How hard would a generated galactic history be? Would you buy a DLC focused on it?

[Rip Off Productions]

having the past relations of the Fallen Empires, Enclaves, the now extinct precursors, and the occasional anomaly subject would be cool.

you'd think that the anti-AI materialist FEs would react to me uncovering the Cybrix ringworld, but they don't...

hell buying galactic history books from the Curators if they trust you could be cool, and which FEs had past rivalries/alliances will determine how War In Heaven events play out.

 

[Meneliki]

I got thinking about this thread earlier, and I had an idea.

EU4 is about early Earth history. You start at a specific point in that history, and you can pick which nation to play. Each nation is set - (France will always be there, in the same spot, every time you load up a new game) and each nation has it's own story throughout the game. I feel like this is part of what you were getting at in your original post.

What if Stellaris had something similar in an alternate game mode?

What about some kind of 'Galactic History' game mode or something, where there was actually a pre-written history script in place(which you could obviously deviate from as per every PDX game). What if you could load up a game in whatever year( like other pdx games) and it would load the current 'state' of the galaxy and you could pick which nation to jump into? (just like eu/ck, etc) Paradox could come up with their own history of the galaxy, and build it into the 'history' game mode the same way they built real history into EU/CK? They could even add scripted events. In EU4, there's the Castille/Aragon wedding thing for example. Perhaps one moment in galactic history could be the great Belmacossan/Taphidian merger of 2632... you know what i mean. Each country in CK2/EU4 is like a set character on a grand stage with a pre-set history both behind and infront of them, that you can alter at will. What if Stellaris adopted this into a new game mode?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

I got thinking about this thread earlier, and I had an idea.

EU4 is about early Earth history. You start at a specific point in that history, and you can pick which nation to play. Each nation is set - (France will always be there, in the same spot, every time you load up a new game) and each nation has it's own story throughout the game. I feel like this is part of what you were getting at in your original post.

What if Stellaris had something similar in an alternate game mode?

What about some kind of 'Galactic History' game mode or something, where there was actually a pre-written history script in place(which you could obviously deviate from as per every PDX game). What if you could load up a game in whatever year( like other pdx games) and it would load the current 'state' of the galaxy and you could pick which nation to jump into? (just like eu/ck, etc) Paradox could come up with their own history of the galaxy, and build it into the 'history' game mode the same way they built real history into EU/CK? They could even add scripted events. In EU4, there's the Castille/Aragon wedding thing for example. Perhaps one moment in galactic history could be the great Belmacossan/Taphidian merger of 2632... you know what i mean. Each country in CK2/EU4 is like a set character on a grand stage with a pre-set history both behind and infront of them, that you can alter at will. What if Stellaris adopted this into a new game mode?

Lacking the outside context that makes a historical script work well, that's why people are suggesting a proceedurally-generated history and geopolitical arrangement.

 

[Ballisticwaffle]

Slaves to MUGANI: God of HAK HAK HAK part 2, Stellaris Fortress.

In all honesty having a dessicated and decrepid galaxy with a history not spelt out would be amazing. Fleet fragments of a war, bombarded planets flourishing with life thousands of years later. I'd drop a debatable amount of money for that.

 

[Rabid]

Other than pure gameplay balance / enhancement issues this is my number one want for Stellaris. I want to be able to choose to start out in the space equivalent of a HRE OPM in thrall of a huge, decaying empire, or whatever. Having symmetric starts (other than advanced starts, which are extremely uninteresting for various reasons) just adds to the whole issue of every species you meet feeling more or less the same, with varying degrees of friendlyness / sociopathy. Spawning in a galaxy with some 'history' would help to give some distinctness from day one.

 

[Rip Off Productions]

I got thinking about this thread earlier, and I had an idea.

EU4 is about early Earth history. You start at a specific point in that history, and you can pick which nation to play. Each nation is set - (France will always be there, in the same spot, every time you load up a new game) and each nation has it's own story throughout the game. I feel like this is part of what you were getting at in your original post.

What if Stellaris had something similar in an alternate game mode?

What about some kind of 'Galactic History' game mode or something, where there was actually a pre-written history script in place(which you could obviously deviate from as per every PDX game). What if you could load up a game in whatever year( like other pdx games) and it would load the current 'state' of the galaxy and you could pick which nation to jump into? (just like eu/ck, etc) Paradox could come up with their own history of the galaxy, and build it into the 'history' game mode the same way they built real history into EU/CK? They could even add scripted events. In EU4, there's the Castille/Aragon wedding thing for example. Perhaps one moment in galactic history could be the great Belmacossan/Taphidian merger of 2632... you know what i mean. Each country in CK2/EU4 is like a set character on a grand stage with a pre-set history both behind and infront of them, that you can alter at will. What if Stellaris adopted this into a new game mode?

Lacking the outside context that makes a historical script work well, that's why people are suggesting a proceedurally-generated history and geopolitical arrangement.

I think an option to force the premade starter species to spawn, and having custom events and extra flavor text available for/from/about them(think like how the CoM has events about looking for other colony ships from Earth, but better. I never liked how finding Earth doesn't have any kind of big event chain for reestablished contact and the effects it has on CoM and UNoE politics) would be a better option, maybe even give them special AIs to fit their species/empire's "character"(think of it as Stellaris's equivalent to "Lucky Nations").

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

I think an option to force the premade starter species to spawn, and having custom events and extra flavor text available for/from/about them(think like how the CoM has events about looking for other colony ships from Earth, but better. I never liked how finding Earth doesn't have any kind of big event chain for reestablished contact and the effects it has on CoM and UNoE politics) would be a better option, maybe even give them special AIs to fit their species/empire's "character"(think of it as Stellaris's equivalent to "Lucky Nations").

That could be interesting- I'd certainly want more species to be supported if they went that direction.

I also feel like a means of implementing asymmetric starts would be beneficial regardless of whether or not it supported your "lucky nations" or a procedural setup; developing FTL and finding yourself in a galaxy that's been halfways-consumed by a Cold War would be neat.

 

[wingren013]

Asymmetric starts are part of what makes pdox great. It was a disappointment for them to not be in Stellaris.

 

[Rip Off Productions]

That could be interesting- I'd certainly want more species to be supported if they went that direction.

I also feel like a means of implementing asymmetric starts would be beneficial regardless of whether or not it supported your "lucky nations" or a procedural setup; developing FTL and finding yourself in a galaxy that's been halfways-consumed by a Cold War would be neat.

Asymmetric starts are part of what makes pdox great. It was a disappointment for them to not be in Stellaris.

I don't mind the symmetrical starts, and it's not like there's zero asymmetry; there are the "advanced start" empires that have an extra system or to under their belt, and there's even a chance of one being physically near your home system if you don't disable it in the set up menu. and then there are a few pre-FTL species around who are on the edge of discovering it without the aid of outside forces.

now the ability to start as one of those two options would be cool(though playing Pre-FTL species would be boring though, unless an observation post get built above your world)

EDIT:
On the subject of possibly making the other default/pre-made Empires possible to spawn in the game; they should also get fixed star systems(hopefully a star system customizer/editor would get added as well).
Another cool thing would be if the Chinorr Stellar Union started the game with a subspecies of themselves that still had Jungle world preferences(their background lore says that their world was once a Jungle before they ruined it with pollution and made it Arid), or even make their entire species still Jungle preference(hopefully coming with the option to make custom species also have preferences that are different from their homeworld; the Commonwealth of Man could benefit from that as well)

 

[Baldeagle91]

Tbh for some reason, out of all the paradox games, people are most hostile to stellaris having and semblance of an option of a fixed start akin to the HOI, EU, CK etc series.

One of the main problems with the game currently is because of the symmetrical starts is there is zero context for most actions other than, 'they're zenophobes' or 'they're zenophiles'. All their actions regardless of anything else, mostly rely on those two traits. For example at the moments it's not possible for a mostly zenophile nation to dislike any particular races or for zenophobes to have races they actually get along with. It also makes scripted events quite hard, so far most if not all events I've seen are mostly random with fairly minor imput from the player.

 

[tradetem]

OP's idea is pretty nice and Paradox will probably do something like this, or at least add pieces of galactic history in different expansions and story packs. What I would like to see is some kind of Permanent mode, where each time you press New Game, the same galaxy map will be used, but there will be new empires, resource distribution, species. Some species will be the same, old relics and wreckages will mention battles you have fought several New Games earlier or a massive AI revolt that your empire from 10 games ago succesfully destroyed, albeit at the cost of losing a 100k fleet in total. So it would be a bit like Mass Effect 3 bad ending Bonus points for downloading the personality matrix of one of your old 5 star admirals, so that he can lead your new fleets one more time.

 

[Summin Cool]

A Scenario editor you mean?

A timeline would also be pretty neat

 

[Alectron]

Personally I would've LOVED to have something like an option of galactic lore at the beginning of the game (in the galaxy creation). For example, "young galaxy" - your empire is among the first species to roam space, no precursors, no FE, a lot of primitives. Old galaxy - plenty of FE, debris from intergalactic wars, forgotten megastructures ext.

 

[SolarGuy]

A Scenario editor you mean?

A timeline would also be pretty neat

Not directly a scenario editor. More like "when you start a new game, it simulates totally random usage of a scenario editor to create a unique backstory and ruins and such things for each game of Stellaris individually".

 

[Summin Cool]

Not directly a scenario editor. More like "when you start a new game, it simulates totally random usage of a scenario editor to create a unique backstory and ruins and such things for each game of Stellaris individually".

Procedural generation then. It's probably too much effort for what it's worth when other stuff needs improving first.

Wouldn't mind either way though.

 

[Emraldis]

I would honestly be ok with just a larger number of available events. I don't mind repeating things in the long run, but if I find the Yuht every second game, it gets a bit repetitive.

 

[SolarGuy]

I would honestly be ok with just a larger number of available events. I don't mind repeating things in the long run, but if I find the Yuht every second game, it gets a bit repetitive.

While there ARE a lot of events, only a few of them are set to appear more often. Which results in twenty billion "strange mountain formation" anomalies while you just hope to get something interesting.
And colony events are far too rare as well. They basically don't exist. Not even if you colonise every single planet in the galaxy.

 

[Emraldis]

While there ARE a lot of events, only a few of them are set to appear more often. Which results in twenty billion "strange mountain formation" anomalies while you just hope to get something interesting.
And colony events are far too rare as well. They basically don't exist. Not even if you colonise every single planet in the galaxy.

Yeah, they should really just add a large number of events of a certain type in a DLC or patch, and then just work through the different portions of the game that require more events. (IE make a DLC or Patch for precursor events, followed by another DLC of Patch for colony events, etc.)

 

[Summin Cool]

I'd bet there will be a mod somewhere that does a bunch of events, seems easy enough to do.

 

[Emraldis]

I'd bet there will be a mod somewhere that does a bunch of events, seems easy enough to do.

There are multiple