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RedSnapper posted:Finally got around to take the psionic path and dick around in the Shroud. Here's my track record: My last one was something like: Got kicked out. Got kicked out. Got kicked out. Got an avatar ship. Got kicked out. Got kicked out. Backed out because it was something asking me to let it inhabit just a -little- part of my empire's minds. Got kicked out. Got a ship hull buff I think? Got kicked out. Got an empire-wide debuff (forget what) Got kicked out. Got kicked out. Got another debuff. Got kicked out. Got kicked out. Got an angry avatar ship that picked a fight with one of those NPC commerce people bases and died. Okay it's not an accurate list but I sure got kicked out even asking for green options about that much. It was ridiculous.
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May 11, 2018 12:12
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Your Shroud luck really seems to vary from game to game. In one game I got Shields and Psi Drives in my first two delves. The game became very positive after that.
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May 11, 2018 12:17
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Bloodly posted:There's already code for monster respawn by default. The trouble is they can only spawn in areas where you or anyone else has zero intel. Nevets posted:The problem with respawning monsters is they have to happen in unclaimed space, Nevets posted:and right now by mid game the costs of leaving neighboring systems unclaimed is higher than the cost to just claim them. e: quoted a bit more of that post than I meant to Splicer fucked around with this message at 13:41 on May 11, 2018 |
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May 11, 2018 13:15
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The current pirate system basically sucks and is a chore.
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May 11, 2018 13:22
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Pirates in the late game can basically be destroyed by an upgraded starbase. The new hyperlane density basically solves the problem, I think.
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May 11, 2018 13:26
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So my tendency to play a somewhat warlike nation is kinda hard with inward focus and being a pacifist. I guess my best strategy is to just focus on starbases with a tiny but powerful response fleet and bait one of the extremely aggressive nations into fighting me, then liberating their poo poo.
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May 11, 2018 13:34
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GunnerJ posted:The current pirate system basically sucks and is a chore.
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May 11, 2018 13:59
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Splicer posted:I'm fine with it as is, assuming the intention is to encourage you to paint the map as quickly as possible. Yeah this is why it's a chore. I had understood it as a mechanism to promote natural expansion/punish ugly borders. That's not how it actually operates though ime.
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May 11, 2018 14:45
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playing spiritualist, which tech tree does psionics come up in?
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May 11, 2018 14:48
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Rushi posted:playing spiritualist, which tech tree does psionics come up in? Society
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May 11, 2018 14:51
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GunnerJ posted:Yeah this is why it's a chore. I had understood it as a mechanism to promote natural expansion/punish ugly borders. That's not how it actually operates though ime. I agree. Especially in the early game where you're trying to rush to choke points and desirable systems before your neighbors and influence is at a premium. Granted, that's the intent, but they just form waaaay too often and it gets to be annoying playing pirate base whack-a-mole.
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May 11, 2018 14:56
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I think pirates would be much better as an abstracted event, rather than in-game fleets and bases. Instead of having a base spawn, you get a popup where you can pay minerals / energy to hunt down the pirates & reset the piracy counter, or leave it be and risk getting hit with a worse event. Civilian shipping & transport is abstracted away, wouldn't pirates that prey on those things get abstracted too? Maybe if they raid enough times in a row without being stopped then they get enough booty to spawn in a base & fleet of their own.
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May 11, 2018 15:26
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Pretty sure Wiz is on record saying he hates poo poo like that - he doesn't want mechanics that boil down to: press button = solve problem. It's why they are still 'looking into' an espionage system for the game since every other game has it boiled down to sliding things around with nothing to show for it. Pirates showing up as -% minerals/energy is the same thing.
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May 11, 2018 15:41
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I still don't understand how people have pirate problems. It's months after the 2.0 launch and I've yet to see them be any threat. They're incredibly easy to manage and in many cases actually beneficial. They're a good mechanic.
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May 11, 2018 16:09
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I've had pirates invade via wormholes. That was annoying.
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May 11, 2018 16:30
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DatonKallandor posted:I still don't understand how people have pirate problems. It's months after the 2.0 launch and I've yet to see them be any threat. They're incredibly easy to manage and in many cases actually beneficial. They're a good mechanic. Now I personally enjoy the logistics of optimising my hammer deployments and I try to barebones as much as possible which leads to closer calls than someone playing more cautiously. So I like pirates. I just like space amoeba better and the current anti pirate strategies are directly opposed to pro amoeba strategies, so I'm hoping for some added nuances. Splicer fucked around with this message at 16:45 on May 11, 2018 |
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May 11, 2018 16:43
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Space Wizards sure are something. I didn't like the fact that I had to spend two points on both the psychic ones then I noticed the second one is insanely good. I haven't even breached into the shroud yet and it's crazy.
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May 11, 2018 17:02
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Splicer posted:Some people don't like pirates because they're not a real threat, incredibly easy to manage, and in some cases beneficial. I hate pirates because of that. They're not fun, they're tedious. I'm forced to take every system possible because I find pirates a tedious mechanic. There's no fun in having to chase their fleets around, especially early game. So leaving systems unclaimed by outposts is not a possibility. No to have fun I have to claim every single system in an outwards fashion. No beelining to chokes, no beelining to good system, just take every closest system until no more space can be claimed. And honestly, I dont know what could improve or even replace the mechanic. I'm finding it ridiculously hard to come up with a way to improve it (in my case) and I honestly dont want pirates removed entirely either. Space pirates are a trope that have to stay imho. I can only imagine how hard the team has coming up with ideas to make it a fun mechanic for everyone.
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May 11, 2018 17:11
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DatonKallandor posted:I still don't understand how people have pirate problems. It's months after the 2.0 launch and I've yet to see them be any threat. The problem isn't that they're a threat, it's that they're a pest.
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May 11, 2018 17:12
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GunnerJ posted:The problem isn't that they're a threat, it's that they're a pest. They're a way to get cool spaceships to explode other spaceships in parts of the game where you can't or don't want to declare war on another empire yet. Spaceship fights is what I play Stellaris for and pirates let you do that early, and continously.
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May 11, 2018 18:05
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Psychotic Weasel posted:Pretty sure Wiz is on record saying he hates poo poo like that - he doesn't want mechanics that boil down to: press button = solve problem. It's why they are still 'looking into' an espionage system for the game since every other game has it boiled down to sliding things around with nothing to show for it. Pirates showing up as -% minerals/energy is the same thing. How is turning pirate attacks into an event chain where you spend resources to solve a problem or gamble that it will go away on it's own and not get worse a different mechanic than the underground civ event chain, or paying off raiders? Making it an event chain at least adds the possibility there will be more depth, or branching decisions. Right now there is no decision making, you can't do anything to influence the pirate spawning chance and when they do spawn you have to wipe them out. If pirates were an event chain, you might have options to buy them off, co-opt them into your navy, dispatch them against a neighbor, capture them for experimentation, blame their actions on a foreign power as a pretext for war, allow their attacks to escalate to drum up support for the militarist faction, etc.
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May 11, 2018 18:13
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DatonKallandor posted:I still don't understand how people have pirate problems. It's months after the 2.0 launch and I've yet to see them be any threat. They're incredibly easy to manage and in many cases actually beneficial. They're a good mechanic. To each their own I guess. If they weren't so common I wouldn't mind them as much. I'd much prefer them to spawn far less often, but be far more powerful in return. I think of it like this: Piracy is an ongoing problem in unclaimed space as a general rule, but when it gets to the point that the game's letting you know about it, it's gotten to the point that they're a credible threat to your claimed systems. As it stands now they're nothing approaching a threat. They're just a mineral pinata that gives your economy and tech a little boost every few months when you're still in the eXploration and eXpansion stages of the game. Depending on your starting location and the location of good systems/choke points you could be bouncing all over the place in the early game before you can easily field a 2nd fleet to split the defense coverage. It's not hard, it's just tedious. E; To expand on that; crime and unrest would be problems on pretty much every non-hive minded planet as well, but you're not asked to deploy police forces to particularly unruly planets unless there's a full-on revolt on your hands. I see piracy as the space based extension of that crime and unrest. NatasDog fucked around with this message at 18:21 on May 11, 2018 |
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May 11, 2018 18:19
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I usually run a very diplomacy/economy oriented empire so pirates can be annoying early, but once I get a federation going, I'll use the federation fleet to go around wrecking pirates
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May 11, 2018 18:28
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perhaps pirates should focus more on the unclaimed space. Roam around hunting construction ships and science ships, and putting up "roadblocks". And if you ignore them they continuesly grow and fortify systems. Perhaps eventually becoming a bordering small "lawless" empire (like mauraders-lite). That way they aren't a tedious pain in the rear end continuously attacking your stations, and you have the choice of ignoring them or hunting them in unowned space. Perhaps events with ambushes etc could spice things up too. I'd add that if they have no where to go (single unclaimed system) they should lash out and attack bordering systems (but no more than 1 jump out).
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May 11, 2018 18:45
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My non-space amoeba complaint about pirates is they don't really go anywhere. You smack them down, occasionally fail to smack them down, they scale up to a single battleship and then... keep doing that until there's nowhere left for them to spawn. Which makes sense, because if there was any long-term consequences only really, really bad players and AI would ever see them. You could probably give pirates more of a progression if they started off less severe. There's no way anyone would ever leave current pirates alone long enough for them to progress through any form of evolution, because blowing up stations is annoying and costly. But what if freshly spawned pirates just rocked on into a system, camped out not blowing anything up for a while but turning off all resource production and keeping it for themselves (plus maybe siphoning 1 mineral and 1 energy out of your stockpile every month), then went home? There's a decent chance you might not bother chasing them if it's a minor system. Not worth the cost of taking your fleet out of drydock. Then they can slowly advance into something you can't easily take down at which point that's kind of your fault and the game could cheerfully start ripping you a new one without it being "unfair".
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May 11, 2018 18:52
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Pirates are obnoxious because they curbstomp the AI later on with 5k fleets/battleships. They're not that big a deal to handle but they tend to lock down AI empires from expanding past their small territory.
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May 11, 2018 19:28
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Do pirates only spawn against the player as well?
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May 11, 2018 19:32
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DatonKallandor posted:They're a way to get cool spaceships to explode other spaceships in parts of the game where you can't or don't want to declare war on another empire yet. Spaceship fights is what I play Stellaris for and pirates let you do that early, and continously. It isn't even that I think they should be gone entirely. It's just that the way they are implemented now is a chore. Every strategy game should have its barbarian equivalent for this reason but as this recurring ankle-biting pest that basically just exists to annoy me for as long as there is any empty space on my border, they suck.
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May 11, 2018 19:34
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Nevets posted:Right now there is no decision making, you can't do anything to influence the pirate spawning chance and when they do spawn you have to wipe them out. There's a civic you can pick and the number of starbases you build influences their spawn chance. Always be at your cap and you'll reduce spawn chances. In my recent Devouring Swarm game, I think I had an initial pirate spawn and then nothing for the rest of the game once my starbases were built out, despite having lots of unowned space beyond and within my borders. Aethernet fucked around with this message at 19:38 on May 11, 2018 |
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May 11, 2018 19:35
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Splicer posted:My non-space amoeba complaint about pirates is they don't really go anywhere. You smack them down, occasionally fail to smack them down, they scale up to a single battleship and then... keep doing that until there's nowhere left for them to spawn. Which makes sense, because if there was any long-term consequences only really, really bad players and AI would ever see them. There is that entertaining sword of the stars menace that harvests minerals from planets and your choices are either fighting it, in which case it will kill you, personally, and letting it do it, in which case it will kill everyone, later 
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May 11, 2018 19:37
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OwlFancier posted:Cos it's great, like it's a stupid cash cow sure but it makes for good fights when you put it in a videogame. How many other games decided that the speed of light is in fact the limit so you have to go through hell to do interstellar travel? On top of that magic exists but you really, really very badly want to stay as far away from that poo poo as possible.
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May 11, 2018 19:42
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Captain Invictus posted:They're not that big a deal to handle but they tend to lock down AI empires from expanding past their small territory. to be fair, a 1k ruby swarm can do that to an AI for about 200 years.
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May 11, 2018 19:43
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Vasudus posted:Space Wizards sure are something. I didn't like the fact that I had to spend two points on both the psychic ones then I noticed the second one is insanely good. I haven't even breached into the shroud yet and it's crazy. Yeah it's just a ton of passive bonus the second you take the perk, it's great.
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May 11, 2018 19:48
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Rushi posted:Do pirates only spawn against the player as well? They did once. Not anymore. Great when your enemy gets to fight them, less great when the enemy pirates go on tour through your space too
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May 11, 2018 19:54
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OwlFancier posted:There is that entertaining sword of the stars menace that harvests minerals from planets and your choices are either fighting it, in which case it will kill you, personally, and letting it do it, in which case it will kill everyone, later 
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May 11, 2018 20:00
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Splicer posted:What's great is this could be describing at least two SotS menaces Hmm ok now I was thinking of the VNs, but what's the other one? I can't remember SotS that well.
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May 11, 2018 20:07
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OwlFancier posted:Hmm ok now I was thinking of the VNs, but what's the other one? I can't remember SotS that well. They're similar to VNs but really, really different!
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May 11, 2018 20:13
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I don't think I ever ran into that menace form of that one, whereas I absolutely defended several planets to the point they exploded.
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May 11, 2018 20:27
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OwlFancier posted:I don't think I ever ran into that menace form of that one, whereas I absolutely defended several planets to the point they exploded. "The planet broke before the Guard did!" / :cryingcitizeninfrontoftheimperialaquila:
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May 11, 2018 20:33
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Is sword of the stars still worth playing if I never played when it first came out? I'm pretty sure I own it from a sale or bundle but I never loaded it up. I like old games so I'm guessing the answer is probably yes unless there's something specific about it that has aged horribly.
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May 11, 2018 20:51
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