Stellaris Dev Diary #164 - Summary of the Year 2019

[Paradoxon]

it's still odd you can look at an enemy fleets destination.

Unless there's a setting I missed somewhere, that hasn't been the case for a while (except for allies, I think). The game doesn't tell you what the other empires' ships are doing, be it moving to a system or building a station or surveying something or anything.

 

[Serenity84]

No internal politics planned? Come on. This is something the game desperately needs. Factions as they are just aren't cutting it. They are just a tool to gain more influence. More internal realm management would take the focus off external wars at certain points. It would allow for a civil war "crisis" to occupy your time. And it would make expansion harder as you'd spend more and more time to try to keep new acquisitions under control.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Really? How long ago? And I mean, sure most empires probably would show you everything as a show of non-hostilities but it's still odd you can look at an enemy fleet's destination.

What does "Not a great experience" mean? Just "not fun"?
IMO It would make trading for people's maps, and building sensor outposts to spy on others cool features.

Remembering Wiz's development style, I can imagine 'Not a great experience' to mean 'we don't have time/capacity to do this properly with everything else'

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

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

This has been a huge issue ever since 2.2 came out. Even with pops creating empire sprawl, pop growth is still going to be the way to go.

And we STILL lack a proper way to automate, or atleast make lategame resettlement bearable. Once you are up to 50, or 100 planets you are constantly forced to resettle your pops onto Ringworlds manually. This has to be automated, like the mod "Automatic migration". Not everyone has access to things like utopian abunance, or wants to change species rights just to not get bombarded by endless crime and deviancy events! This is making the lategame management a miserable experience!

Just like expanding to new planets, habitats, Ringworlds is always a big boost, even if it increases empire sprawl. Maybe changes will reduce snowballing via pop growth somewhat, but the issues will stay -
UNLESS you do some proper balancing which is desperately needed!

Synth empires are still left with potential 20-30 growth, or even higher with Cybrex War forge. Their Synth growth can be easily 12.2, which alone is more than other empires like Hiveminds or regular empires can achieve. Ontop of it they get regular organic growth with no penalties! Thats easily another 6-15 organic pop growth depending on Ecumenopoleis, growth bonuses and immigration. This is completeley out of proportion and had to be nerfed long ago. Synth Ascension is by far the best, even if it takes the longest to unlock and still has lots of other bonuses to make it stand out.

Hiveminds, the empire that has literally written "increase pop growth" at every corner, is the worst at pop growth in the lategame. Any empire with "Flesh is weak" already grows faster than Hiveminds. Proof: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/dnr6te/this_patch_is_25_synth_empires_and_robots/

They are the weakest at producing alloys by a large margin, as Machine empires produce them much more efficiently (4 alloys per 8 minerals instead of 3 per 6 minerals) and Hiveminds do not even come close to the specialist output bonuses of regular empires (with great civics like Meritocracy which Hiveminds completeley lack).

Back in 2.2, you reduced Maintenance Drone output from 5 to 4 and you reduced pop growth from Drone Edict from 25% to 10%. If you were to revert these changes for Hivemind only, they would feel much better in today's meta and be a little more competitive. Still, Hiveminds lack many things at every corner. From Hive worlds lacking a 10% housing reduction like Machine worlds, Synapse Drones being much worse Coordinators lacking % Menial Drone output bonus entirely, having weaker Traditions: getting +2 housing per Synapse Node, while Machine empires get +2 housing for every Maintenance Depot?! or Hive districts granting 0 maintenanc Drone jobs, the worst Housing District in the game to grant 0 jobs, Hiveminds have huge issues. The changes to Habitability hurt them extremely bad as you are forced to pick bonus habitability traits to keep up with other empires. This hurts playstyle options, balance and fun since you can't create unique species with different traits without being severely weaker than other empires.

Hiveminds are constantly struggleing with amenities and deviancy. Crime and amenities for regular empires are not problem whatsoever, especially when you abuse Crime lord deal on every planet for +10 stability. Hiveminds can never get close to comparable stability because of this, unless they use small relics which do not replenish without the Rubricator.

And lastly, why are Hivemind rulers still without any traits when leveling up? They miss out bonuses from Agendas aswell. A high level Hivemind ruler is nothing compared to any regular, mid to high level organic ruler who has an agenda and traits from leveling up. Traits and Agendas have to be enabled for Hivemind rulers (excluding something like arrested developement of course!).

And dear god, please finally nerf Machine empires to a reasonable level! 2.3 made them go out of control because you didn't nerf them at all when every other empire became weaker due to habitability changes. And buffs to Driven Assimilators like allowing Cyborgs to live on Machine worlds only helped them even more. Driven Assimilators were pretty much always one of the strongest empires in the game. But even regular Machine empires are much, much stronger than any regular empire or Hivemind. They need some nerfs to Habitability, remove tech drone job from Nexus district, remove menial Drone output bonus from Coordinators, less pop growth. Alteast something to make them not as insane as they have been from 2.2.7 till now.

Civic flavour: Spend more time on making the civics feel more unique and fun.
We’ve done some work towards this, but we don’t consider it finished yet. There are still a bunch of Civics we would like to make more fun.

Again, Hiveminds desperately need a big civic overhaul like the regular empires received with 2.2. I don't consider Terravore a new civic as its just Devouring Swarm with a different name and one planet decision. However, seeing a new civic for envoys is a good sign. Still, you need to urgently rework all these old and outdated Hivemind civics and add new ones! Look at boring civics that increase tech options by +1! This exact civic was turned into Technocracy for regular empires, one very unique and one of the strongest civics in the game. Meritocracy was changed. Warrior Culture was changed. But Hiveminds are still stuck with lots of boring civics! I do not understand why strength of Legions is still the same when you could have simply made it similar to the new Warrior culture.

There are hundreds of pages with suggestions for new and interesting Hivemind civics. Just look at how many players are using Mods for more Hivemind civics. Many modders have create them as the entire community wants more options for Hiveminds. They need something for bonus stability, maybe adding a 2nd species like Syncretic Evolution. Something similar to Driven Assimilators, where they add additional traits to their own Hivemind pops and surpass the trait limit. I have already said long ago that Hivemind need a way similar to Xeno-Compatibility, to add more traits to their pops. They only have Biological Ascension which already cannot keep up with regular empires which get to use Robots aswell. They should atleast be able to make highly advanced biological Hivemind pops!

 

[Duuk]

A message from @Obidobi:

Hello everyone!

I'm Obidobi, some of you may have seen me around as I've been working at Paradox (and Stellaris for that matter) for the past 5 years. I started my journey as a newcomer to the gaming industry as a Paradox QA in 2014 where I saw Stellaris in its pre-alpha stage and I've been on this spaceship ever since. In 2018 I joined the producer team helping @Jamor on Stellaris and some other projects, including the Console Edition of Stellaris. Stellaris is basically running through my veins at this point, and I don't think I'll know what to do if I ever move projects. So as my dear mentor @Jamor leaves for more ancient lands, like any proper Shounen Protagonist, I will have to pick up the mantle of Hokage and become stronger than ever before (Look forward to these kinds of references).

I'm really looking forward to see where the team and I can take Stellaris going forward and I'm truly excited about getting an opportunity to hold the steering wheel. I hope you guys will accept me with open arms as you did with @Jamor!

I hope you’re all as excited as I am for the future, but for now I just want to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

@Obidobi has created a custom empire "Stellaris Producers" with a Custom Ruler Title Hokage.

The Campaign to Elect a new Producer is underway.

 

[BKazu]

I want to say thank you to whole Stellaris team for the great work done in 2019! I wish you marry Xmas!

• Sectors & automation: Allow players to nudge which sectors planets belong to, reduce micromanagement by improving sector management tool.
  A lot of work has been done with this, such as creating sectors, manual designations and planet automation. All work isn’t finished however, and we want to add more improvements.

With all changes done to sectors, there is one thing missing from my point of view. Do you consider to input in game some kind of planet development templates similar to the ship designer?
That could help immensely to all people who like to play wide and have to micromanage tens of planets

 

[House Centipede]

Unless there's a setting I missed somewhere, that hasn't been the case for a while (except for allies, I think). The game doesn't tell you what the other empires' ships are doing, be it moving to a system or building a station or surveying something or anything.

I'm pretty sure you just have to click on or mouse over someone's fleet and it will tell you where they're going. I use it to stay one step ahead of people trying to intercept me.

It doesn't say their exact route, mind you, just the destination.

 

[Spaceception]

There hasn't been any mention of subject contract so far, so it likely won't come with Federations. Which is a shame, because subject interactions right now are boring.

Actually

What a subject empire can do varies by vassalization type. Satrapies of the Great Khan, for instance, can expand freely. Scions similarly have a unique subject contract.

From DD 160. So there might be unique subject contracts at least, but a full implemetation is probably still in the works?

 

[Tamwin5]

Happy Holidays to the Dev Team! Rest up and eat lots of cookies!

• Civic flavour: Spend more time on making the civics feel more unique and fun.
  We’ve done some work towards this, but we don’t consider it finished yet. There are still a bunch of Civics we would like to make more fun.

Now I could be missing some here, but so far the only changed civics since that dev diary were warrior culture.... and that's it. A twitter tease showed some civic updates coming to Federations, but most of those were dealing with updating them to work with the new system (no real increase in flavor or fun), and the only major change was for Byzantine bureaucracy, which actually became less interesting (although I expect that will change before release).

Civics are the thing that bring the most unique lore and RP flavor to the game, and it really feels like they've been left a little by the wayside. Megacorps and Hiveminds especially feel like they only have a handful of interesting options, machines aren't far behind, and more then half of the default civics are fairly bland simple plusses and minuses. Having some bland civics are good, but they need interesting and flavorful options to work off of.

For the new year, I'd love to see more dev time into updating and expanding civics. There are tons of ideas on the suggestion forum and from mods, and I'm sure the dev team has even more themselves. While I'd personally be ecstatic with a major path being solely and update of 20+ civics, I recognize that's pretty unfeasible for a number of reasons, so what I'm asking for instead is 2+ updated civics for every major version update. More of a wish then anything else, but it's a wish that I'm sure many hope comes true. <3

 

[Annihilat0r]

I'm pretty sure you just have to click on or mouse over someone's fleet and it will tell you where their going. I use it to stay one step ahead of people trying to intercept me.

It doesn't say their exact route, mind you, just the destination.

No it doesn't. Has not been the case since 2.3 I think?

 

[Everstill]

Really? How long ago? And I mean, sure most empires probably would show you everything as a show of non-hostilities but it's still odd you can look at an enemy fleet's destination.

What does "Not a great experience" mean? Just "not fun"?
IMO It would make trading for people's maps, and building sensor outposts to spy on others cool features.

Years ago, when Wiz was the project lead.

And yeah, it was just not fun he said. Specially when declaring War. You will declare war and you don't even know what territories belong to that empire. And if they close borders you can't even reveal anything anymore.

Without implementing tools to make all of this possible, you can forget about this.

And didn't they changed that you can't see the enemy fleet destination anymore.....?

 

[Spaceception]

No internal politics planned? Come on. This is something the game desperately needs. Factions as they are just aren't cutting it. They are just a tool to gain more influence. More internal realm management would take the focus off external wars at certain points. It would allow for a civil war "crisis" to occupy your time. And it would make expansion harder as you'd spend more and time try to keep new acquisitions under control.

Yeah, unique factions types based on authority, happy factions can give unique positive modifiers, unhappy ones give negatives, maybe add in voting and such from federations to make bigger decisions, let factions influence your diplomatic deals, rework civics that are supposed to diversify your government more, add more internal strife. There's a lot of groundwork already done too.

 

[House Centipede]

No it doesn't. Has not been the case since 2.3 I think?

And didn't they changed that you can't see the enemy fleet destination anymore.....?

Ok, my bad. I haven't played in some time; been waiting for the next big DLC and only recently started keeping up with Dev Diaries again.

 

[grekulf]

IWith all changes done to sectors, there is one thing missing from my point of view. Do you consider to input in game some kind of planet development templates similar to the ship designer?

I consider the templates to be a part of the sector management / planet automation. We have a design for it, but we haven't been able to prioritize it yet.

 

[Big Dead One]

Actually

From DD 160. So there might be unique subject contracts at least, but a full implemetation is probably still in the works?

Possibly, but I think that will just be yet another different subject type. A full subject customization system probably won't come with the next patch. But I may be wrong.

 

[Nyrael]

No words on a pop growth asjustment . I hoped someone would have started to look into it allready.

I mean, they didn't talk about any bugs in this DD. That is out of its scope.

Really? How long ago? And I mean, sure most empires probably would show you everything as a show of non-hostilities but it's still odd you can look at an enemy fleet's destination.

What does "Not a great experience" mean? Just "not fun"?

Yeah, not fun for one reason or another. There's a lot of things that work better on paper than in practice. That doesn't mean it won't come in future, but if it does it will be accompanied by another big feature that complements this one.

No internal politics planned? Come on. This is something the game desperately needs. Factions as they are just aren't cutting it. They are just a tool to gain more influence. More internal realm management would take the focus off external wars at certain points. It would allow for a civil war "crisis" to occupy your time. And it would make expansion harder as you'd spend more and time try to keep new acquisitions under control.

The list here is the copy of the List from Dev Diary #141 (as said in this diary). They did not post a new list of features they want o add in near future (I assume they will after the New Years).

 

[Koizumi]

No internal politics planned? Come on. This is something the game desperately needs. Factions as they are just aren't cutting it. They are just a tool to gain more influence. More internal realm management would take the focus off external wars at certain points. It would allow for a civil war "crisis" to occupy your time. And it would make expansion harder as you'd spend more and time try to keep new acquisitions under control.

I personally really agree with this. The faction system exudes potential (it is closely linked to the ethics system, which is great for RP), but ultimately it is very shallow. For instance, it would be interesting to have the various governors and admirals belong to different factions, so that each faction could have a "power base" to allow for insurrections, separatist movements, and civil wars. Replacing leaders could also have an "internal politics" dimensions as factions could be displeased if they lose too many positions of power, and would make empire management more interesting, creating harder choices.

So, while I agree with many of the items on the "to/do" list, I was surprised to see "institutions" included (something which nobody seems to be asking for as far as I know), with no mention of internal politics (which are often mentioned in the forum as an area of improvement). I would definitely prefer having well-developed factions rather than the current shallow factions plus public offices. The same thing is true for cults: I would prefer to have very interesting factions rather than a mix of institutions, factions, and religious movements which do not interact that well with each other and ultimately do not matter (which is a bit what happens in EU IV) - sometimes less features is actually better.

 

[A-150]

Yeah, unique factions types based on authority, happy factions can give unique positive modifiers, unhappy ones give negatives, maybe add in voting and such from federations to make bigger decisions, let factions influence your diplomatic deals, rework civics that are supposed to diversify your government more, add more internal strife. There's a lot of groundwork already done too.

I'd like to see it harder for super large empires to maintain direct control over territory. Perhaps country specific crisis such as civil war (not the current rebellions those are weak), but much more severe. Espionage would also be interesting here as you could trigger civil wars in other empires.

 

[safe-keeper]

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

Gasp.

 

[Nyrael]

I personally really agree with this. The faction system exudes potential (it is closely linked to the ethics system, which is great for RP), but ultimately it is very shallow. For instance, it would be interesting to have the various governors and admirals belong to different factions, so that each faction could have a "power base" to allow for insurrections, separatist movements, and civil wars. Replacing leaders could also have an "internal politics" dimensions as factions could be displeased if they lose too many positions of power, and would make empire management more interesting, creating harder choices.

So, while I agree with many of the items on the "to/do" list, I was surprised to see "institutions" included (something which nobody seems to be asking for as far as I know), with no mention of internal politics (which are often mentioned in the forum as an area of improvement). I would definitely prefer having well-developed factions rather than the current shallow factions plus public offices. The same thing is true for cults: I would prefer to have very interesting factions rather than a mix of institutions, factions, and religious movements which do not interact that well with each other and ultimately do not matter (which is a bit what happens in EU IV) - sometimes less features is actually better.

There's no internal politics mentioned because that's the list from a Dev Diary posted around a year ago. Back then it was decided that this year's Expansion's focus would be on Diplomacy (which was delayed for the good of Economy update) and some minor features. That's why most stuff on the list is in some form related to External Politics.

Once Federations is out of the way, they will be choosing what will be the focus of the next Content Pack and of the next Expansion. Next expansion will probably be focused on Espionage or Diplomacy (or something else), and the next year's list of desired features may include more stuff about overhauling Internal Politics.

But, again, this list was made year 2019, not year 2020. This DD is about looking back at 2019 after all.