Stellaris - To Serve Man - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Stellaris - To Serve Man

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Good OP. Good game. Can't wait for the next patch. Ian M Banks is probably my favorite sci-fi author, so I'm glad his expansion is looking so sweet!

But ugh, what a gross thread title.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2017 19:50

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 2, 2024 19:38

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Nevets posted:

I wonder how orbital habitats will work with the combat AI? Right now it shoots at anything belonging to a hostile empire, which is slightly annoying when you plan on capturing a system whose mining stations (if they are still intact) would flip to your empire after you conquer the planet. I'm hoping we will have the ability to blockade planets without blowing up the habitats containing millions of people first.

Destroying orbitals definitely should not be default. And if you chose to do it, it should be seen as an atrocity on the level of purging.

Though that's currently not a terribly satisfying kind of situation. There aren't really enough international consequences for being an rear end in a top hat. The game really needs some sort of passive generic trade benefit to having neighbors that like you, so there are immediate consequences to being an rear end in a top hat. Something like that could be used to balance play styles- either you keep your pops happy with slavery while your neighbors sanction you, or you're a nice country that trades with its neighbors to compensate for the expense of running utopian species policies for everyone.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2017 22:25

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

I don't think it's the case of anyone melting down. Wiz's "It's not funny anymore" was the perfect end to that joke. It's done now.

If you find that someone's bothered by a thing that you don't care about... that's fine, isn't it? Unless your goal is specifically to be an rear end in a top hat, like Chomp, I don't see why going, "huh, I guess that's not appreciated," isn't the default response to this kind of backlash.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2017 00:38

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Ofaloaf posted:

tldr: It's that one scene from Malcolm in the Middle of the dad replacing a light bulb, except it's modding.

Well I have a friend who loves Stellaris and the Austro-Hungarian empire who you are making very happy, so keep up the good work.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2017 02:18

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

OctaMurk posted:

Also feels weird that there is no "City" building so I can turn all my cities into Coruscant.

From a few pages of fleet talk back, but I feel like this would be a nice solution to a lot of the awkwardness about the current grid. If there was some kind of mega-city or arcology improvement that allowed multiple pops to work the same tile, the full worlds would still be able to expand (with a lot of investment and possibly diminishing returns), and the huge worlds would feel lived in and crowded.

I imagine the UI would be difficult, and I wouldn't guess how the resource gameplay would have to be rebalanced, but from a general RP satisfaction perspective I could not want something like that more.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2017 19:52

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

ProfessorCirno posted:

"Fine tune your ships to counter your enemy" runs into the problem of not being able to actually know what your enemy is fielding until they're at your doorstep. It is to some degree yet another reason why the game needs more non-war ways to interact with other empires - being able to actually spy on them and learn what their main weapon and/or defense types are would be huge. It would basically justify being able to fine tune your navy.

Yeah, this is the dumbest part of the ship designer- you're either optimizing (which is solvable, and therefore boring), or countering, which is more fun... except you need to actually engage to see what you need to counter. Unless you wrote down what kind of weapons they had at first contact to let you guess missile/laser/mass driver at least.

I guess you're supposed to leave your fleet in dock and send in a few suicide corvettes to see how you should retool your ships when you start a war?

If the new faction system ends up being influential and good (I'll believe it when I see it, but I'm definitely hoping), then things like assassinations and funding factions in enemy states would be a ton of fun.

You could even bee Culture style assholes, secretly funding equal rights movements, and hopefully not accidentally starting a bloody civil war.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2017 01:16

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

My only complaint is that the "Jupiter Orbital" got renamed to "Jupiter Habitat" at some point.

Habitat might be more clear at communicating what it is, but Orbital is more of a Banks reference, and this is the Banks patch so I have certain expectations. :colbert:

Also that guy who was more excited about terraforming Mars than orbital habitats was loving crazy. Orbitals are where it's at! Can't wait to learn more on Thursday.

And I know it's already been said, but it's pretty important that ships not auto target these things. That would be super hosed up and awkward and frustrating. (Though obviously you should be able to manually gently caress them up if you wanted to be an rear end in a top hat.)

# ¿ Jan 24, 2017 18:04

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Deceitful Penguin posted:

What counters what? How do I see his ships before I just suicide into them? This is where not having any espionage gets very meh.

Mass drivers shoot through shields, but are stopped by armor. Lasers cut through armor but have more trouble with shields. Missiles are hard countered by point defense. There are lots of variations that work differently in each weapon tree, but that's the absolute basics. If you make note of what kind of weapons a species has at first contact, you can at least know which type of defense to invest in. Otherwise you want to keep things balanced and possibly retool during your war.

quote:

Also wish that game start had more options, like more primitives, picking which type of aliens woud spawn and things like that

You can make custom races and then set whether they can sometimes or always spawn.

quote:

Why can't I see the radius that a Forward base or whatever will cover before I build it? Am I doing something wrong or is it a UI failure?

Major UI failure. Sometimes I save the game and build one if I'm not sure, but that sucks 'cause it takes forever to build and I have to replay that time if it's more poo poo than I thought.

I respect that it's kind of difficult to display, since your borders are always variable and there's a sticky kind of way it fills in the gaps... but even like a basic ring would help a lot planning these things out.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2017 18:55

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

ulmont posted:

Mass Drivers (and the rest of the basic kinetic line) are +33% Shield Damage and 0-30% Armor Penetration depending on size.

Lasers (all flavors, so the entire basic energy line) are -20% Shield Damage and 15-60% Armor Penetration depending on size.

So the difference isn't all that amazing between the two.

Yeah, I should have made more clear I was talking about the logical way to remember what counters what, rather than trying to characterize the actual gameplay effects, which are fairly modest.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2017 19:29

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Roland Jones posted:

https://twitter.com/Martin_Anward/status/825031483874168833

This is neat. I wonder how much you can affect things through this; are you still limited to three "points" of ethics, or can you now slide along every axis? If the former, how does it decide what ethics are lost?

Unfortunate that embracing one faction apparently displeases all others, even if they aren't personally at odds, though. Hopefully it's not too bad for factions that aren't opposed to what you embrace, at least.

The way it reads is that you move one stage more xenophobe. So I guess if you were xenophile you'd go neutral. But if you were neutral, the way this reads, you'd just gain an ethic.

So yeah, at the cost of pissing off other factions, looks like you can have more than three ethics points.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2017 20:06

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Reveilled posted:

Once you've allowed magical FTL engines into your setting, magical artificial gravity doesn't seem like it's worth quibbling over.

As others have said, spin based designs just look cooler, and that's the biggest reason the (really neat) designs we're getting aren't exactly what I was hoping for.

But if I may quibble, just a tiny bit, even if you've got magic artificial gravity are we going to assume it takes essentially no energy to maintain? Maybe that's fine for a ship that already has a huge engine producing lots of power, and is presumably designed so that the power going out isn't a huge deal, but a massive planet-equivalent space habitat is on an entirely different scale, with different considerations.

So even if you have artificial gravity, is it really cheaper and more effective than just spinning a drat cylinder or ring?

Since this is the Banks update, The Culture had artificial gravity in their ships, as well as all the magical technology you could imagine*, but they still had giant rings with spin gravity for their huge planet-equivalent orbital habitats.

*Their force manipulation technology made it so that you could have a bubble of atmosphere around the "ship," and people could fly around out there or sit on a deck with nothing between them and space... except the real hull which was an invisible force field. All this gravity and field manipulation done by the sentient ship essentially to entertain its humans. I mention this because you can just go, "magic technology, who cares, it works," or you can go, "magic technology? let's take this poo poo to the most absurd logical conclusions!" and I appreciate Ian M Banks for the latter.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2017 17:48

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

I just want to say that the trailer introducing Utopia, with the Dyson Sphere blocking out the sun, and the cold mist blowing through the streets of what one imagines to be a city-computer where all the populace's minds have been uploaded, with the word "Utopia" appearing was the coolest god drat thing. Because I could imagine that being a legit utopia. But it comes off as creepy as gently caress.

Which is appropriate for Banks.

I could not be more pleased with all the features for this patch/expansion. All we need is universal food and some sort of pop stacking on planets and internal empire development will be perfect.

GlyphGryph posted:

If you implement a culture system without giving a powerful counterplay system aka "a way to fight back" you have only implemented half of the system so yeah duh players dont lile half finished game systems.

that doesnt mean peaceful annexation is bad it just means you need to finish the feature. Blue control decks in Magic arent inherently bad but they would be if there were no way to fight back against them.

Also again I am gonna point out there have been strategy games like 7k where fighting back and countering espionage is often fun in and of itself.

Ironically enough cultural annexation and espionage based systems when implented together can provide strong counterplays for each other.

(also, no way to fight back is actually a good way to describe the current combat system since counterplays are so limited and weak under the majority of circumstances. An espionage and culture system that let you engage on multiple battlefields could help fix that... or make it worse depending on how you implemented it of course)

I missed most of the culture flip argument, but I wanted to add my biggest objection: it doesn't make any sense.

You're describing balancing a gameplay option... which I guess would be possible if you really tried, but what the heck it it supposed to represent?

Let's say you've got a lovely authoritarian Space North Korea next to a cultural giant Space America (or Space France or The Culture or whatever your culture is supposed to represent). What is going on at the border where a populated planet just... shifts administrations? Are you beaming TV shows at them? Are you beaming your ideology? Okay, let's say you've got their population all riled up, and that planet wants to join the cultural hegemon. But Space North Korea has its whole fleet there. Why the heck would they ever agree to the premise "okay, this is now lawfully Space America territory now" and just leave without shooting at things first.

Wiz's response saying players will get pissed if you lose territory without being able to shoot at stuff is only half of it- any political entity (besides truly dedicated democracies) wouldn't agree to the transition without shooting at stuff.

You might be able to balance it like an abstract card game, where the culture card is countered by the espionage card or whatever, but you can never make it feel right, because it's nonsense to begin with.

If you want "peaceful" transition of territory, it's got to be funding rebel groups who would need to give the other empire enough poo poo that they decide to let them go rather than keep fighting them, or something on that level. It needs to make sense.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 20:28

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

I'm getting more and more curious about what's happening to ethics bonuses. It made sense that the private colony ship was being moved out of egalitarianism as it didn't fit anymore. But my favorite part of pacifism was the paradise dome. Well, my favorite part besides the governments that raise your core systems.

Honestly, it's probably a good change to make it so there aren't as many hidden down-the-line bonuses for ethics (I would have no idea about the paradise dome if I hadn't looked it up on the wiki), but there are some buildings like the alien visitor center and monument to purity that are a bit too intrinsically tied to an ethic to go anywhere else.

Between that and per-pop bonuses being taken away, and factions being a major effect of ethics, it seems like the whole system is being shaken up.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 20:05

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

ChickenWing posted:

help goons, I think I may have screwed up

There was a post a while back that said that when starting out, it was a good idea to colonize a minimal number of planets and take advantage of the fact that your research costs didn't go up to out-tech the other empires. How long can you extend this strategy? A nearby AI just ate a couple of his neighbours and now is twice my size and suddenly I'm not technologically outstripping them by a goddamn century, plus a recent post here implied that small-empire strategies aren't really A Thing. Do my pacifist xenophiles need to start making friends at gunpoint? Should I start aggressively terraforming everything within my borders to at least increase my empire density so that I can pump out a comparable navy? Should I put my faith in the AI and try out this whole federation thing? Should I admit that since I'm still Incredibly Bad at this game, I should not gently caress around with RPing my ethics and just paint the hell out of the map?

Never don't RP your ethics.

If you're worried about a bigger neighbor, a federation is a good idea to take them on. Be aware though that your friends will have as much say in your federation's actions as you, and they might ~~act like brain-dead AI sometimes~~ have unknowable alien motivations. You should be able to persuade them into something as simple as liberating a chunk of your larger rival to cut them down to size though.

If you're interested in playing a smaller well developed "tall" empire, you'll currently end up being an underdog, which can be fun to fight back from so that's often how I play. But you'll have a ton more options to support that style in the next patch/expansion which is emphasizing that play style as a more viable option.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 16:17

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Rakthar posted:

If you've set up 50 planets and turned them over to the sector, at 5 minutes of pointless clicking per that's 250 minutes of pointless poo poo you've done this run alone. 4 hours of your life spent setting pretend pixels up so that a utility AI can give you about 50-80% use out of them. Why is there a cap whatsoever when you've already made the players do all the work?

Jesus man, you're not supposed to do that. On your first 10 or so planets, sure, micromanage the heck out of them. But once you're up to 20 and certainly 50 just throw those fuckers in a sector and don't even think about them.

Yeah, they'll be developed sub-optimally, but at a certain point, who cares? Is cranking out that extra marginal advantage over the AI worth four hours of tedium?

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 21:18

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

I hope it's not something xenophiles or pacifists or egalitarians are locked out of. Yes, I'm playing as a group of nice people who like to respect everyone's differences, but I would like to consult our xeno experts about the most effective form of propaganda to discourage our new friends from growing up to believe that all sentient life exists as food for them. I feel like we should have some influence over beliefs like that if we're uplifting a species.

Even if it's mind probes or something invasive, we've lost the "individualist" ethic, and there's nothing inherently non-egalitarian about coercive mind probes to discourage anti-social cultural developments.

Heck, even if we just install a sympathetic government like we do during liberation wars, that'd make more sense than just going, "Oh, okay, you're a slaving xenocidal star kingdom now. This is awkward."

Speaking of installing sympathetic governments during liberation wars, how's that going to work now that ethics can shift? Like most of the population are largely xenophobic and authoritarian, and you install a "nice" government after a war... what's to stop that all from just falling apart in a few years, with their state falling back into the horrible regressive form you found it in?

I mean in terms of realism... actually that checks out. Nevermind.

And I guess if you free a bunch of slaves, they might be more inclined towards the new government's ethics.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2017 18:36

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Baronjutter posted:

I think more things that limit your range and reach, and having that slowly grow as the game progresses would help keep things interesting and keep the sense of exploration and wonder going. This comes back to the problem of the 3 travel methods though, how to keep them "balanced" ? Honestly, would love to see a total re-do of inter and in-system movement.

This would actually make me pretty happy for the dumb reason that... I love to explore, and there's a material benefit to it. But plotting a corvette's route around the galaxy, and then making another one and re-plotting the route when the first get eaten by space monsters, over and over again means I will burn out on the frustrating micromanagement exploration long before I actually finish it.

Sure, I could just... not. But wanting to know whats out there means I'll try if I can. If I don't bother it's because I was burnt out on the idea before I even started.

This happens all the time because I only play hyperlane-only galaxies, because I'm a fan of strategic defense points, which just don't exist outside of that mode. Otherwise I'd just play wormholes which is perfect in this regard. Build a new wormhole at the edge of your explored space, you get a whole bunch of new stars to explore, you do so, and then get to build another wormhole to open up another little chunk to explore.

All FTL types should have range limits that you can boost with stations or something.

Eiba fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Feb 15, 2017

# ¿ Feb 15, 2017 03:24

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Nelson Mandingo posted:

Ouch. That's painful. 3? Hopefully the research price on adding core systems is cheaper, and pops up more often in response. Not a huge fan of the change though. 5 felt just fine.

They made it seem like you'd be getting back up there with tech in a reasonable timeframe, they just wanted to push you to make your first sector sooner at the very start of the game.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 12:13

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

All sorts of mechanics break down with the way they're doing hive species.

If you want to take territory from them you need to genocide them... but is it really genocide if there are only drones, and no individuals on the planets full of beings you're massacring?

Regardless, I'd like to have an option to try to coexist with the drones in some capacity, District 9 style, rather than being forced to send them into death camps (even if they're dying of their own accord, being split off from the rest of the hive).

If I want to be more humane, can I try to liberate them? Or break off a few planets as a vassal? I guess they wouldn't end up sharing your ethics if they have to still be a hive.

Maybe they won't be able to engage in conventional diplomacy at all, but it would be nice if you could play nice with them and have hive mind buddies.

There are a lot of potential problems, and a bunch of ways they could mess it up, but I'm really glad they're trying something so different and out-there!

# ¿ Feb 23, 2017 02:43

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Litany Unheard posted:

Have we gotten any info on the strength/defenses of the new space habitats? How easy will it be for my foes to slaughter my peaceful plant peoples and/or how easy will it be for my fleets to send the filthy xenos careening into the atmosphere to be purged in the flames as is right and just?

They're planets. You won't be able to do anything to them during war. (Until a future expansion that lets you do things to planets too.)

There's a war goal to dissemble them that's equivalent to the war goal to purge a planet.

I don't think we've got confirmation if they can make a spaceport or not though.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2017 19:18

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Baronjutter posted:

Plz wiz I'll pay for a synthetic art pack. We seriously need more distinct art for robots/droids/synths and maybe a robot per general species type. Why all robuts gotta be humanoids??

Yeah, that was my thought at that tweet- cool feature, but mostly a reminder that humanoid-only robots are lame as heck, especially when you can replace your species with them.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 00:07

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Dog Kisser posted:

Makin' robits

This is good and adorable and the best bit is any species could produce a robot like that. Since we don't have hooks to even mod species specific robots, I'm actually pretty excited for something that looks as good as this to be a universal robot replacement in the meantime.

This matters to me more than it should, so keep up the fantastic work!

# ¿ Mar 19, 2017 01:14

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Dog Kisser posted:

Took a while to figure this out! Nothing too fancy here, just replaces robots and whatnot with floating cute balldroids. I'll release the full set of them with my synthetic pack, though in that one they'll just be selectable as regular species.

Perfect! Love the hearts for synths. With this I'm all set for Utopia.

You have no idea how much more appealing this makes total synth conversion.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2017 05:30

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

I don't want to abstract everything away, but I have to admit... the idea of systems working like provinces in Paradox map games and just having fleets fly into the same system and abstracting the rest... sounded kind of nice.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2017 01:53

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Space habitats are going to be awesome.

I'm looking forward to going as tall as possible with a tiny, incredibly densely populated empire.

Also starting with robots.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2017 20:14

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

So this specifically started with a guy concerned that rushing an invasion is way more efficient than colonizing, right?

That sounds bad and, all else being equal, should probably be changed. But it's honestly a really, really minor issue considering you'll never run into it in single player, and you'll never run into it if you aren't playing with assholes.

That guy who plays with competitive people has every right to complain about this point of balance, but honestly it doesn't seem like it should be at the top of Paradox's list to address.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2017 01:15

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Can an egalitarian xenophobe not enslave a species they syncretically evolved with?

Actually, can egalitarian xenophobes not enslave aliens at all? I've never played them before.

Edit: My goal is to make an AI rival that's a "democratic crusader" personality type, with slaves. Is that possible at all?

Eiba fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Apr 8, 2017

# ¿ Apr 8, 2017 18:57

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Things were going nice in my last playthrough, but some frustrating bits messed everything up.

First, I love the mod that lowers the prerequisites for space habitats. It goes well with my robot focused empire of weak intelligent butterflies. We'll all live in space and produce energy and science, while the planets will be filled with robots making minerals and food. I was going for a "tall" happy pacifist empire hiding in the corner of the galaxy, and it was working out well.

Unfortunately I started off right next to a hive mind. So pacifist xenophile that I was, I needed to gear up for war really early and after a harrowing fight just barely managed to defeat them while I could still annex them in one go.

And then they all died. I didn't know I was waging a war of extermination! I guess that's something my species didn't know either... we tried to liberate them but they all slowly wasted away when we decapitated their hive. It was a tragedy (and a kind of wonky game mechanic) but one I was willing to roll with and RP.

I even started researching gene modding as soon as they started dying, but it was too late to save them.

Then I got refugees from a distant empire that had been conquered by fanatical purifiers. That was really neat. They were going to be wiped out if it weren't for me, and they moved into one of the hive mind's planets right before the last one died out, which left me with one planet in a dumb spot, but a really interesting story.

Unfortunately these (adaptable) tropical refugees weren't well suited to the arctic planet they moved to. So some of them moved to my other colonies... but they're repugnant.

So I've got repugnant, poorly adopted refugees scraping by on this planet... and the gene modding tech. This is an easy fix, right?

Nope, for some reason you need access to a species homeworld to gene mod the ones in your empire. What the heck is up with that? Their homeworld is currently being purged by cute fanatical purifier geckos with a ridiculously massive empire.

So my question is- if a species is purged off of their homeworld, can you modify them? Can I wait this out or is the situation kinda hosed?

# ¿ Apr 16, 2017 18:46

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

I tried making a vaguely mixed fleet that was mostly battleships (because battleships are cool) with a few destroyers to screen missiles and cruisers because why not. No corvettes because I didn't see a purpose and I figured they'd just die a lot.

Well that was a mistake. The cruisers zoomed ahead and got focus fired while the rest of the fleet just sat there. I was really mystified how all my cruisers would die in an engagement that didn't even damage any destroyer until I zoomed in to closely watch how a battle unfolded.

Maybe with corvettes the cruisers wouldn't have been so focused on, but as it happens it looks like I hit upon the worst possible fleet composition where I'd lose half a dozen really valuable ships in battles where I greatly outnumbered the enemy.

The fact that I had a general that boosted combat speed may have made things worse, as the battleships and destroyers weren't pushing any speed barriers, so all it accomplished was giving my cruisers more time to be alone with the enemy.

So my conclusion is that destroyers and battleships go together for a long range fleet, and corvettes and cruisers go together for a melee fleet, but do not mix them!

Or at the very least, don't sprinkle in a few melee ships in an otherwise ranged fleet.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2017 16:59

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

So mechanically, I like new pacifism. Internal development is a good place to take that.

But why did they have to get all of the random capitalist flavor text that individualism shed?

If there's one mod I'd download in a heartbeat, it'd be something that changed pacifist factions names to thinks like "people's production committee" and "worker's cooperative association" and stuff.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2017 21:59

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

First game of Utopia I played I got space habitats with my second ascension perk. Of course, I was gunning for those techs as hard as I could with that civic that gives you an extra research option and a huge focus on engineering research (went well with my robots for multiple reasons). Less then 10 years later energy was a joke, and it remained that way for the rest of the game.

Later I played with a mod that lowered the requirements a whole lot, and got space habitats with my first perk. That was kind of silly and mainly balanced by the fact that I was playing a four system empire. Eventually I had to super focus all my planets on minerals to balance my insane energy, and managed to crank out an empire-level output from just a few systems. It was really fun and difficult at times, but if I'd done that and expanded as far as I could it'd be super broken.

So on the balance... I think it's fine? They're a big deal, but fairly hard to get and that seems balanced.

I would really like an earlier version for RP reasons. It feels good to have people living in orbitals. My proposal for earlier habitats would be to make their buildings less effective at the start, and have them upgrade over time automatically (their build-'em-and-forget nature is a great feature that keeps them from being overwhelming when you spam them everywhere).

The other mega structures though... at least they're cool ideas. Requirements should probably be lower since they're honestly not all that useful.

Except the science stations. That's not even a cool idea. Why are science stations so lame? At least they could have a cool concept like if they were massive supercomputers that simulated an entire universe or something, or if they were basically dyson spheres you built around black holes for absurd levels of science. As it is they're super :geno:

Eiba fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Apr 19, 2017

# ¿ Apr 19, 2017 01:54

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Guildencrantz posted:

This seems like it could work out pretty well. You can't make buildings auto-upgrade, but you can scale their outputs with techs and AP's. This would make early habitats way less efficient than just settling a planet, but eventually unlock into being super good. Do you mind if I steal this idea?

That'd be really cool. I'd like to see how that concept works out to balance things in the game.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2017 16:14

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Applewhite posted:

I'm the update being named after Iain M. Banks not having the option to build non-ringworld orbitals or have your society run by hyperintelligent Minds.

I think one of the early screenshots called habitats orbitals. So there's that at least.

Hyperintelligent Minds would be a great ascention path. Way better than just uploading everyone into robots and wiping out all differentiation. I usually get cyborgs and call it a day because I don't want everything to become one undifferentiated robotic mass (that I have to build manually).

If you could unlock a special advanced AI government type that was as hard to get and gave similar level of benefits but left your people to do whatever they wanted, that'd be Banks as gently caress and also a lot of fun.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2017 16:46

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Synthetic evolution is really unsatisfying. I like playing materialists who are also egalitarian and xenophile, with a nice multicultural population. Turning them all into robots is so... boring.

In Ian M Banks' Culture series there's something called Subliming where an advanced civilization decides to transcend the material world into another plane of existence. All at once. Together. And I remember the (egalitarian, materialistic) Culture was kind of mistrustful of this. They were more than advanced enough to Sublime, but they had poo poo to do in the real world, and they always felt it must be somehow be coercive for an entire species to Sublime all at once.

That's how I feel about Synthetic Evolution. Okay, it's a great idea, and I would love to give that option to my people... but enforcing it on everyone, even all the aliens and non-materialists who have joined my pluralistic society, feels really inegalitarian.

I love going for The Flesh is Weak, as I can imagine there's a diverse population using cybernetics however they please and on average giving me those bonuses, but full robot is way too authoritarian for me to stomach.

I wish there was some sort of way to benefit from going step one, but not step two of an ascension path- like you get to go to the first step of another one, but you can't get the final rank without going all in. I would love to split the first rank of biological ascension and cybernetics, especially as I tend to end up doing a lot of gene modding to make new people who come to my empire cybernetic.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 04:00

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Baronjutter posted:

Just getting the flesh is weak is all you need. Cyborgs and non-cyborgs and synths all living together in harmony in a big cool culture-like society.

Yeah, that's what I end up doing. It's great.

All my other ascension perks focus on building space colonies and so on, and all is well roleplay-wise.

It just feels weird, gameplay-wise, to lock myself out of the other ascension paths without any plans to finish the one I technically started.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 06:34

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

I wonder if it'd be worthwhile for some sort of "biological processing" tech after you get synths that allow them to utilize food as an energy source and basically have synths become regular pops, or if that'd get rid of too much of their flavor. Maybe have such a tech unlock a policy so you can chose how to play it.

Or even just have a policy of "unrestricted synth reproduction" or something. Let synths build more of themselves as they please. I mean, among all the other authoritarian things synthetic evolution does, it robs everyone of their right to reproduce. Let us give that back to them, and solve a gameplay problem at the same time.

Robots and droids being different than other pops makes sense and is cool, but once you get to synths you've kind of thrown that differentiation out the window anyway so they should probably drop some of their now pointless gimmicks.

Alternately just give us an option for each planet to auto build robots until a certain number exist. Building exactly one robot at a time, with no indication that the robot is complete, while competing with biological pops filling up the planet, is not good or fun.

Reveilled posted:

It's maybe worth noting, though, that the event text for the flesh is weak says that the cybernetic enhancements would be "mandatory but free", as if getting your eyes forcibly ripped out and replaced with new models which probably have a SpaceNSA-required backdoor which allows them to be turned off remotely is a-ok as long as you don't have to pay for it.

Plus you'd probably have to make an In-Head Purchase to remove the ads.

Well yeah, the flavor text is totally authoritarian, but I do my best to ignore that. It doesn't need to be so authoritarian.

It would be cool if free societies had a nominal influence cost when modifying species- either cybernetics or regular biological modification- to represent the fact that they have to convince their people to go along with it. Non-egalitarians could do it for cheaper, and authoritarians would do it for free.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 17:58

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

GlyphGryph posted:

Thats not voluntary migration though which is the part that seems broken.

Anyway I have had a ton of migration but exclusively to habitats. Once I build one of those the migrants come straight up pouring in. No one will ever migrate to a normal planet though

Yeah, I thought this was weird too. Like, I've colonized marginally habitable worlds to my guys that are perfect for my neighbors, I had a size 20-something gaia world with a visitor center and every migration edict I could think of, migration treaties with three or four neighboring empires, and no one moved there except some refugees from across the galaxy.

But as soon as I built habitats, migrants came pouring in.

I've seen my pops planning to move to neighboring empires, but I don't think I've ever seen them successfully leave now that I think about it.

It's also weird that I get basically no internal migration except for newly colonized planets. That giant gaia world with "land of opportunity" active had people moving away from it to the colonies, but no one ever moved there even though it was basically empty.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 18:45

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Wiz posted:

Always-war mechanics have been completely awful every time we put them in our games. I'm not keen to repeat that mistake.

Always-war seems bad, but the setting of this game really demands some way to opt out of the whole diplomatic system. Fanatic purifiers and devouring swarms being forced to obey arbitrary peace treaties just feels wrong.

It's hard to imagine an elegant solution, but it's a real atmosphere problem.

Maybe if you add a space UN later you could opt out and not play by the rules, but if you act too egregiously there could be some sort of huge penalties enforced by those in the space UN.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2017 03:09

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

We can finally be the Culture! I'm amazed at a game that's going so totally in a direction I want. I'm not used to that.

Relevant Tangent posted:

This is explicitly not the case. Everyone in The Culture votes to go to war and a ton of Minds and Humans decide to leave and become nomads rather than fight. The whole deal with The Culture that infuriates the other Involveds is how thoroughly they respect individuals.

Feel free to respect individuals as a rogue servitor. You're being kinda coercive if you invade other species who don't want what you're offering, but there's nothing in their basic premise that means you can't RP it as an entirely consensual deal, entirely respectful of individuals.

And in any case, playing a slightly more paternalistic variation of the Culture that doesn't give a poo poo about the misinformed desire for "self determination" of people who live in the chaos and misery outside of their paradise, and makes sure that everyone has access to their heaven-like paradise, by force if necessary, is probably more interesting in a 4X like this with limited diplomatic options.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2017 20:10

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 2, 2024 19:38

Eiba: Jul 26, 2007

Wiz posted:

They're pretty rare in 1.6/1.7, also have some bugs that make them rarer. Being a Xenophile refugee haven is a much stronger strategy in 1.8.

Very important question: Can you be a refugee haven as rogue servitors?

I feel like people fleeing genocide would be relevant to the interests of oppressively benevolent robots, and surely some refugee pops would be willing to give this whole 'material paradise' thing a try, even if it means giving up their autonomy.

Also, will they get xenophile wargoals like stop atrocities and stuff like that?

Rogue servitors are basically the greatest thing you've added to this game, and it seems like other folks are similarly interested, so I hope they're well supported with sensible flavor/RP stuff.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2017 19:45

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Stellaris - To Serve Man

«‹›3 »