Stellaris Dev Diary #187 - Post-mortem

[Pale Blue]

I'm soooooooo tired of every empire being balanced. I do my best with mods to make the game asymmetric, but at this point, the game is an empty shell that merely holds all the things (mods) that allow for an interesting grand strategy game. Which is great, from one perspective.

Are we playing the same game? It feels like the devs gave up on balance long ago. Machines and materialists were overpowered for ages. It got better, but materialists are still too strong. Spiritualists and some origins like tomb or Gaia world's just exist to shot yourself in the foot.
i would really wish empires were at least somewhat balanced but they aren't even close without a balance mod.

 

[Primarch Victus]

And he wants a similar thing for the biological version. It's a fairly common trope.

Yes, I understood that. But I unlike Daimonin, don't want to simply turn other species in more of my species -- that is exactly what a Driven Assimilator do. But Biological Assimilators? They are far more than simple replication machines, they can take the best Traits of a given species for themselves, at the same time they are turning this same species in more of themselves.

 

[TheDungen]

Eh, They had it in Stargate, and at this point I think the Stellaris team is just trying to cover every sci-fi trope.

The goa'uld killed most of their own young to keep the goa'uld population low and kept most of the Unnas around as labourers. Also technically goa'uld hosts can reproduce as members of their own species though it is forbidden.
Not to mention it is implied in the extended universe material that the goa'uld were more like the tok'ra, and were symbiotic rather than parasitic, until they encountered the first sarcophagi which didn't happen until after they ventured out into space.

Oh and the Goa'uld don't need hosts to procreate, they can do that fine in the shallow waters of their homeworld.

I'm a huge stargate fan.

 

[Zagreb 887]

By that logic you may as well remove Devouring Swarms since every hive mind can decide to turn on Purge.

Don't speak if it, they are able do to it, just for the sake of it.

 

[Sopbucket]

Well, I like the Necrophage idea. Undead armies are not exactly sci-fi flavor but I'm sure I could get used to it. Unfortunately this is not going to be enough to get me playing again, I'm sad to say. I still love the game and I hold out hope that the fundamental problems will get the attention they deserve before all is said and done.

 

[Bankipriel]

Are we playing the same game? It feels like the devs gave up on balance long ago. Machines and materialists were overpowered for ages. It got better, but materialists are still too strong. Spiritualists and some origins like tomb or Gaia world's just exist to shot yourself in the foot.
i would really wish empires were at least somewhat balanced but they aren't even close without a balance mod.

I see what you're saying, and I can't disagree. At the same time, the AI is so totally, utterly broken across the board, I have to use dozens of mods and crazy, ratcheted galaxy settings to experience any kind of challenge, no matter what type of empire I play as. There are definately differences between empire types, but the AI can't play any of them, so no matter *what* I play as, every other empire is just a racoon trapped in a van (it's not driving *anywhere*).

It feels like the difference between filling in a circle with a red crayon or a blue crayon; they're different, but IMHO similar enough that I just don't care anymore what color the crayon is. The economy is so simple-minded, whether it's trade, or more EC, or CG & amenities, or all alloys with maintenance drones. Maybe I've just played *too much* Stellaris.

I am genuinely happy for anyone that is excited by this DLC. I think the ships look really, really good.

I was really excited about necrophages for a hot minute, until I read how they work, and it just deflated me---more of the same super micro-intensive pop management with 1 growing at a time. I guess I couldn't stop myself from momentarily hoping it was going to be some kind of new, interesting pop mechanic that would be fun (and to be clear, I find all current pop mechanics to be *not* fun). So ... again, maybe that's just on me for having unreal expectations. *shrug* I should probably just go play some MMO for a few years and take a long vacation from Paradox games ... but it's hard to quit the things we love, even when we can't really stand them anymore. It's hard to stop hoping that things will get better.

 

[Attitude Adjuster]

Basically i prefer a game with a functional albeit simple mechanic to a more complicate, broken and impossible for the ai to manage, one

Exactly!

The new system was great on paper, I really welcome it at first because it was touted as improving performance and being easy for the AI.

The tile system wasnt great - it wasn't even good - but it was so much better than what we have now that I yearn for it.

 

[Archael90]

And i have few questions about RP aspects. If someone answered this somewhere pls show me, maybe i missed it.
1. Why reanimated armies are excluding beeing pacifists? Why my empire cant be defended by skeletons, by people who have already died, instead of actual living people? I understand militarists that love military and would not be happy if their perfect job would be replaced by non-living skeletons... Who already made their way through art of war, and stole the glory from others... But pacifists? They should be happy to not using their actual pop while forced to fight. I understand spiritualists, treating undead army like empty, souless husks, and thus hates them, but spiritualists are one big contradiction. But why pacifists? They have nothing to say about soul, and recycling dead, this is spiritualis domain.
2. Why parasite origin excludes xenophile? I know most of xenophiles can treat this as act od agression, but why we cant make our RP as this parasites are on fact connecting to host, od making them peace with Universe, especially spiritualists xenophiles? Why you stole such great RP opportunity from us?

 

[TheDungen]

And i have few questions about RP aspects. If someone answered this somewhere pls show me, maybe i missed it.
1. Why reanimated armies are excluding beeing pacifists? Why my empire cant be defended by skeletons, by people who have already died, instead of actual living people? I understand militarists that love military and would not be happy if their perfect job would be replaced by non-living skeletons... Who already made their way through art of war, and stole the glory from others... But pacifists? They should be happy to not using their actual pop while forced to fight. I understand spiritualists, treating undead army like empty, souless husks, and thus hates them, but spiritualists are one big contradiction. But why pacifists? They have nothing to say about soul, and recycling dead, this is spiritualis domain.
2. Why parasite origin excludes xenophile? I know most of xenophiles can treat this as act od agression, but why we cant make our RP as this parasites are on fact connecting to host, od making them peace with Universe, especially spiritualists xenophiles? Why you stole such great RP opportunity from us?

They're always very restrictive with new stuff then they slowly remove restrictions.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Playing a gestalt consciousness that absorbs other species into it's hive, slowly transforming them into just more drones is something that sounds fun, and the LACK of such has been a complaint leveled at gestalt for YEARS.

There are assimilators and genetic ascension for hives that do exactly this.

 

[Ketrai]

Honestly, this origin looks really cool. But the mechanics feel extremely poor. I'm going to sum up why.

1. Unlike lithoids, by making it an origin/civic rather than being species tied. It becomes needlessly restrictive. Hiveminds can't be undead, despite being great candidates for parasitic lifeforms. Certain governments can't be undead. And you're being railroaded into playing an empire in the flavour of the origin.

2. The bonuses are weak and the downsides are huge. As far as I can see it, picking necroids either way is automatically gimping yourself. Funnily enough, -75% pop growth speed is actually worse than -100% pop growth speed. Why? Because you'll only ever want your slave species to grow. Because necroids will still have a chance to be grown on your planet, you'll have to prioritize other species, which comes with an automatic -20% growth penalty gimping them entirely when it comes to the most important pop stat in the game.

3. 5% ruler output is nigh pointless except for goverment types and civics that add extra special ruler jobs. Most ruler jobs actually produce less useful resources or less than simple specialists. You do get 5% specialist output as well... but that's entirely shadowed by my next point.

4. -10% worker output. This is extremely bad. This means that you need to keep a constant balance between necroids and slave pops. Why is this negative needed at all? With +10% output from just being a slave, they automatically prioritize themselves in worker jobs. This just ruins the gimmick of trying to convert as many pops as possible, as you'll want more slaves than ruler/specialist pops. This also makes it a lot harder to keep your pops happy, seeing as necroids don't get any additional political power or anything, which would've been much more sensible. Slaves being unhappy just to be a slave, so unless you build your empire around this you might struggle with revolts. At least new players definitely will in some cases.

5. Conversion has a 10 year cooldown (presumably initiated by an edict?). This makes it incredibly clunky to iniate conversion. Wouldn't planetary decisions be better for X amount of pops? You also need to spend building slots to even convert, and blue background assumes a limit of 1 per planet. This makes it micro heavy, and you can't just move all the pops you want to convert to a special planet, as to not muddle up your planetary specialization which jobs that are pretty much just worse entertainers, and therefore not desireable in an optimized empire. For a mechanic like this to be fun, it should be properly under the player's control.

6. No fleet/army bonuses. Unless you play as a purifier type empire, you'll be seriously struggling to get more pops conquering. Which is pretty much the intended playstyle, feeling almost shoe-horned in there. I assume other empires will hate you as well, so if you're not a purifier you might be tossed into wars you can't defend against.

7. The only caveat I see here, is primitives... IF extra habitable planets are enabled. This gives you a potential 16-48 extra pops at the start of the game. Or 8-24 with one guaranteed world. Naturally at the start of the game, 8-pop primitives are far more common. This gives the nasty side effect that without habitable planets enabled, necroids are extremely weak. Slight early game advantage, (better pop specialization, slight resource output) But really poor towards the mid-game due to pop lack. But if they are enabled, necroids can suddenly start the game off with FAR more pops. 8 pops alone brings necroids from the default 28 to 36. Sure it won't beat prosperous unification on the low spectrum. But each time you add another 8... the table becomes like this.

28 - 76.

Even with a little RNG luck, it's easy to get 42 pops relatively early on. But if you have RNG luck a million, you suddenly get 72 pops at the start of the game after a little exploring.

Please paradox, think this one out a bit better before releasing it. I absolutely adore the mechanics and concepts, but right now they're needlessly micro-heavy, have big downsides, and really restrict you from playing the way you want with it. Lithoids were far more enjoyable despite their simple implementation. It's one changed variable and the community ran wide with it. Can't necroids be similar?

- P.S. I don't think everything has to be balanced. But I do like being able to make interesting builds. If something is much more gimmick rather than fun to play with, like the usually gimped, restrictive pacifists... it's not as fun to play with. Some people also love combatting difficult AI (often modded). So it's nice if everything stays at least a little competetive, without having to grovel after the overpowered builds.

 

[Ketrai]

There's also numerous issues with the death cult civic, but I'm not going to into those now. Basically anything that has you rely on having less pops or getting rid of some should offer powerful enough benefits. If you have to sacrifice too many pops to get those benefits, you're just destroying your own production. (especially as those bonuses are temporary and have to be repeated. You're never getting those lost pops back)

 

[Ketrai]

This is insane. 2 guaranteed primitive planets = basically 60 Pops at gamestart. Now add the ressource Bonus and only let non-main-species grow. Pair this up with technoslaver and no other empire type in the Galaxy can beat you. Forget ringworld, Habitat start or machines, with this the game is over at 2250. This Looks way too overpowered to me if there is no Mayor disadvantage for non-main-species.

Forcing a species to grow incurs -20% pop growth speed.
Primitives are tied to the amount of habitable planets that are guaranteed, and RNG. The most common primitives have 8 pops. This is absolutely not overpowered unless you have 1. guaranteed worlds enabled. or 2. win the game early game because you'll get out grown quickly.

 

[Katsue]

I think the necrophage origin will be awesome ... as soon as someone makes a mod that removes the micro and the arbitrary balance.

I don't understand the complaint about micro. From what I can see, you build the planetary building once on each planet, maybe select what species you want to grow on your planets, and then forget about it. I didn't see anything that said the population conversion isn't automatic, and I see no reason it wouldn't be.

 

[Archael90]

Honestly, this origin looks really cool. But the mechanics feel extremely poor. I'm going to sum up why.

1. Unlike lithoids, by making it an origin/civic rather than being species tied. It becomes needlessly restrictive. Hiveminds can't be undead, despite being great candidates for parasitic lifeforms. Certain governments can't be undead. And you're being railroaded into playing an empire in the flavour of the origin.

2. The bonuses are weak and the downsides are huge. As far as I can see it, picking necroids either way is automatically gimping yourself. Funnily enough, -75% pop growth speed is actually worse than -100% pop growth speed. Why? Because you'll only ever want your slave species to grow. Because necroids will still have a chance to be grown on your planet, you'll have to prioritize other species, which comes with an automatic -20% growth penalty gimping them entirely when it comes to the most important pop stat in the game.

3. 5% ruler output is nigh pointless except for goverment types and civics that add extra special ruler jobs. Most ruler jobs actually produce less useful resources or less than simple specialists. You do get 5% specialist output as well... but that's entirely shadowed by my next point.

4. -10% worker output. This is extremely bad. This means that you need to keep a constant balance between necroids and slave pops. Why is this negative needed at all? With +10% output from just being a slave, they automatically prioritize themselves in worker jobs. This just ruins the gimmick of trying to convert as many pops as possible, as you'll want more slaves than ruler/specialist pops. This also makes it a lot harder to keep your pops happy, seeing as necroids don't get any additional political power or anything, which would've been much more sensible. Slaves being unhappy just to be a slave, so unless you build your empire around this you might struggle with revolts. At least new players definitely will in some cases.

5. Conversion has a 10 year cooldown (presumably initiated by an edict?). This makes it incredibly clunky to iniate conversion. Wouldn't planetary decisions be better for X amount of pops? You also need to spend building slots to even convert, and blue background assumes a limit of 1 per planet. This makes it micro heavy, and you can't just move all the pops you want to convert to a special planet, as to not muddle up your planetary specialization which jobs that are pretty much just worse entertainers, and therefore not desireable in an optimized empire. For a mechanic like this to be fun, it should be properly under the player's control.

6. No fleet/army bonuses. Unless you play as a purifier type empire, you'll be seriously struggling to get more pops conquering. Which is pretty much the intended playstyle, feeling almost shoe-horned in there. I assume other empires will hate you as well, so if you're not a purifier you might be tossed into wars you can't defend against.

7. The only caveat I see here, is primitives... IF extra habitable planets are enabled. This gives you a potential 16-48 extra pops at the start of the game. Or 8-24 with one guaranteed world. Naturally at the start of the game, 8-pop primitives are far more common. This gives the nasty side effect that without habitable planets enabled, necroids are extremely weak. Slight early game advantage, (better pop specialization, slight resource output) But really poor towards the mid-game due to pop lack. But if they are enabled, necroids can suddenly start the game off with FAR more pops. 8 pops alone brings necroids from the default 28 to 36. Sure it won't beat prosperous unification on the low spectrum. But each time you add another 8... the table becomes like this.

28 - 76.

Even with a little RNG luck, it's easy to get 42 pops relatively early on. But if you have RNG luck a million, you suddenly get 72 pops at the start of the game after a little exploring.

Please paradox, think this one out a bit better before releasing it. I absolutely adore the mechanics and concepts, but right now they're needlessly micro-heavy, have big downsides, and really restrict you from playing the way you want with it. Lithoids were far more enjoyable despite their simple implementation. It's one changed variable and the community ran wide with it. Can't necroids be similar?

- P.S. I don't think everything has to be balanced. But I do like being able to make interesting builds. If something is much more gimmick rather than fun to play with, like the usually gimped, restrictive pacifists... it's not as fun to play with. Some people also love combatting difficult AI (often modded). So it's nice if everything stays at least a little competetive, without having to grovel after the overpowered builds.

I dont know i understood it corectly
But mechanics of this parasites looks like
For example
Abducted pops that works as slaves for parasites, are once per 10 years converter into new pop, and at the same time you native pop should be growing but very slowly.
It means that you dont want to grow as much slave pops as possible, but rather grow everything, especially your main, slow breeding pops, and once per 10 years making one additional removing one slave.
One pop is growing at rate of 3 per month, and req 100, so one pop is produced in 34 month which is translated into less than 3 years.
Parasites produce new pops in 3 years (slaves/other pops) or 2 pops in about 10 years (main species) = one converted from job, and one from normal growing which takes about 11 years.
I think that conversions should be reduce to 5 yeras but other on that, i think this is neat system

 

[UltimateTobi]

It also doesn't feel cohesive; Lithoids had mechanics tied to portraits, this one here doesn't but adds civics. Not to mention the other Species DLCs.

Stellaris' development seems very directionless.

2.2 MegaCorp overhauled (for the worse according to most (micro)) the economy massively, while 2.6 Federations added some options to Feds and a GC that is mostly pointless (with AIs).
But both DLCs are massively different in scope, yet they share a "major overhaul"-theme.

2.0 just... cut features? They took more than they added (but that could just be clouded memory of mine).

I hope you guys/gals get what I am on about.

 

[sillyrobot]

It also doesn't feel cohesive; Lithoids had mechanics tied to portraits, this one here doesn't but adds civics. Not to mention the other Species DLCs.

Stellaris' development seems very directionless.

2.2 MegaCorp overhauled (for the worse according to most (micro)) the economy massively, while 2.6 Federations added some options to Feds and a GC that is mostly pointless (with AIs).
But both DLCs are massively different in scope, yet they share a "major overhaul"-theme.

2.0 just... cut features? They took more than they added (but that could just be clouded memory of mine).

I hope you guys/gals get what I am on about.

A charitable interpretation would be the roadmap for future development relied heavily on the reworked pop / trade / travel subsystems and was impossible to pursue once the full performance cost attached to these systems was understood. So other development was provided by a new team (since the team effectively changed at the same time) who had limited opportunity to build a compelling and overarching vision while embedded in the forest fire left for them.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

It also doesn't feel cohesive; Lithoids had mechanics tied to portraits, this one here doesn't but adds civics. Not to mention the other Species DLCs.

They need something to make it sell, I guess.

 

[TheDungen]

It also doesn't feel cohesive; Lithoids had mechanics tied to portraits, this one here doesn't but adds civics. Not to mention the other Species DLCs.

Stellaris' development seems very directionless.

2.2 MegaCorp overhauled (for the worse according to most (micro)) the economy massively, while 2.6 Federations added some options to Feds and a GC that is mostly pointless (with AIs).
But both DLCs are massively different in scope, yet they share a "major overhaul"-theme.

2.0 just... cut features? They took more than they added (but that could just be clouded memory of mine).

I hope you guys/gals get what I am on about.

Because some of us really hated linking portraits to mechanics. Why can't I have rock eating dwarfs or food eating rock creatures? Or for that matter use the golem looking rock creatures for machine empires?

 

[Pale Blue]

Because some of us really hated linking portraits to mechanics. Why can't I have rock eating dwarfs or food eating rock creatures? Or for that matter use the golem looking rock creatures for machine empires?

I agree not linking mechanics to portraits is my preferred way of handling it and i would like it if the lithoid trait were changed to a trait anyone can pick.