I have suggestions after seeing the 3.1.2 notes. I liked Lem, it gave me hope. The Devs might really wanna attempt to bring Stellaris closer to the communities vision for it. My hopes are less high after seeing the notes for 3.1.2, they might be attempting something with empire sprawls and unity but that's kind of negligible sounding to me. The rabbit hole I am going to be diving into here is, "How come there are so many things in Stellaris that just feel outdated and inferior in the face of the new content?" and I don't want there to be more of that. Again, I have full faith after Lem that the Devs want to revisit and rebalance previous systems. They seem to be asking for it even. I play this game a lot, in fact, I pretty much only enjoy strategy games. I have played all paradox titles, clocking in 1.5k hours on HOI4 as my most played of them. I also enjoy things like Dominions (up to 5) and the Endless Series (space and legends), multiplayer experience in all of these games and stuff like CIV as well. These are all my suggestions, absolutely none of this is coming from anyone else. If you had a similar idea, that'd be great, you should comment about it. There are also things I have few thoughts on. Most of this was formed based on experiences. These might be my suggestions but I've heard and seen plenty of others that I'm, again, hoping to see in the comments. I wanna try and collect my thoughts on Stellaris as a whole. It would be nice to see some of the things I remember hearing but can't give credit to--so I'm just not gonna take credit for those things. I did try to do that but scrapped it, I'm just gonna give my opinion and my ideas because it's simple. I am literally gonna touch on every topic in a small way, there is no TL;DR, only an earful. I'm gonna use the customization menu as a reference and then explore in game mechanics as they relate (sorta).
Appearance:
You should be able to select an appearance sperate to everything else. Aesthetic preferences should no lock you into any traits, origins or government types. I already know what the community response to this is so I'm going to immediately address it. This, although a welcome change, would be annoying because you couldn't immediately tell what a species is beneath the portrait. The solution is simple though, just tack on the species trait type icon in the bottom corner or something. A Plantoid with a little Lithoid icon or a Mechanoid with a little Humanoid Icon. This is gonna go straight into the next topic.
Traits:
The last bit might not make a ton of sense unless the trait UI changes slightly. It's fine for some species types to have restrictions now, like if necrophage is considered a species type. So, you would need to pick your species type or types if there were some inclusive bonuses somewhere like, again, with necrophage. After that you could pick specific traits and pooled traits. Frankly necrophage is an origin, it's not Necroid, Necroids should be their own thing (to clear that up but in case that was ever to be a thing). All of the species should have their own thing going on. If this was a thing you could fix ascension accidentally. If Genetic Ascension has more traits to work with and can benefit from more varied pops, it may be more viable. There can also be a species or two that starts with psionic traits or something as an option but that ascension needs an overhaul in general. RNG is not a good mechanic, if you're going to try and make it a good mechanic, pretend it's a critical strike. Critical strike chances in games like CoH or even graze chances are a good example of RNG that works thematically. The Shroud is RNG with no thematic, it's RNG for fun and it is definitely NOT fun. It's tedious to pursue and achieve and feels like an easter egg at best.
Origins:
I overheard the following: "Man I can't wait until 2370 when I finally have my gate that will let me go a few systems over in the systems I don't have because I'm significantly weaker for starting with GATES". Please, try to explain to a new player what they're supposed to do now that 22XX (whatever year war is allowed year in) has come around and a fanatic militarist doomsday start is at the goddamn door. I'm not even saying doomsday is broken or something, I'm saying that some of the other origins just suck a whole heck of a lot. My solution is simple, all origins should be significantly weakened and have their bonus extend all the way into the late game instead. Everyone should basically start with an event chain as is the case with On the Shoulders of Giants. This ties into two other in-game mechanics.
Time/Game-state:
Mid and late game aren't very fun, they usually boil down to keeping your head above the water. New players wouldn't even want to survive the early years if they knew the only thing that awaited them was a long and patient waiting game to find out who becomes the crisis or who takes over the senate while everyone fights each-other in (honestly decently fun and intricate) wars--which I will get to the problem with getting ganged up on later as that's a problem there too. If your origin and government and such influenced a bunch of different event chains that drug out all the way into the late game, there could be some interesting things to mess with in there. I get this idea from Endless Space 2, in that game you can shift your ethics over time based on decisions. For instance, a technocracy deciding to enslave robots rather than become them and getting different buffs prior to synthetic ascension / just a different type of ascension all-together / a different FORM of synthetic ascension where you don't become a mechanoid.
Events (in general):
Stellaris desperately needs a context menu, like an encyclopedia with all the events or a link on the event pop-up to the wiki page. There could also just be full context when I hover over the selections which is already something there but isn't fully utilized for this. I'm tired of this stuff, it's junk mail. Show me the percentage chance for the other events and I will learn what those events are that way, but don't just give me nothing. I'm not saying the events aren't neat, I'm saying their tedious and dubious in nature. Another quote for this one, "I really hate to lose a scientist to a 1% chance in the early game and get led on a goose chase that gives me research when I don't know it gives me research and is also letting me know what type of Crisis the game will be put under." See how much cooler it sounds that way, a 'this is what this does' button would be great. Events just sort of... stop happening. A lot of the ones that happen in the early game have really big impact but I forget the options sometimes. I can compare this to Endless Space 2 or Endless Legends again. There, you have the 'quests' everyone can do. The wonders and stuff like that--like with CIV as well. The "make 10000 energy credits first" kind of things. I hate those BUT events would be great if they HAD those, "your neighbor spawned in the cybrex system and is going to roll you!" like, at least let me know that guy just got warforms for free?
Ethics:
Stellaris seems to have a predator/prey style when it comes to ethics. Balance wise, that's really weird. I don't really see how you expect 10 stability to compete with 53% bonus ship fire-rate. No one does actually, no one gets why that's a thing, absolutely no one. Please, dear god, find a balance. I can't tell you how many times I have said that and immediately hear "well, when you put it that way" it's just unfair to be honest. I have heard a lot of suggestions, I'm just gonna leave this one to the comments and the wolves mostly. My personal suggestion is to divide the games mechanics better. It's like every war is a crisis event--which I mean, that would be accurate as a pacifist but as a Xenophile or Egalitarian? A Xenophile should be trying to minimize economic loss, an Egalitarian should be looking to turn the fight around somehow, a Materialist should be minimizing ship losses and giving up tech to the enemy and hopefully using the same tech to survive, a Pacifist should have someone else fight it out for them--which if you count starbases as a static defense thing, is kinda fine. You've done a good job portraying the baddies, thanks, I hate it. I genuinely am mostly at a loss on this one but all I'm saying is if I want an edge I could be Authoritarian or Xenophobe but I usually can't bring myself to do that because of my actual "real life" morals. The same way it wouldn't feel right being the Axis in HOI4. It takes the enjoyment out of winning for me when I'm the bad guy. I'm not some asshole who's gonna roleplay a Nazi regime for fun, hate those guys, please give me more tools to stomp on their tiny cocks. It feels like I'm the only one who wants to do that and currently I'm running militarist myself to do so--otherwise I'm just at a disadvantage to them.
Authority:
Currently there's the big pile of civics that are shared by all the authorities and then some special ones. And then the Gestalt and Corporate types are separate. That is fine, but separate the standard ones too. Lem gave a great example of this and it can go on to fix Corporate or maybe Gestalt somehow. I have to ask you to use your imagination a bit but you probably get the point, you pick Democratic authority and the civics on the right go green just and they have the standard pool and their special bonus civics. Then there could be more bonus civics and now we get to some of my more juicy ideas.
Diplomacy (this is a hot take, relax and wait for the next one):
This is what I used to think; stop giving players free choice, don't let them make decisions based on nothing. If the AI can't do it, neither can they. If a corporate empire raises your opinion, you should be forced to play nice with them. Diplomacy should be a thing, wargoals should even be locked in some cases. I have been surprised to find most players that survive into the mid game with me (i.e. probably better players) think this would be annoying BUT fix some things. I would love to hear suggestions on this because although I've heard plenty I am DEAD set on just forcing players to follow the weight patterns of the AI. It would mean that lack of envoys actually forces you to lose influence because a big corporation is on the good side of your civilians. It just makes sense and it gives the little guys an extra option to "bite back" with and the big guy a reason to move on or find another way to get at them. I am not even sure if I agree with myself but it would be intuitive, simple, predictable and at the very least hilarious. It's definitely more interactive than what it is now where you just decline everything that isn't a gigantic net positive or they're paying you the weight in gold. More diplomatic things should function like the senate does.
And on those last two or three Government topics, I've always had this idea:
Your government should ACTUALLY be a government. The democracy with it's parliament or whatever and the dictatorship with it's tight knit group of followers. All of these individuals should be the ones that influence the leader pool, factions and diplomacy. Make that DLC and I would buy it in a heartbeat. It would be very cool to actually interact with your leaders in an event based but still rpg kind of way. What I said above could literally be decided HERE through the AI. You, as the leader, would have to influence the AI. The dictator executing advisors for being a little too friendly and screwing up a war goal would be great because it would cost you an advisor rather than an entire war and potentially the game because someone is untouchable for you. A happiness debuff because I'm killing my pops beloved corporation? Too bad, take a happiness debuff or maybe an in built option to vassalize and integrate with them. Just some thoughts because I remember that sounding cool to me. HOI4 had something happen that ALMOST looked like it was gonna be that but then it wasn't--please don't do that because it's a missed opportunity but if you do, make it decent. I'm kind of passionate about this one but it's a baby of an idea, I'm not really exploring any of these things in depth to keep it open ended a bit.
Resources (another open-ended idea):
I'm a strategy player like I said. I am an RTS player by extension. Stellaris should pursue RTS resource usage. I'm sure this idea could even be used to help with lag in some way and it fixes a major exploit in the game. Whatever your resource cap is, it should go negative into that cap. No more net zero economies. You can still buy your way out last second but the stockpile is gonna go negative, you got to buy all of it. The only exploit left I can think of is employing bureaucrats to take a tradition and then unemploying them. Doesn't work on research at least. Now to further elaborate, Stellaris consumes resources per turn but as it is in real time, there are seconds (days) between when your turn (months) is/(are) submitted. It's just a turn timer with extra steps when you think about it. I think most upkeeps shouldn't be per month. You should be able to stockpile resources to use throughout the year in a similar way to you using them throughout the days. Why? Because it means that your economic base and by extension the size of your coffers (resources stockpiled) will greatly influence what you can field. You can go over naval cap but be paying out the ass (that would still be a per day basis). Then by the end of the year, you see how your economy weathered, things will go negative and you'll have to pay it all off. You'll suffer penalties due to that for the first 6 months as the economy recovers or suffer events if it didn't recover but at least the debuffs are gone. The event effects could be things like blockers, like the slum even that already exists, or a flat amount of crime, etc. You could have projections per month so you aren't taken by surprise, you could even have some (non-efficient) events to bail you out at the end of the year (you're lacking X amount, we could give up Y amount at a steeper rate if you have it). Resource stockpile buildings and the stockpile in general would actually be a thing but I think you should probably start with a lower total stockpile and planets should naturally provide a flat addition based on size. Net-zero economies could be balanced if people are really so set on making them happen, keeping their reserves low so that they only have to pay the minimum off but not getting a whole lot to work with and having issues as they grow in size in planets and assets (I don't wanna suggest it but if they ACTUALLY suffer the debuffs for that first 6 months and then additional negatives that can stack up on you, then fine).
Last thing for fun, Ship Appearance:
I've actually heard it randomly on like 5 or 6 separate occasions, "where's the DLC with just ship models like they did with HOI4" or something like that. It would be cool if a Scion could have ships styled like a fallen empire for instance--but of course no one is locked out of them as usual. The models look cool, pirate ships are something in game I'd love to actually use.
Appearance:
You should be able to select an appearance sperate to everything else. Aesthetic preferences should no lock you into any traits, origins or government types. I already know what the community response to this is so I'm going to immediately address it. This, although a welcome change, would be annoying because you couldn't immediately tell what a species is beneath the portrait. The solution is simple though, just tack on the species trait type icon in the bottom corner or something. A Plantoid with a little Lithoid icon or a Mechanoid with a little Humanoid Icon. This is gonna go straight into the next topic.
Traits:
The last bit might not make a ton of sense unless the trait UI changes slightly. It's fine for some species types to have restrictions now, like if necrophage is considered a species type. So, you would need to pick your species type or types if there were some inclusive bonuses somewhere like, again, with necrophage. After that you could pick specific traits and pooled traits. Frankly necrophage is an origin, it's not Necroid, Necroids should be their own thing (to clear that up but in case that was ever to be a thing). All of the species should have their own thing going on. If this was a thing you could fix ascension accidentally. If Genetic Ascension has more traits to work with and can benefit from more varied pops, it may be more viable. There can also be a species or two that starts with psionic traits or something as an option but that ascension needs an overhaul in general. RNG is not a good mechanic, if you're going to try and make it a good mechanic, pretend it's a critical strike. Critical strike chances in games like CoH or even graze chances are a good example of RNG that works thematically. The Shroud is RNG with no thematic, it's RNG for fun and it is definitely NOT fun. It's tedious to pursue and achieve and feels like an easter egg at best.
Origins:
I overheard the following: "Man I can't wait until 2370 when I finally have my gate that will let me go a few systems over in the systems I don't have because I'm significantly weaker for starting with GATES". Please, try to explain to a new player what they're supposed to do now that 22XX (whatever year war is allowed year in) has come around and a fanatic militarist doomsday start is at the goddamn door. I'm not even saying doomsday is broken or something, I'm saying that some of the other origins just suck a whole heck of a lot. My solution is simple, all origins should be significantly weakened and have their bonus extend all the way into the late game instead. Everyone should basically start with an event chain as is the case with On the Shoulders of Giants. This ties into two other in-game mechanics.
Time/Game-state:
Mid and late game aren't very fun, they usually boil down to keeping your head above the water. New players wouldn't even want to survive the early years if they knew the only thing that awaited them was a long and patient waiting game to find out who becomes the crisis or who takes over the senate while everyone fights each-other in (honestly decently fun and intricate) wars--which I will get to the problem with getting ganged up on later as that's a problem there too. If your origin and government and such influenced a bunch of different event chains that drug out all the way into the late game, there could be some interesting things to mess with in there. I get this idea from Endless Space 2, in that game you can shift your ethics over time based on decisions. For instance, a technocracy deciding to enslave robots rather than become them and getting different buffs prior to synthetic ascension / just a different type of ascension all-together / a different FORM of synthetic ascension where you don't become a mechanoid.
Events (in general):
Stellaris desperately needs a context menu, like an encyclopedia with all the events or a link on the event pop-up to the wiki page. There could also just be full context when I hover over the selections which is already something there but isn't fully utilized for this. I'm tired of this stuff, it's junk mail. Show me the percentage chance for the other events and I will learn what those events are that way, but don't just give me nothing. I'm not saying the events aren't neat, I'm saying their tedious and dubious in nature. Another quote for this one, "I really hate to lose a scientist to a 1% chance in the early game and get led on a goose chase that gives me research when I don't know it gives me research and is also letting me know what type of Crisis the game will be put under." See how much cooler it sounds that way, a 'this is what this does' button would be great. Events just sort of... stop happening. A lot of the ones that happen in the early game have really big impact but I forget the options sometimes. I can compare this to Endless Space 2 or Endless Legends again. There, you have the 'quests' everyone can do. The wonders and stuff like that--like with CIV as well. The "make 10000 energy credits first" kind of things. I hate those BUT events would be great if they HAD those, "your neighbor spawned in the cybrex system and is going to roll you!" like, at least let me know that guy just got warforms for free?
Ethics:
Stellaris seems to have a predator/prey style when it comes to ethics. Balance wise, that's really weird. I don't really see how you expect 10 stability to compete with 53% bonus ship fire-rate. No one does actually, no one gets why that's a thing, absolutely no one. Please, dear god, find a balance. I can't tell you how many times I have said that and immediately hear "well, when you put it that way" it's just unfair to be honest. I have heard a lot of suggestions, I'm just gonna leave this one to the comments and the wolves mostly. My personal suggestion is to divide the games mechanics better. It's like every war is a crisis event--which I mean, that would be accurate as a pacifist but as a Xenophile or Egalitarian? A Xenophile should be trying to minimize economic loss, an Egalitarian should be looking to turn the fight around somehow, a Materialist should be minimizing ship losses and giving up tech to the enemy and hopefully using the same tech to survive, a Pacifist should have someone else fight it out for them--which if you count starbases as a static defense thing, is kinda fine. You've done a good job portraying the baddies, thanks, I hate it. I genuinely am mostly at a loss on this one but all I'm saying is if I want an edge I could be Authoritarian or Xenophobe but I usually can't bring myself to do that because of my actual "real life" morals. The same way it wouldn't feel right being the Axis in HOI4. It takes the enjoyment out of winning for me when I'm the bad guy. I'm not some asshole who's gonna roleplay a Nazi regime for fun, hate those guys, please give me more tools to stomp on their tiny cocks. It feels like I'm the only one who wants to do that and currently I'm running militarist myself to do so--otherwise I'm just at a disadvantage to them.
Authority:
Currently there's the big pile of civics that are shared by all the authorities and then some special ones. And then the Gestalt and Corporate types are separate. That is fine, but separate the standard ones too. Lem gave a great example of this and it can go on to fix Corporate or maybe Gestalt somehow. I have to ask you to use your imagination a bit but you probably get the point, you pick Democratic authority and the civics on the right go green just and they have the standard pool and their special bonus civics. Then there could be more bonus civics and now we get to some of my more juicy ideas.
Diplomacy (this is a hot take, relax and wait for the next one):
This is what I used to think; stop giving players free choice, don't let them make decisions based on nothing. If the AI can't do it, neither can they. If a corporate empire raises your opinion, you should be forced to play nice with them. Diplomacy should be a thing, wargoals should even be locked in some cases. I have been surprised to find most players that survive into the mid game with me (i.e. probably better players) think this would be annoying BUT fix some things. I would love to hear suggestions on this because although I've heard plenty I am DEAD set on just forcing players to follow the weight patterns of the AI. It would mean that lack of envoys actually forces you to lose influence because a big corporation is on the good side of your civilians. It just makes sense and it gives the little guys an extra option to "bite back" with and the big guy a reason to move on or find another way to get at them. I am not even sure if I agree with myself but it would be intuitive, simple, predictable and at the very least hilarious. It's definitely more interactive than what it is now where you just decline everything that isn't a gigantic net positive or they're paying you the weight in gold. More diplomatic things should function like the senate does.
And on those last two or three Government topics, I've always had this idea:
Your government should ACTUALLY be a government. The democracy with it's parliament or whatever and the dictatorship with it's tight knit group of followers. All of these individuals should be the ones that influence the leader pool, factions and diplomacy. Make that DLC and I would buy it in a heartbeat. It would be very cool to actually interact with your leaders in an event based but still rpg kind of way. What I said above could literally be decided HERE through the AI. You, as the leader, would have to influence the AI. The dictator executing advisors for being a little too friendly and screwing up a war goal would be great because it would cost you an advisor rather than an entire war and potentially the game because someone is untouchable for you. A happiness debuff because I'm killing my pops beloved corporation? Too bad, take a happiness debuff or maybe an in built option to vassalize and integrate with them. Just some thoughts because I remember that sounding cool to me. HOI4 had something happen that ALMOST looked like it was gonna be that but then it wasn't--please don't do that because it's a missed opportunity but if you do, make it decent. I'm kind of passionate about this one but it's a baby of an idea, I'm not really exploring any of these things in depth to keep it open ended a bit.
Resources (another open-ended idea):
I'm a strategy player like I said. I am an RTS player by extension. Stellaris should pursue RTS resource usage. I'm sure this idea could even be used to help with lag in some way and it fixes a major exploit in the game. Whatever your resource cap is, it should go negative into that cap. No more net zero economies. You can still buy your way out last second but the stockpile is gonna go negative, you got to buy all of it. The only exploit left I can think of is employing bureaucrats to take a tradition and then unemploying them. Doesn't work on research at least. Now to further elaborate, Stellaris consumes resources per turn but as it is in real time, there are seconds (days) between when your turn (months) is/(are) submitted. It's just a turn timer with extra steps when you think about it. I think most upkeeps shouldn't be per month. You should be able to stockpile resources to use throughout the year in a similar way to you using them throughout the days. Why? Because it means that your economic base and by extension the size of your coffers (resources stockpiled) will greatly influence what you can field. You can go over naval cap but be paying out the ass (that would still be a per day basis). Then by the end of the year, you see how your economy weathered, things will go negative and you'll have to pay it all off. You'll suffer penalties due to that for the first 6 months as the economy recovers or suffer events if it didn't recover but at least the debuffs are gone. The event effects could be things like blockers, like the slum even that already exists, or a flat amount of crime, etc. You could have projections per month so you aren't taken by surprise, you could even have some (non-efficient) events to bail you out at the end of the year (you're lacking X amount, we could give up Y amount at a steeper rate if you have it). Resource stockpile buildings and the stockpile in general would actually be a thing but I think you should probably start with a lower total stockpile and planets should naturally provide a flat addition based on size. Net-zero economies could be balanced if people are really so set on making them happen, keeping their reserves low so that they only have to pay the minimum off but not getting a whole lot to work with and having issues as they grow in size in planets and assets (I don't wanna suggest it but if they ACTUALLY suffer the debuffs for that first 6 months and then additional negatives that can stack up on you, then fine).
Last thing for fun, Ship Appearance:
I've actually heard it randomly on like 5 or 6 separate occasions, "where's the DLC with just ship models like they did with HOI4" or something like that. It would be cool if a Scion could have ships styled like a fallen empire for instance--but of course no one is locked out of them as usual. The models look cool, pirate ships are something in game I'd love to actually use.
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