Stellaris Dev Diary #106: 2.0.2 patch notes and the Road Ahead for Cherryh | Page 41

Butterwings · Mar 5, 2018

What if a fanatic militarist empire is in a federation with a militarist empire and another non-militarist one? How fast will war exhaustion tick up in a federation war?

Sapa Inca · Mar 5, 2018

Finished my first try with the new war system of 2.0.2 and here is my feedback:

1) WE gain scale much better, WE gain from attrition and space battles feel fine, my only problem here is that ground battles give too few WE, even when you lose 1-2 armies you gain 0 WE from ground combat.

2) The penaties from 100% WE are absolutely irrelevant and need be increased, 0 influence and unity gains are penalties that have 0 effects in your capacity of fight the same war.
The -20% happiness cause more problems in early game wars (mid and late game you will have acess to various ways of increase your happiness and tank totally the -20% penalty), but even early game the malus is absolutely irrelevant for any player.
My empire was completly unoptimized to gain happines, I had not acess to any strategical resource, tradition, tech or trait that increase happiness, the living standards of my citizens is normal and the malus remain irrelevant.

The WE penalties need be higher and need start only after the side with 100% WE refuse a status quo peace, otherwise this will be exploited vs the AI in SP and vs other players in MP, the winning side will lock the losing side in a eternal war, with eternal peanalties, a defender in MP can lock the attacker in a eternal penalty only for griefing.
I have a suggestion to fix this problem:

When one side reach 100% WE a new option appear in war screen for the other side: Start negotiations for peace.
This option replace the standard ask for status quo peace option.
This option is a tick box.
The tick box will appear for you only if the enemy have 100% WE, the enemy will gain this option only if you have 100% WE.
If both sides have 100% WE, each side will have their own tick box, if one side mark their tick box it cant be unmarked for the rest of war. This option represent the willingness of each side in make a status quo peace.
If both sides mark the tick box, in some moment, war will end in a status quo peace.
If one side mark the tick box but the other side no, the side that marked the box will send automatically each X years a status quo peace offer, the other side wll receive the peace offer and can refuse and take a malus, after X years a new peace offer will be send and if you refuse again, you will receive a new malus that stack with the old malus, after X years the same will happen again until you finish the war or accept the status quo peace.

This system is very good because this can not be used to exploit or griefings. If your enemy have 100% WE, you cant hold the enemy in a eternal war and in eternal penalties because the enemy will receive penalties only after you commit for peace efforts.
The malus stack overtime and cant be tanked indefinitely, the player will have the strategical decision of finish the war or take a progressive malus, there is real pressure to accept a status quo peace if you cant enforce your war objectives fast after reach 100%.
This cant be exploited because periodically you will receive a new status quo peace offer and the decision of accept or take the new increased malus is your, if the malus become huge, you known that after X years, a new offer will be made, so, other players in MP cant grief or ruin your game locking you in a huge penalty.

Admiral_Obvious · Mar 5, 2018

Butterwings said:
What if a fanatic militarist empire is in a federation with a militarist empire and another non-militarist one? How fast will war exhaustion tick up in a federation war?

I think the exhaustion ticks based on the war leaders WE metric. Though I'm not 100% positive.

sejemaset · Mar 5, 2018

Spartan322 said:
A better argument would've used players instead of AI but at that point its up to the player being stupid on their own still.

Except I don't give a flying leap what player's do, my concerns lie solely with the ai since other player's aren't playing in my games.

Spartan322 · Mar 5, 2018

sejemaset said:
Except I don't give a flying leap what player's do, my concerns lie solely with the ai since other player's aren't playing in my games.

Well your argument doesn't really work at all then because you don't make games around AIs, there are much better arguments you could make but the one based on the AI doing annoyingly stupid stuff simply because it could have the ability to even though it has no actual ability to do so (nor interest in doing so given current systems) lacking some type of cognition just doesn't work here, I mean the best you could argue is that it be difficult to develop an AI that can reasonably manage fighting a 100% WE+ war but that's still not a good argument against forcing SQ on 100% WE, at best that just means you'd be more effective scripting the AI to peace out at 100.

Jin_Cardassian · Mar 5, 2018

The WE penalties need be higher and need start only after the side with 100% WE refuse a status quo peace, otherwise this will be exploited vs the AI in SP and vs other players in MP, the winning side will lock the losing side in a eternal war, with eternal peanalties, a defender in MP can lock the attacker in a eternal penalty only for griefing.

Pros to this approach: Tying WE penalties to a refusal of Status Quo avoids the obvious issue of a forced surrender in a war against extinction vs purifiers, exterminators etc when your population has nowhere to run.

Cons: It strains credulity (and thus immersion) that your empire only just suddenly starts suffering an abstract composite of unrest/logistical breakdown/drone decoherence the day you get a surrender offer and not in response to, you know, losses from the war itself.

sejemaset · Mar 5, 2018

Spartan322 said:
Well your argument doesn't really work at all then because you don't make games around AIs, there are much better arguments you could make but the one based on the AI doing annoyingly stupid stuff simply because it could have the ability to even though it has no actual ability to do so (nor interest in doing so given current systems) lacking some type of cognition just doesn't work here, I mean the best you could argue is that it be difficult to develop an AI that can reasonably manage fighting a 100% WE+ war but that's still not a good argument against forcing SQ on 100% WE, at best that just means you'd be more effective scripting the AI to peace out at 100.

I'm not arguing for making the game around the AI, I'm arguing against making changes that the AI can't handle. Not that the distinction matters since my whole problem only apparently exists for me since you say the AI can't do what they do every game.

Also, scripting the ai to peace out at 100 WE is exactly the same thing as Forced Status Quo.

Takfloyd · Mar 5, 2018

Jin_Cardassian said:
Pros to this approach: Tying WE penalties to a refusal of Status Quo avoids the obvious issue of a forced surrender in a war against extinction vs purifiers, exterminators etc when your population has nowhere to run.

Cons: It strains credulity (and thus immersion) that your empire only just suddenly starts suffering an abstract composite of unrest/logistical breakdown/drone decoherence the day you get a surrender offer and not in response to, you know, losses from the war itself.

It's far less immersion-breaking than the current system, let alone the previous one with sudden peace decreed by an unseen incontestable force.

Jin_Cardassian · Mar 5, 2018

Takfloyd said:
It's far less immersion-breaking than the current system, let alone the previous one with sudden peace decreed by an unseen incontestable force.

Yeah, I agree it would be preferable and a much more intelligible system than either of those.

I don't see any reason you couldn't have both a scaling (or even just a meaningful static) penalty past 100%, plus extra for refusing Statis Quo offers. Yes, more variables makes it harder to balance but it's been done in other PDX games. And if the main concern is making it so wars aren't apocalyptically long, both kinds of penalties together would add up quickly.

EDIT: The current Unity/Influence penalties also do next to nothing for Gestalts, and there is no compounding malus for them. While the AI can be scripted to Status Quo arbitrarily, there is nothing that compels a player to do so, which is a further immersion break.

fanboy · Mar 5, 2018

I had a strange issue with my new game.

I went spiritualistic and when they got that trait, 75% of my species was considered a different species (I was also xenophobe), while only 25% was pure breed.

How can this happen? Must be a bug?

Zabik · Mar 5, 2018

vren55 said:
I hate this new patch to be honest. I liked the challenging, but gradual growth of the old stellaris pre Cherry Patch, but after 2.0... the challenge is... just way too hard.

Midgame is horrifyingly difficult with the Great Khans. I'm staring death in the face now with 35K fleets just destroying everybody beside me and probably going to wrekc my 12 k fleet. I could build up, but i did a Tall strategy with life-seeded and just don't have the requisite minerals.

And this is after I put the crisis difficulty down to 0.5. At this point, I'm so sick and tired of the frontier outpost and crisis system I probably am going to have to turn the crisis difficulty to 0.25 if I want to play an actual campaign.

Now though, literally the only reason I would conceivably play a long Stellaris campaign is for the mods. aka Star Trek New Horizons.

So basicly u complain that you cannot win on high level of difficulty and that means the game is shit?
For such players as you, they have implemented the difficulty and time settings for crisis. If you are not skilled enough to beat Khan on 0.5, than you put him on 0.25. If you still cannot beat him even in a federation than you put the starting date of midgame crisis to 2300, or even later.
Do not blame one of the best developers ever, just because you can not stand the difficulty level u set to high for yourself. Especially in a situation where you can literally make it as easy, as u need.
As for now it looks like you are to pride to play on easier difficulties and too weak to stand against what your pride is enforcing on you.

fanboy · Mar 5, 2018

Zabik said:
So basicly u complain that you cannot win on high level of difficulty and that means the game is shit?
For such players as you, they have implemented the difficulty and time settings for crisis. If you are not skilled enough to beat Khan on 0.5, than you put him on 0.25. If you still cannot beat him even in a federation than you put the starting date of midgame crisis to 2300, or even later.
Do not blame one of the best developers ever, just because you can not stand the difficulty level u set to high for yourself. Especially in a situation where you can literally make it as easy, as u need.
As for now it looks like you are to pride to play on easier difficulties and too weak to stand against what your pride is enforcing on you.

Another choice is to just surrender to them, which I did, while Khan wrecks all other, you can expand in peace, then when the Khan dies, you are free! And stronger then the others

Zabik · Mar 5, 2018

fanboy said:
Another choice is to just surrender to them, which I did, while Khan wrecks all other, you can expand in peace, then when the Khan dies, you are free! And stronger then the others

You nasty cheater

Zabik · Mar 5, 2018

djvandebrake said:
And in exchange for a net of 1 energy, you have slowed down research and unity. So the choice you are making is - no pirates and gain 1 energy, or keep ahead on tech and unity.

That is why you've got brains. So you wouldn't expand on a system with 2 energy, if the next system is again with 2 energy. You would do so for example if next system has 3 physics and 3 society. With such income 2 systems would overall get you a surplus in energy and science.

Zabik · Mar 5, 2018

Valentin Vattista said:
Problem being that there is no corresponding "rebellion" or "far more bigger losses" happening. You just end the war. And as 2.02 shows, this can be handled far better by giving negative modifiers if you reach 100 warscore.

The mechanics of enforced peace is aka rebellion. Look up history books for WW1, Germany. There was no rebellion, they just surrendered, because they feared the rebellion. And the negative modifiers in 2.0.2 are ridiciously weak.

Zabik · Mar 5, 2018

FailFailWin said:
Reducing claim cost as I mentioned wouldn't change that, it would still be more influence efficient to vassalise/make a tributary, but there should be a reason to conquer too. at the moment the first 100 years is mostly peaceful building even as a militarist, as claiming systems is just way too inefficient.

Not only that, it encourages cheesy gameplay, as I mentioned. I'm not going to pay for those naff systems with influence when I could wipe out his planets, and build outposts out to cover the space for a fraction of the influence cost.

Claims are broken, as it stands, they don't take in to account the fact that you make claims all at once, where you expand one at a time.

The "peace time" is determined only by how populated your galaxy is. I agree that if you have like 50+ stars per player, first wars might occur only after decades from the start of the game. But if you keep it at 40- stars per player, you will see first wars starting in 2220. Ofcourse it isn't the same corvette rush as it was in 1.9, but that was the point, wasn'T it?
Also if you want more aggresive games, come to multiplayer. There wars can occur 5 years into the game if it is 30 stars per player.

So the claim system is broken only if you wann play empty galaxies, in this case I would recommend playing extrem xenophobe for the reduction on influence.

Also I do not understand what do you mean by "claiming is all systems at once"? Like yes it is, but before you get those systems you need to win the war first and claiming systems which are not bordered to you is more expansive than putting an outpost. So I do not see a problem here. Or what do u mean?

FailFailWin · Mar 5, 2018

Zabik said:
The "peace time" is determined only by how populated your galaxy is. I agree that if you have like 50+ stars per player, first wars might occur only after decades from the start of the game. But if you keep it at 40- stars per player, you will see first wars starting in 2220. Ofcourse it isn't the same corvette rush as it was in 1.9, but that was the point, wasn'T it?
Also if you want more aggresive games, come to multiplayer. There wars can occur 5 years into the game if it is 30 stars per player.

So the claim system is broken only if you wann play empty galaxies, in this case I would recommend playing extrem xenophobe for the reduction on influence.

Also I do not understand what do you mean by "claiming is all systems at once"? Like yes it is, but before you get those systems you need to win the war first and claiming systems which are not bordered to you is more expansive than putting an outpost. So I do not see a problem here. Or what do u mean?

What I mean, is quite simple. When building outposts, you will never pay more than the bordering influence cost, as you build one, then the next one, then the next one, your border moving each time.

With claims, wars don't work like that. You need to take larger chunks to make the war worthwhile, and so you end up claiming systems multiple jumps away, by virtue of the fact you have already claimed everything on your border (which is a pretty thin strip of nothing to go through a whole war over).

With claim costs as they stand, it is near impossible to conquer even a small empire without CHEESING (just pointing out there is a way around this, and one I doubt the devs want to encourage) by claiming only planets, and then outposting everything else once the rest of the empire vanishes upon victory.

Blackclaws · Mar 5, 2018

I've been trying out 2.0 and started directly with the beta patch as it seems to get rid of a ton of problems that have been brought up. I must say I like it.

However I've noticed one thing in this game I'm currently in.

I started playing as a devouring swarm. Unlike what I thought would happen I directly took planets from my enemies and could immediately move pops from those planets without having even ended the war. I don't know whether this is intended or not, it is a nice mechanic if intended as it makes these sorts of enemies even more menacing. However there is a downside. This also works in the reverse direction with one key difference. The time it takes for alien pops on planets you take over to be exterminated is significantly higher than the time it takes them to exterminate yours.

Example:

- I take over an enemy planet, it now takes 10 years for me to purge all pops on that planet (which happens automatically)

- They take over my planets, it takes them only about 2-3 years to exterminate all my pops. (For one, I would have thought my pops would probably fight back a bit more, being a devouring swarm and all)

This has had the unfortunate effect, that after I was busy in one war and another empire declared war on the other side of my space and took over one of my planets in a Blitzkrieg like maneuver I was able to get it back, but minus 18 pops. And that after less time than it took my fleet to actually get to that planet.

This is definitely a bit gamebreaking as you might be winning a war easily but someone just comes in,kills about 30-40 pops of yours by simply steamrolling your planets. If the extermination duration were similar on both sides it might make more sense. As it stands right now they killed two of my most valuable planets this way (without me even knowing that this would happen!) and I'm not stuck at 0 power with -104 per turn and no way to move pops to these planets, as I don't have the energy to do so. So after the alien pops they moved to this planet are purged it will probably become an empty rock since I can't even put my own people on there anymore.

EDIT:

What I forgot to mention, this also destroyed a sector and all resources in it.

EDIT2:

Apparently sectors get destroyed by this change of ownership all the time, even though not all of the constituents are captured. Apparently capturing one system destroys the sector sometimes. This makes it absolutely unplayable though and sounds definitely like a bug.

mc40 · Mar 5, 2018

On the Mac I often hit the camera icon to see the system, after meeting an Alien for example, and the camera just pans to the dead space in the middle of the galaxy.

wolkenwand · Mar 5, 2018

mc40 said:
On the Mac I often hit the camera icon to see the system, after meeting an Alien for example, and the camera just pans to the dead space in the middle of the galaxy.

I have same issue, windows 10 here. last time it happen when i met trading enclave

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