Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[tindrli]

you dont need any reasons ESPECIALLY IN SPACE!!!!!!!.. the reason of existence is enough or should be enough.. not to mention inability of communication WHAT SO EVER!!

 

[Norfleet]

you dont need any reasons ESPECIALLY IN SPACE!!!!!!!.. the reason of existence is enough or should be enough.. not to mention inability of communication WHAT SO EVER!!

Yeah, you sort of only really need to justify something when there's an actual international community. When there are just two parties, the only people you need to convince are your own.

 

[Vagiel]

I agree with the sentiment. This reason for war should exist only between an already established galactic council thing where various races play the diplomatic game.

If no such thing exists to whom exactly am I explaining my self for waging war?

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[tindrli]

aaaaaand when in space probably the misunderstanding, technology and maybe fear are reason that specie actually dont give a fuck about any council what so ever

 

[Spectacle]

I agree with the sentiment. This reason for war should exist only between an already established galactic council thing where various races play the diplomatic game.

If no such thing exists to whom exactly am I explaining my self for waging war?

To your own people of course, who will need some kind of reason for the sacrifices they will have to make to fight the war, and to convince themselves that killing the enemy doesn't make them bad people.

 

[Vagiel]

To your own people of course, who will need some kind of reason for the sacrifices they will have to make to fight the war, and to convince themselves that killing the enemy doesn't make them bad people.

Assuming you play a human civilization that has the sensitivities of modern and not so modern society.

Don't get me wrong I get it and in the end if the mechanic works to make the game better then it's acceptable but since you are dealing with different species from different planets you need a way to make them really alien and not humans in different colours. We will see.

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[Lone Wolf]

They did mention something about specific governments having special CBs, didn't they?

I suppose it makes sense that a liberal democracy isn't going to fight wars for the laughs.

 

[Space Satan]

DD: Administrative sectors

i again folks!

Today I am going to talk about one of the great pitfalls of strategy game design; dull micromanagement. That is, features which require too much player attention. The trick, of course, is determining how much is “too much”, but it’s useful to consider how central the feature is to the core gameplay, how well it scales between small and large states, and how repetitive it gets with time.

In Stellaris, one feature which risked causing bad micromanagement was the planetary tile system; assigning Pops to tiles and deciding which buildings should go where. It is a fairly central feature and it is fun to use… but if you had to worry about 20, 50 or more planets, it would scale poorly. The obvious solution to this type of scaling issue is automation; you can let the AI handle it for you. This is indeed what we did in Stellaris, but not in a “traditional” fashion... Instead, we opted for something a little bit more akin to the vassals in Crusader Kings through something we call Administrative Sectors.

A Sector is an administrative region under the control of a Sector Governor. You can control a few planets directly (your “core worlds”), but once you go past the limit, you will start suffering penalties to your Influence as well as Empire-wide income. The exact limit for how many planets you can control directly depends on various factors, like your government type and technologies, but, as with the “Demesne Limit” in Crusader Kings II, it will never be a huge number. At this point, it is best to start dividing your territory into Sectors. You can decide the Sector capital and which planets should belong to it (but they must all be connected to the capital, i.e. form one cohesive sub-region.) You are also allowed to name your Sectors, for fun.

Unlike proper Vassals, Sectors remain an integrated part of your Empire, but they will handle development of planets and the construction of mining stations within their region for you. You can give them a focus (Industry, Research, etc), an infusion of Minerals or Energy Credits to help them along, and decide if you want to tax them for Minerals and Energy Credits. Sectors do not possess any military fleets of their own, nor do they perform research (they have access to the same technologies you do, and their research output is all given to you.)

While Sectors and Sector Governors cannot demand more autonomy, or directly rise up in revolt (things I’d love to explore in an expansion), over time their population tends to diverge ideologically from that of the regime, and create their own identity. Like-minded Pops will tend to migrate there if allowed to. In the same way, aliens of the same species will also tend to coalesce in the same Sectors. Thus, when Factions form, they will often tend to have their main seat of power in a specific Sector. And Factions can demand autonomy and achieve independence. However, this is something that warrants its own dev diary...

That’s all he wrote folks. This time. Next week, I plan to talk about Alliances and Federations!

 

[Inf0mercial]

This sounds retarded, if we can't tell the sectors that you want these exact buildings built on this planet or this frontier planet can be left as shit but this frontier planet must have every military instillation being built on it its going to be a cluster fuck.

I mean are we going to be forced to take manual control over frontier worlds to build them properly let them fall into ai's hands and have them wreck the planet?

Sure there is a lot of micro management in 4x games but that comes with the territory, this just stinks of taking control away because "that's what we do with ck2" jesus fuck.

I am annoyed that they seem to be taking player control away in the name of streamlining, this is what planetary governors are for they don't force me to let go of control of vast swathes of planets but it does let me delegate shit like "build the improvements to these when they become available" letting me focus on developing planets or using my fleets.

Also decide if we want to TAX them??? If i have to suddenly give us 50% of income from a sector because some mechanic bullshit that happens at a certain size i am going to be annoyed, this is not how shit works.

 

[Spectacle]

Paradox claims that the sector system is to reduce micromanagement, but it is obvious that the real purpose is to fracture the player's empire to set the stage for revolts and civil wars later in the game.

If it was just about reducing micromanagement then you could just have planetary governors. There is no reason why a space empire with FTL communication tech would require sector governors for efficiency rather than having each planetary governor reporting to the homeworld bureacracy.

Despite being silly the feature could be good for gameplay if it means you can't expand endlessly all the way to the endgame. I just hope the sector governors won't be too retarded.

 

[Trash]

This sounds like fun. EU: Rome did a splendid job making me paranoid about governors. This reminds me somewhat of that. Uprisings in your own empire are always a good way to spice things up and bring some extra challenge. Shame it does sound like they will keep the really good stuff for a later dlc. I mean, EU: Rome also made me very wary of having generals get too popular for their my own good.

 

[Space Satan]

Check historical colonial governorates and far viceroyalties. It was a paradise of corruption and local despots. Even with FTL or stuff metropolian inspections could be bought or prepared for.

 

[Norfleet]

Paradox claims that the sector system is to reduce micromanagement, but it is obvious that the real purpose is to fracture the player's empire to set the stage for revolts and civil wars later in the game.

If it was just about reducing micromanagement then you could just have planetary governors. There is no reason why a space empire with FTL communication tech would require sector governors for efficiency rather than having each planetary governor reporting to the homeworld bureacracy.

Despite being silly the feature could be good for gameplay if it means you can't expand endlessly all the way to the endgame. I just hope the sector governors won't be too retarded.

I dunno. I'm mixed on this. I think the entire "Reduces Micromanagement" argument is pretty much bullshit, since a thing only reduces micromanagement if it somehow does the job WELL, in the way you would have.

I do, however, like the concept, and the entire "sets the stage for revolts and civil wars" idea. It seems like we could have done this and still have kept the option to push buttons. I like buttons. Perhaps mods will fix it. It seems like there should exist some kind of sweet spot that lets a player knowingly micromanage himself into this kind of situation, because at each step of the way, it's the right option to do, that can potentially lead to an explosion if something goes wrong.

 

[Spectacle]

I dunno. I'm mixed on this. I think the entire "Reduces Micromanagement" argument is pretty much bullshit, since a thing only reduces micromanagement if it somehow does the job WELL, in the way you would have.

You can only personally manage a small number of worlds so sectors will prevent you from micromanaging everything whether you like it or not. I'm sure it will be easy to mod the "demesne limit" to 99999 or something so you can manage everything yourself if you want to.

I expect the sector AI will be dumb as fuck and have a hard time doing anything with their sector that actually supports your overall strategy, apart from collecting a small amount of resources in tax.

 

[Norfleet]

You can only personally manage a small number of worlds so sectors will prevent you from micromanaging everything whether you like it or not. I'm sure it will be easy to mod the "demesne limit" to 99999 or something so you can manage everything yourself if you want to.

I expect the sector AI will be dumb as fuck and have a hard time doing anything with their sector that actually supports your overall strategy, apart from collecting a small amount of resources in tax.

Yah, that's kind of my point, and why I'm divided on the issue. On one hand, I like concept of sectors and factions arising in those sectors (although the implementation may end up less than satisfying). I'm not, however, so keen on the idea of dumbfuck sector AI. Paradox has always done this badly. Plus, I sort of view it as a fundamental conflict of interest to allow the AI to manage my war against itself.

 

[Space Satan]

I've seen Civilization V, where you have to manually manage EACH & EVERY city. thanks but no thanks. Alphs Centauri gave me the best automation mechanic so far with governors to whom i can give orders to manage my empire and concentrate on statecig plans.

 

[kris]

I've seen Civilization V, where you have to manually manage EACH & EVERY city. thanks but no thanks. Alphs Centauri gave me the best automation mechanic so far with governors to whom i can give orders to manage my empire and concentrate on statecig plans.

You think managing a few cities in Civ5 is to much for you? there really isn't much to do, if anything managing all workers is more of a hassle.

 

[Space Satan]

DD: Alliances and Federation

Greetings fellow gamers!

The topic for today is “Alliances and Federations”. Now, we have modelled alliances quite differently in most of our games. In Crusader Kings II, for example, alliances are bilateral, and allies are (since the last patch) automatically dragged into wars with no option of opting out and breaking the alliance. In Europa Universalis IV, alliances are also bilateral, but you can decline a “Call to Arms” at the cost of Prestige. In Stellaris, alliances are multilateral (they can have any number of members, not just two), and are thus more like NATO and less like the complex web of mutual agreements that existed at the outbreak of the Great War. This means that members of an alliance need a greater say in matters that concern the entire alliance, notable declarations of war (and some things are simply not allowed if you are an alliance member, such as guarantees of independence.)

If I am a member of an alliance in Stellaris and I want to declare a war, all the other members of the alliance need to approve. This ties back to what I talked about in the dev diary two weeks ago; if the goals I declare with the war are only beneficial to myself, my allies are of course less likely to approve. Therefore, I will likely have to dicker with the war goals in order to satisfy all of my allies (depending on their opinions and strategic concerns, naturally.) Of course, members can always just leave an alliance (while at peace) if it won’t permit them to achieve their goals.

If an alliance works well, however, the members can instead choose to deepen their cooperation and form a Federation. There are pros and cons to this choice. Alliances can be paralyzed by vetoes from the member states, but a Federation is governed by a single President who has the power to act with impunity. On the other hand, the presidency rotates between the member states, so for long periods members will have little control over their foreign policy. Federation members also share victory, which might be a problem for certain types of players…

Another interesting feature of Federations is that they have a special joint space navy in addition to the forces of the separate member empires. The Federation president gets to design these ship templates using all the best technologies of all the member empires. The president also gets to control these fleets, of course. As a rule of thumb, several fairly equally matched empires might want to form a Federation, especially in the face of aggressive, significantly larger neighbors, but it might not be the best idea for empires who are dominant in their own right. Of course, there is also an element of role-playing to the choice…

That’s all for now. Next week’s topic is Multiplayer!

 

[Jimmious]

That was a good update. I like the concept of the Federation, it sounds "realistic" if that is even something to care about in such a game

 

[Trash]

The more tools there are to improve the political aspect of the game the better. Besides this looks like it could really spice up the middle and late game. Neat.

 

[Inf0mercial]

I like the federation mechanic as long as the AI knows how to use it properly it should let small faction quickly blob up escape speed bump territory.

I also wonder how hard it would be to win game if you allied and federated everyone you met.

 

[Space Satan]

I find it strange that xenophobic or otherwise monarchistic governments couls be placed as presidents. Maybe they'll add some variation on federations to deffir with various government types. Like, Concordate, Hegemony etc.

 

[kris]

I find it strange that xenophobic or otherwise monarchistic governments couls be placed as presidents. Maybe they'll add some variation on federations to deffir with various government types. Like, Concordate, Hegemony etc.

I would find it strange that those races would JOIN a federation.

 

[Destroid]

It's pretty obviously based on the HRE.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

they can base their ideas on pong if it makes the game good, for all i care.