Why does seemingly everybody want Stellaris to be HOI in space?

[Ridixo]

It would be great if strategic resources were more like in HOI. There some things like oil and rubber are only available in certain countries. And if you don't have them you have to conquer or trade for them. In Stellaris that's not the case. Strategic resources are neither rare nor actually strategic.

And the funny thing is that it was suppose to be that way. Betharian Fields? they were suppose to be a resource worth to fight for. They are nothing. If it surprise you that they are still in the game you will see my point

It seems that one reason for constant warfare is that tall playstyles don't work well. Thus, you simply can't stay within your borders and still get enough points for victory.

I don't know, in my game i usually take just my initial sector, 3-4 jumps away from my homeworld, and leave the rest alone unless there is a convenient defense point or something i want. How i then manage my economy with 5 planets at most and just a few systems? Tributaries. I have say it a lot, and i will say it a lot more. One of the changes that most called my attention back when megacorp and the new economy system was out, was that you no longer needed to unlock the domination tree to have tributaries. I quickly realize the change was an economical patch. You can't make you economy work. You need energy and minerals, then you need alloys and consumer goods, then you need crystals, gases and motes. You keep needing more and more to sustain your economy. So players were out to conquer and get that resources, then they need pops to harvest them, then they need specialist to produce them, then they repeat the cicle. You need resources to conquer the galaxy and you need to conquer the galaxy to get resources. Me? I just seat on my little sector and make 3-4 empires my tributaries. I got all the energy and minerals i need. I sell the mineral surplus to get more energy and use the energy surplus to buy all the resources i need

With five worlds i got everything, while the powergamers comply about the micromanagement of 200 planets and their barely balanced economy. My method may or may not be the best, but i rather think it's the fault of those powergamers that want to have the maximum advantage how the game may look like only dedicated to war. For that they are dedicated to war is that they think there is no other way. The problem of the economy is the upkeep, the best of tributaries is that they are free economy

 

[Pancakelord]

The way I look at GW/PD (or equally SC/Flak) as a problem is that neither of the other two primary weapon types and their matching defenses follows a similar path, or even a different path to essentially the same destination. A fleet with enough PD can basically keep their members practically immune to GW damage, assuming they can keep everyone under the PD umbrella. In order to do the same with kinetic/armor, you'd have to go back to old-school "armor as damage resistance", but have it less constrained; ships with enough shields could be similarly unfazed by energy attacks.

But even old-school armor couldn't reach that level of protection, and certainly couldn't do it without completely undermining its ship's defense against anything else - PD both forces no reduction in defensive capability against the other damage types (just in a modest reduction in damage output) and doesn't require that the defended ships even carry the defensive systems, and both were true then and now. Energy attacks completely subvert defensive systems by having various weapons attack defenses in different ways, either doing well against shields or ignoring one/both of shields/armor. This oddly makes shields a relatively poor choice as well, as only a limited number of attacks are actually best defended by them (lasers, plasma, lances, particle launchers are the only ones researchable).

I don't know for certain what the way forward is on this - I've posted more than my fair share of suggestions (see my sig) toward coming up with a solution, without enough positive response to elicit hope in their success or acceptance.

Missiles suffer from not one but two issues in Stellaris, one is PD, but the other is they don't alpha strike, unlike instant-hit kinetics and energy weapons.

For Alphastrikes they could (should) add timers on successful hits. E.g. your kinetic artillery hits and insta-gibs an enemy right now (the gfx engine plays catch-up), but with a timer it would record the hit and wait for "T" before applying the damage (T=distance/defined_speed to emulate the travel time).

• This would solve - or severely curtail - alphastrikes, making missiles (and a few other guns) more viable late-game, without being too processor intensive.
• But engineering in an entire queue/buffer system for hits is probably not going to happen...

At the same time, reintroduce missiles into S,M,L,XL slots but supercharge missiles in G slots (they're effectively L-slots for missiles).

• BUT to compensate for this you add a floating modifier for PD tracking / missile evasion.
  1. When the number of Missiles is N times larger than number of PD their chances of evading should fall to like 5%.
  2. When the number of missiles is N times smaller than the number of PD slots then their chances of evading should rise to 95%.
     • There isnt really a logical reason for this, but it is needed for gameplay balance.
• This means that Missiles will only ever work well when massed, but unlike years ago they would
  1. Have an upper-cap that stops them exterminating everything with mindless spam.
  2. Have a lower-cap (or a scaling buff) to still make them more viable against hoards of PD.
• With a proper equation this would plot out the left half (1) and right half (2) of a bell-curve leading to an optimal or "efficient" number of missiles being used for missile fleets. Think of it like firing a shotgun at a flock of birds vs just 1 bird.
• The engine can definitely do this as it already does something like this with the fleet force disparity modifier, except this would be scaling missile_evasion rather than fleet damage. So i'd rate a rework doing something like this as "quite likely".

The last thing I'd do (this is probably the easiest & most likely thing pdx might do) is put missiles back in all slots (as above) but make missiles into short-range weapons only (<40),

• The fact that they are long range actually makes them more vulnerable to PD because ships dont fire coordinated barrages, they fire whenever they feel like it, or when their current missiles arent alive anymore. short ranges means denser "lumps" of missiles crossing in to PD range at the same time, so more get through more consistently.
• Every scifi i've ever read has also made missiles out to be short ranged weapons, if they exist at all in the book, with lasers being upto a few light-seconds in range for combat and sometimes gauss weapons being ultra-long-range gravity-led (so they'd curve around planets and so fourth - not an issue for stellaris).
• Its really weird that missiles are long range and slow travelling in Stellaris. Even whirlwinds are longer range than they ought to be.

This is perhaps saved for a proper balance thread but IMO missiles should be short, lasers mid and kinetics long range, but all 3 trees should be given Anti armor anti hull and "penetrating" (like disruptor) style weapons. the difference then becomes which playstyle suits you most, short/mid/long - or stack all 3 ranges worth of anti-armor to melt a specific faction etc. Right now balance does the inverse of this having 3 classes for all 3 ranges but focussing on different things.

 

[Zoolimar]

At the same time, reintroduce missiles into S,M,L,XL slots but supercharge missiles in G slots (they're effectively L-slots for missiles).

If you are giving missiles back the slots you can as well remove the G slot. Just allow PD to be put into any slot and make it actually harmless against ships. The other thing is - lower range to 10 or even 5 - this will immediately lower the PD overlap in the fleet meaning that it will be possible to push through almost any fleet PD if you bring enough missiles (corner cases will be when 1-2 corvette/destroyer squadrons are in the way of missiles targeting big ships in the back.)

Frankly just lowering the PD range a lot should be enough without other changes to make missiles useable.

 

[Mr Thursday]

I have got all the expansions for both HOI4 and Stellaris, and I can say that I have never been disappointed by anything from HOI4. Stellaris however is full of half finished and abandoned content, MegaCorp being the case in point.

Also HOI4 has time travellers and Fez's so it's even more SciFi than Stellaris.

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

If you are giving missiles back the slots you can as well remove the G slot. Just allow PD to be put into any slot and make it actually harmless against ships. The other thing is - lower range to 10 or even 5 - this will immediately lower the PD overlap in the fleet meaning that it will be possible to push through almost any fleet PD if you bring enough missiles (corner cases will be when 1-2 corvette/destroyer squadrons are in the way of missiles targeting big ships in the back.)

Frankly just lowering the PD range a lot should be enough without other changes to make missiles useable.

PD should always have been a defensive module, rather than an offensive one.

 

[Janx14]

Why do I see so many people wanting this to be watered down, more simple, more focused on war.

I feel like you're lumping a lot of things together to get here. There's plenty of people who fall in the first 2 camps who don't want the latter, or at least, in the way you seem to imply it.

• Watered down/simple: There's a lot of micro in the game, but that doesn't necessarily mean people want 'simple'. Many want something 'interesting' to do. Having to manage 100 planets isn't really fun due to all the work, but if all the planets were simplified, but i had to manage factions and leaders and actual diplomacy I wouldn't mind. The game is built around a lot of chores, and there's a lot of 'stuff' going on that the player has little input in that the player has to either fight, or just goes wasting processing power.
• War: While the game feels war focused, its also really bad at war, hence people who don't even want to blob would like it to be fixed.

 

[Blodo]

Why do I see so many people wanting this to be watered down, more simple, more focused on war. HOI is a great series, it's fun, but the core is war. There's very little economy or diplomacy to complement that. I don't like that. The popular consensus seems to be to make it more like a map painting simulator, and less like a diplomatic-military-economic civilization builder that it was intended to be. Or at the very least, whichever one of those playstyles you prefer and can play accordingly since there's room for all of it.

Stellaris has been a map painter since launch, just not a very good one compared to HoI. You shouldn't be surprised it gets compared to it, the core of Stellaris's gameplay has been war all the way up until Federations. And you could argue even now your empire is built around your fleet and not the other way around to a large extent. I wish it was more than that with more focus on alien society and cultural differences and first contacts and alien behaviour, more Star Trek than Star Wars, but it is the opposite of that and it is what it is.

 

[ImaTomato]

It would be great if strategic resources were more like in HOI. There some things like oil and rubber are only available in certain countries. And if you don't have them you have to conquer or trade for them. In Stellaris that's not the case. Strategic resources are neither rare nor actually strategic.

The main problem is that the most valuable resources can be mass produced and the rare ones have very limited uses.

 

[grommile]

I have never been disappointed by anything from HOI4.

I have been deeply disappointed by a number of things in HOI4. Some of them are straightforwardly unfixed bugs (like "the battle planner is basically unusable for offensive operations due to various misbehaviours up to and including 'your army does literally the exact opposite of what you have told it to do'"). Others are caused by the inadequacy of the game's response to the player launching "freestyle" wars (using the Justify War diplomacy interaction) as the USSR.

 

[MrParadux]

Reading some of these well put together summaries and remembering some past experiences with the game makes me really sad

 

[KubiG37]

I don't know, Stellaris is not even a good war game when we talk about it, compared to HoI.

There is no tech really involved (doctrines/national specifics/prefered weapon types), or terrain, or flanking, or logistics, nothing but blobs of ships.

You just build more ships than your opponent and win. AI does not respond to your techs, nor does it use choke points and things like pulsars (the star that neutralizes shields) to gain any advantage.
Also, AI is perhaps the most inept out of all other Paradox titles. It has absolutely no persistence and idea about what systems are important, or what armies/fleets should it engage or not.

 

[Cordane]

Missiles suffer from not one but two issues in Stellaris, one is PD, but the other is they don't alpha strike, unlike instant-hit kinetics and energy weapons.

For Alphastrikes they could (should) add timers on successful hits. E.g. your kinetic artillery hits and insta-gibs an enemy right now (the gfx engine plays catch-up), but with a timer it would record the hit and wait for "T" before applying the damage (T=distance/defined_speed to emulate the travel time).

• This would solve - or severely curtail - alphastrikes, making missiles (and a few other guns) more viable late-game, without being too processor intensive.
• But engineering in an entire queue/buffer system for hits is probably not going to happen...

At the same time, reintroduce missiles into S,M,L,XL slots but supercharge missiles in G slots (they're effectively L-slots for missiles).

• BUT to compensate for this you add a floating modifier for PD tracking / missile evasion.
  1. When the number of Missiles is N times larger than number of PD their chances of evading should fall to like 5%.
  2. When the number of missiles is N times smaller than the number of PD slots then their chances of evading should rise to 95%.
     • There isnt really a logical reason for this, but it is needed for gameplay balance.
• This means that Missiles will only ever work well when massed, but unlike years ago they would
  1. Have an upper-cap that stops them exterminating everything with mindless spam.
  2. Have a lower-cap (or a scaling buff) to still make them more viable against hoards of PD.
• With a proper equation this would plot out the left half (1) and right half (2) of a bell-curve leading to an optimal or "efficient" number of missiles being used for missile fleets. Think of it like firing a shotgun at a flock of birds vs just 1 bird.
• The engine can definitely do this as it already does something like this with the fleet force disparity modifier, except this would be scaling missile_evasion rather than fleet damage. So i'd rate a rework doing something like this as "quite likely".

The last thing I'd do (this is probably the easiest & most likely thing pdx might do) is put missiles back in all slots (as above) but make missiles into short-range weapons only (<40),

• The fact that they are long range actually makes them more vulnerable to PD because ships dont fire coordinated barrages, they fire whenever they feel like it, or when their current missiles arent alive anymore. short ranges means denser "lumps" of missiles crossing in to PD range at the same time, so more get through more consistently.
• Every scifi i've ever read has also made missiles out to be short ranged weapons, if they exist at all in the book, with lasers being upto a few light-seconds in range for combat and sometimes gauss weapons being ultra-long-range gravity-led (so they'd curve around planets and so fourth - not an issue for stellaris).
• Its really weird that missiles are long range and slow travelling in Stellaris. Even whirlwinds are longer range than they ought to be.

This is perhaps saved for a proper balance thread but IMO missiles should be short, lasers mid and kinetics long range, but all 3 trees should be given Anti armor anti hull and "penetrating" (like disruptor) style weapons. the difference then becomes which playstyle suits you most, short/mid/long - or stack all 3 ranges worth of anti-armor to melt a specific faction etc. Right now balance does the inverse of this having 3 classes for all 3 ranges but focussing on different things.

I've previously covered the question of GW/SC speed to target and they really should be handled much closer to kinetics and energy weapons, even with the perverse time/distance scale used (i.e., battles that should take hours instead take weeks, at light-hours ranges instead of light-seconds). This would eliminate the alpha disadvantage, but it would also do away with the "PD wall", as GW/SC attacks wouldn't pass through in a way that can be interacted with. I proposed a self-defense-only system called Countermeasures instead to mitigate GW/SC damage - it affects those attacks and others closer to how armor handles kinetics: very well against them but it still slows down other damage types, rather than "no sell" and "nothing".

Your suggestions on moderating the effect of massed GW attacks or massed PD systems seem pointless. PD is not a balance-able defense system - it's far too easy to have it be completely OP or completely useless, unlike the other two. Even the range adjustments offered in later comments are not sufficient - once you get the Range below a given point, the systems become ship-only and they have to be a utility system on each ship, not only the screening DDs.

Most SF universes have no idea how missiles work, or gauss weapons, or whatever - the power outlay for any kinetic weapon is stupid high at even modest exit velocities (1-10% of c) and that makes them either short range weapons or very low effective accuracy at any decent range versus a relatively mobile opponent (e.g., 300K kilometer - 1 light-second - range takes 100 seconds flight time at 1% c). Missiles needing to accelerate are sitting ducks at close range for any PD-type attack - only long ranges after many seconds to minutes of acceleration offer them enough velocity to stand a chance of evading defensive fire (and a catapult launch of the missile doesn't do near enough to get them up to speed - see "power outlay" above). All of the advantages of a missile are in its ability to correct for target movement at range.

Why would a shorter range allow a given missile system to fire faster? Stellaris specifically limits the fire rate of missiles to hand wave the ammunition avoidance issue. The only way you're able to have a larger number of missiles fire in short succession is to have a multi-tube system, and why wouldn't that work at longer ranges?

 

[Anemetius]

it cant be anything more than brain dead Hoi4 copy.

 

[Johann7]

I wished it were more, but it's been years and there is no internal politics whatsoever. Or much to manage in peace time. So to not get bored you go to war. It's just how it is.

Once upon a time, there WAS more - but it's been stripped out in the name of "too much micro". In the first design paradigm, things like manual pop job assignment and adjacency impacts from buildings (which was based on a different planetary development model) meant peacetime development was more involved, so there was more to do; the problem is that more to do becomes unwanted micromanagement when one wants to be focusing on something else.

As others note, a major driver of this issue is a fundamental design conflict between simplifying controls for realtime multiplayer and complexity and depth for single player. It's such a fundamental conflist that I'm not sure there IS a way to resolve it: the combination of grand strategy and RTS may just be a very bad idea (I've liked plenty of RTS games, and they work best as combat/tactics simulators with some light development systems e.g. Blizzard's *craft games or Company of Heroes, while turn-based seems to be a much better option for multiplayer for more involved strategy games, because time management and fast response to changing conditions becomes key in RTS, meaning there is a limit to the amount of complexity that's possible to control effectively, while players can take time to tweak complex systems with turn-based games).

That said, I think the project management approach is also causing problems. I do wish they'd take a year or so to stop chasing cash from new expansions and just focus on fixing everything that's been abandoned or broken for years, cleaning everything up to give a stable point from which to work moving forward without adding new systems that break things in new and exciting ways. Strip out content that doesn't work or isn't relevant any more, finish half-implemented systems if they can function and should be kept, and then overhaul the AI decision-making once there is a stable set of coherent game systems. Part of the problem with the AI is that it doesn't necessarily step around or counterintuitively exploit broken systems like players can learn to do. But this may not be a realistic wish any more, due to the shift in development practices across the industry. I've maintained that the software-as-a-service model, with it's necessary perpetual development structure, is, on the balance, a very bad idea, but market logic prioritizes short-term profits over efficiency of resource use or overall positive (non-profit) outcomes, so SAAS probably isn't going anywhere for a while.

 

[Serenity84]

In the first design paradigm, things like manual pop job assignment and adjacency impacts from buildings (which was based on a different planetary development model) meant peacetime development was more involved

That wasn't meaningful development though. Tile bonuses and adjacency mattered at the very beginning. But eventually you'd just ignore them and make energy or mining planets. And while you didn't constantly need to go over every planet filling an empty planet with buildings ahead of time was somewhat silly.

I much prefer the current economic system (though some things like amenities, happiness and administration don't matter enough). They "just" need to introduce useful and decent enough automation for it. Which is required anyways for the AI. They basically use the same building system.
I always thought that should be tied to sectors and internal politics. Like having sectors be their own political entities - a bit like vassals.

 

[Zoolimar]

That wasn't meaningful development though. Tile bonuses and adjacency mattered at the very beginning. But eventually you'd just ignore them and make energy or mining planets. And while you didn't constantly need to go over every planet filling an empty planet with buildings ahead of time was somewhat silly.

Yeah, it was somewhat silly. True. And development was a little simple. But there were ways to add depth to it without the need to scrap whole system. There were mods that added adjacency bonuses to tile blockers for example. This way you could choose to clear all, some or none of the blockers depending on what was under them, what adjacency bonuses they gave, their layout and what you needed at the time. And you could probably add more if you wanted.

The fact that you didn't need to touch the planet after it was "done" was actually good. As it freed you to deal with factions and pop ethics drift. Ideally that's where your focus should be in empire management mid/late game. Instead of caring about micromanaging each planet. Faction drift, unhappiness, rebellions and, ideally, covert enemy action plus diplomacy should be your main focus after your empire grows past a dozen systems. All this also can potentially damage your overall economy or buildings on the planets, potentially even changing the layout of synergy bonuses and thus putting the planet up for redevelopment (dirty nukes, terraforming weapons, virus weapons, introducing new tile blockers, changing tiles and so on).

Instead focus was put on constantly babysitting each planet. You can't prebuild it even if you have resources. It is specifically made so that you need to return to each planet at regular intervals to build something that you knew you were going to build for around 5 to 10 minutes.

 

[methegrate]

That wasn't meaningful development though. Tile bonuses and adjacency mattered at the very beginning. But eventually you'd just ignore them and make energy or mining planets.

This has been my other "once you see it you can't stop seeing it" problem. Almost all of the game is routed through the economy, but the economy is overwhelmingly unbalanced.

Imo, this is a major root cause of two of the other biggest complaints about the game: Each of the mechanics feel disconnected from each other, and few decisions actually matter.

The game's various mechanics are supposed to interconnect through the economy. You make a choice here and, by changing your income, it affects your options there. Except that doesn't work when players make so much of every resource that they never notice the outcome of any given choice. Your decisions aren't important, not necessarily because there are no consequences but because those consequences are trivial compared to the scope of the economy. And since the player always makes more than they could possibly spend, they simply build everything in every game.

For example, happiness is supposed to connect to construction and warfare because unhappy citizens are less productive. But when I make 300 minerals per turn, how will I ever notice that my choices made those pops 10% more productive? It just adds to the pile. What do I care if they reduce mineral income by 10%? It's just slightly less on the pile.

And in either case, the happy empire and the unhappy empire are going to build the exact same things, because they can both afford to build everything.

It's one of the reasons why Stellaris is SO MUCH better in the early game. At first you do have genuine scarcity. You have to choose what to build and where. The early game is defined by zero-sum choices among important options, and making the wrong ones legitimately can have dire consequences. But not long into the game your empire largely runs on auto-pilot. There are no wrong choices because, by the sheer number of systems and pops you control, you will almost automatically have more than enough of every resource.

A lot of Stellaris' design is built around the idea that relatively small changes are meaningful to the gameplay experience. Like techs that boost your economy by 5%, factions that change your influence by 0.2 points, or the small modifiers that distinguish ethics. Same with adjacency bonuses that shifted your income a bit here and there. In a very tight economy, where players spent the whole game scrambling for resources, that might work. (Except for the ethics. Small modifier will never make two empires feel viscerally different.) In a game where you literally have buildings to store all the resources you can't spend though, it's all irrelevant.

 

[Pancakelord]

In a very tight economy, where players spent the whole game scrambling for resources, that might work.

This is a good way of looking at the crux of the problems with economy balance.

I've recently been going through game assets to re-add cut resources (xuraGel etc) and one that's stood out to me is Helium-3 (cut before v1.0) presumably dropped in favour of universal energy.

But your point made me realise just how far-reaching energy credits are, they're used for everything.

1. The economy scales up in size (+10ec ->+300ec)
2. but it also scales off earlier stages (surplus EC is useless but can be used to buy alloys or notes which are useful, for a time).
   1. This means that any midgame scarcities are "smoothened out" by stockpiles left over from surplus "useless" resources like minerals and energy early on. (Useless in that more EC on its own won't run that tier 2 science lab but glasses - which EC can easily buy - will run it)

Part of me wonders of slashing mineral & energy outputs, and maybe making energy less convertible (lower ec caps, higher market fees, making fleets run on something other than pure EC for upkeep ... like Helium-3, which could be an untradable item to prevent EC "deflation") would keep economies feeling leaner longer in to the game - till they can build megastructures anyway.

 

[Richard Dolder]

It's one of the reasons why Stellaris is SO MUCH better in the early game. At first you do have genuine scarcity. You have to choose what to build and where. The early game is defined by zero-sum choices among important options, and making the wrong ones legitimately can have dire consequences. But not long into the game your empire largely runs on auto-pilot. There are no wrong choices because, by the sheer number of systems and pops you control, you will almost automatically have more than enough of every resource.

A lot of Stellaris' design is built around the idea that relatively small changes are meaningful to the gameplay experience. Like techs that boost your economy by 5%, factions that change your influence by 0.2 points, or the small modifiers that distinguish ethics. Same with adjacency bonuses that shifted your income a bit here and there. In a very tight economy, where players spent the whole game scrambling for resources, that might work. (Except for the ethics. Small modifier will never make two empires feel viscerally different.) In a game where you literally have buildings to store all the resources you can't spend though, it's all irrelevant.

This together when looked at from another angle creates it's own real problem.
To a lot of people the game is about the fantasies you can create, a lot of small modifiers that don't matter hurts that feeling.
To them there should be "No wrong choices", because the essential choices are picking roleplaying focuses which indeed should not be wrong in that way. (no wrong civics/ethics, ways to play them sure.)

Who does stellaris serve?

 

[otro_dia]

This has been my other "once you see it you can't stop seeing it" problem. Almost all of the game is routed through the economy, but the economy is overwhelmingly unbalanced.

Imo, this is a major root cause of two of the other biggest complaints about the game: Each of the mechanics feel disconnected from each other, and few decisions actually matter.

The game's various mechanics are supposed to interconnect through the economy. You make a choice here and, by changing your income, it affects your options there. Except that doesn't work when players make so much of every resource that they never notice the outcome of any given choice. Your decisions aren't important, not necessarily because there are no consequences but because those consequences are trivial compared to the scope of the economy. And since the player always makes more than they could possibly spend, they simply build everything in every game.

For example, happiness is supposed to connect to construction and warfare because unhappy citizens are less productive. But when I make 300 minerals per turn, how will I ever notice that my choices made those pops 10% more productive? It just adds to the pile. What do I care if they reduce mineral income by 10%? It's just slightly less on the pile.

And in either case, the happy empire and the unhappy empire are going to build the exact same things, because they can both afford to build everything.

It's one of the reasons why Stellaris is SO MUCH better in the early game. At first you do have genuine scarcity. You have to choose what to build and where. The early game is defined by zero-sum choices among important options, and making the wrong ones legitimately can have dire consequences. But not long into the game your empire largely runs on auto-pilot. There are no wrong choices because, by the sheer number of systems and pops you control, you will almost automatically have more than enough of every resource.

A lot of Stellaris' design is built around the idea that relatively small changes are meaningful to the gameplay experience. Like techs that boost your economy by 5%, factions that change your influence by 0.2 points, or the small modifiers that distinguish ethics. Same with adjacency bonuses that shifted your income a bit here and there. In a very tight economy, where players spent the whole game scrambling for resources, that might work. (Except for the ethics. Small modifier will never make two empires feel viscerally different.) In a game where you literally have buildings to store all the resources you can't spend though, it's all irrelevant.

To be fair, you only have the illusion you have too many resources because you are unchallenged and can snowball. If you are declared on in 2350 by an enemy with a "superior"fleet, you usually end up wishing you had more alloys, dark matter and energy. And half of my games I have to produce so much alloys that even with mining guilds I have mineral problems.