Stellaris: a second Astral Planes has hit the game

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Stellaris: a second Astral Planes has hit the game

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Jazerus posted:

they must capture the starbase to invade planets, and once you get the FTL inhibitor tech, they can't go past an upgraded starbase or an inhabited planet until they take them

so yeah very early on they can technically just dodge your defenses to an extent, but the AI probably doesn't do that much; a player might though.

You can still annoy your enemies by putting stuff like jammers into your starbase, even in the early game when you don't have FTL-inhibitors yet. Targeting systems to upgrade your starbase-range to take potshots at a passing fleet, or jammers to slow them down will make dodging your defenses a living hell for the enemy.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2018 12:12

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 02:26

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

I'm having a blast with the new Stellaris -it really feels like playing a more abstract version of SEV.

Dumb question: Can you switch off the auto-designer? I'm not using it and manually deleting all these superfluous auto-designs is really cumbersome.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2018 17:07

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

President Ark posted:

there's a checkbox in the bottom left of the fleet design window that turns it off

Jazerus posted:

there's a check-box labelled "Auto-generate designs" in the lower left of the ship designer

Thanks! 550+ hours in, and I never noticed! :suicide:

# ¿ Feb 24, 2018 20:39

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

OwlFancier posted:

Something I find myself wishing for is some kind of fleet tender ship, now that we have the manager it would be trivial to organize and I'd be more than willing to devote some fleet cap to ships that can keep my swarm of corvettes repaired between battles, as they're a bit small for me to bother putting regenerative hull plating on individually.

That's what I love about Space Empires V: You can design entire fleets worth of support ship. You can have ships transporting ammunition, supplies, or straight-up repair tenders, mobile yards and all kinds of dumb poo poo.

In fact, I have often spend entire days doing nothing but designing ships and organize fleet structures to put them in later. :v:

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 11:09

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Gort posted:

Which traditions do people recommend out of the gate? I've been favouring discovery as the first one as it'll get less useful once there's nothing left to scan, but I could see something like Expansion or even Supremacy if you're boxed in.

I'm a science kind of guy, so I always go Discovery first, too. Followed by Expansion, then Prosperity.

Of course I tend to play with huge maps and only 6-12 empires across those thousands of stars, so I also tend to have lots of time to slowly build my empire before I encounter potential enemies. :v:

Still, early game in 2.0 has slowed down enough that I can suggest doing this even on more cramped maps.

Fake edit: I just noticed even your outposts can build a couple defensive platforms. So I don't have to construct huge rear end space forts on every outbound connection? Neat! I guess piracy is dead now.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 14:17

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Splicer posted:

Yes dathaks that is a nice gas giant. I especially like the view of my goddamned homeworld.

At least you don't have to trek across the galaxy to find it :v:

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 17:35

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Ha ha, oh wow. I just had my first upgraded pirates pop up. They have the exact same fleet strength than my main fleet, and for some reason they got frigates and raiders modeled after actual space pirates. So I guess what happened here those clowns got some major help by nearby real pirates.

I think I can deal with this, but I didn't expect pirates to immediately jump from a couple hundred to over 1k strength, that's kind of abrupt.

Edit: Welp, they pasted my main fleet. Really didn't expect pirates to jump from zero to hero like that. :suicide:

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 18:33

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Taear posted:

Most people don't think about it this hard. Just expand! If it works out badly and you feel slow, then cut back.
You don't need to work it out so extremely finely.

Yeah, I'm just bumbling around doing whatever, and I'm still leading in tech. It's not that bad, just don't colonize everything in sight and you're fine.

To be fair though, prioritizing the good stuff often tends to make your borders look kinda snaky:

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 20:40

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Galaga Galaxian posted:

Also, Libluini, I upgraded your Space Cats.

We need a new Goon Species pack/collection or something.

Ah yes, post-apocalyptic starts are now actually a thing. :getin:

Also, nice to see some of my crazy empires get some use

That said, for now I've been going back to being a filthy machine: My new dreaded assimilators are a group of Human colonists who got "saved" by their machines when their new home was devastated by war between the colonists.

My current empire.

And while I learned that I don't like playing Determined Exterminators, they make good enemies! (Extra irony: They ended up my buddies in my current run -for now.) The inspiration for the VN45s was the idea "What if Daleks were robots!!???"

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 21:51

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

toasterwarrior posted:

Getting back into this with my curious robot empire and I have some questions:

1) I heard that sectors are doing pretty well now, but does that extend to robot empires?
2) Likewise, do sectors understand robomodded pops?

1) Better than normal empires actually, since sectors are a little bit overzealous in feeding your people. If you don't need food, that's one headache less for you, the player
2) My experience so far has been mixed, but you can circumvent this by planning out a colony with multiple-building all robo-pops in advance, then remembering to forbid your sector to redevelop.

The only bottlenecks for this kind of planning are your mineral reserves. Oh, and energy reserves if you need to clear blockers first.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 21:57

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Roadie posted:

All the assault army crap should just be something abstracted/auto-generated by your fleets, and/or by wimpy support ships you attach to your fleets.

The whole "pirates have constructed a makeshift fleet from civilian craft (with milpower greater than entire military fleet)" thing is aggravatingly nonsensical.

In this case it started with "Corrupted units" breaking off from our gestalt (which is nonsense enough, since I definitely didn't remember building those additional ships, but OK maybe the rebels blinded us with some computer magic and hijacked some shipyards while I wasn't looking), then it upgraded to "Corrupted Organics breaking free". Said corrupted organics then for some dumb reason were like five times stronger then the machine units rebelling earlier and didn't even have the decency to use our ship set!

Still, at least their ships also used outdated tech, but I don't know if that was good event planning or did only happen because the corrupted used the official pirate ships instead of ours. :shrug:

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 22:51

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

The Locator posted:

I thought for sure that my colony count didn't go up when I built it, but I'll build another one tomorrow night to test it for sure.

That's a system count. Another colony in the same system will still hurt your research and unity, without letting this number go up.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2018 09:49

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

HappyKitty posted:

So what are some of y'all nerds naming conventions for ship designs and sectors and stuff?

For ship designs I try to pick names that also work as a handy mnemonic for what class of ship they are. My corvette designs all start with "cor", for example; destroyers start with "des", cruisers with "cr" and battleships with "b". This current game I'm running with:

Corvettes: Coronet (missile boat) and Cormorant (interceptor)
Destroyers: Desiderata (artillery) and Desdemona (small/medium)
Cruisers: Crassus (artillery), Crenel (picket), and Crucifier (line ship, mostly medium weapons)
Battleships: Boanerges (picket/line ship - uses line AI but with point defense/fighters and medium weapons), and Bellerophon (artillery)

For defense platform designs, I use the various angelic ranks, in order:

Angel: autocannons and small weapons
Archangel: mix of medium and small
Dominion: point defense/fighters
Throne: medium weapons
Cherubim: missiles and torpedoes
Seraphim: large weapons

For sector names, I try to keep it relevant to the map or the circumstances of the sector's creation. If I have to sector a bunch of planets after winning a war, I'll call it "Triumph" or "Victory" sector; if I take three planets at a time I might call it "Triumvirate" sector. If there are a few colonies at the outer edge of the galaxy, you'd better believe I'm calling that fucker "Outer Rim" sector, or "The Outlands", or "Backwater". Current game, I had a random colony on a fairly big planet that had to be sectored after colonization, so I just called it "Prosperity", because it was right next to a gateway I knew I was eventually going to reactivate, making it a pretty important sector. If I have planets that are close to my starting position that I don't get around to colonizing until I terraform them, I will try to lump them all into "Coreward" sector.

I'm hoping they'll let us rename science ships, colony ships and the like, because I always used to name those as well. Science vessels were Prometheus, colony ships were Epimetheus, construction ships were Sisyphus, and transport ships were Odysseus.

Anyone else have very specific naming conventions in your playthroughs?

My own naming schemes are less of a convention and more of a weak guideline, but it goes mostly like this:

Corvettes: Get names like "Reaver" or "Ripper" for interceptors, or "Whirlwind" and "Firestorm" for missile/torpedo boats.
Destroyers: "Shield" or "Paladin" for PD-ships, "Defiant" or "Reliant" for combat destroyers (medium-weapons mostly)
Cruisers: Escort cruisers (Strike craft, medium and small guns) get names like "Escort" and here the naming scheme basically stops
Battleships: "Normal" ships (guns, but no huge guns, sometimes some fighters) tend to get names like "Leviathan", while ships with XL-guns get stuff like "-hammer" suffixed to their name.
Titans: Didn't have one yet, but I plan on giving them really pretentious names like "X of Y". Like for example "Scepter of Unrelenting Pain"

Defense platforms: Don't get names. I give them designations, like for example "Anti-Capital A01" for a platform meant to shoot at big ships, or "Shield S01" for PD-platforms
Starbases: Get names from my favorite SF, or names that sound like them. I have Starbases called "Valdor Industrial" and "Sagittarius Unlimited", for example.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2018 20:42

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

ConfusedUs posted:

I just name my stuff for what�s on it.

Missile corvette. Plasma defense station. Mixed laser/kinetic

Etc

When playing SEV, I combine both schemes, yours and mine. This results in crap like "OMS-1 Mj�llnir" for "Orbital Missile Satellite Typ 1 Mj�llnir"

I'm kind of torn if I should do this for Stellaris too, or if it would be overkill.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2018 21:00

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Admiral Joeslop posted:

I sent a message to glyphgryph asking but he hasn't posted in the new thread or responded to me yet. If he has a problem, I'll take it down.

I went ahead and learned the bare minimum about modding, to update and fix the Goon Species mod located HERE.

It has all the species from the previous pack EXCEPT the "Grand and Mighty and Powerful Collection of Superior Beings" as the mod their portrait comes from is broken and I'm certainly not going to mess with that. I had to adjust some of the species whose traits or ethics had shuffled and were no longer valid. If you submitted one of these species and don't like what I did, or if I have a flag or color or anything wrong, please tell me here or in a PM and I'll fix it as soon as I can.

Like glyphgryph did, I'm open to taking submissions. Please put them in a pastebin, and provide a picture with your post; anything without a biography of some kind will not be considered. You can post it here or just PM me, I use the Awful app a lot and it tells me when I get a PM.

One last thing! I'm not sure if anyone posted it but I had Aethernet add a link to the Discord in the OP. Its been dead for a while but maybe with 2.0 it can be revived so I have someone to complain at when I gently caress up. https://discord.gg/Wa28D77

You want submissions? OK, here we go!

Manifold of Integrity

The Ijeni never had time for war, since they evolved on some crazy nightmare version of Earth: Instead of fighting each other, they spend all their time fighting nature. The constant battle against plants, animals and lovely weather has made them somewhat odd, they obsess about smashing nature with heavy machinery a lot.

Lore:
Ijenic history had its ups and downs: Their own peaceful nature always conflicted with their wild planet. Pairon is cursed with many, many dangerous plants and animals and horrific storms torture the surface in regular intervals. While the Ijeni never had much trouble staying at peace with each other, the constant fight against nature supplied them with all the evolutionary impulse they could ever need. Over time, the endless war against nature gave them an obsession with manipulating nature through the brute force of machinery.

Pastebin Manifold

Solitary Confinement Commune

The Soraccs are creepy weirdos, and would prefer to be creepy weirdos alone, thank you very much

Lore:
The ancestors of the Soraccs were squid-like predators swimming through the dark. Even today, they prefer to remain solitary, contemplating deep thoughts while shrouded in darkness. It is probably for the best that they wish to be left alone, for their way of thinking is incomprehensible to aliens, their behaviour often violent and terrible.

Pastebin Solitary

Outflow of Unified Streams

These little buggers are adapted to the depths of their oceans so well, they're very badly adapted to everything else! Otherwise, they're very conservative and cautious people. And thanks to evolving out of deep sea critters, they are always very careful to preserve environment. (The deep sea can be rather cruel to wasteful beings. Read up on the deep sea, it'll explain a lot about these guys.)

Lore:
The homeworld of the Korelri is a strange place: Life never really left its oceans, and intelligent life only appeared down in its abyssal depths. The arthropoid Korelri are the descendants of the most successful of those lifeforms: They are slow, and methodic thinkers and well adapted to the demanding environment of the deep sea. Sadly, this automatically makes them very badly adapted to colonize other worlds, especially ones without an ocean. And their highly adapted bodies tend to react very badly to low-pressure environments, which makes them not exactly the best fighters. Still, their high intelligence tends to help them work around their weaknesses.

Pastebin Outflow

Technocratic Republic of Trantor

What if machines rose up and mankind gladly joined? This empire also comes with some hidden bonus lore, since it has a cyborg race added in. The cyborgs are of course Human, but what kind? The answer may surprise you! (Cheaters can just look it up in the pastebin-link below.)

Lore:
The Archailects of Trantor are a group of immensely powerful, networked AIs. During the Chaos Days, when Human society on Trantor collapsed, those beings took control of the planet and ended the long war which had devastated this lost colony. The survivors now worship the Archailects as the saviours of Trantor. With AI and flesh now unified in noospheric glory, the Archailects now plan on extending their gift of peace, understanding and progress. Space awaits, the final frontier.

Pastebin of the Future

Green Mass Migration Formation

These creepy fuckers nearly overran half the galaxy in the test game where I employed them. It took a great alliance and lots of cheating to survive their merciless onslaught. Hopefully they're less overwhelming little monsters in Stellaris 2.0

Lore:
Thousands of years ago, a virulent plague destroyed all life on the Visoran homeworld. Centuries later, a strange new form of existence arose from the rotting corpse of the planet: The organism behind the plague had survived, using the few remaining plants as host. Over time, the parasites turned into symbionts and both kinds of life fused into a new whole: The Visoran species had been created. But even though the Visora are technically sapient, they do not communicate with aliens. From the viewpoint of their strange hive mind, there are only two types of beings: Visorans and resources. In this state of mind, enemies are just resources not yet processed, and friends do not exist.

Pastebin of Death

United Imperial States

Ever played the Fallout-series? This is what would have happened if the Humans of the Fallout-universe had been giant insects instead. Food for thought. My notes for this one say "America, in SPACE". Does that make sense for you?

Lore:
The Lathians suffered a lot throughout their long, violent history. Their once blooming world is now a scorched wreck, blasted by multiple nuclear wars. But still they preservere. May your gods have mercy on you if you ever meet them.

Pastebin of AMERICA

Note on mods:

Some of these empires need Cybrxkhan's namelist mod and the foxes use a cosmetic mod you can safely ignore. As I've been told, adding the empires in so they will spawn as random empires makes it possible to ignore what kind of DLC they came from, so go nuts. Playing is probably another matters, so here's the list of DLC I used:

-Everything plant-related: Plantoid Pack
-Machine Empires equal Synthetic Dawn
-The plant empire above is a hive mind, also: Utopia
-The Humanoid ship set is used for the machine empire: It's of course from the Humanoid Pack.

So, I think that should be everything you need to know.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 23:11

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

fantastic in plastic posted:

Question regarding the racial +resource bonuses (ie, Strong, Industrious, etc): do they only apply to tiles worked by pops of that race? Similarly, do the science ones only work when the scientist is a member of that race?

Yes.

(It's a constant little annoyance in my current run: My cyborgs are good physicists, but my logic engine template bots are actually better researchers on both biolabs and engineering facilities. Have to keep the buggers sorted or SHOCK my physics research efficiency may go down a tiny bit!)

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 23:47

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Bedurndurn posted:

gently caress whoever designed the Ghost Signal event. It's loving stupid and you didn't even do a good job because it's bugged my entire game to poo poo.

So as a machine empire, ghost signal cut off my mineral and power production by 40%, so I off the bat can't even afford my loving ships anymore. Then because all Paradox knows how to do is generate giant stacks of armies that work off loving fairy dust and unicorn farts, I have to face a fleet literally 4x bigger than mine was before it turned my loving economy off. So I try my best to fix it by literally scrapping every loving building that doesn't make power or minerals since we were in the red on both. I manage to get my energy income back to positive, but low and behold due to their loving incompetence I still get to keep the -50% penalty to mineral production for having an Energy Crisis.

I even turned down the stupid loving crisis strength from the default.

Didn't you get the option to hack the signal? There should be an option in your event-window. If not, I suggest filing a bug-report.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 09:54

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Bedurndurn posted:

I sure did. It'll take 663 months. Oddly enough not being able to turn on the power to the science labs is kind of a problem. The time to hack the signal does seem to be decreasing as more of my planets are obliterated, so that's kind of helping?

Also the power shortage penalty to my mineral generation did finally go away after a few years of not having a power generation problem.

Holy poo poo. :stare:

How many planets did you have to get this? Or did you put your cost slider to 5x cost?!

Before 2.0, I got something like 12 months, with about 20 planets in a large galaxy.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 11:37

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

I suddenly feel very lucky that I put my crisis start point back to 2600 :lol:

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 12:03

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

How feasible this is depends on how much Wiz has cleaned up the code base. If the part of the code allowing for this has been deleted like the code for warp, the answer is: :lol:

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 15:55

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Jazerus posted:

pick anything but labs as your first research. i beg you. the best picks are probably administrative AI (5% research speed), planetary unification (+2 unity) or genome mapping (+10% growth speed) if that's not available, and powered exoskeletons (5% minerals).

No!

(I always take my first techs for roleplay reasons. And even later, I often stop and think: "What would the people of this empire actually choose, based on their own desires?" Ironically, Planetary Unification is always my first pick for that exact same reason: It just makes so much sense in the early game, when you're still a young, barely united space civilization.)

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 19:32

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Jazerus posted:

if you're playing a bunch of folks who don't want an AI that can clear out their spam folder and powered exoskeletons to take all of the effort out of manual labor while being joyously united with all of their fellow [Root.GetSpeciesName] brothers and sisters across the globe, i don't even know why you'd want to play as them

I tend to play either as machines who have better things to do than manual labor, or space kittens who barely survived their unification and still have to fight down hostile political efforts to drive them apart again. :v:

(That said, exoskeletons and robots are, for purely roleplay reasons, one of the first things my non-robot empires go for.)

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 20:33

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

I'm kind of torn on the changes. Yeah sure, it's nice that bugs like that unity-crap was fixed, but as someone who went mad building starbases in my current game I kind of fear opting in for this beta patch: Not only fucks it with all my plans that +2 starbases is now -20% upkeep instead, I already crashed my economy once by expanding my line of fortresses too fast. Now I think this will happen after the patch: My income will go from +20 to something like -100, followed by bankruptcy a couple months later. gently caress.

Maybe I should just abandon my assimilator-game?

# ¿ Mar 1, 2018 19:11

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

ThatBasqueGuy posted:

Or just cheat yourself a surplus to tide you over while you readjust your empire.

I always try to avoid that. Too much cheating tends to drain the fun out of the game for me. I know myself, if I do this, I'll just abandon the game later anyway and re-start.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2018 19:37

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

OK, I broke down and tried the patch. Sitrep: The income-hit was less then I feared, and the starbase-tradition I could immediately take with the unity-penalty reduction saved my rear end.

Still, the situation is not good: Immediately after starting, new pirates spawned. As always, they're weird: Our "corrupted units" again got rather obvious help from the standard space pirates. They now came with several cruisers, a ship class I didn't even have yet. (I have the tech, but the energy income to support building them is now gone. Welp.)

Luckily their awesome new ships didn't come with any of our technology, so I could still crush them, albeit with losses. So I guess I won't abandon this save after all, but I have to think about how to unfuck the strategic mess the new patch created. :shepface:

# ¿ Mar 1, 2018 20:29

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Bedurndurn posted:

Sort of. They randomly die surprisingly often and they also like to give themselves a negative trait that gives them -10000% experience gain.

I had a string of planetary governors who would take office, hit level 2 or 3 and then decide that they weren't ever going to level up any more, so I fired them. It took 4 firings before we ended up with the governor who actually lasted the rest of the game.

I really don't want to jinx myself, but my machine leaders tend to die 1-2 times across 1-2 centuries. This means I had entire games were literally 2 machine leaders died throughout the entire run. My mortal fleshbeasts in comparison tend to drop like flies all the time. Old age is a bitch.

And by the way, all leaders can get that trait. It's been a bane of many of my games. Tons of leaders, all suddenly arresting their development. :suicide:

# ¿ Mar 1, 2018 21:09

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

ulmont posted:

Yeah, the auto-upgrade is where it all goes to hell.

Auto-design, you mean. Auto-upgrade is perfectly fine, as long as you switch it on only for your own designs.

GotLag posted:

Machines and Hiveminds Coexist

Gives machine empires access to meatbag-related policies so you can make them into slaves or citizens, not just energy. There's also a civic that starts you out with a small organic population to do with as you please (AI Integration) - note that this population currently starts out enslaved, so you need to change their rights ASAP.

Hell, that's the poo poo. I have to go to Steam and subscribe that mod asap

# ¿ Mar 3, 2018 12:14

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Thyrork posted:

Huh. Found Sol in a pre-atomic era and... pre-sapients?

I don't remember this paradox game.

Avian, eh? Looks like this is alternative reality Brin-Earth, and mankind has just begun work on ravens instead of dolphins and apes.

DatonKallandor posted:

I haven't done the Hiigarans yet, but my Kushan are:
Fanatic Egalitarian, Spiritualist with Functional Architecture and Idealistic Foundation. Intelligent, Natural Engineers.

Hiigarans would probably lose the spiritualism and gain militarism. Maybe get a Gaia-World Hiigara.

The Evil Taiidan Empire:
Fanatic Authoritarian, Militarist. Police State, Cutthroat Politics. Wasteful deviants, with Venerable (because without mods there's no other way to represent the ludicrous Emperor Riesstiu IV The Second). Obviously their Homeworld is Occupied Hiigara.

Now do the Beast next!

# ¿ Mar 3, 2018 16:29

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Improbable Lobster posted:

They'd be fine if they're an option in the ship designer rather than something assigned like attachments.

Now that would be a nice place for army attachments: An army designer! (We really need that one, I can't just play machine empires forever, as funny as dropping mech and titan divisions everywhere is, when you don't have titans, attachments are a real dumb chore.)

# ¿ Mar 3, 2018 17:54

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

DatonKallandor posted:

Yeah it really is. I'd expect it to get nerfed to 50% duration increase and it'd still be amazing.

Endgame Crisis. I don't think you currently can do a proper Beast as a normal empire. At best you'd probably get a Driven Assimilator that has somehow taken the Biological Ascension path.

Oh! You could include a warning event, like the Ghost Signal for the Contingency: Some warning about how randomly ships have started to disappear, and if you research it, a general space alarm is send throughout the empire, to make everyone careful. This could then reduce the damage from when the Beast finally shows up and mounts its first assault.

Bonus points if you include a chain about the Somtaaw, ending with you escorting their big ship to strike the final blow to the Beast

# ¿ Mar 3, 2018 18:55

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Deformed Church posted:

Is there a way to lower disengagement chances? The enemy keeps running away before I kick his teeth in and it's annoying me, I need to strap tractor beams to my destroyers or something.

Try to lure the enemy into a black hole system. Black holes lower disengagement chances. For added hilarity, construct a starbase in the same system and add a communication jammer to reduce the disengagement chance even further

(Alternatively, put down a starbase on a chokepoint the enemy wants to go through, then load it up with jammers)

# ¿ Mar 4, 2018 16:31

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

OwlFancier posted:

You can only add one jammer, it's a building not a module, alas.

Still, one should be enough. And it will still stack with black hole systems.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2018 16:41

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Voyager I posted:

I conquered a planet with a couple of organics on it as a Machine Empire and I've decided I'd rather have real robots on it than lovely batteries, but the little jerks refuse to migrate away. I think I've had them set to 'Undesirables' for something like 150 years and they're still just chilling out, miserably working a few tiles on a planet that is now predominantly populated by robots. I even terraformed the planet into a machine world hoping I could 'accidentally' genocide them without pissing off the rest of the galaxy, but they're still sticking around at 0% habitability - they're just slightly more miserable about life than they were before.

Is there anything I can do do get these guys to gently caress off short of sending out the killbots? Should I just make them a habitat in some poo poo-rear end system and then release it as a vassal?

What kind of planet do they need? Maybe non of your neighbours has any planets they could be displaced to. Do you have food production? If not, they should slowly starve to death

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 09:42

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

From my current game as the benevolent AI-Gods of the Techno Core: Holy poo poo, the part of the galaxy to my south-west is swarming with space amoeba! One of my neighbours is (due to bad lane placement) basically boxed in and hat multiple early game fleets mutilated by them. And my own science ships are constantly turned back by them.

It got so bad I had to build up a fleet base at my border to that region, just so I could assign a fleet to that region for basically forever: A couple more engagements, and I'll get regenerative hull tissue without having spend a single day of research on it

And still there are more of them, turning up just when I think to myself: Now that should be the last of them.

At least crystals and mining drones don't move around!

(But I have to confess, this ongoing hunt to clear the space lanes for civilization is kind of fun, if a bit tedious)

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 19:35

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

THE BAR posted:

I actually thought that was how the new pirates were supposed to be like. Having to keep patrolling the badlands for pirate activity instead of them just poofing into existence.

At least now that the mighty Techno Core has Enigmatic Engineering, I always know exactly where the pirates are. Space amoebas are kind of hard to find, except for when they stumble over my science ships. :v:

Question to the thread: What do you feel is more annoying, having to hunt around outside to find space pirates, or having them assault you constantly, but from an easy-to-reach border system?

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 20:08

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

AtomikKrab posted:

So I got bored and decided to do a new start, and to maximize my initial growth I uh... dissasembled my starting fleet so I could get more mineral production freed up

This is interesting. So what happens when the first pirates show up? Will you be able to rebuild your fleet fast enough to stop them, or will they raze your empire to the ground? Don't leave us hanging!

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 22:00

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

I've seen other people say that you want to refit your fleet to have zero equipment/lowest tech because it is remarkably faster to refit a fleet compared to building new ships.

I can't understand this, wouldn't you need to build ships in the first place? Why the refitting to zero, if you can just refit to what you need at the moment anyway? Is it just to min-max some ship-upkeep?

AtomikKrab posted:

It is 2209 I have 81 production of minerals per month after pop expenses.

I did build my race to try to maximize my production of minerals

industrious very strong inward perfecting lifeseeded fanatic pacifists.

by getting rid of the fleet, I could actually afford to move off my orks (yes these are pacifist orkz) off the power plants and onto free mineral fields, so my first months mineral production was 33.

Fascinating! I'm always going for simply collecting as many research-modifiers as I can. (This time around I even started with logic engines as a starting trait, just so my machines could get to science even faster. Now that I can robo-mod, I of course have specialist bots for everything, and my production in everything is slowly gearing up.)

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 22:20

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

What I vehemently and vociferously hate about it is that it is binary. Either you have a leader, or you dont. With each of the things that require (or are better with leaders) in Stellaris (Armies, Navies, governors, heads of state, science ships, and research) what the gently caress is going on if you dont have a leader? Is it a Benny Hill skit going on in the Bridge of your flagship? Paradox the Developer has been doing the same old played-out system since EU1 with leaders and they need to update it to something modern. Leader Pools need to be larger and more diverse. Why isnt it an interesting choice, where the cost of recruiting the leader is a calculation of their age, skill level, and number of and quality of additional talents? Instead we get "One guy who is middle aged and eager to join, one guy who is young and has a useless trait, and an old guy with a useful skill that you dont really need right now though" and it is just so stale. Or why isnt it a system that every leadership position has a pool of many (up to a dozen) randomly generated choices that slowly changes over time (running with the assumption that the pool changes over time as people retire, switch careers, or die instead of the bullcrap we have right now where its the same options forever). These choices would let you pick between an older guy who is talented but will be expensive and also may keel over at any moment, or a guy in the middle of the pack who is less expensive but has some talent to work with, or a green guy who is cheaper to recruit but doesnt have much to work with just yet. Right now I think its dumb that you pay the same regardless of skill or talent level, and the pool you get to pull from is always so small.

I tried to read this several times, but I still don't quite get what you want. Guessing carefully: A more detailed leader system, maybe? Well, why not. Most of your complaints are moot, though: For one, the leader ship pool does change, because occasionally people in it just disappear and are replaced by new ones. You are also not always paying the same, the eager green guys without any extra talent cost only half as much, for example. Of course, a couple sentences before that you complained about this very thing, so maybe you're not really sure what you want yourself?

It would really help if you go back and proofread your post, with all the conflicting and sometimes wrong stuff in it I found it barely readable.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 21:54

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Splicer posted:

That reminds me, I was thinking about how the fiction behind the hiring process is slightly weird now that it's energy credits. When it was influence based it was kind of open ended as to how it worked. Now? You're giving some scientist a one time payment of one-fifth the monthly output of an entire star in return for them working for you unto death.

This came to mind after I kept extending my leaders' lifespans over and over until I ultimately rendered them into immortal machines and they, presumably, realised 200 energy / infinity years is a considerably different lifestyle to the 200 energy / 100ish years they'd initially budgeted for.

I just assume the costs are all the associated energy costs of raising, building, training and programming (delete as needed) a new leader. The actual resources for supporting/paying a leader are so low compared with the operating costs of an entire space civilization, I see them as abstracted away as a rounding error. :v:

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 23:44

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 02:26

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Hot Dog Day #82 posted:

So, what would you guys say is the ideal galaxy size to play in? I know the game defaults to large, but I feel like the dates are ticking by slower than they did in 1.9... I guess it could be that I�m playing more attention to them, though.

I've played on some medium, large and modded-in ludicrous maps, but my all-time favourite are huge galaxies. There's just something just right about having exactly 1000 stars to work with

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 08:53

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Stellaris: a second Astral Planes has hit the game

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