I unzip them, edit and re zip, used to work…
So what is the consensus from QT3’ers with the DLC and patch together? Does it make the game super amazing now?
I’ve played another game for about 130 years or so. Encountered 2 of the new leviathans and 2 of the enclaves. All have been really cool new content.
The big difference like I said before is the more logical clustering of the various “neutral blockers” i.e. crytaline entities, mining drones etc. into geographic groups with a “home” planet. It really opens up the surveying in the early game and makes for a lot less micro with the science vessel.
I also have to say that I think they did a good job with the space combat changes. You see a lot of stuff like missiles are op or ineffective or cruisers are useless but in my experience that hasn’t been the case. I’ve taken a balanced approach though and instead of maxing out one weapon type I’ve tried to develop multiple types. At first I was worried about the corvette changes and the only behavior being an aggressive charge type but I find that they have a decent survival rate and can be very effective capital ship killers. You do have to have a spread of ship types though. They all cover each other. In a couple of battles I found that the first side to lose it’s destroyers was the side that was going to lose. Overall i really like the feel of the space combat now and think it’s going in the right direction.
Biggest problem is that mid game you still have to go find your fun if you don’t want to just micro your core planets and have fun setting up the various facility synergies. If you build up a decent fleet most neighbors will leave you alone and you could just set the speed to fast. Having fanatical purifiers on the border or aggressive advanced ai starts can be challenging early game though. But warfare will be the primary thing so they need to add more stuff like trade and diplomatic crisis. I’d prefer no galatic UN because I just think that’s corny and prefer a more neo realist landscape but that’s just what was drilled into me in grad school. :)
They do need to adjust their war score system a bit especially when defensive pacts are involved. I had a situation where I had occupied a small star nation completely but his defensive pact partner was still kicking a good distance away and the war goals to cede 2 measly planets were no where near being satisfied by the war score. I had to spend 20 years attacking the def pact ally and it was a pain. I beat a 9k fleet and got like 7 war score points…needed 100 to win. So yeah it needs a little work.
I like the changes they’ve made. The game has definitely improved.
Unfortunately it isn’t enough to liven up the mid and late game. The killer feature to solve this, factions, remains undernourished. It sounds like this will get more attention in the Banks expansion.
Personally I’d suggest passing on the DLC until it is on sale or the factions update is out. Combat improvements alone aren’t enough to sustain me through more than a few games on 1.3.
FYI, hotfix patch 1.3.1 was released today. Cleans up a lot of bugs and fixes a bunch of things.
#General
- Fleets that go MIA will now prioritize retreating to spaceports they can repair at or where there are rally points
- Disabling the tutorial now recycles the Advisor’s RAM, granting 2 Minerals (once per game)
- Returning MIA fleets will now appear at the edge of the system’s gravity well, with an order to orbit a friendly colony queued
- Removed restriction on moving pops in sectors, as it caused some issues with resettlement
- Empires get high intel level in systems with Enclaves they have communications with
- Purging now prevents all population growth
#Diplomacy
- It is no longer possible to offer Non-Aggression Pacts while at war
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Balance
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#General
- Scaled spawn chance of the second Enclave station of each type has been doubled, resulting in 24/64/96/100/100% spawn rate in Tiny/Small/Medium/Large/Huge galaxies
- Scaled spawn chance of the third Enclave station of each type has been increased, resulting in 18/48/72/96/100% spawn rate in Tiny/Small/Medium/Large/Huge galaxies
- Civilian fleets can now emergency FTL much faster than military ones
- Reduced frequency of planets with Stone Age Primitives
- ‘Alien Overlords’ happiness modifier is now affected by policy happiness modifier
#Diplomacy & War
- Reduced the extra warscore cost for taking Capitals
#Encounters & End Game Crises
- Unbidden Escort ship base evasion reduced from 80 to 20
- Swarm orbital bombards
- Swarm changes bombardment stance
- Swarm only builds stations within borders
- Swarm sends fleet if it’s small but can’t be merged
- Swarm can now use Full Orbital Bombardment
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AI
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#War
- AI no longer uses torpedoes until cruisers are available
#Sector
- Fixed bug causing sectors to destroy empire and planet unique buildings when redevelopment is toggled off
- Fixed a case where sectors would not properly keep pops enslaved
- Sector AI now only builds military stations in systems with colonies, outpost stations and wormhole stations
#Diplomacy
- AI countries who join the League of Non-Aligned Powers will now always stay in it for at least 20 years
- AI will no longer ask you to become their vassal multiple times in a row
#Misc
- Fixed bug causing AI not to build stations
- Fixed bug causing AI to build empire and planet unique buildings just to destroy them a second after
- AI does no longer know that player is building a Spaceport
- Fixed bug that caused AI not to build armies sometimes
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User Interface
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- Save game incompatibility is indicated by gray text
- Expansion planner shows colony ship type
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Graphics
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- Added new environment for Gaia planet, added new surface tiles for savannah and alpine, and fixed the LUT for alpine and savannah planets
- Stellar Devourer spawn VFX duration reduced to 1 day
- Added missing tech icon for tomb world adaptation
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Bugfixes
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- Frontier Hospital technology now properly requires Frontier Health
- Fleets can now attack during warp drive wind-down
- Added missing localization for Kicked from Federation notification text
- Added missing localization for Federation Association Request
- Added missing localization for Federation Association Ended
- Added missing component set for Enigmatic Disruption Field which broke localization
- Display all DLCs enabled by the host for clients in the multiplayer lobby
- Fixed Fallen Empires spamming threats and remove flag effect being shown in tooltips
- Transports now also showing fleet status
- Fixed some events attempting to spawn removed ship designs
- Slaver mandate is no longer valid if the country’s policies disallow slavery
- Fixed a bug where Colony Influence Cost would sometimes be too high
- Fixed Alpine and Savannah worlds not counting towards the Habitable Worlds Survey event chain
- Fixed CTD caused by ships trying to shoot at entities that did not exist
- Fixed an issue with a slave faction tooltip
- Fixed CTD when an event timed out without any valid options
- The event window will now properly close when the event times out
- Fixed visual artifacts on pulsar and neutron stars
- Added missing localization for Plantoid 4 name list
- Launcher DLC tab scrollbar appears with correct position and size when content overflows container
- Founder species now changes when no pops of that species exist after gene modification
- No longer possible to generate infinite resources by trading non-existent resources
- No longer possible to trade last resource via multiple trade deals
- Tooltip for sector settings was missing localization
- Fixed bug causing ship designer to choose components that haven’t yet been researched by player
- Rebuilding Automated Dreadnought now gives you a ship with the same FTL system you have
- Fixed a bug where robots could sometimes get ethics
- Don’t send double notification messages when notifying all communications
- Fixed mapicons showing 100% habitability after building a robot pop
- Colonization orders only cancel if player lacks resources when resources haven’t yet been allocated. Canceling colonization order for colony ship built via expansion planner returns allocated resources.
- Special projects in the same option group which time out on the same day no longer get blocked from failing properly
- Fix an Infinity Machine event bug where a Spiritualist empire modifier from the Infinity Machine would be removed from one empire if the Infinity Machine killed a fleet from another empire
- Second Infinity Machine contact event will no longer occur if Infinity Machine is hostile
- Wrong event will no longer fire if fleet is destroyed by Infinity Machine
- Dimensional Horror special project now appears in system view
- DPS calculator and military power now take ship firing speed modifiers into account
- Fixed missing graphics on sanctuary guardians
- Fixed conflicting traits for Kel-Azaan
- Fixed materialist Fallen Empire task not giving opinion boost
- Fixed bug causing wrong player to get removed from federation in multiplayer
- Fixed CTD when using polish or russian on Linux/OSX
- Fixed CTD caused by game not having write privileges to its cache files
I recall that after the game launched, the creative director made a post on the forums about the game’s future and said that the mid-game felt bare because they didn’t have enough time to add something called “colony events”, and that the feature would be added in future updates. Did they ever add those?
Not yet. They are looking to add a large number.
I do agree - the mid-game still feels very bare.
Like is a lot of these games, I find it hard to get the right level of challenge. My last game I had set to Hard, I spawned on the edge of the galaxy and expansion options were very limited. I stretched out to get some expansion at a large distance while fortifying the border with the hostile neighbor. Didn’t matter, as they used the Hard mode bonuses to production and fleet cap to build a fleet that just steamrolled me, fortification or no.
Next game I drop to normal, and everything is easy. Spawn in a planet-rich but opponent-poor section of space, and box in my only hostile neighbor very quickly. I don’t see any realistic possibility of a threat until the end-game.
This is hilarious.
I don’t know why companies don’t offer separate granular sliders for setting various settings - like separate sliders for AI research, production, combat, happiness bonuses. Let the user tailor these things right down to 1% increments. Offer the standard templates of easy, normal, hard, etc - but let the user fine tune them.
Yeah, it’s one of the big things I miss from most Paradox games. In EU4 I can set the difficulty just based on who I’m playing. The difference between playing France and Ulm is rather large without having to resort to AI bonuses that sometimes throw the game out of whack.
Does Stellaris jump straight to +50% on everything? Seems like there should at least be a 25% step in between. 50% extra fleet cap is pretty rough to overcome, especially when you don’t have a human’s tactical advantage like you would in HOI or Age of Wonders.
Yes, I’d like to see that. I guess it’s easy enough to mod, but it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that should need a mod.
Yes. I don’t mind the minerals and energy, but 50% extra fleetcap is a huge advantage, and with how Stellaris scales tech, a 50% advantage there is hard to deal with. The lack of tactical also makes overcoming superior numbers difficult. In Stellaris you can’t even get your fleet to disengage without emergency FTL, or stick in range of your station.
They only happen in Gaia or Tomb planets right now, and they are pretty rare. From my experience that is.
I bought the DLC and while there are improvements, the game Is still only halfbaked. I expect it will be a 200$ game before it becomes more than average. Its definitely no miracle patch. If you are thinking of taking the plunge, I would suggest waiting. Its definitely no grand strategy and there are better 4x’s out there.
Still the early game is fun and a lot of people do like the game as is, so I wouldn’t say its no fun or crap. Its just average.
Totally agree with MikeJ, Empire did the 1% sliders back in the early '80’s, should not be that hard to code.
I am also finding the step up from no bonus to 50% too much. If I am playing hard, I really have to cherry pick a good start, which means starting about 50 times to get it.
Yeah, that’s the thing. In a world without Sword of the Stars and Distant Worlds and Star Ruler 2, there’s a good chance I would find Stellaris great. But ours is no such world, and for a game that proposed to “make space great again”, it just isn’t nearly as good or memorable or innovative as those.
If they went with “make space meh again” for a slogan, maybe things would be different.
I dunno, i’m having a pretty good time. Better than Civ VI or Skyrim Remastered anyway! It’s entirely superficial and pointless but i really like how bright and flashing pulsar stars are now with the graphical update. I mean, yea, pointless for gameplay, but awesome for visuals!
I’ve been playing a Leviathans game and I actually had a cool emergent (non-scripted) event happen to me. I decided to go with hyperspace as my means of travel (never again) and I ended up getting blocked out of some good real estate since a fallen empire was blocking access to those sweet worlds. After several years of developing my existing infrastructure, I joined a federation and had just finished a liberation war when the fallen empire asked me to declare war on a nation that was committing atrocities. My fellow federation members joined my cause and actually did a bulk of the fighting for me. Victory was hard fought but eventually won (with the target empire vowing revenge). As a reward, the fallen empire granted me a new technology and best of all, transit rights through their territory. Now I feel like I’ve entered a whole new phase of galactic colonization for my little empire. Neat!
I’m also having fun in my latest game. I just wish the diplomatic model was as complete as EU4, though I guess people playing Civ6 feel the same way, but more so.
In my evil humies game (Commonwealth) I had a Fallen Empire demands that i abandon a colony near it’s border; which i do, because it still has overwhelming military superiority. After this the FE insults me every 10 years, and occasionally wars me. It’s clear that it doesn’t like my aggressive stance in the neighborhood. It has a stack of about 60k.
So, what i do is raid the FE’s planets, break apart their stations and then rush in and salvage whatever i can get my grubby fingers on before the cavalry arrives. Eventually I have stolen a large number of top tier techs.