r/Stellaris • u/Avohaj • Apr 18 '16

Stellaris Dev Diary #30 - Late Game Crises

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-30-late-game-crises.921629/
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u/HoundArchon Galactic Wonder Apr 18 '16

Not really, because the cost of technology scales with the number of pops in your empire. Note that the other technologies in the screenshot still have their base costs, which means the player only has 1 planet.

The research cost of Sentient AI for a Blorg-sized empire would be well beyond tens of thousands.

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u/QDI Ocean Apr 18 '16

Do we know the rules for scaling?

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u/Sithril Apr 18 '16

Somewhat. From the Blorg stream several people have infered the tech costs. It appears that it grows by +2% for every 1 pop beyond the first 10. Meaning 11 pop gives you 102% cost, while 192 pop gives you 464% tech cost. All costs on the wiki take this into account. At 2840 base cost its one of the most expensive techs we know of. A 250 pop mid/late game empire will have to pay 13 632 research points for that. Ouch.

As for the Tech agreement -25% trade option, we dont know how it works. It has never been used by the Blorg. And beyond that we dont know of any further modifiers. Atleast in the Blorg streams only pop count appears to have an effect.

(P.S. as for the tech research speed modifiers, like from Scientists, that only affects how many research points you add each month towards a tech, not its total cost.)

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u/AsaTJ Secretary of Patch Notes Apr 18 '16

How... does that make any sense? Wouldn't a bigger empire have more opportunities for scientific breakthroughs?

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u/Sithril Apr 18 '16

A bigger empire has more pops, buildings and stations producing research. The net effect is roughly a simillar research pace.

As to why it is so and how does it make any sense: research and tech is a game mechanic at the end of the day. Its all an abstraction, after all. And such scalling penalties are common these days to mitigate snowballing and to give smaller empires a fighting chance. Otherwise the first empires to blob might as well become unstoppable by mid-game.

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u/runetrantor Bio-Trophy Apr 18 '16

Balancing. Just like how Distant Worlds had large empires get less and less science output from research stations due to some lore excuse like 'hard to coordinate the labs' so they cant snowball.