So, have you felt the good pain of Desperate Explorers yet?

Me: "Oh it's the hand image... will ASpec say it?" A few seconds later ASpec: "This is a hand, not a spaceship"

I think it would've been interesting if the Subspace tech tree worked backwards for ship classes. You start out with massive battleship-style ships and have to unlock smaller ships along the way as you miniaturize the technology needed for FTL travel.

at 18:16 imagine that, you are living in an arid world full of sand and rough conditions to live in, and just in the next orbit there is a paradise world that you could've been born on, but your species didn't evolve there, damn that is such a bummer

I love that Dacha's modus operandi is literally "I'll give you $100 to fuck off"

I went "Eager Purifier" instead. They just couldn't wait to get out there and purge some xenos.

Tried this, had to invade a primative world and then transfer all my pops. True XCOM ish moment trying to take a space age world with like 4 rushed armies

I love how, after ASpec desperatley searches for a world to live on and barely finds it in the form of a throwaway world, a Relic World and another Gaia spawn right next to him just as a Galactic Middle Finger.

My first Campaign with this, I was playing Starburst Galaxy, and spawned on one of those long, spindly hyper-lane routes. Thing was, the lanes were so long, I *COULD NOT* jump to the Main Galaxy. So I was stuck with 2 low-habitability planets until I could research Hyper-Drive Tech (which I fortunately got in the starting roll, but still took years). And then I find myself boxed in, with a neighbor that had habitable planets. On the bright side, I was able to get past Raiders, which had cut of a section of stars, with the subspace ships, and found a planet that was my class! Perfectly protected, unless the Khan comes from them.

One thing I love to do With Domesday is with the Gigastructural Engineering Mod. After the planet explodes I G.L.U.E. it back together. Then use the Geo Stabilizer to make it colonizable Terraform it back to its original planet type. And finally move my capital back to it.

"I'm sorry politicians... I'm out of influence, and you caused this climate chaos in the first place, so you get to stay on the planet you ruined... have fun!"

This First Contact content is really enabling some new fun eager stuff.

A second part would be very welcome! I want to try it with normal empires, but I've had the idea of also using Rogue Servitors. The robots will be fine, but your biotrophies will need a suitable world. And going back to an old doomsday hivemind build of mine, with a consciousness that evolved on a dying world, this civic would work really well there.

"We'll turn the hyperlanes off, how in the galaxy would they reach us then?"

Man it’s like you sampled a piece of the new candy and now your about to consume the whole bowl 😁

Starting as Eager Explorer Bulwark under Imperial Fiefdom origin is pretty OP. Overlord be like: Here NASA have some destroyers.

See after your Eager Explorer's video I made a Corticeptic Drones Eager Explorers Hivemind with Slingshot To The Stars so I could move out and quickly find the systems that grant me my bio fleets and take them for only 5% of the normal distance upcost.

The only start my girlfriend can play and actually feel like anything is happening is the doomsday start. Its time to introduce this to her now as well :) hehehe.

Really liking the Lifeboat name eh? Naming both initial planets that.

A very thematically accurate flag.

Would love to see more of this play through. It looks fun. Especially the fun discovering you had Cybrex the whole time..

Thank you so much Apec for this! I liked this interesting start. Please do continue this as a play through and explore the wider galaxy. I would like to see how you build up to be a galactic power from this start!

This makes me long for the yonder days of when we had 3 different starting ftl drives to pick from.

I just did a game with this civic, Toxoid, Void Dweller & Incubators, it was a great combination. Starting with 10 less pop wasn't an issue because with Incubators you have bonus grown with fewer pops & because habitats have small max pop your Incubator growth bonus only drops from +30 to +16 on a maxed out habitat world. Too bad my game gets too slow after year 2400 and I don't have the patience to wait for the crisis ☹️.

I'd be interested to see you work with that Dyson sphere and continue. I'm playing a Quantum Sling / Eager atm and having fun. Enjoyed your vid; as usual.

I'm playing this right now as Lithoid Subterraneans, on Grand Admiral Ironman. Made an ally early when a pre-ftl civ rose up (I had just scanned the system too) and I have two more being observed. Pretty fun ngl

Will try now!! Would’ve loved to have seen it through to end

Awesome video! I love how you turned a lot of lemons into lemonade... I'm curious to see where you go from here!

> "Are we going to take the hyperdrive.... of course we are not!" This is the moment you had me.

I wish they would create a Planetless Civic, basically what the Quarian Fleet did in ME in Stellaris where they have to recover damaged or destroyed ships and salvage them or rebuild them as they make their way through the Galaxy and instead of Districts, they have certain Ships being Special and Significant. I.E. (Flagship, Greenhouse, Research, Patrol, and Scouts) Flagship is essentially your Capital. Greenhouse is your Food via Hydroponics. Research is self-explanatory. Patrol is Military and Combat Ships. and Scouts are Science Ships. @Aspec thoughts?

I wonder if the subspace tech will eventually bring back warp...and maybe bring the fabled warp beasts with it?

Did he name two planets the same name?

Been doing a role play of eager explorers. Using only eager explorers science and construction ships and also investing heavily into jump tech. Trying to avoid using hyperlanes

always nice to see an a-spec video you have such a great radio voice

Please continue this series 🙏

would really be nice if there was a continuation of this series

Iv bin playing stellaris sens it came out. This gives me the same joy that I had. Now if only we can have a way back to wormholes.

Damn, I need too try it out! I've also played played with this civic and I have to say that it's not the only challenge here. For example, I wanted to get 'The Path Not Taken' achievement and when I was about to colonize the last two required worlds, some freakin' anomaly gave me the hyperdrive technology....

This was cool please continue.

Evacuate everyone important! Leaves politicians behind haha

Idea to refine Aspec's "Desperate Explorers" run: 1.) Switch the homeworld type to Ocean. 2.) Take the Anglers civic 3.) Set negative traits to "non-adaptive" and "slow breeders" On the one hand, food production is a non-issue if you find a new homeworld! On the other hand, you will have an EXTREMELY bad time if you can't evactuate EVERYONE, and even so you aren't guaranteed survival. Also the additional difficulty from the harsher negatives from colonizing any world that ISN'T an ocean world pretty much guarantees you either get one or die

7:23 Technological ascendancy! ASpec knows whats good. ;D

I feel the desperate explorers overtaking me …

“this is a hand not a spaceship” lol, been there before. gotta love stellaris event arts🤣

I think it was rather courageous of the leadership to make sure the common people were transported off world before they themselves left. Too bad politicians in the real world didn't think that way.

Show Us More This Was Nice.

More!

Played this as a UNE oligarchy variant with fanatic materialist and authoritarian corvee system and it's been a lot of fun seeing the emergent story from finding the spiritualist holy world of pristine jewel to begin the tension that would run through the run or the bromance with the commonwealth that grew from them coming to our defense against a spiritualist neighbor who saw an easy target leading to the martial alliance that would span the galaxy, and the political struggle to be recognized ending on being the most politically powerful civilization in the galaxy from desperate authoritarian refugees to immortal egalitarian technocracy of sythetics returning to a tereaformed mars it's been an incredible history to watch unfold.

Just finished an MP version of this with 4 empires each w/ Doomsday and Eager explorers in a small galaxy.

I really want to run a build that has the remnant origin, with rogue servitor and exploration protocols. The background being the biologicals were idiots and the machines want to observe primitive empires ASAP to figure out what happened and how to avoid it happening again. Only issue is that the game has the game breaking bug where primitives in the atomic age have a 5% chance of nuking themselves each month, which ends up being a very high chance of nuking themselves over a few years. Do love the irony with that bug too. It arose from a fix that lessoned the chances of dastardly asteroids showing up and smiting civilizations that didn't have a benevolent advance civilization to protect them. It's almost like the primitives decided that if the gods weren't going to spare them from being conquered, they end themselves if they are allowed to discover nukes and left to their devices. Though I might just decide to deal with it because I really want to play some stellaris.

Synergy with hyper relays would be a good change with this start, so to get to new space you have to jump and for regular hassle free movement and trade routes you need relays.

11:15 the star system "Skat" would like to introduce itself.

It's like in times of ancient past when we had 3 different typ of engines to start with and I like it!

Plz continue this play through

Yeah go for Dacha, I beat them on the opening attack, but after a bit they came back and kicked me out quite a surprise!

Jumping in now 💯.

My issue with this start having tried it is the lack of auto pathing, it'd be nice if I could tell my ships to move and they would do a sequence of jumps

This was the first game I did on buying the new dlc but started next to purifiers who invaded me before I had researched corvettes.

6:00 Praise the goatse.

You ever try out the Dyson swarm mod?

"I'm gonna give you a gaia world to [translation unavailable] off!"

Being able to jump right over early game obstacles seems really, really overpowered. Just jump over the mining droids, the aggressive space whales, the crystals, the dragons, even the fallen empires. Get all those extra anomalies, events, etc. Being boxed in by an FE goes from a restart situation to basically being unbeatable for the whole early to mid game.

He's our hero! Liked.

seeing 24 habitable locations in one system is hilarious. void born, the worm event and Helito event makes 1 overpowered system

This reminds me of Stellaris1, a game about space esploration. Like Master of Orion before it. Good old days...

Also, that's quite some poetic justice, those elites that probably lived lives of opulence in the dying world, in the end, got the short straw and had to stay behind while their servants got the opportunity to go on and live better lives x)

Aspec has the most ridiculous luck with his desperate exploring! Just needs the Surveyor now for his Tall goodness, Dyson, Matter decompressor, Cybrex, gaia, gaia, gaia

Human pops whom's original homeworld was blown up with their new capital on Sol X? That sounds like a fantastic theme for a sci-fi novel, eager explorers is such a fantastic civic, it's making me almost want to see us being able to have more 'origins' as civics.

Btw Aspec, Dacha is russian word for summer house out of city

I'd like to see this empire become the crisis, it would be interesting.

Problem with turning hyperlanes off is that even if *you* don't care about hyperlanes- other empires certainly do. Knowing the hyperlane layout is critical to predicting the movement of AI vessels and creating defensible chokepoints

ive been playing with a modded origin that gives my pops Relic/Ecumenopolis habitability for a while so "Weapon Trails" is something i IMMIDIATELY notice lmao

I remember how the very early Stellaris was pure chaos with 3 way of star travel. Warp was convenient. but jack of all trade, master of none. Hyperdrive was fast, but could get trapped easily Wormhole was so micro intensive. But it was like Jumpdrive currently, in a way.

As much as I love Eager Explorers and its variants I really think it needs a bit more tweaking. First of all it's annoying as hell that you can't queue up multiple jumps. Seriously, just make the ship wait for its jump drive to cool down, can't be that hard to implement. Then there's the fact that once you get hyperdrives you have to choose between them or the subspace drives... and the latter are just worse in most aspects. At the very least the Science and Construction ships should have access to both IMO. Would be a huge QoL improvement and actually give Eager Explorers a bit of an edge over other empire types. At the moment you start out with a massive deficit, have to micromanage every single jump, and the unique stuff you get in return is mostly rendered moot the moment you research hyperdrives. Hell, as far as I'm concerned it would also be fine if you could put subspace _and_ hyperdrives onto your military ships. Really, instead of researching normal hyperdrives, why not run with the theme and simply further develop the subspace drives to increase its range also be able to access hyperlanes? They could get a malus to the charge time to make up for it or something like that.

Honestly this is one mode I am going to do, the whole doomsday thing wasn't that much of a challenge. And just depends on RNG, and remembering to evade your population before zero (Tho ran into a bug if I dont leave at least 1 pop behind it messes with the event)

The random "This is a hand, not a spaceship." made me laugh and scare my cat, lol.

I still think they should make being able to see hyperlanes locked behind the hyperdrive tech.

And you did exactly what I want to do with all the politicians. Awesome

Oh my good, this is such a good idea. Never thought that you can combine doomsday and eager explorers, thank you Aspec

Halitosis system?! What is this goodness you speak of? Is it only in Stellaris PC, but not console? I have been playing on console since 2019, but only occasionally on PC. I have heard for the 6 Gaia world system, but never seen it on console!

Where is cloaking technology in the tech tree

So.. when your ships get to ignore all hyperlanes... Does your influence when creating outposts get to ignore the cost of the jump distances too?

Hyperlanes, assuming the ai will still use normal drives. you'll want the lanes on the map for defensive planning.

i really like eager explorers but i wish you got some kind of tangible reward or bonus for never researching normal hyperlane travel other than a achievement. on my start i was locked out of a line of systems because it was too far away from any of my other planets and as your empire gets bigger the limited range of the jumps gets annoying to micro since you cant queue jumps one after the other maybe a research or project to make the range bigger or something like that would be nice

Doomsday is the Dark Souls SL1 of Stellaris, I play it more than anything else. Adding it to eager explorers is amazing

i only played warp back in the day

Please keep going.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S A HAND?! HOW HAVE I NOT KNOWN SINCE RELEASE?!

Also, one question, isn't the people of Dacha strenghts based on 70% of your strenght? doesn't that mean if you had chosen war, they'd have like 20 basic corvettes? (since you're very far behind in the game because of your starting situation) I think you could've really gamed the game when you found them that early...

So we got the old Warp tech back in this expack, but where are my Wormhole Generators? Give me my beloved Wormhole Generators back. D':

2:29 which ship sets is he using? or is it a mod?

22:18 wasn't it already cold and lifeless with only politicians left behind?

Now activate Gigastructures and make a GLUE to put your home planet back together again

"Boyz !!! WE NEED TO SEIZE DAKKA !"

The planet broke before the people did.

I feel like if I tried this, I would get jumped by no less then 3 other empires

Love the civic, just way to many bugs. You can't use L gates. At the moment had to leave my campaign, as I can't get in to deal with the Tempest. Other stuff is more quality of life, like more ui to tell when I can jump again (days etc)

"Please take this massive Gaia World and **translation error** off."

Remember when you needed to have a technology to see hyperlanes if you didn’t use hyperlane travel?

You could have triggered the edict for doomsday, it’s called emergency evacuation or something and got to evacuate all your pops for free.