Star Trek: Infinite - It's Stellaris but with Rubber-Forehead Aliens

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Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Star Trek: Infinite is developed by Nimble Giant Entertainment (known for the Master of Orion reboot) and published by Paradox Interactive.

At first glance it is a Stellaris clone but the developers say they have diverged from Stellaris' core systems and the game should be an unique experience with an emphasis on role-play in the Star Trek universe. The developers say they are drawing inspiration from Birth of the Federation and the Armada series. The creators of the Star Trek total conversion mods for Stellaris have been given early access to the game and have given gameplay feedback to the developers. The game has been in development for around 3 years.

Story Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T0DtcZu1jU
Gameplay Overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adebhvd_u2Q
Aspec Starting Guide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZzTbbMr1vs

The stand out features that have been added are:

Warp FTL which is bound to your supply range and must be expanded by your territory and starbases.
Each race gets some unique techs and buildings.
Full modding support and steam workshop integration.
Reworking exploration so it lasts into the late game and not be finished within the first few years.
The main game area where the factions start is pre-set but the outer areas of the map are randomly generated each game so it stays fresh to explore it.
Starting the game with a built-up faction with some established territory, skipping some of the tediousness of early game Stellaris waiting for resources to get collected before you can expand more.
A mission tree for each faction that gives you choices on what your faction becomes over the course of the game and rewards you for roleplaying your chosen faction. (Like the EU IV mission tree).
Addition of spy and governor ship types.
Ships are sturdier and harder to lose but there is a new crew mechanic. Replacing crew losses from battles is more the focus rather than entire ships.
Neutral zones between Empires.
Pops do not have ethics but do have leanings towards the main principles each faction represents - they can defect to the other Empires if you do not use spies and governors to keep your population on your path.
Conflict destabilizes everyone in the game over time and builds up a global tension meter which is similar to what is found in HOI4.
The developers also say that the game suffers a lot less late game slow down due to the smaller scale of the map and number of factions.
The game begins in 2346 with the Khitomer Massacre and proceeds to run for 150 years with the Borg as the end-game crisis.

Dev Logs
Dev Log #1 - The Genesis
Dev Log #2 - A Matter of Perspective
Dev Log #3 - The Artistic Vision
Dev Log #4 - A Trek Story
Dev Log #5 - Ad astra per aspera

Released Oct. 12 2023
Buy on Steam ($29.99/$39.99)

Offical Discord (Devs are active here and answer questions)
Official Forums
Steam Forums
Subreddit

Screenshots

Previews
PC Gamer - I've played the Star Trek game of my dreams, and it's a grand strategy game

PC Gamer posted:

Every time I turned a corner in Star Trek: Infinite, I ran into something that reinforced how much Nimble Giant loves the source material. For example, there's a narrative event after you build the Enterprise where Wesley Crusher brings something to your attention and you can tell him to shut up.

The Mission Tree is essentially a quest log. It sets goals for you to accomplish that represent events in the history of your faction. When you achieve them, you unlock further goals and get rewards like permanent bonuses to your faction or massive chunks of resources. These serve to give your game some structure, and further cement each faction's identity. The early missions for the Federation require you to explore lots of star systems and research anomalies, whereas the Klingons are more interested in building a large fleet and recruiting strong leaders to guide it.

The system feels great, and I think it's the beating heart of Infinite. One thing I find myself struggling with in grand strategy games is a sort of lost feeling toward the middle game. This system introduces story beats but also gives you some guidance on what sorts of things your faction likes to be doing and rewards you for doing them. There's an entire section devoted to building the Enterprise from TNG and recruiting its iconic cast, each crew member requiring you to run missions specific to their expertise. Complete them all and you can upgrade the Enterprise to its Sovereign-class version, which is an absolute monster.

Wargamer - Star Trek Infinite is not for non-Trekkies says Paradox

Wargamer posted:

Who else is Star Trek Infinite for? Well, according to Holm, it�s for fans of Stellaris who like to roleplay. �I believe there are more people out there who want to play a Star Trek game that potentially are a bit scared of Stellaris,� he says �It�s a pretty big and chunky and crunchy game�. But he says Star Trek Infinite doesn�t have the same min-maxing potential of base Stellaris, and is instead more roleplay heavy.

�Star Trek Infinite is just like my perfect setup of the game. It has all the players I want in my game and gives me the flow that I want in roleplaying the Federation or the Klingons or the Cardassians.�

Andr�s Ricardo Chamarra hopes that when Star Trek Infinite releases, it will have broad appeal. �Hopefully, we can pick up some strategy fans and make new Star Trek fans and vice versa. I would say just play it. Give it a chance!�

Socialbites - Preview of Star Trek: Infinite. �Stellaris with a Story�

Socialbites posted:

In the beginning, the player receives a fully developed empire �in its prime�
Therefore, the �active� phase of the game, with political events, wars and other events, comes faster � the game elegantly skips the �boring� period where you wait for the next hundred minerals to build a mining station.

In Stellaris, the game entered its final phase at the time of the onset of the �Crisis� � a global event that affected the entire galactic community, as the Fallen Empire awoke from its slumber. In Star Trek: Infinite, of course, there are no Fallen Empires, but there are canonical enemies of all living things: the Borg. It is their invasion that will become the final �exam� for the players.

Polygon - Star Trek: Infinite could be the grand strategy game Trekkies need

Polygon posted:

The things that make Star Trek: Infinite hard to put down are mainly inherited from Stellaris; however, producer Mats Holm flatly rejects the notion that Star Trek: Infinite is a mere branded module.

�We split off from the Stellaris main branch quite a while ago,� says Holm. �The Stellaris team is completely focused on making every possible sci-fi theme that you can imagine, put into one game. On Star Trek: Infinite, we want to make the ultimate Star Trek fantasy. We want it to be very bespoke.�

Star Trek: Infinite Preview: Spreadsheets, the Final Frontier

IGN posted:

My favorite part of Star Trek: Infinite, however, is how differently each faction plays. When I was the Federation, I tried to do things the way they would, which meant diplomacy and exploration first. I would only get into shooting fights as a last resort. I kept a couple of fleets around for defense, but mostly I explored strange new worlds, sought out new life and new civilizations, and boldly went where no one had gone before. And the crazy part was, it worked. I built relationships with other cultures and once we got along well enough, I brought them into the Federation. Meanwhile, the Klingons were starting wars every other week, the Cardassians were trying to bully and/or conquer the less advanced civilizations, and the Romulans were mostly trying to be left alone. That is, when they weren�t sneaking into our territory.

Eventually, though, conflict does arise, and you�ll want to be prepared when it does. Star Trek: Infinite lets you customize your ships, taking a simple class blueprint and adding in all the wonderful toys you get from the research your scientists have been doing. It�s fun to be able to tailor your ships to your playstyle, and it means your older ships are still useful later in the game. You don�t have to engage with this system - Infinite will generate an �auto-best� build for you automatically - but it�s a nice feature, especially in a game based on a series with ships this iconic.

Star Trek: Infinite does a great job of staying true to what makes Trek Trek while integrating it into a 4K strategy game. You�re still navigating a lot of menus, certain things are still very obtuse and require a lot of prior knowledge (I wasn�t kidding about all those YouTube tutorials), and it can sometimes feel overwhelming, especially if you�re new to 4X games. But after spending a dozen hours with this preview build, I still want to explore, discover new civilizations, unlock new missions in the Mission Tree, and see what else Infinite has up its sleeve. Exploring the final frontier isn�t easy; Infinite gets that. But it also understands there�s a whole lot of adventure out there, too. All we have to do to find it is be brave enough to engage with all those menus.

God Is a Greek Preview

God Is a Geek posted:

Star Trek Infinite is, fittingly, huge. Imagine all this, but with things like trading and diplomacy on top. Relationships with other factions must be maintained at all times, or the simplest matter can escalate to all-out war. And this isn�t Civiliasation where you can pump out soldiers from a barracks building at a rate of knots. Constructing everything takes ages in Infinite, even when you speed up the game time. Of course, research projects unlock new buildings, bases, projects, weapons, and technologies, sometimes speeding up processes. Not to mention, you can go out and explore the galaxy for rare resources, finding abandoned terraforming projects, or primitive species to study from afar.

As you play, random events will occur that demand attention. You might uncover a conspiracy that threatens war between two factions and have the option to choose sides or stay neutral. You might encounter an entirely new species and help or hinder their progress to the stars. You�ll deal with pandemics, uprisings, and cosmic anomalies, and you�ll do it all at the same time. Infinite throws things at you at such a high rate that you�ll come to really appreciate the quiet moments when the galaxy just shuts up for a few minutes and lets you think.

A tactical pause allows you to queue up commands and survey the state of your empire peacefully, and you�ll need it given just how much is going on at any one time. If you click through an event too quickly you could make a crucial mistake, and in my experience so far, war is simply to be avoided. Invariably the other factions will be more advanced than you because it takes so, so long to research things and build new fleets. Also should a ship go missing or encounter a hostile force, it requires a science vessel and military fleet to investigate the scene, often drawing your battleships away from your Colonies.

The thing is though, it�s all so incredibly Star Trek. That�s obvious, yes, but more than any other Star Trek game I�ve played Infinite leans totally and completely into the brand. Armchair generals may well still get a kick from the strategy, but this is a Trekkie�s wet dream � especially considering the DLC possibilities. This is more than just Stellaris in a Starfleet uniform; Infinite is one-hundred percent Star Trek through and through. It�s early days, but to my knowledge no other game gives you this much control over Roddenberry�s beloved universe. It�s not easy going, but if you truly want to boldly go where no one has gone before, Star Trek: Infinite is your best chance.

Steam Store Page posted:

With Star Trek: Infinite there is no singular way to play. Whether you wish to take the route of diplomacy, espionage, warfare, or a mix of all of these, there are multiple paths to victory. You are in the command, and the fate of the galaxy is in your hands!

Choose between the United Federation of Planets, Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, or Cardassian Union. You will take on the role of the leader in charge of all the major decisions of your faction as the game unfolds. With each faction having their own unique styles of play, your decisions determine how successful you are in reaching your goals.

Star Trek: Infinite has been meticulously created to provide an immersive Star Trek experience while allowing you to shape the story of your playthrough according to the choices you make as the leader of your chosen faction. As you take on the role of the Federation, you'll have the opportunity to recruit iconic captains and officers, including Picard, Janeway, Sisko, and Data to name a few. Meanwhile, other factions offer their own set of iconic characters to enlist, such as Gowron, Makbar, Garak, and many more.

Beyond the potential cast of characters you recruit to your faction, the game grants you access to a range of starships from the Star Trek universe, tailored to each faction's arsenal. From the Federation's reliable Intrepid- and Defiant-class ships, the menacing Cardassian Galor-class vessels, the sleek Romulan D'deridex, or even the formidable Klingon Negh'Var battleships.

Of course, the Enterprise-D can be developed and added to the Federation fleet through the bespoke storytelling system developed for Star Trek: Infinite.

Star Trek: Infinite is built upon the core systems of Stellaris, leveraging the deep and complex system and making them its own. Aspects of these systems have been streamlined and simplified to better resonate with the Star Trek franchise.

Thom12255 fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Oct 12, 2023

# ? Sep 23, 2023 19:02

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# ? May 5, 2024 23:11

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Dev Blog 1 posted:

Developer Log #1: The Genesis

Developer Log - Star Date: 23705.8
In today's log, I wanted to talk a bit about why we wanted to make this game. A passion project like none other, and now finally everyone can learn about it.

The Idea
Every game starts with an Idea, and for Star Trek Infinite the idea was to recapture the feeling of the Star Trek Strategy Games of the early 2000s. That mix of playing with the Star Trek ships, on big maps, and fighting the other empires for supremacy.

An important part was not to simply do a remake of Birth of the Federation or Armada. We wanted a game that captures the feeling of playing these. A modern take on the concept that they had, stories and gameplay from the Federation level perspective.

Something like that feeling you get from playing Stellaris.

Charting the Stars
We quickly knew that Nimble Giant was the perfect studio for this game. Firstly we saw the strength of their Master of Orion remaster, and then during early milestone delivery where they were able to prove their mastery of the Grand Strategy Game. They quickly built up trust with Paradox and Paramount with their passion for authenticity and great gameplay ideas.

We laid out a path for the game to be in the established series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. At the point when we started this game, Discovery and Picard was still ongoing, and we wanted to avoid making something that would be directly contradicted in the shows at a later point. The Original Series and the Animated series could be referenced, but our style and tone should be set in the shows of the 90s.

It should mainly occur in the timeline of these series, and we should pick our visuals to match them, and our stories should reflect the storytelling they used.

We needed Diplomacy to remain a prime part of the game, and we needed to balance the perspective between major and minor powers in the Alpha and Beta quadrant. We needed to be better at telling the long story, focusing on the events that play out in the show, and how players can affect these.

With these choices made, a lot of the questions we had were answered, who were the major players in the game, what important events needed to happen, and how were we going to work these stories into the game, no matter what empire you selected to play.

Turbulences and Triumphs
The Trek universe is huge, and we really needed to focus on what stories we wanted to tell and what would amplify these and not distract us.
Should we have fallen empires like Tkon, Talosian or Iconians? No, these could appear in stories, but making them a faction with their own faction would not improve our stories.

Should we have all the quadrants? - While Voyager takes place almost exclusively in the Delta quadrant, the stories we were trying to tell were about the Major Powers in the Alpha and Beta quadrant. Including the Gamma and Delta quadrant was a distraction from our goal of telling stories about these four Powers. They can influence the stories, and we can have some interaction, but play should focus on the Alpha and Beta Quadrant.

Did we pull it off?
I believe we did, and we were lucky to get this confirmed when we started doing previews. People seem happy with our vision, and we are looking forward to showing this to more people.

In the coming weeks we will have several more developer logs, where we discuss all the aspects of making this game. How we approached new features or reworked old ones, how we're-focused on art and what type of new gameplay we added.

The work that has been done by Nimble Giant on this game is amazing, and I am so happy to have been able to work with them over these last few years.

We have already started showing a few pieces of gameplay in our trailer that was released last week (here, in case you missed it) and some folks in the gaming press have had opportunities to get hands-on, share their experiences and conduct interviews with myself and the team at Nimble Giant. Soon we will be giving content creators access to the game, so expect more from them in the coming weeks!

That�s not all, though, we will be creating more dev diaries over the next few weeks in preparation for the launch, so we�d love to hear your thoughts as we publish those. Our Discord server has been steadily growing with Star Trek fans since the pre-order announcement, so if you want to come and say hello, that�s where a lot of us will be!

I can�t wait for you all to see more.

End Log,

PDX_Ruk
Producer for Star Trek: Infinite

Dev Blog 2 posted:

Developer Log - Stardate: 23724.7

The Statement
Last week, in Dev Log #1, PDX_Ruk described the genesis of Star Trek: Infinite. But how do we actually build a grand strategy game of Star Trek? I love these kinds of games, and I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours in Paradox games. If there is one thing that has always been clear to me about them, it is that they always allowed me to tell my own story. So my vision statement for Star Trek: Infinite is very simple: "This game allows the player to live their own Star Trek story" in the iconic timeline.

What is not simple is to execute it. Difficult decisions needed to be made. The first three of these being, When, Who and Where?

When?
Of these three questions, the real difficulty was to answer When?. In reality, we considered all options, but the final choice was between two, the Archer Era or the Picard Era. Archer had many reasons to be the winner, but our statement was clear: we wanted the player to live their own Star Trek story. We felt that if we focused on this era, the player was only going to be able to live their story as the Federation, and Star Trek is so much more than the Federation. The Next Generation era brings a lot of other challenges, but the political map it presented was the perfect canvas for the player to experience different civilizations� points of view and develop their own story.

The choice was clear.

Who?

Not every species in the Alpha and Beta quadrants are equal or have the same capabilities. When it comes to choosing the other paths that the player can develop, in addition tothe Federation, we looked for other Powers that have similar importance and means for fun competition. At this time, three new players joined the mix, The Klingon Empire, The Romulan Star Empire, and The Cardassian Union.

Now, does that mean that we leave all the other species in the quadrant out? No, many other species join our game in the form of Support Powers�species that have a certain degree of power, but concentrate on providing services to our Major Powers, such as the Ferengi.

In addition, we will meet other species with FTL capabilities, but are not so developed. These species are called Minor Powers and will serve as opportunities for expansion and conflict for the Major Powers. Among them you can find Bolians, Talarians, Boslic, and many others.

Where?
The Star Trek Milky Way is a vast space, mostly unexplored but with a rich lore. If we wanted to do it justice we had to focus on a smaller area and fill this with as much Star Trek as possible. That's why we chose to have our game concentrate on the Alpha and Beta quadrants.

Wait a minute! Exploration is iconic! If we present a galaxy that the player already knows, how much can they explore? Finding a way to balance the known with the unknown was one of our first technical challenges.

Seeing a familiar star system like Vulcan (also known as 40 Eridani) placed randomly in the map would feel jarring since we know its a close neighbor to the Sol system; a similar issue would arise with the relative positions of the four Major Powers, so we created a bespoke representation of the core neighborhood of the Federation where the series take place most of the time, and left the rest to be procedurally generated so players can�t anticipate what they will find when exploring the farther reaches of the quadrants.

But those 3 questions were just the beginning, and many decisions followed. Warp being the one that changed everything.

Warp Travel
One of the challenges of space strategy games is geography, how to give shape to the vast emptiness of space and how that shape affects its travelers. A very common and effective approach used by many modern games of the genre is the starlane graph we all know from Stellaris, and while this system can be controversial at times, in Star Trek it's simply a non-starter. You must be able to boldly go, in a straight line at warp 9, but then what stops you from reaching the extremes of the galaxy from the get go?

Well, speed is one, but Voyager was actually an inspiration for the solution! The difficulties of finding fuel, supplies and repair opportunities while deep in alien space far from home present a great challenge.

Warp range was the inevitable approach, provided by your space stations, forcing you to plan your infrastructure to enable your fleets to deploy and move about. Another factor in geography are political boundaries: you can�t just cross someone else�s space without permission (well, spies can�), even in a straight line towards a star outside of their domain. This of course changes war considerably, mostly doing away with choke points.

You can no longer amass a 200-ship fleet in the doorway to your empire, confident that the enemy cannot get through. Since they can simply go past you, strongholds and a more evenly spread deployment of your fleets become paramount (pun intended), reinforcing that space geography. There is a lot more to war, thanks to our warp approach, but that is a story for another log.

Balance of Power
Another thing that comes with the territory of the Picard era is the political stage of the Alpha and Beta quadrants. Unlike many strategy games, in the Star Trek universe constant, all-out war is something even sworn enemies strive to avoid! There are reasons to seek peace, to quell the tensions between the Powers, and in part this tension is kept by a constant balance with no single Major Power ever gaining a definitive advantage over the others.

To reflect this in Star Trek: Infinite, we added two systems that interact with each other to push the galaxy into this back and forth in a way that seems organic and justified. The first is the balance of power, where you can clearly see the relative power of all four major players, and make decisions of who to befriend and who to ostracize, because the A.I. surely will�

The other system is galactic tension, because war does not affect only those involved in it! War pushes all factions into uncertainty and instability which, in turn, puts them under threat too! The longer the duration of a war, the more extreme measures will be considered, and the less you can trust that the crosshairs won�t fall on you next. Any action of aggression and violence increases this tension, and any move for collaboration and conciliation reduces it. If you let it go too far, society itself may crumble!

But if an all-out war is something we want to avoid, how can we expand without going to war? One answer we came up with is our new Principles mechanic.

Principles

Instead of having ethics, each �pop� (meaning population, the citizenry on your planets) may feel more attracted to the principles that represent each of the Major Powers. Among other gameplay elements, spies and governors become extraordinarily important in influencing how affiliated they are with these principles. Now why would I want a pop to seek to follow the principle of my power? A pop that follows a different principle than the power they belong to has a chance of defecting to his new affiliation!

I wanted to be brief and, much like sitting down to watch �just one episode of TNG,� time flew by and we ended up going through a lot. I would like to tell you much, much more but I think that is quite a lot for this week already! I hope we can meet again soon!

End log,

Ezequiel Maldonado
Game Director

Thom12255 fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Sep 30, 2023

# ? Sep 23, 2023 19:07

Bremen: Jul 20, 2006; Our God..... is an awesome God

As I said when it was announced, it will take a lot to make me buy what is in effect a Stellaris mod. But that's not the same as saying I won't buy what amounts to a Stellaris mod. If they really manage to succeed in this and create a fun Star Trek strategy game I think that's awesome. I'm just in the "wait and see and don't get my hopes up" stage.

# ? Sep 23, 2023 20:46

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Bremen posted:

As I said when it was announced, it will take a lot to make me buy what is in effect a Stellaris mod. But that's not the same as saying I won't buy what amounts to a Stellaris mod. If they really manage to succeed in this and create a fun Star Trek strategy game I think that's awesome. I'm just in the "wait and see and don't get my hopes up" stage.

I think that's fair. My favorite Star Trek game was Elite Force which was a straight up Quake 3 reskin so if this is going to be in that vein and be fun and immersive then for $30 I think that's an okay deal.

# ? Sep 23, 2023 21:02

Ardryn: Oct 27, 2007; Rolling around at the speed of sound.

Bremen posted:

As I said when it was announced, it will take a lot to make me buy what is in effect a Stellaris mod. But that's not the same as saying I won't buy what amounts to a Stellaris mod. If they really manage to succeed in this and create a fun Star Trek strategy game I think that's awesome. I'm just in the "wait and see and don't get my hopes up" stage.

At the very least, it'll probably run better than the Stellaris mod. :v:

# ? Sep 23, 2023 21:06

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Ardryn posted:

At the very least, it'll probably run better than the Stellaris mod.

It'll likely run better than Stellaris in general - the scale of both the map and fleets is much smaller.

# ? Sep 23, 2023 21:13

Bremen: Jul 20, 2006; Our God..... is an awesome God

Thom12255 posted:

I think that's fair. My favorite Star Trek game was Elite Force which was a straight up Quake 3 reskin so if this is going to be in that vein and be fun and immersive then for $30 I think that's an okay deal.

If there's one thing that dev blog got right it's that Birth of the Federation was indeed a lot of fun. So there's potential here.

Ardryn posted:

At the very least, it'll probably run better than the Stellaris mod.

I actually kind of hope if this game is a success it might result in some cross pollination that goes back and improves Stellaris (or a potential Stellaris 2).

# ? Sep 23, 2023 21:13

HallelujahLee: May 3, 2009

they got plenty of dlc potential if this goes right

# ? Sep 23, 2023 21:55

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

I'm really looking forward to this, and not just because I've got a friend who did some work on it.

I really hope they get to do some DLC!

# ? Sep 23, 2023 23:12

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Eiba posted:

I'm really looking forward to this, and not just because I've got a friend who did some work on it.

I really hope they get to do some DLC!

What role were they in? I'm impressed by all the work the artists have done.

# ? Sep 23, 2023 23:13

A GIANT PARSNIP: Apr 13, 2010; Too much fuckin' eggnog

Stellaris mods are still captive to the core game functions - a new release that can modify the core game should be able to deliver a better experience.

I�ll still wait to see the reviews at launch but I�m a sucker for Star Trek garbage so I�ll buy if the reviews are decent.

# ? Sep 24, 2023 01:21

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Thom12255 posted:

What role were they in? I'm impressed by all the work the artists have done.

I think he ended up doing some writing and UI stuff.

He didn't know a ton about Star Trek before he got hired, so I got to nerd out about what was cool about the setting while he was preparing for his interview. Now he's quoting In the Pale Moonlight at me out of the blue, so I think it went well. Sounds like the work culture has real fans behind it.

# ? Sep 24, 2023 04:00

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Eiba posted:

I think he ended up doing some writing and UI stuff.

He didn't know a ton about Star Trek before he got hired, so I got to nerd out about what was cool about the setting while he was preparing for his interview. Now he's quoting In the Pale Moonlight at me out of the blue, so I think it went well. Sounds like the work culture has real fans behind it.

Sounds like a lot of fun.

# ? Sep 24, 2023 15:52

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Updated OP with a FAQ that was posted on Steam. Main highlight is that the map is 500 systems large and that exploration is intended to last til the late game.

# ? Sep 24, 2023 18:26

Bremen: Jul 20, 2006; Our God..... is an awesome God

Huh, I had no idea release was that close. I look forward to hearing/seeing some hands on impressions.

# ? Sep 24, 2023 22:04

tithin: Nov 14, 2003; [Grandmaster Tactician]

Can't wait for someone to port the borg crisis to the main stellaris branch.

# ? Sep 24, 2023 23:45

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

IGN has a preview video with some new looks at the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWgU9vbHXgk

Can hear some of the OST and sound effects too which sound good. However, it seems like - at least for this preview build - they're using the base Stellaris advisor voices which seem really out of place?

Edit:

Another new thing over Stellaris is that hyperlanes will still exist in small amounts but they are used to bypass the main empire's region of space so that you can still explore and not end up boxed in within 25-50 game years.

Thom12255 fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Sep 25, 2023

# ? Sep 25, 2023 00:08

Dramicus: Mar 26, 2010; Grimey Drawer

I would hope they recorded new advisors for the factions, but isn't one of the stellaris advisors literally a star trek lady?

# ? Sep 25, 2023 02:51

Ardryn: Oct 27, 2007; Rolling around at the speed of sound.

Dramicus posted:

I would hope they recorded new advisors for the factions, but isn't one of the stellaris advisors literally a star trek lady?

I don't think so, but the militarist advisor is basically doing a Klingon voice and I think the authoritarian one is a pretty good Romulan adjacent.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 03:09

Dramicus: Mar 26, 2010; Grimey Drawer

Ardryn posted:

I don't think so, but the militarist advisor is basically doing a Klingon voice and I think the authoritarian one is a pretty good Romulan adjacent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0mQfo0h3PE
I could be wrong, but I think this is the psychic lady who advises Picard.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 03:17

Ardryn: Oct 27, 2007; Rolling around at the speed of sound.

Dramicus posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0mQfo0h3PE
I could be wrong, but I think this is the psychic lady who advises Picard.

It's very close, but no it's not Marina Sirtis, who plays Dianna Troi. I don't blame you though, she had me going for a while too.

IMDb says it's the same person who does the militarist advisor too.

Ardryn fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Sep 25, 2023

# ? Sep 25, 2023 03:35

pnumoman: Sep 26, 2008; I never get the last word, and it makes me very sad.

I was only kinda interested before, but as a life long casual trek fan that's been drawn in further than I've ever been because of Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds, the preorder bonuses kinda make this a no brainer preorder for me. I was probably gonna get it anyway, 30 bucks doesn't seem like too much for a more bespoke rp experience Stellaris.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 03:43

Dramicus: Mar 26, 2010; Grimey Drawer

Ardryn posted:

It's very close, but no it's not Marina Sirtis, who plays Dianna Troi. I don't blame you though, she had me going for a while too.

IMDb says it's the same person who does the militarist advisor too.

Well, drat. She's good.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 03:44

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Saw that a dev posted in the Discord that they had planned to include the Dominion in the game but had to cut it due to time so DLC opportunity there.

Edit:

Also I asked on their Discord about the advisor voices and the devs said that they had asked IGN not to include those voice overs as they didn't have the new ones in the preview build yet due to the writers strike.

Thom12255 fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Sep 25, 2023

# ? Sep 25, 2023 14:02

HallelujahLee: May 3, 2009

yeah theres plenty of dlc content they can do adding in all the quadrants borg dominion etc

# ? Sep 25, 2023 14:16

Horizon Burning: Oct 23, 2019

i really like stellaris but for quite some time now i've felt that they made a major mistake with having custom races and an indistinct universe, that the game would've been better with something more concrete (and, seemingly smaller-scale.) i'm not much of a star trek fan, but i'm interested in this to see if it feels better than stellaris.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 14:24

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Horizon Burning posted:

i really like stellaris but for quite some time now i've felt that they made a major mistake with having custom races and an indistinct universe, that the game would've been better with something more concrete (and, seemingly smaller-scale.) i'm not much of a star trek fan, but i'm interested in this to see if it feels better than stellaris.

Same. I think this game might not be as fun for someone who doesn't care about the Trek set dressing though - it seems that is a huge emphasis for the devs.

Another tidbit I've discovered is that instead of leaders commanding the whole fleet they instead are put onto the individual starships in the fleet.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 14:43

Poil: Mar 17, 2007

I just want andorians with their cute little antennae that moves based on their mood. :3:

# ? Sep 25, 2023 14:45

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

I really don't see how this is going to compete with the main mod for Stellaris which is so absurdly detailed I can play as rubber forehead alien species #4519 and get a unique gameplay experience with all sorts of crazy events that fit them alongside a custom fleet system that this game seems to be outright cribbing at least some notes off of. Some stuff like captains being assigned as military leaders to ships are ripped straight out of mechanics from the mod, in fact.

And never mind with them basically putting in every minute detail as a playable element. The mod's basically a Star Trek universe sim at this point, complete with various AU's and even a functional mirror universe that you can choose to interact with, play in, or not.

It's giving me "Why are people going to buy the Command and Conquer remake except for nostalgia or future modding purposes when the mod scene has done most of what they're doing over the years for free?" vibes. There's a case where the community just knocks it out of the park and it's hard for a corporation to compete.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Sep 25, 2023

# ? Sep 25, 2023 15:21

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Archonex posted:

I really don't see how this is going to compete with the main mod for Stellaris which is so absurdly detailed I can play as rubber forehead alien species #4519 and get a unique gameplay experience with all sorts of crazy events that fit them alongside a custom fleet system that this game seems to be outright cribbing at least some notes off of. Some stuff like captains being assigned as military leaders to ships are ripped straight out of mechanics from the mod, in fact.

And never mind with them basically putting in every minute detail as a playable element. The mod's basically a Star Trek universe sim at this point, complete with various AU's and even a functional mirror universe that you can choose to interact with, play in, or not.

It's giving me "Why are people going to buy the Command and Conquer remake except for nostalgia or future modding purposes when the mod scene has done most of what they're doing over the years for free?" vibes. There's a case where the community just knocks it out of the park and it's hard for a corporation to compete.

The mod is great - it's also a lagfest after only a few decades and I've never been able to get close to finishing a game. I'm all here for the smaller polished scale of this game. I think they're trying to do different things and the New Civilizations mod lead is pretty supportive of them coexisting.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 15:27

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Thom12255 posted:

The mod is great - it's also a lagfest after only a few decades and I've never been able to get close to finishing a game. I'm all here for the smaller polished scale of this game. I think they're trying to do different things and the New Civilizations mod lead is pretty supportive of them coexisting.

Unfortunately this not going to change with this game since the lag comes from how poorly optimized the base game they're building off of it is. From the sounds of it they're using Stellaris's code as a base which has it's own issues. It's been fairly terrible ever since they changed pops to be more resource intensive the more there are in the game world. Something about the tracking of them seems to crater performance, especially once automated migration factors in. Granted, they improved it in recent years but it's still pretty obvious the game has all sorts of optimization issues. :shrug:

A glorified paid mod is only going to avoid that if they scale down the functionality of the game itself. Which means avoiding displaying stuff that the more expansive content elsewhere has.

There's probably a niche for a more scaled down game that tightly focuses on a few things though. However I honestly have to wonder how many people are going to be buying this for a scaled down experience when compared to the mod (if they know of it and aren't just coming in fresh without awareness of Stellaris) or are buying it to mod the game into another expansive universe simulation.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Sep 25, 2023

# ? Sep 25, 2023 15:32

Ardryn: Oct 27, 2007; Rolling around at the speed of sound.

Archonex posted:

I really don't see how this is going to compete with the main mod for Stellaris which is so absurdly detailed I can play as rubber forehead alien species #4519 and get a unique gameplay experience with all sorts of crazy events that fit them alongside a custom fleet system that this game seems to be outright cribbing at least some notes off of. Some stuff like captains being assigned as military leaders to ships are ripped straight out of mechanics from the mod, in fact.

And never mind with them basically putting in every minute detail as a playable element. The mod's basically a Star Trek universe sim at this point, complete with various AU's and even a functional mirror universe that you can choose to interact with, play in, or not.

It's giving me "Why are people going to buy the Command and Conquer remake except for nostalgia or future modding purposes when the mod scene has done most of what they're doing over the years for free?" vibes. There's a case where the community just knocks it out of the park and it's hard for a corporation to compete.

I get the concern and wondering why someone would buy this, but there are things this can do that the New Civilizations and New Horizons mods can't: actual warp travel, the fleet supply system, exploration that doesn't need something artificial to slow it down, hoi-like focuses, the global balance of power. One thing that does irk me about the NH mod's milky way map in particular is it's basically impossible to prevent the entire galaxy from knowing about everyone before even the Kirk era and infinite might solve that.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 16:28

McSpanky: Jan 16, 2005

One of the central gameplay features I like about this game as opposed to Stellaris is the increased emphasis on diplomacy and relative empire strength, as opposed to Stellaris' implicit goal of "conquer everyone else to win". Judging from everything I've seen it should be pretty rare for one of the main factions to disappear entirely through most or all of an average game, which is already a huge departure from the Stellaris standard. Even New Horizons can't change the core gameplay that much.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 16:31

Dramicus: Mar 26, 2010; Grimey Drawer

McSpanky posted:

One of the central gameplay features I like about this game as opposed to Stellaris is the increased emphasis on diplomacy and relative empire strength, as opposed to Stellaris' implicit goal of "conquer everyone else to win". Judging from everything I've seen it should be pretty rare for one of the main factions to disappear entirely through most or all of an average game, which is already a huge departure from the Stellaris standard. Even New Horizons can't change the core gameplay that much.

Yeah, the balance of power and intrigue systems should make this play quite a bit differently from a typical Stellaris campaign. From the looks of it, war is going to be a much more dramatic affair that is preceded by negotiations and talks failing and so forth. They also mentioned that wars will destabilize the entire quadrant by impacting trade, production, raw materials, etc and the longer they go on, the more severe the effects.

Infinite looks to be very TNG in that war is the absolute last resort and to be avoided at all costs. Since there is omni-directional warp travel, I could see it being really hard to stop raiding fleets that can go to systems and inflict severe economic maluses that persist for years.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 16:34

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Dramicus posted:

Yeah, the balance of power and intrigue systems should make this play quite a bit differently from a typical Stellaris campaign. From the looks of it, war is going to be a much more dramatic affair that is preceded by negotiations and talks failing and so forth. They also mentioned that wars will destabilize the entire quadrant by impacting trade, production, raw materials, etc and the longer they go on, the more severe the effects.

Infinite looks to be very TNG in that war is the absolute last resort and to be avoided at all costs. Since there is omni-directional warp travel, I could see it being really hard to stop raiding fleets that can go to systems and inflict severe economic maluses that persist for years.

Fleet warp range is limited by supply so if you want to hit deep into someone's territory you will first have to take over systems on the borders so that will help give wars a frontline.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:21

Dramicus: Mar 26, 2010; Grimey Drawer

Thom12255 posted:

Fleet warp range is limited by supply so if you want to hit deep into someone's territory you will first have to take over systems on the borders so that will help give wars a frontline.

It could be limited, but my experience with how warp worked in Stellaris when it first launched leads me to think the range will be decently far at first and made significantly farther with research. I wouldn't be surprised if the base range lets you reach half-way into the territory of other powers.

# ? Sep 28, 2023 22:55

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Dramicus posted:

It could be limited, but my experience with how warp worked in Stellaris when it first launched leads me to think the range will be decently far at first and made significantly farther with research. I wouldn't be surprised if the base range lets you reach half-way into the territory of other powers.

This is the only picture I've seen showing it:

Comparing it to a wider view of the map it is a fairly small area in total:

New dev diary tomorrow.

Thom12255 fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Sep 28, 2023

# ? Sep 28, 2023 22:57

Dramicus: Mar 26, 2010; Grimey Drawer

Thom12255 posted:

This is the only picture I've seen showing it:

Comparing it to a wider view of the map it is a fairly small area in total:

New dev diary tomorrow.

Looks like range might start with 1/3rd the way into neighboring territory and techs would likely boost it to 1/2 or more. But It remains to be seen how galaxy size will scale alongside that. Could be that larger map sizes change things dramatically.

# ? Sep 28, 2023 23:10

HallelujahLee: May 3, 2009

my guess is the larger maps come in dlc or if they allow mod support modders

# ? Sep 29, 2023 00:16

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# ? May 5, 2024 23:11

Thom12255: Feb 23, 2013; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

HallelujahLee posted:

my guess is the larger maps come in dlc or if they allow mod support modders

It has full mod support, same as Stellaris. Only thing I've seen the devs say is they will be more strict with what is allowed on the workshop - no Star Wars mods for this game for instance as Paramount wouldn't like it.

# ? Sep 29, 2023 04:09

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Star Trek: Infinite - It's Stellaris but with Rubber-Forehead Aliens

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