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GamingHyena posted:Yeah, it's weird that all of the lore in Stellaris has a common theme of "no matter how powerful you are, your empire will eventually fall and others will rise in its place" yet with current game mechanics there's no reason the precursors/fallen empires/other ancient stuff should ever have fallen. Bringing over the CK2 model of large empires essentially being a house of cards about to topple wouldn't work in Stellaris because the endgame crises require large stable empires to combat them. It'll probably be easier if the crises were reliant less on hard power (spaceships and armies) and had a significant soft power aspect to them. Say for example, while the Unbidden have nasty spaceships and could turn planets barren without having to use armies (which is what they already do). However at the same time their portals and anchors are producing a constant stream of Unbidden cultists (who become their own faction of course) who in addition to being a constant thorn can also have turned out to have infiltrated the political leadership by unveiling their Unbidden Cultist trait upon battle/taking power/gaining an office. Ideally, the three ascension paths would have different ways of responding to them (in addition to a generic response). Psionic Empires could, for example, preemptively identify and rehabilitate those not fully given over to the Unbidden, biological empires code in a 0-point psionic dampener gene (and nerve stapling for everyone else), and synthetic empires can issue anti-memtic upgrades through an edict and use modules that jam Unbidden influence.
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Oct 17, 2017 03:09
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Milky Moor posted:It wasn't me but I love the Feudal System civic as having vassals makes later-game wars so much easier. Smash the enemy fleet and your vassals will win the war with warscore. Who's the goon that made the mod that included human empires for all the other sublight colony ships? I can't find it, iirc it was pretty cool. The workshop is like "human slaves for syncretic evolution," "Undiverse humans [eugh]," "replace humans with animes," "cool but kinda goofy looking anachronistic human clothes" If I wanted to add in human empires myself how do I make sure the game counts them as same species?
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Oct 17, 2017 03:13
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Better watch out or Nerd Squadron will gently caress u up, pal
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Oct 17, 2017 03:19
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You can say that ck2 and Stellaris aren't that similar, but consider that leaders in the latter usually live for decades if not nearly a century. If the scale is so grand in Stellaris, why have leaders at all- shouldn't they just be cogs in the machine as well? Still, I see that there's opportunity in expanding their roles and fleshing them out in the future to explore them further.
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Oct 17, 2017 03:35
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Milky Moor posted:And yet then there's things like 'Science Man #2838 has substance abuse', 'Admiral Whoever has arrested development', and sectors in general (which feel like they should be much more fleshed out than what they are) that makes it feel like it should have more a focus on people and internal politics. Sometimes it feels like Stellaris wants to be a galactic civilisation sim but it doesn't get there. Not yet, anyway. I agree sectors could be fleshed out more, but the entire idea of how you interact with subnational units probably need to be examined. Planets are things that you carefully manage until you are big enough to toss them into a bin with other planets because the micro would be unwieldy. Sectors are places where you have the one governor who somehow manages more planets than the nominal head of state. The entire "domestic" portion of Stellaris is very bare compared with CKII or EUIV, but I'm not sure dealing with internal politics would necessarily make it a richer experience. It could easily become an annoyance when you just want to roll some big space ships and go pew pew pew.
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Oct 17, 2017 03:35
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kw0134 posted:I think that's a distraction too, because leaders are bonuses that you slam into a slot and then forget they exist until they die or they do something and you're forced to deal with them. It's honestly a little weird they're sort of important, but they're all essentially fungible. There's no central guy that the game points to and says "this your proxy, don't gently caress it up!" If my science officer dies, it's a PITA to train him/her/nongender but it's just time and some influence. They're basically the leaders/advisors from EU, something you purchase and maintain and replace when necessary. They don't have an actual personality, but you can pretend to do so (easier to do when you have historical named persons show up in the pool in EU). I like ALOT... a lot. It doesn't change... a lot, but it increases the number of traits leaders spawn with. That's a small difference, but it makes them more immediately valuable and more differentiated.
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Oct 17, 2017 03:41
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Psycho Landlord posted:On the other hand, with the unity payout they give now, precursor systems inside enemy borders are a pretty compelling reason to go to war. Especially the Cybrex one. If you're lucky you can have your ally do the Cybrex quests and then have the system spawn in your territory and then drop a frontier outpost on it to block your ally just before he claims his rightful territory via outpost sniping, you fuckman give me back my ringworld I did all the work 
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Oct 17, 2017 04:05
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Korgan posted:If you're lucky you can have your ally do the Cybrex quests and then have the system spawn in your territory and then drop a frontier outpost on it to block your ally just before he claims his rightful territory via outpost sniping, you fuckman give me back my ringworld I did all the work You know I only noticed that Ringworld existed because in your effort to outpost snipe me you interrupted an existing colonization mission. It was a real nice Ringworld too.
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Oct 17, 2017 04:17
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Speaking of those systems, there's a mod with a similar event chain that struck me as a neat way to do it. Basically, you track down three different locations that sends you to the home system of this ancient species. When you arrive in their home system, each planet has an anomaly that, I think, is only visible to the player who discovered it. So, anyone can colonise the system or outpost the system or whatever, but only the player who did the various events can get the benefits from the anomaly projects. So, say, anyone could head to Cybrex Alpha and find the ringworld and the living metal but only the player who did the chain first could do the project and get the unity and such.
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Oct 17, 2017 04:32
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Milky Moor posted:And as much as I'd like a Stellaris where waning and waxing was part of the gameplay, it's not really there at the moment. If you take big losses, there's no real way to recover -- neighbouring empires never break down or collapse or experience events you can take advantage of. Have the gameplay support all different kinds of empires rising and falling all together. Let us start in a galaxy that's already populated by not just ancient fallen civilizations but moderately advanced ones too in a way that feels like you're entering into a galaxy with some history. If there's an established rear end in a top hat empire that could wipe you out, make it so there are other empires out there that would defend you to balance it or something. Like make it so there are classes of development/power and if you mess with someone much weaker, there are other states that have an interest in stopping that. That way if some big empire fragments (or if you emprie does) it'll still be fun to pick up the scraps and keep going because being small wouldn't be a game-over. Make it so that empires can reach a critical mass and either just fall apart or "sublime" like in Ian M Banks' Culture books. Have the biggest strongest empires eventually just poof into immaterial nothingness, leaving vast tracts of empty territory. Heck, make that the default starting condition- half the galaxy was dominated by an empire that suddenly sublimed, so you get half a galaxy to play current Stellaris in, while there's still a bunch of established empires around the edges jockeying to control the newly abandoned territory. Or something like that. I love Stellaris as it is, and I know this is well outside of the scope of the current game, but I'd love a game like Stellaris that gave options other than blob-blob-blob-win. And I feel Paradox is probably a good company to make a game like that, as their other games don't have that problem. Even if the blob-blob-win game arc is still a viable strategy, the perfectly symmetrical blobbing isn't as mandatory in other Paradox games as it is in Stellaris.
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Oct 17, 2017 06:35
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Milky Moor posted:It wouldn't be so bad if I could put my empire on AI control and let it run itself for however long. That's actually doable. There are console commands to directly advance however many years, or just start 100 years on via 'mature_galaxy'. You could also use 'observe' and let it run itself for however long, then use 'play x' to jump in. 00 is 'your' empire, 01 and up is AIs. Bloodly fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 06:47
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Bloodly posted:That's actually doable. There are console commands to directly advance however many years, or just start 100 years on via 'mature_galaxy'. You could also use 'observe' and let it run itself for however long, then use 'play x' to jump in. 00 is 'your' empire, 01 and up is AIs. For some reason, typing "play x" is already enough. Apparently the game interprets "x" as your empire anyway. No reason to remember numbers!
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Oct 17, 2017 09:28
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Paradox have launched a Halloween competition for people to submit Spooky Empires: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...t-2017.1050536/ Many of these are genuinely terrifying if you have any affection for the English language.
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Oct 17, 2017 09:41
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I think stellaris could benefit from scaling down. If the early game was just about your capital and 2 colonies where every other colony is released as an independent you could morph the game into being more like ck2 in that your species is what's important, not your empire. The benefits of settling and expanding would be a greater core of relatively friendly allies, in fact, make the early game an HRE space equivalent with OPM's and the players capital world as emperor. If Stellaris didn't have tiles the player wouldn't have anything to do but stare at the screen when not fighting wars. Wiz, please take the game to a point where removing tiles wouldn't make the game feel like it's bereft of content.
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Oct 17, 2017 09:53
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Aethernet posted:Paradox have launched a Halloween competition for people to submit Spooky Empires: Vote for my terrible touch up job, the Benevelonion Ogrelords.  Voting isn't a thing, pay this dumbass no heed 
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Oct 17, 2017 09:56
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Aethernet posted:Paradox have launched a Halloween competition for people to submit Spooky Empires: In the last 500 years, the Fourth Stimpire has dominated four systems, which it has united into one starzone, Stimsis. The Fourth Stimpire has origins from the Ten Empire War in which 10 of the United Stimpires revolted against each rules. All empires except for the fourth swore freedom upon their citizens. There is no free speech in the Fourth Stimpire, and all self-controlled transportation has been made illegal without undergoing painful medical verification methods, in which arteries are severed without pain resistant, operated entirely by machines. The way they work claim to be the most hygenic and healthy way possible, but these machines often rub against pain points, causing great deals of pain to patients. The heart is then extracted from the body and placed into a glass grinding machine. Various energy centers are also dissected and replaced with dangerous transplants. After the painful, 52 hour surgical procedure, patients will then have to use a fused guidance tool, which pumps painful resistors into the body every 2 hours. The pain they have caused is so bad, the victim would freeze in a tense position. They would then collapse afterwards. Sexual stimulation in any way within the grounds of the Fourth Stimpire is strictly prohibited, and anyone detected even touching their sexual organs will be subjected to a penectomy or if the offender was a female, they would then have a razor inserted into their ovaries. They would pump a blue solution into the womb until the stitchings burst. Offenders would also be forced to show their operated areas in public, and they would always harass and punch them to a pulp, against their will. Otherwise, offenders would be tazed with the worst type of electricity in the systematic district, causing so much pain, the victim would scream and flail in madness. The pain would also triple every second, but no death would be incurred. This is also used in combat against enemy units, which is why all UEE forces must wear the upgraded suit to block this effect. However, enertainment is also questionable in UEE grounds. Sporting events end with the losing team being rounded into a grinder and shredded on live television, boxing matches end with the loser having their hands removed without anasthesia, flight races would end with the losers having their arms and legs removed, then being injected with insanity, for entertainment. People are also forced into these events, by undergoing a painful 127 hour procedure which involves tweaking the muscles so they will not listen to brain commands, and then having a painful drug injected which also causes madness if the player is not sporting. This is all for entertainment, and anyone not watching any of it during sporting times and cheering for the winning team, they will be imprisoned into galactic camps. Snuff films are also broadcast, and actors are actually murdered just for entertainment. Stealth droids also guide these forced actors into behaving exactly as the director dreams, otherwise they will be punished by being placed into a macerator and having their execution written into the film. Any film that does not feature someone being murdered will be burned and the entire crew behind it will be executed in the most grotesque way possible - vivisection. All executions are broadcast, and anyone who misses even a millisecond, even by blinking, will be executed. All citizens must boo to the person being executed, and the family is gathered to be injected with eternators, which cause pain forever, making them immoral but feeling the pain tenfold every millisecond. They cannot pass out, but they will feel like it forever. Conquests by this Stimpire end in the planet being razed, and all the citizens being executed in the same way as their citizens are. The planet is then destroyed and all remnants of it are removed, and any memories of it will be erased instantly from civil minds. People who are also killed are also erased from memories, and all memories of them, including toys and pictures, are destroyed. Prisoners undergo 40,000 years of relentless and endless labor, and anyone not complying is sentenced to the eternator injection. All prisoners injected with eternators are placed into capsules and launched into far space, then the room is closed tight to ensure maximum insanity. Some prisoners are also subjected to the removal of blood, the lungs, the liver, the genitals, the skeleton, the muscles, the eyes, and even the injection of pressure. Prisoners sentenced to pressure chambers are locked in until they are inflated to a high level. The decompression is then stopped to make sure they are inflated and uncomfortable. Children born on the 14th of July are subjected to the removal of their skeleton and an implant of a silver liquid to replace it. The nervous sysem is also injected in various parts to ensure it is five times more sensitive than the average. Restaurants also are ordered to serve civil meat, and anyone attending must give themself up to be cooked into a grotesque meal. They are cooked alive, undergoing extreme pain, and are then subjected to industrial grinders and blenders. The Stimpire orders at least 1 million citizens to be dispatched every day, as they are afraid the population may overthrow them. But only one planet is cared for, and the rest are banned from eating, drinking, talking, using technology, touching anyone, wearing unauthorized clothes, touching buildings, or walking a centimeter out of designated routes. Civil enforcers are on every planet, and they are engineered so that they are 40 times larger than the 300 quadrillion population. At least 7 billion die every 12 hours under this rule. Thoughts are also surveyed, and anyone who does not think anything to loving the Stimpire with more than their capabilities will be sentenced to a prison. Prisoners who are punished for this violation will meet their greatest fear, only to have it amplified so they will turn insane as they imagine it exactly as they fear it. They then undergo a painful extraction of all fluids, to be replaced by a toxin which causes permanent irritation. The unknown substance keeps the subject aging normally, except they will never die. Prisoners punished in this way are unable to be reverted, despite many efforts, and they will never be able to be disposed. The sickening truths have been revealed only today, and invigilation teams are still investigating the truths without setting foot in the galactic space of this sickening empire.
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Oct 17, 2017 09:56
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Playstation 4 posted:Vote for my terrible touch up job, the Benevelonion Ogrelords. Homeworld should be Tropical, for the relevant tile-blockers.
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Oct 17, 2017 10:15
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Demiurge4 posted:I think stellaris could benefit from scaling down. It sort of feels like the big problem of Stellaris. The early-game just doesn't really extrapolate as the scale grows. Sectors are obviously supposed to deal with some of that but sectors feel a bit contradictory. Take, for example, the usage of 'Core Systems' and 'sectors' as terminology. Core Systems... okay, so these systems should be the ones I want to manage personally -- they should be my better, more important worlds. Sectors will be for ones I don't really want to pay as much attention to. But putting developed worlds into a sector is better because the AI can be wonky (or, even if it's not wonky, it's just not as ruthless as a human might be). So, I should probably want to put my first six worlds into a sector at some point so I can devote attention to my newer ones. Also, you don't really have worlds you don't want to pay attention to. You never get, like, small mining dirtballs or little research outposts that you just fire and forget because planets under Size 12 are Bad. Every world is fairly important and you generally can pay attention to each one. Which leads into... It takes ages to expand to 5/6 systems. And there are sometimes games where you may not ever actually need a sector because you can't expand so far. But if you can't expand, you're going to get overwhelmed. And what's more, there's just nothing to sectors anyway. You get less micromanagement in exchange for a fraction of the resources, which is fine enough, but there's nothing else there. No factions, no personalities, no events. They don't help with war tedium like vassals do. They're just this thing you do to avoid a resource penalty. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 10:28 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 10:19
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For my money, Core Worlds should reduce in line with the number of worlds you have, until your empire is sufficiently large and you only control your capital directly. This should be combined with greater macro control over sectors - i.e. 'Fortify these systems', 'Upgrade all mines to level 3,' 'Ensure all worlds build a monument' etc. The reason for this is that sectors should be your focus in the late game, not individual worlds, but the current mechanics don't permit this or make it interesting in any way. If I can tailor plans for individual sectors that put particular requirements on them, I no longer need to control individual worlds. You should play a wide sector game or a tall individual world game, but not both.
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Oct 17, 2017 10:57
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Aethernet posted:For my money, Core Worlds should reduce in line with the number of worlds you have, until your empire is sufficiently large and you only control your capital directly. This should be combined with greater macro control over sectors - i.e. 'Fortify these systems', 'Upgrade all mines to level 3,' 'Ensure all worlds build a monument' etc. The reason for this is that sectors should be your focus in the late game, not individual worlds, but the current mechanics don't permit this or make it interesting in any way. If I can tailor plans for individual sectors that put particular requirements on them, I no longer need to control individual worlds. You should play a wide sector game or a tall individual world game, but not both. Personally I quite like having specific worlds throughout the empire I use my core world budget for, and everything else is sectors. Sometimes you have a really good planet that you want to keep control over, or one in a key location. Sectors are good for managing the average planets but a few good planets would be nice to keep all game. Maybe give sector capitals more control so that sectors are centered on those key worlds?
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Oct 17, 2017 10:59
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So assume you do away with tiles or you revamp the entire system and base it on HRE mechanics. You base gameplay around each 'elector' being a system and remove the tech penalties for settled systems and planets. Every planet in a system now has mineral veins which means that you can have your lovely little outposts but food is crucially a system only thing (not empire) so only systems with a proper planet can support big industries. Introduce sponsored colonies as your expansion mechanic. When you build a colony ship you assume a sponsorship of the newly settled system and have great influence on its ethics and politics. They will be a drain on your industry and food but can eventually be relied on for trade. As the empire grows you might see systems with larger planets and richer resources usurp the home world for leadership and make you switch if prompted. I'm just brainstorming here but this is the direction I wish stellaris would take. More politics, much less classic 4x.
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Oct 17, 2017 11:00
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It also feels like a democracy should have different sectors to a dictatorship. Authoritarian sectors could be more beholden to the whims of the governor, for example, than an egalitarian one would (which could have more a problem with ethos drift or desire for independence/additional agency). I don't have a clue how you'd begin to model this, though. You can, however, sort of simulate this with Feudal Society and releasing your planets as vassals. The issue is then that you end up with like six different variations on Human Empire running about. Human Empire, United Human Empire, Human Imperial State... It'd be very cool if you could say 'this is House Whoever and this vassal is House So-And-So' when releasing a feudal vassal. Either way, I think sectors should be something you should be wanting to put worlds into because it makes things interesting/gives a bonus, not something you're doing to avoid a penalty. Like that classic thing with WoW and how they phrased the XP buff/penalty.
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Oct 17, 2017 11:13
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Aethernet posted:Paradox have launched a Halloween competition for people to submit Spooky Empires: Beating up English? Well, as a born bully I just had to enter this contest to shove poor English around a bit some more. Welp, here's my entry for this contest:  Since the bio got a bit long, here's the full text: They came from the woods. Millenia ago, when Humanity was building its first cities, the Slean slowly walked out of Earth‘s forests, seemingly birthed from the trees themselves. No city and no fortress could stop them: With wooden bodies as hard as iron and unbelievable strength, the Slean marched across the planet, slaughtering and dominating mankind wherever they went. When ancient Troy, the last free city of Humankind finally fell, mankind‘s history was over. Only a few Humans survived to become the Hum, the Slean‘s pets. After the fall, mankind withered, as if the Slean had taken their very souls. With them, the world itself withered, turning into an arid wasteland. The Slean called this new Earth „Error“ and named the sun „Sal“. If their pets dared to ask why, the Slean simply snapped their necks with their overwhelming strength. Soon the Hum learned to never ask questions again. (Also please disregard the empty portraits on the left, I had to switch off a lot of mods to get pure unmodded vanilla, ha ha)  The other species was once human.  Not anymore, though!  The custom leader of this travesty. Edit: That thread had some great comedy, but since Halloween itself is a joke, that goes together astonishingly well Libluini fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 13:23
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Aethernet posted:For my money, Core Worlds should reduce in line with the number of worlds you have, until your empire is sufficiently large and you only control your capital directly. This should be combined with greater macro control over sectors - i.e. 'Fortify these systems', 'Upgrade all mines to level 3,' 'Ensure all worlds build a monument' etc. The reason for this is that sectors should be your focus in the late game, not individual worlds, but the current mechanics don't permit this or make it interesting in any way. If I can tailor plans for individual sectors that put particular requirements on them, I no longer need to control individual worlds. You should play a wide sector game or a tall individual world game, but not both. Moo3's customizable AI governors did something like this and it was pretty nice. Instead of just having an automate checkbox it also let you put planets into categories to tell them what to build in which regions (which are just stellaris tiles). It also meant you could change your template and it would apply to all the planets already using it, not just new ones. The task force design system and mobilization mechanics were so good for a large scale 4x too.
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Oct 17, 2017 13:45
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Aethernet posted:For my money, Core Worlds should reduce in line with the number of worlds you have, until your empire is sufficiently large and you only control your capital directly. This should be combined with greater macro control over sectors - i.e. 'Fortify these systems', 'Upgrade all mines to level 3,' 'Ensure all worlds build a monument' etc. The reason for this is that sectors should be your focus in the late game, not individual worlds, but the current mechanics don't permit this or make it interesting in any way. If I can tailor plans for individual sectors that put particular requirements on them, I no longer need to control individual worlds. You should play a wide sector game or a tall individual world game, but not both. I don't think this is the game Stellaris really wants to be and a lot of people in this thread seem to keep wishing Stellaris is some other game. While I agree that the economic management of Stellaris could definitely be spiced up and sectors (as always) need work, suggestions like this strike me as throwing the entire game out the window and replacing it with something else.
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Oct 17, 2017 14:47
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conversely, i don't think stellaris really wants to be a game where sectors are barely functional and utterly without flavor or distinction. also, what happens in terms of the war in heaven if there are more than 2 fallen empires on the map? do they all align themselves somewhere along the first axis that forms, or can there be sequential wars?
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Oct 17, 2017 14:55
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Soup du Journey posted:conversely, i don't think stellaris really wants to be a game where sectors are barely functional and utterly without flavor or distinction. Sectors need work, that's a given. That doesn't need to include "throw out the entire system of managing individual planets". War in Heaven involves two Awakened Empires. Any other Fallen Empires don't react at all and I don't think the Awakened Empires bother with the still-Fallen empires. At least, I've never seen them do so.
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Oct 17, 2017 15:10
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The problem is that tile buildings and pop management are a huge part of the game, and a significant number of features and mechanics exist solely for the sake of micromanaging what's on a given planet tile. I think sectors could be nice, but the way they're designed right now isn't very coherent - they should be something the player wants to use, not just a mandatory handicap on wide empires. Almost everything about sectors feels like just a way to force the player to do something, rather than a useful feature that's fun to use. For example, the requirement that sectors cover a geographically contiguous region of space. That could be fun, if sectors were more interesting and had more Independence and flavor. But right now, it's just a pointless annoyance designed to impair minmaxing by forcing the player to stick some of their mining stations into sectors and heavily restricting the player's ability to choose what planets go into the same sector.
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Oct 17, 2017 15:32
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Okay, interesting. Can those other FE's eventually awaken and have another WiH between themselves? I'm kind of thinking of starting with like, 6 or 8 fallen empires or something, but I'd like to know what the long-term effects of that might be. Also, it is my firm and moral belief that the ai can't fight wars, so I kind of want to modify the war score calculation so that space battles are much more decisive than they are now. Unfortunately, I'm confused by basic arithmetic. quote:# War-score from fleet-battles = WAR_SCORE_SHIP_KILL_MUL * (WAR_SCORE_FLEET_COMBAT_WIN_BASE + ((loser_fleet_value_lost / loser_fleet_value_total) * (1 - ((winner_fleet_value_lost * WAR_SCORE_SHIP_KILL_WINNER_MUL) / winner_fleet_value_total))))  I've been plunking around with a calculator, but I remain stupid. Does WAR_SCORE_SHIP_KILL_MUL and WAR_SCORE_SHIP_KILL_WINNER_MUL have to add up to 1? How can I ensure that conclusive doomstack fights more or less swing the fight one way or another, but that ambushing a lone corvette half a dozen times doesn't amount to the same thing, in terms of the war score it awards? Do winner_fleet_value_total and loser_fleet_value_total correspond to the value of the fleet in combat, or the total fleet value of an empire? And furthermore, what even is a formula? Can any of us truly know? I think not.
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Oct 17, 2017 15:34
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Main Paineframe posted:The problem is that tile buildings and pop management are a huge part of the game, and a significant number of features and mechanics exist solely for the sake of micromanaging what's on a given planet tile. I think sectors could be nice, but the way they're designed right now isn't very coherent - they should be something the player wants to use, not just a mandatory handicap on wide empires. This is the thing. Sectors are currently positioned as effectively a punishment for expansion, with at least a 25% tax on planetart output. While they ostensibly reduce micromanagement, they do so at quite a significant cost, even discounting non-optimal build strategies. Sectors should be an opportunity, rather than something you delay starting until you've crafted a perfect world you can hand off to one. Specialising sectors should, as a minimum, offer a direct buff to whatever you're specialising it in that isn't available for manual planet management. If I can get a 25% buff to mineral output by putting a planet in a mining sector, or a 25% buff to fire rates for military stations in a military sector, you better believe I'll leap at creating them. Edit: you should be able to apply edicts to sectors in exactly the same way you can apply them to states in EUIV. This would dramatically buff civics like Imperial Cult.
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Oct 17, 2017 15:43
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Aethernet posted:This is the thing. Sectors are currently positioned as effectively a punishment for expansion, with at least a 25% tax on planetart output. While they ostensibly reduce micromanagement, they do so at quite a significant cost, even discounting non-optimal build strategies. This is wrong, first off, you would spend that "tax" on building up and developing that region anyway, second you can drain a sector for a little bit of influence any time you want, effectively getting everything back. It's less a tax and more like investing into your empire's future. As long as you don't care for optimal build strategies, the cost of a sector is effectively zero.
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Oct 17, 2017 15:51
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Libluini posted:This is wrong, first off, you would spend that "tax" on building up and developing that region anyway, second you can drain a sector for a little bit of influence any time you want, effectively getting everything back. This does require you to empty a sector's coffers every time it approaches capacity though, which is a 100 influence hit every 60 months or similar for large sectors. It also requires that your funds are low to avoid hitting your own cap. Your point about investment is well made, but there's an opportunity cost associated with that 25% not present for other sources of income.
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Oct 17, 2017 15:59
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I must be the only one who puts new planets/systems into a sector as soon as the colony ship lands then.  Granted, in earlier versions I put them in megasectors that had the map looking like gerrymander hell. But even before the new features like being able to take stockpiled resources, building on sector planet surfaces, and the optimizations, I valued sectors more for letting me pay attention elsewhere and advance the game date. I found that more useful than making sure each and every planet is optimal before dumping them in a sector.
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Oct 17, 2017 16:00
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Danann posted:I must be the only one who puts new planets/systems into a sector as soon as the colony ship lands then. I do this when playing very wide because otherwise the micro is punishing, but it really is difficult to resist the urge to at least fiddle before giving a world to a sector. The sector AI has steadily improved and is now adequate, but only just. Take a close look and you will still see inexplicable choices being made.
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Oct 17, 2017 16:20
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Aethernet posted:This does require you to empty a sector's coffers every time it approaches capacity though, which is a 100 influence hit every 60 months or similar for large sectors. It also requires that your funds are low to avoid hitting your own cap. Your point about investment is well made, but there's an opportunity cost associated with that 25% not present for other sources of income. Well, said opportunity cost is incredibly low when compared to the stressful task of dealing with all your planets manually. Besides, I quite enjoy pulling all those levers to manipulate sectors from afar, it reminds me of Master of Orion III, just with better AI. (For one, if a sector needs to build a lot of poo poo because I just gave it a bunch of new worlds, I set the taxes down to 25%, which means my income from that sector gets chopped by 75% Most of the time I run with 50% and only the best and most productive sectors get actually set to 75% taxes. So seen from my playstyle, your argument doesn't even make sense since my "opportunity-cost" looks like it reaches a whopping 75% of my income sometimes, but I don't see it that way at all -generally, "losing" all that income makes me so rich I just don't care. )The opportunity cost shrinks even more if you take into account the fact that by endgame all your coffers will constantly hit your upper limits as long as you aren't in constant war. In fact, using sectors as additional "tanks" for energy and minerals helps you out a lot, even if you don't notice it: This is why I always try to make as many sectors as possible, so the sector AI can fill them all, which in turn makes my emergency bank ever larger. See an example of how I do things above, if my income is high enough or I decide a sector needs it, I only take 1/4th of a sector's income to boost it. In addition to sending in thousands of credits and minerals, of course. And considering how loving rich I tend to be after a couple centuries, this seems to work great! And the influence hit only matters when you actually need to draw from your bank, which generally only happens in emergencies anyway -during the peacetime after your crushing victory you can get all that influence back easily. Most of the time (at least in my case), at the point where I have to think about all this stuff my income is tremendously high, and taking too much from my sectors would actually hurt myself. Libluini fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 16:26
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Danann posted:I must be the only one who puts new planets/systems into a sector as soon as the colony ship lands then. Nope. Megasectors ahoy. Bold Robot posted:Take a close look and you will still see inexplicable choices being made. Why I don't look.  Libluini posted:The opportunity cost shrinks even more if you take into account the fact that by endgame all your coffers will constantly hit your upper limits as long as you aren't in constant war. It takes me an absurd amount of minerals and energy to build up a crisis-proof fleet.
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Oct 17, 2017 16:31
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ulmont posted:Why I don't look. I try not to look. The key is to accept that they aren't going to minmax and to hope they don't royally screw something up. But, it's kind of a bummer that the best way to reduce stress is to adopt a "what I don't see can't hurt me" approach to sectors.
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Oct 17, 2017 16:38
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Sectors just feel like an expansion limiter with no interesting flavor. To me, it should be one of those things that's modified by government type. A machine consciousness or hive mind shouldn't need sectors. A despotism might try the same thing, though with less efficiency because of corruption. Democracies get bonuses to happiness for having local representation, so you should try to put planets in sectors. Feudal empires require everything in sectors but get more fleet capacity. And so forth. Combine that with a bit more interesting interpersonal relationships or events (governor z thinks you haven't been prioritizing development and is now rebellious) and you could make internal affairs as interesting as external ones.
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Oct 17, 2017 16:39
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Soup du Journey posted:Also, it is my firm and moral belief that the ai can't fight wars, so I kind of want to modify the war score calculation so that space battles are much more decisive than they are now. Unfortunately, I'm confused by basic arithmetic. WAR_SCORE_SHIP_KILL_MUL = 0.25 # Multiplier of warscore gained WAR_SCORE_SHIP_KILL_WINNER_MUL = 0.75 # Multiplier of warscore loss for the sinking of ships for the winner WAR_SCORE_FLEET_COMBAT_WIN_BASE = 0.0 # Base score for winning a fleet combat So, I have a fleetcap of 980, my opponent's is 755. I have a fleet totalling 1080, him 1020, cause nobody runs fleet cap and the ai cheats on maintenance anyway. The ai is an idiot with missile spam and dies horribly without running, a wipe for a loss of 167 fleet cap on my end. What should this add to? .25 * (0 + ((1020 / 755) * (1 - ((167 * .75) / 980)))) = .25 * (0 + 1.351 * .872 ) = ~.295 I'm assuming this is gonna be a mult against a warscore cap of 1, percentile wise. So for a complete wipe in an endgame battle = 29.5% warscore. Which seems high, honestly. I've rarely gotten more than 15 at best of of horrible wipes on the ai. In any case, it seems that you want to increase the standard kill_mult, but lower the base to a slight negative, rendering corvette sniping worthless while making huge stackwipes devastating. StealthArcher fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 16:59
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@Libluini - I don't think our positions are that far apart. We may have slightly differing views on the relative cost of sectors, but I'm mostly arguing that the cost of sectors should be turned into a benefit - that putting planets in sectors should give some kind of buff over and above the reduction in micromanagement. Your multiple sector playstyle would actually benefit from this.
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Oct 17, 2017 17:02
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