Stellaris Dev Diary #308 - Rock On! (Also an Announcement Regarding Species Pack Pricing)

[Enfield_PDX]

Rock and Stone

 

[ValinShadow]

Ascension Path Agendas​

Some players have commented that they often find themselves saving an Ascension Perk slot for an indeterminate amount of time, waiting for the required research for their desired Ascension Path to appear.

The Ascension Perks that unlock the four Ascension Paths have had their requirements changed so that they now be taken as your third AP at the earliest instead of as your second AP. We have removed the Technology requirements and moved those to progressing down the Tradition Tree associated with that Ascension Path.

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Each Ascension Path now has an Agenda that grants 25% progress in technologies associated with that Ascension Path, which should ensure that you are no longer reliant on random chance to acquire these technologies. These Agendas have a reduced cost and cooldown compared to normal Agendas, though some have modifiers based on Empire Ethics compatibility with the Ascension Path.

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The random number generator will not keep us out of the Shroud!​

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These agendas advance to the next relevant technology if you finish some research while the agenda is ongoing.

​

Can you confirm how these changes will affect Teachers of the Shroud? I *think* that Teachers would be largely unaffected by these changes, but if you could please confirm.

Also can you confirm that these changes mean that Materialists (which previously had to jump through several hoops or get very very lucky in order to get Psionic Theory) can now always go Psionic?

Thanks!

 

[Eladrin]

Can you confirm how these changes will affect Teachers of the Shroud? I *think* that Teachers would be largely unaffected by these changes, but if you could please confirm.

Teachers gain access to the Agenda as if they had the Ascension Perk.

Also can you confirm that these changes mean that Materialists (which previously had to jump through several hoops or get very very lucky in order to get Psionic Theory) can now always go Psionic?

Yes, but the Agenda takes significantly longer for them to finish.

 

[Lorenerd11]

I don't really like the new Lithoid portrait, it looks weird.

I'll probably change the Theian portrait to something else on my end

 

[HFY]

Does "phenotype" mean portrait group?

 

[Me_]

one of the things that is often requested is some more relatable characters in the various phenotypes. While we’ll of course continue creating horrific alien monstrosities, the art team took this opportunity to add a few new portraits to Lithoids, Plantoids, and Humanoids.

Who the HECK asks for that? There are already dozens of rubber forehead aliens! Please give us more unique and creative designs, not humans with a paintjob.

The rest of stuff is cool, but the rock human is atrocious.

 

[The5lacker]

Will they be able to terraform uninhabitable planets? SInce they have to colonize a planet before they can consume it.

Should lithoid devouring swarms (terravore) be able terraform candidates?

They consume habitable worlds only.

forum.paradoxplaza.com

They should let Terravores consume planets via Habitats. Park a big rock over something, send drones down to take a bite. Should probably be slower than normal planet eating but obviously shouldn't devastate the Habitat itself.

 

[Wendigo514]

I really love the new changes especially to the Ascension Paths, not being restricted by the RNG is a wonderful addition!

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In this post:

Stellaris Dev Diary #305 - Midsummer Festivities

Hello everyone! Midsummer approaches, and with it, holidays. Stellaris: Free to Play We want you and your friends to have a reason to celebrate too. As we announced last week, Stellaris will be free to play on Steam from the 22nd to the 26th...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

It was showed that the Massive Crater was changed to increase the pop growth of Lithoids only, is this still the case?

 

[Lorenerd11]

Does "phenotype" mean portrait group?

Yup, pretty sure it does.

 

[PLSKICKME]

Man, if you screw up my Lithoid Necroid build with these changes... the -50 habitability to non lithoids on the homeworld, or any of their worlds, pretty much wrecks my favorite build. Using a non-lithoid prepatent species to grow my planets pops, while converting them into Lithoids through necrotic purge and ascention ceremonies. Why. Just why.

That's a direct nerf to the way I play. I feel attacked.

You do realise necros and calamitious birth are both an origin so they are muttualy exclusive(apart from other empires bombing their own planets so you cant take them for your main species.)

 

[Wendigo514]

The Void Hive mechanic could have a non-hive parallel. Private corporations, independent prospectors, or oligarchs/nobles have first pick of deposits; the government claiming one requires political wrangling.

It would be really cool to give the Private Prospectors MegaCorp civic the automatic mining and research stations mechanic! I always found it a bit lacking in flavour and this mechanic would definitely spice things up.

 

[HFY]

Yup, pretty sure it does.

How do you know?

Asking because the species design screen already uses "phenotype" to mean something else.

Did one of the devs already chime in about that and I missed it?

Who the HECK asks for that? There are already dozens of rubber forehead aliens! Please give us more unique and creative designs, not humans with a paintjob.

The rest of stuff is cool, but the rock human is atrocious.

Yeah I can get some use from the rock-human as an artificial species created by humanoids, but it's not really the direction I want for future species packs.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Buffing the Old​

As previously shown in DD#305 we returned to Calamitous Birth to give it some love. This includes removing the habitability loss from Lithoid Craters for Lithoid pops as well as increasing the effectiveness of lithoid exclusive traits such as Gaseous Byproducts on the Massive Crater world.

On a related note since you're already giving some of the Lithoids content some much needed love: have you considered making Gaseous Byproducts useful? All the strategic resource traits give strategic resources roughly equivalent to 50%-100% of the value of the savings from Conservationist, but that's both already weak and also half the price of the strategic resource traits (1 point instead of 2). It takes 100 lithoid pops to pay for a single upgraded building's upkeep. They're completely negligible in effect on your economy.

The other two lithoid traits (Volatile Excretions and Scintillating Skin) are saved by the strategic value of their starting edicts. Sensors, land clearance, and weapons are useful even if you can only briefly turn them on. But Gaseous Byproducts doesn't get one nearly as useful. Can these all at least be 2x the value of Conservationist (to match their 2x cost) and gases possibly get an early use?

And, similarly: can Inorganic Breath become a -4 negative trait (to match its numbers) instead of a 3 cost positive trait? It currently costs ~7 points too many (its 10x Wasteful, if you count 1 food as roughly equal to .5 CG, in exchange for 2x Gaseous Byproducts, which is also too weak). Or be buffed until it matches its cost?

Some players have commented that they often find themselves saving an Ascension Perk slot for an indeterminate amount of time, waiting for the required research for their desired Ascension Path to appear.

The Ascension Perks that unlock the four Ascension Paths have had their requirements changed so that they now be taken as your third AP at the earliest instead of as your second AP. We have removed the Technology requirements and moved those to progressing down the Tradition Tree associated with that Ascension Path.

A welcome change.

rm -rf /nodes/regulatory​

I love basically everything about this feature, except one thing: this makes it consistent for genocidal gestalts to roll Ship Construction Focus (the gestalt Shipwright equivalent) on the Growth node (eventually), instead of a crapshoot at the start of the game. They just keep rerolling until they do.

• -30% from Terravore/DS
• -10% from Supremacy
• -20% from Supremacy agenda (Military Buildup)
• -5% from the hull type tech
• -10% from Military Pioneer

Gives -75%. Slapping another -10% on there by rerolling the Expansion node takes it to -85% (1.66x more ships from the same alloy). I'm even assuming you don't roll it on the ruler node (or take an admiral ruler to get a second Military Pioneer).

The same goes for Logistic Understanding (if the player feels so inclined) for the other nodes, which has a similar but lesser issue if you stack its effects to -90%.

Can you please just fix this reduction stacking issue? It will keep poisoning every otherwise great change the team makes because of the way it's inherently unbalanced. If it weren't for this issue, this new feature would be an unambiguous win for gameplay variety and player control.

As before: this is only a huge issue for things that scale with decreased cost, so the big culprits are ship cost and ship upkeep. Ex. going from -80% metallurgist upkeep to -90% metallurgist upkeep means going from e.g. 20 miners and 80 metallurgists to 10 miners and 90 metallurgists: only a ~12.5% increase in alloys, which is about what you'd expect from a 10% reduction. But going from -80% ship costs to -90% ship costs means building 2x as many ships: a 100% increase (in ships or alloys, depending on how you want to look at it), or 10x what you'd expect from a 10% reduction, because of the way cost reductions become more and more powerful as you stack more of them.

The ship cost and upkeep reductions desperately need either to stack multiplicatively (which would be fine: every 10% reduction would mean +11.1% more ships) or not have enough modifiers to even get below -50%, much less -50% just from picking up Supremacy and a single civic. Or just make all these modifiers be anything else besides cost reduction: build speed (like Retired Naval Officer) would be fitting. Or something (anything). There are numerous possible fixes.

 

[cryptkeeper]

I had a thought can we get some changes to the way ascended clone soldiers interact with ascension paths, to give them more then Psionic as a good choose. Tweaks I could see are allowing modifying of ascended clones once you finish genetic ascension and cybernetic so you can at least get some value from the ascensions. More of a wish is to allow your clone vats the ability to maintain small amount clone pops, when you finish genetic ascension, but I understand the balance concerns here. Since this update is already updating the humanoid species pack, and I find it weird that the ascensions thematically fit ascended clone the most, are the some of the worst chooses.

 

[Spaceception]

You do realise necros and calamitious birth are both an origin so they are muttualy exclusive(apart from other empires bombing their own planets so you cant take them for your main species.)

3 other people (including myself) already corrected them around the same time earlier, I think they got the message

On a related note: have you considered making Gaseous Byproducts... good? All the strategic resource traits give strategic resources roughly equivalent to 50%-100% of the value of the savings from e.g. Conservationist, and that's both already weak and also half the price of the strategic resource traits traits (1 point instead of 2) It takes 100 lithoid pops to pay for a single upgraded building's upkeep.

The other two lithoid traits (Volatile Excretions and Scintillating Skin are saved by the strategic value of their starting edicts (mainly sensors, land clearance, and weapons), but Gaseous Byproducts doesn't get one nearly as useful. Can these at least be 2x the value of Conservationist (to match their 2x cost) and gases possibly get an early use?

Another way beyond (or on top of?) buffing how much it produces could be to directly reduce upkeep/cost of buildings/ship components depending on the resource trait. Some may be better than others, but would still have niches. Gases would be preferred for lots of lab upgrades, motes for early alloy builds, crystals for unity rush, and so on.

 

[Rafss]

They should let Terravores consume planets via Habitats. Park a big rock over something, send drones down to take a bite. Should probably be slower than normal planet eating but obviously shouldn't devastate the Habitat itself.

Terravores stationing an Habitat over a world and eating it sounds extremely interesting, specially considering Void Dweller already starts over a shattered world.
They did it themselves!

 

[Abdulijubjub]

How do you know?

Asking because the species design screen already uses "phenotype" to mean something else.

Did one of the devs already chime in about that and I missed it?

This civic also comes with the lithoid species pack and lets you create an empire consisting only of your primary phenotype such as Lithoids, Aquatic, Mammalian, etc.

 

[The5lacker]

Asking because the species design screen already uses "phenotype" to mean something else.

It does? Where?

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Another way beyond (or on top of?) buffing how much it produces could be to directly reduce upkeep/cost of buildings/ship components depending on the resource trait. Some may be better than others, but would still have niches. Gases would be preferred for lots of lab upgrades, motes for early alloy builds, crystals for unity rush, and so on.

Reducing the cost of buildings/ship components sounds fiddly: it would involve turning a species trait into an empire modifier (though there's already precedent with Mechanical and Aquatic). Alternatively, Gaseous Byproducts et.al. could give a bonus to their respective jobs: +50% exotic gases from jobs (or reduced mineral upkeep for such jobs, which would be more fitting) would be interesting, so that you have super-refiners instead of just free resources.

It has the same effect/issue that a lot of other resource traits do (more bonuses to a job means you need fewer of them), but I think that's actually ok for a trait whose identity is "you make this thing just by existing" more than it is for e.g. Agrarian, which conflicts with its theme by making your empire have fewer farmers. Reduced job upkeep doesn't have this issue, though. It reduces the number of miners you need instead, so it's a chance to have your cake and eat it too.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

To add to what Eladrin's said above, if you don't have the tech for the resource (say you have a rare crystal deposit), you'll be able to harvest those rare crystals, albeit with a penalty due to missing the tech.

More importantly, why do you want to delete mining stations?!

I find it very odd that people don't see why I wouldn't want a mining station that costs +10 unity per month (like I said I thought was the case, they changed it in the screenshot to be more clear) when I specifically outlined why that would be awful.

If the game were to forcefully spawn a mining station that cost 10 unity per month to maintain (again, the amended the screenshot to be more clear on this), that would make both unity AND research an impossible resource to obtain (since the unity from the unity buildings would be consumed by the stations and I wouldn't have room for research labs). In order to still be able to produce either unity or research, I would be forced to delete mining stations since the game would be forcefully spawning them every 4 months.

Again, I realize after they changed the screenshot that mining stations do NOT have a unity upkeep per month and ONLY cost upkeep when you build them manually, but in the original post where I had that assumption, mining stations had been made not only useless, but massively detrimental to an empire.