[Dev Team] Astral Planes and Stellaris 3.10.0 "Pyxis" Preliminary Release Notes

[Calvax]

If leader traits are being tuned to decrease their overall power level, and the original reason for the leader cap was that leaders needed to be limited due to their increased power level, I find myself wondering why we still need the leader cap.

Still looking forward to trying out 3.10 though!

From reading the notes it seems like the total cap is going to be a fair bit higher in 3.10 to compensate. Currently we start at 6 and I think the highest I've managed to get it to is 12 (could be wrong about that). Skimming through the patch notes we have tweaks to civics and ascension perks to give extra cap, a rework to traditions replacing leader upkeep with +1 cap, and three empire wide buildings that give +1 each. By my rough count that's +15 meaning we'll be able to get up to 21 leaders before we start getting penalties.

 

[Calvax]

we still won't be back to the old days of having a governor on every planet

Tentatively it seems like we'll at least be able to have a governor per sector. Other than the role play benefit of that it solves the problem of "what's the point of a sector without a governor, beyond tidying the outliner"

 

[Abdulijubjub]

That tech should be deleted.

Noooooo, my infinite late game unity! I can no longer scale unity output faster than planetary ascension costs!

But, also, yes. Tech focus should not get all the benefits of unity focus for free once you're far enough ahead.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Noooooo, my infinite late game unity! I can no longer scane unity output faster than planetary ascension costs!

But, also, yes. Tech focus should not get all the benefits of unity focus for free once you're far enough ahead.

This would still leave Statecraft without any repeatable technology, however.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

That tech should be deleted.

Go ahead. Since the introduction of planetary ascension, the Administrative Efficiency repeatable tech has been extremely powerful for ascensionist builds.

Eliminating it or, my preference, restricting it to 5 repeatables like some other repeatables that are simply too good to be allowed to scale indefinitely, could only make the game better while still allowing unity production to scale slightly through tech.

While we're at it, how about introducing Trading Efficiency, a +2% TV repeatable tech, indefinitely repeatable? The trade crowd would go absolutely bananas, when late-game scaling of resources was no longer restricted to minerals, food, and energy produced by jobs, but also the resources derived from their beloved trade produced by jobs.

EDIT: And yes, that is admittedly also a sneaky way of introducing a new unity repeatable for Marketplace of Ideas, Trade League and Holy Covenant trade policies, just after I have argued in favour of getting rid of or limiting the general-purpose unity repeatable, but at least it would be restricted to trade builds and it would scale unity much worse than Administrative Efficiency does for highly productive builds.

 

[DurianKing]

I know @Eladrin has said that the science system is too tough a nut to revisit anytime soon, but I spend more than half my games in repeatable techs these days. Tech progression should be much slower and there should be a rubber banding mechanic that prevents the empire or two that specialize in tech from sweeping the board. With that, even our most dedicated tech heads might be willing to cool their jets and focus on other developments.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

I know @Eladrin has said that the science system is too tough a nut to revisit anytime soon, but I spend more than half my games in repeatable techs these days. Tech progression should be much slower and there should be a rubber banding mechanic that prevents the empire or two that specialize in tech from sweeping the board. With that, even our most dedicated tech heads might be willing to cool their jets and focus on other developments.

I would just be happy with higher scaling in later tiers. I don't want to turn up tech costs because tech is so slow at the start, even if it's blazing fast at the end. Turning up the tech scaling makes the "slow early vs. fast late" problem even worse, since it widens the massive economic disparity between the early game and end game state by delaying the late game and making it so you have even more pops at that point.

 

[Letharion]

I am no fan, that even more buildings are empire unique. That's fewer customization options for your planets. I understand, that the possibility to spam buildings which give +leader cap would be too strong, but I would have preferred, if they had added a new building to this end, perhaps further ministries.

And I am still no friend of these harsh penalties for the standard council positions. Why give us so many additional possibilities, if it's so disadvantageous to use more than one or two of those? If stacking one kind of leader on the council is the problem, think about a penalty in dependence if a certain type of leaders or one of a group of equivalent leader positions is not represented on the council.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

I know @Eladrin has said that the science system is too tough a nut to revisit anytime soon, but I spend more than half my games in repeatable techs these days. Tech progression should be much slower and there should be a rubber banding mechanic that prevents the empire or two that specialize in tech from sweeping the board. With that, even our most dedicated tech heads might be willing to cool their jets and focus on other developments.

One rubberbanding mechanic I have been thinking about lately would be to make it easier to research technologies already discovered by other empires - based on how much Tech Intel you have on them (arguably similar to, but not quite the same as, stealing technologies outright). This could help diminish the lead of tech-focused empires, as other empires could effectively research technologies at a discount - possibly even scaling with the number of other empires that have discovered a technology, making it trivial to research a technology that is familiar to everybody else.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

I think the only council position that everyone agrees would be madness to give up is the Head of Research. The other two seem totally doable to ditch if you don't need them. You can just straight up ignore diplomatic weight in some playthroughs, and you can easily not care about missing -25% naval capacity in others. That says to me that the research speed penalty should be reduced, so it's also a tempting swap (for some empires).

 

[Calvax]

One rubberbanding mechanic I have been thinking about lately would be to make it easier to research technologies already discovered by other empires - based on how much Tech Intel you have on them (arguably similar to, but not quite the same as, stealing technologies outright). This could help diminish the lead of tech-focused empires, as other empires could effectively research technologies at a discount - possibly even scaling with the number of other empires that have discovered a technology, making it trivial to research a technology that is familiar to everybody else.

I think this would be a really good mechanic from a gameplay and immersive perspective. Particularly when it comes to the galactic community which gives a base intel cap. Makes total sense that if you're a new player on the galactic scene you'd benefit from downloading space wikipedia, even if it's not got full blueprints for everything.

On a similar note I think it would be nice if technologies showed a little empire flag on them if you're benefiting from a specific research agreement. Research agreements are great but it can sometimes feel a bit divorced who is helping you.

 

[mrt1212]

One rubberbanding mechanic I have been thinking about lately would be to make it easier to research technologies already discovered by other empires - based on how much Tech Intel you have on them (arguably similar to, but not quite the same as, stealing technologies outright). This could help diminish the lead of tech-focused empires, as other empires could effectively research technologies at a discount - possibly even scaling with the number of other empires that have discovered a technology, making it trivial to research a technology that is familiar to everybody else.

Absolutely should be a Galactic Domain where if half the empires are walking around with this thing (Enigmatic Engineers excluded), it's should be kind of an 'open secret' that it at least exists and has x,y,z to it foundationally with a,b,c being what pulls the technology together into usable form.

 

[FoolManChoo]

Welp, my holidays are absolutely full already with new content.

 

[DurianKing]

One rubberbanding mechanic I have been thinking about lately would be to make it easier to research technologies already discovered by other empires - based on how much Tech Intel you have on them (arguably similar to, but not quite the same as, stealing technologies outright). This could help diminish the lead of tech-focused empires, as other empires could effectively research technologies at a discount - possibly even scaling with the number of other empires that have discovered a technology, making it trivial to research a technology that is familiar to everybody else.

This is a great idea for the reasons that @Calvax suggests, we already boost our intel in all sorts of ways that bring societies together and would expose your people to other’s innovations (commercial pacts, same federation, vassalage). This should definitely also include a +10 boost for open borders, which weirdly does not exist. The fact that psionics get at intel boost would also allow them to focus less on building research labs and more on passively learning other people’s tech.

This would allow for greater perks for higher levels of tech intel (currently no difference between having Low Tech Intel and Full Tech Intel).

And then you could always just steal a really valuable advanced tech

 

[TranscendentalDragon]

Any chance we might get full leader trait changelog Thursday?

 

[DurianKing]

Any chance we might get full leader trait changelog Thursday?

I believe that is the plan

 

[King Harkinian]

I know @Eladrin has said that the science system is too tough a nut to revisit anytime soon, but I spend more than half my games in repeatable techs these days. Tech progression should be much slower and there should be a rubber banding mechanic that prevents the empire or two that specialize in tech from sweeping the board. With that, even our most dedicated tech heads might be willing to cool their jets and focus on other developments.

The balance is fixed by setting the midgame/endgame/victory years much earlier. The defaults haven't been correct for game balance since 2.2, other than for completely new players on the lowest difficulties.

I fear a large percentage of players don't change the defaults and are stuck with horribly broken game balance, where entities like the Khan, Fallen Empires, Leviathans and the Crisis are pathetic because of player and AI snowballing. With midgame start at 2250, endgame start at 2325 and victory at 2400, all of these are a challenge(and so is the AI), you don't spend too long researching repeatables, and endgame lag/micromanagement doesn't get out of hand. The game is MUCH better like that, and I haven't played it any other way since 2.2. The devs really ought to change the defaults, but I think they're afraid of giving newcomers a challenging first experience.

 

[Calvax]

The balance is fixed by setting the midgame/endgame/victory years much earlier. The defaults haven't been correct for game balance since 2.2, other than for completely new players on the lowest difficulties.

I fear a large percentage of players don't change the defaults and are stuck with horribly broken game balance, where entities like the Khan, Fallen Empires, Leviathans and the Crisis are pathetic because of player and AI snowballing. With midgame start at 2250, endgame start at 2325 and victory at 2400, all of these are a challenge(and so is the AI), you don't spend too long researching repeatables, and endgame lag/micromanagement doesn't get out of hand. The game is MUCH better like that, and I haven't played it any other way since 2.2. The devs really ought to change the defaults, but I think they're afraid of giving newcomers a challenging first experience.

You're not wrong that moving the date forward improves the challenge of the Khan, awakened empires, and default crisis difficulty. But I think having the devs move the default dates forward is the wrong approach. That shrinks the length of the game to address a problem that should be addressed directly: power creep of regular empires.

Yes we've needed these for a while and changing the default dates might be a quick win but it would be a real shame to shorten game length rather than giving these challenges the balance pass they need.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

The balance is fixed by setting the midgame/endgame/victory years much earlier. The defaults haven't been correct for game balance since 2.2, other than for completely new players on the lowest difficulties.

I fear a large percentage of players don't change the defaults and are stuck with horribly broken game balance, where entities like the Khan, Fallen Empires, Leviathans and the Crisis are pathetic because of player and AI snowballing. With midgame start at 2250, endgame start at 2325 and victory at 2400, all of these are a challenge(and so is the AI), you don't spend too long researching repeatables, and endgame lag/micromanagement doesn't get out of hand. The game is MUCH better like that, and I haven't played it any other way since 2.2. The devs really ought to change the defaults, but I think they're afraid of giving newcomers a challenging first experience.

A problem is that the game pace and the optimal phase years change with every update. It might be better to do away with the game phase years entirely, and instead use game conditions to determine when the midgame and endgame phases officially begin.

 

[mrt1212]

The balance is fixed by setting the midgame/endgame/victory years much earlier. The defaults haven't been correct for game balance since 2.2, other than for completely new players on the lowest difficulties.

I fear a large percentage of players don't change the defaults and are stuck with horribly broken game balance, where entities like the Khan, Fallen Empires, Leviathans and the Crisis are pathetic because of player and AI snowballing. With midgame start at 2250, endgame start at 2325 and victory at 2400, all of these are a challenge(and so is the AI), you don't spend too long researching repeatables, and endgame lag/micromanagement doesn't get out of hand. The game is MUCH better like that, and I haven't played it any other way since 2.2. The devs really ought to change the defaults, but I think they're afraid of giving newcomers a challenging first experience.

This is not a fix, this is a kludge for a certain experience that includes scripted events

I've basically taken an entirely different tack, being committed to playing with mostly default settings bar 1000 stars and 15-30 AIs and 7-15 being 'advanced' and then not concerning myself with research as primary objective to playing the game. The playthroughs are fun for the actual guts of how the game goes, especially with other self hobblement in play - games stall out on occasion when I didnt do enough by 2275-2300 (when leviathans start getting decapitated and you know about it - that's a signal to me that I better have something together and poised to get a little more or i'm stalled) , there's always an angle of attack on somebody who is about even steven or slightly stronger in power ratings, there's management tasks to shore up before planning out the next war for keeps (about every 5-10 years).

It's also to keep an eye on how the actual game system is at default to make assessments on the game system itself.

So even though I have fun contorting myself rather than the game system settings, certain elements of the game system having to do with 'Galaxy Levelers' that you mentioned are hilariously off and detatched with the rest of the game at default. And it's undeniable in reported experience that the scripted levelers are not on pace with the game at default, but that should be looked at directly rather than messing with a knob that 'goes to 11'. Just make 10 louder.