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Wiz posted:I mean seriously, we have five different modes of genocide in Utopia. I think we have the evil bit covered even without a Tradition for it. You can never be TOO evil.
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Feb 8, 2017 22:34
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Coolguye posted:a protectorate is simply a vassal who blows rear end at research. (more specifically, they have less than 40% of your total technologies) Huh, okay. I wondered if I was doing something wrong. Do liberated worlds inherit all of their original empire's research I wonder? Because I've never been able to vassalize anybody peacefully, and I'm starting to think its because I'm out-teching them too much.
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Feb 8, 2017 22:36
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Re: the goon species pack. I'm not seeing any species in my species list when making a game. Are they supposed to be there?
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Feb 8, 2017 22:44
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Archonex posted:So the Horizon Signal chain questions: ulmont posted:You can do this at least 2 different ways that I'm thinking of. Also that's NOT an advantage. It clogs up the outliner like crazy. Back Hack posted:You can never be TOO evil.
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Feb 8, 2017 22:45
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ulmont posted:I wish there was some way to force myself into becoming an FE's protectorate. The best I've been able to do is liberate their worlds, vassalize the new empire, and then enter into a tech treaty, but that's only a 25% discount not 80%. i've generally found tech to be overrated anyway, honestly. the number one thing tech can do for you is provide options. in war, you need to have a few levels of each weapon type to provide reasonable options to counter-design whatever your opponent is doing. in peace, you need a couple of levels of each building type (including specialty ones) to provide options to engineer your economy. however, the only level 5 tech that provides a very, very clear and huge benefit over level 2 tech is power. zero-point generators are a huge win because you can spend much less of your space just making things work and much more of your space making things effective. but if you have a design that will work with gamma lasers, blue or UV lasers are going to be at least 90% as good and will be much, much easier to obtain. which has made a pretty interesting dynamic for me this game honestly. i voraciously pounced on all tech bonuses i could get for the first ~50 years of the game, but after i got that small critical mass, it made much more sense to gear toward mining and power generation, build more efficiently, and take tech cards from the debris of my opponents. i skipped 3 levels of missile tech, 1 level of shield tech, and 1 of power generation tech by fighting the AE early on this game. and yes, that was loving scary, but still, it was 2275 and i was to the end of the tech tree in engineering and most of the way there in physics, because i punched a lot of nerds and looked really hard at their lunch money. Serf posted:Huh, okay. I wondered if I was doing something wrong. Do liberated worlds inherit all of their original empire's research I wonder? Coolguye fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 8, 2017 22:45
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Unlike other 4x games where tech is king and lets you really snowball and see immediate obvious gains, tech in stellaris feels more like in other paradox games where it's just this slow plodding forward momentum that's I guess slightly improving things in hard to feel ways. The few times this isn't true is when a tech unlocks a big game-changing mechanic, like robots. I'll usually rush robots, have them around the time of my first colony, then just put everything into rapid colonization grabbing every rock I can. I'll catch up on tech by having 20x the population of my rivals, and that massive mineral income from my robo-colonies can fund a huge fleet. Maybe the enemy has Level III guns and I have level II, big deal, throw more ships at them. Not that the "enemy" ever declares war. If the AI is actually declaring war on you, you've hosed up and didn't expand your empire and fleet fast enough. Really I'd say diplomacy needs the most work in the game. In EU4 no matter how big I am I always feel there's a challenge, there's push back, there's threats. Expand too fast and you'll get a serious coalition against you. Even playing on the higher difficulties in stellaris 99% of the time the only power that ever declares war on me are awakened fallen empires or end game threats. It's just declare war, want to die managing troops, take 3 planets, repeat over and over until you're big enough to take on the FE's. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 8, 2017 22:51
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Wiz posted:five different modes of genocide in Utopia Another good thread title contender imo.
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Feb 8, 2017 22:53
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Baronjutter posted:Not that the "enemy" ever declares war. but even in that situation your point is reinforced rather than refuted. the way you win on these harder difficulties is to intelligently counter-design and have a strong production base. that and only that will be what will saves you. but in order to intelligently counter-design, you need all the features unlocked - you need options. trying to fight someone who is fielding autocannons and rolling heavy armor when you do not have armor, lasers, or big ships is a lost cause. but even if they are rocking level 3 autocannons and level 4 armor, you can bleed them dry with level 2 armor, red lasers, and a beefy cruiser chassis.
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Feb 8, 2017 22:55
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Wiz posted:I mean seriously, we have five different modes of genocide in Utopia. I think we have the evil bit covered even without a Tradition for it. Please don't get me wrong, I totally appreciate and admire you commitment to genocide simulation, but traditions are something everyone is going to have to adopt (or I guess don't adopt them and deliberately cripple yourself?) and I guess I'm not even so much as looking at numbers and specific effects but more how it's all written. It seems every race ever will adopt at least two tradition trees, and if you're a "kill everyone but me" kind of play through, what do you pick? Expansion for sure. Domination and diplomacy are out. You pick Harmony but Harmony is a bit nice sounding. Then you call it a day I guess? Maybe exploration. None of them seem to gel particularly well with the play style other than expansion and maybe harmony. I'll be honest if you asked me to pin point it down I think I'd struggle, it's just the feel it gives off. Even if I dump all the roleplay stuff off to one side and I say "Right, I'm playing a game where I'm going to kill everyone" it's only really Expansion that jumps out at me, maybe Harmony for the bonuses.
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Feb 8, 2017 23:02
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ulmont posted:Yeah, but now you have 15 colonizeable worlds in a single system! Gets a little wonky if you move your capital world to a new system after your old one gets filled with gross time mutants.
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Feb 8, 2017 23:07
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The unrevelaed system we don't know anything about still has the evil as hell Purity stuff. Your evil needs are covered I think.
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Feb 8, 2017 23:08
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Wiz, two questions: I think the point about technology not feeling as impactful as other 4x titles is a pretty important one. While I really like the research system itself in Stellaris, I agree that going up one tier of lasers (which can be a non-trivial investment) really doesn't feel like it makes that much of a difference. This is the only 4x I've played where that is the case. It does make it feel like a tech focused empire is less viable. Building tech feels a bit stronger, but still nothing like getting factories in Moo2/Civ for instance. So: 1) Are there any discussions around making tech feel a bit stronger? Either by increasing tier bonuses, or adding more interesting things that can only be done at higher tech? 2) Will it become possible to acquire tech during planetary invasions? It feels strange that you can occupy the planets of a species who knows far more about mining or power generation than you, and learn absolutely nothing from all their intact facilities, yet you can reverse engineer weapons, shields and armour from some chunks of debris lying around in space.
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Feb 8, 2017 23:10
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Kitchner posted:Even if I dump all the roleplay stuff off to one side and I say "Right, I'm playing a game where I'm going to kill everyone" it's only really Expansion that jumps out at me, maybe Harmony for the bonuses. from a roleplay perspective this is good for me too. you do not have friends as a xenophobe - ever. even other xenophobes get relation maluses with you. literally the only people you can reliably trade and interact with are your vassals. being able to handle vassals better is on my very short list of requests in my current game. hell, if i'd been able to get just those two things in my current game i'd likely be 2/3rds of the way through the galaxy right now, instead of close to half. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 8, 2017 23:11
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Kitchner posted:Please don't get me wrong, I totally appreciate and admire you commitment to genocide simulation, but traditions are something everyone is going to have to adopt (or I guess don't adopt them and deliberately cripple yourself?) and I guess I'm not even so much as looking at numbers and specific effects but more how it's all written. It seems every race ever will adopt at least two tradition trees, and if you're a "kill everyone but me" kind of play through, what do you pick? Expansion, Supremacy, Prosperity, Exploration? Harmony if you also want to be nice to the pops you're not exterminating? Supremacy is outright about conquering so I don't see how that wouldn't fit into a kill everyone playstyle.
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Feb 8, 2017 23:13
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Wiz posted:Expansion, Supremacy, Prosperity, Exploration? Harmony if you also want to be nice to the pops you're not exterminating? Supremacy is outright about conquering so I don't see how that wouldn't fit into a kill everyone playstyle. Oh, have the supremacy traditions been tweeted yet? I left it off my list so it definitely slipped my mind. If that about conquering then consider my point withdrawn.
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Feb 8, 2017 23:18
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Supremacy's coming tomorrow, but it seems like it works as an rear end in a top hat Tradition. From the dev diary: "Supremacy: Focuses on growth through military conquest." It's in-game description, meanwhile, is "The future of the galaxy belongs to those who are strong enough to seize it." So, yeah, I think it'll work for what you want. Pretty sure its starting and finishing bonuses (though not all its perks) got moused over in the stream too, if you want to look there for more info.
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Feb 8, 2017 23:27
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Man, if thats the Spiritualists thing, I'd love it if the biological one was to engineer the Beast Virus. 
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Feb 8, 2017 23:30
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Thyrork posted:Man, if thats the Spiritualists thing, I'd love it if the biological one was to engineer the Beast Virus.
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Feb 8, 2017 23:35
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Or alternatively, you could become the Necromorphs. Hand out free Marker schematics to people. They're much more efficient than powerplants! Totally not a wooden horse. Ignore the unrest and free armies spawning on your energy producing worlds.
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Feb 8, 2017 23:36
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And please do not mind the moons appearing in my space! We simply pulled them from the cosmic dark using all this free energy in order to fEeD UpON tHEm!
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Feb 8, 2017 23:48
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Roland Jones posted:Supremacy's coming tomorrow, but it seems like it works as an rear end in a top hat Tradition. Sounds like I jumped the gun a bit then, I sort of forgot about the original stuff because it looked like it's changed a bit since then. Sounds like kill everyone is a Supremacy, Expansion, Harmony sort of deal.
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Feb 9, 2017 00:00
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before the dlc players would deal with end of game catastrophes after it, players become the end of game catastrophes 
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Feb 9, 2017 00:13
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Arglebargle III posted:Re: the goon species pack. I'm not seeing any species in my species list when making a game. Are they supposed to be there? It surprised me a bit myself, but the species added by the mod are included at the very end of the game's pre-made empires. You have to scroll all the way down until you suddenly see empires you haven't seen before.
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Feb 9, 2017 00:21
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Kitchner posted:Sounds like I jumped the gun a bit then, I sort of forgot about the original stuff because it looked like it's changed a bit since then. Sounds like kill everyone is a Supremacy, Expansion, Harmony sort of deal. Harmony is optional there (and almost everywhere, despite it possibly being my favorite tree so far) I'd say; it provides stability, which is nice, but at the same time you may want the things other trees offer more. Prosperity (industry enabling you to make even more weapons and kill even more things) may come first, depending on your exact needs, for example. But yeah, Expansion into Supremacy definitely seems the way to go there, since you'll want to rapidly expand and leverage that into military might. (Getting Expansion anything but first or not at all seems questionable.) The primary change (that we know of; we admittedly didn't get a good glimpse at what's inside each tree previously) so far is Purity becoming Diplomacy, and Purity's stuff is being put into something less general-use than the Traditions apparently, so that's not really a loss. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 00:22
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DatonKallandor posted:Or alternatively, you could become the Necromorphs. Hand out free Marker schematics to people. They're much more efficient than powerplants! Totally not a wooden horse. Ignore the unrest and free armies spawning on your energy producing worlds. Reminds me of that gods and guardians mod, which if you have the right ethos lets you drop monoliths into a developing nation that let you give them nifty bonuses. If you're a militarist, xenophobe, or fanatic spiritualist with xenophobic leanings you can also use it to set yourself up as gods via the monoliths, enslave the believers of your false religion with carefully concealed slave collars that they think are religious icons, have your believers purge society of all that hate you or realize the sham, ultimately bring their civilization to its knees with some serious decision making and dedication on your part, and then teleport the detritus and survivors off planet to be murdered in brutal labor or as energy producing resources. Needless to say you had better hope the survivors of all of that never make it to the age of being a developed civ. Because whatever is left at that point loving hates aliens. Archonex fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 00:39
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Thyrork posted:Man, if thats the Spiritualists thing, I'd love it if the biological one was to engineer the Beast Virus. I've been watching/reading The Expanse, and I just now realized how the Protomolecule is more or less the Beast with the serial numbers filed off. Bloody Pom fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 00:47
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Bloody Pom posted:I've been watching/reading The Expanse, and I just now realized how the Protomolecule is more or less the Beast with the serial numbers filed off. And less evil
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Feb 9, 2017 00:54
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So in prep for the new DLC coming I've been playing this game again just for kicks. Had a pretty interesting bug though! It happens in the Observation event where one of your scientists declares himself god just for giggles. Apparently if you let the initial Piramid be there's a chance the population below will revolt, with others building a new piramid. I just want to imagine there's this classic virgin volcano sacrifices going on in the name of a bored scientist. 
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Feb 9, 2017 01:04
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Iced Cocoa posted:I just want to imagine there's this classic virgin volcano sacrifices going on in the name of a bored scientist. To be honest if I found another race of creatures that looked like that I'd be herding them into active volcanoes, too.
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Feb 9, 2017 01:07
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How do you tell the difference between what you've surveyed and what you haven't?
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Feb 9, 2017 01:13
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Re: Horizon Signal I haven't actually played through it before, but is there any way to get the dozen planets or whatever in one system but not gently caress with the ethics of all my dudes?
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Feb 9, 2017 01:16
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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fondue posted:How do you tell the difference between what you've surveyed and what you haven't? On the galaxy screen, you'll see the resources and stuff but the dot won't be a bright color and the name is greyed out.
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Feb 9, 2017 01:30
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Poil posted:I only know of one. The other way is to find mutated cockroaches on a tomb world and uplift them.
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Feb 9, 2017 01:36
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PittTheElder posted:Re: Horizon Signal When your scientist gets super excited about changing everybody into the messenger species, execute him and burn his research. Or just stop him I guess, I've only got the event on militarist runs where execution was an option. Once it changed only my homeworld pops into messengers, the other time my curator scientist changed species into a messenger, got "elected" El Presidente and my homeworld pops remained unchanged right up to the end.
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Feb 9, 2017 02:26
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PittTheElder posted:Re: Horizon Signal Answer: When you get the Messenger events, just shut down the scientist's research or quarantine him before he releases it. The retrovirus won't get out and it won't change people. In the worst case it will just mess with your homeworld and everyone else will be fine.
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Feb 9, 2017 02:31
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HiKaizer posted:Answer: When you get the Messenger events, just shut down the scientist's research or quarantine him before he releases it. The retrovirus won't get out and it won't change people. In the worst case it will just mess with your homeworld and everyone else will be fine. Oh right I did this and stayed normal, I forgot. Homeworld added radiated, repugnant, and one more trait I forget but that was it.
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Feb 9, 2017 03:16
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Bloody Pom posted:I've been watching/reading The Expanse, and I just now realized how the Protomolecule is more or less the Beast with the serial numbers filed off. Please spoiler this poo poo, I've been lurking this thread for months and all but I didn't expect to see spoilers for something not-this-game here.
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Feb 9, 2017 05:29
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Wiz posted:I mean seriously, we have five different modes of genocide in Utopia. I think we have the evil bit covered even without a Tradition for it. Well, that's nice. NOW GIVE SOMETHING TO PLAYING 'GOOD'! ...I'm sorry. But I'm left with the thought: There's literally no reason or benefits to such. We know there's a new mineral tax coming in Consumer Goods. We know that raising the living standards to higher-than-average levels will take more. Thus eating the boosted minerals/energy we get for raising the happy. Same as Social Security as an option did, and may continue to do if that tech/Influence option exists. Where is the pay off going to be? It's not in tech, as the warlike will also have the same levels of tech, if not better for having more worlds to offset the reseach tax with. It's not in relations, as there's no real way to really help relations. It's not in military, of course. You're biased towards defences and shields, but that's not exactly an advantage. I'm not saying you should be able to play without a fleet(Despite the fact that defence stations take fleet capacity while being ineffective for purpose). But it seems to me that despite it being 'something to build for and build around' and despite it hamstringing you both in terms of fighting and(If xenophile) interactions with primitive, where is there anything that will help you if you turn your thoughts towards making life nice for your people or others? The matter is beyond frustrating to me. Bloodly fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 06:03
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so to distract a bit from people making judgements and making demands about poo poo while having very few facts, IT'S MAAAAAP TIIIIIIME  this is shortly after officially winning by domination. obviously i'm not finished, i need to finish eradicating all the xeno filth from the galaxy, but it's nice to have the game acknowledge that it's just a matter of time now. i finished destroying the spiritual AE, and the xenophile absolutely did not care. the Unbidden showed up in like 2430, but i was ready for them and pounced on the portal two weeks after it showed up. i nuked 3 fleets and then took down the portal, the crisis lasted for about two months overall. what was funnier was that about 6 months later, the xenophile FE decided to go all guardians of the galaxy, long after everyone had tired of congratulating the galaxy's biggest, baddest bigots for saving everyone. so now they're awakened and i'm hemming and hawwing between letting them do their thing to see what happens and just going in and stomping them flat right now. even after their bonus fleets from awakening, they're still showing as Inferior to my fleet (i have about 250k spread over 5 fleets and i am in the middle of building a 6th). strictly speaking i should turn on my purge policy (which has been prohibited for the last like 150 years to keep diplomats off my nutsack) and start waging cleanse wars. the current vassals i have will probably take the better part of 100 years to integrate fully, and after i flatten the xenophile FE it's not like there's anything that can stop me anymore. my borders are also extruding like holy gently caress (check the second map picture; my territory is actually extruding THROUGH like 4 of my vassals) so as long as i take care to cleanse planets near my borders i should get them pretty reliably. feeling kinda lazy, though. might just watch the xenophile AE do its thing for a bit. ostensibly they shouldn't go on a war spree the way the spiritual AE did so i'm kind of curious how they can actually react.
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Feb 9, 2017 07:00
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Bloodly posted:
Woah how'd you get your hands on the DLC so early in order to do enough playing to figure out all these balance issues? I mean obviously you've been playing it in order to have such strong opinions on new and re-balanced mechanics added in Utopia. Can you tell us all about all the other features they haven't even announced?
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Feb 9, 2017 07:14
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