• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Stellaris Dev Diary #83: Čapek Feature Roundup (part 1)

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is a round-up of some minor changes and reworks coming in the 1.8 'Čapek' update. Though most of what's in these round-ups will already have been discussed on stream or twitter, we still want to make sure that people whose primary source of Stellaris information is dev diaries are aware of what's changing. Everything mentioned in this dev diary is part of the free update.

Democratic Election Changes
We've taken some time to make a variety of changes and fixes to democratic elections in 1.8. Rather than being a confusing mess of candidates from the entire leader pool, elections in 1.8 will be centered around factions and faction leaders. Instead of a candidate's vote share being based on their mandate, candidates from faction now get election support directly based on the strength of their faction, so a candidate from a powerful faction has a much better chance of securing an electoratal victory than one from a fringe party. Election candidates will be generated from all faction leaders, with independent candidates added into the mix if there are less than 4 factions that are able to provide candidates. We've also made some changes to the way faction support is calculated when there are species that lack Full Citizenship (and thus the ability to vote and be leaders): Though free Pops without Full Citizenship can still join factions, their support count for only 1/5th the amount that a Full Citizenship pop does when calculating the overall political strength (and thus also vote share) of a faction. We had hoped to also spend some time adding more Mandates for 1.8, but unfortunately didn't end up being able to fit it into our scheudle. However, it's something we're going to revisit as soon as we can spare the time for it.
2017_08_24_1.png


Leader Max Level
Another change to leaders in general in 1.8 is the rework of the Leader Skills modifier. Where previously Leader Skills modifiers (such as the Talented trait) would increase the base skills of leaders, this has now been reworked into a Leader Max Level modifier that increases the potential skill level cap of your leader. The default skill level cap is still 5, but this can now be increased all the way up to 10 with the right combination of traits, civics, traditions and policies. This will allow empires that focus on raising leader level cap to have extremely powerful leaders, and since all leaders now start at level 1, will also make the Leader Experience Gain modifier far more valuable, especially in synergy with level cap increases.

Core Sector Governors
We've made some changes to governors in 1.8. First of all, the core sector has been changed so that only a single Governor is needed to govern it, rather than one Governor per planet. Also, the effect of Governor skill level has been changed to provide a direct bonus to all resource production in their sector, meaning that highly skilled Governors are now a valuable asset that will significantly strengthen the economy of their sector.
2017_08_24_2.png


Vassal Creation
Lastly for today, we've reworked the Create Vassal button. Where previously it was hidden away in the Demographics screen and would only let you release entire species whose homeworld you had conquered, the Create Vassal button is now prominently displayed in the planet interface and will allow you to release any (non-capital) planet you own as a vassal, under the governance of any species of your choice that is present on that planet at the time of release. Released vassals will get your empire ethics and authority, but will pick their own civics. In combination with other changes and additions in 1.8 (such as reworking the Domination tree to be all about having subjects rather than annexing them, and the new Feudal Realm civic that lets you control far more vassals without having them rebel), this should make a subject-oriented playstyle far more viable.
2017_08_24_3.png


That's all for today! Next week we'll continue the feature roundup by talking about new and changed policies in 1.8.
 
Like, for every inhabited system in a sector > limit, you get -1% on your tax rate and the sector keeps more. Something like that.

I was thinking something like a malus if a system is too far from the sector capital. And 'distance' in this case is accounted from the FTL distance, so you'd have to keep hyperlanes in mind when setting sector borders (for hyperlane users only).
 
Core Sector Governors
We've made some changes to governors in 1.8. First of all, the core sector has been changed so that only a single Governor is needed to govern it, rather than one Governor per planet. Also, the effect of Governor skill level has been changed to provide a direct bonus to all resource production in their sector, meaning that highly skilled Governors are now a valuable asset that will significantly strengthen the economy of their sector.

Does that mean we cannot appoint governor individually for core planets anymore or is that still an option in addition to this?
 
...allow you to release any (non-capital) planet you own as a vassal, under the governance of any species of your choice that is present on that planet at the time of release.

Love this Wiz, even if ya gone darn killed annuver of my mods. But seriously, thank you, this is a cool change.
 
@Wiz for the new vassal function, you said only non-capital planets can be released. Does that mean the bug where the capital modifier stays on a planet after conquest has been fixed?
 
Will you allow us to change the name of regime we play? For example, automatically the game calls my democratic regime "direct democracy", but I want it to be called "representative democracy" without changing civics/ethics. For sake of customization.

Also, is it even possible to allow players to change their own empires' ships prefixes, colors and emblems during the game? I would like to see it one day (finally).
 
Core Sector Governors
We've made some changes to governors in 1.8. First of all, the core sector has been changed so that only a single Governor is needed to govern it, rather than one Governor per planet. Also, the effect of Governor skill level has been changed to provide a direct bonus to all resource production in their sector, meaning that highly skilled Governors are now a valuable asset that will significantly strengthen the economy of their sector.

Brilliant move! BUT can we still override and put in a special governor of a particular planet if we wanted to?

IE, Core Sector has Retired Navy Officer, excellent for our ships, BUT we also have a Titan Planet and have made sure we had our strongest species there with Clone Vats etc, can we then put in a Retired Army Veteran on that singular planet whilst retaining direct control?

Even better would be the ability to have non-connected planets in one sector under one governor I suppose.
 
Speaking of mandates, will you guys be fixing the bug where players can delete then rebuild their stations to fulfill their mandates? The ease of completing mandates is part of what made democracy so strong.
 
Thanks for the response!

Really looking forward to this patch and DLC. To be honest, every patch/DLC from Stellaris has had me excited so far. Seems every single dev diary has something really cool to add.
 
@Wiz especially in case the of a synth empire, will the faction leaders change from time to time? It would be awkward to be a bit stuck with immortal faction leaders with useless ruler traits, or traits that are much more useful as a normal leader (admiral, genius scientist).
 
"Core Sector Governors
We've made some changes to governors in 1.8. First of all, the core sector has been changed so that only a single Governor is needed to govern it, rather than one Governor per planet."


FINALLY! =D