Stellaris Dev Diary #237 - Reworking Unity, Part One

[Critical Ethics]

why cant people who claim admin cap isnt a bad thing understand how ABSOLUTELY crucial technology in this game is?

If my science costs three times as much as yours then that just means I need to build three times as many scientists as you. The question is when do I hit the triple costs compared to my ability to afford more scientists? If I hit triple costs when I only have 1.5 times your economy then yeah, wide empires gonna suck at science. If I hit triple costs when I have 6 times your economy then my wide empire can research better than your tall empire as long as I keep investing a sensible amount into more researchers to keep up with my expansion. Somewhere in the middle is a hypothetical state where investing X% of your budget into science always gets you Y% of a technology per month but realistically this is an impossible target to reliably hit, so they're going to aim for tall empires being on average slightly faster or slightly slower at finishing research than a much wider one.

Without any of this if my empire gets say a 25% economy lead on you then it's trivial for me to jump ahead of you in tech. I can afford more researchers than you but with the same tech costs so I'll just research stuff faster and get more economy and invest more in researchers etc. Sprawl is needed because of how crucial tech is and how early leads turn into snowballs.

 

[Mealya]

As a machine empire, I feel being discriminated in that system, because my leaders are immortal and I have to choose the right leaders from the beginning, but with that system it will put me way more behind, when cycling traits than the other empires.

Same here but with the Venerable trait.

What the point of having immortal/pseudo-immortal leaders if you can not choose a good one at the beginning ?

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Same here but with the Venerable trait.

What the point of having immortal/pseudo-immortal leaders if you can not choose a good one at the beginning ?

To counter, what’s the point in choosing leaders if you feel it’s mandatory to get the best options? You may as well just have a flat bonus and remove leaders.

Its a somewhat reductive argument that not being guaranteed to have the best options from the beginning is a bad thing.

 

[Mealya]

To counter, what’s the point in choosing leaders if you feel it’s mandatory to get the best options? You may as well just have a flat bonus and remove leaders.

Its a somewhat reductive argument that not being guaranteed to have the best options from the beginning is a bad thing.

It's very simple.

If I make a build to have my bio leaders immortals, I don't want to have useless ones at the beginning. That the point of the Venerable trait. Keeping good starting leaders to the end.

If you can't do that at the beginning the trait is useless because like ~30 years after the start, your leaders will never die of old age because you reach the life span tech and can repeat it in less than 5 years.

That the point of the trait in fact, fill the void at the beginning and to have a reason doing that early, your leaders must deserve it.

No possibility to choose good leaders early ? Well, they can die. And the trait is useless. (some may say that it is not really good already...)

 

[Calvax]

If my science costs three times as much as yours then that just means I need to build three times as many scientists as you. The question is when do I hit the triple costs compared to my ability to afford more scientists? If I hit triple costs when I only have 1.5 times your economy then yeah, wide empires gonna suck at science. If I hit triple costs when I have 6 times your economy then my wide empire can research better than your tall empire as long as I keep investing a sensible amount into more researchers to keep up with my expansion.

Good way to put it. The mechanic should be representing diminishing returns, which means that there will still be an advantage to wider empires. Just not as drastic a one which will hopefully make the game more diverse and fun.

 

[Ulyces]

So are Scion empires that get lucky and get a 5k fleet from their fallen empire going to get a bunch of extra influence from that with these new rules? Not only will they be a dominant military power in the early game based on rng, they'll also have free extra influence to expand with? I think Scion needs to be changed with these new rules.

 

[TG_Maks]

Interesting.
I think you did a lot of work with this, but mb is better to delete all unity system ?
Delete unity = no problems with rework.

 

[DeanTheDull]

It's very simple.

If I make a build to have my bio leaders immortals, I don't want to have useless ones at the beginning. That the point of the Venerable trait. Keeping good starting leaders to the end.

If you can't do that at the beginning the trait is useless because like ~30 years after the start, your leaders will never die of old age because you reach the life span tech and can repeat it in less than 5 years.

That the point of the trait in fact, fill the void at the beginning and to have a reason doing that early, your leaders must deserve it.

No possibility to choose good leaders early ? Well, they can die. And the trait is useless. (some may say that it is not really good already...)

If they die, you have to pay the unity cost to replace them anyway. Which you could also do if you just hired a new one when you had the unity to spare.

This doesn't change the dynamic, it doesn't make leaders more expensive, it just changes when you feel comfortable cycling them when you don't need to.

 

[Maethendias]

If my science costs three times as much as yours then that just means I need to build three times as many scientists as you. The question is when do I hit the triple costs compared to my ability to afford more scientists? If I hit triple costs when I only have 1.5 times your economy then yeah, wide empires gonna suck at science. If I hit triple costs when I have 6 times your economy then my wide empire can research better than your tall empire as long as I keep investing a sensible amount into more researchers to keep up with my expansion. Somewhere in the middle is a hypothetical state where investing X% of your budget into science always gets you Y% of a technology per month but realistically this is an impossible target to reliably hit, so they're going to aim for tall empires being on average slightly faster or slightly slower at finishing research than a much wider one.

Without any of this if my empire gets say a 25% economy lead on you then it's trivial for me to jump ahead of you in tech. I can afford more researchers than you but with the same tech costs so I'll just research stuff faster and get more economy and invest more in researchers etc. Sprawl is needed because of how crucial tech is and how early leads turn into snowballs.

the problem is, it doesnt work like that, because there is more to research than just research labs
upkeep, pop upkeep, planetary infrastructure, the time to grow pops to fill those jobs means that by trying to combat the admin penalty, you are in essence acutally making it worse, because guess what...

to build more science labs, you need more pops/planets/systems to be ABLE to build those science labs... which LINEARLY scale research in addition to admin cap penalties

not to mention sectors not being functioning, meaning exponentially increasing micro just to keep up

 

[Maethendias]

To counter, what’s the point in choosing leaders if you feel it’s mandatory to get the best options? You may as well just have a flat bonus and remove leaders.

Its a somewhat reductive argument that not being guaranteed to have the best options from the beginning is a bad thing.

yeah, exactly, why cant we directly choose what leaders we want, instead of having to rely on an arbitrary rng system that doesnt fit at all, mechanically OR conceptually

 

[Critical Ethics]

the problem is, it doesnt work like that, because there is more to research than just research labs
upkeep, pop upkeep, planetary infrastructure, the time to grow pops to fill those jobs means that by trying to combat the admin penalty, you are in essence acutally making it worse, because guess what...

to build more science labs, you need more pops/planets/systems to be ABLE to build those science labs... which LINEARLY scale research in addition to admin cap penalties

Most of those scale directly with economy. Twice the researchers costs twice the job upkeep and pop upkeep, but twice the economy means you have twice the CG and food/minerals/energy to do so. You need twice the building slots, but wide play = more planets isn't really a controversial statement outside of specific niche builds. The new pop mechanics mean pops are the only resource that don't scale directly due to "width", but pop numbers also boost sprawl these days so that can be rendered self correcting.

Is it possible to screw this up designwise? Of course! If sprawl scales too harshly compared to economic potential then there's going to be an issue, but that's what the beta is for. Is it possible for a player to screw it up? Of course! How much stuff you have is only a measure of economic potential, not your actual economy. If you expand too fast without actually developing your economy and research output you'll fall behind technologically, but tradeoffs and the chance to screw up are what make it a game.

I don't quite follow the grammar of the last line.

 

[Farbros]

To counter, what’s the point in choosing leaders if you feel it’s mandatory to get the best options? You may as well just have a flat bonus and remove leaders.

Its a somewhat reductive argument that not being guaranteed to have the best options from the beginning is a bad thing.

Because it is not free? 200 energy credits for a leader at the beginning of the game aren't free. But 200 unity is WAY more, than 200 energy credits.

 

[jaredstanko]

the problem is, it doesnt work like that, because there is more to research than just research labs
upkeep, pop upkeep, planetary infrastructure, the time to grow pops to fill those jobs means that by trying to combat the admin penalty, you are in essence acutally making it worse, because guess what...

to build more science labs, you need more pops/planets/systems to be ABLE to build those science labs... which LINEARLY scale research in addition to admin cap penalties

not to mention sectors not being functioning, meaning exponentially increasing micro just to keep up

as your admin penalty rises it costs more to make more science. however, your economy grows too. without the admin penalty the only thing to pour your economy into once you got a decent tech lead would be more ships. so as you grow, you snowball harder and harder. and if you conquer a large backwards chunk of space, your tech costs would be static.

 

[Mealya]

If they die, you have to pay the unity cost to replace them anyway. Which you could also do if you just hired a new one when you had the unity to spare.

This doesn't change the dynamic, it doesn't make leaders more expensive, it just changes when you feel comfortable cycling them when you don't need to.

Well. If you are cycling leaders, yes I agree. The modification will change nothing.

But here, the goal is to avoid cycling at any cost because :

1) With Venerable (or machines) your leader wont die.
2) You don't want loose any bonuses provided by the experience of your leader.

So at the beginning, you must pay a certain amount to have your starting leader pool optimized, but the amount must stay reasonable and not delaying you more than 1~3 years after starting the game.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Well. If you are cycling leaders, yes I agree. The modification will change nothing.

But here, the goal is to avoid cycling at any cost because :

1) With Venerable (or machines) your leader wont die.
2) You don't want loose any bonuses provided by the experience of your leader.

So at the beginning, you must pay a certain amount to have your starting leader pool optimized, but the amount must stay reasonable and not delaying you more than 1~3 years after starting the game.

Avoiding cycling at any cost is a self-imposed restriction, not a mechanical restriction. You're not being penalized more for cycling more than other empires- other empires are paying more to get optimized as well, since they want early-game optimization when it matters most. They could wait for leaders to die, but they'd be missing most of the best bonuses of the early game if they did so.

It's still your advantage.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

There’s lots of good in this Dev Diary, some important unknown elements that sound important and lots that will depend almost entirely on how well the new numbers are balanced (fingers crossed). But I do worry about 2 things:

1. The loss of culture workers.

I hate bureaucrats thematically unless I’m roleplaying Vogons, when I feel the opposite and love to imagine all the poetry they’re producing and disseminating.

Culture workers are vague enough that I can imagine them being almost anything depending on the empire that I’m playing. Just based on the modifiers they get to job weights the pops in those jobs could represent:

Spoiler: Species Traits and what those Culture workers could represent

×2 Erudite trait
×1.5 Natural Sociologists trait
×1.5 Efficient Processors trait
×1.5 Natural Intellectuals trait
×1.4 Intelligent trait
×1.4 Logic Engines trait
These are intelligent and influential figures like Einstein or Stephen Hawking, inspiring others to learn about the universe. They are the figures in history that will be remembered, buildings, monuments, museums and vast projects will be named after them and they will shape our future.

×2 Propaganda Machines trait
The Newspapers, Television stations, Social Networks, Cults, Government figures, Spies etc. That shape the narrative that we all believe. The Ministry of Truth.

×1.5 Robust trait
The strong and healthy caring for the weak. Volunteers, non-profit organizations, charities.

×1.5 Traditional trait
These are the historians, writers and documentary teams. The secret societies, organizations and institutions from girl scouts to free masons. Old buildings and museums. Tourist attractions and statues and all those needed to build and maintain them.

×1.5 Void Dweller trait
The pioneers of living in space. Developing new ways to live and work, to grow food and materials. New orbits, new techniques all reducing the upkeep costs, food use, increasing available building space etc (They are the ones who develop all the void-dweller unique tradition swaps).

×1.4 Uplifted trait
×1.4 Somewhat Uplifted trait
The altered members of a new species, after gaining new abilities now shaping the growth of the empire and integrating their own culture with that of the rest of the empire. Leaders and campaigners, artists and writers sharing perspectives, ethics, dreams and fears.

×1.2 Psionic trait
×1.1 Latent Psionic trait
The first Psychics and all those pushing for investigation of the shroud and psychic phenomenon. The thought-police before the development of telepaths, the first and founding members.

×0.5 Quarrelsome trait
×0.5 Proles trait
×0.5 Unlifted trait
×0.2 not Full Citizenship rights
All those ignored and forgotten, lost to history. The cultures destroyed via conquest, slavery and authoritarian control of the narrative. All those denied a voice, or erased from history.

But for normal pops without modifiers I can assume almost anything I want. That's good, vague but good.

Being vague is actually a positive here as it makes it easy to swap out the main source of unity with civics. (like Duelists, Entertainers, Soldiers, Bureaucrats, Death Chroniclers, Death Priests, Enforcers, Priests being the main source of unity in a Warrior Culture, Pleasure Seeker, Citizen Service, Byzantine/Efficient Bureaucracy, Memorialist, Death Cult, Police State, Exalted Priesthood respectively).

Spoiler: Definitely Bad Bureaucrats

The word “Bureaucrat” itself has a surprisingly large amount of negative connotations, just the first definition on google (emphasis mine):
“an official in a government department, in particular one perceived as being concerned with procedural correctness at the expense of people's needs.”

or wikipedia
“Modern Bureaucrat - Bureaucrats gained increasingly negative reputations throughout the second half of the 20th century...”

The word itself is now negative, so having more bureaucrats in an empire seems to indicate a crippling degeneracy more fitting for a fallen empire rather than highlighting the social glue that holds an empire together. I want the unity job to show what great or often terrible thing unites its peoples.

It would be fine if Bureaucrats were an unavoidable negative drain on your economy like criminals - the current situation where you have the minimum you need and not one more. But this doesn't work in a situation where you want as many as you can afford and they're always doing good things for your empire and not merely the lesser of two evils.

There should still be a place for Bureaucrats but in my opinion it should only be for empires with the 2 civics with Bureaucracy in the title.
e.g.
Efficient Bureaucracy having a small number of high production ruler jobs (actually I’d like them to provide Edict Cap on their capital administrator equivalent jobs so you can support more edicts)
Byzantine Bureaucracy having low output workers/specialists jobs so you need to dedicate entire planets to bureaucrats. Or to be imaginative there could be something like the old Rogue Servitor mechanic where there is a benefit to having a certain % of the population employed as Bureaucrats (like Servitors used to want a certain % to be biotrophies to get an empire bonus).


And I also worry about:

2. Unity becoming the most complex resource and fiddly to manage.

I don’t think that is hyperbole to call unity the most complex resource in future.

Spoiler: How complex unity will become

Stockpiles normally swing from a little over the cost of one tradition then down to near 0, then slowly raises back and then falls to 0 until the late game when you transition from spending it on traditions to spending it on ambitions and having more unity then sinks to spend it on. That’s fine when you can only spend it on one thing but it doesn’t work when at any point you also suddenly need to spend 1k unity on relocating pops/hiring leaders etc. and when new penalties have to be added for shortages and new ways of spending unity are being added on top of moving all the old influence/energy costs over to unity.

I worry it’s going to get confusing when you spend unity in massive lumps (megastructures, traditions, ambitions), little lumps (hiring leaders, pop relocation, planet decisions), continuously in upkeep (edicts, leaders), gained passively (factions, techs, ascension perks) and actively (jobs, buildings) and with the costs of all these things growing with your empire size and age (sprawl, number of unlocked traditions) and with expenditure sometimes being decreased by technology and civics (edict fund).

So compared to admin cap where if you’re at 256/250 you know you need 1 job giving +10 admin cap. Or if you’re at 256/300 you know you have 44 admin cap being wasted due to excess jobs. A simple puzzle that doesn’t need a calculator or simulations (unless you want to get technical and prove mathematically when you should or shouldn’t go over admin cap).

In the new system you could be at +34 monthly unity and at 1700/1678 unity needed for the next tradition and be prompted to spend almost all your unity leaving you with nothing left and you have no idea if:
1. You’re producing enough unity to even afford the planned megastructures/traditions/planetary decisions in the coming years (especially as future costs will increase scaling with number of planets - planetary decisions/leaders, some with traditions and so on).

2. It’s safe to buy the tradition now while the costs are lower (sprawl will only make it increase) or if doing that will stop you from hiring leaders, building things and relocating pops when you suddenly need to do so (maybe causing rebellions if stability becomes a problem and you lack the unity to do anything about it).

3. If the unity would be better saved for whatever [Planetary Ascension Tiers] involves.

And for the AI there will be problems:

Spoiler: So many new Death spirals

The AI could have problems with weighting leading to:
1. Ignoring traditions because they can never save up enough unity (enacting decisions only to turn them off or hiring too many leaders)
2. Ignoring planets because they lack the unity to enact decisions. (lots of rebellions, high crime as they can’t afford to handle either on all their planets)
2. Unity Death-spirals from having too much added unity upkeep, or as a result of CG/other deficits lowering unity production.

I’m picturing AI having admirals for every single-ship fleet swarming their shipyards, or having 50 unemployed unity jobs because they don’t have the CG to run them, then having all the leaders disbanded to save unity and crippling their economy and research… it has the potential for chaos unless the weightings are done carefully.

But there needs to be a unity shortage penalty or there could be some unity deficit shenanigans, where you save up a few years to turn on all the edicts and buy lots of leaders you can’t support and then ignore bureaucrats, leaders and edicts from that point onwards (maybe only for the length of a war, but I can imagine it becoming a meta strategy if there’s no penalty to a unity shortage).

Maybe think about how unity will be spent on traditions so it doesn’t cripple players and the AI when you’re prompted to spend everything and leave nothing for all the other shiny new uses for unity.
e.g.
1. Prompt the player/AI to take a new tradition when stockpiles reach “tradition cost+500 unity” so they have a small stockpile to move a pop or activate planetary decisions and don’t lock themselves out of taking any action 42 times a game
2. Have traditions work like research, pick the tradition first and slowly fill-up that bucket passively rather than spending a huge lump-sum
3. Take care that the things with unity as upkeep don't get broken when the stockpile is low. It would be sad if upkeep is deducted before income and you’re often at 0 unity from buying traditions like how inter-empire monthly trades get broken if you ever have low stockpiles... also please fix that it's kinda stupid.

So the TL;DR
1. I like culture workers more than Bureaucrats as the default unity job. Please don’t kill culture workers. They’re super-vague but that’s fine for the default unity source.
2. Unity is going to shift from a dump-stat to vitally important and very complicated. This could cause issues for players and especially for the AI.

 

[Quirky77]

Доступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK

Welcome back! We hope you’ve all had a wonderful few weeks.

Today we’ll start with some more information about the goals of the Unity Rework mentioned in Dev Diary 215 (and briefly in 234), some updates on how things have been going so far, and our plans going forward.

Please note: All values and screen captures shown here are still very much in development and subject to change.

Identified Problems and Design Goals

Currently in Stellaris, Unity is an extremely weak resource that can generally be ignored, and due to the current implementation of Admin Capacity, the Empire Sprawl mechanic is largely toothless - leading to wide tech rushing being an oppressively powerful strategy. Since Unity is currently very easily generated through incidental means and provides minimal benefits, Empires have little need to develop a Unity generation base, and Spiritualist ethics are unattractive.

Influence is currently used for many internal and external interactions, making it a valuable resource, but it sometimes feels too limiting.

Our basic design goals for the Unity Rework can be summarized as:

• Unity should be a meaningful resource that represents the willingness of your empire to band together for the betterment of society and their resilience towards negative change.
  • Unity should be more valuable than it is now, and empires focused on Unity generation should be interesting to play.
    • Spiritualist empires should have a satisfying niche to exploit and be able to feel that they are good at something.
    • The number of sources of incidental Unity from non-dedicated jobs should be reduced.
    • Empires that do not focus on Unity (but do not completely ignore it) should still be able to acquire their Ascension Perks by the late game.
  • Reward immersive decisions with Unity grants whenever possible.
  • Internal empire matters should generally utilize Unity.
    • Provide more ways to spend Unity.
    • Rebalance the way edicts work (again).
• Reduce the oppressive impact of tech rushing by reintroducing some rubber-banding mechanics.
• Make tall play more viable, preferring to balance tall vs. wide play in favor of distinctiveness, and emphasizing differences between hives, machines, megacorps, and normal empires. (This does not necessarily mean that tall Unity focused empires will be the equal of wide Research focused ones, but they should have some things that they are good at and be more competitive in general than they are now.)
• In the late game, Unity focused empires should have a benefit to look forward to similar to the repeatable technologies a Research focused empire would have.

In this iteration we have focused on some of these bullets more than others, but will continue to refine the systems over future Custodian releases.

So What Are We Doing?

All means of increasing Administrative Capacity have been removed. While there are ways to reduce the Empire Sprawl generated by various sources, and this will be used to help differentiate gameplay between different empire types, empires will no longer be able to completely mitigate sprawl penalties. Penalties and sprawl generation values have been significantly modified.

• The Capital designation, for instance, now also reduces Empire Sprawl generated by Pops on the planet.

View attachment 793471

Bureaucrats, Priests, Managers, Synapse Drones, and Coordinators will be the primary sources of Unity for various empire types. Culture Workers have been removed.

Autochthon Memorials (and similar buildings) now increase planetary Unity production and themselves produce Unity based on the number of Ascension Perks the Empire has taken. Being monuments, they no longer require workers.

View attachment 793472
These monuments are now planet-unique, and can be built by Spiritualist empires.

The Edicts Cap system has been removed. Toggled Edicts will have monthly Unity Upkeep which is modified by Empire Sprawl. Each empire has an Edicts Fund which subsidizes Edict Upkeep, reducing the amount you have to pay each month to maintain them. Things that previously increased Edict Capacity now generally increase the Edicts Fund, but some civics, techs, and ascension perks have received other thematic modifications.

View attachment 793473
As an example, some Bureaucratic technologies now modify the Edicts Fund.

View attachment 793474
The Imperial Cult will squander any excess Edicts Fund on icons of the God Emperor at the end of the month. No refunds!

Several systems that used to cost Influence are now paid in Unity.

• Planetary Decisions that were formerly paid in Influence. Prices have been adjusted.
• Resettlement of pops. Abandoning colonies still costs Influence.
• Manipulation of internal Factions. Factions themselves will now produce Unity instead of Influence.

Since Factions are no longer producing Influence, a small amount of Influence is now generated by your fleet, based on Power Projection - a comparison of your fleet size and Empire Sprawl.

Leaders now cost Unity to hire rather than Energy. They also have a small amount of Unity Upkeep. We understand that this increases the relative costs of choosing to hire several scientists at the start of the game for exploration purposes, or when “cycling” leader traits, as you are now choosing between Traditions and Leaders..

View attachment 793475
And then some empires go and break all the rules.

Most Megastructures now cost Unity rather than Influence, with the exception of any related to travel (such as Gateways) or that provide living space (such as Habitats and Ring Worlds).

Authority bonuses have (unsurprisingly) undergone some changes again, as several of them related to systems that no longer exist or operate differently now.

When Will This Happen?

Since these are pretty big changes that touch many game systems in so many ways, we’ve decided to put these changes up in a limited duration Open Beta on Steam for playtest and feedback. This will give us a chance to adjust values and modify some game interactions before the changes get pushed to live later on in the 3.3.x patch cycle, and we will continue improving on them in future Custodian releases.

We’ll provide more details on the specifics of how the Open Beta will be run in next week's dev diary.

What Else is Planned?

As noted earlier, we’d like Unity to also reflect the resilience of your empire to negative effects. A high Unity empire may be more resistant to negative effects deficits or possibly even have their pops rise up to help repel invaders, but these ideas are still in early development and will not be part of this Open Beta or release. They’ll likely be tied to the evolving Situations that we mentioned in Dev Diary 234 - we’ll talk about those more in the future once their designs are finalized.

Next week I’ll go into details regarding the Open Beta, go over a new system that is meant to provide “tall” and Unity focused empires some significant mid to late game benefits called Planetary Ascension Tiers, and share details on another little something from one of our Content Designers.

I am exceptionally mixed on this, some of these changes are fine, some are good, some might kill the game for me harder then naked corvettes.
The absolute first thing i noticed is the unity changes, because it seems like unity is trying to be turned into both Influence 2.0 and also Hoi4/Eu4 Stability, which i am very concerned about, This is also very concerning as far as ascension perks and traditions go, because more unity being produced and more ways to spend it likely turns into either rushing all ascension perks and traditions by mid-game, or never being able to/wanting to pick them simply because your need/want to spend unity elsewhere constantly. maybe make them be picked based on total produced unity, rather then spending unity? as in, if the first tradition pick requires say, 10000 unity,
every unity you produce both adds to the next tradition and adds to the stockpile seperately, if you produce 100 unity, you can spend the 100 unity and also have 9900 unity left for the tradition. not sure if i explained that well.


Removing Admin cap from jobs is awful, literally just plain awful. I am a full advocate for tall play, even if i personally play the middle for most games, Expanding rapidly early, establishing borders, then focusing on development and diplomacy more then expanding. i would explain just why this sucks, but i feel people have already explained far better then i can, so instead i will present an idea.

What if rather then trying to bend empire sprawl to fit the changes, we change Admin Cap completely? rather then Admin Cap and Empire Sprawl being gained from pops, colonies, and systems, it gets changed to just systems? the main difference between "tall" and "wide" empires in stellaris, at least in my opinion/experience, is development. a wide empire has a large amount of undeveloped territory, and a tall empire has a smaller amount of highly developed territory. a system cap would probably represent this better. additionally, the penalty for going over the cap should probably change. right now it increases research and unity costs. increasing research costs makes literally no sense, but unity does, and maybe that should be focused more. A vast empire will have a hard time being united, and maybe that should be emphasized. going over the system cap could reduce governing ethics attraction and decrease stability.

In general, maybe a vast empire should have trouble remaining stable, rather then having trouble researching and such? Ways to solve this would probably involve granting some autonomy by creating sectors, or even releasing vassals. Or, y'know, having a military strong enough to (hopefully) crush any dissent underfoot, either works. Espionage could also play a role, letting hostile empires try to capitalize on instability, and maybe cause it with a high enough expenditure of resources. I imagine criminal syndicates would also be quite good at that.

Most of the other changes look good, although i do have an issue with making it harder to get scientists at the start of the game as i tend to need at least 4 science ships early game to explore and survey, although i suppose it would be possible to change it so science ships can survey without scientists(but not research anomialies or do archeological sites)with the benefits of a scientist being not wasting potential XP and also surveying faster. but eh, its probably fine either way.

Thank you for coming to my Blorg Talk(tm)

 

[Morbid Gerbil]

The only reason to change a science leader is because they don't have the relevant skill to what is being researched.
And Leading Research is the only activity that doesn't generate a skill gain checks on levelling up.

Leading Science Research should allow them to learn new skills as well as when surveying or resolving anomalies.

 

[Zahn82]

This is an accurate interpretation of how Power Projection will work.

Is fleet power or the fleet/Empire ratio the only source that adds to Power Projection?

Imho this would be a bit one sided.
Or will Economic Power / Trade Value / Tech also contribute to your Power Projection?
Imho this would make sense given the fact that it also influences the "power" and influence of real world politics or the current diplomatic weight in Stellaris.

 

[fourteenfour]

You guys are way too pessimistic. Let's face it. Currently wide players face ZERO drawbacks. They can just snowball to infinity and beyond, just by building some cheap admin building. And make Stellaris the kinda bland game that it currently is, with no empire/play style differences whatsoever.

Wide empires desperately needed some nerfs to make them less of a snowballing behemoth.
And the notion that a few obstacles will break wide to the point that it's unplayable, is kinda ridiculous. We players will have no problem to find ways!

Tall empires are just a fantasy that some people keep trying to find the means to justify their competitiveness to the point they have to come up with all sorts of silly handicaps to apply to larger empires. A large empire should be design be able to research more items at one time. In effect research in very large empires is like the predictive pathways that CPUs can follow, sufficiently large numbers means you run each predictive path simultaneously and just discard the failed experiments with no impact to the speed of the overall result .

Not all issues would affect all empires the same, hive minds and machine type empires would be immune to many empires which suffer factional and specie issues.