Stellaris Dev Diary #361 - The Vision

[stneron189]

Maybe i am one of 10 Genetical Ascension fans who always takes it on non gestalt empires. But the shenanigans with pop micro is so so so annoying, the perk that you added to pops is a joke, no offence. Please, for the love of Christ, add Genetical Ascension - Pop Gene Modifying based on jobs, not whole planet or whole species. That would indirectly buff GA and make it so much more fun!

 

[Mista-Howie]

the current system of individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation is probably the single biggest source of lag. In my opinion it has to go

fleets are also a major contributor, so I feel they need massively changed cos of that. but I also love watching them fly around and also the fireworks in combat. for combat reworks I think i'd prefer smaller changes so it still feels recognisable? but it might need a series of smaller changes to get to where it needs to be and that might as well be done all at once...

for defining my civilisation I use or used to use a lot of mods that add additional customistion like hair, clothes, sexual dimorphism, and now also visual differences depending on accension paths, and would love it if pdx was able to do these too, though i know it is a massive undertaking due to the sheer number of portraits in the game at this point.
for defining my civ i also really want a culture mechanic? I would love to create a culture that can grow or change as we spread among the stars. a number of traits and civics (hell even aspects of some origins) feel they would fit more as being part of this system as well (and the religion stuff people keep asking for could be tied to it too?). though it's perhaps more of a stellaris 2 kind of thing.

goals are hard to really define, sometimes it's finish my origin's storyline, defeat the crisis, become the crisis, or when i'm playing gigastructures build (atleast) one of each of the megastructures (both the oens it adds, and the ones pdx added). they can change though, and as well as the previous ones it can just be take xyz system before i make a new one?

trade system is annoying honestly, especially when you (re)take a starbase and have to set a route for it. piracy is tedious and i wish i could just reduce my fleet cap by n to reduce piracy in all systems by y

colonisation I have mixed feelings on, i dont like how long colonisation time can be, but i also want planets to be fewer and more impactful? something more akin to the rare, unique, and exotic worlds of planetary diversity with their modifiers that change the art as well as a greater impact on the rural districts/resources available than the extremly subtle system now with wet having more food, cold having more minerals and dry having more energy. on average.
more story planets like the relic worlds?

there's some civics that feel so dissapointing i feel they should be combined with another or made into a tech/tradition? but not really any civics that i feel should be origins or origins i feel should be civics (though as it is now mechanist is very lackluster and could easily be a civic?)
for that first part i feel feudal probably works? i kinda wish that it like automatically released sectors as vassals (when they had a certain number of pops, planets or systems?) as well as letting you give systems to them and take systems from them way more easily.
also vassals being able to have their own vassals, and if your vassals and their vassals could join either side when any vassal of your rebelled so it wasnt always 1v5 or whatever that would be great to see.

the current faction system is probably what i'd remove? it's so boring and you dont really do anything with it? just one party per ethic and you get a tiny amount of unity from them. I kinda wish factions and parties could form and collapse in response to events, asscensions perks, or policies - both yours and your neighbours. you take over some blorg systems and you get a "blorg independance party" that can increase or decrease in strength based on what you do, and it could lead to unrest beyond those systems, or even a war for independance. and maybe espionage opportunities for neighbours? or your banning of cybernetics/a neighbour taking that asecnsion perk could lead to a pro cybernetics party that wants you take them too, and if you crack down on them they could go underground. perhaps a cyborg empire could covertly send cybernetics to the group, and maybe that could even be a driven assimilator? which would then cause a pseudo machine uprising if the party used those DA cybernitcs?

 

[saints171377]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation? - The pop system is kind of built into the games mechanics changing this would change allot of things with the game. i feel like its fine where it is at
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love? - Removing fleet cap would probably be the best thing you could do to make it feel better. i would also like to see customizable ship sections based off a point system. an example would be a cruiser has 25 points to spend and 1 small weapon slot is 2, 1 medium is 4, 1 large is 6. armor and shield slots could cost 1.... etc etc
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization? - I always play with one friend and i love focusing on economy and supplying him with materials for the war effort.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? - When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play? My main goals are: Expansion, buff up choke points, and develop planets
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital? - i would love to see a import/ export of goods from your planets or your allys planets
• Is colonization too easy? - Should habitability and planet climate matter more? I think it is really easy to colonize planets. with that being said i would like to see some more planet options that could change things on the planet like reducing max habitability on a planet to increase mining production. as an example
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins? - with the introduction of Grand archive i do think that the fruitful partnership origin would be better suited as a civic now
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you? - Allot of people say a ground combat rework and im in the same boat. another thing that i think we badly need is a tech tree that we can pick from instead of it being completely random. like what civ does. i would also like to see some origins that involve economy based empires

 

[PineapplePizzaPriest]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  >Somewhat important - they offer some room for management without being too bothersome. Automation helps in the late game with most clicks.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  >As long as I can see ships shooting at each other, it's still Stellaris.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  >Ethics - it would be really cool to see even more defining features for them (like unique subject types, traditions, etc)
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  >Not at all. It's either a bother with pirates, that just force me to do some clicks, or inconsequential even if I play trade. It needs to matter more or matter less.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  >There are too many ways to circumvent unfavorable habitability (lithoids, robots, migration pacts, genesis guides) and thyr take little to no investment and almost always outgrow their empire size penalty.
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  >I think none of the civics should be origins, and most of the "You start at <blank> instead of a normal planet" can be made as civics.
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
  >CONSTRUCTION SHIPS ARE NOT NECESSARY for most of their function. I hate that i need to find a ship, click on it, and then do several more clicks to do whatever I need to do. Orbital rings from my favorite structure become a chore, because i need to 4-5 clicks for each of my planets. Orbital habitats are even worse, to the point where I dislike Void Dwellers gameplay, despite liking it previously. Additional ships' cost is negligible, but they bloat civilian ship menu, if you wanted to finish Hyper relays quickly. If there's one QoL thing I'd request is to make Kilo\Megastructures construction ship-free.

 

[AlphaAsh]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?

Very, although not nearly as much as I'd like. Pops and Jobs characterise my colonies. They are fundamental to my roleplaying. I want more ability to zoom down to individual pop lives, not less. The potential for immersion is there. "I like pop lives, and I cannot lie. Other meta chasers can deny."

• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?

I don't care. I avoid war. Always. Without fundamental and massive changes to the win or do not win that is war, fleets are just a thing I use to generate Influence and to prevent being seen as weak.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

Ethics, origins and civics. I'd suggest that adding more choice here is something you should do. Keep your purity with etic points sure, but give me a check box that lets me throw balance out the airlock, and support it. (And remember, this is the most prolific modder of this game telling you that )

• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?

My goals are pretty samey I admit, and my veterancy makes your hopes of dynamic evolving gameplay, for me, often unrealised. Sorry. Each DLC gives me a couple of reasonably fresh runs though, and I appreciate them.

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?

Shallow. I love depth and complexity, even for the sake of it. I'm one of those OCD weirdos who likes micro-managing stuff on a day when I'm too old to go out and play with the kids.

• Is colonization too easy?

Yes.

• Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

Yes.

• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?

See earlier comment about increasuing combos. Otherwise, you're doing a great job with these so nothing springs to mind.

• If you could remove one game system, what would it be?

Non interactive fleet battles. Pew pew. Yawn.

• Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion?

War. For realz this time.

• Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

Wars.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Gonna respond to some of these, probably edit later if I feel like adding something.

• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?

I don't know what you have in mind for fleets, but one thing I would really like is the ability to merge transport ships with military fleets - with the military fleet being able to deploy the transport ships. This would also mean the transport fleet would no longer be being temporarily deleted from the galaxy map, which would fix queued invasion orders and army reinforcement.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

Flexibility. I remember seeing Knights of the Toxic God and being very disappointed you could not play as a knightly order outside of that hyper-specific, weirdly toxic-themed storyline. I generally dislike overly-specific narrow origins that you have to base your entire civilization around instead of acting as a base. They feel like something you play once for the story then never again.

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital

I don't particularly like it. I had ideas before that would allow for setting up alternate trade route destinations to sector capitals with a Galactic Stock Exchange instead of all routes leading into the capital, but I wouldn't mind a different take on the trade system altogether

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

Way too easy for Lithoids in particular. +50% bonus to habitability is simply too much, you get minimum 70% habitability at some of the least habitable planets, and 100% everywhere else. It need to be cut to +30% at most.

In general, I think habitability as a system should, more than anything, limit how large a colony can get. It should be easy to create a small, reasonably productive outpost on just about any planet (think artificial life support: expensive, but functional), but it should be a meaningful obstacle to a colony's expansion and growth.

• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?

Mechanists, for sure. It feels like it should be a permanent civic rather than an origin. It can easily be combined with most origins. Should take a look at permanent civics in general though. There are way too many, and some of them should not be permanent civics in my view. Perhaps each empire should get two dedicated spots just for permanent civics, and two for regular ones, so that you are not completely bound by them for the entire game.

 

[BlastFilms_]

Coming from someone with very little 4X experience but loves Stellaris to death and back.

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?

I'm not super tied to the current system, but it does at least do a decent job of measuring how developed a colony/capital is in terms of population. There are two things to consider though--

1. Pops are currently the most lag-intensive part of the game and *the* inhibitor to late-game gameplay BUT...
2. Reworking Pops/Planets to the point where we reduce that would require a massive overhaul of dozens of systems, both old and new.

Overall for the health of the game, the pop system should at least be adjusted if not overhauled, though doing so will take a huge amount of developer resources.

• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?

Honestly? I'd love to see more variety to ship weaponry/composition in general. Something that absolutely should happen is a counter to doomstacking (maybe an AOE weapon, though even just ship debuffs when too many are on top of each other would be fine), which currently solves basically every issue in Stellaris. Bio-Ships are *awesome* and I'd love to see more parallel/alternative systems for space combat moving forward. Give us a Flagship civic that forces you to make singular powerful ships for lots of resources instead of following the normal track, or etc.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

This is a tricky question but I usually like to come up with a story behind my civilization and then try to build my empires ethics/civics/origin around that idea. Some of the more customizable origins like Under One Rule and the new origins are awesome for this sort of thing. Even in Multiplayer do I rarely build an empire "mechanics focused" unless I'm going for a specific challenge (e.g, only Bio-ships, or all of my friends are trying to kill me).

This answer is going to be different for absolutely everyone though, and RP is flexible enough to fit for other peoples' needs.

• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?

Usually I have some general idea of something I'd like to accomplish as any given empire "e.g, Vassalize every empire, or fill my Galactic Archive with the rarest objects in the galaxy, etc" and I work towards that goal, but a lot of the fun of Stellaris is how this goal can shift over time (e.g., Psionic Chosen One event chain, I'd absolutely love to see more things like this in the game in general!!) based off of the stimulus of the rest of the galaxy (if my Xenophile Scientists see a galaxy filled with genocidal maniacs, they are far more likely to go for Cosmogenesis then they would be in a federation-stack style galaxy).

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?

Honestly? It's awful. It's either completely a non-issue, or its' remarkably annoying and arcane. It's also a major lag contributor. I'd love to see a complete rework of how trade value and trade routes work in general.

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

For some empires, yes, and I think this is evident with the powercreep from Machine Age in particular. Machines just strictly outperform Organics in almost every scenario and a large chunk of the reason is because habitability is far far easier to manage for Machines then it is for Organics. All you need is a T2 Robomodding tech and Robots get perfect habitability everywhere thanks to Dry/Wet/Cold Climate Habitability. I do think overall alien planets should just be more hostile (but not in an annoying way) and espicially for Robots

• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?

Going to go on a bit of a tangent here, but I think mechanical and narrative origins should be two separated options for empire creation. Mechanically strong options like Mechanist and Tree of Life are just overshadowed by more interesting narrative origins, even if on paper the former are perfectly interesting and fun on their own. Being able to pick both something strong mechanically (like former mentioned Mechanist) and a fun narrative journey for your empire (Under One Rule) would be fun and help differentiate empires from one another even if they share an Origin. You'd have to ban specific combinations (e.g, Mechanist + Synthetic Fertillity) but other than that I don't see much that could go wrong asides from it potentially increasing the overall power level of empires a little bit (which I think would be a much needed buff for Organics/Hives)

As far as the actual question, I think Gaia Seeders and Rogue Servitor could be reworked into much more interesting and complex origins than they currently are Civics. Gaia Seeders in particular could have events and situations and unique buffs (maybe rework Life Seeded into Gaia Seeders + Bloomed and other stuff?), where as Rogue Servitor could again get interesting story stuff (what happens if your organics decided to revolt against your care?). I think Progenitor Hive could be a permanent Civic instead of an Origin but that's a fairly unpopular opinion and I wouldn't be fussed to see if remain an Origin.

• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

1. Cut Ground Invasions. Armies are really annoying to maintain, there's very little interesting about ground combat, and most players just bombard/planet crack anyways. Just cut this system or rework it into something more interesting.
2. Central Focus belongs to Hives. Hives are criminally neglected compared to Machines/Individuals right now and they need a similar Machine Age style expansion (maybe with upcoming Genetics rework?) to boost them back into relevancy.
3. Would like to enjoy Espionage more. It accomplishes very little, eats into your envoys, and just overall isn't useful. I'd love to play more spy games with people but the current implementation is strictly speaking underpowered and accomplishes little for high cost. While I get that multiplayer would be a little more annoying, as it stands the entire system is completely ignorable.

---

PDX guys are awesome and do awesome work, thanks for everything guys!

 

[Ligraph]

For general background, my goal when playing is to be somewhat challenged for survival the whole game - enough I have to worry about making mistakes, but not enough I can't engage in entire systems (i.e. always being to weak to go to war). In practice this usually means playing on roughly GA, midgame scaling modifiers, and a 10x crisis. I'm not entirely against tying some arms behind my back to make the balance work better, but I think it's a shame and don't like doing so. While I'm not much of a fan of RP for RP's sake, I really like it when it's woven into the gameplay, i.e. via diplomacy.

Stellaris is the only game I've found that provides both the strategic and optimization side of things, but also the RP side that makes if feel like you're actually an empire and in space.

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?

Kill it with fire. More seriously, it's just an abstraction, I don't care about it.

• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?

There's three parts of fleets that feel important to me:

1. Positioning and fleet management, i.e. being able to manually move them around.
2. Designing ships to meet the moment (and opponent).
3. Logistics - how much do you want to invest in your fleet at any given time. I wish there were actual supply lines, etc.

I don't think the current implementation does any of them terribly well, tbh. Hyper relays and gateways hugely undercut 1, I think it would be much more interesting if you actually had to worry about how your fleets and shipyards were positioned. 2 is also pretty bare-bones, there's a couple interesting designs and some rock-paper-scissors, but there's not much variety in my ship designs in practice. Except for crises of course.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

Ascension paths, ethics (more for how they determine the general strategy i.e. ascension rush vs tech rush vs fleet rush), and some civics and origins.

This is actually a bit of a gripe of mine - there's lots of options that feel like they do nothing to define your civilization, and are just there as filler and/or numbers. I'd prefer fewer options, but ones that actually meaningfully change your playstyle. Espionage is a poster child of this.

In a similar but opposite vein, there's also lots of options that feel mandatory because of how strong they are. The megastructure APs, ecumenopoli, cosmogenesis, and supremacy, to name a few. They also don't feel like meaningful choices.

I also wish there were more ways to gradually guide your empire during gameplay, i.e. invest in this or that, respond to finding exterminators next door, build our your technical education system, etc. There's a few levers for this in policies and living standards, but not a ton, and they don't really change the identify of your empire (other than embracing factions).

• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?

I generally have two goals:

1. Survive
2. Get stronger

While I do some RP, it's more "realpolitik", trying to act as I believe the nation would. I would very much enjoy having "stronger" AI personalities that made diplomacy, reputation, and relationship building matter more though.

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?

I already have a mod that disables it for lag reasons. I very much like the idea of having supply lines that you need to take care of, but this implementation doesn't really provide that: my main interaction with it is re-creating trade routes after conquering starbases. It's another example of non-meaningful choices.

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

Well, I habitually play machines, so it never matters much. But in general I'd say that migration pacts and terraforming make it not matter regardless pretty quickly. I would enjoy having each planet be more unique, having it's own identity in a sense. Like this planet is great for energy generation but will be expensive to live on, etc. I use a few mods (mostly GPM) for this. This could be great for wars, too, where conquering a particular planet could be a goal and would actually matter. You could do a similar thing with space landmarks, i.e. make owning a neutron star or black whole matter.

• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?

I think there's three issues with origins:

1. The mostly mechanical ones, that should really be civics. Like Mechanist, Necrophage, Overtuned, Subterranean, and Syncretic Evolution.
2. The mixing of "story origins" and "starting scenario origins". I'd like to be able to play as a Synthetic Fertility empire that starts on the shattered ring, or Broken Shackles + Sky Dragons
3. Overly restrictive limitations. Why can't I play as a machine payback empire, or payback + sovereign guardianship, or eager explores + fear of the dark. This has gotten better recently (machine void dwellers!)
   

• If you could remove one game system, what would it be?

Pops. Just for lag reasons. For gameplay reasons, maybe ground combat, or at least greatly simplify it. It's a slog and managing all the army ships sucks.

• Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion?

Diplomacy/AI personalities and relationships. Internal politics too. Technology development (see below).

• Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

Technology. I have the tech tree pretty much memorized so for every game it's just rushing the particular techs that are important to my build. The RNG doesn't add much, although sometimes it gives you nice surprises. I'd love to see a whole rework of the system, to potentially do some things like (this is brainstorming):

• Procedurally and/or AI generate the entire tech tree each game. So that it's all (or more realistically, mostly) new techs each time.
• Perhaps remove a lot of the discrete technologies and instead have, say, a "kinetic weapons" research field you can dump research points into to scale your slug throwers. If you want to get even more fancy, differentiate between research (increasing your kinetics tech level) and development (creating weapon designs based on your tech level).
• Let empires differentiate themselves by their tech development paths. An empire that invests in developing materials and high-energy particle tech should feel different than an empire that's invested in sociology, industry, and computing. But they largely don't.
• Related to the above, there's no real investment in scientific infrastructure other than generic science labs. It would be neat if you could focus on and build out industry for particular research areas, i.e. particle accelerators for particle and materials research, or server farms.
• The spread of technology via civilian interchange, war, foreign sales, diplomacy, espionage, etc.

 

[Humanesque]

How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?

Getting rid of them would be a good thing for the game, I'd bet.

• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?

This isn't core to the needs of the game to me. Change fleets if you like.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

Ethics, civics, choices, story, appearance, diplomacy.

• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?

Stellaris games are so long by default that I have a hard time having a goal other than 'get to the end'.

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?

It sucks!

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

Yes! Yes!

• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?

I don't know, I'd have to take a longer, harder look at them than I want to right now.

• If you could remove one game system

CONSUMER GOODS. Literally, just Ctrl+A and backspace them out of the game and make all empires work the way gestalts currently do and the game is 50% better instantly. Not only are they annoying and add nothing, but they also don't make any sense thematically. I'm the government of a space empire, I'm not directly concerned with the production of cell phones and chairs (the distribution, maybe).

• Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion?

If you're going to rework trade into a system that makes sense and is fun, that could be a good focus for an expansion. Other than that... eldritch horror?

• Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

Spying and hacking. It's close to being good but I mostly just put spies on empires I want more intel on and leave them there until I have something better for them to do. The rewards for success aren't worth the effort or risk.

 

[Ohirra]

The only thing I really dislike about Stellaris is, unfortunately, one of its biggest mechanics.

I hate that anomalies are random on surveying a system instead of being pre-randomized and set, when generating a galaxy.

 

[Claremont Waltz]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?

Zero, the current system is not at all enjoyable. Building massive planets with major purpose is great, fiddling the pops into their various slots isn't at all. And the messiness, performance impact, bugginess etc of the current system all make it unenjoyable. Keep the narrative of slaves, robots, plants etc but remove the weird implementation that forces me to modify individual entities to get a bonus for X or Y resource and then lock them to a particular job and check to make sure they stay there and individually move pops to their correct slave world etc etc. All of this is just busywork micro related to a macro decision I already made when I specialized the planet and built the buildings. The fact that the AI has no idea what to do with most of it is just an additional part of the problem with the whole thing.

• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?

Alter away. The current fleet system is a tedious chore so any change would be an improvement. So tired of playing interstellar tag with an AI that can't design a fleet or ships for beans in a system that forces all combat down incredibly constricted lanes. I also loathe the fleet bloat that makes the loss of major fleet combatants an irrelevance and makes battles a comical lightshow.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

I'd personally highlight the narrative theming element. So I love the (incredibly buggy but still fun) choice that lets you start as a subject of a galactic empire and wish it could be combined with other elements like having a relic world or machine pops or whatnot because that lets me build an interesting narrative around my people. If that screws up balance for multiplayer well, f em.

• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?

Mostly around who I want to kill or conquer next and where I want to create vassals and how I want to interact with and develop those vassals.

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?

Zero, scotch it. Horrible horrible system.

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

Yes and yes. We get a big banner event about how we've settled our first planet and all it took was a cheapo ship and a couple clicks. Feels very silly and anti climactic especially when we all know that settling a planet in our own solar system would be an endeavor of staggering difficulty. Could we have more of that experience in game?

• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

Pops and it isn't even close. Everything about interacting with them is so clunky, repetitive and unpleasant.

 

[Halollet]

I love that you’re asking for feedback. So, I love Stellaris, I think it's my favourite game since I’ve put in 5,500 hours since 2016. And in that time, I have formed some opinions.

“A sense of uncertainty and wonder about what could happen next is core to the Stellaris experience.”

This is an amazing statement and it is what has drawn me in for so long. However, after so much time in the game there is a big difference between each play through where some can be amazing, wonderful, exciting and other can be a huge disappointment. I would love the ability to have more control to craft my own story, and you already give the player a lot, I’m not knocking that. But the ability to choose what precursor appears for the player would be huge because it has been the main reason why I abandoned so many playthroughs. Like getting the Baol when I’m playing a Habitat dwelling Terravore. Or playing a machine gestalt and I get the Zroni. The precursor, in my mind, can be an extension of your empire’s origin.

“How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?”

Not important at all. It was neat back when we had planetary grids but now it's just annoying and lags the game.

“If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?”

It pains me to see how expendable ships are, like corvettes just being cannon fodder after the first 40 years and on the flip side how people can just spam battleships like they’re nothing. And speaking about spam, I feel like it's such a waste in the end game where you can’t really tell the scale of your fleets anymore because they’re all doom stacking on top of each other to the point where it becomes just a messy scribble when docked, and a blur of lasers when fighting. I would love to see a lot fewer ships, that are beefier, that have more individual impact. Individual fleet limits also seem pointless because of the doomstacking and just cause annoyance having to click on all of them all the time to move them around when at war, and sometimes you click and move the reinforcements meaning you get lost ships randomly, ugh. If I want separate fleets it should be up to me, and through game play this is enforced because the AI will skirt around your main fleet to take systems whenever it can, so putting all your eggs in one basket is already not a good idea, so why do we need a system that artificially enforces that?

“What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?”

More Civics slots. Only being able to pick 2 and later only get 3 (except dark forest) is such a bottleneck for the kind of empires I want to build. I would love to see an Empire’s Civic system that works just like your Species’ Trait system. Have different Civics that cost different amounts of points for each one and even have negative ones. That would enrich the different kinds of empires a player could make as well as making balance easier; I’m looking at you Functional Architecture.

“How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?”

While my empire is fun to keep playing, I’ll keep playing. Unfortunately, I seem to run out of steam for almost every playthrough around 2350 where the lines on the map are set, the mid game crisis is dealt with, the genocidal empires are gone, most empires are in a federation, and the galactic community is discussing revoking economic sanctions. And I’m just sitting there in a laggy galaxy with nothing to do for the next 50-70 years waiting for the end game crisis while my technology goes nuts. I could bring the end game in sooner, but the other empires are all inferior and pathetic, even on Admiral with mid game leveling, so I would have to either wait for the crisis to reach me or go babysit some other empire. Because it's not like the galactic community will actually focus the crisis. So at that point I usually just quit because there’s no post endgame gameplay to be had anyways and I have a dozen new empire ideas so off to a new game. Now, I do clearly enjoy this gameplay loop, I got the logged hours to prove it, but there is a hole that could be filled.

“How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?”

It’s currently completely ignorable, if you took it out tomorrow I don’t think I would notice. That doesn’t mean you should though because it is a logical thing that needs more love. Trade should be changed into Logistics, the movement of goods through your empire. And if something disrupts that, it should matter, like what happened with the Ever Given in the Suez Canal, but on a galactic scale. Sectors become more important, trading systems with AI can actually be a thing based on Logistics, trading agreements could also include Logistics moving through other empire’s territory. And this is something that even gestalt empires would have to deal with because they can even have them impose tariffs on trading empires. Megacorps could make a trade deal with a gestalt empire so that setting up branch offices on the other side of their borders would become cheaper! There is a lot of room for growth here.

“Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?”

Echoing my previous points here that you should have the option to pick your precursor because you should be able to choose if it is an extension of your origin or not. As well as more Civics slots with point buying and negative Civics that work just like Species’ Traits would be amazing.

For some reason, I keep thinking that Necrophauge is a Civic, I don’t know why but maybe it should be?

“Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?”

I’m putting these two questions together because I absolutely HATE the way Terraforming is done now.

Drop 5k energy on a planet, wait a bit, and suddenly you have a perfect world to drop your pops on? Like, excuse me?! What happened to all the fauna and flora? You change an ocean world to a desert world, what happens to the fish?! How the hell did Spore, (yes Spore, remember that game?) have a better handle on terraforming than Stellaris? Rendering all of an entire world's ecosystems completely extinct shouldn't just be a casual thing, not from a gameplay perspective and not from an in-game lore perspective. Terraforming needs to be more of a gradual shift from one type of world to another, along with the genetic manipulation of ALL of the life on that planet. There should be galactic laws that outright prevent terraforming because it is just another form of a world cracker. That old world is gone forever after terraforming it.

Terraforming tech should come in pieces, like heating and cooling and making a planet more or less wet by one stage. It shouldn’t be just as easy to turn an Artic world into a Desert world as to turn it into an Ocean world.

You should also need some way to genetically modify all of the life on that planet to suit its new environment. Here on Earth we’re dealing with ecological collapse and extinction level events because of a 4 degree change. How do you think life on a jungle world would fair when 3 years later it's an ice cube?

This also could use the Logistic system I mentioned above. Like needing water for your new ocean world? Better make sure you have a frozen water source in space to harvest just like Hydrocentric ascension does. Need mountains in your alpine world? Better have an asteroid belt to yoink material from.

So how would you colonize these worlds then? I think there needs to be buildings that allow colonization of worlds with hostile environments. Maybe a building that increases habitability by 5-10% per slot, like the domes in our idea of Mars colonisation, to a max of 50-60%. Maybe even on barren worlds? And terraforming should work more like Idyllic Bloom where the people on that planet would be guiding the changing of an entire world into something better. Have actual pioneers in your empire instead of just tenants moving in.

I don't know the perfect solution but terraforming is just such a huge undertaking and Stellaris right now just brushes it off like paying a cell phone bill, and it hurts me.

 

[TrueWolves]

I always feel wary posting on the forums, but it be nice to share some of my rampant brainstorming if it help even a little. Also on phone so formatting is a pain.

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
• - We need species with variations in abilities, rights, and culture/ethics. That this can be 300 million humans or 3 billion rodents at a glance is great. I don't think it needs to be *pops* specifically, but being able to approximate a "pop" for event or movement purposes would be neat. Like how a few events pull the leaders portrait. More of that.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
• - This could change a lot and I'd still like Stellaris. Nonetheless, I prefer ships being modular platforms. Frigates and Corvettes feel like they could be seperate ship sections for the same ship class/size. The more types of ships, the more clutter. Why should every alien build to human historical designs? Who's not to say some species have relied on fighter deployment most of their history, while another prefers agile ships of all sizes?
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
• - Culture! Whether its ethics, the divisions there of in wider empires, and the traditions they've developed. It be neat if Traditions became situations you had to work towards to earn slower or faster rather than merely bought for benefits.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
• - When playing for an achievement, I tend to specialize mechanically than come up with a fun roleplay spin. However when playing entirely freeform? I'm a lunatic with a save that lasted 750 years with 1600 stars. I usually have an Ascension path planned ahead but interactions and ambitions vary based on who I meet and where I can develop. War is not my first or second resort.
• - Starting from humble roots of some nation or origin, first trying to explore and solve modern problems like food or industry, but then developing galactic ambitions and bettering quality of life towards ever improving means of culture and technology. Sometimes that means desperate survival against a superior exterminator, sometimes that means trying to outlaw slavery. I tend to play very utopian in my ideals but a good story is paved with trials, not free progress.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
• - I would prefer if the Capital wasn't the only possible hub, or that international trade mattered. To be honest, trade is a performance heavy system with limited benefit that seems to exist to have justified megacorps and a placeholder clerk job and its grown into an awkward monstrosity.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
• - Early game absolutely. I am not a fan of the 1 biome world trope. By late game perhaps not, but an idea to make early game more interesting and late game less UI cluttered could be:
• - - Instead of per colony entries, have each entry in the outliner be a colonized *system*. Split each system into planets and further into zones. A planet might have 2 to 7 zones (2 +1 per 6 Size?) while each megastructure could have a zone or two and all your space stations could be a zone. Now, each zone can have its own feature(s), specialization, and sub-biome. Earth could have 3 Contenetial zones, an (An)Arctic zone, and an Oceanic zone. Starbase and Administration zones could be seperate from any of the planet/space zones and used for buildings. Its like a hybrid of tiles and districts. Individual zones could be limited to used district slots and a single zone capital building, specializing things like mining or gaining alternate resources like turning a farm zone into energy development.
• - - Early on, developing ideal zones for their features or sub biomes is the focus, with colonization events and the like. Late game, each zone or entire planet can be automated towards a type of production, and the player only needs to focus on an "admin" zone for unique buildings per system. Megas needing pops/workforce means they impact empire sprawl, instead of being free production, but also means pops have families and grow there, assuming something like 1 growth and 0.5 decline per zone before modifiers. (Having natural growth and natural decline at the same time helps naturally phase out old/ill fitting to the zone gene templates and soft cap total population!)
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
• - Another crazy suggestion rather than opinion: Redesign origins slightly, and bring back a pre 2.0 mechanic in the same process. Imagine the origin screen as an upside down triangle with a center hexagon, left corner, right corner, and bottom corner. The center "Core/Story" is used to select what kind of major events shaped your development towards the stars. Most story stuff would go here, even some of the stuff like probes or cult events. Alternatively, split it into a top half (story) and bottom half (origin world) The left and right triangles would be origin modifiers. Several civics that affect game start would be moved here, and some minor origins like Mechanists or Overtuned. Non DLC options would be stuff like a terraforming candidate in your home system, or having a tech focus like in the early days where you started with 1 weapon and armor or shields, letting you start with T2 in that tech. Both modifiers should shape your whole game in small ways, like your armor always having a small buff and armor tech being more common for you to draw, etc. The bottom corner is an origin "flaw". Maybe the UNE hasn't figured out shielding tech yet, to the surprise of most first contact events. Quirks of culture and technology
• - - This grants a much more unique starting experience where each nation has a truely unique origin, not just in story, but in development. Mods could increase the amount of starting nodes, but having a planet, story, 2 perks, and flaw on a triangle/hexagon set up is a clean and sci-fi design with plenty of opportunities to make use of shaped art tiles.
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
• - Envoys. Make improve/harm relations and Espionage cost influence like other diplomacy. Let assigning a leader to a foreign empire reduce the upkeep and improve the effectiveness of these actions, but not be a requirement due to the limited supply of leaders. Now you can pay for diplomacy/subterfuge with influence or leadership, and envoys don't need to be this... halfway mechanic. If networks have an influence upkeep, ops can go back to costing energy and maybe even see automation.
• - Biological and Psionic ascensions are obvious. Several people have mentioned internal politics. The more alive an empire and the galaxy is, the better. We have so much to explore at start and so much to survive at the end, but that middle lacks a breathing empire and a political galaxy. There has been a fear of making negative events too harsh because of the player being hit by them. We *need* more negative events, just give control (or the illusion of such) and take advantage of the situations mechanic as you priortize your problems. As long as something can be done *about* problems they don't feel nearly as bad.
• - Espionage & Intel. There is no counter play to intel. There is no counter play to operations. Performing operations is both expensive and micromanagement heavy. Remove envoys, have networks cost influence and/or leadership as an upkeep. Officials might reduce the upkeep more, Scientists increase the network faster, and Commanders perform ops faster or something. Have many more "negative" event operations. Just have them trigger situations for the target in the final stretch. Not so they can be stopped or the cause discovered (usually) but so the target has partial defensive control of how to respond to things like destablization, election rigging, sabatage, intel gathering, assassination attempts, etc. So they might be able to juggle things like "do I ensure the safety of my Defense Minister or do i spend more resources to try to catch who put a hit on them knowing that'll probably get my minister killed?"
• - - a situation that fires a fake operation every 20 to 40 years, but add 5 years for every real operation, and it'll add just enough paranoia that you're not sure how much you're actually a target or how much these events are just natural internal incompetence. Well, unless you're seeing them pop up constantly!

Behold this poorly designed UI drawn on a phone! Including the system/biome on the same screen as the Origin Triangle isn't needed but they are all related... and several planet origins preset the biome. Some Origins might even take multiple slots? Like both the planet and story slot. Most civics that affect game start could become a perk, story, or planet start.

 

[vince904]

· How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?

While I like choosing necrophages, seeing my pops on a planet, & developing my planets into unique entities, the current system is unending pain. When I have 20+ planets, I’m just playing whack-a-mole with unemployment. If some way could be found to keep the first 3 elements, I’d have no problem getting rid of the fourth. I’d also like colonies to keep growing & not just stop like in Sots 1.

· If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?

Pretty much do what you want. We have doom stacks by another name, where you can just stack fleets in a single system already, so anything to change that would make it more interesting. Maybe have a limit on how many fleets can be in a system at once?

· What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

The origins & the ethics, then government. Traits are currently not much fun/point. Maybe origins could be broken down into location (Space/Sky/Ground/Aquatic/Subterranean) & nature – would just be quite thematic to have space station/necrophage.

· How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?

I tend to set them at a start of a session, & take a break once I’ve achieved them or finished a war, as this usually involves a fairly material reimagining of what I’m trying to achieve. My main objective (conquest, vassalisation, Empire, co-operation usually remains constant).

· How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?

Not at all. I’d prefer something more immersive, but without any additional micromanagement..

· Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

That could make things more interesting.

· Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?

I think all the unchangeable civics should be origins (especially if you could have a location & a nature origin). Tree of Life and Fruitful partnership might work as civics, but I think the rest should stay as origins.

· If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

Internal politics/Leaders. I think there’s an overlap between the two. Internal politics just isn’t interesting at the moment (I also think that factions should compete for support so should have hybrid ethics – as some of them currently do). While I can appreciate the idea that you shouldn’t be able to produce a meta range of leaders every run, the current system is an exercise in frustration. Maybe have it instead that you train a leader for a role (e.g. explosives) & they then get a random bonus in that field. Then if you could also link leaders to a revamped internal politics system, it might make them more engaging (oh, & it would be really nice to have a named placeholder art leader for each [currently] empty space, as it would make the empire feel more alive)

Ground Combat. Please leave as is. It would be wonderful to have a game which combined naval & ground combat, but I don’t think Stellaris is the game for it. Sid Meier described gaming as a series of interesting choices, & I don’t think there would be any point in a more in-depth ground combat system if it didn’t provide more interesting choices. But that would mean greater engagement, which would mean having to nursemaid that (from the galaxy screen to the system screen to the planet screen), while also having to manage other naval/ground battles & run the empire. It would, I feel, be a complication too far. However, I also don’t want it removed & just reduced to planetary bombardment. The current system may not be wonderful, but it works, & if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

 

[Leogun_91]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  -I like the base of it but it gets a lot to manage different species on different planets. A bit into the game you just can´t keep up with it and I just feel I should have the right people on the right planet for the right job but its too much to manage to get them there.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  -Please make significant changes to fleets.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  -Origins and civics. But really all choices are good, the more choices at creation the better to make your civ feel unique. More unique techs decided by origins/civics/other choices would be nice.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  -Varies depending on run.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  -Not important, I feel it works well, I like it, but I don´t find it important.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  -Having lots of worlds is fun. I think its good. But more types would be cool. Say a trio more, added to the three trios available now.
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  -Criminal Heritage for megacorp always felt origin-like to me. But it works as civic too.
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be?
  -Not sure
  o Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion?
  -I want a mini-expansion that just adds a bunch of tradition trees. Every game of Stellaris I eventually end up having to develop traditions that thematically does not fit with my civilization. I want to roleplay the tradition trees I chose and the way to do that is with more options. A mini-expansion that just adds a bunch of tradition trees would help with that. Can add some more ascension traits while at it too.
  o Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
  Yes, gene/robo/cyber modding pops just gets both micro-managy and imprecise at the same time, a horrible combination. Once you are ready to do so the civilization is so large that its too much work to do it effectively. Some way to do it without having to go through planets and chose what where is needed. Say you could mod all of a certain job, that would be very helpful. Just make a template and press a button to apply it to all miners of that specie.

 

[Arduunos]

After reading through a few replies, I would like to add:

Civics along the lines of Latent Psionic for each of the four Ascenscion types would be an amazing addition to the game. Locking the ability to determine what Ascenscion path an Empire will pick behind single-use origins is frustrating. It would be nice to make this an open feature you can add to many empires.

 

[ItThatAltersSanity]

---

Every Game is Different​

We desire for players to experience a sense of novelty every time they start a game of Stellaris.

They should be able to play the same empire ten times in a row and experience ten different stories.
A player’s experience will differ wildly if their first contact is a friendly MegaCorp looking to prosper together or if they’re pinned between a Fallen Empire and a Devouring Swarm.

Stellaris relies on a combination of prescripted stories (often tied to empire Origins) and randomized mechanical and narrative building blocks that come together to create unplanned, emergent narratives.

A sense of uncertainty and wonder about what could happen next is core to the Stellaris experience.
​

---

How does this match what you think Stellaris is, and where it should go? Would you change any of these vision statements?

I find it useful to consider the diversity of player psychographs. Magic the Gathering has a triple-axis framework to measure this. I won't use their names but they boil down to:

• "I want to passively consume content and be entertained"
  • Content designers writing immersive event text pleases them the most
• "I want to actively create my own narrative then share it with others"
  • Systems allowing customisation along many dimensions pleases them the most
• "I want to prove my might"
  • Game balance and strong foes please them the most
  • At the most extreme, they care little for cool graphics or clever writing, they just want to see numbers go up as a result of playing skillfully so they can fight other big numbers

Stellaris is a GSG. This is not a casual genre. It has many sliders (more than other Paradox GSGs) to fine-tune the exact difficulty but any player who stays around has some pride in numerical competency. A lot of the narrative content is gated behind knowing how to make a strong economy and a strong fleet. This skews the audience to caring a lot about balance - a statement applicable to all GSGs.

In contrast, there's nothing inherently demanding players to be connoisseurs of fine fiction. So I imagine the playerbase has a diverse spectrum for how much players care about narrative. It's important to acknowledge that to many individuals, the differences each game offers is in "less important" (to them) details as every game shares some common backbone - especially once the earlygame is past. Namely, "get stonks, get strong, wreck things". Fanatic Purifiers if they were players, in a nutshell. Militarily weak content displeases these players. They need a string of strong foes matching their strength to stay engaged. Perhaps if mid-game crises adjusted their strength-on-spawn to match their theoretical peak fleet power at any given time, they'd be happier. If those foes had different (yet threatening) AI that players had to adapt to, they'd be even happier.

A lesson that the HoI 4 team learnt after their first DLC release was that many players care only about Germany and the historical Eastern front. So they made it a policy that every DLC needs to add something that's visible from Germany's perspective. Including strong foes in DLCs does not exclude adding rich writing and interactable mechanics.

What systems and content are “sacred” to you, which would make Stellaris not Stellaris anymore if we changed them?

Some examples to comment on could include:

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

Pops, jobs and fleets are sacred. As well as laws on how pops are treated.

Pops

How the empire treats pops is central to its identity (since all Stellaris empires build fleets to shoot things, even pacifists). Colonisation is an important question to an empire on how to treat pops: clearly you want pops of the right climate affinity to be working there, how do you get them? Migration treaties? Conquest? Robots? Gene-mods? Or just change the planets as that's less blasphemous than changing the pops of your empire? That there are ways to mitigate habitability in midgame and beyond is less important as stonks economies will want this question answered in the earlygame.

In fact, I spend hours per real day just organising my pops with the game paused. I find the UX for pops inadequate. If it wasn't for Paradox offering other GSGs to split my time, I'd be seriously hunting for a mod or writing one myself to improve the UI for pop mangaement. My wish list:

• I want to ban whole species from ever taking certain jobs. Pops and internal politics should react if the player uses this toggle.
  • The stretch goal would be for spiritualist, xenophilic, egalitarian empires to get buffs (maybe unity) from having a wide variety of species working the same job at a planet. Especially if those pops don't all have traits buffing them. They should be mechanically rewarded for embracing diversity at the cost of cold efficiency.
• I want to ban certain ideologies from taking certain jobs. This should have violent repercussions if toggled.
  • I play a lot of cat and mouse with the pop UI to get wrong-ideology pops away from higher strata jobs. Having it be official policy for an authoritarian empire that then has to fight the consequences would be great.
• I want to "call in" pops to fill specific jobs. One button clicks that replace this horrible UX of:
  • Find a pop of the right species on some other planet
    • Either by going to sell slaves or gene-mod pops menus to track where they are at all
    • No, the planets & sectors view is unsatisfactory for this purpose. I want to see what traits pops have, not see their portraits.
  • Click resettle
  • Find that planet again on the list
  • Click for each pop I want to move
  • The list of pops can shuffle itself as I click
  • Discover I clicked too much so now I need to send these pops elsewhere again
  • I prefix all my planet names with numbers just to make this UX tolerable

I want my gene-modded pops grown all across the empire to be doing the jobs they were designed to do. When I want to fill a new planet to be a generator world, I'll be manually going through every planet in my empire, toggling forced pop growth to be the right species (climate and traits), remember to look back when those pops have grown then resettle them individually from each of those worlds. Heck, what I really want is to "channel pop growth" so 50 planets don't grow any pops themselves as they're focus emigrating all their growth into one planet. I want the mechanical and narrative experience of an empire saying "we need every 'right-pop' to get to this planet for Reasons" with much less UX friction than currently. In Stellaris v1, the thing that made me stop playing was building ships individually from 50 planets. In Stellaris v3, the thing that stops me from playing Stellaris more is manually resettling pops from 50 planets.

Once the UX above is fixed, then you can add a system to disrupt ideal population layouts. Pops fleeing bombardment, crime or too many xenophobic alien pops, teleporting to other planets (of the same empire) and working illegally - jobs they're not supposed to be doing but can't be dislodged from without force (via combat ships or something more abstract). A great way to up the stakes for failing to protect your people as opposed to "oh I need to assign a leader with the justice trait to bring these numbers down". The pop equivalent of border gore is more visceral than some number that's easily manipulated.

Fleets

So long as fleets are shooting at other fleets or space boss monsters, whatever else changes isn't going to trigger pitchfork uprisings. I believe fleets should be doing more, in addition to combat duties. I wrote this example just to link here as one system I'd like to be a DLC focus. The other would be internal politics but ground combat takes slightly more priority for me, especially when ordinary empire planets could be turned into boss fights for fleets (not troop transports, COMBAT SHIPS) to interact with.

Another idea would be fleets reducing planet devastation by delivering humanitarian aid and assisting in re-construction efforts. Not individual construction ships. Whole fleets orbiting a devastated planet, tying them there in exchange for helping a planet recover (or speeding up purging). Fleets need more things to do besides combat to increase tension for whether to abandon secondary objectives to get to battle on time.

Internal Politics

If internal strife required significant investment from the economy to deal with (i.e. make another vector for more boss fights), that would be great. Authoritarians and xenophobes having to invest in brutal police, pacifists and spiritualists having to invest in soft power, etc. The current "there's a stability number and faction/pop happiness. It affects your economy" is not satisfying narratively nor mechanically. It's another thing fleets could get involved in. Combat ships with civilian modules to tie up combat power in a more interactable way.

Trade System

I don't care about the "trade value" which the trade system is supposedly about. I care that the trade system represents overstretched logistics and my fleet needs to devote a portion of combat power to make up for the bad logistics. I dislike that this network can be manipulated just by where I build trade worlds. Also that it just stops being a problem in the endgame when I can just build gateways so everything is closely connected. So keep this system of routes between starbases but make it represent something more consequential if you let pirates (or hostile empire fleets) disrupt it. Like say... pops starving because they're not getting food shipments on their 100% forge-only world. Or lategame buildings getting reduced to rubble because anti-gravity generators ran out of battery shipments.

 

[Dr_Gentech]

Personally, to me
Stellaris is a roleplaying game, the only parts of it that I find lacking are the interactions between Empires. The current trade system is one I would love to see re-vamped, able to interact with more when reaching out to other empires. Obviously, this would be touching up with Megacorporations to, but I think a revamped new Trade System would be nothing but good!


To me, the most important part of defining our Empire is the way it interacts with the Galaxy at large. I would love to see a better implementation of interactions, see smaller scale interactions and choices that impact our empires at large. Federations don't feel impactful, the Galactic Community itself is fantastic, but it all feels like you aren't interacting with people. There are no REAL issues with the laws being proposed, there is no conflict or embargos or even interacting with empires on a vote apart from Favors. A better system of Favors would be neat.

A system I feel like I want to enjoy but really can't is Espionage and the Intel system, it feels far too static. I think that trying to add more options to it itself would be fun, options to lower the Intel Cap in general for other empires, the ability to construct blacksites within enemy space with cloaked Engineering ships that can be detected and result in opinion loss, the ability to decide what the Spy Network is doing when you aren't doing operations, maybe even the ability to increase crime or lower stability in general on worlds, something to add indepth interactions and true espionage.

And honestly, when it comes to Origins I have an interesting idea

Instead of one big lump sum origin (Shattered Ring, Primal Calling, etc)

We divide it into Cultural and Planetary Origin
Shattered Ring is now a Planetary Origin, but your cultural origin on that world is Primal Calling

Void Dwellers is a Planetary Origin, and you could pair it with Cybernetic Creed as a Cultural Origin

This would be pretty powerful, obviously, but it would impact more what our Empire is and WHERE it Came From

Could not agree more with the Origins idea, this articulates something I've been wanting to say for a long time! Where your civilisation is from and who you are/what drives you should be individually selectable, and different from your current "government systems" that are called Civics in game.

 

[WinterLast]

First time posting on the forum, so hopefully I do this right...

• How does this match what you think Stellaris is, and where it should go? Would you change any of these vision statements? ]

For me the game is basically a giant sandbox I can use for roleplaying, I love to build on my empires and create stories through them. I personally would hope for the future of the game that new expansions/update focus on building on what the game already has through deepening our existing mechanics, instead of constantly new isolated features.

• What systems and content are “sacred” to you, which would make Stellaris not Stellaris anymore if we changed them?

The Ethics/Civics/Origins feel very engraved into the game at this point to where I think it would be weird to have the game without them. I think it's fine to change them and all, but if they got fully remove it would certainly very strange.

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?

I have nearly no experience with the old tile systems, but I don't see any issues with changes with the planet managment. I like the idea of districts and buildings, but if they end up having to go away it won't be a huge loss either.

• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?

Please do. Personality I would prefer smaller ships, with individual ships being more important, but as long as the massive fleet stacking for late game are solved I am fine whatever answer you decide.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

How they will react and interact with other civilizations in a roleplay level.

• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?

I prefer keeping goals as simple as possible: Usually simply beat the crisis. (I often play with mods, so my games usually run really slow, so a lot of the time I struggle to even reach that late in the game without turning the game into a slideshow).

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?

Cool idea, but I am not particularly attached to it.

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

Definitely way too easy, I wish it your own planetary preference would matter much more, and that terraforming was harder to do. Don't know how robots would balance in that but that can be figured out later.

• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?

I can see an argument for the genocidal civics, but I don't think it's a big deal.

• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

1. AI uprising in it's current state.
2. Warfare. I wish Starbases had more depth to it, wars weren't so long and "draggy", and each fleet had more individual character
3. Diplomacy/Galactic community. In a singleplayer session, it just revolves around you having big voting numbers. Espionage too is kinda useless, despite how cool it is.

Unrelated to anything else, but I wish we had to option to pick our starting position in the galaxy map, or at least if we want Inner/Mid/Outer Rim.

Hopefully this helps, love the game,
bye

 

[jose2534]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?

It is important and I need more of it, and more complex. For example, we have all these shiny "population controls" and "expel population" that I have never had to use since pop emigration (as the whole pop unit moves to other planets on its own, not the flat pop growth bonus) was reintroduced. Before I had to use the "pop controls" to keep the planets from overcrowding or for pops not under utopia or welfare to be out of jobs, but now it feels like these options are there for nothing other than really borderline cases, so for me I would say make it more difficult to keep the population under control or the pops from being always happy. Also, synergies between different jobs would be cool to see, like, for example, having clerks being kinda essential to the stability of worlds, after all what is a world without baristas to bring you the tea to your table? Besides that, it is okay and full of flavor, I love it! Also, pops could move from planet to planet regardless of strata or having or not a job, that would make the "migration not allowed" more impactful.

• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?

I'm all for change, be bold, if you feel a change would be cool, go for it. I would say I would like more depth, more personality, but other than that, I don't think I will ever feel we will hit a "no longer the game I love" situation unless you simplify it to arcade levels of simplicity.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

Ethos, culture (Civics), traits, backstory. But I need more, I need unique things for each, not only flat bonuses.

• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?

I start every game with a goal in mind, mostly "survive", after all, we can't define ourselves until we have seen another empire, only then will we see our reaction. If it is friendly, then we might be friendly or see an opportunity, if it is purifiers then let's try to survive even harder. I would say I set the "grand goal" at the end of the E.G. and then adapted it to the galactic story. But the "survive" is always there as the base for everything.

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?

It is a chore, I don't like it. First, trade is so abstract that I don't feel I'm trading anything, no staple products, no goods, no services, nothing. And having the system tied up to piracy is so freaking tiresome too, the game turns into a wack-a-mole every time a pirate nest appears (and the AI most of the time doesn't even hunt them, creating energy deficits and pirate nests that are there just being a nuisance). Yes, I can have fleets patroling, and I can have starbases with hangars, but still, it is a chore and the AI doesn't know how to deal with it.

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

Yes and yes, I want colonization to be more engaging, more difficult, more interesting, give me!

• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?

Don't know, never thought about this one...

• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

Remove transport ships for ground armies PLEASE!!! The central focus should be ideologies (ethos) and the expansion of them through the galaxy depending on the empires that inhabit them and their willingness to influence others through culture, propaganda, entertainment, etc. And to the third one, I would say factions, I want to enjoy them, I want them to play a bigger role in my empire, dictating what to do, who to hate, who to love, etc., to keep the galaxy alive and not as static as it is right now, and have them fight for control of planets, specific jobs for their pops (or for their pops to not work certain jobs), etc., give them teeth, give them weight, give them an active role and a voice.