Three major issues with Federations DLC

[MrFreake_PDX]

This is really good news, thank you. Would you be able to internally just suggest a quick fix to allow the federation president to change for the league of none aligned powers (the super galaxy federation thats choosing to not bend to either AEs - based on the federation succession terms). It being fixed is a real deal breaker, not because I want to particularly be president but because my playthroughs tend to depend on the federation fleets to be useful against what is other wise "opposing odds". Especially if the crisis that spawns during it. (I won't go into the AI stuff as that's a tangent of its own).

The best course of action is to submit a bug report on this. If it's already been reported, it's another instance of the issue, with up-to-date saves and reproduction steps. If it hasn't been reported already, well then we learned something new today, and it's gonna be a good day.

 

[Liggi]

Apologies, but is that really the best solution? Shouldn't there be a bit more reasoning behind the AIs votes? Some simple stuff like the following would already go a long way: Is there actually an empire in breach of galactic law? If yes, how is the relationship with those empires? Bad? -> support sanctions. Else, don't.

Right now, it's really hard to find a reason behind how the AI empires in Stellaris act, presumably because often there is none except an arbitrary scripted cooldown. This makes the game significantly less enjoyable than it should be (at least in my opinion). The Galactic Community has a huge untapped potential.

Edit: this is not restricted to the GC, but especially noticeable there.

Actually, if you look at the `ai_weight`, a lot of what you're saying is already there. The AI do actually vote for / support things generally based on sensible reasons. There is always room for improvement though, obviously. I've been creating a personal mod to tweak those weights to my preference.

 

[Foxosaur]

The best course of action is to submit a bug report on this. If it's already been reported, it's another instance of the issue, with up-to-date saves and reproduction steps. If it hasn't been reported already, well then we learned something new today, and it's gonna be a good day.

Thanks Mr.Freake. I made a thread, albeit poorly in comparison to @Liggi a couple of weeks ago, and I'm just trying to piggy back onto and continue this thread -which to me is about more than a bug report and just ties into the general problems of Federations. I will submit one about the federation presidency though, if its not confirmed as being submitted.

Other issues though for Federations -

1. Federation fleets/ships being deleted by an AI and rebuilding the federation ships. (As though its costing some upkeep)

2. Federation ships splitting up and not "doom stacking" as if they were a traditional fleet. It should never or rarely happen. A 600 ship fleet should only split up into no more than 3 fleets, if it even should at all. It's meant to be a galaxy 'deterrent' and a show of power and should be used as such in larger fleet battles.

From a playthrough perspective this is particularly really important because a federation is meant to change the odds, to make a fight possible, to even up end them. It also gives you something to "worry about" when a galaxy has become polarised e.g. "where is their navy, it can decimate my space if I don't know where it is constantly".

3. Federation ships should follow 'better' / 'improved' behaviour than traditional ships due to sheer size/FP in terms of aggression and should not be weighed down by if the enemy is Overwhelming to them (not the player, I mean e.g. Crisis) like a normal empire behaviour may otherwise do.

Relates to 2 but this gives importance onto the AIs usefulness as being a president, I don't want to depend on me being president to make an impact on a war, I'm as happy being the AI's wing man.

4. Federation fleets are awful to manage along your own fleets, creating a lot of clutter. They deserve their own Outliner section or even menu.

All being said - I'm more than happy to go to the effort of reproducing those steps where I can but it would be nice to know if they are already 'acknowledged'.

 

[Ovan]

This isn't an issue with the core federations stuff itself, but one of my biggest complaints is that vassals got no love. Kind of lame.

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

We've done some work to improve this for the upcoming patch. In terms of the AI not proposing federation laws, there was a bug hidden deep in the depths of the AI diplomacy code that meant it will never propose, no matter how high the weights are, even though it was meant to if the weight score was above a certain value. Once we fixed it, we soon realised that the AI was so keen on these federation laws that it became a bit painful to be in a federation with an AI at all, because they'd change diverse laws while you weren't watching... So what we have in the next patch is:
- AI is able to propose federation law votes, but the threshold is fairly high
- If there is no player in a federation, the federation leader will feel 1.5x more strongly about all issues, so AI-only federations will be very likely to pass all manner of laws - certainly including federation centralization and fed fleets. In player federations, it's intended to be a bit less active, but it'll still pass certain laws.

I'm pretty sure that the 2nd point is fixed, though I don't have any juicy details to spill there! Re point 3, that was an unintended side-effect of the AI generally feeling OK about sanctions, and either loving or hating most other resolutions, so sanctions ended up being the lowest common denominator. It should be a bit better in Nemesis - the AI is now scripted not to want more sanctions for at least 10 years after a sanctions law has been passed.

Well, I've VERY happy to hear this. (I do wish that the 2nd point could have been fixed with a patch for 2.8, but I understand that at this point 2.9 is so close that its probably not worth it to do so.)

Actually, as you said "pretty sure" rather than some form of "definite", would it be possible for you to confirm it for us (to further reassure the community on this point). Knowing with 100% certainty that it has been fixed would be such a relief, as far as Stellaris related things go.

Opening a game where "The Readied Shield" has been passed would be a pretty easy way to test it - just delete your fleet and see if it puts you in breach for using less than 50% of the Naval Capacity, for example.

EDIT: I'll add that I likely would have held off on Nemesis until the 2nd point was fixed if it wasn't fixed when 2.9 came out, as the diplomatic game has become something I really love to use and was saddened when sanctions stopped working. I love passing the Egalitarian resolutions that ban slavery and require social welfare standards and penalizing the nations of the galaxy who aren't as enlightened and benevolent as mine. So this news that the issue has been fixed turns a "wait-and-see" to "near certainty" when it comes to purchasing Nemesis - though I'd really appreciate a for-sure confirmation of point #2 to verify this.

 

[Borgratz]

This type of stuff being broken for over a year is the reason why I stopped buying paradox games/dlc on release.

I know you are building really complex games and that bugs happen, but those are two gamebreaking issues with the two main features of the federations DLC and both of those should have been fixed, before you moved on to trying to sell us the next DLC (as in before the marketing campaign for Nemisis started, not as in "before anyone on the team was allowed to work on Nemesis. I know that the artists don't fix bugs and so on).

I know "broken" is somewhat subjective, everyone has their own tolerance, but "AI doesnt use the new Federation features" and "AI cant handle sanctions" is pretty far away from the grey area, in my opinion. That's just a clear case of needs to be fixed before we can think of how to make the AI understand what becoming the crisis means.

 

[Coconut_Cookie]

It's really painful to see that key features of an expansion remain non functioning for almost a year and counting. I really want to like this game but I simply can't because I haven't even finished a single campaing that wasn't ruined by a series of bugs and other problems.