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Splicer posted:I know I'm one of maybe three people in the world who actually liked Beyond Earth, but their virtues really nailed the traditions concept. Really good iteration on the concept. Yeah not a fan of BE over all but this was a legitimately good system.
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Oct 4, 2018 21:41
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Splicer posted:I know I'm one of maybe three people in the world who actually liked Beyond Earth, but their virtues really nailed the traditions concept. Really good iteration on the concept. I also liked this game a lot but the more I play the more I realize civ is not the series for me. I always have this feeling there's not enough time to do what I want and not enough resources and I never know where's a good place to settle and it's just... drat. It takes so loving long to build a soldier and I could have built a lab, but if I don't have the army i'll get ganked and if I don't have the lab i'll be behind on tech... Marching hyper mechs across the planet and doing the final game enders vs all odds was fun as gently caress. Although now that I think about it I never really ended up in a situation where I had half the really advanced resource-intensive things out in use, and never had a lot of good wonders. Honestly I think I like beyond earth better and if there was beyond earth 2 a bit more like 6 I would probably buy it and then still have the same agonizing problem of not being really sure how I want to run things and then just brute forcing a victory without doing anything really fun and awesome. I got a lot more hours in BE than 6 and 6 has a lot of upgrades to make it play a bit smoother.
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Oct 4, 2018 21:47
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Stellaris modding scene is really weird after coming from mainly the Cities Skylines scene. Skylines mods are often polished as hell and really strive for quality, accessibility, and there's a real community of creators that helps each other and makes sure the big essential mods stay up to date and balanced version to version. Stellaris seems really fractured, you'll find 20 mods all purporting to do the same thing but slightly differently and 1 out of the 20 will actually be up to date for the latest version. Everyone abandons their mod after a month or two, then someone new makes something sort of similar, then abandons that. There's only a few major mods that seem to actually bother to keep up with the versions. I mean stellaris does goes through probably 10x as many versions a year than Skylines so there's that. There's also this weird thing where mods over-step their purpose in strange ways. like "Ok here's my mod that adds new building graphics, a few very carefully balanced new buildings that the AI will effectively use, some slight tweaks to which buildings are unlocked with which tech levels, and also makes it so pacifist empires can't build robots" there's so often some totally odd unrelated addition at the end that ruins the mod. Also a vast majority of "balance mods" don't' actually add any balance, they just make everything bigger, remove limits. "hi my mod balances fleets by doubling fleet caps and making all ships cost 1/10th so you can have HUGE FLEETS so cool, no more fleet cap getting in the way! Build your dream fleet!!!" They usually just take some important limiting factor in the game and get rid of it like a kid who wants icecream for dinner. Ok great fleet caps are bigger, it's the same for the AI though so you're back at square one but the numbers are bigger? But of course actual game-changing mods are like 1/10th of the content, the rest are anime nazi poo poo.
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Oct 4, 2018 21:47
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Baronjutter posted:Stellaris modding scene is really weird after coming from mainly the Cities Skylines scene. Skylines mods are often polished as hell and really strive for quality, accessibility, and there's a real community of creators that helps each other and makes sure the big essential mods stay up to date and balanced version to version. Stellaris seems really fractured, you'll find 20 mods all purporting to do the same thing but slightly differently and 1 out of the 20 will actually be up to date for the latest version. Everyone abandons their mod after a month or two, then someone new makes something sort of similar, then abandons that. There's only a few major mods that seem to actually bother to keep up with the versions. I mean stellaris does goes through probably 10x as many versions a year than Skylines so there's that. Any mods you recommend, apart from Guilli? I haven't made much headway through the anime nazis
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Oct 4, 2018 21:53
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Baronjutter posted:Stellaris modding scene is really weird after coming from mainly the Cities Skylines scene. Skylines mods are often polished as hell and really strive for quality, accessibility, and there's a real community of creators that helps each other and makes sure the big essential mods stay up to date and balanced version to version. Stellaris seems really fractured, you'll find 20 mods all purporting to do the same thing but slightly differently and 1 out of the 20 will actually be up to date for the latest version. Everyone abandons their mod after a month or two, then someone new makes something sort of similar, then abandons that. There's only a few major mods that seem to actually bother to keep up with the versions. I mean stellaris does goes through probably 10x as many versions a year than Skylines so there's that. This reminds me, I recently found this one mod adding stronger traits for some min-maxing fun. But when trying it out I learned the hard way I could use many combinations of the new traits to create a dead-on-arrival species. Like a species so slow in procreating, you'll probably never see a second pop until you're steamrolled, or (my favorite  ) a robo-trait which makes it impossible to built new robots. Better hope you only like assimilators, because every other option makes your robots dead scrap metal walking!I planned to copy the mod and balance some of the more deranged options, plus adding some more options for my own personal use, like a trait for deep sea adaptation, but then real life intervened. One of these days, though. One of these days.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:01
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Baronjutter posted:Also a vast majority of "balance mods" don't' actually add any balance, they just make everything bigger, remove limits. "hi my mod balances fleets by doubling fleet caps and making all ships cost 1/10th so you can have HUGE FLEETS so cool, no more fleet cap getting in the way! Build your dream fleet!!!" They usually just take some important limiting factor in the game and get rid of it like a kid who wants icecream for dinner. Ok great fleet caps are bigger, it's the same for the AI though so you're back at square one but the numbers are bigger? But of course actual game-changing mods are like 1/10th of the content, the rest are anime nazi poo poo. That's every 'balance mod' though. Modders, ego, and a lack of game design knowledge go together so often. 
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Oct 4, 2018 22:02
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unfortunately, ego seems to be one of the best drivers for someone to actually make+update their mod.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:10
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Baronjutter posted:Stellaris modding scene is really weird after coming from mainly the Cities Skylines scene. Skylines mods are often polished as hell and really strive for quality, accessibility, and there's a real community of creators that helps each other and makes sure the big essential mods stay up to date and balanced version to version. Stellaris seems really fractured, you'll find 20 mods all purporting to do the same thing but slightly differently and 1 out of the 20 will actually be up to date for the latest version. Everyone abandons their mod after a month or two, then someone new makes something sort of similar, then abandons that. There's only a few major mods that seem to actually bother to keep up with the versions. I mean stellaris does goes through probably 10x as many versions a year than Skylines so there's that. if you want a balanced experience with mods you have to plug into one of the overhaul ecosystems i'd suggest CGM without real space as a good 'base' to hook everything else into. it plays nicely with all of the other good subsystem overhauls, including gulli's mods, and basically if you install glavius + gulli + cgm & its recommended companion mods you'll have a decently balanced experience with a lot more content than the base game. i've been intending to put my modlist in a collection to share for a while, so here you go: my mod list i go for a mix of diverse content and balance. the top mods (above the patches) are the key gameplay-related ones plus a couple of aesthetic mods i feel are essential, the mods below the patches are either very minor or entirely aesthetic so using them is optional but recommended, especially the Yet Another * series which greatly expands the species namelists so you don't run into the same species names all the time. the essential mods are ordered by importance, minor mods are alphabetical. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Oct 4, 2018 |
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Oct 4, 2018 22:21
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KomeradeCanadian posted:Any mods you recommend, apart from Guilli? I haven't made much headway through the anime nazis Nope, I spent a good hour last night looking through the workshop and found nothing. That improved AI mod people like seems good and the author has kept it up to date for a long time now and seems passionate about constantly improving it. But almost every decent mod I found when I was last playing is like 2 versions out of date and its steam page full of comments like "will you ever update this mod?? -December 2017" I wanted something that did some really basic mega-structure balancing, just something that removed the limits on mega-structures and the limit of building one at a time. Nope. It's all "dARKjEDi2981's ULTIMATE megastructure super mod: u can now bild megastructures ANYWHERE even on top of each other!! Put a dyson sphere on every moon in the game!! Stats are doubled and build time for all reduced! Added my own custom mega structure thats like a dyson sphere but makes 1000 minerals!!" For the most part I've learned that if I want to make what I think are some fairly minor balance tweeks, I have to make my own mods. Last time I was really into the game I removed the 1-at-a-time construction limit on mega structures, made gateways a bit cheaper and the tech come in a little earlier, made the default starting worlds a little bigger because I always play on .25 planets and the AI often has trouble with that. But you can never find gentle reasonable balance mods like that. It's always extreme poo poo and SPACE GERMANIA WAIFU graphics set.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:21
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cgm is also great as a base because it's 100% configurable. it can do the dynamic homeworld resizing thing you want, but if someone else doesn't want that, it won't. be sure to turn off asteroid colonization and colonization management though, those features are extremely busted
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Oct 4, 2018 22:24
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Baronjutter posted:Nope, I spent a good hour last night looking through the workshop and found nothing. That improved AI mod people like seems good and the author has kept it up to date for a long time now and seems passionate about constantly improving it. But almost every decent mod I found when I was last playing is like 2 versions out of date and its steam page full of comments like "will you ever update this mod?? -December 2017" https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1406918998 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1365485813 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=937289339 All excellent and up to date. Comprehensive within their field but shouldn't affect overall balance too much. I would also recommend CGM Planets to go along with it but that's more singificant gameplay wise.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:25
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I've checked out and even tried playing with a bunch of those but they always just seem a little too much, it makes me feel like I'm back in Civ4 playing one of those ridiculous "ULTIMATE REVOLUTIONS + EXTENDED REDUX UNLIMITED MERGED" mega-mods that adds like 500 new units and a bunch of impressively detailed and barely integrated new mechanics to the game just for the sake of it rather than a real gameplay need. I don't want MORE ship components and weapons, I feel like the game can't even find a place for half the current weapons and options in vanilla. Getting totally ripshit drunk on kitchen sink mods though sounds like a potentially fun way to squeeze a little more interest out of the game before wiz drops his double deuce on us though. OwlFancier posted:https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1406918998 Ok, a lot of these look good. Ive seen a lot of really bad habitat and asteroid colonization mods but that first one looks excellent. I'm the sort of idiot who will make sure their habitat covered in solar arrays is right next to the sun, and the one covered in mining bays is in an asteroid belt, this mod seems to actually make that a mechanic. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Oct 4, 2018 |
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Oct 4, 2018 22:27
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Speaking of ultimate revolutions add "Potent Rebellions" to my list because that really helps to give the diplomatic game a bit of a shove with dynamic relations affecting events and propaganda warfare. I mean to be honest Jazerus and I seem to have basically the same modlist for gameplay so i recommend basically everything on his as a coherent overhaul. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Oct 4, 2018 |
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Oct 4, 2018 22:28
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Baronjutter posted:I've checked out and even tried playing with a bunch of those but they always just seem a little too much, it makes me feel like I'm back in Civ4 playing one of those ridiculous "ULTIMATE REVOLUTIONS + EXTENDED REDUX UNLIMITED MERGED" mega-mods that adds like 500 new units and a bunch of impressively detailed and barely integrated new mechanics to the game just for the sake of it rather than a real gameplay need. I don't want MORE ship components and weapons, I feel like the game can't even find a place for half the current weapons and options in vanilla. all of my ship component mods add depth rather than breadth to weapons, so there aren't any "new" weapons, the arms race just goes further into the future than with vanilla techs. the other non-weapon ship components do add breadth - for example, the new crew slot, variant thrusters, etc. - but not in a way that feels excessive really. the ultimate goal for me in adding the tech mods that i did wasn't really to spice up combat but rather to lengthen the tech tree and increase the degree that an empire can specialize in particular tech types simply because it's less likely for everyone to research everything within a reasonable timespan Jazerus fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Oct 4, 2018 |
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Oct 4, 2018 22:31
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Baronjutter posted:Stellaris modding scene is really weird after coming from mainly the Cities Skylines scene. Skylines mods are often polished as hell and really strive for quality, accessibility, and there's a real community of creators that helps each other and makes sure the big essential mods stay up to date and balanced version to version. Stellaris seems really fractured, you'll find 20 mods all purporting to do the same thing but slightly differently and 1 out of the 20 will actually be up to date for the latest version. Everyone abandons their mod after a month or two, then someone new makes something sort of similar, then abandons that. There's only a few major mods that seem to actually bother to keep up with the versions. I mean stellaris does goes through probably 10x as many versions a year than Skylines so there's that. You still get some really good mods, but there's a lot more cruft to wade through to find them. Citations: Way too much D&D 3.X. e: To be clear, Wiz et al are doing an amazing job. Any kind of staged overhaul is going to have these kinds of issues. It's unavoidable, and things would be a hell of a lot worse in less competent hands. Splicer fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Oct 4, 2018 |
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Oct 4, 2018 22:33
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Conversely I greatly prefer breadth increasing options rather than depth ( ) as otherwise it just means grinding out more dumb +numbers.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:34
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I find I'm not even entering my first war until I'm hitting repeatable techs, so more depth in weapons tech and things like that actually sounds mildly appealing to me.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:35
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Baronjutter posted:I find I'm not even entering my first war until I'm hitting repeatable techs, so more depth in weapons tech and things like that actually sounds mildly appealing to me. What the gently caress are you doing with your game? Turn the bloody cost sliders up to like 3x and go fight a fucker.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:38
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A lot of mod problems is just that the steam workshop is incredibly poorly sorted. If there was a way for developers to tag the workshop for a new version of the game that completely clears the workshop out of stuff that isn't tagged for the latest version that would be great. Leave an option to switch the workshop back to earlier versions but just don't let old stuff show up at all if its not tagged properly.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:40
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Baronjutter posted:I find I'm not even entering my first war until I'm hitting repeatable techs, so more depth in weapons tech and things like that actually sounds mildly appealing to me. Stop playing on easy/low AI agression. Start playing with -relationship modifiers like assimilator.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:40
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Baronjutter posted:I find I'm not even entering my first war until I'm hitting repeatable techs, so more depth in weapons tech and things like that actually sounds mildly appealing to me. You are either playing on too large a map with too few other empires or are far too passive if that's the norm. On huge+30 empires it's an all-out blood bath 15 years in.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:41
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OwlFancier posted:What the gently caress are you doing with your game? 75% of my games: -Colonize the 5-6 nearby planets before the map is filled up by other powers, who I have a pretty big advantage over because they all have 3-4 planets. -Turtle up and b-line to habs and mega-structures. -Don't attack your lovely neighbour because it would result in ugly borders and more planets to manage. Their planets are already filled up with pops so there's no room to switch all mines over to droids and genocide is unethical so I'm stuck. -Get ready for awakened empires. -Get ready for crisis.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:43
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Jesus Baronjutter, you managed to optimize fun out of the game. I don't even have my third colony before first blood. You do realize you can force a white peace by just taking over several non starport systems and smashing the enemy fleet right? But that white peace results in massive influence-free territory gain.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:44
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Baronjutter posted:75% of my games: That's uh, that's a lot of sitting around doing nothing. Like I consider myself quite passive because I like building forts to lure people into and only go to war with one empire at a time. Fill the galaxy with some force spawn omnicidal maniacs and turn AI aggression up high and the difficulty too. If you aren't feeling pressured, adjust the game settings so you are. I don't want to tell you your way of playing is wrong but I have to question whether playing stellaris as a zen bonsai empire builder is necessarily the best idea because the game does not presently offer a great deal in that area without external conflict. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Oct 4, 2018 |
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Oct 4, 2018 22:45
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OwlFancier posted:Conversely I greatly prefer breadth increasing options rather than depth ( i like breadth too, and as you know since you play with the same mods, that mod list adds an incredible amount of breadth on the civilian side of things without being unbalanced. the ship components have to deal with a more delicate balance so most of the variant components don't stray too far from vanilla norms and there aren't any new weapon lines (although there are a few new one-off creature weapons, like a dimensional horror based weapon that's like a mix between torpedoes and PD)
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Oct 4, 2018 22:48
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Jazerus posted:i like breadth too, and as you know since you play with the same mods, that mod list adds an incredible amount of breadth on the civilian side of things without being unbalanced. the ship components have to deal with a more delicate balance so most of the variant components don't stray too far from vanilla norms and there aren't any new weapon lines (although there are a few new one-off creature weapons, like a dimensional horror based weapon that's like a mix between torpedoes and PD) I really thought ESC 2.0 was the one I (and you) use which adds a shitload of breath to guns and it was Advanced Weapons which added like 5 extra tiers of stuff? E: Yeah, this includes masses of new stuff? https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/923682899083924583/F185CD8C7CCADDF075518C98D86C84CA625B7FB6/
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Oct 4, 2018 22:50
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OwlFancier posted:I really thought ESC 2.0 was the one I (and you) use which adds a shitload of breath to guns and it was Advanced Weapons which added like 5 extra tiers of stuff? i've not had the time to play into the advanced weapons era in months so maybe that's true. up to the end of the vanilla tech tree though there aren't any new weapon lines
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Oct 4, 2018 22:52
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I guess it does look like a lot of them are post T5 I guess but yeah, I'm comparing it to Advanced Weapons which literally just adds T10 guns in all the current lines more or less.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:53
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I would also recommend Guilli's component pack but it breaks Cloud Lightning whenever I try to use it. Which is a shame because I like all the other features but the game crashed last time someone used the modded bugged cloud lightning. I don't know if it's a weird conflict with one of my other mods but it's only that one that causes it.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:54
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One change I am really looking forward to I the removal of the core system cap as I always have an issue of growing up until I reach it, then stalling for a bit while I let each planet grow before handing it off to a sector. I'm not particularly aggressive when it comes to expanding unless someone is really in my way, but this is mostly because I am risk adverse and also moving fleets around early in the game takes an eternity. To get around this I usually play large maps with ~80% the recommended empires. That way everyone has plenty of room and when it is time to fight it'll be more than two scrawny nerds slapping at each other.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:55
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OwlFancier posted:That's uh, that's a lot of sitting around doing nothing. The idea of having planets officially part of my empire that aren't correctly optimized is too much for me to take. I'll generally go to war against robots and hives though since all their bad pops go away and I can rebuilt the planet correctly with hyper-smart humans on labs and mine-bots on mines. Displacement purge sometimes feels ok if the race is really really awful, like some spiritualist militarists with wasteful and decadent. I've found pre-stocking the galaxy to make sure about half the empires are hives or robots or purifiers really helps give me a proper reason to go to war and end up with nice clean planets. I'm 100% fine with aliens living in my great nation, just get the gently caress off those mines, mines are for robots! Also by the mid-late game half the races in the galaxy have engineered them selves into 5 often identical offshoots which clutter up your species tab horribly. God I wish there was a special project you could do to merge two identical-traited same-portrait races together into one entry to clean up the screen. (actually is there a mod that addresses this at all maybe?) I think 2.2 is going to fix a lot of my problems though. More internal development stuff to play with and the ability to just build robots where you need them and let emmigration modifiers solve the rest. No more "full" planets you can't build robots on without genocide.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:55
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You're like if hitler was just the most passively aggressive person in the world. "hey guys i'd really like that lebensraum could you maybe not please get your suboptimal bodies all over it please oh, no, you did, sorry, nevermind, i'll just build habitats" Another suggestion then for you: Play servitors. Organic pops become a resource to acquire, and you can just ship them all onto habitats and turn their planets into lovely robospheres.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:57
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Jazerus posted:i like breadth too, and as you know since you play with the same mods, that mod list adds an incredible amount of breadth on the civilian side of things without being unbalanced. the ship components have to deal with a more delicate balance so most of the variant components don't stray too far from vanilla norms and there aren't any new weapon lines (although there are a few new one-off creature weapons, like a dimensional horror based weapon that's like a mix between torpedoes and PD) e: I know that's a bad example because cloud lightning is one of the few non-guaranteed techs but you know what I mean.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:59
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looking at that tech tree, most of it is just "here are tier 7 regular weapons & defenses, tier 5 specialized weapons, tiers for the creature weapons, and psi weapons" until you hit the very late techs that give you the really weird variant categories. my point is that if baron is nervous about the ship balance being totally crazy with ESC included, it's not as insane as it looks gulli's components are indispensible purely for the crew slot.
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Oct 4, 2018 23:01
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Oh wow I hadn't seen that Paridayda event before, just a straight up free size 25 Gaia world. Very nice.
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Oct 4, 2018 23:02
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Baronjutter posted:The idea of having planets officially part of my empire that aren't correctly optimized is too much for me to take. I'll generally go to war against robots and hives though since all their bad pops go away and I can rebuilt the planet correctly with hyper-smart humans on labs and mine-bots on mines. Displacement purge sometimes feels ok if the race is really really awful, like some spiritualist militarists with wasteful and decadent. the species merge project you're looking for is species modification. change everybody in the species into the new variant, then delete the templates for everything but the new variant and the base species. unless more of non-optimized subspecies pops move into your empire the obsolete templates will stay gone. anyway if you're playing at 0.25x habitables, it can't take you more than a few minutes to do a basic optimization pass of an empire after you conquer it, and then as a long term project you can juggle the pops around by building habitats and resettling on and off of habitats until you've got roughly your desired mix of species with everyone in their perfectly optimized tile everyone must be optimized, and you must utilize the species diversity of everyone to get the job done
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Oct 4, 2018 23:06
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Axetrain posted:Oh wow I hadn't seen that Paridayda event before, just a straight up free size 25 Gaia world. Very nice. Is there any other outcome to it other than another race coming and wiping out the gross fungus dudes? It seems to happen no matter what options you pick.
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Oct 4, 2018 23:06
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Baronjutter posted:Is there any other outcome to it other than another race coming and wiping out the gross fungus dudes? It seems to happen no matter what options you pick. you can wait to claim the system until you've got a 10k fleet and ward off the purgers if you want to keep your primitive fungus-infected guys
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Oct 4, 2018 23:08
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Is it possible to summon things like enigmatic fortress or other event entities by console?
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Oct 4, 2018 23:15
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KomeradeCanadian posted:Is it possible to summon things like enigmatic fortress or other event entities by console? Additionally is there a mod that forces more content like this to spawn? Playing on close to max ai on medium galaxies means most end up with maybe 1 leviathan at most and its sad.
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Oct 4, 2018 23:20
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