[2023] Stellaris Dev Diary #316 - Leader Consolidation

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

by Eladrin

Hello everybody!

Today we’re going to look at a likely 3.10 feature, some changes that we’ve called the Leader Consolidation.

With leaders becoming more important to your empire following the 3.8 ‘Gemini’ release alongside Galactic Paragons, there were some rough edges leftover and experiences that could be better. Some of the changes we’re implementing during this leader consolidation were things we talked about during the development of Galactic Paragons but decided against for various reasons, or were out of scope at the time, while others are based on data gathered since then and community feedback.
So What’s Changing?​ Some of these names are still being argued over, so are subject to change. Hate one in particular? Let us know. One of us probably hates it too.

Admirals and Generals will be merged into the Commander, the Military leader class.

Admiral and General will remain as veteran classes, with the following foci:

• Admiral - Focuses on Fleets and general naval combat
  
• General - Focuses on taking planets and assaulting static defenses - Armies, Planetary Bombardment, Ground Combat, and attacking defensive structures such as Starbases are the General’s forte
  
• Commissioner - Focuses on Planetary Governance (Martial Law)
  
• Strategist - Focuses on the Council, especially the Minister of Defense position

The old Governors and some Envoy functions will be merged into Officials, the Administrative leader class.

Their veteran classes will be:

• Delegate - Focuses on Federations and the Galactic Community
  
• Industrialist - Focuses on Planetary Governance (Industry and Development)
  
• Ambassador - Council Focus (Diplomacy, Espionage, and First Contact), especially suited for the new Minister of State position
  
• Advisor - Council Focus (Economy)

This does give the Officials two council focused subclasses, but the two are different enough that we felt it best to let them specialize accordingly. The Advisor is expected to thrive in some civic based council positions.

Scientists remain the third, Scientific leader class.

Veteran Classes:

• Explorer - Focuses on Surveying and Exploration
  
• Academic - Focuses on Archaeology and Anomalies
  
• Analyst - Focuses on Planetary Governance (Assist Research)
  
• Statistician - Focuses on the Council, especially the Minister of Science position

As suggested in last week’s teaser and by some of the above bullet points, “governor” will no longer be a leader class. Instead, a planet or sector can be governed by any leader, regardless of class, with differing effects. For example, instead of being local planetary decisions, placing a Commander in charge of a sector will place the entire sector under Martial Law. (The exact effects of which will be changing somewhat too - we want it to be a reasonable thing to put the military in charge of a newly conquered or disruptive set of planets until the condition stabilizes.) Administrative leaders will have most of the effects of the current governors, and the Assist Research effects will be moving to the Scientific governors.

You will still be able to override a Sector Governor on a specific planet by placing a Planetary Governor there, so your Forge Ecumenopolis could have an Industrialist governor in a sector that is otherwise led by a Scientist.

We’re also doing a major rebalancing of the traits themselves. As part of this, we’re reintroducing some sector-wide traits to governors (though now they’re split across the governing veteran classes), and the traits themselves will clearly show if they’re of sector or planetary scope. Note that a sector-wide governor trait will not apply to a planet that has its own local planetary governor overriding them.

So are Envoys Real Leaders Now? ​
Partially.

A single Administrative leader can be assigned to your Federation and another to the Galactic Community (or Empire) like numerous Envoys did in the past. Their level and traits will determine how effective they are at the job instead of cramming every Envoy you can spare into there, making Delegates the optimal candidates for this sort of thing.

The Minister of State position is being added to the base council alongside the military and scientific ministries. This councilor will also have general effects on diplomacy, espionage, and first contact.


Ruler, plus one red, one yellow, and one blue council member.​

Envoys will remain as they were to represent the Minister of State’s bureaucratic reach, and will continue to handle “minor tasks” such as Improve and Harm Relations, maintaining Espionage spy networks, and First Contact.

What About Leader Caps?​ Leader caps remain, but are per-class, with any over-cap penalties affecting only the particular leader class that is over. Civics, traditions, and other effects that previously increased the generic leader cap will now generally increase the cap for one or more specific classes.

We may end up shifting more of the over-cap penalty over to the upkeep cost of leaders.

What about Gestalt Councils?​ Gestalt Councils currently have a significant advantage in passing agendas in the early game due to having a larger number of councilors. This disparity will be lessened a bit due to the regular empires starting with one additional councilor, and we’re also making council legitimacy (how happy your factions are with your council) affect agenda progress.

Their nodes will get a little bit of a reshuffle to accommodate the various changes, but should otherwise remain generally familiar. We’ll be able to share more details later on during the development cycle.

I’m a Modder, Tell Me Modding Stuff​ We’ll have more details in the release notes, but leader classes are no longer hard-coded and are thus much more moddable in script, so you should theoretically be able to do things like "this leader does research, commands armies, and represents us in the galcom!"

Is that everything?​ Nooooo.

Next on our Custodian “this is not internal politics” agenda is to do a pass on council agendas. Our thought is that agendas should have more impactful results (tangible effects rather than modifiers), and the range of available agendas should be related to the ethics of your active councilors instead of the ethics of your empire.

This is planned for 3.11 ‘[REDACTED]’ at the earliest.

In the longer term, we may want to make greater differentiation between the councils of different authorities - the councils of a Democracy and a Megacorp could feel different from one another, for example.

Next Week​ Next week we’ll boldly go where no dev diary has gone before.

(We're all currently at a staff conference, so dev replies to the diary will be delayed, but we'll make sure to read through all of the comments when we get back.)