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[Culise]

bump: Did anyone managed to find a way to mod out a hard penalty to diplomatic options for difficulty (-25/-50)? Thats additional 250-500 opinion needed. Making any diplomacy options on 'impossible' trully impossible.

You're looking for commons\defines\00_defines.lua, I believe; that's where difficulty options typically get offloaded.  I'm seeing the following lines there, starting around line 931 (using a search may aid you in skipping down there; there's a lot of stuff in this file):

Code: [Select]

ALLIANCE_ACCEPTANCE_HARD_DIFFICULTY = -25,
ALLIANCE_ACCEPTANCE_INSANE_DIFFICULTY = -50,
...
VASSALIZATION_ACCEPTANCE_HARD_DIFFICULTY = -50,
VASSALIZATION_ACCEPTANCE_INSANE_DIFFICULTY = -100,Switching those with zeros (either directly in the raws or by creating your own custom mod to avoid it being overwritten with every patch Paradox releases) may do the trick.

EDIT:
Also, if you're curious about other difficulty options, they're located in common\static_modifiers\00_static_modifiers.txt.  These are mostly bonuses to resource production and total navy caps, though.

[ZeroGravitas]

I'm probably playing this all wrong, but for me it's a constant struggle to put just enough minerals together to keep moving forward, at least if you want to stay in the tech race or not run into an EC deficit. I have a fairly good-sized empire, with dominion over a fairly large swath of space and 7 planets (all but one of which are within sectors), yet my mineral production is somewhere in the 50s. I just lost most of my fleet against a much smaller empire (that somehow is more advanced than me despite having just one planet and a presence in only 4 systems, none of which have much in the way of research bonuses), and now I can't possibly rebuild it before those damn space slugs manage to wreck my infrastructure and my vassal.

The cost of research scales with the size of your empire, so you don't need to expand to keep up, and aggressively expanding can actually cause you to lag behind in tech. (which might explain how the small empire is ahead of you in tech).

No, you still have to expand. Base tech prices go up no matter what, and you can't just rely on upgrading existing buildings. It's better to say you have to expand efficiently. But research stations in systems make this easy.

Ironically there's a weird incentive where star systems with multiple habitable planets don't matter. It might be easier to defend 2 planets in 1 star system instead of 2, but you lose out on expanding your borders to encompass more possible research stations. All other things being equal (like planet size), you get more production and research out of colonizing two star systems that are far apart than 2 planets in the same system. Besides military expediency, there is no benefit to having two habitable words in the same system. This is contrary to what you'd expect and contrary to every other space strategy game I can think of.

[lastverb]

Hold on, what? My impression so far is that I'm the one who needs to build the spaceports and that I'm the one responsible for upgrading them. None of my sectors have been doing it on their own.

I haven't seen them build one in a place there wasn't a spaceport before, but:
1) I had a game where i was swimming in energy/minerals, reaching cap often
2) I made my sectors swimming in minerals (you can give minerals/energy to sectors) I always use 75% tax and give them resources manually
3) Sector AI have no problem with upgrading player built spaceports, however it only adds levels, not modules
4) I had enemy fleet move far into my backyard by wormholes and destroyed my spaceport in sector
5) Sector AI started rebuilding spaceport as soon as it was destroyed with enemy fleet still in orbit, SO MANY TIMES

[TempAcc]

Well, there is the benefit of not having to spend extra influence (and losing monthly influence gain too, AFAIK), unless said two systems happen to be already inside your territory. Frontier outposts cost a hefty bit of influence to build and 1 influence per month to maintain, so having two habitable colonies inside the same system also saves a fair bit of influence, which is the hardest non special resource to get.

[Sirus]

I'm probably playing this all wrong, but for me it's a constant struggle to put just enough minerals together to keep moving forward, at least if you want to stay in the tech race or not run into an EC deficit. I have a fairly good-sized empire, with dominion over a fairly large swath of space and 7 planets (all but one of which are within sectors), yet my mineral production is somewhere in the 50s. I just lost most of my fleet against a much smaller empire (that somehow is more advanced than me despite having just one planet and a presence in only 4 systems, none of which have much in the way of research bonuses), and now I can't possibly rebuild it before those damn space slugs manage to wreck my infrastructure and my vassal.

The cost of research scales with the size of your empire, so you don't need to expand to keep up, and aggressively expanding can actually cause you to lag behind in tech. (which might explain how the small empire is ahead of you in tech).

No, you still have to expand. Base tech prices go up no matter what, and you can't just rely on upgrading existing buildings. It's better to say you have to expand efficiently. But research stations in systems make this easy.

Ironically there's a weird incentive where star systems with multiple habitable planets don't matter. It might be easier to defend 2 planets in 1 star system instead of 2, but you lose out on expanding your borders to encompass more possible research stations. All other things being equal (like planet size), you get more production and research out of colonizing two star systems that are far apart than 2 planets in the same system. Besides military expediency, there is no benefit to having two habitable words in the same system. This is contrary to what you'd expect and contrary to every other space strategy game I can think of.

What about when sectors get involved? Having two worlds in a single system wouldn't matter much to a sector, right? It might even make things better because you'd have two planet's worth of resources to exploit without ramming against the planet limit.

On another note, is there any way to transfer food between planets? I can't see a world wholly dedicated to research or mineral production being very efficient if none of the pops can eat.

[ZeroGravitas]

Well, there is the benefit of not having to spend extra influence (and losing monthly influence gain too, AFAIK), unless said two systems happen to be already inside your territory. Frontier outposts cost a hefty bit of influence to build and 1 influence per month to maintain, so having two habitable colonies inside the same system also saves a fair bit of influence, which is the hardest non special resource to get.

Wait... I'm getting the impression you think you have to build a Frontier Outpost in a system before you colonize it? You don't. You can colonize any system; you don't need a Frontier Outpost first. There's no Influence difference between Colony A and B both being in same system or not.

Also I think Influence varies widely between governments and ethos types. I've actually had to burn Influence because I had too much (just spent it on leader roulette, but it's better than capping out). For example as a Theocratic Republic, if I can consistently achieve the mandate (not difficult), that's an extra ~2/month. Then factor in rivals and not being in an alliance, and the early/mid techs that give +1/month. But if you're in a 40-50 year government and in an alliance, you will have a much harder time finding influence, yes. So yes, I would only really use Frontier Outposts to secure strategic resources or exceptionally good systems.

[umiman]

I'm probably playing this all wrong, but for me it's a constant struggle to put just enough minerals together to keep moving forward, at least if you want to stay in the tech race or not run into an EC deficit. I have a fairly good-sized empire, with dominion over a fairly large swath of space and 7 planets (all but one of which are within sectors), yet my mineral production is somewhere in the 50s. I just lost most of my fleet against a much smaller empire (that somehow is more advanced than me despite having just one planet and a presence in only 4 systems, none of which have much in the way of research bonuses), and now I can't possibly rebuild it before those damn space slugs manage to wreck my infrastructure and my vassal.

The cost of research scales with the size of your empire, so you don't need to expand to keep up, and aggressively expanding can actually cause you to lag behind in tech. (which might explain how the small empire is ahead of you in tech).

No, you still have to expand. Base tech prices go up no matter what, and you can't just rely on upgrading existing buildings. It's better to say you have to expand efficiently. But research stations in systems make this easy.

Ironically there's a weird incentive where star systems with multiple habitable planets don't matter. It might be easier to defend 2 planets in 1 star system instead of 2, but you lose out on expanding your borders to encompass more possible research stations. All other things being equal (like planet size), you get more production and research out of colonizing two star systems that are far apart than 2 planets in the same system. Besides military expediency, there is no benefit to having two habitable words in the same system. This is contrary to what you'd expect and contrary to every other space strategy game I can think of.

It depends on the quality of research points available to you.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The formula for tech prices is:

 Base cost x (1 + 0.02(Totals pops in empire - 10)) = Cost

Or basically if you have 200 pop, your tech costs about 4x more than what it would have been if you had 10. Another way to think about it is each pop increases tech cost by 2%.

But that's not all. You also get flat tech points from things like anomalies and debris. So in the early game when you get shittonnes of those, you're better off not having way more population as the tech goes further.

Essentially, for every planet you're planning on colonizing, you need to calculate if you can outresearch the total amount of pop in the planet when it's fully maxed out. So if you want to colonize a size 8 planet, you must see if you can get an additional 16% research in all areas, if not you're losing out. Additionally, you must also account for whether you're gaining or losing out in the duration that the planet itself is growing, as you probably aren't devoting the pop to tech when the pop is just starting out.

This is pretty easy to justify in the early game when you barely have pop and an additional 16% means like... 1 research point. Once you get large enough that your research points in bio is 100 for example... then an additional 16% means an additional 16 research in bio just to break even which can be tricky if the planet you're colonizing is only a size 8. And that's JUST bio. You also need 16 in physics and 16 in engineering as well.

tl;dr: It's basically guaranteed that if you expand too big you'll be lagging behind in tech.

[Cyroth]

On another note, is there any way to transfer food between planets? I can't see a world wholly dedicated to research or mineral production being very efficient if none of the pops can eat.

I think planets inside the same system share food, but there is no way to transport food from one system to another.
I once captured a Ringworld and one of its arcs had a bazillion farms on it. None of the other arcs had even a single farm on them, yet none of them were starving.

[Loud Whispers]

Laughed out loud at that Miriam thing...
And the Miroslavs.  Miroslavs everywhere.

I also like the image of her going up to the overlord asking for help for her drug addiction and the overlord is worse than a DF overlord, cheering her for her great success at learning new things

[ZeroGravitas]

What about when sectors get involved? Having two worlds in a single system wouldn't matter much to a sector, right? It might even make things better because you'd have two planet's worth of resources to exploit without ramming against the planet limit.

With sectors, you get more flexibility from more systems. If both colonies are in the same star system, you can't chose to put Colony A in the sector but not Colony B. They're stuck together, in or out. I see that as bad. On the other hand, maybe you'd run into a situation with 2 different systems where you want them both in the same sector, but they're not adjacent (and somehow can't be linked together). In that case, it might be slightly less efficient; you might have to have a marginally worse governor (or no governor) for the other planet/sector.

On another note, is there any way to transfer food between planets? I can't see a world wholly dedicated to research or mineral production being very efficient if none of the pops can eat.

No way to transfer food. But it's not too hard to feed the whole planet. Use the adjacency bonuses from the planet's capital (research can't use them anyway), and Orbital Hydroponic Farms.

[ZeroGravitas]

The formula for tech prices is:

 Base cost x (1 + 0.02(Totals pops in empire - 10)) = Cost

Or basically if you have 200 pop, your tech costs about 4x more than what it would have been if you had 10. Another way to think about it is each pop increases tech cost by 2%.

But that's not all. You also get flat tech points from things like anomalies and debris. So in the early game when you get shittonnes of those, you're better off not having way more population as the tech goes further.

Essentially, for every planet you're planning on colonizing, you need to calculate if you can outresearch the total amount of pop in the planet when it's fully maxed out. So if you want to colonize a size 8 planet, you must see if you can get an additional 16% research in all areas, if not you're losing out. Additionally, you must also account for whether you're gaining or losing out in the duration that the planet itself is growing, as you probably aren't devoting the pop to tech when the pop is just starting out.

All true, but as soon as you colonize a new planet you can build more research stations in that system. On the other hand, the pops take years to grow. Obviously you have to build research labs on the planets, too. But early in the game, gaining 1 pop from building a new colony will immediately result in a tech increase, because of the ability to build new research stations in space.

This is pretty easy to justify in the early game when you barely have pop and an additional 16% means like... 1 research point. Once you get large enough that your research points in bio is 100 for example... then an additional 16% means an additional 16 research in bio just to break even which can be tricky if the planet you're colonizing is only a size 8. And that's JUST bio. You also need 16 in physics and 16 in engineering as well.

True, but it's much easier than you making it sound. 16 research is after bonuses. Scientist characters alone give you 2-10%, plus whatever their specialty is. There's a ton of +10%s, like the Observatory upgrade in spaceports, the +10% physics trait depending on your approach to crystalline entities, racial traits, mid-game buildings that give empire-wide +research percentages, policies, governors that give +10% reseach output, +10/20% from high happiness, government types, etc. Ultimately you probably only need 1-2 labs per category to hit the break-even point. Even on an 8-size, you only need 1 farm, 1 capital, and 1 misc building (Monument to Purity, Frontier Clinic, w/e). The rest can be labs.

[TempAcc]

Well, there is the benefit of not having to spend extra influence (and losing monthly influence gain too, AFAIK), unless said two systems happen to be already inside your territory. Frontier outposts cost a hefty bit of influence to build and 1 influence per month to maintain, so having two habitable colonies inside the same system also saves a fair bit of influence, which is the hardest non special resource to get.

Wait... I'm getting the impression you think you have to build a Frontier Outpost in a system before you colonize it? You don't. You can colonize any system; you don't need a Frontier Outpost first. There's no Influence difference between Colony A and B both being in same system or not.

Also I think Influence varies widely between governments and ethos types. I've actually had to burn Influence because I had too much (just spent it on leader roulette, but it's better than capping out). For example as a Theocratic Republic, if I can consistently achieve the mandate (not difficult), that's an extra ~2/month. Then factor in rivals and not being in an alliance, and the early/mid techs that give +1/month. But if you're in a 40-50 year government and in an alliance, you will have a much harder time finding influence, yes. So yes, I would only really use Frontier Outposts to secure strategic resources or exceptionally good systems.

:v well suddenly a fair bit of things make sense. I used to think you needed to already own the sector to colonize something on it.

[Wolock]

Spoiler: The Galaxy (click to show/hide)

Alliance are starting to form and the next wars will determined the political landscape of the galaxy. My own alliance now includes the Cithin and we control the lower parts of the galaxy. on the upper parts, the three red empires has united their forces and attacked the neutral green nation then the Pouz Jok took the opportunity to attack them. On the right the small pink nation is allied with the purple one. There's only four netral nations left. The green one being attacked, the Bos'Pachtux and their vassal still hating us, the Jaajizan the uppermost blue nation are our best shot for a new ally and the Pouz Jok on the left being as friendly as a fanatical purifier can be while having the most powerful fleet in the galaxy. I would hit them now but my fleets are having a major overhaul at the moment and it takes lots of time.

[Loud Whispers]

Good god, everyone who borders my Empire views me as an inimical threat to their existence and those that do not find me contemptible, all diplomacy is impossible. And I had gone through all this effort to not genocide all the xenos I conquered! Now even my last NAP trading partner is against me, so I literally have zero reason not to genocide every one of my xenos slaves now. Except maybe the Juvan bird people, they're pretty awesome.

Also is research agreement trading bugged? I can never get the AI to start a trading agreement with me, every time I succeed the trade results in them giving me nothing but me still giving me my end of the trading deal.

Spoiler: Also finally got down to populating my mineral word with slaves (click to show/hide)

MINERALS FOR DAYS, the planet's nearly outproducing the 30 planets worth of Vojislav sector! I can probably further improve efficiency by switching the power plants to a human-run world in Foxerod prison sector, cutting out all of Foxerod prison's food production facilities and replacing all the mulloscoid slaves with Juvan miners. That might take some time, but I reckon if I start a Juvan breeding world I'll be able to crank out all the miners needed in no time! Only way I could possibly improve this is with... I dunno, GMO brand Juvans :D

On a sidenote, I think it is rather silly that starvation does not effect the efficiency of your workers, or even cause them to die of starvation. To quote the mouse from McGee's Alice, a good worker is a live worker, a dead worker is a bad worker!

[EnigmaticHat]

I'm probably playing this all wrong, but for me it's a constant struggle to put just enough minerals together to keep moving forward, at least if you want to stay in the tech race or not run into an EC deficit. I have a fairly good-sized empire, with dominion over a fairly large swath of space and 7 planets (all but one of which are within sectors), yet my mineral production is somewhere in the 50s. I just lost most of my fleet against a much smaller empire (that somehow is more advanced than me despite having just one planet and a presence in only 4 systems, none of which have much in the way of research bonuses), and now I can't possibly rebuild it before those damn space slugs manage to wreck my infrastructure and my vassal.

The cost of research scales with the size of your empire, so you don't need to expand to keep up, and aggressively expanding can actually cause you to lag behind in tech. (which might explain how the small empire is ahead of you in tech).

No, you still have to expand. Base tech prices go up no matter what, and you can't just rely on upgrading existing buildings. It's better to say you have to expand efficiently. But research stations in systems make this easy.

Ironically there's a weird incentive where star systems with multiple habitable planets don't matter. It might be easier to defend 2 planets in 1 star system instead of 2, but you lose out on expanding your borders to encompass more possible research stations. All other things being equal (like planet size), you get more production and research out of colonizing two star systems that are far apart than 2 planets in the same system. Besides military expediency, there is no benefit to having two habitable words in the same system. This is contrary to what you'd expect and contrary to every other space strategy game I can think of.

It depends on the quality of research points available to you.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The formula for tech prices is:

 Base cost x (1 + 0.02(Totals pops in empire - 10)) = Cost

Or basically if you have 200 pop, your tech costs about 4x more than what it would have been if you had 10. Another way to think about it is each pop increases tech cost by 2%.

But that's not all. You also get flat tech points from things like anomalies and debris. So in the early game when you get shittonnes of those, you're better off not having way more population as the tech goes further.

Essentially, for every planet you're planning on colonizing, you need to calculate if you can outresearch the total amount of pop in the planet when it's fully maxed out. So if you want to colonize a size 8 planet, you must see if you can get an additional 16% research in all areas, if not you're losing out. Additionally, you must also account for whether you're gaining or losing out in the duration that the planet itself is growing, as you probably aren't devoting the pop to tech when the pop is just starting out.

This is pretty easy to justify in the early game when you barely have pop and an additional 16% means like... 1 research point. Once you get large enough that your research points in bio is 100 for example... then an additional 16% means an additional 16 research in bio just to break even which can be tricky if the planet you're colonizing is only a size 8. And that's JUST bio. You also need 16 in physics and 16 in engineering as well.

tl;dr: It's basically guaranteed that if you expand too big you'll be lagging behind in tech.

That 16% multiplier is multiplied by the base cost tho, not by your research points.  What causes the base cost to go up isn't the size of your empire, its the level of tech you're researching.  That 16% applies equally to a 10 planet empire as to a 100 planet empire.

Eventually all tech in Stellaris gets ungodly expensive because all that will be left is the infinite techs, and in that situation a small empire always beats a larger one.  But for other techs its more ambiguous.  A lategame, non-scaling tech, like say guass cannons (3880 base cost), that 2% per pop represents a 77.6 increase in research cost.  A pop with a lab will effectively produce about ~1.5 research points in each category (depending on bonuses/lab upgrades) and add 77.6 research cost.  That means if every blank tile has lab and every specialized tile gets its particular bonus, I would very very vaguely estimate that new pops would stop increasing the cost of guass cannons when the research is already taking 100 months.  That's... really bad, yeah.  And it gets worse because unmanaged sectors are likely not smart enough to devote the empty tiles to basic labs (which is clearly their most optimal use IMO).

But for a more reasonable tech like destroyers (900 base cost), each additional pop will add a mere 18 to the research cost.  Going with the original rough estimate that means that if you add a ridiculous number of pops the cost will eventually stabilize at a very doable 2 years.  So I would still argue for unchecked expansion because most of the lategame stuff is luxury compared to the cheaper early game stuff and because you'll get an efficiency boost in other areas from being able to dedicate your minerals and EC to basic buildings rather than upgrades.  Its possible in the long term that giant empires become decadent in the long term and lose their edge, but its hard for me to imagine not dominating the galaxy by that point especially since each system you gain is a system your rivals can't benefit from.