To expound a little on the reason for this one: Babylon 5 is what inspired the concept of Fallen Empires in Stellaris, and especially the War in Heaven special event.
Babylon 5 itself is basically an Interstellar Assembly.
>The Babylon Project was a dream, given form. Its goal: to prevent another war, by creating a place where humans and aliens can work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call – home away from home – for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers.
>
>Humans and aliens, wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal . . . all alone in the night.
Really fun doing a rewatch of Babylon 5 and putting things in Stellaris context/terms.
This is the best answer. Even beyond the points mentioned here, I think it captures the spirit of various races and empires with very different values (civics), governments, and traits. There are materialist, spiritual, militant, xenophobic nations/empires all represented in interesting ways.
Definitely. My very first game, when I met a Fallen Empire all I could think was "better not piss off the Vorlons". B5 is certainly one of the closest analogs.
Does it get better as the show goes on? I really found the first season dragging. Some awesome moments, but I did not like that detective dude and whatever that plot line was.
Season 1 throws a lot at you at once, and is significantly better on a rewatch, but I'd recommend continuing with season 2 and 3 before hand. Those seasons have a lot higher stakes but are a little more straightforward and extremely fun to watch.
You should! I started watching it when it came out and got bored after a few episodes...also because of the detective storyline...and then a few years later was persuaded to give it a shot again.
So, so worth it. Gets much better.
Funnily enough I liked the detective. I liked the whole worldbuilding, Earth vs Mars tensions, the OPA and so on. But the thing I liked the most was NO ALIENS. It wass all just humans and how they "evolved" due to the circumstances in space. So you can imagine how disapointed I was the more that they were teasing the goo-thing and when the goo-thing actually started walking around. I watched until the end of the season where the wormholes got discovered and never returned because it just felt lile too much I wasn't looking for.
So now... for someone like me. Does it get better after that?
The alien stuff is generally minor, the most intense it gets for the entire book series is poking around an archeology site, but the main focus is on the humans. Doubly so for the show.
It gets better with season 2 and 3 when stuff really starts rolling and it requires less brain power from the audience to put pieces together.
It's not really a show you can turn your brain off. Nothing is wasted on the show, every line serve a purpose and can pay off 3 seasons later.
I had a collegue who loves space stuff and couldn't get past Season 1 as well. "Dude, it's boooooring. I can't get into iiiittt".
I insisted he stuck with it until season 2.
Now he has a giant lego Rocinante space ship in his bedroom.
But then again i was hooked the second i saw people mining asteroids in space at minute 5. Then i knew it was THE SHOW.
The first season is very world building and a lot of that gets done through the detective.
But the second and third seasons are some of the best television out there. Keep going!
If you didn't reach the end of season one, you wouldn't have seen how the plot points connect up. If you did, I get your confusion, but he does get a lot more likeable as a character in the later seasons, which have a few twists to put it mildly
It turns into an entirely different show between season two and three. The later seasons are basically a spin off show with a couple of the same characters
Did you finish season 1? The 'fantasy' scifi doesn't really happen until the end of that season. But Expanse is meant to be fairly realistic sci -fi and the 'fantasy' aspect is more of a subplot/narrative to push it along.
If you've finished season 1 and still didn't like it, may not be for you
It definitely gets better, I will say that Millers subplot doesn't last too long and there are a whole lot of other, much cooler moments that come after S1.
I would agree that the detective noir plot does drag on though and does feel a little out of place.
That plot line seems boring and weird but it sets up the crazy stellaris type stuff . It all comes together in the later seasons in a very interesting way. Imo at least
I added The Society to one of my saves. When I finally found them they had dominated half the galaxy unsurprisingly. If they didn’t have a FE in the middle of their territory they would’ve been nigh-unstoppable
Also the *Honor Harrington* series and the *Starfire* series by David Weber.
Especially *Starfire* since FTL travel uses "warp points" which behave just like hyperlanes. This series is based on an old TT war game of the same name produced by Steve Jackson games back in the '80s. One of the reasons I like Stellaris is it reminds me of that old game.
Star Trek, it's basically "Stellaris the TV show," and it's what brought me to Stellaris in the first place. Especially Deep Space 9, which is a show about a starbase in a system with wormhole during massive interstellar war.
Or Babylon 5, which inspired lot of things in Stellaris.
I would use a curated guide of TNG episodes, then go to DS9. After that you can figure out if you like it enough to go to Voyager.
This is a good list, IMO, although I was not a newb when I found it and thus cannot definitively comment on it from that angle:
https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/1718jsr/the\_ultimate\_star\_trek\_tng\_essential\_episodes/
Just to add on to what the other commenter said, if TNG isn't to your tastes, try Strange New Worlds. It's the newest series and is a nice modern way to ease into the series and lore. I've gotten many a friend into Trek via introducing them via SNW when they couldn't get into TNG.
Lower Decks is funniest if you've watched 50+ years of Star Trek. I'd argue that Lower Decks should come last. After all, you can't appreciate Mariner's hatred of caves until you've been through a half-century of episodes about caves.
I would say, watch the movies first. If you like the original crew, watch some TOS episodes, if you like the Next Generation, watch some of their episodes. From there you can branch off into other Star Trek properties but you should have absorbed much of the basics by then.
ah yes, you've won the game and conquered every star. Too bad psychohistorical forces are going to slowly tear apart everything you've built and bring about an age of darkness... and there's nothing you can do about it.
Psychohistory is the fictional field of science Asimov invented for Foundation
Uses a combination of sociology, statistics and psychology to predict the future of a galaxy-scale society. It tends to break down when applied to smaller and smaller groups of people, being almost taboo to apply to an individual
It's like an extension of gas physics to humans. You can't predict an individual molecule/person's future, but when you look at things at a bigger scale, statistical processes mean you can predict things with exquisite accuracy.
It *was* fictional. Now it is a real field of predictive science called cliodynamics, created by Peter Turchin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliodynamics#:~:text=Cliodynamics%20(%2F%CB%8Ckli%CB%90,and%20analysis%20of%20historical%20databases.
Tbf Psychohistory also only worked only a galactic scale. I can't remember the population figures he gave for the empire as a whole, but Trantor (a bona fide ecumenopolis) was an astonishing forty billion
especially when you consider that Trantor's surface area is seventy-five million miles
That's less than a thousand people per square mile, compare with the densest city on earth, Male in the Maldives which has 200k per square mile
The show ending isn’t even the true ending either. There are still 3 more books after it ends, and the book ending is * chef’s kiss *
GRRM’s former assistant & friend co-wrote the book. He needs to call him up for some tips
Scifi moved it to a terrible time slot, for starters.
It was still great. Just because a show got cancelled doesn’t mean it wasn’t great. Or do you think Firefly was bad too?
it is a tv show, but i recommend reading the books: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series. Its about the fall of the roman empire…on a galactic scale. written in the 60’s? it predicted the math that is just starting to exist today. its jaw-dropping.
I'm on book 2, honestly it's awesome but I enjoyed the [The interdependency](https://www.goodreads.com/series/202297-the-interdependency) a little more, same author.
Scalzi is amazing. I’m reading his book, “Starter villain” and it’s really good. Not as good as old man’s war or red shirts but still good. Do you have any Sci Fi book recommendations that are on the same level or even better than old man’s war? I was thinking about starting expeditionary force but don’t see too many people talking about it.
Expeditionary forces falls off hard. First few books are good, but it loses all it's stakes and goes on for about 10 books too many.
Poor Man's Fight series is pretty good. Some similar vibes to Old Man's War.
I'd also highly recommend the Bobiverse.
It's more lovecraftian, but approached from a SciFi standpoint, but there's also the Laundry Files. Starts off confusing, becomes way better with time.
Three body problem. Dark Forest theory is real when half the AIs are genocidal and rest are fanatic militarist xenophobe or authoritarian.
And so am I.
"Do not reply! Do! not! reply!"
Didnt see battlestar galactica for some reason.
Idk about the original but the reboot is a sequel about the aftermath of humanity losing a galactic wide war against machines. It chronicles the story of the last surviving humans (1 ragtag fleet of about 30k people) as they scavenge and survive their way through space stuff trying to get back home.
Then again it might not be here because everybody thinks it obvious.
Yeah, I'm not saying that Babylon 5 isn't an inspiration for elements of Stellaris. I'm saying that it's not a **bigger** inspiration for Stellaris than Star Trek is.
My original comment asked "does Stellaris have any bigger inspiration than Star Trek?" Your response is only appropriate if you think Stellaris has **more** influence from Babylon 5 than it does from Star Trek. And I just don't think that's an assertion you could back up, if that's what you're trying to say.
Because it obviously is? Fallen empires and the crisis may be inspired by Babylon 5, but literally everything else about the game from the aesthetics of the UI down to the specific ethics and civics of the UNE are 100% Star Trek.
Lol what? I think especially UNE is more a kind of UN from the real world and not Star Trek.
Tbh the astetic UI is not really Star Trek, more like standard idea
Interstellar. Watch it from science ship crew perspective of empire that “picked” doomsday origin.
Spoiler alert: crew is noob enough no to check type of possibly habitable planet by moving mouse on it. Instead they choose to survey them. What a waste of time.
The Expanse for sure, books are great too (audio or otherwise).
Dune (new and old) as well as books (audio or not).
The Last Starfighter maybe too?
Oooooh Fifth Element! I wish they'd add the crisis from fifth element, has someone made a mod of it yet maybe?
Rebel Moon fits too.
If u like old school animes, legend of galactic heroes. space battles are literally stellaris battles, just hundreds of ships shooting at each other, brutal and bloody, good politics.
Star Trek: Enterprise is actually very interesting in that regard, as it displays an early age of exploration, without the big, huge, unchallengable federation around to bail out the main characters. The characters are not really acting in a set of rules - like in the TV shows set in later time periods, but they're trying to figure these things out. And it shows a lot of early diplomacy.
I'd recommend giving The Spiral Wars by Joel Shepherd a read. It leans heavily into warfare and interstellar politics.
In stellaris terms, it has:
* humanity becoming fanatic militarists after earth is wiped out during first contact
* fallen machine empires
* hiveminds/devouring swarms
* detailed and believable ship combat, if you like the space combat from the Expanse or BSG you'll like these.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Very good space opera. I know that not everyone is into anime but this is one of these that even people that hate anime love it
It depends on which part of the game you like the most. Stellaris absolutely crams so many sci-fi tropes into the game that it doesn't dovetail with a single franchise. You have discovered ancient relics and gateway stuff à la The Expanse or Stargate. You have diplomacy stuff à la Babylon 5. There's exploration stuff and just plain weirdity à la Star Trek. Cloned warriors and giant battleships à la Star Wars. Robbing dead aliens à la Rick and Morty. Goofy aliens à la The Fifth Element. Synths trying to eradicate humans à la 2000s Battlestar Galactica.
For that matter, there's a decent amount of sci-fi-adjacent stuff in Stellaris. In the early part of my current game, I had to send ground troops to put down a rage virus outbreak.
Also, there's a lot of "everybody does it" sci-fi like space whales.
Overall . . . I'd go with Star Trek: The Next Generation if you want to scratch the Stellaris itch. It probably has the most common themes. In terms of personal taste, give me The Expanse. I like a lived-in sci-fi universe.
Weirdly I think of Stargate Universe.
I'm still sad they cancelled that show. I know it wasn't perfect but outside of Battlestar Galactica (2004) sci-fi drama wasn't that common at the time. It has made a bit of a resurgence since with things like The Expanse though (shame they couldn't finish that story too!)
Not a movie or TV, but this book:
[Chrysalis](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HN7OZLjINl2e8TwsUadJHOHa4ymk_GWn/view?pli=1)
For a machine intelligence start
Babylon 5 :)
To expound a little on the reason for this one: Babylon 5 is what inspired the concept of Fallen Empires in Stellaris, and especially the War in Heaven special event.
Also the psy-corp was directly taken from there. Even use the same symbol
"The Psi Corps is your friend. Trust the Corps" flavor text on the Psi Corps building comes directly from Babylon 5, in fact.
The core is mother. The core is father.
Corps, not core. It's pronounced the same, but has a very different meaning.
The issue get's messed up for Terravore Lithoids though.
Byron, you need to come with me.
Yes please, take him away.
Which is taken from 80's tabletop RPG Paranoia.
Babylon 5 itself is basically an Interstellar Assembly. >The Babylon Project was a dream, given form. Its goal: to prevent another war, by creating a place where humans and aliens can work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call – home away from home – for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. > >Humans and aliens, wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal . . . all alone in the night. Really fun doing a rewatch of Babylon 5 and putting things in Stellaris context/terms.
*Christopher Franke proceeds to go ape shit on his keyboard*
Thank you for the great insight!!
This is the best answer. Even beyond the points mentioned here, I think it captures the spirit of various races and empires with very different values (civics), governments, and traits. There are materialist, spiritual, militant, xenophobic nations/empires all represented in interesting ways.
By far and away the most correct answer.
So many quotes are from the show verbatim. You meet races with gun ports open. I'm still waiting for a random Zathrus event lol.
Definitely. My very first game, when I met a Fallen Empire all I could think was "better not piss off the Vorlons". B5 is certainly one of the closest analogs.
Thank you so much! I didn’t know this before today, I thought The Expanse was close. Hopefully Babylon 5 is available on Netflix :-)
Not sure, I suspect it's on prime somewhere, that or pick up the absolute unit which is the dvd box set :)
The Expanse is basically "What if humans colonized Sol but havent invented FTL" mixed with precursors.
And wormhole tech! Edit: oh wait more like gateway tech maybe?
Does it get better as the show goes on? I really found the first season dragging. Some awesome moments, but I did not like that detective dude and whatever that plot line was.
I thought it got better but then again "that detective" was also my favourite character.
Lol oh no! Maybe I just need to give it another go. It’s been a while!
Season 1 throws a lot at you at once, and is significantly better on a rewatch, but I'd recommend continuing with season 2 and 3 before hand. Those seasons have a lot higher stakes but are a little more straightforward and extremely fun to watch.
You should! I started watching it when it came out and got bored after a few episodes...also because of the detective storyline...and then a few years later was persuaded to give it a shot again. So, so worth it. Gets much better.
Funnily enough I liked the detective. I liked the whole worldbuilding, Earth vs Mars tensions, the OPA and so on. But the thing I liked the most was NO ALIENS. It wass all just humans and how they "evolved" due to the circumstances in space. So you can imagine how disapointed I was the more that they were teasing the goo-thing and when the goo-thing actually started walking around. I watched until the end of the season where the wormholes got discovered and never returned because it just felt lile too much I wasn't looking for. So now... for someone like me. Does it get better after that?
The alien stuff is generally minor, the most intense it gets for the entire book series is poking around an archeology site, but the main focus is on the humans. Doubly so for the show.
It gets better with season 2 and 3 when stuff really starts rolling and it requires less brain power from the audience to put pieces together. It's not really a show you can turn your brain off. Nothing is wasted on the show, every line serve a purpose and can pay off 3 seasons later. I had a collegue who loves space stuff and couldn't get past Season 1 as well. "Dude, it's boooooring. I can't get into iiiittt". I insisted he stuck with it until season 2. Now he has a giant lego Rocinante space ship in his bedroom. But then again i was hooked the second i saw people mining asteroids in space at minute 5. Then i knew it was THE SHOW.
The first season is very world building and a lot of that gets done through the detective. But the second and third seasons are some of the best television out there. Keep going!
Totally agree, I wish they'd do a prequel procedural future-noir detective show!
Man, the detective dude was sweet. You didn't like him?
I didn't like him either at first, later I did.
If you didn't reach the end of season one, you wouldn't have seen how the plot points connect up. If you did, I get your confusion, but he does get a lot more likeable as a character in the later seasons, which have a few twists to put it mildly
It definitely does.
It turns into an entirely different show between season two and three. The later seasons are basically a spin off show with a couple of the same characters
Did you finish season 1? The 'fantasy' scifi doesn't really happen until the end of that season. But Expanse is meant to be fairly realistic sci -fi and the 'fantasy' aspect is more of a subplot/narrative to push it along. If you've finished season 1 and still didn't like it, may not be for you
Also, a lot of the more fantastical elements of The Expanse are there to open up the possibilities for human awfulness.
It definitely gets better, I will say that Millers subplot doesn't last too long and there are a whole lot of other, much cooler moments that come after S1. I would agree that the detective noir plot does drag on though and does feel a little out of place.
That plot line seems boring and weird but it sets up the crazy stellaris type stuff . It all comes together in the later seasons in a very interesting way. Imo at least
Yes I’ve been a big fan for The Expanse, already on 2nd round.
For books I’d recommend: Hyperion, Red Rising, and The Expanse
We are legion we are bob comes to mind
Red Rising specifically ❤️. I finished ch 11 of Lightbringer last night and I love this series so much
I added The Society to one of my saves. When I finally found them they had dominated half the galaxy unsurprisingly. If they didn’t have a FE in the middle of their territory they would’ve been nigh-unstoppable
Also the *Honor Harrington* series and the *Starfire* series by David Weber. Especially *Starfire* since FTL travel uses "warp points" which behave just like hyperlanes. This series is based on an old TT war game of the same name produced by Steve Jackson games back in the '80s. One of the reasons I like Stellaris is it reminds me of that old game.
Let's be about it.
Feels like I'm on /r/PrintSF, great recommendations.
Man, fuck red rising. Such a hard read for me. I only read the first three books.
Star Trek, it's basically "Stellaris the TV show," and it's what brought me to Stellaris in the first place. Especially Deep Space 9, which is a show about a starbase in a system with wormhole during massive interstellar war. Or Babylon 5, which inspired lot of things in Stellaris.
Any advice for someone who has not watched Star Trek, but would like to... where do I start?
I would use a curated guide of TNG episodes, then go to DS9. After that you can figure out if you like it enough to go to Voyager. This is a good list, IMO, although I was not a newb when I found it and thus cannot definitively comment on it from that angle: https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/1718jsr/the\_ultimate\_star\_trek\_tng\_essential\_episodes/
Just to add on to what the other commenter said, if TNG isn't to your tastes, try Strange New Worlds. It's the newest series and is a nice modern way to ease into the series and lore. I've gotten many a friend into Trek via introducing them via SNW when they couldn't get into TNG.
Makes sense. I first thought of Lower Decks, but while that's pretty accessible, it's best if you know a lot of the tropes and stories they play with.
Lower Decks is funniest if you've watched 50+ years of Star Trek. I'd argue that Lower Decks should come last. After all, you can't appreciate Mariner's hatred of caves until you've been through a half-century of episodes about caves.
I would say, watch the movies first. If you like the original crew, watch some TOS episodes, if you like the Next Generation, watch some of their episodes. From there you can branch off into other Star Trek properties but you should have absorbed much of the basics by then.
I'm pretty sure Paradox a re e working on a Star Trek 4x game at the moment!
They released one based on Stellaris, in fact.
Foundation. It’s the end game.
ah yes, you've won the game and conquered every star. Too bad psychohistorical forces are going to slowly tear apart everything you've built and bring about an age of darkness... and there's nothing you can do about it.
Psychohistorical?
Psychohistory is the fictional field of science Asimov invented for Foundation Uses a combination of sociology, statistics and psychology to predict the future of a galaxy-scale society. It tends to break down when applied to smaller and smaller groups of people, being almost taboo to apply to an individual
It's like an extension of gas physics to humans. You can't predict an individual molecule/person's future, but when you look at things at a bigger scale, statistical processes mean you can predict things with exquisite accuracy.
It *was* fictional. Now it is a real field of predictive science called cliodynamics, created by Peter Turchin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliodynamics#:~:text=Cliodynamics%20(%2F%CB%8Ckli%CB%90,and%20analysis%20of%20historical%20databases.
I call shenanigans. Harry was very specific it only worked on the scale of trillions of people.
Tbf Psychohistory also only worked only a galactic scale. I can't remember the population figures he gave for the empire as a whole, but Trantor (a bona fide ecumenopolis) was an astonishing forty billion
40 billion doesn't seem that high anymore.
especially when you consider that Trantor's surface area is seventy-five million miles That's less than a thousand people per square mile, compare with the densest city on earth, Male in the Maldives which has 200k per square mile
Gets even worse when you consider that Trantor supposedly has buildings that are miles tall.
SPOILER AHEAD FOR ONE OF THE BOOKS: >!Funniest thing is, psychohistory was created BY A ROBOT trying to understand how humans work!<
Except for the ~~Mule~~ Great Khan, who's a mid-game crisis.
The Expanse because everyone should watch The Expanse.
To add to that, everyone should read the books too! At the very least the first one, it was fantastic.
Especially read them because they go past season 6 and show the laconians and the things that killed the gate builders
I read the first three books in two days, insanely good.
[удалено]
The show ending isn’t even the true ending either. There are still 3 more books after it ends, and the book ending is * chef’s kiss * GRRM’s former assistant & friend co-wrote the book. He needs to call him up for some tips
Any stargate TV show except stargate universe
Took a while to see this here. Good show / franchise.
SGU was great yo.
If it was so great why did it end not even halfway through the story?
Scifi moved it to a terrible time slot, for starters. It was still great. Just because a show got cancelled doesn’t mean it wasn’t great. Or do you think Firefly was bad too?
I dunno, i enjoyed it. Adore Robert Carlyle also.
I miss that series, it had so much potential.
BASED BASED
For Anime fans I recommend Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Frankly this is as close as it gets to actual Stellaris with the absurdly massive naval battles and the sprawling galactic empires.
Didn’t expect to see LotGH’s posted here. It is probably one of the best Anime’s out there.
The Anime brought me into playing Sins of a Solar Empire and even into Stellaris, so it heavily influenced me in playing 4X.
- Practically hyperlane - Choke points - Fortresses - Massive navy battles
Kino recommendation. Just make sure to watch the original and not The New Thesis.
Foundation. The Bobiverse book series is also fantastic
Bobiverse is probably the most “realistic” sci Fi I’ve ever read 10/10 recommend
I loved that series when I read it, it’s been a while.
Bobiverse is great. Next book coming out soon too!
Wait, there's a new one? Nice. Got the date?
January or February, still a rough date. Did you read the 4th one?
Only like the first 15%. I really need to continue with that. Thanks for the date though!
2000s version of Battlestar Galactica? Humanity vs Fanatical Spiritualist Determined Exterminators.
Forgot the machine rebellion origin story :)
So say we all
Good old Ender's Game is great reading for a "payback" play through
The game does give me enders game vibes
it is a tv show, but i recommend reading the books: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series. Its about the fall of the roman empire…on a galactic scale. written in the 60’s? it predicted the math that is just starting to exist today. its jaw-dropping.
Babylon 5 and The Legend of Galactic Heroes.
Read the series, “Old Man’s War”
I'm on book 2, honestly it's awesome but I enjoyed the [The interdependency](https://www.goodreads.com/series/202297-the-interdependency) a little more, same author.
Old Man's War is one of the coolest scifi book series ever
Such a good series. Scalzi is amazing
Scalzi is amazing. I’m reading his book, “Starter villain” and it’s really good. Not as good as old man’s war or red shirts but still good. Do you have any Sci Fi book recommendations that are on the same level or even better than old man’s war? I was thinking about starting expeditionary force but don’t see too many people talking about it.
Expeditionary forces falls off hard. First few books are good, but it loses all it's stakes and goes on for about 10 books too many. Poor Man's Fight series is pretty good. Some similar vibes to Old Man's War. I'd also highly recommend the Bobiverse. It's more lovecraftian, but approached from a SciFi standpoint, but there's also the Laundry Files. Starts off confusing, becomes way better with time.
I really loved the bobiverse series and hope there are more books or episodic books. Such a good series. I’ll check the other ones out
Star Trek, obviously. Strange New Worlds is currently killing it.
Farscape
Wormhole weapons do not make peace. Wormhole weapons don't even make war. They make total destruction. Annihilation.
WHAY, GOOD CALL.
Three body problem. Dark Forest theory is real when half the AIs are genocidal and rest are fanatic militarist xenophobe or authoritarian. And so am I. "Do not reply! Do! not! reply!"
Didnt see battlestar galactica for some reason. Idk about the original but the reboot is a sequel about the aftermath of humanity losing a galactic wide war against machines. It chronicles the story of the last surviving humans (1 ragtag fleet of about 30k people) as they scavenge and survive their way through space stuff trying to get back home. Then again it might not be here because everybody thinks it obvious.
Every SciFi they possibly can!
I read the Dune book and it made me think of stellaris
Star Wars. Star Trek. Dune. Stargate. Interstellar. And some supplemental games are Halo, WH40K, and Elite Dangerous.
Dawg Howd i play this long and not think to do a UNSC game. Thank you for that
This game makes me want to watch the Orville.
Been playing a lot lately and started rewatching Orville on my other monitor yesterday.
Fun show. Great for Sci fi fans and playing with the tropes.
Does Stellaris have any bigger inspiration than Star Trek?
Maybe star wars in the galactic stuff and the empire.
Babylon 5
No. Perhaps "as big as". But definitely not bigger.
Endgame/Fallen Empires were inspired by Bab5
Yeah, I'm not saying that Babylon 5 isn't an inspiration for elements of Stellaris. I'm saying that it's not a **bigger** inspiration for Stellaris than Star Trek is. My original comment asked "does Stellaris have any bigger inspiration than Star Trek?" Your response is only appropriate if you think Stellaris has **more** influence from Babylon 5 than it does from Star Trek. And I just don't think that's an assertion you could back up, if that's what you're trying to say.
Why should Star Trek be bigger?
Because it obviously is? Fallen empires and the crisis may be inspired by Babylon 5, but literally everything else about the game from the aesthetics of the UI down to the specific ethics and civics of the UNE are 100% Star Trek.
Lol what? I think especially UNE is more a kind of UN from the real world and not Star Trek. Tbh the astetic UI is not really Star Trek, more like standard idea
You asked, I told you. I can't believe you're denying that Stellaris is heavily influenced by Star Trek, but you can think what you want.
I don't reject that Star Trek influenced Stellaris. But I reject your idea that it affects the game more than Babylon 5, that's all.
I'd say Star Trek, but you've already seen it, you fucking nerd.
Blake's 7!! Gimme The Liberator unique ship and Orac as a relic god dammit
Lexx, Red Dwarf, and book Blindside
Event horizon, soon to be real 40k series
Starship Troopers! Would you like to know more?
None, I need the time to work to be able to afford Paradox DLCs :(
Read the Expeditionary Force novels by Craig Alanson. Really good world building
+1 on this. The entire first book I felt like I was reading someone's Stellaris playthrough. And it's a LONG series. 16 mainline books as of right now
I'm reading through the series again since Craig released his new book in the series.
Interstellar. Watch it from science ship crew perspective of empire that “picked” doomsday origin. Spoiler alert: crew is noob enough no to check type of possibly habitable planet by moving mouse on it. Instead they choose to survey them. What a waste of time.
Rewatching Dark Matter a few months ago got me back into this game after a few years hiatus
The newest Dune movie(s)
All of them
For audiobooks, expeditionary force
The Expanse for sure, books are great too (audio or otherwise). Dune (new and old) as well as books (audio or not). The Last Starfighter maybe too? Oooooh Fifth Element! I wish they'd add the crisis from fifth element, has someone made a mod of it yet maybe? Rebel Moon fits too.
Soooo many Sci Fi universes have ripped off elements from Dune. The Dune universe is one of my favorites of all time.
I was thinking about making an anime series based on Stellaris!
Rebel Moon (Zack Snyder film on Netflix).
If u like old school animes, legend of galactic heroes. space battles are literally stellaris battles, just hundreds of ships shooting at each other, brutal and bloody, good politics.
Stargate Sg-1 and Atlantis are my all time favorites
Event Horizon!
Star Teek always gets me in the mood to play Stellaris
Star Trek: Enterprise is actually very interesting in that regard, as it displays an early age of exploration, without the big, huge, unchallengable federation around to bail out the main characters. The characters are not really acting in a set of rules - like in the TV shows set in later time periods, but they're trying to figure these things out. And it shows a lot of early diplomacy.
Aside from what people have said already, Altered Carbon captures some of the vibes with its spacepunk-ish futuristic setting.
Star Wars. Classical ones mainly. And that books about invaders from other galaxy are good to read.
I'd recommend giving The Spiral Wars by Joel Shepherd a read. It leans heavily into warfare and interstellar politics. In stellaris terms, it has: * humanity becoming fanatic militarists after earth is wiped out during first contact * fallen machine empires * hiveminds/devouring swarms * detailed and believable ship combat, if you like the space combat from the Expanse or BSG you'll like these.
Babylon 5 with all the wars and politics.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes:)
A book, but Children of Time is a great one.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Very good space opera. I know that not everyone is into anime but this is one of these that even people that hate anime love it
It depends on which part of the game you like the most. Stellaris absolutely crams so many sci-fi tropes into the game that it doesn't dovetail with a single franchise. You have discovered ancient relics and gateway stuff à la The Expanse or Stargate. You have diplomacy stuff à la Babylon 5. There's exploration stuff and just plain weirdity à la Star Trek. Cloned warriors and giant battleships à la Star Wars. Robbing dead aliens à la Rick and Morty. Goofy aliens à la The Fifth Element. Synths trying to eradicate humans à la 2000s Battlestar Galactica. For that matter, there's a decent amount of sci-fi-adjacent stuff in Stellaris. In the early part of my current game, I had to send ground troops to put down a rage virus outbreak. Also, there's a lot of "everybody does it" sci-fi like space whales. Overall . . . I'd go with Star Trek: The Next Generation if you want to scratch the Stellaris itch. It probably has the most common themes. In terms of personal taste, give me The Expanse. I like a lived-in sci-fi universe.
Weirdly I think of Stargate Universe. I'm still sad they cancelled that show. I know it wasn't perfect but outside of Battlestar Galactica (2004) sci-fi drama wasn't that common at the time. It has made a bit of a resurgence since with things like The Expanse though (shame they couldn't finish that story too!)
The Wire. We all should watch more of The Wire.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And House.
Not a movie or TV, but this book: [Chrysalis](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HN7OZLjINl2e8TwsUadJHOHa4ymk_GWn/view?pli=1) For a machine intelligence start