Speaking of the ship designer, does anyone actually design more than one type of ship per class?
I like that. A lot.
See? That kind of stuff is what I’d like to see in Stellaris, not a half-baked rehash of a lot of stuff that other space/4x games have done better.
I love the ship design aspects of Stellaris and similar games. Controlling the loadout details and building effective fleets from various combinations is a big part of the fun.
I used three different cruiser classes in my last game, and a pair of different corvette choices. Gave me versions focused on guns, torpedoes and fighter bays, and they all saw use in my fleets.
Only one destroyer and battleship class, though.
Get rid of planetary tiles. Most of the time this is not-interesting tedium that gets especially bad when you have more than 5 planets in your control or you have to upgrade.
The system is most interesting during the “settling” phase, as you have to decide whether to focus on space-borne resources production vs. planet-based almost exclusive food production. I wish Stellaris to be more like the Vickies in this regard.
On the other hand, once you have cleared the planet and you go into full “exploitation” mode… yes, tiles are way less engaging: the only decision is when to upgrade, balancing the needs to building fleets and maximising food/research/minerals/unity production.
This one will probably be hated, but I will immediately get rid of the ship designer. I know, I know, a staple of space games - but it is almost never pulled off effectively. Instead I have to go in there and fiddle (or in my case do auto-best) with the whole thing, which gets even more painful in the rock/paper/scissors setup of Stellaris. Just get rid of it and adopt a system more akin to Sins of a Solar Empire (my absolute favorite space game… by a country mile)
As @Scotch_Lufkin says, the ship designer in Stellaris is quite good in which doesn’t force you to agonise about ship fitting… Also, what may be your “micromanagement” for others will probable the meat and potatoes of the “tactical level” of a space game.
High level, purely strategic space games are rare. There may be a reason for that: games that feel like they play themselves out get very good reviews but very little playtime. The most close example to memory is Stellar Monarch which I think sounds more fun to think about than to play (I haven’t got it). If you remove “moving parts” you will end up with something that feels like those old strategy play by mail games I used to play in the 1990s: I don’t need fancy visuals for what ultimately can be more efficiently conveyed with a short machine-generated memo built by composing bits of template text, a spreadsheet and some charts.
As for making Stellaris more like Sins… Whoever wants more Sins should be asking Brad W. about it. My opinion is that the guys at Paradox, and every other developer out there, should better try to do the game they actually want to do rather than to look too much on the rear view mirror or to find ways to please the more articulate sections of their gaming communities and their musings of being game designers. That usually works better than to throw together a bit willy nilly elements of other games… as they did a bit on release to be honest.
If you haven’t already been, I think you (all) need to introduce yourself to Distant Worlds. It includes ship design but you can automate that part if you’d like.
I definitely agree about the ship designer. The problem with designing ships in 4X games is that one of two things will happen every time: either it is a mini-game about knowing what weapons/defenses your enemies are using and playing rock-paper-scissors with them, or there is always a clearly best design (mathematically). Stellaris actually suffers from both of these problems, though to be fair I think it’s pretty much a wash with any other popular turn-based Space 4X.
As beloved as Master of Orion 2 is, the only reason to use a weapon other than Phasors was to handicap yourself or roleplay. The math and the fact that the AI never equipped a Hardened Shield module on any design made it always the correct choice along with the Structural Analyzer. I haven’t played that game in almost a decade and I still remember that broken synergy that eclipsed anything resembling strategy.
I’d love it if the ship design choices were more meaningful in the sense that you couldn’t just say “Well, I guess I’ll go Kinetic Artillery and Plasma again, because it’s generically powerful against all compositions and I won’t be deeply regretting the decision”.
All that being said, I thought Stellaris got pretty decent around the time Utopia came out, though certainly not great. 2.0 might actually succeed in making it borderline great, as it addresses some of the most irritating things about playing the game (though not all). I’ve definitely got some faith in the direction Wiz is taking the game, and I’m pretty convinced it will be great at some point. But it might take another two years, so I suppose it’s good that sales seem pretty strong.
Yeah, it’s also an integral part of their designs. The whole point of researching things like plasma weapons, ion cannons, and proton torpedoes is so that you can make the choice of which weapons to put on which ships. Which then makes the choice between things like armor for weight or shields for power consumption meaningful. For as long as I can remember, space games have always had a DIY element where you decide what kind of spaceships you want your empire to have. That’s part of the unique appeal of the sci-fi.
If you just want the usual phalanx to knight to modern infantry, go play Civ, ya luddites!
-Tom
The problem with wanting more Sins of a Solar Empire is that Sins of a Solar Empire is still as good as it ever was. There’s nothing else quite like it and there’s pretty much nothing in it that dates the design as being from the primitive olden days of 2008. If you want more Sins, just boot up Sins! :)
-Tom
I wish I had a clue what Ironclad was up to. They haven’t made a full game since Sins, and it’s not like that bombed.
I really like the ship design in Distant Worlds and never automate it because you don’t just design warships - you get to design cargo ships, defence stations, mining ships, research stations etc. Plus you get lots of detail on how your designs work, like thrust per second and fuel range so you can see how your new designs will improve on older models. Can’t wait for DW2.
They developed a MOBA called Sins of a Dark Age that never really got off the ground and they ceased development in 2015 and shut off servers in 2016.
Sins of a Solar Empire 2 using the Nitrous engine that Ashes of the Singularity runs on. You heard it here first!
SHHHHHH!!! If we say it, they’ll just delay announcing it that much longer because the Fraser brothers like trolling us, lol.
Ha! Indeed, they both still run under Windows 10 so… (even if Rebellion shading and lightning looks a bit drab? Spaceships need to be shiny, right?)
Ship design in a 4x really only becomes relevant if the A.I. is willing to adapt to your designs. I remember numerous times in SOTS 1 when that happened, e.g. I had a missile heavy fleet that rolled over enemy fleets until one day they turned up with a load of PD ships. Same with armour and armour piercing ballistics, or lasers and reflective coating.
Stellaris forces you to adapt to the A.I.'s fleets but I’ve yet to see an example where the A.I. has adapted to yours. If/when that happens, Stellaris will top SOTS as my favourite 4x game.
Someone once described Sword of the Stars as ‘the worst best game ever’. And it’s true. It’s ship designer was fantastic, and I feel like Stellaris tried to copy it and missed the number of things that made it so clever.
For those who haven’t played SotS, the ships consisted of three ‘pieces’ - a nose, a middle, and an engine. And there were three sizes: small (DEestroyer), medium (CRuiser) and big (DReadnaught).
First, on ship sizes: destroyers were your starting ships. They were quickly eclipsed by cruisers once you had the income, production and technology to field them. But destroyers did not vanish; the various hull types you unlocked had plenty of utility hulls (jamming, sensors, tankers) that made sense to produce on smaller non-combat vessels.
DR vessels were lategame monsters that took a huge amount of money and production to field. That kept them limited (until the super late-game anyway). They never totally dominated, as dedicated cruisers could wreck them - and you could specialise the cheaper cruisers much easier.
Second, on the hull parts - these ‘mix and match’ options were different for each race. Human mid-sections provided large broadsides; Tarka prows had many front-facing weapons and strong armour. This fundamentally changed what techs you wanted to field (never mind if you could).
That different races could only sometimes have links available in the tech tree meant that you could be pretty sure that Hivers would find strong armour techs, but probably not good energy cannons - while Liir would have everything, and have it quickly. This changed what you aimed for and what you prepared to deal with. The consequences of this seemingly trivial design choice had consequences throughout the entire game.
Ship design was very fast and intuitive, and the context mattered hugely. You constantly had to be adapting what ships you were building and techs you were researching.
Another important move in SotS was the lack of a refit option for ships. This meant hard counters mattered - one huge issue with Endless Space 2 is that a design can be countered with the click of the upgrade buttons. Not so much in SotS, where you’d have to crank out those specialised designs. As a low industry race like Liir, I’d think very hard about obsolescence time before building any ships.
I really want to play SotS now.
Lack of upgrade is one of those things that people don’t like, but it makes the game so much better. Everyone wants their fleet to be all shiny and new with the latest gizmos. The SotS designers were made of stern stuff! Sometimes that was awesome, sometimes it was merely annoying (like handicapping combat UI based on tech).
I think a ship designer done well can be really, really fun. I agree that it’s usually done poorly.
Like everything with SotS and its simplified mechanics exemplifying tight design, I’m never quite sure if they knew it was good and stuck by their design decision, or just couldn’t justify the development expense of the feature.
If you like that kind of high-level thing, keep an eye on Alliance of the Sacred Suns. Ask @BrianRubin about it if you will. ;)