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silentsnack posted:Something that Fanitic Purifiers and Devouring Swarm and Determined Exterminators get that Assimilators do not is massive combat buffs which directly inflate their fleetpower (which makes those empires less likely to get dogpiled, since the AI likes picking on anyone that looks weaker more than standing up to scary assholes they can't beat) so to offset your lack of power you kinda have to take Unyielding+Supremacy traditions and upgrade a bunch of murderstations. For Assimilators I tend to pick one best Buddy immediately and spend the rest of the game improving relations with them, goal of alliance, which boosts your perceived power tremendously. Meanwhile you enjoy your total war CB.
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Jan 17, 2022 21:24
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Early game defensive deployment of starbases is your friend as an assimilator. You can upgrade a base into something able to hold off an early fleet far cheaper than building a fleet.
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Jan 17, 2022 22:00
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ulmont posted:For Assimilators I tend to pick one best Buddy immediately and spend the rest of the game improving relations with them, goal of alliance, which boosts your perceived power tremendously. This. The strength of a DA is that they're still capable of diplomacy, abuse that poo poo like hell. Also if there are only two neighbors, send your second envoy to improve your relations to your enemy too, because most AI-personalities will only attack if they really hate you and perceive you as a threat. Another stalling tactic can be you only expanding towards a good choke point towards them and then stopping. AIs also feel less threatened if your borders aren't touching yet. Use the additional time to gear up for war and make at least one of the neighbors your friend, and you're good to go. Alternatively, crank up the number of primitives in the settings before start to raise the chance for a huge early game boost. 
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Jan 18, 2022 10:02
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AtomikKrab posted:Early game defensive deployment of starbases is your friend as an assimilator. You can upgrade a base into something able to hold off an early fleet far cheaper than building a fleet. You should definitely do both. I'd never trust a starbase to win a battle on its own, but I'd certainly like to have one on my side in a fleet fight.
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Jan 18, 2022 11:55
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Gort posted:You should definitely do both. I'd never trust a starbase to win a battle on its own, but I'd certainly like to have one on my side in a fleet fight. That's the ticket. Pull back so the AI commits to tackling the station it might have a chance against then swoop in with your fleet and crush them with station + fleet against fleet. Your losses will be minimal and cheap since station upgrades are in comparison. Enemy losses will be severe and expensive. Rinse and repeat while on defense until they buzz off and lick their wounds.
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Jan 18, 2022 22:09
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I restarted again and got a fairly lucky start in that I'm only touching one faction (they expanded exactly one system far enough to block off my other neighbor from technically bordering me, and I found a third way away and just stopped expanding so we have one system of neutral space between us), and I took everyone's advice and put starbases bristling with defensive platforms at both checkpoints. Which worked, actually! They eventually declared war but never even tried to crack my bases and I ended up taking some of their territory and a planet at no cost to myself, and by the time the truce expired they didn't like their odds. (I like mine, though. I'm coming for them soon, the dummies just blunted their strength on a war against another neighbor.) Which leads to an amusing discovery. When I went into Species to give full rights to my new assimilated species, I noticed something. One of the planets I'd settled on had a pre-sapient species, and... apparently "assimilate everything" means "assimilate everything". They were cyborgs. Apparently my dudes were like "hey, these lizards could be smart in ten thousand years, better borg 'em." And I have no idea how the pre-sapient cyborg lizards are somehow breeding true with their cybernetics.
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Jan 18, 2022 22:19
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CapnAndy posted:I restarted again and got a fairly lucky start in that I'm only touching one faction (they expanded exactly one system far enough to block off my other neighbor from technically bordering me, and I found a third way away and just stopped expanding so we have one system of neutral space between us), and I took everyone's advice and put starbases bristling with defensive platforms at both checkpoints. Which worked, actually! They eventually declared war but never even tried to crack my bases and I ended up taking some of their territory and a planet at no cost to myself, and by the time the truce expired they didn't like their odds. (I like mine, though. I'm coming for them soon, the dummies just blunted their strength on a war against another neighbor.) Clearly they install monitoring implants to check when the lizards have babies.
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Jan 18, 2022 22:24
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CapnAndy posted:I restarted again and got a fairly lucky start in that I'm only touching one faction (they expanded exactly one system far enough to block off my other neighbor from technically bordering me, and I found a third way away and just stopped expanding so we have one system of neutral space between us), and I took everyone's advice and put starbases bristling with defensive platforms at both checkpoints. Which worked, actually! They eventually declared war but never even tried to crack my bases and I ended up taking some of their territory and a planet at no cost to myself, and by the time the truce expired they didn't like their odds. (I like mine, though. I'm coming for them soon, the dummies just blunted their strength on a war against another neighbor.) There's a funny/stupid exploit I discovered when assimilating a planet that has a bunch of aliens in addition to some pre-sapients. Presapient species seem to always spawn with a population of 3, and if you have multiple species being assimilated at once there's a decent chance all 3 won't get borg'd at the same time. So every so often you can check your populations tab and at some point you might see the pre-sapients split between two versions, the original meatballs and a cybernetic subspecies. If you select the Original Flavor and choose to uplift it then the game does something kinda silly and creates an entirely separate species for the newly-uplifted pops (which then get chromed), while leaving the pre-sapeint cyborgs which can be uplifted separately as an entirely different project/event chain, for a total of 1000 influence instead of 500. This might only work if the first uplift completes before the next time assimilation processes?
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Jan 18, 2022 23:48
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Can someone explain trade for me? I read the wiki and I know about upstream and downstream flows, and have looked at the trade map mode. What I don't understand is the distance a station can get trade. Is that only from trade souces it has a gather reach from? Say I have station A next to a sector that produces 3 trade in space. Station A has a trade port, so its gather reach is +1, so I can harvest that 3 trade. So far, so good. Now, station B downstream from me is 4 sectors away, it also has a trade port, and its gather reach is also +1. Is it 'gathering' the trade from station A and sending it to my capital, or is that trade from station A stuck and not able to be shipped four hops to B. When I look at the trade routes for station B, I don't see any incoming trade from A, but I do see A in the trade capital. Not sure whats happening there.
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Jan 19, 2022 01:35
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Starbases send gathered trade towards another starbase or the capital, regardless of how far they are from other starbases. It sounds like A is sending trade to the capital directly, not via B. You should be able to see the trade routes on the map by turning on the map mode.
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Jan 19, 2022 01:47
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Ok so my megacorp became the emperor and has all but two weak empires vassalized. The Unbidden were in the Galaxy for less than two years before I sent them packing. I have about 70 years left and I’m thinking this game is pretty much over?
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Jan 19, 2022 01:50
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Dr. Clockwork posted:Ok so my megacorp became the emperor and has all but two weak empires vassalized. The Unbidden were in the Galaxy for less than two years before I sent them packing. I have about 70 years left and I’m thinking this game is pretty much over? Did you keep your branch offices when you became emperor? Curious about what the empire and ethics shifts does to your hard-earned offices when you become king poo poo of gently caress mountain.
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Jan 19, 2022 01:56
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Dr. Clockwork posted:Ok so my megacorp became the emperor and has all but two weak empires vassalized. The Unbidden were in the Galaxy for less than two years before I sent them packing. I have about 70 years left and I’m thinking this game is pretty much over? Sounds like it. If you're playing Ironman you might want to check if there are any achievements you want to nab, but other than that you're probably done with that game.
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Jan 19, 2022 02:06
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Have there been any sector reworks? I just want to know how far the borders extend
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Jan 19, 2022 02:57
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Cimber posted:Can someone explain trade for me? I read the wiki and I know about upstream and downstream flows, and have looked at the trade map mode. As you yourself said, Starbase A has a gather range of 1 sector, and Starbase B is 4 sectors away. B's got an existing trade route to your capital, but A can't see it, so it made its own. This stuff is important, especially because pirates will absolutely prey on undefended trade, so one line that everyone's using is a lot easier to patrol. I can do a super deep dive on the whole topic if you like.
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Jan 19, 2022 03:26
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CapnAndy posted:This stuff is important, especially because pirates will absolutely prey on undefended trade, so one line that everyone's using is a lot easier to patrol. I can do a super deep dive on the whole topic if you like. The really short answer is that piracy doesn't happen in systems with starbases, so take the ascension perks and run the edicts that give you +starbases, and have trade only path through starbases until you get gateways.
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Jan 19, 2022 04:38
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ulmont posted:The really short answer is that piracy doesn't happen in systems with starbases, so take the ascension perks and run the edicts that give you +starbases, and have trade only path through starbases until you get gateways.
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Jan 19, 2022 06:52
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CapnAndy posted:That's way less efficient than just loading your trade hubs with gun/missile/hangar buildings to extend protection range. 3 jumps in any direction covers a lot of ground if placed with some forethought. Or just build a dedicated hangar bay inside your borders instead. 6 jumps in all directions is a LOT of territory.
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Jan 19, 2022 07:14
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Yami Fenrir posted:Or just build a dedicated hangar bay inside your borders instead. 6 jumps in all directions is a LOT of territory.
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Jan 19, 2022 07:17
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CapnAndy posted:Yeah, but you gotta build the trade posts anyway to collect the stuff, so I go 3 hubs/3 protectors per base. Now that you've brought it up, though, I wonder if two starbases with 6 of each is more efficient? Well it depends on the territory. If you're tiny because you're Void Dweller, 3/3 is probably better. But I like stacking the same type for that +2 per building, and the piracy protection increases with the range so I usually make one each instead.
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Jan 19, 2022 07:32
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CapnAndy posted:Yeah, but you gotta build the trade posts anyway to collect the stuff, so I go 3 hubs/3 protectors per base. Now that you've brought it up, though, I wonder if two starbases with 6 of each is more efficient? It depends on the map, but typically I'll make trade stations with 7 range (hyperlane register adds+1) and then rely on my border Bastions to protect against pirates. I can place my Anchorages to plug up holes in my network, or create standing piracy patrols. Having the big trade bases usually means my network is fairly simplified.
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Jan 19, 2022 07:34
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This poo poo was a lot easier before Transit Hubs got added.
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Jan 19, 2022 08:50
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CapnAndy posted:Yeah, but you gotta build the trade posts anyway to collect the stuff, so I go 3 hubs/3 protectors per base. Now that you've brought it up, though, I wonder if two starbases with 6 of each is more efficient? I've noticed this tends to create total overkill. Over time, I tend to build up trading stations, fleet depots, fortresses and shipyards and even without the +5 station perk this poo poo adds up. Since fortresses and shipyards (often basically fleet bases for new fleets at my expanding borders) tend to rock some serious defenses, and I can't resist putting at least one hangar/gun battery on everything else. This sooner or later ends up covering every inch of my empire in overlapping protection zones and while piracy still happens, it's more funny then annoying when a pirate fleets spawns right next to my 69k strong border fleet. My trading stations are often strategically chosen to eat up as much trade as possible, so they're often specialized deep space stations in the middle of nowhere, with names like "Ubersoft HQ" and my trading standard set of 1 defense installation and 5 trading hubs. Plus a combination of trading buildings. Company offices, the office building upgrade, the registrar, the bounty hunting office, just loving everything. A fully maxed station can do something ridiculous like collecting trade goods from 8 jumps away! That covers a lot of space and leaves more stations for anchorages and strategic defenses. Coincidentally, my transit hubs often end up in shipyards, because apart from my borders, major colonies often also house my major fleet bases, and I like to sometimes build up dedicated yards right next to a fleet base. Those yards however don't need to look for their own defense with a huge fortress hanging right around the corner, so they often get the transit hub. Together with a fleet academy, and the other two slots filled with whatever is locally available, or needed. Stuff like more storage or later a Titan yard, that kind of thing. Anyway, that's my normal way of doing things. Of course sometimes I deviate, if e.g. I need a small shipyard somewhere far away and there's some local trade goods I'd like to collect, but there are also not enough ships available to cover that border yet. This then results in an utter abomination of a station just having a little bit of everything until my infrastructure in the region can catch up.  Edit: One trade lanes, something important to remember is that Stellaris really doesn't like it if you move your capital. This will immediately break all your trade lanes and cause a massive drop in your energy income until you unfuck your poo poo manually. Luckily the game can and will recalculate trade lanes, so you only need to manually re-attach 1-2 nearby starbases to your capital to make the game remember that you still have a capital, it just moved.
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Jan 19, 2022 10:12
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CapnAndy posted:That's way less efficient than just loading your trade hubs with gun/missile/hangar buildings to extend protection range. 3 jumps in any direction covers a lot of ground if placed with some forethought. I ran into problems where trade values would scale but my ability to protect trade wouldn’t. And you have to build your anchorages somewhere, so might as well be on the main trade lines.
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Jan 19, 2022 14:50
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I'm on my 2nd game of Stellaris and slowly learning the mechanics. Regarding trade, I think I only sort of understand it and now have a fairly large trade network. I'm over the Starbase capacity (mainly because I was building Starbases to support trade hubs) even with the +5 Starbase ascension perk, so I suspect I have a lot of overlapping trade hubs doing nothing except costing upkeep. Is my assumption correct that extra trade hubs - when not needed - don't do anything? Also, the Khan spawned a few systems away from my empire and his overwhelming fleets immediately started moving towards me. I kind of panicked and surrendered before he could take anything. Unfortunately this threw me out of my federation. Now the Khan is taking territory from my close former federation allies. How do I break the yoke of the Khan at some point? I know he dies after a few decades - do I just build military power until he dies? In the long run maybe this will be good for me as he is absolutely wrecking all of the neighboring empires.
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Jan 19, 2022 14:51
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So i had custom built a race of space dwarves, gave them alpine homeworld type, made them master crafters and miners for perks, slow reproduction. All that jazz. Found this beautiful world to colonize and made a great industrial/energy center there. And as a bonus, it had an archeological site. Something about thieving rodents. Did the site, and got this relic called 'the replicator'. Yay! Until i realize that this released a great dragon, which wiped out my colony and a few of the fleets I sent to battle it. Eventually I amassed a great fleet and finally took down the dragon, and reclaimed my mountain home. Realy getting Erebor vibes outta this.
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Jan 19, 2022 16:32
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Cimber posted:So i had custom built a race of space dwarves, gave them alpine homeworld type, made them master crafters and miners for perks, slow reproduction. All that jazz. You should because that particular Dragon is in fact a Tolkien Reference.
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Jan 19, 2022 16:38
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In fact the name of the dragon was Shard, which I guess is close to Smaug.
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Jan 19, 2022 16:53
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sharkbomb posted:Also, the Khan spawned a few systems away from my empire and his overwhelming fleets immediately started moving towards me. I kind of panicked and surrendered before he could take anything. Unfortunately this threw me out of my federation. Now the Khan is taking territory from my close former federation allies. How do I break the yoke of the Khan at some point? I know he dies after a few decades - do I just build military power until he dies? In the long run maybe this will be good for me as he is absolutely wrecking all of the neighboring empires. This is in fact, very good for you. Everything around you will be shattered and weak, whereas you'll conserve your strength for a few years and get free reign to take whatever you want after.
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Jan 19, 2022 17:38
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sharkbomb posted:I'm on my 2nd game of Stellaris and slowly learning the mechanics. Regarding trade, I think I only sort of understand it and now have a fairly large trade network. I'm over the Starbase capacity (mainly because I was building Starbases to support trade hubs) even with the +5 Starbase ascension perk, so I suspect I have a lot of overlapping trade hubs doing nothing except costing upkeep. Is my assumption correct that extra trade hubs - when not needed - don't do anything? You're right, trade can only be collected once so overlapping trade hubs should be avoided. In general I try to make sure that all of my planets are covered by my trade network, and worry less about other systems. quote:Also, the Khan spawned a few systems away from my empire and his overwhelming fleets immediately started moving towards me. I kind of panicked and surrendered before he could take anything. Unfortunately this threw me out of my federation. Now the Khan is taking territory from my close former federation allies. How do I break the yoke of the Khan at some point? I know he dies after a few decades - do I just build military power until he dies? In the long run maybe this will be good for me as he is absolutely wrecking all of the neighboring empires. Being a Satrapy of the Khan is usually a good opportunity to focus on your economy or even claim neighboring systems that the Khan's fleets are clearing (follow them with a construction ship). It's ultimately temporary.
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Jan 19, 2022 17:50
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dogstile posted:This is in fact, very good for you. Everything around you will be shattered and weak, whereas you'll conserve your strength for a few years and get free reign to take whatever you want after. There are different ways that the Khanate can end, I think there's one that's not necessarily a "good" end for the player who became a satrapy.
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Jan 19, 2022 18:49
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Electro-Boogie Jack posted:Did you keep your branch offices when you became emperor? Curious about what the empire and ethics shifts does to your hard-earned offices when you become king poo poo of gently caress mountain. Switching to ImperiCorp is kind of odd. You keep your branch offices and civics and can still make new branch offices, but you change to Imperial Authority and Fanatic Authoritarian. You keep any Subsidiaries, but any future acquisitions are the usual Protectorate/Tributary/Vassals. It hosed with my economy a bit but with 84 branch offices and 12 Subsidiaries going into Emperor I was totally fine. I can imagine this wreaking havoc with an underdeveloped MegaCorp run though. HelloSailorSign posted:There are different ways that the Khanate can end, I think there's one that's not necessarily a "good" end for the player who became a satrapy. I was pretty annoyed on this Ironman run because I'm trying to clean up achievements. I got the Khan's Throne relic but wasn't able to kill him in battle for the cheevo. I still beat his rear end very quick before he could get very far though.
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Jan 19, 2022 18:53
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Speaking of marauders, don't sleep on hiring Admirals from them. This might be common knowledge, but I have never bothered before my last game. They come instantly at lvl 3 with a really good trait giving Evasion and Fire Rate. Dumping one of those instead of a native admiral gave me several thousands of fleet strenght and they only cost 2k energy: Mercenary Warrior +10% Evasion +10% Fire Rate Really helped get by a few wars against an AI federation.
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Jan 19, 2022 18:54
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I just got battleships. Corvettes now seem pretty useless. What are people's fleet comps like?
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Jan 19, 2022 19:00
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Cimber posted:I just got battleships. Corvettes now seem pretty useless. 2/3-4/5 Artillery Battleships. Emphasize Neutron launchers, with some Kinetic Batteries until you get Mega-cannons in the spinal mount. After that Mega-Cannon and launchers 1/3-1/5 Carrier Battleships. To protect the Artillery Battleships from corvette swarms.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:26
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sharkbomb posted:I'm on my 2nd game of Stellaris and slowly learning the mechanics. Regarding trade, I think I only sort of understand it and now have a fairly large trade network. I'm over the Starbase capacity (mainly because I was building Starbases to support trade hubs) even with the +5 Starbase ascension perk, so I suspect I have a lot of overlapping trade hubs doing nothing except costing upkeep. Is my assumption correct that extra trade hubs - when not needed - don't do anything? Good news is, you did the right thing with the Khan. Your options with him are very much "win the fight" or "surrender before you lose a single ship or system". He's entirely reasonable to his satrapies and he's temporary, you'll be able to pick up the pieces when he bites it. And as has already been suggested, definitely start following his fleets around with constructor ships. Cimber posted:I just got battleships. Corvettes now seem pretty useless. I like a balanced fleet. My endgame fleets are generally 15 corvette/15 destroyer/10 cruiser/5 artillery battleships/5 carrier battleships/1 titan.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:32
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So I was playing with the ship designer for the first time trying to understand it a bit better. When you all Artillery vs Carrier battleships, what is changing? At my current tech the only thing that seemed to change was the AI chip (?) from Line to Carrier.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:48
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CapnAndy posted:Corvettes are not useless. They're your fighter screen; they get in close and tie up the opposing small ships so that they can't engage with your big guns, which don't have the tracking to reliably hit them.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:50
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sharkbomb posted:So I was playing with the ship designer for the first time trying to understand it a bit better. When you all Artillery vs Carrier battleships, what is changing? At my current tech the only thing that seemed to change was the AI chip (?) from Line to Carrier. In this case, you're changing from battleships that can pack a lot of L-sized weaponry to ones with a bunch of H-sized hangars and some P-sized point defenses. Splicer posted:*cackles in battleship carrier full of fighters*
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Jan 19, 2022 19:50
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What are people actually talking about when they say "artillery battleships"? I've been assuming people are talking about the weapon literally called "kinetic artillery",but that doesn't seem to make sense, I think I never even bothered researching pure kinetics since they're not very useful when enemies start adapting towards more armor. I always go with something like carriers plus battleships armed with neutron launchers or plasma, mixed-in with some kinetics or null beams to hammer down shields faster. Thanks to neutron launchers having insane damage, that works out very well even against shield-heavy enemies. At this point you can freely point and laugh at me for not realizing people generally meant "ship with huge loving guns" when calling something an "artillery" battleship
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Jan 19, 2022 20:16
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