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Stellaris - Paradox Dev Studios new sci-fi grand strategy game

Stellaris Dev Diary #28 - The Project Lead speaks

Wormhole:
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Blackhole:

Fun fact: Stellaris was originally planned to have a locked camera like our other games, so that it felt more like a 2D map. The rotatable camera was implemented as a test because we had a hunch it might work better and it turned out so good that we kept it. Meaning that in Stellaris, in comparison to our other games, you can always rotate the camera by holding the right mouse button.
 
That planet nearest to the black hole that's being broken up by it is a really nice touch. Did not expect the galaxy generation to be that detailed.
 
That planet nearest to the black hole that's being broken up by it is a really nice touch. Did not expect the galaxy generation to be that detailed.

Unless it was some kind of black hole weapon it doesn't make a ton of sense, imo. You can have a stable orbit around a black hole as you can a star or any other large mass object, a planet sufficiently close to get partially sucked in wouldn't have survived very long in cosmic terms. If a star collapsed into a black hole, the orbit of planets around it would not alter because the hole has the same mass as it did when it was a star.
 
I suppose that's true. I still think it's neat from a visual standpoint however and I'm fine with them ignoring realism for the sake of style in this case.
Who knows, maybe it will degrade further over time?
 
Unless it was some kind of black hole weapon it doesn't make a ton of sense, imo. You can have a stable orbit around a black hole as you can a star or any other large mass object, a planet sufficiently close to get partially sucked in wouldn't have survived very long in cosmic terms. If a star collapsed into a black hole, the orbit of planets around it would not alter because the hole has the same mass as it did when it was a star.

But it looks cool.
 
Unless it was some kind of black hole weapon it doesn't make a ton of sense, imo. You can have a stable orbit around a black hole as you can a star or any other large mass object, a planet sufficiently close to get partially sucked in wouldn't have survived very long in cosmic terms. If a star collapsed into a black hole, the orbit of planets around it would not alter because the hole has the same mass as it did when it was a star.

"In cosmic terms" is the key phrase there, imo. With FTL travel, no reason you couldn't stumble across a system where the planet is the process of being sucked in.
 
Unless it was some kind of black hole weapon it doesn't make a ton of sense, imo. You can have a stable orbit around a black hole as you can a star or any other large mass object, a planet sufficiently close to get partially sucked in wouldn't have survived very long in cosmic terms. If a star collapsed into a black hole, the orbit of planets around it would not alter because the hole has the same mass as it did when it was a star.

With the whole "ripping holes in reality" event they've been talking about, a black hole weapon doesn't seem out of the cards.
 
It's possible the event that formed the black home either destabilized the orbit and tidal forces are tearing apart, or the even itself shattered it
 
It's possible the event that formed the black home either destabilized the orbit and tidal forces are tearing apart, or the even itself shattered it

Maybe the planet was once habitable, and the species that lived there ended up blowing up their planet and turning their star into a black hole.
 
CfNLG9eW4AEpa37.jpg:large


Aww yeah. I bet we can develope more advanced ai ships too, which brings me one step closer to recreating something similair to the culture.
 
The Blorg Friends series has really sold me on this game, it looks incredible! The #5 video is hysterical, love how everyone hates them because they are disgusting fungus. And that one alien race who "forbids their people from making friends". Those guys hosting the series are great at putting a narrative against the gameplay.
 
The Blorg Friends series has really sold me on this game, it looks incredible! The #5 video is hysterical, love how everyone hates them because they are disgusting fungus. And that one alien race who "forbids their people from making friends". Those guys hosting the series are great at putting a narrative against the gameplay.

3apbAYo.gif
 
The Blorg Friends series has really sold me on this game, it looks incredible! The #5 video is hysterical, love how everyone hates them because they are disgusting fungus. And that one alien race who "forbids their people from making friends". Those guys hosting the series are great at putting a narrative against the gameplay.

I agree. I love their games but one of the other reasons why I always tune in for Paradox's livestreams is because the people doing the livestreams are genuinely fun to listen to.
 
Is anyone putting together a music playlist in anticipation of May 9th? The ingame music sounds great, and I love the style they chose, but sometimes I might just want something different. Mostly I want to play this on repeat I think.
 

Hmm, shouldn't both the worm- and black holes be sphere-shaped?

The Blorg Friends series has really sold me on this game, it looks incredible! The #5 video is hysterical, love how everyone hates them because they are disgusting fungus. And that one alien race who "forbids their people from making friends". Those guys hosting the series are great at putting a narrative against the gameplay.

Agree, this will be the first Paradox game I buy to play immediately. I am thinking a lot about how to set up my first game. Will play as humans and start in Sol-system for sure. But I hope it is possible to extend the phase up to First Contact a bit more than what I have seen, like spending a longer time on scientific discovery and finding strange artefacts near neighbour stars. I want First Contact to feel more special and my feeling is that it would be more realistic not to have it happen so quickly, but who knows? I also hope it will be possible to develop the different means of FTL travel in late game. Such as being able to utilize worm holes despite having spent the majority with e.g. warp. Or if one could trade such knowledge with other empires.
 
May 9th is correct.

Martin Anward @Martin_Anward

Today's @StellarisGame fact: You can build an alien zoo. It's quite delightful.
 
The black hole maybe but for the worm hole it is how it is usually represented in science (as a pathway between two points in space):
Yeah, but those diagrams are abstractions. They condensed the sphere of the wormhole into a disc because they use the height dimension to visualise the short-cut.


Do we know if we can mod the alien race images? I'm kind of desperate for the Star Trek mod for this...
 
The black hole maybe but for the worm hole it is how it is usually represented in science (as a pathway between two points in space):

Yeah I know they have used that well-recognized idea of wormholes, but it is not accurate in three space dimensions. Interstellar have more realistic wormholes with "mouths" being spheres. Not a big deal since the picture you linked is what most think of. Spheres could be saved for modders to work on, although I think most imagine black holes as spheres.
 
Yeah, but those diagrams are abstractions. They condensed the sphere of the wormhole into a disc because they use the height dimension to visualise the short-cut.

Do we know if we can mod the alien race images? I'm kind of desperate for the Star Trek mod for this...

Yeah I know they have used that well-recognized idea of wormholes, but it is not accurate in three space dimensions. Interstellar have more realistic wormholes with "mouths" being spheres. Not a big deal since the picture you linked is what most think of. Spheres could be saved for modders to work on, although I think most imagine black holes as spheres.

Oh yeah! I am not saying that is exactly how they look in reality, but I think they are going more for the abstraction in this case considering also that Stellaris is played on a 2D plane. :P
 
Oh yeah! I am not saying that is exactly how they look in reality, but I think they are going more for the abstraction in this case considering also that Stellaris is played on a 2D plane. :P

No I thought they displayed in one of their vids that the camera can zoom and spin around, so it should be 3D? Maybe restricted 3D, as in e.g. the new Xcom-games? If I remember the Paradox guy who sits on the right in the videos thought they had a star system within their boundaries and then the one who plays remarked that was not the case because it just looks like that from their perspective and that the map is 3D?

Edit: Yeah you might be right that the gameplay is restricted to a plane as in Xcom.
 
No I thought they displayed in one of their vids that the camera can zoom and spin around, so it should be 3D? Maybe restricted 3D, as in e.g. the new Xcom-games? If I remember the Paradox guy who sits on the right in the videos thought they had a star system within their boundaries and then the one who plays remarked that was not the case because it just looks like that from their perspective and that the map is 3D?

Edit: Yeah you might be right that the gameplay is restricted to a plane as in Xcom.

Right, I meant that while the map and everything is in 3D, the representation of space in gameplay is on a flat plane. Which could be a reason why they decided to go with that kind of look. Though I would prefer for the black hole if they went with the one that NASA has on their site.
Way cooler.
 
Right, I meant that while the map and everything is in 3D, the representation of space in gameplay is on a flat plane. Which could be a reason why they decided to go with that kind of look. Though I would prefer for the black hole if they went with the one that NASA has on their site.
Way cooler.

I discovered that the same discussion has taken place on the Paradox forums linked above. Remains to be seen if the devs will adjust anything or leave it for future updates/mods. The Nasa-pic you posted would be ok for binary or multi-star systems, but they do not seem to be in the game (which is perhaps more unrealistic than the occurence of black holes atm). For "lone" black holes I'd prefer some simplified version of the one in Interstellar
dnews-files-2014-10-binterstellar-black-hole-670x440-141029-jpg.jpg

Or perhaps simpler this one from Nasa:
bhlens_riazuelo_960.jpg

For wormholes I'd dream of (even much simplified) versions of the Interstellar one, say with a few templates of images (based e.g. on star color in the system you travel to/from) wrapped around spheres with some distortion look near edges:
Oliver_JamesFig11.png
 
Agree, this will be the first Paradox game I buy to play immediately. I am thinking a lot about how to set up my first game. Will play as humans and start in Sol-system for sure. But I hope it is possible to extend the phase up to First Contact a bit more than what I have seen, like spending a longer time on scientific discovery and finding strange artefacts near neighbour stars. I want First Contact to feel more special and my feeling is that it would be more realistic not to have it happen so quickly, but who knows? I also hope it will be possible to develop the different means of FTL travel in late game. Such as being able to utilize worm holes despite having spent the majority with e.g. warp. Or if one could trade such knowledge with other empires.

When you're setting up your game if you choose a large galaxy with a small number of AI players it should take quite a lot longer before "first contact". The Blorg streams are being done on a relatively small galaxy, presumably to allow them to do a full game run-through quite a bit more quickly.

On the FTL side of things, they have talked about being able to research the other types later on into the game (and possibly even FTL types not included in the initial three, if I'm not mistaken), so they've got you covered on that front too.
 
When you're setting up your game if you choose a large galaxy with a small number of AI players it should take quite a lot longer before "first contact". The Blorg streams are being done on a relatively small galaxy, presumably to allow them to do a full game run-through quite a bit more quickly.

On the FTL side of things, they have talked about being able to research the other types later on into the game (and possibly even FTL types not included in the initial three, if I'm not mistaken), so they've got you covered on that front too.

Yeah, you'll potentially be able to branch out into the other FTL types in the mid-late game, presumably by salvaging (or a REALLY lucky draw), and we've seen a 4th type of FTL (the Jump drive) as one of the late-game disaster techs. Apparently, ripping a hole in the universe to move ships around can have side effects. Who knew?

And man, those Fallen Empires are not fucking around, lol.
 
And man, those Fallen Empires are not fucking around, lol.
They most certainly are not!
Martin Anward @Martin_Anward

I've seen quite a few comments about Fallen Empires not being quite so fallen. Here's the thing: They are, compared to what they were.

Imagine that the modern-day US loses all states but New York. Now imagine that a bronze age country encounters them.

Sure, it's not much compared to the US that was, but I imagine those stealth fighters still look mighty impressive next to bronze spears.
 
They most certainly are not!

Heh. Nice.

So, here's a question. So far all the fleets we've seen are pretty much single-design, or single designs for each class. I wonder if there's any benefit to deliberately mixing things up, like having long and short range specialized ships, that sort of thing.
 
When you're setting up your game if you choose a large galaxy with a small number of AI players it should take quite a lot longer before "first contact". The Blorg streams are being done on a relatively small galaxy, presumably to allow them to do a full game run-through quite a bit more quickly.

On the FTL side of things, they have talked about being able to research the other types later on into the game (and possibly even FTL types not included in the initial three, if I'm not mistaken), so they've got you covered on that front too.

Perfect, thanks for the info!

Yeah, you'll potentially be able to branch out into the other FTL types in the mid-late game, presumably by salvaging (or a REALLY lucky draw), and we've seen a 4th type of FTL (the Jump drive) as one of the late-game disaster techs. Apparently, ripping a hole in the universe to move ships around can have side effects. Who knew?

And man, those Fallen Empires are not fucking around, lol.

Interesting stuff, the Fallen Empires sound like the ancients in Stargate.

A ringworld.
0EtlxKd.png

Oh yeah! And, they are considering reworking the wormholes as well if they have the time. It is really cool what Paradox are doing here, even if it is perhaps a relatively small fix they get well-deserved praise for redoing the black hole-design. I wish Frontier did more things like this with Elite: Dangerous.
 
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