Stellaris Dev Diary #303 - Stellaris with a Twist Community Event!

[Starfury]

2. Won't that make raiding bombardment essentially useless?

Not necessarily. Raiding bombardment can and will kill defending armies, leaving the pops vulnerable to abduction.
You can speed up the process further, by either sending an invasion force to soften up the defenders or by only switching to the raiding stance after you've bombed the living daylights out of the defending armies.

And even if the nerf is too bad, I'd rather spend summer with raiding bombardment being way too weak than with it being way too strong...

 

[-Marauder-]

Any chance of getting increased command limit from admirals back or smth similar to reduce the number of admirals mid-late game? Leader cap still doesnt seem to work well with old command limit.

Please no. The problem lies in scarcity of Admirals, not minor fleet cap changes.

On topic. Good change to Raiding Bombardment, and Planetary Damage via ground combat. Honestly the latter especially kills people at an absurd rate. 1/10 as fast would still be "absurd" in terms of collateral damage looking at past real world conflicts.

Sad to not hear anything about the leader cap. It's still in a terrible state and the discussions about it have turned the forum into as hostile and toxic a place as I've ever seen it, far exceeding both the old FTL cull and Mega Corp release.

 

[mial42]

Frankly, don't understand the quantity of downvotes. Many people are fine wih the current command limit combined with leader cap?

Higher command limit would be good. Dynamic command limit is bad.

 

[Eswahrt]

Any chance of getting increased command limit from admirals back or smth similar to reduce the number of admirals mid-late game? Leader cap still doesnt seem to work well with old command limit.

 

[Calvax]

Frankly, don't understand the quantity of downvotes. Many people are fine wih the current command limit combined with leader cap?

I think it’s because people didn’t like the dynamic fleet cap. I imagine if you’d just posted about the leader cap you would have got more up votes.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

Will the single-planet governor micromanagement be addressed in the patch? Just tone down the governor traits a little and make them sector-wide again please.

The exploit of jumping your starting admiral around to scout with all three starting corvettes also needs fixing. Please try to avoid having so many of these exploits which reward constant micromanagement. Turning edicts on and off at month change to avoid paying upkeep for them is another one.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

That feels more like players punishing themselves more than it being a dangerous exploit.

"The bad design is fine because you don't have to make use of the efficient strategy in a strategy game" will never be an even remotely acceptable argument.

 

[Imajicus]

Dear devs, why no single word to the leader cap??

It feels so unsatifying having the game taunting me all the time everywhere with open positions while it doen't allow me to staff those. This cap feels artificial because it has no relation to ingame-reality and therefore breaks immersion (yes, Stellaris is a story driven game). Why a cap of 7? WT*, It makes no sense. Sorry.

I guess you needed to change the leader system as a foundation for Paragons, but you made it worse with that. Balancing seemed to be an issue because of the new overpowered paragon leaders, but instead of inventing a nice and claen solution (via costs, upkeep and what not, you are the experts!), you just did this low effort workaround. Yes, lets call it what it is: a workaround. Why is balancing an issue at all if all other empires can use leaders equally the same? Interesting is, that the leader cap is still there if you disable the new dlc. Caps are an abstractions that boardgames often need to use to reduce complexity and remain playable in finity time, but I'm not playing a board game here, nor do I want to. Stellaris does sophisticated calculations and mechanics all over the place that make the game so great. Why not here?

Paradox, please try to improve this aspect of the game. Thanks!

Sorry for my bad English.

 

[xeleth12]

Dear devs, why no single word to the leader cap??

They don't care.
Their replies/comments about it were quite transparent: Basically : "We know better, it fits -our- niche playstyle of barely playing the game and we don't care about you. Deal with it. Oh, and here's some sugar: [easier modding ways] so now you can fix it yourselves and be silent."
Yes, I exaggerate, but a certain one of them was bordeline insulting. The condescence was off the charts. Blizzard "don't you have phones" level if not worse. The silence that followed (in regards to the cap) after the reactions from those comments, while being able to talk/reply/joke about everything else under the sun is also telling.
The cap is here to stay and we have no choice but to comply. Hell, they even removed many to mitigate it with ascencions and traditions (XP).
Maybe, if a miracle happens and they adress it, it'll be months from now.

 

[Lorenerd11]

We’re reducing the amount of collateral damage ground units deal, as many invasions were destroying the colonies before the battle completed.

The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops will be dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 3 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony, so on a colony with three defending armies the last ten pops would be safe from raiding.)

Some questions:

1. Does that include offensive armies? If so, doesn't this buff cheap spammable armies like slave armies and clone armies, with 20 armies effectively protecting all pops from raiding on most colonies?

2 Will stronger armies protect more pops, or will a Mega Warform protect as many pops as a basic assault army?

3. Won't that make raiding bombardment essentially useless?

4. And lastly, shouldn't a certain amount of pops be protected from dying to collateral damage at all (especially the last one), and shouldn't armies protect some pops from dying to collateral damage?

 

[4444th]

A little off here but, could we give more origins choice for machine empires? Life-seeded? Why machines cant start in paradise... post-apocalyptic? Like the only creation that survives nuclear war? Ocean-paradise? Robots cant exist underwater? Subterranean? No underground robots? :C

 

[Meneye]

Will the single-planet governor micromanagement be addressed in the patch? Just tone down the governor traits a little and make them sector-wide again please.

The exploit of jumping your starting admiral around to scout with all three starting corvettes also needs fixing. Please try to avoid having so many of these exploits which reward constant micromanagement. Turning edicts on and off at month change to avoid paying upkeep for them is another one.

That feels more like players punishing themselves more than it being a dangerous exploit.

 

[Calvax]

Any chance of getting increased command limit from admirals back or smth similar to reduce the number of admirals mid-late game? Leader cap still doesnt seem to work well with old command limit.

Some flat boosts to all the fleet cap techs would be a good short term solution until they figure out the new plan for leader limits

 

[Rafss]

Are Generals having the mortality rate of Primitive Societies being looked at?

 

[luxeritib]

3.8.3 seems quite solid, but there could be some improvements. Resource traits became absurdly strong, that I have to forget all the meta-builds now. If you manage to get 3~4 resource giving leaders early game, you can easily sit on resources from the very start. Aptitude and Transcendent Learning AP allows you to grab resource leaders very easily. Combine it with Heroic Past or Vault of knowledge, it's even better. Prosperity, Executive Vigor, Aquatics trait,.... they are nothing when compared with leader traits. Resource trait in early economy marginalizes all the other features. I think this market equivalent of 32 energy/month traits should be toned down a bit.

 

[hart30]

Some questions:

1. Does that include offensive armies? If some, doesn't this buff cheap spammable armies like slave armies and clone armies, with 20 armies effectively protecting all pops from raiding on most colonies?

2. Won't that make raiding bombardment essentially useless?

3. Second, will stronger armies protect more pops, or will a Mega Warform protect as many pops as a basic assault army?

4. And lastly, shouldn't a certain amount of pops be protected from dying to collateral damage at all (especially the last one), and shouldn't armies protect some pops from dying to collateral damage?

I believe with this the tactic is to first bomb most of the armies dead, in order to steal the pops which lost protection with raiding afterwards.
It makes sense to me, as before u could have a heavy fortress planet and still easily lose all the pops working on the soldier/army jobs on it from raiding. This caused the defense armies to get deleted rather than beaten.
With the change the defense armies actual protect parts of the population from abduction, rather than getting abducted themselves.

 

[HFY]

Midgame command limit ideas:

- The first Titan in each fleet expands your command limit instead of costing any. It becomes the fleet's Flagship.

- [Leader] Memorial Fleet -- Rokregnir's Rascals, Blorp's Blades, etc. -- randomly dedicated on death of a leader with a war association (Military History expertise, being an Admiral or General, etc.) -- and memorial fleets get extra capacity.

- Armada designation for Admiral level 4+: allows you to combine three fleets into a triangular formation which travel together like that (limiting speed as if a single fleet); but for combat engagement and reinforcement, they each count as a separate fleet.

 

[Eelectrica]

Adding say a 12 month cool down when switching leader locations could work so it doesn’t seem like we’re beaming them all over the galaxy.

 

[DeathMaker900]

Love a lot of the changes in 3.8.3 but the change to Science Division, Colonial Viceroys, and War Games makes them completely useless. Leader cost and upkeep is totally irrelevant after the first 20 years.