Stellaris Dev Diary #153 - Empire Sprawl & Administrative Capacity

[BlackUmbrellas]

I have been wondering latelly if the next big PDX announcement is Stellaris 2. That would explain the current pace and (lack of) aims in the current development cycle.

It's not, and it wont be.

We already know the next Big Thing for Stellaris is going to be a diplomacy-focused update and DLC.

 

[lpslucasps]

It's not, and it wont be.

We already know the next Big Thing for Stellaris is going to be a diplomacy-focused update and DLC.

I've seen this claim being thrown around quite a lot lately, but couldn't find any dev diary/tweet/whatever to substantiate it. Do you have any source that confirms the next dlc will really be diplomacy-focuses?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

I've seen this claim being thrown around quite a lot lately, but couldn't find any dev diary/tweet/whatever to substantiate it. Do you have any source that confirms the next dlc will really be diplomacy-focuses?

The list of future goals from DD #141 combined with pattern recognition of the prior DLC/update cycles (Big Feature update with accompanying Big Feature DLC, followed by a smaller minor content DLC, rinse and repeat).

 

[verybad]

Super easy thing to fix or affect in the machines by giving them a few techs that reduce the Empire sprawl as they get smarter (and bigger), other options would be to give them rulers with increasing anti sprawl abilities. Give them buildings with the same function...lots of options either in mods or as part of the whole.

What I think could be interesting is if Trade Routes also affected the function of sprawl...Say on a core world with plenty of trade government runs pretty well, but on the frontier that rarely even sees a trade ship, sprawl creation would be penalized. The frontier is creating more sprawl, this helps out Tall Empires. Then if a certain colony or even sector is making too much sprawl, they get anxious and want to build their own empire. So you either send them more trade, even if it's not that valuable for you over all, or you send them some nut sector governor that reduces growth but makes them so terrified of being sent off to the Space Jail that they don't rebel (yet).

There are a lot of cool things that could be done with a more interesting Imperial Sprawl and Bureaucracy nuance. Mixing it with Trade would be VERY interesting. Perhaps have the abilities of bureaucrats spread out along trade routes better, then have another space building (communications buildings) work like trade routes but only for handling government. Attacks against com locations would quickly affect government against the frontier.

All space roads lead to space Rome!

 

[lpslucasps]

The list of future goals from DD #141 combined with pattern recognition of the prior DLC/update cycles (Big Feature update with accompanying Big Feature DLC, followed by a smaller minor content DLC, rinse and repeat).

So no official announcement? I mean, sure, that the next DLC will deal with diplomacy makes sense and features in this area are planned, but the next dlc could very well be about religions or internal politics, which are among the general ideas listed in that post. Besides, the linked post quite explicitly says that "As previously mentioned, this is not a promise of features to come, I am merely sharing some of my more high level thoughts and ideas.".

I'm not saying the next dlc won't be diplomacy-focused, but I wouldn't say we "already know" it is either.

 

[Methone]

So no official announcement? I mean, sure, that the next DLC will deal with diplomacy makes sense and features in this area are planned, but the next dlc could very well be about religions or internal politics, which are among the general ideas listed in that post. Besides, the linked post quite explicitly says that "As previously mentioned, this is not a promise of features to come, I am merely sharing some of my more high level thoughts and ideas.".

I'm not saying the next dlc won't be diplomacy-focused, but I wouldn't say we "already know" it is either.

Agreed. I'd be perfectly fine with them taking another small-dlc for 2.4 (We're overdue for a new species pack, nudge nudge, aquatics) while hammering out some other problems. Like, 2.3 largely fixed the problem of microing hundreds of planets, but there's still a gargantuan list of things to fix, some going as far back as 2.0 or earlier!

 

[Thinking and Pretty]

Jobs that increase admin cap?! This is all I've dreamed since Admin Cap became a thing! It always felt odd that I couldn't increase the administrative capacity of my empire...

 

[sakurakouji]

Is this strengthening Byzantium

 

[methegrate]

Jobs that increase admin cap?! This is all I've dreamed since Admin Cap became a thing! It always felt odd that I couldn't increase the administrative capacity of my empire...

Funny, we had exact opposite reactions to that.

I love the idea of making empire sprawl a much harder penalty so that it's worth paying attention to. I'm really skeptical of making administrator jobs though. I feel like that risks making admin cap just like strategic resources, consumer goods, amenities, energy, etc. Instead of being a real bottleneck it's just going to be another maintenance resource that you crank out as-needed.

At least that's my concern... When admin cap is out of my control, it's like pop growth and influence. Very interesting because I have to decide how best to spend a very limited amount. (Albeit in this case just interesting in theory because there are no practical consequences to running out of admin cap. It's always expanding.) When I can just crank out a few more bureaucrats if ever I need more, though, doesn't that render it kind of irrelevant?

Note - If the Stellaris economy was already tight, this might work. Like if a bureaucrat meant pulling workers away from jobs where they were desperately needed, then great! Zero sum decision making! But there's always excess income you can cut back on.

 

[General Karthos]

Gotta say that I do not like these changes at all. Seems like they're trying to make it harder to play "tall" (as though it weren't hard enough already) by making population a part of Empire Sprawl and forcing us to waste precious building slots (of which we don't have enough already, especially if we're playing tall) on trying to keep our capacity above our sprawl. (Especially by making penalties for exceeding sprawl even more harsh than they are already.)

Also, using percentages and stuff makes it harder to figure. I like that certain civics, technologies, ascension perks, and traditions gave us a hard number in bonus. But let's say that I have both Courier Network and Efficient Bureaucracy, and each provides -20% to my Empire Sprawl, and my base Empire Sprawl is 100. Does that mean that efficient bureaucracy reduces it by 20% to 80, and then Courier Network reduces it a further 20% to 60 (making the total bonus 40%) or reduces 80 by 20% to 64?

A tooltip that tells us "adopting this tradition will reduce your sprawl to X" or "adopting this ascension perk will reduce your sprawl to Y" would be helpful. Already it's hard to determine how helpful a 20% bonus from technician jobs or 10% bonus from scientist jobs is. When this moves from a mechanic designed to make it inconvenient to be too tall or too wide into a mechanic designed to punish us for being too tall or too wide, we should really have some idea of where we'll wind up when we devote resources and technology to increasing our cap/decreasing our sprawl.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

So no official announcement? I mean, sure, that the next DLC will deal with diplomacy makes sense and features in this area are planned, but the next dlc could very well be about religions or internal politics, which are among the general ideas listed in that post. Besides, the linked post quite explicitly says that "As previously mentioned, this is not a promise of features to come, I am merely sharing some of my more high level thoughts and ideas.".

I'm not saying the next dlc won't be diplomacy-focused, but I wouldn't say we "already know" it is either.

Agreed. I'd be perfectly fine with them taking another small-dlc for 2.4 (We're overdue for a new species pack, nudge nudge, aquatics) while hammering out some other problems. Like, 2.3 largely fixed the problem of microing hundreds of planets, but there's still a gargantuan list of things to fix, some going as far back as 2.0 or earlier!

Unless they break the update pattern (which is possible but would seem unlikely), the next update is due to be a major content update with an accompanying major DLC. Furthermore, "diplomacy" is the last of the Three Big Things that they talked about overhauling ages ago- the other two being Warfare (2.0/Apocalypse) and the Economy (2.2/Megacorp).

I think its fair to say "the next update/DLC will be a diplomacy overhaul" with a reasonable degree of confidence.

Furthermore, they've laid out MORE than enough plans for the future to discredit the original suggestion that "their next big announcement will be Stellaris 2, since they clearly lack any aim right now".

 

[StellarisFan1]

Properly nerf machine

 

[MichaelJanuary]

I like that MEs will have strong admin cap malus and favor tall. It fits with my concept of MEs as a paranoid super controlling centralized intelligence that doesnt tolerate autonomy. Deviance must be stamped out at all cost to prevent rival artificial intelligences from springing up.

On the other hand, hive mind sprawl can be justified by seeing drones as mindless clones that can only perform the tasks that they have been constructed for, and therefore incapable of developing independent intelligence.

 

[Teldaril]

As a tall player myself i much appreciate this. Especially the "Administration"-Planet thing. And now that ME get to be tall i probably will add one to my collection of preferred tall playstyles.

 

[laptor]

Good to see you read the suggestion forum.
A dynamic administration cap system is very welcome, but I am not sure whether it is necessary to create a new type of job for it?!

 

[DrFranknfurter]

I think this addition seems poorly thought through. I hope they made some major tweaks to stop it from doing the exact opposite of what they intended.

Problems:
1. If an empire that is small (say <10 worlds) and tall (can counteract sprawl with admin cap gained from buildings), then a wide empire can conquer those planets and steal the admin cap to also stay under sprawl. *Tall vs Wide no longer exists*
2. The source of admin cap is from 3 things that a large empire has more of: building slots, pops and resources. Small empires will be unable to build the building that gives admin cap and will end up being "wider" than large empires that can spam them to become "tall" (where sprawl<admin cap)
3. Pops grow without player control. Unemployed pops will become a major nuisance late game as they force an empire above cap and slow research... more micro as people feel forced to resettle/purge/control populations when many were more hands-off before.

Solution A. Admin buildings cost Influence (complex)
1. Add an influence cost to the basic admin cap buildings (of 100, *no influence upkeep cost*) to limit wide empires spamming them to become tall and gain a tech, unity and resource advantage (tall being where sprawl is under admin cap, or close to it). Influence is the only resource with an income that doesn't scale with empire size. No other resource fits sadly.
2. Also add a repair cost in influence to admin buildings, and ruin them on changing ownership. (so you can't steal admin cap easily)
3. Add 3 tiers of the building with increased output - 2, 5, 8 jobs giving 20, 50, 80 cap (probably 30, 75, 120 after bonuses). To encourage building them on advanced planets with 80+ pop and not on frontier worlds with only a handful of pops. (also reduces building slot usage, better for tall empires).
4. Increase the sprawl contribution from systems and planets to compensate for the massive gain from pops to reduce the impact of each pop on the empire.

OR

Solution B. Sprawl increases with Distance (simple)
1. Add a variable based on distance from capital and for exclaves would be amazing and solve much on its own. (e.g. +5% increase in sprawl generated by pops, planets and systems per hyperlane from the capital, distance can be traced through wormholes and gateways, a multiplicative (not additive) x1.5 if the territory is not contiguous with the capital).

Results:
For A:

• Small empires build more admin buildings, large empires build fewer.
  
• Total War empires DE, DA, DS, FP will still go wide and large, but will have to spend influence to do so. Thankfully they don't have to spend any on claims so have huge reserves of it they normally spend on edicts (which normally makes a little less sense anyway, why are they *so* much better at edicts than the other empire types?).
• Small empires will spend more influence increasing admin cap instead of expanding, build slightly fewer habitats and megastructures, fewer edicts until they are at or under their sprawl.
• Large empires will have to choose between continued expansion (claims, going wide) or bringing the sprawl down after a conquest (becoming taller). They are more likely to destroy ruined admin buildings rather than repairing them as they can't afford the costs to repair or build more.
• Tall and Wide exist! (that doesn't mean they're equal or comparable, just that tall hasn't been killed).

OR
For B:

• Large empires have to build far more admin buildings, small empires can build far fewer to stay tall. (Total War empires get hit hardest and need the most admin buildings as they're the widest, making them weaker).
  
• If sprawl gets a multiplier with distance, larger, wider empires would naturally get more sprawl from expanding to the same planets. They would be wider (more sprawl) or have to invest increasing numbers of building slots to stay tall (bureaucratic worlds, Fun!).
• Capital relocation is encouraged... but it will be extremely hard to guess the resulting change in sprawl unless there is a tooltip showing the predicted changes or better yet optimal position for a new capital. (new use for a currently useless mechanic. Fun!)
  
• Gateway construction would massively reduce sprawl and encourage a wave of aggressive expansion late-game. (Fun!)

In short, I started to write out solution A... but then decided I actually much preferred solution B. I left my reasoning for both so you can see why A may or may not be the best solution to the problems the dev diary presented. A mix of both could be interesting: Powerful admin increasing buildings that require influence for smaller empires to invest in when they're boxed in to reduce building slot usage, combined with increased sprawl with distance to make wide empires devote more and more building slots to combat it with basic buildings). But that may be needlessly complex and requires a new set of building art for the powerful vs basic buildings. Still these two ideas can be combined for a better solution, I just think that B would probably solve things on its own.

 

[laptor]

Yes, it would be cool if sprawl exceeding admin cap would increase your susceptibility to spy actions and similar. It would also be cool if having large institutions like a massive secret police or diplomatic corps would increase your sprawl (since those institutions would increase bureaucracy).

Penalty for exceeding the cap could also be an increased amount of time for construct buildings and districts to simulate bad planning and a delay of orders.

 

[kal56]

I kind of feel like maybe it should be reversed. The machine drones should be able to fall back on standard protocols so they have less sprawl were as a hive mind drone out of contact becomes a mindless beast not helping the greater cause.

 

[PirateJack]

One of the problems I see with making Imperial Prerogative into a percentage modifier is that it's going to benefit large empires more than small. At lower empire sizes static increases are better as you need a base value of X before a percentage modifier would provide the same gains that a static one does. That's going to hit the tall crowd more in the early game as ImpPre has a fairly nice niche for speeding up your research more than TA does as a first pick AP (at least that was my understanding of it as of 6 months ago, correct me if I'm wrong on this).

Making it a percentage modifier is just going to encourage wide play more than tall, so maybe there should be some distinction between the core sector and frontier/governed sectors? Having lower Empire Sprawl per pop in the core sector would benefit tall players more than wide and would have the side effect of making your capital's placement something to actually think about.

 

[PirateJack]

I kind of feel like maybe it should be reversed. The machine drones should be able to fall back on standard protocols so they have less sprawl were as a hive mind drone out of contact becomes a mindless beast not helping the greater cause.

I'd argue the opposite. If we're going solely by lore then Machine Intelligences developed sapience through their networking because the civilisation they emerged from hadn't developed Positronic Brains to allow for individuality. So each drone in a ME is effectively a peripheral that is useless without the central CPU coordinating them.