|
Truga posted:I'm completely new to this game, but can I dump my starting dudes entirely and replace them all with robots/androids? Yes. And in 1.5 you can even transform your "starting dudes" into robots themselves, so replacing them isn't necessary anymore!
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2017 18:10
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:09 |
|
|
Patrat posted:Though I wonder if you can still have spiritualist robots who hate you because you allow the existence of robots. I'm not sure, the Ascension perks allowing your people to become first cyborgs, then robots are probably not available for spiritualists, since you have to be materialist to even unlock them. But maybe it's possible to have spiritualist pops in your empire, which you can transform into robots against their will when you reach your ascension? That would be a way to get spiritualist robots.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2017 18:30
|
|
|
oddium posted:stellaris - it means "star is" Not really. quote:Translation and Definition "stellaris", Latein-English Dictionary Online:
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2017 19:02
|
|
|
Kitchner posted:
We will get  orbital habitats in 1.5, that makes the game so awesome it immediately rises on your arbitrary scale of measurement. So I had to fix it, sorry!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2017 21:32
|
|
|
Well, that makes sense. If someone fights for their independence, and you defeat their military forces but don't actually try to get them back under your control, you can't really say they lose. They're still free, after all!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2017 02:07
|
|
|
RabidWeasel posted:
I know goons sometimes have trouble with the concept that other people may like different things, but some of us actually like fiddling around with ship design. Taking it out would remove a huge reason for us to play the game. But that said, the ship designer in Stellaris still needs some improvement. It's kind of silly how you can't rename old designs for example. (Well you can, but that confuses the auto-designer and the refit-AI, causing them to bulldoze all your old ships into one of their designs. Seeing your 20 torpedo corvettes transformed into whatver dumb poo poo the AI cooked up is incredibly frustrating.) Anyway, this is a case where I recommend improving things instead of taking them out. Libluini fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Jan 22, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2017 15:11
|
|
but it's literally just a simple optimisation problem you totally ignore except when you unlock new tech. As someone else said planetary tiles are similar but I feel like that has more potential to actually be interesting to work with in future (though there is an annoyingly high level of micromanagement required if you want to be optimal) and in any case removing it would require a total rework of pops while removing the ship designer would only require a few small changes to techs
|
oddium posted:what they want is boring and what i want is cool so i feel like i'm in the right here Well, I think what you want is boring and what I want is cool, so we're at an impasse here. 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2017 16:16
|
|
|
Wiz posted:The issue with any sort of totally free system where you can design any ship to be any role is that it pretty much always ends up that the biggest ship is best at every role. That's why we have fixed roles now. Counterpoint: Space Empires V. It has exactly this, a free system to design any ship to be any role. And if you only make bigger ships, you will run into one problem after another. For example, you don't want the ships spearheading a warp point assault to be your biggest hull. The totally free system means you can, of course. It will result in glorious explosions, even: Mostly your own ships, though. And swarms of small, cheap ships can totally take down a huge lumbering battleship if you design them right, so wasting tons of resources on battleships isn't always the way to go even in straight-up standard battles.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2017 17:40
|
|
|
Jazerus posted:Agreed, why aren't we sailing around on galleons between the stars? Sailing ships in space would still be space ships! A space game without space ships would be a 4x where you travel around using gates and moving stuff through said gates. This is actually a neat idea: Start with some kind of machine capable of opening rifts, rends or whatever in space, allowing you to send ground troops and other poo poo straight-up from planet to planet. Go from there, see where it ends.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2017 18:46
|
|
|
Wiz posted:The army system is basically guaranteed a rework. I really, really don't like the pointless micro. Yeah, the ground system is a bit silly. I like conducting invasions, but two things about Stellaris' system are immensely frustrating to me: First, the way you have to add attachements to every single army click by click. Second, the way a general can only be attached to a single army, because that makes no goddamn sense. Is that general actually influencing all armies on the same planet as he is, (which would be dumb, but at least not make them a waste) or is he actually only controlling that one army he is put in? For some reason I get headaches trying to find out how this is supposed to work. Allowing us to have Army Groups as an equivalent to Fleets and the ability to add attachments to multiple armies at the same time (like, maybe over a Army Group interface?) would neutralize a lot of what is wrong with the army system.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2017 19:38
|
|
|
Beer4TheBeerGod posted:Making invasions more event-based like CK2 sieges would be cool. I want to hear about how in spite of my limited bombardment campaign one of my cruisers accidentally glassed an entire university and now the entire academic population is actively working against us. What is it with people always wanting to rip out entire features from their games? Is that some weird kind of video game nihilism taking form here? Seriously, rework the army system a little bit, maybe even throw a couple events in, done. Just "Getting rid" of armies makes no sense.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2017 19:58
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:Sword of the Stars removed planetary buildings from the space 4x equation and nothing was lost. You don't need to click 50 times to make resource collection numbers go from +5 to +15. And Sword of the Stars II went one step further by abstracting the ship movement system to some kind of retarded order-system where you didn't even have direct control over your fleets anymore, therefore removing even more clicks! Anyway, I think we have discussed armies in Stellaris to death now, at least until Wiz can start reworking them.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2017 23:56
|
|
|
GlyphGryph posted:Hey guys, since that Goon race pack never actually happened, I'm gonna throw my own together. SPECIES SUBMISSION OK, I went through my empires and retrieved the most interesting ones, here they are: I. Doncorcs The Doncorcs are space crocs and capitalists through and through. They're also oddly charismatic, being able to scam and swindle everyone they meet. They do love their own freedom (to commit fraud), though.  Doncorcs posted:"Ubersoft Incorporated" II. Ghich The Ghich are the absolute opposite from the Doncorcs: Even literally, since they are denizens of the deep sea! They have been trying for ages to think something they call the "Deep Thought" and no-one has any idea what that is or what would happen if they succeed. They are oddly fanatical about their devotion to thinking this "Deep Thought".  Ghich posted:"Principality of Thought" III. Byr The Byr are catoids (felines) who formed a star nation they called the Lyran Commonwealth. The leader who took over the government after development of the first FTL-drive was Archon Catrina Steiner. She is still leading the Commonwealth when you start the game with this empire. The Byr think they are "peaceful" now, after the end of their bloody unification war, but from an alien viewpoint they are still rather militaristic. Edit: I should mention that I used the Cat Portraits Dimorphism mod, since it makes cats look more like cats than the original portraits. Those make me think the devs played far too much Wing Commander in their childhood. The empire is still playable without that mod, it just makes Catrina Steiner invisible and all future leaders will look like Kilrathi-rejects, even the female ones. If you can live with that travesty, or if that mod is somehow included in a future Goon Pack, go ahead and try this species.  Byr posted:"Lyran Commonwealth" I still have seven more races I made for the Goon Mod, but I decided I shouldn't post them all at once. Ten races complete with descriptions and code blocks sound a bit overwhelming for a single post. Next batch coming soon!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2017 22:27
|
|
|
OK, gently caress it: Next SPECIES SUBMISSION: IV: Conecha The Conecha are venomous butterflies from a tropical hellworld where everything is poisonous, toxic, venomous or a combination of all three. Evolving on a world where everything tries to kill everything with poison made them incredibly xenophobic. Luckily they can't poison aliens, thanks to their homeworld's biology being incompatible to other forms of life. Still, this doesn't make things better since a Conech's instinctive reaction to everything new is to spit poison on it: With aliens, this doesn't work. This feels creepy and unnatural to every Conech, which results in an unhealthy amplification of their natural xenophobia.  Conecha posted:"Fyeris Condensate" GlyphGryph posted:Yeah in hindsight a pastebin is probably better. Well gently caress, didn't see this post until now. Would have felt pretty dumb to go through the work of posting ten civs, only to lose seven like that. I guess I better stop now. 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2017 22:43
|
|
|
Azuth0667 posted:Can I destroy enemy habitats? I've read the dev diary. Answer: No you can't, habitats are handled like planets in space and since there aren't ways to destroy a planet, there also aren't ways to destroy a space habitat. You can take them over and murder all former inhabitants with a purge, though.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2017 15:26
|
|
|
Wiz posted:Nah, I have a decent bit of insight here and AI simply isn't a priority for most strategy game developers. There are many reasons for this, a big one is that there's simply not a good knowledge base in the industry about how to make strategy game AI. There's tons of people with experience coding FPS bot AI and they tend to be hired to make strategy game AI, but making a bot AI and a strategy game AI are completely different disciplines. There's other issues, like the fact that game developers don't play their own games, but I'm completely honest when I say that players being utterly dreadful when it comes to feedback about AI is no small factor. From the perspective of people who make the decisions, you basically always get the same amount of 'the AI is completely braindead and broken' because people will say this and only this no matter how large or small the issue they encounter is. Like you'll hear it just as much over AI literally ceasing to take any actions as you will over the AI, say, picking something that gives it 5 resources instead of 6. It's utterly toxic and completely discourages companies from giving a poo poo about AI. This reminds me, the AI in Galactic Civilizations II could do impressive poo poo like using the player to fight a proxy war for them. Why is no-one in the industry hiring those guys to make their AI? At least oddly machiavellian decisions like that made a game interesting, even if the AI ploughed you under. It's not like the really unfun AI in Lost Empire, where the AI-players relentlessly steamroll you if you're not min-maxing as hard as you can from day 1. In the first case, the AI being too good adds to the fun by just messing with you, in the latter case you're just stressed out trying to keep up with your robotically efficient adversaries.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2017 23:01
|
|
|
Wiz posted:I've gone into depth on this topic many a time, so I hope this doesn't come off as dismissive, but... as it stands, machine learning is a complete pipe dream for games of any real level of complexity. About the only games that can employ it outside of highly limited/selective implementations is fighting games, and even there it's in its infancy. The belief in technology and algorithms over simple iterative work is actually a huge issue with strategy game AI, people want easy solutions and they just don't exist. It's about hard work, a bit of design know-how and a thorough understanding of the game you're working on. From the bits and pieces I remember, the problem with using machine learning to make game AI is that this only works really well if you're building a customized AI and then slowly feed it with knowledge about your game. In the end, you've expended tons of resources and years of hard work on this and get a really, really good AI for your game. Which will only and only work for this one game and immediately break when the devs try to port it into a future project. I remember IBM spending years of work and tons of money on a new AI capable of being a really good search engine. They even made it play Jeopardy and win against Human players. But while their result was certainly impressive, it wasn't really cost-effective to get a slightly better search engine this way. So you could use machine learning for strategy game AI, it would just need even more hard work, know-how and a thorough understanding of your own game to get slightly better results then the normal way. And you'd need to hire expensive experts on this kind of thing. FPS-AI programmer probably won't cut it. There's therefore no reason for a company making video games to invest so much for so little gain.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2017 23:12
|
|
|
Wiz posted:The Gal Civ AI is the work of one guy with (as far as I understand it) basically the same approach we at PDS have. Tons of people rag super-hard on the Gal Civ AI, btw, further emphasising my point above. Interesting, sounds like AI-programming is more art than science. 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2017 23:16
|
|
|
Wiz posted:A search engine playing Jeopardy is a much more fertile soil for machine learning because it has clear win/loss states. Personally, I think machine learning will only start working for complex problems like this one after we completely learned to replicate the decision making our own brains are capable off. But at that point the very true AI we could make would probably take as long as a real human to properly train and prepare for real life. And at that point it would make more sense to wait a couple years for the new AIs to get citizen rights and then just hire one for your company, instead of spending a couple hundred million dollars on making your own. The real irony of this is of course, to get good strategy games having true AI isn't enough if the AI just gets bored and vomits out bad FPS-level AI, so you'd need to hire an AI who is Wiz posted:Or to put it another way... the best AI programmers tend to also be hobby game designers. a hobby game designer itself.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2017 23:29
|
|
|
Aethernet posted:Looks like the Enigmatic Fortress. Might get some stronger star bases? The style reminds me a bit of this weird playable AI-shipset mod. Someone made an entire group of robot races, including a shipset. With the exception of the missing neon-colors, this looks a lot like a better version. So maybe playable AI?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2017 11:27
|
|
|
Psychotic Weasel posted:Why not just allow species to slwoly cross breed and create new species? Watch in real time as you new half horse/half stegosaurus race comes onto the scene. After 200-300 years of gameplay you'll have a whole galaxy full of nightmares running around. It would probably work like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngm6ST0HL6U
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2017 20:24
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Replace ship and planet graphics to be correctly scaled, add COUNTERS to help players see where their units are Correctly scaled? Huh, OK but only if they add an auto-zoom function for automatic zooms to everything you want to look at. Otherwise your hands would probably fall off from all that zooming and scrolling.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2017 21:47
|
|
|
Wiz posted:Maybe a post-apocalypse alternative to cockroaches? What would be the giant animal that's taken over though? Besides giant animals, what about rats? This talk about post-apocalyptic Earth reminds me of this movie where some poor bastards survive a lot of dumb poo poo, only to be rescued by literal ratmen in the end. (The end is incredibly, hilariously overblown with the survivors screaming like those rat people are the most horrible thing ever. Dudes, they saved you, they probably won't suddenly start nibbling on you.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2017 00:15
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Did the movie ever get a name? Coolguye posted:i believe we're referencing Rats Night of Terror here I couldn't remember the name, but thanks to Coolguye I found the ending again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbtmGmzvIgI  Don't watch it if you don't want this great comedy movie spoiled for you!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2017 01:16
|
|
|
Heartcatch posted:Been sick the last couple of days, so I haven't kept up with the thread as closely. Before enclaves were a thing, I used to try and trade minerals and energy with other empires. Since most of them tend to vomit out -1000 modifiers for sometimes dumb reasons (they won't take my energy because they are "too far away" are you serious, game???), it was a very frustrating experience.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2017 12:23
|
|
|
Darkrenown posted:The key thing to remember is that to build your Utopia you might need to purge a species or two. One race's heaven is another race's hell etc. Yeah, but heaven needs hell and hell needs demons. Those guys can be the demons. (I don't like to purge.)
|
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2017 19:04
|
|
|
Serf posted:Can I just say that his next expansion looks rad as hell and I can't wait to play it? As neat as that was, I also found it incredibly silly. Though it was perfect for a game where ground invasions were fought with billions of people. I think it could still work, but it would have to be tied to some kind of measurement of cultural vulnerability system to make sense. So xenophobic species would scoff at your superior culture, xenophiles would be more vulnerable then normal and the more different species you have in your empire, the more vulnerable it gets, too. Because the easier it is to accept something truly alien, the easier if would be to convince them of the idea that an alien culture could be superior. Edit: This way you get the neat side effect of culture-oriented races not being overwhelming in the early game: Just make sure even a xenophile race with 2-3 other species in their empire is still reasonably resilient and you'd never get some dumb effect where fanatic purifiers suddenly join you just because you're awesome. Libluini fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Feb 2, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2017 20:17
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:No one likes getting their planets invaded either, but it happens. It should be a thing that only happens with a huge big attractive empire versus some tiny little poo poo country with no chance. If you're already in that position as a player you've lost anyways. The problem in a space 4x is, this would only work for aliens who are cool with other aliens, so you'd basically program in a feature which can only hurt xenophiles and their empires, while normal and xenophobic empires can mostly ignore it. I don't think it's good game design to make a core game mechanic that half the game can purposefully ignore. And going the other way would be going completely loony toons with logic and reason here, if it's that easy to convince an alien mind to accept your empire's culture so totally they're willing to just switch over, you can just delete all portraits except the human ones, because who are we kidding at that point?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2017 20:41
|
|
|
Bloodly posted:Consider that the maintenance cost of a station is 1 Influence in addition to regular costs. This allows double the amount of stations. Sounds perfect for a run with desert galaxy settings.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2017 15:55
|
|
|
I know this feeling, I have like 2-3 games running right now, but the knowledge that there is this awesome new upgrade coming just sapped my will to play Stellaris. Welp, more time for my MO3-thread!
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2017 00:06
|
|
|
Roland Jones posted:Other Prosperity Traditions: This is all very interesting and all, but I'm itching to see what Exploration brings to the table.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2017 12:57
|
|
|
Roland Jones posted:For those who want to get along with people outside their empire, rather than within it, Diplomacy is an option: Shouldn't that be "Adopting Diplomacy reduces Diplomatic Influence Cost" and not Exploration? Looks like a typo.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2017 11:17
|
|
|
Zurai posted:You can produce 80 corvettes exactly as fast as you can produce 10 battleships (Corvettes take 1/8th the time of a Battleship), except you'll have results from the Corvette production 420 days before the Battleships pop out of the yards. Not if you get a cramp from all that clicking
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2017 23:06
|
|
|
Roland Jones posted:There are buildings that give Unity. The default one does nothing else, but all the Tradition buildings so far (including the altered ones like the Visitor Center) give the same amount as well, in addition to their other effects. I think there will be other sources too; there are definitely other bonuses (Diplomacy's one that gives extra Unity per federation member, for example) at least. So advancing your Traditions helps your Unity generation as well as everything else. Helly yes. (It may be a small thing, but I'm always sad that I have to leave science resources for last, to keep building up my economy. With science stations being that much cheaper, I can now squeeze in some more while flooding everything with energy- and mining stations.)
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2017 12:06
|
|
|
GlyphGryph posted:Reminding people I want more custom goon races, a lot more, especially some FEs. OK, I still have tons of species to share (even made some new ones already). Let's start with both an old and a new one: SPECIES SUBMISSION The first is brand new: Space Penguins! Sydons  Nomadic space penguins, even. They're naturally curious and love studying lifeforms and how they interact with each other. Their laser-focus on rifling through your stuff to learn more about you comes with a high price attached, though: They tend to invariably get surprised by unforeseen events, like you punching them into their beaks when you catch them doing this. This makes them seem like Slow Learners. Their soft and light bones aren't well adapted to hard, dangerous work like ground combat, so they also got the Weak-attribute you can't see in the screenshot because I Am Bad At Making Screenshots. At least they're really good at rifling through your stuff, they have a real Talent for it. (In case you want to ask, they got the Fungoid shipset because it looked more "oceany" to me.) Code for Sydons posted:"Immediate Deliverance" The second was made for the (now apparently dead) first Goon Mod, they're basically flying mountain dragons. I mean theoretically their portrait is under "Avian", but for me those weird plant dragons look like dragons, so I made them as dragon-like as I could.  Zvyrni  The Zvyrni like living on mountain peaks. Alone. Since they evolved from solitary predators with strong territorial instincts, even meeting a potential mate is hard for them to do. For most of their history there were no wars or large-scale conflicts, simply because there was no organized society above the level of individual, plus maybe a mate and kids. They're cold, calculating bastards who looked at the majesty of the universe from their mountain tops and decided to go to space purely to maximize survival. They gave no shits about how pretty the stars looked. Code for Zvyrni posted:"Coordinated Mountain Peaks" GlyphGryph posted:One: You write a backstory that's actually relevant to being an FE rather than the normal kind of "we just made it to the stars" backstory. This made my hands race on my keyboard to spit out two races with specially forged fallen empire backgrounds: SPECIES SUBMISSION FE The first one uses a special namelist from a mod to give it extra-flavor. It's from Cybrxkhan's Assortment of Namelists for Stellaris, a horribly named mod with tons of namelists. Viothans  This species is "Echopraxia and Blindsight by Petter Watts gave me nightmares" the race. Weird, but good SF. Anyway, these guys. They have been a spacefaring civilisation for so long, no-one around them actually knows anymore when those solitary deep sea squid-things first left their planet. What makes them stand out is their utter rejection of anything not purely rooted in the material realm. If you talk to those guys about Jedi Knights, you will get strangled by tentacles on the spot. Consider this a fair warning. Code for Viothans posted:"Realm of Zarn" The second one does not use any special crap, just in case adding in yet another mod to keep the Goon Mod running ends up causing problems in the long run. Marquens  A typical Marquen is a squishy, soft mushroom. OK, that's a lie, Marquens are actually walking hiveminds of single-cell fungus colonies. Being weird like this comes with some pros and cons: They're basically immortal, because single cells dying off get immediately replaced and since every single cell of the colony can double as a brain cell, their natural intelligence can be absurdly high. On the other hand, their colonies are highly dependent on a wet, hot environment. Take them out of their jungles and you have a problem. Another problem coming from being a walking colony of individual cells, is that there aren't many or durable connections between cells. There are also no bones, no exoskeleton or anything else stabilizing. Their body surface is as stable as a soap bubble. And their body is like a soap bubble filled with odd, black slime. In other words, don't expect Marquens to field tons of assault troops. They would prefer orbital bombardment, anyway. They are also not really good at reproduction, since if their single-cells produce spores, they only spread inside their own colonies. To get another colony, two colonies, one with at least 60% female cells and one with at least 60% male cells have to meet and infect each other. Then both will be able to grow a separate new colony inside their "bodies" and split them off after a couple of years. Yeah, that's rather inefficient. But hey, until their instable minds succumb to madness, they're practically immortal! All this poo poo had to be condensed into the free space we're given for species biographies, so some of the details I just wrote about are missing from the actual flavour-text. I still hope the general feeling is getting through, though! Edit: Interesting fact, when I went back to check if fungi can actually produce sexually, I was surprised to learn that yes, some indeed can. It even involves spores, like the poo poo I came up with! Nice coincidence, that. Code for Marquens posted:"Ash and Water Directorate" That's it for now, let's give others a chance to send in some empires.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2017 15:25
|
|
|
This is funny, because I just finished writing a fallen empire species who is always warning about poo poo like this.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2017 15:29
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:Re: the goon species pack. I'm not seeing any species in my species list when making a game. Are they supposed to be there? It surprised me a bit myself, but the species added by the mod are included at the very end of the game's pre-made empires. You have to scroll all the way down until you suddenly see empires you haven't seen before.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2017 00:21
|
|
|
Bloody Pom posted:I've been watching/reading The Expanse, and I just now realized how the Protomolecule is more or less the Beast with the serial numbers filed off. And less evil
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2017 00:54
|
|
|
Zurai posted:Sentient doesn't mean what most people use the word to mean. Sentient just means it responds to the senses. Sapient is the ability to think and reason. A Sentient AI would be able to respond to inputs in a non-deterministic way, but wouldn't truly be self-aware and able to reason through abstract principles. That's why someone pointed out Paradox is wrong here, Sentient AI should come first and be followed by Self-Aware AI. Having the better thing come first makes no goddamn sense.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2017 11:03
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:09 |
|
|
LordMune posted:Fun development fact! Is it possible to go into a textfile somewhere and change the tech-descriptions to be the correct ones?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2017 12:32
|
|