I don’t even want to know what I’m missing in 2.7 so I’ll carefully avoid that!
For the console, looks like the next round of DLC is Synthetic Dawn, Apocalypse, and Humanoids Species pack. Anyone have good experiences with those on the PC?
Apocalypse is themed around warfare. It had a bunch of improvements but a lot of it was in the free update. Paid content:
Synthetic Dawn is good if you want to experience playing Robot empires.
Humanoids is cosmetics only. More portraits, ship models, etc.
The big issue at this exact moment is performance, since they seemingly have a broken ethics or alignment check somewhere in the system that chews through CPU cycles like nothing else. Until that gets hotfixed, I’m holding off. Any other issues seem to be minor exploits that a player can just choose not to take advantage of.
Thanks! I might wait for it to go on sale at some point since there’s probably a ridiculous amount of stuff I need to experience already!
Useful to know, thanks!
I think I’m going to wait for a Humble Bundle to get the rest of the DLC, I’ve got most of the big ones until now, but it’s looking like a complete package is going to be like CK2, as long as it sells, it’ll keep expanding.
The fundamental problems with Stellaris (which has been documented thoroughly in this thread) is that the first third of the game (exploration) is really fantastic and the best part of the game. The second third of the game (battling with A.I. for territory) is okay and the final third (crisis) is fun but performance issues ruin the enjoyment.
They have changed a lot of fundamental elements (planet tiles, interstellar travel types, etc.) to try to simplify things for the A.I., but as I haven’t played in a while I can’t comment whether they’ve been succesful.
I’d love for them to fix the later stages of the game without ruining the early stages, but previous patches tend to indicate not. So I’m kinda waiting for Stellaris 2 at this point.
The game is good now, your siting old problems. Try set endgame crisis to 25x to get some challenge
This (performance), lag is now back and really bad. Broke my save. Waiting for a patch to fix it.
I’ve been playing the currently-free-demo-on-Steam mode and kind of liking it. Main game and some expansions are on sale through sunday so I’m thinking about buying it. If I want to grab some expansions while it’s on sale, what ones should I prioritize?
I would recommend Utopia for starters. Apoc has some war toys to play with as well but I feel like a lot of the good stuff here was given away in the free update.
From there, it kind of depends. Something like Synthetic Dawn can be skippable if you’re not into playing a Robot empire but if that sounds fun, grab it. If you like the exploration part of the game, Distant Stars basically doubles the number of anomalies you can find. Ancient Relics is in the same vein, adding archeology and more stuff to discover and explore. Leviathans adds some mid-game content which can spice up a part of the game that can sag a bit. MegaCorp allows you to play as a corporation, which is more of a “tall” playstyle. Federations is the latest and I haven’t really played with it yet so can’t comment.
For the species packs, they’re cosmetic except for Lithoids which have their own mechanics since they eat minerals instead of food and that sort of thing.
The wiki has a helpful listing of the expansion features as well as brief video overviews of what they add. If you want to know more, I’d check that out:
https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content#Expansions
And there’s the beta patch. Now I’ll give it a try this weekend.
I’ve got to admit any time bugs like this make it into a release patch I am forced to wonder if the Devs even play their own game, or if they even have a QA guy, let alone a QA department.
And it happens almost every patch. It’s not a great look.
Edited to add: They do eventually get it all sorted out, but in my professional and personal life I enjoy surrounding myself with people who learn from their mistakes and then act on that learned information. I feel like I would be very frustrated working on Stellaris.
Seconded. The latest generation of Paradox games have this syndrome where they ask you to invest dozens of hours in a play through, and then crucial parts of the game simply fail. E.g. in Stellaris, end game events don’t happen, or in HOI4, the Russians completely fail to defend themselves or station any units on the Eastern front. And then a few weeks later you read some patch notes from Paradox saying “oh whoops hahah we fixed that giant bug try starting a new game.”
The… latest generation?
Someone didn’t play Victoria 2 at launch! Until patched game was almost literally unplayable 75% into the timeline.
And Crusaders King I was never in a playable state. Paradox has always been lacking in the QA department.
I suppose my irritation is primarily that the lack of QA is an obvious issue throughout their entire company and no one seems to find it problematic. At Paradox, that is. I find it highly problematic.
Unfortunately if you are a fan of grand strategy games with real-time/pause, they are your only choice. I suppose until they get some competition they have little incentive to change their behavior when that change would cost money. I think this is a pretty short-sighted view for a company to take, but I guess it looks better on the quarterlies.
They got better in the CK2 release era, probably up to around 2015. CK2 at release worked and worked well.
Then QA took a dive again
I was thinking the same. And it’s weird, because it doesn’t seem to be the case across all their games. EU4 doesn’t have game-breaking performance issues after every update but it’s pretty much guaranteed here. Not to mention that they left performance in a really bad spot for an entire year after MegaCorp. Definitely not a good look.
Not to keep harping on the subject, but I can’t help but feel it’s also a symptom of the game being wrenched in so many different directions and transformed since release. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with PDS’s development model and I’ve been a huge fan of it for EU4. But EU4 and their other established franchises haven’t had to reinvent core parts of their design as a live game, they’ve pretty much been adding layers to the cake. Stellaris has been ripping out the cake while trying to leave the fondant in place.
That in itself isn’t really a criticism for me in the sense that I understand why they’ve struggled to dial in the design compared to their other titles. EU4 had the benefit of three prior games and a boatload of expansions for them to calibrate things before they embarked on the new project. Same with HOI4. And all of those game are rooted in a period of history which helps define the scope. Stellaris on the other hand is a new type of game for them in a lot of ways. It’s scifi instead of history and they weren’t able to rely on history to provide a ton of context and story to the game. It’s a 4X hybrid where everyone has parity with each other while all their other games are very asymmetrical in nature. It’s just really different from what they’re used to doing, despite sharing a lot of similarities on paper.
I don’t know, I don’t fault them for making mistakes in the design or wanting to improve on them or redo them, but just wrap up Stellaris (which has been a very successful game) at this point and embark on Stellaris 2 with lessons learned. Just build it atop a really solid foundation and I can’t help but feel that would alleviate a lot of the technical problems the team has had. Stellaris has been out for 4 years now, that’s a good lifespan for a game. Now go knock it out of the park with a sequel!