Stellaris: a second Astral Planes has hit the game

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Stellaris: a second Astral Planes has hit the game

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

You can build to one fairly easily though, it's just a matter really of remembering to build a few alloy forges and you'll fairly easily reach the standard naval cap.

If you could keep going well past that point just by building a few more, you could end up with radically more ships than another empire, which means that all playstyles but maximum military focus become extremely suboptimal. Or it means you have to fix the diplomatic and war strategy AI which, well, they can't.

That you can't just conquer everything easily is part of the point of the game. Omnicidal empires already have major bonuses it's just that the AI literally can't play properly that it loses so easily.

# ? Jan 9, 2019 20:58

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 10:31

Martout: Aug 8, 2007; None so deprived

Oh cool it's 2249 in my current game and it crashes almost every time a month turns over, no mods, no fleets patrolling, no gateways or anything. Very cool.

ZypherIM posted:

Just make it a planet modifier for X years, and then you can have tech/ethos/civics/policy effect the duration. Like those -colony build time techs could also reduce time to be a colony, and finally be worth me researching.

Or make the building upgrade available from the start but it takes X years to finish. Or split it into a couple smaller upgrades that each supply one of the normal advanced jobs and then have a capper of a 'centralized bureaucracy' building that bundles it all into the 1 planetary admin building.

Basically any of these suggestions would make growing new colonies feel a lot more organic than the current resettle 8 pops to upgrade meta which is very clicky, not very interesting or fun and to me at least feels unintended despite all the mechanics for it being in the game.

Or just removing the -50% growth until the building is upgraded full stop. That'd be fine too honestly?

# ? Jan 9, 2019 21:02

Ham Sandwiches: Jul 7, 2000

OwlFancier posted:

You can build to one fairly easily though, it's just a matter really of remembering to build a few alloy forges and you'll fairly easily reach the standard naval cap.

If you could keep going well past that point just by building a few more, you could end up with radically more ships than another empire, which means that all playstyles but maximum military focus become extremely suboptimal. Or it means you have to fix the diplomatic and war strategy AI which, well, they can't.

That you can't just conquer everything easily is part of the point of the game. Omnicidal empires already have major bonuses it's just that the AI literally can't play properly that it loses so easily.

You mean in a 4x game you'd have to balance your militiary vs econ and couldn't neglect one? I'm not being glib that's the fundamental balancing act that 4x games introduce. Build up and get stronger later, or invest in a military now and get stronger now. If you make a giant military and lose, then you're hosed economically long term. If you go heavy econ and outlast the warmonger, you are in a great position long term.

By removing the ability to go war heavy you remove that entire thing. To turn around what you're saying, it means that the warmonger playstyle is not viable at the expense of supporting stuff like tiny inward perfection empires. If that's what they want, cool. But I think it loses out on some really cool decision making that the more traditional 4x game provides, which is this sort of economic / military / tech race with one player able to decide a conflict when they think it favors them.

# ? Jan 9, 2019 21:03

MaxieSatan: Oct 19, 2017; critical support for anarchists

I'm just going to say essentially the same thing I said a day or two ago, which is that the best way to make both pacifist/econ and militarist playstyles compelling would be if you actually had to make difficult choices between the two.

Aside from Traditions - where, at least in theory, you'll have every one by the end of a default-settings playthrough - I would also agree that the tech tree feels short and should either be slowed down a bit (in the default settings) or expanded upon.

I'm also not crazy about how the random tech selection means you'll often be stuck with a bunch of picks you have absolutely no use for - to the point where, if you get certain events, you can end up with Shields 3 as a research option when you're already on 4 or 5. It also makes Rare and Dangerous techs silly at a certain point, because they cease to be rare.

Mind, I do like the random tech thing on principle, I just feel like it needs more options or something for it to really "work" in the late game.

# ? Jan 9, 2019 21:10

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

The fleet cap as it exists now is actually pretty good. Again, it's a soft cap you can and should go over. It represents, in a very abstract way, the size of a fleet your empire's infrastructure can comfortably afford to support. Strongholds are available from day 1 and are a pretty good mechanic for allowing investments into fleet cap. Want to support more ships? Build more support infrastructure.

That's really at the core of the design philosophy for stellaris right now. It's all about forcing players to make long term choices. Do you spend that slot on an alloy plant so you can build more ships faster? Do you spend the slot on a lab so you can out-tech others in the long term? Do you build a fortress so you can support a bigger fleet and better defend your planet?

If you find yourself with tons of alloys but crippled on fleet cap that's not a problem with the game, that just means you didn't invest enough into your fleet cap, you over-invested in alloys instead. Or you can invest in energy credits and just afford to go over the cap no problem. Plan ahead. I don't think all these limitations and choices are exactly as balanced as they should be though, which is mostly the current problem. But from a design perspective I see nothing wrong with the soft fleet cap we have, it's no worse than the soft admin cap.

Where the fleet cap runs into trouble is that it's not just a matter of "planning ahead" or "investing" it's luck of the tech draw. Sure those forts can give you a little capacity, but an early draw and researching of a +20 capacity tech can literally double your starting cap and make or break an early game warmongering strategy. Too often in Stellaris the one thing you need to get around a cap or limitation is locked behind dice rolls and it can be really frustrating sitting there spinning your wheels.

# ? Jan 9, 2019 21:11

ZypherIM: Nov 8, 2010; "I want to see what she's in love with."

Raenir Salazar posted:

I have no idea how this relates to:

This sounds like you're asking me to give you a flowchart of how mechanically "it" would work; I think we're clearly not at the point where that would be productive part of the discourse and isn't my job, my job is to complain about what sucks.

No, I'm not asking for a flowchart. You're saying that you want the end game scaled to you (but you also want to be surprised by how strong the crisis is). I'm saying that by having it static it gives players a target to aim at, and some players who aren't you enjoy that.

While you can't be surprised by the default setup (outside of which crisis you face), you can change how strong it is or how much time you have before it can trigger (but you still don't know exactly when it'll happen). It is probably possible to add more randomization as to crisis strength and timing with modding.

Raenir Salazar posted:

Again, crises aren't important, it isn't what my gripe is at all, it is merely a useful benchmark to gauge the issues I am observing regarding the game's interest curve.

To repeat (and clarify):
-Techs are too quick.
-Wars are still decided ultimately about throwing two clumps of ships at each other.
-Ships really arent that much different from each other and don't differentiate themselves, see the clumps above; once you have cruisers fleet battles are just about watching to rave dance parties breakdancing until one side teleports away without any input from you.
-Players snowball too quickly not just in respect to the AI, but with respect to other players and to themselves.
-There's nothing to distinguish a tall empire from a wide empire. Which is a part of the problem with snowballing, size rewards size until carpel tunnel sets in.

Turn down tech speed? Mod and change amounts for techs that you feel still are too fast?
How are you envisioning changes to war to change this? I can think of some, but they involve a lot of changes, and introducing systems to achieve this aim may not be something a lot of people want.
Ship design can have a significant impact (see: crisis ship design counters), but there isn't a big advantage to be gained by going in on specializing outside of opening yourself to being countered. However games that do this also get complaints about being rock-paper-scissors combat, so pick your poison.

Snowballing problems is a personal opinion issue, and something that happens in every game with an economy you can expand. The cycle of expand->get more of what let you expand->expand faster is something that I've never seen nullified. If you've got a game in mind that does I'd be interested in checking it out.

Raenir Salazar posted:

Also I don't think making techs "more impactful" is the solution, because at the end the player is going to be so good that they can still blaze through them so now they're snowballing even harder than before.

The problem here about techs being too quick, is that there is no way to sufficiently slow them down without making the game broken, boring, or too difficult in other unintended ways. My preference would be for hundreds of more techs to add increments between techs, and to start off with enough of the major ship/space stuff construction techs so you can still *do* things for the early game, just not very well, cheaply or fast.

When I say impactful, I mean that each tech you research comes slow but with a larger impact. The difference between laser upgrades in stellaris is a tiny dps upgrade, while other games might be doubling it. The tech in stellaris is "research several smaller upgrades, which total to a noticeable increase in power".

Hundreds of techs sounds like a goddamn nightmare that requires an excel spreadsheet to do anything with, and also result in tech just being a blur.

Raenir Salazar posted:

Appealing to other 4X's is I think a problem, there isn't a need to, nothing stops stellaris from being its own thing. There are ways to stop snowballing; by making size a real concern with real tradeoffs.

Alloys don't go far enough to be honest, I've never had problems upgrading my fleets with the latest patches, but before I go further:

I'm pointing out to other 4x's because these aren't problems that only occur here, and when you see every game in a genre with these issues maybe it isn't as easy as you present it.

Not having alloys to upgrade your fleets isn't what I was talking about, it was the fact that if you're taking losses in a war, you can very easily chew through more alloys than you're able to produce. If someone jumps you during or before you can replenish your stores you're now in a tighter situation as alloys on the market trend towards loving expensive. If you want larger impact mod down disengagement chances.

Raenir Salazar posted:

This isn't really true, a 20k fleet with the same number of ships as a 10k fleet will always win. The jump from tier n and n+1 weapons, armor, or engines/powerplants are always decently worth upgrading for to squeeze every inch of available fleet power you can. Depending on how upgrades happen I might hold off to upgrade armor from 2 to 4 or something; but the problem is these techs are often back to back and linear.

Between alloys not going far enough, techs coming too often, and upgrades not being that difficult; results in one of the biggest issues with wide vs tall: There isn't really enough of a reason to split up your fleet.

If you had to have multiple regional fleets, there should be a system where you are strongly encouraged as a wide empire to keep fleets spread apart, comprising of many older ships; then you could have more impactful tech simply as a result of how rare your most advanced warships are, like the Soviet Union having T-64's only for the Germany forces while Allies and Category B divisions had T-72's and T-55s.

As an extension of this, it would be nice if there was a spectrum of warfare that enabled proper borderskirmishes and limited wars; like only the bordering sectors can fight with limited reinforcements from your central fleet.

20k fleet with the same number of ships as a 10k fleet will always win, but that is a poo poo comparison because the side with worse tech hasn't been doing nothing all game. In all likelyhood they're going to have a lot more ships (because they've been spending time expanding) and be chilling with 3x the naval cap leading to 30k fleet power. I never said that tech upgrades weren't worth getting, or that they don't add up. But upgrade from lasers n to n+1 is not going to be the difference in winning or losing most battles.

The reasons to split your fleet is travel time. The AI might not do a good job of using small fast fleet to take your back systems, or being as opportunistic as they could be, but your grouped fleet can only be in one place at a time.

Raenir Salazar posted:

There is clearly room for a revamp, "simplistic light show rave fight dust cloud" can be expanded into a better system. And by redesigning over aspects of the game to be more streamlined, you can focus more actions per minute on warfare; the part of the game people tend to have the most amount of fun with.

Basically solar systems should be larger, and have considerably more strategic depth to them to feel more like a video game adaption of The Expanse; where its a more gradual set piece operation to take the system that is more than just "blow up defending fleet, blow up defending station, bombard planet, land marines on planet". But most importantly, have this system be such that the AI can handle the broad gist of it, so you are free to focus on the one or two battles that matter, while other fronts the AI handle for you at a "good enough" level.

This whole thing I don't desire to see jammed into stellaris. I'd like to see better options for how fleets engage (stand-off carriers for example), but I really don't want to be micro'ing fights in this game. If I want more intensive micro action, there are plenty of 4x games that do that.

It is fine to want a modern 4x that takes after sots, but stellaris was never designed to be that.

# ? Jan 9, 2019 21:13

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Ham Sandwiches posted:

You mean in a 4x game you'd have to balance your militiary vs econ and couldn't neglect one? I'm not being glib that's the fundamental balancing act that 4x games introduce. Build up and get stronger later, or invest in a military now and get stronger now. If you make a giant military and lose, then you're hosed economically long term. If you go heavy econ and outlast the warmonger, you are in a great position long term.

By removing the ability to go war heavy you remove that entire thing. To turn around what you're saying, it means that the warmonger playstyle is not viable at the expense of supporting stuff like tiny inward perfection empires. If that's what they want, cool. But I think it loses out on some really cool decision making that the more traditional 4x game provides, which is this sort of economic / military / tech race with one player able to decide a conflict when they think it favors them.

That's how it already works, you can go war heavy. What you cannot do is leverage your entire economy to linearly outperform any other empire militarily, in a game where marginal advantages are very important.

Above a certain point, which is the fleet cap attained by easily accessible methods such as technology and traditions, you have to invest your economy for marginal military gains, not linear ones in the form of simply building another alloy plant for more ships.

Those marginal gains give you an advantage, what they do not do is allow you to trivially outclass literally everything. The AI's incompetence allows you to do that but the naval cap system, the war claims system, the limited scope of wars, all of these exist to prevent the primary motive force in the universe being an endless tide of ships conquering everything in an unstoppable wave. Because that's not interesting for the person controlling them because it's easy and dull, and it's not interesting for the people on the receiving end because it's frustrating and dull.

The system which works to ensure some degree of parity between empires and where military threats remain, generally, on an interactible scale between empires, is a good one, because it brings the rest of the game into play.

Think of it this way, your economy expands linearly with territory, and without naval cap it would expand linearly with how many alloy forges you built, which is determined by how many minerals you have, which is determined by your territory, all linear.

So that means if you win one war and conquer a similarly sized empire, you are now twice as poweful, flat out. And you're also more powerful than anyone else who is smaller than you. Which means you can easily beat all of them in wars and become bigger than more people. It also means that technology is basically useless because currently, technology serves to give you something other than the fleet to spend your money on, in order to marginally improve your military and economic power. If there is no limit to your ability to expand your fleet power, the efficiency of it doesn't ever fall off and it's all just linear, why would you bother with anything else?

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jan 9, 2019

# ? Jan 9, 2019 21:17

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Martout posted:

Or just removing the -50% growth until the building is upgraded full stop. That'd be fine too honestly?

Each new colony is a linear increase to your pop growth, and pop growth is king. There needs to be a limiter of some kind otherwise just grabbing every habitable planet you can meaningfully afford is the absolute hands down winner strategy because it's the absolute best way to poo poo out more pops. Grabbing every habitable planet you can meaningfully afford is still the absolute hands down winner strategy because the limiter is trivial to bypass. Ditching the 50% penalty requires either a replacement downside to colonising new planets, a reduction in the pops are king aspect of the game, or both.

# ? Jan 9, 2019 21:58

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Keep saying it but base pop growth shouldn't be the main thing, it should be created by development, not owning a planet.

# ? Jan 9, 2019 22:00

prefect: Sep 11, 2001; No one, Woodhouse.
No one.; Dead Man’s Band

Splicer posted:

Each new colony is a linear increase to your pop growth, and pop growth is king. There needs to be a limiter of some kind otherwise just grabbing every habitable planet you can meaningfully afford is the absolute hands down winner strategy because it's the absolute best way to poo poo out more pops. Grabbing every habitable planet you can meaningfully afford is still the absolute hands down winner strategy because the limiter is trivial to bypass. Ditching the 50% penalty requires either a replacement downside to colonising new planets, a reduction in the pops are king aspect of the game, or both.

You know what kicks rear end? Taking Post-Apocalyptic and then spawning right by those three systems that have six tomb worlds between them.

# ? Jan 9, 2019 22:01

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

That pre-scripted clump of systems with all the tomb worlds seems totally broken now, the pre-civ dudes are always dead and if you're playing on .25 planets you always end up with this incredibly powerful clump of valuable planets. It was cool when they would sometimes actually spawn as a civ.

# ? Jan 9, 2019 22:03

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Raenir Salazar posted:

The problem here about techs being too quick, is that there is no way to sufficiently slow them down without making the game broken, boring, or too difficult in other unintended ways. My preference would be for hundreds of more techs to add increments between techs, and to start off with enough of the major ship/space stuff construction techs so you can still *do* things for the early game, just not very well, cheaply or fast.

I'd go the opposite. Take every filler +10% to X tech in the game and roll it into another tech, then double tech costs across the board. You'll get "research complete" notifications half as often, and every time you do it's because something with a meaningful, qualitative impact on your empire has just completed and your next choice is going to be between a bunch of diverse, interesting options.

# ? Jan 9, 2019 22:07

Zurai: Feb 13, 2012; Wait -- I haven't even voted in this game yet!

Baronjutter posted:

That pre-scripted clump of systems with all the tomb worlds seems totally broken now, the pre-civ dudes are always dead and if you're playing on .25 planets you always end up with this incredibly powerful clump of valuable planets. It was cool when they would sometimes actually spawn as a civ.

There's an event which causes them to spawn later in the game. I'm not sure what happens if they spawn when you're already squatting on their planets.

# ? Jan 9, 2019 22:09

Magil Zeal: Nov 24, 2008

Baronjutter posted:

That pre-scripted clump of systems with all the tomb worlds seems totally broken now, the pre-civ dudes are always dead and if you're playing on .25 planets you always end up with this incredibly powerful clump of valuable planets. It was cool when they would sometimes actually spawn as a civ.

I got them as an actual spacefaring empire in one of my recent games. They were on the planets but not a spacefaring Civ in the one before that, think they disappeared when I terraformed the planets. There was something wrong with them in that game though, one of their planets had an anomaly that wouldn't go away no matter how many times I tried to examine it.

# ? Jan 9, 2019 22:11

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸