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Yeah, it's going to take a bit of getting used to that "peace" basically means "non-aggression pact plus trade agreements" rather than being the default state.
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May 4, 2012 16:59
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These system improvements that say "+x SHIP VARIABLE IN SYSTEM", like Hardened Hulls for example, do they give a buff to ships in the system or do they apply their bonuses to ships built in the system a la the Barracks in Civ? I hope you could eventually set a fleet to "patrol" or whatever a chokepoint system, it's annoying having fleets the same size as the defending fleet somehow slip past them and move into the adjacent system. toasterwarrior fucked around with this message at 17:46 on May 4, 2012 |
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May 4, 2012 17:41
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Free invasion of outposts is a good way to slow down colony spam. You know your homeworlds are safe, but if you try to expand you are going to need an armada to defend each colony for 20+ turns. It's also kind of historical, European states used to engage in 'colonial wars' in the Americas and Africa while having a sort of gentleman's agreement to not invade each other. Nth-ing the need for a no research/production alert, maybe just change the color of the end turn button whenever a queue is empty. Missiles are overpowered, but if you research down the industry tree and get the camouflage battle card (looks like a chameleon) you can neuter them pretty bad. I've only had battles with one race so far but they've been pretty exclusively focusing on missile offense and no type of defense, was hoping that a more varied loadout would be optimal. But what I really, really want is some way to intercept fleets when they pass through a system you've got ships in. The AI loves to end it's turn 1 move from the star you are sieging with your level 15 hero's fleet of deathcruisers, then next turn zip into the system and then on to the one after that before you can click the attack button. Some sort of 'guard' command that caused the fleet to auto-attack ships when they enter the same system would be great. And am I imagining it or is there a 1 battle per turn limit for a fleet? Seems like this would be exploitable, you could just spam scouts at your enemy assault force while you maneuver to blockade his worlds or just to keep him from engaging your main force.
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May 4, 2012 17:54
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Must be doing something wrong, seem to be able to keep pace with the Normal AI with expanding and I was able to take my own constellation but then by around turn 75 or so I get super behind the magic voodoo that the other AI are doing and suddenly I'm 2-3x behind them on score by 110. I guess maybe I have poor research priorities or something, will have to play around a bit to see what's going wrong development wise. I took a couple outposts and planets from one of the AI and it had a million system improvements and set every planet to a plus money planet improvement, maybe there's something there? Just musing a bit after a couple crushing defeats around the same turn count, maybe those system improvements are somehow the key to continuing rapid development when free space gets pretty much fully taken. It's either that or I expanded too fast and should have focused on agriculture and slowed down in the star race after locking the constellation wormholes down or something? Game seems pretty fun despite me having little idea how I should be playing it!
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May 4, 2012 18:00
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Nevets posted:But what I really, really want is some way to intercept fleets when they pass through a system you've got ships in. The AI loves to end it's turn 1 move from the star you are sieging with your level 15 hero's fleet of deathcruisers, then next turn zip into the system and then on to the one after that before you can click the attack button. Some sort of 'guard' command that caused the fleet to auto-attack ships when they enter the same system would be great. And am I imagining it or is there a 1 battle per turn limit for a fleet? Seems like this would be exploitable, you could just spam scouts at your enemy assault force while you maneuver to blockade his worlds or just to keep him from engaging your main force. This I completely agree with. The fact that you cannot enter combat outside of orbit is fine, but the AI cheeses it to avoid a fight, and it's a bit annoying. It would be nice to simply create a blockade to avoid exiting the system without cloak technology or something similar.
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May 4, 2012 18:03
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thetrin posted:This I completely agree with. The fact that you cannot enter combat outside of orbit is fine, but the AI cheeses it to avoid a fight, and it's a bit annoying. Thirding this. Having to play jump and skip with an enemy fleet for six turns is really annoying and completely negates any reason you'd have for creating gateway systems that protect the routes to your core worlds.
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May 4, 2012 18:11
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Souai posted:Must be doing something wrong, seem to be able to keep pace with the Normal AI with expanding and I was able to take my own constellation but then by around turn 75 or so I get super behind the magic voodoo that the other AI are doing and suddenly I'm 2-3x behind them on score by 110. What you might be looking at here is the fact that colonization speeds seem to grow exponentially. The 3 biggest impediments to colonizing are population supply (which becomes a non-issue once you get a system with 3+ fully developed ocean/terran/jungle worlds), outpost defense (which you can overcome by blocking off a pocket or making peace with your neighbors) and money to buy out the first improvement that give +10 industry in the system. The only other thing that slows down expansion is the unhappiness penalty you get from empire size, but you can mitigate that too using luxury resources / happiness buildings / reducing the tax rate. You might just not have shifted gears into full-on colonize everything mode once you've got the technology, and the AI is leaving you in the dust.
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May 4, 2012 18:25
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GrandpaPants posted:Speaking of colonies, when I first make one, there's this indicator in the upper left corner of the system screen that says that the system is an outpost, and will take X turns to become a colony. What is the functional difference between the two? Now, this ties in to another poster's question: Influence. Outposts have no Influence, and thus can be invaded freely. Now, some of you may have noticed that thick lined border around your most established systems. Nobody else can colonise that area without an open borders agreement. Since this circle can be greatly expanded with the influence mod buildings, you can basically demarcate areas and say "Nope, you aren't colonising past here". Also, just like the later Civ games, it seems (not confirmed yet) that you can push influence into another person's world. My four way between me (Horatio) and three UE empires showed some hefty border tug-o-war going on, before I got ruined by the lack of T-70, and blue's spamming of cruisers (which I couldn't use) GrandpaPants posted:Does anyone feel that research happens a bit too quickly? Maybe it's just because I'm playing the Sophons, but I scoop up research really quickly once I establish a dedicated research system, which leads to the "This ship is obsolete the second I make a fleet of them" syndrome. I also learned that if you queue up multiple techs, you can actually research multiple techs in one round, which is a great touch. It is great, but the research going quickly? Play Hissho, notice the difference. It's not a huge difference, but it means Sophons are always going to out-tech you if you let them. As such, in preparation for MP, I have my priority list of targets for the first five races: 1) Cravers - No peace, so get them before they get you, because they're going to be doing the same. 2) Sophons - Will out tech you, get them first. 3) Hissho - If they get strong enough, they'll steamroll everything they touch. Don't let them get there. 4) United Empire - They have lots of money to spend, but they're nothing special. 5) Horatio - Eh, their ships are expensive, only important thing is they colonise planets quicker. What use is that when you can beat the poo poo out of their worlds? Note: Horatio aren't actually bad, they just have to be played smart. GrandpaPants posted:What mechanic does the game have for preventing you from taking the panspermia approach and colonizing everything you can? Is there supposed to be a system to deter this aside from slowing growth? Influence. Another side effect seems to be you can't travel through their borders unless you're at war, just met them, or have open borders. That's what killed my Horatio game... two UE players right next to me, no T-70 in my neck of the woods, and two more UEs came out to play by the time I was dealing with blue. GrandpaPants posted:I also can't help but feel some of the system improvements need to be more percentile based, rather than population based. Without that percentile bonus, there's very little incentive for me to pick anything but the most optimal exploitation, like +Production for Lava or +Food for Terran, etc, unless I'm in desperate need of them (ie, a planet that has nothing but Lava and Arid planets should probably get some +Food at some point). Ah, but this is pretty much the same system as Civ... the first tech gives you bonuses... then the rest percentile you up, and all of them stack. By the late game, you've got more of whatever you want than you actually know what to do with. Except Research... never enough Research for the Research God!
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May 4, 2012 18:29
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JamieTheD posted:Now, this ties in to another poster's question: Influence. Outposts have no Influence, and thus can be invaded freely. Now, some of you may have noticed that thick lined border around your most established systems. Nobody else can colonise that area without an open borders agreement. Since this circle can be greatly expanded with the influence mod buildings, you can basically demarcate areas and say "Nope, you aren't colonising past here". These were all really good responses. I guess I haven't seen influence become a factor yet in the games I've started/abandoned, but here's hoping I finally push past that point where I realize that I somehow hosed myself, and restart a game as a result.
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May 4, 2012 18:36
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JamieTheD posted:
I've got to disagree here. Once the Empire gets to a point that it can sustain a 50%+ Tax rate they become unstoppable without a huge tech leap. 50%+ Taxes not only gives them a massive income, but you start seeing a production bonus from their trait that lets them out earn and out produce pretty much anyone else. I'd put them on the same grounds as the Hisso, once they get their war machine rolling it's really hard to stop them. If they aren't out producing you, they can just buy their fleets outright.
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May 4, 2012 18:39
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Omnicarus posted:I've got to disagree here. Once the Empire gets to a point that it can sustain a 50%+ Tax rate they become unstoppable without a huge tech leap. 50%+ Taxes not only gives them a massive income, but you start seeing a production bonus from their trait that lets them out earn and out produce pretty much anyone else. I'd put them on the same grounds as the Hisso, once they get their war machine rolling it's really hard to stop them. If they aren't out producing you, they can just buy their fleets outright. Crap, I forgot about that... but that means... You're boned, whatever you do... Noooooooo!
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May 4, 2012 19:01
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Nevets posted:What you might be looking at here is the fact that colonization speeds seem to grow exponentially. The 3 biggest impediments to colonizing are population supply (which becomes a non-issue once you get a system with 3+ fully developed ocean/terran/jungle worlds), outpost defense (which you can overcome by blocking off a pocket or making peace with your neighbors) and money to buy out the first improvement that give +10 industry in the system. The only other thing that slows down expansion is the unhappiness penalty you get from empire size, but you can mitigate that too using luxury resources / happiness buildings / reducing the tax rate. Wait, you can buy improvements? This changes everything! I've always had these big reserves of Dust and nothing to spend it on. I can't believe I never noticed the little Dust icon on production queues until right now. It's time for some Civ V economizing without any loving empire-wide smiley faces holding me down.
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May 4, 2012 19:11
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JamieTheD posted:Crap, I forgot about that... but that means... You're boned, whatever you do... Noooooooo! Once they get going, yeah.  But I'd also say that the Empire starts off the weakest by far. Their big racial ability isn't very useful until you have the tech and luxury resources to maintain high taxes with high happiness. Their negative traits are pretty nasty to start with too, but later in the game both of their traits become inconsequential since you can get rid of the negative homeworld trait and they make so much money the extra hero action cost isn't anything to worry about.
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May 4, 2012 19:18
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I'm finding that the Empire's true strength is in having enough money to instantly retool their deathfleets to perfectly counter whatever their enemies are fielding at the moment. I was embroiled in trench warfare with some Cravers, making steady progress, when suddenly they switched from missiles to beams and started bypassing all my flak-based defense modules. I took one turn to fly back to a system I owned, retrofitted the entire fleet with shields for about 3 turns worth of dust income, and the next turn flew back out and just obliterated their hero fleet with zero losses. Since all their ships have bonus hp, out There's an early tech in the government tech tree, "Botanical Scanning" which lets you build a cheap powerful +happiness system upgrade. Putting those in your systems lets you grind taxes like crazy, which looks pretty key to playing the Empire. Mzbundifund fucked around with this message at 19:25 on May 4, 2012 |
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May 4, 2012 19:20
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Yeah going over my game over score after quitting I was doing fine on system count but I was chronically behind in research and military strength. I think a lot of it had to do with not getting the +40 research system tech ever and not being good with taxes and system techs in general. I overemphasized colonization techs and going for new ship types at the expense of the other trees. I ended up 1st in colonies and achievements, middle of the pack on population and fids but a solid 4th on command military and research.
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May 4, 2012 19:21
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I like the game and I like the way they've developed the style to be less cartoony than other recent 4x games have often been. The gameplay is good but I'm a bit sad that turning off economic victory doesn't actually stop it from happening. Cuts games short when you're not playing for a fast victory
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May 4, 2012 19:40
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Sputty posted:I like the game and I like the way they've developed the style to be less cartoony than other recent 4x games have often been. The gameplay is good but I'm a bit sad that turning off economic victory doesn't actually stop it from happening. Cuts games short when you're not playing for a fast victory Due to the sheer tenacity of the Craver hordes, I had to turtle down and build up my infrastructure so I can get ships to the front quick. Unfortunately, I think I might end up buying the galaxy first instead of crushing it under my capitalist bootheel.
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May 4, 2012 19:46
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Sputty posted:I like the game and I like the way they've developed the style to be less cartoony than other recent 4x games have often been. The gameplay is good but I'm a bit sad that turning off economic victory doesn't actually stop it from happening. Cuts games short when you're not playing for a fast victory That's a shame. I haven't tried for an economic victory yet, how much dust does it take to pull off? EDIT: VVVV Hmmm ok. I am pulling in ~500 a turn while controlling about half a small galaxy. I'm only taxing at 30% though, and most of my systems are geared towards research or production. Mzbundifund fucked around with this message at 20:02 on May 4, 2012 |
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May 4, 2012 19:53
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Mzbundifund posted:That's a shame. I haven't tried for an economic victory yet, how much dust does it take to pull off? 300000 which wouldn't be that hard to get if you were trying to. Seems weird that a lump sum of cash is what amounts to an economic victory
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May 4, 2012 19:55
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Yup, accidentally bought the galaxy while trying to build up a death fleet to kill my all-devouring neighbour. GOTY 2012. I've learned some neat things about heroes in this game. Here goes: 1. Heroes are awesome: a. Fleet commanders can double your ships' effectiveness in a fight, and give additional bonuses like speed. b. Heroes specced towards Food/Engineering can get entire systems on their feet lightning fast. c. Heroes specced towards Research/Dust can make some serious cash through trade routes bonuses; at the end of my game, a level 11 hero was raking in around 500 Dust through trade alone. 2. If assigned to a system, heroes gain experience from anything you construct or rush-build. Furthermore, this experience is scaled to the value of the thing being constructed. Thus, thought it may seem like a waste, rush-building on systems you are developing with an engineer hero isn't; you're boosting his experience levels even further. Likewise, if you have a trade hero sitting in a dust-focused-system, feel free to use it as a rush-build depot: the experience you get can pay itself back fast through your hero. Additional stuff: From what I experienced, you need to be at peace to be eligible for a trade route. This can be a bitch to maintain if your opponents are mainly aggressive races. If you find yourself with a trading partner though, here's some things I noticed in how trading works: Trade routes are one-to-one: that means a foreign system engaged in trading with one of your systems cannot trade with another system. Thus, I find it beneficial to focus all trade efforts into one system until it's full; that means DON'T build those improvements that add an additional trade route everywhere, to make sure the routes funnel into one system. This way, you can take advantage of the focus with a trade hero. Your trade depot ought to be far away from the border: there are improvements that give bonuses to distant trade partners. There's a caveat when managing trade availability though: sometimes, your planet's moons can have a Temple bonus that enables additional trade routes. As far as I know, you can't disable them, so rebase your depot if necessary. toasterwarrior fucked around with this message at 20:18 on May 4, 2012 |
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May 4, 2012 19:57
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I have discovered an interesting bug. Tactical resource requirements are not checked when you retrofit a ship design, so you can build up a fleet of the base ship, upgrade the design to include modules you don't have the resources for, then retrofit them. Ran into this by doing it on accident, and then trying to figure out why I couldn't build any new ships.
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May 4, 2012 20:07
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Okay, I bought this based off this thread. It had better be awesome!Sputty posted:300000 which wouldn't be that hard to get if you were trying to. Seems weird that a lump sum of cash is what amounts to an economic victory I find most 'alternate' victory conditions in these sorts of games tend to be pretty lame. Cultural in Civ IV was okay I guess, but if I have a choice I generally just leave on the science victory (which is what I go for) and conquest victory in 4X games.
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May 4, 2012 20:15
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Sputty posted:300000 which wouldn't be that hard to get if you were trying to. Seems weird that a lump sum of cash is what amounts to an economic victory SMAC had the same victory condition. When you think about it, when you have that kind of dough rolling in you can pretty much do anything, and from a realism perspective that much capital would let you hold any free market economy hostage; you just have a few proxies takeover enough public corporations and then your opponents start to have mysterious supply shortages, lending crisis's, and manufacturing breakdowns. I'm only about 30% of the way down the tech tree, does anyone know if you ever get the ability to have more than 3 heroes at once? I was thinking an extra hero slot per explored temple would be a good idea, considering temples don't seem to be the awesome things they were made out to be. +10% dust, wow. 
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May 4, 2012 20:40
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seravid posted:Are there any aesthetic changes to the ships depending on things like weapons loadout or do they always look the same no matter what?  Anyone? My Lego spaceship builder inner child tells me this is a top priority.
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May 4, 2012 20:52
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Saw this game on Steam a couple days ago and thought I would keep an eye on in for the future. Then I stumbled on this thread and decided to buy it after reading some of the comments. About to embark on my first journey; Any beginner tips I should know of for getting started, such as, things you wish you knew your first game of ES.
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May 4, 2012 20:53
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Forgotton posted:Saw this game on Steam a couple days ago and thought I would keep an eye on in for the future. Then I stumbled on this thread and decided to buy it after reading some of the comments. About to embark on my first journey; Any beginner tips I should know of for getting started, such as, things you wish you knew your first game of ES. Make the game 5 Cravers, set it to difficult AI.  ( Don't actually do this. )
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May 4, 2012 20:56
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seravid posted:
I haven't seen any on my ships. I think the base designs have 'weapon ports' modeled on, so when your ship fires missiles they fly out of what look like missile tubes, cannons from cannons, etc. They are fairly unobtrusive though, so if you don't fit kinetic weapons on a ship it won't look like you've got a bank of 2000mm railguns welded onto your ship for no reason. I've only seen pirate/terran/horatio ships so far, and the designs are pretty enough that adding pieces onto them doesn't seem neceessary. If you are looking for lego ship designer, may I direct your attention here: 
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May 4, 2012 21:00
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Forgotton posted:Saw this game on Steam a couple days ago and thought I would keep an eye on in for the future. Then I stumbled on this thread and decided to buy it after reading some of the comments. About to embark on my first journey; Any beginner tips I should know of for getting started, such as, things you wish you knew your first game of ES. There's a tech a little ways down the right-hand tech tree that lets you build a magetic research installation that gives +40 science a turn and only costs -3 dust a turn for upkeep. The installation does not care how many population are in the system, the installation does not care what kind of planets are in the system, the installation is a strong flat boost to research. Go for this pretty early and you can focus most of your home systems on building colony and defense ships early on, and grab a big territory while still staying competitive in the tech race. VVVV: Huh. There's a "warp drive" you can research in the bottom tech tree that lets your ships travel directly between stars instead of having to stay in the star lanes. Maybe get that and go explore the other side? Mzbundifund fucked around with this message at 21:11 on May 4, 2012 |
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May 4, 2012 21:02
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I just started a weird game. Normal, three other races. I started exploring the galaxy and didn't run into any of the other races... at all. I eventually fully exhausted all of the nodes, and as I did it told me "you've explored half of the galaxy!" and I still hadn't met any other races. Now, was this intentional? Is there some tech I need to research to travel to the mysteriously missing other half? I didn't see any wormholes around this time, I had them in my last game and they're visible from the get-go. Do I have to "travel to another constellation" somehow? What do I build to do that, if so? Or was there a world-gen issue, and a link was missing between the two halves of the galaxy? With me alone on one half and all the aliens on the other, crammed together?
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May 4, 2012 21:08
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Does anyone's computer actually load turns in this save? It's begun music stuttering for me and takes like 10 minutes to load a turn http://dl.dropbox.com/u/44893/CRAVERS%20-%20Turn%20187.bin
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May 4, 2012 21:10
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superh posted:I just started a weird game. Normal, three other races. I started exploring the galaxy and didn't run into any of the other races... at all. I eventually fully exhausted all of the nodes, and as I did it told me "you've explored half of the galaxy!" and I still hadn't met any other races. About 40% of my spiral galaxy is isolated except for one string linking me to the rest, and I am alone in my 2/5th's. Haven't explored any of the rest because the other end of the chokepoint is held by a hostile player. So I think there are definitely map generation issues that can lead to (huge) pockets of space behind chokepoints. Haven't found a single wormhole, either. Can you discover stars that aren't linked to the system you are in if your ship sensor coverage is big enough? Seems silly to force you to travel along strings to explore once you discover warp drive, and it can bottle you up.
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May 4, 2012 21:18
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Probably a silly question, but is there any disadvantage when you use exploitation on a planet in a system? From the original post, I got the impression it made it specialise (like forcing a city in Civ to produce gold or whatever) but it seems the planet still produces other resources as well? I'm guessing I should exploit all my colonized planets? Also echoing the fact that this feels like a release worthy game already. The 'alpha' tag is a complete misnomer, but then I am used to playing Paradox games which generally take a good 6-12 months post release to actually be playable. Blobbo fucked around with this message at 21:24 on May 4, 2012 |
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May 4, 2012 21:21
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Yes you should exploit on all your planets. Exploitation doesn't reduce production in any area, it just gives a bonus to the production of one kind of resource. So just pick what you need and exploit that resource. Alternatively, some kinds of planets are better with certain exploitations than others. Arid planets, for example, get a bigger than normal bonus when being exploited for Dust. Terran planets get a bonus to food exploitation, barren planets to research, and so on.
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May 4, 2012 21:23
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Nevets posted:About 40% of my spiral galaxy is isolated except for one string linking me to the rest, and I am alone in my 2/5th's. Haven't explored any of the rest because the other end of the chokepoint is held by a hostile player. So I think there are definitely map generation issues that can lead to (huge) pockets of space behind chokepoints. Haven't found a single wormhole, either. Wormholes are those inter-star paths that look like they've dissolved. They take 1 turn to cross but use up all of your movement points, no matter the distance.
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May 4, 2012 21:25
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Mzbundifund posted:Yes you should exploit on all your planets. Exploitation doesn't reduce production in any area, it just gives a bonus to the production of one kind of resource. So just pick what you need and exploit that resource. Alternatively, some kinds of planets are better with certain exploitations than others. Arid planets, for example, get a bigger than normal bonus when being exploited for Dust. Terran planets get a bonus to food exploitation, barren planets to research, and so on. Thanks, that's the impression I got and the way I've been playing. I suppose I just wanted it clarified because the (admittedly fantastic) tutorial didn't make it entirely clear.
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May 4, 2012 21:26
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Also, it should be noted that researching more advanced forms of exploitation auto-upgrades any obsolete exploitations you've got running, at no cost.
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May 4, 2012 21:31
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drat, this game needs a glossary sometime. What hell are "fids"? I'm trying to figure out what my Proto-Orchids give me empire-wide besides yet another luxury resource.
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May 4, 2012 21:33
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Food, Industry, Dust, Science. Your orchids boost everything.
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May 4, 2012 21:34
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Alkydere posted:drat, this game needs a glossary sometime. Food, Industry, Dust, Science. FIDS is the sum of your resources on the planet.
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May 4, 2012 21:34
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Alkydere posted:What hell are "fids"? I'm trying to figure out what my Proto-Orchids give me empire-wide besides yet another luxury resource. Food Industry Dust Science (read down)
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May 4, 2012 21:34
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