Stellaris! ("Situation Log updated.")

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NeuralStunner
 
 
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Stellaris! ("Situation Log updated.")

Post by NeuralStunner »

A Sci-Fi fusion of Real Time Strategy & 4X, by Paradox Interactive. Here's the Steam page. For those of you who already know this thing, here's a discussion thread for it. (Huh, I don't think I've ever started a game discussion thread before.)

I came to this from Galactic Civilizations 2. The transition for me was much like going from Morrowind (excessively complicated, ultimately clunky) to Skyrim (streamlined, not so tedious to start off).

Stellaris also has one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard... I bought the Nova Edition upgrade mainly for the OST, though the spider portraits were a nice bonus, and I had a good use for them. (More on that later...)

A few mods I use:
  • That's Not Fair! - Give your empire a little (or big, your call) head start. Helpful if you like to run a lot of different games and the earlygame struggle is getting on your nerves.
  • Fox Leader Mod - Makes leaders a little more useful.
  • Extended Traits - A nice selection of new species & leader traits.
  • Utopia Expanded - If you've got Utopia, consider this a must-have.
  • Tiny Outliner (and folks' other Tiny UI mods) - Cut some cruft and make lists more compact.
Some interesting/amusing things that have happened:

I started a kingdom of space vikings. The first time I ran it, I didn't end up being very conquest-happy. After getting a better idea what I was doing (it was my first game altogether), I restarted at day 1. The most amusing thing I encountered was a race of weak, strangely charismatic fanatical purifier bugs who screamed at me across the stars that my homeworld would burn. With a hearty "u wot m8", I took their planets with ease, then immediately set about treating them nice. (I basically liberated their populace from an ultimately doomed campaign against the universe, so I figured I'd give them citizenship. Since they like desert worlds in contrast to the alpine worlds my vikings live in, it means more options for expansion.)

Longest-running game so far is the "psychic space sphinxes". I've gone quite a long time without open war, though I'm on the verge of starting a liberation war against some local bullies that don't consider me relevant to their interests. Problem is, they're somehow on good terms with the nearby spiritualists who are about the only neighbor of mine with a very good opinion. My other spiritualist neighbor is a holy guardians FE, whom I'm hoping won't mind if I wrap their protected planets in my own borders to keep anyone from trying to claim them. Where I left off, I'd jsut finished the Old Gods event chain, and I have to decide between keeping my stable oligarchic government, or taking the switch to Divine Empire and the huge Unity bonus that goes with it. (I might be able to do an immediate government reform to at least get some better civics again. I didn't want to go Militarist -> Authoritarian, but then again I haven't fought anyone yet.)

I started a Hive Mind with the intent to eat as many other species as possible. :D I force-spawned the UNE in this game, then soon discovered that I was only a few systems away from Sol. Humans were rather friendly and open-minded, up until I conquered their planets and made them into sandwich factories. I've since restarted that game from day 1, to see if I can fast-track to advanced genetic modding, and assimilate them instead. (Since 1.5 you can integrate a protectorate without having to go to vassal stage, so I might see if I can do this without war. At least for humanity.)

Through save editing and flagrant cheating, I started making a quasi-fallen empire of galactic protectors. Half my neighbors hate me because they despise both hive minds and synthetics. My cheatery presented an interesting outcome: Because I got the techs for AI, I have the AI policy, but didn't get the proper flags to actually change it. With the policy locked to disallowed, I basically banned my entire species out of existence. :lol: (Easy to fix once I knew what flag to look for.)

Through the magic of editing user_empire_designs, I made a cybernetic human empire using this portrait pack. I haven't started this one yet, since I'm still undecided on how aggressive I'd like them to be.

I also put together a race of fanatic spiritualist space spiders, with the goal of making them psyonic space spiders. (PRAISE THE GOD-EMPEROR.) In the words of DavidPH, "that's terror." On that note, I also made some fanatic xenophile space spiders. (Is that really any less terrifying?)

My last design of note is a fanatic pacifist/xenophile race. I used the fungoid design that looks rather tree-like. Time will tell whether I can manage a peaceful victory in a probably-hostile galaxy.
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Re: Stellaris! ("Situation Log updated.")

Post by comet1337 »

as far as portrait mods go, take a look at the silfae's stuff on the workshop
some of them have some gameplay changing things, but the portraits are all really cool and well made

meanwhile sectors are terrible
trying to build farms to grow food for xenos that i'm trying to get rid of
i'm not even going to have any use for food myself
i'm a robot, what do i need this organic goop for?

also taking a fallen empires homeworld is one of the greatest feelings
where's that buffer zone for your imaginary borders now?
and the sounds the dyson sphere makes

still waiting for the fix that makes unbidden not spawn >80% of the time
a federation fleet of nothing but arc emitter battleships is pretty good

i have that thing too, where i set out to make some badguy empire, but after a while it starts slowly drifting into goodguy territory
what started out as an authoritarian empire with slavery, poverty and annexation of primitives, eventually turned into a pretty good place for everyone
citizenships and social welfare for everyone! migration treaties! happines boosting buildings! freedoms up the ass!

also when a recently conquered planet goes into revolution mode is just a bit of a time waster
blow up the spaceport that you built, light bomb the planet to not break shit, take over, rebuild spaceport, done (then purge the xenos as punishment)
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Re: Stellaris! ("Situation Log updated.")

Post by Gez »

So it's Europa Universalis in spaaaaace?
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NeuralStunner
 
 
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Re: Stellaris! ("Situation Log updated.")

Post by NeuralStunner »

Oh man, the 1.6 release snuck up on me. Lots of cool stuff, including a release of the preorder portrait pack for free. No buildable dreadnauts and titans yet, sadly. (But you can now get a tech to terraform colonized planets. Yes.)

Currently I'm waiting on my modlist to finish updating, since I'm going to have to restart my galaxies now.
comet1337 wrote:as far as portrait mods go, take a look at the silfae's stuff on the workshop
I have all of them, actually. A pity many of them have to be hand-edited to remove AI spawning, but hey, they're well done so it's worthwhile. (I used the space angels one for a synthetic hive mind, which I'm disappointed you can't do without save modding. Using TNF to fast-track them with the intent of force-spawning a crisis later and going all GOTG.)
comet1337 wrote:meanwhile sectors are terrible
trying to build farms to grow food for xenos that i'm trying to get rid of
This might be addressed in 1.6, " AI now better understands how to develop planets with only slaves and non-sentient robots."
comet1337 wrote:also taking a fallen empires homeworld is one of the greatest feelings
Probably not something I'll dare to do for a while. A stagnant one is bad enough, awakened empires get outright bonuses so they can come kick you in your arrogant space-ass.
comet1337 wrote:still waiting for the fix that makes unbidden not spawn >80% of the time
Also in 1.6, "The Prethoryn Scourge crisis will now show up more often and the Unbidden less often."
comet1337 wrote:i have that thing too, where i set out to make some badguy empire, but after a while it starts slowly drifting into goodguy territory
My slavers empire, which started with a proles race and then conquered two human empires, found a presentient race on one of their planets. I proceeded to uplift them, granting them the gifts of intelligence and conformism, then set them up for a pretty good life on their little tropical world. (With another one ready nearby so I could expand them. I'm big on research production.)
comet1337 wrote:also when a recently conquered planet goes into revolution mode is just a bit of a time waster
I've yet to have an uprising progress beyond getting mad. But that's largely because the exterminations completed before anyone could arm. :D (I'm not really an asshole, I just play one on TV in Stellaris.)
Gez wrote:So it's Europa Universalis in spaaaaace?
I'm not really familiar with other Paradox titles, but from what I understand, it's rather different from the rest. I think a lot of that has to do with the scale/setting so you may be right. :P
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Re: Stellaris! ("Situation Log updated.")

Post by Accensus »

Had I started the thread, the title would be along the lines of "Evading hostile fleet. Engaging hostile fleet. Fleet destroyed. ಠ_ಠ"

Bought the game yesterday for myself and my flatmate, just so we can play Multiplayer and we are playing as I am typing this. Only one problem. He got spawned in the ass-end of nowhere with only one way into his core systems and I got spawned in the center of the galaxy with 2 empires above me and 10K firepower pirates underneath. If that ain't bad enough, I start with -150 opinion for almost all empires. Send help.
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Re: Stellaris! ("Situation Log updated.")

Post by NeuralStunner »

Seemingly, 1.6 was kinda rushed for the anniversary release, and a lot of new bugs came along with it. (Not a rebuke by any means, the bugfix list in the changelog is huge. Then again, so are the balance changes, and most of the problems arise from there.)

You can enable the 1.6.1 beta through Steam, but it only addresses a small handful of the problems so far.
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Re: Stellaris! ("Situation Log updated.")

Post by comet1337 »

Lud wrote:I start with -150 opinion for almost all empires. Send help.
the hell did you do?
mouse over their opinion number for details
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Re: Stellaris! ("Situation Log updated.")

Post by Accensus »

Repugnant leader, xenophobe, new contact...

In the recent MP game I made the mistake of purging a few colonies and officially became space Hitler. The map glows red like a Christmas tree when set to "diplomatic relationships" mode. I have ridiculous production and can smack most empires up, but one of the empires that was supposed to be in my federation now hates me. Unfortunately for me, those guys were left unattended for too long and shooped da whooped my capital system while my fleet was fighting another enemy. Tough luck. Hope I have enough resources to recover.
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