Stellaris Dev Diary #181 : Threading and Loading Times

[Olterin]

Well this is nice, the dev diaries actually return before the end of August, I half-expected to have to wait all the way to October

I'm not sure Jeff would approve of going this much into technical detail, as us primitives aren't well-versed in quantum string theory
... But it's a very nice way to start off a dev diary cycle, not with new features but with technical diaries - I hope there are more of these coming, concerning balance too!

 

[Balesir]

Who's Jeff?

He's Mutt's buddy.

 

[Dsingis]

This isn't the only we worked on, no. This is merely what I toyed with during the slow summer month with a bit of outside help.

Thank you very much, that was exactly what I wanted to hear

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

We're all back to work, although not at the office yet. It is going to be a very exciting autumn and winter with a lot of interesting news! We are incredibly excited to be able to share the news with you over the coming weeks and months!

Well hopefully it contains fixes for the core problems of the game, like these:

1. Pop growth, (automatic) migration, resettlement simulator lategame, pop micromanagement hell and gene modding problems, having to use an edict to fix pop micromanagement which is locked behind Galactic community and 3 resolutions.
2. AI being as stupid as ever while Starnet AI, being developed by 1 modder with less tools than Paradox, made an AI fully capable of managing its economy with 0 economy cheats.
3. Automation as in planet and habitat auto-build. Its completely broken and just as stupid as the AI. This feature will kill your economy instead of making lategame bearable. There are no working tools to have the AI reasonably automate the tedious micromanagement for you.
4. Crisis AI is broken since 2.2 since the Crisis is too stupid to actually conquer the galaxy. Even worse, the 2.6 patch did focus on Crisis, but Paradox didn't care about fixing whats wrong. Instead they just changed how Crisis targets a player. No one asked for this - instead players asked Paradox to fix the Crisis AI. But Paradox didn't care.
5. The game was never designed with colonizing 50, 75, 100+ planet and Habitats. Paradox had to add a x25 Crisis multiplier beacuse of this. (Of course it doesn't help at all because Crisis is broken, see 4.) Quest rewards and science from station was never adjusted for 2.2 science costs and science from station and rewards are quite close to useless in most instances.
6. Balance is completely absent. As a quick example: Spiritualists are no match for Materialists, since 2.2. The very recent update was a huge slap in the face for Spiritualists and made them much worse since most Edicts are now permanent -rendering edict cost and edict duration bonuses from Spiritualist Ethic useless. (Makes you facepalm immediately if you think about it, but apparently Paradox did it anyway)

These issues are in for months. 2.6 didn't fix the Crisis. Some space-whale patch from 2.7 didn't fix anything either. If you want players to return, you will have to fix the game instead of throwing more content ontop of a broken foundation.

 

[Spartakus]

That command is definitely in the current release. You need to switch to observer mode and observe an AI nation to see it though.

OK, unless I have misunderstood something here the command might be in but doesn't actually do something. At least it doesn't display the nice tooltips we've seen in the dev diary:

The highligthed fleet is mine, so it's there because I send it out to conquer stuff before the AI took it over when I entered observer mode. Note that it is at full strenght and stronger then anything the opponent has to throw against it, yet it's new mission is not only to retreat into friendly territory...

...but to a starbase on the other end of my empire (no wormhole shortcuts that would make this starbase to be considered a nearby one)
This is the reason I stopped playing months ago, my AI allies are just as useless so there's no point in having a federation in the first place for me. So this is a bug that needs to be fixed before I would even consider getting another DLC but in the meantime I would be glad to even understand WHY the AI does this.

 

[MatRopert]

OK, unless I have misunderstood something here the command might be in but doesn't actually do something. At least it doesn't display the nice tooltips we've seen in the dev diary:

You need to observe a specific AI nation for the skull tooltips to show.

AI (and performance for that matter) are always things we keep in mind. The next patch will contain some tweaks on that topic, as the ones after that too. It's a recurring topic that we work on over time, it's unlikely that there will be the _one_ patch that solves everything at once.

 

[Delinard Rochabert]

However, loading faster is not the primary area of concern for players.

*Cough* Trade and gates combination

 

[AlphaAsh]

Although it'll mostly be about Jeff...

Google did not help solve this mystery.

 

[Olterin]

Google did not help solve this mystery.

The mystery of Jeff? I refer you to reading up StarControl: Origins plot spoilers, if so.

I assume it is a subtle teaser of future content, and not just an idle remark. Otherwise, how could the devs have forgotten Steve?

 

[Spartakus]

Apparently I'm too bad at google searching for this. How do I do get to observe a specific AI nation? Is anyone here able to get the skull tooltips to show?

 

[kalauer]

This is all nice and good, but what’s in it for you in the next patch, concretely?

Up to this point I was convinced you'd say Victoria 3, you cruel genius.

Jeff will still be there for you!

We will always have the Blorg! Godspeed.

 

[Pyzayt]

In regards to the AI topic; I feel there will *never* be a single, satisfactory AI. Make it too competent, and some players won't be able to stand up to it at all; which isn't fun. Don't make it competent enough, and everyone will always steamroll it (as we see currently.) I feel AI competence should vary based on the difficulty curve, rather than just using the difficulty setting to prop up the AI with more and more resources being pulled out their.... whatever the species has for removing waste matter.

I think an easy difficulty should have an easy AI, while higher difficulties have progressively more competent and challenging AI. I don't play with Starnet, since I genuinely can't beat the damn thing, and getting my ass handed to me and finding myself faced with a defeat string prior to 2250 is... not fun.

 

[MatRopert]

Apparently I'm too bad at google searching for this. How do I do get to observe a specific AI nation? Is anyone here able to get the skull tooltips to show?

While in observer mode, control+click on a nation's flag to observe it. You can also use the observer outliner on the top right.

 

[Coconut_Cookie]

it's unlikely that there will be the _one_ patch that solves everything at once

But for performance there was one patch that lowered it significantly and we're still dealing with it over 1,5 years later. It was a bold move to change that much of the game with Megacorp, it would also be a bold move to come back on some of these changes. If rebalancing the game arround lower pop numbers would mean a faster, easier and more substantial improvement to performance I would be all for it. Anyway I'm repeating myself. Thanks for answering my earlier question.

 

[Kayden_II]

it has enabled us to drastically reduce the startup time of the game.

Fine, based on the video, Stellaris will start roughly half a real-time-minute faster. Maybe even a whole real-time-minute in some cases ?

I promise that I will be more impressed if the game itself would run faster during its actual play-time so that I wouldn't waste a zillion of real-time-HOURS due to ingame-performance-issues.

Have I missed something, but ( altough 3 whole months have already passed again ) this is all for now, right ? So, let me guess that the 3 whole months were actually used for something else ... like new content ... for a new DLC and its update ?

 

[alexman]

please fire the dev team they are clearly incompetent if they pick more threads over vic3 /joke

 

[Spartakus]

While in observer mode, control+click on a nation's flag to observe it. You can also use the observer outliner on the top right.

THANK YOU!

OK, so my main fleet is running towards the other end of my space to merge with the single transporter there. OK, that is still dumb but it's not randomly dumb. I abandoned this game months ago and finally have an answer.

 

[alexman]

That command is definitely in the current release. You need to switch to observer mode and observe an AI nation to see it though.

matt most of us are done with the base game and playing mods now. im assuming the modders are very bad at optimizing and just love creating. i was wondering if you could make an auto threading script that applies to mods. currently i have over 50 mods installed, but i assume most people are playing with gigastructures or star trek.

it would be cool to see higher interaction between the devteam and modders giving them access to performance metrics. some dos and donts

 

[Alex in Tokyo]

Moore’s Law is still valid, but, to put it in strategy terms, the CPU industry reached a soft cap while trying to play tall so they changed the meta and started playing wide.

This is easily the funniest thing I have read all week Love it.

Great news on the startup performance too.

 

[Attitude Adjuster]

I can honestly say that the loading time of stellaris was not on my list of issues.