What scifi trope is left untapped?

[HFY]

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)

I would love this.

It seems very doable, too -- you'd need some mechanics which allow an empire to decline, or to fragment, and those seem doable.

Declining empires would eventually become Fallen Empires, static and secure but never expanding and seldom interacting with the wider universe. They'd lose all their worlds except a few core colonies.

Fragmented empires could shatter into mutually-antagonistic rivals which tried to destroy each other, and might succeed often enough to leave a "clean slate" for the next generation, or at least reduce their overall production capability and thus set back all fragments by decades of progress.

Then you could start "in the middle" of galactic history, and deal with empires in decline when you're starting, and then deal with vigorous newcomers when you're established.

 

[nestorius]

I would say
1. Aquatic species like the trilarians in MOO
2. More space nomads tbh I think it was a mistake that we got rid of them and it would be great if you could actually play as them.
3. Would be nice to play as a synthetic free will species at the start
4. Civil war tbh there really needs to be more internal strife atm there really isnt anything like enough of this not really a scifi trope but managing the happiness of your citizens should be more important civil war and rebellions are such a major part of CK, EU and Vicky.

cant think of anything else really

 

[safe-keeper]

I keep coming back to a species that's in decline, like in Asimov's Foundation novel. Not just stagnated like a Fallen Empire, but gradually regressing, losing capabilities and even scientific knowledge. Not sure how best to add this to Stellaris, but it would be interesting to have - a situation, lasting or temporary, where you might be pretty advanced, but running negative research points, so that you lose your researched techs one by one in reverse order. So you'll have advanced buildings and ships and whatnot, but you'll be unable to replace them when they are lost.

Again, not sure how, or even where, this could be put into the game, but it'd be really interesting.

 

[Silens]

I would love this.

It seems very doable, too -- you'd need some mechanics which allow an empire to decline, or to fragment, and those seem doable.

Declining empires would eventually become Fallen Empires, static and secure but never expanding and seldom interacting with the wider universe. They'd lose all their worlds except a few core colonies.

Fragmented empires could shatter into mutually-antagonistic rivals which tried to destroy each other, and might succeed often enough to leave a "clean slate" for the next generation, or at least reduce their overall production capability and thus set back all fragments by decades of progress.

Then you could start "in the middle" of galactic history, and deal with empires in decline when you're starting, and then deal with vigorous newcomers when you're established.

Doable... well, that depends...

The exploration phase is arguably one of the most satisfying and fun phases in the game. If you were to remove it in such a scenario, you'd need a worthy substitute on the side of diplomacy and politics: 'exploring' the galaxy with envoys/diplomats/something else (-> anomaly discovery/research would need quite a big overhaul here), expanding via diplomacy, gaining influence by using politics, securing claims/territory by political means (i.e. GC/Custodian/Imperial arbitration, buying territory from broke empires, bribing some local parliament to vote for joing you, staging a coup etc.) and a different way of re-discovering lost tech.

For it to be fun the player needs to feel some kind of progress. The mechanics shouldn't feel like a chore or like a constant uphill battle. The AI would also need some serious personality update, secret agendas and means of settling disputes outside of war. But right now we can't even mediate between two warring empires.

I agree that creating the scenario is doable with what we have right now, but it wouldn't be fun. If you want that, we need more than that. Far more.

 

[HFY]

Doable... well, that depends...

The exploration phase is arguably one of the most satisfying and fun phases in the game. If you were to remove it in such a scenario, you'd need a worthy substitute on the side of diplomacy and politics: 'exploring' the galaxy with envoys/diplomats/something else (-> anomaly discovery/research would need quite a big overhaul here), expanding via diplomacy, gaining influence by using politics, securing claims/territory by political means (i.e. GC/Custodian/Imperial arbitration, buying territory from broke empires, bribing some local parliament to vote for joing you, staging a coup etc.) and a different way of re-discovering lost tech.

For it to be fun the player needs to feel some kind of progress. The mechanics shouldn't feel like a chore or like a constant uphill battle. The AI would also need some serious personality update, secret agendas and means of settling disputes outside of war. But right now we can't even mediate between two warring empires.

I agree that creating the scenario is doable with what we have right now, but it wouldn't be fun. If you want that, we need more than that. Far more.

Oh I would not remove exploration, rather than that I'd remove the ability to blob out.

You'd explore a bunch of empty space until you encountered an empire's borders, and the empire would have those borders because expansion would not be trivial.

Definitely agree that exploration is awesome, and should be preserved.

 

[GnoSIS]

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

It was just some silly mentioning of the fact and just a relic? Is that how low the community standards are?

I could make this 3 expansions.

 

[grommile]

So Arrakis?

Arrakis is pretty tame by deathworld standards.

The classic deathworld is a murderjungle, not a desert.

 

[Colonizor48]

Xenophilic or xenophobic?

You could be either. But if your xenophobe your second spcies could not be enslaved or anyhting and they would act as if they were your main species. So you can purify the universe with an actual friend.

 

[HFY]

It was just some silly mentioning of the fact and just a relic? Is that how low the community standards are?

I could make this 3 expansions.

It looks like people are trying to think of things which haven't been done yet, rather than things which could be expanded upon.

Arrakis is pretty tame by deathworld standards.

The classic deathworld is a murderjungle, not a desert.

To be fair, Arrakis does have giant worms which show up and eat you if you try to walk on the desert.

Is that really "tame"?

 

[grommile]

To be fair, Arrakis does have giant worms which show up and eat you if you try to walk on the desert.

Is that really "tame"?

Compared to a WH40k Death World? Yes.

Like, on Arrakis, you can build a static structure out of reinforced concrete, and have it still be there two years later.

 

[Tragopan]

Organic/monster species sci-fi tropes have been ignored, or at the very least, grossly under represented.

Xenomorphs. Zerg. Organic ship sets/cities.

The Scourge and Hive Minds barely scratch this trope and certainly don't give the player enough to fiddle with on their own. I'd put out for a Unofficial Hive Mind-appropriated DLC pack with new portraits and organic ship set.

 

[klopkr]

Watching invincible the other night made me realise there's a gap for superhero stuff.

I'm not the biggest fan but I think there's a few tasteful ways to add them.

Late civic: Heroic Psionics. Needs the mind over matter ascension. Changes your enforcers and psy-ops into superheros that also produce amenities (merchandising) and gives some of your leaders the heroic trait giving them various bonuses.

Space Monster: The 'protector' of the Galaxy. Once an empire delves into the shroud there's a chance of an event chain initiating that'll take a leader and awaken them as one of the strongest psionic forces in the galaxy. Not on par with the chosen one but kind of like a proto-version. The leader will spawn a type of spacesuit looking 'ship' as a monster and be its admiral. It'll fly across the galaxy targeting 'evil' empires first (genociders, slavers, criminals, etc). Every year they live there's a 1% chance they'll turn to becoming a super villain and switch to attacking 'good' empires (pacifists, etc) and the GC instead. Destroy them and take what's left as a new trophy.

Event: Vigilante Justice. High crime worlds could see a rare event that'll give it a vigilante justice modifier. Crime will be reduced but so will stability and a few vigilante defense armies will spawn. This world will occasionally generate leaders with a special powerful vigilante trait. If you take a decision for the cost of influence you can recruit decently strong vigilante troops from that world.

 

[TrotBot]

Brainslug origin. Like the trill

 

[Snorro Soliman]

Flavor and character like a ck2 type experience for important characters....so tap that space opera trope
The obvious
Adding retinues, followers and traits to leaders. Make certain empires good at generating exceptional leaders.

Allow me to play a Duke from a moist ricefarming planet with a tough Swordsmaster, a dashing Smuggler turned minstrel, a sinister doctor and, ofcourse, a witchlike concubine of exceptional hidden talents.
Allow me to have feuds and rivalries, with my floaty archnemesis, and his son, definitly-not- Sting......

The scifi
Leaders prolonging their lifespan through various means, tech, drug or mindvodoo..civilizations based around an elite caste of 'perfect' clones(horatio-chan?) and the effects of such things on bodies and minds.

More interactions with neutrals, truly unknowable lifeforms and more options then 'laser goes brrr' to interact.

 

[Tyrendian]

Trope wise Migrant Fleets / Nomadic Species similar to the Quarian would be cool. Basically a void dwelling species with fleets of civilian ships that grow in size, can be split, or could land on a planet to settle.

I'd like to see nomadic civilizations claim territory similar to steppe tribes/plains Indians, or exist outside of owning a territory similar to the quarian.

It would be cool if any species could become nomadic if the circumstances warranted it (ie fanatic purifier or other purge happy civilizations).

I'd also like to devolve a species similar to what the forerunners did to the humans in Halo.

 

[Dire]

I would love for my space society to be able to host the F-Zero Grand Prix or Redline or podracing championship race. My citizens are fat and happy, what they need, is speed.

 

[TrotBot]

I would love for my space society to be able to host the F-Zero Grand Prix or Redline or podracing championship race. My citizens are fat and happy, what they need, is speed.

more cultural events and megastructures in general of some sort would be cool, my utopia wants more utopia

 

[DurianKing]

I see that time travel has been discussed on the forums before, but I think a way to implement it without breaking the game (and make it halfway realistic) would be to include incredibly rare tech that would not allow you to go back in time, but allow you to slow it down or speed it up. So, you can go forward, but you can’t go back.

I could see a couple mechanics this could interact with (you could slightly speed up your fleets while slowing down your enemies, for instance), but I think it would be particularly rich for storytelling.

You could have an endgame crisis where a FE is suddenly attacked by a massive fleet of their own species, which would turn out to be a fanatic purifier faction that lost an ancient civil war and traveled to a future when their enemies have stagnated to reestablish their dominance. The FE could call for help (unless they were militant isolationists), but would be swamped within a few years and would be replaced by an awakened empire on steroids that then tried to purge all the xenos, aided by its time tech. And maybe you only get access to this tech yourself if you defeat the crisis.

Or perhaps you could have a small, small chance that temporal refugees from the Cybrex, or the collapse of the First League, or Irassians trying to flee the pox show up in your empire based on whatever precursor you had. This would give you some pops and a chance to develop the time tech.

You could even conceivably have an origin where you are temporal refugees fleeing a past cataclysm yourselves, which would allow a start that gave you both time tech and a whole bunch of other researched technologies. This would only work, though, if they fixed the whole “have more science = win the game” issue they’ve got right now.

 

[David Lo Pan]

Tropes?

From the Stargate franchise: stargates.

Have the ability to build stargates on your planets; can move armies around your empire like ships using a wormhole. Enemy drops 10k army on your planet, you warp in a 20k army and the enemy has a good cry.

Can also be used as an espionage project by building a stargate in secret on an enemy's world. Once complete declare war and invade; however, would need a machanic to thwart it's assembly by the enemy empire like a counter intellegence system.


For some tropey flavor bring back a reworked version of the old army add-ons. Also, add more army templates like power armored armies (Starship Troopers, Fallout) and barbarian armies (Orks) cause everybody agrees that green is best........... and if they don't then they gunna get their faces smashed in by Warboss Smashface.

 

[Kaoru Sen'nin]

Untapped ? Probably none.
Every trope has at least one reference in some text event.

Not exploited mechanicaly ? A lot.

The downside being if they add new systems that will most likely means more calculation and then more lag.