Stellaris Dev Diary - #145 Archaeology

[Taritu]

Really like this idea. At a later date, perhaps branches, so that we don't know exactly what story is being told after we've played the content for a wh ile.

 

[SvatyFini]

Another dumb rng? I really hope that it wont be again something like old anomalies aka 5% critical failure, destroyed ship or 99% chance to succes and nothing happen.
Please dont add any kind of this rng ingame, its not interesting, make requirements to archeology or same thing as anomalies extend time ALOT if scientists are not supposed to do that.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

I hope this replaces the current anomaly systems completely. Currently I get so many pop-ups from them in the early game that I often only glance at the outcomes and don't even read the text. I don't even know where they are most of the time. Cutting down on the amount of anomalies, demanding more of a time/resource investment to uncover them, and the rewards being more significant will make exploration and archaeology as engaging as it should be.

 

[TheDungen]

A neat feature of this new system is that you can click previous chapters to go back and read what happened.

Would be nice to be able to do this with events too.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Another dumb rng? I really hope that it wont be again something like old anomalies aka 5% critical failure, destroyed ship or 99% chance to succes and nothing happen.
Please dont add any kind of this rng ingame, its not interesting, make requirements to archeology or same thing as anomalies extend time ALOT if scientists are not supposed to do that.

RNG is fine. Catastrophic failure is fine, even, so long as its interesting.

 

[leftkeh]

The new archealogical DLC looks amasing! As sidenotes:

on that note, I'm already wishing for there to be "archaeology regions" on the map with sites pre-allocated at game start that dynamically tell a story of what happened in a specific region of space. Would make the map a lot less bland - especially so if new sites could spawn as a result of major galactic conflicts

This will probably tie nicely with the cluster of Tomb Worlds (Silent Colony, Decayed Hub etc.). It would also tie nicely with all those pre-FTL civs that manage to wipe themselves out in a nuclear war...

1.-
Maybe one could hope for a new rare tech in the lines of ... "Create archaeological heritage site" that would tie along with the "Create ..... Colony" family of techs.
2.-
Also, similar to the Alien Zoo, maybe a museum (that would produce trade and happiness?) for the safekeeping of those nice minor-artifacts, just in case one would not wish to "break" them.
3.-
Scientists could now probably gain a new archaeological-type trait?
4.-
Though it has official been stated that the anomaly system will not changed (at this DLC at least), I would highly favour it, especially for those anomalies that are followed by events. Maybe anomalies could remain unchanged but events switched to achaeological digs, whenever possible?


As a final note, I am really excited to read next week's new Precursor system (something old in a new scope)

 

[Sifer2]

Sounds like an interesting feature. Particularly as it could make Science ships useful beyond the early game exploring phase. Going to have to echo some others though in that yet more feature creep seems like a bad idea when the game is still feeling like it was knocked back into an Beta state after that economic rework. AI is poor. Sectors are none functional. Gestalt economics feels like just less stuff to do. All of that to me is higher priority to fix to make the game enjoyable before adding more of these pop up rpg events. I imagine the dev team probably has no choice though. Just being asked to put out quarterly DLC packs, and fix what they can as they go.

 

[Mythox]

here we go with something tottaly new and exciting !!!!

 

[AltaHMano]

Great stuff, I always love all these things you can explore.

 

[Velho e Bom Joe]

If I have enough archaeologists, can I assault the excavation site?
Will planetary bombardment help excavating, like cannons do with EUIV sieges?




More seriously, this looks pretty interesting! I wonder if scientist traits will be updated to this, and have some scientists be good at excavating sites.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

This seems like a great way to do expanded anomalies and colony event chains. Even a lot of secret projects could benefit a lot from a solid system for sequential events and mechanics between them.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

This seems like a great way to do expanded anomalies and colony event chains. Even a lot of secret projects could benefit a lot from a solid system for sequential events and mechanics between them.

Hopefully we'll see a lot of other anomalies and event chains reworked to utilize this in future. It certainly wouldn't work for all of them, but lot of the more interesting/complex ones would absolutely benefit from it.

 

[zukodark]

Will you make it more easy to see which planets have such features in system view? I feel like there should be some inter-system UI to easily show this.

 

[Mantonio]

This is very cool and I'm very excited to see it in action, but a small part of me is annoyed that new features are being announced while so many borked features, or basic, easy-to-fix bugs remain. Especially considering the rocky start to the Le Guin patch.

Heck, even if you ignore stuff like sectors or the AI being a hot mess, machine planets still don't have working visuals, lights or sound, and Synthetic Dawn released a year and a half ago. Part of a huge feature advertised in the expansion, that works correctly when applied to Contingency worlds (thus I'm willing bet is really easy to fix) but doesn't work with player empires.

If even little things like that can remain broken for so long, I'm having trouble remaining confident that this won't just add more broken stuff on top of it.

 

[Methone]

Another dumb rng? I really hope that it wont be again something like old anomalies aka 5% critical failure, destroyed ship or 99% chance to succes and nothing happen.
Please dont add any kind of this rng ingame, its not interesting, make requirements to archeology or same thing as anomalies extend time ALOT if scientists are not supposed to do that.

If you look at the spoilers, the 'rng' of progression can't go below 'nothing happens this time'. And as for rng negative events - like the implied robot attack artwork - well, do you also complain when the War in Heaven starts? When a Marauder decides to raid you and not your neighbors?

 

[tpyo]

any chance we can start tying more events into diplomacy? Resulting in claims, alliances, wars, etc? While archaeology might not necessarily be the best place for this I feel like its something that would great to put more of into Stellaris. This game suffers from not having the wealth of historical events that tie nations together like in other titles.
One example in this instance could be a system that two empires have surveyed and the chain gives the player the opportunity to either work with or against a rival alien archaeology team where you share the rewards but get some form of diplomatic reward (up to defensive pact or federation joining) or take all the spoils for yourself but receive a diplomatic penalty (up to a declaration of war).

 

[MichaelJanuary]

How about an archeology site on your homeworld that reveals the true origin of your species and imbues you with the mission of rediscovering your ancient home, or taking revenge on the race that destroyed your forebears, or finding those who needed your world with life in the first place.

Oooh the possibilities.

 

[SpetznasAgent]

As an actual professional archaeologist, this future feature has definitely tickled my fancy. I can appreciate the more "Indiana Jones" approach, because those narratives are, most of the time, a lot more fun than stories about meticulous note-taking, record-keeping, map-making and public relations.

Some questions:

• I assume this may hypothetically result in Minor or Major Artifact(s) Resources being found; are they just abstract values like regular Energy or Minerals, or are they possibly individually unique?
• If more narrative focused/unique archaeology events are planned, will there be some UI menu or empire-specific feature to display or keep track of flavour text/unique artifacts, aka, a museum?
  
• Will past excavations/expeditions be permanently logged in some way, so we can go back and read about their progress even after they're finished if there is no "museum"?
• Is it possible for co-operative expedition events with other empires (AI or player) that presents a diplomatic issue that could give bonus/malus of any kind to either side?
• If no co-operation, is it possible for 'one-sided' archaeology events to directly affect neighbouring empires?
• Will Artifact Resources or "Unique" Artifacts (if they exist) be tradable with other empires?

 

[Millbot]

This sounds like it'll be a cool feature and probably the best route to go to improve the midgame, while not taking a ton of resources away from fixing areas that need work.

Will we see a revisit of precursor events? First League is way ahead of the other four. So would love to see a rebalancing of these events, so that starting point doesn't matter as much. Also wouldn't mind if in the solo mode, the player could draw all the events once they control enough territory in areas where those events spawn. It's not like the AI does these events. Not sure if the last patch made it so the home system always pops in one's territory or not (I think I've just been lucky), but in solo play the system should always proc so it's directly accessible from my empire, given the AI isn't doing anything to proc it. As for multiplayer, how it procs should factor in how much people have put forward towards completing the chain (will not be accessible from one's systems if they didn't do any of the event, but will have the highest chance if they are the first one to complete the chain).

Also L-Gate chain really should have a mechanic similar to precursor events, where if one doesn't have an L-Gate system, they can opt to start a chain that will find a new hyperlane to a blackhole system that has an L-Gate. Current setup is awful if you roll pacifist and every L-Gate is far, far away from your starting point, that by the time you can locate it, someone will have claimed it. This event would only proc for players (I'd say in both solo & multiplayer, maybe multiplayer can turn it off if people feel L-Gate access shouldn't be guaranteed). For balance, the system that spawns would be the most anemic blackhole system one can get, where it's just a blackhole that always has the lowest amount of physics (seems like we all end up swimming in physics) or energy deposit and no chance of having an anomaly.

I'd love to see some tweaking of anomalies. It's kind of annoying that they completely disappear past the early game, save for systems with space fluff. Then when new systems are found or fluff occupied systems are cleared, the AI is immediately trying to swarm the system(s) with science vessels, thus cheating players out of possible stuff to do because they are BS omnipotent like the AI. There should be some anomalies where anyone that surveys the system before it's claimed can find it and the anomaly can be research by multiple empires because it's something that will always be there. There should also be anomalies that do a check, where if the system needs to be cleared, the anomaly will not show up for anyone that didn't help clear the system. Would also love it if it were possible to find anomalies in newly acquired systems, if I conquer a system or claim it after something wipes out the system's starbase/outpost. I really should have the option to rescan the system. If a normal empire controlled it, have the chances of an anomaly spawn being lower and have that go down each time someone checks for anomalies because of ownership changes (each empire can only scan for anomalies once & I'd let the AI do this scan because it does need some help). FE systems will have the same chance to reveal an anomaly as an unexplored system (right now it's rather convoluted to get anomalies in fallen empire systems, since that requires purging their planets one at a time, returning ones that are cleared of pops & still not having a chance to find anomalies in the last system with pops because you get ownership of that system, when the last pop dies).

As for archaeology, I'm hoping their is some sort of check to avoid having this be another system that overly favors wide playstyles. We need more to do in the midgame, but it needs to be something that isn't "go wide or bust." I'd have it setup so that this system could tie into the diplomacy stuff later on. Who says I can't work something out with an empire so that my scientists can check out the archaeology sites or that I can use shady means to get a scientist in to see if I can discover hidden secrets of fallen civilizations, that an empire might want to keep to themselves.

If these archaeology sites do end up being blockers that we can clear. Will terraforming types that usually clear blockers automatically (I believe machine & hive do this) still do so with these or will these sites be flagged to require the player to manually clear them?

Finally, since this likely means a new trait for scientists. Could that whole leader level system and traits get a revisit? It's bad, it's really bad. The rate some leadership types levels is way to slow. Most of the time, when a leader gets a trait it's either incredibly underwhelming or just feels like crap. It seems like the RNG system really loves the traits rigid programming, stubborn, arrested development & slave driver. Also RNG leading to scientist that are all over the board on research specialization really does feel like crap. I'd be fine if that could happen if one just mindlessly does anomalies & research projects without reading them, assuming anomalies that can reward traits are more up front that doing it will or has a chance of given a particular trait. If I don't do anomalies or projects that do or can reward traits, my scientists really should have a trait setup that either lends them well as a pure generalist (no traits that only work within a field) or a good in one area of research (mix of pure generalist traits & traits relevant to that area of research aka they don't have traits for both engineering & society). Though to be honest, not a huge fan of the area research traits since that only works for the guys doing tech research and is a wasted trait on the science ships.

 

[Kaigen]

Hopefully we'll see a lot of other anomalies and event chains reworked to utilize this in future. It certainly wouldn't work for all of them, but lot of the more interesting/complex ones would absolutely benefit from it.

I don't know if they could get Alexis Kennedy back, but imagine if they converted the Loop Temple to this system and built out that segment of The Horizon Signal instead of just having a 180 day timer.