Stellaris

[Ryika]

It's not about realism though, that's not the opposite of "artificial", the opposite of "artificial" (at least in the way I use it here) is more like... "natural".

An example of what I mean: Weapon types. I do not think that the changes to weapon types are based on "What is logical for the weapon type?", but rather based on "We have a set number of weapons and have to find niches for all of them!". The most obvious example to that are missile weapons that now completely bypass shields. If you could spam those, that would obviously be the ideal weapon to have and completely render useless not only shields, but also any weapon that is not a missile weapon, because those would just be a weaker version of the missile. So how did they solve that? They moved missiles into the Torpedo slot, thereby limiting the amount of missiles you can put onto a ship and forcing you to also use other weapons (as there are no full-missile ship designs, they come with small weapon slots and are only available to Corvettes and Cruisers).

That's just a completely artificial solution to me.

Another example are the combat computers. Why exactly can't you put a Swarmer Module on a cruiser? What's wrong about building massive tanks that get right into the center of the battlefield and soak up damage? That probably would not be a very cost-effective strategy, but if I want to do it, what reason is there to stop me from doing it? Why am I forced to use Corvettes as dodge-based "Tanks"? There's literally no reason for that other than "We don't want to allow it".

Which of course is not much of a problem, after all, that's what mods are for, but it just doesn't sound good to me.

 

[DaviddesJ]

What's wrong about building massive tanks that get right into the center of the battlefield and soak up damage?

This one seems pretty easy. In an "actual" space battle, there would be no reason for anyone to fire at the unarmed massive tank, so it wouldn't soak up any damage. That seems awfully "natural" to me, to disallow builds that just take advantage of artificial limitations in the game (like that the system doesn't know not to bother to attack certain ships, while an actual ship captain would).

 

[Ryika]

Two things:
1.) Why would you assume that the tank is unarmed? I'm not talking about floating structures that do nothing, I'm talking about Titan-level of warship, heavily armed, dishes out tons of damage, very expensive and slow to produce, hard to replace during war.
2.) Why are you now suddenly arguing for realism and talking about what actual captains would do when before you were arguing that stuff must make sense in terms of game mechanics?

Third point actually:
The way Battleships currently work already makes no sense at all. The biggest, heavily armed ships in the game that can have the largest amount of defensive capacity chills in the back as artillery units where all of their defenses are useless until the moment the opposing navy has burned their way through the rest of your army. Putting them right into the action and instead having smaller ships with weak armor but high damage take that position of the ranged artillery would already be WAY more sensible.

 

[PhilBowles]

Returned to Stellaris for the first time since shortly post-release. It now has much more of a Distant Worlds feel with a better interface, which is a very good thing as DW is probably the best space 4x ever made.

The random events still seem to duplicate too frequently, and this time it doesn't seem to be due to a lack of content as it was in my earlier sessions - there are multiple storylines from my earlier games that haven't come up. I like the fact that there are now many more 'natural phenomena' events and you get notifications when you first encounter alien life. I found it immersion-breaking before that a newly-minted interstellar civ found itself living in a galactic junkyard and its first encounters with space wreckage and the like met with no interest whatsoever. The events themselves and all the alternate outcomes are nicely-written as well.

Alien empires spawn at more reasonable distances rather than all crowding in, and while I like the initially open borders it appears that aliens tend to more or less instantly declare rivalry in most cases and there's not a great deal to be done about it. This shuts down all other diplo options, and so to date I haven't had any interesting interactions with the other empires.

There still appears to be a lack of much to do come what I presume is the mid-game beyond teching and building up fleets (most of the techs I have access to seem to be ship modules of some kind).

Since I last played they seem to have copy-pasted the Civ V social policy system into the game, calling it Traditions. While these are fine enough perks to have, I'm not really seeing any particular need for this system or the associated culture (unity) resource to exist - for all that I like gold-buying colony ships. What issue was this introduced to fix? It would have passed mostly without comment had it been there from the beginning, but it seems to serve no purpose as a random addition to the game.

 

[Ryika]

Since I last played they seem to have copy-pasted the Civ V social policy system into the game, calling it Traditions. While these are fine enough perks to have, I'm not really seeing any particular need for this system or the associated culture (unity) resource to exist - for all that I like gold-buying colony ships. What issue was this introduced to fix? It would have passed mostly without comment had it been there from the beginning, but it seems to serve no purpose as a random addition to the game.

To allow players to focus on different aspects of the game, and as a response to feedback that all matches feel the same. There's a dev diary about it here.

 

[Ailedhoo]

Ends are their own beginnings.

 

[Ailedhoo]

Prepare for the doom.

 

[sherbz]

Thoughts anyone? Mine are thats its practically totally different from before. Once again i am lost haha.

 

[Katakanja]

Thoughts anyone? Mine are thats its practically totally different from before. Once again i am lost haha.

Yep, I agree it plays very differently. I'm enjoying it quite a lot though, even more than I expected to tbh.

I don't mind the reduction in drive types - I actively disliked how fiddly wormhole generators were, so I never used them myself, so really it only feels like warp drive is gone. The new border mechanics require a bit more micromanagement, but not an overwhelming amount IMO, and I like how I can now choose precisely which systems to claim.

Warfare is so, so, SO much better. Smaller fleets make individual battles more meaningful, but also make defeats less catastrophic since you're not smashing your massive 500-ship fleet against their 500-ship fleet in a winner takes all scenario every time. The AI even seems to already be quite tactically competent with the new system, which is a good sign since they can only get better with future tweaks - I've seen a neighbor attack me, send their fleet in to occupy some of my systems, then retreat when I sent my larger defense fleet out to chase them down, then they attacked at another point further away along my border with a second force. Ofc its hard to know how much of the AI's movements were based on whatever tactics they've been programmed with and how much was coincidence, but it definitely seemed like it purposefully baited me out to move my fleets in a certain direction. Since the main goal of the whole patch and the expansion itself was to make warfare interesting, first impressions are that Paradox has been successful on that front.

The fleet manager is very useful, but still needs some tweaking to make it user friendly. Hopefully future patches and/or mods will work on that. The war weariness mechanic is similarly well-intentioned but definitely needs work since it can force peace upon combatants at really inconvenient times - though I see the next patch is already going to allow you to continue fighting at max weariness with resource penalties so its clear Paradox is getting to work on that aspect right away. There's a few little bugs, but I;ve seen nothing game-breaking or crash-causing, which is really good considering they've overhauled so much of the core game systems. General game performance seems massively improved as well, before, by about 2350+ on large galaxies, faster and fastest speeds would basically be exactly the same, and would continue to slow down as more time when by. So far, I've played one game through to about 2450 with no noticeable slowdown before abandoning (poor forward planning in regards to the new border system meant that everyone in my first game had way bigger empires than me and I couldn't compete anymore by that point ) I've messed around with a few other starts since, but I might even try a huge galaxy game this weekend, which I normally avoid because the slowdown is obviously even worse.

All in all, I thought Stellaris before the patch was a good game with terrible warfare - basically fun for RPing as interesting aliens. Now I think it might just be an all-around great game

As for the Apocalypse expansion itself, I haven't actually picked it up, so I can't comment on it. It's awesome that the patch alone is this good though

 

[Ryika]

2.0 is great, and not only because of the never-ending salt-mines that it created in the Steam Forums.

I think the main problem is that outposts might become really annoying and boring over time. Having to manually claim every single system every single game could easily become a drag once the novelty of the system has worn out.

Pirate spawn can be really annoying as well, especially when you're neighbors with a Fallen Empire and literally can't fill in that free system.

Hyperlanes feel a bit weird, if you generate a standard universe, there are nearly no choke points (or at least to many to build star bases that opponents can't just fly around). If you create a universe with 0.75 density all you get is snake-hyperlines and building fortresses becomes way too easy. Lacks the middle-ground imho.

But outside of those, I enjoy the patch a lot. Especially the new fleet systems.

Apocalypse isn't very impactful. Still bought it as a way to "compensate" for the free patch, but it's mostly fluff. Can't even use planet destroyers without ruining your diplomacy, so it's a toy for those who got bored and want to start a new game anyway I feel.

 

[Katakanja]

I think the main problem is that outposts might become really annoying and boring over time. Having to manually claim every single system every single game could easily become a drag once the novelty of the system has worn out.

I agree, the new claiming is at its best in the early game when you want that kind of precise ability to pick and choose the most ideal systems to expand into. I was thinking that might be possible to create some kind of automated process for claiming that comes into play later in the game like science ship auto-explore - you could have a sort of station specific resource store akin to sector specific resources that you can dump excess influence and minerals into. Then you add an auto-claim order toggle to construction ships that when activated sends them out to claim any empty systems on the edges of your empire using the resources you set aside. It would cut back on the micro once you'd grabbed the systems with good planets and resources that you really need.

Hyperlanes feel a bit weird, if you generate a standard universe, there are nearly no choke points (or at least to many to build star bases that opponents can't just fly around). If you create a universe with 0.75 density all you get is snake-hyperlines and building fortresses becomes way too easy. Lacks the middle-ground imho.

I've tried a game on both elliptical and spiral-arm galaxy shapes, choke points work better on spiral arms for sure. You get a handful of single links between each arm that become the systems you want to claim and fortify quickly to block adjacent empires and later potentially use as staging grounds to invade across to another arm.

 

[sherbz]

On the claiming aspect: I dont know about you guys, but in vanilla i built mines & stations on every system i had in my borders anyway. So all you are doing now is building something extra - namely a starbase. I would kind of like the option to queue up a build order for a star base and then all the stations. Rather than having to actually wait for the star base to be built. But then i guess there is always the possibility that a pirate< AI or human player (if MP) could come along and destroy your construction ship, so its no big deal i guess.

I like the hyper lane only model. Mainly for warfare reasons. It was so annoying in vanilla when at war and a smaller AI mega fleet would just hop all over the bloody place and you could not catch it because you were stuck to lanes or warp. Similarly, it was too easy to game the AI - penetrate deep into their territory, knock out their core systems, retreat, and mop up what was left in your territory. Or if you had an inferior fleet just play cat and mouse until you caught up. In some ways it was like a really bad version of stacks in Civ. I got the idea of different warp drives. But i think this system is better. Its one of those examples where game mechanics (i.e. how it actually plays) trumps "realism" (i know its a space game we are talking about, but you should get my point).

 

[Acken]

Been a while I havent played this. Seems to have become really fleshed out.

 

[Katakanja]

Been a while I havent played this. Seems to have become really fleshed out.

It's definitely a lot more rounded than it was when it came out. The only area that's still a little lacking IMO is diplomacy, most of the time I'm just trading lump sums of resources to AI's that like me and half the time alliances turn out to be bigger liabilities than they are beneficial when your federation partners constantly get you dragged into wars with some massive despotic empire on the other side of the galaxy every few decades.

Given the pattern Paradox has gone through with their patches and expansions though (first big expansion focused on internal empire development, second one on warfare) I can see inter-empire interactions and diplomacy being their focus for improvement over the course of the third year of the game. If things continue to improve the way they have so far, I'm hoping that by this time next year it will have gone from being a great game to a perfect one

 

[sherbz]

Not that I have had it happen to me yet. But you can have some running dialogues with leaders over a specific issue. And depending on what you say there are certain outcomes. The only interesting diplomatic interactions I had in vanilla were with fallen empires. When they ask you to give up a good scientific leader or something in return for their gratitude. Something akin to that with normal empires would be cool. I think one of the problems with the current version is that there's too much player agency. So negotiations only tend to happen if you initiate them. There should be more meaningful interaction that's initiated by the AI.

 

[odpadnik]

Been a while I havent played this. Seems to have become really fleshed out.

One thing I love about Stelaris - they keep it fresh. And really, compared to most other games and their DLC's, the replay-ability /$$ ratio is awesome here... Though, still have to find time to enjoy the last expansion..

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Just picked up the Distant Stars Story Pack DLC for the game (Yes, I know I'm a sucker. ) I'll be trying it out tonight. I'm hoping that it adds a bit more complexity to the early and mid game.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I also got Distant Stars yesterday. I don't mind shelling out money for DLC if the game has already entertained me for a hundred hours and lets me generate cool SF stories.

My physics lead scientist just drank himself to death at age 120 when the Amoeba he adopted as a baby decades ago was killed by pirates.
I'm also capable of opening the L-Gate in my territory but I've been holding off on it for a long time.
I have a baaad feeling about this.

 

[Arakhor]

You should do. There's a moderately good chance that you start a new crisis by opening the L-Gates and that was determined when you started the game (so save-scumming won't help).

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Is there any indication whether or not it's going to be A Bad Thing from flavor text etc?

Spoiler :

Many anomalies seem to be nanotech related, and I've found a few grey goo infested planets. I think I have a pretty good idea what's going on....