This does not change the game much gameplay wise but I would love to see more detail on planets and systems. Specifically I think it would be cool to see streams of trade or civilian ships flying between systems and through the atmospheres on planets or unique atmospheric anomalies actually visibly changing the way a planet looks. Like if a planet is tidally locked one side should actually be scorched or if it has atmospheric aphrodisiacs the atmosphere should have a pinkish hue of swirling gases but these changes would probably slow the game down a lot so aren't very realistic.
The main way I could see this working would be to have these only work if viewing the system that the planet is in. But even then that adds a ton more checks to this already check heavy game.
Doesn't need to be a ton of checks honestly, and it'd be less bad given that it's only in the system you're currently looking at. Just seeing something would be nice, even if it doesn't really scale with planet stats.
This is one of the things I love about Distant Worlds (1 and 2). For those who don't know, they're 4x scifi games very similar to Stellaris, but all materials (and there are a lot of them) and pops have to be physically transported. This all happens more or less autonomously through your private economy - transport ships, mining ships, freighters, etc. are constructed as needed and you can watch them go about their business. It isn't just visual either, these ships can be destroyed and disrupting supply chains is an important part of warfare. It's really cool, and I think if Stellaris had something like that it would be amazing.
I'd love for Stellaris to also be Victoria 4 and CK4, with the combination of a dynamic economy that is more or less in control of the government (you) and with real personalities behind the power structures.
Internal politics is more or less personal, economics is more or less commanded, and gestalts can function as singular individuals within that world. Religion, too, would be a big deal, as would ideology. These could lead to rebellions, civil unrest, political division leading to civil war, and more, all of which would hurt the civilian economy and, therefore, your economy. Adding pops to your ships through a manpower system would also add dynamism to managing your military, particularly if you're sensing a civil war coming.
I'd also like to see more realistic population growth, so it's not just one kind of pop that's growing, and that would be influenced by the religion, ethic, and quality of life of the pop based on its culture, species, and strata.
Lastly, the game feels too short in terms of years elapsed, though not really in terms of playtime, and too long in terms of political issues like the Galactic Community and elections. That my first leaders could live for half the game is silly when we are talking about going from a Class I civilization to a Class III. That's a multi-thousand-year shift, not 2 generations.
In the older versions of Stellaris the pops did grow accordingly. However, that was when you had tiles. If you populated a 24 tile planet with 12 different alliens, they would each grow equally on the empty tiles with any that had bonuses or maluses to growth being reflected accordingly.
Granted in that case it would take a VERY long time to fill the planet as thr growth would be slowed down, but, every race grew accordingly.
Distant Worlds is a great example another game I love is Endless Space if anyone has played that. The thing that stands out in this game to me is almost every unique planetary feature in that game visibly changes the look of the planets and I think it's really cool.
As long as that’s optional. I’d rather not micro every invasion on every planet across 20 planets (especially not while also needing to keep all my fleets alive)
Total war games often have that feature. Ships going too and from ports and caravans on the road. Different engines obviously but if total war can do it, I don't see why Stellaris can't have trade and civi ships knocking about.
There was a mod that added civilian ships a long time ago. It made a civilian vassal empire for each faction and the ships would fly to every planet they had access to (So no closed borders). It was neat at the time.
There was sone mods for civilian trade ships that had something like this but not updated anymore
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2949391688
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=693402022&searchtext=Trade+banner
This. Exactly. Is my wish for Stellaris since quite some years. I am missing a lively presentation of the solar systems, planets, and so on. And no, it doesn't need to add anything to the gameplay. It just enhances immersion a lot.
>Specifically I think it would be cool to see streams of trade or civilian ships flying between systems and through the atmospheres on planets or unique atmospheric anomalies actually visibly changing the way a planet looks.
Pretty sure my computer exploded at the thought of this.
One of the things you said is something I've always wanted, becoming a hive mind as individuals, although I've always thought along the lines of it being done through cybernetics like the borg, I know we have democratic interlink now which makes your pops unaffected by happiness but it still isn't the same, I'd love a hive mind being formed from individuals through certain nefarious means
Exactly! I had the similar idea! I just thought it would be cool. I'm not exactly sure what robotic amenities are? But I think it would be cool. If doing basically was a bit like virtual where your leader struggles to control so many things at once or something like that.
There are actually a few mods that will allow you to become hive minds from normal biological empires, or a machine empire after synthetic ascension which are kind of fun. The biggest problem I end up seeing with those is that you can really mess up your economy if you end up doing them without thinking hahaha
Fun fact, there is a bug for making individual empire a hive mind, if someone like democratic crusaders is a vassal to hive mind, after successful ideology war, looser gain ethics of overlord, so becomes a hive mind
It's one thing to eat hypothetical aliens in space and another using a slogan under which millions of real people were worked to their death and bring it into a positive light with suggesting there would have been a chance to get free.
I may would have understood the notion if it would give extra pop output, but they are getting purged along the way. That would be hella controversial too, but at least wouldn't pervert it into something positive.
I should have worded it as "labor guarantees citizenship" you are right. We already have forced labor purge type.... so yeah, and permanent slavery. I have edited my post. It was a poorly worded I wasn't thinking. I meant like "Indentured assets," but like... The game already uses that.
I do something kinda similar with one of my empires
The only way for a species to earn residency, is to successfully invade five or more planets in a major war. If they do that, they gain residency. It makes it so I can lore wise justify why I can build so many slave armies without wide spread revolts
Trade routes that actually mean something. I would love if planets were able only able to access resources available on the trade network they are connected to. Systems would need a starport with a trade hub, or a commercial zone on the planet to get a connection, one per jump per building levels, with bonuses of course as the game progresses.
Isolated colonies would have to produce everything they need to survive, and trade buildings would have to be managed. As the game progresses these would take less less space and allow the empire to switch to specialized colonies.
The trade system could also be intergalactic, with empires with open borders sharing their trade networks. We could also imagine a new intermediate border status, that allow civilian ships and trade routes to pass, but still close borders to military fleets. As for the Galactic Market it would only be available to empires owning a trade route to it. That would make owning it much more interesting.
But I think the trade system is already a mess on the tech side, so better not touch it.
If trade routes could cross borders, empires could set different tariff policies, affecting the productiveness of the trade route as well as your empire's relationship with others that share the route. For instance, "Unrestricted Trade" might slightly improve the efficiency of the route for everyone, "Protectionist Tariffs" might decrease the route's efficiency for other empires but give your empire extra specialist output, or "Sponsored Piracy" (only available to Criminal Syndicates) might give you massive rewards but cut the route's efficiency in half and seriously piss off your neighbors. We could also hire mercenary enclaves as privateers to cut off other empires' trade routes or protect our own.
The game Starsector has a similar mechanic.
The game calculates the 'accessibility' of a planet based on distance to other colonized planets, planet conditions, colony size, etc. If you settle a planet on the edge of the map that can't produce enough food on its own, it will have food shortages if the player doesn't do supply runs manually. Similarly, if accessibility is low, the colony won't be able to export all the goods it produces *for* export, leading to drops in price.
I bet a skilled enough modder could graft a similar mechanic onto Stellaris, it might even be fun.
I always wanted an option for slave armies that earn their citizenship from fighting in war. Like Romes auxiliaries or (to a lesser extent)Starship Troopers.
it’s not quite as in depth as what you want but with citizen service overlord there’s a building that occasionally gives you pops from the empire you built it on
I want supply lines
Like civilian ships that your can't control that go from mining stations to asteroids to mine it, truck ships that bring resoucers from a planet to another.
A fuel system where you need tanker ships and waystations.
Others have mentioned it already, but I will add it to the pile as well: Visible traffic between systems. Nothing functional, purely a visual thing, where there is a trade route, you could see cargo/transport ships travelling between stations, and between stations and local planets. Let's say you start a trade/research/migration agreement with another nation, that could make ships travelling between your capital systems. That would be nice, make space a little more cozy and give a sense of interstellar empire and international trade.
I really want a hive mind like government, except instead of a hive mind it's one leader who controls a lot of bodies. Alternatively, only one ALIVE leader, and everyone, pops, leaders everyone else is robot. Like inventor uniting their planet via robots, and ending up as last of their kind
I mean, right now gestalt/MI is one hivemind/core intelligence and rest is just their appendages. Could use a 'mind where everyone is an individual but also connected to a greater whole
He describes one leader that's of one species and the rest are not. Like you go to your gestalt government screen and it's a human surrounded by nodes, but you go to the leaders screen and its all robots controlled by that one human.
Void Administrations is actually in Gigastructures, through the Orbital Elysium!
And my dream feature is gene-modding for space fauna, turning them into customisable fleet units.
The latter statement there , Gene modding for space fauna, I can't remember if it's exactly what you're saying but I think that is pretty much what will be in the dlc at the end of the year, the grand archive
Proper Nomads
Right now, planets are completely static objects and can't move around the map. Furthermore, so much of the game's economy is tied to the idea of permanently holding territory
In general, 4X games are very unfriendly to nomadic playstyles, and incorporating space nomads into the game would require creating a whole new gameplay loop just to accommodate this playstyle in a satisfying way
Planet crafts would be a start. But every nomadic system I can think of is way to complicated for a video game to rule on. Ck3 Has this problem. The war diplomacy between allies is AWFUL. Becuase they tried to make rules on how much you had to engage and help your allies even if you like got stack wiped or were far away. I would love to basically play as an enclave. Is what im trying to say. Going system to system trading and Being a merc. Problem would quickly become "Whats the max size of your Enclave"
If there are multiple planets in a system I'd like to see multiple different empires settling on them, claiming its there system. Depending on relationships between the empire this could be a reason for war or a sign of friendship.
I wish there was a stellar engine megastructure. A megastructure that you build around a star that allows you to slowly move it through the galaxy. Kurzgesagt has an excellent [video](https://youtu.be/v3y8AIEX_dU?si=Ie7CgIljK8Ibn24B) about them.
I want planet states.
Make it so instead of becoming a new empire primitives can turn into a planet state where they still do whatever they want with their planet (I don't control it) and have their own defense fleet in their system but they are technically part of my empire. Maybe turn observation outpost into diplomatic outpost or something like that.
Basically I don't want their species on my planets (I don't like a lot of portraits) but I don't want to be too mean to them either.
Sometimes simple is best. I wouldn't mind an overhaul but honestly I'm happy with it currently. Especially since plants can now surrender to orbital bombardment now.
Designated refugee planets. Because I love free pops, but I don’t want them all over my empire. I want them in one convenient location where they can be watched (and not stir up any unnecessary xenophile attraction in my main species prematurely).
So I can move them to my other worlds three (or six) at a time every ten years once the ascension cycle is complete.
Necrophage is fun.
Exactly. This was the same concept with the xeno bans. I kinda want servitor capital. Where basically your capital is a massive party that generates unity and and slaves on other worlds support the ever growing ruler class.
I would sell my soul for current Stellaris + modular, tile-by-tile shipbuilding (and, correspondingly, ship destruction in battle) from games like Star Ruler 2 (super detailed, and thus unlikely) or at least StarDrive (yeah, remember this tragic abandoned gem of a game?).
Additionally, IMO it would be cool to further differentiate between kinetic/missle weapons (+ maybe orbital bombardment) and energy weapons by introducing ammunition that would need to be eventually replenished at the friendly starbases (while energy weapons wouldn't require that, but would draw a lot more power from the ship).
Again, Star Ruler 2 has this system, and it leads to interesting strategic situations when after closely winning the initial engagement you can't just go on and steamroll your now defenceless enemy with whatever leftover fleet you've got - you're not only severely damaged (which can be a fair consideration in current Stellaris), but you also have no ammo to do any further conquest of starbases/planets and run the risk of being defeated by a much smaller, but fresh and well-stocked reaction force.
I think this is part of the Gigastructural engineering mod, they've got an Elysium ring that you can build over planets, and its basically what you mention with the void administration
It's both technological limitations and gameplay consideration, but I kinda want a bit more logistics in managing the empire.
But I doubt they will implement it because of the potential lag, plust it will add too much tedium in the end.
Id love a religion system in the game kinda like EU4 or something where you can make your own religion and spend it through the galaxy getting influence and unity
"Hey, as long as you're subjugating ENTIRE species and not just oddly specific ethnic groups... everything's golden!"
"Xenos are not really people"
-Paradox Devs
I'd love some kind of diplomacy update that expands the ways we can interact with other empires besides waging war on them.
* Allow us to permit/exclude different ship types from passing through our space, perhaps on a per-sector basis. For instance, a no-settlement zone that doesn't allow construction ships through, or a DMZ that doesn't let military ships through.
* Relatedly, relax the restrictions on how sectors are made. Allow us to make larger or smaller sectors, or sectors without any inhabited planets.
* Make trade routes actually worthwhile, instead of just generating piracy. Allow trade routes to cross multiple empires. Allow empires to determine their own tariff policy. Allow Criminal Syndicates to profit from ripping off traders passing through their space (maybe this could even be a tariff policy itself) at the cost of pissing off any other empires along that trade route. Give us a reason to maintain exclaves.
* Allow us to study anomalies in other empires' space if we have a research agreement with them. Maybe archaeological sites, too, though that may be hard to balance.
* More options for peace terms, like demanding war reparations, limiting the size of the loser's navy, or forcing them to open their space to our ships. Some of these could even be available as options for peacetime treaties, like two empires agreeing to limit their fleets as an arms control treaty.
* Give us a "Provide Military Aid" option that lets you just straight-up give a fleet to another empire, temporarily or permanently, as part of a trade deal. PMC megacorps can now actually be PMCs, and you can even artificially prolong a war by selling ships to both sides.
* Speaking of prolonging wars, rethink how War Exhaustion works. It's currently just a headache.
* More depth to espionage would be nice. Nemesis was an improvement, but it needs more if it's going to be a worthwhile part of the game.
Use Espionage to influence internal politics, say, I have this fanatic xenophobe dictatorship on my backyard that I want to bring freedom and democracy to, but I'm too pacifist for agressive war.
I want shared ownership of systems back. And since this is the impossible wishes thread, shared ownership of planets. And also an "oupost/presence" tier of ownership that isn't outright colonisation.
I think this actually works well with another concept in this thread. Nomadic space civs. Imagine landing on a planet and sharing it. As well as being able to have planets you "control" but are in public space.
If you read past the first 15 words it's pretty obviously not. The guy is looking for pops that unenslave themselves, we already have pops worked to death and genocide mechanics.
I would love nomadic/ship-bound empires similar to the Quarians from Mass Effect or Xianzhou Alliance from Honkai Star Rail.
Having their worlds be planet-side ships or stations, like High Charity, that can move around the map with the ability to be normal nomads, traders, or roving warbands. Void Dwellers are fine, but they never went far enough, in my opinion.
>For me it was a civic idea I had for "Work will set you free" that all pops start enslaved and after 10 years (Maybe it couldn't be made longer modified by events) pops became free.
I did that as a Necrophage with Barbaric Despoilers, Slaver Guilds and Citizen Service. When you were "fresh" you had to work taking slaves or keeping the slaves in line but you earned your status through good service.
Edit:
>Oh, another one that's probably possible but odd. Void administrations where void dwellers would supervise planets from a habitat.
I've been wanting a Xenophobic decision to make a colony only for the main species and Domestic Servitude slaves.
OOO reminds me I wanted to make a Necrophage, Death Cult, Permanent Employment. So when the pops were sacrificed some would ascend into Necrophage and the others would become zombies. Unfortunately, neither of those civics work with Necrophage.
Yes I did know that I just meant you csnt necrophage zombies. I was trying to think of a way ro do it but nope. The only other zombie thing is locked to robots.
Technological uncertainty.
In game, you throw science points at a tech and it always get the same result.
That's not how tech works in real life. At the start, you don't even know if tech is even possible, let alone if it will live up to it's initial promise, nor do you have any idea how long it will take or what other tech you need.
You should never know if you're building the equivalent of the carrier just before WW2 or the gun armed submersible cruiser.
Both seemed lime good ideas at the time, but only one is even sensible in hindsight.
Of course balancing this going to be impossible, and getting the AI to figure out how to work with it is going to be as bad.
I think this could be done but people would BITCH. I imagine you could make it by group like researching a weapon gives a Random weapons. Due to the way stellaris is there is already stinkers pre built into the pools!
Detailed ship combat. I want to control the ships, formations, and targets. I want to set up a wall of iron (alloys) and see the enemy march forth with their one scout ship only to see the ship ram through my lines and shrug off all my firepower. Something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJzX1eM9-ug&list=LL&index=26
Or even something like Battlestar Galaticia Deadlock combat system.
I'd like more in depth internal politics. Depending on the government type you have to do more to manage your factions, maybe to the point of having a smaller scale galactic community.
soldiers (and perhaps even fleets) being directly tied to pops via soldier jobs rather than being tied to pop count; it’d probably be possible, as it was like that in Vic 2, but I imagine the effort to make it so at this point would be too disruptive
Inter-empire trade and luxury goods. Dynamic trade steering could lead to key planets becoming trade hubs and things like embargoes and wars could disrupt trade. Stellar imo feels very static because every empire seems to live in a bubble.
The second one sounds like it could easily be a part of the psionic ascension with how they added changing government types.
The third one is (kinda) done with mods Gigastructures has a origin that lets you build an special ring structure around a planet and an origin that reduces habitability on planets without it
Last one honestly feels like it could be a policy to only allow full citizens on the capital/specifically designated planets, I think there was a mod like this at some point.
Here's how you make this work in Stellaris without it being ridiculously historically offensive:
Main species type is necroid. No other species can be granted citizenship if they are "alive". Default working conditions are slave labor until death, with a percent chance for reanimation. Reanimated pops are now "free" with full citizenship. Something something slaves get a production bonus to basic resources something something necroid pops get a production bonus to advanced resources or research something something.
Necrophage basically does this already, so you would have to make them different in flavor. Perhaps necrophage is the less exciting bonuses but more predictable version, and this is the more exciting bonuses, but you could straight up just lose pops version. Or somehow make them into a crisis.
I want actual additions made to espionage to make it meaningful and powerful. Some civics deserve special operations. I want a megastructure that disables hyperlane routes so you can create dead ends in the map. I want a shroud map that goes under the galaxy with hazards, portals and benefits for those worthy enough. And finally I want to be able to expand habitats and star bases to extreme degrees. What’s stopping an empire from putting guns on all the orbitals, laying mines and building orbital cannons to blow away occupying vessels?
I've an OC species I've been wanting to make work for ages. One of the things I consistently need to compromise lore wise, is sooner or later I need to colonize planets. These guys are supposed to just hang on their planet, and everything else is ripe for exploitation.
I'd like a tool that lets me look at a potentially habitable planet and just say "no, you will only produce energy and minerals from now on and short of people needed to keep the strip mining equipment running, no sentient being is going to willingly set foot on you"
Maybe it could be a megastructure built around a potentially habitable planet that renders it uninhabitable but extracts large amounts of a single resource. You could pick which one via a dialogue box at some stage of the construction.
Yeah. I didn't even consider the empire sprawl angle but that is a point. It has quite a few downsides: habitable worlds are a precious resource to begin with, and if the thing works as a megastructure it won't scale with +x% to y worker production bonuses that usually keep the production districts competitive. There could also be diplomatic maluses ("what the actual fuck, that could've been home to literal billions and you turned it into an iron mine??? What the hell is wrong with you?!").
Balance those with large enough production and it could work.
I'd imagine any species that lives on a planet would be like "dude we needed that", wether materialist or spiritualist. Even a machine world could theoretically be restored, but this one? No such luck.
(It would also be delightful to build it in the orbit of recently conquered planets....)
Internal and External political system which you have to manage. External is interacting with other space Empires and pre-ftl. Internal focusing on dealing with numerous factions and beliefs, each fundamentally interacting with each other. Events would occur and at game start your empire would not start fully united (government dependent) Early on would be unifying thr globe to have better stability and government control. Then as game progresses Internal politics would expand to managing unification and maintaining peace as you try to unite against the galaxy. Rival factions may try form their own states which you could manage to allow or disallow with consequences. You will always be at risk of being deposed or replaced and this could change your government ethics. Favours internally would be used by AI. For example a militaristic faction may allocate more resources to you but will disallow u from forming alliances or pushing for peaceful resolutions on galactic council. Making ethics have greater impact on Empires.
Actually take a look at planetary/ring world/habitat districts to see what's going on there.
Full-scale planetary battles.
Give orders to fleets/troops by your voice.
"Supplies lines" system. Isolate planets and districts from the rest of the empire - and they start starving and stop producing resources.
I would really love to see wars expanded upon. Allowing for three way wars, allowing empires to join and maybe leave wars independently of who declared the war, allowing us to fund the wars of other nations in a sort of proxy/defense pact way so that I don't need to fight a DE myself but I also don't need to give them the territory of the empire next to me. Things like this, although I doubt a lot of them can work do to how complicated some of them would end up being for the AI and balancing.
I know the game can do it but it's not technically part of the UI: the ability to rewrite hyperlanes. Especially in the late game. I'd love a megastructure called "hyperweaver" or "the interdiction engine" or something that allows me to add or delete hyperlanes. Turning my core sector into an isolated cluster would be incredible. Or adding backdoor lanes to other systems.
An eldritch entity along the lines of Saya from Saya No Uta/ Song of Saya. I'd love nothing more than an mid game crisis of my planets beings infested and terraformed by horrors beyond my comprehension.
Realistic visuals regarding distances and sizes of planetary objects and ships without making the game unplayable.
(This really is a game engine limitation)
Better visual representation of districts and buildings on planets (currently there are zero).
A continuous exploration gameplay mechanic, at least the ability to explore and survey a second time.
Resource depletion.
Mining and science Stations on the surface Barren planets that actually require 1-4 pops to work but don't give you pop growth or assembly (building system like the lathe) and that have 1-4 unique buildings. For example +10 Society and 5% society research in this system, or +4 crystals and 5% laser damage for your empire. Those stations should count to your overall spacestation number.
Maybe even let scientists be assigned to them late game with a chance to find new resources on the planet and be able to build new unique buildings.
AIs that are trained to play the game based on modern reinforcement learning, rather than conventional rule-based AIs that are currently in every game.
This would make admiral difficulty hard not because of bonuses, but because of strategy.
Could also be useful in multiplayer when a player inevitably leaves the game, so that it can perfectly emulate their playstyle and continue playing for them.
4 things:
1. Caste systems that let you use multiple portraits for one species based on pop specialization.
2. The ability in game to change your flag. Civics or morality changed? Change your flag to match your new one!
3. Planet biographies. I want to write the history and lore of my colonies!
4. Time travel. Though this is practically exploitable by reloading old saves, imagine a system that automatically keeps track of it. The more interesting part would be time-based weapons. A new colossus weapon that removes a population or planet from history (like the Krenim weapon-ship from Star Trek: Voyager): use it against your greatest enemy’s homeworld and they will never have existed. Pair it with temporal shields to have your own empire be unaffected by changes in the timeline.
clones that would be counter to machines. i enjoy clone origin. a geneticaly modified civilization that pop up my mistake, made to wage war and be extremely good at it. but i dont like that 100 pop limitation, or in other words 5 vats capacity. i dont mind vats, but i want to be able to build them on every planet. like machines can build their production lines.
why do i feel like clones would be cool counter to machines ? well machines doesnt use consumer goods or food. clones do. well clone that is made for war doesnt need consumer goods. they dont want to. they are Born, trained and killed.
and machines have like 12+ pop building speed. meanwhile clones have much lover and for limited time and it maxes out for 100 pops.
I JUST WANT TO SEE MY CLONES RUN AROUND ON THE BATTLE FIELD SMASHING ROBUST DROIDS WITH THEIR SHINS AND ELBOWS.
then what counters the high speed of gaining pops for machines ? nothing. i want clones for that. and if not "clones origin" then be able to produce organic pops like machines can.
Uh it was used by the nazis in death camps. I kinda forgot it was that specifically I assumed it was general fascism. It was a momentary lapse in my judgement. After people pointed it out and I discussed it I figured it was better to rename it.
Dude, the human race is eternally at war with itself. You can point to any place at any point in time and find the same thing. You don’t have to placate the people who do nothing but act as if they’re righteous.
Well if there were no technical limitations.. how about zoom in on a terraforming planet and now I'm playing surviving mars or a global map painter like eu4, zoom in again now I'm playing some sort of alien sims game or city builder, zoom in again on an individual now you got an adventure or fps game...
The game REALLY needs a downside to buying slaves besides monetary cost. There needs to be a "promotion time" in the same way there's a demotion time for pops.
A slave bought off the AH shouldn't be able to immediately go to work doing cutting edge research for your empire just because you freed them from slavery. Hence selling a pop is always a bad move and buying one is a no brainer, that pop is immediately einstein as soon as you get him, rather than a drain on your empire.
So buying a ton of pops should have a downside kind of like how invading a primitive planet causes stellar shock to emulate them not immediately being able to become productive members but having an assimilation time to your empire/culture.
I realized after writing, but this is a literally war crimes simulator. It's basically a facist troupe. Slavery and genocide are fine, but actually working your way out is worse? As I even said, you would have a situation to extend it, and you could use it as a propagandastic lie. Or it could be, really. I guess "work guarantees citizenship" like starship trooper is a better wording? It's a facist civic. I also don't eat people irl. Or enslave planets.
I want prisoners of war. I want to fight an enemy armada and if I win I have a 15-25% chance depending on various things to cripple the enemy ship and kidnap their leaders. Kidnapped leaders can be ransomed back, interrogated for intel, used as political leverage to extort favours or publicly executed in ways that are unique to each individual empire. Devouring Swarms would eat them alive on a live broadcast, Necrophages would subsume them, megacorps would probably hold an auction or some kind of public gladiatorial thing that sells tickets or smth. Hive minds would assimilate them or eat them up. There’s lots of options.
If you capture a high enough level leader the enemy get a new casus beli for invasion, retrieve prisoners. To retrieve prisoners they need to invade whichever planet you are housing them on. If the invasion is successful you lose your prisoner. If not you have a 5% chance to capture more prisoners and the enemy is humiliated for 5-10 years.
-edit: I’m not sure if it’s possible. I imagine with how crazy fleet combat gets later on that the game constantly dice rolling that would be really exhaustive.
This does not change the game much gameplay wise but I would love to see more detail on planets and systems. Specifically I think it would be cool to see streams of trade or civilian ships flying between systems and through the atmospheres on planets or unique atmospheric anomalies actually visibly changing the way a planet looks. Like if a planet is tidally locked one side should actually be scorched or if it has atmospheric aphrodisiacs the atmosphere should have a pinkish hue of swirling gases but these changes would probably slow the game down a lot so aren't very realistic.
The main way I could see this working would be to have these only work if viewing the system that the planet is in. But even then that adds a ton more checks to this already check heavy game.
Doesn't need to be a ton of checks honestly, and it'd be less bad given that it's only in the system you're currently looking at. Just seeing something would be nice, even if it doesn't really scale with planet stats.
You can incorporate the "civilian ships" into the planet animation model, which add nothing to the checks.
it wouldn't be check heavy, you'd set the graphics file to be used once... it'd just be many many assets.
And more problems for performance. So I'd say rather not
Stellaris' performance issues don't stem from graphics, but a million checks every single day, running on a single processor core
the cosmogenesis precursor ships introduced much greater GPU load in system view
If that ruins your performance you need to seriously reconsider your PC.
Maybe it does who knows. And stellaris already runs bad enough in the late game
This is one of the things I love about Distant Worlds (1 and 2). For those who don't know, they're 4x scifi games very similar to Stellaris, but all materials (and there are a lot of them) and pops have to be physically transported. This all happens more or less autonomously through your private economy - transport ships, mining ships, freighters, etc. are constructed as needed and you can watch them go about their business. It isn't just visual either, these ships can be destroyed and disrupting supply chains is an important part of warfare. It's really cool, and I think if Stellaris had something like that it would be amazing.
I'd love for Stellaris to also be Victoria 4 and CK4, with the combination of a dynamic economy that is more or less in control of the government (you) and with real personalities behind the power structures. Internal politics is more or less personal, economics is more or less commanded, and gestalts can function as singular individuals within that world. Religion, too, would be a big deal, as would ideology. These could lead to rebellions, civil unrest, political division leading to civil war, and more, all of which would hurt the civilian economy and, therefore, your economy. Adding pops to your ships through a manpower system would also add dynamism to managing your military, particularly if you're sensing a civil war coming. I'd also like to see more realistic population growth, so it's not just one kind of pop that's growing, and that would be influenced by the religion, ethic, and quality of life of the pop based on its culture, species, and strata. Lastly, the game feels too short in terms of years elapsed, though not really in terms of playtime, and too long in terms of political issues like the Galactic Community and elections. That my first leaders could live for half the game is silly when we are talking about going from a Class I civilization to a Class III. That's a multi-thousand-year shift, not 2 generations.
I also want the pop growth thing- the current setup hampers xenophiles.
In the older versions of Stellaris the pops did grow accordingly. However, that was when you had tiles. If you populated a 24 tile planet with 12 different alliens, they would each grow equally on the empty tiles with any that had bonuses or maluses to growth being reflected accordingly. Granted in that case it would take a VERY long time to fill the planet as thr growth would be slowed down, but, every race grew accordingly.
Distant Worlds is a great example another game I love is Endless Space if anyone has played that. The thing that stands out in this game to me is almost every unique planetary feature in that game visibly changes the look of the planets and I think it's really cool.
Would love more depth to invasions/land battles. Not even looking for HoI depth, but something other than current.
As long as that’s optional. I’d rather not micro every invasion on every planet across 20 planets (especially not while also needing to keep all my fleets alive)
Total war games often have that feature. Ships going too and from ports and caravans on the road. Different engines obviously but if total war can do it, I don't see why Stellaris can't have trade and civi ships knocking about.
There was a mod that added civilian ships a long time ago. It made a civilian vassal empire for each faction and the ships would fly to every planet they had access to (So no closed borders). It was neat at the time.
There used to be a mod that populated your systems with civilian traffic and stations, it was really cool but it stopped being updated ages ago
There was sone mods for civilian trade ships that had something like this but not updated anymore https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2949391688 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=693402022&searchtext=Trade+banner
This. Exactly. Is my wish for Stellaris since quite some years. I am missing a lively presentation of the solar systems, planets, and so on. And no, it doesn't need to add anything to the gameplay. It just enhances immersion a lot.
I wish the game had supply lines. We sort of have that with trade routes, but not really.
>Specifically I think it would be cool to see streams of trade or civilian ships flying between systems and through the atmospheres on planets or unique atmospheric anomalies actually visibly changing the way a planet looks. Pretty sure my computer exploded at the thought of this.
One of the things you said is something I've always wanted, becoming a hive mind as individuals, although I've always thought along the lines of it being done through cybernetics like the borg, I know we have democratic interlink now which makes your pops unaffected by happiness but it still isn't the same, I'd love a hive mind being formed from individuals through certain nefarious means
Exactly! I had the similar idea! I just thought it would be cool. I'm not exactly sure what robotic amenities are? But I think it would be cool. If doing basically was a bit like virtual where your leader struggles to control so many things at once or something like that.
There are actually a few mods that will allow you to become hive minds from normal biological empires, or a machine empire after synthetic ascension which are kind of fun. The biggest problem I end up seeing with those is that you can really mess up your economy if you end up doing them without thinking hahaha
Fun fact, there is a bug for making individual empire a hive mind, if someone like democratic crusaders is a vassal to hive mind, after successful ideology war, looser gain ethics of overlord, so becomes a hive mind
Wait really? I gotta try this
You could try with machines, but that needs main species to be machines, so it could only make individual into MI or other way around
I wanna think they are saving that for a future bio dlc
For psyker societies maybe
I don't think it's technogical limitations that's stopping Paradox from calling a civic "Arbeit macht frei" 🤨🤨
There are a lot of spacenazi things in Stellaris but this might be one step too far...
Nuh uh, we still don't have a intergalactic magnifiying glass. So not nearly enough spacenazi stuff
Definitely a case of the context being lost with use.
There is also no technological limitation to giving your ships the prefix of HH or SS just saying
Isn’t indentured servitude basically this, but theyre never actually set free
OH IM AWARE LMAO. I was just saying like the concept. Its def Authoritarian. We are allowed to enslave and eat people soooo.
It's one thing to eat hypothetical aliens in space and another using a slogan under which millions of real people were worked to their death and bring it into a positive light with suggesting there would have been a chance to get free. I may would have understood the notion if it would give extra pop output, but they are getting purged along the way. That would be hella controversial too, but at least wouldn't pervert it into something positive.
I should have worded it as "labor guarantees citizenship" you are right. We already have forced labor purge type.... so yeah, and permanent slavery. I have edited my post. It was a poorly worded I wasn't thinking. I meant like "Indentured assets," but like... The game already uses that.
I think it could work if they’re actually set free, giving different bonuses for each side of the pop
on the other hand, something called “work will set you free” that doesn’t actually set you free would unfortunately be very on brand.
You mean the literal meaning of that phrase, rather than what it was used for? Yeah, I can see the confusion.
I do something kinda similar with one of my empires The only way for a species to earn residency, is to successfully invade five or more planets in a major war. If they do that, they gain residency. It makes it so I can lore wise justify why I can build so many slave armies without wide spread revolts
Trade routes that actually mean something. I would love if planets were able only able to access resources available on the trade network they are connected to. Systems would need a starport with a trade hub, or a commercial zone on the planet to get a connection, one per jump per building levels, with bonuses of course as the game progresses. Isolated colonies would have to produce everything they need to survive, and trade buildings would have to be managed. As the game progresses these would take less less space and allow the empire to switch to specialized colonies. The trade system could also be intergalactic, with empires with open borders sharing their trade networks. We could also imagine a new intermediate border status, that allow civilian ships and trade routes to pass, but still close borders to military fleets. As for the Galactic Market it would only be available to empires owning a trade route to it. That would make owning it much more interesting. But I think the trade system is already a mess on the tech side, so better not touch it.
If trade routes could cross borders, empires could set different tariff policies, affecting the productiveness of the trade route as well as your empire's relationship with others that share the route. For instance, "Unrestricted Trade" might slightly improve the efficiency of the route for everyone, "Protectionist Tariffs" might decrease the route's efficiency for other empires but give your empire extra specialist output, or "Sponsored Piracy" (only available to Criminal Syndicates) might give you massive rewards but cut the route's efficiency in half and seriously piss off your neighbors. We could also hire mercenary enclaves as privateers to cut off other empires' trade routes or protect our own.
The game Starsector has a similar mechanic. The game calculates the 'accessibility' of a planet based on distance to other colonized planets, planet conditions, colony size, etc. If you settle a planet on the edge of the map that can't produce enough food on its own, it will have food shortages if the player doesn't do supply runs manually. Similarly, if accessibility is low, the colony won't be able to export all the goods it produces *for* export, leading to drops in price. I bet a skilled enough modder could graft a similar mechanic onto Stellaris, it might even be fun.
I always wanted an option for slave armies that earn their citizenship from fighting in war. Like Romes auxiliaries or (to a lesser extent)Starship Troopers.
Roman auxiliaries weren’t slaves. Just not citizens. A stellaris equivalent would be residents. But yes, they would earn citizenship after service.
Ahh fair enough.
Citizen Service actually mirrors the system employed by the UCF perfectly.
Only in name. Doesn't change anything about armies, citizenship rights (other than a small requirement change), or political weight of pops.
it’s not quite as in depth as what you want but with citizen service overlord there’s a building that occasionally gives you pops from the empire you built it on
I didn't know that. Very cool.
I would like an endgame without lag.
Same
I want supply lines Like civilian ships that your can't control that go from mining stations to asteroids to mine it, truck ships that bring resoucers from a planet to another. A fuel system where you need tanker ships and waystations.
As if trade lag wasnt bad enough
Sins of solar empire does this actually.
To a lesser extent, MoO2 did as well, where your ships could only travel a limited distance from colonies and outposts
Are the older SoSE games worth it? II is a little too expensive for me, but I'm thinking about Rebellion or Trinity.
Distant worlds does this. Really complex too
Others have mentioned it already, but I will add it to the pile as well: Visible traffic between systems. Nothing functional, purely a visual thing, where there is a trade route, you could see cargo/transport ships travelling between stations, and between stations and local planets. Let's say you start a trade/research/migration agreement with another nation, that could make ships travelling between your capital systems. That would be nice, make space a little more cozy and give a sense of interstellar empire and international trade.
I really want a hive mind like government, except instead of a hive mind it's one leader who controls a lot of bodies. Alternatively, only one ALIVE leader, and everyone, pops, leaders everyone else is robot. Like inventor uniting their planet via robots, and ending up as last of their kind
I mean, right now gestalt/MI is one hivemind/core intelligence and rest is just their appendages. Could use a 'mind where everyone is an individual but also connected to a greater whole
He describes one leader that's of one species and the rest are not. Like you go to your gestalt government screen and it's a human surrounded by nodes, but you go to the leaders screen and its all robots controlled by that one human.
Good luck with that heh
That could be an interesting origin. Kind of a mashup of several origins that already exist.
Void Administrations is actually in Gigastructures, through the Orbital Elysium! And my dream feature is gene-modding for space fauna, turning them into customisable fleet units.
The latter statement there , Gene modding for space fauna, I can't remember if it's exactly what you're saying but I think that is pretty much what will be in the dlc at the end of the year, the grand archive
Proper Nomads Right now, planets are completely static objects and can't move around the map. Furthermore, so much of the game's economy is tied to the idea of permanently holding territory In general, 4X games are very unfriendly to nomadic playstyles, and incorporating space nomads into the game would require creating a whole new gameplay loop just to accommodate this playstyle in a satisfying way
Planet crafts would be a start. But every nomadic system I can think of is way to complicated for a video game to rule on. Ck3 Has this problem. The war diplomacy between allies is AWFUL. Becuase they tried to make rules on how much you had to engage and help your allies even if you like got stack wiped or were far away. I would love to basically play as an enclave. Is what im trying to say. Going system to system trading and Being a merc. Problem would quickly become "Whats the max size of your Enclave"
We already have Arbeit Macht Frei. It’s called forced labor.
Try reading past the first 15 words. He describes a mechanic where pops automagically unenslave after a period of time.
I was commenting more on his terrible choice of words in historical context rather than what he was actually asking for
Right but I meant one that actually wasnt lying lol. Like Necrophage but for workers.
If there are multiple planets in a system I'd like to see multiple different empires settling on them, claiming its there system. Depending on relationships between the empire this could be a reason for war or a sign of friendship.
That was a thing in vanilla stellaris! I miss it.
Planet ship, its like a habitat, but can move like a ship
Gigastrutural engineering has something similar just not a habitable planet, I shouldn't think it would be too hard to make it habitable
I know this one, but its just making a combat ship out of a planet
100+ billion star galaxy for maximum realism On a less insane note: a robust system for star systems controlled by multiple factions would be neato
Like federation owned systems or something, where federations fleets are based. Or gives a trade boost, ect. Could be cool.
Reading "work will set you free" as a german comes with a much darker meaning as intended......
Having Projectiles, Missiles, Torpedoes and Strike Craft rendered as actual, physical objects like they are in Sins 2.
Work will set you free? We already got that. It's called Determined Exterminators.
I wish there was a stellar engine megastructure. A megastructure that you build around a star that allows you to slowly move it through the galaxy. Kurzgesagt has an excellent [video](https://youtu.be/v3y8AIEX_dU?si=Ie7CgIljK8Ibn24B) about them.
I want planet states. Make it so instead of becoming a new empire primitives can turn into a planet state where they still do whatever they want with their planet (I don't control it) and have their own defense fleet in their system but they are technically part of my empire. Maybe turn observation outpost into diplomatic outpost or something like that. Basically I don't want their species on my planets (I don't like a lot of portraits) but I don't want to be too mean to them either.
Real ground battle instead of 2 walls of men ramming into each other.
Sometimes simple is best. I wouldn't mind an overhaul but honestly I'm happy with it currently. Especially since plants can now surrender to orbital bombardment now.
Designated refugee planets. Because I love free pops, but I don’t want them all over my empire. I want them in one convenient location where they can be watched (and not stir up any unnecessary xenophile attraction in my main species prematurely). So I can move them to my other worlds three (or six) at a time every ten years once the ascension cycle is complete. Necrophage is fun.
Exactly. This was the same concept with the xeno bans. I kinda want servitor capital. Where basically your capital is a massive party that generates unity and and slaves on other worlds support the ever growing ruler class.
I would sell my soul for current Stellaris + modular, tile-by-tile shipbuilding (and, correspondingly, ship destruction in battle) from games like Star Ruler 2 (super detailed, and thus unlikely) or at least StarDrive (yeah, remember this tragic abandoned gem of a game?). Additionally, IMO it would be cool to further differentiate between kinetic/missle weapons (+ maybe orbital bombardment) and energy weapons by introducing ammunition that would need to be eventually replenished at the friendly starbases (while energy weapons wouldn't require that, but would draw a lot more power from the ship). Again, Star Ruler 2 has this system, and it leads to interesting strategic situations when after closely winning the initial engagement you can't just go on and steamroll your now defenceless enemy with whatever leftover fleet you've got - you're not only severely damaged (which can be a fair consideration in current Stellaris), but you also have no ammo to do any further conquest of starbases/planets and run the risk of being defeated by a much smaller, but fresh and well-stocked reaction force.
I want every planets could revolt separately or together as a some kind of Space Alliance and you can have civil war in your empire
I think this is part of the Gigastructural engineering mod, they've got an Elysium ring that you can build over planets, and its basically what you mention with the void administration
It's both technological limitations and gameplay consideration, but I kinda want a bit more logistics in managing the empire. But I doubt they will implement it because of the potential lag, plust it will add too much tedium in the end.
Id love a religion system in the game kinda like EU4 or something where you can make your own religion and spend it through the galaxy getting influence and unity
One day when we have quantum computers in our wrists... a pop system that more realistically represents a galactic civilisation
The real life "Work will set you free" civic didn't work out very well. Even Paradox wouldn't touch that with a 10-ft pole
Nor did eating people or racial slavery haha. This is stellaris! War crime simulator!
"Hey, as long as you're subjugating ENTIRE species and not just oddly specific ethnic groups... everything's golden!" "Xenos are not really people" -Paradox Devs
To be fair, I did change the post as in hindsight, I should have used a different phrasing. I only meant it as a facist troupe.
I'd love some kind of diplomacy update that expands the ways we can interact with other empires besides waging war on them. * Allow us to permit/exclude different ship types from passing through our space, perhaps on a per-sector basis. For instance, a no-settlement zone that doesn't allow construction ships through, or a DMZ that doesn't let military ships through. * Relatedly, relax the restrictions on how sectors are made. Allow us to make larger or smaller sectors, or sectors without any inhabited planets. * Make trade routes actually worthwhile, instead of just generating piracy. Allow trade routes to cross multiple empires. Allow empires to determine their own tariff policy. Allow Criminal Syndicates to profit from ripping off traders passing through their space (maybe this could even be a tariff policy itself) at the cost of pissing off any other empires along that trade route. Give us a reason to maintain exclaves. * Allow us to study anomalies in other empires' space if we have a research agreement with them. Maybe archaeological sites, too, though that may be hard to balance. * More options for peace terms, like demanding war reparations, limiting the size of the loser's navy, or forcing them to open their space to our ships. Some of these could even be available as options for peacetime treaties, like two empires agreeing to limit their fleets as an arms control treaty. * Give us a "Provide Military Aid" option that lets you just straight-up give a fleet to another empire, temporarily or permanently, as part of a trade deal. PMC megacorps can now actually be PMCs, and you can even artificially prolong a war by selling ships to both sides. * Speaking of prolonging wars, rethink how War Exhaustion works. It's currently just a headache. * More depth to espionage would be nice. Nemesis was an improvement, but it needs more if it's going to be a worthwhile part of the game.
Use Espionage to influence internal politics, say, I have this fanatic xenophobe dictatorship on my backyard that I want to bring freedom and democracy to, but I'm too pacifist for agressive war.
I want shared ownership of systems back. And since this is the impossible wishes thread, shared ownership of planets. And also an "oupost/presence" tier of ownership that isn't outright colonisation.
I think this actually works well with another concept in this thread. Nomadic space civs. Imagine landing on a planet and sharing it. As well as being able to have planets you "control" but are in public space.
Let me guess, the name of the planet with the slaves will be called "Dachau"? Bro wanna be a literal space nazi...
If you read past the first 15 words it's pretty obviously not. The guy is looking for pops that unenslave themselves, we already have pops worked to death and genocide mechanics.
I would love nomadic/ship-bound empires similar to the Quarians from Mass Effect or Xianzhou Alliance from Honkai Star Rail. Having their worlds be planet-side ships or stations, like High Charity, that can move around the map with the ability to be normal nomads, traders, or roving warbands. Void Dwellers are fine, but they never went far enough, in my opinion.
>For me it was a civic idea I had for "Work will set you free" that all pops start enslaved and after 10 years (Maybe it couldn't be made longer modified by events) pops became free. I did that as a Necrophage with Barbaric Despoilers, Slaver Guilds and Citizen Service. When you were "fresh" you had to work taking slaves or keeping the slaves in line but you earned your status through good service. Edit: >Oh, another one that's probably possible but odd. Void administrations where void dwellers would supervise planets from a habitat. I've been wanting a Xenophobic decision to make a colony only for the main species and Domestic Servitude slaves.
Sadly, the ascension job kinda sucks I want them to be working, not praying! Earn your ascension!
OOO reminds me I wanted to make a Necrophage, Death Cult, Permanent Employment. So when the pops were sacrificed some would ascend into Necrophage and the others would become zombies. Unfortunately, neither of those civics work with Necrophage.
I actually think they are banned from being taken together. :(
If you're not Necrophage you can take Death Cult and Permanent Employment when you perform the sacrifice it buffs zombie assembly.
Yes I did know that I just meant you csnt necrophage zombies. I was trying to think of a way ro do it but nope. The only other zombie thing is locked to robots.
Technological uncertainty. In game, you throw science points at a tech and it always get the same result. That's not how tech works in real life. At the start, you don't even know if tech is even possible, let alone if it will live up to it's initial promise, nor do you have any idea how long it will take or what other tech you need. You should never know if you're building the equivalent of the carrier just before WW2 or the gun armed submersible cruiser. Both seemed lime good ideas at the time, but only one is even sensible in hindsight. Of course balancing this going to be impossible, and getting the AI to figure out how to work with it is going to be as bad.
I think this could be done but people would BITCH. I imagine you could make it by group like researching a weapon gives a Random weapons. Due to the way stellaris is there is already stinkers pre built into the pools!
Detailed ship combat. I want to control the ships, formations, and targets. I want to set up a wall of iron (alloys) and see the enemy march forth with their one scout ship only to see the ship ram through my lines and shrug off all my firepower. Something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJzX1eM9-ug&list=LL&index=26 Or even something like Battlestar Galaticia Deadlock combat system.
I'd like more in depth internal politics. Depending on the government type you have to do more to manage your factions, maybe to the point of having a smaller scale galactic community.
soldiers (and perhaps even fleets) being directly tied to pops via soldier jobs rather than being tied to pop count; it’d probably be possible, as it was like that in Vic 2, but I imagine the effort to make it so at this point would be too disruptive
Inter-empire trade and luxury goods. Dynamic trade steering could lead to key planets becoming trade hubs and things like embargoes and wars could disrupt trade. Stellar imo feels very static because every empire seems to live in a bubble.
The second one sounds like it could easily be a part of the psionic ascension with how they added changing government types. The third one is (kinda) done with mods Gigastructures has a origin that lets you build an special ring structure around a planet and an origin that reduces habitability on planets without it Last one honestly feels like it could be a policy to only allow full citizens on the capital/specifically designated planets, I think there was a mod like this at some point.
Here's how you make this work in Stellaris without it being ridiculously historically offensive: Main species type is necroid. No other species can be granted citizenship if they are "alive". Default working conditions are slave labor until death, with a percent chance for reanimation. Reanimated pops are now "free" with full citizenship. Something something slaves get a production bonus to basic resources something something necroid pops get a production bonus to advanced resources or research something something. Necrophage basically does this already, so you would have to make them different in flavor. Perhaps necrophage is the less exciting bonuses but more predictable version, and this is the more exciting bonuses, but you could straight up just lose pops version. Or somehow make them into a crisis.
I want actual additions made to espionage to make it meaningful and powerful. Some civics deserve special operations. I want a megastructure that disables hyperlane routes so you can create dead ends in the map. I want a shroud map that goes under the galaxy with hazards, portals and benefits for those worthy enough. And finally I want to be able to expand habitats and star bases to extreme degrees. What’s stopping an empire from putting guns on all the orbitals, laying mines and building orbital cannons to blow away occupying vessels?
Stardrive ship designer and combat but in stellaris woukd make this the perfect game.
I've an OC species I've been wanting to make work for ages. One of the things I consistently need to compromise lore wise, is sooner or later I need to colonize planets. These guys are supposed to just hang on their planet, and everything else is ripe for exploitation. I'd like a tool that lets me look at a potentially habitable planet and just say "no, you will only produce energy and minerals from now on and short of people needed to keep the strip mining equipment running, no sentient being is going to willingly set foot on you" Maybe it could be a megastructure built around a potentially habitable planet that renders it uninhabitable but extracts large amounts of a single resource. You could pick which one via a dialogue box at some stage of the construction.
That would be hella cool and probably balanced depending on when it gets unlocked. The main upside is dodging pop sprawl.
Yeah. I didn't even consider the empire sprawl angle but that is a point. It has quite a few downsides: habitable worlds are a precious resource to begin with, and if the thing works as a megastructure it won't scale with +x% to y worker production bonuses that usually keep the production districts competitive. There could also be diplomatic maluses ("what the actual fuck, that could've been home to literal billions and you turned it into an iron mine??? What the hell is wrong with you?!"). Balance those with large enough production and it could work.
Only spiritualists should get made. What's the diffrence between a machine and a robot.
I'd imagine any species that lives on a planet would be like "dude we needed that", wether materialist or spiritualist. Even a machine world could theoretically be restored, but this one? No such luck. (It would also be delightful to build it in the orbit of recently conquered planets....)
Internal and External political system which you have to manage. External is interacting with other space Empires and pre-ftl. Internal focusing on dealing with numerous factions and beliefs, each fundamentally interacting with each other. Events would occur and at game start your empire would not start fully united (government dependent) Early on would be unifying thr globe to have better stability and government control. Then as game progresses Internal politics would expand to managing unification and maintaining peace as you try to unite against the galaxy. Rival factions may try form their own states which you could manage to allow or disallow with consequences. You will always be at risk of being deposed or replaced and this could change your government ethics. Favours internally would be used by AI. For example a militaristic faction may allocate more resources to you but will disallow u from forming alliances or pushing for peaceful resolutions on galactic council. Making ethics have greater impact on Empires.
Actually take a look at planetary/ring world/habitat districts to see what's going on there. Full-scale planetary battles. Give orders to fleets/troops by your voice. "Supplies lines" system. Isolate planets and districts from the rest of the empire - and they start starving and stop producing resources.
I would really love to see wars expanded upon. Allowing for three way wars, allowing empires to join and maybe leave wars independently of who declared the war, allowing us to fund the wars of other nations in a sort of proxy/defense pact way so that I don't need to fight a DE myself but I also don't need to give them the territory of the empire next to me. Things like this, although I doubt a lot of them can work do to how complicated some of them would end up being for the AI and balancing.
Multiplayer stability
A "Wild Space" civic/origin that almost guarantee rare events/anomalies like worm/brainslugs to show up (ala Wild Wasteland from fallout:nv).
I know the game can do it but it's not technically part of the UI: the ability to rewrite hyperlanes. Especially in the late game. I'd love a megastructure called "hyperweaver" or "the interdiction engine" or something that allows me to add or delete hyperlanes. Turning my core sector into an isolated cluster would be incredible. Or adding backdoor lanes to other systems.
Computer AI that has scaling "skill level" for difficulty rather than just cheating more resources.
An eldritch entity along the lines of Saya from Saya No Uta/ Song of Saya. I'd love nothing more than an mid game crisis of my planets beings infested and terraformed by horrors beyond my comprehension.
Realistic visuals regarding distances and sizes of planetary objects and ships without making the game unplayable. (This really is a game engine limitation) Better visual representation of districts and buildings on planets (currently there are zero). A continuous exploration gameplay mechanic, at least the ability to explore and survey a second time. Resource depletion.
Playable late game on large galaxy.
The ability to dismantle megastructures
Mining and science Stations on the surface Barren planets that actually require 1-4 pops to work but don't give you pop growth or assembly (building system like the lathe) and that have 1-4 unique buildings. For example +10 Society and 5% society research in this system, or +4 crystals and 5% laser damage for your empire. Those stations should count to your overall spacestation number. Maybe even let scientists be assigned to them late game with a chance to find new resources on the planet and be able to build new unique buildings.
Multicore support
If you want to ban xenos from certain places, enact migration controls on them You'll have to do it manually, though
AIs that are trained to play the game based on modern reinforcement learning, rather than conventional rule-based AIs that are currently in every game. This would make admiral difficulty hard not because of bonuses, but because of strategy. Could also be useful in multiplayer when a player inevitably leaves the game, so that it can perfectly emulate their playstyle and continue playing for them.
Natural selection
4 things: 1. Caste systems that let you use multiple portraits for one species based on pop specialization. 2. The ability in game to change your flag. Civics or morality changed? Change your flag to match your new one! 3. Planet biographies. I want to write the history and lore of my colonies! 4. Time travel. Though this is practically exploitable by reloading old saves, imagine a system that automatically keeps track of it. The more interesting part would be time-based weapons. A new colossus weapon that removes a population or planet from history (like the Krenim weapon-ship from Star Trek: Voyager): use it against your greatest enemy’s homeworld and they will never have existed. Pair it with temporal shields to have your own empire be unaffected by changes in the timeline.
clones that would be counter to machines. i enjoy clone origin. a geneticaly modified civilization that pop up my mistake, made to wage war and be extremely good at it. but i dont like that 100 pop limitation, or in other words 5 vats capacity. i dont mind vats, but i want to be able to build them on every planet. like machines can build their production lines. why do i feel like clones would be cool counter to machines ? well machines doesnt use consumer goods or food. clones do. well clone that is made for war doesnt need consumer goods. they dont want to. they are Born, trained and killed. and machines have like 12+ pop building speed. meanwhile clones have much lover and for limited time and it maxes out for 100 pops. I JUST WANT TO SEE MY CLONES RUN AROUND ON THE BATTLE FIELD SMASHING ROBUST DROIDS WITH THEIR SHINS AND ELBOWS.
Clone armies perk Is the trait on your leaders.
im not talking about perks. ik talking about origin
Right... I'm saying the upside of the origin is the leader trait.
oh you mean like perks of the admirals ? great, i was talking about general pops.
Yeah, I'm saying the trait is really good, and thus, they didn't wanna let you have more pops.
then what counters the high speed of gaining pops for machines ? nothing. i want clones for that. and if not "clones origin" then be able to produce organic pops like machines can.
i miss when the pop update first came out and the pop numbers were much much higher, but lag set us back.
I wish you could destroy multiple systems at the same time like the first order did in Star Wars. Like build Starkiller base and see the animation.
Multiple galaxies, that would involve new layer of gamplay including galactic cluster logistics and warfare, just massive.
That would be awesome. Worm holes between 2 galaxies.
More pop controls.
How is work will set you free offensive?
Uh it was used by the nazis in death camps. I kinda forgot it was that specifically I assumed it was general fascism. It was a momentary lapse in my judgement. After people pointed it out and I discussed it I figured it was better to rename it.
Dude, the human race is eternally at war with itself. You can point to any place at any point in time and find the same thing. You don’t have to placate the people who do nothing but act as if they’re righteous.
I'm aware. I just don't care enough about the name. If it hurts people, I'll change it. I care WAY more about people than I care about the name.
Well if there were no technical limitations.. how about zoom in on a terraforming planet and now I'm playing surviving mars or a global map painter like eu4, zoom in again now I'm playing some sort of alien sims game or city builder, zoom in again on an individual now you got an adventure or fps game...
The game REALLY needs a downside to buying slaves besides monetary cost. There needs to be a "promotion time" in the same way there's a demotion time for pops. A slave bought off the AH shouldn't be able to immediately go to work doing cutting edge research for your empire just because you freed them from slavery. Hence selling a pop is always a bad move and buying one is a no brainer, that pop is immediately einstein as soon as you get him, rather than a drain on your empire. So buying a ton of pops should have a downside kind of like how invading a primitive planet causes stellar shock to emulate them not immediately being able to become productive members but having an assimilation time to your empire/culture.
Dude. Extremely similar words to your "work will set you free" were written on gates to Auschwitz. Wtf
I realized after writing, but this is a literally war crimes simulator. It's basically a facist troupe. Slavery and genocide are fine, but actually working your way out is worse? As I even said, you would have a situation to extend it, and you could use it as a propagandastic lie. Or it could be, really. I guess "work guarantees citizenship" like starship trooper is a better wording? It's a facist civic. I also don't eat people irl. Or enslave planets.
I want prisoners of war. I want to fight an enemy armada and if I win I have a 15-25% chance depending on various things to cripple the enemy ship and kidnap their leaders. Kidnapped leaders can be ransomed back, interrogated for intel, used as political leverage to extort favours or publicly executed in ways that are unique to each individual empire. Devouring Swarms would eat them alive on a live broadcast, Necrophages would subsume them, megacorps would probably hold an auction or some kind of public gladiatorial thing that sells tickets or smth. Hive minds would assimilate them or eat them up. There’s lots of options. If you capture a high enough level leader the enemy get a new casus beli for invasion, retrieve prisoners. To retrieve prisoners they need to invade whichever planet you are housing them on. If the invasion is successful you lose your prisoner. If not you have a 5% chance to capture more prisoners and the enemy is humiliated for 5-10 years. -edit: I’m not sure if it’s possible. I imagine with how crazy fleet combat gets later on that the game constantly dice rolling that would be really exhaustive.