Why a new resource?
I don’t see minerals, energy, or even influence fitting well with cultural development, Tall empires, etc. I think a separate resource is called for here, with what they’re trying to do.
Yeah, he was on Twitter the other day saying how the three travel mechanisms has been a major thorn in their side (without much gain, either). There’s been other design decisions that he’s been pretty candid about as well, but he didn’t become a designer on the project until it released, so he’s kind of been saddled with some legacy decisions.
FWIW, thus far I really like where he’s been steering the ship. That’s not to discredit Henrik, I just think Wiz is aligned with what I want the game to be.
The three travel mechanisms were partially copied from SotS, but Paradox completely failed in making them not only different but relevant in the way they are in SotS. It makes sense to scrap them if they’re not going to do anything really game-changing with them.
That sounds good. Have they said anything about a release date for 1.5?
No dates, but Wiz starts the DD by saying it’s quite a ways off.
Don’t think they are thinking of scrapping them. It would piss off too many people at this point. It’s just making it hard to design around. He mentions in some other tweets that various ideas don’t work with certain FTL methods. Who knows though, Paradox seems to be willing to make big changes to their games.
The different types of FTL worked greats in SotS. I don’t know why they don’t seem so great here. Is it relative movement speeds, or real-time versus turn based?
I think it’s the movement speeds. The difference between warp drives and node drivers in SOTS was pretty huge, because taking 8 turns to reach a planet could have serious implications when the Humans could attack you in 3.
In Stellaris, even the basic warp drive is extremely fast. It’s really not a big deal at all to send my fleet from one star system to another. Because everything is so fast, they just seem very samey. You just pick which of the same options are the best and go with that.
Compare that with the Hivers in SOTS. Man, an instantaneous gate network was huge, but having to spend 30 turns just to get your gate to a planet was a serious hindrance. And those very same gates were huge because even the standard warp drive travel was quite slow. If you had decent sensors, you could see where a fleet was headed and be there to meet them. There’s no such thing in Stellaris, because base movement speeds are so fast. I feel like a lot of the game would feel bigger/better if travel speeds were reduced significantly.
They are not as good in Stellaris because they were copied without understanding the very things that made them great. The different FTL drives were a very important part of the design of SotS. In Stellaris, they’re a bullet point. That’s the difference.
I would love to see the engine tech either removed or changed. I like the idea of warp drives being these big bulky things that take a lot of space and energy on ships. You could have “warp gates” be built by starbases, which would allow for instant travel between your populated systems. This would allow for you to build classes of “system defense” ships that don’t have warp drives, so they are decked out with more/better shields/weapons. They could travel quickly between your star systems (with maybe a cool-down timer on the gate of, say, 30 days or something).
Having system defense forces would help with the stack-of-death issues that seem to happen in the early/mid game. Your attack fleets would, by necessity, would need to be equiped with warp drives, causing them to be out-matched by the system defense class ships. Since system defense ships could move instantly between starbases, but with a cooldown per-system, you would need actual tactics like diversion forces and such.
Anyway, just at top-of-the-head thing that I think would make the game a bit more interesting.
Just to pile on, the drive technologies in SotS were core to the game and not an afterthought when designing a race. If one was to differentiate between one species and the next, their drive tech is the first thing that comes to mind. It felt like each species had their character derived from that tech, and it makes sense - that’s how they reach other stars, so their interaction with said stars would be understandably molded around that base experience.
Its a shame the game is built on a 32 bit engine, Paradox, its about time you get these game into a more shiny 64 bit so we can really start to see epic shit ;)
anyway, I agree, combat is simple, but so is EU 4 , and that doesn’t detract much. Combat in this game is not to be a more intricate affair as there is other aspects that is supposed to need the limelight too. SOTS 1 is a pure total war in space game, yes, the varying engines were fun and well done, but not critical to the genre for me.
I like this game! My 4x of the year (not counting Warhammer Total Cereal).
I hope they don’t change the FTL drives. What they need to do is think harder about making them work in more interesting ways. Sensor data is a huge part of this - we really need to know where Hyperlane and Wormhole ships are projected to go, not where they are. The advantage of warp would then be that they might go anywhere.
I don’t get this reference? Snark of some sort?
Yeah, I love Stellaris, and it just keeps getting better, too. Looking forward to 1.5!
Snark - it’s what’s for breakfast!
The lead producer/developer on Stellaris was the original lead developer for CK2. That’s one reason you see so much push to do that.
It may be the way to go, a character driven 4x is not commonplace
Well, if they do that (CK2 in space) I’ll be back in!
Preach it, brother!