Stellaris

[VoltageHero]

 

Hopefully this thread can be used for the hype leading up to the Stellaris release, and for after it gets released.

What is Stellaris?

Stellaris is a grand strategy/4X game created by Paradox Interactive, the same guys who made guys such as Crusader Kings, Europa, Hearts of Iron, and Victoria.

Unlike the other games listed, Stellaris' main aspect is that it's in space. The game, due to being in space allows for a different style of play and stories. The game will allow you to create your own faction, with their own beliefs, ethics, government type, and traits. This will allow you to play anything from a pacifist isolationist group, to a faction of honor-bound warriors, to fanatical space tyrants. Want to go around killing every alien you see? You can do that. Want to help liberate (or "liberate") slave-held planets? You can do that.

Stellaris also has the ability for you to be, and come across, non-human races. Each of these races fall in a overarching group, but can be told apart from different portraits, and of course your own roleplay aspect. Races such as the fungoids, who are quite literally sentient fungi, the anthropoids, who are bugs, the avians, who are birds, and reptilians, who are the reptiles are some of the larger groups a race can fall into.

The wiki is here, while the subreddit is here, and the official forums for the game is here.

The game currently costs $40 to preorder at the entry level, with the $50 Nova edition, and $60 Galaxy edition being the next two up.

As a note, the system requirements for the game is rather high, so I can't be for sure if these are actually spot-on, or if PI is just being generous.

[Dreviore]

The best value zone is on the $50 package.

Be warned, with all Paradox games they love DLC so as excited as I am for it, Paradoxs obsession with DLC hurts me profusely.

Still am buying it though on Friday.

[Guest]

I'm Hype.

[Guest Complete Garbage]

I'm Hype.

Hello Hype, I'm Complete Garbage.

[UnknownMurder]

I'm Hype.

 

Yes, yes... Are you new to the playerbase? You see... N.S.S. Aurora does not negotiate with terrorists.

[Lord Lag]

I got a group of people for a mp game once it launches. Tis gon be gud.

[Vittorio Giurifiglio]

Anyone up for an Mp game?

[incognitojesus]

Anyone up for an Mp game?

We should do an Aurora-themed MP game.

[Gollee]

Dakkadakkadakkadakkadakka

[Guest]

too poor for dis ;-;

[Tenenza]

Anyone up for an Mp game?

We should do an Aurora-themed MP game.

Dibs on Dionaea Collectivist Spiritualist Pacifists.

[incognitojesus]

Anyone up for an Mp game?

We should do an Aurora-themed MP game.

Dibs on Dionaea Collectivist Spiritualist Pacifists.

Dibs on Human Fringe Empire With Slavery and Fanatical Militant Personality.

I have already bombed the planets of two pre-space age planets and enslaved their people to work my mining drills.

[Guest]

Anyone up for this? Aurora themed match? I've actually got the game now :3 ((thanks Serveris :3 ))

[LordFowl]

Sure.

[Tenenza]

I am actually developing an Aurora namepack mod, which currently only has Dionaea finished, with Unathi about halfway done while I twiddle my thumbs thinking of appropriately hissy ship names.

Dionaea name mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=685437261

[Carver]

Would be a decent game to get a group together for. Even if the depth of the base game is somewhat lacking at the moment.

[Lord Lag]

Went on a genocidal rampage across the galaxy, 6/10 would purge all xenos when more bugs are fixed.

[Tenenza]

Well, if we've got people up for it, sure, let's plan a game. My steam's Greenflash42, for anyone who doesn't know.

[Tenenza]

Tales from the Frontier: The Dionaea Gestalt

2200:

Long have we lain, roots deep in this world. Longer still did we walk the great void, carried on star song.

Light and music carried through the still airs of our silent world.

The dead world, waking to death of a great mind, the swan song that comes before the tide.

Rising from the roil, work began on the Leviathi, that would tread the void once more, singing their echo song across void.

Eternal Silence, born into the void, by that which rings throughout. Eternal Silence, the call impossible to deny.

Our Silence rises now, over our world, to the stars, back to the great void.

2210:

The Eternal Silence and now it's sister Leviathi Gestalt chart the great void, uncovering greater mysteries.

The last song of minds hidden in spaces between days in seconds lost.

The dust of quicklings left to rot in wasteful slumber.

The nameless worlds cracked by old god's fury.

We are the Revered Elder Reaching for the Void.

This is the memory of our consensus.

Young voidwalkers have risen, riding the swan song's tide upon our darkened shores.

Above all, are the quicklings, the humans.

Cornered creatures, probing into the void, light burning within.

They seek something out there.

Perhaps enlightenment.

Perhaps power.

Still, our path is open to them, should they call.

In the wake of silence, do our roots lay onto soil, with naught but memory of echos to drive them deep.

Deeply do the nymphs weep, as the price is payed grain by grain, for all that was lost to be gained.

But the echos are now of fear manifest.

The dead world is dying.

The void holds answers, secrets of life.

(To be continued next time: With more cryptic dionaea-talk, diplomacy with humans, and vaurca!)

[canon35]

Stellaris is pretty great.

My first game, I was an expansionist lizard empire who wiped out the peaceful federation, conquered the intergalactic furries, and then got rekkinized by the fallen.

[Guest]

I want to play this again in an RP-oriented group AGAIN ;-; plz

[canon35]

I would play, but I have a pirated copy.

[Tenenza]

The problem was that RP was kinda hard due to the frankly useless ingame chat + the pace of the game inevitably suffering from stagnation at a certain point.

[K0NFL1QT]

Revisting Stellaris after Heinlein and Leviathans is a neat little addition, but today, let's talk mods. The following is a list of the mods I use and consider essential add-ons.

 

• Doomsday Weapons and Ships
  
  Adds a ton of late game tech expansions centered around even huger ship classes, with special modules, and adds various Doomsday Weapons that take effect during planetary bombardment. They cost a lot of influence to authorize though, so you generally turn them on and off as needed; you can't have doomsday weapons always in play.
   
  
• Increase Planet Size Edict
  
  Simple enough. Adds a planetary edict to give that planet +1 slots. It's a high influence cost, but it takes effect instantly and I don't think it requires a tech to learn. But it's a great feature that I found lacking having come to playing Stellaris from GalCiv3. Could be better integrated with a related tech, but it works as is.
   
  
• Stellar Energy
  
  This one drastically impacts balance, but I just find it silly to consider interplanetary civilizations to not be harvesting the energies of stars. Every star becomes an energy node on which you can build a mining station, and it's a significant energy boost per star, usually between 5 and 10 points. This applies to all stars, even AI stars, so it's a Galactic power boost.
   
  
• Quintuple Leaders and Planets
  
  Simple change; ups the base limit of leaders to 50 and planets to 25.

 

The following aren't quite so essential, but I enjoy them nonetheless.

 

• Free New Worlds Protocol
  
  Just a personal thing. It annoys me having to research this and set back biolabs, when I start engineering and physics on their respective lab techs.
   
  
• Cloned
  
  Now cool stuff. Once you have cloning tech, you can clone new pops instead of just armies. They grow significantly faster than normal pops, but are otherwise essentially identical. I just wish we could clone specific leaders too.
   
  
• Repeatable Genetics
  
  Easy enough. Late game tech that gives +1 trait point every time you research it, gradually increasing the limit of genetic enhancements you can perform.
   
  
• Playable Robots (fixed)
  
  Does what it says on the tin. You get robot appearances, a new ship appearance and a new 'synthetic' trait that, when added, makes your populations act like robots. You build them instead of letting them grow, and they require energy but no food. The associated droid and synth upgrades give increases to specific robot trait bonuses such as habitability, mining and energy output. Make sure you get the (fixed) version, the original is out of date and had an issue where upgrading robots to droids and synths would spawn them as a new species instead of upgrading existing pops, so you'd end up with four different robot species and only the initial species has your chosen traits.
   
  
• Ringworld Start 1.2+
  
  Another drastic imbalancer, but until I find a decent ringworld construction mod this will have to do. You can set your homesystem to include one of a few types of ringworld, from 4 slot, to damaged, to 12 slot 'Super Ringworld'. Each section counts as a 25 slot planet.
   
  
• Traits and Ethics +
  
  Another drastic imbalancer. Increases the empire generation limitations so you can select up to ten different traits of a value up to twenty points, and increases ethic points to four so you can get two fanatic ethics if you want. Be warned, the AI will spawn enemy races with the same rules

 

I'm open to other recommendations, too. All the above are confirmed by me to work with the latest build, except 'Cloning' which probably doesn't work because all my pops are robotic. I'll get back to you on that one.

[PoZe]

From all the list above I only use Play as AI. Although after playing as AI race I would agree that it is pretty OP Race, since they do not require any food, their leaders are immortal.

Funny moments: you need to enable your immortality as policy, you need to tell your sector governor to "build robots" to grow pop. You still research robots, just higher tear to make give them +5% bonuses. You still have to research habitability for different types of planets(Or maybe I missed that as choosing continent preference). And after you research "robots" that teirs up your pop it gives you "robot army" which eats energy and has less stats then regular attack/defense army.

Quintuple Leaders and Planets - That is silly, you just co efficiently increase scale, but idea stays the same. It really matters not much if you have medium, big, huge map and if you have increased size of planets. Since you just make your game take "longer" to get into late game, but you still reach the point when you have to expand your empire border by attacking neighbors or colonizing.

Doomsday Weapons and Ships - is interesting an interesting concept, usable for late game. Since nobody would try to build doomsday ship/weapon at middle game(unless you are in multiplayer playing with insane player who most of his game stays withing same territory just fortifying capitol with fortresses).

Actually that was interesting to watch one player in muilting on 12+ huge game staying in his capitol all the time, he had his empire made for research speed, and mostly he maxed engineering. So in mid game he already had last Kinetic artillery. So he built 9 fortresses in his capital system, with last armour and weapon it was almost invincible.