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[Cruxador]

Also, despite those hundreds of hours I *legitimately did not know that Precursor spawns weren't randomised*. I just never noticed 0_o

I didn't notice either, I heard about it before realizing on my own.

Ancient Relics announced

Ain't nothing we don't know already.

I... am actually am indiferent towards this?

Yeah, same. It's not bad. I expect I'll get it. But a story pack just isn't that exciting.

Really could use combat that isn't a purely numbers-based game...

From Paradox? I wouldn't hold my breath.

[amjh]

I think 4X games as a genre already are far too combat-focused.

[Karnewarrior]

I think 4X games as a genre already are far too combat-focused.

Victoria II was good about that; you could feasibly play the entire game without fighting a war, potentially (although dangerously) even without a military, and still be considered a great power thanks to your egregious economic might.

Not exactly a 4X though.

[forsaken1111]

I think 4X games as a genre already are far too combat-focused.

With one of the four design pillars being exterminate how do you propose that works? Stellaris is one of a few 4x games you can play entirely without combat, or very little combat. I played as a fanatic pacifistic culture and only went to war 4 times the entire game, all defensive.

[Telgin]

Same here.  In my current game I've gone about 150 game years with only about 20 corvettes, which did bait one neighbor into declaring war on me twice but they were so scared of my border stations they never even attempted to invade me.  After a few years passed without a single shot fired they offered peace.

[Cruxador]

Same here.  In my current game I've gone about 150 game years with only about 20 corvettes, which did bait one neighbor into declaring war on me twice but they were so scared of my border stations they never even attempted to invade me.  After a few years passed without a single shot fired they offered peace.

You have to imagine it's a matter of their internal politics.

[forsaken1111]

Same here.  In my current game I've gone about 150 game years with only about 20 corvettes, which did bait one neighbor into declaring war on me twice but they were so scared of my border stations they never even attempted to invade me.  After a few years passed without a single shot fired they offered peace.

This makes me wonder if its possible to play an entire game without a navy. I'd still need to tech up on weapons and armor so my defense stations are beasts. With no navy I could devote significantly more to building defense stations. Probably they'll get outclassed late midgame no matter what I do though.

[Telgin]

I'm convinced it's possible in the current game at least, and I very nearly did.  I spawned in an unfortunate spot of the galaxy so my empire ended up being pretty small, to the point that my home system trade hubs were able to collect trade from almost everywhere, meaning I almost didn't even need patrols for pirates.  If I invested a little more in hangar stations, I wouldn't have needed the patrol corvettes at all.

Defensive border stations can easily stand up to AI empire fleets up until the mid game at least and really don't even need defense platforms at that point.  I was able to keep my border stations above the largest fleets of my neighbors just by upgrading them to the biggest sizes available and making sure they had gun modules in every slot.  If you have a particularly aggressive (or advanced start) neighbor, you might need defense platforms.

The real snag here is what happens if an awakened empire is near you.  If you seriously invest in border stations you can beat their fleets, but it takes that investment, including a strategic coordination center and as many repeatable techs and defense platforms as you can fit on a station.  I got one to almost 200K fleet power once doing this.  The real problem with awakened empires is that they have jump drives, and while I've yet to see one actually bypass my border stations, I'm sure it happens.

And, of course, playing purely defensively won't work against the crises unless you're on a low crisis strength setting and are lucky enough for the galaxy to get its act together.  I've yet to see the AI empires pose a credible threat to even weak crises, but maybe they can on 1x.

[EnigmaticHat]

Personally I think 4x's should have simply defined rules as to who can threaten what areas of the map and who wins an engagement.  If a game has enough going on combat can be defined purely by preparation and still be interesting.  The key point is both the AI and the player should mostly understand the outcome of a war in advance so they can plan around that.

Edit: So to be clear I actually like where Stellaris went since if you go in with a plan for who you want to fight and where you'll be more effective than with no plan, not necessarily true prior to the FTL rework.

[ollobrains]

peeps should try the star trek new horizons mod, theres more lore / roleplay and a unique tech tree and a bit more of an engaging experience

[EuchreJack]

peeps should try the star trek new horizons mod, theres more lore / roleplay and a unique tech tree and a bit more of an engaging experience

Did they fix that junk where starbases always regenerated, so you couldn't invade anyone? That's what keeps me away from that.

[Hanzoku]

Finally got around to playing with the newest version, but I think I'm also already done with it. While I cautiously approve of how they've handled populations and planets, and I'm glad they finally removed that stupid leader cap, overall I feel like they just massively slowed down the game to little other benefit. Research proceeds at a crawl, while fleet and station caps are absurdly low so everyone's maximum fleet size is minuscule. Until now, 60 years in, I've seen exactly one war in the western half of the galaxy and there's no chance of a war anytime in the near future because neither I nor any of the AIs around me can muster enough fleet to make one worthwhile.

[Telgin]

It does feel like the scaling of a lot of things has been kind of screwed up since 2.2.  Research is very slow early on, but if get much science production at all it suddenly starts to go very fast by midgame, to the point you can easily be at the 10+ repeatable point by end game.  Naval capacity is definitely the second thing that feels weird.  I really like the idea of pop jobs providing naval capacity, but by competing with economic buildings it pretty much ensures I never build the planetary fortresses unless I need a little boost to housing and jobs on a planet.

[ZeroGravitas]

peeps should try the star trek new horizons mod, theres more lore / roleplay and a unique tech tree and a bit more of an engaging experience

it is insanely slow though. like if you think stellaris chugs at later dates, ST:NH does it the whole time, and only gets worse

[Paul]

I don't think it really slowed down any. If you manage things well you can blast right through tech and get big fleets and everything pretty quick. It's just that the AI is completely incompetent in the new system and thus stagnates really bad and grows super slowly. But the player can shoot past even advance start AIs on the higher difficulties.

Even on the highest difficulty with all AI on advanced start I still surpass everyone in tech military and economy by mid game. The AI mods improve this some, but even modded the AI is woefully insufficient. I'm hoping they eventually take some time to work on that aspect and teach the AI to manage their empires a bit more efficiently.