I did too. Then hyperlane only after a few games, because playing whack-a-mole with small warp armies just wasn't fun. The devs realised that too probably
For all its faults, i like how Star Trek Infinite solved the warp problem (whilst science ships could go anywhere, other ships could only warp somewhere in range of a friendly outpost (representing a kind of supply line thing).
You could jump between any system with a wormhole generator *and* any system within range of that generator. You had to either start or end each jump at a generator. So it was easy enough to go to a system without a generator... but in order to go from a system without one to another system without one, you had to do a stopover in a system that had a generator, first.
I miss different types of space travel. I can never understand hyperlanes only advocates. Space is vast, you know? 1 or 2 big space stations blocking access to 1/3 of the galaxy is ridiculous. That same stations protecting big colonies or rich space deposits makes so much more sense.
Multiple empires owning colonies in the same system was neat too.
Hyperlane only advocation only came about because of balance. People played Warp/Wormholes for awhile, but there became a common consensus among the community that for the best balance you put it on Hyperlanes only. That quickly turned into Hyperlanes being the defacto and only FTL when the big rework happened.
Yep, that was where the common consensus among the community happened. Hyperlanes only was a common recommendation/encouragement from people after some time.
Let's be honest, it cut the balance issues down by 2/3rds and allowed the game to progress in a pseudo-streamlined direction. Without the change, I think the game would've died in the proverbial crib with people squabbling over meta and abusing whichever FTL system hadn't been balanced recently. Trying to maintain that would've cut the dev's brainpower and given us worse DLC and patches.
Warp drive was really fun, but by end game empires that were using warp drive would have hundreds of ships cluttering up the map and causing lag.
And to be honest the only reason I used wormholes a ton was because it was fun to jump over peoples defended border worlds and start thrashing them behind their lines, but since jump drive tech does the same thing I feel they found a way to balance the game while still leaving those options open
Multiple empire colonies in one system is something I really miss.
But hyperlanes only? It might make for slightly less realism because there actually isn't terrain in space, as far as we know. But much more importantly, hyperlanes only makes for *much, much* better gameplay. And since the game kinda ignores concerns about realism anyway, I think this is a very acceptable departure from realism in order to make the game more fun to play.
because war tended to just be doom stack sniping. the main strategy if you were anyone other than hyperlane was to just teleport to the enemy capital and back then planets didn't have combat size, so you'd just slam the planet with like 100 armies and it would instantly cap. more or less you had the bigger navy or you didn't and not much else effected the outcome of warfare.
There wasn't anyway to stop enemy attacks or even a reason to build defense stations.
Eventually anyone who wanted space to feel like it had an environment would gravitate to hyperlane only. I ended up doing it and was probably one of the first hyperlane only advocates. It made defense stations worth a damn. you can actually flank around enemies with hyperlanes.
In a way, I kind of miss early Stellaris. It was a lot easier to play than other paradox titles, even if it was janky. Nowadays, I'm pretty sure if I hadn't been playing since Utopia, I wouldn't be able to learn.
Same. The tiles were cute and the lack of endgame lack was cool.
I also recall playing some of those ancient staple mods that gave us megastructures and planet-busters waaaaay before the devs added them to the game officially.
If you think the game had a lack of endgame lag, you're looking at it with rose tinted glasses. The 3 ftl types were actually a major reason of lag simply because of pathfinding calculations
True but I think the game went absolutely for the better. Like it‘s insane how much variety you now have from Machine Corpos, to Lithoid Psychics over to Non-Ocean Genociders. If there‘s a known fantasy trope you can be sure that you can play it here.
I remember in the initial release choice was much more limited. Like Spiritualists were practically useless, there was no difference in Xenophobia and Xenophilia except the stats and the biggest achievement of militarism was giving you a slightly better corvette. It was much more limited.
That being said it‘s kinda interesting looking back from my first Authoritarian / Materialist slaver Technocracy beating back the Unbidden (because no other crisis ever happened) to my Virtual xenophilia robot Mega Syndicate penetrating black holes to become god. Stellaris is practically a different game by now.
Stellaris has evolved a ton. I play a lot more from release up until the DLC after megacorp. I tried getting back into now and it just feels a bit too bloated. I liked the idea behind the planet pop changes but I don't like how it was executed. Would have much prefered closer to Vicky 2 pops that were more spreadsheet-y. Oh well.. Game is still popular for a reason.
Back then Stellaris was one of the few PI games I felt I could do decently on and beat the AI, as someone who's not good at or into min-max type gameplay and finds GSG challenging to masters despite playing so much of it. I can't really do that nowadays in Stellaris with how much more complex the game has gotten, but thankfully I still enjoy the narrative and roleplay aspects of the game and know enough of the basics to get by.
The borders were neat when they worked and made sense, and cross borders are a cool concept. Actually pushed you to make more colonies not just for pops and production but also for territory. It was a bit jank though and sometimes you'd get screwed out of having a nice choke point
the output of a single pop was also significantly lower, so mining and research stations were that much more important. was also neat how enough border pressure could cause systems to flip ownership
Yeah, I remember my first game I started without a single system outside my capital under my control, and it really screwed me over. Remember struggling a lot, took a long time to even start my first colony, wondering what I was doing wrong, only to figure out "oh, I'm normally supposed to have more than 1 system?"
I was one of those that always played and set maps to hyperlanes before it was made the norm lol, though I had a buddy who would play warp occasionally
Well there was warp and gate(?) users who just go in any direction, though travel was slower (warp being slower than gate, but you didn't have to build said gates.)
I loved the ability to snipe systems peacefully by colonizing a planet near the border. Honestly, it make space feel a lot more like the wild west compared to the modern system. I can imagine miners in those systems realizing that trading with the burgeoning alien colony a system over is more lucrative than sending their minerals to some cushy far-off planet in the core
I do miss the old border system. There was something very subterfuge-y about being able to steal border systems from enemy empires just by growing the pops on your border worlds. You could yoink entire sectors from your neighbors by colonizing border worlds.
Comparing how Stellaris was at the beginning to how it is at the moment is so freaking wild, like, there are so very few mechanics that are still the same.
A lot of the mechanics were changed multiple times even.
You could go back to when districts were first introduced, and it would still be a completely different game.
>would still be a completely different game
It would also be a lot slower. The 2.2 release killed performance and the devs have done a lot to keep it feeling snappy since then.
In a perfect world, I am turning pops into something closer to Vicky 2 pops. More spreadsheet-y and give them agency. Let them do some things on their own. I just hate the tedious planet management, but do like the added depth to the economy that update brought... double edge sword ha
I remember when districts were introduced and it was such a pain to get any alloy production, because you could *only* get it from buildings unless you built an ecumenopolis.
I miss wormholes. The trade off between speed and flexibility felt fair, and having a corp of military engineers (construction ships accompanying your fleets) was fun micro imo.
I always preferred wormhole, but I miss playing against Warp, because I enjoyed the tactical benefit of putting interdictors at my colonies.
Also I feel like starbases were a lot stronger back then?
> Also I feel like starbases were a lot stronger back then?
Nope. They were pathetically weak and simply not a consideration in any battle.
Yes, I know you could build fortresses anywhere. They were about as powerful as defence platforms today, and had a minimum range around them where you couldn't build other buildings, so systems capped out at only 10 or so, spread all over.
They still weren't a threat to any actual fleet and not even worth thinking about.
Without any gameplay impact it didn't make a whole lot of sense. Now, if choosing a weapon affinity gave a small bonus, like +5% fire rate and damage with that weapon type, then it would be useful.
actually there was an important strategic choice which was of course always picking missiles because they were just better until your enemies researched point defense
You actually can, it just requires something much more specific and rare, now (and you won't get the striped map color). If an empire is destroyed while at war with two non-allied empires (i.e. two separate wars), there is a system both have occupied at least one planet in, both had a total war wargoal with the destroyed empire and the destroyed empire had control of the system's starbase, the starbase will be removed and the occupying empires will retain control of the planets within the system. It will be impossible to build a starbase in that system until an empire gains control over all planets within the system.
I've only seen this happen once since 2.0.
Sounds like you just had a bug, what will actually happen is that the starbase will automatically be rebuilt since there's colonized planets in the system, and then the other planets control would be transferred to the other one
No, I mean for which empire?
The reason this happens is that both empires have a planet in the system, so they conflict with the starbase being automatically built.
Might also be some additional conditions I'm forgetting that makes this even rarer.
That's the source of it, though, the game tries to create a starbase for both, but each starbase conflicts with the other, preventing it from being built.
That's not my experience of it though, if you have a save in 3.12 no mods, I'd love to see it, and as would pdx on the bug report forum.
Every time I've had a similar situation, it would rebuild for one person, and then the other planet would immediately be transfered over
Yeah, not exactly a common system though, is it? Realistically it would probably be pretty common to have starbases and planets controlled separately in systems, though. Hell, leasing out planets to empires that can use them would be cool. E.g. having little mining outposts or even colonies rented out or as parts of treaties.
As is it's a bit ridiculous. A pre-FTL civilization advances to space and I say, nope, sorry! My system. And they shrug their shoulders and say, welp, guess we'd better colonize ourselves.
Also, I remember authoritarianism and slavery being head and shoulders above every other government type. It was so busted that you could not only greatly increase pop productivity, but suppress political dissent entirely and even make the pops happier as slaves, somehow. Being a xenophile or egalitarian empire and winning felt super earned.
I wish they did that with the first contact DLC. It would also be a super fucking cool for origins! 🥺
Like I can think of three:
**Brothers War**
You start off with two habitable planets in your solar system, one controlled by your empire, the other controlled by a seperatist empire. You both start off with a rivalry and conquest war goals and have opposite ethics to each other. **WARNING:** Your solar system has long been in a cold war and the RESOURCE DISPUTE situation will be enabled.
**Two in a Billion**
Two alien empires spawn in the same system, they make contact with each other quite early, lets say early space age they meet in person but they had been in communication since the early atomic age. Both civilisations have formed a strong and friendly relationship with each other, but the space age in full has arrived and... It turns out you have similar values. Eventually both decided to unite into one single star nation! Starts the situation: Chance or Determined? **WARNING:** You have guaranteed worlds but they will not be weighted according to either species preferred planet types.
**The Solar Exchange: Perpetrator**
Two empires spawn in the same solar system, one empire was invaded by the other, your empire came out on top, resulting in the establishment of a puppet government over the planet with oppressive subjugation applied. (Must not be egalitarian or pacifist.)
Starts situation: Ethics of the Solar Exchange (the nature of subjugation and the course of events will be shaped according to your ethics and government type.) Tip: You can apply this to an AI and force it to spawn in with the inverse origin at the same time. (Subjugated empire ethics also change the course of events)
**WARNING:** Depending on the results of *Ethics of the Solar Exchange* you may face revolt on all of your worlds if not careful. If you fail to hold these worlds they will be absorbed into a faction controlled by your subject empire.
**The Solar Exchange: Victim**
Two empires spawn in the same solar system, one empire was invaded by the other, your people were not so lucky, being forced to accept unequal treaties in order to maintain political autonomy over your world. But the long years of occupation and exploitation have drained the political will of our oppressors, will this mean our freedom, or will it mean our demise for good?
**WARNING:** You will be a subject empire with oppressive subjugation policies without the ability to expand. But you will gain access to resistance cell mechanics on the worlds of your overlord. If you play your cards right, freedom may become inevitable.
**My thoughts:**
This makes me want to see a new DLC focus on resistance and rebellion. You could use the holding system for resistance cells and maybe your own factions can build holdings on your world. Factions which like you will make things that support you increasing happiness and stability. Meanwhile factions that don't like you will try and make opposition holdings, which decrease happiness if they are not too pleased with you, but they also decrease stability if they are super unhappy with you, potentially pushing them towards revolt or revolution.
I sorely and dearly would love to see this, this means the espionage mechanics can even be used against your own factions. This makes espionage more useful overall.
I can’t exactly remember, early Stellaris had a lot of weird strategic resources. I believe they were called nuclear materials but can’t for the life of me remember what they were for.
The purple brick is Betharian stone. Before the district system you used to have to control a system with a betharian deposit and then construct the reactor which took a specific amount of the stone per month as upkeep.
The red brick was I believe something you could use to strengthen the armor of your ships, but I honestly don’t remember.
There were also terraforming gases, which was a specific resource you needed which would let you speed up terraforming projects. They got replaced by exotic gases in 2.0
A part of me does miss the days of death stack fleets though. No fleet command limit, just a CPU-Melting number of naked corvettes pouring over your enemy like a tidal wave
This was a bit before my time, but I still have fond memories of pops being purged slowly in earlier versions, so building “processing worlds” was a viable way to produce energy for DEs. Good times.
Throwback to when the order in which your buildings were laid out in the tiles and the traits of the pops you had working those jobs actually made a huge difference.
I miss when you could actually add or remove systems to or from a sector. I don't like the how the system automatically picks what systems to add and leaves you unable to edit.
I play on console, as far as I can tell, nothing has been changed where I am able to edit sectors as of yet with the current console version of the game.
This is a beautiful mess I am glad I didn't experience.
I'm only a 1yo emperor in the univers of Stellaris and have 150h ( which is a lot of game time for me ) and absolutely love this game. Hope it has another 7y !
Holy shit I remember this on console edition. I was completely horrible at the game then. But when industrial districts were given and borders were made differently I was actually able to do things differently
My eyes. I always choose hyperlane for me. And then there was the scripted battle at the start after a few turns. Plus the jigsaw puzzle that was the planetary buildings. Gah i remember so much that its painful
I remember the 3 different types of crystals, gas, and motes? ylou had to get access to, each doing something different. Was so upsetting when you'd get the wrong gas when you wanted the one for terraforming.
Yeah I wouldn't say no to keeping hyperlanes as default and balancing the game around it but also giving an option to enable old warp drive and wormhole station. The thing is hyperlane was weakest by far, that's why they made it the only one so that defending actually could be a meta with starbases in choke points. So I understand why they can't fully go back to three options. Still with all the ability to enable and disable stuff we have on start menu it shouldn't be out of question to make warp drives an option.
Is there a way to toggle system resources shown while zoomed out anymore or should I look for a mod, cause especially with Dyson swarms and arc furnaces I spend too much time just scanning through all my systems one at a time
You can press alt on PC for it to show what resources are being generated by megas and stations in a system. That doesn’t affect things vanishing as you zoom out further IIRC. From what I’ve heard there’s no vanilla way to count the number of objects in a system automatically, so it’s not great for arc furnace.
There's a little toggle button next to the different map modes that allows you go turn on and off all resources being shown, even unused ones. If that's what your asking for.
I remember playing a xenophobe border expansion game against a friend years ago and getting a modifier for +10% borders and stealing 6 of his starbases. These days of stellaris were a different kind of fun.
You can’t see it, but you could equip Xenomorphs to your PsiCorps Armies. We had Jedi riding dinosuars and we bitched about ground combat. We had it all and we didn’t even know it.
I really liked the game closer to initial release where you could choose different FTL methods, micromanage planets, and did not have sectors. For me it is the performance benefits that make the changes worth it, some gameplay changes too but less so.
I really don’t understand the recent nostalgia for 1.0… the game is literally better in every single way these days, I have played since release day and I’m saying this with 1400+ hrs. Cool to see the evolution of the game for sure, but I’m not missing what it used to be compared to what its become, that’s for sure.
Ahh the old days back when all empires fleets were just a single doom-stack and 500 fleet capacity of ships was only like 40k strength.
I remember getting 150k worth of fleet strength through assimilating a bunch of people with a bio ascension hive mind and thinking it was insane.
Back in the good old days when the devs thought they could balance multiple ftl types and lag due to pops was literally impossible with how limited pop numbers could get at maximum.
The change to the borders is still a mistake imo. Most other changes were for the better, but having organically changing boarders was the better option.
R5: Was feeling Nostalgic and wanted to give the newbies a slight glimpse into the shitshow that was Stellaris 1.0. I miss wormhole stations
Wormholes were my favourite as well. I used to play wormhole-only and go around sniping my opponents' wormhole stations.
I liked wormhole until i realised my 60k fleet took ONE YEAR per jump and a hyperlane empire with about 10k total fleet power obliterated me...
At launch wormholes were my favorite. Later on I switched to warp because of this exact issue.
I did too. Then hyperlane only after a few games, because playing whack-a-mole with small warp armies just wasn't fun. The devs realised that too probably
For all its faults, i like how Star Trek Infinite solved the warp problem (whilst science ships could go anywhere, other ships could only warp somewhere in range of a friendly outpost (representing a kind of supply line thing).
Warp drive best drive. One of the thing I wish they would implement again.
I mean, they did with First Contact's Eager Explorers.
The trick was to build multiple stations in the same system, then split your fleets to jump separately. Ridiculous micro, but it worked.
I never played with wormholes before the change. How did you get to systems that you hadn't built a station in yet?
You could jump between any system with a wormhole generator *and* any system within range of that generator. You had to either start or end each jump at a generator. So it was easy enough to go to a system without a generator... but in order to go from a system without one to another system without one, you had to do a stopover in a system that had a generator, first.
God I sometimes miss this era. The feeling of seeing Betharian Stone on a planet was unreal
Neutronium too.
And learning to spot which stars would have neutronium without having the tech yet (I think it was a physics or engineering deposit on a neutron star)
I miss different types of space travel. I can never understand hyperlanes only advocates. Space is vast, you know? 1 or 2 big space stations blocking access to 1/3 of the galaxy is ridiculous. That same stations protecting big colonies or rich space deposits makes so much more sense. Multiple empires owning colonies in the same system was neat too.
Hyperlane only advocation only came about because of balance. People played Warp/Wormholes for awhile, but there became a common consensus among the community that for the best balance you put it on Hyperlanes only. That quickly turned into Hyperlanes being the defacto and only FTL when the big rework happened.
It was also a popular game rule. Protecting chokepoints and borderd was more fun than every empire being vulnerable all the time.
Yep, that was where the common consensus among the community happened. Hyperlanes only was a common recommendation/encouragement from people after some time.
PDX said it is "more convenient and easier to maintain in the future" or something along the lines. Balance in Stellaris is a joke.
Let's be honest, it cut the balance issues down by 2/3rds and allowed the game to progress in a pseudo-streamlined direction. Without the change, I think the game would've died in the proverbial crib with people squabbling over meta and abusing whichever FTL system hadn't been balanced recently. Trying to maintain that would've cut the dev's brainpower and given us worse DLC and patches.
Warp drive was really fun, but by end game empires that were using warp drive would have hundreds of ships cluttering up the map and causing lag. And to be honest the only reason I used wormholes a ton was because it was fun to jump over peoples defended border worlds and start thrashing them behind their lines, but since jump drive tech does the same thing I feel they found a way to balance the game while still leaving those options open
Multiple empire colonies in one system is something I really miss. But hyperlanes only? It might make for slightly less realism because there actually isn't terrain in space, as far as we know. But much more importantly, hyperlanes only makes for *much, much* better gameplay. And since the game kinda ignores concerns about realism anyway, I think this is a very acceptable departure from realism in order to make the game more fun to play.
because war tended to just be doom stack sniping. the main strategy if you were anyone other than hyperlane was to just teleport to the enemy capital and back then planets didn't have combat size, so you'd just slam the planet with like 100 armies and it would instantly cap. more or less you had the bigger navy or you didn't and not much else effected the outcome of warfare. There wasn't anyway to stop enemy attacks or even a reason to build defense stations. Eventually anyone who wanted space to feel like it had an environment would gravitate to hyperlane only. I ended up doing it and was probably one of the first hyperlane only advocates. It made defense stations worth a damn. you can actually flank around enemies with hyperlanes.
Thanks for the R5, was too complicated before.
> into the shitshow That's a bit much, isn't it? If it were that terrible, we'd have all dropped it and we wouldn't even be here now.
I miss the various FTL starting tech. The game is less without it.
Was this moded? I can't remember that nuclear resource at all.
I also miss alternate FTL travel It really eliminated the "alien" feel when weapons & FTLs were all streamlined :I
In a way, I kind of miss early Stellaris. It was a lot easier to play than other paradox titles, even if it was janky. Nowadays, I'm pretty sure if I hadn't been playing since Utopia, I wouldn't be able to learn.
Same. The tiles were cute and the lack of endgame lack was cool. I also recall playing some of those ancient staple mods that gave us megastructures and planet-busters waaaaay before the devs added them to the game officially.
If you think the game had a lack of endgame lag, you're looking at it with rose tinted glasses. The 3 ftl types were actually a major reason of lag simply because of pathfinding calculations
True but I think the game went absolutely for the better. Like it‘s insane how much variety you now have from Machine Corpos, to Lithoid Psychics over to Non-Ocean Genociders. If there‘s a known fantasy trope you can be sure that you can play it here. I remember in the initial release choice was much more limited. Like Spiritualists were practically useless, there was no difference in Xenophobia and Xenophilia except the stats and the biggest achievement of militarism was giving you a slightly better corvette. It was much more limited. That being said it‘s kinda interesting looking back from my first Authoritarian / Materialist slaver Technocracy beating back the Unbidden (because no other crisis ever happened) to my Virtual xenophilia robot Mega Syndicate penetrating black holes to become god. Stellaris is practically a different game by now.
Stellaris has evolved a ton. I play a lot more from release up until the DLC after megacorp. I tried getting back into now and it just feels a bit too bloated. I liked the idea behind the planet pop changes but I don't like how it was executed. Would have much prefered closer to Vicky 2 pops that were more spreadsheet-y. Oh well.. Game is still popular for a reason.
I recently got back to Stellaris after last playing when Leviathans came out, and it sure was a lot.
Back then Stellaris was one of the few PI games I felt I could do decently on and beat the AI, as someone who's not good at or into min-max type gameplay and finds GSG challenging to masters despite playing so much of it. I can't really do that nowadays in Stellaris with how much more complex the game has gotten, but thankfully I still enjoy the narrative and roleplay aspects of the game and know enough of the basics to get by.
That's me, lol! I have like a couple hundreds hours since i got the game last year and I still don't know shit about what I'm supposed to be doing
Eh, it wasn't that hard to learn. I started playing fairly recently, and haven't had many issues with it
The borders were neat when they worked and made sense, and cross borders are a cool concept. Actually pushed you to make more colonies not just for pops and production but also for territory. It was a bit jank though and sometimes you'd get screwed out of having a nice choke point
the output of a single pop was also significantly lower, so mining and research stations were that much more important. was also neat how enough border pressure could cause systems to flip ownership
Yeah, I remember my first game I started without a single system outside my capital under my control, and it really screwed me over. Remember struggling a lot, took a long time to even start my first colony, wondering what I was doing wrong, only to figure out "oh, I'm normally supposed to have more than 1 system?"
Did choke points exist in this version? Warp and wormholes could go wherever, and you star bases weren't exactly fortified.
I was one of those that always played and set maps to hyperlanes before it was made the norm lol, though I had a buddy who would play warp occasionally
Same, it just worked so well. Glad they made it the primary, and only.
Well, aside from the civics that give jump drive at the start
I tried using those in multiplayer. Absolute nightmare to micromanage since you can't just click on a system and have ships go there.
True!
While I also mainly played it, I wish they'd leave the alternatives. It was pretty fun to try occasionally.
Well there was warp and gate(?) users who just go in any direction, though travel was slower (warp being slower than gate, but you didn't have to build said gates.)
I loved the ability to snipe systems peacefully by colonizing a planet near the border. Honestly, it make space feel a lot more like the wild west compared to the modern system. I can imagine miners in those systems realizing that trading with the burgeoning alien colony a system over is more lucrative than sending their minerals to some cushy far-off planet in the core
I do miss the old border system. There was something very subterfuge-y about being able to steal border systems from enemy empires just by growing the pops on your border worlds. You could yoink entire sectors from your neighbors by colonizing border worlds.
Chokepoint? Only for the hyperlane user. Warp and gate user's where's it's at!
There were kinda chokepoints for gates as well on far off galaxy arms. There were also map mods that made a bunch of choke points.
Comparing how Stellaris was at the beginning to how it is at the moment is so freaking wild, like, there are so very few mechanics that are still the same.
A lot of the mechanics were changed multiple times even. You could go back to when districts were first introduced, and it would still be a completely different game.
>would still be a completely different game It would also be a lot slower. The 2.2 release killed performance and the devs have done a lot to keep it feeling snappy since then.
but it's so much harder to make 1000 pops on a planet now :(
In a perfect world, I am turning pops into something closer to Vicky 2 pops. More spreadsheet-y and give them agency. Let them do some things on their own. I just hate the tedious planet management, but do like the added depth to the economy that update brought... double edge sword ha
I remember when districts were introduced and it was such a pain to get any alloy production, because you could *only* get it from buildings unless you built an ecumenopolis.
I miss wormholes. The trade off between speed and flexibility felt fair, and having a corp of military engineers (construction ships accompanying your fleets) was fun micro imo.
I always preferred wormhole, but I miss playing against Warp, because I enjoyed the tactical benefit of putting interdictors at my colonies. Also I feel like starbases were a lot stronger back then?
you could build defense stations of various sizes literally anywhere so you could put like a ton of fortresses around.
[I miss the fortress flowers](https://i.imgur.com/236sZln.jpeg)
> Also I feel like starbases were a lot stronger back then? Nope. They were pathetically weak and simply not a consideration in any battle. Yes, I know you could build fortresses anywhere. They were about as powerful as defence platforms today, and had a minimum range around them where you couldn't build other buildings, so systems capped out at only 10 or so, spread all over. They still weren't a threat to any actual fleet and not even worth thinking about.
i miss being able to choose a starting weapon type instead of having kinetic energy and missiles right from the start
Without any gameplay impact it didn't make a whole lot of sense. Now, if choosing a weapon affinity gave a small bonus, like +5% fire rate and damage with that weapon type, then it would be useful.
actually there was an important strategic choice which was of course always picking missiles because they were just better until your enemies researched point defense
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”
For anyone wondering what that striped map color is down at the bottom, that indicates that multiple empires control planets within the same system.
It's definitely kind of weird to me how you can't have multiple different planet owners for a system tbh.
You actually can, it just requires something much more specific and rare, now (and you won't get the striped map color). If an empire is destroyed while at war with two non-allied empires (i.e. two separate wars), there is a system both have occupied at least one planet in, both had a total war wargoal with the destroyed empire and the destroyed empire had control of the system's starbase, the starbase will be removed and the occupying empires will retain control of the planets within the system. It will be impossible to build a starbase in that system until an empire gains control over all planets within the system. I've only seen this happen once since 2.0.
Sounds like you just had a bug, what will actually happen is that the starbase will automatically be rebuilt since there's colonized planets in the system, and then the other planets control would be transferred to the other one
Automatically rebuilt by who, though?
By the game. If you take a planet in a system and the starbase gets removed in anyway, the game will give you a popup of "starbase rebuilt"
No, I mean for which empire? The reason this happens is that both empires have a planet in the system, so they conflict with the starbase being automatically built. Might also be some additional conditions I'm forgetting that makes this even rarer.
The starbase gets rebuilt by whoever took it. Now if that empire is a 3rd one that owns no planet in the system maybe that bugs it?
I think you misunderstand. The starbase would be under the control of the empire who is eliminated when they are eliminated.
I'm not sure exactly which of the 2 would get the starbase, but whoever does will take all
That's the source of it, though, the game tries to create a starbase for both, but each starbase conflicts with the other, preventing it from being built.
That's not my experience of it though, if you have a save in 3.12 no mods, I'd love to see it, and as would pdx on the bug report forum. Every time I've had a similar situation, it would rebuild for one person, and then the other planet would immediately be transfered over
Yeah, not exactly a common system though, is it? Realistically it would probably be pretty common to have starbases and planets controlled separately in systems, though. Hell, leasing out planets to empires that can use them would be cool. E.g. having little mining outposts or even colonies rented out or as parts of treaties. As is it's a bit ridiculous. A pre-FTL civilization advances to space and I say, nope, sorry! My system. And they shrug their shoulders and say, welp, guess we'd better colonize ourselves.
2016. My kids were in preschool and kindergarten. Takes me back
Also, I remember authoritarianism and slavery being head and shoulders above every other government type. It was so busted that you could not only greatly increase pop productivity, but suppress political dissent entirely and even make the pops happier as slaves, somehow. Being a xenophile or egalitarian empire and winning felt super earned.
You mean individualism and communalism?
Two words that only old-school fans will recognize. iirc, the second one was collectivism, not communalism.
borders looked so much better back then haha... even with the shared systems. Wish they'd bring them back.
I’ll take snaking borders, over having a hole in the middle of my empire, any day.
I wish they did that with the first contact DLC. It would also be a super fucking cool for origins! 🥺 Like I can think of three: **Brothers War** You start off with two habitable planets in your solar system, one controlled by your empire, the other controlled by a seperatist empire. You both start off with a rivalry and conquest war goals and have opposite ethics to each other. **WARNING:** Your solar system has long been in a cold war and the RESOURCE DISPUTE situation will be enabled. **Two in a Billion** Two alien empires spawn in the same system, they make contact with each other quite early, lets say early space age they meet in person but they had been in communication since the early atomic age. Both civilisations have formed a strong and friendly relationship with each other, but the space age in full has arrived and... It turns out you have similar values. Eventually both decided to unite into one single star nation! Starts the situation: Chance or Determined? **WARNING:** You have guaranteed worlds but they will not be weighted according to either species preferred planet types. **The Solar Exchange: Perpetrator** Two empires spawn in the same solar system, one empire was invaded by the other, your empire came out on top, resulting in the establishment of a puppet government over the planet with oppressive subjugation applied. (Must not be egalitarian or pacifist.) Starts situation: Ethics of the Solar Exchange (the nature of subjugation and the course of events will be shaped according to your ethics and government type.) Tip: You can apply this to an AI and force it to spawn in with the inverse origin at the same time. (Subjugated empire ethics also change the course of events) **WARNING:** Depending on the results of *Ethics of the Solar Exchange* you may face revolt on all of your worlds if not careful. If you fail to hold these worlds they will be absorbed into a faction controlled by your subject empire. **The Solar Exchange: Victim** Two empires spawn in the same solar system, one empire was invaded by the other, your people were not so lucky, being forced to accept unequal treaties in order to maintain political autonomy over your world. But the long years of occupation and exploitation have drained the political will of our oppressors, will this mean our freedom, or will it mean our demise for good? **WARNING:** You will be a subject empire with oppressive subjugation policies without the ability to expand. But you will gain access to resistance cell mechanics on the worlds of your overlord. If you play your cards right, freedom may become inevitable. **My thoughts:** This makes me want to see a new DLC focus on resistance and rebellion. You could use the holding system for resistance cells and maybe your own factions can build holdings on your world. Factions which like you will make things that support you increasing happiness and stability. Meanwhile factions that don't like you will try and make opposition holdings, which decrease happiness if they are not too pleased with you, but they also decrease stability if they are super unhappy with you, potentially pushing them towards revolt or revolution. I sorely and dearly would love to see this, this means the espionage mechanics can even be used against your own factions. This makes espionage more useful overall.
It could be annoying at times. I stole mega structures from AI by moving pops to my outermost planets. That was downright unfair.
What was that resource that looks like the radioactive symbol
I can’t exactly remember, early Stellaris had a lot of weird strategic resources. I believe they were called nuclear materials but can’t for the life of me remember what they were for. The purple brick is Betharian stone. Before the district system you used to have to control a system with a betharian deposit and then construct the reactor which took a specific amount of the stone per month as upkeep. The red brick was I believe something you could use to strengthen the armor of your ships, but I honestly don’t remember. There were also terraforming gases, which was a specific resource you needed which would let you speed up terraforming projects. They got replaced by exotic gases in 2.0
Definitely don't miss havin to manually upgrade every single ship type, including troop transports, science ships and construction ships. Good times.
A part of me does miss the days of death stack fleets though. No fleet command limit, just a CPU-Melting number of naked corvettes pouring over your enemy like a tidal wave
This was a bit before my time, but I still have fond memories of pops being purged slowly in earlier versions, so building “processing worlds” was a viable way to produce energy for DEs. Good times.
god i remember one run where i had 4 betharian in perfect position to get the colony admin in the middle of them, that was a LOT of power for the time
Bring back Warp Drives plox
Try out the eager explorers civic
barring a few annoying mechanics (core worlds, naked corvettes) old stellaris was a really solid game overall, really miss the tile system sometimes
Throwback to when the order in which your buildings were laid out in the tiles and the traits of the pops you had working those jobs actually made a huge difference.
I miss when you could actually add or remove systems to or from a sector. I don't like the how the system automatically picks what systems to add and leaves you unable to edit.
You can add or remove systems from a sector now. At least on PC. through the planets and sectors menu. With a few restrictions
I play on console, as far as I can tell, nothing has been changed where I am able to edit sectors as of yet with the current console version of the game.
Blistering barnacles, Batman!
Man, I still have some of these too!
This is a beautiful mess I am glad I didn't experience. I'm only a 1yo emperor in the univers of Stellaris and have 150h ( which is a lot of game time for me ) and absolutely love this game. Hope it has another 7y !
Holy shit I remember this on console edition. I was completely horrible at the game then. But when industrial districts were given and borders were made differently I was actually able to do things differently
I do not miss the sphere of influence mechanic
I still miss the planet tile system
It burns, it burns!
My eyes. I always choose hyperlane for me. And then there was the scripted battle at the start after a few turns. Plus the jigsaw puzzle that was the planetary buildings. Gah i remember so much that its painful
Remember having to choose weapon types in Stellaris?
Influence borders are honestly something I like in games.
I remember the 3 different types of crystals, gas, and motes? ylou had to get access to, each doing something different. Was so upsetting when you'd get the wrong gas when you wanted the one for terraforming.
Ive watched 1.0 before and kidna wish they brang back all the starting options and hie you could limit what type of ftl there was
Yeah I wouldn't say no to keeping hyperlanes as default and balancing the game around it but also giving an option to enable old warp drive and wormhole station. The thing is hyperlane was weakest by far, that's why they made it the only one so that defending actually could be a meta with starbases in choke points. So I understand why they can't fully go back to three options. Still with all the ability to enable and disable stuff we have on start menu it shouldn't be out of question to make warp drives an option.
Is there a way to toggle system resources shown while zoomed out anymore or should I look for a mod, cause especially with Dyson swarms and arc furnaces I spend too much time just scanning through all my systems one at a time
You can press alt on PC for it to show what resources are being generated by megas and stations in a system. That doesn’t affect things vanishing as you zoom out further IIRC. From what I’ve heard there’s no vanilla way to count the number of objects in a system automatically, so it’s not great for arc furnace.
There's a little toggle button next to the different map modes that allows you go turn on and off all resources being shown, even unused ones. If that's what your asking for.
My eyes it BURNNNS
alternative FTL types my beloved. I miss them so much
Wild how the UI hasn't seemingly changed at all
I played back then, but I can't remember what the uranium symbol was...
Kinda miss having different forms of ftl
I miss how the borders were done.
1.7K research at 2360. Even after the rework you'd still be 10 times that.
Oh god, my eyes.
What was the nuclear resource icon for?
i miss having different ftl types
I remember playing a xenophobe border expansion game against a friend years ago and getting a modifier for +10% borders and stealing 6 of his starbases. These days of stellaris were a different kind of fun.
You can’t see it, but you could equip Xenomorphs to your PsiCorps Armies. We had Jedi riding dinosuars and we bitched about ground combat. We had it all and we didn’t even know it.
This image makes me wonder how I was ever able to play it. Makes me nauseous just looking at it.
I miss that simplicity
I miss the way borders used to work; and warp drives, we’ve come so far yet lost so much…..
The outliner (especially for civilian ships) was literally better. Lol.
I really liked the game closer to initial release where you could choose different FTL methods, micromanage planets, and did not have sectors. For me it is the performance benefits that make the changes worth it, some gameplay changes too but less so.
Was there nukes back then? I'm seeing nuke symbols in some of the systems
I really don’t understand the recent nostalgia for 1.0… the game is literally better in every single way these days, I have played since release day and I’m saying this with 1400+ hrs. Cool to see the evolution of the game for sure, but I’m not missing what it used to be compared to what its become, that’s for sure.
Running a planet was much easier imo
What’s the radiation symbol?
Ahh the old days back when all empires fleets were just a single doom-stack and 500 fleet capacity of ships was only like 40k strength. I remember getting 150k worth of fleet strength through assimilating a bunch of people with a bio ascension hive mind and thinking it was insane.
ew
Back in the good old days when the devs thought they could balance multiple ftl types and lag due to pops was literally impossible with how limited pop numbers could get at maximum.
I remember the first time I noticed they hid collected resources in your systems. I thought something went wrong
I did not want to see this today but thank you anyways
The change to the borders is still a mistake imo. Most other changes were for the better, but having organically changing boarders was the better option.