State of the game currently?

[currylambchop]

• • Seriously, am I the only one who wants to meet them than the other alternatives ?

Bruh please no, grey tempest is so annoying especially in pacifist games.

 

[WarriorofMODS]

My thoughts:

1. In case you left before the change, Nemesis brought with it a First Contact rework that was very needed (First Contact now runs off envoys and basically like the archaeology system). This really helps clean up a dated part of the early game.
2. The intel and espionage system tends towards the underwhelming. Stellaris has not escaped the 4x espionage trap, where it's either too weak to be satisfying to use or too powerful for being on the receiving end to be fun.
3. Meanwhile, the admin cap system has been removed in favor of something much more like the old tech / unity scaling. This means some level of sprawl for an empire is basically inevitable, which helps tamp down some amount of the snowball. With that said, administrators are now just another unity source, which is less good, and some people dislike that empire sprawl is unavoidable. Probably good in the long run, but some friction in the short term.
4. More generally, there were some performance improvements that seem to have been lost in the most recent patch, so it's about a wash in total. The AI seems to be more competitive later in the game, but by mid-game a player comfortable with the game can still get a solid lead.

Please don't take this as me denigrating the hard work the devs have put in over the past year, especially when things like the first contact system have revamped outdated systems; it just means the basic game structure hasn't changed, and the consistent challenges the game's development has faced (snowballing, AI, performance) remain to a greater or lesser extent. As for the upcoming expansion, I think it will once again clean up an old and cluttered system, but it won't reinvent the game.

I've also found that economic difficulty has increased as well. I make it a habit to play at least one game of Stellaris whenever there's a big update (or even right before, like now} and I've noticed a notable increase in economic hardships. In my current game, I'm playing a Slaver Stratocracy (Roman Republic RP with war modifiers) and I was boxed into a portion of space that was relatively resource poor (small planets with very little food, energy and minerals) and had to slowly build up my economy around exporting rare crystals until I could built habitats that could farm, mine and generate energy. Now, a century in, I finally reach the point where I'm independent in everything except for food production and my import/export ratio is starting to become crippling (food production is -250 a month) and a slave revolt on my main generator habitat brings my economy crashing down as now I can't meet the energy demands to import more food while I'm building up habitats to create farms to feed the people. This can descend into a vicious cycle of economic collapse if I don't act quickly.

I wish there was a way to swiftly and effectively put down slave revolts. I don't care if I have to gun down a bunch of pops, Just let me slaughter any dissenters CCP style and get everything back up, I can just buy more slaves once I export more crystals. It's hard to get people to work when they're clutching their stomachs from hunger pangs.