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ZypherIM posted:I'm a little torn on this, because from a programming standpoint you start getting edge cases for all the queue interactions and stuff, and letting something be a minor annoyance once over the programming effort to make it airtight could potentially be a really big gap. Sort of like how you can't upgrade a design while a ship is queued to upgrade/build on it, instead of the time to make that process perfectly bugfree you just disallow performing the action. Eh. We already have the "some other constructor built that station" cancellation / popup, and there can't be that many other similar problems on the starbase front. While I'm at it, I should have a goddamn notification popup when a gateway frame finishes construction.
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Apr 4, 2018 22:20
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Splicer posted:There definitely needs to be a second scanning pass stage of the game. My pet implementation would be being able to rescan any anomalyless planet if you have a higher scan rate than the last time it was scanned, with some events only ever triggering on the first scan and some others only triggering if it's a rescan. Also the thing someone said a while back about ships assisting research also triggering scan events through re-examining the data. Starships Unlimited did something like this, but instead of just new tech you'd advance an age like Age of Kings and the assumption was you now knew enough to re-examine planets you already thought you picked clean. Another interesting part of the game was colonizing planets, which was extremely costly and it was far more economical to build what amounted to trading posts on star systems to actually generate cash that you could eventually turn into enough of a bankroll to support another world.
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Apr 4, 2018 22:36
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ulmont posted:Eh. We already have the "some other constructor built that station" cancellation / popup, and there can't be that many other similar problems on the starbase front. I have no idea why gateways are a two-step construction process that makes it super easy to forget when/where you built gate sites. Why not just have the construction ship build the gate? The megastructure construction sites only make sense for multi-stage galactic wonders. You don't use them for habs, why for gateways?
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Apr 4, 2018 23:13
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I hope we don't see 200k-ish stations because then the game just becomes tedious trench warfare where you're throwing away entire fleets in the hope of punching through a wall of starbases (and I've never seen the AI actually use a jump drive, much less jump into the heart of an empire to avoid a chokepoint). You don't want to make them so powerful that someone can put up a starbase at a chokepoint and call it a day, but they shouldn't be so weak that they provide virtually no cover for an invasion. Personally, I think the point of stations should be to tangle up an enemy fleet long enough for your fleets to come to the rescue. So instead of just automatically conquering a starbase you should have to bombard it into submission like planets which will give the defending fleets time to actually get there. Also, I don't like that anchorages/trade posts take up a station spot because it leads to a giant cluttered up station list. I'm never going to need to interact with a decked out anchorage or trade post again, yet the current list buries important military stations in a spammy list that includes anchorages and trade post orbiting some BFE star in the galactic backwoods of my empire. I think anchorages and trade posts should be a planetary upgrade (trade posts at least can only be built on a planet anyways so just add them to the planet screen) which would help players only find stations they need to keep an eye on. Baronjutter posted:I have no idea why gateways are a two-step construction process that makes it super easy to forget when/where you built gate sites. Why not just have the construction ship build the gate? The megastructure construction sites only make sense for multi-stage galactic wonders. You don't use them for habs, why for gateways? Alternatively, move gateway construction to the starbase itself as an expensive module and limit the number of gateways a civilization can possess without a massive penalty. That would make stations easier to defend but also put defenders at risk since if the invaders captured the station they could also use the gateway to reinforce. Gateways as implemented
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Apr 4, 2018 23:30
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This mod is a standalone that re-enables the fortresses: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1318927114 This is what one of my endish-game chokepoints looks like 
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Apr 4, 2018 23:30
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I support hell fort starbases, means more jump drive usage. And less corvette spam against things like that,
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Apr 4, 2018 23:58
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I just won my second real game. It was pretty easy to get a solo domination victory habitat spamming with default settings. Year 2389. I opted to continue the game so I can see the endgame crisis.
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Apr 5, 2018 00:02
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GamingHyena posted:I hope we don't see 200k-ish stations because then the game just becomes tedious trench warfare where you're throwing away entire fleets in the hope of punching through a wall of starbases (and I've never seen the AI actually use a jump drive, much less jump into the heart of an empire to avoid a chokepoint). You don't want to make them so powerful that someone can put up a starbase at a chokepoint and call it a day, but they shouldn't be so weak that they provide virtually no cover for an invasion. Personally, I think the point of stations should be to tangle up an enemy fleet long enough for your fleets to come to the rescue. So instead of just automatically conquering a starbase you should have to bombard it into submission like planets which will give the defending fleets time to actually get there. The AI has some restrictions on when it will use the jump drive. There's a line for this in the defines file: code:
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Apr 5, 2018 00:04
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So I complained last week about a game where there was a federation cascade. A rogue servitor planning on caring for the whole galaxy, I joined some federation builder worm guys and let in a kindly scientist race and they just loved everyone so invited everyone that wanted into our federation, including slaving despots and evangelizing zealots that bordered me. I was almost ready to just give that game up, but decided to keep playing. Turns out it was one of the most fun games I've ever played. First my federation got embroiled in a war on the far side of the galaxy against a pretty sizable empire of Determined Exterminator robots. Turns out most of the people who joined the federation (including the initial nice scientist guys) were actually just terrified of these killer robots. So the cascade makes more sense. There were also some fanatical purifier geckos closer to home, but they were merely on par with their neighbors, and ended up getting entirely surrounded by this new federation, so I figured they weren't a big deal, but both those threats were probably motivating factors for nations of extremely different ideology to get together. Heck, we eventually invited the rump of a democratic crusader, even though only two other nations were democratic (the federation worms and the scientists). And that democratic crusader rump was the core of our problems. While we were engaged in a war against the death robots of the outer rim, the race of psychic authoritarian trees, which was the largest empire outside of the federation by far, declared war in an attempt to wipe out the democrats. Most of the federation forces were committed to the death robot wars, so I figured, since I was only a third of the galaxy away, I'd send half my fleet to help out the democrats, because I thought it'd be funny for some rogue servitors to save radical democratists who hated the concept of a machine run society. I figured the remaining half of my fleet, plus my nice choke points and massive space fortresses, would be enough to keep out my potentially problematic neighbors- the fairly small fanatical purifier geckos and a neutral hive mind. That was when the great khan, who was entirely surrounded by the neutral hive mind woke up. The hive mind shortly bent the knee-analog to the new khan, who eventually ended up sending massive fleets against my fortresses that I could barely beat, with huge losses, with my remaining home fleet. I had to withdraw and abandon the democrats to their fate. And then the purifier geckos in the middle of my federation, and neighboring me, declared war. And pretty much all of the federations fleets were still committed to the death robots across the galaxy. I was sure the game was going to be a boring one with a federation controlling half the galaxy, but as it turns out, catastrophe can cascade just like the federation did initially. Desperately clawing my way out of that clusterfuck was great fun. And I did manage it, eventually. Though we lost the democratic crusaders to the psychic trees. And then we invited the psychic trees into the federation, god loving dammit this is why I nearly quit in the first place. Come on, we hate those guys! They're literally the only other power in the galaxy, why are we putting them in our federation? Yeah, the death robots still exist as a power, but they're not a huge threat anymore... Geeze. I told the trees they should just, uh, leaf! Or leave. Or whatever. They were dumb. (I sent them an insult.) And then they left the federation It was really gratifying. I plan on trying to piss off the slavers and zealots in the federation, to see if they'll leave too, but they might be more in love with the other federation members by now. If I can't get them to leave... I guess I'll have to leave myself, and fight all my former friends. For their own good. They won't have to worry about anything. I'll take care of them all.
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Apr 5, 2018 01:50
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GamingHyena posted:Alternatively, move gateway construction to the starbase itself as an expensive module and limit the number of gateways a civilization can possess without a massive penalty. That would make stations easier to defend but also put defenders at risk since if the invaders captured the station they could also use the gateway to reinforce. Gateways as implemented Yes to moving gateways to the station, no to imposing a cap because jesus why
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Apr 5, 2018 02:11
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ulmont posted:While I'm at it, I should have a goddamn notification popup when a gateway frame finishes construction. I was just about to come here to post this because goddamn. It's kinda silly that there exists pretty much absolutely nothing hinting that you have an unfinished gateway waiting to be completed, not on the map, not on the outliner, nothing but zooming into one of a million end-game systems to see the frame itself does the trick. Which is all right on important hub systems, but it's less useful when you're just dropping down gateways in the further reaches of the empire just to make sure you have easy access if an end-game threat shows up in that flank. Also it's weird and a little stupid how if a fleet engages an enemy fleet, but wanders into range of the enemy outpost while closing to attack, they'll immediately break off their battle with the enemy fleet and go straight for the outpost, even if the outpost poses no conceivable threat while the enemy fleet does.
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Apr 5, 2018 15:16
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binge crotching posted:That's what I'm worried about. I need to fight them soon though, since I'm in danger of them waking up before I'm ready. I guess if I insult them they'll attack me, which at least means I get the defensive war bonus. And it's probably time to start building a battleship fleet. Follow-up to this. I insulted the FE, and they attacked me a few months later. Except instead of sending their fleets the 6 jumps they needed to in order to get to my border, they started off on a 60-70 jump trip in the opposite direction. So I waited until they were about 15 systems into their trip, and just attacked their home worlds. I lost about 8 corvettes and 10 of the 30 cruisers I built, but managed to take out both of their stations. I'm guessing it would have been a much closer fight if I had been forced to defend against their fleets. I have no idea why they didn't just come straight into my empire, or at the very least use their jump drives to hurry back once I started attacking them. They just continued on their merry way, and when I finally invaded their last planet they still had 30 systems to go before they made it to my other border.
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Apr 5, 2018 16:55
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binge crotching posted:Follow-up to this. I insulted the FE, and they attacked me a few months later. Except instead of sending their fleets the 6 jumps they needed to in order to get to my border, they started off on a 60-70 jump trip in the opposite direction. So I waited until they were about 15 systems into their trip, and just attacked their home worlds. I lost about 8 corvettes and 10 of the 30 cruisers I built, but managed to take out both of their stations. I'm guessing it would have been a much closer fight if I had been forced to defend against their fleets. Could it be that you had an FTL inhibitor blocking the direct path from the FE to your colonies, but the round-trip allowed them to bypass that? Maybe the AI isn't entirely good at weighting when a bypass becomes too long to be desirable yet.
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Apr 5, 2018 17:54
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Xerophyte posted:Stellaris has got a lot of references worn proudly on its sleeve, mostly from assorted sci-fi I assume the devs watched or read in the 80s and 90s because so it goes. As someone who likes Babylon 5 a little too much I appreciate that the Shadows have been directly lifted in as one of the Creatures of the Void race choices and the entire War In Heaven crisis (and accompanying Last, Best Hope achievement) are just the main storyline for the first 4 seasons of the show done procedurally, because gently caress yeah reenacting B5. Everyone always mentions covfefe, but nobody ever comments on the Lando System.
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Apr 5, 2018 18:52
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Ceebees posted:Everyone always mentions covfefe, but nobody ever comments on the Lando System. Perhaps that's because the Lando system is not some dumb trump meme from last year I have no idea if Heaven's Gate is meant to be a pun or not but it makes me think of the suicide cult with white sneakers every time I see it.
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Apr 5, 2018 18:54
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Slashrat posted:Could it be that you had an FTL inhibitor blocking the direct path from the FE to your colonies, but the round-trip allowed them to bypass that? Maybe the AI isn't entirely good at weighting when a bypass becomes too long to be desirable yet. It's almost certainly this. Maybe there was a wormhole they were gunning for, too. Wormholes have played serious havoc with pathfinding for my fleets in some cases. "Upgrade the fleet, boss? Sure thing! Instead of going to the shipyard we're orbiting lets path 3 jumps, through a wormhole, then 6 more jumps to a shipyard on the other side of the galaxy!"
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Apr 5, 2018 18:57
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Ham Sandwiches posted:Perhaps that's because the Lando system is not some dumb trump meme from last year Arrath posted:It's almost certainly this. Maybe there was a wormhole they were gunning for, too. Or "Instead of going to the yard 3 jumps away, let's do 2 jumps to a wormhole across the galaxy, 2 more jumps to a gateway back across the galaxy, and then hop out at the yard there."
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Apr 5, 2018 19:06
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Bug report: Game does not recognise Shields IV as an upgrade to Shields II unless you also have Shields III. Presume the same applies to other upgrades.
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Apr 5, 2018 19:19
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Arrath posted:"Upgrade the fleet, boss? Sure thing! Instead of going to the shipyard we're orbiting lets path 3 jumps, through a wormhole, then 6 more jumps to a shipyard on the other side of the galaxy!" darthbob88 posted:Or "Instead of going to the yard 3 jumps away, let's do 2 jumps to a wormhole across the galaxy, 2 more jumps to a gateway back across the galaxy, and then hop out at the yard there." There's definitely a bug for distance calculations for upgrades when you have gateways. Someone on reddit had worked out exactly what spaceport would be used (maybe the system with the oldest gateway?), but I can't be bothered; I just figure out which spaceport the ships want to use and then build max shipyards.
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Apr 5, 2018 19:26
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Splicer posted:Bug report: Game does not recognise Shields IV as an upgrade to Shields II unless you also have Shields III. Presume the same applies to other upgrades. Did you also get new power plants for your ships? Something I noticed is that the game will only partially upgrade your poo poo (or not at all), if the new stuff drains too much energy. Some of my designs turned into awkward messes with the game trying to figure out what weapon or shield should be upgraded before the energy runs out. If your old designs had not much energy left over, it could be it didn't want to upgrade your shields because your ship power plants couldn't take it anymore.
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Apr 5, 2018 19:28
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Paradox related: Crusader Kings 2 is free on Steam right now
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Apr 5, 2018 20:38
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So, I've been away from the game since Utopia and 1.6, I had a good grip on the gameplay back then and played quite a bit but then I was attracted by newer, shinier games and forgot all about Stellaris. Now I want to come back, and I guess I'm in for a world of pain if I just jump in with the old habits, right? Can anyone make a short summary of what's changed and major pitfalls to avoid / new strategies to follow for a returning player?
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Apr 5, 2018 20:41
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:Paradox related: Crusader Kings 2 is free on Steam right now Its a trick to get you to buy $100 of expansions!
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Apr 5, 2018 20:46
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Libluini posted:Did you also get new power plants for your ships? Something I noticed is that the game will only partially upgrade your poo poo (or not at all), if the new stuff drains too much energy. Some of my designs turned into awkward messes with the game trying to figure out what weapon or shield should be upgraded before the energy runs out. I'm not sure this is it, because you get the same issue with outposts/star bases and they have effectively infinite power (even the lowest level power plant gives them like 10.000 power). In the game files each component has a line telling the game what that component will be upgraded into, like Shield II being upgraded to Shield III. Despite the fact that the ship design screen will correctly hide Shield II as being obsolete if you have Shield IV but not Shield III, this doesn't seem to work with auto-upgrading outposts/star bases, they will only update if you have every intermediary version of the component as well, at least in my experience. AG3 fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Apr 6, 2018 |
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Apr 5, 2018 20:49
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I got Covfefe and Stimsis in my current game. They're currently owned by a devouring horde.
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Apr 5, 2018 21:02
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I keep hoping a corporate dominion develops in the Sheliak system but no joy so far.
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Apr 5, 2018 21:06
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AG3 posted:I'm not sure this is it, because you get the same issue with outposts/star bases and they have effectively infinite power (even the lowest level power plant gives them like 10.000 power). In the game files each component has a line telling the game what that component will be upgraded into, like Shield II being upgraded to Shield III. Despite the fact that the ship design screen will correctly hide Shield II as being obsolete if you have Shield IV but not Shield III, this doesn't seem to work with auto-upgrading outposts/star bases, they will only update if you have every intermediate version of the component as well, at least in my experience. OK, then I'm at a loss. Of course, since I'm obsessively upgrading all my poo poo with every single tech, I'll probably had a zero percent chance of ever seeing this thing happening. Kind of weird bug though, you'd expect the programming to be flexible enough to account for this poo poo.
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Apr 5, 2018 21:08
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TorakFade posted:So, I've been away from the game since Utopia and 1.6, I had a good grip on the gameplay back then and played quite a bit but then I was attracted by newer, shinier games and forgot all about Stellaris. The econ has been tightened the gently caress up, instead of swimming in energy and minerals you will be hurting for them much of the game. Even when you have a lot of these resources every ship built will impact your energy and minerals pretty significantly, building to your fleet cap is quite expensive. You can improve your space with Starbases, its a lot like EU4 forts. Unity and Science are no longer trivial resources and Apocalypse added some cool edicts for lategame unity spending. It's a pretty interesting game now with a bunch of choices to make and opportunity costs. War and claims have been much improved, taking territory with outposts is way better. Fleets can follow each other effectively and that makes army transports less of a nightmare.
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Apr 5, 2018 21:09
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Ham Sandwiches posted:The econ has been tightened the gently caress up, instead of swimming in energy and minerals you will be hurting for them much of the game. Even when you have a lot of these resources every ship built will impact your energy and minerals pretty significantly, building to your fleet cap is quite expensive. You can improve your space with Starbases, its a lot like EU4 forts. Unity and Science are no longer trivial resources and Apocalypse added some cool edicts for lategame unity spending. It's a pretty interesting game now with a bunch of choices to make and opportunity costs. War and claims have been much improved, taking territory with outposts is way better. Fleets can follow each other effectively and that makes army transports less of a nightmare. Thanks, sounds good enough to get me started. So game is hyperlane-only and there are the equivalent of EU4 forts, huh? That'll make warfare ... interesting, finally. Also you still have to micromanage transporting and landing armies on planets to occupy them? I remember that sucking a lot, even ignoring the fact that defenseless transports were a pain to manage. I'd have guessed that the game getting overhauled would mean a saner invasion / ground combat system...
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Apr 5, 2018 21:15
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Something I just realized after starting a new flesh run: Machine empires get bonus-influence and no elections to waste it on, democracies can harvest tons of influence via fulfilling election promises, but oligarchies are hosed: Elections aren't as often, but don't come with a source of influence. Instead, you need to pay a whopping 200 influence if you want to prevent the game from randomly selecting a new ruler. So is there a way (besides factions), to get extra influence I'm missing, or is the orgy of influence basically the thing of democracy and I shouldn't expect more? Essentially, I've run into a problem with my influence in my new organic run: My oligarchy has to be really, really careful with expanding at the beginning of the game, since every election either means getting a random ruler or crashing my influence hard. On the other side, my machine empire had zero problems getting all the systems it wanted, so now I have to kind of adjust my strategy pretty drat hard.
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Apr 5, 2018 21:16
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TorakFade posted:Thanks, sounds good enough to get me started. So game is hyperlane-only and there are the equivalent of EU4 forts, huh? That'll make warfare ... interesting, finally. It's ok in this version, you just right click the combat fleet with the transports, and once the fighting is over and you're in orbit click "land armies" - a lot of the really dumb stuff is automated now. It's probably not worth listing all the differences but invading planets went from "gently caress this I'm not doing it" to "Yeah its fine" Also planets can have FTL inhibitors which is pretty cool from a strategic perspective and armies inflict collateral damage so it's more interesting as well.
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Apr 5, 2018 21:20
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Libluini posted:Something I just realized after starting a new flesh run: Machine empires get bonus-influence and no elections to waste it on, democracies can harvest tons of influence via fulfilling election promises, but oligarchies are hosed: Elections aren't as often, but don't come with a source of influence. Instead, you need to pay a whopping 200 influence if you want to prevent the game from randomly selecting a new ruler. Democracies get unity, not influence, from fulfilling pledges now. The way you max out influence as a democracy is by taking a form of Egalitarianism too, for the sweet buff to faction influence gains. Democracies have a weaker early game as a result, as factions aren't available from the start.
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Apr 5, 2018 21:24
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TorakFade posted:Thanks, sounds good enough to get me started. So game is hyperlane-only and there are the equivalent of EU4 forts, huh? That'll make warfare ... interesting, finally. If you do a 4 Arm Spiral galaxy with 1.0 Hyperlane Density you will have several chokepoints built into the "terrain" of the map. You can upgrade the starbases in those systems to be HP Sponge defense stations that can also, with the right tech, prevent a hostile fleet from bypassing it. That is EU4 fort-esque. You claim systems by sending a construction ship to the system to spend minerals and influence to build a minor starbase; you can only do this if you have fully surveyed the system with a science ship. It is cheapest to get systems adjacent to systems you already own but you can go across the galaxy to claim random systems if you have the influence to spend. Each system you claim increases your tech and unity costs by 1%.
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Apr 5, 2018 21:26
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Ham Sandwiches posted:It's ok in this version, you just right click the combat fleet with the transports, and once the fighting is over and you're in orbit click "land armies" - a lot of the really dumb stuff is automated now. It's probably not worth listing all the differences but invading planets went from "gently caress this I'm not doing it" to "Yeah its fine" Eh. It also went from "I only ever need to build one gently caress-off ground invasion force and I won't have to worry about it ever again" to "I continually lose an army here or there and have to build them periodically with no fleet manager to help."
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Apr 5, 2018 22:02
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ulmont posted:Eh. It also went from "I only ever need to build one gently caress-off ground invasion force and I won't have to worry about it ever again" to "I continually lose an army here or there and have to build them periodically with no fleet manager to help." Yeah there's room for improvement and I hope they make it better in subsequent patches. For me the main takeaway is that post 2.0 I'm willing to fight wars that involve planetary invasions whereas pre 2.0 I would generally get tired of the campaign right around when the first invasion was necessary.
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Apr 5, 2018 22:04
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Aethernet posted:Democracies get unity, not influence, from fulfilling pledges now. The way you max out influence as a democracy is by taking a form of Egalitarianism too, for the sweet buff to faction influence gains. Democracies have a weaker early game as a result, as factions aren't available from the start. So with my egalitarian oligarchy, I just have to wait for more factions? OK then, but still, do oligarchic elections have to be that expensive? 200 influence in the starting phase of the game is no joke.
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Apr 5, 2018 22:04
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ulmont posted:Eh. It also went from "I only ever need to build one gently caress-off ground invasion force and I won't have to worry about it ever again" to "I continually lose an army here or there and have to build them periodically with no fleet manager to help." Yeah a fleet manager for armies would be kinda nice. Not something you'd really use particularly often, though. I mean, not unless you're warring all the time.
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Apr 5, 2018 22:12
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Just glass the planets. Problem solved 
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Apr 5, 2018 22:15
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Early on (when minerals are so tight that I'm still filling out my fleet cap) I don't bother with planets and take all their space, leaving little rump states surrounded by my poo poo. Later I just have a unitary stack of a huge army that rolls over anything. The army system could use a little work to make it more interesting and less of a hassle. Though I'm not sure those two goals are compatible. In any case, jump drives are a godsend for invading peeps. What with their propensity to path through some crappy little system the enemy reclaimed when I looked away for 0.3 seconds and sit there endlessly circling and getting blown up....I really should set them to evasive, huh. Arrath fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Apr 5, 2018 |
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Apr 5, 2018 22:16
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iospace posted:Just glass the planets. Problem solved Sometimes you want to assimilate whatever's on that planet. Or eat them. Or enslave them.
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Apr 5, 2018 22:26
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