Stellaris: a second Astral Planes has hit the game

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Stellaris: a second Astral Planes has hit the game

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Lawman 0 posted:

Does anyone even use that citizenship class?

It has a weird synergy with slaver guilds as resident slaves have even less political power

It's also not too bad for xenophobe empire secondary species when your main species has poor habitability

# ¿ May 25, 2021 00:30

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 15:12

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Darkrenown posted:

Despite being a Worker, Preacher has Specialist job weight, so that's why. It's doubled if you have "civic_exalted_priesthood" too. Of course, you cannot see this ingame. I think there might be a console command that shows job weights, or that might just have been a feature in debug when we were balancing jobs. I remember requesting and getting it, but it was ages ago.

debugtooltip will show the weights for jobs.

In this way prosperity preacher is a lot like the rare resource extractor jobs - specialist weight, working class

# ¿ May 26, 2021 00:38

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

How would I go about merging different "species" of robots? Picking up other species is a bit of an annoyance in this way - imo they should all derive from the same main species so you can cross-apply templates to them.

Or at least you should be able to apply templates cross robot-species if you have enough trait points.

# ¿ May 26, 2021 00:43

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Splicer posted:

3) Writing AI that plans ahead is hard, making AI that picks ~~the best~~ an option from 3/4/5 options is easy, also removing the player's ability to plan ahead makes it easier to disguise the AI loving up its tech picks (note: this didn't work)

The Stellaris AI doesn't even attempt to be smart here, it picks totally randomly with a few narrow exceptions (battleships)

The scripting infrastructure is all there though. One of the things that makes starnet AI so much stronger is that it actually tries to get the important techs first.

# ¿ May 28, 2021 01:35

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

prometheusbound2 posted:

I thought the Carrying Capacity mod did a lot to improve prior versions of Stellaris. I remember reading that Stellaris 3.x would essentially incorporate Carrying Capacity. I've been playing Stellaris and noticed that my newer colonies in the mid-late game are barely growing. Apparently Stellaris 3.0 slows down growth based upon your entire empire's population and not just based upon a planet's local population. This is dumb AF. Any mods that fix it?

There's a slider in game setup

# ¿ May 28, 2021 02:40

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

What if there were a LOT more uninteresting filler techs and the game went heavier on the "+x tech cards drawn" mechanic?

# ¿ May 28, 2021 17:41

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

If you are fanatic materialist xenophobe and do synth ascension the spiritualist fallen empire threatens constant humiliation wars while not having any specific demands.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2021 18:04

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Dirk the Average posted:

If they're really worried about tech speed, then they need to change how research works entirely and change it to a logarithmic curve or give empires that are behind in research major bonuses to researching technology based on what everyone else has researched. Kind of similar to how EUIV can have gaps in technology, but those who are behind have a much easier time catching up, and those who are ahead have a very difficult time getting even further ahead.

Sprawl before bureaucrats was a good way of mitigating tech speed, as it raised the tech cost for larger empires. Today you can outgrow and still out-tech; in earlier versions this was more of a trade-off.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2021 10:00

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Bar Ran Dun posted:

A finger on the monkey�s paw curls.

Horrendous flashbacks to sword of the stars being a very good game until the update where you had to spend half your time on the trade screen every turn clicking the "add freighter" button on a dozen trade routes (queuing them up ahead of time charged you a penalty, much like districts in Stellaris)

# ¿ Jun 13, 2021 21:16

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

The Cheshire Cat posted:

I think this sort of thing also speaks to a broader issue in Stellaris, which is that generally, war goals aren't very interesting. They always boil down to either "take territory" or "humiliate", when so many more interesting options could exist. I would love to see Stellaris adopt EU4's system, where when demanding peace you can essentially build a custom peace deal, which might include concessions made by both sides if the war is inconclusive.

If you use the ideology war goal, the AI will immediately adopt their old ideology as soon as the war is over.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2021 23:40

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Warmachine posted:

This was mostly inspired by the fact that you can't naturally prevent the Void Dwellers from getting the -60% penalty on non-habitat worlds even if you gene mod them to have a traditional climate preference.

Oh but you can - just select the orbital version without the pop growth penalty as the one you want to grow on the planet.

Similarly, if you gene mod pops already on a planet and select the orbital template you'll get the orbital version on the planet instead of the bad one.

These are "exploits", but ones hard to not do accidentally and have existed since void dwellers were introduced.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2021 23:46

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Yami Fenrir posted:

Are you sure? I've never seen this happen. Not to mention that swapping ethics cosrs a lotta time and influence.

Anyway i once again need go express ly love for the custodian crew. I love the stuff in thd new dev diary.

Am i the only one thinking that necrophage hiveminds are gonna be stupidly good?

I've seen it happen a couple times. Not always immediately, but within a few years - the AI will swap the ideology (embracing the old one) using the conditions they normally do, ie if they still have a large majority population in that faction.

Admittedly this doesn't always happen, but definitely can if you, say, try to spiritualize an empire full of synths. They just go back to materialist.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2021 09:32

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Warmachine posted:

Actually... I don't know if this works, but it shouldn't work. There's an event, "origins.1," that triggers every time a pop is added to a planet by any means:
code:
# A pop has been added to the planet
# Root = pop
# From = planet
on_pop_added = {
	events = {
		origin.1
	}
}
origin.1 checks two conditions to trigger:
code:
trigger = {
		OR = {
			AND = {
				has_trait = trait_pc_habitat_preference
				NOT = { has_trait = trait_void_dweller_1 }
				from = { is_planet_class = pc_habitat }
			}
			AND = {
				has_trait = trait_void_dweller_1
				from = {
					NOT = { is_planet_class = pc_habitat }
				}
			}
		}
	}
If either state returns true, the event assigns one of two traits to the pop. trait_void_dweller_1 is the good one and 2 is the bad one. This basically means that void dweller pops get checked for these traits when moving or growing, and have them added or removed as appropriate.

While you can gene mod the positive template onto your planetary pops, if they move again they'll regain the negative trait. I haven't tested the condition where you create a new template with a non-Habitat climate preference and without the negative trait. That might work to remove the penalty permanently at the cost of also losing the bonus. I need to test this case.

Before they finish growing is when the pop growth stat is relevant. This trigger is at the wrong time.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2021 21:49

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Staltran posted:

Can't the positive-trait version still grow on a planet that doesn't have an existing postive-trait pop, as long as migration controls aren't enabled?

Yup! There's no need to enable migration controls.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2021 00:08

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

isndl posted:

Might be one of those things stuck in the save file if you're continuing a previous game? Though if that's the case you could maybe edit the save to change it then.

Nah it's still a live bug all they changed was that they will migrate if you have a slave processing center (and are under servitude)

# ¿ Jun 20, 2021 06:35

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Ultiville posted:

So I searched the thread because I am having recurring problems with this, but the "look at the species menu" thing isn't helping. I got the ability to uplift because I remembered finding some pre-sapients at some point, but I've since integrated their home system into the empire, and I cannot figure out where they are. I assume what's going on is that they live on some godforsaken hell world so they aren't on an inhabited world or one I can find with the potential colony mouseovers, since it's got 0% habitability. But they don't show up on the species menu. Is there any way to figure out where they live other than just checking every planet and moon in the empire?

If they're not on the empire species menu, are you sure they're still there? If I remember right terraforming kills them.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2021 01:48

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Libluini posted:

Now that I think about it, this can lead to odd effects, like a planet getting a lot of immigration push from nearby planets filled with your pops, but because of an immigration treaty with another empire, all that push goes to some aliens arriving from beyond the border instead. Makes no sense of course, but that's what you get if only one pop can grow at a time!

If you want to talk nonsense focus on the +immigration growth bonuses, which generate pops out of thin air during transit (growth on the new planet exceeds lost growth on other planets)

# ¿ Jun 26, 2021 23:44

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

isndl posted:

I also learned that game that while you can perform a hostile takeover war to grab branch offices, you cannot integrate a subsidiary megacorp at all. I've also come to the conclusion that there needs to be a corporate overlay for branch offices because having click on individual planets to figure out where I can expand to is absolute garbage.

If you're willing to spend an enormous amount of influence, you can reform government away from megacorp and just integrate them as they convert to regular vassals. I think.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2021 23:01

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

a fatguy baldspot posted:

Man, have they still not fixed specialized pops taking the jobs that they�re best at? I�ve tried a million ways to finagle my butterflies to work energy but they�re not fuckin doing it.

A bug that is well-known to the community but not confirmed by Paradox.

Use Starnet AI, it already has a fix included.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2021 08:24

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

isndl posted:

This is me, I'm rushing system surveys to figure out where my chokepoints are going to be and backfilling the anomalies after my science vessels can't keep going because of neighboring empires. Not like the anomalies are going to disappear if I ignore them at first.

If you're really rushing to find choke points, you can explore rather than survey.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2021 14:27

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Vizuyos posted:

If anything, tiles were more micromanagey. It just felt less clunky to deal with because you could directly micro everything exactly how you wanted it.

The major change wasn't tiles to districts, it was getting rid of "core worlds".

There used to be a micromanagement cap because you weren't allowed to micromanage past a certain number of planets.

A nice side effect of this was that the planet automation AI had to keep working since everyone had to use it for noncore planets. It's no surprise it's now rotted beyond all usefulness.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2021 10:56

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Relevant Tangent posted:

If you want to, once you've completed the psionic ascension path you can make any race you'd like in your empire psionic through genetic modification. Aside from flavor reasons there's not really a reason to do it though. Only do it to one species at a time, it completely disables all pops that are undergoing it and it only changes three a month so it takes a long while.

You can also just assimilate them, right?

# ¿ Aug 16, 2021 02:26

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Why are my biotrophies politically underrepresented?

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# ¿ Sep 18, 2021 05:11

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Ok I just found the most broken thing.

The diplomacy traditions is a near instant game win.

The "+5 diplomatic acceptance" applies to trade proposals. You can ask the AI for resources and offer literally nothing in return. Stack these deals as many times as you wish, meaning push enough buttons and get every single AI empire to give you all of their resources.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2021 08:25

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

It really is that simple

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# ¿ Sep 18, 2021 08:30

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

LordMune posted:

This is by design -- they don't take care of things, they are cared for.

Right, so they have a default political power stat of 1. But my machine pops don't have any political power icon in that diagram. So what's actually going into that calculation, to determine pop approval?

Why do I have 81% approval when every single pop with a happiness score has 90% happiness?

# ¿ Sep 18, 2021 08:38

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Libluini posted:

Does this also work on magic attitude problems? On my own quest to abuse diplomacy by gifting stuff I don't need generously, AI empires with attitudes like "cautious", "neutral", "hostile", etc. will have a magic -1000 modifier attached. Likewise, if you take too much, the AI tends to apply a "-1000 do not want"-modifier to that transaction, too. And as positive attitude is capped far below 1000, you'll never be able to trade from empires that use this modifier against you.

Right, you need to have the possibility of a trade with the empire. But unless they're genocidal, you can just give them a bunch of resources to make them have a positive opinion of you, then take them back incrementally.

quote:

So I feel like this exploit is more of a trap, as you can only drain potential allies of their resources, but your enemies will constantly refuse, regardless of how many +5s you stack. (As long as this isn't bugged to hell, you should be able to test this with e.g. a fanatical purifier. Normally, they'll never trade with you, ever)

quote:

Anyway, using StarTech makes this a non-issue, I've found. StarTech makes the AI use their resources far more aggressively, so even with my best space friends, I often find they don't have a lot of alloys over I could trade away from them. Most of the time, they have nothing worth trading anymore.

You can trade monthly resources up until they would have a negative balance, it's almost surely an issue there too.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2021 09:22

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

boloney posted:

I like the spy mechanics a lot and it sucks that most of the operations are insanely weak. Steal Tech and Extort Favors are great but Smear Campaign doesn't seem to do jack poo poo -- I ran probably a half dozen of them on every member of a federation, targeting each other, and nothing happened -- and Arm Privateers is a total joke for how expensive it is. The pirates usually immediately die to the local starbase they spawn on

For those who don't know, steal tech gives you +10% research speed for 6 years on completion, as well as 30% of a specific tech.

In that sense it's better than the research ascension.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2021 03:39

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

LordMune posted:

pmchem's reports were incredibly helpful (QA know him by (user)name now) but I should note that many of the AI improvements you're seeing now were enabled by sweeping changes in organization and resources within the team. It's not that they were easy problems to fix and all it took was for a developer to care, or something.

Thank you for fixing my trade acceptance exploit without me even having to report it

# ¿ Sep 25, 2021 11:44

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Domination tradition gives +1 edict now, which is actually pretty strong. That can be +50% minerals/strategic resources from miners, for instance.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2021 05:22

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Senethro posted:

I went looking into all this because I realized that Colonists are a trash job that just wastes a middle class Consumer goods upkeep and was looking for alternatives.

Pretty sure Colonists date back to a time when food was a per-planet concern. Wow.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2021 13:27

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Splicer posted:

My understanding is:
Glavius is vanilla AI++
StarNet (? I think that's what it's called) is pew pew murderbot multiplayer sim
StarTech is StarNet but with a 30/40 year delay before going full pew pew murderbot, which has knock on effects beyond that time since everyone has had a chance to tech up and ally up and entrench first.

The StarNet friendship patch is a good way to return the AI to more of a vanilla diplomacy approach while still being actually good.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2021 09:24

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

If 10% research speed ascension is so automatic, ya'll should give doing espionage some actual consideration.

Step 1: Assign envoy to espionage, build intel network
Step 2: Run "acquire asset" operations until you get an asset with either subterfuge, technology, or both skills
Step 3: Run steal tech operation, choose the option that trades your asset for +10% research speed for the next 10 years
Step 4: Go to step 2, repeat step 3 either on cooldown or about every time your edicts expire

This also nets you +30% progress on a random stolen tech, or if none are available 1000 research in each category. The cost is ~2000 energy every 10 years, one envoy, and some button presses.

There is nothing stopping you from doing this on allies, or even on nearly useless empires that have no encryption.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2021 05:22

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Mr. Grinch posted:

the espionage in stellaris is worse than it is in eu4, and by that i mean completely useless
there is nothing you can do with spies that will circumvent just having a larger navy than your opponent
offlining a starbase? pretty sure the fleet maintenance required to kick over a starhold or whatever is less than youd pay in monthly operation costs for your "asset"
they sure did put a lot of effort into making espionage intricate and ~engaging~ but its basically relic sites with diplomacy and entirely skippable

Tech stealing is worth it, everything else is dumb

# ¿ Nov 7, 2021 19:57

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Yami Fenrir posted:

...that also has an aggressive setting that doesnt loving work and reset itself after every single invasion.

This was fixed a couple patches ago

# ¿ Nov 22, 2021 08:39

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Yami Fenrir posted:

They said it was but it got reintroduced at some point.

It might be a mod but I don't actually have any that interact with armies I think.

The current behavior is, I believe, that aggressive fleets will automatically invade if they think they can win. It's possible a mod messes with that somehow even if it doesn't modify ground units directly.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2021 09:44

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Through hard work and determination, your maniacal scientist has gained the trait paranoid.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2021 04:06

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Shadowlyger posted:

Yeah apparently the card is tied to finding a living metal deposit as opposed to having a living metal deposit, so as soon as you conquer a system from someone else that has one of those just go ahead and console the tech.

More specifically, the card has no weight at all, however it automatically appears if you get +% tech from it like the events give.

I suppose this means it's still possible to steal (and, if genuinely at endgame where you have everything else, possibly very likely to steal)

# ¿ Nov 28, 2021 15:35

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Sloober posted:

on the topic of living metal it was deeply hilarious to me to have a living metal deposit on a planet being harvested but having absolutely no idea how to use it at all. just a bunch of guys storing all this stuff saying 'but what do we do with it', because i never got the discovery trigger to pop the card. some event created a deposit on an occupied planet which just gave me the income

Someone else found the anomoly, and then finished researching it after you took the system.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2021 10:53

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 15:12

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Shadowlyger posted:

Oh it's not just friendly empires, if you split an enemy empire's space, they'll happily run trade through your systems anyway, generating piracy.

Even if you're a gestalt.

This is, as far as I can tell, the only way to get pirate spawns as a Gestalt empire.

This ends when you close your borders I think

# ¿ Dec 5, 2021 02:59

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