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Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

Wilian

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Divinity: Original Sin
Hey since everyone is complaining about the AI... there is an "Enhanced AI" Mod, did anyone try it?

That's like trying to multiply with zero.
 

DramaticPopcorn

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There are a bunch of threads on Paradox forums where people (even long time fans who play other Paradox games) ask how to play the game to enjoy it and all the answers in 'passive-agressive fanboy drivel' form boil down to: ROLEPLAY! There's literally nothing of substance in this fucking game.

Paradox could have made an actually good product and dominate the scene since modern space 4x are all fucking trash for one reason or the other, but nope, another subpar DLC fest that permanently stuck in development with substantional updates being non-existant.
 
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Yeah the game is pretty shallow, last time I played it on release and quit sometime during the mid-game slog. Tried it again with and without a bunch of mods and meh, it's as boring as ever.

Initially it's kinda neat... first contacts with neighbors, all of the penny pinching of a very young space faring empire, using your (very limited) scientists for discovering anomalies and shit, it's a decent build up I gotta admit. And then when 4x usually spreads its wings in all of its glorious variety - Stellaris falls completely flat, because nothing really changes, anomalies and base building become busywork, combat and war in general sucks a bag of dicks, diplomacy is pretty basic and so on and so forth. It could have been great, but alas.

giphy.gif
 
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Grotesque

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Divinity: Original Sin Divinity: Original Sin 2
Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary will be about changes and new additions for Fallen Empires in the 1.8 'Čapek' update and its accompanying (unannounced) Story Pack, about which we cannot currently provide any information except what's in this dev diary. We also cannot currently provide say anything about the release date for the update other than to say that it's not coming out anytime soon. After what happened with 1.6, we want to take our time with this one and make sure we get it to you in a good shape.

Ancient Caretakers (Story Pack)
Those with the Story Pack will be able to encounter a brand new Fallen Empire - the Ancient Caretakers. The Ancient Caretakers is a fallen synthetic civilization that appears to be the remnant of some great conflict in the distant past. From what they tell you, they appear to have been part of something called the 'Custodian Project', an initiative to construct and maintain a number of ringworlds as a refuge for biological sapients fleeing some unknown menace. Their erratic behavior and speech, however, suggests that something may be very wrong indeed with this Fallen Machine Empire.
index.php


The Ancient Caretakers have a new attitude called 'Enigmatic' and an obscured opinion score to represent their bizarre and unpredictable nature. They may help you with gifts of ships of technology, request your assistance with tasks that may make little apparent sense, or even make demands of your empire that you would be unwise to ignore. They do not awaken like a regular Fallen Empire, but instead have a particular 'triggering event' that, if it happens during the course of the game, will automatically awaken them... though they will not always awaken in the same way. All in all, they behave quite differently from the other Fallen and Awakened Empires, and have their own backstory to explore, as well as unique interactions when dealing with other synthetic civilizations.
index.php


Fallen Empire Tweaks & Changes (Čapek Update)
In addition to the Ancient Caretakers, there are also some changes coming to the current batch of Fallen Empires. First of all, because the Ancient Caretakers also make use of ringworlds, we decided that you'd end up with just a few too many ringworlds to conquer and restore kicking around. Thus, for those with the Story Pack, we made a new initializer for the Keepers of Knowledge with a more traditional Fallen Empire setup of Gaia Worlds and outlying colonies, including some unique features and buildings to suit their archivarian ways. The old initializer with its three ringworlds still exists, however, and will spawn for those that do not have the Story Pack, so those without do not have their Fallen Empire ringworlds taken away.
index.php


Other than that, the following changes were done to the existing Fallen Empires:
- Keepers of Knowledge were changed to have their behavior (Hatred of AI) no longer directly conflict with their ethos (Materialist). Both their Fallen and Awakened variants no longer hold a grudge against AI, but instead have doubled down on their obsession with collecting and hoarding knowledge. Satellites of Awakened Keepers of Knowledge are no longer required to ban AI, but will have to contribute a major share of their research to their overlord.
- Holy Guardians were changed to be a bit more interactive, and are now able to offer tasks and give gifts to the younger races, though they will mostly only deign to do so to fellow Spiritualists. They have also taken over some of the Keepers of Knowledge's hatred of AI, and you can expect their Awakened variant to offer no quarter to synthetic civilizations.
- Militant Isolationists and Enigmatic Observers have mostly been left unchanged, asides from some updates to their initializers and ship designs, such as removing the Synths previously used by the Militant Isolationists and giving them to the Keepers of Knowledge instead. They will now also start with more trait points for their species than the other Fallen Empires, to represent their focus on the biological.

Finally, a change was done to the way you establish contact with Fallen Empires. Previously, unless you had done something to anger them (for example colonize a Holy World) FEs would open communications only when you directly entered their space. This has been changed so that Fallen Empires will now instead contact you when your ships enter any system adjacent to their space. This should make it harder to accidentally colonize next to Militant Isolationists and also make it so that your exploring science ship isn't immediately hurled back to your capital just because it happened to take a wrong turn after Omicron Persei.

That's all for today! Next week we'll be discussing some changes coming to Hive Minds and Devouring Swarms, as well as the addition of Dynamic Tradition Swapping in 1.8 'Čapek'.

Follow me on twitter for regular tidbits about the projects I'm working on.
 

thesheeep

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I started playing GalCiv3 some days ago (was on sale with all the addons).

The start and initial exploration is much better in Stellaris, as are the graphics.
But everything else... wow, GalCiv3 is light years ahead of Stellaris concerning actual strategic gameplay.
It's "surprising" what a difference some simple mechanics like actual upkeep and logistics limits for fleets can make in preventing the typical doomstacks.
And you actually have to specialize your planets and mind fleet composition a lot more. In Stellaris, I never had the impression that any of that mattered much. My planets in Stellaris were always a bit of everything, and my fleets were always battleships only with the longest range weapons, rarely losing anything.

I was pretty surprised when some AI in GalCiv3 with a much smaller fleet beat the crap out of my (so I thought) much stronger fleet. Turns out you should actually look at the enemy ships and if they field heavy laser weapons, you might want to bring a shield or two. It's even color coded for idiots like me :lol:

Edit:
Oh, another thing I like more in Stellaris is the research. I'm just a fan of that kind of randomness and I find the tech tree in GalCiv3 pretty confusing, not presented well and very hard to search. It also smells like "there is a very optimal strategy".
 
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Norfleet

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Oh, another thing I like more in Stellaris is the research. I'm just a fan of that kind of randomness and I find the tech tree in GalCiv3 pretty confusing, not presented well and very hard to search. It also smells like "there is a very optimal strategy".
There's an optimal strategy in Stellaris, too. It's called "research is irrelevant". Basic ship is best ship! Spam naked corvettes. The basic starter ship will defeat its own cost or power in anything else.
 

Raghar

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Oh, another thing I like more in Stellaris is the research. I'm just a fan of that kind of randomness and I find the tech tree in GalCiv3 pretty confusing, not presented well and very hard to search. It also smells like "there is a very optimal strategy".
There's an optimal strategy in Stellaris, too. It's called "research is irrelevant". Basic ship is best ship! Spam naked corvettes. The basic starter ship will defeat its own cost or power in anything else.
Not exactly. Best research is to blow up enemy ships, recover tech from them, and research only what you can't research from salvage.
 

Raapys

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You can disable some of the graphics stuff using console commands. Disabling fog did a lot to help performance on my laptop. So did removing empire borders, though that makes it hard to play for obvious reasons.
 

thesheeep

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Are there any mods that make Stellaris run faster? I got a computer that can run it but I wish I could do so faster. Sorta like a few mods that make CKII fasta
Do you mean going from normal game speed to fast to fastest to .... to plaid?
I think he's already trying to skip to the end.
Spoiler, bro: you uninstall and live happily ever after.
 

Lone Wolf

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Turns out you should actually look at the enemy ships and if they field heavy laser weapons, you might want to bring a shield or two. It's even color coded for idiots like me :lol:

GC2/3 use a rock, paper, scissors set-up for combat that absolutely shits me. Three types of defenses, three types of weapons; enjoy the guessing game. That, coupled with the ridiculous starbase/resource system makes both irrecoverable losses for yours truly.
 
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Turns out you should actually look at the enemy ships and if they field heavy laser weapons, you might want to bring a shield or two. It's even color coded for idiots like me :lol:

GC2/3 use a rock, paper, scissors set-up for combat that absolutely shits me. Three types of defenses, three types of weapons; enjoy the guessing game. That, coupled with the ridiculous starbase/resource system makes both irrecoverable losses for yours truly.

Stellaris aimed to have a rock paper scissors combat system but due to developer ineptitude they failed to make paper or scissors viable and everyone just spams rocks. Is that better or worse?
 

Prime Junta

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That's a blast from the past. Had LAN parties playing that. Late 80s? Early 90s?
 

Lone Wolf

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Stellaris aimed to have a rock paper scissors combat system but due to developer ineptitude they failed to make paper or scissors viable and everyone just spams rocks. Is that better or worse?

Stellaris has never given me the feeling that my beam-equipped vessels would be totally ineffective against shields. For all of its many faults, it can't compare to GC3 in that area.
 
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Stellaris aimed to have a rock paper scissors combat system but due to developer ineptitude they failed to make paper or scissors viable and everyone just spams rocks. Is that better or worse?

Stellaris has never given me the feeling that my beam-equipped vessels would be totally ineffective against shields. For all of its many faults, it can't compare to GC3 in that area.

That's because energy weapons are the "rock" choice. Everything else fails horribly against 90% armor, but armor-penetrating weapons still work just fine against shields.
 

Lone Wolf

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That's because energy weapons are the "rock" choice. Everything else fails horribly against 90% armor, but armor-penetrating weapons still work just fine against shields

Really? Because the vast majority of people who boil it down to mathematics seem to be saying that a combination of kinetic with plasma is the 'best' choice, in the minmaxing sense. Only missiles really underperform, while energy weapons are solid all-rounders.

Meanwhile, in GC, there's no conversation to be had.
 

thesheeep

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Turns out you should actually look at the enemy ships and if they field heavy laser weapons, you might want to bring a shield or two. It's even color coded for idiots like me :lol:

GC2/3 use a rock, paper, scissors set-up for combat that absolutely shits me. Three types of defenses, three types of weapons; enjoy the guessing game.
If you need to guess a lot, you are playing wrong.

Anyway, I wouldn't call it a straight RPS system. Weapons are about more than A beats B beats C. Kinetic is low-range, high-rate and super cheap - but lacks damage. Missiles deal most damage and have the highest range, but fire rather slow and are most expensive. And beam weapons are in-between. Any army just relying on one type is countered by defense types, not really by weapon types.

And as others have said, Stellaris attempts something similar. It just doesn't work. Missiles still suck even when focused on (and even against opponents not especially equipped to defend against them), long-range beats anything and generally the type of ship matters far more than what exactly it has equipped. Plus, there are only two defense types. Evasion doesn't really count, since it is all but useless on anything but the smallest ships.

That, coupled with the ridiculous starbase/resource system makes both irrecoverable losses for yours truly.
Now I don't even know what you are going on about.
Seems to be a pretty solid system to me: Build starbases to mine resources, offering the choice to focus on certain resources or spread out - mostly depending on what ship types you want to go for. Make sure to think where you put those bases up as you don't have an unlimited number of them and defend those most vital to you.

The system makes for far more strategic choices, as huge blows to enemy infrastructure are possible. Blowing up the right starbase or shipyard can really hurt. In Stellaris, everything just seems to be a long slog, conquering planet by planet, as all somewhat developed planets can just replace each other.
 
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Really? Because the vast majority of people who boil it down to mathematics seem to be saying that a combination of kinetic with plasma is the 'best' choice, in the minmaxing sense. Only missiles really underperform, while energy weapons are solid all-rounders.

Plasma is better than Lasers. But Kinetics are all shit vs. armor. Kinetics are strictly early game weapons for when you aren't fighting anything with armor, or if you are specializing for one of the end-game enemies who don't use armor.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

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>turn pop to undesirables and exterminate them, replace them with droids

Wish we could do this IRL
who says "we" aren't? :troll:
What are the good mods out there?
NSC and ISB. Plus, LEX is pretty kewl, but one of the better additions (a shielded ringworld) has its graphics a little messed up by Utopia.

Also, I'm rather hugely butthurt that the guy who made the original (and extremely good) ringworld mod deleted it for some reason after Utopia was released. Suspicious. It was actually in many ways better than Utopia's ringworld system, but obviously incompatible with Utopia.
 

Space Satan

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In upcoming patch hiveminds now can keep conquered species as livestock instead of processing them. Also, traditions for devouring swarms changed also
DDz2Fu7W0AESWDf.jpg:large

DDf5BK2XgAQuxf9.jpg:large
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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MCA Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
And one can bet all those start as cybernetics mods will rejoice.
 

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