100.000 solar systems in Stellaris possible?

[enpi]

Well I know it sounds somewhat heretic, but one of the things which I miss in modern 4x games is the sheer unbelievable vastness of space.

I am not sure if it is realistic for a modern PC to compute this idea, so I speak only theoretically without any deeper knowledge about the technical aspects.

The suggestion to pdx is: why not doing a special 100k version of stellaris? What I mean is - you hear it right - a universe consisting of one or more galaxies with 100k stars. Its a kind of "next level 4x gaming" and I think Stellaris with all its future DLCs and tremendous work pdx put into it the coming years it could be well suited to this experimental evolution.

This means that a player could play virtually his whole real life in one single game and would never explore every solar system out there. Of course he should be able to adjust the game ending conditions as he likes. So the game could still end like now after 200y or so with end game crisis and so on. The only difference is that you probably will never meet the borders of the universe and only a tiny fraction of all the empires theoretically on the game map. (which are of course hidden in fog of war)

I am not sure if this is possible with modern computers. Maybe yes, because 95% of the galaxy and its empires will always be in unexplored dark mode especially if the player goes for a standard game length of only a few hundred years.

 

[Elthy]

If everything is simulated as in the current game (where stuff happens all the time, no matter if you look at it) it would lag horribly, propably computing several minutes for each frame (and that is assuming linear scaling, its propably worse). Just look at the performance in 1000 star galaxys after a few centurys...

 

[Summin Cool]

the fps death of the universe

 

[Aries666]

More systems would be cool but as the next big improvement I would rather have a 3D galaxy.

 

[Summin Cool]

More systems would be cool but as the next big improvement I would rather have a 3D galaxy.

This would be great IMO.

 

[terrycloth]

If everything is simulated as in the current game (where stuff happens all the time, no matter if you look at it) it would lag horribly, propably computing several minutes for each frame (and that is assuming linear scaling, its propably worse). Just look at the performance in 1000 star galaxys after a few centurys...

If you could come up with some way to avoid simulating things that were 'out of range' it might be practical to have a galaxy with a realistic number of stars in it, even. Which is way more than 100k.

Use the Eliteangerous procedurally generated galaxy as the map, with only 'earthlike' planets being inhabitable (hint: those are SUPER RARE but there are still millions of them because the galaxy is really big).

 

[The Founder]

Well I know it sounds somewhat heretic, but one of the things which I miss in modern 4x games is the sheer unbelievable vastness of space.

I am not sure if it is realistic for a modern PC to compute this idea, so I speak only theoretically without any deeper knowledge about the technical aspects.

The suggestion to pdx is: why not doing a special 100k version of stellaris? What I mean is - you hear it right - a universe consisting of one or more galaxies with 100k stars. Its a kind of "next level 4x gaming" and I think Stellaris with all its future DLCs and tremendous work pdx put into it the coming years it could be well suited to this experimental evolution.

There are two primary issues with that:
Memory and processing time.

Memory is limited to 4 GiB. The Clausewitz engine is pure x32. But at least it is a native programm, so no 2 or 3 GiB memory Limit as so many .NET games have.
As it is a game engine, a lot of the drawing code is propably fixed to x32. Drawing code change is never a easy change. They could have been working on turning it x64 for the last 5 years and might still be years off.

Processing time. Multithreading sounds nice, but for most problems it is plain useless. And the main turn/game processing operation is square in that. Just pciture calculating a Fibonacci Sequence the hard way. Now try to run one thread for each number. You end up with more memory demand, code more prone to error and most importantly - code that is slower.
You can make a game extremely multithreading friendly, but that ends up having tons of tradeoffs at design time. You do not do that unless you plan making something on the level of a dedicated server anyway.

 

[RolandRahn]

More star systems sound great, but even 100k stars would be nowhere close to what our Galaxy has. Also there are smaller Galaxies and yes, it might represent a VERY small Galaxy.

The next problem that I see is that every system that has planets can be used in some way.

Even if there are no habitable planets, at the very least we can (with today's Stellaris) build an outpost and, most likely, some mines/research stations.

In 10 days, we will be able to build Dyson Spheres, Ring worlds, Habitats, Research Nodes and listening arrays.

It would be unplayable with 100k stars....unless we accept that you would only play in a small part of it.

But this would provide a lot of disadvantages....in your area, there are 50 Empires competing with each other.

On the other end of the Galaxy, an expansive Empire is swallowing up it's enemies.

By the time that you have a first direct contact with that empire, it controls 10k star systems.

We are the Blorg, prepare to surrender.

And what if a nasty end-game crisis occurs at the other end of the Galaxy?

You would either watch (from a far distance) how it is resolved.....or, by the time it reaches you, it will reach you from all directions with many fleets, each being 10 times stronger than your entire navy.

So, I fail to see how 100k stars would work with the current Stellaris system.

Just my $0,02.

 

[enpi]

If everything is simulated as in the current game (where stuff happens all the time, no matter if you look at it) it would lag horribly, propably computing several minutes for each frame (and that is assuming linear scaling, its propably worse). Just look at the performance in 1000 star galaxys after a few centurys...

thats right but if your machine is weak you should be able to adjust the game in a way that you also play only the usual no. of turns and 95% of the galaxy remains dark in the fog of war. Would the performance still be abysmal? Isnt it true that most of the computing power is used up by graphic display while the calculation of empires which are still in the fog of war is not that costly?

 

[Mitchz95]

I'd rather just have bigger star systems so that it takes longer to get places. Like Space is an Ocean.

 

[TempusxX]

I find that the default 1k galaxy is way to small and I like the idea of a galaxy that is much bigger than 1k and so I use a mod that gives me 5k up to 10k galaxy

 

[jetfx]

There's a 5000 star galaxy mod available if you want a taste of what the vastness of space is like, although it gets so slow that it eventually becomes unplayable. I found that when you reached late game, when empires are highly developed, near the end of the tech tree and there is no space outside of someone's borders, there was still up to half the galaxy where I had no idea what was even there. It was neat, but the larger the galaxy the less likely you'll get around to interacting with it all, and it confines your power projection to only a section of the galaxy. From a gameplay perspective, this is a problem, because what is the point of having a game world so large that most of it will never be experienced by a player?

 

[faljen_isus]

more systems would definitely make the galaxy seem more vast with the added bonus of creating a feeling of isolation combined with irrelevance on a galactic scale

i would personally love for them to rescale the systems making them feel large on their own, because they are, they are extremely large (after watching the Expanse i really got a feel for it)

 

[The Founder]

thats right but if your machine is weak you should be able to adjust the game in a way that you also play only the usual no. of turns and 95% of the galaxy remains dark in the fog of war. Would the performance still be abysmal? Isnt it true that most of the computing power is used up by graphic display while the calculation of empires which are still in the fog of war is not that costly?

Not quite. There can be some slowdowns on the drawing. But the real load is tick processing.
Empires in the Fog of War in no way cost less resources.

The AI routines have already been confirmed to be multithreaded (up to 1 thread per empire). But in the end the main game processing will have to wait if any of them takes particulary long to make up it's mind because the galaxy is so big.
And then the game has to actually calculate a lot of stuff on the 1st and 2nd of the month (all income and reserach) and most other days anyway.

There's a 5000 star galaxy mod available if you want a taste of what the vastness of space is like, although it gets so slow that it eventually becomes unplayable. I found that when you reached late game, when empires are highly developed, near the end of the tech tree and there is no space outside of someone's borders, there was still up to half the galaxy where I had no idea what was even there. It was neat, but the larger the galaxy the less likely you'll get around to interacting with it all, and it confines your power projection to only a section of the galaxy. From a gameplay perspective, this is a problem, because what is the point of having a game world so large that most of it will never be experienced by a player?

But that is largely a feature of communication spread and traveltimes. Both things that can be manipulated by the developers.

The only real reason is propably performance. And that stellaris is way too detailed for that kind of scale. If the game had systems on the detail level of Sword of the Stars to Sins of a Solar Empire it would be perhaps feasible. But Stellaris has way more scale then that.

 

[RWA05]

I mean, I think this could be a fascinating experiment to run with a supercomputer. Maybe multiplayer, and see how the galaxy develops over time with so many players and so many stars.
I think my computer would explode if I tried 100k on it though.

 

[TheShah]

I long for the future days of Stellaris IV, when our kids will play holographic 4x simulated across a 100,000 stars.

Could happen.


We could be in one right now.

 

[TheShah]

There's a 5000 star galaxy mod available if you want a taste of what the vastness of space is like, although it gets so slow that it eventually becomes unplayable. I found that when you reached late game, when empires are highly developed, near the end of the tech tree and there is no space outside of someone's borders, there was still up to half the galaxy where I had no idea what was even there. It was neat, but the larger the galaxy the less likely you'll get around to interacting with it all, and it confines your power projection to only a section of the galaxy. From a gameplay perspective, this is a problem, because what is the point of having a game world so large that most of it will never be experienced by a player?

because space is majestic in its empty and infinite vastness.

 

[Pchang]

Possible now if you are a multi-millionaire. Pay Paradox to refactor the code to be client-server, rent a big enough AWS deployment, and voila!

 

[Riftwalker]

i just wish you couldn't pull the camera too far back on the map or look around too far to see where exactly you are. maybe increase the spacing on planet's a bit more so warp can't always go in every direction and hyperlane might therefore get a buff due to no distance requirements.

 

[The_Human_Oddity]

i just wish you couldn't pull the camera too far back on the map or look around too far to see where exactly you are. maybe increase the spacing on planet's a bit more so warp can't always go in every direction and hyperlane might therefore get a buff due to no distance requirements.

Wormhole will reign supreme.