Stellaris Dev Diary #34 - Clarke Patch

[Akka le Vil]

Paradox, could you please add ticking warscores? It's my single biggest issue with warfare.

And the auto-surrender without any player agency. And the unability to negociate anything outside war goals. And the fact that war goals are very simplistics.
Also some equivalent of casus belli, both to know WHY someone declares war on us, and to add some diplomatic/internal happiness management, would make it so much more interesting than a simple Civ-like "let's go to war, just because".

 

[EuropaCam]

This!. A minor change but managing multiple planets in the same system would be MUCH easier than managing one light years away. This change would account for that nicely (I have not seen a system with more than 3 habitable planets in them so it wouldn't be staggeringly game breaking)

One of my star systems consists of a gas giant orbited by 4 largish habitable moons, of which I've colonized two, and will occupy the others eventually (and making the system its own sector probably).

 

[Fierce "The Canadian"]

@Wiz , Thank you for the Dev Diary update and the highlights.

1. Regarding the Habitability icon/tooltip, I see that it mentions Planet Type, Surface Size and Habitability %. Is it not possible to add to the tooltip, beside the habitability %, the Species that holds that highest compatibility?
2. I am not sure if these Bugs were reported, but they are active and prevalent. Are there plans to fix the below (not specifically in Clarke)?
   • I modified my own species with genetic traits that did not manifest themselves. In my case, I added the "Enduring" trait and completed the Research Project that applied it to all my Pops, but my Leaders would still die around Age 85, even after waiting a couple of years to recruit. I presume (but have not tested) that modifying my species to be "Strong" wouldn't affect my Army damage either. Is the Player going to be made aware when these kinds of self-modifications are going to become active, or if not applicable to Leaders (as I assumed) be removed from the Genetic Modifier window?
   • Ship costs and build speeds are only affected by Assembly Yard modules and Ruler Traits, but not other modifiers. For example, having a Retired Fleet Officer as a Governor and/or a Pioneering Terminal spaceport module does not affect the costs or build speeds of Ships, colony-class or otherwise.
   • A Fallen Empire and my alliance were in a stalemate and demanded my surrender with no terms. To refuse costs 100 Influence. When I refused, they just re-demanded my surrender, costing another 100 Influence; 200 Influence a year if allowed to auto-expire. Are Diplomatic timing limiters going to be added to ensure this kind of un-avoidable Influence drain cannot be exploited by AI / within multiplayer?

Thanks again and looking forward to being a Stellaris fan for years to come!

 

[Arsonide]

Also some equivalent of casus belli, both to know WHY someone declares war on us, and to add some diplomatic/internal happiness management, would make it so much more interesting than a simple Civ-like "let's go to war, just because".

I don't think casus belli would fit in very well, to be honest. This isn't feudal Europe, it's science fiction. There are incredibly aggressive, non-civil species that indeed would go to war with you "just because". If casus belli is added, one of them should essentially be "just because". Perhaps it would carry some sort of malus with it, but it should be present.

 

[ZZMitch]

Any chance one of these upcoming patches will allow us to upgrade defense stations (rather than having to scrap and re-build)?

 

[Sequence7]

Considering the HUGE importance of sectors in the game, and just how hated they are, I'd say they are of a critical importance to overhaul ASAP. Please don't delay this to the next year.

Can't agree with that. There are so many bugs in sectors that no one has had a chance to see how they're supposed to be working. Calling for an overhaul before we've had a chance to play with the bug free version is counter productive IMO.

 

[Akka le Vil]

I don't think casus belli would fit in very well, to be honest. This isn't feudal Europe, it's science fiction.

What kind of argument is that ? Because it's sci-fi, people stop to have reason to go to war ? Wut ?
Reminder : "casus belli" is just latin for "cause/reason of war". It's nothing specific to Europe or to middle-age or to whatever. It's universal to all war by everyone and everything. There is always a REASON to go to war.

There are incredibly aggressive, non-civil species that indeed would go to war with you "just because". If casus belli is added, one of them should essentially be "just because". Perhaps it would carry some sort of malus with it, but it should be present.

Totally agree on this one. It would actually make the system even more interesting - some ethos' advantages would be to be able to declare war without internal happiness penalty.
Possibilities are endless and very exciting, it would make for more variety and depth. What's not to like ?

I can already imagine...
Xenophobic : free CB on all others species "because they are ugly xenos". Gives penalty to reputation with others species, no internal unrest with prime species having the xenophobic ethos, positive happiness if it has the fanatical xenophotic ethos.
Militarist : CB on anyone as a "glorious war", requires twice as much warscore to conquer planets. Gives penalty to relation with non-militaristic empires, positive relationship ("respect") with fanatical militarist.
Just two examples. I can imagine plenty of others, like "genocide" or "enforce peace" or "convert to our own ethos"...

Again, having a reason to do war (even if it's a flimsy pretext) is nothing specific to a game, a nation, a region, a period in history or even a species. It's just a mechanism allowing for lots more depth and possibilities and also allowing to have emergent narrative. It's all win.

 

[Vyktor]

Frederik Westier....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_West

Coincidence or are serial killers the best space empire leaders?

 

[dtroiani]

I am exciting about what I see and cannot wait to get the beta patch.

 

[TK3600]

Is the beta patch coming in a few days?

 

[grandad1982]

Any plans for diplo map modes in Clarke or Asimov?

 

[rickinator9]

Will our current patch save games be broken by the Clarke patch?

 

[JScott991]

Yes, sector AI should understand robot-only planets now.

Could you please add the ability to change ruler name? That would make the game much more immersive.

 

[208]

Thanks for the up-date, Wiz.

Question. How regularly is Stellaris planning on releasing patches? Is it once every month? This DD almost gives me the impression Stellaris is still in full development.

That's generally how Paradox supports their games these days - they don't cut their teams after release, the full team keeps working on it, whether that's patches or new DLC.

Did it have the holy mark on it? Gaia worlds are not always holy.

I've had this happen as well, and yes it was a holy world. I had been looking forward to my annoying neighbour getting smacked down by the FE, but ... nothing.

In my testing on this, a major problem strike craft have is that they are far too vulnerable to point defense. Fighters have no special ability to dodge it and bombers don't have much extra ability to take more hits. They need to be a bit tougher/more evasive and maybe be given a bit of slow-regen shielding.

Fixing the accuracy bug would go a long way to making point defense less effective vs strike craft, but whether that is sufficient or not I have no idea.

 

[DMFan]

I'm very happy with the issues addressed by this first patch and can't wait to end my Ironman play I put on standby.

Please, keep it up the good work.

 

[Senior Tigr]

1. Will this patch address the problem with ship icons blocking the + symbol when adding systems to a sector? (Currently when a ship is in a system the ship icon that indicates its presence there, in the galaxy map, is on top of the + icon and thus it must first be moved to another system in order to ''free'' the + symbol)

While that UI glitch is not fixed, you may also add a system to a sector by clicking on the star itself, instead of the plus sign, it also works.

 

[grommile]

Paradox, could you please add ticking warscores? It's my single biggest issue with warfare.

Ticking warscore is already a feature of Stellaris. It just doesn't work correctly.

And the auto-surrender without any player agency.

The AI auto-surrenders when its willingness to accept terms is high enough to accept everything demanded in your wargoals. If you're that eager to finish your chevauchée campaign, finish that before occupying their planets.

And the unability to negociate anything outside war goals.

That's a deliberate design decision which seems unlikely to be revisited in a hurry.

And the fact that war goals are very simplistics.

Simplistic wargoals are good! They make it more likely that the AI can assess them reasonably.

Also some equivalent of casus belli, both to know WHY someone declares war on us, and to add some diplomatic/internal happiness management, would make it so much more interesting than a simple Civ-like "let's go to war, just because".

They declare war on you because they don't like you (the reasons for which are visible in the diplomatic interface) and want to reduce the number of mudballs you own (which is indicated by the wargoals).

This is, ultimately, always going to be why the AI declares war: it wants to gain something, and it wants to make you lose something.

 

[ightenhill]

Will our current patch save games be broken by the Clarke patch?

Hmm wondering this also

 

[Merrivale]

Cheers for the DD Wiz, UI changes and other fixes/tweaks sound great . On the by, any chance of pausable notifications (and some kind of predictability on pausing/unpausing when the notification is closed), as well as the possibility for notifications (preferably pausible, but just a reminder would be nice) of when fleets arrive somewhere. At the moment, later in the game, when multiple fleets will be in transit across substantial portions of the galaxy, it's very easy for one (or more) of them to be forgotten about and languish. Even if not forgotten, it's a bit fiddly having to scroll the map over, or the outliner up and down, to check if they've arrived yet. Fleet arrival notifications work really well in EU4 and HoI3, and could work well here too.

Down the track, more information being visible would be handy. For example, I currently use a notepad and pen to jot down where I find proto-civs and primitive civs, because as far as I can tell there's no way to tell whether you have any in your empire unless you scroll through each system manually.

Looking forward to Asimov and everything else down the track. Been playing Stellaris non-stop since launch (as in, haven't played any other games, I have eat/slept/worked/etc ) and still very much enjoying it and finding more to it each game, it's a great achievement for the team regardless of it launching a bit rough .

Nice try Axe, someday we'll get someone from Paradox to answer a message settings question . I thought you phrased it very nicely. I just wanted to add that in addition to colonization being a fiddly process of clicking all over the map, so is diplomacy and pop management. Centralized information would be much appreciated for those areas as well as primitives and protos.

 

[CrowScape]

Sectors can now be managed directly from the outliner..

No!!!! This is supposed to improve the UI, not make it worse.

Fix outliner clutter. As soon as that scroll bar appears, the outliner no longer functions as an outliner.