Situations

[Liggi]

I’m intrigued by the idea of adding “Situations” to Stellaris, like EU4’s disaster system, but I wanted to get a sense of what people would like to see from such a system.

I guess my biggest concern is that it would be a system that’s barely interacted with and only when something has gone really wrong, and only ever negatively. I think it’d be a shame because essentially you’d be incentivised to never interact with the system, or to quickly get it to go away if you do have to interact with it.

I’d like to see:

- A variety of situations, not just negative. Kinda like a cross between colony events and archeology. The situation can progress in a number of stages, and can take varied paths rather than being a simple countdown to a revolt that you have to avoid.

- Inter-empire situations. I think the More Events Mod has interesting first contact events where you might have a cultural exchange with another empire, or send a religion procession or missionaries.

- Unrailroaded, unpredictable outcomes. I don’t want to think “oh, yeah, this again” when a Situation kicks off. I want to be unsure exactly what’s going to happen and what the consequences might be.

What are you all hoping for in a system like this?

 

[Methone]

I think there should be less focus on random events that drive inter-empire interactions, and more on 'emergent' interactions from mechanics like opinion and pacts. It's one of the reasons I really, REALLY don't like the 'declare crisis' function in the Galactic Community; it feels like a bandaid to coverup the Mutual Threats mechanic not working.

 

[rubert]

For non-EU4 players, could anyone describe the EU4 disaster system briefly?

 

[Liggi]

For non-EU4 players, could anyone describe the EU4 disaster system briefly?

Essentially there are set “Disasters” that will start to gain progress once particular criteria are met. So, The War of the Roses is one example. If you don’t have an heir, progress starts to tick up. When it gets to 100%, the disaster is “activated” and hits your stability and starts spawning rebels.

 

[Azhcristokos]

For non-EU4 players, could anyone describe the EU4 disaster system briefly?

To add on to what Liggi said: disasters often are part narrative-driven too, as some events and event chains will only fire during them. You have to meet certain requirements to end the disaster, like enforcing one religion on the empire or brokering peace. Some disasters are very specific to certain countries, like the War of the Roses to England or the collapse of the Majapahit Empire to, well, Majapahit.

 

[klopkr]

I kinda hate EU4 disasters but I have no reason to think this system would have the parts I dislike in it.

Bad disasters: Your gonna have constant terrible events until you manage to do specific 'thing'. Can't do that? You're screwed! Keep suffering!

But I want to have Situations and descriptions of the problems I'm having and how to solve them. For example I often get in trouble with stability on worlds when I change something too drastically or invade some angry xenos. It's not always obvious what exactly is the best way to tackle it and I often forget which worlds are where doing what. Having a spot where I can see all of that and what steps I can take to fix it would be perfect.

There's also some other situations that feel unique but end up just being event chains. Subterraneans, the monster invasion, war games with your federation, the odd factory, atmospheric aroma thing, etc.

If there was a big menu with a list of situations in your empire and an event countdown as well as information as to what you can do about it that would be ideal for me.

 

[Pancakelord]

Essentially there are set “Disasters” that will start to gain progress once particular criteria are met. So, The War of the Roses is one example. If you don’t have an heir, progress starts to tick up. When it gets to 100%, the disaster is “activated” and hits your stability and starts spawning rebels.

So... Stellaris Factions 1.0? Or CK peasant revolts with some extra story beats?. (Or special projects with a fancy UI).

I'm down for that.

Doubly so if I can mod the hell out of it and start a pan-galactic communist uprising or a pervasive pan-empire religious movement.

Maybe we'll finally see the pretender heir crisis appear in vanilla again.

What are you all hoping for in a system like this?

For modding: UI hooks. The espionage system - whilst its content may be of dubious use - is really bloody flexible, and I like how (not in vanilla) your espionage op icons can actually move between systems (e.g. when tracking an enemy admiral the assassination diamond will follow them around the map).

• Small sidenote. A missed opportunity of the espionage system is a lack of "radiant quests" (can't think of a proper name now, been playing too much fallout lately). Where if you have an ambassador in someone's empire, operations will automatically appear on the map and will vanish after 6 months, with no downside, if not started. E.g. "kill governor" "spy on diplomatic comms". This would move some of espionage out from the UI and into the galaxy map, and make the system feel more responsive.
• Hopefully situations, if they have widgets, will use the galaxy map more.

So a flexible UI / galaxy map widgets to indicate what's going on in the 'situations' without resorting to popup-spam would be great. It would let you track the unrest of slaves on a per-system basis, for example.

Content wise: Id like them to take input from other empires and connect with other game systems well e.g. if you have a militarist idealist state near you, and there is a slave revolt in your empire. They might get an option (e.g. via espionage) to "arm slaves" which makes a revolution more likely in your space.

 

[Deshiba]

If such a system were to be implemented there are events that could migrate to that system. Including but not limited to:

• Criminality resulting in criminal jobs
  • Gestalt deviancy resulting in deviants
• AI intelligence uprising
• Slave uprisings
• misc. rebellions
• The hatching of a leviathan egg
• The uprising of shard. (I think it's stupid you can extend the time indefinately by just not doing the digsite)

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

If such a system were to be implemented there are events that could migrate to that system. Including but not limited to:

• Criminality resulting in criminal jobs
  • Gestalt deviancy resulting in deviants
• AI intelligence uprising
• Slave uprisings
• misc. rebellions
• The hatching of a leviathan egg
• The uprising of shard. (I think it's stupid you can extend the time indefinately by just not doing the digsite)

Potentially the mid / late game stuff like crisis and the great Khan can be situations as well. The game time could be one of the triggers, along with other potential milestones, like researching dangerous techs etc.

This way you could intentionally call for a crisis like event to start early (if you removed the timed aspect of these), or at the very least it could have more of a ramp up before they trigger.

 

[Deshiba]

Potentially the mid / late game stuff like crisis and the great Khan can be situations as well. The game time could be one of the triggers, along with other potential milestones, like researching dangerous techs etc.

This way you could intentionally call for a crisis like event to start early (if you removed the timed aspect of these), or at the very least it could have more of a ramp up before they trigger.

hadn't thought of that one. In that case you could also aim for a specific end-game crisis by actively working towards the one you wanna get. If this was a shared situation it could be interesting to see them tick up and compete.

 

[klopkr]

hadn't thought of that one. In that case you could also aim for a specific end-game crisis by actively working towards the one you wanna get. If this was a shared situation it could be interesting to see them tick up and compete.

Oh that would be awesome.

Maybe you could influence which crisis spawns by small galactic situations in the early and mid game. You know those special events Japan gets to decide if it'll open or close?

So examples could be like: First robots are researched, how will your empire choose to view them? How does your empire treat the space fauna early on? When you discover wormholes and research the hyper lanes do you probe them for rare science gains? There could be benefits and drawbacks to several situations going on in the early and mid game and they can each lean the odds of a certain crisis spawning based on the events themes.

 

[Incompetent]

- A variety of situations, not just negative. Kinda like a cross between colony events and archeology. The situation can progress in a number of stages, and can take varied paths rather than being a simple countdown to a revolt that you have to avoid.

- Inter-empire situations. I think the More Events Mod has interesting first contact events where you might have a cultural exchange with another empire, or send a religion procession or missionaries.

- Unrailroaded, unpredictable outcomes. I don’t want to think “oh, yeah, this again” when a Situation kicks off. I want to be unsure exactly what’s going to happen and what the consequences might be.

What are you all hoping for in a system like this?

I'm guessing they chose the neutral word "situation" instead of "disaster" precisely because they won't always be simply negative occurrences. For example, perhaps epochal events in your empire's history, like Breaching the Shroud or Synthetic Evolution, won't just be an instant event that happens at the end of a special project, but a more complex process lasting a number of years that can suffer setbacks or yield unexpected side-benefits. (For what it's worth "disasters" in EU4 aren't always bad either: IIRC there's one which is supposed to model an intra-elite power struggle which leaves the crown even stronger if it wins, and another based on the French Revolution, which you may well want to happen to unlock "revolutionary" mechanics.)

On unpredictable outcomes, I'm confident there will be at least multiple-choice outcomes and side events for some of them, although fully procedurally generated outcomes could be a step too far for what the devs can currently accomplish.

For inter-empire situations, we do already have several occurrences of galactic importance, such as the formation of the Galactic Community/Market, the opening of the L-Gates and the Endgame Crisis. At the moment these are mostly handled by event chains, but maybe it would make sense to encode them as "Situations".

 

[Fenris_SE]

I guess for me it would depend how often and what the situations were. There are times when I'm playing and I feel like I'm getting bombarded with pop ups as it is, like mid 1980's internet pop ups, were you'd close one down only to have four more pop up. We had pop up blockers for that, but Paradox seems to think having a pop up in the middle of the screen is a good idea, even when the game is paused they pop up lol. Seriously why can't the pop ups be off to the side so they don't interfere with whatever we're trying to do at the time?

I could be ok with them if they made sense and weren't totally random, but based off my actions instead. Say I have an ally and trade with their enemy, I could see them breaking the alliance or demanding an apology with an influence loss. Or if I purge a population, having pacifist or egalitarian types retaliate somehow through espionage, the GC or something. It wouldn't necessarily have to be war, but something.

Just as long as it is not random, I feel like the game already throws too much randomness at us as it is.

 

[Incompetent]

like mid 1980's internet pop ups

You're probably thinking of the late 1990s to early 2000s (with Internet Explorer being the last major browser to add popup blocking as standard in 2004). I'm pretty sure mid-80s internet, such as it was, consisted of email and some bulletin boards, all text-only; there was no world wide web or HTML back then.

 

[Fenris_SE]

You're probably thinking of the late 1990s to early 2000s (with Internet Explorer being the last major browser to add popup blocking as standard in 2004). I'm pretty sure mid-80s internet, such as it was, consisted of email and some bulletin boards, all text-only; there was no world wide web or HTML back then.

The older I get the more dates just blur together lol. Just looked up Panicware, since that was the company that made the pop up blocker I originally used and they weren't around till 2000, so yeah, only off by 15 years lol.

Still hate the pop ups in this game.

 

[A2ch0n]

I want to see very diffrerent playstyles/situations for different governments & Ethics. A parcifist irenic monarchy should have much less trouble than a militarist slaver or even a shared burden egaliatarian. Each empire build should feel unique on it's own to increase replayability and maybe give some less prominent empire playstiles a new edge.

Against the opinion of the OP, i want this system rather predictable so i can learn from the situation. Maybe the first and second time i fail in the correct decision but later on that would be annoying if i select two times the same decision and one time that worked and the second time not.

My most important point (of course ) is the ability to disturb other empire internal politcs with the espionage system. On one side i want a rework of most existing espionage operations that basiacally stay the same but DO SOMETHING, optimally with a free target selection. And in addition to that i want some new operations for a really good interplay with the situation system that allowes to manipulate the internal stability in other empires. I want to seed unrest, support rebellions/suppressed/miniroty factions, change government types to my likings, manipulate ethics and start civil wars. Of course, starting wars between different empires isn't from the table for me, maybe an final step for a smear campaign if the opinion is low enough.

On the opposite side, i want a mediation system (link in my signature). That could maybe enhanced to keep your internal politics stable too. Finding a heir for the old King, keeping peace between the political factions in a democracy and convince some egalitarians that it's sometims good to have some people that are more equal than others. Maybe even an interplay with other empires to help a friend to keep it's empire stable would be cool.

All this would in my opinion really spice up the game. I'm a huge fan of internal politcs but like i said more predictable after managing a few situations of the same kind. As a player i want to learn how my empire is to play and not entirely rely on rng. Sure, some events in between (like espionage or archeology events) are fine. But it's easy to overdo it. Of course with an external influence this can quickly escalate and that would be exceptionally good!