Stellaris Dev Diary #237 - Reworking Unity, Part One

[Calvax]

Planets full of bureaucrats maintaining the order of the empire are a common sci-fi trope, but admittedly a little dystopian. Maybe there's still a spot for Culture Workers out there.

I'd like to +1 everyone suggesting that bureaucrats be scrapped for regular empires and made a culture swapped job for the bureaucracy civics. The trope isn't that common in science fiction. Hitchikers, 40k, maybe the odd twilight zone episode. The trope is the exception rather than the norm, just like Warrior Cultures.

If you only saw bureaucrats in situations where there aren't any culture workers it would add more flavour, implying a society that fills its art galleries with beautiful examples of formwork.

 

[Bloodbat]

Research agreement is not diffusing, is basically someone more advanced giving you free technology because it's of little benefit to them. Debris I'd agree but it's too easy to prevent by closing borders to where fight took place. Espionage is very underwhelmed and a weak mechanic, not even worth mentioning without reworking it first.
If many empires would be in the same Community or even Federation, many with open borders to each other or even migration treaties, it would be logical to assume that some tech would eventually spready beyond one nation borders (especially considering that some tech isn't just "a new gun" but more abstract things. Small passive gain from neighbors with superior tech indeed might lower the tech creep

There should still be a way for more isolationist, tech-focused empires to protect their research and retain their advantage. If some sort of passive tech spread is introduced, maybe Enigmatic Engineering could negate it.

 

[Wayofwisdom]

I like this change to leaders and look forward to trying out a spiritual feudal empire. It would be nice to see more interactions within your empire and more ways to interact with other empires. My first custom empire was part spiritualist so I am happy to see it get some improvement.

 

[TempestM]

There should still be a way for more isolationist, tech-focused empires to protect their research and retain their advantage. If some sort of passive tech spread is introduced, maybe Enigmatic Engineering could negate it.

Would make encryption and decryption more useful as well

 

[Kim the Mindcaster]

Because I won't support having a spammable source of influence.

Fleet is another spammable source, after all. I think, that planet capitals can add little values of influence too, graded by planet development level. I seems weird that you can get influence by fleet but not with your planets, for example

 

[Paspinall]

Admin buildings are your unity producers now, and one of the uses for unity, as previously mentioned in other diaries, is to mitigate the impact of sprawl.

You don't just endure sprawl penalties, you build admin buildings to generate the unity to spend to mitigate. It's the same function, but different form, of the admin cap raising.

Pray tell how the Unity which doesnt affect sprawl at all is "mitigating" the resource sink being over cap is, and the nonsensical increase in research cost ? Unity doesnt mitigate the effects at all, the only thing this has done is mean having more edicts running wont actually increase the sprawl

 

[Paspinall]

I like this change to leaders and look forward to trying out a spiritual feudal empire. It would be nice to see more interactions within your empire and more ways to interact with other empires. My first custom empire was part spiritualist so I am happy to see it get some improvement.

Im curious why ? Unity generation early game now has SO many uses, so this can massively slow down exploration, and at late game its hardly a noticeable difference.

 

[Benjie164]

I'm pleasantly surprised this is actually getting fixed, god knows myself and others have moaned enough about it. Thanks

 

[OnyxAbussos]

LOVE IT!!
Thank you.

 

[HighKings_Ruin]

While where on the subject on changing things, can we please get the ability to research debris from ships destroyed by other sources other then ourselves? There's no reason we have to be the ones to destroy a ship to be able to analysis the debris field.

 

[Toybasher]

How is this still a thing? Is it then unintentional to be able to freely abandon planets by disabling all jobs and letting auto-migration sort you out, influence-free? Works perfectly well for pops that don't get too uppity when unemployed... or when there are other means of maintaining planetary stability despite a stability debuff from unemployed unhappy pops... or when one just goes to ignore stability because it's not low enough to be of concern at that point.

Aside from that, I would like to add my voice to those saying that entirely losing culture workers as a designation is a loss of flavor that I'd rather see avoided than not.

Sorry for a bit of a off-topic derailment, but I'd also like to mention I've had planets auto-abandon on me because pops moved out when I was playing a genocidal empire.

Like I'd capture the planet, xeno pops start being purged, but for some reason MY pops would decide to auto-migrate out due to unemployment or something, and when the last xeno pop is purged (On second thought, this is a bit amusing because who's doing the purging if my own pops aren't there?) the planet has no pops at all on it and auto-abandons on me. Frustrating!

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

Authority bonuses have (unsurprisingly) undergone some changes again, as several of them related to systems that no longer exist or operate differently now.

So... does that mean there is a chance Gestalts are going to get their ruler traits back? Since we are all still waiting to have them added back, after they were removed without reasoning?

Of course, this is also an opportunity to add more flavour and make both Machines and Hiveminds a little more unique, for example by adding different level-up bonuses for rulers compared to what non-Gestalts get.

And of course not having access to the powerful agendas is a huge drawback, so how about being able to set up agendas by paying unity as Gestalts?

I like the idea of having fleet generate influence. It sounds like a way to prevent players from tech rushing without building any fleet since this will severely cut into influence generation. A very interesting idea!

 

[Calvax]

While where on the subject on changing things, can we please get the ability to research debris from ships destroyed by other sources other then ourselves? There's no reason we have to be the ones to destroy a ship to be able to analysis the debris field.

One change that would have to be added for this is to make debris not disappear upon being scanned, but still have it disappear after a set time.

If anyone could scan debris without this extra change you could bet the AI would race for all of it.

 

[Gui10]

If Trantor is your goal then it'd be neat if Bureaucrats had a ribbon ability that made sticking them all in one planet desirable while Culture Workers had a ribbon ability that made spreading them out more beneficial. Like if culture workers generated unity but also increased stability or governing ethics attraction or something then you'd want a few on each planet, but a "planet of culture workers" wouldn't be very useful. Meanwhile bureaucrats could generate unity and, I don't know, trade or something, so you want them all on one planet sitting beside your capital.

While I don't disagree with you (culture workers being preserved seems important for roleplayers and I wouldn't like to see it taken away), the niche you mentioned is already ocuppied by >entertainers< (a planet of entertainers makes no sense, you want a few in every planet, they generate unity, increase stability, have some impact on ethics attraction and even reduce crime (by increasing happiness). Any change to preserve culture workers would have to be to allow them to be massed in a place, so you would have an entire planet dedicated to culture and arts, or that at least didn't stop scaling so quickly (as it happens when you reach max amenities, +20% happiness)

Yes, I do think Bureaucrats should still be in the game for precisely that reason. But I always though of Unity as more of an abstract sense of common identity turned into numbers and I don't quite see bureaucrats providing the people with a sense of common identity unless being bureaucratic specifically is part of that identity, which in Stellaris would get modeled by having a relevant civic. Religion and culture on the other hand I can easily see as the foundation of a common identity.

Since Stellaris has only the bureucrats go represent government jobs, I always imagined them as far more than just the guys measuring how much food must go towards each planet. I imagined them as the ones designing the teaching programs that allow your people to become educated, the supervisors ensuring corruption doesn't spread uncontested, the appraiser going from planet to planet trying to find what the people need or want, the coordinators that ensure everyone is working towards the same goal yet work is not duplicated, the ones in charge of revising laws and making sure the edicts become actual realities (you can go above edict cap is you have enough), etc. In essence, every gubernamental job dedicated to capacitate, coordinate and make sure the people of the empire still feel like they belong to the same empire, since the administrator only take care of their respective planets.

i like the idea of implictly buffing spiritual empires, i really dont like the idea of nerving wide empires. More pops = more of everything. Tall empires are unrealistically powerful in stellaris as is imho.

And to these disagreeing, how should a tiny few planet empire ever compete militariliy, scientifically or economically with a galactic empire??? There's no way and no how unless the bigger empire collapses in on itself for internal reasons...

I mean, the difficulty in coordinating and making use of the capacities of wide empires are supposed to be represented here. Empire Sprawl (as of now) doesn't reduce your capacity to produce alloys, consumer goods, minerals or energy credits, it only increases the difficulty of coordinating your researchers (but you should have more, thus more than compensating) and enacting social changes (but you could have more bureaucrats, thus compensating).
All in all, this change (I think) is an anti-snowball change. It is not supposed to make a 200 pop empire weaker than a 100 pop empire, but rather make sure you can't just conquer another empire that is the same size as yours and expect your power to double, without having to go through the trouble integrating and coordinating a whole new species (if not several) and sector (if not several) that now belongs to your empire. By the coments of the developers, wide is still stronger, expansion is just not as cheap as it used to be.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Pray tell how the Unity which doesnt affect sprawl at all is "mitigating" the resource sink being over cap is, and the nonsensical increase in research cost ? Unity doesnt mitigate the effects at all, the only thing this has done is mean having more edicts running wont actually increase the sprawl

And besides all that, what has Rome ever done for us?

Aside from the stuff we haven't been told yet but have been indicated in previous dev diaries- that you spend unity to mitigate the effects of sprawl in some way- the use of unity for leaders, pop-movement, and edicts are all ways to mitigate the effect of sprawl.

In the current form- the values of which will change- admin sprawl is an inefficiency penalty. It raises the costs of traditions and technologies by a %. If you can't raise the admin cap, you need to improve your own empire's science efficiency. You do that in one of two ways- you improve the average science per pop, or you improve the number of pops you can employ total.

Researchers and pop-movements handle the first part of efficiency, and unity-powered edicts cover the second. With habitability movement and choosing the best leaders, you get better % bonuses/fewer penalties to your science game. If you use edicts, you can afford more scientists on fewer workers, giving a higher % of your pop economy working on science.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

• In the late game, Unity focused empires should have a benefit to look forward to similar to the repeatable technologies a Research focused empire would have.

This does sound very interesting. So somehow unity is going to turn into repeatable techs like 5% mineral output bonus, Energy weapon attack speed, naval capacity?

I think this is reasonable considering the immense power cap between research-focused playstyles compared to everything else. We all know there is nothing else other than research focused playstyle. The only difference is goin for a timing attack to conquer pops and THEN use those pops to get a research lead.

However one thing about Unity vs Research is very important:

Please keep in mind the big Ascension perks all require a certain tech to select in the first place. Megastructures, Ecumenopolis, Flesh is Weak, Synth Ascension, Biological Ascension, Psionic Ascension. One huge problem unity focused empires have is they will unlock ascension perks but lack the tech to select their preferred ascension perk.

And while you said research focused empires should be able to still gain Ascensionp perks at a reasonable pace..

Keep in mind there is a Tech called ASCENSION THEORY which is +1 Ascension perk. I have criticised this tech in the past because it makes it so research focused empires will always catch up on AP's without having to invest into unity.

Thanks to this tech, research empires are always going to catch up in Ascension perks and will always have a research lead and the ability to select Ascension perks they want, while this might not work for Unity focused empires.

Please take a look at this tech and decide if a change is needed.

 

[Jean-Luc]

"Won't someone rid me of this troublesome scientist!" - Feudal Empire Leader

You'll be able to reassign their jobs, but won't be able to permanently fire them. While they have a job, they don't cost Unity, so that scientist that developed half a dozen negative traits gets put on a ship and sent to explore until he dies.

I suspect what's going to happen is people will end up dumping unwanted scientists on dozens of science ships which will then be sent, in batches, to "investigate" Guardians, Marauders and other fatal threats which, to be fair, is a very feudal thing to do.

 

[kottadragon]

I'm DEFINITELY not a big fan of the

empires will no longer be able to completely mitigate sprawl penalties.

part. Since it basically says, you will have to take some negative penalties, no matter how much and how well you nano-manage your empire. Which is something I'm not liking off the bat, and I'm sure some other people aren't, as somebody who always goes out of there way to make sure every pop has a job, has housing, has extra amenities, and doesn't go over the admin cap as it is now. I was already tentative about colinizing more than a few worlds in any game after the lasting marks of learned behavior from 1.0 and the later versions before the expansion and planet system reworks, and this seems to sort of 'return to form'ing that.

Granted, one Dev Diary isn't that much to go off of, and it may work different in practice to how it's presented here. So I suppose it's a wait and see situation.

 

[dannazgui]

The word unity suggests that it indicates the unity of an empire, not how idealistic or peaceful they are. An aggressive nation of genocidal maniacs still needs to be united under a common leadership and goals..

I'm neither... hahaha
i just playing as UNE as militarist and egalitarian.. Because, I believe that's how the humans would be in case IF, and a big IF, such thing happens and we become a space faring nation

 

[TheRevanchist25]

I was expecting to see "but" at the end. So the purpose was to combat that cycling? Would we ever see a rework of that problem with choosing leaders than? Where we NEED to keep cycling leaders if we want to get something useful or specific because the game just gives you 3 options with no ways to influence random

Honestly, this is one of my major sticking points in all this. It's unacceptable being stuck with 3 random scientists that you have no influence over with these new changes. It never made sense in general, if I'm being honest. Your telling me a country can't go out and hire a Specialist for a project? That a FEDERAL GOVERNMENT has to just accept whatever random Scientist is applying that day or go without? I'm sorry but this system is only more terrible now with these new changes, let us pick what type of scientist we want ffs. I'll pay a mountain of upkeep for them all day as long as they're good at what I need.

But forcing me to pay more upkeep, or possibly refusing to let me fire them depending on the civic, when it's a scientist I don't want, or is ineffective, is just unacceptable, and I feel like your not fully thinking this through logically.