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I wanted to show some stuff off I've been working on today. I'm quite happy with the result, so hoping we can see something like this in the future *looks at wiz*  I woke up with the idea of segmenting my planet rings into pieces and making them pseudo planets and turning them into resource spots. Here is a ring before I started:  Naturally, we don't want there to be resource spots every time, so I quickly moved on to the idea of spawning these pseudo planets (Resource extraction sites, or RES from here on) in the rings themselves. Using some code and texture magics I should be able to turn the models invisible. So I began the work:  Clearly, a way off. The RES's (textures were there to help me visualise their location) were spawning but everything was off location. I spawned 4, but they seemed to like to hug a lot.  That's a bit better. Everything is still way off centre, even the planet names and resource icons. Never mind the rotation lol. After some faffing around with the mesh (learning is fun)  This looks much better. Also applied a huge ring graphics around the planet to see what the end result would be. You can still see the RES textures in the rings. Turning them invisible took no effort, a simple DDS edit turning it all black as my soul  The end result I'm so happy with! The number of RES will be random, as will their deposits (energy for ice rings, minerals for metallic rings) Deposits will probably end up being 2-3 with a rare chance of 4. They will also only appear in systems that have been colonized. Thoughts? :> Guilliman fucked around with this message at 11:38 on May 1, 2018 |
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May 1, 2018 11:32
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That looks brilliant and gives me Elite vibes, which can only be good.
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May 1, 2018 12:03
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Aethernet posted:That looks brilliant and gives me Elite vibes, which can only be good. Thanks! And yeah, got the idea from Elite. Many hours of my life were lost there.. Bonus; I can see the matrix  Making sure the collision boxes are large enough so you can click in the area of the ring to select the RES.
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May 1, 2018 12:22
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Been a while since I played the game, there's a lot of weird poo poo I haven't seen before. This is good. And scary.
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May 1, 2018 13:12
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That's an amazing idea Guilli. I can't imagine playing Stellaris anymore without your Planet Modifiers mod, and that looks great too. I wonder, can you do that with, like, asteroid belts too? Rather than just having one particular (or a hive structure :P) asteroid that has minerals? Or is it fine as is?
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May 1, 2018 13:18
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I love some of the smaller touches in the game. If you're a Devouring Swarm and you get the Marauder event that normally gives you a free admiral instead you get +1 food and some influence.
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May 1, 2018 13:22
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Black Pants posted:That's an amazing idea Guilli. I can't imagine playing Stellaris anymore without your Planet Modifiers mod, and that looks great too. You can, but I fear it would introduce too many dummy planets and may cause weird issues. Like pathing issues, or just plain old lag. I'm not sure how well it behaves with systems that destroy solar system planets (like ringworld construction) so have to be cautious and test plenty. I think the resource extraction sites will be the only of this type of system I'll introduce, just to make sure it doesn't effect games in a weird way and to make sure inter-mod compatibility isn't compromised.
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May 1, 2018 13:23
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So, question. The current combat balance situation for vanilla is still "build nothing but missile/torpedo corvettes", I understand. Both because they're more effective in combat and because all-corvette fleets are much more mobile. If so, is there a mod that attempts to solve this in a relatively lightweight way? Like, I'd be happy with just reducing resource costs and naval cap for BBs/cruisers/destroyers, so that bigger ships let you get more bang for your buck but will be at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to controlling multiple systems (preventing back-caps from enemy fleets) or simply reinforcing. I've found plenty of nice mods that add more ships/components, but very few that aimed to just tweak balance. I found this and this but neither is up to date (the former apparently crashes outright on recent patches) Or, hell, I'd be ok with a heavyweight mod too. Like, the NSC mod seems to be a classic bloated 'let's add a million things' overhaul mod, but since it seems to limit itself to ships and combat, if goons think it achieves a better balance than vanilla then I'll happily install it too. NihilCredo fucked around with this message at 13:30 on May 1, 2018 |
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May 1, 2018 13:27
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NihilCredo posted:So, question. The current combat balance situation for vanilla is still "build nothing but missile/torpedo corvettes", I understand. Both because they're more effective in combat and because all-corvette fleets are much more mobile. Adding sizing to G slots would probably work. prethoryns have small and large scourge missiles, for example
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May 1, 2018 13:41
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Guilliman posted:You can, but I fear it would introduce too many dummy planets and may cause weird issues. Like pathing issues, or just plain old lag. Oh this reminds me, is there a way to make Planet Modifiers run a pass on systems generated after the first day of the game, such as precursor systems?
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May 1, 2018 13:57
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It situational right now, my corvette fleet got annihilated by the unbidden but big ships did not.
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May 1, 2018 14:03
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Shugojin posted:It situational right now, my corvette fleet got annihilated by the unbidden but big ships did not.
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May 1, 2018 14:08
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Splicer posted:Annihilated as in destroyed or as in lost the fight but 70%+ of them reappeared after retreating? Almost straight up dead, turns out the Unbidden weapons don't give a lot of chances to roll to retreat since they have such powerful bonuses vs armor and hull.
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May 1, 2018 14:32
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Shugojin posted:Almost straight up dead, turns out the Unbidden weapons don't give a lot of chances to roll to retreat since they have such powerful bonuses vs armor and hull. They also have a lot of small and medium mount weapons which will do a number on your corvettes. All battleship is best against them.
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May 1, 2018 14:34
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Aethernet posted:They also have a lot of small and medium mount weapons which will do a number on your corvettes. All battleship is best against them. i still like distraction corvettes to absorb some fire as cheap chaff. I've only played unbidden once. i seem to roll up the contingency more often than anything, like almost every time in fact.
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May 1, 2018 14:47
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Black Pants posted:Oh this reminds me, is there a way to make Planet Modifiers run a pass on systems generated after the first day of the game, such as precursor systems? Yeah. My mod already does. Several ways to do it, but I found the least performance option was to overwrite a minor vanilla event for the precursors and go from there. Works great compatibility wise the the game doen't have to check periodically of the new systems have spawned.
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May 1, 2018 15:46
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Guilliman posted:I wanted to show some stuff off I've been working on today. I'm quite happy with the result, so hoping we can see something like this in the future *looks at wiz* This is really cool. Is it possible to make a ring type for food as well? There are times where it would be nice to have space deposits for food that weren't just hydroponic farms. The only thing I'm worried about is that for machine empires and so on they'd be entirely useless.
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May 1, 2018 15:56
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binge crotching posted:This is really cool. Is it possible to make a ring type for food as well? There are times where it would be nice to have space deposits for food that weren't just hydroponic farms. The only thing I'm worried about is that for machine empires and so on they'd be entirely useless. Ice rings would be excellent for space agriculture, and I suppose robots could use them for fuel production.
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May 1, 2018 16:50
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Gulliman, maybe you could add some events where heavily depleted planetary rings are found, with evidence of heavy extraction operations over a long period of time by past space civs leaving barely anything left. And you now have to decide what to do based on the info. If your civ has a lot of conservationalists/traditionalist/natural physicist pops or are environmentalist, you get options to research how to restore the rings, and other stuff, but you don't get any minerals/energy from extractors and instead get another resource, maybe unity after they are repurposed. Or if a civ has mining guilds or are fanatic materialist, they can research the old depleted rings to determine what techniques were used to extract resources, allowing for better extractors in planetary rings.
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May 1, 2018 16:55
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binge crotching posted:This is really cool. Is it possible to make a ring type for food as well? There are times where it would be nice to have space deposits for food that weren't just hydroponic farms. The only thing I'm worried about is that for machine empires and so on they'd be entirely useless. A ring of harvestable space plankton/plants/void life in an area where a lot of stellar objects get caught in the orbit of a planet, and become food for creatures in the rings.
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May 1, 2018 16:59
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I started a new game as egalitarian fanatic spiritualists, playing as the vaguely antisemitic stereotype mollusc portrait (my favorite after the giant fly amanita). The game has a tendency to create sitcom-like scenarios so of course I spawned next to a fanatic materialist who started lecturing me on  and how my species was intellectually inferior because of the climate of my homeworld or whatever, so I invaded them and taught them about the value of spirituality and crystal healing. Now I joined a federation with them. Ultimately I want to see the shroud events on this playthroughWhat's the strategy for playing as a federation? It seems to have a lot of downsides, mainly fleet size limitations and influence drops. Should I maximize the number of members or is that not a good idea?
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May 1, 2018 17:02
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From a purely mechanical point of view, federations do have a lot of downsides. The only true advantage I can think of is allowing you to have more war buddies to discourage an aggressive AI than defensive pacts alone could, since pacts cost influence for each one you have. Allegedly a federation will also help you wage offensive wars, but given the AIs erratic behavior with allied fleets, that's a real questionable "perk". The downsides are many, though. Less fleet cap, a huge and ongoing and inflexible influence drain, less control over your sovereignty and foreign policy from getting dragged into wars that probably won't benefit you, etc. All that aside, the idea of a multi-species federation is pretty integral to most sci-fi tropes. When I enter or create a federation, it's almost always from the perspective of lore and flavor, and much less frequently as the best of two bad choices if I'm worried about some galactic threat vassalizing or conquering me. I imagine someday we'll get a politics themed DLC that make feds more interesting, along with the faction on system. Until then, the Star Trek has a very satisfying take on federations to get your fix of a kumbaya space utopia!
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May 1, 2018 17:15
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It'd be interesting to see if you could apply this to planet surfaces by clipping the points onto planetary models. Larger uninhabitable planets being segmented into different resource nodes would be cool.
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May 1, 2018 18:09
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You can abuse Federation mechanics to give yourself more unity and more fleet cap, unless that got fixed. As long as the Federation member is less than... 10%?... of the total Federation planet amount, they won't take over as head of the Federation every 10 years or so. If you are by far the largest, you can use that to create 1-3 planet vassal states that you then release and invite to the Federation (or tech advance primitives and invite them in). You get +5% unity bonus from the Diplo perk (up to 30%), and with the Federation fleet perk, your fleet cap contribution is increased. Thus, if nobody else is big enough to warrant cycling through as Federation president, you're basically it with a fleet that you can stock with any tech of your members that also doesn't count towards your fleet cap... I forget though if it doesn't count towards your ship upkeep costs though. If they're also small and within your borders - or well behind your borders - then it's unlikely they'd get any diplo need to attack anyone.
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May 1, 2018 18:29
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Federation fleets don't need maintenance and have no cap, making them potentially very powerful if the AI doesn't piss it away.
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May 1, 2018 18:40
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Aethernet posted:Federation fleets don't need maintenance and have no cap, making them potentially very powerful if the AI doesn't piss it away. they're real fuckers i spent the minerals making 3 separate large fleets and those assholes merged them all into one
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May 1, 2018 18:42
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Shibawanko posted:I started a new game as egalitarian fanatic spiritualists, playing as the vaguely antisemitic stereotype mollusc portrait (my favorite after the giant fly amanita). The game has a tendency to create sitcom-like scenarios so of course I spawned next to a fanatic materialist who started lecturing me on The big advantage of federations is that the federation fleet amounts to a whole new cutting-edge free fleet, at a minimal cost in fleet cap for each individual member. This can be a pretty key advantage, since if you go up against a non-federation empire comparably sized with the federation combined, you'll be able to outgun them, in theory. The big disadvantage of federations is that unless you're gaming it, the federation fleet is mostly going to be out of your hands and it's a crapshoot whether the AI uses the federation fleet well or is able to amass the combined power of the federation in an intelligent way. It's the old problem of "This theoretically gives you more power, but any power that isn't directly in the hands of the player can't be trusted because AI is dumb and you can do a lot more with less as the player, as long as you concentrate it in your own hands."
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May 1, 2018 20:51
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Fed fleet is a neat idea in theory that is a pain in the rear end in practice. Instead, replace it with the ability to make the fed ship designs using the best tech from every member that any empire in the federation can build so long as they stay in it.
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May 1, 2018 20:57
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GunnerJ posted:Fed fleet is a neat idea in theory that is a pain in the rear end in practice. I like this idea. Maybe add some unique ship modules unlocked by the ethos makeup of your fed
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May 1, 2018 21:01
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Fuligin posted:I like this idea. Maybe add some unique ship modules unlocked by the ethos makeup of your fed What, like "Fanatic Militarist as a weapons officer means you get +5% fire rate", "Spiritualist helmsman gives +5% evasion from zen navigation"? Cool, but questionable utility/viability.
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May 1, 2018 21:10
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Sometimes a bit of flavor with little mechanical benefit is nice.
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May 1, 2018 21:13
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 Done. Well, still need to make them spawn outside of the test event, but very happy with the results. Semi-Randomized spawn locations for the resource deposits, and they change name when you build an outpost on it. Surveyable so can attach cool anomaly events to them as well.
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May 1, 2018 21:34
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Are federation fleets supposed to be upgradable? My previous game ran into the issue where the fleet was horrendously outdated which was a pain in the rear end given the old and slow hyperdrives making cross-galaxy trips take forever. I did manage to enable the upgrade button by using the fleet template manager to assign a new ship design to the ships, but I only had my own empire's ship designs to choose from and after some loooooong upgrade waiting (to the point where I had to split the fleet and upgrade piecemeal or it wouldn't be finished before the presidency passed) the end result was that they became my empire's ships and not federation ships. So I assume I'm not supposed to be doing that.
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May 1, 2018 21:51
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isndl posted:Are federation fleets supposed to be upgradable? My previous game ran into the issue where the fleet was horrendously outdated which was a pain in the rear end given the old and slow hyperdrives making cross-galaxy trips take forever. Not only can you upgrade them, they should have access to the best tech of all federation members. Like, if you have Hyperdrive 3 but not artillery, while the Zoq'Piqs have kinetic artillery but not Hyperdrive 3, a Federation ship should be able to use both. It's been a while since I played with a federation so I can't recall the specifics, but you do need to make the changes to the Federation designs themselves, and any new designs need to be specified as being Federation ships. There should be a little indicator in the ship designer somewhere noting that so and so is a Federation design, hit those up.
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May 1, 2018 22:01
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I gene-modded my primary species after getting psyonics (in order to get rid of their "weak" modifier), and now they are no longer psyonic. Is there a way to get that back? It feels like a bug, so I'm fine with modding some file somewhere in the save or whatever.
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May 1, 2018 22:25
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Tomn posted:Not only can you upgrade them, they should have access to the best tech of all federation members. Like, if you have Hyperdrive 3 but not artillery, while the Zoq'Piqs have kinetic artillery but not Hyperdrive 3, a Federation ship should be able to use both. Yeah that's the problem, I adjusted the ship designs through the federation ship design menu (including setting up some battleships with Arc Emitters which I didn't tech myself so there was no chance that it was my own ship designs) but I had no way to apply them to existing ships. The fleet upgrade button was greyed out and there were zero federation ship designs available in the fleet template menu when attempting to assign a design for refitting.
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May 1, 2018 22:31
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The federation fleet designer is basically broken, you'll notice that when you try and create a new template and delete all the other ones. After a short while it'll create a whole new set of random auto templates, and assign your existing ships to those templates. The only way to make it work properly is to pause the game, delete everything, create a new template that you want to use, create some ships with that template, and then hang yourself when you lose control of the federation and they all get upgraded by the AI to random whatever.
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May 1, 2018 22:49
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I think I would prefer federations more if they functioned as a monolith rather than the current design of separate nations that are diplomatically linked. Make it so the individual states disappear and instead there's a Senate or something that has to vote to approve wars, policy changes and such, with a single elected president for leader bonuses. Nations that join up get converted to a sector within the federation. Something like that. It would require an expansion though.
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May 1, 2018 23:15
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Gadzuko posted:I think I would prefer federations more if they functioned as a monolith rather than the current design of separate nations that are diplomatically linked. Make it so the individual states disappear and instead there's a Senate or something that has to vote to approve wars, policy changes and such, with a single elected president for leader bonuses. Nations that join up get converted to a sector within the federation. Something like that. It would require an expansion though. That's pretty much what the Star Trek New Horizon mod does when you form the Federation. I guess my big question with that plan is, if you do that, and you and i federate, do you control the new state or do I?
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May 1, 2018 23:17
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Epicurius posted:That's pretty much what the Star Trek New Horizon mod does when you form the Federation. I guess my big question with that plan is, if you do that, and you and i federate, do you control the new state or do I? Good point, I always forget about multiplayer. Maybe nations keep limited sovereignty, and the Senate/presidency act as a third party controlled by no one? You'd have to try to build a majority to ensure passage of your agenda. Not sure what to do about the federation fleet though. Could set up a sort of levy system, where everyone has their own fleets but you can request temporary control over some or all allied fleets during a war. Maybe if you control a Senate majority, you can force a certain percentage of levies no matter what but get larger contributions voluntarily if the federation is getting along.
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May 1, 2018 23:42
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