I wished they changed how the IAs decides to allow (or not allow) a new member into their federation, they have a…ima call it willingness, to allow someone into their fed based on distance, which is conpletely dumb, you can be LITERALLY besides one of the federation members, but since you are far away from one of them, youll likely never get into their federation, please fix this
Also the "allows war of agression". One member will want you in because you allow them and another won't because you don't. If you change your policies then they swap.
@@derpidius6306 Because they're close, and very friendly, one of them being much stronger than the other will override that difference. Honestly I think Federations should work off of the Federation itself. If the Federation itself allows wars of aggression, then even if your empire doesn't, you can still get dragged into wars by the other fed members. However when voting to allow someone in, it wouldn't impact the vote, because its based on what the Federation is. Not what each personal empire is.
I will admit this annoys me, as a Federation Builder, to encounter this every game. As soon as the computer joins... they will fight every other join request! If you manage two computers, somehow, don't hold your breath on a third.... Only fix I have seen is to wait till the by-laws kick in so I can over-rule them.
Something I wish they would add is the ability to have an empire join or leave an existing war. For example: A war starts between two of my neighbors. I'd love to be able to join that war to support one of the empires, and gain all sorts of diplomatic bonuses in exchange for it. Alternatively, if I get stuck in a war that seems like it will never end because my allies are too stupid to achieve their war goals, I want the option to gtfo even if they hate me for it. Another fun war option would be for someone to hire you to help them in a war, but you'll only stay hired for 1 year. You get paid extra depending on how much damage you do, and you automatically exit the war after the allotted time unless they renew the contract.
Its super annoying when someone else starts a war with your enemy and now you cant get proper occupation because player 3 is occupying some of the systems.
Should be 5 years because 1 year is too little in stellaris- without hyperlane battleship fleet are just too slow 5 years would be better as its also the same time you have to change a vassal contract
The problem is that this introduces a lot of complicated edge-cases, but even the existing system has some weird edge-case situations. So they may as well lol
I would like the science ship automation to not fly halfway across the galaxy to finish surveying a system where another automated science ship has just found an anomaly
I'd like them to be greedy: pick the closest task. Don't sail for years to go do something when you could be just going through one hop to the nearest system.
Religion is a BIG one for me. Like, spiritualist empires are really just religion-coded, but if you look closer theres really nothing there. Just ambiguous worship, or shroud stuff. Being able to make religions would be huge, and incentivize me to actually play spiritualist.
I really really don't want religion. I just wish they would rename temples and priets so people would stop bringing it up. I like ambiguous worship and shroud stuff, the few events mentioning religion sometimes mention that your empire has millions of religions, cults and beliefs. To my intergalactic space empire people's personal beliefs are completely irrelevant and turning religion into another drop down policy would suck.
Perhaps, Religion Spread has been a feature of other games and it is something I quite enjoy, but it can't be limited to just Spiritualist Empires. Thus I propose an interesting compromise, one that would use the very same 'religious mechanics' found within other games, but not limit it to just Spiritualists: Factions spread outside of your borders! Some builds might even be made for it, getting your faction to 'polluted' their political spheres... could be a very potent tactic for fanatics. Tweaks would need to be made to ensure it doesn't snowball too fast, such as penalties for trying to spread between nations without migration treaties, but I like this concept. Add the ability to rename factions and we have unique religions that can be spread, right along side the ideology of whatever -ism is forming within your neighbors empire. Fanatics, as mentioned before, should be boosted further by this concept... all those policies that boost a particular faction will have a 'bleed over the border' effect that could sway a while galaxy towards a singular ideology. Hive minds though... we still have to sit in the corner and miss out. But we don't want factions anyway, they are scary and difficult to manage!
On the war system, being able to sign individual peace’s would be a lifesaver for major galactic wars, and has so many intricacies in it. If a vassal is mostly occupied, they can’t peace out on their own but their loyalty would start ticking down. If an empire’s capital is taken, their leadership might be taken hostage. Having high war exhaustion would cause stability and resource output debuffs on their planets, discouraging death-wars over one or two systems. Low centralization federations might allow for individual peace, but at higher centralization laws could be enacted to force members to join and stay in other member’s wars. Orbital bombardment could be used as a terror tactic, greatly ticking up enemy war exhaustion. There’s so much that could be done to deepen the war system from pretty much “throw a bigger fleet at them and win”
Historically, indiscriminate violence against civilians has actually galvanized resistance against enemy forces, not reduced it. If we're gonna do something like that, it should really be set up so that indiscriminate orbital bombardment kills enemies faster, but REDUCES the enemy's war exhaustion. Because your monstrous behaviour is inspiring the enemy populace to resist you even harder. Forcing the player to decide if the costs of indiscriminate violence outweigh the gains.
@@tbotalpha8133 you’re right, but also at some point watching the next planet over being glassed will reduce people’s willingness to “fight to the end” (Battle of Britain vs Hiroshima)
@@tbotalpha8133 Reducing war exhaustion for an enemy that is having it's planets bombed is silly. However your idea does has some merit. I think it should be cheaper and faster to recruit armies as more and more civilians raise up arms against the enemy and ship build speed for the losing side should increase as military production is rapidly increased in an attempt to turn the tide of war. The more desperate the situation becomes, the stronger the buffs for the losing side. This would make fighting wars far away from your own territory difficult (as it should be) and mean the likes of the juggernaut actually has a use, to give your fleets logistical support on the front line. Fleets should NOT be able to repair at captured star bases unless the star base has a shipyard and there should be some sort of asset denial in the game that allows a chance for the enemy to sabotage their shipyards before capture so you cannot use them. There are so many ways to add layers to the war system and make even smaller empires put up a tenacious fight against stronger opponents.
Victoria 3 lets individual members capitulate. That makes it much more interesting to fight large alliances: you're thinking about whether to get the big enemy forces out of the fight by counterattacking them directly, whether to fight a war of attrition until they get bored and quit, or whether to attack your real target and hope to get a quick victory.
I'd also like it if war exhaustion was more dynamic. Capturing an entire sector in a few months should harm a nation's will to fight more than if it had taken years. This IMO would make wars in general more interesting as empires would be able to employ different strategies to turn a war in their favour even if they're the weaker combatant, making raw fleet power less of a deciding factor.
3:49 Smear campaigns actually DO let you pick between 3 empires to target relations with, but you have to have the auto advancement turned off in order to get the choice. And it’s still not particularly effective as far as I can tell…
13:09 One thing I would like related to federations would be to change the Common Ground origin so that two or three human players could start the game as members of the same federation. Me and my friend like playing cooperatively as members of a federation against the AI, but dislike having to hunt each other down first. It would be nice to start off as a federation together right at the beginning.
You should be able to create battle groups, which are basically groups of fleets you can group together which always follow the flagship fleet you set. I'd like my stealth torpedo frigates to always follow the larger fleets without the other fleets outpacing them, without having to do fleet following micromanagement.
You can create control groups, like in rts games. Ctrl 1 sets whatever is selected to that and to quickly access it, you press 1 on your kb. That goes all the way up to 0
@@ErzengelDesLichtes The fleet control limit mechanic is already irrelevant because it can be easily bypassed through micromanagement. This undermines its purpose and highlights the need for a control limit rework.
@@ErzengelDesLichtes No, fleets dictate how many ships receive benefits from a commander's traits at any given time. This would be a quality of life change to make moving large amounts of endgame fleets easier.
Let's face it, this is just a facet of the complete failure of fleet limits and the failed attempt to prevent doomstacking. The Vision dev diary shows that they're aware they're at an impass now with dealing with doomstacking and fleet management without redoing the entire system from the ground up.
This is something I've seen added in mods. Giving ground combat invasion events which can give you interesting roleplaying choices. Having some policies that effect you armies would also make it more interesting. Need an army fast? set a policy for mass conscription that greatly increases how fast you can build a particular army, but in turn that army has poor health and morale. Or if you are willing to take your time. Set a policy for advanced training that makes building armies more expensive and time consuming, but in turn they have drastically increased damage, health, and morale.
Unironically one of the best suggestions given for ground combat changes. Nothing crazy, not a whole new system, just what they already do with dig sites already with event chains. Extra points if they account for the types of armies you have a la slave armies rebelling or Gene warriors devastating the enemy.
@@AceofWickedSpades If you are curious. The mods I use for this are: Ground Command, Military Enhancements 2.0 [Invasion Events and More], Ground Command + Military Enhancements Patch, and Under Siege. Reworks the entire ground invasion system into some thing more interesting.
How would it affect armies that are already created? I think it would require some kind of army experience meter more like the one in HOI4 that represents the level of training/experience of the unit. Maybe a unit below the standard would have massive debuffs until they’re trained back up.
I think construction ships and transport ships should be able to cloak, its niche i know, but something about like an entire “shadow fleet” that lurks in a nebula or something like that that’s undetectable to most empires sounds cool, maybe even cloaking on collosi and juggernaut but i understand the size issue with that and cloaking
I miss assisting research with science ships. Mainly because after expanding towards other empires and claiming your land- there's basically nothing else for them to do. Archeology sites and Astral rifts prolong their usefulness but that is also a finite situation and after those are done there is nothing for your scientists to do if they aren't governers.
Agreed. Although if you have cloaking (from First Contact) they can also gather intel on other empires, which is what I do until their scientist dies and then I scrap them
@@IwhowasdatXD960 They removed it because they added the ability for Scientists and Commanders to govern Planets directly. If you're done with early and mid-game exploration, you can dismiss your scientists tailored to those roles and replace them with scientists tailored to governing planets or filling council positions.
If they ever make it, I would love Stellaris 2 to have the vic3 economic, population and political system, with the Eu4 peace deal system and keep its current warfare system. Imagine being able to win a war by sending your fleet to blockade a hyperlane and cut off an empires main agri world, so you can starve them into submission with revolts and unrest
When I first played Stellaris I just assumed it was MOO2 with better graphics. Largely it worked out, but the fact that you don't need to feed and power each planet locally was weird to me for a while. The local vs global market with convoys mechanic in Vic3 makes much more sense to me. Including the part where if you cut off the supplies, that planet/state is going to be very, very screwed.
So, I do use federations a lot, only for the extra fleet power as a hegemony. The rest of the members will be my vassal, but I use one weak empire to get the extra resources, fleet power, influence and unity - plus being custodian allows for me to max the fleets I control. Its all just for better stats than anything else
Suggestion 3: Ascension Paths and Exotic Material Acquisition. All Ascension paths will unlock flavored science tech trees like Archeotech. They will give anything from new building to new ships to new modules Each ascension perk will allow give access to the creation and exploitation of Late game resources: Nanite, Zro, Living Metal. Biological, will give Living Metal & Zro . Psionic will give Zro & Nanite. Synthetic will give Nanite & Living Metal.
On the topic of Espionage: You are able to select the target of your smear campaign if you do not check the "launch automatically" checkbox on the operations dialog.
I wish you could promote any ethics at a given time, not just ethics representing factions you already have. Sometimes I get events or other circumstances where I want to begin the process of switching one of my ethics, but I have no faction to promote to even begin the process of doing so. There should just be a wheel with all the ethics on it that you can promote any three of your choice like you currently can with your factions.
I think there should be more coercion mechanics, ways to strongarm other empires, or negotiate from a place of weakness with a stronger empire that is hostile towards you. When my empire gets big enough I should just be able to point a million fleet power at an independent empire to force trades from them even if their attitude is negative. Also, automatic acceptance of surrendering should not be a thing, it completely ruins any barbaric despoilers or nihilistic acquisition empires I play, as other empires will just immediately surrender before I can raid any pops from them. We're done when I SAY we're done.
"I should just be able to point a million fleet power at an independent empire to force trades from them even if their attitude is negative" I get what you're saying, but at that point you may as well just make them a Tributary. It will be a short war.
I'm always wary of things being added that make it just a straight no-brainer that it's much stronger to play "evil", though. It's already bad enough in that regard.
One thing I would really really REALLY like to see, is to have more in depth ways in which empires passively affect each other. We already have mechanics in place where pops will gain other ethics through events or where the ethics of an empire can change, or where they are relevant in diplomacy, for example in a federation, or just baseline oppinion. And ofcourse the mega church civic that already has mechanics to intentionally change ethics to spiritual. I think it would be really cool to introduce ways where the ethics of bordering empires slowly change over time, for example you could trade routes across empires, or have effects when migration treaties pass and your species changes planets to a different, or maybe even espionage mission. I am picturing a scenario where all of these mechanics are finally combined. Just imagine, you start out next to an empire, you are both xenophile but you are spiritualist and they are materialistic. Through diplomacy, treaties and trade routes and maybe other stuff you flip a lot of their pops to spiritualist. Maybe at this point they could embrace it as their empire ethic. Maybe try to suppress. Or maybe you could instigate a civil war. Maybe even make it so that you can convince them to fight for joining your empire. There could be so more depth just utilising mechanics that are already there and the connections seem so obvious to me that its killing me that its not already in the game.
There's actually a LOT of these effects already in the game, having treaties between empires or fighting in wars does in fact shift ethics attractions around, but the problem is they're just far too weak, so weak most probably don't even know they exist. Even when you manage to stack them quite high ethics attractions takes decades to centuries to have any effect, and even that is assuming they are NOT stacking any government ethics attraction or shift chance reductions, either of those quickly make it basically impossible to influence someone's ethics peacefully even as a megachurch. So yeah, there should definitely be more, both passively affecting and possibilities of intentionally working to affect ethics. The latter could be something to make espionage marginally worthwhile to conduct again for example. Also, nearly every Galactic Council resolution should carry ethics attraction values as part of their effects. Far as I know there's just one that can go as high as 100% pacifist attraction, and one that can reach 50% spiritual. The "opposite" ones don't give Militaristic or Materialistic... why? And why shouldn't resolutions to make vassals more loyal give Authoritarian attraction, why doesn't the Worker Protection line and slavery ban give Egalitarian attraction etc? Honestly there's so many obvious omissions that sometimes it smells of sheer laziness.
@Arbaaltheundefeated Exactly this! This game has so much wasted depth and features that just scream like they want to work together but for some reason they just ... dont. I genuinely feel like a halfway competent programmer could make diplomacy in this game feel ten times better by just tweaking some numbers of features that already exist, adding things to where they already should be (ethics attraction to galactic senate like you mentioned) or adding some more basic events. For example, there is an event for when you settle on a tomb world. It essentially makes some of your pops pacifist because they see what war leads to. Why arent they any such events for actually being in a war yourself? Imagine getting a planet of yours cracked and having to deal with the fear in your Population. Or entering a bunch of treaties and your pops becoming more xenophile over time. Ethics should actually change depending on your playstyle and Not be almost completely static. Domestic politics are literally so underdeveloped you can literally just ignore them usually. There needs to be some sort of general diplomacy/politics overhaul. Desperately. Maybe even give us more megachurch/criminal syndicate playstyles as a dlc or smth so the rework is justified. I wish I knew to code so I could just do it myself...
My idea for internal politics is basically just adding in something like this one website I remember using like a decade ago. My memory is shaky on the details, but you basically were the leader of a fictional country. Each day the website would bring you an issue that the country is having. You'd be given a list of options, and then the next day you'd find out how things changed. Over time the country could change into a bunch of different ways and it was fun to compare what's going on it your country to a friend's. In Stellaris I feel like it'd be easy enough to implement and not too annoying to engage in if it's like, once every 6 months, or something. Could grand buffs, debuffs, ethics shifts, situations, etc. I think it'd be really fun.
I wish they would fix ai from trying to min-max jobs on planets, which ends up with them falling in behind later in the game. They always set enforcers to 0, leading to tons of crime on planets, they don't bother dealing with unemployed pops, which leads to low stability. Seriously, in my last campaign two robot empires constantly had revolutions cos they didn't bother building more than a couple of districts and buildings, which led to massive overpopulation and constant near 0 stability.
I would like to see them combine some perks, like toxicity and world shapers. Also, as someone to mains trade empires, I would love being able to play origins other than ring world. This can easily be implemented by introducing a single ascention perk that gives trader jobs on city buildings. Something like +10% trade value and 1 or 2 trader jobs on city districts. This would make it so all empires can easily become trade empires, AND this wouldn't make the ring world trade empires any stronger because it isn't buffing trade districts even further. I suppose it does make trade habitats stronger but habitats are already weak in comparison.
With you saying about the gal com, another thing that I wish for is a setting for situation speed, as you know I love knights of the toxic God. The problem is if you play the game on faster settings, u never get more then half way through the situation just give us an option to change how fast we can complete these as for the ground combat, a change they could make would be to make it like endless space where ur combat ships have a ground combat stat, then you invade using ur ships crew. this could even add a new tactical layer by making it so that during ground combat ur ships can not move or are weaker, giving ur war target more time to recover or take advantage of your invasion to fight ur fleet
I would like the Origins and civics to have a bit of a rethink. Not all origins are made the same. Some are stories, others are start planet modifiers and some effect what pops you have. It all feels really limiting for the roleplay options. For example, necrophage changes how your pops work but something like subterrain changes how your planets work. Wouldn't it be cool if you could be a subterrain necrophage? So, I propose that they changes the origins into origin categories so you can mix and match them to create new unique origins. The categories could be something like, Pops, Planet and Story? For example Necrophage (Pops) Subterrain (Planet) Teachers of the Shroud (Story) Catalytic Processing (Economic). This would also allow civics that blur the line between civic and origin to be turned into origin components such as eager explores being a story or Idyllic bloom being part of the Life-seeded origin or as above Catalytic Processing being Economic. All of this would grant a lot more freedom when creating an empire without adding more civics or origins and increase roleplaying opportunities. Also a small note about precursors, I would love to have a tab in the galaxy settings to just guaranty that you get the precursor you want. Just have it set default to random and allow players to choose the precursor. Really it just saves people the time and effort of restarting a game until they get the one they want.
What I'd love to see for the internal politics is a bigger distinction between each of the four basic gov types. For instance, democracies could have a parliament which would correspond to factions (which should probably change) at the moment of elections and where you'd need a majority to change policies, declare war or join a federation (unless say, you have diplomatic corps and you can join a fed without parliament). This could introduce a bunch of events to get more support or losing it like events in the Dynamic Political Events mod. They've confirmed in the recent Q&A that there would be more Machine Age-like government subtypes in the future so it would make sense to really distinguish each large government category.
Ok, my idea for ground warfare rework 1) The "Armies" window would contains tiles (at least something for those who miss them), representing buildings/districts. The armies themselves could be deployed (placed on these tiles) or held in reserve/disengaged (it's already in the game, though purely automatic). 2) Building/districts, corresponding to the tiles where armies are placed on, would give some specific buffs and/or debuffs to these armies. Capital buildings or military installations would give better ones, but they would also be harder to capture. 2) The collateral damage would increase devastarion to the selected buildings/districts during an active combat (devastation from an orbital bombardment would work simlar to how it does now, I guess). 3) Most importantly, people who don't care for it could just turn on auto-battles (yeah, it wouldn't be as effective knowing the AI, but there's always the "quantity over quality" option). You can expand on this idea and get something like a mini-game with elements of "Battleship", chess, etc.
I feel that you have read a lot of comments on Steam and on the forum. I noticed that some ideas overlapped with mine. I am glad that there are like-minded people))👽
I wish we could 'Mothball' fleets we don't need in peacetime; reduce upkeep by x% and pay a fraction of the actual ship cost/time to restore them to functional.
While the idea is cool, I personally think a mobilization/demobilization mechanic would be the better way, considering mothballing would just involve a lot of micromanaging I feel. Also mob/demob might make sense if the pop system, trade and economies are reworked anyways so the option for interactions could be there.
I agree with pretty much everything you've said here. As far as I am concerned, the current real issue with internal politics is that a) empires are very unrealistically united along their governing ethics and b) their internal political situation is remarkably static. On the first thing here, it's almost impossible, unless you go out of your way to conquer a lot of people from an empire with different ethics very quickly as a non-genocidal empire, to actually have non-government ethics pop at all. The idea of an interstellar empire whose trillions of citizens all fully agree with the governing coalition is obviously wild. I think that at minimum, other factions should be easier to spawn based on what you do, and even that a weaker opposition should spawn automatically. It would be really interesting, e.g. with democratic empires with the parliamentary civic to have more realistic elections based on the status of the various factions, to have to build a government coalition representing the majority of faction support etc, so that the political situation is more dynamic and you can transition to different government ethics more organically and easily (if you want), have opposition governments etc. Perhaps it should be impossible for the ruler of the empire to be someone that doesn't belong to the victorious coalition etc. Stuff like that would add flavour without having a very great effect on overall unity or the economy. Even dictatorial governments have to make sure to reconcile tendencies between different powerful factions of the army or oligarchs after all. On the second thing, and speaking of dynamism, the only thing that is actually dynamic about the internal politics right now, is the revolt situation if you are really bad at the game, something which pretty much never happens if you have a minimal understanding of its mechanics and are not playing something very niche, like a terravore, and chomping more than you can handle. Another example could be the robotic uprising that is also actually difficult to pull off. It would be nice if, for one example, the different active factions would create situations where they request, even demonstrate or protest, to have their issues fulfilled (e.g. an egalitarian faction requesting that you return to natural evolution for your leaders, and you can either fulfil their demand, disappointing the authoritarian opposition or else move agaist them), this is in line with the situation system they are now using for a lot of the previously more bare bones mechanics. In general the internal politics are too rigid. If you satisfy the factions, you can ignore it completely. What about attritional wars you are losing causing demonstrations and strikes that you can put down, or at least do PR to avoid, connecting external and internal politics? (I think it would be really nice to have a system that's responsive to whom you're fighting. I expect my citizens to fight to the last if we're about to be genocided by a fanatic purifier, but if I've lost like four fleets trying to get a chokepoint, I do expect strikes. What if I'm fighting another empire with very similar ethics for an opportunistic landgrab? In general if my casus belli comes into conflict with my ethics, or if I'm fighting someone that my people actually like. I don't like the vicky system where you can't attack states with good relations, but I think there could be a penalty to having to persuade people to fight, die and kill when they like the other empire!). Primarily, I think the opposition factions should do plays to try to get power, creating a more volatile background situation you must pay attention to. I don't just mean the opposition factions I've mentioned above. Consider a fanatic egalitarian pacifist empire, where the pacifists want to a) take power, and b) turn it into a fanatic pacifist egalitarian empire. They may even want to do a coalition with the xenophiles against the egalitarians. Different factions could also have a stronger preference for different authority types that comes into it, even a preference about the character of the federation you've got going (on which point, another thing I really want is the ability to merge federations if you persuade all their members, or otherwise a better way to sow discord. I think this would matter a lot to make diplomatic ways of playing less stale. This is also why I fully agree we need espionage operations directly targeting another empire's ethics). Something that you could conceivably ignore to keep the same authority and ethics for some minor costs, or else let your internal landscape be the impetus that would lead you into transforming the greater empire more seriously. We need more chaos, internally. Addendum: your best idea in this video, by far, amongst many other good suggestions, is that we need empire histories. I've actually done a few playthroughs where I personally wrote down what was happening and they remain some of the absolute best games I've had, despite the hassle. I think it's partly because it forces you to stop minmaxing for a second, and take what's happening narratively seriously. In one of those games, an equivalent determined exterminator had just got a pre-FTL system, and I had to decide whether to get into an uncertain war, or let them eat it. If I wasn't thinking in narrative terms, I would have viewed them as a minor resource I just lost and which wouldn't justify war. But I did go to war, and it was a really difficult one, which only made my eventual victory and liberation of their system all the more satisfying. This is also how I know that there is a "saved us from genocide" status that gives pops like +40 happiness. The devs had thought of it, but the game doesn't incentivise you to go for that sort of thing over resource management.
I really want a megacorp origin for Machine and Gestalt. Machine empire is pretty easy: you came about from a trade/corporate AI that took over the government (and have deviancy tied to trade). For hive mind, we have an observation event of an organic singularity. What if that singularity happened but didn’t take over, but ultimately formed awareness from managing systems. It’d be kind of like Rogue Servitor, but instead of pampering a captive population, it’s about ‘optimizing’ the universe through symbiosis (possibly have your guaranteed habitable taken by a friendly empire that you start with a trade agreement)
As a hardcore role player that keeps extensive notes on all the historical happenings, staff and events in my empires (it’s just my thing, I find it relaxing and fun) I would appreciate a history tab immensely. Even if it were as simple as a list of events and dates.
I actually think crime is fine as it is, it gives meaning for enforcers, as otherwise they don't even need to exist in most cases. In my opinion having actual faction leaders/some events with them which influences their approval or might even cause them to rebel or at least rebellions should be more interesting. Maybe we can tie crime in with the factions, for example having a criminal mafia-like faction sounds interesting.. I also agree a lot with history tabs, most stellaris players would probably like to see some graphs of things like, planets, systems, pop over the years.
starbase weapon loadouts are actually depending on high slot weapons i think. i would not lock it behind unyielding, as that makes it a must-pick. i think internal politics should actually be an opt-in ingame, that improves efficiency, and gives you flexibility. my main issue is, that stellaris acts like gestalt empires are always better, where in reality, i think a gestalt would at some point stagnate exactly because it is missing internal politics and a hive mind needs an internal hierarchy as well. so it could be stuff like empire size improvements, or bonuses in general diplomacy and galactic council stuff. i do not think however that it should be anything that is required to be fiddled around with, as some might find that annoying. also the same for espionage: gestalt should be more vulnerable to local espionage actions, but instead gain easier ways to infiltrate.
Suggestion 1: Star bases are now the new Central Habitat Modules. Which effectively makes them function as planet. Taking the Voidborne civic, and tech will not only unlock more districts but also more defensive platform modules. Large Districts will unlock X & L Slot weapons. All modules will also have access to smaller modules as an option. For example, instead of taking 1 L Slot you can take 2 medium. Also, now expanding the Habitat/Star Base, will be incorporated into the build queue of that star base, instead of using construction ships. Lastly the Weapon Slots will fire, from the location in the Star system its located, instead of just the central star base. For example putting a L Cannon module on a Gas Giant will have it fire from the Gas Giant. This will give the system better coverage when engaging enemy fleets.
After your video I thought a bit about the crime modifier and I think its biggest problem is that it is just a simple negative modifier with no use or tradeoff. It is like a far worse version of amenities. I think it should be a modifier which goes in two directions. For example, you could have a crime/surveilance number (one a possitive number and one its negative). It could use the currently useless trade value from living standard. Playing as a criminal syndicate or making deals with them could give you policies to change the bonus. Maybe even criminal/surveilance federations. Opressive autocracy could be the surveilance counterpart. For example having 300crime on the planet would give you the living standart times 3 per pop. To counterbalance it you could get negative events for normal empires that have above 100 crime or surveilance.
Your point about the intel on your own empire would be cool. Being able to use counter espionage to present stronger or weaker than you are to affect diplomacy would be cool, you could also get a bonus from having a nebula in your empire or keeping your ships cloaked.
I think just more ways to make empires feel unique, especially with megastructures. Have like megachurches for only spiritualists, underwater arcologies for aquatic, or a special utopia megastructure for rogue servitors. I also think civics should all feel super different. Council positions were great at that and I think building on that with more unique buildings, techs, and megastructures would be great
I love the idea of empire-type or ethics-specific megastructures. The question then becomes: what happens when other empires capture them? "They just stay ruined" is one solution.
@ I think they should be ruined and then able to be repaired as something else. For example a flooded arcology can take like three years to turn into a normal arcology, a megachurch could be converted into a mega art installation, or a rogue servitor habitat could become a habitat or ring world depending on how it was impoemented
Something I've wanted from day 1 was the option to do Star Trek Federation style exploration fleets. The Enterprise is a heavily armed Cruiser that is also a long range science vessel. Give me a toggle in the game settings or nation settings that lets me start with things like this so that way when they run into threats they don't immediately pop and can act as interdiction fleets against other empires.
Most of your suggestions about War make sense. If I'm trying to vassalize someone I'd probably be willing to forgo some or all of my (or my ally's) claims in order to get that. Being able to negotiate for one's own empire to leave or enter an ongoing war would be interesting. I wouldn't necessarily want to make capturing the homeworld or "capturing" their leader / council the end of the war because it would suck if it happened to you, but it could certainly add quite a lot to your side's War Exhaustion. Espionage definitely needs a rework so that it isn't so toothless. Not sure where I heard this, but it's like they're afraid of a bad response if the AI is constantly targeting the player. And to be fair, it would suck if your Leaders were, too often, being assassinated or buildings blowing up or resources just going missing. I would propose an advanced slider in the galaxy settings that determines how aggressive enemy spies are. That said, I definitely want the ability to: target a Forge World's foundry building; prime an enemy Starbase so that it's disabled when I attack; slay their high-level leaders or coerce or replace them with duplicates with hidden traits; introduce a genetic plague that targets only their main species; smuggle slaves out of their space; steal their relics and specimens; arm their angriest political faction. The list goes on. For internal politics, I'd just like to see the largest unhappy factions (so not necessarily the most angry if they have a small membership) actually get pissed off and do something about it every now and then. Just adding a hidden Loyalty score to Leaders would be all that's needed to kick things off. A paranoid player would be careful not to let angry factions on the council or at least not too many. Get enough disloyal leaders as members of a particular unhappy faction and it starts a Situation where pops with the ethic take BIG happiness penalties and thereby lowering stability. Appease them by granting their factional demands (and add a few new ones!). Perhaps we could use internal spies to uncover who the disloyal Leaders are. When an unrest situation turns into a rebellion on one of the planets, the disloyal leaders reveal themselves (even if you fired them) and several planets join in and we got ourselves a civil war.
Very good video, very good suggestions. I have an idea for a crime-rework, it should be combined with a ground combat rework, where you can use your ground armies (or even space fleets) for more, than just war. E.g. one feature could be to use armies for large security sweeps to fight criminal syndicates, because the only way to do this a.t.m. is to declare a war against this empire and if they are on the other side of the galaxy or in an alliance it just ruins the game. Another example could be making blockades with your fleets to control the flow of commodities or showing force. I have lots of other ideas to make war and combat more interesting, but that should be enough for the moment.
Yea the science one seems fairly simply to implement and would be a nice qol feature. That’s already how the construction ships work when you have them on auto construct. It just sits there with the auto enabled if there is nothing to do, and as soon as there’s a new place to build it does it automatically
It would be nice if all planets functioned like the synaptic lathe; most jobs are determined by planet type and buildings just add bonuses/housing/amenities to choose from, and just get rid of districts entirely. I think this would make the late-game a lot less tedious and make the ai better, since the complexity of this game is one of the reasons ai are so hard to program.
I know it would eat up dev time but I really wish we had the ability to do peace deals like we had at the launch of the game it would make wars much less of a pain in the ass and probably improve the multiplayer a bit. I've always wanted the galactic market to be finite and not infinite as it is portrayed, so the only resources that are in the galactic market are resources players/ai produce and sell to the market so there is a finite amount so if everyone does a trade build and nobody produces and sells food then people will find themselves without food, and likewise someone making a farmers/food build will be able to benefit from very high food prices. (Maybe if multiple people have automatic trades set up with the galactic market the player with the highest trade value gets the resources, and if there's leftover then it goes to the second highest and so on and so forth with 0 resources being traded automatically if the player is at their resource cap) Edit: Another thing is I'd like to have negative traits to have some positives attached to them (maybe slow breeders reduces pop upkeep?) and purely negative traits give more points. Edit 2: Please uncap the council! Or make a 'second' council that gives lesser bonuses for any/all extra council positions!
One thing that comes to my mind with espionage and fallen empires. Just copy the reverse engeneering minor artifacts option. Just get the repeatable option for one time fallen empire buildings could open a complete new playstyle. Make the options 1k energy and 5 years cooldown or 5k energy and 1 year cooldown.
Suggestion 2: Spiritualist Ethic rework. Temples are now a per planet building which can be devoted to 1 of 5 options: (paradox equivalent) Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, Nurgle, and Undivided. All can be upgraded twice, before needing to form a covenant to unlock the 3rd upgrade. All give unity. Khorne gives armor, Naval Capacity and Ground troop buffs, Rivalry and Kinetic weapon Buff. Tzeentch gives Engineering and Physics, shields, Energy Weapon Buffs. Slaneesh gives Amenities, influence, and ship fire rate, and Hangar and Strike Craft Buffs. Nurgle gives pop growth, hull, Pop genetic mutation rate, and Society Research, Titan & Colossal Ship Buffs. Upon making a coven, all Temples will be converted to their respective covenant patron. Taking Spiritualist unlocks the ability to create 1 Spiritual Branch office. Fanatics can build 2. Planets with Branch offices will now have a reduced influence and time cost for doing espionage against them. Star Systems with Low Anti-Piracy will occasionally spawn Pirate Devotees. During Ground Invasions a percentage of Enemy Ground Troops will be converted to your side, on planets with your Faith Offices.
I have my own inside joke that I have no idea if anyone has ever noticed but all my top line descriptions are... unique... I didn't really know how to fit this video with it lmao
Galactic Wonders and Arcology Project shouldn't be ascension perks but should be rare late-game techs unlocked after Mega-Engineering. Currently they are must-have perks which end up completely locking up two whole ascension perk slots, essentially just to unlock certain techs in the tech tree.
Quest! I find Fallen Empire's request interesting, but I think they could go further. If regular empires could make requests, and that is how you can earn favors... Wait, would that make this a Space Empire dating simulator? Anyway, more interactions with Fallen Empires would be cool, so they are not just a roadblock for most of the game. This could be a build-up to the War in Heaven event, making it more epic.
My change to ground combat would be having an option to not equip weapons on a ship and make it a Transport version that can fit a set number of armies and costs that much in Minerals. You can use a General to lead that fleet and get the bonuses. I would also like a different system for Trade that doesn't lag the game a lot, I currently use a mod for that. About the Enclaves, the windows that close and you need to reopen could be worked on. The other major thing is the pop system, I wonder if they can make it work better to reduce lag in the late game. Maybe merge pops that are the same and make them superpops or something like that.
They should change the 'auto-construct' feature for the construction ships to possible include minor/major orbitals and maybe even orbital rings or hyperrelays
I wish I had the ability to reorder my fleets in the outline. It bothers me immensely when I have 1st Fleet, 2nd Fleet, 5th Fleet, 4th Fleet, 3rd Fleet, and so on.
I'd love a lot of things but one thing I'd really love is a cap on how many members a federation can have. I get that it might be fun to create a large alliance and roleplay Star Trek's federation, but when I have to go to war with like 8 or 10 empires at the same time it gets frustrating. All I wanted to do was take a ruined dyson sphere...
Durning a war my Overlord changed my vassaliztion type and took me out of the war on heaven. I was stuck in vassaliztion purgetory could not declare war, join the war, or rebel. The only wars i could join were when a new war was joined by the overlord. Yeah that war went on to go till end game late end game.
I want fewer ships and fleets in the later game stages. It becomes extremely tedious to manage all of them, and good luck even trying to figure what's happening in a lategame battle. This doesn't have to be achieved solely by nerfing your means of gaining naval capacity either. For example, higher tech components could be made significantly more expensive (and significantly more effective) so that your base upkeep per ship more closely matches your growth in income.
I think purificator type empires should be longer/permanenetly in the "first contact" phase but still able to take starbases, unless they invest heavily into spying over another empire. I think it would make them more unique.
I'd be open to alternative ascension paths that don't focus on modifying your people. I think there's a lot of potential to be explored there. What if the empire focused on developing their planets? Like you suggested. Maybe it's all about creating perfect artificial worlds with unique features and districts. That you can choose to pick and build the perfect energy world or factory world. What if in another path your empire focused on creating bigger and better ships? You get access to special ships, weapons and components without having to become a crisis but also at the cost of all other ascension paths. But if they are going to redo genetic ascension I hope at the very least, we can assimilate organics and can make them immortal. But there's a lot more they could do with it beyond that. But that'd make me happier with it.
Funny thing about trade, as I recall from the last dev diary, trade was one of the systems they're looking into potentially overhauling in the near future, which could be interesting. If nothing else, if they rework trade into not having the current trade route system, it means less micromanagement of having to set up trade routes manually from the absolutely banal routes the AI generates at times. Like a 26 system route through other empires when the capitol is literally 3-4 jumps away. Also yes, I couldn't agree more with science ship automation. Now, I can understand science ships running into danger turning it off because fleeting overwrites their orders. Fine, but why can you set construction ships to auto as a set it and forget it but a science ship with nothing to do cancels automation? I'd love it if I could set my late game (heck sometimes just midgame) science ships, who don't regularly have things to do, to be automated on things like anomalies and rifts, so that when new rifts open up or anomalies get left behind by cosmic storms, those standby science ships just go and do it themselves without me having to check which science ship has the person with the rift traits or checking to see if any new anomalies got left behind by a storm.
I would like the weapons on the ship affect planetary bombardment. Not some vague value. Have the planetary shield act like ship shields with kinetics doing better and lasers do less. Strike craft would be very supportive with little or no collateral and being able to support armies on the ground. I recall games like Master of Orion with different planet based weapons. We have a filler with Orbital Rings. But set the Army tab as Military and put the defences there.
I wish they would fix this bug with Hegemony federation type where the members can leave because there's a bug that makes the leave request go to somebody other than the president. I tried spinning some sectors off as vassals one time and pretty much my whole hegemony, which consisted of most of the entire galaxy left to join the other major federation block because they had a -1000 opinion of my vassals i created. Very stupid
Biggest thing for me is resource sliders for the galaxy when starting and precursor choosing/turn off. Maybe I want to play a game with 10x resources, RP-ing as the first civilizations in that galaxy or 0.1x resources, RP-ing as maybe cycle 5.
About the old peace deals: they were scrapped back when we got patch 2.0 (I think that was apocalypse) because it was sort of bad in ye olden times and very painful for the changes 2.0 made to the map in general to implement, so we got the broken down system we have atm. Just as reference I started playing shortly after utopia's release so patch 1.6 I think :-)
I wish we could have a paramilitary megacorp civic with the ability to profit off of wars and sell fleets on demand whie getting synergy from criminal heritage. Also, as far as espionage, we should be able to see relation modifiers without needing intel.
I think megacorp franchise building do not have enough effect on planets like laboratories only give clerk job instead of scientists job it wood be cool if mega corp building wood effect bouth sides maybe with advantage for mega corp so it while playing them there wood need be more thinking for what buildings you place.
I felt the same way and I was complaining to some friends who let me know about this mod “Moar Branch Office Buildings” or something. It was featured by paradox a while back but is still up to date now and it adds a bunch new buildings including a system to specialize branch offices and sort of upgrade the buildings.
The whole mega corp thing needs to be redone. Remove the buildings from each plant and make an influence rate system. I really think it needs to be some kind of progress % bar and other mega corps can influence your empire. You can change influence by changing policies or what services you offer. Maybe keep the building system but make it for that empire rather than per plant.
what about adding criminal pops, we can have the police actually capture and imprison them, put to work with menial jobs with maybe a modifier. then you can maybe have some governing stuff with how you deal with pops, maybe you can select a judge. since we can have criminal corps we can get criminals from other species maybe on our planet we can put to work or banish or something. could also make it with the espionage stuff where you make decisions depending on a certain crimes but could be too tedious maybe.
I think both wars and internal politics should be changes Paradox should prioritize. I’ve made multiple posts on the Paradox forums on how I’d like wars to be improved, because at their core they really haven’t changed much since the early days of Stellaris and if anything have been dumbed down substantially. I’d love the ability to negotiate conditional surrenders, enact ceasefire agreements, enforce reparations and enact lend leases with friendly empires in exchange for energy credits or political favors, and so much more. Internal politics is another thing that hasn’t changed much either. I think Paradox has hinted at changing the current system in the near future, but I have my own ideas on how it can be improved too. Maybe revolts and slave uprisings could me more common and more of a threat to even experienced players, maybe you could run the chance of a civil war in democratic or oligarchic empires and a war of succession in imperial or dictatorial empires if you don’t have an heir (heirs should be improved to it often takes years for a monarchy to find a legitimate heir and an indeterminate period for dictatorships to choose an heir). Reforms, both embracing a new ethic or reforming your empire the normal way should be something that is gradual rather than instant kind of like how cyberization and synthesization now is and would also be the most vulnerable and politically unstable time for your empire. Those are just some of my ideas on how some of the systems in Stellaris should be improved.
The one thing that Hearts of Iron and StarCraft does right is having a defenders advantage. Otherwise you just make a ball of units and throw them at each other and all the buildup becomes very anticlimactic. Probing attacks and such happen due to defenders advantage where defenses are resource expenditures and you need to scout to get a read on the opponent and constantly probe for weaknesses in their borders. That's how games need to be for protracted war to be good.
I tripple support your point about subterfuge and FEs I actually do enjoy the mechanics but wish they‘d be more fleshed out. Regarding this I‘d think it would be great to send the stellarite devourer into an FE‘s system
1. Regarding wars - YES. Also what I always wanted is that you can trade for some systems from the AI, but they always no matter what never ever ever ever ever are willing to give up a system in a traade deal. Why is it even an option? Like I understand, you never give up your capital, or important planets or systems with megastructures in them or sth like that. But can we at least solve some bordergore by trading for a system that is 14 jumps away from the rest of its empire without any structures in it other than 2 research and 1 mining station?
For internal politics, I have a wishlist for improvements: 1: meaningful factions. Make it so that if a significant (>30% support faction) is unhappy, they can revolt. Also, more intelligence in how their demands activate: for example it makes little sense for militarists to complain about low naval capacity usage in 2210 and become unhappy from that, when the empire has met basically nothing and the entire GDP is going into expansion and infrastructure. In a similar vein, they shouldn’t become unhappy that the empire hasn’t killled any leviathans lately, as the last one was killed by the empire 100 years ago. 2: leader lineages. leaders would trace their lineages to previous leaders. You’d have a few new leaders to represent new people breaking into the elite and civics and government types would affect the ratio of new blood to old guard (so democracies would have less leaders related to previous leaders and imperial governments would have far more). Then tie this into skills and traits, so a leader recruited from an existing lineage would start at a higher level, but inherits some of the traits of the previous leaders, especially negative traits. While new ones would be a fresh slate so to speak. And also have factions agitate for heirs to be elected. Also, use this system in imperial and dictatorship governments to spark civil wars with pretenders. And then, not for internal politics, but just to put a dampener on excessively wide builds: corruption. Every planet in your core sector is safe from the effect, but outside the core sector, planets have corruption the further they are away from the capital, which directly lowers resource output. Have it be able to be lowered by buildings and governors, but it’s still a penalty. Then in the mid game, hyperrelays become available and can cut the distance penalty from corruption in half or more, to represent better communication links resulting in better governance. Then late game, gateways come along and reduce the distance penalty to 0 (or nearly 0) allowing for truly effective galaxy spanning empires.
I'd really like if there was more options for holdings. The main problem with current holdings IMO is that you can only put them in friendly empires. It'd be so cool if maybe Communist empires could build underground media outlets to spread their ideals in rival states, kinda like Pravda was before the Russian revolution. Or maybe two warring empires could establish partisan bases in each other's back lines.
"I always use the same negative traits, as there's not many and the ones you could maybes take instead are actually quite devastating compared to the others. for example weak you don't ever want to take" It's an additive 2.5% worker output and who gives a damn about army damage. Am I missing something? Weak and Deviants are my go to for two points unless I have something build specific.
If you occupy every star system even if you don't have the planet, it should make war exhaustion, go up a whole lot faster than it does for the defender. As with each system occupied by the attacker it takes resources away from the defender's economy. Also stopping the ai just to spam out armies even though the system the planet is in is under occupation. They even do it while the planet is under siege. Really annoying the enemy fleet engaged voice prompt every 5 seconds. To find out its just one of your fleets trashing a transport fleet.
imma be honest, the pre-2.0 war goals were also kinda ass; you had to pick _exactly_ what you want and then you couldn't demand anything other than that but i feel like I'd still prefer it over what we've got now spy networks feel like they could be so much more, but instead you just have taking 10 years to build up a network just so you can destroy one (1) starbase module that'd take like a year to rebuild. or pausing the network for 15 years, during which it'd decay by a whopping... 180 points. above level 36 that's literally less than 1 level. or alternatively, you can spend an asset (assets cost 15 levels to get btw) in order to freeze it for 30 years. literally the only thing I've ever used them for is getting full intel on an empire.
There should be a planetary invasion and army overhaul to make combat interesting or at least more meaningful, not just bubbles that are needed in large numbers and disappear.
Lots of things but one thing i would like is for repairing fleets to costs alloys, as in the more armor you have the more expensive it is. Would give even more meaning to having a good economy and indirectly boost shield value. Armor is op imo.
@schwingedeshaehers i believe there is and i am fine with that, but imo fixing a ship that is nearly dead should incur an extra cost tied to the amount of hull and armor the ship is missing. this would make it a tad more realistic and incentivize installing more shield modules in designs(the choice is still the players but there is now an extra future cost to armor designs - repairs) to me, and i might be wrong ofc, it feels like armor designs are the better choice right now, not much point in having shields
Nomadic origin would be nice. Just give them a colossus to build fleets. Would still need to work up to building the other ships. It would be similar to Doomsday.
![Evolution Of Europa Universalis Games [2000-2013]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/j6hKcduumwk/mqdefault.jpg)
I wished they changed how the IAs decides to allow (or not allow) a new member into their federation, they have a…ima call it willingness, to allow someone into their fed based on distance, which is conpletely dumb, you can be LITERALLY besides one of the federation members, but since you are far away from one of them, youll likely never get into their federation, please fix this
Also the "allows war of agression". One member will want you in because you allow them and another won't because you don't. If you change your policies then they swap.
@@winterthemutesonmakes you wonder how or why they federated at all in the first place
@@derpidius6306 Because they're close, and very friendly, one of them being much stronger than the other will override that difference.
Honestly I think Federations should work off of the Federation itself. If the Federation itself allows wars of aggression, then even if your empire doesn't, you can still get dragged into wars by the other fed members. However when voting to allow someone in, it wouldn't impact the vote, because its based on what the Federation is. Not what each personal empire is.
@@Cramblit maybe at medium federalization it could
I will admit this annoys me, as a Federation Builder, to encounter this every game.
As soon as the computer joins... they will fight every other join request!
If you manage two computers, somehow, don't hold your breath on a third....
Only fix I have seen is to wait till the by-laws kick in so I can over-rule them.
Something I wish they would add is the ability to have an empire join or leave an existing war. For example: A war starts between two of my neighbors. I'd love to be able to join that war to support one of the empires, and gain all sorts of diplomatic bonuses in exchange for it. Alternatively, if I get stuck in a war that seems like it will never end because my allies are too stupid to achieve their war goals, I want the option to gtfo even if they hate me for it.
Another fun war option would be for someone to hire you to help them in a war, but you'll only stay hired for 1 year. You get paid extra depending on how much damage you do, and you automatically exit the war after the allotted time unless they renew the contract.
Its super annoying when someone else starts a war with your enemy and now you cant get proper occupation because player 3 is occupying some of the systems.
Should be 5 years because 1 year is too little in stellaris- without hyperlane battleship fleet are just too slow
5 years would be better as its also the same time you have to change a vassal contract
The problem is that this introduces a lot of complicated edge-cases, but even the existing system has some weird edge-case situations. So they may as well lol
I would like the science ship automation to not fly halfway across the galaxy to finish surveying a system where another automated science ship has just found an anomaly
I'd like them to be greedy: pick the closest task. Don't sail for years to go do something when you could be just going through one hop to the nearest system.
Religion is a BIG one for me. Like, spiritualist empires are really just religion-coded, but if you look closer theres really nothing there. Just ambiguous worship, or shroud stuff. Being able to make religions would be huge, and incentivize me to actually play spiritualist.
The animator of clay
I really really don't want religion. I just wish they would rename temples and priets so people would stop bringing it up. I like ambiguous worship and shroud stuff, the few events mentioning religion sometimes mention that your empire has millions of religions, cults and beliefs.
To my intergalactic space empire people's personal beliefs are completely irrelevant and turning religion into another drop down policy would suck.
Perhaps,
Religion Spread has been a feature of other games and it is something I quite enjoy, but it can't be limited to just Spiritualist Empires. Thus I propose an interesting compromise, one that would use the very same 'religious mechanics' found within other games, but not limit it to just Spiritualists: Factions spread outside of your borders! Some builds might even be made for it, getting your faction to 'polluted' their political spheres... could be a very potent tactic for fanatics.
Tweaks would need to be made to ensure it doesn't snowball too fast, such as penalties for trying to spread between nations without migration treaties, but I like this concept. Add the ability to rename factions and we have unique religions that can be spread, right along side the ideology of whatever -ism is forming within your neighbors empire. Fanatics, as mentioned before, should be boosted further by this concept... all those policies that boost a particular faction will have a 'bleed over the border' effect that could sway a while galaxy towards a singular ideology.
Hive minds though... we still have to sit in the corner and miss out.
But we don't want factions anyway, they are scary and difficult to manage!
Honestly they could even use the holding system but have it spread organically unless you intentionally spread. Or a secondary factions list
@@sirgaz8699 I really don't see why you can't have both.
On the war system, being able to sign individual peace’s would be a lifesaver for major galactic wars, and has so many intricacies in it. If a vassal is mostly occupied, they can’t peace out on their own but their loyalty would start ticking down. If an empire’s capital is taken, their leadership might be taken hostage. Having high war exhaustion would cause stability and resource output debuffs on their planets, discouraging death-wars over one or two systems. Low centralization federations might allow for individual peace, but at higher centralization laws could be enacted to force members to join and stay in other member’s wars. Orbital bombardment could be used as a terror tactic, greatly ticking up enemy war exhaustion. There’s so much that could be done to deepen the war system from pretty much “throw a bigger fleet at them and win”
Historically, indiscriminate violence against civilians has actually galvanized resistance against enemy forces, not reduced it. If we're gonna do something like that, it should really be set up so that indiscriminate orbital bombardment kills enemies faster, but REDUCES the enemy's war exhaustion. Because your monstrous behaviour is inspiring the enemy populace to resist you even harder. Forcing the player to decide if the costs of indiscriminate violence outweigh the gains.
@@tbotalpha8133 you’re right, but also at some point watching the next planet over being glassed will reduce people’s willingness to “fight to the end” (Battle of Britain vs Hiroshima)
@@tbotalpha8133 Reducing war exhaustion for an enemy that is having it's planets bombed is silly. However your idea does has some merit. I think it should be cheaper and faster to recruit armies as more and more civilians raise up arms against the enemy and ship build speed for the losing side should increase as military production is rapidly increased in an attempt to turn the tide of war.
The more desperate the situation becomes, the stronger the buffs for the losing side. This would make fighting wars far away from your own territory difficult (as it should be) and mean the likes of the juggernaut actually has a use, to give your fleets logistical support on the front line. Fleets should NOT be able to repair at captured star bases unless the star base has a shipyard and there should be some sort of asset denial in the game that allows a chance for the enemy to sabotage their shipyards before capture so you cannot use them.
There are so many ways to add layers to the war system and make even smaller empires put up a tenacious fight against stronger opponents.
Victoria 3 lets individual members capitulate. That makes it much more interesting to fight large alliances: you're thinking about whether to get the big enemy forces out of the fight by counterattacking them directly, whether to fight a war of attrition until they get bored and quit, or whether to attack your real target and hope to get a quick victory.
I'd also like it if war exhaustion was more dynamic. Capturing an entire sector in a few months should harm a nation's will to fight more than if it had taken years.
This IMO would make wars in general more interesting as empires would be able to employ different strategies to turn a war in their favour even if they're the weaker combatant, making raw fleet power less of a deciding factor.
3:49 Smear campaigns actually DO let you pick between 3 empires to target relations with, but you have to have the auto advancement turned off in order to get the choice. And it’s still not particularly effective as far as I can tell…
13:09 One thing I would like related to federations would be to change the Common Ground origin so that two or three human players could start the game as members of the same federation. Me and my friend like playing cooperatively as members of a federation against the AI, but dislike having to hunt each other down first. It would be nice to start off as a federation together right at the beginning.
You should be able to create battle groups, which are basically groups of fleets you can group together which always follow the flagship fleet you set. I'd like my stealth torpedo frigates to always follow the larger fleets without the other fleets outpacing them, without having to do fleet following micromanagement.
Unfortunately battle groups would probably render the fleet control limit irrelevant.
You can create control groups, like in rts games. Ctrl 1 sets whatever is selected to that and to quickly access it, you press 1 on your kb. That goes all the way up to 0
@@ErzengelDesLichtes The fleet control limit mechanic is already irrelevant because it can be easily bypassed through micromanagement. This undermines its purpose and highlights the need for a control limit rework.
@@ErzengelDesLichtes No, fleets dictate how many ships receive benefits from a commander's traits at any given time. This would be a quality of life change to make moving large amounts of endgame fleets easier.
Let's face it, this is just a facet of the complete failure of fleet limits and the failed attempt to prevent doomstacking. The Vision dev diary shows that they're aware they're at an impass now with dealing with doomstacking and fleet management without redoing the entire system from the ground up.
This is something I've seen added in mods. Giving ground combat invasion events which can give you interesting roleplaying choices. Having some policies that effect you armies would also make it more interesting. Need an army fast? set a policy for mass conscription that greatly increases how fast you can build a particular army, but in turn that army has poor health and morale. Or if you are willing to take your time. Set a policy for advanced training that makes building armies more expensive and time consuming, but in turn they have drastically increased damage, health, and morale.
Unironically one of the best suggestions given for ground combat changes. Nothing crazy, not a whole new system, just what they already do with dig sites already with event chains. Extra points if they account for the types of armies you have a la slave armies rebelling or Gene warriors devastating the enemy.
Ground invasions are literally just watching a load screen right now. Probably gonna package the overhaul into a $20 dlc
@@AceofWickedSpades If you are curious. The mods I use for this are: Ground Command, Military Enhancements 2.0 [Invasion Events and More], Ground Command + Military Enhancements Patch, and Under Siege. Reworks the entire ground invasion system into some thing more interesting.
@@M4gnetar11 they're not doing an overhaul ever, they've already said it
How would it affect armies that are already created? I think it would require some kind of army experience meter more like the one in HOI4 that represents the level of training/experience of the unit. Maybe a unit below the standard would have massive debuffs until they’re trained back up.
I think construction ships and transport ships should be able to cloak, its niche i know, but something about like an entire “shadow fleet” that lurks in a nebula or something like that that’s undetectable to most empires sounds cool, maybe even cloaking on collosi and juggernaut but i understand the size issue with that and cloaking
Have a juggernaut/collosi cloak require it to be immobile.
Imagine passing through an "empty" nebula and a fleet with juggernaut uncloak to defend.
I miss assisting research with science ships. Mainly because after expanding towards other empires and claiming your land- there's basically nothing else for them to do. Archeology sites and Astral rifts prolong their usefulness but that is also a finite situation and after those are done there is nothing for your scientists to do if they aren't governers.
Agreed. Although if you have cloaking (from First Contact) they can also gather intel on other empires, which is what I do until their scientist dies and then I scrap them
@R0ssMM You know what's funny is that I just noticed that feature about 2 hours ago for the first time! I suppose that is something!
Why was it removed? It’s annoying having them do nothing at the end
@@IwhowasdatXD960 Because research was too OP and one of the ways they nerfed it was to get rid of that feature.
@@IwhowasdatXD960 They removed it because they added the ability for Scientists and Commanders to govern Planets directly. If you're done with early and mid-game exploration, you can dismiss your scientists tailored to those roles and replace them with scientists tailored to governing planets or filling council positions.
If they ever make it, I would love Stellaris 2 to have the vic3 economic, population and political system, with the Eu4 peace deal system and keep its current warfare system. Imagine being able to win a war by sending your fleet to blockade a hyperlane and cut off an empires main agri world, so you can starve them into submission with revolts and unrest
When I first played Stellaris I just assumed it was MOO2 with better graphics. Largely it worked out, but the fact that you don't need to feed and power each planet locally was weird to me for a while. The local vs global market with convoys mechanic in Vic3 makes much more sense to me. Including the part where if you cut off the supplies, that planet/state is going to be very, very screwed.
I cant pay another 200$ worth of DLCs for Stellaris 2 😔
So, I do use federations a lot, only for the extra fleet power as a hegemony. The rest of the members will be my vassal, but I use one weak empire to get the extra resources, fleet power, influence and unity - plus being custodian allows for me to max the fleets I control. Its all just for better stats than anything else
ONLY ONE THING! Make genetical modification not based on planet, but based on jobs. Best indirect buff.
Vocational Genomics already does this, and feels like a hacky fix to avoid building a more in-depth system.
This! I want a ruler pop, a metallurgist pop, a unity pop, and I want them to work *those* jobs not just approximate by planet.
Suggestion 3: Ascension Paths and Exotic Material Acquisition.
All Ascension paths will unlock flavored science tech trees like Archeotech. They will give anything from new building to new ships to new modules
Each ascension perk will allow give access to the creation and exploitation of Late game resources: Nanite, Zro, Living Metal.
Biological, will give Living Metal & Zro .
Psionic will give Zro & Nanite.
Synthetic will give Nanite & Living Metal.
On the topic of Espionage: You are able to select the target of your smear campaign if you do not check the "launch automatically" checkbox on the operations dialog.
This just shows how lacking the espionage UX is
I wish you could promote any ethics at a given time, not just ethics representing factions you already have. Sometimes I get events or other circumstances where I want to begin the process of switching one of my ethics, but I have no faction to promote to even begin the process of doing so. There should just be a wheel with all the ethics on it that you can promote any three of your choice like you currently can with your factions.
I think there should be more coercion mechanics, ways to strongarm other empires, or negotiate from a place of weakness with a stronger empire that is hostile towards you. When my empire gets big enough I should just be able to point a million fleet power at an independent empire to force trades from them even if their attitude is negative. Also, automatic acceptance of surrendering should not be a thing, it completely ruins any barbaric despoilers or nihilistic acquisition empires I play, as other empires will just immediately surrender before I can raid any pops from them. We're done when I SAY we're done.
The fleet part sounds American
"I should just be able to point a million fleet power at an independent empire to force trades from them even if their attitude is negative" I get what you're saying, but at that point you may as well just make them a Tributary. It will be a short war.
I'm always wary of things being added that make it just a straight no-brainer that it's much stronger to play "evil", though. It's already bad enough in that regard.
@@Pigga-k8k gunboat diplomacy, the main foreign policy of the US in the late 19th century.
One thing I would really really REALLY like to see, is to have more in depth ways in which empires passively affect each other.
We already have mechanics in place where pops will gain other ethics through events or where the ethics of an empire can change, or where they are relevant in diplomacy, for example in a federation, or just baseline oppinion.
And ofcourse the mega church civic that already has mechanics to intentionally change ethics to spiritual.
I think it would be really cool to introduce ways where the ethics of bordering empires slowly change over time, for example you could trade routes across empires, or have effects when migration treaties pass and your species changes planets to a different, or maybe even espionage mission.
I am picturing a scenario where all of these mechanics are finally combined.
Just imagine, you start out next to an empire, you are both xenophile but you are spiritualist and they are materialistic. Through diplomacy, treaties and trade routes and maybe other stuff you flip a lot of their pops to spiritualist. Maybe at this point they could embrace it as their empire ethic. Maybe try to suppress. Or maybe you could instigate a civil war. Maybe even make it so that you can convince them to fight for joining your empire.
There could be so more depth just utilising mechanics that are already there and the connections seem so obvious to me that its killing me that its not already in the game.
There's actually a LOT of these effects already in the game, having treaties between empires or fighting in wars does in fact shift ethics attractions around, but the problem is they're just far too weak, so weak most probably don't even know they exist. Even when you manage to stack them quite high ethics attractions takes decades to centuries to have any effect, and even that is assuming they are NOT stacking any government ethics attraction or shift chance reductions, either of those quickly make it basically impossible to influence someone's ethics peacefully even as a megachurch. So yeah, there should definitely be more, both passively affecting and possibilities of intentionally working to affect ethics.
The latter could be something to make espionage marginally worthwhile to conduct again for example. Also, nearly every Galactic Council resolution should carry ethics attraction values as part of their effects. Far as I know there's just one that can go as high as 100% pacifist attraction, and one that can reach 50% spiritual. The "opposite" ones don't give Militaristic or Materialistic... why? And why shouldn't resolutions to make vassals more loyal give Authoritarian attraction, why doesn't the Worker Protection line and slavery ban give Egalitarian attraction etc? Honestly there's so many obvious omissions that sometimes it smells of sheer laziness.
@Arbaaltheundefeated
Exactly this!
This game has so much wasted depth and features that just scream like they want to work together but for some reason they just ... dont.
I genuinely feel like a halfway competent programmer could make diplomacy in this game feel ten times better by just tweaking some numbers of features that already exist, adding things to where they already should be (ethics attraction to galactic senate like you mentioned) or adding some more basic events.
For example, there is an event for when you settle on a tomb world. It essentially makes some of your pops pacifist because they see what war leads to.
Why arent they any such events for actually being in a war yourself?
Imagine getting a planet of yours cracked and having to deal with the fear in your Population. Or entering a bunch of treaties and your pops becoming more xenophile over time.
Ethics should actually change depending on your playstyle and Not be almost completely static.
Domestic politics are literally so underdeveloped you can literally just ignore them usually.
There needs to be some sort of general diplomacy/politics overhaul. Desperately. Maybe even give us more megachurch/criminal syndicate playstyles as a dlc or smth so the rework is justified.
I wish I knew to code so I could just do it myself...
My idea for internal politics is basically just adding in something like this one website I remember using like a decade ago. My memory is shaky on the details, but you basically were the leader of a fictional country. Each day the website would bring you an issue that the country is having. You'd be given a list of options, and then the next day you'd find out how things changed. Over time the country could change into a bunch of different ways and it was fun to compare what's going on it your country to a friend's. In Stellaris I feel like it'd be easy enough to implement and not too annoying to engage in if it's like, once every 6 months, or something. Could grand buffs, debuffs, ethics shifts, situations, etc. I think it'd be really fun.
OH, like NationStates dilemmas? Yeah that would be dope af
I wish they would fix ai from trying to min-max jobs on planets, which ends up with them falling in behind later in the game. They always set enforcers to 0, leading to tons of crime on planets, they don't bother dealing with unemployed pops, which leads to low stability. Seriously, in my last campaign two robot empires constantly had revolutions cos they didn't bother building more than a couple of districts and buildings, which led to massive overpopulation and constant near 0 stability.
I would like to see them combine some perks, like toxicity and world shapers. Also, as someone to mains trade empires, I would love being able to play origins other than ring world. This can easily be implemented by introducing a single ascention perk that gives trader jobs on city buildings. Something like +10% trade value and 1 or 2 trader jobs on city districts. This would make it so all empires can easily become trade empires, AND this wouldn't make the ring world trade empires any stronger because it isn't buffing trade districts even further. I suppose it does make trade habitats stronger but habitats are already weak in comparison.
With you saying about the gal com, another thing that I wish for is a setting for situation speed, as you know I love knights of the toxic God. The problem is if you play the game on faster settings, u never get more then half way through the situation just give us an option to change how fast we can complete these
as for the ground combat, a change they could make would be to make it like endless space where ur combat ships have a ground combat stat, then you invade using ur ships crew. this could even add a new tactical layer by making it so that during ground combat ur ships can not move or are weaker, giving ur war target more time to recover or take advantage of your invasion to fight ur fleet
"13 Things I Wish The Changed In Stellaris" The what?
You didn't see a thing
I had assumed “The” was supposed to be “They”, but apparently not.
3:17
The Banking Clan approves of this treaty!
I would like the Origins and civics to have a bit of a rethink. Not all origins are made the same. Some are stories, others are start planet modifiers and some effect what pops you have. It all feels really limiting for the roleplay options. For example, necrophage changes how your pops work but something like subterrain changes how your planets work. Wouldn't it be cool if you could be a subterrain necrophage? So, I propose that they changes the origins into origin categories so you can mix and match them to create new unique origins. The categories could be something like, Pops, Planet and Story? For example Necrophage (Pops) Subterrain (Planet) Teachers of the Shroud (Story) Catalytic Processing (Economic). This would also allow civics that blur the line between civic and origin to be turned into origin components such as eager explores being a story or Idyllic bloom being part of the Life-seeded origin or as above Catalytic Processing being Economic. All of this would grant a lot more freedom when creating an empire without adding more civics or origins and increase roleplaying opportunities.
Also a small note about precursors, I would love to have a tab in the galaxy settings to just guaranty that you get the precursor you want. Just have it set default to random and allow players to choose the precursor. Really it just saves people the time and effort of restarting a game until they get the one they want.
What I'd love to see for the internal politics is a bigger distinction between each of the four basic gov types. For instance, democracies could have a parliament which would correspond to factions (which should probably change) at the moment of elections and where you'd need a majority to change policies, declare war or join a federation (unless say, you have diplomatic corps and you can join a fed without parliament). This could introduce a bunch of events to get more support or losing it like events in the Dynamic Political Events mod. They've confirmed in the recent Q&A that there would be more Machine Age-like government subtypes in the future so it would make sense to really distinguish each large government category.
Ok, my idea for ground warfare rework
1) The "Armies" window would contains tiles (at least something for those who miss them), representing buildings/districts. The armies themselves could be deployed (placed on these tiles) or held in reserve/disengaged (it's already in the game, though purely automatic).
2) Building/districts, corresponding to the tiles where armies are placed on, would give some specific buffs and/or debuffs to these armies. Capital buildings or military installations would give better ones, but they would also be harder to capture.
2) The collateral damage would increase devastarion to the selected buildings/districts during an active combat (devastation from an orbital bombardment would work simlar to how it does now, I guess).
3) Most importantly, people who don't care for it could just turn on auto-battles (yeah, it wouldn't be as effective knowing the AI, but there's always the "quantity over quality" option).
You can expand on this idea and get something like a mini-game with elements of "Battleship", chess, etc.
I feel that you have read a lot of comments on Steam and on the forum. I noticed that some ideas overlapped with mine. I am glad that there are like-minded people))👽
I wish we could 'Mothball' fleets we don't need in peacetime; reduce upkeep by x% and pay a fraction of the actual ship cost/time to restore them to functional.
While the idea is cool, I personally think a mobilization/demobilization mechanic would be the better way, considering mothballing would just involve a lot of micromanaging I feel. Also mob/demob might make sense if the pop system, trade and economies are reworked anyways so the option for interactions could be there.
I agree with pretty much everything you've said here. As far as I am concerned, the current real issue with internal politics is that a) empires are very unrealistically united along their governing ethics and b) their internal political situation is remarkably static. On the first thing here, it's almost impossible, unless you go out of your way to conquer a lot of people from an empire with different ethics very quickly as a non-genocidal empire, to actually have non-government ethics pop at all. The idea of an interstellar empire whose trillions of citizens all fully agree with the governing coalition is obviously wild. I think that at minimum, other factions should be easier to spawn based on what you do, and even that a weaker opposition should spawn automatically. It would be really interesting, e.g. with democratic empires with the parliamentary civic to have more realistic elections based on the status of the various factions, to have to build a government coalition representing the majority of faction support etc, so that the political situation is more dynamic and you can transition to different government ethics more organically and easily (if you want), have opposition governments etc. Perhaps it should be impossible for the ruler of the empire to be someone that doesn't belong to the victorious coalition etc. Stuff like that would add flavour without having a very great effect on overall unity or the economy. Even dictatorial governments have to make sure to reconcile tendencies between different powerful factions of the army or oligarchs after all.
On the second thing, and speaking of dynamism, the only thing that is actually dynamic about the internal politics right now, is the revolt situation if you are really bad at the game, something which pretty much never happens if you have a minimal understanding of its mechanics and are not playing something very niche, like a terravore, and chomping more than you can handle. Another example could be the robotic uprising that is also actually difficult to pull off. It would be nice if, for one example, the different active factions would create situations where they request, even demonstrate or protest, to have their issues fulfilled (e.g. an egalitarian faction requesting that you return to natural evolution for your leaders, and you can either fulfil their demand, disappointing the authoritarian opposition or else move agaist them), this is in line with the situation system they are now using for a lot of the previously more bare bones mechanics. In general the internal politics are too rigid. If you satisfy the factions, you can ignore it completely. What about attritional wars you are losing causing demonstrations and strikes that you can put down, or at least do PR to avoid, connecting external and internal politics? (I think it would be really nice to have a system that's responsive to whom you're fighting. I expect my citizens to fight to the last if we're about to be genocided by a fanatic purifier, but if I've lost like four fleets trying to get a chokepoint, I do expect strikes. What if I'm fighting another empire with very similar ethics for an opportunistic landgrab? In general if my casus belli comes into conflict with my ethics, or if I'm fighting someone that my people actually like. I don't like the vicky system where you can't attack states with good relations, but I think there could be a penalty to having to persuade people to fight, die and kill when they like the other empire!). Primarily, I think the opposition factions should do plays to try to get power, creating a more volatile background situation you must pay attention to. I don't just mean the opposition factions I've mentioned above. Consider a fanatic egalitarian pacifist empire, where the pacifists want to a) take power, and b) turn it into a fanatic pacifist egalitarian empire. They may even want to do a coalition with the xenophiles against the egalitarians. Different factions could also have a stronger preference for different authority types that comes into it, even a preference about the character of the federation you've got going (on which point, another thing I really want is the ability to merge federations if you persuade all their members, or otherwise a better way to sow discord. I think this would matter a lot to make diplomatic ways of playing less stale. This is also why I fully agree we need espionage operations directly targeting another empire's ethics). Something that you could conceivably ignore to keep the same authority and ethics for some minor costs, or else let your internal landscape be the impetus that would lead you into transforming the greater empire more seriously. We need more chaos, internally.
Addendum: your best idea in this video, by far, amongst many other good suggestions, is that we need empire histories. I've actually done a few playthroughs where I personally wrote down what was happening and they remain some of the absolute best games I've had, despite the hassle. I think it's partly because it forces you to stop minmaxing for a second, and take what's happening narratively seriously. In one of those games, an equivalent determined exterminator had just got a pre-FTL system, and I had to decide whether to get into an uncertain war, or let them eat it. If I wasn't thinking in narrative terms, I would have viewed them as a minor resource I just lost and which wouldn't justify war. But I did go to war, and it was a really difficult one, which only made my eventual victory and liberation of their system all the more satisfying. This is also how I know that there is a "saved us from genocide" status that gives pops like +40 happiness. The devs had thought of it, but the game doesn't incentivise you to go for that sort of thing over resource management.
I really want a megacorp origin for Machine and Gestalt. Machine empire is pretty easy: you came about from a trade/corporate AI that took over the government (and have deviancy tied to trade).
For hive mind, we have an observation event of an organic singularity. What if that singularity happened but didn’t take over, but ultimately formed awareness from managing systems. It’d be kind of like Rogue Servitor, but instead of pampering a captive population, it’s about ‘optimizing’ the universe through symbiosis (possibly have your guaranteed habitable taken by a friendly empire that you start with a trade agreement)
As a hardcore role player that keeps extensive notes on all the historical happenings, staff and events in my empires (it’s just my thing, I find it relaxing and fun) I would appreciate a history tab immensely. Even if it were as simple as a list of events and dates.
I actually think crime is fine as it is, it gives meaning for enforcers, as otherwise they don't even need to exist in most cases. In my opinion having actual faction leaders/some events with them which influences their approval or might even cause them to rebel or at least rebellions should be more interesting. Maybe we can tie crime in with the factions, for example having a criminal mafia-like faction sounds interesting.. I also agree a lot with history tabs, most stellaris players would probably like to see some graphs of things like, planets, systems, pop over the years.
starbase weapon loadouts are actually depending on high slot weapons i think. i would not lock it behind unyielding, as that makes it a must-pick.
i think internal politics should actually be an opt-in ingame, that improves efficiency, and gives you flexibility. my main issue is, that stellaris acts like gestalt empires are always better, where in reality, i think a gestalt would at some point stagnate exactly because it is missing internal politics and a hive mind needs an internal hierarchy as well. so it could be stuff like empire size improvements, or bonuses in general diplomacy and galactic council stuff. i do not think however that it should be anything that is required to be fiddled around with, as some might find that annoying.
also the same for espionage: gestalt should be more vulnerable to local espionage actions, but instead gain easier ways to infiltrate.
Suggestion 1: Star bases are now the new Central Habitat Modules. Which effectively makes them function as planet. Taking the Voidborne civic, and tech will not only unlock more districts but also more defensive platform modules. Large Districts will unlock X & L Slot weapons. All modules will also have access to smaller modules as an option. For example, instead of taking 1 L Slot you can take 2 medium. Also, now expanding the Habitat/Star Base, will be incorporated into the build queue of that star base, instead of using construction ships. Lastly the Weapon Slots will fire, from the location in the Star system its located, instead of just the central star base. For example putting a L Cannon module on a Gas Giant will have it fire from the Gas Giant. This will give the system better coverage when engaging enemy fleets.
fyi, for qiucker enclave interactions, there is a mod out there called "speed dial" -- works with newer enclaves as well, comes in very handy :)
After your video I thought a bit about the crime modifier and I think its biggest problem is that it is just a simple negative modifier with no use or tradeoff. It is like a far worse version of amenities. I think it should be a modifier which goes in two directions.
For example, you could have a crime/surveilance number (one a possitive number and one its negative). It could use the currently useless trade value from living standard. Playing as a criminal syndicate or making deals with them could give you policies to change the bonus. Maybe even criminal/surveilance federations. Opressive autocracy could be the surveilance counterpart.
For example having 300crime on the planet would give you the living standart times 3 per pop. To counterbalance it you could get negative events for normal empires that have above 100 crime or surveilance.
Your point about the intel on your own empire would be cool. Being able to use counter espionage to present stronger or weaker than you are to affect diplomacy would be cool, you could also get a bonus from having a nebula in your empire or keeping your ships cloaked.
I think just more ways to make empires feel unique, especially with megastructures. Have like megachurches for only spiritualists, underwater arcologies for aquatic, or a special utopia megastructure for rogue servitors.
I also think civics should all feel super different. Council positions were great at that and I think building on that with more unique buildings, techs, and megastructures would be great
I love the idea of empire-type or ethics-specific megastructures. The question then becomes: what happens when other empires capture them? "They just stay ruined" is one solution.
@ I think they should be ruined and then able to be repaired as something else. For example a flooded arcology can take like three years to turn into a normal arcology, a megachurch could be converted into a mega art installation, or a rogue servitor habitat could become a habitat or ring world depending on how it was impoemented
Something I've wanted from day 1 was the option to do Star Trek Federation style exploration fleets. The Enterprise is a heavily armed Cruiser that is also a long range science vessel. Give me a toggle in the game settings or nation settings that lets me start with things like this so that way when they run into threats they don't immediately pop and can act as interdiction fleets against other empires.
Most of your suggestions about War make sense. If I'm trying to vassalize someone I'd probably be willing to forgo some or all of my (or my ally's) claims in order to get that. Being able to negotiate for one's own empire to leave or enter an ongoing war would be interesting. I wouldn't necessarily want to make capturing the homeworld or "capturing" their leader / council the end of the war because it would suck if it happened to you, but it could certainly add quite a lot to your side's War Exhaustion.
Espionage definitely needs a rework so that it isn't so toothless. Not sure where I heard this, but it's like they're afraid of a bad response if the AI is constantly targeting the player. And to be fair, it would suck if your Leaders were, too often, being assassinated or buildings blowing up or resources just going missing. I would propose an advanced slider in the galaxy settings that determines how aggressive enemy spies are. That said, I definitely want the ability to: target a Forge World's foundry building; prime an enemy Starbase so that it's disabled when I attack; slay their high-level leaders or coerce or replace them with duplicates with hidden traits; introduce a genetic plague that targets only their main species; smuggle slaves out of their space; steal their relics and specimens; arm their angriest political faction. The list goes on.
For internal politics, I'd just like to see the largest unhappy factions (so not necessarily the most angry if they have a small membership) actually get pissed off and do something about it every now and then. Just adding a hidden Loyalty score to Leaders would be all that's needed to kick things off. A paranoid player would be careful not to let angry factions on the council or at least not too many. Get enough disloyal leaders as members of a particular unhappy faction and it starts a Situation where pops with the ethic take BIG happiness penalties and thereby lowering stability. Appease them by granting their factional demands (and add a few new ones!). Perhaps we could use internal spies to uncover who the disloyal Leaders are. When an unrest situation turns into a rebellion on one of the planets, the disloyal leaders reveal themselves (even if you fired them) and several planets join in and we got ourselves a civil war.
Very good video, very good suggestions. I have an idea for a crime-rework, it should be combined with a ground combat rework, where you can use your ground armies (or even space fleets) for more, than just war. E.g. one feature could be to use armies for large security sweeps to fight criminal syndicates, because the only way to do this a.t.m. is to declare a war against this empire and if they are on the other side of the galaxy or in an alliance it just ruins the game. Another example could be making blockades with your fleets to control the flow of commodities or showing force. I have lots of other ideas to make war and combat more interesting, but that should be enough for the moment.
Yea the science one seems fairly simply to implement and would be a nice qol feature. That’s already how the construction ships work when you have them on auto construct. It just sits there with the auto enabled if there is nothing to do, and as soon as there’s a new place to build it does it automatically
It would be nice if all planets functioned like the synaptic lathe; most jobs are determined by planet type and buildings just add bonuses/housing/amenities to choose from, and just get rid of districts entirely. I think this would make the late-game a lot less tedious and make the ai better, since the complexity of this game is one of the reasons ai are so hard to program.
I know it would eat up dev time but I really wish we had the ability to do peace deals like we had at the launch of the game it would make wars much less of a pain in the ass and probably improve the multiplayer a bit. I've always wanted the galactic market to be finite and not infinite as it is portrayed, so the only resources that are in the galactic market are resources players/ai produce and sell to the market so there is a finite amount so if everyone does a trade build and nobody produces and sells food then people will find themselves without food, and likewise someone making a farmers/food build will be able to benefit from very high food prices. (Maybe if multiple people have automatic trades set up with the galactic market the player with the highest trade value gets the resources, and if there's leftover then it goes to the second highest and so on and so forth with 0 resources being traded automatically if the player is at their resource cap)
Edit: Another thing is I'd like to have negative traits to have some positives attached to them (maybe slow breeders reduces pop upkeep?) and purely negative traits give more points.
Edit 2: Please uncap the council! Or make a 'second' council that gives lesser bonuses for any/all extra council positions!
One thing that comes to my mind with espionage and fallen empires. Just copy the reverse engeneering minor artifacts option. Just get the repeatable option for one time fallen empire buildings could open a complete new playstyle. Make the options 1k energy and 5 years cooldown or 5k energy and 1 year cooldown.
Suggestion 2: Spiritualist Ethic rework. Temples are now a per planet building which can be devoted to 1 of 5 options: (paradox equivalent) Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, Nurgle, and Undivided. All can be upgraded twice, before needing to form a covenant to unlock the 3rd upgrade. All give unity. Khorne gives armor, Naval Capacity and Ground troop buffs, Rivalry and Kinetic weapon Buff. Tzeentch gives Engineering and Physics, shields, Energy Weapon Buffs. Slaneesh gives Amenities, influence, and ship fire rate, and Hangar and Strike Craft Buffs. Nurgle gives pop growth, hull, Pop genetic mutation rate, and Society Research, Titan & Colossal Ship Buffs. Upon making a coven, all Temples will be converted to their respective covenant patron.
Taking Spiritualist unlocks the ability to create 1 Spiritual Branch office. Fanatics can build 2.
Planets with Branch offices will now have a reduced influence and time cost for doing espionage against them.
Star Systems with Low Anti-Piracy will occasionally spawn Pirate Devotees.
During Ground Invasions a percentage of Enemy Ground Troops will be converted to your side, on planets with your Faith Offices.
The description is a little goofy, since stellaris is not only unique, but so one of its kind that its the monopoly of this game genre!
I have my own inside joke that I have no idea if anyone has ever noticed but all my top line descriptions are... unique...
I didn't really know how to fit this video with it lmao
@@Ep3o Oh yeah that's true XD
Well someone has noticed it now
This was suprisingly indepth and really good list that you put a lot of thought into, it was a joy to watch.
Galactic Wonders and Arcology Project shouldn't be ascension perks but should be rare late-game techs unlocked after Mega-Engineering. Currently they are must-have perks which end up completely locking up two whole ascension perk slots, essentially just to unlock certain techs in the tech tree.
I wish you had to built different armies. Like anti ship gun armies that attack ships in orbit for example
Quest! I find Fallen Empire's request interesting, but I think they could go further. If regular empires could make requests, and that is how you can earn favors... Wait, would that make this a Space Empire dating simulator? Anyway, more interactions with Fallen Empires would be cool, so they are not just a roadblock for most of the game. This could be a build-up to the War in Heaven event, making it more epic.
My change to ground combat would be having an option to not equip weapons on a ship and make it a Transport version that can fit a set number of armies and costs that much in Minerals. You can use a General to lead that fleet and get the bonuses. I would also like a different system for Trade that doesn't lag the game a lot, I currently use a mod for that. About the Enclaves, the windows that close and you need to reopen could be worked on. The other major thing is the pop system, I wonder if they can make it work better to reduce lag in the late game. Maybe merge pops that are the same and make them superpops or something like that.
They should change the 'auto-construct' feature for the construction ships to possible include minor/major orbitals and maybe even orbital rings or hyperrelays
I wish I had the ability to reorder my fleets in the outline. It bothers me immensely when I have 1st Fleet, 2nd Fleet, 5th Fleet, 4th Fleet, 3rd Fleet, and so on.
I'd love a lot of things but one thing I'd really love is a cap on how many members a federation can have. I get that it might be fun to create a large alliance and roleplay Star Trek's federation, but when I have to go to war with like 8 or 10 empires at the same time it gets frustrating. All I wanted to do was take a ruined dyson sphere...
Durning a war my Overlord changed my vassaliztion type and took me out of the war on heaven. I was stuck in vassaliztion purgetory could not declare war, join the war, or rebel. The only wars i could join were when a new war was joined by the overlord. Yeah that war went on to go till end game late end game.
I want fewer ships and fleets in the later game stages. It becomes extremely tedious to manage all of them, and good luck even trying to figure what's happening in a lategame battle. This doesn't have to be achieved solely by nerfing your means of gaining naval capacity either. For example, higher tech components could be made significantly more expensive (and significantly more effective) so that your base upkeep per ship more closely matches your growth in income.
I think purificator type empires should be longer/permanenetly in the "first contact" phase but still able to take starbases, unless they invest heavily into spying over another empire.
I think it would make them more unique.
I'd be open to alternative ascension paths that don't focus on modifying your people. I think there's a lot of potential to be explored there. What if the empire focused on developing their planets? Like you suggested. Maybe it's all about creating perfect artificial worlds with unique features and districts. That you can choose to pick and build the perfect energy world or factory world. What if in another path your empire focused on creating bigger and better ships? You get access to special ships, weapons and components without having to become a crisis but also at the cost of all other ascension paths.
But if they are going to redo genetic ascension I hope at the very least, we can assimilate organics and can make them immortal. But there's a lot more they could do with it beyond that. But that'd make me happier with it.
Funny thing about trade, as I recall from the last dev diary, trade was one of the systems they're looking into potentially overhauling in the near future, which could be interesting. If nothing else, if they rework trade into not having the current trade route system, it means less micromanagement of having to set up trade routes manually from the absolutely banal routes the AI generates at times. Like a 26 system route through other empires when the capitol is literally 3-4 jumps away.
Also yes, I couldn't agree more with science ship automation. Now, I can understand science ships running into danger turning it off because fleeting overwrites their orders. Fine, but why can you set construction ships to auto as a set it and forget it but a science ship with nothing to do cancels automation? I'd love it if I could set my late game (heck sometimes just midgame) science ships, who don't regularly have things to do, to be automated on things like anomalies and rifts, so that when new rifts open up or anomalies get left behind by cosmic storms, those standby science ships just go and do it themselves without me having to check which science ship has the person with the rift traits or checking to see if any new anomalies got left behind by a storm.
I would like the weapons on the ship affect planetary bombardment. Not some vague value. Have the planetary shield act like ship shields with kinetics doing better and lasers do less.
Strike craft would be very supportive with little or no collateral and being able to support armies on the ground.
I recall games like Master of Orion with different planet based weapons. We have a filler with Orbital Rings. But set the Army tab as Military and put the defences there.
I wish they would fix this bug with Hegemony federation type where the members can leave because there's a bug that makes the leave request go to somebody other than the president.
I tried spinning some sectors off as vassals one time and pretty much my whole hegemony, which consisted of most of the entire galaxy left to join the other major federation block because they had a -1000 opinion of my vassals i created. Very stupid
“Improve war” I’m hooked and I agree
Biggest thing for me is resource sliders for the galaxy when starting and precursor choosing/turn off. Maybe I want to play a game with 10x resources, RP-ing as the first civilizations in that galaxy or 0.1x resources, RP-ing as maybe cycle 5.
My gosh, you must commission an Espionage overhaul mod with those ideas
Improvements on ship design and the ability to save design to use in other matches
Funny you mentioned federations, as just today i made a mod that makes it impossible for them to form (via a tutorial on reddit, can't link)
About the old peace deals: they were scrapped back when we got patch 2.0 (I think that was apocalypse) because it was sort of bad in ye olden times and very painful for the changes 2.0 made to the map in general to implement, so we got the broken down system we have atm. Just as reference I started playing shortly after utopia's release so patch 1.6 I think :-)
I wish we could have a paramilitary megacorp civic with the ability to profit off of wars and sell fleets on demand whie getting synergy from criminal heritage. Also, as far as espionage, we should be able to see relation modifiers without needing intel.
I think megacorp franchise building do not have enough effect on planets like laboratories only give clerk job instead of scientists job it wood be cool if mega corp building wood effect bouth sides maybe with advantage for mega corp so it while playing them there wood need be more thinking for what buildings you place.
I felt the same way and I was complaining to some friends who let me know about this mod “Moar Branch Office Buildings” or something. It was featured by paradox a while back but is still up to date now and it adds a bunch new buildings including a system to specialize branch offices and sort of upgrade the buildings.
The whole mega corp thing needs to be redone. Remove the buildings from each plant and make an influence rate system. I really think it needs to be some kind of progress % bar and other mega corps can influence your empire. You can change influence by changing policies or what services you offer. Maybe keep the building system but make it for that empire rather than per plant.
Can agree to most of this, and nice oldschool Zelda Theme in the background
what about adding criminal pops, we can have the police actually capture and imprison them, put to work with menial jobs with maybe a modifier. then you can maybe have some governing stuff with how you deal with pops, maybe you can select a judge. since we can have criminal corps we can get criminals from other species maybe on our planet we can put to work or banish or something. could also make it with the espionage stuff where you make decisions depending on a certain crimes but could be too tedious maybe.
The game Supremacy 1914 actually did espionage really well in my game and I wish that Stellaris’s was more similar.
I think both wars and internal politics should be changes Paradox should prioritize. I’ve made multiple posts on the Paradox forums on how I’d like wars to be improved, because at their core they really haven’t changed much since the early days of Stellaris and if anything have been dumbed down substantially. I’d love the ability to negotiate conditional surrenders, enact ceasefire agreements, enforce reparations and enact lend leases with friendly empires in exchange for energy credits or political favors, and so much more.
Internal politics is another thing that hasn’t changed much either. I think Paradox has hinted at changing the current system in the near future, but I have my own ideas on how it can be improved too. Maybe revolts and slave uprisings could me more common and more of a threat to even experienced players, maybe you could run the chance of a civil war in democratic or oligarchic empires and a war of succession in imperial or dictatorial empires if you don’t have an heir (heirs should be improved to it often takes years for a monarchy to find a legitimate heir and an indeterminate period for dictatorships to choose an heir). Reforms, both embracing a new ethic or reforming your empire the normal way should be something that is gradual rather than instant kind of like how cyberization and synthesization now is and would also be the most vulnerable and politically unstable time for your empire.
Those are just some of my ideas on how some of the systems in Stellaris should be improved.
I also want an espionage tab because i won't remember who or what I spy on an alien empire..
I hope a lot of these get implemented, but more realistically I wonder which ones already have mods?
The one thing that Hearts of Iron and StarCraft does right is having a defenders advantage.
Otherwise you just make a ball of units and throw them at each other and all the buildup becomes very anticlimactic.
Probing attacks and such happen due to defenders advantage where defenses are resource expenditures and you need to scout to get a read on the opponent and constantly probe for weaknesses in their borders.
That's how games need to be for protracted war to be good.
I tripple support your point about subterfuge and FEs
I actually do enjoy the mechanics but wish they‘d be more fleshed out.
Regarding this I‘d think it would be great to send the stellarite devourer into an FE‘s system
Consul has its own espionage screen
1. Regarding wars - YES. Also what I always wanted is that you can trade for some systems from the AI, but they always no matter what never ever ever ever ever are willing to give up a system in a traade deal. Why is it even an option? Like I understand, you never give up your capital, or important planets or systems with megastructures in them or sth like that. But can we at least solve some bordergore by trading for a system that is 14 jumps away from the rest of its empire without any structures in it other than 2 research and 1 mining station?
For internal politics, I have a wishlist for improvements:
1: meaningful factions. Make it so that if a significant (>30% support faction) is unhappy, they can revolt. Also, more intelligence in how their demands activate: for example it makes little sense for militarists to complain about low naval capacity usage in 2210 and become unhappy from that, when the empire has met basically nothing and the entire GDP is going into expansion and infrastructure. In a similar vein, they shouldn’t become unhappy that the empire hasn’t killled any leviathans lately, as the last one was killed by the empire 100 years ago.
2: leader lineages. leaders would trace their lineages to previous leaders. You’d have a few new leaders to represent new people breaking into the elite and civics and government types would affect the ratio of new blood to old guard (so democracies would have less leaders related to previous leaders and imperial governments would have far more). Then tie this into skills and traits, so a leader recruited from an existing lineage would start at a higher level, but inherits some of the traits of the previous leaders, especially negative traits. While new ones would be a fresh slate so to speak. And also have factions agitate for heirs to be elected. Also, use this system in imperial and dictatorship governments to spark civil wars with pretenders.
And then, not for internal politics, but just to put a dampener on excessively wide builds: corruption. Every planet in your core sector is safe from the effect, but outside the core sector, planets have corruption the further they are away from the capital, which directly lowers resource output. Have it be able to be lowered by buildings and governors, but it’s still a penalty.
Then in the mid game, hyperrelays become available and can cut the distance penalty from corruption in half or more, to represent better communication links resulting in better governance.
Then late game, gateways come along and reduce the distance penalty to 0 (or nearly 0) allowing for truly effective galaxy spanning empires.
I'd really like if there was more options for holdings. The main problem with current holdings IMO is that you can only put them in friendly empires. It'd be so cool if maybe Communist empires could build underground media outlets to spread their ideals in rival states, kinda like Pravda was before the Russian revolution. Or maybe two warring empires could establish partisan bases in each other's back lines.
Companies you can invest in armies ships or supplies/ making supply ship routes or sum would be cool. I just love mechanics
For ground combat they should add different types of units and planetary defense (dealing damage to bombarding ships). That would be enough for me.
Well most of these problems don't exist in mp, but yeah, they still should be changed.
"I always use the same negative traits, as there's not many and the ones you could maybes take instead are actually quite devastating compared to the others. for example weak you don't ever want to take" It's an additive 2.5% worker output and who gives a damn about army damage. Am I missing something? Weak and Deviants are my go to for two points unless I have something build specific.
I would pay for a dlc of a war overhall, I would love for their to be something similar to peace conferences in hoi4.
If you occupy every star system even if you don't have the planet, it should make war exhaustion, go up a whole lot faster than it does for the defender. As with each system occupied by the attacker it takes resources away from the defender's economy. Also stopping the ai just to spam out armies even though the system the planet is in is under occupation. They even do it while the planet is under siege. Really annoying the enemy fleet engaged voice prompt every 5 seconds. To find out its just one of your fleets trashing a transport fleet.
More than anything I want a search and filter on the empire select screen, please.
I have a list of things I’d add… and it keeps growing.
Edit: and this video would be most of my list.
imma be honest, the pre-2.0 war goals were also kinda ass; you had to pick _exactly_ what you want and then you couldn't demand anything other than that
but i feel like I'd still prefer it over what we've got now
spy networks feel like they could be so much more, but instead you just have taking 10 years to build up a network just so you can destroy one (1) starbase module that'd take like a year to rebuild. or pausing the network for 15 years, during which it'd decay by a whopping... 180 points. above level 36 that's literally less than 1 level. or alternatively, you can spend an asset (assets cost 15 levels to get btw) in order to freeze it for 30 years.
literally the only thing I've ever used them for is getting full intel on an empire.
Find systems with a lot of stellar object for effective melting gigastructure depletion
I wished they change the month pop calculation to years pop calculation. Month pop reduce the game speed by a lot
War... War never changes...
There should be a planetary invasion and army overhaul to make combat interesting or at least more meaningful, not just bubbles that are needed in large numbers and disappear.
Lots of things but one thing i would like is for repairing fleets to costs alloys, as in the more armor you have the more expensive it is. Would give even more meaning to having a good economy and indirectly boost shield value. Armor is op imo.
isn't there an alloy upkeep of fleets? maybe lower it a bit, and have it higher when it's repairing
@schwingedeshaehers i believe there is and i am fine with that, but imo fixing a ship that is nearly dead should incur an extra cost tied to the amount of hull and armor the ship is missing. this would make it a tad more realistic and incentivize installing more shield modules in designs(the choice is still the players but there is now an extra future cost to armor designs - repairs) to me, and i might be wrong ofc, it feels like armor designs are the better choice right now, not much point in having shields
@@cookenstein if you higher it while it is repairing, than the cost for more damaged ships is higher, because they need more time to repair
@@schwingedeshaehers good point
Nomadic origin would be nice. Just give them a colossus to build fleets. Would still need to work up to building the other ships. It would be similar to Doomsday.