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Stellaris Dev Diary #221 - Balance and Quality of Life Improvements

Hey folks, I’m @Alfray Stryke, a member of the QA team for Stellaris. As part of the Custodians’ work on the 3.1 “Lem” patch, as mentioned in Dev Diary #215, the team has done a balance and Quality of Life pass on various features throughout the game and we’d like to highlight some of the more harder hitting changes. This is not a complete list of all changes, and may contain some not-final numbers. As a reminder, the changes to the Necroids Species Pack were covered in Dev Diary #216, and all of these changes will also be included in the Lem update.

Void Dwellers

We’ve been aware that the implementation of Void Dwellers of having two separate traits, one positive and one negative resulted in behaviour that we weren’t happy with - in particular being able to gene-mod the negative aspects of the trait out of existence. To solve this we’ve made some changes to how the traits work:

  • There is now only a single Void Dweller trait, so it can’t be exploited via genetic modification of your species.
  • The modifiers on the trait itself have changed, previously it gave:
    • +15% Resources from Worker and Specialist jobs & -10% growth speed (for the positive version)
    • -60% growth speed (for the negative version)
  • The new version of the trait is now:
    • +15% Pop Resource Output on Habitats.
    • -15% Pop Resource Output on Non-Artificial Worlds.
    • -10% Growth Speed
    • -30% Happiness on Non-Artificial Worlds.

Void Dweller.png

The new, improved, Void Dweller trait with its modifiers.

What this means is your Void Dwellers pops are most productive and happiest on habitats, have their bonuses removed on ringworlds and have production and happiness penalties if they settle on planets (best to leave those for immigrants or robots!)

Shattered Ring

So before you grab your plasma-pitchforks (yes, plasma-pitchforks are canon now), rebalancing the Shattered Ring origin is something the team has been discussing for a while. We’ve gone through various iterations on decreasing the initial power of the origin, while keeping the player fantasy that it provides in mind and eventually settled on having the progression of the Shattered Ring resemble that of the Remnants origin.

Shattered Ring.png

The Voor Technocracy, showing off the Shattered Ringworld Segment as a homeworld.

The shattered ring itself supports the following district types:
  • City, Hive & Nexus - housing depending on your empire type.
  • Industrial - where valuable consumer goods and alloys can be manufactured.
  • Trade - where clerks turn a tidy profit and artisans run their workshops.
  • Generator (not pictured) - where hive-minds and machine intelligence power their infrastructure. Note that Generator and Trade districts swap depending on the owner of the Shattered Ring, much like Commercial and Generator Segments on a ringworld.
  • Agricultural - where food is grown for those that eat it.
  • Mining - more on that in a moment...

Once all the rubble has been cleared out, there’s space for 25 of these districts.

So you might be wondering, “Are those mining districts on my ringworld? What am I mining?”

Well dear reader, the answer is the ring itself!

Mining District.png

Mining districts, aka tunnels filled with valuable minerals and alloys.

As a civilization that has only known life on the ring prior to achieving spaceflight, the only resources available to you were those that made up the ringworld itself. Luckily ruined ringworlds are massive and can spare some missing broken materials without falling into their local sun.

As such your mining district on the shattered ring replaces the regular miner jobs with scrap miner jobs with a base job output of 2 minerals and 1 alloy per month.

Of course, as was alluded to above, we wanted the progression for the shattered ring to resemble that of the relic world from the Remnants origin. So once you’ve cleared all the debris from the shattered ring and researched the appropriate technology you can repair it into a fully functioning ringworld segment.

Repair Shattered Ring.png

Of course, sometimes a bit of home repair work needs to be done.

Upon completion of this monumental task, the districts on the shattered ring are upgraded into their respective ringworld districts at a 5:1 ratio - so 5 agricultural districts become 1 agricultural segment. Since fixing up the ring means you’ll no longer be clearing out material, the mining districts are removed and the ability to construct research segments is added.

Ecumenopolis QoL Changes

Something we’ve received a lot of feedback on is that when a world is transformed into an Ecumenopolis is the assignment of industrial districts.

Prior to 3.1, all of the industrial districts were assumed to be devoted to alloy production and thus converted into foundry arcologies. No more, in 3.1 industrial districts will convert based off of the planetary designation:

  • With the “Foundry World” designation, industrial districts will convert into foundry arcologies, at a 2:1 ratio
  • With the “Factory World” designation, industrial districts will convert into factory arcologies, at a 2:1 ratio.
  • With any other designation, including the “Industrial World” designation, industrial districts will convert into both foundry and factory arcologies, at a 4:1:1 ratio.

Relic World.png

Earth, a bygone relic of a time long past, ready to be restored anew.

Ecumenopolis.png

Earth, restored anew! Note that the local governing algorithm did not assume all industrial capabilities should be focused on supporting the Custodianship Navy.

Another change we’ve implemented is the Arcology Project ascension perk and decision to restore relic worlds into ecumenopolises is now accessible to Rogue Servitors. In addition, the leisure arcologies that would normally be present have been repurposed for housing bio-trophies in luxurious towering arcologies.

Sanctuary Arcology.png

Pampering will be provided at Floor 314, Room 15 at 9:26 am.


Assorted QoL Changes

As mentioned above, the planetary designation for consumer goods has been renamed to Factory World, because we’ve added an Industrial World designation.

Industrial Designations.png

Multiple planetary designations for your various needs

The new Industrial World designation is ideal for planets where you don’t want to focus the Industrial districts on a single job type, instead providing a minor upkeep discount to both Artisan and Metallurgist jobs.

Industrial World.png

Industrial World Designation

Both Hive Worlds and Machine Worlds have gained an additional bonus to bring them more in line with Gaia Worlds. Hive Worlds now have +1 innate Spawning Drone job and Machine Worlds now have +1 innate Replicator job. The Machine World given by the Resource Consolidation origin starts with a blocker which will need to be cleared to unlock the Replicator job.

Hive World.png
Machine World.png


Subversive Cults (MegaCorps with both Gospel of the Masses and Criminal Syndicate) no longer have access to the Temple of Prosperity. Instead, they can now establish a Subversive Shrine in their branch offices - increasing both Spiritualist ethics attraction and crime on the planet.

Subversive Shrine.png

Subversive Shrine Tooltip.png

Subvert expectations with deals so good they’re criminal!

With that I’ll pass things over to @Gruntsatwork to discuss some of the changes we’ve made to civics!

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Hello everyone. I am one of Game Designers currently working on Stellaris and on the Custodian Team. While we have been busy with radical changes here and there, new civics and origins, we also wanted to have some more tame but no less important balance changes for our already existing civics, specifically for our outliers and those we felt under- or especially over-utilized.

The following lists all the civics we felt needed a substantial lift up
Regular Empires
  • Beacon of Liberty: Gave +15% produced Unity -> Now ALSO also gives -15% Empire Sprawl from Pops
  • Imperial Cult: Gave +1 Edict cap -> Now gives +2 Edict cap
  • Idealistic Foundation: Gave +5% Happiness -> Now gives +10% Happiness
  • Environmentalist: Gave -10% Consumer Goods Upkeep -> Now gives -20% Consumer Goods Upkeep
  • Parliamentary System: Gave +25% Faction Influence -> Now gives +40% Faction Influence
  • Efficient Bureaucracy: Gave +10% Admin Cap -> Now gives +20% Admin Cap
  • Nationalistic Zeal: Gave -10% War Exhaustion Gain and -10% Claim Cost -> Now gives -20% War Exhaustion Gain and -15% Claim Cost
  • Functional Architecture: Gave -10% Building and District Cost, -10% Building and District Upkeep and +1 Building Slot -> Now gives -15% Building and District Cost, +2 Building Slots, Upkeep reduction removed
Hive-Minds
  • Subspace Ephase: Gave +15% Naval Capacity -> Now gives +20% Ship Speed and ALSO gives +15% Naval Capacity
  • Divided Attention: Gave +10% Admin Cap -> Now gives +20% Admin Cap
Machine Intelligences
  • Constructobot: Gave -10% Building and District Cost, -10% Building and District Upkeep and +1 Building Slot -> Now gives -15% Building and District Cost, +2 Building Slots, Upkeep reduction removed
We hope those changes, while strictly number tweaks, will give those civics a breath of fresh air and increase their appeal to the wider player-base because, “oh, shiny new numbers” is one hell of a drug.

Now sadly, only strengthening the civics we felt undervalued or under-used doesn’t solve all issues, so we also introduced some slight nerfs to the 2(3) biggest offenders in terms of being “must have” civics.
  • Slaver Guilds : Reduced enslaved population from 40% to 35%
  • Indentured Assets: Reduced enslaved population from 40% to 35% (Megacorp civic)
  • Technocracy: Added 1 Consumer Goods upkeep to Scientist Jobs that create unity because of Technocracy

As you can tell, for the slaver guild civics, this change is relatively minor, compared to the Technocracy nerf. The goal here is to make those 3 civics slightly less good. We have no intention of nerfing them into the ground. Our goal here is to move them from “the best pick, every time” to “could be best pick, depending on circumstances”.

We will be following your feedback here and over all other platforms very closely as well as our own telemetry and we will keep adjusting and tweaking the civics as we go on.

As an extra note, we know that there are several other civics that definitely need a pick me up, we will be looking into them as well, but not for the Lem update.

That’s everything from us this week! Thanks for reading and we’ll be back next week diving into more changes in the Lem Update.
 
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@Pancakelord

This post reminded me of another issue with slavery that I observed in my first ironman game - slave nations are too willing to sell off large portions of their own population on the market. While they need to sell off some to that the slave market is meaningful at all, it caused problems for me later in that match. I had spun off a number of sectors into vassals so that they could grow their populations and I could reintegrate them later. And this worked very well while I was still an egalitarian democracy, since my vassals were also egalitarians who outlawed slavery. But after I reformed into the First Galactic Imperium, vassals that I made after that point defaulted to being slavers, since I was then authoritarian. And since I was at that point creating vassals on the edges of my space, in conquered sectors, they had large alien populations. Only did I realize, too late, that the vassals I had appointed to rule those sectors in my stead had sold off most of the xeno populations of those sectors on the slave market, depopulating a large swath of the Outer Rim, which was exactly the opposite of my intention.
 
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Will there be a new DLC anouncement (not release) in september along with the lem release?

Lem will not be associated with a DLC announcement/release. This is a standalone patch as part of the Custodians Initiative. :)
 
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No, that only includes habitats and ringworlds (both shattered and repaired).
Is that a strict list or something that depends on a scripted trigger for habitable megastructures (for happiness non-penalty part)? Would be really nice if the latter since it would be nice to have void dwellers still-happy while living on modded megastructures
 
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@Pancakelord

This post reminded me of another issue with slavery that I observed in my first ironman game - slave nations are too willing to sell off large portions of their own population on the market. While they need to sell off some to that the slave market is meaningful at all, it caused issues in my first ironman game. I had spun off a number of sectors into vassals so that they could grow their populations and I could reintegrate them later. And this worked very well while I was still an egalitarian democracy, since my vassals were also egalitarians who outlawed slavery. But after I reformed into the First Galactic Imperium, vassals that I made after that point defaulted to being slavers, since I was then authoritarian. And since I was at that point creating vassals on the edges of my space, in conquered sectors, they had large alien populations. Only did I realize, too late, that the vassals I had appointed to rule those sectors in my stead had sold off most of the xeno populations of those sectors on the slave market, depopulating a large swath of the Outer Rim, which was exactly the opposite of my intention.
The slave market is just flawed.

You always want to buy pops, even as a slaver empire, as you actually have a place for them to work (moar slaves!) - unlike classical scifi slave traders that just deal in slaves - slaves are a means of production in stellaris, not just a commodity. And energy is dirt cheap. Why make 500 EC when you can just put those pops to work.

What it needs is 2 things
  1. Roaming marauder/pirate-like fleets of AI "Slavers" to steal pops from across the galaxy.
    • They will spawn randomly (e.g. in nebulae systems, uncharted space, on the borders of two empires) and go on a rampage, stealing pops.
    • They will then try to "escape" the territory they were raiding in.
    • If they do, a short time later, those stolen pops then appear on the galactic slave market. This means slaves will be appearing from across the galaxy, even if there arent slave empires selling (and the GC has one more "evil" thing - slaver operations - for it to hunt down).
  2. A special kind of primitive/non-empire thrall planet "Slave farm"
    • ruled over by a despotic class, these worlds exist to breed and export slaves - either directly on to the slave market if it exists - or they'll send caravaneer-like slave merchants to the local (slave-using) rulers, to sell them pops directly (via dialogue popup).
      • Edit - they could also sell them to gestalts as... food and Building a starbase over their system gives you better slave-rates or something too.
This way the Gal Slave market gets a more steady supply of slaves, at least in to the midgame. Beyond that, upping base slave prices might help, too.
 
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I was hoping for Agrarian Idyll to get some buffs or at least lift the shattered ring exclusion so we can take it. I agree that it sounded overpowered to get tons of amenities for almost free, but with these tweaks shattered rings become similar to regular planets in terms of districts.

As for the contents of the DD, it's an amazing job. I welcome them tweaks. Very nice stuff are in there. Love you guys and gals.

Cheers~
 
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For rogue servitors, could it be made possible for bio trophies to auto resettle? With rogue servitors now having access to ecumenopolis with a special district for trophies, the optimal way to play would be to grow them on each of your planets, and then move them to the ecumenopolis. I could see this being rather tedious. If it could be made automatic, it would be a nice balance change.
 
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Artificial worlds are ringworlds and habitats.
That should probably be clarified in the game in some tooltip.

Are Marauder and Enclave pops going to use that new Void Dweller trait?
 
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IMO if you want players to pick this civic, it needs a "USP" (unique selling point)
I think this is true for many civics.
The changes mentionned in this DD are mostly fine, but some "tuning the numbers" is certainly not hat I was looking for when I read that civics were getting changed.
What makes Stellaris interesting is the stuff that actually changes your gameplay/playstyle.
If you wanted to make a game of modifiers, Stellaris is a failure anyway.
Just because some numbers are slightly less bad doesn't mean that my attitude towards a civic will change from "never take" to "might sometimes take". I take civics that makes my playthrough different, not just "viable".

Overall I must say that I'm a bit disappointed by this DD. Not that it's bad. But when I see Qol improvements, I kinda hope to see some Speed Dial-like feature added to the game and similar stuff. Number-tuning is the kind of thing we normally see in patch notes. In the same time, I guess it's better not making too many radical changes at the same time. There's already going to be some gameplay chances for Plantoids and Necroids as well as the new traditions system... We'll see how everything works together. At least I know I'll try a Stellaris game when Lem is out.
 
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Great!
Also, is there any planned improvement for those underwhelming Espionage Operations such as Arm Privateers or Smear Campaign?
Because they really need to be a thing aside from flavour text
 
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I feel like shattered ring now has the worst of both worlds of life seeded and relic. Ring habitability and ungodly tech requirements to even fix up your one segment. Is there any way to fix a broken segments into a livable shattered segment without mega engineering?
 
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