Stellaris Dev Diary #325 - 3.10.3 "Pyxis" Released [d2aa] + Further Beta Plans

[indyandrew]

Breakthrough tech seems like a really good idea. Research cost of breakthrough techs would probably make a good rule to add to galaxy settings.

 

[Thiend]

Breakthrough tech seems like a really good idea. Research cost of breakthrough techs would probably make a good rule to add to galaxy settings.

Research cost, and also either a slider for rare at which the cost decreases from other empires having it or make that scale off number of empires. In a galaxy with 4 empires, one of them having it should be a large reduction in cost for others - in a galaxy with 20, not so much.

 

[Dragatus]

@Eladrin Have you considered increasing the empire size effect on tech costs instead of slowing down research production equally much for everyone? I feel like the game has an excellent tool available to reign in empire that are making crazy research, while not hurting empires that are lagging behind in tech.

 

[Masked Ermine]

The only issue I have with breakthrough techs is...the RNG of Stellaris's tech tree. I feel like breakthrough techs might end up like how ascension used to be...you'd sit around for ages waiting for say gene modding or psionics or whatever, because the RNG would play against you. I'd rather it be, a 'once you research x number of techs in this tier it gives you a permanent option for the breakthrough tech', because we all know it'll happen, you get your breakthrough tech at the same time something like chemical motes or some other 'need to have' tech rolls and then next thing you know you're stuck for ten years in tier one because the tech doesn't re-roll.

 

[Thiend]

@Eladrin Have you considered increasing the empire size effect on tech costs instead of slowing down research production equally much for everyone? I feel like the game has an excellent tool available to reign in empire that are making crazy research, while not hurting empires that are lagging behind in tech.

I would argue they could just make a second beta branch with literally double or more the empire size penalty scaling and few if any other changes. We can try both and see what works better. Or three, also have one with exactly the current planned beta + increases size penalty.

I suspect at least some elements of the currently planned beta would be necessary anyway. There's definitely an element of "empire size is kind of toothless because output scales SO MUCH FASTER than the penalty that it's nearly meaningless" but output per pop in the first place is also way too high. I've suggested multiple elements of this for years as a fix for how fast research is these days. Personally, I'd prefer 50% more to maybe double the empire size penalty (which would actually still leave tech getting faster as an empire gets wider, empire size is that weak) on top of the existing changes. Getting wider shouldn't be a strict downgrade, then nobody would do it, but I would say the uselessness of empire size at current scaling is part of the problem making it so much stronger than it should be in a game where non-conquest is supposed to be a valid option.

 

[-Marauder-]

Is this a coordinated effort to make the game unwinnable for Grand admiral with crisis multipliers?

Because otherwise these changes don't make sense, unless of course paradox plans to sell more power creep with their next expansion.

But then again, as always, we're free to mod away the game to being fun again.

It's decisions made about the game by people who barely play the game, for people on a level they don't play, ignoring the anything but the early and early mid game because they don't play beyond that point in essence.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

I would argue they could just make a second beta branch with literally double or more the empire size penalty scaling and few if any other changes. We can try both and see what works better. Or three, also have one with exactly the current planned beta + increases size penalty.

I suspect at least some elements of the currently planned beta would be necessary anyway. There's definitely an element of "empire size is kind of toothless because output scales SO MUCH FASTER than the penalty that it's nearly meaningless" but output per pop in the first place is also way too high. I've suggested multiple elements of this for years as a fix for how fast research is these days. Personally, I'd prefer 50% more to maybe double the empire size penalty (which would actually still leave tech getting faster as an empire gets wider, empire size is that weak) on top of the existing changes. Getting wider shouldn't be a strict downgrade, then nobody would do it, but I would say the uselessness of empire size at current scaling is part of the problem making it so much stronger than it should be in a game where non-conquest is supposed to be a valid option.

It's not just size penalties and runaway leads that need to be reined in, though. They're nerfing the researcher job itself and, notably, leaving the unity jobs untouched. This also makes unity give better returns, relatively speaking, than research does.

This won't just impact research speed early vs. late and for large players vs. small. It also impacts research vs. other means of advancement.

 

[-Marauder-]

I would argue they could just make a second beta branch with literally double or more the empire size penalty scaling and few if any other changes. We can try both and see what works better. Or three, also have one with exactly the current planned beta + increases size penalty.

I suspect at least some elements of the currently planned beta would be necessary anyway. There's definitely an element of "empire size is kind of toothless because output scales SO MUCH FASTER than the penalty that it's nearly meaningless" but output per pop in the first place is also way too high. I've suggested multiple elements of this for years as a fix for how fast research is these days. Personally, I'd prefer 50% more to maybe double the empire size penalty (which would actually still leave tech getting faster as an empire gets wider, empire size is that weak) on top of the existing changes. Getting wider shouldn't be a strict downgrade, then nobody would do it, but I would say the uselessness of empire size at current scaling is part of the problem making it so much stronger than it should be in a game where non-conquest is supposed to be a valid option.

Tall is viable, it doesn't need indirect buffs by nerfing wide. And Empire Size was never meant to keep everyone in line, it was meant to slow snowballing down. Which it does.

 

[Enailios]

That, is an absolutely insane change. The people celebrating this don't seem to realize just how insane this is in terms of tech cost increase alongside removing bonuses and increasing costs. This is even more heavy handed and extreme than the early leader changes and restrictions.

The change is drastic but I think necessary when the audience relies on early mid/late, .25 planets, GA no scaling and x25 all crisis to have a “challenge”. The changes, methinks, will lower the ceiling of a “challenging” game which in turns will help with lag since 25m doomstacks are no longer necessary as a touchstone to one’s skill. And i’m all for that. I welcome facing a fleet with just one battleship and a consortie of supports and thinking, “aw man, this is gonna be hard”. And I think my laptop will appreciate that too

 

[Calvax]

The change is drastic but I think necessary when the audience relies on early mid/late, .25 planets, GA no scaling and x25 all crisis to have a “challenge”. The changes, methinks, will lower the ceiling of a “challenging” game which in turns will help with lag since 25m doomstacks are no longer necessary as a touchstone to one’s skill. And i’m all for that. I welcome facing a fleet with just one battleship and a consortie of supports and thinking, “aw man, this is gonna be hard”. And I think my laptop will appreciate that too

In addition to player settings I think it's also worth comparing the AI to the crises. Even on middling difficulties with default settings the 1x crisis typically gets wiped by AI empires. As does the Khan and (usually) awakened empires.

 

[Thiend]

It's not just size penalties and runaway leads that need to be reined in, though. They're nerfing the researcher job itself and, notably, leaving the unity jobs untouched. This also makes unity give better returns, relatively speaking, than research does.

This won't just impact research speed early vs. late and for large players vs. small. It also impacts research vs. other means of advancement.

Oh, absolutely. I'm delighted with these changes - tech has long been too valuable compared to alloy or unity (the specialist jobs it directly competes with), this should bring it in line.

I just think empire size is a little too weak, on top of that.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

@Eladrin Have you considered increasing the empire size effect on tech costs instead of slowing down research production equally much for everyone? I feel like the game has an excellent tool available to reign in empire that are making crazy research, while not hurting empires that are lagging behind in tech.

Wouldn't that merely end up hurting inexperienced players more? It certainly seems so to me at a first glance.

The empire size effect tech (and tradition) penalties don't so much limit those that are good at producing science, as it limits those that are bad at reducing empire size or empire size effect.

Perhaps I am extrapolating too much from my own game performance, which I am well aware is quite a bit outside the norm, but let's say that you double the empire size effect. What does that mean?

• If I play a minimum empire size game staying below 100 empire size, despite having much, much, higher tech research than most players will ever have at the same point in time, it changes nothing. Nothing at all.
• If I play a wide ascensionist empire with perhaps around 50% tech penalty and a few thousand POPs with 50-60k science output or something like that, more if I really make an effort, the result of doubling the tech penalty is certainly noticeable, but still small compared to the degree of tech slowdown the game desperately needs to make a real difference and prevent the double-digit repeatable techs from going into overdrive during the early 24th century

Now take somebody who is not strong at mathematics, is not good at using ascension, and is less efficient at developing planets - i.e. the vast majority of players. They won't have anywhere near those science numbers and, if they do, they will have a much higher tech penalty in all but the minimal-ES game. Because it is really, really, easy to stack up lots of ES if you aren't careful.

Now, it is a gradient of skill and knowledge between players like me and new players, with most players falling somewhere in between, but in general, the less you understand the mechanics of ascension, the worse you'll be off if the empire size tech penalties are significantly increased.

Increasing tech costs as Eladrin mentions has different impact. While it is still the case that the more experienced the player, the easier the change will be to handle, all empires are affected proportionally the same regardless of the player's skill at handling empire size. This option is guaranteed to slow everybody down rather than focusing the impact on those who have problems handling empire size.

Likewise, reducing many of the sources of tech speed increases or transforming them into throughput modifiers by with upkeep increases to balance the techspeed increase are guaranteed to affect everybody.

Now, the balancing of the new system is going to be painful, but if they truly want to slow down experienced players, they have to use the tools that are guaranteed to have significant impact on everybody regardless of skill and playing style, because otherwise we'll find ways to significantly limit the impact, and those most easily applied will become general knowledge and then in corrupted form become "the meta".

 

[ATerafin22]

In theory I don't at all mind slowing down tech, but it does worry me in conjunction with recent changes considering how many supposed scientists are now getting non-research traits or non-science traits at all.

 

[MSIOCGenie]

This is true. It's pretty easy to get to much higher levels of Naval Capacity these days.

Increasing ship cost is good, but I think the naval cap needs some tweaks too as you are alluding to here. It would make individual ships feel more important and powerful, while also helping with overall performance and micro-management of possibly dozens of huge armadas in the end-game!

I feel like this could be tied into other systems as well, making the levelling up of armadas feel more rewarding. I like the formation concept from Victoria 3. Possibly capturing ship hulls for overhaul is also something that could be cool!

 

[stargazersatnight]

Fine with the research side but the ship cost changes hurt my feelings a bit. Replacement fleets aren't cheap as it is.

 

[Martok]

Looking forward to checking out the holiday beta. Much as I admittedly love tech-rushing, I agree it's long been overpowered; it's a bummer to hit those repeatables so early, even when I've increased the tech costs in my games settings (which I now do on a regular basis). And that's coming from someone who's mostly a roleplayer, not a min-maxer.


I'm admittedly a little sad at the thought of most ship cost reductions going away, but I won't deny it does get ridiculous sometimes. And of course, the AI players will be affected right alongside us meatbags.

Research Speed Bonuses now usually come with increased Researcher Upkeep.

• By changing these to throughput bonuses (cost + production), a technology focused empire will require more Consumer Goods or other resources depending on who they use to research. This puts a partial economic break on runaway technology.

All the balance changes to research sound good except this one.

1.) It will no longer feel like any sort of "bonus".
2.) It will require the player to micromanage resources just that little bit more -- when I'm pretty sure a lot of us already do so too much as it is.

 

[-Marauder-]

The change is drastic but I think necessary when the audience relies on early mid/late, .25 planets, GA no scaling and x25 all crisis to have a “challenge”. The changes, methinks, will lower the ceiling of a “challenging” game which in turns will help with lag since 25m doomstacks are no longer necessary as a touchstone to one’s skill. And i’m all for that. I welcome facing a fleet with just one battleship and a consortie of supports and thinking, “aw man, this is gonna be hard”. And I think my laptop will appreciate that too

Except you're not talking about "the audience", you're talking about a tiny top percentile of the games player base. Many of the people celebrating this change on the forum barely play beyond the mid game, including the devs.

 

[Dragatus]

The empire size effect tech (and tradition) penalties don't so much limit those that are good at producing science, as it limits those that are bad at reducing empire size or empire size effect.

That's a very fair point. The part I didn't spell out explicitly is that for any increase in the effect of empire size to be meaningful it would have to be paired with the elimination of empire size reduction effects from the game or at the very least a severe limitation of the availability of such effects, much like they're doing with ship cost reduction. Actually just doing that without increasing the size penalty would likely already have a significant effect.

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

Will intelligence "Steal technology" operations focus more on breakthrough techs than regular techs and get more % ouf of them?

If there were some landmark techs that you need and those operations could be guaranteed to go after those techs first then it would add some predictability to the system because "You know what you might get if you click go" and that alone would make spies a LOT more useful.

Also having agents tell you who has the breakthrough techs you want in advance would be amazing so you don't waste resources.

 

[Thiend]

All the balance changes to research sound good except this one.

1.) It will no longer feel like any sort of "bonus".
2.) It will require the player to micromanage resources just that little bit more -- when I'm pretty sure a lot of us already do so too much as it is.

That's still very much a bonus - it's exactly what stuff like alloy nanoplants do. Increasing throughput instead of output still means you get more out of the same number of pops, which is extremely strong - it just doesn't allow you to produce more on the same input, so you still need to increase the infrastructure to support more total output.

Still very good, just no longer quite as good as before - and people are getting repeatables on base tech costs in 2250, so that's definitely a necessary adjustment.

It is admittedly some management to keep up with it, but no more than continually building tech labs because improving tech allows you to support a nearly arbitrarily high number of them already is.