After rage-quitting my latest game, I ranted to some friends about the multitude of bugs/design decisions that I feel make this game, which is so close to being a wonderful, into a rage inducing, un-enjoyable, frustrating experience. However, it's not productive simply to rant, so I'm turning all the points I came up with into a list of issues that could be addressed. Almost all of these have been brought up elsewhere on the forums, but I wanted to put everything into context in one thread so players can see just how many bugs and game-play issues there are once you get past the basic learning curve of 2.2.x, and hopefully encourage the developers to fundamentally re-think many (almost all) of the game's mechanics.
So here we go in no particular order (and apologies in advance for my sarcasm):
1. When in war with allied AI or even other players, your ally will end up feeding war exhaustion and causing a war loss. Regardless of how good you're doing, your ally can lose the war for you. This can also happen in wars for survival, meaning you can lose the game by being in a defensive pact with an AI on the other side of the galaxy who loses a war to a devouring swarm, for example. Even in less extreme cases, having an ally is more of a liability than an asset.
2. If you only happen to have one planet colonized, your ships in your home system can't retreat, no matter that you have many upgraded bases they could retreat to. Not great for life-seeded empires.
3. AI war capability is atrocious. I just had the AI send a fleet clear across my entire empire, lengthwise, to attack an outpost on the far side, then fly the fleet back to their space. They did this while I was capturing and bombarding their worlds.
4. Playing barbaric despoilers? Better be prepared to wage full scale war to get the benefit of your raiding ability. To plunder a neighboring empire and steal a few pops, expect a war that lasts a decade.
5. Related to #4, it's harder to steal pops from less developed, less populated planets than from core worlds. The rugged, unprotected border world is just impossible to effectively raid, while the heavily fortified enemy home-world bristling with defensive armies gives up pops at the slightest provocation. And by heavily fortified, I mean it should be, except the AI doesn't really build much in the way of defensive armies and makes no particular effort to defend their home system any more than any other random system they've built a starbase in.
6. Related to #4 and #5, the AI could care less that you're wiping out their economy by cutting off their space based resources, devastating their planets, and stealing their pops. Virtually all that matters to warscore is how many ships one side or the other lost in space combat (and to a small extent how many planets are captured, but with so few colonizable planets in the early game good luck with that making a difference). As despoilers, after beating back the enemy fleet, pushing through to their home-world, capturing an outlying world on the way, and then bombarding the home-world back a century while capturing 10+ pops, I lose the war in a white peace because I guess my raiders got tired of raiding? Shouldn't I be able to .. you know.. raid? Instead of having to wage a full scale "domination" war?
7. Got an enemy fleet flying through your empire? Your ships are as fast as theirs, so good luck catching it.. years of chasing later, maybe you'll catch em. If you're lucky and have an admiral with a sub-light speed boost you might have a chance.
8. If a system is in the middle of a trade route and is captured by the AI (not the trade hub, just a regular old outpost), trade flows through it as if nothing happened. Pirates can stop your trade, but not a full scale invasion!
9. There's no point researching anomalies in systems you won't be colonizing, since this effectively gives any resources you uncover to your enemies.
10. Once you've met an empire, you suddenly know every little thing there is to know about every barren rock in their territory, because even enemies share complete intel with each other.
11. Interested in defending your borders? Well, before the arbitrary border-locking tech, the AI might accidentally fly into range of your border base, but they certainly won't try to avoid it. Best of luck there. Also about that arbitrary border-locking tech, it makes no sense from an immersion standpoint, in that you somehow (and instantly, once you develop the tech) lock down just the hyperlanes heading to systems you own, while leaving the lanes back to the enemy empire open. Presumably you'd think such a tech could allow you to trap the enemy fleet in your system, but no. So it's there for a gameplay mechanic, not for any immersive reason.. but then, why do I have to wait 50ish years before being able to research it? Why do I have to let enemy fleets bypass my borders for 50ish years before getting the tech, instead of it just being a default from the beginning?
12. Formed a research pact with an ally? Great, congratulations! Good luck guessing which techs you now get a bonus to.
13. Formed a trade pact with an ally? Wonderful! you'll be rolling in 3 energy/month. Or you could just build one more mining station.
14. Alloy production is tied to population grown which means the number of colonizable planets you find far more drastically impacts your ability to wage war than whether or not you're a warmonger. Without the ability for starbases to manufacture alloys, you're stuck trading minerals/food for energy, and then energy for alloys at a 60% loss on the market. This is the only way you can wage war, since war is far more about building up large fleets to minimize casualties than anything else.
15. Inviting xeno pops to live in your empire, or perhaps you have some slaves? Watch the well documented issue where your founding population quickly reaches population parity with each xeno race on your planet, regardless of growth rate or really any other factor.
16. Once gates are in use, you can't stop the enemy from using their gates even in systems you've captured, so they can simply keep jumping in behind your advancing fleet to recapture systems you've already taken. Unless you're in a total war, in which case the feudal rules of space war are set aside and you immediately capture the system and the gate in it.
17. Want to hurt the economy of your enemy? You can't. Feudal space rules say you can't destroy outposts, gates, and so on. You have to give them back when your war is over.
18. Got robots? Say goodbye to your economy. At least if you're playing the latest beta you can turn off robot production so you don't get overrun with robots.
19. Find an anomaly that gives you a resource? Say goodbye to any other resources on that planet/moon. This makes sense both from a game-play and immersion perspective (/sarcasm). If only researchers and miners could co-habitate - alas, it's not meant to be.
20. I hear other people have issues with gestalt consciousnesses, end game crises, fallen empires, late game trade lags, and so on. I haven't gotten far enough into the game to experience these personally, because of all the issues above and of course the daily lag that makes playing on higher speeds an exercise in frustration.
21. I'll throw this last one out there too because it's a pet peeve of mine. When a tool-tip transitions immediately to another tool-tip while panning the screen (your mouse pans over different objects/space while using WASD to pan), the exact same feeling of lag occurs as during the daily update. If instead the mouse pans from a tool-tip area to a non-tool-tip area (unexplored space, mostly), no lag occurs. Generating or removing a tool-tip doesn't cause a lag spike, but transitioning from one tool-tip to another does. This shouldn't be, but devs haven't acknowledged this issue exists, instead focusing on the "hard" problem of daily lag. I suspect early game daily lag is tied to UI updates and is not tied to performance issues until the late game, since daily lag occurs across many different hardware setups and game configurations.
Some large issues, some small, but taken together, it's virtually impossible to play a game of Stellaris that remains fun throughout. Nonsensical game design choices combined with unfixable/unfixed bugs make for an unreliable gameplay experience. You really have to go looking for the fun in the game as it is now, even when you don't run into any major issues. I really wish I didn't feel this way, because Stellaris is in so many ways so close to being a great game. I really wish it was. I know the developers have worked extremely hard on the game, and I know they will continue to fix bugs and add new features (and I'm thankful for the work they've done). Sadly though, its been several years now since I felt I could play the game without running into major game breaking issues, and the constant cycle of new feature releases without proper testing/qa/design, followed by a bit of hope that gets crushed each time I come back to the game, it's just too much. I truly hope there is a solution out there, and that the game continues to be updated and patched long enough for us players to get a game that is relatively bug free, internally consistent, and above all actually fun to play from beginning to end.
So here we go in no particular order (and apologies in advance for my sarcasm):
1. When in war with allied AI or even other players, your ally will end up feeding war exhaustion and causing a war loss. Regardless of how good you're doing, your ally can lose the war for you. This can also happen in wars for survival, meaning you can lose the game by being in a defensive pact with an AI on the other side of the galaxy who loses a war to a devouring swarm, for example. Even in less extreme cases, having an ally is more of a liability than an asset.
2. If you only happen to have one planet colonized, your ships in your home system can't retreat, no matter that you have many upgraded bases they could retreat to. Not great for life-seeded empires.
3. AI war capability is atrocious. I just had the AI send a fleet clear across my entire empire, lengthwise, to attack an outpost on the far side, then fly the fleet back to their space. They did this while I was capturing and bombarding their worlds.
4. Playing barbaric despoilers? Better be prepared to wage full scale war to get the benefit of your raiding ability. To plunder a neighboring empire and steal a few pops, expect a war that lasts a decade.
5. Related to #4, it's harder to steal pops from less developed, less populated planets than from core worlds. The rugged, unprotected border world is just impossible to effectively raid, while the heavily fortified enemy home-world bristling with defensive armies gives up pops at the slightest provocation. And by heavily fortified, I mean it should be, except the AI doesn't really build much in the way of defensive armies and makes no particular effort to defend their home system any more than any other random system they've built a starbase in.
6. Related to #4 and #5, the AI could care less that you're wiping out their economy by cutting off their space based resources, devastating their planets, and stealing their pops. Virtually all that matters to warscore is how many ships one side or the other lost in space combat (and to a small extent how many planets are captured, but with so few colonizable planets in the early game good luck with that making a difference). As despoilers, after beating back the enemy fleet, pushing through to their home-world, capturing an outlying world on the way, and then bombarding the home-world back a century while capturing 10+ pops, I lose the war in a white peace because I guess my raiders got tired of raiding? Shouldn't I be able to .. you know.. raid? Instead of having to wage a full scale "domination" war?
7. Got an enemy fleet flying through your empire? Your ships are as fast as theirs, so good luck catching it.. years of chasing later, maybe you'll catch em. If you're lucky and have an admiral with a sub-light speed boost you might have a chance.
8. If a system is in the middle of a trade route and is captured by the AI (not the trade hub, just a regular old outpost), trade flows through it as if nothing happened. Pirates can stop your trade, but not a full scale invasion!
9. There's no point researching anomalies in systems you won't be colonizing, since this effectively gives any resources you uncover to your enemies.
10. Once you've met an empire, you suddenly know every little thing there is to know about every barren rock in their territory, because even enemies share complete intel with each other.
11. Interested in defending your borders? Well, before the arbitrary border-locking tech, the AI might accidentally fly into range of your border base, but they certainly won't try to avoid it. Best of luck there. Also about that arbitrary border-locking tech, it makes no sense from an immersion standpoint, in that you somehow (and instantly, once you develop the tech) lock down just the hyperlanes heading to systems you own, while leaving the lanes back to the enemy empire open. Presumably you'd think such a tech could allow you to trap the enemy fleet in your system, but no. So it's there for a gameplay mechanic, not for any immersive reason.. but then, why do I have to wait 50ish years before being able to research it? Why do I have to let enemy fleets bypass my borders for 50ish years before getting the tech, instead of it just being a default from the beginning?
12. Formed a research pact with an ally? Great, congratulations! Good luck guessing which techs you now get a bonus to.
13. Formed a trade pact with an ally? Wonderful! you'll be rolling in 3 energy/month. Or you could just build one more mining station.
14. Alloy production is tied to population grown which means the number of colonizable planets you find far more drastically impacts your ability to wage war than whether or not you're a warmonger. Without the ability for starbases to manufacture alloys, you're stuck trading minerals/food for energy, and then energy for alloys at a 60% loss on the market. This is the only way you can wage war, since war is far more about building up large fleets to minimize casualties than anything else.
15. Inviting xeno pops to live in your empire, or perhaps you have some slaves? Watch the well documented issue where your founding population quickly reaches population parity with each xeno race on your planet, regardless of growth rate or really any other factor.
16. Once gates are in use, you can't stop the enemy from using their gates even in systems you've captured, so they can simply keep jumping in behind your advancing fleet to recapture systems you've already taken. Unless you're in a total war, in which case the feudal rules of space war are set aside and you immediately capture the system and the gate in it.
17. Want to hurt the economy of your enemy? You can't. Feudal space rules say you can't destroy outposts, gates, and so on. You have to give them back when your war is over.
18. Got robots? Say goodbye to your economy. At least if you're playing the latest beta you can turn off robot production so you don't get overrun with robots.
19. Find an anomaly that gives you a resource? Say goodbye to any other resources on that planet/moon. This makes sense both from a game-play and immersion perspective (/sarcasm). If only researchers and miners could co-habitate - alas, it's not meant to be.
20. I hear other people have issues with gestalt consciousnesses, end game crises, fallen empires, late game trade lags, and so on. I haven't gotten far enough into the game to experience these personally, because of all the issues above and of course the daily lag that makes playing on higher speeds an exercise in frustration.
21. I'll throw this last one out there too because it's a pet peeve of mine. When a tool-tip transitions immediately to another tool-tip while panning the screen (your mouse pans over different objects/space while using WASD to pan), the exact same feeling of lag occurs as during the daily update. If instead the mouse pans from a tool-tip area to a non-tool-tip area (unexplored space, mostly), no lag occurs. Generating or removing a tool-tip doesn't cause a lag spike, but transitioning from one tool-tip to another does. This shouldn't be, but devs haven't acknowledged this issue exists, instead focusing on the "hard" problem of daily lag. I suspect early game daily lag is tied to UI updates and is not tied to performance issues until the late game, since daily lag occurs across many different hardware setups and game configurations.
Some large issues, some small, but taken together, it's virtually impossible to play a game of Stellaris that remains fun throughout. Nonsensical game design choices combined with unfixable/unfixed bugs make for an unreliable gameplay experience. You really have to go looking for the fun in the game as it is now, even when you don't run into any major issues. I really wish I didn't feel this way, because Stellaris is in so many ways so close to being a great game. I really wish it was. I know the developers have worked extremely hard on the game, and I know they will continue to fix bugs and add new features (and I'm thankful for the work they've done). Sadly though, its been several years now since I felt I could play the game without running into major game breaking issues, and the constant cycle of new feature releases without proper testing/qa/design, followed by a bit of hope that gets crushed each time I come back to the game, it's just too much. I truly hope there is a solution out there, and that the game continues to be updated and patched long enough for us players to get a game that is relatively bug free, internally consistent, and above all actually fun to play from beginning to end.