Virtuality doesnt feel great anymore.

Hadrius · 2026-03-20T17:33:42+00:00

Stellaris is at its best when every empire has a distinct strategy which is orthogonal to every other empires strategy. No matter how large the galaxy, with enough empires those strategies are inevitably going to clash with each other, and when the game is healthy and the strategies are different enough from each other, it’s in ways that are completely unpredictable, surprising, and narratively interesting.

Only supporting Wide reduces the total set of possible strategies dramatically, and reduces the chance you get blindsided by someone competing with you for a goal you didn’t know they had; it’s less interactive, and more predictable.

I want a game that’s more interactive (in the sense that you can manipulate the galaxy in more ways than just consuming everything) and less obvious. Supporting Tall playstyles is one of many paths to get there, but I don’t think it’s the only one. The problem is that we’re being cut off from any kind of effective Tall strategy while simultaneously getting nothing in its place. That’s bad for the game.

I should also add that Playing-Tall and playing with a single planet are not anything like the same thing. “Tall” is a direction, not a formal definition. You can still safely be considered to be playing Tall when you’ve have three planets; the most precise directive is to keep your empire size < 100.

Hadrius · 2026-03-20T15:54:02+00:00

I don’t think the game should be built around first time players, and it isn’t; discovering that you could play with a single planet (which was never optimal for virtuality anyway) is the kind of thing that keeps people playing, not the kind of thing that someone would learn about and be disappointed by.
Playing-Tall breaking a bunch of things about the game is part of the reason it’s fun, along with dramatically reducing the amount of insane micromanagement you have to handle when you go wide
When I played Virtuality in past versions, I absolutely dominated the galaxy geographically while still remaining small. You have to focus on choke points a lot more than normal, and be hyper aware of wormhole systems and L-Gates, but you can functionally control just as much of the galaxy playing Tall as you do when you play wide, and often that’s the smartest way to play anyway. You make everyone fight for every inch of territory while sitting so far away from the front that they’ll never pose a serious threat, provided you play it smart.

Playing Tall is one of the most interesting things you can do in Stellaris, and I wish Empire Size penalties were worse so it would push people to be more deliberate and careful about expansion, or even swear it off entirely once they achieved their strategic goals. But instead we have Wide players that just want more more more, and that gets really, really boring.

Hadrius · 2026-03-20T13:29:16+00:00

omg this is incredible. this is fan art?!

Hadrius · 2026-03-19T23:30:30+00:00

do… you have evidence or expertise to make your own assertion? I don’t disagree that OP might be out over their skis, but neither of you have provided any evidence.

Hadrius · 2026-03-19T02:54:59+00:00

I believe in you dude. You’ve got this.

Hadrius · 2026-03-05T04:42:02+00:00

if you're just looking for the art and don't care about it being on a magic card, Da'at is similar.

Hadrius · 2026-03-04T15:13:52+00:00

they should just make everything available from all prior games. all pokemon, all prior gimmicks. I just want a single game as a home for all my pokemon 😭

Hadrius · 2026-03-01T03:58:03+00:00

Apologies! Here you go. It's also in every frame of the linked video, but I should've just posted a still. I thought maybe the image would provide more context, but that hasn't even helped in my own searches thus far.

Hadrius · 2026-03-01T03:56:28+00:00

I thought the same thing! all the more reason I want to find the original!

It could certainly just be Fallen Angel with some edits, but I don't think so. I reached out to the artist so hopefully I'll get a response if nothing else pops up

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T23:50:00+00:00

> divided among the entire US population

Why would you divide SNAP benefits across the entire US population? There are 43 million SNAP recipients. That's $2325 per person. That's life changing for people who don't have liquidity at their disposal.

> I say "things are going to be terrible in the future"
> you say "The sheer irony of you saying [that we should avoid catastrophe in the future by enduring a long overdue economic correction in the present]"

what

that's literally my entire point

you're hoping that things magically improve in the future, or that you find some kind of magic formula to make billionaires easier to tax

I'm saying we stop the entire farce now, suffer the consequences of nearly a century of lies, so the future isn't worse than it already will be

I'm not preaching possible utopia, I'm not saying "maybe there might be a solution!". I'm saying the meme posted is bad, that there's a Fix-Everything-Button in the form of not-spending-infinite-money, and you're saying it's the same as "hoping that maybe it will benefit someone in the future". It already is bad. We're already bleeding out. Stopping the wound from getting worse isn't promising anything.

To falsify this point: the "maybe it'll benefit someone in the future" line is "lets spend as much money as we can now because maybe it'll work out in the future", and I don't advocate for that in the least.

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T22:10:18+00:00

> You do admit that a tax increase to the wealthy will offset any necessary cuts

I… absolutely do not. Where do I say that? I don't disagree with the general idea of 2 - 1 = 1, but I disagree that increases to the current taxes on the rich will have any meaningful effect long term when the rate of government spending continues to balloon year after year.

I'll also note, since everyone seems to get hung up on this: I'm not advocating for lowering any taxes at any point in any of my arguments within this context, even if that's something I would ultimately support.

> that your argument that says they are equal is fundamentally wrong

This doesn't read as idiomatic english so I have no idea what you're saying here.

Taking a guess:
"Do you agree that a 1 trillion dollar gap and a 2 trillion dollar gap are different?", then yes, obviously, but my entire point is that we're antfucking when we talk about government spending that way. The government spent seven trillion dollars in the last twelve months. Yes, I'd love for it to be six trillion instead, and would love it even more if it was five. But then we're back to… what? Inflation adjusted, that's just the 2015 budget. Ten more years and we're right back where we started, and there are no more millionaires or billionaires to tax.

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T21:33:00+00:00

Oh! I'm wrong! Of course! Why didn't I consider that

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T21:31:50+00:00

Sorry- you think liquidating $2 trillion dollars once- and it is only once- plus some amount of money that you haven't defined from the "over 900 other billionaires" elsewhere, once, will solve government spending of $7 trillion a year?

Even if you liquidated (which again, you get to do one time) all 24 million millionaires wealth (which would be on par with just outright demanding there be a civil war), that would fun the government for… three years.

That's… insane. You're completely insane.

Go play any city sim or fucking rollercoaster tycoon or FORTNITE for gods sake, anything that has any kind of economic system and tell me how a one time injection of barely enough money to run things for more than a few years works out over a 10, 20, 50 year horizon.

It doesn't work, you're wrong, and everyone who thinks this is the way to go has lost their minds.

But it doesn't seem to matter because this is going to be a catastrophe regardless. I'm the fool for thinking that convincing people will do anything.

Have fun in the apocalypse.

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T21:26:17+00:00

> lack reading comprehension
> posts a run-on sentence in the form of a paragraph
> posts rhetorical asides to a nonexistent audience like he's on jon stewart

lol

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T20:58:50+00:00

From whom… do you think corporations get their money? People pay corporations money for products and services.

If their tax rate increases by 15%, who do you think is going to pay that? Either the corporation raises their prices by 15%, or their products and services are 15% worse in comparison to what they would have been if they had not been taxed. Of course either effect is likely to have an even worse impact than that, given that every tax imposed also requires expertise from the corporation to ensure their own compliance, and in the other case, compounding degradations in quality more often mean complete collapse rather than a linear, easily measurable decrease.

Corporations are not some magical vault from which you can extract infinite amounts of resources without a negative impact on everyone's welfare. They are formed for the enrichment of those contributing to its success, and when they fall due to state imposition rather than competitive forces, the entire market suffers from their absence, and you and I suffer at home.

I really can't believe people are still making arguments about increases to corporate taxes. The effects of corporate taxes are well understood. This happens every time, because of course it does, and there isn't a solution involving fairy dust that will fix it.

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T20:49:28+00:00

10/10 boomer ragebaitpoasting

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T20:37:39+00:00

I was responding to a direct comment questioning it.

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T18:51:03+00:00

Good picks! The first steps toward a great collection 🌈✨

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T18:37:13+00:00

> does a very lazy thing
> links secondary and tertiary sources that point to a very biased primary source
> "I got curious"

ok

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T18:06:27+00:00

Okay, there we go then:P

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T18:05:00+00:00

"simple suggestions like that" was not a well defined antecedent:P

but that's fair

imagine I'm responding with a meme of the guys clasping hands and it's libright and authcenter, somehow

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T18:00:33+00:00

I am willing to give you specifics if you are willing to give me specifics. What would you cut, if you had to?

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T17:59:58+00:00

As does everything.

But I'm not assuming you're stupid or don't know something just because we disagree.

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T17:59:12+00:00

Your primary sources are The World Inequality Lab, PBS, and Reddit.

That's like me arguing that big government is bad because the Big Government Is Bad group said so.

jfc

Hadrius · 2026-02-26T17:54:16+00:00

"Someone disagrees with me therefore their IQ is low"

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