Stellaris Dev Diary #328 - New Year, New Beta

[Romulus Augustus]

Look, why not try it out? Play the beta with 1x tech slider, your preferred difficulty, and extreme DAT scaling; It will be less harsh than tech was for you in the first tech beta, but much, much, harsher than the current live game than 1x. Then if you think that's too fast, use the linear tech multiplier slider to fine tune.

In a way, this is what I hate about the addition of evermore sliders. It just feels like too much is being pushed on the player to figure out “their” balance. I want to see the shiny end game content - not continually replaying the first 50-70 years. Yet often, I feel like that’s what I should be doing because I either tuned everything way too high or (most often) too low. All to find a balance that can change dramatically patch to patch/opening to opening.

Even only playing 50 years can be a considerable time investment.


**I fully understand how much of a pipe dream this probably is and that additional customization options are actually more likely to ensure a player can find their perfect settings. Still, dreaming of the ability to just select basic galaxy settings, a difficulty, and have a challenging, yet non suicidal, mid/endgame.

 

[z3rO_]

Do new Bio-Rectors affect Livestock pops?

The old ones did, and were kinda important, so hopefully of these don't, it will be fixed.

 

[Rostyk.96]

you forgot to remove researcher upkeep from curator and curator principles traits

 

[Vreivai]

I believe the galaxy generation UI is getting a bit cluttered. Maybe the team could take a look at the UI to simplify/streamline it ? I imagine as a new player it might be overwhelming, and it doesn't seem very scalable.

As most I'd want to see them put a collapsible section to galaxy generation, label it "advanced options" or something like that. The options right now give a lot of freedom to how you experience the game, and I think the game would suffer for the removal of any of them.

Gonna have to play through another game on the beta with these changes. I was very negative about the first iteration of this, but I think this iteration looks promising.

 

[starchitect]

You aren't locked into higher difficulty settings if you want research slowed down substantially. If you want extreme scaling, set it to extreme.

If you play on, say, Captain, solid middle of the pack, with extreme Difficulty Adjusted Technology scaling, you won't get as hard tech scaling for later tiers of tech as somebody choosing extreme scaling on Grand Admiral would, but on the other hand, if you are playing on Captain odds are that you are playing much less efficiently than those on Grand Admiral, and that your tech progress curve will resembles theirs despite the lower difficulty resulting in milder scaling, the harsher tech cost scaling of GA and increased player efficiency of GA to some degree canceling out.

Look, why not try it out? Play the beta with 1x tech slider, your preferred difficulty, and extreme DAT scaling; It will be less harsh than tech was for you in the first tech beta, but much, much, harsher than the current live game than 1x. Then if you think that's too fast, use the linear tech multiplier slider to fine tune.

You are locked to a difficulty higher than Civilian for the Difficulty Adjusted Technology Cost slider to have any effect whatsoever. When on civilian difficulty (default) difficulty adjusted tech scaling is multiplied by 0.

The base cost of technologies is now based on 3.10.4’s formula, y=1000*2^x, multiplied by the difficulty modifier of 1 + (q*x*d), where x=technology tier, q=difficulty adjusted tech cost galaxy setting (0 - 0.10, default 0.05), and d=difficulty (Civilian = 0, Grand Admiral = 6)

This really seems like an oversight, because there is no reason to tie tech scaling to difficulty- You should be able to have high scaling on low difficulty and vis versa. This setup has bizarrely limited us to only being able to have high scaling on high difficulty. That formula would work equally well if it was just 1+ q*x, with the caveat that we would need a larger range for X to be able to get all the way up to the previous max with q*x*6

 

[SirBlackAxe]

[Balance]

• Tweaked the tiers of technologies that increase naval cap and fleet command limit.
• Reduced the amount of Naval Cap granted by technologies.

Taking a quick look at the society tech scripts, the specific changes appear to be as follows:

• Doctrine: Space Combat (+20 Fleet Command Limit, unlocks Fleet Supremacy edict) dropped from t2 to t1
• Doctrine: Armada Battle Formation (+20 Fleet Command Limit) increased from t4 to t5
• The four +30 naval capacity techs now give +25 instead. (The repeatable Fleet Management Procedures still gives +20.)
  • Doctrine: Fleet Support dropped from t2 to t1
  • Doctrine: Support Vessels dropped from t3 to t2
  • Doctrine: Fleet Support dropped from t4 to t3
  • Doctrine: Fleet Liaisons remains at t4.

There is now one command limit increase tech at each tier, instead of two at tiers 2 and 4 and none at tiers 1 and 5. Similarly, there's now one flat naval capacity increase tech at each tier if you count the repeatable for t5, rather than two at 4 and none at 1. The symmetry of this pleases me. Other notes:

• Military rush empires can now try to double their base naval capacity with Doctrine: Fleet Support before needing to employ soldiers or spend alloys on anchorage starbases.
  • With four anchorages on your two non-shipyard starbases, empires can now hit 61 naval cap in tier 1 without using any pops.
  • And with Doctrine: Space Combat now also in t1, you can now only need two admirals to command all of them.
  • Empires that aren't planning a military rush may still need to watch out for other empires trying this, if it turns out to be more powerful than whatever else those empires were doing with their t1 society research.
• The Fleet Supremacy edict being available in t1 society is potentially interesting for empires looking for a way to use their edict fund very early in the game, particularly gestalt empires who don't have access to any ethic edicts.
• Fleet Supremacy being available in tier 1 also lets you start building 100 XP Experienced ships (for +10% damage) much earlier than you can bring the t2 Fleet Academy online.
• Machines now only need to use a single tier 1 tech on blocker clearing, food, or tiyanki weapons in order to reach tier 2.
  
• With the number of t1 Military Theory techs tripled, Technocracy empires can get noticeably more early value out of that expertise trait in the very early game. It might be worth trying a military rush using the civic to try to take advantage of this, if anyone who uses that strategy wants to try it out.

 

[Blazoran]

It does refer to game difficulty. The graphs and numbers in the OP makes this explicit.

The problem this solves is the one where tech nerfs anywhere near as severe as those we saw in the first beta were, at the same time, potentially crippling for people playing on low difficulties while being quite fine for many playing on the highest difficulties, simply because they play that much more efficiently.

So if you just want to adjust all tech costs by a fixed multiplier and work the same way across all difficulty levels, same as in 3.10, you set the technology slider to 1x or 2x or whatever you want, and set the Difficulty Adjusted Technology slider to OFF. Then, when you feel you are ready to play at a different tech costs will remain the same you are used to.

On the other hand, if you want to increase the costs more for each tier rather than using a fixed multiplier, giving more of the first tech beta experience, you will get that by enabling the Difficulty Adjusted Technology slider, and set its its rate to low, normal, high, extreme. Whatever you choose will be gentler than the first tech beta experience, but the higher difficulty level you've chosen and the higher rate for this slider, the closer it will get.

To put it bluntly, it allows people playing on higher difficulty levels to have fun too by slowing the tech system down for them (without just using a high multiplier, which mainly makes the early game unbearably long... and rewards no-research early game rush tactics), whilee using a system that is calibrated for people playing on normal difficulty.

So some Commodore players who loved the beta scaling might choose to play it with extreme DAT scaling to get much of the first tech beta experience without playing on a higher difficulty level, while some Grand Admiral players who thought it was basically right but overtuned might end up playing with normal DAT scaling, and gluttons for punishment might play GA and extreme DAT scaling.

And of course you can combine the two, if that's what you prefer.

Good post, thanks for correcting me!

 

[Bork_of_Boletaria]

I am torn on the addition of yet more sliders. On one hand more options are always welcome, but on the other hand Stellaris already suffers a ton from having too many sliders without it being clear enough how the game will be affected, and in my opinion with the default options often just being.. bad? For example, the default habitable planets option seems to be overwhelmingly regarded as way to high with all the non-random event planets that have been added to game over the years. Anecdotally anyway, I feel I like constantly see people recommending dropping that down to the minimum.

With the changes to the beta, where does this leave tech speed compared to the live version of the game when using the default galaxy settings? Because it sounds like it won't be very different, which is a shame. I understand the first beta went too far, but this seems like an overcorrection (at least on paper).

I haven't been able to check out the Beta yet, but from the description, this seems like a step in the entirely wrong direction. The first Beta created two benefits - a bit of rubberbanding through breakthrough technologies, and an overall slowdown of research - while introducing one major problem, late game technologies getting too expensive. The solution here would have been adjusting the overall curve.

The new system is essentially the old system, with technology speed simply turned into another aspect of "difficulty". If the new overall speed at minimum settings is the old overall speed at minimum settings, and there is no rubberbanding, I don't see how this improves anything. And this isn't really to the benefit of new / less min-maxing players, who would be better served by proper catch up mechanics, it simply unchains the competitive min-maxers. Tech rush, and only tech rush, is back on the menu I guess, sadly.

This sums up my feelings as well after reading the diary. Now admittedly I have not had the time to experiment with either beta, so I'll be eagerly reading up as people continue the discussion here. All I can say is in the live version of the game tech is just way too fast, and I hope a solution can be found through these experiments. And I also hope that solution is something more elegant and engaging than a slider tying tech costs to difficulty.

 

[Xeridanus]

Glad see you guys finally ceased the endless vacation and had some jobs done.

And some other nonsense probably, I didn't bother reading.

You didn't have to be rude. It would have been easier to leave that out of your incoherent rambling.

 

[Starfury]

No, I'm not saying that no version of the Bio-Reactor would be useful for Anglers trade.

The beta version of bioreactors would be great for Anglers. It still wouldn't require you to research the energy techs, and it would allow you to use the incredibly efficient Angler job for energy production (and the incredibly efficient Pearl Divers for CG) instead of Traders/Clerks.

Ex. before Bio-Reactor, 2 Anglers, 2 Pearl Divers, and 2 Traders make 16 food (and burn 6), 12 CG (and burn 2), and 24 TV (which becomes another 12 energy/6 CG). Add in a Bio-Reactor, and it becomes 3 Anglers and 3 Pearl Divers making 18 food (and burning 9), 18 CG (with no Trade upkeep), 6 energy, and 12 TV (6 energy/3 CG). The bioreactor produces 1 fewer food, but 5 more CG, and the same energy from the same pops (though it's also burning 4 extra minerals).* With larger numbers of pops/a more complex example, you can balance it so you get more of everything. But 5 CGs are more valuable than 4 minerals and 1 food.

It lets you use more of the efficient Angler jobs.

If you were to try the same thing with Technicians, you just... can't.

100% agree with you on the Anglers/Agrarian Idyll stuff.

However, I'm really hard-pressed to find other scenarios where this new bio-reactor would be worth using. Maybe, when I roll the Baol and get +1cg from farmers (with the archaeo-AP)?

 

[Starfury]

• Removed the majority of Researcher Upkeep Modifiers introduced into the Open Beta.

Is there anything left besides the two +5% research speed techs?

 

[Quant]

That's my plan once I have a chance. However, if I'm making adjustments to the settings screen, I'd like to improve some other things about how the existing sliders work.

Please consider adding setting profiles so we can save several of them and return to them later. I have some preffered settings but sometimes I want a completely different setting, and return everything back to my liking afterwards is kinda hard. Would be a very good QoL improvement for people like me.

 

[Schlafendes Wiesel]

Yay a new slider.
A few days ago i wrote this (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/more-balance-less-sliders.1620552/unread) post about sliders and game balance. While the new options sounds quite good, i would like to see a more general slider for game difficulty. The New slider could the be in the advanced tab and perhaps also decoupled from difficulty.

Im addition to that i really would like to see some rubberband mechanics to prevent snowballing. Breakthrough techs were a step in the right direction.

 

[Fusilliban]

I would give the whole team an extra week of vacation just to spite this person

Are you hiring?

 

[Troyen]

Initial thoughts, 70 years in. Normal DAT on Commodore.

I thought the idea of breakthrough technologies was good but the implementation needed adjustment because researching them didn't feel great. They did have a substantial impact in keeping you within one tier at a time and that let those mid-game techs shine a lot more. I think that impact was underrated because I got back-to-back laser and kinetic upgrades in this game with the help of a couple of events, to the point where I could have started researching tier 4 lasers in 2227, but didn't have the crystals yet to build them. In comparison, I spent about 50 years in each tier on my full tech tree run last beta, so these would've shown up closer to 2350, or probably early 2300s if I was more focused on pushing through tiers. Most of my ship components now are already T3.

There's still a brief window where destroyers are useful, but it's much smaller. I got destroyers around 2231 and the cruiser roll in 2259 (though it took 7 years to research), compared to 2240 and 2310 respectively in the last beta.

The cruiser timing seems about a decade slower than I'd experience on live, but I'm also playing Payback (because I did Broken Shackles for the last beta) and you start with some big handicaps (more so than Broken Shackles), which I'm sure is part of the slowness.

For example, the default habitable planets option seems to be overwhelmingly regarded as way to high with all the non-random event planets that have been added to game over the years. Anecdotally anyway, I feel I like constantly see people recommending dropping that down to the minimum.

That one in particular I leave at the default now because the AI needs all those extra planets to compensate for being unable to properly specialize. I used to play on minimum, but found economy-wise the AI is more competitive with their default guaranteed.

I've long argued the game isn't balanced around 2300/2400/2500 but I think they leave those there for new players, same with the 1x crisis fleet power. FE/AE power could definitely use adjustment for the 2400 endgame default though because those have been massively out-scaled by power creep.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

100% agree with you on the Anglers/Agrarian Idyll stuff.

However, I'm really hard-pressed to find other scenarios where this new bio-reactor would be worth using. Maybe, when I roll the Baol and get +1cg from farmers (with the archaeo-AP)?

I agree. Anglers, Agrarian Idyll, and Baol seem like the primary users. For everyone else, it just doesn't really work.

But given I've only used it for machines/Terravores before, I'm not sure it's much more limited. Just a different small subset.

 

[Beauty Nova]

Getting old bio reactors in my old livestock economy empire would have been neat, they had to rely on trade for energy due to not having them.

Overall I have mixed feelings about the new reactors, tying food to gas is a great idea and I think it should be done that way with refineries, expanding who can get reactors is great fun, making reactors useless for everyone who had (or wanted to have) them before is... not so great.

I have no idea how to fix it though.

 

[MadCow94]

Sadface. I miss breakthrough techs already.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

For example, the default habitable planets option seems to be overwhelmingly regarded as way to high with all the non-random event planets that have been added to game over the years. Anecdotally anyway, I feel I like constantly see people recommending dropping that down to the minimum.

Here's another take: The default habitable planets setting is overwhelmingly regarded as fine. Reason for this take: It is a topic seldom discussed.

You often see players recommending dropping habitable planets to minimum in the context of providing answers to people who have problems, that reducing the number of habitable planets might address. Typical examples would be wanting less planetary micromanagement or reducing late game performance issues.

That's not to say that those are the only reasons for liking playing on minimal habitable planet settings, for instance somebody might prefer a universe where opportunities for life are scarcer, or prefer a less crowded feel, but they are two prominent mechanical ones.

Likewise, you'll often see players who play with minimal settings mention how the many non-random event planets added at galaxy creation are affecting their enjoyment of the game negatively, which is a very valid complaint.

But how often do you see threads discussing the habitable planets setting in general? Very infrequently.

It simply isn't something of importance to discuss to the forum playerbase at large, which suggests that either a) the forum players largely have no problems with the default setting, so they don't feel compelled to discuss it or butt into discussions with people who do not like the default settings, or b) Unlike other issues where many players have issues with default settings, they choose not to discuss it.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Is there anything left besides the two +5% research speed techs?

Yes.

Here is the complete list based on scanning /common/ for entries with both an all technology speed modifier and matching researcher upkeep change.

Administrative AI, Sapient AI, and Positronic AI tech
Ministry of Science holding
Nanite Actuators edict
Scientific Revolution unity ambition
Curator Leader trait
Curator insights
Synthetic Dawn machine uprising patched/wiped/research bonus modifiers
Software Damage from bad ending to Geomagnetic Storm situation
Unexplained Insights from the Express Mail anomaly
Knights of the Toxic God Trickster Curse