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EXCAT

Second Lieutenant
Jun 1, 2020
169
78
This is a list of features that Orion2 had 20-more years ago, that Stellaris still does not have.
I know that devs hate comparing games, but I hope it might get some creative juices going. We need something new after 2.7.2, don't we? ;)

1) SPIES! And saboteurs (For ppl who like Galactic diplomacy **)
You can have defensive spies - which would defend you from other species spies,
you could switch them to offensive - which may allow you to capture technology AND BLAME IT ON SOMEONE ELSE (sometimes),
you could turn them into saboteurs - to destroy some enemy's installations.
Some species have traits that make them better or worse at being spies/defending from spies - which is important! -
depending if you are telepathic, have some mimicry, other stuff.

2) Found lost colonies.
You may come up on a planet with a few pops of your own culture!
Apparently they left on a colony ship many years ago, and were presumed lost.
They are obviously happy to rejoin you.
Although - in Stellaris universe - they may have had some shifts in ethics?

3) Blockaded planets suffer.
For example, if the planet cannot produce all the food for itself, pops will start dying.
(blockaded by enemy fleet or a space monster)

4) Capturing enemy's ships - either to use in your fleet or to reverse-engineer.
Scrapping a ship will also produce some resources.
It's so odd that in Stellaris there is no reverse-engineering event ships, and no salvage materials when you disband one.

5) Planetary-based weapons batteries; ability to make some ships on the planet, without a station.
Today, in Stellaris if star's defense station is taken - the goose is cooked.
There is no way a planet under attack could recover, make any ships, or re-take the defense station.

6) Bombs. Sound simple, no?
They are not missiles. They only work on planetary target, but they work WAY better than the regular weapons.
They obviously take space on the ship - so you need to decide how to compose your fleet.
You will need a "Bomber" section configuration.

7) Biologic weapons.
They kill pops, but leave the infastructure intact.
Not sure how it could be translate to Stellaris model, somehow buildings get ruined when there are not enough pops (why?).

8) Free-form ship designer.
You are not limited to few pre-defined ship sections,
only by the total space and power requirements.
Juggernaut has only 1 configuration, come on!

There are probably more features, but let's start with these
 
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1. Yeah espionage is lacking, but we also lack the internal elements that they make much sense. I haven't been impressed with how they tend to work in other Pdox games so not really missing them and there's enough ways to get visual and military info that I need on enemies without them.

2. I do think there is a civic that lets you start as such a colony and chance of finding another empire that was a long lost colony as Humanity. I guess it could be a new event with say other versions such as finding an old generation ship/sleeper ship and story behind that as an anomaly.

3. Yeah long standing issue with global resource pool. If I recall it was tried to have food limited to planets early on but didn't really do much. Not sure what resource cost it might have.

4. Not really needed to capture ships and I can fully understand why we don't have the ability to do so. To capture their ship you are already doing well, so adds more snowballing to it after a battle. We can reverse engineer tech by researching the debris after a battle.

5. As it should be. If you want to fight ships then invest in your fleet and starbases+defence platforms.

6. Again not needed and not much sense. Missiles are much better than bombs. If you just wanted to lob things at a planet much better off using a large lump of rock. Weapons intended purely to work against planets wont be much use as there's very little need to bombard worlds and crippling your warships for such a benefit isn't a good trade off.

7. We do kind of have that in game as one of the planet "destroyer" options - Neutron Sweep. I think balancing it and making it fun will be an issue.

8. Balance, mechanics and visual designs have limits to what we can make. I would like to see it expanded but think having more visual ship types would be better as the current system doesn't exactly lead to a wide range of designs, so having more options that are effectively nerfs or noob traps isn't great.
 
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1) SPIES! And saboteurs (For ppl who like Galactic diplomacy **)
This is a good idea, though a lot of information that is currently available by default would have to cease being so in order for espionage to work.

2) Found lost colonies.
This seems like it has a high chance of being incompatible with a custom country's backstory.

3) Blockaded planets suffer.
In theory this makes sense, but having pops die is extremely punitive, and given how easy it is to conquer a planet outright I don't think it's a situation that would ever actually arise in-game.

Capturing enemy's ships - either to use in your fleet or to reverse-engineer.
I don't see how this could work, as it's trivially easy to make a ship that's impossible to capture.

Scrapping a ship will also produce some resources.
This makes sense. You already get resource refunds if you change a ship to a less expensive design.

5) Planetary-based weapons batteries;
If these weapons worked like defense platforms (ie, they engaged hostile fleets in battle until one side is destroyed/retreats), this would be an interesting idea, though I'm not sure about whether they'd be balanced.
If they simply applied attritional damage to bombarding fleets, I'm opposed. In theory, they'd make the game more tedious, as you'd need to constantly watch your bombarding fleets to remove ships that are about to die; in practice they wouldn't matter, since it's never necessary to bombard a planet.

ability to make some ships on the planet, without a station.
Potentially a good idea, though there'd need to be steep drawbacks to prevent shipyards from being obsolete. Maybe planets can only build corvettes, and take much longer to do so.

6) Bombs. Sound simple, no?
I don't like this idea for a lot of reasons. For starters, I'm ideologically opposed to specialist ships; I feel having any ship able to fill any role is a safer way to design a fleet, as it means you'll never have a ship end up in a situation where it can't do anything and be destroyed. Additionally, there's never a reason to bombard planets in the current version of Stellaris, so dedicated bombardment ships are a silly idea. Finally, ships are already using dedicated anti-planet weapons to bombard, not their anti-ship weapons, as evidenced by the fact that the ship's firepower doesn't affect the rate at which it bombards the planet.

7) Biologic weapons.
There's already a colossus weapon that does this. However, I struggle to see the reason why anyone would want to do this. Even for a genocidal country, conquering the planet and purging the pops is going to be a lot more rewarding.

8) Free-form ship designer.
I like this idea, though I feel like it would result in some pretty absurd stuff being discovered to be optimal.
 
1) SPIES! And saboteurs (For ppl who like Galactic diplomacy **)
At least, envoys could generate rare random "diplomatic" events, like the new one when a leader's memory bank is hacked and everyone learns about what they think of an alien ruler. Such events could be related to a form of spying (e.g. We have an opportunity. Do we take it? Yes/Success -> research points gained)
3) Blockaded planets suffer.
This would require an overhaul of the inner trade, piracy, and economical war effects. Realistically, a blockaded planet should suffer the effects of having deficits, somehow. But before a pop would die from starving, a planetary decision like a food policy would adjust the needs to the resource (for a cost in stability/happiness/efficiency/energy), anyways.
4) Capturing enemy's ships - either to use in your fleet or to reverse-engineer.
Perhaps, on top of having a chance of spawning a timed battle debris, a destroyed enemy ship could spawn a timed "disabled ship" special project and space object. Special project would need a Constructor ship in system, and a Transport ship to research it. Transport would be consumed in the process. Any empire would be allowed to research a disabled ship, but this would degrade diplomatic relation if you capture and reuse, or capture and scuttle a neutral ship. Even the former owner would have to research a disabled ship in order to retrieve it; this would make up for ships left with a handful of HP and no armor. Saying this, I wonder if some badly damaged ships, such as when returning from emergency jump with only so few HP left after a battle, shouldn't be considered as disabled and let on the spot, until duely repaired by a Constructor ship and rearmed with a fresh crew (a Transport).
6) Bombs. Sound simple, no?
I wonder if details of the ordinance have an effect right know. Perhaps a siege ship should just be equipped with XL kinetic weapons to be more efficient at bombing infrastructures? Energy weapons would be expected to react with atmosphere, and large weapons, even kinetic ones, would barely fire enough massive penetrators to light a planet's sky with shooting stars. However, plasma encased (?) particle weapons (neutron torpedoes) could perhaps reach surface and count more in the devastation increase rate.
For now, I'd be conservative, considering that large ships are already equipped with bombarding weapons, that are never used during space battle, and that these weapons account for the devastation damage.
8) Free-form ship designer.
1) Too much freedom could make some ship sizes even less useful or unbalanced: missile destroyers? Full guns battleships with a couple of PD?
2) Instead of more freedom, I'd like more thematic diversity. Currently, all culture designs look the same: a plateform to mount gun turrets on it, like old-time naval gunships. I understand the reason behind, but I wonder if we coulnd't have such designs as fallen empire's. Spheroidal designs, vertical elongated designs, cross/star designs, ... Several mods introduce non-plateform designs, and as far as vanilla designs are regarded, some have animated turrets, new muzzle effects, even turrets on the "belly" (as it should be)! Alas, I figure that such a diversity could look awful on screen with all these different collision boxes...
 
Another missing "feature" - but this is graphics only.

Stellaris land warfare screen is very boring. Bunch of circles....

In Orion2 is was animated - actual soldiers firing at each other, and getting killed (and tanks, and huge battle robots).

Stellaris actually has a nice variety of combat units (not available to every race =( )
but player is required to use his imagination.

You could do better, guys :)
 
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