I’ve dipped back into this after picking up the latest 2 DLCS having left it alone sometime after Apocalypse dropped. I can’t help but feel there’s a fundamental paradox at the heart of this game in that while each expansion/patch adds and fixes a lot, it simultaneously feels further than ever from being perfect. This has become somewhat muddled with the feeling that while the price for each DLC seems justified at the time, if they’d approached me at the start asking for all this cash up front for these features, I’d have simply balked.
I started a new game playing as a MegaCorp and was having a blast. Unfortunately I got too greedy at the start thinking that fo’ sho’ an overclocked Ryzen 9 would be able to handle whatever I threw at it when I moved the galaxy size slider up to large (not ‘huge’, large!). Getting into the final stretch of the game, the simulation speed has slowed down to a degree I find somewhat intolerable. ‘Fastest’ is now running for me slower than ‘Normal’ did at the start and my patience wears thin.
To be fair they’ve done a good job on the technical side separating the UI entirely from the simulation so you at least don’t ‘feel’ the slowdown when you’re trying to do things, but its still there.
Perhaps I just needed to stick it out a bit longer until the crisis shows up and cleans house a bit but it’s really dragging. I wonder if the combination of the new diplomacy options plus the MegaCorp structure encouraging less genocidal gameplay from myself has resulted in more factions getting to the end stretch than usual.
I really enjoy the game, and I love the roster of species that I’ve built up that I can take into each new galaxy. It always brings a smile to my face seeing the Democratic People’s Republic of Slurm upsetting everyone time and time again, and usually doing poorly as a result. Perhaps Glorious Leader shall one day return and release them from this quagmire.
But for reasons like the above, I don’t think I’ve seen a galaxy through to a ‘proper’ end since launch.
Anyhoo, I’ve since restarted on a ‘normal’ size galaxy as a swarm of ravenous lobsters. I’m hoping that between the smaller galaxy size and the fact that I’m rapidly turning neighbouring empires into empty systems in my quest to create the perfect sapientdog that it won’t get as stuck in the mud.
Out of interest, does anybody play this on anything other than ‘fastest’? Much like Oxygen Not Included I fail to see why there’s even an option when you can always instantly pause. Having to put it back into ‘fastest’ each time I reload is a dumb ritual to go through, at least ONI remembers this setting so I only ever have to do it once.