MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2020
Historically the philosophical precursers to the modern scientific method arose out of the arabic faiths attempting to understand better how Gods world functions.
I always find that amusing.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
The resettlement changes actually look pretty good. They've it so that people have to be more careful with moving pops because either they'll more quickly run out of energy or burn through their influence. It's a good way to kill some of the pop gaming people did. Also glad to see that the devs apparently agreed with my take that two edict capacity was probably too good for dictatorships and instead gave them a edict cost reduction. We'll see how things play out but quicker pop demotion time for democracies could be a solid gain for them. Also agree with the idea of oligarchies getting more influence from factions, it actually makes sense and also is somewhat needed for megacorps because they really could use more influence income to do what they need to do. It's also nice to see that they are consider special tools for cases where you pretty much do need to move the pops.
They do need to do something wit the worm in waiting event that deals with a new colony though. IMO they just need to do something about the rewards if the colony goes poof and I really think they could do that in a way that is fucking creepy. "Hey, colony completely disappeared and not a trace is left, it's almost as if it never existed and in fact there are no traces that it did. BTW we found a bunch of ready to use alloys, consumer good and strategic resources. Uh, no all signs point to that these were not prepared for the colony or made by the colony. We just found them on the planet far away from the colony and all signs point to them having always been there and it's both weird and creepy because the missing colonies would have seen them and reporting find them to us."
Finally, I like how now all empires will probably want a starbase in their colonized systems. I think currently it's only non-gestalts that want to do that both for ensuring that trade is collected and to have a blacksite rolling. Gestalts IIRC don't get blacksites. So there is virtually no reason to build starbases in inhabited systems. The only downside is that border fortress worlds are going to be a pain in the ass because a transit hub and blacksite mean, you don't have much buffing the offensive power of the station. I guess if you get a setup like that, get voidborne and spam habitats there. So that it's fucking expensive for an opposing empire to claim and really fucking hard to fully conquer. Also has the nice benefit of giving us more options for the random starbases we build in blackhole systems or ones that contain an enclave. For non-gestalt, that really ups the benefit of maybe investing a perk in better habitats and throwing habitats up in those systems if you don't need more shipyards or dump tons of shit into anchorages.
Man, until they improve sector automation Greater than Ourselves needs to be a function of the game and not an edict slot. It's too essential late game not to have it active when you're swimming in unemployed pops.
Man, until they improve sector automation Greater than Ourselves needs to be a function of the game and not an edict slot. It's too essential late game not to have it active when you're swimming in unemployed pops.
The really annoying thing is when the galactic community doesn’t think its a priority.
“What should we vote on next? A space whale protection measure or a trade stimulus?”
GREATER THAN OUTSELVES ASSHOLES
“Um, you are an authoritarian xenophobe dictatorship are you sure?”
To anyone else who got fucked over with the 2.8.0 "This totally makes loading faster" update--the latest version of the 2.8.1 beta (I believe delivered yesterday) will actually let your game load past 30% if you have a long mod list.
Seeing how most, if not all of the most popular mods have updated themselves to 2.8, meaning 2.7 support is over, I'd strongly recommend going onto the test track. I can actually play the game now with (almost) as long of a mod list a I had back in 2.7.
I just started a new game, in hindsight I shouldn't done that on the 2.8.0 test. On the bright side, probably could make that save file work there, I haven't done much in the way of planet development and my luck with worlds was absolute crap. 14 tile relic world for rubricator event. 12 tile world for one of my two guaranteed worlds. Some random crap 11 tile world like two jumps from my core sector. Then a few other small garbage worlds that i can't even really colonize because they are really low habitability and I need to get my economy further shored up before I hammer consumer good needs. That was like the one redeeming thing about the 12 tile world, was it had the portal to the realm of pure energy. Granted the other guaranteed world rolled decently, I want to say it was between 16-18 tiles and it also came with a special tile that gave two physics research jobs. Granted physics research is only good for so long as a single source of research, but I'm playing another round o death cultists, so they need all the help they can get on the research front.
Hoping I can pull up the game because I got a fairly decent start all things considered. If I play my cards right, can secure myself a ton of real estate. Only issue is I'm a megacorp and I've only found another megacorp and a hive mind.
Based on the last few dev diaries, I've been trying to hold off on starting a new game. Looking forward to the changes they're making to pops and buildings.
Based on the last few dev diaries, I've been trying to hold off on starting a new game. Looking forward to the changes they're making to pops and buildings.
Ah, the eternal curse of being a PDX fan.
Just before you get really deep into the current version, you get news of the next update that is so awesome you are compelled to wait until it's out before playing again.
Based on the last few dev diaries, I've been trying to hold off on starting a new game. Looking forward to the changes they're making to pops and buildings.
Yeah, I feel the same way.
Transit hubs and automatic relocation seem so convenient, the cloning vats thing is so great a solution to the robot issue... just seems like so much the community has been asking for forever.
Though one thing about the cloning vats - they are bio ascension. So now synthetic ascension builds synths, bio builds clones... and spiritual/psi optimally builds no-AI toaster droids?
Based on the last few dev diaries, I've been trying to hold off on starting a new game. Looking forward to the changes they're making to pops and buildings.
Yeah, I feel the same way.
Transit hubs and automatic relocation seem so convenient, the cloning vats thing is so great a solution to the robot issue... just seems like so much the community has been asking for forever.
Though one thing about the cloning vats - they are bio ascension. So now synthetic ascension builds synths, bio builds clones... and spiritual/psi optimally builds no-AI toaster droids?
based on the way the last dev diary ended, and some further comments by the devs, I'm guessing that Psi Ascension empires will have a separate, more... subversive advantage compared to the other ascension paths.
Really hoping they don't do much with active espionage. People get too caught up on thinking about all the ways they can use such a system to fuck over their opponents and never think about how they might actually not want to play against systems. Devs end up listening to what everyone wants, then drop a setup that most people, including some of the asshole trolls end up hating with a fiery passion because the gameplay ends up not being fun to play against. You also know if the AI can use it, it's more than likely to go with spamming the most obnoxious options to play against. IMO it should be mostly passive because that does allow for some depth, but in a way that doesn't become fucking obnoxious to play against. Probably the few areas where they could give us some active espionage play, in a way that won't be horrible to play against. A means to access dig sites that are flagged as solely ours, that are in another empires territory, since that would give us some non-invasion options to access those. The crisis would be another good candidate. Khan could be a great one as well. On the fence if that would be a good idea with fallen empires, it's already sort of an option for psionics and I think that only nets you the psionic specific techs, it doesn't get you fallen empire specific techs. One active approach I could tolerate for the greater game because it's kind of present already, is ways to influence ethics shifts in other empires (if you want an example of how this exists already, megacorp churches can grab gospel of the masses, build a temple at a corporate office and that increases the likelihood pops on that planet shift to spiritualist.
Anyways, I'm hoping they make clone vats baseline once again or give normal empires and megacorps a new building that does cloning on par with the robot assembly plant. Bio ascension really should have a better organic pop assembly bonus, but everyone really should be able to unlock that at about the same time they can get robot pops. Otherwise that might hurt this change; especially, if the goal is to make robot pops completely optional.
Edit: Before I forget, the habitat changes are amazing. Only complaints I have are that the industrial districts for them might not be better, granted if they come with extra housing, that would be acceptable, just think it should be 4 instead of 3. Just need them to solve the issue of the game removing the capital designation from our capital and do something about the weird migration pattern of voidborne pops and the obnoxious quirk of them become absolute shit because they went planet bound and then came back to the habitat and are still garbage. They really shouldn't want to move to any planet period. Only non-habitat thing they shouldn't want to live on is ringworlds. The alternative is to tweak the code so that they only get the production bonuses on habitats, but suffer no maluses for being on ringworlds, relic worlds, ecumenopoli or gaia worlds. Though IMO there should be bonuses tied to galactic wonders, project arcology and world shaper that make those worlds a little less good for people that lack the appropriate ascension perk. For example, ringworlds eat a 10% production malus if one doesn't have galactic wonders. Ecumenopoli only have 90% habitability for those that don't invest in project arcology. Gaia worlds don't give the pop happiness bonus for bio and lithoid pops if one doesn't have world shaper. I know I'm digressing here, but still really bugs me that people can get the full benefit of things that are normally locked behind ascension perks without those perks and this would do wonders to reign in the conquer everything meta, while also ensure that a perk is worth the investment if you get it.
Decide to play my own Prethoryn Scourge style devouring swarm since one of the big planetary climate mods I've downloaded has extra origins depending on the type of empire you play, and in this instance you don't really need to bother with terraforming because every planet you settle eventually becomes an infected hive world.
So what precursor do I finally see for the second time in all the games I've played of Stellaris?
Decide to play my own Prethoryn Scourge style devouring swarm since one of the big planetary climate mods I've downloaded has extra origins depending on the type of empire you play, and in this instance you don't really need to bother with terraforming because every planet you settle eventually becomes an infected hive world.
So what precursor do I finally see for the second time in all the games I've played of Stellaris?
The Zroni.
God damn it
I got them and finished the chain... on my Hive Mind Memorialist first stab at the Necroid stuff. :snap:
I'm surprised that hivemind and machine intelligence can even roll zroni precursor because from what I understand, in order to get good value from it, you need to go down the psionic path. Sure it has some useful triumph choices but the secret and passive are completely useless to gestalts. Hell, it's useless to empires that don't go down psionics outside of the triumph effect and that has to compete with other artifacts. Though I'll concede 20% ship weapon damage or 5 stability, 10% edict cost discount and 25% ethics attraction for 5 years aren't bad at all. It's just that you could have situations where neither one of those are of use. Not at war or planning to be at war. Managing to get 100% stability on most of your worlds without it and IMO I would strive for that so that you can have the influence freed up for other things. The ruler exp is useless to gestalts because by the time you get the artifact you aren't going to get a huge jump in levels and honestly, getting 500 exp on a level one ruler to get them to I think level three isn't worth 150 influence and gestalt rulers don't get traits anyways.
Though, the most harmful thing to this relic for gestalts, is that the passive is 100% useless to them and given that you can probably get more than one relic in most games (can't comment on MP), with the shared CD, the most important thing for most relics is the passive because you'll have one or two relics that always beat other relics on the triumph effect, assuming you have the resources to afford it. Hell, even most of the top triumph effect relics give you most of their value via the passive because it's always active and you may have scenarios where it's not feasible to constantly roll the triumph effect. Influence costs ones could result in a scenario where you don't have the influence because more important influence spending came up. Granted, gestalts don't have to worry about ruler selection through their influence budget out the window, so it's much easier to budget around having enough influence to for the effect and sometimes another triumph effect might be more desirable in a certain situation.
Hilariously, The Last Baol is far more useful to gestalts than Psionic Archive. It goes without saying for hiveminds; especially, with a 10% pop growth passive. Machines get a 10% society research bonus, which is pretty decent all things considered. Society tech is always useful. Ironically, the special civic type empires all get better benefit from the triumph effect than vanilla machine empires. Rogue servitor wants to have it's bio trophies on a Gaia world because they are then happier and than means higher stability and that stability translates into more resource production. Also you get three new bio trophies for every Gaia world you create with the Triumph effect. Driven assimilators can make use of Gaia worlds for their bio pops because I don't think it's possible to get 100% habitability on machine worlds for cyborgs. Also three new cyborg pops with every Gaia world. Determined exterminators probably get the least values, but if you want to create a purge world, having it be Gaia might not be a bad idea, the happiness bonus reduces uprising risk and the 100% habitability for bio and lithoid pops means when you let unity farm breed back up, you're getting as much pop growth speed as possible for them. Also three workers for the unity purge jobs. I mean, I probably wouldn't ever use the triumph effect as as a DE machine empire, but you can get value from it.
Anyways the Zroni secret is absolutely useless for gestalts. Mostly useless for non-gestalts that don't go down psionics. I'm assuming that the 10% psionic research speed applies to all psionic tech, so mostly useless to even psionic empires as well. Baol on the other hand is useful 15% terraforming cost discount, granted that does lose value after awhile, when resource production makes the costs really trivial, but still you can get a few planets terraformed earlier than normal.
The home system is pretty crap IMO because you can't harvest the zro to sell on the market. Non-gestalt empires that forgo psionics can usually get the tech to harvest zro and then sell it on the market, hell, they might luck out and get some tech that uses zro. I want to say that's possible, Baol precursor, which doesn't give you their true homes system, gives you a tomb world, which you can turn into a 20 tile sized colony.
Yeah machine worlds are pretty terrible with driven assimilators (Unless you segregate bio pops away from them), you can get sort of close to 100% with lithoids (I think you can actually get over 100% with lithoids on your homeworld), but any organic pops are going to be topping out around 50% or so... So the gaia worlds really come in handy there.
Similarly the resource consolidation origin is pretty crap unless you take lithoids as your first bio species.
I really wish they would make a necrophage style “get primative worlds instead of empty habitable worlds” origin for Rogue Servitors and Driven Assimilators.
New Dev diary talking about changes to first contact to make it slightly more involved with more choices. Stuff like first contact policies (friendly, cautious, aggressive) and the ability to choose methods to find out more about your stellar neighbors (like, say, capturing and dissecting them, of course)
Given that first contact was so bland I had actually forgotten there was a mechanic already in the game about it, this will hopefully be a welcome change.
I'm hoping they explain what they mean by we won't be lacking in envoys for first contact stuff. Assuming they aren't retooling the system, I'm inclined to think it means we have an infinite pool of envoys for first contact stuff, but a finite pool for stuff like federations, GC, improving relations and harming relations.
Also hoping hostile and aggressive contact don't end up being meta. That more peaceful stuff gets the player rewards just as good as abducting and dissecting aliens. Personally, given some of the scum that roams in paradox games, I wouldn't mind seeing them take the nerf bat to the kind of play that mirrors behavior that the scummy parts of humanity celebrate in. As in slavery and hostile first contact aren't made worthless, but their alternatives are made better than them. (IMO it's why I'm annoyed that democracies are rather crap and that the big meta is slavery).
Anyways, glad to see they aren't keen to make envoys actual leaders. I have to shake my head at everyone getting butthurt over this because the current mechanics for the leaders we have now, are lack luster at best and tedious at worst. The vast majority of traits don't make you choose between interesting choices. it's mostly about shuffling leaders around, if you even bother to do that. We have three that make you put some thought into leaders, but not in a good way. Arrested development makes decide if you want keep a leader and if you don't, then how you go about replacing said leader. Spoiler, more often than not, you nuke said leader and eat the downsides of having a less experienced leader. Maimed and substance abuser could come into play for elections you spend influence on and again, not in a good way, you might pass up an awesome leader because one or both traits being present means said leader has a decent chance of dying halfway through the term. Before we get more leaders to micro, they need to retool the leader system. That said, they did float the idea of envoys getting traits in a way that doesn't involve having to shuffle them around and would argument the diplomacy corps, which would also be a good approach for the stuff as well. For example, if you have three sectors, you'll want governors, but rather than assigning them to a specific sector, it's merely hiring three you like. Ideally, regardless of what happens, traits get a new pass and we're forced to make interesting choices over the system we have now.
On another note with first contact. I'm hoping megacorps get unique options because come on, you're running into new business opportunities here. It would be lame if they went about it the same way everyone else did. Also occurs to me that espionage could be a good way to revamp criminal heritage. Corporate offices already let you sort of spy on people. IMO gives criminal syndicates two options for setting up shop. Get a legal commercial pact where you setup normal corporate offices with normal corporate buildings, but get less espionage capability out of said office. Or you could setup an office illegally, but have much better espionage capability for the trade off of the office being closed. Could also retool it so they are much better at espionage, lose the whole illegal office thing, as in they need commercial pacts for corporate offices. Maybe they keep the bonus to trade value if crime is high, but don't increase it. In short make them something people want to play and stop being something people both hate playing as and against. Honestly, they are probably a good poster child of why people are wary of the idea of active espionage because that is kind of their thing. They actively setup offices that increase crime and the host needs to setup stuff to make them go away.
Yeah criminal syndicates are obnoxious as fuck. I don’t mind them occasionally popping up but I would not want every empire having that capability or making it core gameplay.
On another note with first contact. I'm hoping megacorps get unique options because come on, you're running into new business opportunities here. It would be lame if they went about it the same way everyone else did.
Similar to that, I hope Hive Minds contacting non-Hive Minds will have some unique stuff as well. For one thing, the Hive Mind first having to figure out that the alien species they've come in contact with isn't a singular entity but a bewildering array of individuals. And sort of coming to understand what that actually means.
But I'm not getting my hopes up too high. Hive Minds always seem to be something of an afterthought.
Gestalts in general need some tweaks. Both hiveminds and machine intelligences really suffer once you get out of the locked civics. Devouring Swarm, Determined Exterminator, Rogue Servitor and Driven Assimilator are the only ones that feel truly unique and IMO RS is probably the best of the four. Not only do those four civics impact how you interact with other empires, but some of them limit what you can grab in the way of civics. Every other gestalt ends up feeling very samey because the civics just aren't that good and there isn't much to limit what you pick.
I'll use megacorps here to really hammer home things because IMO most megacorp civics are also pretty crap. Thing is you get a few unique options opened up via ethics. If you go spiritualist, you get gospel of the masses that has some interesting implications. Also the ethics really influence how other empires deal with you to a certain extent. IMO gestalts really should be given a personality you choose, this would ensure that civics could become more of a choice. For instance if we created a parasitic personality, that leaches off other empires, that would open it up to different civic options than say one that is say aggressive and another that is introspective. On top of that limiting civic choices and creating room to create new ones, it also influences how other empires view the entity. A docile or introspective personality means you get less initial friction, parasitic might get a colder reception and people might be very wary of a aggressive gestalt.
Yeah, some sort of ethics civics wheel for gestalts would be great.
Even if it was just like xenophobe-xenophile and militant-passive with 2 dots to assign between them. Xenophile could give diplo bonuses and maybe even the option of peaceful integration of non-gestalt pops without having to ascend, xenophobe maybe better purge options (maybe even having the option of necrophage and assimilation purges as civics?)
I was kind of thinking, if I did it, you get one point. The types you could pick are aggressive, docile, parasitic, symbiotic, introspective & extrospective. Dropping xenophobe because that's covered by aggressive. xenophile is more ore less covered by parts of parasitic and symbiotic. Parasitic doesn't necessarily want to wipe out other lifeforms, it just doesn't believe it needs to make even trades with them. Introspective would be more akin to spiritualists and extrospective would be closer to materialists. Haven't quite worked out the bonuses.
One thing I'd love to do is add limited trade to gestalts. It doesn't really make sense that they are completely excluded, yes there isn't internal trade, but they could trade with entities outside their borders. For instance, for bonus maybe have it so that both parasitic and symbiotic type gestalts get access to the tech immediately upon making contact with another empire that understands the concept. Every other gestalt would have to research the concept. Parasitic gestalts would get more uneven trade, as in they get more benefit from than other gestalts and get more energy credits than their trade partner. One idea is that if paradox ever embraces the idea of civil infrastructure, they could bring the idea of branch offices to gestalts. Setting up such offices would be limited to parasitic and symbiotic gestalts, but maybe any megcorps or those types of gestalts could build branch offices in other gestalt empires. Just that they could build those on worlds and would instead be limited to the civilian starbases within inhabited systems.
Anyways, devouring swarm & determined exterminator would be a aggressive only civics. Maybe parasitic could get something like client states, which boosts energy credits from trade, but gives them the option to take a fully conquered empires or vassal and reduce it down to one system. Don't waste time assimilating all the pops. This client state not only provides the influence bonus, but a portion of the resources they generate are given to their overlord. Also this client state has no military or foreign policy infrastructure. It exists to serve it's overlord, maybe it even comes with a slight decrease to the diplomacy malus that parasitic gestalts usually eat because "hey, at least it's not enslaving those pops to it's will or outright killing them either. symbiotic could get the civic sanctuary worlds, unlike parasitic gestalts it doesn't create client states. Instead it rehomes pops that it either can't assimilate or don't want to be assimilated onto such worlds, not sure on the bonuses, other than a diplomacy one that negates the gestalt malus. The pops on sanctuary wouldn't die if they are part of the gestalt. So for example a hivemind with this civic could take over a machine empire for whatever reason and move all the machine drones to a sanctuary machine world. Driven assimilators would definitely be a parasitic gestalt only civic. I'd make the argument that rogue servitor could be both a parasitic and symbiotic civic.
New Dev Diary, detailing the Intel system. Basically stuff like military/economic/technology power ratings, empire information (name, ethics, authority, capitol, civics, origin), diplomatic stuff (opinion, diplomatic pacts) or even the Empire's borders, are now things you have to find out instead of just knowing.
Relationship and interactions with an empire can increase your intel, and there are other ways to boost it as well. They mention intel reports to temporary boost your knowledge, and they have other ways they'll detail later. Apparently you're going to need to keep your intel fresh too, otherwise it can get stale and out of date.
Lotta 'redacted' going on as well. Gotta be espionage.
Just bought the deluxe ps4 of this since it was on sale. Plan on watching through since of the videos in the op before I hop in. It has been a long time since I played a 4x buy hopefully there is enough overlap that I will not be completely lost. Was feeling burnt out on the games that I have so I thought something different was in order. Plus Cyberpunk may or may not have glitched in a way that will cost me quite a bit of time to fix so I am shelving it.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Finally got Synthetic Ascension! After it all passed my federation declared war on this pathetic level Fanatic Purifier, so I have cleanse casus belli.
Since that meant any system I took was mine to keep and I had both gray (about 37k) and another fleet equal to gray (and yet another at half gray's strength) and he had, like, occasional 4k fleets, my empire is now twice as large and you get all his station for free soon as you destroy the central starbase!
Things are starting to snowball.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Did I ever tell y'all about the time I accidently do-robotified my people. I didn't even know it was possible, but I somehow misclicked uploading another species and wound up downloading myself into organic bodies.
Organic bodies that were hundreds of years old and who almost immediately started dropping like flies.
Anyone else try any of the modjam origins? Gave a few a spin, but the only one I've played in depth has been Stellar Pioneers and I really want Paradox to add it to the base game because it's such a great origin, that only needs a little more polish here and there. The story part of it has a few things that are RNG, so it can feel fresh in follow up playthroughs.
OK, yeah, the player becoming the ultimate endgame crisis is a pretty good concept. And, let's face it, the player usually already was the endgame crisis, so...
Let's hope the AI will be able to put up an actual fight if the player goes that route.
OK, yeah, the player becoming the ultimate endgame crisis is a pretty good concept. And, let's face it, the player usually already was the endgame crisis, so...
Let's hope the AI will be able to put up an actual fight if the player goes that route.
I don't really care how hard they fight, I'm just excited to be able to eat their stars instead of just their populace.
If nothing else, think of the late game performance benefits!
I'm interested to see if this is our first win goal, that will actually end the game. The game really suffers from a lack of end game win goals and it shows after you put a number of hours in because you hit a point where you'll often default to the same approach because well why not, when winning the game is being the best in everything. Having some actual end game stuff, would probably shake things up and help make some options feel different. Like or instance, spiritualist ethic might do much better if suddenly their was end game win objective that is easier to achieve with the stuff they are likely to have. Suddenly, it's less of an issue that materialist kicks their asses on research, if that research speed isn't really vital towards achieving your win condition. If it were me, I'd probably create a pool of win conditions and lock some of them to specific setups. Maybe only spiritualist empires get the win condition that involves the shroud. IMO just by having a pool of win conditions that are dolled out, also means you can hand people long term events at game start. So when you start up that spiritualist empire that gets the win condition of like say 'conquering the shroud," you get events that pop throughout the game (think worm in waiting).
I know some balk at the idea because they honestly believe the game is better as a sandbox and IMO that's where they should just ask the devs to include a sandbox option. I see no reason why they have to cater to one group at the expense of others.
I'm still really iffy on the espionage shit though. On one hand enigmatic engineering is worth a damn, but IMO it's going to be required because having spies be able to steal any and all technology, even if it's a low chance, was a really fucking dumb idea. Yes, it's a realism thing, but at the same time it's going to end up feeling really cheap to play against, when someone can just boost spies and accelerate their research off the backs of empires that invested in research labs, while being able to just load up on alloy districts. Also the pirate bit is really dumb too because IMO while it's cool the game has them, the execution of the concept is pretty shit. Hey, hugely populated system with an inhabited planet, a few habitats but no starbase, whelp if trade gets high enough it'll get pirates because pirates totally fucking congregate on a system that probably has a shit ton of law enforcement because it has a shit ton of people in it. Then there is the whole thing where piracy rate can grow to infinity, needing ever bigger fleets if one doesn't want to use gateways to squash it. Worried the espionage stuff will be the exact kind of shit that people hate playing against.
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I always find that amusing.
They do need to do something wit the worm in waiting event that deals with a new colony though. IMO they just need to do something about the rewards if the colony goes poof and I really think they could do that in a way that is fucking creepy. "Hey, colony completely disappeared and not a trace is left, it's almost as if it never existed and in fact there are no traces that it did. BTW we found a bunch of ready to use alloys, consumer good and strategic resources. Uh, no all signs point to that these were not prepared for the colony or made by the colony. We just found them on the planet far away from the colony and all signs point to them having always been there and it's both weird and creepy because the missing colonies would have seen them and reporting find them to us."
Finally, I like how now all empires will probably want a starbase in their colonized systems. I think currently it's only non-gestalts that want to do that both for ensuring that trade is collected and to have a blacksite rolling. Gestalts IIRC don't get blacksites. So there is virtually no reason to build starbases in inhabited systems. The only downside is that border fortress worlds are going to be a pain in the ass because a transit hub and blacksite mean, you don't have much buffing the offensive power of the station. I guess if you get a setup like that, get voidborne and spam habitats there. So that it's fucking expensive for an opposing empire to claim and really fucking hard to fully conquer. Also has the nice benefit of giving us more options for the random starbases we build in blackhole systems or ones that contain an enclave. For non-gestalt, that really ups the benefit of maybe investing a perk in better habitats and throwing habitats up in those systems if you don't need more shipyards or dump tons of shit into anchorages.
The really annoying thing is when the galactic community doesn’t think its a priority.
“What should we vote on next? A space whale protection measure or a trade stimulus?”
GREATER THAN OUTSELVES ASSHOLES
“Um, you are an authoritarian xenophobe dictatorship are you sure?”
FUCK YOU I SAID GREATER THAN OURSELVES
To anyone else who got fucked over with the 2.8.0 "This totally makes loading faster" update--the latest version of the 2.8.1 beta (I believe delivered yesterday) will actually let your game load past 30% if you have a long mod list.
Seeing how most, if not all of the most popular mods have updated themselves to 2.8, meaning 2.7 support is over, I'd strongly recommend going onto the test track. I can actually play the game now with (almost) as long of a mod list a I had back in 2.7.
Hoping I can pull up the game because I got a fairly decent start all things considered. If I play my cards right, can secure myself a ton of real estate. Only issue is I'm a megacorp and I've only found another megacorp and a hive mind.
Ah, the eternal curse of being a PDX fan.
Just before you get really deep into the current version, you get news of the next update that is so awesome you are compelled to wait until it's out before playing again.
Yeah, I feel the same way.
Transit hubs and automatic relocation seem so convenient, the cloning vats thing is so great a solution to the robot issue... just seems like so much the community has been asking for forever.
Though one thing about the cloning vats - they are bio ascension. So now synthetic ascension builds synths, bio builds clones... and spiritual/psi optimally builds no-AI toaster droids?
based on the way the last dev diary ended, and some further comments by the devs, I'm guessing that Psi Ascension empires will have a separate, more... subversive advantage compared to the other ascension paths.
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Anyways, I'm hoping they make clone vats baseline once again or give normal empires and megacorps a new building that does cloning on par with the robot assembly plant. Bio ascension really should have a better organic pop assembly bonus, but everyone really should be able to unlock that at about the same time they can get robot pops. Otherwise that might hurt this change; especially, if the goal is to make robot pops completely optional.
Edit: Before I forget, the habitat changes are amazing. Only complaints I have are that the industrial districts for them might not be better, granted if they come with extra housing, that would be acceptable, just think it should be 4 instead of 3. Just need them to solve the issue of the game removing the capital designation from our capital and do something about the weird migration pattern of voidborne pops and the obnoxious quirk of them become absolute shit because they went planet bound and then came back to the habitat and are still garbage. They really shouldn't want to move to any planet period. Only non-habitat thing they shouldn't want to live on is ringworlds. The alternative is to tweak the code so that they only get the production bonuses on habitats, but suffer no maluses for being on ringworlds, relic worlds, ecumenopoli or gaia worlds. Though IMO there should be bonuses tied to galactic wonders, project arcology and world shaper that make those worlds a little less good for people that lack the appropriate ascension perk. For example, ringworlds eat a 10% production malus if one doesn't have galactic wonders. Ecumenopoli only have 90% habitability for those that don't invest in project arcology. Gaia worlds don't give the pop happiness bonus for bio and lithoid pops if one doesn't have world shaper. I know I'm digressing here, but still really bugs me that people can get the full benefit of things that are normally locked behind ascension perks without those perks and this would do wonders to reign in the conquer everything meta, while also ensure that a perk is worth the investment if you get it.
So what precursor do I finally see for the second time in all the games I've played of Stellaris?
The Zroni.
God damn it
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I got them and finished the chain... on my Hive Mind Memorialist first stab at the Necroid stuff. :snap:
Though, the most harmful thing to this relic for gestalts, is that the passive is 100% useless to them and given that you can probably get more than one relic in most games (can't comment on MP), with the shared CD, the most important thing for most relics is the passive because you'll have one or two relics that always beat other relics on the triumph effect, assuming you have the resources to afford it. Hell, even most of the top triumph effect relics give you most of their value via the passive because it's always active and you may have scenarios where it's not feasible to constantly roll the triumph effect. Influence costs ones could result in a scenario where you don't have the influence because more important influence spending came up. Granted, gestalts don't have to worry about ruler selection through their influence budget out the window, so it's much easier to budget around having enough influence to for the effect and sometimes another triumph effect might be more desirable in a certain situation.
Hilariously, The Last Baol is far more useful to gestalts than Psionic Archive. It goes without saying for hiveminds; especially, with a 10% pop growth passive. Machines get a 10% society research bonus, which is pretty decent all things considered. Society tech is always useful. Ironically, the special civic type empires all get better benefit from the triumph effect than vanilla machine empires. Rogue servitor wants to have it's bio trophies on a Gaia world because they are then happier and than means higher stability and that stability translates into more resource production. Also you get three new bio trophies for every Gaia world you create with the Triumph effect. Driven assimilators can make use of Gaia worlds for their bio pops because I don't think it's possible to get 100% habitability on machine worlds for cyborgs. Also three new cyborg pops with every Gaia world. Determined exterminators probably get the least values, but if you want to create a purge world, having it be Gaia might not be a bad idea, the happiness bonus reduces uprising risk and the 100% habitability for bio and lithoid pops means when you let unity farm breed back up, you're getting as much pop growth speed as possible for them. Also three workers for the unity purge jobs. I mean, I probably wouldn't ever use the triumph effect as as a DE machine empire, but you can get value from it.
Anyways the Zroni secret is absolutely useless for gestalts. Mostly useless for non-gestalts that don't go down psionics. I'm assuming that the 10% psionic research speed applies to all psionic tech, so mostly useless to even psionic empires as well. Baol on the other hand is useful 15% terraforming cost discount, granted that does lose value after awhile, when resource production makes the costs really trivial, but still you can get a few planets terraformed earlier than normal.
The home system is pretty crap IMO because you can't harvest the zro to sell on the market. Non-gestalt empires that forgo psionics can usually get the tech to harvest zro and then sell it on the market, hell, they might luck out and get some tech that uses zro. I want to say that's possible, Baol precursor, which doesn't give you their true homes system, gives you a tomb world, which you can turn into a 20 tile sized colony.
Similarly the resource consolidation origin is pretty crap unless you take lithoids as your first bio species.
I really wish they would make a necrophage style “get primative worlds instead of empty habitable worlds” origin for Rogue Servitors and Driven Assimilators.
New Dev diary talking about changes to first contact to make it slightly more involved with more choices. Stuff like first contact policies (friendly, cautious, aggressive) and the ability to choose methods to find out more about your stellar neighbors (like, say, capturing and dissecting them, of course)
Given that first contact was so bland I had actually forgotten there was a mechanic already in the game about it, this will hopefully be a welcome change.
Also hoping hostile and aggressive contact don't end up being meta. That more peaceful stuff gets the player rewards just as good as abducting and dissecting aliens. Personally, given some of the scum that roams in paradox games, I wouldn't mind seeing them take the nerf bat to the kind of play that mirrors behavior that the scummy parts of humanity celebrate in. As in slavery and hostile first contact aren't made worthless, but their alternatives are made better than them. (IMO it's why I'm annoyed that democracies are rather crap and that the big meta is slavery).
Anyways, glad to see they aren't keen to make envoys actual leaders. I have to shake my head at everyone getting butthurt over this because the current mechanics for the leaders we have now, are lack luster at best and tedious at worst. The vast majority of traits don't make you choose between interesting choices. it's mostly about shuffling leaders around, if you even bother to do that. We have three that make you put some thought into leaders, but not in a good way. Arrested development makes decide if you want keep a leader and if you don't, then how you go about replacing said leader. Spoiler, more often than not, you nuke said leader and eat the downsides of having a less experienced leader. Maimed and substance abuser could come into play for elections you spend influence on and again, not in a good way, you might pass up an awesome leader because one or both traits being present means said leader has a decent chance of dying halfway through the term. Before we get more leaders to micro, they need to retool the leader system. That said, they did float the idea of envoys getting traits in a way that doesn't involve having to shuffle them around and would argument the diplomacy corps, which would also be a good approach for the stuff as well. For example, if you have three sectors, you'll want governors, but rather than assigning them to a specific sector, it's merely hiring three you like. Ideally, regardless of what happens, traits get a new pass and we're forced to make interesting choices over the system we have now.
On another note with first contact. I'm hoping megacorps get unique options because come on, you're running into new business opportunities here. It would be lame if they went about it the same way everyone else did. Also occurs to me that espionage could be a good way to revamp criminal heritage. Corporate offices already let you sort of spy on people. IMO gives criminal syndicates two options for setting up shop. Get a legal commercial pact where you setup normal corporate offices with normal corporate buildings, but get less espionage capability out of said office. Or you could setup an office illegally, but have much better espionage capability for the trade off of the office being closed. Could also retool it so they are much better at espionage, lose the whole illegal office thing, as in they need commercial pacts for corporate offices. Maybe they keep the bonus to trade value if crime is high, but don't increase it. In short make them something people want to play and stop being something people both hate playing as and against. Honestly, they are probably a good poster child of why people are wary of the idea of active espionage because that is kind of their thing. They actively setup offices that increase crime and the host needs to setup stuff to make them go away.
Similar to that, I hope Hive Minds contacting non-Hive Minds will have some unique stuff as well. For one thing, the Hive Mind first having to figure out that the alien species they've come in contact with isn't a singular entity but a bewildering array of individuals. And sort of coming to understand what that actually means.
But I'm not getting my hopes up too high. Hive Minds always seem to be something of an afterthought.
I'll use megacorps here to really hammer home things because IMO most megacorp civics are also pretty crap. Thing is you get a few unique options opened up via ethics. If you go spiritualist, you get gospel of the masses that has some interesting implications. Also the ethics really influence how other empires deal with you to a certain extent. IMO gestalts really should be given a personality you choose, this would ensure that civics could become more of a choice. For instance if we created a parasitic personality, that leaches off other empires, that would open it up to different civic options than say one that is say aggressive and another that is introspective. On top of that limiting civic choices and creating room to create new ones, it also influences how other empires view the entity. A docile or introspective personality means you get less initial friction, parasitic might get a colder reception and people might be very wary of a aggressive gestalt.
Even if it was just like xenophobe-xenophile and militant-passive with 2 dots to assign between them. Xenophile could give diplo bonuses and maybe even the option of peaceful integration of non-gestalt pops without having to ascend, xenophobe maybe better purge options (maybe even having the option of necrophage and assimilation purges as civics?)
One thing I'd love to do is add limited trade to gestalts. It doesn't really make sense that they are completely excluded, yes there isn't internal trade, but they could trade with entities outside their borders. For instance, for bonus maybe have it so that both parasitic and symbiotic type gestalts get access to the tech immediately upon making contact with another empire that understands the concept. Every other gestalt would have to research the concept. Parasitic gestalts would get more uneven trade, as in they get more benefit from than other gestalts and get more energy credits than their trade partner. One idea is that if paradox ever embraces the idea of civil infrastructure, they could bring the idea of branch offices to gestalts. Setting up such offices would be limited to parasitic and symbiotic gestalts, but maybe any megcorps or those types of gestalts could build branch offices in other gestalt empires. Just that they could build those on worlds and would instead be limited to the civilian starbases within inhabited systems.
Anyways, devouring swarm & determined exterminator would be a aggressive only civics. Maybe parasitic could get something like client states, which boosts energy credits from trade, but gives them the option to take a fully conquered empires or vassal and reduce it down to one system. Don't waste time assimilating all the pops. This client state not only provides the influence bonus, but a portion of the resources they generate are given to their overlord. Also this client state has no military or foreign policy infrastructure. It exists to serve it's overlord, maybe it even comes with a slight decrease to the diplomacy malus that parasitic gestalts usually eat because "hey, at least it's not enslaving those pops to it's will or outright killing them either. symbiotic could get the civic sanctuary worlds, unlike parasitic gestalts it doesn't create client states. Instead it rehomes pops that it either can't assimilate or don't want to be assimilated onto such worlds, not sure on the bonuses, other than a diplomacy one that negates the gestalt malus. The pops on sanctuary wouldn't die if they are part of the gestalt. So for example a hivemind with this civic could take over a machine empire for whatever reason and move all the machine drones to a sanctuary machine world. Driven assimilators would definitely be a parasitic gestalt only civic. I'd make the argument that rogue servitor could be both a parasitic and symbiotic civic.
Relationship and interactions with an empire can increase your intel, and there are other ways to boost it as well. They mention intel reports to temporary boost your knowledge, and they have other ways they'll detail later. Apparently you're going to need to keep your intel fresh too, otherwise it can get stale and out of date.
Lotta 'redacted' going on as well. Gotta be espionage.
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Since that meant any system I took was mine to keep and I had both gray (about 37k) and another fleet equal to gray (and yet another at half gray's strength) and he had, like, occasional 4k fleets, my empire is now twice as large and you get all his station for free soon as you destroy the central starbase!
Things are starting to snowball.
Organic bodies that were hundreds of years old and who almost immediately started dropping like flies.
I may have rolled back a save on that one.
Y'all want some espionage?
I worry about the operations part a bit, I don’t want every empire to be as obnoxious as a criminal syndicate to be around.
Yes, this is what I wanted.
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Let's hope the AI will be able to put up an actual fight if the player goes that route.
I don't really care how hard they fight, I'm just excited to be able to eat their stars instead of just their populace.
If nothing else, think of the late game performance benefits!
I know some balk at the idea because they honestly believe the game is better as a sandbox and IMO that's where they should just ask the devs to include a sandbox option. I see no reason why they have to cater to one group at the expense of others.
I'm still really iffy on the espionage shit though. On one hand enigmatic engineering is worth a damn, but IMO it's going to be required because having spies be able to steal any and all technology, even if it's a low chance, was a really fucking dumb idea. Yes, it's a realism thing, but at the same time it's going to end up feeling really cheap to play against, when someone can just boost spies and accelerate their research off the backs of empires that invested in research labs, while being able to just load up on alloy districts. Also the pirate bit is really dumb too because IMO while it's cool the game has them, the execution of the concept is pretty shit. Hey, hugely populated system with an inhabited planet, a few habitats but no starbase, whelp if trade gets high enough it'll get pirates because pirates totally fucking congregate on a system that probably has a shit ton of law enforcement because it has a shit ton of people in it. Then there is the whole thing where piracy rate can grow to infinity, needing ever bigger fleets if one doesn't want to use gateways to squash it. Worried the espionage stuff will be the exact kind of shit that people hate playing against.
Anything after that is like when you keep playing a Civ game after you got a win condition.
Today's Dev Diary is about turning your go at Galactic Custody in to a permanent gig as you usher in your own particular galactic empire.
Palpatine would be proud.
I like it, seems like a much less frustrating route for a political victory than federations.