Hello everyone!

Today we aim to shed some light on the upcoming changes for the 1.2 “Asimov” update.

Border Rework
Something we did not like with how Stellaris played out towards the mid-game previous to 1.2, was how that the player tended to get locked in and blocked from exploring or gaining access to the rest of the galaxy.

In the upcoming update we aim to correct that issue by reworking how border access works. By default, everyone will have open border access to other empires’ borders. An empire may close its border through a diplomatic action, and access is denied to your rivals by default.

We hope that this will make the game feel less constrained towards the mid-game.

Another valuable addition is that when you give your ships or fleet a Return order, but they cannot find a valid path home, you may set them as “Missing in Action”. While ships are missing in action, they will be invisible to you and reappear within your borders within a certain amount of time.

Expansion Cost
To reduce exploits of the open borders, we have chosen to introduce an Influence cost to colonizing planets or building Frontier Outposts. This cost will be based on the range to your closest owned system.

Embassies & Trust
A significant change in 1.2 is the removal of embassies and the passive opinion increase they provided. In the “Asimov” update, players will have to gain trust by cooperating with the AI. Trust is gained over time by having some sort of treaty with the AI.

Diplomatic Changes
A number of diplomatic statuses that were previously available through trade have now been changed into being Diplomatic Actions available through the diplomacy screen. We felt that some of these actions did not really feel in place, and that they were too hidden, in the trade interface.

We have changed how cooperating with the AI happens. It is no longer as easy to enter into an Alliance with the AI, and you have to start off by gaining their Trust through research agreements, guarantee independence, non-aggression pacts and defensive pacts.

Defensive Pacts are a new diplomatic action that allows two empires to be called into wars if any of them should get attacked.

Joint War Declarations
Another new diplomatic feature is the possibility to invite other empires to your wars. The AI will not join your wars if their Attitude towards you is not at least neutral and they have something they also want from the target.

All things combined we hope that these changes will make the mid-game feel less static and will open up more possibilities for interesting situations to occur.

Join us again next week for more details about the upcoming 1.2 "Asimov" update!

 

[Mezmorki]

When you are rival or when you have closed the border to an empire, I think borders should not be physically closed. It is space, after all. The analogy in our world is Renaissance oceans, Spain could not *physically* close the Caribbean Sea to English and Dutch navies in spite of rivalry. In a SF context, there is a long history of ships sneaking in forbidden space and avoiding being detected.

So you should be able to actually trespass these borders, only the trespassed empire would then be authorized to destroy your ships without prior notice and without declaration of war.

Or something equivalent.

But please consider giving the possibility of trespassing "closed" borders, it is so much a SF trope.

Of course this should be then further expanded with more actions in a "pirates & smugglers" Han Solo Patch/DLC.

+1 to all of that. Good stuff

 

[Mezmorki]

Just two words - Influence Game.
Who needs minerals, or credits? All we need is influence! Devs, seriously, what are you doing? Just look, how many people in steam play with no outpost maintenance mod!
Also, i has many situations, while the planet i can colonize is far away. Now I must wait 30 years to get enough influence for it?

The game's resource balancing on influence if off IMHO.

Early game, influence is tight - late game you are often swimming in it. These changes seem to be adding more ways to spend influence (or more things that require influence) to the early game, but no ways to strategically invest in things that get you more influence. The game needs more ways to earn influence in the early game as a strategic decision, and more ways to spend larger sums of influence in the late game.

 

[kazper]

How about end game stutter issues? I had to stop playing because it was unbearable even on high-end PC. Was this fixed, or is it included in this patch?

Thanks!

They've continuously fixed performance issues in previous patches and plan to keep doing that, however , if you have issues in 1.1 on a high end PC it's not a simple performance issue. Lots of people - including me - have no issues anymore despite being at best on a mid-end PC. It's probably issues with very specific combinations of hardware and drivers, which can be very very tricky to fix since its nearly impossible to reproduce for the devs...

 

[Chiron]

When you are rival or when you have closed the border to an empire, I think borders should not be physically closed. It is space, after all. The analogy in our world is Renaissance oceans, Spain could not *physically* close the Caribbean Sea to English and Dutch navies in spite of rivalry. In a SF context, there is a long history of ships sneaking in forbidden space and avoiding being detected.

So you should be able to actually trespass these borders, only the trespassed empire would then be authorized to destroy your ships without prior notice and without declaration of war.

Or something equivalent.

But please consider giving the possibility of trespassing "closed" borders, it is so much a SF trope.

Of course this should be then further expanded with more actions in a "pirates & smugglers" Han Solo Patch/DLC.

Love the idea, Paradox will never go for it though.

 

[Wrymn]

They've continuously fixed performance issues in previous patches and plan to keep doing that, however , if you have issues in 1.1 on a high end PC it's not a simple performance issue. Lots of people - including me - have no issues anymore despite being at best on a mid-end PC. It's probably issues with very specific combinations of hardware and drivers, which can be very very tricky to fix since its nearly impossible to reproduce for the devs...

Just to add, they are not FPS issues, I can have even 120FPS, but there is lag, like literally internet like-lag in singleplayer. When connection is slow and objects have to interpolate between those movements.

But that is singleplayer and I have never seen such a problem in SP.

 

[Repeats]

Joint War Declarations
Another new diplomatic feature is the possibility to invite other empires to your wars. The AI will not join your wars if their Attitude towards you is not at least neutral and they have something they also want from the target.

So does this mean that even if we are in an alliance, we can declare a solo war on another empire, alliance, or federation? I really hate it that we currently have to satisfy all members of our alliance just to declare war on tiny empires. It is a mess right now.

 

[kazper]

Just to add, they are not FPS issues, I can have even 120FPS, but there is lag, like literally internet like-lag in singleplayer. When connection is slow and objects have to interpolate between those movements.

But that is singleplayer and I have never seen such a problem in SP.

Could be CPU bound issues (which spills over into possible MB or RAM issues) or even storage based if it happens during autosave? Or again bad drivers - could even be completely unrelated - could be a bad USB connected device that keeps polling the CPU continously causing stutter. The options are close to endless.

At least it doesn't sound GPU related - that much seems obvious if FPS never falter...

 

[Zythe99]

Do you have to individually turn off border access for every empire you encounter? I prefer the default closed borders.

 

[kazper]

So does this mean that even if we are in an alliance, we can declare a solo war on another empire, alliance, or federation? I really hate it that we currently have to satisfy all members of our alliance just to declare war on tiny empires. It is a mess right now.

No this is completely different. This means you can ask another empire you are not allied to, to help you in a war. If you are in an alliance you must play by it's rules - Wiz said earlier in this very thread that this is by design.

 

[Wrymn]

Could be CPU bound issues (which spills over into possible MB or RAM issues) or even storage based if it happens during autosave? Or again bad drivers - could even be completely unrelated - could be a bad USB connected device that keeps polling the CPU continously causing stutter. The options are close to endless.

At least it doesn't sound GPU related - that much seems obvious if FPS never falter...

In my opinion and knowledge, this is intentional. I have really strong CPU and 16GB of ram, there is no chance at all they could be the issue.

The "lag" is related to engine not processing some frames and just hanging, dont know why or what is causing that.

 

[gourley4p]

Hi @Wiz ... has "Non-aggression pact" been made into an action rather than a tradable item in Asimov?

Yes. See the image in the OP.

 

[Mythox]

awesome just awesome !! told you this game will be better and better =) keep it up Paradox we trust you and we love you !!

 

[thegiffman]

I like the idea of joint war declarations, but actually what makes a lot more sense to me is being able to have a "war of pity" war declaration mechanic, and a "beg for help" diplomatic mechanic to go with it. Basically, I see some bully in an aggressive war against a weaker neighbor. He begs me for help, and promises various things in exchange for me coming to the rescue. Then I come and save the day, changing the tide of the war. The weaker state might even agree to vassalage in exchange for rescue against a foe bent on their annihilation. This seems like something that could be fairly common, and it could really make things diplomatically interesting. Saving someone in their hour of need ought to earn gratitude and loyalty for decades, if not centuries.

 

[Cataclysm]

Just to add, they are not FPS issues, I can have even 120FPS, but there is lag, like literally internet like-lag in singleplayer. When connection is slow and objects have to interpolate between those movements.

But that is singleplayer and I have never seen such a problem in SP.

I believe this may be caused by using Ironman while using Cloud saving as I experience this kinda lag. If you're playing on Fast it saves automatically every 30 seconds, and the save seems to be greatly slowed down by Cloud saving, and by the time the lag has finished from one save, its up to day ~15ish and the next save will be occuring soon.

 

[schedim]

the last one should be: open, but with great impact of relations.... how should a fleet get stopped ANYWAY in OPEN SPACE???

Yeah, that has really been breaking my immersion every time I think about it. It should be a soft closure, with warnings and relation costs, not a magic wall...

 

[Ratanka]

i am scared about one fact
some nations often start with like -40 to each other and with no embassies we can never start doing any agreements ?
also is it changed that nations never do research etc without alliance ?

 

[Mezmorki]

I like the idea of joint war declarations, but actually what makes a lot more sense to me is being able to have a "war of pity" war declaration mechanic, and a "beg for help" diplomatic mechanic to go with it. Basically, I see some bully in an aggressive war against a weaker neighbor. He begs me for help, and promises various things in exchange for me coming to the rescue. Then I come and save the day, changing the tide of the war. The weaker state might even agree to vassalage in exchange for rescue against a foe bent on their annihilation. This seems like something that could be fairly common, and it could really make things diplomatically interesting. Saving someone in their hour of need ought to earn gratitude and loyalty for decades, if not centuries.

YES! +1

 

[WolfeFumblepaw]

You start the same thing that you did with CK2...

Removing embassies because you are too lazy to balance them. They was a good, logical and immersive part of the gameplay.

Introducing expansion costs and taking away early choices to compensate a self-made problem with the open borders, that are as unimmersive as crap.

Restricting alliances and diplomacy because whatever.

I won't go the same walk of pain like in CK2 and watch you chopping a good and promising game to death.
That was the last lesson i needed. Keep your upcoming DLCs.

 

[EPAstor]

Embassies & Trust
A significant change in 1.2 is the removal of embassies and the passive opinion increase they provided. In the “Asimov” update, players will have to gain trust by cooperating with the AI. Trust is gained over time by having some sort of treaty with the AI.

We have changed how cooperating with the AI happens. It is no longer as easy to enter into an Alliance with the AI, and you have to start off by gaining their Trust through research agreements, guarantee independence, non-aggression pacts and defensive pacts.

So, I admit, this DOES worry me a bit. It sounds in theory like a great idea, but...

For clarity: does this mean more AI empires will be open to Research Agreements BEFORE Alliances? As of now, several have a hard limit and refuse to make many treaties (research in particular) without a pre-existing Alliance.

Also: will the effects of existing treaties on Trust be increased, to make this practical?

Finally, will we be getting ANY increased clarity on the "differing war philosophy" modifier? It's a real obstacle, and it's currently extremely difficult to find what the negotiating partner objects to! Embassies are currently one of the main ways to work around this - but if we could, say, just ASK (or get details on) what the problem actually is, it would be a much better solution.

 

[indalecio248]

Now that we have open borders, there was one other thing I was concerrned about. Will Empires share survey data? No real point to open borders if everything is already explored for you. So I'd prefer that Empires not share survey data.