STELLARIS: New Paradox Game in SPAAAACE

[crazy canuck]

I think some of those are WAD.  But despite the things that can be improved this is still a lot of fun.  I really like how your choice of ethics changes how the game plays and the options the player has.  I like that it is not just the tech that is variable and is weighted differently depending on those choices but also the options the player has to choose from when events trigger.  The structure of the game is well conceived. 

[jimmy olsen]

When I hand over newly created colonies to my sectors, they can never upgrade the central building, which also means the colony will never upgrade its other buildings. Is there a way around that? Do I have to manually remove the colonies temporarily from the sector, upgrade the central building and then give it back...? That seems tedious.

I'll have to check that out, but I've seen my sectors build a spaceports, so they can build pricey things, you just have to set up their economy well by building minning stations.

[Legbiter]

Something I'm noticing is that my pops seem to be losing their ethics. Not just diverging (those can be purged for heresy) but dropping the empire ethics altogether. 

Checked it, it's a confirmed bug.

[celedhring]

Something I'm noticing is that my pops seem to be losing their ethics. Not just diverging (those can be purged for heresy) but dropping the empire ethics altogether. 

It's a known bug. Instead of adopting new ethics, diverging pops just become neutral.

I'm holding off on my first proper long playthrough until they get it fixed (they say they have a fix under testing).

[Tamas]

Yeah, I am very curious how that divergence thing turns out when fixed. It sounds like it is what should keep things fluid in the later half of the game, and the game does need something for that.

[Zanza]

When I hand over newly created colonies to my sectors, they can never upgrade the central building, which also means the colony will never upgrade its other buildings. Is there a way around that? Do I have to manually remove the colonies temporarily from the sector, upgrade the central building and then give it back...? That seems tedious.

I hadn't noticed that before.  What a pain that is.  I wonder if it is WAD so that you have to spend influence points?.  That would be a bad design decision if that is so.

I checked and my sectors do eventually upgrade. But it takes a while, even if they have the necessary resources (except influence of course).

[Zanza]

The areas of the game that need the most work:

1) Space combat. Right now the winning fleet is high evasion corvettes. I love the idea of small torpedo ships posing a threat to big capital ships, but ultimately I think a fleet of starfighters is not going to pose a huge threat to a fleet of destroyers. Needs to be better balanced.

2) The narrative: One of the great things about Paradox games is the story telling they provide. Stellaris has tons of potential in this area that is unrealized. I've played various different types of governments in Stellaris and, aside from some diplomatic changes and decisions, they all feel the same to me. An oligarchy just feels like a democracy with really long terms. It really feels like more of an elective monarchy. I'd like to see the different government types really change the dynamics of how you play your game.

3) Factions: Need more factions. Could be based on government type. Let monarchies and empires have different dynastic houses. Oligarchies could have wealthy plutocrats. Democracies can have political parties, etc.

4) Leaders: Feel rather pointless to me. I'm just generating leaders to fill empty slots in the UI. Unless they can be given a larger role / some kind of character its about as interesting as the advisors in EU. Which would be fine except they are EVERYWHERE. Governors, scientists, head of state, military leaders. It would be cool if factions auto generated leaders and spending influence created leaders guaranteed to be part of your loyalist faction.

5) Needs more setup options. I should be able to control a lot more about the galaxy I generate than I can currently. Resource richness, fallen empires (which suck btw). AI aggressiveness could use a slider somewhere.

I think what I'm looking for is something a little more dynamic to keep replays fresh. Right now everything about Stellaris feels very procedural.

All agreed. Diplomacy is also seriously weak as all aliens just seem to hate me all the time. I think the basics for everything is there, it just needs more work to flesh it out.

[Solmyr]

I dunno, I am quite good friends with alien races that are not either xenophobic or otherwise diametrically opposed to me in ethics.

[Zanza]

Maybe it's because I am a warmonger? Most seem to have threat -200 or so towards me.

[Zanza]

Annexing a vassal seems to take forever. I started annexation of one of my vassal empires and it will take 300 months... In that time I could easily conquer them...

[Solmyr]

Maybe it's because I am a warmonger? Most seem to have threat -200 or so towards me.

That would do it, yes.

Integrating vassals is apparently not very useful, as their pops will get the "conquered" happiness penalty afterwards. And it's not like you generally need more crappy planets to run. Even if your vassal is disloyal, they'll still help you in wars and such and won't rebel if they are weaker than you.

[Grallon]

Well I played for some 10-12 hours - it does have much potential but you can see the giant DLC holes waiting to be filled.  I don't think I've reached the mid game lull - I always get bored around reaching 5 planets then I restart.  And this weekend I returned to Inquisition for another run rather than play this.  *shrug*


G.

[Grey Fox]

When I hand over newly created colonies to my sectors, they can never upgrade the central building, which also means the colony will never upgrade its other buildings. Is there a way around that? Do I have to manually remove the colonies temporarily from the sector, upgrade the central building and then give it back...? That seems tedious.

I hadn't noticed that before.  What a pain that is.  I wonder if it is WAD so that you have to spend influence points?.  That would be a bad design decision if that is so.

I checked and my sectors do eventually upgrade. But it takes a while, even if they have the necessary resources (except influence of course).

Have you tried reducing their contribution to the empire? or given them some starting ressources? Maybe that makes a difference.

Are your empires giant blobs or a couple of smaller ones? Mine is allover the place. I'm guessing it's a byproduct of using wormhole as my FTL tech.

[Martinus]

See, this is why I love Paradox - they are very open about stuff not working as intended and have already posted plans for future patches:

First off, for those of you who are unfamiliar with our post-release policies, we will release a lot of expansions over the coming years. Each expansion will be accompanied by a major update (for Stellaris, these free updates will be named after famous science fiction authors) containing a whole bunch of completely free upgrades and improvements to the game in addition to regular bug fixes. As long as enough players keep buying paid content for the game, we promise to keep improving the game for everyone, almost like an MMO.

Now, before we begin the expansion cycle in earnest, we will spend the rest of May and June only focusing on bug fixes and free upgrades to the game. We carefully listen to all your feedback, which has already made us alter our priorities a bit. As a veteran designer of our complex historical games, I was anticipating a fair amount of criticism regarding the mid-game in Stellaris compared to that of our historical games, but I was more concerned with the depth of the economy than the relative lack of diplomatic options, for example. I also find much of the feedback on the Sector system interesting; the GUI and AI concerns will receive the highest priority. One area I was not at all surprised to get flak for is the lack of mid-game scripted content, however. We simply took too long getting all the early and late game stuff in, and neglected a whole category of events called "colony events", which were supposed to be the bread and butter of the mid-game for the Science Ships.

We've been digesting and discussing your feedback and how to best go about improving the mid-game to make it more dynamic, both in the short and long run. Let's start with our short term plans. When the game was released, we had already proceeded to fix a lot of issues. Together with some other pressing issues that have been reported, the plan is to release the 1.1 update - "Clarke" - near the end of May. We will try to cram as much as we can into this update, but the more fundamental stuff will have to wait until the next update ("Asimov"), which is scheduled for the end of June. The "Clarke" patch will mainly be a bug fix and GUI improvement update. Here are some of the highlights:

"CLARKE" HIGHLIGHTS
•Fixes to the Ethic Divergence and Convergence issues. Currently, Pops tend to get more and more neutral (they lose Ethics, but rarely gain new ones.)
•The End of Combat Summary. This screen looks bad and also doesn't tell you what you need to know in order to revise your ship designs, etc.
•Sector Management GUI: There are many issues with this, and we will try to get most of them fixed.
•Diplomacy GUI issues. This includes the Diplomatic Pop-Ups when other empires contact you, but also more and better looking Notifications, and more informative tooltips on wars, etc.
•AI improvements: Notably the Sector AI, but also plenty of other things. This kind of work is never "finished"...
•Myriads of bug fixes and smaller GUI improvements.
•Late game crises bugs. There were some nasty bugs in there, blocking certain subplots and various surprising developments.

After that, we're moving on to the "Asimov" update, and this is when we can start making some major gameplay improvements to especially the mid-game. As you might have guessed, we plan to add some new diplomatic actions and treaties. Another thing that struck me during our discussions is that the normal lack of access to the space of other empires makes the game feel more constricted than intended. It limits your options since you can't really interact much with the galaxy beyond the borders of your empire, and you only tend to concern yourself with your direct neighbors. This is bad for your Science Ships too, of course, since they might not be able to finish some of the grander "quests". Compare the situation with Europa Universalis, where you usually have access to the oceans and can thus reach most of the world, or Crusader Kings, where you can even move through neutral territory with your armies. We also intend to add as much mid-game scripted content as we can. Thus, this is currently the plan for "Asimov", but it's not set in stone yet, so please bear with us if something gets pushed or altered:

"ASIMOV" HIGHLIGHTS (NOT SET IN STONE!)
•Border Access Revision: Borders are now open to your ships by default, although empires can choose to Close their borders for another empire (lowering your relations, of course.)
•Tributaries: New diplomatic status and corresponding war goals.
•Joint Declarations of War: You can ask other empires to join you for a temporary alliance in a war against a specific target.
•Defensive Pacts.
•Harder to form and maintain proper Alliances.
•More war goals: Humiliate, Open Borders, Make Tributary, etc.
•Emancipation Faction. We had to cut this one at the last minute. Needs redesign.
•Diplomatic Map Mode. Much requested!
•Diplomatic Incidents: This is a whole class of new scripted events that causes more interaction with the other empires.
Past "Asimov", I can't give you any kind of specifics yet, but I am currently leaning towards honing in on the following general areas for the "Heinlein" update (these are not promises!):

CURRENT "HEINLEIN" INTENTIONS
•Sector and Faction Politics: We are working on a design for this. I always wanted to make Factions more closely tied to Sectors, for example...
•Federation and Alliance Politics: As a player, you need more ways of interacting with the other members, push your will through, and get elected, etc.
•Giving Directions to Allies and Subject States.
•Strategic Resource Overhaul: You should need these and search for them far and wide. They should be extremely important.
•Battleship Class Weapons. Some Battleship front sections will be repurposed for an XL size weapon slot. There are currently four ship sizes but only three sizes to weapons, creating an imbalance. Also, Battleships should have fewer small weapon slots and have to rely on screens of smaller ships.
•Fleet Combat Mechanics: Formations and/or more complex ship behavior is needed.
•Mid-game scripted content: Guarded "treasures", mid-game crises, colony events, etc.
•Living Solar Systems: Little civilian ships moving around, etc.

[Zanza]

Good stuff. If that is just the free content, I am really looking forward to the paid content.