Hi guys,
I decided to give it a go in 2.2, I gave up after version 2.0 when game went from slow to crawl, but thought, maybe for a change this time they had enough time to make at least one thing right. It will be half rant and half constructive critique.
This is my list of observations.
1. I have no idea why no-one complains about speed of the fleet. I did a simple experiment fleet of corvettes was flying from one side of owned solar system to another. 30 days (or was it 60? maybe 60 was for battleships, cannot recall right now) to do that. If you want to perform jump to another system add a couple of days. Multiply by 10 jumps in your home territory and you end up with number like 550 days. In my case I was playing 800 star galaxy, my federation member was attacked by exterminators and game told me it will take 1770 days to get there (27 jumps - in a galaxy that had 800 stars). 1770 days to get to the front line. In EU4 terms you would go from Paris to Beijing and back in that time and EU4 timeline is 2 times longer. In addition it was added to the game with version 2.0, to somehow force you to split your fleets, but if you do and if one of the fleets is going to be caught by stronger opposition, you will have never a chance to reinforce it. Because 4 jumps in enemy territory is like like 150 days to catch up. Solution: 4 days to cross the solar system, 2 days for jump preparation and 10-20 days for travel time in between of stars, totalling 16 days in best scenario * 10 jumps = half a year. Not perfect, but honestly, anything is better than crawl that happens right now.
2. Population. Yeah population always growing, right? Science says that population always stops growing once all the resources that allow that growth are depleted. You have 8 planets, at some point all 8 planets are dystopian anarchy? Not enough housing, not enough jobs, but hell yeah, another pop is about to show up. It's like a race against exponential growth, more planets you have more pops you have to dump elsewhere, more ring worlds/habitats/planets you need to procure in the end having even more pops to dump (or tank stability). Solution: limit the pop growth in some formula like this -> base_growth * district still available / 5 + planetary decision to continue growth 10%, this way growth will stop once districts are saturated (or close to) but if you need 2-3 more pops you can enforce it with a policy.
3. Robots. Try to stop their production that with materialist empire. Your capital is building robots. What is more if do robotic ascension you have usually organic pop of another species growing and robot being build on a planet that has 10 unemployed and 8 homeless. And of course robot that is being built is not of your primary species, but basic robot. Because why would you not build them, right? Try to change it and after it's spawned it reverts back to robot. I know it's a bug but looking at issue with never ending population growth I would call it a huge one. Solution: a) add decision to stop robot production, b) once you have synth ascension perk allow to assimilate robots, c) if you go evolution mastery, allow to gradually replace robots with biological pop
4. Specialisation of your species. Yeah, what's the point when you have no control if your super-duper smarty science guy decided to become a clerk. You cannot micro it (at least not in a sane way), it's not guaranteed to make a good choice (we have weights). In real world we do not do weights you are either good at what you do or there is someone better and eventually you are fired/moved to another job. Another real life example are guys that finish universities in my country to become full time coal miners, it's better paid job than lab guys, because are labs are horrible and under founded and our mines are essential to local economy so willing to pay much, much more. Half of the benefit of gene-modding is lost when you have no control who gets a trait and then what it will do with it. Solution: a) the best species always get the best fitting job, perhaps gradually but inevitable, b) gene-mod per job not per planet
5. If you do not buy all the DLC game-balance is off. So in my case I am missing Distant Stars and Megacorps and at year 2400+ I am struggling with mineral production. I did as well Syntethic ascensions, so I can for some reason convert food into energy, but I cannot convert energy into anything (excluding market which is not guarantying stable prices and hence stable economy). Those that have Megacorps can build Matter Decompressor, me? No chance. What about tech you can get in Distant Stars, is Crisis, Fallen Empires, etc balanced against that tech or mere vanilla game? Solution: is it even solve-able? But on trying side of the thing there should be unique buildings for people that do not own given DLC that give an opportunity to build similar resources.
6. Trade. Almost better than EU4, we have dynamic nodes! Yupi, yay!! Except there is no way to assign fleet to "trade node" and whatever you assign, in late game trade value will overwhelm your fleets anyway and pirates will spawn doing absolutely nothing than annoy you, require to divert your fleet that is 6 jumps away and merely 240 days away. Plus at times trade routes path finding makes no sense at all. Solution: create actually a trade node and assign fleets to protect them (starbases in the range of that node will add to protection as well), pirates are not a ships that spawn at random and do nothing, but debuff to the node that takes your trade value.
7. End game crawl. It was an issue from very beginning of stellaris, in years that has passed it seems it only got worst. It's the only argument I believe majority of us will agree and the hardest to fix.
8. Why do we need overlay? Overlay is a living fossil of a horrible UX. Why by looking at galaxy map we cannot see same information? Is there not enough space or something? Solution: Move overlay stuff to the map and get rid of it.
9. Why pressing Q, at times zoom you in to the planet level/fleet level in a grand strategy game. You wonder where is the fleet, you press Qs you would assume it will centre you on the fleet, nope. It will centre you on the fleet flying happily next to some worm forsaken Class M star, you zoom out, to end up in the same place you have started. Solution: no matter how many times you press Q and on what type of the object you are centred on a star in the galaxy view, use a scroll bar or another button to zoom in into granular level. Game does not allow you to make any sort of fleet manoeuvre on solar system so why it's even bother with it?
This is my opinion, hate it if you will, agree if you do.
For me till we have some meaningful changes, Stellaris is an example how to promise big and then two game directors later still fail on delivery.
Cheers.
I decided to give it a go in 2.2, I gave up after version 2.0 when game went from slow to crawl, but thought, maybe for a change this time they had enough time to make at least one thing right. It will be half rant and half constructive critique.
This is my list of observations.
1. I have no idea why no-one complains about speed of the fleet. I did a simple experiment fleet of corvettes was flying from one side of owned solar system to another. 30 days (or was it 60? maybe 60 was for battleships, cannot recall right now) to do that. If you want to perform jump to another system add a couple of days. Multiply by 10 jumps in your home territory and you end up with number like 550 days. In my case I was playing 800 star galaxy, my federation member was attacked by exterminators and game told me it will take 1770 days to get there (27 jumps - in a galaxy that had 800 stars). 1770 days to get to the front line. In EU4 terms you would go from Paris to Beijing and back in that time and EU4 timeline is 2 times longer. In addition it was added to the game with version 2.0, to somehow force you to split your fleets, but if you do and if one of the fleets is going to be caught by stronger opposition, you will have never a chance to reinforce it. Because 4 jumps in enemy territory is like like 150 days to catch up. Solution: 4 days to cross the solar system, 2 days for jump preparation and 10-20 days for travel time in between of stars, totalling 16 days in best scenario * 10 jumps = half a year. Not perfect, but honestly, anything is better than crawl that happens right now.
2. Population. Yeah population always growing, right? Science says that population always stops growing once all the resources that allow that growth are depleted. You have 8 planets, at some point all 8 planets are dystopian anarchy? Not enough housing, not enough jobs, but hell yeah, another pop is about to show up. It's like a race against exponential growth, more planets you have more pops you have to dump elsewhere, more ring worlds/habitats/planets you need to procure in the end having even more pops to dump (or tank stability). Solution: limit the pop growth in some formula like this -> base_growth * district still available / 5 + planetary decision to continue growth 10%, this way growth will stop once districts are saturated (or close to) but if you need 2-3 more pops you can enforce it with a policy.
3. Robots. Try to stop their production that with materialist empire. Your capital is building robots. What is more if do robotic ascension you have usually organic pop of another species growing and robot being build on a planet that has 10 unemployed and 8 homeless. And of course robot that is being built is not of your primary species, but basic robot. Because why would you not build them, right? Try to change it and after it's spawned it reverts back to robot. I know it's a bug but looking at issue with never ending population growth I would call it a huge one. Solution: a) add decision to stop robot production, b) once you have synth ascension perk allow to assimilate robots, c) if you go evolution mastery, allow to gradually replace robots with biological pop
4. Specialisation of your species. Yeah, what's the point when you have no control if your super-duper smarty science guy decided to become a clerk. You cannot micro it (at least not in a sane way), it's not guaranteed to make a good choice (we have weights). In real world we do not do weights you are either good at what you do or there is someone better and eventually you are fired/moved to another job. Another real life example are guys that finish universities in my country to become full time coal miners, it's better paid job than lab guys, because are labs are horrible and under founded and our mines are essential to local economy so willing to pay much, much more. Half of the benefit of gene-modding is lost when you have no control who gets a trait and then what it will do with it. Solution: a) the best species always get the best fitting job, perhaps gradually but inevitable, b) gene-mod per job not per planet
5. If you do not buy all the DLC game-balance is off. So in my case I am missing Distant Stars and Megacorps and at year 2400+ I am struggling with mineral production. I did as well Syntethic ascensions, so I can for some reason convert food into energy, but I cannot convert energy into anything (excluding market which is not guarantying stable prices and hence stable economy). Those that have Megacorps can build Matter Decompressor, me? No chance. What about tech you can get in Distant Stars, is Crisis, Fallen Empires, etc balanced against that tech or mere vanilla game? Solution: is it even solve-able? But on trying side of the thing there should be unique buildings for people that do not own given DLC that give an opportunity to build similar resources.
6. Trade. Almost better than EU4, we have dynamic nodes! Yupi, yay!! Except there is no way to assign fleet to "trade node" and whatever you assign, in late game trade value will overwhelm your fleets anyway and pirates will spawn doing absolutely nothing than annoy you, require to divert your fleet that is 6 jumps away and merely 240 days away. Plus at times trade routes path finding makes no sense at all. Solution: create actually a trade node and assign fleets to protect them (starbases in the range of that node will add to protection as well), pirates are not a ships that spawn at random and do nothing, but debuff to the node that takes your trade value.
7. End game crawl. It was an issue from very beginning of stellaris, in years that has passed it seems it only got worst. It's the only argument I believe majority of us will agree and the hardest to fix.
8. Why do we need overlay? Overlay is a living fossil of a horrible UX. Why by looking at galaxy map we cannot see same information? Is there not enough space or something? Solution: Move overlay stuff to the map and get rid of it.
9. Why pressing Q, at times zoom you in to the planet level/fleet level in a grand strategy game. You wonder where is the fleet, you press Qs you would assume it will centre you on the fleet, nope. It will centre you on the fleet flying happily next to some worm forsaken Class M star, you zoom out, to end up in the same place you have started. Solution: no matter how many times you press Q and on what type of the object you are centred on a star in the galaxy view, use a scroll bar or another button to zoom in into granular level. Game does not allow you to make any sort of fleet manoeuvre on solar system so why it's even bother with it?
This is my opinion, hate it if you will, agree if you do.
For me till we have some meaningful changes, Stellaris is an example how to promise big and then two game directors later still fail on delivery.
Cheers.
