Stellaris - Fallen Empires hate me for no reason

[Heromanikus]

Description
Fallen Empires hate me for no reason

Game Version
3.7

What version do you use?
Steam

What expansions do you have installed?


Do you have mods enabled?
No

Please explain your issue is in as much detail as possible.
I was sitting to myself, not touching anyone, and suddenly I received a message from the Keepers of Knowledge demanding to "apologise". I checked our relationship, and it turned out that their opinion of me managed to fall by -115, and continued to fall! The reason was not specified in the modifier. I played as the Crime Syndicate with the origin of the "broken shackles"

Steps to reproduce the issue.


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[Scyobi_Empire]

Fallen empires get angry with every branch office you have. It's been an annoying oversight for ages, 3.4 I think

 

[Heromanikus]

Fallen empires get angry with every branch office you have. It's been an annoying oversight for ages, 3.4 I think

Well, I don’t remember such a bug before. What is it connected with?

 

[Mcgan]

Well, I don’t remember such a bug before. What is it connected with?

It's the "Criminal Heritage" civic.
There have been many reports about it in the past, but apparently this is too minor to care. Well, it is just one civic... but still.

 

[Lenny_DE]

Hey, I fixed it and created a mod. Search Steam Workshop for FE_Crime_Branch_Opinion_Fix

 

[Paradoxon]

I just got out of a similar run, Broken Shackles Criminal Heritage Megacorp, and it seems the problem is not limited to Fallen Empires. A good chunk (but not everyone, though I failed to see the logic behind who was or wasn't affected) of the non-Fallen empires hated my guts due to a hidden modifier that matched the number of all my branch offices, ten times, minus one (probably due to one being already present in the shown modifiers).

(Screenshots taken by switching empires with console commands, hence why they're shown from their perspective rather than mine. It's interesting to note that I do not actually have branch offices in either empire, so even the visible -10 malus is weird)

 

[Mcgan]

There is very little chance this will be fixed any time soon I'm afraid: it's just one civic, locked behind a dlc, and not even the most popular of the dlcs. This problem has been reported many times before, too.

But for information, let me share the changes I've made to fix this for now (updated for 3.7.4):

Spoiler: Fix

In the file "common\opinion_modifiers\00_opinion_modifiers.txt", replace triggered_opinion_crime_corp and opinion_crime_corp_branch_offices (at the time of writing, these are lines 3773-3802) with this:

triggered_opinion_crime_corp = {
    trigger = {
        FROM = {
            is_criminal_syndicate = yes
        }
        is_gestalt = no
        has_corporate_government = no
        OR = {
            is_country_type = default
            AND = {
                is_primitive = yes
                OR = {
                    has_pre_ftl_age = atomic_age
                    has_pre_ftl_age = early_space_age
                }
                current_awareness_level = full
            }
        }
    }

    opinion = {
        base = -25
    }
}

opinion_crime_corp_branch_offices = {
    min = -200
    block_triggered = yes # stops modifier from automatically triggering when trigger evaluates to true

    trigger = { # copy from can_support_branch_offices
        FROM = {
            is_criminal_syndicate = yes
        }
        is_gestalt = no
        has_corporate_government = no
        OR = {
            is_country_type = default
            AND = {
                is_primitive = yes
                OR = {
                    has_pre_ftl_age = atomic_age
                    has_pre_ftl_age = early_space_age
                }
                current_awareness_level = full
            }
        }
        any_owned_planet = {
            has_branch_office = yes
            branch_office_owner = { is_same_value = from }
        }
    }

    opinion = {
        base = -10
    }
}

With these changes:
- Empires only get the "Criminal Syndicate" negative opinion if their government allows them to host branch offices on their colonies
- Empires only get the "Criminal Branch Offices" negative opinion if at least one of their colonies has a branch office from that specific Criminal Megacorp

 

[Lenny_DE]

I just got out of a similar run, Broken Shackles Criminal Heritage Megacorp, and it seems the problem is not limited to Fallen Empires. A good chunk (but not everyone, though I failed to see the logic behind who was or wasn't affected) of the non-Fallen empires hated my guts due to a hidden modifier that matched the number of all my branch offices, ten times, minus one (probably due to one being already present in the shown modifiers).

(Screenshots taken by switching empires with console commands, hence why they're shown from their perspective rather than mine. It's interesting to note that I do not actually have branch offices in either empire, so even the visible -10 malus is weird)

This is in fact intentional, although not transparent enough, for normal empires. So the public opinion is an important factor limiting your number of branch offices.

For fallen empires that modifier should not exist tho. For one it's unplayable if you get constantly threatened by the Fallen empires. Also why would they even care about what unimportant weak empires do to each other? It's simply an oversight.

However I added an exception for that modifier for fallen empires and uploaded a mod as a bugfix to the Steam Workshop.

 

[Paradoxon]

This is in fact intentional, although not transparent enough, for normal empires. So the public opinion is an important factor limiting your number of branch offices.

For fallen empires that modifier should not exist tho. For one it's unplayable if you get constantly threatened by the Fallen empires. Also why would they even care about what unimportant weak empires do to each other? It's simply an oversight.

However I added an exception for that modifier for fallen empires and uploaded a mod as a bugfix to the Steam Workshop.

I heavily, sincerely doubt that having (almost, for some obscure reason) every existing empire take -10 in relations for each branch office you have in the galaxy is intended.

First, because, once again, it's not shown anywhere.

Two, because it does not make any sense that the Kingdom of Farlandia at the other end of the galaxy would hate my guts because I opened a dozen of branch offices in the Republic of Neighbourland right next to me.

Third, because it de facto makes Criminal Heritage empires the most universally hated empires in the galaxy right after omnicidal ones, even more hated than Barbaric Despoilers and Driven Assimilators.

Fourth, because once again, this negative modifier seems to apply randomly to empires, some have it, others don't, and sometimes an empire that did not have it starts having it for seemingly no reason (or vice versa). In that specific game, I had a fairly close empire with whom I had decent relations for the larger part of the game suddenly dive to -250 relations with no apparent trigger that would've justified that dive, and another empire that hated me because of it randomly stopped for a few years before going back to negative hundreds after a while. That's not the behaviour of an intended feature.

The stacking -10 modifier is intended to apply to the empire you have branch offices in (and should only stack up to the number of offices you have in this specific empire), not the entire galaxy. But this is the bug report forum, and starting a debate on the matter when the devs are the ones who actually know what's what is a bit redundant.

 

[Scyobi_Empire]

This is in fact intentional

Didn't happen in 2.7 and 2.8 (when I last played a Crime Empire)