Well, Stellaris is in a very weird place. Last time I had played it was before 2.0, it still had 3 FTL systems, planets had tiles, fleets were a single huge blob, and no war exhaustion claims and individual system claiming. I had a lot of fun playing back then. I recently decided to jump back in, with all dlc on.
My initial confusion was to be expected, so much had changed. As soon as I got to grips with the new systems and how systems had changed, it all made sense finally. But I was left with one overarching feeling, despite having fun: Everything is so slow. Literally. Pops grow slowly, so you get new building slots slowly, new starbase allowance slowly, your economy grows slowly. The only thing that could be very fast was expanding if you built your race for it.
Now I haven’t had the chance to play a warlike nation yet, so I have no clue how the game plays when you are the aggressor. I also haven’t played as a megacorp, or a gestalt consciousness (since way back then) But after putting dozens of more hours in, here are my impressions of the current state of the game.
My first issue is pop growth. It needs to go faster, or building slots need to be independent from it mechanically. I’ve played a race minmaxed for pop growth and it still felt slow. Also there should be an automatic resettlement system for planets that are full (no jobs or no housing) and it really needs to be controllable (ie able to toggle on or off for each race individually) Also having lots of different and specialized pop types (ie dedicated miners, researchers, technicians, farmers, synthetic, slaves, cyborgs etc) Is a bit of a logistical nightmare because you have very little to no control of who works where. Usually pops with a bonus at a job are set to work that job, but try playing a syncreting slave race with robots and genetic enhancements and lots of migration treaties and it soon gets problematic.
The trade network is great, and piracy and routes are very interesting, but at some point it becomes a nuisance and makes little sense. I am a nation that outshines fallen empires in everything, from tech to military to economy. And yet I simply cannot control my major trade route. I cannot build more starbases with hangars, and my patrol fleets of frigates do very little (which are pure cheese btw, since a 100% naked frigate is equally effective in piracy supression to an armed to the teeth one) Overall the trade network mechanics are one of the best new features.
The starbase limit is imho too low. I constantly find myself needing more starbases, either for defensive chokepoints, more fleet size, piracy suppression or actual shipyards.
Later in the game you can build gateways, which sounds cool and all, until you realize all gatewas in the galaxy are linked to a single network. So you cannot link two distant systems of your empire without inviting everyone to a new defensive weak spot in your empire. I really believe there should be a way to limit two gateways to only link to eachother. At my current game, there are wormholes gateways and l gates making the galaxy so interlinked, physical borders are of significantly less importance.
All in all, nothing feels like it snaps perfectly in place, but very few things seem way off. I think if they take the time to iterate a bit on the mechanics before introducing new stuff, the game can be great. As it stands it is good, but not great. I will keep playing though because I like the game.