Addendum; I've just been informed that the price of the story packs have gone up from their historical 9.99 USD to 14.99, whilst I understand that inflation is a thing, a straight up 50% price increase is excessive. Overall the pack is fine in terms of its content, but if you feel the price is too much feel free to wait on a sale in future.

My one big complaint is that we didn't get a full shipset for Eager Explorers. Granted, the two ships we got look great, I just wish they had expanded on the "primitive ship" aesthetic.

I very rarely invaded Pre-FTL to begin with, settling with the meager bonus to society research; this story pack is basically a major buff for my playstyle, lol.

But Aspec the Primitives yearn for the mines.

i made it 8 seconds in, then i realised it was out and instantly headed to the steam shop. Great review thanks!

Eager Explorers has me suddenly very nostalgic for the old 3 FTL types.

Although I’m not good enough to successfully do this, your suggestion of pairing the new civic with doomsday seems like an incredibly thematic and cool experience which I might have to try at some point, so thanks for that suggestion!

Pay walling cloaking is a bit of a shame.

Stellaris First Contact is here! Are you ready for some Payback?

Didn't hesitate to get it. Mostly invested in the new technologies in the game and maybe squaring up with Msi.

I think I'll try the new civic for the shipset and challenge. You can just convert over to hyperlanes once that's researched, I'm hoping? Also, i may start this with maybe only 2-3 AI players just to get a feel for it.

I want to do a game with every empire starting as a primitive.

Hey Aspec, any word on a revamp of the ground combat or planet invasion mechanics to add depth of content? I feel like there’s potential there. Nothing too complex, maybe phases of the invasion and simple formations in a rock paper scissors style approach and some researches with it?

I got this DLC the day it came out and immediately started playing it. I love the Broken Shackles story line and have had fun playing it however, there are two things I wanted to point out. One, I was disappointed when after spending a lot of time and energy to get one of my home worlds into my empire I only got the typical pre-ftl story line to continue. I feel like they could have at least given an excavation like method to bringing your former home world into your empire. Second, you are so right about this DLC not being for the first time play through. Having multiple species in your empire is tough and takes a lot to make it work which is fine, though usually I try my best to avoid extra species. But at the end game I had fifty species in my empire; I get where they are going with the beacon of liberty and all but it was a bit much even for a large map. Thanks for the great videos. I am looking forward to seeing your updates to civics and ship designs with all the new items and changes.

Super excited that despite some earlier comments they did decide to go with a *tiny* bit of "The Road Not Taken" with the Eager Explorers and similar civics. "The Path Not Taken" was definitely a clever achievement name. On the reference of other FTL types, I regret having never played around with Wormholes bac in the original version. I think it's possible to revert the install though?

I am curious how the cloaking system will affect the meta ! I am guessing there might be a major change as to how to consolidate chockepoints for example. or for nihilistic acquisition with jump drives or pre ftl jum drives to bypass defenses quickly dispose of station to abduct a lot of ennemies population.

We need the Event Horizon as a primitive ship model

I haven't played the last two expansions yet. But gonna buy it anyway to support Paradox for making a game that has once sunk 500 hours of my life. Waiting for the next wave of stellaris fever in me to consume all these content.

Another video I've seen today said a nice combo of the new civic with the catapult to the stars origin, and you go snatching planets having dots in the galaxy

i always loved the pre-cavillations in stellaris. while they can be overlooked very easily, they also can be looked at for a boost into immersiveness.

not happy with how much dlc has gone up by, but the dev teams always make something interesting and try to bring a lot of core things to the base game same with ck3 and v3. that said I pre-ordered it on Sunday as Stellaris is one of my favorite games

Great video man!!

those eager explorer ships with the heat shields and fusion torches!

Can you cloak construction ships? So you can ignore borders with them and get them to points of interests behind other empire boarders?

I kinda was hoping for the chance to use the MSI ship set. Oh well but actually they added a song or to with this and it sounds terrific!

Haven’t played stellaris in more than a year, still watch your content tho

I have played a game in the broken shackles orgin till about 50 years to end game so far. Some things still seem needing real balance though. Part of the new tech is it looks like precursors can give build options now too. I got the vultanium on my first game as broken shackles empire. In short I got a new building that was practically a second research institute I could build on every planet. I wasn't materialist nor was I trying to go all in on the science, but between that and other things I got scientific advancement far faster than any other play through I can remember. It may not be the building alone, I was also forced to play tall which I truly did before, and did pretty well too, but man I don't remember getting to 3000k research very early in the years 2300

Not that excited for the DLC but I do think the patch changes will be nice to explore. Worth noting is that the cloaking feature, like the various megastructures added certain previous DLC, seems to be the bait on the hook.

The only setting I usually change from the default when starting the game, other than galaxy size and shape, is the number of primitives, which I max out. So this is right in my wheelhouse.

I feel like locking stealth to the dlc is to encourage purchase for those utterly uninterested in playing as a pre-FTL species this pack doesn't seem to offer a whole lot else and I can already tell a fair few mods will come out using, featuring and vastly improving on stealth mechanics requiring to purchase the dlc somewhat forcing you to buy it to enjoy the much more interesting modding scene compared to the rather bland updates paradox puts out. The only time I found Pre-FTL interesting was one event where a pre-flt world/species had a more advanced species living on the world(underground?) or something and woke them up and this advanced species with space lasers smacked the pre-FTL into oblivion and took control of their world once more and then did the standard this is our solar system in the middle of your empire, I've only seen this event once and I don't know if it was base game or a mod or what. Pre-FTL species are honestly nothing more than a chance for my mod added interesting/unique species to spawn in and be put into my alien zoo and send a few of every species I like to a ring world in the back of the L cluster for safe keeping while consuming the rest of the galaxy.

Was just wondering if this expansion would be worth it, then your video gets recommended. Praise the algorithm!

Any plans to create newer updated videos for beginners and experienced players alike?

crazy to think your finally allowed to play as pre ftl i remeber there was a mod for it years ago and here we are

A missed opportunity with the cloaking system is being able to do false flag attacks, with your cloaked fleet disguise as pirates and able to attack other empires and cross borders without necessity of declaring war.

did they ever add automation QoL to the eager explorers bootleg jump drive stuff?

I hope that Stellaris really focuses more on improving stuff, and if they release new DLC, that at least get more content, they feel a bit disappointing sometimes ,and the price increase might be for the rampant inflaction we are all in... just a theory.

looking forward to starting as a primitive

Nice Analysis. Top

Primitives living on a ringworld never really made sense to me, unless they were some sort of experiment made by an advanced empire. How would primitives create an artificial environment of that scale to begin with anyway? It's mainly the very rare Sanctuary system that I'm thinking about

I enjoy watching your videos twice. Once when the dlc comes out on pc and then again around the time it comes out for console. Got a majority of the dlc for pc but could never get into stellaris on there like I could on console. Idk why.

Is there new species portraits with this dlc? Or new ships?

Would love to get this. But my X1 broke where I had all the DLC except for the latest (Aquarian, Overlord and Nemesis). I've got it on my PS4 but I only have the first 2 DLC's there.. And I do not have the money to buy all the others. So I'm gonna have to play with the basics while watching videos like this..

Well I guess the slingshot finally has value if you can't use hyper relays.

been wanting a dlc like this since i got the game 🎉🎉

Time for Broken Shackles Compatibility babee!! Can I win before my processor crashes?

That’s for the video. I think I’ll buy it when it comes to console in the year 2076

Re: cloaking not being in the patch. Paradox will move stuff from expansion to base game if they want to build on it in future expansions so maybe someday

I guess I’m forever hooked to this game and will buy all the DLCs for the rest of my life

Man, I am still trying to figure out how to use Federations ...

Do we get a new ship set? I'm seeing new ships!

It's great that it's out. Now with fingers cross. I wait to see if they bring a mechanic or dlc where we can seed planets with radiated crystals.

How do you get the cloaking technology

I loved primitives even when they were bland (ignore the fact that I mostly play Necrophage and don't usually sit on my observation posts for long), so this pack was a must for me. I've already doomed an entire species to an organic singularity, and had like 3 planets wiped out by plagues, it's great.

I might have bought this the moment I could.

The way im entering the room is kicking the fucking door in

The cloaking tech alone made me buy it. I absolutely love the idea of being able to cloak certain ships.

$15 for a story pack? Ridiculous.

Seems to be bugged. Set primitives to X5, started a game, wasn't seeing any primitives, expanding... expanding... WTF no primitives. Toggled the cheat for map reveal - no primitives. EDIT before anyone asks; no mods and everything (except primitives) was set to default for a quick start.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I can now play an upscaled continuation of XCOM 2😎👍

Am I the only one who's disapointed that the process of primitive advancement wasn't given a bit more nuance or decoupled with human advancement? It was only coincidence that it's taken us as long (or short) as it has to become the society we are now. If anything had gone different: Bronze Age Collapse, Roman expansionism, medieval/dark age, European empires and the world wars - we would have turned out vastly different. An alien society could have a much different timeline.

Oh yes boys, it’s officially here!

Lol the new dlc made me go back to your channel. Every time there is new dlc I watch your channel and see what I missed. This is the only game that satisfies my Warhammer 30K politics feels.

Masters of Orion 16?

I just want bio ships!

I’m obsessed with stellaris shit or not I’m buying it

So worth it if you enjoy playing remnant. They made the origin sooooo much better now

These DLCs are becoming less and less worth buying

Is only me or anyone more can't play in console version after overlord expansion?

How do I get not bore early game. Seems like every single run is the same

Not interested if they didn't add iron maiden to the soundtrack.

I was mid Stellaris when the expansion released. I quit bought the expansion then saw this video.

In the origin where you play kidnapped/enslaved populations revolting and breaking free, do you choose each of those species or can you just choose the "main species"? Because I'm not one of those who maximize stats but in that origin I would like to choose my favorite species portraits.

Really wish there was a couple different villains besides MSI, kinda sucks that you only get a megacorp, can't get some kinda authoritarian empire, or slaver species. But, eh.

I'm geting put off buying this game as it has TOO many DLC. I hate having to buy tonnes of extras just a to get a uptodate without missing features.

First game, I'm 30 years in, have located one of the home worlds, and just squared up to the bully living just south of me and forced him to a draw when he tried to vassalize me, due to my other neighbors timely declaration of war on the bully. This is good storytelling.

I love Stellaris, but 15 bucks for a DLC pack that is only slightly bigger than a species pack (an I'm not a fan for paying for species).. nope.. I've already dumped over well over a 100 bucks into Stellaris to get all the major update packs. This feature as a story pack playstyle option really feels like it should be sitting in a 5-10 dollar niche.

Can I finally play as the romulan empire? :3

The cloaking button is OK as it is on screen, but scrolling as hell in outliner sucks

TBH it's excecively expensive for the content, but we have to remember that we're also financing the overall continued development of the game. I bought it cuz i have enough income but i'm not stocked about the price... Also and or local equivalent is a fcking lie because I'm from switzerland and it cost me 16.71 CHF aka more expensive AND a more valuable currency, which is over 18 $ so steam is being dipshits, i hope the extra is atleast still reaching paradox and not going down Gaben's gullet

If only I weren't broke :(

Give me masters of orion any time. XD

"Payback" start option... This just screams Greater Terran Union...

Too high a price for only a few aspects of the DLC I would actual use. Waiting for a steam sale before buying.

I haven't played this game in like two years and I still buy every dlc.

Some of the systems and events are pretty coil but some do not seem to be working right POSSIBLE SPOILERS? I found a system that had 6 gaia worlds in it! However once you build the observation posts you will see that there are "primitives" on all of them but the only thing primitive about them is that they lack FTL (there worlds also all have the building that tuens a world into a gaia world). They were well aware of your presence since you entered. They will eventually ask you to leave, but by that point I wanted to see what would happen when I invaded. So I refused to leave but they did something that destroyed all hyperlanes to the system and all ships disappeared! At that point I REALLY wanted to invade so I rushed jump drive to get there. When I jumped in they aren't happy and the hyperlanes reappear but nothing else happens. I cannot invade the world's because the outpost became theirs and so it wasnt my space, and I couldn't attack the outpost either. Thought it might be because I was xenophilic so I went through the Long process of changing to militaristic and made sure my policy allowed me to invade primitives but I still couldn't do anything. Now there are 6 gaia worlds sitting there being wasted 😞

Aspec can you show off the new ships and if they very from species

Yes, buy it.

Meh story and species packs are neat but not enough to make me come back again

should i crack it or no...

No

Does AI understand the mechanics of Eager Explorers jump drives and can defend itself against fleets spawning behind their fortified border systems? Or is it just as dumdum as usual?

I hear "new stellaris dlc" and until now, this is everytime a autobuy.

Eager explorers machine version is broken when paired with quantum catapult. For some reason the -75% bonuses cancel each other out. Very odd.

Ah yes, another dlc that contains niche content and some content for the wider game. Seriously, I need to pay £15 for cloaking? I'll pass.

As someone who always end up with materialistic hippies who don't take slaves and welcomes all refugees I do welcome this expansion. And hell yeah, I'm looking forward to the challenge! It would be a great experience to not dominate everything by the midgame 😅

Mid DLC at best, I appreciate you guys being so positive but you can't seriously think it's worth $15USD

Waaay ahead of you ASpec... I pre-ordered "First Contact" HAHAHA!!!

I have over 1800 hours in this game.. i dont mind the $15 as i am way ahead on value for my dollar

I love Stellaris, but not my PC. 😅