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Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Wiz posted:

Only materialists can give them rights though.

That seems odd. Locking the full ascension paths to spiritualist/materialist I can see, since you need reasonably non-standard mindsets to consider a computer copy of your brain "you" or saying the part of the extradimensional hive mind labelled "you" counts as "you". But why can't an egalitarian warrior culture reward its metal fightmans with full citizenship?

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 10:04

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 05:57

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Wiz posted:

I feel like we just had a discussion about realism arguments when it comes to game mechanics. Probably just my imagination.

It's a discussion I've been on the "balance&gameplay>realism" side of before, but that's not the same as saying that discussing the relative intuitiveness of game mechanics is pointless. Whether something is intuitive and how arbitrary a lockout feels, both in isolation and in the context of the rest of the game, has a definite impact on gameplay. Having over 70% of potential xenophile combos being AI racists is sufficiently odd to be worth highlighting.

Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Feb 10, 2017

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 11:24

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Wiz posted:

I mean honestly you have some points, but materialists basically have zero mechanics unique to them at the moment, and I don't think it's too crazy to say that you would need a certain materialistic mindset to think that machines matter just as much as biological pops. You can be Egalitarian and Xenophobe after all, the former doesn't necessarily imply total equality for everyone.

Go full materialist and lock everyone else out of researching or building strong AIs to start with. Only materialists are egotistical enough to play god in that manner, but other ethics can still embrace the products of the hubris of other empires and earlier, less enlightened ages if they choose.

Splicer fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Feb 10, 2017

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 11:36

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Kitchner posted:

All in all I think the three distinct types are quite well balanced.

I like to treat presidents as short term goal setters. Oh hey a mining dude, guess I'll do that push I've been putting off. Oh look a shipwright, guess it's WARTIME.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 13:29

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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GunnerJ posted:

You still might need to deal with Synth pops that end up in your empire through conquest or something.

Yeah that was what the last line was meant to imply. Your xenophile peacenics can give synths full rights or your military collectivist can enslave them or whatever, they're just not going to build any more. Only materialists find the idea of building people not weird, how other ethics treat prebuilt buildable people is up to the player.

e: if you already built a bunch of synths and AI ships and then lose materialist then you'd lose the ability to build them, but whether you keep the existing ones as full citizens or demote them is a policy thing.

Splicer fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Feb 10, 2017

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 14:00

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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GlyphGryph posted:

Oh thats real dumb then.

It's not a thing that is happening it's a thing I thought would be cool.

Also no you're dumb.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 14:13

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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GlyphGryph posted:

Also will be able to build edible robots? This one is really important.

Robots made of candy like some kind of Space Willy Wonka

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 17:04

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Archonex posted:

Yeah, i've never actually completed the Precursor chain outside of the day one version of the game. Even now I can never seem to get the event chain to fully pop without dicking about with the console. Not sure what's up with that.

I'm running the game unmodded and the only "problem" precursor so far was some rear end in a top hat beating me to the finisher :argh:

I also don't have leviathans yet, maybe there's something in there busting it?

Jeb Bush 2012 posted:

I mean, realism aside, giving spiritualist empires wizards *feels* right. Playing xenophile/egalitarian and having no choice but to enslave your androids feels wrong.

It would actually make more sense if materialists were the only ones who could make synths at all, since using technology to beat god at his own game is extremely on-theme. (and then if you were a non-xenophobe and some synths moved to your empire you'd still be able to give them rights, you just wouldn't be able to make more)

I said this and GlyphGryph called me dumb

Splicer fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Feb 10, 2017

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 17:56

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Libluini posted:

Well, it is dumb. But I don't feel like copying and pasting my old answer on this again, so you just have to trust me on this.

I read your post and thought it was dumb :v:

But seriously, are you saying the "It feels wrong" bit is dumb or the "It would be cooler if only Materialists could build AIs to start with" bit is dumb (or both)?

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 20:53

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Nuclearmonkee posted:

I will mediate the disagreement.

You are both dumb.

I am dumb.

We are all dumb, and no one cares. Please resume discussion about the many different ways we will be able to commit acts of genocide in the next patch.

Can synths eat other synths for an energy and minerals boost?

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 20:54

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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GlyphGryph posted:

You were specifically advocating we should lose the ability to build robots even if you've already built a bunch, even if your civ is mostly robots and we've been building them for centuries, if we drift away from Materialist.

I'd be fine with limiting the research for synths to materialists, but not with suddenly magically banning what has become a societal norm.

That wouldn't feel good or fun or contribute to good stories at all, imo.

Not robots, Synths and ships with the top tier AI. Losing materialist causing you to automatically reconsider the ethical ramifications of building strong AIs is no weirder than losing materialist causing your society to suddenly automatically decide they're not people anymore.

And I think it would feel better and make better stories!

# ¿ Feb 11, 2017 11:35

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Libluini posted:

All this talk about eating people made me realize there aren't any nice-looking portraits of spiders and centipede-like beings in Stellaris' standard arthropod portraits. After some searching I finally found a really neat black-and-red nightmare of a centipede on deviant art and are trying to work it in as a portrait, but I had no luck with spiders so far.

If we ever get to start as machines, I'm set though: I found two pictures of robot-spiders while searching for nice-looking real spider artwork.

Does anyone know some nice pictures of spiders (webspiders mostly, but hunters would do in a cinch)? And when I say "real", I mean artwork of something that looks like a spider. My image search turned up enough pictures of actual IRL spiders to last my nightmares a lifetime (shudder).

My plan so far is putting those new people-eater portraits into my Weird Portrait mod on the Steam-workshop, including some custom name lists.

The Nova and Galaxy edition have a neat spider dude, but if you've already bought the base version it seems to be impossible to obtain Nova on steam. I really want that spider dude, but not enough to buy a seperate copy of the game which may-or-may-not load into steam :smith:

# ¿ Feb 11, 2017 13:25

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Mokinokaro posted:

I uplifted a race that became fanatical spiritualists while I was fanatical materialists. They became quite a thorn in the side.

To be fair, uplifting is basically the christian creation myth except the serpent has taken over Heaven.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2017 16:28

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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PoptartsNinja posted:

Now we just need to fill that empty 6th slot.

Active Experimentation. Dump mutagens, plague bombs, and random technological artefacts from orbit, watch the results. Warning: May cause X-Men.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 14:56

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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GotLag posted:

remove the fishbowl helmets

Get purged

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 15:52

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Psycho Landlord posted:

I post in here pretty often, is it okay for me to post something like that? Because holy poo poo is he right.

Wiz appreciates the value I've added to his ignore list. Nothing annoys a developer like an underutilized software function.

Aethernet posted:

On weapons tech: the game could do with secondary effects on weapons that are more interesting than +/- shields/armour, and some interactions between secondary effects to create more choices. For example, some kind of 'gluon' cannon that reduced enemy ship speed plus aoe torpedos, countered by afterburners, would be positive.

Yes please. I end up using the power sucker and lightning arc things well beyond their game usefulness just because they're more interesting than Bullets Go Out V2.5.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 09:49

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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oddium posted:

are there any plans on having more than one species in a starting empire, even just cosmetically (so same ethos/habitability/etc). or two empires having the same homeworld maybe

I'd love some weird alternate starts like that, like an empire of two species on different worlds in the same system, or Space Capitalists vs Space Soviets in different systems glowering across the tombworld remains of their original world.
e:

Wiz posted:

Yes.

Details to come.

Oh sweet.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 15:09

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Deceitful Penguin posted:

Why, why WHY are there so few ways to gently caress with pre-spacefarers? The mod that was linked was a good start but drat, if the game isn't ripe for awful things to do with them.
The Pyramid event is honestly one of my favs just because it's there and isn't "oh by the way there's a meteor there"

next time I'm really tempted to just let it slam them

I tried to do this because it seemed the easiest way to deal with the early spaceflight militant xenophobes. At the last minute my ally swooped in out of nowhere and blew it up with a smug grin on their xenophillic rear end in a top hat faces. I was displeased.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2017 08:20

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Poil posted:

My species invented FTL as a last desperate attempt to avoid total extinction as well as a complete depletion of their planet's resources after a global craze of real life Kerbal Space Program.

Has anyone made a Kerbal wait why am I asking

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=681993365

It's beautiful.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2017 08:39

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Serf posted:

Outside of my very first game back when Stellaris came out I don't think I've ever used sectors. Just got a mod that lets you use as many core planets as you want.

Serf posted:

I don't usually finish games, just go until I get bored.

OK so this is going to sound crazy but hear me out...

# ¿ Feb 16, 2017 16:52

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Psychotic Weasel posted:

Lets see if Wiz can break the mold this time.

As per the "win condition vs victory condition" and diplomacy-based planet flipping discussions, Wiz is somewhat against non-murder-based conflict resolution.

I was always a spaceship builder in civ 2.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2017 17:11

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Soup du Jour posted:

The number 1 request finally makes it in:

https://twitter.com/martin_anward/status/832597715557179392

I know I wasn't the first to request this, but I was the first to request it in this thread and that's something.

Not something good, but definitely something.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 17:11

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Nuclearmonkee posted:

It's definitely good.

Oh the thing is good, it's my interest in genetically engineered sapient foodstuffs I'm worried about.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 17:45

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Baronjutter posted:

Imagine gene-modding a conquered species to be delicious.

This was exactly my initial request.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 19:08

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Wiz posted:

There's already a stop atrocities wargoal, and you can save species from extinction by accepting refugees, and potentially by helping rebels.

Go on...

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 22:02

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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AG3 posted:

I've always liked evil and terrible choices in games because even if I don't use them much, they give good choices meaning (provided the evil choices aren't trick/detrimental). It always feels better to roleplay someone good if being terribly evil is a viable option.

This is a really good post.

It also just reminded of me of when I was playing a Xenophile and ended up swamped by a whole bunch of these fast-breeding furry rat dudes on my main species' planets because I wasn't paying attention when I said yes to the migration treaty. I was locked into no purges/resettlement so I couldn't get rid of them by any standard "evil" approaches.

I genetically engineered their entire species from Ocean preference to Arctic preference and watched them all slowly gently caress off to other empires and a few freshly colonised frigid hellhole honeypot worlds. Mrs. Splicer called me "a passive aggressive monster".

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 22:17

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:

Ok so, I love the idea of cannibalism and Delicious species and all that but it's weird as hell that it's ten times more efficient to breed sentient livestock than just... regular... livestock.

But all livestock is sentient :v:

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 19:30

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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I had a planet with stone age primitives on it, and I picked the one that lets them roam (relatively) free. Then I found some terraforming equipment and kicked it off, which wiped all the tile blockers... including the primitives. Except it still has the primitives tag. I guess they're hiding?

# ¿ Feb 19, 2017 16:10

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Pipski posted:

I'm confused! According to the 'species' screen, I have "3 pops [of Cithin] on 0 planets." Certainly seems to be true that they aren't on any of my planets - but in that case where are they? They're pre-sentient anyway, and their homeworld is in my neighbour's system. I need them to use as colonisers, so if there's any way of locating them it would be good.

Check all the planets in your territory that you have not colonised. They're probably chilling on one of them being all dumb and non-sapient at you.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2017 20:03

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:

there is something pure and heartening about how much the person who made that mod loves parrots

His attitude toward helmets is sickening.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 10:25

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Anticheese posted:

drat. He wants to add kakapo and kaka. Respect, mod guy.

Kakapo has fanatic xenophile ethic by default and you can't remove it.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 12:07

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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StrixNebulosa posted:

https://twitter.com/Martin_Anward/status/833640469531914240

Give up your secrets, mysterious honeycomb thing.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 12:41

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Going back to one of the jokes from the gAstronomy discussions, it'd be neat if there were ethics you can't choose at start but your pops can develop. Like Xenophage or Robot Sympathiser.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 13:16

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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GunnerJ posted:

Dunno, it seems a little odd for one particular kind of weirdo government to have a symbol all to itself, but you could be right.

eta: Unless there are different kinds of "hive minds" just like there are different kinds of democracies, oligarchies, dictatorships, and monarchies.

Could do. Like distributed hive mind (original Borg) distributed hive mind with queen (post-First Contact Borg) an actual hive (ants) etc.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 13:19

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Anticheese posted:

I think those would be factions.

Oh, I got the impression the "adopt faction ethos" stuff mainly shoved ethics around. If someone can be a member of the "eat people" faction and gain happiness when meat is on the market, awesome.

Can someone be a member of multiple factions? Can factions trump ethos? Could a "robots have souls" faction arise in a spiritualist empire and adopting their ethos gives robots full rights while not actually affecting your spiritualism ethics?

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 13:35

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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GlyphGryph posted:

Or the most sensible - mega colonies where each pop represents a single distributed organism.

Queen based hives where there is one individual "in charge" are the dumbest thing.

That originally said "dumb post-first contact Borg" but I'm trying to be less judgemental.

And yeah that's a cool image, but mechanically identical to the current pop mechanics. My first race I made in the game was actually based on that idea (sedentary, unsocial, nonadaptive, some other things I forget. I picked the collectivism ethic without reading what it did, was very surprised to find it meant hooray for slaves)

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 16:50

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Libluini posted:

To explain why you are wrong, imagine your guts voting that they should take over your body and your brain should be executed for treason. Instantly, you die. A hivemind works more like a living body and by definition can't work like democracy.

I believe that's called an autoimmune disorder.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2017 00:46

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Hive mind + lovely non-hive mind race used for manual labour because that's all the filthy singletons are good for.

Splicer fucked around with this message at 10:41 on Feb 21, 2017

# ¿ Feb 21, 2017 10:39

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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TG-Chrono posted:

Can these secondary species be an immediate livestock source? Talking cows!

A hive mind that doesn't eat other hive mind races because they only eat lower lifeforms.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2017 10:59

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 05:57

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Yeah, there's 80 possible ethics combos, even if only some of them have unique civics it'll be a hell of a lot more than 15. When you account for it being a combo of two ethics + a government style I pity whatever poor paradox employees were responsible for writing/QAing the naming system.

I wonder if there'll be a "nicer" version of syncretic evolution where you're allies and they both count as "Primary" species.

Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Feb 22, 2017

# ¿ Feb 22, 2017 11:45

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