Stellaris Dev Diary #361 - The Vision

[malakhglitch]

A bit late to reply (damned timezones), but...

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

It's all I've known since I started playing around the release of Megacorp, but I am not too attached to the system that I won't consider other systems.

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

If you remove fleets then I'd probably rage-quit, but that's about it. I'm also not too attached to the current system.

• 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?

I lumped these two together because the answers are interconnected.

I mostly play Rogue Servitors. That's my true Stellarian love. At the beginning of the game I decide on whether I will be a "Gotta catch 'em all" type, a "Protect my squishies at all cost" type, a "Spread the glory of our creators" type, etc. I rarely change my goals once I set them.

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

Gestalt consciousness don't have Trade. Although... I haven't really played an individualistic machine empire yet...

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

I have always been on the "colonization is too simple in Stellaris" camp. I've always been tinkering around with habitability and stuff as mods, but Real Life™ usually gets in the way.

In a nutshell my take is that we need habitability to reflect the following:

• Atmosphere
• Gravity
• Temperature
• (Presence of Liquid) Water

• 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'd have to say Espionage. It just doesn't contribute too much to my gameplay.
• Exploration. Can't get enough of it.
• Espionage.

 

[Quatro Garjeena]

So I have put around 700 hours into it and is currently my most played paradox game, not to mention my favorite. But I have to personal gripes that I wish could be alleviated.

I would love to see a more in depth trade system, since right now it is barely something I ever consider in my games. I personally think it should be something I think about constantly when managing a huge galactic empire. I would love to see myself having to weigh taking a core planet for map security versus the economic issues it could cause or if it would cause other empires to sanction me. Just something that would cause me to second guess actions and consider things would be great, especially if it helped served other parts of the game.

And the other is the way you interact with empires can be so frustrating. Whether it be me wanting to terraform in tomb world planets in a subject to help them out. Or try and negotiate a peace deal when I get dragged into a forever war in the ai federation. The interaction in the game being so sparce just makes it feel like I am pulling teeth to get anything done that is not slaughter every alien I come into contact with. I understand the ai can be hard to work around since it's hard to make them play well. But I just feel more optionality in how I diplomatically interact would help smooth so many things along rather than me having to use console commands to just help a friendly ai civilization.

I am sure there are some other minor things that I could mention but those are my core things. Stellaris is a phenomenal game and my personal favorite in the paradox roster. But I see it could be so much better.

Good luck and I can't wait to see the changes you guys make

 

[TNTIger_]

To respond to each point, one by one, in my opinion as someone who owns all DLC and has sunk 900+ hours into the game:

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

In the broadest sense, I like that there is a system where there are jobs, and there are measures of population, and they interact. I, however, am not totally married to the current 'slot' based system where pops are unindividuated units. I, for example. would not be adverse to a system similar to Vicky 3, where Jobs and Pops are more granular and assign themself to jobs based on culture(/species) rights, taking out the micro- it'd also feel more organic, as outside of specific flavours (slaver empires or those with corveé) it feels weird (as say, a Democracy) to be able to forcibly relocate all pops! This'd also be the place to say that I wouldn't mind other aspects taken from Vicky, such as how different economies change how much control you have over building.
I also wouldn't mind (though never experienced it first-hand) a return to the tile system. It sounds engaging, and could work alongside other features.

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

I'm not super 'big' on combat (I keep autodesign on lol), but I will say I do like having individual ships that I can trace a legacy of. However, I'm open to change.

What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

The big three- Origins, civics, and ethics- I think are currently well-balanced off each other, and work equally to define a civilisation. Previously theres been a few civics- mainly basegame ones- that were less flavourful, but many of those have had good facelifts in the last few years to give them new features to make them more interesting. With ethics, they are great, but I wouldn't mind adding more- I'd love for 'Individualist' and 'Collectivist' to return as economy-minded choices.
However, the fact these are the 'big three' I think underlines how three other aspects have very limited impact- Authority, species traits, and planet type.

• Authority: Authority, currently, is a pretty limited choice. It has very little impact on a game, isn't very dynamic, and only really effects your election type- which is made meaningless by unity spend. What I'd love to see, instead, is for authorities to be more diverse and more specialised for different playstyles. I'd take inspiration from Polybius' forms of government, with a few modern name tweaks:
  • Anarchy: Ruler selected via popularity. Gives strong bonuses to pops and their stability + happiness, with penalties to expansion (such as empire size and war) and to the ruler. Good for tall play.
  • Democracy: Ruler selected via popularity. Bonuses to faction output + approval, as well as to federations. Penalties to ethics attraction, and stronger penalties for not managing factions (later on I'll advocate for an internal politics rework- can you tell?)
  • Oligarchy: Ruler selected semi random* (*I'd actually like to see a more involved system, still distinct from popularity, but I'm at a loss). Bonuses to leaders and councillers. Penalties could exist for having subjects, joining federations, and the galactic community
  • Aristocracy: Ruler is hereditary. Bonuses to govenors, being a vassal, and being an overlord. Penalties related to federations and other forms of diplomacy outside of your 'realm'. Perhaps resource upkeeps and production from districts, particulary those outside of the core sector or under govenors are both reduced?
  • Autocracy (renamed Dictatorship): Ruler selected semi random. Bonuses to stability, edicts, pop amenities usage, ruler, and empire ethics faction output/approval. Penalties for pop happiness and faction output and approval of non-empire ethic factions.
  • Monarchy (renamed Imperial): Ruler is hereditary. Bonuses to expansion (such as empire size), influence production, and Rulers. Penalties for workers.

Rather than being freely able to switch, only governments within two steps of the chain can switch (Ie, Democracy can become Anarchy, Oligarchy, or Aristocracy), and it is triggered by an event rather than the player- though the player may invest Unity (or other resources) to sway to subsequent situation to your liking. Swinging to two 'steps' away is more expensive/less likely than one, mind. Did I mention an internal politics rework?​

There's also the question of where Megacorps fit in this, and my controversial opinion here is that it shouldn't be an Authority. My ideal, perhaps, would be that Megacorp-specific civics- those that don't have a normal alternative (Free Traders, Private Prospectors, Gospel of the Masses, Criminal Heritage and the like)- will still be 'gold', and on selection turn your civ Megacorp, while retaining your original Authority. Civics that are just palette-swaps (Brand Loyalty, Ruthless Competition, most other DLC civics) are only then made available. Honestly, I often find it hard picking my second (or even third) megacorp civic anyway, so the variety won't be missed.​

• Species traits: At the moment, most species traits are simple mathematical boosts or penalties to existing numbers. This feels relatively limp compared to the rest of the game, personally, when the 'diverse alien species' you encounter should be a really exciting part of a sci-fi game! Two fixes I'd like to see are- first, unique civics. Ones that enable a species to do something that is otherwise impossible. There's a few that do this already- Incubators, Radio/phototrophic, Budding, the lithoid strategic production traits. They are great! But they are 1. Few and far between 2. Locked to DLCs 3. Locked to species portraits (a feature I've always disliked). I'd love to see more- a lot more! The second thing is I personally think it'd be more interesting if each trait had both a positive and a negative. Hell, I could see a world in which 'trait cost' was removed altogether because every trait was internally balanced. What if 'traditional' pops produced less science? 'Nomadic' increased Empire Size or housing usage? Being 'enduring' made them nonadaptive? It'd make trait picks feel much more impactful.
• Planet Type: I think the current planet range is too limited and too easy to overcome. The first thing that could be interesting- Montuplays suggested this is a recent video- is that tech unlocks being required for colonising planets not of your starting type. Furthermore, different planet types could be much more varied- make wet worlds MUCH more likely to be good for food, frozen worlds MUCH more likely to house rare crystals, etc. Make that knowledge available on the civ creation screen- and make the pick really matter! I'd also like to see the planet system overhauled to add a second axis other than temperature- humidity. The planet options could be increased to the following:

	Cold	Mild	Hot
Dryland	Steppe	Prarie	Desert
Grassland	Tundra	Meadow	Savanna
Woodland	Taiga	Forest	Jungle
Wetland	Mire	Marsh	Swamp

Habitability is calculated along both Axes. A species native to a Mire world, for instance, are going to find Taigas the second-most habitable, then Marshes, then Tundra, etc. Per previous, techs could exist for each row and column ('Dryland colonisation', 'Hot colonisation', etc). And each row and column could have different variables- Cold, Mild, and Hot could be keyed to Minerals, Food, and Energy as before, but you could go wild with the rows. Maybe more Consumer Goods can be produces in Woodlands? More trade value in Grasslands? Anyways, I'm just spitballing here.​

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

Personally, I set a broad roleplay goal first (this game I'll be a pirate, this game I'll be a techno-cult, this game I'll be a museum archivist). I'll then set goals just as I roll along, depending on what I encounter, with my final goal in mind.

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

Not too much, and honestly I would like to see it changed. It's at the odd spot where it's both too fiddly to bother with, and not impactful enough to try. I'd personally like a total rework (while giving the trader/capitalist fantasy a new set of tools to work with), or reinforcing the current system by making trade routes essential for food distribution, collecting resources, construction cost, and immigration.

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

See what I said previously about planet types! I don't think colonisation is too 'easy' (in fact I think the process, sensu stricto, of building a ship then waiting for it to finish 'colonising' is actually a bit of a hassle) but differenty climates should have varying effects and habitability should be more granular.
Also as this is the best place as any to say it, one of my wishlists is for randomised planet appearances. Nothing fancy- just make the sky, plants, and water on different planets randomly pallette-swapped to make each look unique.

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

Some people have made proposals that I'm not against, but I don't care too much overall about origins that should be civics, and vice versa. There are some- such as Mechanist- that feel they could be civics, but I'm not fussed either way. What I do think could be addressed is origins that could be planet types! Particularly life-seeded, post-apocalyptic, shattered ring, void dwellers, and subterranean. I noticed the especially with the new DLC- I really wanted to give my voidborne Pirate civ the 'Treaure Hunters' origin, but then they couldn't be voidborne! Why shouldn't a tree of life civ be able to be based out of a gaia world?
Really, the planet preference these give you is balanced enough in itself- at worse, the bigger bonuses could be kept as origins/ascension perks. The changes to Void dweller/Voidborne could even be reverted and switched for instance, with the bonuses being locked behind the perk again.

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 wouldn't want to remove any features. That includes- and I'll defend it here- ground armies. I think there's fertile ground for Starship Troopers/Imperium of Man/Helldivers flavoured roleplay here, the system just needs to be fleshed out more! Perhaps with situations, perhaps by combining it with brought-back planet tiles, perhaps a whole new mechanic- the current implementation has flaws, but I'd be disappointed if it was removed entirely and completely replaced with 'bomb this planet until it surrenders'.
What mechanic I WOULD like to see added and made the focus of an expansion would be- and I've lready mentioned it- internal politics! I'd love to see something in the vein of Vicky 3, with factions being dynamically generated.

• Each ethic could act like Vicky 3's interest groups, and factions like their parties- ethics will align and combine together to form more powerful factions.
• Rather than always having the exact same 'issues', faction will have a limited list (3-5) based on a number of factors, including but not limited to their constituent ethics (especially where the ethics agree), the current policies and edicts in play, pop happiness and other modifiers, and the major events in play (wars, federation activity, the galactic community, etc).
• Factions will yet again have leaders (chosen from your roster), whose current level and position will influence the faction's power.
• Factions can trigger situations to force their issues. When these issues are policies, they have a chance to change them outright, while if more impactful (for instance, leaving the galactic community or starting a war), the player retains a choice to refuse- while eating the penalties.
• Each ethic will give a different output when content. Spiritualists produce unity (as current factions to), materialists science, egalitarians worker output. However, these are based on the factions the ethics are contained within- so if your materialists have aligned with the xenophobes in your xenophilic materialist civ, you may have to choose between getting your science output or maintaining your diplomatic connections!
• Potentially, more than one faction with an ethic can exist, 'splitting the vote' for pops- letting the player play kingmaker (based on the faction's other ethics and issues) over which they want more pops to align to
• If authorities were also revamped- as mentioned previously- factions could be tied in with those. Different factions could support and trigger switching to new authorities, and potentially could play a role in distinguishing democratic and oligarchic elections- perhaps in the latter, the ruler is the leader of the currently most powerful faction?

Sorry for the long post! I've had a lot of thoughts about these things over the years of playing, so I've let it all spew onto the page. I'm overjoyed to hear that the team is taking feedback, and excited to see what comes next. Under Eladrin's noble rule, Stellaris has changed much, but almost always precisely for the better in the direction I want it to go- I look forward to what comes next!

 

[KingAlamar]

One thing that I'd like to see is a reimagining of all the Crises factions and having more of a "Synthetic Queen / Cetana" feel to most if not all of them ... Having a little more lead time and the possibility of doing some additional "quests" so you're in a better position to meet the crisis OR even try to address the crisis using methods that don't rely [as much] on sheer brute force.


For example:

-- Unbidden : Maybe there is an unusually strong Astral Tear that just shows up. You could potentially do some recon in order to better understand the threat and to not be totally surprised by the "we're here" announcement before you have a fully fledged Unbidden invasion going on. Perhaps you could lure in one of the other Extradimensional factions that may weaken the Unbidden but [significantly?] speed up the other factions showing so it's not necessarily an easy choice??

-- Scourge: Maybe there could be an initial wave [add a new wave as an even weaker scout wave] where we could analyze debris, capture a queen, etc.. Perhaps [B5-style?] research could be done by Psychers to attack the organic ships or at least lower the coordination that the "hive mind" (??) grants them.

-- Contingency: Perhaps there could be an early quest line to reinforce your own programming [or that of your robots, combat computers, etc.] ... Perhaps you could even share the results of the quest with Fallen Empires [robotic] so they don't necessarily get taken over and can fully awaken if they haven't already done so.


Perhaps not doing the associated quests makes the crisis even harder while doing the quests means that they are manageable ... I.E. they are standard difficulty

 

[SlashFacePalm]

> Every game is different

(This feedback is only applicable to playing single player, I haven't played in a full MP lobby.)
I feel like fleets, currently, do not live up to that mission statement. There is some variance to it, in which techs you roll for your fleet, but in the gameplay of building your fleets and managing them? Its the same every time. You deathball, and need your deathball to stomp over the enemy's deathball. If you lose, there's such a small chance of recuperating, either on your side or the enemy's side, after a massive engagement.

I LOVE civics. Even if they aren't as involved as Driven Assimilator / Environmentalist / planetscaper, I LOVE civics. I'd love like 20 more! 30 more!

I love creating an empire with a goal. I'm not married to Tiles vs Districts vs Pops, but I like seeing little portraits of my lil' guys next to the jobs. If they became more abstracted, I'd be okay with that, as long as I can still see my lil' dudes on the planets, and see the tiny little fungoid portraits as they're exerminated / subsumed into the hive mind or whatever.

 

[Empdizz]

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

Not very, the micro managing gets annoying in late game.

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

Not much, I would sacrifice 90% of the rest of the game to expand on fleets, they are easily my favourite part of the game. Any changes to designing ships and fleets would pretty much end up in me uninstalling Stellaris and never playing again.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

Civics and ethics.

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

I personally like it and would like to see it expanded, but it doesn't seem popular with other people and wouldn't be upset if it was changed.

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

Yes, and yes.

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

Factions and elections kind of annoy me.

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

Fleets. There are so much more you could do with them. Support and repair ships, E-war ships, supercarriers, bio ships (please expand on the current space fauna system), an early game flagship that you build up overtime to become a late game threat, suicide drone ships, more ships styles, space mines and mine sweepers, etc.

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

I really want to enjoy ground invasions, it's mostly not worth my time at the moment.
The war and war exhaustion system still isn't fantastic.
I'd really love a reason to terraform planets, but by the time I need to, I can build better artificial ones or gaia worlds. That period where it would be useful to terraform a dry world into a wet one is too small.

 

[Jar-Roslav]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  • I like the current system, I feel that sometimes it helps to change pops around
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  • Ship classes, customization and leaders are a part I cant imagine fleets without. As for addressing doomstacks, I'd like to see some logistics systems that would maybe penalize ship density in a system.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  • Civics and origin, they set the playstyle.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  • I create my empire with a goal in mind, but the goal usually changes with circumstances
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  • Inconsequential
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  • Colonization is easy, but I like Planetary Diversity solution to climate with subclasses. It bring variety with little effort. I like the removable blockers that give jobs until removed.
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  • I don't think so, but we are getting more and more civics that are unremovable. The older unremovable civics fundamentally changed how your civilization interacts with the world (Fanatic Purifiers, Driven Assimilators, etc.). I feel like some newer unremovable civics do not work like this. Dark Consortium gives dark matter techs and it is lock just only that player can not get techs and then reform to something else. Souvereign guardianship shuffles around empire size cost but the systems and planets cost is still not high anyway.
  • I don't think that new civics should have their mirroring civics in every other government types and I like when the mirror is quite different working.
• 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 really dislike vivarium and how the breeding of space fauna work. The ships are imbalanced and weak. I remember space combat rework and thorough beta-testing of frigates and ship changes and it brought great rebalance pass. Not vivarium. And the amount of colored text outside common Stellaris color palette for quality grading is staggering.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Stellaris is my comfort game I can play on autopilot while listening to audiobooks.

Bugs and broken features ruin things for me so I really, really look forward to more time being taken next year getting things polished, fixed and tackling old tech debt.
Although I wish that bugfixing time was allocated throughout the year and not in one big lump, it can feel like shouting at a brick wall with how long it takes to get anything fixed and the generic (mildly patronising) "have you made a bug report?" replies in dev diaries that seem to be helpful but make my eye twitch when bug reports don't get any responses and seem to be silently triaged and black-tagged for the death, never to be fixed.

Anyway, in answer to the questions in the Dev Diary, in no particular order:

How I like to play.

Spoiler: Making my empire

I alternate between my empire of robot spiders, cute scientists and or random traders collecting vassals and branch offices like pokemon.

Empire design for me goes like this:
Government Authority - Oligarchic/Megacorp/Gestalt (normal/frustrating/simple)
After that it's Origin (normal/Void/fancy pants)
After that it's Civics (Powerful/thematic/Murder hobo)
Everything else is cosmetic (quite literally in many cases).

I avoid Democratic, Dictatorial and Imperial because of mechanics for leaders/elections and the weak empire wide effects.
I prefer materialists, then xenophobes, then pacifists (the latter two just not to deal with war/allies/federations and all the bugs and issues they cause)
I prefer using habitats, so my default pick is voidborn... although I would love to just pick that in the starting planet screen instead.
Gestalts don't have as many cool civics which is a bit sad. Some weak and boring (Factory Overclocking, Built to Last) or annoying (Memorialist replacement building adding gas upkeep) or strong but boring (Rapid Replicator+OTA Updates as third pick) is hard to beat but dull.
The lack of trade is a big positive for reducing micro with gestalts... which indicates how annoying trade is at the moment.

After thinking up an empire and actually starting the game I set goals like:
Try to never build X and use Y instead (no generators only trade, no miners only space deposits, no entertainers only luxury housing, no lathe only researchers, no Soldiers only Duelists, only use habitats, only use machine worlds/arcologies/ringworlds) I don't know why, it's just fun to try.
Try to not have a single worker pop job (tax vassals for all basic resources)
Try to keep empire sprawl under X
Try to keep a specific ratio of Pops:Unity:Research
Try to claim every abandoned megastructure
Try to get every source of minor artifacts/digsite
Try to make a themed fleet with a crippling weakness work (All energy weapons, all missiles, all kinetics)
Try to use a colossus to shield a planet (not easy with the number of things you aren't allowed to shield like Khan planets/pre-FTLs etc.)

But usually the games end up playing the same for the most part, with the only recent difference being deciding between custodian or cosmogenesis. Although some special civics like Rogue Servitor or Obsessional Directive make the game interesting and my building choices dramatically different which is nice.

Features I want to enjoy:

Spoiler: The sad state of Espionage

Espionage
1. I hate the tooltip is broken "x days to next infiltration level" doesn't divide by progress per day.
Yes the default progress per day is 1 but sometimes this is <0.8, sometimes it's 2+ once you factor in bonuses or penalties so the tooltip is almost always wrong.
I know it's a little thing but it shows me how little care has been taken to polish espionage when even that hasn't been fixed in years.

2. All the Espionage operations events are bad, extremely repetative, mostly negative and sometimes buggy
Panicked operative event you pay to get the BAD option not the good one. Or don't pay for a chance at the good option.
Modulated shield occurs even when you've got Fallen empire level shielding and sensors
You can spend an asset to not fail the get asset operation if you really want to just waste an asset
Sometimes events just get stuck after saying something will happen in a few days nothing happens for years and you have to cancel the operation and try again.

3. I hate how the better you are at espionage the more it costs to do operations and the more you lose performing them.
(specifically high infiltration levels cost more infiltration progress, losing infiltration levels costs more the closer you are to 100)
You should lose infiltration progress instead of infiltration levels so operations don't blind you and take years to recover.
Currently it's like losing 1 Federation level (which can be 1,200 up to 18,000xp) instead of losing 1200xp.
This also makes Gather Information operation suck as the 10 year duration can actually be shorter than the time it takes to actually reach the new max infiltration level... especially if you aren't paying attention to make use of said higher infiltration level... and there's no notifications relating to espionage operation being ready to start so you aren't going to notice.

4. More positive Espionage stuff
Make empires like you, make them like each other
Add some good operation events that make it go faster, refund spent resources or upgrade an asset
Make it suck less.

5. More Asset collection and mechanics.
I like collecting pokemon, relics and even assets. Assets add so much flavour even if they barely do anything at the moment. They could do more:
Military assets could give combat bonuses, naval capacity, ship/army XP gain etc while at war with that empire
Economic assets could give bonuses to TV, trade agreements and governor XP gain
Diplomatic assets could give bonus to diplomatic weight, reduce diplomatic agreement costs, increase diplomatic acceptance like a reusable favour etc.
Assets could unlock special operations relating to their specific role.

6. More impactful espionage operations
I want to break apart federations, or merge two federations
I want to break apart empires (revolts), or change their authority (make my vassal into a megacorp, or trick them into an organic singularity as a hivemind overlord, or turn a planet into primitives for fun and profit/observation posts).

7. Better UI for intel levels:
Currently I check the wiki to see that I need medium military intel to see ship details... and then check a table to see I get that at 60+ intel... then look at my current infiltration level, max infiltration level and progress per day. But I have no idea how long I will have to wait without doing more math than you can make me do. Or how long I'll lose that intel level if I spend infiltration progress by doing an operation.

I want to see what espionage is currently giving me (Ship details)
How long before I will get what I want (like full fleet vision)
What the true cost of an operation is (spend infiltration and lose fleet vision for x years... although that's a ridiculously stupid mechanic. At least if people saw what it was doing they may be inclined to ask for it to change to something better and not quadrouple-dip on operation costs - pay energy/influence/assets/infiltration progress, sometimes paying all that twice with operation events cancelling the operation or doubling the costs)

...I could work it out using maths with the numbers shown on screen already... the game just doesn't want to do the math for me, or does it wrong. And the wiki doesn't include half the information, nothing at all about espionage operation events, so I can't tell what is a bug or what is supposed to be happening.

8. Notifications for espionage
I only really use Steal Tech and if that isn't available then Acquire Asset (when I'm capped on influence)
I would like to know when steal tech is off cooldown, or when I get enough infiltration to use it. Currently I only notice when hitting the influence cap reminds me to check and see I've been sat at max infiltration doing nothing for decades.

9. Operations that don't cost one of either influence / infiltration / energy but just cost time.
Espionage currently is more of an idle game, that's fine... but it's easy to forget it even exists, so more to do when you can't afford to perform good operations would be nice.
I want to boost my infiltration progress per day when I want to hit a key number like 60 or 100 even if it's expensive in terms of influence or energy.
I want to steal stuff (money, ships, relics... anything) when I have far more infiltration progress than I care about.
I want to have little things to do while waiting for the next big thing (preparations to make the next operation faster, better, cheaper or stronger when I can't afford the influence yet)

Federations, vassals and allies in general are more frustrating to me than most other things combined, and stop more games dead in their tracks than anything else.

Spoiler: Federation and vassals issues

I love the idea of Federations, but not the implementation as Federations and allies in war (and in peacetime) are like trying to herd cats, with bugs in the room (new federation members automatically quitting for example)

The good:
Trade federations has the powerful trade policy
Holy Covenant federations have +1 Priest job per 25 pops and planetary ascension effects
Research Cooperative federations gives some generic free research speed (boring)
Hegemony gets the special casus belli
Special Federation events

The Bad:
But it's not worth dealing with the hassle, every time I interact more with AI empires I get frustrated by them.
They make claims, go to war and drag me into conflicts all the time
They attract the ire of fallen empires (and drag me into conflicts that destroy me)
They bombard me with pointless changes to laws and votes
They don't contribute to federation cohesion (and lower it with all the voting)
They make a bordergore mess in any total wars
They don't like growing the federation peacefully
They don't like dealing with other federations peacefully

I also cannot stand federation fleets... they are so messy I just can't handle them no matter how powerful they may be. It's like eating soup with your bare hands.

It would be nice to have:
1. A law preventing members from making claims, disallowing settling FE holy worlds and borders.
Also preventing the AI from shouting at Fallen Empires to say that their mother was a hamster and their father smelled of elderberries, and farting in their general direction. It's just rude how AI allies behave sometimes.

2. More control for the player when in wars and not the primary war leader
I want to extract myself from a war that is going on forever or going badly, or encourage the AI to end it. Especially when there's some bug or quirk with warscore preventing the war's end (like two empires both at war with the same target and each occupying ~50% of an empire, or one member of a war being out of reach or similar situations that lead to a forever war).

So many things can't be done while at war (diplomatic vassals), and the AI dragging you into war can ruin your plans for decades as it makes no effort to reach a quick conclusion like the player would and cannot be bribed, cooerced or cajoled into doing what you want.

3. Better management of fleets you aren't directly building but you will be controlling. I'd have a joint fund members pay into and the federation fleet be a normal fleet with a reinforce button that pulls from the federation funds and builds ships from the nearest shipyards using random ship styles. I want control over where and when ships are reinforcing to avoid a big mess and lots of MIA fleets.

Vassals:
I adore... but I know they are more than a bit broken. Both in the overpowered meaning and the buggy meaning.

High taxes, influence from protectorates and from Ministry of Truth gives overpowered amounts of sprawl-free stuff (and reduces empire micromanagement)
Being a specialist vassal you magically get unique mechanics like resource/research caches (like a free bonus surveyor relic)
...but have to deal with the overlord trying to change the deal to integrate me and fighting an influence tug-of-war to screw each other over... not so fun.

Also Vassal taxes stop them getting strong enough to rebel or advance from being a protectorate so you never have to worry... although I do hate the automatic swap to protectorates and back, it's annoying getting the notification and it sometimes breaks the contracts as protectorates don't match the default vassal type in possible contract terms. I also don't always want to give them free tech, especially when I made them a vassal via war and am trying to run them into the ground and generally being mean to them out of spite for vivisecting my best scientist.

And vassals are buggy when vassal empires implode and revolt. Sometimes they just flip and join another empire without any notification to you that anything happened, sometimes you suddenly start a war to claim all their systems... it doesn't work right either way (and yes I have posted bug reports).

Ideally instead of the vassal having the revolt situation the overlord should get a special situation - with the Overlord Garrison being used to stop the vassal revolting, or the Aid Agency being able to compensate for deficits or repair devastation to help them, or for megacorps being able to sell them what they need for profit if your branch office is on an allied planet having difficulties/trying to fight your crime.

The other special holding buildings are a bit weak, highly situational and very expensive in terms of loyalty (double-dipping in costs as the holding slot itself costs loyalty). Mind thralls are thematic yet pathetic.

Also looking at vassal planets (and branch offices as a megacorp) is like looking behind the façade of a building on a film set. The illusion doesn't hold up to that level of scrutiny. I see things like the AI turning off all amenities jobs while low on amenities causing revolt, or not using decisions or having a unity deficit of all things... it hurts to look at how badly they sometimes manage planets, with no way to help fix things.

TLDR:
More control for non-player wars (getting out or convincing the war leader to end the war)
Rebalance vassals as everything they give you is sprawl free and easy (the AI shouldn't dream longingly of being a vassal).
Situations for the Overlord/Megacorp before vassals and allies implode/revolt (it's buggy currently)
Warning before overlords try to change the contract (no more influence tug-of-war).
Empires should prefer to be free, then in federations and lastly vassals. So, much less eager to become vassals (trust requirements only delays the problem).

Storms I'd love to love... really I just want cosmic storms to be better so I don't have to turn the DLC off to enjoy the game.

Spoiler: Storms DLC isn't fun for me

Storms are pretty but sorry to say but it's the first DLC I have disabled.

I don't like:
Devastation.
With no mechanics for lowering it or interacting with it (just reducing the gain of it) this shouldn't be the focal part of a new game mechanic. I can build new buildings in days with +1000% build speed, or terraform planets quickly, even build ringworlds but I can't repair a planet faster than a storm can damage it... I just have to wait... and wait... and wait... for it to leave and then wait... and wait... and wait... for the damage to get repaired. It sucks. It devastates my immersion.

Theme. Storms are common and move all over the galaxy. Earth has never had a cosmic storm... so storms are pure fantasy in a way that quite uniquely for me actually completely breaks immersion. If storms were fixed in place like nebula, growing and shrinking only due to player interactions there would be no problem. If they were created rather than natural there would be no problem. If most were beneficial or had no impact on planets there would be no problem... but no life should be able to survive in a universe plagued with a constant stream of devastating cosmic storms.

RNG. It's completely random if storms this game will give me lots of free stuff I can use, or will just ruin things instead, maybe I'll have 3 storms at once along my borders or maybe I will go 100 years without a single storm using the exact same settings. I can't build my empire or plan around something so reliant on RNG without having a 90% chance of a bad time.

UI. I wanted a map overlay to show environmental hazards like nebula or pulsars
Colour-coded with green for good, red for bad... only there are no good storms... and everything is grey as colours are used for attraction and repulsion instead... so there isn't an overlay to find nebula or the systems that will kill shields, storms aren't easy for me to spot, but I can really see where storms are being repelled and even without storms the UI wants me to know the cosmic storm intensity level is neutral... not that storms exist... but if they did they would most definately be neutral in every single system in the game.

Poor performance
Nobody else seems to mention this so it could just be a quirk of my computer. But lots of particle effects in every system makes my computer fans run louder as though everything is running at 100% trying to render it all. Similar to running old games where the framerate is uncapped on the opening screen and it jumps to 12k frames per second trying to render it as fast as it can. I care more about performance and quiet computer fans than eye candy.

New Precursors
I haven't actually encountered them sadly... because they need RNG to line up perfectly and all the games I played before turning off the DLC didn't have a single lucky match... with no settings to force it. I could leave the DLC on and turn storms off in galaxy settings but that would be even worse if my precursor is storm related in a non-storm centric game so I have to turn the DLC off entirely because of the precursors.

Pops?
I hope they are improved. My thoughts:

Spoiler: Pop changes I'd like

Pops mechanics aren't sacred to me, but my spider robot portraits are.

I get slightly annoyed with the way Pops are handled:
1. Managing pop templates is an expensive headache.
There can be pops leftover after modification, modification is expensive and annoying, growth progress gets deleted the month the old template isn't valid and any time the growth window goes blank a month, low habitability planets can alternating between growing a pop and not growing anything when the game decides that pop isn't valid for some reason (perhaps the migration pact target no longer has outgoing migration? who knows) the end result is often the game just deleting pop growth progress over and over unless you stick to one species and one template only in my empire.

So for me, having more than one pop template in my empire results in too many bugs for me to cope with. Old bugs with assimilation, templates and broken species rights have killed too many games for me even if they're mostly fixed now. So please don't introduce more bugs and test the new pop system first.

2. Viewing pop traits is a headache (especially when they start to stack all the traits), viewing different species with the same portrait on a planet is annoying.

3. Pop traits are annoying. Especially pop growth traits.
Any trait that applies only while actively growing encourage 1 growing template and 1 working template to modify into later.
Compare how budding works to how fertile works, budding applies the pop exists, fertile stops working once the pop is grown. A planet full of billions of fertile pops grows new pops far slower than a planet with billions of infertile/lithoid pops when a single non-species pop is growing.
Other traits are weak for their trait point cost, and all trait job modifiers (except Dark Matter Engines) feel dwarfed by the other modifiers to job output, using many traits result in needing less of the job those pops love and are good at (for upkeep resources like food and amenities).

4. Planet capacity isn't great. New colonies grow too fast without using or needing migration, ringworlds grow far too slowly compared to district build speed. The carrying capacity formula has been butchered, completely undermining the situation it was supposed to solve (i.e. reaching an equilibrium population level in a fixed length of time without decades of underpopulation or endless overpopulation).

5. Virtuality is great. But the dramatically reduced micro would have been better for wide empires and is wasted/detrimental on tall empires where you have less to do and want to micro pops and jobs rather than automate it away.

6. Automatic migration/slavemarket all use whole pops, while monthly migration uses fractions of pop growth. Monthly migration still needs fixing as it overvalues housing which you always want to be high to max growth in your empire after the planet capacity update. Needs much, much larger emigration push from no free jobs to outweigh the pull. Also the population growth decisions should max emigration push instead of setting it to 0 (since +100 x 0 = 0 their added push does nothing, it should reduce growth on the planet in a step after growth has been sent to other planets not before that growth tries to escapes elsewhere).

If I could redesign pops I would:
1. Make it with performance in mind (no daily or per-pop checks)
2. Pop traits apply to the planet not individual jobs. So 6 agrarian pops improve the first 6 farmer jobs, and add secondary job output like trade value/amenities/crime reduction/sprawl reduction/pop upkeep reduction to encourage building more thematically appropriate jobs matching species traits and empire civics)
3. UI to show what each planet is good at or lacks. I want to sort a list of my planets by technician/metallurgist output when deciding where to build next.
4. Pop growth being less important. More expensive buildings, population much quicker to reach a stable equilibrium so you don't wait centuries to fill a ringworld.
5. Migration depending on relative attractiveness of planets and not absolute, so it still happens even if all your planets are stable and with free housing and jobs.
6. Different faction demands - power projection instead of exceeding naval cap use, wanting certain buildings like entertainment, silos or planet shields
7. Post-war populations harder to manage (currently pops being purged don't cause any issues, nor do pops given full rights - makes war a bit cheap)

Fleets I think needs a big rework, I hope it results in less micromanagement of lots of fleets and more interesting stories. I want:

Spoiler: Fleet changes I'd like

Nothing too dramatic.
1. Fewer ships (above a certain number it becomes a messy blob)
2. Combat speed being back (ships above a certain speed turn into a swarm of flies buzzing around rather than clean battle lines)
3. Combat behaviour looked at (ship targetting causes them to jump between targets, waste DPS or even to fly to some equidistant point out of range of any target)
4. Combat report to work (correct number of ship losses when multiple fleets are fighting - I see losing more ships than I have lost, or no enemy losses when I've killed lots. I want to be able to trust the numbers, and to see if a ship design underperformed and needs a refit)

What would kill my enjoyment:
1. Needing to micro 8 fleets if a rework intends to stop doomstacking.
2. Needing to use automation and watching it breaking - I would cry if my fleets behaved like marauders and got stuck with broken pathfinding because of FTL inhibition, or like AI fleets that stop moving in random spots when they see a big fleet approaching, or wait to jump towards me until I jump towards them, or watching fleets dance back and forth never meeting, or giant groups of ships not merging into fleets... poor handling of AI fleets scares me.

Mechanics I would remove, no need for spoilers it's a short list:
Demotion times
It's backwards to me that a clerk can become a science director instantly with no need for training but the reverse takes years.
The only time I notice demotion times is when a mistake has been made or there's a bug with job weights. I hate it.

Mechanics I would Rework

Spoiler: Negative Leader traits, Aptitude and Explorer scientists

Leader Negative Traits
I want more interesting interplay, choices and tradeoffs. Currently getting a negative trait feels like a rebranded leader death, but worse as you have to take them out and shoot fire them yourself. I'd add:

1. Events and choices around negative traits like Substance Abuser/Arrested Development/Traumatized/Maimed/Stubbornness (Give them cyborg implants)
2. Special relic/deposit a Hoarder could be paid to part with, or drop on death
3. Thematic Tradeoffs for negative council traits like Bureaucratic/Rationer
4. Self-enriching negative traits add increased xp gain/lifespan/special jobs on home planet as they siphon resources for personal gain

Also the Aptitude tradition tree and Leadership Conditioning agenda were nerfed to death, I'd like to have them back especially as Aptitude has to compete with Tradition trees that give -10% sprawl from pops, they are hard not to pick as lower sprawl benefits science, unity, agenda speed and planetary ascensions. I'd love if the agenda worked more like gestalt reformat node agenda to perhaps also remove negative traits at a cost.

I also don't like scientist traits:
1. Explorer traits come far too late to be useful in exploration and feels like a waste (you're improving systems far away from your territory most of the time)
2. Scholar traits make completing anomalies imperceptibly faster making those scientists completely useless a few months earlier (+10% anomaly research speed is dwarfed by the effect of leader level on investigation time, just being one leader level higher saves at least 4x as much time)
3. Statistician traits are powerful but it's annoying to level-up in preparation for putting leaders on the council as they do nothing for the scientist and possibly never even get used at all if they roll a negative trait on top.
4. Analyst traits are ok... but so boring. There's no mad scientist vibes at all.

Gestalts are better, since their scientists trait pools aren't clogged with council traits and their and councilors aren't constantly being lost to old age.
Also I've seen AI empires go into unity deficit because they level-up leaders too quickly and can't afford their upkeep early game... which is just sad.

For scientists I'd change:
1. Explorer and related traits to be a starting trait to be useful early game.
2. Mechanic for re-surveying your territory (chance of getting a resource or technology cache each year or getting a random anomaly) so explorer/scholar is useful late game to discover new anomalies or study existing ruins for new insights respectively.
3. More mad scientist vibes from Analyst scientists
4. Less annoying levelling of council leaders with a buff to Leadership Conditioning (it hurts having to make more useless Statisticians than you have council slots to counter the negative trait RNG that may render them useless)

Trade routes I wouldn't feel sad about losing.
I would love actual trade goods with art and flavour text (think Specimens, but made to sell to other empires)

Spoiler: Trade, the good, the bad and the ugly

I really hope Trade gets a rework. It feels all-or-nothing, annoying to manage and dull.

Currently it hurts performance and irritates me:
1. Food/Rocks can teleport anywhere instantly while all the intangible trade goods like writing, music, art, films, banking, stocks, shares etc. need armed guards.
2. Routes exist to the capital but not between empires or to the market hub
3. Lacks imagination (TV number goes up, but not one named good is created or traded)
4. Lacks any integration with the internal and galactic market, price of goods or monthly trade systems.
5. AI overvalues direct trades with the player (lots of easy profit from selling CG/food/zro to a machine empire, but you can't buy loyalty once it goes below 0. Trade acceptance in general is in need of repairs)
6. Piracy + Crime aren't connected or related, have no benefits and aren't fun to deal with. Criminal megacorps are anti-fun, especially for pacifists - winning a war should block them from your worlds FOREVER unless they win a subsequent war to make you a subject.
7. Criminal jobs are boring (and amusingly pops often just refuse to work those open "jobs")
8. Trade routes need to be manually fixed after conquest with little indication they're broken

I would take inspiration from the success of the Relic rework and add:
1. New Trade Goods as objects with Art, flavour text and different mechanical effects (some manufactured, some harvested, and some produced by civic-unique jobs and the special megacorp holdings instead of just boring clerk jobs).
2. Trade routes I would remove (if reworked instead I'd use simpler, non-branching connections between capitals or to the market hub planet. The lack of external trade routes just feels wrong)
3. Monthly trades I would like to see a price history graph, better automatic buying and selling and more noise and fluctuations added. I don't want it to always snap to default or trend towards maximum/minimum prices quite as easily (I'd have a non-zero background amount being bought and sold that your monthly trades are added to, changing the prices to a new stable equilibrium value)
4. Piracy I'd revert to the old version: Spawns in unclaimed systems as an early game test of fleetpower that punishes scrapping your starting corvettes for metagame reasons (like preventing rivalries and banking on friendly AI being protective of you, although force projection at least gives a reason to invest in ships even if they never fire a shot).
5. Criminals I would rework into thematic variants of existing jobs operating outside the normal building structure, each criminal type with a thematic penalty or trade-off. This could encourage you to allow a criminal megacorp to infest your planet, or to allow a small backwater planet to devolve into a wretched hive of scum and villainy (for profit!).

Features I'd make an entire DLC/custodian patch around:

Spoiler: Planet Building Set DLC

Planet buildings:
1. Currently all empires have the same list of default buildings the entire game with no visual or mechanical differences... except cosmogenesis that get cool buildings.
2. Districts are generic squares (Even years after we lost planet tiles I still resent them every time I look at them)

I'd like themed sets of building art (like ship sets) with new building mechanics to pick in empire creation, or to change into later after gaining techs/traditions and reforming government. Some mix and match of sets and mechanics would be great to plan for during design (empires aren't monolithic).

The current building list being default. But DLC could add:

Spoiler: Example Building Sets

1. Organic building set.
Costs food to grow, pop growth bonuses and mechanics impact build speed and upkeep.
Special events relating to diseased buildings, parasites, buildings breeding/splitting etc.

2. Automated buildings
More pop-free output or robot-specific job slots
upgrades convert some jobs to hedonists and maintenance instead of having more jobs

3. Primitive buildings
Cheaper, faster to build with more worker-strata jobs. Increases unity at the cost of research

4. Elegant/Royal Buildings
Much, much more expensive to build and maintain, more jobs per x pops type mechanics, better for tall empires

5. Brutalist Buildings
Big black and bulky.
Extra housing on each building but lower happiness.

6. Artistic Buildings
More happiness and unity per unique building.
Increased uses for amenities from entertainment

7. Environmental Buildings
Some buildings limited to the number of natural blockers
Gaia Seeder equivalent that spreads natural blockers as the world is healed of damage and restored to a natural state

8. Industrial Hellscape Buildings
With more smog.
Pollution mechanics.

Also one for each species class that are purely cosmetic just so buildings can actually match the planet background city artwork.

It would be nice to allow two styles at once if you want both Brutalist slums and Royal quarters on the same planet, or to have green environmentalist utopias with some industrial hellscape buildings mixed in to tell your own story visually. The two species from Syncretic Evolution could be represented by two building styles, or your building style could change after technological progress as you reform government.

Districts:
District icons I'd replace with 6 special building slots on each planet for Farms/Mines/Generators/Forges/Housing/Other

Districts have the advantage of taking up much less space in the UI and clearly grouping together similar things... but they're also generic squares that lack the visuals of a Quantum Drilling Plant or the old 5 levels of mines and generators growing more elaborate.

You place a building in one of these slots and can build and upgrade multiple copies of that building more easily. Districts and buildings would then fit together seamlessly in the UI while allowing for more flexibility depending on how you use those district slots. I want to see mines growing larger and larger and costing time and minerals to upgrade instead of a tech just instantly giving +20% minerals from miners, especially if we had the above rework/DLC as the district options for each cityset could be different.

Less ambitious idea.
More ways to get access to advanced building sets like Fallen Empire buildings outside of cosmogenesis.
I like turning buildings up to 11 with those cool looking floating things but I don't like total wars with annoyed Awakened Fallen Empires (they claim systems as if they'll just humiliate you and take a border system but once they declare war they are locked into total war where you can't surrender... which sucks if you aren't prepared for it).
I also don't like hoping to buy lottery tickets using minor artifacts for a chance at winning a single buggy building that may or may not upgrade. I don't mind if it's expensive, but using the exact same buildings at the start and end of the game feels wrong.

TLDR:
New building art packs to make empires look different, some to match city backgrounds and to add visual storytelling (Royal Palace and Brutalist Slums)
New building mechanics to spice up the gameplay loop (Growing buildings, automation and hedonists, jobs that require specific species like robots)

If you read some or all of that, congratulations! Have an Intangible Cake™ Trade good (May contain traces of ennui).

 

[SmileyJeff]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  • not important, individual pops and jobs doesn't add much to the game.
  • i prefer an abstract pop where we can have 10billion pops as a value, and then assign a percentage of that to certain district.
  • i still want the ability to customize species trait, for example:
    • species 1: 5 billion pop
    • species 2: 2 billion pop

• 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 theres big fleet battles, im good.
  • if individual pop/jobs are removed, performance could allocate to make battles more epic and large scale.
  • i also love amazing space battle mod, gives me time to enjoy watching the fleets i built in battle (part of what makes sins of solar empire great)

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  • origin, ship design, species, ethics and civics
  • i think what we have now is amazing

• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  • i don't set goals, i usually create a new civilization for a new playthrough and that will define how i play them
    • if i create a necron empire i will just try to dominate the galaxy
    • if i create a trading civilization, i will try to be the richest civilization in the galaxy
  • anything that happens in between to me are just events that make the galaxy feel more alive and i will go along with the flow and i really love this aspect of Stellaris

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  • not really important, i really dislike how the trade system is implemented currently.
  • i rather have individual pops/jobs removed and have more performance allocated to trade, so we can see tradeships or trade fleets using trade routes (sins of a solar empire, age of empires 2).
  • it breaks immersion the most currently especially with how pirates are generated. i want to be able to assign my fleet to escort the trade and watch them engage in battle, not just a skull icon on the screen.

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  • i am neutral on this, maybe bring back the old research on what planet type we can colonize, with the exception of machine race? maybe certain climate can affect machine and bio differently.

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

• 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 one game system: individual pops/jobs
  • i would like to see a trade focus expansion, reworking trade.
  • trading sucks, i would love to see more depth (tradeships customization, escort tradeships with fleets, actual pirate battles, trade routes, visible tradeships etc)

 

[:Gabe 521]

My favorite thing about Stellaris is the roleplaying aspects. For me, Stellaris sets itself apart from other Paradox games as more of an RPG, which adds to the replay value. I would love more ways to customize your empire and more events (even if they are minor) that lean into the role play factor. An example would be defining the religion of a spiritualist empire. Do they worship a pantheon? A single powerful god? An eldritch abomination? This could also expand the way you interact with other empires and how they view yours. I think expanding roleplaying aspects in empire creation would add more replay value and depth to each campaign.

A second thing I would like to see is a more in-depth trading system. I would love to have an empire that specializes in agricultural production and feel like I can have a major impact on the galactic economy if my production is stifled or halted in some way. It would also give more reasons for waging war and conquering a system or planet if the resources there are particularly valuable on the galactic market.

 

[Cb@me]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  • I like it enough but I wouldn't call it sacred to the game. If something better came along I'm all for it
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  • I truly struggle to think of what changes could be made to make me feel that way. Here again I enjoy the current system but am open to improvements. I suppose one thing I enjoy a lot of ship classes and the fact each vessel is auto-named? It would be a shame RP wise to have it all be abstracted away entirely
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  • As someone who likes to lean into the RP side, the imagined story I have for my civ, ie what happened before the 2200 start date? I was a major fan of origins when they were added, and I like to match origins, governments, ethics, to the civilization I RP my faction to be
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  • I often have goals before a play-through of a general story I want to tell (as an example, how a plucky civilization survived the Tomb World origin and went on to form the Galactic Imperium). Apart from a vague long term goal like that, I mostly just play along and let the emergent story weave me around as I work towards my long term goal.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  • I barely ever think about it. Would love something different, because I feel galactic and interstellar trade is an interesting topic
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  • Yes and yes
• 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: I suppose this is where I'm supposed to say ground combat, but I don't mind the current implementation, and don't want to lose anything else.
  • Expansion focus 1: Internal Politics of course. Faction system feels very outdated and almost out of place at this point. Edicts could be tied into it too. Would love an Overlord or Machine Age sized internal politics overhaul.
  • Expansion focus 2: Planets and colonization. Would love for planets to feel more unique and different from each other, even within the same class. Terraforming likewise feels underwhelming/anticlimatic a bit, not to mention not as strong as I feel it could/should be
    Expansion focus 3: Machine Age for Psionics when??

 

[Supreme Emperor Elliven]

As a long time player I'd be happy to offer what I can! I look forward to seeing what happens!

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  • Not important to me. If anything I often find them confusing and hard to explain to new players. A single "Pop" represents some fairly random quantity of people on a planet. When it comes to jobs I do like that we know exactly how each pop filling a job changes the overall resources produced by a planet, but I don't think that is specific to the current jobs system.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  • I think it would only start feeling wrong if I made entire fleets with single clicks. Think similar to Civ where an "army" is represented by 3 dudes in a square. Otherwise, I'm open to changes generally.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  • The Origins and Civics are the most important aspects of my civilizations. The origins are often the foundation of my design, allowing me to build based on some pre-cursor form that my people held that I can advance upon. The Civics allow me to better refine the nature of my faction in a satisfying way. Example: I created a faction I called The White Hand, built originally around the Death Cult and Necromancy Civics and the Teachers of the Shroud origin. (My names might be a bit off, but you understand hopefully.) While I loved the idea of playing this dark sorcery style cult of individuals and embraced the shroud as a more Eldritch Arcane form of power, I actually felt more limited by the Ethics system due to be marked "spiritualist" as if we were running churches/temples and speaking sermons, while instead I was playing Dark Ritualists harnessing powers beyond the veil! If anything, I feel like my use of necromancy should have been the reason we freaked out Materialists more than the fact we were "spiritualists."
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  • The initial goals are always based on the type of faction I play. Bandit Kingdom? Raid the surrounding people as much as possible and bathe in gold dust. Aforementioned White Hand? Grow in power to contact The Shroud and begin drawing on power from another dimension to drive our people forth to take command. Megacorp? Gain as much trade value as possible, open branch offices in every possible planet, become the economic superpower in the galaxy. My end-game goal also depends on the faction, as some are more willing to command a Galactic Imperium, while others are more likely to just try and survive the End-Game crisis while being a thorn in the sides of the rest of the galaxy.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  • Not important at all, if anything I feel like it needs a serious rework. Trade should be far more in-depth and trade as it currently is makes little sense within your faction as it more seems to represent luxury products, which are also represented by Consumer Goods. I honestly find it to be one of the biggest hurdles for new players to understand in many cases.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  • It's definitely too easy, but I fear that any changes is going to facilitate change to machine empires that I feel make NO SENSE! Robotic pops are NOT biological, so of course they have an easier time living in just about any environment than other species. Not really the point, I know, but still. Habitability could matter, but I think a rework of the habitability system might be in order. If your species is used to living on a wet planet, there are obvious things getting in the way of living on dry or cold worlds that habitability seems to overly simplify. I think Tech needs to be the great equalizer. For organics, tech for warming pops on cold worlds or allowing moisture or water gathering in desert worlds. For robots, you can get the same effect by providing seals for dust and dirt for desert worlds, moisture for wet worlds, and climate controlled bodies for cold worlds. It would allow you to make it so colonization can only occur on worlds your species is able to survive in, and can also be used to better facilitate reasons to welcome pops from other climate types through things like migration treaties.
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  • This is an odd question, since I don't really think about it much, but I would say any Civic you cannot remove from your government should be an Origin instead. As for Origins that should be civics, I would say Origins that provide minimal benefit (Like Mechanist or Post Apocalyptic.) might be better as civics. I just feel like many of the origins just don't measure up to the others, so they are far less likely to be used specifically as an origin but could be more viable as a civic.
• 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?
  • As I said before, I find the habitability system entirely unnecessary and a little harmful. It encourages strange and even boring methods of play for the "ideal" benefit, which no game should encourage in my opinion. Just like in real life, the more difficult a place is to live, the more tech is needed to make it comfortable. As for an expansion? I would LOVE to see the Diplomacy expanded! Creating events for diplomatic incidents, both good and bad, is something we desperately need! Envoys should not be static set pieces for "Improving or Harming Relationships" but instead should be able to be sent on diplomatic missions! If I want to improve my relations with someone, having someone go and talk their ear off would be annoying, not helpful! Gifts of Goodwill, Funeral Services or Show of Solidarity when beloved allied leaders die, Peace Summits, Mediation between two factions you like, etc. We should have many situations where we can provide aid to the people, show solidarity with the leaders, send goodwill between factions, and be diplomatic far beyond what we currently have! On the other side, harming relations could instead become parodies of rival leaders, propaganda against an opposing faction, harming relations between your allies and your rival by spreading rumors and harmful rhetoric, even throwing a lavish celebration when an enemy is wiped out?! I mean, surely there are many ways we can come up with for how to improve and harm relations without it being a single button press and the events being relegated only to spy events. Speaking of, the feature I REALLY want to enjoy is the Spying/Espionage feature. I feel like so much could be done with it, it could be so satisfying, but it's really nothing special and just becomes an annoyance where AI spy regularly while I see little to no benefit to doing it beyond stealing tech. (Even trying to destroy relations is pretty useless if they already have any kind of relationship.)

I hope this helps!

 

[Jekson20level]

Ok. Let's start
1) How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?

• Right now, jobs occupy an important part of the simulation. Many civics and origins use them. And in the midgame, I often need to change priorities by settling in new colonies. Just removing them will make the game empty. But I would be happy with a system similar to Victoria. However, it should be borne in mind that Pops of different species are not equal in number. This means that you need to add size to the biological properties. If you know how to implement this, it would be great.

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

• We already have a large number of weapons and other components. It's hard for me to imagine how to change the fleet. However, I am sure that a torpedo hitting a corvette will cause more damage to it than to a battleship. If you wanted to add the effectiveness of torpedoes against large targets compared to other weapons, then you should introduce the mechanics of damaging/disabling components when the hull is damaged. For large targets that live longer and have multiple modules, active weapons are more important. Of course, other weapons that penetrate armor and shields will become more effective. It's worth thinking about, but the damaged logic of the torpedoes prevents me. Another idea for the fleet is the formations and the general tactics of the fleet. This will have to be linked to the current ship behavior modules.
• The problem with doomstacks is related to the ability to move your fleet quickly. If the player and the opponent have already set up gates everywhere, then the strongest doomstack will win. It is possible to complicate the passage deep into enemy territories if you prohibit the use of gates in captured systems until they are hacked. I am actively using the rise in the cost of technology so that it is really an endgame. The second problem of doomstacks: there is no logistics in the game (with the exception of rare trading builds, not all) to bring down the enemy's economy as punishment for the doomstack by hitting in two places at the same time.

 

[Karlb]

Ok so here is my take

1. 1. Pops and Jobs.
   1. The district limit works, but the building limits are somewhat artificial. Now we also have so many newer buildings I find I am always running out of slots. Personally, I think that planets should have a lot more options in terms of districts and perhaps buildings should be restricted to specialty (planet limit that are more focused on % bonus rather than flat extra jobs and be limited to 1 per planet (looking at administrative/temple/research labs)
   2. I really dislike micromanaging when there are too many species and species variants in the empire, they lose their distinctiveness. The auto modding traits were a good start but I feel this needs a big overhaul to make species feel unique.
   3. When I conquer pops, they are usually oddly happy to be enslaved into my empire and never really rebel. I feel it should be a little harder to manage pops after conquest. Same with just juicing my planets by buying slaves from the market, it needs to have at least some drawbacks.
2. Fleets
   1. Mid game micro is more fun, but as the game goes on, it just ends up being bigger number better.
   2. Designing ships should be more impactful than it really is.
   3. Ships have a very limited number of slots so it really stifles my creativity, especially on larger ships.
   4. Carriers should be a separate class entirely.
   5. Fleet cap should not be a thing if we have naval capacity. I would like to see it replaced with some kind of logistics system where you suffer attrition if you have more ships than your other infrastructure can support. Maybe something like being x jumps away from your starbases
   6. Starbase cap needs to scale with galaxy size
   7. Starbases could be flushed out with a lot more customization
   8. Defenses are still always steamrolled in the late game, even maxed out ones. I should be able to defend my systems better without fleets. Asteroid guns, planetary missile launchers, local fighter squadrons etc..
3. Origins/RP
   1. really really like the RP origins, especially the ones that have branching narratives. I would like to see more of them and maybe some of the older plain ones get a pass or have some extra flavour added to them.
   2. It would be neat to have some civics that you can earn by doing some specific things.
   3. I would love to see a 'group' origin where you guys create a few complementary origins that interact with each other.
4. Trade system.
   1. I don't pay attention to it unless pirates show up
   2. pirate activity should be a game setting, need more pirates. Pirates can have narratives too and should have more ways to interact with them
   3. Trade between empires needs to be a lot more fleshed out.
   4. Having treaties cost monthly influence really limits who I want to trade with.
   5. Gateways seem to make the pathways irrelevant.. but they really should still exist in some form.
5. Origins/Civics
   1. As stated before, it would be neat to have more interaction between the two
   2. I would like to be able to earn more civics past the current 3, 2 is a good starting point, but I think we should be able to research more, but have some of them limited to being initial picks, maybe have some special ones that you actually have to research or do something to acquire (buy them from the curators/artisans?)
   3. As always, the more the merrier
6. What should be removed/Expanded
   1. Terraforming needs a big overhaul, its far far too limited, and mostly can only be done to already habitable planets. It should be more accessible, but also much more expensive. Maybe having it broken into stages but take like 100 years to fully terraforming a planet.
   2. Detox is never ever worth the AP, please move it to a really expensive tech or something.
7. What else
   1. My biggest beef with the game, is that I like to play lively galaxies, but this just turns everything into a race to fill every single spot and go as wide as you can fit
   2. Playing tall will really curtail exploration, which is the most fun part of the game. There should always be stuff to explore in the galaxy.
   3. I love surveying anomalies and archaeological sites.. but its always a race to claim as much territory as I can so that I have the opportunity later on to survey them
   4. I would like to see a system in place that puts the brakes on expansion a bit, and lets me use my influence for other things here and there. incentives for maybe leaving open space
   5. I know it can be cheesed, but please let me trade systems with the AI, even if they make me pay exorbitant amounts for them.
   6. Add more hostile blockers, why can I only have 3 marauder empires, crank that slider up to 11
   7. Add more Fallen empires, these are effective at blocking off sections of the galaxy until later
   8. Add more hostile space fauna! also make them destroy your starbases if you cant defend them. Also pirates would do this nicely too. Just generally add more blockers all over the place that need to be overcome.
   9. The game is too short.. I would love to play longer games, but the power creep at the end is just a bit hard on my CPU.. it would be nice to have some kind of decline mechanic and have new empires spawn mid game. Give me some stuff to do after the crises.
   10. Speaking of crises, keep 'em coming. Id like to see a bit more customization for power and timing, but the more the merrier. (if you add more though and I play with all of them on, maybe figure out a better scaling mechanism than multiplication)
   11. More enclaves and other interesting "NPC" entities int the galaxy
   12. I want the ability to steal things like relics and unique techs (dragon scales etc...) via espionage so its er actually useful for something

 

[Shaeliss]

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

Any civic that currently "Start of the game only" should be an origin... or a second origin, if you would entertain the idea of such a system. And as origins, empires should be able to grow beyond them. A Determined Exterminator could try to repent, it wouldn't erase its history of genocide and the negative relations from such a history, but it should be able to make the effort. Similarly a Devouring Swarm could overcome its constant hunger. These options should be available at least sometimes (ascension comes to mind)

So, the Cybrex called, and they say they're glad other robotic empires are considering abandonning their genocidal crusades against organics.

 

[roshide.leo]

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

I think pops are great, altough i would like to see more buildings, decisions or edicts to make them more efficient so i can have a empire with low population without being excessively weak. Also i would like to see pops in other places, like starbases or megastructures, in part for balance reasons (because they are strong, relatively cheap and easy to build, and i think having pops attached would give them more weight in where you build them and who is there) and also for logic reasons (are you telling me that this dyson sphere think does not have people maintaining it? robots? we are throwing alloys there but who is working them in situ?)

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

I like having the size and composition of the fleets chosen by me, but i agree with some arguments about the size of them and the lag they cause in the late game. I think a mechanic that reduce doom stack and reduces overal fleet size is badly needed (i tough about logistic in a system. Each one have a logistic capacity that depends of planet, starbases and megastructures present in said system, if your fleet exceed that logistic capacity the upkeep of the ships increase MASSIVELY. I think this would help at least in the doom stack part)

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

I origin and civics that cannot be changed are the most defining part of it, mainly because you are stuck with them through gameplay. Ethics, pops and normal civics can be changed (some easier than others and some with more benefits than others) so that part of your civ is more fluid, at least a little bit (i would like to see more fluidity in the empire tough).

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

I usually try to make a empire good at something, and play until achive that something...or something break and i abandon the save.

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

I like it existence but i think the implementation could be a little more complex. I would like to see trade routes not only for money, but also for other resources, it could be a great way to use corvetes and frigates in the late game and also a way for a weaker empire to figh against a stronger one.

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

I think WP's Dangerous Wildlife Expanded is a really cool concept that should be base game, at least to some extend, also beneficial blockers that maybe you dont want to clear due it´s benefits. In habitability terms, i would like to see the technologies that improve it, being something that you have to spend resources to it and not a simple buff that you research and forget about it.

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

I would like to see more civics that change or expand over certain origins. Also more gameplay variability bewteen them.

• 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?

There are several systems that i want to enjoy. The factions, espionage, federations, markets and private sector, all of them are systems that are present but are shallow and/or boring.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

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

Please don't change the fundamental systems of the game again. The game was near-unplayable for years after 2.2 since the AI had no idea how to play it anymore, and the game balance took until this year (with the science nerf) to recover.

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

Again, enough fundamental changes. The main problem with fleets and combat is all the bugs in the current system. I don't think the doomstack issue is nearly as much of a problem as the memes suggest.

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

Having a trade route/piracy system is important. The way it currently works isn't anything special though. If the current system were replaced with visible civilian ships moving around in your systems (and being attacked by visible pirates), that would be very cool.

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

Absolutely. Habitability barely matters except in the early game. In the early days of Stellaris you needed techs for colonizing each type of planet. More barriers like that would be good.

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

Please don't remove any features. For every feature there is someone who loves it. Don't take things away from people that they paid for.

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

Other than the obvious Genetics/Psionics and internal politics? Maybe Japanese sci-fi. Giant robots with laser swords, wave motion cannons, energy disc weapons, all that cool anime stuff. And catgirl aliens.

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

Espionage. Make it stronger or get rid of the influence cost please.

 

[Diputs]

I've been playing Stellaris since release, it's my favorite game of all time and I have over 2600 hours on steam. I almost never play competitive multiplayer, but I do play cooperative or roleplay based multiplayer with my friends. I'm happy with the direction the game has been going and with the releases so far. Thank you all for making this great storytelling game!

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  • I enjoy the way different species feel different, customizing my species and coming up with their story is extremely fun, but I think that modeling the individual portraits isn't strictly necessary given the amount of resources it can take. Especially if there isn't a simple drag-and-drop to work and you have to rely on unintuitive "deprioritize, then reprioritize in exact order and hope the job weights work as intended." I also think the pop growth system is pretty odd, trying to naturally even out population ratios and basing the growth on number of planets just doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't know the solution to this, but it is something I'd like to see improved.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  • I'd like some encouragement not to doomstack, but it's pretty hard to think of a good system that works in the lore as well as makes for a fun gameplay feature. I think having a supply system would be useful as well, to make it so you don't want to operate for extended periods without some way to support the fleets. One idea I'm interested in is if civilian ships weren't an inherently different class of ship, rather they are modules that you could add to ships (slap a science scanner on a corvette body and lead it wish a scientist instead of an admiral, slap a construction bay on and lead it with an official), so that you can have armed civilian ships (after all, enterprise wasn't helpless even though its main purpose was exploration).
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  • I like the current system of origin + ethics + government + civics; I think that's a very strong base to work from. There is a question about how much of your 'culture' should be represented on the pop level rather than the government level; one gameplay mechanic that isn't represented much would be your species' culture or religion becoming popular even outside your nation, letting you absorb other nations peacefully or declare war on them to 'liberate' planets that should be yours.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  • Most times, I have some goal going into the game - get this particular ascension, make a capital that fits with my nation, get so many species in my empire, pass these laws in the Galactic Community. I also tend to set shorter term goals, get this archaeology site, secure this border, turn this planet into a good sector capital; those are more hit and miss, but you can't win them all.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  • It's a little odd that trade is the only resource that works this way. I can rely on one agri-world at the edge of the galaxy to feed my capital, and all the trade coming from it can be intercepted, but the food still gets through? I'm not particularly sure what would be the best way to resolve this tension.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  • I love the colonization stage of the game, and having extra complexities and issues here would be interesting. One question is how much we should hold to the one-biome planets - they are super popular in sci-fi, but it might give more options. I would like to see terraforming being available more early, but also more expensive in terms of both time and resources - you'd have to throw a lot of biomatter and science as well as that energy. I like the update that added events to terraforming, perhaps terraforming and colonizing should both be situations with different approaches available based on civics/ethics?
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  • Right now, there are three kind of origins: species, planet, and political. I think it would be a good idea to tease these out apart from each other, so they can be combined in new ways. Why can't my Necrophages be in debt to Minimar Specialized Industries? Why can't my Under One Rule dictator be living on a habitat? This would also call into question some civics, especially those that can't be added or removed after game creation.
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be?
  • I like many of the game systems, but I'm less fond of the enclaves and marauders current implementations. They were designed for an earlier system of the game, and their features would be able to be represented by having voidborne advanced empires that were more willing to trade or raid than a normal Comp.
• Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion?
  • Probably either the above mentioned idea of splitting up origins into species/planet/politics (and adding more); or the below mentioned diplomacy and war. I would also love more species packs, the art for them is always so inspirational for each new playthrough.
• Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
  • Diplomacy, especially around war and peace treaties. The war exhaustion and war score systems can lead to absurd and frustrating conclusions; the forced truces and specific wargoals can make it seem like every species is following these same considerate rules. It feels like so many of diplomacy's features are binary, on/off, rather than using soft caps and incentives or discouragements. I think a lot of inspiration could be taken from other paradox games to help make diplomacy be more in depth.

 

[bunkerman]

• As for what system i feel is sacred funnily enough i feel the most like taht about the old tile system, dont get me wrong i wouldnt want the old system fully back, but for one i really feel liek stellaris lost its main charm when it removed it and i for one really wonder what would have happened if instead of the convoluted district and building system that replaced them, we kept the tiles just decoupled pops from them. Like to me it would sem far superior to teh current system to jsut have teh old tile system to build whats currently districts and buildings in the same places just the pops would have their own screen as the pops on teh tiles really did make very litttle sense. Like right now it feels very wrong that we have 2 kinds of building slots on teh planet and different things cant go on different slots, like why cant i build labs in these district slots, or why cant i build more alloy foundries in these building slots, just feels very arbitrary and wrong, even if we cant go back to the tiles, it would be a very good idea to try to unite these 2 discombobulated kinds of slots on planets

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
• i feel like individual pops are holding the game back from greater scopes and greater performance, getting rid of teh game having to simulate each pop individually would be an awesome step into teh right direction

• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
• fleets dont matter too much, its just doomstacks of alloys to grab planets with, feel free to change whatever or even completely remove them

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
• economy, how we get our basic resources, what we do with them, how is our economy different from another empire (at this point the differences coudl deifnitely be bigger in vanilla, but mods help with that)

• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
• i have a goal or goals at start, and they only change if tehy become unattainable or if i complete them but want to play on

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
• trade system is important to have, the routes setting is nothing special atm as it offers 0 nuance, and tehre is always an obvious best choice, either make the route setting matter or feel free to remove it, but as a system in general its ok as is

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
• i personally would say for colonization tehre should be no minimum, but teh habitability should matter a lot mroe for how much teh planet adds to the empire, imo the biggest problem atm is that any colony is good colony because number of colonies basiclaly directly multiplies the number of pops you can grow, the biggest thing to fix in here would be making pops grow empire wide not per planet so that colonizing random backwaters into breeding colonies wouldnt amek sense earlygame, if anything spreaidng your pops over lots of low planets should lower your pop growth overall not increase it as it currently does

• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
• agrarian idyll, inwards perfection, barbaric despoilers and all teh genocidal civics deifnitely feel liek they could do better as origins, as of the otehr way, syncretic evolution and mechanists kinda feel liek teh ycould be civics, but both of these things are kidna hard to say as the valid combinations for empires in fantasy will always get into the territory of wanting 2 separate origins or wanting 3 civics and no origins really suiting you, maybe it would be good to work on a system that would remove teh lines between the 2 insteado f just moving a few things arround

• 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?
• if i could remove a single system its kinda hard to say which, so many good options, 1 good choice would be rmeoving combat to make the game mroe about building teh best economy, but that kinda requires too much of an overhaul for the game and would be quite controversial , more realistically id eitehr remove the anomaly system as its just endless clutter of stuff that once you have seen it all, tehre is nothing new there until next expansion and even before taht its kidna all samey,
• as for what to make the central focus of a big expansion its deifnitely planetary deposits, feels really odd for basically the only thing different about planets being how many of the 3 districts you can build there, and the size, i would add a lot of more interesting deposits, like weh ave teh legacy betahrian stone and xeno pets and make these 2 even more compelling, as a few examples:
  Exotic Spices: every farmer produces +1 amenity and +2 trade value on this planet
  Rich Lithium Vein: every miner produces +2 energy on the planet and buildinsg on this planet require 50% less energy upkeep
  Giant Fungus: Researchers on this planet produce +1 society research and they make you research biology technologies 1% faster (each)
  Metallic Volcano: Metallurgists on this planet require 0 mineral upkeep and produce +1 alloys
• As for feature i really want to enjoy but cant, its the early development of an empire, feels liek current game starts us with 1 planet but we immediately ened to grab as many planets as possible and colonize them to get the popgrowth out of them and then preferably conquer more planets and even better ready to go pops to fuel teh economy, i feel like to enjoy teh game overall better teher needs to be less emphasis on maximizing popgrowth through limitless expansion and more of a focus on actually having strong, well built and prosperous worlds, the feeling that if you arent colonizing everything you are just throwing away pops is a really annoying thing to have to deal with when otherwise teh earlygame could be quite more interesting if one had to time properly when to colonize what

 

[M@ni@c]

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

Very important. It's the reason I started heavily playing Stellaris. The pre-MegaCorp economy I found boring. I also don't like a Victoria style system with large population numbers. The advantage of a pop system is that you can clearly see for each pop what the modifiers to that pop are, and how productive they are compared to other pops. This become more difficult when a pop consists of 12798 artisans.

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

I like it. In fact I would like to see it expanded to something like Civ5/6, where you create trade routes between planets.

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

Yes. At the start of the game only your ideal planet class should always be worth colonizing. Playing tall and having only one planet for the first two decades, should not be a death sentence. Initally other climates should only be worth colonizing if they have a useful modifier or resource. But such modifiers should be much more common and impactful. Guilli's Planet Modifiers style. Simply increasing pop growth should not be the main driver of expansion. For a long time your homeworld should be the main source of pop growth.

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

Since there are so many origins now, they should be split up into two categories: an origin related to your starting planet, and the remainder category. It should be possible to combine something like Life Seeded and Under One Rule.

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

Why would I want to remove content?