Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. As mentioned in last dev diary, we are still in full post-release support mode and until we are ready to get back to regular feature dev diaries, we're not going to have full-length dev diaries. Instead, we'll use the dev diaries to highlight certain fixes or tweaks coming in the rolling 2.0.2 beta update that we feel need highlighting. All the changes listed below will be coming in the next 2.0.2 update, which we expect to have with you soon.
Species Rights Changes
Both in order to fix some bugs caused by traits that alter species identity (such as Psionic ascension path traits), and to expand player freedom, we've made some changes to species rights. There are no longer any traits that cause a species to be considered entirely distinct from its parent species, so a Psionic or Hive-Minded Human pop is still considered to be a subspecies of Human. As it would then no longer make sense for all Human subspecies to share the same rights, we've added the ability to set rights for subspecies, so you can have, for example, different levels of military service and living standards for different subspecies of the same species living in your empire. However, there will still be certain restrictions for subspecies of your primary species, so if your empire is Human, you will not be able to purge a Human subspecies unless that subspecies has been majorly altered (such as being turned into Hive-Minded humans)
Food Trading & Negative Food Spirals
We've had a bunch of feedback on AI and player problems with ending up in negative food spirals where a lack of food would cause starvation, reducing happiness and causing unrest, which would reduce food production, making starvation worse and creating a vicious cycle. To address this we've made a couple of changes. First of all, unrest and low happiness no longer reduce food production (they still reduce food from processing/livestock, as that represents the pops fighting back against being eaten). Secondly, we've improved the AI's understanding of food trading, so that it should heavily prioritize trading for food when in starvation. Finally, for those with Leviathans, we've added the ability to trade Minerals/Energy for Food and vice versa with the Trader Enclaves.
New Marauder Events
In order to make it less of a pure loss prospect to start near Marauders, we've added some positive events that can only fire if your empire is bordering Marauders. These benefits might include gaining resources, pops, free ships and leaders, or temporary buffs to the effectiveness of your fleets.
Occupation Armies
Since the army rework in 2.0, it's become significantly easier to snipe back planets that were recently taken by the enemy, as these planets lack a garrison to defend them. For this reason, we've implemented a new type of army type called Occupation Armies. When a planet is occupied, the occupier now spawns a garrison force of these Occupation Armies (the exact type varying depending on species just as with defense armies). Unless destroyed by battle or bombardment, the garrison force remains until the planet is either annexed or reverts to the owner's control.
Weapon Range Modifier
Since this is a topic that keeps coming up (because the way weapon range is implemented in the code is extremely complex and there is no one single weapon range modifier bug to fix, but a bunch of different places where it has to be hooked in correctly), I just wanted to mention that we've done some additional fixes, and believe that the modifier should now be fully functional. We've also implemented a separate ship_modifier entry for ship sizes that can be used to apply certain modifiers (such as firing rate and weapon range) that do not work in the regular ship_size modifier (as that modifier is applied to the ship design, and not the ship itself).
That's all for now! Remember that these are just a selection of tweaks/fixes, and there are many more that were not listed here but will be included in the patch notes when we next update 2.0.2. See you next week!
Species Rights Changes
Both in order to fix some bugs caused by traits that alter species identity (such as Psionic ascension path traits), and to expand player freedom, we've made some changes to species rights. There are no longer any traits that cause a species to be considered entirely distinct from its parent species, so a Psionic or Hive-Minded Human pop is still considered to be a subspecies of Human. As it would then no longer make sense for all Human subspecies to share the same rights, we've added the ability to set rights for subspecies, so you can have, for example, different levels of military service and living standards for different subspecies of the same species living in your empire. However, there will still be certain restrictions for subspecies of your primary species, so if your empire is Human, you will not be able to purge a Human subspecies unless that subspecies has been majorly altered (such as being turned into Hive-Minded humans)
Food Trading & Negative Food Spirals
We've had a bunch of feedback on AI and player problems with ending up in negative food spirals where a lack of food would cause starvation, reducing happiness and causing unrest, which would reduce food production, making starvation worse and creating a vicious cycle. To address this we've made a couple of changes. First of all, unrest and low happiness no longer reduce food production (they still reduce food from processing/livestock, as that represents the pops fighting back against being eaten). Secondly, we've improved the AI's understanding of food trading, so that it should heavily prioritize trading for food when in starvation. Finally, for those with Leviathans, we've added the ability to trade Minerals/Energy for Food and vice versa with the Trader Enclaves.
New Marauder Events
In order to make it less of a pure loss prospect to start near Marauders, we've added some positive events that can only fire if your empire is bordering Marauders. These benefits might include gaining resources, pops, free ships and leaders, or temporary buffs to the effectiveness of your fleets.
Occupation Armies
Since the army rework in 2.0, it's become significantly easier to snipe back planets that were recently taken by the enemy, as these planets lack a garrison to defend them. For this reason, we've implemented a new type of army type called Occupation Armies. When a planet is occupied, the occupier now spawns a garrison force of these Occupation Armies (the exact type varying depending on species just as with defense armies). Unless destroyed by battle or bombardment, the garrison force remains until the planet is either annexed or reverts to the owner's control.
Weapon Range Modifier
Since this is a topic that keeps coming up (because the way weapon range is implemented in the code is extremely complex and there is no one single weapon range modifier bug to fix, but a bunch of different places where it has to be hooked in correctly), I just wanted to mention that we've done some additional fixes, and believe that the modifier should now be fully functional. We've also implemented a separate ship_modifier entry for ship sizes that can be used to apply certain modifiers (such as firing rate and weapon range) that do not work in the regular ship_size modifier (as that modifier is applied to the ship design, and not the ship itself).
That's all for now! Remember that these are just a selection of tweaks/fixes, and there are many more that were not listed here but will be included in the patch notes when we next update 2.0.2. See you next week!
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