Certain parts of this are probably going to come off as whiny and demanding, and to a degree that can't be helped. I'm a blunt writer. But I am kind of upset at how easily avoidable many of these issues were, so I'm not going to tone it down. Developers may take pride in their work, but remember that I wouldn't have bothered typing this up at all if I didn't love the game.
Please consider some of what I have to say, @Wiz. As of this post, I play vanilla v1.4.1 [1759] with all DLCs.
Bugs or unintended issues.
1. In a (now deleted) save game, I noticed that a slave planet still had labs being worked long after I conquered it. I don't recall if I set the sector to allow redevelopment, so has anyone else seen this?
2. Usually getting all the research for a tech by scanning debris gives it to you automatically, but sometimes it just sits there and waits for you to click on it.
3. The notification for elections don't use your custom ruler title. You also can't change a custom title even if you switch government forms.
4. Deleting federation ship types takes you into your empire's ship interface, and you can't seem to eliminate the automatically generated ships from your build menu.
5. Sometimes when my fleet enters a system with a weaker enemy fleet, they get stuck in indecisiveness (preparing to warp to one system and then switching, over and over) and don't leave at all. This may or may not be a hyperspace issue.
6. I integrated a vassal which had previously recruited the Ether Drake. It used their travel type (hyperspace) and could not be upgraded or merged with my fleet. I don't remember if I used warp/wormhole, or if I started out with hyperspace and got jump drive.
7. It always says that my leader's reign has ended after elections, even if they got reelected. I assume this is due to not fulfilling mandates.
8. Species portraits are reused even if they aren't all taken. I was playing in a 150 star galaxy and first met an empire, then a pre-FTL species with the identical portrait. However, the empire was one of my custom-made ones (which I force to replace randomized empires), so maybe the game didn't count it?
9. When the modifier Enhanced Solar Power was directly above my agenda, it showed the agenda's description instead.
10. The Horizon Signal event changed most (but not all) of my species' portraits as well as their ethos, but didn't change any traits as it seemed to imply.
11. Do synth leaders get the fertility preacher trait? I think I saw one but I'm not sure now. It seems odd that a synth would care about food.
12. Enigmatic observers (or any other fallen empire) shouldn't give out resources if the receiving empire has them maxed out and probably also if the addition would max them out.
13. I got the passing asteroid in the home system event, and it was considered a 'good omen' despite my empire being materialist.
14. Xenophobes need to do a better job at evaluating how close your settlements are to their borders (taking into account hyperspace lanes, assuming the intruders use it and the xenophobes can see them). I also received a complaint for settling a world which didn't really seem all that close to them- even though some of my other worlds were in between them and my new one! Instead of xenophobes getting mad at you for settling, how about they just have a simple malus for close worlds?
15. Losing all the planets on a system removes it from a sector- is this deliberate?
Naming/theme complaints.
1. The naming system doesn't make sense for planets around black holes. No planet deserves the name 'Faranis Black Hole I.'
2. I stumbled across WWII Earth and all the planets were named as though Sol was an ordinary system (meaning after Sol itself, with Earth being Sol III). While some players might like this, I certainly don't, and I'm probably not the only one. Can this be an option, at least?
3. There's no reaction to making first contact with intelligent aliens if they are an enclave, which is immersion-breaking.
4. Enlightenment should surely advance civilizations across eras? How would this unbalance the game in any way?
5. Uplifted protectorates which don't like you vow to 'return to their position on the galactic stage.'
6. Shouldn't city appearance reflect the majority of free inhabitants on a planet rather than the owning empire?
7. The xenophobe and xenophile icons look way too alike. This is also a problem with traits like maniacal and AI assistant.
8. The pirate event comes way too early to feel immersive, and then never again. You'd think it would be good for spicing up games where all your neighbors are federation builders.
9. Slums aren't workable? They'd be a much better representation of poverty if they locked in pops.
10. Fallen empires are out of touch with reality, so maybe they should refer to themselves by different names? It seems odd to hear something called the Zyxnoiod Remnant threatening me, but not the 'Grand Zyxnoiod Imperium.'
11. Paradox can give every portrait five or six color schemes, but humans are either white or black? At the very least there needs to be brown (Arab/Indian) and Far Eastern. And the Earthling namelist should definitely be tied to appearance. I don't know any black guys named Qiang.
12. The empire adjectives are terrible (e.g. Urid becomes Uran). Why are they even in the game? Is there any usage of them that can't be easily replaced?
13. The naming schema doesn't really work at the present moment. If I uplift a species, should they really start out as the "Galactic Concordat" or "Centralized Suns?" Give them names like "[home system/planet] territories" or something, until they switch to advanced government forms (and maybe also when they ascend).
14. It is astoundingly lazy on Paradox's part to use namelists instead of name (or namelist) generators. There simply aren't enough names, whether for individuals, species, or celestial bodies, to go around, and even on small maps you'll usually find another species with your exact namelist before you meet a quarter of the empires in the galaxy. Give every species a unique generator with randomized parameters and have that create a namelist. Also, I keep seeing 'easter egg' systems like Arrakis or Belgium clustered together in every game, which rather defeats the point of having easter eggs. Couldn't they be restricted to one per galaxy?
UI complaints.
Paradox games have always been on a special level of awfulness when it comes to the UI, but outdoing EUIV in this regard was truly an accomplishment. I can't address everything wrong with it, not even close, but I'll try my best.
1. You can't see/access spaceports from the galactic map.
2. You should be notified when a faction has a high chance of gaining support every month, not just when its support is high.
3. It's way too easy to accidentally remove systems from sectors. Please remove the checkbox or give us a popup asking 'are you sure.'
4. We can't see what deals are active with other empires.
5. It's frustrating to receive messages while not being able to directly enter diplomacy from them. Who the heck thought this would be fun?
6. Making a deal shuts off the diplomacy screen. Seriously?
7. There's no notification for peace treaties timing out.
8. We should be able to make a fleet follow a different fleet or merge them in the outliner. We should also choose the order of planets, fleets and armies on it.
9. Dear god- can we at least have larger ship lists when we open fleets? The ability to split off multiple ships at a time or entire ship types? Not have a bug where splitting off too many closes it, making it hugely annoying to split off any fleet larger than five or six ships?
10. If we queue multiple systems to survey, then we should get notified when the queue is done, not each time a survey finishes.
11. We should see what percentage of our research is being generated on planets.
12. Allow us queue maxed-out buildings, please. I shouldn't have to manually upgrade it every single time. EDIT: Apparently this is in the game and I missed it. Sorry.
13. How, how, how could the notification that buildings/ships are finished not tell us what was built?
14. We can't order science ships to research anomalies from the galactic map.
15. We can't contact enclaves from the galactic map.
16. We need to be notified when modifiers end, especially the Curator research boost.
17. I really don't see why we should have to click on a button to make the contact list appear, or why primitives are listed on it (seriously, give them a separate list). We should also see their attitudes toward us, and their diplomatic status shouldn't be conveyed by a bunch of inscrutable icons stuffed in the middle of their bars.
For reference, this is what a proper list should look like- note that they are listed by score (not alphabetically lol), color-coded, with easily discernible icons in separate areas. Vassals are always directly below their masters and pushed to the right, which is an effective way of conveying their status.
Finally, in my opinion Stellaris would be dramatically improved by screens like this or this.
18. Can't I be *told* when strikes are happening? I've gone for years with the malus without knowing.
19. We should be able to mouse over the demographic pie chart to see which species are in which section of the pie. The legend isn't enough, especially when the colors are similar.
20. We should be able to reciprocate border closings instantly, instead of having to track down the empire and contact them.
21. It's way too easy to miss the options for ship segments. I didn't realize they were there for my entire first playthrough, and therefore believed that my game was bugged and missing the X and T modules.
22. A question: are hyperspace lanes visible to non-hyperspace empires who possess ships with hyperdrives?
23. If we genetically alter some of our species, the new species should have some kind of extra name or label after it so that the list doesn't fill up with indistinguishable species.
Gameplay complaints.
1. There should be a way to set and prioritize checkpoints- or if there already are, they should be made apparent to players. EDIT: Missed the rally point button.
2. You should be able to set varying degrees of military autonomy for sectors. Either you control their military queues directly, you ask for ships from a sector and it queues them up, or sectors have their own fleets which can be ordered to support yours. Personally I'd make fleet academies become nonfunctional (and unbuildable) within sectors, for the sake of removing complication.
3. Shouldn't the cost for removing systems from sectors scale with the size of the empire?
4. Stations around colonized planets should be automatically deleted.
5. Frontier outposts weren't done well. Realistically, they'd be huge 'mothership' type stations, capable of defending themselves from small attacks at least. And they need to figure into war demands somehow. Nothing irks me more than taking an entire region away from my enemies only to find that they still have a bubble of territory left over because I didn't check *every single star* for outposts.
6. Why in the seven hells do fleets treat non-military stations like enemy fleets? I should be able to support my troops on a planet without them tearing off across the solar system to defeat that diabolical research station.
7. We should be able to instruct fleets to flee at sublight speeds. There's no reason for my troop carriers to charge straight into the jaws of the enemy's Grande Armada when they could simply move in a different direction. This would also make war less like playing pin the tail on the donkey, since catching the enemy's fleet at a random star system is what decides it right now.
8. No empire should be allowed to have more than three ethos points at a time. That just makes things more complicated for no gameplay value. (Or maybe this is already the case and I've discovered a bug- saw this in an uplifted species that I previously gave the xenophobe trait to.)
9. Science/construction ships that run from danger should continue their tasks, excluding the star system they ran from (this includes automated exploration).
10. Other empires constantly badger me to join non-aggression pacts if we don't have one, or defensive pacts if we do. Why can't they offer me a trade deal or something instead, if you want them to seem active?
11. The 'Drone Bounty' edict is simply ridiculous. Turn it on when you find some mining drones, turn it off the rest of the time. Just reduce the benefits and make it a modifier.
12. You can demand planets from your enemy's ally at 100% warscore, even if they are much more powerful and haven't lost a single planet to you. Seriously, war is just screwed up in this game, which is disappointing because this is an area where Paradox usually does very well. At least give us war leaders and allow more powerful empires to take the role if they didn't start it. War would still suck, but it wouldn't be totally broken.
13. Paradox style wars were really just the wrong approach for this game. 'Occupying' territory kinda makes sense in feudal/early modern wars but it doesn't on a planetary scale, or when the conflict is between two species. It's not just a matter of realism- the game has hardly any litigious aspect, certainly not for aggressive races or fanatical purifiers. I say remove the mechanic and let us conquer worlds without having to finish wars.
14. I've been surprise attacked several times. The first time, no fleet ever showed up and I took their worlds with minimal resistance. The second, it showed up very late. I don't understand why the AI can't first send off a fleet in your direction and only then declare war?
15. Why can't we close border with an empire if we have a peace treaty with them? Open borders should be enforceable as part of a peace deal, yes, but there's no reason for that to be mandatory. If I want to seal off an empire, basically I can't ever go to war with them.
16. Going over the force limit should perhaps hurt you more? Right now it's easy to maintain a fleet at a full 25% higher than your limit.
17. There is no way to coordinate the fleets of two empires. Stellaris's combat system in particular is just crying out for this. We need to be able to ask our allies to follow our fleets or attack particular systems. EDIT: The former is already in the game. However, I have never seen the AI link up ships and if they're coordinating their war effort in any fashion, it's beyond me. So there's still a problem.
18. Why can't we capture planets through bombardment alone? Sure, it should force you to destroy a number of buildings first, but it seems strange that having a gigantic fleet doesn't allow you to win wars, only ground troops do. Weapons on the planet itself would make capturing them much more interesting and provide a deeper role for armies, but it's probably too much to ask for seeing as the game is already designed this way.
19. So planets can't resist fleets by themselves, and spaceports are ridiculously weak in the lategame. I assume that they're intended to represent the entire planet's capacity to resist spaceborne attacks? In that case, then we should be able to build multiple defense modules. It would be a tradeoff, having to choose between economy, ship-building, or defense. The synchronized defenses play into this well- the force multiplier rises in value with every weapon you add, but building it removes yet another slot.
(May I also suggest: removing crew quarters since they're useless, or adding military station type auras.)
20. Strike craft come really late in the game, and reach their final upgrade too quickly after.
21. Planets that are deep in enemy space should have an exponentially higher war value, and so should capitals unless they're down to a few planets. It's rather astounding to me that the latter isn't already the case.
22. It's awkward to have inferior tech constantly staring you in the face when you have a more advanced version. Perhaps a research bonus for them?
23. Why can't we instruct science/construction vessels to only flee if they're outmatched?
24. Moving pops to different spot on the same planet in the resettlement screen (which I commonly do to rebalance them after moving a pop away) shouldn't cost influence, and there should be a button to reset what you did, since it's rather hard to track them.
25. If you want to create actual defenses or checkpoints in space, maybe FTL inhibitors should reach across the whole system (forcing the enemy to destroy every single one of your stations unless they do an emergency retreat).
26. Can we maybe upgrade the smaller military stations to larger ones? There doesn't seem like a good gameplay reason not to allow this, and it would streamline the process of improving your defenses.
27. The design of science and construction ships should play a much bigger role in the game. Even large empires typically only have a few of those. Aside from making them much more expensive, there's just so much that can be done here. I hope it wasn't the plan to just leave them this way.
28. For immersion purposes, fallen empires could have unique capital buildings as well. Just a thought, because all their buildings give a sense of hyper-advancement and are unreachable for the player.
29. I'd suggest that 'the waiting world' event could give different buildings instead of farms if the empire (or the planet itself) has a high proportion of synths.
30. The 'spiral-feed hub' is totally useless, giving the exact same bonus as the power hub II but with added unhappiness.
31. Unfriendly empires shouldn't ALWAYS refuse research agreements. Certainly not if I have fifty-five techs on them.
32. Xenophobes should be unhappy if their governor is an alien (and spiritualists when they're a synth).
33. The returned captain in the Horizon Signal event should actively attack your fleet/worlds instead of waiting around the black hole. For me the event got triggered by a science ship and then another empire destroyed it.
34. I cannot imagine why a mechanic like trust exists if it isn't reduced when you break pacts or declare aggressive wars on others.
35. Heavily populated galaxies with lots of empires mean a ton of free influence for first contacts.
36. Do research agreements actually work? I can't remember ever seeing a bonus from that when researching a tech.
37. There's a general lack of game customization. I can't force Paradox's premade empires to replace random ones, can't select multiple endgame crises, can't put in more than two fallen empires on the smaller map sizes, can't customize starting rulers at all, etc. There are also no gameplay settings to speak of.
38. I have no idea what 'planet censor range' refers to, so could someone explain it to me? But more important than answering my question is making it so that people don't have to ask this online.
39. It seems like battleships come too early- they feel like more of a lategame thing. Anyone else agree?
40. I'm concerned that the consumer goods mechanic will make slave economies even more mineral focused than they already are, as enslaved pops will (I assume) need less of them. Since energy credits are supposed to represent money, shouldn't they be drained by consumer goods as well?
41. I really can't believe that Paradox has copied the Civ V mechanic of throwing money at minor civs until they like you. Enclaves should be a LOT more nuanced than they are, and their attitude towards you should decay.
42. Trade enclaves are the most broken thing in the game right now. They completely remove the need for a balanced economy, since having a large amount of either minerals or energy is almost always enough to offset a deficit with the other. There's literally no downside to enslaving the galaxy!
How about this: they give you a monthly trade at a 2/1 ratio, capped at something like 50/25, and continuing that trade is vital for improving relations with them (meaning you have to weaken your economy to get on their good side, not merely give gifts in times of plenty).
43. The AI way overvalues minerals and energy. One mineral per month for ten years is enough to get a research agreement, open borders and sensor sight? Strategic resources are also extremely overvalued (and they're overly weak to begin with).
44. I can't get over the lack of restrictions on spaceports. A planet with three pops and a disassembled ship shelter should not be able to max out its spaceport and begin pumping battleships. There need to be some restrictions.
45. Growth is way too fast. There's no real loss to having pops killed and no sense of accomplishment when you manage to reach planetary administration on a colony. Realistically, a pop might represent a billion people- should you really fill up most planets within 20-30 years? Both gameplay and realism would be served by slower pop growth.
46. Settling worlds with blockers has no real downside except in the very earliest stages of the game, since the removers come much too early (or perhaps removing them is much too cheap).
47. The leader system doesn't have any connection to the rest of the game and appears to have been simply hacked on for the sake of future development. There are no real patterns or dynamics to them, just some randomly acquired positive and negative traits. No leader-related events, very little interaction with policies and edicts, no rare traits, no ethos despite how perfectly that mechanic is suited for them.
An early idea of mine for improving scientists was being able to generate them from one of your planets, with higher science yields reducing the cost. Their ethos would be randomly determined from the average of the pops on that planet, and selecting a planet twice in a row would give a slight malus to all the labs outside of it for a while. The Research Institute building would allow you to directly generate scientists at much cheaper costs without any penalty for favoritism.
However, with the reworked faction system it appears that this is now obsolete. Recruiting leaders from factions sounds great, but I don't recall anything about them giving leaders an ethos, which is a shame.
Finally, I've noticed people complaining that generals are useless and I agree. I have an idea to fix this: create a "unique leader" category that only allows one per empire (or two for advanced governments) but doesn't take up a leader slot. This leader would be based on government type. You could have theologians for spiritualists, generals for militarists, diplomats for peaceniks, etc.
48. The gamespeed is just too slow. I use normal speed to watch battles and fastest in ordinary play (and even then I constantly find myself dragging my feet and doing nothing for minutes at a time). I have never had cause to use anything below normal.
My suggestion: move all the speeds back one (removing the current slowest speed) and give us a new fastest.
Please consider some of what I have to say, @Wiz. As of this post, I play vanilla v1.4.1 [1759] with all DLCs.
Bugs or unintended issues.
1. In a (now deleted) save game, I noticed that a slave planet still had labs being worked long after I conquered it. I don't recall if I set the sector to allow redevelopment, so has anyone else seen this?
2. Usually getting all the research for a tech by scanning debris gives it to you automatically, but sometimes it just sits there and waits for you to click on it.
3. The notification for elections don't use your custom ruler title. You also can't change a custom title even if you switch government forms.
4. Deleting federation ship types takes you into your empire's ship interface, and you can't seem to eliminate the automatically generated ships from your build menu.
5. Sometimes when my fleet enters a system with a weaker enemy fleet, they get stuck in indecisiveness (preparing to warp to one system and then switching, over and over) and don't leave at all. This may or may not be a hyperspace issue.
6. I integrated a vassal which had previously recruited the Ether Drake. It used their travel type (hyperspace) and could not be upgraded or merged with my fleet. I don't remember if I used warp/wormhole, or if I started out with hyperspace and got jump drive.
7. It always says that my leader's reign has ended after elections, even if they got reelected. I assume this is due to not fulfilling mandates.
8. Species portraits are reused even if they aren't all taken. I was playing in a 150 star galaxy and first met an empire, then a pre-FTL species with the identical portrait. However, the empire was one of my custom-made ones (which I force to replace randomized empires), so maybe the game didn't count it?
9. When the modifier Enhanced Solar Power was directly above my agenda, it showed the agenda's description instead.
10. The Horizon Signal event changed most (but not all) of my species' portraits as well as their ethos, but didn't change any traits as it seemed to imply.
11. Do synth leaders get the fertility preacher trait? I think I saw one but I'm not sure now. It seems odd that a synth would care about food.
12. Enigmatic observers (or any other fallen empire) shouldn't give out resources if the receiving empire has them maxed out and probably also if the addition would max them out.
13. I got the passing asteroid in the home system event, and it was considered a 'good omen' despite my empire being materialist.
14. Xenophobes need to do a better job at evaluating how close your settlements are to their borders (taking into account hyperspace lanes, assuming the intruders use it and the xenophobes can see them). I also received a complaint for settling a world which didn't really seem all that close to them- even though some of my other worlds were in between them and my new one! Instead of xenophobes getting mad at you for settling, how about they just have a simple malus for close worlds?
15. Losing all the planets on a system removes it from a sector- is this deliberate?
Naming/theme complaints.
1. The naming system doesn't make sense for planets around black holes. No planet deserves the name 'Faranis Black Hole I.'
2. I stumbled across WWII Earth and all the planets were named as though Sol was an ordinary system (meaning after Sol itself, with Earth being Sol III). While some players might like this, I certainly don't, and I'm probably not the only one. Can this be an option, at least?
3. There's no reaction to making first contact with intelligent aliens if they are an enclave, which is immersion-breaking.
4. Enlightenment should surely advance civilizations across eras? How would this unbalance the game in any way?
5. Uplifted protectorates which don't like you vow to 'return to their position on the galactic stage.'
6. Shouldn't city appearance reflect the majority of free inhabitants on a planet rather than the owning empire?
7. The xenophobe and xenophile icons look way too alike. This is also a problem with traits like maniacal and AI assistant.
8. The pirate event comes way too early to feel immersive, and then never again. You'd think it would be good for spicing up games where all your neighbors are federation builders.
9. Slums aren't workable? They'd be a much better representation of poverty if they locked in pops.
10. Fallen empires are out of touch with reality, so maybe they should refer to themselves by different names? It seems odd to hear something called the Zyxnoiod Remnant threatening me, but not the 'Grand Zyxnoiod Imperium.'
11. Paradox can give every portrait five or six color schemes, but humans are either white or black? At the very least there needs to be brown (Arab/Indian) and Far Eastern. And the Earthling namelist should definitely be tied to appearance. I don't know any black guys named Qiang.
12. The empire adjectives are terrible (e.g. Urid becomes Uran). Why are they even in the game? Is there any usage of them that can't be easily replaced?
13. The naming schema doesn't really work at the present moment. If I uplift a species, should they really start out as the "Galactic Concordat" or "Centralized Suns?" Give them names like "[home system/planet] territories" or something, until they switch to advanced government forms (and maybe also when they ascend).
14. It is astoundingly lazy on Paradox's part to use namelists instead of name (or namelist) generators. There simply aren't enough names, whether for individuals, species, or celestial bodies, to go around, and even on small maps you'll usually find another species with your exact namelist before you meet a quarter of the empires in the galaxy. Give every species a unique generator with randomized parameters and have that create a namelist. Also, I keep seeing 'easter egg' systems like Arrakis or Belgium clustered together in every game, which rather defeats the point of having easter eggs. Couldn't they be restricted to one per galaxy?
UI complaints.
Paradox games have always been on a special level of awfulness when it comes to the UI, but outdoing EUIV in this regard was truly an accomplishment. I can't address everything wrong with it, not even close, but I'll try my best.
1. You can't see/access spaceports from the galactic map.
2. You should be notified when a faction has a high chance of gaining support every month, not just when its support is high.
3. It's way too easy to accidentally remove systems from sectors. Please remove the checkbox or give us a popup asking 'are you sure.'
4. We can't see what deals are active with other empires.
5. It's frustrating to receive messages while not being able to directly enter diplomacy from them. Who the heck thought this would be fun?
6. Making a deal shuts off the diplomacy screen. Seriously?
7. There's no notification for peace treaties timing out.
8. We should be able to make a fleet follow a different fleet or merge them in the outliner. We should also choose the order of planets, fleets and armies on it.
9. Dear god- can we at least have larger ship lists when we open fleets? The ability to split off multiple ships at a time or entire ship types? Not have a bug where splitting off too many closes it, making it hugely annoying to split off any fleet larger than five or six ships?
10. If we queue multiple systems to survey, then we should get notified when the queue is done, not each time a survey finishes.
11. We should see what percentage of our research is being generated on planets.
12. Allow us queue maxed-out buildings, please. I shouldn't have to manually upgrade it every single time. EDIT: Apparently this is in the game and I missed it. Sorry.
13. How, how, how could the notification that buildings/ships are finished not tell us what was built?
14. We can't order science ships to research anomalies from the galactic map.
15. We can't contact enclaves from the galactic map.
16. We need to be notified when modifiers end, especially the Curator research boost.
17. I really don't see why we should have to click on a button to make the contact list appear, or why primitives are listed on it (seriously, give them a separate list). We should also see their attitudes toward us, and their diplomatic status shouldn't be conveyed by a bunch of inscrutable icons stuffed in the middle of their bars.
For reference, this is what a proper list should look like- note that they are listed by score (not alphabetically lol), color-coded, with easily discernible icons in separate areas. Vassals are always directly below their masters and pushed to the right, which is an effective way of conveying their status.
Finally, in my opinion Stellaris would be dramatically improved by screens like this or this.
18. Can't I be *told* when strikes are happening? I've gone for years with the malus without knowing.
19. We should be able to mouse over the demographic pie chart to see which species are in which section of the pie. The legend isn't enough, especially when the colors are similar.
20. We should be able to reciprocate border closings instantly, instead of having to track down the empire and contact them.
21. It's way too easy to miss the options for ship segments. I didn't realize they were there for my entire first playthrough, and therefore believed that my game was bugged and missing the X and T modules.
22. A question: are hyperspace lanes visible to non-hyperspace empires who possess ships with hyperdrives?
23. If we genetically alter some of our species, the new species should have some kind of extra name or label after it so that the list doesn't fill up with indistinguishable species.
Gameplay complaints.
1. There should be a way to set and prioritize checkpoints- or if there already are, they should be made apparent to players. EDIT: Missed the rally point button.
2. You should be able to set varying degrees of military autonomy for sectors. Either you control their military queues directly, you ask for ships from a sector and it queues them up, or sectors have their own fleets which can be ordered to support yours. Personally I'd make fleet academies become nonfunctional (and unbuildable) within sectors, for the sake of removing complication.
3. Shouldn't the cost for removing systems from sectors scale with the size of the empire?
4. Stations around colonized planets should be automatically deleted.
5. Frontier outposts weren't done well. Realistically, they'd be huge 'mothership' type stations, capable of defending themselves from small attacks at least. And they need to figure into war demands somehow. Nothing irks me more than taking an entire region away from my enemies only to find that they still have a bubble of territory left over because I didn't check *every single star* for outposts.
6. Why in the seven hells do fleets treat non-military stations like enemy fleets? I should be able to support my troops on a planet without them tearing off across the solar system to defeat that diabolical research station.
7. We should be able to instruct fleets to flee at sublight speeds. There's no reason for my troop carriers to charge straight into the jaws of the enemy's Grande Armada when they could simply move in a different direction. This would also make war less like playing pin the tail on the donkey, since catching the enemy's fleet at a random star system is what decides it right now.
8. No empire should be allowed to have more than three ethos points at a time. That just makes things more complicated for no gameplay value. (Or maybe this is already the case and I've discovered a bug- saw this in an uplifted species that I previously gave the xenophobe trait to.)
9. Science/construction ships that run from danger should continue their tasks, excluding the star system they ran from (this includes automated exploration).
10. Other empires constantly badger me to join non-aggression pacts if we don't have one, or defensive pacts if we do. Why can't they offer me a trade deal or something instead, if you want them to seem active?
11. The 'Drone Bounty' edict is simply ridiculous. Turn it on when you find some mining drones, turn it off the rest of the time. Just reduce the benefits and make it a modifier.
12. You can demand planets from your enemy's ally at 100% warscore, even if they are much more powerful and haven't lost a single planet to you. Seriously, war is just screwed up in this game, which is disappointing because this is an area where Paradox usually does very well. At least give us war leaders and allow more powerful empires to take the role if they didn't start it. War would still suck, but it wouldn't be totally broken.
13. Paradox style wars were really just the wrong approach for this game. 'Occupying' territory kinda makes sense in feudal/early modern wars but it doesn't on a planetary scale, or when the conflict is between two species. It's not just a matter of realism- the game has hardly any litigious aspect, certainly not for aggressive races or fanatical purifiers. I say remove the mechanic and let us conquer worlds without having to finish wars.
14. I've been surprise attacked several times. The first time, no fleet ever showed up and I took their worlds with minimal resistance. The second, it showed up very late. I don't understand why the AI can't first send off a fleet in your direction and only then declare war?
15. Why can't we close border with an empire if we have a peace treaty with them? Open borders should be enforceable as part of a peace deal, yes, but there's no reason for that to be mandatory. If I want to seal off an empire, basically I can't ever go to war with them.
16. Going over the force limit should perhaps hurt you more? Right now it's easy to maintain a fleet at a full 25% higher than your limit.
17. There is no way to coordinate the fleets of two empires. Stellaris's combat system in particular is just crying out for this. We need to be able to ask our allies to follow our fleets or attack particular systems. EDIT: The former is already in the game. However, I have never seen the AI link up ships and if they're coordinating their war effort in any fashion, it's beyond me. So there's still a problem.
18. Why can't we capture planets through bombardment alone? Sure, it should force you to destroy a number of buildings first, but it seems strange that having a gigantic fleet doesn't allow you to win wars, only ground troops do. Weapons on the planet itself would make capturing them much more interesting and provide a deeper role for armies, but it's probably too much to ask for seeing as the game is already designed this way.
19. So planets can't resist fleets by themselves, and spaceports are ridiculously weak in the lategame. I assume that they're intended to represent the entire planet's capacity to resist spaceborne attacks? In that case, then we should be able to build multiple defense modules. It would be a tradeoff, having to choose between economy, ship-building, or defense. The synchronized defenses play into this well- the force multiplier rises in value with every weapon you add, but building it removes yet another slot.
(May I also suggest: removing crew quarters since they're useless, or adding military station type auras.)
20. Strike craft come really late in the game, and reach their final upgrade too quickly after.
21. Planets that are deep in enemy space should have an exponentially higher war value, and so should capitals unless they're down to a few planets. It's rather astounding to me that the latter isn't already the case.
22. It's awkward to have inferior tech constantly staring you in the face when you have a more advanced version. Perhaps a research bonus for them?
23. Why can't we instruct science/construction vessels to only flee if they're outmatched?
24. Moving pops to different spot on the same planet in the resettlement screen (which I commonly do to rebalance them after moving a pop away) shouldn't cost influence, and there should be a button to reset what you did, since it's rather hard to track them.
25. If you want to create actual defenses or checkpoints in space, maybe FTL inhibitors should reach across the whole system (forcing the enemy to destroy every single one of your stations unless they do an emergency retreat).
26. Can we maybe upgrade the smaller military stations to larger ones? There doesn't seem like a good gameplay reason not to allow this, and it would streamline the process of improving your defenses.
27. The design of science and construction ships should play a much bigger role in the game. Even large empires typically only have a few of those. Aside from making them much more expensive, there's just so much that can be done here. I hope it wasn't the plan to just leave them this way.
28. For immersion purposes, fallen empires could have unique capital buildings as well. Just a thought, because all their buildings give a sense of hyper-advancement and are unreachable for the player.
29. I'd suggest that 'the waiting world' event could give different buildings instead of farms if the empire (or the planet itself) has a high proportion of synths.
30. The 'spiral-feed hub' is totally useless, giving the exact same bonus as the power hub II but with added unhappiness.
31. Unfriendly empires shouldn't ALWAYS refuse research agreements. Certainly not if I have fifty-five techs on them.
32. Xenophobes should be unhappy if their governor is an alien (and spiritualists when they're a synth).
33. The returned captain in the Horizon Signal event should actively attack your fleet/worlds instead of waiting around the black hole. For me the event got triggered by a science ship and then another empire destroyed it.
34. I cannot imagine why a mechanic like trust exists if it isn't reduced when you break pacts or declare aggressive wars on others.
35. Heavily populated galaxies with lots of empires mean a ton of free influence for first contacts.
36. Do research agreements actually work? I can't remember ever seeing a bonus from that when researching a tech.
37. There's a general lack of game customization. I can't force Paradox's premade empires to replace random ones, can't select multiple endgame crises, can't put in more than two fallen empires on the smaller map sizes, can't customize starting rulers at all, etc. There are also no gameplay settings to speak of.
38. I have no idea what 'planet censor range' refers to, so could someone explain it to me? But more important than answering my question is making it so that people don't have to ask this online.
39. It seems like battleships come too early- they feel like more of a lategame thing. Anyone else agree?
40. I'm concerned that the consumer goods mechanic will make slave economies even more mineral focused than they already are, as enslaved pops will (I assume) need less of them. Since energy credits are supposed to represent money, shouldn't they be drained by consumer goods as well?
41. I really can't believe that Paradox has copied the Civ V mechanic of throwing money at minor civs until they like you. Enclaves should be a LOT more nuanced than they are, and their attitude towards you should decay.
42. Trade enclaves are the most broken thing in the game right now. They completely remove the need for a balanced economy, since having a large amount of either minerals or energy is almost always enough to offset a deficit with the other. There's literally no downside to enslaving the galaxy!
How about this: they give you a monthly trade at a 2/1 ratio, capped at something like 50/25, and continuing that trade is vital for improving relations with them (meaning you have to weaken your economy to get on their good side, not merely give gifts in times of plenty).
43. The AI way overvalues minerals and energy. One mineral per month for ten years is enough to get a research agreement, open borders and sensor sight? Strategic resources are also extremely overvalued (and they're overly weak to begin with).
44. I can't get over the lack of restrictions on spaceports. A planet with three pops and a disassembled ship shelter should not be able to max out its spaceport and begin pumping battleships. There need to be some restrictions.
45. Growth is way too fast. There's no real loss to having pops killed and no sense of accomplishment when you manage to reach planetary administration on a colony. Realistically, a pop might represent a billion people- should you really fill up most planets within 20-30 years? Both gameplay and realism would be served by slower pop growth.
46. Settling worlds with blockers has no real downside except in the very earliest stages of the game, since the removers come much too early (or perhaps removing them is much too cheap).
47. The leader system doesn't have any connection to the rest of the game and appears to have been simply hacked on for the sake of future development. There are no real patterns or dynamics to them, just some randomly acquired positive and negative traits. No leader-related events, very little interaction with policies and edicts, no rare traits, no ethos despite how perfectly that mechanic is suited for them.
An early idea of mine for improving scientists was being able to generate them from one of your planets, with higher science yields reducing the cost. Their ethos would be randomly determined from the average of the pops on that planet, and selecting a planet twice in a row would give a slight malus to all the labs outside of it for a while. The Research Institute building would allow you to directly generate scientists at much cheaper costs without any penalty for favoritism.
However, with the reworked faction system it appears that this is now obsolete. Recruiting leaders from factions sounds great, but I don't recall anything about them giving leaders an ethos, which is a shame.
Finally, I've noticed people complaining that generals are useless and I agree. I have an idea to fix this: create a "unique leader" category that only allows one per empire (or two for advanced governments) but doesn't take up a leader slot. This leader would be based on government type. You could have theologians for spiritualists, generals for militarists, diplomats for peaceniks, etc.
48. The gamespeed is just too slow. I use normal speed to watch battles and fastest in ordinary play (and even then I constantly find myself dragging my feet and doing nothing for minutes at a time). I have never had cause to use anything below normal.
My suggestion: move all the speeds back one (removing the current slowest speed) and give us a new fastest.
Last edited:
