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Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

oddium posted:

remove custom ships and replace them with three tech trees of fixed stats kinetic/missile/laser ships

this is the most correct sentence in this thread so far. gently caress custom units

# ¿ Jan 22, 2017 01:34

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 11:12

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Psycho Landlord posted:

My actual belief is that both systems are cool and good, though in need of some polish and expansion, and that anything that allows personalization and player input is good in Stellaris, noted space empire roleplaying game.

Wiz posted:

There is exactly 0% chance that the ship designer is ever getting cut. Asides from the fact that I personally enjoy it, it's both a 4x staple and something that a lot of people want (we have metrics on this).

IMO it's pretty telling that arguments for unit designers never involve a remotely compelling argument about why/how they add to the game and instead end up being "more choice = better" and "everyone does them".

I'm not remotely surprised that it's not going to happen but these systems are a large part of why combat in space 4X games tends to be so bland.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2017 13:41

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Wiz posted:

What they add is the fun of designing ships and the ability to do things like specialize your fleets for certain enemies to win against an otherwise overpowering foe. If you don't think it's fun to design ships, obviously it's not a selling argument but the playerbase is really split on this. For a lot of people it's like asking what being able to see space battles in progress adds to the game - you could argue technically nothing compared to having two ships poking at each other with lasers PDS mapgame style, but in reality taking them away would be a huge blow to the game.

Specialising your fleets would be more interesting with fixed ships, though, because that allows much more interesting variety in ship types. This is why armies in land 4Xs (which tend to avoid unit designers, with some unfortunate exceptions) tend to have more heterogeneous armies and more interesting build choices.

And the thing about showing space battles is that it at least doesn't undermine other game systems. I mean, if people find the idea that they've designed their own ships so compelling that it's worth the gameplay costs then I guess that's a matter of taste? But it's still good to be clear about what's being sacrificed there.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2017 14:02

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Wiz posted:

If a significant chunk of your playerbase bought a game with a ship designer in it because they wanted to design ships, suddenly taking away the ability to design ships is a terrible, terrible idea, yes.

I think "should [game] have [feature]" is something people are strongly inclined to answer "yes" to, regardless of how well the feature actually works in the context of the game.

Wiz posted:

Oh yeah, I fully understand why people might not like it and I completely see the arguments against its inclusion. I'm just saying that like it or not, it's here to stay. That's why we included the auto-design option.

That doesn't actually solve the problems with having a ship designer though

# ¿ Jan 22, 2017 16:17

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Wiz posted:

Listening too much your players is a mistake, yes. However, not listening at all to your players is an equally big mistake. It seems that you are advocating the latter extreme, and that's just not gonna happen. Sorry.

Nah, I'm just saying that "a majority of players want it to stay in" isn't particularly indicative. I understand why you wouldn't want to remove a major feature after release! I still think the game would be better for it, though.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2017 17:42

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

oddium posted:

I'm struggling to imagine the combination of preferences that makes "no ground combat" a dealbreaker but not "ground combat as it is currently implemented in stellaris"

# ¿ Jan 24, 2017 01:29

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Splicer posted:

Beyond Earth did the same. Take previous non-space game's resource system, Ctrl-R Money -> Energy seems to be A Thing.

BE did it because everything about that game is an inept attempt to ape alpha centauri

# ¿ Jan 26, 2017 20:29

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Wiz posted:

A search engine playing Jeopardy is a much more fertile soil for machine learning because it has clear win/loss states.

Let's try to translate that to say, EU4. What's a win/loss state there? Well, clearly being annexed is a loss, so if the machine AI gets annexed it's making bad decisions. Only, which particular decisions led to it getting annexed? Was it raising stability, fabricating claims? Was it the alliance it formed? Furthermore, there are countries that are going to do much worse on average than others, so you'd have to filter for that as well. At some point you accumulate so much data, it's simply impossible to filter the useful stuff from the noise. You could have a crack team of AI experts going at it for decades and I still don't think it'd be better than something I can put together in six months with a utility machine and some heuristics.

That's if you want to use ML to play the entire game, though. It seems like a more natural way to incorporate ML would be in specific places where you have binary or categorical decisions (do I think I will win if I start a war with this person? which tech should I pick next?) and labeled training data (which can be generated by hand, or by watching good human players).

# ¿ Jan 27, 2017 02:19

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Arglebargle III posted:

Our science has proved that Truth is in the middle. We regard with patience the childlike efforts of those who delude themselves as they play with their concept of "objective facts."

sneak preview of the fanatic neutral diplomacy screen

https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312

# ¿ Jan 27, 2017 21:18

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Lexorin posted:

I'd like to see a trait that's randomly handed out in a game that makes one race (not necessarily the PC) completely repulsive in all ways to another race (also not necessarily the PC). It should be a one way street though. That race just happens to embody everything that the other race finds disgusting and the other race refuses to deal with them in any way outside of genocide, or, in the case of pacifists, just ignoring them. The race with the trait wouldn't see the affected race any differently then it sees an unaffected race. Affected race get's a ground combat negative against them because of all the vomiting.

Conversely, a trait that makes a random race extremely attractive in all ways to another race. The affected race will refuse to go to war and will yield to all but the most extreme diplomatic requests.

Maybe it only shows up in one of ten games or something, but it'd be an interesting wrinkle. Also, this could affect minor races or fallen empires.

I couldn't see it as a bought trait, just one that's randomly applied when one race meets another. It'd be super weird if the ugly race also happened to be delicious, "We hate everything about them, but they're so flavorful!". Like having arachnophobia but thinking that deep fried spiders are the best snack ever.

This is a weirdly specific terrible idea

# ¿ Jan 28, 2017 03:39

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

The Cheshire Cat posted:

I know this post is from like 20 pages ago, but I was catching up on the thread and this reminded me of something I found weird with the game ever since release - why don't pops die of old age? It would add a natural churning of pops to your planets (so you'd see more diversity in species even one your oldest planets), and it would make the various age traits more meaningful, since they would apply to all pops rather than just leaders. It might be annoying to lose production in a tile when a pop dies, sure, but maybe the game could handle that by having new pops grow outside the planetary grid, and if someone dies while they're still growing, they will move to that tile to replace them (if they finish growing before anyone dies, they'd just occupy a new tile).

You realise pops aren't supposed to represent individual people, right?

# ¿ Jan 30, 2017 19:34

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

The Cheshire Cat posted:

Yes I understand that pops don't literally mean "one guy", but population demographics change over time and using species lifespan to represent that makes perfect sense.

It makes absolutely no sense for your population to suddenly fall because a hundred million people all died of old age at the same time.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2017 20:02

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Poil posted:

Does anything good ever contain the word neo in the beginning?

the neo-Darwinian synthesis

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 03:50

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

oddium posted:

[talkie toaster finishing smb2] ah what an enjoyable romp of platforming and peril. now to watch the ending and be validated that my adventure was 100% real and good

"the lovely ending soured me on [thing]" is a perfectly normal sentiment you weirdo

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 18:59

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Eiba posted:

Jesus man, you're not supposed to do that. On your first 10 or so planets, sure, micromanage the heck out of them. But once you're up to 20 and certainly 50 just throw those fuckers in a sector and don't even think about them.

Yeah, they'll be developed sub-optimally, but at a certain point, who cares? Is cranking out that extra marginal advantage over the AI worth four hours of tedium?

The whole point of making sectors mandatory is to avoid that kind of power-tedium tradeoff, this is the mechanic failing at its goal.

Captain Oblivious posted:

Setting aside the issue of whether your complaints have any merit or not:

Please stop horribly abusing the word tedium like that. I am starting to think you don't actually know what it means.

what the gently caress are you talking about

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 21:50

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Baronjutter posted:

Technically it's all about the ability to suffer without consent, not their type of biology. A consenting human could make cannibalism vegan, breast milk would be vegan. Honey isn't vegan because the bees didn't consent to have the fruits of their labour stolen by MEN WITH (smoke) GUNS. Honey is theft, and slavery. Intelligent plant people, not vegan unless they give their express consent.

They'd certainly be vegetarian though because that only concerns its self with plant vs vegetable matter , nothing about intelligence or consent.

gently caress you I'm going to buy it BEFORE it comes out!!

Vegetarians are concerned about animals in the common language sense, not the formal scientific definition. So plantoids would count imo. (and if you did define it in the formal scientific sense, no alien would be an animal, since none of them are members of the kingdom Animalia)

# ¿ Feb 9, 2017 19:16

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Wiz posted:

Soft locking tends to make everything feel very samey. I think people actually like hard locks a lot more than they think they do because they create clear, distinct choices and playstyles. People praise the different FTL styles in SotS but they would never have worked as well if any race could choose any FTL rather it coming along with their other advantages and disadvantages.

I see what you did there

Is FTL likely to change in banks/utopia?

Kitchner posted:

I honestly feel this is a trap a lot of game designers fall into.

The best example I ever experienced myself was with a MUD game based on the Discomworld series by Terry Pratchett. You could teach yourself literally any of the like 50-100 skills in the game, it would be inefficient but you could do it. What's more is other players could teach you skills which was more efficient.

There were no skill restrictions, and no skill caps, only certain abilities were class specific. So as a thief class you could learn the theft.person skill or whatever and learn "snatch" and "steal" but also "filch" which uniquely allowed you to steal worn items and steal during combat. However, a wizard could also learn snatch and steal and with enough effort the only way you would be a better thief as a thief class was you could steal in combat and steal worn items.

Non wizards could cast spells using scrolls, and could cast divine powers using casting rods. So my thief literally had the ability to telephone across the map without having to speak to a wizard or priest.

What it basically all meant was that, fundamentally, there was no reason to ever play a character beyond your first one, because you can become such a Swiss army knife what's the point?

Skyrim and the elder scrolls games in general suffer from this as well I think because you can be head of the mages guild, Thieves guild, warriors guild, etc etc in one playthrough and just be good at everything.

I'd guess that most people don't play RPGs of that length all the way through more than one anyway. (certainly the only one I've bothered to finish more than once is BG2, and that was with a lot of years between different playthroughs)

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 00:53

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

good reasons for psionics to be spiritualist-only: more diversity of play experiences, space wizards are a good thematic fit for spiritualist empires

bad reasons for psionics to be spiritualist-only: actually, psychic powers are real but scientists won't test them because they love atoms too much

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 05:18

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

NoNotTheMindProbe posted:

I look at it like complex number in mathematics (or hyperreal and surreal numbers for that matter.) We had been using numbers to describe the physical universe for millennia but nobody ever measured something that was the square root of a negative number long or heavy. It took pure theoretical work in algebra to figure out that numbers have an extra dimension that jut out perpendicular to natural numbers in a way that can't be observed by Humans. No amount of measuring or experimentation would produce this result, instead it relied on people thinking in a completely non-intuitive fashion to make the leap and now all our maths and science rely on this purely intellectual discovery.

I figure the shroud is similar except it transcends even mathematics and meta-physics and relies on a mystical mindset and thought patterns to comprehend.

as a mathematician, no

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 08:10

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Wiz posted:

I feel like we just had a discussion about realism arguments when it comes to game mechanics. Probably just my imagination.

I mean, realism aside, giving spiritualist empires wizards *feels* right. Playing xenophile/egalitarian and having no choice but to enslave your androids feels wrong.

It would actually make more sense if materialists were the only ones who could make synths at all, since using technology to beat god at his own game is extremely on-theme. (and then if you were a non-xenophobe and some synths moved to your empire you'd still be able to give them rights, you just wouldn't be able to make more)

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 17:11

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Splicer posted:

I said this and GlyphGryph called me dumb

how rude

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 18:29

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

It's not that it's impossible to imagine an otherwise tolerant society that is bad to its intelligent robots, it's just bizarre to have literally everyone other than the science kings behave that way.

Maybe more importantly, it's also much less exciting as a bonus for materialists. Like, being able to build intelligent robots, that's cool as hell. Being able to treat them well is nice but much less exciting, and also completely useless if you want to be an evil empire backed by intelligent robot slaves. (which still seems pretty materialist to me?)

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 18:53

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Libluini posted:

Well, it is dumb. But I don't feel like copying and pasting my old answer on this again, so you just have to trust me on this.

it's not though

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 19:35

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Libluini posted:

It is. Arguably from my view point, though. So let's drop this or do you want us to exchange ten posts of "Yes" and "No" until we just report each others posts and give up in disgust?

I mean if you don't want that kind of exchange you could just, like, not do that

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 22:23

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Wiz posted:

Ships make the game more interesting. We're still 'discouraging' you from building them by making them cost minerals.

It's much easier to increase your mineral output than your influence output, though. Anything with a per/turn influence cost feels like something you need to be super careful about accepting. Defensive pacts in particular feel very difficult to justify most of the time.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 21:29

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Wiz posted:

My point is that saying 'why put a cost on X if I don't want it to have a cost'' is a completely self-centered argument. You can argue that the diplomacy isn't worth the influence cost (and I'd disagree) but your personal feeling that something you should be free because you don't like it having a cost is... not very relevant to the game as a whole.

I think what "discouraged" means is that it has a cost so high you rarely want to use it (which is true with defensive pacts in my experience - certainly compared to how much I'd use defensive alliances in EUIV), not that it has any cost whatsoever.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 21:37

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Wiz posted:

That was your argument, not his.

Well he would know better than me but I think that's what he was getting at too

Rakthar posted:

The ship cost in stellaris has never discouraged me from building a ship. The rigid fleet cap has, but that's a post for another time. The influence cost has discouraged me every single time I've gone to mess with diplomacy.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 21:40

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Mad Wack posted:

can we get a co-op farm to manage while we manage our empire?? maybe a new tab under empire called "farm" that gives unique bonuses for the crops you grow

ideally you would get additional empire-wide bonuses for engaging with the farm on social media, recruiting new farmers, taking surveys, etc.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 01:22

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Mad Wack posted:

also lets take from T.O.M.E. (tales of maj'eyal not troubles of middle earth) and literally implement a stellaris irc chatroom in the lower left corner

go full dark souls and let other players invade your galaxy from theirs as the ultimate endgame crisis

(I actually kind of like this idea even though it's dumb and unworkable for a dozen reasons)

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 01:34

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Darth Windu posted:

Whoa!! I feel like I haven't seen half the stuff in this game and I've played like three or four campaigns almost to completion.

Warp is deffo my favorite ftl, I thought it was hyperlanes but warp is so much less trouble. Wormholes are way too effort

I just started a game with wormholes, I think they're the most interesting of the three so far because of the range restrictions. Apparently they get more annoying when your fleets get real big though?

Coolguye posted:

yeah you can learn from your mistakes

and/or i can keep posting about nutsacks whenever you are being insufferable

your incessant whining about people talking about stuff you don't want to talk about is pretty insufferable imo

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 21:08

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

PittTheElder posted:

Not really. There's mid-tier techs that increase range and cut jump time (like the other FTL methods), and you can always just split your fleet in two and move it through separate wormhole stations if you need the speed for some reason. By the time it would become actually problematic you get Jump Drives (Psi Jump Drives if you chose your ethos correctly).

Well the ability to split your fleet up for faster movement is the bit that sounds annoying

Darth Windu posted:

Aren't jump drives dangerous tho

Aren't the unbidden supposed to be the least dangerous endgame crisis right now? I mean it's not like I'm about to *not* build synths so some kind of crisis is happening regardless

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 21:34

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Darth Windu posted:

How does it handle that?

The borders show up as a combination of both, and either empire can enter it (and build stations, I assume, as long as no-one else has built one in the slot you want). It can happen with uplifted races if you colonise the system first (it works similarly if you uplift a race in a system with one of your outposts), and I guess you can probably get it from peace deals too.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 22:48

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Libluini posted:

Curiously, that was what I thought back in 2003, when I started playing Master of Orion 3. Man, did that game cure me of this delusion fast.

if you thought the moo3 AI was too dumb to give control over anything you weren't wrong

it's just that the game was also too dumb to give a human control over it

# ¿ Feb 16, 2017 15:42

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

The Cheshire Cat posted:

I dunno, it's kind of like gentrification vs. forced relocation. They're both about making "undesirables" go somewhere else, but the former is less immediately visible and thus easier for a more "moderate" government to get away with. Especially if you imagine genetic modification as something you can do by slipping mutagen into the water supply or something.

I'm having difficulty seeing the argument that forcibly rewriting someone else's DNA is something that people would be all "oh NBD" about

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 01:00

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

GotLag posted:

With the Blorg you can see the problem coming. My space parrots are magnificent to behold. It's only when your planet is covered in bird poo poo and they've taken everything apart to see how it works that you realise you've made a mistake.

there is something pure and heartening about how much the person who made that mod loves parrots

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 10:23

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Reveilled posted:

Given that ethoses are percentage based, purging pops with heretical views will just turn some percentage of your loyal pops to dissidents to make up the numbers, I'd wager. What I think you'll need to do is reduce the percentage to turn your bad pops good.

Eh? Aren't ethoses (and divergence, etc.) pop-by-pop? Or is this changing in banks?

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 18:35

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:

I really disagree, again, that a hive mind should play out any differently than a democracy. A hive mind is just a democracy where they communicate through some other way than talking and writing.

hive minds aren't real, dude

(and the fictional concept has multiple different interpretations)

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 20:21

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

GlyphGryph posted:

If they are in, hive minds are going to be factions rather than empire level stuff. Calling it now.

You finally get everyone on the same page as part of your empire wide hive mind faction and then there's a schism and you have two competing factional hive minds, and then a dozen. Darn it all to heck!

WE ARE THE BORG. ALL OTHER ENTITIES CLAIMING TO BE THE BORG ARE IMPOSTERS. THE ONLY RELIABLE SOURCE FOR BORG UPDATES IS OUR TWITTER ACCOUNT, @REALTHEBORG

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 21:02

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Reveilled posted:

It can't be as simple as that, though. If it was you could just resettle all your pops of a different ethos to planets on the edge of your borders, trade them off to your neighbours, and end up with a state that has no ethical problems ever again. There has to be a natural pull to other ethoses that will over time cause pops to drift away from your preferred ethos. And if there's a natural pull, there's also going to be some sort of equilibrium where the pulls of all the ethoses (including any techs, buildings, faction support etc.) balances out. So if you have a materialist empire where 10% of the population are pesky spiritualists, removing all the spiritualists might get rid of them temporarily, but over time the factors which were causing 10% of your population to be spiritualists in the first place are just going to drag 10% of your remaining population towards spiritualism. You'll need to deal with the factors causing spiritualism influence pull, rather than just removing pops.

The mechanism is Ethics Divergence (if you mouse over a pop, you'll see the ethics divergence %, positive if they have a chance to shift away from your ethics, negative if they have a chance of shifting towards it).

There a) isn't a single stable equilibrium (because when a negative divergence effect happens, what the pop flips to is affected by what ethics other pops have) and b) even if there is, it can take a long time to converge to it, so purging individual pops could make a big difference for a long time.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 23:16

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 11:12

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Ein Sexmonster posted:

The ethics divergence mechanic/ pop ethics are being completely redone in Utopia. Now each pop has a single ethic, and the proportion of ethics your pops will drift towards will be based on a variety of factors. For example, being friends with other species will boost xenophile attractiveness.

Ah. Well, depending on how fast the drift is you could still maintain an ethos balance different from your resting one by periodically purging pops with the wrong influence or whatever

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 23:26

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