Stellaris Dev Diary #425 - Nomads Roam the Galaxy, What's Next?

by Eladrin

Greetings, travellers!

The Stellaris 4.4.1 ‘Pegasus’ update and Nomads released this Monday.

SimasTV created a tutorial on the basics.​

Today we’re going to look at the first few days, discuss a few common comments, and explain where we’re going next.

Very quickly we saw a number of crash reports coming in. Most of these came down to an issue at low resolutions (x800 or lower), which truncated the Waystation UI. This led to a crash when the game attempted to update the Wayline information that is displayed in the upper section that was no longer there.

We put it up as an Open Beta on Monday, and you players found some issues with the planned Hotfix, such as Precursor selection disappearing from Galaxy Generation, so that’s a +1 for Open Betas.

The 4.4.2 Hotfix released Tuesday afternoon, with the following fixes:

4.4.2 ‘Pegasus’ Hotfix Release Notes

Balance:

• Reduced the rate of the Forever Cruise situation speed on all difficulties.

• Significantly reduced the amount that the situation increases based on game difficulty. (These are further reduced from last night’s Open Beta release.)

• Doubled the grace period after completing a crew or passenger contract - it will now pause progress in the passenger satisfaction situation for 24 months.

• More comprehensive changes will be coming in this weekend's Open Beta for the patch planned for next week.

Bugfix:

• The Defenders of the Galaxy achievement should now be completable

• \[Beta Bug Only] Fix overlapping and missing items in single player game setup

Stability:

• Preventing a waystation UI from crashing in some cases.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when changing the animated main menu background from the in-game settings screen.

• Fixed a crash that could occur while the AI was evaluating which contract to take on.

• Fix crashing on 800p and lower resolutions when clicking on Waystations.

• Fix combat crash when calculating ship design states (from required component arrays having null-object placeholders that defaulted to the “weapon” type)

• Fix crash when escaping combat as an enemy is destroyed

• Fix crash in spawn_random_anomaly when orbital fleet has no ships

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering an empire's ethics tooltips, including after that empire was destroyed.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering ethics tooltips in the empire setup screen.

• Fixed a potential crash when opponents were deleted in mid-combat

The Stability list included fixes to over 90% of the crashes reported in the first 24 hours, and we made a few changes to the difficulty of the Forever Cruise situation speed on higher difficulties - there’s more coming next week though.

The 4.4.3 hotfix was a small one on Wednesday to target a few especially confusing issues.

4.4.3 ‘Pegasus’ Hotfix Release Notes
Bugfix:

• The Void Reavers civic no longer requires both First Contact and Nomads

• Corrected the Trust and Opinion thresholds required to propose a Waystation Pact.

• Fixed opinion modifiers from Defender of the Galaxy applying when they shouldn't.

Operation Reserves are something that it seems we could have had more clarity about. As mentioned in Dev Diary #421, Operational Reserves were introduced as a solution to balance consumption creating a desire to move about (to harvest and collect) and having an angry red number in your resources bar that the last ten years have trained us all to interpret as “EMERGENCY! ACT NOW! YOUR ECONOMY IS IN SHAMBLES! EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE!” - but this is intended to be the normal state. Merging Energy and Minerals into a single more fungible resource gave us a way to represent the continuous drain of resources while providing several different ways to mitigate it, while hopefully making it not feel the same as a deficit situation in a normal empire. (This also gave us the tech we needed to explore a nice niche for a Nanotech redesign that the Custodians will be looking at during the summer.)

Some people have commented about the difficulty in getting detailed information about the mineral and energy expenditures - it’s a bit obfuscated, but we intended for the Operational Reserves to be more of a black box where you shouldn’t need to care about the exact state of mineral or energy. You shouldn’t be using it for much - construction generally requires more advanced or strategic resources - except for fishing for the Galatron and feeding Lithoids. But since Energy and Minerals are mutually exchangeable, the answer should always be “get more of either”.

There have been many comments about Arkship Skins and Bio-Arkships. The Arkships are the most complicated ships we’ve ever created, with three different specializations, each with three tiers and a number of other customization options (such as the spinal mounts).

While we would have loved to include all of them, if we made them to the same detail level of the Arkships we did create, it’d have required a total of 20 different shipsets x 3 Arkship types x 3 tiers = 180 ships - an impossible scope. While we could have cut the different tiers, reducing the count to 60, that’s still too much. Cutting the three different types as well could have dropped it to 20 - but we felt that the Civilian vs. Military vs. Scientific choices and the multiple tiers of Arkship were a more interesting use of the resources, and we feel that just going with textural changes without form changes wouldn’t have been satisfying.

If at some point in the future we do add a Bio-Arkship, I’d likely want to make it a fourth category with its own mechanics rather than being a copy of one of the other three, especially since we decided to permit bioship empires to use the standard Arkship variants. We would likely permit the reverse as well - empires that use mechanical ships would likely still be allowed to use the Bio variant of the Arkship if we went this direction.

We have a larger patch planned for early next week with a few fixes, which we will be pushing to the [c]stellaris_test[/c] Open Beta branch today.

Here are the Open Beta release notes:

4.4.4 ‘Flappy Horse’ Open Beta Release Notes
Feature

• The Baol Life Seeding decision can now be enacted on artificial worlds and structures, and grants a unique deposit carrying over some of the bonus of a Gaia world

Improvement

• AI will now consider abandoning a contract after 20 years have passed since they have accepted it.

• Idle Arkships and Logistic ships will notify the player about having completed the waystation/wayline stockpile collection.

• Added Logistics Hub indicator in the galaxy map.

• Arkship and Logistic harvest and strip mine orders issued on a whole solar system now target higher-value planets first instead of simply the nearest.

• Automated science ships that temporarily run out of reachable tasks now stay automated and resume when new work appears, instead of cancelling automation.

• Arkship random names in empire creation now use namelists for ships, not planets.

• Fleets will continue repairing and upgrading while following the moving arkship within the system.

• Fleets will continue following the arkship after having completed its upgrades.

• Improved the randomization of nomadic empires in galaxy generation, so they no longer take up the bulk of the advanced AI empire slots.

• Following ships will start charging its FTL drive without waiting for the target to complete its hyperlane jump.

• Becoming nomadic now embarks assault armies on the planet instead of destroying them.

Balance

• Further reduced the effects that higher difficulties have on Forever Cruise progress.

• Deep Sleep civics can no longer be combined with the Synthetic Fertility origin to avoid breaking their starting situation and the identity repository.

• Rebalanced Arkship habitability from species traits.

• Arkship colonies gain +40% habitability from their planet class.

• Arkship Living Space Module grants habitability and costs Exotic Gases.

• Reduced the size bonus damage from the Vanguard and Knight Paladin subclasses.

• Adjusted the starting conditions of Forever Cruise and upkeep of Passengers to not start you in massive deficits.

• Made the Forever Cruise center situation stage longer

• Added a Passenger Satisfaction penalty for abandoning Forever Cruise contracts

• The Doomsday modifier you get for successfully embarking now grants +60% habitability

• Increased offspring ship limits.

• Nomad strategic-resource harvesting reworked. Researching a resource's mining technology now grants a +50% harvesting yield for that resource (Volatile Motes, Exotic Gases, Rare Crystals, Living Metal), replacing the previous penalty for lacking the technology. This means that the bonus from the technology now applies to resources inherent to the planet class instead of only those from deposits.

• Tribute Vault and Pirate Hideout waystation modules now add their resources to the waystation's stockpile.

Bugfix

• Literally unplayable typo fixed in "Agree to Disagree" perk tooltip.

• Fixed opinion modifiers from Defender of the Galaxy applying when they shouldn't.

• Paladin ships can no longer cloak, as their UI does not support it.

• Fixed some Star Seekers checks only checking for the regular version of the civic.

• Nomad-exclusive technologies are now hidden if you decide to settle, and re-revealed if you then decide to embark and become nomadic again.

• fixed error logged when loading a save that contains popup informing about finish a tech research

• The gas giant created by the Primal Calling origin now starts surveyed.

• Corrected that mineral_insight_nomad did not provide job efficiency for astro-harvesting jobs.

• The Waystation Research Module now establishes communications with pre-FTL civilizations in its system.

• Planet class modifiers now apply to Arkship (ship-carried) colonies.

• Fixed a crash that could occur while the AI was evaluating which contract to take on.

• Total Wars between Nomads now properly move arkships between owners

• Preventing a waystation UI from crashing in some modded ui cases.

• Fixed the Planet Modifier for doomsday empires embarking not being applied to their arkship.

• Fixed the Safe Haven modifier for embarking as a doomsday empire not having an icon.

• Allowed Beastports for non-Beastmaster empires if you have tech_alien_cloning..

• Fleets will no longer get stuck not being able to jump if the target their are following is currently moving.

• In "Decipher Strange Signal", the nomadic empire needs to be in the system owner's empire to make contact

• Fixed Nomadic empires not being able to enable L-Gates in some cases.

• Arkships no longer benefit twice from waystation network (wayline) modifiers.

• The Utility Deck specialization now correctly supports industrial buildings.

• Fixed Specific Cetana events being broken for Nomads

• Fixed delayed starbase spawn upon settling as Nomads

• Fixed Cetana's Databank Project not showing up under Ongoing Crises

• Fixed the Clone Army dig site spawn event localisation pointing towards an incorrect planet

• Fixed an edge case where it was possible to dismiss the Eternal Chorus scientist before the end of the event chain

• Fixed an instance of the Assist Colony special project not spawning properly upon accepting the contract

• Fixed the Sable Pilot trait icon being empty

• Fixed crash that could happen when federation members were destroyed while a proposal was still being voted

• "Cetana: Weak Links" entry stays inside the borders of the Situation Log window.

• Fixed 2 resort world specializations deleting themselves after being build

• Changing the situation approach will now update the effect list faster - some edge cases used to delay the changes in the effects for a few in game days.

• Abandoning an internal contract no longer sends an issuer toast

• The on_cancel effect only fires once for internal contracts

• Massively increased the likelihood that the Drums of War chains starts for Heirs of the Khan empires near the mid game year.

• Ignore border restrictions for nomadic countries in uplift-species special projects

• Fixed Recall paladin ability to work for nomad players

• Fixed Stellar Ignition Contract being impossible to complete

• Take the initiative projects will now abort if they are no longer needed.

• Fixed Wanderlust event chain re-appearing in the situation log

• The Doomsday event to unlock Embarking once again unlocks embarking.

• Lowered the Forever Cruise situation speed change based on difficulty

• Enabled the Sacred Path event chain to remain in the Situation Log after completing all Sacred Sites, so players can still find them on the galaxy map.

• Color change in "System Warmth Detected" event window

• Fixed internal contract spawn chances for Forever Cruise

• Fixed the Timeline event for megastructures only firing for Behemoth empires

• Fixed GetPlanetMoon returning a capitalized version of Planet as well as not returning moon when it should

• The Doomsday Arkship modifier now speeds up decisions, not buildings

• Fixed some Patron callings and deeds that were inappropriate for Nomadic Empires showing up.

• Fixed the tooltips for some Patron accords not showing the correct tooltips for gestalt empires.

• Fixed the tooltips for when an Arkship couldn't perform an action being confusing in some cases.

• Blocked Shroud-Forged from Embarking.

• You can no longer distribute Zro or Astral Threads during the Psionic Ascension situation if you run out of Zro or Astral Threads.

• Astral Scars spawned during the Psionic Ascension situation are now revealed to Nomadic Empires.

• Fixed an unlocalized tooltip for cloaking detection.

• Fixed some backup clone effects checking for the incorrect tradition.

• Arkship Preparation for the Doomsday origin now correctly reduces the time to embark.

• Polish and Russian loc fix

• Added a fallback if the Cyberization situation gets stuck with less than 100 pops to cyberize

• A firing Stellar Cannon no longer blocks interaction with planets and construction in other star systems.

• Arkships can now research the special project in Crystal Manufactory

• The Breach the Shroud situation now recognizes all types of Psi Corps buildings

• Unit Solace now correctly has the Synthetic trait

• Players without the Nomads DLC can again create Nomadic empires in multiplayer when the host owns the DLC.

• Fixed Arkship afterburners not upgrading to tier 2 when Advanced Afterburners is researched.

• Automated fleets no longer drop out of automation after evading hostiles.

• Fixed Stingers and the Devastator Mount not obeying the listed firing arcs for their weapons in some cases.

• Fixed civic-granted starting buildings not being added on Sacred Path Nomad Arkships (Experimentation Chambers, Sanctuary of Repose, Astrometeorology Observatory, Sacrificial Temple)

• Fixed Experimentation Chambers not being added on Hive/Machine Nomad Arkship starts

• Fixed deep-scan Resource Cache toast displaying incorrectly

• Fixed Forever Cruise empires incorrectly receiving Luxury Residences on game start

• Event generated Nomad empires will no longer get an asteroid

• Fixed Arkship move button incorrectly disabled

• The Abandon Contract button now warns about the consequences in its tooltip.

• Fixed duplicate colony names in the diplomacy tooltip after a nomad empire settles.

• Fixed a Special Project icon that could appear underneath the star in certain situations.

• Fixed starbase module and building limits showing as 0 in link tooltips.

• Timed project alerts no longer show projects from option groups you did not select.

• Fixed a duplicate scope name in deposit-related event tooltips.

• Fixed accepted contracts showing "Available Until: 0" in the issuer's tooltip.

• Fixed the outliner planet tooltip incorrectly reading "Carried by".

• Improved unhelpful modifier tooltip labels on Arkships.

• The anomaly "The Imitator" can no longer appear twice.

• The Stellar Cannon no longer removes portals when it fires.

• Fixed situation approaches not working after a repeating situation completed a cycle.

• Fixed welding bots facing the wrong way while constructing a megastructure.

• Harvesting modifiers for Civilian Arkships are now working correctly.

• Fixed some resource mining technologies being blocked for Nomadic empires.

• Fixed issues in which settled empires that Embarked could retain starbases and borders. Clarified the tooltip for Waystation conversion in English.

• Expulsions wars will no longer move stations nomads are not allowed to build before reverting their ownership

• Fixed Governor modifiers not applying.

• Nomad Raids now properly transfer waystations on status quo's in both directions

• Maintenance Optimization Tradition now grants Amenities bonuses for Calculator Jobs and the Hive equivalent.

• Changed icon for "Resources Stolen" alert notification to make it more noticeable after successfully plundering a planet.

• Operational Reserves tooltip now mentions the 1-3 scaling of energy/minerals to operational reserves

• Fixed numerous modifiers (such as the Stability from Bureaucrats granted by Byzantine Bureaucracy) not granting their modifiers to Arkships. Note to modders: Any scripted modifier needs to be updated to work on colonies rather than planets.

AI

• AI will no longer accept unreachable contracts and will abandon contracts that become unreachable.

• Fixed AI empires not properly using Deep Sleep mechanics.

• Fixed nomadic AI empires not merging their armies into a single transport fleet.

• Fixed AI not selecting hostile, domineering, threatened or imperious attitudes if either country is nomadic.

• Fixed AI counting their existing armies twice when calculating how many armies to build.

UI/UX

• Eager Explorers, Privatized Exploration, Stargazers, and Exploration Protocols are now marked as a Challenging Civic on the empire creation screen.

• Ship automation buttons are now disabled, with an explanatory tooltip, for ships that cannot use Hyperlane travel.

• The diplomacy window dynamically resizes width as you move between options

• Selection box remains in the correct section after building a System or Spinal Mount

• Improved concept tooltips for starbase building and module unlocks.

• Fix waystation stockpile max capacity rounded to thousands

• Removed a duplicate Ascension Perks header in the perk picker.

• The starbase module list now keeps its scroll position when advancing through slots.

• Fixed the Situation Log selection jumping back to the first entry when scrolling.

• Fixed the position of the remove-contract button.

• Waystation UI now shows income to two decimal places.

• Waystations that are collecting excessive resources now have more room to display their icons in the system map.

Performance

• Improved performance of the empire creation UI.

Stability

• Fixed a crash on the start of the game loaded from an old save file.

• Fixed a SHELD_HEALTH OOS on hotjoin

• Country Modifiers OOS fixed due to badly parallelized navy coverage calculations

• to reduce the amount of OOS at resync, the host will now also reload the save during a resync

Audio

• Stellaris Complete Soundtrack updated with Nomads tracks and album artwork.

• Correct sound now plays when arkships are attacked.

Modding

• Added `category_limit_fail_text` to scripted actions.

• Added a `context_menu_ordering` (distance/weight) field for scripted actions to control target ordering when issued on a whole system.

• Added a per-ship-class shield multiplier modifier (e.g. `corvette_shield_mult`), matching the existing per-class health and armor multipliers.

• Added collected_colony_resources allowing starbase modules to steal or clone resources from colonies in the same system.

• Added AI_HOSTILE_FLEET_DISTANCE define.

Let us know if you run into any issues!

The 4.4 Nomads release adapted a large number of Origins to nomadic gameplay, but more is always better. Most of the list of disallowed Origins have technical reasons.

We plan on enabling more nomadic fantasies going forward. Storm Chasers and Knights of the Toxic God are on the shortlist, along with further investigation into Broken Shackles. We won’t make any promises at this time (Broken Shackles has been especially tricky, since the MSI flagship isn’t set up quite right to just be turned into an Arkship), but the Custodian team wants to enable as many as possible.

Some of these are likely to make it into this summer’s 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta.

During the development of 4.4, the programming team spent a lot of time working on multiplayer stability. The data we’ve collected so far looks very promising regarding out-of-syncs, but we’d like to hear more from how it’s been going for you, even if it’s largely anecdotal.

We’re also eager to hear more about what you like and dislike about Nomadic gameplay, so we can adjust our plans for the 4.4.5 patch and 4.5.

Last Thursday we held a Q&A on discord - here’s a transcript of the questions and answers.

azaken_mobito asked:
How terrifying would a fleet of tier 3 military Arkships be?

Well, you can only have 1 per fleet. So not too bad ;)
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

neonakoro asked:
what happens if everyone closes their borders to a nomadic empire and/or destroys their way stations?

Just closing borders won't stop Nomads from moving through, if everyone in the galaxy had declared war on the nomad to expulse them at the same time, than we move into a wonky situations where the nomad will likely be stuck for a while and they really should work on their PR
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

velhote1051 asked:
How do you plan on supporting nomads in the future? Can we expect nem nomads content in future DLC and/or tweaks and changes from the custodian to nomads?

Future content should work with Nomads. Same as with MegaCorp when there is fun potential fantasies we add them!
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

eps200 asked:
Have you considered removing megastructure caps, balanced by having the modifier non stacking. That would make second ones less powerful and avoid us getting screwed out by the limits.

One of the things we're probably going to experiment with during this summer is changing Starbase Limits into a Structure Limit, which would also include changing the limits on kilostructures and possibly even megastructures. If our internal experiments go well, expect it to go into an Open Beta at some point for a while.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

fiji_oskar asked:
does operational reserve has capacity limit

Yes, off the top of my head I think it's around 50k or thereabouts
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

ravana. asked:
What's the status of the outliner allowing fleets to be reordered?

It has gone from never to unlikely.
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

dskin asked:
how effective is playing mp stellaris as a co-op between settled and nomad empires?

I had a lot of fun issuing a bunch of contracts for Cosmogone to do during one of the dev MPs. He buffed my colonies and did things for me, and we coexisted quite nicely together.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

lucaszorua asked:
what are your thoughts on size-based traits? Like if you want a species to be mouse or elephant sized

I have been pitching the Big and Small species pack since my first day here!
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

the_no0b asked:
if the answer to the big question about life, the universe and the entire rest is "42", then what the hell was the question?

Ground combat rework when?
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

tabernak asked:
Does genocidal biological hivemind consume all biomass from worlds and leaves an empty baren world ?

They kill all the pops, but they quite fully scour it. If you want to eat planets you will need to be lithoid.
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

squishyfishy asked:
any thoughts on abducting cool planetary features?

We actually did talk about that during development. I think Grunts wanted to steal the Eiffel Tower.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

fleppo99 asked:
How will the new Democratic Interlink Cyborg Pop faction work if Cyborgs in that empire type have no Happiness, and factions no Approval Rating to work off of because of that? How is Faction Approval determined with this new faction?

The Interlink has no demands
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

hotcoffee_ asked:
I love the new merch - any plans to make more plushies?

Yep I have seen two of them! Very soft.
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

tabernak asked:
For you, which ascension path is the funniest to play as a Nomads ? I personally think Virtuality can be hilarious being the biggest moving data center through the galaxy

Virtuality 100%. Though some of the psionic patrons are also hilarious.
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

sandwich8 asked:
are galactic nomads going to put back into the game, even if you own MegaCorp???

The original nomads from 1.0 do not come back with this DLC, they are replaced with actual empires instead of the old NPC ones
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

rynn11k asked:
What are you most excited for for 4.5?

Hopefully massively decreasing the amount of technical debt in the script to make the plans for 4.6 and 2027 easier to achieve
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

squishyfishy asked:
can nomads create a mercenary enclave in an owned system and remain the patron?

Yep it's tied to the waystation when a nomad creates them. Might be a hard time getting it back if it blows up tho
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

formula_c8h10n4o2 asked:
Can you still become ruler of the galactic imperium as a Nomad?

I don't see why we would block that ????
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

azaken_mobito asked:
Can Arkships have alien zoos?

Yes, useful if you have a Nascent Stage Kindergarten.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

halfedead_harry asked:
Do nomads act well as advanced subjects?

Nomadic empires cannot be (or have be an overlord to) the specialist subject types from Overlord. They were too planet-/system-based.
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

dskin asked:
are there conquering wargoals allowing you to take over waystations owned by other nomads

Yes
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

azaken_mobito asked:
Would leaders in control of Arkships be Captains, Admirals, or Grand Admirals you think?

Arkships have two leaders assigned to them, one to the colony (as the governor) and one to the ship. The ship leader can be either a Commander or a Scientist.
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

the_no0b asked:
Can a star be changed by the latest revealed spinal mount, then starforged by a Hpyerthermia empire, and then still be Dysonswarmed? Or blown up into a black hole?

Should just work, yes
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

cipher3250 asked:
Did the devs have a chance to do an internal MP game during nomads dev? Did the devs who played nomads end up being more helpful or annoying to the rest of you dirtdwellers?

We have a weekly MP game that's typically 90-120 minutes long. It's incredibly useful for finding all of the crashes and out-of-sync issues that the community thankfully never sees.
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

formula_c8h10n4o2 asked:
Can Forever Cruise be Individualist Machines?
And with forever cruise, is it possible to... 'replace' the starting passengers? Say I want to accept passengers from all the strongest factions of the galaxy! Is it possible to offer out services as a cruise to other races and empires beyond our starting passengers?

Yep you can be robits! And yes you can add more passengers or crew as the game goes on. You can not really remove your starting passangers tho.
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

jumblee asked:
how possible is it to not use harvesting actions and still thrive as nomads (I want to be eco friendly)

Its sub-optimal, but its possible. You will most likely be sacrificing more of your districts for energy production than a harvesting nomad.
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

azaken_mobito asked:
Will Arkships have their own Name lists? Will this update seemlessly inject new name lists without it counting as a mod or a modded game that messes with compatibility?

Civilian Arkships use the Colony Ship namelists, Scientific Arkships use the Science Ship namelists, Military Arkships use the Juggernaut namelists
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

alexiacew asked:
Will nomad empires get colony events?

They'll get Arkship events.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

dskin asked:
what gives warscore against nomadic empires?

Defeating their fleets, disabling their arkships, pretty much everything that would work for normal empires, except occupying starbases
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

azaken_mobito asked:
Have you considered adding an Origin for Nomads that makes them explorers from another Galaxy?

You might want to pay attention to one of the scenarios being released later this year
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

the_no0b asked:
were there any funny errors/bugs/explouts you ran into while developing this DLC?

YES! In fact, this one's even in our release build, so it's a Known Issue!

The galaxy is vast and full of riches. Space based deposits are more common than intended (almost every object in the galaxy has something on it!) but it’s pretty cool so this is probably going to turn into a galaxy generation slider.

It's really fun, so we're gonna keep it as a slider.

Other funny bugs included when logging in or loading a save would immediately kill your empire, as we were partially through the colony carrier conversion.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)
lucaszorua asked:
apologies I meant can you use subspace imaging without creating / discovering new hyperlanes. It sounds like subspace is more likely to find things rather than deep scan

Subspace Imaging has a less than 10% chance of discovering new hyperlanes or wormholes when used and can only be used once per system. I wouldn't worry too much.
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

formula_c8h10n4o2 asked:
Can Nomadic Empires create Nomadic Vassals? The settled and embarked mechanics showed that Nomads could create settled vassals (or become settled while all their other arkships become vassals) but is it possible for a Nomad to remain Nomadic while creating other nomadic vassals?

Nomads can have other nomadic vassals, yes
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

rafi69 asked:
Can one of our colony embark on an arkship while at war, to escape it and let our new vassal deal with it?

You can escape sure, however you are still the country who was in that war :P
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

dskin asked:
are there events where destroyed empires can evacuate onto arkships, such as escaping from a genocidal empire if they have sufficient pop numbers or resources?

Becoming nomadic has to be done before you lose the game, though of course if you die you could then continue as any empire so you might find a suitable Nomadic empire somewhere in the galaxy.
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

lavraleksej asked:
how painfull will porting a mod relying on planet flags and empire borders be?

Depending on how involved the mod is it might just be a case of replacing `colony_` with `carrier_`, alternatively it might be several days of work. Depends on the mod really.
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

cipher3250 asked:
I probably missed this - how do nomads handle archeology and rifts?

they can always do it outside of borders, and if they get archivisim they can do it inside of borders.
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

azaken_mobito asked:
How many puns were added in Nomads? Was it enough, or far too little?

never enough.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

kayla_colon3 asked:
do star types affect your arkship? for example more radiant stars increase energy output

Nah, but see the new Photoadaptive trait! https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-423-stellar-cannon-civics-and-the-hyacinth-found.1926410/Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

big_fish213 asked:
is there a setting to choose how many empires will appear as nomads vs traditional empires? or is it just a random chance that an empire may generate as nomads?

We have a slider for how many nomadic empires can appear in the galaxy. Nomadic empires can also randomly be selected to be Advanced Start empires, meaning they start with up to 3 arkships
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

hotcoffee_ asked:
In your opinion what is the best looking shipset?

A tie between the Spinovores from BioGenesis, the Mindwardens from Shadows of the Shroud, the \[REDACTED] from Willpower, and the \[REDACTED] from \[REDACTED] (at least the concept art for it).
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

gorehuchi asked:
Have you all ever considered allowing transport fleets to damage starbases or large ships with "boarding" actions? This question is spurred by the fact arc ships can't be invaded.

It is a surprisingly common topic in our design meetings but we have no current plans for this. Just note that this is a far bigger change than it would seem and so not something we would want to implement casually.
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

gorehuchi asked:
Can a nomadic empire have Obsessional Directive? I would like to field a fleet of paperclip hungry von Neumann probes.

Yes. Make the galaxy a consumer good
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

mon.archie asked:
Could you describe what the Wanderlust AP does in a little more detail?

Go to cool places and be rewarded! You start out with some powerful modifiers and get more based on what systems you visit. See the curators for what might be out there.
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

captainkorpie asked:
How will Void Dwellers function as a nomadic empire? will that even be compatible?

Void Dwellers are not compatible with Nomads. They're all Void Dwellers.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

eps200 asked:
\[ Could a space fauna serve as the colony carrier? A nomadic version of here be dragons?]

I can't immediately think of a reason why this wouldn't be possible to mod in.
Answered by: pthooie (Programmer)

formula_c8h10n4o2 asked:
What origins can and cannot be Nomadic? Beyond some obvious examples like Wilderness. Progenitor Hives? Mind Wardens? Under One Rule? Scion? Cybernetic Creed? Synthetic Fertility? Shroud Forged? Here Be Dragons?

We listed these in the latest dev diary! https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-424-nomads-and-4-4-pegasus-preliminary-release-notes.1927421/Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

azaken_mobito asked:
What is each of your favorite parts of this new DLC for all the panelists?

All the new ways you can play. It almost feels like we doubled the amount of combinations and playstyles. Which is really cool!
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

azaken_mobito asked:
Can we have some murder mystery events happen within our empires sometimes for various potential outcomes and for just the sheer fact it would be interesting?

We do have that already. Usually the mystery is who murdered my energy income. Jokes aside, there is nothing particularly stopping us, but as always it needs to fit into the narratives and themes the Content Design team is exploring at any given time. It does suffer a bit since Stellaris on a galactic scale and murder mysteries are more personal.
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

formula_c8h10n4o2 asked:
Nomads and crisis paths, how do they work? Cause all crisis paths depend on some form of megastructure. The Aetherophasic Engine, The Synaptic Lathe, The Behemoth Egg/Chrysalis, The Galactic Crucible. Are Nomadic empires incapable of becoming these? Or if they can, how does it work with another empire settling the system they built their super galaxy machine in?

You can actually own megastructures without owning the system, so a lot of these actually work quite well out the box. Cosmogenesis is the odd one out since it also required pops and that broke things. But we are investigating it!
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

paprusteuton asked:
Will the free update set to release alongside Stellaris: Willpower contain changes to internal politics, such as factions and elections?

The free updates alongside releases almost always include at least some updates to the systems we explore within the DLC release.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

the_no0b asked:
Are there any plans for a Nomad specific crisis path? There's a lot of potential to be explored here, like an empire that acts like the scavenger bot, going around destroying stuff and incorporating it into the arcship to make it bigger and bigger...

Not especially, but if you wanted to make me happy go eat every world as a terravore!
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

formula_c8h10n4o2 asked:
Psionic Auras and Shroud Seals. It was previously mentioned that you could equip waystations with Aura Emitters but do Arkships have any ability to project a psionic aura with their populations or is ALL of that done through the waystations? And I presume Shroud Seals remain the same but I might as well ask. Nomadic Mindwardens?

All colonies project aura if they can. Arkships have colonies. itjustworks.gif
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

lucaszorua asked:
can you decide to NOT make hyperlanes during a deep scan and just look for deposits etc

Deep Scanning cannot discover new hyperlanes
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

shaxingren3900 asked:
Can a psionicist like Shroudshaper become a Shroud Patron？

I do not think we have ever considered that but its a very cool idea.
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

engie4212 asked:
What made y'all decide Arkships would carry nomadic empires?

Well having a planet off map where your pops lived and just pretend that you were nomadic sounded boring!
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

azaken_mobito asked:
What Arkship do you all like to start with first?

It depends on how mean I'm planning on being. The meaner I am, the more likely I am to take the Military Arkship. If I'm nice I tend to go for the Scientific one, but not always.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

corpalcat asked:
How will virtuality and nanomachine ascension work as a nomad?

Nanites has been answered already in anther question. Virtuality will work virtually the same. There is very little in its base functionality that Nomads clashed with.
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

jackisonhiatus asked:
The game's ship pathfinding seems obsessed with taking the shortest route possible, even if it leads into obvious dangers like a Marauder homespace or the Shattered Hive's forbidden zone. Is there any way to fix this?

In systems you don't want ships to path through, there is a small button next to the system name, if you click it, it will restrict the system from pathfinding
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

zilea asked:
Have there been any considerations in regards to traditions and Ascension perks. And the bloat there is in there? Right now with the current available slots for either it's very shoehorned into a fixed set of traditions than being able to select some in response to what happens without feeling you loose what you aimed for me. Any plans to increase these slots up to say 12 and matching perks, or allow linking traditions so you can choose to have 2 inside the same slot.

We do not have any plans for something like that. In general the scarcity of AP's and Traditions slots is by design, we want more choices, not less. If builds get to stale, we'd rather investigate this from the direction of "this shouldn't always be the best choice, no matter what"
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

neonakoro asked:
How many origins are available to nomads?

I posted a list of origins and civics available or barred to nomads in today's dev diary thread on our forum. ( https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-424-nomads-and-4-4-pegasus-preliminary-release-notes.1927421/page-2#post-31346985 )
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

azaken_mobito asked:
How useful is the Exodus Jump for invading other Empires you are at war with?

Very!
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

tempest1273 asked:
I understand that in the basegame, being a settled vs nomadic empire will be binary with nothing like "a few planets and a few arkships" but will this be moddable so you can in fact have arkships and planets simultaneously?

You can try, however a lot of the ingame logic assumes that this never occurs and things might break.
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

meatshtick asked:
Does the scion origin work with nomads?

I was playing it in our Dev MP earlier today. Having a fleet of fallen empire ships made securing victory the CFL! contest dead easy and led to profits acquired via the Pest Control contracts I was issued.
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

navar asked:
Are Inward Perfection Nomads possible?

Ye sure! Go out and be grumpy! Telling people to stay off your lawn when you were the one that drove there.
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

necrolcz asked:
May i ask if waystations are meant to be weaker spacestations? Or can they be just as good at static defence?

Different, rather than weaker. They are primarily economic in nature though, they're not particularly defensive.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

the_no0b asked:
For regular empires the start of the game consists of scouring nearby systems to find good planets, like relic planets or gaia planets or even just good modifyers and events. Have Arkships something that balances out that they cannot have these things?

Nomads will also want to find special systems, but mostly for juicy deposits. What arkships do have is the promise of being size 27 at the max. Which is guaranteed as well as the freedom of moving away from threats.
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

gorehuchi asked:
Will arc ships have functional turret models? That was something I missed (but understand not having) on bioships

Arkships have functional turrets. Biological ships not having turrets was a deliberate creative choice that the art team made
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

navar asked:
Some civics like Byzantine Bureaucracy, Cutthroat Politics, and Imperial Cult lack flavor, will any be added in the near or distant future? They could have cool stuff, but are just number tweaks at the moment!

Sure
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

algae328 asked:
How do nomadic terravores work? Do their purge vassals use the consume planet decision?

Their vassals first purge all the pops and sends all the resources to their parent empire.

Then you can use your Arkship to eat the planet <:smjoe_happy:1107796759570284635>
Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

the_no0b asked:
how many stellar cannons does it take to oneshot Cetana? What happens if we do so before are allowed to enter her systems, or even before she establishes contact?

Try it and find out.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

squishyfishy asked:
How exactly does deepscanning work?

In order it does the following:
* Grants some Intel on the System Owner depending on what they have in the system.
* Rolls on the Deep Scanning outcome table:
* 50% Nothing Happens (This chance increases depending how many times the planet has been Deep Scanned)
* 15% Uncover a Resource Cache
* 25% Uncover a Resource Deposit
* 7% Uncover an Anomaly
* 3% Uncover an Archaeology Site

If you uncover a Resource Deposit, the Resource Depletion modifier from Harvesting is removed.
Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

catos67 asked:
how will nomad civil wars work

Grand Theft Arkship
Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

terraseb asked:
Normal empires have starbases for defense. Do nomads have something similar if one would rather make a like turtle strat or is it only things like ships and military arkships.

Staying put is anathema to Nomads. Void Reavers (and a few options in one of the Nomadic Origins) can fortify their Waystations a bit, but it won't compare to the defenses a settled empire can build in a system.
Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

There are additional questions from the Q&A posted on the Paradox forums if you would like to read them all!

We also had some questions gathered by our Community Ambassador from the Chinese Stellaris Community - the translated questions he gave us and our answers (in English) are here:

Late-game performance remains one of the most frequently raised concerns among CN players. Are there any further plans to improve late-game performance, especially CPU utilization, multi-core scheduling, large-fleet situations, and high-pop/high-system galaxies?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

Performance, AI, and Stability remain among the top priorities of the Custodian team.

How does the team prioritize bug fixing, stability issues, and event-chain blockers between major content updates? Would the team consider a more transparent or regular process for addressing frequently reported bugs?

Iggy (Content Design) said:

A part of our team, the Custodians, is always dedicated to improvements to the game. These are often exactly the things like you asked, bug fixing, stability issues, etc. That is why when there is usually a patch with no other DLCs attached, the patch notes are a lot longer. When we do release a new update, though, everyone moves over to fixing for a few weeks. Making sure to make the game as good as it can be.

Many CN players feel that weaker civics, origins, and ascension paths should be improved rather than strong playstyles being repeatedly nerfed. How does the team decide whether to buff weak options or nerf strong ones?

Iggy (Content Design) said:

We think so too! If you look back at Custodian updates in the past (especially 3.1 and 3.9) you can see that we really enjoy making old content especially good. This style of development has not been forgotten and it's something we like to do.

Some players worry that old DLC mechanics are weakened or made less attractive when newer DLC systems are introduced. How does the team approach balance between new paid content and older DLC/base-game playstyles?

Iggy (Content Design) said:

Since we are not a competitive pvp game with ladder rankings or tournaments, while we always try to balance new content against old content, we do sometimes overlook some of the more… “creative” uses taken by the Community when using new content. But also we keep making old stuff too powerful, I can't count how many times Rogue Servitors have been made into the best civic in the game.

Are there plans to improve AI empire management, especially in colony development, economy planning, diplomacy, and warfare, so that difficulty can rely less on raw bonuses and more on better decision-making?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

Yes, we will continue to work on the AI. Game difficulties will very likely continue to grant them efficiency bonuses to make them a greater threat.

As Stellaris becomes increasingly complex, are there plans to improve automation and reduce repetitive micromanagement, such as planet automation, starbase templates, fleet reinforcement, construction queues, and ship design automation?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

It’s our desire that a player should feel at ease manually selecting a planetary designation, turning on planetary automation, and they should expect to end up with a planet that is roughly what they would expect a Mining World or Tech World to look like when it is done. We do expect you to manually manage your most critical core worlds (like your capital), but conquering a neighbor shouldn’t require immense levels of micromanagement. (This also connects indirectly to some of the AI improvements we want to make - it’s less of an issue if the planets you take over are better.)

We have some plans for things like ship design automation planned for the 4.5 Open Beta during the summer.

Could the new-player experience and tutorial be improved to better explain planet development, economy planning, fleet design, and the overall mid-to-late game structure?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

With a game that shifts over time as much as Stellaris, we’ve found that other players tend to be the best teachers. (When 4.4 releases, we’ve asked some members of the Community to make tutorials for Nomads, for instance.) That said - I’d love to use the Scenario System to make a proper focused tutorial for various game systems.

Are there any plans to rework or expand ground warfare and planetary invasions? Many players feel the current army system is too simple compared with space combat.

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

We do not currently have plans for a ground combat rework.

Will diplomacy, espionage, trade, and internal politics receive deeper mechanics in future updates? Many players want more ways to influence other empires beyond direct warfare.

Iggy (Content Design) said:

The upcoming Willpower DLC will focus on external politics and pressures; you should see things like ethics attraction, and alliances matter more there. This is something we enjoy and want to keep exploring and expanding.

Will future development include more narrative-driven content, event chains, story origins, scenario-style packs, or deeper long-form stories?

Iggy (Content Design) said:

We always love telling new stories as well as expanding on existing ones. Look to Willpower for the “Lost Makers” origin where you learn more about the precursors than we ever knew before. And with the new Scenario Pack where you play as the Unbidden, learn more about the Extradimensional Invaders and why they might have come to our galaxy.

Are there plans to revisit older systems and DLC content, such as Fallen Empires, the L-Cluster, Leviathans, older megastructures, older ascension perks, and older origins, to bring them closer to the depth of newer content?

Iggy (Content Design) said:

These are all parts of the game the Custodians have had their eyes on. One interesting thing, now that Utopia and others have been folded into the base game, new updates can make use of these and assume that they are part of every player experience. This makes it a lot easier to expand on things like older megastructures.

Will cross-DLC interactions become a larger focus in future updates? For example, stronger links between ascension paths, crises, Fallen Empires, L-Cluster/Nanotech content, Cosmogenesis, and Galactic Custodian/Imperium systems.

Iggy (Content Design) said:

The Custodian team is always looking for interesting and fun ways to improve and connect DLCs, for instance we got the new Fallen Empire and Cosmogensis combined when you play with BioShips. One thing you should look forward to is the “Lost Makers” origin as it ties together with existing precursors.

Can modding support be improved with better documentation, more stable interfaces, version control options, and more exposed hooks for newer systems?

Alfray Stryke (Game Designer) said:

Whenever possible, we aim to make new additions to the game as moddable as we can.

Are there plans to improve Simplified Chinese localization quality and terminology consistency, especially for newer mechanical text and UI strings? Could there be a clearer channel or workflow for collecting and fixing localization issues?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

Our Community Ambassador has been bringing your reports directly to us, and we hope that it has improved the quality of the translations at least somewhat.

Are there plans to improve multiplayer stability and desync issues, especially late-game desyncs and random_count-related problems? Would official matchmaking ever be considered?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

Multiplayer stability is incredibly high on the Custodian programming team’s priorities.

What is the long-term development vision for Stellaris? How many more years of major updates does the team currently plan for, and how does the team decide between continuing Stellaris and eventually making a sequel?

Alfray Stryke (Game Designer) said:

We have all of science-fiction to draw upon for inspiration and the design team has no shortage of ideas for future updates.

Could the game offer more configurable galaxy/gameplay settings for players who prefer different pacing, such as resource output, empire size penalties, fleet capacity, and crisis timing?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

We’ve already added some sliders in galaxy generation for some of these - naval capacity and command limit sliders were added in 4.3.3, and the end-game year (which dictates when the end-game crisis can occur) has been around since the beginning. 4.4 will be adding a Fallen and Awakened Empire Strength slider, and we have a Galactic Resource Abundance slider planned for this summer’s 4.5 Open Beta.

Many thanks to everyone who participated!

Next week we have our Nomads Art Blast. I took a peek at the work-in-progress diary, and it’s looking really nice.

See you then!