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Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Oh cool a new Stelaris DD about leaders!
*20 pages of totally-not-racists upset the diversity of portraits for humans is too high for them to role play as space nazis but it's strictly hypothetical and it's important to note the posters them selves are NOT racist, they just prefer to play video games where they role play as 100% white male dominated empires*

*additional derail into Roman concepts of racial purity*

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Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I just find it weird and gross and very paradoxforums that racial purge mechanics is something they really really want. I can get the argument for terrible nazi things to happen in a WWII game because that's history and it was a very important part of the time period. But in a space fantasy game?? In a game that will allow you to have slavery as a policy people are upset that the human names aren't white enough and why can't we have internal genocide and slavery?!?!

Like I guess sure there's some "realism" reasons you could include that, but I think it mostly speaks to the types of people the people demanding these features are. I'm sure they also love to play Germany in every video game and make scale models of german military vehicles and own "WWII memorabilia" that just happen to be mostly german and have book shelves full of WWII books, once again strangely focused on the germans. Maybe they do airsoft or historical dress up and have an SS uniform.

But they are NOT nazi's or nazi sympathizers they're just really interested in history you see. Anyways, click my sig to get a 20 paragraph feature request about how to "tastefully and historically" implement the holocaust to HOI4 and maybe why Hitler had good reasons to do it (good reasons from a historical perspective I'm not really a nazi remember!)

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I do hope it's really easy to make empire graphics though. Simple 2d portraits and some txt files or what ever. Workshop will be full of cool race sets.

I know the game generates random races but I wonder if there's a way to tie certain empires to certain graphics, or weight them. So you could for example create a species graphics set for super religious humans and have the art all like space templars and poo poo, but then the game randomly selects that art set to be used in a randomly generated communist-technocracy human empire. Probably not though, other than telling the game what species-type it's for there won't be much to pre-set.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Much like in EU where multi-cultural empires get advisors from other cultures I'm sure the same will be true for Space-EU. So if you're "empire" is multi-species you'll get a mix of leaders based off the demographics of your nation and of course your policies towards other species.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Buy emperor of the fading suns and make a good space game.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I'd be so happy if we could realistically just totally ignore planets and once we get off our homeworld and into space survive entirely in huge orbital habitats and asteroid mining.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Yeah it's dumb to just have a blanket single-use-only for all research. Have it make sense in a case by case basis. If your scientist can't translate some huge alien tablet let someone else come try later, maybe when you have better translation technology. Or maybe you've found some ruins, but they are booby-trapped and it all self-destructs. Basically have it based on the outcome of the quest.

It could also force players to make tough choices about what to do with the anomaly after they're done the quest. You've gained some insights by studying this ancient city but its far from your borders. At the end of the quest you can choose to destroy the ancient city so its secrets don't fall into anyone else's hands, or keep it intact as it will provide bonus infrastructure or a tourist attraction when colonized. There, an interesting choice!

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

DrSunshine posted:

Basically the anomalies seem a little bit like cracking open ruins in Civ or pods in SMAC/X -- random effect, possibly a disaster, sometimes nothing, sometimes a nice bonus. That was entertaining enough, so I'm pleased to read about this being a part of Stellaris.

Yeah I was just about to post that Anomalies are just goodie huts from civ. Little treasures to encourage and reward exploration. But sadly once they are gone the whole mechanic is gone :(
This is why I'd love many anomalies to stick around, or have the failures give you a hint that you need to come back later. A mid or late game breakthrough could finally unlock the secrets of that weird anomaly you found in the early game.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

They will be most like goodie huts in civ I guess, in that they can be both good and bad, but usually good enough to get you wanting to go out there and explore. Civ tried to have an "explorer" unit that gave better goodie hut rewards but it was too small a part of the game to really make it worth building.

In Stellaris it sounds like they've become a much bigger part of the game, and more interesting. Everyone loves the CYOA events from CK2, so it will be that in space. Find a space hole to hell, fill it full of rocks, get an outcome. Except your options and the results will also be based on the skill of your explorer-scientist, your cultural values, your technology, and a ton of other things.

For instance you find a planet with an ancient abandoned city that has an engineered slave race still maintaining the city for their long dead masters. You then get options based on your leader, society, and technology.
Maybe you have good enough bio tech that you can make a simple change that makes their "loyalty gene" dormant, freeing them from their hard-wired compulsion to maintain the city and worship their old masters. In thanks they give you the technology "cubism" and a new pop of citizens joins your empire, or the city becomes a colony.
Maybe your society is down with slavery and with some simple pheromones your scientist reports we could put these "people" to productive use thinking we are their new masters, giving you a POP unit of slaves.
Maybe your scientist is lovely and tries to tell them their creators are long dead and the slaves all sink into comatose depression as they are programmed to die in such an event.

Then on another play through you get the same event, or you think it's the same event, but when you free the slaves they kill your scientist and rise up as a small but technologically advanced upstart nation. Freed from their genetic obedience they can now use their masters ancient technology to become a serious threat.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Fintilgin posted:

I want a Stellaris anomaly inspired by the Blight in Vernor Vinge's 'Fire upon the Deep'.

I'm sure there are going to be a ridiculous amount of events and a good amount of them will be obvious winks at established scify situations. I also hope it's easy to write our own chains or a couple PD staffers just love doing it and ever patch adds dozens or hundreds of new event hooks and options.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

If I can't rename everything in a game I get really twitchy.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Paradox dudes, please let me beta test just this one time, been applying to every beta since Victoria 2 :(

Also war plan black = align against fascists in support of the western allies, ie historical outcome.
War plan white would be to align against communists and eventually even ally with fascists to further than cause.
War plan red I assume when it mentions "the empire" it means the british empire, ally with soviets in a global "anti imperialism" crusade?
War plan orange just sounds like ramping up against japan, which also historically happened. If you can only pick one though what about war plan black??

Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Nov 6, 2015

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

This is pretty good time to be a Paradox fan. I'm both really excited about Stellaris and the new HOI. I'm more confident about the design and quality of HOI4 but Stellaris has more "potential" (for both success and failure). What a time to be alive! So many dev diaries to look forward to.

Can anyone refresh my mind on the estimate release dates for both of them though?

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads%2Fdev-diary-8-the-situation-log-and-special-projects.890612%2F

New dev diary up. Looks like anomalies can expand into "special projects" just like I thought/hoped!!

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

An EU board game should be a cooperative game where the players do what they can to influence random events and the course of history to make the most pretty borders.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I don't care that I didn't get in the beta, this is wonderful.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

When people say RTS they're thinking of a pretty specific genre, things like Warcraft and Total Annihilation and probably Homeworld. It's like the term "RPG", it means a fairly specific thing to most people. You can play the role of a leader in Paradox games and there are characters with stats, so clearly it's an RPG.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

A friend asked me what CK2 was and I told them it was a Princess Breeding Game, or medieval eugenics.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I loved both moo and moo2 and no one, not a single "clone" has actually captured any of the best mechanics.

What I loved about the original Master of Orion is that it was simple but had depth. I really liked the industrial system. A planet has population and an industry score. Each base unit of population gave some tiny amount of production, plus each unit of population is able to staff a certain number of factories. Factories give a large amount of production. As you go up in computer technology you get better and better robotics, allowing you to build more factories per population. As you go up in construction tech it makes your factories cheaper to build, allowing you to grow quicker. There is also a pollution mechanic which makes increased production have diminishing returns due to more and more production needing to be put towards keeping the planet clean and livable, and of course then technologies that reduce pollution in some way.

So as you go through the game your empire slowly gets more productive, not in huge leaps but fairly gradually as you go from robotics II to robotic III or what ever. None of it requires your intervention. Planets automatically direct most of their production towards building more factories until they hit a cap, and when a new tech comes along they automatically build to that new cap. When you get better pollution tech your planets automatically build it and then reduce their pollution budgets. The interface and automation isn't perfect but it some how managed to be better than nearly every game that followed. No micro-managing tiles or buildings, no worrying about optimizing or specializing. That mineral ultra rich planet you probably want to "specialize" for industry but it's simply a matter of pulling that production slider up to maximum. That mineral poor artifact planet? Drag it's research to maximum. Done. No pre-planning, no building placement mini-game.

I think the ideal planet management system would be something like this, just a few stats, and maybe the ability to build the odd specialty building here or there but never at moo2 or civ levels of buildings. Keep it simple and abstracted, no building placement mini-game, but provide a rich amount of interesting statistics showing the mechanics behind each planet.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

If a system in a game has an optimal solution or state, and the only cost of getting there is the player's time and micro-management that entire system should be abstracted with the numbers being based on the assumption of the player correctly optimizing things, otherwise it's just pointless busy work that gets frustrating very quickly. If the question is only how you want to specialize a planet, then just ask the player. This planet is mineral rich, set it as a forge world which automatically sets everything optimized for production, done. Don't have an AI governor that attempt to optimize things but maybe the player can do better, just abstract the whole system assuming the optimal, that's way easier than designing a whole player-managed system then making a AI play that system. Either the AI does a good job and the player ignores the system, or the AI does a bad job and the players manually do everything because they have OCD and have to do everything right. That again depends on how bad the AI is. If the AI can handle things about 90% as well as a player that's good. If the AI is really lovely and you can get way better results doing it by hand then the AI is useless.

I mean it really depends on the context of the whole game. The more you abstract lesser details the more you can focus on others.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Dibujante posted:

I really want to see something like CK2's subinfeudation system apply here. That would allow the player perfect granularity - they could hold onto individual planets, sectors, or even whole systems depending on how much they wanted to manage them. E.g. you might want to manage Earth directly but after that only want to manage the governor of the Solar System, who in turn manages all of the other planets.

Basically feudalism seems like the bright future of humanity.

I'd love this if it was optional, like one of many forms of government, depending on your culture and technology and choices. You could start off as near-future humans and end up a horrible bloated barely unified "empire of man" situation as you sprawled across the galaxy wiping out everything in your path but your backwards social, communications, and government tech forces you to be massively decentralized. Or you could have a smaller more focused empire that is run with perfect direct control and absolute efficiency.

I'd also love to see expanding faster than your society and government can keep up make your empire ripe for instability. I want the possibility of CK2 in space, with treacherous governors taking a whole sector off to become separatists. But I also want all sorts of efficient utopias to be possible too.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Dibujante posted:

It's optional in CK2 as well. You hit diminishing returns. Ruling over 5 provinces directly is far more powerful than ruling over 1 province and 4 counts, for example. The diminishing returns definitely do hit after you've got a few vassals, so very small, very focused empires would be at a disadvantage, but not an insurmountable one, I think.

But of course in CK there isn't really a tech effect on where the efficient direct-rule point is. In Stellaris it could shift bigger and bigger as your tech increases, and if you expand too fast too early you could fall apart. Which of course creates a more interesting universe. Hell I'd play a game with just 1 nation at the start, rapidly expanding unopposed into space but eventually falling apart and populating the galaxy with dozens of empires and cultures.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

nothing to seehere posted:

The space 4X genre is probably unique in having no brilliant games for a long time despite a fairly steady pace of people trying to make good ones, and getting average/good at best. Maybe there's something about how divergent fans expectations are about the genre that you never get a universally acclaimed game?

I think the problem is that they try to be groundbreaking and innovative or do the same old tired poo poo in the wrong places.
Also none of them have had good combat since moo2. Either fully abstract it or give me fully hands on turn based battles, none of this real-time no or limited control 3d cut scene bullshit. I don't think it's a problem with the genre, it's just all the attempts have suffered from poor design.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

The Sharmat posted:

Sword of the Stars.

Wasn't a bit fan of the combat there. They all go real time and 3d but end up having the tactical depth of a lovely rts where you just select all and throw them at the other side. moo2's wasn't perfect or even great but I still like it most of any 4x. Firing arcs, shield arcs, special systems, turn order, they all played a role. You could design a ship with rear facing weapons and run-away from the enemy to keep them at stand-off range. You could make 2 shot missile boats that fired everything and ran away while a 100% defensive ship stayed behind to keep the battle going. You could have a ship specializing in killing crew while a fast-moving troop ship would quickly move in after and board or launch assault shuttles. You'd come up with designs to specifically try to counter the enemy you're fighting.

moo2 had a lot of balance issues that invariably ended up with you just sticking massively miniaturized auto-fire AP mass drivers or Gauss Cannons on, but in theory if balanced a bit better there was a huge wealth of options and different valid strategies. If you're going to give me the ability to design ships and control battles, make it really fun. If not, abstract it to Paradox levels. But don't make me sit through some 3d battle where my input barely matters.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

It would be cool if they had a bunch of potential break-away states in the game so that future civil wars could go along those lines. So like texas could break away, not because of "fascism" but "texan independence". It would have its own flag and such ready to go within the game. Cascadia, new england, Quebec, so many good potentials and that's just NA.

Also are the "big 3" factions hard coded in the game or can you add more? What about democratic communists opposed to the capitalist west AND the brutal dictators of the soviet union? Could you mod that in? I'd just love to see something like a North America that didn't really survive the great depression politically and having a communist civil war, but the result being something not automatically assumed to be in Russia's camp.

Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Nov 20, 2015

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Darkrenown posted:

You can't start in the same system as another race.

The bulk of our races are going to be custom/randomly generated races, but there are also some (8?) scripted "quick start" races which you can just pick and go if you don't want to make your own race. One of these is the Sol-humans. So if you want to start on Earth, you pick them (and you can customise them if you want too). On the other hand, if you just make a race using the human template you'll start in a random system.

Is there any way to make custom humans that start in Sol?
\/ I'm a bad reader :(

Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Nov 24, 2015

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Fintilgin posted:

I actually wish they'd drop the 2200 start date for that reason and just have the game start on Year 1 of the game uh.... Stellaris Era.

I don't give a poo poo either way but having the game start in 2200 seems awfully human centric. hell just have a turn counter and let the player imagine how much time is passing. Otherwise the game will seem amazingly short or ships amazingly slow, or something just won't quite make sense.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

2200 start is bullshit they'll probably add a 2133 start in an expansion.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Remember in moo2 how could you start pre-warp, warp, or advanced? I always loved starting pre-warp and having a cool amount of time to build up my home world and maybe even colonize a couple planets locally before I even knew FTL technology. In many cases I'd purpsefully hold off researching FTL technology almost "role playing" that my race thinks it has more than enough room to expand at home and doesn't need it yet. Sometimes I'd make first contact with another civilization during this time, and my people would freak out and get researching space stuff.

I know everything about this game is about perfectly symetrical multiplayer-balanced starts, but I'd wish so bad for some sort of "randomize empire advancement" option at the start of the game and then maybe a slider or something for how big of a gap there could be.

So one empire might start out with a big developed homeworld, 2 scouts and a colony ship like normal. Another empire might have a few more levels of tech and a couple small colonies, while another might be basically where humans are today. Pre-warp, just barely getting a local space program.

I see the appeal of symmetrical starts, specially if you're playing some sort of competitive multiplayer, but I'd love a galaxy that feels more like I'm just newest but certainly not the last to join this interstellar club that's been going in for the last few centuries.

Or even just have a global "primitive start" with no empires at all, just a galaxy seeded with minor races ranging from stone age to information age and as the turns go by they all have a chance to develop to the next phase and hopefully become a FTL empire. Who ever gets FTL first in their area will have a massive advantage. Will they ignore all the less developed races but protect them from others? Enslave them? Uplift them and bring them into their multi-cultural federation? Eventually all the empires that managed to break out of minor status and become a real empire will meet up, after gobbling up all the lessers.

I'd love to play some humans that see this going on in the distant galaxy, and have to do what ever it takes to be ready for them. By appeasing them, but working together with others to destabilize them. How good would it feel if the plucky little Earth Alliance and a couple other bottom-tier space powers managed to pull the great Googian Empire into an exhausting war that ends up embarassing its dictatorship to the point that a civil war begins, breaking the empire up into little parts that no longer threaten the galaxy.

Or maybe poor earth doesn't stand a chance and is forced into joining some massive ancient empire. Now it's like we're playing a vassal or colonial nation, waiting for our chance to declare independence war , making secret alliances with fellow protectorates and outside powers. One day earth will be free! And when we are we'll have all the technology of our former masters.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Darkrenown posted:

Planets don't move in their orbits around stars, it would be cool, but having your planets in consistent places was felt to be more important.


We don't have different starting levels, but I agree they're cool and would like to see them added.

Will it be possible to become vassalized/puppeted or some sort of "subject nation" in Stellaris? I'd love to see a mechanic where it's far "cheaper" to just turn a rival (or chunks of them) into a subject nation and not have to deal with a huge expensive occpuation, revolts, and the slow messy affair cultural assimilation. But by keeping another nation as a subject you run of the risk of them rebelling later.

Or maybe you did directly annex a whole other race but you've realized you've bitten off more than you can chew and have another war you didn't plan on, so you "free" them as a subject nation, which takes a lot of the rebellion pressure off but now they're a subject and might end up wanting more freedom.

I'd just love to see a whole spectrum of control when it comes to our empires, from totally "cored" systems under our total control, to semi-autonomous regions under a (hopefully loyal) governor, to "protectorates" or "sphered" nations that are almost independent nations but pay some sort of tax or tribute and defer their foreign policy to us. And I'd equally love as a player to get stuck sometimes on the receiving end of such an arrangement.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

So can you actually be like a parasitic species like the Harvesters in moo3?

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I think even the worst complaints and criticism posted here are said with love and the most angry spergy rambling with a wink and self-awareness.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

All I want for Christmas is to conquer SPACE with glorious NATO counters...
But does Stellaris even have a release estimate? Like mid next year maybe?

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRp7T5irXTQ
Stellaris gameplay vid. Lots of info from tool tips and such if you run in HD and pause and read poo poo !

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Strudel Man posted:

Hah. One of the planet's tiles was "sprawling slums." "This region is covered with vast shanty towns and slums filled with the poor and the outcast. It contributes nothing to society. Cleared in 90 (turns, I guess)."

I guess we can imagine that 'clearing the slums' means different things depending on your empire's ethics.

The other tile was an "Industrial Wasteland" filled with obsolete factories that takes 120 turns to clear. I love the idea of colonizing some ruined planet, although those ruins should probably have some sort of salvage value or something.

Also a technology for colonizing RING WORLDS.

Also your scientists can be drug addicts.

Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Dec 3, 2015

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Tomn posted:

The basic problem, of course, is "How do you make the slow destruction of all that you worked to build interesting?" I do like the idea, but finding a way to keep the player invested when they're going into decline is a bit of a challenge.

I think it would have to all make sense. Not "well my empire's been stable for too long so I guess the game is throwing a random event at me". You should be able to see it coming and also avoid it, but the causes of the decline should be tricky to ignore, or have been short term boons. Perhaps you know you're expanding too fast and too far, you want to gobble up that space-land before someone else does but the result is a lot of far flung and kinda poor colonies and your current propulsion and communication technologies are keeping them isolated, allowing them to form their own local identities. You see it hapening, you see the pop's culture and ethos shifting away from that of your homeworld and core developed colonies. You can see that these colonies are not really attracting immigration from your core culture because the conditions there are lovely, allowing them to develop locally and isolated, you know what's coming. Eventually those colonies feel less and less part of your empire, they want different policies, they want more autonomy. You keep spending resources keeping things under control but eventually it gets too expensive. And now your rivals are funding separatist movements! Next thing you know you've got a civil war, and it's not just those far flung colonies, it's every group with an axe to grind against your government. In the end your empire is devastated and you're left with nothing more than your core systems. Will some of your newly independent colonies eclipse you? Will you re-build and conquer your old empire? Fun choices!

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I'm really getting on this Stellaris hype train.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I'm really getting on this Stellar's hype train from Paragon, the makers or Universal Europe and Ironhearts and their most recent success Kings 2: the Crusades.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Well I know it's controversial, but I'm probably going to buy Stellaris. I'll even play it until I get frustrated and stop.

Same. And then a couple months later an expansion will hit, and the cycle will repeat for years.

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Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I assume it just limits your options. I also assume that your population can be divided on such issues depending on their POP-THOUGHTS so if you bomb a planet to death maybe the jingoistic xenophobes get happy but your peaceful xenophiles get mad.

Good question though if xenophobic-phile applies to empires of the same race as you. If you've got 3 other off shoots of your race that you graned independence does your xenophobic empire have different rules for war crimes for them vs dirty scary aliens?

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