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Stellaris Dev Diary #215 - Gameplay themes & Balancing considerations

Hello everyone!

First I want to thank you for the overwhelming support that you’ve shown us with announcing the Custodians initiative. It’s been really fun and motivating to see so many positive responses, and for that we’re truly thankful. At the same time, I must admit that it is also a bit scary in the sense that we shouldn’t have the expectation that this will suddenly resolve any issues you might have with the game, or that we’ll be able to deliver large amounts of significant changes with every update. Let’s appreciate this opportunity and make the best of it :)

Species Pack Gameplay Themes
Last week we already talked about what the Lem Update (honoring the author Stanislaw Lem) would focus on, but I’d also like to go into more detail regarding some things.

We mentioned that we would be adding gameplay to the Humanoids Species Pack and the Plantoids Species Pack, and although I won’t talk about the exact details yet, I do want to talk a little about how we approached it, and the themes we chose.

Plantoids was a bit easier, because there are some obvious fantasies. Going around the themes of growth and plants we’re adding some new traits, civics and origin. We felt like it made sense to open up these gameplay additions to both Plantoid portraits as well as for Fungoids.

Humanoids was a bit trickier, because there are no direct fantasies that apply to them in general, so we instead chose to focus on fantasies that align with things like dwarves, elves, orcs or humans. The Civic we showcased last week was an example of how we made something inspired by a traditionally dwarven fantasy.

Let us know about any ideas or thoughts you have regarding those :)

We will be talking more about these in much greater detail later, but that may possibly be in August.

Game Balance
We’re going to take a look at reworking some of the major outstanding balance issues that we’re having.

One example that I want to talk about is the issue with Research Booming, where power players can essentially outpace other empires due to focusing a lot on research. What enables this is usually Districts that provide Researcher Jobs, which is relatively easy to gain access to early on through Origins such as Shattered Ring or Void Dwellers (the latter not being nearly as strong).

For Shattered Ring we are looking into changing the start from a pure “end-game” Ring World, to be more of an actual “Shattered Ring” that you need to repair before you gain access to the powerful Districts of the Ring World. Putting additional emphasis on the fantasy of restoring this ancient megastructure to its former glory can be a fun addition to the Origin itself. Although we haven’t decided exactly what we’re doing, changing the start to be a Shattered Ring that you can restore with the Mega-Engineering technology is a likely route.

Unity & Empire Sprawl
Beyond Lem, we are also going to take a look at Empire Sprawl and Unity. The design for Admin Capacity was never really something that I felt worked out, and we never finished the design that was intended for it. Continuing to use Admin Cap as a mechanic also feels a bit like a dead end due to multiple reasons (ranging from design to technical), so we’re instead going to look into another solution.

I have a design for doubling down on using Unity as the resource for internal management, removing Admin Cap entirely, and to make Empire Sprawl something that you can never mitigate anymore. More sprawling empires will always suffer harsher penalties from Empire Sprawl, and we’ll instead focus on how Unity can be used internally to mitigate some of those penalties. Examples could be Edicts that have a Unity Upkeep Cost, and perhaps reduce the Research Cost Penalty induced by Empire Sprawl. Angry Pops could potentially also have a Unity Upkeep Cost, to represent the drain on your society.

Note that these ideas are very much in their infancy and very prone to change. We will probably start talking a bit more about that once Lem has been released, but I wanted to share some thoughts with you so that we could gather some initial feedback.

------

That’s all for this week folks! We’re in the middle of reviewing our dev diary schedule, so we’re hoping to be back with 2 more dev diaries before we take a summer break. We’ll keep you in the loop as we go.
 
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To put some concerns at rest, as I've said in every dev diary (I think, it seems like it at this point) we're always working on the AI and the work done on Humanoids, Plantoids and considering game balance isn't subtracting from that.

maybe you should start using a disclaimer after "that was all for this week"

disclaimer
we are always working on performance and AI. Designer/Artist Work hours do not take away from Coder Work. (Maybe in better English ^^) would that help? i doubt it, but it would help with those who always forget, :D i mean of course they might not believe you (or want to)
 
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To put some concerns at rest, as I've said in every dev diary (I think, it seems like it at this point) we're always working on the AI and the work done on Humanoids, Plantoids and considering game balance isn't subtracting from that.

Working on it how? In terms of one master script that applies to all AI empires (ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww)?

Or separate scripts depending on what government an AI empire is? For instance a tech focused AI empire may focus on research, research labs, etc. While a fanatic militarist focuses on alloy production and fleet power to war early.

Or what difficulty is set? Lower difficulty, less optimized AI decisions. Higher difficulty, higher optimized AI decisions/weights. Maybe even opinion modifiers. More wars. Difficulty does not equal give the AI more stuff.

Is it in the coding phase or the discussion phase?

I consider at this state the AI is so significantly underwhelming that it should be the focus of the entire as many members of the Quality Team as reasonably possible until it's being coded, then as soon as that's done. Testing. Many could write a dense page about the issues revolving around AI.

EDIT: What's in purple.
 
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You do realize the research penalty for empire sprawl was in from launch, right? It was just hidden in tooltips rather than glaring in the top bar. The "mitigation" was that your empire is larger, therefore you produce more science.
Perhaps it was adjusting to the new economy but I do not recall research feeling so slow when an empire sprawled out in the earlygame in the time of planet tiles. The rest of my point still stands: I want sprawl to hinder research in more organic, indirect ways. Not with a simple Research Cost Penalty.

Or what difficulty is set? Lower difficulty, less optimized AI decisions. Higher difficulty, higher optimized AI decisions/weights. Maybe even opinion modifiers. More wars. Difficulty does not equal give the AI more stuff.
I keep seeing players (in other games as well as this one) asking devs to make AI development worse than ever by spreading finite dev time thin with difficulty-dependent changes to the algorithm. Players who are great at finding the optimal meta in-game but unable to apply that thinking outside the game.
 
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First I want to thank you for the overwhelming support that you’ve shown us with announcing the Custodians initiative. It’s been really fun and motivating to see so many positive responses, and for that we’re truly thankful. At the same time, I must admit that it is also a bit scary in the sense that we shouldn’t have the expectation that this will suddenly resolve any issues you might have with the game, or that we’ll be able to deliver large amounts of significant changes with every update. Let’s appreciate this opportunity and make the best of it :)
I hope Custodians will do what isn't possible in agile/scrum frame: solid and efficacious backend. It will not be a cure for design flaws and balance issues, but probably will produce clear and stable API for game's frontend and modding.
 
I consider at this state the AI is so significantly underwhelming that it should be the focus of the entire Quality Team until it's being coded, then as soon as that's done.

This is an incredibly bad idea for multiple reasons, firstly not all professions have an impact on the AI, secondly adding more programmers doesn't mean a solution will be made faster (as the saying goes nine women can't make a baby in one month).
 
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Hello everyone!

First I want to thank you for the overwhelming support that you’ve shown us with announcing the Custodians initiative. It’s been really fun and motivating to see so many positive responses, and for that we’re truly thankful. At the same time, I must admit that it is also a bit scary in the sense that we shouldn’t have the expectation that this will suddenly resolve any issues you might have with the game, or that we’ll be able to deliver large amounts of significant changes with every update. Let’s appreciate this opportunity and make the best of it :)

Species Pack Gameplay Themes
Last week we already talked about what the Lem Update (honoring the author Stanislaw Lem) would focus on, but I’d also like to go into more detail regarding some things.

We mentioned that we would be adding gameplay to the Humanoids Species Pack and the Plantoids Species Pack, and although I won’t talk about the exact details yet, I do want to talk a little about how we approached it, and the themes we chose.

Plantoids was a bit easier, because there are some obvious fantasies. Going around the themes of growth and plants we’re adding some new traits, civics and origin. We felt like it made sense to open up these gameplay additions to both Plantoid portraits as well as for Fungoids.

Humanoids was a bit trickier, because there are no direct fantasies that apply to them in general, so we instead chose to focus on fantasies that align with things like dwarves, elves, orcs or humans. The Civic we showcased last week was an example of how we made something inspired by a traditionally dwarven fantasy.

Let us know about any ideas or thoughts you have regarding those :)

We will be talking more about these in much greater detail later, but that may possibly be in August.

Game Balance
We’re going to take a look at reworking some of the major outstanding balance issues that we’re having.

One example that I want to talk about is the issue with Research Booming, where power players can essentially outpace other empires due to focusing a lot on research. What enables this is usually Districts that provide Researcher Jobs, which is relatively easy to gain access to early on through Origins such as Shattered Ring or Void Dwellers (the latter not being nearly as strong).

For Shattered Ring we are looking into changing the start from a pure “end-game” Ring World, to be more of an actual “Shattered Ring” that you need to repair before you gain access to the powerful Districts of the Ring World. Putting additional emphasis on the fantasy of restoring this ancient megastructure to its former glory can be a fun addition to the Origin itself. Although we haven’t decided exactly what we’re doing, changing the start to be a Shattered Ring that you can restore with the Mega-Engineering technology is a likely route.

Unity & Empire Sprawl
Beyond Lem, we are also going to take a look at Empire Sprawl and Unity. The design for Admin Capacity was never really something that I felt worked out, and we never finished the design that was intended for it. Continuing to use Admin Cap as a mechanic also feels a bit like a dead end due to multiple reasons (ranging from design to technical), so we’re instead going to look into another solution.

I have a design for doubling down on using Unity as the resource for internal management, removing Admin Cap entirely, and to make Empire Sprawl something that you can never mitigate anymore. More sprawling empires will always suffer harsher penalties from Empire Sprawl, and we’ll instead focus on how Unity can be used internally to mitigate some of those penalties. Examples could be Edicts that have a Unity Upkeep Cost, and perhaps reduce the Research Cost Penalty induced by Empire Sprawl. Angry Pops could potentially also have a Unity Upkeep Cost, to represent the drain on your society.

Note that these ideas are very much in their infancy and very prone to change. We will probably start talking a bit more about that once Lem has been released, but I wanted to share some thoughts with you so that we could gather some initial feedback.

------

That’s all for this week folks! We’re in the middle of reviewing our dev diary schedule, so we’re hoping to be back with 2 more dev diaries before we take a summer break. We’ll keep you in the loop as we go.
Since you still decided to tackle the old problems of the game, check out my post on psionic elevation, currently the weakest and most useless elevation in the game. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...d-balance-psionic-exaltation-upgrade.1472597/
 
This is an incredibly bad idea for multiple reasons, firstly not all professions have an impact on the AI, secondly adding more programmers doesn't mean a solution will be made faster (as the saying goes nine women can't make a baby in one month).

Good point on the firstly. A graphical artist, for instance.

Regarding secondly:
Huh. Maybe it's different for a game company. My brother who is a coder at Facebook is one of many programmers working on the same aspect of a project. Same with folks I recruited in IT for Fortune 500.

For instance. Looking at a game folder, like pop_jobs. There's 7 txt files. Could have 7 programmers doing each txt file. OR. Have 1 programmer working on AI Empire is this Government/Civic Combo for all the permutations possible. OR one coding the AI military decisions, one coding the AI research decisions, one coding the AI economy decisions. If you have just one person coding all the AI, I bet that person hates AI and has nightmares about AI. Not to mention it will only be done as quickly as that one person can code.

The more I think on it, the more I see a separate main file, with multiple txt files inside. Each main file could have one programmer.

ai_jobs
ai_ship_design
ai_military_actions
ai_difficulty
ai_diplomacy
ai_buildings
ai_galactic_community
ai_technology
ai_traditions_ascensions
ai_first_contact
ai_anomalies/precursor/events
 
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I'm not so sure about the idea of having Bureaucrats as the primary Unity producing job. I feel like Unity represents the general "feeling-of-togetherness" of an empire. "Culture Workers" may be generic, but I feel like I understand how they are producing that feeling of "togetherness". I don't like the idea of a culture being "unified" in the figurative sense because they have a lot of Bureaucrats filing paperwork. Maybe for a Byzantine Bureaucracy or something, but for a regular old empire? I don't like it.
 
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Game Balance
We’re going to take a look at reworking some of the major outstanding balance issues that we’re having.

One example that I want to talk about is the issue with Research Booming, where power players can essentially outpace other empires due to focusing a lot on research. What enables this is usually Districts that provide Researcher Jobs, which is relatively easy to gain access to early on through Origins such as Shattered Ring or Void Dwellers (the latter not being nearly as strong).
The issue with technology being so powerful goes far deeper than that. And I feel this is more a valid criticism for 2.8's state of play, not 3.0's - the same mistake that was made with the hub buildings providing more jobs when population got the axe in 3.0. The advantage of these districts now is the fact you don't have to build a city district before now, just making it more efficient. But there's no significant barrier beyond minerals and upkeep for ANY Empire to fill their capital with research labs now that building capacity is tied to city districts instead of population (in fact in a Necrophage game I did in Mutliplayer, the only way I managed to fulfil the Researcher jobs I was making was by migrating the necropurged primitives I made from my guaranteed worlds).

Tied to the below, having Empire sprawl not be a penalty you can avoid will definitely help. But what really needs to be looked at is that technology is the key to EVERYTHING in the game. Any feature or upgrade you'd want that's meaningful comes from technology, whether that be building upgrades, more resource output, etc. Short of military conquest of more pops (raw production) there is no meaningful alternative, so you obviously want to throw everything you can into science. To a point, this fits the 4X formula, but it shouldn't be so... drastic.

At the very least, Traditions needs to be more meaningful, so that players can feel rewarded for focusing more on culture (and just enough technology to not be the Sick Man of the Galaxy). My boyfriend for one is annoyed to no end because he loves the spiritualist flavor, but following through on that flavor by focusing on unity gets modifiers which are, on the whole, worse than many of the technologies (20% resource output to one category from one tech... Which comes in multiple tiers... verses... 5% worker output, for example). He's particularly annoyed because if I ran Technocracy I could stay afield enough in Tradition while snowballing in technology. And even if not, I'm far more likely to get to the t2 and higher Unity Buildings than him and can then leave his Unity production in the dust.

With the idea of having multiple traditions to pick from, and that they can be specialized now that alternatives are available, I think it would be a fantastic idea to put some gameplay defining features in Tradition Trees. It can be a way to make different Empires feel, and play, quite a bit different. Things like Slave Processing Facilities being a tradition in a slavery focused tree for example, the old school Domination bonuses for Vassal Swarms as another. Give real rewards to a culture that dedicates to fields of discovery and research, or slavery and production, rather than being small bonuses one accrues on the side.
Unity & Empire Sprawl
Beyond Lem, we are also going to take a look at Empire Sprawl and Unity. The design for Admin Capacity was never really something that I felt worked out, and we never finished the design that was intended for it. Continuing to use Admin Cap as a mechanic also feels a bit like a dead end due to multiple reasons (ranging from design to technical), so we’re instead going to look into another solution.

I have a design for doubling down on using Unity as the resource for internal management, removing Admin Cap entirely, and to make Empire Sprawl something that you can never mitigate anymore. More sprawling empires will always suffer harsher penalties from Empire Sprawl, and we’ll instead focus on how Unity can be used internally to mitigate some of those penalties. Examples could be Edicts that have a Unity Upkeep Cost, and perhaps reduce the Research Cost Penalty induced by Empire Sprawl. Angry Pops could potentially also have a Unity Upkeep Cost, to represent the drain on your society.

Note that these ideas are very much in their infancy and very prone to change. We will probably start talking a bit more about that once Lem has been released, but I wanted to share some thoughts with you so that we could gather some initial feedback.

------

That’s all for this week folks! We’re in the middle of reviewing our dev diary schedule, so we’re hoping to be back with 2 more dev diaries before we take a summer break. We’ll keep you in the loop as we go.

Oh yes! If its a worker that goes, its the Culture Worker since its so generic. Bureaucrats would be the Unity producing job. That would mean shifting around some job-swaps (like managers for megacorps) to be swaps of the bureaucrat instead.

We absolutely need to maintain the idea of Trantor.
DEATH TO BUREAUCRATS! \o/ (Its somewhat vindicating after saying that the 'crat introduction and Administrative Capacity was a mistake since the dev diary announcing it from a summer experiment, sorry. I'll get over it after watching crab rave for five minutes).

Might I make a recommendation of shifting Entertainers to also be a primary Unity producing job? Healthcare, Clerks, merchants make sense for amenities, but I always felt 'entertainment' being an amenity was a bit odd, when entertainment and media is such a core part of cultural power and expression, which Unity is arguably the resource meant to represent that (and accrues to unlock bonuses from their society in Traditions/AP). And I can certainly imagine the power media has for internal stability (or tying into Espionage... for external instability. The propaganda war during the Cold War, or the black market of hollywood movies in Communist countries, can be prime inspiration for game mechanics to 'nudge' your neighbors into agreeing more with you via the power of your entertainment).

Bureaucrats meanwhile I could imagine providing some amenities, I mean they are paper pushers that can move government aid around to provide for the needs of the citizen. Perhaps a bonus to them from Shared Burdens? I know we technically have two jobs that share the same niche then, but I think that could be just fine and flavorful, as each job could be customized in different ways via civics and traditions to lead to different places.
 
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Here's another question: Expanding will clearly become a bit more punishing in the future, encouraging players to overall maintain smaller empires/keep less territory. That also means fewer opportunities for archeology, which means less artifacts.

Is there some consideration going on to make artifacts obtainable in a more diverse manner, like war (i.e. Galatron), trade or via imperial seizure? (I specifically didn't mention espionage, as there's no real defense against that)
Espionage could be used to see which artifacts are even "available" for grabs and creating a Casus Belli for that.
 
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I would be kinda sad if I couldn't build ecumenopolises (modded eco-arcologies have bureacrat districts) full of bureaucrats ala 40k Holy Terra but it might be good for the game as a whole.
 
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To put some concerns at rest, as I've said in every dev diary (I think, it seems like it at this point) we're always working on the AI and the work done on Humanoids, Plantoids and considering game balance isn't subtracting from that.
Maybe put it to your signature to save time. :D
 
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This is an incredibly bad idea for multiple reasons, firstly not all professions have an impact on the AI, secondly adding more programmers doesn't mean a solution will be made faster (as the saying goes nine women can't make a baby in one month).
Replying here because i can't hit the "agree" button as many times as i would like to.
 
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Replying here because i can't hit the "agree" button as many times as i would like to.
Replying here to drive my point home.

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The difference is PDS Green is going to need to add more files to improve the AI, not just edit what's already there. For instance, the AI doesn't resettle its pops. It can auto resettle pops, but it cannot force resettle. Doomsday Origin? Yep.
 
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The entire point is that culture worker is a generic name and conflates artists, entertainers, social workers, censors, propagandists, and a dozen other specialised roles. If it were just "entertainers" or "artists," I doubt that @grekulf would have called them "generic."
Well that's easily fixed. Just call them Curators. That fits neatly with the monument buildings.
 
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Replying here to drive my point home.

View attachment 730665

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The difference is PDS Green is going to need to add more files to improve the AI, not just edit what's already there. For instance, the AI doesn't resettle its pops. It can auto resettle pops, but it cannot force resettle. Doomsday Origin? Yep.

The bottleneck for developing a feature is not the number of files involved, dude. It's how many developers can work concurrently on the feature without stepping on each other's toes and keeping up a decent level of coordination.

Not to mention that a lot of AI work isn't going to be purely scripting, there's a lot more to it than "adding new files".
 
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Huh. Maybe it's different for a game company. My brother who is a coder at Facebook is one of many programmers working on the same aspect of a project. Same with folks I recruited in IT for Fortune 500.

For instance. Looking at a game folder, like pop_jobs. There's 7 txt files. Could have 7 programmers doing each txt file. OR. Have 1 programmer working on AI Empire is this Government/Civic Combo for all the permutations possible. OR one coding the AI military decisions, one coding the AI research decisions, one coding the AI economy decisions. If you have just one person coding all the AI, I bet that person hates AI and has nightmares about AI. Not to mention it will only be done as quickly as that one person can code.

The more I think on it, the more I see a separate main file, with multiple txt files inside. Each main file could have one programmer.
Mythical Man-Month thinking detected. That you're basing an argument based on comparisons across sub-industries of software development indicates you're not familiar with the details of software development, only hearsay from other people who aren't going to explain details to someone outside the field. I appreciate you are highly concerned about the state of Stellaris' AI and I agree it needs (likely has) a high priority in dev time management. I do not recommend talking further on how it should be done. I have seen from the inside a big software company fail hard because management didn't understand the reality of software development and imposed policies based on factory assembly line metaphors.

Apologies if you genuinely want to learn the details but I don't sense that desire from what you've written so far.
 
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Beyond Lem, we are also going to take a look at Empire Sprawl and Unity. The design for Admin Capacity was never really something that I felt worked out, and we never finished the design that was intended for it. Continuing to use Admin Cap as a mechanic also feels a bit like a dead end due to multiple reasons (ranging from design to technical), so we’re instead going to look into another solution.

Main problem with Admin Capacity is not its concept per se, but the fact than you can get it too easy (especially now when building slots can easy me maxed out by building city districts). If you can balance/soft cap how much you can realistically get it would be fine. For example, capital buildings get one bureaucrat job per level and bureaucratic buildings are limited one per planet; this way you could never max out your admin cap just bump down Empire Sprawl occasionally.

PS - I know you mentioned than army/ground combat overhaul ir pretty much at bottom end of content update barrel (and i can live with it even if i am not happy about it), but could you at least entertain idea of creating Army Manager UI so we dont have to click 1000 times each time we want to rebuild assault armies.
 
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