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To boldy go to [Stellaris] Rift

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Posts

  • OlivawOlivaw good name, isn't it? the foot of mt fujiRegistered User regular
    I always play these games on whatever difficulty is the flattest no bonuses to me or the AI mode

    I’m not here for a challenge I’m here to mess around and see how things play out and get some drama out of it, and I don’t understand how to play well or efficiently enough to stomp the AI anyway

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  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    I'm not here for a challenge I'm here for the personal story (and I suck).

    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    EvmaAlsar wrote: »
    Just curious, but what difficulty does everyone else play on?

    I watch tryhards like MontuPlays and Stefan Anton do Grand Admiral with no scaling but they also have ridiculous resources and military strength 20 years into the game.

    Tried to copy a play style like theirs on GA with clone army and.. it just doesn't work out.

    Yeah pretty similar to the others -- I'm playing on Captain because it feels right.

    Ultimately the only real reason to play on higher difficulties is if you find your current difficulty too easy, or I guess if you're training to push your skill once you feel comfortable with the lower ones.

    Your example is honestly a good reason of why not to play on maxxx difficulty just for the sake of it:

    Clone Army is currently considered pretty damn OP. So those lets plays are using an incredibly meta strategy and wringing out every possible advantage from it they can, in order to be able to overcome the tremendous disadvantages imposed upon you at max difficulty.

    It's....kind of gimmickey as far as learning how to play the game. You're tailoring your entire strategy around something that will probably be nerfed down the line, and learning to play wringing every possible benefit out of that very specific playstyle. If you have fun doing that, fuck yeah!

    But if you're open to lower difficulties it will expand your options of playing, and probably be more satisfying. More specifically to your question -- from the few times I've tried to copy a strat like that, it typically comes down to a bunch of very minor things they're doing that add up to big advantages when it's all executed perfectly. Something like a 2% bonus can be huge when it's something you're doing over and over on dozens of planets.

  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    I've got over 3,000 hours in Stellaris, but I don't multi so was just curious how other people spent their time with it.

    I've settled on Commodore with scaling off for this determined exterminator run so we'll see how it goes. I got a pretty damn nice starting position where I've managed to settle about 7 worlds without spending a huge amount of alloys/influence on scooping up territory. It's Cybrex precursor as a bonus.

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  • WotanAnubisWotanAnubis Registered User regular
    I'm not here for a challenge I'm here for the personal story (and I suck).

    Yeah. I usually fire up Stellaris when I've got an idea for some kind of Space Empire I'd like to play.

    I could probably play on a higher difficulty level than I usually do, but that's also not really what I come to Stellaris for.

  • ScooterScooter Registered User regular
    edited August 2022
    I play low-to-mid but usually with some mod that fixes the enemy AIs a bit. A big problem with setting a level is you don't know if your first neighbors will be friendly or aggressive and it can make a big difference to the early game.

    Scooter on
  • DonnictonDonnicton Registered User regular
    I'm not here for a challenge I'm here for the personal story (and I suck).

    Yeah. I usually fire up Stellaris when I've got an idea for some kind of Space Empire I'd like to play.

    I could probably play on a higher difficulty level than I usually do, but that's also not really what I come to Stellaris for.

    "I think I'll try a spiritual empire this time around."

    (ends up creating a machine empire anyway)

  • MillMill Registered User regular
    I go with a setting I feel comfortable with. Right now that's captain, with no scaling and AI on normal aggression. I play games for fun, so I tend not to bump up the difficulty unless I find things are boring, but I'll also either bump it down or quit if I find it not fun at all or way to stressful. Like if someone wants to tryhard that is on them and they are free to do what they will in their own games. One of these days I should see about multiplayer, but currently I'm using like an 8 year old laptop, so even if I could find people that want a chill game, my computer is probably too much of a potato for that.

    As for the stuff Stefon and Montu pull off. A fair bit of it is exploiting the meta and min/maxing to the extreme. As pointed out, each bonus, while small, really starts to add up if you have a mountain of them. The downside to this approach, other than learning how to play in a way that might get patched out, is that you are very much at the mercy of RNG and having to forgo more interesting choices.

    Anyways, currently playing an empire loosely based on one of the hololive vtubers. I figure a fanatical pacifist and spiritual megacorp empire with teachers of the shroud origin, is close to what Ina would be. I will say, that I won't don't spiritualist empires often, given how slow stuff seems to be going.

  • DaimarDaimar A Million Feet Tall of Awesome Registered User regular
    I bounced off of this fairly hard when I first got it but was looking through my backlog and thought I might give it another go. I don't have any expansions though, does it work without them or are they must haves?

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  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    edited August 2022
    Daimar wrote: »
    I bounced off of this fairly hard when I first got it but was looking through my backlog and thought I might give it another go. I don't have any expansions though, does it work without them or are they must haves?

    I'll be honest I found the original game to be pretty boring and samey relative to other similar games at the time.

    I think the first DLC, Utopia, is what made it whole and unique and cool. They started to get a bit more weird with it and the different types of civilizations started to feel properly asymmetrical and varied.

    You'll find the game has changed a lot without buying any DLC because of the way paradox patches their games (fairly dramatic overhauls to systems and removing some entirely), but I would highly recommend at least Utopia.

    Fiatil on
  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited August 2022
    I don't really think this is a very good game to go into expecting to find a good challenging strategy game, although I'm sure it's there.

    If you are like me though and only play these games as a sandbox out of which you extract meaningful personal stories and experiences, it's easily the best in the genre.

    Morninglord on
    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
  • MillMill Registered User regular
    Aspec runs a DLC list, here is the most recent one, which should include the last one.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlplHuNBV-Y&ab_channel=ASpec

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    edited August 2022
    I have spent so much god damned money on this game.

    It's got to easily be the most I've spent on a single game that wasn't an MMO.

    Undead Scottsman on
  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    I don't want to know how much it all costs up front because I just get them when they come out, or if I'm busy with some other game, later on when it's on special.

    And it's all great!

    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
  • ElvenshaeElvenshae Registered User regular
    Yet another A++ announcement trailer.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    So Story Packs are basically dead then?

  • MillMill Registered User regular
    So it won't be this patch and it might not be Orion, which is the patch after, but given that they are sharing details. We know at some point there will be changes to ship combat, I mean it was pretty obvious given how unfun wars are and how the meta just invalidates a shit ton of tech in the bloated engineering tree, but also in the physics tree as well. Also they are doing changes to the ascension paths.

    I'm going to drop this video here because it's a lot of information.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMzRclGxHRM&ab_channel=MontuPlays

    For ship combat, they are looking at adding in a new hull type, torpedo corvettes, which will be tankier but less evasive than normal corvettes. They are going to push for each hull type have more of a roll to fill, while making it so that proton torpedo battleships don't end up being the end game meta because battrleships can't have torpedoes. A big change to torpedoes that is they'll deal more damage as you progress up to bigger hull types (ex. battleships will eat 5x the damage from the same torpedo as a regular corvette, but no much if that damage goes up beyond that point if the targets is a Titan, Juggernaut, Star Easter or something like a citadel starbase. My guess is that 5x is the max for damage on ships given the limitations on ships larger than battleships and given how the current meta still shits on starbases, it probably will work differently on those). They also intend to reign in doom stacks and the number of fleets people have, as in they've stated the former just isn't fun and that there are just too many fleets present towards end game, which also can be really unfun to deal with. The combat changes might happen before they reign in doom stacks and fleet spam, since those are kind of different systems outside of combat. Also mention that they'll probably do a pass on repeatable techs and possibly even current techs (IMO engineering needs pruning, some techs probably should be scrapped and some might be an okay fit in physics, if engineering is still too crowded).

    As for ascension paths. They are looking at reducing those down to one perk slot, so freeing up a perk slot for other stuff, which means less work needed to make the weakest perks viable (aka rather than trying to make them non-path perk choice #6, they could still get picked up as perk #7. Synth path is taking a hit, with cybernetics been split off into it's own path, so we'll have four. Both psionic and bio will still be open tot he same types of empires. Cybernetic will be open to regular, hiveminds and driven assimilators and a new AP is being added (I suspect that's the one that opens it up for DA). Synth is being opened up to machine empires as well and they'll need synthetic age (I think that's the name of the perk that gives them more trait points and slots) to access it. Right now they are leaning towards making them tradition paths that are mutually exclusive from one another, I'm hoping they'll give them the become the crisis interface because they are pretty much mandatory and that would really limit us to six traditions and it really blows for non DA machine empires because you get no choice (well you could choice to play badly, but yeah, that's not really a choice if you want to play well).

    Anyways this all sounds pretty cool and apparently we'll get a beta for the combat overhaul, not sure if the path revamp will be in or if it won't or if it'll get it's own beta.

  • DonnictonDonnicton Registered User regular
    I'm not sure I like the solution to battleship torpedoes is just "well they can't use them at all anymore then". Even ignoring how unimaginative a design solution that is, it doesn't make sense in-game either. "We can build a shell around a star but a torpedo on a battleship is an engineering feat too far."

    Resolving doomstacks is something I hope they can pull off as much for AI as for players. Rolling crisis doomstacks at the end game is just as annoying as other players, particularly given the AI of other regular empires being completely inadequate to handle them.

  • WotanAnubisWotanAnubis Registered User regular
    I hope the cybernetic path becomes an actual thing. I like the idea of my empire becoming cyborgs, but I'm not particularly interested in turning everyone into robots and it just kind of feels bad to take only half of an ascension path. So I'm all for cybernetics becoming its own thing.

  • -Loki--Loki- Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining. Registered User regular
    Hey

    I want a bioship/fully biologic path before robuts get another path.

  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    Donnicton wrote: »
    I'm not sure I like the solution to battleship torpedoes is just "well they can't use them at all anymore then". Even ignoring how unimaginative a design solution that is, it doesn't make sense in-game either. "We can build a shell around a star but a torpedo on a battleship is an engineering feat too far."

    Resolving doomstacks is something I hope they can pull off as much for AI as for players. Rolling crisis doomstacks at the end game is just as annoying as other players, particularly given the AI of other regular empires being completely inadequate to handle them.

    It could just be standard fleet doctrine.

    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    It's sort of funny poking my head in and hearing what's changed - last time I played, I think the meta fleets I was doing were fast Corvette swarms designed to tie up fleets while stripping shields/other defenses, and then big ol artillery battleships would land in the system and obliterate the now pinned enemy fleet.

    So hearing it's currently all torpedoes is a bit the more things change...

    Anyway, if they're fiddling with the APs they probably need to take a further look at how much research the biological ascension path needs, and how you can end up playing out the tiny genetic fires. (I just tried to make everyone into as super as possible pops. Everyone was equal in the Loveable Mind Nonmers empire! Long age, powerful builds and grand brains for all).

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • DonnictonDonnicton Registered User regular
    Going to need a mod that replaces the in-game music with it.

  • MillMill Registered User regular
    -Loki- wrote: »
    Hey

    I want a bioship/fully biologic path before robuts get another path.

    Well biological ascension is slotted to let you incorporate Leviathan traits. Assuming you have to kill them, but still that could be pretty damn cool.

    Anyways on the front of bioships, I've been thinking, that with the ascension path rework, they should base the species pack after Toxiods on the concepts you see in the various ascension paths. Call it Masters of Ascension.

    -Have an origin where your empire starts out with bioships and fully organic buildings. The origin should definitely lock the empire out of being able to go down synthetic ascension if it's normal or hive empire. Maybe lock it it to just hiveminds, since they do have the best fit. Have biological ascension already essentially unlocked. Probably will need some die sides to make up for essentially having an extra perk, so it isn't too OP.

    -Have a cyborg origin as well. Similar deal to the above one, where the appropriate path is already unlocked, but with downsides to off set having that advantage.

    -Have an AP that unlocks the ability to make bioships, but lock it behind have a tech that requires biological ascension or the bio mastery origin. Probably give the ships a few special features that can only be gotten by the AP. That way the bio mastery origin won't be OP by having two free perks. The ships from the origin would mostly behave like regular ships, but would have a different skin and requires food for construction, while the bioships from the perk have some different features.

    or

    Make this a civic that bio mastery origin is locked into and maybe it's a civic that can't be added or removed (aka the bioships aren't part of the biological mastery origin, but it kind of is since you have to pick the civic anyways). Could also be fun added a civic that can be added to your empire, but can't be removed. If we go the civic route, the different resources for construction might be enough to carry it a fair bit. Maybe have hull and armor regen be a passive thing for bioships. This also opens the fun concept of if the civic still needs a bit more power, of letting those with this civic grow existing ships into a hull type above it's current size. So if you go on a conquest spree early game and have more corvettes than you need and have to drop some, you can just have them go to a shipyard and grow into destroyers. Note, if this is an AP, this could also be a perk of having the AP.

    -Obviously bioship set and organic building backgrounds.

    There is more that could be done here. I'm leaving out the idea of a normal synth. It's not that I don't think it won't be interesting, but more that it would need to get several passes with the nerf bat to make sure it isn't fucking disgustingly OP. Of the top of my head, Fanatical militarist, materialistic empire with private prospectors and brand loyalty. Is an empire that could easily go with a setup that let's them put most of their jobs towards maximizing alloying and research production, while still bring in enough energy, unity and consumer goods to cover everything else. Plus, as machines, they can colonize any planet within their empire. I know with more time I could come up with an even more OP setup and I know others can come up with some truly obnoxious BS starting setups if that origin were added today and all it did was give you the proposed tradition path. Like the origin would probably fail because it would need way too many fucking restrictions at game start that drop and people would piss and moan all the way about it.

  • RuldarRuldar Registered User regular
    I hope the cybernetic path becomes an actual thing. I like the idea of my empire becoming cyborgs, but I'm not particularly interested in turning everyone into robots and it just kind of feels bad to take only half of an ascension path. So I'm all for cybernetics becoming its own thing.

    100% with you on this, that ascension path is one I typically only take half of as is for the flavor and RP value.

  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited September 2022
    Robot bodies for everyone!

    Morninglord on
    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
  • MillMill Registered User regular
    Bit sad that psionic isn't being opened for hiveminds, by cyborg hiveminds sound pretty rad in themselves.

  • DacDac Registered User regular
    Bioships should not be a hive mind only thing because dammit I want Farscape.

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  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    yeah definitely not that would be boring
    non hive-minds can grow things too!

    BahamutZERO.gif
  • SixSix Caches Tweets in the mainframe cyberhex Registered User regular
    So I bought this game in April, 2017 and between then and now I'd played it for 91 minutes, halfheartedly trying to understand the tutorial but never clicking. Saturday I was sick and a friend suggested we do a multiplayer game of this so I watched 15 mintues of an intro video and gave it a shot.

    22 hours later I accidentally ended my first game by killing the last of the crisis race and finishing a very close third. Then I went to bed, but decided to see if it worked well on steam deck.

    2 hours later it was 1:30 am and I really, really needed to go to bed

    can you feel the struggle within?
  • CantidoCantido Registered User regular
    I seems like I am always hurting for Alloys and Consumer goods starting as Aquatics despite the Catalytic Converter workers.

    How do I fix this? Note that I have never won a Stellaris solo session but got pretty far as UN.

    3DS Friendcode 5413-1311-3767
  • MillMill Registered User regular
    Depends on your civics, ethics, origin, species traits, edicts and living standards. Also what you're doing with industrial districts and the policies you pick. On average, you're always going to start out in a position where you'll quickly struggle to have enough alloys to everything you want and your mineral and energy income, along with available pops, is going to be in a way that limits your ability to get new buildings on line. You usually start with a slight surplus of consumer goods, but rapid colonization and heavy research can eat through those fast.

    My experience, is that you need to first figure out how you want to do early game on the following points. Do you want to invade neighbors ASAP or do you want focus on research. As far as I know, there aren't any meta builds that can do both research and aggression at the same time. Your metallurgists and researchers both need additional consumer good upkeep and you have only so many pops. Sadly, I do believe that the game is still biased towards zerg rushing people down, they really should add in unique capital system starbases, so that they can reign that in. Then also get special situations up for conquered worlds, so that people have to put time and work into making them a boon down the line, but only if the player does things right and has the resources on hand, rather than a quick boon that boosts the snowball effect.

    I will say, early colonization, system claims and exploration can be a big factor here.

    They did succeed at making it so that you don't want to colonize every crap world ASAP. Pops grow slower and need more shit to do basic things. So right now, if resources are an issue, you're really better off not throwing pops on the world they have 70% or less habitability on; especially, if it's 0%. You're better off trying to get pops that won't be eating shit on those worlds in the early game because you can just brute force it.

    It's also not worth building an outpost in every system that you find early game. You only want to claim low resource systems in the early game if it lets you setup a chokepoint, box the AI out of what you want to control or if you'd otherwise have to leapfrog over it. Like with influence costs, income and travel time. I'm not sure there are many situations where leapfrogging is going to be worth it. It just drives up the influence cost and unless you can guarantee a leapfrog will let you secure something and lock other AI empires out before they can create border gore. It's just not worth it most of the time. Once you get minerals under control, even a 2 resource system is better than nothing. Just don't grab the 2 energy system that only has one way in and is so far from the first choke point, that the AI is never claiming it. It'd debatable if that will even be worth claiming later on and it's something the devs should look into. I'm fine with prioritizing systems, but at some point, it should always be a high enough benefit to claim even the worst systems, after all the good stuff is claimed.

    Exploration can hurt not only unity but also alloy and consumer goods. Those leaders need upkeep, cost unity and well science ships aren't cheap when it comes to alloys early game. Also they did kill the downgrade trick, so you can't even use that on your three corvettes to get enough alloys for another science ship.

    Outside of the above three, the other three areas that can have a huge impact on this are living standards, edicts and policies.

    Usually, the game is set on basic living standards, so unless you turn a specialized one on for a species, those don't cause issues. That said you can turn those on and that could be a boon or a bust depending on a number of things. I'll say, don't turn on decadent living or utopian abundance standards early on, if they are options for you. They are great, but expensive and early game, I'd argue unless you really know how to min/max they'll do more harm than good. Academic Privilege and Stratified economy can be pretty good early game. They come with increased consumer good usage, but unlike the first two, the pops getting the boosts is much smaller and easier to managed, instead of all the pops for the species selected.

    Depending on ethics, you can have access to some pretty useful edicts that can boost production. Authoritarian has information control, which gives some stability and that means a slight boost to resources. Pacifist has peace festivals, which gives increased pop happiness and that means greater stability and thus increased resources.

    Lastly, you can set you economic policy to focus on either alloys or consumer goods. The one you pick see increased output, while the other other sees a decrease and IIRC that decrease is a lower percent than the increase. This means you usually get a better deal by picking one or the other and this is why you tend to see the research rush vs zerg rush choice at the start. Though do note that void dweller is always better off focus on alloys and won't being zerging people down. You can always unlock trade policies that give you consumer goods and energy, instead of just energy, but that requires either going down the mercantile tradition tree or lucking out into a trade league.

    Finally, we get into origins and civics. If alloys and consumer goods are a struggle for you, you'll want to avoid imperial fiefdom origin as a Prospectorium because the tax your overlord takes on those is going to hurt; especially, the consumer goods one. Void dweller is also a possible bad start for someone with that problem because you need alloy income to build more habitats and since you can't really build ships for early conquest, you need to pretty much tech rush and economy rush to stay ahead. On the flip side, clone soldiers can be stupid good because you can quickly grow pops and usually get a decent number of specialist boosts to increase alloy and consumer good production. As for civics, well pleasure seekers gives you the decadent living standard and that is the main draw, so not a great choice for those that struggle with consumer goods. Now masterful crafters on the other hand is fantastic for making consumer goods easier to manage, since it gives you artificers which are more efficient than artisans, IIRC it's 2 more consumer goods and you also get .5 engineering production. So you have more efficient pops, which really helps when population is limiting things.

    I'm sure there is more I can add and there is stuff I'm probably missing, but this is already a long post.

  • SixSix Caches Tweets in the mainframe cyberhex Registered User regular
    edited September 2022
    I have a problem

    H6Zc2pLl.jpg

    Six on
    can you feel the struggle within?
  • FoefallerFoefaller Registered User regular
    Six wrote: »
    I have a problem

    H6Zc2pLl.jpg

    Yes, the problem is that you can only spare 15 hours a day to Stellaris.

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  • SixSix Caches Tweets in the mainframe cyberhex Registered User regular
    Foefaller wrote: »
    Six wrote: »
    I have a problem

    H6Zc2pLl.jpg

    Yes, the problem is that you can only spare 15 hours a day to Stellaris.

    On one of those days I left the house at 7am for a work trip and didn’t return until 8pm and couldn’t play in between.

    It makes the math scarier.

    can you feel the struggle within?
  • nexuscrawlernexuscrawler Registered User regular
    Is the new species pack any good

  • AuralynxAuralynx Darkness is a perspective Watching the ego workRegistered User regular
    Is the new species pack any good

    Knights of the Toxic God seems pretty okay from what I've logged with it. The minigame of doing various Knight Things is pretty amusing.

    kshu0oba7xnr.png

  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    edited October 2022
    Six wrote: »
    I have a problem

    H6Zc2pLl.jpg

    M1A8kAi.jpg

    ONE OF US

    ONE OF US

    ONE OF US

    Auralynx wrote: »
    Is the new species pack any good

    Knights of the Toxic God seems pretty okay from what I've logged with it. The minigame of doing various Knight Things is pretty amusing.

    They are really powerful as researchers if you pick the research boost option in all of the quests they get, leaves your homeworld free to focus on resources.

    EvmaAlsar on
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