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[ZeroGravitas]

... that you know of

[forsaken1111]

Yeah they're never going to revert a change that made the game better. And it IS better. I'm pretty excited about the next big change, doing away with planet tiles. Should speed up the late game stutter and make the AI a bit more sensible.

[Dutrius]

Yeah they're never going to revert a change that made the game better. And it IS better.

No. Just no.

doing away with planet tiles

*Sigh.* I didn't think it was possible to lose any more hope for the game.

[Criptfeind]

Removing the tiles and replacing them with the job system is also going to make the game better (probably) so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I used to sorta like the tiles, defended them on this thread a while back even I think. After playing a few max pop growth specialized pops builds in a row though I've come around to realizing that they need to go.

The fact that replacing them with the job system has really opened up the potential scale of the game is a bonus as well.

[Telgin]

The replacement for planet tiles is essentially just increasing the resolution of them and visualizing them differently.  Instead of planets having a maximum of 25 tiles, they now have independently tracked populations and jobs that can vastly exceed 25 each.  It's not visualized in a simple grid where you match up buildings to tile bonuses anymore, which the AI was inexplicably bad at, and instead it's broken out into population views by strata, with a separate section for viewing the planet's features like deposits and deposit blockers, which replace the old tile blockers and bonuses.

I guess you can argue that it's not the same, but I never found the old view to be particularly compelling as a way to visualize the planets' surfaces anyway.

[forsaken1111]

doing away with planet tiles

*Sigh.* I didn't think it was possible to lose any more hope for the game.

You LIKED the tile system?

The tile system was the reason that planets were limited to 25 possible pops, and the primary reason the AI had such trouble with managing planets. The new system is miles better both at simulating an actual economy and population stratification in societies that should have such stratification. You couldn't have different pops, such as nobles or technicians, in the tile system because every pop was equivalent in status.

Also ringworlds will be much closer to actual ringworlds, habitats will be properly differentiated from planetary colonies. The change overall is very very good looking. We won't know until we play, obviously, but so far in the dev clash it has seemed extremely positive.


Out of curiosity, what is your reasoning for liking the old FTL system? The new system feels and plays so much better that I have a hard time imagining why you'd prefer the old.

[Dutrius]

Eh, maybe. I'm just downright pessimistic about the game at this point. I used to have fun with it and they ruined it for me with 2.0.

To be fair, I haven't actually read up about the job system. This is the first I've heard of it. It might be amazing, but its not going to get me back into the game to check out until they fix the problems I have with hyperlanes.


And by fix hyperlanes, I mean put an optional alternative in. Maybe some sort of station that can create temporary tunnel between systems, let's call it a "Wormhole" for now. Or maybe some sort of way of relatively slowly moving between a system and any other in a certain range, let's call it a "Warpdrive". And players can restrict it to a single FTL type if they want to. Oh wait...



Pre-edit edit: Oh, so it's more like pops in Vic2? Then I approve of this change and withdraw my pessimism about it.

Out of curiosity, what is your reasoning for liking the old FTL system? The new system feels and plays so much better that I have a hard time imagining why you'd prefer the old.

I just despise hyperlanes. I have no idea why people like them so much.

[Trekkin]

I just despise hyperlanes. I have no idea why people like them so much.

Because explicit graphs are easier to understand and symmetry makes balance easy. Boring, but easy.

Wormholes and warp drives mean you forgo having a series of bright lines saying "you can go here." That makes pathfinding easier, as well, and Stellaris AI frankly needs the help.

For the record, I agree with you on wormholes and warpdrives being better, although I'm more a fan of wormholes. I just can see why the added complexity would overwhelm the devs when they're already booked solid deciding on new ways in which everyone who disagrees with them is a toxic bigot.

[Telgin]

They make defensive positions much more meaningful, for one thing, and add a bit of strategic depth to the game that's hard to get otherwise.  If you can rely on enemy fleets going through a certain system, you can put a defensive station there and it will be useful.  It also lets you more easily cut off enemy fleets.

There would have been ways to do that with the other FTL types too, and they did consider things like warp interdiction bubbles around stations.  The problem was that it was just too confusing to have to figure out if your empire was defensible against 3 different types of FTL types.  How do you present all of that information on the map without crowding it out?

Wormhole travel was apparently a major resource hog too, so there's that.  I actually don't even know how wormhole FTL travel worked in Stellaris, since I used warp in the one game I played before 2.0.

All of this said, I wouldn't have minded if they opted to drop wormholes and hyperlanes in favor of leaving warp drives in, with interdiction bubbles around defense stations that pulled ships out of warp to the stations.  It would have had a similar level of strategic depth and a bit more flexibility.

[LoSboccacc]

the real issue was that you had no real way to defend from raids without the hyperlanes creating an arbitrary frontier (they could just have either done so that warp drives emerged at a stellar body, allowing for easier intercept or that ship were disabled for an extended period after warping, but oh well)

[Dutrius]

How do you present all of that information on the map without crowding it out?

Mapmodes. Like in every other paradox grand strategy game on the Clausewitz engine.

ship were disabled for an extended period after warping

They did have that. Fleets would have a warp cool-down where they couldn't move in system and fought with a disadvantage if another fleet engaged them. It was over a month long by the late game and was the only issue I've ever had with warp. Chasing down fleets using hyperlane or wormhole was a pain in the ass.

[ZeroGravitas]

you know that the release of a new expansion is nigh when people have nothing better to do than rehash ancient debates for the 500th time

[forsaken1111]

And by fix hyperlanes, I mean put an optional alternative in.

Unfortunately for you I think they're here to stay at this point. I don't understand why you despise them so much, it's just connections between nodes on a grid. They make for better gameplay in that they allow defenses and known routes. There are the late-game jump drives which can bypass hyperlanes at a cost, the fleet is temporarily weakened to prevent players jumping a fleet directly into combat (unless you have such an overwhelming force disparity that it doesn't matter in which case why didn't you just break the defense stations?)

The hyperlane system makes the "terrain" of space matter, it makes chokepoints and makes some locations more or less strategically desirable. No it isn't realistic but realism doesn't always make for good gameplay.

Old stellaris warfare turned into weird chases where a jump drive ship would pop around its jump stations trying to nail down a warp drive ship but never quite catching it, or a hyperlane ship taking ages to make the same trek a jump ship could make in a single jump. It was weird and unintuitive and just didn't work well. SOTS did so much better with FTL differences.

[Dutrius]

I really don't get this obsession with chokepoints and "terrain". It's a bloody space game ffs.

[forsaken1111]

I really don't get this obsession with chokepoints and "terrain". It's a bloody space game ffs.

It isn't an obsession, plenty of games DON'T do it, this specific game does. I don't seek out games with hyperlanes. In any case, if you want a totally realistic space combat simulator try something like Children of a Dead Earth. It's kind of a blast if you can wrap your head around orbital mechanics.