Stellaris Dev Diary #42 - Heinlein patch (part 3)

[Pchang]

The new colonization system may have the unintended consequence of make droids/synths super powerful. And thereby making spiritualist a big disadvantage.

 

[Marky612]

I think we need one more category of planets, we have wet, dry, and cold, we also need hot!
We should have a volcanic world, a primordial world, and a greenhouse world.

 

[Draguss]

Thank you for your hard work! Very excited and looking forward to starting a new game with all of the new tweaks and features present.

 

[EditorElohim]

I think we need one more category of planets, we have wet, dry, and cold, we also need hot!
We should have a volcanic world, a primordial world, and a greenhouse world.

Technically, according to the description given by the artwork of Stellaris, Toxic Worlds are the greenhouse worlds.

Quote: "Toxic planets have a thick atmosphere, generating an extreme temperature and often poisonous air, making them uninhabitable for all known life forms. With the runaway greenhouse effect and sulfuric air they are a veritable hell."

But it is understood your point.

I also agree that there is to consider other factors to categorize planets; I suggested a table on page 19 of this issue.

An example would be the Customized Worlds Menu of Civilization I

Spoiler

Obviously, the land mass and age of the planet does not have an apparent importance Stellaris, although they could define the amount of tile blockers in the homeworld or the same planet types. It's just an idea.

 

[AntonIceland]

i slept on this. and i think we need more options to make frends. im playing as an empire and i dont wont to by a part of any Federation. i only like to by in the Federations if i'm playing a spaces that is all for corporations, Federation. when playing as empire i like to have other options where i'm in control of my Alliance power house. and a empire or dictatorship is not going to fit in a Federation any way. the cant play nice XD

i was thinking need something like what the soviet union had or the Axis. where the are at one mind set and Ethics with similar goals in mind. for dictatorship and empire players.

or at least have option to tell what kind of Federation it is.

i thing your removing cool from Federation if you remove other Alliance option from the game.

 

[Remair]

i slept on this. and i think we need more options to make frends. im playing as an empire and i dont wont to by a part of any Federation. i only like to by in the Federations if i'm playing a spaces that is all for corporations, Federation. when playing as empire i like to have other options where i'm in control of my Alliance power house. and a empire or dictatorship is not going to fit in a Federation any way. the cant play nice XD

i was thinking need something like what the soviet union had or the Axis. where the are at one mind set and Ethics with similar goals in mind. for dictatorship and empire players.

or at least have option to tell what kind of Federation it is.

i thing your removing cool from Federation if you remove other Alliance option from the game.

Have to say I agree with this. I'd love to see the option of a 'founding principal' of a Federation. Maybe the founders can pick one ethic that forms the core of the Federation, be it peace, xenophilia, military etc. Those who join would at least have to not have the opposite trait (so no spiritualists joining a federation founded on the principals of materialism). It might serve as a good way of making Federations feel a bit more alive, instead of being a mish-mash of ideologies for convenience.

I mean, Star Trek, which the idea of the Federation is clearly based on, would be a Xenophile Federation. The Dominion, which could be seen as a kind of Federation, might be a Militaristic one.

 

[LlewellynX]

I think your changing the planet circle is great, but that you are also missing an opportunity. You've basically created a three by three grid of world types, but you've only made uses of the x axis of that grid. Why not use two basic factors to describe a world type? Hot, Warm, Cold on the X axis and Wet, Dry, Barren on the Y axis. Then if your species likes warm, wet climates its easy to modify habitability factor as individual planet get colder or dryer by just cross referencing their relationship on the grid. As the planet's climate gets wetter or warmer your species likes it less. I hope I'm not repeating what has been already posted, but I think a mod will appear with this change within days of this patch anyways.

Another neat twist to this kind of matrix would be to add a third factor on the Z axis. Perhaps a geological Age which would effect arable land or ruggedness of the terrain for habitation.

 

[Musashironin]

I won't even start explaining why this would not be the same (at best, it is a raw approximation, but maybe you need some more "taste" to see it).
But again:
1: Wormhole only is not as having ship range.
2:Having ships alongside yours from a foreign country that can turn you up as soon as she will? Very smart Anyway, the point never was what YOU wanted, but to add some more options to the game.
3.The function to Sell territories doesn't work because it was too easy to build a strong economy and buy territories. So they kept it difficult. But a real federation or empire wouldn't consider energy/economy as the sole condition. Under certain circumstances, it might become very useful to sell the control over a system to another nation. And, also, stranded systems keeps sending their resources to their controlling empire even if they have a blocked access.... this should not happen.

I'm posting these suggestions because I hope this game can actually reach it's full potential, even if to do so you would need also some kind of real random technology system, and some better way to DESIGN/BUILD ships.

Play Wormhole-only. Job done.

So that their ships can actually be useful in combat alongside yours.

We might, conceivably, get the ability to sell systems, since the ability to sell (or gift) territory exists in EU4. The ability to proactively buy territory, on the other hand, is something Paradox tried in the original Victoria, and decided it was utterly terrible; I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to show up in Stellaris.

So that their ships can actually be useful in combat alongside yours.

We might, conceivably, get the ability to sell systems, since the ability to sell (or gift) territory exists in EU4. The ability to proactively buy territory, on the other hand, is something Paradox tried in the original Victoria, and decided it was utterly terrible; I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to show up in Stellaris.[/QUOTE]

 

[Mrakvampire]

I don't like oversimplified habitability mechanic. Even in recent Master of Orion there are more different types of planets than in Stellaris. Why so?
If you think that it's difficult to remember, just combine all 'internal mechanics' in background and just present it to player in simple form of %.

 

[grommile]

3.The function to Sell territories doesn't work because it was too easy to build a strong economy and buy territories.

The function to proactively sell territory (which is what EU4 has) works fine and would be a useful addition to Stellaris. In EU4, the AI will seek to sell the set of provinces that Paradox think it should be willing to sell (which is, admittedly, a pretty small list).

The function to proactively offer to buy territories is what Vicky 1 had, and is absolutely horrible to write the evaluation AI for. There are, quite simply, much better ways to improve the AI's strategic behaviour.

 

[Wartraveler]

The Planet thing somehow doesnt sit well with me.
It somehow makes no sense.
Because Humans live in all three climates.


How about this.

Pops which dont have 50% or more Habitability for a Planet are considered to life in closed complex.
They get 50% Habitability by this but cost 0.5 Energy Maintenance.

Only those who got 50% or more habitability are able to walk outside thus not costing additional Energy.


This would allow to tremendously lower habitable planets because you could use all Planets for Colonizing.
It would still mean you should especially in early game Colonize only your own worlds cause others are expensive to use.
AND it would give additional meaning to the Core Worlds mechanic as it would make certain Worlds much more productive for your species.

 

[Topher]

I think your changing the planet circle is great, but that you are also missing an opportunity. You've basically created a three by three grid of world types, but you've only made uses of the x axis of that grid. Why not use two basic factors to describe a world type? Hot, Warm, Cold on the X axis and Wet, Dry, Barren on the Y axis. Then if your species likes warm, wet climates its easy to modify habitability factor as individual planet get colder or dryer by just cross referencing their relationship on the grid. As the planet's climate gets wetter or warmer your species likes it less. I hope I'm not repeating what has been already posted, but I think a mod will appear with this change within days of this patch anyways.

Another neat twist to this kind of matrix would be to add a third factor on the Z axis. Perhaps a geological Age which would effect arable land or ruggedness of the terrain for habitation.

The problem with using a 3x3 grid is that now the Continental type adjacent to four other planet types, while the four sides and corners are only adjacent to three and two respectively. Continental is also at most two steps from any other type, while it takes four steps to get from one corner to another.

You could try to balance it out by changing planet spawn rates, but it would be difficult to ensure that there's not an optimal choice between having many moderately habitable planets, or fewer very habitable planets.

 

[Wandre]

The Planet thing somehow doesnt sit well with me.
It somehow makes no sense.
Because Humans live in all three climates.

Humans actually live in a very narrow climate band. We consider it broad by our standards but If you check the actual climate data for population centers you'll see a fairly small variance compared to the alternatives found anywhere else in the universe.

To put this in perspective consider the difficulties of simply sending a number of humans to the arctic or the desert. What about simply surviving on the ocean for a year. Now imagine trying to build a city there and what would be required to maintain a self sustaining colony. These are just places on Earth and not a billion kilometers away from any kind of aid.

Just like we'd need specialized technology to move to a harsh climate on Earth a space faring race would need it's own specialized tech to colonize new worlds effectively.

 

[grommile]

To put this in perspective consider the difficulties of simply sending a number of humans to the arctic or the desert.

The cities of Murmansk and Riyadh are testaments to the power of 20th and early 21st century technology in this regard... and Stellaris empires are even more advanced than that.

What about simply surviving on the ocean for a year.

Polynesia says "hi". (Stellaris's "Ocean Worlds" are not completely devoid of dry land; they just have a lot less of it than a Continental planet.)

 

[Nereid]

Federation Association Status
Another issue we ran into with the changes to diplomacy in Asimov is that Alliances and Federations had trouble bringing in new members - since non-aggression pacts, defensive pacts and guarantees were no longer possible with outside powers, building trust is difficult and you have to mostly rely on large bribes to get new members to join, something that just didn't feel right. To address this, we're adding a new diplomatic option to Heinlein called 'Federation Association Status'.

Please add more of this kind. There should be some diplomatic actions between two feds too. It feels just not right if two federations can't form a NAP or a defensive pact between each of them or an independent empire.

 

[LMS153]

I would like to recommend a few additions. Most of these have probably been said before.

Federations

• Please remove Federation Presidents. - I hated using federations in Stellaris because it destroyed my country's sovereignty by allowing other countries to manage every member's diplomacy. In most games, I end up in a federation with nations many, many times weaker, smaller, and less advanced that mine, who have me to thank for their existence (Liberation)... and THEY end up controlling MY diplomacy. I can't tell you how many times my pathetically small federation neighbor has used me to defeat some MASSIVE country that I had no interest in attacking.
  
• Every decision in a federation should be by popular vote.
  
• AI countries should be more likely to form federations. - AI started federations are a little too uncommon.
• Non-Democracies should be more likely to team up. The more threatening countries out there tend to be easier to defeat because they usually fly solo. It would be AWESOME if the more imperialistic countries joined forces to eat up their weaker neighbors. This would also make it more of a necessity for democracies to join forces to fight them off.

UI

• Federation Information screen - It would be nice if there was a kind of empire screen for federations, where you could view the members, the average of your relations to the members, who they are at war with, etc...

Relations

• Greater effect of ethics on relations - I think it would help make the game more interesting and help spark more alliances/wars if the ethics of two countries had a greater effect on relations.

Combat

• Combat Control - This is not a "Must Do", but it would be nice to be able to somewhat influence fights.

Technology

• Technological Aid - There should be some way to help close the tech gap between your empire, and a less advanced friend. I know there is already a way to do it, but it would be cool if there was a faster way where you could sacrifice influence or research points to accelerate an ally's research.

Thanks for reading and can't wait for the Heinlein patch!

 

[bronze Void poison]

I had a idea for new Colonisable planet types like volcanic a world with rich tectonic activity and lots of volcanoes, hot house a world with a dense atmosphere that stores a lot of thermal energy creating a hot planet and tectonic world a world which should have broken apart ever throw gravity or magnetism this planet stays together with large cracks across the surface pushing the heat to uncomfortably hot.

 

[Challenge]

Humans actually live in a very narrow climate band. We consider it broad by our standards but If you check the actual climate data for population centers you'll see a fairly small variance compared to the alternatives found anywhere else in the universe.

To put this in perspective consider the difficulties of simply sending a number of humans to the arctic or the desert. What about simply surviving on the ocean for a year. Now imagine trying to build a city there and what would be required to maintain a self sustaining colony. These are just places on Earth and not a billion kilometers away from any kind of aid.

Just like we'd need specialized technology to move to a harsh climate on Earth a space faring race would need it's own specialized tech to colonize new worlds effectively.

Inuit and Laplanders have lived on the tundra long before we had the tech to support cities there. The Navajo farmed the desert of the North American southwest and cultures in what became Egypt (pre-pharo cultures) and others made the desert bloom. As Gromile said, the Polynesians settled all over the Pacific. Given the technology level needed just to keep people alive in space craft for extended periods, I'd say establishing colonies in unfriendly environments may be difficult (minuses to pop growth, construction, extra costs for mining and agriculture) but not impossible -- even for stone-age cultures.

Most deserts aren't sand dunes as far as the eye can see. Tundra supports rich ecosystems. Only the absolutes of glacier ice and dune deserts may be out of reach and even they have food chains that can be exploited..