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

«‹›1747 »

ilkhan: Oct 7, 2004; Ok then

Libluini posted:

Luckily us Germans are protected by the mighty power of copy right, so I have no idea what that was

You're the winner in this.

# ? Feb 10, 2023 23:20

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 13, 2024 01:46

Red Crown: Oct 20, 2008; Pretend my finger's a knife.

I'm trying to assimilate all of the galaxy's organics, but really don't want to deal with the administrative consequences. Is there a way to create vassals from sectors as a driven assimilator? When I try to make one out of a sector, the button just says "we do not own any planet we can give up."

# ? Feb 11, 2023 19:51

Deki: May 12, 2008; It's Hammer Time!

I'm playing with the various planet modifier/diversity mods and settings cranked and got a 48 district ancient archaeopolis, a 2x material world, and a +2.25 alloy/metalurgist world all within one jump of my start.

I basically have no excuse to lose this game.

# ? Feb 11, 2023 21:22

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

e; ^ gently caress me running :staredog:

drat they have actually worked on the Crisis AI since last time I played vanilla. I got my rear end SPANKED by the Contingency.

# ? Feb 12, 2023 00:52

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

the AI in general is way better than it was just a few patches ago

still not amazing, but it's definitely a threat now if you zone out. and yeah, crises will wreck your poo poo if you're not careful

# ? Feb 12, 2023 00:58

Poil: Mar 17, 2007

Unless of course they happen to spawn in the system directly next to a fallen empire who casually moves in their fleets and wrecks the spawn point as soon as the crisis fleets move out. :v:

# ? Feb 12, 2023 11:05

Red Crown: Oct 20, 2008; Pretend my finger's a knife.

Red Crown posted:

I'm trying to assimilate all of the galaxy's organics, but really don't want to deal with the administrative consequences. Is there a way to create vassals from sectors as a driven assimilator? When I try to make one out of a sector, the button just says "we do not own any planet we can give up."

I got halfway there because I've found your cyborg pops don't care about being purged, so I can, uh, rescuplt my empire the hard way. Guess I wasn't ready for the responsibilities of ~~parenthood~~ driven assimilating.

# ? Feb 12, 2023 16:42

Duodecimal: Dec 28, 2012; Still stupid

Current game is for getting "The People of Earth Must Be Destroyed", one of the 11 remaining achievements I have left. I have to defeat UNE while my leader has the brain slugs.

I'm hoping me adjusting my starting ethics and civics for CoM doesn't invalidate the run. Anyone know for sure? I didn't touch my species.

# ? Feb 12, 2023 18:16

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

Normally, a brutal imperial hierarchy invading your homeworld sucks big time because they are definitely not the good guys.

However, when they're invading to liberate you from the Fanatical Purifiers who conquered you a couple of years earlier and are rapidly exterminating you, they are :v:

# ? Feb 13, 2023 07:44

QuantaStarFire: May 18, 2006; Grimey Drawer

I started a new game and am currently sandwiched between a Fallen Empire and religious slavers who are hostile to me, equivalent in all areas, and currently at war with two unknown empires so I'm wondering if I should just rip the bandage off and begin my war to escape my corner or if I should just keep biding my time and building fleet strength.

# ? Feb 13, 2023 12:02

The Iron Rose: May 12, 2012; Cat Army

Just got back into this after a Year and a half. Finishing up a moderately successful toxoid become the crisis run, wherein I was forced to remember why managing multiple species sucks and why single resource planets are important.

I�d like to check out the necrophages or aquatic guys next. Any build recommendations?

# ? Feb 13, 2023 17:24

standard.deviant: May 17, 2012; Globally Indigent

Necrophage Devouring Swarm with Cordyceptic Drones has a really strong chance to snowball rapidly out of control.

# ? Feb 13, 2023 18:17

binge crotching: Apr 2, 2010

Duodecimal posted:

Current game is for getting "The People of Earth Must Be Destroyed", one of the 11 remaining achievements I have left. I have to defeat UNE while my leader has the brain slugs.

I'm hoping me adjusting my starting ethics and civics for CoM doesn't invalidate the run. Anyone know for sure? I didn't touch my species.

As long as all you did was edit the pre-existing CoM entry, you're fine. It requires you to have the human_2 flag (set by the default CoM empire), the empire you defeat having the human_1 flag (the default UNE empire), and then your ruler has to have a brainslug and be human:

code:

	trigger = {
		has_country_flag = human_1
		from = {
			has_country_flag = human_2
			ruler = {
				has_trait = leader_trait_ruler_brainslug
				species = {
					is_human_species = yes
				}
			}
		}
	}

# ? Feb 13, 2023 18:29

Angrymantium: Jul 19, 2007; Resistant to everything

The Iron Rose posted:

Just got back into this after a Year and a half. Finishing up a moderately successful toxoid become the crisis run, wherein I was forced to remember why managing multiple species sucks and why single resource planets are important.

I�d like to check out the necrophages or aquatic guys next. Any build recommendations?

standard.deviant posted:

Necrophage Devouring Swarm with Cordyceptic Drones has a really strong chance to snowball rapidly out of control.

In addition to necrophage and devouring swarm having a lot of synergy, you can add in terravore and the aquatic trait for one of the fastest snowball builds out there. Send a colony ship or two our early for the biggest world that you can eat, and you'll be flooded with minerals and alloys earlier than anyone else so you can start your quest to devour the galaxy while others are struggling to get their second research station up.

Aquatic is good with terravore specifically because you lose outnon the ability to terraform, so you at least get 10% to menial drone production even if you'll never get the complex drone bonuses from Hive Worlds. Cybernetic Ascension is good to progress through because you'll really need the resource boost on top of that to maintain your fleets and pop upkee, and the growth you get from genetic ascension will be mostly wasted on you. You have a 33% chance of getting a pop every time you make the consume world decision, so your pop growth isn't too bad if you stay active and have enough food (habitable planets) nearby.

You really do need to stay active as a devouring swarm these days too, due to the tendency of AI empires to roll up into federations. Every species you exterminate/assimilate into your necrophage swarm is one less member of an endgame federation that will come at you in the end.

I'm finishing up a crisis run as a necrophage DS right now and I have effectively allied with the praetorian scourge - the scourge spawned in the back of the biggest member of the galactic federation, and I launched an attack on the other side of their empire to keep them distracted from fighting back against the scourge. I have every crisis enabled in this game so I've got a few years to go stage 5 crisis myself and start blowing up stars before the unbidden and contingency show up to wreck my poo poo.

# ? Feb 13, 2023 18:47

silentsnack: Mar 19, 2009; Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is the 45th and current President of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.

Angrymantium posted:

You really do need to stay active as a devouring swarm these days too, due to the tendency of AI empires to roll up into federations. Every species you exterminate/assimilate into your necrophage swarm is one less member of an endgame federation that will come at you in the end.

I'm finishing up a crisis run as a necrophage DS right now and I have effectively allied with the praetorian scourge - the scourge spawned in the back of the biggest member of the galactic federation, and I launched an attack on the other side of their empire to keep them distracted from fighting back against the scourge. I have every crisis enabled in this game so I've got a few years to go stage 5 crisis myself and start blowing up stars before the unbidden and contingency show up to wreck my poo poo.

Been a long time since I bothered to try it, but when playing with Total War civics: is it still useful to exploit the fact that [being at war prevents vassal/federation changes] to block relatively weak empires from forming/joining a coalition megablob before you're actually ready to attack them?

# ? Feb 13, 2023 19:05

divx: Aug 21, 2005

Does setting the crisis type to "All" also guarantee a War in Heaven? I had never seen one in about 300 hours of playing, but I've tried that setting in my last 2 games and got one in each.

Also is there a way to get exactly a 240 fleet command limit without taking Galactic Force Projection besides going Militarist and taking the Distinguished Admiralty civic?

divx fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Feb 13, 2023

# ? Feb 13, 2023 19:27

Angrymantium: Jul 19, 2007; Resistant to everything

silentsnack posted:

Been a long time since I bothered to try it, but when playing with Total War civics: is it still useful to exploit the fact that [being at war prevents vassal/federation changes] to block relatively weak empires from forming/joining a coalition megablob before you're actually ready to attack them?

I actually don't know for sure, but I'm inclined to believe that doesn't work anymore. I've definitely been at war with a federation that drew in more empires as it dragged on.

# ? Feb 14, 2023 01:34

HiKaizer: Feb 2, 2012; Yes!
I finally understand everything there is to know about axes!

Personally I've been kind of a little vexed by the tendency of the current AI to vassal and federation blob. I think it's good that the AI uses those systems, I just don't think it's good that one empire will tend to snowball by getting vassals and then everyone joining their federation for protection. Late game there's no politics or conflict except for the crisis or fallen empires waking up.

Is there really a way to try and break up those unions? Trying to support a vassals independence doesn't actually seem to make them rebel and doesn't give you a cassus belli so I'm not sure how to try and pick apart the mega blobs.

# ? Feb 14, 2023 07:37

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Feels like there�s not enough penalty for opposing ethics in mega blob federations - just a ding to cohesion you overcome with an extra envoy. If I didn�t have 3 half-finished mods to work on already, I�d make a Situation trigger when the centralisation of a federation you were in (but had ethical clashes with) increased. One end of the scale would be relinquishing your clashing ethic, the other leave the federation or have a civil war as planets secede by force.

# ? Feb 14, 2023 09:33

Deki: May 12, 2008; It's Hammer Time!

I can't tell if my starting strats suck, but the NSC2 mod's production bonus to the AI seems awful for the early game, I tend to get rolled by any total war civic neighbors unless I go hard on throwing everything at defense, and that's after turning off the built in 70% prod bonus.

After midgame, I get it, its way too easy to take advantage of the new options, but I've had way too many checkpoint stations with my entire fleet parked get rolled to want to try playing it "as designed"

# ? Feb 14, 2023 20:11

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

As someone who hasn�t played in ten thousand years and is looking to do Angler+Catalytic Aquatic shenanigans, how is the ascensionist civic and planetary ascension as a mechanic in general?

I�m waffling on what to take for the third civic

Also on what specific configuration of spiritualist xenophile and/or egalitarian to use

# ? Feb 15, 2023 06:46

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

What's new with the game in the last 9 months or so? Artisan Crafters still the best general civic by far?

# ? Feb 15, 2023 06:58

HiKaizer: Feb 2, 2012; Yes!
I finally understand everything there is to know about axes!

Talkie Toaster posted:

Feels like there’s not enough penalty for opposing ethics in mega blob federations - just a ding to cohesion you overcome with an extra envoy. If I didn’t have 3 half-finished mods to work on already, I’d make a Situation trigger when the centralisation of a federation you were in (but had ethical clashes with) increased. One end of the scale would be relinquishing your clashing ethic, the other leave the federation or have a civil war as planets secede by force.

There's also supposed to be a penalty for having too many vassals, given there's a Galactic community law to mitigate it. But it either doesn't do anything, it's effect is too easily mitigated, or having disloyal vassals for long periods doesn't affect anything. I'm not a super aggressive player by default so most of my vassals I get are weak nations that ask for protection and I never get more than one or two.

# ? Feb 15, 2023 12:26

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

HiKaizer posted:

There's also supposed to be a penalty for having too many vassals, given there's a Galactic community law to mitigate it. But it either doesn't do anything, it's effect is too easily mitigated, or having disloyal vassals for long periods doesn't affect anything. I'm not a super aggressive player by default so most of my vassals I get are weak nations that ask for protection and I never get more than one or two.

I tend to end up with something like 4-6 vassals eventually. Maybe more, if some dumb war on the wrong side gives me tons of territory that lets my borders get ugly. But I also take the ascension perk that nullifies the vassal penalty, so, yeah.

# ? Feb 15, 2023 13:07

Duodecimal: Dec 28, 2012; Still stupid

binge crotching posted:

As long as all you did was edit the pre-existing CoM entry, you're fine. It requires you to have the human_2 flag (set by the default CoM empire), the empire you defeat having the human_1 flag (the default UNE empire), and then your ruler has to have a brainslug and be human.

Thanks - it took a few restores-from-backup. The issue I had was my ruler, who did have the right species name, did not actually have a brainslug. So I fired all my leaders, went to an oligarchy, and spent a hundred thousand unity hiring a full suite of brainslug leaders. Weirdly, only one of the four that popped up in the election had the actual brainslug, so I elected him, immediately invaded Sol, and got it.

My earlier restores was when I conquered them via a revolution event, and other nonstandard victories that led me to believe it was some other issue. But no, the entire time Sidney Beauclaire had no symbiote.

# ? Feb 16, 2023 02:03

binge crotching: Apr 2, 2010

Duodecimal posted:

Thanks - it took a few restores-from-backup. The issue I had was my ruler, who did have the right species name, did not actually have a brainslug. So I fired all my leaders, went to an oligarchy, and spent a hundred thousand unity hiring a full suite of brainslug leaders. Weirdly, only one of the four that popped up in the election had the actual brainslug, so I elected him, immediately invaded Sol, and got it.

My earlier restores was when I conquered them via a revolution event, and other nonstandard victories that led me to believe it was some other issue. But no, the entire time Sidney Beauclaire had no symbiote.

Yep, makes sense. The brainslug leader trait is random and rare, even though IMO it should be a 100% thing if you have it on all your pops.

# ? Feb 16, 2023 03:37

Adenoid Dan: Mar 8, 2012; The Hobo Serenader; Lipstick Apathy

I believe if you modify your species, any leaders in that species will have the trait applied.

# ? Feb 16, 2023 03:56

Duodecimal: Dec 28, 2012; Still stupid

Adenoid Dan posted:

I believe if you modify your species, any leaders in that species will have the trait applied.

That's what I did, and it did not work. The modified species I named "Joined", which was what the species listed on the Empress became. It failed.

# ? Feb 16, 2023 06:01

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Speaking of Devouring Swarms, my latest run at Commodore difficulty with scaling on has gone well. The biggest lesson I've learned through my repeated attempts is to keep the gas pedal floored at all times; you can't ever back off and decide to do something else for a bit, and you can't ever decide "okay, this is enough". Every day is either another day closer to when their scaling fully kicks in, or another day of grossly overpowered resources flooding in to surpass you with. So this time I immediately ate my three closest neighbors, completely overwhelming them because I was building my fleets to max capacity from the day I made first contact, leaving me in a nicely sized empty quadrant of the galaxy. So I identified some choke points, built to there, then stuck to that size and consolidated my gains while keeping my fleets as maxed out as possible. I figured that since I hadn't met any other AI empires, they wouldn't know to be afraid of me and wouldn't be using the time to prepare. This turned out to work when another empire finally expanded to touch my borders; I immediately declared war and ate them too.

And, in fact, it seems to have all gone too well -- the Galactic Council responded to that by declaring me the Crisis, which is the first time that's ever happened to me in any playthrough, so I suddenly found myself at war with literally the entire rest of the galaxy. Unfortunately for those chumps, it turned out my "eat all neighbors and don't get rediscovered for 60 years" strategy lulled everyone into complacency and I'm rampaging around at will with 60-70k fleet strength in a galaxy that still thinks 13k or so is pretty good because it's only 2290. Suckers.

They're gonna suffer for this one too, due to the sheer scale of my enemies I've nearly eaten an entire empire out of existence and their war exhaustion is still below 10%. A lot of sapients are gonna have to die before they get the message, I think.

# ? Feb 21, 2023 20:16

Baron von der Loon: Feb 12, 2009; Awesome!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWzw7CE21gY
March 14th, let's gooooo!

# ? Feb 21, 2023 20:25

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Baron von der Loon posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWzw7CE21gY
March 14th, let's gooooo!

I am so hyped for ship cloaking and the pre-FTL Awareness mechanic. When I play friendly, deciding who's ready for technological uplifts is difficult, so I vastly appreciate that advanced-enough species are gonna be like "hey, you've got artificial satellites and radio traffic in our system and we've noticed that".

# ? Feb 21, 2023 21:01

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

I hope they're going to deal with the sanctuary system problem.

# ? Feb 21, 2023 22:32

scaterry: Sep 12, 2012

Has there been anything to suggest that there is anything in the dlc better than simply invading the primitives for the pops? Unless primitive invasion is nerfed I don't think the dlc will see any use, imo.

# ? Feb 21, 2023 22:41

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

I think there are unique techs only learned through observation? Probably some other stuff. They made vassals a solid choice rather than conquering so I imagine they can here, too.

# ? Feb 21, 2023 23:32

Relevant Tangent: Nov 18, 2016; Tangentially Relevant

I think that if you've got Shared Burdens there should be a way to instantly bring people into the fold without inflicting a decade of culture shock on them.

# ? Feb 21, 2023 23:36

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

Relevant Tangent posted:

I think that if you've got Shared Burdens there should be a way to instantly bring people into the fold without inflicting a decade of culture shock on them.

"Hi we're literal space communists and huh one of their northern hemisphere continents just nuked itself"

# ? Feb 21, 2023 23:42

Relevant Tangent: Nov 18, 2016; Tangentially Relevant

we'd try to nuke the aliens and it wouldn't work and then while the former powers that be were reeling from that they'd hit us with "btw your other immediate neighbor doesn't have a language we've been able to decipher (we think it's a hive mind?) but here's some videos of the atrocities it has committed"
e: posadism is already a thing, the shock to the system from benevolent aliens would be minimal

Relevant Tangent fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Feb 22, 2023

# ? Feb 22, 2023 02:03

SkySteak: Sep 9, 2010

Long shot modding compatibility question, because I cannot seem to find consensus on this:

Without a compatibility patch (both are abandoned currently), has anyone found Planetary Diversity and Gigastructures to overall play nicely with eachother? Irony Mod Manager throws up a ton of conflicts between them but I don't know if that's causing actual meaningful problems! It'd absolutely suck to have to choose one or the other.

# ? Feb 22, 2023 20:11

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

So apparently if the Council declares you the Crisis, that war literally never ends? I got war exhaustion up to 100% and wanted it to be over just so I could do something that wasn't fighting an uneding stream of reinforcements because the bullshit Commodore resource streams had fully kicked in, but nope, apparently Status Quo isn't a valid option for this type of war. And since it's otherwise a war of pure extermination, the war is just until I lose or I'm alone in the galaxy?

Honestly, I'd rather restart than fight a forever war for the next 150 years.

# ? Feb 23, 2023 07:57

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 13, 2024 01:46

standard.deviant: May 17, 2012; Globally Indigent

Take the Become the Crisis perk and finish out that tree, it�s an alternative way to end the war.

# ? Feb 23, 2023 08:17

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

«‹›1747 »