Stellaris Dev Diary #128 - Decisions and Planetary Bombardment

[ClockBasher]

Yeah, the planetary rework mechanics have gone through some iterations since the dev diaries. I'm going to talk about it more on stream today.

Kind of a shame, imo. I liked the idea of infrastructure, it was different and a concept not used by many games. It would have also made the worlds seem huge and sprawling, like "Whoa, all this infrastructure can sustain 250k pops." Now it feels like, "Oh, I can support 25 pop count on this planet."

 

[Serenity84]

Could someone kindly post the highlights of what was talked about?

Just watch it later. Twitch archives streams. They may also upload it to their YouTube account later

 

[Tim_Ward]

Kind of a shame, imo. I liked the idea of infrastructure, it was different and a concept not used by many games. It would have also made the worlds seem huge and sprawling, like "Whoa, all this infrastructure can sustain 250k pops." Now it feels like, "Oh, I can support 25 pop count on this planet."

The reason they gave in the stream was that people were spamming empty cities on their planets even if there was no one to live in them so they could get all the buildings slots.

To me - and they may already have tried this out and found it didn't work - it would make more sense to cap cities to population size, then you can still have this idea of having really developed high-tech worlds with a lot of infrastructure to support science labs and whatnot, but low to medium population or heavily populated but impoverished resource extraction colonies - i.e. a going tall vs wide decision on a planetary level.

Part of the reason for the planetary rework (apart from tiles being terrible in every possible respect) was to have more differences between planets, and this flattens that slightly because now all high population worlds are also going to be highly developed worlds.

 

[Sigma 582]

Re: developed vs underdeveloped worlds. Look at this example:

Player A has 3 planets with just 3 city districts each and research facility built in the first building slot unlocked.
Player B has 1 planet with 9 city districts and research facility.
Let's assume they have the same population per district.

They both have the same tech costs 'cause it's affected by number of districts, but "wide" player A has 3 times more research jobs thus producing 3x research points every months.

In order to catch up in research on 9-district planet Player B would need to upgrade research facility spending lots of resources (including rare ones) for upgrade and upkeep. On the other hand, he has unused slots he can dedicate to other jobs and thus diversify his economy.

It appears that undeveloped planets are easier to specialize while highly developed ones will tend to diversity 'cause each building gives fixed number of jobs and can only be built once per planet.
Also it means that wide empires with lots of undeveloped planets can easily focus on research if they choose so.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Just watch it later. Twitch archives streams. They may also upload it to their YouTube account later

I know I could do that, but I wanted to know what else they could be saying there that would be relevant for the discussion here.
@Sigma 582 already sent the link and I was able to see the highlights.
On one hand, I understand, after play testing why they scraped, but on the other one, I was hoping we could actually have ecumenopoli.

 

[Thecooldude5579]

I've been interested in how the armed forces shall be changed with 2.2, so this is interesting. Speaking of the new alloy resource that is being added, I'm interested to see how such a resource shall impact the navy, as it would seem only natural to have it (along with maybe a few others for special ship designs or modules?). Speaking of decisions though, do you think it might be interesting to be able to "hurry" production of ships with a decision that would give the ship or fleet a negative modifier (maybe in hull or armor strength?) that would negatively impact the ships until they fixed the issue in a repair yard (the time would be based around the balance of the game), or something similar. I think that would be an interesting decision for empires that need to spam out a giant fleet; do they rush the ships and get a modifier, or simply wait it out in exchange for the enemy getting some territory? Otherwise a good update from the look of things. Looking forward towards more information on how this will change the technology tree, if at all. Looks good though.

 

[Dan_Daniel2000]

It appears that undeveloped planets are easier to specialize while highly developed ones will tend to diversity 'cause each building gives fixed number of jobs and can only be built once per planet

Thats just wrong, not all Buildings are planet unique, only some, just like in the current Version.

So the Player with one planet just builds 3 Research labs, and then 1 amenities Building and is done, while the Player with 3 planets Needs 1 amenity Building for each planet, as amenities are planet bound.

 

[Tilarium]

That last screen shot, the preview for next week. All I can think is the Brute Squad from Princess Bride. LOL

 

[Sinister2202]

Too punishing? It's okay. The game needs more challenge. War is too forgiving atm.

Also very nice to see that Judge Dredd will be joining the game!

 

[TheVoidDragon]

Will there not be some way to prevent the effects of planetary bombardment to some extent? There's ground armies to obviously defend against a planetary invasion as it occurs (with those buildings defending those armies from the orbital bombardment) but there isn't anything to defend against or counter orbiting enemy fleets or bombardment on the planet itself.

Obviously you use your own ships or have space defenses to counter enemy fleets directly, but the lack of buildable planet-based defenses to hold out with seems a bit strange, the ability to make a heavily fortified planet like Reach from the Halo series or Cadia from W40K is something that the game is sort of missing at the moment.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Will there not be some way to prevent the effects of planetary bombardment to some extent? There's ground armies to obviously defend against a planetary invasion as it occurs (with those buildings defending those armies from the orbital bombardment) but there isn't anything to defend against or counter orbiting enemy fleets or bombardment on the planet itself.

Obviously you use your own ships or have space defenses to counter enemy fleets directly, but the lack of buildable planet-based defenses to hold out with seems a bit strange, the ability to make a heavily fortified planet like Reach from the Halo series or Cadia from W40K is something that the game is sort of missing at the moment.

They're called Planetary Shields and they're a rare tech.

Fortresses protect armies directly, too.

 

[Kipsta]

Will there not be some way to prevent the effects of planetary bombardment to some extent? There's ground armies to obviously defend against a planetary invasion as it occurs (with those buildings defending those armies from the orbital bombardment) but there isn't anything to defend against or counter orbiting enemy fleets or bombardment on the planet itself.

Obviously you use your own ships or have space defenses to counter enemy fleets directly, but the lack of buildable planet-based defenses to hold out with seems a bit strange, the ability to make a heavily fortified planet like Reach from the Halo series or Cadia from W40K is something that the game is sort of missing at the moment.

There already is, you can build planetary shields.

 

[DeinonychusTaco]

For those concerned that Devastation is too punishing, rest assured that we will be looking into that. Recovering from Devastation should never feel like an impossible task.

I think I'd actually kind of push back on this. While "impossible" is probably not a good thing, Devastation seems like a great mechanic and I do think it makes sense for a totally conquered empire that has had all its planets bombarded to spend up to 10 years (or so) with a damaged economy. I wouldn't be too worried about the mechanic being too punishing given the situation in 2.1 feels a lot more like "Meh, rebuild some buildings, regrow a few pops, who cares?"

 

[hewhoispale]

I think I'd actually kind of push back on this. While "impossible" is probably not a good thing, Devastation seems like a great mechanic and I do think it makes sense for a totally conquered empire that has had all its planets bombarded to spend up to 10 years (or so) with a damaged economy. I wouldn't be too worried about the mechanic being too punishing given the situation in 2.1 feels a lot more like "Meh, rebuild some buildings, regrow a few pops, who cares?"

Devastation's impact and it's ease of application should be proportional. Easy to cause? Minimal impact. Requires dedication of resources and has a non-trivial cost to the bomber? Harsher impact.

Probably don't want to encourage gameplay style of bombarding enemy planets *that the bomber has no intention of taking after the war and has already won the conflict* just to twist the knife.

 

[Coyote027]

Another great Dev Diary! I wish our ships were able to move faster between systems, so a journey from one end of the largest Galaxy to another won't take years...

If gateway construction was obtainable earlier it'd be less of an issue.

 

[JulienJaden]

If gateway construction was obtainable earlier it'd be less of an issue.

Yeah, but having travel take a while makes managing warfare a much more strategic concern.
You wanna wage war with your neighbor? Better put your fleets in position first.
Concerned that your other neighbor might attack you once you declare war? Well, you should probably hold back a defensive fleet.
Building up defensive locations, fleet bases, defense fleets, and having several of them to guard your empire's most important strongholds actually becomes a concern when you can't just send them from one end of the galaxy to the other in a matter of minutes.

Maybe they should make it a little easier to obtain gateway construction earlier if you focus on it, BUT at the cost of being behind on several other key technologies - yeah, you'll be able to reposition your fleet a lot faster than your enemy, but he will probably have the better ships. Might make for a nice bit of asymmetric warfare.

I'm curious how bombardment will play out in practice. With a much more open-ended pop progression, it should be easier to reflect the devestations of orbital bombardment, but I'm not sure if it will make one of its weirdest aspects better.
Because, let's be honest, it was really weird that it would take a medium-sized fleet (armed with high-calibre kinetic weapons and a whole arsenal of nuclear missiles) weeks, if not months, to wipe out a small outpost on newly-colonized planet. Surely that could be handled in a way that makes this stand out less like a sore thumb.

 

[208]

Yeah, the planetary rework mechanics have gone through some iterations since the dev diaries. I'm going to talk about it more on stream today.

There's ongoing Stellaris developer streams? I thought those ended at launch. I don't see anything obvious in the forum stickies about it, where do I find out about these streams?

 

[Pointyearedgit]

There's ongoing Stellaris developer streams? I thought those ended at launch. I don't see anything obvious in the forum stickies about it, where do I find out about these streams?

Check out their twitch channel, I think Wiz may announce on twitter too (I saw the announcement posted in a thread here). IIRC the dev diaries occasionally announce them as well.

 

[Person012345]

The reason they gave in the stream was that people were spamming empty cities on their planets even if there was no one to live in them so they could get all the buildings slots.

To me - and they may already have tried this out and found it didn't work - it would make more sense to cap cities to population size, then you can still have this idea of having really developed high-tech worlds with a lot of infrastructure to support science labs and whatnot, but low to medium population or heavily populated but impoverished resource extraction colonies - i.e. a going tall vs wide decision on a planetary level.

Part of the reason for the planetary rework (apart from tiles being terrible in every possible respect) was to have more differences between planets, and this flattens that slightly because now all high population worlds are also going to be highly developed worlds.

Or how about just making a penalty for having too much infrastructure. Or a soft cap where if you have too much infrastructure there is a chance that it will ruin in some way,scaling with how much too much you have.

Removing infrastructure as a concept really dampens my hype about the update. I don't see how half of the mechanics are even going to work without it (city-planets, overcrowding etc.) and not just end up as sterile and impotent or just removed altogether.

 

[GoldenShotgun]

Could clearing devastation have unique events?

Say, if you play a Non-Purifier empire, you could get an event to have the conquered pops help in (flavor-wise) clearing the rubble, and restoring cultural landmarks, or just bulldoze everything.
The former slows construction but reduces unrest--since you're showing the conquered you're not evil.
The latter leads to quicker recovery but may increase unrest as the locals see your seemingly callous behavior.

(Alternatively to above, depending on Ethics the event could involve just using enslaved locals while your troops raid and pilfer the place--giving you a lump sum of goodies, but increasing unrest and slowing construction/recovery)