Stellaris Dev Diary #164 - Summary of the Year 2019

[Koizumi]

Espionage would also be interesting here as you could trigger civil wars in other empires.

Agreed! It would be great to be able to fund and support factions whose ethics align with your own within other empires. It would allow you to pursue "aggressive" politics and damage your enemies without necessarily having to go to war against them.

 

[Koizumi]

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.

Not sure I agree - 5 of the 8 items on the list still not stricken out do not seem especially relevant for external politics (pop growth, automation, institutions, religious movements, civic flavour). More specifically, internal "institutions" are included, so the devs are thinking about working on the internal mechanisms of the empire - I think it is reasonable to point out that factions also need some work.

 

[Spaceception]

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 Still, you need to urgently rework all these old and outdated Hivemind civics and add new ones!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.

I've also recently felt that Gestalts, in general, could use a rework. Assuming we get an internal politics update, that could make them very inferior to regular Empires, because you can just... do almost anything you want with little to no pushback in comparison. It'd be much more evident you're just playing easy mode instead of a unique type of Empire.

So I had the idea of giving them access to ethics as a purpose for them, then adding restlessness (a kind of happiness modifier) where if you do things they like, they'll remain docile or restful, and your planets could gain things like unity and stability. But going against them makes them restless, raises deviancy, and lowers stability. Adding a unique faction to this could help as well, where they'll push for their purpose, and give various bonuses or maluses based on what you do.
A civic I'd like to see with this system is a kind of Inwards perfectionist Hive Mind, where they'll hate to go to war. There should be other mechanics to make them interesting to play, but I think it'd be a good step up for them.

And if you want to keep "regular" Gestalts as we have them now, you could instead have a civic where your species has an overall cohesion, instead of individual pops having restlessness. With some similar functions (like this species preferring when you follow their purpose), but also unique ones as well (cohesion lowering based on distance from the core, or strength of Governors?).

In either case, you could see Gestalt civil wars, or hell, a Gestalt feudal society. Where they automatically have a low cohesion, so your Queen instead rules over many different Hives as you colonize past your core, and that could either turn out very fun, or very stupid

 

[The Conmmander]

Unfortunately no performance beta to christmas. I had hope.
Honestly 2019 has ruined Stellaris and PDX for me.
If I read this DD, I am not sure PDX is actually clear how much the base of the game is disturbed.
AI, Factions, Performance, Subjects, Fighter, Bugs in Events, WiH, Engame Crises and so on.
Sry, i feel so intended lucky making DD's schizophrenic, when at the same time the base of the game is destroyed.

But merry christmas and a happy new year

 

[brantodb01]

is Federations coming Q1 next year or are we going to have to wait till Q2?

 

[Mythox]

well i think we will have to wait till jan/feb to get this little jewel in our library .....!!!

 

[OnyxAbussos]

Awesome.
Much love.
And props for acknowledging BOTH where bummers happened AND where magic happened. We need more of that in the world. Thank you.

 

[adil3tr]

“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.”

I hope this will be broad so there can be tech cults that want transhumanism, authoritarian cults that want an admiral to become dictator, xenophile cults, etc.

 

[mysticdueler]

Merry Christmas, I hope you haven’t been naughty?

 

[Piotrzeci]

I would watch an I:R stream just for History Wiz.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

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

The bit you quoted isn't referring to new/planned content- it's talking about how the game ALREADY works. Different types of Vassal have different rules for what they can do, in-game, right now. "Subject Contracts" as described sound like they want to let you customize/tweak individual vassal rights in a similar way as to how Federation laws are tweaked.

 

[Beagá]

Why not a pure AI patch before Christmas? That would be a good enough gift before the new DLC.

 

[Kukumarro]

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

My suggestion is that you implement some kind of logistic growth:

1. Scale organic growth with the number of present pops, so new colonies grow slower and populated planets faster.
2. Downscale the growth from overcrowding (e.g. 25% overcrowding => x0.5 pop growth), on top of increasing emigration.
3. Downscale the growth from habitability.
4. Make colony ships cost 1 pop.

If you do that, then the same number of pops will produce the same growth across any number of planets, provided no planet is overcrowded and all have the same habitability. If planets start overcrowding, then it becomes beneficial to have colonies with high growth potential, even if they have less habitability.

 

[Major Malfunction]

Search: "Performance"
Results: 0

 

[Gothbert]

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.

Even being able to designate "Must Have" and "Do Not Build" buildings for planets would be extremely helpful. For example, I could say "I want every colony to have a Fortress and Gene Clinic but do not want any colony to build Hydroponic Farms or Bio Reactors." Overall, the AI's build decision making criteria needs revision as the logic is not as tight as it could be.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

I'm hoping that cults, organisations and pops are merged into an overall factions/internal politics update. Factions and the ethics system are a real niche that drew me to Stellaris, and yet it still doesn't really function all that well other than a mild distraction from the current mindless expansion.

But good to see again acknowledgement of the problems and I hope you have a nice break.

 

[Purussaurus]

Primitives: Allow for more interactions with primitive pre-FTL species

This is one of the points I want most, I even made a recent suggestion on the topic. See:

In the game there are two major types of civilizations according to the space they occupy:

- Planetary Civilizations (limited to one planet).
- Galactic/Interstellar Civilizations (limited to one galaxy, with the exception of the Prethoryn).

In the game are lacking the Stellar Civilizations (limited to one star), that do not have FTL engine technologies, build primitive ships and spread through their star system. So we have three different ages:

- Planetary Age (Stone Age - Early Space Age).
- Star Age (Early Space Age - development of a FTL method).
- Galactic Age.

In the future, the game could be designed such that the player could choose at what age to begin when starting a new game.

If you choose a beginning in the Planetary Age:
- The player has no advanced space technology yet and controls one of the planet's nations, represented as tile blokers. The player can choose between militarily conquering other nations or diplomatic/economic unification, thus determining their origin.

- Non-player pre-FTLs are also contains tile nations. They are randomly generated at the beginning of the game and each one controls a number of districts (their territories). Each nation has different ethos, armies and populations.

- This opens the possibility of colonizing planets without having to attack the natives, as long as some districts are available ("Avatar" style). The downside is that they could attack first and there would be permanently districts being controlled by the natives, preventing them from being used.

If you choose a beginning in the Star Age:
- You start with the planet already unified, technology to build ships without FTL and the system not yet surveyed.

- Optionally there may be a "The Expanse" type start, with several factions dominating the system (in the case of Sol, there would be Earth, a semi-terraformed Mars, and a habitat representing The Belt). The player must unify the system before developing an FTL engine and advance to the Galactic Age.

- Some pre-FTL non-players will start at this stage, with the possibility that some have very advanced technology, but without FTL for any reason (unlucky, inability to understand more than 3 dimensions, etc.).

- Regarding the ships used by the Star Age pre-FTLs, I suggest creating a new class, the warboats, which would only be useful until the development of the corvettes.


This is all just a general idea, I refrain from entering details so as not to become a huge text that no one will read.

 

[G S Palmer]

"The year began with an extended period of patching, which had us starting on a bad footing."

What the fuck? No it didn't. Fix your game.

Yes, it did. There were 5 bugfix patches released in early 2019 before the release of Ancient Relics (patches 2.2.3-2.2.7). That's more bugfix patches than between any other major patches except for after 1.2 Asimov. And that's not including the two that were released before the end of 2018 (2.2.1 and 2.2.2).

 

[iniudan]

A message from @Obidobi:

[...]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[...]

Ok, but who are you parent of (a pet name is fine), so we can call you by your proper name of [CurrentlyUnknown]'s Dad.

 

[The Conmmander]

Surely there was 5 patches, but releasing 5 bugfixes dosent mean that the problems of 2.0 or 2.2 or 2.3 are solved. I think thats the point.