Hello,
Before I plunge head first into this post I want to state quite clearly one thing - This is one man’s subjective opinion and is in no way intended as an ‘attack’ on the hard working people at Paradox, who, time and again, have produced wonderful games that continue to delight and entertain me, some might say excessively (CK2, I’m looking at you). The reason I raise my issues with Stellaris is because I believe that while this game is fine, it could be so much more and all of my opinions have been rattling around in my head for a while. Something about Stellaris just doesn’t feel ‘right’ to me, so please join me as I go down the rabbit hole of rantdom…
The problem with space
Something space games always seem to have trouble with, the vastness and emptiness of space. From the get go in Stellaris you have access to FTL travel and could, if desired, traverse the galaxy almost immediately (I know the wormhole mechanic makes this a bit trickier, but the possibility remains). Space, as we all know, is huge and incredibly dangerous to boot. So why, when playing Stellaris, does it feel like it’s not an obstacle at all? Sure, distance could be considered an obstacle of sorts (though even when travelling across the galaxy, it is easily overcome by speeding the game up) but space in and of itself is nothing more than something you see your ships pass through on their merry way to the next system. Even with FTL travel the hazards you would face in space would be monumental. Radiation, fuel, lack of resources, psychological trauma, effects of weightlessness on our bodies, malfunctions in equipment or the ship, getting hit off course. All of these are probable consequences of making your way through the great expanse. Within Stellaris we do not see any of these things occur even in the most extreme of situations, with maybe the exception of anomalies (but I ain’t talking about them here). We also have a situation where space is full of stuff. This is all well and good later on in a play through, but as you enter the beginnings of the game, space, for me, should be bleak, empty, dangerous and insufferable. The mere thought of getting on a colony ship should fill the settlers with fear. Instead we build a ship, set it on its course and providing it doesn’t get attacked will arrive safely and securely at its intended destination, as regular as Mussolini’s trains. So what are my thoughts on what could be done?
Well if it isn’t obvious, I want space to actually be something. I want it to have presence in the game, something more than just a distance to overcome. At the early stages of the game I want space to be daunting and its exploration require great courage/stupidity. Events should trigger during the initial phases of your civilisation that wreak havoc (and possibly mildly reward you) when you send ships out. Radiation poisoning killing off the crew, running out of fuel or food leaving the ship stranded or the crew slowly dying (more on this later), the crew going absolutely bonkers, changing their ethics and flying the ship somewhere else, never to be located again (or better still, form a new civ full of crazies). I believe that ‘hiding’ many nearby systems until you advance a little through the tech tree would add a real discovery aspect to exploring – ‘our sensors have discovered a new system’. This way we can maintain the level of systems in the game but when your civ is young space will seem vast. Even limiting the visible map would aid in this. Right now space is just that, space. I would like it to do something, to mean something. Let’s make space great again!
The problem with ships
Ships are the cornerstone of the game. Without them we don’t go anywhere, but why should ships necessarily go everywhere? Linking in with what I previously said about space, ships, to me, are nothing more than chess pieces I move around a board. Now, I am not talking about combat, that seems okay to me and is not a bugbear of mine. I am talking about the actual ships. Currently, you build a science ship, or a small fleet, and you send them off exploring, scanning, building, whatever, but there’s no inherent risk involved or logistical problems to consider. Again with the exception on anomalies and attacks, your ships are fine and have limitless capability. This is unrealistic to me. Space, on top of what I said above, is expensive and fraught with danger, so why should ships be safe havens from that?
What I propose is, in terms of theory, pretty simple. Make ships finite. Wear them down. Give each ship a fuel allocation that must be topped up at space ports and require cash/energy to refuel. It seems crazy that you can have science ship whizzing around indefinitely or a fleet orbiting a far flung gas giant without ever need of resupply. By giving ships a fuel allocation (which could also represent supplies etc.) it would stop over reaching early on and keep your eye fixed on your current surroundings. It will aid the realism that even with FTL it would takes yonks to get to the other side of the galaxy, especially with refuelling. If your science ship or fleet cannot go more than several jumps away without the need to come back it will make space seem larger, tying into the above. We could also take from previous Paradox games, like CK2 , that have attrition limits in counties. One system could only support so many ships, stopping the ability to put a huge 100k fleet in one system. Naturally, as technology progresses, these problems would get easier.
The problem with sectors, planets and colonization
Sectors have been an issue for quite some time and I applaud Paradox’s continual work on this front, however, there is something about sectors that remain too, dare I say, dull. As is the case, you have your core worlds, then you expand and create sectors, but usually, by the time sectors could start acting for themselves you have a huge fleet and shed load of resources. Quite simply, they are too easy to control and you have too much control over them. Now, I must admit sectors are one of the things I have found hardest to pin down in my mind. Why do I find them so bland? The answer, there’s no personality, there’s no life there. Vassals in CK2 or colonies in EU4 have their own thing going on, their own interests. They are part of the whole, but also apart from it, fragmenting the main group. Sectors in Stellaris are nothing more than a task in administration and core planet limit control. The planets that make up sectors have no relationship to each other, no common bond. Both the planets and the sectors seem to have, most times, complete passive loyalty to you, their god-emperor, who wields complete control over, what to me, is nothing more than fancy wallets.
Planets are often too generic. Yes, there are modifiers that add or detract from a planet’s worth, but more often than not every tundra planet is like all the others, every desert planet like all the others, and don’t get me started on pre-sentient species. Now, Paradox could just add an array of new modifiers, which while welcome, I do not think would solve this issue. Not wanting to sound like a broken record, more events based on the planets modifiers would aid this. The population themselves also need to have modifiers of some description (ultra-resilient, anarchists, heretics etc.) that add some extra flavour. Also, I know there are plans to, but the ability to build a wee station on a barren or frozen planet would be pretty cool. While they may not be able to spread influence, they could at least ‘discover’ traits on the uninhabitable planets that could provide for, or take from, you.
Colonization. Now, what I am about to say about colonization should be read within the frame of the early game. Much like I have said above, settling a planet is just too damned easy. Build a ship, send it, settle. With the exception on the initial ship cost and energy cost to develop a colony, there’s nothing stopping you. When a civ reaches the colonization phase each colony ship should be a huge social as well as financial investment. Right now colony ships are never lost and because of the lack of fuel, are never left stranded. Its crew never changes and is always devoted to you and each other. When you have settled a few nearby planets there should be huge and far reaching social repercussions. Two or three of your first colonies declaring a war for independence for example, would be a neat, or even just economic or social struggles on the colonies, perhaps even a colony’s complete failure and an influx of refugees (as colonies on earth often failed). Something to give the start of the game more of a challenge than just a few pirates and an amoeba every now and then. Another idea would be for corporations to colonise their own worlds that, if they lay within your space are great cash generators, but bad, mysterious stuff happens there and you cannot control them (think Alien). Also, there is nothing wrong with an individualist or xenophile civ from settling worlds with primitives on, just sayin’.
The problem with ethics
I know there are plans to rework ethics, so if you guys know of anything that will make what I am about to say redundant, I apologise. Ethics is a mixed bag for me. I love the ability to start new and weird civilisations with unusual ethic combinations and role-play them, but as it stands, ethics is too rigid.
One, depending on your chosen ethics, you are already silencing your civ on matters of great importance. For example, an individualist, militarist empire seemingly has no opinion on alien species, despite that fact you populate a galaxy with them and they could settle your worlds. Science, religion, social structure, all of these opinions could be effectively silenced through not picking one from their respective pair.
Two, there’s no influence of your pops on your governmental ethics or outside civs on your pops ethics. It would also be handy to have the ability to force your pops ethics to the governmental ethics (does negative ethics divergence do this? I was never really sure). We should also have the ability to completely change our governmental ethics, much like we do our government type (at a high price). What I'm getting at, is it seems most of the time our governmental ethics and population ethics never interact. We, in real life, are not static in our beliefs, why are Stellaris’ civs?
Three, current ethics mechanic hinders your game choices. As I alluded to earlier, I could be a xenophile civ, but that means, for reasons, I cannot colonize worlds inhabited by primitives, or as a spiritualist empire, I cannot partake in certain tech choices because reasons.
What I propose is that ethics should be place on a scale, whereby at game start, we are given X amount of points to allocate against all ethics. You may want to place 1 point on spiritualist, but 4 on materialist, thereby representing an opinion of Y amount of pops in your galaxy and gaining a tiny spiritualist advantage. I think it would also be good to allow the flux of ethics near the borders of other empires and give us the ability to freely change our government ethics or our pop ethics (perhaps depending on government type).
Finally, I would like to see a ‘freeing’, as it were, of choices for all governments and dominant ethics types. Are you a xenophile who wants to colonise that primitive world? Go right ahead… but you will pay. It would be nice to create a more diverse and interesting civ, while also giving us more freedom to throw that diversity and restrictions to the wind.
The problem with the map
Now this one is going to be vague and short. The galaxy map is just too… generous. Starting out the galaxy should be completely unknown, perhaps barring a few key solar systems. Right now you can see where every system is, even if you haven’t been there and getting there isn’t even difficult (as I said above). At the start of the game systems are too many and throughout the map is kind of dead. I will just leap into this one, I think the map would be better if many systems are hidden at the early stages of the game and then revealed as you explore nearby systems or advance through the tech tree.
Influence for me is also a bit of an issue. Right now, it expands outwards in a circle, until it hits another border, however, coming from a world of CK2 and EU4, this never sits right with me. I think that the map would be better served with set borders for systems that influence kind of grows into. There would be a maximum and minimum extent, but all systems would jigsaw into each other, a kind of compromise, if you will. How this would affect non-habitable systems would need more thinking, but perhaps laying a claim to a border uninhabited/able system would allow the ‘flow’ on influence into it, and the civilization with the strongest influence gets the system. This is more aesthetic for me and is more of a ‘nice to have’.
As for the ’deadness’ of the map, this could be resolved with things like civilian trade (yes I know there’s a mod but…) or super nova. Something to make the galaxy seem like a galaxy in motion. Over all I think the ability to see the whole structure of the galaxy from the start feeds into the problem of space not feeling vast and empty.
The problem with me
Oh boy, where do I start? I have an unhealthy addiction to bread and CK2. On top of that I also say a lot of things without thinking them through. This may be one of those cases that may start a Stellaris civil war, or just get me and my opinions beaten down. Either way, I just wanted to essentially splurge out a load of things about Stellaris that, for me, hold it back from being a great game. Now I am no programmer or modder and like I said at the very top, I in no way mean to belittle or insult the team at Paradox who have created wonderful games and even Stellaris, with all of my subjective issues with it, is still fun to play. I have no idea if any of these things I have mentioned are plausible or even possible without rewriting masses of code, and if they are then I’m sure there are good reasons not to do any of them.
To summarise, I think space should seem larger and more dangerous and, controversially, unlimited FTL hinders the start of the game. Ships are infinite in their usage and should be limited by fuel and/or resources. Sectors need to have their own agenda and the player needs to have reduced control over them. Planets need some love and colonization is too safe. Ethics need to be more fluid and finally the map needs… something.
Anyway, if you made it this far, congratulations to you, really, and thank you for taking time to read my rant. I welcome your constructive criticisms and comments below and look forward to many many down-votes.
Regards,
S.
Before I plunge head first into this post I want to state quite clearly one thing - This is one man’s subjective opinion and is in no way intended as an ‘attack’ on the hard working people at Paradox, who, time and again, have produced wonderful games that continue to delight and entertain me, some might say excessively (CK2, I’m looking at you). The reason I raise my issues with Stellaris is because I believe that while this game is fine, it could be so much more and all of my opinions have been rattling around in my head for a while. Something about Stellaris just doesn’t feel ‘right’ to me, so please join me as I go down the rabbit hole of rantdom…
The problem with space
Something space games always seem to have trouble with, the vastness and emptiness of space. From the get go in Stellaris you have access to FTL travel and could, if desired, traverse the galaxy almost immediately (I know the wormhole mechanic makes this a bit trickier, but the possibility remains). Space, as we all know, is huge and incredibly dangerous to boot. So why, when playing Stellaris, does it feel like it’s not an obstacle at all? Sure, distance could be considered an obstacle of sorts (though even when travelling across the galaxy, it is easily overcome by speeding the game up) but space in and of itself is nothing more than something you see your ships pass through on their merry way to the next system. Even with FTL travel the hazards you would face in space would be monumental. Radiation, fuel, lack of resources, psychological trauma, effects of weightlessness on our bodies, malfunctions in equipment or the ship, getting hit off course. All of these are probable consequences of making your way through the great expanse. Within Stellaris we do not see any of these things occur even in the most extreme of situations, with maybe the exception of anomalies (but I ain’t talking about them here). We also have a situation where space is full of stuff. This is all well and good later on in a play through, but as you enter the beginnings of the game, space, for me, should be bleak, empty, dangerous and insufferable. The mere thought of getting on a colony ship should fill the settlers with fear. Instead we build a ship, set it on its course and providing it doesn’t get attacked will arrive safely and securely at its intended destination, as regular as Mussolini’s trains. So what are my thoughts on what could be done?
Well if it isn’t obvious, I want space to actually be something. I want it to have presence in the game, something more than just a distance to overcome. At the early stages of the game I want space to be daunting and its exploration require great courage/stupidity. Events should trigger during the initial phases of your civilisation that wreak havoc (and possibly mildly reward you) when you send ships out. Radiation poisoning killing off the crew, running out of fuel or food leaving the ship stranded or the crew slowly dying (more on this later), the crew going absolutely bonkers, changing their ethics and flying the ship somewhere else, never to be located again (or better still, form a new civ full of crazies). I believe that ‘hiding’ many nearby systems until you advance a little through the tech tree would add a real discovery aspect to exploring – ‘our sensors have discovered a new system’. This way we can maintain the level of systems in the game but when your civ is young space will seem vast. Even limiting the visible map would aid in this. Right now space is just that, space. I would like it to do something, to mean something. Let’s make space great again!
The problem with ships
Ships are the cornerstone of the game. Without them we don’t go anywhere, but why should ships necessarily go everywhere? Linking in with what I previously said about space, ships, to me, are nothing more than chess pieces I move around a board. Now, I am not talking about combat, that seems okay to me and is not a bugbear of mine. I am talking about the actual ships. Currently, you build a science ship, or a small fleet, and you send them off exploring, scanning, building, whatever, but there’s no inherent risk involved or logistical problems to consider. Again with the exception on anomalies and attacks, your ships are fine and have limitless capability. This is unrealistic to me. Space, on top of what I said above, is expensive and fraught with danger, so why should ships be safe havens from that?
What I propose is, in terms of theory, pretty simple. Make ships finite. Wear them down. Give each ship a fuel allocation that must be topped up at space ports and require cash/energy to refuel. It seems crazy that you can have science ship whizzing around indefinitely or a fleet orbiting a far flung gas giant without ever need of resupply. By giving ships a fuel allocation (which could also represent supplies etc.) it would stop over reaching early on and keep your eye fixed on your current surroundings. It will aid the realism that even with FTL it would takes yonks to get to the other side of the galaxy, especially with refuelling. If your science ship or fleet cannot go more than several jumps away without the need to come back it will make space seem larger, tying into the above. We could also take from previous Paradox games, like CK2 , that have attrition limits in counties. One system could only support so many ships, stopping the ability to put a huge 100k fleet in one system. Naturally, as technology progresses, these problems would get easier.
The problem with sectors, planets and colonization
Sectors have been an issue for quite some time and I applaud Paradox’s continual work on this front, however, there is something about sectors that remain too, dare I say, dull. As is the case, you have your core worlds, then you expand and create sectors, but usually, by the time sectors could start acting for themselves you have a huge fleet and shed load of resources. Quite simply, they are too easy to control and you have too much control over them. Now, I must admit sectors are one of the things I have found hardest to pin down in my mind. Why do I find them so bland? The answer, there’s no personality, there’s no life there. Vassals in CK2 or colonies in EU4 have their own thing going on, their own interests. They are part of the whole, but also apart from it, fragmenting the main group. Sectors in Stellaris are nothing more than a task in administration and core planet limit control. The planets that make up sectors have no relationship to each other, no common bond. Both the planets and the sectors seem to have, most times, complete passive loyalty to you, their god-emperor, who wields complete control over, what to me, is nothing more than fancy wallets.
Planets are often too generic. Yes, there are modifiers that add or detract from a planet’s worth, but more often than not every tundra planet is like all the others, every desert planet like all the others, and don’t get me started on pre-sentient species. Now, Paradox could just add an array of new modifiers, which while welcome, I do not think would solve this issue. Not wanting to sound like a broken record, more events based on the planets modifiers would aid this. The population themselves also need to have modifiers of some description (ultra-resilient, anarchists, heretics etc.) that add some extra flavour. Also, I know there are plans to, but the ability to build a wee station on a barren or frozen planet would be pretty cool. While they may not be able to spread influence, they could at least ‘discover’ traits on the uninhabitable planets that could provide for, or take from, you.
Colonization. Now, what I am about to say about colonization should be read within the frame of the early game. Much like I have said above, settling a planet is just too damned easy. Build a ship, send it, settle. With the exception on the initial ship cost and energy cost to develop a colony, there’s nothing stopping you. When a civ reaches the colonization phase each colony ship should be a huge social as well as financial investment. Right now colony ships are never lost and because of the lack of fuel, are never left stranded. Its crew never changes and is always devoted to you and each other. When you have settled a few nearby planets there should be huge and far reaching social repercussions. Two or three of your first colonies declaring a war for independence for example, would be a neat, or even just economic or social struggles on the colonies, perhaps even a colony’s complete failure and an influx of refugees (as colonies on earth often failed). Something to give the start of the game more of a challenge than just a few pirates and an amoeba every now and then. Another idea would be for corporations to colonise their own worlds that, if they lay within your space are great cash generators, but bad, mysterious stuff happens there and you cannot control them (think Alien). Also, there is nothing wrong with an individualist or xenophile civ from settling worlds with primitives on, just sayin’.
The problem with ethics
I know there are plans to rework ethics, so if you guys know of anything that will make what I am about to say redundant, I apologise. Ethics is a mixed bag for me. I love the ability to start new and weird civilisations with unusual ethic combinations and role-play them, but as it stands, ethics is too rigid.
One, depending on your chosen ethics, you are already silencing your civ on matters of great importance. For example, an individualist, militarist empire seemingly has no opinion on alien species, despite that fact you populate a galaxy with them and they could settle your worlds. Science, religion, social structure, all of these opinions could be effectively silenced through not picking one from their respective pair.
Two, there’s no influence of your pops on your governmental ethics or outside civs on your pops ethics. It would also be handy to have the ability to force your pops ethics to the governmental ethics (does negative ethics divergence do this? I was never really sure). We should also have the ability to completely change our governmental ethics, much like we do our government type (at a high price). What I'm getting at, is it seems most of the time our governmental ethics and population ethics never interact. We, in real life, are not static in our beliefs, why are Stellaris’ civs?
Three, current ethics mechanic hinders your game choices. As I alluded to earlier, I could be a xenophile civ, but that means, for reasons, I cannot colonize worlds inhabited by primitives, or as a spiritualist empire, I cannot partake in certain tech choices because reasons.
What I propose is that ethics should be place on a scale, whereby at game start, we are given X amount of points to allocate against all ethics. You may want to place 1 point on spiritualist, but 4 on materialist, thereby representing an opinion of Y amount of pops in your galaxy and gaining a tiny spiritualist advantage. I think it would also be good to allow the flux of ethics near the borders of other empires and give us the ability to freely change our government ethics or our pop ethics (perhaps depending on government type).
Finally, I would like to see a ‘freeing’, as it were, of choices for all governments and dominant ethics types. Are you a xenophile who wants to colonise that primitive world? Go right ahead… but you will pay. It would be nice to create a more diverse and interesting civ, while also giving us more freedom to throw that diversity and restrictions to the wind.
The problem with the map
Now this one is going to be vague and short. The galaxy map is just too… generous. Starting out the galaxy should be completely unknown, perhaps barring a few key solar systems. Right now you can see where every system is, even if you haven’t been there and getting there isn’t even difficult (as I said above). At the start of the game systems are too many and throughout the map is kind of dead. I will just leap into this one, I think the map would be better if many systems are hidden at the early stages of the game and then revealed as you explore nearby systems or advance through the tech tree.
Influence for me is also a bit of an issue. Right now, it expands outwards in a circle, until it hits another border, however, coming from a world of CK2 and EU4, this never sits right with me. I think that the map would be better served with set borders for systems that influence kind of grows into. There would be a maximum and minimum extent, but all systems would jigsaw into each other, a kind of compromise, if you will. How this would affect non-habitable systems would need more thinking, but perhaps laying a claim to a border uninhabited/able system would allow the ‘flow’ on influence into it, and the civilization with the strongest influence gets the system. This is more aesthetic for me and is more of a ‘nice to have’.
As for the ’deadness’ of the map, this could be resolved with things like civilian trade (yes I know there’s a mod but…) or super nova. Something to make the galaxy seem like a galaxy in motion. Over all I think the ability to see the whole structure of the galaxy from the start feeds into the problem of space not feeling vast and empty.
The problem with me
Oh boy, where do I start? I have an unhealthy addiction to bread and CK2. On top of that I also say a lot of things without thinking them through. This may be one of those cases that may start a Stellaris civil war, or just get me and my opinions beaten down. Either way, I just wanted to essentially splurge out a load of things about Stellaris that, for me, hold it back from being a great game. Now I am no programmer or modder and like I said at the very top, I in no way mean to belittle or insult the team at Paradox who have created wonderful games and even Stellaris, with all of my subjective issues with it, is still fun to play. I have no idea if any of these things I have mentioned are plausible or even possible without rewriting masses of code, and if they are then I’m sure there are good reasons not to do any of them.
To summarise, I think space should seem larger and more dangerous and, controversially, unlimited FTL hinders the start of the game. Ships are infinite in their usage and should be limited by fuel and/or resources. Sectors need to have their own agenda and the player needs to have reduced control over them. Planets need some love and colonization is too safe. Ethics need to be more fluid and finally the map needs… something.
Anyway, if you made it this far, congratulations to you, really, and thank you for taking time to read my rant. I welcome your constructive criticisms and comments below and look forward to many many down-votes.
Regards,
S.
.
