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Stellaris Dev Diary #200: The Custodian

Hello everyone!

Today we’re back again with yet another dev diary; number 200 in fact. It sure has been a very exciting journey for Stellaris, and I think it is only going to get better! Nemesis is shaping up to be a very interesting addition to Stellaris, and today we thought we would talk about another headline feature for our upcoming expansion – namely the Custodian.

While some empires seek to set the universe on fire, others need to find their destiny as its defender. As we mentioned last week, the Galactic Community will get their own tools to fight the crisis, and that is what they can do by electing their chief crisis fighter.

We are setting the stage for these two nemeses to battle over the fate of the galaxy, and it is up to you who will win.

Becoming the Custodian
As soon as there is a Galactic Council, the Galactic Community can propose to elect one of the council members to become the Custodian. It is possible to have multiple proposals going at once, but as soon as a resolution is passed that elects a Custodian, others cannot be proposed anymore, as the choice has already been made.

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Concrete evidence that my lithoids should rock the Custodianship.​

The AI is more likely to vote for a Custodian when there is some sort of crisis going on, which can be a Marauder crisis, end-game crisis, “Become the Crisis”-crisis or any of the other things that can happen.

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Time to get to work.​

Powers of the Custodian
In order to be effective at their role, the Custodian must gain access to some special powers. The Custodian may need to be able to affect which resolutions move to the Senate Floor, so they have extended powers to be able to influence that more directly.

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The Custodian in the Galactic Community.​

Prematurely End Session: A Custodian can end the current session after half of its voting period, which will pass or reject the resolution being voted on depending on the voting situation at the time.

Emergency Measures: The Custodian can use the Emergency Measures power to send a proposal to the Senate Floor, but has a much lower cooldown than regular council members.

Shared Intel: The Custodian will gain some Intel on all other members of the Galactic Community, such as knowing their Relative Fleet Power.

Freezing proposals: The custodian can pay 200 influence to freeze a resolution for 4 years, making it impossible for the resolution to move to the Senate Floor for the duration.

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Brrrr. Will you be resolute and wait it out..?​

Custodial Resolutions
There are a number of new Resolutions that are tied to the Custodian. Let’s take a look at some of them:

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Galactic Defense Force
In order to protect the galaxy from threats from within and from beyond, the Custodian is able to construct ships for a Galactic Defense Force. The GDF is very similar to a federation fleet in the way it works, with the exception that it’s under the control of the current Custodian.

Should there cease to be a Custodian, the GDF will become an independent entity until a new Custodian is established.

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Once again, similar to federation ships, the GDF ships can be designed in the ship designer., which can be accessed from the Galactic Community UI.

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GDF? Ship just got real.​

A Galaxy on Fire
After you have gloriously hammered the crisis into obscurity, your service as a Custodian is no longer needed, and the powers that came with the responsibility could be returned.

Maybe it was a really tough fight, a war the galaxy is sure to remember, and maybe you needed to ask the Galactic Community for more powers in order to win against the crisis – powers that you may not want to give up so easily...

This very much captures what we are trying to do with Nemesis. After one crisis has been defeated, maybe the next one is just around the corner… and this time it's a diplomatic one.
 
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CaptainGrimlock said:
If they implement that, maybe as a “controversial law” event giving each and every empire the option to leave at once, then the empires that leave the community would form a second community.
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It would need a different name like "the league of worlds" or something suitably neutral and similar but snobbishly different
Colonizor48 said:
Either that or a federation.
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Ideally it should be both, so that in the end you also have the option to dissolve or merge one or the other or both. and not all who leave would want to join the federation, but they may stick around in your alternate community. like a warsaw pact community with the USSR as a federation vs nato community with the USA as the federation inside it?
 
TrotBot said:
It would need a different name like "the league of worlds" or something suitably neutral and similar but snobbishly different

Ideally it should be both, so that in the end you also have the option to dissolve or merge one or the other or both. and not all who leave would want to join the federation, but they may stick around in your alternate community. like a warsaw pact community with the USSR as a federation vs nato community with the USA as the federation inside it?
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Confederacy of Independent Star Nations?
 
Scyobi_Empire said:
What if one becomes the Custodian but later becomes the Crisis during their totally democratic reign as the Custodian?
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I believe the dev responded to a similar question like this earlier. They said to become the Crisis, you'll eventually have to leave the Community. So there's no way to be both Custodian and Crisis at the same time.
 
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Why can't we be an oligarchy and rule over the galaxy that way? the restriction to be authoritarian while it makes sense in some ways makes little sense in others. Just because you became the Galactic Sovereign your people can no longer get utopian abundance?
 
SpaceMarine4040 said:
Why can't we be an oligarchy and rule over the galaxy that way? the restriction to be authoritarian while it makes sense in some ways makes little sense in others. Just because you became the Galactic Sovereign your people can no longer get utopian abundance?
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Pretty sure you replied to the wrong dev diary XD
 
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@grekulf , a few comments about these resolutions in case the feedback is helpful....

--> Galactic Mobilization's bonus of 150 Naval Cap is nice, but I might suggest there would be merits to setting it to something like 200 instead. Not only would it feel a bit better to the player to get a larger number, thus encouraging more players to take it , but there would be extra significance to 200, as that's exactly enough to qualify for an additional Titan.

--> Introduce Galactic Standard is something that I really like. Influence is a really valuable resource, so this is easily one of the best resolutions of the series here. Is the thought behind the energy credit cost the cost of educating everyone in the new standard and establishing schools?

--> Anti-Piracy Initiative's trade protection [as well as the standard trade protection tradition] is far too weak to be worth considering, to be entirely honest, and the anti-pirate damage bonus is not very valuable as they're easy to beat. The only place where it would help is against the Khan, but the bonus feels week for that . Might I suggest a 50% bonus instead so that it feels more worthwhile? Additionally, I recommend that the Trade Protection value increase should be massively increased.

-->. How large will the Galactic Defense Force naval cap be?

-->. Interstellar Navigation Agency: I think that a 15% speed boost is too small for years in the queue and 200 influence. I'd bump it up to 25% at last.

-->. Galactic Trade Organization - Unless you are a Trade League, trade is not particularly powerful in current builds, and a 10% bonus to trade for 200 Influence feels like the influence could have been spent better - on some other resolution that would let you get further down a chain for sanctioning opponents, for instance. I'd suggest increasing the value to at lest 20%.

-->. GALPOL: Crime is a a mechanic which most players control either almost perfectly or deliberately allow to get the Crime Lord Deal. Almost no one would want to pay 200 Influence for this. This one really needs strengthening - more so than any of the others; its clearly the weakest of the lot. Maybe add on some additional and more unique effects?
 
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In lore is the Custodian meant to refer to the nation as a whole or the individual leader? The Imperium Dev diary seems to suggest the Custodian is the individual, but here it seems to refer to the nation as a whole
 
Dlin369 said:
In lore is the Custodian meant to refer to the nation as a whole or the individual leader? The Imperium Dev diary seems to suggest the Custodian is the individual, but here it seems to refer to the nation as a whole
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The individual IS the nation for they are the state. It switches your ethics to fanaticnwuthoritwrian and imperial authority, meaning it's a coup by your leader using the galactic fleet and army as personal guard.
 
“Why can't we be an oligarchy and rule over the galaxy that way? the restriction to be authoritarian while it makes sense in some ways makes little sense in others. Just because you became the Galactic Sovereign your people can no longer get utopian abundance?”

they should make a special imperial civic (I think they did, actually) that allows all spevies rights settings, as a true galactic govt should. All unlocked. So you customize your imperial core as you like
 
SpaceMarine4040 said:
Why can't we be an oligarchy and rule over the galaxy that way? the restriction to be authoritarian while it makes sense in some ways makes little sense in others. Just because you became the Galactic Sovereign your people can no longer get utopian abundance?
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That's the sacrifice you make for imposing your rule of law on an entire galaxy. No way is anyone going to treat your empire like it's Egalitarian anymore. Not after you force them to leave all of their federations and kneel before the might of the Imperium.

From a gameplay perspective, so many people have been complaining that Authoritarians don't get a lot of showtime because of how hard it is to get the political party up and running at all. I honestly welcome this ability to force the empire into Authoritarian.

I have to assume that as galactic sovereign, your founding species has some benefits unique to them only to replace Utopian Abundance. But considering what Egalitarians represent, it makes almost zero sense that an Egalitarian empire would even begin or even be internally allowed to enforce such a drastic consolidation of power. You'd have to be pretty authoritarian already if your public freedoms value a single state over the rest.
 
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Panzerslothen said:
Question: Does the Custodian receive any... renumeration, for their services?


View attachment 680174

>and the powers that came with the responsibility could be returned.

PLEASE do give us the option to see-off the crisis and, once the Galaxy comes saying, "So, uh, time to give up those emergency powers now", we can turn right back round and say "Nah, you're alright mate", and keep the powers, whether the Galaxy likes it or not.
It would cue SO MAMY "I AM the Senate" jokes.
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You called it mate.
 
Hi there, I'm a bit late to the party. Only saw the dev blogs now, and signed up for the forums to comment on this:

I think that an empire might want to not contribute their fleet technology to the GDF. The reasons could be anything, perhaps distrust in the community, wanting to keep their technological lead for themselves or mischievous goals for the future, but I think that the option should exist.

Something I could imagine would be that there is a policy where each empire has the option between sharing component tech and not sharing component tech with the galactic community. This could have the default set to sharing, maybe depending on ethics.

Then in the galactic community, there is a law whether technological contribution is mandatory, set to no by default, but the community (or custodian) has the ability to propose a change to mandatory contribution. An empire who would still not be contributing their tech would then be in breach of the laws afterwards, and suffer from sanctions. (Just like other laws cannot directly force you to change policies, but give you (possibly quite severe) penalties for not abiding.
 
A look at some of the Custodian powers through this video, including influence costs for some of our powers:

I'll also highlight the modifier shown at 105 seconds in (1 min 45 seconds)

Galactic Custodian gives an empire modifier of +30% Diplomatic Weight and a whopping +5 influence, making it a lesser (but still very powerful) version of the Galactic Sovereign civic from becoming Emperor (and its treated as an empire modifier rather than a civic).

EDIT: I also see that the Galactic Defense Force ships now cost -50% Alloys at the cost of -5% global alloy production. Back when the Dev Diary was first posted it was only -25% instead. I like this change. The question now is what is the naval capacity of the GDF?
 
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