My thoughts on Stars in Shadow

[emky]

I first played Stars in Shadow numerous years ago when it first hit GOG and loved it. But I wandered away and came back to it in the fall, picked up the DLC, and rekindled that love. It's an amazing game. It's probably dethroned Civ4+BBATAI as my favorite 4x game. Now that I've played more than a couple games with every faction on normal, I want to share my thoughts. (Moving to hard probably doesn't appeal to me; most games it doesn't.)

Reminder: I love the game. Maybe some of these are just me sucking at certain parts. I'm also looking forward to what I've seen with the next-coming DLC.

• I'm definitely going to try the "population report" mod. This is the top micromanagement-sad part of the game, is clicking through to move species between planets to maximize your population growth, maximums, and productivity.
• I do wish that I could transport a pop unit that's between 1 and 1.3 million without killing the 100-200 individuals and making them vanish. It's extra cumbersome to have to check in the zoom in to make sure moving a pop isn't going to be wasteful.
• Humans are harder to play than other factions. Not because of their starting situation, but because of diplomacy bonuses due to pirates.
• Even more than humans, Gremak are by far the hardest to play. Their diplomacy sucks because of raiders. And if you ever use their slave powers, you're screwed on diplomacy.
• The Harpy Steward ship needs a rework. They appear too often and too early for their power. Or if their power is to be maintained, change their size to be more planetoid-like. A single one can wreck even huge, well-equipped fleets because of its point-blank ultraburst. I have managed to deal with them, but only at absurd costs. They usually end up making a system in your general area unusable to anyone.
• Insert usual comment about Viscids here. It's cheap that to deal with them you either let someone else get the planet and bombard it to death, or, if you're willing to be a little wasteful, fill the planet to full population immediately so they viscids can't reproduce.. This was especially hurtful when I was a newer player.
• I'd be nice to be able to see the help screen for things more easily. Like on a planet, you can't see the help page for a building until you've built one.
• Techs need to have a clear line between flavor text and functional text. Move that "Increases command range" out on Subspace Communications and other actual functional bits into their own lines outside of the story part.
• The same for ship components. (Do turblolasers actually do increased shield damage, or is it just flavor?)
• Ship design screen: Please show metal and labor costs of the base hull on the screen before clicking in one. Preferably also the list of mount points.

Misc wishlist items:

• More pirates than just human pirates.
• More "lesser races".
• "Lesser factions" that control a planet or system but aren't an empire to expand beyond it. (Comparable to pirates/slavers, but with better possibility of peaceful expansion.) Or maybe they just have significantly, significantly increased cost of colony and outposts.

[Arioch]

Thanks for the feedback!

[Dacarnix]

You might (and might not) enjoy playing the game using the "DLC Rebalance Mod" that's already got 37 pages of replies on Steam. It addresses at least half of your bullet points, anyway.

Using the mod, I finally found Humans and Gremak to be viable factions in the game, found Viscids more interesting, and found Harpies more... uh... "predictable" in how much they would hinder your expansion (i.e. a lot; they're scary, even the little ones).

I'm not saying it's perfect or that it's what the game should be, but it does address some of your chief concerns.

[PrivateHudson]

I agree with most items of the list, am neutral to few, but disagree with the proposal about Steward. Harpies in vanilla are super-easy to deal with, basic missile boats mow them down. They have to field at least something competitive, that lends Harpy Repellent reason to exist.

[zolobolo]

I agree with most items of the list, am neutral to few, but disagree with the proposal about Steward. Harpies in vanilla are super-easy to deal with, basic missile boats mow them down. They have to field at least something competitive, that lends Harpy Repellent reason to exist.

Do we still have Harpy repellant tech?
Since Harpies stopped invading other systems I have never looked for the tech and doesnt seem to have much use

I hope Harpy invasions will come back of coruse and not arguing the tech should be taken out if its still in

[zolobolo]

[*] Techs need to have a clear line between flavor text and functional text. Move that "Increases command range" out on Subspace Communications and other actual functional bits into their own lines outside of the story part.

+1

[Serenitis]

• Even more than humans, Gremak are by far the hardest to play. Their diplomacy sucks because of raiders. And if you ever use their slave powers, you're screwed on diplomacy.

Gremak are double awkward both because of this diplomacy malus, and that slaves are in every way worse than the 'base' populations.
Tinkers also see a lesser degree of this due to similar mechanics. (Although at least harmonised pops are still useful, just in different ways. They are all still strictly worse for economy & science - arguably the most important things.)
If I ever play Gremak I will *never* use slavery as it just makes pops less productive for zero gain.
And playing Tinkers I rarely use harmonisation, except for primitives (to give them a science output).

• Insert usual comment about Viscids here. It's cheap that to deal with them you either let someone else get the planet and bombard it to death, or, if you're willing to be a little wasteful, fill the planet to full population immediately so they viscids can't reproduce.. This was especially hurtful when I was a newer player.

The way I 'solved' Viscids was to give them the sterile trait so they don't ever grow.
That way they actually behave like a negative planet trait by using up food & pop slots, instead of being an all-consuming complete waste of a planet.

Do we still have Harpy repellant tech?
Since Harpies stopped invading other systems I have never looked for the tech and doesnt seem to have much use

Yes. It's one of the 'codex' techs you can buy from the Herald.
It's still useful in that it will let you colonise harpy controlled systems.

The dialog and events for harpy invasions are still there, but you will (afaik) only ever see them if you buy the repellant and colonise a harpy system, then leave them alone so they keep sending 'resourcing' groups.

[zolobolo]

• Even more than humans, Gremak are by far the hardest to play. Their diplomacy sucks because of raiders. And if you ever use their slave powers, you're screwed on diplomacy.

Gremak are double awkward both because of this diplomacy malus, and that slaves are in every way worse than the 'base' populations.
Tinkers also see a lesser degree of this due to similar mechanics. (Although at least harmonised pops are still useful, just in different ways. They are all still strictly worse for economy & science - arguably the most important things.)
If I ever play Gremak I will *never* use slavery as it just makes pops less productive for zero gain.
And playing Tinkers I rarely use harmonisation, except for primitives (to give them a science output).

I am most often playing Gremak both because I find their ship designs the most cool looking but also to their playstile differeng fundementally from the others

For me: They are the only faction that cna be played by ignoring other factions almost entirely.
That is to say they are not the easiest to play but the strange maluces and drawback of slaves makes sense when playing this style:
1. Slaves are kept as production and research boosters and not for their base production. In the early game these can easily double porduction and research output
2. Due to point #1 it is not recommended to keep minor factions due to the moral penatly on them that cannot be negated by enslaving them. Two possible courses of action for these are:
A: Only have minor factions on planets with at least 2 markets
B: Hold back on sacrificing slaves and spread out their boost across the game always holding a short break in between and using that time to concentrate them on new planets to be built up rapidly
3. Search of Marauder factions agressively ignoring the territory of other factions if need be. Once found buy all the slaves from them thereby boosting relationship and simply buying them out via influence. This is only really possible of course if the player does not spend any influence on faction diplomacy which works out great as all the other factions will hate Gremak anyhow due to the amount of slavery going on
4. This is not tied to diplomacy or slaves but has to be noted that the most powerfull exploit is only available to Gremak from the start: Boarding Cruisers with cloacking and shield

This basically means that Gremak can outproduce and out-research other factions at the cost of having bad relationship with them
They can easily be friends with Marauders though on top of this and gain their hyper-valuable planets without a single shot fired which is huge in its own right

In this context the diplomacdy malus and poor slave output makes abosulte sense
If not so, they woul be hands-down the easiest faction to play as even now the game is more of a logistics challenge with the above (I can usually mostly ignore what other factions are doing as they will be brutally outpaced anyhow)

Another note here is that the AI is not too good in playing this game: I dont think I have even seen the AI Greak empire buying out a Marauder faction

Humans do suck I agree: slow start, diplomacy malus and nothing to show for it

[zolobolo]

Do we still have Harpy repellant tech?
Since Harpies stopped invading other systems I have never looked for the tech and doesnt seem to have much use

Yes. It's one of the 'codex' techs you can buy from the Herald.
It's still useful in that it will let you colonise harpy controlled systems.

The dialog and events for harpy invasions are still there, but you will (afaik) only ever see them if you buy the repellant and colonise a harpy system, then leave them alone so they keep sending 'resourcing' groups.

Ah yes: I havent been buying anything from Herald for two reasons: It does not show up most of the time and if it does it really feels like cheating to buy stuff from them as the AI does not do the same

I really miss the harpy invasions as you can now count on your back being protected which makes it much easier to deal with major factions
The worst effect of their removal though is that there is now no reason to clean up Hyperspace nodes to put at stop to their invasions

Originally they were removed during AI balancing I think (either then or during economy rebalance) and the AI really had issues for sure
Now they are much more solid and by tweaking the invasions to only hit the top factions (e.g.: top metal producing planets of the top 2 factions) it can be prevented for them to break the back of weak factions

Pirates could be the coin counterpart of this mechanic that attack the top x coin producing planets of the top factions

[Serenitis]

Ah yes: I havent been buying anything from Herald for two reasons: It does not show up most of the time

As soon as you spend any research on the "Hyperspace Anomalies" tech Herald will start on its way to one of your systems from one of said anomalies.

it really feels like cheating to buy stuff from them as the AI does not do the same

And?
When the AI can magically support more than 3x as many ships as me for any given population, I don't really care very much about what is 'fair' in relation to it.
That being said, using your metal as extra research is practially the only way to lean into terraforming in any reasonable timeframe without completely stagnating all your other tech.

I'd love to see some pirate bases set up like Marauders, sending out little raids to nearby systems.
And a much higher density of pirates and Marauders in general - they seem to be on the uncommon side even with the 'Extreme' setting.
These are basically 'no strings attached' combat opportunites for the player if they don't want to be an antagonist themselves.

As are the harpies - unless you're trading with Herald, in which case attacking harpies is the opposite of what you want to be doing. (Clear out any harpy controlled systems before meeting Herald and the rep loss doesn't count.)

[zolobolo]

Ah yes: I havent been buying anything from Herald for two reasons: It does not show up most of the time

As soon as you spend any research on the "Hyperspace Anomalies" tech Herald will start on its way to one of your systems from one of said anomalies.
Yes I havent seem them crop up after the research multiple times though admittedly I have been avoiding that research lqtely for the exact reason of not engaging with the mechanic at all anyhow - reported the missing Herald when I first noted it aroudn a year ago but dont know if it has been resovled sicne for obvius reasons

it really feels like cheating to buy stuff from them as the AI does not do the same

And?

I want a fair challenge as close as possible hence this and playing almost exclusively on normal Eclipse shape and normal settings otherwise
Exclusive market and unique tech only for the player are not ok in this regard hence I also tend to avoid using the boarding module

That being said, using your metal as extra research is practially the only way to lean into terraforming in any reasonable timeframe without completely stagnating all your other tech.

Yeah I never really got to terraforming in easily 100 games game end mostly at around 200-250 turns and the mechanic is not that fleshed out yet (+AI does not use it)

I'd love to see some pirate bases set up like Marauders, sending out little raids to nearby systems.
And a much higher density of pirates and Marauders in general - they seem to be on the uncommon side even with the 'Extreme' setting.
These are basically 'no strings attached' combat opportunites for the player if they don't want to be an antagonist themselves.

As are the harpies - unless you're trading with Herald, in which case attacking harpies is the opposite of what you want to be doing. (Clear out any harpy controlled systems before meeting Herald and the rep loss doesn't count.)

+1 for Pirate bases - would be better then out of nowhere assembly points that were used originally - there are actually already puirate sanctuaries they are just not called like that

I dont think Extreme setting does anything alos strange there is no normal setting for this parameter - I suspect there are only realyl two setting currently and all they control is the density of Marauder and Harpy systems. Marauders do nto attack AI even on Extreme I think

Harpies are really at a strange place now: they can be easily wiped off with rockets or small craft but once they have a capital unit it is extremely difficult to get rid of them - since they dont actually expand I tend not to care about them beyond wiping out a few low hanging fruit systems in the early game for their reaseach boost and the system itself. Once we have 12 or so planets we dont realyl need their few systems anyhow

[Serenitis]

I suspect there are only realyl two setting currently and all they control is the density of Marauder and Harpy systems. Marauders do nto attack AI even on Extreme I think

setup\new_galaxy.lua
Lines 541 to 548.
Exactly 3 settings.
'None'
'Rare'
and
'Default'

Changing the divisor on line 542 to something smaller will increase the amount of stars 'allocated' to pirates/marauders on galaxy gen.
(So long as you don't start the game with with either 'none' or 'rare' selected for raider activity.)

The Marauders definitely do attack AIs.
They start the game with Gremak pops, and depending on the planet they get some mix of Human and Ashdar (both types) slaves,
Any time you see a Marauder base with any other kind of slave on it, they have successfully raided someone.
This is (imo) a fairly convenient path to accessing different pop types - either by purchase or conquest.

[gaerzi]

So I chained up a new condition in there:

Code: Select all

  local nlocals = 2 -- magic number from galaxy_shapes.lua that, ideally, wouldn't be repeated here
  local pirate_stars = max(1, round | ( nstars - nempires*(1+nlocals) ) / 12.5 )
  local raider_activity in advanced!
  if raider_activity=='none'
    pirate_stars=0
  elseif raider_activity=='rare'
    pirate_stars = max(1, round | ( nstars - nempires*(1+nlocals) ) / 25 )
  elseif raider_activity=='frequent'
    pirate_stars = max(1, round | ( nstars - nempires*(1+nlocals) ) / 5 )
  end

  print(format("pirate stars: %d out of %d",pirate_stars, nstars))

("Extreme" translates to "frequent", cf. option_to_setting array in MapSettingsScreen.lua, line 745.)

Result: for a 99-star galaxy, with all civilizations, I get:
Extreme: 15 pirate stars
High: 6 pirate stars
Low: 3 pirate stars
None: 0 pirate stars

Obviously there needs to be room kept free for harpies and marauders, but I may mod myself a "ludicrous" setting with even more marauder activity than this. With a "/ 3" it'd give 25 pirate stars, which would begin to be a real awful lot, just as the doctor ordered. :p

[Serenitis]

Can confirm that using "3" is incredibly entertaining, and gives me just the "I want to fight, but don't want to start a fight" thing I was looking for.

That snippet is definitely going into my mod bin. Thank you for your service.

[sishelper]

I agree Gremak need a special playstyle to enjoy it but thats the beauty of it. However I totally disagree on Humans. Vanilla Humans (no mods) is for sure the strongest faction in the game. Mind you I play always on the hardest difficulty. Reason for that is the fact that you have the strongest and fastest start with Humans that can make a huge difference. You settle the two best planets initially, usually with other races on them, so you can choose what to settle. With the cruiser which is the strongest ship in first game turns you can either immediately obliterate a neighbor race or on larger maps beeline to boarding tactics and make those pirate colony ships and transports yours giving you a third planet in the initial game turns. Himans are very very OP, imo