Stellaris Dev Diary #241 - Unity Open Beta and the Dev Clash

[MonzUn]

Something I'm not clear on is if the leader cost will go down as you lose leaders and go below 6, or if it just goes up.

As far as I know, it stays at 100 until you go over the starting leader amount and from there on, the cost is relative to how many leaders you currently have.

 

[MonzUn]

Good stuff!

Hopefully "AI Megacorps should spawn half as often as before now" applies when playing a Megacorp too? IIRC the chance of spawning AI Megacorps was increased for that case. Rationale being to make the game more interesting, practice being that among gestalts, megacorps and purifiers it was hard to find an AI empire that could accept a branch office.

It applies always.

As far as I'm aware, there was never any bias when the player was a Megacorp (apart from the player itself not affecting the randomization).
I personally believe it's that players are more aware of the amount of Megacorps in the galaxy when they themselves are a megacorp.

Their spawn rate was quite high overall though and I think this was a side effect rather than random weight balancing issues.

 

[MonzUn]

Hey, pretty important issue I just noticed. A lot of enforcer jobs for the AI are remaining unfilled even when a planet is in complete chaos from high crime.

Bug reports should go into the bug reports forum, or they are likely to be missed by QA
That being said, are you on the latest beta?
I have a vague memory of a colleague fixing this one already.

 

[DeanTheDull]

With Influence becoming a strictly external affair, the Influence bonus should be moved to Xenophile. It is the ethic that makes the most sense for a bonus to (external) Influence, it would be a nice boost to the ethic, and it would synergize very nicely with the extra Envoys (not to mention that it would make a nice mirror for the reduced outpost cost for Xenophobes). It would solidify Xenophile as the "diplomatic power" ethic.

Which influence bonus? And what, specifically, would be the Xenophobe/Xenophoble compensation/rebalance? Especially when the primar


As is, there is a cohesive Authoritarian/Militaristic/Authoritarian trinity on 'more and more efficient use of influence to dominate other polities.' Xenophobe gets bonuses to early expansion influence, militarist gets bonuses to cliams in occupied territory later, authoritarian gets a bonus to influence in general. All three factions are generally compatible with eachother (bar xenophobe-aliens, which are pacifistic), work in a basic gameplay loop focused around the capture/exploitation of pops,


Moreover, Xenophile already has a defacto early game influence bonus in its first contact capacity, and is entirely compatible (and faction supports) Federation play, which is basically reduced diplomacy influence costs anyway. What more does it really need?

 

[Millbot]

For the whole tall vs wide thing, still feel the core sector mechanic interacting with sprawl is probably going to be the best way to pull that off. Probably could expand on that where sprawl malus gets worse for every sector or jump (got to have that so people don't try gaming the whole frontier thing) further from the core sector one gets.

Influence is tricky because if you do get tall down as reasonably viable, that's going to typically be the type of empire that is going to get swamped with the stuff because currently there aren't really any good sinks for it. Megastructures no longer use it for initial construction. These are the empires that aren't making claims. The GC can't really work well in this regards and the amount of influence it will use is going to scale with empire numbers (smaller numbers mean player probably uses more influence if they participate in the GC, where max number mean player spends less). I'm aware that calling in favors uses influence, but more often than not the big influence drain the GC has is from resolution proposals. Espionage would definitely be a good sink, but that only really works if people want to use the system. Another option is that given most tall empires probably want to play the diplomatic game be that an alliance of cooperation or a hegemon where they throw their weight around. So maybe there is room for the use of influence in regards to the new internal crisis thing that is coming up, where an empire could burn their influence to help an ally out because if a rebellion or some other nasty thing happens, you as a player probably don't want that crippling your federation. Also with tall, since those might be the types of empires that carve out puppet states or vassalize other empires, maybe the creation of client empires should have an associated influence cost and maybe that has some sort of scaling to reign in other problematic playstyles (like creating vassals that are pop farms).

Wide probably is the easiest to do something about influence with. The claim system is a hot mess. One, it shouldn't be possible to achieve zero influence claims and frankly, it shouldn't be cheaper to claim systems that others own, than it is to claim unowned systems. Having claims expire would probably also be a nice touch and maybe again, this is another system that should scale with sprawl. The bigger you get, the more expensive it is to claim systems.

Complicating things on the influence front is habitat heavy empires and megacorps because those can constantly find new things to spend influence on. The former has the issue where it could be a major contributor to both performance drop and just making some aspects of the game awful to deal with. The latter is more impacted by how many colonies exist, but I've had times where I've been annoyed by how expensive my first branch office ends up being because of how the galaxy spawn went. Both are probably good candidates to impacted by sprawl. With habitats that would mean it becomes less viable to constantly spam them because after a point, both the player and the AI will be waiting years to stockpile enough influence to build the next habitat. Also would greatly influence how both tall and wide approach habitats, with the latter likely building them less and using them more as lynchpin sector capitals to connect colonies into larger sectors. With branch offices that would mean being able to get the first few up quicker, rather than finding out the nearest viable empire for them is on the other side of the galaxy, a large one at that, and you're spending well over a hundred influence to get it.

Now the downside to all of this is that it makes map painting harder and normally this would be a good thing, but as we saw with the pop growth changes. The game really needs to offer players more to do in mid and late game years other than mostly painting the map and microing pops.

 

[Ridixo]

The launcher is developed by a different team than the Stellaris devs, as the launcher is shared between several (most, I think?) Paradox products. Feedback like this is best left for the launcher devs by opening a ticket at support.paradoxplaza.com, and Customer Support will forward it to the Launcher team. They can likely also help you fix your problem.

Hope this helps!

Don't worry i know and don't want to create controversy here. The launcher is by made by other people since it's, i think, for almost all the PDX games. Have read about people having the same problem on the EUIV and CKIII forums too. They have comply too. Sincerely don't know if making a ticket will help since i already saw someone telling that it was a problem not related to the launcher but with the antivirus and i am not well mentally to bother myself with the same answers i already tried. Thanks for the help, just wanted to say that, still not being able to play the game, just like i keep waiting for Runemaster. Don't worry and have a good weekend

 

[Jman5]

Bug reports should go into the bug reports forum, or they are likely to be missed by QA
That being said, are you on the latest beta?
I have a vague memory of a colleague fixing this one already.

Yeah, sorry I'll report it officially. Yes, I'm on the latest public beta, no mods.

It seems to be mostly fixed, but it's still happening with some empires. A handful of empires will start off with their Enforcer job unfilled and they will just keep it that way forever it seems. Even as more enforcer jobs become available they don't seem to fill. I saw this happening to my own empire, a few times, but that may have been in an earlier beta.

If you want to try reproducing it, just start a game with max empires so you get a big sample size, observe the game, and just check each empire's capital world. There will likely be 3 or 4 doing this.

Honestly I have no idea what is causing this. I couldn't find any sort of pattern.

 

[MonzUn]

Yeah, sorry I'll report it officially. Yes, I'm on the latest public beta, no mods.

It seems to be mostly fixed, but it's still happening with some empires. A handful of empires will start off with their Enforcer job unfilled and they will just keep it that way forever it seems. Even as more enforcer jobs become available they don't seem to fill. I saw this happening to my own empire, a few times, but that may have been in an earlier beta.

If you want to try reproducing it, just start a game with max empires so you get a big sample size, observe the game, and just check each empire's capital world. There will likely be 3 or 4 doing this.

Honestly I have no idea what is causing this. I couldn't find any sort of pattern.

Ah, yeah then we're probably both right
Best to make a bug report to show this off. Make sure to get a save game in there and point to a planet where this is happening.
You could also point out that it's been claimed to be fixed, but that the fix only seem partial.
Thanks!

 

[Echo Candor One]

I just wanted to say I adore the recent direction of the game. I do game design as a hobby, so I totally get how massively complicated what you're doing is. Major props.

 

[MrFreake_PDX]

Don't worry i know and don't want to create controversy here. The launcher is by made by other people since it's, i think, for almost all the PDX games. Have read about people having the same problem on the EUIV and CKIII forums too. They have comply too. Sincerely don't know if making a ticket will help since i already saw someone telling that it was a problem not related to the launcher but with the antivirus and i am not well mentally to bother myself with the same answers i already tried. Thanks for the help, just wanted to say that, still not being able to play the game, just like i keep waiting for Runemaster. Don't worry and have a good weekend

From my personal experience, most issues with the launcher can be solved by uninstalling Paradox Launcher v2 in add/remove programs, and renaming the launcher-v2.sqlite file in C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris, then relaunching the game. The game will automatically download the launcher. Let the launcher download its updates, and restart it.

Apart from that, another thing to try is: in Settings in the launcher, choose borderless fullscreen or windowed modes. If you have one of those two selected, select fullscreen.

If none of those things work, it's past my technical support experience, and you'll need to go through Customer Support or the Tech Support forums for more detailed help/instructions.

 

[Flamgino]

It'll be nice for psionics to have a production bonus that isn't RNG and doesn't have a 5% chance to kill a whole planet.

...The telepaths don't now have a 5% chance to kill the planet they're on, right?

 

[DaJay42]

• Scientists assigned to research can now gain new traits.

*gasp*
One of the oldest issues in the game, finally resolved?

 

[Echo Candor One]

It'll be nice for psionics to have a production bonus that isn't RNG and doesn't have a 5% chance to kill a whole planet.

...The telepaths don't now have a 5% chance to kill the planet they're on, right?

I want to do a Chosen One Imperial Cult Galactic Empire run so bad, but I can never get it all to line up.

 

[DeanTheDull]

I also think it's worth considering adding subject empires into the Empire Size at a greatly reduced value. Perhaps 10-25% of the total value. Y

Why would you want to decrease the value of having subject empires? It's already hard enough to encourage players to use them rather than annex them.

Currently the value of subject empires in the sprawl system is that they are entirely outside your sprawl system, so that you can trade with them at great rates for resources while paying none of the admin cost of resource worlds. If you make their resource worlds more of your burden, the relative margin of utility goes down, not up, and when you factor in AI development of the vassals admin efficiency is one of the few real merits left.

 

[Jman5]

Why would you want to decrease the value of having subject empires? It's already hard enough to encourage players to use them rather than annex them.

Currently the value of subject empires in the sprawl system is that they are entirely outside your sprawl system, so that you can trade with them at great rates for resources while paying none of the admin cost of resource worlds. If you make their resource worlds more of your burden, the relative margin of utility goes down, not up, and when you factor in AI development of the vassals admin efficiency is one of the few real merits left.

Because they are not value-less. Just because many people don't appreciate the value of subject empires does not mean they are fine being entirely outside the Sprawl system. Clearly they are not as valuable as having direct control over it, which is why I was suggesting they only count at a significantly reduced rate of 10-25%. Also I'm suggesting you reduce sprawl penalty for the subject empire itself which would be a buff for them.

Making them entirely free in terms of sprawl does not seem balanced to me.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Because they are not value-less. Just because many people don't appreciate the value of subject empires does not mean they are fine being entirely outside the Sprawl system. Clearly they are not as valuable as having direct control over it, which is why I was suggesting they only count at a significantly reduced rate of 10-25%. Also I'm suggesting you reduce sprawl penalty for the subject empire itself which would be a buff for them.

Making them entirely free in terms of sprawl does not seem balanced to me.

People not appreciating the value is precisely why you want them outside of the sprawl system. If people view having subjects as not worth the cost, raising the cost is going to make them less useful except as a means for vassal-annexation.

 

[Lidhuin]

Because they are not value-less. Just because many people don't appreciate the value of subject empires does not mean they are fine being entirely outside the Sprawl system. Clearly they are not as valuable as having direct control over it, which is why I was suggesting they only count at a significantly reduced rate of 10-25%. Also I'm suggesting you reduce sprawl penalty for the subject empire itself which would be a buff for them.

Making them entirely free in terms of sprawl does not seem balanced to me.

A vassal produces no research or unity for me and cannot, so why should subject empires penalize on tech and traditions?

 

[Echo Candor One]

Not specifically, since the 3.3.1 changes aren't up on the open beta branch. If everything goes well, those changes will be going live together with 3.3 when it releases.

Oh, hey, it's me, your best friend from QA. I didn't get the latest build. I'm on work from home, trust me. Send me dem changes.

 

[Nevars]

I also think it's worth considering adding subject empires into the Empire Size at a greatly reduced value. Perhaps 10-25% of the total value. You could give subject empires themselves a similar discount to help give them a bit of a catch-up mechanic.

Plz no, using subject is already suboptimal as is, don't nerf thing that already performing bad relatively furthermore than this.

What need a nerf is highly unrealistic optimal strategy such as wide, not a joke strategy (cuz it's subopitmal) such as using subject empire.

 

[Bentusi16]

I don't post very often and I know the suggestion and feedback thread got closed but I did want to put my thoughts out here.

I finally got the chance to play the beta and played a full game as a regular hive mind.

Despite having a relatively small empire for quite some time the scaling cost on the Tier Upgrades for planets rapidly outpaced my ability to produce unity, even with an entire planet devoted to synapse drones (~5 planets in the empire total for awhile there). T

The bonuses planets give tend to only effect the ability of planets to reduce consumption of material (forge worlds reduce consumption of minerals and upkeep on the worker, not production output) meaning that you end up reducing your overall cost per material but do not actually increase production. The only option is to expand your planets, thus increasing the amount of empire sprawl you have. It's good for the "resource" planets (Gens/mInes/food) but not very good for the "material" worlds (consumer/alloys).

The way I understand it "tall" empires are supposed to be low-pop, low-size, but high efficiency. That's a cool idea. But I'm not sure it can work given stellaris current systems.

As an aside that game I played as the hive mind finally netted me two achievements I was looking for!