[Dev Team] 2.6.3 Patch Released [checksum ae56]

[Capt.Picard]

So is a lot of bile directed at the developers.

I mean the devs are starting to get real sloppy now with this game and more bile will be directed at them, i expect a lot more from PDS developers than what we are seeing especially when it comes to the bugs that have not been properly addressed and this multiplayer OOS that has been a constant plague with the Federations release. i mean the scroll got messed up, like really guys? fixes should not be causing more bugs, its real sloppy and until i start seeing some better results i am not paying for any more PDS products.

 

[YeshuaAgapao]

The ability to have scroll boxes in the planet UI is still gone (removed in 2.6.2->2.6.3)

 

[brbonfire]

I’ll admit, I’m a little concerned about ship balance. Now that hangars actually have a use (decent pd, shreds corvettes) I feel that the only usable ship type late game is battleships, titans and like one fleet of fast corvettes. While I can see the logic behind fleets progressing to the largest fleet size as tech rises as a form of progression, it’s beginning to feel like battleships are essentially self reliant and with a mix of artillery and hangar are more than capable of defeating anything except alpha strike BB fleets. Destroyers were at least used for extra L slots and pd before the hangar fix, cruisers have been poor man’s battleships since 2.0 and corvettes will always have a tactical niche because speed, but now it feels like you can comfortably get away with two ship types not counting titans - and maybe even just BBs if the hyperlanes go your way.

Don’t get me wrong, hangars needed the love, but working hangars bring their own design issues as well.

 

[dostillevi]

I’ll admit, I’m a little concerned about ship balance. Now that hangars actually have a use (decent pd, shreds corvettes) I feel that the only usable ship type late game is battleships, titans and like one fleet of fast corvettes. While I can see the logic behind fleets progressing to the largest fleet size as tech rises as a form of progression, it’s beginning to feel like battleships are essentially self reliant and with a mix of artillery and hangar are more than capable of defeating anything except alpha strike BB fleets. Destroyers were at least used for extra L slots and pd before the hangar fix, cruisers have been poor man’s battleships since 2.0 and corvettes will always have a tactical niche because speed, but now it feels like you can comfortably get away with two ship types not counting titans - and maybe even just BBs if the hyperlanes go your way.

Don’t get me wrong, hangars needed the love, but working hangars bring their own design issues as well.

I always come back to strategic goals. If the only strategy is to have a better fleet than your opponent and ram that fleet into theirs and then into their planets, there's only one niche to be filled and it gets filled the way you say. No matter what, there will always be a single optimal fleet build against AI, and straight forward and well known metas and counters to human designed fleets. To make combat more interesting, there need to be varied strategies to achieve varied goals. Back when the galactic marketplace was being introduced, I really hoped that economics could be a driving factor of conflict. Things like raiding supply lines, blockading planets or trade routes, economic activity being shared between empires (think friendly empires getting trade income from each other, with the reach of a trade base in one empire reaching into the other), and so on all present alternative strategic goals that make different fleet compositions viable. If blockading a planet kept the empire from receiving any of the planet's output while also keeping the planet from importing resources, there's suddenly a way to use military force to harm an opponent without direct fleet-to-fleet or fleet-to-planet combat. Further, non-military goals could be made a part of the game, such as using military force to create political or economic concessions. Anything that adds new dimensions to strategic goals creates scenarios where differing fleet and ship designs are better suited.

So what could all these strategic goals do to ship and fleet design? We see a simple example with piracy suppression. In theory, corvettes are great at suppressing piracy and could be used to patrol trade routes. Unfortunately, the game's mechanics are typically so forgiving this is rarely necessary. Remember back when fleet power caused significant delay in hyperjump time? Imagine that changed to be based on ship size instead of fleet power. Suddenly a small pack of corvettes could outrun and avoid a fleet of bigger ships to achieve a strategic goal other than fighting that fleet or conquering planets. Then it's a matter of balancing ship components and the like. A fleet of corvettes really shouldn't be that good at taking on a fortified position. I'm thinking something like a penalty to size class, where small weapons are slightly less effective against medium shields, and even less effective against large shields. Vice versa large weapons would shred small shields, but may miss a lot.

Another example in the game is raiding, where nihilistic acquisition allows stealing of pops. This is a neat idea, but without significant variance in ship speed, the mechanic still resolves to beating the enemy fleet and then beating their planet. It would be much more interesting if a small fleet of destroyers could sneak in (small fleets and ships might be less detectable than larger fleets and ships! Make sensor technology matter!), get into orbit, and quickly steal a few pops before defensive forces could mobilize.

Much to my chagrin, the game design has gone in almost the polar opposite direction of this since around 2.3. Starbases are one per system and sit over the star, so illogically it becomes necessary to disable (not destroy, that would be too complicated!) the starbase before interacting with planets. Planets have no inherent defenses against space forces aside from shields. Hyperlane inhibitors prevent all fleets (including raiding fleets) from getting past gateway systems. On and on, the game design has been to simplify the dimensions of armed force use to the most basic "enemy at the gates" big fleet-on-fleet combat. To go back to your original concern about fleet design, I don't think it's a conversation that can meaningfully be had without considering strategic goals.

 

[yerro]

So is a lot of bile directed at the developers.

If you think that's bile, wait until you see some other communities lol. Probably the only person that was a bit toxic (or rather passive-aggressive, imo) is klc123, and I kinda understand him.

When a developer claims to have released a fix three times in a row, and everything remains visibly untouched/unfixed, you bet people aren't gonna be happy about that. After all, all that we have been asking for is some basic feedback from the devs. Instead, we're getting "fixed (but not really)" x3.

 

[Tyro]

I always come back to strategic goals. If the only strategy is to have a better fleet than your opponent and ram that fleet into theirs and then into their planets, there's only one niche to be filled and it gets filled the way you say. No matter what, there will always be a single optimal fleet build against AI, and straight forward and well known metas and counters to human designed fleets. To make combat more interesting, there need to be varied strategies to achieve varied goals. Back when the galactic marketplace was being introduced, I really hoped that economics could be a driving factor of conflict. Things like raiding supply lines, blockading planets or trade routes, economic activity being shared between empires (think friendly empires getting trade income from each other, with the reach of a trade base in one empire reaching into the other), and so on all present alternative strategic goals that make different fleet compositions viable. If blockading a planet kept the empire from receiving any of the planet's output while also keeping the planet from importing resources, there's suddenly a way to use military force to harm an opponent without direct fleet-to-fleet or fleet-to-planet combat. Further, non-military goals could be made a part of the game, such as using military force to create political or economic concessions. Anything that adds new dimensions to strategic goals creates scenarios where differing fleet and ship designs are better suited.

So what could all these strategic goals to do to ship and fleet design? We see a simple example with piracy suppression. In theory, corvettes are great at suppressing piracy and could be used to patrol trade routes. Unfortunately, the game's mechanics are typically so forgiving this is rarely necessary. Remember back when fleet power caused significant delay in hyperjump time? Imagine that changed to be based on ship size instead of fleet power. Suddenly a small pack of corvettes could outrun and avoid a fleet of bigger ships to achieve a strategic goal other than fighting that fleet or conquering planets. Then it's a matter of balancing ship components and the like. A fleet of corvettes really shouldn't be that good at taking on a fortified position. I'm thinking something like a penalty to size class, where small weapons are slightly less effective against medium shields, and even less effective against large shields. Vice versa large weapons would shred small shields, but may miss a lot.

Another example in the game is raiding, where nihilistic acquisition allows stealing of pops. This is a neat idea, but without significant variance in ship speed, the mechanic still resolves to beating the enemy fleet and then beating their planet. It would be much more interesting if a small fleet of destroyers could sneak in (small fleets and ships might be less detectable than larger fleets and ships! Make sensor technology matter!), get into orbit, and quickly steal a few pops before defensive forces could mobilize.

Much to my chagrin, the game design has gone in almost the polar opposite direction of this since around 2.3. Starbases are one per system and sit over the star, so illogically it becomes necessary to disable (not destroy, that would be too complicated!) the starbase before interacting with planets. Planets have no inherent defenses against space forces aside from shields. Hyperlane inhibitors prevent all fleets (including raiding fleets) from getting past gateway systems. On and on, the game design has been to simplify the dimensions of armed force use to the most basic "enemy at the gates" big fleet-on-fleet combat. To go back to your original concern about fleet design, I don't think it's a conversation that can meaningfully be had without considering strategic goals.

ALL. OF. THIS!

 

[brbonfire]

I always come back to strategic goals. If the only strategy is to have a better fleet than your opponent and ram that fleet into theirs and then into their planets, there's only one niche to be filled and it gets filled the way you say. No matter what, there will always be a single optimal fleet build against AI, and straight forward and well known metas and counters to human designed fleets. To make combat more interesting, there need to be varied strategies to achieve varied goals. Back when the galactic marketplace was being introduced, I really hoped that economics could be a driving factor of conflict. Things like raiding supply lines, blockading planets or trade routes, economic activity being shared between empires (think friendly empires getting trade income from each other, with the reach of a trade base in one empire reaching into the other), and so on all present alternative strategic goals that make different fleet compositions viable. If blockading a planet kept the empire from receiving any of the planet's output while also keeping the planet from importing resources, there's suddenly a way to use military force to harm an opponent without direct fleet-to-fleet or fleet-to-planet combat. Further, non-military goals could be made a part of the game, such as using military force to create political or economic concessions. Anything that adds new dimensions to strategic goals creates scenarios where differing fleet and ship designs are better suited.

So what could all these strategic goals do to ship and fleet design? We see a simple example with piracy suppression. In theory, corvettes are great at suppressing piracy and could be used to patrol trade routes. Unfortunately, the game's mechanics are typically so forgiving this is rarely necessary. Remember back when fleet power caused significant delay in hyperjump time? Imagine that changed to be based on ship size instead of fleet power. Suddenly a small pack of corvettes could outrun and avoid a fleet of bigger ships to achieve a strategic goal other than fighting that fleet or conquering planets. Then it's a matter of balancing ship components and the like. A fleet of corvettes really shouldn't be that good at taking on a fortified position. I'm thinking something like a penalty to size class, where small weapons are slightly less effective against medium shields, and even less effective against large shields. Vice versa large weapons would shred small shields, but may miss a lot.

Another example in the game is raiding, where nihilistic acquisition allows stealing of pops. This is a neat idea, but without significant variance in ship speed, the mechanic still resolves to beating the enemy fleet and then beating their planet. It would be much more interesting if a small fleet of destroyers could sneak in (small fleets and ships might be less detectable than larger fleets and ships! Make sensor technology matter!), get into orbit, and quickly steal a few pops before defensive forces could mobilize.

Much to my chagrin, the game design has gone in almost the polar opposite direction of this since around 2.3. Starbases are one per system and sit over the star, so illogically it becomes necessary to disable (not destroy, that would be too complicated!) the starbase before interacting with planets. Planets have no inherent defenses against space forces aside from shields. Hyperlane inhibitors prevent all fleets (including raiding fleets) from getting past gateway systems. On and on, the game design has been to simplify the dimensions of armed force use to the most basic "enemy at the gates" big fleet-on-fleet combat. To go back to your original concern about fleet design, I don't think it's a conversation that can meaningfully be had without considering strategic goals.

Honestly, I just want mixed fleets to be viable, I was speaking more tactically than stragetically, focusing on the big battle itself rather than anything around the battle.

But you’re absolutely right. There does need to be strategic considerations to make. Never mind the espionage, or diplomacy, what Stellaris needs is a war update.

 

[RoaringSheep1116]

Fixed a bug where you could replace starbase shipyards.

This seems to have broken something for me, if this is not how it's supposed to work. I can't demolish/replace shipyards at all. Which is a shame, because I normally move my main shipyard out of my starting system. Anyone knows if this is a bug or intended? (I can't demolish shipyards on different stations either.)

 

[Moah]

I was wondering if there is an Issue with the crossplay on the stellaris_test beta for 2.6.3. I personally play on GOG while my friends run it on steam and we cant seem to play together without going on the roll rollback.

There was an issue with the stellaris_test branch which has been fixed. If you try again, it should work now.

 

[Bhurano]

Used to play Stellaris a lot with a friend in multiplayer prior to the Federation release. Something changed in regard of game speed. After it was impossible to play on fastest speed, or even fast. He would end up lag 3 days behind and the game would choke on itself (or if he hosted, I would end up do the same). Whenever we started out a new game, we preferred to play on fastest speed, because watching grass grow is not fun. And before; It must be your riggs or connection.. No, nothing changed, and we play all kinds of multiplayer/online games together.

edit; we just tried a new game this morning, and still got out of sync issues. as well. Not even 50 years into a new game. :/

Yeah... that's the same for me and a buddy of mine.
Anything above normal? Not gonna happen... it de-syncs like crazy. It works sometimes like a charm at normal speed for a while, but that's not holding up constantly.
In a usual round of 4 to 6 hours? There's at least 4 to 6 de-syncs that we have to account in a typical Stellaris session... at least.
It's annoying as hell.

At normal it begins to drop to somewhere into yellow and then into red (the 3 day area) and then stays there.
The game handles that for a long time, but inevitable as a tax collector it will fail de-sync.
I do have fun with the game, I can't deny it. It's still bothering me to death.

I mean the devs are starting to get real sloppy now with this game and more bile will be directed at them, i expect a lot more from PDS developers than what we are seeing especially when it comes to the bugs that have not been properly addressed and this multiplayer OOS that has been a constant plague with the Federations release. i mean the scroll got messed up, like really guys? fixes should not be causing more bugs, its real sloppy and until i start seeing some better results i am not paying for any more PDS products.

The thing is, Federation IS objectively a really, really nice product. There's no doubt about it. I can't fault them for that.
And yeah, they did stoke a certain interest and brought me back to Stellaris. Great job there.
But yeah, there's room for improvement especially for the damn issues in multiplayer.
Or they could just build a working and LAN or Co-op, hah as if that would happen! I'd be a happy camper though.

If they aren't damn careful at Paradox though they are liable to go the way of Bethesda, which would be a friggin' shame.
Those Bethesda morons, to be fair it was probably more the high chieftains and not the keyboard slingers but whatever, decided to rely more and more
on the modding community to polish their products and just cruise on in Auto-Mode and call it a day.
I think we know how this has ended with Fallout, right?
That Franchise is right now in tatters and probably in it's dying breath.

I’ll admit, I’m a little concerned about ship balance. Now that hangars actually have a use (decent pd, shreds corvettes) I feel that the only usable ship type late game is battleships, titans and like one fleet of fast corvettes. While I can see the logic behind fleets progressing to the largest fleet size as tech rises as a form of progression, it’s beginning to feel like battleships are essentially self reliant and with a mix of artillery and hangar are more than capable of defeating anything except alpha strike BB fleets. Destroyers were at least used for extra L slots and pd before the hangar fix, cruisers have been poor man’s battleships since 2.0 and corvettes will always have a tactical niche because speed, but now it feels like you can comfortably get away with two ship types not counting titans - and maybe even just BBs if the hyperlanes go your way.

Don’t get me wrong, hangars needed the love, but working hangars bring their own design issues as well.

For ships I have only ONE hard rule:
Destroyers will be stuffed to the gills with PD's.
They are excellent in that role. Load up on flaks and anything peeking out of a hangar is dead meat.
Fast, small, fitting in the range band and good evasion and decent toughness.
I do discard corvettes though. I find them to meta gamey and undergunned.
Everything a corvette can do, a Destroyer can do more efficient and at a better pricepoint.

Anything else there's people who are probably more knowledgable than me, but damn does flak rock!

 

[Tyro]

<snip>
For ships I have only ONE hard rule:
Destroyers will be stuffed to the gills with PD's.
They are excellent in that role. Load up on flaks and anything peeking out of a hangar is dead meat.
Fast, small, fitting in the range band and good evasion and decent toughness.
I do discard corvettes though. I find them to meta gamey and undergunned.
Everything a corvette can do, a Destroyer can do more efficient and at a better pricepoint.

Anything else there's people who are probably more knowledgable than me, but damn does flak rock!

I'm not accustomed to using hangars yet - I'm a relic from the days of corvette swarm spam, haven't really learned to use larger ships except as artillery platforms. Any tips or links so I can learn?

 

[Tarlar]

Correct me, if I am wrong but aren't there any improvement to the sector management AI?

In 2.6.2 (no mods) I am confronted with rebelling planets unless I manage those planets/sectors myself...

 

[Dëzaël]

Correct me, if I am wrong but aren't there any improvement to the sector management AI?

In 2.6.2 (no mods) I am confronted with rebelling planets unless I manage those planets/sectors myself...

AFAIK, no others than the economic plans the regular AI now uses. I don't know if sector AI is using them, but they have been barely introduced, need tweaking and several new plans to be written, and from what I saw regular AIs suffer from the same rebellions. At least they squash the rebels rather quick, but for player sectors it seems we have to wait some more.

 

[UltimateTobi]

AFAIK, no others than the economic plans the regular AI now uses. I don't know if sector AI is using them, but they have been barely introduced, need tweaking and several new plans to be written, and from what I saw regular AIs suffer from the same rebellions. At least they squash the rebels rather quick, but for player sectors it seems we have to wait some more.

My ME Fed ally completely collapsed because one planet after another seceded due to low Stability and no AI was ever at war with their rebels. Only sometimes would they DOW their Seperatists. So this is a major issue.

 

[Dëzaël]

My ME Fed ally completely collapsed because one planet after another seceded due to low Stability and no AI was ever at war with their rebels. Only sometimes would they DOW their Seperatists. So this is a major issue.

Well, I guess the conditions for this to happen were not met in my games. I only played 800 stars 24 empires games, vanilla AI for now, and I saw OPMs emerging a lot, but managed and no full collapsing. I play with a set of preset empires with carefully selected civics, traits, etc... No bad combo. There is one empire for nearly each AI personality. Only DA, RS and regular machines are not represented. I have only two exterminators as MEs, and didn't specifically watch after them, but I'm sure they didn't collapse, and I don't remember them taking big losses in wars or anything.

Maybe are MEs prone to collapsing in this patch? Or maybe my civics/traits pick for my set was good enough to just keep them afloat, and random empires are not that lucky? The later seems likely since you say your AIs only rarely DOW their rebels. Mine would routinely take back their planets in like ~5 years tops. Only sometimes taking a bit longer.

 

[Gilbert95]

AFAIK, no others than the economic plans the regular AI now uses. I don't know if sector AI is using them, but they have been barely introduced, need tweaking and several new plans to be written, and from what I saw regular AIs suffer from the same rebellions. At least they squash the rebels rather quick, but for player sectors it seems we have to wait some more.

In the Dev Diary where the new economic AI that uses the economic plans was presented, someone asked about sectors. The Dev responded that right now, sector AI does not use the new economic plans. In other words sector AI is same in 2.6 as 2.5. The Dev did say they will be monitoring the new plan-based economic AI and will tweak and expand it over time, so we may see sector AI using the plans in a future update.

 

[LWE]

By this point, I would be fine with the devs fixing the bugs so that the game is in the state of Victoria 2 or even Imperator bugwise (including AI bugs) and then declaring the game to be finished. This option has its negatives, but I actually don't mind the current state of the game mechanic-wise.

 

[EvilxFish]

Will AI allies now reliably come to your aid in wars or will they just protect their own borders mostly still?

 

[LWE]

They sometimes are quite ineffective even at protecting their own borders.

 

[Varatus]

Guys, I'm sorry to be the first to jump in and start complaining, but are Ethics ACTUALLY FIXED?

Reason I'm capsing is, it's the third announcement you guys have made stating they'd been fixed, and they still failed to shift towards the expected quotas.

More importantly, suppressing factions doesn't do a thing: my suppressed Spiritualist faction gets bigger than most other "minor" factions (aka the minor Ethic faction, and other minor factions like Xenophiles or Xenophobes that pop up due to bordering events, diplomacy, etc).

Edit: to clarify, I haven't tested it after this announcement yet, so I'll give it a shot later today through the Peaceful Unification origin, then Void-Dwellers for 100 years, and come back with the results. D:

and? did it?