Stellaris

I haven't played that much yet, but I'm having fun just re-creating known races. Since I'm busy reading a Star Trek novel from the ENT era, I made some Vulcans.


Empire name: Confederacy of Vulcan
Leader: T'Pau
Home World Type: Desert Planet

Ethoses:
- Xenophile (IDIC, very much into exploring)
- Spiritual (touch telepaths)
- Pacifistic (generally speaking, insofar as they follow the teachings of Surak)

Government: Moral Democracy (guided by logic; there's a "First Minister" and ministers chosen for their aptitude)

Traits:
- Enduring (Vulcans live very long, Venerable would fit even better but is too expensive)
- Strong (3x as strong as humans)
- Quick Learners (dedicated to knowledge)
- Slow Breeders (not a lot of Vulcans around)

Drive Tech: Warp
Weapon type: Energy Weapons

Yeah, creating new races is pretty cool.
I like that they limited the options you can pick.
However I think it also offers various aspects which could be improved:
1. The amount of traits to pic from is rather slim. Especially negative traits are few. Should be easy to adjust and of course there are already mods for it.
2. The impact of most of your choices are rather small. I mean sure, the Enlighted Monarchy combo stacked with other trait improvements as Nyx found out might be extremely powerful and they have some impact in early game, but overall it's rather slim and mostly about numbers. I mean there is also basically no real difference because the path of your race must be the same: Kill or vasallize everyone as there arent any other victory conditions. So "how you play" is mostly the same anyways. The biggest choice you make at race creation is probably the travel method as this has huge impact on the way you play from year 1 to the end.
I would have loved more and bigger differences which also affect gameplay. While Civilization 5 is balanced very poorly, they did a great job in making most factions rather unique. Having the Iroquese being able to use woods as roads and trading network connection was an awesone idea for example.
3. I would have loved more exotic setups. In stellaris basically everyone is somewhat human like. They all live on planets which are like parts of the earth. Being it a desert or the artic. But there is no truely "alien" enviroments. Also the implications on settling on a non-native worlds are therefore rather slim. I mean "oh, yeah it's artic here, I am a little bit more unhappy now because I am cold" is the consequence (which is also only true for the first 100 years you play as after that planets are either terraformed or your pop is genetically adjusted). But what I would have loved to see is something like special buildings which make completely alien planets habitable. I mean you wouldn't be settle on Mars or Venus (which is argued to be easier) as you'd do on another earth. But the game only offers different "earths".

The art is uninspired. That's an understatement to put it that way. To Paradox's account, players desire to relate and apparently, it leads that alien must not be that alien. Anything that is not anthropomorphic is a possible reject.

Some other points go against gameplay core mechanics.

Stellaris is about expansion.

To expand, the player must find the least dissimilar to the played species, ally with them to gang up to eliminate the most dissimilar.
Once they are eliminated, the least dissimilar are now by relativity enough dissimilar to be eliminated.

Features are conceived under the perspective.

So is colonization of different environments. The stake here is to avoid breeding dissimilarity. Settling an artic planet with a desert adapted species breeds dissimilarity (hence hindering the expansion effort) through the enhancement event.

The main trouble is that at the moment features have no weight.

Going for terraforming, genetic modification, integrating environment adapted species, or the other events do not go with different consequences. They all look the same. Annoying for a strategy game.

As a side note, there are specific (to the ethics) buildings to help settling worlds. They work the same: curbing the growth of dissimilarity.

The points go against core features, changing the way it works now will require some deep rework or diluting features, an issue as features do not have enough weight.

You sound a little bit like a broken record, Chien. We get it, the game is broken.

In other words, the 1.1 Clarke patch has been released.

We are proud to release the first major update for Stellaris. The "Clarke" update comes with various UI improvements and bug fixes, see changelog below for details.

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Source.

wiretripped said:

We get it

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How?

Source.

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A few things to be tested.

The patch brings more comfort to browse through the content. At the moment, Stellaris' background is one primary interest and this patch that removes various bugs allows to close narrative lines.

As expected, the aggression feature does not add much (it might remove on the lower level though, to be checked) It was not a problem of aggression but a problem of lack of opportunities to be aggressive, which is far from being tackled.

Quite a number of unexpected changes like the speeding up of ship retrofitting. It is nearly instant at the moment (which relieves from splitting the fleet in several smaller to be sent to space sports to speed up the process)
They probably want to favour adaptative fleet compositions.

After toying more, watching where the projects goes is going to be worthwhile.

At the moment, Stellaris supports no prioritarization in decision making as it supports all strategies.

The technological tree exhibits that feature, at this end, you end researching the same technologies (except the few that are reserved)

The victory conditions also make it so that it does not matter which technology you research first. In the end, you will control way too many planets for it to matter.

Curious to see the kind of products they'll eventually deliver.

1.2 beta patch now available on steam! I wanna go hooooome and play https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...checksum-50ca-not-for-problem-reports.950932/

A beefy patch that confirmed the speculation made before, with the open border stuff for example. Space was supposed to free to move in. Not sure they managed to reach the active interdiction they aimed for.

Patch also shows the crowdfunded state of release.
Quite a number of features that had stubs in the initial release.

For example, playing on a small ring galaxy. One empire next to the played empire was a fallen empire.
Fleets were sent in the fallen empire space before knowing it since communication with the fallen empire was not made.
The move (probably as a result of a bug) was undertood as a violation of the territory.
It came in two stages: first, a warning that a new intrusion would be met by violence. Second, the notification of the punishment.

The notification was the following: humiliation and abandon of three planets.

Playing on a small ring galaxy, with the fallen empire met just as the start, it meant immediate defeat as it took down all the planets of the played empire.

As stated, it was the result of a bug, technically, no territory was encroached since it was not known as the fallen empire territory.

Nevertheless, it gave away a few mechanics that should have made it at initial release.

Patch 1.2, aka Asimov, has been released.

Change log.

Just one more week and I'll be home, heading straight into space! Can't wait to try the new patch. Lots of goodies. Especially looking forward to seeing if end game crisis actually feels like a crisis now

Still waiting for additional victory conditions.

The last patch showed how incomplete Stellaris was on release so victory conditions are not yet for now.

It gives some room with the tribute as a possible economic victory condition. For diplomatic victory conditions, the introduction of a feature to bend the ideology of an enemy will be a strong sign.

PI announced the first expansion-DLC for Stellaris, called Utopia.
No release date yet, unfortunately.

Stellaris: Utopia is the first major gameplay expansion to Stellaris, Paradox’s critically acclaimed and best selling strategy game about building an empire in new galaxies. Utopia introduces new options for developing your empire, with new types of space stations and constructions that open alternate avenues for making your species the dominant power in the galaxy.

One of the core improvements to Utopia is the introduction of Ascension Perks. As your species advances and gains new traditions, it can choose how it wants to evolve as it is further enlightened. You can choose between a biological path, a psionic path or a synthetic path, with various options within these broad categories. Body, Mind or Machine - how will your species challenge the future?

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Source.

I'm excited for the ascension stuff and mega-structures -- I am so building my own ringworld -- yet a little bit disappointed I don't get to build a Babylon station.

I honestly think Stellaris could be a stellar (ha) game if they could flesh it out a little more. It still needs more diplomacy and not to mention a proper trade and economy system.

I've been following the developer diaries recently and it looks like the next patch (and/or DLC) is going to change a lot of the mechanics. For reference, here are some links:

Ethics Rework
Unity and Traditions
Ascension Perks
Species Rights
Habitats
Megastructures

And I've only recently started my first serious play-through. Naturally I play as "The Culture". I also made the Idirans (main antagonists of the Culture), forgot about them and promptly stumbled upon them in the game, which was quite surprising. Good fun, although I'm only 25 years into the game.


Oh, and it turns out I didn't need to make Star Trek races myself, there's a total conversion for Stellaris called "Star Trek New Horizons" that has lots and lots of goodies. Still going to continue with my normal play-through to get a hang of the mechanics.

The problem with these PI games is that the next patch/DLC always looks so tantalizingly juicy you're holding off playing until it is released. And then when it is finally released, you're like, let's wait a few more hotfixes. And by then the next DLC is announced, and the cycle repeats.

Or is that just me?

Arhu said:

Oh, and it turns out I didn't need to make Star Trek races myself, there's a total conversion for Stellaris called "Star Trek New Horizons" that has lots and lots of goodies. Still going to continue with my normal play-through to get a hang of the mechanics.

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I actually subscribed to that one a while ago, but haven't given it a spin yet.

Stellaris is a different case.

PI can not release full fledged products (or even fully implement features) because of the overreaction an implementation that players do not like causes.

So they keep going one layer at a time. They test what players like and move on when players okayed.

So indeed, PI products always look as they are missing something, because they are missing something.

Stellaris is a different case, the foundations are shaky. Even if not developped by PI, only published, city skylines on release looked as missing something. The foundations were extremelly strong though. Not much to rework, only to expand.

wiretripped said:

The problem with these PI games is that the next patch/DLC always looks so tantalizingly juicy you're holding off playing until it is released. And then when it is finally released, you're like, let's wait a few more hotfixes. And by then the next DLC is announced, and the cycle repeats.

Click to expand...

Haha, yes, but it seems replayable enough to me so that I can simply go with a completely different species with every new addon.

Currently xenophile, individualist, materialist. Next I'd go xenophobe, militarist, spiritual. After that … who knows what space opera series I'll be invested in by then.

It's my first Paradox game by the way. Future in Space > History on Earth.

Gah, Utopia finally got a release date: April 6. Still quite a wait.

Also, this new trailer is rather epic:

The latest dev diary deals with music in Utopia. It was recorded with the Budapest Film Orchestra and they made a bonus track that I find breathtaking~!