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[Aklyon]

Yea. It spat asteroids at things.

[thvaz]

The game is okay for the most part, but...

The combat and ship designing bits are awful, the worst of all the 4x space games I've played, and I played a lot of them.

[Sirus]

I dunno, the ship designer in Stellaris never struck me as all that bad. I'm quite certain there are worse ones.

[Greiger]

Just saw a stupid AI moment.

Got dragged into a war by a hive mind attacking a defensive pact buddy.  My pact buddy is completely incapable of defending himself, and is sending all his ships off to fight the hive mind's buddy on the literal other side of the galaxy anyway.  So I move in, and as highest tech civ in the galaxy I'm stomping a bunch of bugs into goo.

Mid stomping I have a couple ships flying around nuking their wormholes.  And a single corvette shows up to fight one of my destroyers.   Somehow the corvette has double my destroyer's battle rating.  I expect to lose it.  Instead I find that my destroyer is regenning it's shields faster than the corvette can damage them.  Corvette gets filled full of plasma and disruptor, and another single lone corvette shows up to try it's luck.  It also dies.  This happens 5 times before my main fleet starts knocking on the door to the hive mind capital.

Moral of this story, when programming combat AI, make sure to put in a single check that compares your dps to the opponent's regen rate, and wait to build up yer fleet a little first if you can't outdamage their regen.

[Neonivek]

Yeah the battle ratings in the game are... weird...

I mean we all know about how buildings have insane battle rating purely by armor and shields.

Yet I've upgraded my fleet and had its battle rating decrease! (I think it is because I got tech that let me be more efficient...)

[Chiefwaffles]

Okay. Ringworlds are straight-up useless.
Sure, they give you the equivalent of 4 gaia worlds in one system and look cool, but:

• They still take up a core slot.
• They take forever to unlock - you have to get a super-endgame tech then two ascension perks after that to unlock the ringworld.
• They take even longer to build - Each stage takes an extremely long amount of time, and the first two stages are useless to you, then you have to finish each section individually, since you can only work on one section at a time and one section takes as long as a whole stage.
• Then after you finally have even one section done, you still have to build buildings and wait forever for your pops to grow.
• Habitats are also way better - they're way easier and way quicker, to build, can be built sooner in the game, and their buildings are really good - their power plant gives a base of 10 power, their labs give 3 of each science type, and their mines give 3 minerals.
• If you really want actual planets, you can always do more terraforming or colonize existing planets.
• Minor note, but buildable ringworlds also take away from the glamour of Fallen Empires and their own ringworlds. Not a huge deal though.

I see only two uses for ringworlds:
1.) As a status symbol. Admittedly, this reason is enough for me to build them super-lategame, but in my current game I got bored after starting the agonizingly long process to finish the second section, out of four sections total. But I imagine having a ringworld at the center of your empire would be pretty cool.
2.) If you're extremely starved for more fleet capacity and have colonized literally every planet possible, then ringworlds could help a bit since each section can have its own starport.


Also, has anyone had a broken Scourge invasion or am I just stupid? I had an invasion but I just got two waves and all they did was split up into 60k stacks (vs my 80k fleet equipped specifically to fight scourge ships) and perpertually bombard my vassal's planets. Their constructors and colony ships just stood there doing nothing while I destroyed each 60k stack one by one. It was disappointingly easy to beat them.

[umiman]

1. The mod versions of megastructures are better. I'm not joking, they're straight up better in every single way. The game ones are practically worthless with the exception of habitats. Considering Paradox released a space 4x without some kind of planet destroyer and with completely fucked up space structures (even base space fortresses are almost garbage), I'm starting to think they have no clue what a space 4x is supposed to be like.

[Glloyd]

1. The mod versions of megastructures are better. I'm not joking, they're straight up better in every single way. The game ones are practically worthless with the exception of habitats. Considering Paradox released a space 4x without some kind of planet destroyer and with completely fucked up space structures (even base space fortresses are almost garbage), I'm starting to think they have no clue what a space 4x is supposed to be like.

Do you have any recommendations for mods then?

[NullForceOmega]

I like 'ringworld restoration', it's fairly balanced overall, requiring three distinct late-game techs and access to living metal.

I enjoy 'jacking the Beacon of Perpetuity and rebuilding it...

[Neonivek]

A BIIIIIG problem with Paradox in how they handle Stellaris is they are too much in the mindset of making things ridiculously difficult.

They understand that a good space 4x game needs to have some awesome things... but then they make it ridiculously difficult and time extensive to actually pull off.

It is why in a good world this game would be average... (Even with the DLC... it would be average)

[Majestic7]

Personally, I value Paradox games on a different scale than other games. This is not due specific liking to their games, but rather on the history of watching them evolve. If Stellaris gets supported like CK2 and EU4, it is going to be an awesome game in a couple of years. Likewise, it is going to mold to support awesome mods that will give you practically new games using the base game as an engine to run them.

Knowing this makes Stellaris simply better than the other 4X in the ballpark, because they were pretty much abandoned after launch. Sure, Distant Stars is better in several ways, but it is stuck in being what it is. Sword of the Stars II had the potential to be something awesome, but was screwed. The new Master of Orion is just a lukewarm reheating of an old soup. Compared to the alternatives and knowing how Paradox handles the other games, Stellaris is just in its own class.

[Neonivek]

Personally, I value Paradox games on a different scale than other games. This is not due specific liking to their games, but rather on the history of watching them evolve. If Stellaris gets supported like CK2 and EU4, it is going to be an awesome game in a couple of years. Likewise, it is going to mold to support awesome mods that will give you practically new games using the base game as an engine to run them.

Stellaris has already kind of disproven this theory. Crusader Kings 2 mostly works (Ignoring how money grubby, nickel and diming it is) because DLC often doesn't have to interact with eachother in any meaningful way.

Stellaris has two expansions, it only had to deal with how two expansions interact... and they do not.

The expansions NEED to interconnect.

Not to mention in a WEIRD oddity... each expansion begets an expansion for each expansion as they never feel sort of fully cooked.

[umiman]

1. The mod versions of megastructures are better. I'm not joking, they're straight up better in every single way. The game ones are practically worthless with the exception of habitats. Considering Paradox released a space 4x without some kind of planet destroyer and with completely fucked up space structures (even base space fortresses are almost garbage), I'm starting to think they have no clue what a space 4x is supposed to be like.

Do you have any recommendations for mods then?

LEX is nice. It adds a bunch of awesome big bads floating around the galaxy with comprehensive and detailed quest lines around them.

There's beautiful space battle's doomsday weapons but I haven't used that.

NullForceOmega mentioned ringworld restoration which is great and thematically sound.

There's way too many to list, even stuff like buffing space stations so they aren't sitting ducks. Just search workshop or http://stellaris.smods.ru/. Or mod them in yourself, it's fairly easy. Just fiddling with .txt files mostly unless you want to add in new models.

---

If there's one mod I think everyone should get no matter what, I think it's auto auto explore. Why the fuck did Paradox put auto explore behind a tech you had to research is seriously beyond me.

[IWishIWereSarah]

Distant Stars is better in several ways

What game are you talking about ?
I thought I remembered a game called that, but can't find it anywhere... The closests would be Distant Worlds, or the SoaSE.

[Majestic7]

Oh yeah, Distant Worlds. Sorry, all this warp travel is melting by brains but on the plus side, Blorg body pillows and tentacles.

Honorary mention to indie game Stellar Monarch for that "I'm an emperor, don't bother me with trivialities" -felling.