[Dev Team] 4.0.14 Patch Released (checksum 1056)

[elriese]

Heya,
found another potential source for a RANDOM_COUNT desync in MP when i tried to downgrade the space station megastructure which i got after claiming one of the fallen empire's systems.

 

[snowy801]

At normal galgen settings, I would very much hesitate to describe an empire containing 20-30 habitable planets as "tall".

If I can be under 100 empire size I consider myself tall. Galgen doesn't really matter as if there aren't enough planets granted to me I can just choose to conquer my neighbor or build artificial planets. It's not a matter of how you get the planets, but of a soft cap to benefitting your empire.

Opinions may differ but I certainly will die on this hill. If you told anyone sub 100 empire size 10 patches ago was wide they'd laugh you out of the universe; it's just a lot easier now.

 

[grommile]

conquer my neighbor

That's an inherently wide behaviour.

 

[snowy801]

That's an inherently wide behaviour.

This is extreme pedantry and a completely meaningless comment.

If you have 10 systems and 3 planets, and you conquer your neighbor for 6 systems and 4 planets, you now sit on 16 systems and 7 planets.

That is not wide.

What argument are you even trying to make here? Mathematically wide has been made less and less viable due to empire sprawl changes (you know before, they used to stack empire size effect reductions - now we can just get rid of empire size altogether!). Cosmo was one of the few ways to make wide useful, and they took that away too.

For what? Who is this helping? What balance or game direction issue is this change resolving?

Initial cap to FE buildings were made strictly to resolve the pop assembly issue. None of the other FE buildings were an issue. Example solution: slap a planet limit for those building types only (or as Paradox did, for all FE buildings - weird but livable).

This change? Possibly the worst reaction that could possibly be made to the issue.

I do not want to waste 60% of my endgame research or micro through 15 tech options every month. That's my main gripe, though I am listing other negatives to this change just to get my point across.

 

[grommile]

Maybe the designers just, y'know, don't think FE buildings should be spammable?

(Or that if you get to the point where they can be, you should already have won the game, so the pace of your victory lap doesn't matter.)

 

[snowy801]

Maybe the designers just, y'know, don't think FE buildings should be spammable?

(Or that if you get to the point where they can be, you should already have won the game, so the pace of your victory lap doesn't matter.)

Then put a hard limit on them. Don't make it a repeatable tech.

Edit: here's a middle ground suggestion based on what appears to be prevailing sentiment - that we hate FE buildings and that it should die in a ditch; make it scale off of Advanced Logic instead, in such a hideously costly way you would have to burn the galaxy to achieve it, but still not destroy the current repeatables balance.

 

[Calvax]

Then put a hard limit on them. Don't make it a repeatable tech.

Edit: here's a middle ground suggestion based on what appears to be prevailing sentiment - that we hate FE buildings and that it should die in a ditch; make it scale off of Advanced Logic instead, in such a hideously costly way you would have to burn the galaxy to achieve it, but still not destroy the current repeatables balance.

This is ridiculously hyperbolic and completely disingenuous. No one has said FE buildings should die and putting a hard cap on them would be worse for players like you who want to build arbitrary numbers of them. “Repeatable balance” is completely meaningless because if you don’t want to research them then don’t. Having more choices makes the game more strategically interesting than just spamming everything.

I like FE buildings being kept different, rare, and special and if anything I think they should also get a buff with this change. Have them give a % automation or a % boost to efficiency for relevant jobs so that they remain good even at scale compared to modifier buildings.

 

[snowy801]

This is ridiculously hyperbolic and completely disingenuous. No one has said FE buildings would die and putting a hard cap on them would be worse for players like you who want to build arbitrary numbers of them. “Repeatable balance” is completely meaningless because if you don’t want to research them then don’t. Having more choices makes the game more strategically interesting than just spamming everything.

I like FE buildings being kept different, rare, and special and if anything I think they should also get a buff with this change. Have them give a % automation or a % boost to efficiency for relevant jobs so that they remain good even at scale compared to modifier buildings.

It is not disingenous. This is both a quality of life and balance issue.

Micro will kill you. It may not matter to people who can't produce that much research in game, but it does for those who do.

My position has been clear on this from the start:

First announcement to the patch preview:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1kwo8ii/comment/muiwqmp

The suggestion was so absurd that I honestly gave it no thought past that comment, because of course it would be reworked. To my surprise when I visit here on a whim and it still seems to be on the table.

Every FE building taken is a endgame tech not researched. Given the absurd state of the economy right now, the only time to take fallen empire buildings is for a few molecular revitalization as biogenesis for the job efficiency on a few key planets, one dimensional replicator to be able to buy from market, and a handful of storage units for QoL then stop FE research. Nothing else would even be worth it.

Best part? You don't even get that option. Either you have to micro all that down or live with the fact that you have 15 more options in your repeatables now.

"If you don't want to research them don't". Yes, please, I would love to live in a world where this is possible.

One single change will make FE buildings actively hurt your endgame and cause you incredible amounts of grief. And you guys support this change... why?

 

[TSBasilisk]

It gives you an alternative research route for the end game. If you're wide, it's more meaningful to stick with the +5% repeatables; if you're tall, the FE buildings become more appealing. More choices sounds like better than choosing only which +5% you want.

 

[Calvax]

It is not disingenous. This is both a quality of life and balance issue.

It’s absolutely disingenuous to frame the intention of the devs, or any one else here, to want to murder FE buildings and throw them in a ditch.

Micro will kill you. It may not matter to people who can't produce that much research in game, but it does for those who do.

Clicking to research is hardly micro. If it bothers you turn on the auto research.

The suggestion was so absurd that I honestly gave it no thought past that comment, because of course it would be reworked. To my surprise when I visit here on a whim and it still seems to be on the table.

Not sure why you’d upvote a clear comment from the devs and think they weren’t telling the truth.

Every FE building taken is an endgame tech not researched.

Then don’t pick it. I’m not sure what world you’re living in where picking technologies is some extreme act of micromanagement.

Given the absurd state of the economy right now, the only time to take fallen empire buildings is for a few molecular revitalization as biogenesis for the job efficiency on a few key planets, one dimensional replicator to be able to buy from market, and a handful of storage units for QoL then stop FE research. Nothing else would even be worth it.

Certainly were agreed the balance is off. As I’ve said a couple of times now the FE buildings are a bit lacklustre in the face of districts scaling jobs and modifier output buildings. Hence why I think it would be good if they also have an efficiency boost for appropriate jobs on the planet.

One single change will make FE buildings actively hurt your endgame and cause you incredible amounts of grief. And you guys support this change... why?

It’s less about supporting and position and more about not agreeing with you that this will actively hurt your end game and cause incredible amounts of grief. No idea what you mean with the former and picking technologies is far, far from what I would consider a micromanagement problem in stellaris.

 

[snowy801]

It’s absolutely disingenuous to frame the intention of the devs, or any one else here, to want to murder FE buildings and throw them in a ditch.



Clicking to research is hardly micro. If it bothers you turn on the auto research.



Not sure why you’d upvote a clear comment from the devs and think they weren’t telling the truth.



Then don’t pick it. I’m not sure what world you’re living in where picking technologies is some extreme act of micromanagement.



Certainly were agreed the balance is off. As I’ve said a couple of times now the FE buildings are a bit lacklustre in the face of districts scaling jobs and modifier output buildings. Hence why I think it would be good if they also have an efficiency boost for appropriate jobs on the planet.



It’s less about supporting and position and more about not agreeing with you that this will actively hurt your end game and cause incredible amounts of grief. No idea what you mean with the former and picking technologies is far, far from what I would consider a micromanagement problem in stellaris.

Don't know what to tell you then. I certainly have thoughts on why you don't think technology isn't a micromanagement issue but instead I will say this -

If we consider a month in 2300 to be the span of about 60 seconds (extremely generous timeframe imo, and accounting a lot for MP lag) then you have to every month click open physics, choose the tech you want (3 seconds), likewise society (5 seconds) and engineering (6 seconds) that is 14 seconds of a minute, or 23% of your game time choosing techs. This time will almost certainly increase with more research options. I want to spend 25% of my game time playing the game, not trying my best to avoid useless techs.

 

[Calvax]

Don't know what to tell you then. I certainly have thoughts on why you don't think technology isn't a micromanagement issue but instead I will say this -

If we consider a month in 2300 to be the span of about 60 seconds (extremely generous timeframe imo, and accounting a lot for MP lag) then you have to every month click open physics, choose the tech you want (3 seconds), likewise society (5 seconds) and engineering (6 seconds) that is 14 seconds of a minute, or 23% of your game time choosing techs. This time will almost certainly increase with more research options. I want to spend 25% of my game time playing the game, not trying my best to avoid useless techs.

If by halfway through the game you’re researching one repeatable in every science a month then congratulations, you’ve won. Everything after that is a victory lap.

If it’s a temporary thing due to a burst in the lathe then yeah it’s attention grabbing for a bit, but not hugely and not for long.

I wouldn’t mind a feature to right click a repeatable and have the auto research function keep repeating it. But I really don’t think the end game is ruined, fallen empires have been murdered in a ditch, and the end is nigh for lacking it.

 

[PhillipLynx]

I like the addition of FE building limits. I like that there is a way around those limits. I don't like that it sounds like it's going to be a repeatable for each individual FE building. That's what ... 19 new repeatable techs? Most of which I will want to avoid. There's got to be a less clunky way to limit them, but still allow people to build past or push the limit.

What about having them be uncapped but the cost increases for each FE building on the planet? say, +100% per building? Cosmo could add a repeatable tech with 5 levels that reduces that to +50% to differentiate it from EE.

Could also limit the total number of FE buildings to the ascension level of the planet.

 

[T5_k]

Machineworlds when? :3

 

[TeHb Z Shadow]

Technologies that grant Fallen Empire buildings now grant +1 to the empire limit of that building. In addition, these technologies are now repeatable.

Oh no, the only thing I ever wanted from EE is 100k Resource storages on my planets! I wish they let us have at least 1 planet limit as they mentioned a week before.
So now i need to be lucky to get Silos research 2 times just to get +40k/90k "upgrade" for single regular +10k silo to +100k?
And let me guess - each repeatable tech will decrease FE opinion on you?
Not worth anymore (for me) unless FE are dead or i can beat their awakening fleets combined (playing 2325 late game). But if i can beat them and i can make fast research - this means game is already over.

At least we don't lose buildings on FE Capital anymore.

 

[Adaman5280]

Because you can research no more than 1 tech a month, that "zoom through the tech" argument doesn't hold value.

There are at least 8 (molecular/robot, mining, generator, tech, alloy, cg, dimensional replicator, aspis) buildings which you want to maximize building. How long is that going to take? Assuming your argument isn't "just play KoTG" (side note: when is that getting nerfed?), there is no way to make these buildings viable going wide.

Further consider: each tech researched is another repeatable not researched. This setup (uncapped buildings) makes tech automation impossible in the late game. At least a planetary build cap would have a reasonable end, but this would just mean a Cosmo empire in endgame who didn't go through the tedium of clicking a tech every single time (and how many options will we have to browse through now?) will be considerably weaker than others.

I don't know, this just seems like the worst way to go about solving a problem which frankly doesn't even seem to exist. Like someone mentioned earlier, if they think it's too strong in MP have the players agree not to take it. I know a lot of people already consider it inferior to other crisis in MP because of how long it takes to come online, and the questionable relative value of riddle escorts.

I think before any of this debating goes on the question has to be answered: what problem is this change solving? Because it's certainly creating a lot.

Agreed, but i think someone already asked at their motivation to no avail.


I don't think these buildings should have been changed, should have just left cosmogenesis alone. Its pretty clear to me that everyone who's against that is only against it because they want the buildings without having to pick cosmogenesis, like what the... if you want the buildings take cosmogenesis? Its really that simple. Genuinely this is one of the most confusing and stupid arguments I've seen on here. People don't like picking cosmogenesis for the buildings but still want them, ok, weird. So now we introduce other methods of their acquisition, the most prominent of which is literally just another ascension perk... What is even the point of this? I mean can anyone just come in here and drop the ball for us?

 

[lth5287]

fallen building +1 research make upset fallen empire?

 

[Ketsueko]

So if i understood well, to have fallen empire building tech, you must either roll it with arcane deciphering or research it if you have enigmatic engineering? If you do not do those, you will never get them?

While i like the change they want to make on the roll from arcane deciphering, i'm worried that it will participate into the fallen empire not liking us. Arcane deciphering is good for boosting research but if you risk upsetting the fallen empire if you have the luck to roll fallen tech, it will be more difficult to use. Even more if you take the archeoengineer ascension perk. On that i think arcane deciphering shouldn't participate in fallen empire disliking you. However, researching later the upgrade of the fallen tech obtained should count.

On that note, i think it is not highly important to have an "auto minor artifact use" for those options. Arcane deciphering is available every 5 years and if you have enough minor artifact output (which is now quite easily achievable), you must keep watch of time every 5 years to use the arcane deciphering action, which i find tedious.
This action being now that important if you want super Fallen empire tech, an automatique action should let you automatiqually take the minor artifact option you want every time it become available. Like that you toggle it and forget it for the rest of the game, giving you some time some sweet tech.

 

[Dayknight]

Nerf cosmogenesis by making FE building follow empire limit is elegant solution I never expected. It make cosmogenesis no brainer perfect empire builder perk to optional science crisis perk, as things should be.

 

[Calvax]

Nerf cosmogenesis by making FE building follow empire limit is elegant solution I never expected. It make cosmogenesis no brainer perfect empire builder perk to optional science crisis perk, as things should be.

IMO Cosmo needs to feel more like a crisis. As it stands it's pure power fantasy since no one ever attacks you, and you can glide through without having to do more than one galaxy damaging experiment. I feel it would be a more fun challenge if you were required to do more applied infinity theses to progress and had to defend your needle against the entire galaxy. The fact the galaxy always sits back passively undercuts the feeling it's a crisis at all.