3001

The two things that I see as an improvement after a couple of hours of play is the elimination of having to research colony ships and I just came across an anomaly that turned out to be an alien race that I actually had a radio conversation with. Other than that it isn’t much different than before the patch and DLC, just more stuff to deal with.

3002

Haven’t played a whole lot yet, but I would agree, if you didn’t like the game before, this won’t change it. Personally, think it looks great so far.

3003

…and I guess I am waiting for a patch. Had the zealot rebels on the edge of my home system and a construction ship trying to leave the system was stuck “evading hostile fleet” even though it was no where near that planet or any enemy fleets. It just sits there, can’t move it.

3004

I really like the new features I have played with. Empire customisation prior to starting is much improved now that they have some interesting civics and the ethics have been revamped. In the early part of the game it still feels like the same 4x it was at launch, except with alot of QOL improvements, more events, better diplomacy, etc. etc…

It’s when you start absorbing some alien species and get to mid-game that I feel the improvements start to open up. I like how the traditions/ascension stuff feels more like rule changes as opposed to “+ X% to Y”. As Tom said it is a bolted on thing to the tech tree, but I don’t mind that because Stellaris had very few of those as it was. EU4 is sitting at what, 10 now? Yet it’s still an amazing game.

Anyway, I also like the significant changes they’ve made to species rights and living standards and things like that. If you are roleplaying an evil empire you can have a great time micromanaging the misery of each individual species in your empire and you don’t have to manually affix the iron chains on each individual pop that you used to have to do.

Thumbs up from me so far, but it’s still early and much I have yet to try. Stellaris was my least favourite paradox game so I hope it has long enough legs now.

3005

Have you tried changing it’s fleet stance from “Brave Sir Robin” to “Passive”?

By default civilian ships are set to run away to the nearest safe system when they encounter hostile forces. In the case of the zealots, there is no safe system since they show up in your home system. When this happened to me, my construction ship made a beeline for the home planet, but I told the Captain to grow some balls (switched to passive stance and reissued build order) and they went back to doing their job.

Maybe in your case they didn’t run for the planet because the zealots were between them and the planet?

3006

The pop ethics changes were badly needed. The existing divergence system basically boiled down to either adopting strict social control or everything-goes fanatic individualism. It was very one-dimensional.

As for the factions, it seems the idea is they represent large political groups, rather than rebels of one type of another. The only thing to do with rebels is remove them, with factions it’s supposed to be more interesting.

From the DD on factions:

[quote=Wiz]
One thing we feel is currently missing from Stellaris is agency for your pops. Sure, they have their ethics and will get upset if you have policies that don’t suit them, but that’s about the only way they have of expressing their desires, and there is no tie-in between pop ethics and the politics systems in the game. To address this and also to create a system that will better fit the new pop ethics, we’ve decided to revamp the faction system in the following manner:

  • Factions are no longer purely rebel groupings, but instead represent political parties, popular movements and other such interest groups, and mostly only consist of pops of certain ethics. For example, the Supremacist faction desires complete political dominance for their own species, and is made up exclusively of Xenophobic pops, while the Isolationist faction wants diplomatic isolation and a strong defense, and can be joined by both Pacifist and Xenophobe pops. You do not start the game with any factions, but rather they will form over the course of the game as their interests become relevant

  • Factions have issues related to their values and goals, and how well the empire responds to those issues will determine the overall happiness level of the faction. For example, the Supremacists want the ruler to be of their species and are displeased by the presence of free alien populations in the empire. They will also get a temporary happiness boost whenever you defeat alien empires in war.

  • The happiness level of a faction determines the base happiness of all pops belonging to it. This means that where any pop not belonging to a faction has a base happiness of 50%, a pop belonging to a faction that have their happiness reduced to 35% because of their issues will have a base happiness of only 35% before any other modifiers are applied, meaning that displeasing a large and influential faction can result in vastly reduced productivity across your empire. As part of this, happiness effects from policies, xenophobia, slavery, etc have been merged into the faction system, so engaging in alien slavery will displease certain factions instead of having each pop individually react to it.
    Factions have an influence level determined by the number of pops that belong to it. In addition to making its pops happier, a happy faction will provide an influence boost to their empire.[/quote]

3007

Thanks, I did not put it on passive, I’ll try that. Definitely a bug though, the only enemy is a fleet around a planet on the edge of the system. The ship is right next to the home planet and it won’t go there either. Never encountered this behavior in past games. Hopefully your advice will save this game.

3008

I can’t see what it’s doing in your game, but based on the description, I’m not sure I’d agree. If you don’t have a safe system to run away to, running to shelter under the guns of the nearest starport seems like correct behavior. When a fleet is evading, it ignores regular orders. If it listened to some orders but not others it would need to understand which orders are the player trying to help it evade and which are normal orders to be followed once it is done getting to safety.

Basically I don’t know if there is a rule it could follow that won’t lead to even more dumb behavior.

3009

It’s been awhile since I played, but I am pretty sure the ship went back to the home planet if it was under threat and didn’t have another system to go to. If it’s evading, it should be moving somewhere, but it’s just sitting in open space. It’s not running or seeking safety, just sitting there. The game says it is fleeing, but it’s flight path still shows it going right past the zealots.

Of course in past games I always put ships on passive, because the AI was annoying for when it would flee and didn’t need to.

Edit: Just fired it up. Set the ship to passive, told it orbit the home planet, it did. Tried to recreate the previous situation, but couldn’t. Guess something in it’s AI in that particular spot caused it to get stuck for some reason. Anyway, not sure why I didn’t think to put it in passive mode myself. I’ll blame it on beer and being rusty.

3010

Fraser Brown likes Utopia/Banks. Then again, I believe he liked the initial release.

3011

This is with the expansion but… that’s really surprising to me! I didn’t even make out of the start screen (setting up my race/empire) before noticing a bunch of new improvements, and it just kind of snowballed from there. I mean, the core 4X experience is still there. You explore, you build colony ships, etc, but everything beyond that feels like it’s had additions and improvements. Again, though, this is with the expansion, so maybe that’s the difference.

3012

@ShivaX and I played a few hours last night, I really like the new changes to the way government and factions work quite a lot, and I’m extremely digging the Unity resource gain and spending it on new, cool whatsits that help make my species feel a little more unique.

It’s extra fun because I barely touched 1.4/Leviathan so I’m also seeing just a crazy amount of new content and anomaly/research options.

Playing with another person in the game is a little extra spice as well, since we’d just be playing it at the same time anyway, may as well be in the same universe. Good stuff.

3013

Are the defensive buildings still completely worthless? I always hated having to play whack a mole with invading fleets because there was no way to have any static defense that could even scratch them before they were completely wiped out.

3014

Yeah, they’re still not great. It’s a known issue but it’s tied up in the multiple forms of FTL. Wiz had talked specifically about it so I’m sure it will be addressed, but not for Unity.

This expansion is all about empire building and making each playthrough more varied and distinct. I wouldn’t be surprised to see to the next one focus on FTL and War.

3015

There were questions a little earlier in this thread, wondering if Hive Minds could genetically modify other races to be hive-minded. I saw in-game that they are able to do so, but they need to complete the Biological ascension path.

3016

Stellaris didn’t grab me at launch, and I hadn’t touched it in 11 months – until yesterday, when I installed the new expansion. I’m finding it much more engaging now! There’s much more to do now, it seems.

3017

UGH. How do they not consider a game in which you have next to zero static defense options completely unplayable? I mean, I’m sorry, but I have this giant space empire and I’m supposed to keep 15 different fleets handy to run around and defend them all? Who thinks that’s fun? Just give me some Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrechment style space stations and I would be SOOOOO happy.

3018

Hello.

I admit not knowing where, or sometimes how, the enemy will show up can be frustrating, but I leave a defensive fleet to chase down enemy fleets.

3019

Yeah but then they’ve always gotta make like 5 jumps to get to where the bad guys are, and by the time they get there they’ve wiped out half your mining outposts in the system, and then you chase them around the system until they finally turn and fight. While you’re trying to manage everything else at the same time. It gets tedious and stops being fun for me :( WAY more fun to watch some epic space station duking it out with a giant fleet. So many cool battles like that in Sins :)

3020

Part of the problem is that Stellaris basically offers no interaction with other empires other than war. So you have have the ‘throw fleets against one another’ of war, or nothing. It’s not good when internal dynamics are minimal (frankly, even with Banks).