Hello Community,

What does the title mean? I played a few games and started to wonder. First I wasn't sure, but now I know for sure: There is nothing in Space worth to conquer! It's boring!

First boring:

 Actually All planets get rated by their size. When I look at a system, I don't care if it's a dark sun or a frozen johurt planet. If there are 4+ planets medium or higher, it's a good system, as it will inhabit a lot of population - and population is king. 

Nobody ever cares if this population is on a barren wasteland or in a gas cloud, as planet type might have an effect, but compared to population it's negligible.

Anything is negligible. If there are special anomalies, luxury or strategic ressources, they might be nice to have, but never every a reason to change my game behavior. If there are 5 bad anomalies on a 5 planet system, I will take it. If there is a luxury and a strategic ressource on a 1 plantet system, I will ignore it. 

It's all about growing your population, while there is nothing out the which can impress your civilisation.

With behemoths this did even improve. Then there is a ressource I can pick it as long as needed

Second  boring:

Despite the fact that population is King, they grow like rabbits. I did never put a special focus on food, but after 100 rounds most systems are close to their population limits by themselves. No real reason for any thought about the Food ressource, which turns the FIDS an IDS.  Nobody knows what that means: Every tooltip must be rewritten and icons redrawn.

For me this is a real loss of potential, as if nullifies the option to play tall, make migratio pointless food producing planet still more boring.

Third boring:

Similar problem happend to improvements. I remember in ES1 I had always some standard buildings which require strategic ressources.

Now I cannot remember a single one, expect for wonders, that did need one.

Same old story: You don't need to go anywhere, civil delopment can grow at home. No reason for exploration, trade or whatever. Even when Strategic costs for ships come up, I barely had a problem getting enough of them as a single deposite seems always enough for everything, and anything else can be solved by the market. This never changed my ship design any longer than a few rounds and I only focus on industry to spam non-strategic designs. Only Industry matters.

Conclusion:

By now I am pretty much not impressed by this game, not to say disappointed. There are a lot of new features added, compared to the old games, but it feels as if half of the elements from it's predecessors are missing or badly used. 

Furthermore most of my points are questions of balancing, as all the features are given to make space great again, they may just be adjusted a bit.

By this I try to say, that the game is not entirely bad, but not using it's full potential at its current state.

I would simply love to say things like:

-"This is an epic system as it's tiny, but has 4 ressources"

-"That anomaly ruined the whole system. Without having the fixing-technology it's impossible to settle"

-"This System has nothing to offer for economy, but this special moon is magnetic which reduce projectile accuracy by 75%"

-"Oh dear, can this be true? A planet with a population limit 3 can have a moon adding +6 population? I didn't see that coming. Delicious!"

Does anyone else feel this way? 

These are mostly well aired complaints and I can think of some specific people who have targeted these issues for mod projects, some of which is currently available, some still in progress. They may be along to respond with their perspective.

1. This is true to some extent, in that the higher planet systems represent the better investment long term, but it can definitely matter what those planet types and climates are at the start of a game when your colonisation tech is variable. You do have to make decisions early on regarding where to expand and which planets to colonise when, according to your research order. Planet size also matters - a three planet system with a huge and/or larges can often match or exceed 4+ planet systems without those.
   
   I would disagree that strategic and luxury resources are not a reason to change your approach. They are vital to your success when developing, and a high value luxury like Jadonyx, even on a one planet system, is worth taking - as could also be the case if a two planet system is your only source of hyperium and titanium in early game. This is a context that I have seen enough times.
   
   I do agree with you on the anomalies. Most of them are too minimal to matter, with the exception of some negative approval anomalies. This could be resolved by tweaking the values up so they have more of an impact on their host planet's worthiness.
   
   
2. This was recently adjusted to be a little slower than it was before, but it is a common complaint. That said, I don't think 100 turns is a short time for your existing systems to reach their initial population caps at all. Food is valuable in the early game, especially when colonising, to accelerate development of new colonies and to ensure you have adequate manpower.
   
   There have been attempts by mods to address this in the past, with Cyrob's Community Mod Project and Kuma's recently released Enhanced Space 2 project (still in progress). I also believe IceGremlin has put it on his agenda. If you care about this and the game, I would advise you join discord.gg/amplitude and participate in the #modding chat
   
   As for playing tall, I am not sure that will ever be fulfilled by food adjustments as the GUI has a hard limit on the amount of pops it can support per planets. There are alternatives, like making mutually exclusive techs with Cultural Invertics - the tech that unlocks Autonomous Administration - and laws like the recently added Hatched at Home for Hissho. I will look into providing some of these in my mods.
   
   
3. I am not sure about this one. Most of the mid and late tier improvements require not insignificant amounts of strategics, while the early game ones make sure you still have things to build when you don't have deposits. There are definitely a lot, so I suggest taking another look at the tech wheel. It is instead more likely that you had an unreasonable income of strategics and thus did not notice the costs.
   
   When you talk about strategic costs for ships, do you mean the initial hull cost for mediums and above, with their enhanced slots, or fully strategic outfits? You can get away without full strategic in single player, but in multi player you will lose to a player with a well composed full strategic fleet. That, I would say, is certainly not cheap to produce in the first place, and not easily replaced.
   
   It's also worth mentioning that the base game's combat, despite multiple attempts by the dev's G2G Balance Mod, is still in a sore state. You can easily subvert the intended meta without having to think too hard, for this I would advise trying my Combat Balance Mod.

In response to your conclusion, my advice is to look into some of the balance mods. I've made balance, with a new feature here and there, the focus of my modding and Kuma has also released his take on a number of topics. The game has high potential, and there are modders dedicated to seeing it realise that and to resolve as many shortfalls as we can both for our own enjoyment, and to show the devs what can be accomplished.

I'll give my take:

First:

While it's true planet count that planet count is often the main factor when deciding colonization, planet type still matters. If at the start of the game you have the choice to take a 5-planet system of 3 ice, 2 lava, 1 Arid, or a 3-planet system of 3 Boreal, you should always take the Boreals as you'll snowball way faster (can colonize faster, quicker building synergies, more pop growth). Planets towards the Fertile spectrum have more food (which really does help this early on), more Pop slots and less approval penalties (which matter if you go way past the overcolonization limit and still need Loyal/Devoted empire bonuses). Even if you can eventually terraform everything so that only size matters, to get there fast you have to take advantage of these minor (but material) bonuses available to you.

Strategic deposits are always a major factor for colonization decisions. I don't see how they're "nice to have" as I never have enough even on Exceptional galaxies with abundant resources settings (and yes, I already prioritize extraction techs). Mid-game strategy against the AI often involves bullying one or 2 of them to extort hundreds of strategics for ships and buildings. Large luxury count is basically a gold mine when you use the market and is useful for buying the luxuries that are actually useful (e.g. Jadonyx). Again, this affects the order I would colonize systems. If I want to colonize/conquer every single system, I also need to prioritize systems with the luxuries for lvl 4 systems and Autonomous Administration buildings.

Regarding anomalies; maybe you're being hyperbolic but they definitely alter decision-making when it comes to the order systems/planets are colonized. They're a nice flavour addition that have slight synergies with some Pops, buildings and minor faction traits; their inclusion definitely adds to how much I engage with the game. E.g. Irradiated: an anomaly that requires an era 5 science tech you usually put off getting - makes pops as upset as if they were on an Ash planet but which you can't terraform away.

Perhaps the problem is that optimal play involves ultimately taking everything/growing in scale, and you take issue with that? I personally like it that way as a goal to eventually build towards. Expansion is usually the riskier and costlier proposition and it should be rewarded as such. The game already offers a very large number of per-system improvements that lets you reach a high level of development (i.e. tall), with many of them being reasonably impactful. 

Second

This is a point I somewhat agree with. Population growth rates skyrocket too quickly after the early game and may need looking at.

Third

I don't see this, such buildings are everywhere: Graviton-shielded lab, Predictive Logistics, Pulvis Production, Colonial Rights, Wellbing Foundation, Microwave Pipes... There are lots of them, and some of the higher tier ones ask for 25 strategics each. Some of these are the most impactful buildings you can build too so it's really strange that you don't remember a single one (although granted, the early ones have negligible costs so you don't really feel them). Non-strategic designs are usually much worse and industry inefficient compared to strategics. You also often can't get like-for-like guns of the same tier for non-strategics unless RNG blesses you with them on your curiosity explorations (no era tier gives you the full set of generic weapons and armor). Furthermore, finding the non-researchable titanium-enhancer/hyperium intensifier/titanium smart T-repair bots is a hugh bonus for early-mid game wars before adamantium/antimatter production catches up. Aggressive exploration is an important part of optimal play.

I just can't agree with much of what you feel. It just seems like you aren't playing aggressive enough. Then again, the AI often doesn't challenge human players enough to warrant doing so.

Just something to add:

I always play with resources set to minimum (advance setup on galaxy generation).  It doesn't solve a lot of this, but I feel that the marketplace and resource "choices" are mostly formalities otherwise.  It's so easy to get boatloads of Titanium and Hyperium in the early game.  Vastly shifts how you approach quest lines and colonization when it's more than possible you won't even see a Hyperium or Titanium planet until mid game.  Same thing for luxuries.