Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today is the third week of post-Synthetic Dawn 'filler' dev diaries, as mentioned in Dev Diary 88. Regular dev diaries return on October 26th.

As we don't have anything in particular to talk about this week, I'm just going to give you another brief update on 1.8 post-launch support: We released the 1.8.2 update yesterday, with all the fixes from the 1.8.1 beta as well as some additional fixes and tweaks.

There has been a couple of script issues reported in 1.8.2 related to Devouring Swarms, Exterminators and Purifiers (missing tooltips and opinion modifiers) that we are going to look at and likely publish a fix for, but other than that we feel like we have now addressed all important issues reported in 1.8 and 1.8.1 and so will be wrapping up 1.8 post-launch support if no other critical issues are found in the live build.

As before, I'm going to sign off this dev diary with a screenshot, this one taken on the galaxy map in the internal development build, where everything clearly looks the same as it always has and there certainly aren't any significant changes being prototyped that I can't yet talk about. See you next week!

 

[Astax]

I'd argue that it's not a bug but definitely an example of a mechanic that needs tuning. Frontier outposts should be worth more than their fleet power in warscore, as should spaceports.

Personally I think this works well, given that outpost can be a war-goal, so you can bypass a war-goal with a small scale attack, which I find to be CHEATING, but I do it EVERYTIME because I am a SOULESS MACHINE!

IMO Outposts should not be destroyed but rather disabled, and transerable/repairable/dismantle-able (is this a word?) after the war.

 

[Zavaleta]

Not sure if this's been posted before but I'ma go for it anyway:

Wiz threw this onto his twitter earlier, not long after the dev diary; seems the outer color of the border is now your empire's Secondary color

Wiz: "Yep... nothing at all is different than before."

Edit: I didn't even see this until now but Science and Construction vessels now have system icons that match their roles- look at the ship icons in Soao and Procyon respectively.

Furthermore, the spaceport icon on Sol now seems to indicate the level by which the spaceport has been upgraded

Hopefully, we will now "buy" systems (like tiles in Civ5) with influence, unity, or both. That would constitute a much better system in my opinion.

 

[DevilinDupriest]

Am I the only one who likes the current dynamic borders and +border range? I really enjoy making border aggressive races. Rubbin' is racin'!

 

[stavern]

I was reading diaries from before launch and just after. There was talk about living systems with civilian ships flying around. Is that ever going to happen?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Am I the only one who likes the current dynamic borders and +border range? I really enjoy making border aggressive races. Rubbin' is racin'!

The current system works but the new system will have more interesting mechanical implications and will benefit all sorts of future developments and potential changes.

 

[Wellech]

Cool. Just want to point out;

though expansions are cool, and stuff, what has been done to balance the game for those who do not have DLC?
I did a run without DLC enabled. The economy system seemed was way off; too much income (as if I needed an Enclave to spend it)

 

[NeoExodus]

So I dont know if anyone else has noticed this, but are there currently no Synthetic style ship models in game yet? If I go to create a synthetic race in the create empire section, there is no synthetic city to choose nor is there an option for synthetic styled ships. The only way to get any synthetic style ship is to choose the pre-made synthetic race. They are the only ones with the "AI style" ships. Even when I use that pre-made empire the only AI looking ship is the science ship. I know there are some AI ship mods out there, but I was kinda hoping that the synthetic dawn dlc would include some synthetic based ship designs. Am I completely missing something here?

 

[legofreak97]

If the new system really happens to be "Buying with Influence", then I think this is actually a very good idea, fo a number of reasons.

Possible thingies that might play into it:

• Influence-buying systems means it will most likely slow down your early expansion (depending on the cost)
• Can we only buy systems that are adjecent to our borders? If not, maybe increased costs?
• Cost is most likely going to increase by either distance from how-world or distance from border (see above)
• It might be possible to "snatch" an enemies system for a higher influence cost, without having to declare a war - most likely creating a neutral zone, like when 2 different empires have Planets in the same system
• The change would boost the early-game power of authoritarian/hive-mind/machine-empires, since they start with more influence (also mind cutthroat-politics). Lategame Democracies/egaltarians might be stronger because of happy factions. Of course this is the same as it is right now, but it's probably going to be more noticeable.

 

[Ari54x]

Cool. Just want to point out;

though expansions are cool, and stuff, what has been done to balance the game for those who do not have DLC?
I did a run without DLC enabled. The economy system seemed was way off; too much income (as if I needed an Enclave to spend it)

The latest patch should have decreased your available income, or at least the extent to which it can snowball. The only thing that feels remotely similar to last patch is jumping down a difficulty and playing a machine empire and terraforming everything to a Machine World.

 

[CrowScape]

So I dont know if anyone else has noticed this, but are there currently no Synthetic style ship models in game yet?

Absolutely no one else has noticed this.
You are the first.
No one has requested Synthetic style ships.
Wiz has not explained the cost of developing ship models.
He certainly has not explained why ship models seem easy to mod in.
And he has not explained this on multiple occasions.
I am a nice guy.

 

[Scribbit]

I think they were all set to zero a while back because it made it too easy to scum for warscore without actually fighting. Especially before they fixed the AI constantly rebuilding its stations while enemy ships were in orbit... but even now you can trick it into rebuilding and then go blow up the half-built station again before it's finished.

I prefer the trick of bombing a planet, leaving with my main fleet, and then having my transports come in and take the planet...while the new spaceport is being built. Wherein you then own that spaceport.

Don't know if that was fixed, since I've been playing mostly defensively since 1.8, but that was a fun thing to do.

 

[HorusHeresy1982]

I'd love a system where frontier outposts can be built to build a neutral zone between empires to reduce empire border friction.

 

[Riftwalker]

I was reading diaries from before launch and just after. There was talk about living systems with civilian ships flying around. Is that ever going to happen?

considering how much lag a mod that does this, does to my machine, i'd say no. please god no.

 

[Gratak]

I was reading diaries from before launch and just after. There was talk about living systems with civilian ships flying around. Is that ever going to happen?

considering how much lag a mod that does this, does to my machine, i'd say no. please god no.

Indeed. Though I guess civilian ships in the way EU4 displays trade would work. Though that would mean they only appear after you enter a system according to some dev index of that system and not really move from one planet to another.