new hyperfocus: stellaris! (pulled an all nighter reading the wiki oops)

I got Stellaris back when it first came out & *wow* has the game changed a lot since then — I don't think there's a single game mechanic that still works the same way. Economy, diplomacy, combat, exploration, & empire creation have all been overhauled at least once each, all for the better.

I do miss the starting choice of method of hyperspace travel (wormhole gates yea!!) but it had to go

you used to be able to choose between
- very fast, but limited to hyperspace lanes
- slow, but can go to any nearby system
- fast point to point, but only within range of player-built wormhole stations (<-- my favorite)

it's hyperspace lanes only now, because without that there's no border to fortify & building defenses is infeasible

wars were just cat and mouse games between two giant balls of space ships, with one or both able to teleport

there's three "ascension paths" (with the 1st dlc)

— awaken psychic powers (makes leaders way better at everything + a psi gacha)
— replace everyone with synthetics that are better at everything and can live anywhere
— genemod your species with super traits + way more trait points

psi powers are almost but not completely unavailable to the Materialist (+science&robots) governing ethic; robots/synths & gene modification are also regular tech trees

psi and synthetic paths both give pretty big boosts to leaders which in turn give pretty big boosts to your whole empire

synthetics get a blanket +10% productivity to everything (+15-20% to specific jobs based on their blueprints) but more importantly they have 200% habitability on every planet type

normally, planets of the same type (~10%) as your homeworld are only 80% habitable, which the game doesn't really tell you but is a huge deal!