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[Criptfeind]

Reworking a never used mechanic into probably an even easier to avoid system isn't really the type of internal society simulation with interesting choices and differentiation between different societies that I feel like people want (at least, that I'd say I want). Situations certainly could be used for interesting internal stuff, but I'm guessing that they are going to join the pile of "no interesting choices, click button to get stuff" that is (most) events/anomalies/projects/archeology.

[Telgin]

That's what I'm concerned about.  My expectation is that it'll end up being the espionage system for anomalies like the Manifesti and other multiple stage events, but with only minimal input from the player.  I'm not sure what it might end up meaning for internal politics, but maybe we'll get lucky and it might get some use for that.  Admittedly, I'm not sure what internal politics for Stellaris could look like without a significant rework of things like planetary, system and sector governments.

[axiomsofdominion]

I think the release of the Information Gathering/Espionage system was an iconic Paradox moment/paradigm. Any new systems they add will probably look like that. Paradox just loves unintegrated, rigid, shallow mechanics with timers/progress bars.

[Telgin]

The details from today's dev diary look pretty cool: Link

I like that they're expanding the holdings concept from the way branch offices worked with megacorporations, and I find myself oddly enticed by the foreign aid holding, since I've run a few games where I was the only advanced species in a galaxy of primitives that I enlightened.

I still usually play isolationists so this isn't giving me a ton of new stuff for most of my games, but it does look like it should be a step in the right direction for many players.  I'm curious to see what they do about making integration harder, if anything, since as one commenter pointed out if you can still easily force subjects to be integrated then it remains the dominant meta to get around the stupid pop growth system.


I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that in my current game I actually got the Prethoryn Scourge instead of the Unbidden somehow.  They still spawned early, which makes me guess that researching jump drives must just enable the crisis early and give some bonus to the Unbidden showing up, but since I was expecting the Unbidden at 01/01/2400 I was mostly ready.

50 years later and they've eaten one of the awakened empires that started the War in Heaven, so I guess I can thank them for ending that disaster of an event that usually means I just get to 2500 and call the game done instead of getting a victory screen since I have zero interest in personally conquering 100 planets to make the war end.

I continue to be frustrated at how useless titans are too.  Strangely, I managed to actually get 6 titans up to veteran status through decisive battles with the scourge, but after playing a session last night it seemed like I lost a titan in every engagement despite overpowering the scourge fleets almost 2:1.  At 5x, the crisis ships just do so much damage that if they start shooting at a titan it just evaporates.  And titans like to charge to the front of the engagement despite having perdition beams...

[Mini]

If you put a carrier computer on your titans I've found they will hang very far back, and also has the effect (I consider it a benefit, but it definitely hinders sneaking around) that your fleets will engage at a much longer range.

[Criptfeind]

The details from today's dev diary look pretty cool: Link

Ah, man, I saw this but forgot to toss my unasked for opinions into the void, so here we go.

I think a lot of this is cool stuff, especially holdings getting expanded. Customizable subsidies and tributes is a bit worry though since although it could, in theory, be a cool feature, in reality stellaris is a fairly snowbally game where relatively small things will, over time, come out to massive differences. As cool as it'd be to spend resources to uplift an ai underling, it's just going to make our sum total much weaker later on then if I just looted them for all they are worth and put those resources into building up my own empire to make enough power to work for the both of us. It's sorta a shame because I can see how cool it COULD be, if the game was less based on constant growth and snowballing, but it's going to be really held back by those issues. Also a lack of differentiation between empires, if there were significant differences in the capabilities of empires this would be a cool way to exploit or work together with others. Imagine a research heavy feudal empire where the empire on top gave research a vassal specialized in food production in exchange for food, and to a mining vassal for minerals, and such. But that's not really how stellaris works.

[Telgin]

If you put a carrier computer on your titans I've found they will hang very far back, and also has the effect (I consider it a benefit, but it definitely hinders sneaking around) that your fleets will engage at a much longer range.

I've been meaning to try this but keep forgetting to, since it felt like the computers made little practical difference and everything ends up in a knife fight with artillery anyway.  Do you put carrier computers on the other ships in the fleet with the titan, or leave them with other computers?  Do they actually fly ahead and screen the titan if you do that?

[Mini]

I put other computers on the fighting ships in the fleet, it seems the combination of the difference in computers and weapon ranges means the rest of your ships will move ahead to get into their own range while the titan hangs back with its beam and aura.

[Rolan7]

When I bother with dedicated picket ships I like to form them as uh... line?  I use a lot of corvettes even late-game which might let my AA destroyers maintain distance and take out missiles/fighters for my artillery battleships.  To be honest though I don't know if it's a good strategy or just overwhelms by size.  I have trouble interpreting the post-class statistics.

[Culise]

If you put a carrier computer on your titans I've found they will hang very far back, and also has the effect (I consider it a benefit, but it definitely hinders sneaking around) that your fleets will engage at a much longer range.

I've been meaning to try this but keep forgetting to, since it felt like the computers made little practical difference and everything ends up in a knife fight with artillery anyway.  Do you put carrier computers on the other ships in the fleet with the titan, or leave them with other computers?  Do they actually fly ahead and screen the titan if you do that?

The issue with computers in vanilla, assuming they're still unchanged, is that they only define maximum distances.  Ships won't fall back to keep the range open if the enemy is set to close to shorter distances than they are set to engage at.  However, for screens, they should continue moving in to engage at their own preferred range while the titan remains back if their configured range is shorter than the titan; this just won't matter as much outside the opening volleys once the enemy ships mix in.  I'm also not sure offhand how weapons targeting is determined beyond the basic "shield-bonus weapons target ships with active shields first, armor-bonus weapons target ships with exposed armor first, etc.," so I'm not sure how long they'll keep providing ablative armor to the titan either.

[Rolan7]

*Necro*, though I'm a little surprised since I've really enjoyed 3.4, the Overlord update.  As usual most of the important update is free, with fun gimmicks for those who buy the DLC.  Primarily:  Vassal-states are a lot more practical.  In the previous system they obviously didn't even consider you might play as a vassal-state, because they don't even warn you when your overlord starts to integrate you (despite notifying *every other empire in diplomatic range*).  Now you're safe from that unless you negotiate a deal where it's allowed.  Plus there are options and an origin for starting as a small, specialize vassal!  I like this a lot.  I did it in CK2 too and it's... different, but appeals to me sometimes.

The game really pushes you into going independent sooner or later though.  Meh.

I'm mostly here to share a somewhat wacky situation.  I loaded up Clan Snek Cobra, my Mechwarrior-inspired Lost Colony of Human Barbaric Despoilers.  Lost Colony sorta bites, but it's flavorful.  What I wasn't expecting was to meet... the Commonwealth of Man?!  And they don't recognize me at all, none of the special flavor text or "you're not a xeno " bonus.  Fair enough, I cooperate with them anyway and we're almost allies (despite their xenophobia and my significant Barbaric Despoilers malus).

Then the Galactic Community forms and I'm reunited with Sol, the UNE!!  ...They don't recognize us either.  kinda rude.  They also have two large specialized vassal states in 2232, and are the only Advanced Empire.

I'll know more with more intel, but my current theory:  The Commonwealth spawned, spawning the UNE for them (overriding me ).  Then the game tried to spawn a vassal-origin civ and chose the only Advanced Empire, the UNE, spawning in 1-2 more vassal states for the UNE.

I have no idea whether the UNE properly recognize the Commonwealth of Man, heh.  The end result is a very human galaxy map.  The UNE hates my authoritarian-militarist guts though, so it's a good thing they and their vassals are on the other side of the galaxy. 

Current plan:  Unite with the Commonwealth to bring a reckoning on Sol!  They tossed us through wormholes to die, and now claim the moral high ground?  We will cut out their rot!

I watched Star Trek ToS: Seedship recently, and as a MW clan my leader is Il-Khan.  Fun coincidence.  Fine excuse to go genetic-ascension for once~

[Iceblaster]

I do know that if the species you're playing does not have the exact same traits -and potentially in the same order- and the exact portrait used, the game will not recognize the species is the same.

[Telgin]

One thing I've wondered about vassal play: can you claim victory if you're the vassal of another empire?  I assume this is very hard in practice since your overlord gets a score bonus based on your score, but I was never sure if they got only a fraction of it or if they got the full value (and thus making it impossible to beat them in score).

I guess most people probably don't play to get the victory screen, especially as a vassal, so it probably doesn't come up often.

[Telgin]

I decided to give the new All Crises mode a spin in the latest patch and have some mixed feelings on it.  The extra challenge and stuff to do in the end game is nice, but I'm in the year 2660 right now and haven't yet finished.  The performance is abysmal as usual at this stage of the game, and it makes it a real struggle just to play, much less summon the mental energy to apply much strategy to the fight.

I tried it on commodore difficulty and 10x crisis mode, which I figured would be a decent step up in challenge since that's what level I usually play on and each crisis is stronger than the last wave.  The game doesn't say how much and I can't find it online, but it looked like it went from about 10x to 18x to 27x, which if you factor in commodore boosting the difficulty some implies it's probably a 50% increase in multiplier per wave.

You still get a random crisis first so I was hoping I'd get the Contingency first since they massively boosted the value of relics from the crises and the Contingency core lets you build 2 of each megastructure.  Getting the Contingency first (and thus weakest) plus the ability to build two science nexuses, two matter decompressors and two strategic coordination centers would have been excellent.

Instead, surprise surprise, I got the Unbidden first because you usually do.  To my utter shock, an AI empire sniped their dimensional portal almost immediately and handicapped them, meaning they were trivial to deal with.  Unfortunately, that AI empire also got the relic.  I let them go for a while in the hopes they'd kill a lot of AI pops and improve performance, but they seemed to refuse to attack planets so I finished them off.  Next came the Prethoryn scourge, whose fleets were at 1.6 million power each and a bit more frightening.  They did attack and destroy 71 planets in the end, which somehow did not improve performance of the game at all, so by 2645 or so I finally killed them off.

Then the Contingency spawned.  Getting them last was the worst case scenario, and I feared they'd be unbeatable.  To my surprise their fleets were only 2.7 million power each (6.6 million for the system defender fleets), and by switching to penetrating weapons I was able to defeat their fleets with acceptable losses.

I think my biggest problem with this overall is that I'm pretty sure I hate the War in Heaven now.  I'm almost sure that the fleets flying around the galaxy are the real cause of the lag, not pops, and by 2660 it still has not ended. I'm leaving some of the Contingency alone instead of finishing them off in the hopes that they'll destroy the remaining awakened empire, but I fear it would take until 2800 at this point so I'll probably just finish them off and live with getting no victory screen.

[pisskop]

I do know that if the species you're playing does not have the exact same traits -and potentially in the same order- and the exact portrait used, the game will not recognize the species is the same.

It seems to recognize that two various degrees of custom human I use are the same species when both factions are used.  They use the same portrait, and have one shared trait.  The one with the smaller pop seems to be a subsect of the one with the larger.

.

I got a little turned off after the game dragged out my purification victory.  I had taken over half the galaxy before I decided 'freak it, I already overpower them individually, lets do become the crisis'.

That was just a timesink.