Any players of Stellaris on here?

Its a real time space based strategy game by Paradox. I'm rather liking its fairly epic scale; a 'small' galaxy is 400 stars, a large one has 1000. The game has the ability for a truly terrifying number of opponents, in the form of AI players, evolving races that can become their own faction, fragmenting empires that shed new nations like dandruff, even internal factions attempting to sow discord. I don't think I've ever had a RTS game take over 12 challenging hours to complete before (and that's with an accelerated game timer!) But I like it.

I'm liking it so far too. I hear you can enslave lesser races, order them to stop breeding, and when they all die off repopulate with your master race.

Having a race that fully tolerates slavery has been my best start yet. I can't build ships fast enough to use up the minerals my many slave races are producing. My fleet is steamrolling nearby empires and getting me even more slaves. Conquest in the early part has made this game incredibly strong for me.

I've been a bit slowly plodding along until I managed to get my mineral supplies up. Although once I did things got exciting as I could keep my mineral and energy reserves full even while building a massive fleet.

A couple of things I've learned so far:

More empires is better. Both because you can declare more rivals (and keep up your influence) and alliances/federations are far more powerful. One sided fights turned into complete curb stomps when your 40k power fleet gets reinforced by another 30k from your allies.

Fighters/bombers suck. They have a range of 8, which unfortunately is the distance they will fly, not the range of their weapons. So fighters and such are the shortest ranged weapons in the game..... WTF....

Particle lances, torpedoes, and flak artillery kills everything. Supplementary weapons are optional.


A couple of things I wish they'd implement:
There *really* needs to be a way to rush buy things. I've spent probably 80% of the game with my energy reserves maxed. The only time they dipped below max was when I integrated a vassalized empire and picked up the tab for all of their stuff in addition to trying to absorb their recently crushed economy.
Covert operations would be nice.
It would be nice to have a little bit more control over sector planets, as the sector governors are none too bright.
You should be able to export food to other planets/empires.

How is it in comparison to Sins of a Solar Empire? Used to spend fuckloads of time playing that game.

this game piqued my interest, i may have to check it out.

how big a time sink is it? how easy is it to hop on and play a few minutes and then put back down?

In my opinion it absolutely destroys sins. No contest. You can customize your ships, you have a far higher degree of control of your internal politics, diplomacy actually matters.  And each game will be significantly different.




I would say that it is pretty easy to hop on and hop off.... as long as you're not in the middle of a campaign. When the fleets are in motion, or there is a crisis brewing it is a bit hard to pull yourself away.

Came across three negatives so far that really almost ruin the game for me:

1.  Non military units cannot cross into peoples territory even if you are neutral to one another or at least have a positive attitude towards.  So if your space is locked between people you arent allied with... tough shit, you are literally trapped.

At least allow for non military units to cross into peoples territory unless you are rivals/at war or have a negative attitude towards.

2.  Cannot ally with someone while they are at war.  No explanation needed why this is so fucked up.  

3.  If I am at war with someone, and my fleet is inside their space when someone else takes over the system my fleets magically "disappear" only to reappear in my space months later.  Ok.... At least have someone open communications saying "This is my territory now, kindly fuck off please".

Will try the game again after Warhammer wears off.

The first one can be mitigated/eliminated (maybe only partially) depending on what method of hyperspace you use. And you can arrange for free passage of civilian ships with the diplomacy functions.

That second one is quite aggravating I'll admit. I've only found it to be a problem once however when I was trying to ally myself with a faction that was at war with the same people I was at war with.

The whole MIA function is a bit wonky but seems to exist to try and head off attempts to do deep penetration raids that the AI might trouble coping with.

I'd be quite happy with 3 main improvements or changes:

Have fighters and bombers actually fight at range instead of staying right next to the mothership.
Make integrating a vassal state take less time (trying to integrate an empire with maybe 20 planets will take something like 500 years)
please please please let someone make a total conversion that uses star wars skins/names/ships....