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[Stellaris] - Paradox does space strategy - Le Guin, Megacorps - DECEMBER 6th

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Posts

  • GoodKingJayIIIGoodKingJayIII They wanna get my gold on the ceilingRegistered User regular
    @Abbalah great write up. As it happens I started another void dweller run over the weekend and it has been going really well. Reading your post helps shed some more light on the whys. It's also helpful because there are a lot of little mechanical things I still don't fully grock (housing). My first 50 year strategy was:

    - rush tech and alloys. My economy was pretty slow going for a few decades but it caught up pretty quickly.
    - less focus on geographic expansion; grabbed a lot of high value systems (strategic resources, high amounts of base resources, research)
    - expanding to habitats with mineral/energy districts

    Here's something else though. I'm running this game as a fanatic pacifist xenophile corporation, ensuring that I was largely left alone for the early game. It allowed me to be really greedy in a way I probably couldn't if I'd had an aggressive empire breathing down my neck. I had a few grumpy empires on my borders at the start, but nothing a few bastions couldn't deter. The fanatic purifiers were on the other side of the galaxy. So I was able to get a lot done in the early game.

    But now it's 2400 and my diplomatic weight is 100% larger than second place's, everyone is "pathetic" to me, I am the leader of a powerful federation, and pretty soon I will be the sole galactic councilmember. So, I have turned around on void dweller quite a bit! But I am not sure I would have been as successful if I'd been dealing with war every decade or so.

    Battletag: Threeve#1501; PSN: Threeve703; Steam: 3eeve
  • MillMill Registered User regular
    I'm curious to see where they go with pop growth. If it gets tuned down further, then they'll definitely have to do something about advance habitat tech for void dwellers. I've played around enough to see how you can get that as quickly as possible, which essentially is tech rushing and tech rushing is reliant on pop numbers. Influence is a bottleneck for void dwellers because you need it for habitats and you have to balance around getting habitats before pops become an issue, but also make sure you get your choke points, which means competing with empires that can mindlessly expand their borders. If pop growth takes another hit, you'll be in a situation where you need more space, but don't have the influence to build more habitats. I'm also not thrilled with the idea that the current setup pushes heavily on needing to tech rush. I mean, if your doing your economy right, you'll hit a point where alloy production will totally outpace influence and thus have the alloys to build another habitat and expand both your fleet and at least one existing habitat.

    Anyways with housing, pop growth stops when 50% of the pops don't have. AKA you have pops that need housing equal to 150% of what you currently have. The stability is something to watch for because it can end badly depending on empire type. Notably if you have slaves, IIRC chances of rebellion are higher when you get into the low stability. Low stability also means you produce less. This is why I have doubts about 0% habitability worlds being worthwhile, and also why a number of min/max players say it's not worth it for the pop growth because you're paying a premium for that extra bar and the resources for it have to be produced by something, usually more pops. Anyways, this is also a big reason why the planetary decision to stop pop growth is viewed as such a trap. Either you can leave it on to exploit the resettlement feature, by having a full colony be a pop factory or your pops stop growing from a lack of housing options. Either way, you can probably find something better for that influence, probably more habitats.

    It's a bit of shame that only organic and lithoid empires that aren't hive mind can take void dweller. Rogue Servitor could probably make great use of the origin. The civic has a few advantages that people miss. People usually focus on how it's an outstanding unity producer but miss two other huge advantages it has. Biotrophies usually have a high happiness level if you do thing right, which translates into higher stability than what most machine empires can hope to get without spamming amenities. Sure any world with biotrophies can't be a machine world but I'm pretty sure the ease of getting high stability easily offsets the advantages of a machine world. The other big one that gets overlooked, is once you're maxed out organic sanctuary tech, you can shove 20 pops into a single building slot. So rogue servitor can easily open up all the slots on a small world or habitat. Probably one of the few, if only build, that can take the smallest world (I believe that's 6 districts), turn it into a refinery world and optimally use all the pops on it without having pointless garbage jobs, unemployment or needing to use mastery of nature to get two more districts. Rogue servitor can do amazing things with habitats far easier than other empires can.

  • AbbalahAbbalah Registered User regular
    Yeah, the thing with housing is that it and amenities are both presented in the same confusing way: The UI shows you the absolute amount of surplus amenities/housing you have on a colony, but the effect of having either of those things high or low is based on the ratio between how much you have and how much you need.

    Having 12 housing and 18 pops on a colony will show as -6 housing in the colony pane, and will cause +50 emigration push, -13 stability, and stop all pop growth [because 18/12 is at the 1.5 ratio threshold that disables growth]

    Having 30 housing and 36 pops on a colony will also show as the same -6 housing, but will only cause +50 emigration push and -7 stability.

    And 80 housing with 86 pops will show -6 housing as well but only cause the emigration push and -3 stability.

    (The stability penalty is 40*(amount of shortage/amount required))

    And stability's main effect is to give +.6% pop production for each point above 50, and -1% pop production for each point below 50. Which means that as long as you can keep your net stability at or above 50, even the 12 housing/18 pop housing shortage only really matters because it's big enough to stop pop growth; -13 stability only translates into an 8% reduction in pop production. The -3 on the big colony? -1.8% pop production, and you fix it you'd have to burn up a building slot on a Paradise Dome, which not only blocks out the slot for a job building but also costs energy and crystals in an amount that will mostly offset the 2% gain in pop efficiency you gained by building it.

    Amenities are similar, with the fun twist that they're even less consistent: If you have at least enough amenities as required, you get a happiness bonus that maxes out at +20%, and the amount required to get that full bonus is twice the amount required - IE, if your colony needs 20 amenities and you have 40, the panel will show +20 amenities and you'll have a +20% happiness bonus to pops in that colony. If your colony needs 100 amenities and you have 120, the panel will show the same +20 amenities, but your happiness bonus will only be 4% because you're 1/5th of the way to doubling your amenity requirement so you get 1/5th of the max bonus.

    Meanwhile, if you have an amenity shortage, you get a flat -2% happiness per missing amenity, so a colony that needs 20 amenities and has 10 gets -20% happiness and a colony that needs 100 amenities and has 90 also gets the same -20% happiness.

    And then happiness affects stability in basically the same way stability affects output: +.6 stability for each point of overall approval above 50, -1 stability for each point of approval below 50. (And keep in mind that each pop has a different base happiness based on their faction, and different happiness modifiers and political power based on their stratum, with specialists and rulers having way-outsized influence on approval for most living standards)

    The upshot of all this is that as long as you run a decent surplus of amenities and keep your major factions happy, it's pretty easy to keep stability above 50 even if you're eating a penalty from housing, and as long as your stability stays above 50, all you really have to care about with housing is staying above the (fairly extreme) point where pop growth suddenly stops (and making sure your emigration push isn't sending your hard-earned growth to some other asshole's planets). As long as you're staying above the 1.5 housing line so your pop growth stays turned on, the housing stability penalty functionally caps out at -12, which is exactly offset by the stability bonus from the +20% happiness you get from keeping your amenities doubled. Getting into the red on stability really requires you to be neglecting both housing and amenities, or for there to be some other colony-wide modifiers screwing things up (recently conquered, etc)

  • MillMill Registered User regular
    Happiness is probably one of the mechanics people overlook a ton. For example with nutritional plentitude, it's pretty easy for people to hyper focus the pop growth boon and completely ignore the happiness boost that comes with it. The 5% happiness boost is essentially 3% additional stability for your worlds, assuming you aren't a hive mind. I'm a bit amazed that the die hard machine and hivemind players don't whine about that aspect of nutritional plentitude because outside of like rogue servitors, it's a bonus they don't get. I say this because you'll see them complain about crime lord deals, which isn't anywhere near as easy to get nutritional plentitude and it's restricted to a single planet. Nutritional plentitude is empire wide, that's every colony getting a 5% happiness boost to the biopops and thus 3% stability to all worlds. Granted this is a negative that synth ascension overlooks as well because once a ton of pops are synths, you lose that boost. Sure synth empires can game biopop growth, but they aren't going to see the full benefit and to be fair if you start having droid pops with rights, that does erode the benefit some.

    Anyways, there a few events and scenarios that can either boost happiness for a single world (usually the capital) or do it empire wide that are either temporary or permanent. Some of these, you have to make a choice and usually you're almost always better going for the happiness boost because again that translates into more stability which means more resources from your pops. The only things that trump happiness. Obviously pop growth. Reduce housing, needing less housing means you can get more bodies on a world to fill more jobs and you can really exploit that with utopian abundance. Sure utopian abundance is not efficient, but hey if you can get 20 more bodies on a planet and they were going to be unemployed anyways because you've exceeded that world's ability to create enough jobs, well now you're getting something decent from those pops. I'd also say permanent tech research boosts are the final one; especially, if it's a boost to engineering. Maybe alloy production boosts. To through an example out, there is an anomaly called Tree of Life IIRC, you get the choice of giving it to the people for a 5% boost to bio and lithiod pops, hoarding it for a select few boosting your leader lifespan by like 5 or 10 years or just letting it drift in space. The only really good answer is to give it to your pops for the happiness boost because increased leader lifespan really doens't do much for you. Sure they get some boosts, but they have to level up and those boost pale in comparison to the production output you'll get from just having happier pops throughout your empire.

  • GoodKingJayIIIGoodKingJayIII They wanna get my gold on the ceilingRegistered User regular
    Interestingly happiness and stability have been the least of my problems because all my habitats produce so many amenities. And like you guys said the pops don’t really care about housing. I do find myself running out of jobs pretty quickly but I just try to keep building habitats. I filled up a fully restored ring world in like 20 years with all the pop transfers I’m doing.

    My trade power is hilarious. I have corporate embassies everywhere and just pump out so much unity from Market of Ideas (which is completely busted for a trade empire). I blow through influence pretty fast, otherwise I think I could have more branch offices.

    A war in heaven took place and I turned down both the fallen empires. As a result half the galaxy joined my federation and I quickly amassed a gigantic fed fleet. Completely smushed both empires. They still exist but they are shadows of themselves. Because I’m fanatic pacifist I can’t claim territory so all my allies got the system goodies and it completely doesn’t matter because I am so far ahead of everyone. I have one heavily fortified system in the middle of the divine ascendancy with a huge bastion and a gateway. It’s hilarious watching them glower on the other side of the border and they can’t do anything.

    Like, this game just got out of control stupid fast. Have definitely come full circle on Void Dweller, though I do think some of their early game needs to be tweaked. I am not sure tech rush is going to be viable for a lot of civs. But clearly if you can stay out of trouble and stabilize your base economy you can run roughshod over everyone.

    At this point I’m basically just amassing fleet power to prep for the endgame crisis. It’s a bit boring. Think I need to tweak endgame down to 2450 for the future. But hopefully I can just crush whoever shows up and call it a game.

    Battletag: Threeve#1501; PSN: Threeve703; Steam: 3eeve
  • MillMill Registered User regular
    One of the deceptive things with stability is that unless you read the part that is only visible during the mouse over, you're unlikely to realize that you really want max stability because that means your pops make more stuff. IIRC 50% is the break even point, where what they produce is equal to what the base job production is. So with happiness, unless your pops are 100% happy, you always want more and even if they are 100% happy, just taking on the extra stuff, while not getting you more bonuses, means you can easily eat random events the give you a happiness malus. Same deal with stability, if it isn't at 100%, then you want more. Even if it's at 100%, you want more because that can offset any maluses you pick up. For example, a 105% stability is only as good as 100%, but if you haven't reached the housing crisis, well that extra 5% will be handy when you do reach the housing crisis because that means when you hit peak homelessness, you'll be at 93% instead of 88%, which means you pops will be producing more. Again this goes into how easy it is to overlook the benefits of high happiness because IMO the game doesn't do a great job making obvious. Yes, a mouse over of stability on a planet will tell you, but that's kind of buried.

    As for massive unemployment, if you happen to be egalitarian or are willing to make your empire that, you can easily pop utopian abundance. Downside is that it costs a ton of consumer goods, but by the time you really need that for massive unemployment, you probably could easily produce tons of those or spend energy get tons of them and not suffer for it. One of the big issues at endgame is that unity really looses a ton of it's value because you can keep the edicts that cost it going unless you get bad timing that result in a unity storage rollover right as a unity edict expires. This in turn makes social welfare really useless because it main purpose at this point is to keep your unemployed pops happy, sure they produce 1 unity but it's superfluous to your needs (I actually need to see how the edict system might have made this worse). At this point utopian abundance becomes really good because each unemployed pop produces 2 each of the three research types and one unity, essentially your unemployed, likely to be homeless pops become philosopher hobos. This is to the point that if you don't need all your clerks for amenities or to boost trade as a megacorp with the right setup, you might as well get rid of those useless clerk jobs for even more research. Event at repeatable level tech, more research is much, much better than more unity. I don't see this changing anytime soon because currently slavering empires have a huge advantage over non-slavering empires because indentured servitude was a dumb fucking idea and the only area where egalitarian empires can get a leg up on slavering empires is in the end game by making their jobless pops much more worthwhile than that of slavering empires.

    Anyways as for end game, since we don't get proper end game victories. You'll likely be forced to do some trial and error to figure at what are good midgame and endgame points for various setups. IMO the default tends to be way too long. I'd recommend against raising technology and level costs because default feels like it's a touch on the too long side as well, but that is an option if you want your games to be longer without hitting the point of "I'm OP as fuck and there doesn't seem to be a point in continuing this game."

  • GoodKingJayIIIGoodKingJayIII They wanna get my gold on the ceilingRegistered User regular
    Well, after thoroughly smashing the scourge I called the game. I know that victory is technically not possible because of the War in Heaven, but I am a pacifist and dependent on allies to declare war, and since they're kind of stupid and it would just be me waiting around for another 15-20 years for something to happen, I'm calling this a win.

    I circled my territories, which are relatively small, but of course, habitats. I was also colonizing a second ring world when the scourage showed up, just because I needed something to do.

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    Battletag: Threeve#1501; PSN: Threeve703; Steam: 3eeve
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Buddy of mine was complaining about the mid-game. He only has vanilla so I recommended he pick up some expansion and described what they offered. When Imentioned the galactic community, he said that was already in vanilla. Did they back-port it to the base game?

  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    Buddy of mine was complaining about the mid-game. He only has vanilla so I recommended he pick up some expansion and described what they offered. When Imentioned the galactic community, he said that was already in vanilla. Did they back-port it to the base game?

    Galactic Community is included in base game, but a lot of diplomatic features are in the expansion.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited June 2020
    I've pretty much run out of any compliments to pay 2.7 or the 2.7.2 beta.

    Loading times aren't any shorter. Well, no surprise there.

    Except now we get improperly generated empires at the pre-game. The whole "Despicable neutral" shtick from Futurama is funny until you realize it's only there because the game generated an empire without a name (which has basically always been a possibility), and without governing ethics or an origin (which is a new problem). And if it's a Fallen Empire, expect whatever empire discovers it first to rope it into being a juicy vassal, because it's basically a harmless fat stack of resources that sits there, doing nothing. Try adding the ethics and AI back into it, and the game crashes.

    And we can't even blame mods for it either, apparently. Well, I guess that's what betas are for. To add new bugs that Paradox can reflect somberly on.

    Oh well. Classic Paradox.

    EDIT: Side note--if you're using a mod like Abandoned Habitats to add the occasional habitat around an otherwise empty system, and notice that they're all textureless versions of the Mammalian Habitat, that's basically the blank placeholder the game uses for the old code for habitats and Paradox changed it at some point for some reason or another. For example "avian_01_orbital_habitat_entity" should be "avian_01_habitat_phase_01_entity", which is something you can edit in the save.

    Synthesis on
  • MortiousMortious The Nightmare Begins Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    edited July 2020
    So this time around I've decided to play a little bit more warlike since most of my games are techno-pacifists.

    Made a fantatical militarist xenophobe voidborne empire, i.e. marauders with the idea of holding a small amount of space myself, but turning everybody into tributaries.

    So the game put the two AI marauder empires on my borders. Very thematic.

    But 2 questions, 1) does the ship fire rate bonuses from militarist/distinguished admiralty/supremacy stack on strike craft? and 2) how do I actually make tributaries?

    Mortious on
    Move to New Zealand
    It’s not a very important country most of the time
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
  • AuralynxAuralynx Darkness is a perspective Watching the ego workRegistered User regular
    Mortious wrote: »
    So this time around I've decided to play a little bit more warlike since most of my games are techno-pacifists.

    Made a fantatical militarist xenophobe voidborne empire, i.e. marauders with the idea of holding a small amount of space myself, but turning everybody into tributaries.

    So the game put the two AI marauder empires on my borders. Very thematic.

    But 2 questions, 1) does the ship fire rate bonuses from militarist/distinguished admiralty/supremacy stack on strike craft? and 2) how do I actually make tributaries?

    I know the answer to #2 - you're gonna need to adopt Domination to get the ability to demand tribute. Then, when people refuse, you get the "no, really," CB for tributary status.

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  • MortiousMortious The Nightmare Begins Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    Hmm, can the Eater of Worlds shroud habitats or ring worlds? I might be safe taking this deal them. Probably not worth the risk.

    Move to New Zealand
    It’s not a very important country most of the time
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
  • GoodKingJayIIIGoodKingJayIII They wanna get my gold on the ceilingRegistered User regular
    Started playing this again. Fanatic materialist xenophobes. Spawned next to an advanced empire who immediately demanded vassalage and when I rejected it proceeded to claim tons of my territory. And there was really nothing I could do about it because they had massive fleet power. So they would declare war and I would surrender and cede 2-4 systems and 10 years later they’d do it all over again.

    Well, aliens may be scum, but I’m not stupid. I formed a defensive pact with the nearby megacorp and by the third war it allowed me to push back hard, reclaim lost territory and cripple their economy to the point where they couldn’t recover. Also, I got a bunch of free citadels out of it!

    And, I started eating them. Literally. Just because I could.

    Got the worm I’m waiting event which I’d never completed. Absolutely love it. So much fun colonizing 5-7 planets in one system.

    I want to do a xenophobe pacifist run with inward perfection but I find pacifism so limiting in the mid and late game, and I end up not really knowing what to do with myself.

    Battletag: Threeve#1501; PSN: Threeve703; Steam: 3eeve
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
  • GoodKingJayIIIGoodKingJayIII They wanna get my gold on the ceilingRegistered User regular
    It seems super boring but it’s a bunch of really sweet bonuses.

    My successful habitat run was with xenophile pacifists, and I’ve been wanting to try the other way, but again, pacifism feels sooo limiting and the benefits don’t make up for it.

    Battletag: Threeve#1501; PSN: Threeve703; Steam: 3eeve
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    I'm not crazy and blind in thinking that they removed the Nutritional policy options from the Policy Menu a while ago, right? As a matter of "balancing" (though I suppose it was inherently unbalanced compared to synthetic and Lithoid species)?

    Food is now just basically, "Either you have it, in which case you're good, or you don't, in which case you have famine and you're fucked." Unless you use mods. Even if Encouraging Growth was easy to abuse, I miss the option.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    It was less that people abused it and more that pops were the most important resource in the game and basically made it so maximizing your pop growth was the best strategy no matter what.

  • MillMill Registered User regular
    Yeah, they needed to cut back on the number of things that boost pop growth and there are still areas that need that. There are performance reasons to do so, pops are the biggest drain on CPU resources. Then there is the whole thing about them being the most important resource and thus there really wasn't a ton of choice when it comes to pop growth options, assuming one is trying to be efficient with their choices. If you're going really suboptimal, there is always a choice but IMO a developer that goes "but you can choose to be really suboptimal, so there is a choice" just needs to get out of the industry.

  • GoodKingJayIIIGoodKingJayIII They wanna get my gold on the ceilingRegistered User regular
    Has anyone noticed that there seem to be a lot fewer planets in their empires habitable zone? I feel like in the past I could pretty reliably find 4-5 planets in the green or at least yellow during the first 25 years or so and now I’m extremely lucky if I find 3. AND that’s with the two habitable planets toggled on. Everything else will be in the red.

    I could have sworn I could expand more prior to 2.7. Is this something they changed that I missed?

    Battletag: Threeve#1501; PSN: Threeve703; Steam: 3eeve
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    Mill wrote: »
    Yeah, they needed to cut back on the number of things that boost pop growth and there are still areas that need that. There are performance reasons to do so, pops are the biggest drain on CPU resources. Then there is the whole thing about them being the most important resource and thus there really wasn't a ton of choice when it comes to pop growth options, assuming one is trying to be efficient with their choices. If you're going really suboptimal, there is always a choice but IMO a developer that goes "but you can choose to be really suboptimal, so there is a choice" just needs to get out of the industry.

    As usual, I feel like there was a happy medium short of completely ripping it out. Severely nerf the boosts, including food obviously. Maybe even re-examine how a low food surplus can still potentially hurt growth (for example, of resident species rather than citizens). The game is going to be a CPU-usage air crash disaster no matter what, unfortunately.

  • MortiousMortious The Nightmare Begins Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Synthesis wrote: »
    I'm not crazy and blind in thinking that they removed the Nutritional policy options from the Policy Menu a while ago, right? As a matter of "balancing" (though I suppose it was inherently unbalanced compared to synthetic and Lithoid species)?

    Food is now just basically, "Either you have it, in which case you're good, or you don't, in which case you have famine and you're fucked." Unless you use mods. Even if Encouraging Growth was easy to abuse, I miss the option.

    It's now an edict that you unlock somehow, either a tech or one of those tree unlocks. This is on 2.7.

    And speaking of edicts, I like that the influence ones are now a toggle (and they need to redo the traits that give minus edict cost because those are nerfed hard now) but the penalty for going over seems harsh.

    Mortious on
    Move to New Zealand
    It’s not a very important country most of the time
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
  • GoodKingJayIIIGoodKingJayIII They wanna get my gold on the ceilingRegistered User regular
    I have such a hard time getting some of the tech that I want. I only recently learned that some tech is gated by previous techs--but it doesn't explicitly tell you that, unlike other techs (say, power generators, laser weapons, etc.). Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not.

    I'm going for the world shaper perk on a gaia world origin race I built but the climate restoration tech never appears. And as far as I know I have all the correct tech that I need to get there.

    Battletag: Threeve#1501; PSN: Threeve703; Steam: 3eeve
  • PhyphorPhyphor Building Planet Busters Tasting FruitRegistered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Stellaris' tech system is one of the things I started liking quite a bit but not so much later as I kept playing. It's a neat take on the typical "pick one of a few dozen available techs" style while retaining a traditional tech tree (and also not telling you the tech tree part of it still very much exists). It's got weird interactions like sometimes looking for a specific tech you want to avoid techs that unlock more techs. And sometimes the tech you want just won't show up. And that you have to research a certain number of techs from a tier to see higher tier techs, which is never mentioned anywhere

    I suppose that's thematic to paradox's more narrative style, but being able to say pick your tech with a penalty would be nice for those "god just give me a weapon/reactor upgrade already" scenarios. Or even just to see all the techs you are eligible to get, so you can know you have the prereqs done

    Phyphor on
  • GoodKingJayIIIGoodKingJayIII They wanna get my gold on the ceilingRegistered User regular
    I think it’s totally fine as a design choice to make tech selection somewhat random. And that itself doesn’t bother me. I just want a little more consistency in terms of knowing whether tech A is a gate to tech B. Sometimes it tells us that, sometimes not.

    Battletag: Threeve#1501; PSN: Threeve703; Steam: 3eeve
  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    I have such a hard time getting some of the tech that I want. I only recently learned that some tech is gated by previous techs--but it doesn't explicitly tell you that, unlike other techs (say, power generators, laser weapons, etc.). Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not.

    I'm going for the world shaper perk on a gaia world origin race I built but the climate restoration tech never appears. And as far as I know I have all the correct tech that I need to get there.

    IIRC climate restoration is gated behind some of the earlier terraforming techs, and maybe some habitability improving techs as well. The weighting of some techs can also be slightly influenced by the specialisation of the scientist leading the research. An engineering scientist whose specialisation is voidcraft is more likely to have ship class and starbase research options.

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  • m!ttensm!ttens he/himRegistered User regular
    It might potentially spoil late game features and mechanics and make things feel more "gamey" than "immersive story-building gameplay" but a button on the research tab that shows each tech tree with all your researched skills, along with which ones are locked due to meeting requirements and which ones are available as a potential draw during your next research pick would go a long way to de-mystifying the whole research metagame. In general, I like the system because focusing into one or two paths can make early and mid-game feel pretty different between games, but I know I've gone to the wiki before and had to mentally check off what I've researched and estimate my chances of getting a needed tech, as well as figuring out which skill pick wouldn't make my chances for the next pick to get worse.

  • GoodKingJayIIIGoodKingJayIII They wanna get my gold on the ceilingRegistered User regular
    So I just won a game... without an end game crisis. I didn’t know that could happen.

    Battletag: Threeve#1501; PSN: Threeve703; Steam: 3eeve
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    So I just won a game... without triggering an end game crisis. I didn’t know that could happen.

    Oh yeah, it's possible. Some people call that a feature. I don't.

    On the modding scene, I decided to throw my hands up in defeat and give up on System Scaling compatibility in Real Space 3.6. RS has been very divisive for the last few months on account of a the 2.7-patch being gated behind a Patreon membership (in of itself not that big of an issue, except the earlier RS release seemed to cause a graphical glitch that caused the main menu to be unnavigable, and most people can't really easily roll back to 2.6 without deactivating their whole mod setup anyway). But it still seems to be the most comprehensive visual/environmental overhaul for the galaxy map, especially re: large stellar bodies, star types, etc.

    System scaling was the creator's desire to...well, scale...all interstellar bodies to more vaguely resemble reality. So a gas giant might be one-sixth the diameter of a blue supergiant, rather than one-third or half (not realistic, but still an improvement). Unfortunately, it was basically incompatible with every other mod affecting stellar bodies in the game, and the compatibility patches weren't great.

    Unfortunately, while you can run RS without system scaling, the author's overzealousness to replicate reality has some other issues. For example, Class B (?) supergiants that are so massive they swallow other stars or planets in their system map, making them impossible to select without some tricky camera work (and very dumb looking).

    I can see why a lot of modders are considering cutting out RS support entirely. It's a shame that the other equivalents for stellar bodies/environmental overhaul are three or four times as massive, and more like complete game overhauls. It makes me appreciate how well Planetary Diversity plays with everything else.

  • GoodKingJayIIIGoodKingJayIII They wanna get my gold on the ceilingRegistered User regular
    Synthesis wrote: »
    So I just won a game... without triggering an end game crisis. I didn’t know that could happen.

    Oh yeah, it's possible. Some people call that a feature. I don't.

    It was a huge letdown after 80+ years of vassalizing and conquering 2/3d of the galaxy.

    Battletag: Threeve#1501; PSN: Threeve703; Steam: 3eeve
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    Synthesis wrote: »
    So I just won a game... without triggering an end game crisis. I didn’t know that could happen.

    Oh yeah, it's possible. Some people call that a feature. I don't.

    It was a huge letdown after 80+ years of vassalizing and conquering 2/3d of the galaxy.

    Most obviously, I'm pretty sure you can steam-roll the game and effectively meet the victory criteria years before the actual end-game crisis can happen at its earliest. This is the game working as intended, I think.

    Less obviously, it's entirely possible for the game to bug out and not actually start the end game crisis when it's supposed to. Possibly because of a mod, though not necessarily.

  • GoodKingJayIIIGoodKingJayIII They wanna get my gold on the ceilingRegistered User regular
    Synthesis wrote: »
    Synthesis wrote: »
    So I just won a game... without triggering an end game crisis. I didn’t know that could happen.

    Oh yeah, it's possible. Some people call that a feature. I don't.

    It was a huge letdown after 80+ years of vassalizing and conquering 2/3d of the galaxy.

    Most obviously, I'm pretty sure you can steam-roll the game and effectively meet the victory criteria years before the actual end-game crisis can happen at its earliest. This is the game working as intended, I think.

    Less obviously, it's entirely possible for the game to bug out and not actually start the end game crisis when it's supposed to. Possibly because of a mod, though not necessarily.

    Not running mods currently.

    But yeah, by end of game I had triple the score of my next competitor so I could have won easily 50 years prior.

    I’ve really started to cut back on the “finish” date because there is just so much dead time between mid game and late game.

    Battletag: Threeve#1501; PSN: Threeve703; Steam: 3eeve
  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    https://youtu.be/a6MWyc0wIo8

    From that dev diary. 21 second initial game load.

    Holy crapola.

    Morninglord on
    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
  • PhyphorPhyphor Building Planet Busters Tasting FruitRegistered User regular
    I have somewhat seriously considered trying to get a job at paradox with one goal: improve load times and late game turn times

    21 seconds to start menu is still pretty damn bad if we're honest

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    I've got 12 to 15 minutes, running of an Nvme (Sabrent 1 TB Rocket), but I also have several gigabytes of mods.

    The game has never loaded quickly, even without mods.

  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    Hey man I'm not gonna look down my nose at that. It takes me a good two minutes to load this damn game.

    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
  • Kane Red RobeKane Red Robe Master of Magic ArcanusRegistered User regular
    Couple of buddies roped me into a multiplayer game of this, my second least played Paradox game and I'm doing okay but I need some advice. I'm playing my usual custom race of egalitarian-spiritual-militarists, who are basically the Covenant from Halo, everyone is welcome into the fold as long as they'll follow the faith.

    1) I've expanded past the point where I can conceivably micro my entire empire in a game where I can't pause at will. Is the AI still garbage at sector management and can I mitigate it to at least workable? I literally cannot keep up with buildings and employment on my planets.

    2) Last time I played cruisers were the hot meta for cost:effectiveness ratio. Is that still the case or what should I build my general fleets out of for all around effectiveness? (Obviously I'll make edits once I know the makeup of the enemy fleets)

    3) Is there a use for unity after I've done all of the trees? I'm just about done with them and I'm loath to get rid of all my temples.

    4) Are there any Ascension perks that are just straight up garbage? I've taken the fleet size one, the sprawl reduction one, the telepathy one and the governing ethics attraction one so far.

    5) What are some unorthodox strategies I can use to surprise my friends despite them playing this way more than me?

  • GoodKingJayIIIGoodKingJayIII They wanna get my gold on the ceilingRegistered User regular
    I am probably not the best person to answer these but I can comment on a few.

    3) the edicts you get from Ascension Theory are very good but cost a lot of Unity. If you can run multiples of those you will have some pretty slick bonuses. I don’t know how many temples you have, but I suspect you’ll want to convert at least some of them research labs, since research is king, and the repeating techs you get stack bonuses hard.

    4) The early ascension perks like Admin cap and ethics attraction are considered somewhere between meh to bad, but you also don’t have many choices in the early game. That’s more of a problem with the perks than what choices you’ve made.

    Battletag: Threeve#1501; PSN: Threeve703; Steam: 3eeve
  • MachismoMachismo Registered User regular
    2)
    Pretty sure a balance is best now. For example fast attackers can deliver payload early (like shock in EU4). I think maneuverability hasn't quite been nerfed, but brought to an appropriate level to keep them helpful.
    It can help to have a sorta mobile cavalry of cruiser and below or just below fleets that can just be fast response.

    3) Agreed with Jay above. Those edicts that use unity are great. I think their cost increase, so it may make sense to switch to research at some point. Not sure.

    4) Grasp the void is kinda lame. I still sometimes find myself taking it because I need just a few more starbases, but I avoid it cause it truly is a waste.

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