Hello! I'm not quite new here, I've been lurking since before 2.0 came out. Now I've been seeing a lot of harsh feedback on the 2.2 update on here, so I figured I'd share my first experiences with the system.
The Game
So I start up my game, turn off all my mods (all of them outdated, 2.2 had only been out for a few hours), and decide to play my first fully vanilla game in ages. Instead of any of my custom races I decide to go with the egalitarian humies, because every now and then I like to pretend I'm the Federation from Star Trek. Besides, I was hoping to try out the new immigration system.
So I spawn in, and am rapidly overwhelmed. So many new resources and mechanics. It takes me a good half hour of fiddling around before I'm confident enough to press the start button. When I do I'm still feeling somewhat confused, but as the game goes on I start to *get* it. It's a fairly basic train of production, and once I wrapped my head around it the system all made sense. Which was nice.
So it turns out that colonising a planet no longer nukes your energy income. I was pleased to note that now it costs minerals and food, which makes sense, so I colonise every habitable planet with a 60% or higher habitability rating. Get a couple of good ones, a couple of ones I regretted down the line. It's at this point that I start realising how complex and expansive this 'economy' thing is. These worlds actually feel alive and functional, which leaves me playing with a big silly grin on my face. I come close to total economic collapse a couple of times, but lucky resource deposits have left me with an excess of trade value (and therefore energy). I'm adjacent to a megacorp (ruthless capitalists), the Commonwealth of Man, and a second megacorp of angry plant people. For some reason the second megacorp hates my guts and the first one's xenophobe, but they're willing to trade with me because of my massive amounts of money. Commercial pacts cause them both to soften up over time as I explore the universe.
I've met a couple of new species when suddenly the Subterranean Civilisation event hits. I'm playing good guys so I prepare to communicate with them, and attempt peace. Coexistence is achieved as usual, but suddenly things are different. I don't just get a modifier and the occasional popup, these guys are actually PRESENT. There are actual caverns, with actual creatures in them. And I can see them on the planet screen. Something about that just blew my mind. They'd been upgraded from a vague bonus to actually feeling like part of this world. The Subterranean Liason jobs were a beautiful idea, and really fleshed out my interactions with this group. I loved the idea of this large embassy embedded halfway into the crust, with trade and diplomacy happening between the races. This was a massive improvement on the previous event.
At this point I've managed to secure the market capital, but the Commonwealth is threatening to destroy my friendly Ruthless Capitalist neighbours. After a costly war in which the Capitalists lose a few systems I offer a defense pact, and they accept. Neither of us were particularly militarily capable, but both our forces combined could hold off the Commonwealth of Man for another couple of years. That gave us time to scale up into a Federation, and prepare the Federation Fleet. This apparently threatened the Commonwealth, who teamed up with Plant Inc. by creating a Defensive Pact, and then a Federation of their own. What followed was a rivalry that lasted all the way to the end-game with twists and turns, although eventually my federation leveraged it's superior economic power to overwhelm and vassalize Plant Inc. The Commonwealth was soon to follow.
Summary
This is not the whole story, of course. What followed was an excellent game where the Prethoryn Scourge arriving sparked a War in Heaven. In response I rushed to complete Synthetic Ascension, which managed to make my situation somehow worse. It ended up being one of the most tense finales to any game I've ever played. The Ascension nearly destroyed my economy, which was not what I needed when the Prethoryn had already devoured roughly 1/8 of the galaxy. And gateways annihilated my performance before I removed all the protection-granting buildings.
But, despite all that, this game was amazing. It had be grinning at every turn, and the struggles only made it more fun when I eventually emerged victorious against all odds. While there are definitely plenty of problems with this update, for me at least they have succeeded at creating a truly wonderful experience.
The Game
So I start up my game, turn off all my mods (all of them outdated, 2.2 had only been out for a few hours), and decide to play my first fully vanilla game in ages. Instead of any of my custom races I decide to go with the egalitarian humies, because every now and then I like to pretend I'm the Federation from Star Trek. Besides, I was hoping to try out the new immigration system.
So I spawn in, and am rapidly overwhelmed. So many new resources and mechanics. It takes me a good half hour of fiddling around before I'm confident enough to press the start button. When I do I'm still feeling somewhat confused, but as the game goes on I start to *get* it. It's a fairly basic train of production, and once I wrapped my head around it the system all made sense. Which was nice.
So it turns out that colonising a planet no longer nukes your energy income. I was pleased to note that now it costs minerals and food, which makes sense, so I colonise every habitable planet with a 60% or higher habitability rating. Get a couple of good ones, a couple of ones I regretted down the line. It's at this point that I start realising how complex and expansive this 'economy' thing is. These worlds actually feel alive and functional, which leaves me playing with a big silly grin on my face. I come close to total economic collapse a couple of times, but lucky resource deposits have left me with an excess of trade value (and therefore energy). I'm adjacent to a megacorp (ruthless capitalists), the Commonwealth of Man, and a second megacorp of angry plant people. For some reason the second megacorp hates my guts and the first one's xenophobe, but they're willing to trade with me because of my massive amounts of money. Commercial pacts cause them both to soften up over time as I explore the universe.
I've met a couple of new species when suddenly the Subterranean Civilisation event hits. I'm playing good guys so I prepare to communicate with them, and attempt peace. Coexistence is achieved as usual, but suddenly things are different. I don't just get a modifier and the occasional popup, these guys are actually PRESENT. There are actual caverns, with actual creatures in them. And I can see them on the planet screen. Something about that just blew my mind. They'd been upgraded from a vague bonus to actually feeling like part of this world. The Subterranean Liason jobs were a beautiful idea, and really fleshed out my interactions with this group. I loved the idea of this large embassy embedded halfway into the crust, with trade and diplomacy happening between the races. This was a massive improvement on the previous event.
At this point I've managed to secure the market capital, but the Commonwealth is threatening to destroy my friendly Ruthless Capitalist neighbours. After a costly war in which the Capitalists lose a few systems I offer a defense pact, and they accept. Neither of us were particularly militarily capable, but both our forces combined could hold off the Commonwealth of Man for another couple of years. That gave us time to scale up into a Federation, and prepare the Federation Fleet. This apparently threatened the Commonwealth, who teamed up with Plant Inc. by creating a Defensive Pact, and then a Federation of their own. What followed was a rivalry that lasted all the way to the end-game with twists and turns, although eventually my federation leveraged it's superior economic power to overwhelm and vassalize Plant Inc. The Commonwealth was soon to follow.
Summary
This is not the whole story, of course. What followed was an excellent game where the Prethoryn Scourge arriving sparked a War in Heaven. In response I rushed to complete Synthetic Ascension, which managed to make my situation somehow worse. It ended up being one of the most tense finales to any game I've ever played. The Ascension nearly destroyed my economy, which was not what I needed when the Prethoryn had already devoured roughly 1/8 of the galaxy. And gateways annihilated my performance before I removed all the protection-granting buildings.
But, despite all that, this game was amazing. It had be grinning at every turn, and the struggles only made it more fun when I eventually emerged victorious against all odds. While there are definitely plenty of problems with this update, for me at least they have succeeded at creating a truly wonderful experience.