Stellaris

Stellaris is designed for streamers. As a consequence, streamers might organize MP sessions for their viewers or subscribers. That is probably the best way to get steadu MP sessions.

Originally Posted by wiretripped
Wut?
Someone cannot into translate.

That is that. The observation of staticness in Stellaris is such a mind breaking discovery, it must be translated in every language known to man, past, present and to come.

Even more, it shall be broadcast to space.

Not like every gamer should have made the observation for themselves…

I am not that sure if it's really that good for streamers. Then again I am not watching streams a lot and only doing let's plays myself.

But in my current playthrough, which is already 30 hours long, there are LOOOOOONG passages where I do absolutely nothing interesting, because building up stuff just takes ages.
To be fair it feels not as boring and repetitive as in GalCiv3 for example, but it's not horribly interesting either.

The only thing which made the multiplayer dev stream really interesting to watch is that they used a fake observer mode (and of course they were devs explaining the game).

Thing is I find that the AI is not as agressive as it could be. That changes and things can become a bit more chaotic.

Also, I think a much more robust diplomacy and trade system would change the game a lot. Which are both on the way if past paradox games are the standard.

I would also bet we see a combat focused addon as well.

I still have a lot of fun, but I have decided to wait until Clarke is released to really give it another restart….then asimov….

Yeah, if the AI was more aggressive it would be harder and more interesting. Not sure if you would survive the first dozen years on insane difficulty though

Regarding diplomacy…well…actually I didnt miss much there.

Combat can use some intense balancing though. Imho the weapons don't make a lot of sense, though the different weapon types are a cool thing and work somewhat well.

I just finished my playthrough now. Insane Ironman in a tiny galaxy after 33h.
Will leave it there for now and might revisit in half a year or so, when more content is in, better balance, better AI and any maybe some more sane victory conditions.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Yeah, if the AI was more aggressive it would be harder and more interesting. Not sure if you would survive the first dozen years on insane difficulty though

Regarding diplomacy…well…actually I didnt miss much there.

Combat can use some intense balancing though. Imho the weapons don't make a lot of sense, though the different weapon types are a cool thing and work somewhat well.

I just finished my playthrough now. Insane Ironman in a tiny galaxy after 33h.
Will leave it there for now and might revisit in half a year or so, when more content is in, better balance, better AI and any maybe some more sane victory conditions.

I say wait three months and you will see a big difference….they plan on a major content patch once a month for the first three then start on expansions…these guys do know how to add lots of content to their games.

How does this compare to Galactic Civ?

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
How does this compare to Galactic Civ?

Imho it's much better compared to Galactic Civ on various fronts (disclaimer: I only played the release version of GalCiv3)

1. Balancing: In Galactic Civ it is a game developer decision to put freedom above balancing. I made a short video about it back here (in english actually this time):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY5i6CurT88
It feels like in Stellaris they at least try to balance the game even though it's not well balanced.

2. Gameflow: The flow of the game is much, much better in Stellaris. I would actually say that the main reason is not because of the RTWP vs TB modus but because of removing unnecessary and unfun micromanagement mechanics.
Two examples:
A: When you researched a new building in Galciv 3 in was a pain in the ass to upgrade all your buildings in your empire, because the AI was bad at it and you had to do it step by step manually as it was inefficient to do it otherwise. In Stellaris this is actually very smooth.
B: After researching every single module in GalCiv3 you had to redo your whole fleet. Not just "replace old module with new module" but you had to retinker the whole thing. That is because they gave new modules a different weight than old modules. So that your new laser isn't just 10% stronger but also 1 tons heavier. Old schematics don't work anymore. Became a pain in the ass. In Stellaris the ship designer is much more friendly while still allowing for enough customization. Handling energy consumption is very easy there.

Both of these things made it so that in GalCiv3 I always thought like "Oh no! I researched a new technology again…now I have to redo all this shit again". So instead of making it fun researching a new tech, it made it a hassle. Also you had TONS of techs where you had to redo everything. In stellaris it's much more smooth and there are also less techs which actually make you replace anything.

3. Story: Stellaris has a lot of Events in early game when doing exploration. Quite enjoyable.

4. Limit of micromanagement: Stellaris at least tries to limit micromanagement by limiting your planets. You can only control like 5-7 later maybe 10 planets directly. Everything else must be handled via AI. Being forced to do it like that, makes it much more pleasant than just giving an option between "You could do it manually, then it will be perfect, or you could make it automatically and it will horribly suck" as in GalCiv3.
That said, the Sector Governer AI in Stellaris sucks horirbly as well. They are attempting to fix that in the next patch.

5. The scope: GalCiv3 has an already very big scope. The scope of Stellaris is even bigger though. As mentioned I used over 30 hours to beat the smallest map which had like 12 AIs or so and 150 star systems. The biggest one has 1500 star systems and 32 AIs if I remember correctly. But that also comes with a problem: While GalCiv is intended to be "beatable", Stellaris isn't really made for that. It's more of a game which you are intended to play a long, long time, until you want to start over. The victory conditions in stellaris are basically not reachable in bigger galaxies.

Stack of Doom:
One thing I don't really remember that well anymore is the stack of doom problematic in GalCiv3. I think GalCiv3 had less problems with that than Stellaris does. In Stellaris each Player has one huge stack with all his armies. If this stack of armies is smaller than the opponents you will get crushed. Not much of tactics or "partial victories" in there.

60 hours now (added 30 hours in fastest speed) Nothing has happened. The game is stalled.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
I am not that sure if it's really that good for streamers. Then again I am not watching streams a lot and only doing let's plays myself.

But in my current playthrough, which is already 30 hours long, there are LOOOOOONG passages where I do absolutely nothing interesting, because building up stuff just takes ages.
To be fair it feels not as boring and repetitive as in GalCiv3 for example, but it's not horribly interesting either.

The only thing which made the multiplayer dev stream really interesting to watch is that they used a fake observer mode (and of course they were devs explaining the game).

That is why it is so good. Stellaris is non engaging. A video maker must run two things at the same time: the game and the show he makes off playing a game.
Engaging games take away from the video maker's capacity to host his show.
In Stellaris, nothing happens by itself and the player decides what is going to happen. The player does not have to manage events that would go against his will.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Yeah, if the AI was more aggressive it would be harder and more interesting. Not sure if you would survive the first dozen years on insane difficulty though

The level of difficulty does not change much once the ropes are known. Usually, this kind of difficulty level is left aside, but Stellaris is so static that doubts had to be cleared.


Actually, the little experiment to know how long it would take for the AI to initiate war is made on an insane level game. 60 hours and things are locked. The AI is unable to declare war on the player's empire. Everything is locked up, nothing advances, the late game crisis event etc

EDIT: the corvette is too good

That is an understatement. Paradox changed the combat model and from the beginning, issues were clear. Actually, Stellaris combat did not benefit from gaming experience and it is in a worse shape than Dune was when it was released.

In Stellaris, each unit has its own dedicated roll to hit. From this point, it is immediate to tell that units that can be fielded in large numbers, that skills that increase the fire rate or skills that decrease the chances of being hit or hitting are going to be good.

So massing corvettes, led by a proper admiral (evasion, aggressive), pushing them on shields to extend their durability is very effective.

It does not come from the unit itself, it comes from the way the combat is designed.
Added to that, usual counter measures like crowd control, focused fire or AoE attacks are few.

As it is often the case with Paradox, tools to manage large productions are not provided. This lessens the disaster.

There is no rally point to mass fleet (another common feature in gaming) and the management of the production must be done at every space sport.

The tedium is painful to mass fleet 200 corvettes. Which prevents players from going that way.

It only takes 90 days and 20 space ports to renew the fleet. Which means that the battle front can be regularly fed.

It goes beyond the sole corvette though. The issues come from deeper.

Alright Chien, you do have some valid points, which PDX itself acknowledged. Yes, the AI is not aggressive enough (I do get DoW'ed regurlarly in my game though, by the AI), yes, combat needs an overhaul (fleet formations, corvette being OP, strike craft with too short of a range), yes, diplomacy = war currently… BUT, those are all things that can be fixed and remedied. The *core* of the game is good. The basis is there to make this a very good game, which I have no doubt it will become given time knowing PDX.

And despite the current shortcomings, I am having fun with it. I love the little exploration events popping up, I love exploring my little corner of the galaxy, and I hope they'll expand on that further.

(But by god, not having a rally point for your ships IS very annoying.)

All the following is not written relatively to GC3.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
1. Balancing:
It feels like in Stellaris they at least try to balance the game even though it's not well balanced.

To balance things out, things must have a weight. Currently, most features have no weight. Players can go one way or another without compromising consequences.

For example: designing ships. It does not matter much because going laser, missiles, kinetic are weightless features.

Players do not ponder on these features to make their decisions, they take things as they come.

There is no urge to strategize, to prioritize because features have no weight. It is useless to prioritize. To be complete, it is fully possible to go random on deciding things like technologies, settling what kind of planets etc

The issue of balance does not exist as making mistakes is hard to achieve.

2. Gameflow: The flow of the game is much, much better in Stellaris. I would actually say that the main reason is not because of the RTWP vs TB modus but because of removing unnecessary and unfun micromanagement mechanics.
…
4. Limit of micromanagement: Stellaris at least tries to limit micromanagement by limiting your planets. You can only control like 5-7 later maybe 10 planets directly. Everything else must be handled via AI. Being forced to do it like that, makes it much more pleasant than just giving an option between "You could do it manually, then it will be perfect, or you could make it automatically and it will horribly suck" as in GalCiv3.

Stellaris is micro management intensive. The creation of an efficient fleet is micro intensive. The management of the planets is micro intensive. Browsing through other empires is micro intensive and so on.

Thanks to the current state in Stellaris, players might skip the micro quite often.

As in the following example

That said, the Sector Governer AI in Stellaris sucks horirbly as well. They are attempting to fix that in the next patch.

Actually, the AI is inadequate. AI implementation is based on the anticipation of certain behaviours by AI served people.

Except that players in Stellaris do not display the expected behaviour.

The expected behaviour was that players would take charge of managing the newly acquired planets (be they from settling an empty planet or conquering a peopled one) and build their sectors from already stabilized planets.

Newly acquired planets come with issues that players were expected to solve before transfering them to a sector.

The problem is that players do not act as expected, they transfer the management of newly acquired planets to sectors while they usually keep for themselves the oldest, tamed planets.
In which case the AI is inefficient and indeed horrible ( worst case scenario is probably settling a planet with a robot pop, hoping the AI to take charge from that point)

For players who play like expected, the AI works quite well. The thing is that the AI is tailored to manage long settled colonies, not new ones.

Looks like Paradox underestimated the emotional attachment to the homeland planet etc

Stack of Doom:
One thing I don't really remember that well anymore is the stack of doom problematic in GalCiv3. I think GalCiv3 had less problems with that than Stellaris does. In Stellaris each Player has one huge stack with all his armies. If this stack of armies is smaller than the opponents you will get crushed. Not much of tactics or "partial victories" in there.

To complete that point, static defences do not work.

Yeah, stellaris has micromanagement, but believe me, it's not as bad as in GalCiv3.

Also not as bad as in the first Early access of Master of Orion, where you spent big part of your time with shipping pops around.

Stellaris has a lot of micromanagement. But it's diverse and feels somewhat meaningful.

To add the the sector issue: The whole mechanic doesn't really to be thought to the end.
One thing which doesnt work at all for example is the control of Space stations.
Space stations are not handled by sectors, but they are tied to the planets interface.
So once you put the planet into a sector, the interface for the space station is gone. You can still manually zoom to the planet and click on the space station to improve or give ship building orders but that will become a huge pain in the ass.
If you build a colony ship that way it also becomes somewhat bugged as its displayed as blue and the colonize button is greyed out.
Also systems with more than one planet become a pain in the ass as well. As you HAVE to deal with all 3 of the planets before you can put them into a sector. If you put them into a sector before all of them are complete, the sector government will screw things up. Even with a cap of 7 or 9 planets a system with 3 planets in it is quite a time intensive issue.

And yeah static defences do not work.
1. because of the stack of doom mechanic. How can a 1k station defend vs a 10k army? and it won't even slow it down much as they will just blast it away before the defense force arrives.
2. there isnt even an option to upgrade them. So by building static defense all you do is building a lot of floating scrap - with monthly costs.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
To add the the sector issue: The whole mechanic doesn't really to be thought to the end.

It was thought against the wrong expectation of players' behaviours.

For example, if a player starts with the desert biome

-They expected the player to explore space to find desert planets.

-They expected the player to settle only the desert planets that are necessary to extend the empire's territory.
Planets trapped in the empire territory can only be settled by the player so it is useless to settle them all.

The increase of the frontier range depends on the population growth, which depends on food, happiness etc So it matters most to settle planets with the adequate population.

At the end of the first stage, they expected the player to have a full hand of desert planets forming a continuous space territory.

At this point, they expected the planet to take a look at all the non settled planets trapped in the empire territory. There could be desert planets (since the player may have skipped planets) and non desert planets.

If there are many artic planets (which are bad to settle with desert adapted people), the player was expected to unlock the tech and find a pop that is adapted to the artic biome.

The pop might be acquired through different ways (uplifiting, migration access, conquest)

If the player acquires that population by conquest, they expected the player to move two desert planets to a sector to put the newly acquired planet in the active hand.

Then build a colony ship from artic population, then settle an artic world (within the empire) The new settled world is now in the active planet and the player has access to all the options (like resettling etc)

So if a player has a 5 planet cap, they expected the player to build the largest possible, continuous empire on desert planets only (at this stage, all in the active hand)
At this point, start to settle a different kind of planets, that means moving desert planets to sectors to make place for artic planets.

From a hand of five desert planets to a hand of five artic planets.

When the player behaves that way, the design works appropriately. The sector AI, the colonization feature (you are not supposed to use a sector planet to colonize)

Players do not behave that way, they colonize the planets as they find them (so they need sectors faster) and they do not move the newest planets in their hand, but place them in sectors.

At this point, the design is unfit. Instead of pushing a desert planet out of the hand, they place the newly settled artic planet in a sector. Then they launch a colony ship from that planet sector. When out, it does not belong to the player, but to the sector and then the player cant operate it directly.

If the player wants to use that ship, he must go to the planet to colonize screen, select the option colonize and then the ship is available.

Players though are not supposed to colonize using sector pops. Hence the troubles.

On the MP:

It is as foretold. It does not provide a gameplay driven experience. It provides a community driven experience.

Streamers, because of their job, are suited community managers.

The quality of the experience depends on the rules set by the manager as the gameplay fails to establish any rules set.

Rules that managers might set are as following: no rush twenty minutes, no vassalization one hour, no alliance three hours, truce after war last ten years etc
Nothing of this stems from gameplay and relies on the willingness of the community to abide by the rules.
Hence the decision making is low and most time is allocated to networking on the com channel.

The experience is an extension of real life. A bunch of six players who know each other can overtake a 22 player map. All it takes is that they use their separate channel to hide their real life connection, providing themselves with an insider status, which is enough to win.

Finally, sessions are affected by the patsy syndrome.
Since it is a real life extension, some players join the session with less cronistic assets, making them patsies. They only join the session so that the connected others can beat them.
As soon the session run out of patsies (they've been eliminated), usually, the session has run to its end.

Some more details about the upcoming Clarke patch were just disclosed in the newest DD.

Personally, I've clocked in about 40 hours so far, and I think I'll hold off starting a new campaign until at the very least they release the last of their announced patches ("Heinlein"), or maybe even until the first official DLC.

I just tried making a sensor ship in GalCiv 3 and it only had a sensor range of 8. I was just rushing through so I could have done it wrong but I think they may have addressed that issue. (However, you can buy a mercenary scout that can reveal the map in pretty short order. Not only does he have a good sensor range, he's fast, too!)

I'm not so sure it's a good idea to take those 3 constructers, either, if you aren't going to go pragmatic. Each pick doubles in price so doing that doubles the cost of everything in your intended outlook.

Originally Posted by Zloth
I just tried making a sensor ship in GalCiv 3 and it only had a sensor range of 8. I was just rushing through so I could have done it wrong but I think they may have addressed that issue. (However, you can buy a mercenary scout that can reveal the map in pretty short order. Not only does he have a good sensor range, he's fast, too!)

I'm not so sure it's a good idea to take those 3 constructers, either, if you aren't going to go pragmatic. Each pick doubles in price so doing that doubles the cost of everything in your intended outlook.

I am glad that didn't work out for you, I hate censorships…..

Originally Posted by Zloth
I just tried making a sensor ship in GalCiv 3 and it only had a sensor range of 8. I was just rushing through so I could have done it wrong but I think they may have addressed that issue. (However, you can buy a mercenary scout that can reveal the map in pretty short order. Not only does he have a good sensor range, he's fast, too!)

I'm not so sure it's a good idea to take those 3 constructers, either, if you aren't going to go pragmatic. Each pick doubles in price so doing that doubles the cost of everything in your intended outlook.

Thanks, might need to test that one again.
Back at release it was a huge deal and it seemed like the majority of the player base argumented to keep it. And the developer himself said that he wants to keep it, too.

Originally Posted by Zloth
I just tried making a sensor ship in GalCiv 3 and it only had a sensor range of 8. I was just rushing through so I could have done it wrong but I think they may have addressed that issue. (However, you can buy a mercenary scout that can reveal the map in pretty short order. Not only does he have a good sensor range, he's fast, too!)

I'm not so sure it's a good idea to take those 3 constructers, either, if you aren't going to go pragmatic. Each pick doubles in price so doing that doubles the cost of everything in your intended outlook.

I just tested it again and they indeed fixed it. Instead of getting sensor range now you get sensor power instead and which is then converted into sensor range with a far smaller value.

Regariding the consturctors: It might still be helpful to have 3 additional colony ships in turn 3 or so. They adjusted the upgrade price so that you have to bay a few hundred credits now per ship. You start out with tons of money, so this is still not a big deal. But at least they adjusted it a bit. Might still be the single best strategy around, might not be.
The big thing before was, that you already knew all the planets around you and knew where you could send your colony ship. As you dont have this info anymore, this strategy becomes weaker as well.

So…might give the game another try. Originally I wanted to play this one in multiplayer which was kinda pointless back then.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
I am glad that didn't work out for you, I hate censorships…..

Huh? Are you talking about that Euro-centric mod that… oh Aaaahhhhhhgggg!!!

Sensors hint at a possible different way of handling spatial space.

In the current version, the territory is locked up to encroachment as soon as a planet influence expands.
This severly impairs the option of moving around and ruin quests.

This is set passively: no fleet can move in another territory unless an agreement is made.

The sensor feature hints they wanted an active interdiction.
There would have been the claimed territory (roughly the same as the current one) and another territory: the actively forbidden, which corresponds with the space covered by sensors.

Space amoebae can move freely and are unknown to the player until they get into sensor range. The capacity to intercept them depends on the area covered by sensors. When a space amoebae fleet enters the sensor covered area, it is possible to launch a fleet to intercept them. Usually, they withdraw before the interceptors are in range to engage. Pursuit follows and the success of the pursuit depends on the area covered by the sensors. As soon as amoebae leave that area, the only way to keep going after them is the trail left by their jump engine.

Hence a strong incentive to upgrade the sensor technology since it increases the area of active interdiction.
As a side effect, it gives weight to jump engines and flight engines.

This is probably how they wanted the whole thing to work: an active interdiction area.

This would have meant the possibility to move around as long as you dont not get your fleet into sensor range and also an escalation to war as encroachment of territory would have been possible: if you are taken into sensor range, the AI might send a warning etc

This would also have given a different dimension to raid events like piracy with fleets able to hit and run.

This would have also made possible gathering information (since at the moment, the player goes blind most of the time)

Reading the patch depiction, they do not aim at implementing this feature any time soon as they plant to ease obtaining various licenses to move around.
This change does not make any sense, relatively to the ideological features.
Why would a pacifist empire allow free movement to a warmongering empire?

In the case they managed to implement a sensor based interdicted area, asking for permission would not have been mandatory.
Therefore a warmongering empire would not have to ask for it, all it would have taken, fly outside the sensor range.

The next patch is not going to give sensors more weight and it will also dilute other features as ideological oppositions.

This reminds of the evolution of the W40K universe. When it launched, it was war everywhere, there was only war, war against the xenos, war against the heretics.
War, war, war.

Then it grew laxer: alliances were being introduced. Trade was established.

So much that, in the end, a common joke that the only one missing to get a big family were the tyranids. Get them to trade and the evolution of the universe would have been complete.