Stellaris Dev Diary #361 - The Vision

[timxout]

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

I like being able to manage the pops, but that is partly because the pops can make clearly sub-par decisions. If pops couldn’t waste their time, managing them would be much less important

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

When I can’t create an unstoppable deathball when i am far ahead of other empires anymore

 What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

The 'more efficient than usual options' it can lean on to get ahead of other empires. Like, making a lot more priests than usual with the cybernetic creed origin, stuffing 1 habitat to the brink with the toxic god origin, settling only a few worlds with corporate protectorate, going all in on miners with the calamitous birth origin, going for a lot of farmers with the catalytic processing and anglers civics etc.

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

I experiment with the origins, civics etc for a while until I find a combination that I like and have a general strategy and goal for. Every couple of decades I look ahead to the next 2 decades and every couple of years I course correct a bit. After that I just work with what I find and surprises me.

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

It is quite unrewarding ever since the rework, considering the mediocre return on investment and the headache of piracy, but it is fine. In general stellaris would benefit from a bit more subtle nerfing, rather than bludgeoning a beloved playstyle to unplayable, which i have seen quite a few times now

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

I generally like it, but I like expanding and building an empire.
You could make colony ships cheaper, add a few more cheap to remove blockers that lower habitability or block a lot of districts or something like that and allow players to clear clockers in advance within their empire before they start to colonize. Requiring players to clear blockers for at least a part of the planets before they can colonize them might increase the feeling of space is not just made for us.

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

There are a number of “barely do anything for you” origins that might be fine as civics if they are given a strong council position like galactic doorstep, cave dwellers, riftworld, life seeded, fruitful partnership and syncratic evolution, but they could also be reworked as origins, as they do have flavor. Mechanist on the other hand seems fine but might work very well as a civic.

In general most ‘can’t be removed’ civics could be worked into interesting orgins. Or you can allow players to choose 1 origins, 1 ‘can’t be removed’, a bit stronger core civic (after adding a few more options for different playstyles) and 1 or 2 normal civics as it is often the synergistic 1+1>2 interaction between the mechanics of an origin and a civic that make empires feel unique. A few civics could be added to the megacorps too, to give them more interesting empire options.

 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?

The leader Limit can be a bit annoying and i wouldn’t mind it disappearing, but I personally like finding the right person for the job for each key planet and big fleet and with a big enough empire most positions are empty and i understand it makes balancing harder

The feature I want to enjoy more would be traditions. Almost all traditions are generically good, mediocre or just plain bad. With a few exceptions like mercantile and the ascension trees, they don’t really reward a particular playstyle or empire. So you tend to end up with the same 5 solid traditions of the time, one great ascension tree and maybe one that is particular to that playthrough. Traditions could be a unique and impactful mix that defines your playthrough, as they benefit certain actions and maybe hurt others a bit. Every game requires for example solid science, resource collection and a fleet, so maybe traditions could focus more on how you try to achieve growth in all those sectors rather than 1 for each as they are all must haves. So you have good reasons to choose a completely different sets of traditions depending on the kind of empire you play

As it stands you could just remove the espionage and politics system without anyone noticing, but reworking the traditions as a whole might give a opportunity to fix them.

Space piracy and space trade feels like an untapped narrative resource. Lucrative trade routes from and too the neutral space stations and maybe between empire capitols that you have to patrol. Missions from the curator enclave to investigate some phenomena or finding a particular wreck for the salvager enclave that reward you with the possibility to establish those higher risk, higher reward interstellar trade routes. Named moving pirate fleets/ pirate commanders, that navigate towards the les defended regions and you can “pay protection money” to stay away or maybe allowing empires to steal from each others trade routes with a few weak border-ignoring black-ops vessels or something like that and maybe have a pirate empire orgin.

 

[LordAithos]

My take, as a micro hater and (also) CK3 enjoyer. I have been on board since 1.0 and I find the current Stellaris even more to my tastes than ever, with many updates/expansions hitting it out of the park recently. I have faith in the dev team and their vision.

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  • Not important. I mean, the idea of interacting with species with different habitabilities, aptitudes, civil rights etc is central to the fantasy and should remain, but the actual implementation can be redefined, as it has in the past. It seems to me that the shift from pops to jobs has been going on for a while now.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  • If you have an idea, absolutely go for it. I admit the fleet mechanic has never been my favorite part of the game. I tend to run a "all around decent" fleet and counter other empires/leviathans/crisis with appropriate weapons/armor loadouts as needed, but I mostly look up the "meta" and stick with it. I keep all fleets together and direct them as one. Transports follow the fleet. None of this is particularly engaging, so I try to avoid wars as much as possible, only using fleets as deterrents most of the time. I would love for this to change.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilisation?
  • I guess the combination of origin and major civics. They account for 90% of the differences in playstyle between runs. Ethics and government type closely tied to civic choices. Ascension paths and traditions often follow from this choice as well, and precursors are not selectable (I think they should) but only change things on edge cases.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  • I tend to set them at empire selection and early in the run, as soon as I know my neighbours and local space features (like L-gates). The main goal is to "experience" the narrative of the empire.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  • Not important to actively detrimental (piracy spawns are a nuisance, they serve basically no purpose imho). Trade policies and trade agreements are also not that well integrated, but at least they are unobtrusive. I would not lament its demise. Instead, I think it would make much more sense for example for resources to "travel" (food from agri-worlds to core words, minerals to forges, etc) to provide a trade-off against hyper-specialised planets (more efficient but more fragile).
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  • I think so. Habitability should have a huge impact. Players have several tools at their disposal (multi-species empires, genetic adaptations, robotics, terraforming) but none of that matters if you have enough +habitability. I would not mind more impactful and interactive planetary features other than size.
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  • Origins should always have a NARRATIVE impact. Civics should usually have a gameplay impact. I like the idea presented by another commenter about creating a third category of "planetary" origins (ringworld, ocean paradise, void dwellers, life-seeded, post-apocalyptic, etc). In general, I feel that:
    • the higher the number of permutations, the better. There should really be a mechanical/technical reason to disallow two things to combine.
    • civics should have a massive impact on gameplay. Things like Fanatic Purifiers, Inward Perfection, Sovereign Guardianship, Catalytic Processing, Rogue Servitors, Cordyceptic Drones are all good examples of that. Civics like Idealistic Foundation, Heroic Past or Zero-Waste Protocols... less so. Coincidentally, the former are mostly "fixed" civics that tend to define an empire.
    • I would welcome of treating those "lesser impact" civics as a different kind of game concept. And if that were the case, I would also consider having different kind/numbers of "slots" for those, perhaps based on government strength/type/ascension perks etc.
    • I would also welcome turning some of them into "neutral" civics or even adding "negative" civics to balance them out. I do not know if a point-buy solution like traits could be concocted.
• 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 feel all systems have their niche in the fantasy, even though some are better implemented than others. Currently trade, ground combat, blocker clearing and internal politics suffer from lack of attention, but I would not scrap them if you can come up with ideas to make them work better. I would rather avoid adding new systems that feel detached from the main game in the future, just to pad an expansion.
  • I guess trade, psionic, genetics, bio-ships and internal politics are all obvious choices for an expansion. A general beefing up and rebalance of things would also be great, like the usefulness of the detox ascension perk for example. There are many resources online on the subject.
  • I think cloaking+intelligence is the big "miss" in terms of expectations vs reality for me.
• Bonus: things I really love about the game right now:
  • the new(-ish) trait systems for leaders. I would double down on that, with ways to improve/direct trait acquisition instead of being completely random, having special unlockable traits from civics/ buildings/ technologies/ deeds/ events. I love some of the paragons, very thematic.
  • The "situations" mechanic. It really helps building a cohesive narrative and you should definitely expand it as much as possible.

 

[Juwatu]

A little bit late to the party but I hope someone will read this. My opinion btw, I am just going to answer the questions as outlined in the diary.


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

Not at all, the way things are currently handled makes the system kind of clumsy and I doubt there can be a way that fixes it so that it works perfectly. Much has changed since the first rework when tiles were a thing.

Instead, I believe that removing pops as they are right now and making them a graph with the associated species would work far better than the system currently employed. Kinda like a stock market graph so you see how many people there are on a given planet and which species they belong to.

Buildings would need a certain amount of people to fully function, and you could encourage workers to go work in these buildings by providing incentives that could be something like higher maintenance/production costs for said prioritized buildings. I think that such a system allows for easier maintenance and allows modders to change it significantly if desired.


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

Personally, I feel that combat as it is right now needs a total rework to be more than just amassing forces for a big charge.

It always seemed to me that the best tactic is to just have a doomstack of ships going around carving the enemies head in. Just because that doomstack is no longer one big conglomeration of ships but instead smaller fleets doesn’t change anything gameplay wise.

I am a big fan of the HOI4 fleet system, and I think that such a system would work pretty well in Stellaris. The way I imagine it would work is that you do it as it is in HOI4 with zones and such. Once the zones are set up you can see the patrolling ships in the systems (kinda like set pieces that load into the system that are orbiting / or moving to different planets in the system) once the enemy is spotted and engaged the main fleet that can be anchored at an actual starbase starts moving towards the target just like in HOI4.

Btw I also think that healing a ship at a station should be a module. Increases strategic depth since you can’t just park your fleet at a lvl 2 starbase and just repair up to full.

Ship types could also be drastically changed with such a system. Right now, I only really need to create a single template or two for each class of ship and that is it. There are for example no dedicated electronic warfare ships or anything of this type. Yes, there are artillery and carrier ships but those are not interesting to design and once you have battleships other ship classes get outclassed pretty hard.

The fleet managing interface also doesn’t seem to have the same polish as other parts of Stellaris. I can’t quite put my finger on it but it always felt like it is stuck together with spit and glue.

Also, travel times are immersion breaking imo since moving from A to B from an empire can take years overall without gates or the like. Wars seem to take an incredibly long time when you think about it but that is just a minor nitpick from me.


• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

Civics and origins are the most important factors in creating your civilization since they can drastically change the gameplay of any given run. It would be awesome if you could perhaps combine origins with one another for example lost colony with under one rule.


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

I actually don’t set goals for runs other than for example playing tall or wide or perhaps an achievement here or there.


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

The current way trade systems are done is something you set up once and then forget about. Moving fleets to patrol costs a lot of money in the early game where it might be necessary. By the mid-game however, it is not even worth mentioning better to build a module that reduces piracy or a small starbase than move your expensive fleet around. It also isn’t seen on the map visually with perhaps small ships or something moving through the system.

It is an aspect of the game that could be drastically changed for the better.


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

Colonization at the core of it is just a matching game between planet and species. It is something that is considered in the early game and ignored or solved by the mid game where you can have migration treaties. It is also a far too smooth affair since you only have a timer once the colony ship reaches the planet and after a time.. Done! Here is your colony do something. I think that there is immense potential to add new dilemmas and event chains. It should be difficult in the early game but after your empire learns how to colonize planets it should become fairly easy.


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

Primal Calling to Civic

Treasure Hunters to Civic

Shared burdens to Origin

Eager Explorers to Origin


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

I would remove the pop system as it currently stands as explained at the start.

Many systems need either a rework, a readdressing or an increase in depth:


o Spy system needs a readdressing

o Diplomacy needs a rework

o Interactions with Primitives need an increase in depth

o Combat / Ships need a rework

o Federations need a readdressing (Also please move away from lvls and such give it some flavour instead of just lvl1 lvl2 lvl3 etc.)

o Policies need an increase in depth

o Democratic / Oligarchies need a rework

o Internal management needs a rework

o Revolts need a rework



What I want to see most is a diplomatic expansion and an expansion for more events for example cross border terrorists, crime, diplomatic incidents etc. Something that makes the game feel more alive than it currently is.

A feature I want to enjoy but can’t the most is the spy system. It feels shallow, and you can’t do anything you just set up and done that’s it. The same events all the time, no real interaction no setting up no diplomatic crisis etc.

 

[Belonogy]

the game is changing too slowly. We need at least 8 major expansions a year

 

[Helicopter200]

Please add more variety of habitable planets like in the planet diversity mods please paradox

 

[George Fernell]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  
  Its important to see a pop of a certain species, with specific traits occupying the "correct" position. Its also great to see that different strata have different happiness values. But the fact that 90% of pops happiness is determined by FACTION APROOVAL - MAKES NO SENSE! I think Ethic granularity is redundant and useless, it makes for both ugly planet UI and unnecessary complexity. Faction approval should be connected to the Senate or at most, be a global planetary modifier.
  
  
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  
  Gut it! Destroy it!
  No seriously, if we have to give up the "ship lego" but that will allow artists to make more pretty and coherent ship looks, I'm all for it. Because ship combat is so un-involved that the only thing I care about is whether my ships are pretty :3 I would love to have at least Civ level of combat involvement, braindead as it is.
  
  
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  
  Id say Species traits first and Civics a very close second. Unfortunately Species traits have been terribly weak and insignificant for over 5 years, they should start at 20% bonuses, and go beyond if you chose to pick some negatives to get more points. 2 civic slots are incredibly limited, especially because you insist on creating redundant options like "Police State" & "Oppressive Autocracy". You have been dancing around the concept of a CORE CIVIC for years but cant get the guts to implement it. There are civics that actually define your empire, that make you different, and then there is "+15% unity form beurocrats". aND THEY ARE TREATED EQUALLY! Each empire should have 1 core civic at the start and 2 supporting "simple" civic slots. Unlocking 2 more up to "1 core + 4 simple" by the end game.
  
  
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  
  The goals are set from the start and never change. The events such as the antient shrine offer you the "transformation" option that is WAAAY too radical. I didnt spend 5 hours creating y empire to give it up on a whim. Options to make smaller changes, based on discovery, would be welcome. Especially since I'm a firm believer that "reform government" button should not exist.
  
  
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  
  Its ok, I personally enjoy the "supply routes" gameplay - would be cool if it also included resources. But if you would decide to remove it entirely and stick with "magic global stockpile", I would miss it, but I would live with it.
  
  
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  
  YES! YES! YES!
  
  
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  
  I see no point discussing this before the role of civics themselves is defined better, see the comments above.
  
  
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be?
  
  Anomalies! I would DELETE. EVERY. SINGE. ANOMALY. I would have the writers check witch ones can be turned into relic sites with some additional writing and gut the rest. They are completely irrelevant to gameplay, they bore you to death by your 3nd game of Stellaris in your life. And cause so much UI spam you wanna tear your eyes out.
  
  
• Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion?
  
  As long as its not another disconnected collection screen :|
  
  
• Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
  
  Species traits - for all the reasons mentioned above. They are too weak, too specific, too unbalanced. There is so sense or logic to what traits have/dont have negative counterparts. There are too many trait slots, which makes end game species UI look like an ugly card deck.

 

[Mipedian Associate]

I want to know how the community feels about this.

 

[Person Three]

I think a more comprehensive logistics system would add a lot to the game. This would force players to engage with the galactic geography that they start near and make solving problems like doom stacks and trade easier. Instead of a hard limit to the max size of a fleet, now the limit is how much you’ve built up your internal logistics. Trade now flows between your colonies along the path of least logistical resistance. Is there a large nebula in the middle of your empire? you’d better build some relay stations so your fleets and trade can get through easier. Is there a system with a lot of asteroids between two of your largest planets? Build and staff an asteroid wrangling station.

 

[Pietrooperv]

Roleplay in stellaris feels... Kind of stale to me. I'd like to roleplay my empire and dive into their unique story, what they encounter as they expand into space, and how they interact with other empires. But it's always the same. After you see every anomoly a dozen times, it's no longer interesting. The mechanics of how you play the game are widely different depending on what kind of empires border you (even though it ultimately comes down to a single number: your relations) but roleplay wise, there's not a lot of options. Every AI is either hostile, neutral, or friendly. Neutral and friendly empires won't ever attack you and hostile ones will, if they are able. That's a decent summary of international relations in stellaris

My idea to fix that may not be feasible, but it would be interesting. Use an AI to auto generate random and completly unique anomalies and events. Then, every single anomoly would be unique in *every single game*. That would be refreshing and amazing.


Stellaris's other major problem, in my opinion, is a lake of scaling though the game. Game mechanics do not scale well throughout the game. Early game you have maybe 2-3 fleets, so micromanaging them isn't hard. But late game, when you're managing a galaxy spanning war with dozens of combat fleets? It's annoying and tedious. It's the same for planet management. Early game it's fine, but the mechanics do not scale well with quantity of planets under your control.

I'm not really sure how to fix that second problem without a major rework to several aspects of the game.

Also, intergalactic expansion would be amazing, assuming the second problem can be solved.

 

[Skyhunteren]

I love playing megacorp and doing a lot of trade. I don’t really care about the current routing to the capital. It is just something you set up with stations and then you ignore it. I would have no problem with it going away.



I would like to see smaller fleets. So would my graphic card.



The most importent part in deffining my Empirer is origine, race, civics and ethics.



How importent race is depends a lot. Like if I am going to play xenophile “I have 10 races on every planet”, then it is less importent, than if I play “Starfish ruling over a society of snails” or some similar concept. Often race is very importent to my concept though.



It also seems like you could sepperate origins into two different categories. One that kind of focus on culture and another that focus on like placement. Like. Placement could be like voidborn, shattered ring, lifeseeded. Culture could be like Eager Explorers, Necrophage.



I love the exploration part of the game. I think it would be cool if we could scan planet a second time in mid/end game like when you get lvl 3 scanners you open up for a second scanning.



One of the big things for me is that it would be nice with more space diversity.



I think that the super structures have made space stuff a lot more interesting. Like you look for systems with loot of festures and molten planets for the arch-furnace and suns with special output for the Dyson Swarm. In that way I actuelly think that the super-structures are more interesting and work better than the megastructures.



I would like more planet diversity. Have most planets get 2 modifiers and make them relative big.



I think colonization is maybe to easy and simple. Like it could be a lot cooler you had events happen during colonization. Stuff that could affect the planet modifiers. Like finding hidden ore or pre-sappiens. Unique building. Like you could use the archeology system here and make it a flavour DLC.



I love the unique techs you can get from observing pre-FTL civs. It would be nice with more tech like that from different sources. Like colonization perhaps.



It would be nice if the bonuses you get from having enclaves inside your territory was bigger. Like unless you focus a lot on expansion then it is rare to get an enclave inside your space. Despite that the bonuses they offer is to small to even bother building. Like the curator Think Tank give you less science than 2 scientists.



New leviathans would be nice.



A kind of smaller Empires. Think a combination of enclave and empirer. They live in single system and do not expand, but start out with better tech, defensive buildings and starbase. So you can’t conquere them in early game, but they are ready to engage in diplomacy, join federations. Etc.



This lead me to my second thing. Better diplomacy. More diplomacy.



Diplomacy feels kind of static. Voting in the Galactic Community should affect relations. You should be able to set and see what other Empires aim to get voted through in the Galactic Community.



I think it could be nice to be able to manipulate relations more with spies. Maybe also be able to send them to the Galactic Community.



More interaction with pre-FTL civilizations that have found out you are there.



Then my third and most importent big thing is Federations.



Federations seems kind of dead. You just start them and slowly level them up, centralize and pass a few laws. It seems like there is so much potential in Federations that is not used at all.



Like. The Galaxy Community have institutions, but federations cannot. Subjects can be specialized, but Federation members can not. Those features could be added to federations. You could enable players to build federation buildings in the holdingstap.



You could have intern federation politics. You could also like enable people to dominate a Federation so much they either absorb it or turn it into a Hegemony federation. Just having votes in the federation work like in the Galactic Community would be an improvement.



The most importent thing though is that when I play a non-Hegemony federation I really want to help and boost the other members of the federation. I really don’t feel like I am doing that now.



Imagine that voting in a Federation happens like in the Galactic Community. Our federation have just approved the making of the Culinary Cross Development institution(CCDI). First thing is that all members can now nominate a planet for the CCDI headquarter, like when the Galactic Market is established. The chance to get it is based on diplomatic weight in the federation, the number of farmers on the planet and lowered if you already have other institution headquarters.



The planet that get the CCDI headquarter gain extra farm jobs based on federation size and all farmers on that planet also produces society research. At the same time all farmers in the federation starts producing a small amount of trade value. Perhaps based on the amount of farmers on the planet with the CCDI headquarter.



There is laws to move or close the institution.

 

[daniel060]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  Not that important; it honestly would feel more immersive to know whether a planet had a few hundred colonists or several billion inhabitants. Having between 1 and 26 pops really doesn't give much sense of scale. I would love to see hundreds of different map layouts for planets with scripted regions that could be used for various things (which we do abstractly now with districts and planetary features). I think it would be fun to see your planets change appearance as you turned an area industrial or urban or agricultural.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  I'm willing to let it be altered significantly if it feels better! We've never really found an effective way to deter the doomstack. Even fleet caps just cause me to have multiple fleets following each other. (I would really like a change that prevented Scout admirals from getting too far ahead of the group, though.)
  I also think it would be fun to have your fleets go on "wargame" training missions during peace time (or, heck, even wartime if you want) to increase the crews' and admirals' experience levels. This might be balanced by having crew experience decay over time as officers retire and are replaced by fresh cadets.
  It could be interesting to have fleets take a more realistic approach to gravity by having them speed up when going toward a gravity well (star or planet) and slow down when trying to fly away from one.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  The biology of the species and the philosophy of the people. When those two elements come together harmoniously, the roleplaying gets epic. I do wish we had a few more flag background options, though--or even the ability to rotate the background options we currently have.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  If I choose a specific origin, I want to get to the end of that origin's story. Other goals happen as I explore and discover what's going on with the map (grab this system, box in that rival, etc.)
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  It's an occasional annoyance when a starbase gets disconnected and I have to manually reconnect it. Otherwise, I don't really bother with it. The current pirate mechanics are like mosquitos more than anything else. What I would LOVE to see with trade are actual trade convoys that bring in the food, alloys, and minerals from one system to the next. That way there's actually something for my ships to protect, not to mention a very logical penalty if I fail to do so (e.g., if the alloys convoy from sector 3 gets destroyed, I lose that sector's alloys production for that month). This would allow us to have problems like starvation if the food network collapses, and choices like whether it's really best to specialize worlds or to let them be as self-sufficient as possible. (This would also help with the fleet problem by giving the fleets something worthwhile to do during peacetime.)
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  Yes to the first question, no to the second. A single colony ship would have a population maybe in the thousands. That's barely enough people for a town; them landing somewhere on the surface would in no way prevent others from landing on another part of the world. (Combined with the different map layouts for planets mentioned above, this could allow for split control of planetary resources and ground campaigns that actually conquer parts of planets instead of whole worlds). I would love to see colonization work through the situation mechanics rather than on a simple timer. That way we could have multiple stories about what's happening on the ground with each of these new worlds, and have some way to influence those events in a way that would make each world feel unique in the galaxy, rather than just "another continental world" like all the rest I've colonized.
  Concerning habitability, every civilization in Stellaris has figured out how to cross the vacuum of space. Climate control for desert or arctic conditions is easy-peasy compared to that!
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  Origins should be history that your species can't change; Civics should be societal choices that an empire can make (and unmake). Follow that rule, and you won't have to ask this question.
• 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 would remove leader caps. They're arbitrary and fundamentally absurd. The U.S. military has 44 four-star officers and many more lower-star generals from a population of 335 million. Every state has a governor, and every city has a mayor. We never run out of these people. An interstellar civilization numbering in the billions has as many admirals, governors, and scientists as they need to administrate. In fact, the penalties should come from not having a leader assigned in every possible slot! (And once you have lots of leaders, they can play politics with each other. And, of course, some can be incompetent.) Different authorities should have different ways of getting their leaders. For example, in democracies, the people vote and pick the leaders for you. The players have less control, but the people are happier and the leaders may be of better quality (or, if not, they might get changed out faster). Autocracies get to appoint the leaders they want to each position, but at the costs of happiness and/or competence.
  I would love to have dome cities on barren/frozen planets be the focus of an expansion. If you can live in orbital habitats, you can live on those bodies too--but they should have their own drawbacks and challenges, of course!
  I still want to see the planets and moons move in their orbits as time passes in the game. (Maybe that would take too much computing power, but I still want it!)
  Finally, I would absolutely love to have a Stellaris expansion based on the Interdependency series by John Scalzi. It's an empire built on hyperlanes, like Stellaris, but the hyperlanes start moving and collapsing. I think that would be a fabulous map-resetting crisis. And I'm pretty sure he'd be willing to work with you on the rights and the story...

 

[KNakamura]

I like how this is the first time I've understood just how the people who didn't want to move on felt.

"We should make the game harder!" No.

"We should make it more complex!" Gods why.

"Terraforming should matter more!" Why?

"It should be harder!" .... No? Go play mods if you want this.

I find Stellaris difficult enough without and I don't want to start feeling like I need to do homework to play a game. If I wanted that feeling I would, in fact, play HOIV. Or Victoria.

A lot of this feedback really feels like problems looking for solutions, because things becoming more complex is bad, not good.

 

[AndanteInBlue]

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 love the exploration and growth aspects of the early game, and management of the empire. If there was to be an expansion of a system, I really wish for the team to look at the early colony phase and internal management of the empire. The sense of exploring the unknown and taming it for your civilization is really unmatched in any other title! I don't think there are any "sacred" systems for me. Any well thought out overhaul would be welcome, I think, especially given the game's moddability. I do enjoy the feel of exploring the galaxy map and revealing new and interesting planets, but I'm not especially invested in how that's implemented. I just wish there was more to it!

What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

I usually spend a lot of time with my original species and I think having a "cohesive" species pick that is somewhat effective is fun for me. I wish the traits systems had more depth in it. It very much feels like it's a shopping cart for whatever bonuses are most effective (esp with mods that add more traits).

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

Probably the espionage system... it just never does anything for me, mechanically or thematically.

 

[Xeridanus]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  • It's a nice abstraction but I've never really understood why an advanced civilisation doesn't have jobs and housing provided on a 1-to-1 basis.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  • Individual ships need to matter, be destroyed or survive. Apart from that, I don't care. You should look at what problems doomstacking tries to solve and see if you can remove those problems or incentivise other options.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  • Long lasting choices, so ethics, civics, origin, flavour text, certain events. Speaking of, a recorded history of events would be amazing.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  • Before I play I have an idea of what ascension I want to play and that's about it. My devouring swarm will conquer the galaxy while my megacorp will unite it. But otherwise it's up in the air.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  • As a devouring swarm, what's trade? Can I eat it? As a megacorp, god it sucks. It's so opaque but even then the most you can do is fighter modules and corvette patrol. I don't know if it's better to spread out my trade routes so piracy doesn't get too high or I should stack them up so that I only have to protect one path. And at the end of the day, it just makes number go up.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  • Yes. Yes. What I want is a climate system that has more than one axis, like humidity and temperature. Maybe even an axis for gravity or usable land/ocean space. It doesn't make sense that a non ocean species can use an ocean planet equally well compared to an aquatic species, or that it's equal to a desert planet the same size. Adding gravity as an axis would allow void born origin to have more nuance. I also agree with the earlier suggestion of separating home planet origins and cultural origins. It makes a lot of sense to me.
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  • Off the top of my head, Progenitor Hive. I've been meaning to make a mod to change it since it came out. A lot of civics have enough of a drawback they shouldn't cost a point to take them, like the total war civics.
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
  • Transport ships. Armies should travel with fleets for protection but also, they're going to the planets to bombard them anyway. Either have dedicated planet invasion ships that are good at bombarding planets and carry troops as well or have troops just abstracted at the fleet level like any other ship and can be reinforced like other ships. It would also be fun to have different types of ground units matter, but I think that would be somewhat unpopular with those who hate ground combat. This would also be a good opportunity to have planetary defenses in the form of cannons and such which might force you into an early assault to save your ships from being destroyed but it means your troops have a hard time on the planet.
  • Crime/deviancy: It's either easy to counter and a nuisance or it screws you over big time. As a devouring swarm, when I capture a new planet, I would like an easy way to spread my food over my empire so that it doesn't try to escape and can be consumed faster. As a megacorp, the pirate civic has always interested me but I've heard it doesn't function very well. Some things I think might help: A method of making deals with corrupt officials to allow more crime on a planet. Some way of stealing trade with a cloaked ship sitting in a trade lane. Fights with other crime syndicates or non megacorp crime gangs in other empires in the form of events (not sure if this exists).
  • Espionage/internal politics. Factions and their leaders need to matter more. Which means a leaders faction will matter more. Events should increase ethics attraction when certain choices are made and have more choices even if they're all the same reward. Espionage should have more powerful but temporary effects. For example, make sabotage starbase able to pick which starbase to hit so that starting your war is easier but disabled during war, or at the very least make it show which one is going to be hit allowing you to reroll before executing. And make it disable the starbase for a few months. Just more options would help a lot. Sabotage research, slows research speed for a year or something.

 

[Kiwibaum]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  I think the individual pops and jobs are not to important to me. What is important is that whatever system is there keeps the following things important: Different species and different amounts of each species can be on a planet. Species are different in some way. Planets need time to populate (I actually would love it if new colonies take longer to grow than they do now, due to the set minimum of pop growth speed, due to low pops). Planets can be specialized or generalized on different resources and are different in how good they are accomodating different resources. There is an upper limit on what a planet can support (maybe this could even be linked to habitability?). I would like to see something being added that can also work in the opposite direction and reduce pop amounts. Wars can do some degree do this atm, but most of the time it feels minimal and there is nothing like diseases.
  
  
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  I don't feel that strong of a connection to the current way fleets work. I find wars can end up a little tedious at times, especially with how much else is going on in the game atm. I do like that you can somewhat specialize your ships and that tech matters here, however I don't like that the menues don't support having multiple different corvette designs for different situations and the like very well. I think armies should not be their own thing and just be merged into fleets as components or the like. Fleets could also maybe use up population to build, tying into the earlier point about war losses. Also the system should make the ai suffer less from the current grouping fleets for years issue if there's updates to the fleets.
  
  
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  I think the biggest 3 are ethics, government types, civics and origins. Tho it can vary which of those is the most important. Ethics are farely consistent in their impact. Government types either mean little for the differences in the normal ones or a whole lot in megacorps and gestalts. Civics and origins often mean more than ethics, but there is also plenty that have farely minor impacts on your game and can be somewhat forgotten during gameplay. Also the backstories I write, even if the current text window is a bit of a pain to use.
  
  
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  Most of the time I set them at empire creation and they don't change all to much during that. Tho subgoals to reach those major goals change often. In general I tend to play till I am satisfied with what I've reached or the game becomes to tedious. Then I let the ai take over through commands and observe what they do. Jumping back in when they lock themselves into stupid things like they often do, like endless wars (often either due to not being able to reach the other or cause the empires are fighting in a circle and the ai doesn't understand distances, so moves their fleets around their halfcircle all the time, so the winning empire has to move their fleets longer being disadvantaged) or economic fumbles.
  
  
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  I find the idea of trade routes very neat, but honestly gameplay wise it feels like a very hidden feature. For most of the game you don't really interact with it, unless there's pirates, so you have to build a starbase for trade protection or something or when you gain new stations that fail to connect automatically.
  
  
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  Yes you colonize every single planet regardles of habitability and just let pops autoresettle from there or do so manually. There isn't a big cost involved, no internal political struggles from that or risks of importing some disease from there or anything. Honestly minimal pop growth on planets is probably partly to blame for this. If you'd barely get any pops out of this anyways, then it might not be worth spending alloys on it temporarily (tho the price is pretty cheap anyways, maybe low hab colonies should cost more to establish?)
  
  
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  I don't think so. There are some origins that feel like they are lacking a bit in impact tho like: Galactic Doorstep, Mechanist, Syncretic Evolution and Tree of Life. Maybe Storm Chasers aswell, but that is mostly so due to not much interacting with storms except the civics that came with the dlc and you kinda want or need something that benefits from having storms around. So you're kinda doing the same thing with the same story again everytime you choose it.
  
  
• 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?
  Edicts would be the thing I'd remove. I really dislike how they work currently and I don't like interacting with that system. They are very hidden away and interact annoyingly with empire size, meaning you want to check up on them regularly. I also don't think they impact the game in an interesting enough way for them to be worth to be there. The worst ones are the strategic resoruce edicts, you have to remember to activate every single war and deactivate at the end of every war. I'd rather have it be an event, where a ruler can enact an edict, with maybe a choice of a few ocasionally, depending on ruler skill and empire size. Maybe staying temporarily or through the rulers lifetime.
  Internal Politics would be what I center an expansion around. There needs to be a feature that brings instability into big empires and makes factions something you interact with besides setting policies once and supporting one at the start. Maybe also having sectors mean something.
  Think either leader traits how they currently work or species modifications I don't like the current implementations at all. The former is to much. Have leaders just have traits at the start and rarely have new traits come up. Not every level imo. (I always set that to automatic.) Species modification is just pain all together. I'd rather see it work through assimilation than a project for example.
  
  
• Other
  I would personally love to see some work be done to the empire selection/creation screen. I love creating empires, but at this point I have so many that this screen becomes hardly mangeable. There is hundreds of empires in there and no folders to put them into. I have empires based on friends I don't want to spawn in more public games, so I have to go through hundreds of empires and deselect them. Then when I want to play with them select them again. Instead of just having them all in a folder, which I can set general spawn settings for, where one of this is "use empire setting" which allows to have different ones for the different empiers in that folder. I have to use force spawn, because can spawn barely ever does anything. I'd love to see the abilty to adjust the spawn chance for can spawn. I can't easily share that file, again cause of the lack of being easily able to select empires which I'd share. I got requests for sharing my file in the past and always had to say no, cause it would take a while to go through the file and make sure none of the empires based on my friends are in there and the like.

 

[SynfulPagan]

Longer times to colonize with events and obstacles to overcome before the colony is successful. Mainly for systems outside your chosen planet type to represent more of a struggle, add more flavor, and slow down the planet rush.

A ground combat overhaul would be much appreciated.

 

[Critical Ethics]

A running theme in any feedback I give would be the amount of fiddly non-decisions there are. I don't want to make 10 different decisions each of which adds +10% output to something, I want to make two big decisions that add 50% each. And when I make a decisions I want that decision to be made, not followed up by having to repeat the same decision over and over. I think planet automation is close to an excellent place right now, for example - I can throw down the buildings I really care about, look at all the stuff a planet has to offer, select my automation settings, and then say "this is a mining planet" and walk away reasonably sure that all the fiddly decisions that happen after that will be handled fine. The generic designations could do with a glow-up so that it's worth selecting "rural" or "industrial", well, ever, and I'd like use cases for less hyperspecialised planets in general, and I'd like to be able to preplan the personal preference stuff a bit more (queue up a city building and then queue up something for the not yet available slot, or be able to set a building as "build this first" globally or whatever) but overall it's in a pretty good Big Decisions place right now. Starbases are the opposite - it takes more mental load to get a starbase up and running properly than it does an entire planet.

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  • I like being able to see my pops, but I don't need to see them the way they are now. As long as there's a little picture of them somewhere I don't care if it represents one guy on a mine or the entire population of that species type in the entire empire.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  • Rip it all out and start over, everything about the current combat system is my least favourite part of the game.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  • Things that add or remove concrete gameplay elements. If an ethic or civic or origin gives me a unique building or changes the way one behaves that's very cool. The +XX% I do not care about. The +10% research from Materialist is way more impactful but also way less exciting to me than the autocthon monument modifiers, because the latter feels so much more real. I play a lot of environmentalists and voidborne empires because they shake the base game up so much.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  • Goals are map based or neighbour based. I see a unique system? I want it, or I want it to belong to an ally who "deserves" it. I see a total war empire nearby? Hell yeah fight time. Another empire starts to get stroppy with someone I feel protective over? I'm all on that. A genocidal empire takes a primitive planet or one with pre-sapients? It's war time, I gotta save those guys.
  • Tying this into the previous question white noise empires are the worst. I'd love more things that made the more generic empires feel very obviously different to interact with, both politically and violently.
  • Speaking of, let me change the spawn settings of the default empires without using mods. It's silly that I can neither force spawn the ones I like nor disable the ones I don't
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  • You could delete it tomorrow. Please do. No need for a replacement.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  • I don't like the 2 guaranteed 80% habitable worlds and would like a system put in place that no longer requires them.
  • More planet variety is more better. I like all the new modifiers I'm seeing!
  • Please rework gaia worlds. Make them a modifier or something. I like variety and hate that wiping a planet to bedrock and replacing it with a generic clone is a "good thing".
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  • No opinion
• 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: Troops as a distinct unit on the space map.
  • I want to enjoy combat but it's so abstract - by midgame it's just watching a bunch of blobs smack against each other. Whoch wouldn't be an issue if they were interestingly distinct blobs, but there's so many tiny nothing differences between ships that it all just melds into one big melange of who cares - especially given the weird obsession someone on the team has with making sure every fleet must must must have some of every hull size in it.
  • An even bigger reason fights feel pointless is the granularity of ship design results in everything being insanely samey. I want to enjoy ship design but the current setup just... it doesn't work at the scale the game is supposed to feel like, and, again, all the tiny decisions mean they all feel so pointless. I shouldn't be picking weapons by the slot in a game like this. I should be making Big Decisions like picking pre-made hull segments that feel incredibly different from each other in ways that you can't achieve with the current system, then customising them with Big Decision augments that massively alter their function. Armour and shields should be moved to core components like power was and the slot juggle game replaced with Big Decision hulls and Big Decision Augments.

All in all I want less Grand Fiddly more Grand Strategy.

 

[Sandermatt]

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

I like this aspect, it lets me connect with my pops more. If the planet was just numbers it would hurt my immersion and emotional connection to it.

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

Please make changes. I want to care about my ships. Currently fleets are so large I feel no attachment to any ship lost.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

Ethics, genetics, civics, policies all play into it.

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

The endgame crisis is the goal that I try to achieve. while constraining myself at the same time on how to achieve it. Never changes during the game

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

Not at all

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

I never really expand much, since then I would have more things to manage, which would reduce my enjoyment of the game, so no opinion on that

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

Not that I am aware of

• 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 you could remove one game system, what would it be? -> Espionage, I dont have fun engaging in it,but on the bright side it feels like it can safely be ignored already
Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? -> Rework combat away from two large fleets bumping into each other. Of all your games, Hearts of Iron has the best combat. This is because its the game where if my opponent has a 3x stronger army than me, putting it on one field and marching straight to my capital won't work, I can block a defensive position with a small army. In stellaris I might have a couple percentage buffs and a space station to defend, but its nothing that prevents a doomstack vs doomstack fight.

 

[Critical Ethics]

An addendum: The key thing I think needs to be kept in mind is that busywork needs to scale. When you have one planet then placing every building and district yourself is cool. Your first couple of colonies requiring heavy involvement and attention is fun! But when you have a dozen or dozens of planets you can't be giving them that kind of attention and you need to scale out. The worst parts of the game are the parts where that's been forgotten. Early game you have a half dozen starbases and they take a couple of clicks each to set up. Late game you have to visit each new starbase a half dozen times to get it up and running over the course of decades, and queue up dozens of replacement platforms every time there's an attack. Early game your fleets will have one or two ship types at most and you can mash two half fleets together in a couple of clicks. Late game you're supposed to juggle proportions for 5+ ship hulls and merging two half destroyed fleets is a nightmare. Fiddliness scaling linearly is not great. Fiddliness scaling logarithmically is good. There's places in Stellaris where fiddliness scales quadratically - that's just silly.

 

[Lex137]

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

Very, in that I hate the current systems. I want each planet to tell a story, to feel unique, and to suggest interesting development strategies that fit into my empire in varied and interesting ways. Your current approach is too simulationist, leaving few compelling options and even fewer strategic choices. I want planets to feel like unique worlds with unique cultures that are alive, not just nodes from which I extract resources.

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

Change it all, I don't care. Five different wavelengths of laser weapons with slightly improved stats are completely uninspiring. Ship design offers very little room for creativity, and fleets are just a chaotic lump of ships. In my ideal version of your combat systems, ship roles would be better codified (or maybe just better explained) in terms of how they behave within the context of a fleet - whether a given ship class or role is going to primarily defend my capital ships, hunt and kill enemy bombers, attack large enemy targets, or whatever else. Then I could design ships to suit those roles and the AI could competently assign ships to roles and use them appropriately. I get the impression some of this happens already, but the process of moving from a ship design to a combat outcome is intensely opaque and confusing.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

I want to be able to tell a story about how my society is organized, how different species and different population strata interact and what roles they fill on each planet and in the society as a whole. Right now, there are a lot of individual pieces that lend themselves to these narratives, but they don't interact in pleasing ways. I want to be able to easily create flexible rules for stratifying my society - this group for running my fleets, this group for feeding my vampires, this group for working the mines, etc.

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

I like to let them emerge from my discoveries, but then I like to commit to those goals and pursue them through adversity.

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

I want trade to be so much better than it is. The automatic trade routes are awful, the UI for accessing and reviewing any of this is buried uselessly, and the the whole thing feels to static. Trade should be a source of dynamic activity, it should be able to create a sense of a living empire. As of the last time I played, it was none of those things. And it was hard to ever see or interact with.

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

Yes. Also, planets should be more unique and interesting.

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

Probably. Honestly, civics are largely indistinguishable from origins in that I set them at the beginning of the game, add one due to tech, and almost never change them throughout the game. Civilization governments should make more sense and be more interesting to develop over time.

• 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 think it's insane that this game has civics, ethics, policies, traditions, edicts, species rights, and galactic resolutions. Surely some of these things can be merged into more dynamic and coherent systems that accomplish all the same things and more. I would like to see planetary governance rationalized into something fun and engaging, rather than the hodgepodge of specializations and decisions that are easy to completely overlook. I would like to see sectors either make any kind of sense or be eliminated. I feel like you should be able to manage civilization-level government with fewer than 8 different systems that don't play very well together. The easiest answer here is to combine civics, policies, and edicts into a single coherent system that use a set of common resources in varied ways.