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[Sirus]

Honestly, the thing that I hate most about space 4Xs is the lack of micromanagement. Running a space empire should be fucking brutal.

You might want to check out Distant Worlds.

It's only brutal if you decide to turn all the automation off, and even then you only control the "state-owned" stuff. Your empire has civilians that do their own thing, including all of the shipping.

[RadtheCad]

Well, if people want a brutal game, Aurora's there-  ready and waiting... 

[Majestic7]

I hate micromanagement, but I like simulation. Distant Worlds has a nice balance for it (though the automated fleets and stuff could work better). It would be nice to see civilian traffic on the map and be able to interact with it. As well as civilians actually doing stuff like forming colonies and such by themselves. This could depend on the political/economical system like in Victoria, which would change gameplay based on how totalitarian your system is. (Total micro for totalitarians, total hands-off for the opposite.)

[Greenbane]

Well, if people want a brutal game, Aurora's there-  ready and waiting... 

The problem with Aurora is that it eventually collapses under its own weight, due to its ersatz coding and structure, orbiting around a Microsoft Access database. Has anyone managed to play much more than a hundred game years?

As for micromanagement, I don't usually mind it as long as it's interesting, meaningful, non-repetitive management. Micro can mean any number of things to people, but from my point of view, there cannot be grand strategy without detailed management.

[Shadowlord]

I only once even managed to get out of the home system before it started doing 1 second per "end turn" click, or throwing error messages for no apparent reason.

[USEC_OFFICER]

That's why you never, ever turn on Invaders. Eventually they'll find a bunch of NPRs and trade sensor pings with them for all eternity. _{Though I believe that options exist to ignore sensors or something in systems you don't have ships in, which is supposed to eliminate that problem.} The Swarm and Precursors are generally fine to turn on though, since they don't randomly appear in systems and thus it's rarer for them get into a stare down with alien races.

[Shadowlord]

Where's the challenge when the alien races are all braindead, though?

[USEC_OFFICER]

Bugger if I know. I've played many games of Aurora but always dropped them before I encountered any NPRs. It just got to the point where I felt like I was doing a whole lot of nothing and moved onto something else.

[sambojin]

That's the thing about the Stars! way of doing it. If you're doing it right, the micro never stops. Ideally, the eXpansion phase continues all game, which means plenty more micro for colonization and spreading on top of all the other MM for warfighting.

Mostly the MM does stop though. You just can't be bothered doing it right. By that time you'll have hit your micro limit, and the human brain just can't handle it any more. It assigns it into "important stuff" and "stuff I really don't give a rat's arse about any more" sections of the game, and expansion and colonization tends to end up in the latter. So does basic minefield laying and sweeping on a regular basis.

You'll be micro'ing enough fleets for battle by then, where a 1LY fleet split or change in orders can sometimes make a huge difference, even without exploits.

It's a good test so you can see your own "brain dribble" factor. How long can you keep up complete MM of your empire before you just start using "large chunks of whatever" for that section of the game? God help you if you load a game from a few days ago or have multiple games going over a reasonable time period. It's almost as though your own brain rebels against such torture, and even if you know what you were trying to do, your apathy level rises to ignore the challenge.

I hope Stellaris does away with a lot of that. It's grueling.

[Shadowlord]

It's a good test so you can see your own "brain dribble" factor. How long can you keep up complete MM of your empire before you just start using "large chunks of whatever" for that section of the game?

I had noticed that in another way when playing OpenTTD. When I was making tons of money, I'd ignore things that weren't making a lot of money but weren't losing a lot either, because there were more efficient* or fun things I could do instead of fixing or removing those.

* in terms of how much profit they would generate for the time taken to make or change them

[sambojin]

It's one of the hardest things to do right in games. Keeping it detailed enough that there's still a lot of tweaking available, but still have it interesting enough to be worthwhile doing for the umpteenth time. I did exactly the same thing in OTTD. New routes were always better than updating old ones.

I've got a lot of faith in Paradox in this regard. It just depends on if they can make it relatable enough for us to keep our interest, something which can be tricky with aliens/space/future tech.

Take HoI3 for example. Very detailed, huge numbers of units, supply chains, tech trees, diplomacy, the whole bit. But they managed to straddle the line between micro and automation pretty well. Considering just how annoying virtually any other interface would have made being Russia in that game, they did very well indeed. It's not perfect, but once you learn the basics, its actually not that hard to get huge battlelines moving or defending.

If they can do that with a WWII sim, they should be able to pull it off in a space sim, if only because scale can be arbitrarily determined for the sake of gameplay. How detailed/micro'y do you want it? Paradox can more or less choose, so I'm hoping they err on the side of fun and fluid, rather than every little rock having to matter. Good automation, but the ability to go silly on micro if you want.

HoI3 wasn't perfect, but it's a good example of how things could be done, without it turning into a logistical nightmare. Well, mostly, anyway. At least there will be a smaller start point to work your way up from, rather than the 1 hour setup times of HoI3 before you even unpause. It should be a lot easier on new players, rather than the "You're Russia. You have all Russia's stuff. Have fun!" start in HoI. A more organic growth at the start would make most of Paradox's interface styles really easy to use.

[sambojin]

I guess to put it into a HoI3 perspective for Stellaris: I want all my troops forming up and defending adequately without me having to do squat-all other than the initial setup. I'll focus on a bit of diplomacy, a bit of specific tech, but some of it just gets done by itself. I've got better things to do, I've set the grand plan in motion. I don't need to fulfill it all.

But I still want the option to personally command my spearhead army of light/medium tanks and mechanised infantry, so I feel personally involved in the blitzes. And messing around with my air force and a few small naval contingents to put pressure on where needed. But auto-grunts are auto'ing.

I still do want the option to move the grunts around though. I just have no intentions of doing it all the time. But I could, if I wanted to.

And thusly, the war was won

I know Paradox can do this, because they have already done so before. It just depends on how they do it this time. Having a smaller start will be amazing. When it's a 4X then GS for the players, but there might be a few big blue blobs for NPCs, it sounds like a challenge. Without the learning cliff or start-up times. Or predefined events/start positions and power.

I'm barely looking forward to Stellaris more than HoI4, but only barely. If there's one company that can do MM vs auto, 4X'y and GS, it's them. Plus, they make games that stand the test of time, even if they're flawed as shit (on release and after). That's a totally different line to straddle, but they always do.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Paradox's track record indicated good things. Personally, i'm pumped.

[sambojin]

The MOST important thing had better still be how big your name is on the map. And they'd better give us full unicode or TT font access this time. BB code too.

B=======) 

In Earthling, our people's name translates to "We're not going to use lube motherfucker!".

[sambojin]

"You still use the word gay for happy, right? You're going to feel so 'happy' once our invasion fleets come to, at, in, or on your planet.
Signed, the B======) President."

And thusly, the war of the *happy campers* was begun.

And yes, conquering worlds just to turn that frown upside-down, or maybe straightening it out a bit, can be your entire empire's goal. Make it big, of course, but not bendy.