Stellaris Game Thread

[Bobble]

Here's where I am with this game: It's fun but...

- Why in the world doesn't the research screen automatically pop up when I finished researching the last thing?
- I'm ~20 hours in and I still can't figure out which pop-ups have automatically paused my game and which haven't. I'm happily reading away thinking it's paused while time marches on. Either all pop-ups should pause or none should.
- Either 5 planets to be able to manage is too few or the penalty for going over is too large.
- Seems like the game wants to play in the individual star systems rather than on the strategic galaxy map. The "normal" view is within the star system and if you go to the galaxy map, there's a specific button to "close galaxy map" and get back to the "main view". When you double-click on a ship, it zooms into the star system map where that ship is. Seems backward to me. I'm running a galactic empire here. Most of the time, I want to command that ship to move from one system to another.
- No available planet list? I just have to poke around the somewhat clunky galactic map? One of the 4X's is still eXpand, right?
- In the Sector view (or whatever it's called), you should be able to expand/collapse your sectors so you can see what's going on in those sectors. A little too much autonomy in sectors, I think. I'm still the boss of this galactic autonomous collective.
- Agree with a little more automation on the research debris deal. Should work like construction ships where you can click on the system and have it schedule researching them all.

Anyway, fun game but some kinks to work out.

[tarcone]

Do I buy? Or do I wait?
Im about to be off work for awhile. And time will be on my side.
Decisions, decisions.

I do have Starbase Orion on my ipad. Fun little game and easy to play. May stick with that for awhile.

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by bobble

- Why in the world doesn't the research screen automatically pop up when I finished researching the last thing?

I'm actually ok with this. You don't lose research points if you don't pick anything right away, it just gets stored and you use it later. The way it is right now lets me choose whether I want to deal with that now or after a while.

Originally Posted by bobble

When you double-click on a ship, it zooms into the star system map where that ship is. Seems backward to me. I'm running a galactic empire here. Most of the time, I want to command that ship to move from one system to another.

Stuff like this is probably just taste or whatever. Single-click selects it so you can move it to a different system, double-click takes you into the system, which is better than making you click on the system, then select the fleet once you are there, etc. I like the way this works.

I agree with you on most of the rest, esp. the pausing thing. There's definitely a lot to be done to make it better.

[Peregrine]

Originally Posted by Bobble

- No available planet list? I just have to poke around the somewhat clunky galactic map? One of the 4X's is still eXpand, right?
-

You can see your planets from the empire screen - planets tab. It will show you all your planets, what they produce etc.

[Abe Sargent]

I think I'm about to walk into my first "LAte Game Crisis" We'll see, I was just told to prepare myself for the "Coming Storm"

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by tarcone

Do I buy? Or do I wait?
Im about to be off work for awhile. And time will be on my side.
Decisions, decisions.

I do have Starbase Orion on my ipad. Fun little game and easy to play. May stick with that for awhile.

well if you are going to be off work anyway, you should buy it

[Abe Sargent]

No secrets, but it's definitely a late game crisis

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

I'll just drop this here. Some of my goals are not things that everyone is going to want to have, but this first version I wouldn't expect to raise many objections. RealTime v 0.1 is now up on the Steam Workshop: Steam Workshop :: RealTime v 0.1. Next up I plan to start getting into some changes relating to the timescale, but I will also be looking into the problem of energy hoarding which, aside from the planetary management AI that I can't touch, is enemy #1 at the moment.

Mod thread with a little more info: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...altime.929961/


v 0.1 CHANGELOG + REASONING

** Core planets limit set to 30. This is just a placeholder amount until I find a more elegant solution.

** AI will now build planetary capitals before having a full planet of pops. For some reason it was set not to do this. This has a considerable impact on development of new systems.

** AI hoarding tweak -- they will no longer save minerals for things they don't need, freeing them up for other costs. Default is for them to keep 1.4k in the reserve at startup, that amount increasing over time. They'll invest these now when not needed for something specific, aiding their economic growth. Similarly, reduced amount stored up by sectors so they will use what they have.

** AI leaders; they will recruit a bit more governors and a bit less scientists. Was set to always have six scientists, but never more than 2 science ships. In other words, to always have a scientist they couldn't use. They should now move that leader over to governor and administer their planets and sectors a hair better with the extra body.

** Tried to make the AI stop hoarding influence as well. The only thing I was really successful at making them do was to use it on planetary edicts. This is better than not using it at all. I also tweaked a couple things to make them hopefully build more frontier outposts.

** Experience gained by survey scientists is now a third of what it was. They level up ridiculously fast, so this was just an easy quick change. It is probably still too high but should be a lot closer to the right ballpark.

Great! I'm adding this to my game now

[Brian Swartz]

Cool. Make sure to read the notes on the latest version before you do, as I've changed/fixed some more things as of just a couple hours ago. Biggest thing you'd probably notice is a drop in your naval cap and some increased tech slowdown due to population.

[tarcone]

Brian, can I share your mod on another site? Its a wargamers site. They also have fallen in love with this game.

[Brian Swartz]

Sure. If you don't mind giving me the link, it could potentially be another source of feedback about what things to consider adding.

[tarcone]

Here you go

Main site
The Game Box - Index

Thread
Computer Games You're Playing Now - page 14 - General Gaming Discussion - The Game Box

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

Cool. Make sure to read the notes on the latest version before you do, as I've changed/fixed some more things as of just a couple hours ago. Biggest thing you'd probably notice is a drop in your naval cap and some increased tech slowdown due to population.

I did. Love the changes in theory. I will tell you my impressions over time.

[Abe Sargent]

Well I won with 40% planets in 37 hours of play and 147 years in the game.


Gentle Spoiler on a way I did it:

Spoiler

For the last 50 yeas or so I was running heavy energy credits losses (around 80-100 a month) with huge mineral gains, like 400-500 a month, and then trading them with other nations for energy, and other things i needed. Other nations do have a limited stockpile, but if you have enough trading partners, everything works out. Around 75% of the nations in the workd were in my Federation, or a vassal of those nations, or a primitive or lost empire. Not a whole lot of war after taking out a few early game problems until the late game crisis emerged

[Abe Sargent]

One quick lil late game comment about the late game event.



If you read the pre-views, and reviews, you'll be told by the devs about one potential late game crisis that could emerge with rare and dangerous technology. You are given quite a bit fo detail about that LGC. Then another LGC was given at the ed of the interview for another idea/

So when I got an LGC of a 3rd type, I was pretty happy.

Afterwards I went and looked it up Want to know how many LGCs there are? Just three. Sad



We need more variety for the LGCs



EDIT -

Here are a few LGCs I'd like to see -

Mass Slave Rebellion
Major Shut Down of Hyperspace Movement
Major Disaster that does something crazy - (Like shuts down all power or something0
Clone Wars
Maybe a Civil War?
Disease Pandemic
Major Pirate Attack
Fallen Empire Civil War
Inter-Fallen Empire Conflict that wants you to choose sides

[Thomkal]

congrats Abe!

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

congrats Abe!

THanks!


Oh, and I came trhough still vague on some mechanics like migration and I never bothered to build any robots either nor slaves

[Abe Sargent]

Dola apparently


Time to create some races of different types to litter my next world. This time i had too many Diplos, and Federation builders and stuff like that. Let's create some havoc

EDIT -

First race I made:

The Rule of Juffo-Wup

Mycon, Fungoid
Collective, Military, Spiritual - Divine Mandate Government
Leader - The Speaker of the Way
Arid World Prefernce (opposite of ocean)
Epsilon Scorpi is home star, Shattered World name of home planet.
Traits - Repugnant, Sedentary, Industrious, Conformists

Fungoid Ships, Missile Weapons, Warp Travel,


Enjoy, if you get that reference. Let's hit that up again:

The VUX Empire

VUX, Molluscoid
Extreme Xenophobe, Militarist
Trait - Repugnant, Conformist, Natural Engineers
Beta Luyten, Tropical
Military Junta

Energy Weapons, Hyperspace,


I'm thinking of changing the Mycon from Conformist to Adaptive so the VUX can be the real conformists.

[Bobble]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

Stuff like this is probably just taste or whatever. Single-click selects it so you can move it to a different system, double-click takes you into the system, which is better than making you click on the system, then select the fleet once you are there, etc. I like the way this works.

I wasn't fully clear. I meant as an example of the game wanting you to play in the star system view. Rather than centering on the ship in question in the galactic view, it jumps right back to system view where "you're supposed to be." Is there a way that I can select a ship on the outliner and have the game center on that unit in the galactic view?

Originally Posted by Peregrine

You can see your planets from the empire screen - planets tab. It will show you all your planets, what they produce etc.

The 5 that I can control, right? Not any of the ones in "my" sectors and not any of the tons that I can colonize. I'm the boss. Need the info!

[Thomkal]

new dev diary up about future updates/expansions:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...yage.932668%2F

[Brian Swartz]

Looks good. I'm pretty impressed with that statement actually.

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by Bobble

The 5 that I can control, right? Not any of the ones in "my" sectors and not any of the tons that I can colonize. I'm the boss. Need the info!

Click on the sector itself in the planet list. The planets in that sector will appear indented underneath it. As far as colonizable ones, there isn't a list of those. If there was one, I'd still use the galactic map for it but I understand why some people wouldn't want to. For me, the color-coded icons for planets I've surveyed(green/yellow/red) is a better way to find what I want because by looking at those I can see not just the habitability but also where they are in the galaxy which is just as important. I'd be constantly going in and out of a list to see the locations.

Originally Posted by Bobble

Is there a way that I can select a ship on the outliner and have the game center on that unit in the galactic view?

Not that I know of, though I don't know all of the hotkeys. If there isn't a way to do this, I agree that there should be. .

[Bobble]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

Click on the sector itself in the planet list. The planets in that sector will appear indented underneath it.

The collapse/expand sectors that I was looking for. Thanks!

BTW, I started a new game with your mod. I'm enjoying it so far.

[Brian Swartz]

Cool! Since there seems to be a fair amount of interest in it around here, let me float a couple trial balloons on what I'm working on for the next version, which will likely be the last one before the Clarke patch hits in a couple weeks.

** Increasing core planets cap via technology. Everybody always wants more tech to research, right? There's a lot I'd have to learn to do scripting/events for a more elegant solution -- I do have a background as an amateur coder so I'll get there, but it'll take time.

Under this approach the core planets cap would start quite low. I'm thinking 3. Then in each field and tier there would be a tech with a fairly high -- exactly how high I'm not sure, I don't want it to be colony-ship level of automatic but a lot more likely than your average tech -- weight of showing up that would increase it. There are four tiers of technology the way it's set up, so you'd have a dozen new ones that would deal with this. Society/Engineering/Physics would each have a tier-1 tech that gave +1 core planet, a tier-2 that gave +2, and so on. If you researched them all, you'd have 33 at the end. If I wanted I could also put in a couple rare techs that would give +5 or +10 but you wouldn't normally get.

Best way I can think of right now to have the limit scale up with the size of an empire, yet still require the use of sectors for most of the empire.

** RealTime Lite. Ran into a couple issues here, which is why I'm calling it 'Lite'. One is that I don't want to cripple the AI -- it isn't great yet at fleet deployment and if I slow travel times down significantly without slowing down combat that already takes plenty long enough, they wouldn't be able to send reinforcements in time for it to matter. I think that would give the player too much of a wartime advantage. I thought about just slowing down the civilian ships in terms of their in-system travel, but this would hurt the early game. One of the best things about that aspect I think are the choices you have to make in terms of what you can afford -- do you build the mining station or the power plant or the colony ship or the frontier outpost, etc. Slow down the time it takes to explore/build stations much, and everyone ends with a backlog of resources, allowing them to just build too much of what they want. I can't just change the costs, partly because I don't think there's a way to to alter what mining or research stations are priced at.

Slowing down the pace of expansion is going to have to rely on Plan B. Well, plan C or D, more accurately. Slowing population growth will help, esp. reducing the impact of extra food since the AI is less than stellar in pumping out the pops. Secondly, I think the actual colonizing part(the year you spend waiting for the colony base to get set up) ought to take a lot longer.

Station-building and exploration would still take as long or close to it, may slow it down a bit but not very much. With population and developed colonies harder to come by though, and compounding that the tech slowdown already in place, I can get it a lot closer to where I'd like it to be. Then I'd make a couple other tweaks, wait for the Clarke patch which is supposed to have among other things some AI changes, and re-evaluate at that point.


I'd be interested in what those of you who are interested in the RealTime mod concept think of these ideas.

[Abe Sargent]

Race #3 -

THe Kilrathi iEmpire -

Kilrathi
Military Dictatorship
Feline Mammalian

Extreme Militaristic, Collectivist (The Pack Instinct)
Leader - Karga the Hunter
Energy Weapons, Hyperspace



Home Planet - Kilrah, Arid

Traits - Strong, Resilient




EDIT - Race #4 -


The Kreegan

Reptillian,

Traits - Slow Breeders, Enduring, Talented

Kreeg-Lar, HW, Continental

Ethos - Xenophobe, Militarist, Individualist

Military Junta

Missile, Wormhole

[Brian Swartz]

That sounds like fun! I'm going to add in a bunch of custom races the next game I play.

[Shoveler]

still in the testing phase of my first tiny galaxy game.. found out the hard way that when my starting planet is using buildings requiring special resources and you put those special resource systems into sectors those buildings stop functioning.. The joys of trial and error.

But, enjoying the game so far..

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

That sounds like fun! I'm going to add in a bunch of custom races the next game I play.

True, plus you can use other races for inspiration if you want. My favorite slate of races is from StarCon, I think they are the most believable, fleshed out, and intriguing races out there ,and there are counter examples that push things nicely Take the Spathi, a group of cowardly races. Yet there is the Black Spathi Squadron, one foo the most powerful, aggressive, and decidedly un-cowardly group of fleets out there. That's good wrting, when races aren't always seen in one thig.

[Neon_Chaos]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

Cool! Since there seems to be a fair amount of interest in it around here, let me float a couple trial balloons on what I'm working on for the next version, which will likely be the last one before the Clarke patch hits in a couple weeks.

** Increasing core planets cap via technology. Everybody always wants more tech to research, right? There's a lot I'd have to learn to do scripting/events for a more elegant solution -- I do have a background as an amateur coder so I'll get there, but it'll take time.

Under this approach the core planets cap would start quite low. I'm thinking 3. Then in each field and tier there would be a tech with a fairly high -- exactly how high I'm not sure, I don't want it to be colony-ship level of automatic but a lot more likely than your average tech -- weight of showing up that would increase it. There are four tiers of technology the way it's set up, so you'd have a dozen new ones that would deal with this. Society/Engineering/Physics would each have a tier-1 tech that gave +1 core planet, a tier-2 that gave +2, and so on. If you researched them all, you'd have 33 at the end. If I wanted I could also put in a couple rare techs that would give +5 or +10 but you wouldn't normally get.

Best way I can think of right now to have the limit scale up with the size of an empire, yet still require the use of sectors for most of the empire.

** RealTime Lite. Ran into a couple issues here, which is why I'm calling it 'Lite'. One is that I don't want to cripple the AI -- it isn't great yet at fleet deployment and if I slow travel times down significantly without slowing down combat that already takes plenty long enough, they wouldn't be able to send reinforcements in time for it to matter. I think that would give the player too much of a wartime advantage. I thought about just slowing down the civilian ships in terms of their in-system travel, but this would hurt the early game. One of the best things about that aspect I think are the choices you have to make in terms of what you can afford -- do you build the mining station or the power plant or the colony ship or the frontier outpost, etc. Slow down the time it takes to explore/build stations much, and everyone ends with a backlog of resources, allowing them to just build too much of what they want. I can't just change the costs, partly because I don't think there's a way to to alter what mining or research stations are priced at.

Slowing down the pace of expansion is going to have to rely on Plan B. Well, plan C or D, more accurately. Slowing population growth will help, esp. reducing the impact of extra food since the AI is less than stellar in pumping out the pops. Secondly, I think the actual colonizing part(the year you spend waiting for the colony base to get set up) ought to take a lot longer.

Station-building and exploration would still take as long or close to it, may slow it down a bit but not very much. With population and developed colonies harder to come by though, and compounding that the tech slowdown already in place, I can get it a lot closer to where I'd like it to be. Then I'd make a couple other tweaks, wait for the Clarke patch which is supposed to have among other things some AI changes, and re-evaluate at that point.


I'd be interested in what those of you who are interested in the RealTime mod concept think of these ideas.

There is a research project to add +1 to core planets. Via the social research.

[Peregrine]

I was talking to a friend about this game at lunch. We noticed that he was complaining about not understanding all the systems and options and felt like he was missing stuff. I (as a longtime veteran of CK2 and EU series) was complaining about the lack of more complex systems (trade, diplomacy, espionage, etc.) Seems to me Paradox made an obvious attempt to make this game more approachable to bring in more players, but could be it is losing some of its longtime fans in the process.

[Abe Sargent]

I thought it was rock-tastic, and I'm only tickled to see what's next for the game. It's immediately one of my top 5 favorite 4x Space Sims, and I'm not sure anything could ever push MOO2 off the perch, but it's got an up pointing arrow, you know?

[Honolulu_Blue]

I finally fired this up on Friday night. 10 hours later it was 5 am Saturday morning and I was still playing,

I haven't really gotten to any of the diplomacy stuff yet. I've really been enjoying the game so far. Very solid and pretty intuitive. I really like the UI, even if I struggled with some of it at times.

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by Neon Chaos

There is a research project to add +1 to core planets. Via the social research.

Thanks. I was aware of that, I'm just looking for a way to have it scale up more. Having 5-7 at start and then getting only another 1-2 as you conquer a quarter of the galaxy just feels 'off' to a lot of people. I find it hard to come up with a good argument against their concerns.

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

Seems to me Paradox made an obvious attempt to make this game more approachable to bring in more players, but could be it is losing some of its longtime fans in the process.

This is right on the nose. My guess is that they don't lose enough of the long-timers for long enough that it will really matter all that much, based on what sales have been so far. There's a lot of blustering going on at the Paradox forums right now but I'll seriously doubt the people who like the other games are going to leave in droves. They might shelve it till further down the patch and DLC train especially with HOI4 in the pipeline, but at the end of the day I don't see them walking away. Maybe I'm wrong and I just want it to be that way, but the evidence pushes in the direction of this being a good business move. Lots of stuff I wish was different of course, I already was a fan of HOI so I wasn't really their target here, but if they support like they say they are going to and with the modding community -- I think there are approaching a thousand mods up on Steam and it's been out a week -- I doubt they are feeling too many regrets about the approach taken. They really should have spent more time on UI and bugfixing, but so should every game when you come down to it.

[tarcone]

Paradox whiners, gonna whine

[Groundhog]

I was home with a cold yesterday, and took the plunge. Another one of those '...and then, 8 hours later, I was still playing...' moments that Paradox are pretty darn good at. I don't particularly like 4x games, so maybe that has something to do with why I enjoy this vs why some others don't.

I agree with what I've seen about combat - death stacks of 1k+ ships seems to reduce the depth of both combat and the ship builder. Outside of that, I'm really enjoying it, but concerned how well it's going to scale upward as empire sizes grow huge.

[lungs]

If I want to attack my ass hole neighbor and send them back to the stone age, how many assault armies should I have? I have defense armies on every colonized planet, but I haven't got a good sense of how many assault armies I should be keeping around.

[Abe Sargent]

You'll need a large assault army to win after soft bombardment denudes their defenses. Check out their garrison by clicking your target, and then the armies tab. Alternatively, you could have some bIG INFANTRY from the planets that have large species, and those you'll need one or two of, and then some fodder small stuff too, and you'll blow through defenses.

[korme]

I'm a disappointed that your team/leaders aren't fleshed out, just random meaningless names. Expected it to be much more like CK2

[Abe Sargent]

They each have some abilities, and level up. I find that aspect to be like Master of Magic/Orion in its simplicity but style. I also like being balanced my leaders with a limited pool, and wanting them for my army, navy, research and science vessels, and administration. I think the leader need is quite balanced overalll.

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

...especially with HOI4 in the pipeline, but at the end of the day I don't see them walking away. Maybe I'm wrong and I just want it to be that way, but the evidence pushes in the direction of this being a good business move. Lots of stuff I wish was different of course, I already was a fan of HOI...

What is HOI and HOI4?

[cuervo72]

Hips of Indignation.

[MrBug708]

Hearts of Iron

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by MrBug708

Hearts of Iron

dammit we could have had fun with this

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

Hips of Indignation.

Originally Posted by cuervo72

dammit we could have had fun with this

lol

[Critch]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

dammit we could have had fun with this

When was it going to start?

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by Critch

When was it going to start?

haughty old immigrant...

[Vince, Pt. II]

Has anyone toyed around with getting their Science Leaders a few levels up out in the field on science ships, and then rotating them back into the research slots? I'm wondering if that isn't a viable / good strategy.

Also, friendly reminder that you can (and should) update the blueprints of your civilian ships when you get upgrades to scanners, thrusters, and drives.

[MizzouRah]

I wish you could choose (for your military fleets) do not fire unless fired upon instead of, do not fire unless they get too close.

I'm still very early in the game and these space jelly fish things are hanging around a little too close to my home world and I don't want to engage them yet so I've been keeping a safe distance, but I would like to do a fly by a la a Top Gun and give them the finger!

[Shkspr]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

Has anyone toyed around with getting their Science Leaders a few levels up out in the field on science ships, and then rotating them back into the research slots? I'm wondering if that isn't a viable / good strategy.

Yeah, that's actually one of the first things I tried. I've come to the conclusion that the only time it makes sense before mid-late game is when a science ship captain levels up and picks up a second trait that happens to be a research specialty that you want in-house. Some of the anomaly missions, for example, end up adding the potential for research stations that earn several points of research. A one-star vs a five-star researcher in-house adds 8% to all research. A five star ship captain probably solves 10-20% more anomalies, many of which add multiple points of research when stations get built on them. I'd say that until your research is in the triple digits per month, the ship captain is the better option for highly experienced scientists. The most important aspect, though, is almost certainly to match trait expertise to the lab or the field.