It’s always been a mystery to me why Stellaris only shows the current system in the galaxy map. I mean, from one perspective I can understand it: you don’t want players to get overwhelmed with information and lose focus of what they’re doing at this particular moment. But on the other hand, I think it really hurts immersion and endgame content.
You see, you start Stellaris and after playing for a few hours your map becomes so cluttered with “points of interest” that it becomes really impossible to determine what systems are worth colonizing and expanding into – there’s just too much stuff on the map already. You can click on some of these dots of course, but often it doesn’t show you anything relevant, or just a basic descriptor with no additional info.
This is a really frustrating experience for someone who likes to expand and see new worlds – particularly with the added “empire sprawl” mechanics in Stellaris – it feels like there’s so much going on already, that expanding your borders becomes extremely difficult.
How to increase empire sprawl
One option is to turn down the number of stars in the game (downside: it looks horrible, upsides: less clutter), but then you lose that spacey feeling that makes Stellaris so special. Another alternative is opening up all systems by default, which does remove some unnecessary clutter, but also prevents you from focusing on your empire at will.
These are all of the ways you affect your empire sprawl.
- Construction Templates technology: -25% from branch offices
- Courier Network: -25% from systems and colonies
- Docile Species trait: -10% from populations
- Extensible Software: -25% from systems and colonies
- Fanatic Pacifist ethic: -30% from populations
- Finishing the Harmony tradition: -10% from populations
- Finishing the Synchronicity tradition: -10% from populations
- Fortify the Border edict: +10 from systems
- Franchising civic: -25% from branch offices
- Governer skill level: -2% from populations
- High bandwidth species trait: +10 from populations
- Limited Autonomy: -25% from systems and colonies
- Modular Deposits tradition: -25% from districts
- Nutritional Plenitude edict: +10 from populations
- OTA Updates civic: -20% from populations
- Pacifist ethic: -15% from populations
- Private Prospectors civic: -33% from systems
- Psionic Theory Technology: -10% from populations
- Stellar Culture Shock: -50% from populations
- Streamlined Protocols species trait: -10% from populations
- Subsumed Will civic: -20% from populations
- The Greater Good resolution: -10% from populations
- Unruly species trait: +10 from populations
So what are your thoughts on the matter? Does anyone else feel this is a problem in Stellaris or am I just too picky with my space exploration? What are some of your suggestions to fix it?
