Some feedback regarding First Contact DLC

[Elhazzared]

The new DLC First Contact brings about very few changes but I'd say very significant changes that needs some attention to be broght over.

Let's start with the one that most people were looking at with woe and wonder, Cloaking. The idea of cloaking in Stellaris is likely not new and a lot of people have thought it would be nice to have something that could do this. To a degree I agree with that as far as science ships go. Being able to get your precursor in an territory that was taken by an opponent or being able to scout past native threats (though still need defeating to take the territory) is a good thing. However cloaking fleets is abismal to say the least.

A very long time ago, Stellaris used to have 3 different types of FTL drives which some people still like to this day, however for the majority of us here we know those caused huge issues in the game. In a galaxy so far reaching it was impossible to conduct a proper war, it always turned down into a war of capturing and back caping and retaking what was taken. No one got anywhere because you just can't have a large fleet, larger than the enmy anyway on every single system. This is why the system change so that you can only travel along jump gates which allows for proper combat and choke points to exist. It enforces action as long as you plan your wars accordingly.

However, cloaking comes around and slaps that concept right in the nose and turns space combat back into what it used to be, back capping, recapturing and nothing really progressing. It is incredibly damaging to the gameplay and pacing that was set as a fix to what was seen very quickly as a big early development mistake.

Next we have the origins and they could be cool and great, except there is one problem. You see, 2 of these originis bring an advanced AI start into the table, regardless of your game start choices. Now some people enjoy advanced AI starts, but some don't and I'm one of them. If the AI picks an opponent that forces an advanced AI empire to spawn, then the game completly ignores that the player does not want to have advanced AI starts and sticks it into play which is terrible. That is, unless they have thought about it and remove the abillity for an AI that enforces the advanced AI start to come into play from being picks if the players has disabled advanced AI starts but I doubt Paradox did it. Granted this is something they can fix unlike the previous mistake.

Now for the pre sapients content and the story pack, that much is fine. I don't see anything bad or wrong with it, but similarly, I don't see that much value which brings me to the closing point.

The price for a story pack or if you prefer, a smaller DLC being 15€ is just not acceptable. This clearly indicates that Paradox wants to raise the prices of their future products like a small number of other greedy developers are doing. If they are given the idea that this is something we as consumers allow, then next we'll see the big DLCs costing 30€ instead of 20€ which again is frankly too much and paradox already prices their DLC frankly too high even if we ignored all of that.

For all of these reasons, I will not be buying this DLC and I believe that probably not any of it's future DLCs and possibly even any of it's games, at least if this price increase policy maintains as it is only bad for us, the consumers.

[Nightsbane]

Well said. Unfortunately you'll have apologists come in here that unofficially represent the company telling you why it's completely cool to be exploited and nickel and dimed.

[Elhazzared]

Originally posted by Nightsbane:

Well said. Unfortunately you'll have apologists come in here that unofficially represent the company telling you why it's completely cool to be exploited and nickel and dimed.

And that's fine, they can have their own opinion even if that opinion is bad for the consumer. No one is forced to accept my values or yours but on the same token I don't intend to engage them. If they want to reward a company for bad practices then there is nothing we can do about it. I'm voting with my wallet and I simply hope enough people will too so we see that go back.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Ironic you saying that when your thread was people telling you it's NOT necessary to grab every single DLC for the game.

[Elitewrecker PT]

As for the cloaking, I haven't experimented with it yet (haven't gotten the DLC) but as far as I can see, a starbase dedicated to cloaking detection should easily prevent a fleet larger than mono-corvette/frigate from backcapping you.

[Elhazzared]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

As for the cloaking, I haven't experimented with it yet (haven't gotten the DLC) but as far as I can see, a starbase dedicated to cloaking detection should easily prevent a fleet larger than mono-corvette/frigate from backcapping you.

Except you need the techs for it which leaves a very large gap in which this can happen and with all the focus you can get on stealth you can make it very hard to detect. The only point at which you can guarantee is close to the end game when most if not all tech is reasearched and that is asusming there aren't repeatable techs.

In any case, under no circunstance should stealth be allowed in the game for combat ships, it completly breaks the balance of the game and the pace it is meant to set.

[Terijian]

cloaked ships dont do anything jump drives dont already do really.
made it more interesting for me personally

[Razorblade]

Originally posted by Elhazzared:

Except you need the techs for it which leaves a very large gap in which this can happen and with all the focus you can get on stealth you can make it very hard to detect. The only point at which you can guarantee is close to the end game when most if not all tech is reasearched and that is asusming there aren't repeatable techs.

In any case, under no circunstance should stealth be allowed in the game for combat ships, it completly breaks the balance of the game and the pace it is meant to set.

Before empires research FTL inhibitors, empires can do effectively the same thing without cloaking. Once Jump Drives are unlocked, Starbases become useless. Stellaris has always had ways to bypass "galactic terrain."

Cloaking is just a new way to do so for hyper-specific builds in the midgame. I wouldn't say the warfare meta has changed significantly at all.

[Elhazzared]

FTL inhibitors come so early that it's a non issue. At worst you'll have 1 war before they come and only if you either provoke it or have a genocidal empire next to you. The first is your own fualt and the second for most players is an instant loss anyway.

Jump Drives as far as I understand do not let you bypass choke points. I've always researched them but truthfully never seen a option to jump several fields down the lane nor has the AI ever managed to jump through any of my choke points at all. All the jump drive does (as far as I can see) is allow for a combat jump which can be used to make some distance or close the distance inside the system, neirther of which allows you to run choke points.

[Terijian]

lol you dont know how to play
with jump drives you can ignore lanes and bypass choke points entirely

extra funny since you're writing a review for dlc you havnt played.

[Elhazzared]

Originally posted by Terijian:

lol you dont know how to play
with jump drives you can ignore lanes and bypass choke points entirely

extra funny since you're writing a review for dlc you havnt played.

Again, I've never seen an option to jump several systems ahead despite using them. Similarly, the AI has never used it so as far as I know, jump drives only jump you in combat some distance, it's a tactical option. If there is an actual option to jump several systems in ignoring lanes and jump gates which must be quite well hidden. Then the AI at least does not uses it so it isn't broken. But I'm pretty sure they will use the stealth.

Also who said it was a review? It's not a review, I don't own it. I know how the DLC works because I can read and I've seen how it works on vids. Therefore my feedback (feeback and review are 2 different things) is based upon that and quite valid.

[Malkuth]

Jump drives don’t jump ahead, they don’t use lanes at all. You can jump anywhere in range, and range is only limiting factor. Than adding gates to mix makes it a non issue again. Gates trump everything.

I just defeated the AI in payback with the default Empire. Cloaking was annoying but I managed, I kept my detection up. Never really had deep back tracking when I was against MSI.

And the AI start is a non issue I passed him before 2300 in everything but fleet size. And that was only because I was not use to playing that default AI start. It was really hard game but fun.

[Chri55e]

52% positive reviews to the new DLC. I'm pretty sure most people think it's to expensive. So by the looks of it people are speaking up to Paradox.

I'm not going to buy it either until they lower the price.

[Terijian]

Well If I said stellaris did a good job of explaining itself I'd be lying, but you're missing the entire point of jump drives. look at the fleet menu a little closer (its on the very top)

If you dont know how a game works from playing it then Ima gonna go ahead and suggest that just watching a few vids might not be enough for you to make an informed opinion

[Elitewrecker PT]

Originally posted by Elhazzared:

Originally posted by Terijian:

lol you dont know how to play
with jump drives you can ignore lanes and bypass choke points entirely

extra funny since you're writing a review for dlc you havnt played.

Again, I've never seen an option to jump several systems ahead despite using them. Similarly, the AI has never used it so as far as I know, jump drives only jump you in combat some distance, it's a tactical option. If there is an actual option to jump several systems in ignoring lanes and jump gates which must be quite well hidden. Then the AI at least does not uses it so it isn't broken. But I'm pretty sure they will use the stealth.

Also who said it was a review? It's not a review, I don't own it. I know how the DLC works because I can read and I've seen how it works on vids. Therefore my feedback (feeback and review are 2 different things) is based upon that and quite valid.

Wait... you've been using jump drives as regular hyperdrives all this time?
Once you equip jump drives you'll see a button on the fleet interface (hotkey J) to jump to any system within the dotted line you see around the fleet. Once you do you cna't jump again for around 200 days I think, and you'll be debuffed (lower sublight speed and fire rate) during that period.

[Elhazzared]

Originally posted by Terijian:

Well If I said stellaris did a good job of explaining itself I'd be lying, but you're missing the entire point of jump drives. look at the fleet menu a little closer (its on the very top)

If you dont know how a game works from playing it then Ima gonna go ahead and suggest that just watching a few vids might not be enough for you to make an informed opinion

If somehow I missed a small feature because it never really shows it doesn't means I don't know how to play.

Also the AI does not uses jump drives at least not to jump past block points and you know it doesn't so on that end it's fair to say that jump drives only break late game for multiplayer but it's multiplayer in a game balanced for single player so the point is already moot there. On the other hand, the AI uses stealth creating the problem I described.

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

Wait... you've been using jump drives as regular hyperdrives all this time?
Once you equip jump drives you'll see a button on the fleet interface (hotkey J) to jump to any system within the dotted line you see around the fleet. Once you do you cna't jump again for around 200 days I think, and you'll be debuffed (lower sublight speed and fire rate) during that period.

I've never seen a new button on the interface of the fleet though it might be a small button so it's entirely possible that I missed it. That said, nerf to sublight speed and fire rate? I wouldn't use anyway if that's the case. I always pick my admirals for sublight speed since I always want my fleets to be able to catch the enemy as well as all moving at the same speed. Fire rate loss is another issue, I don't like losing firepower, I even use no retreat so I get that fat 33% fire rate bonus and I'm not about to use something that will debuff it. So I guess it being there or not makes no difference for me and since the AI doesn't uses it either it doesn't breaks anything.