Stellaris - To Serve Man - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Stellaris - To Serve Man

«‹›641 »

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

Which, to be fair, does make sense when you're building things that size. It's just not very fun.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 08:40

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 14, 2024 00:24

A Tartan Tory: Mar 26, 2010; You call that a shotgun?!

WhiskeyJuvenile posted:

Too many god drat core worlds

Trying to manage loving twenty planets is impossible

Mayor Dave posted:

Yeah, I don't care how big my core sector size gets, anything except for like the best 4-5 get thrown in a sector and efficiency be damned.

Am I seriously the only person that doesn't use sectors whatsoever? I just colonise a planet, resettle enough pops to get to 10 pop, then poo poo out all the buildings i'll ever need on it, upgrade to max rank and ignore it from then on.

Works amazingly well with terraformed new colonies + nomadic, because you don't even need to migrate the pops, your core worlds will send enough to get it to 10 pop after a year without influence costs. Repeat ad infinatum, managing maybe 5 colonies at a time max.

In my current game I have 17 core sector systems and 46 planets, all 'managed' personally via this system.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 08:59

CrazyTolradi: Oct 2, 2011; It feels so good to be so bad.....at posting.

Milky Moor posted:

Which, to be fair, does make sense when you're building things that size. It's just not very fun.

Oh I agree, I mean, you're building a ring or a sphere around a star, that's pretty advanced. But in terms of gameplay, it's just kind of pointless.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:04

Poil: Mar 17, 2007

I started a new game, yet again, and there was a black hole close to my starting system. Trying to trigger a certain event early I got what I had coming to me and my best scientist got eaten by a dimensional horror.

If you turn a species into livestock they'll produce 3 food regardless of the tile but unless you demolish the buildings you're still paying maintenance on them.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:09

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

CrazyTolradi posted:

Oh I agree, I mean, you're building a ring or a sphere around a star, that's pretty advanced. But in terms of gameplay, it's just kind of pointless.

Exactly.

Speaking of, it'd be cool if you could find like half-derelict Dyson spheres or ringworlds outside Fallen Empires - that'd be cool stuff to fight over. Like the huge derelicts in Homeworld. So you could find a ringworld with one habitable section or a Dyson sphere that only outputs a fraction of its energy... And that could provide a path to getting them that isn't perk-related.

I mean, I know there's Sanctuary, but it has not spawned in any of my games.

Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Apr 13, 2017

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:13

GotLag: Jul 17, 2005; 食べちゃダメだよ

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/653obc/ive_done_something_awful/

quote:

I recently won a small war with my decades-long spiritualist rival to the north for two of their systems. I probably could have gotten more, but oh well that's what you get with Stellaris's war demands system. But I had two planets full of disgusting xeno scum and no real use for them, since I wasn't starved for minerals or energy at the time.

Immediately I start purging them off by default, but I soon had a better idea. I have enough Killbot armies on the planets to deal with any unrest from slavery, but again, I'm not REALLY in need of the economic stimulus they would provide since I'm pretty well off. But you know what everyone needs? Food.

Except for me. I had recently completed Synthetic Evolution and turned all my pops into perfect synthetic beings with no use for food. But you know who does need food? My old spiritualist friends to the north who's people I had recently taken.

So I switch my new toys from undesirables to slaves, and from chattel slavery to livestock. Then I strike up a very generous deal, giving my recently conquered neighbor 20 food per month for practically nothing. They accept, apparently not at all suspicious of why an entirely synthetic empire suddenly has a surplus of food production.

And that's how I sold an empire's own people back to them as food.

That's something all right

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:14

CrazyTolradi: Oct 2, 2011; It feels so good to be so bad.....at posting.

Milky Moor posted:

Exactly.

Speaking of, it'd be cool if you could find like half-derelict Dyson spheres or ringworlds outside Fallen Empires - that'd be cool stuff to fight over. Like the huge derelicts in Homeworld. So you could find a ringworld with one habitable section or a Dyson sphere that only outputs a fraction of its energy...

I mean, I know there's Sanctuary, but it has not spawned in any of my games.

I honestly think it'd be cool to have abandoned megastructures around, left by FE's or precursors that you could make operational again. Have them start off damaged and needing repair, but at a much lower cost than building one anew. It'd make them strategic targets to possess or take, which is something I'd like to see more of in Stellaris warfare.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:16

JuniperCake: Jan 26, 2013

CrazyTolradi posted:

I honestly think it'd be cool to have abandoned megastructures around, left by FE's or precursors that you could make operational again. Have them start off damaged and needing repair, but at a much lower cost than building one anew. It'd make them strategic targets to possess or take, which is something I'd like to see more of in Stellaris warfare.

That's a cool idea. Especially if some other empires also prioritized them so you might have to do some diplomacy or war to obtain them and keep them.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:18

Mayor Dave: Feb 20, 2009; Bernie the Snow Clown

A Tartan Tory posted:

Am I seriously the only person that doesn't use sectors whatsoever? I just colonise a planet, resettle enough pops to get to 10 pop, then poo poo out all the buildings i'll ever need on it, upgrade to max rank and ignore it from then on.

Works amazingly well with terraformed new colonies + nomadic, because you don't even need to migrate the pops, your core worlds will send enough to get it to 10 pop after a year without influence costs. Repeat ad infinatum, managing maybe 5 colonies at a time max.

In my current game I have 17 core sector systems and 46 planets, all 'managed' personally via this system.

I'm not denying that it's trivial to actually manage the systems. What I'm saying is that it's pretty tedious and I'd rather focus on other things than clicking on upgrade arrows over and over again.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:20

CommissarMega: Nov 18, 2008; THUNDERDOME LOSER

GotLag posted:

That's something all right

I love stories like this.

Anyway, re: Megastructures, I do want them to be quicker/earlier to build, as like everyone's said, they're often far too late in the tree to actually be anything but a vanity project. I'd also like to terraform Precursor homeworlds, especially ones that don't actually have a reason to be dead- the First League homeworld, for example, is simply described as having fallen into anarchy then slowly faded away. By all means make them Tomb Worlds or Arid Worlds or whatever, but let us make a go of their worlds anyway.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:32

GotLag: Jul 17, 2005; 食べちゃダメだよ

Milky Moor posted:

Exactly.

Speaking of, it'd be cool if you could find like half-derelict Dyson spheres or ringworlds outside Fallen Empires - that'd be cool stuff to fight over. Like the huge derelicts in Homeworld. So you could find a ringworld with one habitable section or a Dyson sphere that only outputs a fraction of its energy... And that could provide a path to getting them that isn't perk-related.

I mean, I know there's Sanctuary, but it has not spawned in any of my games.

Unique Systems Spawn 100% - All the unique systems, enclaves, leviathans spawn in every game

CrazyTolradi posted:

I honestly think it'd be cool to have abandoned megastructures around, left by FE's or precursors that you could make operational again. Have them start off damaged and needing repair, but at a much lower cost than building one anew. It'd make them strategic targets to possess or take, which is something I'd like to see more of in Stellaris warfare.

Utopia Expanded - Ringworld repairs, research to build FE structures

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:43

JuniperCake: Jan 26, 2013

Mayor Dave posted:

I'm not denying that it's trivial to actually manage the systems. What I'm saying is that it's pretty tedious and I'd rather focus on other things than clicking on upgrade arrows over and over again.

I wonder if the solution might be to make something like a planet planner where you choose the final buildings you would normally build for a planet and the order you'd build them in. So like say a template might list Unity Buildings -> Power -> Minerals -> Research so then you'd have a planet start with all of the unity, then go into power, etc. Have an option on whether or not it respects tiles, otherwise for non bonus tiles it'll just build whatever building has the highest priority. Then for the planet you could select a template and it would just follow that. You could also use it for sectors. So instead of them choosing what to build, they'd just follow your template for every single planet in the sector.

Then for special core worlds that you'd build up differently, you could either build those manually without the planner or maybe create an extra template for that special case.

This might be a nightmare to implement so I'm not sure how feasible it would be but I have to wonder if something like this wouldn't take a lot of the tedium out of building up multiple worlds, especially when you got like 15 or so of them and don't especially trust the sector AI.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:49

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Demon_Corsair posted:

Well I officially don't get combat anymore. Was fighting an early war. They had blue lasers, I had level coil guns. 1.5k of their corvettes absolutely annihilates 1.4k of my heavily level 1 shielded corvettes. I jump out at 500 and they are down to 1.2. Ok, that's a little odd, their penalty to my shields should have made that a much closer fight.

Throw some more shields on the destroyers I built up and go back for some vengence. Gunship bow and stern, 3 medium level 1 shields. 1.6k of their corvettes vs 1.4k of my destroyers. Just watched them burn through my entire fleet because this game is toast, and they are down to 1.2k.

The only funky think I can see is that they have a level 4 admiral vs my level 2. Does the level of your general basically outweigh anything else in combat? Did lasers get a crazy buff?

Maybe they had some types armed with disruptors mixed in? That would tear down your shields in no time.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:52

Spanish Matlock: Sep 6, 2004; If you want to play the I-didn't-know-this-was-a-hippo-bar game with me, that's fine.

So has anyone messed around with indoctrination? I don't know if it just happens randomly, but I'm just wondering if there's ever a time when I would want to indoctrinate a primitive species before uplifting them, when I could just uplift them as assholes, wait for them to rebel or achieve vassal status so I can liberate them, and then just shitstomp them into someone I can get along with.

That seems somewhat backwards, aside from the fact that my Xenophile population seems super unhappy about me teaching hateful xenophobic space mushrooms to not be giant dicks. Still it seems like you convert like 1 pop to a random one of your ethics when a message pops up and messages only happen every couple of years, with no progress bar to indicate that it's actually doing anything.

Spanish Matlock fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Apr 13, 2017

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:54

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

A Tartan Tory posted:

Am I seriously the only person that doesn't use sectors whatsoever? I just colonise a planet, resettle enough pops to get to 10 pop, then poo poo out all the buildings i'll ever need on it, upgrade to max rank and ignore it from then on.

Works amazingly well with terraformed new colonies + nomadic, because you don't even need to migrate the pops, your core worlds will send enough to get it to 10 pop after a year without influence costs. Repeat ad infinatum, managing maybe 5 colonies at a time max.

In my current game I have 17 core sector systems and 46 planets, all 'managed' personally via this system.

To be fair, if your empire can handle that many core systems, go hog wild! Personally, after a certain point (8-10 systems) I stop handling things on my own and instead use higher caps to build up colonies and then stuff them in sectors. Basically after I hit my personal limit, I just use my slowly growing cap to avoid the hefty penalties of going over your limit while crafting my next sector.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:57

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

From looking at the events, it appears that a pop on the planet has to flip to your ethos before the event can actually fire. And I have no idea what the timing is on those ethos shifts, but I've had indoctrination running for half a century before without any visible progress, so it certainly can't be called reliable.

edit: Ah, the information is in defines.

code:

POP_ETHOS_DIVERGENCE_INTERVAL				= 360	# Number of days until a Pop has a change to diverge from empire ethos
POP_ETHOS_DIVERGENCE_RATE_MULT				= 0.01	# Chance of a pop evaluating its ethics every year

So once a year, there's a 1% chance of a pop randomly selecting an ethos. Primitive planets typically only have a few pops on them, and even when it reevaluates it's not guaranteed to switch to something you're indoctrinating, so no wonder it's hideously ineffective.

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 10:00 on Apr 13, 2017

# ? Apr 13, 2017 09:58

A Tartan Tory: Mar 26, 2010; You call that a shotgun?!

Mayor Dave posted:

I'm not denying that it's trivial to actually manage the systems. What I'm saying is that it's pretty tedious and I'd rather focus on other things than clicking on upgrade arrows over and over again.

I would sell the first born children of my Empire to the Shroud for an upgrade all button.

Or even buy a �15 dlc just for said button.

Libluini posted:

To be fair, if your empire can handle that many core systems, go hog wild! Personally, after a certain point (8-10 systems) I stop handling things on my own and instead use higher caps to build up colonies and then stuff them in sectors. Basically after I hit my personal limit, I just use my slowly growing cap to avoid the hefty penalties of going over your limit while crafting my next sector.

I just treat it as more of an 'until I can research or somehow increase my core sector cap, all I can do in these systems is terraform them and build habitats until I can'.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 10:02

CrazyTolradi: Oct 2, 2011; It feels so good to be so bad.....at posting.

GotLag posted:

Utopia Expanded - Ringworld repairs, research to build FE structures

Ringworld repairs has been around for a bit, I was more referring to finding things like sensor arrays, science labs or Dyson spheres that are in disrepair, fixing them up and making them your own.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 10:04

PoptartsNinja: May 9, 2008; He is still almost definitely not a spy; Soiled Meat

Heh.

It could be the difficulty I'm playing at, but do fallen empires seem smaller? Most of the ones I bump into now are only 1-2 worlds rather than the 5-6 they were previously.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 10:32

evilmiera: Dec 14, 2009; Status: Ravenously Rambunctious

What are the benefits of going cybernetic? As in, not fully synthetic?

Edit: vvv Is fire rate the only thing it gives? Or is there something else? I've never made cyborgs before.

evilmiera fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Apr 13, 2017

# ? Apr 13, 2017 10:44

CrazyTolradi: Oct 2, 2011; It feels so good to be so bad.....at posting.

evilmiera posted:

What are the benefits of going cybernetic? As in, not fully synthetic?

Cybernetic oddly enough gives Admirals a faster fire rate, actually. Also you don't have to "build" pops, they still breed as before.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 10:46

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

PoptartsNinja posted:

Heh.

It could be the difficulty I'm playing at, but do fallen empires seem smaller? Most of the ones I bump into now are only 1-2 worlds rather than the 5-6 they were previously.

Still nothing to gently caress with

# ? Apr 13, 2017 11:02

WhiskeyWhiskers: Oct 14, 2013; "هذا ليس عادلاً."
"هذا ليس عادلاً على الإطلاق."
"كان هناك وقت الآن."
(السياق الخفي: للقراءة)

evilmiera posted:

What are the benefits of going cybernetic? As in, not fully synthetic?

Edit: vvv Is fire rate the only thing it gives? Or is there something else? I've never made cyborgs before.

Scientists get an extra 5% research rate, Generals get +10% army damage, not sure of governor's, but every one of your leaders also gets +40 year lifespan.

e:Governors get +5% Minerals and Energy.

WhiskeyWhiskers fucked around with this message at 11:28 on Apr 13, 2017

# ? Apr 13, 2017 11:22

Bholder: Feb 26, 2013

PoptartsNinja posted:

Heh.

It could be the difficulty I'm playing at, but do fallen empires seem smaller? Most of the ones I bump into now are only 1-2 worlds rather than the 5-6 they were previously.

I think it's random or depended on the type of the FE, but I remember seeing 1-2 world large FE on last patch as well.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 11:25

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

Paradoxish posted:

Local, per-game achievements are actually a really cool idea and I wish it was something that games did. Just something like a little internal tracker for things you've accomplished in a particular playthrough or whatever.

Factorio does this and it owns.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 11:29

evilmiera: Dec 14, 2009; Status: Ravenously Rambunctious

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Scientists get an extra 5% research rate, Generals get +10% army damage, not sure of governor's, but every one of your leaders also gets +40 year lifespan.

e:Governors get +5% Minerals and Energy.

Thanks. I had a hell of a time figuring that out. Not a super great upgrade like some of the other choices, but not terrible by any means. Wish there was more to do with it, like with genetics, but I'll take anything I can get.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 12:17

GotLag: Jul 17, 2005; 食べちゃダメだよ

For gently caress's sake why the gently caress am I still loving required to have loving border access to a loving alien homeworld to modify the loving pops inside my loving borders?

# ? Apr 13, 2017 12:56

Pierson: Oct 31, 2004; College Slice

Is there any way to force a war? Half my galaxy right now is split between two blocs wrapped up in defensive pacts, and I'm pretty sure in a fight we can take them, but I need the other bloc to declare on me for my allies to join me, and just insulting them hasn't worked so far. They're at -400 rep but even this pure loathing isn't enough for them to declare I guess.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 13:01

Staltran: Jan 3, 2013; Fallen Rib

Cyborg pops also get +20% habitability and some more army damage army damage, and I think a minor mineral production boost as well.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 13:02

Dog Kisser: Mar 30, 2005; But People have fears that beasts do not. Questions, too.

It would be fun if there was a way to reduce an enemy empire or planet to primitive stage - bomb them back to the stone age, as it were.

Then you could raise them from the muck and be their gods!

Then do it again.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 13:15

GotLag: Jul 17, 2005; 食べちゃダメだよ

More dumb faction bullshit: if you're not materialist, you can't make synths full citizens. But if synths end up in your empire due to conquest/integration, then their lack of rights angers both egalitarian and xenophile factions.

Edit: also when is my government supposed to change ethos? The two most populous factions are now egalitarian and xenophile, but government is still fanatic egalitarian/pacifist

GotLag fucked around with this message at 13:32 on Apr 13, 2017

# ? Apr 13, 2017 13:28

Communist Bear: Oct 7, 2008

Is it weird that I've spent most of the day writing up 6 pages worth of descriptions for different species that I'm plugging into Stellaris?

# ? Apr 13, 2017 13:32

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

WMain00 posted:

Is it weird that I've spent most of the day writing up 6 pages worth of descriptions for different species that I'm plugging into Stellaris?

No you are playing Sci-Fi Setting Generator completely right.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 13:36

Guilliman: Apr 5, 2017; Animal went forth into the future and made worlds in his own image. And it was wild.

Is there any rule on mod advertising?
Since people really liked the idea, here it is:

get it on the steam workshop
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=904340430

Cheers :P

# ? Apr 13, 2017 13:44

GlyphGryph: Jun 23, 2013; Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.

Spanish Matlock posted:

So has anyone messed around with indoctrination? I don't know if it just happens randomly, but I'm just wondering if there's ever a time when I would want to indoctrinate a primitive species before uplifting them, when I could just uplift them as assholes, wait for them to rebel or achieve vassal status so I can liberate them, and then just shitstomp them into someone I can get along with.

That seems somewhat backwards, aside from the fact that my Xenophile population seems super unhappy about me teaching hateful xenophobic space mushrooms to not be giant dicks. Still it seems like you convert like 1 pop to a random one of your ethics when a message pops up and messages only happen every couple of years, with no progress bar to indicate that it's actually doing anything.

I found humanity on earth in the space age, opted to indoctrinate them, and then they wiped themselves out in a nuclear war.

Random chance put zero other aliens in my corner of the galaxy (i checked with observer the rest is packed but there are huge swathes of empty space around me) and so my xenophile species has encountered one type of sentient alien in the galaxy and that species promptly blew themselves up.

Their view of the universe must be rough right now.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 13:45

Nitrousoxide: May 30, 2011; do not buy a oneplus phone

Whats a good build for someone who wants to go heavy science/unity but doesn't want to be space hitler?

Alternatively i've heard of empires asking to join you wothout having to conquer them how do i get that to happen?

# ? Apr 13, 2017 13:52

GotLag: Jul 17, 2005; 食べちゃダメだよ

Be big and strong and of a compatible ethos to them. I am the largest power in the galaxy and all the little democratic states are throwing themselves at my feet as I waltz around smashing up all the authoritarians/xenophobes.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 14:03

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

Nitrousoxide posted:

Whats a good build for someone who wants to go heavy science/unity but doesn't want to be space hitler?

Alternatively i've heard of empires asking to join you wothout having to conquer them how do i get that to happen?

You have to be very powerful comparatively, for others to straight up ask you to join up as vassals/protectorate. Alternatively, invite everyone to a federation.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 14:07

GlyphGryph: Jun 23, 2013; Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.

Nitrousoxide posted:

Whats a good build for someone who wants to go heavy science/unity but doesn't want to be space hitler?

Alternatively i've heard of empires asking to join you wothout having to conquer them how do i get that to happen?

Heavy science bio or robots?

Spiritualist/Pacifist or Materialist/Pacifist are both effect. Build all the unity buildings available to you, beeline for paradise domes then fill out the science tradition tree, expand at a reasonable pace and focus on happiness

# ? Apr 13, 2017 14:06

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 14, 2024 00:24

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

Power nexus as unity building is arguably even better than paradise domes tbh, especially as a materialist, since you'll be spamming robots. No reason not to get both, obviously, but I'd go for that first.

# ? Apr 13, 2017 14:08

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Stellaris - To Serve Man

«‹›641 »