Small Novella warning, if you’re not interested in reading a long two page bit on what I would like to see, please pass on, I just wanted to put my thoughts out there for the devs, to shoot some ideas for things I think would be really cool to add to the game.
Hello, I was hoping to be able to write up a whole thing for your "What do you want out of stellaris" question a while back and was unable to find time to write anything up at the time due to a busy schedule. That being said, I spend a lot of time playing as mega-corps, both Criminal Syndicates and normal eco empires (I've also tried playing as a Merc company, but not being able to actually rent out your own fleets makes it a little dull, you more just feel like the parent company for a bunch of private merc companies. and I think there's something fun to be had in looking into adding contracting features later on, but that's not what I'm here to discuss.). Personally, because of my play-style I deal a lot with the trade systems, piracy, and espionage, and think that they're not only interlinked, but crucial to the playstyle. This being said, these are my hopes. One: that Piracy will be linked to crime overall, it should be impossible to have 0 crime, it should be more of a half-life thing, where you can have less and less, but never none (barring things like hive minds, because individuals aren't sentient). Crime itself needs a major rework, but it should be something you're always concerned with a bit, you have to manage your empire, and if dealing with crime was as easy as building a few police stations and rooting out the criminals, we wouldn't have any crime in real life, which just isn't the case. as crime develops on your worlds it creates a "Branch office" called a Criminal Hideout, it's on the same page, but like overlord encampments things it should be it's own tab. as you have more crime it will develop more criminal enterprises to take advantage of the things that are plentiful on the planet, syphoning off those resources, making enforcement really important to make sure you're getting all of the resources you want from your world. As a Criminal Syndicate, I think that instead of building a branch office, you should Hijack the local Criminal Hideouts for yourself, which would limit (to a degree the piracy that will happen at high crime in your empire, making criminal syndicates have a minor positive, making them not quite as annoying, sometimes it's better to let the mob run the crime than to let the hooligans go crazy). Similarly, I think that "Intel" on criminal hideouts should be locked behind an enforcement resource, which dictates how much enforcement you have, how effectively it fights crime, and how much intel you have on your criminal elements. This would make crime more meaningful, impactful, and actually relevant to gameplay, allowing empires to really play around with the feature. this also allows for criminal syndicates to be more unique, and not just make playing a normal mega-corp unfun, and you have to evict every criminal syndicate from your trade partners in order to establish your branch office, but makes doing so relevant, as your branch offices would lose resources due to bad crime, possibly giving you an option for something like private police companies in branch offices. Now, how does all this tie into piracy, I think that at a certain stage of crime development a Pirate port/hideout should be built, and that this should syphon resources to fund piracy in your empire, meaning that if you have bad crime, and a strong economy, you're going to have strong pirates that are going to be a real threat as they have more resources to do as they please. Now, to touch on the last two things that I mentioned at the beginning, Trade and espionage, starting with trade. I hope that trade will become a resource that will be used sort of like a GDP, of sorts. Making an actual currency resource, and not just energy credits (EC) (though trade agreements with a Gestalt should be in EC because they would have little use for real currency.) I think that this should just be your trade value, as we currently have it, I don’t think it should automatically be converted into EC, because this sort of devalues trade and resource management. Being able to actually accumulate and spend trade value should be important, and using the market through regular/recurring purchases should be how you use this to generate resources. Generating energy with trade just feels cheep, and I never feel a need to build a single generator district or power world ever, I constantly joke about powering my worlds by burning money in a furnace. Having Crime directly impact your resource production (and particularly trade, through things like piracy, and planetary crime) will add a lot of depth to eco empires in my opinion, and using trade value as the measurement for “Economy” in the GalCom could make stacking economy an actually viable way to generate political power, as right now the only real way to do it is through fleet strength, though you can get a decent amount from pops, if you do it right (economy is usually a joke stat for political weight as it doesn’t matter how much more of everything you produce than anyone, there just isn’t any weight there, which doesn’t make sense as economic weight in the real world is often the most important, and is only ever set aside by military weight, similarly, I think that all things that generate diplo-weight should generate influence, as right now the only way to get influence consistently is through military strength which makes very little sense). Lastly: Espionage, this is one that’s near to my heart, as I really love the idea of information brokers/spy nations, but espionage is utterly unremarkable. First, I don’t actually think a lot needs to change to make it alright, as it currently exists basic espionage has it’s place, but if you want to lean into it, it quickly becomes underwhelming. Enter, Spy Networks, if you guessed I was going to suggest another thing in the branch office tab, they you guessed right. Spy networks should work similarly to criminal hideouts/organizations in that they should be a tab that when you lack the required information, should be blacked out, so you can’t see what’s happening there, or who owns it, I think that there are some unique mechanics that you could add, such as shadow wars, using resources, and things like codebreaking, and strong/experienced leaders, in order to usurp spy networks from other factions, helping you to establish dominance in the spy/information world. But, in essence, you would have a branch office, which you could develop as it progresses, through a combination of how high your intel level is, and how long the network has been developing on that world. This should only be available to the espionage tradition. And the espionage tradition should also provide bonuses that increase the difficulty of detecting these networks, which should still be through enforcement, though vs encryption as opposed to crime. This would make them very hard to root out for factions that specialize in spying such as taking spy civics. These Spy Networks should allow you to syphon resources at the cost of risk (which should count against your encryption to make it more discoverable). The first building should be guaranteed, and it should just be the Spy Network Headquarters, which provides a small amount of intel gain, this should be able to be upgraded, and this should be the primary way a spy empire gains intel on an empire, basic spying should really only develop low level intel “They’re looking to declare war on you, this is generally what their territory looks like, here’s their capital, ETC” making the capital the place where you would probably have to start your Spy Networks for most factions. Anyways, I obviously have too many ideas about how I would love to see this implemented, so if you want to pick my brain more I give the community team permission to DM me on Discord, I’m in the discord as zodrickzheioh. But I think you guys get the idea. Anyways, I hope you like the idea, I have wanted this for a long time, and would love to see more depth be added to this part of the game. That being said, I think that these are all excellent opportunities, because they’re additional features, and you don’t have to interact with them if you don’t want to, just build a police force, run a police state, be a Fascist, or a Gestalt and you should crush all these with ease due to enforcement bonuses. Anyways, I hope everyone’s having a good time, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for Stellaris.
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