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Stellaris Dev Diary #69: Beyond Utopia

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is going to briefly cover our plans for future Stellaris updates, and what you can expect from us going forward.

The Adams Update
With Utopia and Banks now out, the next thing we have planned for you is the 1.6 'Adams' update. This update, named after Douglas Adams, is going to focus completely on bug fixing and quality of life changes, with no major feature additions and no accompanying paid DLC. Work on 1.6 actually started almost immediately after Banks/Utopia went into code freeze, and it already contains hundreds of bug fixes and usability/UI additions and tweaks. A particular focus of Adams has been to work on our backlog of old issues, taking care of many of the smaller issues and annoyances that have been present in the game since release. We've also made time for some of the things that were originally planned for Banks, but had to be cut due to time constraints. While I can't give you an exact release date for Adams yet, I can say that you shouldn't have to wait too long.

Beyond Utopia
Back in Dev Diary #50, I listed a number of priorities for us going forward from Heinlein/Leviathans. A number of these things have since been added to the game, so I'm going to go ahead and list it again to give you an idea of where our focus will lie in future updates, expansions and story packs, with the items that are already completed noted with a strikethrough. The list is NOT in order of priority, and something being crossed out does NOT mean we aren't going to continue to improve on it in future updates, just that we consider it to be at a satisfactory level.

As before, THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE OR FINAL LIST, AND NOTHING BELOW IS CERTAIN TO HAPPEN (unless it already did)!
  • Ship appearance that differs for each empire, so no two empires' ships look exactly the same.
  • More potential for empire customization, ability to build competitive 'tall' empires.
  • Global food that can be shared between planets.
  • Ability to construct space habitats and ringworlds.
  • Factions that are proper interest groups with specific likes and dislikes and the potential to be a benefit to an empire instead of just being rebels.
  • Ability to set rights and obligations for particular species in your empire.
  • Deeper Federations that start out as loose alliances and can eventually be turned into single states through diplomatic manuevering.
  • Superweapons and planet killers.
  • More story events and reactive narratives that give a sense of an unfolding story as you play.
  • More interesting mechanics for pre-FTL civilizations.
  • A 'galactic community' with interstellar politics and a 'space UN'.
  • Buildable Dreadnoughts and Titans.
  • Reworking the endgame crises to be more balanced against each other and the size/state of the galaxy.
  • Reworks to war to address the 'doomstacks' issue and make the strategic and tactical layers of warfare more interesting and less micro-intensive.
  • Deeper mechanics and unique portraits for synthetics.

With Utopia and Banks, we decided that rather than divide our focus, it was better to have the update and expansion focus almost exclusively on empire customization and internal politics, and this is the policy we intend to continue with for future expansions. As always, I can't tell you specifically what the next expansion, update or story pack is going to be about, but the above list should at least give you some ideas of where you can expect Stellaris to go in the future.

That's all for today! Next week we'll start going into specifics of the 1.6 'Adams' update so until then, I leave you with this picture of some of the free graphical content coming in Adams:
2017_04_20_1.png
 
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TheVoidDragon said:
I'm not saying it's something important that should be done right away and they do say they might add more to it later on, but i don't see how with that relativity small change that was made it's suddenly been deemed "satisfactory" when the problem is still exactly the same as it was before; the ships of some empires tend to look identical to those of other empires. The trail colour change doesn't address the actual problem.
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I agree that it's not satisfactory overall, but - again - there're hundreds of unsatisfactory things which would come in (my) priority list before making differing models for ships and turrets.
 
I like all things on list I personally really wish they bring back idea of living solar systems there so much game play potential from that. for example living solar systems would allow trade lanes to be established, it also allow for pirates factions to of more value they could raid these lanes, it also then allow people to establish there own privateers operations that work under black flag like in real life in the 1700s, it open things up like slave trading for profit or other ways for governments to make black market currency the story's for these things are already in lore, it be neat to see them in game and are in the game as events it be neat to have game play features that all u player to setup events like that or for other empires to do so also but only way to do that is with a living solar systems setup - and now that everything including food is trade global and use able on a empire scale, this also allow blockaded where you could blockaded a planet or even a whole system and take the food or resources being trade form trade lane into it and then or even people maning the ship coming in, open like i said black market system. and perhaps mercenary system privateer stuff.

other thing game play system be neat to see is system like in game CK as expansion to this game - where u can have more control over leaders - lords so family so forth. factions could work well with this system where these lords governs family members try to use there own factions to assert there own person demands or wants on government overall and this system also work well with living solar system above due to open up idea of black op operations internal and external. also factions with a living solar system could hold resources that they have control over as ransom for things they want or like to have require you to decide how to handle factions. militarily black ops - privateers mercs - privateers so forth to deal with these situations.

for me for these two things be add into game would be worth price of an expansion pack.
 
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So I guess the next DLC is war and diplomacy.
 
Wiz said:
  • Deeper Federations that start out as loose alliances and can eventually be turned into single states through diplomatic manuevering.
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What is a regular empire but a tightly bound Federation of sectors? What is vassal integration but tightening the binds? It seems to me that there's considerable potential to further deepen internal politics here, and turn sectors into active actors while at it. You could even let the player control one, rather than the entire empire; this would then allow new playstyles and strategies, like getting purposefully conquered so you can take the throne from within.

You could, at the extreme, make the internal structure - and thus politics - of empires CKII complex, complete with a full feudal-llike power structure.
 
  • Deeper Federations that start out as loose alliances and can eventually be turned into single states through diplomatic manuevering
  • A 'galactic community' with interstellar politics and a 'space UN'.
Both of these sound awesome for resolving some of the diplomatic shallowness that is present at the moment, but will there be any improvements to vassals at all? Having an ambiguous loyalty based solely on opinion seems shoddy and you get few benefits from them other than a separate fleet for war.
 
I hope that the reworks to war include revamping warfare AI. Currently in war I can easily blitz into enemy systems, capture a planet, and then move on to another system without even encountering an enemy fleet. Then from that point on they are doing nothing but slowly following behind my trail of destruction trying to recapture their occupied worlds while I take 3 more for every 1 they manage to get back. And even when they're trying to take a system back they constantly abandon the planet they're bombarding to try and pursue my transport fleet when it's temporarily separated from my main fleet -- even though it's clear that they have no hope of catching up with my transports before they rejoin the main fleet since they're just auto-following the fleet and are a jump away (which is also annoying -- why can't ships that are auto-following other ships just jump WITH the ships instead of after them?). And why don't they target critical structures like wormhole generators -- especially ones that I construct in their systems during war? The war is tediously easy and predictable, every single time.

Further, why is it that I can click on enemy fleets and see the orders they are issued and even which system they are jumping to next? This kind of information should only be available if there was some sort of espionage mechanic where my spies are planted within their empire and can tell me their fleet movements. Currently it's trivial to outmaneuver or intercept enemy fleets with this information.

And finally, since I'm on the topic, emergency FTL and evasion need tweaking. Currently even fleets that are 1 day away from jumping to another system but get caught in combat have the same emergency FTL countdown as a fleet caught in the middle of a system. Why wouldn't your regular FTL warmup carry over into your emergency FTL warmup if you are outside of the gravity well? As for evasion, currently my workers and science ships think the best way to get away from any threat is to beeline for the nearest point outside of the gravity well and jump -- even if that is the exact point that the enemy fleet just jumped in. And why do non-combat ships slow down in combat like combat ships? I get that combat ships slow down because they're diverting power from engines to weapons, but that doesn't make any sense for non-combat ships trying to get away (unless there's some other thematic hand-wavy reason for ships slowing down in combat).

I have thoughts on other areas but I'm not sure how welcome ranty long-winded posts like this are welcome here :)
 
Wiz said:
  • Buildable Dreadnoughts and Titans.
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I wonder how r u going to add those types? I assume the Dreadnought is twice bigger than battleship and Titan will be 4 times bigger, right? Assuming the same utility and weapon slots ratio maintained, the Titan shall carry 24 large weapons and 40 large utility slots. Imagine doing 64 clicks in the designer?.. Ridicules. Unless together with new ship types u introduce a couple of extra- and super-large slot types as well. Please do not rush introducing new ships, double-think on details to not get things ugly.

Suggestion for consideration before introducing any new large ship types: rescale utility slots first, so that 1M becomes equal to 8S and 1L - to 64S (1L=8M=64S instead of 1L=2M=4S). This solves the problem with utility slots for large ships even beyond dreadnought and titan sizes. As for the weapons, new types are needed. As an alternative for doubling gun sizes u may consider doubling attack speed for those.
 
Yandersen said:
I wonder how r u going to add those types? I assume the Dreadnought is twice bigger than battleship and Titan will be 4 times bigger, right? Assuming the same utility and weapon slots ratio maintained, the Titan shall carry 24 large weapons and 40 large utility slots. Imagine doing 64 clicks in the designer?.. Ridicules. Unless together with new ship types u introduce a couple of extra- and super-large slot types as well. Please do not rush introducing new ships, double-think on details to not get things ugly.

Suggestion for consideration before introducing any new large ship types: rescale utility slots first, so that 1M becomes equal to 8S and 1L - to 64S (1L=8M=64S instead of 1L=2M=4S). This solves the problem with utility slots for large ships even beyond dreadnought and titan sizes. As for the weapons, new types are needed. As an alternative for doubling gun sizes u may consider doubling attack speed for those.
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I think they'll just have more XL slots, and maybe even XXL, perhaps.

Could also have some other unique slots, like how currently XL slots are very specific to the spinal mount of the battleship.
 
How about adding the following changes.
1. Changing the places of your planets in the list so you can for example have all the planets in a single solar system in a row. Because as you expand your empire and get new tech you can terraform planets and you can colonise planets in solar systems you already have planets in, i prefer creating fleets in systems wich i have many planets in so i can focus my fleet academy on those select planets.
2. Adding Unity focus for sectors.

;)
 
hello there

i ll be out of subject but just here to say that i love your work, Stellaris is far far away the best space strategy game i ever played until Ascendancy.
Music are wondurfull, game so epic etc
Keep it up guys , we will support you on this.

Best regards
 
Can strategic resources please be something other than awful in 1.6? Honestly, the system as it stands now is atrocious. "One dark matter unit? Why yes, that's just enough to supply a literally innumerable number of laboratories across the galaxy within our empire, and not one bit more!". They're strategic irrelevances. They don't stack, they're relatively common enough for you to expect to have all of them within your eventual borders, and you can often accumulate 5-6 units of a few resources, easily ignoring an enemy destroying some of them during a war with your fleets none the lesser.

Make economic resources limited by bonus output(i.e. pitharan dust can provide up to N extra food per dust owned), fleet resources capped by ship size, and then have the bonus value increase if you're significantly under the cap similar to a power overage. Resources immediately become valuable while tall empires get another soft buff(or wide a soft nerf, depending how you look at it).
 
Under your proposed scheme, even trading them to your allies probably doesn't make sense.
 
Pretty exciting stuff. Can't wait to see it . With regard to bug fixes,and bug reporting in general, it would be nice to see more engagement on the forum so that we can work through what is a bug, what is working as designed, and what are just complaints.

On a positive note though, it's good see a company take quality as seriously as Paradox does.
 
Please bring back individual-Pop purges and slavery. I absolutely hate the new system where it's done to an entire species in one go.
 
Alex_brunius said:
Yeah, I have too agree with this. The main issue IMO is that Spaceports ( and to lesser degree fortress/defenses ) don't scale in defensive powers at all so they become roadkills later in the game, and that there is very little in terms of logistics or harassment of supplylines ( which should be the main weapons against putting everything in a single doomstack ).
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AOE weapons on stations?
 
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