|
Dwesa posted:Spaceborne aliens tend to be clustered. You probably started in an area with pirates. There are areas with higher density of mining drones, crystalline entities etc. And while they'll sometimes be camping on a system you'd really like to colonize, it's rare that you'll find yourself entirely boxed in even when using hyperdrive.
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 15:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 15:19 |
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:Volcano Removal -> Deep Crust Engineering Man, this sounds really cool and good, if onl- Wiz posted:Do I have your permission to steal this? 
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 16:34
|
|
|
With all these new ways to brutalize your subjects, how would I go about playing the Combine in this? I guess a Caste system with lots of bio engineering perks?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 16:36
|
|
|
ThaumPenguin posted:Man, this sounds really cool and good, if onl- It sounds cool but would be underwhelming in game if I saw a 'planetary climate control' tech and all it did was remove a couple of blockers. If additional effects are added though... 
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 16:45
|
|
|
Don't smash the mountain  Hollow it out and turn it into a giant city covered in vertical farms!
Splicer fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Jan 24, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 17:02
|
|
|
Who really needs things like sunlight and open sky? Just get a full spectrum lamp and paint the ceiling blue and everyone will be right as rain. Right? There's a lot of stuff being teased on right now in Twitter and the dev diaries. Looks like 1.5 is going to be adding a lot of flesh for this fleshing out phase of developmemt. Way more than we've seen in the past. Hope they keep up the pace.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 17:21
|
|
|
My only complaint is that the "Jupiter Orbital" got renamed to "Jupiter Habitat" at some point. Habitat might be more clear at communicating what it is, but Orbital is more of a Banks reference, and this is the Banks patch so I have certain expectations.  Also that guy who was more excited about terraforming Mars than orbital habitats was loving crazy. Orbitals are where it's at! Can't wait to learn more on Thursday. And I know it's already been said, but it's pretty important that ships not auto target these things. That would be super hosed up and awkward and frustrating. (Though obviously you should be able to manually gently caress them up if you wanted to be an rear end in a top hat.)
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 18:04
|
|
|
Eiba posted:And I know it's already been said, but it's pretty important that ships not auto target these things. That would be super hosed up and awkward and frustrating. (Though obviously you should be able to manually gently caress them up if you wanted to be an rear end in a top hat.) Ships should target them with an appropriate Purge policy. If those filthy xenos want to make it easier for me to purge them quickly, I see no reason not to avail myself the opportunity. I'm very curious to see how defensible they'll wind up being though. Wiz, is this your take on the Prosperity/Devastation mechanic that's slated to come to EU4?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 18:09
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
While I suspect the UI is incomplete the oribitals we've seen so far (which appear to be two of the same type) look more like they count as settled planets rather than a ship or station. They also have no firepower rating like other stations. That makes me suspect they will be exempt from combat. Makes me wonder if there will be more than one type, if/how the can be further modified and how they are supported if POPs do live on them. Wiz said in a tweet way back that he was a fan of a global food stockpile but there's been no word on whether it's also getting rolled out for Banks.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 18:19
|
|
|
It sort of has to come in Banks. How else could you eat all your neighbors?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 18:25
|
|
|
oddium posted:use the ship designer to build units that counter his oddium posted:it'll get better soon, probably oddium posted:force hyperlanes from the start, it's more fun that way. i think the idea with vassals is they could gain their freedom and then property right would be a mess oddium posted:that'd be super cool but this is a 4x Also wish that game start had more options, like more primitives, picking which type of aliens woud spawn and things like that oddium posted:after the beginning chain pirates just seem to never come back Dwesa posted:Spaceborne aliens tend to be clustered. You probably started in an area with pirates. There are areas with higher density of mining drones, crystalline entities etc. Do you eventually unlock alternate ship forms? I did get a few alternate weapons but they mostly seemed garbo? Some kinda weak "shield absorbing" thing. Why can't I see the radius that a Forward base or whatever will cover before I build it? Am I doing something wrong or is it a UI failure?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 18:30
|
|
|
Aethernet posted:Also, there should be some sort of weapon that can strip the atmosphere from a planet and revert it to a Mars-like state. Planetary engineering is the best. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 18:43
|
|
|
Deceitful Penguin posted:What counters what? How do I see his ships before I just suicide into them? This is where not having any espionage gets very meh. quote:Also wish that game start had more options, like more primitives, picking which type of aliens woud spawn and things like that quote:Why can't I see the radius that a Forward base or whatever will cover before I build it? Am I doing something wrong or is it a UI failure? I respect that it's kind of difficult to display, since your borders are always variable and there's a sticky kind of way it fills in the gaps... but even like a basic ring would help a lot planning these things out.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 18:55
|
|
|
One of my bother with the game is that you are forced to expand quickly or you'll get boxed in and won't be able to expand for a long time. Still, if you have some angry neighbours just find more and hopefully they'll be happy to ally with you even if temporary.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:08
|
|
|
Eiba posted:Mass drivers shoot through shields, but are stopped by armor. Lasers cut through armor but have more trouble with shields. Missiles are hard countered by point defense. Mass Drivers (and the rest of the basic kinetic line) are +33% Shield Damage and 0-30% Armor Penetration depending on size. Lasers (all flavors, so the entire basic energy line) are -20% Shield Damage and 15-60% Armor Penetration depending on size. So the difference isn't all that amazing between the two.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:14
|
|
|
Yeah the problem is that you never really know what your neighbours have, and your ships really need to be ready for anything. So the only logical choice, unless you absolutely know 100% that you're only going to be fighting a specific fallen empire next or something, is to make fairly generalized ships that do ok against everything. So all my ships tend to be the same game after game because the micro needed to constantly refit your fleet for every enemy is insane, and if you screw up you're at a huge disadvantage. Tons of micro, tons of risk, little reward.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:22
|
|
|
That's why you play RP runs where decide things like "okay, in this campaign I'm the Galactic Empire and will only develop energy weapons."
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:26
|
|
|
YES will now be majorly disappointed if stealing air from pacifists is not an option ingame.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:27
|
|
|
refits happen pretty fast nowadays so scouting someone out just as a war starts and making a dongkiller 5000 class a week into the war means that within a month or two your fleet will be taken care of this is a problem if you have only one worthwhile starport of course but you could, in fact, have many
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:27
|
|
|
ulmont posted:Mass Drivers (and the rest of the basic kinetic line) are +33% Shield Damage and 0-30% Armor Penetration depending on size.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:29
|
|
|
I just send out a couple of corvettes when the war starts and suicide them against a fleet. Gets me all the Intel I need
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:30
|
|
|
But how do you deal with all the pirates and space animals and whatnot where you can't see what armor or shields or weapon type they use? Wiki? Also, I just saw a black hole system named Blorg's Bane. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:32
|
|
|
We really do need some basic military intel system. Some points to throw at/invest in other countries to unlock greater info on them. See their demographics, see their budgets and planets, see their ship designs, research goals and so on. \/ Right but you don't get a page displaying "known designs" or something. You have to like take notes manually, that's not so fun. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Jan 24, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:33
|
|
|
It's not like you can't already do that. Sneak science ships into their space/around their borders and keep an eye out for any sightings of their fleet. Just because it's not abstracted doesn't mean military intelligence doesn't exist.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:36
|
|
|
the 'barbarians' of the game like amoeba, pirates, and crystals are not worth counter-designing for and the solution there is to just bury them under fleet strength i mean you can do it but the benefits aren't substantial enough to warrant the work
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:37
|
|
|
Coolguye posted:refits happen pretty fast nowadays so scouting someone out just as a war starts and making a dongkiller 5000 class a week into the war means that within a month or two your fleet will be taken care of
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:39
|
|
|
Wiggly Wayne DDS posted:what is considered the norm for a war fleet? I'm used to entry-level 30-40k late-game pushing 400k normal-sized map (which ultimately determines # of planets, thus # of spaceports & pop and max fleet size) 1) Build at least as many ships as your less than friendly neighbors. Don't trust the diplomatic screen, it has bands of ~25% or so. 2) Don't build over 30k (adjusted depending on difficulty) if not necessary, to avoid awakening Fallen Empires. 3) When in doubt, build up to fleet cap. 4) Battleships artificially inflate fleet strength. Cruisers are your workhorses.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:43
|
|
|
artificial strength is what ais work off of so has importance in the grand scheme my point was more how you're remaking an entire fleet in the space of a month or two
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:46
|
|
|
yeah at least in my mind it all depends on who your opponent is i prefer to match my opponent roughly in fleet strength and make up the difference in counter-design, so i'll size up who i'm fighting and go from there. FEs/AEs are the obvious exception here because good mother loving luck ever matching them in raw fleet cap in the case of me fighting a federation i'll generally design for the strongest member of the federation e: oh you're referring to time lines most of my brawling is done in the mid game with no more than 40-50k or so, and i remember that being about a 2 month process last time i did it though if that's not jiving with what you're seeing in game i could be wrong and understating things. obviously if you need to upgrade hundreds of thousands of FS it's gonna take longer, but the point's mostly academic because it takes the AI a long rear end time to properly invade a planet so you can just ignore whatever their first attack is in favor of refitting your fleet, which will then be able to smash the blockade and take the offensive from there. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Jan 24, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:46
|
|
|
I read a post somewhere recently arguing that the best fleet composition right now is all cruisers with all plasmas (which might be all medium mount, I forget). The guy's logic was that your ships will target whatever enemy ship is most vulnerable to their damage, and since plasma has a bonus against armor, this means that as soon as one enemy ship loses its shields, your entire fleet will focus fire that ship before going back to shielded enemies, greatly increasing kill speed. Conversely, weapons with bonuses against shields will apparently prefer to fire at shielded targets, making it harder to actually finish an enemy off. The guy recommended using cruisers since they tend to just ball up and charge, so they're more likely to all be in range when an enemy ship loses its shields. I don't know if this is true and I haven't tested it. But the real answer is: Baronjutter posted:So all my ships tend to be the same game after game because the micro needed to constantly refit your fleet for every enemy is insane, and if you screw up you're at a huge disadvantage. Tons of micro, tons of risk, little reward. It's waaaaay too much  to first figure out what your enemy is actually using, design a counter to it, pay for upgrades, etc. This also doesn't get you anywhere if you are fighting more than one dude at once, or in a short timespan. I run ships with a mixed loadout of kinetics and plasma in roughly equal proportions and shields and armor also about equal. PD on destroyers, no missiles, maybe a few carrier battleships sprinkled in in the late game. I never really mix this up and it works fine.
Bold Robot fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Jan 24, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 19:46
|
|
|
Tile blockers being things you actually build directly on top of (giving unique building options, or beneficial modifiers to the base terrain) instead of removing and then building on the empty space is such a good and fairly obvious idea I don't know why I haven't seen anyone suggest it yet. Reasons it's good: Planets feel less homogenous as a whole Individual planets are more distinct from one another Blockers feel like less of a 'gently caress you' because you know that they will pay off and give you bonuses later on Due to the above, blocker removal tech (which I guess would be 'permit building on blocker tile' tech now) is a more attractive choice even if you don't actively need it It's also sci fi as gently caress, I'm basically imagining volcanoes being turned into a SMAC Thermal Borehole and it owns and I want that to be a thing.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 20:14
|
|
|
How would that work with terraforming, though? Right now you find an desert planet filled with mountain ranges & you terraform it into an ocean paradise for your fish aliens and obviously the mountains all go away. But if the mountain tiles had bonuses do those stay even after terraforming, or do they disappear?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 20:26
|
|
|
RabidWeasel posted:Tile blockers being things you actually build directly on top of (giving unique building options, or beneficial modifiers to the base terrain) instead of removing and then building on the empty space is such a good and fairly obvious idea I don't know why I haven't seen anyone suggest it yet.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 21:29
|
|
|
Eiba posted:Mass drivers shoot through shields, but are stopped by armor. Lasers cut through armor but have more trouble with shields. Missiles are hard countered by point defense. There are lots of variations that work differently in each weapon tree, but that's the absolute basics. If you make note of what kind of weapons a species has at first contact, you can at least know which type of defense to invest in. Otherwise you want to keep things balanced and possibly retool during your war. Are wormholes a thing? I looked through almost the entire galaxy wit mah cruisah and I didn't see any, they really are one of the good ways to help being boxed in. Eiba posted:You can make custom races and then set whether they can sometimes or always spawn. Eiba posted:Major UI failure. Sometimes I save the game and build one if I'm not sure, but that sucks 'cause it takes forever to build and I have to replay that time if it's more poo poo than I thought. Why not just have a tooltip before you place it but as you aim it: "When you build this here, these systems will be in range" ? Is that complex? You don't have to show it on the map so long as you know what happenin' and wouldn't the game know?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 21:39
|
|
|
I'd love it if each planet was more like a tiny civ map. A bunch of terrain types all with their own bonuses and traits and poo poo, and you'd build things on top of those. But have each tile actually represent some sort of specific feature or zone on the planet, not just generic "empty land" with maybe a bonus. Have hills, plains, jungles, forests, deserts, tundra, permafrost. Have the whole thing more like a civ city map and you improve the tiles. Have multiple buildings that do similar things but on different terrain. Build kelp farms on the ocean tile for food vs a farm on grasslands. Stuff like that. So if you know your planets have a lot of ocean, you'll want to jump on those level 3 kelp farms before you bother with the level 3 hydroponic farms. And in the same way, treat the population more like a civ city. Workers working the tile improvements vs specialists working inside the cities, and the ability to have more pops than tiles. Have planetary level improvements that open up slots for specialists. Build that huge planetary university that gives +10% science production plus has 2 scientist specialist slots. Stuff like that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 21:46
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I'd love it if each planet was more like a tiny civ map. A bunch of terrain types all with their own bonuses and traits and poo poo, and you'd build things on top of those. But have each tile actually represent some sort of specific feature or zone on the planet, not just generic "empty land" with maybe a bonus. Have hills, plains, jungles, forests, deserts, tundra, permafrost. Have the whole thing more like a civ city map and you improve the tiles. Have multiple buildings that do similar things but on different terrain. Build kelp farms on the ocean tile for food vs a farm on grasslands. Stuff like that. So if you know your planets have a lot of ocean, you'll want to jump on those level 3 kelp farms before you bother with the level 3 hydroponic farms. I think it's possible to go too far this way but planetary surfaces need something to make them more meaningful than whatever number of pops you can fit in there.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 22:06
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I'd love it if each planet was more like a tiny civ map. A bunch of terrain types all with their own bonuses and traits and poo poo, and you'd build things on top of those. But have each tile actually represent some sort of specific feature or zone on the planet, not just generic "empty land" with maybe a bonus. Have hills, plains, jungles, forests, deserts, tundra, permafrost. Have the whole thing more like a civ city map and you improve the tiles. Have multiple buildings that do similar things but on different terrain. Build kelp farms on the ocean tile for food vs a farm on grasslands. Stuff like that. So if you know your planets have a lot of ocean, you'll want to jump on those level 3 kelp farms before you bother with the level 3 hydroponic farms. Yes very much this and thank you for saving me the work of typing it. Haven't played a Civ game in ages so here is how I'm imagining things: Have a city block module where you can stack pops and that acts as a hub for extractors. I'm not sure what they would produce on their own, maybe science and energy since that's basically money? Maybe even influence once it gets big enough? Then I'd have the pop capacity increased with every adjacent city tile so say you start with a 2 pop capacity, increased by 2 for every neighbouring city tile. That gives you the choice of making a giant economic hub like Trantor that cannot feed itself. On the other hand I'd reduce extractor efficiency with distance from cities so you could have a lot of tiny farm villages to feed you mega cities. Then roll this in the rework of ground combat so you have to capture all the cities on a planet to get the whole planet, a bit like the sieges in CK2. This would make ground combat a bit more interesting since you could have partially contested planets where the defender could still raise new armies on one side and the attacker could get bogged down if he can't get reinforcements in. Another idea would be to make cities able to produce everything except food until the very late game and have the option to go heavy into extractor or city tech. Good/bad idea?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 22:26
|
|
|
Deceitful Penguin posted:Like, is range even a thing? I don't see how to set tactics as a setting other than "SLAM INTO ENEMY OOHRAH" Range is not as important as it is in other 4x games. Basically just the opening part of the battle. A mix of long range and mid range weapons seems to work well for me. Still keep in mind how the AI uses the ships. Corvettes and Cruisers will charge and get close. Destroyers and Battleships will hang back at their longest range. So for me I have had the best results making making cruisers front line brawlers with medium auto cannons, have my BB's be as back line artillery and my DD's as picket ships for my BB's that destroy all missiles, strike crafts and any corvettes that got by my Cruisers. Corvettes are just cannon folder that draw fire away from my Cruisers. With how missiles work in this game I am not even sure what you see in a battle is actually happening or if it's just a visual abstraction. Wormholes only exist as a FLT drive method. Not the Moo2 kind you were thinking about. Still with wormhole FLT you will not be boxed in. You are only limited by the range of your wormhole stations, which you can build in your space, unclaimed space, and in enemy space while at war. It ignores boarders and allows you to jump over other empires. It's the best FLT method until you get Jump Drive, unless you like Hyperdrive only games.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 22:28
|
|
|
Nevets posted:How would that work with terraforming, though? Right now you find an desert planet filled with mountain ranges & you terraform it into an ocean paradise for your fish aliens and obviously the mountains all go away. But if the mountain tiles had bonuses do those stay even after terraforming, or do they disappear? Maybe you could get an equivalent number of tile features that are appropriate for the new planet type? Or maybe terraforming could give you a certain number of "feature points" similar to the limits on genetic engineering that would let you toss down the tiles you want. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Jan 24, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 22:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 15:19 |
|
|
Mountain ranges become islands with some flavour of bonus.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2017 23:22
|
|
