Stellaris

elidib

Vyemm Raider
2,052
3,460
I love sci-fi strategy but I'm on the fence with this one mainly due to this ING review:https://youtu.be/eoAkomMEFQo

Can anyone that played this watch the review and comment?
I've been playing this for a while now, I'm in the mid-game (and using the warhammer 40k races lol)

I agree that sectors are 100% the worst thing in this game, maybe the worst idea in the history of 4x games. So.... I got rid of it. If you want to, you can increase the core planet cap by editing the .lua file, so I raised it to 999.

Now the game is fun and playable, for me at least.
 

spirytus

Trakanon Raider
14
0
I've been playing this for a while now, I'm in the mid-game (and using the warhammer 40k races lol)

I agree that sectors are 100% the worst thing in this game, maybe the worst idea in the history of 4x games. So.... I got rid of it. If you want to, you can increase the core planet cap by editing the .lua file, so I raised it to 999.

Now the game is fun and playable, for me at least.
Thanks. After watching a few more reviews (clutch:Play Wait or Avoid? Review of Stellaris - YouTube) looks like this one needs to mature a bit.
 

AngryGerbil

Poet Warrior
<Donor>
17,781
25,896
I am more of a 4x hobbyist rather than a 4x enthusiast.

This game is fun for me. I have had fun exploring the depths. It is cool to be able to zoom from citizen to universe in two clicks or rolls of the mouse wheel.

I probably sound like a noob, but this game is fun for me. I like the atmosphere and the malleable nature of the science fiction. The UI needs a bit of work but the foundations are great. I've had fun.
 

iannis

Musty Nester
31,351
17,656
I can't imagine playing the game without sectors. That would be SO MUCH MICRO.

I get to a point fairly quickly in games where i'm flooding myself with minerals and energy and I'm starting to wonder, "Do I just build massive kamikazee fleets with all this income?" It starts to get to be so much that I have to pause just to spend.

Which is fine, but the advantage to sectors is that you can use them for resource dumps. "Here you go, East Dakota -- have 2k crystals. That's how much I love you. #votetrump"

I'm probably just completely ignoring some integral facet of the game and one of these times i'll load up and just get my shit pushed in by some little 3 planet empire or something. "Oh... I was supposed to be building armies on my planets? WHO KNEW!"
 

Agraza

Registered Hutt
6,890
521
It needs to be optimized better for late game performance and needs to streamline its micromanagement handling features like sectors and fleet construction. 3/5 atm. It's a good game, but they can do better, and I expect them to. CK2 released much more wobbly than this, and it's amazing now.
 

khorum

Murder Apologist
24,338
81,363
I've never played wormhole-using races but they seem kinda op... So they just build wormhole generators and then they can teleport fleets anywhere in its radius? I spent most of the last war hunting down the generators or have their fleets just raping my interior.
 

iannis

Musty Nester
31,351
17,656
I've never played wormhole-using races but they seem kinda op... So they just build wormhole generators and then they can teleport fleets anywhere in its radius? I spent most of the last war hunting down the generators or have their fleets just raping my interior.
Wormholes are kinda neat. You can jump anywhere within the radius of the generator, but your supply lines become very very short. Unless you just want to spam a generator in every system, which isn't really practical.

Early game exploration is a huge pain with wormholes compared to FTL or warp lanes. FTL exploration is kinda funny, you can just send out a lonesome corvette and Q up like 20 systems. "Go look there!" In the hands of an AI, wormholes are probably fairly OP. In the hands of a human they're kinda neat, and I think the tradeoffs seem good.
 

Agraza

Registered Hutt
6,890
521
wormholes are totally fucking OP, or rather, everything else sucks.

I think path control should be more strongly enforced by fortresses and the such, and fortresses should be more economically viable to distribute for different purposes. As it is there is little difference between the periphery of your empire and the heart of it for a wormhole user. They can just emerge where they please, and that's a pretty good distance with even mid-game tech. I only use wormholes atm, but I'm considering removing them from my home mod entirely because they disrupt the flow of traffic without a significant counter.
 

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
<Silver Donator>
31,672
18,377
I like the strategic element that restricting everyone to hyperspace lanes lends to the game, tbh.

What systems you grab and where you expand becomes more restricted and also more important.
 

Punko

Macho Ma'am
<Rickshaw Potatoes>
7,921
12,571
I spent 10 hours building an empire, watching my enemies grovel before me

And then out of nowhere the "equivalent" power rival I had waltzes in with literally 9x the forces I have

Balance sucks dick.

I like the strategic element that restricting everyone to hyperspace lanes lends to the game, tbh.

What systems you grab and where you expand becomes more restricted and also more important.
yea it is, until you see AI cheats
 

Apostolos

Golden Knight of the Realm
430
219
The biggest bonus to sectors is that the population in a sector does not count toward your research population limits (at least I am fairly sure they did not when I was checking numbers). Unless you change something other than the .lua file to increase the max number of controllable planets, then you will have massive penalties due to large populations to research and will be researching stuff reallllly slow.
 

Jozu

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
6,958
6,268
I havent run any mods yet as I am still learning, but the game is pretty impressive.

Like I said before, someone really needs to make a Dune mod, this game more than any other could capture that universe. Spice could replace energy or something, and there is enough real estate to make the trade aspect of the spice economy really flourish.

House Atriedes or Harkonnen as starting race and your all set.
 

Aaron

Goonsquad Officer
<Bronze Donator>
8,115
17,928
Changing my opinion from 'this is a great game on anything that meets the minimum specs' to 'Wow, do not bother unless you are rocking a brand new machine'. Even on the box I built six months ago, around 2600 and 71 planets (I need 83 for the 'Conquest victory') it is taking 10 minutes a year on the fastest speed setting. Considering it takes something like 2-3 years to research a new tech and probably 3 years to go from one side of a 600 Star map to the other... ouch.
I honestly think this game will rock by the next expansion, as what will most likely happen by then is you'll have a few balance/streamlining patches and the expansion will flesh out the game a bit more. I view this phase as an almost form of paid beta. That said, I probably won't play much until said patches and even expansion hit.
 

Rime

<Donor>
2,638
1,613
I honestly think this game will rock by the next expansion, as what will most likely happen by then is you'll have a few balance/streamlining patches and the expansion will flesh out the game a bit more. I view this phase as an almost form of paid beta. That said, I probably won't play much until said patches and even expansion hit.
My issue is not with the gameplay itself, though Sectors are not explained very well and they really need to hammer home how important influence is. My issue is that it is horribly optimized. That is all! Otherwise, 7/10. Very few bugs and those that I encountered were already fixed by player made mods.
 

Aaron

Goonsquad Officer
<Bronze Donator>
8,115
17,928
As expected,hereis a Dev forum post about the next three planned patches, one bug/performance patch for later this month, and two later patches with balance and content added. Game should be a lot, lot better come the June patch!
 

General Antony

Vyemm Raider
1,142
3,547
The biggest bonus to sectors is that the population in a sector does not count toward your research population limits (at least I am fairly sure they did not when I was checking numbers). Unless you change something other than the .lua file to increase the max number of controllable planets, then you will have massive penalties due to large populations to research and will be researching stuff reallllly slow.
Uhh this is completely false.
 

khorum

Murder Apologist
24,338
81,363
I have absolutely no idea how you are supposed to expand in the early-middle game with this not working the way it does right now.

Oh well. I am almost done with my first game. The Scourge (Stellaris Zerg) invaded my galaxy, pushed me back and lost four planets to them. Then pushed back at them only to discover that it is currently bugged and you cannot exterminate them from a planet. They are not sure when this will be 'patched', so I downloaded a mod that does it.

Anyways, the Scourge have their capital and three other planets left, out of about 15 planets previously and then suddenly, one of the super advanced races demands that I stop attacking the Zerg. Wat.jpg.

So I back off, as I am not ready to fight them. The Scourge slowly retake the territories I was forced to abandon on my quest to purge them. I shift all of my focus from research to Energy Credits, triple the size of my fleets from one at 20k and one at 15k to a 40k, a 35k and a 30k. Then I go and stomp the heads in of the giant space llamas that made me stop my crusade. Fallen Empire? Pffft! Tachyon lances and point defense nomnomnom.

Cleaning them up, then there is a second Fallen Empire, space cockroaches with a giant arse ringworld around a sun. They only have the one system, so once the Scourge are gone, I will destroy them and return to pacifying the remaining populations to the empire of Rimelandia.
I actually don't mind the "bug" that the Scourge-invaded planets become unusable if you let them win a ground invasion. It makes sense for a late-game crisis event.

My beef is that in the unlikely event that you actually kill the last Queen you get hit with a MASSIVE "Genocide" diplomat hit!! It's kinda bullshit and that SHOULD definitely be treated as a bug.

After spending almost fifty years fighting off the Scourge (and losing like 4 vassals to them), I finally wiped them out but I look over to the diplomacy screen and everyone is all RED to me. Sure enough I have a huge Genocide diplomacy hit for wiping out the Zerg! (even though I had to station a small squadron at each of their planets to keep them from spawning new stations and ships).

After a few years my allies abandoned me, joined up with my rivals and I had to walk away from yet ANOTHER almost-won game.