My thoughts on Stars in Shadow
Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2021 4:53 pm
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.
Misc wishlist items:
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.