Stellaris: RIP Wormhole, Warp.

[Dragoness]

Time for us to get a stellaris thread! And I don't think a stellaris thread would be complete without mentioning the next big patch, Cherryh, and the fact that they're removing Wormhole and Warp as FTL technologies. Their reasoning is pretty sound, actually - right now they have to build all their gameplay systems with 3 different FTL technologies in mind, which massively hinders them making improvements in certain areas, like the useless of static defenses since Wormhole and Warp can both bypass them completely and it's impossible to make a chokepoint. Sure, you can add in extra FTL inhibitors that stop all Warp travel / redirect it to the inhibitor's location, but that doesn't work for hyperlanes bcause of the risk of stranding hyperdrive ships several jumps off course and makes no sense at all for wormhole travel which is technically bypassing the bubble completely and shouldn't be affected by it. Add in the complexities involved in showing all this to the player without overwhelming them, in wars that can have well over a dozen actors... yeah.

It also allows them to redesign borders and sensors to, instead of just spreading out in elucidation space, to propagate along the hyperlane network. Each level of sensors allowing you to see one step further along the route from your start point. No more hyperlane races having planets technically within their borders but so far away along the hyperlane network they make no sense to be under their control. And systems can have terrain that matters, like Pulsars disabling shields in the system, or neutron stars massively slowing down travel within their system.

[SlateSlabrock]

Huh. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I always went with warp drives because hyperlanes could be really restrictive in getting to outlying systems.

[Dragoness]

It's worth noting they're planning to make density of hyperlanes an option you can adjust when generating a galaxy, if you decide the base settings are too restrictive.

[RudeCyrus]

Everything to do with the Shroud is downright cosmic horror.

[Dragoness]

Also the best way to murder yourself and the rest of the galaxy in one go!

[Mechanical Ape]

Got time for one last game before the big changes. Making a wormhole race since I never gave those much of a chance; warp is my default, sometimes hyperlanes when I feel like restricting myself that way.

Looking forward to the galaxy having (the equivalent of) terrain. Till now it’s just been “nebula, ships go slightly slower” which I don’t even notice or can do anything about.

[Dragoness]

Huh, I went back through and read more of the dev blogs related to this update. They're taking the basic part of Utopia's Ascension Perks, the ones not related to the lategame ascension paths, and making them part of the base game so future DLC can expand on them without requiring the base game *and* utopia. Also, frontier outposts, colony space stations, and defense stations are getting combined into one thing; Starbases, one per star, which are upgradeable from basically a frontier outpost that costs no upkeep (but is also basically defenseless) to huge citadels, which can match entire late game fleets for firepower, and can produce up to 6 ships at one time depending on upgrades. Border expansion is now tied flat out to building these outposts to claim a system since whoever owns the starbase owns the system. No starbase? no ownership.

This also means every system will be guaranteed to have *some* resources even if it's only a little so you don't feel like you wasted influence on the construction price of an outpost on a useless system. And home solar systems will have a tier 1 (so just above an outpost) starbase plus a few mining stations scattered around the system + complete survey.

[Quanta]

Since military ships can't be put into passive mode anymore, what do people do for early scouting? Just build an extra science ship?

[SlateSlabrock]

Border expansion is now tied flat out to building these outposts to claim a system since whoever owns the starbase owns the system. No starbase? no ownership.

I hope they don't cost a ludicrous amount of Influence now.

[Dragoness]

I hope they don't cost a ludicrous amount of Influence now.

No influence over time. Medium amount of influence cost on building. Apparently they're overhauling early game influence gain too

[Dragoness]

So *A LOT* of combat mechanics are getting overhauled to fix what the forums likes to refer to "doomstacks" - the problem that wars will inevitably begin with two empires throwing every single ship they have at eachother at once, and whoever has more numbers / fleet power will win by a ridiculously large margin and then run rampaging across the entire enemy empire with nothing left to stop them.

So, Admirals will have a fleet cap. This is to encourage you to use multiple admirals and fleets.
Fleets that are following other fleets will always enter FTL with them, so they don't get split up.

To address the fact that a fleet of 1.3x times the power of another fleet will win with a shitton more than 1.3 kills to losses ratio, they're giving the smaller group of fleets in a battle a fire rate bonus to simulate the fact that it's easier for a smaller group to maneuver and find a target to hit that's not a friendly. ("we're not outnumbered, it's just a target rich environment")

Ships that take hull damage will start losing combat effectiveness, down to 50% at near 0% health.

Also fleets no longer fight exclusively to the death. Any ship that takes enough damage has a chance to decide to disengage, and no longer participate in the battle - if their fleet wins, they rejoin the fleet at the end of the battle. If their fleet loses they're treated a having emergency FTL'ed out. Smaller ships have a much better chance of being able to disengage.

All this means that a smaller force might very well be able to make it a Pyrrhic victory for the larger force, and have enough of their fleet remain alive to return to battle after some repairs, for repeated hit and run tactics on a larger foe.



Oh also all empires will now start with all the basic techs - missiles, lasers, mass drivers, since it was basically a false choice and you still needed all three later on to have any chance of being able to adapt to different enemies.

Also missiles are being moved to exclusively the Torpedo slot, and ignore shields entirely. Energy torpedoes are being moved *out* of the torpedo slot since they didn't really fit with normal torpedoes. Reactors are being moved out of component slots and into their own dedicated slot on the right side, with A slot reactor boosters you can fit if you need extra power (which you start the game with available so you'll have *something* for A slots right out of the gate).

and holy shit there's a lot of other cool changes coming like armor being just an extra layer of health between shields and health, with different resistances than health (so, autocannons - near useless against thick armor). and a fleet manager that allows you to decide "this fleet should have 5 torpedo boat corvettes of <design A>, 5 interceptor corvettes of <design B>, and two destroyers of <design C> and then you can click one button to reinforce them after a battle and all nearby unoccupied starbases with shipyards will crank out reinforcements to fill them back up to spec. (or, as much as is possible with your current funds)

[Bigdog]

Someone just clued me in, so I'm doing the same for y'all: Stellaris is available for $12 as part of the current Humble Bundle.

[Mechanical Ape]

It's really just going to be a whole new game after Cherryh, isn't it?

[Mechanical Ape]

So as we move into the year 2411, let's see how the galaxy is filling out! (This is with all DLC but not the 2.0.2 beta patch.)



That's me in the upper left, the Volaxi Star Archipelago. Volaxians are spiritualist, fanatic pacifist humanoids who live in and around the ocean. They are philosophically opposed to aggression and warfare, though they maintain one of the largest defense fleets in the known universe. They're ruled by a High King or Queen, under a neo-feudal system which for centuries was merely ceremonial, but is now a real thing again because the Archipelago contains two vassal states (alien refugees granted their own territories) whose monarchs swear fealty to the Volaxian head of state.

Going clockwise, the rest of our cast:

• The hyper-religious Order of Hesuk. The humanoid Hesukar species evolved on a paradise world, which their faith interprets as "we are the perfect race of the cosmos". They're snobbish toward most aliens but are friends with the Volaxians, whom they embrace as almost as good as themselves.
• The Bothrian Directorate. Bothrians are a race of flying monkeys who love science, hate spiritual nonsense and most of all, hate aliens. They are an empire of Internet Atheists, and are as well-liked in the galactic community as that would imply.
• The Galactic Ikarzuri Technocracy. Toad people who are actually cool and friendly. They like peace and diplomacy and are cool with aliens, so I guess they're the closest thing this galaxy has to Starfleet. In fact their territory includes Earth, or rather the radioactive remains thereof, since humanity appears to have nuked itself at some point in the past. That's OK, some cockroaches survived and the kindly Ikarzuri uplifted them into a member species. The toads are co-founders of a federation, known as the Auspicious Concord, with:
• The Confederacy of Taunrak. Friendly humanoids who love the universe and everything in it! They're frankly just too innocent for this hard, hard galaxy, and would have been wiped out long ago if not for their Ikarzuri toad-pals.
• The Wessari Star Coalition. Science-minded fox people. They're pretty horrified at all the religious mumbo-jumbo that proliferates around them. Wessari-Volaxi relations used to be chilly, but there's lately been a thaw thanks to a shared rivalry with:
• The Allied Vetirisius Realms. The Vetirisius are plant people who've been bitter rivals with the Volaxians for a long time. Because both empires are fanatic pacifists, it's been a very cold war -- just insults and angry glowering, though for a while they were funding 3rd party space marauders to plunder Volaxi territory.
• The New Sibulan Khanate. These would be the space marauders I just mentioned. A race of one-eyed bird people, their clans used to be constantly at war with one another, making a living as raiders and mercenaries. Then they were unified around 2390 under a Great Khan, who conquered a bunch of territory from their neighbors before being defeated. In the wake of the Great Khan's death, the Sibulans entered a few years of infighting, but they didn't dissolve completely, and reemerged as the New Sibulan Khanate, a functional state. Thanks to their conquests, they even have a planet to call their own (really a few Sibulans and a whole bunch of Wessari slaves). But most Sibulans still reside in their space stations, like in the old days.

With the Sibulan crisis stabilized, and the age of galactic expansion at an end, the Volaxi Star Archipelago is pursuing internal growth. They're rehabilitating the old nuked-out tomb worlds in their borders so they can be colonized by peaceful folk. And their spiritual and scientific progress has recently helped them explore their own psionic potential. (The Hesukar got there first, though. They went psionic decades ago because of course they did, they're better than everyone else.)



And there's been serious study of the ancient, ruined Dyson sphere within Volaxi territory. Recently a mad genius psionic scientist named Hannakon has made it his life's work to unlock the secrets of the sphere. He thinks it can be patched up and refurbished.

Hannakon, what is the reason for this obsession? Is it madness -- or precognition? What is it you have seen in the future of the Star Archipelago???