Stellaris Dev Diary #226 - Custodians & Next Steps

[DUnit]

If taking bugs/suggestions - how about fixing Xenocompatibility? I think it would be good to have every portrait registered as its own species (0 pops) with every in-game species being a subtype of whatever portrait it uses - including the half-breeds. It would also be cool to open Xenocompatibility up to empires that have taken the gene modding ascension perks, adding scary/intimate RP to hive mind assimilation.

 

[Rhym3z]

Any chance you guys could finally fix the "take point" feature?
it hasnt worked at all for like 2 years ish?

 

[Shimohi]

Next step, proper UI scaling. Thanks.

 

[WwAiRtRhIiOnR]

Maybe bug tracking/voting/submission and feature suggestion as an ingame feature accessible from the main menu.

 

[Libertine Angel]

Fantastic work!

Is there any chance for a spy rework? Namely to seperate spies from envoys. Right now the diplomacy and alliance system tends to suck up all available envoys leaving espionage forgotten until mid to late game where you can afford to spare an envoy for a rival.

Possibly a policy that allocates some percentage of representatives between diplo and spies?

All through the dev diaries for First Contact and Espionage so many of us were clamouring to have them be made into proper leaders and I still think that's a good idea, maybe give them a separate quantity cap so we still have to do some amount of prioritising but it would definitely make things feel more fleshed out, I don't remember exactly why the devs said they wouldn't.

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

More public bug tracking? Good, the whole "submit on forums, vote on forums, but then it goes internal" is quite apparently kind of a mess and looks like it means lots of spamming of duplicates because it's not easy to search. You'll probably get a lot less noise with a more formal, integrated system.

An open beta? Even better, the main issue I think with Lem is that some issues very obvious to players looking to optimize things came with it. It also has...less than stellar balance overall.

But...what's the ETA on 3.1.3? It's quite frankly a little concerning we're talking about the next 2 major patches before talking about a very necessary hotfix to numerous bug and balance issues Lem introduced, especially when the last hotfix came with a list of "known issues" as large as its fixes (and that didn't even include some really important bugs). I really hope that this whole Custodian initiative isn't falling victim to the same trap the main team seems to have, whereby a focus on ever-further-off reworks means a desire not to make many tweaks to what is here now.

 

[Velaroz]

If there is anything that could really use some expanding on to better make something have good value, I'd say the Nemesis's DLC's "Become the Crisis" needs a proper shipset for the ships meant to "strike fear" into the galaxy.

Currently all we have is some old pirate ship junkheaps we dig out of old asteroid belts and debris fields, and strap good weapons on. The scary part is the stuff we put on them, not the ships themselves.

 

[Reedstilt]

Is there any chance for a spy rework? Namely to seperate spies from envoys. Right now the diplomacy and alliance system tends to suck up all available envoys leaving espionage forgotten until mid to late game where you can afford to spare an envoy for a rival.

Definitely agree that envoys and spies/operatives should be split up (I prefer "Operative" over "Spy" because it's a bit more all-encompassing in terms of its function). Right now, Xenophiles are better at espionage than other Ethics because they get extra envoys from the start. I don't see any reason why Xenophobes shouldn't be good at espionage even if their diplomacy is terrible. Splitting them up also means you can get more Operatives from Subterfuge rather than needing to take Diplomacy for that +1 Envoy effect.

I could see a world where everyone starts with one or two Envoys and Operatives, with Xenophiles getting +1/+2 Envoys and Xenophobes getting +1/+2 Operative, with various Civics to boost that further. Secret Police and Shadow Council would both be good places for a +1 Operative.

Obviously, I also think we need more variety of Operations for an Envoy/Operative split to really be worth it. Bare minimum, a "Counter-Espionage" Operation would be useful to suppress the target empire's ability to gather Intel on you. That gives Xenophobes something thematic to do right away since they wouldn't want those nasty xenos learning too much about them.

 

[Enfield_PDX]

But...what's the ETA on 3.1.3? It's quite frankly a little concerning we're talking about the next 2 major patches before talking about a very necessary hotfix to numerous bug and balance issues Lem introduced, especially when the last hotfix came with a list of "known issues" as large as its fixes (and that didn't even include some really important bugs). I really hope that this whole Custodian initiative isn't falling victim to the same trap the main team seems to have, whereby a focus on ever-further-off reworks means a desire not to make many tweaks to what is here now.

I'll be open about this, there are no plans for a 3.1.3 right now. A hotfix is generally something we do to resolve issues that *must* be fixed. 3.1.2 was aimed at some obvious issues that we could fix quickly and efficiently and in a couple of cases fixes that didn't make the release build.

As it stands right now, there's nothing in 3.1.2 that I would consider hot fix worthy. That includes the fleet manager issues. The Desync from custom UI mods in MP, etc.

They are annoying, but generally speaking the vast majority of players games right now are totally untouched by them, they will be addressed in our next release, but to get to that release without causing issues, we have to focus our attention on 3.2 without stop starting to make small patches.

 

[Mythox]

honestly the LAM patch is the best thing that has happened to Stellaris in a long time, I'm so happy with it and I keep playing it after a long break !!

 

[ATerafin22]

I'll be open about this, there are no plans for a 3.1.3 right now. A hotfix is generally something we do to resolve issues that *must* be fixed. 3.1.2 was aimed at some obvious issues that we could fix quickly and efficiently and in a couple of cases fixes that didn't make the release build.

As it stands right now, there's nothing in 3.1.2 that I would consider hot fix worthy. That includes the fleet manager issues. The Desync from custom UI mods in MP, etc.

They are annoying, but generally speaking the vast majority of players games right now are totally untouched by them, they will be addressed in our next release, but to get to that release without causing issues, we have to focus our attention on 3.2 without stop starting to make small patches.

I very much appreciate the insight and candor, as I've appreciated everything recently except for the fact that I have what I consider to be a game breaking bug with nearly all Fleets disappearing from the Fleet Manager (and so non-upgradeable or controllable).

As bug reported here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ctual-ships-or-match-military-fleets.1491273/

I have had a couple exceptions, in one game I had a drifting Marauder fleet remain in my Fleet Manager and in another I had the 3 New Ships remain. That wasn't helpful in the same way being able to control/upgrade a 2nd or 3rd Fleet would be, but it was different. I don't know if I should mention things like that in the original bug report or somewhere else?

In any event, as someone who is in the minority and has a gamebreaking bug then is there a recommended course? Not playing the game at all until 3.2 hopefully fixes it? Rolling back to Dick? Something else?

Thanks again for addressing what you did. I realize that sometimes the minority has to be patient and am doing my best. Hopefully the game will work again for me, and others like me, sooner than later.

 

[AllenY]

Back in february 2019 in Dev Diary #141 Grekulf gave a pretty good list of things they had on their plate:

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST, NOR IS ANYTHING FINAL OR CERTAIN TO HAPPEN

Future goals (in no particular order):

• Pop growth: Look into how immigration/emigration works, try to make base growth across multiple planets less powerful, make habitability matter more again
• Sectors & automation: Allow players to nudge which sectors planets belong to, reduce micromanagement by improving sector management tools
• Backgrounds: Split up some civics into backgrounds, and add more backgrounds.
• Civic flavour: Spend more time on making the civics feel more unique and fun
• Institutions: Define which institutions make up your empire’s internal departments (such as Diplomatic Corps, Xenology Bureau etc.), and their funding, size and power.
• Espionage: Intel to determine how much you know about another empire, spy actions, cloaking, sabotage & general mischief.
• Religion & Cults: Similar to factions, cults could appear in your empire during certain circumstances. Spiritualist empires would most likely have “imperial” cults. Worship of powerful entities etc.
• Archaeology: Explore the ruins of ancient civilizations
• Subject contracts: Allow overlords to better customize what type of subjects they have, tribute levels, benefits to subject etc.
• Federation depth: Allow federations to level up, have different election types, taxes etc.
• Galactic Council: Create a sort of a ‘space UN’ with galactic politics and diplomacy
• Primitives: Allow for more interactions with primitive pre-FTL species

I would say we have seen quite a bit of this list added since then. I would certainly be interested to see an update to this and perhaps a new one for the Primary team and one for the Custodians.

I still refer to this too! I really hope they speak about institutions/primitives and other such small-scale, detailed interactions soon.

 

[Hagala]

A potential solution to the empire sprawl thing could be that your empire sprawl grows exponentially capped at say 300% of current sprawl, so the bigger your empire the bigger portion of it has to be beurocrats.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

Even if you don't implement a voting feature or anything, I think it would be nice to have a stickied thread in the bug forum with known issues. That might help cut down on duplicate reports, and give you a location to ask for save files exhibiting certain bugs.

 

[megaboto]

I'll be open about this, there are no plans for a 3.1.3 right now. A hotfix is generally something we do to resolve issues that *must* be fixed. 3.1.2 was aimed at some obvious issues that we could fix quickly and efficiently and in a couple of cases fixes that didn't make the release build.

As it stands right now, there's nothing in 3.1.2 that I would consider hot fix worthy. That includes the fleet manager issues. The Desync from custom UI mods in MP, etc.

They are annoying, but generally speaking the vast majority of players games right now are totally untouched by them, they will be addressed in our next release, but to get to that release without causing issues, we have to focus our attention on 3.2 without stop starting to make small patches.

i really do not like this. at the start most might not be affected because they try the base game, esentially, or the mods aren't updated. but this breaks a lot of mods and limits the options. and hell, it could even straight out not be adressed in 3.2 while even more issues come up

 

[Ferrus Animus]

The Custodian Initiative
With the Custodian Initiative we’re doing a lot of new things at once, and in combination with a lot of internal changes as well, means we’re still learning and adapting.

Lem has been a bit mixed for me. On the one hand a lot got fixed, including some have been in the game for over 5 years.
On the other hand some issues remain or have been added. I will use the very haphazard necrophage hivemind implementation and the ability for empires without biological pops to abuse catalytic processing.
One is an implementation of something shiny that seems simply unfinished and in need of much future fixing, the other is a simple oversight, that at this point should not happen.
Necrophage relies on slaves/purging, yet nobody seems to have considered that hiveminds don't enslave the same way and that as such they can't work around a penalty to worker output, or how stabiltiy works different for them.
The catalytic processing issue of simply being able to eat the penalty for a food shortage, because the negatives simply affect nothing the empire has (it gets partly adressed in 3.1.2.) is something that can literally be seen by reading the wiki or starting a game to see how it works. Given that the way shortages work has been clunky since they were implemented and that especially machine empires ability to mostly ignore the impact of energy shortages has been one of the reasons they could and can tech rush so well, having that overlooked seems like there's a flaw somewhere in the testing process.

Now custodians are new, but issues like this hint to the fact that the processes that govern Stellaris development and that made the custodian initiative something necessary haven't really change, except there's 2 teams now.
So my feedback here is: Adress that. Change how the custodians work and do these things. If the custodians keep producing the same issues they are supposed to fix, then you've just created extra work.

 

[Aerolfos]

I'll be open about this, there are no plans for a 3.1.3 right now. A hotfix is generally something we do to resolve issues that *must* be fixed. 3.1.2 was aimed at some obvious issues that we could fix quickly and efficiently and in a couple of cases fixes that didn't make the release build.

As it stands right now, there's nothing in 3.1.2 that I would consider hot fix worthy. That includes the fleet manager issues. The Desync from custom UI mods in MP, etc.

They are annoying, but generally speaking the vast majority of players games right now are totally untouched by them, they will be addressed in our next release, but to get to that release without causing issues, we have to focus our attention on 3.2 without stop starting to make small patches.

With all due respect, but personally I see at least 5 (usually more) people creating bug reports in mods *daily* for the desync issue, and disagree strongly. This is exactly the kind of issue that has been hotfixed in the past as critical.

Any kind of modded multiplayer is effectively dead until November, and I've seen several scheduled games not happen. Anecdotal perhaps, but there's quite a lot of people that wanted to coop against the new Blokkat crisis from Gigastructures, which is effectively not possible in 3.1.

 

[Azhcristokos]

I am bummed that we didn't get a look at necrophage hive minds and the ability to peruse traditions at will...but overall, Lem seems to have been a resounding success! And really it's not that big of an issue because the next release is two months and not six.

 

[pmchem]

Looking forward to the AI blog and AI improvements in 3.2.

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

I'll be open about this, there are no plans for a 3.1.3 right now. A hotfix is generally something we do to resolve issues that *must* be fixed. 3.1.2 was aimed at some obvious issues that we could fix quickly and efficiently and in a couple of cases fixes that didn't make the release build.

As it stands right now, there's nothing in 3.1.2 that I would consider hot fix worthy. That includes the fleet manager issues. The Desync from custom UI mods in MP, etc.

They are annoying, but generally speaking the vast majority of players games right now are totally untouched by them, they will be addressed in our next release, but to get to that release without causing issues, we have to focus our attention on 3.2 without stop starting to make small patches.

I'm quite frankly shocked. Of the things 3.1.2 fixed, I'd say only 2 are critical (Elder One exploit and locked 0% hab), in that they would effectively allow a player to put their own empire or another in an unexpectedly unrecoverable state, and surely such a severe desync, or the 1-month-warning-asteroid bug, would be considered of similar severity. I would surely expect, given history even from the previous "Dick" patch cycle, a second minor patch to address serious issues while knocking out low-hanging fruit (Mastercraft Inc.'s problem, the relic capture being impossible bug, etc.) and making minor balance tweaks.
I am hopeful that an open beta will eliminate the need for multiple minor followup patches from 3.3's reworks in February, but I am still rather worried about things given it seems like the process of releasing a patch is so extremely disruptive to operations. I suppose 3.2 will involve dealing with technical debt rather than incurring it as 3.1 did, but November is a long ways away...hopefully it truly will be quite the bundle of fixes and balance tweaks.