Stellaris: a second Astral Planes has hit the game

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Infinite Karma: Oct 23, 2004; Good as dead

Just reinstalled this after many years away, and I just got my rear end kicked me some extremely bullshit Awakened Fallen Empire AI. I had enough fleets strength to go toe-to-toe with them, and a bunch of gateways constructed to give me some more maneuverability, but I was not prepared for literally 50 2k power mini fleets spreading all over my territory and taking out my outposts. I couldn't catch up with enough of them, and they never bothered actually fighting me or defending anything. I have no idea how I'll ever be able to chase down their tiny fleets, even if I took out most of their 100k power titan fleets. What a wet fart of a way to hit the endgame.

Is there anything I can do to corral them and actually have them engage me? Or do I just need to take their starbases so they can't keep replacing their in fleets?

edit: also, is a fallen empire awakening one of the endgame crises? Or will the Tyranids or Protoss eventually invade as well?

# ¿ Mar 21, 2021 01:12

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 17:57

Infinite Karma: Oct 23, 2004; Good as dead

Lysidas posted:

How did they get into your territory in the first place? I don't have any advice about how to deal with so many small fleets, but the general idea is to prevent this by forcing enemy fleets to go through a few well-defended choke points at your borders. Or maybe internal choke points, if a war has resulted in messy borders with a few systems that aren't really crucial to you.

I don't know how useful that information is, since I prefer map layouts that are better suited to setting up defensible border systems: 0.25 wormhole density and 0.75 hyperlane density -- but the general principle still applies.

Not a crisis -- fallen empire awakening is a normal thing that happens during the endgame.

There were like 6 ways into my territory, and they had about 500k in fleet strength, no amount of surrounding them ahead of time was feasible. I just used whatever the defaults were as far as hyperlanes and wormholes.

I guess I'll have to build some badass citadels with lots of guns at some choke points in the interrim. I'm not sure I'll be able to, this game could be a lost cause.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2021 01:52

Infinite Karma: Oct 23, 2004; Good as dead

Jump Drives can teleport you like that? No wonder they seemed lovely I just thought they were a faster cooldown warp drive with how the game works now.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2021 03:46

Infinite Karma: Oct 23, 2004; Good as dead

CapnAndy posted:

You don't want static defenses, you want fleets. Choke points are a sword that cuts both ways. Wherever they are now, figure out where the next choke point is, get your fleets there, then start sweeping them back. If they're sending dinky 2k target practice at you, build 5k and go hunting. You've got a star map; use it.

Choke points are really key strategy and this is a good time to learn that lesson. You should have had your main fleets parked at stations at each entry point into your territory. Once you get Gateways, you can build one in each fleet system, and that way you keep a deterrent everywhere while being able to concentrate your forces if someone decides to start some poo poo.
There'll be a dotted line circle surrounding any Jump Drive-equipped ship. That's your jump radius. Jump drives let you travel based on physical space rather than hyperlanes, so if you've got to get to some system that's close but has a 10-system detour to get there because that's how the lanes shook out, you can just jump over. That said, while jump drive is on cooldown your fleet power is severely lessened, so you don't want to jump right into danger unless you can take that hit.

Gateways treat any other friendly Gateway as though they occupy the same point in space. They teleport you.

To clarify, I was on offense. I'm playing the evil machine army out to purge the galaxy of sentient life, and the fallen empire had more "I win" points because of the stupid tech boosts, so I was gonna lose if I didn't take them out. As soon as I declared war, every single one of their fleets left their home space and scattered all over the place, and my fleets weren't big enough to beat them if I split up. By the time I realized that I had to do a different strategy than even the other fallen empires I took out, it was too late. It might just be unwinnable at this point, it'll take too long to rebuild and refit, unless they just never build more fleets and the ones I wiped out were a one time thing.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2021 05:42

Infinite Karma: Oct 23, 2004; Good as dead

If I have a Colossus, can I declare war on an empire without claiming everything in sight, and still keep the stuff I conquer with a white peace? Because waiting for enough influence to expand in Conquest wars is exhausting.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2021 18:54

Infinite Karma: Oct 23, 2004; Good as dead

I really wish I had better options to manage unemployment in my late game empire. I have a Penal Colony, and Social Welfare and Chemical Bliss lifestyles for all the species under my control. They don't give a poo poo about being unemployed, and they won't turn to crime because I've got it nipped in the bud empire-wide. But I still get constant prompts to give them more consumer goods, which I would happily do just to stop getting pestered.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 17:11

Infinite Karma: Oct 23, 2004; Good as dead

Relevant Tangent posted:

Just go full Utopian Abundance at that point, you're not destroying anyone by mandating that an entire species be drugged into compliance and that way you'll get the happiness bonus for all your pops.

That's not compatible with my authoritarian ethos, but I looked into it, and the Chemical Bliss lifestyle actually applies a happiness penalty if they're unemployed, for some stupid reason, so I painstakingly changed every species and subspecies in my empire to Social Welfare, and not only did the crime warnings go away, my overall productivity went up despite all the extra consumer goods that 120 worlds demanded.

There's something really satisfying about being an Imperial Authoritarian/Militarist, only letting your species be full citizens, and conquering the galaxy with World Breakers and overwhelming force, and then having awesome social welfare and happiness boosts, and everyone likes their benevolent, immortal ruler better than their original ethoses.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2021 00:04

Infinite Karma: Oct 23, 2004; Good as dead

Yami Fenrir posted:

That happens naturally, especially if you're actually conquering stuff. More important is trying to keep them as small as possible.

You need to look at the actual faction screen.

It'll show you what ethic type has what attraction and more importantly why. if you hover over it.

They should just let you A) manually make sectors bigger than "4 leaps from the capital", like the game had at launch and B) let you set different policies in different sectors. If the Spiritualist faction will be happy living in robo-free spiritualist Texas, you should be able to give them a corner of the galaxy to live in.

Hell, setting different policies on different planets would be nice, but probably too much micromanagement. Since factions often want patently unreasonable things, and you have almost no ability to appease them or compromise, it's really just a random penalty that you can't do much about.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2021 20:39

Infinite Karma: Oct 23, 2004; Good as dead

I just had an event pop that hosed my entire campaign, I'll probably have to abandon the game completely.

I found some non-spacefaring civilization, and in the span of 10 years, they became spacefaring, and became basically an awakened fallen empire, before Titans and megastructures have unlocked by year. They became aggressive, and spawned with 400k in fleets (including a single 250k fleet), when I was dominating the game at that point with 3x 20k fleets (all other empires I had intel on were Pathetic in fleet strength). Then they went to war with me and have conquered half my empire before I could even get my fleets nearby to try and contain them.

Is this a mod event? Or just some new stupid thing?

edit: It was the Gigastructures mod. How dumb.

Infinite Karma fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Apr 21, 2021

# ¿ Apr 21, 2021 00:23

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 17:57

Infinite Karma: Oct 23, 2004; Good as dead

bob dobbs is dead posted:

thats the katzen, go play the risk minigame to beat them

yeah its from the mod. theres options at the beginning of the game to make them not appear, sometimes appear, or be 60x stronger

Looks like. Guess I'll be turning that off.

Is there a minigame to beat them besides "give them everything they want to placate them until you can beat them fair and square?" I didn't see anything besides some dumb dialogue events that were cede more systems, or not cede more systems.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2021 00:43

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