Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today, we're going to continue talking about the 2.1 'Niven' update accompanying the Distant Stars Story Pack. Everything mentioned in this dev diary is part of the free update, not the story pack.

Space Creature Research
In the Niven update, we've gone back to the space creatures (Amoebas, Crystals, etc) and improve on their special projects and rewards. Instead of the wildly inconsistent and unbalanced rewards we have now, we have changed the space creatures so that upon discovery and completion of the initial contact project, you will now generally get up to 3 options, depending on your ethics and the type of creature:
- Hunt: This will grant a permanent damage bonus towards this type of space creature, and rewards in the form of resources on killing them.
- Research: This is the most similar option to the old events, and unlocks a special project for detailed research of the space creature that will yield a reward in the form of technology and/or permanent empire buffs.
- Pacify: This will unlock a more expensive special project that allows you to turn the space creatures non-hostile, allowing you to co-exist with them and share their space, as well as potentially unlocking the ability to research special components or weapons that they use. It is not possible to pacify certain kinds of space creatures, such as mining drones.

Strategic Resource Discovery
Another thing we've tried to improve on in Niven is the discovery and exploitation of Strategic Resources. Previously, while exploring, you would not know if you had discovered any strategic resources unless you first had the related technology, which generally meant that you would explore, eventually research the tech, and suddenly discover a bunch of resources on places you had already built orbital stations on - not the most rewarding or strategic feeling. We've changed this so that strategic resources are now always visibile from the start, and you will get an event informing you when a science ship discovers a new strategic resource for the first time.

Some strategic resources will be able to be exploited immediately, while others will require a technology to be researched before you can build a mining station around that planet and gain access to the resource. Strategic Resources have generally been buffed and made more rare - we've removed their tendency to spawn in large clumps in certain areas of space, so if you find a particular resource and fail to claim that system before someone else does, you can no longer be assured that there will be another of its type nearby, and generally there won't be enough of any one strategic resource for every empire in the galaxy to have access to it.

Experimental Subspace Navigation
Lastly for today is a new order we've added for Science Ships called Experimental Subspace Navigation. This order is unlocked by a mid-game tech and allows the science ship to travel to any system which you have any level of intel on (that is, has been in sensor range at least once, or is part of another empire you have communications with) while ignoring the hyperlane network. The science ship will be considered MIA for the journey and simply arrive in the other system at the end of the order, bypassing any hostile creatures or closed borders along the way. This allows even empires that have been boxed in by hostile neighbors to continue exploring the galaxy and complete event chains that might otherwise require a war. Certain special systems (such as the L-Cluster) will not be possible to travel to using this method.

That's all for today! Next week is PDXcon, so there won't be a dev diary. There will, however, almost certainly be something related to Distant Stars talked about at the event itself, so stay tuned!

 

[SolSys]

Pardon if I did make mistake, even though I don't see any.

While I am not the one who made the post you replied to originally [quoted below] -- I do believe they were referring to all resource being seen from the beginning which makes them feel less special rather than talking about their icons being identifiable.

Good changes mostly, but I hope you can't see late-game strategic resources like Zro, Dark Matter and Living Metal from the start - it would make them feel less special and advanced. They could be made visible in separate, earlier techs from when they are made harvestable though.

 

[Roddo]

Why would you, as a player, hunt any of the space monsters?

IIRC the rewards they gave for each fleet destroyed seemed quite underwhelming. So much so I always tended to go for the research and fixed 5% increase till ETERNITY.

 

[samz812]

i assume that using Experimental Subspace Navigation will have a fairly sizeable chance your science ship may get "LOST IN SPAAAAAAACE!!!!"?

 

[Devanor]

Strategic Resource Discovery
Another thing we've tried to improve on in Niven is the discovery and exploitation of Strategic Resources. Previously, while exploring, you would not know if you had discovered any strategic resources unless you first had the related technology, which generally meant that you would explore, eventually research the tech, and suddenly discover a bunch of resources on places you had already built orbital stations on - not the most rewarding or strategic feeling. We've changed this so that strategic resources are now always visibile from the start, and you will get an event informing you when a science ship discovers a new strategic resource for the first time.

Some strategic resources will be able to be exploited immediately, while others will require a technology to be researched before you can build a mining station around that planet and gain access to the resource. Strategic Resources have generally been buffed and made more rare - we've removed their tendency to spawn in large clumps in certain areas of space, so if you find a particular resource and fail to claim that system before someone else does, you can no longer be assured that there will be another of its type nearby, and generally there won't be enough of any one strategic resource for every empire in the galaxy to have access to it.
View attachment 367941

My question is, will we have a list of sorts (like expansion planer) that can show us where we have discovered strategic resources?

 

[Ex Mudder]

I understand Experimental Subspace Navigation is for Science ships only. I do like this change because it solves problems with research ships. However it sounds a little bit unrealistic to me that no other space vessels can make use of that technology. I do understand that would kill game mechanics, but I am missing an explanation for it. This sounds to me like: "Hey our research ships magically can do this sensational kind of space travel, oh well but only the science ships, we're too dumb to implement this technology in other space vessels."

I am going to speculate that it needs an actual scientist leader to do this, just as surveying and anomalies do. I can see someone like Mr Spock and Scottie making this happen, but not just any random Constitution class starship.

 

[lilsaihah]

I think you should definitely be able to send Jeff Goldblum with his gameboy to hack into the remote mining drone stations to take control of them.

 

[Randomblaofdoom]

Given they block very valuable mineral deposits in their systems even if not hostile, we didn't really want to introduce an option that is obviously inferior to the others.

Wouldn't it make more sense to just take over their mining stations in systems you control if you've pacified them? Pacifying them could quite conceivably involve limited reprogramming to some extent anyway, right? Literal mining drones with mining stations seem high up on the list of things that could be turned into a useful thing for an empire. I don't know what kind of coding this would involve to implement, but in terms of immersion it seems very odd to exclude.

 

[klopkr]

I really like the experimental subspace navigation but I think it would be slightly better if instead of disappearing and reappearing like emergency FTL it used the old warp system so you could watch it move to another system by going outside the grid.

I don't think you should be afraid of using 'warp' (moving from one system to another without hyper lanes) for non combat ships and animals.

 

[PirateJack]

Wow. People here are really sick of the warp debate, aren't they? I mentioned it not because I want to bring warp back; I'm perfectly happy with hyperlanes and have argued in favour of it many times. I just know that there are plenty out there who would like it back, and I asked out of consideration for them.

The problem there is that it has unlimited range from what is suggested about it being able to go to any system that you have data on.

So you'd have warp that goes from one side of the galaxy to the other.

That's a fair point. I believe they've removed the calculations that allow the game to judge euclidean distance as well, so this likely wouldn't be a great idea. Could make for interesting gameplay, though, if every ship can reach every surveyed but uninhabited system.

The problem is they go MIA when travelling between systems, you don't see them moving across empty space like you did with warp drive. So, that would make fighting a war against/as a warp empire a bit of a pain in the ass.

It was back in 1.9 as well, to be fair. Still, another good point.

Jump drives already exist and are moddable. And their mechanics are much much closer to warp than how subspace navigation is described.

Kinda, but not quite. That's why I asked the question. I know we're all sick of it by this point, but if modders are given the ability to bring it back, that would bring more people back to Stellaris, which can only be considered a good thing in my book.

 

[DragonShadow]

I understand Experimental Subspace Navigation is for Science ships only. I do like this change because it solves problems with research ships. However it sounds a little bit unrealistic to me that no other space vessels can make use of that technology. I do understand that would kill game mechanics, but I am missing an explanation for it. This sounds to me like: "Hey our research ships magically can do this sensational kind of space travel, oh well but only the science ships, we're too dumb to implement this technology in other space vessels."

My headcanon would be that the technology requires too many specialists to operate/maintain it to be viable on lots of ships. Still wouldn't technically rule out putting it on a flagship or something in addition to science ships but at least it's a conceivable problem.

 

[goodusername]

Could be that Experimental Subspace Nav gets more and more dangerous as the size or numbers of nearby ships increases. So a single science ship slowly navigating "uncharted" terrain? Sure. But a load of combat ships would just slam into something and blow up.

 

[Aepdneds]

The most important question is:
Will my devouring swarm now be able to consume space monsters?
I want to experience the taste of space whale steak with crystalline spices roasted in the mouth of a dragon.

 

[Ezumiyr]

Yeah. That would be a feature -- allowing pacifists to peacefully expand instead of forcing them to fight. It would cost a ton of influence.

So you would only let pacifists doing it? And how do you justify it? Nothing in the pacifist ethics says that they want to expand in the whole galaxy. And nothing says that the pacifists should be the only ones to do it.
Even if everyone is allowed to do it, it would just enable anyone to build outposts anywhere. Welcome to bordergore simulator.

It doesn't make any sense imo.

If you play as a pacifist, you should accept that you're that kind of empire. If you want to be free to expand, play as any other kind of empire.

 

[Iguannabits]

i assume that using Experimental Subspace Navigation will have a fairly sizeable chance your science ship may get "LOST IN SPAAAAAAACE!!!!"?

I agree. If there was a risk which increased exponentially with distance this would explain why only ships designed specifically for exploration with a crew of scientists would dare to try and navigate subspace outside a hyperlane, and only as a last resort where further exploration would otherwise be impossible.

 

[terrycloth]

So you would only let pacifists doing it? And how do you justify it? Nothing in the pacifist ethics says that they want to expand in the whole galaxy. And nothing says that the pacifists should be the only ones to do it.
Even if everyone is allowed to do it, it would just enable anyone to build outposts anywhere. Welcome to bordergore simulator.

It doesn't make any sense imo.

If you play as a pacifist, you should accept that you're that kind of empire. If you want to be free to expand, play as any other kind of empire.

I didn't say anything about only pacifists. But they're the ones most easily blocked in with the least recourse for fixing that (since they can't do quick wars to take a few chokepoint systems like everyone else).

There's nothing about 'not wanting to fight people' that means they should be locked into a corner and prevented from expanding, but it's much easier for that to happen to them now. This would help fix that and bring back proper balance.

And really, people already can build outposts anywhere -- 'getting blocked in' with actual closed borders is pretty rare. This only lets you bypass closed borders, it's not making it any easier to gather 1000 influence to build a distant colony. The most common case where you'd need to use it is if you get a bad spawn with a hostile or fallen empire locking you into a few systems on the edge of the galaxy.

 

[laptor]

[...]
Strategic Resource Discovery
Another thing we've tried to improve on in Niven is the discovery and exploitation of Strategic Resources. Previously, while exploring, you would not know if you had discovered any strategic resources unless you first had the related technology, which generally meant that you would explore, eventually research the tech, and suddenly discover a bunch of resources on places you had already built orbital stations on - not the most rewarding or strategic feeling. We've changed this so that strategic resources are now always visibile from the start, and you will get an event informing you when a science ship discovers a new strategic resource for the first time.

Some strategic resources will be able to be exploited immediately, while others will require a technology to be researched before you can build a mining station around that planet and gain access to the resource. Strategic Resources have generally been buffed and made more rare - we've removed their tendency to spawn in large clumps in certain areas of space, so if you find a particular resource and fail to claim that system before someone else does, you can no longer be assured that there will be another of its type nearby, and generally there won't be enough of any one strategic resource for every empire in the galaxy to have access to it.
[...]

I am (more than a bit) disappointed about that. I hoped to get a system more like Civilization, where SR pop up as soon as you can have a use of them - without the technology, iron is just a useless weird-stone-thing and so not the speech worth.
Also the chance to tie weapon(-techs) to the availibility of certain SR seems to be passed by...

 

[Razzlie]

Why would you, as a player, hunt any of the space monsters?

IIRC the rewards they gave for each fleet destroyed seemed quite underwhelming. So much so I always tended to go for the research and fixed 5% increase till ETERNITY.

Not to mention that making them hostile means they inevitably cause issues with transport fleets, science ships and construction ships when doing things like exploring the galaxy, building mining stations or outposts, trying to complete special projects, trying to salvage debris, etc.

Of course, at some point they're all dead anyways, but that also means now you will never hunt them again.

I don't see myself taking the hunting perks over the research or befriendment option, unless I'm just roleplaying for fun.

 

[Rafss]

The most important question is:
Will my devouring swarm now be able to consume space monsters?
I want to experience the taste of space whale steak with crystalline spices roasted in the mouth of a dragon.

So many nice ideas of things to do with space creatures, yet all they did was organizing in a pretty way the different outcomes we had before, and added the neutral behavior option. Will they revisit space creature mechanics someday after this update? Oh well, I hope so

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

So many nice ideas of things to do with space creatures, yet all they did was organizing in a pretty way the different outcomes we had before, and added the neutral behavior option. Will they revisit space creature mechanics someday after this update? Oh well, I hope so

I suspect they've done more than "reorganize" it; I'd bet that the rewards themselves have been rebalanced or redistributed.

 

[Archael90]

I would like to see MORE strategic resources rather than less. Both more variations of resoures and more spawns.
But SR shoud have effects increasing with number of pools (with cap, and perhaps special bonus when getting 50% resources of that kind). This should increase importance of exchanging respurces with another epires - I need bonus from having 50% of all teldar crystals, and my ally needs bonus of having 50% of all zros, so we exchange. This could create new way of winning the game - having this 50% cap of all SR.