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[Descan]

I'm just gonna say, the one streamlining I know of is the transportation boats pool (a la supply convoys, but for transporting troops) and honestly? Yes. That was needed.

[Majestic7]

The base structure of Paradox games have been steadily improving, like I think EU4 is vastly superior to EU2. What was lost though were the historical events etc and other content. Instead Paradox now increasingly make just skeletons and frameworks, expecting modders to provide the real content. It is the same with CK2, although the base game is great it gets boring quickly; it is the fluff, flavor and events provided by modders in the Big Mods that make the game awesome.

It will be interesting to see if Stellaris will be the same kind of empty framework.

[BFEL]

It will be interesting to see if Stellaris will be the same kind of empty framework.

Personally I would be 100% ok with this.

[Majestic7]

Yah, even an excellent empty framework that does things differently to the standard "Master of Orion II for the 113th time" would be well worth the money.

[Jopax]

I think the main difference that Stellaris has to their previous titles is that the older games all operated in a historical framework, so they had to stick to certain things and storylines, especially in stuff like HoI which was very focused in its timeline. So there aren't any historical events or scenarios that they can stick to this time around. What they seem to be making is essentially a framework for emergent stories and games. A 4x focused on making up your own story as to why and how things are happening. Having structured events that you can expect in every playtrough would be the exact opposite of that. What will happen I think is that there are going to be events and things but these will for the most part be very general and non-specific so that they don't feel out of place in certain situations and scenarios. But hopefully, the events will be moddable and customizable so that you can in the end create a very specific and focused scenario if you want to.

[DemonOfWrath]

Honestly I think this game more than the others paradox has released in recent years will work really, really well with their current design methodology, which has been to initially release a more open framework and use expansions to fill in specific areas to much greater detail over the games life.

For instance, they're going with 3 methods of FTL travel. When the game comes out, I won't be surprised if within a few weeks people started modding in new options in addition to those, or if an expansion takes that and increases that number while simultaneously making the existing ones more nuances.

How this game evolves with expansions, mods and total conversions (I'm sure a lot of us expect someone to do a full 40k conversion of this asap?) is actually really exciting. You can look at EU4 and CK2, both games (without mods) are vastly superior to what they were at release.

[Zangi]

The base structure of Paradox games have been steadily improving, like I think EU4 is vastly superior to EU2. What was lost though were the historical events etc and other content. Instead Paradox now increasingly make just skeletons and frameworks, expecting modders to provide the real content. It is the same with CK2, although the base game is great it gets boring quickly; it is the fluff, flavor and events provided by modders in the Big Mods that make the game awesome.

It will be interesting to see if Stellaris will be the same kind of empty framework.

Can't please both the this-never-could-have-happened-back-then group and the why-does-AI-always-do-the-same-thing-in-every-damn-game group.

[mainiac]

Yes but you can make the AI always do the same ahistorical thing every game.

[Flying Dice]

For instance, they're going with 3 methods of FTL travel. When the game comes out, I won't be surprised if within a few weeks people started modding in new options in addition to those, or if an expansion takes that and increases that number while simultaneously making the existing ones more nuances.

That's a no-brainer for sure. They've already got:

1. Battletech style (Ship-based, outside system gravity well, high cost, recharge time, limited range, unrestricted destination, non-instantaneous)
2. One-way Gate-style (Infrastructure-based, outside system gravity well, single-threaded, unlimited range, unrestricted destination, non-instantaneous)
3. semi-Honor Harrington-style (Ship-based, no gravity well restriction, restricted destination, range delineated by natural distribution of systems, non-instantaneous, conceptualized as "lanes")

That leaves plenty of options. You can go Starfire style and have naturally occurring paired wormholes which connect instantly but which are easily defended choke points; Star Trek warp drive style and allow ships to travel without a set destination system albeit at lower speeds; maybe even throw in a generic point-to-point hyperdrive which can only navigate to previously visited systems, meaning that you have to send ships out on blind jumps to discover systems, randomizing their destination with a spread weighted by distance from the starting point. Shit like that.

But yeah, if that sort of thing is moddable then the game is ripe for total conversions.

[Aklyon]

Is it still one-way if they can apparently call for a gate opening when they need to go back and are within range of the station?

[Shadowlord]

Honor Harrington is more like the first kind, though. There's a hyper limit, and general travel is conducted via hyperspace. Wormhole junctions tend to be extremely rare in HH - It just happens that the Star Kingdom of Manticore has the Manticore Wormhole Junction in its home system, and that connects to seven other systems. (They have a cooldown time dependent on the mass that has been shoved through them, as well.)

[Culise]

Aye.  There are transit lanes in Honor Harrington, but these are closer akin to shipping lanes on Earth's oceans: typical paths taken by commercial ships, guided by terrain and prevailing winds.  The Honorverse simply gives us Warshawki sails for cloth sails, hyper and impeller drives for oars or engines, stars for terrain, and standing gravity waves for prevailing wind.

[GundamMerc]

For instance, they're going with 3 methods of FTL travel. When the game comes out, I won't be surprised if within a few weeks people started modding in new options in addition to those, or if an expansion takes that and increases that number while simultaneously making the existing ones more nuances.

That's a no-brainer for sure. They've already got:

1. Battletech style (Ship-based, outside system gravity well, high cost, recharge time, limited range, unrestricted destination, non-instantaneous)

I'm pretty sure Battletech is instantaneous once you initiate the jump, it's getting to the jump point, the recharge time, and the limited range that limit its travel time.

[Hanzoku]

Yes, the battletech FTL is instant, but recharge is between one to two weeks, assuming you don't have a battery system in the jumpship to carry enough charge for a second jump. This does present the very real possibility that you can jump into a hostile system and lose your jumpship because it can't get back out in time.

Also, prior to 3070 or so, no one except the clans have warships, and jumpships were both irreplacable and practically unarmed, so surrendering it was considered the logical thing to do.

After 3070, everyone has piles of warships, and the whole universe went a bit out of whack.

[Culise]

Dev Diary 5: Empires and Species

So, Empires are defined by species (in the six major classes we know already: Mammalian, Arthropoid, Avian, Reptilian, Molluscoid or Fungoid), but also by their Ethos (which are designated at game start, but can also be manipulated in-game).  Species have genetic traits which are also bought separately, which are much more fixed when compared to ethos but are still not completely inviolate (quote from Sheng-ji Yang here).  Pops also have their own ethos which may or may not match their government, like Victoria 2 issues and parties, but it looks like they're a bit more unruly than they were in V2.  It sounds...promising, depending on how much control we actually have to influence population and government ethos directly or indirectly.