Stellaris

[bayonetbrant]

https://www.strategygamer.com/articles/stellaris-2-7-wells-patch-notes/

[Martok]

Yeah, I checked out the patch notes yesterday in the Paradox forums.  (Note:  New Paradox forums now include option to show dev posts only.  Very handy!)  Looks pretty damn good overall.  I'm especially interested to see the rework to space creatures and edicts. 


In fact, I am -- gods help me -- planning to update Stellaris to  2.7 once my current game is finished.  (My game won't be done until after 2.7 is released.)  Hoping I can muster the patience this time to at least tolerate (if not enjoy) the colony management scheme introduced back in 2.2. 

[Martok]

For anyone who's been interested in trying out the game, Stellaris is free to play this week through Sunday (May 17).  It's also on sale for $9.99 (a 75% discount here in the States), along with nearly all of its DLC (Federations being the exception).  Definitely worth checking out if you have any interest in this one! 


I did go ahead and update to the 2.7 version, incidentally.  I'm really digging the changes to how Edicts work, and the visuals have definitely been improved; the detail when I zoom in on ships & planets is pretty amazing. 

Am admittedly still not enthralled with the colony management -- I suspect I may never be -- but otherwise I like a lot of changes I've seen so far.  I'm slowly realizing just how many QoL improvements I've missed out on over the last two years. 

[bob48]

I've tried a couple of games like that before, and failed miserably. I seem to lack the required spacial awareness to play such games.

<falls off chair>

[Martok]

 


I definitely sympathize.  For me, the biggest challenge with games like this is mastering their complexity, and I -- like many others -- find that's especially true of Paradox titles.  Stellaris is more accessible than most of their lineup, but it still has a fairly steep learning curve -- something I'm rediscovering as I muddle my way through figuring out the population and colony management system introduced in the Cherryh update.  (Part of me keeps thinking, "I'm getting too old for this ****.")   

I hope/suspect it'll be worth it in the end, but man I wish I could trust the AI to take over some aspects of the game for me.  But I guess that's why I'm waiting on Distant Worlds 2...   

[ojsdad]

I was just listing to Mentioned in Dispatches where Cyrano and Brant were discussing Alt-History games and Space games. 

I think games like Stellaris take the wrong approach to things like economy and people.  It doesn't matter the size of the planet, your locked into just 24 building slots and  x number of districts, depending on the planets size.  If a system has an asteroid belt, it may produce no resources at all.  If it does, it's almost always just 2 minerals.  Instead of actual buildings, I'd like to see industries developed.  Don't build a single building for producing consumer products, develop industries that don't have set size limits.  Not all planets are going to have all industries.  As planets develop and grow their population, their ability to support more home grown industries and not have to import items from other planets will change.  How will this impact the employees and revenues of planets that were exporting these items. 

Except for a few exceptions, most habitable planets probably aren't going to have resource gathering industries.  Those functions are going to be performed by at asteroid belts, from from orbiting mining stations around gas giants, and on planets that cannot support large populations but require small closed eco systems for people to live in. 

I think with not all planets not having all industries, you may feel the impact if a few frontier systems get cut off from the rest of your empire.  How will the populations react to losing access to goods and services.  Were those frontier planets sending back needed resources that the rest of the empire needed.

Just some ramblings. 

[Martok]

You're not wrong.  And your points highlight some of the reasons why Stellaris is not -- and cannot -- be the "ultimate" space 4x/grand-strategy game (if such a thing could even exist).  Heck, even Distant Worlds lacks a lot of what you've mentioned, although it certainly does a better job of modeling it than most games. 

Ironically, I think the space 4x that modeled planetary development best is probably the much-maligned MOO3.  For as deeply flawed as that game is, its concepts for managing & developing colonies was -- and still is -- pretty revolutionary.  (I still bitterly regret we never got to play the game that Alan Emrich envisioned.  Sigh.) 

[Anguille]

Ironically, I think the space 4x that modeled planetary development best is probably the much-maligned MOO3.  For as deeply flawed as that game is, its concepts for managing & developing colonies was -- and still is -- pretty revolutionary.  (I still bitterly regret we never got to play the game that Alan Emrich envisioned.  Sigh.)

Imagine his game with modern graphics! Imho, the main reason why MOO3's development failed was because Steve Barcia wasn't part of the team...he knew how to make things work.

[ojsdad]

DW is really well situated to take advantage of what I would like to see with it's FTL method of getting around and it's use of civilian ships.  Image, Earth getting most of it's food from three other systems.  Your at war with the humans, and you're able to disrupt their food shipments for a couple of months with raiders.  Or keep a small naval base cut off for a few months before a major attack.  It would also make the defender think about protecting their shipping lanes. They just need to expand the economy from just resources to include goods and services. 

[Martok]

Imagine his game with modern graphics!

No thanks, I don't want to torture myself.   

Imho, the main reason why MOO3's development failed was because Steve Barcia wasn't part of the team...he knew how to make things work.

Certainly the dev team suffered from a lack of focus and not adhering to a more defined schedule.  I suspect that has to at least partially be laid at Emrich's feet, much as I'd rather not. 

Whether Barcia's presence would've been enough to keep things on track, I think that's hard to say.  (Although if he'd been the actual project head, then perhaps?) 

[Martok]

DW is really well situated to take advantage of what I would like to see with it's FTL method of getting around and it's use of civilian ships.  Image, Earth getting most of it's food from three other systems.  Your at war with the humans, and you're able to disrupt their food shipments for a couple of months with raiders.  Or keep a small naval base cut off for a few months before a major attack.  It would also make the defender think about protecting their shipping lanes. They just need to expand the economy from just resources to include goods and services.

Agreed, I would love to see something like this in DW2 (or any other 4x game, for that matter).  For now, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. 

[ojsdad]

Imagine his game with modern graphics!

No thanks, I don't want to torture myself.   

Imho, the main reason why MOO3's development failed was because Steve Barcia wasn't part of the team...he knew how to make things work.

Certainly the dev team suffered from a lack of focus and not adhering to a more defined schedule.  I suspect that has to at least partially be laid at Emrich's feet, much as I'd rather not. 

Whether Barcia's presence would've been enough to keep things on track, I think that's hard to say.  (Although if he'd been the actual project head, then perhaps?)

If I remember correctly, the company that was originally developing MOO3 was purchased by someone, who was then purchased by someone else in short order.  The new company gave Emrich and company orders to get it out the door. 

[Anguille]

Imagine his game with modern graphics!

No thanks, I don't want to torture myself.   

Imho, the main reason why MOO3's development failed was because Steve Barcia wasn't part of the team...he knew how to make things work.

Certainly the dev team suffered from a lack of focus and not adhering to a more defined schedule.  I suspect that has to at least partially be laid at Emrich's feet, much as I'd rather not. 

Whether Barcia's presence would've been enough to keep things on track, I think that's hard to say.  (Although if he'd been the actual project head, then perhaps?)

If I remember correctly, the company that was originally developing MOO3 was purchased by someone, who was then purchased by someone else in short order.  The new company gave Emrich and company orders to get it out the door.

The game started under Hasbro and was released by Inforgrames. The project was fairly long and one of the reason why it was rushed (progress to slow and very complex game):

Fate rekindled the flames on this long dormant franchise when Michael Mancuso, then a Producer for Hasbro's west coast offices at the old Spectrum Holobyte digs in the San Francisco Bay Area, ran into Quicksilver Software's El Presidente, Bill Fisher at E3 in 1999. The two of them had a long discussion about all things gaming and really hit it off. They agreed, philosophically, on what makes a game great, how to make them, and so forth. Bill Fisher explained how Starfleet Command was created as a real-time game using the StarFleet Battles turn-based boardgame as its foundation.
Michael Mancuso saw the magic in the way that Starfleet Command came together and coupled that with the list he had of game titles that they were shopping for developers for. On that list was Master of Orion III, and both groups perceived a good match in MOO3 and Quicksilver. The deal was made and design work began in August 1999.

[Martok]

Okay, Stellaris is starting to piss me off again.    My gripes (in no particular order)... 


-  Since when did *all* treaty types suddenly cost Influence to maintain, and -- more importantly -- why?  (As if Influence wasn't already a bottleneck in this game...)  I get why defensive pacts and independence guarantees might cost influence, but to now have basic treaty types like commercial pacts and reserach pacts do so as well is f***king annoying. 

-  Events and event chains taking place in star systems well outside your current territory -- systems that in many cases needs to be part of your empire before you're allowed to do whatever is needed to complete the event/quest...yet you'll have no chance of acquiring said star system(s) before a neighbor does (due to its distance).  I've run into this problem occasionally in v 2.1; I can't believe it still hasn't been fixed 2 years later (and 4 years after release). 

-  The resource model has become even more byzantine than the colony management system, which is no small feat.  It's as if with, the 2.2 update and onwards, Paradox has been actively attempting to make the learning curve steeper and make the less accessible to people.  That, or someone on the dev team fell in love with complexity for complexity's sake, and failed to realize that complexity doesn't always equal depth. 


I'm tempted to rant more, but I really need to get some shut-eye right now.  There's still a lot to like in Stellaris, and a lot of the changes they've made to the game since 2.1 really are improvements, but JMFC they frustrate me.  I've rarely seen a dev team with its collective head so far up its own hindquarters.  Argh. 

[Anguille]

I really think that Paradox make things more complex just for the sake of it. And their fans fall for it...every time.