Does Stellaris have a ledger?

[ParagonExile]

I'd be disappointed if it isn't in. The ledger is the easiest way to gather large amounts of statistics and figures without manually working everything out. It also has GLORIOUS spreadsheets and an UNLIMITED BOUNTY of pie charts. Really, it's quite convenient and makes me geek out. Provided it is disabled during multiplayer (so no poverty espionage is possible) it can only be a good thing.

Is it in the game? We haven't seen it. If it isn't I'd like to see it put in, in an update or expansion.

Seriously though, I NEED SPREADSHEETS.

 

[witchveil]

I'm pretty sure Wiz said in an early Blorg stream that there wasn't a ledger.

 

[Asiak]

The ledger is a grand old girl.

But at the end of the day the ledger is an outdated method of information delivery. Especially in a company so skilled at and in love with awesome tool tips.

But even more awkwardly the ledger breaks the 4th wall overtly. And in a game like CK2 and EU4 where you were already kind of breaking that barrier anyway because why would a medieval count in France know or have an opinion of a guy in India, much less know how many troops he has in real time.

My assumption was always that this was a decision that was made because the player needed access to this information simply to play the game. Just like magically knowing everyone's opinion of you.

But they have grown a lot since then. It could work where you only see the races you've discovered. And yes instantaneous information is actually realistic in this time frame.

But I can still see them simply not having a ledger, and focusing instead on the rest of the UI / tool tips. And we would be fine without it. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a ledger simply that it is weird from a number of different angles, a little dated, and that we could do without it.

 

[barny]

Not sure how much there is, that could actually put into a ledger. Maybe the habitable planets you found and stuff along those lines, but since you will only have a limited amount of planets under direct control anyway, I'm not sure we will need that.

Enemy strength is displayed in the diplomatic overview and considering the possibly large differences between similar ship categories, I'm not sure giving exact numbers of ships would be a helpful thing.

 

[Zavaleta]

I think it would be very helpful for keeping track of planets, habitable, anomalies, pre-ftl civilizations, etc.

 

[Exemplar Voss]

Relationships (alliances, rivals, federations, vassals), Current Wars, Relative Power, Relative energy, mineral and science production, charts for your own populations by species, slaves, etc...

More information! Let there be numbers, Let there be facts! Sortable, Alphabetical, Numerical. Let all that can be known be accessible and easy to find in one convenient place!

 

[Finnway]

But even more awkwardly the ledger breaks the 4th wall overtly..

This is my issue with the ledger. Sure, the information is necessary to play the game optimally. But for just casual play, I much prefer an information panel like Civilization V that provides information in a concealed way. IIRC, it gave what the global average in a given category was (e.g. army size), who the world leader was, and where you ranked in the world.

I think a panel like this would be better from an immersion perspective. It would give you enough information to make strategic decisions (e.g. "Is my army big enough?"), without giving you "4th Wall" levels of knowledge.

And, of course, this feature should be optional. That way, "meta-gamers" & people playing online can still have a detailed ledger, but casual players can use a dumbed down version with inexact information, so they still have to rely on their instincts.

 

[Krajzen]

I completely don't care about any realism or immersion regarding ledgers and statistics in strategy games, my love for them is far too great. I wanna sort all countries regarding their income and army and compare them. I wanna know their population density. I wanna know their pie charts and income per capita. The more obscure data is provided, regardlessly of setting and context, the better. I wanna graphs and charts.

I don't even care about 'leaking strategic secret data'. Okay, okay, thanks to ledger you know how strong my military is despite me being on the opposite side of the map, you can destroy me easily. Whatever, kill me but don't touch my statistical data. I am browsing it again. Oh this empire has so big military for its small income.

<you'd never guess I am excited at the prospect of me having Statistics in my college soon!>

 

[misiceman]

The better question would probably be what information you need from the ledger. I would outright say that any information about other nations should not be included. With that in mind the data about your empire then becomes a function of weather or not you have the interface requirements to see your empire, with from the screens we've seen is either there or almost there to give us more then enough information.

This coupled with the idea that information about other empires is limited on purpose until some sort of espionage DLC makes me think the ledger in its entierty as it is in EU4 or CK2 is dead. That and like in HoI 4 there are cooler way to show said data.

 

[AluminumSoldier]

A detailed empire overview would be awesome. Something that shows the species that make up your empire, in what amount, and their ethos, as well as what your planets are producing, and in what amount. Location of resources, etc. I think the UI in Stellaris is probably the weakest part of the game right now, just from what I can glean from the stream, but can be improved if not by release than after they get some player feedback. I think the need for a ledger or overview tab will be clear, in addition to different mapmodes.

 

[Maldenic]

It doesn't have to be a ledger, but I agree that there needs to be a table or menu of known worlds, a well as things like empire population stats etc. I don't think we need info on other empires, but we do need something like the ledger. Map modes and tooltips aren't sufficient for the purpose.

 

[Red_warning]

Knowing things such as energy/mineral/food/science production per capita could actually be very useful when comparing yourself to other empires.

 

[praftd]

I completely don't care about any realism or immersion regarding ledgers and statistics in strategy games, my love for them is far too great. I wanna sort all countries regarding their income and army and compare them. I wanna know their population density. I wanna know their pie charts and income per capita. The more obscure data is provided, regardlessly of setting and context, the better. I wanna graphs and charts.

I don't even care about 'leaking strategic secret data'. Okay, okay, thanks to ledger you know how strong my military is despite me being on the opposite side of the map, you can destroy me easily. Whatever, kill me but don't touch my statistical data. I am browsing it again. Oh this empire has so big military for its small income.

<you'd never guess I am excited at the prospect of me having Statistics in my college soon!>

The issue is that it is a rather inefficient, antiquated way of information delivery. One of the primary focuses of proper GUI design is do more with less. And bombarding users with obscure information is something to be avoided. Graphical representations and abstractions are what's desired for usability, not pie charts and spreadsheets.

While I'm sure there is some information that could be made more apparent, I have yet to see anything that is so vital as to require a dedicated ledger.

 

[witchveil]

I can see why people like having a ledger/stats. They are nice to look at sometimes. Personally I prefer not to have one. I think the closest we may get is with a possible Espionage DLC which would let us gather intel on other empires.

Most of the stats can be probably be extracted from save games though. A talented programmer could probably come up with a program to extract and collate the data like this guy did with EU4 saves: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/i-hear-you-guys-like-stats.824440/

 

[McDog]

I'm sure they will do the right thing and not hand out formation about stuff you wouldn't know about like candy. It's like cheating yourself in civ with info addict. Very lame in that game.

 

[Cruxador]

I'd be disappointed if it isn't in. The ledger is the easiest way to gather large amounts of statistics and figures without manually working everything out. It also has GLORIOUS spreadsheets and an UNLIMITED BOUNTY of pie charts. Really, it's quite convenient and makes me geek out. Provided it is disabled during multiplayer (so no poverty espionage is possible) it can only be a good thing.

Is it in the game? We haven't seen it. If it isn't I'd like to see it put in, in an update or expansion.

Seriously though, I NEED SPREADSHEETS.

That kind of thing is for nerds. Stellaris needs to be casual so that 4x players will buy it, so there's no ledger allowed.

But even more awkwardly the ledger breaks the 4th wall overtly. And in a game like CK2 and EU4 where you were already kind of breaking that barrier anyway because why would a medieval count in France know or have an opinion of a guy in India, much less know how many troops he has in real time.

A ledger doesn't have to be 100% accurate. In fact, we might see some sort of limited ledger with the all-but-confirmed espionage DLC, in which the info you know will be displayed but the accuracy will be "to the best of your knowledge" and generally not perfect.

It doesn't have to be a ledger, but I agree that there needs to be a table or menu of known worlds, a well as things like empire population stats etc. I don't think we need info on other empires, but we do need something like the ledger. Map modes and tooltips aren't sufficient for the purpose.

Also we don't have map modes, so yeah.

 

[Brennan]

But even more awkwardly the ledger breaks the 4th wall overtly.

NOT for a modernist game. Indeed, the fourth wall would be broken if your stellar-colonizing government DIDN'T have spreadsheets and ways of summarizing information - the business of government and war, after all, will be conducted by sapients crouched on their hind-tentacles in front of computers rather than riding on top a war-kuul waving a sharpened stick at the enemy.

 

[Xykon]

A ledger seems fairly simple to add in. Someone will probably mod one in if the devs don't listen to our collective requests for a ledger.

That kind of thing is for nerds. Stellaris needs to be casual so that 4x players will buy it, so there's no ledger allowed.

I almost wrote a serious reply to this, but then I realized you were joking.

 

[jaredstanko]

i can understand why you wouldnt want a ledger in the game for all things all though i strongly strongly would disagree with you

but there is absolutely no reason to not have a ledger for population race makeup, ethos makeup, planet makeup, and other empire NECCESITIES all by percent and total numbers

anything you could easily find out by painstakingly clicking on all of your planets one by one needs to be in a freaking ledger. this is a paradox game. where would we be if i had to click every province to find out what is and isn't Hungarian culture, count up my hungarian basetax by hand and then break out my calculator to find out what percentage of my population is properly Hungarian. the pie chart is, and in the case of stellaris, NEEDS TO BE right FREAKING THERE

 

[FerdinandVeblen]

The issue is that it is a rather inefficient, antiquated way of information delivery. One of the primary focuses of proper GUI design is do more with less. And bombarding users with obscure information is something to be avoided. Graphical representations and abstractions are what's desired for usability, not pie charts and spreadsheets.

While I'm sure there is some information that could be made more apparent, I have yet to see anything that is so vital as to require a dedicated ledger.

Nah, it's different means of info-delivery for different purposes. The on-map stuff is like the executive summary of the report, the ledger is like the appendices at the back of Lord of the Rings. You don't use it during the game, you use it after playing to look at the state of the world and feel immersed in the fictional universe. I very much disagree that everything needs to be hyper-simplified #CONTENT these days. Spreadsheets have their place and pie charts are totally a graphical representation anyway