Stellaris: a second Astral Planes has hit the game

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Stellaris: a second Astral Planes has hit the game

King Doom: Dec 1, 2004; I am on the Internet.

Does the Tomb World Vault event only have two outcomes now? I've gone through the entire event like 30 times (Save scumming mostly) and it's either the 'everyone dead' or the 'welcome to a bugged out world conquered by mutants that is glitched to hell' ending. I've got a save with the 'open the vault/ignore it forever' pop up, and from a few seconds before the vault opens and it's always the bad endings either way.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 15:52

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# ? May 25, 2024 11:09

Black Griffon: Mar 12, 2005; Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all become one. One moment left. One point of space and time.

I know who you are. You are destiny.

Regarding DLC, I like the plantoid and humanoid packs as well. I didn't know they included new ship skins when I bought them, and playing as genderless ents is fun.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 15:58

Ignorant Hick: Mar 26, 2010

Is there a known bug with the factions this patch? The last two games I started a faction would spawn with no issues to get influence from, then they would eventually disappear entirely. Gone from the outliner and the factions tab.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:06

TalonDemonKing: May 4, 2011

Criminal heritage megachurches are a bit strange.
You can make 2 unity producing buildings (Temples + Megacorp heritage sites), and your Temple of Prosperity building doesn't raise crime, thus making it kinda bad for criminal heritage

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:06

ilkhan: Oct 7, 2004; I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Bloodly posted:

Note that Exotic Gas as upkeep, though....Dangerous.

It's an up front cost, not upkeep.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:11

Nemo2342: Nov 26, 2007; Have A Day; Nap Ghost

I'm uh, not sure how long this current game has. My poor robots have spawned in a galaxy that is so-far about 90% spirtualists (or xenophobe spirtualists) with 2/3 of the map uncovered. I also got hemmed in pretty early by mining drones and space amoeba, so by the time I built up enough to take care of them I was boxed in with only a handful of systems.

I guess I'll just see how long I can hold out, since I know I'll probably end up restarting anyway in a couple of days once the patches started rolling.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:22

Back Hack: Jan 17, 2010

Ignorant Hick posted:

Is there a known bug with the factions this patch? The last two games I started a faction would spawn with no issues to get influence from, then they would eventually disappear entirely. Gone from the outliner and the factions tab.

If a faction doesn�t have enough pull or members, eventually it will disband.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:22

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

So question, is the DLC proper worth it? I'm waiting till Tuesday (namely first balance patch because I love me some robots) to start up again, but wondering if the additional stuff is good.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:24

Gyshall: Feb 24, 2009; Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.

So many old boring civics are good now... Enjoying Technocracy/Inward Perfection... Currently bottlenecked on Alloys though.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:28

Aethernet: Jan 28, 2009; This is the Captain...

Our glorious political masters have, in their wisdom, decided to form an alliance with a rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters right when the Federation has us at a tactical disadvantage. Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in the Feds firing on our vessels...

Damn you Huxley!; Grimey Drawer

iospace posted:

So question, is the DLC proper worth it? I'm waiting till Tuesday (namely first balance patch because I love me some robots) to start up again, but wondering if the additional stuff is good.

Caravaneers are kind of lame. Banging xenos to make hybrids, on the other hand, owns. Haven't tried corporations yet, but there's lots of views in the thread, which I could summarise as 'balancing required'.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:29

TalonDemonKing: May 4, 2011

iospace posted:

So question, is the DLC proper worth it? I'm waiting till Tuesday (namely first balance patch because I love me some robots) to start up again, but wondering if the additional stuff is good.

Megacorps are fun with friends. Fun with AI too, unless you're in a game with 3-4 megacorps (which seems to be every game), thus making you not really able to interact with your primary mechanic since AI snaps everything up.

Criminal corps cause AI to poo poo themselves with precinct housing just to get you off their planet.

Megastructures are megastructures; you'll like em or you won't.

I'd say wait till Megacorps are balanced to be a bit rarer and something is done about crime and criminal corps before picking up the DLC.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:29

Anno: May 10, 2017; I'm going to drown! For no reason at all!

iospace posted:

So question, is the DLC proper worth it? I'm waiting till Tuesday (namely first balance patch because I love me some robots) to start up again, but wondering if the additional stuff is good.

Isolated from the patch I think MegaCorp is probably only really �worth� it if you intend to play as a MegaCorp at some point. I�m having a very good time with my Megachurch but it�s a government type that seems pretty hit or miss depending who�s in your galaxy/neighborhood, which I could see being annoying. Hopefully there will be a couple balance passes to help with that and criminals being so aggressively driven off of planets.

I tend to include the patch in with the DLC when I�m thinking about it�s value, so to me it�s been worth every penny, but ymmv otherwise.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:31

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

GunnerJ posted:

Is the ability to do branch offices a line in the authority definition like "can_have_branch_offices = true" that could in theory be put in a civic?

Now that I have looked into the files, it seems this is unfortunately not the case. Just posting this as a modder's resource in case anyone cares, but the relevant bit is in 00_rules.txt:

code:

# This = country
can_build_branch_offices = {
	custom_tooltip = {
		fail_text = BRANCH_OFFICE_NOT_MEGACORP
		has_authority = auth_corporate
	}
}

To extend this, you have to override this rule. Fortunately, it seems like entries in this file can be individually overridden without replacing the whole file although this may introduce incompatibilities between multiple modes using this rule. But in theory, it should be possible to add other qualifications than just what's there. While bulkier than I'd have hoped, the potential is at least there. Something you could do with this in theory is create a civic that this rule can check for which can be used by non-corporate empires to get in on the branch game. I haven't tested this yet though, so it's possible that won't work just because it might otherwise allow an end-run around owning the DLC, but honestly I'd expect the code for branch offices to check for DLC ownership (meaning that people without the DLC who mod in a civic like I described and change the rules would just not be able to use branch offices anyway). I hope this is how it works, because I don't fault Paradox for locking a key DLC feature behind actually owning the DLC but I'd like to expand the options available to people who do own it.

Something slightly more disappointing is that everything about how "hostile" branch offices operate seems to be opaque in the moddable files. At least, as far as I can tell, there's nothing in the moddable files that checks if you have Criminal Heritage to allow you to build branch offices without permission, which means that this behavior is in the code and can't be added to anything else just by modding. It seems that you absolutely need the specific Criminal Heritage civic to open branch offices without a treaty, rather than this just being a copyable property of the civic. Not the worst but unlike opening branch offices with a treaty, I can't yet see any even theoretical way to mod this ability to be available without having that civic.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:40

Nalesh: Jun 9, 2010; What did the grandma say to the frog?

Something racist, probably.

Do these crime offices give stuff like for example research to them, or to me?

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:52

TalonDemonKing: May 4, 2011

Nalesh posted:

Do these crime offices give stuff like for example research to them, or to me?

It isn't very well explained, but research and resources typically belong to the corp while jobs & amenities belong to the planet.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:56

TalonDemonKing: May 4, 2011

Quality of life suggestion: Stop allowing me to sell stuff for energy when I'm at energy cap

# ? Dec 8, 2018 16:56

MrL_JaKiri: Sep 23, 2003; A bracing glass of carrot juice!

More bugs/comments:

Hive minds should get the "unemployment" thing on the outliner when the planet has scavengers
Are there any ways to balance research output? My society research is currently more than double the other two put together
Colony ships with an order (even if it's just moving somewhere) can't be used to colonise planets until they stop

# ? Dec 8, 2018 17:21

KOGAHAZAN!!: Apr 29, 2013; a miserable failure as a person

an incredible success as a magical murder spider

Selling the entire worker strata of two planets did not crash my economy, amazingly. Or, there were a lot of red numbers for a bit but I made so much money out of it I could terraform half a dozen planets and still eat pure energy for half a decade. God bless.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 17:24

The Iron Rose: May 12, 2012; Cat Army

This is the future that liberals want.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 17:25

wiegieman: Apr 22, 2010; Royalty is a continuous cutting motion

Kris xK posted:

Im going to assume Im doing something wrong, as I cannot keep my energy in a net positive. Playing as robots I've rampant unemployment but everytime I build a workplace my energy just tanks. I tried building a reactor for more energy, but my bots wont farm? I built farming districts.

Like I said I assume Im doing something wrong and will play with tutorial on tonight, but if anyone has a "hey idiot do this ______" comment Id love to hear it.

For whatever reason, miner jobs get workers assigned to them before generator jobs. You need to open up the population tab and expand the worker drone jobs, and use the + and - buttons to move workers around to make them go to the power plant.

This is basically like moving pops around on tiles, except worse. It needs to be fixed right away.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 17:39

Mayor Dave: Feb 20, 2009; Bernie the Snow Clown

So uh I think I'm gonna have to ramp the difficulty back down, I only had 5k fleet power when the Khan rolled up

The new systems are going to take some getting used to, I have no idea what to build when anymore

# ? Dec 8, 2018 17:41

Beer4TheBeerGod: Aug 23, 2004; Exciting Lemon

wiegieman posted:

This is basically like moving pops around on tiles, except worse. It needs to be fixed right away.

The lack of optimization in Pop distribution is pretty annoying. It's dramatically increased the required micromanagement.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 17:44

turn off the TV: Aug 4, 2010; moderately annoying

Why can't I just press this curator icon to open their diplomacy window? :bahgawd:

# ? Dec 8, 2018 17:46

Mayor Dave: Feb 20, 2009; Bernie the Snow Clown

Oh also, I don't know if it's a spoiler or not but the first league home system now has an ecumenopolis you can colonize, putting it right up there with the cybrex for best precursor chain.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 17:46

wiegieman: Apr 22, 2010; Royalty is a continuous cutting motion

Bad job assignment optimization is also why people keep seeing their economy crash out from under them. An advanced building will strip off 6 workers from your energy production instead of splitting the load between your basic resources, leaving you with a bunch of busywork to balance it out.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 17:54

Nalesh: Jun 9, 2010; What did the grandma say to the frog?

Something racist, probably.

The Iron Rose posted:

This is the future that liberals want.

Genuinely surprised there's not a Half-Robot in that somewhere.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 17:57

Gobblecoque: Sep 6, 2011

Looks like some of the new building unlock techs are busted. I've researched two such techs that don't actually unlock the building they're supposed to unlock.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 18:03

Xerxes17: Feb 17, 2011

To be honest, the system would work a lot better if pops didn't change jobs unless they get dragged and dropped, or only once they lose their job for whatever reason. You should be able to put a lab down and have it take the pop growth and not worry about it eating all of your workers immediately. In fact, this is probably the core problem of the update as taking any building action has an automatic and unpredictable effect on what already is. When expanding you should be building like a brick wall, one on top of the other, without having to worry about someone coming along and stealing your foundations from under you.

Edit: the turning off and on of job slots is also bad from a UX PoV, as there is no quick way to see if they are disabled so if you forget, welp.

Xerxes17 fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Dec 8, 2018

# ? Dec 8, 2018 18:08

How are u: May 19, 2005; by Azathoth

I'm slowly working through my first Le Guin game as fanatic xenophobe materialist space starfish with syncratic slaves (and I mean slowly, with all of the new micro-management in this patch i haven't found myself able to bump up over Normal speed), and I think I've hit my stride. Being xenophobes who don't use robots has let me avoid a lot of the things that I've seen people complaining about like species settling the wrong types of planets.

I got the First League precursor chain and just finished it, gaining the free Ecumenopolis and holy poo poo those are loving nuts! I just colonized it but in 100 years its going to be pumping out so much poo poo, amazing. I usually have gone for mega-structures but maybe I should skip them this time. Anybody have any thoughts on Ecumenopoli vs Ringworlds?

# ? Dec 8, 2018 18:12

Mayor Dave: Feb 20, 2009; Bernie the Snow Clown

How are u posted:

I'm slowly working through my first Le Guin game as fanatic xenophobe materialist space starfish with syncratic slaves (and I mean slowly, with all of the new micro-management in this patch i haven't found myself able to bump up over Normal speed), and I think I've hit my stride. Being xenophobes who don't use robots has let me avoid a lot of the things that I've seen people complaining about like species settling the wrong types of planets.

I got the First League precursor chain and just finished it, gaining the free Ecumenopolis and holy poo poo those are loving nuts! I just colonized it but in 100 years its going to be pumping out so much poo poo, amazing. I usually have gone for mega-structures but maybe I should skip them this time. Anybody have any thoughts on Ecumenopoli vs Ringworlds?

I'm pretty sure from a cost perspective that Ringworlds will be less efficient, but you also have to factor in the loss of raw materials production that happens when you convert a planet. I'm going to have to experiment with both once I get my feet a little more firmly planted in the expansion's new systems before I can say for sure.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 18:17

Inverness: Feb 4, 2009; Fully configurable personal assistant.

RedSnapper posted:

Slowly warming up to the changes, but I could REALLY use a planetary pop/housing and a worker/job counter in the outliner.

This. I find myself having to open the planet window often just to check on the progress until the next pop is produced so I can decide when to build the next building or district with minimal disruption.

For now I'd be find with a mod that appends these counts to planet names as a shortcut.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 18:22

TalonDemonKing: May 4, 2011

Finally got ringworlds and...

They're not very exciting, especially compared to the city worlds that you can make much earlier and much cheaper.

Sure, they're massive, but that's really about it. They have 3 districts: City, Energy, and Food, but they're just the generic ones. Each part of the ringworld is the same. No planetary features, no unique buildings. They cost 10k alloys per section to upgrade, with 2 10k alloy steps in between. As they are a megastructure, they do prevent you from building other mega-structures while they're upgrading, and are an absolute pain to get unlocked.

This was kinda a let down considering habitats & city worlds have their own unique districts. Doubly so since you can't offload all your raw resource generation onto the ringworld (Since there is no mining districts), so the other options are sort of just better unless you stumble across it via event chain or what not.

Edit: Oh hey, didn't see others talking about ringworlds while I was writing mine.

Considering I was swimming in food and energy credits with just 1 and 2 worlds respectively dedicated to them, I don't think ringworlds are worth it compared to city-worlds, especially since the latter has the unique districts for refining minerals into ALLOYS and consumer goods, and can support a ton of people as well.

Also they're much cheaper to build (20k minerals vs 15k alloys on average per limb), so honestly I'd just ignore ringworlds.

TalonDemonKing fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Dec 8, 2018

# ? Dec 8, 2018 18:27

Aethernet: Jan 28, 2009; This is the Captain...

Our glorious political masters have, in their wisdom, decided to form an alliance with a rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters right when the Federation has us at a tactical disadvantage. Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in the Feds firing on our vessels...

Damn you Huxley!; Grimey Drawer

Xerxes17 posted:

To be honest, the system would work a lot better if pops didn't change jobs unless they get dragged and dropped, or only once they lose their job for whatever reason. You should be able to put a lab down and have it take the pop growth and not worry about it eating all of your workers immediately. In fact, this is probably the core problem of the update as taking any building action has an automatic and unpredictable effect on what already is. When expanding you should be building like a brick wall, one on top of the other, without having to worry about someone coming along and stealing your foundations from under you.

Edit: the turning off and on of job slots is also bad from a UX PoV, as there is no quick way to see if they are disabled so if you forget, welp.

Guys

guys

Just specialise your colonies in the way you're encouraged to by colony bonuses and this issue goes away.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 18:29

Nitrousoxide: May 30, 2011; do not buy a oneplus phone

Something I've discovered,

If you're not a megacorp, give the first non-criminal megacorp you encounter a trade agreement to let them build branch offices in your planets. Since only one megacorp can have a branch office on a planet at once, it means that those planets become immune to criminal megacorps.

The only possible exception this might be mega churches if you are worried about the religious pop pull of their branch office buildings, but otherwise since the megacorp branch office buildings are mutually beneficial, you're highly encouraged to get them from non-criminals ASAP..

# ? Dec 8, 2018 18:34

Gladi: Oct 23, 2008

Mayor Dave posted:

Oh also, I don't know if it's a spoiler or not but the first league home system now has an ecumenopolis you can colonize, putting it right up there with the cybrex for best precursor chain.

Nonsense.

It is by far the best. An Ecomenopolis ready for settling right away in an early game. Cybrex ring takes time and effort to bring online.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 18:41

PittTheElder: Feb 13, 2012; Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Nitrousoxide posted:

Something I've discovered,

If you're not a megacorp, give the first non-criminal megacorp you encounter a trade agreement to let them build branch offices in your planets. Since only one megacorp can have a branch office on a planet at once, it means that those planets become immune to criminal megacorps.

The only possible exception this might be mega churches if you are worried about the religious pop pull of their branch office buildings, but otherwise since the megacorp branch office buildings are mutually beneficial, you're highly encouraged to get them from non-criminals ASAP..

Speaking of, with everybody a couple pages ago talking about the AI blowing up their criminal corporate buildings, is that an AI only thing? The only way I could figure out to eject these criminal posts was to declare (a phoney) war and wait around for the white peace.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 19:03

Bloodly: Nov 3, 2008; Not as strong as you'd expect.

MrL_JaKiri posted:

More bugs/comments:

Are there any ways to balance research output? My society research is currently more than double the other two put together

Not really. Your main building will have jobs that raise Society and Unity. Your Unity building probably does too. You'd need three or so Science buildings
per planet to match that.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 19:07

Runa: Feb 13, 2011

I keep getting traitless rulers but I also have a roster of 30+ custom empires I force spawn each game.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 19:07

Ihmemies: Oct 6, 2012

You can save a few moneys by buying from https://2game.com/paradox-sale?dir=asc&order=position

I googled a 10% off code and paid 13� total for my Megacorp. Hopefully the money won't go to russian mafia.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 19:11

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# ? May 25, 2024 11:09

mst4k: Apr 18, 2003; budlitemolaram

I�m sorry this is an ancient question - I haven�t played stellaris in a while. Is colonizing planets sized 13 or lower still �bad�?

# ? Dec 8, 2018 19:13

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