Stellaris Dev Diary #141 - Exploring the Future

[crowdemon]

I would love to see new races & technologies.

 

[leoamdb]

I completely agree. I actually like many of the new changes post 2.0, and think they add a great deal of strategy to the game at the beginning. Nonetheless, at present, once your empire gets on a roll, blobs and gets past a certain size the external threats diminish, the interest goes as you wait for a crisis that I'll probably crush, an awakened empire to actually do something or a repeatable tech to, er, repeat. And of course there's the micromangement of planets, but I think that will be fixed. Also, I only go to war for something to do rather than for any real strategic reason. Knowing I have won the game usually with 100 years to run, is probably why I have never ever finished a run through despite clocking up 1000+ hours. It is still my favourite game to play but while loving the early and mid game, I think the end game could be made really much more engaging.

Apart from the issues of performance and stuttering, I think sectors is the key to creating a good end game.

Firstly, getting sectors working properly will solve the issue of micromanaging 200 planets completely. But what I'd love to see it the sectors to be part of an internal politics / diplomacy update, to create more challenges from within an empire, particularly ones which are huge. An couple of unhappy sectors (with differing predominant ideologies from the central government) of 20+ planets could create loads of issues that could really mess with you in the end game and possibly lead to you losing huge swathes of territory - which would be awesome. Think a pacifist empire that you took over in the early mid-game getting rebellious.

After all, I don't think many of us play Stellaris to "win" except in multiplayer - it's the adventure and the story that matters most. I could not care less if my game ends in ruinous defeat if I've had a great journey. Maybe there could be something like how CK2 works with its factions. Huge empires at the moment are internally very peaceful and stable. But really they should be massively unstable with high unhappiness, with the threat of violent and bloody break-up around every corner (much like many of my relationships!!).

An end game I'd like to see would possible be like this. Due to being really good at Stellaris, I am in the year 2300 ruling a huge empire with very powerful and influential sectors, who are threatening to breakaway, become independent, attempt to overthrow the central power, or join another empire, or whatever. The sectors gang up - massive civil war - a few small empires on my fringes take advantage of the mayhem and pinch some territory. I am reduced to a small rump state and have to rebuild - which I will as I am way smarter than AI. The Crisis comes and the galaxy buddies up to defend itself. The Crisis beaten off (hopefully) and the galaxy can go back to tearing itself to pieces while I and all the other empires attempt to re-establish supremacy. Until the psionics unleash the galaxy ending event - that I have never seen as I have never made it that far!!

Personally, I think that would really spice the game up. Perhaps an option pre-game for real empire destroying events in the end game, so those that just want to blob to their hearts content, can continue to do so.

That would definitely get me completing a game.

 

[Momento Mori]

So, no fixes for the stuttering then?

 

[Metztli]

Is 2.2.6 going into the beta branch or straight up to release in 1 week ?

 

[Tavior]

Federation depth: Allow federations to level up, have different election types, taxes etc.

What exactly did you meant by "level up"? The phrase is usually associated with RPG and is growing power of an individual's power. Not a federation...

Pop growth: Look into how immigration/emigration works, try to make base growth across multiple planets less powerful, make habitability matter more again

Don't forget to change synth auto-picker for new population as micro-management for them are some of the most egregious cases currently in 2.2.5.

IE for example: If I have 6 template for different jobs and would like to set auto-picker for new population to automatic based on empty jobs. Or even build a new population to be push off-world. Currently gestalt empire do have push/pull for immigration and emigration but it is currently unused by them.

Sectors & automation: Allow players to nudge which sectors planets belong to, reduce micromanagement by improving sector management tools

I would much rather that the shape of the sector itself to be a pre-determined shaped by galaxy geography. Not some arbitrarily distance when you create a first new world not in a sector. This make for bad gameplay where I am forced to settle new world in a very particular order to get a nice sector that doesn't end up with one world each.

 

[Marconius]

Hm, no real plans to make diplomacy more in-depth then?

Right now, I think the biggest issue is that playing the game peacefully is near impossible; it's very difficult to expand a federation once you have a few members in there. In general there's just very little you can do without going to war...
Espionage and deeper federations are welcome, of course, but I would like more depth in just regular diplomacy between empires.

 

[Postron]

How about making Pop growth an empire level mechanic rather than a planet level mechanic ?

 

[TheDungen]

May I suggest adding a third civic slot called Origin Civic. Which is only stuff like Life seeded syncretic evolution and so on. Yo can also add the earth and deneb systems as orgin civics. You can also add a few generic ones like, "big planet" rich system" and so on.

Edit:

Backgrounds: Split up some civics into backgrounds, and add more backgrounds.

I should read before I write.

 

[Onkel_Bums]

No fix for the "Yeah, that wormhole over there is unexplored? IDC LET'S USE IT #YOLO" Bug?

 

[Iosue Yu]

Certainly quite a lot we would like.

I would also want to suggest that perhaps it is over the time of "Exploration" now. Better say something about Domination or Prosperity about a Stellaris future.

 

[Cymsdale]

It makes me happy that the developers recognize the issues with the current pop growth model. Right now there is really no strategic decision in colonizing another planet. More pops are better and more planets means you get more pops faster; because pops don't grow pops, planets grow pops.

A more realistic model would be to have the high population planets be the highest producers of pops (all else being equal) and have low population planets rely nearly exclusively on immigration to grow at a reasonable rate. In this case the main motivation to colonize other planets would be to deal with the huge overflow coming out of your "filled up" worlds. The current model does try to emulate this to some degree, but could stand to be a lot stronger. "Base growth" needs to GTFO.

Please note that I'm not talking about WHICH pops are growing, that is a completely separate discussion.

 

[TheDungen]

Oh also it would be nice if buildings was softcapped not hardcapped. Something like after 50 pops each new building requires 1 more pop more than the previous building or something.

 

[monkeypunch87]

I'm really missing "Empire internal politics" and "Rebel sectors" in your future thoughts and goals, in line with CK2.

And do you plan to create "areas" and "regions" with the sector system on the galaxy map to add some reasons to get to war?

 

[Ezumiyr]

Unique features: We’ve started the process to update a bunch of civics and ascension perks to have more unique effects instead of just being a number bonus. This will be an ongoing process for future updates, and my goal is to replace as many as creatively possible.

Backgrounds: Split up some civics into backgrounds, and add more backgrounds.

AMAZING!!!
Please consider doing the same thing regarding Traditions. I don't see it in your list, but the tradition system, while a really cool concept, deserves to be expanded. More unique stuff instead of numbers, more tradition trees, and more exclusive tradition trees would be welcome.
Maybe religions, backgrounds, ethics, federations or even events or Ascension Perks could unlock new/different tradition trees as well (so at the start of the game everyone roughly start with the same trees, and during the game you unlock new ones depending on what you did). This would also open new customization possibilities to Ascensions for instance - instead of just going through a linear path, you would have to choose between different trees.

 

[Spaceception]

This all sounds good! Interested to see the new military AI as it develops.
And I'm glad to see that AI empires not removing tile blockers was addressed. Guess my comment yesterday was made moot pretty quickly

The future plans all sound very exciting too. I can't wait to see what comes out of it!

 

[meertn]

What exactly did you meant by "level up"? The phrase is usually associated with RPG and is growing power of an individual's power. Not a federation...

I believe it could be a HRE-like mechanic from EU4, where the federation becomes more tightly knit over time. So it's a similar process to the one you describe, only applied to an organisation.

 

[Arutar]

* Pop growth further adjusted to put less priority towards minority pops

Pop growth: Look into how immigration/emigration works, try to make base growth across multiple planets less powerful, make habitability matter more again

This is all welcome news. Thank you!

 

[Klokwerkaos]

I think the thing that I would like to see most is to have more options when it comes to dealing with various types of interactions with other empires, meaning if you're at war, at peace, in a federation, in a trade agreement, vassal, lord, etc. it doesn't matter we need more options to interact with these things and the reason being is that this can fundamentally change the way the game is played. While doom stacks are sorta less of a thing than they used to be, it still makes the most sense to bolster your military through the roof and shoot anyone who doesn't agree with you.

I'd like to have so many options that we could in theory, play without having to fire a single shot and still achieve some form of victory, even if it's just a principle of sorts, like maybe a federation or universal peace or whatever...

Right now the game is overly focussed on supremacy, and while that is a great option I think it should be AN option, not THE option. By opening lots of doorways for players to go through we would not only allow these various extreme outcomes, but we'd also create far more nuanced stories as well, since tiny things could change the course of our story, changing this from being just 4x and actually adding a solid role playing element where the choices we make actually matter, have consequences (good and bad) and allow for far more nuanced play sessions.

To be honest this is why I've been less active lately with stellaris because there just isn't any nuance to speak of.

While it's great that we have so many additions and filler, like the advanced encounters and the near infinite possibilities with modding, I think creating a game that allows me the option to play whatever I want to play is good, but it would be much better also if I could play however I want to play.

Another solid mechanic is that I think having additional non balanced modifiers would be good as an option as well.

What if I want to start as a non ftl to make the game super hard, or start as an overpowered race of kill machines? Why can't these things be part of base? If you want to get really crazy, maybe even put a direct interface in for us to create custom modifiers that are not iron man compatible directly in there so we don't have to either a) write them ourselves in mods or b) rely on others to write them. It wouldn't be too hard, the parameters are already there, and the mod support is already there, why couldn't you slip in a simple interface for this? Then mods could instead of focussing on just making a ton of coding, instead create different styles of playing the game by importing simple packs? It just seems like an easy and logical step for features that are most DL'd out of mods. This also doesn't stop people from creating the same stuff they do, it just makes it firstly A) easier to import and B) easier to customize our game experience for the things literally nobody plays without that understands the basics of modding.

Also please take inspiration from the top modders out there that add tons of perks, civics, ascension paths, etc. add more of that stuff in as options, but make it something like "tick the advanced box" so that way new players can try the game on a more limited setting with training wheels and more advanced players can customize things.

Like, just take a look and see, what is most DL'd mods? Maybe if you want to earn a ton of good will, buy the code from those developers, they already do it for free, so I doubt most of them would try to screw you on the price and would probably just like some acknowledgements in the credits and a few peanuts tossed their way, and if they don't want to sell it, no loss, because then they can just keep developing it themselves and people still have it.

Consider how simple this is. Lets create a civic. We have a name box, select a generic icon color (maybe if you want to be ambitious, upload a custom icon as an option, but that's even overkill), point cost and then maybe the possibility for that to modify up to three parameters from a drop down, and then set the values (+/- x), place on civic list and iron mode is disabled. Option to add for NPCs, and limit to types of races (ie, synthetic, hive mind, etc.). This is the easiest simple little addition you could make that would drastically alter the game experience for most. Then just let them create, I don't know, up to 999 saved? that seems overly easy. Do it for traits and all the other nifty stuff, and even then we can still have mods dedicated to even more advanced things that are just too complex for the basic list... like something that requires hard overwrites to core files, stuff that really drastically alters the game to a specific new kind of flavor... win in all directions.

I understand game balance is a thing the company needs to worry about, but the facts are, the world isn't balanced and most people don't play a balanced game set by the devs, instead they customize it to their personal taste for either greater or lesser challenge. Give people balance in the basic training wheels version, and then let them customize their experience... which you do... but make it IN GAME. That doesn't mean stop having mod support, or w/e, but it does mean this is the thing that matters to players.

Yes, some players are committed to iron man hardcore experiences that are balanced exactly as devs intend, but they already have their ball, and this wouldn't take their ball away, it would simply give everyone else their ball to play with, however they want to play with it.

Coupling that with a deeper RP experience with more interactive options with the people you meet will really be the game changer imho. You could still play the same as you always have, but you could now choose to do something entirely different or blend theorycrafts to create your own honest to goodness RP experience. Like imagine you have a summit option and at the summit you could snub or encourage, or promise foreign aid or suck up, or whatever... and maybe with that foreign aid they reject it or accept but you decide to stop paying and they have a civil war and their country then remembers you as the great satan, which doesn't matter now, but might later when you're at war and someone takes them as a radicalized vassal that hates you already and they declare a holy war... These are all things that would make the game super interesting and would still allow you to blast everyone else to bits, but you could play a far more nuanced game and not fire a shot.

Yeah, it would be cool to get new stuff like better pop and sector management, that's nice, but it's, to me, much less of an issue than being able to have the options to play whatever and however I like. That to me is the reason to play stellaris to begin with, it's the number one marketing asset and what the game brings to the table (albeit through mod support). The systems in place, while they could be better, barring bugs, are functional, they are "good enough" and tinkering with them to make them more interesting is awesome, but adding honest to goodness content is really what I think would make Stellaris moving forward.

Having more options about what to do, say, and how you interact, and being able to customize your experience however you like I think is really the top and most important priority.

 

[Dsingis]

Institutions: Define which institutions make up your empire’s internal departments (such as Diplomatic Corps, Xenology Bureau etc.), and their funding, size and power.

That idea sounds hella interesting and fun. Haven't even thought about that, yet it's so obvious. This could make for so much interal interaction.
Just imagine a conflict between different departments, or a department going rogue and acting independend like Section 31 from Star Trek.
Or a department assuming more direct power and basically becoming a different important political entity within your empire, like the Obsidian Order from the Cardassian Union.

Religion & Cults: Similar to factions, cults could appear in your empire during certain circumstances. Spiritualist empires would most likely have “imperial” cults. Worship of powerful entities etc.

And don't forget our beloved materialists. They could have something like philosophies, instead of religion or cults.

 

[Tavior]

I believe it could be a HRE-like mechanic from EU4, where the federation becomes more tightly knit over time. So it's a similar process to the one you describe, only applied to an organisation.

Eh why use the phrase level up when you can instead use centralizing? At least this way it would have been less ambiguous.