Really wish the gene perk opened up another gene trait slot. I'll willing to keep the negative traits, if I can grab a few other things. I'm also trying to make sure I get the whole gene thing in order just in case I find the anomaly that gives me a free gene trait, since I'll liable to put a scientist on it before I'm ready to snag it.
Hybrids from the new Xeno Compatibility perk have an extra trait slot. And it seems (though it might be a bug/UI thing) that you can gene mod the parent species to the hybrids
Of course, getting all the many, many, many constantly spawning sub-species to have the same traits is an... effort, to say the least.
True, but I'd also argue that trying to make every species in your Empire exactly the same as every other species in your Empire goes against the very spirit of Xeno-Compatibility, so you shouldn't be trying to anyway.
I was going to try the Glavius mod finally but forgot it disabled achievements and think I am going to collect a few of them first. Plus not like I am a master and dominating the AIs without the mod yet.
I've been using the AI mod but you need to be kind of cautious about it. In the week or two after xmas he broke everyone's game on at least 3 different occasions with his 'rolling beta'.
No Dev Diary or Dev Clash this week due to patch work being a bigger priority. Instead they posted an.. executive diary?
Welcome, to the new (Fake) Dev Diary, Donte's Inferno!
As you may or may not have heard, today's dev clash was postponed in favor of allowing the development team (the majority of the participants), to focus their time on the current work-in-progress patch.
We pride ourselves here at Paradox on having a bit of fun with what we do, and the streams are a large part of that, not only are they great for promoting our games and engaging with the players, but they are short moments of light relief form the normal tasks and duties of the staff. However, it is important for us to keep in mind that we're here to make great games, so sometimes we end up in situations like today where we needed to team to focus on the development of the patch, rather than participate in the stream. On top of this, Daniel has also had to focus his attention on the patch, rather than write you a dev diary, so here I am as a quick and dirty stand in!
These things happen, it's game development, it rarely goes according to plan, but it's still good fun at the end of the day.
As a quick introduction for anyone who doesn't remember the last time I did one of these, my name is Bevan, aka Dnote, and I'm a Product Segment Owner. Very fancy title, but essentially, I'm part of the Product Management team, responsible for the "business case" of a game, bringing together the various disciplines involved and ensuring that everyone is working towards the same goal. This is usually broken down into two parts, Production (they make games), and Marketing (they talk about and sell games). In other companies, I'm the suit in the background controlling the money and making all the decisions you players usually hate!
On top of this though, I'm also responsible for the strategy games part of our portfolio of games. This means every strategy game that Paradox develops and publishes is my responsibility to some extent. I'm also responsible for growing that part of the portfolio, so I get a very large say in what games we make next. It's always fun to work with the talented creative leads we have and at other studios to come up with new ideas and opporunities, then do some revenue forecasts and cost estimates to determine if we can actually make it work or not.. so far we've been pretty lucky with that.
So, I want to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about where we are at and where we are headed. This isn't strictly a Stellaris dev diary, as I like to think I'm smart enough to leave the actual development of the game to the specialists in that area. Daniel, nor Martin before him, has come to me with an idea that was too crazy to do, so I feel a little confident in leaving them to it (though I still complain about how expensive it is to do everything).
Where we are at right now is pretty good, we have Europa Universalis 4, Crusader Kings 2, Hearts of Iron 4, Stellaris and Battletech, in what we call a live state. They are launched and have active ongoing development, focused on a mixture of free updates and DLC. The cadence and types of updates and DLC are things that are determined by the individual teams, but they all seem to have found a healthy approach that works for them and the players of those games.
Going forward, we do have more games in development, we break this down in various ways but out of those that we've announced, we have Imperator: Rome from PDS, Age of Wonders: Planetfall from Triumph and Stellaris Console from Tantalus. Whilst technically Stellaris Console isn't a new game, we do have a different development team on it, so we treat it as it's own thing. And I'm pretty sure this isn't a secret (I don't stay up to date on everything), but these three are all planned to come out this year too.
On top of this, we have other strategy games in development as well, both at our internal studios and at external studios, which we aren't ready to talk about. Suffice to say we're pretty confident you'll enjoy them and I don't know the exact timing of things but you'll probably want to make sure you attend or tune into PDXCon later this year. Our road map forward is solid and builds on the expertise we already have, with a focus towards delivering the types of games we know you, our current players, enjoy.
Then there is the theoretical part of the portfolio, which is the fun part for me. What are we going to do beyond that!
At this point, we don't really know (much to the annoyance of Management and Acquisitions). It can be quite hard for us, or anyone in this industry to identify new opportunities, as very few companies publish data about their games and the audiences (people that buy and play them). We need to find our own ways to figure this out, through a mixture of market research, player engagement (we do talk with you every now and then) and gut feeling.
So my question to you, is what would you like to see?
Now, I know you're going to say the usual things, but what I'm really curious about is the unusual things. What features in strategy games are important to you, what features in other games would like to see come to strategy games? Maybe you would like to see something that brings epic large scale wars to life, with tactical battles (imagine control the Khan's horde as it rampages across Europe), or a game where you unite the HRE but each of the major dynasties are fleshed out with personalities and story arcs beyond normal procedural content, or something else entirely?
Every year we look at what is coming next, its an ever updating plan and right now, in this moment, we're looking for something special, something that really stands out from the crowd.
Anyways, not a proper dev diary, and not really Stellaris focused, but Daniel and Jamie will be back soon with more info on the patch and the dev clash will resume next week if all goes well with it.
I also wouldn't mind hearing about where you would like Stellaris to go? We've made some pretty big changes to the game over the last 18 months, but what would you like to see added to it, flesh out, or changed?
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So I was running the Commonwealth of Man to do a 'wipe out all the xenos' run but taking over planets and managing them is just... exhausting. It takes so long, and each planet requires so much babysitting. Although once you have things running well enough the problems that arise from new planets is offset by massive income.
So I made a Fanatic Purifiers race of cat people and I'm going to just glass the galaxy. I can always terraform stuff after.
Maybe I can go back to my Commonwealth game if they fix the AI so that sector managers can do stuff on their own. Right now they don't seem to.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
* Fanatic Purifiers can no longer draw the Uplifting or Xenomorph Armies techs. Devouring Swarms still can, because sapience enhances the flavour of your food
* Fixed Tomb Worlds created by the Worm not having any planetary districts at all, as harsh and brutal and heavy metal awesome as that was
* Fixed literally unplayable typos and grammatical/formatting errors
* Fixed so that newly promoted pops can be instantly demoted if fired within a year of promotion. This should help with cases of pops abandoning basic resource production jobs to take on more specialist roles when the buildings that provide them are activated, crippling your economy
* Changed the size of all sectors to be 3 hyperlane jumps
Still am curious about sector management. Is that... working... right now? Larger sectors will help, but I would really like to delegate some planet management work. It's annoying.
Fanatic Purifiers run is going really well. I dunno if I just got lucky with tech or what, but managed to get my initial space claimed, and defensive stations on all my borders. Basically right after that, all my neighbors got pissy. Their fleets were weaker than my stations though, so I could focus on taking territory.
Since purifiers don't need to claim systems to take them, I just washed over my enemies after their initial assaults, taking WIDE swaths of turf from them. Then let them end at status quo just in time for the NEXT neighbor to get angry and declare war on me, and do the same thing to them.
I am not even bothering to claim enemy planets right now. I am just taking their non-planet systems and leaving their worlds cut off from each other. I can go back and clean those up later.
I also just got Fen Habbanis so moving all my alloy and consumer goods production to that. My homeworld is slowly being converted to a massive research hub.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
* AI now properly prioritizes starbase types it has too few of; the prime one being a shipyard
* Fixed it so AI can now attempt to counter piracy even when at war
* Made AI a lot less likely to split up its fleets in to portions so small, it then calculates it lacks sufficient strength, and will not attack when at war
* Lowered the threshold for the AI deciding whether or not to attack, so it shouldn't resort to a Fabian strategy of non-engagement in war
* Fixed some AI weights for population control (thanks for the heads-up Glavius, you're rad)
* Fixed AI not repairing ruined buildings when it had the resources to do so
* AI will now actually follow through on its well-intentioned desire to upgrade buildings
* Tweaked alloy budget for fallen empires to better match their needs
* Stopped the AI from spamming redundant colony ships
* Fixed Gestalt empires not building colony ships
* Tweaked budgeting to make the AI less reticent about hiring leaders
* AI now properly prioritizes starbase types it has too few of; the prime one being a shipyard
* Fixed it so AI can now attempt to counter piracy even when at war
* Made AI a lot less likely to split up its fleets in to portions so small, it then calculates it lacks sufficient strength, and will not attack when at war
* Lowered the threshold for the AI deciding whether or not to attack, so it shouldn't resort to a Fabian strategy of non-engagement in war
* Fixed some AI weights for population control (thanks for the heads-up Glavius, you're rad)
* Fixed AI not repairing ruined buildings when it had the resources to do so
* AI will now actually follow through on its well-intentioned desire to upgrade buildings
* Tweaked alloy budget for fallen empires to better match their needs
* Stopped the AI from spamming redundant colony ships
* Fixed Gestalt empires not building colony ships
* Tweaked budgeting to make the AI less reticent about hiring leaders
* AI now properly prioritizes starbase types it has too few of; the prime one being a shipyard
* Fixed it so AI can now attempt to counter piracy even when at war
* Made AI a lot less likely to split up its fleets in to portions so small, it then calculates it lacks sufficient strength, and will not attack when at war
* Lowered the threshold for the AI deciding whether or not to attack, so it shouldn't resort to a Fabian strategy of non-engagement in war
* Fixed some AI weights for population control (thanks for the heads-up Glavius, you're rad)
* Fixed AI not repairing ruined buildings when it had the resources to do so
* AI will now actually follow through on its well-intentioned desire to upgrade buildings
* Tweaked alloy budget for fallen empires to better match their needs
* Stopped the AI from spamming redundant colony ships
* Fixed Gestalt empires not building colony ships
* Tweaked budgeting to make the AI less reticent about hiring leaders
If the upgrade an repair building bugs are truely fixed, that's huge, as they were the major reason the AI started to lag after the early game.
Glad to see they are trying to fix the whole issue where every pop that can will flee from agriculture to better paying jobs. I mean from a historical point of view, yeah it makes some sense if you have a society with a ton of freedom. Where it stops making sense, is when everyone opts to starve because these jobs are soo much better, while also ignoring that some people work agriculture because they like that line of work. It really falls apart with hives. It's also really not fun to manage around; especially, when you need to get a structure up for a specific resource. I'm surprised they don't have a formula or rule in place now that ensures that some level of the low end jobs stay manned. I mean you could do a playstyle setup where hive minds keep pretty much every where they are at, more strict non-hive minds have a small amount of movement and the more individualist societies see the most movement. Then again, as I said, it's really annoy micromanagement.
No comment on AI changes. I'm still do my whole thing of run the game on an easy setup to get a feel for how I want to attempt certain things. Like how I want to build up my initial planets, how I build first setup of specialized planets and how to shift over existing planets (kind of arriving on the idea that the best setup might be to shift the first 2-3 planets into a mining-agriculture setup and phase out the energy stuff. Probably not the most efficient use because pure mining or farming frees up another building slot, but feels like it would require more babysitting that I'm willing to do make sure amenities, housing and jobs are in the red when I'm done). Also figuring out when limited building (aka only one per planet) I always want to build and which ones should only be used for specialized worlds. Plus, it's fun to see how silly I can make something and experience the anomalies.
At some point, I'll have to try this with a non-have mind since I'll have to figure out how to manage thing when I don't have access to hive worlds and have to deal with consumer goods, while also not having the option to stop pop growth on planets. Also need to give machine empires spin. I figure once I get more comfortable with the underlining mechanics and want a challenge, I'll make things harder.
Also trying to figure out, assuming it didn't get broken, how to move pops to a specific planet. Right now it only gives me the option to send them to my original world. I had a game of hive shroom people where I was experimenting wit the idea of having a two low tiles worlds, that were built to generate pops faster than my specialized worlds, which I would move over to those worlds to fill them out faster. Currently have that on hold because I wanted to try something with a tiny galaxy and that game drew the gray goo scenario. Actually destroyed the factory fairly quickly, but didn't save because I want to open the gate and let the gray tempest rampage through the parts of the galaxy I don't control.
I am getting ton of numismatic visualization spam from some caravanners. Every few months they ask if I want to see their wares and their wares are offering me an edict I already bought (because after the first 20 times they offered it, I figured maybe it'd go away if I just bought it).
I said No the next 40 times, but they just kept coming back. I'm not going to say No the next 40 because I've just turned the game off.
I am getting ton of numismatic visualization spam from some caravanners. Every few months they ask if I want to see their wares and their wares are offering me an edict I already bought (because after the first 20 times they offered it, I figured maybe it'd go away if I just bought it).
I said No the next 40 times, but they just kept coming back. I'm not going to say No the next 40 because I've just turned the game off.
This happens when the caravaneers cannot find a safe exit to your system (usually a space amoeba wandering into a chokepoint) and the game keeps firing off the offer since I'm guessing it's programmed to offer every 12 months or something.
So thoughts on the espionage, since they mentioned they were looking into. I hope they come up with some reasonable good because it would make devouring swarm a little more interesting to play as and against. Don't get me wrong, I love the concept behind devouring swarm, but the diplomatic side it's very one dimensional (unless you have to end a war without fulling absorbing the opposing side, but then the whole open borders things makes no fucking sense with devouring swarms). It's pretty much either you have the resources to crush the swarm or you don't, likewise the swarm either can crush an obstacle or it doesn't. Until one of those points gets hit, both sides are just building up for the confrontation.
As for population management. Maybe I missing something, but moving populations around is really tedious because as far as I can tell, it's send populations out from the home world to the locations you want to buff and then feed in population to the home world. Maybe that's intended to discourage the tactic, but if I'm not missing anything and they don't care to put restraints on population moving (outside of energy cost), well it's really half assed.
Alpha Centauri had decent espionage. You could try to gain tactical information, steal tech, steal energy credits, sabotage facilities, sabotage research by assassinating scientists, cause riots, commit bioweapon atrocities or even engage mind control probes if you have the subsequent special project.
Best of all, if you were good enough, you could try and make it look like a third faction was responsible for your crimes. It was great. Alpha Centauri is a great game. I'd actually be happy if they lift the diplomacy and espionage systems straight from that game.
One thing I'd really like in diplomacy is a way to 'buy' open borders from empires, if only for a limited time. At least from the ones that don't really, really hate you.
Purchasing right of passage for a specific fleet with a start and end point. Or purchasing right of passage for unlimited fleets through a specific corridor.
Purchasing right of passage for a specific fleet with a start and end point. Or purchasing right of passage for unlimited fleets through a specific corridor.
If they ever fix up Sectors, you could buy passage through the specific Sectors you want. That might work.
* Fixed so that newly promoted pops can be instantly demoted if fired within a year of promotion. This should help with cases of pops abandoning basic resource production jobs to take on more specialist roles when the buildings that provide them are activated, crippling your economy
* Changed the size of all sectors to be 3 hyperlane jumps
Still am curious about sector management. Is that... working... right now? Larger sectors will help, but I would really like to delegate some planet management work. It's annoying.
Fanatic Purifiers run is going really well. I dunno if I just got lucky with tech or what, but managed to get my initial space claimed, and defensive stations on all my borders. Basically right after that, all my neighbors got pissy. Their fleets were weaker than my stations though, so I could focus on taking territory.
Since purifiers don't need to claim systems to take them, I just washed over my enemies after their initial assaults, taking WIDE swaths of turf from them. Then let them end at status quo just in time for the NEXT neighbor to get angry and declare war on me, and do the same thing to them.
I am not even bothering to claim enemy planets right now. I am just taking their non-planet systems and leaving their worlds cut off from each other. I can go back and clean those up later.
I also just got Fen Habbanis so moving all my alloy and consumer goods production to that. My homeworld is slowly being converted to a massive research hub.
The bigger sectors only apply to new games, so I can't tell yet. I would guess the sector AI gets the same fixes as the opponent AI, so maybe it will get better at some point.
* Fixed so that newly promoted pops can be instantly demoted if fired within a year of promotion. This should help with cases of pops abandoning basic resource production jobs to take on more specialist roles when the buildings that provide them are activated, crippling your economy
* Changed the size of all sectors to be 3 hyperlane jumps
Still am curious about sector management. Is that... working... right now? Larger sectors will help, but I would really like to delegate some planet management work. It's annoying.
Fanatic Purifiers run is going really well. I dunno if I just got lucky with tech or what, but managed to get my initial space claimed, and defensive stations on all my borders. Basically right after that, all my neighbors got pissy. Their fleets were weaker than my stations though, so I could focus on taking territory.
Since purifiers don't need to claim systems to take them, I just washed over my enemies after their initial assaults, taking WIDE swaths of turf from them. Then let them end at status quo just in time for the NEXT neighbor to get angry and declare war on me, and do the same thing to them.
I am not even bothering to claim enemy planets right now. I am just taking their non-planet systems and leaving their worlds cut off from each other. I can go back and clean those up later.
I also just got Fen Habbanis so moving all my alloy and consumer goods production to that. My homeworld is slowly being converted to a massive research hub.
The bigger sectors only apply to new games, so I can't tell yet. I would guess the sector AI gets the same fixes as the opponent AI, so maybe it will get better at some point.
I don't want to end my current run as I already have taken like 25% of the galaxy and there doesn't seem to be anything that can stop me. I'll have to see next run.
At this point planet managing has become so fiddly I am just glassing enemy worlds, terraforming them back, and then leaving them uncolonized until I need more basic resources. At a certain point they are not worth the micromanagement when I am already effectively unstoppable.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
* Fixed so that newly promoted pops can be instantly demoted if fired within a year of promotion. This should help with cases of pops abandoning basic resource production jobs to take on more specialist roles when the buildings that provide them are activated, crippling your economy
* Changed the size of all sectors to be 3 hyperlane jumps
Still am curious about sector management. Is that... working... right now? Larger sectors will help, but I would really like to delegate some planet management work. It's annoying.
Fanatic Purifiers run is going really well. I dunno if I just got lucky with tech or what, but managed to get my initial space claimed, and defensive stations on all my borders. Basically right after that, all my neighbors got pissy. Their fleets were weaker than my stations though, so I could focus on taking territory.
Since purifiers don't need to claim systems to take them, I just washed over my enemies after their initial assaults, taking WIDE swaths of turf from them. Then let them end at status quo just in time for the NEXT neighbor to get angry and declare war on me, and do the same thing to them.
I am not even bothering to claim enemy planets right now. I am just taking their non-planet systems and leaving their worlds cut off from each other. I can go back and clean those up later.
I also just got Fen Habbanis so moving all my alloy and consumer goods production to that. My homeworld is slowly being converted to a massive research hub.
The bigger sectors only apply to new games, so I can't tell yet. I would guess the sector AI gets the same fixes as the opponent AI, so maybe it will get better at some point.
I don't want to end my current run as I already have taken like 25% of the galaxy and there doesn't seem to be anything that can stop me. I'll have to see next run.
At this point planet managing has become so fiddly I am just glassing enemy worlds, terraforming them back, and then leaving them uncolonized until I need more basic resources. At a certain point they are not worth the micromanagement when I am already effectively unstoppable.
Yeah they started with a goal of reducing micro, and managed to not do that at all. Once the sector ai is passable I think it will be better.
* Fixed so that newly promoted pops can be instantly demoted if fired within a year of promotion. This should help with cases of pops abandoning basic resource production jobs to take on more specialist roles when the buildings that provide them are activated, crippling your economy
* Changed the size of all sectors to be 3 hyperlane jumps
Still am curious about sector management. Is that... working... right now? Larger sectors will help, but I would really like to delegate some planet management work. It's annoying.
Fanatic Purifiers run is going really well. I dunno if I just got lucky with tech or what, but managed to get my initial space claimed, and defensive stations on all my borders. Basically right after that, all my neighbors got pissy. Their fleets were weaker than my stations though, so I could focus on taking territory.
Since purifiers don't need to claim systems to take them, I just washed over my enemies after their initial assaults, taking WIDE swaths of turf from them. Then let them end at status quo just in time for the NEXT neighbor to get angry and declare war on me, and do the same thing to them.
I am not even bothering to claim enemy planets right now. I am just taking their non-planet systems and leaving their worlds cut off from each other. I can go back and clean those up later.
I also just got Fen Habbanis so moving all my alloy and consumer goods production to that. My homeworld is slowly being converted to a massive research hub.
The bigger sectors only apply to new games, so I can't tell yet. I would guess the sector AI gets the same fixes as the opponent AI, so maybe it will get better at some point.
I don't want to end my current run as I already have taken like 25% of the galaxy and there doesn't seem to be anything that can stop me. I'll have to see next run.
At this point planet managing has become so fiddly I am just glassing enemy worlds, terraforming them back, and then leaving them uncolonized until I need more basic resources. At a certain point they are not worth the micromanagement when I am already effectively unstoppable.
Yeah they started with a goal of reducing micro, and managed to not do that at all. Once the sector ai is passable I think it will be better.
They went like top speed the other direction. I am super psyched for when they fix it.
In the meantime, Purifiers so I don't need to deal with it.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
While I don't consider myself a micromanager generally, tbh I love the new sector changes, in that it basically allows me to pretend sectors don't exist. I hated giving planets to sectors in the old versions. When I would get habitats, I would look for systems with 8+ planets so I could fit as many worlds as possible into my limited number of core systems. I also like how planets keep developing for a long time now, and it's not just 'fill all the tiles then you're done' like previously.
Alright found the thing to move stuff more efficiently, I think my issue was I did try clicking it the pop screen and that's probably right as it decided to save and I just didn't realize it was saving. Even with that found, I'd like to see a future patch that takes some of the clicking out of population moving & trading. I'd rather type in what I want to sell or trade with an empire.
Still messing around seeing how best to do things with empires. Finding that machines have some nice perks, but the big issue is they are harder to get off the ground, since it seems like energy shortages can kick in quicker & it seems like grow slower than organics at the start of a habitat's development (which likely fair given you can colonize anything).
Machines make me wish they'd revisit gene modding for organics. Maybe have the civics limit what you can do, but the genetic engineering path really should allow the removal of positive traits, I'd be find if that required picking an upgraded trait of certain positive traits (for ex. dropping intelligence means having to get erudite. Machine modding is rather handy if you don't delaying engineering stuff & plays rather well with specialized worlds.
Also wondering if they'll take another look at perks. I feel like some need a little tweaking. Imperial prerogative is in kind of weird spot. On one hand it can be really useful short term, but on the other hand it's less valuable in a long game. I would mind seeing the up front admin boost get halved, but give it a second effect where the first district or two on each colonized world don't increase the admin load (ring worlds are good enough that wouldn't apply it to them and while it seems like habitats could use a buff, I'm not sure admin is where it is needed and even if it was needed, I'd pretty much tied any admin perks to voidborn.
Granted, I haven't picked up megacorp, so I don't know if some of the stuff in there alleviates some of the issues inherent with habitats. Big one being the player has to find minerals elsewhere & at best they are fifteen tiles. Ringworld doesn't have minerals, but at 100 tiles, easily let's the player off load energy and good production on it while freeing up tiles on actual planets for mining. Maybe void born should give the player the option to sacrifice a few tiles for a building a mineral generation plant or even let habitat's in nebulas build the starbase building that can generate minerals. Of the megastructures, they seem the most underwhelming, it's probably better to just colonize a few shitty low tiles worlds; especially, if you can pop one of the powerful terraforming options (hive or machine world). Kind of feel they could add something to voidborn to make them a more solid option to build, be a less thrilling prize for those that don't invest in the perk, who find other ways to get habitats.
Machines make me wish they'd revisit gene modding for organics. Maybe have the civics limit what you can do, but the genetic engineering path really should allow the removal of positive traits, I'd be find if that required picking an upgraded trait of certain positive traits (for ex. dropping intelligence means having to get erudite. Machine modding is rather handy if you don't delaying engineering stuff & plays rather well with specialized worlds.
The bio-ascension path(or rather the technology it unlocks) does allow you to remove positive traits, or add negative traits if you want.
Today we’re back with a dev diary where I will outline some of the stuff I want us to prioritize in the near future. Note that this is not a complete list of the bugs or improvements, but rather a highlight of some of the bigger things that I feel are especially important. These are the current plans, which are prone to change, so I cannot promise that all these things will actually be deployed in the next patch. We’re planning to release a definitive 2.2.x version at the end of the post-launch support period, before all of us start working on The Next Cool Thing™.
Pop Growth
We’ve heard your concerns about how pop growth currently functions, and how it in some cases can create situations that feel wrong. We will be adjusting how pops are chosen for growth, and try to avoid having pops move to, or being chosen for growth, on planets where they have a very low habitability. I feel like moving pops to those planets should be based more on player choice.
Ship Upgrade
I think the experience of upgrading ships could be better, as it feels a bit awkward that cancelling your upgrade at 99% doesn’t actually leave any ships upgraded. I want to address that by making each ship upgrade individually, one at a time, and that this process should make use of multiple shipyards in the same starbase. This should mean that if you cancel a fleet upgrade at 50%, roughly half of the ships will still be upgraded. We’ll also take a look at tweaking the upgrade costs and time.
Planet View
One of the most important UIs in the game is getting a bit of an overhaul. We’ve been joined recently by our new UX/UI designer, Doyle, and he’s been very busy taking a look at the planet view.
Something we feel is important is making sure that city districts do not look so significantly different from the other districts. We will be making the Max Districts show as boxes as well, so it's more consistent and visually appealing. You can visualize it as picking a box from “Max Districts”, and putting it into one of the districts. We’re also consolidating some of the UI elements so that they appear in more consistent locations across the tabs. The list of resources should also be more structured, with better tooltips for each item.
The Pops tab is also being cleaned up a little, and you’ll now be able to prioritize one job per strata, which should make it easier to make your workers prioritize farming without having to juggle the priorities of other jobs in the same strata. The ability to “star” a job was actually the original design, but it was changed into an on/off prioritization.
Those are just a few of the bigger points that I wanted to address, and that have been prioritized for the definitive 2.2.x version. Of course I need to repeat that it's not a complete list of all the issues we will be addressing. You can expect there to be more fixes to bugs, improvement to AI and performance, and other issues from the rest of the dev team. Your feedback is very important in helping us prioritize the most high-value changes we can make during this period, so we really appreciate it.
We have some really cool things planned for 2019, and I am really looking forward to being able to share those plans with you, but first we will focus on fixes and improvements for a while before moving on to the new content. Scheduled dev diaries will be on hiatus until we have something new to show, but we may post something during the post-launch support period if we feel like we have something worthwhile to share.
Thank you for your time, and I'm very much looking forwards to a great 2019!
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True, but I'd also argue that trying to make every species in your Empire exactly the same as every other species in your Empire goes against the very spirit of Xeno-Compatibility, so you shouldn't be trying to anyway.
No Dev Diary or Dev Clash this week due to patch work being a bigger priority. Instead they posted an.. executive diary?
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
So I made a Fanatic Purifiers race of cat people and I'm going to just glass the galaxy. I can always terraform stuff after.
Maybe I can go back to my Commonwealth game if they fix the AI so that sector managers can do stuff on their own. Right now they don't seem to.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/dev-team-2-2-3-patch-released-and-2-2-4-beta-now-available-checksums-2-2-3-746c-2-2-4-f25b.1146499/
Noice.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Still am curious about sector management. Is that... working... right now? Larger sectors will help, but I would really like to delegate some planet management work. It's annoying.
Fanatic Purifiers run is going really well. I dunno if I just got lucky with tech or what, but managed to get my initial space claimed, and defensive stations on all my borders. Basically right after that, all my neighbors got pissy. Their fleets were weaker than my stations though, so I could focus on taking territory.
Since purifiers don't need to claim systems to take them, I just washed over my enemies after their initial assaults, taking WIDE swaths of turf from them. Then let them end at status quo just in time for the NEXT neighbor to get angry and declare war on me, and do the same thing to them.
I am not even bothering to claim enemy planets right now. I am just taking their non-planet systems and leaving their worlds cut off from each other. I can go back and clean those up later.
I also just got Fen Habbanis so moving all my alloy and consumer goods production to that. My homeworld is slowly being converted to a massive research hub.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
?
Welp. Must be time to get my eyes checked!
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
That's in the 2.2.4 beta
If the upgrade an repair building bugs are truely fixed, that's huge, as they were the major reason the AI started to lag after the early game.
No comment on AI changes. I'm still do my whole thing of run the game on an easy setup to get a feel for how I want to attempt certain things. Like how I want to build up my initial planets, how I build first setup of specialized planets and how to shift over existing planets (kind of arriving on the idea that the best setup might be to shift the first 2-3 planets into a mining-agriculture setup and phase out the energy stuff. Probably not the most efficient use because pure mining or farming frees up another building slot, but feels like it would require more babysitting that I'm willing to do make sure amenities, housing and jobs are in the red when I'm done). Also figuring out when limited building (aka only one per planet) I always want to build and which ones should only be used for specialized worlds. Plus, it's fun to see how silly I can make something and experience the anomalies.
At some point, I'll have to try this with a non-have mind since I'll have to figure out how to manage thing when I don't have access to hive worlds and have to deal with consumer goods, while also not having the option to stop pop growth on planets. Also need to give machine empires spin. I figure once I get more comfortable with the underlining mechanics and want a challenge, I'll make things harder.
Also trying to figure out, assuming it didn't get broken, how to move pops to a specific planet. Right now it only gives me the option to send them to my original world. I had a game of hive shroom people where I was experimenting wit the idea of having a two low tiles worlds, that were built to generate pops faster than my specialized worlds, which I would move over to those worlds to fill them out faster. Currently have that on hold because I wanted to try something with a tiny galaxy and that game drew the gray goo scenario. Actually destroyed the factory fairly quickly, but didn't save because I want to open the gate and let the gray tempest rampage through the parts of the galaxy I don't control.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I said No the next 40 times, but they just kept coming back. I'm not going to say No the next 40 because I've just turned the game off.
Insteller Assembly Site has a consumer goods upkeep. Even if you're playing a race that doesn't use consumer goods. Kinda weird.
This happens when the caravaneers cannot find a safe exit to your system (usually a space amoeba wandering into a chokepoint) and the game keeps firing off the offer since I'm guessing it's programmed to offer every 12 months or something.
you can now restrict which race grows on a planet on 2.2.4
if you force one it gets a growth speed penalty though
As for population management. Maybe I missing something, but moving populations around is really tedious because as far as I can tell, it's send populations out from the home world to the locations you want to buff and then feed in population to the home world. Maybe that's intended to discourage the tactic, but if I'm not missing anything and they don't care to put restraints on population moving (outside of energy cost), well it's really half assed.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Best of all, if you were good enough, you could try and make it look like a third faction was responsible for your crimes. It was great. Alpha Centauri is a great game. I'd actually be happy if they lift the diplomacy and espionage systems straight from that game.
If they ever fix up Sectors, you could buy passage through the specific Sectors you want. That might work.
The bigger sectors only apply to new games, so I can't tell yet. I would guess the sector AI gets the same fixes as the opponent AI, so maybe it will get better at some point.
I don't want to end my current run as I already have taken like 25% of the galaxy and there doesn't seem to be anything that can stop me. I'll have to see next run.
At this point planet managing has become so fiddly I am just glassing enemy worlds, terraforming them back, and then leaving them uncolonized until I need more basic resources. At a certain point they are not worth the micromanagement when I am already effectively unstoppable.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Yeah they started with a goal of reducing micro, and managed to not do that at all. Once the sector ai is passable I think it will be better.
They went like top speed the other direction. I am super psyched for when they fix it.
In the meantime, Purifiers so I don't need to deal with it.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Still messing around seeing how best to do things with empires. Finding that machines have some nice perks, but the big issue is they are harder to get off the ground, since it seems like energy shortages can kick in quicker & it seems like grow slower than organics at the start of a habitat's development (which likely fair given you can colonize anything).
Machines make me wish they'd revisit gene modding for organics. Maybe have the civics limit what you can do, but the genetic engineering path really should allow the removal of positive traits, I'd be find if that required picking an upgraded trait of certain positive traits (for ex. dropping intelligence means having to get erudite. Machine modding is rather handy if you don't delaying engineering stuff & plays rather well with specialized worlds.
Also wondering if they'll take another look at perks. I feel like some need a little tweaking. Imperial prerogative is in kind of weird spot. On one hand it can be really useful short term, but on the other hand it's less valuable in a long game. I would mind seeing the up front admin boost get halved, but give it a second effect where the first district or two on each colonized world don't increase the admin load (ring worlds are good enough that wouldn't apply it to them and while it seems like habitats could use a buff, I'm not sure admin is where it is needed and even if it was needed, I'd pretty much tied any admin perks to voidborn.
Granted, I haven't picked up megacorp, so I don't know if some of the stuff in there alleviates some of the issues inherent with habitats. Big one being the player has to find minerals elsewhere & at best they are fifteen tiles. Ringworld doesn't have minerals, but at 100 tiles, easily let's the player off load energy and good production on it while freeing up tiles on actual planets for mining. Maybe void born should give the player the option to sacrifice a few tiles for a building a mineral generation plant or even let habitat's in nebulas build the starbase building that can generate minerals. Of the megastructures, they seem the most underwhelming, it's probably better to just colonize a few shitty low tiles worlds; especially, if you can pop one of the powerful terraforming options (hive or machine world). Kind of feel they could add something to voidborn to make them a more solid option to build, be a less thrilling prize for those that don't invest in the perk, who find other ways to get habitats.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
The bio-ascension path(or rather the technology it unlocks) does allow you to remove positive traits, or add negative traits if you want.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-139-2-2-x-post-launch-patch.1147916/
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Set up so it will build what you consider most important first and least important last, filling up all available space on each planet.
It would still take time to build, but you wouldn't need to micromanage or leave it up to incompetent sector AI.
God yes.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.