Stellaris

[Geezer]

What is the difference between exploring a system and surveying a system? I always choose survey, since that is what I am used to from prior versions.
...

Exploring a system just allows combat ships to be able to go to the system but does not reveal any details about the system.  Essentially you can't explore with combat ships as you could in previous versions.  Survey works as it did pre 2.0.  At least that is my understanding.

Haven't played enough yet to have any thoughts on consumer goods.

[mikeck]

What is the difference between exploring a system and surveying a system? I always choose survey, since that is what I am used to from prior versions.

I have a pretty modest sized empire now with 5 colonized worlds in three sectors. My energy and mineral income is generally acceptable, but the mineral income fluctuates at times due to demand for consumer goods. I'm not sure what drives this demand or what I can do to impact it...I presume the severity of the demand, or even its existence has to do with my racial or governmental choices when creating the civilization...thoughts?

I choose "explore" if I'm only trying to find which systems have habitable planets. I go to all my neighboring systems, explore and then go back and survey the ones with habitable planets that I will want to colonize

[solops]

So, in 2.0 does slow development and other changes result in getting crushed by the waves of alien threats and ancient civs? Or do the starlanes make the threats trivial?

[OJsDad]

Per a Reddit thread.  I havent tried it yet, but makes sence

The point is only science ships can explore and until a system is explored, no other ship can go there. So if you want your military fleet to travel somewhere, you need your science ship to scout ahead.

[mikeck]

So, in 2.0 does slow development and other changes result in getting crushed by the waves of alien threats and ancient civs? Or do the starlanes make the threats trivial?

It does if you leave the events as-is. BUT, in the game setup there is an option to push back the arrival of mid game and late game threats

[Huw the Poo]

The amount of time it takes for ships to travel from one part of your empire to another is really getting on my tits.

There are some positives though.  I quite like the fleet manager - it's very handy to be able to just click "reinforce" and have all your shipyards spring into action.  That's a great time saver.  However, be aware that if you have upgraded designs they won't count as being part of a fleet in the fleet manager, so an innocent click of the reinforce button could order a whole fleet's-worth of ships!

I seem to be terraforming a lot sooner than I have in previous games, although it's been a year since I last played so maybe I'm not remembering clearly.  Perhaps I got lucky with the research goals.  I like the way factions now work too, it makes a lot more sense and doesn't feel like constant firefighting.

Is anyone playing, or have played, as a xenophobic race before?  I'm a bit concerned; my people are divided into two factions, neither of whom want anything to do with other races at all (not to mention the opinion hit I get for being xenophobic in the first place).  Isn't this going to really harm my chances of winning?  It doesn't look like I'll ever be able to join an alliance.

[Jarhead0331]

The amount of time it takes for ships to travel from one part of your empire to another is really getting on my tits.

There are some positives though.  I quite like the fleet manager - it's very handy to be able to just click "reinforce" and have all your shipyards spring into action.  That's a great time saver.  However, be aware that if you have upgraded designs they won't count as being part of a fleet in the fleet manager, so an innocent click of the reinforce button could order a whole fleet's-worth of ships!

I seem to be terraforming a lot sooner than I have in previous games, although it's been a year since I last played so maybe I'm not remembering clearly.  Perhaps I got lucky with the research goals.  I like the way factions now work too, it makes a lot more sense and doesn't feel like constant firefighting.

Is anyone playing, or have played, as a xenophobic race before?  I'm a bit concerned; my people are divided into two factions, neither of whom want anything to do with other races at all (not to mention the opinion hit I get for being xenophobic in the first place).  Isn't this going to really harm my chances of winning?  It doesn't look like I'll ever be able to join an alliance.

So you're playing it now? Didn't you say before that it was so terrible you didn't think you would ever install it again? I'm glad you decided to give it another shot!

[Huw the Poo]

So you're playing it now? Didn't you say before that it was so terrible you didn't think you would ever install it again? I'm glad you decided to give it another shot!

I did say that, yes!  However, to my dismay the last holdout in my gaming group decided to buy it last Friday and cheerfully pointed out that it has multiplayer.  So now, having been outvoted three-to-one regarding what we'll play next weekend, I'm playing a quick single player game to get accustomed to all the changes in 2.0.  Someone's going to have to teach the fools how to play, after all.  ;D

[OJsDad]

What is the difference between exploring a system and surveying a system? I always choose survey, since that is what I am used to from prior versions.

I have a pretty modest sized empire now with 5 colonized worlds in three sectors. My energy and mineral income is generally acceptable, but the mineral income fluctuates at times due to demand for consumer goods. I'm not sure what drives this demand or what I can do to impact it...I presume the severity of the demand, or even its existence has to do with my racial or governmental choices when creating the civilization...thoughts?

I choose "explore" if I'm only trying to find which systems have habitable planets. I go to all my neighboring systems, explore and then go back and survey the ones with habitable planets that I will want to colonize

I did some quick testing with Explore.  Non science ships cannot move to or through a system that has not been visited by a science ship. Also, if you give a science ship an order to move to another system, an it passes through a system(s) that have not been visited by a science ship previously, then it is considered explored.  Thus, you don't have to give an order to explore every system.  Also, as the science ship passes through a system, you'll see if there are any planets there or not.

[OJsDad]

There are some positives though.  I quite like the fleet manager - it's very handy to be able to just click "reinforce" and have all your shipyards spring into action.  That's a great time saver.  However, be aware that if you have upgraded designs they won't count as being part of a fleet in the fleet manager, so an innocent click of the reinforce button could order a whole fleet's-worth of ships!

I've played a little with the fleet manager.  Like Huw points out, you can use it to add more ships to a flee with the reinforce option.  You can also do this by clicking on the fleet it self.  There is a reinforce button there also.

One thing I still don't like about Stellaris.  I start a new game with a basic corvette design with mass driver and red laser.  I deside to add another corvette design with missiles.  But when you look at the fleet, you have an upgrade option.  If you use it, all ships are upgraded to the missile version.  Kind of frustrating. 

[OJsDad]

So you're playing it now? Didn't you say before that it was so terrible you didn't think you would ever install it again? I'm glad you decided to give it another shot!

I did say that, yes!  However, to my dismay the last holdout in my gaming group decided to buy it last Friday and cheerfully pointed out that it has multiplayer.  So now, having been outvoted three-to-one regarding what we'll play next weekend, I'm playing a quick single player game to get accustomed to all the changes in 2.0.  Someone's going to have to teach the fools how to play, after all.  ;D

:DD

[JudgeDredd]

There are some positives though.  I quite like the fleet manager - it's very handy to be able to just click "reinforce" and have all your shipyards spring into action.  That's a great time saver.  However, be aware that if you have upgraded designs they won't count as being part of a fleet in the fleet manager, so an innocent click of the reinforce button could order a whole fleet's-worth of ships!

I've played a little with the fleet manager.  Like Huw points out, you can use it to add more ships to a flee with the reinforce option.  You can also do this by clicking on the fleet it self.  There is a reinforce button there also.

One thing I still don't like about Stellaris.  I start a new game with a basic corvette design with mass driver and red laser.  I deside to add another corvette design with missiles.  But when you look at the fleet, you have an upgrade option.  If you use it, all ships are upgraded to the missile version.  Kind of frustrating.

One would imagine it's like that because your next "iteration" of a corvette would be an upgrade, no?

Still - it would be nice if they listed all the different corvettes you've designed, allowing you to micro manage your fleets by upgrading some to the missile version, others to have the hanger bay, etc, etc

[Jarhead0331]

I observed the AI engaging in some noteworthy behavior...

My effort to grab a few star systems into my territory in order to keep them from my nearest galactic neighbor resulted in war. Due to the star lane routes, there are pretty much only two lanes of ingress into my territory, one to the galactic north and one to the south on the opposite end of my space. The aggressor first sent a modest fleet into my territory from the South, but I was able to quickly respond with sufficient force in order to push his fleets out of my space and back across the border. He avoided a confrontation that most likely would have resulted in the destruction of his force. Over the next few months, things got quiet, but I observed his fleet withdrawing deeper into his own territory. The thought that the enemy fleet was being repositioned to come at me from the north did occur to me, but I didn't give the AI enough credit. Well, that is exactly what he was doing, and although I did begin preparations to counter this in earnest, I wasn't ready for him and he was able to occupy a large swath of my northern territory before I was in any state of readiness to confront the invading fleets.

Very tricky, and a good use of the new star lane mechanic. 

[JudgeDredd]

I observed the AI engaging in some noteworthy behavior...

My effort to grab a few star systems into my territory in order to keep them from my nearest galactic neighbor resulted in war. Due to the star lane routes, there are pretty much only two lanes of ingress into my territory, one to the galactic north and one to the south on the opposite end of my space. The aggressor first sent a modest fleet into my territory from the South, but I was able to quickly respond with sufficient force in order to push his fleets out of my space and back across the border. He avoided a confrontation that most likely would have resulted in the destruction of his force. Over the next few months, things got quiet, but I observed his fleet withdrawing deeper into his own territory. The thought that the enemy fleet was being repositioned to come at me from the north did occur to me, but I didn't give the AI enough credit. Well, that is exactly what he was doing, and although I did begin preparations to counter this in earnest, I wasn't ready for him and he was able to occupy a large swath of my northern territory before I was in any state of readiness to confront the invading fleets.

Very tricky, and a good use of the new star lane mechanic.

Cool  O0

[PanzersEast]

I observed the AI engaging in some noteworthy behavior...

My effort to grab a few star systems into my territory in order to keep them from my nearest galactic neighbor resulted in war. Due to the star lane routes, there are pretty much only two lanes of ingress into my territory, one to the galactic north and one to the south on the opposite end of my space. The aggressor first sent a modest fleet into my territory from the South, but I was able to quickly respond with sufficient force in order to push his fleets out of my space and back across the border. He avoided a confrontation that most likely would have resulted in the destruction of his force. Over the next few months, things got quiet, but I observed his fleet withdrawing deeper into his own territory. The thought that the enemy fleet was being repositioned to come at me from the north did occur to me, but I didn't give the AI enough credit. Well, that is exactly what he was doing, and although I did begin preparations to counter this in earnest, I wasn't ready for him and he was able to occupy a large swath of my northern territory before I was in any state of readiness to confront the invading fleets.

Very tricky, and a good use of the new star lane mechanic.

One thing I have noticed is the AI 1 fleet stack.  I not seen them dividing their fleets up, but I have only had two border skirmishes and pincered my enemy faction to the west fleet twice.  Each time they had a very large fleet, this last fleet was 5K which I am not tech'd up to do yet ( I have one 3K and another 2.7K).  They were not cruiser heavy, but a pretty good mix with a majority composition of DD.

They tried to block me from accessing off the spiral arm, which I beat them to it and they immediately made a claim for the system.  I took three of their systems in the last skirmish and now they have a permanent presence on the border.  In total I have attacked them twice because they tried to block me in calming the systems and a little extra room.

When a Marauder fleet is hired by an enemy faction, bend over and kiss anything in their path goodbye!  I just got hit with a 11K stack, I did not bother trying to interdict them with my 3K fleet.  They just go through destroying everything in their path......