TLDR; check back in a month or 3 and I'll think you'll find most of your issues have been addressed. I did not realise my replay was near never-ending!

Thanks for the feedback, it's good to know what people thinking of the mod's overall direction. Bare with me with this post - some of it will agree, some will disagree. For reference, current version is 2.1, so when I say 2.2, I'll be talking about the upcoming vanilla update.

First of all, I'll stress that the problem with presenting this as a review is that the mod is in constant development. It is only an early beta, so a lot of commentary of its state will quickly become out-of-date. I've made several videos on youtube about the mod, and each one has become quickly obsolete because so much changes. E.g. right now the goal is actually to improve interaction, now most of the mechanics have been at least basically implemented.

The level of interaction will raise significantly over time. I just wanted to get away from the current repeitition of build this, build that. I think vanilla 2.2 is heading in a good direction, and you'll get the planet interaction you're looking for with adapted 2.2 planetary mechanics. This is a hole in the gameplay I've felt from the start myself.

It won't go back to being a game about micromanaging colonies though - the standard colony in this mod will remain autonomous, while the core worlds will become far more interactive. There are multiple reasons for this, the main being that the common colony in this game isn't a vanilla-style colony, and therefore can't be made interactive.

This will change in 2.2 when we get the ability to make decisions on uncolonised planets, meaning we could potentially interactive with this mod's common colonies. It'll be limited though, because in the grand scheme of things, as the central government we care about our largest worlds, not our smallest. Expect a lot more interaction with our homeworld than in vanilla, as it will almost certainly be by far the most important planet in our empires for a long time to come.

"First off, a little bug that I found is that the ship building window keeps popping up, even when I've selected to not EVER be notified again."

You may want to check that - it's not the case. There was a couple of days where it was, but that was fixed quickly, along with options for popup frequency of a couple of other things.

"you cannot specificy if you want a mining world for example"

A colony won't be anything but a mining colony at first, because that's the only reason it would be established, unless it was a particularly desirable world that people actually want to live on. Second, where's the gameplay value in determining whether a world should be a mining world? Mining colonies area dime a dozen in this mod. It would be far more interesting to designate a world as the location of strategic government facilities or something rather than someting generic like mining ;)

AFAIK you cannot significantly increase your research, which means that in essence research has been modded out.

Not sure why you think it has been modded out - there are no pop/colony/system penalties to research, so we don't need to increase it via research stations and science buildings. The old research for science buildings now unlocks research speed bonuses, and the +10% via the education policy isn't insignificant.

The real problem with research is that maybe a fraction of that techs currently have no use, and unfortunately anomoly bonuses are currently removed (unintended, but I haven't fixed that yet for balance reasons - soon I'll scale everything so anomaly deposits are reasonable again).

"Finally, this mod takes away the player's ability to roleplay or just become the species he/she wants to play as. As stated already in the mod description, it does not support Machines or Hive Minds"

I semi agree with this. We've talked about hivemind and machine empire mechanics on discord, and to do them justice required focusing on them specifically - something I don't have time for right now. That said, I otherwise strongly disagree, because I'm offering empire management roleplay here. Some predefined traits, traits and constructin buildings and ships don't give the feeling of ruling and managing an empire, just a playing a 4x. The mod aims to offer an empire building experience.

"But it also forces the player to play as some sort of free market, bureacratic government because any other kind of gameplay would mean that you would have no money."

Vanilla has current, I just renamed it from energy credits to just credits. A currency doesn't indicate the type of economy, it's just a medium for the exchange of goods and services. It's also not free market at all, it just makes a distinction between the central government, and the autonomous nature of development. This doesn't even mean it's the private sector, it could be local government governing industry. I believe I actually mention both in the localisation.

"Take the policies/taxes for example - the only viable option seems to be to set the spending policies to medium and the tax rate around 50 to 70%."

Not really, there's a pretty wide range you can set it at. 70% likely won't be great for your economy, and it is possible to run an empire with maxed out services. When I allow government intervention back in, it'll be possible to run taxes at 100% and have state governence of the means of production.

"You can not even hope to beat the marauders, not when you only have just gotten to ion thrusters."

Actually, to date I'd say the mod makes it too easy to construct a large military.

"In addition, because of the nature of the mod, anomalies that give bonuses to planets or just reasearch become useless."

Not the nature of the mod, just a lack of completion. Not happy with it, and I've done enough now where it's high on the list of priorities to fix this.

"making their slaves mine and manufacture for them? I understand that it might sound like a dumb scenario but in vanilla Stellaris"


Yes it is :P Why use slaves rather than robotics? I'll still keep slaves in, I just think it's not something advanced civs are going to care about.

"But in this mod, energy is really the only resource and that sort of makes everything one dimensional."

For those looking for an RTS type economy, I'd agree it seems that way. But there are 3 categories of natural resources and 14 industries, all of which are resources in their own right. And in 2.2, this will only increase as industries rather than just supplying a value to each other, will produce actual goods. Even then, we won't tend to manage these ourselves, as this it not really our role as the central government. Perhaps we subsidise an industry by purchasing the supplies they require from the market, but generally, economy will still be relatively autonomous.

HOWEVER, soon I'll be reworking the industry screen to allow manual intervention, so each industry will be able to be directly controlled. It still won't support the construction of imbalanced economies as unsustainable industry will collapse, it's to allow people to set their tax rate to 100% and control the economy centrally.

"owever, I find myself unable to play any more of this mod until I get some of that interactive and personalisation aspect back."

This is fair enough, and I feel this myself. But my idea of roleplaying and interaction is going to be different from many, as it isn't going to offer vanilla style interaction. Interaction will still tend to remain consistent with acting as a central government, and personality will come in terms of policies, laws, culture, politics etc. I do think the implementation of 2.2's planet mechanics will help a great deal, getting pops back, interacting with major colonies etc.

"the lack of customization for my species itself, with traits and traditions"

This is one of those areas where my view on roleplaying differs from others. I value roleplay in action, not predefined choices, so instead of selecting my species to be naturally good at science before the game even begins, I will steer them on that path myself. I'm not a fan of the choice of traditions, because it actually harms roleplay - we can make choices that are actually inconsistent with how we play the game. I intend to add traditions that are the result of our gameplay - if we tend to do something, we'll get better at it.

" But if playing Stellaris as a simulation means that I can't customize my species"

I agree the mod is a little heavy on automation and light on interaction a the moment, but again, for me, roleplaying isn't about customising your species, but guiding them along the path that is consistent with your view of them. PDX could remove traits and civs altogether, and as long as the gameplay allows me to play in the way the fits my species, I lose nothing.

That said, I don't want to keep piling on work for myself, so I'd like to try and get vanilla's traits and traditions more compatible with the mod. Likely, this will mean moving some mechanics from population to pops.

I do agree that the mod's systems do favour what I expect to be fairly typical of an advanced species though. The stereotypical machine empire and hivemind need to operate quite differently, but that's for another time.

Originally posted by ButtJunkie:

TLDR; check back in a month or 3 and I'll think you'll find most of your issues have been addressed. I did not realise my replay was near never-ending!

Thanks for the feedback, it's good to know what people thinking of the mod's overall direction. Bare with me with this post - some of it will agree, some will disagree. For reference, current version is 2.1, so when I say 2.2, I'll be talking about the upcoming vanilla update.

First of all, I'll stress that the problem with presenting this as a review is that the mod is in constant development. It is only an early beta, so a lot of commentary of its state will quickly become out-of-date. I've made several videos on youtube about the mod, and each one has become quickly obsolete because so much changes. E.g. right now the goal is actually to improve interaction, now most of the mechanics have been at least basically implemented.

The level of interaction will raise significantly over time. I just wanted to get away from the current repeitition of build this, build that. I think vanilla 2.2 is heading in a good direction, and you'll get the planet interaction you're looking for with adapted 2.2 planetary mechanics. This is a hole in the gameplay I've felt from the start myself.

It won't go back to being a game about micromanaging colonies though - the standard colony in this mod will remain autonomous, while the core worlds will become far more interactive. There are multiple reasons for this, the main being that the common colony in this game isn't a vanilla-style colony, and therefore can't be made interactive.

This will change in 2.2 when we get the ability to make decisions on uncolonised planets, meaning we could potentially interactive with this mod's common colonies. It'll be limited though, because in the grand scheme of things, as the central government we care about our largest worlds, not our smallest. Expect a lot more interaction with our homeworld than in vanilla, as it will almost certainly be by far the most important planet in our empires for a long time to come.

"First off, a little bug that I found is that the ship building window keeps popping up, even when I've selected to not EVER be notified again."

You may want to check that - it's not the case. There was a couple of days where it was, but that was fixed quickly, along with options for popup frequency of a couple of other things.

"you cannot specificy if you want a mining world for example"

A colony won't be anything but a mining colony at first, because that's the only reason it would be established, unless it was a particularly desirable world that people actually want to live on. Second, where's the gameplay value in determining whether a world should be a mining world? Mining colonies area dime a dozen in this mod. It would be far more interesting to designate a world as the location of strategic government facilities or something rather than someting generic like mining ;)

AFAIK you cannot significantly increase your research, which means that in essence research has been modded out.

Not sure why you think it has been modded out - there are no pop/colony/system penalties to research, so we don't need to increase it via research stations and science buildings. The old research for science buildings now unlocks research speed bonuses, and the +10% via the education policy isn't insignificant.

The real problem with research is that maybe a fraction of that techs currently have no use, and unfortunately anomoly bonuses are currently removed (unintended, but I haven't fixed that yet for balance reasons - soon I'll scale everything so anomaly deposits are reasonable again).

"Finally, this mod takes away the player's ability to roleplay or just become the species he/she wants to play as. As stated already in the mod description, it does not support Machines or Hive Minds"

I semi agree with this. We've talked about hivemind and machine empire mechanics on discord, and to do them justice required focusing on them specifically - something I don't have time for right now. That said, I otherwise strongly disagree, because I'm offering empire management roleplay here. Some predefined traits, traits and constructin buildings and ships don't give the feeling of ruling and managing an empire, just a playing a 4x. The mod aims to offer an empire building experience.

"But it also forces the player to play as some sort of free market, bureacratic government because any other kind of gameplay would mean that you would have no money."

Vanilla has current, I just renamed it from energy credits to just credits. A currency doesn't indicate the type of economy, it's just a medium for the exchange of goods and services. It's also not free market at all, it just makes a distinction between the central government, and the autonomous nature of development. This doesn't even mean it's the private sector, it could be local government governing industry. I believe I actually mention both in the localisation.

"Take the policies/taxes for example - the only viable option seems to be to set the spending policies to medium and the tax rate around 50 to 70%."

Not really, there's a pretty wide range you can set it at. 70% likely won't be great for your economy, and it is possible to run an empire with maxed out services. When I allow government intervention back in, it'll be possible to run taxes at 100% and have state governence of the means of production.

"You can not even hope to beat the marauders, not when you only have just gotten to ion thrusters."

Actually, to date I'd say the mod makes it too easy to construct a large military.

"In addition, because of the nature of the mod, anomalies that give bonuses to planets or just reasearch become useless."

Not the nature of the mod, just a lack of completion. Not happy with it, and I've done enough now where it's high on the list of priorities to fix this.

"making their slaves mine and manufacture for them? I understand that it might sound like a dumb scenario but in vanilla Stellaris"


Yes it is :P Why use slaves rather than robotics? I'll still keep slaves in, I just think it's not something advanced civs are going to care about.

"But in this mod, energy is really the only resource and that sort of makes everything one dimensional."

For those looking for an RTS type economy, I'd agree it seems that way. But there are 3 categories of natural resources and 14 industries, all of which are resources in their own right. And in 2.2, this will only increase as industries rather than just supplying a value to each other, will produce actual goods. Even then, we won't tend to manage these ourselves, as this it not really our role as the central government. Perhaps we subsidise an industry by purchasing the supplies they require from the market, but generally, economy will still be relatively autonomous.

HOWEVER, soon I'll be reworking the industry screen to allow manual intervention, so each industry will be able to be directly controlled. It still won't support the construction of imbalanced economies as unsustainable industry will collapse, it's to allow people to set their tax rate to 100% and control the economy centrally.

"owever, I find myself unable to play any more of this mod until I get some of that interactive and personalisation aspect back."

This is fair enough, and I feel this myself. But my idea of roleplaying and interaction is going to be different from many, as it isn't going to offer vanilla style interaction. Interaction will still tend to remain consistent with acting as a central government, and personality will come in terms of policies, laws, culture, politics etc. I do think the implementation of 2.2's planet mechanics will help a great deal, getting pops back, interacting with major colonies etc.

"the lack of customization for my species itself, with traits and traditions"

This is one of those areas where my view on roleplaying differs from others. I value roleplay in action, not predefined choices, so instead of selecting my species to be naturally good at science before the game even begins, I will steer them on that path myself. I'm not a fan of the choice of traditions, because it actually harms roleplay - we can make choices that are actually inconsistent with how we play the game. I intend to add traditions that are the result of our gameplay - if we tend to do something, we'll get better at it.

" But if playing Stellaris as a simulation means that I can't customize my species"

I agree the mod is a little heavy on automation and light on interaction a the moment, but again, for me, roleplaying isn't about customising your species, but guiding them along the path that is consistent with your view of them. PDX could remove traits and civs altogether, and as long as the gameplay allows me to play in the way the fits my species, I lose nothing.

That said, I don't want to keep piling on work for myself, so I'd like to try and get vanilla's traits and traditions more compatible with the mod. Likely, this will mean moving some mechanics from population to pops.

I do agree that the mod's systems do favour what I expect to be fairly typical of an advanced species though. The stereotypical machine empire and hivemind need to operate quite differently, but that's for another time.

I totally agree with your sense of roleplaying.