Planet Scaling in Stellaris

[Dragon]

I have been keeping an eye on this game for a while, it seems like a great space empire builder for a change. There have been plenty of these types of games since Sins of a Solar Empire (the last one I played) but, I always found their scaling to be way off. Planets always tend to be tiny compared to everything else, with some ships or fleets sometimes being larger than entire planets! This is a very immersion-breaking factor for games of this type.

What is this like in Stellaris? It seems difficult to determine via screenshots, with ships either being above planets or some distance away from them, making it difficult to compare scale. Other posts related to the same question are often met with mixed response, also making it difficult to judge. So, let's use Sins of a Solar Empire as an example since planet scaling in that game turned out to be the perfect balance between immersion and gameplay plausibility.

How does planet scaling in Stellaris compare to planets in SoaSE? If planets in Stellaris are smaller, by what margin? Do planets at least still feel like planets if you park a fleet of ships next to them? Are they large enough to use strategically in battle? How long would it take an average ship to circumnavigate a planet?

Thanks!

 

[fifthpint]

Ships are enormous, but the game is easily moddable. There is a downscaled ship mod for this purpose. Also ships fly like bumper cars and not like... space ships like they do in Sins.

 

[Nobody987]

A lot of stuff in game is out of scale or behave different than you would expect. Using Sins gameplay as comparison, every star system in stellaris is 'arena' size area equivalent to gravity well of planet in Sins. You can look at planets as just points on star system map and nothing more, you cannot use it tactically, like hide fleet behind planet to avoid missiles or something, in fact, nothing on system map is affecting combat, it is just flat grassland (TW style )

If you use your imagination as much as possible with stellaris you will have nice time and great immersion. At some point, you wont need game anymore

 

[General Retreat]

Effectively your fleets all fly above the 'plain' that geography sits on. Hence why you can fly your fleet through the system star, for example. Scale is pretty abstracted here so none of it is particularly accurate. Still, as said above: there's a mod for that.