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

How are u: May 19, 2005; by Azathoth

It seems that taking syncretic evolution ultimately ends up as a bad choice, because there's no way to eventually uplift your special slaves and you end up with hundreds and hundreds of pops who are forbidden from working anything but the lowest level jobs. Then they pile up in massive unemployment and cause crime!

poo poo!

# ? Dec 9, 2018 05:40

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# ? May 23, 2024 13:21

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

How are u posted:

It seems that taking syncretic evolution ultimately ends up as a bad choice, because there's no way to eventually uplift your special slaves and you end up with hundreds and hundreds of pops who are forbidden from working anything but the lowest level jobs.

poo poo!

If you take Evolutionary Mastery you can gene edit away the Proles trait, but it kind of sucks that the only way to make them good is with two Ascension Perks.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 05:41

Voyager I: Jun 29, 2012; This is how your posting feels.
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Mayor Dave posted:

They need more district space or unique buildings or something, I've tried spamming them like before and they are baaaad in comparison to other things you could do with the resources it takes to build them

I think they were always pretty inefficient - it's just that before you often had literally nothing to spend your minerals on after you'd finished midgame.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 05:42

Zane: Nov 14, 2007

How are u posted:

It seems that taking syncretic evolution ultimately ends up as a bad choice, because there's no way to eventually uplift your special slaves and you end up with hundreds and hundreds of pops who are forbidden from working anything but the lowest level jobs. Then they pile up in massive unemployment and cause crime!

poo poo!

it is extremely cumbersome to manage xenophobe-based slavery as compared to authoritarian-based slavery (my latest game). i don't think there's a natural mechanism that balances the reproduction of specialists vs. workers. the best way to manage this yourself is to use the population control policy to impose forced reproduction of your 'master' race on each planet at certain points.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 05:44

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

Mayor Dave posted:

They need more district space or unique buildings or something, I've tried spamming them like before and they are baaaad in comparison to other things you could do with the resources it takes to build them

It's like, this thing has 4 alloy upkeep for 8 crappy district slots? That stuff is water in the desert cause they didn't even rebalance ship costs.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 05:44

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

wiegieman posted:

It's like, this thing has 4 alloy upkeep for 8 crappy district slots? That stuff is water in the desert cause they didn't even rebalance ship costs.

It's especially obvious when special fleets spawn - I opened the L-Gate and the grey tempest fleets were just so numerous that even as the most powerful non-FE in the galaxy it took me nearly 100 years to finally beat them back because it took forever to replenish losses

# ? Dec 9, 2018 05:46

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

I definitely think they should have kept it in the over a few more weeks

# ? Dec 9, 2018 05:49

ZypherIM: Nov 8, 2010; "I want to see what she's in love with."

I haven't messed with it in the new patch yet, but are you sure you can't change their species rights to let them work better jobs? They'll still have that negative but that should be an option. Alternatively, clerk jobs are worker class and you can poo poo those right out. Alternatively alternatively, between resettling and population controls you should be able to find plenty of work in the mines for your 2nd species while ensure that your glorious overlords never step below specialist jobs.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 05:52

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

Baronjutter posted:

Ok so this is way beyond what I can mod, but here's the materialist faction demands regarding technology compared to others. I think I'm understanding the script here to be saying to compare any "default" class empire you have communications with, is not primitives, and is not a vassal is compared to your country in the category of technology with equivalent being neutral and anything above giving the bonus and behind giving the penalty. The problem being that the "successor" great khan result becomes flaged as a "default" empire.

And here is an example successor khanate

It has a custom description and a special civic. Would there be any way in the above faction code to add a check to omit a country that has this special civic or special "successor khanate" government type?

yes, you want to find the internal name of their special civic and add a NOT block inside the any_relation part of the trigger

should look something like

code:

        trigger = {
			owner = {
				NOT = {
					any_relation = {
						has_communications = root.owner
						is_country_type = default
                                               NOT = {
                                                   has_civic = <internal special successor khan civic name goes here>
                                                }
						relative_power = {
							who = root.owner
							category = technology
							value > equivalent
						}
					}
				}
			}
		}

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:00

Psychotic Weasel: Jun 24, 2004; Bang! You're dead.

ZypherIM posted:

I haven't messed with it in the new patch yet, but are you sure you can't change their species rights to let them work better jobs? They'll still have that negative but that should be an option. Alternatively, clerk jobs are worker class and you can poo poo those right out. Alternatively alternatively, between resettling and population controls you should be able to find plenty of work in the mines for your 2nd species while ensure that your glorious overlords never step below specialist jobs.

Being servile locks a species to worker jobs only (though why they couldn't be enforcers or soldiers I don't know). But knowing this you can just spec whatever species you're creating for resource collection. They're useful in that it makes sure you always have an income of energy, food and minerals because they can't just bolt for whatever specialist jobs open up.

Can get a bit micromanage-y though. Especially in the late game... I think I miss when planets would fill up and be 'finished'. Now they just keep growing and demand constant attention only now there's like two dozen of them and pops keep growing faster and faster.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:01

pokie: Apr 27, 2008; IT HAPPENED!

Something is really weird with my game. In a new game every planet has no non-city districts. Capitals have the starting ones but it's like 3 out of 0 mining districts or whatever. I was messing around with those files earlier so I verified their integrity and when that didn't work disabled all mods and re-installed the game. It's still hosed up.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:11

really queer Christmas: Apr 22, 2014

I've gotten about a hundred years in so I'd definitely say that I've got a grasp of the new system.

I still really like the changes and am glad for the death of tiles, but uh yeah agreed that the game probably needed another go in the oven. My biggest complaints are the new sectors, alloys, and rare resources. Almost all of my planets are scattered about, so each one is in its own sector, which means a governor for each. As well, despite disabling auto build, my governors have a hard on for immediately building robot production facilities the moment a building slot comes online. It ended up working out for a colony I was planning to make a rural place anyway, but I didn't catch it in time and have extra robots laying about on some urban worlds.

Alloys are necessary for just about everything in space, and all the costs feel like they didn't change... despite the fact that they're much harder to obtain. Maybe I'm not as good at the economy part as I feel like, but the balancing act is hard when...

The rare resource upkeep is way too harsh. The cost of rare resources for upgrading buildings is fine, but a unit of upkeep per level 2 building and 2 units per level three means you have to start getting some unfun chain production going just to upgrade a building. I'd say a cost increase for the second tier, and only have the upkeep for the third tier would be a lot more understandable.

I still really enjoy it, but I'm glad I'm going to be busy for a couple weeks, and will get to hopefully come back to the game being actually ready around Christmas.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:12

Runa: Feb 13, 2011

Huh, a quick googling indicates that the "no ruler traits" thing is because of a missing line of code in pre-2.2 custom empire files. Make a new fresh empire in 2.2 and the new file will have the line, go fig.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:12

Jay Rust: Sep 27, 2011

This seems weird to me. What am I missing?

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:24

TheDeadlyShoe: Feb 14, 2014

those mandates are kinda buggy...

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:30

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

Jay Rust posted:

This seems weird to me. What am I missing?

My uneducated guess is that maybe it's looking for an increase of 12 over your previous income? Weird either way though

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:30

How are u: May 19, 2005; by Azathoth

Yeah I think the new system is great "bones", but there's some serious tweaks that need to be done. Echoing others when I say that I miss being able to be "done" with a planet relatively quickly. It took over 100 years for my empire capitol to be "done", with micro required every, say, 15 minutes between 2200 and 2300. And that's the same for every planet! The planetary micro jumped hugely. I think I had around 19 planets settled in my early mid-game save I was just playing, and it felt like the entirety of gameplay was hopping from planet to planet to tweak this or queue that. It got a bit annoying.

I think it would be awesome if 1) the AI was smart and 2) if there was a per-planet toggle option to tell it to develop into say an Agri-world, Forge-world, Energy-world, etc. For reference: I was fully happy with the sector AI in the old version of the game and would routinely throw every new colony into a sector and let the AI do everything for me. I tried doing that here (tho sectors are way different and I don't think I like them) and all they wanted to do was build farms.

Also a toggle per-planet that let you determine which species were allowed to grow/emigrate and which were not would be fantastic.

How are u fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Dec 9, 2018

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:31

Bedurndurn: Dec 4, 2008

Zane posted:

my intuition is that it is safer and more efficient to ensure high surpluses in primary goods (minerals and energy) than it is to play fast and loose with them and to have to make up for unexpected shortfalls on the market later on. this means a healthy privileging of resource extractors over factories. this, in turn, means many fully developed resource planets actually keep their passive 'rural' specialization, even after they have four or five upgraded factories on them.

i do nonetheless tend to develop specialized manufacturing planets.. but for early game this is more for organizational purposes than it is for mechanical benefits. the 'flux capacitor' factory i think you're referring to is probably ultimately worth stacking up for.. i think it's a 15% total bonus to all factory-related production?

the one early game planet specialization that pays off very early is research--ideally on a world with low resources--because research assist is now a base ability.

I think part of the problem is that 'better' buildings don't make your workers more efficient. Your first alloy forge job takes 6 minerals and makes 2 alloys. Your fully upgraded alloy forge still takes 6 minerals and produces 2 alloys; you just get to fit 8 more equally efficient dudes in the same building. If anything, you're actually less efficient now because somewhere else in your empire there now needs to be a guy in a chemical plant who eats 10 minerals to make the 2 motes your better forge takes in upkeep costs.

Amenity production doesn't seem like it gets any bonuses at all (or maybe that's because the examples I'm checking out are from my late game hive mind empire). Maybe it would be easier to grow and scale if you eventually needed fewer pops to fill that need?

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:37

Jabor: Jul 16, 2010; #1 Loser at SpaceChem

Noir89 posted:

I did kinda manage to find a solution! This fixes it:
code:
			modifier = {
				factor = 3
				any_owned_pop = { scavenger_drone = yes }
			} 
But only if I remove this:
code:
			# No one to work it anyway
			modifier = {
				factor = 0
				NOT = {
					any_owned_pop = { is_unemployed = yes }
				}
			} 
So it might break sector AI completly. If it does, it basically needs to be completly redesigned, something I won't do tonight at least!

You should be able to put an OR in the last condition so that it only multiplies by zero if both nobody is unemployed and nobody is a scav.

While you're at it, do the same with the Servant job that fills the same role as scavengers if you're running that one form of slavery.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:39

pokie: Apr 27, 2008; IT HAPPENED!

pokie posted:

Something is really weird with my game. In a new game every planet has no non-city districts. Capitals have the starting ones but it's like 3 out of 0 mining districts or whatever. I was messing around with those files earlier so I verified their integrity and when that didn't work disabled all mods and re-installed the game. It's still hosed up.

If anyone cares I had to delete the Paradox folder in Documents, not just its mods subfolder for things to work out.

E: VVV Same happened to me around 2470.

pokie fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Dec 9, 2018

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:41

Hommando: Mar 2, 2012

I'm just over 400 years into my current game and I have to stop. No matter what speed I set the game to I get unplayable stuttering. I had this problem in earlier builds, but I think the lag is worse than it has ever been. It doesn't matter what speed I set the game to, it takes at least 1 second per day.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 06:55

TheDeadlyShoe: Feb 14, 2014

Bedurndurn posted:

I think part of the problem is that 'better' buildings don't make your workers more efficient. Your first alloy forge job takes 6 minerals and makes 2 alloys. Your fully upgraded alloy forge still takes 6 minerals and produces 2 alloys; you just get to fit 8 more equally efficient dudes in the same building. If anything, you're actually less efficient now because somewhere else in your empire there now needs to be a guy in a chemical plant who eats 10 minerals to make the 2 motes your better forge takes in upkeep costs.

Amenity production doesn't seem like it gets any bonuses at all (or maybe that's because the examples I'm checking out are from my late game hive mind empire). Maybe it would be easier to grow and scale if you eventually needed fewer pops to fill that need?

Where its efficient is that you're using 2 building slots total to get 5 building slots worth of alloy production, leaving you with 3 building slots you can do whatever with. Like you could do a couple luxury housing plus a commercial zone and get 5 clerk jobs for like 20 energy. Pops are nice but ultimately they are a means to an end especially when you are talking slot-capped planets.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 07:00

cheesetriangles: Jan 5, 2011

I've reached my breaking point of not using sector ai. 2000 pops and 30 planets is too much to manage.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 07:01

TheDeadlyShoe: Feb 14, 2014

Yeah i recommend turning habitables down...

# ? Dec 9, 2018 07:16

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

binge crotching posted:

I've tried four different games with different empire types, and consistently about 23-25 years in the game slows to an absolute crawl. Fastest speed goes from a couple of days per second to a couple of seconds per day. And this is with a medium size galaxy too, so it's not even anything crazy.

It's literally unplayable once it gets to that point, as the entire game completely locks up for those 5+ seconds per day. If I pause the game everything is as smooth as it normally is, but if I try to advance time it ends up being impossible to do anything.

There are a lot of things that are fun about the 2.2 patch, but this is not one of them.

I had a game do the same thing, except it was like 150 years in. :rip:

that game.

On the other hand, my second game in 2.2 was way easier than my first; knowing roughly how you'll want to specialize your planets goes a loooong way.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 07:18

nessin: Feb 7, 2010

After my third game I've noticed a couple more problems:

1) Building upgrade research timing is hosed up. Short of research labs, I never felt it useful or necessary to upgrade buildings until I had a planet in the 60/70+ pop range or had enough income that I could specialize planets in specialized industry from the start. Neither of which become an issue for the first 100 or so years, and yet the first upgrade tier comes well before that point in the tech tree. Even if you wanted to upgrade buildings you probably can't even do it more than a couple times until you have the space and pop to support the resource buildings.

2) The new planet system really needs a triggered queue of some sort. Given the way the system works I should be able to queue up a production list where the next item won't be actively constructed until I hit a pop or jobs target. Specifically I'm thinking of not building something until I've only got 1 open job remaining or 1 free housing unit left. It wouldn't be a perfectly solution since most of the buildings don't give you housing, but at least it would be less tedious than trying to manage everything individually now. The cost you pay for convenience, building stuff early, is way to high right now and the gap between manual control and sector control is too wide.

Side note for those encountering stunted AIs, especially in fleet power, there might be an issue where the AI is trading Alloys. I haven't looked in the files myself, but it's one of the items supposedly "fixed" by the Glavius AI mod. Assuming true, why in the world Paradox would let the AI trade the single most important resource it has at all is mind boggling, but it would also explain why the AI can't build up it's fleet power if it's prioritizing selling off alloys for cash.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 07:31

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

Bedurndurn posted:

I think part of the problem is that 'better' buildings don't make your workers more efficient. Your first alloy forge job takes 6 minerals and makes 2 alloys. Your fully upgraded alloy forge still takes 6 minerals and produces 2 alloys; you just get to fit 8 more equally efficient dudes in the same building. If anything, you're actually less efficient now because somewhere else in your empire there now needs to be a guy in a chemical plant who eats 10 minerals to make the 2 motes your better forge takes in upkeep costs.

Amenity production doesn't seem like it gets any bonuses at all (or maybe that's because the examples I'm checking out are from my late game hive mind empire). Maybe it would be easier to grow and scale if you eventually needed fewer pops to fill that need?

It would be cool if there were technologies that modified the job inputs so that workers required less raw materials to make the same amount of stuff over time. Could probably hack together this system by making it so that the upgraded buildings create new jobs that need less minerals/consumer goods/whatever and give the job titles names like greater researcher/advanced researcher/superior researcher/peerless researcher so that it's distinguishable in the code and by the player.

It'll make the current buildings look powerful and it'll probably help with the resource traps that newbies and the AI will stumble into.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 07:31

OddObserver: Apr 3, 2009

TheDeadlyShoe posted:

Where its efficient is that you're using 2 building slots total to get 5 building slots worth of alloy production, leaving you with 3 building slots you can do whatever with. Like you could do a couple luxury housing plus a commercial zone and get 5 clerk jobs for like 20 energy. Pops are nice but ultimately they are a means to an end especially when you are talking slot-capped planets.

Also base versions of those buildings take 5 pops to unlock the building slot, but only offer 2 jobs. Now you get some jobs for free from the colony center and the city districts, but still...

# ? Dec 9, 2018 07:48

Runa: Feb 13, 2011

I just deleted one of my custom empires, remade it from scratch, then started a new game. Now ruler traits are back on the menu again.

That's a silly little bug lol

# ? Dec 9, 2018 07:52

Ms Adequate: Oct 30, 2011; Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling

Yeah I am a bit irked/baffled at T2 and better buildings not being better on a per-worker basis az well. That said I suspect it's because pop numbers are so much higher that throwing a bunch more mans at the problem is a very obvious and necessary response. And I also reckon at least part of my feeling is because it's the direct opposite of the old system, where buffing the output of a far smaller number of pops was the way to up a planet's output.

I don't know if more time in the oven is what was needed though, if the team decide to take another look at this stuff I suspect it'd happen because thousands of players can give feedback. Sometimes you either can't spot the problem or you can't hit the right solution without just.. throwing a bunch more pops at it WE'RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

# ? Dec 9, 2018 07:54

Jabor: Jul 16, 2010; #1 Loser at SpaceChem

The general idea is that the raw efficiency improvements come from tech that just gives you the raw "Artisans make more stuff" improvements, and you don't need to do the busywork of building the obvious upgrade on every single planet.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 08:08

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

I think my only real bitch with the new economic system right now is that the placement of the rare resource techs in the tree seems kinda hosed up? I'm not really sure the rare planetary deposits even SHOULD require a tech.

Either way, it feels like they come bizarrely late for how early upgraded buildings come.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 08:21

appropriatemetaphor: Jan 26, 2006

TheDeadlyShoe posted:

Yeah i recommend turning habitables down...

Yeah I'm on .25 and no extra start planets. A lot of empires just have one big rear end homeworld. Which I conquer and turn into horrible slave filled forge planets.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 08:46

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Zane posted:

it is extremely cumbersome to manage xenophobe-based slavery as compared to authoritarian-based slavery (my latest game). i don't think there's a natural mechanism that balances the reproduction of specialists vs. workers.

In my game where I enslaved what was originally a small number of naturally industrious badger-people who had apparently immigrated to a gaia world I conquered, it appeared that it naturally tried to grow them towards 50% of the population (equal numbers with my primary, full-citizenship species).

# ? Dec 9, 2018 09:50

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Ms Adequate posted:

Yeah I am a bit irked/baffled at T2 and better buildings not being better on a per-worker basis az well. That said I suspect it's because pop numbers are so much higher that throwing a bunch more mans at the problem is a very obvious and necessary response. And I also reckon at least part of my feeling is because it's the direct opposite of the old system, where buffing the output of a far smaller number of pops was the way to up a planet's output.

I don't know if more time in the oven is what was needed though, if the team decide to take another look at this stuff I suspect it'd happen because thousands of players can give feedback. Sometimes you either can't spot the problem or you can't hit the right solution without just.. throwing a bunch more pops at it WE'RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

lol and yes. They really should consider doing an open public beta of each patch before release, because that's what the first few weeks of every released patch has been since Utopia at least, they've just just not been calling it that. Same result, better PR.

Give everyone who participates in at least one beta a special hosed up looking Robot portrait and namelist and you'd have people breaking down the door to click the button.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 10:19

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

They had to pull a couple of guys from the dev team to go stake the Vampire guy in the heart before he got Chechnya declaring war on them, give them some slack.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 10:29

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Strudel Man posted:

In my game where I enslaved what was originally a small number of naturally industrious badger-people who had apparently immigrated to a gaia world I conquered, it appeared that it naturally tried to grow them towards 50% of the population (equal numbers with my primary, full-citizenship species).

That's based on population, not job utility. Any new species you get will be prioritised for growth until they reach approximate parity with every other species on the planet. Because reasons.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 10:32

cheesetriangles: Jan 5, 2011

So managing a mid to late game large empire is basically zero fun. It's dozens of planets asking me for help constantly. When I said fine let the ai manage it all. I'm not sure they actually did anything. Probably because they only have a certain budget to make upgrades and I need to constantly go back there and give them new minerals to make any buildings. It needs the option to let them siphon some of your income to pay for the improvements the planets need. Because what they have right now is garbage. The other option is to pause every 5 seconds because you are gaining 10 pops a month that all need attention. I cracked opened the L gate wiped out all the hordes and just gave up on the save. It was constant pop ups about somebodies problems.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 10:35

Roadie: Jun 30, 2013

My first Ironman game started after 2.2 is really rewarding me. I've got friendly Nivlacs colonizing all my low-habitability worlds, an almost-complete Worm-in-Waiting quest chain so I can make maximum use of the (many) post-apocalyptic tomb worlds in my part of the galaxy, an unexplored wormhole, an L-Gate ready to crack open as soon as my fleet is big enough, and S875.1 Warform as a level 8 admiral of my fleet. I just need to think of a good alternative name to "United Nations of Earth" once the Strange Loop has really taken effect...

Fake edit: Also, one of my worlds is in the Filion system. The colony name is, of course, Nathan Filion. Somebody in the 2200s really liked Firefly.

# ? Dec 9, 2018 10:40

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# ? May 23, 2024 13:21

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

cheesetriangles posted:

So managing a mid to late game large empire is basically zero fun. ... It was constant pop ups about somebodies problems.

Sounds like an accurate portrayal of managing a huge space empire to me!

# ? Dec 9, 2018 10:42

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

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