Stellaris Dev Diary #369 - 4.0 Changes: Part 3

[Znikii]

How does Piracy and anti-piracy patrolling work in the new system?

Really love the trade logistical upkeep for fleets&planets.

A few suggestions or thoughts:
Please keep the 'material' upkeep, as in energy and alloys needed for ship upkeep, trade/logistical upkeep should represent the effort required to supply materials to the fleets.
While the fleet is in battle and/or in repair it should have increased Trade Logistical Upkeep costs
-base Ship Trade Logistic Upkeep: (fleet size*20%Σstategic&rare material upkeep)*(hull size + Σweapon type&size) [obviously things like H, X and G slot weapons costing much more upkeep]
-Fleet trade logistical upkeep costs should be modified by things like Empire Size, Naval Size, enemy presence

-3 new ship 'weapon' slot components: each would act as an aura

• Logistical Center (X weapon slot - Battleship tech) - give fleet aura: increase fleet size by 20 & system aura: Defense Platforms & Land Armumes gains +20% Damage & Health.
• Supply Depot (L weapon slot - Cruiser tech) - fleet aura: how long a fleet can operate (in hostile territory) before it suffers from any insufficient trade logistical upkeep penalty .... by how fast, much, the Trade Logistical Upeek of a fleet increases each week, when not docked.
• Baggage Train (H weapon slot - Cruiser tech) - fleet aura: how devesting the insufficient Trade Logitical Upkeep penalty a fleet can suffer..... lowers the base ship Trade Logistical Upkeep Costs.

Trade rework, especially Criminality, Planetary and even more the Fleet Trade Logistical Upkeep is a golden opportunity to give Subterfuge tradition some love: Have traditions & espionage missions give better logistics while in hostile territory and vice versa to the enemy. Increase the effectiveness of criminal jobs, spy missions to destroy & steal Planetary Trade, unlocking new Federation type: Pan-Galactic Criminal Conglomeration....
as well as Expansion tradition tree some love: Planets have 20% lower Trade upkeep generation; Colonist jobs produce more trade; Corporate Branch Offices have -50% Empire size

 

[cryptkeeper]

If energy is no longer used for the market, what uses will it have in 4.0. Just a resource for fleet upkeep and robots ? I feel energy has lost a lot of importance then.

 

[cheetawilliam]

Reading this I had a thought to expand/rework some parts of this proposed logistics system.

Goal: To bring costs to far flung empires with industrial bases far from their homelands. Promoting centralization and releasing subjects. And allow for technology and infrastructure to change the economic landscape.

Economic Capital: Each empire, by default their home planet has an economic capital. The place where logistics costs are 0 or near 0.

Distance from EC (Economic Capital): This is a value expressed in how many jumps ships need to take. This is relatively static so shouldn't cost much performance. Opening Wormholes and building gateways reduces the distance directly. Whilst hyperlane highways make each jump only increase the distance by something like 0.1 a normal jump.

Better research in ship engines/hyperdrives can apply a reduction on total distance empire wise.

How trade interacts with this: Each planet, fleet, station and other structure has a trade cost modified by the distance from the EC. Stations that produce raw goods are cheaper. For recource imballances on planets it would calculate the trade cost based on number of goods x type of good x distance from EC. Raw materials being cheaper to ship back to the Economic capital. Consumer goods flowing back out to the outlying systems are lower in volume so are more efficient that way.

Interaction with fleets: Fleets stationed at stations still have a trade cost based on distance from EC. Some station buildings reducing that like a forward operating base building.

The cost can rise exponantioally with distance, making it so that at some point, especially in the early game planets, systems will cost more than they can provide. Forcing you to either create subjects of them or stop expanding till you can build better infrastructure or research better engines/drives.

Additional bits:
Blockading planets with a fleet large enough disconnects it making it stop importing/exporting everything. Perhaps a policy can allow food imports/exports for the nice empires.

Having systems occupied increases distance from EC cost, would need to recheck the network for that empire every time an empire flips but could make raiding actions more worth it.

Pirates: Instead of spawning pirates along routes that no longer exist. Perhaps the size of your trade income dictates the amount of force you need to have dedicated to police action. A special mode ships can take which make it cost more upkeep but keep your empire safe from pirates. Corvettes and carriers being better at trade protection. During war you could pull them off that duty but not having enough trade protection going on will reduce trade income. And critical shortages could lead to pirate attacks in more distant systems.

 

[Starfury]

Criminals can still open Branch Offices without a trade deal, getting the same kind of buildings they have right now and adding 25 crime per building to the planet.
However, they can now get a commercial pact too (if both parties agree), which replaces the buildings with their non criminal variant but every building will add +5 to the crime floor (to a max of +20 crime floor for a fully developed branch office, which is not enough to trigger negative crime effects on its own).
If the commercial pact is broken, the branch office reverts to traditional criminal behavior.

Does that make sense?

Are there going to be any other effects that increase the crime floor? Or do you plan on changing crime to no longer be irrelevant below 30?

Because unless I'm missing something, there's no functional difference between adding +20 crime and adding +20 crime floor.
As soon as your planet has 10 crime from other sources, you're going to need an enforcer.
Whether you end up at 5 crime without the floor or 20 crime with the floor doesn't matter.

 

[polakma]

Can Machines get a little more love in a way of a lvl 2 upgrade for hunter-seeker drone post?

 

[klingonadmiral]

Yeah this is my one beef, it'd be great if this worked at a system level rather than a planetary level. That's a bigger rework though and I'll take what I'm getting for now!

Here's an idea: Make the Offworld Trading Company starbase building consolidate the deficits to the system level. Now it's got a use!

 

[RoverStorm]

This is by far the most exciting change in 4.0 so far, for me.

Out of curiosity, will there be any interesting new flavor for the theme of the "Subversive Cult"/"Machine Cult" government types for Megacorps?

 

[currylambchop]

I think that if you penalise doomstacking you should make it only apply to having multiple fleets in a system, as opposed to having only one fleet. It would feel bad to be punished for using the game mechanic of fleet command limit.

 

[herculeanus]

It would be better to remove the trade value completely for now and think carefully about a good logistics feature for the future. The fact that trade value should now be logistics and currency is not logical and very disappointing. We have energy credits as currency. Please leave it at that, otherwise energy will lose importance.
And then you can think carefully about a good trade and logistics system for the future. Please, dear developers, think about that again.

 

[Ajacoba]

If energy is no longer used for the market, what uses will it have in 4.0. Just a resource for fleet upkeep and robots ? I feel energy has lost a lot of importance then.

I would assume the same uses as previously: providing electricity to your star bases, ships, buildings, robots, districts, etc.

 

[Ilab]

You previously mentioned that trade value / logistics / local deficits might impact sieges (and storage depots might help). Any update on that?

Do you happen to know where was that said? Can't find it.

 

[Tommi414]

Stellaris scorched earth warfare soon? :trollface:

 

[Imp0815]

This is still the exact problem I'm talking about. What you're describing is the annoying micro version that I want to avoid. By making the tax only apply in combat you're still encouraged to use your fleets in separate battles, which implies they'd be split up, but if you do want to do a big climactic all out fight it still costs exactly the same as it would in the annoying micro version except you can just send your ships all up at once instead of getting charged more money because two of your fleets happened to funnel through the same system on the way to the fight.

There's no benefit to forcing people to keep their ships apart outside of combat since a doomstack that's not in combat is just a pile of ships. It's only in combat that the doomstack matters so sidestep the whole issue and only charge extra during combat. Same effect but with no perverse incentives.

That's a bit radical to call it "perverse incentives," but I get your point that you basically do not want this system to become too complex or annoying to manage. I agree that, in general, any system that discourages or prevents doomstacking must come with a control overhaul and automation of some sort.

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

Megacorp Gestalt AI rogue servitor when

 

[Filippo011235]

What if we jump our fleet on the other side of the galaxy, all alone in enemy, and unknown, territory?

 

[Critical Ethics]

Do you happen to know where was that said? Can't find it.

It was back in November:

Trade is almost certainly going to change. Very few of you seemed terribly fond of the current system, and it’s both terribly bad for performance and mechanically difficult to understand for new players. While I like the general idea behind the trade routes, I don’t think they add enough benefit for their costs. We’re likely to revamp it into a proper resource, though I’m also considering ways of also using it to simulate supply lines and local planetary deficits. If we end up pursuing the latter, gestalt empires would need access to trade or at least, something similar. That could potentially open up more opportunities for MegaCorps and diplomatic pacts, and we’ll have to find new ways of using pirates.

That wasn't what I was suggesting there. Your local food or mineral deficit might cost a small amount of Trade upkeep though to simulate the convoys supplying the world. You should not need to micromanage that sort of thing.

Though if the planet were being bombarded, I'd probably want to experiment with blockade effects.



More or less that, but using trade rather than energy. Maybe storage depots prevent any negative blockade effects for a while, or cloaking techs.

Not guaranteeing we'll do this, but it's my line of thinking. I don't want to go to the detail level of tracking the locations of all resources - while that has cool potential, Stellaris isn't set up for that sort of thing. Abstraction is good enough.

 

[Ozantiax]

The trade changes look interesting with how it handles local deficits. Is the resource going to be called “trade” or is the resource “logistics”?

I'd think "logistics" is much more fitting for gestalts

 

[seradi1]

Great changes overall. I have a question/comment about the following:

With these new sources of trade upkeep, it is of course important to mention that we will also introduce a new trade deficit. Like Unity, this will not create a Deficit Situation but a country modifier that persists until the deficit is dealt with. Running a trade deficit will reduce advanced resource production (alloys, consumer goods, unity, and research) and all ship weapons damage.

Wouldn't it make more sense that running a trade deficit reduce fleet speed rather than ship damage? I'm thinking about the general effect of logistics problems on deployed military, they usually get bogged down, rather than reduce combat effectiveness (although I guess you could make an argument that logistical problems would mean reduced ammo, which in turn would mean less damage ).

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

@Eladrin
If gestalts can be megacorps and megacorps can open branches on each other then I think being able to set up branch offices and trade deals on gestalt empires gains importance to level the playing field .

Else the gestalt megacorp can open a branch on your regular megacorp but you can't open branches on them

 

[Critical Ethics]

That's a bit radical to call it "perverse incentives," but I get your point that you basically do not want this system to become too complex or annoying to manage. I agree that, in general, any system that discourages or prevents doomstacking must come with a control overhaul and automation of some sort.

Ha, sorry, "perverse incentives" is a specific term to describe when you add an incentive or penalty to something but it ends up rewarding behavior that's not what you intended. Like if a city with a rat problem offered a reward for turning in dead rats but then a bunch of people set up rat breeding farms. It's a very useful phrase and not nearly as extreme as it sounds!