1 more day!

Estimated release time is now back to 2:00 pm EST(per Steam). Also a bunch of people getting all kerfluffled about the fact that slave revolts didn't make it into the release version.

That's all I have right for hype-dampening duty. Neither bothers me.

Darn... I'm off tomorrow but I pick my girl up from school around 2:30.. was hoping to be playing during the day before she got home.

Is this going to be good solo?

Yeah I saw that about the slave revolts. It's such a small part of the game, kinda silly to have a fit over it. Especially when its something that will probably be added soon.

If you watch some of the livestreams/let's plays, it seems to play rather well solo. Can't really tell for sure till I get my hands on the game though.

I have nothing going on tomorrow until the Blues game.. so I hope to get at least a few hours in.

Will the game automatically download for me while I'm at work tomorrow?

Doubtful, unless your PC is smarter than mine! Consensus is back to noon EST now which is weird ... I don't think anyone really knows for sure.

cKnoor does a random empire stream:

Stellaris - Random Empire Start - Part 1 - YouTube

It won't download automatically, but with the phone app you can make it download when it becomes available. Leave Steam up on your PC and you can do it from your phone.

Ahh, so you just need a phone that is smarter than mine then(I'm a lifelong confirmed dumbphone user).

Holy crap there are some people that take this WAY too seriously. Have you seen the Steam thread about the release? Not everyone but there are some who sound like 2 year-olds throwing a temper tantrum.

Yeah it's like that pretty much everywhere. Not worth getting involved in it.

looking like 3 pm EST right now. does anybody have a key?

I think the older the internet gets, the worse the users get. People like to complain about everything.

Where do you get updates?

Thomkal probably bribed a developer ;). I don't have anything that doesn't still say noon EST roughly which is the usual steam time. I'm choosing to believe that because I like that time better than 3p.

This concerns me a little bit.

Stellaris Review - IGN

Looks to me like a mix of legitimate criticism with some things that just aren't true. Examples of the latter:

** No reason other than war to trade -- um, yes there is. Intelligence(star charts/sensor links), resources can be an important one but won't usually be, research agreements can really be helpful, etc. I don't agree based on what I've seen of gameplay that trade is a weak point. Espionage, on the other hand -- yes, that's not a feature.

** Regarding tech and abstracted combat -- this along with the sectors comments make me wonder whether the reviewer knows they are playing a Paradox game. There is a big difference between weapons systems as can be seen from the recorded battles that are already out there. Some of the people in the MP event talked about situations where they had superior numbers in a fleet but still lost. Previous Paradox games like HOI3 had even less combat info but you could still tell the difference when you advanced in something and it was still significant so ... just seems like they were expecting moo-style tactical combat and aggravated that they didn't get it or something.

Review did make some good points but most of the criticism I honestly think is off-base. Of course we'll all see for sure soon.

Another one.

Stellaris PC Review | GameWatcher

Stellaris Countdown

With livestream.

Sounds like a typical Paradox game that's going to require patches before it's great.

Just looked at one of the reviews - what's the difference between Stellaris MP and something like Eve Online? They look tremendously similar.

I just got an email from them with the extras you get from pre-ordering. There are some links there for where you can activate them. Check the keys link in your Paradox account for them. I do not have one for the game itself yet.

I've gotten nothing yet :(.

Question... How will multiplayer work in this game, is it live gameplay only or something along the lines of offline turn based?

I've been watching the paradox stream this morning and somebody just asked that very question. It's live gameplay, everybody online at once.

It's live only, at whatever speed is agreed upon(set by the host, I think).

well I've not played EVE online-does it let you control a empire or do you play as an individual player/ship?

game has been released. I do not have my key for the game yet

correct that-game is installing on Steam now.

So it's out now -- and the Stellaris forums appear to have crashed. At least from my end. I may have to wait a while before I can actually download it.

Edit: Spoke too soon, steam just updated and I'm downloading! Yay!! The hype train has reached it's destination.

Installing now!!! :)

Installing.

Installed. After a little flutter at the beginning when my download went to "63 days" it zipped along at top speed. Good that the Steam servers didnt get crushed like on some other releases.

download complete-see ya tomorrow :)

Loving the intro and opening exploration of the initial star system!

Shows as downloaded on the Steam app on my phone. :D

I'll check it out after hitting lessons tonight.

Should get a few hours in tonight. ;)

Stellaris Review | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A little more positive of a review. Seems to gel well with my expectations.

Happy space faring FOFC!

Man I am really digging the music in this game.

Any way to preload a game from not on that computer? I need to enter my GMG code and I can't find a simple way to do this through the steam web thingy.

Another glowing review...

https://explorminate.net/2016/05/09/stellaris-review/

my hero.

seriously, I have zero patience waiting for a game to download and this saved me that headache. using that app and see it ready and waiting for me and my arrival home is the best feeling a Monday at work can bring.

Me too! I'm not sure if it was coincidence or not, but I got some great thematic music when I colonized my first planet. Enjoying everything about the game so far.

Alright I'm in.

Good thing that GMG still has it for 25% off.

so played around with the pre-set "us" for a bit with the tutorial going to start to get a feel for the game. Explored a couple anomalies (the alien mural being the most interesting so far (and productive). Met my first species-a rat like group of scientists. Going to start a new game later with the race I want to create and start to explore some of the ethics and government options.

Damn i was patiently waiting for HOI IV as I'm more into WEII than space but all the good reviews finally made me to buy it, downloading now.

So right now I'm having fun with galaxy generation. Paradox was a bit coy with how big the random galaxies can go. Answer: pretty darn big. I started by doubling the huge size just to be silly, double all the empires and everything too. No problem. I doubled it again. Took a lot longer to generate but the game didn't complain. At an obscene 4k stars, I'm going to see how far I can go. Anything above about 1500(even with a reduced or eliminated galaxy core) is going to have a potential gameplay issue of increased star density since the galaxy can only go about 10% 'wider' and 'taller' than the default huge, but it appears there will be a rather insane upper limit on how big they can be.

Let's see how much I can abuse this ...

Started out a Earthlings with a Representative Democracy. Finished survey Sol and on to...

Just got home from work and now downloading.

This may well be unplayable, but those who are interested in such things:



That's 10 thousand stars, or 10 huge galaxies rolled into one. 50k was too many. You have to increase star density to get much above 3k. Only took a few minutes to generate.

This is going to be insane in a few months once the modders figure out the max. of what's possible in various aspects here. .

My god it's full of stars!

Looking forward to spending Christmas break with this. Until then, i´ll be eagerly living this through you lot ;)

Brian if you play in that universe, I suspect we will never see you again. Come back to us! :)

That's beautiful, man.

I think these large galaxies are going to be a problem in the late game when they are all colonized, etc.

Heck, just customizing your race is quite fun with all the options!

With the Blues game, I only just started a medium size galaxy game.. but the UI is the BEST in any 4x game I've played.

I don't know how to edit the title of the thread, but if I say ALRIGHT BOYZ! will Abe post in the thread now? :)

edit the first post, you can change title there.

That review seems to have confirmed some of the fears I had with this game. I love CK II, but really don't enjoy the pace of 4X games. I think (as usual) I'll await a few patches and maybe an expansion or two before taking the plunge.

The game is fantastic. As many have said, the UI is incredible. I've only dabbled a bit to get used to the systems, but the balance between exploration, research, development...I'm going to have a lot of fun with this one.

Fun Game. I dont care much for a battles/war in games. I like the expansion/research/exploration part. I might just pick the 1000 stars with very minimal AI

Yeah, I might be on the same wavelength. The war and combat is pretty weak but the game is beautifully done and just exploring and finding planets and other features is fun.

In my first game so far I went with a medium galaxy and got boxed in a corner by warlike empires, think I'll probably up the map and slightly lower the number of AI empires next time through like you are suggesting

The combat is not the best (to be improved in the future I think) but being able to destroy enemy aliens and then use your science ships to research their technology is really cool.

Loving it a lot so far.

My only issue.... I have 2 planets named Achernar pretty much right next to each other. :D

My first experience with combat... some of my citizen revolted and turned into pirates and decided to attack one of my mining stations. Managed to save the mining station but lost 4 ships to those little bastards.

One suggestion.... turn on Details Mapmode. It is a checkbox down on the bottom right side.

It gives you more information on the galaxy map.

I actually like the combat part. Maybe I'm just not seeing what other people don't like so far. Haven't had enough experience with the war system to have an opinion on that.

Here's what my test game to try things out looks like nine years in:




The red is an empire that appears to be one of the 'advanced AI' starts. They snagged Alpha Centauri, which has the closest colonizable world, with a frontier outpost before I could get to it. The green on the right, who I'll probably end up allying with against the other one, got the next-closest one(Goffia and Yillion systems). I'm trying to get a frontier outpost up in the space between them, where I had to take out a couple groups of mining drones to even be in business. AI is clearly better than in the early stream builds, and I'm rather enjoying the fact that -- partly due to a crappy starting spot -- they are pushing me around quite a bit here at the start.

Haven't seen anything yet to convince me that I'm not going to be binge-playing this for a very long time.

Anyone know why I am seeing all kinds of auto-designed ships even with the auto button turned off? I also see duplicate ship designs with the name of my leader on them - not sure what that's all about.

I don't think I quite understand the second part, but with this one, did you delete the old ones?

*snicker*. The most powerful empire I've yet uncovered and I are both surveying the same system. Their ship is named the RRS Imprudent Plumage. Probably don't need to mention the phenotype ...

anyone know what's up with merging fleets? want to merge newly built ships into my fleet, but option is not available? also had a nice anomaly find of a alien shipyard, and not sure how to merge the new ships with my fleet.

also had my first dealings with combat thanks to pirates. defeated the initial ships, but then found their base which was another matter altogether :( good thing I found that shipyard.

You can shift click the fleets you want to merge. Once selected, there is a button on the top left corner of the panel.

I'm not home, I thought you just clicked on the ship you wanted to merge and then right clicked on fleet and picked merge?

Found this with a quick search: Select both fleets and click a button on the upper left corner to merge them

I guess the combat isn't any worse than any other Paradox game - build lots of troops, send them at the enemy and see what happens. Probably just takes some getting used to, although there's very little information presented and a lot going on.

The diplomacy/alliance stuff seems pointless with a capital P though. In my first game I'm a pacifist/individualist in a corner of the galaxy blocked in by 3 militaristic empires, who are constantly at war/rivalry with each other. Even though I'm nominally pacifist, I have a fleet equal to two of them and inferior to the other one - I should be an absolutely natural alliance to any of them if they would consider it as I'd completely tip the balance of power between them. If I want to propose an alliance they should be biting my hand off to take it - instead because of permanent negative modifiers they are all between -50 and -70 and won't consider it despite my relations being decent - so what's the point? If I want to continue the game the diplomacy screen is basically completely useless based on some of the traits I picked and the empires around me, which is a huge part of a 4x game. That's just pretty bad design, and disappointing given that the diplomacy is a massive part of EUIV and CK2. Hopefully they can build on it, but right now it seems like by far the weakest part of the game.

Yeah I can confirm this works. If they are in different locations one has to get to the other, so if you have them at other ends of the galaxy maybe you just haven't given it enough time?

This game looks cool but my tiny brain won't understand it. I'll stick with Civ which I barely understand. :)

Is combat more like an RTS where you have to give commands in real-time to your units and win that way, or turn-based like Civ where you've got time to think about it?

Sorry if this is a question with an obvious answer.

Neither actually. Combat is like other Paradox games like CK2 and HOI3. You send your fleet or army and the battle is resolved based on the abilities of your units. There is no 'tactical control' of combat. You can see what's going on in the space battles -- ground combat you don't get a lot of info on that to bhlloy's point. It's mostly a matter of bombarding the planet until the fortifications are down(during which time they may send reinforcements), and then on the ground it's about numbers mostly unless your troops are a lot better equipped. IMO the space combat is where it's at in this game, which I don't have a problem with but the ground combat is definitely limited.

I haven't seen the ground combat yet, but the space combat is exactly what Brian is saying: watch it happen. The game simplifies things tremendously by giving each fleet (regardless of # of ships) a single number to represent their power. There's much more going on than just that number, but it's a pretty good indicator of what's happening. I don't have enough experience to definitively state what's going on, but based upon the reviews I've read, there are a few things to consider:

• 1 ship at 200 power is stronger than 5 ships that combine for 200 power. The one ship will stay at 200 power throughout the course of the fight, while the 5 ships will lose power with each ship that is destroyed during the fight.
• The makeup of your ships is important - the rock-paper-scissors -ish system of Missiles / Particle Weapons / Lasers combined with the distinction of armor vs. shields will have an impact on the way the battle happens, so 100 power vs 100 power doesn't necessarily mean that the combatants are dead even.
• Speaking of ship makeup - do not forget to implement new technology before building your fleet. I was pumped to send my Corvettes out to clear a nearby star system for exploration after developing some armor and better lasers. When they flew into battle and kept firing the old lasers and getting roughed up, I realized I was building the old model Corvettes that had the default pieces on them.

They do a pretty good job of spoon feeding new things, especially with the advisor turned on full blast. It ends up being a lot of things to juggle, but nothing is difficult to understand.

Trola

One thing that seems annoying about combat - once you designate a target, your ships will lock on to that target until it - or they - is/are dead. I went in to take out an orbital mining station, and some robots from across the system came in mid-combat. My guys were roughed up so much before finishing off the station that they barely defeated the robots.

Has anyone else had this problem, or am I missing a command?

I have the checkbox checked to automatically update my ship designs when a discover a new tech.


I was reading a reddit post where folks were criticizing a YouTuber. One of the complaints he had was that enemy ships would focus down his ships while his ships would attack at random. They were criticizing him because they said you could make them focus fire down enemy ships. Damn if I've been able to figure out how to do it.

I've only been able to focus-fire enemy fleets. If there are more than one fleet involved, my guys will focus on one at a time, as long as I give the order before battle commences, to attack one ship.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...ords.927411%2F

edit: One day sales record for Stellaris.

Also keep in mind you can just take your old design that you are using and update it with new components, and save/overwrite it. Then you just click the upgrade button on your fleet and they will go to the nearest spaceport and start updating.

See, so many things that I had no idea you could do.

I've found so far that I get way too involved in my exploration and research, and simply forget to spend my resources to improve my colonies/spaceports.

There are definitely some bugs to work out -- not that I'm all that surprised. A couple I've found:

** Civilian border access treaty expired ... and I still have access permanently.

Other one's a minor spoiler possibly and I don't know how the tags for that work on this forum. Suffice to say -- stick to the regular colony ships. If you know what I'm talking about, great -- if not, I won't ruin it.

What do you guys think about Sectors? Anyone used them a lot?

Update on this: discovered the cause I think. Basically, don't delete your colony ship design without replacing it. If you do, you can still build them -- you just don't get anything after you've spent the time and minerals.

I suppose so :)

I think that;s actually pretty realistic. How many cities in America have the same name? How many counties? I totally think real life space exploration and settlement would be the same.

I just started using them. I've seen conflicting things about them as far as bugginess. But I don't know, I mean, I have to use them, right? I hit my five planet limit, added a 6th because I needed influence so I could remove an outpost, and then went to war and acquired 2 planets. So, if I didn't use sectors I would be sitting at 8/5 on planets and the penalties would be too big, right?

I just started usign them, though, and I haven't noticed anything too bad. I have been having to build and update teh spaceports still, and just glanced at the one that I first created and it's at least building buildings on the spaces. When I go back in I will see what they are actually building to make sure it isn't completely stupid.

But, yea, I mean they are necessary right?

You need to give sectors a boost at first because they're probably in energy/material debt.

I don't have the game open, where is this option? Will your older fleets still have the option to update at the closest base when this is enabled?

I thought it was right there on the bottom left of the screen when you open the ship design panel. It does work with the auto-update button on fleets.

Yep. I don't use it because I like to make sure my designs are the best I can, or at least want to make them, but that's where it is. Pretty prominent checkbox, yet easy to miss.

Thank you both! I'm not keen on ship building.. however I might dabble in it a bit once I play more.

Well there goes my Alzar dynasty :)