Stellaris

[Medusa Cascade]

It'd be fun to have an MMOC multiplayer game but time zones cause problems

[Morae]

Not according to Paradox:

"It will be released sometime during the afternoon/evening CEST on the 9th (early morning in the US, late evening in Asia/Oceania)."

They're going to be doing a release stream on their Twitch channel that's probably going to be a few hours, so a midnight release would be a bit too stressful on the staff.

Apparently this in stellaris forum on steam. This appears to have been posted a few hours ago. So... no midnight. I wanted to play, but I need to wait tomorow evening then... :C

Stellaris' release time

Hi all,

Stellaris is scheduled to be available to play on Steam around -
9th May, 18:00 CEST

If you translate this to your timezone, you will have your release time!

As already stated in a previous thread, there will be no pre-load for Stellaris.

Cheers

[Deleted]

They'll start a twitch stream at around mid day CEST, and then the game will be released hopefully sometime 5-6 hours after the stream has started.

Paradox doesn't have control of the button to release it on Steam, so its in Valves hands on whether its late or not.

[Nerraw]

1800 CEST is Noon ET and 9am Pacific.

[Deleted]

Today is the day!!! Get hype!!!

[Tekkommo]

Interested in this game but going to wait for reactions.

Watched some streams yesterday, but this game isn't exciting to watch someone else play.

[Simulacrum]

Interested in this game but going to wait for reactions.

Watched some streams yesterday, but this game isn't exciting to watch someone else play.

Yeah, a lot of 4X games are boring to watch play unless you do so for a specific purpose. I like to watch people play in lieu of going through whatever game's tutorial, or to see what the hardcore min-maxers have figured out the most optimal way to achieve a specific goal is, but other than that it's not very riveting.

Really looking forward to this game, though, but I didn't preorder it either. Always choose to wait for user feedback for games these days. Even if streamers and reviewers give games positive reviews, that isn't always representative since they don't always get the full release experience. Though that's mainly the case for online games, I still figure better safe than sorry.

[falagar112]

https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

they are streaming right now until release

[Morae]

I hope that clustering can be altered with a mod. When these ships fight they just gather into a cluster of mess. Can't even see what is happening. They have space ships, but they seem to fight with swords.

[Sassafrass]

How in-depth is this compared to HoI 3?

[Deleted]

How in-depth is this compared to HoI 3?

Way less deep.

I'm enjoying myself a lot, but I do have the feelings it's a bit 'barebones' at the moment in comparison to other paradox titles (which of course have many dlc's released). I'll still have lots of fun with it, but I think after a couple of games I'll wait for some DLC.

[Aoewy]

63/100 too much space -IGN

Joke aside, the early critic seems good except from IGN, I'll check out some youtube reviews, if available atm, from those who I know have the same taste as me after work, but it seems like a game I might pick up even before any kind of sale.

Can you guys give your feedback if you played it, how it compare from others Paradox title like CK2 or EUIV, thank.

[Milchshake]

63/100 too much space -IGN

Joke aside, the early critic seems good except from IGN, I'll check out some youtube reviews, if available atm, from those who I know have the same taste as me after work, but it seems like a game I might pick up even before any kind of sale.

Can you guys give your feedback if you played it, how it compare from others Paradox title like CK2 or EUIV, thank.

Any feedback in relation to Gal Civ 3 would be useful, as it was the latest big space 4E release. Personally it was a bit of a disappointment, so i'm a bit cautious to jump on this one.

[Morae]

The game at least starts a bit slow... that or I didn't just understand how it worked. At first I was suffering severe lack of resources to do anything. Then I realized I could just build space stations at unihabited systems and start collecting resources. Suddenly I could build a fleet and other stuff. A bit of diplomacy has aquired me star maps from other races and I see large portion of the galaxy. I'm still expanding and I believe I'm still right at the start.

Anyway... I believe I will at least get my money's worth of enjoyment from this game. I don't care what IGN says or anyone else. I looked at the videos and other stuff and made my own decision whether this game was worth the money. At least right now I wouldn't give such a low rating as IGN gave. Perhaps 75? Maybe 80. It is a fine game so far, but it is not exactly a YOU MUST BUY THIS GAME. It is slow... or perhaps it is because I play on normal speed. :I

[Aoewy]

Yeah thank for your pov, as of IGN there are already lot of tinfoil hat theory on the internet as why they are 20 pts lower than the average critics, and IGN Italy is 93.. I'm not sure i understand the matter as I missed this entire drama it would seems, but it has something to do about Paradox endorsing Totalbiscuit on something, and IGN reviewers were pissed, so it could have affected their review. As I said, tinfoil hat controversy theory ^^

Any case, I think I'll buy it, I know I'll spend more hours than needed to get my money worth, and maybe more.

[Nazrark]

The start is going to be slow. Took me about an hour to have my first colony ship. I got lucky playing a 1k star map. I ended up with Peaceful Traders and Federation Builders as my neighbours in my arm. I also have 1 Gaia and 3 Continental worlds in the immediate area.

So I'm basically boxed in and need a higher Warp Drive to continue exploring or ask a neighbour for Civilian Ship Access. I know at least one of them is a head start AI.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh and both my neighbours use Arctic worlds. So I'll need one of their species in order to colonize those worlds.

[Ravenblade]

IGN apparently values Civ:BE higher than Stellaris.

[Gorsameth]

IGN apparently values Civ:BE higher than Stellaris.

Paradox didnt pay them so they lowered the score.
That or they purposefully gave them a lower score knowing that the game would be popular and it would generate a lot of hits, but the developer is not big enough to punish them for it

[Nerraw]

IGN apparently values Civ:BE higher than Stellaris.

IGN sucks. They also gave Heroes of the Storm 6.5 for not having comeback mechanics. The game has nothing BUT comeback mechanics!

On the topic of Stellaris, I accidentally played until 3 in the morning. This game is going to suck what little life I have left away from me.

[Simulacrum]

Played like 5 hours last night before I realized I had to get some sleep. Obviously, I liked it; not many games get me to sit down for that long anymore.

Start is a bit slow, though. I knew what I needed to do at the start: Research colonization and survey as many planets as possible, searching for minerals, and then build as strong a mineral-generating economy base as possible, since you need minerals to do almost everything, but it still took a while. Especially as resources are random, and colonozation initially takes like 70 months to research, followed by another year just to build the first colony ship, which you probably can't afford to build right away since it costs 350 minerals and that's minerals you could instead spent constructing almost 5 of the initially very important mining stations.

There isn't really much to do with your military initially either, which means the whole first everal hours is just building up your economy, with maybe some minor fights with those random aliens you encounter. Though at least those aliens have fairly cool lore and such behind them, and give you access to some neat technologies when you salvage their destroyed fleets.

I really like a lot of the flavor of the game. Like how the aforementioned aliens have some cool sci-fi stories to them. Some are peaceful, gas-eating 'space amoeba', some are extremely hostile living crystals, some are energy beings as old as the universe who by pure chance somehow developed intelligence, etc. It's pretty cool, though I suppose after a few playthroughs it may get a bit mundane as you see them all.

Also like how we can interact with the pre-spacefaring civilizations we sometimes find on planets. You can construct an observation post above thier planet, from which you can either simply observe them for some research points, aggressively observe them for more resource points (and presumably some negative modifiers), elevate them to a space-age civilization at a cost (if you have the appropriate policies), or even go full insidious alien conquerors and breed genetic hybrids with which to inflitrate their entire civilization in order to facilitate your 'peaceful takeover'. Felt pretty weird to do that to a bunch of fungus-people as generic humans... they weren't very happy about it either, actually, which seemed a bit inconsistent with the flavor text. You can also enslave them after doing this, though I didn't have slavery enabled.

There are some cool event chains as well, such as investigating extinction-level-events on other planets, or abducting different species for your fancy interstellar zoo, or searching for artifacts from (presumably lon-gone) progenitor species with their own lore. I got an event chain to uncover forgotten artifacts from a 500,000 old civilization populated by giant space-faring creatures measuring in the hundreds of meters whose space ships only held 1-3 of them at most, and whose city-sized ruins were usually the habitats of single individuals.

I didn't get a chance to mess around with growing my empire beyond 3-4 planets, or get very far into the tech tree. I actually managed to get myself wiped out by a neighbouring faction of 'fanatical purifiers', whom I forgot were there as I sent my entire fleet up against some angry crystal aliens, losing all but 1 of my ships, after which my neighbours promptly attacked and conquered all my planets (except the capital, but by then all was lost and it was time to go to bed anyway) faster than my ONE spaceport could build ships to fight them off with.

If I had to complain about something, it'd be that the species and empire customization is pretty underwhelming. Only 4 species customization choices, most of which are pretty insignificant? And the government differences at least on the surface seem very minor. As do the ethical aligments, though at least there the fanatical choices sometimes have nice, significant effects. My shallow understanding of it may mean I don't fully grasp all the consequences of these choices, though. Presumably, many of the choices available in-game depend on your particular ethics / government / species traits.

On the upside to that, though, the game seems very moddable. I already saw a bunch of cosmetic mods on the workship, particularly one that added WH40K customization options to leaders and names and such, which is pretty cool. If we can mod in the option to make the different species and civilizations more distinct than it seems they can be now that would be pretty great.

I could go on for a while more, but now my lunch break is over. Suffice to say, it seems pretty good so far, and looks like it'll only get better. Only way I think it could end up sucking was if the end-game was trash.