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When making a new game, do you guys just start it and go? I've always checked my scientists/placement before I actually play the game. If I don't have at least 2 scientists with either Spark of Genius or Maniacal and ok placement I just reroll.
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Apr 28, 2018 14:20
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Vasudus posted:When making a new game, do you guys just start it and go? I've always checked my scientists/placement before I actually play the game. If I don't have at least 2 scientists with either Spark of Genius or Maniacal and ok placement I just reroll. Depends on how I'm feeling, honestly. I care more about placement than scientists, but sometimes I just give no fucks and just roll with whatever the RNG gives me.
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Apr 28, 2018 14:23
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Tiles would be 90% less terrible if you could repeat-place buildings like you can robotic pops, and I'll keep harping on about that until it becomes a reality (or tiles are removed).
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Apr 28, 2018 14:40
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Conskill posted:At its core it isn't any different than combat resolution in EU4 or CK2, it just has a minimalist bordering on non-existant GUI. Functionally I could survive with having an event that fires at the start of ground combat that gives me options for how to arrange battle (tweaking factors such as survival vs. lethality of troops) based on what type of units I have and how fortified the planet is, This is...not all that far from how ES2 does it, honestly. It's not actually all that interesting. There's basically one right answer for any given situation out of three possible (and for defenders, one of their three options is "surrender"). Once you learn what the numbers mean it's a simple optimization problem, every time land combat happens.
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Apr 28, 2018 14:51
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Conskill posted:At its core it isn't any different than combat resolution in EU4 or CK2, it just has a minimalist bordering on non-existant GUI. Functionally I could survive with having an event that fires at the start of ground combat that gives me options for how to arrange battle (tweaking factors such as survival vs. lethality of troops) based on what type of units I have and how fortified the planet is. Conskill posted:Aesthetically it'd be nice to see dinosaur riding Jedi slashing through hordes of xenomorphs, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Apr 28, 2018 15:12
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Splicer posted:The point is these are all decisions you've already made before boots hit the ground. Sending base troops, or battle thralls, or xenomorphs, how many you're sending, how long you've been bombarding for etc. all have a big impact on the actual fight. It's just there's little to no visceral feedback on it, just a bunch of numbers go up or down and you end up with a few more or a few less troops and you have a few more or a few less buildings blown up. A flavor text ticker for ground combat would be cool. Add a bunch of unique 'events' based on species type (hydra/moth/fungus/etc), ethics, and army type as well.
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Apr 28, 2018 15:42
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Make it read like a news ticker and I'd be pretty down for that. "Heavy fighting in industrial districts shatters local infrastructure...General Zop'Pix announces successful annihilation of invading Assault Corps...defensive garrisons recorded in full retreat on northern continent...Democratic Republic of Shofur denies reports of collateral damage causing major Humfgar civilian casualties...Holy Guard rallies for final stand at planetary capital...contact lost with last remaining resistance cells on Adurnia..."
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Apr 28, 2018 16:21
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Tiles are bad and I will fight anyone who disagrees.
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Apr 28, 2018 16:37
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A news ticker for the galaxy as a whole might be pretty rad and give me something to read while waiting for things to complete in multiplayer. Can't just bump the speed up to fastest on a whim. Learn about pointless minutiae like how the first gecko migrants have settled on their neighbor's planets only a hundred years after the migration treaty was signed! Contemplate the mysterious disappearances of the Beefsteak citizens in the Gourmand empire! Tremble in fear as the Militant Isolationist FE wipes the fleet of the fools who settled too close!
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Apr 28, 2018 16:46
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isndl posted:A news ticker for the galaxy as a whole might be pretty rad and give me something to read while waiting for things to complete in multiplayer. Can't just bump the speed up to fastest on a whim.  Soon...soon... Stellaris continues down its road of being a dumbed down Vicky 2.
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Apr 28, 2018 16:50
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isndl posted:A news ticker for the galaxy as a whole might be pretty rad and give me something to read while waiting for things to complete in multiplayer. Can't just bump the speed up to fastest on a whim. Actually this could be a bold and interesting move that could add some continuity to other P-Dox games. 
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Apr 28, 2018 17:16
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Grammar-Bolshevik posted:Tiles are bad and I will fight anyone who disagrees.
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Apr 28, 2018 17:19
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Is the Transcendence Ascension Perk supposed to turn all my pops into robots?
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Apr 28, 2018 17:58
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You will take my tiles over my cold, dead body of this random person who was advocating for tiles. Here, have the tiles.
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Apr 28, 2018 18:00
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What are the advantages of synthetic ascension? I was planning on it with a mechanist race but between getting horizon signal and a hostile wildlife planet my engineering research sucks comparatively
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Apr 28, 2018 18:04
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StashAugustine posted:What are the advantages of synthetic ascension? I was planning on it with a mechanist race but between getting horizon signal and a hostile wildlife planet my engineering research sucks comparatively +Everyone is a robot. Robots don't need food. +Everyone gets the Synthetic trait, increasing all resource output by 20%. You can also mod everyone with robot traits. +All of your leaders are immortal (Barring randomly occurring "accidents") and have the Synthetic trait, which generally makes them better at everything. +You may assimilate other species, turning them into glorious robots like yourselves. -You now have to faff about with robomodding everyone so they can be the best at whatever tile they're on and it is a big ole pain in the butt. -Say goodbye to species diversity, everyone gets turned into your base robot type. Though you can alter robot appearances. -Spiritualists will have a poo poo conniption at you and may declare war in an attempt to stop the project that converts everyone into robots. You may consider this a plus. Also all of your pops will shift way towards Materialism.
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Apr 28, 2018 18:14
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Tomn posted:This is...not all that far from how ES2 does it, honestly. To b fair, there is also the army composition/upgrades/techs that contribute to the system as well. On the topic of ES2, I'd kill for Stellaris with the UI and presentation of ES2 :v
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Apr 28, 2018 18:28
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What are good and bad ascension perks, are there any really lovely ones?
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Apr 28, 2018 18:59
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Shibawanko posted:What are good and bad ascension perks, are there any really lovely ones? A lot of them are situational, but some are more useful than others. Consecrated Worlds, for instance, which only shows up if you're spiritualist, gives you an edict that increases growth speed, happiness, and unity generation. This is fine, but spiritualists get a lot of bonuses to unity generation anyway, and have an edict, "create saint", that gives you a unity bonus but doesn't take an ascension perk. Galactic Force Projection gives you a bonus to fleet size and naval power, which again, can be handy, but there are a lot of techs and buildings that do that too.
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Apr 28, 2018 19:11
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If you're down with mods, pick up EUTAB because it gives you some great unlockable tech choices when you pick an "underpowered" ascension perk, along all the other cool poo poo it adds. Speaking of mods, I think Glavius has finally unfucked his AI, because I started a new game with it and the AI is certainly doing much better now compared to before.
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Apr 28, 2018 19:20
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Tomn posted:
Captain Invictus posted:Your morale will be broken by my titanic beasts MFW checking the thread for a game I barely worked on and seeing two features I made on the same page  Newspapers would be so much easier to make again today, with the dynamic text system from CK2 TRD and the scaling text boxes in the newer games. Ever news article needed three versions, had to fit into a fixed size box despite using dynamic text, and the dynamic text system was specifically make for and only worked in the newspaper system 
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Apr 28, 2018 19:20
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Shibawanko posted:What are good and bad ascension perks, are there any really lovely ones? Mastery of nature is the worst ascension perk because it leaves the player with the false impression that planet tiles are a good thing. Planetary tiles are the fuckboys of the 4x genre. Only the most dry dicks intentionally pick an ascension perk that makes you have to click on *more* little yellow triangles. Grammar-Bolshevik fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Apr 28, 2018 |
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Apr 28, 2018 19:25
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I'm starting to think you don't much care for tiles.
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Apr 28, 2018 19:34
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If I give no poo poo about taking an enemy's planet, should I be bombing it into oblivion to damage them as much as possible? I still don't have a Colossus to blow it up outright but I'm working on that 
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Apr 28, 2018 19:38
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StashAugustine posted:What are the advantages of synthetic ascension? I was planning on it with a mechanist race but between getting horizon signal and a hostile wildlife planet my engineering research sucks comparatively You can settle anywhere (+200% habitability), all your pops will shift extremely fast towards materialist, you can build new pops faster than they grow naturally, and all your pops have a large production bonus (which you can increase further by robomodding .) IMO, it's the most powerful ascension path.
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Apr 28, 2018 19:39
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Tiles currently suck because they aren't actually tiles, they're building slots with occasional bonuses attached. The only time they act like tiles is the adjacency bonus around the capital building. Accordingly, the actual decisions you make about them as tiles as opposed to slots are limited. Compare this with Ascendancy, where tiles were meaningful because you could only build on tiles adjacent to an existing building. This made colonisation and construction marginally more interesting, although still quite tedious once past a certain number of worlds. Stellaris could imitate this, but doing so wouldn't make the AI issues any better - it would actually make it worse, if Ascendancy is anything to go by. If we're not abstracting tiles entirely, making them meaningful would require identifying a way of requiring players to factor them into their decision-making by considering the relationship of a tile with surrounding tiles when placing buildings. At the same time, this would need to be amenable to simple enough rules to enable the AI to do it well. Of course, the easier it is for the AI, the less interesting it is for the player.
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Apr 28, 2018 19:43
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TorakFade posted:If I give no poo poo about taking an enemy's planet, should I be bombing it into oblivion to damage them as much as possible? I still don't have a Colossus to blow it up outright but I'm working on that Bombing to oblivion takes ages, as I recall. If you're a total war type it'd be better to just take it and then purge it until it's decolonized, that frees your fleet up to continue actually fighting the war. If you're not fighting a total war then just invade it and move on, it's warscore and if you didn't put a claim on it you don't have to keep it. wiegieman posted:You can settle anywhere (+200% habitability), all your pops will shift extremely fast towards materialist, you can build new pops faster than they grow naturally, and all your pops have a large production bonus (which you can increase further by robomodding .) IMO, it's the most powerful ascension path. That being said, there IS the downside that one of the end-game crisises is specifically designed to gently caress over synthetics.
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Apr 28, 2018 19:48
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wiegieman posted:all your pops will shift extremely fast towards materialist Ironically, synthetic ascension removes the "AI allowed" opinion modifier that makes the technologist faction happy, so you'll need to constantly pay the curators and stay ahead of everyone in tech if you don't want to gut your influence gain. Beyond that, yeah, I'd say it's the most powerful ascension, especially now that it doesn't guarantee war with a spiritualist fallen empire..
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Apr 28, 2018 19:52
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Tomn posted:That being said, there IS the downside that one of the end-game crisises is specifically designed to gently caress over synthetics. Synthetically ascended empires are uniquely immune that crisis, if I remember right.
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Apr 28, 2018 19:53
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I'm not complaining about getting the achievement for free but I'm pretty dang sure there were no fallen empire titans in that pitiful thing where I stomped on 3 of there destroyers
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Apr 28, 2018 19:59
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Jabarto posted:Ironically, synthetic ascension removes the "AI allowed" opinion modifier that makes the technologist faction happy, so you'll need to constantly pay the curators and stay ahead of everyone in tech if you don't want to gut your influence gain. Sounds like a bug rather than a design choice really.
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Apr 28, 2018 20:06
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Jabarto posted:Ironically, synthetic ascension removes the "AI allowed" opinion modifier that makes the technologist faction happy, so you'll need to constantly pay the curators and stay ahead of everyone in tech if you don't want to gut your influence gain. poo poo like that is what really drags stellaris down for me. I never feel like I'm role playing or seeing a society organically develop, I feel like I'm being forced down a couple extremely narrow paths based on the game's very punishing and inflexible mechanics. There's always some quality of life/interface issue that makes certain potentially interesting play styles just too annoying to play, or there's poo poo like going synthetic killing your materialist faction happiness.
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Apr 28, 2018 20:07
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wiegieman posted:Synthetically ascended empires are uniquely immune that crisis, if I remember right. Ah, so they are. I was thinking of Machine Intelligences.
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Apr 28, 2018 20:19
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Baronjutter posted:poo poo like that is what really drags stellaris down for me. I never feel like I'm role playing or seeing a society organically develop, I feel like I'm being forced down a couple extremely narrow paths based on the game's very punishing and inflexible mechanics. There's always some quality of life/interface issue that makes certain potentially interesting play styles just too annoying to play, or there's poo poo like going synthetic killing your materialist faction happiness. I don't know if I'd go that far, most of my more roleplay-oriented issues are limited to factions. I think ethics, traits, civics, etc. are in a pretty good spot and generally give me a lot of room in designing my own little utopia (or dystopia  ).That said, factions ARE a pretty big mess right now. I've already gone over what I don't like about the militarist and egalitarian ones in particular, and the system as a whole needs a rework.
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Apr 28, 2018 20:28
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I think the system is fine but their demands need to be a lot more flexible and they should have events connected to them. Outside of fixing a few dumb things I kind of think they're a secondary priority though, I'd like to see external diplomacy and trade come first
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Apr 28, 2018 20:32
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Darkrenown posted:MFW checking the thread for a game I barely worked on and seeing two features I made on the same page Do what you must to get a galactic news ticker in the game zomg
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Apr 28, 2018 20:39
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Jabarto posted:I don't know if I'd go that far, most of my more roleplay-oriented issues are limited to factions. I think ethics, traits, civics, etc. are in a pretty good spot and generally give me a lot of room in designing my own little utopia (or dystopia Yeah, that's mostly what I mean by punishing and inflexible mechancis. The ethos system is cool and if they left it more abstracted and let the player fill in the blanks that would be cool, but instead you have very specific factions with very specific and often odd demands. Influence is so important I usually end up designing empires based on what factions are the least pain in the butt to deal with and keep producing influence. Egalitarians are super easy to keep very happy, and simply researching selected lineages and not enacting it makes them over the moon happy. Yet other factions have really odd or annoying demands that you need to actively chase rather than being based on passive policy choices. There's also the problem of some factions playing nice with each other and others having very mutually exclusive demands. This would be fine if it was limited to factions based on directly opposing ethos, obviously a spiritualist faction and materialist faction are going to be at odds with each other. There's also the problem with the factions taking what could be a very open to interpretation definitions of ethos and what you imagine they'd combine into, and giving extremely specific fluff and mechanics defining exactly how the dev's interpret those terms. I've mentioned before that I really like the EU4 custom nation tool. You just pick a bunch of mechanical bonuses on a point buy system and are then free to name them and even add your own fluff to explain the bonus. It's weird that I feel way more flexibility and diversity creating an eu4 nation than a stellaris nation. Ultimately in stellaris your options for gameplay/roleplay boil down to the few factions that exist in the game. If you aren't basing your gameplay around a complimentary mix of those pre-existing factions you're going to face steep influence and happiness penalties.
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Apr 28, 2018 20:52
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What I hate about tiles is that you can't just build up to date buildings. You instead have to build obsolete ones and upgrade them gradually. Colonizing planets late game would feel much less like a chore if you could just build Mining Network IVs etc from scratch.
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Apr 28, 2018 21:35
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Grammar-Bolshevik posted:Only the most dry dicks intentionally pick an ascension perk that makes you have to click on *more* little yellow triangles. That's why you pick up Autobuild and turn on automatic upgrades, so you literally never have to click on little yellow triangles.
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Apr 28, 2018 21:58
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Shibawanko posted:What are good and bad ascension perks, are there any really lovely ones? So the main thing to remember is that most of them are situational, or if you're aiming to get a certain style of gameplay. I'll note a few of these that are only good if you're using Apocalypse DLC, and that is because there is a late game way to spend Unity (Unity Ambitions) that are really strong but require that DLC. [------------------------------------------] The Big Paths: Choosing one of these is almost always a good spend for 2 of your perks (Utopia DLC required). You're getting not only improvements to populations, but leader bonuses. Psionics have better leaders, Synthetics have better pops. Bios can have super specialized pops but is more finnicky, new leader bonuses give them a big research edge. Also no one cares if you gene mod, while synths/psions can have some negative diplomatic impacts. [--------Psionic---------] (Mind over Matter, Transcendence) Ruler: +.5 influence; Governor: +10% unity, -15% unrest; Scientist: +10% research speed, +25% survey speed; Admiral: +10% dmg, +15% evasion; General: +15% army morale/morale dmg. Also gets access to the shroud, which have a variety of buffs (and sometimes negatives) ranging from bonus production to a special unit to upgrading a leader to "Chosen One" (double bonuses). Population bonuses is +5% to energy/research per perk, and +5% happiness with the second. [--------Synthetic---------] (The Flesh is Weak, Synthetic Evolution) Ruler: +5% resource production (2nd perk); Governor: +5% minerals, +5% energy (2nd); Scientists: +5% research speed, -10% anomaly fail (2nd); Admirals: +5% fire rate, +10% range (2nd); Generals: +5% army dmg/perk. Population bonus for first perk is +10% army dmg, +20% habitability, +40 leader lifespan. After the second perk all your pops become synths, which means full habitability, +20% production for everything, and robomodding instead of gene modding (perk also gives you 1 extra point and -10% upkeep costs). Since you can build pops from templates it is a lot easier to specialize to tiles for max bonuses. [--------Biologic---------] (Engineered Evolution, Evolutionary Mastery) You need to mod in Erudite to get these leader bonuses (+20% research, +1 leader level cap). Ruler: +5% research speed; Governor: +5% science output; Scientist: +5% research speed; Admiral: +5% fire rate, +10% disengagement chance; General: +5% dmg, +10% disengagement chance. Gene modding pops can be a bit frustrating as you juggle them around, but look at uplifting species when you can for some unique traits (10% energy, 10% research, 10% mineral/food, etc). It combines really well with slavery, and is the only path choice for hive minds. Also you get a gently caress-ton of mod points so you'll be able to shave off all negative traits and still have like 12 trait points (See here for bio only traits). [------------------------------------------] Consecrated Worlds: Spiritualist only, planetary edict: 300 influence for +5% happiness, +15% growth speed, +15% unity, 100 year base duration. A solid bonus but a big up-front influence cost. I'd probably only take this with Apocalypse DLC. One Vision: +10% unity, +50% governing ethics attractions. Only take with Apoc DLC for unity ambitions, it isn't terribly hard to finish out unity trees, and there is often at least 1 tree that isn't really giving you much for your play style. Executive Vigor: +50% edict duration. Deceptively strong, the base edicts available are all really good, and taking this basically makes you able to run all the ones you want all the time. If you're not sure what to take this is always a good buy. Interstellar Dominion: -20% claim cost, -20% starbase influence cost. Lets you blob/war faster, a decent pick. You're often influence limited on how fast you can expand, so this is a direct buff to that style. If you're not being aggressive and are done with initial space grab, not too useful. Shared Destiny: -75% subject integration influence cost. If you're going to vassalize+integrate as your expansion method this is really good, otherwise useless. Technological Ascendancy: +10% research speed. Utterly boring, but one of the strongest picks. My favorite start is to do discovery tree first into TA for a cool +20% research bonus. Transcendent Learning: +2 leader level cap, +2 leader capacity. Actually decent, but boring and only a later pick (need +lifespan for them to live to those later levels, consider modding your pops for +leader experience gain). For reference these are per level bonuses from leaders. Rulers: -5% unrest, +5% edict duration, +3% monthy unity. Governors: +2% pop resource production, +5% building speed, -5% clear blocker speed. Scientist: +2% research speed, +1% research output with assist research. Admiral: +3% fire rate. General: +5% army health/dmg, -5% upkeep. Enigmatic Engineering: Apoc DLC, +2 sensor range, tech can't be reverse engineered. More of a multiplayer pick, still not bad if you get any of the unique techs and want to ensure no one can nab it from you. Sensor range is also really useful for being able to react in time to enemy fleet movements. Imperial Prerogative: +5 core systems. Maybe the only never take, it was added for people who hate sectors. However with all the changes to sectors you can micro-manage them all you desire now, making this basically a waste (you can turn off sector redevelopment, and remove a planet from a sector for no cost, tweak it, and re-add it, and can pull resources out of a sector for a marginal cost). [------------------------------------------] Mastery of Nature: -33% blocker cost, planetary edict: 100 influence, 500 energy, bonus tiles: size <=12 (+3), size 13-15 (+2) size 16-24 (+1). A good early-mid game pick if you're done with initial space grab and unable to expand through wars. If you've gotten a lot of small planets this'll have a bigger impact. Later on habitats are most likely a better influence spend, but also have a mineral cost (with new influence costs on habitats this gap is much closer). Voidborne: Unlocks Habitats. Strong, lets you turn empty space into 12-tile planets. Focus them as science and leave the minerals/energy to your planets, see big rewards. With the 2.0.2 changes they're more balanced than before. You can get them to size 15 with Master Builders, but the influence cost got doubled (200 influence, 10,000 minerals). Ringworlds are a better use of influence, but are way later. If you're limited on expansion options this opens a ton of space, and lets you unlock Master Builders which gives you the Mega-Engineering research option (required for Galactic Wonders). Master Builders: +50% megastructure build speed, +3 habitat size, mega-engineering research option. Required if you're doing megastructures, the time cost is one of the biggest aspects of megastructures. Galactic Wonders: Unlocks megastructures. All are really good, but quite expensive in both time and minerals. Often if you're able to afford the costs you should be able to be stomping the galaxy, but they give a good edge if that isn't the case. [------------------------------------------] Eternal Vigilance: +5 defense platforms, +25% defense platform dmg, +25% starbase dmg. Very situational, but if you've got lynchpin systems that you really need a boost to it could be useful. If you can get that edge elsewhere instead do it. Galactic Force Projection: +20 fleet command limit, +80 naval capacity. If your economy can handle the increased ship upkeep this is really strong, giving you another fleet to watch your back while attacking someone, or just being able to have a crushing ship advantage to roll over someone. Defender of the Galaxy: +50% dmg to endgame crisis, +20 opinion. Gives a huge edge that you'll often need, and the opinion modifier makes it a ton easier to get other empires to do what you want. While normally I'd wait until the crisis to actually take it, if you're doing federation building the opinion modifier could be what pushes you over the edge. Galactic Contender: +33% dmg to fallen/awakened empires. If you're planning on ganking a FE or the War in Heaven happens, this could be what gives you the edge to not get stomped. [------------------------------------------] World Shaper: -25% terraforming costs, Gaia world terraforming. Really good, Gaia worlds give +10% resource output and +5% happiness and are 100% habitability for everyone. If you're spiritualist you can designate an uncolonized Gaia world for +10% unity. Cost is 10k energy and 20 years base, but then the perk itself (-25% cost) and terraforming gasses (-25% cost) or liquids (-25% time) or ruler trait world shaper (-15% cost, -25% time) can cut it down to 3.5k and 10 years. Machine Worlds: Synthetic Dawn DLC, basically Gaia worlds for robots. Big bonuses (+20% all), worth it if you're machine empire. Synthetic Age: Synthetic Dawn DLC, +2 machine mod points, -33% modify species cost. Worth it if you're a machine empire, you need to specialize your dudes as much as you can. Colossus Project: Apocolypse DLC, unlocks Colossus ship. If you want to play with them you'll need it. There are some downsides to having a death star diplomatically, but on the other hand you have a death star. Nihilistic Acquisition: Apoc DLC required, unlocks Raiding Bombardment Stance. I have no experience with this one, sorry!
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