Any news on Xeno-Compatibility in 2.6?

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Celulthor

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Sep 17, 2017
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I would very much like to use the Xeno-Compatibility Tradition, but I usually end up abandoning campaigns where I pick it, because of the intolerable half-species spam. Has anything been said by the devs or glimpsed in promotional material that would indicate changes/fixes to this issue in 2.6?
 
they've mentioned it and haven't changed anything around that
 
I would very much like to use the Xeno-Compatibility Tradition, but I usually end up abandoning campaigns where I pick it, because of the intolerable half-species spam. Has anything been said by the devs or glimpsed in promotional material that would indicate changes/fixes to this issue in 2.6?

I think it would be good to temporarily lock this perk for ai players until the developers come up with a solution that does't clog up the UI and hit performance.
 
I think it would be good to temporarily lock this perk for ai players until the developers come up with a solution that does't clog up the UI and hit performance.
they said in the dev stream that it doesn't impact performance
 
they've mentioned it and haven't changed anything around that

You mean the devs have acknowledged the problem, but said that there will be no fix in 2.6?

I think it would be good to temporarily lock this perk for ai players until the developers come up with a solution that does't clog up the UI and hit performance.

I think a decent solution would be to limit the crossbreeding to only happen with the empire founder species. All the half-breeds could then be encapsulated as subspecies of the founder species. This would decrease the worst case number of half species from N^2 to N. This would be a nerf in the sense that the effect only works on planets where the founder species is present. At the same time it might be more of a boost as it would also allow genemodding unique traits gained through crossbreeding to the whole founder species population as well as effectively giving the whole species +1 trait cap and +1 trait point.
 
I Idont think they changed it at all. I saw a mod on the workshop that limits the possible combinations to between certain phenotypes. From memory:
  • Humanoid X Mammalian
  • Fungoid X Plantoid
  • Reptilians X Avians
  • Arthropods X Molluscoids
  • Lithoids X Lithoids
I feel like that is a decent compromise Vs the current situation where everyone (except lithoids) can cross breed.

It would radically reduce the number of possible combinations (particularly on big galaxies with many species) whilst still Keeping the spirit of the perk.
  • If PDX ever add more galaxy settings, this could be made into a setting, a la ck2 game rules:
    • "all species can crossbreed",
    • "all but lithoids"(currently how it is),
    • "some"(the above list),
    • "same phenotype only"(humanoids only cross with humanoids etc).
    • "Xenocompatibility disabled".
 
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It’s not a Xeno-Compatibility playthrough if your pops aren’t unique! 1000 pops in empire? 1000 entries in Species list!

it’s the exact opposite of Horatio.
 
It’s not a Xeno-Compatibility playthrough if your pops aren’t unique! 1000 pops in empire? 1000 entries in Species list!

it’s the exact opposite of Horatio.

When everybody is unique, nobody is unique.

From a gameplay standpoint, it stops making you care, they just become a sea of random portraits with "half-" Infront of their name. This is tolerable, granted.

From a technical standpoint, what isn't tolerable is:
  • When you're playing on a 5x habitable worlds, a 1k star game, and habitats are being spammed everywhere, too.
  • You will end up having so many half-breed pops that opening the species screen literally causes the UI-thread to hang and lock up the game's primary process - even on a top of the line intel processor with DDR4 Ram.
  • Even expanding the stratum menus on planets with many different halfbreed pops can cause stutter as all of those pops different portraits will load up and play animations simultaneously.
  • That's when you know you have a problem with a game feature and you consider limiting the number of possible species combinations (seeing as UI design is... Lacking in Stellaris).
 
Xeno-Compatibility is an other example for a game-setting I wish the game would offer to disable.

On top of problems like UI-freezes and too many of them, it's also confusing that they don't have unique portraits, but names like "half-whatever".
 
I modded my game so I can transition in and out of fanatic Purifier to clean the problem up.purging pops helps performance too.
 
Xeno comp is only part of the problem, a migration treaty between 2 empires one with one without gene modding is enough to cuttler both with subspecies.

1 Hybrid species should always be a sub species of one base species.
2 AI should not have more than 3 different templates per species.
3 There should be a score system for AI to value species templates, AI should mod all 4-inf templates to the 1st.
4 The score should be higher for synergetic traits, and respect the AI ethics and options, e.g. xenophile should value Nerve Stapled and Delicious negative while xenophobe/authorian value it positive on aliens. A psionic empire should ignore whether a species is psionic, a synthetic empire should ignore cyborg.
5 If an empire has access to adv genemodding it should remove all normal traits first before adding new traits.
 
I think it would be good to temporarily lock this perk for ai players until the developers come up with a solution that does't clog up the UI and hit performance.

But it does, the affected menus did get very slow in all versions ever since. Maybe this is fixed somewhat with the increases made by performance but I kinda doubt that.

Your post makes it seem as if you are addressing them as separate yet related issues. If you intended to limit your original statement to the species UI performance, fine. Subspecies checks are handled differently now, we'll see what the impact is, but it does look promising.
 
Even before there is any noticeable performance impact, there is just way too much visual clutter. In the eyes of the player the species lose any feel of distinctiveness, when they become just an exhausting list of different trait permutations. This is also true with the way AI genemods.
 
From a gameplay standpoint, it stops making you care, they just become a sea of random portraits with "half-" Infront of their name.
I challenge you to claim sincerely that you care even without Xenocompatibility.
Traits are so weak in Stellaris that in the vast majority of situations a pop is just a warm body to fill a job=-shaped hole. You don't care whether a Klingon or a Vulcan is working your Researcher job because +10% intellectual just ain't all that.
 
I challenge you to claim sincerely that you care even without Xenocompatibility.
Traits are so weak in Stellaris that in the vast majority of situations a pop is just a warm body to fill a job=-shaped hole. You don't care whether a Klingon or a Vulcan is working your Researcher job because +10% intellectual just ain't all that.

You care in the early game, when 10% makes some difference. But after you have some techs and some traditions... nope. Then racial features become just peculiarities.

I think this is a problem we can also find in EU4: there are too many modifiers. IMHO the less the better.
 
It’s not a Xeno-Compatibility playthrough if your pops aren’t unique! 1000 pops in empire? 1000 entries in Species list!

it’s the exact opposite of Horatio.

Thats precisely why I hate it. :mad:

As a fellow Horatio fan, I rather want THIS:

This is beautiful, isn't it?
tkvo2oq7y5p31.jpg


Also please Paradox, unlock the Species Self-Modification Event, Nivlac Event and Horizon Signal for Hiveminds (Horizon Signal for everyone in general, even Synth empires can get it)
so this becomes possible also for Organic Hiveminds!
 
We are very much aware of the issues with xeno-compatibility :) I don't think there's any changed to it in 2.6, but it's definitely something we are looking at.