Stellaris End-All

Do major patches like this invalidate current saves? Or even better, is there certainty that it will/won’t?

PaladinTom wrote:

Do major patches like this invalidate current saves? Or even better, is there certainty that it will/won’t?

They usually recommend you finish your current games on your existing versions before updating and starting a new one. 2.0 had to do this as they removed the whole propulsion system and made everyone explore space the same way

It is likely that your saves will break under thr new patch. However, if you have a save you want to finish you can just switch to the archived version of the game, finish it and update when you are ready.

tboon wrote:

You can't move around them until you get better stuff. So go somewhere else until you do. On the plus side, anyone else will not be able to get to you (most likely - if you have advanced AI starts turned this may not necessarily be true).

As for what they, it is hard to tell from the screenshot. Could be space amoeba, ancient robot mining ships, crystalline entities, or another nasty I cannot remember - the galaxy is a wondrous and dangerous place. They randomly spawn a few jumps away from your start; it appears you got moderately unlucky in that they are pretty close to your homeworld (but you also have found 3 habitable worlds close by too, so that is pretty lucky).

The hostiles will not move so you can not worry about them until you get a bigger navy to go take them out.

My amoebas move. They ooze into neighboring systems now and then. They don't destroy infrastructure, exactly, but it's annoying.

Renji wrote:

Looks like a marauder cluster. Leave em alone and expand another direction. You can expand right up to their border though. And likely no one else can make it through their territory either. You may have to bribe them occasionally later on or face annihilation, but it's not too pricey. Also you can buy sweet admirals and generals from them if you have the cash.

HOW?

Wasn’t aware of the archive. Thanks all.

Natus, iirc, you just negotiate with them.

Ugh. Espionage. The point at which a 4x introduces an espionage system is generally the point at which I assume they’re out of any interesting ideas or ways to actually improve the game. Is there a 4x out there that has an espionage system that’s fun to interact with?

Natus wrote:
Renji wrote:

Looks like a marauder cluster. Leave em alone and expand another direction. You can expand right up to their border though. And likely no one else can make it through their territory either. You may have to bribe them occasionally later on or face annihilation, but it's not too pricey. Also you can buy sweet admirals and generals from them if you have the cash.

HOW?

You'll have to talk to them, either by clicking their faction symbol on the map (where the "?" is now), or through the contacts menu on the left bar. But before you do that you have to make contact with them through the situation log.

Renji wrote:
Natus wrote:
Renji wrote:

Looks like a marauder cluster. Leave em alone and expand another direction. You can expand right up to their border though. And likely no one else can make it through their territory either. You may have to bribe them occasionally later on or face annihilation, but it's not too pricey. Also you can buy sweet admirals and generals from them if you have the cash.

HOW?

You'll have to talk to them, either by clicking their faction symbol on the map (where the "?" is now), or through the contacts menu on the left bar. But before you do that you have to make contact with them through the situation log.

Thank you and Robear. So much of this is hidden under the hood it drives me crazy! So many neat ideas you'd never think to even try. I spent ten minutes trying to govern my sectors because it wasn't immediately apparent how to do that. And let me tell you how surprised I was when at looooong last an archeological dig finished up, and it was a Dragon the size of a solar system. NOMNOMNOM! So glad I spent a few centuries digging *that* out!

Anybody have advice on pirates erupting out of nowhere and attacking outposts? They're really more of a nuisance than anything else, but I'm not sure how to stop them from appearing.

billt721 wrote:

Ugh. Espionage. The point at which a 4x introduces an espionage system is generally the point at which I assume they’re out of any interesting ideas or ways to actually improve the game. Is there a 4x out there that has an espionage system that’s fun to interact with?

HOI 4 espionage is pretty decent.

Explore around and you’ll find one or more pirate bases that can be attacked and wiped out.

When I start a new game, I tend to increase the number of hyperspace lanes - I don't want things boxing me in.

Be careful not to up it too much cause that can bite you pretty hard later on. defending against invasion without choke points can be really tough.

How important are leaders?

I understand you can always recruit new leaders when needed, but the levelling up and death mechanic has me wondering if I should be paying more attention to them. I usually just throw whatever person I can find into my science vessels and let them do their thing.

I'm sure there are benefits to placing leaders on planets and into military fleets, but outside of the small % increase in firepower etc. I haven't really felt much difference.

I'm assuming leader lifespan upgrades are good because they let you use levelled up leaders for longer, but I just haven't felt much difference. Perhaps I'm not looking in the right areas.

Leaders can be quite important, but in a rather subtle way.
Once you have a strong understanding of the research system, you can actually start to manipulate it a bit by using scientists with the right specialization (for example, if you don't have alot of systems to expand to you might grab someone with voidcraft for engineering to up the likelihood of getting techs that will lead you to habitats).
Once you have a strong energy credits income you can actually have a stable of scientists with different specialties to drive your research im the directions you want or need.
Governors can help alot with soecializing your sectors. I usually get a science govenor since i like to tech up fast.
Military leaders also have a useful effect on their areas but i don't use the war systems enough to give useful advice.

Also, highly leveled leaders can greatly reduce the time you need to research during the research events (ie, after you've found stuff out in the galaxy). Military leaders can tilt the odds in a fight or make it easier to withdraw. Every percent you can add will make a difference in the long run, so protect your leaders and give them tasks that will give them experience.

Assigning governors to different sectors I still find very tricky. I try to "leader up" as much as possible, but it would be great if the game would help me do so.

You can shortcut to the Province menu with the Province view (halfway across the top of the Map options bar), and then from their just click on the double arrows to change the governor. Oh, and I think an alert drops in the upper left that will take you the empty positions, one after another, as you left click on it.

I had a very interesting start today.

A few months in, some space caravaneers came to sell me some unnecessary item. Shortly after telling them to buzz off, another caravaneer dropped by to sell me a leader for only 300 credits! After buying him, they were so happy with the deal they ran a parade through my galaxy, netting me 1000 credits in return.

It looks like they had a little bit too much fun though, as I now have a whole new race to play with. They bred with my colonists! This let me go out and expand into worlds not usually habitable for my original faction.

Unfortunately, the colonization efforts were cut short by my researchers finding a floating tree. Some nasty aliens came out to defend it, and send a 1000 point fleet hurtling through my area, destroying starbases and innocent science ships!

I've only just now destroyed them and used the tree's bizzare bio-metal to bolster my fleets with regenerating hulls!

A_Unicycle wrote:

I had a very interesting start today.

A few months in, some space caravaneers came to sell me some unnecessary item. Shortly after telling them to buzz off, another caravaneer dropped by to sell me a leader for only 300 credits! After buying him, they were so happy with the deal they ran a parade through my galaxy, netting me 1000 credits in return.

It looks like they had a little bit too much fun though, as I now have a whole new race to play with. They bred with my colonists! This let me go out and expand into worlds not usually habitable for my original faction.

Unfortunately, the colonization efforts were cut short by my researchers finding a floating tree. Some nasty aliens came out to defend it, and send a 1000 point fleet hurtling through my area, destroying starbases and innocent science ships!

I've only just now destroyed them and used the tree's bizzare bio-metal to bolster my fleets with regenerating hulls!

I never understood the whole Paradox "just enjoy the ride" mindset until this game. That's a grfeat story.

Why won't the Caravaneers breed with *my* people? What's wrong with tree people?

God, I wanna love this so bad, but I hit the mid-game every time and Stellaris goes from "Whee! Exploration! Aliens! Finding unseen relics!" to "So I can just leave this running while I do the dishes and read a book, and come back when the end game starts?"

Is this something I can deal with using mods? Because I've basically expanded as far as I can and now we're just sitting here, researching things and trading sh*t until 2400.

mods can certainly spice things up, there are some that add new mid game mini crisis style events. you can also just change when the midgame starts (there's a slider for that at galaxy creation). determine when you usually get comfortable and slice 10 years off to challenge yourself :).
i'm a big fan of gigastructural engineering, more events mod, and more ai personalities. forgotten queens and nyblax are good too.
gigastruct even allows multiple crisis's to happen at once (which can be fun in a daunting way) and in the latest adds the possibility of galactic core faction appearing that starts with like 20 million fleet power on the easy setting. i think that one also adds a mid game mini crisis that will literally take over the galaxy in a few decades if you don't fight it on multiple fronts (most of which are not directly military)

I'll have to take a look, because I just adore the early stages of this game. But from a brief perusal of the internet, it seems like there's broad agreement that once you hit the middle, it's a fine game to have on in the background while you do something else.

Early game is tradition Space 4x. Mid-game turns into EU4 in space without all the history explaining why everything is the way it is and, as such, has less personality than EU4.

The game is somewhat better, IMO, if you decide to be aggressive and drive the game. Being passive, yeah, it will turn into a background game.

I can also strongly recommend role playing your species, if I'm playing my socialist diplomats, i will build 0 ships and hold on with only soft power if i can only building ships in a defensive war and trashing them after, if im playing my lifeform collecting robots, I'll raid for pops even when i really shouldnt be at war or have no room for the pops. For me at least, tltellibg a story is where stellaris thrives, yeah once you are good at it, it wil be a story of how your race mastered the galaxy, but, what path will you take.
Another fun one i haven't done in awhile is to regularly reform your government by embracing the largest factions.
Challenge is not where stellaris does it's best work (at least in single player, maybe multi-player games do, i don't know)

tboon wrote:

Early game is tradition Space 4x. Mid-game turns into EU4 in space without all the history explaining why everything is the way it is and, as such, has less personality than EU4.

The game is somewhat better, IMO, if you decide to be aggressive and drive the game. Being passive, yeah, it will turn into a background game.

My big issue when I'm boxed in is that the surrounding aliens usually have advanced technology to mine and are in the process of invading. Sure, once in a while one moderately advanced race will invade and I'll smack them back, but then they just ally with a neighbor and return.

focusing on research is quite important, but you don't forget about soft power and keep in mind that you can actually vassalize yourself to other civs to protect yourself. gives some wrinkles of it's own but if you are in an untenable situation, find someone who likes you and is powerful, then you have a big friend on the playground and you can focus on teching, securing your economy and then break out onto the galactic field when you are ready.

Tycho the Mad wrote:

Challenge is not where stellaris does it's best work (at least in single player, maybe multi-player games do, i don't know)

The other day I stumbled across a YouTube video that was a 32-player Stellaris game that somebody was observing and casting like it was an esports tournament. They talked about ranks and "meta" and everything. I didn't have time to watch more than a couple minutes then, but I may have to queue that up for late-night-baby-holding viewing and see if there's anything there.

I still with they'd thrown out the multiplayer balance and made something that was more galaxy-sim/Crusader-Kings-ish, but I've had many happy hours in multiplayer so I suppose I shouldn't complain.

Brizahd wrote:

So I have been playing the mobile version of Stellaris (Stellaris galaxy command)for 3 days now. It is like a stripped down dumber version than the pc. I’ve only got a space station and spend my time researching, building structures, making ships and harvesting resource nodes. Randomly I will have events that I will have to make choices that affect my ethics.

I’ve tried twice to claim a system and both times been wiped out by the pirate fleet guarding the capital.

Anyway it has been great as a couch game. Just unlocked destroyers! Soon it will be round 3 with the pirates.

So... it is a big pay to win game. Also the daily loops are routine and not exciting. Major combat focus, and combat is all about who has the biggest stacks of doom. In game events are always going to reward the bigger players who have been playing the longest. I’m only playing it cause of time sink I’ve put in and I want to see what there is to do once you’ve researched everything and built everything.

No niches or real strategy. Big fish beat on little fish. Little fish cannot compete, no chance for a battle of Thermopylae here.