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Shugojin
Sep 6, 2007

THE TAIL THAT BURNS TWICE AS BRIGHT...


Improbable Lobster posted:

Split your fleet

I did, I wanted to put it all back together to see what it was up to under my level 10 aggressive dragon slaying super-admiral. I guess I'll never know unless I reassign him to the other one and do BASIC ADDITION

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MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

Shugojin posted:

Since when can I not make a fleet bigger than 500 ships :saddowns:

1.8 :v:

ugh its Troika
May 2, 2009

by FactsAreUseless
Fighters will also attack missiles!

Milkfred E. Moore
Aug 27, 2006

'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

King Doom posted:

Ragnarok Heavenly Spear Gungnir

Anime Anime Anime Anime.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Shugojin posted:

I did, I wanted to put it all back together to see what it was up to under my level 10 aggressive dragon slaying super-admiral. I guess I'll never know unless I reassign him to the other one and do BASIC ADDITION
I shouldn't have to do graphitics to play this computer game!

Ms Adequate
Oct 30, 2011

Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling



Milky Moor posted:

Anime Anime Anime Anime.

Actually although Voltron: Legendary Defenders has an anime aesthetic, and although Voltron: Defender of the Universe was adapted from an anime, it is western in origin. :goonsay:

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
So, what is the "deal" with hive minds in stellaris? Do other races instantly hate them (or to phrase it another way, is playing a hive mind like playing a xenophobe)? I know that they don't have factions to deal and have a hard time sharing planets with other species, but is there anything else that makes them notable?

Milkfred E. Moore
Aug 27, 2006

'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

Mister Adequate posted:

Actually although Voltron: Legendary Defenders has an anime aesthetic, and although Voltron: Defender of the Universe was adapted from an anime, it is western in origin. :goonsay:

:argh:

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Hot Dog Day #82 posted:

So, what is the "deal" with hive minds in stellaris? Do other races instantly hate them (or to phrase it another way, is playing a hive mind like playing a xenophobe)? I know that they don't have factions to deal and have a hard time sharing planets with other species, but is there anything else that makes them notable?

You can play a "plain" hive, either a organic or robotic one and people treat you like normal. There's a few special sub-types though that make you always-at-war and everyone hate you though. But if you just want to play some chill diplomatic robots or friendly hive mind you totally can.

ulmont
Sep 15, 2010

IF I EVER MISS VOTING IN AN ELECTION (EVEN AMERICAN IDOL) ,OR HAVE UNPAID PARKING TICKETS, PLEASE TAKE AWAY MY FRANCHISE

Hot Dog Day #82 posted:

I know that they don't have factions to deal and have a hard time sharing planets with other species, but is there anything else that makes them notable?

Of psychics / synths / genetic ascensions, limited to genetic, which is the most annoying (fiddly).

Robots tie them for fiddliness, mind you.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Hot Dog Day #82 posted:

So, what is the "deal" with hive minds in stellaris? Do other races instantly hate them (or to phrase it another way, is playing a hive mind like playing a xenophobe)? I know that they don't have factions to deal and have a hard time sharing planets with other species, but is there anything else that makes them notable?

For regular hiveminds, no. They are indeed like playing as Xenophobes.

Devouring Swarms are different though, because they're the Fanatic Purifier variant.

Crazycryodude
Aug 15, 2015

Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

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


Normal hiveminds get a diplomacy malus with non-gestalt empires because they have trouble grasping things like "individuality", but it's 100% possible to overcome it and be friends. There are certain variants, though, that have diplomacy turned off and just have to murder everyone. The Devouring Swarms (biological hivemind Zerg) and Determined Exterminators (machine hivemind Skynet), to be exact.

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!
Throwing in my two cents -- the crisis system as is, is kind of like playing CK2 in Western Europe with the Mongols, the Sunset Invasion, and some kind of mod with like zombie Hypervikings and an African Empire toting guns and riding rhino cavalry invading from the north and south. Which, I mean, I like it, it's fun to have something charge in and mess up all that lategame stagnation, but it's all very samey.

What I'd enjoy is something like the HOI4 or V2 crisis system. So, like, you have these great powers that rise to the top eventually, and there's some sort of tension score between them along border territories. Getting into a crisis would gradually get them into a situation where they stand to lose influence or unity or something if they back down, and the higher the tension goes, the more "options" are unlocked. I loved the V2 Great War system where the whole world would sort of organically get dragged into a big messy war, allowing everyone to tack on their own grievances. If we had something like "galactic tension", it'd make for some great mid to late game politics.

We have some of that with the War in Heaven, but it's always restricted to Fallen Empires. By the mid or late game, the player and AI empires are already rivaling the Fallen Empires and Awakened Ones in strength, so having a more "organic" crisis would make things a bit less samey in character, and more unpredictable since the conflicts would arise from the galaxy's new Great Powers.

Another thing that was cool about V2 was that revolutions were not necessarily a huge loss! They would simply result in a change of your government type. Making factions more powerful and capable of insurrections and so on might be an interesting path. What if the radical cybernetics faction rose up and turned your empire into the Borg?? Then you'd go from a xenophile materialist democracy into a devouring hive mind, totally changing the options you have available to you!

DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Oct 7, 2017

Milkfred E. Moore
Aug 27, 2006

'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'
I'm not sure it's just a crisis issue.

What I find with Stellaris is the following things.

1. The early-game is great. Anomalies, events, expanding, meeting empires, etc. That's all great.
2. The early-mid is good, too. This is the period of time where I'd say there's still a heap of empty space but war is becoming something achievable.
3. The mid-game can stagnate as borders are drawn up, defensive pacts and Federations begin forming. Sometimes the galaxy can feel like it stagnates here as the AI feels like it settles.
4. Mid-to-late is much the same. I may run the very real risk of doing nothing but teching up and setting the timer to Fastest, waiting for something cool to happen, be it getting megastructures or ascendancy perks or the like. This is where I tend to start feeling bored.
5. Late-game with things like the Crises, the War in Heaven, and so on is very cool. But sometimes it feels like I'm sitting around and waiting for one of them to fire off.
6. Once the crisis is done, there's little point in continuing. Start a new game.

I feel like there should be Galactic Crises (things like the War in Heaven, the current ones, and so on) and Regional Crises, which could be smaller and shake things up a little. Maybe a planet spits out a 20k Precursor Kill Fleet that goes around the galaxy destroying things but unable to replenish its numbers. Diplomatic events, Empire/Empire events, random things to just spice the galaxy up. I'd like to see moments like the invention and deployment of the tank in World War 1, where technological advancement can provide a distinct edge to an empire for a few years, not just a slightly higher DPS.

By the time you get the cool things in Stellaris -- ringworlds, Dysons, habitats and so on -- it kind of feels like the game is over. By the time the Crises fire off, you're probably got a huge chunk of the galaxy, you're into the repeatable techs, and anything you're doing is just sort of for 'the hell of it' as opposed to any sort of goal. And I get that, getting to the level of superpower that your whims ("I'll knock down that Fallen Empire today after all") alter the face of the galaxy, but it's not nearly as exciting as the early game where decisions feel like they matter more.

I was actually disheartened by seeing crises pushed back fifty years. To me, that's another fifty years of just teching up and waiting and maybe fighting some wars.

I think this is all compounded by the wargoal system (which is both awesome and annoying at the same time) and the way war is a blob VS blob situation. I do wonder how Stellaris combat would be if you had less ships, they could do more, were more important, and designs mattered more. On some level, it is a little strange that all your ships have individual names, like inviting them to get history, perks or little stories, but they're just going to burn down out in the void of space without fanfare.

Reveilled
Apr 19, 2007

Take up your rifles
On the topic of hive minds, how does the new create vassal option work for them? I haven't had the chance to play much since 1.8 came out, if a hive makes a vassal world out of a conquered enemy (I.e. Not their own hive pops), what determines their ethics?

And please don't say something like "creating vassals is disabled for hive minds" or I'll be very sad.

Milkfred E. Moore
Aug 27, 2006

'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'
And just as an additional to the above, Leviathans are kind of vulnerable to that, too. By the time you can safely bring down a Leviathan without substantial losses, it feels like it doesn't really matter. Getting your pet Drake is cool, getting Jump Drives is neat... but by the late-game it feels hardly radical.

I really like the Infinity Sphere for that reason, because you can engage with it early, and it's something that can maybe be very powerful or game-changing (big research black hole or Sentient AI).

edit: And it's why I think the Cybrex precursor one is the best. A ruined Ringworld and living metal? That's so cool! The rest are just kind of boring, giving you a heap of resources, y'know?

Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Oct 7, 2017

Reveilled
Apr 19, 2007

Take up your rifles

Milky Moor posted:

I think this is all compounded by the wargoal system (which is both awesome and annoying at the same time) and the way war is a blob VS blob situation. I do wonder how Stellaris combat would be if you had less ships, they could do more, were more important, and designs mattered more. On some level, it is a little strange that all your ships have individual names, like inviting them to get history, perks or little stories, but they're just going to burn down out in the void of space without fanfare.

Have you tried the Star Trek mod? It does almost exactly that, makes individual ships way more expensive and brings the naval capacity way down. I haven't really played much of it (felt just a tad too work-in-progress last time I tried it), but I've heard good things about it on that very topic.

Aethernet
Jan 28, 2009

This is the Captain...

Our glorious political masters have, in their wisdom, decided to form an alliance with a rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters right when the Federation has us at a tactical disadvantage. Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in the Feds firing on our vessels...

Damn you Huxley!

Grimey Drawer
All the stuff about testing weapon effectiveness - bear in mind that these tests take place in an idealised environment in which fleets approach each other across a system. Short-range weapons like autocannons have a role if you're on the defensive and can trap a fleet into jumping on top of you.

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene
While I love the idea of doing more with individual ships what that boils down to (unfortunately) is giving the player more control to rear end gently caress the AI without lube.

While not ideal, the sort of bland sameness works because it keeps the AI semi-competitive through the law of averages. You can do some min/maxing but honestly, it doesn't make that much of a difference.

As others have pointed out, there are already ways of clowning the AI. I know the Owlfanciers of the world just want a "I win" button where they feel super smart for using it but that basically kills the game.

I like that I can design my ships because I want them to be *my* ships. But, from a game-design perspective, I also appreciate that me designing my custom ships doesn't mean that I'm going to automatically crush the AI.

If we're going to fantasize about what we want, what I want is more of a CK2 dynamic. I want worlds to have regional governments. I want sectors to have internal politics. I do want empires to collapse because going back to Emperor of the Fading Suns (the most Stellaris-like 4X game I can think of) my favorite part was to explore and grow an empire until the logic of the game broke and it became untenable. Similarly, my favorite thing to do in CK2 is to conquer Byzantium and then loving everything only to have it fall apart, observe for a while, then pick a small nobody while letting my previous dynasty and the remaining (disenfranchised but pretending) Karlings fight it out in a wonderfully changing war of all against all.

Empires collapsing is fun but only if you have something to collapse to. My favorite CK2 game had me (mis)ruling everything until what amounts to an investiture-style controversy (CK2+, Brittany was a theocracy because it overcame my Norse ancestors but since I avoided the great schism they became the Patriarch Supreme so after a couple of generations of trying to lightly convert to Bogomilism (first as witch-queens trying to vie for gender equality, next as an alternative to an ecclesiarchy I couldn't control) some loving kid inherits and all the secret religions fire so it all goes to poo poo.

Rome seems like it might come back but then the plague hits so the new divisions become ossified while any stable area is destabilized.

It was amazing. I can't get that from Stellaris. I want that from Stellaris though.

Reveilled
Apr 19, 2007

Take up your rifles

Aethernet posted:

All the stuff about testing weapon effectiveness - bear in mind that these tests take place in an idealised environment in which fleets approach each other across a system. Short-range weapons like autocannons have a role if you're on the defensive and can trap a fleet into jumping on top of you.

Arguably this might be the more common type of engagement anyway. If the AI thinks it could lose an engagement it will often try to retreat, which then leads to you jumping in on top of the AI to catch them even if you wanted ideally to do a long range engagement, and vice versa if you're retreating and get caught by them.

Maybe that's just my playstyle, but point blank engagements are definitely the norm for me.

toasterwarrior
Nov 11, 2011
Certainly makes the idea of FTL trap fortresses chock full of bombers and autocannons a lot more appealing though.

nessin
Feb 7, 2010
I'm in the middle of the most screwed up game I think I've ever seen. I'm a Determined Exterminator Robot in a outer branch of a two arm spiral galaxy. Only one AI spawned nearby so I fed off it for an early energy/planet boost and while exploring found several other AI races a fair ways out and my neighbor to the other side is another Determined Exterminator, plus I've got two 25-slot Gaia worlds basically next door. One is the Hiver Nest and the other is a secluded Infinity Machine system. So here I am with a small empire to feed off of, a "friendly" neighbor whose expanding fast and I've got a defensive pact with, and some amazing systems (including a grand total of 54 minerals within two jumps of my home system). Then it all goes to poo poo. Turns out those extra AI's I found on the other side of my feeder nation are all compatible with each other and my relations with my fellow exterminator quickly went from +250 to -330 thanks to border friction, despite the fact that it's a hyperlane only game and there are a dozen empty systems between us via that method (yes, I know that isn't how it works). I've also grown a bit annoyed with normal games, so this game is on hard.

As soon as my friend drops the defensive pact I get jumped on by one of the AI's next to the one I partially devoured. After a fairly long defensive war I finally beat them off (screw AI hard research bonuses and cruisers in 2220) and for the next 15 years every time one AI gets beaten off the next in line declares on me. None of them are strong enough to beat me individually as long as I'm careful but their territory is too far away for me to chip away at and weaken them for the future. And despite a 0.5x habitability setting they're still managed to get a total of 18 planets between them, so they're just building up way faster than I can match, even with my great start. Pretty soon I'm not going to be able to rebuild a planet or military station in time after a major push and it's all going to collapse.

There is my rant of a dream start in a interesting game going horribly wrong.

Edit:
I'm going to be ruined for future games anytime I'm in a good start. How often can you be at positive 148 mineral income, sitting on 8500 energy, and 5 planets with growing population in just 26 years of game time.

nessin fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Oct 7, 2017

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Milky Moor posted:

I feel like there should be Galactic Crises (things like the War in Heaven, the current ones, and so on) and Regional Crises, which could be smaller and shake things up a little. Maybe a planet spits out a 20k Precursor Kill Fleet that goes around the galaxy destroying things but unable to replenish its numbers. Diplomatic events, Empire/Empire events, random things to just spice the galaxy up.
Definitely. There's stuff that looks like it should be a threat, like the pirate fleet, they should pirate things, or set up shop in an empire and attack the surrounding empires, forcing a war if the empire refuses to to deal with them. There's the asteroid hivers, they should start spreading to other nearby systems. The organic leviathans should enter their breeding cycle. A few mid-game mini-crisis events would be great.

Milky Moor posted:

I'd like to see moments like the invention and deployment of the tank in World War 1, where technological advancement can provide a distinct edge to an empire for a few years, not just a slightly higher DPS.
I know that a big part of the Stellaris design ethos was to avoid Tech Is King, but you're right that it means there's no "Oh poo poo he's got (x)???" moments. In SotS some guy showing up with plague weapons means a huge shift in your defence tactics. Even going cruisers -> battleships doesn't seem like a big thing.

Milkfred E. Moore
Aug 27, 2006

'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

Splicer posted:

Definitely. There's stuff that looks like it should be a threat, like the pirate fleet, they should pirate things, or set up shop in an empire and attack the surrounding empires, forcing a war if the empire refuses to to deal with them. There's the asteroid hivers, they should start spreading to other nearby systems. The organic leviathans should enter their breeding cycle. A few mid-game mini-crisis events would be great.

Absolutely. Like, why isn't the Crystal Nydus or whatever spitting out Crystal fleets to go sit in nearby star systems?

I understand why this is, maybe. I think people really didn't like losing science ships -- hell, I still don't -- but I also think it feels like it was tuned back a bit too far.

quote:

I know that a big part of the Stellaris design ethos was to avoid Tech Is King, but you're right that it means there's no "Oh poo poo he's got (x)???" moments. In SotS some guy showing up with plague weapons means a huge shift in your defence tactics. Even going cruisers -> battleships doesn't seem like a big thing.

True. My mind does wander back to SotS a lot, it had some really great wars to make the galaxy feel alive.

I can't help but think it's because Stellaris has a multiplayer component. But I also don't think there'll ever be truly competitive Stellaris multiplayer and to balance for it is a mistake. To me, at least, it's a single-player game that I can get some friends together to roleplay space empires with.

I mean, just to borrow ideas off the top of my head from SotS...

Derelict asteroid defense stations you can destroy or take over with a research project.
The Locust Fleetworld that travels from inhabited system to inhabited system, sapping all resources and turning planets barren until it reproduces another of its kin which goes off to do the same...
The Peacekeeper that enforces galactic peace with extreme prejudice.
The Puppet Master that draws a line through the galaxy and visits all systems within a certain distance -- inhabited systems are turned into an AI revolution.
The Von Neumann probes who sap resources from planets and fleets and, if they sap enough, can construct ships at their secret homeworld to do more than sap resources, up to and including planet killers.

edit: I don't know how well Stellaris' engine could handle things like this, of course.

Also, the derelict megastructures were a huge step in the right direction, even if it can take a while to actually get to use them.

Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Oct 7, 2017

Eej
Jun 17, 2007

HEAVYARMS
IIRC large missile mounts have a pretty big penalty tracking that makes them not very attractive to use against anything smaller than a cruiser.

Crazycryodude posted:

Normal hiveminds get a diplomacy malus with non-gestalt empires because they have trouble grasping things like "individuality", but it's 100% possible to overcome it and be friends. There are certain variants, though, that have diplomacy turned off and just have to murder everyone. The Devouring Swarms (biological hivemind Zerg) and Determined Exterminators (machine hivemind Skynet), to be exact.

Assimilators have a pretty big penalty for wanting to assimilate everyone too. Other machines don't care of course but I also noticed squishy hiveminds don't care about potentially being cyborged.

ugh its Troika
May 2, 2009

by FactsAreUseless
You can get around that with some research and the right perks.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸
I just got The Prince event again. I don't know why, but I had a third option this time to call them up and tell them their book was terrible :v:

McGiggins
Apr 4, 2014

by R. Guyovich
Lipstick Apathy
I got the "your book is terrible" option in my run as Space Terminators, and I didn't take it because I thought a bunch of murder-happy machines calling up their enemies and delivering a thorough deconstruction (the likes of which only a machine is capable of) of the merits and flaws of the book while murdering their populace might be just a little too mean.

Seams
Feb 3, 2005

ROCK HARD
Trying to fight the Contingency as an Inward Perfection pacifist empire was frustrating. I could take out their fleets, but the bombardment of the machine world would tick so slowly that another fleet would spawn on top of my bombardment fleet and by the time it was dead the machine world would be back at full strength. Couldn't change my bombardment policy to anything above the minimum because I was pacifist.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Milky Moor posted:

And just as an additional to the above, Leviathans are kind of vulnerable to that, too. By the time you can safely bring down a Leviathan without substantial losses, it feels like it doesn't really matter. Getting your pet Drake is cool, getting Jump Drives is neat... but by the late-game it feels hardly radical.

I really like the Infinity Sphere for that reason, because you can engage with it early, and it's something that can maybe be very powerful or game-changing (big research black hole or Sentient AI).

edit: And it's why I think the Cybrex precursor one is the best. A ruined Ringworld and living metal? That's so cool! The rest are just kind of boring, giving you a heap of resources, y'know?

If Leviathans could just spawn in in backwater parts of the map and maybe go on a ramble around the galaxy, that would be interesting. As it stands, honestly, my priority when I find a leviathan is to immediately claim it with an outpost and close my borders to stop anyone else killing it until I'm ready to, which I don't feel like is quite the intended response. They're currently just "insert 20k fleet power for a prize" objects and don't really interact with you otherwise.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Oct 7, 2017

Dr Snofeld
Apr 30, 2009
I was big into wormhole stations at launch but I've gone off them, since I figure they make exploration and surveying a pain in the neck. Wormhole players, are they actually usable later in the game? Especially if you have to wage war against a large empire outside of your jump range.

Fintilgin
Sep 29, 2004

Fintilgin sweeps!

Seams posted:

Trying to fight the Contingency as an Inward Perfection pacifist empire was frustrating. I could take out their fleets, but the bombardment of the machine world would tick so slowly that another fleet would spawn on top of my bombardment fleet and by the time it was dead the machine world would be back at full strength. Couldn't change my bombardment policy to anything above the minimum because I was pacifist.

Hmmm. Bombardment of crisis planets should probably just ignore your policy and default to max/armageddon.

Schlesische
Jul 4, 2012

Dr Snofeld posted:

I was big into wormhole stations at launch but I've gone off them, since I figure they make exploration and surveying a pain in the neck. Wormhole players, are they actually usable later in the game? Especially if you have to wage war against a large empire outside of your jump range.
They don't have cooldown, don't consume energy on the ship and you get more range than Wormhole while not being as restricted as Hyperlane (provided you have a well built network of gates).
On the flipside it takes longer to jump from system to system if you have a large fleet and you have to build your own network of gates.

Late game though, you're going Psydrive or Jumpdrive and giving 0 shits.

McGiggins
Apr 4, 2014

by R. Guyovich
Lipstick Apathy
Is there a reason that Armageddon bombardment is not available to determined exterminators?

It's my policy, but I can't set my fleets to actually use it, so they're restricted to full.

Really, a determined exterminator is a form of fanatic purifier, so I should be able to use the stance seeing as it is specifically allowed by the determined exterminator flavour text, yet not actually selectable in the fleet stances.

turn off the TV
Aug 4, 2010

moderately annoying

OwlFancier posted:

If Leviathans could just spawn in in backwater parts of the map and maybe go on a ramble around the galaxy, that would be interesting. As it stands, honestly, my priority when I find a leviathan is to immediately claim it with an outpost and close my borders to stop anyone else killing it until I'm ready to, which I don't feel like is quite the intended response. They're currently just "insert 20k fleet power for a prize" objects and don't really interact with you otherwise.

There's a mod that adds ether drakes that cruise around the galaxy, and surprisingly it's actually kind of poo poo when you're unlucky enough to have a guy with 20k fleet power decide to pay your systems a visit a decade into a game.

kujeger
Feb 19, 2004

OH YES HA HA

McGiggins posted:

Is there a reason that Armageddon bombardment is not available to determined exterminators?

It's my policy, but I can't set my fleets to actually use it, so they're restricted to full.

Really, a determined exterminator is a form of fanatic purifier, so I should be able to use the stance seeing as it is specifically allowed by the determined exterminator flavour text, yet not actually selectable in the fleet stances.

I've never not used armageddon bombardment with my determined exterminators, but I'm also on the 1.8.1 beta, so might be a bug that got fixed?

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

Shbobdb posted:

While I love the idea of doing more with individual ships what that boils down to (unfortunately) is giving the player more control to rear end gently caress the AI without lube.

While not ideal, the sort of bland sameness works because it keeps the AI semi-competitive through the law of averages. You can do some min/maxing but honestly, it doesn't make that much of a difference.

As others have pointed out, there are already ways of clowning the AI. I know the Owlfanciers of the world just want a "I win" button where they feel super smart for using it but that basically kills the game.

I like that I can design my ships because I want them to be *my* ships. But, from a game-design perspective, I also appreciate that me designing my custom ships doesn't mean that I'm going to automatically crush the AI.

Are you seriously saying that the ship designer has to be crippled to the point of uselessness because the AI is too dumb to use it and therefore it would give the player an advantage otherwise? If that's the case, why even have the ship designer, other than "because other 4Xes have it"?

The AI is incredibly clownable right now, that's true. My preferred solution to that is improving the AI, not dumbing everything else down so that the player can't outdo the AI. The fact that I can get declared on by someone with twice my fleet power and easily win just by blowing up their unescorted transports is a problem.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

turn off the TV posted:

There's a mod that adds ether drakes that cruise around the galaxy, and surprisingly it's actually kind of poo poo when you're unlucky enough to have a guy with 20k fleet power decide to pay your systems a visit a decade into a game.

Well yeah I mean it should be a later game thing obviously, and probably tone down the wandering variants a bit. But the idea of leviathans not being perfectly controllable and something you might be pressured to get rid of or avoid would be nice. Even if the static ones just had a patrol radius or poo poo out the occasional fleet of baby ones to pester nearby systems.

Giant Tourtiere
Aug 4, 2006

TRICHER
POUR
GAGNER
So I'm just getting my feet wet in this game (thank you Steam sale?) with Space Communists (obviously) and just hit the point where I think all the alien empires blinked in on the map and of course one of them is an absolutely *enormous* blob called the Nessian Slaughterers and they're Fanatic Purifiers. There's *another* set of Fanatic Purifiers out there too.

The last time I played a game like this was Moo2 (I am old) and a reasonable amount of the time you could tell from the game state early on that you were just hosed (usually by Silicoids or Sakkra) barring squeaking out a win diplomatically before the giant empires inevitably rolled over you.

What I'm asking is this - is it possible to come from behind in Stellaris, just as a general principle? I'm having fun but I'm not certain whether it's better to restart or keep plugging away at this one.

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OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

evenworse username posted:

So I'm just getting my feet wet in this game (thank you Steam sale?) with Space Communists (obviously) and just hit the point where I think all the alien empires blinked in on the map and of course one of them is an absolutely *enormous* blob called the Nessian Slaughterers and they're Fanatic Purifiers. There's *another* set of Fanatic Purifiers out there too.

The last time I played a game like this was Moo2 (I am old) and a reasonable amount of the time you could tell from the game state early on that you were just hosed (usually by Silicoids or Sakkra) barring squeaking out a win diplomatically before the giant empires inevitably rolled over you.

What I'm asking is this - is it possible to come from behind in Stellaris, just as a general principle? I'm having fun but I'm not certain whether it's better to restart or keep plugging away at this one.

A big blob is only a problem if there's no chance of forming a comparably sized pact of non shitheads against it.

Personally I find a big omnicidal blob to be quite desirable because it makes the game interesting, they often have a lot of trouble getting off the ground because everyone hates them and gangs up to beat them down at the start.

Get you the Space USSR going and form yourself a bloc against the kill crazy bastards! Diplomacy is a really big thing in this game, make some generous trade deals to get some non aggression pacts going, build up your trust with compatible neighbors and upgrade into defensive pacts. It's not you against everyone else, at least not until you want it to be. Making friends is super important and a big part of why the game is interesting, allies are dependable in this game even if their combat AI is a bit stupid. They won't backstab you arbitrarily like in a Civ game.

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