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Stellaris Dev Diary #161 - Development Update

Hello everyone!

For this week’s dev diary we chose to switch the order of a couple of dev diaries to be able to give you some updates earlier rather than later.

The Stellaris brand has understandably been under more scrutiny than usual for the last few months, and we want to address situations related to work-in-progress art in Federations. As an example, we had some UI design mockups (shown during PDXCon) that contained placeholder art. We want to make clear this is not how the game will appear in its final version.

Moving on to Federations: During PDXCON 2019 we said that we would give more information on the expansion later during the year – and today we want to share some news that Federations is targeted for release in early 2020. Although we understand that some of you might be disappointed that Federations will not be released in December, we want you to know that we are taking more time to make sure that the next update is going to be amazing.

In addition, to give us the best chance of improving some of the pain points you’ve shared with us, we have assigned some of our team members to focus solely on trying to improve performance and AI. It is very important to us that 2.6 does not compound any of the current issues with the game, and that we can take the time we need to address some of the issues remaining from 2.2. It’s important to remember, however, that working on these kinds of issues is not a sprint, but a marathon – it's something that is constantly being worked on over longer periods of time.

If you want to read more about performance, and how we work to maintain it over time, we shared some more information on this topic in Dev Diary #149.

While we have been unable to give concrete information or specifics related to these issues, we can say that it is very important to us. With that said, it's important for us that you know that your feedback is not being ignored, even if we have no news to share.

We want to thank you for being such a dedicated community and helping us by providing feedback and reporting issues with the game. We appreciate this to no end and encourage you to continue voicing your thoughts to us.

From the beginning of next year, we’ll be doing a series of dev diaries dedicated entirely to answering questions related to specific topics each week. The schedule for those dev diaries will be released later in December when we’ll summarize and round up the year.

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That is it for this week! Dev diaries will resume their regular schedule, and as promised last week, next week we will be talking about some of the new things affecting diplomacy, such as Envoys.

P.S:
Since this dev diary had no pictures I felt it was necessary to add something, so here's a picture of the premade Lithoid-empire that some of you have been asking us to add to the Lithoids Species Pack! (Will also be updated with 2.6)

upload_2019-11-21_15-28-57.png
 
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All I really want is a fix to the late and mid game lag because the game currently is completely unenjoyable late game. In fact I have been refusing to purchase anymore DLC content until this issue is addressed because what is the point in awesome DLC's and a more fleshed out game if it isn't something you can enjoy. So please Paradox focus on making the game work smoothly on all modes (time, galaxy sizes, galaxy shapes, AI empires) without tweaks (player in origin) before doing anything else, even if this means pausing any further development on DLC content. Stellaris has the potential to be one of the all time best space strategy games but if you can't play the game from start to finish without enjoyment plummeting from slow down then unfortunately it will never reach said acclaim.
 
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This is great news, thanks a lot!

Hopefully you guys will get around to do some more balancing like you did after 2.2 aswell and adress the Machine empires vs Organics issue. Especially Hiveminds and Spiritualists need it. Most of these can be fixed with some quick changes, Hiveminds for example:

  • Add additional spawning drone jobs to spawning pool building
  • Don't prioritize Syanpse Drone jobs on new colonies, prioritize worker jobs instead so players are no longer forced to unemploy synapse drones
  • Add 1 maintenance drone job to Hive Districts
  • Add ruler level up traits + agendas for Hivemind rulers (preferably give us the option to select the ones we like for our ruler on certain level ups)
  • Rework Civics similar to the rework that regular empires got: Example: Warrior Culture, Technocracy for Hiveminds
  • Buff Hunter killer drones, make dealing with deviancy, amenities easier
  • Change traditions for Hiveminds to grant +2 housing per maintenance building, same as Machine empires instead of only +2 housing per Synapse Node (of which you can only build 1)
  • Add 10% less housing modifier to Hive worlds -> make them equal to machine worlds.
Overall what we need is a choice to use Robots or not. Players who do not choose to use Robots are penalized as a Robot factory adds 2.0 pop growth and Robots are cheap pops with high habitability. Gene Clinis on the other hand are not even worth using (the amount of pops you "invest" to use this job grants additional pops after roughly 80 years). There has to be a real choice between using only organics for pop growth or adding Robots.

This is why I suggested additional spawning pool jobs for Hiveminds aswell. Currently, Hiveminds are already outclassed by any empire that uses regular Organics + a Robot factory once Flesh is Weak ascension perk unlocked. This adds up to roughly 9,5 total pop growth. This is already a little more than Hiveminds can achieve with full Bio Ascencion, Rapid breeders, Nutritional Plentitude etc.

We don't know yet how much pops will impact empire sprawl but my gut feeling tells me pop growth is still going to be #1 stat to judge empire strength. And pop growth needs to be looked at as a whole. The fact that Synths can get up to 20-30 combined pop growth (12,23 from Synths + organics) while Hiveminds don't even have 10 total pop growth, with Spiritualists being even further behind must not continue. And this doesn't even count in a relic like Cybrex Warforge which is already game over if a Synth/Machine empire gets it.
 
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...Federations is targeted for release in early 2020. Although we understand that some of you might be disappointed that Federations will not be released in December, we want you to know that we are taking more time to make sure that the next update is going to be amazing...
Early 2020, it's right there in the dev diary :)
Not quite, Radene. It’s TARGETED for release early 2020. [insert disclaimer about things changing from paradox here]
 
Not quite, Radene. It’s TARGETED for release early 2020. [insert disclaimer about things changing from paradox here]

In that case, "No sooner than early 2020".

Because even if it was fool proof, they wouldn't dare release sooner, because a bug or two will inevitably slip through, and then there'd be rage again :D
 
In that case, "No sooner than early 2020".

Because even if it was fool proof, they wouldn't dare release sooner, because a bug or two will inevitably slip through, and then there'd be rage again :D
I’ll be honest, there will likely be some rage from a very vocal minority if the game isn’t 100% perfectly ballenced between every single combination of options. I also only dislike absolutely gamebreaking bugs, and performance isn’t the highest thing on my priority list. I just want a game in which I can RP an empire SP.
Edit: and people will likely find some bug that barely matters and yell about it for months until paradox fixes it, at which point they will never have cared about it and find a new bug.
 
I’ll be honest, there will likely be some rage from a very vocal minority if the game isn’t 100% perfectly ballenced between every single combination of options. I also only dislike absolutely gamebreaking bugs, and performance isn’t the highest thing on my priority list. I just want a game in which I can RP an empire SP.
Edit: and people will likely find some bug that barely matters and yell about it for months until paradox fixes it, at which point they will never have cared about it and find a new bug.

You and me both. In fact I even get a tad miffed when in a game with so manny possibilities, people decide to play it overwhelmingly as a war/map-painting simulator :D
 
You and me both. In fact I even get a tad miffed when in a game with so manny possibilities, people decide to play it overwhelmingly as a war/map-painting simulator :D
Yeah. That’s probably why my other favourite PDX game is CK2, though that’s a completely different type of RP for me. I can enjoy map painting in stellaris when playing Driven Assimilators, but that’s because that’s their RP. I don’t map paint for map-paintings sake.
 
Moving on to Federations: During PDXCON 2019 we said that we would give more information on the expansion later during the year – and today we want to share some news that Federations is targeted for release in early 2020. Although we understand that some of you might be disappointed that Federations will not be released in December, we want you to know that we are taking more time to make sure that the next update is going to be amazing.
Thank you.
 
people will likely find some bug that barely matters and yell about it for months until paradox fixes it, at which point they will never have cared about it and find a new bug.

I guarantee you that if they fix Duuk's bug (an easy to fix bug that has existed since 1.0), @Duuk will do a happy dance right here in the forum.

I'm also starting to think that the devs intentionally do not fix said bug just to keep it as a tradition.
 
Finally! We'll see how this turns out.

It amuses me to no end the post linked "for more detail" is from May, but.. this is communication! Thanks.
 
700 hours in Stellaris, own all the expansions. Can honestly say this is the best news about the game I've heard all year.

Man, i am exactly where you are! 709 hours, bought everything

But today i am sooo close to shelve this franchise: because whatever i do, i cannot get the current game with the "new" launcher to load old mods. Tried every solution i could find out there, nothing helps. I guess PDX finally completely broke things. Maybe in the end i will be happy that it is finally over between Stellaris and me...
 
I guarantee you that if they fix Duuk's bug (an easy to fix bug that has existed since 1.0), @Duuk will do a happy dance right here in the forum.

I'm also starting to think that the devs intentionally do not fix said bug just to keep it as a tradition.
What is Duuk’s bug?