Stellaris

[Jarhead0331]

Speaking of bugs, here's an odd one.  Every time I load, one of the empires in my alliance (not always the same one, either) has a completely different name.  It's not a huge deal of course and has no impact on the game, but it's kind of jarring.  Has anyone else noticed this?

That's an easy one to miss. The names of the empires are so varied and nuanced in this game that they are really hard to keep track of. I have a pretty large federation and don't think I can name a single one of its members...including my own race!!!! 

[Huw the Poo]

That's an easy one to miss. The names of the empires are so varied and nuanced in this game that they are really hard to keep track of. I have a pretty large federation and don't think I can name a single one of its members...including my own race!!!! 

Haha!  Yeah, now that you mention it, I'm not particularly confident of mine either!  I think it's the United Nations of Earth but I could be wrong, embarrassingly.

I'm struggling with a decision....I'm itching to start a new game for two reasons: playing as something other than boring old Humans, and the benefit of knowing what I'm doing from the start.  However I have 22 hours invested in my first game and I feel like I should finish it.

It's a hard life!

[Tuna]

Hotfix #3 has been released.  Steam has already pushed it out.

- Fixed Planet capital modifier being spammed.
- Fixed CTD caused by ground combat side containing invalid armies.
- Fixed issue with disabling everything in Outliner would render it unusable.
- Fixed issue with orbital bombardment of swarm invaders.
- Removed shortcut from "help" button to avoid colliding with fleet "hold" shortcut.
- Performance optimizations caused by huge amounts of resource stations.
- Ship designer: List of designs is sorted according to ship sizes.
- Transport ships are now designable.

Looks like there were a few bugs after all, eh Tuna and Jarhead?

None that bummed me out.. didn't notice any of those..

[Jarhead0331]

That's an easy one to miss. The names of the empires are so varied and nuanced in this game that they are really hard to keep track of. I have a pretty large federation and don't think I can name a single one of its members...including my own race!!!! 

Haha!  Yeah, now that you mention it, I'm not particularly confident of mine either!  I think it's the United Nations of Earth but I could be wrong, embarrassingly.

I'm struggling with a decision....I'm itching to start a new game for two reasons: playing as something other than boring old Humans, and the benefit of knowing what I'm doing from the start.  However I have 22 hours invested in my first game and I feel like I should finish it.

It's a hard life!

For what its worth, I've had much more fun playing as a non-human species. I feel it gives me some kind of psychological freedom to be more creative in the selection of my starting race attributes and play style. However, it makes ship and planet naming much more difficult! lol

[Huw the Poo]

For what its worth, I've had much more fun playing as a non-human species. I feel it gives me some kind of psychological freedom to be more creative in the selection of my starting race attributes and play style. However, it makes ship and planet naming much more difficult! lol

Yeah, for my first game I just took the default Human race, but this time I'm going to use one of the pre-order races and let my imagination go mad.  It would be nice not to have such...restricting...ethics this time, too.  >:D

Re: name lists, people have been making these already.  I've downloaded a cyberpunk list that looks quite promising.  I expect there's stuff in the workshop by now too.

[Nefaro]

For what its worth, I've had much more fun playing as a non-human species. I feel it gives me some kind of psychological freedom to be more creative in the selection of my starting race attributes and play style. However, it makes ship and planet naming much more difficult! lol

Their addition of differently flavored sets of names is nice. 

May seem like a small thing, in the bigger view, but adds another extra bit to the race customization.  Also saving some time for those of us who usually don't bother renaming characters or fleets.

I expect modders to add more name packs in the future.

[Huw the Poo]

Started a new game with that arachnid race and created an empire called the Space Napoleon Star Technocracy.  This time we're using wormholes.  Let me tell you...wormholes are cool.  Even the default range is pretty huge when you're used to nothing but hyperspace.  Apparently the time taken for a wormhole to be generated scales up with fleet size though.

Christ I love this game.

[sandman2575]

Huw, was there a moment or event that made the game 'click' for you? Or did it suck you in, black hole like, from the very beginning?

Have to say, I've surprised myself with how little I feel an urge to play Stellaris. I've made a few attempts now but honestly I feel like my experience isn't a whole lot better than what I got with GalCiv III -- which is to say, I get bored surprisingly quickly.  And I just can't shake the thought that I should just go an play Distant Worlds instead... Just not sure what Stellaris is offering that isn't already done, and done better, in DW, beyond Stellaris's novel random events.

Like X-Files's Agent Mulder:  I want to believe (in Stellaris)!

[Huw the Poo]

Huw, was there a moment or event that made the game 'click' for you? Or did it suck you in, black hole like, from the very beginning?

The latter.  For me, it's exactly what I've been looking for for a long time...a PDS game, only in space.  That's precisely what Stellaris is, and that's why I love it.  It feels like a cop out, but I like all of it...there isn't one killer feature.  The only other space 4X that's come close, for me, is Endless Space (not counting Sins of a Solar Empire which I don't really see as a 4X even though it kind of is).

Note that I didn't like Distant Worlds.

[bbmike]

Huw, was there a moment or event that made the game 'click' for you? Or did it suck you in, black hole like, from the very beginning?

The latter.  For me, it's exactly what I've been looking for for a long time...a PDS game, only in space.  That's precisely what Stellaris is, and that's why I love it.  It feels like a cop out, but I like all of it...there isn't one killer feature.  The only other space 4X that's come close, for me, is Endless Space (not counting Sins of a Solar Empire which I don't really see as a 4X even though it kind of is).

Note that I didn't like Distant Worlds.

+1. Which makes me wonder, what does Martok think of Stellaris?   ???

[Dread Rlyeh]

I can't decide if I want to get this sooner or later.   For people who have played with the latest patch, how does it address some of the combat concerns (corvette swarm uber alles for example) in this reddit thread?  How far beyond rock/paper/scissors (a complaint I've read) do you think the combat will evolve via either mods (dunno what the limits are here with modules/weapons, tactical AI) or future DLC? 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/4j8a41/minmaxing_fleet_to_absurd_levels/

[panzerde]

I've kind of parked this until the patch is released. The game as it stands works and was fun as far as I played it, but I think things like the open borders issue will make it a lot more interesting. I'm not motivated to spend a bunch of hours on it until then.

Definitely enjoyable, just not so enjoyable as to pull my away from other current fixations, like WWI.

[Huw the Poo]

I can't decide if I want to get this sooner or later.   For people who have played with the latest patch, how does it address some of the combat concerns (corvette swarm uber alles for example) in this reddit thread?  How far beyond rock/paper/scissors (a complaint I've read) do you think the combat will evolve via either mods (dunno what the limits are here with modules/weapons, tactical AI) or future DLC? 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/4j8a41/minmaxing_fleet_to_absurd_levels/

I'm not sold on the corvette spam strategy to be honest (and since I only play against AI so far it's a moot point for me anyway), but there are counters to it, so I'm really not concerned.  Also, and to address your final point, I'm sure Paradox will gradually add more variety to combat as well.  Give it a month or two and people will be bitching about some other "I win" button instead. ;)

As for rock/paper/scissors, well, this is always going to exist in games like this, isn't it?  Unless everyone uses a single weapon type, you will always need counters for everything.

I honestly just don't concern myself with this sort of thing, it would impair my enjoyment of the game and it just isn't necessary.

One other thing I would add: I don't know why some people complain about their big missile-using ships charging into the fight.  I've literally never seen my BBs do this; they always sit at the back of the fleet, firing salvo after salvo of torpedos.  If anything, the opposite is true - my BBs always carry strike craft which almost never get used since they're never close to enemy ships.

[Huw the Poo]

Here's why I dislike this kind of discussion.  From the Reddit thread posted a short while ago:

The thing about missiles is - who's going to be willing to take the ristk on a research path that is totally countered by point defense? If you choose a bunch of missile researches and then run into a empire that spams point defense, you're done. And at that point, you can't exactly throw some level 1 lasers on your ships to recover.

...yes, and that empire who went heavy on point defense is now vulnerable to every other empire that doesn't go heavy on missiles.  There's no one-strategy-fits-all!

People have been arguing about this kind of thing since the dawn of strategy games.  Pick your game...people have argued over which is the winning strategy.  They always have and apparently always will.  Meanwhile I just play, and enjoy myself.

[Dread Rlyeh]

..snip
As for rock/paper/scissors, well, this is always going to exist in games like this, isn't it?  Unless everyone uses a single weapon type, you will always need counters for everything.

Well I guess it depends if we are talking about hard or soft counters.  I generally prefer metas that force diversity in fleet composition and reward tactics. 

Thanks for the reply btw.  I'm thinking that provided the game allows modders a decent amount of leway wrt ship design, modules, weapons, and individual ship AI, any concerns I have will be addressed one way or another given it's huge popularity.