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Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

I remember when they got rid of the 3d city screen and having a million buildings to buy/manage in EU, totally ruined the game. Only a few buildings and everything can be built via the main map en-mass??? Horrible, lost all character and fun.

# ? Mar 22, 2017 21:49

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# ? May 14, 2024 01:41

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Interplanetary bureaucracy should be a technology option, not the game.

# ? Mar 22, 2017 21:51

GotLag: Jul 17, 2005; 食べちゃダメだよ

Baronjutter posted:

I'd love to get rid of the planet grid, the system view or at least any tactical movement within it, and cut ship design and just have pre-set balanced ships that get better/unlock with tech. Merge planets, orbitals, and mines into a single system view that just listed the system's combined statistics and open slots. Orbital mines/labs would just be a slot system within the system view. Energy Mine 5/6, Mineral Mine 3/8 and so on in a list. Every planet and orbital would simply increase the pop capacity. So that nice big continental planet adds +23 capacity, but you also have pop slots open up by building orbital improvements and dome-colonies and poo poo on planets. Click on that barren planet, build a colony dome and now the system has +5 pop capacity. Have most all the important stats and basic building menu fit along the bottom or side of the screen when you click on a system, or double click for a more detailed view that shows all the pretty planet art if you're into "graphics" or what ever.

Dude if you don't want to play Stellaris, don't play Stellaris.

# ? Mar 22, 2017 22:01

The Muffinlord: Mar 3, 2007; newbid stupie?

I want the game to stay exactly how it is but all the sound effects are replaced by the ones from Spaceward Ho!.

# ? Mar 22, 2017 22:03

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Baronjutter posted:

I'd love to get rid of the planet grid, the system view or at least any tactical movement within it, and cut ship design and just have pre-set balanced ships that get better/unlock with tech. Merge planets, orbitals, and mines into a single system view that just listed the system's combined statistics and open slots. Orbital mines/labs would just be a slot system within the system view. Energy Mine 5/6, Mineral Mine 3/8 and so on in a list. Every planet and orbital would simply increase the pop capacity. So that nice big continental planet adds +23 capacity, but you also have pop slots open up by building orbital improvements and dome-colonies and poo poo on planets. Click on that barren planet, build a colony dome and now the system has +5 pop capacity. Have most all the important stats and basic building menu fit along the bottom or side of the screen when you click on a system, or double click for a more detailed view that shows all the pretty planet art if you're into "graphics" or what ever.

Also, automate all aspects of playing the game, actually just uninstall it.

# ? Mar 22, 2017 22:35

Wiz: May 16, 2004; Nap Ghost

Baronjutter posted:

I remember when they got rid of the 3d city screen and having a million buildings to buy/manage in EU, totally ruined the game. Only a few buildings and everything can be built via the main map en-mass??? Horrible, lost all character and fun.

The 3D city screen was removed in Divine Wind, the same expansion that added far more buildings to build. In fact, the 3D screen was removed precisely because there were simply way too many buildings for it after all the ones added in DW.

# ? Mar 22, 2017 22:36

Staltran: Jan 3, 2013; Fallen Rib

Dongattack posted:

Is it possible to have ships temporarily switch to a different template without deleting/editing the old one?

Just for instance say you have laser corvettes with only armor modules and you want to quickly change to only missiles and shields. Is editing the current template the only way to do it?

I think you could rename the existing design and make a new design with the old name? Not sure.

# ? Mar 22, 2017 22:55

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

I like the game but I wish I could make it entirely imaginary and just think about numbers all day.

# ? Mar 22, 2017 23:11

Doorknob Slobber: Sep 10, 2006; by Fluffdaddy

The Muffinlord posted:

I want the game to stay exactly how it is but all the sound effects are replaced by the ones from Spaceward Ho!.

i just want someone to make an updated spaceward ho

# ? Mar 22, 2017 23:19

VirtualStranger: Aug 20, 2012

I don't know if this bugs anyone else but it would be really nice if Pre-FTL civs would spawn in the same way that regular empires do during initial galaxy generation.

Regular empires always spawn with the species name, home planet name, home system name, and namelist all from the same matching set. For example:

code:

name = Alari
plural = Alari
home_planet = Alaria
home_system = Alar
name_list = "HUM2"

Pre-FTL Civs, on the other hand, spawn with a completely random name list, and select their homeworld's name randomly from that list. They also don't get to name their home systems or any other objects in their home system like regular empires do.

Regular empires always have 16 to 20 tile homeworlds, while it seems like Pre-FTL can have homeworlds that are pretty much any size.

Regular empires always inhabit the only habitable planet in their home system, Pre-FTL can spawn on systems with any number of other colonizable planets.

# ? Mar 22, 2017 23:38

Psycho Landlord: Oct 10, 2012; What are you gonna do, dance with me?

GotLag posted:

Dude if you don't want to play Stellaris, don't play Stellaris.

# ? Mar 22, 2017 23:41

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

GotLag posted:

Dude if you don't want to play Stellaris, don't play Stellaris.

sounds like he just doesn't want to play the boring parts of stellaris

# ? Mar 22, 2017 23:51

Baron Porkface: Jan 22, 2007

Is utopia gonna have another cuties pack?

# ? Mar 22, 2017 23:52

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

A real time game shouldn't force you to micro a ton of separate tactical battle maps simultaneously while also trying to play a strategy game. Then again there's people that want a Total War sort of tactical RTS battle for every battle in EU. Stellaris often feels like those people got their terrible wish.

In every other paradox game you can just look at the map and understand the situation. You can see your troops are lined up along the Maginot line at a glance, you don't need to click on every province and order them inside the bunker otherwise they might just stand along the west border with their backs to the germans. At a glance on the main map you can see how big the enemy's forces roughly are, where they are, and where they are moving to. In stellaris on the main map all you get are red fleet icons and you have to mouse-over them to see what's going on, or zoom into the star system to really see what's up. You get constant "station under attack" warnings but nothing to show you where, it's pause and hunt. Was it a mining station that was instantly popped? Is a starbase under attack? Where is this going on? Who knows, the map is flooded with red fleet icons that don't tell me at a glance if it's 2 transports or 500 battleships, let alone where they are headed or where in the system they are.

How I'd actually solve this without making this moo with better politics:
Have different main-map icons for fleet types as well as the fleet strength above or below it. Have lines and arrows showing if the fleet is moving and its known destination and have the arrow shade like a progress bar if the fleet is spinning up its drives or what not. Make the system icons on the main map bigger, big enough so that when you zoom in you can see roughly where the enemy fleet is. If it's in the north edge of the system just sitting there waiting to jump to the next system, show the enemy fleet icon north of the star. If it's heading in to attack or bombard a planet, show the fleet in the middle of the system and so on. Don't make me constantly switch between maps to understand the basic situation.

Give our ships more orders we can give from the main map and an improved AI to carry those out. I'm not expecting (or wanting) HOI3 or distant worlds levels of automation but let me from the main map order a fleet to an enemy system with the "invade planet" order (if there's multiple planets have a sub option/all appear). That fleet will then go and attack that planet and bombard it. Hopefully ground troop management is also gutted/improved by now so troops are simply part of the fleet you gave the orders to, or are automatically dispatched when bombardment starts. Either way, if you're fighting a huge war and have basically already won, let me just queue up a few fleets to invade a bunch of systems.

Another problem is if you're on the defensive or just trying to catch the enemy fleet to force a battle you can't just chase them on the main map, you have to micro on the system level. If you chase a fleet they're always going to be warping in and out from the opposite side of the system and you'll never catch them. You generally have to get ahead of them then back track so that your fleet is sitting on top of the location they're going to appear. Which means once again constantly going into the system view, clicking on the enemy fleet, seeing where they are moving, then going in and out and in and out again of the maps to select your fleet and give them orders to not just move to the correct system to catch them, but to tactically move to the correct location in the system. Aggressive fleet stance doesn't help because they can pop in and out of the system faster than you can ever chase them down. It would be nice to be able to give our fleet an "intercept" order that automatically does this, tries to put our fleet ahead of where the enemy is moving to force a battle. Or just make in-system movement faster and weapon ranges longer, but that would just come back to the question of what does tactical in-system movement micro even add to the game?

# ? Mar 22, 2017 23:52

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Baron Porkface posted:

Is utopia gonna have another cuties pack?

That would be rad.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 00:24

Kitchner: Nov 9, 2012; IT CAN'T BE BARGAINED WITH.
IT CAN'T BE REASONED WITH.
IT DOESN'T FEEL PITY, OR REMORSE, OR FEAR.
AND IT ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT STOP, EVER, UNTIL YOU ADMIT YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT WARHAMMER; Clapping Larry

Baronjutter posted:

I mean I genuinely do kind of see your point, but I think it could be solved by being able to assign missions to fleets with admirals and let them manage themselves while you control your main fleet.

For example "Patrol X sector" means they will go to be centre of the sector and move to engage any enemies that enter.

If you have a system where you can order fleets to do generic ~things~ like protecting sectors, capturing planets, destroying stations or whatever, I think it would become more like HoI 4.

I genuinely do see what you're saying though, it would be like if in EU 4 you could zoom in to every province and order around the armies within the province, rather than have them automatically fight when they are in the same province. That being said, being able to control your fleet a bit is pretty cool.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 01:09

Majestic: Mar 19, 2004; Don't listen to us!

We're fuckwits!!

Baronjutter posted:

I'd love to get rid of the planet grid, the system view or at least any tactical movement within it, and cut ship design and just have pre-set balanced ships that get better/unlock with tech. Merge planets, orbitals, and mines into a single system view that just listed the system's combined statistics and open slots. Orbital mines/labs would just be a slot system within the system view. Energy Mine 5/6, Mineral Mine 3/8 and so on in a list. Every planet and orbital would simply increase the pop capacity. So that nice big continental planet adds +23 capacity, but you also have pop slots open up by building orbital improvements and dome-colonies and poo poo on planets. Click on that barren planet, build a colony dome and now the system has +5 pop capacity. Have most all the important stats and basic building menu fit along the bottom or side of the screen when you click on a system, or double click for a more detailed view that shows all the pretty planet art if you're into "graphics" or what ever.

Devs, please ignore every single thing in this post, these ideas are terrible.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 01:46

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

I kind of understand why people love ship design even though they're wrong but I'm pretty confused by people who think that having a bad UI is fundamental to the game experience

# ? Mar 23, 2017 01:48

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

I don't want to abstract everything away, but I have to admit... the idea of systems working like provinces in Paradox map games and just having fleets fly into the same system and abstracting the rest... sounded kind of nice.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 01:53

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

I hate map games so I would much prefer not.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 01:56

oddium: Feb 21, 2006; end of the 4.5 tatami age

[wokely] stellaris is a map game

# ? Mar 23, 2017 02:02

Kitchner: Nov 9, 2012; IT CAN'T BE BARGAINED WITH.
IT CAN'T BE REASONED WITH.
IT DOESN'T FEEL PITY, OR REMORSE, OR FEAR.
AND IT ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT STOP, EVER, UNTIL YOU ADMIT YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT WARHAMMER; Clapping Larry

Eiba posted:

I don't want to abstract everything away, but I have to admit... the idea of systems working like provinces in Paradox map games and just having fleets fly into the same system and abstracting the rest... sounded kind of nice.

I like being able to see the fleet combat and I like the fact there are a couple of tricks you can pull by ordering the fleet around, but I'd also like it if you can automate more of war so you don't have to micromanage it all at once.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 02:07

Bholder: Feb 26, 2013

I don't think removing what little strategic choices we have already is a good idea

# ? Mar 23, 2017 02:11

uber_stoat: Jan 21, 2001; Pillbug

oddium posted:

[wokely] stellaris is a map game

lol if you haven't genocided entire species just to get your borders looking pretty.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 02:10

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

If you were going to make any changes in that vein I would suggest moving the game to weekly turns or something and having combat be more controllable rather than automating everything and making everything less controllable because there would be very little to do otherwise.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 02:19

Ms Adequate: Oct 30, 2011; Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling

Tulul posted:

Am I the only one who's bugged by sci-fi writers not knowing the difference between "sentient" (your dog) and "sapient" (you)?

Probably.

No, and as a sci-fi writer, I'm careful to maintain the distinction.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 02:23

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

OwlFancier posted:

If you were going to make any changes in that vein I would suggest moving the game to weekly turns or something and having combat be more controllable rather than automating everything and making everything less controllable because there would be very little to do otherwise.

The way other 4x games get around this is by being turn based. You can have that meaningful and fun tactical combat because you can stop and play out the combat even for multiple battles in a single turn, and if that's too much you can always hit auto (unless the game brutally punishes you for doing this, which they sometimes do). I love hands on tactical battles and I find a lot of 4x games feel bland when they abstract them away or give the worst of both worlds, a time consuming but mostly hands-off battle. Paradox games are all real time though, so micro managing one battle or front means you're not managing another, or ignoring an important popup, or not ordering those new ships, or not noticing your sector just deleted all your paradise domes for some reason. You can of course pause in single player and bounce between managing things while paused but even that becomes a bit of a nightmare in a large war. In multiplayer with a fixed speed it means slowing the game down to the point where people can micro what needs to be micro'd during a war, but that also means the game is slow and boring as hell for anyone not needing the slow down. Turn based games can have a big variety of focuses or large amounts of time where nothing happens because the turns just get processed as fast as needed, real time games need to be a bit more consistent with the level of focus.

Previous paradox games at least put everything on the same map. Maybe it was a bit of a pain if you were fighting a war in Europe and North America AND africa at the same time, but you could always clearly see what was going on and having an effective strategy didn't really require any micro unless you were doing something really gamey or trying to exploit the AI with weird movement poo poo. But for the most part you could see the enemy was in province B, give your troops an order to move to province B, and know that will trigger a fight and an outcome. You could also watch the general progress of the battles from the map level. Clicking on the battle itself gave you more details, but from the general view you could see at a glance how both the war and individual battles were going. You also can at a glance tell how your victory will effect your strategy, how a loss and the hole that opens up might hurt you, and you can plan and strategize accordingly. In Stellaris war feels like a bunch of random ships zipping all over the place and it's frankly a surprise when/where battles happen so it's really hard to have a strategy. There's also not really terrain and it's very hard to block enemy movement so again there's no interesting strategic options like holding back in some mountains to let the enemy attack there, or try to bait the enemy army away from that forest and into the hills where your 2nd army can catch them. I'd argue that there's very little strategy available in Stellaris, it's all just micro-management and a lot of clicking and view switching without much reward.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 02:45

Voyager I: Jun 29, 2012; This is how your posting feels.
🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥

Baron is right as gently caress and currently Stellaris suffers from trying to jam in a bunch of half-baked features related to ship customization and combat for no reason other than other to appease genre convention.

It's possible that some day they will be fleshed out enough to add depth to the game instead of just dumb poo poo to micromanage, but I'm dubious that trying to manage multi-front wars while also running an empire in real time will ever be proven to be a very good idea.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:13

Crazycryodude: Aug 15, 2015; Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?

The people have spoken, Wiz.

Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space ~~Communism~~ Distant Worlds Now!

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:19

Doorknob Slobber: Sep 10, 2006; by Fluffdaddy

Eiba posted:

I don't want to abstract everything away, but I have to admit... the idea of systems working like provinces in Paradox map games and just having fleets fly into the same system and abstracting the rest... sounded kind of nice.

This was how I thought the game was going to be when I first heard of it and still think it should be that way. There are plenty of space4x that do what Stellaris does, but better. Nothing does CK2/Hearts of Iron in space as far as I'm aware and that would be fun.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:20

Psycho Landlord: Oct 10, 2012; What are you gonna do, dance with me?

So I guess based on the objectively correct all the time opinions of a few posters in this thread, Utopia should just delete the game and install every other Paradox title you've bought instead, but with Blorg randomly inserted.

Better get on that Wiz, the denizens of the Something Awful games board know what's best.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:27

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Baron Porkface posted:

Is utopia gonna have another cuties pack?

They're never going to top snailiens but I'd like to see them try, so I hope so.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:31

GodFish: Oct 10, 2012; We're your first, last, and only line of defense. We live in secret. We exist in shadow.

And we dress in black.

Crusader Kings II but the Sunset Invasion is Blorg.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:32

Bloody Pom: Jun 5, 2011

I could go for a Blorg Portrait/Culture Pack for CK2.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:32

Psycho Landlord: Oct 10, 2012; What are you gonna do, dance with me?

It will be very hard for the Axis powers to form in HoI4 with the Blorg handy to befriend Hitler.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:36

Crazycryodude: Aug 15, 2015; Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?

Blorg & National Dogs DLC confirmed for all Paradox titles on April 1st, I guarantee.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:41

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

If we're gonna do radical Hot Takes on how Stellaris needs to be changed: get rid of ship power. I can kinda see why people don't like the ship designer even though they're wrong because of the pure unrewarding tedium that managing ship power adds. Juggling power requirements and ship parts means you can't reliably automate straight upgrades from L1 to L2 lasers or whatever if your power tech can't handle it, which in theory makes for an interesting logistics choice but in practice results in a lot of busywork. If power plant modules were just straight boosts to ship speed or damage or whatever without being a requirement, there'd still be an interesting tradeoff between defense and offence in choosing power plants over shield or armor.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:41

Clarste: Apr 15, 2013; Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.

I like the idea of being able to automate fleets with simple tasks like "protect this area" or "keep invading enemy planets". That seems fundamentally similar to the Sector system, and a good way to prevent the need for constant micromanagement while still allowing you to take direct control and presumably do things better than the AI would. Maybe they could be tied to new technologies so you don't just automate everything from the beginning.

Clarste fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Mar 23, 2017

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:43

Bholder: Feb 26, 2013

I don't really get the reason for downright removing ship customization, rather than maybe simplifying or streamlining it when this is the main reason the combat has something beyond "the bigger army wins".

Even movement inside systems could be made more important if there would be something like a formation system so flanking might actually mean something, or when you go FTL make ships move to the edge that is the closest to the destination system.
Or just seperate systems into multiple tiles to make it easier to deal with, you could even add terrain modifiers to these tiles.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:44

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# ? May 14, 2024 01:41

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

I would also be open to replacing combat with the combat from sword of the stars.

That would basically make the game Sword of the Stars 2 Except Good.

# ? Mar 23, 2017 03:47

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