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

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

The only thing bugging me right now is the fact that I can't right click poo poo to queue up surveys or mining stations anymore, otherwise life is good

# ¿ Feb 22, 2018 20:44

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 15:09

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Life Seeded Fanatic Pacifist/Spiritualist with Agrarian Idyll has been real good. I�m 56 years in, about to finish my fourth tradition tree and just got my second planet by uplifting some friendly buggers.

I just need to find this bloody Climate Restoration tech for World Shaper and I�m ready to snowball hard.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2018 07:56

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Has anyone been able to build Science Nexi/Dyson Spheres without weird poo poo happening? I'm getting close to getting Galactic Wonders :ohdear:

# ¿ Feb 24, 2018 03:45

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

OwlFancier posted:

So I'm sitting on 10k minerals before having researched destroyers in 2270. Gaia start + 2x tech cost seems to do odd things to the balance of the game. I just don't have anything else to spend money on. Expanding as fast as I can so I can find things to blow up or colonize.

2299 and I�ve researched ZPP, Battleships, Citadels, have five tradition trees cleared and just two planets. Just need to draw Mega Engineering to spend my fifth perk on Galactic Wonders.

Life Seeded works very well for a pseudo OPS but sometimes not expanding is the right call.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2018 18:52

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

The Locator posted:

So I won my first war and then it took about 50 years to completely assimilate the meat-bags into our cyborg life and get the economy all straightened out, and how my machine nation has 9 colonies and 52 outposts and everything (research) costs like 220% extra! Wee...

My only other real neighbor was broken into 4 or 5 pieces by uprisings, so now I have nothing to fear at all in my corner of the galaxy, so I think I'm going to reboot this game, as I didn't have enough starting AI dudes for the size of the galaxy I made. I'm not terribly upset about it as it was a good learning game without a lot of beatdowns to keep me from advancing to see how things go.

The 'hump' was gotten over when I finished researching the IV and V level buildings for both minerals and energy.. makes a huge difference, ate up like 20k minerals just upgrading everything. Then I got another ascendency or whatever it's called and took Habitats and made my first one... drat.. all the wonders of a planet without the research costs... I think I might have to rush that ascendency in the next game if it's possible, and keep the empire smaller.

The year is something like 2380. I just found a system with 15 minerals, but it's another 8 or 9 systems away from my already bloated empire.

Pretty sure Habitats still incur research costs. They're still a colony.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2018 07:39

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Taear posted:

Defence stations and other starbase things don't display the correct cost.
For example it tells me a titan shipyard is 1000 but it actually only cost me 600. Upgrades to the station show 300 but cost me 50. It's weird.

And I don't understand how jump drives work now. I still get the little border around me like my jump distance but my ships don't bother to do it, what am I doing wrong here? They've definitely got the drives.

Jump Drives function as hyperlane drives but have a special action on the fleet window to initiate a Jump that can bypass hyperlanes. This action is on a cooldown and puts significant debuffs on the fleet in question for the duration of the cooldown. It does not replace hyperlane travel altogether.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2018 17:11

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Do claims ever expire? One of my vassals is still Hecking Mad because he has claims on a variety of my poo poo from before I subjugated him.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 07:22

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

I thought the fix was that you aren't forced to accept surrender and instead you just freeze your unity and influence gains at 100% war exhaustion?

I would love to know how Determined Exterminators, Hive Minds, or Fanatical Purifiers even get war exhaustion. Especially when they're winning. The whole system is a complete mess and seemingly fails to take into account some really basic things like who is winning. Given how long the game has been out I personally find this lack of polish to be really difficult to justify.

It's a shame because the update as a whole is really good.

It literally doesn't matter because realism is subordinate to gameplay. The design function of war exhaustion is to prevent every war from being a fight to the death. It's up to the players to rationalize it how they want in this highly unrealistic game about the impossible pipedream of faster than light travel.

The only real problem I have with war exhaustion isn't even war exhaustion itself, but rather AI acceptance. It would be helpful if you could negotiate separate peaces when fighting people in defensive pacts, because fighting multiple people tends to make it real hard to forced a surrender in, for example, wars of vassalization. The AI acceptance values are wonky, the war weariness itself is mostly fine.

It would probably help if acceptance ticked up when you've occupied Literally All Their poo poo or even most of their poo poo.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 13:51

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

I feel like Hive Minds could use the Synthetic Dawn treatment. They feel like a rough draft for what they did with Machcine Intelligences, and could probably use more archetypes than just Devouring Swarm to give them some flavor.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 18:40

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Tomn posted:

A Hive Mind that really wants to know more about these strange single-minded "individuals," and who can gain bonuses for convincing other empires to allow emissary drones to live on their planets to learn more about them would be a neat trope to get in.

Xenophile but in the opposite direction! I can get behind that.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 19:43

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Okay folks I need some advice. I'm in an amazing place in my Iron Man Hive Mind game on 0.75 hyperlane density. I'm hemmed in by a friendly Machine Intelligence to my south, the 10k Old Guard Pirate stack blocking my west, and my east is a ridiculously lush unclaimed space I have free reign to expand into including a ruined ring world. There is just ONE SMALL PROBLEM.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/929302799332098250/F42046CECAFAE7368E9C6300586BB56344339745/

In 2245 this rear end in a top hat is gonna come out of the Pulsar literally right next door to me and start loving my poo poo up. I have a rough plan to deal with him. I'm going to build a Star Fort on top of the Pulsar, load it for bear with Defense Platforms and build two fleets of 30~ corvettes each and stick on top of the star for when he shows his face. I have a shipyard in the adjacent star system and the plan is to just reinforce high evasion corvettes faster than he can kill them and hope they distract him long enough for the defense platform star fort to kill his dumb rear end.

My question is: What the gently caress defenses does the Spectral Wraith have cuz I need to counter them and none of the online resources seem to detail whether he's got shields or not. My weapon tech is limited so I need to know what to bring.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 15:54

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Hunt11 posted:

So I just ran across a ruined Dyson sphere. If I repair it do I just get the first stage or does it become fully upgraded?

Fully upgraded. Ruined megastructures go from zero to full in one go.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 17:00

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Staltran posted:

2.0 probably changed the Specter loadout anyway, and you can't view it ingame. From what I can tell from common/ship_sizes/11_guardians.txt and common/section_templates/guardians.txt, it has 20k hp, 10k armor, and no shields (I can confirm the no shields part from ingame). It makes sense too, since it spawns in a no-shield system. It appears to be armed with all large lasers, so you should use crystalline plating if you have that. Also it has 75% evasion. Make sure to counter that.

This is what I do as well, but... You don't actually need another scientist. You can just deselect a tech and let the production pool up, and assign the scientist in charge of the category to the science ship to explore. Then later do the same with another category, switch the original guy back in and let the pooled science be used. Not too much micro in the end, but really abusive.

Operation Stellar Fetus Abortion was a success :911:

Can't say I've ever killed a Leviathan by year 2246 before.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2018 08:10

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Hopefully opting in to the beta patch won't bust my Ironman save. I have such a rad starting position :ohdear:

# ¿ Mar 1, 2018 18:01

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Magil Zeal posted:

I thought that was intentional, like they'd have a chance to escape. Now I'm sad.

Yeah I don't think 2.0 is quite the slam-dunk most of the rest of the thread seems to think it is. My problem with Stellaris has always been sitting around waiting for my numbers to tick high enough to do what I want, and the updates haven't addressed that part, if anything, it's made it worse. It's not just the little things, it's the big things too.

There is some good stuff in 2.0/Apoc but there's also a lot I'm iffy on.

I think 2.0 is going to be a parting of ways for some people and Wiz knew that going in. Some things are shaky and are going to get refined, some things are not because they are a statement of purpose and direction and what kind of game Stellaris aspires to be. Much like with the fate of wormhole and warp, not everyone is gonna go home happy and that's okay even if it is unfortunate.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2018 20:23

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

I can't tell if they lowered the draw chance on Galactic Administration or gave it different prereqs, but the drat thing seems to take forever to show up post-2.0

# ¿ Mar 2, 2018 05:44

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Spanish Matlock posted:

Yeah, that's kind of exactly my point. It's not like having gates isn't useful, but two gates hardly lets you "centralize ship production". Gates are useful, but I don't see any clear argument that two gates are 20,000 minerals useful, or that 3 gates are 30,000 minerals useful. Even if you had three perfectly placed ruined gates, I think you'd have a hard time claiming that they're as useful as 15,000 minerals and 30,000 energy. I mean energy is worthless but accumulating 30,000 of it takes a non-zero amount of time.

I'm saying you could cut gate costs in half and they'd be about right. 5,000 minerals per build (which is half as much as a habitat, for something that provides travel convenience and generates absolutely no resources) 5000 energy/2500 minerals per reactivation. Those seem like sane numbers to me that would give you the ability to establish a gate network in the mid-game where it's actually useful, instead of being able to establish one during the post-crisis mop-up-the-survivors phase of the game.

Because putting a Gate on two (or more) shipyards, one Gate to each shipyard, and one closest to the probable frontline of whatever conflict you are likely to wage does in fact make matters a whole lot easier...? By the time Gateway Construction is a thing raw mineral output shouldn't be much of a constraint.

I think you're the only person I've ever seen anywhere suggest that a gate network, in this newly extremely slowed down hyperlanes only 2.0 reality, is anything less than insanely helpful :psyduck:

# ¿ Mar 2, 2018 06:16

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Catfish Noodlin posted:

I just started playing the game yesterday, and my first start has me playing with a wormhole right next store.

How do I research the technology to stabilize it? Will it just come up as an option under one of the scientist research options eventually, or do I have to build some sort of sequence?

Hyperdrive tier 2 is a prereq for Wormhole Stabilization to show up. It's a Physics tech.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 16:18

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

I kind of like that interpretation, but I think of it from a gameplay perspective. Specifically what ThatBasqueGuy said about "gating all the cool megastructures behind five ascension perks". The whole point of having limited choices is to provide a meaningful consequence that ultimately makes the gameplay more enjoyable. I would argue that the current perk system does that in a relatively uneven fashion. Compare the significant gameplay experience associated with the Transcendence perk with anemic choices like Interstellar Dominion or Technological Ascendancy.

I look at something like Enigmatic Engineering. Right now it's a +2 sensor range bonus and a prohibition on reverse engineering. Imagine instead of it was both of those things, but also made it so that Empires had no way of knowing your technology level, couldn't trade with you, and no way of knowing your fleet strength. Imagine instead if you were the ones in that situation.

Or Galactic Contender. Imagine if, instead of a simple bonus against Awakened Empires, it instead gave you access to unique technology that you previously had to reverse engineer. Maybe with a side effect of having your ship style changed into the Awakened style as you discovered more "Awakened" technologies.

Defender of the Galaxy could be similar; rather than a fixed bonus to endgame empires it gave you access to unique technologies or narrative events that you had to research and develop that would serve as a useful tool against whatever endgame crisis pops up. Maybe when The Unbidden show up another external entity shows up to help you, but only because you've dedicated your entire Empire to protecting the galaxy.

Other perks have limited utility because of how the game itself is currently functioning. A perfect example is Synthetic Age; currently there's no reason to take that perk because by the time it's available you've already gamed the system or run out of traits. Perhaps if Synthetic Age eliminated the limit on how many traits you could take it would be far more useful. Or if the traits were re-done so that there were some traits that cost far more points but had massive benefits.

All of this is perfect. Enigmatic Engineering and Nihilistic Acquisition in their current state are, I think, a good step towards what ascension perks should be. But this post right here is what we should be striving towards to make the system great, not merely acceptable or functional. Ascension Perks should all feel transformational, and if you ask me whether I'd like a flat percentage stat boost versus an end game crisis or an event chain predicting which one is going to happen and the ability to research unique techs to help combat them, even if those unique techs only amount to a functionally equivalent damage bonus who cares! The difference in game feel is critical.

Hell maybe give Defender of the Galaxy a relations penalty with the galaxy at large until it happens. Let us be a civilization of Commander Shepards raving about the Reapers.

Ah yes, :turianass:

"The Unbidden" :turianass:

. We have dismissed those claims.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 20:23

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

I really like the idea of the Philosopher King civic, but I wish it did more. Ruler skill level just isn't that impactful at the moment. Maybe make the civic cause ruler skill level to effect more things? Make it a civic for pacifist autocracies? :shrug:

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 05:51

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

So, I'm having a interesting game.

I'm playing as Life Seeded/Free Haven xenophile/pacifist/spiritualist space hydras with the intent of poaching a bunch of immigrants with migration treaties to my (now apparently multiple) lush gaia world and colonizing from there. The problem: So far my neighbors are an Inward Perfection shitlord and a Xenophile/Militarist honorbound warrior. The Xenophile isn't totally unworkable I don't think, they're only -20 with me due to the shared xenophilia. Does anyone have any ideas on how to butter them up for migration treaties? I've never gone with quite such a diplomacy emphasis before.

Also yeah that's a Tomb World Sol with upliftable cockroaches literally right next to my capitol :psyduck:

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 16:03

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Splicer posted:

Imagine their reaction. They leave their beautiful paradise and the first thing they see is an apocalyptic hellscape full of irradiated bugs. I'd turn right around and head home never to leave again.

I mean if you look at the screenshot there's ALSO a size 24 Gaia world one jump from my beautiful artificial paradise homeworld so I mean

The galaxy is sending me real mixed messages here.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 18:27

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Soooo, status update from xenophile space hydras

My closest neighbor is a bunch of Inward Perfection jackoffs. Sure, fine, whatever. I've got migration treaties with other people.

The problem is they expanded their borders over a Cybrex artifact point I hadn't researched yet because no level 5 Scientist. I know Inward Perfection can't do most things, is it possible to butter them up enough for them to at least open their gat dang borders for a minute? I don't WANT to Liberation War them over a Cybrex Artifact but...

I absolutely will :black101:

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 19:56

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

So I don't suppose anyone knows of a cosmetic mod to fix the Ringworld gap introduced in 2.0? Preferably one that doesn't break Ironman?

My pretty ring worlds being flawed like this is killing me :negative:

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 07:08

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

AG3 posted:

The single most important change.

For loving real. I scrolled through looking for this, THEN read the rest :v:

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 17:05

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Ciaphas posted:

So I remembered this evening that I own Stellaris from launch but never really played it for some reason. Taking another look at it, maybe tomorrow.

Does the ingame tutorial teach the ins and outs or am I gonna want to youtube around?

Is there an ultimate goal or do you just play until bored/dead?

If I bounced off of CK2 because it was too goddamn fiddly/complex, but love sci fi, is there even any point in downloading this?

You're gonna have to youtube/wiki dive/experiment. Experimentation is a fine way to learn though here.

No. It's still very much a "make your own goal" game like every other Paradox game is for the most part. Theoretically there are win conditions but they are nakedly tacked on.

Maybe. It's objectively way less fiddly than CK2 but still shares heritage.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2018 12:22

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Shadowlyger posted:

The AI is cheating, it pays 50% less on all maintenance costs.

Feel absolutely no shame in cheating back.

If you need to cheat back, you gots problems my friend

# ¿ Mar 10, 2018 18:41

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

OwlFancier posted:

I often thought that something fun you could do with food was let hive minds use it to power special structures on planets that have unique effects.

They've kind of already started moving in this direction. Hive Mind edicts cost food (BIOMASS) instead of energy, which is a cool and good step in the right direction but we need more stuff like that to make it interesting.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2018 19:53

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

The Deleter posted:

Help a giant red jellyfish is killing my empire, I lured it to a red star like the horrible plant monsters told me to and it still destroyed everything. What's the actual fleet strength of a wraith? Please help my beautiful human pets are dying and it makes me sad.

Bring a poo poo load of plasma. I mean NOTHING but plasma, it has no shields, and you can kill it with potentially 6-8k.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2018 22:39

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Is the War in Heaven still busted and if so how? I am in a Federation spanning basically the whole galaxy and I have both a Xenophobe and a Xenophile FE. A War in Heaven seems...likely so I wanna know what to expect.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2018 04:28

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Shadowlyger posted:

Get the Extended Map Sliders addon and set it to 99 AI empires.

I'd just like to call attention to the fact that "you're lying" is a pretty poo poo thing for a dev to say to someone about their game's balance, especially since I wasn't.

You made a claim that was readily and easily disproven. His options were to either call you a liar or an imbecile, or oblivious to entire game systems. He suggested the first and the last thing were possibilities, wasn't it nice of him not to say the second one?

Granted, in light of your comments about cheating maybe he should have gone with theory 2.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2018 00:02

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Baronjutter posted:

So I finished the precursor chain, a rarity, but their ancient home world spawned right behind the xenophobic fallen empire. I spend the whole game waiting for jump drives but then realize science ships can't jump into unexplored systems. This makes me sad.

You can if your sensors can go far enough to get you bare minimum intel on the place.

Build the Sentry Array if you must :v:

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 06:52

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Axetrain posted:

How many of you favor Imperial Prerogative, cause I have a hard time passing it up once I hit my second ascension perk. The only things else I might want are trying out the new Mastery of Nature or seeing if Executive Vigor is still worth it even after the nerf.

Imperial Prerogative is a crutch for bad gameplay habits. Get better at speed developing the layout of a planet then chucking it in a sector. Your inner perfectionist will rage but it's better that way.

Master of Nature is also not great. Too many things competing for influence. Executive Vigor is still amazing even at 50%, just not the best perk in the game.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 18:52

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

....you can do that more than once?!?

You can do it four or five times in fact

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 19:25

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

Also if you can't afford the Ministry of Culture when they offer it, you can buy it at any time later on by contacting them.

Oh my loving god

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 20:20

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

ulmont posted:

It is. But you can go to the species screen and set that leftover species to "Assimilate" and they will be converted to Psionic pretty quickly. Note that they will not produce resources while Assimilating, so if you turn your dominant-by-population-but-not-actually-primary-species over to Assimilate you can expect things to suck for a while.

Semi related but, does gene modding your Psionic founders species still gently caress up a bunch of poo poo and generally confuse the game?

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 21:45

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Bloodly posted:

Still annoyed/hateful about Wormholes. It's understandable.

I can't judge-I've been in hospital the past month with a laptop that couldn't run Stelllaris even if I wanted to put Steam on it(I don't, as Net access is not a certain measure in hospital.)

You should wait until you get a chance to try it. Wormholes in their current implication are pretty neat and A Big Deal when you can get ahold of one.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2018 03:53

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

cock hero flux posted:

I mean, it's a terrible system that a lot of people rightfully hate which they had gotten rid of and are now bringing back. I can definitely understand people being upset about it, it really is bad, bad game design and the fact that they seemed to realize that only to put it back in later just makes it feel worse. I honestly just couldn't enjoy the game when that was how it worked, and I absolutely be modding it out.

Why is it bad

The purpose of it is to make wars shorter and about incremental gains, to prevent wars from being To The Death in all cases. The problem with the unity/influence gain system was that it was harder on the weaker empire than the stronger empire, giving the stronger empire an incentive to continue the war at 100% WE just to break their back rather than taking their war goals. That's a direct contradiction of the stated design goal.

If you aren't strong enough to claim your objectives before 100% WE, you aren't as strong as you thought you are. Only real exception is Subjugation and Liberation wars right now, but that's a problem with acceptance modifiers not so much with WE.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 02:49

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Taear posted:

If the idea was to stop wars being to the death in all cases why then introduce actual to the death mechanics? As a driven assimilator I can only fight that way, for example

The issue I have is that all it cares about is direct losses. Even if I'm pushing them back and have enormous mineral resources I'm still out when it hits 100%.

Honestly I just want the old war mechanics back. With a ticking war score and with stations mattering more than they did/than they do right now.
Ideally no armies as well but you can't have everything.

Because less is still different than always, and differentiates Assimilators/Purifier variants even more. That is not a very hard question.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 03:00

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 15:09

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Milky Moor posted:

At least with the example of my vassal, they weren't starving they just weren't doing anything. I could give them hundreds of food and thousands of energy and minerals and nothing would change.

On the other hand, I had another vassal who did build up their planets and build a fleet and generally do what they could to expand.

I just don't have a clue why one froze up and another managed to keep up as best they could.

Yeah I'm experiencing this in one of my games.

Two of my vassals have just...stopped.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 15:29

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