HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Now that I'm getting the hang of the game's changes, Devouring Swarm does indeed seem overpowered as fuck. I've gone unchallenged in sweeping up galactic territory.
Finished the 'have 5 livestock species' achievement. The Maweer is an interesting species to play. Heavy focus on farming, only defensive wars. Managed to actually keep in the black most of the time on all my resources. Debating whether to continue the run. I think I might go back and attempt a megacorp again now that I understand things a bit better and they've fixed a few things.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Now that I'm getting the hang of the game's changes, Devouring Swarm does indeed seem overpowered as fuck. I've gone unchallenged in sweeping up galactic territory.
Even just the fact that their Assimilation casus belli gives them immediate control of territory as soon as they control the starbase (+ colonized planets) is huge compared to other types where you have to wait for peace.
the assimilation casus belli is fantastic.
I've used it to blitz a lot of unprotected systems and then before the computer or player can mount a counteroffensive I force a white peace because of quick early victories. and that leaves your influence for other more important matters like production quotas and capacity overloads.
just realize, that your neighbors get the 'liberation or containment' casus belli on you, which lets them flip systems without claims as well.
big starbase fences make good neighbors after all.
edit** i've got a mod that halves the admin cap for owned systems and its so much nicer to be able to expand and own all the systems in your empire.
pirates need to go back to being fringe raiders. Maybe the reason Paradox only has them attack shipping lanes is because I used to keep an uncontrolled backwater system that only had 2energy in it as a pirate farm for my admirals. the new pirate shipping lane system means that the only exp that gestalt consciousness get is through combat with stellar zoologicals or in actual wars... where I want experience admirals in the first place.
lastly, either defense platforms need an HP boost, or they need to cost half what they currently do. A platform with 2 small sections, of 6x lvl2 weapons and lvl2defenses costs like 250alloy and they don't have the durability for the alloy cost involved. I know they are not supposed to be equivalent or stronger than a similar fleet, but when all 6 platforms explode in the first battle and the starbase repeatedly tanks the enemy fleet for 5 years of a war without additional platforms leaves a sour note in my mouth.
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I love having starbase defense choke points. If I can get a route where it's one system to the other only, I'll have both starbased so that even if one is defeated there's no way the other will. Granted this is after having the resources to fully build up defense platforms around them with quality tech going all around.
I noticed today that hanger bay stunt fighters have bonuses now for shield and armor penetration. I don't remember them having that at all and I very much approve of this.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited December 2018
I'm gonna give my technocracy + mechanist empire a try again. Near as I can tell robot pops have been reduced to only have +200 habitability and no other traits. On the flip side, in a way this is a route to faster population build because while people breed the robots are built. I haven't looked up what droids do compared to robots.
Bonus points; the religious version of this empire I designed to have a fixed adversary spawn right next to me in the galaxy so the tension is there from the start. Yay.
Edit - Oh, I looked it up. Robots, Droids, and Synths never gain any sort of benefits on production or anything like that. Robots can only be workers, Droids can be specialists and colonize, and Synths can be Leaders. I dunno where they wanna go with robots as a population type for the game now. Like does robo modding (species traits) provide things that are stronger than what my actual biological species can get for their traits?
I've been trying out an older game called Distant Worlds: Universe today and there's a number of similarities with Stellaris that they might want to consider.
The diplomacy options feel a lot more robust with the ability to buy off another empire into putting tariffs on a third party etc. I can basically cut off a civilization's trade with all their other trading partners so they become reliant on me and then crash their economy when it suits me. I was not expecting to be able to recreate a story out Azimov's Foundation.
It also has tech trading, and while I prefer the Stellaris method it made me realize that because of how Stellaris handles research treaties and lots of other stuff, you end up not being able to do a lot of the horse trading I can in Distant Worlds: Universe even with empires that hate me.
I am hoping to give Stellaris another play once all the issues with LeGuin are worked out.
Man I just tried out they new megacorp a bit last night and wow so much interface change!
A few years in and now I have a ton of extra minerals and energy, but alloys are choking me down. Time to go back and reread the last few pages in detail.
I'm gonna give my technocracy + mechanist empire a try again. Near as I can tell robot pops have been reduced to only have +200 habitability and no other traits. On the flip side, in a way this is a route to faster population build because while people breed the robots are built. I haven't looked up what droids do compared to robots.
Bonus points; the religious version of this empire I designed to have a fixed adversary spawn right next to me in the galaxy so the tension is there from the start. Yay.
Edit - Oh, I looked it up. Robots, Droids, and Synths never gain any sort of benefits on production or anything like that. Robots can only be workers, Droids can be specialists and colonize, and Synths can be Leaders. I dunno where they wanna go with robots as a population type for the game now. Like does robo modding (species traits) provide things that are stronger than what my actual biological species can get for their traits?
They are another avenue for pop growth, which in 2.2 is amazingly powerful on it's own. Even better for colonies as you first building, since they aren't affected by the growth penalty colonies have.
Also, just so you know, the job restrictions are actually miner, farmer and soldier jobs *only* for regular robots, all worker jobs, and any specialist just except researchers and priests (maybe culture workers too?) For droids, and synths any job, though I don't think they can take ruler jobs until you give them full rights.
because you can build robots on top of organics just shooting dna at each other, your population growth can be considered effectively double.
the problem is, the current mineral consumption for building robots is staggering to a newly formed colony, and you need 1 pop on assembly for every 1.00 growth speed.
robots may live on energy alone, but they require minerals to build. assimilators also need food now for their organic pops.
where organics simply need food to maintain, robots require 2 or all 3 base resources to maintain their growth. that maintenance cost cuts into terraforming, navy and starbase expenditure and creation, leadership hirings, edict proposals, and the list goes on.
all you need to do is look at the very first month to understand what's up. robots do get 200 energy for an immediate science leader purchase for a second science vessel, but they only get 24 minerals/month. every other empire type gets 36minerals/month. also, assimilators only make 3 food surplus on month 1. one of your very first builds is a 500 mineral food district, when you need to be building a mineral district or an alloy factory. and don't forget to build another energy district to be worked on by nonexistant pops yet, if you can't find a good 5+energy system in the space neighborhood
I would be ok with all the other issues with assimiliators if they removed the food requirement of organic pops and put that requirement back into energy. maybe tweak their homeworld to have more energy districts at the start so its not a nose dive right off the start.
at least then, if I see an agri-world, I can still build food districts (for market energy) and convert that into a bio reactor energy world.
edit*** sorry for the stream of consciousness here,
if you are wondering if the robot habitability offsets the world terraforming cost, not quite for assimilators. it comes back to their cyborgs and if the world is too unhabitable, you gotta drop a TON of buildings that provide amenities. stability and deviancy exist for robots now, and if it goes too high, it tanks noticeable percentages of resources being pulled out. so that 6.00 base growth is actually 1.00 base growth because there is only 1 robot making more robots and no organics giving the other 3.00. and so you gotta spend 300 energy to move 3 productive pops from another planet (because idle pops are sin) to get to the 5people building and then build a replicator to finally have 3.00 growth speed.
In my current Rogue Servitor game I've come across what I think is a bug, but I'm not sure. I've researched Micro-Replicators for an additional 10% assembly speed, but it doesn't seem to be applying that bonus to my empire. These screenshots are from a couple years after the research completed. I know for certain that my pop grown was +4.14 before I researched this technology because my friend and I were comparing growth speeds (we're in a multiplayer game).
I started up a game as a Democratic Crusader(Fanatic Egalitarian/Militarist) and boy Utopian Standards sucks now. Happiness got a slight nerf, which was probably needed, but the cost increase with the new strata system has gone from 2x to around 3-3.5x more consumer goods needed. I had 2 civilian factories on every single planet and was still running a deficit.
I started up a game as a Democratic Crusader(Fanatic Egalitarian/Militarist) and boy Utopian Standards sucks now. Happiness got a slight nerf, which was probably needed, but the cost increase with the new strata system has gone from 2x to around 3-3.5x more consumer goods needed. I had 2 civilian factories on every single planet and was still running a deficit.
Do you have your trade policy set to generate Consumer Goods? That can generate a lot of CG, and scaling up trade is a lot easier than manufacturing.
In any case, I wouldn't make the jump to Social Welfare and Utopian Abundance until you start having unemployment issues, so that your unhappy unemployed pops are now happy unity (and with UA, research) producing pops.
+1
Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
Something that I thought of reading an SMBC comic, I would love for them to add Synth compatability as an Ascension perk along the lines of xeno compatability where robot pops of synth level have a chance to reproduce with biological pops and make a cyborg species with a mix of their biological and robot traits.
Also it's not important mechanically but I'd love to see Piscene species portraits, I always love new portraits and I want to play as weird space fish.
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
Pop growth is damn near everything in the new meta. More pops means more things you get.
As for colonies, I'm seeing some people put down colonies and then during the devolopment period, they save 800-900 energy and move 8 - 9 pops from the Capitol world and buy the admin building, because it needs 10pops to upgrade. The admin building removes the pop growth debuff of a new colony.
Pop growth is 3.00 per month base. And you need 100 growth to produce 1 pop.
Unless you are hive or robot, your growth on a new world is 1.50. Thats crippling. You need 50 *years* with 1pop on his lonesome to make 10 pops for the admin building. With the expansion trait of 2pops per colony, thats only cut to 44.44 years. (Math: 900 growth for 9 pops ÷ 1.50 growth of a new colony is 600months, or 50 years.)
This can all be modified by migration treaties, but what I'm seeing is only 1 or 1.5 growth added to a planet from immigration. And that gets countered by a not insignificant amount of emmigration.
So each and every time a pop growth social science comes up, is worth it. 10% growth means 1.5 becomes 1.65 which means 45.45 years with 1 pop breeding into 10pops.
Dont worry about overpopulation. There are planet policies you can invoke for cheap influence to halt pop growth
I played a bunch of Distant Worlds: Universe over the holidays, and while the game has it's own issues there's a fair bit I wish that Stellaris would steal. The civilian freighter system is great for making the game world feel alive and allows for some cool pirate/police interactions. The deeper resource system is something that they could draw some inspiration from. I'd probably approach it from the perspective that minerals and energy provide the baseline capabilities, but much of the higher tech tree options have additional bonuses if you have enough of a strategic resource for your fleet/infrastructure rather than the current system of if you have 1 of a strategic resource you have all you need.
The pirate system also discouraged me from just spreading like crazy and produced a lot of good border-war level interactions because I didn't want to overextend my protections or my outer colonies would get preyed upon. It gave me some good empire versus wilderness type gameplay that threatened to create a new empire opponent out of my empire holdings if I neglected it too long.
The option to play the game as a pirate (and the modded ability to transition from a pirate empire to a traditional empire when certain conditions are met) is also cool, although the new corporation system seems like it ticks a few of those boxes. Another mod that was cool was the ability to play as a trader with a ship and building up a trading empire with the possibility of turning the trading empire into an empire of your own if you start out as an independent (or at least that is what it looked like the mod said it did). Alternate paths like this are cool.
Something else that Stellaris is approaching, but doesn't have yet that I think is worthwhile doing is an overall plotline in the game. If they go for a racial plotline like Endless Legend does, with Wonder and Questline victory options, that'd be cool. Custom games that disregard this are fine, and the current precursor plotlines are sort of this, but it'd be nice if this content was more fleshed out and featured some badguys like the Antarens from MoO2 or the baddies from Distant World: Universe that can show up in the endgame on top of the other potential crises.
Give different default races a range of civilization characters/stances and questlines that you can pursue to turn them into allies or enemies to help with the diplomacy system. Give the races more character, because the races as they stand right now have very little character from the games I've played and feel a lot more like races that have been randomly generated from the traits.
I'm not sure if it is something that would work for Stellaris, but having a fuel cell range similar to Master of Orion 1/2 and the ability to extend the range using fueling stations is something that might also be fun to help extend the exploration portion of the game.
Anyways, these are the things I am hoping Stellaris develops towards.
I played a bunch of Distant Worlds: Universe over the holidays, and while the game has it's own issues there's a fair bit I wish that Stellaris would steal. The civilian freighter system is great for making the game world feel alive and allows for some cool pirate/police interactions. The deeper resource system is something that they could draw some inspiration from. I'd probably approach it from the perspective that minerals and energy provide the baseline capabilities, but much of the higher tech tree options have additional bonuses if you have enough of a strategic resource for your fleet/infrastructure rather than the current system of if you have 1 of a strategic resource you have all you need.
The pirate system also discouraged me from just spreading like crazy and produced a lot of good border-war level interactions because I didn't want to overextend my protections or my outer colonies would get preyed upon. It gave me some good empire versus wilderness type gameplay that threatened to create a new empire opponent out of my empire holdings if I neglected it too long.
The option to play the game as a pirate (and the modded ability to transition from a pirate empire to a traditional empire when certain conditions are met) is also cool, although the new corporation system seems like it ticks a few of those boxes. Another mod that was cool was the ability to play as a trader with a ship and building up a trading empire with the possibility of turning the trading empire into an empire of your own if you start out as an independent (or at least that is what it looked like the mod said it did). Alternate paths like this are cool.
Something else that Stellaris is approaching, but doesn't have yet that I think is worthwhile doing is an overall plotline in the game. If they go for a racial plotline like Endless Legend does, with Wonder and Questline victory options, that'd be cool. Custom games that disregard this are fine, and the current precursor plotlines are sort of this, but it'd be nice if this content was more fleshed out and featured some badguys like the Antarens from MoO2 or the baddies from Distant World: Universe that can show up in the endgame on top of the other potential crises.
Give different default races a range of civilization characters/stances and questlines that you can pursue to turn them into allies or enemies to help with the diplomacy system. Give the races more character, because the races as they stand right now have very little character from the games I've played and feel a lot more like races that have been randomly generated from the traits.
I'm not sure if it is something that would work for Stellaris, but having a fuel cell range similar to Master of Orion 1/2 and the ability to extend the range using fueling stations is something that might also be fun to help extend the exploration portion of the game.
Anyways, these are the things I am hoping Stellaris develops towards.
I'm hoping that the diplomatic expansion does more to develop the races into more defined personalities. They've been dripping a select number of set races in the game over the years, and I'd love to see more of that occurring. That's especially true if they do more with giving races unique (or at least pre-defined) sets of characteristics and playstyles.
As for the overall plotlines, I hope they crib from Total Warhammer the setup where each race has its own goals/plotlines that may or may not overlap. That lets you set up traditional 4X competitions, but also have players who are focused on their own unique goals that may have little to do with the overall race to completion.
What are Subversive Cults like in the current patch? I remember early in 2.2 they were kind of self-defeating since the 2 civics didn't support each other very well.
I've gotten to the point where I can conquer an opponent, go into the extreme negative resources, and still eventually recover. But it's not fun. Planets take too much damn work. Recovering from winning a war takes more effort than winning the war.
Also I am not sure why, but the empire I just ate... all their planets had like twice the population they could handle with their housing. I think the only thing that saved me was having a mostly empty First League Planet that can handle hundreds of extra people.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I've gotten to the point where I can conquer an opponent, go into the extreme negative resources, and still eventually recover. But it's not fun. Planets take too much damn work. Recovering from winning a war takes more effort than winning the war.
Also I am not sure why, but the empire I just ate... all their planets had like twice the population they could handle with their housing. I think the only thing that saved me was having a mostly empty First League Planet that can handle hundreds of extra people.
Housing's effectiveness goes down with devastation, I thought?
I've gotten to the point where I can conquer an opponent, go into the extreme negative resources, and still eventually recover. But it's not fun. Planets take too much damn work. Recovering from winning a war takes more effort than winning the war.
Also I am not sure why, but the empire I just ate... all their planets had like twice the population they could handle with their housing. I think the only thing that saved me was having a mostly empty First League Planet that can handle hundreds of extra people.
Housing's effectiveness goes down with devastation, I thought?
Yes it does.
You need to stop bombing their planets so much and go in with a bigger assault force. That will make sure planets you conquer can bounce back quicker.
I've gotten to the point where I can conquer an opponent, go into the extreme negative resources, and still eventually recover. But it's not fun. Planets take too much damn work. Recovering from winning a war takes more effort than winning the war.
Also I am not sure why, but the empire I just ate... all their planets had like twice the population they could handle with their housing. I think the only thing that saved me was having a mostly empty First League Planet that can handle hundreds of extra people.
Housing's effectiveness goes down with devastation, I thought?
Yes it does.
You need to stop bombing their planets so much and go in with a bigger assault force. That will make sure planets you conquer can bounce back quicker.
or bombthier planets to ash and take the steal pop perk
Trying doing some research on this earlier because it was really bugging me.
How the gene trait formula works is either bugged or the devs should have given it a better tool tip to explain how it works, if it isn't.
I figured I'd create a hive mind devouring race of dwarfs and start them off with Industrious, Intelligent, Natural Engineers, Sedentary & Nonadaptive. Then grab the engineered evolution perk and do targeted gene expression, so I could I could drop the nonadaptive and sedentary traits and have even more points to play with, but it looks like the game considers removing a negative trait as spending gene trait points. For example if I drop sedentary my total points with the perk and the research will drop to 4 and if I remove nonadaptive it drops 3. Seems like this is bugged to me since I'm dropping negative traits that should refund me points. If this is working as intended, then they did a piss poor drop of stipulating that with new race creating screen because that would behoove me to not pick up negative traits if I wanted to see how crazy I could make things, but this seems like a bug.
I'm working on a Xenophobe game to get the 'wipe out all other species' achievement.
But conquering is freaking exhausting. Every planet I take requires months of 'repair time' to get things back in order. Is there a way I can just wipe a planet clean and colonize it from scratch or something.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I miss the Sword of the Stars sliding scale of diplomatic war crimes.
First contact was typically made with nukes, slave barges, or both if your neighbor was the skaven.
Any which way you could expect millions of sapients dead and delightfully low property values for go getting colonists.
Now I'm tempted to play more Distant Worlds. It has been a while since I last subjugated some random insectoid species and turned their homeworld into a zoo as revenge for whichever great war some other insectoid species started once.
Trying doing some research on this earlier because it was really bugging me.
How the gene trait formula works is either bugged or the devs should have given it a better tool tip to explain how it works, if it isn't.
I figured I'd create a hive mind devouring race of dwarfs and start them off with Industrious, Intelligent, Natural Engineers, Sedentary & Nonadaptive. Then grab the engineered evolution perk and do targeted gene expression, so I could I could drop the nonadaptive and sedentary traits and have even more points to play with, but it looks like the game considers removing a negative trait as spending gene trait points. For example if I drop sedentary my total points with the perk and the research will drop to 4 and if I remove nonadaptive it drops 3. Seems like this is bugged to me since I'm dropping negative traits that should refund me points. If this is working as intended, then they did a piss poor drop of stipulating that with new race creating screen because that would behoove me to not pick up negative traits if I wanted to see how crazy I could make things, but this seems like a bug.
This is WAD, removing neg. traits will cost gene points.
This is because those negative traits gave you more trait points in the first place; Adding Sedentary gave you 1 extra point, and nonadaptive gave you 2, so removing those traits takes away the extra points they gave you.
Really wish the gene perk opened up another gene trait slot. I'll willing to keep the negative traits, if I can grab a few other things. I'm also trying to make sure I get the whole gene thing in order just in case I find the anomaly that gives me a free gene trait, since I'll liable to put a scientist on it before I'm ready to snag it.
Really wish the gene perk opened up another gene trait slot. I'll willing to keep the negative traits, if I can grab a few other things. I'm also trying to make sure I get the whole gene thing in order just in case I find the anomaly that gives me a free gene trait, since I'll liable to put a scientist on it before I'm ready to snag it.
Hybrids from the new Xeno Compatibility perk have an extra trait slot. And it seems (though it might be a bug/UI thing) that you can gene mod the parent species to the hybrids
Of course, getting all the many, many, many constantly spawning sub-species to have the same traits is an... effort, to say the least.
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The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Even just the fact that their Assimilation casus belli gives them immediate control of territory as soon as they control the starbase (+ colonized planets) is huge compared to other types where you have to wait for peace.
I've used it to blitz a lot of unprotected systems and then before the computer or player can mount a counteroffensive I force a white peace because of quick early victories. and that leaves your influence for other more important matters like production quotas and capacity overloads.
just realize, that your neighbors get the 'liberation or containment' casus belli on you, which lets them flip systems without claims as well.
big starbase fences make good neighbors after all.
edit** i've got a mod that halves the admin cap for owned systems and its so much nicer to be able to expand and own all the systems in your empire.
pirates need to go back to being fringe raiders. Maybe the reason Paradox only has them attack shipping lanes is because I used to keep an uncontrolled backwater system that only had 2energy in it as a pirate farm for my admirals. the new pirate shipping lane system means that the only exp that gestalt consciousness get is through combat with stellar zoologicals or in actual wars... where I want experience admirals in the first place.
lastly, either defense platforms need an HP boost, or they need to cost half what they currently do. A platform with 2 small sections, of 6x lvl2 weapons and lvl2defenses costs like 250alloy and they don't have the durability for the alloy cost involved. I know they are not supposed to be equivalent or stronger than a similar fleet, but when all 6 platforms explode in the first battle and the starbase repeatedly tanks the enemy fleet for 5 years of a war without additional platforms leaves a sour note in my mouth.
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I noticed today that hanger bay stunt fighters have bonuses now for shield and armor penetration. I don't remember them having that at all and I very much approve of this.
Bonus points; the religious version of this empire I designed to have a fixed adversary spawn right next to me in the galaxy so the tension is there from the start. Yay.
Edit - Oh, I looked it up. Robots, Droids, and Synths never gain any sort of benefits on production or anything like that. Robots can only be workers, Droids can be specialists and colonize, and Synths can be Leaders. I dunno where they wanna go with robots as a population type for the game now. Like does robo modding (species traits) provide things that are stronger than what my actual biological species can get for their traits?
The diplomacy options feel a lot more robust with the ability to buy off another empire into putting tariffs on a third party etc. I can basically cut off a civilization's trade with all their other trading partners so they become reliant on me and then crash their economy when it suits me. I was not expecting to be able to recreate a story out Azimov's Foundation.
It also has tech trading, and while I prefer the Stellaris method it made me realize that because of how Stellaris handles research treaties and lots of other stuff, you end up not being able to do a lot of the horse trading I can in Distant Worlds: Universe even with empires that hate me.
I am hoping to give Stellaris another play once all the issues with LeGuin are worked out.
A few years in and now I have a ton of extra minerals and energy, but alloys are choking me down. Time to go back and reread the last few pages in detail.
They are another avenue for pop growth, which in 2.2 is amazingly powerful on it's own. Even better for colonies as you first building, since they aren't affected by the growth penalty colonies have.
Also, just so you know, the job restrictions are actually miner, farmer and soldier jobs *only* for regular robots, all worker jobs, and any specialist just except researchers and priests (maybe culture workers too?) For droids, and synths any job, though I don't think they can take ruler jobs until you give them full rights.
the problem is, the current mineral consumption for building robots is staggering to a newly formed colony, and you need 1 pop on assembly for every 1.00 growth speed.
robots may live on energy alone, but they require minerals to build. assimilators also need food now for their organic pops.
where organics simply need food to maintain, robots require 2 or all 3 base resources to maintain their growth. that maintenance cost cuts into terraforming, navy and starbase expenditure and creation, leadership hirings, edict proposals, and the list goes on.
all you need to do is look at the very first month to understand what's up. robots do get 200 energy for an immediate science leader purchase for a second science vessel, but they only get 24 minerals/month. every other empire type gets 36minerals/month. also, assimilators only make 3 food surplus on month 1. one of your very first builds is a 500 mineral food district, when you need to be building a mineral district or an alloy factory. and don't forget to build another energy district to be worked on by nonexistant pops yet, if you can't find a good 5+energy system in the space neighborhood
that's a pretty big deal
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at least then, if I see an agri-world, I can still build food districts (for market energy) and convert that into a bio reactor energy world.
edit*** sorry for the stream of consciousness here,
if you are wondering if the robot habitability offsets the world terraforming cost, not quite for assimilators. it comes back to their cyborgs and if the world is too unhabitable, you gotta drop a TON of buildings that provide amenities. stability and deviancy exist for robots now, and if it goes too high, it tanks noticeable percentages of resources being pulled out. so that 6.00 base growth is actually 1.00 base growth because there is only 1 robot making more robots and no organics giving the other 3.00. and so you gotta spend 300 energy to move 3 productive pops from another planet (because idle pops are sin) to get to the 5people building and then build a replicator to finally have 3.00 growth speed.
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Do you have your trade policy set to generate Consumer Goods? That can generate a lot of CG, and scaling up trade is a lot easier than manufacturing.
In any case, I wouldn't make the jump to Social Welfare and Utopian Abundance until you start having unemployment issues, so that your unhappy unemployed pops are now happy unity (and with UA, research) producing pops.
Also it's not important mechanically but I'd love to see Piscene species portraits, I always love new portraits and I want to play as weird space fish.
As for colonies, I'm seeing some people put down colonies and then during the devolopment period, they save 800-900 energy and move 8 - 9 pops from the Capitol world and buy the admin building, because it needs 10pops to upgrade. The admin building removes the pop growth debuff of a new colony.
Pop growth is 3.00 per month base. And you need 100 growth to produce 1 pop.
Unless you are hive or robot, your growth on a new world is 1.50. Thats crippling. You need 50 *years* with 1pop on his lonesome to make 10 pops for the admin building. With the expansion trait of 2pops per colony, thats only cut to 44.44 years. (Math: 900 growth for 9 pops ÷ 1.50 growth of a new colony is 600months, or 50 years.)
This can all be modified by migration treaties, but what I'm seeing is only 1 or 1.5 growth added to a planet from immigration. And that gets countered by a not insignificant amount of emmigration.
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Dont worry about overpopulation. There are planet policies you can invoke for cheap influence to halt pop growth
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They build crap places to live so every pop wants in on my utopia.
The pirate system also discouraged me from just spreading like crazy and produced a lot of good border-war level interactions because I didn't want to overextend my protections or my outer colonies would get preyed upon. It gave me some good empire versus wilderness type gameplay that threatened to create a new empire opponent out of my empire holdings if I neglected it too long.
The option to play the game as a pirate (and the modded ability to transition from a pirate empire to a traditional empire when certain conditions are met) is also cool, although the new corporation system seems like it ticks a few of those boxes. Another mod that was cool was the ability to play as a trader with a ship and building up a trading empire with the possibility of turning the trading empire into an empire of your own if you start out as an independent (or at least that is what it looked like the mod said it did). Alternate paths like this are cool.
Something else that Stellaris is approaching, but doesn't have yet that I think is worthwhile doing is an overall plotline in the game. If they go for a racial plotline like Endless Legend does, with Wonder and Questline victory options, that'd be cool. Custom games that disregard this are fine, and the current precursor plotlines are sort of this, but it'd be nice if this content was more fleshed out and featured some badguys like the Antarens from MoO2 or the baddies from Distant World: Universe that can show up in the endgame on top of the other potential crises.
Give different default races a range of civilization characters/stances and questlines that you can pursue to turn them into allies or enemies to help with the diplomacy system. Give the races more character, because the races as they stand right now have very little character from the games I've played and feel a lot more like races that have been randomly generated from the traits.
I'm not sure if it is something that would work for Stellaris, but having a fuel cell range similar to Master of Orion 1/2 and the ability to extend the range using fueling stations is something that might also be fun to help extend the exploration portion of the game.
Anyways, these are the things I am hoping Stellaris develops towards.
I'm hoping that the diplomatic expansion does more to develop the races into more defined personalities. They've been dripping a select number of set races in the game over the years, and I'd love to see more of that occurring. That's especially true if they do more with giving races unique (or at least pre-defined) sets of characteristics and playstyles.
As for the overall plotlines, I hope they crib from Total Warhammer the setup where each race has its own goals/plotlines that may or may not overlap. That lets you set up traditional 4X competitions, but also have players who are focused on their own unique goals that may have little to do with the overall race to completion.
Also I am not sure why, but the empire I just ate... all their planets had like twice the population they could handle with their housing. I think the only thing that saved me was having a mostly empty First League Planet that can handle hundreds of extra people.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Housing's effectiveness goes down with devastation, I thought?
Yes it does.
You need to stop bombing their planets so much and go in with a bigger assault force. That will make sure planets you conquer can bounce back quicker.
Serious business going on at Paradox.
or bombthier planets to ash and take the steal pop perk
Stellaris: where everything sounds awful.
How the gene trait formula works is either bugged or the devs should have given it a better tool tip to explain how it works, if it isn't.
I figured I'd create a hive mind devouring race of dwarfs and start them off with Industrious, Intelligent, Natural Engineers, Sedentary & Nonadaptive. Then grab the engineered evolution perk and do targeted gene expression, so I could I could drop the nonadaptive and sedentary traits and have even more points to play with, but it looks like the game considers removing a negative trait as spending gene trait points. For example if I drop sedentary my total points with the perk and the research will drop to 4 and if I remove nonadaptive it drops 3. Seems like this is bugged to me since I'm dropping negative traits that should refund me points. If this is working as intended, then they did a piss poor drop of stipulating that with new race creating screen because that would behoove me to not pick up negative traits if I wanted to see how crazy I could make things, but this seems like a bug.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
But conquering is freaking exhausting. Every planet I take requires months of 'repair time' to get things back in order. Is there a way I can just wipe a planet clean and colonize it from scratch or something.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Trying to get the resources to research those things. In the meantime, exhaustion.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
First contact was typically made with nukes, slave barges, or both if your neighbor was the skaven.
Any which way you could expect millions of sapients dead and delightfully low property values for go getting colonists.
Now I'm tempted to play more Distant Worlds. It has been a while since I last subjugated some random insectoid species and turned their homeworld into a zoo as revenge for whichever great war some other insectoid species started once.
This is WAD, removing neg. traits will cost gene points.
This is because those negative traits gave you more trait points in the first place; Adding Sedentary gave you 1 extra point, and nonadaptive gave you 2, so removing those traits takes away the extra points they gave you.
Really wish the gene perk opened up another gene trait slot. I'll willing to keep the negative traits, if I can grab a few other things. I'm also trying to make sure I get the whole gene thing in order just in case I find the anomaly that gives me a free gene trait, since I'll liable to put a scientist on it before I'm ready to snag it.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Hybrids from the new Xeno Compatibility perk have an extra trait slot. And it seems (though it might be a bug/UI thing) that you can gene mod the parent species to the hybrids
Of course, getting all the many, many, many constantly spawning sub-species to have the same traits is an... effort, to say the least.