Stellaris Dev Diary #421 - Contracts, Life on the Arkship, and Forever Cruise

by Eladrin

Hello everyone! Today the team will be going over some of the general gameplay differences you’ll see when playing a Nomadic empire. After going over the fine print of Nomad Contracts, we’ll take a luxury trip on the Forever Cruise, look over the newest model of Civilian Arkships and Logistics Ships, harvest some resources, reprocess some unnecessary planetoids, build some kilostructures, and examine our Arkship’s operation reserves and infrastructure. Let’s get moving!

Contracts​

I’m PDX_Ferry and I’m here to talk about Contracts and the Forever Cruise origin. Contracts let settled empires outsource work to nomads. Need hostile space fauna cleared from a system? Resources harvested? A third party to join your wars? Issue a Contract! They come in four categories: Military, Science, Resource, and Diplomacy, and cost Trade to issue.

Right-click a system to issue contracts ​

From the nomad side, contracts are a way to earn income. Accept a contract, send your Arkship to the location, complete the work, and collect the Trade reward.

Steam post image A Waystation in this system will benefit us both. ​

Some contracts require that you complete one or more special projects, perform Arkship fleet orders like Harvest Resources, or bombard planets in the Raid Planet contract. Completed contracts reward you with increasing amounts of trade and also improve Opinion and Trust with the issuer, opening the door to Wayline Pacts and deeper diplomacy.

Right-click a system, pick a contract, and let a nomad handle it. ​

Let’s take a simple example: as an issuer, the Clear Blockers contract lets you remove all natural planetary blockers from a colony without researching the necessary technologies. As long as a nomadic empire in the galaxy has researched the new Planetary Engineering tech, the contract becomes available for you to issue.

Steam post image Can you have it done by Monday? ​

On the nomad side, you fly an Arkship to the system, complete a special project, and collect the reward. Nomadic empires are limited to one contract per Arkship, but with the ability to build more Arkships it's possible to accept more contracts.

Steam post image And we would appreciate getting paid on time. ​

Nomads have new Focus Tasks, some related to contracts and some to other parts of the nomadic experience, and modified Focus Progression steps. The Progression Tiers have also been adjusted for all empires to make it easier to reach the highest tiers.

Nomadic Focus Tasks

Arkship upgrade techs as guaranteed research options. ​

You can read more on contracts and other nomadic topics in the Databank by using the new Nomads DLC text filter.

Extra, extra, read all about it! ​

Origin: Forever Cruise​

Welcome to the Forever Cruise! Your suite is ready, the zero-gravity sucrose fountain is operational, and the observation decks are open. Nebulae to witness, alien shores to visit, spectacles yet unimagined. Our crew exists to make it happen.

Forever is a long time, especially towards the end. ​

The Forever Cruise begins with two species on one Arkship. The Crew is your primary species, who fills every working role on the ship. The Passengers are your secondary species: a class of leisure-seekers that generate Unity at a steep Consumer Goods cost. The Crew part can be a regular empire, a Hive Mind, or Machine Intelligence, including a special variant of Rogue Servitor.

Error 301: Guest permanently moved to the spa. ​

At the heart of the Forever Cruise is a question that never goes away: who does this ship serve? The Passenger Satisfaction situation tracks this as a persistent tug-of-war. If passengers grow bored, the needle drifts toward Planetfall on the left. If the crew is overworked, it drifts toward Mutiny on the right. You start in the middle, in Cruising Steady, and your job is to keep it from reaching either extreme.

Forget the crisis. This bar is your real endgame threat. ​

Both sides of the ship issue their own Contracts, which are internal demands that affect the direction that the Passenger Satisfaction situation moves. Passenger Contracts are about entertainment while Crew Contracts are about maintenance and stress relief. The Forever Cruise can also complete regular contracts issued by other empires, but remember that passengers are so used to entertainment that a Harvest Resource contract will bore them.

Satisfy one side, disappoint the other. ​

The Forever Cruise introduces the unique Service District, which has district specializations for the Crew or Passengers. The Habitation Decks (City District) can be specialized as a Fabrication Deck for the crew, an Observation Deck for passengers, or a Utility Deck for both. The origin adds eight unique buildings, for example the Passenger Estates, which increase your First Class Passenger capacity, and the Enrichment Labs, which turn passengers into amateur researchers.

No hypothesis, no method, no rigor. Somehow, results. ​

For the crew side, buildings like the Holo-Production Studios churn out passenger fantasies on demand, which boosts Entertainers. The Crew Coordination Center unlocks the Activity Manager, a new Elite Stratum job that boosts Worker and Specialist output across the Arkship.

I see you're mid-repair of the hull breach, but have you logged this task in the tracking system? ​

But push the situation too far in either direction and it is over. With Planetfall, the passengers force you to settle, which turns you into a regular settled empire. With Mutiny, the crew revolts and demands government changes. Both outcomes strip away everything that makes the Forever Cruise unique. Can you keep the cruise running forever?

Civilian Arkship and Planetary Reprocessor​

Alfray Stryke is back with another Intel Report on Arkships: [c] [/c]

Civilian Arkship Tiers ​

If Scientific Arkships are meant to explore the galaxy and find uncharted wonders, Civilian Arkships are industrial powerhouses meant to refine those wonders into something useful.

Selecting a Civilian Arkship in Empire creation. ​

Now the keen-eyed amongst our community may have noticed that the Voidfarers origin grants Arkship Action Speed: +20%. This applies to all of the special Fleet Orders we’ll be detailing today, but not the Deep Scan and Subspace Image orders from last week, since those use Survey Speed modifiers. The primary Fleet Orders these will apply to belong to the category of Harvesting Actions: These actions share some common features:

• They target celestial objects that are NOT a star or habitable world.

• They harvest resources depending on local resource deposits

• Depending on the planet class of the targeted celestial object, they harvest additional resources.

• The amount of harvested resources depends on the size of the deposits.

• Although Nomadic Empires start the game with the Strategic Extraction technology, additional technologies can be researched to improve the harvesting of strategic and rare resource deposits.

• Harvesting resources in owned systems will have diplomatic consequences with the system owner.

• After harvesting has been completed, the celestial object has the Resource Depletion modifier applied to it for a number of years (depending on the action used).

  • This prevents another harvesting action while it is present.

  • Reduces Resources from Mining Stations in orbit of the celestial object by 75%

  • Can be removed by Deep Scanning the celestial object.

​

Table of Common Planet Classes and Resources yielded by Harvesting Actions. We’ll leave it to you to discover what resources other planets yield. ​

• Harvest Resources

  • Resource Harvesting Efficacy: 100%

  • Resource Depletion Duration: 20 Years

  • Available to Arkships and Logistic Ships

    • Arkships harvest directly into the empire stockpile.

    • Logistic Ships harvest into their local stockpile.

• Planetary Strip Mining

  • Resource Harvesting Efficacy: 250%

  • Resource Depletion Duration: 50 Years

  • Requires the Arkship satisfies one of the following requirements:

    • Is a Civilian Arkship of Tier 2 or 3.

    • Is equipped with a Planetary Engineering Bay Module

    • Is equipped with a Planetary Reprocessor Spinal Mount

• Planetary Reprocessing:

  • Resource Harvesting Efficacy: 600%

  • Resource Depletion Duration: 200 Years

  • Target is converted into a Shattered World with all current deposits removed.

  • Requires the Arkship have a Planetary Reprocessor Spinal Mount

​

Both Arkships and Logistic Ships can be automated much like Science and Construction Ships, but with a few different options.

Arkship Automation Settings

Logistic Ship Automation Settings ​

As a reminder, when collecting resources from a Waystation (or Wayline) Stockpile, Logistic Ships add the resources to their internal Stockpile and have to deliver them to an Arkship in order for these resources to be used. If a Logistic Ship has Automation enabled, whenever its Stockpile reaches around 10% free capacity, it’ll automatically route to the nearest Arkship to drop off the resources and then resume the Automated orders. The automation system (which also applies to the AI usage of harvesting) has been configured for the following ​

If resources have been harvested, the deposits will appear in orange in both the system and galaxy view.

When a harvesting action is selected in the fleet UI, all valid targets will be shown in the system view and the resource icons will swap to showing what resources will be gained if that target is selected.

If a harvesting action is ordered via the context menu on either the system or galaxy view, the tooltip will inform you of which resources will be gained.

Issuing the order via the context menu on the galaxy map will also queue the order for all valid targets in that system.

When a harvesting action is completed, the toast or notification will show the resources gained.

Nomadic Empires & MegaKilostructures​

Due to their highly mobile nature, Nomadic Empires cannot build Megastructures…

What are Habitats? ​

…but they can build Kilostructures. The list of (non-Crisis Path) Megastructures that Nomadic Empires have access to are:

• Arc Furnaces (Machine Age)

• Dyson Swarms (Machine Age)

• Gateways

• Grand Archive (Grand Archive)

• Hyper Relays (Overlord)

• Quantum Catapults (Overlord)

• Waystations (Nomads)

All of these can be built by both Arkships and Logistic Ships. All requirements for Megastructure construction that require “Must own the System” for Settled Empires are instead changed to “System must be on a Wayline with a Tier 2 or 3 Waystation”.

Countless civilizations, however, cannot conceive of consigning their carefully curated collection of curiosities to some distant corner of the cosmos. ​

Arkships can also build additional Arkships via the Megastructure Build Menu, which upon construction will automatically gain a new colony with 1,000 pops of your founder species. And now to pass onto GruntsAtWork to discuss our Economic Situation

Life on the Arkship​

Hello everyone, Gruntsatwork here. Let us talk about Life on an Arkship and its economic ramifications and the best way to start, in my opinion at least, is by taking a step back. One of our earliest design goals for Nomads was a relatively simple “Nomads should move”. It is incredibly self-evident, but it remained a challenge until the end to make sure we cleaved to that vision. Every mechanic we added had to either encourage this or at least not run counter to it. Our first mechanical step into this direction was simple and will also be the first thing you notice once you start playing a nomad empire. There are no mineral districts, so gaining minerals must be achieved through other means. This very neatly introduced a need for you to move to harvest minerals. Even neater it introduced our second big design problem and design decision. “Nomads should want to move”. Forcing you to move or perish was easy, but it felt empty, because the movement felt so forced. It led to testers moving as little as necessary and then sitting stationary for as long as possible. Some of the features you have already heard about came in to address both the need for minerals but also to make it feel more rewarding to be on the move and they worked quite nicely in our humble opinion. We however were left with a slight perception issue. There was an angry red number in your top-bar, telling you that you were losing and the more you built up your Arkship, the worse it got. All the actions that should lead you to success, like building up your research, your unity or your alloys, made the number angrier and redder. It became very apparent that simply not having an income in minerals was not enough. It didn’t feel like a new playstyle, it felt like an old playstyle but worse. We bashed our brightest design heads together and before you know it, we had the shape of a solution on paper. Operational Reserves.

For nomads, both energy and minerals are handled through the Operational Reserves Situation. This is the resources required for the Arkships day to day operations. Any energy or minerals that come in, go straight into your Reserves, any that go out, come straight from your Reserves.

If your reserves are high, you get a stability and a research speed bonus, if your reserves are low, you get a ship combat penalty and a slight stability penalty. The stages are relatively simple in their effects, our main goal was to make it rewarding to have high reserves and punishing but not ruinous to have low reserves. Your ships will be incredibly ineffective if your reserves are low, but since your economy and harvesting is untouched, you should always be able to recover.

To really embrace this as a new playstyle, we set up all nomad districts, buildings and specializations to not require fixed mineral costs, but instead depend on rare resources, which you can gain through assorted Arkship actions.A lack of minerals should be a problem to solve, not a blocker on you taking action to fix your problem.

In addition, we ended up with 3 approaches, with the default one being neutral, balanced and relaxed. The Saving approach reduces your job upkeep, while also reducing your researcher and bureaucrats job efficiency. Meanwhile, the Burning Approach increases your build speed and all specialist job efficiency, which logically increases your energy and mineral upkeep as well. The goal for both approaches is to introduce a natural way to adjust your operational reserves progress.

Mind you, being at 0 Operational Reserves or close to it is a failure state - you won’t lose, but it will carry additional penalties and you won’t have a great time. Please restrict your deficit spending/bankruptcy strategies to about 364 years before our start date.

Let's talk about the standard setup you can expect on an Arkship. Each Arkship will have the base city district, a generator district and depending on if they require food or not, a farming district or a special housing district.

Your starting specializations for the city district will be unique Arkship variants, with a slightly bigger spread to your jobs. Your research and unity specialization will also add a few traders for example. This was necessary for the simple reason that as a Nomad, you will have in general far fewer colonies for longer periods of time than normal empires, as such, having to sacrifice a district becomes far more painful.

Your generator and farming districts have their usual assortment of worker tier jobs, however, there are once again unique specializations on an Arkship that allow you to adjust the output of your technicians and farmers to buff your ship for example, for the small cost of reducing your resource output….or having a rare resource upkeep on those worker tier jobs.

The Waystation Trade Hub Giveth, the Harvesting Bay Taketh Away ​

Now with all that said, what about that red-colored hole in your list of districts? What fancy new toy do you get for not having a mining district? Well, for most Arkships, they will have Ordnance Engineering Districts instead. Ordnance Engineering gives you soldier jobs, which grant you more naval capacity but no defensive armies on Arkships. This new district type comes with quite the selection of specializations as well, though nearly all of them tend to the more militaristic side of Stellaris.

Finally a type of silo people will build? ​

By utilizing some of these new district specializations we added for Ordnance Engineering you might be able to squeeze some more benefits out of them as well and buff your Arkship to be a combat monster capable of annihilation fleets, if you are willing to put your pops to use.

Next Week​

Next week’s dev diary will take a more violent look at our new Ambition: Defender of the Galaxy, the Champion’s Forge Live! enclave, the Paragons associated with the CFL, the Military Arkship, the Devastator Mount, and the dwakam of the Heirs of the Khan Origin. HYEEEIIIEEE!!!

4.4 will also include the missing behemothkin variants.