Quoting: kuhpunktAnd the downward spiral continues.

Uh, of who?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestDid anyone even play this anymore?

Wellll, we have documented evidence of one Mac user . . .

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Well, normally I would say this isn't going to work. But then there's this:

I can lower my expectations and sales goals.

OK. If lowering sales is the objective, then sure, I think this will be a success! :D

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: rkfg

I take a healthy dose of scepticism any time a developer says something like that, as it rarely ends up being true.

This. However, it's easy to verify the claim by just asking "how is your game going to compete with Cities: Skylines?" as it's arguably the best (most complex and popular) city simulator to date. There's also the perceived complexity aspect: it doesn't matter how detailed the simulation is if the player doesn't see it, can't affect it and can't use it to their advantage. I.e. if it seems random, it is random. If it looks simple, it is simple. Anyway, here's hope it'll be good!
EDIT: aaaand it's actually asked already [External Link]! Looks like the developer goes for more micromanagement. This really depends on the implementation, it might be a chore to manage or an exciting feature that "makes the game". Another hope, it's the latter.

Um. Looked at what the dev said. That doesn't sound really good. I'm fine with micromanagement where it's, I dunno, meaningful and appropriate, but if I want to set the patrol routes of cops I'll play a police station manager, not a city builder. I can see something like setting policies for policing (although it would inevitably get political), like drug zero-tolerance vs. harm reduction or whatever like that. Setting funding levels, even, although probably not on a per-station basis. But hiring the officers?! Heck with that. That's the police chief's job (or maybe the police chief's HR department's job)--I'm the mayor, I hire the police chief, he/she handles the grunts.
If the city gets beyond hamlet size and you're doing that level of irrelevant detail, you'll get lost. If I wanted depth from a city sim, it wouldn't be from adding lower and lower level functions, it would be from adding more factors and detail affecting my work at the mayor/planning staff level. More zoning, political pressure from different groups like developers, residential areas spontaneously tending to stratify into luxury and working class neighbourhoods leading to different pressures and management needs, gentrification and displacement, yadda yadda like that.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Mal

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI'll be able to trade for it--except I can't currently extract any strategic resource to trade with.

I'm pretty sure that you can also produce them with jobs by converting basic resources aka minerals/energy/food though ofc harvesting them directly is much cheaper. In other words you won't be stuck to lower tiers if you don't have access to strategic resources.

You can, sort of. Far as I can tell, there's a technology each for converting at least all the main strategic resources from minerals (maybe not weird stuff like dark matter, but that's fine), at rates that although steep are actually cheaper than I might have figured. Two problems: First, you have to get the technology, which means it has to come up. I haven't seen them come up much, although maybe they'll start soon--but I mean, the buildings that require the stuff have been coming up, so why not the tech for either extracting or creating them? Like, I haven't seen the mining techs at all yet, and I've seen one creation tech once.

Second, the technology doesn't let you do the conversion, it lets you make a building in which to do the conversion. And specialist buildings are one of the key bottlenecks now; you can make a building on a planet every time you get 5 population, and you need them to balance your economy, to keep the public happy with "amenities", to produce Unity, to make the "Alloy" stuff you make ships with now, to do research, eventually to keep down crime (I presume--haven't had any yet, my people are pretty happy)--you want lots of buildings for lots of things, and a slot only comes up on a planet every 15 years or so in the early game--maybe faster later as you get more pop growth techs. So, having to devote one of these buildings to something like making strategic resources can seriously set back your economic/research/unity plans, and you might have to wait 10 years or more to do it at all.

On the other hand, in terms of the rarity of the strategic resources themselves, I've just noticed it's not as bad as it seems. I'm used to those only existing in space, but it looks like some planets have them too, so it might be worth colonizing a more marginally habitable planet than you normally might if it has a strategic on it.

It'd be nice if the technologies would come up, though. Overall, I feel like it's more true than before that there are things you just can't do if a technology or even a few different technologies working in concert don't all come up, which makes the semi-random nature of tech development feel like more of a roadblock. Before with tech I'd be like, "Oh, I got a tech, let's see what the options are for the next one, is there something cool?" Where now I'm more, "Oh, I got a tech, please please please let this tech I need be in the options to research--damn." The whole random card-ish thing for technology (rather than your ubertypical tech tree) is pretty neat, but if technology is going to matter this way maybe we need to supplement it with a wishlist or something, where you can pick a few things you hope for and they have a higher chance of coming up, except "transcendence" path technologies are immune--so, you can't put psi or genetic engineering tech on the wish list.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Well, I've been playing it (just Le Guin, haven't bought the Megacorp yet). I mostly like it.
I like the new planet management system. It's definitely more interesting. Kind of complex, you need to sort of plan your buildings because some of them transform resources rather than creating them, so if you want to make more research centres they use up consumer goods to make research, which means you need to make a commercial sector that takes minerals and makes them into consumer goods, which means you better be making enough minerals. The jobs thing is OK, although it can be a bit annoying when you want more energy production and you make an energy-producing zone, but then when you get more pops they're all deciding to get jobs in the entertainment sector instead. I'm finding it can be a good idea not to build something you could be building, just so the new pops will be forced to take the existing jobs you want them to take. But overall, I like the new planet management quite a bit. And I'd say it puts more emphasis back on planets; they do more production compared to all the little mining stations now, which is probably good.
And I like the revamped economy, I think. Again, you have a couple more kinds of stuff, plus trade routes of a sort.
And because of all the different stuff, you have a bunch of new techs, which is fun. Mind you, with lots more techs you need to make your economy work, it would be nice if you got them faster, but if anything it seems slower.

It would be good if the new Administrative Cap on empire size was called something quite different because it's apparently nothing resembling a cap and is intended to be ignored; it's just a new version of the same old Stellaris deal where your tech and Unity get slowed down as your grow, but not by as much as you gain from being bigger. Screwed me up significantly trying to keep under the "Cap" until I found that out.

There is one other thing that annoys me somewhat. Strategic resources are more closely integrated into the game, which should be kind of cool. But here's the deal: There are now various advanced buildings which require a strategic resource to build them. And I'm not talking hyperadvanced buildings, I'm talking the second level of your research building. But the damn resources are still just as hard to get. And they still require a technology to mine them even if you have some in your empire, so you can research your more advanced research facility or more advanced entertainment sector, but you can't build them because even if you've got the right strategic resource in your empire, the tech to actually extract it won't come up. Presumably once I've met a critical mass of empires that galactic market thing will open up and maybe I'll be able to trade for it--except I can't currently extract any strategic resource to trade with.

Overall pretty good, although damn the "Administrative Cap" was frustrating the hell out of me until I found out it was nothing of the sort.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestInstall 1.0 of Stellaris and tell me it has any resemblance to the 2.2 version, at all...

I tell you, it has a significant resemblance to the 2.2 version.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Valve: "Screw you too, Epic!"

View this comment - View article - View full comments

This looks very cool to me. The Le Guin looks great . . . but I'm thinking very seriously about grabbing this DLC at full price, which I do try to avoid.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

That's a great word . . . Shenanigan!

View this comment - View article - View full comments