Stellaris Dev Diary #361 - The Vision

[Calvax]

I'm not commenting directly to the replies because I don't want to influence the discussion with my views (beyond what I already wrote in the dev diary), but this one is going down as one of the best dev diaries we've ever written.

Hope you made your bus this morning

Understandable that you don’t want to bias things, but I for one would be interested to see how various devs would answer these questions. Maybe after some more time has passed.

 

[Anonim97]

I'm not commenting directly to the replies because I don't want to influence the discussion with my views (beyond what I already wrote in the dev diary), but this one is going down as one of the best dev diaries we've ever written.

Understandable that you don’t want to bias things, but I for one would be interested to see how various devs would answer these questions. Maybe after some more time has passed.

As @Calvax said, it is understandable, but I would love to see some feedback or responses after some time. I'm just greedy like that. ;P

 

[Dunno123]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  
  Not really. the current system feels like a slightly awkward compromise between the very barebones Pops we had in launch Stellaris and the more sophisticated pops we see in games like Vicky. The current system also necessitates some awkward abstractions (eg only one species can grow at a time). I would welcome a system that focuses on adding a bit more depth to pops (as much as is reasonable and performant). I quite like that pops are at the core of the economic simulation and would prefer that it stays this way (as opposed to something like more kilostructures which increasingly let you build economy without directly using pops)
  
  
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  
  I'm open to significant changes, but there are a few things that I would not enjoy. I would not like for the ability to directly control fleets to be taken away. Something like Vic3 frontlines or Hoi4 naval zones would not be enjoyable and would remove too much player agency. As indistinct as it sounds, I would want a new fleet system to keep the "soul" of the current system as much as is possible.
  
  
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  
  Ethics and civics have the biggest impact initially, but the biggest factor quickly becomes the events and discoveries that emerge over a playthrough. Things like discovering Sanctuary, getting a brain worms anomaly or being invaded by another empire with opposing ethics. The internal factors like ethics quickly become less important than external factors that the game throws at you.
  
  
• 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 set goals throughout my playthrough, but typically try to have a single overarching goal in mind when I start a game. This is often just something vaguely thematic (eg "I want to play a Human empire fighting against a superior hostile alien empire"). I would appreciate more tools in the galaxy set up to serve this. Eg create an ethics bias for AI empires, so I can have a more xenophobic or militarist galaxy if I want.
  
  
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  
  Not at all. I like the conceit of the system, but I don't engage with it enough in the typical gameplay loop to make the performance costs worth it. I'd be perfectly happy with an alternative system that doesn't require complex pathfinding to generate trade routes.
  
  
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  
  In my opinion, yes. One of the things I appreciated about the older tile system was the way that blockers visibly covered large chunks of a planet with alien features. Colonisation felt more tenuous and early colonies felt like real frontier worlds that were barely civilised. I would love for colonisation to have more visual feedback and for the "frontier" stage to feel more distinct and long lasting.
  
  
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  
  None that I feel strongly about no. However some of the more basic origins like Mechanist or Prosperous Unification feel a bit content-light compared to some Civics. I would appreciate a Curator pass on those to give origins like that a bit more flavour than a simple early game modifier and a tech or two.
  
  
• 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 a game system?
  
  Gestalts
  
  Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion?
  
  I'd like for more internal actors / events. Things like subnational megacorporations or noble dynasties inside an empire that have unique interactions and events.
  
  Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
  
  Factions. The initial implementation (a million years ago) before Utopia had some interesting concepts, with things like sector specific factions and separatist factions was barebones, but really interesting. I would adore a re-exploration of those concepts and for factions to have more dynamic interactions and effects. At present I check the factions screen maybe 3-4x during a playthrough and essentially ignore it otherwise, which is waste for such an interesting concept.
  

 

[Calvax]

Not really. the current system feels like a slightly awkward compromise between the very barebones Pops we had in launch Stellaris and the more sophisticated pops we see in games like Vicky. The current system also necessitates some awkward abstractions (eg only one species can grow at a time).

Other than the Gestalts bit I agree with all of your feedback Dunno123, and want to touch on this point in particular. The current pop growth system disproportionately favours minority pops, meaning that unless you're playing xenophobe or gestalt most empires by the late game have the same species mix. Some of the uniqueness of empires are lost when you see the same four or five common species as leaders of multiple different empires.

I feel this should be tweaked so that it's less likely to happen unless you're xenophile and leaning into it. It shouldn't be the norm that primary species become a minority after 200 years in all but the xenophobe/gestalt empires.

 

[Tje Ejor]

Make space fauna stronger, or at least fix bug with unique mutation for crystalline entity and make fauna cheaper

 

[peter_m]

Here are the areas that I would like to see more improvements:

1. Internal politics that make the empire more divisive and unstable as empires get larger. Very large empires should be very unstable and difficult to hold together. Currently, the opposite tends to be true.
2. More information about the current game's economy, politics, and historical data. I would like to be able to see a simple chart that shows if the economy has been growing over the past few years, if mineral output has increased or decreased, distribution of pops by ethic over time. Or things like map overlays that show which ethic is stronger in certain planets / systems. How many ships have been built or destroyed over time. Things like that to put the current snapshot of the game in context to see what parts of my empire are growing, stagnating, or declining.
3. I really like the mechanics of the espionage system, but the missions are generally not very useful, especially in the mid and late game. I would like to see a re-balancing of the current missions and many new missions, especially focused on causing political instability in other empires.
4. Some more control over how ships fight so there can be actual tactics in ship combat. I don't necessarily want to micro-manage fleets during the combat, but some simple orders like telling a fleet with short range weapons to hold a position and fight when the enemy approaches, rather than charging into a melee.
5. More geography within a system that has effects on fleet combat so defensive fleets can be customized to favor the local geography.

 

[johnty5]

It feels to me like questions around pops/jobs, fleets and trade are interlinked.

As many others in the thead are, I’m relaxed about moving the pops/job allocation to a more abstract system (more akin to Victoria or Project Caesar) so long as the mix of species on particular planets is still meaningful for production.

That’d by quite a change to the economic system and - since if we’re removing one thing, we’d need to add something to replace it - open up the opportunity for adding a new element of economic management. The obvious candidate for that is a massively revamped trade system. I’d envisage some kind of internal resource logistics network that we can tweak and optimise - both between planets and between planets and fleets.

Making internal trade networks a vital part of the economy would then provide a way to address the fleet doomstack issue that many have brought up. Wars wouldn’t just be about empires smashing their largest stacks together - but also about tactical strikes at the trade networks that their enemy’s economy relies on and the logistics that their fleets rely on. That gives a reason to have larger numbers of smaller, more specialised fleets - some to defend your trade/logistics networks, some to attack your enemy’s trade/logistics networks, some to raid strategic locations etc. - making for more interesting wars from a tactical point of view.

 

[Tje Ejor]

Make genetic&rights modifications more flexible, for an example add something like better automodding, where you could edit your own race for every job type, or edit it's sitizen rights. Return old slavery mechanic where you can choose who will be slave.

 

[johnty5]

On colonising planets, I don’t think it’s a case of wanting it to be “harder” - but rather wanting it to include more interesting choices and it being more of a long process than an event.

I like what Civ7 is proposing in differentiating Towns and Cities - with settlements starting out as town that produces/behaves very differently from a city, rather than just being a “city, only smaller”. Towns can be upgraded to cities at a certain size, but that will be a strategic decision with advantages and disadvantages rather than a step you’ll always want to take.

In Stellaris, colonies could start out as low-population resource-extraction settlements that exist to send resources to your “big” planets. There’d be systems and choices to make as the world is explored/revealed while it’s at that stage - and the decision about which ones to leave as low-population resource-extraction settlements vs which ones to develop into “big”, “main” planets would be a strategic one.

 

[Star Heintinuse Dragon]

Nope, we're reading everything. I'm thinking of keeping this dev diary pinned for a few weeks since the discussion is so active and helpful.



It's definitely one of the higher ones.

I'm not commenting directly to the replies because I don't want to influence the discussion with my views (beyond what I already wrote in the dev diary), but this one is going down as one of the best dev diaries we've ever written.

Excuse me but will this happen again? I mean for such a special dev diary event as this

 

[Gilbert95]

Looking at 21 pages of responses... That gotta be one of the most commented Dev Diaries in Stellaris, right?

There have been a few controversial or exciting DDs that generated more comments, but these are so long I'm sure this is tops for sheer word count

 

[Hurimo]

Edicts seem to me too expensive, I just had a look and I have a pool of 120 Unity, yet just Capacity Subsidies cost me 610 . I have plenty of Unity spare and I should probably start doing something with my Empire size, but still, it should be cheaper to have Edicts and there should be far many more of them.

Trade system I rarely use, uses starbases I use differently, not for trade. Maybe add some extra sections to existing starbases but dedicated just for trade.

Transport ships are annoying, Maybe add a module for existing ships with marines on it, maybe a carrier class of ship which focuses on deployable armies with modules dedicated only to armies and small amount to weapons just so they are able to defend themselves.

I tried last time, and I hope I remember correctly and hasn't changed since..., as an empire with tens of systems why I cannot build Dyson swarms/spheres in a trinary system… I believe it says Dyson sphere destroys all other objects in the system, so just let me build all three of them there, and choose which other systems to cannibalise.

 

[Eler]

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

Not important at all. Considering that the pop system is inherited from tiles, I believe it will be better to come back to them or make pops more abstract.

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

Change them please, doomstacks are basically the thing we will do in any interpretation of the current system. In many ways vic3's system seems to be better suited for Stellaris as we have less nuance when it comes to movement of military units (not a bad thing, just different).

What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

Origin, ascension path, civics. In that order.
Origins and ascentions are the most impactful as they provide the most interesting effects.

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

Generally, my goals are: finishing ascension, seeing new stuff, map painting(preferably with vassals), getting first place in GC(and federation if I'm not felling fancy for Imperium which is most of the time).
I see this as basic 4X behavior, there is nothing wrong with that, snowballing is just natural for this kind of game. And this is the answer to any problem the game might trow at you.
Stellaris seems like it might change this with having side objectives, but generally all empires are a little samey. Would love to see some asymmetrical gameplay.

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

Not at all. I only remember about it if I get pirates.
Maybe have them replaced by supply system for fleets and internal interplanet trade.

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

YES PLEASE. The right decision right now is to colonize everything, as pop is king.

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

Tree of Life and Calamitous Birth feel like civics.
Also I'd love to see origins that change your starting system be compatible with story and mechanics origins. Remnants Under One Rule pls. At least have galactic doorstep as a side origin to the main course.

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: ground combat
Expand: Internal politics (as everyone already said), organic ships and structures, immaterial stuff(literally cosmism)
Rework: peace deals(let me actually decide what goes to who, especially when it comes to vassals), espionage (now there's basically no use for it), trade collection (and maybe trade value in general), ascentions (as they all provide pop bonuses and don't affect anything else)(psionics, my beloved, has so much potential, and the fact that we can read your minds, we've seen your plans within plans and, you know my ruler is a GOD has almost no bearing on the game)

 

[Mittraw]

TLDR; I wish more time was spent implementing mechanics that are "cool" and less on whether something is balanced.

The spy mechanics had potential, but it's been balanced into the ground for fear of being too frustrating to other players. (Why can't I assassinate a leader? Why can't I cloak drop an asteroid on a planet? Why can't I sabotage shipyards?). This is the most obvious example but I imagine it's happened in other places. And so we keep the status quo of better tech, leading to better fleets, leading to winning.

I really wish we could win in other ways. The galactic community leading to empire was a decent attempt but I wish we would double down on that. Same goes for the tech crisis. But they both fall short of simply building bigger fleets. The balance MUST be upset to allow for more varied and interesting playthroughs.

I think an example of how to approach this would be to focus on victory conditions:
- Focus on alloys to build a massive fleet and take over the galaxy by force.
- Focus on influence to become the senate and take over the galaxy by politics.
- Focus on unity to influence worlds and empires into joining you.
- Focus on energy credits to control trade/banking and take over other empires through corporations.
- Focus on spying and take other the galaxy by replacing enemy leaders with your own.

 

[ieishrifi]

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

Not terribly important, but it is difficult to imagine how engaging an alternative system based on more "realistic" planetary management would be. Abstracting pops into a model more closely matching "reality" is a tantalizing thought, though.
One particular issue I have with Stellaris' pop growth is that it's based on a per-planet basis, essentially regardless of how populated a planet is - the base pop growth for an ecumenopolis and a new colony is pretty much the same. Modifiers to nudge those values towards more "realistic" growth aren't really tackling the main issue.
Pop growth is also pretty fast? I find myself having a better time playing with a mod that puts the pop growth bar's base value from 100 to 200 or above.
Migration should also be the main driver for early colony growth.

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

I would welcome a core effort towards solving the doomstack issue - either or both by slowing down ship travel and introducing a some kind of logistics system.
I'm not generally too bothered about fleet management changes, though full fleet automatization might be too far. Partial like in Imperator might be good, but not a priority for me like the doomstack thing.
Armies in their current form are also pretty clunky.

What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

An interesting combination of ethics and civics and possibly an origin. I'm not too big on narrative-heavy origins so I don't really tend to use those.

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

I set a general direction for my empire at empire creation, and pretty much let the game's flow guide me to it. Plans emerge and change often throughout gameplay, and I think that is one of Stellaris' strengths.

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

It's an interesting idea for modelling a form of an internal economic transport structure, but in its current form it's a system that is a nuisance you ignore at best and a lag-causing annoyance that spawns pirates at worst. Also feels disconnected from the rest of the game. Either make an involved economic logistics system roughly utilizing the mechanic or don't.

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

Yes and yes. Over time habitability has been trivialized and the fastest way to develop your empire is by colonizing everything and collect that pop growth - a symptom of the problem I mentioned earlier.
In general game systems have been getting more forgiving, with more bonuses being added to the game with not as many maluses to accompany and balance them. I fear the positive modifier creep is only getting worse with the recent patches and DLCs.

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

It seems to me like the recent DLC origins have been feeling more like civics, cultural things, than real origins that fundamentally alter a civilization's starting position regardless of their cultural inclination. Overtuned, Storm Chasers, Treasure Hunters are the most obvious examples I have in mind. Maybe combine Storm Chasers with Storm Devotion or something.
On the other side, Eager Explorers and its equivalents has been a rather odd civic among the bunch. It delineates a specific starting position that's more an origin than civic, but then it also has added some modifiers that work kind of like a civic's. I'd personally move it to the origins.

As an aside, Planetscapers is kind of silly. Its base modifiers are very powerful and you need to remove natural blockers for them to be present - but the civic already makes it easier to remove those (not like it was that hard for a regular empire if you put your mind to it, either).
Plus Planetscapers, the people dedicated to bending the environment to their wishes from before achieving FTL, actually start with natural blockers on their homeworld while no one else does, not even the environmentalists? All homeworlds (excepting some origins) having natural blockers would simply make sense.
Does that also imply that their homeworld is in some way much more difficult to cultivate by default? That could be a neat smaller-in-scope origin by itself. I think Stellaris could benefit from more of those rather than focusing on narrative-heavy stuff.

Maybe a simple origin point system akin to the ethic points would work well here. That way players could combine two smaller-in-scope origins (or just one) or choose an origin that is more substantial in scope instead. It would solve the issue of having to only ever pick one origin without the need to create a whole another category among origins and civics.

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

Maybe armies? Integrate them with fleets somehow. I don't really want a planetary combat rework like many others, but armies are an odd standout as non-combat fleets of their own.
And hyper relays. There's already a wealth of things making space travel too fast, and hyper relays kind of completely trivialize it. Not to mention gateways. In my opinion the way space travel is handled currently makes the galaxy feel very small quite quickly. I'd slow travel down across the board, akin to how the Star Trek New Civilisations mod handles it. Hyper relays and gateways could be more expensive and slightly nerfed megastructures, making their spam difficult. Travel times mattering would also incentivize people to split their fleets to cover different fronts.

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

Internal politics, certainly. Expand the faction system into something that really matters. Empire ethic attraction is also really powerful currently and any bonus or penalty to it is kind of trivial in effect due to that. I barely remember planet distance from capital being a factor for empire ethic attraction, if the mechanic even still exists.

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

Wars and occupation would be one. The game would graphically go a long way if system occupation would show the same striped territory occupation or similar as in other PDS games. Wars don't "look good" as they are right now. System occupation icons aren't really fun to look at or make sense of where the frontline is.
Wars could also be a slight bit more destructive, such as destroying planetary buildings more easily. No thresholds that allow pop and building destruction.
The diplomacy system when it comes to warfare is also way, way too rigid currently. Empires can't join or leave a current war and there is no peace deal mechanic, only victory, status quo, or defeat according to the preset wargoal.
And make war exhaustion into something that actually provides escalating penalties to your empire to incentivize ending the war, rather than it being just a percentage that automatically stops you when it reaches 100%. Ending the war should be an informed choice.

 

[Freger]

I would change the hability to multiple scales instead of just 1 one-dimensional percentage. For example if it is not the same star type, the plants brought over wouldn't be adapted to that wavelength so food upkeep would be higher for the first few years until local plants has been domesticated for industrial farms. Or expand on the high/low gravity planet modifiers, so health risks are higher if gravity is ideal.

Also the single worst thing that takes me out of the zone IMO is that mechanics, that limit you but I cannot see what they actually represent or any link between the metric and the effect. For example why do the number of planets limit an empire's ability to understand dark matter? Why can a population of 22 recruit the same number of generals as a population of 400. And why can't you both use both genetic ascention and cypernetic implants?

 

[HFY]

There have been a few controversial or exciting DDs that generated more comments, but these are so long I'm sure this is tops for sheer word count

Controversial DDs can have a lot of posts, but probably much less distinct, constructive, positive content.

 

[Azar]

What is Stellaris to you?​

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

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

Its hard to say which elements are "most sacred" since I love most things in Stellaris, but I do have some worries and some things I dont like.

- I dont want the game to become too fast-paced and too competive. Im in for a casual exploration adventure and fulfilling roleplay experience. After buying almost all DLC stellaris has (I own everything except storms atm), my games have become very notification-heavy and it seems that something is happening constantly. It would be rather hopeless to play without constantly pausing the game in order to actually read the notifications, before Im spammed by three more notifications. I play at the slowest speed obviously, but its still very spammy even at the beginning of the game. I wish I had a knob that I could turn to slow the game down further. There are times when Stellaris feels more like a RTS than a "grand strategy".

- I generally don't like game elements that spawn huge amounts of fleet power out of thin air to threaten me early game, as that feels too "game-y" to me, and forces me to play 'competitively' to survive. The marauders are a feature that I always turn off for this reason, and possibly I have to do the same to voidworms as well.

- Megacorps are sad. Please consider giving them a similar shape-up you did to machine empires in the machine age. The most important thing is that they dont FEEL like a megacorp, they feel like just another empire. Not to mention all the restrictions to branch offices. I feel megacorps are all negatives with nothing to show for it along with near complete lack of flavor. Perhaps more megacorp-specific events would be nice. More galactic paragons would also be nice.

- Overall, Id prefer making existing game mechanics deeper and more complex over completely replacing or removing them. More... nuance. Revamping trade routes? Sounds good. But of course the game needs to proceed slow enough that we can actually handle such minutiae.

- It would be cool if travel time actually mattered for the leaders. Perhaps they could travel in the same way characters travel in Crusader kings 3..

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

- I generally like the idea of individual pops mattering. Perhaps special pops could function a bit like planetary features.

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

- Depends entirely on what those changes were. Usually I dont (cant) pay attention to the battle itself or micromanaging the fleet, only the composition of the fleet.

3. What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

- Im not sure. The civics, the ascension path, the government, the special buildings maybe

4. 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 have an idea what kind of civilization I want to be at the very beginning and then try to roleplay that. Whether its Federation from star trek, evil empire from star wars, I make the choice when I design the empire. Ingame things that make me alter my plans are usually only archeological finds and special events like the infinity engine as an example.

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

- I prefer that it exists, but as it stands its very barebones. I wouldnt mind putting more depth to it.

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

- I think the game is slightly too fast-paced in general in my opinion, but I think the exploration is more at fault than colonization.

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

- Cant think of any

8. 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?

- To remove: probably marauders. I hate how disruptive they are. What system would I make central focus of an expansion? MEGACORPS. Same answer to the other question.

 

[P0tat01]

I am excited to contribute! This was my first game on an Xbox (joined just before origins) and my first game on a PC (joined not long before first contact), my top favorite of all time!

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  • not important to me, any changes (or the lack thereof) to the planet simulation is welcome! as long as it remains somewhat detailed I will welcome what's to come.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  • you would need to gut the system entirely, strip it down to a land army equivalent, for me to be unhappy. any major changes in my opinion will be meet with interest in the future.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  • its origin and civics for me, currently the most impactful systems for setup and play.
• 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 set major goals during empire creation or beforehand, as challenges or rp experiences, minor and more gameplay specific goals emerge during the run.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  • I have never interacted directly with it, I would not want it removed of course but maybe a few changes to up its importance and visibility could be helpful.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  • yes and no? I feel more climates, planet variants, and the such would be wonderful and add depth to the galactic terrain, however far too often worlds seem to be left unclaimed or are immediately terraformed, so it should be rewarding and risky to take un-terraformed/bad worlds and harder to terraform in my opinion, maybe by delaying the tech or by making it initially only able to terraform some worlds to a similar world type?? idk, it's a tough thing to balance.
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  • I want more things like eager explorers definitely where origins are made civics so they can be combined, I could see syncratic evolution becoming a civic again, but I am unsure what else, I would hazard progenitor hive becoming a civic to change how the government works like how machine hives have their archetypes.
• 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 not remove any established system, major reworks sure but ever remove imo.
  • if I could set a major focus for an expansion it would be galactic terrain, I would love more galaxy shapes (particularly I would like one that breaks up the galaxy into small clusters without hyperlanes between them for EXTRA GALACTIC CONFLICT OOOO, though I have heard the many issues with developing this kind of system in the engine, maybe add temporary stars/connections in generation and delete them after???), and expanding planet/star/asteroid/ect types with new base variants and special ones as well! lots of ideas there. more travel options would be appreciated but that's stretching the theme a bit.
  • I am able to enjoy a lot of the features, and can get into most if not all (trade being the previously mentioned exception), I don't like how gateways and wormholes (I am 90% this applies to wormholes too) don't let non-hyperlane capable ships through, missed opportunity for no-ftl or subspace travel options in the midgame. but nothing besides stands out.

 

[smile444]

Nope, we're reading everything. I'm thinking of keeping this dev diary pinned for a few weeks since the discussion is so active and helpful.



It's definitely one of the higher ones.

I'm not commenting directly to the replies because I don't want to influence the discussion with my views (beyond what I already wrote in the dev diary), but this one is going down as one of the best dev diaries we've ever written.

Small thing i forgot to add to my post that probably wasn't said: I really, really dislike the fact that megacorp is a governement type. Or at least megacorp mechanics of branch offices is tied to some sort of oligarchy. Maybe this should be part of a trade rework since a lot of people pointed that the current trade system is something that they at best ignore, but there should be a tradition, federation bonus, or ascention perk that allows normal empires to build branch offices. I am really disappointed that i cannot make a democratic or dictatorial trading empire.

Not really. the current system feels like a slightly awkward compromise between the very barebones Pops we had in launch Stellaris and the more sophisticated pops we see in games like Vicky. The current system also necessitates some awkward abstractions (eg only one species can grow at a time). I would welcome a system that focuses on adding a bit more depth to pops (as much as is reasonable and performant). I quite like that pops are at the core of the economic simulation and would prefer that it stays this way (as opposed to something like more kilostructures which increasingly let you build economy without directly using pops)

Strongly disagree with the Kilostructure. I think they are a great idea. The economy is already too pop-dependant as is. Alternative means of producing ressources that just having more pops and more planets makes gameplay more interesting for empire that do not expand much.