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I've been trying to find the right settings to get a Shadows game that's a little more epic space-opera, but the consistent problem I run into is that the AI empires grow extremely slowly or not at all. Community wisdom seems to be that certain settings have very noticeable effects on how well the AI does and this has been supported by my experiences. Specifically: Colony Prevalence: This seems to have the most impact. The AI does not seem to handle well having limited settlement options. Pirate Numbers: The fewer pirates, the bigger they can grow and if you're playing a Shadows start they can really throw a wrench in early empires. More pirates means more pirate infighting. Number of Stars: Anecdotal evidence from the community was that less stars made for more capable empires. I thought this was odd until I noticed that at 1000 stars my home system had on average 6 planets/moons, but at 700 stars the average was more like 20! If that seems high by comparison to the experience of others it should be noted I'm playing with the Extended mod and all 37 races enabled and I suspect that the galaxy generation takes into account number of races in some manner in order to place enough resources. I think the best way to give the AI some help may be to set their home systems to Excellent, but I've run into a small snag when manually adding the empires: Mechanoids are listed in the race dropdown and I'm unsure what happens if I do or don't add them. Do I need to add Mechanoids to get Ancient Guardians in the game, or are they automatically added if RotS events are enabled (meaning that adding them would result in two Mechanoid empires)?
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Jun 5, 2014 15:45
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MagnumOpus posted:Do I need to add Mechanoids to get Ancient Guardians in the game, or are they automatically added if RotS events are enabled (meaning that adding them would result in two Mechanoid empires)? They and the refugees are automatically added if RotS events are enabled, yes.
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Jun 5, 2014 15:58
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hemale in pain posted:Set a homebase for your fleet, you can do that on the fleet screen or by pressing the 'set home base' button and manually clicking on the planet. Then select distance, so system if you want them to stick to one area or sector if you want them to branch out a bit. Then just leave them on automatic. No, it's fine. I had meant to edit my post but work beckoned. I had done this (set home base, posture attack, range anywhere, automated) and I swear my ships don't go anywhere. Do they only attack enemy ships or space creatures as well? Because I got a warning that slugs or whatever were attacking a freighter but my shops just sat there. Maybe I will just give it more time tonight.
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Jun 5, 2014 16:02
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A couple questions as I'm loving this game but also dangerously close to bouncing off it just as I'm getting past the Pre-Warp period: 1) I'm playing Securans because I want to be the Risans of the galaxy, offering up pleasure lounges and carnal escapes to the rest of a war-weary, lustful galaxy. I have no interest in combat in 4Xs, generally speaking, so how do I automate my military and troops without the AI bankrupting me by keeping a standing army of like 6 billion on my homeworld and without loving myself down the line by having none? 2) When I started I had lofty ideals of custom designing every ship imaginable, including private ships, so I deleted a bunch of the default designs. Now the game is bugging me to make a private Passenger ship design, which I did, but how do I know I made a ship that fulfills whatever the hell requirements it is that the game does with private Passenger ships? And I don't mean making all the red text in the ship designer going away, I mean how do I know I won't find myself in a bad situation a few years down the line because I didn't put enough cargo holds in it or whatever else arcane magic the game expects?
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Jun 5, 2014 16:37
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1) You can set it to fully automate and the AI should make an attempt not to bankrupt you but you'll need to make sure you're creating a good economy. If nothing else you can set it to prompt you which is mostly fully automated but it'll just run things by you for approval first. 2) All I know is select the right role to start and then make the red text go away. Beyond that it's probably trial and error whether or not you've made a quality ship.
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Jun 5, 2014 16:46
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1.) In empire policies you can have the minimum amount of troops set on a planet as well as "don't recruit troops until planet reaches x amount of population." You can also set percentages of each type of troop you want, even lower it to zero if you so desire. 2.) Passenger ships are used to transport migrants back and forth between planets. Eventually your homeworld and a few of your first worlds will cap on population, and a lot of passenger ships are going to be visiting them. They are also used for transporting migrants to resort locations and such. Although I personally design and retrofit all my state ships, spaceports, and mining stations I leave the private ships alone to do their own thing. They tend to retrofit when certain beneficial technology is researched such as a better reactor or a more efficient cargo hold. If you're retrofitting them and doing the manual upgrading I would follow that type of mindset. So if you need a large chunk of your population centers to move offworld give them larger or more passenger compartments, if you had to take over planets that are far away give them faster hyperdrives and more fuel cells, and if they are under fire a lot then provide them with armor and shields so that they can get through the bad stuff on the way to their destination. It's going to depend on what you need them for, the environment around them, and how much the private corporations can afford. Abyss fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Jun 5, 2014 |
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Jun 5, 2014 17:15
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Thanks for the tips. I went from full automation, which was frustrating me in some of the decisions the AI was making, to full manual, which was somewhat overwhelming given some of the obfuscation of what's going on behind the scenes, and I wasn't happy with either. I just need to find that magic balance between the two.
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Jun 5, 2014 18:43
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Take a moment to click on 'empire policies' and just set everything the way you like or that sounds good. You can always change it later if you want. I'm sure every single person has a different setup for that screen, you'll want to find your own.
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Jun 5, 2014 19:22
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Shab posted:Thanks for the tips. I went from full automation, which was frustrating me in some of the decisions the AI was making, to full manual, which was somewhat overwhelming given some of the obfuscation of what's going on behind the scenes, and I wasn't happy with either. I just need to find that magic balance between the two. Try letting the AI do everything except research, ship design on military ships (defensive bases, escorts, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, capital ships, carriers, troop transport), colonization (set it to 'suggest new projects), diplomacy (also set it to 'suggest), and espionage (also set to 'suggest'). The game will be a lot easier to deal with. Don't feel like you need to update your designs after every new tech (unless it's something major like hyperdrive), accumulate like 3 to 5 new components, then go into design, select the ships you manually control, hit 'auto-upgrade design' (this just replaces old components with new ones) then manually go into the designs and make sure things are working/efficient.
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Jun 5, 2014 21:36
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Anyone have a strategy for playing the sluken? I want to like their gimmick of killing off other populations to add to their own but the problem I seem to be running into is getting enough numbers of them off my home world and onto colonies with other races so they can properly genocide them and get a significant gain from it. For one my sluken population simply won't migrate to colonies I've invaded but don't have the tech to colonize myself yet like ice worlds. Maybe I could try to resettle the other races to planets with sluken already on them then exterminate them? But resettling seems like it's more likely to send the resettled population to another empire's planet if it's closer, in my limited experience.
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Jun 5, 2014 22:50
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ProfessorGroove posted:Anyone have a strategy for playing the sluken? I want to like their gimmick of killing off other populations to add to their own but the problem I seem to be running into is getting enough numbers of them off my home world and onto colonies with other races so they can properly genocide them and get a significant gain from it. For one my sluken population simply won't migrate to colonies I've invaded but don't have the tech to colonize myself yet like ice worlds. Maybe I could try to resettle the other races to planets with sluken already on them then exterminate them? But resettling seems like it's more likely to send the resettled population to another empire's planet if it's closer, in my limited experience. *Research passenger capacity techs (hi-tech). They'll improve the efficiency of your transports dramatically. *Design your own passenger ships. You can often fit in 2x-3x more passenger compartments than the default. All the ships will automatically retrofit to this new capacity, for free! (Actually, you'll *gain* money in the process). Mmm, in my tech-y Quameno game, I rushed a medicomplex on my homeworld, maxed it out at 0%, and then designed massive 179mil passenger ships. Even at 25% growth, my 15bil population was *dropping* from the sheer migration power. It was impressive.
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Jun 5, 2014 22:56
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How do you make a working economy? I did it in one game (mentioned earlier, which I won), but I have no idea how. Suddenly I was making money instead of 5-10k a year and never had any money issues again. Every other game, I try building a fleet, run out of money, and can't build anything.
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Jun 6, 2014 00:51
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Comstar posted:How do you make a working economy? I did it in one game (mentioned earlier, which I won), but I have no idea how. Suddenly I was making money instead of 5-10k a year and never had any money issues again. Every other game, I try building a fleet, run out of money, and can't build anything. 1. Don't expand so quickly. Your colonies start out making 0 taxes, basically, and you suddenly have to put more money into them in bases, ships to defend them, private economy ships to move goods to them, etc. 2. Resort bases. Make sure you're taking advantage of the serious cash you can make from tourism. Look for areas with scenery bonuses relatively near a populated planet. Design a base with medical, passenger, and entertainment modules and have a constructor ship build it. Your private vessels will ferry tourists to and from it. 3. Trade. If you're not actively planning to go to war with someone, you should try to get a trade agreement with them. The longer a trade agreement lasts, the better the bonus to income both parties get. 4. Strategic resources. I'm not 100% on this, but I think that ship costs/maintenance vary depending on the costs of the resources needed to build them. If you keep supplies of basic shipbuilding resources and fuels low by aggressively establishing mining bases where appropriate, you'll see an across the board decrease in costs.
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Jun 6, 2014 00:57
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Comstar posted:How do you make a working economy? I did it in one game (mentioned earlier, which I won), but I have no idea how. Suddenly I was making money instead of 5-10k a year and never had any money issues again. Every other game, I try building a fleet, run out of money, and can't build anything. --This is kinda unintuitive, but lower taxes = higher population growth. Now, population growth is exponential, so doubling your growth rate (by halving taxes), will cause a 4x increase in gdp growth. *Research techs civilians will use. --Civ-ships will pay you to build their stuff. Just researched warp bubbles? Everyone's gonna want one, big income spike. Oops, now got gerax online? Time to replace those warp bubbles! These two factors can make for an interesting, if not exploitative, opening - you don't need taxes to sustain your early game economy. Start game. Plop homeworld to 0%. Rake in small amounts of cash from civilian ships, and it'll fuel you just fine (plus, its not like you're going to be doing much - you don't have the techs yet!). Once your population's close to maxed (~14bil), crank up the taxes and watch the money flow.
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Jun 6, 2014 01:10
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Cantorsdust posted:1. Don't expand so quickly. Your colonies start out making 0 taxes, basically, and you suddenly have to put more money into them in bases, ships to defend them, private economy ships to move goods to them, etc. Number 4 is true. In your Expansion Planner (F3 I think), there is a tab showing potential colony sites. If you look in the drop down from there, there is a list of empire resources. Anything in the strategic layer that is higher cost than .8 your empire is importing because of shortages. So while not directly increasing maintenance costs, your ship that is using rare minerals that you have to import from the trade mice means it costs more to build. Try and build mines to cover any resource you lack in empire. This will trigger your private sector to build freighters to handle that mine, giving you money from your private sector in yard fees. I also think that your private sector increases its GDP by each transaction at a mine, buying the resource from the mine at empire cost, then dumping it at your yards, but thats just a theory. Higher cost resources will draw freighters to that mine in order to fill that need, though, so it might be a profit seeking on their part, to sell rare materials needed for a marked up price, but it works to stabilize your empire.
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Jun 6, 2014 01:17
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Kjoery posted:*Keep taxes low until population's maxed.
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Jun 6, 2014 02:49
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I installed GEM but now there is like a planet inside a planet. All the other changes seemed to have worked
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Jun 6, 2014 04:17
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It's potentially a hosed up planet shadow thing, it's a known issue and you can fix it by replacing the GEM shading image with the original.
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Jun 6, 2014 04:54
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Goddamn, how do I efficiently deal with hidden pirate bases on my worlds? I have really powerful fleets that are destroying opponents but I can't successfully defeat any of the bases.
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Jun 6, 2014 05:08
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It's a bit of an awkward process (hey, what isn't in this game?): Go to the colonies screen and select the colony with the pirate base. There will be a facilities tab - click on this and you'll see what pirate facilities are there. Select one of the pirate facilities (if there are several, it doesn't matter which one you select - they all get attacked at the same time), and then click attack. Your troops on the planet will then attack the pirates, and you can watch their progress as you would any normal ground battle. Make sure you have a fair number of troops on hand first, though. I've seen firmly entrenched pirates with a strength of ~300k before. My personal strategy is to have a dedicated pirate cleanup crew - a transport packed with tanks and grunts that just goes from planet to planet clearing out whatever scumbags have set up shop there.
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Jun 6, 2014 05:38
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Quick question about Resort Bases, I don't need to build one at a planet if I've already colonized it right? And you only ever need one per planet right?
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Jun 6, 2014 05:49
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Bouchacha posted:This was patched out. Low taxes tend to just encourage migration now instead of adding to population growth.   (1.9.5.1)
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Jun 6, 2014 06:29
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Kjoery posted:No it didn't? Yes, it's the present beta patch that was supposed to change that.
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Jun 6, 2014 06:42
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At what point should you upgrade from a small->medium->large spaceport? I figured out one of the reasons I hit a wall is my stations cost too much, but I don't know when to update them.
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Jun 6, 2014 11:43
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Comstar posted:At what point should you upgrade from a small->medium->large spaceport? I figured out one of the reasons I hit a wall is my stations cost too much, but I don't know when to update them. Quick Answer: The deciding factor for me is always Construction Yard / Docking Bay throughput. If you have a spaceports with a ton of ships waiting, select it and look at the bottom of the info pane for the Building and Docked queues. If those numbers hover at double digits it's time to upgrade. Best time to check this for Construction Yards is when you've just put through a retrofit order for a lot of ships, since they will all rush for the nearest port. Likewise you can test Docking Bay numbers by having a big fleet try to refuel there. Real  Answer:If you want to get into manual designs but have been holding off, spaceports are actually a great place to start. I've found what's most effective for me is to place Small/Medium/Large bases thinking about it in terms of what you need to provide spaceport services to a region. I use almost entirely Small and Medium bases, with Large reserved for my homeworld until my empire is huge enough to need another regional capitol. Here's some guidelines: 1) Strip all labs from Small/Medium spaceports. They are in the default designs so that as you build spaceports you are steadily increasing your research potential. This is great for hand-holding newbies but it is actually insanely inefficient. More efficient is to consolidate all your Labs into one place so that you can get the most out of your Scientists there, and update the design for that base as your total potential grows (seen in the Research Stations tab in the Research screen). Note that there are diminishing returns for multiple Scientists so if you are a race that gets a lot of them you may want to experiment with moving a few to Research Stations of the appropriate type. Protip: Alter your Research Stations to include 2 each of the other kinds of labs so that if you place a Scientist there, their bonuses to the other two fields aren't completely wasted. 2) Make your Small spaceport really barebones. The default Construction Yards and Docking Bays, Medical/Recreationmodules for planetary improvement, Commerce module. The main purpose of these bases is to get the Medical/Recreation bonus for the planet's growth. Every planet gets at least a Small spaceport. 3) Put Medium spaceports where strategically useful: valuable planets, map chokepoints, near your frontlines, etc. They are your main construction and repair/refueling centers. For that reason, like 90% of your mined resources are going to end up there. If you want to get really spergin about it, make sure that regional Medium bases all have nearby mines for strategic resources. 4) Defenses on each spaceport type can be based on where you are in the game. Early with no wars and pirates all paid off? You don't even need any. Getting ready to start cleaning out pirates? Toss shields and weapons on there in proportions relative to how much pressure you think you're going to get. The most important thing is that you have enough Shields. This is something you get a feel for as you play more, but what you're aiming for is enough shields so that if a typical attack force shows up, the shields can hold out until local defense arrives. MagnumOpus fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Jun 6, 2014 |
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Jun 6, 2014 12:38
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Is there any way to search for a specific system name or planet? I'm sometimes having trouble finding specific places due to the immensity of the game and the apparent lack of a "find province" button, as you find in paradox games. e; Ah. I figured out why I didn't find the system and colony I was looking for. When the people I were at war with offered to trade a colony for peace, I assumed it was THEIR colony they were offering, not actually a demand from me. Welp.
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Jun 6, 2014 14:15
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My inner sperg wants planets I'm working with and ships I'm controlling to be locked in the direct middle of the screen sometimes. Is there a way to do that?
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Jun 6, 2014 14:30
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There's a lock button on the top-left side of the lower-left window where the information about whatever you have selected is. That's exactly what you're looking for.
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Jun 6, 2014 14:56
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Is there any way to have built military ships join a fleet immediately, or rally somewhere? How much amror is a good amount for military ships? Is there any disadvantage to making ships that are supposed to be small really big?
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Jun 6, 2014 15:38
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How do fighter bays and the newer fighters work? When I upgrade a new fighter, do my ships get them immediately or do I need to retrofit? What about when I have say upgraded torpedos and fighters, will it only use these or will it still use the old lovely missile fighters as well?
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Jun 6, 2014 15:45
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dtkozl posted:How do fighter bays and the newer fighters work? When I upgrade a new fighter, do my ships get them immediately or do I need to retrofit? Generally your carriers will get access to new fighters when they're researched, but it will take some time to (automatically) replace the old fighters with the new models. I vaguely remember there being some way to specify the exact makeup of a ship's fighter complement (say if you want half interceptors and half torpedo bombers) but I've never cared enough to drill that deep. Dark_Swordmaster posted:There's a lock button on the top-left side of the lower-left window where the information about whatever you have selected is. That's exactly what you're looking for. You can also hit the L key on the keyboard to do this. WYA posted:Is there any way to have built military ships join a fleet immediately, or rally somewhere? If you assign a ship under construction to a fleet (say, from the ships window), it will head to join that fleet once it's finished.
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Jun 6, 2014 17:24
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WYA posted:Is there any way to have built military ships join a fleet immediately, or rally somewhere? You can go in the ship screen immediately after you've ordered the ships. Filter military ships, sort by firepower ascending. Ships under construction will have orange names, and because you just ordered them they'll have 0 firepower. Shift click or ctrl click to select and assign to existing or new fleets. Set homebase from the fleet screen and the ships will rally there. I usually build 30-50 ships at a time and have fleets of 10-20 ships. In the beginning with weak slow ships all my ships will be in fleets under manual control. As I expand I add at least 2 automated fast escorts per colony and leave them automated. You can also choose exactly where to build ships by selecting the shipyard base and double clicking on the name in the bottom left window (or filter construction yards from the ships screen), then go to the construction yard tab and queue them up. Useful for avoiding construction at yards you know lack the materials to build in a timely manner, and to build an entire fleet in the same location. Also to ensure colony ships only get built at planets with max construction speed. I run with at least 30 yards on my capital as soon as I get hyperdrive and build most ships there throughout the game unless I lack some key strategic nearby. (Chromium, I'm looking at you  )
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Jun 6, 2014 17:28
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I just got the game, played through the tutorials, and launched the "you're new to the game" scenario, and ... what the hell do I do? The AI seems to run everything (I know I can turn it off, but what decisions do I take then) and I have no idea what value judgements to make. I'm thrown in the deep, and I think I can swim but I have no idea where to? I'm thinking of just letting the game run on its own, but I still have no idea what I should focus on understanding. Any tips?
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Jun 6, 2014 20:25
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What to focus on? Hmm. Research and ship design would be good first points. Research so you can out-tech guys, ship design so you can put the tech to work and let the AI handle actual deployment. The baseline designs the AI comes up with by default are workable, but you can generally do better.
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Jun 6, 2014 20:34
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Pay attention to pirates offering to sell you discoveries, especially if they happen to sell you the location of the pozdac weapons testing range. I wont say what's in there, but it is really a nice little thing to find, especially if you can get it early on.
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Jun 6, 2014 21:00
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double nine posted:I just got the game, played through the tutorials, and launched the "you're new to the game" scenario, and ... what the hell do I do? The AI seems to run everything (I know I can turn it off, but what decisions do I take then) and I have no idea what value judgements to make. I'm thrown in the deep, and I think I can swim but I have no idea where to? Try following this guide. Afterwards you will have a much better idea about which things you might want to control yourself, and which things to leave for the AI.
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Jun 6, 2014 21:05
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With Universes new character creation through the editor it now has an option to choose a custom image when creating a spy/leader/troop leader/etc. Except that if you try to use it it just breaks the image, replacing it with some kind of default ocean background. Even if you try and use the original character image from the vanilla game that was being used in the first place! Anyone know what's up with this? Is it just broken for now? Also, thanks to whomever mentioned you can change planet graphics manually through the editor. Somehow I completely overlooked that.
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Jun 6, 2014 21:06
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The AI simply will not upgrade my military ships. I'm not sure why it is happening. Bug? I selected one of my designs and hit the Auto Upgrade button and it deleted the design! Now I have no destroyer design. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong but it's killing my enjoyment as I do not care for ship design.
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Jun 6, 2014 23:08
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Huskalator posted:The AI simply will not upgrade my military ships. I'm not sure why it is happening. Bug? It didn't delete the design. What probably happened is it upgraded the design to use a newer, larger component and you can't see it anymore because the new design is to big, and the old design is now obsolete. Change your filter to show all designs rather than newest buildable ones. Also if you have ship design on automatic you don't need to tell it to upgrade things ever.
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Jun 6, 2014 23:18
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Lowen posted:It didn't delete the design. What probably happened is it upgraded the design to use a newer, larger component and you can't see it anymore because the new design is to big, and the old design is now obsolete. Change your filter to show all designs rather than newest buildable ones. Ohhhhh, ok thanks. That seems a little silly though. Why would I want to have a design that I can't even build? Is there a way to prioritize jump drives when the AI upgrades my ships? I just want to have my military zip around and defend my early trade routes and mining bases ASAP.
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Jun 6, 2014 23:31
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