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Baronjutter posted:I'd just be happy with a title that doesn't make the paradox staff cringe and shed a single tear of regret every time they read it. Stellaris: A Safe-Space 4x by Paradox 
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Jan 20, 2017 19:02
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The Cheshire Cat posted:The utopian direct-democracy style does exist as one of the government forms - it goes from a basic Swiss style "everyone votes regularly on issues" to the upgraded "everyone has a brain implant that lets them vote in real time". I feel like a hive mind should be a species trait, maybe tied to a unique form of government. -100% ethics drift for affected species to ensure conformity...But some kind of other downsides, like severely restricted leader skill growth or something.
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Jan 20, 2017 19:42
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Aethernet posted:Also, there should be some sort of weapon that can strip the atmosphere from a planet and revert it to a Mars-like state. Planetary engineering is the best. 
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Jan 24, 2017 18:43
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Lum_ posted:Considering that GalCiv is basically a playground for its designer's hilariously far-right conservative world view (its economic model actively punishes you for collecting taxes) the ability to draft 100% of your population does not surprise me in the slightest. Huh? It's been a couple years since I picked up GalCiv 2, but I don't recall anything particularly "right wing" about it's tax system. I'm pretty sure it was your standard "tax more, produce less" scheme, albeit with approval rating and such. That's like, every game ever. You need both money and production to survive, so it's a balancing act. Edit: Glad I wasn't the only one scratching my head there...
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Jan 25, 2017 20:05
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GunnerJ posted:Wiz, any plans to make asteroid colonies? I'd love to see more advanced stations or modifications to asteroids, rather than more habitats that bring the fiddly Pop system into play. Like a special advanced research station on asteroids that gives a slight bonus to Materials research, or maybe even opens up a unique tech or something.
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Jan 26, 2017 20:15
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GotLag posted:Is there any clue as to roughly when to expect 1.5? I've just bought this game and it's a bit daunting as I don't know where to start, and I'm wondering if I should wait for 1.5 as it sounds like it will change a lot. I'm guessing 1.5 will be some time as there's no official announcement yet. Give it a couple playthroughs and familiarize yourself with the rest of the game in the meantime.
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Jan 27, 2017 12:46
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Sun Wu Kampf posted:I think this game plays a lot better if you set the planet incidence to 25% at game start. It makes the planets you do get more important, and can make terraforming actually worth doing in some situations. I agree that it seems to be more fun with a slightly less populated galaxy, although it'd be nice if the influence cost of frontier outposts scaled down with the number of habitable planets. I need my borders to look pretty goddamnit. Either than, or an increased influence sphere for colonies. Otherwise the space is TOO empty, in that, it's wasted.
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Jan 27, 2017 15:19
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Zore posted:According to Wiz they also cost influence so that may not be a solution. Well, colonies cost influence right now, just as a lump sum, not maintenance. Do we know habitats would have influence maintenance?
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Jan 27, 2017 15:31
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Reveilled posted:Once you've allowed magical FTL engines into your setting, magical artificial gravity doesn't seem like it's worth quibbling over. Magic gravity is fine in sci-fi, but poo poo like the 2001 space station and O'Neill Cylinders just look rad though. My favorite station in the game is the little pre-FTL Early Space Age station. All the rest just seem kinda static.
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Jan 30, 2017 14:55
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fondue posted:I just started playing the game, I come from an experience of playing Civilization and this game looks like a fun. What Let's Plays would you recommend for someone starting out? I've started a game on easy mode to try to understand the interface and gameplay and I'm still struggling to understand where my queue's are and how to direct my fleets to do things. Skip the Let's Plays and Just Play. Play and fail. Then roll again. Best way to play Paradox games.
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Jan 31, 2017 00:15
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The problem right now with espionage/assassination is that losing a leader hardly affects anything. There's no shock, dissent, or risk of rebellion. In other Paradox games there's usually some mechanic that can destabilize nations. Maybe this will change when factions are fleshed out in 1.5. Federations need a lot of work too. The whole rotating Presidency thing is annoying. It should be some kind of static position decided by power or influence or something, so the player can stay in charge if they're the 800 lb gorilla in the alliance, but can also lose it if they don't pay attention.
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Jan 31, 2017 14:25
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Deceitful Penguin posted:All you need is one vassal that isn't peaceful and you can assign them planets to take over. Don't add too many but you can then vassalize parts and liberate others. Wait what? You can assign orders to vassals?
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Feb 2, 2017 19:09
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Thyrork posted:In another nod to Sword of the Stars (and Homeworld), I'd love for Stellaris to have spinal mounts for corvettes, destroyers and cruisers. Perhaps it takes up the first two parts, perhaps its very energy costly but I loves me some Ion Frigates. Yeah, it would be neat if instead of "360 degree turrets for everything" we instead had something like MOO2's ship design where weapon size was linked to the mount, flexibility, and modifiers. So, in Stellaris, a corvette might be able to be equipped with a medium mount weapon, but it'd act as a spinal mount as far as traverse goes. Destroyers likewise would be able to mount Large weapons as a spinal mount. Cruisers could theoretically mount XL weapons as a spinal mount, but make the power consumption high enough and utility slots limited enough so that an XL cruiser would essentially be a glass cannon for long range artillery or planetary bombardment. Only Battleships would be able to effectively mount spinal XL weapons and still be semi-standalone vessels. If you do this and open up more possibilities for the ship behavior via the combat computers, so that (for example) corvettes aren't always doomed to rush and die, then I could see a lot more diversity in ship design and combat. One could also include interesting techs, like one that unlocks the smaller spinal mount ship components. Or inertial dampeners that allows ships to turn more quickly, thus making the spinal mounts more useful. Hard to balance? Sure, but at least it's more interesting than "Laser Versions 1 through 5".
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Mar 7, 2017 19:17
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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. I guess it's not so much an increase in detail, as it is keeping a similar level of detail as we have now, but shifting around some of the options so there's a bit more diversity possible with said detail. Like, you could go with torpedo 'vetts vs spinal mount 'vetts, based on your tech situation or enemy. I'm also bummed out by recent games that boil down to the "lets perfectly balance everything because I can't stop myself from min-maxing based on spreadsheets". Some times it's fun to run gimmicks and role-play in 4x's, even if it's sub-optimal. I think a real problem with Stellaris combat is the fuzzy attempt at a rock-paper-scissors system. It means that all weapon types are (in theory) viable until the late game, which is kinda boring and ends up with the "Well, lets quickly refit my entire fleet to min-max against this guy" mentality. It also leads to the frustrating imbalances when you bump into someone and either wipe them (or you get wiped) because they chose the wrong matchup at random, since you can't really scope out the enemy fleets before contact. Instead, it would have been neat if the three competing tracks had varying effectiveness over time. Like, here's a hypothetical since I enjoy tilting at windmills: In the beginning everyone starts with missiles, torpedoes, kinetics, and both kinetic-based and energy-based PD. Armor exists right off the bat. -Missiles are great at tracking and damage, but are limited to small mounts. -Torps have big damage (station killers), but poor tracking and are toast when faced with PD or evasion, similar to now. -Kinetics are decent all rounders. Kinetic PD is kinda poo poo and extra short range, but cheap. -Energy-based PD is a bit longer range and much better at tracking, but eats up more power and expensive. -Armor is expensive and reduces evasion (due to increased mass). -Basic deflectors are an early tech. Think, navigational screens. However, as they're only nav screens, lets say they only boost non-combat ship speed and give a very slight boost to evasion. They have very little HP and take lots of power. You then have an early-middle phase (the "Battlestar" phase)... -Missiles and Torps have a horse race with both kinetic and energy PD. -Kinetics get better, have a slight boost to shield damage (takes a lot of energy to absorb/deflect inertia?) -Energy stays only as basic PD at first, however as you invest more research into it you unlock the "full sized" weapons. -Deflectors still kinda crap. Basic shields arrive towards the end. -Armor gets lighter and harder, reducing and eventually eliminating the evasion penalty. -Heydey for strike craft. ...And a late-middle phase (the "Star Trek" phase): -Conventional Missiles and Torps start to rapidly drop off in effectiveness as energy PD improves significantly. -Kinetics improve but the Small/Medium/Large mounts top out towards the end. -Energy weapons improve dramatically, and you get more diversity with plasma cannons, disruptors, and such. -Shields are a big part of defense and are needed to counter the increasing power of energy weapons. -Energy Torps arrive and are important to break through the increasing defenses of large ships and stations quickly, but have short range (Corvette/brawler cruisers only?) And finally, a "late" phase: -Big spinal mount weapons. Giga Cannons exist but are better at station killing and maybe give a large boost to planetary bombardment -Spinal mount Tachyon Lances are battleship killers and such. -Energy weapons generally rule the field. -A balance of both armor and shields are important. The idea being that these "eras" allow for a moderate amount of customization, but certain weapon classes are distinctly better in certain eras, with a general progression through time. This would be similar to the old school Paradox games like EU, where you'd have "Shock, Fire & Siege" values, and fire and siege would slowly get more powerful as your weapons advanced towards more modern gunpowder-based infantry and artillery. This is fuzzy enough where no particular playstyle rules throughout the entire game. Better tech generally wins, better economies generally win. This is true now, but having a clear(ish) progression avoids the universal uselessness of some weapon tracks (missiles) and the rock-paper-scissors BS. This would involve reworking the tech tree so that it's more of a web than "Laser Versions 1 through 5". Maybe territory for modders rather than the main game, but I choose to dream the impossible dream.
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Mar 8, 2017 00:31
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GunnerJ posted:So is there a button to upgrade all your military stations? That would be an improvement, but Stellaris could REALLY benefit from a HoI style upgrade system, where you devote a portion of your mineral income to upgrades that just happen in the background, with priority markers for important stations/fleets.
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Mar 8, 2017 22:17
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Depending on what you're fighting against, high evasion torp corvettes still seem to be useful for some time. Pop some shields on them and they handle PD and flak OK. Medium and larger mounts have trouble hitting them. Once you get flak cannons I'm not sure destroyers are worth it as picket ships anymore though, given that you can now load a PD weapon in medium slots on cruisers and BBs.
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Mar 29, 2017 01:24
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Re: Fortresses & Doomstacks: I think the real solution is to break up the doomstacks, either with some kind of leadership limit, or a hard cap on fleet size. The doomstack combat just kinda sucks. As many others have said, wars boil down to 1-2 battles, then it's all done with. Before we start monkeying with fortresses/stations to compete, I'd say start with breaking up the stacks. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 18:41
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Kimsemus posted:There is really no way to prevent this, you can just send in separate fleets at once. I would think a crowding malus would work. You creat diminishing returns for dumping fleets into the meat grinder. Like, HoI does (or used to) handle combat that way.
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Mar 29, 2017 18:56
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:This doesn't really work without something extra, because you'd still be better off creating the largest ball possible even if there's some diminishing returns on size. Unless you crank it up to the point where larger fleets actually take more losses rather than fewer, I guess, but that would cause its own problems. Again, it works well in older versions of Hearts or Iron. If you keep loading more and more armies/ships into a battle, you end up with attack maluses that make it completely pointless to have the additional units. They just take damage and hits to morale, but don't really contribute much. It's not so much that the enemy loses more ships, just that the smaller fleet loses less, and the extra ships on the "overstacked" side are less ready to fight later. I like the idea of having command ships, maybe as a combat computer option.
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Mar 30, 2017 01:35
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GunnerJ posted:Super glad the precursor events will now be player-only. Counterpoint: it's fun when the Cybrex homeworld suddenly pops up within you territory because the AI finished the event chain and you get the system for free!
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Mar 30, 2017 14:48
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If we want to talk piracy, I would say that it should be abstracted a bit. Like, a ticking "control" rating for each system or something. As the rate grows, resource production suffers. Having ships in the system rapidly restores order and reduces these maluses. Stations eliminate it. If a system is within sensor range, deterioration of control is capped at 20% or something. If you the rating hits 100% you start getting the possibility of spawning a pirate base or other event. So you only have to play whack-a-mole if you really screw up and lose control over a bunch of space. This would promote using smaller fleets for patrol (a patrol order would be nice anyway), and the development of a station network. Different governments affect how disorder spreads, and hive minds could be largely immune to it.
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Mar 30, 2017 19:06
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Kitchner posted:Contraversial opinion incoming but I actually thought BE was OK as a game, certainly at least as good as Civ V on release. Same thoughts here, although I had been playing Paradox games since EU1 and Civ since Civ2. By the time Civ V came out, even with the expansions, it felt kinda shallow and very "gamey". Again, not inherently bad, but not the game I was looking for. Personally, the series peaked for at Civ IV, Beyond the Sword. I still reinstall every now and again and have a blast. There's also the Realism Invictus mod, which in theory would be my perfect, fiddly, Paradox-esque version of Civ. It's fun but has some problems with balance, AI, and optimization. Even on a good system it's hard to finish a game without it chugging to a halt.
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Mar 31, 2017 11:38
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The Muffinlord posted:What the gently caress is ICS I guess I should have asked Infinite City Spam. Basically, tightly (or tighter) packed cities, never stop expanding.
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Mar 31, 2017 19:15
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Spanish Matlock posted:Like it would be cool if aliens meet humans and are just like "Holy poo poo, they're just like meat robots!" https://youtu.be/7tScAyNaRdQ
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Apr 1, 2017 11:08
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fuf posted:Does the AI know my fleet composition somehow? It definitely seems to try and adapt, from my experience. The first time you might have gotten unlucky that their composition was rigged to tear you up. The second time, did you have any small encounters with them where your new ship composition might have been revealed? It's real obvious when you go all-in on one type of defense or weapon. I generally make my ships a mix of both energy, kinetics, armor, and shields, and it seems like the AI has a bit more trouble adapting to a mixed design.
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Apr 1, 2017 11:51
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fuf posted:I don't think so, unless they can see across closed borders. It was the same both times: declare war, immediately send my fleet to their nearest planet, their fleet shows up a few days later. First time I had mostly shields and their fleet was 100% mass drivers, second time I had mostly armor and it was 100% lasers. If you (or the AI) have sensor coverage in another empire's territory, you can click on the system and see their ships, assuming there's a system in range. I have no idea if the AI actually takes advantage of this and redesigns their ships properly, but I certainly do.
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Apr 1, 2017 13:06
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Splicer posted:On the subject of keystone buildings, is it just me or are frontier clinics/hospitals useless now? I could have sworn they used to increase habitability. Now they're just crappy farms that Agrarian Ideal doesn't apply to. They used to improve habitability, but with all the other possibilities to increase that stat, they were often redundant. Now they boost growth time, which makes sense flavor-wise, but I'm not sure if they're "worth it" yet.
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Apr 8, 2017 12:54
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:You also start with the robots tech. But it's a bit poo poo when compared to stuff like 15% unity. Robots double your pop growth and give a decent boost to food and mineral production, and don't require consumer goods. 15% unity is nice, but with the tighter mineral supply in the early game now, it seems like it might be effective.
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Apr 8, 2017 13:26
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Game got a bit harder it seems. Pre-Utopia/Banks, it was hard for me to really fall behind the curve militarily. Now, it seems that you really have to watch out for those Hegemonic Imperialists and Ruthless Capitalists. Hard to keep an edge on them fleet-wise. I've been wiped a couple times already. My current game, the jerks next door invaded early, they occupied one colony, but I was able to knock enough off their fleet numbers so that my homeworld starport was safe. I was also able to spam defensive armies on my second colony, keeping them from actually invading. Still, one colony occupied, the other being bombarded to hell sucks. Slowly building up a new fleet at the homeworld to counterattack. Feels kinda tense, if tedious. Missiles definitely seem to pack a bit more punch against corvettes and such. Energy still seems lackluster vs. kinetics.
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Apr 10, 2017 02:27
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Demiurge4 posted:The dismantle frontier outpost wargoal is kind of unnecessary seeing as you can just blow it up. Maybe if you had a design for it and it came as a medium defense station with higher upkeep (and no special module slots) it would be better. Outposts currently are no more defensible than a mining station. Yeah, I would really like to be able to upgrade frontier outposts. Obviously they had something in mind at one point, because there's an unreachable "frontier beacon" part that shows up in the debris field after you blow an outpost up. I usually protect my critical outposts with a defense station or two, but it'd be nice to have a beacon in something slightly more robust than an aluminum balloon.
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Apr 10, 2017 11:45
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Bohemian Nights posted:It could be cool to have a galactic highway, like a series of expensive warp relays or whatever flavour you want, giving a speed boost/cooldown reduction to the various FTL systems. Like it'd be pretty alright to have an express way from your homeworld to the front lines, especially when you have territory spanning an entire quadrant or more I always liked the idea of having hyperlanes be reworked from a primary drive to a buildabe "highway", and wormholes a later-game tech requiring expensive stations at both ends for long-distance travel. At first I liked the idea of having multiple types of FTL throughout the game, but in practice it's just annoying and adds to the already clunky/micro heavy aspect of war. Now I pretty much only play warp or hyperlane only. Which sucks, because I like the flavor and story aspects inherent in all three. I've said this before, but I still like the idea of starting everyone with a slowish warp drive, and then having the other two FTLs open up as options to enhance warp, rather than locked-in choices made at the start of the game.
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Apr 10, 2017 14:50
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Since I don't play slaver often, does the 10% production boost from enslavement work from a guaranteed baseline (e.g. whatever a free pop would produce at 50% happiness +10%)? If not, and slave production is also hit with a unhappiness malus, that would kinda suck. However, if they work from the 50% baseline, then I could see a strategy of using slaves to populate low habitability worlds and turn them into hellish mining powerhouses.
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Apr 11, 2017 17:24
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GlyphGryph posted:Living metal goes a long way towards making battleships worth building imo Yeah, battleships with Regenerating Hull Tissue, Crystal Forged Plating, and a fair amount of armor can tank a LOT of damage, even moreso with living metal. Anyway, my current Commonwealth of Man game was going swimmingly, I just ate the only FE on the map, and was turning my sites on the only real remaining challenger:  Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves. Of course, you will note that the goddamn Unbidden spawned and have proceeded to gut my final foe for me. 
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Apr 16, 2017 23:28
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Does resettling slaves still require as much influence as resettling a "citizen" pop? That's been my biggest peeve with slavery. You conquer an empire, and then have planets full of slave pops. In order to "spread them around" so you can use them effectively, you have to spend hundreds of influence points. Was this a conscious decision to make slavery more clunky,, or just an oversight? Like, I'd love if I could find a way for the cute fox race my fascist distopia enslaved to be used effectively as domestic servent. Say in staffing unity monuments or something where their production doesn't matter.
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Apr 22, 2017 02:53
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Asimo posted:Similarly, megastructure construction seems to be locked behind Fortress tech. Which I guess makes sense, but I suspect most people aren't exactly rushing military base techs and that's part of why it seems to come in so late. I feel like there shouldn't be discreet techs for military stations and habitats and such, but rather a generalized tiered system for "station" sized, "fortress" sized, and larger structures. Probably tied to starport sizes? I really feel like Habitats shouldn't come so late, but also should start out kinda lame and only become the science/energy powerhouses they are later in the game. Like, maybe we could build different levels of habitats, similarly to how there are varied sizes of planets?
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Apr 26, 2017 15:59
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deathbagel posted:Habitats are insanely good, letting you build them larger would make them absolutely game breaking. They are almost borderline broken as is. Which is why I said early structures should start out worse than the current habitats and only build up to their current utility by the end game. They should be a way to maybe gain a slight edge if you get hemmed in and need a way to build momentum against a larger empire. As it stands, you most often get hemmed in long before habitats are available. They basically just let you stomp your competition harder, rather than act as a way for an underdog to get an edge.
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Apr 26, 2017 16:47
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I still feel like, if they're restricting FTL types, the basic drive should be Warp, but warp is SLOW, and maybe has a range restriction. You then discover hyperlanes, and later get the ability to build new ones (maybe as a end game tech. Wormholes are a mid-game tech, but require stations at both ends and are much, much more expensive. More like a buildabe shortcut rather than a primary drive. Thematically hyperlanes don't much do it for me the same way warp does.
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Apr 28, 2017 11:35
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NihilCredo posted:Also, Slow Breeders + Sedentary. I kind of want to try a Domination-focused playthrough where I never expand beyond my core systems+frontier outposts and instead just force the galaxy into vassalage/tributary status. Obviously I'd build the crap out of habitats and other megastructures.
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May 5, 2017 15:02
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Crazycryodude posted:Oh my god the powerplants are just running massive spacecoin miners aren't they Power runs bitcoin mining rigs, actual mines are accumulating purestrain gold, farms are producing Space Cheetos. The Holy Trinity.
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May 8, 2017 17:59
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 02:03 |
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I think Federations will hopefully become worthwhile after some future diplomacy-focused patch. It would be great if you could attempt to host some kind of summit between members and potential candidates to try and smooth things over. You could have a CK2-esque event chain similar to feasts or festivals where any number of beneficial events or hilarious faux-pas occur. Like a repugnant species accidentally spewing it's bodily fluids all over an important delegate, or a spiritualist and materialist form a bond after a productive discussion on the nature of the Shroud over a glass of Romulan Ale or whatever. Another thing that would be neat would be a return to "uncertain" diplomatic interactions. Right now, it's basically just a matter of getting enough "points" to turn the button green, then clicking OK. That works fine for, say, resource trading, where there's not much drama to be had. But stuff like negotiating non-aggression pacts, border closures, war invitations, etc. are quite dull right now and could use a bit of chance or flavor added. I think it's well known that the diplomacy needs a bunch of extra content to make the game world come alive.
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May 12, 2017 14:27
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