I’ve decided to write a series of proposed fixes after playing 4 full games of 2.2.X. Keep in mind this will be entirely balance based and does not address bugs or performance; nor will I touch on diplomacy since that will likely be the subject of the next major patch. This is my first post on Stellaris. Since I have very little ‘street cred’ here, I’ll mention that I have been playing 4X games since the original DOS Master of Orion games. I play Paradox games extensively, as well as many other games in the genre. Paradox is one of my favorite developers currently making games. Lastly, my game design philosophy is that the more choices a player can make the better, and “+10% to X” bonuses are lazy and boring. So, without further ado, let’s get started:
Let’s first discuss the issues. What does and should playing a game of Stellaris to feel like?
Game Speed - My main gripe with the game speed is that, unlike most other Paradox titles, the “game speed” option seems to be entirely arbitrary outside of multiplayer. In multiplayer it’s a bit of a pain. Single player: Play on fastest, pause during an event. Multiplayer: Play on fast, have a book handy.
Lack of character – No matter the empire type you play, the play style itself feels the same. Sure I can play as Passivist and get locked out of CBs but get minor bonuses to various traits. But I’m not rewarded or punished hardly at all for switching or playing true to my starting ethics. My picks for traits, civics, and ethics feel like min/maxing a spreadsheet in a bad way, not in a good way.
Everything is a chore – Managing an empire that spans the galaxy would, in fact, be a chore. But that’s not good game design. Resource management, especially in this latest patch, is too unstable. I’ve had my entire economy shift drastically with what seemed like no changes on my part. I had no sector AI running. My various primary resources would go from +100 to -50 month after month with no real explanation. It was nearly impossible to track down why this might be happening. Then a few years later, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.
War is almost never worth the cost – When I declare war or get declared on, I’m almost always punished by the game regardless of the outcome of the war. My wins feel meaningless, and I often find myself avoiding taking planets if I can help it, so my economy doesn’t tank. Restructuring the economy of a conquered world usually is a race against time to get it done before my minerals run out.
The mid game is still boring – enough said? Great Khans many times spawn on the opposite side of the galaxy, and the Khan is assassinated before it impacts my empire. Wars being prohibitively expensive with little profit makes this problem worse. I just end up rebalancing my planets in a desperate attempt to keep everything in the black until the crisis.
Let’s look at what we can improve:
FTL Inhibitors should work more like EU4 forts – I love the changes that have come with the removal of the other forms of FTL (at game start). I do however have an issue with FTL inhibitors. They are far too weak and aren’t really a ‘choice.’ Starbases and Strongholds get them. But most of my planets have a Starbase, making the Stronghold addon feel a bit redundant. My recommendations are: All planets get FTL inhibitors once the tech is unlocked. Starbases get them with an addon. FTL inhibitors work via the ‘return province’ system EU4 uses. (IE if I enter a system connected to an inhibitor, I can only leave that system via the route I entered, or I can enter the system with the inhibitor to capture the offending starbase). This allows for a bit more flexibility with how to handle your borders without making border security trivial. Also, starbases should be relatively low damage output and higher HP. Taking a system with a starbase should feel like a siege. We aren’t destroying the starbase. We are capturing it. Once the weapons are destroyed, we are likely landing marines on the station via boarding actions and fighting for control floor by floor. There could be additional starbase addons (Marine Barracks) that make these sieges take longer, making starbase customization a bit more fun and interesting. A battle in a starbase system might look something like this:
An enemy fleet enters. The size and power of the fleet will determine how long the space battle takes. If the starbases defenses are disabled, a boarding action begins. This will work similarly to a planetary invasion. (Which I also redesign later)
Fleet upkeep, design, and micro – Part of what makes waging war, so punishing is the moment my fleet leaves anchorage my economy tanks. You might say that I’ve overbuilt my fleet, and you might even be right. However, so has the AI that just entered my fringe system with 20% more fleet strength than I have. Now I can easily overcome this (being the player) by looking at the AI fleet configuration, changing my designs, refitting my fleet, and heading out to meet them in the abyss for some good old fashion laser-fisty-cuffs. So, my complaint here is twofold, as is my fix. I propose removing fleet anchorage maintenance and forcing the player and AI to pay full cost with a small overall reduction to upkeep (~20%). This also has the added benefit of making my empire feel more alive by incentivizing patrol routes over building out Starbases to counter pirates with the tradeoff that pirates may take advantage of that during a war! Second, I enjoyed the “lasers, kinetics, missiles” concept from the previous versions of the game. I would take it a step further and pair that with “shields, armor, hp.” Shields are more effective against races that specialize in lasers, average against races that specialize in kinetics, and poor against races specialized in missiles. The breakdown would look something like this:
Armor: Lasers (Average), Kinetics (Poor), Missiles (Good)
Shields: Lasers (Poor), Kinetics (Good), Missiles (Average)
HP: Lasers (Good), Kinetics (Average), Missiles (Poor)
Advanced Weapons (Fallen/Awaken/Crisis) and Advanced Defenses can be added that are good against all. The galactic defender perk maybe gives Advanced Def/Weap? Just a thought.
Make switching these things a major undertaking for an empire to undergo but might be worth it if they find themselves surrounded by empires that counter them. The overall ‘counter’ impact would be low but still meaningful. Maybe a 10% bonus to races you counter. Now drastically reduce fleet customization. The fleet customization sounds fun and amazing, but in practice its unneeded and extra micro. This would also reduce some of the tech clutter, prevent me from hard countering AI and making them trivial, etc.
Lastly, I find that often my naval and fleet caps are roughly the same. I’m not sure why the fleet cap isn’t a % of the naval cap. So maybe the average empire will start with a naval cap of 20 and fleet cap of 33%. Thus, a fleet can be 1/3 of the total naval cap. Maybe ethics and traits can modify the % of the fleet cap?
Simplify invasion management – Having to manage my army in addition to my fleet is tedious. If we look at how armed forces work in the modern world, we find that we don’t have marines packed on transports following the battle fleet. The landing forces often embark on the ships that will deliver them to landing sites and transports are only used for ‘the last mile’ landing actions. My proposal here is that we remove the current ‘Army’ system entirely. Defense force size would be a combination of population, ethics (militarist get more defense per pop than pacifist for example), buildings (military buildings prove more), edicts (recruitment drives), policy (conscription), and jobs (pops working at military buildings are soldiers). The attacking force size would be related to the size of the attacking fleet and can be modified by fleet customization (choosing Marine accommodations and air support over say, reactor boosters, or afterburners, etc.). Invasions themselves would be less of combat and more of a siege action like starbases. However, if your fleet power is too low, you may not be able to complete the siege at all! In fact, at the start of the game (fleet power under 5k), you shouldn’t be trading more than simple outposts with your enemies.
Lack of meaningful tech – I would say around 20% of the time I pick a tech that interests me. The rest of the time it feels like a slot machine. Will I get choices I find interesting? Or 3-4 duds? The number of techs that are % bonuses is absurd and a bit lazy. Almost none of the options are ‘fun.’ I’d prefer teching up take longer, and there be less ‘filler’ in the tech trees. I’d prefer to choose between 2-3 options I really want every time than see 3-4 I don’t, and I’m just clicking the cheapest one to re-roll my choices. I also think the % techs related to economy cause the economy to fluctuate and become harder to manage.
Random Events – For the love of Paradox, please implement empire internal random events ala your other games. These don’t have to impact the entire galaxy. Just give me something to do! These should be ethics based. These should give me more control over the happenings in my empire “Alpha Drone 0001 has gained the trait ‘Arrested Development.’ Option 1: A shame. Option 2: Send them for reprogramming! (Costs (Energy Income * 15), 50% Alpha Drone 0001 dies.)
The economy complexity goes a step too far – I love this patch. It’s the best patch Stellaris has been given. But the economy needs some love. The players and the AI both have trouble balancing the budget. I believe a large portion of the issue is the 1:1 value and conversion rate of basic to advanced resources, and the scarcity of special resources, using the special resources for upkeep, etc. My vision here isn’t quite as clear as what I see as issues in the rest of the game. But what I would do here is 10x all energy and mineral values, so they can be more flexible and tweak costs from there. Leave mid-tier resources alone and remove all special material upkeep. Reserve those for building buildings, ships and enabling edicts ONLY. Make naturally occurring specials a touch rarer as well. Making systems that have naturally occurring specials very valuable and empires that control them can fetch more income via the market (I think average medium galaxy would have 2-3 of each special TOTAL). I would probably need to playtest these changes before I’d be able to tweak further.
The war system needs a little more love – Although I believe this partly plays into diplomacy (which I said I wouldn’t touch), I will go into it slightly here. This all or nothing system of war, especially when it comes to territory conquest is a bit of a pain. It causes wars to turn into grinders where nothing is lost or gained for decades. Long drawn out wars should be reserved for rivals. War exhaustion should play a more passive role in the peace process (both sides seek peace for the sake of their economy and to avoid rebellion). It also doesn't fit some of the empire play styles. A driven assimilator would not declare war. They would simply appear in a system and begin assimilating. I'm not sure how to balance that yet but it's definiately on my mind.
So first and foremost, war exhaustion penalties vs. rivals should be halved. The penalties should be more empire based and should only play a minimal role in war score. There should be more ways to spend my way out of war exhaustion. It should persist after the war and tick down slowly. It should be consistent between wars.
Rebellions should be more common and more interesting – During all 4 games, I never had a rebellion. In the context of my ground invasion changes, I’d like to see rebellions become more common. Say I let amenities stay too low, too long and a rebellion fires on a planet. The siege would start, and I would need to move a fleet into orbit to deploy Marines and get the rebellion under control. If my fleets are otherwise occupied and unable to respond quickly enough, the planet falls but stays in my empire but stops providing any resources. If I do not siege the world back within a certain amount of time, the colony will spawn as the homeworld of a new empire. They will then rival me (since we presumably have similar ethics and we would likely become allies quickly), and we would gain CBs on each other that would allow the new empire to be a become of a problem. It would be interesting if unhappy factions could build rebellion on a colony as well. This way pleasing factions my empire ethics oppose with might have the purpose of pacifying them as opposed to having almost no downside now.
---
There you have it.. a few suggestions I think would make the game better. I humbling submit them for review by the game devs and community at large.
Let’s first discuss the issues. What does and should playing a game of Stellaris to feel like?
Game Speed - My main gripe with the game speed is that, unlike most other Paradox titles, the “game speed” option seems to be entirely arbitrary outside of multiplayer. In multiplayer it’s a bit of a pain. Single player: Play on fastest, pause during an event. Multiplayer: Play on fast, have a book handy.
Lack of character – No matter the empire type you play, the play style itself feels the same. Sure I can play as Passivist and get locked out of CBs but get minor bonuses to various traits. But I’m not rewarded or punished hardly at all for switching or playing true to my starting ethics. My picks for traits, civics, and ethics feel like min/maxing a spreadsheet in a bad way, not in a good way.
Everything is a chore – Managing an empire that spans the galaxy would, in fact, be a chore. But that’s not good game design. Resource management, especially in this latest patch, is too unstable. I’ve had my entire economy shift drastically with what seemed like no changes on my part. I had no sector AI running. My various primary resources would go from +100 to -50 month after month with no real explanation. It was nearly impossible to track down why this might be happening. Then a few years later, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.
War is almost never worth the cost – When I declare war or get declared on, I’m almost always punished by the game regardless of the outcome of the war. My wins feel meaningless, and I often find myself avoiding taking planets if I can help it, so my economy doesn’t tank. Restructuring the economy of a conquered world usually is a race against time to get it done before my minerals run out.
The mid game is still boring – enough said? Great Khans many times spawn on the opposite side of the galaxy, and the Khan is assassinated before it impacts my empire. Wars being prohibitively expensive with little profit makes this problem worse. I just end up rebalancing my planets in a desperate attempt to keep everything in the black until the crisis.
Let’s look at what we can improve:
FTL Inhibitors should work more like EU4 forts – I love the changes that have come with the removal of the other forms of FTL (at game start). I do however have an issue with FTL inhibitors. They are far too weak and aren’t really a ‘choice.’ Starbases and Strongholds get them. But most of my planets have a Starbase, making the Stronghold addon feel a bit redundant. My recommendations are: All planets get FTL inhibitors once the tech is unlocked. Starbases get them with an addon. FTL inhibitors work via the ‘return province’ system EU4 uses. (IE if I enter a system connected to an inhibitor, I can only leave that system via the route I entered, or I can enter the system with the inhibitor to capture the offending starbase). This allows for a bit more flexibility with how to handle your borders without making border security trivial. Also, starbases should be relatively low damage output and higher HP. Taking a system with a starbase should feel like a siege. We aren’t destroying the starbase. We are capturing it. Once the weapons are destroyed, we are likely landing marines on the station via boarding actions and fighting for control floor by floor. There could be additional starbase addons (Marine Barracks) that make these sieges take longer, making starbase customization a bit more fun and interesting. A battle in a starbase system might look something like this:
An enemy fleet enters. The size and power of the fleet will determine how long the space battle takes. If the starbases defenses are disabled, a boarding action begins. This will work similarly to a planetary invasion. (Which I also redesign later)
Fleet upkeep, design, and micro – Part of what makes waging war, so punishing is the moment my fleet leaves anchorage my economy tanks. You might say that I’ve overbuilt my fleet, and you might even be right. However, so has the AI that just entered my fringe system with 20% more fleet strength than I have. Now I can easily overcome this (being the player) by looking at the AI fleet configuration, changing my designs, refitting my fleet, and heading out to meet them in the abyss for some good old fashion laser-fisty-cuffs. So, my complaint here is twofold, as is my fix. I propose removing fleet anchorage maintenance and forcing the player and AI to pay full cost with a small overall reduction to upkeep (~20%). This also has the added benefit of making my empire feel more alive by incentivizing patrol routes over building out Starbases to counter pirates with the tradeoff that pirates may take advantage of that during a war! Second, I enjoyed the “lasers, kinetics, missiles” concept from the previous versions of the game. I would take it a step further and pair that with “shields, armor, hp.” Shields are more effective against races that specialize in lasers, average against races that specialize in kinetics, and poor against races specialized in missiles. The breakdown would look something like this:
Armor: Lasers (Average), Kinetics (Poor), Missiles (Good)
Shields: Lasers (Poor), Kinetics (Good), Missiles (Average)
HP: Lasers (Good), Kinetics (Average), Missiles (Poor)
Advanced Weapons (Fallen/Awaken/Crisis) and Advanced Defenses can be added that are good against all. The galactic defender perk maybe gives Advanced Def/Weap? Just a thought.
Make switching these things a major undertaking for an empire to undergo but might be worth it if they find themselves surrounded by empires that counter them. The overall ‘counter’ impact would be low but still meaningful. Maybe a 10% bonus to races you counter. Now drastically reduce fleet customization. The fleet customization sounds fun and amazing, but in practice its unneeded and extra micro. This would also reduce some of the tech clutter, prevent me from hard countering AI and making them trivial, etc.
Lastly, I find that often my naval and fleet caps are roughly the same. I’m not sure why the fleet cap isn’t a % of the naval cap. So maybe the average empire will start with a naval cap of 20 and fleet cap of 33%. Thus, a fleet can be 1/3 of the total naval cap. Maybe ethics and traits can modify the % of the fleet cap?
Simplify invasion management – Having to manage my army in addition to my fleet is tedious. If we look at how armed forces work in the modern world, we find that we don’t have marines packed on transports following the battle fleet. The landing forces often embark on the ships that will deliver them to landing sites and transports are only used for ‘the last mile’ landing actions. My proposal here is that we remove the current ‘Army’ system entirely. Defense force size would be a combination of population, ethics (militarist get more defense per pop than pacifist for example), buildings (military buildings prove more), edicts (recruitment drives), policy (conscription), and jobs (pops working at military buildings are soldiers). The attacking force size would be related to the size of the attacking fleet and can be modified by fleet customization (choosing Marine accommodations and air support over say, reactor boosters, or afterburners, etc.). Invasions themselves would be less of combat and more of a siege action like starbases. However, if your fleet power is too low, you may not be able to complete the siege at all! In fact, at the start of the game (fleet power under 5k), you shouldn’t be trading more than simple outposts with your enemies.
Lack of meaningful tech – I would say around 20% of the time I pick a tech that interests me. The rest of the time it feels like a slot machine. Will I get choices I find interesting? Or 3-4 duds? The number of techs that are % bonuses is absurd and a bit lazy. Almost none of the options are ‘fun.’ I’d prefer teching up take longer, and there be less ‘filler’ in the tech trees. I’d prefer to choose between 2-3 options I really want every time than see 3-4 I don’t, and I’m just clicking the cheapest one to re-roll my choices. I also think the % techs related to economy cause the economy to fluctuate and become harder to manage.
Random Events – For the love of Paradox, please implement empire internal random events ala your other games. These don’t have to impact the entire galaxy. Just give me something to do! These should be ethics based. These should give me more control over the happenings in my empire “Alpha Drone 0001 has gained the trait ‘Arrested Development.’ Option 1: A shame. Option 2: Send them for reprogramming! (Costs (Energy Income * 15), 50% Alpha Drone 0001 dies.)
The economy complexity goes a step too far – I love this patch. It’s the best patch Stellaris has been given. But the economy needs some love. The players and the AI both have trouble balancing the budget. I believe a large portion of the issue is the 1:1 value and conversion rate of basic to advanced resources, and the scarcity of special resources, using the special resources for upkeep, etc. My vision here isn’t quite as clear as what I see as issues in the rest of the game. But what I would do here is 10x all energy and mineral values, so they can be more flexible and tweak costs from there. Leave mid-tier resources alone and remove all special material upkeep. Reserve those for building buildings, ships and enabling edicts ONLY. Make naturally occurring specials a touch rarer as well. Making systems that have naturally occurring specials very valuable and empires that control them can fetch more income via the market (I think average medium galaxy would have 2-3 of each special TOTAL). I would probably need to playtest these changes before I’d be able to tweak further.
The war system needs a little more love – Although I believe this partly plays into diplomacy (which I said I wouldn’t touch), I will go into it slightly here. This all or nothing system of war, especially when it comes to territory conquest is a bit of a pain. It causes wars to turn into grinders where nothing is lost or gained for decades. Long drawn out wars should be reserved for rivals. War exhaustion should play a more passive role in the peace process (both sides seek peace for the sake of their economy and to avoid rebellion). It also doesn't fit some of the empire play styles. A driven assimilator would not declare war. They would simply appear in a system and begin assimilating. I'm not sure how to balance that yet but it's definiately on my mind.
So first and foremost, war exhaustion penalties vs. rivals should be halved. The penalties should be more empire based and should only play a minimal role in war score. There should be more ways to spend my way out of war exhaustion. It should persist after the war and tick down slowly. It should be consistent between wars.
Rebellions should be more common and more interesting – During all 4 games, I never had a rebellion. In the context of my ground invasion changes, I’d like to see rebellions become more common. Say I let amenities stay too low, too long and a rebellion fires on a planet. The siege would start, and I would need to move a fleet into orbit to deploy Marines and get the rebellion under control. If my fleets are otherwise occupied and unable to respond quickly enough, the planet falls but stays in my empire but stops providing any resources. If I do not siege the world back within a certain amount of time, the colony will spawn as the homeworld of a new empire. They will then rival me (since we presumably have similar ethics and we would likely become allies quickly), and we would gain CBs on each other that would allow the new empire to be a become of a problem. It would be interesting if unhappy factions could build rebellion on a colony as well. This way pleasing factions my empire ethics oppose with might have the purpose of pacifying them as opposed to having almost no downside now.
---
There you have it.. a few suggestions I think would make the game better. I humbling submit them for review by the game devs and community at large.
Last edited: