Quote Originally Posted by Kaptin Keen View Post
But ... it's a strategy game. Calling it 'grand' strategy doesn't change that. When they 'improve' the game, why don't they make it a better strategy game, rather than making it more of a galaxy sim? Just gimme a few more things I can do to affect the outcome of battles. Thus far, I've discovered precisely one trick one can do before the fleets clash and fight each other on autopilot.

Bah! :p
You're not going to get that with a Paradox game, not matter how much you might like it, I'm afraid... MAYBE in Hearts of Iron IV (I've not played that yet); but if you want something for actual tactical-level starship combat... Look at Swords of the Stars or something (which is still the gold standard). Same if you wanted groundside tactical combat, you'd play Total War. While I would very much like proper starship combat in Stellaris, the long and the short of it is that's not what a grand stratagy game (which is what Paradox calls it particular batch of games and it's as good a name as any) aims for. It's just not what they do.

(I mean, if you want to get pedantic "stratagy" is not particularly pertaining to battles, "tactics" is - regardless of the not-entirely-accurate label "RTS" appended to itself - strategy is the larger picture; and logistics is the most important part of that.)

For my part, with this expansion, Stellaris is finally starting to feel like a grand strat and not a poor hybrid of grand strat/4X which is was when it started.