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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!
 
Is there a reason that the anomalies are not generated for all systems at the beginning of the game? That would make more sense and to be honest I miss the chance of running into them once the game gets rolling.
 
Is there a reason that the anomalies are not generated for all systems at the beginning of the game? That would make more sense and to be honest I miss the chance of running into them once the game gets rolling.
Yeah that's how I would have done it too. I suppose there is a very good and legitimate reason, but I don't really see why it's not like that already
 
You already know that under the current system as long as you have contact with an empire. You can see all the resources they are currently collecting including strategics.
Please provide me a screenshot that shows which enemy system exactly provides strategic resources to an empire upon establishing contact with said empire without surveying those systems first.

Please read my post more carefully, because what I wrote does NOT happen under the current system.
Knowing which resources they can trade and knowing which planet you need to cede to gain permanent access to that resource are NOT the same thing.
 
I'm still loving the border-rework in the 2. pic ! + The other stuff is good, too.
 
I was going to start a new Stellaris campaign but I think I'll wait until this update/DLC comes out. Seems as if waaay too many fundamental mechanics are changing to spend time on the game just now. I'll be back, later :)

So long, I guess we will see you again sometime around Easter. :p
 
I thought Stellaris goes the same way as CK2 and EU4 - putting essential features into expansions, balancing the game around them and pretending base game is OK without DLC.

But now with Ascension Perks being upgraded to a core feature I'm fine again. It's not that I didn't want to pay for DLC (already did), it's just it's painful to see how EU4 Development and Estates feature work horribly.

Great job, Wiz.
CK 2 is fine, you bought the game to play as a, well, crusader king, not jihad sultan or Buddhist warlord. The DLC's just expand your horizons and places you can play, you don't need equipment or retinues to enjoy the game.

I completely agree with you on EU IV though. The estates and some form of development should be made available to those who don't own the DLC (estates is really easy to fix, give three main estates to anyone with the base game, Cossacks gives you extra estates, you can add extra interaction like MEIOU and actually update the estates.
 
Yeah that's how I would have done it too. I suppose there is a very good and legitimate reason, but I don't really see why it's not like that already
Because this way anomaly discovery chance won't work.

And i'm absolutely not a fan of the change that make all enemy territory auto-explorer. Exploring conquered system with your scientist who got major +% anomaly discovery chance due to traits, traditions and tech was a major bonus for some builds. I see no reason to remove it. Sure make them explored if they are controlled by other Empire, and make them unexplored if they got conquered by you.
 
If the systems owned by other empires are now automatically surveyed, then Planetary survey corps Tradition has just become a LOT less valuable. As of now, once you clear part of the galaxy of enemy presence, you still gain 1- XP for scientists when they survey the new systems (extremely useful late game once your veteran scientists die: being head of a research field give very little XP) and 2- Extra research points for surveying; which, the later you do, the more points you get.

Is there any plan being developed in order to address those losses?

Wiz already resonded to your first question earlier in the thread, and your second question is already in the game now. Its called assist research.
 
Because this way anomaly discovery chance won't work.
Then you simply add a discovery chance to the anomaly.
If you don't trigger it yourself, then the next one surveying it will have its own try.
If no one triggers it after x amount of time, then its controller gets an event similar to the Precursor artefact one. If it's in uncontrolled territory, then it will wait.
 
Is there a reason that the anomalies are not generated for all systems at the beginning of the game? That would make more sense and to be honest I miss the chance of running into them once the game gets rolling.

This is just me guessing, but I would think it's because of things that give increased anomoly discovery chance.
 
Then you simply add a discovery chance to the anomaly.
If you don't trigger it yourself, then the next one surveying it will have its own try.
If no one triggers it after x amount of time, then its controller gets an event similar to the Precursor artefact one. If it's in uncontrolled territory, then it will wait.

So you need to go around claiming systems not knowing what resources are actually, really there. Just gotta hope that your scientist was an idiot, and some good stuff pops up after you claim it?
 
So you need to go around claiming systems not knowing what resources are actually, really there. Just gotta hope that your scientist was an idiot, and some good stuff pops up after you claim it?
Well if you really want to spend x influence for the possibility of an eventual undiscovered anomaly then so be it
 
It just occurred to me that this is going to severely hurt exploration in the game beyond my initial expectations.

In the current version of the game you do not want to share star charts, nor do you want to buy star charts from Curators, because this will severely hurt the usefulness of Planetary Survey Corps, which is already barely useful because of the nerfs. However, there was another reason to never share star charts with another empire.

I realize that anomalies are first-come first-serve and if the AI scans a celestial body, you'll never find an anomaly on that celestial body if you scan it. This comes as a major issue with the new system. If you establish communications with an AI empire, then there is a chunk of the map that they no longer have to scan. Which means that they can be more "efficient" in fishing for anomalies and prioritize scanning systems that have yet to be surveyed. This means that the player will have even greater competition than before when it comes to finding anomalies.

As it is anomalies stop becoming relevant way too quickly and this will only make the problem far worse. Anomalies and events are some of the most interesting elements of Stellaris, and without a way for them to become relevant in the later stages of the game it's just going to feel like a system of wasted potential and going to frustrate players even further.

I'm not saying we should stop this change, but I hope there is a lot of thought going into what the ramifications are going to be, and what changes may need to be implemented to address this.
 
It just occurred to me that this is going to severely hurt exploration in the game beyond my initial expectations.

In the current version of the game you do not want to share star charts, nor do you want to buy star charts from Curators, because this will severely hurt the usefulness of Planetary Survey Corps, which is already barely useful because of the nerfs. However, there was another reason to never share star charts with another empire.

I realize that anomalies are first-come first-serve and if the AI scans a celestial body, you'll never find an anomaly on that celestial body if you scan it. This comes as a major issue with the new system. If you establish communications with an AI empire, then there is a chunk of the map that they no longer have to scan. Which means that they can be more "efficient" in fishing for anomalies and prioritize scanning systems that have yet to be surveyed. This means that the player will have even greater competition than before when it comes to finding anomalies.

As it is anomalies stop becoming relevant way too quickly and this will only make the problem far worse. Anomalies and events are some of the most interesting elements of Stellaris, and without a way for them to become relevant in the later stages of the game it's just going to feel like a system of wasted potential and going to frustrate players even further.

I'm not saying we should stop this change, but I hope there is a lot of thought going into what the ramifications are going to be, and what changes may need to be implemented to address this.

The whole "trading star charts is actually a noob trap" thing really needed to be fixed, anyhow. Although, I hope there is enough stuff added to the mid game to keep me and my scientists busy, if this does end up shortening the exploration period.
 
Yeah that's how I would have done it too. I suppose there is a very good and legitimate reason, but I don't really see why it's not like that already

I think it's so they can have properties like "anomaly discovery rate" modified by traditions and leader traits. I don't think that's a very useful thing, but that would need to change if you wanted to make them hard coded all along.
 
@Wiz I understand the reasoning behind this.

Still, I would like to say that I, for one, didn't trade star charts and simply didn't survey systems that were inside other empire's territory - thus, I kept running into anomalies and such well into the game.

So, while I see good reason behind changing the way surveying works, it sounds like this reduces anomalies and surveying to something that will make the early game interesting but completely and utterly cease to be a part of the game as soon as you enter the mid-game, and that doesn't seem like a good thing to me.