[Dev Team] Stellaris Technology Open Beta Released [ef75]

[Eladrin]

I'm pleased to announce that the Technology Open Beta that we first talked about in Stellaris Dev Diary #325 is now available for your feedback.

Stellaris has undergone a significant amount of power creep over the years, and the speed at which we're able to burn through the entire technology tree is much higher than is healthy for the game. Due to the large number of stacking research speed modifiers, repeatable technologies are reached far too early in the game. Another power creep issue mentioned by many players, it's also become trivial to stack large numbers of ship build cost and ship upkeep reduction modifiers.

The Holiday Open Beta will be a feature branch that contains the following changes, which may or may not go into 3.11 (or 3.12, or any release at all for that matter). Similar to how we handled Industrial Districts several years ago, we're intentionally keeping these separated from core 3.11 development, isolating this in a parallel track.

The dev diary linked above contains more details regarding the intents behind some of the changes. While some changes planned for 3.11 “Eridanus” have snuck into this release (like some improvements to Galactic Doorstep), the overall technology rebalance is considered experimental and may or may not end up being released. It is likely to undergo some changes if it does go live.

We have created this feedback form to collect your impressions on both the partial tech rebalance and the military and economic changes that are present on the branch.

Spoiler: Technology Open Beta Release Notes

Features

• Replaced basic research technologies such as Quantum Theory with Breakthrough Technologies. Breakthrough Technologies will only appear once you have researched enough techs of your current tier and are required to research to reach the next tier.
• Breakthrough Technologies become easier to research based on the number of other empires you have low Tech intel on that have already researched them.
• Enigmatic Engineering blocks your Breakthrough Technologies from spreading.
• Events that give progress towards random technologies can grant progress towards Breakthrough Technologies, but will not give as much as they would a regular technology.

Improvements

• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup.
• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)

Balance

• Adjustments made to the Galactic Doorstep origin:
  • Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin.
  • Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.
• Rebalanced research speed modifiers. Most sources of Research Speed now have a corresponding increase in Researcher job upkeep
• Removed or adjusted many sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
• Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
• Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
• Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
• Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
• Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
• Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
• Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
• Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
• Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
• Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
• Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
• Letters of Marque now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
• Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
• Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked.
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies.
• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
• Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
• Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
• The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
• Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
• Knights of the Toxic God balancing:
  • Slightly reduced the research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
  • Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
  • Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
  • Slightly reduced the unity and research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
  • Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
  • The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
  • Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% not 2% per Squire.
  • The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors.
• Reworked and rebalanced the Erudite, Cyborg, Synthetic, Psionic, Chosen One, and Chosen of X traits to include new leader assignments.

​

Bugfix

• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events.

Modding

• Added `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger

The Technology Open Beta will run until January 15th.

Thank you for your help in improving Stellaris!

Please note that the Technology Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it.
Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test - Technology Open Beta" branch.
Please disable mods for the Technology Open Beta, they are likely to break.

Link to feedback form.​

 

[MadCow94]

Thanks for the quick release. I guess it's time to dust off my vanilla gameplay skills and see if these tech costs are as unreal as I think they are for filthy casuals like me.

 

[Lenk]

Looking forward to play this beta in the downtime

Was wondering For terms of balance/late game lag, kind of thought of a few things. Since by the end game there are tens of thousands of ships in the galaxy

1. Reducing the naval capacity gained from all sources to lower the limit of ships in active service.
2. Drastically increasing the upkeep of ships when over naval capacity so that people don't have double or triple the amount of ships over the naval capacity.
3. Adding an officer mechanic/resource where ships would require officers to lower the speed in which ships could be produced therefore stopping spam. Could do it like how Star Trek Infinite does its officer thing.

 

[MadCow94]

Random thoughts while re-reading some descriptions.

The Curator and Artisans starhold buildings need to be updated. They give too little for what they are.

 

[cerberus189]

ok so first complaint i have about the open beta when it comes to the knights specifically, you said u reduced their output slightly...... I DONT THINK A 50% DECREASE IS A SLIGHT DECREASE. you have actually made knights so unbelievably weak i dont know if i want to play my favourite origin anymore. you took them from 2 science starting to 1 and the quest now gives them 1 more base instead of 2 i could understand 1.5 base and increasing by 1.5 to keep in line with the 25% decrease of normal scientists, but this is just unplayable. please take a look at the balance for this or this origin will go from being an okay origin that gets better to a trash origin that will die before it gets good

 

[Eladrin]

at game start, its now more effective to unemploy my pops then it is have them work science or knight jobs wtf is this

Your Researchers are producing nearly twice as much research as your unemployed pop (though at a higher Consumer Goods cost), and your Knights have a giant list of other benefits they're providing.

 

[MadCow94]

Sounds like nobody remembered to nerf unemployed pops, to be very honest.

They should produce 1/1/1 and the 1 unity.

 

[LiZinckle]

And perhaps rebalance 25x crisis as well? The hull: armour: shields ratio of their ships did not favour diversified techs. You know something is wrong when figure out arc emitter have far better performance than X slot battery, and the problem will perhaps only be aggravated.

Anyway I am looking forward to see how it plays out myself!

 

[Perimal]

Giving increased survey speed, anomaly research speed, etc bonuses on Ascension is pointless as by the time you ascend you've already done 99%+ of the exploration, archeology, anomalies, etc you're ever going to do.

 

[Panzerslothen]

View attachment 1063152View attachment 1063151View attachment 1063153
at game start, its now more effective to unemploy my pops then it is have them work science or knight jobs wtf is this

At the start, perhaps. But remember that unemployed pops don't benefit from Intelligent or Traditional. They don't benefit from any Scientist job output bonuses at all, meaning that Scientists will continue to scale across the game - but unemployed pops won't (or at least, only to a fraction of the extent). So you're right, but there's also other things to consider.

 

[Farbros]

Looking forward to play this beta in the downtime

Was wondering For terms of balance/late game lag, kind of thought of a few things. Since by the end game there are tens of thousands of ships in the galaxy

1. Reducing the naval capacity gained from all sources to lower the limit of ships in active service.
2. Drastically increasing the upkeep of ships when over naval capacity so that people don't have double or triple the amount of ships over the naval capacity.
3. Adding an officer mechanic/resource where ships would require officers to lower the speed in which ships could be produced therefore stopping spam. Could do it like how Star Trek Infinite does its officer thing.

I would disagree on that. I do love huge fleets. I don't think that the fleets have as much influence on the late game lag as pops outside the fights.

 

[LiZinckle]

At the start, perhaps. But remember that unemployed pops don't benefit from Intelligent or Traditional. They don't benefit from any Scientist job output bonuses at all, meaning that Scientists will continue to scale across the game - but unemployed pops won't (or at least, only to a fraction of the extent). So you're right, but there's also other things to consider.

Perhaps it is a good direction. We now truly have to consider, when starting with utopian/Egalitarian composition, if it is a good idea to divert more CG into researchers, or budget these minerals for something else.

And the choice is only for Egalitarian, so I think at least I can give it a pass.

 

[Starfury]

Just checked out the new Scientist council traits:

• Spark of genius is +3/6% research speed (as before) and increases scientist upkeep by the same amount. The increased chance for rare technologies is gone.
• Hyper Focus is +3/6/9% research speed (instead of +6/9/15%) and also increases upkeep by the same amount. The increased chance for rare technologies is gone.
• Inquisitor gives +1/2/4% research speed ( instead of +2/4/8%) and increases upkeep by the same amount. +1 research alternative is unchanged.
• Expertise Traits give +5/10/15% research speed in their field (down from +15/20/35%) without increasing upkeep. +25/35/75% draw chance is unchanged.
• The Statistician veteran class still gives +5% research speed but now comes with a corresponding +5% upkeep
• Similarly, Great Researcher stays at +10% research speed but adds +10% upkeep

This means a council scientist can ideally add +30% research speed at level 8 (+6% from spark of genius, +5% Statistician, +9% Hyper Focus, +10% Great Researcher). For the last 2 traits you'll probably want at least one level of Inquisitor and maybe an expertise trait for the draw chance. (the research speed doesn't seem worth it compared to Inquisitor 2, even if it's free)

This means stacking the Council with 5 Scientists (ditching the Minister of State) can still give a +160% bonus (and another 20% from Minister of Science) to tech speed, though that ability now comes at a massive increase in CG cost. It's still worth it, but chances are you'll need to double you cg production compared to 3.10.

For Scientist Governors, I haven't noticed any changes from 3.10.

 

[cerberus189]

At the start, perhaps. But remember that unemployed pops don't benefit from Intelligent or Traditional. They don't benefit from any Scientist job output bonuses at all, meaning that Scientists will continue to scale across the game - but unemployed pops won't (or at least, only to a fraction of the extent). So you're right, but there's also other things to consider.

want to know something funny ? im 50 years in to the game and have not seen a single tech that increases science output so i dont think scientists will scale that much outside of traits and traditions.

 

[cerberus189]

I would disagree on that. I do love huge fleets. I don't think that the fleets have as much influence on the late game lag as pops outside the fights.

Fleets are the main reason for lag late game the solution i personally think they should have for this is to add squadrons at later times or add some larger ship sizes. For example, instead of having five battleships, you have a battle ship squadron that acts as one unit but has the power of five battleships. this way you avoid the lag problems caused by the game calculating thousands of ship units by condensing them

 

[Foxosaur]

Playing the Galactic Doorstep origin in the OB and enjoying the update to it (though I know its in the actual .4 release as well). I stopped using it probably a year ago as there's just much more interesting ones to go with, so thank you.

 

[NoBoDyFTW]

I wonder how this will work with making my Luminary a synth, or if it is even possible without a huge meta strategy.

Trying to get all synth techs before The fall, in order to unlock the entire Synth tradition will be harder than before.

 

[Farbros]

Fleets are the main reason for lag late game the solution i personally think they should have for this is to add squadrons at later times or add some larger ship sizes. For example, instead of having five battleships, you have a battle ship squadron that acts as one unit but has the power of five battleships. this way you avoid the lag problems caused by the game calculating thousands of ship units by condensing them

The whole reason why I play in Stellaris and not in other Paradox games is because Stellaris is the only game where I can see a 1000 battleships fighting another 1000 battleships in real time (I do like to build the whole infrastructure to support it too). There are no other games, which have that, even from other developers. So I am against any ideas of removing it, as it is my main reason to play that game.

 

[Silens]

Reworked and rebalanced the Erudite, Cyborg, Synthetic, Psionic, Chosen One, and Chosen of X traits

Looking at the table, especially at the "Chosen of the Composer" with its +50 Leader Lifespan, does that mean the Chosen traits have lost the immortality across the board?

 

[Eladrin]

Looking at the table, especially at the "Chosen of the Composer" with its +50 Leader Lifespan, does that mean the Chosen traits have lost the immortality across the board?

No, that applies to the other leaders in your empire.