Personally I would like to see internal politics that could do something like a civil war that could reform a government but maybe you get to pick what side you want to control for the future of your empire
You can just ignore your factions so a fanatic spiritualist and egalitarian empire can have policies allowing AI, etc if that is what you (the ruler) decides. Or ideally you could make your own religion like in CK3 allowing or forbidding AI, welcoming refugees ... A Necrophage religion that pops from neighboring empires convert to and their ruler finds this all deeply concerning!
They used to have uprisings, and actual civil unrest that if you didn't balance and handle would result in civil wars.. People hated it because 90% of the player base of Stellaris are brain rotted morons. That's why every avenue and aspect of the game has been simplified 5x over. Every new addition is hyper simplified. People who say Stellaris is in depth and expansive, are the same people who look at a mile wide, inch deep game, and go "wow what an amazingly in depth game!" War Goals used to work like Europa Universalis, with more control, and actual diplomacy involved of where the borders were drawn, and what systems are handed over, etc. Now its just all or nothing, or some middle ground option that just decides for you. Its garbage. Planetary control, same thing. internal Diplomacy was more advanced too, with civil unrest like I mentioned.. Way back when the game first launched, you had 3 different types of movement for ships, making it unique, and no connections between stars.. Systems all had their own influence that expanded out, so having "border friction" was an actual real thing. If your borders were getting pushed back by another empire and you were under threat of losing systems due to the border, you could push war to stop it. Stellaris has gone so far backwards its actually insane. 80% of Stellaris development is either re inventing mechanics (like the pop/planet system that has been re made no less than 7 times), or completely removing mechanics and game systems to "simplify and help the AI function better" (literally paradoxes words) because paradox is so dog crap at coding an actually functional AI and require modders to pick up their incompetence.
I really liked how in the machine age, they separated playstyle from tall (virtual), wide(Nanobots) and somewhere in between (modularity). I hope the other ascension types (biological and psionic) can get those type of choices.
Biological should stick with the perks of having explosive population growth (wide) but it would be cool if psionic empires could choose to ascend into an ethereal form that is completely different from regular pops (kinda like virtuality).
My big hope for psionic is having paths for each shroud covenant and one without a covenant, similar to the new cybernetic. I would also like if cloning vats were unlocked with tech with levels.
@@evilemperorzurg9615 How about psionic empires getting "pocket plane" ascension? Interdimensional webways, pocket worlds -- there is a lot of flavor to explore there.
I would love to see in espionage the ability to set up coups and fan the flames of civil war in other empires and then come to the aid of the rebeling faction to vassalize I mean liberate them from their oppressor
Stellaris is one of those games where they basically can and will change things drastically and it always kinda turns out okay. It’s rare and weird for this to be pulled of and it’s even weirder that it’s happened so often and so consistently.
Because the player base is patient. Tiles to pops was a big shift but people mostly stuck with it. Tiles had their advantages and so do pops but few said, duck it I'm out. That allows the developers to breathe and experiment. Not always good but always trying.
Every time there's DLC the new stuff needs nerfing in the following releases. Some misfeatures were avoidable by disabling the DLC or mods. The player base is relatively loyal because what other games are like Stellaris? Some of us did get totally sick of vassal spam and dropped out because of the changes altering the balance of the game favouring boring play styles.
I don't know how you can look at leaders and say that it was OK. No amount of changes will bring back that feeling of being the ultimate ruler anymore.
I'd really like to see more alternate win conditions. So far we have victory score at the end date, conquer all empires, become the crisis, and cosmogenesis. Half of these basically involve being extremely militaristic and fighting, but I would also like to see win conditions for diplomatic or trade empires. Things like unite the galaxy through diplomacy, or own the galaxy as a megacorp. Maybe even install puppet governments inside each other empire through espionage and have them all as secret vassals.
i also think that win conditions should never be an all or nothing proposition. like control 75% of the galaxy through diplomacy should be enough to count as a win.
I think something like an idealogical/religious/political victory could be cool. Maybe with an ethics rework you could unlock a “crisis” tradition that allows you to influence the ethics of other empires more effectively and create a new empire specific ethic you can start converting your own and other empire’s pops to. Maybe once you reach something like 3/4 of the galaxy’s pops believing in your ethic, 3/4 of the stars either controlled by you and a vassal, and the highest diplomatic weight you win the game. If nothing else it would shave off a few decades off of games that you have in the bag but don’t want to wait out 50+ years of peace to get a victory screen.
Maybe a win condition that sends a small fraction of your population to another galaxy? Like survivors of a crises or just trying to colonise another galaxy.
I'd love an Espionage: Spread Ideology, Espionage: Found Faction and Espionage: Fund insurgency All where you select any which ethic, getting more of a difficulty penalty if that ethic oppose yours than if it were unaligned with yours
@@jwalter81 No evasion = gets destroyed. They can be good if done correctly, but always will get destroyed. That's why we need some kind of starbase manager for them.
For scenarios, I think that the best way to do it wouldn’t be for the devs to create scenarios themselves, but rather for them to give us a throwback to the great 2000s RTSs, where they create a custom scenario creator, and then you can go and load scenarios other players have created and opened to the public. That was a big thing with Rise of Nations, for instance, and other games at the time
I remember when you talked about the fleet system and how we have too many ships. i would really like to have less but meaninfull ships, have the chance to read like a logbook of the ships, just for flavor. but in general im exited for the factions and trade update.
I would love to see the game lean more into a quantity vs quality style match up. if you want to play with lots of ships that should be an option.... but your ships might end up being somewhat crappy. if you want a small but powerful navy that should also be an option. perhaps the way to do that might be through training and experience being a more potent force. naval academies might be something that even large empires can only have a few of and a resource drain that results in very experienced and powerful ships. .... but you can only train so many ships at a time and it takes a while to get them trained. highly trained ships requiring higher upkeep. that way you would have an option, train up your navy and have smaller numbers. Or just build a lot of ships that are poorly trained and maintained. it would also create a dynamic where you might start a war with an elite navy but by the end your just churning out conscripts and throwing them into the front, much like what often happens in real wars on earth.
@@islandwills2778 this *kinda* exists already, though an extreme edge case, is that sometimes it is better to build naked battleships with only F.A.M. to kill the unbidden with the alpha strike
@@KaizerKlash111 im thinking something more along the lines of do you build seal team6 or do you field a vast army of poorly trained conscripts? of course how the ships are built would also matter.
@@islandwills2778 you can do both tho. Have highly specialised cloaked ships for taking down core worlds, and have a giant fleet to take down other fleet. It's already there
Internal politics !!! Totally agree with Montu, I want Episode 1 in stellaris: Blockading planets playing as some kind of trade federation would be super epic :D
This is most I’ve ever been excited about stellaris. Genetics’ ascension has been a slog to play through and I hope eladrin pulls it off! Also paragons tier list, pls
The pop system would be crazy. I started stellaris right before the tile system was removed and it was quite a bomb shell of chaos. Though Im happy they're trying to find a solution
I’d like common origins to be changed so that multiple players can start out as members of the same federation sort of like multiple players can start out as vassals of the same overlord and start out allied if they all take the imperial overlord origin (but without the overlord, of course). Me and my friends who play stellaris would love not having to search for each other to be able to play together cooperatively as members of a federation against the AI.
@ There doesn’t seem to be one (and I have searched several times), and the game doesn’t allow you to generate a federation and allow another player to play as one of the two NPC federation members either if restarted as a multiplayer game (which I’ve tried).
I really whish crime syndicates could have a legitate side, that doesn't increase crime, for allies/vassals. I had a really, really fun run as a "criminal syndicate" and the "egalitarian collective ownership or something one" that I created/cheated in a bit later as an offshoot colony from the main empire, the Sol Parliament that Headquartered from a ruined ecumenopolis. But I really whished I could engage in legitemare trade with other empires of similiar ideology It would make sense too for authoritharian ones too, The legitimate front, with their own sets of buildings, should be somewhat limited, or normal megacorp should get access to more underhand buildings or mechanics too!
Another cool change to megacorp might be where a planet isn't exclusive to one megacorp, initially. Perhaps having domestic corps (or something else) fill those up, and have them compete with the megacorp empires
@@jezusbloodie I mean if there is going to be competition on the planet you might as well allow megacorps compete with each other as well. You could also allow MegaCorps to trade/buy trade deals which you could call "Reductions in trade regulations" "State approved goods and services" or something basically the megacorp can bribe another empire to give their branch offices a competitive advantage.
@@JoViljarHaugstulen yea that's what I meant, you get it! Core concept: companies that can occupy type of slots on planets (number of slots depending primarly on development level of a planet), on sectors (like for trade, space mining, etc), and some slots for empire. The companies only represent the larger, more significant and noteworthy segment in a local economy/society, and perhaps a special type of company should (always) exist for the informal economy and unorganised aspect of a society. To represent the amount of control the companies, or efficiency of them, where if this special thing is high somewhere, stuff like espionage is easier there, it's easier for megacorps to compete and move in if building the right things, companies are less profitable, chances of piracy are higher, but also where the chance for a new companies (of certaintypes) to spawn is higher Companies could be government bureaus, small corperations on only one planet expanding and combining into sector-wide conglomerates, monastic orders, slaver rings, mercenary companies, syndicates,, state corperations, tribal groups, oligargic conglomerates, noble estates, research initiatives, criminal cartels... The megacorp empire would be extremly buff at this, adding a layer of flavour and gameplay depth to basically every single megacorp civic. Imagine companies that get to powerful off shooting into megscorps, with their own territory and diplomatic representation. the potential depth and interaction with most other mechanics is insane: from internal regulation and policy shape diplomatic relations as you examplify, there'd be more forms of/dimensions to warfare, it could interact with leaders, (spread of) research, colonisation process and private colonisation, planetary and sector governance (giving sector or planet wide monopolies), supply chains (militarised economy gives access go military industrial complex companies), slavery (special slave companies that add bonus to slave pop output), vassals (if granteddifferent specialisations gain access to more optomized or flavoured companies, bit like megacorp in a way), GALCOM (embargoes), federations (shared customs, equal playing field to various degrees) (although forming coherent economic blocks outside of a trade union would be cool), mercenary enclaves (protect sector trade routes, garrison planet, suplement sector star stations), . . . You'd probably need a whole new menu screen for companies
@@JoViljarHaugstulen yes you're getting it. I've written two whole-ass essays as comments to you, but they're both not showing up about the depth and synergetic interaction with basically every other game mechanic, that adding companies that occupy some slots on planets and sectors could give to stellaris. Maybe this one is short enough to remain undeleted by YT?
i want bio to go one of three ways. kill stab smash aliens think rampaging monsters who are really good at killing smart aliens, think aliens with big brains and tiny spindly arms and legs. good at tech, good at research. die if sneezed upon. sneaky aliens, think shapeshifters who infliltrate governments replacing key figures and manipulating and later outright controlling them from within.
I want the internal politics to have leaders in each faction and pulls based on ethics, when a faction rebels the leaders have a chance to rebel based on their ethics and other factors.
if this were implemented, would be cool to also have an event chain after a civil war resolved where the leaders who joined the rebellion get put on trial and you can choose whether to allow them back their former jobs, rejoin as civilians, exile, execute, etc. could have it done in either three steps for brevity (military, civilian leadership, rebellion leadership) or, if you want to let the weight of it increase as the size of your empire increases, have every leader individually on trial. maybe even have popular dissatisfaction modifiers if too lenient or too harsh, modified by ethic.
I want customizable AI building of Starbases. Maybe not full on picking every part of a loadout, but some presets would be nice. PD-focused, Energy weapons, Explosives, Antishield like Artilleries or maybe Void Beams/ Siphons. Hell, should get a free small missile slot at Starhold and a large one at Star Fortress or Citadel for longer range engagement. And picking Armor, Shield, or a Balanced focus, with Armor being forced in Storm or other shield nullification systems. Maybe with a 1 year shutdown of a starbases defense if you swap it's Defensive Focus. It's always weird to research new tech like Blue Lasers or Void Beams, and look at an outpost or some Bastion and find that it is is using Mass Driver T1 tech...
I love the idea of supply/trade routes which will make you decide between optimising planets with one resourse at the risk of being blockaded or make planets that do all resources for stable economies during war With internal politics there should be independence factions from planets that have been conquered where you either govern harder or give them benefits to stay in the fold
I mean you could also have resource storage buildings or something allow for local storage of resources in cases of shortages buying some time when cut off. Though of course if the resources is stored locally on the planet if the enemy happens to take the planet well now they also get control of those resources.
building on this, could have the independence factions grow in strength as a sector becomes more economically self sustaining, giving players the choice of how to balance having a bunch of vulnerable planets in outer sectors vs. maintaining allegiance (maybe they will be satiated when building projects or buildings within planets?) the achilles heel on this is the automating of planet production and managing sectoral economies. maybe they can add widgets that dictate percentages of different jobs across planets and sectors to help both the player and the ai additional thought could introduce more organic subjects, where you can blob out a self-sufficient subject that has far less autonomy and you essentially help keep it updated, which is more possible with present mechanics but also a lame duck if implemented without other internal politics changes
@@VSci_ and even with the present one, I use a mod that basically removes it and has all trade just in a station in the capital to let the game run to end game. I respect the poor programmer trying to save the mechanic/salvage it to save game performance while still having some way to simulate trans-stellar trade/supply lines
So we can find like a dozen different space dragons, make an obvious orc, gnome or dwarf insert our portrait, and have a fuedal kingdom in space, but glowy portraits are too silly? Energy species have been my fondest dream for a species pack since Lithoids. Oh, and you can be a sentient, floating rock too. forgot that extremely normal genetic template.
Yeah that was such a weird point to draw the line at. We have fantasy related portraits(literally also elves) and creatures in the game, but a staple of Sci-fi, energy-based organisms, is somehow too much? Doesn't make sense. I've been wanting those playable for soo long, it'd absolutely be a shame if we don't get them at some point.
probably unpopular but I wish there was more control in the advanced settings for how to change the game in vanilla. its actually really hard to change anything in that menu because it all has knock-on effects that you just can't pre-empt, like you can double the length of each phase of the game and also double the tech to match it, but ship travel time is still the same, and so exploration is unaffected and all techs related to it are useless.
Huh? Things like galaxy size and numbers of empires, what types can change radically the way the game plays out. If you increase galaxy size but reduce habitable planets then you'll slow the game and have to explore farther. Some of the tech like survey speed are probably more about zooming out on detail as an empire grows and micro becomes more and more of a chore.
I have to play like at least 4 half-games to figure out if the balance is right whenever I mess with the settings, that I wouldn't have to with more transparent advanced settings. let me change fleet travel speed, let me have longer exploration without having to have an enormous empire of 100 systems.
@@RobBCactive which I literally do. You fail to understand that the reason someone want a feature, is because what I they is not fascilitated by the game! you are giving advice to a person you have invented in your head! you are having a fantasy argument!
I think the best thing about scenarios would be that it would also enable more and easier modding of scenarios as well as a convenient way to select scenarios downloaded from the Steam workshop. While I'm sure Paradox could make some great scenarios themselves, my concern would be that each new scenario may need to be updated with every new patch or reworked to meaningfully include new content. Especially if the scenarios have a wider scope or more in-depth content, this can become a lot of work, especially for multiple scenarios. Much the same issue as maintaining multiple start dates in other games which Paradox have moved away from or tried to limit at least. As such, a few relatively simple scenarios might be the best fit for Paradox to make, and I would expect that modders who focus exclusively on scenarios might go much further in creating an in depth narrative scenario of, for instance, a Galactic Empire in decline.
I would like to see the ability to start a relic war to obtain relics from a different empire and vice vesra. This is because some excavation site and other events do not allow you to obtain a relic all the time. Add a an ai generated history of what happen in the empire history. Especially for example if you have a authocratic government and you want to go through what each emperor contributed throughout their reign. That would be really nice.
Relic Wars would be awesome! I instantly thought of a fanatic religious empire questing after a holy grail-esque reliquary set at all costs, hoping to follow a predecessor empire "Great Journey" style.
I would love to have different variations of open borders agreements. Such as a toll for having fleets pass through or maybe open borders for trade routes and civilian ships but not for military fleets and armies. A trade rework that makes trade hubs feel more important would also be great. Maybe every resource in the game produces a small amount of trade that also produces amenities. For example a single food could produce 0.1 trade where a consumer good produces 1.0 trade and having them be shipped to the planets who can “afford” these resources if they produce enough trade worlds could also have a global equivalent of a gross GDP and GDP per capita. This could lead to there being richer and poorer planets which could be an interesting mechanic when it comes to internal politics, factions, rebellions, and pop growth. Ethics could also be more impacted by events in game. For example, if a planet is invaded by aliens its population would become more xenophobic and war like but if a planet is a trade hub and has a high diversity of species it will become more xenophilic, a research world’s population would become more materialist, and a world that produces lots of unity would gradually drift to being more spiritualist.
Glad this covered a lot of the big things. Intrested to see how it goes for the bio ascension dlc. Can imagine a lot of routes, maybe even some additional contnet to the clone system and origin. If they do another nemesis route, we might even get a horatio refrence and try to turn the galaxy into one "perfect" species in the ultimate ethical crusade
This may sound like heresy, but do we need pirates? If internal politics is implemented well, that aspect of the game can be taken up there with people rising up etc. We don't really need a tropey space piracy thing. Just a thought.
I sort of agree with this. if we must have pirates can we have it more like real life age of sail on earth. governments might actually approve of pirates oops i meant corsairs and give them letters of marque. essentially pirates might be funded by nations and set to prey on rivals. but it wont always work out, they are pirates after all. the opposition might hire them out and now they are attacking you... unless pirates become more meaningful the way they are now is rather pointless and annoying.
When I first played the game I didn't enable the DLC I had and the first encounter with a pirate base was interesting. The problem with a lot of that kind of thing in Stellaris is a lack of variation, it's soon very obvious how to deal with a group so they become a routine chore.
@@Kasaaz well they sell the DLC, but something basic needs to take the place for practical reasons. It actually simplifies the game by avoiding special cases. I used pirates to train up admirals, sometimes early game they drop handy tech.
Piracy should be linked with crime and stability on neighbouring planets. If all planets and habitats in your space are managed with 0 crime from where are these space pirates even coming from? Pirates spawn should only be possible if your planets or your neighbors planets have high crime and low stability
Flag update! I want more flag symbols to play with. It's so sad to see some of the categories with only a single row of symbols, and I've used most of the symbols I like already.
What was missed : a fallen empire rework, possibly an in-game galactic map editor, and a way to create custom starting positions by merging existing ones (to a reasonable degree). More civic ponts and a single additional ethic point may also help flesh out our own civilization, which could go in hand with a rework for some very old, bland civics which have zero new mechanic and only change numbers currently. I'd definitely love playing either as a fallen empire or as a fractured empire. The former may be akin to play as the USA in vanilla HOI4, where you're technically industrialized and have access to a large manpower pool and resources, but are stuck with crippling debuffs for quite a while; and are forced to either watch from afar or to use other countries to do your bidding. The fractured empire thing is self-explanatory, you were essentially an advanced empire that completely shattered due to internal strife, and such origin could fit perfectly a rework for internal politics. Thank you to the devs for considering the feedback.
Ship consolidation mechanic: as you tech up the ships rendered start to represent "groups" of ships rather than just one. So 1 corvette becomes 2 with some "wingman" tech. Then 2 becomes 5, then 10, then 25. Each upgrade multiplies the hull size and all corresponding slots. So the wing of 10 corvettes would be a "single" ship with 30 small weapons slots, for example. While it's cool to see all the little ships, it stops become fun around 10 fps and I'd be happier just imagining that each corvette on the screen was actually a fighter wing of 25 corvettes, and each battleship rendered was a battle group of 5.
I kind of hope the trade rework means that the market leader mechanic is more interesting. It would be interesting if the market leader had a bit of financial power he could utilize. Kind of like a mini custodian, maybe advocating for trade tax, free trade, more interesting economic sanctions It might end up too complex and not worth it but I feel the market leader event is kind of boring, it's a lot of RNG and it really just gives you a reduction in prices. Not very interesting mechanically
With bioships, what about being able to make your species the size of space fauna and able to just roam around in space? Each individual member of your species could be, the size of, or essentially BE an Ether drake! ^^
I think, that the Pops system does need a change for the better, the Internal Politics sound's like it'd be a really cool thing to add, maybe it should effect types of technology or decplonicy
32:24 *This is a terible idea, Paradox do not listen to this.* That's what hapend in Gwent and every diffrence between the modes was annoying or confiusing.
Second this. Consoles don't have the option of picking from beta installations, so when they finally catch up what are they supposed to do? Just not get this feature? What if in 2027 pdx has added 8 more dlc and between them theres 8-12 of these scenarios? Do you sell the dlcs as a shadow of what they were supposed to include?
Plus like, how do you swap between the different builds? Nobody wants to turn the game on, try to start a scenario; it says "sorry you're supposed to be in version 3.17", so you turn the game off. Download a beta, get the game back on and it goes "no version 3.17, you misremembered and picked the wrong one." Stuff that, I don't want to have to turn my game off and download a different version all the time anyway, let alone if it introduced problems. The modding scene would be in shambles. Imagine being one of the big mod authors and now your mod needs to support not only the current build, but also it has to support backwards compatibility for all of the popular scenarios too? Just gah! Don't do this. Alternative, instead of having to turn the game off, it just emulates the correct build with the game already started. To be clear, this is also a terrible idea, do not take this as me advocating for the correct way to handle things. Where to start? Install sizes would balloon, if it's even possible to emulate the game within the game you'd still have to wait the same amount of time it takes to turn the game on in the first place, it could make the original initialization take longer if it was handled poorly, and worst of all it doesn't fix ANYTHING. If an update can break a scenario, then an update can break a build image. Don't expect players to play scenarios on specific builds, simple as. It's a bad idea if you need them to pick the build outside of the game and it's a bad idea if you pick the build for them from within the game. It's also just complicated and messy as hell and new players will be utterly lost.
My bioship fantasy is trees. Whether it be playing as elves or the tree themselves, I want the galaxy to fear the big stick. With the new war, it could be the Ents Attack Isengard IN SPACE!
I can not express how stoked I am for the competing insticts / directives idea for gestalts. The main issue I have with them at this time, is that they are even more static and rigid than normal empires (which themselves are fairly rigid, largely because it is very difficult to spawn factions not representing your empire ethics. So it's really hard to actually push towards different ethics in a narratively compelling way, though it's at least possible). It's very easy to act differently as a gestalt (I once even played as a determined exterminator and assumed a strictly defensive posture. I never genocided anyone, and soon enough parity of fleet power made it so no one else attacked me either), but it's very difficult to *change* in a way that is recognised by other empires, and there is no narrative force behind those changes (a fanatical purifier that changes their ethics can even turn off the civic, becoming, for all intents and purposes, a normal empire without the diplomatic barriers. Still insufficient, but even that is not possible for a gestalt). I love the implicit possibility of narrative progression it would open up. I want to be the cybrex. A gestalt that learns and grows and becomes better, or worse, in a meaningful way that is recognised by others is such a compelling possibility. Re: the scenarios, what I would really like, is a randomized mid-game start, and a scenario editor a la rimworld. I think the latter is self-explanatory and would really free people to do interesting things, but the former would be fun for luck-based games. I for one would like to start with a weak mid-game empire, possibly surrounded by bad neighboors, or in the middle of a war, and see if I can survive it. This is not really possible with the normal start, since you know what to expect and can prepare, especially if you know the game well. A randomized advanced start would sometimes be easy and sometimes unfair, but I suppose that kind of uncertainty is exactly what people like about randomization.
Trade routes and logistics should be naturally occurring internally. This means good will flow between worlds and stations. Internationaly trade routes can be authorized via diplomatic relations. To provide more depth you can manually assign trade or flow of goods in the case of a struggling colony or shifting war front
A way to make nomadic empires really interesting that also adds new options for regular empires as well would be to allow the option of using a cloaked fleet to engage in space piracy of other empire's supply lines, allowing you to gain a portion of the resources that move through a particular system.
For espionage I think a way for using operations that could create fifth columns in other empires that could do anything from coups to maybe put more friendly leaders in charge at best or as another possibility cause a civil war you can use as justification to intervene and maybe take territory to "protect" a minority species
With the trade/logistic changes another interesting addition could be that of blockading a planet with a fleet in orbit, cutting it off from the empires resources and the empire of its resources. This could lead to the planet surrendering I’m not sure, but it adds another dynamic to warfare. Also, it just makes sense that a planet you’re bombarding would be effectively blockaded, as it is now your ships will be bombing a planet while apparently allowing shipments of critical resources to come and go as they please.
I'd add/change the following espionage projects: Sabotage starbase: progresses faster during war, debuffs the entire starbase instead of destroying a random module, can spend an asset to delay sabotage until one of your fleets enters the target system Smear campaign: can actually break up federations or get members expelled instead of just reducing cohesion. Can gain secret fealty from target's vassals Steal technology: prioritizes rare techs, materialist empires get reduced cooldown Diplomatic incident: reduces diplomatic weight, progresses faster when senate is in session. If used on vassal or overlord can modify vassal agreement for free one time. Sway sector: create or grow an independence faction in target sector. Burn an asset and some alloys to start a a rebellion, where the sector tries to (your choice) gain independence or join your empire. Alternatively smear campaign could be used to break up empires with multiple sectors. Infiltrate government: catch all operation where you create friendly factions and leaders in the target empire, try to get friendly candidates elected, and use that influence to make the target empire enter treaties, support you in the galactic community or fight your wars. If you are a vassal and you sufficiently infiltrate your overlord, you will tag-switch to the overlord if you are integrated. Extort favors: should gain you more favors per use and favors should be good for more than just senate votes Acquire asset: could also give one of the target empire's leaders a new "asset" trait making ceratin operations easier to complete depending on leader type (scientists help you steal tech, commanders help you with military operations, occicials help you with diplomatic ops) Having a councilor with substance abuse should also reduce encryption, I dont know why they never added that. To reduce micromanagement, most operations should be automatically repeatable as long as you can pay the upkeep.
I really hope they add a system where you can make your own religion and go for a religious victory. Then we'd have a domination victory, a science one, the nemesis one and a fourth one: The religious victory.
I would like to see a Army Designer. Have direct combat slots, support slots, unlock slots, strategies, and units with tech, civics, traditions, discoveries, origins ect.
In terms of espionage, it would be cool to have the ability to not only see the buildings ands districts on planets, but mess with them in some way. Having a project to maybe destroy a building or district, or disrupt production. Then there's also the possibility of destroying your enemies resources. Imagine going to war with someone, and suddenly your forge planet is taken offline by massive partisan attacks, and your alloy supply is cut down severely.
Would love to see the same characterization you see in Leaders applied to Spies and Diplomats - skills, levelling, etc. I want to see my empire have its "Jack Ryan" or "James Bond" character for Bio-Ships: I really dig the Vorlons from B5: A ship is kinda like a dog or a horse, like moreso - much more a companion/partner more than a beast of burden (even though it still is, kinda).
My dream for bioships is something like the Zerg or tyranids. The Zerg have leviathans that can hold a brood of the swarm and have units capable of operating in a vacuum and the tyranids I feel have more units that fall into the “ship” category. For espionage I think something to look at is how Civ V and Civ Beyond Earth did espionage. It’s been awhile but I think you could flip cities, you could shoot down orbital units near the city, pillage improvements, steal a unit, detonate dirty bombs. Hell the AI would appreciate you sharing intel with them that they would be interested in. In Civ V you could have counter spies too. I think having a spy should be different than an envoy personally. I hate having to choose between diplomacy or espionage with my limited envoy count. Another cool thing you could do is attract feral aliens to attack the city and nearby improvements in beyond earth.
I’d really like to see nomads. I feel like there are so many options you could have with that concept. Spiritualists could be undertaking an eternal pilgrimage, militarists could have an economy based on sacking enemy worlds and starbases, xenophobic nomads might be running from another empire, materialists might be a lost scientific fleet send from another galaxy or smth, of course you could be nomadic traders, maybe xenophile nomads could get bonuses from visiting multiple empires in a short time. Maybe there could even be nomadic space fauna hunters. Otherwise I’d like to be able to act as mercenaries with militarist empires in general. To have other empires give you resources per destroyed enemy ship maybe if they bought your services for a war
Lend Lease (provide ships, equipment, other items to allies in war but not actually fight in that war); blockades (cut off a section of an enemy empire and starve them out, etc., hire pirates to do it for you, etc.); bioships yes, but also crystal tech ships that are grown by lithoids; toxoids that live on toxic worlds (can terraform worlds into toxic); ability for your empire to effect other empires culturally (they like you so much factions appear in the other empire that favor yours); MORE FLEXIBLE WAR SYSTEM (betrayal, ability to make a separate peace, switch sides, play both sides off against each other, then turn on the weaker, etc.).
I would love further additions to the espionage system. I think it would be cool if they added new operations that were exclusive to the ascension paths, and more sabotage in nature. Empires with cybernetic ascension could deploy computer viruses that cripple an opposing empire's digital infrastructure, affecting research, trade, etc. Empires with psionic ascension could infiltrate and mind control the leaders of other empires. Biologically ascended empires could deploy bioweapons on a rivaling empire's worlds. So much cool stuff you could do.
In terms of bioships, I really like the idea of some sort of multi-form hive like the Tyranids (though not necessarily a devouring swarm) where they have many different shapes their bodies can take. One of those body shapes is a spacecraft, with the rest of the hive living on and within that larger creature. The crew have bodies that are adapted to the void, so they require no internal pressurized compartments. Like the ship itself, they are resistant to vaccuum, so the crew of those ships scuttle around the outside of the ship, and perhaps only retreat to the protective cysts and internal organs of the craft when it is about to enter hyperspace.
I would really like to see some late mid-game content. Specifically for midgame a fourth special civic policy that can be chosen from a list depending on your legacy in game. For example let’s just say you started as a pacifist empire but have been at war the entire game you get the option to choose from a number of militarist quests with a unique civic reward at the end of each. For example declaring 3 liberation wars and winning them. For such a quest you get a special civic that gives you special diplomatic powers in the galactic senate or something that allows you to intervene in conflicts across the galaxy along with extra diplomatic weight. Some sort of midgame content that ties into the identity of the empire you have forged over the course of the game rather then just chose at game start. Mid game is a perfect place for this since things at this point start to get static until the crisis spawns.
Being able to switch your graphical culture (or however your ship style is actually called in the game code) would be huge. It would also work greatly with the Machine Age ascension paths. Another one would be ship generations - as in different, increasingly advanced looking designs in line with the already existing Tech Tiers.
My bioship fantasy is that of the Bitek in The Night's Dawn Trilogy by From the wiki: "Bitek starships used exclusively by Edenists (one of the two main sections of humanity, the other being Adamists), voidhawks are sentient beings who are bonded to their captains at birth via affinity. Whilst growing up both voidhawk and captain can communicate with one another through affinity, and generally have a very loving and affectionate relationship ... A voidhawk (type of Bitek ship) body is largely (about 80%) composed of energy patterning cells which give the voidhawk its unique abilities. These cells are used to create a distortion field which enables the voidhawk to accelerate in space, reload its patterning cells, create wormholes to perform swallow-manoeuvres and to sense the emergence point of a starship performing a ZTT-jump. A voidhawk distortion field is also capable of preventing other ships from performing ZTT-jumps. A voidhawk can block ships up to a distance of 100 000 km. ... Biological Machines: Bitek Servitors As knowledge of how to manipulate the genetic make-up of all life on Earth grew, some began to experiment with animals, leading to the development of servitors, animals adapted for specific tasks. The servitor monkey was developed with greater dexterity and increased mental function to work as a servant or domestic cleaner. Different servitors were developed for different purposes. Eight years after servitors came into common use, a new way was developed to control them: Affinity. Anyone with Affinity could directly instruct a servitor to perform a certain task. Habitats and voidhawks Affinity allowed for greater and greater developments in bitek. the Neural Symbiont allows for a connection between the neural structure of the user and the bitek unit.
28:00 Lots of things we can consider 'fantasy' in this game already, but they still don't break verisimilitude for playing as a regular empire. Though that varies from person to person. I for one, would find the idea of 'energy beings' being reduced to a few cool portraits and one or two 'special traits' (that still need to be balanced against my regular human empire) to be cheapening the fantasy. Broken Lords are my favourite Endless Legends faction though.
When it comes to having "Scenarios" in the game I've always had a few ideas that I think could be interesting. Scenario 1: The Galactic Imperium has just collapsed and now the former "Galactic Community" has just been dissolved. You likely only have a matter of years to gain your bearings and plot your vision for your own civilization or even the larger galaxy as a whole. This scenario could allow for players to roleplay as anything from the former ruling civilization to galactic liberators, rising warlords, Galactic Community revivalists, or even Xenophobic Isolationists. There would have to be something of an event chain to help create a more tailored player experience with an emphasis on replayability and the aforementioned roleplay opportunities. Scenario 2: the Galactic Community has grown increasingly divided as various political factions from across the stars have overstepped their bounds and are now seeking to dominate Galactic politics with their own agendas. This scenario could allow us players to influence the politics of other empires and eventually convert their ethics to those of whatever our empire has. This could even allow us to allies or even vassals out of the sectors of other empires. I have more ideas but I'll end this comment here as its already a bit lengthy and I'll continue sharing my ideas should you guys be interested.
As an example for the scenarios; I would take a note from the game 'Empire at War'. The game has fantastic scenarios/instances of the galaxy, even the mods for the game do the same thing and work with sections of the galaxy and forces you start out with and must build up to take out your opponent(s)
I would love to see the army rally point mechanic work even when an army is invading a planet, it would cut alot of unescessary bussy work merging armies in between back to back invasions. It would also be nice if we had a army managment screen akin to the fleet one so its less annoying to hire armies. Ofcourse if there is some ground combat rework in the works perhaps theese changes will be unnecessary xD
My take on bioships is fusion of pilot and the ship. Pilots needing proper biochemical mix or maybe they need latent psionic connection, both needing them to be inside 24/7, and this requires some sacrifice on part of the pilot and their family or community. Perhaps this is not needed at start, but going bio/psi ascension boosts it so much that indefinite merger makes the bioships that much more responsive, as in faster firing, moving etc. Then we can muddle it up: Forced symbiosis for all mandated by the state? Emergency symbiosis in times of war? Are specialists needed for this or does the happy little flower ship requires fresh and adaptable mind of a young person? What does your religious/xenophobe factions have to say about this? Your plant/fungi alien citizens or immigrants, and what of the lithoids in this system? Are materialists on board with the idea or are they seething because valuable goverment funding goes into society research and not computer research? Are egalitarians across the border considering war against you because you're fusing your sapients together and wanna put a stop to this 'atrocity' as they call it? How about we ask the fallen empires? The Prethoryn? Cetana? The Contingency isn't available for comment because it already woke up prematurely to put an end to this 'threat'.
I'd like more types of strike craft, just because I like to play around with different ship load outs. Carriers are fun, I want more reasons to use them
Honestly, i really want to have the kind of bio ships which are present in the Science Fiction books series The neutronium alchimists (Consolidation) by Peter F Hamilton. with Humanity is divided in 2 category : the Adamist who use technology similar to what we are using and the and the Edenist who develop Bio-technology with conscient bioships and space station.
Ive been wanting scenarios/a canon map forever. Could be things like earth trying to find it's place in the political landscape, the commonwealth of man having to decide whether to help the united nations or retake earth for themselves, fun stuff like that. I keep trying to do that bey having lots of advanced starts but advanced start empires can snowball without really doing anything.
Changing pops could be really interesting, but a I believe Victoria 3 has its endgame lag due to how manny different pop types it has. I can imagine something cool, like my Giant Lithoid pops counting as three normal pops when it comes to manual labor, but counting as only one pop for specialized jobs
Okay, "Scenarios" has me excited. I've always thought the game could benefit from at least one or two 'static maps', where it spawns in with pre-determined empires and special system placement. Either that, or a 'seed' system so that you can get particular galaxy generations. Though I get there's so many tweakable variables and random rolls it may not be possible.
When it comes to espeionage, I would prefer that they dont kill planets BUT: - Being able to put factions against eachother - breaking up others federations, as you said - stealing ships in a rewarding ammount (if done on multiple planets) - having counter espionage with an envoy on your planet - being able to steal ressources - giving planets crime increases or uprisings (maybe even causing a robot uprising) - blowing up buildings or even deactivating megastructures like dyson spheres or arc furnaces - making defense armies less effective by sabotagin their supplies or even turning off the plantetary shield generators - turning off ftl inhibitors in a system - reprogramming or sabotaging ftl inhibitors so that some enemies can be trapped - sabotaging fleets, not to inflict heavy damage but maybe something like slower sublight speed or turning off their shields, if they're stationed near a planet you have a spymaster on, potentially lifting a blockade or a stalemate or even making a purely defensive fleet harder to pursue you which can be countered by giving your ships an inspection which takes some time, like upgrading or repairing your ships especially things that reward you with a domino effect after a bit of preperation can be very satisfying to have with spying i believe, making enemy attacks easier or harder
For trade you can also add ways for cross border resource exchanges, like you make a trade deal how much metals or alloys you wnat to sell at a maximum over the border and you get trade in return. It would make diplo more megaging at least.
Alternate Game Mode could be like Crusader King's start dates and we could play just before the Cybrex turning exterminator mode. A very hard difficulty pick in such a start would be the Kuur ;)
I like doing my own roleplay, so I'm eager to see internal politics fleshed out. As an Overtuned main, I most certainly hope the genetic ascension gets a good rework, especially if it involves bioships.
Hope they add a Necron origin (Not Necrophage) Here’s how I think it could work: (sorry if this is somehow not original) Stuff that isn’t positive or negative: Hiding away inside massive “tombs” maybe for a few hundred or thousand years. Starting on a Tomb world. Tomb world preference Positives: Having ALL technologies up until tier 3 (but not including tier 3) unlocked. Have several small fleets ON THE PLANET that you can launch at the beginning of the game. Negatives: You have just as many pops as the Prosperous Unification original, HOWEVER they are asleep and must be reawakened, or they can awaken on their own over time. Only begin the game with a planetary capital, a crewed science ship, and a starbase. As well as 5 “Tombs” that take a while to reawaken. All fleets are on the surface of your planet, NOT in space and it may take a while to get them off world. This origin focuses on playing tall. It will give you an IMMEASURABLE technological advantage, HOWEVER there are different stages of awakening you must go through in order to have a good chance at winning an OFFENSIVE war. Here’s how it goes: You can reawaken pops and bring their strength back up to full strength with a point system for THIS ORIGIN SPECIFICALLY. Stage 1: The First Stir. You begin the game with 10 pops, they CANNOT breed YET and have a few debuffs such as being weaker (for both organic and machines in their own way). You can get rid of these debuffs by earning “reawakening points” such as building things on your planets and having your pops be employed. Please take note that once a “Tomb” has been opened, it WILL NOT give you a free building slot. You can choose to have it return to a blocked building slot OR turn it into a fortress. Stage 2: The People Return. One “Tomb” opened. 10 pops gained. Stage 3: The Rejuvenation. One “Tomb” opened. 10 pops gained. Stage 4: (Final one) The Future is Ours. One “Tomb” opened. 10 pops gained. A new event chain: A massive stash of resources and a weapon of some sort (would be REALLY powerful by let’s say…mid game standards?) in another system about 4 or 5 jumps away. If you expand into the system that this “stash” and weapon are before the event chain begins, then you will get a different message: Instead of saying “We need to locate the system”, it would say “We have located and colonised the system, now we just need to start digging” or something like that. This origin basically is for tall play styles but it tries to prevent you from going on an early game rampage by weakening you A LOT at the beginning. However, if you are attacked and need to DEFEND yourself, then that will ACCELERATE the awakening process. Let me know what you think, thank you for reading. I hope Monty sees this.
what i want is risky star systems where some of the stars will go supernova or turn into red giants. You find a resourse risk system but the down size is the star is close to supernova and you have a limit time to use that resources. Or there a risk your sun could go supernovs in your home system. There could be espionage with a low success rate where you could cause a star in a empire to go supernova ? I would love to see that
100% with you on the Energy creatures and Gaseous Species pack. The game is basically built on sci fi, sci fantasy tropes. Plenty to pull from in terms of inspiration so you can make them grounded, and I would love some energy beings. Chains of Silicon crystals linked by electrical, electromagnetic, or psionic energy that acts as a living brain and being. I mean, that was 2 min. of thinking, I think its easily doable, and you don't need to use magic to accomplish that species pack.
I’m hopeful for a complete rework of piracy. At the moment it’s by far my least favourite aspect of Stellaris, and it’s the thing I dread most about playing non-gestalt empires. Just because of how annoying they are to deal with. At this point I’d even accept no changes made to piracy but just an added button in the game creation screen to turn them off.
To that list I would also add more anomalies/archeology/situations within empire. Events like EU4 has could be nice addtion with pros and cons - for example increased mining output but u need to spend more consumer goods or increased stabillity but less unity income etc.
Paradox should perhaps dedicate a separate advancement path to espionage, where you get really powerful bonuses to “crack open” federations, for example
Trade -> markets, with an attached stock market in the market hub. Markets form by building a stock market on a planet or space station, with each resource producing entity (planets, mining stations, etc) connecting to the market with the greatest strength at that entity's location. Markets build strength by having more resources in them, and propagate that strength along hyperspace lanes based on proximity and other market strength (basically rivalling markets cancelling out in systems between them). If there is a surplus in a market it can be exported to another market, which increases that markets profitability. In case of a deficit, that market will need to import to compensate for it from other markets, decreasing it's profitability. An unfulfilled deficit in a market will have a severe effect on that market's strength, causing planets further away to join different markets. Markets will propagate their strength across borders with empires you have trade access with (like military access, but for trade and science/construction ships, and military access remaining necessary for military access). This allows you to have a border planet be fed off of a foreign market, giving the foreign empire the profit from the trade, but making sure the planet's needs are met, or the other way around and profit of off foreign planets in your market. Transportation of the goods a planet requires transportation capacity, which is generated by planets and additional transportation hubs, and the cap is shared within a market. This makes dense markets more viable, with further away planets increasing the cost of including them, which in turn makes having them join a foreign market actually viable. Ultimately, stock markets are your access points to view how a market is doing, and the amount of goods traded within that market modified by that market's profitability ultimately defines how much you make of off that market. What this also allows is for war to actively interfere in the economy, as disrupting a market can cut off planets from goods they need and decimate a market's profits. On the flip side, conquered planets will need to be supplied from your market and have their profit reduced based on resistance. Resistance can be reduced by installing an occupation government, and is naturally lower through matching ethics and species rights for each species relative to the previous owner's species rights. A planet can only be integrated as resistance is reduced to below a threshold. War exhaustion can be eliminated altogether as a result - the winning side will naturally seek peace to bring the conquered planets under control, and the losing side will seek to avoid collapse from the increasing strain on their economy as their markets are disrupted. Willingness to seek peace can still be modified by the length of a war, along with the relative amount of losses and achieving of the wargoal. Anyway, that's what I'd like to see, no idea what they'll actually do.
My biggest complaint about pops (besides to much causing lag) is even if you hyper specialize them there’s no way to force pops to only work in specific roles. I.e. last time I tried to play necrophage the specialist/research necrophage pops kept ending up working as clerks while a random species became researchers.
For the species thing I am hoping for a insecoid or a arachnoid species pack. Imaging encountering a ant society or a scorpion civilization, they can even do something similar to the there’s a zombie on my lawn achievement but instead of conquering a plant or zombie civilization as the other it can be “Top of the food chain” and to turn a insecoid species into cattle as a arachnoid species. Plus the buildables for both can be intresting.
I think that would be too much for sure! Reducing the micro of pops by removing individual pops and having 'groups' would be good. Less micro is better in my opinion
@@MontuPlaysSame with ships and fleets like you said get rid if the carpet of ships which cause lag and honestly are visually unappealing and hurt the immersion experience. Add value to each ship/fleet instead and have fewer of them.
@@bomlife1572 I mean, this could be replaced by simply shuffling numbers (via sliders or smth like that) from each group between planets. It wouldn't really hurt the immersion compared to dragging pop icons.
Stellaris devs, if you're reading these comments still (and I sincerely hope you are), first of all, thank you. These past nine years have been an absolute blast with this game. I remember when it first came out, with its wonky borders and multiple choice of FTL systems. I spent countless hours making empires, exploring the galaxy, forging alliances and battling bitter rivals. Your Custodian team especially has been remarkable, keeping a game alive that, handled by any other company, would have fallen by the wayside years ago. As for what I'd like to see the most, it mostly revolves around war, warships and the overall scale. Conquering a single planet should be an incredibly monumental task. Not only should it take more than just a few months, it should be more engaging. It doesn't need to be fancy visually, even if we would all like that quite a bit. I would just ask that there be depth to not only ground combat, but orbital blockades, bombardment decisions and consequences, and even the space battles themselves. Too much of a war is decided on how many ships an empire can churn out, rather than being strategic with placement. Fleets should be a resource worth maintaining, protecting and utilizing only when deemed worth either the risk or the loss. Perhaps by making individual ships significantly stronger but more expensive, players and AI empires alike will be forced to be more deliberate with their galactic warmongering. I'd also, to a much lesser extent mind you, love to see some planetary diversity and uniqueness. Too many worlds just end up feeling same-y, with Forge Worlds number 1 2 and 3 over there, and Mining worlds 1 and 2 over there, etc. This could very easily be worked in alongside the pop and internal politics revamp that was suggested in this update. Planetary governments may change to reflect the will (or lack thereof) of their populace, and things such as distance from the core sector, plagues, natural disasters, visits from the Caravaneers and interstellar wars could help shape each world's identity. When I lose a planet, I don't want to think "oh dang, guess I gotta get that back at some point," I want to be outraged. I want that planet, those people, back. Not because its just a resource, but because its a part of my empire and its very identity. Anyway, if you're reading this PDX devs, thank you for your time entertaining my midnight ramblings, and once again, thank you for making Stellaris as good of a game as it has been for nearly a decade.
Trade route calculations are 80% of the cause for late-game performance problems. I used a mod for years which disabled them and just added trade directly into your empire where it was generated, like energy, and I barely experienced any lag or slowdown. The reason I stopped using it was because it was causing issues with how some events triggered, but I do miss it dearly and wish the base game had an option for it, like how you can disable xeno compatibility.
about the scenario idea. i think it would be easily solved by just not hard coding techs etc. like create a system for generating an empires tech level that can just run on any tech tree independent of individual techs. this way you can generate many empires with different setups and directions. if a scenario has a parricular setup you could just generate a tech level with bias towards energy or some specific weaponry
Apart from a better Pop system ofc: Nomads. I want to Play a Trader fleet that Just scurries around following traderoutes and Generating income by Trading artifacts or resources, or Raiders that have to constantly run from bigger fleets and get resources by plundering starbases and planets, with mobile shipyards.
This is gonna sound crazy but I've always wanted to play the kett from Mass Effect andromeda in stellaris. They have to conquer other species to reproduce through assimilation, and after assimilating a certain amount of one species, they can choose one of its traits to add to their species.
Honestly, I just want a pop system that doesnt completely crush the performance of the game after the halfway point.
Colossus goes fwoooosh.
@seanphelps4057
I know the meme is that killing pops will help performance, but its a pretty dead meme at this point if you ask me.
@@goosemanVEVOIs Star eater better?
@@goosemanVEVO It definitely is. As dead as the planets my Colossus visits.
They should just like. Bundle pops into 5s then 10s then 20s etc as the game goes on
Personally I would like to see internal politics that could do something like a civil war that could reform a government but maybe you get to pick what side you want to control for the future of your empire
they already have an event chain for robo uprisings, so would be great if they allowed to do the same with factions
yers maybe something a bit like hoi4 where certain decisions can lead to instability which leads to civil war
You can just ignore your factions so a fanatic spiritualist and egalitarian empire can have policies allowing AI, etc if that is what you (the ruler) decides. Or ideally you could make your own religion like in CK3 allowing or forbidding AI, welcoming refugees ... A Necrophage religion that pops from neighboring empires convert to and their ruler finds this all deeply concerning!
Basically Victoria 3
They used to have uprisings, and actual civil unrest that if you didn't balance and handle would result in civil wars.. People hated it because 90% of the player base of Stellaris are brain rotted morons. That's why every avenue and aspect of the game has been simplified 5x over. Every new addition is hyper simplified.
People who say Stellaris is in depth and expansive, are the same people who look at a mile wide, inch deep game, and go "wow what an amazingly in depth game!"
War Goals used to work like Europa Universalis, with more control, and actual diplomacy involved of where the borders were drawn, and what systems are handed over, etc. Now its just all or nothing, or some middle ground option that just decides for you. Its garbage.
Planetary control, same thing.
internal Diplomacy was more advanced too, with civil unrest like I mentioned..
Way back when the game first launched, you had 3 different types of movement for ships, making it unique, and no connections between stars.. Systems all had their own influence that expanded out, so having "border friction" was an actual real thing. If your borders were getting pushed back by another empire and you were under threat of losing systems due to the border, you could push war to stop it.
Stellaris has gone so far backwards its actually insane. 80% of Stellaris development is either re inventing mechanics (like the pop/planet system that has been re made no less than 7 times), or completely removing mechanics and game systems to "simplify and help the AI function better" (literally paradoxes words) because paradox is so dog crap at coding an actually functional AI and require modders to pick up their incompetence.
I really liked how in the machine age, they separated playstyle from tall (virtual), wide(Nanobots) and somewhere in between (modularity). I hope the other ascension types (biological and psionic) can get those type of choices.
Biological should stick with the perks of having explosive population growth (wide) but it would be cool if psionic empires could choose to ascend into an ethereal form that is completely different from regular pops (kinda like virtuality).
My big hope for psionic is having paths for each shroud covenant and one without a covenant, similar to the new cybernetic.
I would also like if cloning vats were unlocked with tech with levels.
@@evilemperorzurg9615 How about psionic empires getting "pocket plane" ascension? Interdimensional webways, pocket worlds -- there is a lot of flavor to explore there.
I would love to see in espionage the ability to set up coups and fan the flames of civil war in other empires and then come to the aid of the rebeling faction to vassalize I mean liberate them from their oppressor
Same, just make it hard depending on empire overall stability, power, etc. And option to disable it on multiplayer
I would love to see in espionage the ability to do something actually impactful. The only operation worth anything is steal technology.
Ah yes... the CIA/ KGB roleplay. 😂
Some maidan sheanigans there bud
Stellaris is one of those games where they basically can and will change things drastically and it always kinda turns out okay. It’s rare and weird for this to be pulled of and it’s even weirder that it’s happened so often and so consistently.
Because the player base is patient. Tiles to pops was a big shift but people mostly stuck with it. Tiles had their advantages and so do pops but few said, duck it I'm out. That allows the developers to breathe and experiment. Not always good but always trying.
Paradox makes bigger changes with a patch than Activision does with a new game. It really feels like we are on Stellaris 5 at minimum.
Every time there's DLC the new stuff needs nerfing in the following releases.
Some misfeatures were avoidable by disabling the DLC or mods.
The player base is relatively loyal because what other games are like Stellaris?
Some of us did get totally sick of vassal spam and dropped out because of the changes altering the balance of the game favouring boring play styles.
I think one of the biggest strenght Stellaris has is that there is no previous title, so no expectation to live up to, unlike Vicky and CK3
I don't know how you can look at leaders and say that it was OK. No amount of changes will bring back that feeling of being the ultimate ruler anymore.
I'd really like to see more alternate win conditions. So far we have victory score at the end date, conquer all empires, become the crisis, and cosmogenesis. Half of these basically involve being extremely militaristic and fighting, but I would also like to see win conditions for diplomatic or trade empires. Things like unite the galaxy through diplomacy, or own the galaxy as a megacorp. Maybe even install puppet governments inside each other empire through espionage and have them all as secret vassals.
i also think that win conditions should never be an all or nothing proposition. like control 75% of the galaxy through diplomacy should be enough to count as a win.
I think something like an idealogical/religious/political victory could be cool.
Maybe with an ethics rework you could unlock a “crisis” tradition that allows you to influence the ethics of other empires more effectively and create a new empire specific ethic you can start converting your own and other empire’s pops to.
Maybe once you reach something like 3/4 of the galaxy’s pops believing in your ethic, 3/4 of the stars either controlled by you and a vassal, and the highest diplomatic weight you win the game.
If nothing else it would shave off a few decades off of games that you have in the bag but don’t want to wait out 50+ years of peace to get a victory screen.
So Civilization... in space! (Hello SMAC...)
Maybe a win condition that sends a small fraction of your population to another galaxy? Like survivors of a crises or just trying to colonise another galaxy.
Or pull a USA move and get a cultural win.
Espionage: Leader assassinations (Like murder plots in Crusader Kings)
ik, so many opportunities!
I'd love an Espionage: Spread Ideology, Espionage: Found Faction and Espionage: Fund insurgency
All where you select any which ethic, getting more of a difficulty penalty if that ethic oppose yours than if it were unaligned with yours
*Assassinates chosen god emperor with that "one rule" (or whatever it was) origin.*
*Calls checkmate.*
@@lucifersatan8240 since the dude can have an "almost death" moment and still survive through projects, Im sure it wont do him anything xD
Starbase designer, starbase manager.
Yes, that would be fun. The late game lag wouldn't be though, if I get what you're thinking off.
@@lucifersatan8240 I just wanna have starbases with weapons that actually do damage and rebuild my defense platforms with one click after an attack.
For the love of god indeed let me choose what weapons my stations use 😭
Are defense platforms only good for pirates? Everytime a decent sized fleet attack they wipe it out no matter how much it's upgraded
@@jwalter81 No evasion = gets destroyed. They can be good if done correctly, but always will get destroyed. That's why we need some kind of starbase manager for them.
For scenarios, I think that the best way to do it wouldn’t be for the devs to create scenarios themselves, but rather for them to give us a throwback to the great 2000s RTSs, where they create a custom scenario creator, and then you can go and load scenarios other players have created and opened to the public. That was a big thing with Rise of Nations, for instance, and other games at the time
Why not both? Give us some examples and the community would build off that
I remember when you talked about the fleet system and how we have too many ships. i would really like to have less but meaninfull ships, have the chance to read like a logbook of the ships, just for flavor. but in general im exited for the factions and trade update.
I would love to see the game lean more into a quantity vs quality style match up.
if you want to play with lots of ships that should be an option.... but your ships might end up being somewhat crappy.
if you want a small but powerful navy that should also be an option.
perhaps the way to do that might be through training and experience being a more potent force. naval academies might be something that even large empires can only have a few of and a resource drain that results in very experienced and powerful ships. .... but you can only train so many ships at a time and it takes a while to get them trained. highly trained ships requiring higher upkeep.
that way you would have an option, train up your navy and have smaller numbers. Or just build a lot of ships that are poorly trained and maintained.
it would also create a dynamic where you might start a war with an elite navy but by the end your just churning out conscripts and throwing them into the front, much like what often happens in real wars on earth.
@@islandwills2778 this *kinda* exists already, though an extreme edge case, is that sometimes it is better to build naked battleships with only F.A.M. to kill the unbidden with the alpha strike
@@KaizerKlash111 im thinking something more along the lines of do you build seal team6 or do you field a vast army of poorly trained conscripts? of course how the ships are built would also matter.
@@islandwills2778 you can do both tho. Have highly specialised cloaked ships for taking down core worlds, and have a giant fleet to take down other fleet. It's already there
@@islandwills2778 yeah I understood that, I was simply showing the rare example where you make this decision
Internal politics !!! Totally agree with Montu, I want Episode 1 in stellaris: Blockading planets playing as some kind of trade federation would be super epic :D
Blockades are incredibly important in war in general.
Goddamit Montu you had me at Crime Update
This is most I’ve ever been excited about stellaris. Genetics’ ascension has been a slog to play through and I hope eladrin pulls it off! Also paragons tier list, pls
Yeah, the genetic ascension origin needs some love. Right now it’s pretty weak.
The pop system would be crazy. I started stellaris right before the tile system was removed and it was quite a bomb shell of chaos. Though Im happy they're trying to find a solution
I’d like common origins to be changed so that multiple players can start out as members of the same federation sort of like multiple players can start out as vassals of the same overlord and start out allied if they all take the imperial overlord origin (but without the overlord, of course). Me and my friends who play stellaris would love not having to search for each other to be able to play together cooperatively as members of a federation against the AI.
Look for a mod that does this
@ There doesn’t seem to be one (and I have searched several times), and the game doesn’t allow you to generate a federation and allow another player to play as one of the two NPC federation members either if restarted as a multiplayer game (which I’ve tried).
I hope they fix criminal syndicates when they're looking over trade and piracy.
Right now, crime doesn't pay like it should.
I really whish crime syndicates could have a legitate side, that doesn't increase crime, for allies/vassals. I had a really, really fun run as a "criminal syndicate" and the "egalitarian collective ownership or something one" that I created/cheated in a bit later as an offshoot colony from the main empire, the Sol Parliament that Headquartered from a ruined ecumenopolis. But I really whished I could engage in legitemare trade with other empires of similiar ideology
It would make sense too for authoritharian ones too,
The legitimate front, with their own sets of buildings, should be somewhat limited, or normal megacorp should get access to more underhand buildings or mechanics too!
Another cool change to megacorp might be where a planet isn't exclusive to one megacorp, initially. Perhaps having domestic corps (or something else) fill those up, and have them compete with the megacorp empires
@@jezusbloodie I mean if there is going to be competition on the planet you might as well allow megacorps compete with each other as well.
You could also allow MegaCorps to trade/buy trade deals which you could call "Reductions in trade regulations" "State approved goods and services" or something basically the megacorp can bribe another empire to give their branch offices a competitive advantage.
@@JoViljarHaugstulen yea that's what I meant, you get it! Core concept: companies that can occupy type of slots on planets (number of slots depending primarly on development level of a planet), on sectors (like for trade, space mining, etc), and some slots for empire. The companies only represent the larger, more significant and noteworthy segment in a local economy/society, and perhaps a special type of company should (always) exist for the informal economy and unorganised aspect of a society. To represent the amount of control the companies, or efficiency of them, where if this special thing is high somewhere, stuff like espionage is easier there, it's easier for megacorps to compete and move in if building the right things, companies are less profitable, chances of piracy are higher, but also where the chance for a new companies (of certaintypes) to spawn is higher
Companies could be government bureaus, small corperations on only one planet expanding and combining into sector-wide conglomerates, monastic orders, slaver rings, mercenary companies, syndicates,, state corperations, tribal groups, oligargic conglomerates, noble estates, research initiatives, criminal cartels...
The megacorp empire would be extremly buff at this, adding a layer of flavour and gameplay depth to basically every single megacorp civic. Imagine companies that get to powerful off shooting into megscorps, with their own territory and diplomatic representation.
the potential depth and interaction with most other mechanics is insane: from internal regulation and policy shape diplomatic relations as you examplify, there'd be more forms of/dimensions to warfare, it could interact with leaders, (spread of) research, colonisation process and private colonisation, planetary and sector governance (giving sector or planet wide monopolies), supply chains (militarised economy gives access go military industrial complex companies), slavery (special slave companies that add bonus to slave pop output), vassals (if granteddifferent specialisations gain access to more optomized or flavoured companies, bit like megacorp in a way), GALCOM (embargoes), federations (shared customs, equal playing field to various degrees) (although forming coherent economic blocks outside of a trade union would be cool), mercenary enclaves (protect sector trade routes, garrison planet, suplement sector star stations),
.
.
.
You'd probably need a whole new menu screen for companies
@@JoViljarHaugstulen yes you're getting it. I've written two whole-ass essays as comments to you, but they're both not showing up about the depth and synergetic interaction with basically every other game mechanic, that adding companies that occupy some slots on planets and sectors could give to stellaris. Maybe this one is short enough to remain undeleted by YT?
with internal politics i'd love it if it spawned paramilitaries like Cerberus in mass effect.
My dream of Wagner PMC, Milkypolitics, and new cold war are maybe coming to reality
Anything bio-related, I want HR Giger to be their main inspiration visually. Alien xenonorphs, The Engineer's Space Jockey biomechanical suit, etc.
i want bio to go one of three ways.
kill stab smash aliens think rampaging monsters who are really good at killing
smart aliens, think aliens with big brains and tiny spindly arms and legs. good at tech, good at research. die if sneezed upon.
sneaky aliens, think shapeshifters who infliltrate governments replacing key figures and manipulating and later outright controlling them from within.
I want the internal politics to have leaders in each faction and pulls based on ethics, when a faction rebels the leaders have a chance to rebel based on their ethics and other factors.
if this were implemented, would be cool to also have an event chain after a civil war resolved where the leaders who joined the rebellion get put on trial and you can choose whether to allow them back their former jobs, rejoin as civilians, exile, execute, etc.
could have it done in either three steps for brevity (military, civilian leadership, rebellion leadership) or, if you want to let the weight of it increase as the size of your empire increases, have every leader individually on trial. maybe even have popular dissatisfaction modifiers if too lenient or too harsh, modified by ethic.
I just need my ground combat update
Honestly
eh. I believed the same but how can you make it without turning a boring system into an annoying one? there's already so much stuff to do all at once
@@danielelombardo8196 fair
How cool would it be to be able to build and deploy mechs on a planet? Or a starcraft 2 viking style ship that can fly and transform PLEASE
But why?
I want customizable AI building of Starbases. Maybe not full on picking every part of a loadout, but some presets would be nice. PD-focused, Energy weapons, Explosives, Antishield like Artilleries or maybe Void Beams/ Siphons. Hell, should get a free small missile slot at Starhold and a large one at Star Fortress or Citadel for longer range engagement.
And picking Armor, Shield, or a Balanced focus, with Armor being forced in Storm or other shield nullification systems. Maybe with a 1 year shutdown of a starbases defense if you swap it's Defensive Focus.
It's always weird to research new tech like Blue Lasers or Void Beams, and look at an outpost or some Bastion and find that it is is using Mass Driver T1 tech...
I love the idea of supply/trade routes which will make you decide between optimising planets with one resourse at the risk of being blockaded or make planets that do all resources for stable economies during war
With internal politics there should be independence factions from planets that have been conquered where you either govern harder or give them benefits to stay in the fold
I mean you could also have resource storage buildings or something allow for local storage of resources in cases of shortages buying some time when cut off. Though of course if the resources is stored locally on the planet if the enemy happens to take the planet well now they also get control of those resources.
building on this, could have the independence factions grow in strength as a sector becomes more economically self sustaining, giving players the choice of how to balance having a bunch of vulnerable planets in outer sectors vs. maintaining allegiance (maybe they will be satiated when building projects or buildings within planets?)
the achilles heel on this is the automating of planet production and managing sectoral economies. maybe they can add widgets that dictate percentages of different jobs across planets and sectors to help both the player and the ai
additional thought could introduce more organic subjects, where you can blob out a self-sufficient subject that has far less autonomy and you essentially help keep it updated, which is more possible with present mechanics but also a lame duck if implemented without other internal politics changes
Stellaris used to have better actual trade routes but they took it out for performance reasons
@@VSci_ and even with the present one, I use a mod that basically removes it and has all trade just in a station in the capital to let the game run to end game. I respect the poor programmer trying to save the mechanic/salvage it to save game performance while still having some way to simulate trans-stellar trade/supply lines
Pure energy being is such a Star Trek trope it's weird seeing it labelled too fantasy
So we can find like a dozen different space dragons, make an obvious orc, gnome or dwarf insert our portrait, and have a fuedal kingdom in space, but glowy portraits are too silly? Energy species have been my fondest dream for a species pack since Lithoids. Oh, and you can be a sentient, floating rock too. forgot that extremely normal genetic template.
How cool would it be to play as a plasmoid civilisation that can only settle (some types of) stars, rather than pillars.
Yeah that was such a weird point to draw the line at. We have fantasy related portraits(literally also elves) and creatures in the game, but a staple of Sci-fi, energy-based organisms, is somehow too much? Doesn't make sense. I've been wanting those playable for soo long, it'd absolutely be a shame if we don't get them at some point.
I want to see something with resource storage. Why do we have this as star base/planet building if enemy cant steal its content in some way?
probably unpopular but I wish there was more control in the advanced settings for how to change the game in vanilla. its actually really hard to change anything in that menu because it all has knock-on effects that you just can't pre-empt, like you can double the length of each phase of the game and also double the tech to match it, but ship travel time is still the same, and so exploration is unaffected and all techs related to it are useless.
Huh? Things like galaxy size and numbers of empires, what types can change radically the way the game plays out. If you increase galaxy size but reduce habitable planets then you'll slow the game and have to explore farther.
Some of the tech like survey speed are probably more about zooming out on detail as an empire grows and micro becomes more and more of a chore.
I have to play like at least 4 half-games to figure out if the balance is right whenever I mess with the settings, that I wouldn't have to with more transparent advanced settings. let me change fleet travel speed, let me have longer exploration without having to have an enormous empire of 100 systems.
@@dulljumbo4321 increase galaxy size but lower habitable planets!!
@@RobBCactive which I literally do. You fail to understand that the reason someone want a feature, is because what I they is not fascilitated by the game! you are giving advice to a person you have invented in your head! you are having a fantasy argument!
I think the best thing about scenarios would be that it would also enable more and easier modding of scenarios as well as a convenient way to select scenarios downloaded from the Steam workshop.
While I'm sure Paradox could make some great scenarios themselves, my concern would be that each new scenario may need to be updated with every new patch or reworked to meaningfully include new content. Especially if the scenarios have a wider scope or more in-depth content, this can become a lot of work, especially for multiple scenarios. Much the same issue as maintaining multiple start dates in other games which Paradox have moved away from or tried to limit at least.
As such, a few relatively simple scenarios might be the best fit for Paradox to make, and I would expect that modders who focus exclusively on scenarios might go much further in creating an in depth narrative scenario of, for instance, a Galactic Empire in decline.
I want to see your allied empires joining you on their own in wars. In late game one war might cause natural war in heaven and it would be epic
I would like to see the ability to start a relic war to obtain relics from a different empire and vice vesra. This is because some excavation site and other events do not allow you to obtain a relic all the time.
Add a an ai generated history of what happen in the empire history. Especially for example if you have a authocratic government and you want to go through what each emperor contributed throughout their reign. That would be really nice.
Relic Wars would be awesome!
I instantly thought of a fanatic religious empire questing after a holy grail-esque reliquary set at all costs, hoping to follow a predecessor empire "Great Journey" style.
Internal politics? I've been waiting for years to see this!
Me *playing in background whils i do stuff*
*hears *biological ships/playable nomads*
Me: Ok now u have my full attention
Sounds like Montu really just wants to play Victoria 3 IN SPACE!
I'm going, to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by industrialization... SPACE!!!
@@jonathantifone8001 Democratic Kampuchea in space! 👏
@@jonathantifone8001 that's one cultured quote
"Stellaris is changing"
It keeps changing all the time.
I would love to have different variations of open borders agreements. Such as a toll for having fleets pass through or maybe open borders for trade routes and civilian ships but not for military fleets and armies.
A trade rework that makes trade hubs feel more important would also be great. Maybe every resource in the game produces a small amount of trade that also produces amenities. For example a single food could produce 0.1 trade where a consumer good produces 1.0 trade and having them be shipped to the planets who can “afford” these resources if they produce enough trade worlds could also have a global equivalent of a gross GDP and GDP per capita. This could lead to there being richer and poorer planets which could be an interesting mechanic when it comes to internal politics, factions, rebellions, and pop growth.
Ethics could also be more impacted by events in game. For example, if a planet is invaded by aliens its population would become more xenophobic and war like but if a planet is a trade hub and has a high diversity of species it will become more xenophilic, a research world’s population would become more materialist, and a world that produces lots of unity would gradually drift to being more spiritualist.
Glad this covered a lot of the big things. Intrested to see how it goes for the bio ascension dlc. Can imagine a lot of routes, maybe even some additional contnet to the clone system and origin. If they do another nemesis route, we might even get a horatio refrence and try to turn the galaxy into one "perfect" species in the ultimate ethical crusade
This may sound like heresy, but do we need pirates? If internal politics is implemented well, that aspect of the game can be taken up there with people rising up etc. We don't really need a tropey space piracy thing. Just a thought.
I sort of agree with this. if we must have pirates can we have it more like real life age of sail on earth. governments might actually approve of pirates oops i meant corsairs and give them letters of marque. essentially pirates might be funded by nations and set to prey on rivals. but it wont always work out, they are pirates after all. the opposition might hire them out and now they are attacking you...
unless pirates become more meaningful the way they are now is rather pointless and annoying.
When I first played the game I didn't enable the DLC I had and the first encounter with a pirate base was interesting. The problem with a lot of that kind of thing in Stellaris is a lack of variation, it's soon very obvious how to deal with a group so they become a routine chore.
@@RobBCactive There's lots of old systems like that just left over because of inertia. They maybe made more sense long ago.
@@Kasaaz well they sell the DLC, but something basic needs to take the place for practical reasons. It actually simplifies the game by avoiding special cases.
I used pirates to train up admirals, sometimes early game they drop handy tech.
Piracy should be linked with crime and stability on neighbouring planets. If all planets and habitats in your space are managed with 0 crime from where are these space pirates even coming from? Pirates spawn should only be possible if your planets or your neighbors planets have high crime and low stability
Flag update! I want more flag symbols to play with. It's so sad to see some of the categories with only a single row of symbols, and I've used most of the symbols I like already.
What was missed : a fallen empire rework, possibly an in-game galactic map editor, and a way to create custom starting positions by merging existing ones (to a reasonable degree). More civic ponts and a single additional ethic point may also help flesh out our own civilization, which could go in hand with a rework for some very old, bland civics which have zero new mechanic and only change numbers currently.
I'd definitely love playing either as a fallen empire or as a fractured empire. The former may be akin to play as the USA in vanilla HOI4, where you're technically industrialized and have access to a large manpower pool and resources, but are stuck with crippling debuffs for quite a while; and are forced to either watch from afar or to use other countries to do your bidding. The fractured empire thing is self-explanatory, you were essentially an advanced empire that completely shattered due to internal strife, and such origin could fit perfectly a rework for internal politics.
Thank you to the devs for considering the feedback.
Ship consolidation mechanic: as you tech up the ships rendered start to represent "groups" of ships rather than just one. So 1 corvette becomes 2 with some "wingman" tech. Then 2 becomes 5, then 10, then 25. Each upgrade multiplies the hull size and all corresponding slots. So the wing of 10 corvettes would be a "single" ship with 30 small weapons slots, for example.
While it's cool to see all the little ships, it stops become fun around 10 fps and I'd be happier just imagining that each corvette on the screen was actually a fighter wing of 25 corvettes, and each battleship rendered was a battle group of 5.
So no more idiotic slowdown on the pop growth and having to pay the Phantom Corp to fill my Ring Worlds?
Nice.
I truly hope that the systems there working on barres' fruit in the coming days
I kind of hope the trade rework means that the market leader mechanic is more interesting.
It would be interesting if the market leader had a bit of financial power he could utilize. Kind of like a mini custodian, maybe advocating for trade tax, free trade, more interesting economic sanctions
It might end up too complex and not worth it but I feel the market leader event is kind of boring, it's a lot of RNG and it really just gives you a reduction in prices. Not very interesting mechanically
Biological warships aka. the flood
We already have artificial space fauna thought
Master Chief: Bonjour
With bioships, what about being able to make your species the size of space fauna and able to just roam around in space?
Each individual member of your species could be, the size of, or essentially BE an Ether drake! ^^
I think, that the Pops system does need a change for the better, the Internal Politics sound's like it'd be a really cool thing to add, maybe it should effect types of technology or decplonicy
32:24 *This is a terible idea, Paradox do not listen to this.* That's what hapend in Gwent and every diffrence between the modes was annoying or confiusing.
Second this. Consoles don't have the option of picking from beta installations, so when they finally catch up what are they supposed to do? Just not get this feature? What if in 2027 pdx has added 8 more dlc and between them theres 8-12 of these scenarios? Do you sell the dlcs as a shadow of what they were supposed to include?
Plus like, how do you swap between the different builds? Nobody wants to turn the game on, try to start a scenario; it says "sorry you're supposed to be in version 3.17", so you turn the game off. Download a beta, get the game back on and it goes "no version 3.17, you misremembered and picked the wrong one."
Stuff that, I don't want to have to turn my game off and download a different version all the time anyway, let alone if it introduced problems. The modding scene would be in shambles. Imagine being one of the big mod authors and now your mod needs to support not only the current build, but also it has to support backwards compatibility for all of the popular scenarios too? Just gah! Don't do this.
Alternative, instead of having to turn the game off, it just emulates the correct build with the game already started. To be clear, this is also a terrible idea, do not take this as me advocating for the correct way to handle things. Where to start? Install sizes would balloon, if it's even possible to emulate the game within the game you'd still have to wait the same amount of time it takes to turn the game on in the first place, it could make the original initialization take longer if it was handled poorly, and worst of all it doesn't fix ANYTHING. If an update can break a scenario, then an update can break a build image.
Don't expect players to play scenarios on specific builds, simple as. It's a bad idea if you need them to pick the build outside of the game and it's a bad idea if you pick the build for them from within the game. It's also just complicated and messy as hell and new players will be utterly lost.
I Would LOVE TO BE ABLE TO PLAY AS NOMADS I wish there was even more freedom to go where you want
My bioship fantasy is trees. Whether it be playing as elves or the tree themselves, I want the galaxy to fear the big stick.
With the new war, it could be the Ents Attack Isengard IN SPACE!
I just want to play Jurai
I can not express how stoked I am for the competing insticts / directives idea for gestalts. The main issue I have with them at this time, is that they are even more static and rigid than normal empires (which themselves are fairly rigid, largely because it is very difficult to spawn factions not representing your empire ethics. So it's really hard to actually push towards different ethics in a narratively compelling way, though it's at least possible). It's very easy to act differently as a gestalt (I once even played as a determined exterminator and assumed a strictly defensive posture. I never genocided anyone, and soon enough parity of fleet power made it so no one else attacked me either), but it's very difficult to *change* in a way that is recognised by other empires, and there is no narrative force behind those changes (a fanatical purifier that changes their ethics can even turn off the civic, becoming, for all intents and purposes, a normal empire without the diplomatic barriers. Still insufficient, but even that is not possible for a gestalt). I love the implicit possibility of narrative progression it would open up. I want to be the cybrex. A gestalt that learns and grows and becomes better, or worse, in a meaningful way that is recognised by others is such a compelling possibility.
Re: the scenarios, what I would really like, is a randomized mid-game start, and a scenario editor a la rimworld. I think the latter is self-explanatory and would really free people to do interesting things, but the former would be fun for luck-based games. I for one would like to start with a weak mid-game empire, possibly surrounded by bad neighboors, or in the middle of a war, and see if I can survive it. This is not really possible with the normal start, since you know what to expect and can prepare, especially if you know the game well. A randomized advanced start would sometimes be easy and sometimes unfair, but I suppose that kind of uncertainty is exactly what people like about randomization.
Trade routes and logistics should be naturally occurring internally. This means good will flow between worlds and stations. Internationaly trade routes can be authorized via diplomatic relations. To provide more depth you can manually assign trade or flow of goods in the case of a struggling colony or shifting war front
9:38 what about stealth blockade runners system of sorts as well
A way to make nomadic empires really interesting that also adds new options for regular empires as well would be to allow the option of using a cloaked fleet to engage in space piracy of other empire's supply lines, allowing you to gain a portion of the resources that move through a particular system.
For espionage I think a way for using operations that could create fifth columns in other empires that could do anything from coups to maybe put more friendly leaders in charge at best or as another possibility cause a civil war you can use as justification to intervene and maybe take territory to "protect" a minority species
With the trade/logistic changes another interesting addition could be that of blockading a planet with a fleet in orbit, cutting it off from the empires resources and the empire of its resources. This could lead to the planet surrendering I’m not sure, but it adds another dynamic to warfare. Also, it just makes sense that a planet you’re bombarding would be effectively blockaded, as it is now your ships will be bombing a planet while apparently allowing shipments of critical resources to come and go as they please.
I'd add/change the following espionage projects:
Sabotage starbase: progresses faster during war, debuffs the entire starbase instead of destroying a random module, can spend an asset to delay sabotage until one of your fleets enters the target system
Smear campaign: can actually break up federations or get members expelled instead of just reducing cohesion. Can gain secret fealty from target's vassals
Steal technology: prioritizes rare techs, materialist empires get reduced cooldown
Diplomatic incident: reduces diplomatic weight, progresses faster when senate is in session. If used on vassal or overlord can modify vassal agreement for free one time.
Sway sector: create or grow an independence faction in target sector. Burn an asset and some alloys to start a a rebellion, where the sector tries to (your choice) gain independence or join your empire. Alternatively smear campaign could be used to break up empires with multiple sectors.
Infiltrate government: catch all operation where you create friendly factions and leaders in the target empire, try to get friendly candidates elected, and use that influence to make the target empire enter treaties, support you in the galactic community or fight your wars. If you are a vassal and you sufficiently infiltrate your overlord, you will tag-switch to the overlord if you are integrated.
Extort favors: should gain you more favors per use and favors should be good for more than just senate votes
Acquire asset: could also give one of the target empire's leaders a new "asset" trait making ceratin operations easier to complete depending on leader type (scientists help you steal tech, commanders help you with military operations, occicials help you with diplomatic ops) Having a councilor with substance abuse should also reduce encryption, I dont know why they never added that.
To reduce micromanagement, most operations should be automatically repeatable as long as you can pay the upkeep.
I really hope they add a system where you can make your own religion and go for a religious victory. Then we'd have a domination victory, a science one, the nemesis one and a fourth one: The religious victory.
I would like to see a Army Designer. Have direct combat slots, support slots, unlock slots, strategies, and units with tech, civics, traditions, discoveries, origins ect.
In terms of espionage, it would be cool to have the ability to not only see the buildings ands districts on planets, but mess with them in some way. Having a project to maybe destroy a building or district, or disrupt production. Then there's also the possibility of destroying your enemies resources. Imagine going to war with someone, and suddenly your forge planet is taken offline by massive partisan attacks, and your alloy supply is cut down severely.
Would love to see the same characterization you see in Leaders applied to Spies and Diplomats - skills, levelling, etc. I want to see my empire have its "Jack Ryan" or "James Bond" character
for Bio-Ships: I really dig the Vorlons from B5: A ship is kinda like a dog or a horse, like moreso - much more a companion/partner more than a beast of burden (even though it still is, kinda).
My dream for bioships is something like the Zerg or tyranids. The Zerg have leviathans that can hold a brood of the swarm and have units capable of operating in a vacuum and the tyranids I feel have more units that fall into the “ship” category. For espionage I think something to look at is how Civ V and Civ Beyond Earth did espionage. It’s been awhile but I think you could flip cities, you could shoot down orbital units near the city, pillage improvements, steal a unit, detonate dirty bombs. Hell the AI would appreciate you sharing intel with them that they would be interested in. In Civ V you could have counter spies too. I think having a spy should be different than an envoy personally. I hate having to choose between diplomacy or espionage with my limited envoy count. Another cool thing you could do is attract feral aliens to attack the city and nearby improvements in beyond earth.
I’d really like to see nomads. I feel like there are so many options you could have with that concept. Spiritualists could be undertaking an eternal pilgrimage, militarists could have an economy based on sacking enemy worlds and starbases, xenophobic nomads might be running from another empire, materialists might be a lost scientific fleet send from another galaxy or smth, of course you could be nomadic traders, maybe xenophile nomads could get bonuses from visiting multiple empires in a short time. Maybe there could even be nomadic space fauna hunters.
Otherwise I’d like to be able to act as mercenaries with militarist empires in general. To have other empires give you resources per destroyed enemy ship maybe if they bought your services for a war
Lend Lease (provide ships, equipment, other items to allies in war but not actually fight in that war); blockades (cut off a section of an enemy empire and starve them out, etc., hire pirates to do it for you, etc.); bioships yes, but also crystal tech ships that are grown by lithoids; toxoids that live on toxic worlds (can terraform worlds into toxic); ability for your empire to effect other empires culturally (they like you so much factions appear in the other empire that favor yours); MORE FLEXIBLE WAR SYSTEM (betrayal, ability to make a separate peace, switch sides, play both sides off against each other, then turn on the weaker, etc.).
I would love further additions to the espionage system. I think it would be cool if they added new operations that were exclusive to the ascension paths, and more sabotage in nature. Empires with cybernetic ascension could deploy computer viruses that cripple an opposing empire's digital infrastructure, affecting research, trade, etc. Empires with psionic ascension could infiltrate and mind control the leaders of other empires. Biologically ascended empires could deploy bioweapons on a rivaling empire's worlds. So much cool stuff you could do.
Happy thanksgiving!
In terms of bioships, I really like the idea of some sort of multi-form hive like the Tyranids (though not necessarily a devouring swarm) where they have many different shapes their bodies can take. One of those body shapes is a spacecraft, with the rest of the hive living on and within that larger creature. The crew have bodies that are adapted to the void, so they require no internal pressurized compartments. Like the ship itself, they are resistant to vaccuum, so the crew of those ships scuttle around the outside of the ship, and perhaps only retreat to the protective cysts and internal organs of the craft when it is about to enter hyperspace.
I would really like to see some late mid-game content. Specifically for midgame a fourth special civic policy that can be chosen from a list depending on your legacy in game. For example let’s just say you started as a pacifist empire but have been at war the entire game you get the option to choose from a number of militarist quests with a unique civic reward at the end of each. For example declaring 3 liberation wars and winning them. For such a quest you get a special civic that gives you special diplomatic powers in the galactic senate or something that allows you to intervene in conflicts across the galaxy along with extra diplomatic weight.
Some sort of midgame content that ties into the identity of the empire you have forged over the course of the game rather then just chose at game start. Mid game is a perfect place for this since things at this point start to get static until the crisis spawns.
Being able to switch your graphical culture (or however your ship style is actually called in the game code) would be huge. It would also work greatly with the Machine Age ascension paths.
Another one would be ship generations - as in different, increasingly advanced looking designs in line with the already existing Tech Tiers.
My bioship fantasy is that of the Bitek in The Night's Dawn Trilogy by
From the wiki:
"Bitek starships used exclusively by Edenists (one of the two main sections of humanity, the other being Adamists), voidhawks are sentient beings who are bonded to their captains at birth via affinity. Whilst growing up both voidhawk and captain can communicate with one another through affinity, and generally have a very loving and affectionate relationship
...
A voidhawk (type of Bitek ship) body is largely (about 80%) composed of energy patterning cells which give the voidhawk its unique abilities. These cells are used to create a distortion field which enables the voidhawk to accelerate in space, reload its patterning cells, create wormholes to perform swallow-manoeuvres and to sense the emergence point of a starship performing a ZTT-jump. A voidhawk distortion field is also capable of preventing other ships from performing ZTT-jumps. A voidhawk can block ships up to a distance of 100 000 km.
...
Biological Machines: Bitek Servitors
As knowledge of how to manipulate the genetic make-up of all life on Earth grew, some began to experiment with animals, leading to the development of servitors, animals adapted for specific tasks. The servitor monkey was developed with greater dexterity and increased mental function to work as a servant or domestic cleaner. Different servitors were developed for different purposes.
Eight years after servitors came into common use, a new way was developed to control them: Affinity. Anyone with Affinity could directly instruct a servitor to perform a certain task.
Habitats and voidhawks
Affinity allowed for greater and greater developments in bitek. the Neural Symbiont allows for a connection between the neural structure of the user and the bitek unit.
*By Peter F. Hamilton
Hamilton sure could provide some very thematic inspirations here. The endgame crisis could be just like replaying through the Armageddon Cycle too. 😊
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Lots of things we can consider 'fantasy' in this game already, but they still don't break verisimilitude for playing as a regular empire. Though that varies from person to person. I for one, would find the idea of 'energy beings' being reduced to a few cool portraits and one or two 'special traits' (that still need to be balanced against my regular human empire) to be cheapening the fantasy.
Broken Lords are my favourite Endless Legends faction though.
We need Cosmic Storms 2.0. That dlc was essential for good experience. Who needs proper internal politics.
When it comes to having "Scenarios" in the game I've always had a few ideas that I think could be interesting. Scenario 1: The Galactic Imperium has just collapsed and now the former "Galactic Community" has just been dissolved. You likely only have a matter of years to gain your bearings and plot your vision for your own civilization or even the larger galaxy as a whole. This scenario could allow for players to roleplay as anything from the former ruling civilization to galactic liberators, rising warlords, Galactic Community revivalists, or even Xenophobic Isolationists. There would have to be something of an event chain to help create a more tailored player experience with an emphasis on replayability and the aforementioned roleplay opportunities.
Scenario 2: the Galactic Community has grown increasingly divided as various political factions from across the stars have overstepped their bounds and are now seeking to dominate Galactic politics with their own agendas. This scenario could allow us players to influence the politics of other empires and eventually convert their ethics to those of whatever our empire has. This could even allow us to allies or even vassals out of the sectors of other empires.
I have more ideas but I'll end this comment here as its already a bit lengthy and I'll continue sharing my ideas should you guys be interested.
As an example for the scenarios; I would take a note from the game 'Empire at War'. The game has fantastic scenarios/instances of the galaxy, even the mods for the game do the same thing and work with sections of the galaxy and forces you start out with and must build up to take out your opponent(s)
I hope that they will eventually bring back Shared system ownership... That would go fantastically well with a Politics and Culture Update :D
I would love to see the army rally point mechanic work even when an army is invading a planet, it would cut alot of unescessary bussy work merging armies in between back to back invasions.
It would also be nice if we had a army managment screen akin to the fleet one so its less annoying to hire armies.
Ofcourse if there is some ground combat rework in the works perhaps theese changes will be unnecessary xD
My take on bioships is fusion of pilot and the ship.
Pilots needing proper biochemical mix or maybe they need latent psionic connection, both needing them to be inside 24/7, and this requires some sacrifice on part of the pilot and their family or community. Perhaps this is not needed at start, but going bio/psi ascension boosts it so much that indefinite merger makes the bioships that much more responsive, as in faster firing, moving etc.
Then we can muddle it up: Forced symbiosis for all mandated by the state? Emergency symbiosis in times of war? Are specialists needed for this or does the happy little flower ship requires fresh and adaptable mind of a young person? What does your religious/xenophobe factions have to say about this? Your plant/fungi alien citizens or immigrants, and what of the lithoids in this system? Are materialists on board with the idea or are they seething because valuable goverment funding goes into society research and not computer research? Are egalitarians across the border considering war against you because you're fusing your sapients together and wanna put a stop to this 'atrocity' as they call it? How about we ask the fallen empires? The Prethoryn? Cetana?
The Contingency isn't available for comment because it already woke up prematurely to put an end to this 'threat'.
I'd like more types of strike craft, just because I like to play around with different ship load outs. Carriers are fun, I want more reasons to use them
Honestly, i really want to have the kind of bio ships which are present in the Science Fiction books series The neutronium alchimists (Consolidation) by Peter F Hamilton. with Humanity is divided in 2 category : the Adamist who use technology similar to what we are using and the and the Edenist who develop Bio-technology with conscient bioships and space station.
Ive been wanting scenarios/a canon map forever. Could be things like earth trying to find it's place in the political landscape, the commonwealth of man having to decide whether to help the united nations or retake earth for themselves, fun stuff like that. I keep trying to do that bey having lots of advanced starts but advanced start empires can snowball without really doing anything.
Changing pops could be really interesting, but a I believe Victoria 3 has its endgame lag due to how manny different pop types it has.
I can imagine something cool, like my Giant Lithoid pops counting as three normal pops when it comes to manual labor, but counting as only one pop for specialized jobs
virtual empire?
gaestalt hive empire?
i cant wrap my mind around it
Okay, "Scenarios" has me excited. I've always thought the game could benefit from at least one or two 'static maps', where it spawns in with pre-determined empires and special system placement.
Either that, or a 'seed' system so that you can get particular galaxy generations. Though I get there's so many tweakable variables and random rolls it may not be possible.
When it comes to espeionage, I would prefer that they dont kill planets BUT:
- Being able to put factions against eachother
- breaking up others federations, as you said
- stealing ships in a rewarding ammount (if done on multiple planets)
- having counter espionage with an envoy on your planet
- being able to steal ressources
- giving planets crime increases or uprisings (maybe even causing a robot uprising)
- blowing up buildings or even deactivating megastructures like dyson spheres or arc furnaces
- making defense armies less effective by sabotagin their supplies or even turning off the plantetary shield generators
- turning off ftl inhibitors in a system
- reprogramming or sabotaging ftl inhibitors so that some enemies can be trapped
- sabotaging fleets, not to inflict heavy damage but maybe something like slower sublight speed or turning off their shields, if they're stationed near a planet you have a spymaster on, potentially lifting a blockade or a stalemate or even making a purely defensive fleet harder to pursue you which can be countered by giving your ships an inspection which takes some time, like upgrading or repairing your ships
especially things that reward you with a domino effect after a bit of preperation can be very satisfying to have with spying i believe, making enemy attacks easier or harder
For trade you can also add ways for cross border resource exchanges, like you make a trade deal how much metals or alloys you wnat to sell at a maximum over the border and you get trade in return. It would make diplo more megaging at least.
Alternate Game Mode could be like Crusader King's start dates and we could play just before the Cybrex turning exterminator mode. A very hard difficulty pick in such a start would be the Kuur ;)
I like doing my own roleplay, so I'm eager to see internal politics fleshed out.
As an Overtuned main, I most certainly hope the genetic ascension gets a good rework, especially if it involves bioships.
Hope they add a Necron origin (Not Necrophage)
Here’s how I think it could work: (sorry if this is somehow not original)
Stuff that isn’t positive or negative:
Hiding away inside massive “tombs” maybe for a few hundred or thousand years.
Starting on a Tomb world.
Tomb world preference
Positives:
Having ALL technologies up until tier 3 (but not including tier 3) unlocked.
Have several small fleets ON THE PLANET that you can launch at the beginning of the game.
Negatives:
You have just as many pops as the Prosperous Unification original, HOWEVER they are asleep and must be reawakened, or they can awaken on their own over time.
Only begin the game with a planetary capital, a crewed science ship, and a starbase. As well as 5 “Tombs” that take a while to reawaken.
All fleets are on the surface of your planet, NOT in space and it may take a while to get them off world.
This origin focuses on playing tall. It will give you an IMMEASURABLE technological advantage, HOWEVER there are different stages of awakening you must go through in order to have a good chance at winning an OFFENSIVE war.
Here’s how it goes:
You can reawaken pops and bring their strength back up to full strength with a point system for THIS ORIGIN SPECIFICALLY.
Stage 1: The First Stir.
You begin the game with 10 pops, they CANNOT breed YET and have a few debuffs such as being weaker (for both organic and machines in their own way). You can get rid of these debuffs by earning “reawakening points” such as building things on your planets and having your pops be employed. Please take note that once a “Tomb” has been opened, it WILL NOT give you a free building slot. You can choose to have it return to a blocked building slot OR turn it into a fortress.
Stage 2: The People Return.
One “Tomb” opened.
10 pops gained.
Stage 3: The Rejuvenation.
One “Tomb” opened.
10 pops gained.
Stage 4: (Final one) The Future is Ours.
One “Tomb” opened.
10 pops gained.
A new event chain: A massive stash of resources and a weapon of some sort (would be REALLY powerful by let’s say…mid game standards?) in another system about 4 or 5 jumps away. If you expand into the system that this “stash” and weapon are before the event chain begins, then you will get a different message: Instead of saying “We need to locate the system”, it would say “We have located and colonised the system, now we just need to start digging” or something like that.
This origin basically is for tall play styles but it tries to prevent you from going on an early game rampage by weakening you A LOT at the beginning. However, if you are attacked and need to DEFEND yourself, then that will ACCELERATE the awakening process.
Let me know what you think, thank you for reading. I hope Monty sees this.
what i want is risky star systems where some of the stars will go supernova or turn into red giants. You find a resourse risk system but the down size is the star is close to supernova and you have a limit time to use that resources. Or there a risk your sun could go supernovs in your home system. There could be espionage with a low success rate where you could cause a star in a empire to go supernova ? I would love to see that
100% with you on the Energy creatures and Gaseous Species pack. The game is basically built on sci fi, sci fantasy tropes. Plenty to pull from in terms of inspiration so you can make them grounded, and I would love some energy beings. Chains of Silicon crystals linked by electrical, electromagnetic, or psionic energy that acts as a living brain and being. I mean, that was 2 min. of thinking, I think its easily doable, and you don't need to use magic to accomplish that species pack.
I’m hopeful for a complete rework of piracy. At the moment it’s by far my least favourite aspect of Stellaris, and it’s the thing I dread most about playing non-gestalt empires. Just because of how annoying they are to deal with.
At this point I’d even accept no changes made to piracy but just an added button in the game creation screen to turn them off.
To that list I would also add more anomalies/archeology/situations within empire. Events like EU4 has could be nice addtion with pros and cons - for example increased mining output but u need to spend more consumer goods or increased stabillity but less unity income etc.
Paradox should perhaps dedicate a separate advancement path to espionage, where you get really powerful bonuses to “crack open” federations, for example
Trade -> markets, with an attached stock market in the market hub. Markets form by building a stock market on a planet or space station, with each resource producing entity (planets, mining stations, etc) connecting to the market with the greatest strength at that entity's location. Markets build strength by having more resources in them, and propagate that strength along hyperspace lanes based on proximity and other market strength (basically rivalling markets cancelling out in systems between them). If there is a surplus in a market it can be exported to another market, which increases that markets profitability. In case of a deficit, that market will need to import to compensate for it from other markets, decreasing it's profitability. An unfulfilled deficit in a market will have a severe effect on that market's strength, causing planets further away to join different markets. Markets will propagate their strength across borders with empires you have trade access with (like military access, but for trade and science/construction ships, and military access remaining necessary for military access). This allows you to have a border planet be fed off of a foreign market, giving the foreign empire the profit from the trade, but making sure the planet's needs are met, or the other way around and profit of off foreign planets in your market. Transportation of the goods a planet requires transportation capacity, which is generated by planets and additional transportation hubs, and the cap is shared within a market. This makes dense markets more viable, with further away planets increasing the cost of including them, which in turn makes having them join a foreign market actually viable. Ultimately, stock markets are your access points to view how a market is doing, and the amount of goods traded within that market modified by that market's profitability ultimately defines how much you make of off that market.
What this also allows is for war to actively interfere in the economy, as disrupting a market can cut off planets from goods they need and decimate a market's profits. On the flip side, conquered planets will need to be supplied from your market and have their profit reduced based on resistance. Resistance can be reduced by installing an occupation government, and is naturally lower through matching ethics and species rights for each species relative to the previous owner's species rights. A planet can only be integrated as resistance is reduced to below a threshold. War exhaustion can be eliminated altogether as a result - the winning side will naturally seek peace to bring the conquered planets under control, and the losing side will seek to avoid collapse from the increasing strain on their economy as their markets are disrupted. Willingness to seek peace can still be modified by the length of a war, along with the relative amount of losses and achieving of the wargoal.
Anyway, that's what I'd like to see, no idea what they'll actually do.
My biggest complaint about pops (besides to much causing lag) is even if you hyper specialize them there’s no way to force pops to only work in specific roles.
I.e. last time I tried to play necrophage the specialist/research necrophage pops kept ending up working as clerks while a random species became researchers.
For the species thing I am hoping for a insecoid or a arachnoid species pack. Imaging encountering a ant society or a scorpion civilization, they can even do something similar to the there’s a zombie on my lawn achievement but instead of conquering a plant or zombie civilization as the other it can be “Top of the food chain” and to turn a insecoid species into cattle as a arachnoid species. Plus the buildables for both can be intresting.
Imagine the economy of Vic3 gets put into Stellaris, that might be overwhelming
I think that would be too much for sure! Reducing the micro of pops by removing individual pops and having 'groups' would be good. Less micro is better in my opinion
@@MontuPlaysSame with ships and fleets like you said get rid if the carpet of ships which cause lag and honestly are visually unappealing and hurt the immersion experience. Add value to each ship/fleet instead and have fewer of them.
@@MontuPlays then how would we resettle pops to planets that have unfilled jobs
@@bomlife1572 I mean, this could be replaced by simply shuffling numbers (via sliders or smth like that) from each group between planets. It wouldn't really hurt the immersion compared to dragging pop icons.
Stellaris devs, if you're reading these comments still (and I sincerely hope you are), first of all, thank you. These past nine years have been an absolute blast with this game. I remember when it first came out, with its wonky borders and multiple choice of FTL systems. I spent countless hours making empires, exploring the galaxy, forging alliances and battling bitter rivals. Your Custodian team especially has been remarkable, keeping a game alive that, handled by any other company, would have fallen by the wayside years ago.
As for what I'd like to see the most, it mostly revolves around war, warships and the overall scale. Conquering a single planet should be an incredibly monumental task. Not only should it take more than just a few months, it should be more engaging. It doesn't need to be fancy visually, even if we would all like that quite a bit. I would just ask that there be depth to not only ground combat, but orbital blockades, bombardment decisions and consequences, and even the space battles themselves. Too much of a war is decided on how many ships an empire can churn out, rather than being strategic with placement. Fleets should be a resource worth maintaining, protecting and utilizing only when deemed worth either the risk or the loss. Perhaps by making individual ships significantly stronger but more expensive, players and AI empires alike will be forced to be more deliberate with their galactic warmongering.
I'd also, to a much lesser extent mind you, love to see some planetary diversity and uniqueness. Too many worlds just end up feeling same-y, with Forge Worlds number 1 2 and 3 over there, and Mining worlds 1 and 2 over there, etc. This could very easily be worked in alongside the pop and internal politics revamp that was suggested in this update. Planetary governments may change to reflect the will (or lack thereof) of their populace, and things such as distance from the core sector, plagues, natural disasters, visits from the Caravaneers and interstellar wars could help shape each world's identity. When I lose a planet, I don't want to think "oh dang, guess I gotta get that back at some point," I want to be outraged. I want that planet, those people, back. Not because its just a resource, but because its a part of my empire and its very identity.
Anyway, if you're reading this PDX devs, thank you for your time entertaining my midnight ramblings, and once again, thank you for making Stellaris as good of a game as it has been for nearly a decade.
Trade route calculations are 80% of the cause for late-game performance problems. I used a mod for years which disabled them and just added trade directly into your empire where it was generated, like energy, and I barely experienced any lag or slowdown. The reason I stopped using it was because it was causing issues with how some events triggered, but I do miss it dearly and wish the base game had an option for it, like how you can disable xeno compatibility.
I would love to see in tabs text that shows the changes adding a building or district would have when added at that time.
about the scenario idea. i think it would be easily solved by just not hard coding techs etc. like create a system for generating an empires tech level that can just run on any tech tree independent of individual techs. this way you can generate many empires with different setups and directions. if a scenario has a parricular setup you could just generate a tech level with bias towards energy or some specific weaponry
Apart from a better Pop system ofc:
Nomads. I want to Play a Trader fleet that Just scurries around following traderoutes and Generating income by Trading artifacts or resources, or Raiders that have to constantly run from bigger fleets and get resources by plundering starbases and planets, with mobile shipyards.
This is gonna sound crazy but I've always wanted to play the kett from Mass Effect andromeda in stellaris. They have to conquer other species to reproduce through assimilation, and after assimilating a certain amount of one species, they can choose one of its traits to add to their species.