Stellaris Thread

Tofystedeth

I found an anomaly on a colonizeable planet that made one of its tiles give +9 mechanics research. Mmmmmm yes please.

Virgil_Leads_You

Maddoc wrote: »

The game doesn't really support pacifism as a long term strategy, currently

Yeah, it's more "check this box if you want"
Some Small War Penalties
in exchange for a few extra embassies you can use

which is a useful trade off.
but a broader application of your philosophy
into actual play feels necessary

Jars

Dubh wrote: »

I wish fighters were a thing that could happen earlier in the game

because I frikkin' love fighters

you can get the amoeba ones fairly early

Phillishere

In my pacifist xenophile game, I decided not to kill any of the amoebas or crystals in my space. They are easy to maneuver around and don't attack space stations or colonies, so I generally see them as a free defense force.

One interesting thing is that I have started getting research bonuses from some mysterious third party helping me out in that game. I wonder if the two things are connected?

Platy

Virgil_Leads_You wrote: »

Maddoc wrote: »

The game doesn't really support pacifism as a long term strategy, currently

Yeah, it's more "check this box if you want"
Some Small War Penalties
in exchange for a few extra embassies you can use

which is a useful trade off.
but a broader application of your philosophy
into actual play feels necessary

I think this is because it tries to be a 4x game more than I initially expected it to be

I hope there's going to be at least one expansion which focuses on "tall" instead of "wide" gameplay

Federations are nice and a start

honovere

Tofystedeth wrote: »

I found an anomaly on a colonizeable planet that made one of its tiles give +9 mechanics research. Mmmmmm yes please.

Is that planet Mars? did you find the Void Dragon?

Pinfeldorf

honovere wrote: »

Tofystedeth wrote: »

I found an anomaly on a colonizeable planet that made one of its tiles give +9 mechanics research. Mmmmmm yes please.

Is that planet Mars? did you find the Void Dragon?

I found the Void Dragon! It gave me +9 physics research. It was also three systems away from next door to me, it was super, duper hot for my science-driven space fish that also had a physics bump.

SCIENCE!

Oghulk

Was in the process of researching Sentient AI earlier

Fallen empire Keepers of Knowledge was like "yo, cut that shit out"

and I went all "nah fuck y'all I do what I want"

so they declared war on me

only desires? keep me from studying sentient AI and humiliate me

except I was in a federation

so the entire federation helped me fight back

war actually ended in a tie, so neither of the two stupid ass war demands were incurred

then another empire that wasn't in our federation and was on their own taking over space in the galaxy declared war on the fallen empire and beat them

just like...woah...

Pinfeldorf

Oghulk wrote: »

Was in the process of researching Sentient AI earlier

Fallen empire Keepers of Knowledge was like "yo, cut that shit out"

and I went all "nah fuck y'all I do what I want"

so they declared war on me

only desires? keep me from studying sentient AI and humiliate me

except I was in a federation

so the entire federation helped me fight back

war actually ended in a tie, so neither of the two stupid ass war demands were incurred

then another empire that wasn't in our federation and was on their own taking over space in the galaxy declared war on the fallen empire and beat them

just like...woah...

Holy shit. Your federation must have really done a number on that fallen empire's forces for one guy to take him out. Right as I kind of scuttled my game where the fallen empire tanked me back to the stone age I got the tech for the sentient AI, saw it was red and was like, "Yes I want this. Dangerous? Fuck you EDI is awesome." Never got to see any consequences from it.

Aistan

Sector AI is completely moronic. It moved all the enslaved alien populations off of the production and food tiles and onto other things, and left the monument to purity completely unworked.

Sir Fabulous

First Major Patch Coming Soon.
Beta patch probably out this week. The patch aims to focus on improvements and bug fixes over new content.

Some highlights include:

Sectors manageable from the Outliner
More detailed Diplomacy and End of Combat popups
Better AI (Including Sector AI)
AI will be more willing to trade
Empire Creation will have a Biography and Ruler Title option
Corvette nerfs
Strike Craft buffs
Xenophilia/phobia buffs
Technology costs scale with # of planets and pop instead of just pop

Mr. G

One of the things I really like about this kind of game is it will only get better as time goes on

They will put out great patches and people will make really cool mods

It's already great to begin with, it'll just be cooler

DarkPrimus

I hesitate to call the game "great" in its current state.

But it's certainly good.

Phillishere

DarkPrimus wrote: »

I hesitate to call the game "great" in its current state.

But it's certainly good.

It's extremely solid for a Paradox early release. If they had wanted to, they could have added more polish and called it a day. As it is, there are clearly huge "DLC goes here" gaps that they left empty, trade stands out, instead of cobbling together good enough systems.

Maddoc

Can't wait to write biographies for my custom empires

Sir Fabulous

Maddoc wrote: »

Can't wait to write biographies for my custom empires

"Thses Hedgehog-like organms like to 'go fast.' Created in a cloning lab to be the ultimate life-form, they'll conquer the galaxy beyondd a Shadow of a doubt :winky:"

Oghulk

Pinfeldorf wrote: »

Oghulk wrote: »

Was in the process of researching Sentient AI earlier

Fallen empire Keepers of Knowledge was like "yo, cut that shit out"

and I went all "nah fuck y'all I do what I want"

so they declared war on me

only desires? keep me from studying sentient AI and humiliate me

except I was in a federation

so the entire federation helped me fight back

war actually ended in a tie, so neither of the two stupid ass war demands were incurred

then another empire that wasn't in our federation and was on their own taking over space in the galaxy declared war on the fallen empire and beat them

just like...woah...

Holy shit. Your federation must have really done a number on that fallen empire's forces for one guy to take him out. Right as I kind of scuttled my game where the fallen empire tanked me back to the stone age I got the tech for the sentient AI, saw it was red and was like, "Yes I want this. Dangerous? Fuck you EDI is awesome." Never got to see any consequences from it.

The one single guy was actually really powerful and controlled roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of the entire galaxy

nah, he has a big ass army

Zibblsnrt

Sir Fabulous wrote: »

Strike Craft buffs

eeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Gonna build all the carriers.

Captain K

Late to respond but my usual plan with new colonies is to sector them off quickly, but not until I've built a frontier clinic and a starbase with an orbital hydroponic farm module. I know the sector management AI is dumb, and I accept that, but I'm going to at least force the new colony to grow quickly.

Which might actually be a bad idea, now that I think about it, since research costs go up as you grow in population, and if the sector AI is using those pops poorly... hmm. Gonna have to rethink it. Or more accurately, gonna have to see how it goes with the "improved sector AI" the new patch promises.

Wyvern

Does excess food even help pops reproduce faster? I feel like it's always 1.1 or 1.2 points a month regardless of the food situation.

theSquid

I think it's +.1 per month per excess food

Doobh

so, uh, a thing happened with stellaris modding

CW for racism

Tynnan

I get a kick out of anyone trying to claim "but my free speech" over this. That's not how that works, you inflammatory geese.

Coinage

It's hilarious that Paradox is saying just don't put Nazi rhetoric in your mod and we don't care if you make everyone white, but no that's still such incredible oppression. Well maybe hilarious isn't the right word...

Wyvern wrote: »

Does excess food even help pops reproduce faster? I feel like it's always 1.1 or 1.2 points a month regardless of the food situation.

There is a bonus for each point of excess food, I don't recall the formula but you can see the exact numbers in the defines.lua file.

Maddoc

Tynnan wrote: »

I get a kick out of anyone trying to claim "but my free speech" over this. That's not how that works, you inflammatory geese.

Nobody who has ever complained about free speech on the internet knows how free speech works

Probably most people outside of the internet also

Virgil_Leads_You

They should just pull white people out of the game proper with a patch.

Doobh

Virgil_Leads_You wrote: »

They should just pull white people out of the game proper with a patch.

too OP of a change

would break game balance

Tofystedeth

Man, that article left out the "best" part of the update after he reposted his mod, where compared Paradox to the Stasi.

Crimson King

Virgil_Leads_You wrote: »

Maddoc wrote: »

The game doesn't really support pacifism as a long term strategy, currently

Yeah, it's more "check this box if you want"
Some Small War Penalties
in exchange for a few extra embassies you can use

which is a useful trade off.
but a broader application of your philosophy
into actual play feels necessary

the game needs missionaries, i think

a pacifist game should be about converting the galaxy to your political system and uniting it in a single federation

Tofystedeth

Yeah, it's unfortunate there is basically just 2 versions of the Civ 5 domination victory.

Phillishere

Crimson King wrote: »

Virgil_Leads_You wrote: »

Maddoc wrote: »

The game doesn't really support pacifism as a long term strategy, currently

Yeah, it's more "check this box if you want"
Some Small War Penalties
in exchange for a few extra embassies you can use

which is a useful trade off.
but a broader application of your philosophy
into actual play feels necessary

the game needs missionaries, i think

a pacifist game should be about converting the galaxy to your political system and uniting it in a single federation

Missionaries or tourist resorts.

Cantide

The game also needs a diplomacy option for merging alliances. In my pacifist game there's 2 empires that are good friends of mine and would happily join my federation... except that they're already allied with each other, so I can't do anything with them.

Doobh

Tofystedeth wrote: »

Man, that article left out the "best" part of the update after he reposted his mod, where compared Paradox to the Stasi.

fucking lord

Phoenix138

I gave this game a try last week and after a rocky start I'm now really glad I did.

I'll try to keep this relatively short but my first full playthrough involved a xenophobic fallen empire declaring war on me after I refused to destroy all my bordering colonies. I had already gotten rid of other bordering colonies earlier in the game but was feeling pretty good about myself since I was part of a decent-sized federation plus had some vassals from earlier wars (members of the federation I was in kept declaring these small wars against the same species and liberating them/splitting them into different empires).

So even though the diplomacy screen stated that this fallen empire was overwhelming in force, I figured that that didn't factor in the strength of the rest of the federation. Plus I had built up some pretty decent defensive systems that I imagined I could bleed his forces in. Didn't realize at the time that fallen empires have jump drives and could just skip those systems and go straight to raiding my core worlds. Also learned that sending out my fleets in strength (I had two good-sized fleets, one for the core worlds and one for the border with this fallen empire) would usually result in the fallen empire jumping into the recently vacated system to raid it while my ships were in transit. So I spent most of the war turtled in those heavily defended systems while this guy set fire to the rest of my empire. Eventually was able to get him to engage in those heavily defended systems by sending off very small fleets to harass his raiding fleets, which seemed to goad him into attacking my primary fleets. Those engagements went well but otherwise I was definitely losing the war.

I was checking the war score screen to see how my allies were doing and they were faring even worse, a long list of -1 engagements, until I got to the bottom of the list and saw a +30 score. Apparently my biggest ally had managed to take one of the fallen empire's home system planets, despite losing most every other defensive engagement. This home system was a ringworld system so one of the segments out of the four had just fallen, but my ally's invasion fleet was relatively small (about 7K). I took the primary fleet that was defending my border systems (~24K) and joined the invasion and was able to take 2 more of those segments before a peace was forced. That was a little annoying as I didn't know how the war demands system worked at the time so basically we ended up just handing over those 3 home system planets because our federation president accepted this fallen empire's increasingly desperate calls for peace. Luckily it was my empire's turn to be federation president in the next cycle so I had them re-declare war and jumped that fleet back into his home system and conquered it, adding a very cool ringworld system to my empire and subjugating a fallen empire.

So I'm sure a lot of this can just be chalked up to bad AI on the part of the fallen empire. My guess is that he had simply spread himself too thin raiding my empire and my federation allies and left his home system with an insufficient defense fleet. But from a roleplaying perspective it made for a pretty great story about my allies making what amounted to a from hell's heart I stab at thee suicide mission only to be bailed out when their allies realized what had happened and a force in size to back up their invasion.

Anyway, that was a really fun first experience. Looking forward to see how this game progresses. Seems like it has a lot of potential for modding/expansions down the road.

Der Waffle Mous

beta patch is out

Captain K

Der Waffle Mous wrote: »

beta patch is out

Patch notes seem pretty encouraging!! spoilered here:

##############################################################
######################## VERSION 1.1.0 #######################
##############################################################

###################
# Features
###################

* Strike Craft attack behavior was changed
* It is no longer necessary to control planets to demand them in war, but controlling planets that are set as wargoals now generates more warscore
* It is now possible to set a custom ruler/heir title for your custom empires
* It is now possible to write a biography for your custom empire
* Added an Influence reward for establishing communications, or conversely being contacted
* Collection of strategic resources on planet tiles is no longer suppressed by buildings
* Added settings for AI aggressiveness in the galaxy setup screen
* "Shipwright" mandate for democractic empires has been reworked
* Added resource reward to Raid on Smugglers event
* Individualist empires will no longer generate election candidates with slaver mandates, and Individualist Pops are less likely to vote for candidates with slaver mandates
* Slaver mandate no longer possible if slavery is outlawed
* It is now possible to set difficulty in multiplayer
* Symbols of Domination is now available for everyone
* Platypus species portrait and Paradox empire flag is now available for everyone

###################
# Balance
###################

# Technology
* Technology costs now increase by +10% per owned planet (up from +0%) and by +1% per Pop (down from +2%)
* Unlocking Spaceport technologies now makes you more likely to get research options for new reactor techs
* Spiritualists and Materialists now get tech progress towards Frequency Tuning for researching Space Whales

# Ethics
Fanatic Individualist
* Pops are now more unhappy in collectivist empires
* No longer have increased ethics divergence

Individualist
* Pops are now more unhappy in collectivist empires
* No longer have increased ethics divergence

Fanatic Xenophobe
* Rivalries now provide 50% more Influence

Xenophobe
* Rivalries now provide 25% more Influence

Fanatic Xenophile
* Alliance Influence cost reduced by 100%
* Maximum number of embassies increased by 2

Xenophile
* Alliance Influence cost reduced by 50%
* Maximum number of embassies increased by 1

Fanatic Militarist
* No longer gains additional Influence from rivalries
* No longer have an increased Influence cost for being in an Alliance

Militarist
* No longer gains additional Influence from rivalries
* No longer have an increased Influence cost for being in an Alliance

Fanatic Pacifist
* Pops are now more unhappy in militarist empires
* No longer increases Food output, but rather reduces growth needed for a new Pop by 30%

Pacifist
* Pops are now more unhappy in militarist empires
* No longer increases Food output, but rather reduces growth needed for a new Pop by 15%

# Components
* Strike Craft engagement range was significantly increased
* Strike Craft launch time reduced from 5 to 3 days
* Fighter movement speed increased from ~2 to 3.5
* Bomber movement speed increased from 1.5 to 3
* Chemical Thrusters Chance to Evade reduced from +10 to +5
* Ion Thrusters Chance to Evade reduced from +20 to +10
* Plasma Thrusters Chance to Evade reduced from +30 to +15
* Impulse Thrusters Chance to Evade reduced from +40 to +20

# Buildings
* Research Institute modifier to research speed reduced from +10% to +5%
* Colony Shelter modifier to ethics divergence reduced from +20% to +10%

# Government forms
Theocratic Republic
* Additional Core Planets reduced from +2 to +1

Transcendent Republic
* Additional Core Planets reduced from +4 to +2

# Traits
* Aggressive - fire rate bonus reduced from +20% to +10%
* Butcher - army damage bonus reduced from +20% to +10%
* Glory Seeker - army morale damage bonus reduced from +10% to +5%

# Modifiers
* Youthful Elite modifier effect on leader lifespan reduced from +50 to +25 years

###################
# AI
###################

# Misc.
* Computer-controlled Empires will start outlawing AI over time during a certain Crisis
* Increased negative opinion scaling for relative power of subjects
* AI will now colonize far away systems if COLONIZE_NON_ADJACENT define is enabled
* Fixed a bug where the AI would not use planetary edicts due to too small stockpile cap
* Empires that were previously controlled by a player (for example if said player drops in multiplayer) will now refrain from making any major changes to the country for a period of 10 years
* Fixed a bug where AI was modifying their species with bad traits, effectively giving them lots of traits
* Fixed a bug where military focused sectors would not build military stations
* Fixed an issue where the AI would not enslave any Pops

# Diplomacy
* AI will no longer accept a white peace when they are winning in warscore
* AI is now more open to trading access, migration rights and (for some personalities) research treaties
* Fixed a bug where AI would offer peace deals that gave allies' war goals to the player
* Fixed AI spamming the player with military access offers
* AI is now more aggressive against easily defeated targets

# Economy
* Fixed an issue where the AI would not disband ships even when running a heavy energy credit deficit

# Sector
* Respect Tile Resources setting will now prevent sector from building the wrong type of building for a tile regardless of special circumstances
* Improved the way sectors determine which resources the country needs when constructing buildings
* Fixed a bug where sector AI would move Pops back and forth
* Fixed budget issues that were preventing sectors from properly managing spaceports and construction ships

# Warfare
* Improved military tactics and handling of units
* Improved handling of military fleets vs. transport fleets
* AI now fights Crises
* Fixed issues where military fleets would not move
* AI should be better at trying to regain control of occupied planets
* AI should be better at trying to invade planets taken by ""AI uprisings"

###################
# User Interface
###################

* Diplomatic notifications and pop-ups have been improved
* End of combat UI has been improved
* Colony Ships now show which Pop it is carrying
* Localization of armor/shield penetration updated
* If a weapon has both shield penetration and a corresponding reduced damage to shields the two effects are replaced by a single line: "Ignores X% Shields"
* Habitability icons in galaxy map and systems view have been improved
* (BETA) Added a new experimental option for GUI-scaling in the options menu

###################
# User modding
###################

* Ported system for weights/triggers on songs from HoI4/EU4
* Fixed so that effect set_name can use localization system
* Moved Domination victory condition into defines
* Added NOR operator
* Species Appearance screen is now moddable
* Species City Appearance screen is now moddable
* Ship Appearance screen is now moddable
* Added num_energy trigger
* Reading a single on_action entry from multiple files will now append the events to the list entry rather than overwriting it. This should allow more mods to be compatible
* Prescripted countries can now set the attribute "disallow_editing = yes" to disable the edit button in the Empire selection view before game start

###################
# Performance
###################

* Optimized daily AI calculations
* Fixed frame rate drop when having one or more fleets selected

###################
# Graphics
###################
* Lighting for ship preview images has been improved
* 8 new event images added to the game
* Textures for Massive Reptilians have been improved
* Improved textures for space event assets
* Optimized textures for event assets
* Increased texture resolution for ancient drone station
* Optimized textures for pirate ships
* Updated textures for generic station
* Increased texture resolution for AI Core
* Optimized textures for AI ships
* Improved texture for Arthropoid colony ship
* Added cover art for Digital OST

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
* Military Station maintenance is now correctly discounted by 25% instead of increased by 75%
* Fixed negative opinion modifiers being applied to owners of planets that the Prethoryn Scourge is purging
* Extradimensional Invaders should no longer spawn inside Fallen Empire borders
* Reduced chance of generating the Improbable Orbit anomaly
* Fixed the Master's Teachings edicts "Philosophical Mindset" and "Warring States" not being applied after event project finished
* Fixed "Colonial Failure" anomaly event handing out a Colonization tech you already had
* Fixed an issue with the VO not triggering for the mining station tutorial mission
* Researched robot Pops are now always listed, but are not buildable if AI policy is set to Outlawed
* Injured Queen project is now properly cancelled and visual asset removed when another Empire researches it first
* Species Procurement event chain descriptions now correctly refer to planet names
* Various localization bugs have been fixed
* Fixed outdated Avian name list titles in Brazilian Portuguese, French, Polish and Spanish
* Fixed some faction events not printing planet names properly
* Loyalist-affiliated candidates now display proper faction names in Election view
* Fixed observation post events sometimes not printing planet name correctly
* Changed the way native reservations are placed for colony event related to colonizing planets that have primitive natives
* Fixed a bug where missiles could appear on the galaxy map
* Ring World habitability-trait now has proper localization
* Fixed a bug where Destroyer Assembly Yard didn't require the correct Spaceport level to build
* Fixed an issue where trait randomization didn't respect opposing traits
* Fallen Empires are now able to build armies
* Fixed an exploit where you could reduce the cost of resettlement by moving pops around on the same planet
* Newly enlightened countries should no longer be despicable neutrals
* Fixed right click not working to give additional orders while in FTL transit
* Fixed an issue where embassies and rivalries could remain after an empire was annexed
* Fixed an issue where you could always enable edicts
* Fixed Swarm Infestors and Constructors sometimes not reinforcing properly
* Robot Pops should no longer get shuffled ethics from divergence
* Heirs now keep the dynasty name of the ruler in monarchies
* Added missing localization strings for leaders who gained the arrested development trait
* Fixed Power Overwhelming achievement
* Fixed Domo Arigato achievement
* Fixed Elixir of Life anomaly potentially spawning multiple times if not researched
* Fixed Living Metal deposits not being minable
* Fixed Sublight Probe event chain sometimes breaking after combat with the Salvage Skippers
* Fixed being unable to change speed with (-) and (+) on American keyboard
* Fixed bugs related to Ethics Divergence. Pops should no longer drift to "neutral" ethics. Drift towards empire ethics is slower than drifting away from
* Fixed a bug where Frontier Outposts in sectors would cost no influence maintenance
* Fixed a bug where ship_accuracy_add was not being calculated correctly

Definitely gonna fire up a new game soon!

Pinfeldorf

Do spaceport modules that affect 'ships' affect my whole armada, just docked ships, or just ships produced from that spaceport? Or some combination? Kind of confused.

Weaver

My run, which is still super early, I only have one colony, is "What if Cadia was the last human planet and they had to rebuild the Imperium of Man".

Zenyatoo

Weaver wrote: »

My run, which is still super early, I only have one colony, is "What if Cadia was the last human planet and they had to rebuild the Imperium of Man".

So automatically declaring war on every single alien race you discover and purging them relentlessly?

Anzekay

Zenyatoo wrote: »

Weaver wrote: »

My run, which is still super early, I only have one colony, is "What if Cadia was the last human planet and they had to rebuild the Imperium of Man".

So automatically declaring war on every single alien race you discover and purging them relentlessly?

Weaver said Canada, not America