The biggest problem I have with Stellaris

[Thecarlocarlone]

I'm a long time fan of Stellaris and this post is made becase I love the game.
I find today Stellaris boring. I was thinking and I came with some ideas about why.

Almost all mechanics of Stellaris of today feel like combat in Stellaris before the combat update. You have a good rooster of different ships and a tons of different ships components, yet the entire game was about unlocking as fast as possible neutron launcher and battleships, combining them together and then printing as many as your forge world could.
This feeling has permeated almost all Stellaris. As in a lot of mechanics are there just to be there, just like all those different ship components back then.
I was playing recently and I came to the conclusion that most of the game is spent waiting for the right tech to pop up and hoping it pops up in time for you to use it. I'm mostly thinking about megastructures, because by the time I set a ring world, I don't need a ringworld anymore. But this also happened to me with fauna ships. I was trying to play creatively and my alloy production was suffering because alloys were needed for kilostructures, roboticists and I was planning in espanding and upgrading starbases: basically I estimated that I could not spare alloys for ships. Big idea, I could use fauna ship! I was so excited at the idea that my empire was going to specialize in fauna ships out of necessity, I was already looking at my planets differently, thinking where I could expand my food production and such. I just had to unlock tech for capturing, upgrade tech for capturing, make a vivarium, capture space fauna, unlock tech for cloning space fauna, unlock tech for upgrading space fauna and then improve my food production and then I'm all set, all that's missing is to unlock tech for making bigger space fauna. You know what I did instead? After 10 years of waiting, I just improved my alloy production.
This made me extremely sad because I noticed how all my recent playtrough are 1) pump as much research as you can. 2) pump as many alloys as you can. 3) wait for game to end. Everything else doesn't matter and feels superficial. All problems could be solved with this. You want to invest in your leader? you want to make espionage plays towards an hostile empire? You want to explore astral rifts? you want to excavate archeological sites? Too bad, all those things don't matter anyway, the solution is always pumping alloys and research. Every time I try to use another less used tradition tree or ascension perk, I just feel punished for not chosing the "right option". Exactly like in the past trying to make something different than an entire fleet of only neutron launcher battleship resulted in you feeling like you made the wrong choice instead of feeling like you made a different choice. The point is not about things being suboptimal, the point is about things being ultimately useless, making you feel like nothing you do matters. Either you made the right choice or the wrong choice because everything else is give to an RNG.

Maybe things will change with the nexts updates, making this post useless. I just want to see how many people feel the same, if they feel something similar or different. Also how to solve this problem, dev side or player side doesn't matter.

 

[Ohirra]

I'm mostly thinking about megastructures, because by the time I set a ring world, I don't need a ringworld anymore.

Yeah, the combination of waiting for the RNG to give you the tech, the length of time it takes to research it, and then the length of time it takes to get enough alloys to build each segment, and how long it takes to build each segment...

You're either already in a position to win the game, or you're not.

 

[Nyrael]

Maybe things will change with the nexts updates, making this post useless. I just want to see how many people feel the same, if they feel something similar or different. Also how to solve this problem, dev side or player side doesn't matter.

Doubtful, if you play on highest difficulties and focus entirely on winning, you will always have a limited set of options. This is a common problem in games and difficult content in them.
For those people it doesn't help that the devs focus on normal difficulties and players who play casually. Similarly, focusing too much on players who like difficult content might annoy those (of us) who prefer to just relax and RP. Finding a golden middle is hard, and harder yet to guess how difficult is truly difficult (for example, devs added 25x crisis as an unplayable joke, but many players play with it) or how bad suboptimal features are (Genetic Ascension is widely considered useless and bad, but statistics showed that it is a popular (I think most popular even) Ascension Path so it being suboptimal isn't as a big problem as it appears).

 

[Jeyops]

Big reason fueling this problem was the update cycle last year. Go Machine or miss out. Take those weather resolutions or eat dirt. Use fauna ships and you get crushed.
The devs are in dire need for some time to balance this game accordingly.

 

[Nakkivene]

Yeah, it all builds up to fleet power. The way you get that fleet power matters a bit, but it's the same fleet power regardless.

 

[cecla]

I think that Stellaris is full of this, just because it's a complicated game with lots of mechanics. Certain mechanics seem like they should be possible to combine in interesting ways to get interesting results, but it doesn't actually work. Or, different but I think related, certain things that seem like they should lead to playstyle diversity don't.

For an example of the latter, authoritarians get a bonus to workers and egalitarians get a bonus to specialists. In principle this kind of thing could be the basis for different strategies/approaches, but in practice it's hard to see how to leverage it, I think the reason is that it's unavoidable that your empire always needs a mix of workers and specialists, i.e., there aren't a lot of opportunities to leverage one instead of the other (the main exception is a worker-free trade build based on mutual aid, but this isn't common).

I was thinking the other week about whether there was a technical solution for this involving machine learning/reinforcement learning techniques. The idea would be for given parameters, see if diverse strategies appear according to certain metrics, and then try to tune values to increase the number of discovered strategies. It seems like the first step would be to define a very simple "game" with simple mechanics to make the concept/technique precise before moving on to more complicated game models.

It's still just an idea, but has motivated me to read more about this topic.

 

[Soletestament]

It's a complicated game with a lot of disjointed mechanics.

The biggest issue straining stellaris is that for a really long time new mechanics were designed with the idea that players wouldn't HAVE to engage with them if they didn't want to.
As a result none of those mechanics ever became important to the core gameplay loop which is to build up your economy so you can build more ships and research facilities.

It should come as no surprise that alternative gameplay options end up feeling gimmicky or unnecessary. If espionage, the galcom, leaders, most origins, space weather and the grand archive, are all optional to engage with, then they're just different spices to a dish that never changes.

This also had the side effect of watering down a lot of what these systems could have been. Instead of being engaging and adding interesting new strategies to the game they became superfluous.

This is the actual problem with stellaris. Expansions like Utopia and distant stars are remembered fondly because they were so well integrated into the rest of the game.

I'm glad to see that Paradox is thinking about adding a logistics system into the game, even if it's just an abstraction and reimagining of trade. I just hope that when they start tackling all these problems they find solutions in weaving existing systems into each other rather than adding new systems or trying to make the fix old systems that have already proven themselves not to work. Seriously, Naval cap / fleet cap and empires size shouldn't even exist in the game. They should be governed by logistics which itself has a growth curve with diminishing returns, along with topographical restrictions. Suddenly you fix three of the biggest complaints people have with the game. And you can get even more creative with it from there.

 

[Hiksday]

I think we need to distinct in multiple category what's wrong with Stellaris.

1:Balance.
Balance is completely gone with things like machine ascension , crisis empire , broken traits etc
Things that are this powerful should have REAL drawback. For example, crisis empire lvl should progress automatically , you should be in a race not a leisurely walk. Right now it's gated by technology or special project so you can simply get all the benefits without any drawback , even worse with cosmogenesis because you don't even get a total war when you're lvl 5...

2:Bloated mechanics.
People play Gestalt not because it's more powerful but because it's more fun. No annoying trade to setup , less type of resource to manage , no elections ,no council, no ethics , no happiness . Let's face it, playing a regular empire is a chore at this point.
A small mention to strategic resource : Why do we have 3 of them when they are so easy to produce and have pretty much no difference ? do we really need 3 tech to exploit the resource and 3 tech to synthesize them ? We could have one tech and one abstract strategic resource and be done with it.

3:RNG.
I hate the tech and leader system.
"We are going to war soon , we need to rework our military to gain in effectiveness"
"Nah, i feel like doing some food research"
WHY?! Why can't i chose what i want to focus my empire on ? And you're telling me that in the billions of people i govern i can't find ONE guy who like to explore and get a bonus to survey speed?

4:Too many techs.
We could really afford to fuse some of them . Strategic resource is an obvious one , basic resource is another (eco simulation+food processing for example).
other ideas include:
-Missile+torpedoes
-Plasma+disruptor
-power + shield
-ship armor + improved hull T1 (Ceramo-Metal Materials + Improved Corvette Hulls for example)
-Encryption + code breaking
-Ai research boost+ ship computer
-A lot of space fauna related stuff
Cost would need to be adjusted but that would make the tech draw system less annoying

I have seen that some of this stuff could be improved in 4.0 but i'll wait and see...

 

[Thecarlocarlone]

I think we need to distinct in multiple category what's wrong with Stellaris.

1:Balance.
Balance is completely gone with things like machine ascension , crisis empire , broken traits etc
Things that are this powerful should have REAL drawback. For example, crisis empire lvl should progress automatically , you should be in a race not a leisurely walk. Right now it's gated by technology or special project so you can simply get all the benefits without any drawback , even worse with cosmogenesis because you don't even get a total war when you're lvl 5...

2:Bloated mechanics.
People play Gestalt not because it's more powerful but because it's more fun. No annoying trade to setup , less type of resource to manage , no elections ,no council, no ethics , no happiness . Let's face it, playing a regular empire is a chore at this point.
A small mention to strategic resource : Why do we have 3 of them when they are so easy to produce and have pretty much no difference ? do we really need 3 tech to exploit the resource and 3 tech to synthesize them ? We could have one tech and one abstract strategic resource and be done with it.

3:RNG.
I hate the tech and leader system.
"We are going to war soon , we need to rework our military to gain in effectiveness"
"Nah, i feel like doing some food research"
WHY?! Why can't i chose what i want to focus my empire on ? And you're telling me that in the billions of people i govern i can't find ONE guy who like to explore and get a bonus to survey speed?

4:Too many techs.
We could really afford to fuse some of them . Strategic resource is an obvious one , basic resource is another (eco simulation+food processing for example).
other ideas include:
-Missile+torpedoes
-Plasma+disruptor
-power + shield
-ship armor + improved hull T1 (Ceramo-Metal Materials + Improved Corvette Hulls for example)
-Encryption + code breaking
-Ai research boost+ ship computer
-A lot of space fauna related stuff
Cost would need to be adjusted but that would make the tech draw system less annoying

I have seen that some of this stuff could be improved in 4.0 but i'll wait and see...

2, 3 and 4 really hit the nail for me.
Maybe I don't agree 100% with the proposed solutions, but I absolutely agree with the problems.

We do have bloated mechanics and too many strategic resources: we have as many strategic resources as we have basic and advanced resources combined, it's too much.

We do rely too much on RNG, especially for leaders and tech

We do have too much tech., making the RNG part even more frustrating.


As for number 1: we also have problem with balance, but it's not top priority to me. I would buff useless traits, civic, ascension perks, origins and such rather than debuffing powerful things if possible. Mostly because I prefer having more viable choices, even if more powerful options still exists.

 

[Ellionious]

3:RNG.
I hate the tech and leader system.
"We are going to war soon , we need to rework our military to gain in effectiveness"
"Nah, i feel like doing some food research"
WHY?! Why can't i chose what i want to focus my empire on ? And you're telling me that in the billions of people i govern i can't find ONE guy who like to explore and get a bonus to survey speed?

I completely resonate with your frustration. RNG can add variety and unpredictability, but it often feels like it strips away meaningful control over your empire's direction. I get the need for randomness to keep things fresh and avoid a single, optimal tech path. It’s also more realistic that you wouldn’t have complete mastery over your tech tree at all times. However, there’s room for improvement.

Imagine a system where you could set a research focus, like Combat, Expansion, or Growth, giving a weighted modifier to the likelihood of related technologies appearing. Better yet, what if you could force a research category to show up (not a specific tech, but a type) at the cost of efficiency? For example, prioritizing combat research might come with a 25% longer completion time for those techs. This could reflect a leader obsessed with war, willing to sacrifice efficiency to shape the empire’s future.

This kind of system would strike a balance between the unpredictability of RNG and the agency players crave. It would give you enough control to guide your civilization’s progress while maintaining the dynamism that makes the game engaging. It would also enhance roleplaying opportunities by allowing leaders with distinct agendas to influence your empire in meaningful ways.

 

[Enero]

It is because social and economic systems are from non-existant to extremely primitive in essence. You just can't mimic complexities of modern societies with economic model of a middle-age village.

The economy should be more abstract but with more features to reproduce social dynamic.

 

[passeris]

I think the RNG is meant to mimic an 'organic' process of random events and happenstances that direct a society down one path but not another. You are experiencing friction because you want a 'teleological' process in which your society progresses according to the ultimate build you have in mind for them. Maybe Stellaris can offer an RTS mode, where all tech trees are available for research. Personally, I'd go the opposite way and base new tech's likelihood to appear on what's already been researched.

Sci-fi reference: 'The Road Not Taken' by Harry Turtledove.

 

[Varren]

And you're telling me that in the billions of people i govern i can't find ONE guy who like to explore and get a bonus to survey speed?

If the leader hiring system were remotely realistic, 90% of your options would be incompetent nepo babies and party loyalists. And another 7% would just be people who are good at disguising their incompetence.

 

[Imp0815]

This made me extremely sad because I noticed how all my recent playtrough are 1) pump as much research as you can. 2) pump as many alloys as you can. 3) wait for game to end. Everything else doesn't matter and feels superficial.

You know why this is? Why do you pump endless research and alloys(Or food or minerals or energy, pick your poison!)? DO YOU KNOW WHY? - Because the game is built around an effing large fleet power snowball. And you can utilize that endless fleet power, so why not build endless fleet power?
Stack 'em all up and bring doom to your enemies, win the game. That’s it.
"Everything else doesn't matter and feels superficial." EXACTLY!

And I feel exactly the same—sad. The game could be so much more and diverse in its approaches to what we do and why we do it. But it can only be done if they finally wake up and introduce a deeper and more complex military system. It cannot be done with simple RNG removal or balance changes. It’s the inherent need for amassing massive fleet power numbers, no matter what you do or how you do it: "Make it happen—endless fleet power! Make the largest doomstack the galaxy has ever seen and crush your adversaries. And to TEST YOUR MIGHT, beat the Crisis. 50x and more—just stack them up. See that Crisis? 25 MILLION fleet power in ONE system! Did you make enough alloys? Did you optimize your pacifist trader robots to churn out the naval capacity necessary? - Or maybe, for extra tactical fun, let them chase you a bit. Make them run around in circles by abusing the pathing and AI."

After a full year of additional curtains the Wizard has put up, I’m getting extensively frustrated with the whole affair. You and I are just the beginning. The game is stagnating for years now so some might also have realized it’s a hollow experience. Once you realize nothing else matters besides fleet power, the game fizzles out—until they make part two, where they MAYBE find a new and better system to wrap the game around.
Until then, we’ve already got a new roll of fabric ready for the next year of curtains, where we’ll see the superficial systems touched up and streamlined so you can reach the part where the game is going even quicker and with better performance. In the next 11 months, we will not see any changes to the main game’s focus on fleet power dominance—maybe not ever—as it was only teased as "fleet and ship changes."
I really love the game, and I see its potential. I had good fun with it, but when the honeymoon phase ends and the additional content provided doesn’t address the harsh reality exposed, it just gets really, really sad.

I’m not at the apathy stage yet, but it might come. Until then, I will try to voice my concerns, and I’m hopeful. As more people realize there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark, there might be a chance somebody wakes up to get rid of the curtains altogether and we finally get a deep, engaging, fun, diverse, and complex space GSG from Paradox that we all, hopefully, wanted.

 

[grommile]

DO YOU KNOW WHY?

Because there are existential threats which don't run on normal economics and reject all attempts at diplomacy, so if you don't have enough ability to exert and concentrate armed force when they turn up, you die.

As long as that is the case, alloyscience will always dominate economics.

 

[Imp0815]

Because there are existential threats which don't run on normal economics and reject all attempts at diplomacy, so if you don't have enough ability to exert and concentrate armed force when they turn up, you die.

As long as that is the case, alloyscience will always dominate economics.*

*At least as long as the mechanics reward and allow the endless accumulation of militarypower into singular locations, where overwhelming force eclipses any need for strategic diversity.

 

[3ishop]

*At least as long as the mechanics reward and allow the endless accumulation of militarypower into singular locations, where overwhelming force eclipses any need for strategic diversity.

But then it still does, you just now need to automate the military control to handle having the endless accumulation of military power spread out across multiple systems rather than just one.

 

[Imp0815]

But then it still does, you just now need to automate the military control to handle having the endless accumulation of military power spread out across multiple systems rather than just one.

It would not. You do not have a divsion on each province in HoI.

 

[grommile]

It would not. You do not have a divsion on each province in HoI.

You don't have a division on every province, but you do have a division on every frontline province.

 

[Connacht]

3:RNG.
I hate the tech and leader system.
"We are going to war soon , we need to rework our military to gain in effectiveness"
"Nah, i feel like doing some food research"
WHY?! Why can't i chose what i want to focus my empire on ? And you're telling me that in the billions of people i govern i can't find ONE guy who like to explore and get a bonus to survey speed?

I propose a slider in the starting settings about research path:

- blind (you cannot choose which tech to research, you do not know what will be the result of the research like in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri*);
- random (like now);
- weighted random (you can choose a focus in the research menu that will have higher chances to spawn while active);
- penalized weighted random (you choose the focus but you also get a small research penalty if you do);
- directed (you can choose a focus and related techs will always fill the card selection at every refresh while active);
- free (every available tech can be selected like in most games).

*: technically you can mimic its effects in the current game by automating research, but you can still see what is being researched if you open the menu, you are still limited by the number of cards, and you are still free to select another tech if you wish.

And for further fun:

- unlimited blind (like blind but without card limits, any available tech could be chosen by the rng);
- weighted blind (you can choose a foucs in the research menu that will have higher chances to spawn while active);
- penalized weighted blind (like above);
- penalized directed (like above);
- predetermined (you can configure what will be automatically researched!).

Perhaps things like weighted or penalized can be simply put as a toggle button rather than different choices in the slider.

4:Too many techs.
We could really afford to fuse some of them . Strategic resource is an obvious one , basic resource is another (eco simulation+food processing for example).
other ideas include:
-Missile+torpedoes
-Plasma+disruptor
-power + shield
-ship armor + improved hull T1 (Ceramo-Metal Materials + Improved Corvette Hulls for example)
-Encryption + code breaking
-Ai research boost+ ship computer
-A lot of space fauna related stuff
Cost would need to be adjusted but that would make the tech draw system less annoying

I have seen that some of this stuff could be improved in 4.0 but i'll wait and see...

I like having many techs, but I'm willing to considerate merging some of them, for example missile+torpedoes or some space fauna things. I think that some should not be merged even if it would make sense, to allow for strategic diversity, like encryption and codebreaking.