Yeahhhh
as much as i love stellaris, it's really gone from 'a neat scifi 4x with some good ideas to build on' to 'feature creep and half-baked systems.'
Such is the nature of the Paradox DLC model. You can make cool systems as a part of a DLC but then what? What if you need to change that system to work with something else? What if you want to add new content that relies on this? What if you want to improve it but can’t rationalize spending that kind of man hours on content that neither attracts new players (free updates) or DLC purchases (DLC exclusive)?
It just quickly becomes a mess. It can be handled relatively well or poorly depending on the game and DLC in question, but overall the way I see it it’s a huge harm to developing systems that aren’t new or were always in vanilla.
Even with that in mind, Crusader Kings 2 has managed generally to avoid this issue, and while I don't really enjoy it anymore, EU4 is still... EU4. Meanwhile Stellaris has just had the worst of the model in every step.
srsly lithoids get unique mechanics but you can't just update plantoids to add in some unique mechanics?
yeah, i would really appreciate more back-fill. unique mechanics for every species group would be a nice start. they don't even need to be game-changing like lithoids. just something for minor flavor, like +1 envoy for humanoids, +5% habitability for mammals, etc. sure, do something wild for plantoids and whatever else.
all the old civics could really use some love, too. too many are just boring filler like +unity, +happiness, etc.
but ultimately i think the underlying model of the game just doesn't work well. colonization is too 'blah', internal factions meaningless and can be ignored (hell, ethics shift apparently doesn't even work right, like at all), techs are 100% repeatables after just like, 100-150 years, etc.
typical paradox game takes ~2 years to get good, we are almost 4 years in and there are serious flaws with the basic systems in the game.
yeah
they ripped out a ton of neat stuff too
for example: faction rework had independence factions alongside iirc others, as shown here by the wiki
Loyalists
The faction that supports the empire. Has no Demands and does not need to be dealt with. The loyalist leader is always an option in democratic elections.
Democratic election factions
These multiple factions will briefly exist during democratic elections to allow for multiple choices.
Docile Slaves
Special Slave only Faction. Effectively "enslaved Loyalists", but not quite. As long as Slavery is not set to Regulated, this faction is dangerous. Afterwards it is intended to be ignored by the player. The greatest danger is forcing pops into the Malcontent Slaves Faction.
Emancipation Faction
Non-Slaves that disagree with the use of Slavery in the empire. Most likely non-collectivist and non-xenophobes.
Malcontent Slaves
One of the most dangerous Factions in game. Is made up of very unhappy (under 30%) slaves and slaves radicalised by the other two Slave Related Factions. The Slave Revolt in particular is a extremely dangerous problem. Primarily intended to prevent the player from just forcing otherwise unhappy pops into the Docile Slaves faction (and thus out of the Faction System) using Slavery.
Repatriarchs
Discontent pops that have the "Recently Conquered" penalty will join this faction. Their goal is to have their planets returned to their previous owners. There are several special ways to deal with this Faction:
Launching Integration Campaigns in up to three phases. Each campaign phase will lower the faction attraction for a lump sum of Influence, increasing with every phase.
Fighting it out. Unlike any other factions, it will not reform after a rebellion has failed.
Completely eliminating the enemy empire. Without an empire to return to, no Repatriarch Faction can form.
However all but the first option may let the pops join another Faction instead.
Planetary Separatists
Discontent Planet pops not part of the Repatriarchs or another higher Ranking Faction. They wish the planet to become an indepedent empire to choose its own intergalactic allegiance.
Sector Separatists
Because sectors means one does no longer have to deal with Planetary Separatists, instead the Sector Separatist Faction is introduced. Wishes to release the whole sector as a independant Empire.
Purgees
All Faction capable pops set to being Purged are forced into this faction. Their goal is to stop all running purges.
But with the ethics rework and the following faction rework, they just
kinda fucking ditched all the interesting results of hte previous system, for example even tho it was shallow, they removed hte ability to do things such as:
have factions with leaders that aren't your own existing leaders -and thus remove the weirdness of your leader of your xenophobic fan. authoriatian empire being in the egalitarian faction
factions actually being worth keeping docile
factions that actually have an effect on galactic politics
srsly, having a sector revolt faction actually pull a sector away if it gets too unhappy would be fucking fantastic to reduce late-game blobbing boredom. but nope, one planet an dmaybe two systems will pop away and then get swatted down near instantly.
they also just completely fuck with sectors
srsly now sectors aren't even worth having
can't automate them without going into each individual planet to set that planet to be automated(the fuck how does this reduce micro)
they don't auto colonize systems in their borders(can't even give a toggle?)
can't auto build stations in their borders
can't manually designate sectors
i might be the only one, but i really liked it when factions were like mini countries inside your own, with their own construction fleet and colony ships + taking resources and giving a fraction to you as a tax. it made it feel more like the wheels of an empire slowly grinding ddown as they grew too big to control directly.
EDIT: Also, selective purging and enslavement.
Why can't I just enslave one planet's pops of a species but leave hte rest free? Why not the same for purging.
If I'm a horrible dictatorship, let me actually direct my killsquids to kill the xenos on one planet for lebesraum instead of having to have
all of that species being dead.