OK, the phrase "insurance commando" piqued my interest, and the rest of the trailer convinced me to download the demo. I'm not sure what I just watched, but I'm definitely curious.

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With all the new mobs added over the years, an overhaul of the spawn egg visuals was definitely due. Differentiating based purely on colors worked when there was, like, no more than 20 to keep track of. (Though probably not for colorblind people, come to think of it. :neutral:)

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The 4.0 update really is a huge one too, and makes you think - why don't they just do Stellaris 2 at this point? Multiple major features of the game have been completely changed (multiple times in some cases too).

Silly, we already had Stellaris 2.0 back in 2018! :tongue: But I, for one, am happy that they're not afraid to massively rework things rather than simply dropping each version after a year or two in favor of ever-incrementing sequel numbers like too many other companies in the games industry. Sequels always lose something in the making (remember how much less CK3 had compared to CK2?), whereas with Stellaris I can continue playing with all the content I've purchased for it rather than having to re-purchase it over and over for each sequel. And while the various reworks have taken some getting used to over the years, in my opinion they've pretty much always been for the best (either in terms of player cognitive load or streamlining performance in my late-game 1,000 star galaxies). From what I've heard of 4.0, it sounds like it'll continue that trend.

Also, while all of the upcoming content sounds interesting, oh boy am I looking forward to BioGenesis and living ships! :woot:

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Stellaris is $9.99.

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That's a shame. I enjoyed "Say No! More" – a short but fun game about being an overtasked intern running around and saying "no" in ridiculously over-the-top ways to the ludicrously hyperbolic demands of your co-workers/managers/bosses/assistant-sub-vice-directors/CEO and maybe, just maybe, that one friend who really needs to hear it for his own good.

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Steam only dropped support for Windows 7 & 8 at the beginning of last year, and they've been EOL for ages.

That's probably what I was thinking of, thanks.

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Isn't Windows 10 end-of-life coming up pretty soon? Or end of Steam support for it, or something? It'll be interesting to see what happens with that. (I'm not expecting a huge influx to Linux or anything, just curious how long people will continue to hold on to it.)

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My first question upon reading that headline was "In what unit system?", so good on 'em for including an FAQ! :grin:

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I can see it all, a future where No true Scotsman arguments around this seal pop out once it turns out that devs forgot current machine translation uses Gen AI, or that their spellchecker and grammar correction comes from, again, AI.

I feel compelled to point out that spellcheck doesn't need or use generative AI, just a dictionary of words to check against.

But otherwise it's an interesting point. The issues people have with Generative AI now are, in some ways, matters of scale; ChatGPT is essentially the autocomplete in your phone scaled up to the size of the (scrapable) Internet and allowed to generate much longer strings of text. No one's particularly worried that the existence of predictive typing on phones or an IDE suggesting a function to use are going to lead to widespread layoffs among companies in the name of lower head count and increased profitability in the way that ChatGPT (or other Generative AI) might*. Fundamentally it's a difference of quantity rather than quality.

All of which unfortunately gets us into the realm of "nuance," something both Internet discussions and the law are famously good at handling. :whistle:

*Whether such profitability increases actually occur remains to be seen, but all it needs for major disruption to lots of people's lives is for the higher-ups to think they will and act accordingly.

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Can't wait to see what comes of this. :)

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