|
GlyphGryph posted:Im regards to fixing combat, I propose players lose the ability to control a fleet directly at all. gently caress, hell no. I absolutely hate this idea. If it were an option, sure. But just losing all control without being able to take over in an emergency would be poo poo. Sitting there watching helpless while the AI fucks up? That's something only a masochist would love. Edit: On what others have said about fleets, borders, stations and FTL: I feel like I should say something, but I never had any of the trouble players are describing here, so I'm kind of at a loss. Well, except for how I like the different FTL-options and always cram all of them into my games, balance be damned. In fact, I kind of think it's awesome how Stellaris covers (together with Jump Drives) basically almost everything SF-authors have come up with in terms of FTL-propulsion. I've read a lot of SF over the years, and most of what I found generally boils down to one of 3-4 basic movement principles. Stellaris covers all of them. And players wanting to cut them down to one always confuse the hell out of me, because Stellaris already has that option, too. So do you guys want others to not have fun, or what is the matter here?
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 07:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 05:18 |
|
|
Libluini posted:gently caress, hell no. I absolutely hate this idea. If it were an option, sure. But just losing all control without being able to take over in an emergency would be poo poo. Sitting there watching helpless while the AI fucks up? That's something only a masochist would love. people want fixes to the way movement (and specifically, movement in war) work that won't be feasible as long as the designers have to assume that all FTL types could be in the game
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 07:37
|
|
|
Jeb Bush 2012 posted:people want fixes to the way movement (and specifically, movement in war) work that won't be feasible as long as the designers have to assume that all FTL types could be in the game Well, as I just said in that post you quoted, I don't see anything that needs "fixing". Which means all I'm seeing is people trying to make Stellaris a different, more boring game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 08:04
|
|
|
Materialist is so boring, turned my entire pop into synths and now i might just start knocking neighbors down for fun.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 08:15
|
|
|
Libluini posted:Well, as I just said in that post you quoted, I don't see anything that needs "fixing". Which means all I'm seeing is people trying to make Stellaris a different, more boring game. I too like all the FTL types, but restricting it to one type increases the scope for strategic depth. If you compare Stellaris to any of the 4X space games with only one FTL type, the strategic side of war is handled very poorly - defences are largely meaningless past the early game and Mao-style tactics are irrelevant in the face of a single large fleet. Compare this to, say, Ascendancy, where you can shut down invasions at a point through planetary defences in particular systems, or Stars! where it's entirely possible to win a war without ever confronting an opponent's main fleet at all. Multiple FTL types works in SOTS because the races are designed from the ground up around their FTL types, and have appropriate weaknesses to compensate. Restricting Stellaris to a single FTL type will actually create more fun, not less - I suggest you watch the stream where they talk about what it'll enable them to do. I'd prefer Warp over hyperspace, but I can see why they're going for the latter.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 09:17
|
|
|
Huh. Just had the war in heaven kick off for the first time. I led the non-aligned worlds, and when the awakened empires declared war on me, all my vassals flipped to their side. :paradox:
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 09:22
|
|
|
Wasn't Wiz recently absolutely against restricting FTL types based on some player statistics?
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 09:25
|
|
|
Dwesa posted:Wasn't Wiz recently absolutely against restricting FTL types based on some player statistics?
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 09:31
|
|
|
Can someone post a link to that stream where he talks about future possibilities?
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 10:48
|
|
|
Aethernet posted:I too like all the FTL types, but restricting it to one type increases the scope for strategic depth. If you compare Stellaris to any of the 4X space games with only one FTL type, the strategic side of war is handled very poorly - defences are largely meaningless past the early game and Mao-style tactics are irrelevant in the face of a single large fleet. Compare this to, say, Ascendancy, where you can shut down invasions at a point through planetary defences in particular systems, or Stars! where it's entirely possible to win a war without ever confronting an opponent's main fleet at all. Multiple FTL types works in SOTS because the races are designed from the ground up around their FTL types, and have appropriate weaknesses to compensate. If defences are meaningless, wouldn't it be better to make better defences instead of gutting the game? I think this reasoning is badly thought out. Also as I've stated multiple times, I think the way Stellaris handles FTL works good as far as I'm concerned, so saying it doesn't and then using that "fact" as an argument falls flat with me.  I'll give you the point on the overly weak defences. But that could be easily solved by the devs just minimizing this weird dead zone around a station. If you could pile defence stations up more easily, that would solve even that minor issue.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 10:53
|
|
|
Lprsti99 posted:Can someone post a link to that stream where he talks about future possibilities? https://www.twitch.tv/videos/138426813 Libluini posted:If defences are meaningless, wouldn't it be better to make better defences instead of gutting the game? I think this reasoning is badly thought out. Watch the above. The countervailing argument isn't that the three types of FTL aren't fun, but that they constrain what static defences can achieve and still be fun. You need to enable players to build defences against every FTL type and make such defences make sense. The example used in the video is of some kind of area-of-starmap-effect FTL Inhibitor that forces fleets into a system - how does that work for wormholes that are intended to be between two particular points? Can they still jump over that area? If so, doesn't that render such a defence meaningless? If not, how earth is that meant to happen when the ships never cross that space? Similarly, for warp, are vessels simply dragged into that system, even if they're directed somewhere else? Or are they just slowed, a la MOO2? You'd end up needing three different types of defences - some form of Wormhole Formation Inhibitor, a Warp Drag Projector, and a Hyperspace Lane Blocker. They'd act in different ways at different times and it might not always be clear to the player why a given ship was able to get past such an odd confluence of defences. As the attacker, you'd find your ships doing a selection of potentially random things, depending on when defences were built and where they are - and not necessarily have enough information to manage it. It's not impossible, but it's a much messier and potentially unfun solution compared to restricting FTL types.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 11:10
|
|
|
I still feel like, if they're restricting FTL types, the basic drive should be Warp, but warp is SLOW, and maybe has a range restriction. You then discover hyperlanes, and later get the ability to build new ones (maybe as a end game tech. Wormholes are a mid-game tech, but require stations at both ends and are much, much more expensive. More like a buildabe shortcut rather than a primary drive. Thematically hyperlanes don't much do it for me the same way warp does.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 11:35
|
|
|
I've always been pretty firmly in the "FTL tech should stay the way it is" camp, but watching the stream for a bit and seeing them talk about what fun things they could do with hyperlane-only starts and discoverable wormhole tech and poo poo is making me change my mind. I'm now in the "these guys have good ideas and they should do what they think is best" camp.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 11:42
|
|
|
I'm pretty sure Wiz (and a lot of other people) were against just scrapping Warp and Wormhole while leaving Hyperlanes are they are; just scraping two of the 3 options while leaving the last one as it is wasn't a route they wanted to go down because it would upset a sizable portion of the player base while adding nothing to the game and I tend to agree with that. I myself prefer warp over the other methods because it offers the greatest freedom to move around. The new system they are hypothesizing about sounds interesting and if hyperlanes did offer more options instead of just a straight point-to-point system then I wouldn't be opposed to it but part of me wonders how including the various lanes, gating some options behind drive tech and other variables wouldn't result in just another confusing mess that's hard to interpret and guard against.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 12:44
|
|
|
Aethernet posted:https://www.twitch.tv/videos/138426813 I'll definitely watch it after I come back from work. ( )That said, isn't the snare already a rather elegant solution? It doesn't care what kind of FTL you use, it drags you in regardless. (At least I think. I haven't ever seen it used against wormhole-fleets. I just assume it works the same way with them, since otherwise that would be pretty drat illogical.) If you had the ability to put down more of them, a caught fleet would have to shoot multiple of the things, giving the defender more time to catch them. Also wasn't it that the snare drags ships right on top of them? (In my current game I've started building odd 2-3 station set ups, with a defense fortress, an attack fortress and a snare carefully positioned to overlap each other. The snare is at the sun, and if my plan works out like intended, an enemy fleet should drop at the snare and be immediately attacked by the heavy fortresses, preventing them from targetting the snare. It'll be interesting to see how that works out in practice. The idea is, even if the snare immediately dies, killing the fortresses and moving out to the edge again should add on a couple months, giving me time to react.) LogisticEarth posted:I still feel like, if they're restricting FTL types, the basic drive should be Warp, but warp is SLOW, and maybe has a range restriction. You then discover hyperlanes, and later get the ability to build new ones (maybe as a end game tech. Wormholes are a mid-game tech, but require stations at both ends and are much, much more expensive. More like a buildabe shortcut rather than a primary drive. In this case, jump drives would still be end game tech, right? Being able to go wherever you want, without needing silly little stations, is after all incredibly powerful in a 4x game. And I have no idea how that could ever be implemented without shooting balance dead with a bazooka, but I'd like to see some of the more exotic FTL-drives I've encountered in SF. In Perry Rhodan for example there's some sort of shadow drive, making you travel through hyperspace and normalspace at the same time, but the drive essentially turns your ship into an invulnerable shadow in normalspace. Then there are "classic" FTL-concepts like the Linear Drive or the Metagrav-Vortex Drives. The Linear Drive is basically a souped-up mix of warp and hyperlane without any of their drawbacks: Fast like hyperlanes, but you're able to move freely by targeting the star you want to go to. That star can be at the other side of the galaxy, if you want to go there and really like long travel times. Metagrav-Vortex Drives used artificial blackholes to drag spacetime around their ships and turned them into small reality-bubbles floating in hyperspace. You could not only move everywhere, exit and enter hyperspace everywhere, you could also just drift off into the wrong direction and enter another universe, if you knew how. (Of course I have no idea how that function could ever be relevant for Stellaris. An endgame fleet visiting the Unbidden on their own turf instead of the other way around? Making really gigantic maps with multiple galaxies other than your own, but hidden from the player until you can build ships with those super-drives? Maybe something for Stellaris 2.  )
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 12:56
|
|
|
Why are we supposed to want static defenses to be important? I would rather have wars become faster and more decisive, not less.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 13:02
|
|
|
Plus static defenses are way too anemic in Stellaris and serve only to delay enemies until your fleet's arrival even if you can bait them into the right system. They should just add a system where you weld fortresses onto your spaceport and make it tougher and more damaging as much as you want.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 13:11
|
|
|
Ditching Wormholes as an available starting FTL makes sense to me. Not requiring them to be a functional main drive gives them a lot more design space, and even for the "Play every space opera" ethos Wormholes/Jumpgates tend to be existing networks made by precursor civilisations rather than something the protagonists just have. I do like the idea of having both warp and hyperlanes. What if you could still choose warp or hyperlanes as a game mode? And a third one where there's stargates in about 20% of the systems (including all empire home systems) and you have to slowboat to the rest. Also I find stations fiddly and annoying, I'd like less of them rather than more. Maybe have them take up orbital slots?
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 13:19
|
|
|
Coldbird posted:With the other, less interesting megas, they could consolidate the sensor and science stations into one - and make it a huge AI sphere that sees far more than any meat being or group of them could ever process. You would have to reason with it via events once you build it, and if you squeezed it hard enough in the early game maybe that can set off an endgame crisis later.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 13:23
|
|
|
Pyromancer posted:Plus static defenses are way too anemic in Stellaris and serve only to delay enemies until your fleet's arrival even if you can bait them into the right system. To be fair, I've designed fortresse who should be able to beat every battleship one-on-one. ("should" because the designs are still untested) What makes the defenses anemic is the inability to stack them together like fleets. If I were in charge of this, I would allow some limited stacking: Let's say up to a dozen platforms, up to five stations and two fortresses are now allowed to be placed close to each other. Now add a superfortress with just one of the drat things allowed and finally, allow the smaller sizes to be placed in addition to the larger ones, for mutual support. Now you can get scary defenses, but not overpowered ones: A large fleet can still fight their way through, just with a lot more time and losses, but you have to actually spend some effort on cracking a strong defense. Edit: I'd actually make spaceports weaker, since they're more dedicated space shipyards than anything else. Instead let the player construct fortresses and defenses around them and their homeworld. (Well, effectively like it is possible right now, just without the odd prohibition on using more than one defense construction. )
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 13:30
|
|
|
I'd imagine more of a cross between Sins of a Solar Empire and MOO4 for systems. Namely in MOO you can blockade hyperlanes with military stations preventing movement through unless you have a treaty/alliance/etc. In Sins you are capped on defense installations based on a defense number which is determined per system, with every installation taking up a set amount of slots, and you aren't limited in your placement and are free to mash them all into a doomball of defenses, keeping in mind your non-planet based resources. I don't particularly have a great idea for Stellaris, beyond where they're going with making FTL to be hyperlanes only - that opens up a lot of options regarding defenses.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 13:50
|
|
|
Yes, a per-system cap on defense, that you can spend on non-FTL defense boats and static defenses would be a good way to do system defenses. Especially since this would be easy to handle for sectors - and would make for a useful minerals sink for them. I think it's funny how the talk about armies and ground combat in the stream is basically saying "MoO3 did it right". Which is correct. The MoO3 ground combat system was fantastic, fluffy without being micromanagement hell - perfectly tied into the fleet design mechanic and even had diplomatic repercussions depending on how hard you went on the NBCs.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 14:13
|
|
|
Make defenses super powerful and stackable but dont let them block. Let fleets just ignore them and continue flying past and trying to land on the planet or whatever. Make it more about overwhelming the defenses enough to get by them and overwhelm the planet anyway. Let then maintain air superiority while you actually win everything through the power of ablative sacrifices and maximum afterburners Or build a battleship sniper team to crack them from long range, and then when building defenses you can decide to focus on lots of short weaponry to counter attempts to bypass with swarms OR heavy long range weaponry to counter sniper attrition wars. Basically make defenses more and less powerful at the same time. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Apr 28, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 14:21
|
|
|
Would still love to see the ships themselves totally reworked. Give us generic chassis we can put whatever we want on module wise, make the heavier chassese really powerful but really long to buuld, make weapons really expensive to strap on but quicker, let me build an enterprise equivalent science ship that can actually go toe to toe with threats, and strap weapons to my constructor platforms as a last ditch defensive option. Drafting the civilian bits.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 14:32
|
|
|
If stations were beefier and foiled fleets of cruisers on down, it would solve the problems they point out in the Reddit threat about battleships not having a use.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 14:34
|
|
|
I'm not sure the people calling for station doomstacks have really thought the fundamental problems with combat through. I don't think building three dozen stations in any system I want to defend is going to be fun. If they want stations to be useful they should buff them so they can actually hold up against a fleet, not make it so you can drop fifty of them on one system. Edit: And where are planet based defenses? Why can't I build ground batteries or have fighters deploy from my planet's hangars? It's fine if it's abstracted but a fleet should be risking damage if it comes into orbit over a hostile planet, and currently the game doesn't have any such interactions. Edit2: And still no espionage of any kind a year in? There's really no way to know anything interesting about my opponents or take any actions against them that aren't military based, and that's a ridiculous oversight by the devs. Wicked Them Beats fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Apr 28, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 14:47
|
|
|
I believe they mentioned defense stations possibly being changed to take up fleet capacity, which I think is a great idea because it lets them be buffed while still keeping it balanced. Maybe with that, you actually can be able to build defenses that can stand up to a fleet.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 15:03
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:They couldn't figure out how to balance the game or implement proper mechanics for dealing with hive-mind pops so your nation, regardless of policies, brutally genocides them. The excuse is that, separated from the hive they all die off, but mechanically it's treated as you purposefully exterminating them in a full on genocide and your factions get angry. Hives are forced to do the same to any planets they conquer too. Just to be clear, are you saying the genocide happens automatically or do I have to purge them? Because the pops seem to be doing fine in my game. What benefit do I get from purging them other than getting 100% full citizenship again? Are they not producing resources and I just missed that?
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 15:05
|
|
|
Litany Unheard posted:Edit: And where are planet based defenses? Why can't I build ground batteries or have fighters deploy from my planet's hangars? It's fine if it's abstracted but a fleet should be risking damage if it comes into orbit over a hostile planet, and currently the game doesn't have any such interactions.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 15:06
|
|
|
I Am A Robot posted:Just to be clear, are you saying the genocide happens automatically or do I have to purge them? Because the pops seem to be doing fine in my game. What benefit do I get from purging them other than getting 100% full citizenship again? Are they not producing resources and I just missed that? They are automatically purged. There is a way to save them if you have all the gene-mod techs and got both biological ascension perks, you can remove the Hive-mind trait they get, but that doesn't come until later and even then I heard that it can be buggy and may not actually stop the purge.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 15:13
|
|
|
Jeb Bush 2012 posted:people want fixes to the way movement (and specifically, movement in war) work that won't be feasible as long as the designers have to assume that all FTL types could be in the game Even aside from that, the AI is still not up to the task. Even after all this time since release, wars that aren't wildly in the player's favor seem to be mostly decided by figuring out how to trick the AI. I just won a war I had absolutely no business winning, because it turns out the AI absolutely can't deal with having its army transports intercepted right now. The powerful doomstack I couldn't possibly match just sat there above my homeworld, doing nothing but waiting for the unescorted invasion armies that would never come because I parked a few corvettes at a hyperlane chokepoint they had to pass through. Even when they sent more fleets, they didn't even try to drive off my corvettes - I just moved aside and let then through to my capital world, where they immediately joined up with the doomstack and continued to uselessly bombard my capital. With the only real threat pinned down by its own AI, I was free to take my time building up a new fleet and sending it against softer targets to build up warscore and win a moderate victory. Caustic Soda posted:Why are we supposed to want static defenses to be important? I would rather have wars become faster and more decisive, not less. Static defenses can limit the opponent's options, allowing you to force a battle, and provide some level of security for the incredibly soft targets all over your empire. Otherwise they can just zip all around your empire and your pursuing fleets will never catch them until they stop to blow something up - like an expensive Frontier Outpost. But really, that's just a reaction to the current state of Stellaris movement where it's really difficult to intercept a fleet in motion unless you can predict exactly where they're going to go and have a fleet laying in wait for them. I feel like warp and hyperlane would be a lot better if fleets had to jump out from the side of the system that's closest to their destination, rather than just using their arrival point as their exit point.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 15:48
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:Static defenses can limit the opponent's options, allowing you to force a battle, and provide some level of security for the incredibly soft targets all over your empire. Otherwise they can just zip all around your empire and your pursuing fleets will never catch them until they stop to blow something up - like an expensive Frontier Outpost. But really, that's just a reaction to the current state of Stellaris movement where it's really difficult to intercept a fleet in motion unless you can predict exactly where they're going to go and have a fleet laying in wait for them. I feel like warp and hyperlane would be a lot better if fleets had to jump out from the side of the system that's closest to their destination, rather than just using their arrival point as their exit point. I think warp used to have to do this and it was actually really awful.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 15:59
|
|
|
Re: defending systems - it seems like the easy solution is already half there - why can't planets shoot back? It seems kind of dumb in game that you would have these sprawling civilizations of millions or billions, and the technology to build massive lasers and super missiles - yet you can't have batteries of weapons on the ground. Obviously, ships have to fly around and lug ammo, generators, etc. around, but ground batteries don't have those problems - so you can get a lot of firepower cheap if it never leaves the ground. SOTS did this, but with lovely missiles that took forever to land and got shot down by PD easily. Why not just make the actual stations dedicated to ship building, and sieging planets should be a function of (increased) planet HP - but planets should have firepower equivalent to a mixed fleet with the same HP as the planet has, using the best guns available to your tech level. Would still need a solution to defend systems without planets. Maybe make frontier stations as tough and powerful as the new fortresses (or just consolidate both into one thing).
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 16:35
|
|
|
BenRGamer posted:I believe they mentioned defense stations possibly being changed to take up fleet capacity, which I think is a great idea because it lets them be buffed while still keeping it balanced. Maybe with that, you actually can be able to build defenses that can stand up to a fleet. I agree, I liked how they mentioned defenses as being more efficient in terms of military strength per fleet cap but with the obvious disadvantage of not being able to project power. It's the sort of thing that could do a lot to help wars not be an all or nothing doomstack hellwar that they are now. At the moment, there is virtually never any reason to not go to 100% warscore whereas in say CK2 or EU4 there are lots of occasions where it's plenty worthwhile to make peace at a lower warscore and take what you really want because continuing to wage war might be slow and expensive due to fortifications and might leave you diplomatically vulnerable.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 17:11
|
|
|
i was right about hyperlane only, and in time i will be right about the ship designer. praise be
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 17:15
|
|
|
BenRGamer posted:I believe they mentioned defense stations possibly being changed to take up fleet capacity, which I think is a great idea because it lets them be buffed while still keeping it balanced. Maybe with that, you actually can be able to build defenses that can stand up to a fleet. hahaha are you crazy, why would you build one then and limit your fleet, they are bad enough allready
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 17:24
|
|
|
 So one of my curator scientists won presidency, and I could recruit a new one. When their election ended, I got two. This is kind of neat and all Wiz, but I imagine you might have problems.  Still, wrangling this kind of thing is fun!
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 17:25
|
|
|
Coldbird posted:Re: defending systems - it seems like the easy solution is already half there - why can't planets shoot back? this! Planets are industrial powerhouses that transport minerals and builds ton of ship in shipyards above it. But putting a few XL weapons on the planet is a nono? Smaller ships could maybe even be build on the planet, like strike crafts. Dug in armies under regional shields on the planet, with XL weapons and strike craft, would make invasion a nightmare. But anyway, the game is really simplistic, and the whole planet counts as one Tile for army purposes. which makes it really boring. If planets had as many tiles as the size of the planet that you had to conquer, ground combat would be very different and engaging. and the potential for fun similar units from other space universe, like controlling drop pods, hover tank, AT-AT, Titans, aliens, robots, psionics infantry ex. Think of a 10-25 platnet tile country in EU:U or HOI4, that you have to invade with space units, vs a defending similar army. And strong enough shields on the planet that makes bombarment useless, at least in some regions of the planet. Or a generator that you have to destroy manually before bombarment starts(starwars ex.)
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 17:43
|
|
|
MoO 2 let me put stellar converters on my planets and it was awesome.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 17:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 05:18 |
|
|
BenRGamer posted:I believe they mentioned defense stations possibly being changed to take up fleet capacity, which I think is a great idea because it lets them be buffed while still keeping it balanced. Maybe with that, you actually can be able to build defenses that can stand up to a fleet. They already DO take Fleet Capacity; that's the whole PROBLEM. In choosing to build a defence, you are not only crippling your offence(Less ships), they are easily destroyed, making your investment null. It's why we've gone total fleet aside from Starports, which even with their own buffs, can only hold so much back later game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2017 18:03
|
|
