OFFICIAL STELLARIS WINTER 2018 CAMPAIGN

Hide your galactic credit cards! The Megacorps are coming!



Read the Dev Diaries for details on the upcoming update here:
https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Developer_diaries​

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With the arrival of this new and expansive update, we will be launching another Stellaris campaign for our gorup! Be sure to get your game up to date so you can take part. Be aware that we have a repository for members to post their favorite faction here. If you want to include your faction in the campaign, but can't make it for the start of the campaign, be sure to let us know and post your faction using the above mentioned link.

Scheduling

• Two meeting times per week until the campaign is completed.
• One evening meet and one afternoon meet. This is to help accommodate all member schedules.

Game Settings

• No Advanced AI starts.
• Max number of fallen empires.
• Max number of primitives
• Crisis Strength = 1x
• Habitable Worlds = 0.5x (lowered to speed up campaign)
• AI Aggressiveness = Normal
• Difficulty = Normal
• Start with basic hyperspace tech
• Empire Placement = Random (gives most room for player expansion).
• Advanced Neighbors = Off
• Elliptical map with size depending on number of players (roughly 1:2, Player vs. AI).

House Rules

• Default game-speed = Fast (or Normal for first 10 minutes of gameplay)
• All game times will be posted in advance as early as possible (minimum of three days prior).
• Game times will begin promptly. Players may join at any time.
• Minimum number of players required for valid session and ends when online player count drops below threshold (currently 4).
• No reloads (unless savefile gets corrupted).
• Game pausing only for bio/food breaks (duration must be specified).
• Player Protections:
  • You may not claim offline player systems unless it is to reclaim captured populations from your empire.
  • You may not "liberate" offline player factions.
  • You may vassalize any player factions, but you cannot eliminate another player's empire. Vassalized players reserve the right to retain their three starting systems as well as any adjacent systems.
  • Particularly aggressive/hostile factions (ex. Devouring Swarms) are excluded from ALL player protections. You have been warned.
• Don't be a dick.

Victory Conditions

• Unite, vassalize, or make tributes of all factions (except Fallen Empires) under one Alliance.

Mods*

• Quality > Quantity
• Intended to augment vanilla experience, NOT change it (most give more cosmetic options or minor tweaks to vanilla features).
• List can be found here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=685614600
• List will be reviewed and updated after Megacorp update, but before campaign begins. Outdated mods will be removed.

*NOTE: Subject to change. Suggestions are welcome.

If you want to include your custom empire in the campaign, it is REQUIRED that you post your faction at the link provided below:
Click here to post your current faction stats!

We need a headcount so be sure to post your interest, availability, and questions below!
CAMPAIGN LAUNCH DATE TO BE ANNOUNCED IN THE NEXT 48 HOUR!​

 

I'm game for this. I'll not be able to play between the 24th of December and the 2nd of January.

 

Yes, I'm pretty sure we will be incorporating Warlord Wednesday as one of our two meeting times. Likely what will work for most of us is a evening meet on Wednesday and then an afternoon meet on the weekend. Suggestions are appreciated though.

 

The rules we had before is that we would run as long as there were a minimum of 4 people active in game. This was done just to move the game along.

However, I am not opposed to setting hard time constraints if that is more tolerable for people's schedules. At the minimum, I would like to get in a solid 4 hours per session (with some stretch breaks in-between). Anything longer than 5 hours I feel would be excessive.

Just as an example for scheduling:

• Wednesday 8p-12a
• Saturday 2p-6p
• optional 10 minute breaks at the top of each hour

If we can get it together in time, I'd like to start as early as this Sunday, but we can push it back to later if people need more time (I can't be there this Saturday to organize).

 

Oh, we're just gonna jump in without any prior playing, really? That's fair, I suppose.

 

Yeah, I figure it will be a much more even playing field.

 

Oh, and to Hep's second question:
for the sake of simplicity, please only one custom faction per player.

 

The 0.5x habitable planet was actually to help speed up the mid and late gameplay. Keep in mind, the 0.5x does not affect starting planets (usually you always start with 3 clustered together). Since there is less real-estate to fight over, the campaign generally goes quicker. Also, there's way less micromanaging larger empires when you have less than a dozen planets to keep track of. Having less habitable planets also allows for more "neutral space" between important worlds. So yeah, there's a lot of good reasons to do it. That being said, if the new mechanics have changed that in some fundamental way, we will adjust accordingly.

 

I know it seems scary to knock it down to half, but you will be surprised by the results:

Here's a picture of roughly 1/4th a medium galaxy with 50% habitable planets of normal:

The planets are all red to me because I was in observer mode using console commands.

As you can see, there is still a TON of real-estate to fight over. It is also worth mentioning that we will be playing with the maximum allotted AI, Fallen Empires, and Primitive Civilizations... all of those spawn more planets you can capture and do with as you will (especially the primitives). Having tons of NPCs helps to fill in quite a bit of space on the map and allows for more interesting interactions.

Also, regarding Eliptical vs. Spiral galaxies (because I know it will come up):
I understand a lot of people like spiral galaxies, because of aesthetics and also because it creates natural choke points. This, however, is a double edged sword. If you have too many choke points, it can really screw over a player's whole game if they start in a bad spot. The only reason I'm concerned about this is because I want to make the game start as fair as possible for everyone.

The above and directly below are examples of a elliptical galaxies:



As you can see there are still plenty of choke points (hypersapce lane density set to above average), but there are also ways around them. However, if people REALLY want their beautiful spiral galaxy, I'd be willing to run with that, but under the one condition that we crank hyperspace lane density up to 2.75. The result will look something like this:



I would suggest we take hyperspace lanes to "full" but something weird happens in the algorythm when you jump from 2.75 to "full":



I feel like there needs to be a more gradual transition between 2.75 and full lane density.

Update: I found a mod that may satisfy everyone regarding the latter:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1103779886&searchtext=hyperspace lane density