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Squiggle posted:It's like Shadowrun. The more cybernetic you become, the less able you are to tap into....whatever shaman use. Shadowrun is a hard example to use, since part of its charm is that it has a magic-as-science tradition. What Wiz stated is somewhere between the Sheep Goat effect (Psi hits and Psi misses correlate with Psi belief) and phenomenology (a branch of philosophy that argues that your sensory experience is predicated on your intentionality or expectations of what you will perceive).
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Feb 10, 2017 00:23
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Wiz posted:Soft locking tends to make everything feel very samey. I think people actually like hard locks a lot more than they think they do because they create clear, distinct choices and playstyles. People praise the different FTL styles in SotS but they would never have worked as well if any race could choose any FTL rather it coming along with their other advantages and disadvantages. I honestly feel this is a trap a lot of game designers fall into. The best example I ever experienced myself was with a MUD game based on the Discomworld series by Terry Pratchett. You could teach yourself literally any of the like 50-100 skills in the game, it would be inefficient but you could do it. What's more is other players could teach you skills which was more efficient. There were no skill restrictions, and no skill caps, only certain abilities were class specific. So as a thief class you could learn the theft.person skill or whatever and learn "snatch" and "steal" but also "filch" which uniquely allowed you to steal worn items and steal during combat. However, a wizard could also learn snatch and steal and with enough effort the only way you would be a better thief as a thief class was you could steal in combat and steal worn items. Non wizards could cast spells using scrolls, and could cast divine powers using casting rods. So my thief literally had the ability to telephone across the map without having to speak to a wizard or priest. What it basically all meant was that, fundamentally, there was no reason to ever play a character beyond your first one, because you can become such a Swiss army knife what's the point? Skyrim and the elder scrolls games in general suffer from this as well I think because you can be head of the mages guild, Thieves guild, warriors guild, etc etc in one playthrough and just be good at everything.
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Feb 10, 2017 00:29
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certain games i feel like that's part of the appeal. TES games are definitely omnicompetent power fantasies and that's fine. 4x, not so much.
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Feb 10, 2017 00:31
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Blorange posted:Do habitats and ring worlds follow the terrain habitability of your main species? If not, they'd open up migration treaties and triple your colonization potential... From what I understood of the dev diaries, habitats and ring worlds are 100% habitability for all species, like gaia worlds. Habitats don't unlock until after the final spaceport upgrade so I can see why they'd be so powerful. e: Wiz, do ringworlds and dyson spheres require you to have a pre-existing knowledge and source of living metal?
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Feb 10, 2017 00:53
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Wiz posted:Soft locking tends to make everything feel very samey. I think people actually like hard locks a lot more than they think they do because they create clear, distinct choices and playstyles. People praise the different FTL styles in SotS but they would never have worked as well if any race could choose any FTL rather it coming along with their other advantages and disadvantages. I see what you did there Is FTL likely to change in banks/utopia? Kitchner posted:I honestly feel this is a trap a lot of game designers fall into. I'd guess that most people don't play RPGs of that length all the way through more than one anyway. (certainly the only one I've bothered to finish more than once is BG2, and that was with a lot of years between different playthroughs)
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Feb 10, 2017 00:53
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:I see what you did there I caught that too. Wiz has mentioned before he wants to change how FTL is handled. Considering how much this patch and DLC is changing, I think he might be saving that for later like with armies. I would think they have enough on their hands in setting up the AI to use these new changes and find the right balance. Kilravock fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Feb 10, 2017 |
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Feb 10, 2017 01:06
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Hey Wiz, can y'all add some vertically oriented ship sets? I'd pay $5 for a few sets of ships that are set up like the Homeworld mothership (to give an example).
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Feb 10, 2017 01:15
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Release date chat: I assume Paradox isn't planning on dropping Utopia suddenly as a surprise, correct? As in there will be an announced release date some time before the actual release? It feels very strange to see this much about an upcoming expansion and not have a date, but since you're improving so much stuff I would not be surprised at all if there was still a ton of quality control work to do.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:17
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Sedisp posted:Dietary terminology used apparently randomly.  Wiz posted:There is no plan to perfectly balance Tall and Wide, we just want options for when you either can't or don't want to expand aggressively. Huh, I had already flagged this combination up as a potentially good combination given the bits of information we've been given. The pacifist ethos bonuses seem strong in and of themselves (core systems and unity) and there's some obvious synergy there being able to quickly build up traditions, some of which themselves generate more unity, and then getting fast access to habitats, though my main concern would be that you wouldn't have good enough mineral generation to actually benefit from that. I think it makes sense that if any playstyle / ethos is going to thrive best as tall it should be the guys who aren't even allowed to declare wars. I'm really hoping that fanatic pacifist feels like a viable choice - the defensive wars only restriction is pretty extreme.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:24
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Squiggle posted:It's like Shadowrun. The more cybernetic you become, the less able you are to tap into....whatever shaman use. I'd agree with that except that in Shadowrun you can have a literal Math-O-Mancer who uses a Cerebral Co-Processor (CPU embedded in the brain) to help cast your spells and other cyber/bioware I forget the names of to help reduce/deal with the cost of casting spells. That's not to say anything other than that Shadowrun is a drat cool setting, though.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:39
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At least with the new faction system, if you choose to go that far when you get the ethics change to pops in the a Horizon Signal chain you can now appropriately convert your government ethics as well. It always bothered me that there wasn't an (obvious at least) method of doing this.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:44
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I love that I'm too materialistic IRL to even imagine how something like the shroud could be hard for a determined scientific study to uncover. I'm also fine saying that since all of this magic energy comes from the shroud, and the shroud is intelligent (or full of various intelligences) it can be choosy on who to hide from and who it blesses with fit. Perhaps it finds the thought patterns of materialistic societies disgusting, or it's looking for spiritualists it can dupe into [bad shroud result]. Ok this all checks out now. \/ That's because it's useless to study things that pretty clearly aren't real. It's certainly been studied though, and there's huge cash prizes for anyone who can provide any sort evidence for either. People try all the time, the military even farted away tons of money very seriously looking into it only to have to be embarrassingly proved the people behind it were of course scam artists. In the real world there's no magic powers, there's also no FTL. There is in stellaris though, so in that universe those are both serious scientific topics. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Feb 10, 2017 |
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Feb 10, 2017 01:45
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Baronjutter posted:I love that I'm too materialistic IRL to even imagine how something like the shroud could be hard for a determined scientific study to uncover. Real world scientists, today, will refuse to investigate any psychic or weird claims they think are too wacky. Go to your local university, psych department, tell them you want help doing an experiment relating to psychic conductivity. Or contact the astronomy department and earnestly ask them to help in your study of Aliens. In every belief system there will be stuff that falls outside of the tenets of that belief system.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:48
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I mean, science isn't exactly a belief system, is it? Provide solid evidence, and enough people will take you seriously. Don't, and they'll laugh you out of the room, as they should. Unless there's some other agenda on the table  As someone mentioned earlier, scientists would be in fact the most interested in magic, study it, and harness it. Imagine a magical source of power I'm personally not too fond of locking spiritualists out of robots and vice versa, because if nothing else, going on a holy wat to digitalise the galaxy and spread the true word of the Computer would be great, but on the other hand, I currently beeline for synths and psi jump drive on all my plays because they're both just so good. If the lockouts give good alternatives I'm all for it.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:55
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Rakthar posted:Real world scientists, today, will refuse to investigate any psychic or weird claims they think are too wacky. Go to your local university, psych department, tell them you want help doing an experiment relating to psychic conductivity. Or contact the astronomy department and earnestly ask them to help in your study of Aliens.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:00
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Kitchner posted:Skyrim and the elder scrolls games in general suffer from this as well I think because you can be head of the mages guild, Thieves guild, warriors guild, etc etc in one playthrough and just be good at everything. This is why I think hardlocking stuff in a game like Stellaris is good and fine, because you shouldn't be able to just run around with all the great end game techs from both Spiritualists and Materialists. Choices should matter in game, more so one like Stellaris.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:01
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Truga posted:I mean, science isn't exactly a belief system, is it? Provide solid evidence, and enough people will take you seriously. Don't, and they'll laugh you out of the room, as they should. Unless there's some other agenda on the table Yeah, science is not a belief system. It's a methodology. In fact many scientists are happy to explore many ideas that seem at first to be weird or wacky. You just need a falsifiable hypothesis and a valid way to test it and there you go. That said, if it doesn't serve the game well, I don't think it works to be worried about realism. Having a fun game is far more important and anything that adds more ways to differentiate empires is good.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:02
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Ein Sexmonster posted:This is just wrong though. Scientists HAVE investigated psychic or weird claims for decades. They just haven't ever found anything that backs up their existence. I'm fine with the current division though. Wiz is right about restrictions being good for variety. Ah, I see. Scientists are impartial knowledge priests thoroughly testing any claims brought to them and doing so without any biases or preconceptions based on their existing understanding of the world. To imply that there's a recursive aspect to what they will test, or how thoroughly they will test or, or how they interpret the data - nope. Also, lol.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:03
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Talk about biases and preconceived notions.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:05
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Zurai posted:Talk about biases and preconceived notions. "Maybe the scientists on 2017 earth would have a hard time considering psychic phenomenon as a real thing and would be less receptive to investigating that than something they believe exists, like 10nm processor fabrication" "Ur wrong, scientists investigate EVERYTHING"
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Feb 10, 2017 02:06
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Truga posted:I mean, science isn't exactly a belief system, is it? Provide solid evidence, and enough people will take you seriously. Don't, and they'll laugh you out of the room, as they should. Unless there's some other agenda on the table I spoke with one parapsychologist that lamented that there were statistically valid results for Psi, but that just invited incredulous insistence that their methods were flawed to have gotten that result. Note, I am not familiar enough with parapsychological literature to judge that as truthful or not, but there are people IRL who really do research and claim these things.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:07
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Rakthar posted:"Maybe the scientists on 2017 earth would have a hard time considering psychic phenomenon as a real thing and would be less receptive to investigating that than something they believe exists, like 10nm processor fabrication" Sarmhan fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Feb 10, 2017 |
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Feb 10, 2017 02:08
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Forcing a degree of specialization I think is good because otherwise your optimal configuration simply becomes the optimal mix of all techs. One thing I enjoyed about sword of the stars was that it randomly removed techs. Sometimes you just wouldn't have some techs, or even some branches of the tree. Just gotta do without them and adapt. Doing that for everyone in the game could be cool, some things just aren't possible in the reality of this particular game.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:10
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Ein Sexmonster posted:That is, of course, not what you actually said. You claimed scientists 'refuse' to investigate claims about ESP, etc, period. If you're going to paraphrase do it honestly. When I say refuse, I mean "The scientific community is satisfied with an answer that does not satisfy the general public, and is no longer investigating." A really simple example is the current debate about Thimerosal. The scientific consensus says that they have proven it is safe, and basically refuses to do any substantive inquiry otherwise. I believe that Psychic Phenomena, claims of faith healing, and claims of Aliens fall into this category but apparently this is in dispute and credible studies are done on them. Can you please link the last study trying to determine a psychic phenomenon, when it was published, and how many subjects it had?
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Feb 10, 2017 02:18
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Yeah, scientists totally ignore aliens. SETI is a figment of my imagination, after all.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:26
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Rakthar posted:Ah, I see. Scientists are impartial knowledge priests thoroughly testing any claims brought to them and doing so without any biases or preconceptions based on their existing understanding of the world. To imply that there's a recursive aspect to what they will test, or how thoroughly they will test or, or how they interpret the data - nope. 
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Feb 10, 2017 02:29
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What if I asked the scientific community what a "vegan" is, would this convince Wiz to change his mind...?
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Feb 10, 2017 02:30
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Rakthar posted:When I say refuse, I mean "The scientific community is satisfied with an answer that does not satisfy the general public, and is no longer investigating." A really simple example is the current debate about Thimerosal. The scientific consensus says that they have proven it is safe, and basically refuses to do any substantive inquiry otherwise.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:30
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Conskill posted:I spoke with one parapsychologist that lamented that there were statistically valid results for Psi, but that just invited incredulous insistence that their methods were flawed to have gotten that result. I'm personally acquainted with the (anti)vaccine science due to it being a very popular topic recently, and there's "doctors" or "scientists" who call themselves that but are really just plain old propagandists. Dunno how para-scientists do their work, but if it's anything like that, I can understand the aversion. Rakthar posted:When I say refuse, I mean "The scientific community is satisfied with an answer that does not satisfy the general public, and is no longer investigating." A really simple example is the current debate about Thimerosal. The scientific consensus says that they have proven it is safe, and basically refuses to do any substantive inquiry otherwise. Scientific "truths" that get reversed all the time. Here's something *everyone* used to know is true until this week: https://theconversation.com/maybe-moderate-drinking-isnt-so-good-for-you-after-all-72266 Like I said, present solid evidence for your hypothesis, no matter how preposterous, and the podium is yours! I'll listen to wacky poo poo any day of the week, especially if there's evidence for it. There aren't many people who want magic to be more real than me. I'll post a lovely comic to the other half of your question:  You could argue 20 years ago that maybe there's things people have seen, but nobody ever caught on camera. Now, there's camera footage of people doing anything and everything, and there's *zero* footage of magic, aliens, anywhere. GunnerJ posted:What if I asked the scientific community what a "vegan" is, would this convince Wiz to change his mind...? Vegans are rainforest killing monsters.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:32
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Conskill posted:I spoke with one parapsychologist that lamented that there were statistically valid results for Psi, but that just invited incredulous insistence that their methods were flawed to have gotten that result. Not to drive the derail further than it already is but this is the core of publican bias. You get so few studies published that one which happens to have a good methodology and appears to have a positive result makes it seem like it's possible but it is really just a statistical anomaly because you don't see the hundreds of other studies that were negative and never published for one reason or another.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:34
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Rakthar posted:When I say refuse, I mean "The scientific community is satisfied with an answer that does not satisfy the general public, and is no longer investigating." A really simple example is the current debate about Thimerosal. The scientific consensus says that they have proven it is safe, and basically refuses to do any substantive inquiry otherwise.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:35
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Zurai posted:Yeah, scientists totally ignore aliens. SETI is a figment of my imagination, after all. The simple thing I was trying to illustrate is that Scientific inquiry as it is currently done tends to be a little rigid and fall within existing beliefs, and is better at doing inquiry on topics they think are credible than they think are not. Of course, I used the word "Refuse" instead of "Does a lazy, lovely job looking into stuff they don't think exists" and here we are arguing about it. To my mind, when people who actually can look into something choose not to because it falls outside of their existing beliefs, that's refusal. And the guy trolling me about bringing up antivax is a great example, you can't really discuss "issues under scientific vs general dispute" without being labeled as a follower of a camp.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:37
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What ethics combo lets me unmask the dangerous truth about vaccines the arrogant science-priests have lied about and ban them in my empire?
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Feb 10, 2017 02:38
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Truga posted:I'm personally acquainted with the (anti)vaccine science due to it being a very popular topic recently, and there's "doctors" or "scientists" who call themselves that but are really just plain old propagandists. Dunno how para-scientists do their work, but if it's anything like that, I can understand the aversion. So, story time. So, the place where I did my doctoral studies has an in-house parapsychologist. They have a rather tame view of Psi (understanding it as a psychological experience to be studied, rather than a force of nature to quantify), but still, experiments and all. I personally got to experience a ganzfield experiment, and it's actually kinda wild but no insight into the future. I got walked through a few other Psi experiments, which to no one's great surprise produced a lot of misses. Anyway, they were going to do an experiment on whether the experience of magnetic fields intersecting the brain produces the Psi experience. They got as far as getting the hardware to do this, when the person who invented the machine found out it was for parapsychological research and shat a brick. Far as I know the experiment had to be cancelled, because they never got access to the software to run the machine. Scientists are people too, warts and all.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:38
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In terms of science versus metaphysics, you could argue that in Babylon 5, telepathy/psionics had been reduced to a scientific field that was being actively researched on by the Psi Corps to further their abilities. On the other hand, it's a game and you can't explain that poo poo, it's CHIM.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:38
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Conskill posted:Scientists are people too, warts and all. That does sound like it sucked, personally I'd go for that. There's almost always something that can be learned from stupid experiments, and if absolutely nothing came out of it, it'd be one more psi experiment on the back of the book saying "results inconclusive", which is still better than nothing. 
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Feb 10, 2017 02:57
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I found myself reflexively clicking "Enter the Shroud," even though it was just a screenshot. Yeah I'm prob gonna buy this.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:58
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nessin posted:Not to drive the derail further than it already is but this is the core of publican bias. You get so few studies published that one which happens to have a good methodology and appears to have a positive result makes it seem like it's possible but it is really just a statistical anomaly because you don't see the hundreds of other studies that were negative and never published for one reason or another. Which is why negative results are just as important as positive ones. Anyways, I'm absolutely psyched for this update and can't wait for it to come out.
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Feb 10, 2017 03:40
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JuniperCake posted:Anyways, I'm absolutely psyched for this update and can't wait for it to come out. I think we can all agree that 1.5 sounds awesome. And that we'll eat the ones who don't agree.
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Feb 10, 2017 03:49
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I want to explore the shroud, with robots. Spiritual psychic robots.
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Feb 10, 2017 04:14
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