Stellaris Dev Diary #141 - Exploring the Future

[Millbot]

Mid-game would probably work better if they did something that kept some sort of exploration going on during it. I get why they probably don't do dynamic anomalies because things would get out of hand if you got systems with 50 of every resource and one off rewards of resources could get old fast.

-Solo games have one really easy option; especially, if they consider having a setup where precursor systems didn't spawn in AI empires that did jack to find them. Pretty much the solo game could have a setup where the other precursor events fire off and the player gets events that let them find the location of the other 4 precursor systems, while also spawning in wormholes to access them. Can always have the option that lets player either turn that aspect off if they don't like it or turn off the wormholes, while letting the stuff spawn somewhere.

-As for the game as a whole, I feel like they should run with the mechanic that around the midgame year, a special project fires that let's the player (not the AI) gain a tech called hyperlane stabilization. This tech then let's player do projects to located and stabilize hyperlanes to new undiscovered systems. This opens up a chance to have a new roaming leviathans spawn in or even create a scenario that causes a small galactic empire to pop up out of the woodwork. Only the player that discovers the hyperlane would be able to open it, these lanes would be within player territory and opening them requires ownership of the system. Could even have a new policy setup that restricts how quickly other empires can access the system (side note, there really should be a system specific buff called spoils, that gives the empire that cleared the system or open the L-Gate a better shot out getting stuff out of the systems before the obnoxious omnipotent AI swarm the area almost instantaneously.

-The above mechanic could also be used to address some of the L-Gate issues. I've seen my share of games, where I spawn in one corner of the galaxy and no a single L-Gate spawns there. For solo games, there really should be a recourse, like finding a hidden system that I can claim with an L-Gate. L Cluster can't maintain a setup of being interesting if you get setups where it might as well not exist (pacifist and all L-gates spawned in a way you were never going to claim them being a good example).

-Gray Tempest and Khan probably need some tweaks. I've found if I get gray tempest and want to cause problems, I can just let them do as they please and clear things once the gray tempest fleets either start getting eaten by ai citadels or just get bored of watching the galaxy burn.

Moving off of midgame. Could something please be done about caravanners? They get stuck on all the space fluff. Will spam you with the same trade offer, when they do get stuck on something. I've also had some games, where it seems they just straight up stop doing anything. Probably a simple fix would be to give them crystalline & amoeboid pacification, so they can bypass a good chunk of the space fluff. Then give them something like jump drive and a code that makes them just jump to a clear system. Finally, give them a beefed up version of enigmatic engineering, which would give them enough hyperlane detection to safely jump to a clear system, while removing any perverse incentives for players to knock of the newly buffed caravanner fleets for jump drive tech.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

More or less, but with more of a focus on that there's a preexisting mechanic to be expanded on if we want First Contact with fuzzy borders and a lack of magical intel.

Then I do moast fullsomely apologise. Its been a rough day but no reason I should take that out on you.

 

[Rip Off Productions]

thoughts on factions and internal politics:

1) multiple possible factions for each Ethos(for example; a Militarist faction focused on defense, and another focused on offence), or factions that have a mixture of Ethos present in them(for example; Pacifistic factions with Authoritarian leanings, and another with Materialist leanings), and Xenophobic factions would segregate by species.

2) factions focused on a single issue should be able to form and disband once that issue is dealt with, such as a exploration and colonization focused one at the start of the game to help tutorialize the early game and give an extra boost to early colonization that pitters off once you've got a few colonies up to speed. Other such factions could pop up as part of event chains(say the residents of a planet with a euphoric atmosphere being moved into some sort of "stoner" faction that does nothing but take members away from your other factions), or in response to Crisis(to encourage co-operation with other empires, or at least making it so any factions that might be upset by your needed actions during a crisis are moved here so they don't get upset by you running a deficit, or opening your borders to other nations, or whatever).

3) the above mixed Ethos and Event based factions would tie in with the possibilities for "cults" among Spiritualist POPs.

4) Sector Factions: Sectors would have their borders predetermined at Galaxy formation, likely based on stuff like Hyperlane chokepoints and such(the galaxy generation system would likely need to be written around the needs of making reasonably identifiable Sector borders, which would likely only be an issue on the extreme ends of Hyperlane density slider).

From there, POPs living in a Sector would get distributed between normal Factions and their Sector's specific one, with members of the largest factions having highest priority for conversation to avoid minority factions being rendered completely powerless by this process(though maybe in the event that a Sector is home to a large minority its private faction might have demands that match or assist that faction's).

Sector Factions will usually(or maybe always?) be led by its governor, making governor traits important to how these factions will function(new "personality" focused traits? traits with both positive and negative effects?).

Sector Factions are the most likely to trigger civil wars.

 

[Rip Off Productions]

thoughts on factions and internal politics:

1) multiple possible factions for each Ethos(for example; a Militarist faction focused on defense, and another focused on offence), or factions that have a mixture of Ethos present in them(for example; Pacifistic factions with Authoritarian leanings, and another with Materialist leanings), and Xenophobic factions would segregate by species.

2) factions focused on a single issue should be able to form and disband once that issue is dealt with, such as a exploration and colonization focused one at the start of the game to help tutorialize the early game and give an extra boost to early colonization that pitters off once you've got a few colonies up to speed. Other such factions could pop up as part of event chains(say the residents of a planet with a euphoric atmosphere being moved into some sort of "stoner" faction that does nothing but take members away from your other factions), or in response to Crisis(to encourage co-operation with other empires, or at least making it so any factions that might be upset by your needed actions during a crisis are moved here so they don't get upset by you running a deficit, or opening your borders to other nations, or whatever).

3) the above mixed Ethos and Event based factions would tie in with the possibilities for "cults" among Spiritualist POPs.

4) Sector Factions: Sectors would have their borders predetermined at Galaxy formation, likely based on stuff like Hyperlane chokepoints and such(the galaxy generation system would likely need to be written around the needs of making reasonably identifiable Sector borders, which would likely only be an issue on the extreme ends of Hyperlane density slider).

From there, POPs living in a Sector would get distributed between normal Factions and their Sector's specific one, with members of the largest factions having highest priority for conversation to avoid minority factions being rendered completely powerless by this process(though maybe in the event that a Sector is home to a large minority its private faction might have demands that match or assist that faction's).

Sector Factions will usually(or maybe always?) be led by its governor, making governor traits important to how these factions will function(new "personality" focused traits? traits with both positive and negative effects?).

Sector Factions are the most likely to trigger civil wars.

some additional thoughts I've had:

an exception to Xenophobic Factions being segregated by Species would be one of those event based reactionary factions, in response to you picking that Inter-Species mating perk, this faction might even be one of those rare ones that will attract both sides of an Ethos axis; bringing in Xenophiles who see interspecies crossbreeding as a step to far, violating the unique diversity of the galaxy by enabling them to mix together into a homogenous soup of sameness, or whatever.

another event type of faction would be one of the Cults that could develop; on world with high unemployment/crime, a "church of charity" or something similar could spawn; they'd increase the planet's stability, and even make criminal POPs stop being criminals if given enough time, and maybe even generate a new job type for the unemployed, but at the cost of converting them all to Spiritualist(if they weren't already) and joining their faction; which would demand the institution of a higher end living standard for your empire.

also, sense there would be so many more factions under this system("pure" factions for each Ethos, the mixed Ethos factions, "Cults"[or would those just be the factions with spiritualist mixed in?], each Sector, and the temporary single issue event factions), I think reverting the Faction system to how it used to be, with unhappy factions generating negative Influence, would be a great idea: this makes building a large empire a double edged sword, more sectors means more sector factions to farm Influence from... but also more sector factions to placate or else risk seeding rebellion, more places for Ethos to drift and generate opposing factions that could drain your income, meanwhile a "tall empire" would be more homogenous and thus more likely to be getting positive Influence income from all their factions, even if they had fewer in total.

 

[Lharrs]

My Two Cents
Sector Management

For me the one aspect of the game at this point that really does need love (given its import to how a player will design and play an empire in the long run) would be Sector management.

Given what was stated in the OP, addition, removal, and transferring of planets/systems between sectors is already being looked, but how to address the actual management of a sector and its planets?

Well, the very basic least difficult way to address this if only temporarily would be to include a two tiered system in which each tier addresses both districts and buildings within each tier.
1st Tier - Sector Management

This tier would see the use of broad focuses for the planets in the sector in which the total number of used/available district slots are shown as well as constructed/available buildings. At a glance this will give the play knowledge as to the current status of the sector as a whole and its potential.

The Sector Foci would be broad ones such as:

1. Balanced Sector development
   • Focuses on making the planet self reliant in that the population on said planet is fully supported at all times which allows the player to direct the planet's specialization.
2. Basic/Raw Resource and infrastructure development
   • Focuses on districts and tier 1 buildings that only require basic resource costs for production and upkeep along with housing and amenities for the population.
3. Industrial/Manufacturing
   • Focuses on buildings that require basic resources to produce goods and the districts or buildings needed to maintain them including housing and amenities.
4. Research and/or Finished Goods
   • Focuses on buildings with multiple stages of resource production (minerals>consumer goods>Research) to reach the final produced good along with buildings that support the population along the chain.

• Each Focus would have tick boxes allowing for slightly more in-depth management of the focus.
  • Example: Using the Balanced Sector focus, tick boxes for the offered Districts currently available in the sector are shown allowing the player the opportunity to specify Sector wide which districts will or will not be offered.
    • A drop down menu could be added for buildings.

Not sure how to deal with system stations other than to perhaps allow some way for the play to indicate whether or not to allow the player to tick or un-tick an option to have the system stations show up in the outliner with their planets under the given sector they are in. This way, the player can work on all the major aspects of a given sector for the sector tabs.

​

2nd Tier - Planetary Management

Here, we would see the use of planet specific tick boxes which override the Sector Foci.

• The Sector is using the Balanced Sector focus with the farming district un-ticked (meaning all planets will not build farming districts) but one of the five planets/habits/ring worlds/etc. has 15 farm districts and a bonus to food output on this world. The player could now on the planetary level 'tick' the blank tick box over the Farming Districts to tell the sector manager to build Farming districts here. Additionally, the player could further un-tick the mineral and energy districts to make sure no other districts are made before the farming districts are built.

On the planetary level, all that would be needed (at least as an initial basic step forward) is a few tick boxes to basically verify and have the planets follow through with what the Sector manager has put forth or if changed by the player, to follow the player's direct adjustments as priority over the Sector Manager.

2.5 Tier - Tick Boxes in the building select dropdown

When a player goes to select a build to be built on a given planet, if the building is non-unique building such as an alloy factory, then a tick box could appear along side it in the dropdown menu allowing the player to tick/un-tick the building for use by the Sector/Planet Manager. These tick boxes could also be set to be just above the buildings panel in the planet manager with an indication of what the sector focus is and the primary focus buildings the sector will be making large numbers of, in this case, Consumer Goods Factories and Alloy Factories.

• Example: This Sector is an Industrial/Manufacturing Sector which means that Consumer Goods and Alloy factories will be the most produced buildings on this planet. The player wants this world to only build Alloy Factories so he/she un-ticks the Consumer Goods Factory which prevents it from being build on this planet by the Sector AI.

*** Sector/Planet Priorities and Infrastructure ***
Lastly, a couple of tick boxes that should be included are for the above mentioned directives.

• Infrastructure would indicate that as part of the development process the needed infrastructure must be built to support the Sector/Planet.
  • So, on the sector level given it sees the total output of the sector, if ticked, the infrastructure directive would force the sector to be as close as possible to self sufficiency which would prevent a drain on the rest of the empire. This means that if a given planet has been edited by the player to not build certain districts/buildings on it, the Sector AI will do its best to correct the short fall by developing the other resources on the planets accordingly.
  • On a planetary level, this would mean that a player will or will not want the required resources to be developed to support this forge would that is being created. Ticked on, developing a self sufficient planet which currently has 10 buildings slots filled (6 of which are Alloy planets and 4 are other basic buildings generally built on all worlds) might take a longer time to build up than by ignoring the basic infrastructure needed to support it.
• Sector/Planet Priorities would indicate what is focused on first.
  • All planet in the Sector Manager will start with equal priority and as such, funds will be distributed fairly equally ranging from current estimated funds already spent to being listed alphabetically, this part is whatever. However, depending on the default/player selected Capital and what player assigned priority level a planet has, the funds will be given to the highest priority planet first if there is queued work with now development currently going. In that way, if a sector has tons of resources, then it does not matter who has priority as everything just keeps getting done. If the sector has low funds, then highest priority gets the funds and if enough funds are secured for another project to start, then it will begin work as funds become available. However, if 4 of 7 planets are getting work done on them and funds become available just after a high priority planets completes work, then that planet will again receive the funds before the lower priority planet.
  • On a planet, priority can be given to infrastructure before focus, focus before infrastructure, or balanced meaning infrastructure will be built then focus buildings as the infrastructure become available.

There was more but I forgot the rest. This gives basic overview of a very simple implementation for a quick(ish) and easy addition to temporarily help some Sector Management Problems.

 

[Sum Ting Wong]

What I'd really like to see more than anything is a complete rework of the back end engine and systems for optimisation and efficiency. Once a game gets past the year 2400, the game begins to suffocate under it's own immense obesity and becomes almost unplayable after 2500+.

Adding new systems or content is just going to make that worse until the underling problem is fixed.

 

[methegrate]

What I'd really like to see more than anything is a complete rework of the back end engine and systems for optimisation and efficiency. Once a game gets past the year 2400, the game begins to suffocate under it's own immense obesity and becomes almost unplayable after 2500+.

Adding new systems or content is just going to make that worse until the underling problem is fixed.

I'm still actually kind of curious about that. I'm sure someone can explain, what makes performance such an issue as the game goes on? I mean, according to the Paradox Wiki there are over 800 individual countries in Europa Universalis, along with all of their units, cities, and AI decisions... not to mention the literally thousands of territories on a single game map. Yet I never hear about this being such a problem in that game.

What is Stellaris trying to do that it struggles so hard to handle?

 

[destroyer3435]

Any plans for ground invasions getting a overhaul? I'd say it is definitely the weakest part of the game.

 

[Kethiet]

I think growth should be wieghted for population. It makes sense that +1pop is easier for 30 pops to produce than it is for 3.
Casually i think (A*(# of pops) + B*(habitability (wieghted per pop type))) makes sense.

 

[Mastakazam]

Thanks you, Steallaris Team, for your work thus far and continuing efforts. I don't agree with all changes but generally Stellaris is improving over time! These last couple updates really fixing a lot of bugs and issues I've seen and many I had no idea about, and I look forward to the refinements you're thinking of in the future.

I really like the idea of the institutions, and other internal affairs of empires. As much as we love our space wars, running a 'nation' is also mostly about dealing with internal issues and forging a nation's identity, whether that be from the people or forced upon the people.

With AI functionality improved for both AI-players and sector management, I would also like to see (this is going to sound crazy) larger galaxy size options; for really epic empires and interesting events in late stages of the game! When you're playing a grand galaxy and you have all the techs and features you want, but you still want to build more jump gates, more megastructures, improve your planets... or just have more viable rivals on your borders instead of the 2-4 other big empires that made it to the end of the game and you already know how it's going to end. (Also, tech please to allow multiple simultaneous megastructure projects.. probably a levelling tech that allows +1 project per level)

Surely I'm not the only one who would like to enjoy the fruits of my labours in building the perfect galactic empire. Surely.


Also hotfix pls: When selecting a race to start the game, all my species' summaries now show their ethics to be Xenophobe-Militarist-Spiritualist

 

[Spot4nick]

Another idea for the future of Stellaris is: It would be nice if you guys could make a dedicated server for stellaris to hopefully cutback on some of the endgame lag in multiplayer. Not only that but, if there was a way to make the game more RAM based rather than core based, then that would also hopefully solve the endgame lag.

 

[generalis Julius Caesar]

My big desire for Stellaris is an enhancement of the "internal side", as in government type etc. Not sure exactly in what way though. Your institutions idea therefore is something I like the sound of.

Yes I am so happy that someone wants institutions too. I can not wate for this update.

 

[generalis Julius Caesar]

The Future Goals sound very interessting. What about more depth in terms of the leaders? I think it would be cool if the would be "real" characters with own plans and agendas not just a portrait with a name. Like different Admirals intrigue against each other or planning a coup against your current regime resulting in a civil war.

The rulers that would fight might have opinions based on traits. Like an admirals with the reckless trait might get a negative modifier to admirals with the a defense focused trait. (-10 reckless fool).

 

[shadyn]

Espionage:

Not sure if anyone remembers the ancient SPI/AH boardgame Freedom in the Galaxy. It had a mechanic whereby the rebellion player could send agents on missions that would try and either establish intel to help bring down the empire (it was very influenced by star wars) - knowledge of imperial atrocities, plans for the secret starbase, etc. - or else infiltrate a planet and try to move it further towards unrest and rebellion. Applied to Stellaris, this could allow an interesting new Agent character type (alongside Scientists, Admirals, etc) and also provide a different use for Science/Scout ships during the later game, as the galaxy has become largely explored. Missions might include sabotage, intel, assassination of opposing players' characters or propaganda to stoke a civil war/independence movement.

Also:

I'd like to see a Chronicle type feature. Not strictly similar to CK2 but perhaps an Encyclopedia Galactica (so just alphabetically rather than date ordered) that builds up over time with entries for my own empire's characters, ships, battles, planets, first contacts, etc. CK2's Chronicle isn't perfect but once you've invested all this time into putting together a game for your "action figures" - per the first post - it would be nice to have a record of what happened to them. Right now they just disappear into memory.

 

[Rip Off Productions]

my thoughts on what you'd be able to do with espionage:

1) information; uncover fog of war, stats for planets, and maybe the "relative power" thing you see on the diplomacy screen will be even more vague and can be clarified with investment in espionage.

2) counter intelligence: invest into this to prevent others from doing the above to you, and maybe even feed false information.

3) Propagandizing: boost ethos drift in another empire.

4) Support/generate a Faction: boost support for or create a new faction in another empire, this option would be dependent on how much the faction system is changed, and would likely be tied into the above propaganda option.

 

[pyriel2005]

I'd really like to see an option to determine your general start location in the galaxy.

It takes me forever to load a map to start in the center. Having an option like that would certainly be appreciated.

 

[pyriel2005]

Also an event tied to archaeology in which you accidently wake up a hidden fallen empire (a la shadows from B5). Could be a fallen empire event or a crisis event.

I'd be very interested to see where you guys take the archaeology idea, xenoarchaeology has always been an intriguing concept to me, seeing as statistically space faring races exitisting at the same time in the same relative space (in this case the same galaxy) is arguably very low. So one would expect to encounter more dead races than living....happy thoughts

 

[Rip Off Productions]

Also an event tied to archaeology in which you accidently wake up a hidden fallen empire (a la shadows from B5). Could be a fallen empire event or a crisis event.

I'd be very interested to see where you guys take the archaeology idea, xenoarchaeology has always been an intriguing concept to me, seeing as statistically space faring races exitisting at the same time in the same relative space (in this case the same galaxy) is arguably very low. So one would expect to encounter more dead races than living....happy thoughts

I encountered an anomaly of a shielded planet that could be un-shielded, when I did it spawned a Fanatical Purifier Empire, and it gave them a level 6 starbase in their home system.. this was like 5 years into the game and I hadn't even had the opportunity to research new military techs yet(and I was RPing my pacifist xenophiles anyway, so I wouldn't have taken those options anyway, just like how I hadn't built any additional corvets for that same reason, I was expecting to encounter hostile space fauna to explain why they'd finally invest in military assets), and had barely started by first colony... that this was like 4 jumps away from the Earth... I was barely able to build up my fleet to 9 in total by the time they attacked, though thankfully I was able to stale mate them in Sol...

I think we don't need that to be possible for an even bigger threat.

 

[Spaceception]

When I watched the stream yesterday with @grekulf talking about clusters in galaxies, I had some ideas on what we could see.

Tiny, and (maybe) small galaxies (may) be exempt from this or have little in the way of clusters.

Larger clusters are mainly internal, and can only be accessed by A: tier 2 hyperdrives, and/or B: a wormhole. They would have, let's say about the same amount of stars as the L-Cluster. These would be great places for defense, and could be home to some Leviathan's (maybe even new ones). And maybe there's a slight chance you or an AI empire could spawn inside one of these - effectively trapping you/them until you/they get the required tech.

Small clusters could be made of a handful of stars (3 or less), they can be internal like the larger ones, or slightly external, taking the place of those absurdly long hyperlanes on the outside of galaxies sometimes. They're only accessible by tier 3 hyperdrives, and could have larger deposits of strategic resources, higher chances of a Gaia world, or other useful things that you would/may need by the time you can access it.

In both cases, you can't map these places until you have the next tier of hyperdrives.

New precursor events could also spawn in these clusters (As previous empires could've made their mark in these isolated places in the past). And brand new, or some current anomalies as well could be more likely to occur in here. All this would help spark a second large wave of exploration and exploitation around the early-ish/mid game. And then a third smaller wave of exploration and exploitation once you get the second and third tier of hyperdrives respectively.

A hyperlane creator (needs renaming) could be built around starbases to create a hyperlane with the nearest other "creator." Upkeep would be much higher than all other starbase buildings so it can maintain that lane. Depending on the upfront cost (Like if it required dark matter to build), this tech could be included with tier 3 hyperdrives instead, and hyperdrive registrars could actually remain a separate tech, unlike what was suggested in the stream.

Some of this could be added to Leviathan's/Distant stars, but the base idea of isolated clusters should be base game. It would also give dark matter a very important function outside of FE tech.

I got another idea to go with this. I was thinking about tier two hyperdrives unveiling a second, much smaller, hyperlane network. These would be long lanes, like the ones between spiral arms, or the edges of a galaxy, but instead would be internal, and can only be seen/traversed once you have the second tier of hyperdrives.

They could be connected either at random, or by the extreme objects of the galaxy (black holes, pulsars, neutron stars), in a spread out web to make crossing around the galaxy faster.
- I like the idea of connecting them with things like black holes, but then you'd know to defend yourself there. So random might be better.
- I'm thinking there would be a few dozen stars or so (no idea if I'm over/underestimating this), give or take depending on the size of the galaxy. So it'd be a "loose" network, compared to the "dense" network of hyperlanes we have now, if that makes sense.

And some of the really long lanes would only be traversable by tier three hyperdrives/jump drives, along with those being able to create their own.

Given how far apart some of these would be, this may be a disjointed network, with small networks scattered around the galaxy, some connected, then once you have tier three hyperdrives, all those networks connect.

Graphically, for one, I'm not sure how well this would work. Maybe you have have two map modes for each network? And/or, the second network has thinner lanes when it overlays on the main network?

I also don't know how good this would be gameplay wise, this was just a random idea I had today, but it could be fun, and open new strategies. Like getting the upper hand on an empire with a lower tier hyperdrives. You'd be able to get right in the middle of their space without worrying about bastions. Or, vice versa, they could do the same to you.

And alternatively, I could also see tier two hyperdrives letting you explore these clusters, and then tier three hyperdrives letting you use this smaller network, giving you faster travel in the late game.

 

[juracsik]

I like the planned development direction, but I am disturbed by what I do not see. This is the development of the army, the earth war.
Currently, the army is only an unnecessary distraction. The basic function of the army should be to have the army occupy anything. Whether it's a planet or a space station. The fleet is capable of destroying them, but only the army can occupy things. That is why it would be necessary to rethink the modules of space stations. It would be better if the space modules' defense modules instead of the current cannon / rocket / hangar set up were an army / torpedo boat / hangar lineup. Army Module is a Defense Army deployed in a cavern. Torpedo Boat Module is an automatically deployed ship that is weaker than the corvette, reducing the impact of piracy. The hangar module strengthens the space station's direct defense capabilities by installing Strike Craft. This assumes that the attacking army's defense army is limited in size, limited by the attachment to the defense army, and that the attacking army is replenished from the defense army, and represents common attributes with the defense army, such as the preference of the defense army planet type.
The army would need a call-back option. This would make the army easy to handle and more important than the current system. It would disregard the confusing phenomenon that I think the attacking party is gaining a significant defense position by occupying a space station.
Another major problem lies in the rapid occupation of the planets. It would be better to break the war on the planet into three stages, attacking, defensive, guerrilla. In the three stages, the width is the width of the planet, half the width of the planet, and 1 the width. The speed of the battle against the current speed and the battle of the space base x2 / x4 / x8.
I think these changes would make the use of the army more meaningful. If we also consider that the Admiral Commanders would give a separate bonus to their own unit and group, so that more Admiral and Commander at the same time could be used within a group, so that there would be more balanced leadership choices.