Stellaris: Paradoxian Space Stategy.

[houlio]

Here's the stream they recently put up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shoiYDp7EEA

I think they are planning on doing it every Thursday for awhile.

[Cristo Meyers]

Here's the stream they recently put up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shoiYDp7EEA

I think they are planning on doing it every Thursday for awhile.

That looks remarkably better than I honestly thought it would. Dang, might have to reconsider waiting and actually get this closer to release.

All hail the Blorg!

[Cikomyr]

Here's the stream they recently put up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shoiYDp7EEA

I think they are planning on doing it every Thursday for awhile.

We are the Blorg.
Lower your shields and surrender your ships.
We will hug your biological and technological friendliness with our own.
Your culture will adapt to befriend us.
Resistance is futile.

[Cikomyr]

The thing i love most is the anti-blob features in the game. Things like factions, that will push for independence and civil war. Classic 4x games never have these checks, so its always massive monolithical entities.

The Klingon Empire is a good example of heavily decentralized power, with Noble Houses ruling over ships, ressources and worlds.

[Leecros]

The thing i love most is the anti-blob features in the game. Things like factions, that will push for independence and civil war. Classic 4x games never have these checks, so its always massive monolithical entities.

That largely depends on how they're implemented.

Both Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV have anti-blob features. However, they end up rarely working out. Factions in CKII are easy to deal with and Aggressive Expansion in EUIV is also fairly easy to manage. They do work at slowing the player, but they rarely become a major hurdle, even for large sprawling empires.

[Rockphed]

If the anti-blob features make it so huge empires split up sometimes, then they are good enough. Even if a good player can keep a galaxy wide empire going, I always get bored near the end of space 4x games. Often there isn't enough going on or it is all tedious micromanagement. Also, I hope there is support for races to end up with multiple competing powers, a la Honor Harrington and the peeps.

[Sian]

They have said earlier one that one of their focus points was stuff to do when you had grown big, with the examples shown being sentient robotic rebellion, or W40kesque Chaos or Tyranid attacking

[Inarius]

They have said earlier one that one of their focus points was stuff to do when you had grown big, with the examples shown being sentient robotic rebellion, or W40kesque Chaos or Tyranid attacking

So like comet sighted, except now its also full of tyranids? No wonder everyone in EU4 was so freaked out by those comets.

[Cikomyr]

They have said earlier one that one of their focus points was stuff to do when you had grown big, with the examples shown being sentient robotic rebellion, or W40kesque Chaos or Tyranid attacking

Kind of funny. Materialist can creat robots, while Spirituals can do psionics.

Ai Rebellion and Chaos surge represent the evil consequence of either

[Razade]

Apparently there's a date of May 9th on their website, probably a good guess to the release date.

[Leecros]

Apparently there's a date of May 9th on their website, probably a good guess to the release date.

Indeed that date was also stated in a trailer released the other day and the posted release date on Steam.

[Grif]

Apparently there's a date of May 9th on their website, probably a good guess to the release date.

Huh. What a happy birthday present.

[Cikomyr]

All right. Imperium of Mankind is definitely Spiritual, while Tau are Materialist. Its official.

Materialist gives you access to robot tech, while Spiritual give you Psionics.

Also give you a fun explanation for the Age of Strife following the Dark Age of Technology:

The original Human Empire was heavily materialist. However, some of their population were slowly deviating in becoming Spiritual (probably due to Eldar influence), which led to Human Psionics, and thus fundamental civil strife.

The Human Empire was hit at the same time by a Robotic Rebellion while the Spiritual Faction rebelled.

[Leecros]

I'll be curious to see how the combat looks in-game. I know you can zoom in and see the combat(although you can't order individual ships). I also believe that in a forum post they said that the shots will be simulated. So hits will be hits and misses will be misses...Unlike say...the DPS-based combat system that Sins of a Solar Empire has. However, I'm curious to see how stagnant or dynamic combat is going to be.

Taking Sins of a Solar Empire as an example. Combat in that game always felt sort of...fake. The ships lined up across from each other and "shot" at the opposing forces which caused them. Then of course, the game ran on a damage per second system rather than simulating each shot, so the ships health would just tick down while the firing animation was going.

Comparatively speaking, Sword of the Stars is the opposite. The combat was very dynamic with lots of maneuvering and every shot was simulated. It mattered where your guns were, it mattered where your ships got hit.

I sort of suspect that the combat may be somewhere in between those two examples...

I'll also be curious to see how combat rolls are taken into account. Paradox like their dice rolls and that's not always an entirely bad thing, but if they do simulate every weapon shot that can hit or miss. I'm interested in seeing how dice rolls affect that.

[Grif]

I'll be curious to see how the combat looks in-game. I know you can zoom in and see the combat(although you can't order individual ships). I also believe that in a forum post they said that the shots will be simulated. So hits will be hits and misses will be misses...Unlike say...the DPS-based combat system that Sins of a Solar Empire has. However, I'm curious to see how stagnant or dynamic combat is going to be.

Taking Sins of a Solar Empire as an example. Combat in that game always felt sort of...fake. The ships lined up across from each other and "shot" at the opposing forces which caused them. Then of course, the game ran on a damage per second system rather than simulating each shot, so the ships health would just tick down while the firing animation was going.

Comparatively speaking, Sword of the Stars is the opposite. The combat was very dynamic with lots of maneuvering and every shot was simulated. It mattered where your guns were, it mattered where your ships got hit.

I sort of suspect that the combat may be somewhere in between those two examples...

I'll also be curious to see how combat rolls are taken into account. Paradox like their dice rolls and that's not always an entirely bad thing, but if they do simulate every weapon shot that can hit or miss. I'm interested in seeing how dice rolls affect that.

Are there invisible rivers in space? Or maybe mountains?

(For those not in the loop, EU4 (and 3) had these random malus to dice rolls during the combat phase to the game. It used to be that each province had "rivers" and percentages of different terrain. Attacking into a mountain, and crossing a river would incur a malus of -3 and -1/-2 respectively, which is a big deal when a dice only goes up to 12.)

[Cikomyr]

Just fyi: the reddit page r/stellaris has been taken over by a hostile moderator who is posting things about child pornography and the likes.

The new Reddit page is r/stellarisgame

[Leecros]

Are there invisible rivers in space? Or maybe mountains?

There might be like...Nebulous regions that influence combat. Who knows?

I certainly hope that at least some solar systems have different "terrain types" such as being in a nebula, or the center of gravity for the system being like a black hole, or a neutron star instead of a regular star, or something.

[Cikomyr]

Good news. Theres been a Blorgdate, with a full 2 hour stream of gameplay.

I will post a link as soon as i get home.
And i eat my pizza

[Narkis]

For those like me who are too impatient to wait for Cikomyr to finish his pizza, the stream can be found here.

[Cikomyr]

For those like me who are too impatient to wait for Cikomyr to finish his pizza, the stream can be found here.

Thanks a lot. The pizza was good. But then I got distracted by my GF putting on Pacific Rim

And then I got distracted in the bath by reading The Player of Games

I want a Culture Society now

[Cikomyr]

So, anyone here have an idea of the kind of government they will create?

I was thinking of remaking Star Trek's humans. Materialist, Pacifists and Xenophiles.

[Narkis]

Fanatic Materialist and Militarist. Government Indirect Democracy, unless Science Directorate turns out to be better.

Through superior technology and more competent leaders we shall conquer all. I was going to play as humans, but their portraits that I've seen are really ugly, and thus I'm undecided. An I'm not sure on race traits either, probably long-lived and even better leaders, but I might go for even more science.

[Cristo Meyers]

I'll do the same thing I do every first playthrough: try and take over the worldgalaxy!

I'm thinking something militaristic, not sure where on the Spiritual/Materialistic spectrum though. Though for some odd reason just making Wing Commander's Kilrathi and going stomping around the galaxy sounds like a good time. Then when I get that out of my system I'll try something a little more in-depth.

[houlio]

I'm going with humans for my first playthrough. I'm thinking Xenophobic/Militarist/Materialist, aiming for something like the humans in Starship Troopers (the book, not the film). Maybe Individualist instead of Xenophobic.

[Cikomyr]

Individualist, Militarist and Materialist sounds okay. Although they do have chaplains, so its not really anti-religion regime.

Maybe Fanatic Militarist, Individualist? You could have a Military Republic

[dying0d]

Kind of excited for this.. looks interesting

[Razade]

Stellaris just went up for Pre-Order on Steam with some incentives to do so.

[Aotrs Commander]

I've only just started playing EUIV, which is... Different. Lot of sitting around with the equivilent of "next turn" in Civ IV in between doing anything, though it is just about holding my interest for the moment.

One the other hand, SotS 1 and 2 (though the latter only about a year after launch) are, in my opinion, thus far the best 4X games, since they handle the actual starship design and combat the best. GalCiv 1 & 2 (I never played 3) were very good on the campaign end, but so deeply unsatisfying on the combat end (both in terms of the combat and the fancy ship design basically boling down to "magnitude of some numbers"); the rest fall somewhere between.

So, as per usual, for me, I think the starship combat is the make-or-break. Have we seen any of that, or is it just like EU combat? If it's the latter,, sadly, it will get a pass. In my opinion, there's not much point in having starships and not being able to fight with them. (Even MoO3's fairly cursory system was fine; SEV's was a little bit too simple, though. (I never got on woith MoO2's turn-based combat system. I actually wasn't that struck with it, heretical as that is to say...)

I sort of like the idea of late-game events, as SotS 2 in particular - never having been properly finished with scenarios to cut off a late game that was basically just mop-up - could drag a bit.

An improvement on SotS's "yay, you win, click close" win screen would be nice.

The perfect space game would incorporate SotS' 1/2's starship combat, with something between Space Empire V/Moo3's expansive tech trees, GalCiv's planets system (though crossing with EU-style wouldn't uhrt either) and - cautiously, since I've not seen that much of the game - EU's political system.



Not going to rush - since I've been burned enough times now I generally don't pre-order, but I'll certainly keep an eye on it. (Unless the starship combat looks especially stellar, as it were.)

Though, on checking some of the videos, it looks promising. I'll go have a thread on their forums, and see if they can sway me.

Edit: Nope "like EIUV but animated." Something to look at when it goes on sale some time down the line, then.

[AgentPaper]

I think the starship combat is the make-or-break. Have we seen any of that, or is it just like EU combat?

From what we've seen, it's sort of like EU4 in that, once battle has joined, you don't really do anything but watch and decide if you need to retreat. Before the battle is joined, though, you have a lot more control than EU4, being able to set up your ships with specific weapons, shields, armor, and some auxiliary things we haven't seen much of, and you can also research more advanced AI to allow you to set some ships to hang back and attack from afar, while others rush forward. You can apparently design your fleet to counter specific enemies, so you could have an "anti-Blorg fleet" with lots of lasers and armor or whatever, while the rest of your fleets have a more general-purpose design.

But yeah, Stellaris, much like all of Paradox's games, isn't really about battles. It's about managing your empire and treating with other empires to survive in the cutthroat world of international politics.

[Destro_Yersul]

So I sat down and read all of the Dev Blogs paradox has been putting up on their forums, and, umm..

I might need this game now.