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Black Pants posted:Bring back Ascendancy's ship designer, cowards! That was my favourite 4x game in middle school. It's almost 25 years old but building ships in it is right up there near Sword of the Stars in terms of ease and fun. It's too bad the space combat wasn't as interesting. Now that I'm thinking about it there is a lot of overlap with Ascendancy and Stellaris, especially with both how good the presentation and early game are, and then the amount of micromanagement required near the end stage with the poor A.I. being non-aggressive and making stupid decisions with planet building. Entorwellian fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Dec 23, 2019 |
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Dec 23, 2019 16:59
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Presentation-wise the tech tree is also a work of art.
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Dec 23, 2019 19:06
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Black Pants posted:Bring back Ascendancy's ship designer, cowards! Also Ascendancy's weird aliens. I can't think of any other sci-fi game that had species that were as out there as Ascendancy.
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Dec 23, 2019 22:31
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Fister Roboto posted:Also Ascendancy's weird aliens. I can't think of any other sci-fi game that had species that were as out there as Ascendancy. Definitely that too. No human races, either! I like the stringray race that were tech thieves and more than eager to ally with you just to steal everything you had. If they re-released the game with better A.I., I think it'd sell very well.
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Dec 23, 2019 23:15
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Entorwellian posted:Definitely that too. No human races, either! I like the stringray race that were tech thieves and more than eager to ally with you just to steal everything you had.
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Dec 23, 2019 23:46
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I liked the eyeball aliens that could see all the jump lanes, myself, or the single-celled amoeba aliens and their weird bioship things. And yeah they were weird and neat but didn't lock you into a playstyle, just gave you some nice bonus and a ship appearance - like Stellaris, too.
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Dec 24, 2019 15:18
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Splicer posted:There's AI patches, when I went back to play it recently it was UI stuff that caused me problems. It's not a bad UI for the time but the resolution and the lack of small modern things like scroll wheel support were hard to get past. For me it was the fact I had all these cool wibbly bounceray things but they were all useless in the face of long range weapons. A new version would need a serious balance pass.
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Dec 24, 2019 15:53
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Speaking of balance, there's also the fact that you can make planets invulnerable by filling their space with stuff that can't be shot at, so there's nothing for ships to destroy so they can get into range to attack the surface.
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Dec 24, 2019 17:22
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Black Pants posted:Speaking of balance, there's also the fact that you can make planets invulnerable by filling their space with stuff that can't be shot at, so there's nothing for ships to destroy so they can get into range to attack the surface. This gives me flashbacks to Operation: Eastside, where you could totally stonewall enemy fleets by making a tiny corvette with maximum engines and then just run away at the start of every battle. (If you managed to escape, the battle would end in a stalemate, making it impossible to assault the planet afterwards. The smallest ship with engines maxed out and nothing else was always faster then even the fastest armed ship at the highest tech level. You do the math.)
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Dec 24, 2019 17:30
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Libluini posted:This gives me flashbacks to Operation: Eastside, where you could totally stonewall enemy fleets by making a tiny corvette with maximum engines and then just run away at the start of every battle. (If you managed to escape, the battle would end in a stalemate, making it impossible to assault the planet afterwards. The smallest ship with engines maxed out and nothing else was always faster then even the fastest armed ship at the highest tech level. You do the math.) Road Runner cartoon 4x
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Dec 24, 2019 17:51
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Hey so question, I remember like a year ago after they went to hyperlanes-only there was talk of having fortress worlds where you could chokepoint a system with a colonized planet and a stronghold on it that would prevent the enemy fleet from hypering out, requiring them to bring an invasion force that could invade and occupy the planet... did that get patched out or something? Yami Fenrir posted:Oh it gets so much worse than that. It'll also create phantom fleets sometimes, that you have to manually delete. Or try to reinforce maxed out fleets, which causes new 1 ship fleets to be created. Or create new fleets for each singular ship that stupidly decided to go into enemy territory while reinforcing. I ran into multiple of these last night, it was enormously frustrating. Then I thought "okay, think I've got the fancy loving ~fleet manager~ figured out now," so I went to build a new fleet homebased at this system and ".......where is it? why the gently caress am I out of resourc- why the gently caress is the game trying to double every existing fleet?? gently caress this" and quit to desktop. I get what they were going for with the fleet manager but as it stands it is more frustrating than the old 1.x model. Also the UI around trade routes and piracy where I have to select a starbase and click on the trade routes button to see which systems are experiencing piracy... what the gently caress, man. Horizon Burning posted:Part of me feels they should've gone less 4X and more Grand Strategy, maybe with pre-made empires and a bit more focus on events and intrigue. Kanthulhu posted:From what I remember about EU3 combat each province had some geography expressed in percentages like 20% mountain, 30% forests and 50% plains and when armies met in province the terrain of the fight was decided randomly based on those percentages, each terrain type giving different bonuses to defenders and limiting the battle width. Stellaris should have been like that, with star systems instead of provinces and the geography should have been stuff like debris fields, asteroid felds, gravity wells, planet rings and more exotic things in rare cases like dimensional rifts. Starbases should have been like forts in EU4, a big structure that needs to be sieged or assaulted and limits enemy ships moviments. Eliminate that nonsense of having to move your ships inside the system. The AI would be much better in defending and there would be less micro. cock hero flux posted:fleets should work like Hearts of Iron armies and systems should work like provinces, with the system view existing but mostly being a cosmetic thing for immersion because it's a much more visually interesting way of representing that information Gonna be honest, as someone whose very first direct exposure to Paradox strategy games was Stellaris, I have no investment in the rich and storied heritage of ~~*~Paradox Grand Strategy Games~*~~, find them byzantine and unapproachable, and would probably not be interested in Stellaris 2 if it was "Hearts of Iron 4, In Space".
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Dec 26, 2019 23:04
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Hey so question, I remember like a year ago after they went to hyperlanes-only there was talk of having fortress worlds where you could chokepoint a system with a colonized planet and a stronghold on it that would prevent the enemy fleet from hypering out, requiring them to bring an invasion force that could invade and occupy the planet... did that get patched out or something? Once you research inhibitors, planets with fortresses will block movement.
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Dec 26, 2019 23:09
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Hey so question, I remember like a year ago after they went to hyperlanes-only there was talk of having fortress worlds where you could chokepoint a system with a colonized planet and a stronghold on it that would prevent the enemy fleet from hypering out, requiring them to bring an invasion force that could invade and occupy the planet... did that get patched out or something? In order: #1: You need the upgraded version of a fortress (requires a strategic resource) #2: Upgrading your fleet to the current template seems to fix a lot of the reinforcement issues. #3: use gateways and/or your capital as the trade hub to eliminate a surprising amount of piracy problems. Still a pain in the rear end, though.
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Dec 26, 2019 23:14
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Gonna be honest, as someone whose very first direct exposure to Paradox strategy games was Stellaris, I have no investment in the rich and storied heritage of ~~*~Paradox Grand Strategy Games~*~~, find them byzantine and unapproachable, and would probably not be interested in Stellaris 2 if it was "Hearts of Iron 4, In Space".  Every now and then I try to learn EU IV or CK II and I just bounce off it because I can't parse what's going on and there's a billion little things to fiddle with. A Grand Strategy Stellaris 2 would probably inherit enough from Stellaris that I could find my way around, though.
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Dec 26, 2019 23:21
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Also the UI around trade routes and piracy where I have to select a starbase and click on the trade routes button to see which systems are experiencing piracy... what the gently caress, man. Can't you just click the little "trade view" arrows above the "toggle hyperlanes" button in galaxy map view? or am I missing something?
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Dec 27, 2019 00:31
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Yeah I find the trade routes map mode to be extremely intuitive and easy to use. You click one button and can immediately see all of your trade lanes and there they go as well as which systems have piracy. You usually don't need to mess with anything in this mode, you just need to identify which places have piracy and send a small fleet of corvettes to patrol along those routes. Sometimes it's useful to redirect a trade lane from one starport to another, and sometimes you need to manually create a trade lane because a starport simply doesn't have one (this happens with freshly-conquered starports) You don't need to click on a starport first, that's just a shortcut for viewing the trade coming out of that starport. If you want to interact with the entire trade map (which is 99% of the time what you want) just click on that map mode
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Dec 27, 2019 00:52
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Hey so question, I remember like a year ago after they went to hyperlanes-only there was talk of having fortress worlds where you could chokepoint a system with a colonized planet and a stronghold on it that would prevent the enemy fleet from hypering out, requiring them to bring an invasion force that could invade and occupy the planet... did that get patched out or something? Basically yes. You can put Fortress buildings on planets and they will function as FTL Inhibitors if you have the requisite technology. But they stop functioning at 50% Planetary Devastation, so a fleet just has to bombard your planet for a bit and then they can cruise on past. Also, note that FTL Inhibitors never prevented you from retreating your fleet the way it came.
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Dec 27, 2019 04:29
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Basically yes. You can put Fortress buildings on planets and they will function as FTL Inhibitors if you have the requisite technology. But they stop functioning at 50% Planetary Devastation, so a fleet just has to bombard your planet for a bit and then they can cruise on past. The pro move is to pair your fortresses with a shield generator, and designate it as a Fortress world. -60 bombardment damage, +20% defense army damage. You can hold out forever. Maybe even 5ever.
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Dec 27, 2019 05:04
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(Also if you have NSC, all upgraded starbases will have inhibitors once you research the tech, though planets with fortresses offer an additional barrier by also needing to be taken in the case of the starbase being captured)
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Dec 27, 2019 07:05
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Gonna be honest, as someone whose very first direct exposure to Paradox strategy games was Stellaris, I have no investment in the rich and storied heritage of ~~*~Paradox Grand Strategy Games~*~~, find them byzantine and unapproachable, and would probably not be interested in Stellaris 2 if it was "Hearts of Iron 4, In Space". what it would do is instead make it so that Stellaris' combat system doesn't involve every fleet being a swarm of tiny RTS units that you have no control over and your primary contribution being trying to find the weapon loadout that least encourages them to fly directly into the enemy and kill themselves
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Dec 27, 2019 07:19
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the one thing stellaris doesn’t need from other paradox games is their combat and not because i dislike the systems in eu4 and hoi4 but because they wouldn’t fit. you fix it by fixing the ai systems, the core of it isn’t the issue
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Dec 27, 2019 07:36
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also those systems are actually still individual units with weird ways of interacting the only difference is they’re even more unclear and strange and the only view is the little combat view instead of the system view which actually visualises it
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Dec 27, 2019 07:38
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Stux posted:the one thing stellaris doesn’t need from other paradox games is their combat and not because i dislike the systems in eu4 and hoi4 but because they wouldn’t fit. you fix it by fixing the ai systems, the core of it isn’t the issue For real I can't even begin to fathom how someone could want to see the EU4 combat system ported to Stellaris, I understand it now but I still think it's generally way too obtuse even after having played EU4 for *checks notes* 750 hours, gently caress could be worse i guess You can see a little bit of the EU4 DNA in planetary invasions, that's enough I think.
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Dec 27, 2019 08:03
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Stellaris combat is generally a garbagefire for many reasons, but EU4 combat would not be an improvement and I say this as someone who actually understands EU4 combat.
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Dec 27, 2019 09:22
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Black Pants posted:(Also if you have NSC, all upgraded starbases will have inhibitors once you research the tech, though planets with fortresses offer an additional barrier by also needing to be taken in the case of the starbase being captured) Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Gonna be honest, as someone whose very first direct exposure to Paradox strategy games was Stellaris, I have no investment in the rich and storied heritage of ~~*~Paradox Grand Strategy Games~*~~, find them byzantine and unapproachable, and would probably not be interested in Stellaris 2 if it was "Hearts of Iron 4, In Space".
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Dec 27, 2019 13:35
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:I don't know what NSC is but this is a basic feature of the game, you don't need a mod for that to work. At this stage they pretty much need to completely ignore what's currently there and just devise a new system from scratch, because I'm not sure what they have is fixable.
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Dec 27, 2019 14:13
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Splicer posted:Yeah, my current wishlist for Stellaris combat is "Not this, thanks". AAAAA! Real Muenster fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 15:03
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:I don't know what NSC is but this is a basic feature of the game, you don't need a mod for that to work. Is it? Dang, I've been playing with it for so long that apparently I've forgotten what's a mod feature and what isn't, apparently. And, it's this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=683230077
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Dec 27, 2019 16:10
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:I don't think anyone is asking for EU4 or HoI in space. I think a lot of people just want this super lovely combat system that we have been stuck with for the past 3+ years to be overhauled. The ship designer is buggy, incredibly tedious, and feels tracked on because "4x games have ship designers" and not because it adds any real benefit. The space battles themselves are absurd in their "remove all player control while ignoring what the combat computer that they picked tells their ship to do". There is not really any strategy and definitely zero tactics to space battles because it is just blobs of opposing ships smashing into each other in a swarm. It's a whole bunch of half-baked features cobbled together so that there is a system that works, not a system that is good. I'm not saying I disagree with any of your specific points, but I want to say that the space combat is not uniformly awful in every way. It usually looks really cool, and this was something my non-strategy-games-playing friend called out when we were playing some MP games together.
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Dec 27, 2019 16:24
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Vavrek posted:I'm not saying I disagree with any of your specific points, but I want to say that the space combat is not uniformly awful in every way. It is definitely the best looking Paradox combat, yes, but it either needs a bit more player control over what your ships are actually doing or a bit more abstraction as to how it actually works. Essentially you either need to be able to tell your ships, generally, what they should be doing (simple version is having a bunch of preset roles you can assign to a ship through the designer which actually dictate what it will do, unlike combat computers which really don't, or if you want to go complex just let players edit the role AI manually with something like the FF12 gambit system), or it needs to not matter (flashy lights exist as a visualization for what is really just comparing the different ship stats and deciding which ones blow up).
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Dec 27, 2019 17:49
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:I don't know what NSC is but this is a basic feature of the game, you don't need a mod for that to work. AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:If I could maintain some control or have a fleet tactic selection that coordinates my various ships so that Corvettes could be screens, Destroyers could be their namesake and go after Corvettes or be torpedo boats or whatever, and so on, then have each of those ships behave a certain way based on their individual combat computer, then I may be okay with it. But I think starting from scratch would be better, yes. But the fact that I can be fighting a Star Fortress, get it down to 2% armor, then all my ships leave to engage the enemy fleet that *just* showed up, leaving the badly damaged and nearly incapacitated starbase there to shoot at me while my fleet kills every. single. enemy. ship. before returning to shoot at it again. Or they kill a few ships, travel -while getting shot- to shoot the station, then travel -while getting shot- to shoot a few more ships, then, you guessed it, go back to shoot the station some more! dog i hate to be the one to point this out but the stellaris combat is already like very literally paradox combat but instead of the combat screen its something you can watch. like that starbase thing is comparable to eu4 sieges and enemy troops entering the province during it and getting a bonus. the main difference is that you cant really fit combat widths in in any sensible fashion because youre on the space scale. i dont think the designer is buggy or pointless, you do get a real benefit from fitting out your fleets as a counter to enemy fleets once youve reconned them. the biggest issues with the combat have been the ai computers not working entirely correctly and cruisers being completely pointless, but even the computer thing you can work around to some extent through properly staging your battles and not using mixed fleets. i havnt played in the last month or two so maybe things have suddenly changed but like corvs already do screen. theres a reason the big thing has been corv fleets that warp in first followed by a battleship backbone for main dps and escort destroyers for PDing missiles and cutting down the enemy corv screens. you dont see this in single player because of the ai but destroyers do also make really good corvette killers and you will take a fleet of them around in an MP game to clear up corvette screens. i dont think it needs to be started from scratch or more or less involved than it is now. i dont think its materially very different to any other paradox combat, its just presented better than a little window. i think the computers need fixing absolutely but to expect anything but a paradox combat system from paradox is weird and theres probably other games that do that.
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Dec 27, 2019 19:03
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Combat mostly just needs to look pretty and is fine I think? Having combat be more central and requiring more attention in a game where that’s not the primary focus doesn’t seem to be terribly valuable and will just make the game even more unplayable as another fiddly system the AI can’t do is introduced. Need to fix all the terribleness around simply being forced to micro every stupid planet and you entire economy because the AI is brain dead before adding yet more complexity. With team changes over at paradox I’m afraid the game has already peaked though so welp. Time to add espionage and another ship tier or whatever
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Dec 27, 2019 19:10
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Combat would be a lot better if it wasn't RTS-like, like others have said. Being able to move your ships around within a system adds nothing to the game, and only causes stupid frustrating things like what muenster described. Just delete system view.
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Dec 27, 2019 19:18
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Fister Roboto posted:Combat would be a lot better if it wasn't RTS-like, like others have said. Being able to move your ships around within a system adds nothing to the game, and only causes stupid frustrating things like what muenster described. it isnt rts like, its just visual fun to look nicec and its like 500x better than the normal paradox combat window. theres no benefit to removing it and it would resolve literally 0 of the combat things people are talking about because the combat is essentially already acting like other paradox games. you just get to actually watch some fun space battles instead of only having a little combat window to look at.
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Dec 27, 2019 19:23
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like its insanely fine and even good for some stuff to just be there as flavor, its fine for the system view to exist to watch spaceships shoot each other and to look at the stars and planets. and heck sometimes you might even use it to right click and only mine out one thing in the system early on. idk what removing it solves when its mostly just there for fun to look at and visualise the systems.
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Dec 27, 2019 19:26
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Me, upon first installing Stellaris 1.0, and also upon replaying it in 2.2: "Why the gently caress isn't there a smooth zoom function from tiny to fullmap? Every game has had it since Supreme Commander made it a marketing point, and many before then" Then there's this thread: Fister Roboto posted:Just delete system view. Its like quintessential paradox cruft: "This system/mechanic sucks, so let's break more things to justify it..."
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Dec 27, 2019 19:30
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You can have cool space battles without system view. Also it does a poo poo job of visualizing the systems since the planets don't move.
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Dec 27, 2019 19:30
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Late game your fleet has enormous engagement range anyways and if you just flip their stance to aggressive they’ll chase stuff without you having to zoom into system view
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Dec 27, 2019 19:32
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Fister Roboto posted:You can have cool space battles without system view. where lol if you remove system view you will just have the combat window. theres no gain from removing it. literally no point. if you want to never use it you never have to, and its already there so they arent spending time adding it in. i dont get this line at all just dont look at it who cares. mod it out.
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Dec 27, 2019 19:39
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QuarkJets posted:Yeah I find the trade routes map mode to be extremely intuitive and easy to use. You click one button and can immediately see all of your trade lanes and there they go as well as which systems have piracy. You usually don't need to mess with anything in this mode, you just need to identify which places have piracy and send a small fleet of corvettes to patrol along those routes. Sometimes it's useful to redirect a trade lane from one starport to another, and sometimes you need to manually create a trade lane because a starport simply doesn't have one (this happens with freshly-conquered starports) I didn't even know about that button! Fuckin' VIR. The tutorial definitely has holes in it.
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Dec 27, 2019 19:42
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