2.2 & Megacorp Teasers

[Goosecreature]

I can confirm that the Brown Dwarf is a WIP. They're not supposed to be transparent.

 

[Caligula Caesar]

Considering that the anomalies have been stated to not be possible to fail anymore, 720 days is quite short for a very hard anomaly - only really significant in the early game, and there usually isn't much reason to rush anomalies in the first place.

 

[LordMune]

So 1 hour 10 minutes for me.

CEST (Central European Summer Time) is UTC+2, but BST+1. It releases in 2 hours and ~15 minutes.

 

[Goosecreature]

Almost! It's Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Varuna.

 

[Caligula Caesar]

"Here's another look at a feature that's currently in early development in the internal @StellarisGame build. For details, you'll have to wait until feature dev diaries return."

https://twitter.com/Martin_Anward/status/1017345674394955776

I wonder who gains the 54 energy of transfer fees and taxes when they buy and then sell the 100 minerals.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Wait, didn't they remove exchanging minerals to energy in 2.0 because people were just ignoring energy and focusimg on minerals? Now it looks like they are putting it back in.
[...]

The problem was more that the exchange rate was fixed.
If it works anything like in AoE2 or SoSE, your 5000 food will be worth close to nothing after a short while if there isn't actual demand on the market.

I invite you to suggest a plausible meaning behind the visible neutronium, zro, dark matter, and enegos symbols in the marketplace that doesn't increase their fungiblity.

Well, sure, if you add a very good change on top of a bad change then you end up with an aggregate good change, but the bad part is still bad and we'd still all be better off if they didn't do the bad part.

I haven't been in the office for a while, so I have no idea how it is supposed to work either, but if you look at ES2 you also have all ressources in the trade screen - with the actual available quantity for purchase is equal to what was actually sold by another empire in the past.

 

[Wizzington]

I imagine Theocracies will have clergy as the localisation for the Ruler strata, like how "Nobles" seem to be a localised version of the same.

It's not a localisation swap.

 

[Wizzington]

Didn't the devs say they wanted to revamp armies and invasions even more, and that the changes in Apocalypse was just a band-aid, basically? Perhaps we'll get those changes together with the POP & tiles revamp.

And with what Wiz just said about Nobles not being a localisation, I sooo hope Jobs and Stratas are highly moddable so that we can add new ones as we see fit. It's a great way to add character to civics, ethics and authorities.

The new system is designed to be as moddable as we possibly can make it.

 

[Wizzington]

Ok good point, I hadn't considered that really. So they are stuck being pointless... unfortunate.

There is a lot of states between "absolutely integral to success" and "pointless" that a feature might occupy.

 

[Wizzington]

I also wonder if Robot pops will have the ability to push organic pops out of their jobs to unemployment status(causing them to slowly transition to other jobs/strata)

They will.

 

[Wizzington]

Hmm, the placement of the items seems to suggest that organic pop growth is tied into amount of available housing. That's just because it's right beside the "robot assembly" resource that we can be reasonably sure drives robot construction. Hopefully that's just a coincidence. I don't think it would be good to have people having more babies just because there is some free housing. Maybe a small effect?

Free housing results in higher immigration pull, but does not affect normal growth.

 

[Wizzington]

@Wiz The screenshot with the droid Technology mentions robots gaining the ability to work in new Jobs. Does that mean there are only Robot Pops that get upgraded, instead of Robot --> Droid --> Synth Transition?

Yeah. Since the upgrade is automatic anyway and we replaced production penalties with job restructions, having them as different species is now pretty pointless and would just cause bugs.

 

[Wizzington]

Synthetic Ascension will still create a distinct robotic species though, right?

Yes, as will robomodding

 

[Wizzington]

I asked earlier. Now that most robot/synth/ME changes has been revealed.

Will they now be able to use migrate?

I see three reasons for them to start use it now.

From migrate teaser we know that migrate is the stick + bag icon just below assembling. Since the icon is just a flat - perhaps to annotate that there is no factor affecting migrate at that moment.

Second, I assume that robot/machine empire has the same build/job structure as organic. So in theory you can build city to grow above initial housing space. Then convert the city back into a mine which will leave you with LOT of unemployed synth.

Third, in the robot second tease you can tell that you have "enabled migration control" for that particular synth.

So it is either WIP or all but confirmed that machine empire can use migrate. Might as well get ahead of it Wiz.

Free synths will probably be able to migrate. Machine units and shackled bots, no.

 

[Wizzington]

Do synths cost luxury resources? It makes sense that they would given that they're sentient but I'm concerned that if I had an empire with Utopian Abundance selected with a largely autonomous droid labour force an automatic switch would suddenly mean that my luxury goods costs are through the roof.

Free synths cost luxuries.

 

[Wizzington]

That's not the same though is it? If you're playing an egalitarian empire then of course you're going to let the sentient synths get citizen rights. The question is why on Earth would you roll out the update empire wide? It makes sense to have some synths, but do you really want the hassle of making your mining bots sentient and having to give them more housing, luxury resources etc.

Because if you could selectively apply sapience there would be no tradeoff or interesting mechanics related to synths. There would only be one obvious best choice at all times.

 

[Wizzington]

Maybe have synths demand that all robots be upgraded, so the player has to choose between upgrading everything and paying the increased maintenance or continue to risk a rebellion even though synths have rights?

This is the exact decision we already have. It's fine just as it is.

 

[Wizzington]

I think this is a strange thing to say, given who is responsible for implementing those interesting mechanics and trade-offs. If you could selectively apply sapience then you could justifiably have an egalitarian synthetic faction whose agenda included expanding the franchise to include more, lower strata robots. Similarly, you could have an authoritarian synthetic faction whose agenda included constricting the franchise to only include robots whose jobs were deemed worthy of sapience. The choice of who to support between those two factions is the trade-off, the interplay between the two factions are the interesting mechanics. That factions and policies don't offer these interesting choices/mechanics/trade-offs is surely an indicator of the need for improvement to that system.

It's true that I could unneccesarily overcomplicate features but the result is rarely a good one. Clear and distinct choices drive good gameplay, trying to fit in every conceivable option tends to lead to a lot of very samey choices.

 

[Wizzington]

Stellaris is not and will never be a realistic game. "Humanlike" robots is an estabished sci-fi trope and a part of the Stellaris universe, whether or not it "makes sense".

 

[Wizzington]

@Wiz : for Space Unicorns, 2.2 will be the 4th ?

https://twitter.com/Martin_Anward/status/890270069082685452

https://twitter.com/Martin_Anward/status/993452222305521664

Yup. 2.2 is the deadline.