Stellaris Dev Diary #40 - Heinlein Patch (part 1)

[MishaTX]

You're pretty much the only person I've seen that wants to keep the game the way it is for a while. 99% of the threads on this forum have been hollaring for every aspect of the game to be changed. Usually to make it more like Distant Worlds: Universe.

Make that two persons, then.

I'd like to see how the previous nerf/buffs/additions work out when working as intended before adding new potential problems to the build. Modify how things work, publish, make sure it works as intended, if it doesn't, bug fix so it does, THEN add new changes.

Not "add new changes, then add some more, then one day maybe make them work all together."

I'm a big fan of bug fixes. And I'm a big fan of game changes too. But you have to make sure that your latest changes actually WAI before you start adding more.

And no, I don't necessarily want Stellaris to be more like Distant Words. I already own the latter. If I loved that one so much more, I'd just play that instead.

 

[MishaTX]

I see your sectors like to build engineering too...

Yeah, no mention of that. I guess that'll be in Stellaris 7.59

 

[Soranya]

Make that two persons, then.

I'd like to see how the previous nerf/buffs/additions work out when working as intended before adding new potential problems to the build. Modify how things work, publish, make sure it works as intended, if it doesn't, bug fix so it does, THEN add new changes.

Not "add new changes, then add some more, then one day maybe make them work all together."

I'm a big fan of bug fixes. And I'm a big fan of game changes too. But you have to make sure that your latest changes actually WAI before you start adding more.

And no, I don't necessarily want Stellaris to be more like Distant Words. I already own the latter. If I loved that one so much more, I'd just play that instead.

Make this three.

 

[MishaTX]

Superficially appealing, but a pain in the tail to actually balance, and as an added feature rather than a from-the-start feature pisses off anyone whose preferred ethos/trait combo is no longer valid for their preferred portrait due to the portrait-based modifiers.

(Now, throwing some weighting factors into the system so that particular phenotypes or phenotype groups, when encountered as computer players, are significantly correlated with particular ethoses or traits? That could be neat.)

Great idea! If you, as the human player, wants to play as, say, Mushroom Space Hitler, that should definitely be allowed. You shouldn't necessarily be locked down on certain species according to your play style. So I'll modify my original suggestion because you have a great point: Make it so that the AI empires, not the human ones, were somewhat constrained in what RNG would allow them to be. At least that would provide the game with some familiarity and ability to differentiate between different species.

It would also probably be illegal in Sweden since it would be racist

Or some kind of "-ist". If there isn't a name for it yet, somebody who hasn't moved out of his mom's basement will come up with it shortly.

 

[lief1]

I would really like planet specialization giving you the option to develop your planet to specialized areas (industrial, urban, agricultural), paired with food being treated like energy were each POP (not robot) uses food upkeep so you can have food specialized worlds supplying you empire and build city planets much like in many Sci-fi stories and in the lore of at least one of the precursor aliens. Also make their home worlds matter more, maybe giving a small free empire buff.

Example of Specailisation:
Urban specialization could add more slots to the planet but cause reduction to planet happiness, minerals, and food production.
Industrial specialization could add mineral bonus while lowering habitability and food production.
Agricultural specialization could add bonus to food production but lower mineral production.

Each specialization could have multiple levels each increasing bonuses and penalties while also requiring tech to unlock.

 

[Chosen One V13]

What about missile weapons as a whole? Will there be Turrets with ability to track, or will those one be overhauled and made them SILO based launchers?

 

[EnSvenskTiger]

Good stuff! Excited to see how it turns out!

 

[Diezy]

XL weapons look exciting.

One thing game could use imo is some one-time use, expensive supwerweapon (though you can build more if you're really rich and can afford to maintain them). To be used strategically in a huge fleet battle and really do a lot of harm to a doomstack. Activate to cut all the shields in the system, or turn off all energy weapons/make rocket attacks fail for a month, etc, etc.

Also cheaper things that can cause logistical nightmares, like a lengthy FTL disable to keep'em trapped in a system for a while. Make them run out of resources or keep main fleet pinned there while you slip and get some warscore.

It'd be even funnier if they're double-edged swords that also affect the user doing more harm if used poorly!

 

[Reinhard von Lohengramm]

Really excited that there will be a combat overhaul. Right now, the endgame combat is simply long range tachyon lance bombardment, and there is no room for variety.

My ideal scenario would be that the game allows trade-off between firepower, protection, and mobility (faster ships should be able to close distance with enemy, to disengage from combat without relying on emergency warp-out, and are more difficult to hit with large weapons) in the ship design, so that the player can find optimized ships for the tactic of choice. In other words, maximizing one takes away from the other two. For example, heavily armored, long-ranged, but slow ships for defense of fixed positions. Or weakly armored, short-ranged, but highly mobile ships for striking transport and support ships. And so on.

In addition, the weapon choice should result in a tradeoff between dps, range, tracking, and energy draw (among others). Perhaps, different weapon types can provide this as below (I prefer physics-based on balance, but I realize it may not result in best game balance):

laser - med dps / med range / good tracking (range limited by optical divergence, good tracking thanks to easy optical defection - no need to swing around laser)
kinetic (railgun) - med dps / long range / poor tracking (long range with inertial projectile, rapid rate of fire, extremely bulky therefore difficult to align the gun)
artillery - low dps / long range / med tracking (inertial projectile, long time to load/fire, relatively easier to swing around gun barrel)
plasma - high dps / low range / good tracking (rapid decay of plasma due to radiation/recombination, relatively easy to defect plasma by modulating magnetic field)
autocannon - low dps / med range / good tracking (low damage due to small projectile mass / speed, low effective range due to low accuracy, easy to swing around)

Now, this will be a challenge to program AI to figure out ship configureation. I would suggest multiple pre-programmed ship configuration and tactic combinations, from which AI can choose (either randomly or algorithmically based on empire size, resource availability, or fleet configurations of their enemies).

 

[Yvonnell]

The biggest thing I would like to see is a rework of the way Special Projects are researched and the way debris and other ship based projects are handled. Can we get a special tab just for debris so its not completely cluttering up the entire Situation Log and why oh god why?!?! does researching debris lock the research from the actual Empire scientist when there is a perfectly good scientist on-board the science ship that has to be tied down to scan the debris anyway? Can't the ship scientist do this? They already do anomalies on their own without bogging down the entire empire's research progress. Same with things like hauling ships out of gas giants or checking out a giant skeleton.. these are done at a ship level on a single planet out in the wilderness of space, often not even inside your own borders, so why would the Science Center on Empire Prime be involved?

The main tab of the Situation Log should be for things like first contact, progenitor species mission logs, tracking habitable planets or mining areas... things that actual have an Empire-wide impact with a secondary tab for those things like debris, planet special projects like alien murals, skeletons, derelict ships and the types of things that really should be handled by a Science ship scientist (if it requires a ship to be present, then it should be handled by the ship kinda thing).

The rest of the changes sound interesting and looking forward to hearing more about it!

 

[Kwami]

I'd like it more if certain traits and ethoses were more/less expensive depending on species. It might actually make me think of species as something other than "just different skins on the same thing."

How would you decide which ethos go with which portraits? What would that mean for portrait DLCs, which are currently just cosmetic?

 

[Held der Arbeit]

I hope that the strategic resources update will finally make their stockpile available to sectors?

It is hugely annoying that a sector would suddenly be out of a required resource even though it is abundant in your empire - just not in that particular sector.

 

[Dunaedine]

I hope that the strategic resources update will finally make their stockpile available to sectors?

It is hugely annoying that a sector would suddenly be out of a required resource even though it is abundant in your empire - just not in that particular sector.

If I understand correctly, there will not be anymore stockpile for strategic ressource. They will need a special building for extraction and after, they will affect all your empire. So the only need about sector is the capacity for sector AI to build this "extractor".

 

[Michael S]

I don't now if this goes here but I ofund an odd bug when you place weapons on ant ship larger than a cruiser the weapons don't don't go in the right places sometimes they are off.

 

[ross-g]

link

Very happy to see this type of control being added.

I note the word "encourage" being used... does this mean some of your allies (stronger/militarist) may be a bit cocky and refuse to follow the players lead?

 

[MrMarbles]

Also i hope someone did look into early game turtling possibilities to facilitate defense against The Mighty Rush.

A tiny boost in spaceport/defence platform strength would do the trick. Right now spaceports are basically useless, I've yet to see them decide a close fight.

 

[c0mc0]

I encountered an issue the other day that I believe has to do with the way you guys have set up modding support, and I was wondering how easy/hard it would be to fix as part of this or one of the other upcoming matches.

I tried a mod the other day that provides additional city art (among other things) - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=722964631

Now, one of the side effects of this mod appears to be a lot of empty categories in the species and ship selection screens. I.E,. For every new city type, there are empty categories in the Species Appearance and Ship Appearance screens. For example - The mod adds a 'Scavenger' city type, and because of this, there is also 'scavenger' appearance and ship types, but as there is no species art or ship types for these, the UI goes a little wonky. (see attached). It also causes some odd scrolling issues for me in the Appearance screen.

 

[FaultyAI]

Strategic resource changes and expansion plannet look fantastic. Hoping to see more mid-game events as well, random decisions for colonies.

 

[Kolonel]

So wait, we won't be able to set a rally point per spaceport? Only global ones?
Or did I misunderstand?

 

[ambago]

Perhaps this was mentioned before, but please give us the opportunity to change the empire's flag in-game.