Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[Azalin]

- hope, that they won't go overboard with DLC milking

 

[JudasIscariot]

- MINERALS MINERALS MINERALS holy crap I cannot get enough of this

"WE REQUIRE MORE MINERALS!" is pretty much an ironclad rule of every game of everything, ever.

Yeah I know about minerals or shiny rocks or money being the backbone of every strategy game ever but why can't I shunt all those extra and damn near worthless energy creds into minerals? Say 50 EC nets you 10 minerals or something. Otherwise, I just have all these energy credits laying around not doing anything. Just a thought though.

 

[Inf0mercial]

- MINERALS MINERALS MINERALS holy crap I cannot get enough of this

"WE REQUIRE MORE MINERALS!" is pretty much an ironclad rule of every game of everything, ever.

Yeah I know about minerals or shiny rocks or money being the backbone of every strategy game ever but why can't I shunt all those extra and damn near worthless energy creds into minerals? Say 50 EC nets you 10 minerals or something. Otherwise, I just have all these energy credits laying around not doing anything. Just a thought though.

Don't get optimistic about trading for minerals either at this point me trading 2.5k energy credits to another nation and the trade window sits on a big fat 0.

They don't even want my shitty credits for free.

 

[Jimmious]

I don't know guys, the game can certainly be improved.. But it got me completely hooked. I played 6 hours, went to sleep super late, I'm tired at work (and have a meeting today) and I'm thinking how to proceed with my empire.

I started with a random one which happened to be a four-eyed bird race of hardcore collectivists that are completely in favor of slavery and purging etc.

After a while I met the first sentient other race which are some cthulhu looking ugly assholes who are the exact opposite and of course immediately hated us and declared us rivals. We didn't get into war yet but there is certainly tension

 

[Tytus]

Yeah I know about minerals or shiny rocks or money being the backbone of every strategy game ever but why can't I shunt all those extra and damn near worthless energy creds into minerals?

Yeah if just Hitler could've convert those worthless Deutsche Marks into iron/steel he would've win the war

But I agree that there should some trade agreements in the game where you can actually get minerals from other people for giving them a couple of tech points a month, or the fore mentioned credits. Not just one time trades.

Or diversify resources by splitting minerals into gas based resource (Hel-3 or something from gas giants etc) and metal based resources (from rocky planets and asteroids). Then trading with it would make more sense.

 

[Jimmious]

Yeah I know about minerals or shiny rocks or money being the backbone of every strategy game ever but why can't I shunt all those extra and damn near worthless energy creds into minerals?

Yeah if just Hitler could've convert those worthless Deutsche Marks into iron/steel he would've win the war

But I agree that there should some trade agreements in the game where you can actually get minerals from other people for giving them a couple of tech points a month, or the fore mentioned credits. Not just one time trades.

Or diversify resources by splitting minerals into gas based resource (Hel-3 or something from gas giants etc) and metal based resources (from rocky planets and asteroids). Then trading with it would make more sense.

I'm pretty sure there's an option for monthly income in the diplo screen

Edit: I'm sure I could offer monthly energy

 

[ArchAngel]

I am going to wait for your real impressions once you hit this game's Deep Caverns :D

 

[Zed]

are there barbarians in this game? or what are those early 200 military power motherfuckers chasing away my scientists..?

 

[Space Satan]

Amobaes, crystal thing and void clouds?

 

[varangos]

Yea what are those?

 

[Space Satan]

Space flora nad fauna. Some are docile, like lreatures who feed on gas planets, but amobes, crystals and void clouds can vary from 75 combat str. up to 400+ and are agressive, especially clouds.

 

[kris]

Well I have learned more lessons. Having more than one planet really does suck as I thought.

No no. More planets means more influence which means more stations that can bring in resources and tech. I didn't colonize the best planet, I colonized the planet that would give me access to best resources/tech boost.

- MINERALS MINERALS MINERALS holy crap I cannot get enough of this, meanwhile Energy Credits are damned near worthless and I manage to accrue enough to reach my empire's limit for them
- pirates happen for no reason at all and they almost always happen right at the beginning of every game session
- the galaxy map is structured in such a way that if you happen to be between two empires you are locked in between them unless you manage to schmooze civilian access for your ships to go through

Indeed, your access to early minerals seems to heavily affect how good start you will get. I most certainly agree that this is the biggest early game issue. Overal I would have liked some more variety in resources. the difference between my first and third start was massive due to how I found plenty of minerals in my zone in my third game, so I did much better despite a much higher difficult rating.

Can pirates be tied to difficulty? Or maybe it is just random, because I only got those in my third start.

After three starts I feel like the game is designed to have you close to other empires, one on each side. But again, could be just random happening.

Yea what are those?

Space monsters. That dont neccesarely attack you.

Pretty good so far, though I've got a feeling it's not going to have enough variety to keep it lasting as long as other games.

Still, I just wasted an evening, so I guess it did its job,

Yeah there doesn't seem to be much replay value involved. The tech tree is mostly always the same, you perform the same rote actions of mining all mineral locations and so forth. Meh.

My three short starts have been more varied than in any 4x space game I ever played. Only thing is what Judas mentioned, the reliance on minerals.

 

[JudasIscariot]

are there barbarians in this game? or what are those early 200 military power motherfuckers chasing away my scientists..?

You do get pirates in the game and they can and will form.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I got a research option to make my own docile space ameobas.

 

[Spectacle]

Alien abductions are great! I've set up an observation post on a nearby industrial age world and I've nearly doubled my monthly bio research by aggressively studying them. Who knew that you could learn so much by anal-probing a few primitives?

Apparently the infiltration option is bugged, taking over a pre-ftl civ by replacing their leaders with your own species in disguise gives the same penalties than if you invade them, and that is much cheaper and easier.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

game is decent. barebone but decent. it's a good entry point for grand strategy games.

the problem is it seriously lacks in the diplomacy department and oh god everything useful from the interface have been axed. no map filters and no autopause settings are the worst offenders.
also it's retarded that clicking on a fleet/ship/whatever, even in galactic view, zooms to planetary view: moving fleets and ships is an endless zooming in and out. irritating and tiresome.

 

[Spectacle]

game is decent. barebone but decent.
it seriously lacks in the diplomacy department and oh god everything useful from the interface have been axed. no map filters and no autopause settings are the worst offenders.
also it's retarded that clicking on a fleet/ship/whatever, even in galactic view, zooms to planetary view: moving fleets and ships is an endless zooming in and out. irritating and tiresome.

IIRC if you select a fleet/ship from the outliner then you stay in galactic view.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Been playing for 3 hours, impressed so far. It actually feels you are a part of the empire you created. I like that you can't colonize like crazy, it takes time and resources, so every planet you get to colonize feels more memorable. The combat is so-so. Only had a couple of space battles against pirates and aliens. You can't do much than just watch, but then again in Sins of the solar empire, even if you can maneuver your ships, the one with the most ships wins 95% of the time. The only thing that feels kinda artificially restrictive is the limit on "officers" or what you wanna call them. I can only support 10... in a empire probably having more than 40 billion people. Why is there a restriction on those? I can't afford to have a governor on one of my recently acquired planet because... limit.

So far I like it. Now I'm in the middle of trying to play nice with a small pre-space flight race. I want their planet but it seems a rebellion is brewing.

You can easily edit the number of officers by going to your common folder, defines subfolder, defines.lua file, find the line that says "LEADER_BASE_CAP" and change it to the number you wish.

Edit: Make sure to use notepad++, regular windows notepad app cant save with the proper encoding, so the game with crash starting up.

 

[Jimmious]

The autopause options are indeed a bad Miss, I'd love to have the game Pause when for example a research finishes.

 

[Talby]

We're going to build a wall around Earth and the aliens will pay for it.

So I broke down and bought the game based on some of the positive things I heard. I just had to scratch that 4X/grand strategy itch.

 

[Lyre Mors]

So I broke down and bought the game based on some of the positive things I heard. I just had to scratch that 4X/grand strategy itch.

Don't worry, man. Just enjoy it and have fun. I guarantee you will.

 

[GrainWetski]

My impressions of the game so far:

- once you put planets into a sector say goodbye to tweaking them on a planetary level ever again
- MINERALS MINERALS MINERALS holy crap I cannot get enough of this, meanwhile Energy Credits are damned near worthless and I manage to accrue enough to reach my empire's limit for them
- Influence is annoying but I can see somewhat the reason behind it
- no espionage/subterfuge/skulduggery as of right now so no spying on the other guys or making their worlds rebel
- pirates happen for no reason at all and they almost always happen right at the beginning of every game session
- the galaxy map is structured in such a way that if you happen to be between two empires you are locked in between them unless you manage to schmooze civilian access for your ships to go through
- the AI seems to just declare me a rival, sets up an embassy...and that's it. I've never been offered any trade deals or anything else besides that so far
- there's no generic "hey, let's open up some economic trade routes between us" option, you always have to trade something for something else

Energy credits are just for maintaining all your shit mostly. Well, and trading.

Got plenty of trade deals from a friendly neighbour. Most of them about Star Charts and shit, but still trades.

Don't get optimistic about trading for minerals either at this point me trading 2.5k energy credits to another nation and the trade window sits on a big fat 0.

They don't even want my shitty credits for free.

Just increase minerals till they get to a -1000, then go 1 below that and increase your energy credits until it's at least +1. Traded plenty of credits for minerals. Sometimes they obviously don't want to trade away their minerals..

Well I have learned more lessons. Having more than one planet really does suck as I thought. However I also learned that battleships are utterly worthless. Massive swarms of corvettes and destroyers are OP.

Defense stations can't do shit because they have a proximity limit and for some reason also even when an enemy fleet is in the field of fire of 2 of them only one still attacks so multiple ones are a waste.

But seriously Battleships can't do shit to corvettes which is both not how space combat works and also super annoying considering they cost 10x-15x as much. Destroyers cost about 1/5 of a battleship.

Battleships can handle cruisers easily and somewhat fight destroyers but a mass of cheap vettes will stop your glorious battleships.

I am now going to run a test game where I pursue a slightly different strategy.

Having more planets does not suck at all.

Defense stations are great for just having extra defense on frontier outposts, so you can actually get your fleet there to defend them as they otherwise die in like 5 seconds. There's also this:

 

[Talby]

Time to make a nation of space Jews. Talents: Nomadic, Thrifty, Repugnant.

 

[acer palmatum]

IGN review http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/09/stellaris-review
Verdict: 6.3/10

Some serious butthurt over at the Paradox forum right now, all the frothing fanboys hanging around waiting for the release are getting themselves worked up.

It is not a 9x, sure - but that IGN review is just utter bullshit, done by someone who didn't get the mechanics and should better review tea sets.

 

[ArchAngel]

It is not a 9x, sure - but that IGN review is just utter bullshit, done by someone who didn't get the mechanics and should better review tea sets.

By IGN standards this should be a 9.9 or something. Paradox clearly didn't water IGN's hand for this game, which grants them points in my book. I'm not a crazy Paradox zealot and I thought this was absolutely bullshit, written by an unqualified retard - as usual with "professional" "gaming" "journalism". They deserve all the hate they'll get from this review.

It amuses me deeply to know that user reviews and Youtube are killing the worst, most parasitic media any entertainment field ever had and I have multiple orgasms watching their final breaths of desperation.

I read the IGN review, it seems they gave it to 4x player to review. As a 4x player myself I found it good and all the things that bothered him would probably bother me as well.

If Paradox is trying to expand more into 4x space maybe they should expect to put more 4x features into the game.