Space Satan
Arcane
before, purging cause such diplomatic penalty that never faded away. It could, in theory, fade after, like 500-700 game years, during which you never purge anyone again.
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Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game
- Thread starter Perkel
- Start date
Space Satan
Arcane
a cut of domestic sheep prime
Guest
a follow up to that mod I posted earlier. This used to be a fully functional ringworld:
Then they declared war on my empire.
It's he effect of the Ragnarok's spear of longinius. On planets, it either glasses them or shatters them. On gas giants, it turns them into burning gas giants.
Also, I tested destroying a star system. The "sun crusher" is kind of useless as it's slow and defenseless, but in this case, I was able to distract their main fleet in the center of the system and detonate a star that was orbiting their central black hole - warping my other ships out before the star detonated and wiped out the enemy's fleets and homeworld.
Then they declared war on my empire.
It's he effect of the Ragnarok's spear of longinius. On planets, it either glasses them or shatters them. On gas giants, it turns them into burning gas giants.
Also, I tested destroying a star system. The "sun crusher" is kind of useless as it's slow and defenseless, but in this case, I was able to distract their main fleet in the center of the system and detonate a star that was orbiting their central black hole - warping my other ships out before the star detonated and wiped out the enemy's fleets and homeworld.
Last edited by a moderator:
MadMaxHellfire
Arcane
sounds extremely hard to pull and rarely worth the effort.
a cut of domestic sheep prime
Guest
yeah, I'm trying to imagine a scenario would be worth it to blow up a star, but it's difficult.
I guess if you didn't have the tech trees of the other doomsday weapons, or if you were vastly outnumbered and lured a superior enemy fleet into an ambush it might be worth it. place it in a system you know your enemy's main fleet will pass through, wait for them, detonate. Boom 200k+ of enemies dead in an instant.
And in case you are referring to doomsday weapons in general, what makes the doomday weapons so powerful is that they transcend the war mechanics' nerfing of player power. They don't rely on warscore or wait until the end of a long war to have their effect. You destroy a planet and it's dead forever. You assimilate a world and it's yours instantly. You wipe out the population of a planet with a virus and it's cleansed.
The Brazilian Slaughter
Arcane
Its time to cleanse the universe of odious light and plunge into a dark age lasting forever. Snuff all the suns, doom all life to freezing to death forever!
Sometimes, sometimes I just want to snuff out the sun. Fuck the light, the day! Praise the forever night! PRAISE DARKNESS!
Jason Liang
Arcane
Space Satan
Arcane
Government and Civic rework, also Hiveminds
Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is going to be about the Government Rework, the last of the major feature reworks coming in 1.5 'Banks' and some related features in the 'Utopia' expansion.
Government Rework (Free Feature)
With the focus of Banks and Utopia being ethics, internal politics and empire customization, we felt it would be remiss of us not to put in some work in regards to governments. While the old government grid worked alright to give you a broad range of governments to pick from, they were a bit lackluster, not very well balanced and I rarely felt that the government I picked truly corresponded to my own idea of what my empire's society was like. To address all of these issues at once we decided to go back to the drawing board and redo the way governments are constructed completely. In Banks, instead of picking from a preconfigured government, you build your own from Authority and Civics.
The Authority determines how power is transfered in your government. The different Authorities are:
Democratic: A ruler is democratically elected every 10 years.
Oligarchic: A ruler is elected every 40 to 50 years.
Dictatorial: Rulers are elected but rule for life.
Imperial: Rulers rule for life and are succeeded by appointed heirs on death.
In all systems that involve elections, leaders will be elected from the different Factions in your country, and electing a ruler of a particular Faction will significantly strengthen the political clout of that faction and the attraction of their related ethics, so be careful about letting a Xenophile take charge of your Supremacist Empire!
The Civics represent the political and social traditions of your government, and come in a wide variety of types, primarily limited by your authority and ethics. In addition to providing modifiers, they can also change how your empire is governed. For example, the Citizen Service Civic ties citizenship to military service, so that only species with Full Military Service are afforded the right to vote and become leaders. On empire creation, you can choose two Civics, with a third able to be unlocked later through research.
With a few exceptions (more on that below), Civics and Authorities are not necessarily permanent. Where previously you could change your government type for 250 influence, you now have the option to effectively rebuild your government at the same cost. By using the 'Reform Government' button in the government screen, you can add and remove Civics and change Authority from among the picks available to your ethics. As your Ethics and Authority change, you may end up with Civics that are no longer valid for you country - for example a 'Beacon of Liberty' that has lost its Egalitarian ethics. When this happens, the Civic in question will remain, but will become 'inactive' and stop providing you with any sort of bonus, effectively a wasted Civic slot until you reform your government and replace it.
From the Authority, Civics and Ethics you pick, a Government Name is finally generated. The Government Name is purely there to roughly summarize the government you have built, as well as provide flavor, and has no actual impact on gameplay.
Advanced Civics (Paid Feature)
In addition to the normal Civics available to everyone, there are also a few special Civics that are only available to those with the Utopia expansion. These Civics are meant to simulate very specific kinds of societies and generally have more of an impact on your game than the normal Civics do. They are as follows:
Hive Minds (Paid Feature)
In addition to the Advanced Civics, those with the Utopia expansion also get access to a unique Authority with a highly unique playstyle: the Hive Mind. Hive Minds are species where the individuals are all part of the same, vast, psionically linked consciousness. The Immortal Hive Mind rules absolutely over the population of non-sentient worker drones, using sentient 'Autonomous Drones' (Leaders) to extend the reach of its will. Picking the Hive Mind Authority requires the Hive Mind Ethic and each can only be picked together with the other: With only one, vast and linked consciousness, the guiding values of a Hive Mind is whatever the Hive Mind player wants it to be. They have their own set of Civics that can only be used by Hive Minds, and cannot use any non-Hive Mind Civics.
All Pops from the founder species of a Hive Mind will have the Hive-Minded trait. Hive-Minded Pops are not affected by Happiness and will never form Factions, allowing Hive Minds to completely ignore internal politics... though this comes as a cost, as they also cannot benefit from the Influence boost and other benefits provided by happy Factions in a regular empire. As Hive Minds rely completely on their ability to communicate psionically with the drone population, they are also unable to rule over non Hive-Minded Pops, and any such Pops in your empire will automatically be killed over time and processed into food to feed the Hive. Similarly, Hive-Minded pops that end up in non Hive Mind empires will be cut off from the Hive and will perish over time. The only way to integrate Pops between Hive Minds and non-Hive Minds is to use the Biological Ascension Path to unlock advanced gene modding and modify them by adding or removing Hive-Minded (more on this in the next dev diary). However, Hive Minds can still coexist with other species: They have full access to diplomacy and can have non-Hive Mind subjects (and can be ruled over as subjects in turn), though non-Hive Mind empires tend to be somewhat distrustful of Hive Minds on first contact.
While Hive Minds are psionic by nature, the way they function and their connection to the Shroud is radically different from that of regular psychics, making them unable to follow the Psionic Ascension Path. Furthermore, Hive Minds are deeply biological entities, and fundamentally incompatible with the Synthetic Ascension Path. They are however perfectly suited for the Biological Ascension Path, and can make use of it to assimilate other, non-Hive Mind species into the Hive as described above.
That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about the Biological and Synthetic Ascension Paths. See you then!
Government Rework (Free Feature)
With the focus of Banks and Utopia being ethics, internal politics and empire customization, we felt it would be remiss of us not to put in some work in regards to governments. While the old government grid worked alright to give you a broad range of governments to pick from, they were a bit lackluster, not very well balanced and I rarely felt that the government I picked truly corresponded to my own idea of what my empire's society was like. To address all of these issues at once we decided to go back to the drawing board and redo the way governments are constructed completely. In Banks, instead of picking from a preconfigured government, you build your own from Authority and Civics.
The Authority determines how power is transfered in your government. The different Authorities are:
Democratic: A ruler is democratically elected every 10 years.
Oligarchic: A ruler is elected every 40 to 50 years.
Dictatorial: Rulers are elected but rule for life.
Imperial: Rulers rule for life and are succeeded by appointed heirs on death.
In all systems that involve elections, leaders will be elected from the different Factions in your country, and electing a ruler of a particular Faction will significantly strengthen the political clout of that faction and the attraction of their related ethics, so be careful about letting a Xenophile take charge of your Supremacist Empire!
The Civics represent the political and social traditions of your government, and come in a wide variety of types, primarily limited by your authority and ethics. In addition to providing modifiers, they can also change how your empire is governed. For example, the Citizen Service Civic ties citizenship to military service, so that only species with Full Military Service are afforded the right to vote and become leaders. On empire creation, you can choose two Civics, with a third able to be unlocked later through research.
With a few exceptions (more on that below), Civics and Authorities are not necessarily permanent. Where previously you could change your government type for 250 influence, you now have the option to effectively rebuild your government at the same cost. By using the 'Reform Government' button in the government screen, you can add and remove Civics and change Authority from among the picks available to your ethics. As your Ethics and Authority change, you may end up with Civics that are no longer valid for you country - for example a 'Beacon of Liberty' that has lost its Egalitarian ethics. When this happens, the Civic in question will remain, but will become 'inactive' and stop providing you with any sort of bonus, effectively a wasted Civic slot until you reform your government and replace it.
From the Authority, Civics and Ethics you pick, a Government Name is finally generated. The Government Name is purely there to roughly summarize the government you have built, as well as provide flavor, and has no actual impact on gameplay.
Advanced Civics (Paid Feature)
In addition to the normal Civics available to everyone, there are also a few special Civics that are only available to those with the Utopia expansion. These Civics are meant to simulate very specific kinds of societies and generally have more of an impact on your game than the normal Civics do. They are as follows:
- Syncretic Evolution: Your species evolved along with another, subservient species. A second species is randomly generated on your homeworld replacing some of your primary species' Pops. They always have the Proles (rebalanced in Banks) and Strong traits, making them excellent soldiers and workers but less ideal for intellectual pursuits. This Civic provides no additional benefits and cannot be removed once picked.
- Mechanist: Your species is obsessed with the pursuit of robotics. This Civic requires you to be Materialist and has you start with the Robotic Workers and Powered Exoskeletons technologies and a population of worker robots to do the farming and mining for you, replacing some of your primary species' Pops. This Civic provides no additional benefits and cannot be removed once picked.
- Fanatic Purifiers: Your empire will not tolerate the existance of any other sentient life. This Civic requires you to be Fanatic Xenophobe/Militarist and gives very large boosts to the effectiveness of your military and gives you Unity from purging Xeno Pops, but disables all diplomacy with other species and forces all Xeno Pops in your empire to be purged (though you get to choose the method of extermination). All other regular empires will also have a massive relations malus with you, the one and only exception being Fanatic Purifiers from the same species.
Hive Minds (Paid Feature)
In addition to the Advanced Civics, those with the Utopia expansion also get access to a unique Authority with a highly unique playstyle: the Hive Mind. Hive Minds are species where the individuals are all part of the same, vast, psionically linked consciousness. The Immortal Hive Mind rules absolutely over the population of non-sentient worker drones, using sentient 'Autonomous Drones' (Leaders) to extend the reach of its will. Picking the Hive Mind Authority requires the Hive Mind Ethic and each can only be picked together with the other: With only one, vast and linked consciousness, the guiding values of a Hive Mind is whatever the Hive Mind player wants it to be. They have their own set of Civics that can only be used by Hive Minds, and cannot use any non-Hive Mind Civics.
All Pops from the founder species of a Hive Mind will have the Hive-Minded trait. Hive-Minded Pops are not affected by Happiness and will never form Factions, allowing Hive Minds to completely ignore internal politics... though this comes as a cost, as they also cannot benefit from the Influence boost and other benefits provided by happy Factions in a regular empire. As Hive Minds rely completely on their ability to communicate psionically with the drone population, they are also unable to rule over non Hive-Minded Pops, and any such Pops in your empire will automatically be killed over time and processed into food to feed the Hive. Similarly, Hive-Minded pops that end up in non Hive Mind empires will be cut off from the Hive and will perish over time. The only way to integrate Pops between Hive Minds and non-Hive Minds is to use the Biological Ascension Path to unlock advanced gene modding and modify them by adding or removing Hive-Minded (more on this in the next dev diary). However, Hive Minds can still coexist with other species: They have full access to diplomacy and can have non-Hive Mind subjects (and can be ruled over as subjects in turn), though non-Hive Mind empires tend to be somewhat distrustful of Hive Minds on first contact.
While Hive Minds are psionic by nature, the way they function and their connection to the Shroud is radically different from that of regular psychics, making them unable to follow the Psionic Ascension Path. Furthermore, Hive Minds are deeply biological entities, and fundamentally incompatible with the Synthetic Ascension Path. They are however perfectly suited for the Biological Ascension Path, and can make use of it to assimilate other, non-Hive Mind species into the Hive as described above.
That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about the Biological and Synthetic Ascension Paths. See you then!
a cut of domestic sheep prime
Guest
Tried it. It's ok, but needs a lot of work still. Kinda cool to play Star Trek for a while tho. The Xindi crisis event was cool. I liked being able to use my knowledge of the show to simply bypass all the retarded things Captain Archer did in Enterprise. Man, I still remember how much I wanted to punch the entire cast every episode for all the dumb things they would do. Pro tip: if you want your characters to be likeable, don't make them stupid assholes from day one.
Whisky
The Solution
Government and Civic rework, also Hiveminds
Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is going to be about the Government Rework, the last of the major feature reworks coming in 1.5 'Banks' and some related features in the 'Utopia' expansion.
Government Rework (Free Feature)
With the focus of Banks and Utopia being ethics, internal politics and empire customization, we felt it would be remiss of us not to put in some work in regards to governments. While the old government grid worked alright to give you a broad range of governments to pick from, they were a bit lackluster, not very well balanced and I rarely felt that the government I picked truly corresponded to my own idea of what my empire's society was like. To address all of these issues at once we decided to go back to the drawing board and redo the way governments are constructed completely. In Banks, instead of picking from a preconfigured government, you build your own from Authority and Civics.
The Authority determines how power is transfered in your government. The different Authorities are:
Democratic: A ruler is democratically elected every 10 years.
Oligarchic: A ruler is elected every 40 to 50 years.
Dictatorial: Rulers are elected but rule for life.
Imperial: Rulers rule for life and are succeeded by appointed heirs on death.
In all systems that involve elections, leaders will be elected from the different Factions in your country, and electing a ruler of a particular Faction will significantly strengthen the political clout of that faction and the attraction of their related ethics, so be careful about letting a Xenophile take charge of your Supremacist Empire!
The Civics represent the political and social traditions of your government, and come in a wide variety of types, primarily limited by your authority and ethics. In addition to providing modifiers, they can also change how your empire is governed. For example, the Citizen Service Civic ties citizenship to military service, so that only species with Full Military Service are afforded the right to vote and become leaders. On empire creation, you can choose two Civics, with a third able to be unlocked later through research.
With a few exceptions (more on that below), Civics and Authorities are not necessarily permanent. Where previously you could change your government type for 250 influence, you now have the option to effectively rebuild your government at the same cost. By using the 'Reform Government' button in the government screen, you can add and remove Civics and change Authority from among the picks available to your ethics. As your Ethics and Authority change, you may end up with Civics that are no longer valid for you country - for example a 'Beacon of Liberty' that has lost its Egalitarian ethics. When this happens, the Civic in question will remain, but will become 'inactive' and stop providing you with any sort of bonus, effectively a wasted Civic slot until you reform your government and replace it.
From the Authority, Civics and Ethics you pick, a Government Name is finally generated. The Government Name is purely there to roughly summarize the government you have built, as well as provide flavor, and has no actual impact on gameplay.
Advanced Civics (Paid Feature)
In addition to the normal Civics available to everyone, there are also a few special Civics that are only available to those with the Utopia expansion. These Civics are meant to simulate very specific kinds of societies and generally have more of an impact on your game than the normal Civics do. They are as follows:
- Syncretic Evolution: Your species evolved along with another, subservient species. A second species is randomly generated on your homeworld replacing some of your primary species' Pops. They always have the Proles (rebalanced in Banks) and Strong traits, making them excellent soldiers and workers but less ideal for intellectual pursuits. This Civic provides no additional benefits and cannot be removed once picked.
- Mechanist: Your species is obsessed with the pursuit of robotics. This Civic requires you to be Materialist and has you start with the Robotic Workers and Powered Exoskeletons technologies and a population of worker robots to do the farming and mining for you, replacing some of your primary species' Pops. This Civic provides no additional benefits and cannot be removed once picked.
- Fanatic Purifiers: Your empire will not tolerate the existance of any other sentient life. This Civic requires you to be Fanatic Xenophobe/Militarist and gives very large boosts to the effectiveness of your military and gives you Unity from purging Xeno Pops, but disables all diplomacy with other species and forces all Xeno Pops in your empire to be purged (though you get to choose the method of extermination). All other regular empires will also have a massive relations malus with you, the one and only exception being Fanatic Purifiers from the same species.
Hive Minds (Paid Feature)
In addition to the Advanced Civics, those with the Utopia expansion also get access to a unique Authority with a highly unique playstyle: the Hive Mind. Hive Minds are species where the individuals are all part of the same, vast, psionically linked consciousness. The Immortal Hive Mind rules absolutely over the population of non-sentient worker drones, using sentient 'Autonomous Drones' (Leaders) to extend the reach of its will. Picking the Hive Mind Authority requires the Hive Mind Ethic and each can only be picked together with the other: With only one, vast and linked consciousness, the guiding values of a Hive Mind is whatever the Hive Mind player wants it to be. They have their own set of Civics that can only be used by Hive Minds, and cannot use any non-Hive Mind Civics.
All Pops from the founder species of a Hive Mind will have the Hive-Minded trait. Hive-Minded Pops are not affected by Happiness and will never form Factions, allowing Hive Minds to completely ignore internal politics... though this comes as a cost, as they also cannot benefit from the Influence boost and other benefits provided by happy Factions in a regular empire. As Hive Minds rely completely on their ability to communicate psionically with the drone population, they are also unable to rule over non Hive-Minded Pops, and any such Pops in your empire will automatically be killed over time and processed into food to feed the Hive. Similarly, Hive-Minded pops that end up in non Hive Mind empires will be cut off from the Hive and will perish over time. The only way to integrate Pops between Hive Minds and non-Hive Minds is to use the Biological Ascension Path to unlock advanced gene modding and modify them by adding or removing Hive-Minded (more on this in the next dev diary). However, Hive Minds can still coexist with other species: They have full access to diplomacy and can have non-Hive Mind subjects (and can be ruled over as subjects in turn), though non-Hive Mind empires tend to be somewhat distrustful of Hive Minds on first contact.
While Hive Minds are psionic by nature, the way they function and their connection to the Shroud is radically different from that of regular psychics, making them unable to follow the Psionic Ascension Path. Furthermore, Hive Minds are deeply biological entities, and fundamentally incompatible with the Synthetic Ascension Path. They are however perfectly suited for the Biological Ascension Path, and can make use of it to assimilate other, non-Hive Mind species into the Hive as described above.
That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about the Biological and Synthetic Ascension Paths. See you then!
Sigh. Why am I allowing myself to look st Stellaris with hope?
They're just going to burn me again...I know it. But still...
MadMaxHellfire
Arcane
one or two expansions more.
whatevername
Arcane
Very sad, actually. It's the same garbage as GalCiv 2/3 and Endless Space too.
DramaticPopcorn
Guest
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2009
- Messages
- 1,659
They are such fucking cheapskates. Most of their ideas for the (paid) civic/gov update stem form ethic&government rebuilt mod. They could have the decency to at least mention it.
I also wonder why no 4x dev is trying to implement hard sci-fi combat physics.
I also wonder why no 4x dev is trying to implement hard sci-fi combat physics.
Jason Liang
Arcane
Since they can't come up with better space combat than Star Control 2?
They are difficult, complex, uninteresting and simply no fun.
Average Manatee
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2012
- Messages
- 14,267
Hard Sci Fi would just be launching a million missiles at each other, because other non-guided weapon types are pretty much worthless.
Norfleet
Moderator
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2005
- Messages
- 12,250
Yeah, it basically boils down to "shoot a lot of missiles at each other and whoever fails to shoot down enough dies, with the high probability both sides die. The wiggle room comes from all the non-hard parts.
Then again, a lot of non-hard sci-fi combat is ALSO this way. A surprisingly large number of non-hard sci-fi is also tends to congeal down into the "mnogo missiles" approach, especially early on when the non-hard elements have not climbed to ascendance.
Average Manatee
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2012
- Messages
- 14,267
One thing I'm not sure about is whether you could even find each other at all. Radar works in space because we're OK with very slowly and methodically scanning every inch of space. In a theoretical war where someone actually makes stealth spacecraft/stealth missiles, combined with the much greater distances compared to war on earth, you'd need massively more powerful radar systems to locate things. And using such a powerful radar would be basically advertising your location to everyone, making it suicidal, so instead both sides switch to passive radar and simply never find each other in the vastness of space.
Jason Liang
Arcane
Grand strategy games aren't about combat
GarfunkeL
Racism Expert
The ship would be bright as a torch against all backgrounds except the sun. Since everything on the EM spectrum travels at the speed of light, it doesn't take long for thermal cameras to spot a spacecraft. Only exception would be if you place your craft so that the Sun is behind it. Then you need a telescope to spot the dark spot. Both options are entirely possible with current day technology, not to mention the technology we will have when space combat becomes reality.
Then you combine that with the fact that to minimise fuel usage, 99% of space craft would actually be travelling along few well known "highways" between planets, so you don't even need to scan the entire Solar system except in special cases.
Lasers and kinetic weapons would be useless because, while they don't lose velocity like in atmosphere, they cannot change their trajectory once in flight, so it wouldn't take long for ships to routinely jink around in combat.
That leaves self-guided missiles as the only viable weapon system outside of knife-fight distance. But nukes are not as effective in space because there is no pressure wave from atmosphere and the fire blast evaporates almost immediately due to lack of oxygen to keep it going. Which leaves just the initial blast and the radiation. The initial blast range of even megaton range nukes is quite small - in space distances that is - and the radiation isn't very dangerous except at point-blank, especially to ships whose crews must survive cosmic radiation anyway.
Hence, writers doing the harder side of space combat often rely on missiles with laser warheads - basically the warhead isn't meant to hit the target but it creates the energy necessary for a strong, directed, one-time laser blast that is sufficiently close - a thousand kilometers or four - so that it cannot be dodged in time.
All this means that the harder your sci-fi, the more boring your space combat becomes. Or rather, the less classic warfare tropes and cliches you can use. Meaning that it is far more challenging to write engaging hard sci-fi space combat instead of recycling Trafalgar in space or Pacific War in space.
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