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Stellaris Dev Diary #34 - Clarke Patch

Hello everyone! As you may have noticed, there was no Stellaris development diary this week, because the team has been extremely busy working on the first free patch for the game, which we have named Clarke. Clarke is currently undergoing internal QA testing, and we hope to have a beta version of the patch out for you before the end of the week. Therefore, we decided to do a dev diary after all, detailing some of the fixes, changes and improvements coming in the patch.

Please note that the highlights below are just highlights, NOT exhaustive patch notes!

UI IMPROVEMENTS
A major target area for Clarke was the UI, particularly in regards to sectors and diplomacy. A few highlights:

  • Sectors can now be managed directly from the outliner.
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  • Diplomatic Notifications are now much more detailed.
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  • End of Combat interface has received a major face-lift.
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  • Habitability icons/tooltips now show you more detailed information, including which worlds in a system you can currently colonize.
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AI IMPROVEMENTS
Another major target area for Clarke was to address complaints regarding the AI, particular in sectors to sectors and warfare. A few highlights:
  • Greatly improved sector AI handling of pops, buildings, spaceports and mining stations.
  • Fixes for AI in end game crises.
  • Improvements and fixes to AI handling of its fleets.
  • Less restrictions on what the AI will trade and with who, especially in regards to border access.
  • In multiplayer, empires that are player-controlled will have a 'limited' AI for a period of 10 years if the player drops. The limited AI will not make any drastic changes to the empire, such as changing sectors, disbanding ships, declaring wars, etc, allowing a player to rejoin their empire pretty much as they left it.

We've also added a new option in galaxy setup where you can set the AI's overall aggressiveness.
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EMPIRE BUILDER IMPROVEMENTS
We also took some time to add a pair of highly requested features to the empire builder. Namely, the ability to write a biography for your species and empire, and the ability to customize ruler titles. Ruler titles are customized separately by gender, and will remain even if you change government type, so long as the new government is of the same type as the previous one (so changing from a Monarchy to another Monarchy will not clear your ruler titles, while changing from a Monarchy to a Democracy will).
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BALANCE CHANGES
While balance wasn't our main priority for Clarke, we nonetheless targeted a few major balance issues. A few highlights:
  • War score costs now scale to the size of your target, so you can take more planets from large empires but can't vassalize them in a single war.
  • The ability to stack evasion on Corvettes was nerfed.
  • Strike craft had their range substantially increased.
  • Ethics were rebalanced to make Xenophile/Xenophobe stronger picks, among other changes.
  • It is no longer necessary to control planets to demand them in war, but controlling planets that are set as wargoals are now worth more warscore.
  • Technology cost is now increased both by number of planets owned and size of population, instead of just population. Accordingly, the tech increase cost from population was lowered.

BUG FIXES
In addition to all this, Clarke naturally also includes dozens of fixes for bugs large and small. A few highlights:
  • Military Station maintenance is now correctly calculated (was far too high previously).
  • Numerous fixes to events, including fixing up the Old Gods event chain.
  • Fixed 'ghost' trade deal entries and trade deals silently failing when you traded above a certain percentage of your resource stockpiles.
  • Democracies that don't allow slavery will no longer get the Slaver mandate.
  • Difficulty settings are now available in multiplayer setup.

With Clarke almost finished, we're now switching over fully to working on the Asimov patch, as outlined in last week's dev diary. Where Clarke was mainly a fix and UI improvement patch, Asimov will target the midgame with new diplomatic features and event chains. More details about Asimov will be released in development diaries over the next few weeks, but if you have any questions about the Clarke patch, feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer.
 
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@Wiz Are there plans to add a more convenient way to colonize planets, and raise fleets?

For colonies, I'd prefer if I could either (or both):
  • Click a potential colony, click colonize, and then select my available races at planets with stations. Queue's up and sends a ship.
  • View a table of all potential colonies with key summaries, then click one to go to step 1.
For fleets:
  • Design a fleet and then have the order filled from available spaceports ASAP.
 
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Some suggestions for Asimov I guess:

Vassals and Alliances: If an empire drags his alliance mates or his vassals into a war (offensive wars only) and then they lose the war badly is there a chance that they will break the alliance up in disgust, especially if the ally had positive relations with the war target.


Another UI suggestion, give us a ledger list of controlled planets and colonisable planets within our borders, along with a list of trade deals and the option to cancel them
 
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Wiz said:
The problem with this is that things like Fallen Empires, endgame crises etc are balanced against the current tech pace. It would be better as a mod than as an option because it requires reworking of those things to not mess hard with game balance.
Click to expand...

Then could you tell me what values have to be changed to tinker with these dates? I ask because I created a double/half tech time mod, but didn't find variables about these.
 
Wiz said:
  • Strike craft had their range substantially increased.
Click to expand...

In my testing on this, a major problem strike craft have is that they are far too vulnerable to point defense. Fighters have no special ability to dodge it and bombers don't have much extra ability to take more hits. They need to be a bit tougher/more evasive and maybe be given a bit of slow-regen shielding.
 
Donnicton said:
Yeah this is my biggest problem with the game right now, allied AI refuse to fight their own wars. They declare war whenever they want, and then run over to hide in my own fleet like a kid that says they're gonna beat someone up and then runs and hides behind their big brother, expecting the big brother to do the fighting.

On top of that it doesn't respect distance either, sometimes crossing the entire galaxy to hide under my biggest fleet.
Click to expand...

Yeah, federation I presume? I didn't try it out yet, and I am not gonna. Sounds horrible in every way. Half done mechanism with no way to influence it.

But it is also the problem when you play normally.

1. When you are attacked by an AI stacked fleets fail to damage your industrial potential properly.
2. When you are attacking dozens of friendly AIs tail your fleet, making it very difficult to get a fight (hostile AI goes NOPE).
3. Manoeuvring is a laugh, not everyone has the same propulsion, especially amusing when player use wormholes.
4. It looks ugly.
5. One of those things bothering CPU for no gain in terms of gameplay.


If I am suppose to be a war leader I should have some menu where I could tell: Fleet 1 > tail my fleet No2, Fleet 2 > patrol sector X, Fleet 3 > defend vassal Y, Fleet 4 > defend your homeland, Fleet 5 > independent offensive action etc.
 
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greller said:
Has the issue with putting strategic resource buildings into sectors when the resource isn't in that sector been addressed? Sectors are basically unusable to me when I can never put a planet with a beth plant into a sector unless the beth happens to be produced in that same system. I understand the goal of not wanting sectors to build strategic resource buildings, but there has to be some consideration for buildings that already exist (especially for players like cKnoor who prefer to develop planets themselves and then put them in sectors rather than Wiz's method of letting the sector do the development).
Click to expand...

I would also like to know about this. I've tested it myself by building a beth-stone power plant.

Works fine with both -out- of sector.
Works fine with Plant -in- but mining station -out- of a sector
Doesn't work with Plant -out- and mining station -in- a sector
Doesn't work with Plant -in- and mining station -in- seperate sectors.
Works fine with both -in- the same sector

Some resources are all okay to attach to the same sector e.g only building Beth-stone power plants in sectors that have the stone nearby -but- when it gets to terraforming planets I usually have to keep the resource stations out of a sector and single the planet out for the duration of the terraforming; before putting the planet back in a sector. Which of course plays havok especially when the resource system can have colonised planets in them too.

I will paitently await the full patch notes.

Oh! I have to point out too that the launcher's link to 1.0.3 patch note picture in the news points to the 1.0.2 patch notes. :)
 
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Persipnei said:
Then could you tell me what values have to be changed to tinker with these dates? I ask because I created a double/half tech time mod, but didn't find variables about these.
Click to expand...

The scourge is in game_start.txt

They have a 10% chance of showing up after 120 years, etc.

You can block psi jump drives and jump drives from being researched at all before a certain date.

Likewise, you will be making the droid, sentient AI and synth techs more expensive as-is, though you could increase them further.
 
Ah, about that one.
Wiz said:
The problem with this is that things like Fallen Empires, endgame crises etc are balanced against the current tech pace. It would be better as a mod than as an option because it requires reworking of those things to not mess hard with game balance.
Click to expand...

Fallen Empires and endgame crises could be much stronger. At present they seem to lose steam very quickly.
 
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Were any changes made to vassals and allies following your fleet even when they declare war? Did we get a "attach to fleet" button?

Everything sounds great and i can't wait for the patch.
 
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I'm not sure if this has been asked but has anything been done to improve the fleet management/fleet building UI? Options like build fleet or add to fleet from EUIV would be very helpful. Reorganising fleets is also a bit of a nightmare. Ships don't seem to be grouped by class so it's difficult to quickly move all the ships of one type. The split in half function seems to have a mind of it's own too. I had 8 new battleships and wanted to put 4 each into my two fleets but when I split them I got 3 and 5. Improvements here would add real quality of life value.
 
Wiz said:
What do you mean by changes to sector system, exactly? There's various fixes, but no overhaul is planned for either Clarke or Asimov.
Click to expand...
It's nice to see all the fixes, but I really hope to see Sectors and War Goals completely revamped - they are really broken/half-implemented features as of now, and won't become interesting purely through simple fixes.

Considering the HUGE importance of sectors in the game, and just how hated they are, I'd say they are of a critical importance to overhaul ASAP. Please don't delay this to the next year.
 
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@Wiz : Does the sector AI now take advantage of more nuanced species traits, for example, preferring to have multiple races for xenophiles, or one race for xenophobes, or requiring a certain amount of slaves for decadent species?
 
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