Quoting: Xpander

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: XpanderStory seems gringe worthy

You know, I know that was a typo, but now I want the word "gringe" to exist. It just seems like a great word.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gringe [External Link]

but yeah it was a typo lol :D

Wow, and it's related to Tim Minchin, who I'm quite fond of.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: XpanderStory seems gringe worthy

You know, I know that was a typo, but now I want the word "gringe" to exist. It just seems like a great word.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: LungDrago

Factions - they appear out of thin air a few years into the game and they reduce your economy a bit or a lot (it's a coin toss really). Period.

I normally play democracies. All I've ever noticed about factions is, they give me a stack of Influence so I can expand faster. That and if I tweak my policies a bit, most of my pops average happier, which actually improves the economy. Like, their base happiness before planet mods becomes the faction's happiness instead of the probably-50% default; if I can get the big factions to 65 or 70% happy with me, that's a major win. Sure, there's always a few factions that go against your overall social thrust, and give you some unhappy pops, especially on conquered worlds where the locals don't grok your society's way of doing things yet. But if you keep social cohesion high, I can't remember what the mechanic is called, those factions stay pretty small. Directly suppressing 'em doesn't work very well, true, but that's kind of realistic. Ask the Chinese government about Falun Gong.

For the rest, I never play multiplayer so I'll take your word for the planet management issue.

The ship design thing is fairly true, but not really a huge problem exactly. Like, lately I just ignore ship design most of the time, take the presets. Maybe do a bit of fiddling in late game. Mostly don't even worry about the rock/paper/scissors and instead concentrate on having a big economy that can support fleets way bigger than the opponent's. It's a missed opportunity, like there's this whole aspect of the game that's basically useless, but it doesn't get in my way.

The sectors--well, if you have big expectations of them doing something important and useful, they don't and that's bound to be disappointing. I never had such expectations, really I always thought they were kind of a mechanic looking for a purpose, so as long as they largely stay out of my way I'm OK with them. I resented them back when I had to assign most of my planets to sectors which would then be mismanaged by the AI and there was little I could do to salvage them, but now they're a shrug. Although I have learned to place my sector capitals with a little care. A sector extends four jumps from its capital; you want to maximize the number of inhabited planets in it, and avoid leaving too many orphan planets.

Your general conclusion though just baffles me. Maybe because I'm just not a multiplayer kind of game player, and the multiplayer experience is just that different. Certainly I spend a lot of time paused; in single player that's a feature, not a bug. But the bottom line is, I'm unaware of any 4X space game that compares to Stellaris. It's got problems, but for me they're mostly niggles and missed opportunities, not the gaping wounds you see. I've never felt the need to try mods. The scope of Stellaris is unmatched--there's so much of it that a couple of underdeveloped areas that you can largely ignore don't really do much to the experience. It feels to me like you're someone looking at the windowpane and saying "Look, there's quite a bit of dirt" instead of looking through it at the amazing view.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: TheSHEEEPCan you pet the bears, though?

A friend of mine once petted a wild bear. She's crazy. And, perhaps surprisingly, still alive.

Bears are actually very peaceful. And, probably more importantly, REALLY lazy - if your crazy friend was not perceived a threat, it's quite likely the bear was just like "yeah, whatever".

(still wouldn't recommend, though)

In her defence, she didn't, like, see a bear and walk up to it. She was hanging out, realized that there was now a bear hanging out right beside her, and couldn't resist reaching over to check the fur.
But there are various other reasons it's surprising she's still alive, like a lot of climbing up mountains with zero equipment in her youth.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Cheeseness

Quoting: Purple Library GuyWhat kinds of hats? Are there bowlers?

There is a bowler hat that the Queen can wear (that went in last year).

The patch notes contain a full changelog, but the new hats are a white bandanna, a pink sweat band, a top hat with yellow trim, a monocle, a hammer, a green visor, a fruit hat, and a bee hive.

My goodness! Those are some snazzy hats and things.
I'd been meaning to get this for a while. Now is the time. Strike while the wax is hot! Bought it.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

What kinds of hats? Are there bowlers?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: TheSHEEEPCan you pet the bears, though?

A friend of mine once petted a wild bear. She's crazy. And, perhaps surprisingly, still alive.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

By the way, does anyone else find annoying the fashion among big corporations to rename themselves by the acronym of what used to be their name, except now it officially doesn't stand for anything it's just this free-floating brandable signifier?

So like we got EA which used to be Electronic Arts but now is just two meaningless letters. In Canada, our big banks all went that way--the Bank of Montreal is BMO (not just BM, heh), the Royal Bank of Canada is RBC and so on. And the slogan is "Our name stands for nothing, and so do we!"

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: wvstolzing

Quoting: slaapliedjeIs it me, or is this just a ploy to get people to install Origin. Like EA finally realized it was a failure, but so they went back to allowing games to be sold on Steam again... but still require origin so they have a reason to say the software still lives?

Of all the 'trademarks' that EA bought & made a travesty of, the case of 'Origin' is possibly the most bizarre.

Thought I think the name will be laid to rest soon: https://venturebeat.com/2020/09/14/electronic-arts-doubles-down-on-ea-play-brand-with-ea-desktop-app/ [External Link]

Urgh, goddam. Serebit mentioned in Discord that Origin was going away, and I genuinely thought that I might start playing EA games again after nearly a decade of boycot. But nope, they're just re-launching Origin v2, calling it EA Desktop, and bundling their shitty subscription service in?? Yeah. No thanks.

Unless it gets actual Linux support, of course. Might reconsider if that happens. Right after I shoot down that flying pig...

Damn flying pigs, get off my lawn! Uhhh, and out of my trees, dagnabbit!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: ssj17vegetaBut the thing is, Nebuchadnezzar is quickly catching up (recently added crimes, fire management, clickable workers, and the initially sorely missed sandbox mode).

Correction: crime, fire and diseases are coming to the 1.2 update for Nebuchadnezzar, it's not in yet and no ETA on when.

Without context I'd be quite amazed by how much everyone seems to want fire, crime and diseases! :grin:

View this comment - View article - View full comments