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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Its the pick you will have active the longest - how is it the least valuable pick? Because all the best picks are gated behind not-being-first basically. As far as I'm concerned the Objectively Correct picks for non-gestalts are: 1) Executive Vigor, Imperial Prerogative, or Interstellar Dominion 2) Ascension 1 (Requires 1 other) 3) Arcology Project (Requires 2 others) 4) Ascension 2 (Requires 2 others, worse than Arcology) 5) others... PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Apr 1, 2019 |
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Apr 1, 2019 23:41
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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ConfusedUs posted:I keep posting this, but I want more "overpowered" perks. Is it really "overpowered" if everything is overpowered in a different way? Building a Dyson Sphere would cause the galactic market to instantly crash as energy would now be worthless. Totally gamebreaking stuff like that is entirely what megastructures should do.
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Apr 2, 2019 00:41
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I just got finished reading the Algebraist a few days ago, and I've been thinking about the gas giant population relocation event chain. It'd be cool to play as a gas giant dwelling species- their gimmick obviously would be that only gas giants are inhabitable by them, so they aren't forced into the same kind of competition for living space that other empires have to engage in. To compensate they could have an innately slow pop growth rate, or maybe just make the planets themselves really, really hard to develop. Maybe they don't even engage with empire borders in the normal way and can colonize gas giants in other empires that will allow them to do so, or even just do it anyway and let the host empire bombard the planet in question if they like. I guess I'm sort of thinking about how megacorps work while thinking about this. Just add a gas giant dweller map overlay to see the extent of the gas giant empires in your galaxy I guess.
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Apr 2, 2019 00:47
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THE loving MOON posted:I just got finished reading the Algebraist a few days ago, and I've been thinking about the gas giant population relocation event chain. It'd be cool to play as a gas giant dwelling species- their gimmick obviously would be that only gas giants are inhabitable by them, so they aren't forced into the same kind of competition for living space that other empires have to engage in. To compensate they could have an innately slow pop growth rate, or maybe just make the planets themselves really, really hard to develop. Maybe they don't even engage with empire borders in the normal way and can colonize gas giants in other empires that will allow them to do so, or even just do it anyway and let the host empire bombard the planet in question if they like. I guess I'm sort of thinking about how megacorps work while thinking about this. Just add a gas giant dweller map overlay to see the extent of the gas giant empires in your galaxy I guess. Dwellers would make a great fallen empire template. Don't actually hold space just a bunch of gas giants all over that can be used as gateways by them and pop out doom fleets if you make them mad.
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Apr 2, 2019 00:51
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Dwellers would make a great fallen empire template. Don't actually hold space just a bunch of gas giants all over that can be used as gateways by them and pop out doom fleets if you make them mad. Even just that would be really cool. At any rate I think gas giants are different enough from regular terrestrial planets to justify them playing a different game altogether from normal empires
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Apr 2, 2019 00:53
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FYI they're just farts
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Apr 2, 2019 01:20
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Gyshall posted:FYI they're just farts the ones from the event chain, yeah. The ones in the Algebraist are a race of senile semi-anarchic dorks who mostly spend millions of years loving around doing whatever, secure in the knowledge that nobody has a reason to mess with them, and they're easily capable of dealing with anybody who tries. Their ancient fleet-busting hyper weapons are entirely looked over by clubs of hobbyists who just like tooling around with that sort of thing. edit: They're like... bi-hemispherical jellyfish/clam thingies that actually wear clothes. edit: also they like staging wars between different bands of their planet using archaic old dreadnoughts with crappy kinetics- to the death- just for funsies edit: it's a fun book, definitely worth a read THE FUCKING MOON fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 01:36
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ConfusedUs posted:I keep posting this, but I want more "overpowered" perks. Is it really "overpowered" if everything is overpowered in a different way? I still subscribe to the idea that Megastructures should be unique habitat types which have unique buildings and districts and grow as you complete stages of the megaproject (or, ideally, have construction buildings/districts which are the actual way a megaproject is constructed past the initial stage). Theoretically this should be possible to mod in -- maybe not the construction district stuff but the rest -- but it would be a ton of work. Shadowlyger posted:Click a construction ship, select the megastructure menu, select the ringworld segment thing. It should show a green circle on every slot where you can build one. This is how I do most of my Gigastructural Engineering megastructure placement, but I have yet to find whatever the requirements are for a Nicol-Dyson Beam.
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Apr 2, 2019 02:37
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Zurai posted:This is how I do most of my Gigastructural Engineering megastructure placement, but I have yet to find whatever the requirements are for a Nicol-Dyson Beam. I believe you need a Class-A or B star with no habitable planets in the system.
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Apr 2, 2019 03:05
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Gyshall posted:FYI they're just farts finding out that the ancient information cache in an unknown language was actually an alien fart box is the best exploration event
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Apr 2, 2019 03:54
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Am I wrong or does the shroud really suck for 2 ascension perks Like I get to pick a buff every 5 years that may or may not be very relevant, it may or may not even work, and sometimes it also kills a random scientist while also not working. Maybe there's more results I haven't seen yet and maybe I've had bad RNG (I seem to fail at least 50% of the time even on the "high probability" events), but so far I'm seriously underwhelmed. Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 03:59
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The Shroud? It's not as powerful as biological Ascension, but the passive bonuses are solid, and the Shroud is among the more amusing mechanics in the game I think. It can give you better shields, better ship computers, and Psi jump drives, living metal tech and an insanely strong immortal ruler. Then there's the Instrument of Desire; if you can roll that, it's better than any other bonus in the whole game by a huge margin. I love playing Spiritualist specifically because of the Shroud. But yeah sometimes the RNG just hates you and there's nothing you can do sadly. E: maybe defeating shroud entities should give you +25% Psionic Shield tech, but not let you actively put research into it. Then if you got 20 years of critical failures you'd at least get shields out of it. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 04:08
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Nuclearmonkee posted:The first pick is the least valuable one and it's very good to be able to declare war on someone for whatever random rear end reason you feel like, completely ignore the wargoal and just go around stealing all their poo poo. Having slaves sucked directly onto your planets with people ready to put boots on their necks is quite strong and saves a lot of effort and headache with redistributing pops around from your freshly conquered pissed off planet. It's situationally "decent" but, again, in most cases if they can't stop you from bombarding their planet, then they can't stop you from taking that planet, so might as well save yourself a civic and do that instead. And if all you want are the pops then you can handle relocation in a controlled manner instead of spreading angry pops all over your empire that you then have to manually assign to suitable planets, so there goes that argument, too.
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Apr 2, 2019 04:25
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Aethernet posted:Building a Dyson Sphere would cause the galactic market to instantly crash as energy would now be worthless. Totally gamebreaking stuff like that is entirely what megastructures should do. The thing is, this is the only megastructure that feels like it should do this. The ringworld is just a lot of living space. It might be gamechanging from an in-universe perspective of "holy poo poo we won't need to colonize another planet for 1000 years or more," but it doesn't do much else. Maybe the matter decompressor has a similar impact, but even that is a dubious preposition because while it is still impressive, it isn't "capture the sum total output of a star" impressive. E.g. you don't get the entire mass of the black hole all at once. Dyson spheres are definitely the odd-man-out in the megastructures list, and probably shouldn't have been in the game in the first place unless they were a giant table flipper for the first empire to create one.
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Apr 2, 2019 04:28
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In terms of leaders psionics are really loving good too. If you get the immortal leader he'll get double bonuses, but just the normal leaders are really solid. Your ruler gets +0.5 influence gain. The more influence gain you already have the less good this is, but it is still a solid increase. Govs: psionic gives 5 stability and +10% unity. 5 stability is equal to increasing all production by 3%. So when you compare to other options, they'll get 5% to energy/minerals/research, while you get 3% to all of those plus everything else you produce. Scientists: psionics is 10% research speed, while the other options give 5%. Admiral: psionics is 10% dmg, 15% evasion. The others give 5% fire rate (which is less good as you can get a bunch of sources of that already) and either weapon range (useless) or 10% disengagement (not bad, but more about reducing losses than in combat strength). Army: sort of a weak spot with +moral effects. Since late game you're likely to be able to get moral immune units with the other options. The psionic trait for your pops is also not bad: 10% energy credits and research (note that intelligent+psionic matches erudite for output), 5% happiness. Calculating the increase of production for happiness relies on a ton of poo poo so no rule of thumb, but basically a small increase across the board. Conspiratiorist posted:It's situationally "decent" but, again, in most cases if they can't stop you from bombarding their planet, then they can't stop you from taking that planet, so might as well save yourself a civic and do that instead. You're ignoring the main thrust of his post, which is that in order to take their stuff you're forced to invest a bunch into army and claims. Being able to steal pops gets you the majority of the benefit of taking the area, none of drawbacks, and enables you to benefit from fighting in wars that you normally wouldn't (so a war against someone non-adjacent to you isn't a waste of time).
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Apr 2, 2019 04:43
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One thing I don't like about the shroud covenants is that there is an obvious best choice in the instrument of desire. It is just much better than what you get out of any of the others with negligible downsides. The psi leader traits are good, though the synth ruler trait is better. Smiling Demon fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 04:57
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ZypherIM posted:You're ignoring the main thrust of his post, which is that in order to take their stuff you're forced to invest a bunch into army and claims. Being able to steal pops gets you the majority of the benefit of taking the area, none of drawbacks, and enables you to benefit from fighting in wars that you normally wouldn't (so a war against someone non-adjacent to you isn't a waste of time). Being able to spare a fleet to just sit there and bombard, but not armies? Capturing and releasing space being more of an administrative hassle than reshuffling angry pops that randomly spread about your empire? My point is those are niche situations, and their scope should weighted vs the opportunity cost of an ascension perk. Again, those situations can exist, and when it seems like they'll be a common occurrence in that game then the pick becomes decent enough to warrant taking, but otherwise? poo poo, just take Imperial Prerogative.
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Apr 2, 2019 04:59
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Because the ringworlds don't rotate, in order to have normal gravity they'd have to be much smaller and closer to the sun.
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Apr 2, 2019 05:09
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Ak Gara posted:Because the ringworlds don't rotate, in order to have normal gravity they'd have to be much smaller and closer to the sun. Are you basing this on the ringworlds in the game not visibly rotating, or are you thinking of something else that's ringworld like? (I'll also note that ringworlds in the game visibly have their habitable surface on the inside)
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Apr 2, 2019 05:15
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Yeah armies barely cost anything now, a few hundred minerals is nothing. You can't resettle off of occupied planets I assume?
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Apr 2, 2019 05:20
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What are generally good dates for mid and end game? I was playing for AGES with the mid game as early as possible as I didn't even know it was a slider, so I was facing threats with fleet powers larger than every single ship in the entire galaxy at the time. Fun, but not winnable. Though all other dates I've chosen seem to come too late, the threat shows up and i brush it off. Also, have they ever said why they haven't done new ship sets? I Know there are workshop items that add ship types, but they're pretty static, I like them changing with the different types of hulls, plus while I love star wars and mass effect ships, they look odd with the Stellaris designs.
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Apr 2, 2019 05:40
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twistedmentat posted:What are generally good dates for mid and end game? I was playing for AGES with the mid game as early as possible as I didn't even know it was a slider, so I was facing threats with fleet powers larger than every single ship in the entire galaxy at the time. Fun, but not winnable. 2300 midgame / 2350 lategame with 5x crisis strength is good.
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Apr 2, 2019 05:58
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Warmachine posted:The thing is, this is the only megastructure that feels like it should do this. The ringworld is just a lot of living space. It might be gamechanging from an in-universe perspective of "holy poo poo we won't need to colonize another planet for 1000 years or more," A Ringworld is also completely beyond the scale of the game; as much living space as ten thousand Stellaris galaxies is more than "a lot". Honestly, the "the entire output of a sun" isn't that impressive in some ways for the trouble taken to build it given it's an unimaginably difficult engineering feat.
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Apr 2, 2019 09:01
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Aethernet posted:Building a Dyson Sphere would cause the galactic market to instantly crash as energy would now be worthless. Totally gamebreaking stuff like that is entirely what megastructures should do. I feel like you're only looking at one side of the equation; how much of that energy is expended in maintaining the dyson sphere? That much surface area that close to a star would take an insane amount of effort to keep functioning. We have to assume that the in-game Dyson Sphere doesn't instantly make everything worthless for gameplay reasons but it's pretty reasonable to explain that away, too, since it's not like we have any real grasp on the true scale of difficulty that this engineering problem represents.
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Apr 2, 2019 09:37
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Aethernet posted:Building a Dyson Sphere would cause the galactic market to instantly crash as energy would now be worthless. Totally gamebreaking stuff like that is entirely what megastructures should do. Warmachine posted:The thing is, this is the only megastructure that feels like it should do this. The ringworld is just a lot of living space. It might be gamechanging from an in-universe perspective of "holy poo poo we won't need to colonize another planet for 1000 years or more," but it doesn't do much else. Maybe the matter decompressor has a similar impact, but even that is a dubious preposition because while it is still impressive, it isn't "capture the sum total output of a star" impressive. E.g. you don't get the entire mass of the black hole all at once. Zurai posted:I still subscribe to the idea that Megastructures should be unique habitat types which have unique buildings and districts and grow as you complete stages of the megaproject (or, ideally, have construction buildings/districts which are the actual way a megaproject is constructed past the initial stage). ..... * It might be cool if localised maintenance with limited transfer was text throughout the game. Each planet/system first pays its own food, energy, minerals, and consumer goods, then spits the rest out into the empire economy. The amount that the empire economy can handle is limited, meaning both lossy exports and a hard cap, with the latter improving with size and both improving with tech. Food used to be planet only which was... messy, but this would be more of a hybrid. Splicer fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 10:17
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Conspiratiorist posted:Being able to spare a fleet to just sit there and bombard, but not armies? You're still wanting a fleet either way, that is a bad comparison. Early on, investing in army is additional costs. Later in the game they may not be worth noting, but those first few wars every alloy you can get is worth a lot more. To capture, resettle, and release those same pops costs you an amount of influence based on the amount of space you need to claim, in addition to the energy costs of resettling. We can maybe ignoring resettling costs if you say that every pop ends up where you don't want them, but you still are spending a large chunk of influence to be able to actually take that territory. This is where the perk is really shining, because you're able to prosecute effective wars as long as you have the alloys to do so, regardless of influence on hand to actually make claims. So you can either make claims in a more efficient manner (spending less based on distance increases because you're taking chunks over multiple wars), or you could make claims on empire B while prosecuting a war on empire A (while normally you'd be influence restricted). If you run into a situation where your immediate neighbors are on truce timers and/or are friendly you can start a war with an empire farther away and still benefit. Yea, these are technically 'niche', but if you push yourself much at all it isn't too hard to get into these situations. If you aren't being all captain war the perk isn't very good, but in terms of how good the perk is compared to your other options it is very strong.
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Apr 2, 2019 12:25
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While I appreciate all the above posts pointing out the challenges in implementing the Dyson Sphere in a context where other megastructures might not be so obviously game breaking, my intent is less to pay attention to realism or balance and instead have megastructures be equivalent to Dominions' global enchantments: i.e horrifying gothic game-changing events you really want to stop or embrace. In Dominions, these include things like removing the sun and sending the entire world into endless night, causing everyone in the world to age at a horrifically accelerated rate, or creating an enormous whirlpool of blood that lures in sacrificial victims. In Stellaris, these could include crashing the market with a Dyson Sphere, providing an unbeatable destination for all immigrants with a ring world, or destablising the fabric of reality and causing Voidspawn to appear at every black hole with a matter decompressor. We need more crises that are avoidable or offer tangible benefits for their instigator, and megastructures could be a path to doing that.
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Apr 2, 2019 12:33
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Accessing the shroud after the first time should be involuntary. Ascend, get some passive benefits. Breach the shroud, get additional passive benefits, pay for them by getting randomly prodded by the elder gods who Saw You.
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Apr 2, 2019 12:54
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Conspiratiorist posted:2300 midgame / 2350 lategame with 5x crisis strength is good. Yeah this is what I do datewise. Less crisis strength, but I've been thinking of bumping it up.
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Apr 2, 2019 15:14
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Splicer posted:Accessing the shroud after the first time should be involuntary. Ascend, get some passive benefits. Breach the shroud, get additional passive benefits, pay for them by getting randomly prodded by the elder gods who Saw You. Yes, this. More of a sense of delving into The Terrible Secrets Of Space.
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Apr 2, 2019 15:52
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Aethernet posted:Yes, this. More of a sense of delving into The Terrible Secrets Of Space.
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Apr 2, 2019 16:20
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Splicer posted:I bounced hard off the shroud because I was paying energy to possibly get worse than nothing. Each time I tried I got three gently caress you results in a row so why would I keep paying to get ghost kicked in the space nuts? On the other hand getting a bunch of ongoing neat stuff as the base thing and having weird stuff happen to me as a consequence, usually bad but very occasionally good? Heck yes. Apparently, if you make too many deals with the Space Devil, the whole galaxy gets hosed over hard later on. Have got to give that a shot one of these days.
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Apr 2, 2019 16:28
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Splicer posted:I bounced hard off the shroud because I was paying energy to possibly get worse than nothing. Each time I tried I got three gently caress you results in a row so why would I keep paying to get ghost kicked in the space nuts? On the other hand getting a bunch of ongoing neat stuff as the base thing and having weird stuff happen to me as a consequence, usually bad but very occasionally good? Heck yes. The energy cost is basically meaningless by the time you can breach the shroud. The thing that sucks for me is the timer, since the timer is the same regardless of result. I feel like if you get a bad result, you should be able to try again sooner, so at least if you keep rolling snake eyes you aren't screwed for as long.
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Apr 2, 2019 17:37
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Just started a fanatic purifier run, going with no retreat and oh my god you kill stuff so fast.  I might have lost 3 corvettes purging as many planets maybe
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Apr 2, 2019 17:46
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ConfusedUs posted:Started a game with some fanatic militarist, spiritualist starfish people, high aggressiveness, Admiral difficulty. Took Warrior Culture, and it's a lot of fun. Duelists are awesome. I wish I'd taken Authoritarian, though, because I didn't realize that Nihilistic Acquisition was gated behind Authoritarian/Xenophobe. I had to actually capture enemy planets instead of just kidnapping everyone. I joined a broad alliance that popped up to defend against the threat of the swarm. Defense pacts were established, with a set of Fanatical Befrienders at their core. So what does the swarm do? It declares war on the Befrienders and drags no less than five empires into the war, including me. Unfortunately, I still haven't gotten Wormhole Stabilization. The swarm kept poking fleets through the wormhole in the middle of my territory, and leaving. I couldn't leave the wormhole unguarded, and unfortunately, the other end of it is deep in the heart of swarm territory. Sending my fleets to join the war was suicide. So I sat on my wormhole and watched as the swarm ate half of GEICO and half of the Befrienders, including both their homeworlds. I did some good, as I was able to lure a few of the swarm's fleets into my space by moving my fleets to the borders of the two neighboring systems. Then when they were too far from the wormhole to escape, I'd pounce and destroy the fleet with minimal losses. Eventually I saw an opportunity. It would take over a year, but by taking a circuitous route, I could penetrate all the way to the swarm's homeworld. If I could somehow take it and hold it, we could cripple their production. I dispatched one of my fleets, set it to encourage followers, and dove in. Our fleet combined fleet strength was enough to overwhelm any single swarm fleet (and probably win against two), even if there was a station. We chewed our way deep into enemy territory. We were one jump away from the homeworld when the Befrienders settled a Status Quo peace. Goddamn it. ConfusedUs fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 18:17
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ConfusedUs posted:I joined a broad alliance that popped up to defend against the threat of the swarm. Defense pacts were established, with a set of Fanatical Befrienders at their core. Stabbed in the back
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Apr 2, 2019 19:03
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Is the Shroud the Chaos Gods one? I really want that end game crisis but holy poo poo they make you work for that. "Attempt to contact, Fail" over and over and over. At this point i'm building Habitats and just filling them with hydroponic farms because I have to remove my food districts for houses.
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Apr 2, 2019 19:29
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Having now encountered one, I'm unsure how I actually feel about the War in Heaven mechanic. Unless the victorious empire gives back territory afterward it just feels needlessly punishing, especially if you're playing a race that won't submit to them. 
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Apr 2, 2019 19:29
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Break a leg!
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pew pew    Charge!   ohshit   Pew. Pew.  
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Apr 2, 2019 19:30
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I've built ~10 custom empires that I force spawn in every game. This includes a every empire I've "won" game with as well as a Mr. Rogers-themed Fanatical Befriender, my GEICO megacorporation, and The Radishers, who are the devouring swarm I've been talking about. The Radishers use the portrait that looks like a radish that grew where the head should be. It's like the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, only in space, and they're radishes. It's juvenile but it makes me laugh every time. VostokProgram posted:Stabbed in the back Next time I'm going to goad the swarm into declaring on me, instead. I'm going to insult them non-stop and rival them (when I can). I'm ~1 year from several super important techs that should make the difference in holding my wormhole base, including star fortresses. If I can just get the god drat Wormhole Stabilization tech to spawn I might even declare on them myself and invite half the galaxy. I think I can hold my wormhole once I upgrade the station to a star fortress.
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Apr 2, 2019 19:46
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