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AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

hobbesmaster posted:

ICS has proved effective throughout history!
What does ICS stand for in this instance?

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Magil Zeal
Nov 24, 2008

And along the lines of the Roman Empire, I'm no opponent to internal building being good. In fact I think it should have huge pay-offs. If I was designing it, in fact, buildings would cost no energy maintenance at all. Just have all starbases cost energy maintenance, including outposts, possibly scaling with empire size and/or distance to government center, in the same way ethos attraction works. It should always be desirable to have lots of things, whether it's outward or inward, and balancing both is key to building a rich and powerful empire. In that way you encourage building upward without necessarily discouraging building outwards.

I don't hate the idea of energy maintenance on starbases. I just think it's too much combined with everything else expanding costs you.

Archenteron
Nov 3, 2006

:marc:
Yesterday in babby's first (post tutorial partial-game) Stellaris game: My technocratic space empire of potatolike fungoids (with their enslaved lower-caste) found the last of their pantheon's space shrines... right inside the borders of a fanatic purifier race that slammed closed the borders. On the other side of the galaxy.

Cue bribing a few star nations for good relations, and sending a fleet through a wormhole deep into an ally's space halfway to my goal, rolling through a space crystal squad to get to the borders... and finding out I can't press a claim or have any sort of CB against these assholes.

Cue sending a construction ship along the same route, having to spend 1000 influence to claim a system in the rear end-end of nowhere but on the border I need, and immediately getting and launching a Containment CB, rolling over every system these guys owned, ignoring their planets, then declaring a status quo peace, selling all their captured systems (and my beachhead system) to all their neighbors for one-sided research agreements/minerals, and then one of those neighbors declaring war on them, shelling their planets, and removing them from the game.

End result: Resources for me, removal of a galactic threat, three really happy star nations who I gave hilariously lopsided trades to, and gaining Spiritualist from finishing my space-god quest chain, meaning we're now a Holy Empire, baby. Astra Deus Vult!

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

What does ICS stand for in this instance?

Infinite city spam. Every civ game since 3 has tried to reduce its effectiveness. Peak ICS was probably SMAC.

TGLT
Aug 14, 2009

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

What does ICS stand for in this instance?

Infinite City Sprawl, which was the old civ strategy of just always building new cities forever always all tiles, everywhere (after accounting for the workable tile footprint).

Also the Roman Empire was pretty loosely organized and prone to near constant civil wars. poo poo for a bit there it was three different empires. I mean I'm down for bigger = more likely revolutions, but until then maintenance costs and increasing unity/research work just fine.

TGLT fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Mar 1, 2018

Jazerus
May 24, 2011


TGLT posted:

I mean I'm down for bigger = more likely revolutions, but until then maintenance costs and increasing unity/research work just fine.

i dream of the day that sectors have government types and elect/appoint/crown/etc. governors who have their own political agendas that may lead them to rebellion

Randarkman
Jul 18, 2011

TGLT posted:

Infinite City Sprawl, which was the old civ strategy of just always building new cities forever always all tiles, everywhere (after accounting for the workable tile footprint).

Also the Roman Empire was pretty loosely organized and prone to near constant civil wars. poo poo for a bit there point it was three different empires. I mean I'm down for bigger = more likely revolutions, but until then maintenance costs and increasing unity/research work just fine.

Until Diocletian there wasn't even much of a formal state apparatus at all, no organizations in charge of taxations or public works or anything like that, it was all done at a local level by local notables with the Emperor at the top of the pyramid as the head of the army and kind of acting as the patron of the entire empire.

Magil Zeal
Nov 24, 2008

TGLT posted:

Also the Roman Empire was pretty loosely organized and prone to near constant civil wars. poo poo for a bit there point it was three different empires. I mean I'm down for bigger = more likely revolutions, but until then maintenance costs and increasing unity/research work just fine.

Pax Romana is also said to have lasted more than 200 years.

TGLT
Aug 14, 2009

Magil Zeal posted:

Pax Romana is also said to have lasted more than 200 years.

Pax Romana's bullshit. It basically just amounted to "winded down the near constant foreign invasions." Nero was an emperor during Pax Romana, and right after him is the Year of Four Emperors. You also had a pretty major Jewish revolt in those 200 years.

History of Rome is a great podcast for listening to while playing Stellaris, if you're interested. edit: basically if there's one theme in Roman history, it's that Hadrian was right and their enormous size relative to their capacity to navigate it was a constant issue. Wheeling the army around to respond to problems was a whole thing and Governors couldn't be trusted to handle it on their own.

TGLT fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Mar 1, 2018

TalonDemonKing
May 4, 2011

Gort posted:

###################
# Balance
###################
* Increased energy upkeep of all Starbase sizes by +1. Outposts now cost 1 energy maintenance

What the gently caress?

Also, is mega-engineering only available through ascension perks now or?

metasynthetic
Dec 2, 2005

in one moment, Earth

in the next, Heaven

Megamarm
I'm way behind in the thread but I wanted to submit these guys for the latest generation of the goon race mod:

The Solarian State

(not shown: starting system is Sol, of course)

Made them natural engineers since that's the only way you can literally create pops to be slaves.

Trivia
Feb 8, 2006

I'm an obtuse man,
so I'll try to be oblique.
I started a new game. Things were going swimmingly. Then I meet my neighbors, fanatical purifiers no less. "No problem." I think, surely I can beat them in a rush.

Then I start scouting and see that the game really hates me.



It's a bit hard to see, but that ONE system has 38 loving minerals in it. From what I assume is a shattered planet.

gently caress you, game.

Magil Zeal
Nov 24, 2008

TGLT posted:

Pax Romana's bullshit. It basically just amounted to "winded down the near constant foreign invasions." Nero was an emperor during Pax Romana, and right after him is the Year of Four Emperors. You also had a pretty major Jewish revolt in those 200 years.

Oh, sure, there were times of internal strife. It wasn't "near constant civil wars" though.

And modeling revolts and revolutions in a strategy game is generally not a good thing.

Brother Entropy
Dec 27, 2009

Trivia posted:

I started a new game. Things were going swimmingly. Then I meet my neighbors, fanatical purifiers no less. "No problem." I think, surely I can beat them in a rush.

Then I start scouting and see that the game really hates me.



It's a bit hard to see, but that ONE system has 38 loving minerals in it. From what I assume is a shattered planet.

gently caress you, game.

think how sweet it'll be when you finally steal it from them though

Trogdos!
Jul 11, 2009

A DRAGON POKEMAN
well technically a water/flying type
A thing to note is that even though starbase upkeep was raised, Expansion traditions got this:

quote:

* Galactic Ambition expansion tradition now gives -20% starbase upkeep instead of +2 starbase capacity

Magil Zeal
Nov 24, 2008

Trogdos! posted:

A thing to note is that even though starbase upkeep was raised, Expansion traditions got this:

It sounds nice on paper, but it'd be a while before that actually outweighs building two extra starbases packed full of trading hubs. Though maybe that's bias from my last game where I played Corporate Dominion with Prosperity and was making huge bank from trading hubs. I'll call it a wash at best.

Magil Zeal fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Mar 1, 2018

TGLT
Aug 14, 2009

Magil Zeal posted:

Oh, sure, there were times of internal strife. It wasn't "near constant civil wars" though.

And modeling revolts and revolutions in a strategy game is generally not a good thing.

It totally is though, but in lieu of that you get maintenance costs and an empire that is increasingly more difficult to keep cohesive.

Also I mean three Jewish revolts, the Year of the Four Emperors, Boudica's revolt, plus two wars with Parthia and one with Dacia, that's a pretty heavy amount of fighting. Then it ends in the Year of the Five Emperors and all the poo poo between that and Diocletian. It was relatively better than the periods of instability preceding and following it, but it's still more myth than fact.

Jazerus
May 24, 2011


TGLT posted:

Pax Romana's bullshit. It basically just amounted to "winded down the near constant foreign invasions." Nero was an emperor during Pax Romana, and right after him is the Year of Four Emperors. You also had a pretty major Jewish revolt in those 200 years.

History of Rome is a great podcast for listening to while playing Stellaris, if you're interested.

nero was a perfectly decent emperor in that, because he was way too busy working on his sweet lyre jams to pick up actresses, he really did nothing to interfere with the workings of the imperial apparatus; it was very used to self-direction since tiberius and claudius were both pretty hands-off and caligula was, well, caligula, so this wasn't as much of an issue as you'd think. his reputation as a bad ruler is incredibly overblown because the senate thought he was weak enough that a bunch of propaganda could lead to a successful senatorial coup. which they indeed tried during the year of the four emperors, and their senatorial emperor was terrible

the pax romana was totally a real thing. the average roman's life was not at all disturbed by any of the political intrigue you describe, except for those living in rome itself maybe. there is violence during the pax romana obviously, but it's less frequent and, jewish revolts excepted, less severe than you might expect before or afterward.

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon

TalonDemonKing posted:

Also, is mega-engineering only available through ascension perks now or?

It's the same as before, except that there's a chance of spawning broken-down galactic wonders (Sentry Array, Science Nexus, Dyson Sphere) which you can repair with just the Mega-Engineering tech and don't require any perks. Gateways are built through the megastructure interface, but they don't require any perks and don't block megastructure construction.

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters
Hopefully opting in to the beta patch won't bust my Ironman save. I have such a rad starting position :ohdear:

Magil Zeal
Nov 24, 2008

TGLT posted:

Also I mean three Jewish revolts, the Year of the Four Emperors, Boudica's revolt, plus two wars with Parthia and one with Dacia, that's a pretty heavy amount of fighting. Then it ends in the Year of the Five Emperors and all the poo poo between that and Diocletian. It was relatively better than the periods of instability preceding and following it, but it's still more myth than fact.

I'm referring to Pax Romana strictly as it refers to internal strife, though. The Roman Empire was pretty good at keeping its own poo poo together without a huge number of "civil wars", for a while anyway (not for the entirety of its existence, certainly). There was the occasional uprising in the provinces, sure. But "near constant civil war"? No.

TGLT posted:

It totally is though, but in lieu of that you get maintenance costs and an empire that is increasingly more difficult to keep cohesive.

I don't consider a cost the same as modeling revolts/revolutions, but I agree it's a good measure. I simply balk at the current implementation as going too far (or at least, too far in the wrong direction).

Randarkman
Jul 18, 2011

Jazerus posted:

nero was a perfectly decent emperor in that, because he was way too busy working on his sweet lyre jams to pick up actresses, he really did nothing to interfere with the workings of the imperial apparatus; it was very used to self-direction since tiberius and claudius were both pretty hands-off and caligula was, well, caligula, so this wasn't as much of an issue as you'd think. his reputation as a bad ruler is incredibly overblown because the senate thought he was weak enough that a bunch of propaganda could lead to a successful senatorial coup. which they indeed tried during the year of the four emperors, and their senatorial emperor was terrible

the pax romana was totally a real thing. the average roman's life was not at all disturbed by any of the political intrigue you describe, except for those living in rome itself maybe. there is violence during the pax romana obviously, but it's less frequent and, jewish revolts excepted, less severe than you might expect before or afterward.

Well, here's the thing, really there wasn't much of an imperial apparatus for an Emeperor to mess with, the Roman Empire essentially ran itself, and that doesn't mean it had a self-perpetuating bureacracy or anything like that it means that every part of the empire ran its own affairs at the local level with very little intereference or involvement from above, except things like appointments to the most important posts like governor and such (and this was often more of a rubber stamp kind of thing than anything else).

Truly it is not until Diocletian you get anything resembling what we'd call a state apparatus at all.

TGLT
Aug 14, 2009

Magil Zeal posted:

I'm referring to Pax Romana strictly as it refers to internal strife, though. The Roman Empire was pretty good at keeping its own poo poo together without a huge number of "civil wars", for a while anyway (not for the entirety of its existence, certainly). There was the occasional uprising in the provinces, sure. But "near constant civil war"? No.

Well the "near constant civil war" comment wasn't about Pax Romana specifically but the Roman Empire's history as a whole. It's the root of its inception and the biggest recurring issue I can think of after the five good emperors.

Magil Zeal posted:

I don't consider a cost the same as modeling revolts/revolutions, but I agree it's a good measure. I simply balk at the current implementation as going too far (or at least, too far in the wrong direction).

Eh, my experience so far has been that most costs are getting offset by the growth itself. Except for the unity.

Jazerus posted:

nero was a perfectly decent emperor in that, because he was way too busy working on his sweet lyre jams to pick up actresses, he really did nothing to interfere with the workings of the imperial apparatus; it was very used to self-direction since tiberius and claudius were both pretty hands-off and caligula was, well, caligula, so this wasn't as much of an issue as you'd think. his reputation as a bad ruler is incredibly overblown because the senate thought he was weak enough that a bunch of propaganda could lead to a successful senatorial coup. which they indeed tried during the year of the four emperors, and their senatorial emperor was terrible

I think Caligula's purges were a lot more responsible for his bad reputation. Also Nero gets undue poo poo for the fire but he did start going down hill in his last years. I mean assassination attempts will do that to you, but still. Also the Domus Aurea is the dumbest loving thing.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


TGLT posted:

Well the "near constant civil war" comment wasn't about Pax Romana specifically but the Roman Empire's history as a whole. It's the root of its inception and the biggest recurring issue I can think of after the five good emperors.

There are only two periods of the classical empire that would qualify as near constant civil war. The Social War through the ascent of Augustus, and then the Crisis of the Third Century.

The empire started with the conquest of foreign territory during the Punic Wars. The socii which switched sides during Hannibal's invasion were not part of the Roman state so I wouldn't count those.

Magil Zeal
Nov 24, 2008

TGLT posted:

Well the "near constant civil war" comment wasn't about Pax Romana specifically but the Roman Empire's history as a whole. It's the root of its inception and the biggest recurring issue I can think of after the five good emperors.

And that was my reason for bringing up Pax Romana as a two hundred year period where we can say that "near constant civil war" wasn't a thing.

TGLT posted:

Eh, my experience so far has been that most costs are getting offset by the growth itself. Except for the unity.

To some extent I agree (prior to this new cost), but it also creates weird situations where it's "optimal" to claim a bunch of stuff, and then later remove outposts on systems that don't produce much and won't be claimed by other empires. Pirates, after a while, cease to be a threat and are more of a nuisance.

At any rate, I'm not asking for a lot either. I just want the %-based research cost increase per system gone, if we're going to need to pay energy for it.

Magil Zeal fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Mar 1, 2018

Jazerus
May 24, 2011


Randarkman posted:

Well, here's the thing, really there wasn't much of an imperial apparatus for an Emeperor to mess with, the Roman Empire essentially ran itself, and that doesn't mean it had a self-perpetuating bureacracy or anything like that it means that every part of the empire ran its own affairs at the local level with very little intereference or involvement from above, except things like appointments to the most important posts like governor and such (and this was often more of a rubber stamp kind of thing than anything else).

Truly it is not until Diocletian you get anything resembling what we'd call a state apparatus at all.

this is kind of a mischaracterization. from the very beginning, augustus had a fairly large household staff that doubled as, essentially, command staff for the empire as a whole, handling routine communications from governors and directing policy in the significant chunk of the empire that had non-senatorial governors because augustus owned it as personal property. he had a huge network of clients, both inherited from caesar and established himself, who carried out his will outside of formal channels, including some agents you could accurately describe as secret police, who watched the administrations of the provinces for unusual levels of corruption and hunted national security threats.

this informal imperial administration kept going as though augustus were still alive for quite a while after he died, in the sense that they ran the empire in basically the same way as augustus would have while his successors brooded and partied and went into bloodthirsty rages. diocletian formalized what remained of it as an actual imperial court because he loved the trappings of monarchy, and because it desperately needed to be formalized to continue operating.

Jazerus fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Mar 1, 2018

TGLT
Aug 14, 2009

Grand Fromage posted:

There are only two periods of the classical empire that would qualify as near constant civil war. The Social War through the ascent of Augustus, and then the Crisis of the Third Century.

The empire started with the conquest of foreign territory during the Punic Wars. The socii which switched sides during Hannibal's invasion were not part of the Roman state so I wouldn't count those.

I was referring to Julius loving off to Gaul so he could pay his debts and duck the senate until he was ready to roll in with an army. Although yeah the republic was definitely in the imperialism game with the Punic wars.

Jabarto
Apr 7, 2007

I could do with your...assistance.
I"m really liking the buffs to militarist and its asociated civics. I was just thinking the other day that they feel kind of weak, but the buff to Citizen Service in particular makes it seem like a perfect fit for my Military Commissariat + Beacon of Liberty. Also I was surprised from day one that being militarist didn't affect your war exhaustion at all.

prussian advisor
Jan 15, 2007

The day you see a camera come into our courtroom, its going to roll over my dead body.
So since I had heard that Marauders were kinda broken with the new patch, I’ve simply been playing with the Marauder slider set to zero since 2.0 dropped. Now that the “neutral rampage” bug has evidently been fixed, I figure I’ll start playing with them in. Anyone have a basic idea of the best way to deal with them? Are they strong enough that you can’t deal with them just one-on-one early on (outside of a Great Khan event of course)?

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
Their raiding fleet is gonna be bigger than anything you can field unless you've been going all out, but if you've been fortifying your borders and can figure out where they're going to start, you can hold them off with a good bastion and a reasonably sized fleet. Planetary FTL inhibitors mess them up good, but that's harder to set up without some losses.

Aethernet
Jan 28, 2009

This is the Captain...

Our glorious political masters have, in their wisdom, decided to form an alliance with a rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters right when the Federation has us at a tactical disadvantage. Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in the Feds firing on our vessels...

Damn you Huxley!

Grimey Drawer

prussian advisor posted:

So since I had heard that Marauders were kinda broken with the new patch, I’ve simply been playing with the Marauder slider set to zero since 2.0 dropped. Now that the “neutral rampage” bug has evidently been fixed, I figure I’ll start playing with them in. Anyone have a basic idea of the best way to deal with them? Are they strong enough that you can’t deal with them just one-on-one early on (outside of a Great Khan event of course)?

Torpedoes and strike craft. They have next to no PD and are vulnerable to these - you might want missiles for the faster ships too.

Staltran
Jan 3, 2013

Fallen Rib
Heh, my tradition costs dropped by 75% when I installed the beta. Good thing I was waiting for the patch and had 600k unity stored, and now a tradition costs... 23k. Guess I'm using all unity ambitions!

Also, my naval capacity dropped by about 100? Anyone know why that happened?

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer
I'm kind of torn on the changes. Yeah sure, it's nice that bugs like that unity-crap was fixed, but as someone who went mad building starbases in my current game I kind of fear opting in for this beta patch: Not only fucks it with all my plans that +2 starbases is now -20% upkeep instead, I already crashed my economy once by expanding my line of fortresses too fast. Now I think this will happen after the patch: My income will go from +20 to something like -100, followed by bankruptcy a couple months later. gently caress.

Maybe I should just abandon my assimilator-game? :(

ThatBasqueGuy
Feb 14, 2013

someone introduce jojo to lazyb


Libluini posted:

I'm kind of torn on the changes. Yeah sure, it's nice that bugs like that unity-crap was fixed, but as someone who went mad building starbases in my current game I kind of fear opting in for this beta patch: Not only fucks it with all my plans that +2 starbases is now -20% upkeep instead, I already crashed my economy once by expanding my line of fortresses too fast. Now I think this will happen after the patch: My income will go from +20 to something like -100, followed by bankruptcy a couple months later. gently caress.

Maybe I should just abandon my assimilator-game? :(

Or just cheat yourself a surplus to tide you over while you readjust your empire.

Dongattack
Dec 20, 2006

by Cyrano4747
Hm, with the new ascension perk in the beta that gives 2 levels to leaders my machine leaders can reach level 10 with a government reform and some machine template fuckery. That's 10% more research, 15% more firerate and 10% more resource production across the board. I'm gonna try that, it sounds pretty powerful.

TheDeadlyShoe
Feb 14, 2014

pretense is my co-pilot

i mean, you can downgrade your starbases instantly.

Note: Downgraded starbases keep all their defense platforms, lawl

quote:

* Fixed scientists not dying when their science ship was destroyed in battle
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Crazyeyes24
Sep 14, 2014

Your good vision is your fatal weakness!

Dongattack posted:

Hm, with the new ascension perk in the beta that gives 2 levels to leaders my machine leaders can reach level 10 with a government reform and some machine template fuckery. That's 10% more research, 15% more firerate and 10% more resource production across the board. I'm gonna try that, it sounds pretty powerful.

Are machine leaders immortal? That seems hella good.

EDIT:
Downgrading wont reduce the energy upkeep though. The basic outpost will still cost 1 energy.

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





Crazyeyes24 posted:

Are machine leaders immortal? That seems hella good.

They don't have age checks, but they can randomly break down and die for no apparent reason. It's annoying.

bitterandtwisted
Sep 4, 2006




Goddamn my allies suck.
The galaxy is being invaded by the scourge who have 100k fleets all about. My main fleet is 40k and my allies keep setting all their fleets to follow it so we have a 200k+ combined fleet. Twice in a row I've sent my main fleet to attack one of the scourge's only for all my allies to nope right out of there. :mad:

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sudo rm -rf
Aug 2, 2011


$ mv fullcommunism.sh
/america
$ cd /america
$ ./fullcommunism.sh


Baronjutter posted:

Oh nice a space communism mod not made by a tankie and full of purges and space gulags. Pretty bare bones so far though.

Also,
Is there a console command to destroy outposts and revert a system back to uncontrolled, or a console command to change ownership of a system? I've got some insane bad bordergore where every AI seems to have multiple random enclaves inside everyone else's territory and it's making me UPSET.

yeah, just click on the thing you want to kill and console "damage [health]" where health is the amount of hull points the thing has

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