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Stellaris Dev Diary #200: The Custodian

Hello everyone!

Today we’re back again with yet another dev diary; number 200 in fact. It sure has been a very exciting journey for Stellaris, and I think it is only going to get better! Nemesis is shaping up to be a very interesting addition to Stellaris, and today we thought we would talk about another headline feature for our upcoming expansion – namely the Custodian.

While some empires seek to set the universe on fire, others need to find their destiny as its defender. As we mentioned last week, the Galactic Community will get their own tools to fight the crisis, and that is what they can do by electing their chief crisis fighter.

We are setting the stage for these two nemeses to battle over the fate of the galaxy, and it is up to you who will win.

Becoming the Custodian
As soon as there is a Galactic Council, the Galactic Community can propose to elect one of the council members to become the Custodian. It is possible to have multiple proposals going at once, but as soon as a resolution is passed that elects a Custodian, others cannot be proposed anymore, as the choice has already been made.

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Concrete evidence that my lithoids should rock the Custodianship.

The AI is more likely to vote for a Custodian when there is some sort of crisis going on, which can be a Marauder crisis, end-game crisis, “Become the Crisis”-crisis or any of the other things that can happen.

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Time to get to work.

Powers of the Custodian
In order to be effective at their role, the Custodian must gain access to some special powers. The Custodian may need to be able to affect which resolutions move to the Senate Floor, so they have extended powers to be able to influence that more directly.

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The Custodian in the Galactic Community.

Prematurely End Session: A Custodian can end the current session after half of its voting period, which will pass or reject the resolution being voted on depending on the voting situation at the time.

Emergency Measures: The Custodian can use the Emergency Measures power to send a proposal to the Senate Floor, but has a much lower cooldown than regular council members.

Shared Intel: The Custodian will gain some Intel on all other members of the Galactic Community, such as knowing their Relative Fleet Power.

Freezing proposals: The custodian can pay 200 influence to freeze a resolution for 4 years, making it impossible for the resolution to move to the Senate Floor for the duration.

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Brrrr. Will you be resolute and wait it out..?

Custodial Resolutions
There are a number of new Resolutions that are tied to the Custodian. Let’s take a look at some of them:

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Galactic Defense Force
In order to protect the galaxy from threats from within and from beyond, the Custodian is able to construct ships for a Galactic Defense Force. The GDF is very similar to a federation fleet in the way it works, with the exception that it’s under the control of the current Custodian.

Should there cease to be a Custodian, the GDF will become an independent entity until a new Custodian is established.

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Once again, similar to federation ships, the GDF ships can be designed in the ship designer., which can be accessed from the Galactic Community UI.

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GDF? Ship just got real.

A Galaxy on Fire
After you have gloriously hammered the crisis into obscurity, your service as a Custodian is no longer needed, and the powers that came with the responsibility could be returned.

Maybe it was a really tough fight, a war the galaxy is sure to remember, and maybe you needed to ask the Galactic Community for more powers in order to win against the crisis – powers that you may not want to give up so easily...

This very much captures what we are trying to do with Nemesis. After one crisis has been defeated, maybe the next one is just around the corner… and this time it's a diplomatic one.
 
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Player Custodian vs Player Become The Crisis

The War in Heaven 2.0
 
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Player Custodian vs Player Become The Crisis

The War in Heaven 2.0
Complete with neither side fighting each other a whole lot (at first), except it's because they want to see/use their new toys first (i.e.: push emergency measures and unlock the 'Menacing Corvette/Destroyer'), not due to AI not doing much.
 
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I'm sorry, but the Custodian "perks" are incredibly, disappointingly, lame. A handful of extra diplomatic options -- in a Galactic Community where diplomacy is already borked -- is worthless compared to the (admittedly) awesome abilities, ships, technologies, etc. available to someone who chooses to become the Crisis.

And here I'd been looking forward to becoming the Galaxy's defender. Sigh.
Probably intended to dome degree, the concept feels less as someone who is supposed to directly fight the crisis and more like someone who is supposed to coordinate the galaxy’s fight against it, as opposed to a crisis’ solo fight.
 
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Hopefully the Galactic Custodian ship designer and fleet manager (assuming it exists) are less of a pain to interact with than the federation one...

I like the idea, but would it be possible to take a bit of inspiration from Civ 6's crisis events and have some sort of competition to help influence who becomes Galactic Custodian? Maybe have whoever destroys the most crisis ships, sends the most aid, or houses refugees could get some sort of boost...
 
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Galactic Council​

Available only with the Federations DLC enabled.
You and others are not attentive - My question concerned exactly the phrase

and I've got necessary clarification from developers

So you all are wrong with disliking me
I think the problem was that your initial post was quoting:
"Marauder crisis, end-game crisis, “Become the Crisis”-crisis" and saying
"So Nemesis won't work without Federation?"

Which seems like a non-sequitur, completely disconnected and impossible to follow the logic since Marauders come from Apocalypse, Crisis from the Base game, Become the crisis from Nemesis and nothing quoted comes from Federations or is related to Federations in any clear and obvious way. (But I do understand what you were implying).

If you'd instead said:
The "Galactic Council" part of the Galactic Community is a Federation only feature, how will a council member be voted galactic custodian if there isn't a galactic council in the galactic community?

The Developer response then makes sense:
The Galactic Council will be unlocked for owners of Nemesis as well. You will not need Federations to unlock it and the Custodian

So your initial post made no sense to most people who weren't aware that you were indirectly talking about the galactic council. Since you didn't mention the galactic council at all in that post and then started insulting people "You and others are not attentive... you all are wrong with disliking me" when they were unable to spot something that you did not actually write in the first post that people respectfully disagreed with. I hope that explains why your post wasn't liked or seen as helpful.
 
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READ attentively who wrote this

Goosecreature

Content Design Lead Stellaris​

What exactly is your point here?
Yes, a stellaris dev posted that "The Galactic Council will be unlocked for owners of Nemesis as well".
UNLOCKED. As in MADE ACCESSIBLE or GRANTED ACCESS TO.

My point is you just incorrectly assumed that you couldn't acces a core feature of this DLC without another DLC. Which is not how Paradox does things. And you stated yourself how incorrect you are about that by citing a dev contradicting your point.

This might have been a simple misread, but Goosecreature stated you will have access to it if you own Nemesis. That is literally what they said.
 
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Probably intended to dome degree, the concept feels less as someone who is supposed to directly fight the crisis and more like someone who is supposed to coordinate the galaxy’s fight against it, as opposed to a crisis’ solo fight.
And yet, You can bring a horse to water but cannot make it drink.

Or gift an AI all the Fleet cap and buffs it needs - but you cannot make it fight.

For a coordinator role it's going to be utterly useless without the ability to place map pins/pings/commands/whatever that order the AI "Attack this cluster, defend this choke point, patrol this cluster" etc.
 
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Fantastic some new toy's but don't for get to show some love with ground warfare. Events new UI just for eye candy. (Official ships downscale would be nice on a side note.) Looking to read on the next Dev diary.
 
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