Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary will be focusing on the road ahead after Cherryh and Apocalypse, and our long-term priorities going forward.

Cherryh Post-Release Support
As mention in last week's dev diary, the immediate priority for the team is post-release support for Cherryh and Apocalypse, fixing bugs, addressing balance/feature feedback, and working on quality of life and performance improvements. We are maintaining a running 2.0.2 beta patch which we will continue to update every few days or so until we are happy with the state of the game.

The Post-Apocalypse
Apocalypse and Cherryh were an expansion/patch focused almost exclusively on war, and with it out, we are now going to be moving on to other, non-war related priorities for future updates, expansions and story packs. To give you an idea of what's coming, we're going to revisit the list of long-term goals for Stellaris I made and updated for Dev Diary #50 and Dev Diary #69. This time, we're going to organize the goals into the ones we feel have been delivered on, old goals that were added to the list before 2.0, and new goals that we have set for ourselves after 2.0 (there is no prioritization difference between goals based on when they were added or whether they are considered old or new for this particular list).

As before, the list is NOT in order of priority, and something being considered completed NOT mean we aren't going to continue to improve on it in future updates, just that we consider it to be at a satisfactory level.

As before, THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE OR FINAL LIST, NOTHING NOT ALREADY COMPLETED IS CERTAIN TO HAPPEN AND THERE ARE NO ETAS

Completed Goals

• Ship appearance that differs for each empire, so no two empires' ships look exactly the same.
• More potential for empire customization, ability to build competitive 'tall' empires.
• Global food that can be shared between planets.
• Ability to construct space habitats and ringworlds.
• Factions that are proper interest groups with specific likes and dislikes and the potential to be a benefit to an empire instead of just being rebels.
• Ability to set rights and obligations for particular species in your empire.
• Buildable Dreadnoughts and Titans.
• Deeper mechanics and unique portraits for synthetics.
• Reworking the endgame crises to be more balanced against each other and the size/state of the galaxy.
• Reworks to war to address the 'doomstacks' issue and make the strategic and tactical layers of warfare more interesting and less micro-intensive.
• Superweapons and planet killers.

Old Goals

• A 'galactic community' with interstellar politics and a 'space UN'.
• Deeper Federations that start out as loose alliances and can eventually be turned into single states through diplomatic manuevering.
• More story events and reactive narratives that give a sense of an unfolding story as you play.
• More interesting mechanics for pre-FTL civilizations.
• 'Living systems', making empire systems feel more alive and lived in

New Goals

• Less micromanagement and more focus on interesting choices in regards to planets, the ability to grow planets beyond current fixed size.
• Empire trade mechanics and trade agreements.
• A galactic market where resources and strategic resources can be imported and exported.
• Espionage and sabotage mechanics.
• Improved galaxy/hyperlane generation with better placed systems and dangers.
• More anomalies and unique systems to explore.

That's all for today! Over the next few weeks, dev diaries will continue to focus on post-release support. Feature dev diaries will resume when we have new features to talk about. Finishing off this dev diary is a screenshot of how we're reworking difficulty modes in the next update to the rolling 2.0.2 beta:

 

[klingonadmiral]

A 'galactic community' with interstellar politics and a 'space UN'.

Would it be possible to turn Awakened Empires into the catalysts for something like that? Basically after a phase of intense warfare (be it alone, in a WiH or as GotG), they start to calm down a bit and turn their carved-out spheres into various types of "mega-federations".

Benevolent Interventionists could be your most standard "UN", with motions and interventions against members that break the galactic treaty framework. Watchful Regulators are similar but more concerned with technology instead of civil rights.

Jingoistic Reclaimers become the "Galactic Hegemon", a feudal suzerain ruling over ambitious vassals that in secret plot their downfall. By gaining favors with the Hegemon, its vassals can make it look the other way while they expand their own sphere on influence. But offending the Hegemon could have terrible repercussions. Basically a much more involved version of CK2 China. Doctrinal Enforcers are similar, but more "space Pope".

What I don't like about Civ Vs UN is how in-evitable it is. The world is a bunch of brutal warmongers? UN happens. Half a dozen religions vying for dominance? UN. A bunch of technocratic microstates going for Alpha Centauri? UN.

Less micromanagement and more focus on interesting choices in regards to planets, the ability to grow planets beyond current fixed size.

A simple "build all stations" command for construction ships would already help a lot. And a rearrangeable build queue for planets.

Espionage and sabotage mechanics.

I'm sceptical about sabotage. AI rebellion was replaced to not be "Rebuild Spaceports" simulator anymore, and the espionage system in EU4 was one of the things that made me no longer touch the game for 2 years now. Nothing like all your rivals spamming sabotage reputation while you are integrating Hungary or something.

More story events and reactive narratives that give a sense of an unfolding story as you play.

More anomalies and unique systems to explore.

This I want more than anything else. To this day, Sanctuary and Zanaam are the only two special system initializers not connected to either spaceborne life, Leviathans, Enclaves, or Fallen Empires. And even with the first few enviromental effects in play, systems are sadly little more than piles of energy, minerals and research you claim for yourself (with nebula systems having hidden mineral piles and black holes hidden physics piles). If you are lucky they have a planet, which is another pile of energy, minerals and research. The only exception to that is the Abandoned Sensor Array modified, but you'll find this one once every blue moon.

And while the Horizon Signal is neat, it is also not all that "interactive". You either kill the Worm, or become its Messenger species (with pre-set traits). It would be cool to get a similar event chain but where you can choose from multiple rewards. Kinda like the different Shroud boons, but permanent.

a screenshot of how we're reworking difficulty modes in the next update to the rolling 2.0.2 beta:

How will old saves behave?

 

[Tim_Ward]

I'm still not entirely sold on the FTL changes but they've definitely added some interesting situations to my games that would not have happened with warp.

Using the Jump Drive for some aaaaaha! style manoeuvres will likely never get old.

 

[Matt516]

Shouldn't the mode where the AI doesn't get extra bonuses be called something more like "normal" or "regular" than "beginner"?

No, because strategy game AI, no matter how much work is put into it, will pretty much always be worse than any "normal" player. It needs some bonuses to have any chance at competing.

Speaking of difficulty modes @Wiz, can you tell us what the equivalency is between the current difficulty levels and the new ones? Looking at that list, I can't really tell what I should play on if I found normal to be too easy and was thinking about trying hard.

EDIT: He beat me to it. Apparently Captain is roughly old "Normal".

 

[Snoipah]

More potential for empire customization, ability to build competitive 'tall' empires.

Well, yeah. That's completed alright since going wide and not polka-doting systems is incredibly inefficient.

 

[rubert]

Will the modifiers for the difficulty levels (including the scaling one) be moddable?

 

[Princess Stabbity]

I love the idea of scaling difficulty! Sometimes I wish I could start on normal but then raise it to hard once I'm in the midgame and this is exactly that, only automated! I love it <3

 

[Matt516]

That's completed alright since going wide and not polka-doting systems is incredibly inefficient.

This is so silly. Polka dot is only optimal for unity. Period. Early in the game, Space Science more than makes up for the 1% / system penalty, and all throughout the game Wide empires will be better at producing minerals and energy than Tall empires.

So yeah, if unity and ascension is your sole criteria than obviously Tall is the way to go. That's good, they have a niche! It is far from the optimal way to play though, and people keep saying that for some bizarre reason while ignoring the massive massive resource advantages any Wide empire has.

 

[BrokenSky]

It's a 4X. Symmetrical game mechanics give the player a huge advantage.

To call the AI incompetent is a massively generous understatement. They current get some economic benefits and they are still pushovers on the current normal. What you are asking for would better be described as "trivial" rather than "normal."

No, because strategy game AI, no matter how much work is put into it, will pretty much always be worse than any "normal" player. It needs some bonuses to have any chance at competing.

I was mainly thinking that it might be considered pretty insulting to people to tell them "being treated fairly is for noobs", which is more or less what the system says.

Well that and that ensign doesn't exactly leave much space below it for an actual beginner mode which gives the player bonuses so they can just learn how to use the main systems.

 

[FortunaDraken]

I admit, I'm a filthy casual who only plays on Normal mode right now, but the idea of scaling is actually really nice. I'm nowhere near skilled enough to manage the harder difficulties, but right now I tend to end up steamrolling the AI later on. Having them scale up so it's harder to truly get into snowball mode sounds fun!

 

[Zulark.]

And a rearrangeable build queue for planets.

I need this too

 

[korodikrisz]

It's a 4X. Symmetrical game mechanics give the player a huge advantage.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-1-the-vision.882808/

I wonder. In the early dev diaries, they said they are not trying to make a 4X game. More like az exploration game, then a GSG game.

The last three points happen to be defining features of "4X" games, so - although I somewhat dislike the term - Stellaris is in many ways a 4X game; a pretty crowded niche these days. However, we are not trying to recreate classics like Master of Orion. Stellaris is quite a new and different beast, but the symmetrical, small start offers two great advantages: The game can appear deceptively simple for new players. I.e. it can have a much smoother learning curve than our infamously hard-to-learn historical games. Secondly, it allows us to focus on the first X; eXploration, which I personally feel has always been the most neglected one.

The early game is thus characterized by exploration and discovering the wonders of the galaxy. We have put a lot of effort into making this part of the game feel fresh and unique every time you play. Then you start coming into contact with rival space-faring races and soon you reach the mid game, when there is not much left to colonize and your easy expansion grinds to a halt. At this point, the map stabilizes into the Stellaris equivalent of the world map in Europa Universalis, and the stage is set for a classic Paradox Grand Strategy experience...

Of course, the vision has changed in the last 2,5 years, as focus went to Extermination from Exploration, but I agree with Doomdark: it seems like a 4X game, but it's not. It's some kind of a "pseudo-4X" game...

 

[Rafss]

Nice job Wiz, thanks for sharing the goals with the community so we can comment on it.

I'm all for unique systems, I hope that means unique planets too!

Also, I like @klingonadmiral ideas for different types of UN, it is really interesting and full of flavor. We wave yet to see if fallen empires will be responsible for creating a UN.

 

[Semigall]

I'm happy to see that planet management is a priority. It's honestly one of my least favorite parts of the game right now. After the early game, there's still so much click, click, click, click going on, even though I know some of the changes in 2.0 helped with all the clicking.

When comparing to other games of the same genre, Stellaris has FAR less micromanagement, mainly thanks to sector mechanic, so I can't complain (after Star Empires, Galactic Civilizations and other space 4x that I have played before).

 

[stavern]

Is it possible to increase galaxy to 2000 stars? 2.0 made galaxy feel a lot bigger and see empty regions of galaxy in 2300. But it still feels to small. If say ‘yea we have trial version of game not released to public going as high as 10000 stars but it cause to much lag so choose not to release’ i am cool with that.

 

[Badesumofu]

I really like the idea of scaling difficulty. The longer the game goes, the more the accumulated benefits of being a human player stack up. It makes sense to have AI bonuses grow through the game.

 

[Nyrael]

This is good design (maximum transparency), but I'm sad because it makes it extremely clear to me that this game is NOT for me and NOT made in the tradition of CK2 / Victoria / EU.

This is not another sandbox where a single player rolls the dice of the massive systems simulator to see an endogenous, dynamic world develop that is completely unique from any other run at the game (like a traditional Paradox game). This isn't like CK2, which made it so any religion could become the new orthodoxy and crusades/jihads/holy wars were totally dynamic and depended on circumstances. This isn't about the crazy simulation of the world, and it's a different genre of game completely.

Instead, this game aspires to be a "challenging" strategy game, even for people who play single-player. It's for people who want to minmax systems and defeat the AI. It's aiming more for the (single-player!) hardcore Master of Orion 1/2 players than the "let's just see what happens" Crusader Kings players.

Disappointed, but that explains why I roasted this game constantly: it's trying to be something that your traditional Paradox game doesn't try to be. Well, good luck, I guess.

Not sure what yo are even talking about. Stellaris to me has been far more of an RPG, and far less of a strategy game, than any other PDS product. Everything about it is about generating stories and changing worlds. The goals themselves show that they intend to build further in that direction. And unlike with CK2, I don't need to sabotage myself to get interesting stories out of it.

 

[LeSingeAffame]

I admit, I'm a filthy casual who only plays on Normal mode right now, but the idea of scaling is actually really nice. I'm nowhere near skilled enough to manage the harder difficulties, but right now I tend to end up steamrolling the AI later on. Having them scale up so it's harder to truly get into snowball mode sounds fun!

Yep, the difficulty is generally only relevant in the early game, once you survive it and start to snowball no matter the difficulty level you'll be able to crush the AI. Having scaling difficulty seems to counter this problem which is a nice thing !

 

[Knight of Orthus]

Are scaling boni for the AI limited to the "scaling" difficulty or are there scaled elements in higher difficulties as well? For Grand Admiral difficulty I'd really like to see some sort of scaled bonus as the "cherry on top" (see what I did there? ). I quite like the concept of scaled difficulty, but I don't want to choose between them and flat bonuses for AI.

 

[Spaceturtle]

• A 'galactic community' with interstellar politics and a 'space UN'.
• Deeper Federations that start out as loose alliances and can eventually be turned into single states through diplomatic manuevering.
• 'Living systems', making empire systems feel more alive and lived in
• Empire trade mechanics and trade agreements.
• A galactic market where resources and strategic resources can be imported and exported.
• Espionage and sabotage mechanics.
• More anomalies and unique systems to explore.

Perfect! Diplomacy, Trade and Subterfuge are the three big areas of improvement right now, in my opinion. Space UN, better federations, new trade mechanics, galactic market, (trade routes??), spy shit...

I have high hopes for the future of the game if you are able to achieve those goals!

 

[MacGillivray]

What about victory conditions? I'm pretty sure they've not changed since launch and I think for players who are more interested in internal development than war they could use some love.