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GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Jeb Bush 2012 posted:

now that I think about it, it's kind of weird that when you advance from pre-ftl to ftl civilisation you replace all of your heavy industry with mines

The thought process seems to roughly have been: "We are making a scifi space 4x, we also have a tile development aspect, SMAC was a scifi 4x with a tile development aspect, SMAC had minerals, energy, and food being made by mines, power plants (solar), and farms, therefore..."

ETA: for real, check the art for a SMAC mine and a Stellaris mine.

GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Mar 13, 2017

# ? Mar 13, 2017 16:42

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# ? May 14, 2024 03:11

Communist Bear: Oct 7, 2008

Looking forward to "deep and meaningful voiced quotations" DLC then.

# ? Mar 13, 2017 16:48

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

WMain00 posted:

Looking forward to "deep and meaningful voiced quotations" DLC then.

# ? Mar 13, 2017 16:49

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

I would say that I will buy any game that shamelessly rips off SMAC's atmosphere & writing but having played beyond earth I will amend that to "I will buy any game that competently rips off SMAC's atmosphere & writing"

# ? Mar 13, 2017 16:56

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Please have all quotes voiced by the gentle ghost of Carl Sagan.

# ? Mar 13, 2017 16:56

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Jeb Bush 2012 posted:

I would say that I will buy any game that shamelessly rips off SMAC's atmosphere & writing but having played beyond earth I will amend that to "I will buy any game that competently rips off SMAC's atmosphere & writing"

CBE never really even tried to rip off SMAC's atmosphere and writing imo. I mean in terms of atmosphere it was like the anti-SMAC.

Early on in Stellaris's life as a game I was worried it would go down CBE's misbegotten way-too-bland path but it's pulled back from that in a big way.

# ? Mar 13, 2017 17:03

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

GunnerJ posted:

CBE never really even tried to rip off SMAC's atmosphere and writing imo. I mean in terms of atmosphere it was like the anti-SMAC.

can you seriously tell me that this is not an inept attempt to ape SMAC

# ? Mar 13, 2017 17:06

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Jeb Bush 2012 posted:

can you seriously tell me that this is not an inept attempt to ape SMAC

OK, its writing then for sure. When it comes to the vague thing we call "atmosphere" though, I can't say it tried to do what SMAC did because it barely had any coherent themes. It was generally a lot more optimistic than SMAC so that's failing mimicry so bad that you end up being the opposite of what you're imitating.

# ? Mar 13, 2017 17:08

Crazycryodude: Aug 15, 2015; Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?

God, I'd kill for a new SMAC. Hell, even for just an HD retexture and UI overhaul.

# ? Mar 13, 2017 17:33

PittTheElder: Feb 13, 2012; Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Yeah, I just started a new game last night, still amazing. I think the thing it really needs is a broadening of the tech tree at the later end. Once you get past the tier six techs, it really narrows way down and the game just zooms past.

I think my first playthrough of Utopia will be a Planetmind inspired Hive.

# ? Mar 13, 2017 20:53

Comstar: Apr 20, 2007; Are you happy now?

I give up, Stellaris has defeated me. I cannot play a 4X game because this game won't allow me too. I thought after a year it might have improved. Fool.

I cannot Explore - soon as I meet an Alien race it's borders up exploring down and the end of anything interesting happening.

I cannot Expand - I built 2 or 3 System stations to be able to get some energy and I run out of influence. Only way to get 1 point is to wait several years for my 1 colony to get 5 Population and then update the governor's mansion.

I cannot Exploit- I hit an energy wall and building any new stations consumes as much energy as I get. There is no technology available to increase energy production on the horizon either.

I cannot Exterminate - I declare war and get a list of things I can try and gain, which won't allow me to attempt to take all the enemy systems and gives no clue on what I need to do to do that.

I doubt it will be any better a year from now.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 08:36

Milkfred E. Moore: Aug 27, 2006; 'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

Comstar posted:

I give up, Stellaris has defeated me. I cannot play a 4X game because this game won't allow me too. I thought after a year it might have improved. Fool.

I cannot Explore - soon as I meet an Alien race it's borders up exploring down and the end of anything interesting happening.

I cannot Expand - I built 2 or 3 System stations to be able to get some energy and I run out of influence. Only way to get 1 point is to wait several years for my 1 colony to get 5 Population and then update the governor's mansion.

I cannot Exploit- I hit an energy wall and building any new stations consumes as much energy as I get. There is no technology available to increase energy production on the horizon either.

I cannot Exterminate - I declare war and get a list of things I can try and gain, which won't allow me to attempt to take all the enemy systems and gives no clue on what I need to do to do that.

I doubt it will be any better a year from now.

good troll, friend

# ? Mar 14, 2017 08:42

GotLag: Jul 17, 2005; 食べちゃダメだよ

I've been enjoying the game a lot more since I got a couple of mods that remove the early-game grind:
Actually expand - Tweaked so that frontier stations use 0.5 influence/month instead of 0
Faster start

The struggle of the first few years is fun once or twice, then just gets tedious.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 08:56

Kitchner: Nov 9, 2012; IT CAN'T BE BARGAINED WITH.
IT CAN'T BE REASONED WITH.
IT DOESN'T FEEL PITY, OR REMORSE, OR FEAR.
AND IT ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT STOP, EVER, UNTIL YOU ADMIT YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT WARHAMMER; Clapping Larry

Comstar posted:

I give up, Stellaris has defeated me. I cannot play a 4X game because this game won't allow me too. I thought after a year it might have improved. Fool.

I cannot Explore - soon as I meet an Alien race it's borders up exploring down and the end of anything interesting happening.

I cannot Expand - I built 2 or 3 System stations to be able to get some energy and I run out of influence. Only way to get 1 point is to wait several years for my 1 colony to get 5 Population and then update the governor's mansion.

I cannot Exploit- I hit an energy wall and building any new stations consumes as much energy as I get. There is no technology available to increase energy production on the horizon either.

I cannot Exterminate - I declare war and get a list of things I can try and gain, which won't allow me to attempt to take all the enemy systems and gives no clue on what I need to do to do that.

I doubt it will be any better a year from now.

I doubt you'll be a better player a year from now either.

I mean it's weird telling someone to get good in a paradox game, but you start with a base influence gain of +3, declaring a rival gets you potentially to +4 and an early tech gets you to +5.

Yet you still manage to both get down to only 1 influence a turn, but you've apprently done with without any benefits to your expansion.

Like if this is a serious post it genuinely sounds like you need some advice on how to properly manage your early game. This game has many flaws but "I cannot expand at all in any way" isn't one of them.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 09:29

Piss Witch: Oct 23, 2005

Kitchner posted:

Like if this is a serious post it genuinely sounds like you need some advice on how to properly manage your early game. This game has many flaws but "I cannot expand at all in any way" isn't one of them.

I dunno, I've had some pretty lovely clustered starts where I've ended up locked in to a small area pretty quickly, this gets even worse if you're using hyperlanes.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 09:51

Bloodly: Nov 3, 2008; Not as strong as you'd expect.

Comstar posted:

I give up, Stellaris has defeated me. I cannot play a 4X game because this game won't allow me too. I thought after a year it might have improved. Fool.

I cannot Explore - soon as I meet an Alien race it's borders up exploring down and the end of anything interesting happening.

I cannot Expand - I built 2 or 3 System stations to be able to get some energy and I run out of influence. Only way to get 1 point is to wait several years for my 1 colony to get 5 Population and then update the governor's mansion.

I cannot Exploit- I hit an energy wall and building any new stations consumes as much energy as I get. There is no technology available to increase energy production on the horizon either.

I cannot Exterminate - I declare war and get a list of things I can try and gain, which won't allow me to attempt to take all the enemy systems and gives no clue on what I need to do to do that.

I doubt it will be any better a year from now.

1. You must be utterly surrounded for that to be happening-not the 'borders up', but the 'cannot explore'. If it's truly painful, turn Clustered Starts 'OFF'. It also depends on what type of propulsion you're using. It's a lot harder to be locked out if you're using Warp or Wormhole over Hyperlane.

2. The initial conditions guarantee at least two systems with planets you can colonise near you. Now, I'm fully aware that them spawning doesn't mean you'll GET to them before someone else does, especially if it's an Advanced Start Empire(With free systems and an actual fleet) starting right next to you. You want to be sending other ships as well as your science ship to explore the surrounding systems to find those planets and more planets.

3. If the tech draw has been painful, there's little that can be done, but you don't have to match tile bonuses in terms of on-planet generation. If you have to build those extra plants, then do so and replace the buildings later. Power techs(Both power plants and a Starport Module that grants some power) are in Physics. If you have Bentharan Stone, the tech to unlock the Bentharan Power Plant is in Engineering. Churn through a fewc techs.

4. To directly take a planet, you want the 'Cede Planet' war goal. Read your tooltips, each war goal is explained in the tooltip for each one. Since you can pause anytime, there's no excuse here.

What I really want is more details. Though I do sympathise since I've had some TERRIBLE starts where I was blocked off and on the edge of the galaxy and couldn't do anything about it.

Bloodly fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Mar 14, 2017

# ? Mar 14, 2017 09:53

Communist Bear: Oct 7, 2008

Kitchner posted:

I doubt you'll be a better player a year from now either.

I mean it's weird telling someone to get good in a paradox game, but you start with a base influence gain of +3, declaring a rival gets you potentially to +4 and an early tech gets you to +5.

Yet you still manage to both get down to only 1 influence a turn, but you've apprently done with without any benefits to your expansion.

Like if this is a serious post it genuinely sounds like you need some advice on how to properly manage your early game. This game has many flaws but "I cannot expand at all in any way" isn't one of them.

I had a +1 in fairness at the start, but that was due to Government choices and I quickly changed that to +3 by building two influence producing buildings.

(I'm playing a modded game also).

# ? Mar 14, 2017 10:08

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Comstar posted:

I give up, Stellaris has defeated me. I cannot play a 4X game because this game won't allow me too. I thought after a year it might have improved. Fool.

I cannot Explore - soon as I meet an Alien race it's borders up exploring down and the end of anything interesting happening.

Split up your starting fleet and send them to find out what directions you want to send your science ships. I always build a second science ship first thing too, but that's personal preference.

Don't do the alien research things in the situation log until after you've got Colony ships, they pull from the same resources. The other empires will research you soon anyway, let them do the work!

If the blocker is someone you want to be friends with, you can make friends with them and they will reopen borders.

Comstar posted:

I cannot Expand - I built 2 or 3 System stations to be able to get some energy and I run out of influence. Only way to get 1 point is to wait several years for my 1 colony to get 5 Population and then update the governor's mansion.

If you don't want to be friends with someone you can declare them a Rival. You'll get influence and their other rivals will like you better (and reopen their borders!). The quicker you get colonies up and running the sooner you can start replacing redundant stations. Don't build too many colonies at first though, they slow your research. Generally I don't like to build a third colony until I can afford to drop a research building on it to offset, but again this is a rule of thumb based on circumstances.

Comstar posted:

I cannot Exploit- I hit an energy wall and building any new stations consumes as much energy as I get. There is no technology available to increase energy production on the horizon either.

You can build more power stations on your home world, place your starter stations for optimal energy, research solar panels, leave ships in orbit unless you're actively using them, plant a second colony (remember, speed research colonies) and dump power on it, and/or research the next level of planetary power plants. You can also trade with other empires (that you made friends with through rivalries!) and you get energy as rewards for some early quest chains. Obviously not all of these will be immediately viable choices depending on your starting circumstances and strategy, find what works for you!

Comstar posted:

I cannot Exterminate - I declare war and get a list of things I can try and gain, which won't allow me to attempt to take all the enemy systems and gives no clue on what I need to do to do that.

I uh... yeah, this is the weakest X at the moment. You pick your war goals and mash fleets and armies until your winningness (bottom right circle icon that appears after the war starts) exceeds the total war goal. To take their planets you pick some planets you want from the list and either pick the liberate option (makes a new friendly empire) or the one with red text I forget what it's called that gives you the planets straight up, but has a higher war cost and requires certain policies to be in effect and might piss off your friends. Win or lose you end up in a truce for 10 years, then you can take another nibble. At the bottom there's options that affect the entire empire at once but they're very pricey. You get winningness by blowing up ships and invading planets (put ships in orbit and drop armies on them). If a war goes on too long with no winner a white peace will be declared and the winninger of the sides can make some demands.

There's a couple of changes to war coming up in a couple of weeks that I won't go into because you haven't hit those issues yet but everything to do with pew pewing needs work, hopefully that's the patch round after this.

Comstar posted:

I doubt it will be any better a year from now.

As above, massive free content patch with accompanying DLC coming 6th of April, focused on pop management, building tall, non-war-based dick waving, and a bunch of quality of life improvements. The non-DLC additions/changes are extensive and awesome (including a lot of the new content and all the things that could be classed as "fixes"), the DLC is just the cherry on top.

Hope this helps!

Splicer fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Mar 14, 2017

# ? Mar 14, 2017 10:19

Kitchner: Nov 9, 2012; IT CAN'T BE BARGAINED WITH.
IT CAN'T BE REASONED WITH.
IT DOESN'T FEEL PITY, OR REMORSE, OR FEAR.
AND IT ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT STOP, EVER, UNTIL YOU ADMIT YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT WARHAMMER; Clapping Larry

WMain00 posted:

I had a +1 in fairness at the start, but that was due to Government choices and I quickly changed that to +3 by building two influence producing buildings.

(I'm playing a modded game also).

You can hardly complain if you've got no influence at the start and you're playing a modded game designed that way though!

# ? Mar 14, 2017 10:21

Communist Bear: Oct 7, 2008

Kitchner posted:

You can hardly complain if you've got no influence at the start and you're playing a modded game designed that way though!

Well yeah and as I say all I needed to do was plonk down two buildings and hey presto.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 10:24

Bholder: Feb 26, 2013

The war system is mostly problematic late game, early on you can gobble up entire empires if they are just 2-3 planets big.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 10:47

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

I like the war goal system for the most part (though the incoming tweaks are needed), it's the mechanics of conducting war (armies, doomstacks, amount of clicks required to queue up builds, fleet behaviour) that I find unengaging.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 11:56

spectralent: Oct 1, 2014; Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

Bloodly posted:

1. You must be utterly surrounded for that to be happening-not the 'borders up', but the 'cannot explore'. If it's truly painful, turn Clustered Starts 'OFF'. It also depends on what type of propulsion you're using. It's a lot harder to be locked out if you're using Warp or Wormhole over Hyperlane.

To be fair, every time I have Clustered Start it ends with me buried in other empires within 20 years, so I feel that. I assume it's meant to force some combat by mandated war to break out, but it is annoying if you're peaceful. Plus there's already the pirate event that it seems like literally everyone gets.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 13:59

ProfessorCirno: Feb 17, 2011; The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

I forgot how loving terrible Beyond Earth was.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 14:21

Mazz: Dec 12, 2012; Orion, this is Sperglord Actual.
Come on home.

I have literally never struggled with the start that hard, and I've only put like 10-12 hours into this game :iiam:

# ? Mar 14, 2017 14:28

Crazycryodude: Aug 15, 2015; Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?

I've got probably ~300 hours in and I've played to the endgame at least once on every single major update. Back before the update that made borders open by default, I would get boxed in pretty regularly, but since then it's literally never happened except for the one time I started next to a xenophobic FE. Maybe it's just that I've got a decent amount of experience with the game now and can play my way out of a bad situation, but horrific starts like some people are describing seem like they're pretty much gone.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 14:32

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

GotLag posted:

I've been enjoying the game a lot more since I got a couple of mods that remove the early-game grind:
Actually expand - Tweaked so that frontier stations use 0.5 influence/month instead of 0
Faster start

The struggle of the first few years is fun once or twice, then just gets tedious.

I'll add that this mod is still relevant because the in-game "no clusters" option just makes spawning random instead of giving you some breathing room: No Clustered Starts.

Counter-intuitively you have to keep the in-game clustered start option on because that's what the mod changes.

I still end up bumping up against AI empires and coming into conflict, but they're not directly up my rear end from the start. With this mod I have a ton of fun in the opening part of the game, just exploring random poo poo.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 14:49

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

ProfessorCirno posted:

I forgot how loving terrible Beyond Earth was.

BE makes me sad to think about because if Firaxis gave it the kind of ongoing support Paradox is giving Stellaris, I really think it could have been an awesome game rather than just... kinda bland.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 14:54

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Anyone know how to get in touch with King Lemming? I made a mod that is a very heavily modified version of his new spaceship classes mod and I want to put it on the workshop but I'd feel bad about doing that if he'd object. (Maybe this is irrelevant in the Stellaris modding community, I'm used to Skyrim where they take this real drat seriously.)

# ? Mar 14, 2017 15:00

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

Lifeglug posted:

I dunno, I've had some pretty lovely clustered starts where I've ended up locked in to a small area pretty quickly, this gets even worse if you're using hyperlanes.

Or spiral maps where you can be sandwiched between two rear end in a top hat powers on either side of your lane and you're not going any further early game.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 15:08

Mazz: Dec 12, 2012; Orion, this is Sperglord Actual.
Come on home.

The answer, as always, is wormholes.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 15:11

Fintilgin: Sep 29, 2004; Fintilgin sweeps!

GotLag posted:

I've been enjoying the game a lot more since I got a couple of mods that remove the early-game grind:
Actually expand - Tweaked so that frontier stations use 0.5 influence/month instead of 0

You know, I feel like it would be nice if there was a way to 'graduate' a frontier station so it no longer uses influence, or reduces influence consumed. Like you can upgrade it into a heavy military/science/diplomatic station that eats energy/minerals but provides border push.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 15:10

Pigbuster: Sep 12, 2010; Fun Shoe

Comstar posted:

I cannot Explore - soon as I meet an Alien race it's borders up exploring down and the end of anything interesting happening.

This is a little odd to me; I don't really see aliens declare closed borders unless I go out of my way to piss them off or if they're xenophobes. Borders are open by default now so you'd need to have really bad luck for everyone to close them.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 15:13

Piss Witch: Oct 23, 2005

Fintilgin posted:

You know, I feel like it would be nice if there was a way to 'graduate' a frontier station so it no longer uses influence, or reduces influence consumed. Like you can upgrade it into a heavy military/science/diplomatic station that eats energy/minerals but provides border push.

I thought the purpose of them was to stake a claim to an area but as you grow your empire and colonise planets, you decomission them as their expanded border isn't needed.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 15:16

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

Yeah, by mid game you should only be using frontier outposts for critical strategic purposes, they're really not needed for just basic border expansion for basic resources after you have 5-6 colonies up.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 15:27

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Pigbuster posted:

This is a little odd to me; I don't really see aliens declare closed borders unless I go out of my way to piss them off or if they're xenophobes. Borders are open by default now so you'd need to have really bad luck for everyone to close them.

I often get border closures on first meeting that get re-opened a few months later. I haven't gotten boxed in completely in a good while, but I do expand into potential choke points ASAP specifically to prevent it.

I tend to have bigger problems with piles of monsters or pirates camping out on important hyperlanes :argh:

# ? Mar 14, 2017 15:33

Poil: Mar 17, 2007

They are often needed to connect your empire's borders if you have wide areas with no colonizable systems. If you have a single remote colony or outpost you get a small circle but if you have two nearby each other you get a big blob of space.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 15:34

Pigbuster: Sep 12, 2010; Fun Shoe

Splicer posted:

I often get border closures on first meeting that get re-opened a few months later. I haven't gotten boxed in completely in a good while, but I do expand into potential choke points ASAP specifically to prevent it.

I tend to have bigger problems with piles of monsters or pirates camping out on important hyperlanes

Huh. Maybe I've gotten lucky.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 15:37

OnceIWasAnOstrich: Jul 22, 2006

Splicer posted:

I often get border closures on first meeting that get re-opened a few months later. I haven't gotten boxed in completely in a good while, but I do expand into potential choke points ASAP specifically to prevent it.

I tend to have bigger problems with piles of monsters or pirates camping out on important hyperlanes

I made it work on my last hyperlane-only game, but I had a nice cluster of 3 planets in a spiral galaxy...that was split off from everything else by two chokepoints, one was the Crystalline Entity homeworld, the other had about 8 solid systems of privateers, including two groups in aggro range of the warp-in from my direction. I basically didn't interact with anyone for a while until I could clear the pirates.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 15:47

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# ? May 14, 2024 03:11

spectralent: Oct 1, 2014; Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

That's a good point, I usually play hyperlane-only. Maybe that affects it a lot.

# ? Mar 14, 2017 16:23

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