Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today, we're going to continue talking about the 2.1 'Niven' update accompanying the Distant Stars Story Pack. Everything mentioned in this dev diary is part of the free update, not the story pack.

Space Creature Research
In the Niven update, we've gone back to the space creatures (Amoebas, Crystals, etc) and improve on their special projects and rewards. Instead of the wildly inconsistent and unbalanced rewards we have now, we have changed the space creatures so that upon discovery and completion of the initial contact project, you will now generally get up to 3 options, depending on your ethics and the type of creature:
- Hunt: This will grant a permanent damage bonus towards this type of space creature, and rewards in the form of resources on killing them.
- Research: This is the most similar option to the old events, and unlocks a special project for detailed research of the space creature that will yield a reward in the form of technology and/or permanent empire buffs.
- Pacify: This will unlock a more expensive special project that allows you to turn the space creatures non-hostile, allowing you to co-exist with them and share their space, as well as potentially unlocking the ability to research special components or weapons that they use. It is not possible to pacify certain kinds of space creatures, such as mining drones.

Strategic Resource Discovery
Another thing we've tried to improve on in Niven is the discovery and exploitation of Strategic Resources. Previously, while exploring, you would not know if you had discovered any strategic resources unless you first had the related technology, which generally meant that you would explore, eventually research the tech, and suddenly discover a bunch of resources on places you had already built orbital stations on - not the most rewarding or strategic feeling. We've changed this so that strategic resources are now always visibile from the start, and you will get an event informing you when a science ship discovers a new strategic resource for the first time.

Some strategic resources will be able to be exploited immediately, while others will require a technology to be researched before you can build a mining station around that planet and gain access to the resource. Strategic Resources have generally been buffed and made more rare - we've removed their tendency to spawn in large clumps in certain areas of space, so if you find a particular resource and fail to claim that system before someone else does, you can no longer be assured that there will be another of its type nearby, and generally there won't be enough of any one strategic resource for every empire in the galaxy to have access to it.

Experimental Subspace Navigation
Lastly for today is a new order we've added for Science Ships called Experimental Subspace Navigation. This order is unlocked by a mid-game tech and allows the science ship to travel to any system which you have any level of intel on (that is, has been in sensor range at least once, or is part of another empire you have communications with) while ignoring the hyperlane network. The science ship will be considered MIA for the journey and simply arrive in the other system at the end of the order, bypassing any hostile creatures or closed borders along the way. This allows even empires that have been boxed in by hostile neighbors to continue exploring the galaxy and complete event chains that might otherwise require a war. Certain special systems (such as the L-Cluster) will not be possible to travel to using this method.

That's all for today! Next week is PDXcon, so there won't be a dev diary. There will, however, almost certainly be something related to Distant Stars talked about at the event itself, so stay tuned!

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Wiz . All these changes sound interesting and will improve the game - the strategic resources change sounds very good, and the reworked creatures sound more interesting to boot .

Jump drives, FTL inhibitors, static defenses, etc would all become pointless. This is an option purely to allow exploration to continue, it's not meant for warfare.

While this makes very good sense from a gameplay perspective, it's a little odd (unimmersive/unintuitive) that particular ship types can and others can't. Instead of a hard block, what about a risk/reward where using experimental travel for the fleet runs a risk of X% to Y% of warships suffering catastrophic failures - and making it pretty slow - so it's not a 'good' option, but doesn't feel odd and adds some variety. Warships suffering failures and science ship not can be put down to science ship crew being super sciencey. Static defenses and FTL inhibitors still matter then, but there are options. Would probably need some UI notification that there's an incoming fleet approaching through subspace, and make it 'slow enough' so that the defending empire has a reasonable chance of getting there in time.

As always, please ignore if silly, not trying to cause trouble. Have a fun PDXCon .

 

[uberion]

if you are going to make a demand like that at least have the courtesy to elaborate your position.
You cannot possibly expect anyone to listen to you when your only argument is "I don't like it."

Short feedback posts are easier to count. Devs listened to the "I'm boxed111" whines because they were loud enough. Not because of the elaboration level =) If AI use this thing you cant block their exploration ships with closed borders. So less anomalies for the player. Also you will not be able to keep AIs from meeting each other and form a military alliance against you.

Players can choose to use it or not as they please though

 

[pcavalcanti]

Strategic resources are still underwhelming if they aren't tied to a specific technology and tile buildings.
In order for you to build more efficient mining stations you must have this strategic crystal, for example. Empires with those strategic resources will then be able to develop very differently through specific paths according to those. Otherwise it's just 5% more of this, 10% more of that... I might as well build more ships and compensate for the adversary's buff. They should also be worth going to wars for and be a very valuable trade resource which could make or break other empires' economy as well depending on how you/they choose to develop. Would that be too hard to implement?

You should take a clue from Alpha Mod or the ST:NH mods to make a proper expansion.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Strategic resources are still underwhelming if they aren't tied to a specific technology and tile buildings.
In order for you to build more efficient mining stations you must have this strategic crystal, for example. Empires with those strategic resources will then be able to develop very differently through specific paths according to those. Otherwise it's just 5% more of this, 10% more of that... I might as well build more ships and compensate for the adversary's buff. They should also be worth going to wars for and be a very valuable trade resource which could make or break other empires' economy as well depending on how you/they choose to develop. Would that be too hard to implement?

You should take a clue from Alpha Mod or the ST:NH mods to make a proper expansion.

I think this is a step in the right direction, but I agree that Strategic Resources need to be more game-changing. Stellaris would, in my opinion, be a better game if, for instance, you could only equip ships with shield modules if you'd claimed a specific type of Strategic Resource.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

I think this is a step in the right direction, but I agree that Strategic Resources need to be more game-changing. Stellaris would, in my opinion, be a better game if, for instance, you could only equip ships with shield modules if you'd claimed a specific type of Strategic Resource.

That could be far, far too strong, depending on the availability of the resource. It could well lead to the Civ problem where your neighbour has access to a resource, you don't, and as a consequence you get steamrollered. Even more so since you can't conquer the resource from them because their units are now just outright better than yours...

Only have access to improved versions *might* be better, but flat out not being able to use a category of technology because you dont have a given resource is not going to be fun over the long term. It's also probably not fun if no one else in the area can even hope to put up a fight against you because you're the only one with the magic spacerock of shielding, so you can crush them without any real problems, since they can't ever build equivalent ships to you.

 

[Malecord]

I dunno. The last patches have all been about removing all asymmetries in the game. FTL, weapons. Even spreading strategic resources among the galaxy instead of concentrating them in well defined zones goes in the direction of removing asymmetries as it goes removing the technology requirement (tech is random so if you're unlucky with tech draw you would be at disadvantage with your expansion planning).

Having game changing strategic resources would be step backward: the empires that controls them would have a competitive advantage over the others. I don't think this is what the devs really want. It would screw multiplayer.

 

[pcavalcanti]

That could be far, far too strong, depending on the availability of the resource. It could well lead to the Civ problem where your neighbour has access to a resource, you don't, and as a consequence you get steamrollered. Even more so since you can't conquer the resource from them because their units are now just outright better than yours...

Only have access to improved versions *might* be better, but flat out not being able to use a category of technology because you dont have a given resource is not going to be fun over the long term. It's also probably not fun if no one else in the area can even hope to put up a fight against you because you're the only one with the magic spacerock of shielding, so you can crush them without any real problems, since they can't ever build equivalent ships to you.

That's why there´s trade. I might have a very good SR for military use but my people might be starving and there's no way for me to produce more food. We then form a trade deal and a treaty. Or empires who are threatened join in a federation together to protect each other against you and force you into diplomatic relations otherwise their combined strength will destroy your empire. Or you can set up a pirate operation to steal that SR so you can have a chance, or corrupt their politicians to sell you some SR in the black market and if you get caught they get a causus beli against you and your allies get an opinion penalty which might make them withdraw from a possible war and break alliances with you, etc. It's just a matter of creativity.

I may have gone to far in terms of actual programming all this stuff in but this is what Paradox is known for, complex diplomacy.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

That could be far, far too strong, depending on the availability of the resource. It could well lead to the Civ problem where your neighbour has access to a resource, you don't, and as a consequence you get steamrollered. Even more so since you can't conquer the resource from them because their units are now just outright better than yours...

Only have access to improved versions *might* be better, but flat out not being able to use a category of technology because you dont have a given resource is not going to be fun over the long term. It's also probably not fun if no one else in the area can even hope to put up a fight against you because you're the only one with the magic spacerock of shielding, so you can crush them without any real problems, since they can't ever build equivalent ships to you.

So make anti-shield weaponry more specialized and more powerful, have them stop working or get a huge debuff if you lose the deposit, or balance it in other ways so that having access to the shield-providing Strategic Resource isn't an "I win" button. Asymmetric gameplay is fun.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

That's why there´s trade. I might have a very good SR for military use but my people might be starving and there's no way for me to produce more food. We then form a trade deal and a treaty. Or empires who are threatened join in a federation together to protect each other against you and force you into diplomatic relations otherwise their combined strength will destroy your empire. Or you can set up a pirate operation to steal that SR so you can have a chance, or corrupt their politicians to sell you some SR in the black market and if you get caught they get a causus beli against you and your allies get an opinion penalty which might make them withdraw from a possible war and break alliances with you, etc. It's just a matter of creativity.

I may have gone to far in terms of actual programming all this stuff in but this is what Paradox is known for, complex diplomacy.

It doesn't help if only a few empires have the resource, they need to retain a unit of it for their own purposes, and the ones with that resource aren't friends with you.

Stealing the resource would be highly frustrating yo the player if it happened to them. Having control of s resource should mean you have control of it.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

So make anti-shield weaponry more specialized and more powerful, have them stop working or get a huge debuff if you lose the deposit, or balance it in other ways so that having access to the shield-providing Strategic Resource isn't an "I win" button. Asymmetric gameplay is fun.

Assymetric gameplay is fun, up to a point. That point is when your game is ruined by who has a given resource dictating who can win battles, and thus the game.

To my mind strategic resources should be a primarily a matter of degree, not of kind. Certainly in a space 4X. Having a bonus to shields is good. Having an alternate and different shield tech locked behind a resource can be good. Being the only empire in the galaxy who can have shields because you happen to spawn on top of the "magic shield rocks" isn't.

 

[pcavalcanti]

It doesn't help if only a few empires have the resource, they need to retain a unit of it for their own purposes, and the ones with that resource aren't friends with you.

Stealing the resource would be highly frustrating yo the player if it happened to them. Having control of s resource should mean you have control of it.

Well, just create a variety of resources that are unique to certain regions, just like on planet earth. Not every country has large oil deposits, not every country has large iron deposits or is capable of producing large quantities of food, etc. So if they have a lot of a certain military resource that makes their fleet way too powerful you might have lots of planetary mineral deposits that make your planets extra hard to invade and beat.

Stealing is frustrating so you have to manage to have counter measures. A specialized are of your military to patrol and engage illegal opperations - it creates more of internal politics to deal with and make things interesting when the galaxy is at a salemate.

 

[TheDungen]

I seriously think all resources should work like living metal zro and darkmatter that you can't find the tech for them until you find them (or acquire them through trade).

Because then you could poof a construction ship over, start claiming territory, and drop a jump gate, thereby getting out of being boxed in without either conflict or diplomacy

And that's a bad thing? Some people can't be diplomacied and some of us don't like wars. It's essentially the counterpart to what the Spanish and Portuguese did with the age of exploration. They changed the playing field.

Yeah. That would be a feature -- allowing pacifists to peacefully expand instead of forcing them to fight. It would cost a ton of influence.

Exactly I already set up loads of exclaves when I play on systems I find valuable and then I slowly allow them to connect as I expand later. It's again reminiscent of the scattered trade posts and land grabs that Europeans did along coastlines all over the world.

Even if everyone is allowed to do it, it would just enable anyone to build outposts anywhere. Welcome to bordergore simulator.

It doesn't make any sense imo.

If you play as a pacifist, you should accept that you're that kind of empire. If you want to be free to expand, play as any other kind of empire.

Actually bordergore makes loads of sense it has been the rule not the exception throughout most of human history. What doesn't make sense is the OCD some people seems to have with regards to it. Sure extended supply lines should make you vulnerable, it's what eventually broke the spanish, but it should be a risk that you should have to decide on a case by case basis if to do or not.

And why should a pacifist empire have to be small? You are imposing your ideas on us. Seeking to change the playing field to avoid conflict seems right up their alley.

I didn't say anything about only pacifists. But they're the ones most easily blocked in with the least recourse for fixing that (since they can't do quick wars to take a few chokepoint systems like everyone else).

There's nothing about 'not wanting to fight people' that means they should be locked into a corner and prevented from expanding, but it's much easier for that to happen to them now. This would help fix that and bring back proper balance.

And really, people already can build outposts anywhere -- 'getting blocked in' with actual closed borders is pretty rare. This only lets you bypass closed borders, it's not making it any easier to gather 1000 influence to build a distant colony. The most common case where you'd need to use it is if you get a bad spawn with a hostile or fallen empire locking you into a few systems on the edge of the galaxy.

Truth be told the influence costs for distant systems should be lowered and the space pirates mechanic should instead be extended to where they are a genuine threat not just a nuisance.

That could be far, far too strong, depending on the availability of the resource. It could well lead to the Civ problem where your neighbour has access to a resource, you don't, and as a consequence you get steamrollered. Even more so since you can't conquer the resource from them because their units are now just outright better than yours...

Because that has never happened. It's not like them having horses large enough to carry a rider allowed the Persians to carve out the first real unitary empire in the history of man.... oh wait.
Or like them having aces to domestic oil allowed the US and USSR to become global superpowers.

My advice would be placate them, pay them tribute, plot against them and when they are busy elsewhere you try to grab that resource.

 

[semaphore]

History is full of conquests by a polity that had harnessed a resource better than their neighbours. But it's rarely because those polities had a monopoly on the resource. It's not that the Achaemenid Empire by chance were the only ones with horses, it's that they trained a cavalry and chariot force better than their neighbours

The Neo-Assyrians raised cavalry and chariot units in response to incursions by horse nomads too.

Don't get me wrong, I think having strategic resources be rare and valuable is good. But making the mere ability to equip shields dependent on luck seems extremely unbalanced.

 

[Atrus IV]

That's just a formal excuse I think. The real reason is that Distant Stars does not have much to be discussed, as most of it would be spoilers. So he probably wants to use every opportunity to not talk about it.

I'm hoping they'll actually announce a release date at PDXcon :/

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Because that has never happened. It's not like them having horses large enough to carry a rider allowed the Persians to carve out the first real unitary empire in the history of man.... oh wait.
Or like them having aces to domestic oil allowed the US and USSR to become global superpowers.

My advice would be placate them, pay them tribute, plot against them and when they are busy elsewhere you try to grab that resource.

As a game it is incredibly frustrating to (in the example of Civ) play through a game, get as far as copper and iron being discovered, and then find that a) you don't have any, b) those around you have closed their borders so you can't expand through or past them, and c) those nearby countries who have the critical resources just turned hostile. At least in Civ, sitting it out until you get another group of unit critical resources available is possible (or at least waiting until you get non-resource units like the gunpowder set). With the way this sounds for Stellaris, there isn't that later possibility.



Sure, placating or paying tribute might work (although tribute in Stellaris doesn't entirely seem to work for me), but since they're going to have stronger individual units due to having the resource, and a numerically better force due to having their economy and a chunk of yours working for them, that attempt to take the deposit from them will be *really* difficult, especially if it's deep in their empire. Functionally it depends on them losing a war and that resource not being taken by whoever they lose to, *and* you being able to war them for it before they recover.

 

[pcavalcanti]

History is full of conquests by a polity that had harnessed a resource better than their neighbours. But it's rarely because those polities had a monopoly on the resource. It's not that the Achaemenid Empire by chance were the only ones with horses, it's that they trained a cavalry and chariot force better than their neighbours

The Neo-Assyrians raised cavalry and chariot units in response to incursions by horse nomads too.

Don't get me wrong, I think having strategic resources be rare and valuable is good. But making the mere ability to equip shields dependent on luck seems extremely unbalanced.

Sorry to bother you, but how did you get that Crusader Kings II Holy Knight pre-order icon? I didn't see any new expansion announced and checked the current ones...

 

[Strager]

I'm hoping they'll actually announce a release date at PDXcon :/

I REAAAAAALY hope that isn't the "big" announcement Wiz teased.... Nothing short of a Stellaris spinoff would placate me after this much hype.

 

[pcavalcanti]

As a game it is incredibly frustrating to (in the example of Civ) play through a game, get as far as copper and iron being discovered, and then find that a) you don't have any, b) those around you have closed their borders so you can't expand through or past them, and c) those nearby countries who have the critical resources just turned hostile. At least in Civ, sitting it out until you get another group of unit critical resources available is possible (or at least waiting until you get non-resource units like the gunpowder set). With the way this sounds for Stellaris, there isn't that later possibility.

Sure, placating or paying tribute might work (although tribute in Stellaris doesn't entirely seem to work for me), but since they're going to have stronger individual units due to having the resource, and a numerically better force due to having their economy and a chunk of yours working for them, that attempt to take the deposit from them will be *really* difficult, especially if it's deep in their empire. Functionally it depends on them losing a war and that resource not being taken by whoever they lose to, *and* you being able to war them for it before they recover.

How about having a variety of unique resources as I've mentioned before? Maybe one empire gets some crystal that allow them to have a stronger type of laser while I find in my territory a resource that allows me to build a deadly type of missile? Iron is too universal a material and it would bad for balance purposes but if you have multiple types of resources that unlock a technological path then empires would develop more uniquely and they would balance out through different ways.

 

[Gilad Pellaeon]

Sorry to bother you, but how did you get that Crusader Kings II Holy Knight pre-order icon? I didn't see any new expansion announced and checked the current ones...

It's one of the semi-"lost" icons. You got it for pre-ordering Crusader Kings 2. Not any of the DLCs, but the base game.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Assymetric gameplay is fun, up to a point. That point is when your game is ruined by who has a given resource dictating who can win battles, and thus the game.

To my mind strategic resources should be a primarily a matter of degree, not of kind. Certainly in a space 4X. Having a bonus to shields is good. Having an alternate and different shield tech locked behind a resource can be good. Being the only empire in the galaxy who can have shields because you happen to spawn on top of the "magic shield rocks" isn't.

I can agree that asymmetric gameplay shouldn't be of the "one side gets an 'I win' button" kind- so, again, balance it other ways. Shields being a "special technology" you can only utilize with the right resources could be balanced. I'm not saying that's the only way it could work, I'm saying I'd rather see that sort of asymmetry than the current "+5% to X" method of bonus that Strategic Resources provide.