It might be time for my next 100 hour run in Stellaris with the narrative-focused and exciting sounding Astral Planes expansion, along with a free update now available.
First up the free 3.10 "Pyxis" patch brings Leader Consolidation, merging together the likes of Admirals and Generals have been merged into the Commander, the Military leader class. Plus, Governors and some Envoy functions have been merged into Officials, the Administrative leader class. On top of that all leaders can now govern planets which opens up new ways to play. Plus various other improvements across the game like new planet modifiers, new planetary decisions and lots of balancing improvements and bug fixes.
As for Astral Planes the release trailer is below:
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"For the first time in Stellaris, navigate in widely branching narratives through a dedicated interface, specifically designed to maximize the effects of player choice. The Astral Planes are full of surprises, and hard choices will be necessary to reach your desired outcome. Make the right decision for your empire and chart a course that fits your play style."
Some of what's in the expansion includes:
- Added Astral Scars and Rifts
- Added 30+ Rift Sites
- Each site contains branching narratives, featuring multiple potential endings and a chance at powerful new rewards
- Added Astral Thread Resource
- Added Astral Harvesting and Rift Sphere Technologies
- Added “Rift in Space” Situation and random Rift Situations.
- Added 8 New Relics
- Added 10 Astral Actions, plus 4 additional Astral Actions if you have the Overlord expansion
- Added Riftworld Origin
- Added 4 New Civics
- Hyperspace Specialty
- Dimensional Worship
- Dark Consortium
- Sovereign Guardianship
- Added 3 New Music Tracks from Andreas Waldetoft
- 70+ New Event Pictures
- 80+ New Sound Effects
- the formless...
On the surface it sounds awesome and looks really interesting. Then you go look at the Steam page, and see it's "Mostly Negative". The main complaint seems to be the pricing at €19.99 / $19.99 / £16.45 not matching up to what players feel the content is worth.
Stellaris is available from GOG, Humble Store and Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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6 comments
ExpandingMan Nov 17, 2023
The game is spectacularly broken for me as of this patch, if not earlier. According to the forums there has been an ongoing issue where the crash reporter pops up. Fortunately the game is still playable, but it's very annoying. Unfortunately I ran into a quagmire of issues trying to resolve this. I tried forcing it to run in proton, but for some reason it can't find it's graphical assets when running the windows version. Then, switching back, sometimes the launcher is unable to talk to steam and the game won't launch. Steam now seems confused about whether I want to run the linux or windows version, and it tries to do some 200 MB update every time I try to run it. I can consistently get it to run by clicking and unclicking "force compatibility mode" but it loves doing that 200 MB update. Completely uninstalling the game and removing all its assets and reinstalling seems to lead the same issues.
What a mess. I love this game but paradox is unbelievably bad at fixing bugs. Whatever is happening here is clearly a critical issue experienced by a lot of people, and according to the forums some version of it has been going on for more than a month. This is hardly unprecedented since some more minor bugs persisted in the game for *years* (that were hardly linux specific). I'm so fond of stellaris, and so happy with the game content of a lot of their updates, that for this particular game I don't mind supporting its development via overpriced DLC's, but that indulgence is contingent on the game actually goddamn working. Please paradox, slow down on the DLC's and game tweaks and get your act together.
Last edited by ExpandingMan on 17 November 2023 at 5:52 pm UTC
What a mess. I love this game but paradox is unbelievably bad at fixing bugs. Whatever is happening here is clearly a critical issue experienced by a lot of people, and according to the forums some version of it has been going on for more than a month. This is hardly unprecedented since some more minor bugs persisted in the game for *years* (that were hardly linux specific). I'm so fond of stellaris, and so happy with the game content of a lot of their updates, that for this particular game I don't mind supporting its development via overpriced DLC's, but that indulgence is contingent on the game actually goddamn working. Please paradox, slow down on the DLC's and game tweaks and get your act together.
Last edited by ExpandingMan on 17 November 2023 at 5:52 pm UTC
1 Likes, Who?
I've long loved Paradox games, and have in the past defended their DLC system. But they seem to have more and more bugs with serious ones that must have been evident during QA, and their DLC costs keep rising even as the individual DLCs feel far slimmer. I used to buy Paradox games and DLCs at launch for full price, but now I wait for sales and pick them up cheaper.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: ExpandingManThe game is spectacularly broken for me as of this patch, if not earlier. According to the forums there has been an ongoing issue where the crash reporter pops up. Fortunately the game is still playable, but it's very annoying. Unfortunately I ran into a quagmire of issues trying to resolve this. I tried forcing it to run in proton, but for some reason it can't find it's graphical assets when running the windows version. Then, switching back, sometimes the launcher is unable to talk to steam and the game won't launch. Steam now seems confused about whether I want to run the linux or windows version, and it tries to do some 200 MB update every time I try to run it. I can consistently get it to run by clicking and unclicking "force compatibility mode" but it loves doing that 200 MB update. Completely uninstalling the game and removing all its assets and reinstalling seems to lead the same issues.There's currently some issues with their launcher - Star Trek Infinite was having trouble with dlc ownership at its launch a month ago (and not registering the numerous dlc correctly if you owned them rendering the content unavailable), Victoria 3 is having the same issues now with the most recent dlc, and I saw people running into the same issue for Astral Planes as well.
What a mess. I love this game but paradox is unbelievably bad at fixing bugs. Whatever is happening here is clearly a critical issue experienced by a lot of people, and according to the forums some version of it has been going on for more than a month. This is hardly unprecedented since some more minor bugs persisted in the game for *years* (that were hardly linux specific). I'm so fond of stellaris, and so happy with the game content of a lot of their updates, that for this particular game I don't mind supporting its development via overpriced DLC's, but that indulgence is contingent on the game actually goddamn working. Please paradox, slow down on the DLC's and game tweaks and get your act together.
PDX is more than happy to take your preorder money, but not terribly inclined to fix an issue preventing you from accessing what you bought. Doesn't help their reputation, and it certainly doesn't seem they care that much.
0 Likes
They are a publicly traded company since quite a while. They follow a different credo now.
Last edited by Mal on 18 November 2023 at 7:54 pm UTC
Last edited by Mal on 18 November 2023 at 7:54 pm UTC
0 Likes
Gotta wonder why they insist that their trailer text be read in a Swedish accent 
("Ø" is a letter in used in Danish and Norwegian, but they way they used it here is oddly close to how many Swedes speak English)
("Ø" is a letter in used in Danish and Norwegian, but they way they used it here is oddly close to how many Swedes speak English)
1 Likes, Who?
Philadelphus Nov 21, 2023
Well, maybe it's a good thing I'm in the grip of a RimWorld obsession right now, it'll give some time for bugs to be fixed before trying Astral Planes (which does sound pretty interesting).
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