What scifi trope is left untapped?

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An earlier start date where everyone starts in Early Space Age and can do stuff like colonising their equivalent of Mars and doing slower than light flights to neighbouring systems (which would likely rebel in a couple decades if colonised, as you have no way to meaningfully control them) would be really neat to have as an option imo.

EDIT: I'd also really like a New Game+ option where you complete a megastructure that allows you to travel to another galaxy and begin from scratch, but with all of your fancy lategame tech. To balance this, the new galaxy would have much stronger and harder threats to tackle, maybe even whatever the Prethoryn were running away from.
 
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After some thinking (and without getting sucked into tvtropes) I realized one trope that I haven't seen in Stellairs: Sentient Stars. In Gene Rodenberry's Andromeda and in Frank Herbert's ConSentiency universe, some stars are outright sentient or multi-dimensional beings whose physical manifestation in the universe is a star.
 
Oh, I almost forgot about one trope with juicy gameplay implications: Nomadic spacefaring civilizations, like the Exters or the Eldar Craftworlds. There's a lot of potential for expansion / DLCs here, but I don't know if Stellaris current engine would be able to simulate such a thing.
 
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I find it both funny and slightly disappointing that religion was mentioned as "the only sci-fi trope left".

I would like for cloning to be expanded upon - buildable pops were a step, but I feel like there is way more room there to explore.
 
There is still the clone crazy people trope.

It's like the race is devoid of diversity. But a few founding elders have their genes preserved by being cloned down generations. The whole race is composed of clones of the few individuals. They are not Hives but the "clans" are different individuals with the basic gene composition of the same ancestor.

And they reproduce by either cloning, or by a transformative virus to rigourously change the host into the gene composition of the clone father.
 
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We have barely scratched the surface of . . . well most of my favorite science fiction novels. I get the feeling this game is produced by people who mostly focus on Warhammer, Star Wars and Star Trek . . . Not Asimov and hard science fiction. We certainly don't get the gravitic technology from James Hogan's Geneseis machine or the Gentle Giants of Ganymede series . . .
It's not even that. Of Warhammer it's just the Tau (who are generic anyway) and a complete bastardization of the Imperium, while Star Wars representation pretty much ends at the movies.
 
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Multiple, sapient, equal species on the same planet that isnt syncratic evolution, more like symbiotic evolution. In fact that would be a cool origin, symbiotic evoluiton. Half of your pops start as a second species and if your xenophobic your symbiotic species get full citizenship. Both are your empire's primary species. You can even be fanatic purifer with this origin. Infact winning a game as purifers with this origin would give an achivement or somthing.
 
Multiple, sapient, equal species on the same planet that isnt syncratic evolution, more like symbiotic evolution. In fact that would be a cool origin, symbiotic evoluiton. Half of your pops start as a second species and if your xenophobic your symbiotic species get full citizenship. Both are your empire's primary species. You can even be fanatic purifer with this origin. Infact winning a game as purifers with this origin would give an achivement or somthing.
Xenophilic or xenophobic?
 
The most obvious one is how each empire/species is usually defined by the way they do warfare.
Cloaking devices and honour-based warfare of the Klingons, hiveminds throwing waves after waves of suicidal fighters, authoritarian empires relying on huge ships, egalitarian using individual fighters with FTL capabilities, space orks opting for ramming and boarding, space AIs trying to hack your systems etc.
 
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The whole "using other species to reproduce" has been missing until Necrophages, but sadly it was one with some sort of cult-mechanic. So I am happy that we are finally getting Hivemind Necrophages, which has been missing from the game for such a long time. We have Driven Assimilators, but we need something similar for Hiveminds and I hope Necrophage Hiveminds will be a similar playstyle like this. Maybe its even semi-genocidal like Driven Assimilators.

Another thing that we have been asking for is using the "build special buildings on other planets" type of feature for something other than Megacorps. For example, infestation Hivemind which builds infestation buildings on other planets like a Criminal Megacorp would. These would for example turn pops into Hiveminded and make them migrate to your own planets, steal research or other nasty things. This could easily be intertwined with the Espionage System.

Gestalts should be able to use Voidborne aswell. Who says I can't play a Devouring Swarm laboratory experiment gone wrong with Devouring Swarm + Void Dwellers? Why can I not play Gestalt + Scion? The fallen empire even calls you an "experiment" in the Scion Origin. So why can you not play a Devouring Swarm bioweapon created by a fallen empire?

And lastly, we need something similar to Horatio from Endless Space 2, with clones of one guy conquering the entire galaxy.
 
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These would for example turn pops into Hiveminded and make them migrate to your own planets, steal research or other nasty things. This could easily be intertwined with the Espionage System.
Ah, another DLC to never buy no matter how good the rest of its content is.
 
A lot!
  1. Songstress - someone, usually an attractive woman, who can sing and bring peace because all xenoi love hearing her
  2. Creation myth, common seeding - a precursor civilisation seeding the whole galaxy with different species, so all species only have adopted different environments with evolution and should have a common proto ancestor and are xeno-compatible
  3. Humanoid war machines
  4. Anything using beam / light sabre / sword / blade
  5. Young military conscripts... and even younger children enlisted for killing because "a new generation has more potential"
  6. Secret supersoldier enhancement programmes and their cruel treatments to participants, and said participants becoming a hero in the future and hate those programmes back then
  7. Psionic Ascension that really ascends to an upper being, like Human Instrumentality Project, that the whole species turns into a radient giant (So that it finally parallels to Synth Ascension)
  8. Big Brother government with AI, a combination of Police State and Shadow Council but with a focus of a Quantum Computing Unit where all data about everyone are processed and accessed by the government
  9. Dimensional manipulations, weapons, travels... and of course the cool "Dimensional Submarine"
  10. Stealth systems of any kind
  11. Some god particles that can be used as both a power source and shot directly as a beam and will jam all other primitive communications, creating a thick fog of war
  12. Latent power manifesting in certain individuals. And then the government tries to create their own version of artificial manifestation of the same powers. Inhuman experiments (an extension of 5 and 6). And then the participants get some superpowers themselves but with severe side-effects. But individual civilians may be born naturally with the powers but the government prefers artificial ones because they are more willing and obeying.
Regarding 3, can't robotic gestalts make armies modeled after humanoids? I seem to recall that being a tech and army type.
 
Unused Trope: Accessories make the Xeno.

Expressions:

Planet of Hats - the species is visually similar to another species, but wears a specific hat or has some sort of distinctive accessory.

Visible Cyberwear - the species is visually similar to another species, but has visible cyborg traits (anywhere from Seven of Nine's cyber-eyebrow to DC Cyborg's full-body replacement).

Eye Hax - includes cyborg laser eyes, but also glowing psionic eyes or the like.

Colored Psionic Halos - one color, multi-color, each specific arrangement would correspond to a distinct species. Game should not allow adjacent color combos to exist in the same playthrough.

Face Paint - Yes of course that's a subspecies, can't you see how they have an obvious pattern of paint on their faces?


Xenocombatibility could mix these traits up between models, like a facepaint-human with wavy blorg arms, or a blorg with facepaint.
 
1. Time travel - and all of the paradoxes it can create.

2. Ascension & ascended organizations - like the ascended in stargate or the Q continuum. <- this could be major DLC/expansion! Ascended Blorg Friends???

3. Simulation hypothesis - the galaxy is simulated, and the races from inside come out into the real galaxy, or/and the races running the simulation are going inside for some reason.

I could probably think some more, but these are the major ones missing IMHO.
 
3. Simulation hypothesis - the galaxy is simulated, and the races from inside come out into the real galaxy, or/and the races running the simulation are going inside for some reason.

Already done... somewhat... twice. Once for the Vultaum and another for the Miniature Galaxy Relic.
 
Ah. This one

Time dilation. When you speed up and approach relativistic speed, time flows slower.

And this one

Space Witcher. Similar to Super Soldiers of various types. But if you actually think about it, the Witcher's design is very SF. You need to undergo certain surgeries and become a super soldier with some side effects. When you fight, you need to be loaded with drugs. You are "created" for war and only war. But they never asked if you want to fight or not. Now you are thrown into the world with superhuman abilities, but the institute who created you no longer exists. Slowly you are discovering about normal lives and culture. But your side effects are kicking in so you really can only try to distance yourself from the society.

The more you think about it, the more the Witcher sounds like a good SF setting.
 
The trope that most of all come to my mind is:
Shattered Empire/After the Fall - The Star League/Star Union/Galactic Empire ruled all of space during the golden age, but now humanity has shattered into a bunch of squabbling successor states.
I mean, there are traces of lost civilizations out there, but they are a mystery, rather than something that is in the immediate past as a memory.
Of course this would require a whole alternate setup algorithm.
 
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One trope that would require some serious rework of how the game begins: start in a decadent, stagnant and fully explored/colonized galaxy that is on the verge of galaxywide collapse -> old federations are about to break, the GC is unable to pass even the smallest motion, technology has to be rediscovered, new upstart empires are eating the old and declining, the central power/custodian/emperor is too weak to intervene... something akin the Old Republic, but with a heavy dystopian touch.

But that would outright cut the whole exploration and shift the focus on year-long diplomacy and politics. I'm not sure we have the level of refined mechanics we would need for this to be fun and engaging. (Well, tbh, I am sure we don't have that level - yet, I hope)
 
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Death Worlds - Hostile environment to all species, including machines, hostile fauna, hostile flora, etc. Armies trained here are extra strong and they tend to produce some valuable resources, but pop growth is a problem.
So Arrakis?