Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[Anthedon]

We are are proud to Announce the First Major Expansion for Stellaris!



STOCKHOLM – 02 February 2017 – We reach for the stars for many reasons. They challenge us to explore. They dare us to explain. They prod us to expand. But, most of all, the universe offers every space-faring race a new start. This is the chance to perfect the species and to reach new heights of self-awareness, technological prowess or spiritual enlightenment. You can only get to Utopia by moving faster than light.

Stellaris: Utopia is the first major gameplay expansion to Stellaris, Paradox’s critically acclaimed and best selling strategy game about building an empire in new galaxies. Utopia introduces new options for developing your empire, with new types of space stations and constructions that open alternate avenues for making your species the dominant power in the galaxy.

One of the core improvements to Utopia is the introduction of Ascension Perks. As your species advances and gains new traditions, it can choose how it wants to evolve as it is further enlightened. You can choose between a biological path, a psionic path or a synthetic path, with various options within these broad categories. Body, Mind or Machine - how will your species challenge the future?

Utopia also includes:

• Megastructures: Build wondrous structures in your systems including Dyson Spheres and ring worlds, bringing both prestige and major advantages to your race.
• Habitat Stations: Build “tall” and establish space stations that will house more population, serving the role of planets in a small and confined empire.
• Rights and Privileges: Set specific policies for which of the many species under your thumb will have the rights and privileges of full citizenship. Build an egalitarian paradise or follow a caste system.
• And even more improvements and updates, including (as is traditional with all of our paid content releases) free updates for every Stellaris owner!

Stellaris: Utopia brings even greater depth and variety to a game already celebrated for its story-telling power and near endless possibilities. Are you ready for perfection?

Do you want to read more details about the features coming with Stellaris: Utopia, as well as the free Update 1.5 Banks that accompanies the expansion? Then check out the Development Diaries.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...r-galactic-empire-in-stellaris-utopia.997685/

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

aaaaand the first two bullets are free mods.

 

[kris]

Can't just be me that think population grow to quick?

Basically expansion of your empire is hardly limited by population growth as you just need food for that.

 

[Average Manatee]

Can't just be me that think population grow to quick?

Basically expansion of your empire is hardly limited by population growth as you just need food for that.

The problem is that Paradox decided to go with the weird growth model where you need a +10 food surplus to double the growth rate. Because everyone sees that its useless to overproduce food, there is effectively only one growth rate and it has to remain "fun" (in terms of not having the player wait around with nothing to do) all the way from the first year with 1 planet to 2400 with 200.

This is also part of what makes colony rushing so OP. 1 colony with 2 pops grows less than half as fast as 2 colonies with 1 pop (or you could say the 2nd colony adds a free +12 or so food). Quite the opposite of most 4x games where there is a linear relationship between growth and food and a handful of well-developed planets or cities can spur growth as fast or faster than a vast expanse.

 

[kris]

Can't just be me that think population grow to quick?

Basically expansion of your empire is hardly limited by population growth as you just need food for that.

The problem is that Paradox decided to go with the weird growth model where you need a +10 food surplus to double the growth rate. Because everyone sees that its useless to overproduce food, there is effectively only one growth rate and it has to remain "fun" (in terms of not having the player wait around with nothing to do) all the way from the first year with 1 planet to 2400 with 200.

This is also part of what makes colony rushing so OP. 1 colony with 2 pops grows less than half as fast as 2 colonies with 1 pop (or you could say the 2nd colony adds a free +12 or so food). Quite the opposite of most 4x games where there is a linear relationship between growth and food and a handful of well-developed planets or cities can spur growth as fast or faster than a vast expanse.

Not only that, but colonies are needed for resource/territory rush.

Just wait, soon they will make some new limit on colonies.

 

[Ventessel]

The problem is that Paradox decided to go with the weird growth model where you need a +10 food surplus to double the growth rate. Because everyone sees that its useless to overproduce food, there is effectively only one growth rate and it has to remain "fun" (in terms of not having the player wait around with nothing to do) all the way from the first year with 1 planet to 2400 with 200.

This is also part of what makes colony rushing so OP. 1 colony with 2 pops grows less than half as fast as 2 colonies with 1 pop (or you could say the 2nd colony adds a free +12 or so food). Quite the opposite of most 4x games where there is a linear relationship between growth and food and a handful of well-developed planets or cities can spur growth as fast or faster than a vast expanse.

Or the fact that somehow food can't be transported at all... a mechanic that is both stupid in terms of game play and logical reasoning. We've got FTL but not refrigeration apparently.

And colonies being needed to spread magical space borders that block movement and access to the minerals needed to build everything... Because influence is yet another anchor holding back the player from "getting too strong" just like how more planets increases research costs for no real reason, making everyone roughly flatline in overall progress. Just like in Civ5, bigger is still better because the marginal cost is lower than the gain. Good job, Jon Shafer, you resurrected ICS. And now we now, it can into space.

But hey, I'm excited to pay $25 for features that I could mod into the game over the weekend! At least the art will be good, their whole graphics team is actually very skilled.

 

[Average Manatee]

The food thing at least makes sense if we assume that a populated planet is billions of people, where transporting would be way out of the league of what looks like are pretty small ships we are building.

 

[Idiott]

It makes more sense to transport food than to magically distribute power from a few planets to your whole empire.

 

[Average Manatee]

Power you can assume to be stored in an arbitrarily small volume in the form of antimatter or something. Transporting it is no problem, and there's no waste besides the power required to transport the power (and the energy-to-mass ratio ends up being E=MC^2). Food is bulky.

I mean it wouldn't be impossible to design a freighter big enough to haul a year's supply of food for an entire planet. The Square-Cube law is working in your favor and if you are staying in space and have arbitrarily powerful FTL (which is the definition of FTL to begin with really...), it would be possible to envision such a ship even today. But the logistics and complexity would be really insane, compared to just throwing your own damn seeds in the ground wherever you go.

It could also work a lot more reasonably if we assume a pop = 1 million rather than 1 billion, the assumption being made that in the future technology means that a few million are enough to extract all available resources from the surface of a planet (presumably in some non-destructive eco-friendly fashion). But still silly to attempt.

 

[Alienman]

A couple of billions of these:



In a:

And your colonies will never starve!

 

[Grinolf]

I'm pretty sure game director stated some time ago, that he wants to switch to global food in the near future. Still, from what was shown in updates, it doesn't look like it be changed in the next patch.

 

[Anthedon]

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is going to cover the headline feature of the Utopia Expansion that we announced mere hours ago: Megastructures.

Megastructures (Paid Feature)
Have you ever looked at a Fallen Empire's Ringworld and thought 'I want to build one of those?'. Well, so have we, and in the Utopia expansion you will be able to do so. Megastructures are massive multi-stage construction projects that require an enormous investment of resources and time but offer quite spectacular pay-offs. There are four Megastructures that you can build: The Ringworld, the Dyson Sphere, the Sentry Array and the Science Nexus. In order to build a Megastructure you will need to unlock a number of advanced technologies and pick the appropriate Ascension Perk. This will unlock the ability for your construction ship to build a Megastructure Construction Site in an appropriate location. The Construction Site alone is a project that takes a large amount of resources and takes several years to complete.

Once you have built the Construction Site for a Megastructure, you will be able to upgrade it to the first construction stage for a Megastructure. For the Ringworld and Dyson Sphere, this is an initial frame that provides no benefit, while the Science Nexus and Sentry Array gets a partially completed structure that provides some of the benefit of the finished version. From here, you can upgrade the unfinished Megastructure to the next stage(s) by investing more time and resources. For the Dyson Sphere, Science Nexus and Sentry Array, you upgrade one stage at a time, with increasing benefits from each finished stage until you have the completed Megastructure. The Ringworld Frame has four segments that can all be upgraded into finished Ringworld Sections simultaneously.

The four different Megastructures work as follows:

Ringworld: Can only be built around a planet-rich star in your borders and, once finished, provides four maximum size 100% habitable planets. The Ringworld construction project will consume all planets in the system to be used as building materials. Cannot be built around Black Holes, Pulsars or Neutron Stars.

Dyson Sphere: Can only be built around a star in your borders and provides a huge amount of energy each month, with the amount increasing for each stage of the Dyson Sphere completed. Once completed, the Dyson Sphere will cool down the system, turning most planets there into frozen worlds. Cannot be built around Black Holes, Pulsars or Neutron Stars.

Science Nexus: Can be built around any non-inhabitable non-moon non-asteroid planet (similar to Habitats) and provides a huge amount of science each month, with the amount increasing for each stage of the Science Nexus completed.

Sentry Array: Can be built around any non-inhabitable non-moon non-asteroid planet (similar to Habitats) and functions as a sensor station, providing sensor range in a radius that grows for each stage of the Sentry Array completed. Once fully finished, it will give complete sensor view of the entire galaxy.

Building a Megastructure is hardly a subtle affair, and once an empire starts construction on such a project, all other empires that have communications with them will be notified about the start, progression and completion of such a project. As monumental undertakings involving the resources of a whole empire, these projects can also have unintended political and diplomatic consequenses. Also, much like the Ringworlds already in the game, you are not the first civilization to conceive of the idea of Megastructures, and you may encounter ancient, ruined Megastructures while exploring.

That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about yet another feature of the Utopia expansion: Psionic Transcendance and The Shroud.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-59-megastructures.997705/

 

[LizardWizard]

Not only that, but colonies are needed for resource/territory rush.

Just wait, soon they will make some new limit on colonies.

For the upcoming expansion, Unity points will be harder to come by if you're colony rushing. Which means less early Traditions which seems like a fair tradeoff depending on how powerful they are.

 

[trais]

Or the fact that somehow food can't be transported at all... a mechanic that is both stupid in terms of game play and logical reasoning. We've got FTL but not refrigeration apparently.

Look m8, you can freeze me and my family in a cryo-pod for the duration of the space travel, but once I get to the colony I want my veggies fresh and that's non-negotiable!

 

[Ventessel]

Look m8, you can freeze me and my family in a cryo-pod for the duration of the space travel, but once I get to the colony I want my veggies fresh and that's non-negotiable!

Maybe in Sweden that's a logical argument...

Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

dyson spheres are as a staple in science fiction as lasers. if you're going big, you NEED them.
also one of them is the protagonist of one of the best star trek episodes http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Relics_(episode)

 

[coldcrow]

Main problem for dyson spheres is that they would be under constant bombardment by meteorites. It's just a stupid idea and "bad" sci-fi.

 

[Ventessel]

dyson spheres are as a staple in science fiction as lasers. if you're going big, you NEED them.
also one of them is the protagonist of one of the best star trek episodes http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Relics_(episode)

The "sphere" concept is probably inefficient. Surrounding the star with orbiting collectors is probably a lot more effective and easier to build and maintain. Plus you immediately start to get ROI.

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[Prime Junta]

Main problem for dyson spheres is that they would be under constant bombardment by meteorites. It's just a stupid idea and "bad" sci-fi.

If you can imagine materials strong enough to build a Dyson sphere, it should be pretty easy to imagine that they're self-healing from any meteor damage. With the nutty amount of energy being harvested that ought to be trivial.

(Thing that's puzzling me most about the Dyson sphere though is the thermodynamics. Wouldn't it just melt?)

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

dyson spheres are as a staple in science fiction as lasers. if you're going big, you NEED them.
also one of them is the protagonist of one of the best star trek episodes http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Relics_(episode)

The "sphere" concept is probably inefficient. Surrounding the star with orbiting collectors is probably a lot more effective and easier to build and maintain. Plus you immediately start to get ROI.

Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

no doubt, and lasers wouldn't work nor they would be visible. still we have them both because they're here to stay.

 

[Lone Wolf]

The new DLC - Utopia - is going to bring Dyson Spheres, Ring Worlds and other mega constructions into the game (all buildable), as well as orbital habitats.

Not bad.

BTW, Star Trek: New Horizons just went to v0.9. Really interesting mod for Stellaris. Brings a lot to the game, both in terms of flavour and mechanics.

 

[kris]

Not only that, but colonies are needed for resource/territory rush.

Just wait, soon they will make some new limit on colonies.

For the upcoming expansion, Unity points will be harder to come by if you're colony rushing. Which means less early Traditions which seems like a fair tradeoff depending on how powerful they are.

Paradox are really easy to predict nowadays.

 

[Ventessel]

no doubt, and lasers wouldn't work nor they would be visible. still we have them both because they're here to stay.

Why wouldn't lasers work, exactly?

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[Average Manatee]

Dyson Spheres are kinda stupid honestly. How much material is necessary? I think you would have to strip-mine entire systems?

Depends on thickness and size of course. You already need to strip mine entire systems for Ringworlds.

(Thing that's puzzling me most about the Dyson sphere though is the thermodynamics. Wouldn't it just melt?)

The thermodynamics of a big solar collector in space is no different from the small ones we use on space stations. Of course if you are actually building one you'll probably want to save on materials and build a smaller diameter structure that hugs the sun as much as possible, but you can get a steady state temperature that is acceptable.

Main problem for dyson spheres is that they would be under constant bombardment by meteorites. It's just a stupid idea and "bad" sci-fi.

Same thing, the number of meteorite impacts : energy gain ratio is static, a 100 m^2 solar panel requires just as much maintenance per KWH as a 100 trillion m^2 surface area solar panel. Although in this case making a smaller diameter structure that hugs the sun lowers your surface area while keeping the energy gain the same, so it's actually significantly more efficient to build the sphere than it is to have the solar panels on our space stations.

Also since space matter isn't distributed evenly, you could probably reduce the impacts by something like 99.99% while losing almost nothing on energy if you built the 99% of the dyson sphere that isn't in the plane of the solar system and just go with two halves of a sphere tethered together across the plane.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Ring Worlds and other mega constructions into the game (all buildable), as well as orbital habitats.

Not bad.

and all of them you can have for free already with mods.

no doubt, and lasers wouldn't work nor they would be visible. still we have them both because they're here to stay.

Why wouldn't lasers work, exactly?

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please, mercy, not this discussion again.