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[LurkerPrime]

hey everyone
i've been playing this game here and there. some questions:

-are there different kinds of war ships? or are you just supposed to edit the ship to add different components yourself?

-whats the best way to get influence? i've read that it helps to have rivalries.

-what's the best way to balance credits? i suddenly found myself with a severe deficit and had to go into debt with neighboring species for credit loans.

There are different sizes of ships, four or five, I think, and a few different designs you can choose for each size. They each have different benefits and negatives, with larger ones being stronger, more expensive, and locked behind advanced research. Their exact abilities rely on their components, which, yeah, you need to manually design (or you can let the game auto-design them based on your available research). Note that their effectiveness relies heavily on the components and size of enemy ships--analyse them if you're struggling in battles with even fleet strength.

For influence: rivalries or advanced government buildings. There's a little marker on research that leads to advanced governance stuff, so watch out for it. You'll never get that much turn-to-turn so don't spend it frivilously.

For credits? Again, research (advanced power supply buildings), or expand your borders to capture particularly energy-rich systems within your territory. Eventually you'll have focused planets for power generation that will be much more efficient. It's also (ofentimes) really easy to trade for energy if you're in a pinch.


Hopefully I'm not overlooking anything big.

 

[TheVoidDragon]

What are paradox like with updating parts of the core game that aren't game mechanics? One thing i've found very disapointing is how the majority of weapons don't have a unique appearance and the ships hulls don't get updated. I really hope that gets changed in the future but i don't know if that's the sort of thing they usually do.

 

[Tacitus_]

What are paradox like with updating parts of the core game that aren't game mechanics? One thing i've found very disapointing is how the majority of weapons don't have a unique appearance and the ships hulls don't get updated. I really hope that gets changed in the future but i don't know if that's the sort of thing they usually do.

Utopia did this

* Ship engine-trails will now be colored by their empire's primary color

so they will do them. Maybe not as extensively as you'd like, but then there are mods for that.

 

[PeskyToaster]

My strongest, strongest advice would be to set your games to only have one form of travel. I think hyperlanes are the best, because it builds a good storyline and adds geography to the game. Even the designers have admitted that it shouldn't have 3 different travel mechanics - it creates too much asymetry, and the AI is completely unable to deal with that,

There's no way to change it post-game start is there?

 

[TheVoidDragon]

Utopia did this


so they will do them. Maybe not as extensively as you'd like, but then there are mods for that.

Remembered that one of their potential features was this, so it seems like it could happen:

Ship appearance that differs for each empire, so no two empires' ships look exactly the same.

 

[Fattony12000]

I managed to fix it today. Deleted everything, both the game folder and the folder in documents, and reinstalled. That solved the problem.

Ahh, didn't think to blast the folder inside Documents...I did this and now it seems to be behaving itself! Thanks!

 

[Tacitus_]

Wew. I conquered my starting neighbour as a hivemind and ate them. +200 food for years and a couple free planets. Now I have something like 10 planets.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Alright I'm not generally an LP person, but Rock, Paper, Shotgun just put up part 1 of their Stellaris playthrough (a utopian turtle empire) and it's great. Part 2 isn't up yet but I'm excited for it.

It's rather amazing, the stories one can wring from this game.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Alright I'm not generally an LP person, but Rock, Paper, Shotgun just put up part 1 of their Stellaris playthrough (a utopian turtle empire) and it's great. Part 2 isn't up yet but I'm excited for it.

It's rather amazing, the stories one can wring from this game.

I still feel like it'd not quite there yet tbh. Not enough variance to diplomacy or warfare. The latter is especially dire since it mostly still boils down to doomstacks chasing each other around until the bigger catches the smaller.

I'd also really like to see more fleshed out leaders. Even something like what EU 4 has now would be great.

 

[spiritfox]

I still feel like it'd not quite there yet tbh. Not enough variance to diplomacy or warfare. The latter is especially dire since it mostly still boils down to doomstacks chasing each other around until the bigger catches the smaller.

I'd also really like to see more fleshed out leaders. Even something like what EU 4 has now would be great.

Yeah, I would like the game to embrace the grand strategy side of it and have a more fleshed out political and economic system. Right now most interactions end with deploying fleets.

 

[Trickster]

Yeah, I would like the game to embrace the grand strategy side of it and have a more fleshed out political and economic system. Right now most interactions end with deploying fleets.

My main wish for this game currently is definitely to have diplomacy greatly expanded. It definitely feels like something their next dlc/expansion should be focused on. Would make the game so much more interesting.

 

[EndcatOmega]

Trade, Diplomacy, Military, Espionage. Art of War, Common Sense and Mare Nostrum for Stellaris should be their next thing- though preferable with a slightly better split of DLC versus free features- the former two you basically have to buy them. Mare Nostrum has the opposite problem but speaking as a customer that's, er, a lot easier to stomach.

 

[The Technomancer]

I agree, and I think that all ties back into my feelings that right now all consequences are either military or economic. Either someone conquers one of my planets, or I make 15% less resources because people are unhappy about something (which...has never been a problem for my production, since unless I'm engaged in military conflict I'm not exactly on a timetable to complete any objectives. Oh no, placing these buildings on this new colony is going to take 14 months instead of 12...)

 

[Tacitus_]

New Dev diary time!

As before, THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE OR FINAL LIST, AND NOTHING BELOW IS CERTAIN TO HAPPEN (unless it already did)!

Deeper Federations that start out as loose alliances and can eventually be turned into single states through diplomatic manuevering.
Superweapons and planet killers.
More story events and reactive narratives that give a sense of an unfolding story as you play.
More interesting mechanics for pre-FTL civilizations.
A 'galactic community' with interstellar politics and a 'space UN'.
Buildable Dreadnoughts and Titans.
Reworking the endgame crises to be more balanced against each other and the size/state of the galaxy.
Reworks to war to address the 'doomstacks' issue and make the strategic and tactical layers of warfare more interesting and less micro-intensive.
Deeper mechanics and unique portraits for synthetics.

 

[The Technomancer]

lol I just had an idea. do sector governors affect the ethics of their pops? How great would it be if a.) the ethics of governors changed over time and b.) there was friction if you tried to oust them ranging from unrest up to civil war?

 

[Kumquat]

Decided to play a game as my loveable Pacifist and Xenophilic space hipsters and I noticed I am surrounded by two Fallen Empires. In fact I am the buffer zone between them. I then noticed that one is a fanatic spiritualist and the other is fanatic materialist.


So I forsee in my future these two FE's going to war and they will crush my little nation between them. I wonder how much time I have before the War in Heaven.

 

[spiritfox]

An Adams update with no ability to construct space highways?

Literally unplayable.

 

[Poodlestrike]

New Dev diary time!

Space UN would be a massive add. Some way to manage and deal with interstellar conflict short of war.

 

[EndcatOmega]

Stolen shamelessly from SA/reddit:

Splitting hiveminds in two perhaps?

 

[Steel]

Decided to play a game as my loveable Pacifist and Xenophilic space hipsters and I noticed I am surrounded by two Fallen Empires. In fact I am the buffer zone between them. I then noticed that one is a fanatic spiritualist and the other is fanatic materialist.


So I forsee in my future these two FE's going to war and they will crush my little nation between them. I wonder how much time I have before the War in Heaven.

Get a colony ship to the other side of the galaxy, STAT!

 

[Lister]

New Dev diary time!

This sounds amazing

 

[spiritfox]

Stolen shamelessly from SA/reddit:



Splitting hiveminds in two perhaps?

That's Fanatical Purifiers but for Hive Minds.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Stolen shamelessly from SA/reddit:



Splitting hiveminds in two perhaps?

Just when I thought the Zerg were already here, they arrive again.

 

[EndcatOmega]

That's Fanatical Purifiers but for Hive Minds.

Ah, well. Hope there's some adjustments to the original civic as well- I know they're buffing habitability for all hive minds but while I understand they're not going to catch everything there's too many events at the moment that don't make any sense for them.

 

[jtb]

Space UN would be nice.

I've long thought that the Crisis system in Vicky 2 was a brilliant way of handling typical 4X/Paradox diplomacy - which is usual borked and terrible.

Would love to have something very similar in Stellaris.

 

[Brakke]

Started my first game the other day. I colonized two planets after my first, did the 10 power and 30 minerals production quest, have discovered 3 other empires. I've killed some pirates and mining drones and have a couple science ships out exploring my boundaries.

But... nothing's really happened yet? I have rivalries set with my immediate neighbors and there's one I want to fight because some roaming spacewhales killed an outpost I had and that system was subsequently devoured by their influence. Only thing is, as far as I can tell, any fleets moving around are 400-500 power; mine is 420 but that's with like 13 ships and I have an empire limit of 20 ships, so I can't make 2 fleets of 10 ships, and dunno how I'm going to conquer a civilization with a single fleet. Also have no idea how transports and armies and ground wars work.

I dunno, there's a bunch of systems going on at the periphery that don't seem relevant to anything. I could build temples to get Unity, but I'm barely keeping up with my pops on food. I've seen things about "ethics attraction" but I dunno what that means.

Long way to say, I guess the game hasn't really clicked with me yet. Should I expect the pace to carry on like this or will it pick up naturally as research completes? Should I be doing things to force action?

Oh yeah and two specific questions: 1) what are sectors and should I care about them? 2) should I care about weapon system rock-paper-scissors and how do I spy on another empire's fleet to figure out if they have missiles or lasers?

 

[Quixzlizx]

Started my first game the other day. I colonized two planets after my first, did the 10 power and 30 minerals production quest, have discovered 3 other empires. I've killed some pirates and mining drones and have a couple science ships out exploring my boundaries.

But... nothing's really happened yet? I have rivalries set with my immediate neighbors and there's one I want to fight because some roaming spacewhales killed an outpost I had and that system was subsequently devoured by their influence. Only thing is, as far as I can tell, any fleets moving around are 400-500 power; mine is 420 but that's with like 13 ships and I have an empire limit of 20 ships, so I can't make 2 fleets of 10 ships, and dunno how I'm going to conquer a civilization with a single fleet. Also have no idea how transports and armies and ground wars work.

I dunno, there's a bunch of systems going on at the periphery that don't seem relevant to anything. I could build temples to get Unity, but I'm barely keeping up with my pops on food. I've seen things about "ethics attraction" but I dunno what that means.

Long way to say, I guess the game hasn't really clicked with me yet. Should I expect the pace to carry on like this or will it pick up naturally as research completes? Should I be doing things to force action?

Oh yeah and two specific questions: 1) what are sectors and should I care about them? 2) should I care about weapon system rock-paper-scissors and how do I spy on another empire's fleet to figure out if they have missiles or lasers?

Ethics attraction is how likely your pops are to be converted to/stay as a particular ethic.

You can only directly control systems up to your core systems limit. After that, you have to put systems into sectors, which are AI-controlled.

Weapons don't have rock/paper/scissors against each other as much as they do against shields/armor/point defense. And yes, it does matter. If you have anything near the border, your sensor range might be able to capture what an individual ship is equipped with.

 

[The Hamburglar]

Every game I've played my end game crisis has always been unbidden. Starting to piss me off. I've had the game since launch.

And the devs have patched this game so much that unbidden for example now are just too powerful. You can't partical lance them from range now since you only get one x slot.

I had to reload after they spawned next to my home planet. Luckily for me they spawned next to an awakened empire who wiped them out.

What are the other end game crisis like? I turned my population into synthetics now everyone hates me lol.

 

[Frozenprince]

Need another 2-3 endgame crisis tbh. The few we have now aren't enough variety for end game.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Every game I've played my end game crisis has always been unbidden. Starting to piss me off. I've had the game since launch.

If people research jump drives, you in particular, it's the most likely event.

I've had Unbidden and Preytheon, but never machine revolts.

 

[LiQuid!]

Can anybody tell me if it's possible to liberate my own synthetics? I didn't realize when I researched AI that I'd be enslaving all my robofriends.

 

[Quixzlizx]

Can anybody tell me if it's possible to liberate my own synthetics? I didn't realize when I researched AI that I'd be enslaving all my robofriends.

It's under the Artificial Intelligence policy. I think you can only choose full rights if you're a Materialist, though.

 

[LiQuid!]

It's under the Artificial Intelligence policy. I think you can only choose full rights if you're a Materialist, though.

Thanks I am which is why it's bothering me so much that they're enslaved in the first place

 

[CloudWolf]

Amazing, so Paradox upped the chance for the Horizon Signal event to fire in 1.5... but then they completely broke the event by adding a negative value for one of the techs that you have to research to trigger the ending of the quest. At least there's a mod out there that fixes it, but wow.

 

[Brakke]

Alright I'm really cooking now. While I was prepping for war with one of my neighbors, another neighbor attacked me! Foolish him. The war demands system seems pretty cool. He had just colonized a planet in an inconvenient spot for me, so I conquered it and demanded he cede it in the peace negotiation. The big tide-turning battle reduced my fleet from like 27/25 to 9/25. But it totally wiped him and I had enough left over to bombard. I kept up fleet production just in case he was gunna muster a counterforce, which was cool because then I had a hunting party to go wipe some automated miner things and some space squids around my frontier borders. I like the debris research projects, I've already retrofitted a bunch of my ships with mining lasers salvaged from the drones, which seem way better than the pewpews I had.

But conquering the planet put me at 4/3 planets. So I created a sector? I just looped my nearest colony (v well developed) in with the conquered one. No clue what a sector is beyond automated planet-development.

Anyway my new problem: in expansion planning I saw two juicy planets that had shitty blocking terrain all over. I researched mountain-clearing for the one and colonized it, thinking I'd later research forest-clearing and colonize the other. Well... three cycles of research later and it hasn't come back up on the list of options? But I went ahead and colonized it anyway because I figured by the time the colony ship built, traveled, and landed, I'd have two research cycles, and maybe another couple before the pops filled the non-blocked spaces. But now I'm worried I'll just have a hamstrung colony that can't expand if forest-clearing doesn't become available again... ever? Is that a thing?

 

[The Hamburglar]

If people research jump drives, you in particular, it's the most likely event.

I've had Unbidden and Preytheon, but never machine revolts.

By the time jump drives comes up unbidden already been and gone.

Can you get more than one event?

 

[CloudWolf]

By the time jump drives comes up unbidden already been and gone.

Can you get more than one event?

No, only one per game. I used to always get Prethoryn, but now it's pretty much always Unbidden.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

By the time jump drives comes up unbidden already been and gone.

Can you get more than one event?

AI Rebellion requires AI techs to be researched by one or more civilizations and the crisis to not be averted through the "perfection of servant AI" or "An AI accord" events. So dodging this crisis is really easy in my experience even with robots.

The Unbidden requires jump drives to be researched by one or more civilizations and if anyone has Psi Jump Drives the probability increases. There's also some event called "wanderlust" that increases the probability of it triggering. I have no idea if fallen empires count as having jump drives for this calculation.

Prethoryn Swarm is the "if the other crises don't happen, then this happens". According to wiki the arrival date is calculated at game start, with 25% chance it won't happen. Their arrival happens between 170-300 years after game start, and their arrival is cancelled by other crises triggering.

I remember reading something a long time ago that crises didn't cancel other ones per se, they just drastically increased their Mean Time To Happen figures. I don't know if that's still true or only relevant for old versions of the game. But in any case, you're not going to ever see two in one game even if that's the case. If you have only seen one, it's possibly a run of bad luck. I've never gotten AI rebellion but that's because I always play smart with Synthetics. I've had an even mix of Prethoryn and Unbidden though.

 

[LurkerPrime]

I had a pleasant game where I was going to be the friendly federation empire. Started well, even met humans (that hated me because we were spiritualist...) and began the Grand Network of Non-Aggression Pacts, prepping for the Grand Federation. And then a warlike neighbor declared war and everything was over; I'm really bad at defending my borders, it turns out...

And so the grand experiment of being peaceful and benevolent has ended.


I think I'll try a full material/robotics game now that the automation civic is in.

 

[spiritfox]

I had a pleasant game where I was going to be the friendly federation empire. Started well, even met humans (that hated me because we were spiritualist...) and began the Grand Network of Non-Aggression Pacts, prepping for the Grand Federation. And then a warlike neighbor declared war and everything was over; I'm really bad at defending my borders, it turns out...

And so the grand experiment of being peaceful and benevolent has ended.


I think I'll try a full material/robotics game now that the automation civic is in.

Can't be peaceful if you don't have the fleet to back it up.

 

[LiQuid!]

Yeah, even fanatic pacifists need to protect their own territory otherwise you'll just be a doormat.

 

[CloudWolf]

I had some amazing luck with my fanatic pacifist run. I hadn't really kept up with my fleet and a neighbour uses this to declare war (even though I had defensive treaties with like five other empires, but whatever). Literally the second they declare war, I get the nomads event, giving me fifteen free cruisers. This enabled me to easily stomp him.

 

[zer0blivion]

Alright I'm really cooking now. While I was prepping for war with one of my neighbors, another neighbor attacked me! Foolish him. The war demands system seems pretty cool. He had just colonized a planet in an inconvenient spot for me, so I conquered it and demanded he cede it in the peace negotiation. The big tide-turning battle reduced my fleet from like 27/25 to 9/25. But it totally wiped him and I had enough left over to bombard. I kept up fleet production just in case he was gunna muster a counterforce, which was cool because then I had a hunting party to go wipe some automated miner things and some space squids around my frontier borders. I like the debris research projects, I've already retrofitted a bunch of my ships with mining lasers salvaged from the drones, which seem way better than the pewpews I had.

But conquering the planet put me at 4/3 planets. So I created a sector? I just looped my nearest colony (v well developed) in with the conquered one. No clue what a sector is beyond automated planet-development.

Anyway my new problem: in expansion planning I saw two juicy planets that had shitty blocking terrain all over. I researched mountain-clearing for the one and colonized it, thinking I'd later research forest-clearing and colonize the other. Well... three cycles of research later and it hasn't come back up on the list of options? But I went ahead and colonized it anyway because I figured by the time the colony ship built, traveled, and landed, I'd have two research cycles, and maybe another couple before the pops filled the non-blocked spaces. But now I'm worried I'll just have a hamstrung colony that can't expand if forest-clearing doesn't become available again... ever? Is that a thing?

That tile blocker clearing tech will come up again eventually. Alternatively, when you unlock an ascension perk by filling out one of your ascension trees, or researching the ascension perk +1 tech, you can pick the "Mastery of Nature" perk which immediately gives you all the tile blocker techs and reduces the cost to clear them to 0.

Edit: Assigning a leader to a sector will make it more efficient too.

 

[fanboi]

So what other end game crisis can there be?

Lemme think:

• Something that has been sent back in time to annihalate the galaxy? Like (book spoiler)
  Spoiler

  Hyperion
• Semi-cirisi of some galaxy wide plague that is spreading, killing any affected and turn them into some enemy (or not)
• Maybe something like Thanos in the Marvel universe?

 

[spiritfox]

Zombies. Gotta have zombies.

 

[fanboi]

Zombies. Gotta have zombies.

Bullet number two!

 

[EndcatOmega]

Greater Older Space Bulgaria. The strongest crisis.

 

[Frozenprince]

So what other end game crisis can there be?

Lemme think:

• Something that has been sent back in time to annihalate the galaxy? Like (book spoiler)
  Spoiler

  Hyperion
• Semi-cirisi of some galaxy wide plague that is spreading, killing any affected and turn them into some enemy (or not)
• Maybe something like Thanos in the Marvel universe?

Borg like entity, designed to assimilate and upgrade individual entities (though that's already some high level civs).

Maybe something like individual ships that act as leviathans, acting as distinct entities which go sector to sector doing something.

Warp or travel types are tearing space time apart (kind of like Unbidden summon event) and begins literally eating away at the map unless you figure out countermeasures.

Chaos analogue begins corrupting nominally normal pops, causing widespread political and social upheaval galaxy wide and open war.

 

[Steel]

I mean, the war in heaven is kinda an endgame crisis and I've never had it not proc. Though, half the time I opt out and the two fallen Empires struggle to even move the needle in war in heaven warscore, better yet pay attention to non-affiliates.


That aside, there needs to be a specifically psionic triggered end game event. Like, one that comes because they sense psionically advanced civs.

 

[CloudWolf]

I must be doing something wrong because The War in Heaven literally never fired for me. One FE awakens, but the other one almost always stays put or gets wiped out by an aggressive AI at some point.