Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary will be focusing on the road ahead after Cherryh and Apocalypse, and our long-term priorities going forward.

Cherryh Post-Release Support
As mention in last week's dev diary, the immediate priority for the team is post-release support for Cherryh and Apocalypse, fixing bugs, addressing balance/feature feedback, and working on quality of life and performance improvements. We are maintaining a running 2.0.2 beta patch which we will continue to update every few days or so until we are happy with the state of the game.

The Post-Apocalypse
Apocalypse and Cherryh were an expansion/patch focused almost exclusively on war, and with it out, we are now going to be moving on to other, non-war related priorities for future updates, expansions and story packs. To give you an idea of what's coming, we're going to revisit the list of long-term goals for Stellaris I made and updated for Dev Diary #50 and Dev Diary #69. This time, we're going to organize the goals into the ones we feel have been delivered on, old goals that were added to the list before 2.0, and new goals that we have set for ourselves after 2.0 (there is no prioritization difference between goals based on when they were added or whether they are considered old or new for this particular list).

As before, the list is NOT in order of priority, and something being considered completed NOT mean we aren't going to continue to improve on it in future updates, just that we consider it to be at a satisfactory level.

As before, THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE OR FINAL LIST, NOTHING NOT ALREADY COMPLETED IS CERTAIN TO HAPPEN AND THERE ARE NO ETAS

Completed Goals

• Ship appearance that differs for each empire, so no two empires' ships look exactly the same.
• More potential for empire customization, ability to build competitive 'tall' empires.
• Global food that can be shared between planets.
• Ability to construct space habitats and ringworlds.
• Factions that are proper interest groups with specific likes and dislikes and the potential to be a benefit to an empire instead of just being rebels.
• Ability to set rights and obligations for particular species in your empire.
• Buildable Dreadnoughts and Titans.
• Deeper mechanics and unique portraits for synthetics.
• Reworking the endgame crises to be more balanced against each other and the size/state of the galaxy.
• Reworks to war to address the 'doomstacks' issue and make the strategic and tactical layers of warfare more interesting and less micro-intensive.
• Superweapons and planet killers.

Old Goals

• A 'galactic community' with interstellar politics and a 'space UN'.
• Deeper Federations that start out as loose alliances and can eventually be turned into single states through diplomatic manuevering.
• More story events and reactive narratives that give a sense of an unfolding story as you play.
• More interesting mechanics for pre-FTL civilizations.
• 'Living systems', making empire systems feel more alive and lived in

New Goals

• Less micromanagement and more focus on interesting choices in regards to planets, the ability to grow planets beyond current fixed size.
• Empire trade mechanics and trade agreements.
• A galactic market where resources and strategic resources can be imported and exported.
• Espionage and sabotage mechanics.
• Improved galaxy/hyperlane generation with better placed systems and dangers.
• More anomalies and unique systems to explore.

That's all for today! Over the next few weeks, dev diaries will continue to focus on post-release support. Feature dev diaries will resume when we have new features to talk about. Finishing off this dev diary is a screenshot of how we're reworking difficulty modes in the next update to the rolling 2.0.2 beta:

 

[Strigoi Tyrannus]

Omg, all of these goals are so spot on that I can't wait for them to be eventually fulfilled. I would say the priorities (for me) are: less planet micro and more meaningful choices > anomalies, sense of a story and living systems > trade, markets and diplomacy > espionage. Though, trade and diplomacy might have to be implemented before those more important ones can be achieved.

 

[Hype]

If the AI doesn't get bonuses, there will be no 'see what happens'. The same thing will happen: the player will just destroy everything they come into contact with.

For you and me sure, but some people are really bad at the game and may want an easier setting. Why would anyone care if there are easier settings anyway? It's not like it takes away the other more difficult settings. Let people play the game how they like.

 

[TheRealNiall]

They did just change the tradition to give assist research instead, it may be necessary to start a new game, the new patch might not be compatible...

Actually, no turns out starting a new save does not help. Still do not have the tradition as an option

 

[Hype]

It's interesting that if Captain is the equivalent of Normal that the AI is still going to get some bonuses. Many competing Space 4X games do NOT give the AI buffs on Normal. It's traditionally the level known for the AI and player to be playing the same game. Specific recent examples are Gal Civ III, Endless Space 2 and Distant Worlds. None of them have the equivalent of half maintenance bonuses for the AI on Normal. The Distant Worlds AI even simulates vision and has to explore as does Gal Civ III these days (wasn't always the case).

Being previously unaware of those hidden bonuses, I had thought the AI was in relatively good shape compared to other games. Particularly when it comes to planet management it's highly likely the AI is actually not strong as compared to it's competition in the market, although of course that is hard to evaluate objectively. Either way, I would propose the buffs are removed from Normal entirely, and there is also consideration of improving AI planet management in particular.

They're including that mode now with ensign, it's just semantics which one is considered "normal" as the tooltip describes the level of bonuses each difficulty will have.

 

[pizzapicante27]

For a war-focused update the war mechanics are kind of garbage, everything else was excellent (map generation, ftl systems) to meh (raiders, pirates) but the war systems are utter manure, Federation wars are this annoying endless affair because the AI sets unrealistic goals and is then apparently unable to perform basic actions like invade planets or move fleets, and of course you cant end them because only the main actors can do so, and empire invasions are slow as hell because everything now has FTL inhibitors so you have to either bomb the planets to the stone age, or spent a lot of time moving massive armies to them so you can invade.

 

[Butterwings]

Completed Goals

• Ship appearance that differs for each empire, so no two empires' ships look exactly the same.

Really? Is that why a fourth of the galaxy uses the mammalian ships too which are identical to mine? I mean, I get you can't actually make unique ships for each empire, but that statement is beyond misleading.

 

[James Fire]

The maximum is somewhere around Admiral level (it's not the exact same bonuses).

So can we get a slider for how high it goes?

Is it possible to increase galaxy to 2000 stars? 2.0 made galaxy feel a lot bigger and see empty regions of galaxy in 2300. But it still feels to small. If say ‘yea we have trial version of game not released to public going as high as 10000 stars but it cause to much lag so choose not to release’ i am cool with that.

Epic Galxies in the workshop can do that until vanilla has support.

What about victory conditions? I'm pretty sure they've not changed since launch and I think for players who are more interested in internal development than war they could use some love.

How about your founding species be more than 20% of the pops in the galaxy?

I'm gonna be honest the main thing that makes me not want to play a new stellaris game is the insane amount of tedious clicking that has to happen to upgrade a planet to full. Please give us an upgrade all to max level button or something for late game at least!

Shift click the upgrade button to queue up to max level.

 

[James Fire]

Completed Goals

• Ship appearance that differs for each empire, so no two empires' ships look exactly the same.

Really? Is that why a fourth of the galaxy uses the mammalian ships too which are identical to mine? I mean, I get you can't actually make unique ships for each empire, but that statement is beyond misleading.

No need for that attitude here.

And every ship has lights, which do technically make them different.

 

[Elfwind]

Shift click the upgrade button to queue up to max level.

!!!! Thank you!

 

[Ghellis]

Would really love the idea of having federation worlds where you get a federation capitol and the federation leader gets to control the system during their rule. It wouldn't have to give anything major just for more RP value. Maybe providing tier 6 buildings or changing it so that with out a federation capitol, a meeting place for empire leaders if you will it would stop players from voting on things like wars ideologies etc. Just an idea!

 

[Ole122]

Any chance on making starbase management more user-friedly? The current system using the outliner is - quite honestly - way too tedious. And having to engage with every single starbase to upgrade defense platforms (just as an example) gets very annoying.

 

[Emraldis]

Actually, no turns out starting a new save does not help. Still do not have the tradition as an option

Apparently it might have something to do with the 1080p UI mod not being up-to-date yet or something.

 

[NixPanicus]

Organic empires currently have access to 35% more research speed than gestalt empires can achieve - 10% Fanatic Materialist, 10% Scientific Leap agenda, 10% Research Grants, 5% Synth trait. That's a substantial difference. Any plans on allowing gestalt specific edicts, civics or techs that focus on gestalt research speed? There's no real reason to not have a gestalt specific Research Grant edict for instance.

I know Devouring Swarm and Introspective exist, but both are narrow in focus and Devouring Swarm is a completely different playstyle from a research focused empire.

 

[nyirog]

Still missing a revamped planetary invasion warfare mechnaics and some things that make systems look living. Maybe a year before civilian ships, stations (corporations?) was mentioned.

 

[terrycloth]

Warp could only be a late-game tech or defensive starbases in border systems would become irrelevant (again) and we have the reworked Jump Drive in that area. Punching holes in space-time to create your own wormholes would be pretty sweet though.

Edit: Also, mods.

Starbases in border systems are not very relevant right now. I haven't been able to make them matter against anything but randomly spawning pirates -- they don't even last long enough for a fleet to come support them from one system away. Even the FE's massive death-citadel that's twice as strong as a player can make was down before their fleet could show up from the next system over.

 

[pieman]

What about victory conditions? I'm pretty sure they've not changed since launch and I think for players who are more interested in internal development than war they could use some love.

They could use some removal.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

• A 'galactic community' with interstellar politics and a 'space UN'.

• Deeper Federations that start out as loose alliances and can eventually be turned into single states through diplomatic manuevering.

I would love to see a space UN. Civilization 5 felt so much more alive because of the constant politicking within the UN and my biggest disappointment with Civ 6 is that it doesn't have a UN.

I'm going to add a couple society techs that give Hive Minds and Machine Empires substantial resource production boosts in the mid-game.

Glad to see Gestalts are getting some love. Hopefuly these coming changes will bring them up to the level of non-gestalt empires.

They need to make gates build more like habitats, where you can build them while building other megastructures. I guess they want them to be rare, but late game I think you should be able to have an extensive network in your territory.

While I find it incredibly annoying that you can only build/upgrade one megastructure at a time, it at least has a plausible explanation as to why it is this way. Even if an empire has the RESOURCES to build multiple megastructures that doesn't mean it has the MANPOWER to build them more than one at a time. Think about the astronomical size of a Dyson Sphere or Ringworld. It's no joke.

Would it be possible to turn Awakened Empires into the catalysts for something like that? Basically after a phase of intense warfare (be it alone, in a WiH or as GotG), they start to calm down a bit and turn their carved-out spheres into various types of "mega-federations".

This is the best idea that I read about space UN, make AEs the catalysts of a UN formation.

While I agree that AEs should affect a supposed space UN, I don't think they should be the trigger for its formation. That would mean that the space UN could not form before the the 2400 mark, which means it would not be present for most of the game. A space UN forming during the mid-game would make more sense.

Using the Jump Drive for some aaaaaha! style manoeuvres will likely never get old.

There are few things more satisfying to me in 2.0 than Jump Drive style ambushes. Wiped out about 7 fleets from a large federation all at once last night because of this. They were playing this annoying game of cat-and-mouse but then I was all like "Surprise!" Good times.

I have certain that the diplomacy update will be great, because Cherryh update was amazing.
My only concern is about integrating gestalts consciousness in federation single states, because currently, gestalt pops cant survive inside a empire with normal government.
Maybe add a special citizenship for hive minds and machine pops that empires in federation with gestalts can use.

I love the idea of scaling difficulty! Sometimes I wish I could start on normal but then raise it to hard once I'm in the midgame and this is exactly that, only automated! I love it <3

I would love to seem some more meaningful interaction between empires in this game and between gestalts and non-gestalts in particular. A real life hive-mind would be so alien and wholly "other" to us as humans that we wouldn't be able to fully understand each other. This has the potential for some great role play.

Nobody likes rubberbanding mechanics.

Yeah, I've seen scaling difficultly done really poorly before. Like in Oblivion where, once you reached a certain level, every ****ing bandit had full daedric armor and was an even match for even a dremora lord.

Shift click the upgrade button to queue up to max level.

I didn't know you could do that! You are my new favorite person!

 

[NixPanicus]

I would like to see some way to remove claims on your system from a vassal. Fallen Empires can declare a war to force claim removal, overlord empires need some kind of humiliation casus belli to force vassals to drop claims so they can flip loyal some day. Otherwise I have vassals with -300 from claims who will never go loyal.

 

[MacGillivray]

They could use some removal.

Honestly yeah. I think they either need to be fixed or binned. I don't like the approach that says "just ignore them" if they were meant to be ignored they shouldn't be in the game in the first place.

 

[ashbery76]

The Moo3 senate game situation was pretty cool in theory.A voting block with a fallen empire in charge for a time until the new races outvote them.Something similar with a lot more voting issues depth and would be great.Only a limited number started in the senate with the option to vote new faction into it.