Stellaris Dev Diary #97 - Tech Progression in Cherryh

[Tavior]

After thinking about the changes in this dev diary I am very very ambiguous about if I like or dislike those changes put together.

On a negative side, you can put up lot of mega-engineering stuff in a small package. So size is no longer a good estimate on how strong someone would be in a war. Even the in-game diplomacy "strength comparison" is bad at this. At very least we would need a something to help estimate someone's strength.

Adding more tech to research while not fixing the very core fundmental flaw with tech progression. Unable to focus on one area and I had games where it would take 50 "reroll" before getting a tech I need to growth (space habitations). To name just a few bad thing that seem to be largely ignored.

I don't think there is to be frank with you much positive I can like about this dev diary.

 

[RevanIRL]

Crusader Vanguard hopefully something can be worked out between your team and the developers as I really like NSC and usually don't play the game without it.

 

[CaptainX3]

What I was trying to do originally before all hell broke loose in this forums, was point out to Paradox that this has been supported in all other shipsets except this new one, and I just wanted to ASK if they would support it. I'm not "demanding" anything from Paradox. How they handle their game is their choice.

Now you might ask "why don't you take the hint that Paradox will not support your request because they didn't include those models in the first place?" That's a valid question. The answer is because Paradox has shown me in recent patches that modders are a bit of an afterthought for certain major changes, or something. The "defines" file issue back in Patch 1.6 "Adams" had mods broken for a week... or when Patch 1.8 came out and THEN Paradox realized that modders depend on being able to access traits for species mods. They had to fix both of these afterwards in a patch, which I would think if they were 100% honest about supporting Modders, this would have been thought of before releasing the patch. Regardless of why these "misses" happened, I am grateful Paradox took the time to correct these issues, although it does leave modders with the feeling that "we will support modders" is a convenience and an afterthought, or a half truth.

Since @Wiz has stated on multiple occasions that if we want something to support mods, all we need do is ask, so I thought I would ask. Personally, I think if you have made all these models already, asking for 2 more or so wouldn't be that big of drain on resources, but I don't know for sure, therefore, if Wiz came on here and told me (or anyone else asking for this) that the artist team that developed this shipset didn't have the resources or don't want to spend the resources making the few extra models, I will accept that call. But given the "misses" (whether they were honest mistakes or Paradox forgot about modders), I thought it was prudent to ask. I just wanted to know officially what the answer was.

If you're going to say you support modders and we can ask but then we get shut down for asking, do you support modders? All I'm doing is asking. It's ultimately Paradox's call, but since modders are suppose to be supported, here is what we ask for, and now I will let Paradox decide how to handle it.

That's the only thing that irritated me about this issue... it wasn't so much that the models weren't included but we were immediately bombarded with a "How DARE you ask us for ANYTHING" attitude. If that's the community's viewpoint, I'm sure myself and many other modders would be happy to move on to other games.

 

[Kipsta]

Every dev diary I read I for Stellaris or HoI4 I can't stop myself from asking why both base games had so many lackluster, bad and nonfunctional design decisions. Still, good read can't wait to play the next iterations of Stellaris and HoI4.

 

[LiberiusX]

Let me put this way: Paradox wants to keep making expansions for Stellaris for at least as long as they have for CK2 and EU4. In order to this, there needs to be Things About Expansions Can be Made. Trade, and espionage, are pretty obvious candidates for an expansion, therefore aren't going to ignore them forever.

We're not going to be in like 2019 and they're sat there in meetings like "Well, we've done war, we've done federations and we've done diplomacy. We've done planet killers, and we've added more crisis, and we've added mid game crisis, and we've added new internal crisis. We've added civil wars, and we've added expansions into new galaxies. What the hell else can we do?"
"What about trade?"
"Nah."

It will happen eventually. I happen to believe that they'll be coming relatively soon. Just not this patch. Maybe the next one or the one after. They seem like the next logical step after the Cherryh reworks, plus they wouldn't put shit like 'Deep Space Black Site' and 'Trading Hub' in the game if they didn't intend to do something with them.

See I disagree. Reason being that they may implement some kind of trade but I have a feeling it will be so abstracted as to not really offer anything beyond what I can find in other 4X games. Stellaris deserves something at least as deep as Distant Worlds: Universe's economy, but I'm 95% sure that it won't get it.

 

[MaXimillion]

For this reason, we have changed the Tech and Unity penalties to no longer be based on pops, but rather purely on the number of owned planets and systems, with each owned system and colonized planet adding to your tech and unity costs, and planets overall having less on an impact on tech costs than before.

Why not use the total amount of tiles on owned planets rather than planet count, to reduce the negatives small planets suffer from? They'll still be less efficient due to not being able to benefit as much from planet-wide buffs, but at least they wouldn't be doubly penalized.

 

[ArtanisCreed]

I fully support NSC and it's devs and i personally know that a metric ton of other people do as well.

@Wiz has stated, numerous times, that he wants stellaris to be mod friendly.

SO we could end up with, as Crusader said, an oversight in the models lacking some sections for modders to work with.

If this is NOT an oversight then we can simply petition for them to be added and ask that future shipsets include content that is already present in all the other shipsets.

 

[Sweden is overpowered]

new features (like Wormhole Stabilization and Space Trading)

Space trading?
Sneaky

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

When Wiz says 'supporitng new feature' with Space Trading, i'm 99% sure that refers to that its a tech supporting the New Feature of Starbases, not that there's some sort of trading system being added.

That's the only thing that irritated me about this issue... it wasn't so much that the models weren't included but we were immediately bombarded with a "How DARE you ask us for ANYTHING" attitude. If that's the community's viewpoint, I'm sure myself and many other modders would be happy to move on to other games.

like a few people give you guff and you're throwing a fit.

if you arn't making mods for yourself, then u r doing it wrong.

why don't you just duplicate the existing sterns and slap new slots on em.

Seriously though, complaining that the developers arnt making new assets *just for your mod* is the attitude that gets mod support dropped. Get a grip.

 

[Celonte]

And if you know someone who has a desire to create new models for all of the races in the game, by all means, send them our way, but we have found no one willing to do so. Those that have the ability (and the income to pay for the required software) are already working on their own mods.

I'm surprised and sorry to hear this, that no-one is willing to create models for as you say the most popular gameplay mod for the game. However, this here is the problem that your mod has, rather than Paradox not providing support or breaking the mod for you. Breaking mods is like when they broke the way custom species and custom traits worked together. In this case it is more that you are asking Paradox to create assets solely for you to use, because you can't find anyone willing to create them for your mod. And that is not the fault of Paradox, but more of no-one being willing to volunteer for supporting the mod in this way.

Perhaps a more straightfoward way of thinking of it is: If you had someone working on the mod willing to create the assets you need, or to adjust the existing assets to fill the role, would you still be calling for Paradox to create them?

 

[RevanIRL]

Seems there is a bug with the dlc anyway as I just finished building a frontier outpost and it uses the mammalian model not the humaniod model

 

[CaptainX3]

like a few people give you guff and you're throwing a fit.

if you arn't making mods for yourself, then u r doing it wrong.

y dont you just duplicate the existing sterns

Hmm... you're right... I'm no longer making NSC for myself, since I don't play the game any longer. So, by that logic, I shouldn't make NSC anymore, right?

 

[SelorKiith]

It's not about having few planets... just about having few systems!

It's not about being red... it's about not being a darker shade downwards of orange!

Nice, Tech cost rises, more techs necessary to acquire proper "Endgame Tech" and still the same old RNG Tech Lottery.
What exactly has changed apart from being more restrictive and punitive than before?

 

[Kreldin Foxclaw]

I'm surprised and sorry to hear this, that no-one is willing to create models for as you say the most popular gameplay mod for the game. However, this here is the problem that your mod has, rather than Paradox not providing support or breaking the mod for you. Breaking mods is like when they broke the way custom species and custom traits worked together. In this case it is more that you are asking Paradox to create assets solely for you to use, because you can't find anyone willing to create them for your mod. And that is not the fault of Paradox, but more of no-one being willing to volunteer for supporting the mod in this way.

Perhaps a more straightfoward way of thinking of it is: If you had someone working on the mod willing to create the assets you need, or to adjust the existing assets to fill the role, would you still be calling for Paradox to create them?

You make a good point. However, there's a big difference between Paradox taking the time to task someone already working on the assets with creating the extra, and them leaving it up to a number of mods to each find not only someone with the experience, but the (rather expensive) software nessacary to make those assets. That's the kind of support that we were hoping for - that Paradox would be willing to make the smaller step themselves, so we dont have to make the big leaps.

 

[Taritu]

Mod fight seems a bit silly. Modders have asked if Paradox can do something to support them. Paradox will decide yes or not. It's not worth getting this upset over, especially for people who won't be effected.

 

[the glory of plain]

matter generator
maybe turn energy into food or minerals?

 

[Crusader Vanguard]

I'm surprised and sorry to hear this, that no-one is willing to create models for as you say the most popular gameplay mod for the game. However, this here is the problem that your mod has, rather than Paradox not providing support or breaking the mod for you. Breaking mods is like when they broke the way custom species and custom traits worked together. In this case it is more that you are asking Paradox to create assets solely for you to use, because you can't find anyone willing to create them for your mod. And that is not the fault of Paradox, but more of no-one being willing to volunteer for supporting the mod in this way.

Perhaps a more straightfoward way of thinking of it is: If you had someone working on the mod willing to create the assets you need, or to adjust the existing assets to fill the role, would you still be calling for Paradox to create them?

You have a good point, however, I would like to point out that it isn't just NSC that has this issue. Ship Classes Extended is another mod that does something very similar on a smaller scale (less ship classes), and there are other ship class mods that do similar things. There is the "Old Segments" mod (forgot its exact name) that would allow you to reuse these old segments that is very popular, but you cannot use the Humanoid shipset with it due to the missing models.

If Paradox has decided that they will NEVER support these segments again, that's their choice, but again, given modders have been told they can ask for support where needed, this is where support is needed. NOT just for NSC, but a few other popular mods as well. If it was JUST NSC, I would agree that this is rather pointless.

Mod fight seems a bit silly. Modders have asked if Paradox can do something to support them. Paradox will decide yes or not. It's not worth getting this upset over, especially for people who won't be effected.

Thank you. I just wanted to ask if Paradox would be willing. I'm sorry this upsets the people who DO NOT use the mods affected by this, but I just want an official answer. If Paradox says no, that's the end of it. We come on here to simply ask and everyone pounces.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Oh jeez how dare people have opinions about posts made in a dev diary thread. If you want to be mature & professional about it write a damn email rather than making a public circus.

 

[Jastebro]

Hello guys,

new feature?!

View attachment 319361

Pleas,e please, PLEASE, let there be trade agreement diplomatic options available.

 

[Roddo]

God dammit. I loved having to research other types of weapons at start to have more options. But well.. I guess it was really kind of a chore.
I could get it that way again with some modding so no biggies.