I think some people at Paradox thought of Stellaris as at least partly a SotS 3. Check this thread, for instance.
Now we have this:
https://twitter.com/Martin_Anward/status/922398086177214464
Where “disruption field” and “warp fluctuator” would seem to play a role in that general FTL rework. If they can make the terrain and logistics of the map interesting, that would be a big deal.
Currently, Starports kind of suck, no way to reorg, or develop towards a goal, defense, build, etc. …ok build is there.
Yeah, the improvements they have in the works are definitely welcome. More scope for starport development, more ability to build up defensive platforms, possibly more ability to interdict movement. Plus there is a lot of speculation that hyperdrive will be the starting tech, and other options something you research later. Which should make certain systems more strategic.
On the other hand, improved defenses and chokepoint systems seems to reinforce the pull towards doomstacks. Yet the devs seem confident they can kill doomstacks. So there must be some fairly significant things that haven’t been hinted at yet.
Some more hints:
I don’t know what solution they’re attempting, but this is the update I’ve really been waiting for! Looking forward to Thursday.
Yeah, will be interesting to see everything they are planning. I’m very close to putting the game away for good, so hopefully this will re-ignite my interest.
Yeah, in-system travel is really slow, compared to FTL travel. Changing that would help…
Catching a fleet on it’s last day of FTL preparing routine is… Delightful if you’re catching, enraging if you’re the cathced. No way to tell the fleet “don’t care just go”. It takes 30 days for the emergency jump to spool up even though the fleet needed only 1 more days for the normal jump. Changing that would help…
Removing all the FTL types except hyperlanes? No-no-nope. It’s such a huge step back, it would kill my excitement a lot more, than the original release killed for a lot of fans…
Make hyperlanes the starting tech and the rest researchable? Not that bad an idea, but… Imho, from science point of view it would be better to make the starting tech be warpdrive, make it slow, but able to go “anywhere”. Reasoning: What’s the easiest way to get to the neighboring system tech-wise? Strap a big/efficient drive to the ship, point in the right direction, go. The other techs should be the advanced ones, one of them slower but even more efficient, the other fast but with high energy cost. As you have access to all technologies, you can make different fleets for different purposes. Of course, this needs a solution to make doomstacks preferred only situationally (but certainly not impossible).
Anyway, looking forward for the DDs.
Maybe they could gradually, then drastically increase the cost of supply for huge fleets? Perhaps this would simulate a bottleneck of goods coming to one place, or the effort of feeding a rapacious star-horde. A clever or desperate fleet admiral might be able to coordinate careful scheduling to arrange for The Mother Of All Space Battles without breaking the bank.
I kind of like that idea, actually. It requires less suspension of disbelief than a hard cap would.
I’m in favor of logistics limits, but if they are applied at the fleet level you run again into the problem of people flying two nominally separate fleets side by side.
How about they make up some pseudoscience if too many FTL signatures are in the fleet/star system all engines run slow, ships have a chance to blow up, weapons fire slower/less powerful etc. The bigger/faster the engine the more trouble it causes, not just the number of ships.
Crazy?
Yeah, I’d prefer to do it on a system-level, not a fleet-level. However, one drawback is that would be a fluid system, given the RTS nature of the game, and I’d worry the AI wouldn’t handle it well (let alone a human player).
That’s … a little too extreme, imho. Cool concept, but I couldn’t comprehend the percentage of rage quits that would generate, lol.
Yes, there have definitely been proposals along the lines of figuring out your empire’s logistics capacity in any given star system and working from there. I like that sort of idea. SotS2 had some useful logistics limits, but was way too restrictive and clunky (each fleet being assigned a specific support base meant rebasing all the time).
AI has sunk more than one good game mechanic!
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They need to work on targeting AI so that smaller fleets can do appreciable damage despite losing. This ‘all or nothing’ result from battles between unequal fleets is incredibly detrimental to a game where empires will rarely have the same size fleets.
1.a) Working on ‘balance’ between the ships is separate from this and not a solution -
Fleets need to become ‘locked in’ in some sense, in terms of a fleet losing ships should be able to replenish itself automatically over time (e.g. EU)
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Replenishment/reinforcement rates and caps should be something that differs between empire types, research and deliberate player decisions (long war of attrition vs short, sharp confrontation and overwhelming victory)
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Starting weapon choice should have a path dependency effect. Whether this takes the form of only empires that chose projectiles can research and use kinetic artillery and megacannons, or simply that laser+missile research costs 400% normal, I don’t mind.
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Fleets should become slower as they grow larger, in both in-system travel speed, and FTL charge-up speed.
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Armies need to go. If ground combat is going to be kept, simply assign a troop numerical value per fleet supply, and a fleet orbiting a planet can ‘assault’ with these embedded and extrapolated troops. The same can be done in return for planets, but via a) population & b) research
6a) This business of getting fortifications down to 0 and then invading and winning instantly is just stupid. It should still be a battle unless overwhelming numbers are involved
6b) Insurrection on rebellious planets can only be dealt with by edicts and keeping a fleet in orbit
Eh, I could go on. But those seem like obvious things.
The silliest of nitpicks, and I don’t mean to specifically pick on you, Kevin, but man, after watching so much competitive SC, the weird ways “zerging” has morphed in gaming parlance kinda bug me (hah, pun intended). A great Zerg is swarming all over the map with breakaway forces, infiltration groups, scouting parties, ready to swarm in when weakness is sensed or disperse when they encounter a stronger force. Since Zerg units are so much weaker, supply-for-supply, than Terran or Protoss, just balling everything up and throwing it at the opponent’s face was usually a recipe for disaster unless you were monumentally ahead already. . .
Again, sorry to unleash my minor, long-held tirade upon your poor, undeserving post :)
This is the most frustrating part of the game to me. In mid and late game micromanaging many planet invasions every time you go to war is a massive pain. I am getting sad just thinking about it.
Martín anward has said he wants to revamp ground combat, but is far away that I guess.
I just can’t fathom why this wasn’t priority number 1. When I used to play expansionist empires it would get to the point where half of my game time was micromanaging planetary invasions which is never fun. I haven’t played since the Utopia expansion so if anyone knows of any QoL improvements in this area since then please let me know.
I don’t even care if they keep the core mechanics of ground combat the same, I just want a button that says: “build marines, send to planet X, auto invade when fortifications are at 0, and then send the marines back when done”.
This seems to be a war themed expansion, so I have hopes this gets tackled as well. Dev diaries for the update begin tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll see in a month or two.
Nope, still a royal pain in the ass.
Didn’t SOTS have boarding pods with marines available on their ships that you could use to invade or also as boarding parties to disable enemy ships? Including them as a module option on ship design would open up a lot of options for Stellaris as well as do away with the god awful micromanagement.