Stellaris Dev Diary #128 - Decisions and Planetary Bombardment

[Pointyearedgit]

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.

Infrastructure was proportional to housing, now you need the old infrastructure (now represented by the housing) *and* pops so developing them simultaneously will be necessary. You can’t build Chinese ghost cities, you need actual people.

 

[CommanderHolt]

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.

On the other hand, it might give the losing side more of an incentive to accept surrender terms rather then pointlessly resist longer until inevitable defeat and take even longer to rebuild after the devastation.

 

[Person012345]

Infrastructure was proportional to housing, now you need the old infrastructure (now represented by the housing) *and* pops so developing them simultaneously will be necessary. You can’t build Chinese ghost cities, you need actual people.

Yeah, am watching the stream now, we'll haveto see how it turns out.

 

[Sopbucket]

I assume collateral damage from armies will increase devastation as well?

You say that the higher the devastation is, the greater chance a pop will be killed in the bombardment? Does this mean prolonged bombardments will be killing off pops at an accelerated rate, the longer they go on? That just seems a little weird to me, I don't know. I'm curious what the justification for this is, if I'm being accurate.

 

[lordvagrant]

Can Devastation be a modifier to Bombardment? Once you have blasted most of a planet, it gets harder to find survivors hiding underground to bombard.

Can decision costs be variable on planet population/size, and have ongoing costs?

 

[JosunUrashima]

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.

This definitively suggests to me it could be a fair while before it comes out. Would it be too much to estimate a possible release date sometime in 2019?

 

[SaladinTheWise]

If there's nobody to live in it, nobody is maintaining it.

Sorry, but I simply cannot imagine people rebuilding houses/infrastructure at the same rate planetary bombardment destroys them. In fact, repairs are always so slow and difficult, they shall not delay the destruction of a bombarded building in any way whatsoever. I think my point remains valid.

 

[Dr_Harnsaft]

Sorry, but I simply cannot imagine people rebuilding houses/infrastructure at the same rate planetary bombardment destroys them. In fact, repairs are always so slow and difficult, they shall not delay the destruction of a bombarded building in any way whatsoever. I think my point remains valid.

Maybe some late tech could do that. Nanomachines or something.

 

[tiomor]

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.

Please no! Make this game a bit more hardcore. War should cost, and a planet razed to the ground should be rebuilt for many years, and not within a year or a month if you pay the XXX minerals ...; d
The game is easy and forgives mistakes, so this small change will not affect the "carebear game" level

 

[Make Victoria 3]

Depending on the rate influence is going to be gained in 2.2 and the final cost of decisions like land clearance those decisions might (again) be completly useless for large empires. Once you have like 100 planets good luck trying to only give half of them the land clearance decision with that influence cost. Its way more efficent to just spend it on an empire wide edict for +??% energy/minerals/whatever. So please consider lowering the influence cost of planetary decisions depending on empire size (maybe even removing it entirely for very large ones) and in case of martial law depending on ethics (xenophobic/genocidals should not pay any influence to enact martial law on a planet full of xenos that are "a bit rebellious" about their fate instead they should pay energy/money).

 

[Make Victoria 3]

And will bombardments have a higher chance to kill a pop if there are more pops on the planet as bombarding the major cities of a planet would probably kill a enormous percentage of the planets pops within a week depending on urbanization and fortification. Will you also allow underground bunkers where pops can hide and food (or resources in general) can be stored to prevent starvation?

 

[Person012345]

This definitively suggests to me it could be a fair while before it comes out. Would it be too much to estimate a possible release date sometime in 2019?

It's unlikely that it won't come out in 2019 I think. Probably towards the beginning to mid if I had to guess.

 

[sbytheway]

So infrastructure is gone and replaced by popcount?

Not to be salty but I don't know why people keep disagreeing with this when it says in the diary "When a building slot becomes invalid due to no longer having the amount of Pops required for it to operate"

 

[Serenity84]

Depending on the rate influence is going to be gained in 2.2 and the final cost of decisions like land clearance those decisions might (again) be completly useless for large empires

Large empires don't really need it. I've always seen it as a way to squeeze more out of small realms

 

[SaladinTheWise]

Maybe some late tech could do that. Nanomachines or something.

A true visionary, huh? You could be right, of course, but we need to stick to the game the way we understand realism in ourdays. Because if it is possible to build building approximately in the same time that it takes to destroy it, there is no sense to make destroyers in the first place

 

[Orphalesion]

Please no! Make this game a bit more hardcore. War should cost, and a planet razed to the ground should be rebuilt for many years, and not within a year or a month if you pay the XXX minerals ...; d
The game is easy and forgives mistakes, so this small change will not affect the "carebear game" level

^ This. Recovering from severe devastation on a planet-wide scale should be a huge undertaking that takes many years.

 

[Dr_Harnsaft]

^ This. Recovering from severe devastation on a planet-wide scale should be a huge undertaking that takes many years.

With possible corruption events that make it take even longer if crime is high.

Edit: And the corruption on devastated planets could lead to organized crime growing. Like the mafia did in southern Italy.

 

[Orphalesion]

With possible corruption events that make it take even longer if crime is high.

oooh and maybe a chance for the planet to become a haven for crime/anarchic if the process takes to long and crime/corruption gets to high, something like Kowloon the Walled City on a planetary scale with the player having to invest considerable resources to rehabilitate this Crime World.

 

[Richard Dolder]

Please no! Make this game a bit more hardcore. War should cost, and a planet razed to the ground should be rebuilt for many years, and not within a year or a month if you pay the XXX minerals ...; d
The game is easy and forgives mistakes, so this small change will not affect the "carebear game" level

So given the default assumption that I will win every war and it's only the computer dealing with these problems....
You want the game to be easier?

 

[Calvax]

So given the default assumption that I will win every war and it's only the computer dealing with these problems....
You want the game to be easier?

If you assume you’re going to win then yes. If you are finding the game currently too easy then increase the difficulty.

Having bombarded planets take time and effort to recover (not years and years but more than just a couple of clicks) with consequences for that planet in terms of stability, crime, decisions would be a richer experience overall.