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[EnigmaticHat]

I never thought of that...

[MrWiggles]

So, I think I just lost my first stellaris game. It was overall, pretty peaceful. All of the 3 bigger guys near me, were all traders or philes and the few that werent, were eaten by them. And then this zealot guy, got pissy that I was expanding and making a U around his space. (As I was expanding closer to the militarist isolationist fallen empire, but they were keeping a steady buffer between the two.) And they had buddies on the literal other side of the galaxy. I was playing an elliptical galaxy, and I had sorta just fat guy around the core. So I had a central gut my legs were pudging out. 

Holy crap...

Several fleets of 6-7k. And here I was having chronic energy credit problems and could barely afford my fleet of 9k. I was super mineral rich, and ended up just having to do trades for monthly transfers for lump sums and some monthly transfers. But when you're buring -15, and at my worse, -130 EC, getting 5 a month is just a piss in the ocean.

Now the two big peaceful guys and I all alliance up, but man, we dont have the numbers. There was this huge epic battle over Sol. That was awesome. I had sent my fleet to my border, and I hadnt consider they would just make a bee line to my capital so my 9k fleet was just heading away...

And if you give, at least warp cable ships a long way point, they wont change their destinations.

Now, I did have a few Fortress platforms. Only 2 actually, as you cant build very many of them and they have some pretty intensive EC maintenance cost. But they were only 1k of power each, and when facing a total of 13-15k, it just didnt matter. .

SO eventually, my fleet manage to to get back into SOL before they were finished, and started to engage the massive fleet. I figure, that I was totally boned and may as well as watch the fire works.

Then one of my allies, /finally/ comes into the fray with two fleets of 6k. And we manage to to win that huge space battle...

(Which had a super tiny warscore value.)

But yea... My 9k fleet was shot down to 3k, and there no way I can a mass a navy to win this war to a white peace.


Overall, I had lots of fun and will be playing again.
I found it a real fucking bitch to get any influence. Yea, I had my rivals set up, but my three closet neighbors and I were chill, so the distance penalty really hurt me.  But eventually, that smoothed out.
A thing that I couldnt figure out what to do, was how to get high level scientists. At the start of the game, it was pretty easy. I had them all up at 5 stars in what seem like quick order. Then they all died. And now I'm lucky to get anyone over 3 stars before they die. There are these neat quest things, but they all require lvl5 to do them.
I nearly bankrupted myself during my second or wave of expansion. For a good long time, I had only 3 planets. Then wham, I hit this critical point, and suddenly there was more planets for me to gobble.

Setting those things up, are /expensive/ which is a good thing. I like that. It makes colonizing really methodical and purposeful.
Colonizing eventually became kinda of a pain when I had uplifted several races and made them be succumb by my mighty humanity. They were in different sectors. I could build the colonizing ships just fine, it was just tedious. I was concern that the AI would try and control them, since I was forcing ship production out of stations I didnt control. You cant even control Observation Posts in other sectors. (Which seems dumb.)

But I needed them for this new batch of conolizing and the other sectors had planets that could sustain them. So More the merrier. I'd be happy if this happen on its own, but it didnt seem like it would happen.

I had a fine time keeping my sector happy. They were just room mates to my empire of five planets really.

I wish they were more active. I know there a big scary review shitting on the game... but I do wish they were more active. I wish they function something like an alien race Allie. Especially if I set one of them to a military sector. I want them to produce ships and then pay for their up keep, but I dont get to control them directly. Or maybe pay influence and you can assume command when you're at war.

It also felt kinda of dumb that I had several sectors with 1000s of EC sitting in the bank, but I still had to go out and trade for them. I wish I could just trade with the sectors. Or by taking a lump sum, you dont have to pay the taxes for x amount of time. Like taking an advance or something.

I like uplifting and having them become a vassal and integration. I really fucking love that new races pop up as space faring after the game start.  Though at some point, there isnt any room for them.

Um...
The bonuses for planetary governors, and sector governors are kinda meh. Scientist traits and admiral traits seem much better. I have no idea if generals really matter. With only 10 slots for Leaders, generals seem to be the biggest waste. I dont get why its restricted to ten. Its already limited by influence, and you will be hard press to keep those leaders filled up, as they die. 

Oh, I found it really hard to understand which special resources I had, and I dont quite understand if buildings 'use them' up or not.  I also wish that if I want to use a special building, and the special resource is in a sector, that I can still use it. Or be sure that the Sector is using it.

[Cyroth]

You get more leader slots later.
There are several researches that give +2 slots each and another one that can come multiple times and gives +1 slot each time you do it.
I think I'm at 18 or 19 slots.

Influence can be very hard to come by or you can drown in it, depends on your government.
I played a Republic once that changed leaders every 5 years and each new leader would give a super easy quest (build 3 mining outposts) that gave 200 influence.
The military dictatorship I play as now doesn't have anything like that and gaining influence is way harder.

[MrWiggles]

You get more leader slots later.
There are several researches that give +2 slots each and another one that can come multiple times and gives +1 slot each time you do it.
I think I'm at 18 or 19 slots.

Influence can be very hard to come by or you can drown in it, depends on your government.
I played a Republic once that changed leaders every 5 years and each new leader would give a super easy quest (build 3 mining outposts) that gave 200 influence.
The military dictatorship I play as now doesn't have anything like that and gaining influence is way harder.

Yea. I was an indirect demo. I got new leaders but eventually, I had built them all up. There werent any more mining stations or research stations left to build. I hadnt consider destroying them and rebuilding them. I dont think I'd be incline to, as that seems a bit to min maxing for my taste.

[Majestic7]

Don't autocratic realms get a permanent bonus depending on the leader agenda for the lifetime of the leader instead of the influence agenda bonus? So there is a difference, democracies have more political clout while autocracies have a set efficiency bonus in certain area.

Protectorates/uplifts made me think of rebels... We should really be able to support/arm rebels in neighbor territory, especially if it is a planet populated by our species that we lost to them. Hopefully we will get espionage DLC soon.

Edit: Now that I think about what is bad about Stellaris, I think Paradox failed a little by going to differences in numbers instead of difference in actions regarding values/governments/species. What I mean by this is that some +10% bonus to something might be mathematically big thing, but it doesn't come across to the player that different to -10% malus. If instead the player had a different ship class or diplomacy action or something, it would give the player the impression of larger difference between those choices. Even if the actual difference would be less.

So I think the differences that exist are appreciated by those with a mathematical approach to games or with a lot of past experience about Paradox games. But people coming in from more accessible games have a feeling that the game is bland regarding the options available, because numbers don't come across intuitively in the same way.

[EnigmaticHat]

The most important thing for generating energy is solar panel modules.  Energy credits by their nature tend to run pretty neutral, making them susceptible to even small swings.  3 power per planet is NOT a small swing when you add up all the planets in an empire.  Also, be sure to build power mining stations literally everywhere you're allowed to; they're one of few things in the game that have no maintenance and are a pure benefit.  If your surveyors spot a nice patch of energy in space, feel free to grab it with a frontier station.

Beyond that, you want to keep power costs low by expanding outward before you build upward.  Basic buildings are usually the most power and mineral efficient of way of producing a resource, while upgrades can be serious power hogs.  Avoid needless excess like upgraded labs or unnecessary food if you're struggling with EC.  The purpose of upgrades is to make yourself more powerful once you have no more space on which to build basic buildings.

There's a lot you can do to lower fleet upkeep.  There's a hard limit of -47% fleet upkeep modifier which you can hit in a variety of ways.  Faction leaders and admirals both have fleet upkeep reducing traits.  Hunting space monsters is a good way to give admirals traits, hopefully you'll get the logistics one.  Docking your fleet at a starport reduces its upkeep, and modules can make your starports even better at lowering upkeep.  Beyond that, ship cost translates directly into fleet upkeep cost.  If you're strapped for cash small savings on the ship designer can translate into large savings when multiplied across an entire fleet.  Try to predict when you'll be in conflict and avoid upgrading your fleet if you won't be needing it, as more primitive components are cheaper to maintain.

[Wolock]

Results of the War of Eviction

I was able to merge all my fleets before destroying a lone battlecruiser. Then I made an unconditional surrender.

While I lost 9 colonies in sectors and one core I was able to keep most of my fleet, got some debris to research and about 4 colonies were being established right before the war and weren't affected.

Also the race I've integrated in my empire is down from a quarter of my pop before the war to only 2.

[EnigmaticHat]

That sounds catastrophically bad for you.

Hope that battlecruiser had some good shit on it.

[Neyvn]

Ok this is getting annoying. Another "Questline" that broke, I think...

Probe Recovery. They all spawned nearby, though one was in a surveyed system so the bonus was pointless and the second was scavenged back to the same system as the first, the third had a Void Cloud guarding it but the forth, it was 'Modified' by something/one. It spoke to me, asking me if I were the makers. No matter which I would choose though, it would attack. I defended with my fleet. And then.... NOTHING! IT DIDN'T CHANGE ANYTHING, the quest is still there to be done but now its pinging the CENTER OF THE GALAXY! The F-ing Core where you can't travel... WTF??!?!?!

[Sean Mirrsen]

Right now the most gamebreaking bug I've encountered, is that you can't random-name custom ship designs. :/

[Neyvn]

Right now the most gamebreaking bug I've encountered, is that you can't random-name custom ship designs. :/

Oh heck yeah this is annoying...
I generally just click the Autocreate button, then steal the name of the class I want to make a customship out of. But have learned only to specialize. Cause upgrading the ships only goes for the best one it seems, can't make a fleet of a collection of similar classes it seems or I must be missing something! No Longrange Rocket Corvettes flying around with CQC Corvettes with high shield/armour defenses without micromanaging that...

[MrWiggles]

So, should I go though every sector and make sure every station has solar panels?

[Orange Wizard]

So, should I go though every sector and make sure every station has solar panels?

Probably.

[Majestic7]

I've had no problems with energy, but I put energy mining stations anywhere. Plus those strategic resource power plants are really good combined with the power hub. If you are short of energy maybe the solar panels are worth it, but I prefer using the station slots for something else. For example, having an engineering bay at the place you keep your battlefleet can save you more energy than the solar panels would generate in the first place.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Question, since the game is so new I'm still very confused about the pace early on. Maybe I'm just being bad about efficiently constructing resource collectors, but it seems to take a very long time to get the ball rolling. How long does it usually take for you peeps to get planet #2?