Anticheese posted:

How do you drug a synth?

GunnerJ posted:

Is it all right to link to a pastebin? Is there a limit on submissions?

Deceitful Penguin posted:

Wait, "collectivists" (lol that name) are the only ones able to keep slaves??
I thought you just had to be a non-individualist

Baronjutter posted:

I would pay real DLC dollars for a graphics pack of just more humans. Militarist humans, religious humans, space hippies, happy utopia humans. Basically give me a human clothing pack and I'll buy it, specially if it's some how tied into the ethos system. So my break-away xenophobic militarist empire dress like fascists and it's easier to know who to punch in the face.

CrazyTolradi posted:

Prepare for war, but let the hostile civ declare war so the defensive pact is to your advantage. Try making a pact with someone else if possible. If/when the hostile civ declares war, try taking a planet or two of theirs as an objective.

Psychotic Weasel posted:

I find that even at 100% there are often times where parts of the galaxy seem devoid of habitable planets or are just full of grabage planets that aren't really worth settling on. This often leads to huge areas where you're not able to exploit anything because there's no way to extend ypur influence through it, so it just sits unused.

PittTheElder posted:

The most human of moves.

Still, I feel like Defensive Pacts are almost pointless in this game past the very beginning, it's not hard to outbuild even an advanced start AI.

Poil posted:

I wonder if Solitary and Communal wouldn't be better if they worked like Charismatic and Repugnant. But Communal would probably need to be at +0.5%. Or maybe they were given flat 5% because it's simpler and redundant to go further with it.

Yeah, it would be fun to alter a race into being shortlived or something just to hurt them some more. Or remove their fast breeder trait at least. drat repugnant pests!

Splicer posted:

GlyphGryph posted:

Communal and Solitary should work based on adjacent pops. +2%/-3% per pop.

For xenophobes, alien pops don't count for communal and count double for solitary unless enslaved. For any pops, robots and droids don't count for either and synths depend on policy.

Also introduce a variant called Highly Territorial that gives a bigger penalty, but only for pops of the same species.

This would be cool because it gives you a playstyle with a reduced incentive to remove tile blockers, since your guys are actually super happy about being surrounded by giant carnivorous life forms instead of their friends or family. More importantly, a bunch of decadent solitary humans only happy when they're living on planets with a minimum 2:1 enslaved robot:utopian human ratio is basically Asimov's Spacers.

Roland Jones posted:

I was suggesting this in the Dev Diary thread in response to people suggesting such a trait (would increase food production from them being Livestock and perhaps Processing) and debating whether or not it'd a good idea since making your own species with it would be silly, unless you're role-playing or something. As an option for genetically engineering a captured species, though, it's both appropriate for evil empires and rather horrifying, in a good way. And it'd easily make it a "positive" trait, something people were debating, since you're getting a benefit from it.

Roland Jones posted:

Well, as a positive trait (i.e. one that costs points) it doesn't make sense to add to your own species, and as-is you can't add negative traits so it'd have to be positive for the genetic engineering scenario. Also adding it to a slave species in your empire is pretty much a pure positive here (boosts their food production, literally the only thing Livestock slaves do), so even if you could add negative traits it wouldn't make sense as one when looking at the mechanics, even if thinking about it a species being tastier is an odd "advantage" for them.

Deceitful Penguin posted:

Sigh, why are my spiritual militarists not allowed to purge or enslave people.

I guess I should have gone for xenophobic rather than full spiritual for my space confederates but goddammit, the idea of 'The Wrath of God' theocratic dictatorship just seemed right.

I guess I can console it in but then I gotta do it every time I play because it doesn't stick.

ChrisBTY posted:

Wait, what's an ascension goal?
Is that a real in-game thing?

Because my game has reached the point where all I can really do is take some chunks out of the massive radical purifier empire every decade or so. Which isn't exactly a win-con.

Wiz posted:

People are a lot less willing to accept losing planets when they didn't have a chance to fight back. It's the same with say losing territory through espionage/sabotage, things that you can only fight back against 'indirectly' tend to be very frustrating when they have a large impact on the player's experience.

Wiz posted:

When I say 'fight back' I literally mean 'fight back' as in shoot lasers at it.

Magil Zeal posted:

If you can see a ship on your sensors you already can tell its exact construction (unless it's a FE/pirate/other nonstandard ship).

Eiba posted:

Rakthar posted:

I'm glad that I get to read a recounting of the argument you had on reddit arguing about the same old labels that have been discussed since release, as well as explaining that your position is the right one because you are not a crazy person.

Truga posted:

Doesn't high happiness provide a percentage bonus to pop productivity?

RabidWeasel posted:

Yeah the faction system is completely different and so intrinsically entwined with your government ethics that it seems entirely pointless to try and figure out any particular strategies right now.


It does a good job in making happiness actually useful though, there needs to be some distinction between 'just happy enough' and 'really happy' otherwise you will always want just enough happiness to keep people in line and any extra is kind of useless.

Zurai posted:

Yeah, +20% production of every resource sure is useless.

Truga posted:

Actually, it's a really good mechanic.

quote:

Happy people are far more productive than angry people, even enslaved ones.

Truga posted:

Yeah you're right, that's why all the world superpowers run on slaves, because slaves are more productive

Truga posted:

Because it gives a benefit of going beyond an arbitrary number. Numbers that give a penalty when below number x, but absolutely nothing when above the same number is poo poo game design. It's why most RPGs have gotten rid of accuracy, or give accuracy some kind of additional bonus when you go above 100%.

Splicer posted:

Why is it super dumb?

ProfessorCirno posted:

Until there's a way to meaningfully interact with other empires beyond warring with them, the game cannot really be played in a pacifist manner.

Beefeater1980 posted:

For economic and tech victories, it's tough because the map you play on is a territory map. What it tracks is military strength and expansion, not economic or technological success. So it's hard to see who else is performing well and how.

John Lee posted:

If you're almost entirely concerned about which options have the best mechanical benefit and you don't care about the flavor at all, this might not be the game for you.

Coolguye posted:

again though, the question more becomes "what's the best VALUE" because for most of the game you have to husband your resources carefully. you're mostly fighting the entire galaxy here. and in that case using autocannon corvettes or destroyers to counter alpha-strike plasma thrower corvettes is where the smart money is. which makes some sense because if you're slotting autocannons those ships are sure as hell not gonna be useful on anything larger than an enemy destroyer.

PittTheElder posted:

And to that end, remove Spaceport modules that give a permanent bonus to ships built there.