Stellaris Dev Diary #326 - 3.10.4 "Pyxis" Released [e9b6] + Upcoming Holiday Tech Beta

[Laaaaan]

I still think Supremacy itself should keep -10% ship cost for Master Shipwrights. If all other sources of ship cost reduction are reduced or removed, Supremacy should still keep its own one...

 

[MadCow94]

The more I look at the tech changes, the more I think a sledgehammer was brought instead of a scalpel. We're talking 100% reduction if my match is right coupled with up to a 500% increase in costs. Not sure I'm in love with that math. I guess we'll see.

 

[somerandofromreddit]

• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.

This is probably the most important change. With all those synergies and bonis we were breezing through the late game techs in a jiffy once the economy got going.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

No building slots fix?

also, RETURN of the EATER

Should be fixed by

• Some planet modifiers that were getting incorrectly applied twice should now only be applied once.

does chosen of.. no longer get immortal trait? since when?

They're still immortal.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

if chosen are immortal then why have a leader lifespan trait at all? and not have immortal on them?

The Chosen of the Composer's ruler trait's Leader Lifespan and Leader XP bonuses apply to all leaders.

It is one of the reasons that the Composer of Strands is my favourite Shroud Patron since the Shroud rework.

EDIT: I also like the rest of the Composer's bonuses, as between Composer's chosen ruler, sanctum, and the covenant bonuses you get a very strong package, and the downsides aren't too punishing, so long as you plan for them:

1. Either living life dangerously OR needing spare council-specced leaders in case one of them dies to rare random leader death event (15 years MTTH, 15% chance each event, targets random leader with the psionic trait; All else being equal, assume that you lose about one leader per century, though of course some times you get unlucky and lose more - or lucky and lose none in hundreds of years). Note that both the Chosen of the Composer and Chosen One traits make a leader immune to the random death event (by substituting for the psionic trait); Were this not the case, I would not be so sanguine about it
2. Needing to complete essential gene-modding before reaching tier 3 Covenant progression, where you become restricted to 3 total trait picks

That said, I perfectly understand people who prefer to play Instrument of Desire, as even though the Instrument isn't that great if you aren't playing a trade build, at least it is easy to handle and you don't risk leaders. So it is a great choice for trade builds, newbies, and the risk averse.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

One potential balance issue, especially for AI empires:
About half of the ascension perks are currently gated behind technologies. With technological progress becoming slower, the number of ascension perks available at each new AP slot will be lower. This will especially impact two categories of empires:

1. AI players.
   Unlike human players, who can delay their ascension perk picks, AI players pick from the ascension perks available when a new AP slot is obtained. AI players will get the more powerful technology-gated ascension perks much less frequently than currently, weakening AI players versus human players.
2. Unity-focused (Tradition-focused) empires.
   Human players will need to wait longer until they can fill an AP slot with the intended ascension perk, but AI players will be hit especially hard due to their inability to plan their AP picks in advance (and wait patiently when no desired ascension perk is available). Unity-focused AI empires may end up having mostly, perhaps only, basic ascension perks.

This can be avoided in two ways:

1. AI players are "taught" to plan their AP picks in advance, i.e. only pick ascension perks from a small pool of selected ascension perks.
2. Ascension perks are changed to never require technologies to be picked.
   • Optionally, they could also help focus research in that direction. A real-life analogy could be that when the USA picked the Manhattan Project and Lunar Program ascension perks, they did not yet possess the necessary technologies - rather, these undertakings focused research in those directions.
     • For instance, "Eternal Vigilance" currently requires the Star Fortress technology (tier 3 engineering). With this change, "Eternal Vigilance" could instead be picked regardless of whether that technology had been researched. Additionally, Starhold and Star Fortress could become guaranteed research options once their prerequisites are fulfilled (similar to the advanced Habitat technologies becoming guaranteed research options after picking Voidborne).
     • "Arcology Project" could similarly be picked early, and add "Weather Control Systems" and "Anti-Gravity Engineering" as guaranteed research options, but the planetary decision "Arcology Project" could require that "Anti-Gravity Engineering" has been discovered. Essentially, players could pick "Arcology Project" early, and face a time period where the ascension perk is effectively useless, but ultimately get the necessary technologies sooner than they otherwise would have.
   • It would become more important for ascension perks to be relatively balanced versus each other, so that all of them are (situationally) attractive options.
   • Suggestion thread:
     Ascension Perk picks should never require technologies to pick, but instead...

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Loaded up the patch. Started a new game with exalted priesthood/vaults of knowledge civics. Immediate reaction: The 3.10 "leaders offered traits they already have" bug reported by me and many others is still present.

Stellaris - [3.10.2 1cff] Leader starting at level 2 offered trait he already has on level-up

Description [3.10.2 1cff] Leader starting at level 2 offered trait he already has on level-up Game Version 3.10.2 What version do you use? Steam What expansions do you have installed? Plantoids, Humanoids, Synthetic Dawn, Utopia, Leviathans...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[LiZinckle]

Granting some situaltional merit is actually a good way to emphasize negatraits. I like it.

 

[Dr Pippy]

I don't mind nerdy!

I am curious how you went about making assumptions to create reasonable calculations, since, to me, growth that is linear or sublinear is something that happens when you are pretty much done with the game and are playing on fast-forward - not something that can be considered representative of most of the game.

Probably overkill, but I've attached a png of a pdf with my calculations. (Wasn't going be able to type all this intelligently in a regular forum post.) It's obviously a very approximate answer, but given appropriately wide error bars (say, +/-100 to 150 years) seems pretty robust to different assumptions.

Pop growth seems pretty heavily playstyle dependent; I tend not to go on conquering sprees, so once I've got my borders secured and my habitats built, linear or sublinear growth is what I usually experience. But I did include some extra calculations for superlinear growth; the short version is that it makes a slight difference but doesn't change the overall story that I'd expect tech times 3-4x longer than what's on live.

I don't necessarily expect that anyone else would want to (or be interested) in this kind of modelling, but at the very least it was a good intellectual workout for me, so thanks for prodding me in that direction!

 

[Verx90]

if chosen are immortal then why have a leader lifespan trait at all? and not have immortal on them?

i may be wrong , but i think it talk about other leaders lifespan .

 

[King Harkinian]

Were the leader trait names fixed? Several of them were seemingly renamed recently by a non-native English speaker. One hilarious example was Inquisitive -> Inquisitor, which is.... a very different thing. Multiple traits also had "-ness" added to them which make the names very clunky and also no longer descriptors of a person but of a concept. "Carefulness" is the worst example, since it's barely even a word - the correct word would be "caution". But it should of course be "cautious" or "careful", like it used to be. The trait names are supposed to be adjectives or descriptors after all. You can't say "this leader is carefulness".

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Psionics may have awful growth, but ... the POP efficiency for all jobs is much, much, better than anybody else's

This is 100% intended, when we rebalanced the ascension paths for Orion last year one of the goals was to ensure that the more pop growth/assembly an ascension path gave, the less effective their pops were, compared to other ascension paths.

 

[Yagisan]

*Cries in GOG*

I like to tell myself that it's fine. The Steam users are the ones guinea pig testing the beta changes, and that us GoG users are getting the refined release.

 

[Dr Pippy]

• Significantly reduced the yearly chance for leaders to gain negative traits.
• Due to player feedback, the Micromanager negative trait for Commanders now increases fleet upkeep instead of reducing command limit.
• The Lethargic negative trait for Commanders now also reduces fleet upkeep.
• The Nervous negative trait for Commanders now also increases disengagement chance.

All of these look like great changes! I especially appreciate seeing some negative traits that are trade-offs; those should make for interesting gameplay choices.

I understand the wisdom of waiting to test the tech changes in the open beta before formulating an opinion. My concern here is that there have been so many drastic changes that it'll be difficult to tell what effects each of them has had in terms of actual gameplay. I think a more incremental approach would be more informative.

Without making any judgments pro or con, it does seem feasible at least to estimate the effects on tech costs of the individual changes being proposed. They are... massive.

• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.

This will obviously depend on empire size; for a relatively typical end-game empire with size 1000, this will increase tech costs by a factor of 1.5. (+300% to tech costs instead of +200%.)

• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.

This is tough to say precisely without knowing how the techs are weighted between the different tiers. A reasonable estimate is to add up the costs of one of each tech from T1 through T5. Under the old curve, that's (2k+4k+8k+16k+32k)=62k. With the new curve, it's (2.5k+6.5k+17.5k+48.5k+137.5k)=212.5k, which is a factor of 3.4 larger. Obviously this is approximate, but the overall effect of this change is therefore in the neighborhood of a 3x increase in tech costs.

• Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4

This one is a straightforward increase in (effective) research cost by a factor of 4/3.

• Replaced basic research technologies such as Quantum Theory with Breakthrough Technologies. Breakthrough Technologies will only appear once you have researched enough techs of your current tier and are required to research to reach the next tier.

This is a loss of +60% research from jobs. This is significantly diluted by the number of other +X% from jobs modifiers that you can get by mid/late game, which might reach something like +100% (+35% from other tech, +20% from scientist governor (potentially more depending on traits), let's say +30% from stability, +10% from designation if you're on a research ring world). This would mean that you're getting +100% research from scientists rather than +160% research from scientists—a slowdown by a factor of 2.6/2=1.3.

There were some other changes as well; e.g., the changes to research speed, etc. But I'm less confident that I can come up with even a ballpark numerical estimate for how much of an effect those will have at this point. And hopefully I've managed to capture all the big ones.

So taking all these together, you're increasing research costs by a factor of 1.5 x 3 x (4/3) x 1.3 ≈ 8. Even without doing any testing, this seems like an awful lot.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I don't know where you've been the last few years, maybe you was an employee or tester for Paradox (that's not an accusation or implication) or playing a lot of crusader kings but Stellaris has been a set way for at least how long I've been a player (just over 3 years). And as there is a ebb and flow to communities, I expect that a quietened minority remember the game any differently but it was certainly beyond those 3 years I've been around. And that's the reason in plain sight where you can't just dismiss people getting "uppity", "unsettled" and otherwise be cautious about these changes. A lot of active people only know this way of Stellaris and have been "purchasers" of it and "enjoyer" of it throughout this time and it's been sold a specific way under a power fantasy. EU/Crusader Kings by comparison are far slower and is much more about diplomacy, borders and province management - and as there isn't a CW game like Stellaris, rightfully people are a little concerned of a overall narrative change but also maybe a lot of fast paced change too.

So I think you should give people room to exercise their caution and to also expect it and not combat it whilst as you say, letting people test it for themselves

I've been around since forever on the Paradox forums, mostly providing helpful analysis and advice about gameplay mechanics as well as writing silly stories, but also being a real killjoy in balance discussions by insisting on separating preference from problems, and have been playing Stellaris a few weeks - or in some cases - months every year since its release. As for testing, I've beta tested most of PDS' games but, curiously enough, not Stellaris, and I don't think I personally know anybody on the current Stellaris development team - but I might be wrong. Anything else you don't want to know?

(Sorry about that, couldn't resist it. It is all true, but at times my sense of humour gets the better of me.)

I am definitely not against people expressing themselves, being cautious, or exercising alarm - but if they do it without reference to the numbers we are presented for changes, or do it with reference to the numbers, and my analysis happens to differ, then I will tell them what my analysis of the situation is and why I think there is cause for alarm, or not cause for alarm as the case might be, because I quite like helping people by presenting data and analysis rather than opinion.

So when I see an argument based on "when the price of tech and traditions have been increased" by a player who has played the current game under those conditions by using the tech/tradition slide, and to the best of my knowledge (as expressed in these release notes and last week's dev diary) the price of traditions has not been increased, and the tech and tradition sliders have been deliberately split up for the test, why would I not want to try to correct that mistaken assumption by looking at the implications of what we do know, giving my own extrapolations?

If they end up relieved, that's fine. If they end up thinking, "he's got a point, but I still think so-and-so" that's also fine. If they end up thinking that I don't have a point, that's also fine with me, and perhaps they are right. But at least I'll have provided them with better data and a contrasting view to make better predictions.

And perhaps they'll provide arguments that convince me they have a point, or at least cause me to doubt my point, and take a second look at affairs, and that is valuable too.

 

[amib]

Hello everyone!

The 3.10.4 "Pyxis" update has been released today. Of particular interest in this week’s update are a fix that lets AI be more willing to recruit Scientists for exploration, a fix to certain modifiers doubling up, and some adjustments to negative leader traits.

Spoiler: 3.10.4 "Pyxis" Patch Notes

Balance

• Significantly reduced the yearly chance for leaders to gain negative traits.
• Due to player feedback, the Micromanager negative trait for Commanders now increases fleet upkeep instead of reducing command limit.
• The Lethargic negative trait for Commanders now also reduces fleet upkeep.
• The Nervous negative trait for Commanders now also increases disengagement chance.
• Having the Antagonistic Diplomatic Stance will now appease your factions asking for you to have a Strong Diplomatic Stance.

Bugfixes

• Added some failsafes to generate council positions and gestalt nodes in various edge cases where they weren't created or disappeared
• Clarified reformed tooltip for Dark Consortium civics
• Declining to Hunt for the Hyacinth should now correctly remove the event chain.
• Fix Astral Harvesting not available for heavily conquering empires
• Fixed a typo in the pre-FTL Provide Technology Tooltip.
• Fixed Civics not swapping to their alternative when switching Governments
• Fixed missing loc for the Fear of the Dark Admiral trait
• Fixed the Accelerated Time Astral Planes Modifier having a description for a title.
• Removed a redundant tooltip from the Synthetic Evolution event
• Ruler clothing selection in the empire designer is now respected
• Some planet modifiers that were getting incorrectly applied twice should now only be applied once.
• Updated the All Crisis Strength tooltip to accurately state that it doubles the strength of each subsequent crisis.
• Your ice miners will no longer make your Mercenaries homeless if they happened to have built their base above an ice asteroid.

AI

• AI Empires will now be more willing to hire leaders for their science ships as long as they believe they can afford the Unity upkeep.
• UI
• Fixed XP not being shown in XP bar tooltip for gestalt rulers and councilors.

Modding

• collapsable_leader_container should now calculate the correct height no matter the amount of horizontal slots.
• Fixed lock_country scope change incorrectly stating that the output scope was a bypass, when it is actually a country

Barring unexpected developments, we consider the 3.10 “Pyxis” release stable at this point, and the 3.11 “Eridanus” update is the next expected release - currently planned for 2024Q1. As mentioned in an earlier dev diary, 3.11 “Eridanus” will be focused primarily on general bugfixing and stability.

Technology Open Beta

We’ll be putting a Technology Open Beta up tomorrow to gather feedback and data on some possible changes to research. While some changes planned for 3.11 “Eridanus” have snuck into this release (like some improvements to Galactic Doorstep), the overall technology rebalance is considered experimental and may or may not end up being released. It is likely to undergo some changes if it does go live.

The Technology Open Beta will run from December 15th through January 15th. We’ll post a feedback form tomorrow to help gather your impressions and thoughts.

Spoiler: Technology Open Beta Release Notes

Features

• Replaced basic research technologies such as Quantum Theory with Breakthrough Technologies. Breakthrough Technologies will only appear once you have researched enough techs of your current tier and are required to research to reach the next tier.
• Breakthrough Technologies become easier to research based on the number of other empires you have low Tech intel on that have already researched them.
• Enigmatic Engineering blocks your Breakthrough Technologies from spreading.
• Events that give progress towards random technologies can grant progress towards Breakthrough Technologies, but will not give as much as they would a regular technology.

Improvements

• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup.
• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)

Balance

• Adjustments made to the Galactic Doorstep origin:
  • Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin.
  • Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.
• Rebalanced research speed modifiers. Most sources of Research Speed now have a corresponding increase in Researcher job upkeep
• Removed or adjusted many sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
• Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
• Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
• Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
• Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
• Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
• Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
• Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
• Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
• Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
• Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
• Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
• Letters of Marque now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
• Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
• Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked.
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies.
• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
• Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
• Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
• The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
• Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
• Knights of the Toxic God balancing:
  • Slightly reduced the research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
  • Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
  • Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
  • Slightly reduced the unity and research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
  • Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
  • The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
  • Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% not 2% per Squire.
  • The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors.
• Reworked and rebalanced the Erudite, Cyborg, Synthetic, Psionic, Chosen One, and Chosen of X traits to include new leader assignments.

View attachment 1062609
View attachment 1062610​

Bugfix

• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events.

Modding

• Added `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger

Meet the Devs Video

Game Systems Designer @Gruntsatwork did a video interview about what it’s like to work on the Custodian and Crisis teams.

No, you can’t implement trash. - E​

Next Week

The nights are getting cold and long, so for the last dev diary of the year it’s time for a look at the year in review.

See you then!

why, lord WHY do you guys stay so determined to keep scientists useless in the late game? in what universe is anomaly research speed beneficial in the late game after you've finished your ascension? erudite is literally the only actually useful scientist trait on that whole list. the timeline of a whole game session is filled with a plethora of useless modifiers and abilities you get AFTER the fact, once you no longer need them. any trait or modifier that increases survey speed after the first few scientist levels is utterly redundant and a waste of it's own existence.

for something that's supposed to be a fundamental milestone of your empire's timeline, getting anomaly research speed from your ascension path is just rude and irritating. survey speed, anomaly discovery chance, anomaly research speed, extra chance to get minor artifact deposits from archeological dig sites, those are all early game traits. the later you get them, the more useless they are.

other trait based modifiers would be more appropriate for ascension path traits. research speed, leader xp, leader negative trait reduction, upkeep reduction, and resource efficiency improvements like extra research from pops when the scientist is a governor, those are mid to late game trait effects more appropriate for an ascension path.

 

[amib]

Hello everyone!

The 3.10.4 "Pyxis" update has been released today. Of particular interest in this week’s update are a fix that lets AI be more willing to recruit Scientists for exploration, a fix to certain modifiers doubling up, and some adjustments to negative leader traits.

Spoiler: 3.10.4 "Pyxis" Patch Notes

Balance

• Significantly reduced the yearly chance for leaders to gain negative traits.
• Due to player feedback, the Micromanager negative trait for Commanders now increases fleet upkeep instead of reducing command limit.
• The Lethargic negative trait for Commanders now also reduces fleet upkeep.
• The Nervous negative trait for Commanders now also increases disengagement chance.
• Having the Antagonistic Diplomatic Stance will now appease your factions asking for you to have a Strong Diplomatic Stance.

Bugfixes

• Added some failsafes to generate council positions and gestalt nodes in various edge cases where they weren't created or disappeared
• Clarified reformed tooltip for Dark Consortium civics
• Declining to Hunt for the Hyacinth should now correctly remove the event chain.
• Fix Astral Harvesting not available for heavily conquering empires
• Fixed a typo in the pre-FTL Provide Technology Tooltip.
• Fixed Civics not swapping to their alternative when switching Governments
• Fixed missing loc for the Fear of the Dark Admiral trait
• Fixed the Accelerated Time Astral Planes Modifier having a description for a title.
• Removed a redundant tooltip from the Synthetic Evolution event
• Ruler clothing selection in the empire designer is now respected
• Some planet modifiers that were getting incorrectly applied twice should now only be applied once.
• Updated the All Crisis Strength tooltip to accurately state that it doubles the strength of each subsequent crisis.
• Your ice miners will no longer make your Mercenaries homeless if they happened to have built their base above an ice asteroid.

AI

• AI Empires will now be more willing to hire leaders for their science ships as long as they believe they can afford the Unity upkeep.
• UI
• Fixed XP not being shown in XP bar tooltip for gestalt rulers and councilors.

Modding

• collapsable_leader_container should now calculate the correct height no matter the amount of horizontal slots.
• Fixed lock_country scope change incorrectly stating that the output scope was a bypass, when it is actually a country

Barring unexpected developments, we consider the 3.10 “Pyxis” release stable at this point, and the 3.11 “Eridanus” update is the next expected release - currently planned for 2024Q1. As mentioned in an earlier dev diary, 3.11 “Eridanus” will be focused primarily on general bugfixing and stability.

Technology Open Beta

We’ll be putting a Technology Open Beta up tomorrow to gather feedback and data on some possible changes to research. While some changes planned for 3.11 “Eridanus” have snuck into this release (like some improvements to Galactic Doorstep), the overall technology rebalance is considered experimental and may or may not end up being released. It is likely to undergo some changes if it does go live.

The Technology Open Beta will run from December 15th through January 15th. We’ll post a feedback form tomorrow to help gather your impressions and thoughts.

Spoiler: Technology Open Beta Release Notes

Features

• Replaced basic research technologies such as Quantum Theory with Breakthrough Technologies. Breakthrough Technologies will only appear once you have researched enough techs of your current tier and are required to research to reach the next tier.
• Breakthrough Technologies become easier to research based on the number of other empires you have low Tech intel on that have already researched them.
• Enigmatic Engineering blocks your Breakthrough Technologies from spreading.
• Events that give progress towards random technologies can grant progress towards Breakthrough Technologies, but will not give as much as they would a regular technology.

Improvements

• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup.
• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)

Balance

• Adjustments made to the Galactic Doorstep origin:
  • Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin.
  • Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.
• Rebalanced research speed modifiers. Most sources of Research Speed now have a corresponding increase in Researcher job upkeep
• Removed or adjusted many sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
• Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
• Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
• Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
• Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
• Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
• Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
• Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
• Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
• Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
• Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
• Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
• Letters of Marque now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
• Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
• Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked.
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies.
• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
• Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
• Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
• The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
• Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
• Knights of the Toxic God balancing:
  • Slightly reduced the research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
  • Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
  • Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
  • Slightly reduced the unity and research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
  • Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
  • The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
  • Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% not 2% per Squire.
  • The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors.
• Reworked and rebalanced the Erudite, Cyborg, Synthetic, Psionic, Chosen One, and Chosen of X traits to include new leader assignments.

View attachment 1062609
View attachment 1062610​

Bugfix

• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events.

Modding

• Added `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger

Meet the Devs Video

Game Systems Designer @Gruntsatwork did a video interview about what it’s like to work on the Custodian and Crisis teams.

No, you can’t implement trash. - E​

Next Week

The nights are getting cold and long, so for the last dev diary of the year it’s time for a look at the year in review.

See you then!

after playing on the beta, i really wish you guys would state the actual intended tech curve at default settings. i'm still on third tier techs in 2400 and getting my butt kicked by the crisis. feels horrible, and it seems like you're over-correcting a problem that never existed in the first place.

please stop trying to tune the game for the 1% meta build "rush" players. the rest of us don't do that crap.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Probably overkill, but I've attached a png of a pdf with my calculations. (Wasn't going be able to type all this intelligently in a regular forum post.) It's obviously a very approximate answer, but given appropriately wide error bars (say, +/-100 to 150 years) seems pretty robust to different assumptions.

Pop growth seems pretty heavily playstyle dependent; I tend not to go on conquering sprees, so once I've got my borders secured and my habitats built, linear or sublinear growth is what I usually experience. But I did include some extra calculations for superlinear growth; the short version is that it makes a slight difference but doesn't change the overall story that I'd expect tech times 3-4x longer than what's on live.

I don't necessarily expect that anyone else would want to (or be interested) in this kind of modelling, but at the very least it was a good intellectual workout for me, so thanks for prodding me in that direction!

Did you really write a document in LaTeX to detail this? I’m impressed.

 

[Calvax]

Sweet, I'm looking forward to trying out the beta. The changes to galactic doorstep are a welcome surprise too. It's a cool idea for an origin as it implies you'll be able to spread pockets of your empire throughout the galaxy, but that rarely works out as by the time you get the Black Crown operational it usually leads right into someone else's territory.