Only 6 Leaders?

[xeleth12]

I really -hate- this cap; mainly for personal gameplay style reasons so... Tastes and colors I guess.
Though, the complaints are quite objective for the most part in the various issues this cap presents.

I will say I am glad the team didn't double down on this kinda "we know better" comment and takes the feedback in which is, let's be honest, quite negative regarding this cap.

Pretty useless for me to go into any details of the issues this cap presents since many have done it already and quite well.

Overall I'm not against the idea of limiting leaders a bit to make them more meaningful, especially given how stronger they became, but it is clear than this is not the way to do it.

We have this thread discussing it in depths on the forum at the moment and there are -many- great ideas how to improve the system and how they could be implimented.
It shows how passioned many players are with the game.

I really hope the Devs will take the time to read some of those as many players go in depths about said ideas how to improve the system, some are quite great.
And I don't think the solution would be on a single front with just: "scaling with X" and be done with it because as we've seen, the issues come from multiple fronts. The many uses for scientists and other leaders aswell as the different types of leaders speak for themselves in this regard.
Hopefully we will see changes regarding this cap -soon- as it's gonna be a dealbreaker for many players especially if it goes on for months and months until a next big update.

Take this reply/comment with a grain of salt as I ain't sure if I formulated it well, not in my best shape at the moment.
EDIT: Just modified a bit because I realised I wrote it in this thread and not the "Hotfix" thread. Hah! Need coffee.

 

[Archael90]

I am a Stellaris player since 1.0 release (+-2000 hours) and I must say that it's the first time I complaint about a change on this game. And you know what ? I'm perfectly fine with the idea of saying that a fleet/planet/army, by default, has no leader attached, and that we have to choose where we want to benefit from their greater advantages.

But the main problem with this new paradigm is that scientists are still essential to science vessels for even the most basic missions. Whereas a fleet without an admiral, an army without a general, or a planet without a governor can do anything they did with a leader. As a result, that means that you always start your games with significantly more scientists than any other leader, regardless of the type of empire you play.

And that's the main problem with the current leader cap. Give exploration ships the ability to at least explore and only 'find' anomalies without a scientist, and you fix a lot of issues with the current leader cap.

As it is now, it doesn't really slow down exploration in the early game too, because no player want to shoot themselves in the foot by limiting their early exploration to one scientist, even if they have an empire based on admirals/governors/generals .

I agree with this.
I would accept lowering initial leader limit to 3, or 4, but allow science ships being independent of leaders, but maybe slower? Or without leader they cannot do special projects? TBH when i saw info about limitting leader number and softcap for them, i was almost sure that this will be the case, that we would get science vessels without need of scientist.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Well, not sure how to summarize 1+ years worth of discussions into one short posts but basically there are a lot of trade offs that don't have clear easy solutions.

Here there is a trade off UI vice between clearly showing that you CAN assign a leader here, and at the same time it should feel like you don't HAVE to do it. Sure you can make the icon smaller or hide it but then it is much harder for new players to find it.

Same sort of arguments for having token level 0 leaders on every single spot, how to clearly show that this leader isnt really a real leader and that you can assign someone else here to give actual good buffs without making it exactly the same where you feel like you HAVE to assign someone there? Also when you would remove a leader from a spot like unassigning an admiral, instantly someone else would appear there would probably make it confusing.

Also the gray zone for these token leader becomes problematic right away where for example you assign a governor to a planet where previously the level 0 leader "Steve" used to be, but then you change your mind and remove your governor, how do you then make "Steve" reappear on that planet instead of someone else? Similarly if split and merge a fleet with it self new Admirals would appear every time.

The list goes on and these are just things that still are weird with that system, completely disregarding how long it would take to make and how many side effects and new bugs it would cause

I am not a UX designer so I can't cover everything, but yes this topic was probably the most discussed through the entire development.

Thank you very much for explaining.

My first thought is that the simple solution to token leaders magically appearing every time you un-slot a leader is making players actually buy token leaders and allocate them manually. So just removing the automatic generation aspect. Splitting a fleet wouldn't automatically create a new leader, instead you have to slot-in a token leader, or buy a new one if you don't have enough token leaders. With a button to promote a token leader into a full leader that gets traits and XP gain as well as more power and responsibilities, with some events doing this for free and increasing leader capacity at the same time like the promising junior officer type events. And for those traitless leaders to matter I'd have some council trait bonuses apply to the performance of these token leaders.

So
A fleet with a level X Admiral costing 20 unity and 1 leader capacity
A fleet with a token leader costing 1 unity and 0 leader capacity
A fleet reinforcing has no leader

But I'm sure with 1+ years of arguments this must have been considered and shot-down for a variety of other reasons.

 

[Te'Ryn Tec]

I always thought they should of changed how leaders worked anyways.

1 Leader per slot.

Unlimited fleet power, unlimited sectors, unlimited research(as many different tech at the sametime instead of just 3). Unlimited armies.

The more sectors, the more tech, the more fleets and the larger your army is the greater negative effects.

So lets say research, standard now is 3 different techs, physics, bio and eng. Get rid of those restrictions. You now can research 1 at a time or 10, or 50, or 100 at a time.. With each added tech you are researching increase the time/cost whatever you want to call it to complete the research. So researching 1 tech at a time grants really fast/focused research while researching multiple at a time makes it take longer to complete.

Same with sector leaders. The more sectors the lower the buff that leader gives while only assigning him to 1 sector massively increases that bonus.

The same with fleets and army. You can have as much fleet and army power as you want but the higher in strength it is the less effective the leader becomes.

So technically you would only need 4 for basics...research, sector, admiral and army. Then you could have your council members/main leader.

Science ships would not need a leader assigned to each ship and just assume the traits from the 1 main scientist.

 

[RoverStorm]

The same with fleets and army. You can have as much fleet and army power as you want but the higher in strength it is the less effective the leader becomes.

This won't be a sollution at all because Hoi4 has this mechanic: you can go over a field marshal/general's command limit and get proportionally reduced stats. Outside of going about 20% over because they can earn a trait that increases their limit by 20%, almost nobody goes over the limit and just gets more generals and field marshals. Unsurprisingly, there is no cap in that game, though there is an increasing cost to recruit based on # of leaders.

 

[Arxlite]

I agree with this.
I would accept lowering initial leader limit to 3, or 4, but allow science ships being independent of leaders, but maybe slower? Or without leader they cannot do special projects? TBH when i saw info about limitting leader number and softcap for them, i was almost sure that this will be the case, that we would get science vessels without need of scientist.

I think, simply allows science vessels without a scientist to explore/survey (with a disaventage in speed and chance to discover anomalies) is enough. You should still have a scientist to research anomalies, special projects, archelogocal sites, assist research, stealth detection, etc. Like, you don't need your über-Einstein national heroe to survey a random asteroid, but you need him to understand the weird anomaly you discovers on it. Makes sense.

 

[Te'Ryn Tec]

This won't be a sollution at all because Hoi4 has this mechanic: you can go over a field marshal/general's command limit and get proportionally reduced stats. Outside of going about 20% over because they can earn a trait that increases their limit by 20%, almost nobody goes over the limit and just gets more generals and field marshals. Unsurprisingly, there is no cap in that game, though there is an increasing cost to recruit based on # of leaders.

Maybe I'm not understanding what your saying but it sounds like HoI4 has something similar to what i suggested and people have....found a balance to what is best to use in this idea?

I don't get how this wouldn't work. The complaint is there aren't enough leader slots to accommodate the way the game is currently setup. This limits the reason to have 10, 20, 30, 40 leaders. So with the current limit that's impossible to fill all the leaders required because now we have a need for even more leaders due to council members and sector leaders being changed to planet leaders.

How would that NOT be a solution?

 

[RoverStorm]

Maybe I'm not understanding what your saying but it sounds like HoI4 has something similar to what i suggested and people have....found a balance to what is best to use in this idea?

What I mean is they don't engage with it, only going over by just enough that they don't have to do any micromanaging to add more units once they get the trait that allows them to handle more units without penalty. They go over by 20% not because "this is when the penalty is acceptable" but because "while preparing for the big war or shortly after it breaks out, they will gain a trait that has an increased limit, so I'm just giving them however many units they are going to be able to handle right now"

Also the missing fact I neglected to mention is that unlike Stellaris, leaders gain traits based on what they are doing, so if they are doing stuff while over the command limit they will quickly gain the trait that increases their command limit by about 20%. So it's not even "oh the penalty is negligible" it's "I'm literally only going over the command limit for a short while because it gives me a trait that reduces the existance of the command limit"

 

[GeneralArmchair]

Because if you don't slow it down, the majority of the exploration is done by 2225, and all of it is done by 2240.

Only because the space UN forms and everyone shares notes, except for the subset of isolationist nations that don't join. At that point exploration simply shifts from drawing maps to delving into anomalies and archaeological ruins.

 

[Archael90]

I think, simply allows science vessels without a scientist to explore/survey (with a disaventage in speed and chance to discover anomalies) is enough. You should still have a scientist to research anomalies, special projects, archelogocal sites, assist research, stealth detection, etc. Like, you don't need your über-Einstein national heroe to survey a random asteroid, but you need him to understand the weird anomaly you discovers on it. Makes sense.

Anomalies could be discovered even without scientist but lot slower:
1. Anomalies have different difficulty, and without skilled scientist its almost impossible to do in reasonable time, so much without scientist at all.
2. Sometimes anomalies can make event of promising scientist, it could be great opportunity to get one while only the crew is trying to solve mystery and suddenly one of them shows some bigger potential.

 

[julianjaynes222]

Since this seems to be the main thread: a cool idea someone brought up in the hotfix thread was to allow admirals to pilot science ships and allow generals to govern planets/sectors. In my opinion, this makes perfect thematic sense. You can then introduce asymmetries such as that admirals can survey but not resolve anomalies, but are immune to being captured on first contact. Meanwhile, generals increase stability and reduce crime as governors, at the cost of happiness and resource production, or something. Martial law.

Dunno the balance implications of this, but I bring it up because it's elegant, thematic, and reduces the number of leaders while also making leaders more useful mechanically.

Edit: it would also fix the bizarre issue of invading fleets being unable to enter unexplored systems in enemy territory without a science ship, which I always found annoying and silly. But don't mind my blue-sky ideas, I'm sure they're more than simple to implement in practice.

 

[GeneralArmchair]

In my opinion, the exploration and surveying would be fine for science ships but things like anomalies should require a scientist. Going back to the "stellaris is a sci-fi simulator" idea, the anomalies are the plots of the day's episode. They're comparatively uncommon events that have a small narrative involving the main characters.

Even with science ships being able to survey, I think that in most cases players would prefer to have a scientist present simply so that they don't waste EXP. The core problem that's causing chaffing is that the leader cap makes it hard to perform basic hyperlane mapping.

 

[Calvax]

In my opinion, the exploration and surveying would be fine for science ships but things like anomalies should require a scientist. Going back to the "stellaris is a sci-fi simulator" idea, the anomalies are the plots of the day's episode. They're comparatively uncommon events that have a small narrative involving the main characters.

Given the number of anomalies and events that have text referencing a scientist I doubt it would be easy to turn on leaderless anomaly scanning/special projects.

 

[julianjaynes222]

Given the number of anomalies and events that have text referencing a scientist I doubt it would be easy to turn on leaderless anomaly scanning/special projects.

It seems like all the feedback and dev posts converge on the idea that leaders should be limited and support tall playstyle. The devs already implemented ways to increase leader cap that are basically focused around tall methods like picking traditions. I think these just don't go far enough in practice, which is one of the main problems with leaders right now and probably the most pressing. What are the tall progressions that can increase leader cap for both tall and wide playstyle equally? I mentioned before I think maybe council leaders not counting for leader cap, or capital buildings. Are there others?

 

[Arxlite]

In my opinion, the exploration and surveying would be fine for science ships but things like anomalies should require a scientist. Going back to the "stellaris is a sci-fi simulator" idea, the anomalies are the plots of the day's episode. They're comparatively uncommon events that have a small narrative involving the main characters.

Even with science ships being able to survey, I think that in most cases players would prefer to have a scientist present simply so that they don't waste EXP. The core problem that's causing chaffing is that the leader cap makes it hard to perform basic hyperlane mapping.

I agree. For the sake of balance, I think scientists should remain mandatory for research anomalies and all other actions other than exploration/survey. But the lack of scientists shouldn't block the eXpansion as it is at the moment, otherwise the majority of the early game leader cap will consist of scientists.

Another solution would be to be able to build outposts in non-survey systems. After all, why does a system absolutely have to be surveyed before taking control? For new players, it is often perceived as nonsense... In this case, science ships without leaders would only need to be able to explore. Any other science vessel action would still require a scientist.

 

[Arxlite]

Since this seems to be the main thread: a cool idea someone brought up in the hotfix thread was to allow admirals to pilot science ships and allow generals to govern planets/sectors. In my opinion, this makes perfect thematic sense. You can then introduce asymmetries such as that admirals can survey but not resolve anomalies, but are immune to being captured on first contact. Meanwhile, generals increase stability and reduce crime as governors, at the cost of happiness and resource production, or something. Martial law.

Sounds like a good idea; the problem is that a lot of traits that are good for ruling planets are useless for commanding an army, and if you mix them, you lose the distinction between the different types of leader...

 

[CBR JGWRR]

It seems like all the feedback and dev posts converge on the idea that leaders should be limited and support tall playstyle. The devs already implemented ways to increase leader cap that are basically focused around tall methods like picking traditions. I think these just don't go far enough in practice, which is one of the main problems with leaders right now and probably the most pressing. What are the tall progressions that can increase leader cap for both tall and wide playstyle equally? I mentioned before I think maybe council leaders not counting for leader cap, or capital buildings. Are there others?

Dev posts yes, but there's literally thousands of players who object to to the Leader Cap. Look at the Steam workshop for Stellaris, search by "Leader Cap" and you'll find loads of mods. Some people have already made mods that give Leader Cap based on pops, or Empire Size, or planets, mods that add Leader Cap repeatable techs.

Of the top 30 mods when sorting by most popular and this week, 11 of them either outright move the base Leader Cap higher, or add a scaling method to allow more Leaders. And of those 11, the most popular puts the Leader Cap at a base of 50. Which - while not enough for me - is effectively uncapped for normal players. (One further down makes it 60)

One even gives you +1 Leader Cap on hiring a General, which is one way to make Generals not a waste of a slot.

Honestly, you guys pretending that negative feedback doesn't exist - exampled by your blanket statement to open - or is just the "standard" "they changed it, now it sucks" complaints just makes you look like you're whitewashing the issue.

Edit to add:

Stellaris

Stellaris Modify the Galaxy Modify your Stellaris experience by checking out the many mods created and shared by the community, including tweaks to almost any aspect of the game. Learn More

steamcommunity.com

 

[GeneralArmchair]

The current leader cap may have been the dev's intent, but there are a lot of indicators pointing towards them failing to read the room on this point.

 

[Ikael]

Man, reading all that negative feedback makes me feel that I am the only player that loves the new leader system clearly in the minority here on these boards.

Yes, it is not perfect at all, there are a ton of things that I would balance or change, but for now I feel that it is vastly superior to the previous leader system of faceless stat buckets and gacha trait re-rolls.

The only cons that I see in this system are:

- Firing generals is the first thing I do in my games now
- Having to fire a homegrown leader in order to include a shiny new paragon is an excruciating decision. Feels bad man.
- A plethora of traits need to be balanced, especially governor traits (but that is something that will always happens in any expansion)
- Yeah, the initial exploration phase is slower and much more limited than before.

Then again, I am not a meta player at all, and I don't play in mega-huge galaxies, so that might explain why I am enjoying these changes (or why they don't annoy me as much as other players).

But my feeling is that the main, biggest gripe that people have is the leader cap imposing an effective limit on how many science ships you are allowed to have. This is understandable: You can have a fleet without admirals or planets without governors, but you are not allowed to go exploring without scientists.

Focus on that pain point, solve it, and all the other parts of the leader system will "click", or at least, this is what I hope.

 

[Holefernes]

It seems to me the developers are having a tough time listening to the player base.

The problem for me is how a leadership system is effectively brought into current game mechanics.

If this is about legendary leaders perhaps the better solution would have been to allow for a random chance for rare leaders to show up in the leader pool pre-update. Then the essential features could have been covered by regular leadership types while allowing for a spice play leader to appear and become part of a council or progression tree. Legendary leaders could be soft-capped as is, including all the patch feature elements, while promoting scarcity of an obvious bonus. This would combine already worked for content with a legendary role-play using the existing game features.

Just my 2 cents. The new material is understandably already out, and took time and resources to develop. But I don't think these new features needed to overwrite all of the existing game mechanics to the detriment of play experience.