- Humans with the Post-Apocalyptic Origin. At last, humanity has finally joined hands to work together. Because after the nuclear apocalypse it was either that or extinction.
- Unity, led by the AI Harmony. A divided, warlike people tasked a supercomputer with bringing peace to their planet. The AI did so. By assimilating the entire population. I know the game says that Driven Assimilators want to know everything, but this one just wants everyone to live in perfect unity.
I usually don't replay empires because games take a long time to finish even though I've only ever gotten to game finish twice (technically once because the second time was just blowing the galaxy up). Might give the agrarian idyll anglers with ocean paradise another try. Granted, since it's a really good trade build, I'll probably opt for authoritarian, pacifist xenophile setup over the fanatical authoritarian pacifist one. I figure paragons will make that a much different experience and I have the mod that let's me pick my precursor. Don't know if I'll limit myself to just baol (have the anglers provide food, amenities and consumer goods) or add a few others on.
My preferred setups are rogue servitor if I go gestalt. Then I find myself often using xenophile, materialist and egalitarian for the empires I make. Often it's xenophile and materialist, but with paragons, I'll probably be doing more non-fanatical empires.
Don't really touch genocidal or slaving builds. I just don't find them enjoyable and even though I know it's a game, but I feel that certain level of ick when presented the option to play builds that do either or both.
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
I never finish games because around 2300 I start to get a bit antsy. So I end up playing a lot of empires more than once because I'll be like "this time I'll finish a game!"
Democratic warrior clans of turtle humanoids from alpine mountain planets who are great dwarf-y diggers and engineers, and very tough because big turtle folks, but tough ground troops has never been a particularly useful racial trait so they're not very min-maxed.
Usually play some sort of technocratic xenophobe enclave who wish to be left on their own in the pursuit of science, ethics be damned. They have little interest in alien life except for when they're the subject of invasive study.
I never finish games because around 2300 I start to get a bit antsy. So I end up playing a lot of empires more than once because I'll be like "this time I'll finish a game!"
That's about roughly where I end most of my games. I blame it on two things.
-Warfare in this game largely sucks and get worse once empires start consolidating into federations or vassals around an overlord.
-I find the exploration and discovery to be the most fun and that all dries up at about that point. I main it's dumb that we have a one an done approach to finding anomalies. In fact, it's also dumb that we can only survey a world once and find all that we're going to find. Would be more interesting if the devs had one or two research options that unlock at midgame and late game, that allow us to rescan systems if we owned them or they are unclaimed. That would allow for finding more stuff.
In fact, I have mixed feeling on archaeology because I do enjoy how that pushes out the discover phase, but the process kind of sucks. I agree with Aspec, in that I wish there was more choice involved with how digsites progress. Also the precursor ones tend to be obnoxious because baol definitely has some bit of half ass code that ensures you'll have to claim shit 30-40 systems out from the first digsite because it prioritizes unclaimed systems and it just feels shitty.
I never finish games because around 2300 I start to get a bit antsy. So I end up playing a lot of empires more than once because I'll be like "this time I'll finish a game!"
That's about roughly where I end most of my games. I blame it on two things.
-Warfare in this game largely sucks and get worse once empires start consolidating into federations or vassals around an overlord.
-I find the exploration and discovery to be the most fun and that all dries up at about that point. I main it's dumb that we have a one an done approach to finding anomalies. In fact, it's also dumb that we can only survey a world once and find all that we're going to find. Would be more interesting if the devs had one or two research options that unlock at midgame and late game, that allow us to rescan systems if we owned them or they are unclaimed. That would allow for finding more stuff.
In fact, I have mixed feeling on archaeology because I do enjoy how that pushes out the discover phase, but the process kind of sucks. I agree with Aspec, in that I wish there was more choice involved with how digsites progress. Also the precursor ones tend to be obnoxious because baol definitely has some bit of half ass code that ensures you'll have to claim shit 30-40 systems out from the first digsite because it prioritizes unclaimed systems and it just feels shitty.
I agree with pretty much everything in this post. Bonus fun, I just had one of the Baol dig sites spawn in the same system as the Ether Drake. So that's fun.
I never finish games because around 2300 I start to get a bit antsy. So I end up playing a lot of empires more than once because I'll be like "this time I'll finish a game!"
That's about roughly where I end most of my games. I blame it on two things.
-Warfare in this game largely sucks and get worse once empires start consolidating into federations or vassals around an overlord.
-I find the exploration and discovery to be the most fun and that all dries up at about that point. I main it's dumb that we have a one an done approach to finding anomalies. In fact, it's also dumb that we can only survey a world once and find all that we're going to find. Would be more interesting if the devs had one or two research options that unlock at midgame and late game, that allow us to rescan systems if we owned them or they are unclaimed. That would allow for finding more stuff.
In fact, I have mixed feeling on archaeology because I do enjoy how that pushes out the discover phase, but the process kind of sucks. I agree with Aspec, in that I wish there was more choice involved with how digsites progress. Also the precursor ones tend to be obnoxious because baol definitely has some bit of half ass code that ensures you'll have to claim shit 30-40 systems out from the first digsite because it prioritizes unclaimed systems and it just feels shitty.
Lol, why not play with 1 Planet and rush research if you like it?
One planet runs into the same issues. In fact, it doesn't slow things down anymore in regards to exploration, nor does it do a damn thing about wars being shit. I'm not one of the people that paints the galaxy like a map and I tend to shoot for having compact tall empires to begin with. Even then, you still run the issue of someone declaring war on you and then having to deal with hos shit the the current war setup is. Worse, if you're not the aggressive type that likes to declare wars on the fly, then you have higher odds of getting the scenario where you're winning handily, but can't win the war because that's the kind of empire that has pissed off enough other empires, that it'll get war decked once you start winning. Then you get the shit show where no one can win their war because no side can occupy enough territory to hit their war goal. Not unless someone has claimed all the systems with colonies.
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
I do agree with everything @Mill has been saying. Around 2270 I sort of just start waiting for the Khan to show up, unless I’m playing super aggro. But I think we have similar playstyles in that I really like settling worlds and building something tall or “medium,” but if I’m not in a commanding position by then it sort of feels like, what’s the point? And if I am, it’s still kinda like that unless I am in the middle of vassalizing the other empires.
And war can be kinda fun but again it’s like—oh I don’t have a bunch of vassals? Guess I’m warring with three factions, not one. Or, if I do? There’s nothing to kill.
Choose between the United Federation of Planets, Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, or Cardassian Union.
No Dominion? No Ferangi? No Borg?
Oh, that's gonna be DLC I bet.
It's Paradox, so there's going to be DLC for miles obviously.
But Borg and Dominion I see being better implemented as late game crisis events. The Dominion would be an interesting one because in DS9 they didn't pour through the wormhole guns blazing, they showed up with what seemed to be good faith diplomacy (except with the Federation, who were not dealing with them in good faith either), they fixed poverty and starvation in the Cardassian Union, even did more in a few months to rebuild Bajor from the Occupation than Starfleet had done in years, to the point that Kira almost fell for it. They jumped their allies up the tech tree while subverting the politics and command structure of their enemies.
Sure they blamed Cardassia for their own mistakes, but if you're winning there's nothing for them to blame you for, right? And sure they were going to come for Romulus and Tholia eventually, but the Federation was resourceful and had the Klingons on their side, so it might never come to that, right? Everyone in or not in the war, even Cardassia and Breen, had a plan that ended without a Jem'hadar bootheel on their necks, while the Dominion's plan ended with bootheels for everyone, just not all at once.
Trek's got plenty of big bads who could come in and just wreck a quadrant of they wanted to, but the Dominion could upend every aspect of the game when they show up - technology, economy, diplomacy, military, all bets are off.
And they can also wreck a quadrant while they're at it, but unlike the Borg they have a full toolbox.
Hevach on
0
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Oh
Instead of that horrible game it will be that horrible star trek game. We getting specifics to the horribleness.
I will need to get this.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
So I was playing a fanatical materialist empire and popped the zroni and managed to get psionic theory; I always though it was impossible to go psionics as materialists unless you pull some shenanigans but I can totally take that ascension perk now. Is there any negative for doing this as a materialist empire?
Choose between the United Federation of Planets, Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, or Cardassian Union.
No Dominion? No Ferangi? No Borg?
Oh, that's gonna be DLC I bet.
lmao the Star Trek conversion mod has way more content than that. Completely different game if you choose to play as the Borg, starting out in the Delta quadrant.
So I was playing a fanatical materialist empire and popped the zroni and managed to get psionic theory; I always though it was impossible to go psionics as materialists unless you pull some shenanigans but I can totally take that ascension perk now. Is there any negative for doing this as a materialist empire?
There's nothing stopping an organic race from going psionic unless they've already gone down the genetic, cybernetic or synthetic ascension paths.
It's just far less likely to trigger unless you get the Zroni precursor; I think that adds weight to the psionic theory social research option.
Also: if you go into the shroud and your leader becomes the immortal Chosen One, you'll eventually have an event where your people suggest reforming your government to an Imperialist Cult where they're installed as a permanent leader and worshipped as a living god.
Choose between the United Federation of Planets, Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, or Cardassian Union.
No Dominion? No Ferangi? No Borg?
Oh, that's gonna be DLC I bet.
lmao the Star Trek conversion mod has way more content than that. Completely different game if you choose to play as the Borg, starting out in the Delta quadrant.
This did manage to make me aware of said total conversion, which I'm currently enjoying immensely.
Choose between the United Federation of Planets, Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, or Cardassian Union.
No Dominion? No Ferangi? No Borg?
Oh, that's gonna be DLC I bet.
lmao the Star Trek conversion mod has way more content than that. Completely different game if you choose to play as the Borg, starting out in the Delta quadrant.
Best back that mod up if you want to keep playing it..
Choose between the United Federation of Planets, Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, or Cardassian Union.
No Dominion? No Ferangi? No Borg?
Oh, that's gonna be DLC I bet.
lmao the Star Trek conversion mod has way more content than that. Completely different game if you choose to play as the Borg, starting out in the Delta quadrant.
Best back that mod up if you want to keep playing it..
I would have advised that even before. After the Axanar guy's antics* they came down hard on fan products that had been tolerated and even acknowledged for years. Two fan games vanished in the big retaliatory purge, mods for several games, and the ongoing fan series all ended.
*-they were ok with the show, even ok with him fundraising for it. But then he started selling merchandise unrelated to Axanar and claiming it to be official, and even tried to tell a judge he should be given control of the rights because he loved Star Trek more than CBS.
So I was playing a fanatical materialist empire and popped the zroni and managed to get psionic theory; I always though it was impossible to go psionics as materialists unless you pull some shenanigans but I can totally take that ascension perk now. Is there any negative for doing this as a materialist empire?
There's nothing stopping an organic race from going psionic unless they've already gone down the genetic, cybernetic or synthetic ascension paths.
It's just far less likely to trigger unless you get the Zroni precursor; I think that adds weight to the psionic theory social research option.
Also: if you go into the shroud and your leader becomes the immortal Chosen One, you'll eventually have an event where your people suggest reforming your government to an Imperialist Cult where they're installed as a permanent leader and worshipped as a living god.
Unless you already have imperial authority or your leader is removed from office before the event triggers!
Guess I'm going to be the rare empire with Psionics and Robots who have equal rights.
I usually play materialist, so I've done psionic ascension like once until I did Knights of hte Toxic God last game and did it again... and then in my immediate next game I get the Zroni.
Like 3.1 Lem, 3.3 Libra, and 3.6 Orion, Caelum will be a Custodian update focused on revisiting old packs, catching up on technical debt, and generally improving the game.
Sounds like Lithoids is getting an update. Cataclysmic Birth looks like it's getting much needed buffs.
Will be interesting to see how things go with their Star Trek game. I'm willing to be there will be enough shit under the hood that will make it functional a different game. Figure they'll pull the elements that really work for a space themed grand strategy game. I kind of figure hyperlanes will probably be in some form, even if they don't stick with a starbase cap because it allows for added galactic terrain that defensive points can work with. Granted, they don't have jump drives, so I imagine the hyperlane setup will be more of you have to go through neighboring systems and can't just go around everything to hit a colony that has no fleet or starbase in the system it occupies. They are probably going to build it from the ground up, even if they stick with the current engine that stellaris uses (though willing to bet it'll get a new one), so it's not going to have all the tech debt that the current game has.
I'd also wager it's probably going to be more narrative focused than current Stellaris and that we probably won't get the option to create custom empires because they are going to want to make sure it's just not a reskin of Stellaris, but with the Star Trek look. So each faction we're currently getting is probably going to have some sort of goal to achieve and limits on what it can and can't do. For instance Federation is likely going to be setup so that there are some hard limits on when you can declare war, slavery will be outlawed and have to stick with utopian like living standards. Where the Cardassians will probably be able to more easily declare war, allow slavery and probably have a stratified living standards setup. Also wouldn't be surprised if we could adjust living standards at all, but each empire has to account for pop resource use based on how many of X pops they have (aka Federation is likely to always have a high pop upkeep, while the Cardassians might have it swing based on where their pop distribution is, if they have a ton of the high level officials it'll get closer to what the federation spends, but if they have a world full of mostly slaves, the upkeep goes way down. Also can see them trying a different approach with pops and wouldn't be surprised to see some of the pop micromanagement going the way of the dodo (aka if you don't have enough jobs, you add them, but you won't be able to say turn them off, while keep the district/building that provides them or turn them on and off to try to get the preferred pop working it. Probably will be somewhat of an additional lab to improve things in Stellaris, while Stellaris probably does similar things (at least in areas where they have similar problems or mechanics).
As for the Star Trek themed mods. Hard to say what's going to happen to those. I kind of get the impression that Paradox is probably going to leave them alone. At least as long as they mostly are a reskin of Stellaris that is Star Trek themed and avoid trying to be a free way to have the Star Trek game (aka any unique mechanics to Infinite will stay with there and mods that attempt to bring those into Stellaris will get hit with the copyright bat). Paramount is another matter, they might not tolerate those mods if the execs get a bug up their ass and start to believe those mods hurt sales of Star Trek Infinite.
As for the next patch. The teaser for Calamitous Birth should probably make that a pretty good origin for LIthoids. At least ones that don't intend to want to have happy non-lithoids, who aren't robots. Not sure the boost to lithoid traits will be worth it though, most of the current ones aren't great and it would be such a small bonus for the ones that are worth taking. I suppose they might be adding more traits that are lithoid only.
Also will be interesting to see what they are thinking about doing with habitats. I'm hoping that this will force them to take a look at how the AI goes about dumping excess influence because a large chunk of habitat spam is the AI trying to burn off influence. There is also the issue where the AI doesn't make good use of habitats. Unless an AI empire went down a trade build, it should prioritize building habitats around worlds that would give it special districts until it runs out or hits a point where it doesn't need more habitats. Hell, not entirely sure even trade builds should bother with trade habitats if they can get research, mining, generator or if they need an agriculture district (which would also want to be around a world that doesn't get special districts). Anyways just fixing how the AI dumps influence would also solve hyperrelay and gateway spam because the AI is terrible about building those in systems that make no damn sense and the gatewyas get really fucking bad because they increase border friction (absolutely dumb that they do).
I'm hoping next major patch also sees a warfare update. Mostly dealing with the concept of negotiated treaties to ending wars. This means people can join a war already in progress. Leave a war, even if their are other parties that want to duke it out. Opens, the door to get more than one thing (like you go to war with a criminal megacorp to take their branch offices and also force them to change government into a trade focus non-megacorp). Finally, also means that people don't get dicked over because they weren't the ones declaring the war (again maybe you go to war as a megacorp to steal their branch offices and your ally joins you because they want to change their government into something that isn't a criminal megacorp that annoys the ever loving shit out of them).
I'll not the above might force them to take a look at megacorps, namely criminal ones and maybe make it so you can't make them stop being megacorps, but also make it so that criminal megacorps aren't so unpleasant to deal with. Stellaris criminal megacorps are a great case study in how you can fucking nail the theme, but still have really unpleasant design for players to deal with.
I turned a 5k fleet into a 15k fleet just by killing fauna, it was wild.
+4
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
I am trying to make Clone Army work. It's clearly a very good origin, but I'm sort of struggling with balancing necessary buildings with the Clone Vats. For example, I went with Xenophile-Fanatic Spiritualist, which puts two temples on my home planet. With the vats, that leaves no room for anything like foundry or additional research.
So am I kind of just expanding to my guaranteed planets as soon as possible, bum rushing base economy (energy/minerals) and not worry about research, foundries, etc. until 2025 or so?
Did they give away console expansion packs 3&4 at some point? I was looking at the Xbox dlc sale and was surprised to see I own them. Entirely possible I bought them on some random sale and forgot but I only remember buying the first one
I'll have to play around with the habitat changes whenever they do the PTR for it.
On paper, what they have proposed looks reasonably solid. It solves some shit that makes habitats pretty fucking obnoxious and I say this as someone that really loves the concept. It's just still something complex enough where the player would have to try it out and see how things go.
They're updating the first four species packs to bring them inline with the modern packs so they can raise the price to $10 for them; this will happen when 3.9 comes out, so not only can you still pick them up while they're cheaper, there's going to be a steam strategy sale late august/early september where you'll be able to grab them discounted even.
They go over the changes being made to Lithoids first; they're making cataclysmic birth better, adding a new civic for space minded hive minds, as well a a civic for space racists where you get diplomacy bonuses or minuses depending on whether or not an Empire's main species is the same phenotype as you and pops not in your phenotype get less rights. You'll even spawn with like-phenotypes if you do the hedgemony or federation origins. Obviously, most xenos are going to hate your bigoted guts.
They go over other fixes, like being able to drop a council node for hiveminds and making ascension paths a little less PITA to get. (Or more depending on how you approach them)
I don't agree with the price change for the old species packs.
I could understand it for the new ones they are releasing. One, they do have to adjust the upward at some point to account for inflation and inflation has been pretty damn rough. Two, they have a fairly solid argument for the additional increase alone, on the fact that they are putting more work into the packs they are releasing, which costs more money. I mean, sure we could try to argue whether or not the people at the top of Paradox are taking too much of the cut, but at the end of the day the low level people not making this call do need to be paid a fair wage and there are other operating costs that a company has to pay that aren't going towards anyone's salaries. Does it suck the consumer, yes, but at the end of the day paradox is a company that does have financial obligations and some of those obligations shouldn't be ignored so that consumers can have cheap games. I as a consumer may not want to pay more some so some c-suite fucker can try to goose up their score on the oligarch scoreboard, but at the same time I also don't want to support a company that is entirely reliant on an exploited workforce that is paid slave wages.
I disagree with changing the cost for old species packs. Yes, the custodians team costs money and that is adding additional investments to old content. On the other hand, I'm going to bet most the initial investment when those DLCs were released, was much higher than the costs associated with the custodian team. There is also the fact that the custodian team's work isn't entirely to the benefit of old content, it also benefits new content given that it's addressing issues that might turn players off from buying newly released DLCs and also helps to make people want to maybe finally buy the older DLCs. I wouldn't be surprised if Paradox hasn't just broken even on some of these old DLCs, but has long hit a point where they are so far into the profit margin that the associated costs with the custodian team aren't even registering.
If anything, Paradox should be looking at making the cost of entry into the game lower because there is a fair bit of DLC content now and it's probably pretty pricy. I haven't run the math yet, but pretty sure it's above 200 dollars. I wouldn't be surprised if that price tag is now discourage guaranteed buyers because they fear that if they give the game a try and like it, they'll be disappointed, since they can't justify shelling out the money for everything. It's pretty easy to justify 15-50 dollars on the game a year when you are up to date and enjoy it because that's anywhere from 1-4 months of subscription service to something like WoW and doesn't have where near the level of bullshit that a gacha has in the way of hidden costs (either they get you on the micro transactions or you piss away a fuck ton of your free time on tedious grinding shit to be able to play without paying real money and still potentially get locked out of contend because of bad RNG).
That said, the changes so far look pretty good. Will be interested too see what the new plantoid origin will be. I mean the trait will be interesting and I'm pretty sure a civic getting some polish will be idyllic bloom. It really needs more oomph to justify being a locked civic you pickup at start; especially, with the opportunity cost that you take on with the special building. I'll have to check but IIRC the two biggest issues continue to be that once you run out of worlds to terraform into Gaia's it's a dead civic and it's one of those hard choices where someone also can reap all the benefits you were suppose to get from it without having to really spend anything outside of invading you; especially, since anyone can make good use of Gaia worlds, even if they have an option that is better than them. So it really needs a perk that is still relevant after you turn all your worlds into Gaia worlds, that you can only reap the benefits from if you have the civic. An easy one would be that your pops get additional benefits from Gaia worlds, but only if you have the civic. As an aside, World Shaper should also really get that bonus as well and maybe Idyllic bloom works similarly to teachers of the shroud, where you effectively get a free ascension perk. I also wish the devs would get a better grasp on bonus values because while reduced terraforming time isn't nothing, it's not the bee's knees that the devs think it is, partly because does lose value once you run out of shit you want to terraform.
I quite like the Stellaris Evolved overhaul mod. Adds an absolute ton of tradition trees (including 2nd tier paths), ascension perks, as well as civics and ethics to empires (including unique ones for gestalts) and has rejiggered a lot of stuff in policies even, like increasing the construction cost of orbital resource stations but increasing their yield. Just adds a lot more Stellaris to the game without making anything broken, adding quite a bit of balance if anything.
It'll be a shame when 3.9 comes along and breaks it, but I'm enjoying it for now.
The steam workshop is such a bad method of distributing mods. I'd like to play my 3.7 save but I can't anymore. The mods updated to 3.8 and fuck you if you want a prior version.
Playing the lost colony origin and did you know that your advanced start empire that you spawned from can be fanatical purifiers? And spawn 4 systems away from your homeworld. And also you can be friends with them, because they still consider you as them? You can use diplomacy, establish an enbassy, even do non aggression pacts and trade! It's wild.
I was playing a militiristic empire already and quickly built up my fleet, and they must have bit off something they couldn't chew because the suddenly were pathetic to me militarily. Since I'm a crusader I can't claim territory, but all of that purifier space could be taken under "end threat" war type. Five or more planets that were already colonized with my own people. Incredibly tasty.
The subsequent revolts and resource shortages were less tasty.
Posts
- Unity, led by the AI Harmony. A divided, warlike people tasked a supercomputer with bringing peace to their planet. The AI did so. By assimilating the entire population. I know the game says that Driven Assimilators want to know everything, but this one just wants everyone to live in perfect unity.
Still bummed there's no Techno Cult option.
My preferred setups are rogue servitor if I go gestalt. Then I find myself often using xenophile, materialist and egalitarian for the empires I make. Often it's xenophile and materialist, but with paragons, I'll probably be doing more non-fanatical empires.
Don't really touch genocidal or slaving builds. I just don't find them enjoyable and even though I know it's a game, but I feel that certain level of ick when presented the option to play builds that do either or both.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
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That's about roughly where I end most of my games. I blame it on two things.
-Warfare in this game largely sucks and get worse once empires start consolidating into federations or vassals around an overlord.
-I find the exploration and discovery to be the most fun and that all dries up at about that point. I main it's dumb that we have a one an done approach to finding anomalies. In fact, it's also dumb that we can only survey a world once and find all that we're going to find. Would be more interesting if the devs had one or two research options that unlock at midgame and late game, that allow us to rescan systems if we owned them or they are unclaimed. That would allow for finding more stuff.
In fact, I have mixed feeling on archaeology because I do enjoy how that pushes out the discover phase, but the process kind of sucks. I agree with Aspec, in that I wish there was more choice involved with how digsites progress. Also the precursor ones tend to be obnoxious because baol definitely has some bit of half ass code that ensures you'll have to claim shit 30-40 systems out from the first digsite because it prioritizes unclaimed systems and it just feels shitty.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I agree with pretty much everything in this post. Bonus fun, I just had one of the Baol dig sites spawn in the same system as the Ether Drake. So that's fun.
Lol, why not play with 1 Planet and rush research if you like it?
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
And war can be kinda fun but again it’s like—oh I don’t have a bunch of vassals? Guess I’m warring with three factions, not one. Or, if I do? There’s nothing to kill.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1622900/Star_Trek_Infinite/
It's a reskinned Stellaris!
No wonder they added cloaking to the game.
EDIT: Oh wow, only four factions?
No Dominion? No Ferangi? No Borg?
Oh, that's gonna be DLC I bet.
It's Paradox, so there's going to be DLC for miles obviously.
But Borg and Dominion I see being better implemented as late game crisis events. The Dominion would be an interesting one because in DS9 they didn't pour through the wormhole guns blazing, they showed up with what seemed to be good faith diplomacy (except with the Federation, who were not dealing with them in good faith either), they fixed poverty and starvation in the Cardassian Union, even did more in a few months to rebuild Bajor from the Occupation than Starfleet had done in years, to the point that Kira almost fell for it. They jumped their allies up the tech tree while subverting the politics and command structure of their enemies.
Sure they blamed Cardassia for their own mistakes, but if you're winning there's nothing for them to blame you for, right? And sure they were going to come for Romulus and Tholia eventually, but the Federation was resourceful and had the Klingons on their side, so it might never come to that, right? Everyone in or not in the war, even Cardassia and Breen, had a plan that ended without a Jem'hadar bootheel on their necks, while the Dominion's plan ended with bootheels for everyone, just not all at once.
Trek's got plenty of big bads who could come in and just wreck a quadrant of they wanted to, but the Dominion could upend every aspect of the game when they show up - technology, economy, diplomacy, military, all bets are off.
And they can also wreck a quadrant while they're at it, but unlike the Borg they have a full toolbox.
Instead of that horrible game it will be that horrible star trek game. We getting specifics to the horribleness.
I will need to get this.
lmao the Star Trek conversion mod has way more content than that. Completely different game if you choose to play as the Borg, starting out in the Delta quadrant.
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There's nothing stopping an organic race from going psionic unless they've already gone down the genetic, cybernetic or synthetic ascension paths.
It's just far less likely to trigger unless you get the Zroni precursor; I think that adds weight to the psionic theory social research option.
Also: if you go into the shroud and your leader becomes the immortal Chosen One, you'll eventually have an event where your people suggest reforming your government to an Imperialist Cult where they're installed as a permanent leader and worshipped as a living god.
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1983990/Stellaris_Nexus/
This did manage to make me aware of said total conversion, which I'm currently enjoying immensely.
Best back that mod up if you want to keep playing it..
I would have advised that even before. After the Axanar guy's antics* they came down hard on fan products that had been tolerated and even acknowledged for years. Two fan games vanished in the big retaliatory purge, mods for several games, and the ongoing fan series all ended.
*-they were ok with the show, even ok with him fundraising for it. But then he started selling merchandise unrelated to Axanar and claiming it to be official, and even tried to tell a judge he should be given control of the rights because he loved Star Trek more than CBS.
I'm pretty sure, yes.
Unless you already have imperial authority or your leader is removed from office before the event triggers!
I usually play materialist, so I've done psionic ascension like once until I did Knights of hte Toxic God last game and did it again... and then in my immediate next game I get the Zroni.
Sounds like Lithoids is getting an update. Cataclysmic Birth looks like it's getting much needed buffs.
I'd also wager it's probably going to be more narrative focused than current Stellaris and that we probably won't get the option to create custom empires because they are going to want to make sure it's just not a reskin of Stellaris, but with the Star Trek look. So each faction we're currently getting is probably going to have some sort of goal to achieve and limits on what it can and can't do. For instance Federation is likely going to be setup so that there are some hard limits on when you can declare war, slavery will be outlawed and have to stick with utopian like living standards. Where the Cardassians will probably be able to more easily declare war, allow slavery and probably have a stratified living standards setup. Also wouldn't be surprised if we could adjust living standards at all, but each empire has to account for pop resource use based on how many of X pops they have (aka Federation is likely to always have a high pop upkeep, while the Cardassians might have it swing based on where their pop distribution is, if they have a ton of the high level officials it'll get closer to what the federation spends, but if they have a world full of mostly slaves, the upkeep goes way down. Also can see them trying a different approach with pops and wouldn't be surprised to see some of the pop micromanagement going the way of the dodo (aka if you don't have enough jobs, you add them, but you won't be able to say turn them off, while keep the district/building that provides them or turn them on and off to try to get the preferred pop working it. Probably will be somewhat of an additional lab to improve things in Stellaris, while Stellaris probably does similar things (at least in areas where they have similar problems or mechanics).
As for the Star Trek themed mods. Hard to say what's going to happen to those. I kind of get the impression that Paradox is probably going to leave them alone. At least as long as they mostly are a reskin of Stellaris that is Star Trek themed and avoid trying to be a free way to have the Star Trek game (aka any unique mechanics to Infinite will stay with there and mods that attempt to bring those into Stellaris will get hit with the copyright bat). Paramount is another matter, they might not tolerate those mods if the execs get a bug up their ass and start to believe those mods hurt sales of Star Trek Infinite.
As for the next patch. The teaser for Calamitous Birth should probably make that a pretty good origin for LIthoids. At least ones that don't intend to want to have happy non-lithoids, who aren't robots. Not sure the boost to lithoid traits will be worth it though, most of the current ones aren't great and it would be such a small bonus for the ones that are worth taking. I suppose they might be adding more traits that are lithoid only.
Also will be interesting to see what they are thinking about doing with habitats. I'm hoping that this will force them to take a look at how the AI goes about dumping excess influence because a large chunk of habitat spam is the AI trying to burn off influence. There is also the issue where the AI doesn't make good use of habitats. Unless an AI empire went down a trade build, it should prioritize building habitats around worlds that would give it special districts until it runs out or hits a point where it doesn't need more habitats. Hell, not entirely sure even trade builds should bother with trade habitats if they can get research, mining, generator or if they need an agriculture district (which would also want to be around a world that doesn't get special districts). Anyways just fixing how the AI dumps influence would also solve hyperrelay and gateway spam because the AI is terrible about building those in systems that make no damn sense and the gatewyas get really fucking bad because they increase border friction (absolutely dumb that they do).
I'm hoping next major patch also sees a warfare update. Mostly dealing with the concept of negotiated treaties to ending wars. This means people can join a war already in progress. Leave a war, even if their are other parties that want to duke it out. Opens, the door to get more than one thing (like you go to war with a criminal megacorp to take their branch offices and also force them to change government into a trade focus non-megacorp). Finally, also means that people don't get dicked over because they weren't the ones declaring the war (again maybe you go to war as a megacorp to steal their branch offices and your ally joins you because they want to change their government into something that isn't a criminal megacorp that annoys the ever loving shit out of them).
I'll not the above might force them to take a look at megacorps, namely criminal ones and maybe make it so you can't make them stop being megacorps, but also make it so that criminal megacorps aren't so unpleasant to deal with. Stellaris criminal megacorps are a great case study in how you can fucking nail the theme, but still have really unpleasant design for players to deal with.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
You either lose, or fucking win the jackpot.
I turned a 5k fleet into a 15k fleet just by killing fauna, it was wild.
So am I kind of just expanding to my guaranteed planets as soon as possible, bum rushing base economy (energy/minerals) and not worry about research, foundries, etc. until 2025 or so?
Looks like they're taking a nerf bat to Habitat spam
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-306-habitat-experiments.1594678/
On paper, what they have proposed looks reasonably solid. It solves some shit that makes habitats pretty fucking obnoxious and I say this as someone that really loves the concept. It's just still something complex enough where the player would have to try it out and see how things go.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
They go over the changes being made to Lithoids first; they're making cataclysmic birth better, adding a new civic for space minded hive minds, as well a a civic for space racists where you get diplomacy bonuses or minuses depending on whether or not an Empire's main species is the same phenotype as you and pops not in your phenotype get less rights. You'll even spawn with like-phenotypes if you do the hedgemony or federation origins. Obviously, most xenos are going to hate your bigoted guts.
They go over other fixes, like being able to drop a council node for hiveminds and making ascension paths a little less PITA to get. (Or more depending on how you approach them)
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-308-rock-on-also-an-announcement-regarding-species-pack-pricing.1595636/
I could understand it for the new ones they are releasing. One, they do have to adjust the upward at some point to account for inflation and inflation has been pretty damn rough. Two, they have a fairly solid argument for the additional increase alone, on the fact that they are putting more work into the packs they are releasing, which costs more money. I mean, sure we could try to argue whether or not the people at the top of Paradox are taking too much of the cut, but at the end of the day the low level people not making this call do need to be paid a fair wage and there are other operating costs that a company has to pay that aren't going towards anyone's salaries. Does it suck the consumer, yes, but at the end of the day paradox is a company that does have financial obligations and some of those obligations shouldn't be ignored so that consumers can have cheap games. I as a consumer may not want to pay more some so some c-suite fucker can try to goose up their score on the oligarch scoreboard, but at the same time I also don't want to support a company that is entirely reliant on an exploited workforce that is paid slave wages.
I disagree with changing the cost for old species packs. Yes, the custodians team costs money and that is adding additional investments to old content. On the other hand, I'm going to bet most the initial investment when those DLCs were released, was much higher than the costs associated with the custodian team. There is also the fact that the custodian team's work isn't entirely to the benefit of old content, it also benefits new content given that it's addressing issues that might turn players off from buying newly released DLCs and also helps to make people want to maybe finally buy the older DLCs. I wouldn't be surprised if Paradox hasn't just broken even on some of these old DLCs, but has long hit a point where they are so far into the profit margin that the associated costs with the custodian team aren't even registering.
If anything, Paradox should be looking at making the cost of entry into the game lower because there is a fair bit of DLC content now and it's probably pretty pricy. I haven't run the math yet, but pretty sure it's above 200 dollars. I wouldn't be surprised if that price tag is now discourage guaranteed buyers because they fear that if they give the game a try and like it, they'll be disappointed, since they can't justify shelling out the money for everything. It's pretty easy to justify 15-50 dollars on the game a year when you are up to date and enjoy it because that's anywhere from 1-4 months of subscription service to something like WoW and doesn't have where near the level of bullshit that a gacha has in the way of hidden costs (either they get you on the micro transactions or you piss away a fuck ton of your free time on tedious grinding shit to be able to play without paying real money and still potentially get locked out of contend because of bad RNG).
That said, the changes so far look pretty good. Will be interested too see what the new plantoid origin will be. I mean the trait will be interesting and I'm pretty sure a civic getting some polish will be idyllic bloom. It really needs more oomph to justify being a locked civic you pickup at start; especially, with the opportunity cost that you take on with the special building. I'll have to check but IIRC the two biggest issues continue to be that once you run out of worlds to terraform into Gaia's it's a dead civic and it's one of those hard choices where someone also can reap all the benefits you were suppose to get from it without having to really spend anything outside of invading you; especially, since anyone can make good use of Gaia worlds, even if they have an option that is better than them. So it really needs a perk that is still relevant after you turn all your worlds into Gaia worlds, that you can only reap the benefits from if you have the civic. An easy one would be that your pops get additional benefits from Gaia worlds, but only if you have the civic. As an aside, World Shaper should also really get that bonus as well and maybe Idyllic bloom works similarly to teachers of the shroud, where you effectively get a free ascension perk. I also wish the devs would get a better grasp on bonus values because while reduced terraforming time isn't nothing, it's not the bee's knees that the devs think it is, partly because does lose value once you run out of shit you want to terraform.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
It'll be a shame when 3.9 comes along and breaks it, but I'm enjoying it for now.
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I was playing a militiristic empire already and quickly built up my fleet, and they must have bit off something they couldn't chew because the suddenly were pathetic to me militarily. Since I'm a crusader I can't claim territory, but all of that purifier space could be taken under "end threat" war type. Five or more planets that were already colonized with my own people. Incredibly tasty.
The subsequent revolts and resource shortages were less tasty.
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