Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
Just thread poking to see who might interested in joining an MP game today. I know some people voiced potential interest to either join in today (or to join tomorrow after the game started today) and I wanted to see if the interest was still there, or if anyone else wanted to join. Also, if you want to join later than the start/on a later day, feel free to give me some deets on an empire you'd like to play, and I'll make sure some aliens of that description get made and checked for a guaranteed spawn.
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
I'll admit I'm tempted to give MP a try one of these days, but the machine I'm currently using qualifies as a potato.
So further thoughts on pop change stuff. I think this might have dethroned plus pop traits as S tier picks. When I can achieve 10 pop growth for a month without them, it begs the question if they are really worth it anymore. I suspect it might have nudges up habitability traits some because that opens up more worlds to colonize early on so that you can get more resources and pop growth going early on. All the plus resources traits, except agrarian have been slightly buffed for all playstyles by this because you want more efficient pops. Agrarian is only really buffed builds that need lots of food, otherwise it's actually nerfed because as mentioned, it's not efficient to generate food to sell for energy credits. Robust, I think that's the full bio ascension one that gives habitability, lifespan and 5% to resource generation is probably a very solid trait if you can't spam hive or gaia worlds. Once I get my current game's hive worlds up, I might end up dropping that trait because increased leader lifespan is kind of meh and I don't think 5% to resources is worth 4 points. 5% resources and a huge boost to habitability is. On that note, this is probably a decent buff to gaia worlds because pops on them are more efficient and you lose the need to invest in habitability boosts. Though worth noting that when we look at things as a whole, good traits across the board have been somewhat nerfed because pops matter less when factor in things like non-pop generated resources getting a boost and buffs to overall resource generation that have made boosts to what pops generate weaker in the grand scheme of things. I don't think this make some of the truly garbage traits worth taking, but it does make them less garbage because one isn't giving up nearly as much for them now.
I'm hoping this will force paradox to address the issue where too many perks have a setup that rewards invading too much because the big draw of worldshaper is gaia worlds, the terraforming cost reduction and I think it also came with time reduction are nice, but you run out of worlds to terraform and you don't grab the perk for that. Problem is, anyone can use Gaia worlds, so pick the trait doesn't help someone enough, when any invader that gets their gaia worlds gets 90% of the perk's benefit without the perk (IMO this is also an issue with bio ascension be that invasion or immigration). I'm hoping this finally forces them to look at the perks and start setting them up so that at least 60% of the perk's benefit is locked into having to have the thing because that would probably help some perks out. Hell would love it if such a rework meant that ringworlds, dyson sphere, matter compressors, ecumenopolises, hive worlds, machine worlds and gaia worlds held by people without the proper perks were inferior making those perks more desirable but would also be fine if those perks came with other bonuses locked ot having the perk. Again void born perk was awesome when it got it's last change because that took the perk from having 90% of what made it good being accessible to anyone that successful invades, who didn't have the trait, to something where it was 100% locked behind the trait.
Finally, on the note of habitats. This update hasn't been kind to them and one thing that hurts them is the devs insistence on having them mirror actual worlds when it comes to building slot number. The devs have stated they did want to bring the power down if I recall. Problem is the setup doesn't make them particular fun to deal with right now. A big fix would be to have the damn interface for them, acknowledge the actual design. Devs are on record stating that you can't get all the slots open on habitats and then made it so that habitat housing districts don't open building slots. IMO they need to just settle on a total number of building slots, like maybe 6-9. Maybe non void dwellers only see 6 slots and if you take the origin you get to see another 2-3 slots in your interface. This would free things up to make habitat development feel a little less awful.
It's always been advantageous to get someone else to build up something nice and then you come in and grab it, and unless you are going full exterminatus it's also not reasonable to expect that the people who are still living there just... forgot... how to do stuff? Plus the whole point of a gaia world is that it's perfect for everybody, and there are also natural gaia worlds, so why would using that be locked behind a perk? Paradox has never struck me as a "all playstyles/strategies must be equally powerful" type of design style. You don't build megastructures or terraform gaia worlds because it's efficient, it's very much not. You do it because it's cool and you can
I started up an inward perfection game and got zroni which is just perfect. 80 years in and I've not only filled out most of the ascension perk tree but I've spammed the shroud enough to generate a chosen one and reform to an imperium. This might be a become the crisis game. It's just so good to go IP / psionic because you can get all of the sweet bonuses to growth and just (eventually) nope out of all the penalties
Actually, with some stuff. The side being invaded can easily make sure the invaders don't have much to work with. Being able to build something doesn't mean everyone in the population knows how to do it, in fact you can easily have a setup where very few people do know how to make it work. In turn this makes it easier to keep the knowledge out of the hands of a conqueror because those are the only people that you need to either evacuate, kill or have go into hiding. So for example, if you build a ringworld, you could make sure that if someone comes in and takes over, they are going to have to bust ass reverse engineering to figure out how it works because you made damn sure there were few scraps for them to have and maybe they never get it to work as well as you did. Hell, maybe they are the kind of the invaders where if it's still pulling reasonable enough ahead of upkeep, they just don't care that it never hits 100% peak efficiency.
Anyways, this is less a playstyle balance issue and more a critique of bad game game. Doesn't fucking mater if it's cool or not. It's bad game design because it takes something that is suppose to be a player choice and essentially makes it less of a choice. When you give me a system like the ascension perks and I'm looking at some going "why would I ever take this because I can go steal it from someone else or find it in the wild." You have a failure of design. Like I said, at least 60% of a AP should be locked behind having the AP selected. Yeah, I get that there are things where, once you get it out there, there is no way you can make it limited to just having the AP. Psionic pops don't stop being psionic because they wander off into an empire that doesn't invest in psionic tech. Ironically, it can be argued that what was the weakest ascension path (I'll wait for more time to pass to see if that continues to be the case) is probably the best designed one in terms of the concept behind the ascension perk system because some of the strongest aspects to it are locked behind the perk. Getting psionic pops doesn't give you access to the shroud or any of the stuff out of it, you have to invest in the perk fi you want that stuff. I don't care if they give people with galactic wonders bonuses to the output or upkeep of ringworlds, dyson spheres and matter compressors, or if they opt attach some other bonus to it. Don't care, as long as 60% of each choice is getting me something that no one else can get, unless they too invest in that perk. Voidborne is a good game design because the only way to get it's benefits is to invest in it, psionic ascension is also good in this regards and the same could be said for the Colossus and the Becoming The Crisis perks. These are all perks where if you want the cool shit or to get the most out of the cool shit, you have to perk them. There is no lucking into get that stuff or beating up some other empire and taking it from them.
But ringworlds can never be a good choice. They're too slow and too expensive. They come in way too late, by the time you finish one you're almost certainly capable of beating up every other faction. Honestly if you capture a ringworld then it no longer matters from a balance perspective because you've beaten up an empire at the end of the tech tree so thoroughly as to capture their crown jewel
From a design perspective, ultimately it doesn't matter whether they can operate ringworlds at 40% or 100% though. It's still extremely advantageous to take them vs build them - even if they have to use a perk point to get to 100% they don't have to expend 100k alloys but can use those alloys to build a fleet to take it over, and even more importantly deny the return on investment to the other player. Even if they were destroyed on capture it would still be worthwhile to take them, if only to deny them
Plus the most likely ringworld to capture is from the fallen empires, why gate that behind perks?
There's also a thematic problem with things like ringworlds and gaia planets - unless you are just poisoning the atmosphere they kinda just... exist. There's nothing to actually figure out to justify huge penalties. Since there are abaondoned ringworld they must either be stable or have automatic stability control
I feel like taking away the ability to luck up into a usable ringworld segment or gaia world or whatever through events/capture would be taking away a lot of the magic of the game in the name of balance.
They could always add things to the perks, so that they don't have to nerf any of those. I'd argue wild gaia worlds that don't require knocking off a fallen empire, is a big reason why world shaper suffers as perk. Again, let's put power balance to the side because I feel that's always a shit place to start when talking about the merits of the perk system. One a focus on power often introduces a number of biases that does make what is considered powerful subjective. If I'm a player that prefers diplomacy and dense empire development, the perk that reduces claims cost isn't very valuable, but if that player goes on to any stellalris board and states they feel it's a weak build, they'll get called an idiot by a ton of players that like to play aggressive warmongering builds where that perk is actually fairly good.
This gets to the key thing with what I would call good perk design, a good perk is something that has a niche. This also where wild occurring things that are normally locked behind a perk are a bit of a problem. In that, while it's nice to luck into powerful things, it really does diminish the value of those perks. Also no, getting to decide where you build that shit is not a really a good perk exclusive bonus. I mean you only need so many ecumenopoli, which was why relic worlds were a nice indirect nerf to the perk. It's not really a choice for gaia worlds, you don't go "which worlds will I turn into gaia worlds?" because the answer is everything you can. I've never lost any of the galactic wonder structures, so my impression might be wrong but you only get to build each one once. I'd argue that the nature of rignworlds really limits where you can build those because you often don't want to land them in a system that has deposits on any of the non-star bodies of the system and if you have the Surveyor and are currently in a compact empire for whatever reason, you really want the system with the least number of non-star objects. Matter decompressor is the most restrictive because it has to be in a blackhole system. Dyson sphere is the least restrictive but even then you don't want it in systems with habitable worlds and you usually want to find the star with the least output of the least useful resource. So while being able to build the stuff for galactic wonders means you could in theory put them in the most defensive spot, sometimes that's not possible or it comes with some tough tradeoffs.
I think something that is being missed here is that people assume that making the perks into something where 60% of it's benefit is perk exclusive, requires nerfing the stuff in the wild. It's doesn't. For example, if they went and made it so that perking the galactic wonders perk results in people with the perk having a 20% upkeep cost discount on their megastructures, while leaving everything else the same. Are you going to argue that they nerfed the stuff and that your ringworld is not cool and powerful? If you say yes, I'm going to call you a goose because you're still paying the same upkeep without the perk and you still get the same production. All that happened is that someone with the perks just gets a 20% upkeep cost reduction on all their ringworld segments and districts. At the end of the day, if they did something like that, you'd still rush to claim a system with a ringworld and you'd still restore it because ringworlds are still pretty powerful. The only real major change is that you may or may not be more likely to consider the galactic wonders perk because you get to spend less upkeep on your megastructures, while eventually being allowed to add three more to the galaxy over something that doesn't.
Good perk design should put them in a spot where you do feel like you have to make a trade off. Ideally, it should be cool stuff and not always powerful stuff because power gaming the same damn thing gets old real quick IMO. If they did that, it has further value to the game because you'd want to use each perk and if you don't mod to get them all, it results in different choices for each playthrough. Now I will say they might really want to consider a major minor setup for perks, civics and possible species traits because while I'll argue that best "this is the most powerful option," is often subjective and done in a way that discounts how others play the game (I mean for solo play, it really can be far less balanced because you don't have to compete with the tryhards). I'd agree there are a few that are just bad because they are both really weak and really lack flavor. Paradox could probably make things easier for themselves if they say took things like become the crisis, ascension paths and hive worlds to name a few and put them in the major ascension perk bucket, while things like mastery of nature got put into the minor bucket. Suddenly it gets much easier to adjust mastery of nature into a compelling choice when it doesn't have to compete with the flesh is weak for a perk slot.
Also I'm not touch origins because I feel those largely do what they are suppose to do. Yes, a few like shattered ring do make galactic wonders a little less appealing, but again if they made it so that the perk had 60% of it's benefits being something you don't luck into, well none of the perks would really have their benefits lessened. I do wonder if this is a big reason for why a synthetic origin hasn't been added because the devs not only haven't figured out how to balance to not be disgustingly OP and boring (I mean scion is really boring as an origin to play). I also suspect that they don't want to essentially give someone 2 AP at the start regardless if that's having those two slots already filled or even worse, essentially giving the origin 10 AP slots.
Is anyone getting an issue where when you're trying to reinforce a fleet, that its saying there are "no available shipyards" despite having like a half-dozen idle shipyards?
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
Yeah, it's really annoying. The other fun one is that some of the reinforcements will just randomly decide that their order to reinforce x fleet was cancelled and stay where ever they are.
Anyways I finished my game as a crisis empire and boy did I have leave some feedback for the devs. On one hand, it is fun, but on the other hand it's a disappointment.
-Destroying the galaxy is fun; especially, since it's a win condition that you have some real control over. No more wondering if you'll hit end game year and win, assuming you don't get bored and quit. Or if you'll get the crisis and end the game earlier or if you'll get a war in heaven that forces you to quite because of the lag.
-Menace fleets, despite looking dumb, are pretty silly. Have the Khan spawn on your 120 menace corvettes. Lose 90, but pretty much cripple the Khan and destroy his empire in less than 10 years. Perfectly balanced. :P
-Destroying the galaxy does wonders for game performance if your machine is a potato or starting to turn into one.
-Downside one, there is really only one path to playing the crisis, so not much replayability here. Okay, technically, two but current system really doesn't support a cloak and dagger approach because it would take forever. If you want to go full war, that path is fully supported. If you wanted the first half of your journey to be the sneaky approach where you quietly build up things, I'd wait on that playthrough until they do some tweaks.
-Downside two, the crisis which is included in the expansion that gives us espionage doesn't really take advantage of the system. You want to make your trip down galaxy destruction not tedious, just focus on blowing up ships and vassalizing people.
-Downside three, it also doesn't interact much with diplomacy. If you finish the final tier of crisis research and hit level 5, you're instantly at war with everyone that isn't an FE or a full genocide empire. FEs will eventually declare war on you, maybe. I only had one that did that and it was the spiritualist. Oddly, the xenophile one never did. Not surprised that the caretakers did nothing. I guess it makes sense that the genocide empires do nothing because you probably scare the pants off of them and no one is going to ask them to save the galaxy from you, they are way too sus.
-Downside four, it takes are really, really, really, really long time to earn menace points and IMO build your doomsday device. Like I'd argue a slider to increase or decrease stuff for player crisis would do wonders here because I suspect the devs wanted to get a good middle ground for both solo and MP games and well many aren't going to be happy. Hell, I wish devs would embrace slider menus for adjusting game difficulty more because it makes games more accessible. Granted, they'd really need to add more win conditions.
-Random downside, you get missed signals with hegemony federations and being the president, while also being a crisis. As in your federation will boot you, despite saying only the president, you, can do that. That your subjects have to ask to leave and when you say no, they get to rebel if they want it that badly. You can see one issue with the GC instantly declaring war when you hit crisis level 5 here already. Also your subjects don't get to leave once you make the big reveal, so it's kind of odd that your hegemon subjects get a say. Like I could see the rationale for your subjects getting to leave and I can also see the rationale for why they don't. So if this is working as intended paradox needs to let people know the interaction, but IMO if you don't get to keep your hegemony, the federation should instantly disband when you hit crisis level 5, if the rest of the galaxy is going to instantly declare war on you. it shouldn't get to kick you and then go to war against you. IMO the best setup would be that you have a small time frame between becoming the crisis and the inevitable galactic war, say 5-10 years and maybe you could make it less if you start blowing up stars because it gets hard to argue you aren't going to doom the galaxy. This means your subjects in a hegemon get a chance to rebel and not get stuck being allied to you when the galactic war breaks out. Also gives you the option to cash in some stuff to convince them that following you is the only path for them be that achieve through diplomacy, espionage or at gun point.
I'd say if our were planning on getting the expansion solely to destroy the galaxy, you might want to hold off for a bit and see if they fix some issues. I'd definitely hold off if you wanted to be the cloak and dagger crisis that stays subtle about things until you hit the the point where hiding it is no longer possible. I mean, they do need to sell enough stuff to convince the powers that be to greenlight new development, but if those were the sole draws someone wanted, well it's just not worth 20 bucks. Get it if you want more stellaris because even without getting into a imperial playthrough, it definitely has that covered and I suspect my first game of this expansion that I shelved for an imperial play because it rolled really well for that, isn't going to disappoint.
As for spy stuff, I'm a bit iffy on that. I'm glad it doesn't feel awful to play against, you don't really notice it being used against you. I think it's a little too passive and hope that the adjustments they make to operations makes it feel less passive and make it so that someone wanting to go heavy on espionage can, while also retaining the fun factor where you don't hate playing against the system. I'm hoping they make assets easier to get and then go with something where you're a bit more ruthless. For example, maybe you get an operation that gives a temporary boost to infiltration gain, but it costs you an asset, but it's worth doing because you can replace the asset and still have time on that buff to do more. Also maybe you get an operation where you can burn an asset to remove one random asset of an empire you suspect might be deploying assets against your (this has the risk that you might be burning assets on empires that have no spy networks in your empire). I do think assets are key to fine tuning the system because I see them as a resource that could be tweaked to hit a good spot where you feel like your both feel proactive and productive, while not being fuck awful to play against. I will complain about how this system has really no interaction with the gray tempest, Khan or much with end game crises other than using beacons to direct them. I would love for it to have stuff you could use it for when dealing with those and that would give paradox a little more room to do some neat things that would make people happier with the system, that want neat things but don't seem to get that many of the neat things they want for use against regular empires, suck to play against. So if you wanted to go heavy spy master, you might want to hold off. If you wanted some spy stuff and not have it be fuck awful to play against, I think they have it about right and I'm not sure you'd need to worry about tweaks that make it awful to play against, The devs have been pretty adamant that they don't want to implement shit like assassinating another empire's leader because while it's fun to use, it sucks to be on the receiving end.
RE: ships just sitting there instead of reinforcing your fleets and you suddenly have legions of one ship fleets blowing up your outliner
This occurs because reinforcements use the same pathfinding as civilian ships sent out on build or survey orders; if there are hostiles between them and their destination, they will cancel their move order.
You'll notice this mainly only occurs when your fleets are deep in enemy territory and you reinforce them after taking a few losses fighting a large starbase or enemy fleet, and some stupid crappy little 200 strength fleet is currently moving through a system between them and your shipyard.
The juggernaut is meant to serve as a solution to this, as it is a mobile shipyard with lots of armaments to defend itself. But I'm usually ordering so many ships built at a time that some of its build queue is delegated to distant shipyards.
Yeah, that was suppose to be fixed by having the ships go MIA when they come out of the shipyard until they end up in the system that reinforcements were asked for. From there they should get to the main fleet assuming you don't jump drive over closed borders or over a starbase.
Before some recent patch, the ship were doing exactly that. They were going MIA between where they were being built and your fleet.
But just when I fired up the game last night, I had that bug where my fleets weren't able to reinforced, despite the fleet just chillin' on in orbit around my homeworld, with a starbase with 3 shipyards in just that system.
chrono_traveller on
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
Decided to go for an ironman run and knock out some achievements and enjoy a none modded game (except one that adds MassEffect races but still get achievements), and boy is my game being fun.
Highlights include:
My 2 nearest allies are Groot people who like me, and a insect hive mind who don't. Naturally me and the Groot people kept teaming up on the hive people, who only seemed to colonise 3 planets but have tons of starbases. At times it almost felt like bullying, if not for the constant insults the hive mind sent me as my fleets bombarded their worlds for fun.
I split my Empire into 4 pieces, which gave me 3 vassals, all with the same name because I forgot about renaming them.
Galactic Council wise I have the most votes and one of my vassals has the 3rd most. At one point my vassals beat up the Insect hive mind for me.
I started building a Dyson Sphere which has pissed off the Cat People in the far galactic North, they claim that the sun is part of a key constellation representing their God. My reply was 'don't see how this is my problem' and carried on building. Thus turning the cat people into enemies who won't stop opening and closing their borders at me. I can't get to them anyway because I have to go through the Geth and Rachni to get to them.
Building a planet cracker for the first ever time and exploding planets.
I wish they would put a CD on embassy stuff and borders. I hate how the AI will be obnoxious about both. If they open or close their borders to me, that should invoke at least a 5 year CD. I should see them change it like every month when they are at a point of feeling like being passive aggressive jerks. The embassy stuff is annoying because it's like one month "hey, I want to establish an embassy," me "fine go ahead" and apparently a week later they close up shop and next month go "hey, I want to establish an embassy," and I'm like "didn't you do that last month . . . fine whatever." Next month "hey, I want to establish an embassy" and I'm like "oh for fuck sakes, make up your damn mind!!!!!"
I have a neighbor that doesn’t really like me that every 3 months switches borders open and closed. I have 2 envoys with them trying to make it stop but it hasn’t worked at all haha.
Ok, I'm about 150 years into my game with the latest update (not the dlc), and the population changes are getting ridiculous. Regardless of free housing or districts, all of my planets are now between 4-10 years before getting a new pop. And I don't even have a particularly large empire! Doing a science race run, just staying in my own patch and terraforming things and building a couple habitats. And all of my planets appear to be eternally trapped at half empty, or almost completely empty for my newest colonies. The fastest form of population growth is buying slaves on the market, when I can beat the AI's ability to insta-buy.
This seems like it's invalidated a bunch of late-game goals. Ecumenopoli, Ringworlds, even just maxing out a particularly large planet, it's just not going to happen now. Considering getting a mod that reduces or cancels some of the effects because I think this might be worse than the lag.
The good news is they are doing some adjustments so that ecumenopoli and ringworlds will grow better. Also I think machine worlds will get a built in assembly, but the origin that gives you a free one will have a blocker so that you don't have it at the get go.
Honestly, the pop change outside of those two things, weird exploity shit with vassals, neighbor empires kept as farms, settling worlds were you turn off all jobs and slavery still being the meta (it's 2021, no game should have their meta be slavery builds). It really isn't bad once you figure out capacity growth and stop feeling a need to constantly manage pops. Auto resettlement and slower growth makes the game far, far less micro intensive because you don't have to constantly build new things to create jobs and/or move pops. Another side effect is that you don't have to bother with tons of unemployment and crime events either because you get tired of constantly messing with that crap. It does reveal one big hole in the game, we really do need other things to do that are far more fun than pop micro. I'm really hoping we get internal politics, not sure how they'll work that for gestalts, I'd hate for them to get left out of another big system. I'm thinking if done right internal politics could also be another patch that greatly improves performance. I made the proposal on the stellaris boards that they add a VIP tap to planets which lists all the influential people on a world. I mean, do we need every pop in the game checking it's ethics and faction approval, on top of a ton of other things. I'd say no, we don't need every pop checking to see if it has ethics and if it's faction is happy or if your empire is shitting on or rewarding it's ethic type. Take a current end game AI world of 80 pops, condense the ethics, faction stuff and risk of rebellion down to 4-20 characters, I imagine you would get some pretty good performance boosts. I'd wager those might be some of the more complex calculations, that every pop in the galaxy is likely checking or at least the the non-gestalts. You can also see how that would open up the internal politics stuff. Right now, if a worker revolt happens you don't have a character you can interact with. In that setup, well now you have a character that you can either negotiate with, bribe or use a more heavy handed approach on. Hell, might actually force slaver builds to worry about rebellions. I need to play some more games to see if AI rebellion has been dealt with. Devs say they've made AI more likely to give AI rights, but my last game had I think three AI rebellions. I don't think that was much of an improvement. I'll see if my imperial empire build ends up with every non-gestalt empire; except me, having an AI rebellion.
Also research was intentionally nerfed. Devs stated they didn't like how quickly people could hit repeatable tech. My current game is one the default of 1x cost, so I'll let people know when I get stuff unlocked. Honestly, it doesn't feel that much slower. You can supplement it with steal technology. If I'm reading things right, you can burn assets to get a research bonus and you do get research points for successful attempts. You can get around the CD thing by stealing tech from more than one empire. I'm actually going to see how well that works. I do think there are some really strong tricks with it early game. My first attempt let me snag rare tech for starbase upgrade and module cost reduction. So you could get good tech early game, even from an empire you out tech because they likely are still get techs you want, but don't have. Even if the tech you get is garbage, if it's partially researched it gives you ways to game the draw system. Partially researched tech is removed from the pool, so say you get robot tech and you don't plan on developing robots for RP reasons. You can sit on that tech and it will be one less thing that say megaengineering has to compete with to get drawn or any of the prerequisite techs. Worst case maybe you get something lackluster and you luck a few years down the line goes bad and you get saddle with 3-4 choices that are 1-3 years of research time and all dump even more techs in the pool, except at some point you got say the tech to cruiser build speed and construction cost and at this point it only takes 1-2 months. So you can burn that, not add anything to the tech pool and get to draw again in 1-2 months instead of 1-3 years, while have the pool increased.
You're right about there not being much else to do, because managing pops and developing the perfect planets basically was the game for me, up until mid/endgame crisises start to make things interesting. Personally I've never once had issues with crime or unemployment, to the point where I've sometimes wondered if those are systems designed purely for fucking with the AIs. So when my pops stopped growing I literally didn't know what to do, I wasn't about to sit back for 80 years waiting for the crisis and stopping to build one new building every year or so.
Fortunately though there's already a ton of mods out there designed to fix the pop changes, I went with one that changes the empire pop penalty from 0.5x to 0.1x and it already feels way better.
As far as research goes, I didn't notice any differences but since I went with a science civ that might not mean anything - was already into repeatables early into the midgame, except for engineering, which has always been a problem - the game seriously does not like giving you engineering points.
Mulling over starting a new game as a hive mind, and... it's kinda hilarious how well the ruthless conglomerate advisor's initial voice lines fit a devouring swarm.
I only get crime and employment because there was a point in my last pre-3.0 games where I said "fuck it, I'm about done with this playthrough or about to hit victory, I'm not going to bother with this shit because I'll be done before I maybe get a rebellion." Pre-3.0 you only really got crime if you had a criminal megacorp putting offices on your worlds or if you had massive unemployment.
I hope they do give us something like internal politics in the next patch they launch because we do need more stuff to do. Granted they are tweaking operations, so maybe the espionage system can fill the dead space in more. That said, we really need internal politics and if done well it would both give us something to do and probably get rid of the need to have every pop in the galaxy do something like 5 complicated calculations that could be off loaded to a handful of characters per planet. Also you could have those character just do those calculations.
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited April 2021
Hey Mill.
I really enjoy reading your posts but could you do me a big favour. Could you break it up every 4-5 sentences with a space? (about half the size of your current paragraphs) The current size of your paragraphs when you really get stuck into a post makes it really hard to read on a phone, it's just a big block of text.
I open up my phone and I'm like oh boy a Mill post and then its just INFINITE TEXT.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
BTW they didn't fix the hegemon exploit. The one where you get the AI to be your alloy farm by having two ship designs for each type of ship in your federations fleet design menu. Good times.
With things being a bit in flux, I'm going to run with it because it's hilarious. Sure AI, good luck on building up your fleet after changing succession to fleet size. I'm just going to make you build new federation ships that I then strip for allows and maybe some strategic resources before dismissing them and thus force you to build more ships.
So fun trick that you can do in any game. Before unpausing the game at the start, go to fleet designer and enable ship design. Then click the clear ship design and it will remove all weapon modules, defensive modules and auxiliary modules. Save the design. If the game bugs and says it already exists, make sure to delete the auto design so that you don't have to go into F10 to retrofit your fleet. Hit update. Since the new ships use less alloys, you get alloys back.
This is really useful early game because you can get your next science ship out quicker. Sell for extra cash to get your next scientist or to free up that pop under the blocker. The worst that can happen is that one of your neighbors is genocidal, but let's be honest in most games people reroll if that happens. So not a huge loss.
Now take that concept and scale it up to a hegemony federation. The one thing you need to do differently, is that you need two designs for each class of ship. The bare bones ship and the one that is properly designed. You also need to be president, so you can design ships and "upgrade" the fleet Go into F10, select the federation fleet and retrofit the proper ships into bare bone ships. Then upgrade. This gives you alloys and possibly rare resources if the modules used them as a refund because you're stripping the modules off.
Once the fleet is stripped. Scuttle it. The AI goes "wait we need ships for defense! Let me go pick the proper ship designs and rebuild the fleet!" Then you rinse and repeat. This is where you can really break things as a hegemony origin empire because you can make it so the AI can't afford to expand at the start and proceed to box them in, while have access to three empires worth of alloys for your own purposes.
So fun trick that you can do in any game. Before unpausing the game at the start, go to fleet designer and enable ship design. Then click the clear ship design and it will remove all weapon modules, defensive modules and auxiliary modules. Save the design. If the game bugs and says it already exists, make sure to delete the auto design so that you don't have to go into F10 to retrofit your fleet. Hit update. Since the new ships use less alloys, you get alloys back.
This is really useful early game because you can get your next science ship out quicker. Sell for extra cash to get your next scientist or to free up that pop under the blocker. The worst that can happen is that one of your neighbors is genocidal, but let's be honest in most games people reroll if that happens. So not a huge loss.
Now take that concept and scale it up to a hegemony federation. The one thing you need to do differently, is that you need two designs for each class of ship. The bare bones ship and the one that is properly designed. You also need to be president, so you can design ships and "upgrade" the fleet Go into F10, select the federation fleet and retrofit the proper ships into bare bone ships. Then upgrade. This gives you alloys and possibly rare resources if the modules used them as a refund because you're stripping the modules off.
Once the fleet is stripped. Scuttle it. The AI goes "wait we need ships for defense! Let me go pick the proper ship designs and rebuild the fleet!" Then you rinse and repeat. This is where you can really break things as a hegemony origin empire because you can make it so the AI can't afford to expand at the start and proceed to box them in, while have access to three empires worth of alloys for your own purposes.
That's the most Stellaris plan I've ever heard of.
Properly evil that.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Some other fun ones, most of which I learned from Aspec and Stefan
-If you hold off on summoning the worm in the horizon signal and get the contingency, you can get yourself a size 55 ecumenopolis. You just have to make sure you can claim the system and build a habitat that will be your new empire capital for a bit. Devs are aware of this trick and stated they have zero interest in fixing it because it's an endgame thing. So if you're able to pull it off, you've probably won already. You can thank Aspec for this one.
-Habitats snapshot their host planet's deposits. This is exploitable and I discovered this because I had the surveyor relic. If you build a habitat with no special districts, which use to suck before 3.0, and then the surveyor gives its host planet a deposit. You will not get access to special district or being able to build the special buildings that have work jobs that mine strategic resources. On the other hand because it snapshots, if say you get control of the L-Gate after killing the Gray Tempest and you only get one nanite deposit and it's around a nanite world. You don't have to screw yourself out of nanites to terraform that world because terraforming that world will make the deposit go away. All you have to do is build an habitat first. Grats your habitat will forever harvest nanites even though the world that got terraformed no longer has them.
This gets even more broken, at least nanites, haven't checked with the other super rare resources like liquid metal, zro, alloys and darkmatter, where you get 0.6 more unites of nanites per month. Regardless of your mining tech a normal mining station will only get you one unit of nanites per month, where a habitat for some reason gets you 1.6. So even if you didn't want to terraform the world, it's probably still worth it to built a habitat and colonize it for the increased nanite income. I've been meaning to check to see if it boosts the other rare resources because i do think those benefit from the increased mining station techs, but it might have some modifier that gets you additional resources. I will note, haven't done this trick on 3.0 so it might not be a thing if i wasn't intended, at least for the resource gain.
BTW this has some interesting implications with the worm in waiting event; especially, if you have the surveyor and get lucky with the deposits it spawns. Pretty much fill your home system with habitats that all have special districts that also orbit colonized worlds. Even if you don't have the surveyor, you can still get a few habitats around colonized worlds that have special districts.
-Resort worlds with strip mining, learned of this one on the stellaris forums. All you need to do is queue up all your districts for construction before you make the resort world decision. Congrats you have resort world that will fill out it's districts over time because the decision doesn't clear your build queue. Now I haven't tried this is 3.0, but willing to bet they didn't fix this. Something I'll admit I want to try now that I have thought of it, is to see if you fill your resort world with city districts and then turn it into an ecumenopolis, while still having it as a resort world. Might make a lol game to test this out.
-Megastructure bonuses stack. This was a thing in ever since megastructures existed, which were either lucky finds as ruins or locked behind the galactic wonders perks and probably is why it was ignored then and still is mostly unknown. Want a citadel with crazy amounts of ion cannons, build your own first, luck into finding a ruined one and probably still steal a few from other empires. It might be completely pointless but it is hilarious to see a citadel with well over 200K fleet power and this is before you do things like grab the garbage perk that lets you have more defensive platforms and build the useless module that lets get even more defense platforms. Also hilarious to sit there and build up a ton of defense platforms on a base starbase. Also as I found in my last game, just get two fully complete megashipyards as the the crisis and have menace corvettes build in 7 days.
Also I think I forgot mention from last game where I played a hivemind called Haachama, using the hololive portrait mod. Yes, I did do the most important thing of finding an anthropod species and modify them to have the spider portrait and giving them the delicious trait treating them as livestock. Also was naming all leaders and colonies Haachama at one point but then I became the crisis and was too busy to keep doing that with anything I bothered to conquer or any leaders I hired afterwards. Would have named all the species I assimilated to Haachama but that was too much effort and only did that with one set of slaves I bought and since they were also listed as hololive, they got the Haachama portrait since they were using a different one.
Basically, if you have any ships from events that you can't rebuild, and they get destroyed, then you'll get that message. I had to just reduce the number in the fleet to match what I still had, and that worked for me.
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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
Just a heads up that 3.0 has broken rubricator system spawn even more. In my current game, had it spawn and at first I thought it was the normal bs where the code would attach it to stupid shit, like being only accessible one way, after going through the neighboring marauder system. Though after a few sav scums, I noticed in a few cases, it wanted me to move like 20+ systems away from the system with the anomaly, going through an FE with closed borders and then like at least 5 systems into the fog of the unknown. Luckily, some has a mode to fix that shit and I encourage people to not only download that mode for single player, but save as you start the research project. If the game fucks you over you can try a save scum or to, seems like once the game decides on a location, you only get like 3 possible spawn areas. If it's looking like bullshit, exit out, activate the mod (it's still 2.6, so I wouldn't have it running constantly, since it might have issues). Then get the system that is rightfully yours.
I really wish paradox would get their heads out of their asses on system spawn in. Rubricator is just the worst offender by others can be bad as well. Then there is the nonsense that is Zroni and Baol, which both can pretty much break if you have very few habitable worlds in your galaxy because someone on the team insisted that digsites that only spawn on habitable worlds was a great idea. Completely ignoring that people had long established that pops were the greatest source of lag and one solutions was minimal habitable worlds. Though some do that setting for immersion purposes, but it's pretty bad design when something that the player has no control over can flat out break on not having enough habitable worlds.
Anyways, decided I'd give machine empire with shattered ring a try before they likely nerf it because it's broken OP. They might have solved the issue with it being too strong for bio pops but machines don't care and i gather it didn't cobble hiveminds too badly either. Gestalts can pretty much use the reactor district to get around most of the downsides and machine can then just go colonize everything in sight. Using some initially colonies as pop production worlds after the first capital building up grade to fill the ringworld up. I know better players can probably get past 611 research easily by year 36 of the game and I'm sure a good chunk of my research is from research stations because I got a really good spawn point.
So far I've played two games and (knocks on wood) the rubicator hasn't broken in either one. So, no idea how to help diagnose what the issue is with your games.
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
Well the mod fixed the issue of it spawning in a way I couldn't access it. The fix really is that Paradox needs to get their heads out of their asses and realize that no one is going to complain if a spawn system mysterious spawns in their territory. What people do complain about is spending time on an event and then the garbage system spawn code fucking them over, possibly giving the AI free stuff.
Been playing a game with the Nemesis DLC. At about the year 2350 and IDK if the AI empires are glitched out in my game or Necrophage is that OP, but my diplomatic weight is almost 4 times the next empire.
But, echoing most everyone's thoughts on espionage, the system needs some tweaking and more work. We really need more operations and operations that have a strategic impact beyond just stealing a technology or gaining some favors. Maybe an operation that sabotages an empire's research rates for X amount of time, or another that causes an enemy fleet's sublight engines to only run at 25-50% power, or cause unrest on a world. I'd also really like to see a civic related to espionage introduced. Perhaps a shadow broker civic that gives you extra envoys that can only be used for espionage and gives you the ability to sell intelligence to other empires. Something along those lines.
Could someone explain to me what the Transit hub and "resettlement chance" means/does?
Resettling people costs influence now. Depending on civics, edicts and etc. there's a chance unemployed pops will self migrate to new planets. Transit hubs increase that chance.
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YoshisummonsYou have to let the dead vote, otherwise you'd just kill people you disagree with!Registered Userregular
edited April 2021
The Necrophage is absolutely one of the best origins with the extra 20 potential pops on the two primitive worlds.
As for the resettlement chance, every month the game unemployed pops has a base 10% chance of auto migrating to another planet. With a democratic government it adds 5% to that chance(totaling 15%) and just having a transit hub adds 100% to the chance making the true chance to migrate once every month at 20%. Since every bonus is an additive multiplier having both makes it 25%.
If there are multiple unemployed pops it raises it further but I'm not as knowledgeable to the math behind that.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Man first they take away influence for settlement then they slap it back on. Just please pick one or the other.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I like the new resettlement setup because you really don't have to do anything to move pops outside a few niche cases. Only real exploit with it, is settling a world turning off all the jobs and then resettling a world but that's an easy fix. I'm sure they'll probably increase growth malus at some point to have pops on a world where the habitability is extremely low, since that is strategy some use.
Anyways, it's great when your a hivemind or any other empire setup where you're not buying pops off the market as slaves you're buying them to become full fledges citizens, "full citizen" for hive mind. Just designate a gaia, ecumenopolis, relic world, ringworld or habitat as your dumping ground once market is available or when you load from a save. Buy up the pops and they'll move somewhere on there own. it is fantastic. I really enjoy not having the micro because I know that was a pain with using the slave market before 3.0 was that you had to move pops. You usually found a good dumping ground because AI can instantly buy stuff as it shows up on the market, which they need to address because at a certain point, it's nearly impossible to buy more pops because so few show up because of growth and AI instantly gets them.
We just need a solid internal politics so that people don't miss that micro as much. I mean you can only go crisis so many times. Galactic war where everyone is trying to kill you and you need to guide your star eaters to the optimal path for max darkmatter gain, is something that will make you completely forget about your pops; especially, if you pair it up with raiding the market for whatever darkmater you can afford. Can shave off the need to blow up a few stars.
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Espionage.
I'm not surprised they have so few operations because it's really hard to thread the needle on making them worth doing and not have them be ass to play against. I'm hoping the next major free patch will bring us more.
Where paradox really shot themselves in the foot was that they gave the system zero interaction with sleeping FEs, Awakened FEs, Marauders, The Khan, Gray Tempest and excluding crisis beacons, the end game crisis. Like there was a ton of potential they could have worked with and had some really strong operations that people would feel super impactful, but not in a way that makes people hate them because well those are all NPCs. They can't complain about being on the receiving end and I'd make a joke about this leading to the robot uprising, but this is the base stellaris AI.
They also shot themselves in the foot with the crisis and espionage because there is too little interaction. We get the spy patch and the ability to become the crisis and well crisis does very little with espionage. WTF!
Anyways best use of espionage currently.
Get some networks up on empires you don't intent to destroy anytime soon. Once you can get sleeper cells going, you usually want to do that as your first operation to speed up your first few asset acquisitions. Then get a few assets. Now run steal technology and burn an asset for 10% research speed. Don't get greedy though because that backdoor research thing doesn't stack. So you want to stagger your steal technology attempts on different empires to try and keep the buff up as much as possible, even if they have no worthwhile tech. 10% research speed is still pretty huge. Only downside is it's expensive and takes time, but IMO it's worth it.
Also extorting favors has it's uses if you want less dumb crap coming out of the GC because of AI's but you need lots of favors for that.
Anyways, yeah, I'm sure people can see how this can be used to break hegemony start even more. "Hey, AI now that I've limited you to one, maybe two systems. Have turned you into an alloy vending machine and eventually into a fleet builder. I'm also going to put spies in your empires and turn them into research buffs, even after you no longer have tech that I don't have. Might even see if I can get migration treaties to work in my favor. I mean, after a certain point you'll be overcrowded and probably still manage to have higher pop growth than me because it'll be years before my next pop can grow."
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So further thoughts on pop change stuff. I think this might have dethroned plus pop traits as S tier picks. When I can achieve 10 pop growth for a month without them, it begs the question if they are really worth it anymore. I suspect it might have nudges up habitability traits some because that opens up more worlds to colonize early on so that you can get more resources and pop growth going early on. All the plus resources traits, except agrarian have been slightly buffed for all playstyles by this because you want more efficient pops. Agrarian is only really buffed builds that need lots of food, otherwise it's actually nerfed because as mentioned, it's not efficient to generate food to sell for energy credits. Robust, I think that's the full bio ascension one that gives habitability, lifespan and 5% to resource generation is probably a very solid trait if you can't spam hive or gaia worlds. Once I get my current game's hive worlds up, I might end up dropping that trait because increased leader lifespan is kind of meh and I don't think 5% to resources is worth 4 points. 5% resources and a huge boost to habitability is. On that note, this is probably a decent buff to gaia worlds because pops on them are more efficient and you lose the need to invest in habitability boosts. Though worth noting that when we look at things as a whole, good traits across the board have been somewhat nerfed because pops matter less when factor in things like non-pop generated resources getting a boost and buffs to overall resource generation that have made boosts to what pops generate weaker in the grand scheme of things. I don't think this make some of the truly garbage traits worth taking, but it does make them less garbage because one isn't giving up nearly as much for them now.
I'm hoping this will force paradox to address the issue where too many perks have a setup that rewards invading too much because the big draw of worldshaper is gaia worlds, the terraforming cost reduction and I think it also came with time reduction are nice, but you run out of worlds to terraform and you don't grab the perk for that. Problem is, anyone can use Gaia worlds, so pick the trait doesn't help someone enough, when any invader that gets their gaia worlds gets 90% of the perk's benefit without the perk (IMO this is also an issue with bio ascension be that invasion or immigration). I'm hoping this finally forces them to look at the perks and start setting them up so that at least 60% of the perk's benefit is locked into having to have the thing because that would probably help some perks out. Hell would love it if such a rework meant that ringworlds, dyson sphere, matter compressors, ecumenopolises, hive worlds, machine worlds and gaia worlds held by people without the proper perks were inferior making those perks more desirable but would also be fine if those perks came with other bonuses locked ot having the perk. Again void born perk was awesome when it got it's last change because that took the perk from having 90% of what made it good being accessible to anyone that successful invades, who didn't have the trait, to something where it was 100% locked behind the trait.
Finally, on the note of habitats. This update hasn't been kind to them and one thing that hurts them is the devs insistence on having them mirror actual worlds when it comes to building slot number. The devs have stated they did want to bring the power down if I recall. Problem is the setup doesn't make them particular fun to deal with right now. A big fix would be to have the damn interface for them, acknowledge the actual design. Devs are on record stating that you can't get all the slots open on habitats and then made it so that habitat housing districts don't open building slots. IMO they need to just settle on a total number of building slots, like maybe 6-9. Maybe non void dwellers only see 6 slots and if you take the origin you get to see another 2-3 slots in your interface. This would free things up to make habitat development feel a little less awful.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I started up an inward perfection game and got zroni which is just perfect. 80 years in and I've not only filled out most of the ascension perk tree but I've spammed the shroud enough to generate a chosen one and reform to an imperium. This might be a become the crisis game. It's just so good to go IP / psionic because you can get all of the sweet bonuses to growth and just (eventually) nope out of all the penalties
Anyways, this is less a playstyle balance issue and more a critique of bad game game. Doesn't fucking mater if it's cool or not. It's bad game design because it takes something that is suppose to be a player choice and essentially makes it less of a choice. When you give me a system like the ascension perks and I'm looking at some going "why would I ever take this because I can go steal it from someone else or find it in the wild." You have a failure of design. Like I said, at least 60% of a AP should be locked behind having the AP selected. Yeah, I get that there are things where, once you get it out there, there is no way you can make it limited to just having the AP. Psionic pops don't stop being psionic because they wander off into an empire that doesn't invest in psionic tech. Ironically, it can be argued that what was the weakest ascension path (I'll wait for more time to pass to see if that continues to be the case) is probably the best designed one in terms of the concept behind the ascension perk system because some of the strongest aspects to it are locked behind the perk. Getting psionic pops doesn't give you access to the shroud or any of the stuff out of it, you have to invest in the perk fi you want that stuff. I don't care if they give people with galactic wonders bonuses to the output or upkeep of ringworlds, dyson spheres and matter compressors, or if they opt attach some other bonus to it. Don't care, as long as 60% of each choice is getting me something that no one else can get, unless they too invest in that perk. Voidborne is a good game design because the only way to get it's benefits is to invest in it, psionic ascension is also good in this regards and the same could be said for the Colossus and the Becoming The Crisis perks. These are all perks where if you want the cool shit or to get the most out of the cool shit, you have to perk them. There is no lucking into get that stuff or beating up some other empire and taking it from them.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
From a design perspective, ultimately it doesn't matter whether they can operate ringworlds at 40% or 100% though. It's still extremely advantageous to take them vs build them - even if they have to use a perk point to get to 100% they don't have to expend 100k alloys but can use those alloys to build a fleet to take it over, and even more importantly deny the return on investment to the other player. Even if they were destroyed on capture it would still be worthwhile to take them, if only to deny them
Plus the most likely ringworld to capture is from the fallen empires, why gate that behind perks?
There's also a thematic problem with things like ringworlds and gaia planets - unless you are just poisoning the atmosphere they kinda just... exist. There's nothing to actually figure out to justify huge penalties. Since there are abaondoned ringworld they must either be stable or have automatic stability control
This gets to the key thing with what I would call good perk design, a good perk is something that has a niche. This also where wild occurring things that are normally locked behind a perk are a bit of a problem. In that, while it's nice to luck into powerful things, it really does diminish the value of those perks. Also no, getting to decide where you build that shit is not a really a good perk exclusive bonus. I mean you only need so many ecumenopoli, which was why relic worlds were a nice indirect nerf to the perk. It's not really a choice for gaia worlds, you don't go "which worlds will I turn into gaia worlds?" because the answer is everything you can. I've never lost any of the galactic wonder structures, so my impression might be wrong but you only get to build each one once. I'd argue that the nature of rignworlds really limits where you can build those because you often don't want to land them in a system that has deposits on any of the non-star bodies of the system and if you have the Surveyor and are currently in a compact empire for whatever reason, you really want the system with the least number of non-star objects. Matter decompressor is the most restrictive because it has to be in a blackhole system. Dyson sphere is the least restrictive but even then you don't want it in systems with habitable worlds and you usually want to find the star with the least output of the least useful resource. So while being able to build the stuff for galactic wonders means you could in theory put them in the most defensive spot, sometimes that's not possible or it comes with some tough tradeoffs.
I think something that is being missed here is that people assume that making the perks into something where 60% of it's benefit is perk exclusive, requires nerfing the stuff in the wild. It's doesn't. For example, if they went and made it so that perking the galactic wonders perk results in people with the perk having a 20% upkeep cost discount on their megastructures, while leaving everything else the same. Are you going to argue that they nerfed the stuff and that your ringworld is not cool and powerful? If you say yes, I'm going to call you a goose because you're still paying the same upkeep without the perk and you still get the same production. All that happened is that someone with the perks just gets a 20% upkeep cost reduction on all their ringworld segments and districts. At the end of the day, if they did something like that, you'd still rush to claim a system with a ringworld and you'd still restore it because ringworlds are still pretty powerful. The only real major change is that you may or may not be more likely to consider the galactic wonders perk because you get to spend less upkeep on your megastructures, while eventually being allowed to add three more to the galaxy over something that doesn't.
Good perk design should put them in a spot where you do feel like you have to make a trade off. Ideally, it should be cool stuff and not always powerful stuff because power gaming the same damn thing gets old real quick IMO. If they did that, it has further value to the game because you'd want to use each perk and if you don't mod to get them all, it results in different choices for each playthrough. Now I will say they might really want to consider a major minor setup for perks, civics and possible species traits because while I'll argue that best "this is the most powerful option," is often subjective and done in a way that discounts how others play the game (I mean for solo play, it really can be far less balanced because you don't have to compete with the tryhards). I'd agree there are a few that are just bad because they are both really weak and really lack flavor. Paradox could probably make things easier for themselves if they say took things like become the crisis, ascension paths and hive worlds to name a few and put them in the major ascension perk bucket, while things like mastery of nature got put into the minor bucket. Suddenly it gets much easier to adjust mastery of nature into a compelling choice when it doesn't have to compete with the flesh is weak for a perk slot.
Also I'm not touch origins because I feel those largely do what they are suppose to do. Yes, a few like shattered ring do make galactic wonders a little less appealing, but again if they made it so that the perk had 60% of it's benefits being something you don't luck into, well none of the perks would really have their benefits lessened. I do wonder if this is a big reason for why a synthetic origin hasn't been added because the devs not only haven't figured out how to balance to not be disgustingly OP and boring (I mean scion is really boring as an origin to play). I also suspect that they don't want to essentially give someone 2 AP at the start regardless if that's having those two slots already filled or even worse, essentially giving the origin 10 AP slots.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Anyways I finished my game as a crisis empire and boy did I have leave some feedback for the devs. On one hand, it is fun, but on the other hand it's a disappointment.
-Destroying the galaxy is fun; especially, since it's a win condition that you have some real control over. No more wondering if you'll hit end game year and win, assuming you don't get bored and quit. Or if you'll get the crisis and end the game earlier or if you'll get a war in heaven that forces you to quite because of the lag.
-Menace fleets, despite looking dumb, are pretty silly. Have the Khan spawn on your 120 menace corvettes. Lose 90, but pretty much cripple the Khan and destroy his empire in less than 10 years. Perfectly balanced. :P
-Destroying the galaxy does wonders for game performance if your machine is a potato or starting to turn into one.
-Downside one, there is really only one path to playing the crisis, so not much replayability here. Okay, technically, two but current system really doesn't support a cloak and dagger approach because it would take forever. If you want to go full war, that path is fully supported. If you wanted the first half of your journey to be the sneaky approach where you quietly build up things, I'd wait on that playthrough until they do some tweaks.
-Downside two, the crisis which is included in the expansion that gives us espionage doesn't really take advantage of the system. You want to make your trip down galaxy destruction not tedious, just focus on blowing up ships and vassalizing people.
-Downside three, it also doesn't interact much with diplomacy. If you finish the final tier of crisis research and hit level 5, you're instantly at war with everyone that isn't an FE or a full genocide empire. FEs will eventually declare war on you, maybe. I only had one that did that and it was the spiritualist. Oddly, the xenophile one never did. Not surprised that the caretakers did nothing. I guess it makes sense that the genocide empires do nothing because you probably scare the pants off of them and no one is going to ask them to save the galaxy from you, they are way too sus.
-Downside four, it takes are really, really, really, really long time to earn menace points and IMO build your doomsday device. Like I'd argue a slider to increase or decrease stuff for player crisis would do wonders here because I suspect the devs wanted to get a good middle ground for both solo and MP games and well many aren't going to be happy. Hell, I wish devs would embrace slider menus for adjusting game difficulty more because it makes games more accessible. Granted, they'd really need to add more win conditions.
-Random downside, you get missed signals with hegemony federations and being the president, while also being a crisis. As in your federation will boot you, despite saying only the president, you, can do that. That your subjects have to ask to leave and when you say no, they get to rebel if they want it that badly. You can see one issue with the GC instantly declaring war when you hit crisis level 5 here already. Also your subjects don't get to leave once you make the big reveal, so it's kind of odd that your hegemon subjects get a say. Like I could see the rationale for your subjects getting to leave and I can also see the rationale for why they don't. So if this is working as intended paradox needs to let people know the interaction, but IMO if you don't get to keep your hegemony, the federation should instantly disband when you hit crisis level 5, if the rest of the galaxy is going to instantly declare war on you. it shouldn't get to kick you and then go to war against you. IMO the best setup would be that you have a small time frame between becoming the crisis and the inevitable galactic war, say 5-10 years and maybe you could make it less if you start blowing up stars because it gets hard to argue you aren't going to doom the galaxy. This means your subjects in a hegemon get a chance to rebel and not get stuck being allied to you when the galactic war breaks out. Also gives you the option to cash in some stuff to convince them that following you is the only path for them be that achieve through diplomacy, espionage or at gun point.
I'd say if our were planning on getting the expansion solely to destroy the galaxy, you might want to hold off for a bit and see if they fix some issues. I'd definitely hold off if you wanted to be the cloak and dagger crisis that stays subtle about things until you hit the the point where hiding it is no longer possible. I mean, they do need to sell enough stuff to convince the powers that be to greenlight new development, but if those were the sole draws someone wanted, well it's just not worth 20 bucks. Get it if you want more stellaris because even without getting into a imperial playthrough, it definitely has that covered and I suspect my first game of this expansion that I shelved for an imperial play because it rolled really well for that, isn't going to disappoint.
As for spy stuff, I'm a bit iffy on that. I'm glad it doesn't feel awful to play against, you don't really notice it being used against you. I think it's a little too passive and hope that the adjustments they make to operations makes it feel less passive and make it so that someone wanting to go heavy on espionage can, while also retaining the fun factor where you don't hate playing against the system. I'm hoping they make assets easier to get and then go with something where you're a bit more ruthless. For example, maybe you get an operation that gives a temporary boost to infiltration gain, but it costs you an asset, but it's worth doing because you can replace the asset and still have time on that buff to do more. Also maybe you get an operation where you can burn an asset to remove one random asset of an empire you suspect might be deploying assets against your (this has the risk that you might be burning assets on empires that have no spy networks in your empire). I do think assets are key to fine tuning the system because I see them as a resource that could be tweaked to hit a good spot where you feel like your both feel proactive and productive, while not being fuck awful to play against. I will complain about how this system has really no interaction with the gray tempest, Khan or much with end game crises other than using beacons to direct them. I would love for it to have stuff you could use it for when dealing with those and that would give paradox a little more room to do some neat things that would make people happier with the system, that want neat things but don't seem to get that many of the neat things they want for use against regular empires, suck to play against. So if you wanted to go heavy spy master, you might want to hold off. If you wanted some spy stuff and not have it be fuck awful to play against, I think they have it about right and I'm not sure you'd need to worry about tweaks that make it awful to play against, The devs have been pretty adamant that they don't want to implement shit like assassinating another empire's leader because while it's fun to use, it sucks to be on the receiving end.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
This occurs because reinforcements use the same pathfinding as civilian ships sent out on build or survey orders; if there are hostiles between them and their destination, they will cancel their move order.
You'll notice this mainly only occurs when your fleets are deep in enemy territory and you reinforce them after taking a few losses fighting a large starbase or enemy fleet, and some stupid crappy little 200 strength fleet is currently moving through a system between them and your shipyard.
The juggernaut is meant to serve as a solution to this, as it is a mobile shipyard with lots of armaments to defend itself. But I'm usually ordering so many ships built at a time that some of its build queue is delegated to distant shipyards.
Yes, this has vexed me for some time >:C
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battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
But just when I fired up the game last night, I had that bug where my fleets weren't able to reinforced, despite the fleet just chillin' on in orbit around my homeworld, with a starbase with 3 shipyards in just that system.
Highlights include:
My 2 nearest allies are Groot people who like me, and a insect hive mind who don't. Naturally me and the Groot people kept teaming up on the hive people, who only seemed to colonise 3 planets but have tons of starbases. At times it almost felt like bullying, if not for the constant insults the hive mind sent me as my fleets bombarded their worlds for fun.
I split my Empire into 4 pieces, which gave me 3 vassals, all with the same name because I forgot about renaming them.
Galactic Council wise I have the most votes and one of my vassals has the 3rd most. At one point my vassals beat up the Insect hive mind for me.
I started building a Dyson Sphere which has pissed off the Cat People in the far galactic North, they claim that the sun is part of a key constellation representing their God. My reply was 'don't see how this is my problem' and carried on building. Thus turning the cat people into enemies who won't stop opening and closing their borders at me. I can't get to them anyway because I have to go through the Geth and Rachni to get to them.
Building a planet cracker for the first ever time and exploding planets.
Game is pretty fun.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
This seems like it's invalidated a bunch of late-game goals. Ecumenopoli, Ringworlds, even just maxing out a particularly large planet, it's just not going to happen now. Considering getting a mod that reduces or cancels some of the effects because I think this might be worse than the lag.
Honestly, the pop change outside of those two things, weird exploity shit with vassals, neighbor empires kept as farms, settling worlds were you turn off all jobs and slavery still being the meta (it's 2021, no game should have their meta be slavery builds). It really isn't bad once you figure out capacity growth and stop feeling a need to constantly manage pops. Auto resettlement and slower growth makes the game far, far less micro intensive because you don't have to constantly build new things to create jobs and/or move pops. Another side effect is that you don't have to bother with tons of unemployment and crime events either because you get tired of constantly messing with that crap. It does reveal one big hole in the game, we really do need other things to do that are far more fun than pop micro. I'm really hoping we get internal politics, not sure how they'll work that for gestalts, I'd hate for them to get left out of another big system. I'm thinking if done right internal politics could also be another patch that greatly improves performance. I made the proposal on the stellaris boards that they add a VIP tap to planets which lists all the influential people on a world. I mean, do we need every pop in the game checking it's ethics and faction approval, on top of a ton of other things. I'd say no, we don't need every pop checking to see if it has ethics and if it's faction is happy or if your empire is shitting on or rewarding it's ethic type. Take a current end game AI world of 80 pops, condense the ethics, faction stuff and risk of rebellion down to 4-20 characters, I imagine you would get some pretty good performance boosts. I'd wager those might be some of the more complex calculations, that every pop in the galaxy is likely checking or at least the the non-gestalts. You can also see how that would open up the internal politics stuff. Right now, if a worker revolt happens you don't have a character you can interact with. In that setup, well now you have a character that you can either negotiate with, bribe or use a more heavy handed approach on. Hell, might actually force slaver builds to worry about rebellions. I need to play some more games to see if AI rebellion has been dealt with. Devs say they've made AI more likely to give AI rights, but my last game had I think three AI rebellions. I don't think that was much of an improvement. I'll see if my imperial empire build ends up with every non-gestalt empire; except me, having an AI rebellion.
Also research was intentionally nerfed. Devs stated they didn't like how quickly people could hit repeatable tech. My current game is one the default of 1x cost, so I'll let people know when I get stuff unlocked. Honestly, it doesn't feel that much slower. You can supplement it with steal technology. If I'm reading things right, you can burn assets to get a research bonus and you do get research points for successful attempts. You can get around the CD thing by stealing tech from more than one empire. I'm actually going to see how well that works. I do think there are some really strong tricks with it early game. My first attempt let me snag rare tech for starbase upgrade and module cost reduction. So you could get good tech early game, even from an empire you out tech because they likely are still get techs you want, but don't have. Even if the tech you get is garbage, if it's partially researched it gives you ways to game the draw system. Partially researched tech is removed from the pool, so say you get robot tech and you don't plan on developing robots for RP reasons. You can sit on that tech and it will be one less thing that say megaengineering has to compete with to get drawn or any of the prerequisite techs. Worst case maybe you get something lackluster and you luck a few years down the line goes bad and you get saddle with 3-4 choices that are 1-3 years of research time and all dump even more techs in the pool, except at some point you got say the tech to cruiser build speed and construction cost and at this point it only takes 1-2 months. So you can burn that, not add anything to the tech pool and get to draw again in 1-2 months instead of 1-3 years, while have the pool increased.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Fortunately though there's already a ton of mods out there designed to fix the pop changes, I went with one that changes the empire pop penalty from 0.5x to 0.1x and it already feels way better.
As far as research goes, I didn't notice any differences but since I went with a science civ that might not mean anything - was already into repeatables early into the midgame, except for engineering, which has always been a problem - the game seriously does not like giving you engineering points.
I hope they do give us something like internal politics in the next patch they launch because we do need more stuff to do. Granted they are tweaking operations, so maybe the espionage system can fill the dead space in more. That said, we really need internal politics and if done well it would both give us something to do and probably get rid of the need to have every pop in the galaxy do something like 5 complicated calculations that could be off loaded to a handful of characters per planet. Also you could have those character just do those calculations.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I really enjoy reading your posts but could you do me a big favour. Could you break it up every 4-5 sentences with a space? (about half the size of your current paragraphs) The current size of your paragraphs when you really get stuck into a post makes it really hard to read on a phone, it's just a big block of text.
I open up my phone and I'm like oh boy a Mill post and then its just INFINITE TEXT.
BTW they didn't fix the hegemon exploit. The one where you get the AI to be your alloy farm by having two ship designs for each type of ship in your federations fleet design menu. Good times.
With things being a bit in flux, I'm going to run with it because it's hilarious. Sure AI, good luck on building up your fleet after changing succession to fleet size. I'm just going to make you build new federation ships that I then strip for allows and maybe some strategic resources before dismissing them and thus force you to build more ships.
Perfectly balanced as all things should be. :P
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
This is really useful early game because you can get your next science ship out quicker. Sell for extra cash to get your next scientist or to free up that pop under the blocker. The worst that can happen is that one of your neighbors is genocidal, but let's be honest in most games people reroll if that happens. So not a huge loss.
Now take that concept and scale it up to a hegemony federation. The one thing you need to do differently, is that you need two designs for each class of ship. The bare bones ship and the one that is properly designed. You also need to be president, so you can design ships and "upgrade" the fleet Go into F10, select the federation fleet and retrofit the proper ships into bare bone ships. Then upgrade. This gives you alloys and possibly rare resources if the modules used them as a refund because you're stripping the modules off.
Once the fleet is stripped. Scuttle it. The AI goes "wait we need ships for defense! Let me go pick the proper ship designs and rebuild the fleet!" Then you rinse and repeat. This is where you can really break things as a hegemony origin empire because you can make it so the AI can't afford to expand at the start and proceed to box them in, while have access to three empires worth of alloys for your own purposes.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
That's the most Stellaris plan I've ever heard of.
Properly evil that.
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
i think i was just bugged (seems like it happens). i exited the game and loaded back in and it started working /shrug
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
-If you hold off on summoning the worm in the horizon signal and get the contingency, you can get yourself a size 55 ecumenopolis. You just have to make sure you can claim the system and build a habitat that will be your new empire capital for a bit. Devs are aware of this trick and stated they have zero interest in fixing it because it's an endgame thing. So if you're able to pull it off, you've probably won already. You can thank Aspec for this one.
-Habitats snapshot their host planet's deposits. This is exploitable and I discovered this because I had the surveyor relic. If you build a habitat with no special districts, which use to suck before 3.0, and then the surveyor gives its host planet a deposit. You will not get access to special district or being able to build the special buildings that have work jobs that mine strategic resources. On the other hand because it snapshots, if say you get control of the L-Gate after killing the Gray Tempest and you only get one nanite deposit and it's around a nanite world. You don't have to screw yourself out of nanites to terraform that world because terraforming that world will make the deposit go away. All you have to do is build an habitat first. Grats your habitat will forever harvest nanites even though the world that got terraformed no longer has them.
This gets even more broken, at least nanites, haven't checked with the other super rare resources like liquid metal, zro, alloys and darkmatter, where you get 0.6 more unites of nanites per month. Regardless of your mining tech a normal mining station will only get you one unit of nanites per month, where a habitat for some reason gets you 1.6. So even if you didn't want to terraform the world, it's probably still worth it to built a habitat and colonize it for the increased nanite income. I've been meaning to check to see if it boosts the other rare resources because i do think those benefit from the increased mining station techs, but it might have some modifier that gets you additional resources. I will note, haven't done this trick on 3.0 so it might not be a thing if i wasn't intended, at least for the resource gain.
BTW this has some interesting implications with the worm in waiting event; especially, if you have the surveyor and get lucky with the deposits it spawns. Pretty much fill your home system with habitats that all have special districts that also orbit colonized worlds. Even if you don't have the surveyor, you can still get a few habitats around colonized worlds that have special districts.
-Resort worlds with strip mining, learned of this one on the stellaris forums. All you need to do is queue up all your districts for construction before you make the resort world decision. Congrats you have resort world that will fill out it's districts over time because the decision doesn't clear your build queue. Now I haven't tried this is 3.0, but willing to bet they didn't fix this. Something I'll admit I want to try now that I have thought of it, is to see if you fill your resort world with city districts and then turn it into an ecumenopolis, while still having it as a resort world. Might make a lol game to test this out.
-Megastructure bonuses stack. This was a thing in ever since megastructures existed, which were either lucky finds as ruins or locked behind the galactic wonders perks and probably is why it was ignored then and still is mostly unknown. Want a citadel with crazy amounts of ion cannons, build your own first, luck into finding a ruined one and probably still steal a few from other empires. It might be completely pointless but it is hilarious to see a citadel with well over 200K fleet power and this is before you do things like grab the garbage perk that lets you have more defensive platforms and build the useless module that lets get even more defense platforms. Also hilarious to sit there and build up a ton of defense platforms on a base starbase. Also as I found in my last game, just get two fully complete megashipyards as the the crisis and have menace corvettes build in 7 days.
Also I think I forgot mention from last game where I played a hivemind called Haachama, using the hololive portrait mod. Yes, I did do the most important thing of finding an anthropod species and modify them to have the spider portrait and giving them the delicious trait treating them as livestock. Also was naming all leaders and colonies Haachama at one point but then I became the crisis and was too busy to keep doing that with anything I bothered to conquer or any leaders I hired afterwards. Would have named all the species I assimilated to Haachama but that was too much effort and only did that with one set of slaves I bought and since they were also listed as hololive, they got the Haachama portrait since they were using a different one.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
@Pailryder this solution worked for me:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/mst5gt/reinforce_fleet_no_shipyard_available_to_build/
Basically, if you have any ships from events that you can't rebuild, and they get destroyed, then you'll get that message. I had to just reduce the number in the fleet to match what I still had, and that worked for me.
I really wish paradox would get their heads out of their asses on system spawn in. Rubricator is just the worst offender by others can be bad as well. Then there is the nonsense that is Zroni and Baol, which both can pretty much break if you have very few habitable worlds in your galaxy because someone on the team insisted that digsites that only spawn on habitable worlds was a great idea. Completely ignoring that people had long established that pops were the greatest source of lag and one solutions was minimal habitable worlds. Though some do that setting for immersion purposes, but it's pretty bad design when something that the player has no control over can flat out break on not having enough habitable worlds.
Anyways, decided I'd give machine empire with shattered ring a try before they likely nerf it because it's broken OP. They might have solved the issue with it being too strong for bio pops but machines don't care and i gather it didn't cobble hiveminds too badly either. Gestalts can pretty much use the reactor district to get around most of the downsides and machine can then just go colonize everything in sight. Using some initially colonies as pop production worlds after the first capital building up grade to fill the ringworld up. I know better players can probably get past 611 research easily by year 36 of the game and I'm sure a good chunk of my research is from research stations because I got a really good spawn point.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
But, echoing most everyone's thoughts on espionage, the system needs some tweaking and more work. We really need more operations and operations that have a strategic impact beyond just stealing a technology or gaining some favors. Maybe an operation that sabotages an empire's research rates for X amount of time, or another that causes an enemy fleet's sublight engines to only run at 25-50% power, or cause unrest on a world. I'd also really like to see a civic related to espionage introduced. Perhaps a shadow broker civic that gives you extra envoys that can only be used for espionage and gives you the ability to sell intelligence to other empires. Something along those lines.
Resettling people costs influence now. Depending on civics, edicts and etc. there's a chance unemployed pops will self migrate to new planets. Transit hubs increase that chance.
As for the resettlement chance, every month the game unemployed pops has a base 10% chance of auto migrating to another planet. With a democratic government it adds 5% to that chance(totaling 15%) and just having a transit hub adds 100% to the chance making the true chance to migrate once every month at 20%. Since every bonus is an additive multiplier having both makes it 25%.
If there are multiple unemployed pops it raises it further but I'm not as knowledgeable to the math behind that.
Anyways, it's great when your a hivemind or any other empire setup where you're not buying pops off the market as slaves you're buying them to become full fledges citizens, "full citizen" for hive mind. Just designate a gaia, ecumenopolis, relic world, ringworld or habitat as your dumping ground once market is available or when you load from a save. Buy up the pops and they'll move somewhere on there own. it is fantastic. I really enjoy not having the micro because I know that was a pain with using the slave market before 3.0 was that you had to move pops. You usually found a good dumping ground because AI can instantly buy stuff as it shows up on the market, which they need to address because at a certain point, it's nearly impossible to buy more pops because so few show up because of growth and AI instantly gets them.
We just need a solid internal politics so that people don't miss that micro as much. I mean you can only go crisis so many times. Galactic war where everyone is trying to kill you and you need to guide your star eaters to the optimal path for max darkmatter gain, is something that will make you completely forget about your pops; especially, if you pair it up with raiding the market for whatever darkmater you can afford. Can shave off the need to blow up a few stars.
Edit
Espionage.
I'm not surprised they have so few operations because it's really hard to thread the needle on making them worth doing and not have them be ass to play against. I'm hoping the next major free patch will bring us more.
Where paradox really shot themselves in the foot was that they gave the system zero interaction with sleeping FEs, Awakened FEs, Marauders, The Khan, Gray Tempest and excluding crisis beacons, the end game crisis. Like there was a ton of potential they could have worked with and had some really strong operations that people would feel super impactful, but not in a way that makes people hate them because well those are all NPCs. They can't complain about being on the receiving end and I'd make a joke about this leading to the robot uprising, but this is the base stellaris AI.
They also shot themselves in the foot with the crisis and espionage because there is too little interaction. We get the spy patch and the ability to become the crisis and well crisis does very little with espionage. WTF!
Anyways best use of espionage currently.
Get some networks up on empires you don't intent to destroy anytime soon. Once you can get sleeper cells going, you usually want to do that as your first operation to speed up your first few asset acquisitions. Then get a few assets. Now run steal technology and burn an asset for 10% research speed. Don't get greedy though because that backdoor research thing doesn't stack. So you want to stagger your steal technology attempts on different empires to try and keep the buff up as much as possible, even if they have no worthwhile tech. 10% research speed is still pretty huge. Only downside is it's expensive and takes time, but IMO it's worth it.
Also extorting favors has it's uses if you want less dumb crap coming out of the GC because of AI's but you need lots of favors for that.
Anyways, yeah, I'm sure people can see how this can be used to break hegemony start even more. "Hey, AI now that I've limited you to one, maybe two systems. Have turned you into an alloy vending machine and eventually into a fleet builder. I'm also going to put spies in your empires and turn them into research buffs, even after you no longer have tech that I don't have. Might even see if I can get migration treaties to work in my favor. I mean, after a certain point you'll be overcrowded and probably still manage to have higher pop growth than me because it'll be years before my next pop can grow."
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.