Its like they never played a few dry runs of the game and simply said... SHIP IT!

I have been playing since Alpha. The game plays fine. I have seen players play with 70 factions on an insane and its a different type of play then having 15 factions. There should be ideology given to planetary invasions but that is another thread. 

I do not understand J5S's comment. It makes zero sense. The game has been intensely played by 1000's of players for the last YEAR, to say it was played a few times and shipped is a disservice to all the Alpha and Beta people who have been posting here all that time. 

Yes all factions can go through your territory and set up star-bases or such. All the more reason to go to war. How are your turn times with that many factions and how many turns have you had so far?

I have 766 hours logged and I am just a Putz.  However, my extensive training renders me resistance+5 toward level 1 implied insults.

Did you really need to post this 3 times in 3 different places?

I've found 40+ empires to work fine on big 1.01 maps, but the nerf to huge/abundant maps in 1.02 reduces everything by 25% and planets by 60%. That puts a fairly serious squeeze on everything, particularly as you start to approach 100 empires, when you start dropping to only 5-6 planets per race. The solution there is either opting-out of 1.02 until Stardock have finished balancing it, or modding the files to restore the old values (I recommend the latter, since the AI in 1.02 seems less inclined to spam colony ships until it hits the approval cap).You can even increase the size of insane maps... though you'd better be using a real beast of a system if you want to go over about 2,500 habitables.

So you have achieved Putx Lvl 2 ?!   Wow, grats.

Quoting Bamdorf,

reply 5

I have 766 hours logged and I am just a Putz.  However, my extensive training renders me resistance+5 toward level 1 implied insults.

Only 766!? Rookie! I've got 837 as of today. Tonight there will be several more hours to add...

I appreciate what you're saying, and I totally get the performance issues of running ridiculous maps. However, I think I repeatedly heard Paul and Brad say that the game supports up to 100 major opponents. Now, if you're going to say that all the time: making forum posts trumpeting it, mentioning it on the livestreams, it might even be in promo material; then I sort of expect to be able to make a playable game with those 100 opponents in vanilla and not resort to mods, even if I obviously need a beast to play it.

A custom faction is a mod.  Whether you use the in game generator to create your mod or not is irrelevant, it's just the same as adding or modifying any other asset.  It's not even as simple as changing the maps are.

The game does support 100 major opponents.  It's quite playable with only two or three planets, you can even run up the ideology tree by getting the building that produces points ASAP.  If this isn't your preference, then you should mod the maps to your liking while you mod in dozens of factions.  It's not rocket science, the game supports the capability just fine.

There are games with an entire mod development kit built into the game itself, a mod is a mod whether the tools to build it are built into the gui or not.  Accept reality, or live in your delusions of slight, the choice is yours.

I'd say that's well into mid-game. Has everyone stalled on research and cash to maintain fleets? Sure the game runs smoothly, but does it still play smoothly? Do you have tech-trading on?

P.S.- Can I get a screenshot of the UP council deliberating? That sounds pretty epic.

A few more screenshot requests. Can you do some of your various graphs in the govern screen? That'd give me good ideas on the info I really want to know.

I counted (haha bet you thought I couldn't) and I have 93 factions available, but as stated above, I am just a rookie, so you can assume I am not really trying.  

Click, click, run.  A mod is something you have to download from Nexus, activate, run LOOT, pray it works....oh sorry I only have to do that for Skyrim, don't have all that whatever with GC3, but what the heck a mod is supposed to be real work right?!   Can you really blame me for not getting that?!

And I have run insane with 60 or 70 (I can't count everything! Sheesh) factions and I found that the game does run smoothly on my crummy four year old computer.

Except Seilore is right (don't you get tired of that, huh?  I mean what the heck) the ship movements are a bit jerky.     That's the only thing I noticed though.  As a rookie though I probably missed all the important stuff.   I really have to get back to playing this horrible broken messed up piece of garbage, I mean if it really was decent and worked right I would  have my 1000 hours in by now and I wouldn't have people calling me rookie...OUCH I think my feelings are hurt*.  

As far as the UP, well, it's way too many peeps to count, now that I am tired of the brain exercise.   They don't vote my way anyway how broken is that?! 

*jk, about most everything actually, sorry, just can't be serious when I read some forum posts, I am a horrible person too, and dang old to boot.

I do see the point everyone is making. Looking at the xmls adding new size and settings choice drop downs that will show straight from in game really isn't that hard to do. It should be as easy as copying a definition and writing it in with a new name for it and then setting it's parameters in mapsizedefs. Haven't tested it yet but it doesn't seem overly complicated.

I think right now though they're more worried with balancing and fleshing out more content and bug hunting. Since it's just as easy as scripting in more options in a drop down box and making sure there's a xml definition for it, it honestly wouldn't surprise me if once more pressing matters are taken care of if they don't add extreme settings in. Just give them time. I'm sure there will be default improvements still to come from here.

It's just a question of who will do it first, them or one of us modders. I'm sure if we don't they will just like I said they're more worried about bugs and balance and polish right now than in adding in more default options.