Stellaris 4.0 "Phoenix Update" Free Features

[Calvax]

Probably not the place to ask this but given this is the final thread before BioGenesis goes live, I haven't been able to find anything concrete regarding the upcoming Advanced Government Authorities coming with Genetic Ascension. The reason I'd like to know is so I can plan accordingly as opposed to finding out by trial and error. I got enough on my plate digesting the upcoming 4.0 changes but getting a full breakdown would be extremely beneficial since I'd like to see if Genetic can match Cybernetic with respect to minimizing Empire Size.

Some of them were shown on discord:

 

[DarkHelmet110985]

Some of them were shown on discord:

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Big Thank You from me and seems I must have missed it in an old Dev Diary, but they only showed a few and not every Authority type. Seems regardless of what Authority we go with, we get -1% Empire Size from Pops per Species Trait. Since we were capped to 7 Traits in 3.14, that would be -7% but I recall at least one Genetic Tradition granting up to 4 Trait Picks(up from 2) so that would yield a total of 9. Overtuned and Evolutionary Predators grant another Trait pick as well so that's 10 Trait Picks right there or -10%. Whether we'll get more than that I don't know. If we're capped to 10 Trait Picks, it sadly doesn't match what Cybernetic can yield with Democratic Concurrency or -15%. If they bumped it to -1.5%, we'd be on equal footing, but I'd love to see -2% since -20% would be phenomenal. The secondary effects are largely meh but I do like the idea of implementing buffs based on the strongest Faction. Hive Mind one in particular seems to make the Hive World AP all but irrelevant unless the AP is getting an overhaul or massive buff to Hive Worlds.

*Edit* Also I'd really like to see Civics get a balance pass at some point. My biggest request would be Shared Burdens with the following changes in bold:

Can use Shared Burdens Living Standard
Cannot Use other Living standards except Utopian Abundance and Chemical Bliss
Can build Communal Housing and Utopian Communal Housing
Can construct Communal Housing Outreach Holding
+5 Stability
-75% Demotion Time
+100% Worker Political Power
+10% Worker Output
+5% Worker Happiness
-10% Empire Size from Pops
-10% Housing Usage
-10k Resource Storage

Communal Housing(w/ 4.0 changes... which may not be to scale)
Planet Limit of 1
+500 Housing, +100 Housing with Imperious Architecture
+3 Amenities
-5% Housing Usage
+50% Egalitarian Ethics Attraction

Utopian Communal Housing(upgrade to Communal Housing)
Planet Limit of 1
+1000 Housing, +100 Housing with Imperious Architecture
+6 Amenities
-10% Housing Usage
+100% Egalitarian Ethics Attraction

Communal Housing Outreach Holding: Unchanged(save for 4.0 update where its needed)

Councilor Post: Head Arbiter
-0.5% Empire Size from Pops

Basically, Shared Burdens should yield you Greater Good Tier 5 from the start. If you manage to get Tier 5 Greater Good in Galactic Community, you can double up the bonus but gain additional Diplomatic Weight from Pops. The unique building granted by the Civic always felt like a waste to build since it didn't really yield anything of tangible value. The updated form I have above yields the Communal Trait on top of yielding a fat Egalitarian Ethics attraction bonus that mirrors the Holding for vassals. Finally, the more radical change is the Councilor post. While additional Worker output is perfectly fine, I feel additional Empire Size reduction would easily place Shared Burdens among the S-Tier Civics in the game given it requires that you be Fanatic Egalitarian.

 

[Ajacoba]

Big Thank You from me and seems I must have missed it in an old Dev Diary, but they only showed a few and not every Authority type. Seems regardless of what Authority we go with, we get -1% Empire Size from Pops per Species Trait. Since we were capped to 7 Traits in 3.14, that would be -7% but I recall at least one Genetic Tradition granting up to 4 Trait Picks(up from 2) so that would yield a total of 9. Overtuned and Evolutionary Predators grant another Trait pick as well so that's 10 Trait Picks right there or -10%. Whether we'll get more than that I don't know. If we're capped to 10 Trait Picks, it sadly doesn't match what Cybernetic can yield with Democratic Concurrency or -15%. If they bumped it to -1.5%, we'd be on equal footing, but I'd love to see -2% since -20% would be phenomenal. The secondary effects are largely meh but I do like the idea of implementing buffs based on the strongest Faction. Hive Mind one in particular seems to make the Hive World AP all but irrelevant unless the AP is getting an overhaul or massive buff to Hive Worlds.

I mean, there's zero reason to have a stat precisely as strong as another build

Balancing should look at the bigger picture and not make everything identical

 

[T5_k]

Why the obsession with the scientist that you assign to a world and then put them somewhere else instantly? Do you peeps not put a scientist or two on science worlds sooner or later anyways?

All my scientists are in science ships, exploring the galaxy and all its anomalies, dig sites, astral rifts and special projects :3

 

[DarkHelmet110985]

I mean, there's zero reason to have a stat precisely as strong as another build

Balancing should look at the bigger picture and not make everything identical

It's true that not everything has to be X but the min/max person in me with respect to playing Tall/limiting Empire Size as much as possible tries to get what they can. I'd be perfectly fine with 10% with Genetics as its better than nothing. I'd much rather get my Shared Burdens proposal through in some capacity. Head Arbiter tweak may be a bit much but granting Tier 5 Greater Good(minus the Diplomatic Weight) resolution perks on the Civic itself seems more than fair for a Civic that doesn't have anything else going for it other than the +5 Stability(even Demotion Time on Harmony Tradition is stronger... smh).

 

[Uncle_Murphy]

Unsure about unemployed pops being called "Civilians". It weirdly implies that employed pops are military.

 

[MarkDey]

Unsure about unemployed pops being called "Civilians". It weirdly implies that employed pops are military.

I saw something helpful in the preliminary patch notes.

A Civilian stratum has been added to represent the masses that do not generally contribute to the empire’s military economy.

For me, this is a helpful clarification as it makes it easier to understand the naming choice, and it also helps frame the player-built economy to clearly distinguish that it's in support of the military-industrial complex, and not necessarily a total picture of all transactions that happen in an empire.

 

[alexgmcm]

Have you considered lowering fleet sizes so we have fewer, more meaningful, ships? This would also help performance.

It'd mean that your more powerful ships actually matter and if you lose them it really hurts. Rather than just thousands of ships that the player feels little connection to.

 

[Ajacoba]

Have you considered lowering fleet sizes so we have fewer, more meaningful, ships? This would also help performance.

It'd mean that your more powerful ships actually matter and if you lose them it really hurts. Rather than just thousands of ships that the player feels little connection to.

they kinda did that when they removed 99% of all ship cost modifiers, so even in endgame you usually pay the full price for your ships
also bioships eat more naval cap per ship, meaning each fleet of fully grown bioships is basically the equivalent of 2 fleets of regular ships
in the first place the ship sizes do just that, the bigger and stronger your chosen ship the less you can field of them

 

[Critical Ethics]

Have you considered lowering fleet sizes so we have fewer, more meaningful, ships? This would also help performance.

It'd mean that your more powerful ships actually matter and if you lose them it really hurts. Rather than just thousands of ships that the player feels little connection to.

I'd like if they scaled up the costs and effectiveness of ship by 3, so a battleship is as good as and takes up the fleet cap of 27 corvettes.

 

[TreeCloudGrass]

I see that the bug, which caused BIOLOGICAL_species_trait_points_add = X / BIOLOGICAL_species_trait_picks_add = Y to not work in Empire Creation, has been fixed!

 

[PawOfDeath]

these numbers are just insane. And apparently they don't work correctly.

1 district gives about 4.2 empire sizes

 

[Rhaegar1]

Darn it, here i go again. Lets see how performance in the steam deck is and more importantly how this improves the micromanaging at larger empire sizes.

Congratulations guys, stellaris is still going strong after all these years.

 

[ompy]

I do like how they added a bit of logistics simulation by making planetary production imbalances cost trade, but I would have expected trade to be consumed for any market transaction, buy or sell. "Trade" is intangible capacity that can be used but not banked. Credits can be banked, so energy credits should be still be the currency in which everything is priced. When you buy something on the market, there should be both a cost in trade and an exchange rate in credits. For example:

- Buying 100 minerals costs 130 energy and 100 trade.
- Selling 100 minerals yields 120 energy, but still costs 100 trade.

Personally, I would have just made energy and credits into two different resources. Energy would be a planet only resource that couldn't be banked (to replace amenities), while credits would be a bankable resource that you could produce with crypto-mining buildings.

 

[Ilab]

Having less stats doesn't make them easier to calculate

The main issue is path finding
If anything your idea would be worse than the current implementation because those trade ships would either repeatedly run into enemies or stack up a lot of calculations trying to maneuver around an obstacle

The 4.0 version that just "magically" puts it in a global storage is kinda the best, especially since all other resources already work like that, it makes sense when "abusing" that magic causes a resource imbalance in form of a tradd deficit that has to be accounted for

The old trade system needed one single fix, being calculated monthly instead of daily. Just that. It was heavy on performance because it was calculated daily, every day piracy would grow up up to supression cap 9if any) and then trade would decrease correspondingly, this would happen for each system in the trade route, so yeah, it was heavy. But making it monthly would have solved most of it really, after all it was just some additions and subtractions (again, the problem was that it was daily for every system in the route, so it adds up).

Anyways, it is gone now, so no point on dreaming much about it.

 

[Critical Ethics]

The old trade system needed one single fix, being calculated monthly instead of daily. Just that. It was heavy on performance because it was calculated daily, every day piracy would grow up up to supression cap 9if any) and then trade would decrease correspondingly, this would happen for each system in the trade route, so yeah, it was heavy. But making it monthly would have solved most of it really, after all it was just some additions and subtractions (again, the problem was that it was daily for every system in the route, so it adds up).

Anyways, it is gone now, so no point on dreaming much about it.

It needed to be updated every time a ship pathed through it, friend or foe.

 

[Ilab]

It needed to be updated every time a ship pathed through it, friend or foe.

I dont think foe had to do any calculations, only friends. Why where foes influencing the calculations?

And, it would have been solved in the same way, as an example: when a ship enters a system it substracts adds its supression value to the system, at the end of the month, substract supression from piracy and calculate trade from there. Since all economic things are calculated at the end of the month, it does not matter. At the end of the month you would had something like this for a X system: trade = previous piracy + piracy increase per month - supression this month. This would give the same data in the end, but only calculated once.

Still curious about why foes updated it though, i don''t recall ever hearing it nor noticing an enemy ship influencing piracy, supression or trade.

 

[Critical Ethics]

I dont think foe had to do any calculations, only friends. Why where foes influencing the calculations?

And, it would have been solved in the same way, as an example: when a ship enters a system it substracts adds its supression value to the system, at the end of the month, substract supression from piracy and calculate trade from there. Since all economic things are calculated at the end of the month, it does not matter. At the end of the month you would had something like this for a X system: trade = previous piracy + piracy increase per month - supression this month. This would give the same data in the end, but only calculated once.

Still curious about why foes updated it though, i don''t recall ever hearing it nor noticing an enemy ship influencing piracy, supression or trade.

Foes break (well, broke) the routes. That was half the point of the system, to allow you to blockade trade routes.

 

[Arkarnia]

How can I remove blockers? This UI seems a little unintuitive to me.

 

[Blackadder23]

The old awful trade system is dead.

Long live a new, awful in a different way, trade system. (Seriously it makes no sense to be able to store it, what are you thinking?!)

I'm pretty sure it's not unusual to store trade goods...