The Galaxy is asphyxiating.... small!

[GnoSIS]

Even the 1000+ settings feel small. The reason is the speed by which you travel and claim systems.

... But then, if you make travel or claims slower, the whole thing becomes a crawling mess of a game.

How can this be otherwise addressed and make the game better? Perhaps a different claim mechanic?

 

[TrotBot]

Even the 1000+ settings feel small. The reason is the speed by which you travel and claim systems.

... But then, if you make travel or claims slower, the whole thing becomes a crawling mess of a game.

How can this be otherwise addressed and make the game better? Perhaps a different claim mechanic?

1000 stars is big enough if you reduce the number of civilizations to make it feel roomy. i usually go with like 10-12 ais in a singleplayer game, plus marauders, traders, and fallen empires.

 

[Janx14]

Space ships take days and months to cross star systems, thats far longer than it is in most sci-fi.

 

[Ryika]

Imho, the biggest problem is that most of space is just meaningless once it's explored. Space resources hardly matter, so everything between planets essentially becomes white space after the early game.

If there was more interesting stuff between planets to claim and conquer, then maybe wars wouldn't need to be fought over such large parts of space to feel like you're getting something out of them. And maybe expansion as a whole would feel more rewarding, and less like a beeline to planets and bottlenecks.

 

[methegrate]

Imho, the biggest problem is that most of space is just meaningless once it's explored. Space resources hardly matter, so everything between planets essentially becomes white space after the early game.

If there was more interesting stuff between planets to claim and conquer, then maybe wars wouldn't need to be fought over such large parts of space to feel like you're getting something out of them. And maybe expansion as a whole would feel more rewarding, and less like a beeline to planets and bottlenecks.

Too true. Most of the systems in Stellaris are kind of dead space. They're just the filler between the planets and the occasional special system.

 

[HFY]

Yeah, there need to be differences in regions of space, and those differences must somehow matter.

 

[Archael90]

With Real Space and ship scaling the Galaxy looks huge, because traveling through one system can take months. Wars are much shorter, ending before You can go further than egde systems. Weapon range and strikecrafts has meaning.
Maybe this is answer?

 

[majikero]

I love Real Space - Ship in Scaling Hard. It makes even a medium galaxy feel really large that I had to adjust settings like increase habitable planets and tech cost and decrease pop scaling. Still need to find a good balance. Expansion is so slow that you end up with more influence than you know what to do with so you can do things like switch edicts or civics.

80 years in and the galactic community isn't formed yet.

 

[Me_]

Imho, the biggest problem is that most of space is just meaningless once it's explored. Space resources hardly matter, so everything between planets essentially becomes white space after the early game.

If there was more interesting stuff between planets to claim and conquer, then maybe wars wouldn't need to be fought over such large parts of space to feel like you're getting something out of them. And maybe expansion as a whole would feel more rewarding, and less like a beeline to planets and bottlenecks.

Well, space is mostly space. If every empty rock were important we would fall hard into the other direction - too many plates to spin at the same time.

 

[Ryika]

Well, space is mostly space.

It's full of resources that may potentially be useful though. Even now we, not being a spacefaring civilization yet, are thinking about how to mine these things, but in Stellaris it's a side show compared to the vast and never ending mineral deposits that are apparently found on inhabitable planets.

If every empty rock were important we would fall hard into the other direction - too many plates to spin at the same time.

There's certainly a balance to be found, yes. I would argue that right now the balance is very much tilted to the "there's just nothing there" side though.

The interesting question is, how do you create "attractions" in space that are worth picking up without turning space into a sea of resources, and without making it feel artificial.

It would be easy to, for example, add a flag to 5% of all systems in the galaxy that makes their planets spawn with a disproportionately large amount of resources, but then that would feel quite odd because it seems unlikely that this one system would be so vastly different from its surroundings. Maybe it'd be possible to change anomaly sites add some really large resource deposits instead of so often giving direct monthly research rewards, but that'd come with its own downsides, like the awkwardness of spawning materials for your opponents.

 

[Pancakelord]

Even the 1000+ settings feel small. The reason is the speed by which you travel and claim systems.

... But then, if you make travel or claims slower, the whole thing becomes a crawling mess of a game.

How can this be otherwise addressed and make the game better? Perhaps a different claim mechanic?

Ive found it boils down to two things:

1. Interstellar speed (Hyperlane speed between stars)
2. "in System Speed", consisting of:
   • Wind up time (time to charge ships to leave system)
   • Wind down time (time ships are locked in place upon arrival in a system)
   • sublight speed for moving about

If you slow down #1 (making hyperdrives slower) the galaxy feels bigger. But as you mentioned, it feels slower, as in system speed is a killer. You'll find that like 80% of travel time is spent *in system* rather than between stars. So you never actually spend much time watching fleets move around the galaxy slowly. This is what utterly kills the sense of scale IMO.

The solution i've gone with in a personal mod amounts to slowing FTL, indirectly speeding up STL, and doing weird things with bypasses:

1. Slow down FTL speeds between stars
   1. HS1 - 10% vanilla speed
   2. HS2 - 35% vanilla
   3. HS3 - 65% vanilla speed
   4. Tier 4 drives (jump drive/psi jump drive) - 80% vanilla speed.
2. Add a new "hyper-drift" function via script (on_enter_system) that boosts Sublight speed by 100/200/300/400% for 7 days (so sublight becomes less of an issue)
   • Unfortunately its not possible to re-implement the very old functionality of hyperdrives (where they could depart a system from anywhere, or from any edge, not just at the relevant exit triangle) though @OldEnt is working on scripted jump drives, so perhaps the set_location function can be (ab)used to do this... needs more thought).
3. Give FTL more wind up and wind down time (about 2 weeks worth)
   • Not strictly relevant to making the galaxy vaster, but I have a few FTL drive "flavours" - one where the drives move faster between stars, but take longer to charge and vice versa, or offer increased "hyper-drift" time/speed on system ingress.
4. A few more system effects:
   • 100% longer wind up times when a fleet arrives in a black hole system (so it takes 2x as long to leave)
   • -100% wind up times when a fleet arrives in a neutron star system (lifting the idea of neutron stars supercharging FTL drive cores from Elite Dangerous lol)
   • Other things im looking in to:
     • I want to add slower Interstellar speeds to fleets in nebula space (even if its just a hyperlane passing through a gas cloud) - but I dont think this is currently doable....
     • I've been able to "skew" hyperlane speed to be slower nearer the galactic core (where stars are denser) and faster near the galactic rim, though its slightly buggy with the scripts I use, as they dont quite take jump drives moving your dist from core in to account.
       • I'd also like to evolve this and look in to flagging stars as "in an arm" or "inbetween an arm" and using this to make moving between galactic arms faster, but slower within arms themselves.
5. Gateway activation is now Tier 1.
   • Soon as you find one, you get a simple special project to crack its codes and bring it online [I'd remake this into an archaeology site if I ever publicly release this - feels like it'd be ideal]. Finishing the SP gives you gateway activation right away to let science ships activate other ones.
   • Gateways end up being actually relevant in the early-midgame, with fleets moving so slowly through the galaxy your empire starts to cluster and grow around gateways, whilst hyperlanes are the "slowboat" method of getting about.
     • Also thinking of modifying gateway construction rules, so they dont become so common late game.
6. New "Jump Holes" - Unstable Wormholes that will appear and disappear around the galaxy randomly [#active = #wormholes in the galaxy, per gal settings], they connect to any other wormhole
   • (for technical reasons - pair-to-pair connections to just 1 other rando jumphole is doable, too, rather than to any other jumphole, like how gateways work, but too time consuming for me right now, and is probably less performative)
   • This works by using megastructures dressed up as wormholes, as wormholes are hardcoded and cant be deleted after being placed.
7. WIP / highly buggy - point-to-point, one-way and "flickering" gateways that only connect to other gateways, sporadically etc.
   • Modelled on the setup from Mass effect's Primary gateways (that connect to other primaries) and Secondary gateways that connect to 1 other secondary)

The earlygame is quite a bit slower, but it leads to an overall - to me - more interesting game, your empire planning is less "blob everywhere", and becomes more "wheres the nearest gateway or jumphole for me to lock down?" You end up with more disparate empires, and the AI seems quite happy to go along with this, as it's not really a logic-affecting change (the special project to activate gateways works for them too).

Overall, even smaller galaxies (e.g. 400,500(modded with more AIs) and 600 - FEEL BIGGER - than 1k star galaxies to me, with this setup. 1k star galaxies - particularly 2 arm ones, with more breakups in the hyperlane net, feel bloody huge.

 

[GnoSIS]

Ive found it boils down to two things:

1. Interstellar speed (Hyperlane speed between stars)
2. "in System Speed", consisting of:
   • Wind up time (time to charge ships to leave system)
   • Wind down time (time ships are locked in place upon arrival in a system)
   • sublight speed for moving about

If you slow down #1 (making hyperdrives slower) the galaxy feels bigger. But as you mentioned, it feels slower, as in system speed is a killer. You'll find that like 80% of travel time is spent *in system* rather than between stars. So you never actually spend much time watching fleets move around the galaxy slowly. This is what utterly kills the sense of scale IMO.

The solution i've gone with in a personal mod amounts to slowing FTL, indirectly speeding up STL, and doing weird things with bypasses:

1. Slow down FTL speeds between stars
   1. HS1 - 10% vanilla speed
   2. HS2 - 35% vanilla
   3. HS3 - 65% vanilla speed
   4. Tier 4 drives (jump drive/psi jump drive) - 80% vanilla speed.
2. Add a new "hyper-drift" function via script (on_enter_system) that boosts Sublight speed by 100/200/300/400% for 7 days (so sublight becomes less of an issue)
   • Unfortunately its not possible to re-implement the very old functionality of hyperdrives (where they could depart a system from anywhere, or from any edge, not just at the relevant exit triangle) though @OldEnt is working on scripted jump drives, so perhaps the set_location function can be (ab)used to do this... needs more thought).
3. Give FTL more wind up and wind down time (about 2 weeks worth)
   • Not strictly relevant to making the galaxy vaster, but I have a few FTL drive "flavours" - one where the drives move faster between stars, but take longer to charge and vice versa, or offer increased "hyper-drift" time/speed on system ingress.
4. A few more system effects:
   • 100% longer wind up times when a fleet arrives in a black hole system (so it takes 2x as long to leave)
   • -100% wind up times when a fleet arrives in a neutron star system (lifting the idea of neutron stars supercharging FTL drive cores from Elite Dangerous lol)
   • Other things im looking in to:
     • I want to add slower Interstellar speeds to fleets in nebula space (even if its just a hyperlane passing through a gas cloud) - but I dont think this is currently doable....
     • I've been able to "skew" hyperlane speed to be slower nearer the galactic core (where stars are denser) and faster near the galactic rim, though its slightly buggy with the scripts I use, as they dont quite take jump drives moving your dist from core in to account.
       • I'd also like to evolve this and look in to flagging stars as "in an arm" or "inbetween an arm" and using this to make moving between galactic arms faster, but slower within arms themselves.
5. Gateway activation is now Tier 1.
   • Soon as you find one, you get a simple special project to crack its codes and bring it online [I'd remake this into an archaeology site if I ever publicly release this - feels like it'd be ideal]. Finishing the SP gives you gateway activation right away to let science ships activate other ones.
   • Gateways end up being actually relevant in the early-midgame, with fleets moving so slowly through the galaxy your empire starts to cluster and grow around gateways, whilst hyperlanes are the "slowboat" method of getting about.
     • Also thinking of modifying gateway construction rules, so they dont become so common late game.
6. New "Jump Holes" - Unstable Wormholes that will appear and disappear around the galaxy randomly [#active = #wormholes in the galaxy, per gal settings], they connect to any other wormhole
   • (for technical reasons - pair-to-pair connections to just 1 other rando jumphole is doable, too, rather than to any other jumphole, like how gateways work, but too time consuming for me right now, and is probably less performative)
   • This works by using megastructures dressed up as wormholes, as wormholes are hardcoded and cant be deleted after being placed.
7. WIP / highly buggy - point-to-point, one-way and "flickering" gateways that only connect to other gateways, sporadically etc.
   • Modelled on the setup from Mass effect's Primary gateways (that connect to other primaries) and Secondary gateways that connect to 1 other secondary)

The earlygame is quite a bit slower, but it leads to an overall - to me - more interesting game, your empire planning is less "blob everywhere", and becomes more "wheres the nearest gateway or jumphole for me to lock down?" You end up with more disparate empires, and the AI seems quite happy to go along with this, as it's not really a logic-affecting change (the special project to activate gateways works for them too).

Overall, even smaller galaxies (e.g. 400,500(modded with more AIs) and 600 - FEEL BIGGER - than 1k star galaxies to me, with this setup. 1k star galaxies - particularly 2 arm ones, with more breakups in the hyperlane net, feel bloody huge. Late-game campaigns, away from

I would love to see some of those mods on the workshop. Great Ideas here! Care to post some of these there? (or suggest existing mods)

Gateways making space travel faster is also a good idea. Perhaps we need a structure/megastructure-like building or even starbase module that would modify both FTL speed/windup times and STL times? That way, the galaxy is slow if it's under developed, but from mid to late game it speeds up and thus becomes smaller.

In general I think having more star system infrastructure would make systems feel more worthy of being part of your domain and more important than just being the backdrop of colonies.

 

[Pancakelord]

Gateways making space travel faster is also a good idea. Perhaps we need a structure/megastructure-like building or even starbase module that would modify both FTL speed/windup times and STL times? That way, the galaxy is slow if it's under developed, but from mid to late game it speeds up and thus becomes smaller.

That is an interesting idea. I'd been trying to find a way to make wind up/down more relevant. Having higher wind up/down times AND a starbase aura* on >outpost stations, keyed to all allied fleets in-system, might work. That was the concept behind of the Hyperlane Registrar I think.

*Maybe the aura upgrades with starbase tier, or automatically over 3 new FTL techs (e.g. a new "Hyperlane encoding" tech unlocks T2 of this, reducing wind up/down by 50%)

The other option - though more micro intensive, sort of - is to add a new free-standing megastructure (a la how old defence stations were built) "The Hyper-relay" that does this to any fleets owned by/allied to the MS's owner. Though I think if I was going to add a new Megastructure, I'd work on the idea of restoring "OG" hyperlane functionality, by allowing fleets to instantly hyperjump to the "next" system without having to move through the system with the hyper-relay.

Edit: This Reminds me that I need to look in to my old idea of portable gateway ships again. Now with all the stuff from 3.0/3.1 it might be more readily doable.

I would love to see some of those mods on the workshop. Great Ideas here! Care to post some of these there? (or suggest existing mods)

Not sure if any existing mods do this, but if I have some free time I'll tidy up some of the less buggy parts [1,2,3,5 mostly] and post them at some point "soon".

 

[methegrate]

Ive found it boils down to two things:

1. Interstellar speed (Hyperlane speed between stars)
2. "in System Speed", consisting of:
   • Wind up time (time to charge ships to leave system)
   • Wind down time (time ships are locked in place upon arrival in a system)
   • sublight speed for moving about

If you slow down #1 (making hyperdrives slower) the galaxy feels bigger. But as you mentioned, it feels slower, as in system speed is a killer. You'll find that like 80% of travel time is spent *in system* rather than between stars. So you never actually spend much time watching fleets move around the galaxy slowly. This is what utterly kills the sense of scale IMO.

The solution i've gone with in a personal mod amounts to slowing FTL, indirectly speeding up STL, and doing weird things with bypasses:

1. Slow down FTL speeds between stars
   1. HS1 - 10% vanilla speed
   2. HS2 - 35% vanilla
   3. HS3 - 65% vanilla speed
   4. Tier 4 drives (jump drive/psi jump drive) - 80% vanilla speed.
2. Add a new "hyper-drift" function via script (on_enter_system) that boosts Sublight speed by 100/200/300/400% for 7 days (so sublight becomes less of an issue)
   • Unfortunately its not possible to re-implement the very old functionality of hyperdrives (where they could depart a system from anywhere, or from any edge, not just at the relevant exit triangle) though @OldEnt is working on scripted jump drives, so perhaps the set_location function can be (ab)used to do this... needs more thought).
3. Give FTL more wind up and wind down time (about 2 weeks worth)
   • Not strictly relevant to making the galaxy vaster, but I have a few FTL drive "flavours" - one where the drives move faster between stars, but take longer to charge and vice versa, or offer increased "hyper-drift" time/speed on system ingress.
4. A few more system effects:
   • 100% longer wind up times when a fleet arrives in a black hole system (so it takes 2x as long to leave)
   • -100% wind up times when a fleet arrives in a neutron star system (lifting the idea of neutron stars supercharging FTL drive cores from Elite Dangerous lol)
   • Other things im looking in to:
     • I want to add slower Interstellar speeds to fleets in nebula space (even if its just a hyperlane passing through a gas cloud) - but I dont think this is currently doable....
     • I've been able to "skew" hyperlane speed to be slower nearer the galactic core (where stars are denser) and faster near the galactic rim, though its slightly buggy with the scripts I use, as they dont quite take jump drives moving your dist from core in to account.
       • I'd also like to evolve this and look in to flagging stars as "in an arm" or "inbetween an arm" and using this to make moving between galactic arms faster, but slower within arms themselves.
5. Gateway activation is now Tier 1.
   • Soon as you find one, you get a simple special project to crack its codes and bring it online [I'd remake this into an archaeology site if I ever publicly release this - feels like it'd be ideal]. Finishing the SP gives you gateway activation right away to let science ships activate other ones.
   • Gateways end up being actually relevant in the early-midgame, with fleets moving so slowly through the galaxy your empire starts to cluster and grow around gateways, whilst hyperlanes are the "slowboat" method of getting about.
     • Also thinking of modifying gateway construction rules, so they dont become so common late game.
6. New "Jump Holes" - Unstable Wormholes that will appear and disappear around the galaxy randomly [#active = #wormholes in the galaxy, per gal settings], they connect to any other wormhole
   • (for technical reasons - pair-to-pair connections to just 1 other rando jumphole is doable, too, rather than to any other jumphole, like how gateways work, but too time consuming for me right now, and is probably less performative)
   • This works by using megastructures dressed up as wormholes, as wormholes are hardcoded and cant be deleted after being placed.
7. WIP / highly buggy - point-to-point, one-way and "flickering" gateways that only connect to other gateways, sporadically etc.
   • Modelled on the setup from Mass effect's Primary gateways (that connect to other primaries) and Secondary gateways that connect to 1 other secondary)

The earlygame is quite a bit slower, but it leads to an overall - to me - more interesting game, your empire planning is less "blob everywhere", and becomes more "wheres the nearest gateway or jumphole for me to lock down?" You end up with more disparate empires, and the AI seems quite happy to go along with this, as it's not really a logic-affecting change (the special project to activate gateways works for them too).

Overall, even smaller galaxies (e.g. 400,500(modded with more AIs) and 600 - FEEL BIGGER - than 1k star galaxies to me, with this setup. 1k star galaxies - particularly 2 arm ones, with more breakups in the hyperlane net, feel bloody huge.

I really like this in theory. My concern would be that, since the 2.0 update, Stellaris already plays so damn slowly. Personally I find it unplayable on any setting other than "Fastest."

Would it really be a good thing if we had to spend still more time waiting for our fleets to crawl their way around the stars?

 

[Pancakelord]

I really like this in theory. My concern would be that, since the 2.0 update, Stellaris already plays so damn slowly. Personally I find it unplayable on any setting other than "Fastest."

Would it really be a good thing if we had to spend still more time waiting for our fleets to crawl their way around the stars?

You can reframe the problem as such:

1. Psychology and "feedback" - Star systems obfuscate travel times
   • Current hyperdrive settings don't make for a "big feeling" galaxy - when viewed from the galaxy map - you don't see fleets slowly crawling through space. You see them instantly jumping about like bunnies on crack.
   • If it takes 1000 days to get from A to B, but ~950 days are spent moving Within a system whilst ~50 days are spent in FTL. This makes star systems all feel like they're islands in EU4, rather than legitimately lightyears apart from eachother.
   • If - instead - 950 days were spent travelling in FTL, and ~50 days were spent "in system", then the same amount of travel time has eclapsed, whilst now the galaxy map is full of ships slowly moving between stars. This gives the illusion of vast distances between stars.
2. FTL technology is utterly pointless -
   1. In a 4x space opera the fact that this is acceptable is honestly shocking to me.
   2. FTL technology should start off weaker and get progressively better over time - and could be incorporated in to defences (like starbases adding "hypertraps" to add wind down time to incoming fleets, offset by their own "hyper capacitors" that reduce wind down times)

Focussing just on 1, for the sake of this thread (as FTL tech expansions can be their own topic); if travel times can be re-tuned, so that a higher proportion of time is spent between star systems, rather than in star systems, whilst overall travel time remains the same, then the galaxy Will feel bigger - without any additional waiting around.

• However, the problem with this, now, is you have to speed up in system travel somehow. Either
  • Directly - modding base ship speeds / thruster speeds / aux thruster speeds.
  • Tempoarily/via Tech - e.g. my hyper-drift scripts, adding X times sublight speeds for 1-2 ingame weeks on exiting FTL.
  • Indirectly - by shrinking solar systems themselves - which has implications on battle balance, particularly the "range" stat, see below spoiler.

Sublight speed really only matters in the early game, when you are rushing an outpost, or have small fleets where micro/timing are important. Later Sublight speeds are largely irrelevant, militarily (see spoiler) and economically/for general travel (gateways). But they still retain their "psychological" effects of obscuring the "true size" of the galaxy.

Spoiler: Solar systems - in-system movement quickly becomes less important

Solar system fleet movements are largely irrelevant. And they become more irrelevant over time.

• In the very early game, rushing for an outpost build site vs another empire is, IMO, the "most high impact" use of ship sublight speeds. Otherwise it's all down hill from here.
• In the "late early game" (in this case, defined as "pre-station FTL inhibitor"), stations can be out manoeuvred with some micro (Mostly by humans - but occasionally the AI does this, if its a binary or trinary system, its fleets might just happen to not enter starbase aggro range if its going to a target system deeper in).
  • But after FTL inhibitors arrive on the scene, ship speed is irrelevant, now you need to burn down all defences any way. Why drag out the inevitable with slowass ship sublight movement?
• The moment L slot KA weapons (and a few other earlier edge cases) appear, combat engagement ranges more or less approach "max", and by late game fleets will often auto-engage starbases - and other fleets on the opposite side of a system - the moment they drop in to that system, as their weapons ranges are so great.
  • This reduction in the "military" importance of sublight speeds, pretty much exterminates the relevance of sublight speeds as time goes on, eventually solar systems act like fleet-v-fleet cage-matches.

Some mods also actively speed UP fleets out of combat and Slow DOWN all fleets when in combat, to make sublight effects more pronounced, without also making the game such a slog.
So whilst fleets move at "ludicrous speed" out of combat, they're moving at "custard speeds" in combat. This has balance implications for corvettes<->cruisers too.

.

The lazy solution is take a few 1k-star test galaxies, plot a trip to the other end of the galaxy, take the time, reduce FTL speeds to something "acceptible" (1/10th, 1/3rd etc), then multiply up sublight speeds until the travel times remain constant. This way more time will be spent between stars, than in them, making the galaxy feel bigger, without "noticably" impacting travel times (this method ignores things like variable FTL 1 / 2 / 3 speeds and other "more exotic" speed effects).

The 'high effort' solution is to basically do some/all of the 7 points I laid out earlier, not just slow FTL and conditionally speed up sublight speeds (to a lesser degree), but also overhaul the earlygame importance of gateway / wormhole -based expansion and expand general "hyperlane/starbase infrastructure" over time, to make sublight speeds less relevant, too.

 

[Mitchz95]

At launch, ships didn't have to cross the system at sublight to get to another system, they could just warp/hyperlane/wormhole out from anywhere beyond the system's planets proper. The reason this was changed is the devs wanted space battles to happen inside the system, not just in the outskirts between jumps.

 

[firenze419]

It's full of resources that may potentially be useful though. Even now we, not being a spacefaring civilization yet, are thinking about how to mine these things, but in Stellaris it's a side show compared to the vast and never ending mineral deposits that are apparently found on inhabitable planets.

No we're not. Science fiction writers and fans are thinking about it. Serious business ventures are a non-starter.

As to the OP - even medium galaxies feel tedious to me and yet I get your meaning. Exploration is too short a phase of the game. Maybe they could introduce logistical limits for each phase of the game

 

[Archael90]

That is an interesting idea. I'd been trying to find a way to make wind up/down more relevant. Having higher wind up/down times AND a starbase aura* on >outpost stations, keyed to all allied fleets in-system, might work. That was the concept behind of the Hyperlane Registrar I think.

*Maybe the aura upgrades with starbase tier, or automatically over 3 new FTL techs (e.g. a new "Hyperlane encoding" tech unlocks T2 of this, reducing wind up/down by 50%)

The other option - though more micro intensive, sort of - is to add a new free-standing megastructure (a la how old defence stations were built) "The Hyper-relay" that does this to any fleets owned by/allied to the MS's owner. Though I think if I was going to add a new Megastructure, I'd work on the idea of restoring "OG" hyperlane functionality, by allowing fleets to instantly hyperjump to the "next" system without having to move through the system with the hyper-relay.

Edit: This Reminds me that I need to look in to my old idea of portable gateway ships again. Now with all the stuff from 3.0/3.1 it might be more readily doable.


Not sure if any existing mods do this, but if I have some free time I'll tidy up some of the less buggy parts [1,2,3,5 mostly] and post them at some point "soon".

It seems You knows much about modding Stellaris.
Can You tell me is it possibile in current system to at least mimic how pre 1.9 ftls worked?
1. Mini gateway structures that makes Your ships to jump to and from in range (windup depends on fleet size).
2. Slow ftl that allows You to "jump" to other system in small range without needs of hyperlane?

 

[Pancakelord]

At launch, ships didn't have to cross the system at sublight to get to another system, they could just warp/hyperlane/wormhole out from anywhere beyond the system's planets proper. The reason this was changed is the devs wanted space battles to happen inside the system, not just in the outskirts between jumps.

True. Though I always assumed it was because people were complaining Hyperspace fleets were too hard to catch, suffering from "whack a mole" syndrome, rather than wanting battles to happen inside systems specifically (as I recall plenty of "in system" battles when playing both mixed, and HS-only, games).

Either way, as I mentioned in the spoiler in my post earlier, battles do now often happen on the outskirts of systems - later in a match with higher tech fleets. With how range (and the addition of XL weapons) have changed over time, fleets often engage the moment they jump in to a system. The art style holds the game's in-system combat back more, in this respect, with its cartoonishly-scaled star systems.

If systems were substantively larger, or engagement ranges/ships scaled down a lot, that could pave the way for real tactical fleet mechanics - but this is both never going to happen, and, per the direction the game has gone since 2.0++, outside the scope of Stellaris.
So we'll always have battles playing out like dogpiles with limited fleet manoeuvres once L slots are unlocked and range "caps out". Might as well just revert hyperlane functionality, too, rather than forcing fleets to always cross systems. Even ones devoid of enemies.

Can You tell me is it possibile in current system to at least mimic how pre 1.9 ftls worked?
1. Mini gateway structures that makes Your ships to jump to and from in range (windup depends on fleet size).
2. Slow ftl that allows You to "jump" to other system in small range without needs of hyperlane?

1. I have a thread (also in my signature: Wormhole Drive Tests. 2.8.1. Proof Of concept. ) where I looked at the feasibility of implementing wormhole station-style FTL.
   • Short answer is yes it can be done, but it's not really playable.
   • Long answer is you can mimic the original wormhole drive -
     • but with how bypasses are coded, you need to do some hackish things to create a wormhole drive unit for your ships (as ships need to be able to "go to FTL" to use a bypass - for some reason - so a ship with no FTL drive [one that cant also use a hyperlane] cant fly through a gateway (I assume this is due to some coding shortcut they took).
       • Likewise sensors continue to render on a hyper-lane distance basis - though this can be fixed through (unperformative) scripts that update intel on all stars within "X distance" of your colonised systems, for example. OR only give you active sensor coverage on your current systems, killing off long range sensor cover entirely [which is viable - I once played a 1k star galaxy with Grand Admiral and Starnet, the galaxy was completely covered in nebulae, literally every system... It was an interesting experience].
     • The UI needs heavy work done to it to make this "playable" - you cant re-create the old "range rings" (which showed how far you could jump) as we - via script - do not have access to spawn entities directly on to the galaxy map layer (though I've demonstrated that its technically possible via the console in the past).
     • It would likely work best in a "total conversion" format, where all empires use warp, rather than some using warp and some using HLs.
2. Yes... potentially ... but not for human players. **
   • So quite a while back I saw a video on endless space 2's galaxy guns - weapons that fire shells (turn by turn) at enemy star systems and blow them up (think Stellaris star killers... but instead of a knockoff borg cube, its a big gun sitting lightyears away firing a superluminal shell at your star).
   • And I did some tests [Link to that thread] and found that there are in fact ways to mimic warp drives, to a degree, you can spawn a hyperlane between star A and B, once a fleet begins charging up to go to that star, you can delete the hyperlane (preventing anyone from following that fleet) - and then that path has now been cached for that fleet and it will travel to star B ... along a "hyperlane free" route.
   • This whilst interesting, is not too useful for a human player, as you cant right click on a random star to send a ship there. You need to spawn a HL, wait for fleet to begin wind up, delete the HL, and the automatic pathfinding wont work for this. This could be adapted for some modded crisis faction using warp drives, however.
   • This MIGHT be more feasible if we got a new "on_action" that fires/triggers whenever a fleet is DEPARTING from a star system
     • currently we have one for ARRIVAL, EMERGENCY RETREAT, ON BYPASS USE etc, but on departure is a ... "black hole" when it comes to on_actions,
     • But there's no easy way (that doesnt involve performance intensive checks/polling) to bind scripts to fleets leaving a star system via hyperlane.

More simply, if youre interested in FTL modding, my advice is pretend warp was just a nice dream and focus on either

• making Hyperlanes "more mechanically interesting"
• or making gateways more interesting (i.e. reading in to the "bypasses" classes)
• or focus on creating warp as a standalone drive type (a big job)

** may have to click on the below image, it should take you directly to the video on imgur and play there.

https://imgur.com/NXqInFH

 

[OldEnt]

1. Add a new "hyper-drift" function via script (on_enter_system) that boosts Sublight speed by 100/200/300/400% for 7 days (so sublight becomes less of an issue)
   • Unfortunately its not possible to re-implement the very old functionality of hyperdrives (where they could depart a system from anywhere, or from any edge, not just at the relevant exit triangle) though @OldEnt is working on scripted jump drives, so perhaps the set_location function can be (ab)used to do this... needs more thought).

jumpdrive order is mostly done and I even started implementing it in ACE.

You can find current source on my GitHub https://github.com/OldEnt/stellaris-fleet-extender .

docs: https://github.com/OldEnt/stellaris-fleet-extender/blob/main/sfex_docs_log

For jumpdrive order syntax would be:

sfex_set_fleet_order_jumpdrive = {
    TARGET = <scope>
    MODNAME = <string>
    JUMPDRIVE_CUSTOM_MAX_RANGE = <float>
    JUMPDRIVE_IGNORE_CAN_JUMP_DRIVE = <bool>
    JUMPDRIVE_IGNORE_CAN_ENTER_SYSTEM_BY_JUMP = <bool>
}
Supported Scopes:   fleet
Supported targets:  ambient_object galactic_object fleet planet megastructure

Example uses:

sfex_set_fleet_order_jumpdrive = { TARGET = prevprev }

sfex_set_fleet_order_jumpdrive = { TARGET = eventtargetname MODNAME = yourmodprefixfordebug JUMPDRIVE_CUSTOM_MAX_RANGE = 1000 }

There are still some things I would like to implement so the library is not ready to be unleashed (build order supports only starbases, survey cannot fire anomalies due to custom on actions not saving properly from= scopes etc, want to do army land order etc, fail on action etc).

I can easily implement support for custom windup GFX as an optional parameter, this would effectively make wormhole drive etc, no? (I never played old Stellaris).