Fintilgin posted:

Interesting thread on Paradxo forums shows some of the slow down may be UI related in some manner?

Sandwich Anarchist posted:

I am building ports on all my systems (which is also weird, because theirs have something like 1.2-1.6x the power of mine), and they weren't advanced start, since they only had one planet when I encountered them initially?

I wasn't aware of the dynamic of building over fleet cap and hemorrhaging energy to fight a war, that might explain it.

Pocky In My Pocket posted:

I accidentlly picked world shaper instead of mastery over nature for ascention pick 1. Is thaat a restartworthy booboo

OwlFancier posted:

At the moment I find it's costly enough to keep them in drydock that it kind of discourages you from building them unless you need to.

Nessus posted:

I mean if you have autosaves you could jsut go back a couple of months if it JUST happened.

Sandwich Anarchist posted:

By this you mean keeping them in orbit of a starbase right? By "deploy" you mean "not in orbit"?

Korgan posted:

So yeah if you repair the damaged section in Alpha Refuge, and I assume other partially destroyed ringworlds, the damaged section gets flipped around compared to the rest of the ringworld. Obviously this is unacceptable and I hope you fired the idiot responsible for this blunder.

Psycho Landlord posted:

Groverworld is real

LogisticEarth posted:

New ringworld-exclusive edict: Insulated Stairs Initiative. Net Effect: does nothing.

3 DONG HORSE posted:

First, assess the situation. How far behind are you? You need to do this to determine your War Goals. You will have to use your current knowledge so if you are really unprepared, pick the cheapest possible option. I usually go for Destroy Frontier Outpost or Humiliate. If you can answer these questions with any certainty:

A) Are you near your fleet cap?
B) Are they 5k over you? 2k?
C) What techs are they using? What are you using?

Then you can decide if adding a planet or two is feasible. So now you have a goal: you will either fight for a draw or fight to win the war after a delaying action.

Next, send corvettes to scout the enemy empire. Your first target being the capitol because the fleet is usually based there (check diplo screen, the little planet near the bottom when the empire is selected will take you there). Send as many scouts as you can to find out where they have stations and fleets - your ideal targets are planets without stations. At this point you will also upgrade your fleet IF your tech differences are direct counters (i.e. you have missiles and they have a lot of PD). Upgrade all your ship designs. Time and money must be spent wisely: build as many of the biggest ship class you have available. Make sure to keep track of your energy if you don't have a good reserve. Then proceed to the next step.

If the enemy invades immediately, do not engage unless you can arrive at your system in time to hang out behind the planet (let the enemy fleet engage the station, then close range so you don't lose as many ships) and your space station adds enough firepower to almost even it out. This situation is unlikely as the AI won't declare war without a massive advantage so don't rely on it.

Now you send in the boys. Ideally each fleet is at least strong enough to take out a space station and a defense station. You need to have one fleet acting as a distraction. Make sure armies go with it in case the enemy fleet goes for your invasion fleet(s). It also helps if you try to run down their transports with a small fleet. If you can't spare an actual fleet, use like 5 corvettes to engage so the transports have to emergency FTL or the enemy has to send a fleet to bail them out. The AI will focus on rebuilding armies and retaking their own planets, during which time the Length of War will decrease and you can build up your fleet to reduce Relative Size of Fleet.

So now you occupy a couple enemy planets and hopefully your fleets are mostly intact (it's okay if you lost one). Depending on your previously defined goals, your next step is continue harassing or hole up in your empire and wait. If you can win the war, you move out when they try to recapture territory. Now this is when you target core systems as the enemy empire will have divided attention. You will replenish your fleet while their production dwindles. Once your fleet surpasses the enemy fleet, engage. Even if you take heavy losses, you can rebuild faster. You will win. If you hole up, you just wait and wait. And wait. Eventually a truce will be offered if you delayed them enough and you managed to keep the ship production going.

One crazy thing that works sometimes is to engage the enemy fleet right away if you're within 2k difference (only do this if your other neighbors are chill and your economy is good). You will get smashed but the enemy will lose almost as much, meaning you are now both fighting for a truce.

Fighting a war at a disadvantage is extremely difficult in Stellaris but if you pull it off, it is incredibly rewarding.

Source;
The Fart of War
3 DONG HORSE

e: added a bit about War Goals and heavily edited because I didn't realize my initial phone post was formatted so poorly and it triggered me

appropriatemetaphor posted:

I think B) is the important one, I had ~17k while they were at 36k. My AI ally actually invited me to the war, and he was supposedly "superior" while the enemy we'd be double teaming was "superior". So of course my ally gets absolutely stomped, leaving me with a 36k doom stack just ripping around. My war goal was just to blow up a frontier station which I did, but couldn't peace out because I wasn't the main dude.

Kinda related, but what's the best way to deal with the war in heaven? I've got a Benevolent Interventionist who gave me some free poo poo, and an evil Human Remant both waking up. Just sign the peace treaty? I've only got a 50k fleet at this point (at cap) so zero chance of actually fighting (i assume).

TGLT posted:

To add to that, I actually really liked the Zuul and they highlighted just how different empires were in SoTS. Everyone else is playing some sort of 4X calculated strategy game, but Zuul are playing deathmatch. Say in a four arm galaxy game with four people, by the time the three other empires were really solidfying their hold midway up their arm the Zuul were already bleeding their whole arm dry because they had to, because over-harvesting pretty quickly ruins planets. And their FTL fed well into that - their hyperlanes weren't just artificial they were also unstable. After a decent number of turns they'd just collapse, and honestly you rarely had a reason to remake them. Zuul were all about forward momentum.

The different FTLs in SOTS only worked because their respective empires were designed with them in mind. That doesn't fit well with Stellaris's focus on randomly generated and custom empires.

Pocky In My Pocket posted:

I accidentlly picked world shaper instead of mastery over nature for ascention pick 1. Is thaat a restartworthy booboo

Fintilgin posted:

Interesting thread on Paradxo forums shows some of the slow down may be UI related in some manner?

Splicer posted:

Uh Wiz I'm digging around in the deposit files and I think there was a copy-paste error with the spawn modifiers for Alien Pets and Betharian Stone, unless the intended implication is that Betharian Stone is secretly animal poop.

appropriatemetaphor posted:

I think B) is the important one, I had ~17k while they were at 36k. My AI ally actually invited me to the war, and he was supposedly "superior" while the enemy we'd be double teaming was "superior". So of course my ally gets absolutely stomped, leaving me with a 36k doom stack just ripping around. My war goal was just to blow up a frontier station which I did, but couldn't peace out because I wasn't the main dude.

Main Paineframe posted:

Running a negative energy income is fine, even for extended periods of time - you can easily cover the deficit by just trading to refill your stockpile.

kaffo posted:

I love the Xenophobe's voice. It's the utter spite you can hear when he talks about aliens "Dirty xenos have invaded our land!"
So good

Korgan posted:

3 DONG HORSE posted:

Oh, yeah I was assuming a 1v1 fight. In this case, the AI is really bad and I am pretty sure you are hosed. Next time an ally declares war, hit the "rally to this fleet" button at the top of the little fleet box so the AI fleets join you. I am sure this isn't' intended but the AI will occasionally engage without the player fleet even if it will die without your support (because the war was only even when your fleets added up). It's weird because when you fight against an enemy alliance they always meet up. I've only noticed this with AI empires allied with players. Sorry for your loss.

This is a good learning experience though. Make sure to keep up with your allies' relationships with their neighbors/rivals. Check your ally's DPs and NAPs and who they are rivaling, compare relative fleet powers*, and how they are positioned (i.e. lots of border touching = likely conflict). Sometimes it's worth bailing on a defensive pact if you think war is brewing.

*it'll be relative to you if you only have vision of your ally. For example, if your ally is superior with 17k, you have 11k, and the enemy is superior, then you can ballpark the enemy fleet from 16-21k. If you check on that once every few years, you should be able to keep up in fleet power without overspending, too.

Meldonox posted:

I was reading an article about the upcoming patch making all FTL travel the same and it got me wondering, did the asymmetric mobility make things an unbalanced mess in.. what was it, Sword of the Stars? I haven't played a ton of either this or that so I'm not really familiar with how well or poorly it balanced out.

Sandwich Anarchist posted:

Followed the thread's advice and finally won a war! Also discovered that "liberate planet" does not mean I get the planet!

IAmTheRad posted:

Liberate just changes their civics to match yours.

Baronjutter posted:

Temporarily until the factions based on the existing pops ethos change it back.

IAmTheRad posted:

At the end of the entire war, the planet becomes an independent empire. All planets liberated in a single war become a new empire. And then ethics diversion takes place.

Sandwich Anarchist posted:

Followed the thread's advice and finally won a war! Also discovered that "liberate planet" does not mean I get the planet!

Baronjutter posted:

I've found about 50% of the time they eventually just switch back. So you take that spiritualist authoritarian empire and liberate them into an egalitarian materialist empire. They are good and your friends, but all their pops are still authoritarian and spiritualist. After many many years a few pops might actually switch to the new state ethos but not enough, and the huge faction pressures result in them embracing authoritarianism or spiritualism. Before you know it they are evil again and hate you.

Baronjutter posted:

I've found about 50% of the time they eventually just switch back. So you take that spiritualist authoritarian empire and liberate them into an egalitarian materialist empire. They are good and your friends, but all their pops are still authoritarian and spiritualist. After many many years a few pops might actually switch to the new state ethos but not enough, and the huge faction pressures result in them embracing authoritarianism or spiritualism. Before you know it they are evil again and hate you.