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Jabarto posted:This sounds like a good strategy for my pet empire (Fanatic Egalitarian/Militarist with Beacon of Liberty and Citizen Service). I'm guessing go for Discovery and either Expansion or Harmony first, then pick up Interstellar Dominion and crap outposts everywhere I can? *shrug* in my last wide game, I did Discovery last. Going Expansion first was huge in terms of reduced Influence costs to expand, and extra pops for new settlements.
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Jun 7, 2018 18:54
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What's the general idea and general rules of going tall? I've pretty much just been going wide the past two games.
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Jun 7, 2018 19:01
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Captain Monkey posted:Claims should almost certainly be cleared if ownership is transitioned to an ally during a war. That's a pretty annoying bug.
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Jun 7, 2018 19:09
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ConfusedUs posted:*shrug* in my last wide game, I did Discovery last. Opening Discovery for the increased anomaly chance is nice. But the thing that really makes it shine is the pick that gives 3 months worth of unity on every tech completion. It depends upon your unity costs, but it can be as many as 5 -10 free picks.
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Jun 7, 2018 19:10
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Ice Fist posted:What's the general idea and general rules of going tall? I've pretty much just been going wide the past two games. I just followed this guide, worked well on everything up to grand admiral, not tried that yet. https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/82phu6/my_202_tall_build_and_tips_science_nexus_by_2300/
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Jun 7, 2018 19:12
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ConfusedUs posted:*shrug* in my last wide game, I did Discovery last. I love going Discovery first for the anomaly chance (I even wait to start surveying until I have Discovery, then pop Map the stars and send 2 science ships out), then going down to the Unity on Tech Research one, usually pretty quickly. It can be really helpful for keeping that unity coming in as you get bigger and bigger. I also tend to play Driven Assimilators, so the Influence needed for expansion tapers off fairly quickly so it works for me quite well. Then, uh, the top right tree for Robot Build Speed and the sweet, sweet Neuro-Mechanical Amplifiers. I also tend to pick up Grasp the Void as my 2nd perk, just to build more anchorages/bastions to keep the wolves at bay cause sometimes they really have a hate boner when I just want to bring unity to the galaxy.  One thing I've noticed about going very wide, at least when capturing planets, Sector AI seems like it doesn't prioritize building a Unity building. So when I capture planets I queue up a capitol building and the Unity spire before handing it off to the Sector.
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Jun 7, 2018 19:17
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Psychotic Weasel posted:What? When did that happen? I thought one of the benefits to joining a federation was so you didn't have to pay the influence cost of defense pacts or other guarantees. That just makes them even less appealing. No clue, just what the wiki said when I went to go make sure I knew how Federations actually worked. I'm pretty satisfied with my decision to have never joined one. Xenaero posted:I really kinda wish the ship designer gave me the stats before I slotted the equipments in the spots. I mean if you're feeling lazy, you can literally build only corvettes, with three of the best level autocannons you have and as many shields as you have power for, and just loving crush people. Or if you want fewer bigger ships to minimize clicks, Cruisers with a mix of Kinetic weapons (good against shields) and Plasma (good against Armor, Hull). Put afterburners on stuff for better strategic mobility, and also evasion I guess.
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Jun 7, 2018 19:24
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:No clue, just what the wiki said when I went to go make sure I knew how Federations actually worked. I'm pretty satisfied with my decision to have never joined one. I would probably do 2 autocannons and 1 plasma instead of 3 autocannons.
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Jun 7, 2018 19:47
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binge crotching posted:I would probably do 2 autocannons and 1 plasma instead of 3 autocannons. Yeah, taking that penalty against armor 3 times seems excessive. Unless this corvette fleet is backed up by a battle line of BB's with pure plasma or something.
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Jun 7, 2018 19:48
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Started a game next to the marauders. Surrendered to them the same day they announced the great khan. I'm sitting this one out everyone. I don't know why so many people get upset at the whole great khan stuff. Just surrender if you don't want to lose systems.
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Jun 7, 2018 19:51
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Arrath posted:I love going Discovery first for the anomaly chance (I even wait to start surveying until I have Discovery, then pop Map the stars and send 2 science ships out), then going down to the Unity on Tech Research one, usually pretty quickly. It can be really helpful for keeping that unity coming in as you get bigger and bigger.
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Jun 7, 2018 19:53
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Splicer posted:Same. It's the only one where not taking it first doesn't just make you worse, it means less content. Good point. With the latest changes in Distant Stars I've found so many anomalies its kind of insane! And really awesome, I got some kickass free tech out of it and enough of them have turned into precursor artifacts that I'm sitting at 5/6 like 25 years into the game.
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Jun 7, 2018 19:55
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binge crotching posted:I would probably do 2 autocannons and 1 plasma instead of 3 autocannons. I mean that was my first instinct too, but it seems to work better if you just have 3 autocannons. These were not scientific tests however, YMMV.
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Jun 7, 2018 20:03
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I'd take a standard mass driver. One auto, one mass driver, one plasma/laser(Depending on what you have available). Standard Kinetics have the longest range. Going pure autocannon or autocannon/plasma mix means you're giving up the first strike.
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Jun 7, 2018 20:22
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I like 1ac/2plas and 1ac/1torp in 50:50 for my general purpose vette fleets. Giving up the alpha doesn't hurt so bad, unless facing something that'll be one-shotting the corvettes. In that case, just bring more and let them soak the shots that could potentially put a hurting on my battlewagons. The alpha I'm really concerned about is my own big guy's, so if the shields can be down by the time they enter range for their full on armor-blasting loadout I'm happy.
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Jun 7, 2018 20:30
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Psychotic Weasel posted:What? When did that happen? I thought one of the benefits to joining a federation was so you didn't have to pay the influence cost of defense pacts or other guarantees. That just makes them even less appealing. PittTheElder posted:No clue, just what the wiki said when I went to go make sure I knew how Federations actually worked. I'm pretty satisfied with my decision to have never joined one. I honestly thought federations had always cost influence, so I went digging and... I can't find any mention of the change in the patch notes. But I'm pretty sure it was changed in 1.3 (so October 2016), when alliances were dropped and federation associates were added (and minimum members for a federation was dropped from four to two).
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Jun 7, 2018 20:34
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Bloodly posted:I'd take a standard mass driver. One auto, one mass driver, one plasma/laser(Depending on what you have available). Standard Kinetics have the longest range. Going pure autocannon or autocannon/plasma mix means you're giving up the first strike. Afterburners mean that by the time their first strike reaches you yours has hit them too.
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Jun 7, 2018 20:39
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binge crotching posted:Opening Discovery for the increased anomaly chance is nice. But the thing that really makes it shine is the pick that gives 3 months worth of unity on every tech completion. It depends upon your unity costs, but it can be as many as 5 -10 free picks. Yeah the right side of Discovery + the opener is still god tier, IMO. Assist research more of an endgame thing. My general strategy has been to open with discovery and get the +Unity boost ASAP. Then go through Expansion/Harmony depending on wide v. tall. I generally am not starting to explore and sticking to one system until after I open Discovery, then popping Map the Stars. I keep my focus on influence and unity gain (getting through the bio techs that give unity/influence is important) and try to time completing Expansion around the time my main planet is getting close to being over populated. This way, I can maximize the amount of anomaly and potentially anomaly/boost rich systems, and generally plan in which direction to grow my borders. It is pretty satisfying. The only downside with Distant Stars is that the other Tradition trees should be on level with Discovery/Expansion in terms of usefulness. Prosperity is pretty good but mostly all purpose once you're bottlenecked by energy and upkeep. e: ^^ RE: Shipchat, Afterburners on Vettes are really, really good combined with a +Sublight Speed Admiral, both for utility (getting from one side of your empire to the other) and for damage (getting into range ASAP as Aethernet said) Gyshall fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Jun 7, 2018 |
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Jun 7, 2018 20:40
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Yeah I pretty much optimize all my fleets and admirals for speed. Afterburners, best speed admirals. Lethargic is grounds for immediate execution. Mobility is absolutely key and I'll trade a more optimized combat build for pure strategic movement speed every time.
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Jun 7, 2018 20:45
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there's nothing stopping you from grabbing the discovery opener and then immediately pivoting to another tree. the cost increase is more or less trivial in the early game. i always open discovery, then fill out expansion before going back to fill discovery, because the starbase influence discount is too good to miss out on and the tech unity bonus is less relevant extremely early on due to the slow pace of research in the beginning stages of the game.
Jazerus fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Jun 7, 2018 |
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Jun 7, 2018 20:47
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I'm recommend finishing out discovery before switching to other trees, the flat +10% research is actually quite good. If you don't have a favorite first perk, doubling down with another +10% research means you have quite a tech bonus. Even if you're lagging on your science planets it can keep you caught up until you get around to it, or you can keep a decent edge on your opponents. If you aren't playing psionics, fitting in at least materialist is hugely beneficial as well, since you get the +10% science edict and when you're able to support it academic standards of living for another +10% science (and +10% happiness which might put you into additional bonus territory). Even if you're playing wide, these can add up to a big tech lead in the early/mid game, and by the time other people are able to catch up on tech you're a juggernaut and can rampage or build even more science poo poo.
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Jun 7, 2018 20:47
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ZypherIM posted:I'm recommend finishing out discovery before switching to other trees, the flat +10% research is actually quite good. If you don't have a favorite first perk, doubling down with another +10% research means you have quite a tech bonus. Even if you're lagging on your science planets it can keep you caught up until you get around to it, or you can keep a decent edge on your opponents. Goddamn it, I always forget about Academic Standards. Re rollin'.
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Jun 7, 2018 20:48
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I am having a pretty great game. Unlike most of my starts I went authoritarian, militarist and materialist; my main race is industrious and I pretty much poo poo out minerals, I have a pretty big chunk of space for myself that is connected to other empires by only 2 choke points that I fortified heavily. I am pretty much untouchable after carving a big chunk off my nearest neighbor which granted me two more species: a servile very strong one which is awesome for my slavering ways, and another which is thrifty solving a bunch of my energy problems. To my north there's a precarious "friend" which I have a NAP with, south there's a huge machine consciousness empire that is hated by everyone and I can total war them. They're equivalent to me, but only because my fleet is not at cap, I am about 120/200 so I think I can crush them as soon as I build a few more ships 
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Jun 7, 2018 21:07
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Much as I like the Discovery opener, opening Expansion and beelining the +1 pop tradition before your first colony is finished is an excellent way of extracting quick value from new colonies. Then picking the Prosperity opener for that sweet -15% mineral costs before finishing Expansion just before your third colony to avoid having to sector up. Research in the early game is actually not massively useful for wide play, as you have all the tools you need to expand out of the gate.
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Jun 7, 2018 21:14
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There really doesn't seem to be any downside to colonizing literally everything in the end game. I've already got all the Traditions (literally all of them, I'm playing Fanatic Spiritualist and I absolutely poo poo Unity), and pretty much all of the Techs. The only other thing that increases in cost with planets colonized is Unity Edicts, and I can outgain that by putting Temples everywhere.
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Jun 7, 2018 21:24
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binge crotching posted:I would probably do 2 autocannons and 1 plasma instead of 3 autocannons. I actually find that you can make a remarkably good early and mid corvette by putting 1 frequency tuner (I forget the name of it, the tech's frequency tuning you get it from discovering tiyanki) and 2 mining drone lasers on a ship. They're all hyper efficient against shields/hull respectively. Mining drone lasers remain competitive until quite late compared to plasma actually because their hull specialization is higher than plasma, and all ships have hull, and for much of the game they'll have more hull than anything else. The tiyanki weapon is also +100% against shields making it better than autocannons by a good margin if you want a dedicated shield stripper. Either way yeah you definitely don't want to go all autocannons because those will be spectacularly bad against starbases and anything with a good amount of armour on it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Jun 7, 2018 |
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Jun 7, 2018 21:49
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OwlFancier posted:I actually find that you can make a remarkably good early and mid corvette by putting 1 frequency tuner (I forget the name of it, the tech's frequency tuning you get it from discovering tiyanki) and 2 mining drone lasers on a ship. They're all hyper efficient against shields/hull respectively. Mining drone lasers remain competitive until quite late compared to plasma actually because their hull specialization is higher than plasma, and all ships have hull, and for much of the game they'll have more hull than anything else. The tiyanki weapon is also +100% against shields making it better than autocannons by a good margin if you want a dedicated shield stripper. I do the same actually, the Energy Siphon + Mining Laser are both about the same as T2.5 kinetic/lasers.
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Jun 7, 2018 21:59
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Gyshall posted:e: ^^ RE: Shipchat, Afterburners on Vettes are really, really good combined with a +Sublight Speed Admiral, both for utility (getting from one side of your empire to the other) and for damage (getting into range ASAP as Aethernet said) Afterburners are great on pretty much everything. Put 3 afterburners on a Titan (or was it a colossus, I can't remember) and it'll keep up with your Cruisers.
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Jun 7, 2018 22:15
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Hey Gulli, not sure if this was your mod doing it or else it's an in-game bug, but I turned off Horizon Signal and ended up getting it anyway (because while I love the benefits, it loses a lot of its appeal when it fires practically every game now). That was the only mod I had on.
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Jun 7, 2018 22:43
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Aethernet posted:Much as I like the Discovery opener, opening Expansion and beelining the +1 pop tradition before your first colony is finished is an excellent way of extracting quick value from new colonies. Then picking the Prosperity opener for that sweet -15% mineral costs before finishing Expansion just before your third colony to avoid having to sector up. So the only part of expansion that helps early is the -10% influence cost on starbases. Which is nice, I'll admit. The colony bonuses are.. not that big let's be honest. Faster grow speed is decent as it saves you energy, the extra pop is useful but is the fastest to grow and likely going to just be going to a unity building to counter the penalty. Tradition penalty cost isn't going to hurt anyone who waits on their initial planets while spending minerals elsewhere. Prosperity is (IMO) a terrible second tree. At that point you should be generating enough minerals to afford colonies, buildings, and corvettes anyways, while also not really needing the slight energy savings/income. I take it around 4th, by then the saving are making an actual impact and I'm building fleets of sizes that generate significant savings. Doing a discovery opener nets you 1 not-so-useful pick (assist research), while the rest are all immediately beneficial. Anomaly discovery chance to increase your system value, +1 research picks to help get very useful early techs, survey speed helps with the new default speed and your time spent on more anomalies, leader experience is good across the board, and tech->unity propels your next tree really fast. Half of what makes discovery so useful is that when you're pushing +20% (or more!) research onto more raw research from anomalies you can be getting down the expansion branch by the time you're making colony ships anyways from all your bonus unity. If you want to be super picky max expansion you should open discovery, open expansion, take the -starbase cost, then finish discovery, and finally finish expansion.
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Jun 7, 2018 22:53
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TjyvTompa posted:Does anyone know what happens if you load a savegame from 2.1.1 where you have the World Shaper ascension perk as a Machine Empire that you can't have in 2.1.1b? It's an ironman game so I don't want to try if it fucks something up. copy the save out to some other folder and if it blows up you still have the save
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Jun 7, 2018 22:57
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ZypherIM posted:Prosperity is (IMO) a terrible second tree. At that point you should be generating enough minerals to afford colonies, buildings, and corvettes anyways, while also not really needing the slight energy savings/income. I take it around 4th, by then the saving are making an actual impact and I'm building fleets of sizes that generate significant savings. People always talk like making GBS threads out minerals and energy within the first decade is the easiest thing in the world but I don't know what game they're playing because I'm constantly constrained by both while overflowing with influence.
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Jun 7, 2018 23:35
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ZypherIM posted:Prosperity is (IMO) a terrible second tree. At that point you should be generating enough minerals to afford colonies, buildings, and corvettes anyways, while also not really needing the slight energy savings/income. I take it around 4th, by then the saving are making an actual impact and I'm building fleets of sizes that generate significant savings. I go 1 point into Discovery into finishing Harmony into finishing Prosperity every time. Every god drat time. Why? Because both Harmony and Prosperity add 2 Unity per planet while having decent early game buffs. 10% research will get me maybe one to two extra techs when you contrast finishing discovery first to finishing it third. That unity though, it calls to me. Most of the fun stuff is gated behind unity, so getting as much of it per planet as possible as soon as possible is my primary concern, especially on non-spiritualists who lack temples.
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Jun 7, 2018 23:48
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So I don't know if this is excatly a bug or at least a serious exploit but being the vassal of a great khan is one of the most powerful situations I've ever been in. The khan outright destroys outposts and star bases, making the territory unclaimed. They're also not the best at following that conquest up with a construction ship to claim the system. So, I can just follow their fleet building outposts every time they open up a new system. This alone is pretty exploity, but it gets crazy when it comes to populated systems. If the Khan invades a system with a planet they destroy the outpost but have to still invade the planet. The crazy thing is, despite the map showing the territory as still being owned by the planet's empire, you can in fact build your own outpost in the system because the previous was destroyed. When the khan finally wins the invasion of the planet, it instantly flips to your control due to you controlling the system's starbase. Slightly related, but can anyone tell me why any time I'm a vassal my scientist faction gets less happy? Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Jun 7, 2018 |
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Jun 7, 2018 23:52
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Baronjutter posted:So I don't know if this is excatly a bug or at least a serious exploit but being the vassal of a great khan is one of the most powerful situations I've ever been in. The khan outright destroys outposts and star bases, making the territory unclaimed. They're also not the best at following that conquest up with a construction ship to claim the system. So, I can just follow their fleet building outposts every time they open up a new system. This alone is pretty exploity, but it gets crazy when it comes to populated systems. 
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Jun 8, 2018 00:22
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Jabarto posted:People always talk like making GBS threads out minerals and energy within the first decade is the easiest thing in the world but I don't know what game they're playing because I'm constantly constrained by both while overflowing with influence. Use that influence to capture systems with minerals!
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Jun 8, 2018 00:36
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Jabarto posted:People always talk like making GBS threads out minerals and energy within the first decade is the easiest thing in the world but I don't know what game they're playing because I'm constantly constrained by both while overflowing with influence. You're not expanding hard enough. No, more. Even more. Okay, you're getting there, but I'd like to see more expansion. Are you researching? Why are you researching? You should be expanding!
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Jun 8, 2018 00:43
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If you're not waiting for enough influence to build the next outpost, you're not expanding fast enough.
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Jun 8, 2018 00:43
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How does that jive with waiting til the discovery tradition to get more anomalies?
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Jun 8, 2018 01:13
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Jabarto posted:People always talk like making GBS threads out minerals and energy within the first decade is the easiest thing in the world but I don't know what game they're playing because I'm constantly constrained by both while overflowing with influence. To jump on the bandwagon, are you not just constantly building outposts wherever possible? You get minerals by expanding, do so until you are hemmed in. Once you can no longer expand that way, take the edicts for +20% mineral and energy production. Clanpot Shake posted:How does that jive with waiting til the discovery tradition to get more anomalies? You only need to open Discovery to get that effect. That happens within the first few months.
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Jun 8, 2018 01:15
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