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[Majestic7]

You only need to find a couple of rocks in the solar system, attach engines into them and send them towards the planet. Remember what happened to the dinosaurs? Yeah. That would be possible, in theory, with our present technology level. Destroying biospheres from space is easy. Destroying fortified positions without fucking everything up for generations is much harder.

I remember reading once a calculation on how much that plan would cost the Imperium of Man, compared to an Exterminatus. Even conventional explosives might win the bidding competition; redirecting a large number of asteroids is very, very expensive.

Destroying whole biosphere is expensive, but you only need one rock to fuck up a technological civilization. Just strap a couple of booster rockets into it, aim carefully and fire away. Orbital mechanics do the rest. Assuming the target space presence has been eliminated, there is nothing they can do to prevent the impact. You don't even need warships for the job.

Besides, using 40K for anything technologically plausible as a baseline is pretty stoopid when it is a game about thousand kilometer starships operating with manual slave labor. The setting was meant as a joke and works best with humor in mind, falling apart with any kind of critical inspection. I certainly enjoy WH40k, but only as a joke.

[Neonivek]

The setting was meant as a joke and works best with humor in mind, falling apart with any kind of critical inspection

Actually that is a plot point!

Both Ork and Human technology runs on pure nonsense. In Ork's case it is that they psychically fuel their technology... in Human's case they do a similar yet different thing.

[Flying Dice]

Regarding AI behavior:

I'm not sure exactly what it is, but some combination of the game updates, me giving myself and all random-gen empires six ethos points (rather than four), and a mod that adds additional AI empire attitudes has done some wonderful work.

We're all familiar with the standard experience, the two types of AI. There were all the strong assholes that invaded and annexed everything, and there were all the weak assholes that banded together into federations. Give a game a few decades and the entire map would consist of the former's super-blobs and the latter's federation-blobs.

I'm not getting that in my current campaign. Well, I'm getting lots of hostile assholes, but that's because I'm playing xenophobic fascist space elves. The AI-AI interactions have been really cool. In a 3500 star galaxy with ~30 starting empires and four fallen empires (no advanced start ones; they're all random-genned so they all get the increased ethos and trait points and slots to make them more distinct), there is either one or two federations, and it/they have only a handful of members. Two of the strongest blobs in the game are "federation-builder" types that instead took the conquest-through-diplomacy route by talking all of their neighbors into vassal status and then annexing them. Wars between AI happen regularly, but not at an incredibly high rate -- usually it's just two or three ongoing at any given time.

More importantly, remember what I said about playing xenophobic fascist space elves? I've got two fairly close allied empires who've backed me up and been backed up in turn. The kicker? They're also xenophobic military/spiritualist types, and they tend to be on the far side of my most hostile neighbors. That's a really interesting interaction that didn't seem to happen in my earlier campaigns.

However, it has also highlighted two problems: border friction is still fucking absurd, and there's no real allied state between mutual defense pacts and full federation. The former is more important. As I and one of my purging buddies took bites out of one of our rivals, we eventually had our respective territorial salients make contact. Instant -50 or some shit to our relations. I reiterate: border friction is fucked. We and they have been working together to exterminate inferior alien filth for over a century and the fact that we can now have our fleets wave at each other without needing to start a war against a common neighbor instantly nukes relations?

IMO border friction should be extremely minor unless two empires already have negative relations. Otherwise your allies are only safe if you federate (fuck that) or are on the opposite side of the galaxy (at which point why bother allying, it's not like you'll get military support).

Clearly my empire and theirs have some sort of mutual respect or understanding. Yeah, the other side are still xenos heretics, but they kick as much ass as we do and are equally honorable, so how about we meet in the middle and then start pushing out in other directions? LOLNOPEGOODBYRELATIONS

On an unrelated note, that common neighbor we've been attacking?

Spoiler: They ain't too popular with anyone at all, seems like (click to show/hide)

The 60k are my purging buddies, the two other fleets are random neighboring powers. These guys have five separate wars being waged against them at the same time.

[IronyOwl]

IMO border friction should be extremely minor unless two empires already have negative relations. Otherwise your allies are only safe if you federate (fuck that) or are on the opposite side of the galaxy (at which point why bother allying, it's not like you'll get military support).

I feel like a better (and infinitely less likely) solution would be more nuanced relationships than a series of flat modifiers. It makes perfect sense that two warmongering assholes would be more than a little upset at being bordered by a warmongering asshole, especially one with a history of proactive success in their field. It also makes sense that a century of successfully working together to cleanse the galaxy of its aberrant mistakes would make them ironically rather fond of each other. It also makes sense that a century of successfully working together to cleanse the galaxy of its aberrant mistakes would be building towards one final, large scale addition to that policy.

The game, at present, can recognize the first point and nothing else. Aside from a handful of decaying modifiers and limited diplomatic options, there's nothing to flavor your relationships with other empires. If your ethics are the same, evidently you get along. If your ethics are different, evidently you do not. You can't match ethics with somebody and be ultra best buddies on top of that, or become fanatical rivals over concepts most other empires don't even understand. You can't be xenophiles and value other species as equals, or treasure them as adorable pets. And in this case, you can't spend a century carving up the galaxy between yourself and a buddy until you two are the only ones left to carve, or until the galaxy is split between your two obviously worthy empires.

Unless the game can handle context like that, modifiers are always going to be kind of crude and deterministic, in the faith hates science therefore war kind of way.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, that's why I'm working under the assumption that we're never going to get complex diplo, so we should hope for diplo that treads on as few toes as possible. Even something simple like modifiers on border friction based on number of past wars, time spend in mutual defense pacts, past research/trade agreements, &c. would be nice. As it is, every interaction between two empires is basically treated as taking place in a void, and the only effect it has is to increase or decrease their "i like/hate you" factor for the next interaction. A lot of those are reflected in the main relations number, of course, but that tends to fluctuate and doesn't "remember" events for very long unless they're brutally extreme.

They've got it set up so that there is only one possible way to realistically work together with other empires, and that's to join a federation... which sucks massively if you want to do things.

Never mind pipe dreams like being able to establish DMZs on your borders to reduce border tensions. If we could get self-sustaining starbases it'd be really cool to be able to build a shared one in a border system for a relations, and to give both empires sensor coverage of the border. Being able to give permission to allied empires to travel to/build wormhole stations in specific systems in your empire without giving them full access. Setting up civilian trade routes in the same way with civilian ships, tying that in to espionage. Allowing allies to build defensive stations in your systems if they've got good tech for it and you don't, being able to deploy agents to plant demolition charges on them or infiltrate their command structures so that if the alliance is ever broken you can destroy or capture them. Selling ships without giving away the relevant technologies (unless they dismantle the ship or it is destroyed).

Hey, I want to be able to fight proxy wars by supplying two-bit empires with advanced warships. But it ain't gonna happen. Very likely none of that will happen.

[Majestic7]

Xenophobes suffer from increased border friction. So that explains it partway. Think about it this way - Hitler and Nippon were fine being allied in WW2 because they were on the other sides of the globe. Had they, say, carved the Soviet Union in two between them, do you think they'd been happy being neighbors forever after?

Regarding diplomacy, Banks will make internal politics and faction stuff more complicated and interesting. I presume the next patch after that will touch diplomacy and the interaction between factions & outside forces.

[Ultimuh]

A new Dev Diary have been released.

Apparently, we will have access to three new win conditions in the upcoming Banks (1.5) update.
A Biological path, Psionic path, and Synthetic path.
Each with their own requirements. And of course, all three are mutually exclusive.

[Culise]

A new Dev Diary have been released.

Apparently, we will have access to three new win conditions in the upcoming Banks (1.5) update.
A Biological path, Psionic path, and Synthetic path.
Each with their own requirements. And of course, all three are mutually exclusive.

Ah.  Um, I hate to ask, but it's probably just me being oblivious: where is it stated that these are win conditions?  I thought they were just sort of....late-game "superprojects," so to speak.  They even talk about how they have to adjust how finishing the synthetic path and going full synth will affect certain endgame crises (to wit, AI rebellion), and how each of the three will have unique mechanics (in a comment down-thread).

[forsaken1111]

From the dev diary:

The idea behind the Ascension Perks is to provide more unique unlockable features for Empires, and to provide the player with the ability to determine an 'endgame' for their species

Finally there are the three 'Species Endgame' paths:

Not technically 'win conditions' in the sense of something where you stop playing once you achieve them but they are late-game ultimate goals that you work towards for a long time and provide a significant benefit once achieved.

I don't use win conditions when I play games like this anyway

[Ultimuh]

Ah, well sorry about that. I misread what was being stated. My bad.

But still looking forward to that new update.

[forsaken1111]

The ascension perks look very neat but honestly I am more interested in the empire politics, upgraded factions, and I really want to know what the next dev diary means by 'species rights and obligations'

[Majestic7]

"Manlings, you have right to exist. You have an obligation to be eaten."

I presume it means political rights/laws per species.

[Retropunch]

I'm only mildly interested in this side of it - it could be interesting and give more form to the long term structure of the game, but I imagine it'll more likely just be like another type of researching. It could work well if it can shake stuff up really well - like if you've got a 'tall' civ that's basically not much of a contender, but then manages to ascend has has big advantages over others.

The more internal political stuff is a lot more interesting - I reallllllly hope they push the complexity with that stuff a lot.

[Mephansteras]

Ugh. Picked this up over the winter sale and started playing recently. Just had my first game come to a crashing halt because of the Unbidden. Would be just fine, if my Federation members would actually help me instead of hanging around twiddling their thumbs as multiple 60k fleets stomp through my empire.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Ugh. Picked this up over the winter sale and started playing recently. Just had my first game come to a crashing halt because of the Unbidden. Would be just fine, if my Federation members would actually help me instead of hanging around twiddling their thumbs as multiple 60k fleets stomp through my empire.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa... Federations dont mean shit when it comes to wars really, unless it's YOU helping THEM, it's never the other way around.