Sounds like I'll continue to wait for it to be fixed and come to the stable branch, then.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyUm. I'm not sure what I think of that. I don't play 4X space games to be an RPG, I play them to explore the galaxy and manage economies and research mindboggling technologies.

Totally fair. I should mention that CK II never really hooked me like Stellaris does, so I was (pleasantly) surprised that adding seemingly similar mechanics would be so interesting to me. I think the difference is that CK II has so many characters, and they're constantly dying and being replaced with new ones, and they're all just various randomly-generated collections of traits and stats with little you can do about your own traits and nothing about anyone else's (except your kids). Here, the number of leaders you'll have has been pared down quite a bit, and unless you're playing an Overtuned origin there probably won't be a huge turnover, so you can actually get invested in your leaders a bit more. Being able to choose their traits at each level up, at least for me, really made more engaged in their progress, rather than "Oh look, scientist #14 leveled up again and got an exploring trait that they'll never use because they're leading engineering with their Spark of Genius trait already." When I said it was like an RPG, that's all I meant; you're not going to be having extended talks with all your leaders around the space-campfire or anything like that. (I think the legendary Paragons might have a bit more flavor and event chains, but there are only 8 of them and you'll only [possibly] see the 2 or 3 corresponding to your ethics, from what I gather.)

Considering that some traits are now "Council" traits that provide bonuses to your entire empire (like more mineral production, or faster research) when a leader is on the council, choosing traits at level up can also affect the managing of your economy and how fast your research progresses on mindboggling technologies :smile:. It's the same underlying gameplay, it's just that leaders have now been made a much more integrated and interesting part of it.

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In its continuing quest to be every Paradox grand strategy game ever made (…in SPAAAACE!), Stellaris has taken more than a few pages out of Crusader King's playbook with its latest 'Gemini' update and DLC Galactic Paragons. This is huge. I played for an hour or so this evening, and wow does this update change the game.

Some updates/DLCs focus more on end-game stuff that you won't see for hours into a campaign (like becoming the crisis in Nemesis, or Colossi from Apocalypse). The leader and government changes in the Gemini update, in contrast, change your very first decisions of the game, and look likely to remain relevant all the way through the game. You now get to pick a trait for each leader when they level up, which instantly makes them 2000% more engaging; I had to unlearn my knee-jerk reaction of instantly dismissing the pop-up about a leader gaining a new level, because now they're actually interactive and interesting. Some traits are "council traits", which only give their effects when the leader is on your council, which makes choosing traits (and which leaders to put on the council) an interesting choice. Since leaders require more attention you'll also have fewer of them at once, at least in the early game before you increase your soft cap (no more 5+ exploring science ships in the first decade, and honestly, I don't think I'll miss it). It feels a bit more like an RPG, leveling up your party members to get better and better, and I quite enjoy it. I also like that you can further customize your starting leader with a trait (possibly more depending on starting choices?) and an optional biography if you want.

(As an aside, I love that they've gotten rid of scientists having two roles; they're only explorers now, save for whoever is your head of research, who acts as chief scientist for all three research branches simultaneously. The conflict between the two roles is much diminished now, since research-affecting traits are only council traits now from what I saw, meaning you only have to worry about one scientist dual-classing [and they can still command a science ship while being councilor].)

With the two additional tradition trees from Galactic Paragons (focused on producing better leaders, and the governing council specifically), I counted sixteen traditions tree to choose from in my game. For the first time since they were introduced all the way back in Utopia, I finally felt like I had to make hard choices about which ones to get, and I love it! Picking a new tradition tree shouldn't feel like a no-brainer, and there are enough now that I can actually feel like I'm giving something meaningful up by picking another one. The council has something new called Agendas which are empire-wide bonuses that take some time to enact, and different tradition trees (along with ethics, government type, etc.) give you different ones. It remains to be seen how well it works (they take long enough to enact that I only saw a handful in my time playing), but it seems like a decent system.

I didn't take the new origin, so I can't speak to it, though it sounds solid enough. (I have this weird habit of essentially playing the last expansion [or a least a previous one] whenever a new one comes out, hence my Ocean Paradise Angler Aquatics running a MegaCorps this time around. :grin:)

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Those certainly are some of the color choices of all time. :whistle:

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I think this is a good example of the kind of way current VR devices need to go in order to see wider adoption. Can't wait for it to get to the point where it's just a pair of glasses with video and power sent wirelessly from a transmitter on your desk. :smile:

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe results of this could be . . . discordant.

If a certain Cupertino company got involved we could have quite an Apple of Discord on our hands!

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Quoting: denyasisFor me, the debate is less "Do I get value for the price?", and more "Can I afford it?". I don't think I was super clear and wasn't intending to argue that they are over priced (they aren't).

Oh, gotcha! That's totally understandable. For the record I didn't think you were complaining about the value for the cost, I kinda just wanted to gush about how impressed I was with it – but of course if one can't afford the cost in the first place it doesn't matter how good the value is.

Quoting: denyasisI played a bunch of Vanilla Expanded years ago. It was a lot of fun! I might have to try it again!

Yeah, I tend to play with a lot of the "Vanilla Expanded _______" mods, they're pretty great. :smile:

Quoting: PenglingThat's so cool! One of my favourite YouTubers posted a stream-recording of the game a day or so ago, so I'll have to keep an eye out!

Hahah, thanks. I'm pretty new to pixel art but the community's been super helpful and supportive. I'll check out that video, I love watching people's reactions to the various fusions! :grin:

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: PhiladelphusLike, you can flip a fair coin and get 10 heads in a row. It's quite a small probability to happen, but it's technically just as random an outcome as getting 5 heads and 5 tails

Nnnno.

Getting HHHHHHHHHH is as likely as getting HHTHTTTHTH, but there's many more versions of 5 heads 5 tails.

He didn't say just as likely, only just as random.

This. Getting 5 heads and 5 tails is the most likely result, probabilistically. But all results are equally random. But getting 10 heads doesn't feel random, even when it actually is.

And if you have millions of people flipping coins, statistically a non-negligible number of them will get 10 heads…then go online to point out how non-random their results are. :smile:

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: PhiladelphusMostly still Slay the Spire and Pokémon: Infinite Fusion. With the latest monthly sprite pack, some of the sprites I made are now in the game. :grin:

That's awesome! :grin: Which ones, if you don't mind me asking?

Not at all! Let's see, there's Shedinja + Houdour/Houndoom in February, then Magikarp/Yanma, Sandshrew/Aerodactyl, and Drifloon/Ponyta in March. In April (the sprite pack for which should be out pretty soon) I got inspired and did all the Eeveelutions + Aron, Remoraid/Wailmer (two variants with different teeth), and Lickitung/Ariados. Haven't decided my next project yet, I might go back and do Gyarados/Yanma. But it depends on where inspiration strikes. :smile:

Quoting: denyasisRimWorld is an old standby, but it'll run on my laptop. I'm debating buying the DLC. I know it's more mechanics than content (mods can add content easily). But it's a very steep price for all three 🤔

So, my entirely, 100% subjective opinion: I generally think Paradox DLCs are fine (and I have a lot); they're worth the price to me for what they add. The RimWorld DLCs feel, to me personally, like they could be twice as expensive and I'd still be getting a bargain for what they add. I had trouble believing just how much new stuff they each added, I think I've played full games with less content.

Not to say you should get them, everyone has different likes. But boy do they add a lot of stuff.

(And if you like mods, there's a really awesome one called Vanilla Psycasts Expanded that overhauls the sci-fi magic system from Royalty to make it less of a crapshoot and more like an RPG with skill trees for each psionic character! :grin:)

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: GuestThat's it, the Steam survey is definitely skewed against Linux users: out of the ~120 million monthly active users on Steam, 7 (seven) of them commented on gamingonlinux.com lamenting they never, or very rarely, received a survey.
Clearly, this should be a priority for Valve and fixed ASAP!

Haha, I wasn't lamenting it, just making an observation because several others also had. This made me laugh a bunch, so have a Like. :grin:

Yeah, I wasn't lamenting either, just pointing out my experience. I used to care about it more, but over time I've mellowed out. :smile: I almost added an addendum about how humans sometimes find true randomness "less random" than a pseudo-randomness that smooths out weird things like one person getting the survey every month for a year and another not getting it for two years, but didn't have time.

Like, you can flip a fair coin and get 10 heads in a row. It's quite a small probability to happen, but it's technically just as random an outcome as getting 5 heads and 5 tails, or 10 tails. But people tend not to see the extreme cases as random, even if they really did happen randomly. (One problem, of course, is that you can't ever really prove something did happen randomly.)

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