Sank 55 hours of my life into Stellaris in the 6 days since release - all during finals week. Here's what I honestly think about the game, and it seems to fall in-line with many other opinions on this subreddit.
As of release, Stellaris is indeed a barebones game. It has a solid foundation with engaging mechanics and promising replayability, but it is an unfinished game nonetheless. Many promised or hyped features were delivered as basically and judiciously as possible with the clear intent to expand upon them with DLC. There is an even smaller amount of features that out-right need to be fixed. I have no doubt that Paradox will build upon it as they did with EUIV and CKII, but I'm still disappointed that I'll have to pay in increasingly more to the DLC Bank for a "completed game."
I've compiled a list of features which, I believe, should find their ways into this game by the end of the year, whether through DLC or non-paywall major patches. Among them are basal gameplay concepts suit the Stellaris inclusive sci-fi trope theme, having ground in many other sci-fi universes and generic fiction devices. Some are just common-sense, Quality of Life mechanics to fix release-day broken ones. Some would just be nice to have and would increase the ethos of total customization that Paradox distilled into this game.
QUALITY OF LIFE FIXES/OPTIONS
- Better Campaign Start Screen UI. When starting a new campaign, whether singleplayer or multiplayer, show a list of empires - including players and AI - with the name of their empire, species name and portrait, ethics and government type. If AI is not a premade empire and will be randomized in-game, show a "question mark" symbol in lieu of the species portrait which can be clicked on to choose a pre-made empire, so that you yourself can choose the empires you pre-make for the AI and would like to appear in the game.
- We need more campaign options. Most glaringly, we should be able to toggle whether or not all empires know of each other at start or are hidden to each other (with an option allowing to reveal only Player Empires in a multiplayer campaign.) Also, there should be options to toggle space pirates, cultists and organic entities (amoeba/crystalline entities/void clouds). Add options to lock empires by weapon types (missiles/lasers/projectiles) and genus of species (fungoid only universe, anyone?) for customizability's sake. (I would advocate for options to lock certain government types/ethics, but that would require another UI for a little-used option.)
- Where's the automation? EUIV added an auto-explore button for conquistadors and explorers. Why not Stellaris? Science ships should have auto-survey and auto-research anomalies buttons. Construction ships should be allowed to automate construction within borders. This allows players who don't appreciate the micromanaging of early/early mid game to toggle that and enjoy a smoother gameplay experience.
- Mapmodes. Seriously. Diplomatic Relations, Technology, Fleet Capacity, Fleet Strength, Alliances and Federations, etc.
- Fleet Templates. Credited to jabari74
- Growth of Slums and Planet Tile Blockers. Migrating Forest anomalies result in the spread of planet tile blockers. On a colonized planet with lots of empty resource tiles and hungry and unemployed pops living on them should result in the growth and spread of slums, tile blockers that have a negative resource drain per tile and increase unhappiness. This should keep empires on their toes to migrate unemployed pops between worlds and keep their pops unemployed. Lazy, corrupt or inept governors would fail to check slums, resulting in more political domestic tension.
- Core Planets should be Core Systems instead. It makes far more sense, makes for easier organisation, and gives a better metric for delegation of systems to sectors.
- Ethos-specific Victory Conditions. Credited to himmelstoss1914.
- Ledgers. Please. Make it a toggleable option for multiplayer as well.
- Rally Points for Ships/Embarkable Armies and Patrols. Set patrols or fleet orders for fleets that they can repeat so that their sensors can make a designated loop through your empire and engage enemies accordingly.
- Better auto-best feature for Ship Designer. Ship Designing takes far, far too long in multiplayer and necessitates frequent scheduled intermissions and pauses for competitive games. Make it so that auto-best can be toggled on a scale, allowing you designate which components you want auto-upgraded in tandem with better power generators.
- Better intelligence for Evasive mode. Credited to Namell.
- Upgrading buildings takes too many clicks.
- Corvettes are drastically overpowered. As it stands, there is no need to build other ships save battleships for auras. An entire fleet of corvettes can take on a mixed combined-arms fleet and win handily.
- Carnage Reports. Credited to Lowbacca1977. Why can't we see how many ships were lost per side in a fleet action? It'd also make it a lot easier for me to keep track of how many and which ships I lost after a battle so I can rebuild more easier to maintain my fleet composition, because right now I have to search through my unit stack and count which classes of ships I'm missing through a roll call.
RAW GAMEPLAY CONCEPTS
- More Utilities and Dimension to Combat. Right now, war is a tedious slog of cat-and-mouse until a single, massive battle decides the war. There are no frontlines or strategic systems. There are no true struggles or back-and-forths in wars, comeback-worthy moments like you would find in EUIV. War in Stellaris should be far more tactical and involve choke-points, military installations and traps. Tractor Beams/Stasis Webifiers and Warp Dampeners should be added as utility components to ships so that you can trap individual ships or prevent an entire enemy fleet from leaving the system for a time. Microwarpdrives should be added so that interceptor fleets can warp across a system and engage a fleet preparing to leave the system. Sensor Scramblers, and other forms of electronic warfare utilities should leave enemy fleets blind and add a dimension to combat besides "whoever does most damage wins." Defense stations should prevent enemy fleets in a designated radius from leaving the system. Right now there's nothing you can really install in a ships' utility slot that uses power besides shields, which is a damned shame.
- Superweapons and Megaprojects. I made a thread about this a few weeks back. Paradox should absolutely introduce planet/star-annihilating superweapons ala the Death Star or Star Killer base to shake up late-game. Building and use of these weapons should result in tremendous diplomatic relations maluses, trigger Fallen Empire activity or even an extragalactic intervention crisis. Allow an option to disable it in game start for those who don't want it.
- Temporary Coalitions and Badboy. As of now, the AI empires populating my galaxies do nothing to impede my totally-unchecked expansion across the galaxy. I never feel as though I have to worry about my AI neighbors banding together to stop me. Alliances are slightly too permanent in nature and the AI in-game seems to be skittish of making long-term commitments to each other. Include a coalition feature targeting specific empires which neighbors can join in to cut players or rapidly expanding AI empires/Unbidden down to size.
- Making Use of Surplus Food. In one of my current campaigns, my capital world has a population of 16 and produces 12 food. All of it seemingly goes to waste while I intentionally starve out a neighboring planet to see if the food from my capital world goes to the needy planet. It doesn't. Surplus food should be added as "global resource" (like minerals and energy) and used as a pool to be distributed amongst planets with a food deficit. This way we can designate worthy planets to be used as breadbaskets that feed the massive cosmopolitan worlds, a trope seen in the Halo universe with the planet Harvest.
- Boarding and Capturing Ships. Credited to Gula25. Would allow armies to participate in space combat as well, increasing their usage. Would also be interesting if you could reverse engineer captured ships as well.
- Trade Routes, Lines of Supply and Blockades. Why don't our planets trade with each other? Why don't in-game empires carry on trade with each other? My empires seem to be collections of largely autonomous planets all drawing from the same pool of energy and minerals. As our empire grows, expands and comes into contact with new resources, we should see trade routes form with civilian ships zipping along those galactic highways to planets. This is where my above idea with surplus food would also come into play, as surplus food would steadily find itself distributed along these routes. Outer rim planets would take a while to supply and be supplied by planets closer to the galactic core. Blockading a planet would choke it off from galactic trade routes and should cut off the flow of minerals, energy and rare resources from that planet to its owner's resource pool.
- More resources and resource options. Spice is a common trope in sci-fi literature, commonly being used as a hallucinogen with various other applications depending on the strain. Why stop at spice? There should be a variety of illicit goods and contraband, each with their own benefits and maluses which could be legalized or banned on an individual basis. EVE Online has a list of illicit goods with bases in sci-fi tropes. Banning a highly demanded resource should cause the feed the growth of a black market and increase the spawn rates of pirates and smugglers. Which brings me to my next idea:
- Smugglers and the Black Market. The black market in a campaign should be a galaxy-wide underground consisting of non-affiliated xenos from every corner of the galaxy. Smugglers should be independent, freebooting space captains that grow and feed the demand of the galactic black market, with important figures gaining notoriety and raising bounties across the galaxy. You could crackdown on them in your own jurisdiction, or recruit from their ranks for craftier, more experienced admirals - basically, Privateers from EUIV.. Smugglers should be the guys getting your governors the Substance Abuse trait and damaging your planets' productivity. Or if you decide to harness their capability, they should be running blockades and spying on enemy empires for you. They should be recognizable figures with their own names, backstories and legends.
- Bounty Hunters and Mercenaries. Just as CKII has hireable mercenary companies with their own chain of command and legendary figures, Stellaris should have the same across multiple entities. Individual Bounty Hunters should begin to look for work as galactic empires come into contact with each other and xenos begin migrating between worlds. Bounty Hunters would be able to hunt other individual figures across empires - for example, you could assassinate the leader of a slave faction in your own empire to curb its growth, or you could capture a notorious smuggler that's feeding your empire's drug habit. Mercenaries would be hireable contingents of ships or armies to help boost your navy in an emergency or to supplement your forces with higher tech/better experienced ships that you don't have access to.
- Crime and Corruption. As colonies turn into urbanized cosmopolitan worlds, crime should result in the form of drug-running cartels, corrupt corporate schemes and miscellaneous forms of scum and villainy. Governors should have a Corruption stat that can change throughout the course of their lifetimes as they fall privy to influences from domestic elements and outside empires. Crime should be represented as a metric on a planet and can be dynamically increased with corrupt governors and event chains. Crime should decrease resource efficiency on a planet and should become an issue worth tackling through edicts, policies and gubernatorial changes.
- The Slave Trade. I'm not quite sure if implementing a slave trading function in Stellaris breaks Paradox's rules on facilitating "the evils of humanity" in gameplay, but it would be a neat function to be able to trade and sell slaves with other empires. If I had enslaved the Weak and Decadent Horvat species but wanted to trade for the finest slaves in the Very Strong, Intelligent and Industrious Sirpski species, I should be able to do so.
- Better dynastic mechanics. Right now, rulers and heirs mean next-to-nothing in gameplay. They're just a face to the empire with a couple of nice traits. They rule, die and elect a new ruler without any sort of effects on the empire. When your ruler dies, there is a new heir generated with no backstory behind it or "greater goal": There is no dynasty to uphold, no stability or peace to keep. Playing an autocracy should be a struggle to maintain power against vying domestic factions, nobles and dynasties, with unpopular heirs being eschewed for claimants. Democracies should experience upheaval due to corruption, tyrannous behavior or voter disenfranchisement. Oligarchies should try to maintain the status quo at all costs and resist encroachment by radicals on either side of the political spectrum. Essentially, every time your ruler dies, you should have to worry about what happens directly after and work to ensure a stable transition of power.
- More religious mechanics. Spiritualist empires should be able to designate what type of religion they devote to - whether adherent to cosmologic in nature, a traditional folk religion, or simply a transcendent view in line with achieving "enlightenment", it'd be up to Paradox to delineate. Those spiritualist empires should be able to proselytize and spread their faith, designating Holy planets and issuing religious mandates to followers, whether or not they're in that empire. For example, Paul Atreides in Dune declaring a galactic jihad against the Padishah Empire, resulting in the uprising of the Muad'Dib's jihad by the Fremen race and the overthrow of the Corrino dynasty.
- Galactic Congress. There should exist a galactic political/diplomatic apparatus aimed at joining together interested empires. Upon researching a specific higher level tech, that empire would be able to establish the congress and host it on their capital planet. Empires who join this congress would debate on a variety of issues in a democratic format, each being given one vote, with the host nation having two. For example - a galaxy-wide ban on superweapons, deciding what resources constitute illicit goods/contraband, a ban on slavery, a forced end to an aggressive war, etc. Depending on their ethics, empires would have different interests in the congress and conflict accordingly - Spiritualist empires would like to see 'holy planets' protected and kept as a sanctuary free from mining, Materialists would argue against those measures in order to obtain resources and research. Xenophobes wouldn't be privy to the congress and would likely abstain from joining it. There's a ton of potential here that can be detailed in a different format, but that's how I would imagine it to be.
- Fleet/Army Veterancy As your individual ships and armies see action and prevail in combat, they should gain experience and levels of their own. Each level would slightly increase evasion rate, fire rate or weapons damage for navies and army damage/health for armies.The loss of a highly experienced fleets and armies would be even more damaging to an empire as they have to rely on lower-experienced conscripts for the duration of the war. As years go by and the crew filters out and is replaced by new blood, the experience level will slowly degrade, requiring a consistent stream of action to keep ship/regiment veterancy at top form. Empire-wide policies and edicts such as "space academy" or "mandatory conscription" could increase unit starting veterancy level or increase experience level gain rate, and traits such as "Warrior Tradition" could do the same for individual species. Another interesting idea is where fleets as a whole could gain levels and increase their Fleet Tradition, so that a fleet as a whole grows in veterancy by fighting in formation and utilizing tactics through multiple wars. The leveled fleet would then produce a "Banner" or a "Flagship" which would hold the Fleet Tradition level, allowing the fleet to be split or combined without losing the Tradition level.
Of course, it's important to keep in mind that Stellaris is a 4X game at its core and must be treated as such. It would be fantastic to see these ideas take form in Stellaris and deepen the universe and storytelling capability.
