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

[Ajacoba]

going to test to see how much of a nerf u have made to knights. i hope its not too bad because, nowadays, the first 60-70 years they fall behind a lot compared to other origins hopefully the over all change to tech makes it not as bad but we will see ( on the topic of knights can we make it so slaves can be squires ?)

To be fair, it is supposed to be a harder start

As long as you aren't handicapped to the point of dying in 10 out of 10 games it should be fine

 

[Mech_infect]

"Under One Rule" origin has several final decisions that depend on ascension . And it depends on your technology.

There is a point - this chain of events does not scale depending on the PRICE of technology and traditions, which is set up before the creation of the galaxy.

That is, two exaggerated examples

1) the technology price setting is small - by the end of the event chain I could already complete the ascension line 100 times

2) I decided to play with a higher price of technology - the time of the origin chain of events did not change and I did not have time to make an ascension due to the inconsistency of these 2 moments.


Question: will developers, when working with technologies and traditions, pay attention to this in order to make a correspondence and connect these two points?

 

[PDS_Iggy]

I realise that (and to Peter), I completely forget I’ve selected all crisis so never hung around to see what the strength increase is.

For clarity I was literally asking if it’s:

(Crisis multiplyer * 2) * 2 for the third spawn

Or something else.

And commenting at how that would be insane and in a funny difficulty kind of way, nothing more.

Anyway, who cares and merry Christmas.

If you are asking if you were to select the 25x crisis multiplier then the 2nd crisis would be 50x and the third crisis is 100x then the answer is yes.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

I absolutely hate the idea of Ascension Perks not requiring technologies. It would legitimately ruin the game for me. The complex interplay between the Unity and technology systems has always been one of my favourite game design aspects of the game, and every time it is weakened it disheartens me, such as when the relationship between Master Builders, Mega-Engineering and Galactic Wonders was simplified, and when Ascension Paths were changed to not require techs and to give Agendas that provide you with the techs you need to progress the Tradition Tree.

You are not supposed to be able to brainlessly focus on a single resource and have success with that, it is important to have interconnected systems of locks and keys so that you have to balance your economy to some extent to reap the full benefits from each focus area. Efficiently navigating those pathways of locks and keys is one of the most satisfying aspects of the game to me.

1. The fundamental suggestion was that techs should not be required to pick an ascension perk - not that ascension perks should no longer require technologies. It was even explicitly stated that Arcology Project could still effectively require Anti-Gravity Engineering, by just shifting the technology requirement to the planetary decision. Essentially, the core suggestion was only that it would be possible to decide which ascension perk will go into which slot without having to wait 50-100 years for technology to catch up, and that the AI would thereby also be less handicapped by its lack of planning ability.

2. It was also one of two alternative suggestions in the post, with the first one incidentally being that AI players could get the ability to plan their ascension perk picks in advance. Since your reply does not mention it, I can't see why you chose to award that one a disagreement too.

But, your attitude and forum behaviour are your own choice.

 

[Dr Pippy]

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

Math, LaTeX, and video games are three of my favorite things, so it was a good time!

Of course, maybe it would be more helpful just to, you know, try the beta and see how it goes...

 

[Shark7]

I appreciate the effort that went into modeling that, but I hope I won't have any more calculus flashbacks when all I want is to talk about Stellaris lol. The college classes were enough for me for one lifespan.

Yeah, I took one look at it and...nope, just nope. Trying to figure all that out would probably just give me a headache, so I'll take the word of the mathematician.

 

[MadCow94]

It's honestly obnoxious logging into an iron man game you're 60 hours deep into to find all your planets suddenly have unrepairable ruined structures and unemployment that weren't there when you played 2 days ago. There really should be a feature to make changes like this optional for games already in progress. Not like I knew this was a "bug" or was trying to exploit it, just been playing the game normally, and now have a ton of extra busy work to try to correct all this crap.

There is. Roll back to the previous version, which is listed under the betas tab.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Patch 3.10.4 has caused 2 buildings in majority of my colonies to break a few only 1 building has broken and in even fewer colonies no buildings are destroyed. Pops remain the same so not the issue. According to steam comments many other players are experiencing the same issue after installing the newest patch. I attached screenshots of one of my colonies showing the buildings fine upon loading the game then after unpausing they immediately break. Anyone know why this might be happening?

Yes. 3.10 was released with building slots seriously bugged.

3.10-3.10.3 gave empires twice the building slots from planet modifiers that increased building slots.

This bug was fixed in 3.10.4.

As a result, all games in progress where a planet had more buildings than the number of building slots it really should have had (and would have had prior to 3.10), had excess buildings destroyed when this was fixed. This is the same thing that happens during unbugged gameplay when the number of building slots on a planet is reduced below the number of buildings present. (This seldom happens in normal gameplay unless the player is destroying City Districts and gets trigger happy.)

Immensely frustrating for everybody who weren't aware that they were taking advantage of a bug by building more buildings than their planet really should have been able to support and thus didn't see this coming*, but nothing to do about it, alas.

* Exception for anybody playing with the Functional Architecture civic. There is no way they didn't notice they got +2 building slots rather than +1, so they, at least, must have expected a bugfix to be incoming.

 

[Thaduck]

I can't way to play the new tech beta but I can't help but think that they've tweaked it excessively.



- Base Output of research is reduced by 25% (with seemingly no way to increase it except for the already present Vultaum precursor building)

- A lot of percentage modifiers are coupled with an increase to upkeep (the economy will already be less developed compared to previously because research will be slower), granted we have no idea how much upkeep will increase. This however might make ascending a research world more compelling.

- The technology curve massively increases the cost of late game techs

- Empire size will also have a larger impact on tech cost (ANOTHER INCREASE)

- Gateway techs ensure the pace will be slower by removing the easily accessible 20% boost techs [Love this idea]

But I guess that's what this beta is for. Maybe they overnerfed it on purpose

 

[ValinShadow]

• Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
  
  Fleet Supremacy increases ship upkeep, not decreases it. So does this mean it won't increase ship upkeep any longer?

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

What exactly is the point of these techs? If they cost the same as the next tier, then they're just a filler tech. Or are they costlier than normal techs (like Quantum Theory being the breakthrough for t2 but costing the same as a t3)?

They are a gating mechanism intended to slow down tech frontrunners a bit as well as a catch-up mechanism for those that are behind.

According to last week's dev diary, they are much more expensive to start out with, but get cheaper the more empires know them. So if you are a tech frontrunner you may end up paying full price to break through to the next technology tier, whereas if you are a laggard you'll get the breakthrough techs with a significant discount.

Exactly how much more expensive we won't know until we see the beta tomorrow.

So at the point where you qualify for the next tech tier and would usually start being offered its techs (along with all of the current and previous tiers), you'll instead start being offered the breakthrough tech and have to decide whether you stick around researching the tiers you already have access to for a while hoping the cost of the breakthrough tech goes down or whether you'll pursue the breakthrough tech immediately.

 

[Harvey_James]

4th civic would be great ... devs .. so many choices now.. it hurts too have ignore so many great ones

 

[Lenk]

For terms of balance/late game lag, kind of thought of a few things. Since by the end game there are tens of thousands of ships in the galaxy

1. Reducing the naval capacity gained from all sources to lower the limit of ships in active service
2. Drastically increasing the upkeep of ships when over naval capacity
3. Adding an officer mechanic where ships would require officers similar to that in Star Trek: Infinite to lower the speed in which ships could be produced.

 

[Harvey_James]

i feel like scientists exploration always finishes far too early in the game.. i like the idea of slowing everything they do down they did a little with survey speeds and scientist caps.. but its not really enough especially now assist research is gone its -1 avenue in late game they have a use for.. if u lucky to get a tech planet that helps give u a governor but most of the time its about 2 council spots worth of scientist by end of game u care about... thats sad... especially if u get the explorer renowned scientist guy.. he runs out stuff too do really..
- slow down surveying more and nerf the huge survey speed tech buffs.. this should help slow down early game a little more
- anomalies could also do with being slower too complete.. maybe make them multi step too extend there time much more? .. give us more mid/late game things too research like u have habitable worlds survey and the animal one.. give us more of these that last longer maybe randomly generated ones or empire related stuff? maybe planet stuff also make nebulas a thing too survey as a long term thing .. give us some unclaimed nebula systems and unique systems u cant claim too research stuff in

- archeological sites these in real life are never always done.. there is always more sites to be found over time as tech improves and people find more tombs etc.. this should be a semi constant thing too do.. maybe the results could vary much more so u not getting too much resources off it? .. or give us more unique and luxury resources from them we could trade or sell or research maybe another function scientists could do..
- astral rifts .. these could also take longer too research in the game..

 

[Miuramir]

- archeological sites these in real life are never always done.. there is always more sites to be found over time as tech improves and people find more tombs etc.. this should be a semi constant thing too do.. maybe the results could vary much more so u not getting too much resources off it? .. or give us more unique and luxury resources from them we could trade or sell or research maybe another function scientists could do..
- astral rifts .. these could also take longer too research in the game..

I think there's an idea in here that you just missed: what if you could assign scientists to already-completed archaeology sites and astral rifts to generate a small amount of useful stuff? And have the useful stuff depend not only on scientist level, but on any bonuses they have to the relevant type of thing (skill, speed, etc.).

This gives late-game scientists focused on archaeology something to do once the sites are all explored (and similarly for astral rifts), and also makes the sites slightly valuable as things to capture as they are a potential small but steady source of resources. Some archaeology sites already leave a 1 or 2 minor artifacts deposit when finished, so this would be an extension of that. There might also be a "commercial tourism" policy that reduced the science / artifact / etc. output in exchange for some energy and consumer goods.

 

[Eladrin]

When is the Technology Open Beta out today, lads?

It's now live.

 

[blahmaster6k]

I appreciate the effort that went into modeling that, but I hope I won't have any more calculus flashbacks when all I want is to talk about Stellaris lol. The college classes were enough for me for one lifespan.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

I think that's pretty weak then. Synths get pop assembly to each world on their leader. Erudite gets tech alternatives, you can't get many sources of additional tech alternatives. And let's not even get started on what Psionics can get with their leader

Suppose you have 1000 pops scattered over 20 colonies when you start the comparison (round numbers pulled from a hat, YMMV if you have more/fewer pops/planets).

If you take cybernetic, your ruler immediately nets you 2% (20) effective pops. Its like having 20 extra pops, except without the sprawl. And as your empire grows, you'll consistently keep that 2% effective pop bonus.

If you take synths, your ruler gets you +1.15 assembly per colony. Each pop costs 100+1000*0.25=350 growth required, so it will take you 25 years to grow 20 pops. Except you (and the cybernetic empire) are growing at 10x that rate from organic growth and assembly combined. So you actually need to grow 24 pops to actually have 2% more pops because of the ruler when you catch up (30 years).

At the end you'll have ~1224 more pops, and the cybernetic will have 1200 pops with 2% more effective output per pop (ish, maybe; this is getting pretty handwavy, as synths also get another free roboticist, unrelated to the ruler traits). You are now even-ish.

But the cybernetic empire got its bonus immediately, so it will take 60 years for your average bonus from your ruler to match the cybernetic's over that time. Your growth required scaling will be higher (so the extra growth is less than it seems), and your empire size will be higher (both from more pops, and because the cybernetic gets a small district size reduction). Let's call it 64 years.

~32 years until you're even in economic output with the cybernetic, during which time it can either be researching (slightly) faster or conquering (slightly more) planets to put that bonus to use. And another 32 years of slowly accumulating raw pop advantage (assuming the cybernetic wasn't leveraging its advantage) before you get enough bonus from the extra pops to finally catch up with what the cybernetic had the entire time.

The cybernetic ruler is fine. It's not unbelievably amazing, but it's fine.

 

[mirco297]

Initially, I was a bit unsure when I read that Galactic Doorstep would be changed as I already really liked this Origin the way it was.
But these changes seem both fitting and good for it, I'm glad Galactic Doorstep hasn't been forgotten.

Overall, this Dev Diary and the planned changes to technology seem very nice as well.

 

[Foxosaur]

• Updated the All Crisis Strength tooltip to accurately state that it doubles the strength of each subsequent crisis.

Does that mean a x25 initial crisis will become x50 as the second and then the third would be double of x50? So finishing on x100?

Lol that’s a lot of fleet power. I need to see this in a game now and cower in fear but I’ll start with my usual x5 first.


P.S Great interview @Gruntsatwork and thanks for introducing yourself and explaining things, found it really good.