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[ZeroGravitas]

Do Stellaris pops really have traits, or is that just the officers? Do they actually rebel individually? I thought that kind of thing happend on a per-faction basis.

I'll look about for it but no, pops aren't that simple. Pops have the traits of their races, with variations. Pops of the same species living in different environments will diverge over time and become different pops of different (sub)species. There's also the possibility for sentient robot pops from technology or something. Pops of the same race can belong to different factions as well - on the stream there were some radical pacifist separatists who rioted, and wanted their own state. That's on a per-pop basis, I think?

It's not quite Vicky 2 in space, no, since we don't have as much of the economic side of things. But it's certainly more complicated than Civ citizens. (Specialist jobs in Civ are really just a kind of tile.) And it's certainly much more complicated than MoO2 pops, still.

[Biowraith]

Fwiw, on the 2nd Blorg video, at 1:49:50 you can see the happiness modifiers for a particular pop that's joined a faction, and at 1:50:03 you can see the traits and ethics for that same pop.  Ethics can change on its own - and in this case it has, from the racial default Militarist to Fanatic Pacifist - with some government types and racial traits affecting how likely that is to happen (e.g. Conformist makes it less likely).

We've not seen traits changing yet, but in a number of places the devs have mentioned that you'll be able to use genetic manipulation tech to add (possibly remove?) traits from a pop/race and as mentioned by others, pops might decide to genetically manipulate themselves to better suit their environment (presumably that just means changing from e.g. Tropical preference to e.g. Arid preference) and while they're at it might decide to make other changes and potentially end up declaring themselves a separate species.

[umiman]

I've been playing Polaris Sector to pass the time till Stellaris.

If you're interested, I put my impressions in the spoiler.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's pretty neat. It's basically Master of Orion, except more modern. I don't understand why the Steam reviews are mixed... maybe they're from it was in early access or something? I played for around 23 hours yesterday in a row and only stopped when I realized the sun was rising. Again. Also the bullshit secret boss was total bullshit and made me ragequit.

Combat:
The combat is pretty fun, probably the best part of the game, as it's real time. The ship design is great too as you fiddle around to make your own tactical disasters. It's actually very endearing. My first ship I tried to fight off the enemy's fighter swarms by building the most point-defense-y of point defense ship, bristling with lasers and rockets to nuke tiny fighters. I had four of them against his two carriers and they cost at least 4 times the price. Completely failed. It really hurts in this because it takes YEARS to make ships. something that never changes until the end of the game. So I spent the next few years being in panic mode trying to prevent the enemy from completely wiping me off the map.

In my panic I thought I could at least delay them by making some sort of rubbish cheapo ship (that still took like a year to make). Well, it turned out my rubbish cheapo ship was also super light because it had no armor or anything. So I could blitz past the fighters and nuke the carriers before running away. And till now that rubbish cheapo ship is still a mainstay of my forces.

Come to think of it. Speed is a really big deal in this, more so than other games. It feels more like Nexus: Jupiter Incident, which had a great combat system for space battles. The difference in speed is massive as it means you can kite and harass more. Make no mistake, big ships in this move so frigging slow. Even their turn rates are abysmal. If you can flank a capital ship up the arse with torpedo bombers, it's usually boned. There's also stealth and interdiction and all that other good stuff.

The combat really is a ton of fun. I wish you could set the engagement ranges and what direction you want the ship to face though.

Tech:
It's got a nice scope and I really like how the tech tree has a good balance of diversity while maintaining a lot of usefulness in older stuff. In other 4x-es, you kinda make everything obsolete as you progress up the tech tree but in here you can very likely still be using your basic lasers and nuclear reactors at the end simply because they're so cheap and you like to field ten trillion cheap fighters to swarm enemies. And they're not just cheap too. Most of the time the tech unlocks are just sidegrades. Very rarely are they upgrades. So it depends whether you like that kinda thing or not. I have to say that it's nice having to decide on 13 different generator options for my ship. I have to think... do I have the minerals for this? Isn't this too expensive? What about the upkeep cost? What about the weight? Do I really want to put my super ultra generator on a suicide fighter?

AI:
It's pretty decent from what I've seen. I played on normal the whole time, maybe it gets super hard on hard? The AI backstabbed me a few times and the diplomacy kinda makes sense. Nothing really stands out other than the fucking backstabs. On the battle side of things they do a good job. They're not afraid to attack you. They run away when they don't stand a chance. They try to flank with their ships and use formations. No complaints really. I've never gone "why the fuck?" when it comes to the AI.

They also really love exploiting weakspots in your defense and finding ways into your realm. When you give them military access to your worlds (in exchange for theirs) they will send in lots of spies to scout you out. It's not completely bad though, because there's a setting in your options where you can choose how much misinformation you want to feed them if you manage to detect their spy ships. Pretty cool.

Pacing:
The pacing in this game is glacial. Which should be fine for Paradox fans. Everything takes years. Literal years. It even has the real time pausing / speeding up just like Paradox games. Almost every decision can be lethal simply because of how long it takes to recover from a mistake. That 4 corvette fleet you spent 8 years building got wiped out? Welp... good luck! Hope you like defending things with fighters for awhile. Do you decide to spent 50 years rushing frigate ships or let the tech balance out evenly? Sent your fleet on a 3 year journey only to find out pirates are poking at your butthole?

This pacing doesn't change, even until the end of the game. Well except for tech. In the end you're getting so much tech so fast it's kinda stupid really.

It's actually pretty intense like that. Oh, and you can't rush construction. Everything has to be slowly built. There's also no money in this game, only minerals. Those can't rush anything either.

Downsides:
As for downsides... the game was made by a really small team and it shows. Models and animations need a lot of work, though they have their own kinda charm I guess. It's not the most complex game, though it's more complex than the most recent Master of Orion rerelease. Some of the UI quirks are super annoying such as how difficult it is to have to manually go into every planet to manually build your ships. When you have a thousand worlds, it gets very annoying trying to assign production to them. I also once ran into a piece of dialogue that was completely in Russian. Also there really isn't anything in terms of events or random stuff or variety. You can pretty much expect the same game every single time you play because nothing is going to shake it up.

The early game strat is always going to be the same and I can't see how it will ever change. You're going to want to rush habitation modules so you can actually colonize 90% of space as opposed to 10% of it. And you'll be spamming colonizers like mad. There's no downside to having a million worlds and in fact, if you have a world disadvantage it can be quite severe.

Oh, the biggest problem I have with this game is that you can't destroy planets.

There's also this mod:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[gimli]

Well...not the most interesting DD, but it is worth a read: Stellaris Dev Diary #27 - Music & Sound

"Next entry will be an interesting one when the Project Lead speaks about Stellaris."

[Majestic7]

The first sample song reminds me of Mass Effect. The music has a strong 1980s scifi flick vibe, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It reminds me of all the hours spent playing Traveller as tabletop RPG with friends.

[Retropunch]

I've been playing Polaris Sector to pass the time till Stellaris.

I followed it on this forum (under it's old name) and it looks really good - a shame it hasn't got more coverage, but I'll definitely get it at some point. Unfortunately the price point is just too high at the moment for me to justify it - especially as it is definitely 100% indie in production values.

[Persus13]

I'm a little disappointed in the music samples. The music just sounds like generic epic sci-fi music instead of finding some way to stand out from the rest of the pack of sci-fi game/film scores. I really liked Waldetoft's historically appropriate music for CKII and EUIV, and they managed to stand out from other historical video game scores, but here his music just sounds bland and barely melodic. I hope the full soundtrack will prove me wrong.

Also, the synth beat in the second track is too loud, and makes me feel like I'm in some sort of club instead of doing grand exploration.

[umiman]

I've been playing Polaris Sector to pass the time till Stellaris.

I followed it on this forum (under it's old name) and it looks really good - a shame it hasn't got more coverage, but I'll definitely get it at some point. Unfortunately the price point is just too high at the moment for me to justify it - especially as it is definitely 100% indie in production values.

Yeah. It's actually very similar to Distant Space actually in terms of production, except Distant Space has way better automation. The combat is way more fun in Polaris though.

If I were to rank recent Space 4X's, it'd be...

1. Sword of the Stars
2. Distant Worlds
3. Polaris
4. Star Ruler 2
5. Master of Orion (The new one)

Edit: Wait fuck that. Aurora is number 1.

[Glloyd]

If I were to rank recent Space 4X's, it'd be...

1. Sword of the Stars
2. Distant Worlds
3. Polaris
4. Star Ruler 2
5. Master of Orion (The new one)

Edit: Wait fuck that. Aurora is number 1.

I really want to get into Aurora, but I can never seem to find the time and figure out how to play it well enough to enjoy it. It's just so obtuse, even compared to DF and SS13, two of my favourite games.

[Orange Wizard]

Well...not the most interesting DD, but it is worth a read: Stellaris Dev Diary #27 - Music & Sound

That was underwhelming.

[Egan_BW]

This music is great.

[Greenbane]

Music's alright, but could be better. I realize it's hard to compose sci-fi instrumental of the "epic" variety, but considering Waldetoft's record (EU4's music is awesome), he shouldn't be afraid of trying.

I really want to get into Aurora, but I can never seem to find the time and figure out how to play it well enough to enjoy it. It's just so obtuse, even compared to DF and SS13, two of my favourite games.

Aurora is really in need of an overhaul (Where's Aurora II?). I really enjoyed it a good while ago, around version 5.42, but the game just crumbles under its own weight within 100 game years due to the way it's coded. It's essentially a bunch of VisualBasic (I think?) code duct-taped to a Microsoft Access database. I believe the new versions keep adding features, but the structural foundations of the game are still just a rickety bunch of sticks tied together, and that can't be fixed without redoing everything in a new, better-suited environment.

[Culise]

Music's alright, but could be better. I realize it's hard to compose sci-fi instrumental of the "epic" variety, but considering Waldetoft's record (EU4's music is awesome), he shouldn't be afraid of trying.

I really want to get into Aurora, but I can never seem to find the time and figure out how to play it well enough to enjoy it. It's just so obtuse, even compared to DF and SS13, two of my favourite games.

Aurora is really in need of an overhaul (Where's Aurora II?). I really enjoyed it a good while ago, around version 5.42, but the game just crumbles under its own weight within 100 game years due to the way it's coded. It's essentially a bunch of VisualBasic (I think?) code duct-taped to a Microsoft Access database. I believe the new versions keep adding features, but the structural foundations of the game are still just a rickety bunch of sticks tied together, and that can't be fixed without redoing everything in a new, better-suited environment.

Like C#? ^_^
((Honestly, just the revamped class design window is enough to make me wish for its release.  Color choices could be chosen much better for legibility, though.))

[Greenbane]

Like C#? ^_^
((Honestly, just the revamped class design window is enough to make me wish for its release.  Color choices could be chosen much better for legibility, though.))

Yeah, found that checking out the Aurora forums just after posting here. If it stabilizes and optimizes the game's running, it'll be a godsend.

Well, it's still taped to the Access database, which contains 90% of the game, so time will tell just how much of an improvement it would be.

[Retropunch]

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?board=234.0]C#[/url]? ^_^

OH MY GAWWWD!!!!! It's finally happened!!!!!! I thought the day would never, ever come.

Aurora is one of my absolute all time favorite things which I also really hate. I just can't deal with playing a game I know will collapse after a certain amount of time, no matter what I do. Even with the most careful play, it just ends up folding after a few hundred years unless you sort of basically cheat. It's also infuriatingly clunky - even when you've gotten to grips with it.

I literally could not be more excited.