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[ZeroGravitas]

Oh my god.

Genuine good complexity that applies throughout the whole game?
I’m so happy. Are we sure this is for Stellaris and not some other space game?

Don't get your hopes up too soon, the only gameplay information revealed is that you will need "advanced resources" from specific planets or from manufacturing them. Even assuming the balance is such that they're consistently worth using, the floor for possible gameplay improvement is pretty low.

agreed... i'm not sure this will necessarily be good, though it could be

[Telgin]

It does look like it will be a relatively shallow system, at least for what they've shown so far.  I believe there was an image of a corvette requiring some amount of crystals to manufacture, so it seems reasonable that that was the "rare crystals" resource shown in some of the more recent screenshots.  If they're representative of what the system will look like, there will probably only be maybe 3-4 "rare" resources like that, which will probably be abundant enough that if you don't stay on a single planet you'll probably always have at least some income of them.

Which is okay, I think.  Anything more complex than that would probably be needlessly tedious and irritating.  If ships took 5 resources to build and you were only likely to have 3 or so yourself and always had to buy more, that would be annoying.  It would be nice if some specialized components did require special resources you can't get otherwise, like dark matter tech requiring stockpiled dark matter or neutronium armor requiring stockpiled neutronium, but it sounds like the jury is still out at Paradox on if that's how it's going to work.

Shifting gears a bit, does the crisis strength impact how powerful awakened empire fleets are during a war in heaven?  I actually got one of those last night, finally getting my wish to be in a defensive war and with painful results.  I wasn't afraid at first, since the fleets parked in fallen empire systems usually hover in the 50-60K range and I could easily beat those if I pooled my fleets, but the fleets that came knocking were in the 120-160K range, which were substantially harder to repel and caused massive damage before I drove them off.  Side note: I hate worm holes now.

Also, does the war in heaven count as the end game crisis, or am I still going to get the Contingency (there is more than exactly 1 robot in the galaxy, so it will be the Contingency).

[Flying Dice]

Agreed. I don't really like shallowness, but it's better than the Civ III situation of "There are literally only two rubber patches in the world and mine just disappeared."

As others have said, the actual update looks shallow, but the increased access and standardization for modders could be massive.

[ZeroGravitas]

yeah, watching alphamod and st:nh dance around unique tile resources for stuff like resource chains and manufacturing of higher resources has always been awkward

it'll be a good starting point for something better, anyway. tiles were so bad precisely because there wasn't much to do with them that required them to be tiles.

[Rolan7]

Also, does the war in heaven count as the end game crisis, or am I still going to get the Contingency (there is more than exactly 1 robot in the galaxy, so it will be the Contingency).

It doesn't count as the crisis, no.

[Telgin]

That's good.  The crisis should be extra interesting this go around then, since the galaxy's militaries will be depleted from the war in heaven.  That is, assuming I don't get to the crisis before Paradox fixes the bug introduced in 2.1.2 where the crises don't ever expand.

[Cruxador]

Regarding the use of special materials for ships, I think that actually only applies to components, and ships it should still be possible to build viable ships using only minerals, at least early on, and if the later tiers of basic  components require advanced materials, they'll be the ones that you can produce domestically, so you won't automatically be locked out. When it comes to the more esoteric functionality that appears on side forks of the tech tree, I'm actually fine with it if sources of the resource are very unusual.

[Telgin]

All of the screenshots so far are WIP of course, but I guess it's possible that the rare crystals being needed for the corvette could have come from some components like shield generators or energy weapons.  I'm not really opposed to that idea, since it could conceivably give you a reason to focus on energy vs. kinetic weapons or armor vs. shields, if you have more access to a resource that lets you build more of one type.  Right now, I never bother except against the Contingency since its energy weapon exclusive loadouts make shields so much more valuable than armor.  Normal empires used balanced approaches, so I do too.

I'm guessing alloys will be needed for all ships, but then it's likely that you'll be able to produce them straight from minerals without any rare resources needed.

[ZeroGravitas]

what's more interesting is that they've opened things up enough that we can have things like ships built with food and other non-humanoid economics

[Draignean]

what's more interesting is that they've opened things up enough that we can have things like ships built with food and other non-humanoid economics

This is what I'm excited for. More unique resource systems also allows for the prospect of actual divergent technological evolution, with species pursuing the most cost effective paths available to their resource situation instead of everyone muddling into the same tech options regardless of background. Neutronium needlers! Baryonic deracinators! Dark matter mortars! Crystalline inertial disruptors!

You'd actually have the Indus Space River Valley civilizations, getting a few worlds with rich core resources and blooming in technology while their friends struggle with complex elemental synthesis just to get a handful of the strange matter that the ISPRV civilizations accidentally found in the heart of dying star!

I'm actually kind of stoked as for what this could do for research.

[Radsoc]

There is potential, but much depends on where they decide to go from here.

It's always possible to make up arbitrary numbers for costs, but to me minerals would be the bulk metal and materials required to build something of mass, basically a fixed cost with some material waste based on tech level. Energy is what should be required to put the materials/mass together into its finished state, which also should be at a variable cost depending on tech level along the lines of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

Then naturally rare materials like strategic resources should be required for whatever components are needed within the lore (or be replacable by large amounts of energy to produce them). Not sure about how food would enter the picture, unless the ship has to grow organically and pure energy can't be used, or the workers are paid in natura.

I think there is some event where you discover crystals, and it gives you energy. I think that's an inconsistency. Energy is translatable but not equal to credits (even if you could derive some kind of currency from it). Here gold, crystals etc should be counted as a "mineral" for instance, not energy.

[Trekkin]

Energy is what should be required to put the materials/mass together into its finished state, which also should be at a variable cost depending on tech level along the lines of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

I'm curious how you intend to scale energy costs "along the lines of" a scale of energy production.

I'm not being snarky here; there's probably a really good way to handle being able to trivialize energy costs as a matter of raw production at the planetary scale through the building of Dyson spheres (in the Stellaris case) and reduce it to a purely logistical problem, but it has to be done carefully to prevent it feeling like just having lots of energy on hand makes all your devices more efficient, which is what it would be mathematically.

[Dunamisdeos]

I always wondered how the fuck the energy got from my Dyson sphere to my homeworld 9000ly away or however far it is without serious loss.

[Trekkin]

Alternatively, it's so horrifyingly lossy that it's only worth 1000 Energy as opposed to whatever exponential we're bandying about this week.

If we're cinematic enough for solid Dyson shells, we can presumably dock battery freighters to them.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Alternatively, it's so horrifyingly lossy that it's only worth 1000 Energy as opposed to whatever exponential we're bandying about this week.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is the case.