I've not got the robo-dlc, so I'm not sure how they play. Are agriculture districts then basically useless to them?
They have a building that converts food into energy.
There are also two types of Machine Empires- Rogue Servitors and Driven Assimilators- that can have organic pops in their empire, and need food to feed them.
Having played a couple tall games now, it seems like the real bottleneck for tall play is just plain old minerals. All of the options for playing tall do something a little different, but none of them can mine minerals in any significant quantity, and most of what they do is give you more ways to consume minerals for alloys.
What's your definition of Tall? It seems like that just means living close to your admin cap in 2.2; I haven't had any mineral issues yet; it's pretty consistently my #1 surplus. Though I may under-produce alloys as I tend to be forced into buying those when I need a war surge.
I think 2.2.2 is supposed to increase Alloy yield from 2 -> 3, which may mitigate that.
Tall is basically holding a relatively small number of actual systems and getting room for pops via things that increase the population density of space (ecumenopolis, habitats, ringworlds, mastery of nature), as opposed to wide, where you'd be grabbing as much space as possible and getting room for pops by controlling more planets. It doesn't necessarily mean staying under or close to your admin cap, since you can pretty easily outstrip your admin cap if you build a bunch of habitats and/or 50-district ringworld sections.
There is definitely a phase of the game where minerals will run as a surplus in almost any strategy, but the more people you put in a given amount of space the more minerals you're going to need without your mineral income being able to grow, because minerals basically only come from occupying more space - once you've maxed out the mining districts on your existing planets, you either need mining stations in mineral-heavy systems, or new mining districts on new planets, and both of those things require you to take more space. If you don't want to do that, you're eventually going to be mineral-throttled, because you can get more energy and food by growing 'up' but not more minerals.
Also I would avoid buying alloys as much as possible unless you're energy-capped and looking for something useful to convert it to. Alloys tend to hover around 20 energy each on the market, and a corvette with anything more than starter gear is generally gonna run 150-200 alloys, which means that when you buy alloys to build your navy you're basically trying to buy a navy with energy at a cost of 3000-4000 energy per corvette. That's a pretty rough exchange rate (especially given that you can get a 5-year contract on an entire mercenary fleet for 9-15k).
This is a heady mix of good and bad advice. Mostly that's not how I'd build a tall race, trait-wise. Communal is a trap choice, for one - housing is easy to get, the penalties for housing shortages are minor, and a 10% reduction in housing usage (which won't even stay a 10% reduction, because you'll have immigrants who aren't Communal) is minor. I wouldn't build any race in this patch without Rapid Breeders, and certainly not a tall race which is going to need those growth bonuses to keep up with other empires that have more planets and thus more base growth. I also, as I mentioned, would strongly recommend that any race intended to be tall be Industrious. This boxes out Intelligent/Natural Engineers, but that's honestly not a big deal, because A)you'll have more people to do science with thanks to the better population growth and B)Intelligent is a smaller bonus than it appears to be, especially since it only applies to a very limited number of jobs. You're better off taking bigger bonuses to more-common outputs and then using that resource advantage to just put more scientists on tech instead of inefficiently trying to maximize your tech per scientist.
Likewise, Technological Ascendancy is kind of a shitty ascension perk. It's not nearly as big of a bonus as it appears to be, because it's not multiplicative with all the other science bonuses you're going to end up with, and while your first perk choices are somewhat limited, both Voidborne and Mastery of Nature are much better for tall empires - particularly Voidborne if you're planning around trying to get early megastructures, because Voidborne->Master Builders is the only way you're going to get Mega Engineering in a reasonable timeframe without getting very lucky, just because of its low chance to roll as a research option.
And Imperial Prerogative, while a fine (but not especially amazing) perk in general, is terrible as a second perk because it means you're passing up a huge population growth bonus from either Xenocompatibility or Bio Ascension, and again you need that growth bonus both because pop growth is king in the current patch and because you're already effectively eating a growth penalty by being tall as a result of the fact that the base growth of your empire is a factor of the number of colonies you have.
Also even with a tall strategy, you want to colonize every planet within your borders ASAP. Being at year 60 with 1 colony and like half a dozen uncolonized planets in your borders is a real bad plan no matter how tall you think it makes you.
Couple counterpoints to your counterpoints:
A lot of his choices build off each other. Communal by itself isn't very impressive, especially with Xenophile, but with Agrarian Idyll and Life Seeded it's more than enough to fill out all of his homeworld's building slots and keep nearly all of it as non-city district. He's also going for the classic Stellaris tall of "doesn't matter you have way more stuff than me, I'm building Battleships with Kinetic Artillery and you've only just figured out Cruisers" which gives the "bad" ideas of picking Intelligent, Technological Ascendancy and Imperial Prerogative a much more favoriable context: he's trying to get as much tech and unity as possible, and grow as big as possible while staying under his Admin capacity.
I actually feel Rapid Breeders is a trap trait, at least for non-Hive Minds that have to deal with the 50% pop growth penalty for new colonies, for the same reason you don't like Technological Ascendancy; too many additional modifiers I can pick up elsewhere. I can day 1 switch my food policy for +10% growth, and then whenever I can, pop the planetary decision for +25%, get Genome Mapping for another 10% as one of my first techs, and pick up the 10% pop growth Expansion tradition in the first 5-6 years. Adding Rapid Breeders to all that only gets me a net 6.5% increase to growth vs. not. Is that really worth two trait points? I personally don't think so.
Finally, for not picking up Voidborne if his professed goal is megastructures... Not a problem, where he's starting. Why? Well, that comes with a fun, and very important fact:
What Precursor you get is *not* random, and in fact is entirely dependent on what part of the galaxy you get the first precursor anomaly.
And South/SW is where you will get Cybrex. He just needs to complete the chain (which is also part of the reason why he dipped into Discovery first thing, to research the precursor anomalies faster), and he will get a broken Ring World spawning nearby that he can claim and use to fish for Mega-Engineering, which with his setup he'll be doing by the time he's getting alerts that marauder mercs are now available.
On Communal: I understand why he's picking it, but it's a bad choice. Idyll is going to do most of the heavy lifting on that front by itself - it's going to give him +25 housing, which is enough to cover a substantial part of his building jobs, especially since he's gonna have at least 3 building slots used on single-job buildings, and likely several more that are used on 1-job or no-job buildings to fill the planet in the first place (Cloning Vats, Assembly Plants). On top of that, since he's running a rural planet, he's going to want all the rural job buildings (mineral purification plant, food processing center, energy nexus), which is another 3 slots with only 2 jobs each. So we've already filled 9/16 building slots (vats, assembly plant, capital building, 3 special resource extractors, 3 basic resource amps) and only need a net 7 net housing to do it (because the capital will eventually provide 3 net housing on its own). So all he needs to cover is the remaining 7 building slots - and while some of those will be high-job-density buildings like megaplexes or research labs or alloy foundries, each of those things comes with at least 1 low-job-density complement building (stock exchange, research institute, ministry of production respectively) that only takes 1-2 job slots, and if he's trying to run a single colony for that long he's probably going to end up with more than one (or all 3) of those buildings, too, plus anything else he might want like like unity producing buildings (curating vault caps out at 10 jobs, but the upgraded holo theatre caps out at 4 and ministry of culture caps at 3). At the absolute most his remaining 7 slots will need another ~50 housing, but it's likely to be more like 30. Idyll is going to cover almost all of that, and what it doesn't cover won't actually be important because all a housing shortage does is create immigration push (which you'll want by the time your planet is getting full) and create a small stability penalty which won't really matter and basically only translates to an even smaller resource production penalty.
On top of that, robot pops only take .5 housing each if you don't give them citizen rights/stop before upgrading them to synths, and since he should be building those from as early as possible (and will get them early, because he's going Natural Engineers), he'll get a bunch of housing reduction from those pops already, which will almost certainly cover whatever Idyll doesn't. Every robot he builds will give the same housing bonus as having five Communal pops, while also increasing his pop growth so he can fill his tall planet faster, all without costing any trait points at all.
By picking Communal he's spending a valuable, limited trait point on something that will have absolutely no effect at all until the mid-late game, and which, when it eventually does have an effect, will have a negligibly small one that isn't even of universally positive value. In the process, he's giving up a point that could be spent on a much larger bonus that would be present from the start of the game, like Industrious or Agrarian or Rapid Breeders. It's a bad plan born of a desire to not have red numbers on the screen even if those numbers don't actually matter. Even if that small different in housing did matter, it'd become relevant so late he'd be able to genemod it on by the time it started to have an impact.
On Intelligent/Tech Ascendancy/Imp Preregative: I know he's trying to get as much tech and unity as possible. He's doing it wrong! Picking those things doesn't actually give you the most tech, it just looks like it does because the numbers say +tech on them. What gives you the most tech is picking better traits so that you have more resources faster and can spend them on more scientists, which is going to give you a better rate of return than trying to make each scientist individually better. By the time he has ten scientists using Intelligent+Natural Engineers to do the work of twelve scientists, the guy who picked Rapid Breeders+Nomadic instead is just going to have fifteen scientists, and be ahead on tech as a result. That gap is only going to grow as he picks Tech Ascendancy+Imp Prerogative to get a marginal tech bonus and the Rapid Breeders+Nomadic guy takes Voidborne+Bio Ascension and uses them to dramatically increase his pop growth so he can make even more scientists.
On Precursors: That's interesting, and not something I knew. Still, though, he's rolling the dice - having a repairable megastructure in your borders does substantially increase the odds of rolling mega engineering, but the base odds are so low that it's still a gamble - I routinely have games where I have ruined megastructures in my borders and still don't roll mega engineering until I'm already allocating my fifth or sixth ascension perk. That's a ~30-year delay on your megastructures, which is fine if you're not building around them, but if you are then you want the guaranteed mega engineering so you can reliably start building your first structure on time, ideally as soon as you grab your fourth perk. Like, he's intentionally making all these trait choices for the express purpose of speeding up his access to megastructures, and then also going out of his way to avoid taking the actual fastest, most reliable way of getting megastructures. Taking Tech Ascendancy over Voidborne in order to use Tech Ascendancy to race to megastructures is literally announcing "My plan is to get megastructures as fast as possible" and then intentionally choosing "maybe megastructures later" over "definitely megastructures now". He's giving up the thing he wants in order to take something else because he thinks it will help him get the first thing eventually.
It's in direct conflict with his own stated goal. (I also, for the record, think that Arcology Project is currently a much better tall play than pushing to early megastructures in the first place, but that's a whole other thing.)
Again, if you are stacking all the early pop growth modifiers (and with a little foresight there is no reason why you can't, especially with Agrarian Idyll) You are only getting a net 6% increase to overall per-planet pop growth.
To put that in perspective, that means for every 50 pops, you have 3 extra pops. You also won't lap someone who doesn't until you get your 17th pop. which would take 344 months, or 28 and 2/3rd years. To have 5 more pops on a planet for research than someone who took Intelligent instead, assuming everything else is unchanged, that will not happen until around 2343, one hundred and forty years after the game starts. While it's true you would have ~284 pop-years worth of extra production (or about the equivalent of 13k more minerals, before pop upkeep costs) you can't use that to make more labs until you have the pops to fill them.
(This is also why Gene Clinics are considered a poor choice unless you build them early on your first colonies, as the Return on Investment, i.e. when you get enough pop-months of production to make it a net gain, is over a hundred years)
Now, you are probably going to say "but Intelligent suffers from the same diminishing returns!" and the answer is, well, yes and no. While there are bonuses that affect pop research points directly (assist research by science ships being the notable one), the majority of bonuses to your research are things that boost research speed, such as Technological Ascendancy. However, Intelligence does not affect research speed, it effects research points gained. This means that Research Speed bonuses, which are treated as a multiplier to the research progress from points, are a multiplicative bonus to the net research gain from Intelligent and Nat. Engineers, not an additive one that diminishes their returns. Every bonus to research speed makes those traits even better, while every bonus to pop growth makes Rapid Breeders give a smaller and smaller gain over your peers.
(You know what other effect is multiplicative? The growth penalty for new colonies, meaning you are still only getting a 6% bonus over a normal empire on that planet when both are pumping that food decision, if you even bother)
This is why I suggested that Rapid Breeders is a trap trait. You are able to stack so many bonuses for pop growth, especially if you go the double-whammy of Xeno Compatibility and Bio Ascension, that the net effect the trait has for your growth is tiny for something that's two trait points, when traits that affect pop production directly, or even affect how many pops you can fit on a planet, tend to fair a lot better over the game's lifespan... especially if they can benefit from the few multiplicative effects the game has.
There aren't any traits that affect how many pops you can put on a planet. Communal doesn't actually do that. Housing doesn't actually limit population growth to a significant degree, and doesn't limit it at all until the planet is almost full anyway. Even if you really, really cared about keeping positive housing, most planets will run out of jobs to give pops before they run out of housing for them. Jobs are the limiting factor on planet population, not housing - and there aren't any traits that make more jobs. Even if you were dead-set on including only traits which increase pop production, Industrious/Agrarian/Ingenious and so on would all be better investments of the same two points than Intelligent, because they're going to come into play on more pops faster and those extra basic resources are again going to translate into more science if you want them to, and do so at a better rate than Intelligent does.
Your breakeven timeline also assumes you're only on one planet, but you're not. It doesn't take 28 years to get an extra pop from Rapid Breeders, it takes 28 years divided by the average number of colonies you occupy during that time, which should be at least 3-5 in the first couple decades even for a tall plan, because Rapid Breeders isn't a planet-specific bonus like Gene Clinics are. Likewise, it doesn't take 140 years to get five more pops, because that number, too, is divided by the number of colonies you have providing base growth, and even for a tall strategy that number should be starting at 3-5 and eventually growing to 15 or more. Moreover, the major reason Gene Clinics have a bad return rate is that they require pops to be working jobs themselves for the bonus, so you basically have to 'pay' for the pops who will be working the clinics (and the people who will be working the buildings that make the consumer goods that the clinics consume, and the people who will be mining the minerals that the consumer goods production consumes) before you start getting 'real' growth over what you'd have without the clinic. This, too, does not apply to Rapid Breeders. You're trying to treat Rapid Breeders and Gene Clinics as equivalent, but they are different in critical ways that fundamentally change the math.
You are correctly identifying that you can't do anything with buildings until you have pops to work them, but then failing to make the leap that what that means is that every single resource you gather ultimately scales with the number of pops you have (especially in a tall strategy that isn't going to be making a lot of its income with mining stations), and that an increase to your population is therefore more valuable than anything else. You are fundamentally trying to assert that a 5-6% increase in research speed is more valuable than a 5-6% increase to all yields including research from having a larger population. That's trivially not true.
The patch didn't bump Rapid Breeders from 1 point to 2 because it was a trap trait that isn't actually good. The cost got changed because it was clearly too good at 1 point, and even at 2 it remains one of the strongest traits you can take, if not the strongest.
Unless you are Hive Mind or Fanatic Xenophobe, I do not see how you will maintain 5-6% extra growth at all times. At the moment, as soon as one pop from a new species shows up pretty much every planet in your empire starts growing them until they make up an equal% of the empire's makeup, which means that 5-6% suddenly becomes only 2-3%, and drops further with each new non-Rapid Breeders species shows up in it. If you can use that argument to dismiss communal two posts ago...
That boost from intelligent might be for just a handful of jobs, but you also do not need your whole empire to have that trait to get the boost from it. And before you snark, yes in this one case the job AI is smart enough to make them researchers whenever possible, especially if you are stacking something like Nat. Engineers on top of it.
And Rapid Breeders became worth 2 points only when planets stopped maxing out at 25 pops or less in 50 years. Recall plenty of debates and strats that called for slow breeders (particularly when paired with Mechanist), because the trait would mean nothing once every planet worth mentioning was at or near full population.
Anyway, we're really arguing past each other more often than not, so... Agree to Disagree?
That's not the argument I used to dismiss communal; I mentioned it briefly, but my actual argument against communal is just that housing isn't actually very important (and if you want a reduction on it, you can get a bigger one by just building robots, which you probably want to do anyway). By the time immigrants comprise a significant portion of your population A)a bunch of them are going to get Rapid Breeders from your main species via Xenocompatibility and B)none of the racial traits you picked at race generation will matter anyway because you'll be finishing up bioascension and all your pops, immigrants included, will be Fertile/whatever. (and you can even have a subrace that's Erudite/Natural Engineers if you want, now that you've actually got a reasonable number of researcher jobs to give them)
And of course Rapid Breeders wasn't especially amazing before 2.2 but that doesn't have anything to do with anything - we weren't talking about how you'd have played a tall empire two complete game overhauls ago, we were talking about how the game works now. "It didn't used to be good until they changed a bunch of things and made it different" is totally unrelated to whether or not it's good now. It can't be a trap trait and also be worth 2 points now because the recent changes to planet population made population growth more important.
I found a cool anomaly this playthrough, where one of my planets has a portal on it to an alternate reality. It's very much the same, even down to duplicates of my ruler. The main difference is they travel via Warp Drive and we use Hyperlanes. The people from the Warp Drive reality are constantly fighting 'Warp Beasts' though. We've established interdimensional trade with our alternate selves.
I occasionally get small updates from them about how they are doing, and how the fight against the Warp Beasts goes.
This anomaly is cool as hell and I wonder how many outcomes there are. I haven't gotten the warp beast outcome yes, but I have gotten:
1. The portal goes to a dimension of pure energy; portal jobs make a large amount of energy in addition to their large amount of physics research
2. The portal goes to a dimension of pure pain; output doesn't seem changed but pops working the portal have penalties and you get a project to close the portal which removes the penalties but also reduces the yield of the portal research jobs
3. The portal goes to a dimension of pure entropy; portal jobs make small amounts of dark matter in addition to their physics output, and you unlock+get 50% completion on a special tech that gives you Null Void Beams, a weapon component which deals relatively low damage (on par with tier 1-2 weapons) but deals +400% damage to shields and -75% damage to armor and hull
The new patch seems greatly improved, my economy is much more stable and manageable this time. No huge swings until I conquered a heap of systems with a heap of starbases taking me way over my limit. But that conquest showed me that I don't think the AI is doing very well yet, I was able to fight two enemies at once and neither could muster a fleet big enough to get past one of my starbases.
The new patch seems greatly improved, my economy is much more stable and manageable this time. No huge swings until I conquered a heap of systems with a heap of starbases taking me way over my limit. But that conquest showed me that I don't think the AI is doing very well yet, I was able to fight two enemies at once and neither could muster a fleet big enough to get past one of my starbases.
AI is currently either very unwilling or completely incapable (evidence points to the latter) of upgrading anything that requires rare resources. So they start to lag behind the player quite a bit once the mid-game rolls along, because they aren't able to produce enough alloys and CG without wasting most of their building slots on them, and lag behind in tech because they aren't upgrading their labs either.
Foefaller on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Do you guys think the housing districts are superior for adding homes, or those buildings that provide a few houses + a bit of amenities?
Do you guys think the housing districts are superior for adding homes, or those buildings that provide a few houses + a bit of amenities?
I think generally you start with mining/farming/etc districts, and maybe need a couple of housing buildings... then as your planet gets bigger you get buildings with more jobs, which lets you transition districts to cities.
Do you guys think the housing districts are superior for adding homes, or those buildings that provide a few houses + a bit of amenities?
Depends on the resources available on the planet and the purpose you have for it. Generally I prefer city districts over housing buildings, but if you, for example, have a relatively small planet with a lot of mineral deposits that you want to use as a mining world, building a city district might mean giving up a mining district - so you'd probably be better off with housing buildings on that planet even though they generally make a planet 'cap out' lower.
Has anyone tried out the default races? I hear there's unique storylines associated with each.
Only the Commonwealth of Man AFAIK. They have a special event chain to try and find one of the other colony ships that got lost in space with them.
They also have a unique trigger where, if the UNE, Earth Custodians or any custom empire that uses Sol does not spawns, then it will create Sol (in the same way it creates the precursor systems; adds a system with a single connecting hyperlane to it) and put the UNE there, or if a primitive Sol does spawn, immediatly bring it to full empire and make that the UNE.
Foefaller on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited December 2018
I'm confused about how the crime-on-purpose thing is supposed to work. (Edit - Specifically as far as what I click and where; I get special crime buildings, but how?)
I also don't understand the trade hub space station building. It says it increases "range" by 1 but I don't know what that means.
I'm confused about how the crime-on-purpose thing is supposed to work. (Edit - Specifically as far as what I click and where; I get special crime buildings, but how?)
I also don't understand the trade hub space station building. It says it increases "range" by 1 but I don't know what that means.
One hyperlane jump. Space Stations hoover Trade from neighboring systems with the Hub upgrades.
Spaceports collect trade value in their own system. Adding one trade port lets them connect one jump away,a second trade port two jumps away, etc.
This means that later on larger stations can cover vast areas on their own.
Incidentally, trade protection from defense modules operates the same way. Adding more modules increases the protection and also extends it further out.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Resource-wise, what does trade actually do? I see a number, but no description of what that number is doing for me.
By default that number is the number of energy credits you get. However, policies can be selected to turn a portion into consumer goods or unity, and those can be strong choices if you're good on energy.
Spaceports collect trade value in their own system. Adding one trade port lets them connect one jump away,a second trade port two jumps away, etc.
This means that later on larger stations can cover vast areas on their own.
Incidentally, trade protection from defense modules operates the same way. Adding more modules increases the protection and also extends it further out.
Spaceports also seem to collect trade value along the hyperlane route between the station and the capitol. So if there's two systems with trade value, a basic station at the further one will get both.
But how does that work like... on a planet? My starting planet had 40+ "trade," so does that just means it was generating +40 energy?
Capitol planet trade value is 'free', other systems need to have a starbase in trading range (default of local system, +1 jump for each trading hub built) to gather the delicious trade. Piracy develops along trade routes (visible by clicking the trade routes button in the starbase UI), reducing the actual amount that reaches the capital. Piracy can be mitigated by having ships patrol through the systems, and starbases can also combat piracy within their range (default of local system, +1 jump for each weapon installation built)
:edit: That being said it would be nice if there was somewhere you could go to see exactly how much trade value you're bringing in, and what it's being converted to.
NEO|Phyte on
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
But how does that work like... on a planet? My starting planet had 40+ "trade," so does that just means it was generating +40 energy?
Capitol planet trade value is 'free', other systems need to have a starbase in trading range
Capitol isn't actually free. You just start with a spaceport there. If you lose it you lose the trade value. When you do have a starport there, though, the value is collected without producing any "trade routes" that you have to protect, so there is that.
This anomaly is cool as hell and I wonder how many outcomes there are. I haven't gotten the warp beast outcome yes, but I have gotten:
1. The portal goes to a dimension of pure energy; portal jobs make a large amount of energy in addition to their large amount of physics research
2. The portal goes to a dimension of pure pain; output doesn't seem changed but pops working the portal have penalties and you get a project to close the portal which removes the penalties but also reduces the yield of the portal research jobs
3. The portal goes to a dimension of pure entropy; portal jobs make small amounts of dark matter in addition to their physics output, and you unlock+get 50% completion on a special tech that gives you Null Void Beams, a weapon component which deals relatively low damage (on par with tier 1-2 weapons) but deals +400% damage to shields and -75% damage to armor and hull
No dimension of pure itching and no room with a moose?
This anomaly is cool as hell and I wonder how many outcomes there are. I haven't gotten the warp beast outcome yes, but I have gotten:
1. The portal goes to a dimension of pure energy; portal jobs make a large amount of energy in addition to their large amount of physics research
2. The portal goes to a dimension of pure pain; output doesn't seem changed but pops working the portal have penalties and you get a project to close the portal which removes the penalties but also reduces the yield of the portal research jobs
3. The portal goes to a dimension of pure entropy; portal jobs make small amounts of dark matter in addition to their physics output, and you unlock+get 50% completion on a special tech that gives you Null Void Beams, a weapon component which deals relatively low damage (on par with tier 1-2 weapons) but deals +400% damage to shields and -75% damage to armor and hull
No dimension of pure itching and no room with a moose?
Disappointing.
I just had this event happen and got a different dimension.
A dimension so hostile to life that anything living entering it immediately tries to commit suicide. I decided to leave the portal open to study it, I am sure nothing bad will come of this.
This anomaly is cool as hell and I wonder how many outcomes there are. I haven't gotten the warp beast outcome yes, but I have gotten:
1. The portal goes to a dimension of pure energy; portal jobs make a large amount of energy in addition to their large amount of physics research
2. The portal goes to a dimension of pure pain; output doesn't seem changed but pops working the portal have penalties and you get a project to close the portal which removes the penalties but also reduces the yield of the portal research jobs
3. The portal goes to a dimension of pure entropy; portal jobs make small amounts of dark matter in addition to their physics output, and you unlock+get 50% completion on a special tech that gives you Null Void Beams, a weapon component which deals relatively low damage (on par with tier 1-2 weapons) but deals +400% damage to shields and -75% damage to armor and hull
No dimension of pure itching and no room with a moose?
Disappointing.
I just had this event happen and got a different dimension.
A dimension so hostile to life that anything living entering it immediately tries to commit suicide. I decided to leave the portal open to study it, I am sure nothing bad will come of this.
This is probably how you get Warp Beasts.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
This anomaly is cool as hell and I wonder how many outcomes there are. I haven't gotten the warp beast outcome yes, but I have gotten:
1. The portal goes to a dimension of pure energy; portal jobs make a large amount of energy in addition to their large amount of physics research
2. The portal goes to a dimension of pure pain; output doesn't seem changed but pops working the portal have penalties and you get a project to close the portal which removes the penalties but also reduces the yield of the portal research jobs
3. The portal goes to a dimension of pure entropy; portal jobs make small amounts of dark matter in addition to their physics output, and you unlock+get 50% completion on a special tech that gives you Null Void Beams, a weapon component which deals relatively low damage (on par with tier 1-2 weapons) but deals +400% damage to shields and -75% damage to armor and hull
No dimension of pure itching and no room with a moose?
Disappointing.
I just had this event happen and got a different dimension.
A dimension so hostile to life that anything living entering it immediately tries to commit suicide. I decided to leave the portal open to study it, I am sure nothing bad will come of this.
First game since 2.0, and first game playing as a hivemind, went full devouring swarm. Seems a liiiiitle bit OP, I made a lot of mistakes economy-wise but the game kept letting me dig myself out and take over the whole northwestern half of the galaxy. Literally every other empire in the galaxy except the pair of fallen empires on my eastern border are rated pathetic to me, I'm running a ridiculous number of planets and teraforming even more into hiveworlds. One of the Fallen Empires on my borders awoke and started grabbing territory, but I have one of their only routes into my turf locked down hard and I'm basically using them as a distraction to conquer the rest of the galaxy while I get around to them.
I guess you either fall to an end-game crisis, or you live long enough to see yourself become one. Feels good to be back in the saddle, can't wait to roll up a bunch more empires and maybe even do some MP if a game comes up while I'm on vacation.
First game since 2.0, and first game playing as a hivemind, went full devouring swarm. Seems a liiiiitle bit OP, I made a lot of mistakes economy-wise but the game kept letting me dig myself out and take over the whole northwestern half of the galaxy. Literally every other empire in the galaxy except the pair of fallen empires on my eastern border are rated pathetic to me, I'm running a ridiculous number of planets and teraforming even more into hiveworlds. One of the Fallen Empires on my borders awoke and started grabbing territory, but I have one of their only routes into my turf locked down hard and I'm basically using them as a distraction to conquer the rest of the galaxy while I get around to them.
I guess you either fall to an end-game crisis, or you live long enough to see yourself become one. Feels good to be back in the saddle, can't wait to roll up a bunch more empires and maybe even do some MP if a game comes up while I'm on vacation.
Hive Minds got it good at the moment. They have insanely good pop growth, and don't have the "spool up" time that normal and Machine empires do with new colonies. They have energy issues from lack of trade, but since their pops don't need it for upkeep, unlike Machine Empires, that's not as hard of a barrier to overcome.
This anomaly is cool as hell and I wonder how many outcomes there are. I haven't gotten the warp beast outcome yes, but I have gotten:
1. The portal goes to a dimension of pure energy; portal jobs make a large amount of energy in addition to their large amount of physics research
2. The portal goes to a dimension of pure pain; output doesn't seem changed but pops working the portal have penalties and you get a project to close the portal which removes the penalties but also reduces the yield of the portal research jobs
3. The portal goes to a dimension of pure entropy; portal jobs make small amounts of dark matter in addition to their physics output, and you unlock+get 50% completion on a special tech that gives you Null Void Beams, a weapon component which deals relatively low damage (on par with tier 1-2 weapons) but deals +400% damage to shields and -75% damage to armor and hull
No dimension of pure itching and no room with a moose?
Disappointing.
I just had this event happen and got a different dimension.
A dimension so hostile to life that anything living entering it immediately tries to commit suicide. I decided to leave the portal open to study it, I am sure nothing bad will come of this.
This is probably how you get Warp Beasts.
Basically interdimensional bedbugs
Just lay out a space cloud of Diatomaceous Earth, it'll be fine.
First game since 2.0, and first game playing as a hivemind, went full devouring swarm. Seems a liiiiitle bit OP, I made a lot of mistakes economy-wise but the game kept letting me dig myself out and take over the whole northwestern half of the galaxy. Literally every other empire in the galaxy except the pair of fallen empires on my eastern border are rated pathetic to me, I'm running a ridiculous number of planets and teraforming even more into hiveworlds. One of the Fallen Empires on my borders awoke and started grabbing territory, but I have one of their only routes into my turf locked down hard and I'm basically using them as a distraction to conquer the rest of the galaxy while I get around to them.
I guess you either fall to an end-game crisis, or you live long enough to see yourself become one. Feels good to be back in the saddle, can't wait to roll up a bunch more empires and maybe even do some MP if a game comes up while I'm on vacation.
Hive Minds got it good at the moment. They have insanely good pop growth, and don't have the "spool up" time that normal and Machine empires do with new colonies. They have energy issues from lack of trade, but since their pops don't need it for upkeep, unlike Machine Empires, that's not as hard of a barrier to overcome.
The AI is pretty terribad right now too. There have been some things sorted in the beta patches, but for the most part out of the early game it's going to be pretty easy to steam roll the whole galaxy barring crises and fallen empires.
I kind of wish there were some equivalent civics for the other hive mind archetypes. Devourers get this huge thing that completely changes the game and everything else is just, you get some extra unity or whatever.
0
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
The civics that change the game rules for your empire are definitely the most fun. They need more of those for sure. Spiritual based empires need a civic based on conversion of pops from other empires, or going on a crusade of sorts. Mechanist should change from just being "you have some robots" to a game changer at the start as well.
+2
MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
But how does that work like... on a planet? My starting planet had 40+ "trade," so does that just means it was generating +40 energy?
Capitol planet trade value is 'free', other systems need to have a starbase in trading range (default of local system, +1 jump for each trading hub built) to gather the delicious trade. Piracy develops along trade routes (visible by clicking the trade routes button in the starbase UI), reducing the actual amount that reaches the capital. Piracy can be mitigated by having ships patrol through the systems, and starbases can also combat piracy within their range (default of local system, +1 jump for each weapon installation built)
:edit: That being said it would be nice if there was somewhere you could go to see exactly how much trade value you're bringing in, and what it's being converted to.
If you hover over your Empire EC income you can see how much of it is from trade.
The civics that change the game rules for your empire are definitely the most fun. They need more of those for sure. Spiritual based empires need a civic based on conversion of pops from other empires, or going on a crusade of sorts. Mechanist should change from just being "you have some robots" to a game changer at the start as well.
Exalted Priesthood is real good for going heavy-Unity from moment 1, if not quite as sweeping as you're hoping, for what it's worth.
The civics that change the game rules for your empire are definitely the most fun. They need more of those for sure. Spiritual based empires need a civic based on conversion of pops from other empires, or going on a crusade of sorts. Mechanist should change from just being "you have some robots" to a game changer at the start as well.
One thing people have been clamoring for is a Machine Cult civic for Spiritualist, who are A-OK with robots and cybernetics
Dude's has broken Matter Compressor, a Dyson Sphere and an Art Installation all right next to each other.
He's just keeping them warm for you.
I was going to say- they won't be glad those things are there when you smash your way through to take them.
0
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
edited December 2018
@Lord_Asmodeus@swphreak and I got some multiplayer going this afternoon. I got an event I've never seen before that gave me what appears to be an L-Gate caliber cruiser. That plus my Very Strong militarists throwing bodies at planets let us wipe an AI empire that was irritating both me and swphreak off the map by like 2260.
@EvmaAlsar It'd be good to have you join us when you're able, since the AI civ we put in there for you was allied to said now-deceased political entity and caused us some problems. A sane neighbor would be good to have. It also - strangely - didn't bother opening a Branch Office on my homeworld even though I gave it a green light to do it from quite early on.
E: honorable mention to the Marauder empires we seeded in, which just sort of left ships on my and phreak's doorsteps as a Christmas gift of some kind.
Yeah, if it weren't for the free Marauder fleet, Evma's AI would have done much more damage to me. Next on the agenda will be dealing with the Marauder systems that spawned only 4 jumps away from me.
E: Oh, I came across a bug where I couldn't use multiplayer chat. Is it because I'm Hive Mind? I'm not the bad, no diplomacy kind.
E2: Looks like that 1440p UI Overhaul hid the more/chat button.
Posts
They have a building that converts food into energy.
There are also two types of Machine Empires- Rogue Servitors and Driven Assimilators- that can have organic pops in their empire, and need food to feed them.
EDIT: Also, new beta patch in time for the holidays
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/dev-team-stellaris_test-beta-branch-updated-to-2-2-3-with-many-new-fixes-checksum-1960.1140823/
That's not the argument I used to dismiss communal; I mentioned it briefly, but my actual argument against communal is just that housing isn't actually very important (and if you want a reduction on it, you can get a bigger one by just building robots, which you probably want to do anyway). By the time immigrants comprise a significant portion of your population A)a bunch of them are going to get Rapid Breeders from your main species via Xenocompatibility and B)none of the racial traits you picked at race generation will matter anyway because you'll be finishing up bioascension and all your pops, immigrants included, will be Fertile/whatever. (and you can even have a subrace that's Erudite/Natural Engineers if you want, now that you've actually got a reasonable number of researcher jobs to give them)
And of course Rapid Breeders wasn't especially amazing before 2.2 but that doesn't have anything to do with anything - we weren't talking about how you'd have played a tall empire two complete game overhauls ago, we were talking about how the game works now. "It didn't used to be good until they changed a bunch of things and made it different" is totally unrelated to whether or not it's good now. It can't be a trap trait and also be worth 2 points now because the recent changes to planet population made population growth more important.
This anomaly is cool as hell and I wonder how many outcomes there are. I haven't gotten the warp beast outcome yes, but I have gotten:
2. The portal goes to a dimension of pure pain; output doesn't seem changed but pops working the portal have penalties and you get a project to close the portal which removes the penalties but also reduces the yield of the portal research jobs
3. The portal goes to a dimension of pure entropy; portal jobs make small amounts of dark matter in addition to their physics output, and you unlock+get 50% completion on a special tech that gives you Null Void Beams, a weapon component which deals relatively low damage (on par with tier 1-2 weapons) but deals +400% damage to shields and -75% damage to armor and hull
AI is currently either very unwilling or completely incapable (evidence points to the latter) of upgrading anything that requires rare resources. So they start to lag behind the player quite a bit once the mid-game rolls along, because they aren't able to produce enough alloys and CG without wasting most of their building slots on them, and lag behind in tech because they aren't upgrading their labs either.
I think generally you start with mining/farming/etc districts, and maybe need a couple of housing buildings... then as your planet gets bigger you get buildings with more jobs, which lets you transition districts to cities.
That's how my planet growth tends to go, I think.
Depends on the resources available on the planet and the purpose you have for it. Generally I prefer city districts over housing buildings, but if you, for example, have a relatively small planet with a lot of mineral deposits that you want to use as a mining world, building a city district might mean giving up a mining district - so you'd probably be better off with housing buildings on that planet even though they generally make a planet 'cap out' lower.
I'll get around to checking the Kingdom of Yondarim out at some point, I'm sure. The Lok are pretty good, mechanically, as well, and worth a shot.
Only the Commonwealth of Man AFAIK. They have a special event chain to try and find one of the other colony ships that got lost in space with them.
They also have a unique trigger where, if the UNE, Earth Custodians or any custom empire that uses Sol does not spawns, then it will create Sol (in the same way it creates the precursor systems; adds a system with a single connecting hyperlane to it) and put the UNE there, or if a primitive Sol does spawn, immediatly bring it to full empire and make that the UNE.
I also don't understand the trade hub space station building. It says it increases "range" by 1 but I don't know what that means.
One hyperlane jump. Space Stations hoover Trade from neighboring systems with the Hub upgrades.
This means that later on larger stations can cover vast areas on their own.
Incidentally, trade protection from defense modules operates the same way. Adding more modules increases the protection and also extends it further out.
Spaceports also seem to collect trade value along the hyperlane route between the station and the capitol. So if there's two systems with trade value, a basic station at the further one will get both.
Trade Value is Energy but you have to collect it, and protect the trade route.
There are a couple empire policies to change half of it into consumer goods (at 1:2) or unity (at 1:4) instead.
Capitol planet trade value is 'free', other systems need to have a starbase in trading range (default of local system, +1 jump for each trading hub built) to gather the delicious trade. Piracy develops along trade routes (visible by clicking the trade routes button in the starbase UI), reducing the actual amount that reaches the capital. Piracy can be mitigated by having ships patrol through the systems, and starbases can also combat piracy within their range (default of local system, +1 jump for each weapon installation built)
:edit: That being said it would be nice if there was somewhere you could go to see exactly how much trade value you're bringing in, and what it's being converted to.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Capitol isn't actually free. You just start with a spaceport there. If you lose it you lose the trade value. When you do have a starport there, though, the value is collected without producing any "trade routes" that you have to protect, so there is that.
No dimension of pure itching and no room with a moose?
Disappointing.
.
Island. Being on fire.
I just had this event happen and got a different dimension.
This is probably how you get Warp Beasts.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Basically interdimensional bedbugs
I guess you either fall to an end-game crisis, or you live long enough to see yourself become one. Feels good to be back in the saddle, can't wait to roll up a bunch more empires and maybe even do some MP if a game comes up while I'm on vacation.
Hive Minds got it good at the moment. They have insanely good pop growth, and don't have the "spool up" time that normal and Machine empires do with new colonies. They have energy issues from lack of trade, but since their pops don't need it for upkeep, unlike Machine Empires, that's not as hard of a barrier to overcome.
Just lay out a space cloud of Diatomaceous Earth, it'll be fine.
The AI is pretty terribad right now too. There have been some things sorted in the beta patches, but for the most part out of the early game it's going to be pretty easy to steam roll the whole galaxy barring crises and fallen empires.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
If you hover over your Empire EC income you can see how much of it is from trade.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Exalted Priesthood is real good for going heavy-Unity from moment 1, if not quite as sweeping as you're hoping, for what it's worth.
Dude's has broken Matter Compressor, a Dyson Sphere and an Art Installation all right next to each other.
He's just keeping them warm for you.
One thing people have been clamoring for is a Machine Cult civic for Spiritualist, who are A-OK with robots and cybernetics
I was going to say- they won't be glad those things are there when you smash your way through to take them.
@EvmaAlsar It'd be good to have you join us when you're able, since the AI civ we put in there for you was allied to said now-deceased political entity and caused us some problems. A sane neighbor would be good to have. It also - strangely - didn't bother opening a Branch Office on my homeworld even though I gave it a green light to do it from quite early on.
E: honorable mention to the Marauder empires we seeded in, which just sort of left ships on my and phreak's doorsteps as a Christmas gift of some kind.
He's nearly on the other side of the map, sadly. It'd be easier just to build my own versions.
E: Oh, I came across a bug where I couldn't use multiplayer chat. Is it because I'm Hive Mind? I'm not the bad, no diplomacy kind.
E2: Looks like that 1440p UI Overhaul hid the more/chat button.