Stellaris Dev Diary #257 - Summer is Coming...

[Ridixo]

Have you considered allowing the use of favors while negotiating vassals contracts?
What about more ways to earn minor relics?
Oh, adding the aquatics background would be good

 

[L0rdScrambles]

Fleet Combat Balance​

Meanwhile, my planned experiments primarily have to do with fleet combat.

Things I’m looking forward to looking at include:

• Providing a late game role for Destroyers and Cruisers, and providing incentives for mixed fleets.
• Increasing the length of fleet combats, reducing the dominance of alpha strikes.
• Experimenting with existing counters, tracking, evasion, and accuracy mechanics.
  • This may also end up providing a role for smaller weapons.
• Improving ship behavior based on the roles assigned them by combat computers.
  • Yes, Carrier Battleship, I know you have a point defense laser and you're very proud of it. That doesn’t mean you should charge into melee to use it.

These are likely the experiments most ethereal in nature at this time and are unlikely to bear fruit in the short term.

I recommend experimenting with varying ship combat speeds, just to see what you think - I think you will find the results interesting. Slower combat speeds change the balance dramatically and I believe make for much more aesthetically pleasing battles. Combining slower speeds with changes to evasion, strike craft etc. might yield some great results.

 

[StellarisPlayer]

While you're looking at relics, any chance you can add them to the trade menu? Would love to be able to swap them around or rent them out on occasion.

 

[kwheeler]

While you're looking at relics, any chance you can add them to the trade menu? Would love to be able to swap them around or rent them out on occasion.

I like your idea renting out relics, but I think I would limit it to Megacorps in particularly being able to rent out relics for 10-year periods, and making it an option unique to them to give them some unique flavor, and limiting the ability to trade relics to empires that have completely finished their diplomacy tree, to give the diplomacy tree some unique flavor.

 

[Malech]

I have an idea in regards to fleet compositions and incentives.

Apply a percentage combat bonus to fleets who’s composition falls within certain parameters. This could mean that each ship can have a weight value to help designate what other ships are needed in a fleet. If your fleet is balanced correctly you could get a 25% bonus across the board in combat.

This could be expanded further by having different fleet doctrines affect the weight of each ship. Defense in depth could allow more large ships per fleet to maintain the 25% bonus. Where as hit and run tactics allows for more corvettes and destroyers in a fleet for the same 25% bonus.

This would still allow players to make any composition they want, but now there would be added incentive to have a balanced fleet build.

 

[oreopirate]

Oooh, Really hope the darkest timeline is getting the temples, and the worm as the UNE, then purging your former phenotypes and becoming the crisis.

But super excited to see how the fleet experiments pan out. I like to use my destroyers as picket, but one I get T5 techs, destroyers just aren't cost enough compared to just taking the losses of a battle ship or two. Because building one battleship, and reinforcing the fleet is easier than building all of your destroyers again.

And the relics need some love. Javorian pox just flat out sucks. The difference in bombardment damage is not enough to really make a difference. I'd love to see Pox form a situation type of disease outbreak amongst unadaptive species. Since they are unadaptive, that could easily include their immune systems, and the psionic archive need to be useful for more than just psionics, not just for machines. As well, I think that the Yuht cryo core could use a look at. The extra colony pop is nice, but I think there could be a better effect.

 

[Mcwynne]

Any chance that we will ever get more extensive message settings? Stellaris has a lot of notifications that are almost always useless (but not always always), foreign trade agreements etc. It would be nice if we could turn them off, and ideally mark empires as interesting and thus having them pass the block. Some of your old titles have this functionality but at some point you just stopped.

 

[Cordane]

I recommend experimenting with varying ship combat speeds, just to see what you think - I think you will find the results interesting. Slower combat speeds change the balance dramatically and I believe make for much more aesthetically pleasing battles. Combining slower speeds with changes to evasion, strike craft etc. might yield some great results.

Slower combat speeds = longer X/L-slot alpha strike period = providing LESS incentives for mixed fleets.

 

[StellarisFan1]

spy upgrade!! URAaaaa

 

[Alfha Robby]

honestly whenever i play mid game year, i get bored because there's lack of variety of planet climate which using mods planetary diversity could satisfy my appetite for more diverse galaxy, and more mega engineering using mods giga engineering.

but the fact that Marauder Khanate and Awakened Fallen Empire isn't as menacing as it supposed to be make me feel bored during mid and late game because i couldn't find the proper mod for it.
i'm happy with late game crisis have toggle setting at beginning so i could simply use either 5 x or 25 x crisis power but the fact that nanite, marauder and fallen empire doesn't have these setting is kinda make the game boring and ruin the immersion because they weren't as threatening as they should and no longer could force other empire to band together to fight against them unlike Crisis Empire, please add slider option to give them more power like the late game crisis as well so i could disable decadency of fallen empire and give them more power to make the game more challenging and force me to band with the rest of empire against them.

 

[Slaughter]

Because unlike origins and ascension, you can change your ethics.

Hmmmm... reasonable.

 

[Silens]

Relic Balance
Precursor Relics should be strong and useful for every single empire. I am not promising that [...] the Psionic Archive will be the best machine relic.

You have no idea how happy I am hearing this! Just look at the huge disparity between two precursor relics, Cybrex and Zroni.

The Cybrex War Forge does everything right: it gives you good quantities of a valuable resource (the equivalent of 166 alloys a month, and a +5% bonus to all alloy production) and allows you to recruit armies that are roughly 20% stronger than the Mega-Warforms a Machine Intelligence can recruit. The relic is not needed to make Synth/MI empires work, and each and every type of empire, from bio to lithoid to machine, has an easier life when finding it. Unlocking Mega-Engineering early and getting a ruined ring world is just the cherry on top.

The Zroni relic is the exact opposite: only psionic empires profit from the passive effect, but they absolutely need it to stay competitive compared to other ascensions, and even then the Shroud as a mechanic remains as painful to use as ever. The ascension can't keep up with synths, and the relic is mostly useless for everyone else. Secrets of the Zroni gives you a useless buff and the Zroni homeworld just gives you a bit of Zro, which you mostly don't need. Here the cherry on top is that the relic is exceedingly rare.

Please, decouple the Psionic Archive entirely from any interactions regarding the Shroud, and give it some actual useful buffs, like unlocking a special operation to turn a world into a Shrouded World or summon a corrupted psionic avatar, similar to how the Devourer relic gives you an unique spec op.

This would also be a great opportunity to transition the Shroud into the new situations system. It could be so much more, and you have proven with the Shroudwalkers that it can work.

 

[Jernsaxe]

All of this sounds nice, what I personally look forward to the most is the fleet combat updates.

If there is one design aspect I would like to see more of it would be "longer fleet combats", right now damage seems to outscale defense quite heavily making things like Hit and Run less viable the longer the game goes on.

During the recent tracking bug I actually enjoyed spacebattles more because they wouldn't be over in seconds, but could take long enough for stuff like the manual retreat button to actually be useable (today almost all battles are over before the retreat cooldown is ready).

 

[SilentReflection]

I like the idea of making new tradition trees that are gated behind requirements. When the selectable tradition trees came out, I remember the devs mentioned they did not want to overwhelm players with too many choices. This here would be the perfect work-around.

 

[Pale Blue]

Dunno if we need more tradition trees if most of them are currently pretty bad and worse than tech. It's like these mods that add a bazillion trees without actually adding value to the traditions. +tiny modifier that is worse than a single tech is no engaging tradition. Most tradition trees have a few good picks that justify taking the tree even if everything else is in it is mediocre/useless/niche.

Instead of creating more stuff that does nothing for defining your empire or playstyle o would rather see an extensive rework of existing tradition trees to matter more.

For example most of the expansion and discovery tree are only useful in the early game, either the tree becomes useless if not picked first or has such a strong modifier like discovery finisher that you don't care about the rest.

 

[Dlin369]

Can we get a Relic related to the L-gates? Beating the Tempest does give pretty powerful rewards already, but it would be nice to have a less powerful relic a souvenir

 

[Kolonel]

Since we're getting a DD with patch notes next week, I assume this means we can expect the next patch to hit before your summer break, right?

Also, for a game so focused on war, I don't understand why we're still stuck with such limited war goals, all-or-nothing peace treaties and that absolutely atrocious implementation of war exhaustion? Imo, that seems a lot more important (and would definitely increase my enjoyment of the game tremendously) than any of the other stuff you're looking at.
And need I mention sectors? Why oh why can we not edit these (within certain constraints)?

 

[toegut]

Any chance that we will ever get more extensive message settings? Stellaris has a lot of notifications that are almost always useless (but not always always), foreign trade agreements etc. It would be nice if we could turn them off, and ideally mark empires as interesting and thus having them pass the block. Some of your old titles have this functionality but at some point you just stopped.

Agreed, some messages are useless but present in the game (I don't care if one AI empire signed a migation agreement with another) while others are necessary and nowhere to be found. I absolutely hate how after waiting five years for my fleet to move to the border I then miss its arrival because there's no setting for "the unit has arrived" notification like in EU4. Please add notification settings, it's a QoL feature that is sorely missed.

 

[carthe]

Idk if this is the right place to post it but how about locking some ship variants behind technology?
This could give early ships (corvs, destro) more advanced designs after we reach late game and make them even more customizable.

 

[BaBoFantasy]

Fleet Combat Balance​

Meanwhile, my planned experiments primarily have to do with fleet combat.

Things I’m looking forward to looking at include:

• Providing a late game role for Destroyers and Cruisers, and providing incentives for mixed fleets.
• Increasing the length of fleet combats, reducing the dominance of alpha strikes.
• Experimenting with existing counters, tracking, evasion, and accuracy mechanics.
  • This may also end up providing a role for smaller weapons.
• Improving ship behavior based on the roles assigned them by combat computers.
  • Yes, Carrier Battleship, I know you have a point defense laser and you're very proud of it. That doesn’t mean you should charge into melee to use it.

These are likely the experiments most ethereal in nature at this time and are unlikely to bear fruit in the short term.

As a modder, who tried to improve the space warfare balance for 3 years, now I am shedding tears of joy! All the planned changes are fascinating and promising, I cannot wait the announce of the NEW APOCALYPSE! I do appreciate your plans and strongly agree with it.

BTW @Eladrin, is there any plan for the AI shipbuilding improvements? I know well that there are AI weights in the ship sections and components, but...
1. Beyond the AI weights, weapon preference and defense ratios (HUL/ARM/SLD) are strongly fused with the AI personalities for now. So there are NO way to change them without handling the AIPs directly, which makes sooooooo many compatibility issues beyond shipbuildings. Can they be detached from the AI personalities?
2. The AI weights for the ship components are country-scoped, so they cannot be applied with the ship or ship class specific. Can you improve the conditions so that they can consider the component-shipclass match?
3. There are no triggers for counting the components of the ships (impossible for the existing has_component trigger). Is there any possibility that introducing them to the modding univerese?

Anyway, I'm happy again with the planned combat balance improvements and looking forward to it. What a wonderful Thursday! Thanks Devs!