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Criminal syndicates are part of the reason I mainly play gestalt empires. Few things are more frustrating than getting massive hits to your stability out of nowhere because a criminal syndicate on the other side of the galaxy finally got their branches built in your empire. The fact that there's basically no way to undo it beyond demolishing your buildings and replacing them with precinct houses to force crime down is so badly thought out that it feels wildly out of place in this game. Luckily hive minds don't have to deal with that mechanic at all but it's weird that it's stayed in it's current terrible form for so long
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Mar 24, 2023 14:59
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I have a set of about 20 custom empires of all sorts. A few straight-up bad guys. A few out-and-out good guys. A healthy mix of everything in the middle. All of them are viable in that I've played at least one game with them and was competitive at Commodore or higher. I set the game to force spawn them, so I don't get random trash empires. (If you have fewer AI slots than force-spawned empire, it randomly picks from the force spawn empires.) Not one of them is a criminal empire.
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Mar 24, 2023 15:19
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I have a couple of subversive cults that are at war with one another, one is fanatic materialists and one is fanatic spiritualists. Criminal megacorps should really get a free civic at start and have criminal be the type of government your corporation has instead of a civic. If you did it that way it'd encourage an actually different play style.
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Mar 24, 2023 15:30
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Just noticed nobody answered this, and I'd meant to but figured someone else would, so.wilderthanmild posted:I've been away a while and I'm trying to get caught up to the mechanics again. I think pre-overlord DLC was when I last played. Frigates are... eh. I don't use them. They're for torpedos, and torpedos are capital ship killers, so they don't do much against corvettes or destroyers. I much prefer to just load torpedos onto my cruisers, since cruisers are big ships. If my opponent doesn't have any cruisers in their fleet, I crush them on size, and if they do, I've got cap-killers to take out their big guns quickly. Armies and invasions are the same.
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Mar 24, 2023 18:55
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I am a megacorp enjoyer, and while I have no trouble with competing in my games, it would be nice to see them get another pass to differentiate them a bit more from regular empires. Seems like they’ve just been bolting on megacorp versions of most of the new civics that have come out over the years. Not that I’m complaining though, this game has come a very long way since it was released, the DLC is just showing it’s age.
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Mar 24, 2023 19:11
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Since you can build defensive stations on non-upgraded starbases, for as often as asteroids seem to be heading for my pre-FTL friends sitting a single single defensive station with a hanger and L slot is a great way to ensure you never have to send a fleet out to clear the asteroid at the rear end end of the empire.
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Mar 25, 2023 05:19
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Regarding the Fear of the Dark origin: - it is probably the best Fanatic Purifier setup in the game. You don't get to eat your neighbors easily earlier as if you started as a FP, but instead you can build out a functional economy in relative peace, and trip the event sequence to go FP at your leisure. - your little Haven buddies hate you doing ANYTHING with alien empires. They'll barely tolerate non-agression pacts but will loudly complain about anything else (even accepting someone as a vassal will cause a break in relations). So don't bother being xenophile, it'll be an exercise in frustration. - the tech boosts can be *really* good. I've seen Haven give you free terraforming 5 years in. - when you flip, your ethics are *completely reset*. No matter what you chose originally, you become Fanatic Xenophobe/Militarist. Your civics don't change, Fanatic Purifier is just added. Yes, this means you can have 4 civics. (You also get an extra civic slot if you choose not to go FP.) If your old civics become invalidated from your new ethics, you'll have to wait 20 years to fix them, so you might want to just ensure you start with compatible ones. - I earned the Dark Forest achievement by going aquatic with catalytic processing/masterful crafter, played as an isolationist, and just building the crap out of my little sector of home, while building 100K fleet power border stations on all my borders (easily doable with Unyielding and a few defense platforms). Thus when I flipped over to FP, I could pick off the easier targets first at my leisure and snowball from there. The achievement requires you to wipe out all other life while being the only empire in the game, so no vassals to make micromanagement easier. It's a bit of a slog. More than a bit. Small map strongly recommended. Lum_ fucked around with this message at 12:18 on Mar 25, 2023 |
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Mar 25, 2023 12:02
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What are good bench marks to shoot for? By year 2275 I tend to see my Research around 1k and my unity in the 500-800 range. Its pretty random as to if this is enough to stay alive on commodore and higher. Feels like it depends on if I get a driven exterminator to spawn right next to me and or if the Kahn spawns near by. By end game I'm typically I'm a comfortable lead position that 5x crisis is relatively easy to beat.
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Mar 25, 2023 12:27
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The Iron Rose posted:My solution is getting bored by 2350. I haven’t fought a crisis since 2018 if your mid game crisis isnt set to start at 2275 - you're playing easy mode
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Mar 25, 2023 13:17
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CoolHandMat posted:What are good bench marks to shoot for? What build are you using to get to 1k research by that time? I usually aim for 1k research by ~2230 if I'm playing a necrophage empire, or ~2250 if I'm playing another origin that doesn't kneecap your growth.
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Mar 25, 2023 15:56
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If megacorps in Stellaris played more like merchant republics in CK2 then I would adore this government type. Your competitors share the same homeland as you, and you may struggle for power but they're also kind of useful when you face a common outside threat. You don't have the same grasp on territory as conventional factions so you spread your influence through trade ports, with its own map mode. This lets you play tall while still building influence on turf.
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Mar 25, 2023 19:23
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All You Can Eat posted:If megacorps in Stellaris played more like merchant republics in CK2 then I would adore this government type.  This is exactly what I want tbh
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Mar 25, 2023 21:00
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I'm also honestly a little confused as to why gestalts can't engage in inter-empire trade. Surely there are things that the gestalt empire would appreciate that they can't get elsewhere, and vice versa. And a criminal megacorp or pirates existing in and thriving in gestalt space so long as they don't bother the robots or hive mind seems like it would be fairly straightforward (as a side note, I have no idea why the pirates that spawn from trade that goes through a gestalt empire are hostile to the gestalt empire - if anything they should be leaving each other alone for a wide variety of reasons).
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Mar 25, 2023 23:08
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All You Can Eat posted:If megacorps in Stellaris played more like merchant republics in CK2 then I would adore this government type. The problem in my mind always comes back to how the game can't decide if it wants to be a grand strategy thing or a more straightforward 4x. Megacorps can't be too different in the current system because at the end of the day the only real way of interacting with other empires comes down to waging war and securing territory. I'd love to see corps function in the way you describe, with other weird empire types like space nomads possible as well, but I feel like that would require pretty fundamental changes to the game as a whole. That feels more like a potential Stellaris 2 kind of thing. I wish that system/space ownership was a lot more fuzzy than it is right now. Something like actual owned territory being a relatively small area around settled systems, with a more vague perimeter extending out through more empty space. I think of sci fi stories and there's a lot of room for interesting tension arising from one empire wildcat mining in another empire's space, or settling small colonies in a contested frontier, or neutral zones or dmz's between empires. If there were game systems to support that then there could be a lot more interesting non-shooty gameplay.
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Mar 25, 2023 23:34
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So in my most recent game I discovered that when you roll cordyceptic drones you can just katamari your way through the spawning systems (because every kill adds itself directly to that specific fleet agnostic of fleet cap) and end up with a 120k fleet around midgame.
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Mar 26, 2023 03:32
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Spanish Matlock posted:So in my most recent game I discovered that when you roll cordyceptic drones you can just katamari your way through the spawning systems (because every kill adds itself directly to that specific fleet agnostic of fleet cap) and end up with a 120k fleet around midgame. In a similar but less OP way I love playing reanimators because you can just build a few armies at the start of the game and never have to worry about making armies again. Plus roleplay wise it's very fun to show up to the Fallen Empire planets with 10k army power made up of the zombies of all the armies you've murdered along the way. CapnAndy posted:... Thank you. Makes sense, static defenses are better now, but still really just situational. Frigates are disappointing, which makes me sad. My understanding is they get murdered before they even get in range most of the time. Maybe I'll try some clever BS like engaging first with a normal fleet and sending them in later so the other fleet is already engaged and they don't get erased before even entering combat. wilderthanmild fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Mar 26, 2023 |
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Mar 26, 2023 05:07
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Dirk the Average posted:I'm also honestly a little confused as to why gestalts can't engage in inter-empire trade. Surely there are things that the gestalt empire would appreciate that they can't get elsewhere, and vice versa. And a criminal megacorp or pirates existing in and thriving in gestalt space so long as they don't bother the robots or hive mind seems like it would be fairly straightforward (as a side note, I have no idea why the pirates that spawn from trade that goes through a gestalt empire are hostile to the gestalt empire - if anything they should be leaving each other alone for a wide variety of reasons). This is probably a legacy of the original designs where all hives were devouring swarms and all robots were at least semi-hostile to (independent) organic life. A plain old gestalt with normal civics should be allowed to engage in trade.
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Mar 26, 2023 07:00
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I haven't played this in a bit since performance started to nosedive a few expansion packs ago. Have they made any good improvements or optimizations to like the daily calculations with recent patches?
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Mar 26, 2023 13:10
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bobtheconqueror posted:I haven't played this in a bit since performance started to nosedive a few expansion packs ago. Have they made any good improvements or optimizations to like the daily calculations with recent patches? Yes, they have.
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Mar 26, 2023 13:14
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Does anyone play this on a steam deck? I thought it was all working surprisingly well until I hit a trade screen with another empire: their offer column doesn't render and you can't move the offer window. Tried making the UI much smaller, looked for mods etc and no dice. Does anyone have any work arounds (or am I the only one having this)?
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Mar 26, 2023 14:09
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Rev. Melchisedech Howler posted:Does anyone play this on a steam deck? I thought it was all working surprisingly well until I hit a trade screen with another empire: their offer column doesn't render and you can't move the offer window. Tried making the UI much smaller, looked for mods etc and no dice. Does anyone have any work arounds (or am I the only one having this)? I don't have a Deck but have you tried UI Dynamic Overhaul mod specifically? It strikes me as something that might fix your issue.
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Mar 26, 2023 14:15
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Jack Trades posted:I don't have a Deck but have you tried UI Dynamic Overhaul mod specifically? Yeah, unfortunately that was the main mod from my desktop that I had to disable straight away - it makes a bunch of the menus too wide.
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Mar 26, 2023 14:33
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Rev. Melchisedech Howler posted:Does anyone play this on a steam deck? I thought it was all working surprisingly well until I hit a trade screen with another empire: their offer column doesn't render and you can't move the offer window. Tried making the UI much smaller, looked for mods etc and no dice. Does anyone have any work arounds (or am I the only one having this)? I play on Steam Deck and yeah the trading aspect totally breaks. Better have enough energy for when events pop up, or else you’re screwed!
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Mar 26, 2023 14:59
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Is it possible to, uh, force your ascension path on vassals? I want to make an empire that is basically MSI. Megacorp, gather primitives, uplift and vassalize. I think it would be neat for both gameplay and rp reasons to say pick cybernetics and forcefully cyborg my worker-vassals.
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Mar 27, 2023 15:10
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I killed the star devourer, grabbed its eggsack and started seeding other empires' stars for fun, but does it do anything? I got messages as it progressed and then how it succeeded but since then nothing seems to have happened at all.
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Mar 27, 2023 17:21
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Poil posted:I killed the star devourer, grabbed its eggsack and started seeding other empires' stars for fun, but does it do anything? I got messages as it progressed and then how it succeeded but since then nothing seems to have happened at all. If it's fully successful it destroys the star and kills everyone in the home system, but the target empire gets a special project to try to stop it. The project is pretty easy to do; requires a science ship and they've got about a year to do it. Realistically, that only fails to happen if for some reason they can't get a science ship there in a year. Every planet/hab in the home system gets a bunch of negatives until the project is complete or the star dies, so it's not useless...but actually blowing up the star is pretty rare
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Mar 27, 2023 17:27
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The First League precursor building being 1 per empire instead of 1 per planet is too much of a nerf.
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Mar 27, 2023 20:46
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binge crotching posted:The First League precursor building being 1 per empire instead of 1 per planet is too much of a nerf.
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Mar 27, 2023 20:58
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You know what's pretty freaky is that if you saw a gigantic space monster eat a star, or a planet, or whatever it would be totally silent. So all the poo poo that monsters/zerg/we do in Stellaris to destroy empires and populations is totally silent to everyone except the immediate victims.
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Mar 27, 2023 20:59
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I haven't played Stellaris in a super long time and did a game on my deck this weekend! I started as a Life-Seeded civilization, completely surrounded by a big ol empire of space racist geckos who would up owning half the galaxy. They were usually in some form of conflict with everyone in the entire galaxy except for me. I generally avoid joining the galactic community, but I really wanted to build tall this time so I didn't even try to maintain relations. The game proceeded along these lines: a galaxy-wide conflict between everyone and my space racist buddies (and a robot empire that died shockingly fast) ending up at roughly a stalemate. Then the racists got gobbled up by not-zerg and it became a galaxy-wide conflict between everyone and the not-zerg. The not-zerg were probably able to conquer everyone pretty easily, but then they decided to focus on me exclusively for a while. Except I was very strong and only had to defend two chokepoints which I did very easily. No loss of systems. The rest of the galaxy ultimately managed to defeat them, or at least get to a standstill because the not-zerg kept launching these massive attacks at me that I would fairly easily repel. Once I decided to start to push back and reconquer systems, taking them from the not-zerg, everyone hated me for some reason and nobody would sign a NAP even though they survived the crisis because of my stalwart defense. So I became the space racist not-zerg crisis. I elevated the xenophobe/militarist factions, pivoted extremely hard away from research and turned my home planet from a science fortress into a factory fortress. If these stupid assholes weren't going to be my buddies, they were going to be my slaves. I allowed slavery and started building transit centers. The only aliens that would be spared my wrath were the remnants of my ablative shield of space racists. At this point I felt like it was at that point where you couldn't really lose, so I was ready to take some risks. I reached into the Shroud and as luck (lol) would have it, having neither spoiled it nor experienced it, chose End of the Cycle, which made me The Most Powerful Empire In The History Of Space. Conquering people is very annoying and with any luck it would just kill everyone and I could just put up another unassailable defense. 50 Years goes by, and that did not happen. Now I'm playing a completely different game and honestly I am here for it. Everyone hates me, and I was not ready for it but more importantly neither are any of those other assholes.
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Mar 27, 2023 22:11
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The galactic community with me as the sole hive mind in it had to declare a massive Devouring Swarm a Crisis, since they had overrun almost the entire eastern galaxy. Que a grueling 50 year long war, billions dead, star systems and clusters switching ownership back and forth, gettin cleansed by one side, abandoned and cleansed by the other. After 50 long years of full out, total galactic warfare I managed to get enough of a respite to strike at the back of their territory with my full might, sweeping up several worlds including the homeworld of the beast. This seems to have tipped the scales and they are slowly loosing ground, even if they still field some powerfull fleets:  Now we just have to do it all over again on the western part   At least it is robots and not drones so hey some variation! Also I think gestalts will not be very popular in this galaxy lol.
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Mar 27, 2023 23:03
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I do enjoy the exterminators vs. devourer fights because, like, they're perfectly opposed to each other.
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Mar 27, 2023 23:40
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Oh I am one of the good guys. Tried the start as a vassal as a hive mind, the story being we where found as a primitive hive mind and forcefully upplifted by the masters. Yearning for freedom and finally achieving it, the hive mind would then strive to explore and find it's place in the galaxy. Turned out that place was bonking in the heads of other gestalts
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Mar 27, 2023 23:42
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jokes posted:You know what's pretty freaky is that if you saw a gigantic space monster eat a star, or a planet, or whatever it would be totally silent. So all the poo poo that monsters/zerg/we do in Stellaris to destroy empires and populations is totally silent to everyone except the immediate victims. There's also light lag to consider. If we on Earth witnessed the Sun being eaten that would have happened like 8 minutes prior.
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Mar 28, 2023 14:17
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I have 3/3 starbases, but one of them is occupied by a much more powerful enemy, which means I really only have two. How can I abandon or lose this station so I can get to three again?
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Mar 28, 2023 14:42
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pisshead posted:I have 3/3 starbases, but one of them is occupied by a much more powerful enemy, which means I really only have two. How can I abandon or lose this station so I can get to three again? Once the war is over either they'll get it via claims which frees up capacity or you'll get it back.
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Mar 28, 2023 15:04
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wilderthanmild posted:Once the war is over either they'll get it via claims which frees up capacity or you'll get it back. I see. The war's over and I've lost it. What's the general plan for expanding an empire? I have two starports, three colonised planets (two of which have barely anyone on them), a few outposts, and a dozen or so explored systems. Population doesn't grow very fast and I'm always short on alloys and minerals. Do I just construct every moon and build as many outposts as possible? I don't want to attack that enemy again because I don't have any firepower.
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Mar 28, 2023 16:01
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I have never felt as much like a villain as I did in my current game. My immediate 4 hops away neighbor ended up being a poor species with the payback origin so I was able to expand aggressively and box them out of being able to get out of a tiny 3 star corner. Then I fabricated claims on 3/5ths of their systems including the capital and just rolled over them and took pretty much everything of worth. Now they're a tiny rump state north of me boxed in by one of the Marauder empires, me and one of the FEs on the other side. But they're still kicking and we're getting into midgame now. it does kind of suck I'm never gonna be able to do anything with the MSI ship though, its just sort of a monument over their former homeworld.
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Mar 28, 2023 16:40
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Zore posted:I have never felt as much like a villain as I did in my current game. My immediate 4 hops away neighbor ended up being a poor species with the payback origin so I was able to expand aggressively and box them out of being able to get out of a tiny 3 star corner. Then I fabricated claims on 3/5ths of their systems including the capital and just rolled over them and took pretty much everything of worth. Aren't those origins deliberately locked for the AI because they can't use them?
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Mar 28, 2023 16:43
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pisshead posted:I see. The war's over and I've lost it. What's the general plan for expanding an empire? I have two starports, three colonised planets (two of which have barely anyone on them), a few outposts, and a dozen or so explored systems. Population doesn't grow very fast and I'm always short on alloys and minerals. Do I just construct every moon and build as many outposts as possible? I don't want to attack that enemy again because I don't have any firepower. Are you blocked from any future expansion by that neighbor? If not, just fortify that border as much as you can and expand elsewhere, while planning on them eventually attacking you again. The rest of this advice probably still applies, but you'll definitely need to focus on getting everything you can out of your current territory if you're blocked. If you're blocked, on the space front prioritize building any further outposts and building the appropriate resource harvesting stations in each system. After things are stabilized a bit, particularly minerals, you can automate this by clicking the automatic construction option on one or more construction ships. On the planet front, colonize any planets of good habitability. Those should be highlighted green. If you're short on those the more mediocre habitability ones highlighted in yellow can be okay but they will be a bit worse at basically everything until later in the game. Building wise try to focus each planet on one, maybe two things. Like a mining planet, factory planet, and energy planet, etc. Depending on how many planets you have, some might double up, but the more specialized the better. Food is the least useful resource for most empires, so try not to overproduce that. Your homeworld can kinda be a catch all for whatever else you need, but early on it usually ends up being mainly research focuses for me. Don't forget research! As for growth I'm not really an expert, but I know the core mechanic is mostly based on available space, plus associated bonuses. Building city districts can help this. There are also tons of research options and buildings that can help, but I think the buildings kinda suck iirc. Take at least one science vessel and set it to assist research on your capitol planet, focus the rest on exploring any other systems you can expand to, and then on resolving any anomalies/research projects in your systems, as these can often add resources and such. Try to find a choke point between you and the enemy, build an upgraded star base there and fill it with weapons. Ideally a border, but maybe give up a few systems if you have to. Also max out your fleet capacity by the time the truce with the neighbor ends. Ideally you can fight him in that choke point system. A combat focused station + fleet is pretty tough to overcome early game.
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Mar 28, 2023 16:46
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