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Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Rumda posted:

Purging seems to be done on a species by species level only come Banks.

Right, that's what GunnerJ was asking about, whether the new purge mechanics would prevent you murdering dissidents to maintain your ethos balance

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Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
taking other ethos points is disrespectful to The Hive imo

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Fintilgin posted:

Yeah, it's pretty great. Kinda wondering if they're even going to announce a new game this year or if it's all going to be DLC and we won't see V2/Rome 2/Diplomacy 2 until late 2018.

Dude have I got some great news for you

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Quorum posted:

I always interpreted the Symbol of Unity as representing, in addition to a single monument, an effort to fill the society with repeating images and memes to reinforce the intended ethics, sort of like the Statue of Liberty + the repeated usage of the Statue of Liberty to symbolize various American ideals.

man I thought it was just a big gently caress-off symbol but I like the idea that it's actually just a bunch of space americans putting flags on cash registers for some reason

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

but then you'd see that literally everyone after the first two replies are disagreeing with those guys

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
It's also possible to find anomalies associated with a different precursor than the one you're on the chain for, but as far as I can tell it's impossible to actually get the artifacts

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Splicer posted:

The only thing they can't do is research good. Unless you're talking about how they (presumably) can't be leaders until you get the leaders from all species tech, which again wouldn't see as gamebreaking.

I'm presuming difficulty with adding a "leaders from just your TWO starting races" option is one of the main reasons, as if they're explicitly subservient it handily sidesteps the issue.

Isn't that going to be set per-race now anyway?

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Baronjutter posted:

This can also be a big divide. To people like us who only play single player and just want cool emergent stories that are forced into consistency by good mechanics, others expect e-sports level of "balance" for their hyper-competitive multiplayer matches where everyone's just minmaxing to gently caress and doing whatever exploits or gamey poo poo possible to win.
yeah and the divide is "do you actually know what the word balance means"

there's this dumb idea that balance means homogeneity (or "consistency" if you prefer), but a well-balanced game will have more diversity because it has fewer obviously correct choices

GlyphGryph posted:

Imo gently caress the idea of the mechanics being fair and balanced I just want the game to be involve lots of interesting decisions that build emergent stories.

balanced mechanics are very important if you want interesting decisions! unless your idea of "interesting" is "I feel really smart for not choosing the trap choice"

Baronjutter posted:

Chill fun social players don't ruin poo poo. It's the group I specifically described that finds all sorts of dumb exploits that then sometimes get entire options deleted because they're impossible to totally fix against anti-social hyper-competitive jerks.

I, too, want broken poo poo in the game and also want to get real mad at people for using it

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

GlyphGryph posted:

Balanced mechanics and interesting decisions are almost completely tangential concerns. Its perfectly possible to have boring balance and exciting imbalance.

Also we know of exactly one guaranteed trap choice in Utopia and we are all probably gonna end up picking it because come on who wouldnt.

You can make bad and suboptimal options fun and desireable while still leaving them bad and suboptimal.

none of this beyond the first sentence actually contradicts what I said, which is not surprising given that what I said is obviously true I guess?

the fact that you can have interesting decisions in a poorly balanced game is not actually inconsistent with the fact that better balance tends to lead to more interesting decisions

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
has anyone suggested porting Historically Accurate Pirates to stellaris yet

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Bloodly posted:

That was that 'Super-Pirates' thing, wasn't it?

That'd be tricky at present, since the Pirates are a spawn, not a true faction on the map.

The closest would probably be a map spawn where almost every star has monsters/pirates on it. Or seriously bump up the 'Birth of Space Piracy' event-ramp up the strength of the spawned ships, ramp up the skills and abilities of the spawned admirals.

EDIT: Hmm. If one turned the AI to 'on' for Pirates in 00_country_types, perhaps? But then....they still couldn't do colonisation and building and such, because they have no Spaceport. I'm not up enough on that sort of thing to be able to change or add such a spawn.

you could also add historically scientifically accurate features like a -50% mineral malus for pirates attacking transports, scientists periodically defecting to the university of pirate science, and pirate saboteurs blowing up space docks. any of these could be suppressed for a year by negotiating with the pirates (-2000 energy -100 influence) or fighting them (half of your fleet defects because piracy pays better than government work)

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Aethernet posted:

That gives me time to finish off my EUIV Byzantium run and then take my Basileus into space. I wonder what ethics to take to represent a really specific hatred of Lithuanians...

I think that's collectivism

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

canepazzo posted:

When can we castrate and blind slave pops, Wiz?

good point, for a paradox game stellaris is very lacking in proper byzantine empire mechanics

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Sultan Tarquin posted:

*Fixed bug where AI would check to see if they could castrate every sentient being in galaxy

byzantium fell because 15th century processors just couldn't keep up with all those castration checks

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
I don't think wiz intended it but yes, that tweet does read as making GBS threads on people with coeliac disease and it's perfectly fair for people to be annoyed by it

Lifeglug posted:

look at all these people itt saying triggering and triggered like redditors

also this

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Dwesa posted:

Wiz, notice me senpai, are buildable superstructures also destructible? Destroying Dyson sphere around the star restores frozen planets?
I guess I will find out in April anyway.

presumably even if they were, destroying one wouldn't restore the frozen planets, you can't freeze and defrost a planet and have it be good as new

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
There's no reason to build corvettes and destroyers once you get cruisers in stellaris though?

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Kitchner posted:

If you had fleet of cruisers and battleships only I could, in theory destroy them with corvette with torpedoes because you'd struggle to hit my ships but I would do massive damage to you.

Its best to always have a mixed fleet

I thought cruisers-corvettes was still fine or is that destroyers-corvettes?

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

GunnerJ posted:

This is kind of a strange point because the opportunity cost of not building a power plant isn't relevant to the comparison given that you can't get energy out of a space rock or whatever that gives only minerals. And anyway, I do need some minerals. Replacing all my mines with power plants will solve my energy flow problem but introduces another and inefficiently uses tile bonuses.
No, it's exactly the correct comparison to make. If you're turning down 2 minerals for 1 energy because you don't think the conversion rate is good enough, it makes no sense to build mines over power plants, where the minerals you get vs. the energy you lose (from not replacing that mine with a power plant!) is way worse than a 2:1 ratio.

GunnerJ posted:

So I'm not even going to think about that. That doesn't matter to me when I'm comparing spending 1 energy-per-month on a 2 mineral asteroid/etc to adding 2 minerals produced (from a mine network) to a tile that already gives 1+ minerals. That's at least a 3:1 ratio. Further upgrades are less efficient but still beat 2:1. If we're talking about a tile that gives 2 minerals (directly comparable to a 2-mineral asteroid), then even with a basic mine it's 3:1, upgraded to a mine network it becomes 4:1.

Yeah, this is all nonsense because you're comparing it building nothing on that tile, which is not the actual alternative.

(whereas with mining stations building nothing on that asteroid is the alternative)

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

GunnerJ posted:

Yes, this is why I keep emphasizing that this is a temporary thing. When I am not worried about energy flow, I build mining stations on even crap rocks.


Alright, but look man, I don't sit around with a spreadsheet planning out my pretend space empire. I'm talking about what makes sense over the ebb and flow of the developing economy. I guess part of that thought process I haven't really mentioned is the tedium of dealing with tiles. Am I going to want a power plant on a mineral tile forever? I don't want to deal with replacing that poo poo later because of a temporary crunch. In the long run I want to use tiles in ways that take advantage of what they offer (until the very endgame I guess). I am never going to get anything out of space rocks besides what they offer so once I build mining stations on them, I don't have to worry about whether I'm using them effectively enough again.

I mean if you're just saying you can't be bothered with the micro fair enough (stellaris tile management is pretty tedious and bad imo) but you seemed to be trying to argue it was also the correct play optimisation-wise which it clearly isn't

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
managing pops is pretty grim as it is, I can't imagine an overpopulation mechanic being fun at all

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Baronjutter posted:

Any increase in ship design detail would have to correspond to wayyy better feedback and focus on battles. Stellaris doesn't have turn based combat like other 4x games, it doesn't even stop the game to process the combat letting you pay full attention. If anything the combat and ship design needs to be drastically simplified presenting only a few actually meaningful balanced choices.

it's the same basic problem as combat in every paradox game, you've got all these detailed mechanics but the experience for the casual player is "highest number wins, except when it doesn't for some reason"

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
now that I think about it, it's kind of weird that when you advance from pre-ftl to ftl civilisation you replace all of your heavy industry with mines

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Baronjutter posted:

The game should have modeled industry and had "minerals" being things factories consume to make "production" or "industry units", which is what you'd spend to build things. Maybe have a few raw resources. Clipper factories etc.

just make victoria III but in space imo

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
I would say that I will buy any game that shamelessly rips off SMAC's atmosphere & writing but having played beyond earth I will amend that to "I will buy any game that competently rips off SMAC's atmosphere & writing"

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

GunnerJ posted:

CBE never really even tried to rip off SMAC's atmosphere and writing imo. I mean in terms of atmosphere it was like the anti-SMAC.

can you seriously tell me that this is not an inept attempt to ape SMAC

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

fondue posted:

Likewise, I'm so bad at this game but love watching people play it and really want to get better. The user interface is so loving frustrating though it drives me insane.

yeah there are a lot of things that need to be fixed with the UI

at the top of my list currently would be that either it should be easier to get to and build spaceport stuff (including ships) at sector planets, or you shouldn't be able to do it at all

e: also more generally it should be harder to accidentally end up on the opposite side of the galaxy from whatever you were trying to examine. this is especially bad when giving a ship orders to move to a specific place in a different system

Jeb Bush 2012 fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Mar 14, 2017

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Hot Dog Day #82 posted:

I wish I was good enough at the internet to make heads or tails out of Reddit. I like the dated layout of these dead gay forums much more, though I guess these days that is like preferring a phonograph to iTunes or whatever it is the kids use now

Nah, branching reply threads (like reddit) and linear threads (like SA) have both been around for ages, neither is more dated than the other. Also, the former type has always sucked balls for discussions with more than 10-20 comments

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

GlyphGryph posted:

Synths should also get a lot of their own hosed up alternatives to drugs and mind control lasers. Perfect thought monitoring and control opportunities when everyone is networked up for an empire unscrupulous enough to take advantage of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3RjP6_TV0E

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Crazycryodude posted:

drat now I wanna know what the other idea was now, too. Wiz, you know goons can keep a secret, you can tell us.

grand strategy rather than 4x maybe? i.e. you start established in a galaxy that's already mostly colonised, along the lines of EU etc.

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Rakthar posted:

It's odd how people oscillate between "We can ask Wiz gameplay questions" and "We can keep asking about upcoming unnanounced stuff and stuff they go out of their way to avoid talking about". I have a feeling one will be more fruitful than the other, good luck goons.

like one person actually asked him about that here and it was obviously a joke?

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
Taking planets feels like a terrible deal at the moment because you could take like 2-3 planets or you could vassalise them and then get all of the planets in 10 years time

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

ulmont posted:

There's a maximum size for vassalizing an empire, too.

it's way bigger than 3 planets though

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

CrazyLoon posted:

after messing around with the defines.lua a bit, I wonder if anyone knows - does setting the game options to 'hyperdrive only' make it impossible to obtain jump drives in the endgame?

I never stick around long enough to get to jump drives but iirc it does not

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

JuniperCake posted:

During the crusades, one faction of Christendom and another faction of Islam would often join forces to fight a different faction of Christendom joined with another faction of Islam. Hell one of the crusades was just crusaders from mainland europe ransacking Constantinople which was another Christian city. You'd be surprised how far, the whole enemy of my enemy thing gets you as far as unlikely allies go. It wouldn't be that hard to imagine that the spiritualistic folks of a planet might join together to defend against weird aliens that they feel threaten their way of life.

that's not what he's talking about though, it's that evangelising zealots specifically like other evangelising zealots more than they like other people, despite their presumably different religions

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Dog Kisser posted:


Makin' robits

this is great

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

GunnerJ posted:

This works pretty well but can't do anything about the fact that I apparently need to have colonized a planet to do anything with them, which is cool because the pre-sentients I found are on an arid world and so are perfect for colonizing all the arid worlds I can't colonize.

send in a robot?

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Cyrano4747 posted:

ITs been a while since I checked in. Do we have any ETA on the next big patch? I've been itching for a game, but it seems like a lot of changes were floating around a while ago.

Utopia is coming April 6th, so I assume the accompanying patch will release at the same time

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

PittTheElder posted:

Anyone have experience creating custom pre-set starting systems? Thinking of creating a SMAC themed start, so I'd like to be able to start in Alpha Centauri, and have Earth nearby, but whether it's a tomb world or not I haven't decided.

make every pop start with a different one of 7 mutually incompatible ethics combinations imo

also they are being eaten by mindworms

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Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

OwlFancier posted:

That event was very buggy for me too, The mutants were using planetary fortifications which I couldn't bombard because it was still technically my planet.

yeah this is also a known issue I think

fortunately when it happened to me I had a titanic life uprising on the same planet shortly afterwards and they hurt each other enough that I could send in my army afterwards

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