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Stellaris Dev Diary #94 - Ascension Perks & Surveying in Cherryh

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris dev diary. Today's topic was supposed to be ship balance and doomstacks, but because certain things weren't ready to show off yet, we're instead going to be doing a smaller dev diary talking about some changes coming to Ascension Perks and Surveying. We'll get back to the doomstack topic in a couple weeks.

Ascension Perks
Ascension Perks were added in Utopia as the paid component to the Tradition system to create a set of interesting choices for the player to take as they went through the Tradition tree, choosing between simple but powerful bonuses and more elaborate 'unlocks' such as the ascension paths and Megastructures. However, since then we have noticed that this is a system we keep wanting to build on (for example by adding unique Ascension Perks for Machine Empires as we did in Synthetic Dawn), and found the requirement to depend all of this on Utopia too limiting. For this reason, in the Cherryh update, we are going to make the basic Ascension Perks such as Mastery of Nature, Defender of the Galaxy and so on free for everyone. Biological/Psionic/Synthetic Ascension Paths and Megastructure Ascension Perks (including Habitats) will still require Utopia and Machine Empire Ascension Perks will naturally still require Synthetic Dawn (but not Utopia). The core system itself however, will become part of the base game, so everyone will be able to get at least the basic set of Ascension Perks even if they don't own a single piece of DLC.

Surveying & Communications Trading
The way surveying, anomaly generation and star chart trading works has never really worked very well. For one, it's very unclear to players that for example, you cannot discover anomalies in other empires' space, or that star chart trading can actually be a bad idea since it can in some cases stop you from finding anomalies in those systems. For this reason, we've decided to make some changes to the way surveying works. In Cherryh, any system inside the borders of an empire you have communications with will automatically be considered surveyed, without any need to send a science ship into it and waste a bunch of time scanning planets that have no chance of yielding anomalies aynway. There are some exceptions to this, such as Fallen Empires, whose space will need to be surveyed manually and can in fact yield anomalies.

As part of this we have decided to remove Star Chart trading as well as the ability to buy Star Charts from Curators, and instead replace this with the option to trade Communications with another empire - acquiring Communications from an empire in a trade deal will automatically put you in comms with any empires they have comms with that you do not. This should mean that there are no longer any 'traps' in surveying, while also requiring the need to explore every little nook of the galaxy even when that nook is held by your ally since a hundred years back.
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Terra Incognita Changes
Finally, I just wanted to mentioned that we have done some changes to Terra Incognita to make it more clear and make it work properly with bypasses (Wormholes and Gateways). Instead of Terra Incognita being based on which physical pixels on the map your ships have 'seen', it is now based on which systems are considered visited. Visited either means that you have been to the system with a ship, or that the system is inside the borders of an empire that you have communications with. As such, Terra Incognita no longer needs to be manually lifted on empires you have met in order to not make them appear grey and washed out on the map, also making it easier to see important galactic features such as nebulas.
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That's all for today! I know it was a short one, but don't worry, we still have a long way to go and plenty of major things to talk about for Cherryh. However, next week we're actually going to be talking about something that's§ unrelated to Cherryh, but exciting nonetheless. I'm not allowed to spoil what just yet, but stay tuned!
 
Anomalies can't be found in other empires' space because then you could end up changing the deposits on their planets. You do not automatically see everything, you just have survey data on their planets. You don't get sensor of their ships automatically.

I had cases where I had AI empire come in survey my planets and changed the deposit. Extremely rare but it indeed does happen.

The problem is I don't want them to do that so I usually just set border to close on first contact until I survey all of my solar systems.
 
huh? why do you need to know resources? you'll just capture everything.

also on the streams Wiz said that they want to any at least something in every system. because it's not fun to claim empty systems (or something like that)

Have you ever heard of this thing called, you know, prioritization? "Oh, this system has 39 minerals, this system next to it has 1 mineral and 1 energy. Hmm, which one should I claim first?"

I don't know, maybe some people like to gamble, but I'd rather know what I'm spending my influence on beforehand.

Also, you know, did it occur to you that maybe you can't "capture everything" because you need to claim systems with influence, which is a limited resource, and then actually capture said systems and hold on to them?
 
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my problem was that you share all info. and you can't choose parts you don't want to share
That's already like that right now. If you shared your star charts one time, everyone, except the fanatical purifiers, knew what was inside your empire.

Again, we don't know how the final product will be so what we,re talking right now may actually be different in the end.
 
Im hopeing for more anomalies that can lead to unique expeiences and to be fun as well. it's good to see you won't know evrething from shareing star charts but some things are still fun to know about, what i mean is what kind of reources you can expect if you think about expanding borders, i know they are changeing how you expand borders but i hope that dosent mean it will be slow and a micromanagment of every single system. (Hopeing for aquantic species pack)

and hopeing for the surveys of idffrent anomalies like the precurosr one that ops up in another empire leading to shared intel caneling the quest in a way. People will always complain about everything but DLC which adds content to a game with a base cost of 39£ and free patches i mean devlopment aint cheap.

i sorta wish the acesnion perks could be balanced out as federation one for robots is a lot better then bio and domination a hassel. would be cool to see mroe unique things to each tadition tree and i wish the dmg to fallen empires and end game crisis could at the least include awakend empires, not fallen just awakend since they are well a end crisis as well. now im shit at the game even at 1500 hours ( barley won any ). but sure hope next dev diary includes new ship classes something to be a good point defence. im typing on the fly so what comes to mind i type XD

looking good ill defently get the dlc, even if i wish there were more tech options and i gota keep saying this but plantoids ships what were you thinking??! , i mean i tend to call my battleships gigant dongs , if youd gone for a more scure look for the trees , ( this turned out to long and half is jibbrish
 
Are we the owners of Utopia getting new exclusive Ascension Perks as compensation?
I mean, we payed for a product X that now we see that parts of it are free

Why would we , weve had those features for some time now and it's just fair to give something to base game. your not gonna get something that massive for free since you bought an expansion. :D , It ain't a pre purchase offer ^^
 

While I understand the reason behind the removal of exchange map.

However I do not agree in general with opening communicate and get a large area revealed to you.

I much rather have a general outline until you get military access or go to war and explore them that way. So you still have some "mystery" feeling in meeting someone instead of "instant" knowing how many starbase/outpost/planet they have as soon you obtain their communication protocol.

I suppose that will have to wait for another expansion to properly expand.

So I am still somewhat cool to all thing in this Dev Diary.
 
Why would we , weve had those features for some time now and it's just fair to give something to base game. your not gonna get something that massive for free since you bought an expansion. :D , It ain't a pre purchase offer ^^
Especially since part of Utopia DLC becoming free represent less than the cost of a Happy Meal at McDonald's. Almost like my past life working at a call center and receiving death threats for a 1$ error in a phone bill. :p
 
Thanks for ignoring the rest of my post explaining how this particular example is one of the fairest things I've ever seen, and less of a "loss" than pretty much everything else you're not complaining about, so you can hold on to your irrational anger ;)


I wasnt ignoring it. From my understanding of what you wrote, it was the basis of your entire argument.
Also thanks for the insults always appreciate those.
As for the Terms of Service, thats a legal document. Not wheter a dlc policy is fair or not. So I dont see how it is relevant.

Did you read my previous posts? My entire point in this thread has not been about making a feuture free, I even pointed out it makes sense from a game design point for the future as it would solve the issue of certain ascension perks requiring 2 DLC like machine worlds. Which I also consider unfair.

My point is simple: People paid for something and now it is going to be released for free, thats is unfair.
There should be some compansation, a portrait or something. Doesnt have to be a whole lot(As those couple perks are not worth that much), but something.

If you want to call that irrational anger then fine call it, then I guess I am irrationally angry.
 
Have you ever heard of this thing called, you know, prioritization?
ehm...no.
you see your enemy. you remove it from the map. then you survey and re-build everything.
when I start the war I always do the same steps: I select opponent's capitol world(cede), then I cede\cleanse everything I can on the rest of the points. then I attack and destroy every ship\station\starport\ on his territory. then I usually bombard his planets for few years and after that I conquer his capitol.
depending on the changes in the claims system (no one answered if you need to "snake-in" to reach planets inside the blob, or you can select any system you want) i'll do the same: claim what I can+capitol and destroy the rest. wait the truce and repeat till total annihilation of the enemy. then proceed to everyone who has NAP\DP\Federation with him.

also i'm playing with assumption that the whole galaxy rightfully belong to me. and others are just intruders. so by the end of the game my empire will be the only one standing, unless i'm stopped.
 
That's already like that right now. If you shared your star charts one time, everyone, except the fanatical purifiers, knew what was inside your empire.
not true. first of all they know only til the moment of the change. thing could change in a future (like with anomalies of with exploration of more systems)
also if you share the map iirc you don't exactly tell everyone that there is empire. they have to research each other themselves.
 
not true. first of all they know only til the moment of the change. thing could change in a future (like with anomalies of with exploration of more systems)
also if you share the map iirc you don't exactly tell everyone that there is empire. they have to research each other themselves.

Sure they don't know it right now because they have to spend 60 research points to "find" you. Mid-game, it's so low that you don't even care about the cost. I don't see how this system is better than the one suggested by developers in the next patch.
 
I don't see how this system is better than the one suggested by developers in the next patch.

It's only marginally better - the problem is it wasn't very good to begin with and this new system is just doubling down on all of it's faults instead of making changes to make the game better.
 
It's only marginally better - the problem is it wasn't very good to begin with and this new system is just doubling down on all of it's faults instead of making changes to make the game better.

I always thought the current system was far from being ideal. I don't really care that people know about my empire system if I get infos about other empires. When espionage is implemented, something Wiz wish to do, maybe I'll consider comms and charts like strategic information.
 
I fully agree with you. And I have a question to the ones "respectfully disagreeing" with you ory earlier similar complaint. Why? Why is it bad to ask for compensation? Ascension perk were the main selling point of that dlc. Px should discount that or sell that with bundle but not make investments adhocly void.
They could give Utopia out for free, and I wouldn't particularly care. It's what, the price of a couple drinks and some bar food? That money is long gone. I'd much rather the devs have more tools to improve the base game than stress over an insignificant amount of money I spent over a year ago.
 
No, it does not. What it does is make it so you don't have to survey systems where you can't get anomalies anyway.
That's not... entirely true. Currently, you can get anomalies in systems that initially belong to other empires, if you avoid surveying them or trading map data until you conquer or integrate those systems into your empire. Once the unsurveyed systems are part of your empire, you can send science ships to survey them and find anomalies. So this change could, in fact, drastically reduce the number of anomalies one can find over the course of the game.


As for a question of my own, will the anomalies (and other events like the hunt for old probes event chain) that forcibly give you survey data on the system be removed from the game? Those are among the most frustrating anomalies, as they preclude you from finding any additional anomalies in that system. I usually avoid researching those anomalies altogether until I have finished scanning the rest of the system. (I have the lead-in text for those written down, so I know which to skip. I also always skip the derelict ship anomaly, as that has killed far too many of my scientists.)
 
Currently, you can get anomalies in systems that initially belong to other empires, if you avoid surveying them or trading map data until you conquer or integrate those systems into your empire.

YES - In fact this is arguably one of the most important things to know if you are going to have a successful game as not only do you get anomalies, these often stack with the anomalies the AI found. It adds a lot to the game and in encourages you not to survey their systems or trade maps or have other meaningful contact with small weak empires you want to conquer. Since there is almost no diplomacy/trade/etc. in the game yet, conquering folks and surveying systems is really the only thing to do for most of the game.
 
I think we should get more anomalies over time in our existing systems, like how you can "discover" new precursor artifacts. So you can always get more, and perhaps some of the old exploration tools that go obsolete to improve discovery chance.

Give each owned system a cooldown, so one system an't discover more than one anomaly every X number of years, then let boosts to anomaly discover chance reduce the min cooldown, and increase the per month chance. For example, the anomaly discover chance scientist perk increases the odds to find anomalies in your systems within their sensor range by Y% per month, and can discovr additional anomalies in a shorter cooldown than normal. Giving them better sensors lets them cover more systems, so the effect scales into the late game as places to explore become scarce, and you end up with scientists parked around planets more often.

You could add unique anomalies to these later anomalies, and could give increased or decreased anomaly discovery based on the results, so getting bad endings gives more overall, while good endings leave longer gaps in time between discoveries, so it does not snowball out of control.
 
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