But an aquatic species wouldn't sing sea shanties...
Or would they sing nothing but?
I know where you're going with this, but no
Sea shanties are derived from the need to coordinate work and form a bond between people in an environment where you work together or you die because it is inherently hostile to life. An aquatic species wouldn't experience that. While there might need to be some land-based development (rockets won't launch as well in water for example) land doesn't basically always try to kill you the moment you enter it (eg a fish in a suit in some wind on land is going to be fine, a mammal in a boat in some normal winds might just straight die if they don't sail good) and usually when it does it's the water that's doing the killing, and where land can easily be disconnected via oceans or mountains the oceans will almost always be connected so there's less need to go on land at all.
Windy weather? Stormy weather? Not super relevant to a species that lives underneath those waves. It is a cool song though
Haven't quite done a game yet. I already see a few hotfixes we are likely to get down the line though.
-People are reporting that game will make you eat the negatives for aquatics on habitats and I kind of doubt that was intended.
-Watched Stefan Anon play a game with the dragon origin and let's say that highlights that the devs really need to do something with liquid metal because it's super easy to get a game where you have zero access to it because the AI gets the few anomalies that will spawn the nodes and never actually do the research or put in on the market. Wasn't an issue till this origin dropped and has a spot where you kind of want that resource.
I'm also betting that Anglers is going to need work because it's just bad, which is a shame. Essentially, pearl divers be such crap pretty much kills the advantages you get from Anglers and it shows that the devs didn't consider how their game works. I mean, maybe in late game it can be made to work if you have pops to spare but it's a nonremovable civic you have to get at the start and it's not pop efficient or really district efficient at the time of the game where pops and minerals are going to be your big limiter. Also your anglers really aren't efficient enough to handle having the workforce halved. Waiting for a list on what all modifies pearl diver output. If it gets bonuses from what boosts farmers, which seems doubtful, it's less awful but that doesn't help the early game. I guess an upside in that scenario would be that you don't need to burn two building slots buildings to boost CGs. If it's the stuff that benefits artificers and artisans, it's still behind. It's going to be bad if doesn't get an equivalent number of boosts; especially, if Stefan's poking is still accurate and you only get one Angler from hydroponics buildings instead of two.
I've seen a few ideas that could work. Making pearl diver a free job, in the sense that you get three jobs from your agricultural districts. That would at least mean you likely either rely on trade to cover the missing CGs or go with catalytic converters to burn all the excess food off. This also a setup that could make mastercrafters worth taking with it because I feel that civic only really works if you get all benefits (people seriously underestimate how good artificers are and as baller as the extra building slots are on industrial worlds, I don't feel it's quite enough for builds that don't need jobs producing CGs. Another route could be to let aquatics trait boost CGs output from pearl divers, which I admit isn't much and to also have it boost trade value from at least both anglers and pearl divers (would probably be better if it TV from all jobs).
I'm getting the impression that Anglers suffers the same issue we see with leader lifespan stuff. The devs are too far up their butts to admit that design isn't good and stubbornly stick with the belief that they are much better than truly are and it ends up hurting stuff that could be pretty cool, if it was so under powered.
For the record, I was rolling along just fine with Anglers / Catalytics as a Mechanist last night, but I've got to admit it makes the job balancing wonky to have the Pearl Divers around all the time.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2021
The shanty in the trailer is absolutely a space shanty. They might not find the water to be a terrifying place they have to work together to survive.
But space sure is, and it fits perfectly in that context. They even talk about the space dragons.
edit: Also lets be honest. If you've watched any nature documentaries about the sea at all.
Yeah it's also a terrifying place they have to work together to survive. More so than land. Even under the waves.
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(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
How many electrical accidents do you figure would happen with an aquatic species developing technology that requires power to function
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
What if they're electric eels.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
edited November 2021
Sadly, no Space Sharks
Edit: I've gotta say... not a huge fan of the Aquatics advisor voice
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Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Edit: I've gotta say... not a huge fan of the Aquatics advisor voice
It really feels like they went all-in on the silly parts of the expansion and kind if mailed the rest in. I am enjoying the pseudo-Near Eastern antiquity name set at least.
It's a species pack, which I think should temper expectations to a degree. My observations are the two biggest slips are:
-Liquid metals piss poor design is highlighted further by the "Here there be Dragons" origin. They do give you one liquid metal deposit, within a one jump of your home, which solves one issue of liquid metals design. The problem is the didn't fix the RNG clusterfuck that the whole thing typical is on actually getting the tech. Some have said that they think the deposit is a bug and that it's suppose to be an anomaly. This might be true, but I suspect it's working as intended because liquid metal anomalies could easily become a trap for new players, given that they typical take a really long time to research and the tech also techs a huge amount of research. So really easy to get a new players to commit down a path of destruction, when they'd be better off researching other anomalies and techs that have an immediate payoff.
Anyways current design, means you can get galaxies where you effectively can't get half the origin's reward because RNG says "fuck you, no liquid metal extraction tech." Easy fix would be that the origin's event chain gives the research option for liquid metal.
-Angler civic. Probably not as egregious as the liquid metal screw up. The issue is that it's not pop efficient, it does get better over time, but it's a locked civic and to pretty much reach parity with other builds on output, you have to use 5 pops instead of 4. In a chill game or against most AI setting this isn't a problem, but outside of that, it's going to be a problem because this game rewards snowballing and that fifth pop is always going to be better getting you more resources than just getting you caught up.
The issue comes down to pearl divers being a turd of a profession. They erase the awesomeness of the angler job because they erase the food surplus that job provides and don't do enough to hit pop efficiency parity. They get really annoying if someone tries treating them as a supplement job because they are a specialist which means, you'll be in micromanagement hell and be annoyed when you miss turning off an unneeded pearl diver job on a new agricultural world and have to deal with pop demotion time. It's also worth noting that you only get a single angler job from hydroponics buildings, so you're talking about having to build a city district to get a single farming job on worlds where you decide that you want to load up on as much food output as possible.
If the devs do deliver with the unity and sprawl revamp that will get February of next year, I only see this civic getting worse because that pop inefficiency problem is only going to get worse since pops also add sprawl and from what I recall, unity was going to be needed to address that. If you go pearl divers as supplement jobs and/or hydroponic heavy builds, the one job per district is also going to really hurt.
I actually, see Ocean Paradise getting better if they pull off the revamp because part of the stated goal is to cut off the disparity between wide and tall builds.
-Also laughing at people that are doing vacuum comparisons of Gaia vs Ocean worlds when one has the aquatics trait. Sure if you get a Gaia world or have Baol, you want you specialist only worlds to be Gaia, unless you hit end game, then the housing perk of hydrocentric powered aquatic pops might get you more specialist resources, when you consider how the housing works out (I'd have to do the math). Hell, I'll laugh if it's a wash. Resource worlds that have research labs are going to be ocean worlds because most of the pops are going to be workers and the reduced housing means less city districts and more resource districts. I want to say on average, you're typical world is going to get about six to seven research labs (this is also why science institutes actually aren't worth it most of the time right now because you usually don't get enough researchers on packed worlds to justify them. Also why ministry of production buildings need to go, they eat up a building slot and are frankly redundant).
Once you get to the perks, I'd argue hydrocentric is a much easier justification than world shaper. One you get the benefits instantly because if you can get the per, you likely have a few Ocean worlds and the pops get the boost once the perk is selected. World shaper you have to terraform stuff first. Also if you have the influence to spare and have ice, making your worlds bigger can be a huge boon and that could also mean getting building slots on a world you normally couldn't get them on without a ton of sacrifice. Plus, Gaia doesn't have the synergy that Hydrocentric and Colossus Project have. Finally, even if we're past the glory days of housing reduction, it still gets criminally underrated by the community. I mean it slows down how quickly new pops eat into capacity that impacts pop growth and can still be the difference between building something to add more production or having to build more housing.
The terraforming changes aren't bad either. Haven't don't enough non-colonized worlds to see if you get them for those. If not, that could create a weird setup where you want to terraform a world after you colonize because some of the events are pretty good. The mediocre one the one that instantly builds district. A slightly better one increases the total number of district you can have for one of the base resource districts (granted this can suck if it shows up on a world size that you usually turn into a specialist world). The really good one gives you a choice between 10 amenities or 5% bio/lithoid pop happiness and immigration pull (I'd argue the latter is a no brainer). Don't know if there is more, could be something really rare. If not, I hope they add on to it, would love one one where they find an overlooked anomaly or dig site.
So it figures, was looking at starting up Stellaris again, and there's another major update coming out in a few days that will probably break all the mods for a while again.
There's some good changes though, including apparently fixing the AI creating a ton of jobs it can't fill, and at least attempting to address the weird framerate drops when opening planet windows. I don't mind micromanaging a bunch of planets, but that irritating stutter it picks up during the end game is actually one of the biggest things that drives me to go, okay, I'm done with this round. Managing 40 planets is fine, but not when the game chokes just looking at them.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
I still have mine set to like two major updates ago because I haven't finished that game yet. Gonna be interesting when I finally give up on it.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I messed around with the open beta they did. Thus far, the changes to sprawl are an overall improvement. My only real critiques with the beta are:
They need to fix the awfulness that is the leader system. They made them cost unity and they get more expensive the more leaders you have. Also they do disappear after a certain point. Main goal was to kill leader cycling (where someone pours tons of energy mass recruiting until they get a leader they want). The leader system is just not fun to deal with. On the upside arrested development is less fuck awful, still way too common, but it just shaves your leader cap by two levels instead of halting their ability to level.
They haven't quite achieved a good balance between tall and wide. I'd really love them to embrace the concept of the core sector as a mechanic to make it happen. AKA everything in your core sector just generates less sprawl.
Influence is in a weird spot, it went from being super valuable to kind of pointless after you get the systems you want. Unless you happen to be a branch office spamming megacorp or spamming habitats.
On the plus side, the performance is absolutely amazing now.
I messed around with the open beta they did. Thus far, the changes to sprawl are an overall improvement. My only real critiques with the beta are:
They need to fix the awfulness that is the leader system. They made them cost unity and they get more expensive the more leaders you have. Also they do disappear after a certain point. Main goal was to kill leader cycling (where someone pours tons of energy mass recruiting until they get a leader they want). The leader system is just not fun to deal with. On the upside arrested development is less fuck awful, still way too common, but it just shaves your leader cap by two levels instead of halting their ability to level.
They haven't quite achieved a good balance between tall and wide. I'd really love them to embrace the concept of the core sector as a mechanic to make it happen. AKA everything in your core sector just generates less sprawl.
Influence is in a weird spot, it went from being super valuable to kind of pointless after you get the systems you want. Unless you happen to be a branch office spamming megacorp or spamming habitats.
On the plus side, the performance is absolutely amazing now.
Leaders cost Unity now? Yikes. I know they overhauled Unity, but... that sounds far too expensive.
Yeah, just make sure nothing intensive decides to start updating unannounced in the background. Initially thought performance was worse, but remembered that some assholes at microsoft decided the update should no longer display the icon it's updating (strongly suspect those fuckers are cyrpto fuckers and having stuff tell you it's updating, makes it harder to hide bullshit mining shit they try sneaking in). Once I didn't have something upgrading in the background, performance was pretty damn good and the machine I'm using for gaming is a potato. So if it's getting really good results, I can only imagine how great things are on a machine that isn't a potato.
As for leader unity costs. Honestly, it's not that bad. In a ways, it's a bit pointless once your unity hits a certain threshold, assuming your fire unneeded leaders. It can be a bit rough at the start because it does make it harder to spam out scientists for exploration. The one nice trade off with the change is that it actually makes setting up your homeworld and early colonies less of a pain in the ass because since you don't need energy for leaders, you can put that towards the minerals that you do need and straighten out your homeworld, while being able to afford infrastructure on super early colonies. I know I also struggled to hit a good balance between energy on minerals and energy on leaders because I'm a scientist spammer for early exploration (I'll admit, not happy with how the unity does hamper my ability to get scientists up and running for exploration).
I'm hoping they do something about the leader system because all the changes so far are doing a great job of highlighting just how shit the system is. For the most part, leaders are just really annoying stat sticks and they tend to annoy you when they die or manage to get a really shitty trait that causes issues. I guess with arrested development only shaving two levels off the max cap and I think you can still get your leaders with arrested development to level 10 without having to do anything too crazy. That just makes corrupt the most fucking obnoxious trait and probably the only one you want to insta fire a leader for.
I know I also struggled to hit a good balance between energy on minerals and energy on leaders because I'm a scientist spammer for early exploration (I'll admit, not happy with how the unity does hamper my ability to get scientists up and running for exploration).
This is me. I really like having multiple scientists because exploring is so slow in the early game. And with the new diplomacy, spying and intelligence stuff, it really feels like you need to find your neighbors ASAP before you get locked into an unpleasant location or sandwiched between two very unpleasant factions.
New expansion announced. Looks to be expanding mechanics for vasselization and other forms of subjugation. New origins, megastructures and enclaves too.
In Stellaris: Overlord, a new full expansion, gain access to new features designed to unlock the next level of your empire.
Guide a galaxy full of potential subjects to victory - or subjugation. New mechanics provide many ways to specialize your vassals’ roles within your empire, bring new planets and subjects under your reign, and new magnificent megastructures to project your power further, faster.
The Brightest Star Must Guide Them
Overlord’s thematic focus is on exerting your will across the galaxy, the projection of power, and the expansion of civilization under your glorious banner. The other empires can choose to submit willingly or by force, but they will submit.
In Federations, we expanded diplomacy between equals with the federations themselves and the politics of the Galactic Community. Nemesis included more hostile forms of diplomacy with espionage operations, and some empires declaring themselves more equal than others with the Custodian and the Galactic Imperium.
In Overlord, we will explore diplomacy between empires that are explicitly not equal.
New Ways to Rule
Vassalization mechanics will undergo significant changes.
A major goal in this revision was to make subjugation a more valuable and viable system with benefits for both sides, rather than being a delayed “Game Over” as you wait for Integration should you be subjugated.
Subjugation will be customizable, with Vassalization Contracts, Specialist Vassals, and Overlord Holdings.
New Beginnings and Friends
Explore five new Origins (including a new Origin for Hive Empires), as well as new enclaves, some of whom are Shrouded in mystery.
All Roads Lead to Deneb IIb
Governing a galaxy-spanning empire is challenging, and threats can come from any direction. There will always be those who plot to undo what you have built.
A new megastructure will allow you to counter such threats as well as help you take what you deserve.
Other new constructions will allow you to elevate civilization to new heights and exert your influence to build a network tying the galaxy together, with your capital as the center, of course.
Realize Your Grand Design
Will you be a benevolent Overlord that brings prosperity to the galaxy, or an oppressive tyrant exploiting your vassals? Or will you instead serve and become part of something greater?
Looks like we might actually have an official subterranean origin. If so that will be nice, since it means we don't have to worry about patches breaking the modjam mod should we want to play subterranean. Hell, I'd say it's about time.
The other stuff looks interesting. I have to say, I'm happy to see that orbital rings might be a thing too. I loved them in gigastructures and it's a thing I've wanted to be in the game proper.
I was trying to get an inward perfection -> chosen one -> reform to imperial -> become the crisis game, but the damn shroud event just wouldn't fire, so I decided to become the emperor instead and was beating down the council when the FE next to me woke up and... did nothing, nothing at all because by that point they were "inferior" in fleet power so I guess they thought they wouldn't be able to win, and I completely surrounded them so they couldn't path to anyone else
But everybody else went from completely opposed to mostly in support! Not that their votes were needed
I was trying to get an inward perfection -> chosen one -> reform to imperial -> become the crisis game, but the damn shroud event just wouldn't fire, so I decided to become the emperor instead and was beating down the council when the FE next to me woke up and... did nothing, nothing at all because by that point they were "inferior" in fleet power so I guess they thought they wouldn't be able to win, and I completely surrounded them so they couldn't path to anyone else
But everybody else went from completely opposed to mostly in support! Not that their votes were needed
-Integration is off by default for subjects. You actually have to negotiate for that to be in a subject contract and it sounds like there is a fair bit of leeway for a subject to shoot down the most onerous things that an overlord can push. This pretty much means that becoming a vassal is no longer game over because you'd have to agree to allow the AI to integrate you.
-Blue post confirmed that AI vassals under the player will retain some of the AI bonuses. So pair that up with how the player can give their subject subsidies, AI vassals should actually have some good values; especially, since you can have them provide with resources other than minerals and energy.
-You can allow your vassal to expand, forbid or even tax it (you get taxed influence as your own). This is another that will ensure they are worth a damn. I assume this also means that AI vassals will build habitats if they run out of space to claim and have the resources to build them.
-They can have independent diplomacy if you allow it. Also how wars work with them has been changed. You can be drawn into their wars or opts to stay out of them (aka it's now possible to declare wars on subjects). They can be drawn into your wars or kept out, this is useful if they are really fucking weak and on the border next to someone you want to fight because now you can keep them out of a war they'd be obliterated in.
-Become the crisis has been confirmed as a perk that will be blocked for subjugated empires. If an empire does take the perk and gets subjugated, they can still continue down the progress until they hit level 5. Level 5 is locked until they can become independent again. So no worries about subjects fucking you over on that front and unless you become a lvl 5 crisis empire, the perk doesn't prevent others from subjugating you.
Next week will get info on specialist empires, which are locked behind having the expansion. I'd also wager the week after, we get details on the new megastructures, origins, probably one or more civics and it looks like we have at least one perk (likely one of the megastructures is tied to it). I'm hoping orbital rings will be something that isn't locked behind a perk because we do seem to be at the point where you can't take all the good perks and it does seem like more of the useless perks are hitting a point where they are a good choice in some builds. Depending on how things go, shared burdens may be a very solid perk for a vassal heavy build; especially, if i's a prerequisite perk for the new one and that one ends up being very solid.
Granted, I want orbital rings to be a non-perk locked megastructure because I suspect they'll be too good of a benefit to be something you lock to something with finite choices because they aren't likely going to work well with the relic world fix that made project arcology more of a choice than a mandatory requirement for normal empires, on top of ecumenopoli being somewhat nerfed enough that it didn't sting too bad if you didn't grab the perk or luck into a relic world (like industrial sectors probably did the most to make those optional). Though wouldn't surprise me if orbital rings didn't go well with the one civic that locks an empire out of project arcology.
At some point we'll probably also get more insight on situations because I'm pretty sure the devs said the next free patch, which comes with overlords release, will have those. Also pretty sure we'll get some insights on where they want to go with internal politics. I kind of expect internal politics to be a multipatch deal because it's not exactly a simple thing. Also betting will get some reworks to espionage with Overlords release, not just in that they'll cost influence, but also other changes to hopefully, make the system more worthwhile. I'd love to see the espionage traditions being worth a damn because currently they aren't worth taking.
Edit: Also forgot about holding. Not entirely sure if each building is a holding or if it's similar to branch offices because the devs haven't responded to my question getting clarification. I'm thinking each building is a holding based on how I'm interpreting the info given, but I could easily be wrong here. Those will be neat and are additional ways to bolster your subjects into usefulness. I know they've said they wanted some sort of planner to make managing branch offices easier, both with existing ones and options to expand to new ones. So with overlords getting something similar and the brand office tab being converted into the holdings tab, that bodes wells for that feature coming soon.
I started over the weekend (big mistake on my part...) a budding fungoid species. This seems kinda crazy with all the pop growth, AND can turn a world into a gaia world with a building (that then disappears?). This seems kinda OP to me...
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
The Gaia world idyllic bloom, I think that's the civic name, is actually pretty weak. The terraforming buildings are pretty expensive and once you terraform all your worlds, the civic does nothing for you. Given that it's a locked civic, you can't really switch out. Not unless you go down the psionic tree, which hiveminds can't do, and get a ruler with the chosen one trait. Then get the event where people want to worship the ruler. If you go along with it, you'll get the one known event that can remove locked civics (not sure if FP can be shed with this, I'd assume so).
Honestly, really wish Idyllic bloom gave a bonus to pops on Gaia worlds so that it can be useful when all you and your subject's worlds are Gaia worlds (subject stuff won't happen till Overlord release). It needs to be something that is significant and coded in a way that locks it behind the civic. Right now, the civic suffers from one of the main issues that Mastery of Nature has. The best part of the perk, is something people can steal from you. I mean if you have either one, the answer is pretty obvious, you'll make sure all your worlds are Gaia worlds and you're going to add two more districts to all your worlds.
Glad to see that imperial fiefdom isn't essential a federation start like I initially thought it was going to be. I though we'd be the overlord with two vassals starting on our guaranteed habitable worlds. I like the idea that you are a specialized vassal. This also gives me hope that you aren't being spawned on your AI overlords guaranteed habitable worlds. Also gives a use to the ascension perk that reduces starbase influence costs as a first pick here, so that you can expand at a reasonable pace, given that you have taxed expansion.
Still whether this spawns on the AI overlords guaranteed habitable worlds or not. They really need to fix that aspect of the two existing federation starts. Like it seems 90% of time one or two empires in those federations gets shafted by getting a spawn where they either have few systems to expand to before having to jump passed their fellow federation members to get more space or they start boxed in. Galaxy really should spawn those more in a position where they expand away from each other and have a decent shot at getting a decent number of systems.
Ugh, the Great Khan attack is always frustrating to play against when I'm playing a pacifist empire. I was basically the only race that was close by, so I bore the sole brunt of its attack. Thankfully I was just strong enough that my big fleet could defeat its main fleet if it was fully healthy, but it had 3 different entrances to my territory, so I lost about 10 systems with about 4 planets in total. I was just starting to win them back when the khan died, so they stopped the war, and I couldn't reclaim the other planets. It really makes me want to change my pacifist trait to go after them!
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
It's not going to be an OP start because your overlord won't be able to bail you out nearly as much. Also each vassal specialty has pros and cons. They get resource production boosts or naval boosts, but they are reliant on their overlord to cover deficiencies that are a result of them taking maluses to certain things. Also the whole, expansion being taxed and thus being slowed down.
Granted, we'll see if they tweak anything with scion start because people have complained about that one. So possible that with the new vassal system design dev dairy stating they want it to work within the rules and not be an exception. It's possible that scions may have to give their FE overlords something. I suppose that might very well end up being that they get saddled with taxed expansion.
New Enclaves
-Scrappers: Can break down ships for resources, sell you ships, or even research debris fields for you.
-Shroud-touched: Order of monks obsesssed with the Shroud and will teach you stuff about it.
-Mercenaries: You actually build these rather than fine them, netting you a rentable fleet (though once you build the enclave, any race that makes contact with it can use it.)
Bulwark Vassals
-military base, mad bonuses to defensive platforms, at the cost of large swaths of your economy. Gives a starbase bonus to it's ruling empire, can build specialized construction ships that can repair other vessels, shield bonus to ships while their in your territory, admiral traits that increase also increase stats while in their own territory.
Holdings
-Emporium: Forces vassal to buy amentias from the ruling empire.
-Ministry of production: Ruling empire takes a portion of food and consumer goods
-Ministry of Energy: Same deal, but with energy
-Overlord Assembly Complex: For every construction ship the ruling empire leaves in orbit, increase building build speed and alloys
-Dread Outpost: Reanimators can get physics and social research, as well as spawn undead armies
-Reemployment Center: Same dealio, but zombie pops for Megacorps
-Franchise Headquarters: Megacorps can turn their vassals consumer goods into unity and trade value for the subject, and unity for the overlord.
So my entire federation, including three empires I personally uplifted from primitive levels, and gifted them a number of systems (and even terraformed some planets to be their planet type) are voting for some other empire to be the Custodian.
I have wheeled, dealed and spent a fortune in rare resources to get every favor I can get a hold of, and I'm pretty much out of time and influence, and I'm still like 10,000 votes short.
My only plan now is to try and declare war on that empire hoping it'll make my Federation vote against him.
So my entire federation, including three empires I personally uplifted from primitive levels, and gifted them a number of systems (and even terraformed some planets to be their planet type) are voting for some other empire to be the Custodian.
I have wheeled, dealed and spent a fortune in rare resources to get every favor I can get a hold of, and I'm pretty much out of time and influence, and I'm still like 10,000 votes short.
My only plan now is to try and declare war on that empire hoping it'll make my Federation vote against him.
So for the people still playing, how is the game, in its current state? I've been kind of disappointed with Stellaris as a whole to be honest; it seemed to have amazing potential early on, but has been handicapped by rework after rework, each one resulting in a ton a bugs and breaking the AI's ability to post any kind of threat. The general pattern has been that I'll start a game, play for a couple of hours and then run into a major bug or flaw in the AI that ruins my enthusiasm to continue playing. Have we finally reached some sort of stability?
Game runs faster now. Like it's a pretty solid clip and I was using a piece of shit computer that probably hasn't had any upgrades for nearly a decade. AI also economies better and I've seen people on the harder difficulty settings mention that it takes longer leave the AI in the dust. The unity rework seems to have helped as well, since that means spiritualist and unity focused empires can stay within a reasonable distance of tech rushing builds (either unity needs further buffing or tech rushing needs further nerfing). A side of effect of this is that empires that do get limited to a small footprint, do have some tools to be powerful.
Honestly, if someone is burned out on stellaris like me or hasn't been happy with AI performance and bugs. I'd wait till probably the first hot fix patch after overlords. That should put you passed any game breaking bugs released with overlords. The vassal rework should probably also make the AI more of a challenge, since subjects can be better leveraged for things other than integration to get more pops. We'll get situations, which will help to make empire management more engaging (this is first round and even if they are ripping other paradox games, just keep in mind it might not be super amazing). So if situation go well, that should allow the game to offer more challenge, that isn't reliant on making sure AI empires are idiots. We also probably see further tweaks to unity and the economy.
Apparently at some point they made Awakened Empires no longer a joke. I used to be able to steamroll them once they got uppity, but this one has been a serious threat and managed to stomp a couple of my fleets. Also being unable to see what how their ships are designed is kind of bullshit.
Yeah, they first gave them a modifier where they got a certain amount of certain strategic resources for free (didn't need pops, buildings, starbases or systems for them). So that solved the issue where a number of times the FE would peter out because they could rebuild anymore of there ships from a lack of darkmatter. Not sure if they gets boosted when they awaken.
Then I think it was last major patch or the one before, they realized that awakened empires probably use their ascension perks.
I imagine the next step will be determining if they want them to use the AP paths or not. If they decide they should, expect AEs to get some sort of buff to let them finish the special projects for those in a reasonable time scale for an AE. They did a dev battle where they brought in a bunch of the big streamers to play the game as special empires, along with others as normal empires. Special empires include awakened empires and robot rebellions (not sure if regular rebellions or the khan got included). Aspec tried one of the APs and well, it would have taken him something like 5K, or maybe it was 50K, months to complete the special project. So really the issue currently is that it's a dead AP for AEs. So either they need to be able to finish the special projects in a less than 2 years, maybe less, or they need to not waste their limited slots on those perks.
Posts
I know where you're going with this, but no
Sea shanties are derived from the need to coordinate work and form a bond between people in an environment where you work together or you die because it is inherently hostile to life. An aquatic species wouldn't experience that. While there might need to be some land-based development (rockets won't launch as well in water for example) land doesn't basically always try to kill you the moment you enter it (eg a fish in a suit in some wind on land is going to be fine, a mammal in a boat in some normal winds might just straight die if they don't sail good) and usually when it does it's the water that's doing the killing, and where land can easily be disconnected via oceans or mountains the oceans will almost always be connected so there's less need to go on land at all.
Windy weather? Stormy weather? Not super relevant to a species that lives underneath those waves. It is a cool song though
They wouldn't call them sea shanties because that would be like humans calling our music land songs.
I really wish Stellaris crash logs were more helpful. I don't think they've ever actually managed to identify what the cause of a crash was.
I love land songs almost as much as sea shanties
For the record, I was rolling along just fine with Anglers / Catalytics as a Mechanist last night, but I've got to admit it makes the job balancing wonky to have the Pearl Divers around all the time.
But space sure is, and it fits perfectly in that context. They even talk about the space dragons.
edit: Also lets be honest. If you've watched any nature documentaries about the sea at all.
Yeah it's also a terrifying place they have to work together to survive. More so than land. Even under the waves.
Edit: I've gotta say... not a huge fan of the Aquatics advisor voice
It really feels like they went all-in on the silly parts of the expansion and kind if mailed the rest in. I am enjoying the pseudo-Near Eastern antiquity name set at least.
-Liquid metals piss poor design is highlighted further by the "Here there be Dragons" origin. They do give you one liquid metal deposit, within a one jump of your home, which solves one issue of liquid metals design. The problem is the didn't fix the RNG clusterfuck that the whole thing typical is on actually getting the tech. Some have said that they think the deposit is a bug and that it's suppose to be an anomaly. This might be true, but I suspect it's working as intended because liquid metal anomalies could easily become a trap for new players, given that they typical take a really long time to research and the tech also techs a huge amount of research. So really easy to get a new players to commit down a path of destruction, when they'd be better off researching other anomalies and techs that have an immediate payoff.
Anyways current design, means you can get galaxies where you effectively can't get half the origin's reward because RNG says "fuck you, no liquid metal extraction tech." Easy fix would be that the origin's event chain gives the research option for liquid metal.
-Angler civic. Probably not as egregious as the liquid metal screw up. The issue is that it's not pop efficient, it does get better over time, but it's a locked civic and to pretty much reach parity with other builds on output, you have to use 5 pops instead of 4. In a chill game or against most AI setting this isn't a problem, but outside of that, it's going to be a problem because this game rewards snowballing and that fifth pop is always going to be better getting you more resources than just getting you caught up.
The issue comes down to pearl divers being a turd of a profession. They erase the awesomeness of the angler job because they erase the food surplus that job provides and don't do enough to hit pop efficiency parity. They get really annoying if someone tries treating them as a supplement job because they are a specialist which means, you'll be in micromanagement hell and be annoyed when you miss turning off an unneeded pearl diver job on a new agricultural world and have to deal with pop demotion time. It's also worth noting that you only get a single angler job from hydroponics buildings, so you're talking about having to build a city district to get a single farming job on worlds where you decide that you want to load up on as much food output as possible.
If the devs do deliver with the unity and sprawl revamp that will get February of next year, I only see this civic getting worse because that pop inefficiency problem is only going to get worse since pops also add sprawl and from what I recall, unity was going to be needed to address that. If you go pearl divers as supplement jobs and/or hydroponic heavy builds, the one job per district is also going to really hurt.
I actually, see Ocean Paradise getting better if they pull off the revamp because part of the stated goal is to cut off the disparity between wide and tall builds.
-Also laughing at people that are doing vacuum comparisons of Gaia vs Ocean worlds when one has the aquatics trait. Sure if you get a Gaia world or have Baol, you want you specialist only worlds to be Gaia, unless you hit end game, then the housing perk of hydrocentric powered aquatic pops might get you more specialist resources, when you consider how the housing works out (I'd have to do the math). Hell, I'll laugh if it's a wash. Resource worlds that have research labs are going to be ocean worlds because most of the pops are going to be workers and the reduced housing means less city districts and more resource districts. I want to say on average, you're typical world is going to get about six to seven research labs (this is also why science institutes actually aren't worth it most of the time right now because you usually don't get enough researchers on packed worlds to justify them. Also why ministry of production buildings need to go, they eat up a building slot and are frankly redundant).
Once you get to the perks, I'd argue hydrocentric is a much easier justification than world shaper. One you get the benefits instantly because if you can get the per, you likely have a few Ocean worlds and the pops get the boost once the perk is selected. World shaper you have to terraform stuff first. Also if you have the influence to spare and have ice, making your worlds bigger can be a huge boon and that could also mean getting building slots on a world you normally couldn't get them on without a ton of sacrifice. Plus, Gaia doesn't have the synergy that Hydrocentric and Colossus Project have. Finally, even if we're past the glory days of housing reduction, it still gets criminally underrated by the community. I mean it slows down how quickly new pops eat into capacity that impacts pop growth and can still be the difference between building something to add more production or having to build more housing.
The terraforming changes aren't bad either. Haven't don't enough non-colonized worlds to see if you get them for those. If not, that could create a weird setup where you want to terraform a world after you colonize because some of the events are pretty good. The mediocre one the one that instantly builds district. A slightly better one increases the total number of district you can have for one of the base resource districts (granted this can suck if it shows up on a world size that you usually turn into a specialist world). The really good one gives you a choice between 10 amenities or 5% bio/lithoid pop happiness and immigration pull (I'd argue the latter is a no brainer). Don't know if there is more, could be something really rare. If not, I hope they add on to it, would love one one where they find an overlooked anomaly or dig site.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
There's some good changes though, including apparently fixing the AI creating a ton of jobs it can't fill, and at least attempting to address the weird framerate drops when opening planet windows. I don't mind micromanaging a bunch of planets, but that irritating stutter it picks up during the end game is actually one of the biggest things that drives me to go, okay, I'm done with this round. Managing 40 planets is fine, but not when the game chokes just looking at them.
They need to fix the awfulness that is the leader system. They made them cost unity and they get more expensive the more leaders you have. Also they do disappear after a certain point. Main goal was to kill leader cycling (where someone pours tons of energy mass recruiting until they get a leader they want). The leader system is just not fun to deal with. On the upside arrested development is less fuck awful, still way too common, but it just shaves your leader cap by two levels instead of halting their ability to level.
They haven't quite achieved a good balance between tall and wide. I'd really love them to embrace the concept of the core sector as a mechanic to make it happen. AKA everything in your core sector just generates less sprawl.
Influence is in a weird spot, it went from being super valuable to kind of pointless after you get the systems you want. Unless you happen to be a branch office spamming megacorp or spamming habitats.
On the plus side, the performance is absolutely amazing now.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Leaders cost Unity now? Yikes. I know they overhauled Unity, but... that sounds far too expensive.
As for leader unity costs. Honestly, it's not that bad. In a ways, it's a bit pointless once your unity hits a certain threshold, assuming your fire unneeded leaders. It can be a bit rough at the start because it does make it harder to spam out scientists for exploration. The one nice trade off with the change is that it actually makes setting up your homeworld and early colonies less of a pain in the ass because since you don't need energy for leaders, you can put that towards the minerals that you do need and straighten out your homeworld, while being able to afford infrastructure on super early colonies. I know I also struggled to hit a good balance between energy on minerals and energy on leaders because I'm a scientist spammer for early exploration (I'll admit, not happy with how the unity does hamper my ability to get scientists up and running for exploration).
I'm hoping they do something about the leader system because all the changes so far are doing a great job of highlighting just how shit the system is. For the most part, leaders are just really annoying stat sticks and they tend to annoy you when they die or manage to get a really shitty trait that causes issues. I guess with arrested development only shaving two levels off the max cap and I think you can still get your leaders with arrested development to level 10 without having to do anything too crazy. That just makes corrupt the most fucking obnoxious trait and probably the only one you want to insta fire a leader for.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
This is me. I really like having multiple scientists because exploring is so slow in the early game. And with the new diplomacy, spying and intelligence stuff, it really feels like you need to find your neighbors ASAP before you get locked into an unpleasant location or sandwiched between two very unpleasant factions.
I miss the story packs.
The other stuff looks interesting. I have to say, I'm happy to see that orbital rings might be a thing too. I loved them in gigastructures and it's a thing I've wanted to be in the game proper.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
But everybody else went from completely opposed to mostly in support! Not that their votes were needed
So this is how democracy dies ...
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Some big things to note:
-Integration is off by default for subjects. You actually have to negotiate for that to be in a subject contract and it sounds like there is a fair bit of leeway for a subject to shoot down the most onerous things that an overlord can push. This pretty much means that becoming a vassal is no longer game over because you'd have to agree to allow the AI to integrate you.
-Blue post confirmed that AI vassals under the player will retain some of the AI bonuses. So pair that up with how the player can give their subject subsidies, AI vassals should actually have some good values; especially, since you can have them provide with resources other than minerals and energy.
-You can allow your vassal to expand, forbid or even tax it (you get taxed influence as your own). This is another that will ensure they are worth a damn. I assume this also means that AI vassals will build habitats if they run out of space to claim and have the resources to build them.
-They can have independent diplomacy if you allow it. Also how wars work with them has been changed. You can be drawn into their wars or opts to stay out of them (aka it's now possible to declare wars on subjects). They can be drawn into your wars or kept out, this is useful if they are really fucking weak and on the border next to someone you want to fight because now you can keep them out of a war they'd be obliterated in.
-Become the crisis has been confirmed as a perk that will be blocked for subjugated empires. If an empire does take the perk and gets subjugated, they can still continue down the progress until they hit level 5. Level 5 is locked until they can become independent again. So no worries about subjects fucking you over on that front and unless you become a lvl 5 crisis empire, the perk doesn't prevent others from subjugating you.
Next week will get info on specialist empires, which are locked behind having the expansion. I'd also wager the week after, we get details on the new megastructures, origins, probably one or more civics and it looks like we have at least one perk (likely one of the megastructures is tied to it). I'm hoping orbital rings will be something that isn't locked behind a perk because we do seem to be at the point where you can't take all the good perks and it does seem like more of the useless perks are hitting a point where they are a good choice in some builds. Depending on how things go, shared burdens may be a very solid perk for a vassal heavy build; especially, if i's a prerequisite perk for the new one and that one ends up being very solid.
Granted, I want orbital rings to be a non-perk locked megastructure because I suspect they'll be too good of a benefit to be something you lock to something with finite choices because they aren't likely going to work well with the relic world fix that made project arcology more of a choice than a mandatory requirement for normal empires, on top of ecumenopoli being somewhat nerfed enough that it didn't sting too bad if you didn't grab the perk or luck into a relic world (like industrial sectors probably did the most to make those optional). Though wouldn't surprise me if orbital rings didn't go well with the one civic that locks an empire out of project arcology.
At some point we'll probably also get more insight on situations because I'm pretty sure the devs said the next free patch, which comes with overlords release, will have those. Also pretty sure we'll get some insights on where they want to go with internal politics. I kind of expect internal politics to be a multipatch deal because it's not exactly a simple thing. Also betting will get some reworks to espionage with Overlords release, not just in that they'll cost influence, but also other changes to hopefully, make the system more worthwhile. I'd love to see the espionage traditions being worth a damn because currently they aren't worth taking.
Edit: Also forgot about holding. Not entirely sure if each building is a holding or if it's similar to branch offices because the devs haven't responded to my question getting clarification. I'm thinking each building is a holding based on how I'm interpreting the info given, but I could easily be wrong here. Those will be neat and are additional ways to bolster your subjects into usefulness. I know they've said they wanted some sort of planner to make managing branch offices easier, both with existing ones and options to expand to new ones. So with overlords getting something similar and the brand office tab being converted into the holdings tab, that bodes wells for that feature coming soon.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Honestly, really wish Idyllic bloom gave a bonus to pops on Gaia worlds so that it can be useful when all you and your subject's worlds are Gaia worlds (subject stuff won't happen till Overlord release). It needs to be something that is significant and coded in a way that locks it behind the civic. Right now, the civic suffers from one of the main issues that Mastery of Nature has. The best part of the perk, is something people can steal from you. I mean if you have either one, the answer is pretty obvious, you'll make sure all your worlds are Gaia worlds and you're going to add two more districts to all your worlds.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Overall, they've been doing a pretty good job at keeping the playerbase informed this time around
Still whether this spawns on the AI overlords guaranteed habitable worlds or not. They really need to fix that aspect of the two existing federation starts. Like it seems 90% of time one or two empires in those federations gets shafted by getting a spawn where they either have few systems to expand to before having to jump passed their fellow federation members to get more space or they start boxed in. Galaxy really should spawn those more in a position where they expand away from each other and have a decent shot at getting a decent number of systems.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
No, instead it's essentially a Scion start. Although I'm guessing the Overlord is going to be less randomly nice to you than the Fallen Empire.
Granted, we'll see if they tweak anything with scion start because people have complained about that one. So possible that with the new vassal system design dev dairy stating they want it to work within the rules and not be an exception. It's possible that scions may have to give their FE overlords something. I suppose that might very well end up being that they get saddled with taxed expansion.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
New Enclaves
-Scrappers: Can break down ships for resources, sell you ships, or even research debris fields for you.
-Shroud-touched: Order of monks obsesssed with the Shroud and will teach you stuff about it.
-Mercenaries: You actually build these rather than fine them, netting you a rentable fleet (though once you build the enclave, any race that makes contact with it can use it.)
Bulwark Vassals
-military base, mad bonuses to defensive platforms, at the cost of large swaths of your economy. Gives a starbase bonus to it's ruling empire, can build specialized construction ships that can repair other vessels, shield bonus to ships while their in your territory, admiral traits that increase also increase stats while in their own territory.
Holdings
-Emporium: Forces vassal to buy amentias from the ruling empire.
-Ministry of production: Ruling empire takes a portion of food and consumer goods
-Ministry of Energy: Same deal, but with energy
-Overlord Assembly Complex: For every construction ship the ruling empire leaves in orbit, increase building build speed and alloys
-Dread Outpost: Reanimators can get physics and social research, as well as spawn undead armies
-Reemployment Center: Same dealio, but zombie pops for Megacorps
-Franchise Headquarters: Megacorps can turn their vassals consumer goods into unity and trade value for the subject, and unity for the overlord.
I have wheeled, dealed and spent a fortune in rare resources to get every favor I can get a hold of, and I'm pretty much out of time and influence, and I'm still like 10,000 votes short.
My only plan now is to try and declare war on that empire hoping it'll make my Federation vote against him.
Yeah but what have you done for them lately?
Honestly, if someone is burned out on stellaris like me or hasn't been happy with AI performance and bugs. I'd wait till probably the first hot fix patch after overlords. That should put you passed any game breaking bugs released with overlords. The vassal rework should probably also make the AI more of a challenge, since subjects can be better leveraged for things other than integration to get more pops. We'll get situations, which will help to make empire management more engaging (this is first round and even if they are ripping other paradox games, just keep in mind it might not be super amazing). So if situation go well, that should allow the game to offer more challenge, that isn't reliant on making sure AI empires are idiots. We also probably see further tweaks to unity and the economy.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Then I think it was last major patch or the one before, they realized that awakened empires probably use their ascension perks.
I imagine the next step will be determining if they want them to use the AP paths or not. If they decide they should, expect AEs to get some sort of buff to let them finish the special projects for those in a reasonable time scale for an AE. They did a dev battle where they brought in a bunch of the big streamers to play the game as special empires, along with others as normal empires. Special empires include awakened empires and robot rebellions (not sure if regular rebellions or the khan got included). Aspec tried one of the APs and well, it would have taken him something like 5K, or maybe it was 50K, months to complete the special project. So really the issue currently is that it's a dead AP for AEs. So either they need to be able to finish the special projects in a less than 2 years, maybe less, or they need to not waste their limited slots on those perks.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.