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Dev Diary #8 - The Situation Log and Special Projects

Fellow sentients!

Do not be alarmed. I have been summoned to your pitiful quaint planet to tell you a little bit about Special Projects and the Situation Log.

As you play the game and venture out into the galaxy, you will eventually come upon Special Projects. These projects are sometimes spawned by the Anomalies that were discussed in last week’s Dev Diary, but they can also be triggered by other events. They typically represent a specific action that can be performed by the player, and in that respect they function a bit like the decisions you might find in some of our other games.

Most projects are centered around a location (often a planet, but it could also be an object in space), and many require the presence of a Science Ship and a skilled Scientist before they can be started. Others may require the presence of a warship, or a troop transport, or something else entirely. It depends on the project.

stellaris_dev_diary_08_02_20151109_event.jpg


While the cost of some projects is only a time investment, others will require research efforts within a particular field, such as physics, to complete. Technology research progress is diverted to the project at the expense of your current technology research in that field, temporarily halting all progress. In other words, you may want to hold off on that physics project for a while if you are just about to finish researching a new shield system!

A few examples of Special Projects could be boarding and investigating a derelict space hulk, performing an archeological dig on the homeworld of a dead civilization… or perhaps fishing something out of the atmosphere of a gas giant. Projects can also appear on your colony worlds, and they may be time sensitive.

So what do you get for completing a Special Project? Well, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, that depends on the project. You might get an advanced alien warship, or a new technology, or any number of other bonuses and advantages. Sometimes the reward might simply be staving off an imminent disaster on one of your colonies.

To help players keep track these projects, we have added something called the Situation Log to the game. This screen works like a quest log in many ways, and you will find all currently available Special Projects here. You can also follow your progress in certain event chains, with various Points of Interest listed that can be visually tracked on the map. A Point of Interest could be a strange signal emanating from a distant star system, which will remain in your log until you send someone to investigate.

stellaris_dev_diary_08_01_20151109_situation_log.jpg


That’s it for now. Next week, renowned interstellar gangster Daniel “grekulf” Moregård will take time out of his busy schedule to tell you more about how planets work in Stellaris - including planet modifiers, surface tiles, buildings and resource collection!
 
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I want to play it so badly
 
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So...I'm usually against pre ordering and tend to see the concept of it as anti-consumerist but in this particular instance...

big_thumb_814a4bfd896e9238ff6a3f9555e7e55e.jpg
 
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View attachment 142340

So, right here, you see those yellow patches on the night side? That, my friends, is the light of settlements visible on the night side of a colonized world. It's right there on the game map people.

That is attention to detail.

That is paradox going that extra mile. That is paradox saying "no, it's not enough to just remake Moo2/Civ in space". That is paradox, fundamentally, giving a shit.

The amount of cities on the planet also scales with the development level. So on a colony there is just a little bit of light. When its fully populated, the entire surface glows.
 
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Please make this goddamn comet from eu4 one of the special research projects so we can finally know why is appears close to Earth so often (it's very mysterious) and why does it hate us.

Bonus points if at the ending of the project we'd be able to comment results with one of eu4 comet quotes.
 
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pds_giving_a_shit.jpg


So, right here, you see those yellow patches on the night side? That, my friends, is the light of settlements visible on the night side of a colonized world. It's right there on the game map people.

That is attention to detail.

That is paradox going that extra mile. That is paradox saying "no, it's not enough to just remake Moo2/Civ in space". That is paradox, fundamentally, giving a shit.

spaceships.jpg


The scale of ships compared to planet is much nicer in this one as well. I don't know if it's a different view mode, some trick of scale or if it's really just been changed in the latest builds but it looks much better now. I still think the space station there is a bit large but honestly I think there are probably usability issues with making it any smaller so I don't have a problem with it.

Also, Space Morlocks are a thing, apparently. So that's good too.
 
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So when you say "others will require research efforts within a particular field, such as physics, to complete. Technology research progress is diverted to the project at the expense of your current technology research in that field, temporarily halting all progress." Do you mean this is going to be another 4X Game where a Massive Interstellar Empire with Billions if not Trillions of citizens is completely incapable of performing even the slightest bit of multitasking? Will this stop progress across your Entire Empire or just for that single Ship?

Because if this is another game where researching even two things at the same time is physically impossible then I'm honestly kinda losing interest because that is a stupid game convention that really needs to die.
 
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King Ari said:
Someone mentioned the sliders in HOI3 which I quite liked the idea of/or something similar. But then you get the issue of bigger is always better which is no good
I assume you are referring to how it is always preferable to put all of your focus towards a single tech to unlock it as fast as possible and spreading your research out tends to reduce efficiency. It is true, this is a problem that pretty much every 4X Game with multiple research paths encounters.

Of course it is a 'problem' only because of these game's ridiculous insistence on abstracting the process and it would not apply at all if they instead made research more Realistic.

In Reality, Modern Research follows a very simple process; Background Study->Hypothesis->Experimentation->Review->Repeat. As Stellaris has named Scientist Characters incorporating a system that followed this would be very simple;

When you assign a Scientist to a tech, they start on Background Study. Each tick of time they study it they have a chance to come up with a Hypothesis, with the chance being dependent on how long they have been studying and their pre-existing skills. Once they have the Hypothesis, they begin Experimenting, which is where you may need to start shovelling Money into their Lab. Events can happen during this that wildly change the results. Once the experiment has concluded they Review it, and you gain, or possibly lose, progress towards the tech. Ideally 'techs' would be collections of independent Inventions, rather than a boring Progress Bar that eventually fills up and magically changes your military. Ideally Ideally there would also be a tech spread feature like in CK2.

The important thing is that the Hypothesis they test is decided when they get it, not once the experiment is done. This is not only more realistic but also gives the game a wonderful opportunity to toss in some ridiculous technobabble, something modern 4X Games seem to lack. More importantly, it automatically provides a way of balancing someone trying to 'Crash Research' a tech by pushing all their scientists onto it, because if you have two Scientists working on a Project, and they both get a Hypothesis at the same time, they might have both gotten The Same Hypothesis. Meaning at the end of the day, you get the tech of 1 Scientist for the Cost of 2.

On the other hand, it could be worthwhile on Multi-Disciplinary Projects, as Scientist 1 may get a Hypothesis related to Electrical Engineering while Scientist 2 got one related to Thrust Vectoring and thus together they both help design a new Engine. Especially if techs were composed of a set of independent inventions.

As always, the root of every problem in these types of games is a needless abstraction.
 
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Fellow sentients!

Do not be alarmed. I have been summoned to your pitiful quaint planet to tell you a little bit about Special Projects and the Situation Log.

As you play the game and venture out into the galaxy, you will eventually come upon Special Projects. These projects are sometimes spawned by the Anomalies that were discussed in last week’s Dev Diary, but they can also be triggered by other events. They typically represent a specific action that can be performed by the player, and in that respect they function a bit like the decisions you might find in some of our other games.

Most projects are centered around a location (often a planet, but it could also be an object in space), and many require the presence of a Science Ship and a skilled Scientist before they can be started. Others may require the presence of a warship, or a troop transport, or something else entirely. It depends on the project.

View attachment 142320

While the cost of some projects is only a time investment, others will require research efforts within a particular field, such as physics, to complete. Technology research progress is diverted to the project at the expense of your current technology research in that field, temporarily halting all progress. In other words, you may want to hold off on that physics project for a while if you are just about to finish researching a new shield system!

A few examples of Special Projects could be boarding and investigating a derelict space hulk, performing an archeological dig on the homeworld of a dead civilization… or perhaps fishing something out of the atmosphere of a gas giant. Projects can also appear on your colony worlds, and they may be time sensitive.

So what do you get for completing a Special Project? Well, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, that depends on the project. You might get an advanced alien warship, or a new technology, or any number of other bonuses and advantages. Sometimes the reward might simply be staving off an imminent disaster on one of your colonies.

To help players keep track these projects, we have added something called the Situation Log to the game. This screen works like a quest log in many ways, and you will find all currently available Special Projects here. You can also follow your progress in certain event chains, with various Points of Interest listed that can be visually tracked on the map. A Point of Interest could be a strange signal emanating from a distant star system, which will remain in your log until you send someone to investigate.

View attachment 142321

That’s it for now. Next week, renowned interstellar gangster Daniel “grekulf” Moregård will take time out of his busy schedule to tell you more about how planets work in Stellaris - including planet modifiers, surface tiles, buildings and resource collection!
I proposed quest system for CK2 this seems very similiar to what I proposed (though much better). It seems really awesome, I hope some of these ideas will trickle back to other future paradox titles and sequels. The anomalies, the technology system and this (as well as the focus trees from HoI) seems like great ideas that should definatly be used for inpsiration for how to handle things in other paradox games.
In these titles you're workign on you seem to take everythign you have ever done to the next level. Mainly by out of the box thinking (which is much better than just more of the same which many developers do).
 
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