Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today, we're going to continue talking about the Distant Stars Story Pack that will be accompanying the 2.1 'Niven' update, on the topic of exploration and new things to find in the galaxy. As with the previous dev diary, we're going to be fairly light on the details to avoid spoilering too much of what's out there to explore in Distant Stars.

New Anomalies
Distant Stars adds several dozen new anomalies to the game, with everything from simple discoveries to complex event chains (including the opportunity to make a new and very different kind of friend...) Overall, Distant Stars increase the anomaly count of the game by about 50%. We've also taken the time to go back and improve some old anomalies and fix up others that did not spawn correctly, so that even those without Distant Stars will be able to experience new discoveries in the Niven update.

New Systems
Distant Stars adds around 20 new, unique systems to the galaxy, similar to Sanctuary or Zanaam in the base game. Most of these systems have unique encounters, event chains or anomalies related to them, and some are actually several systems with a common background or event chain tying them together. Overall, though none of these systems are guaranteed to spawn in any individual game, every randomly generated galaxy in Distant Stars should contain some new and potentially rewarding discoveries for your empire to make.

New Leviathans
Distant Stars also adds 3 new Leviathans to the galaxy. Two of these Leviathans work in a similar way to existing ones, while one is altogether different from anything you will have seen before. As with previous Leviathans in the Leviathan Story Pack, these new Leviathans have curator dialogue and interactions related to them, which means that the Curator Enclave will appear in the galaxy if you have Distant Stars but do not own Leviathans (Traders and Artists do not spawn unless you have Leviathans, however).

That's all for today! Next week we're going to talk about the Niven update, on the topic of Space Creatures and Strategic Resources.

 

[Jorrhast]

The AI was competent enough in 1.9

I wonder what do you mean by "competent enough". Because AFAIR 1.9 sported the same food death spiral, half-empty planets and total disregard of both planetary and tile resource modifiers (that's not nearly a full list, just to name a few issues) as 2.0 does.
Hell, even expansion, which was expected to be much easier for AI to plan in 2.0, what with it being hyperlane-only, is sometimes just stops for no apparent reasons at all. Or for some insane reason like 400-600FP space monsters blocking chokepoint system while AI have multiple fleets each one with FP in tens of thousands.

 

[117Killer]

Nonsense.

I remember the trend. It was upward. By 1.9, people were frequently remarking that the AI had gotten... pretty good, actually. The jump in competency was noticeable (IIRC, a big thing was that the AI was expanding way more aggressively).

I really don't understand how people have developed a sort of selective amnesia about this.

upward trend don't matter, when the AI was never really decent, and with all the recent additions is the equivalent of fighting a monkey. I am a micro managing tall building style player. which makes the difference even more obvious to me. I like squeezing the most out of every planet system, and upgrade I can get.

so when I get 100 years in, see my nearest competitors at pathetic, despite some having almost twice the worlds as me. and when I conquer them I get to see whole planets with 2 buildings and 12 pops despite the empires size. when I see my sectors for my newly upgraded to robot empire building food, when the largest AI military I know of is stuck moving back and forth in a single system. when I'm sitting on 4 built ringworlds, a dyson sphere, a science nexus, a sentry array, a system full of habitats, 10 deep into repeatable techs and having conquered all three fallen empires, and the only AI empire owning even close the same amount of territory than you is still stitting on shields 4, you cannot argue the AI is in any way capable. their previous improvements don't matter. fact is, it is broken now. they need to focus more on it.

 

[Razzlie]

Speaking as someone who's been playing since release day, the AI has been rollercoasting up and down the entire time, but the rollercoaster has slightly, but steadily, risen upwards.

Sometimes the rollercoaster dips down hard, sometimes it goes up pretty high, but generally speaking the average has gone up, although painfully slowly.

I personally find the pacing unacceptable, too many very basic issues have persisted for too long, many of which have been resolved by modders by now, while the devs are just spinning their wheels in the mud.

 

[xxaxx]

And yet there are plenty of games that have been in EA or official release for far longer than Stellaris has been released, which have incrementally improved their systems including AI, and have done this for years without charging extra for anything. The price of the product may go up during EA, but no one is being asked for an extra dime after they've bought a copy. At PDX we are paying to license a (fully-revocable) copy of a game and then asked to make installments for extra content, and the AI never seems to improve.

Being upset about the state of the game is a perfectly acceptable position. Being frustrated should be taken as a sign that we want a great game that plays well. More content that is easy to draft and implement and earns revenue might be PDX's priority, but it's should not be the highest priority.

Yeah can you please post some examples of these "plenty" of games? Because in my experience the vast amount of games get a couple of patches and its done. Not to mention the fact that they almost never get reworked like Stellaris did in 2.0. Now you can like or dislike the 2.0 changes, the fact is that 1.9 is quite a fully functioning game and would be for many developers the last patch after which we'd get Stellaris 2.

As for EA games, which ones have a need for complex AI? Most of the EA games i played were either more sandbox oriented or MP games, none of which require complex AI.

Have you ever played any Total War games? Basically their games have the same shit AI since probably the first Rome game which was released 2004. The latest release of Thrones of Britannia has the same goddamn AI bugs that their games had 10 years ago. There are so few games out there where the AI is actually decent that its almost become a staple of the industry.

Look, i completely agree with you, that i would like a better AI, but given the fact that 2.0.5 is way better than 2.0 i think they will get to a certain level eventually. I fail to see why they shouldn't release extra content (which isn't essential) in the meantime.

I've also never played a game where the AI offered a real challenge (once you were good at the game) unless it blatantly insanely cheated. Then you just need to resort to cheese tactics.

 

[Hanno The Navigator]

Just saw some of the new Steam Achievements for the upcoming story pack and have to say, nice Chrono Trigger reference.

 

[I am Goot]

@TheDungeon

Well thats useful, really worth mentioning that your mod gives a unique megastructure for each of the pre-cursor systems, if the mod is personal and only available for you to use.

 

[VaderYodaFett]

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today, we're going to continue talking about the Distant Stars Story Pack that will be accompanying the 2.1 'Niven' update, on the topic of exploration and new things to find in the galaxy. As with the previous dev diary, we're going to be fairly light on the details to avoid spoilering too much of what's out there to explore in Distant Stars.

New Anomalies
Distant Stars adds several dozen new anomalies to the game, with everything from simple discoveries to complex event chains (including the opportunity to make a new and very different kind of friend...) Overall, Distant Stars increase the anomaly count of the game by about 50%. We've also taken the time to go back and improve some old anomalies and fix up others that did not spawn correctly, so that even those without Distant Stars will be able to experience new discoveries in the Niven update.
View attachment 365336
View attachment 365338

New Systems
Distant Stars adds around 20 new, unique systems to the galaxy, similar to Sanctuary or Zanaam in the base game. Most of these systems have unique encounters, event chains or anomalies related to them, and some are actually several systems with a common background or event chain tying them together. Overall, though none of these systems are guaranteed to spawn in any individual game, every randomly generated galaxy in Distant Stars should contain some new and potentially rewarding discoveries for your empire to make.
View attachment 365337

New Leviathans
Distant Stars also adds 3 new Leviathans to the galaxy. Two of these Leviathans work in a similar way to existing ones, while one is altogether different from anything you will have seen before. As with previous Leviathans in the Leviathan Story Pack, these new Leviathans have curator dialogue and interactions related to them, which means that the Curator Enclave will appear in the galaxy if you have Distant Stars but do not own Leviathans (Traders and Artists do not spawn unless you have Leviathans, however).
View attachment 365335

That's all for today! Next week we're going to talk about the Niven update, on the topic of Space Creatures and Strategic Resources.

Are there going to be more event chains and things that will apply to robot and hive species? Right now there are a number of event chains and things that you simply cannot get if you"re a robot. It is immediately noticeable when you go from playing a game a a robot, and then play your next as a human or something.