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[Draignean]

What do they want in the war?

12 of my ally's planets

What's that you say, they don't want anything important?

[umiman]

What do they want in the war?

12 of my ally's planets

That would have been day 1 surrender for me.

Like, the moment they called me, I would have surrendered it.

[Karnewarrior]

Fuck that. Conquer them. Scan the debris from your glorious battles and bring them their own weapons with human innovation!

Their time is over! Yours is nigh!

[Descan]

Yeah, basically, that war? That was actually the game giving you a rather major leg up, not a fancy game-over screen. If you had managed to destroy *any* of their ships, you'd be able to scan it and unlock the weapon techs (and I think shields? reactors?) the FE's use. Them wanting your ally's planets means it's basically a free war for you, nothing major will happen to you for losing it, so you could throw your entire fleet at the FE in your own territory and hope to destroy a ship or two. Then peace out, give them a planet or several of your ally, and scan the debris.

Obviously the more debris you scan the easier it is to unlock the techs, but even just one debris lets you research it on your own.

[Sirus]

Um, isn't it only a *chance* to unlock the techs? I know when battling space critters they won't always drop their techs in their debris. Same with enemy factions. I assume FEs and AEs work the same way.

[Karnewarrior]

The debris field will give you a set of techs randomly selected from the specific bits of debris at the site. You can look at it when you hover your cursor over the debris in question.

FE's always have top-tier tech though, so no matter what he gets it should be at least the next tier above, if not two or even three jumps ahead. Shields, Armor, Lances, Lasers, whatever they're using is probably way beyond what he should have at that stage of the game.

If you get two or three debris fields it should be enough to get all the major techs.

[BurnedToast]

The debris field will give you a set of techs randomly selected from the specific bits of debris at the site. You can look at it when you hover your cursor over the debris in question.

FE's always have top-tier tech though, so no matter what he gets it should be at least the next tier above, if not two or even three jumps ahead. Shields, Armor, Lances, Lasers, whatever they're using is probably way beyond what he should have at that stage of the game.

If you get two or three debris fields it should be enough to get all the major techs.

I did manage to salvage some debris leftover after I ambushed a small fleet. I got.... T3 point defense, neutron armor (which I already had half researched) and the top(?) tier of ship computer. Yay?

Well it's all moot now. I got attacked by a prethoryn (?) swarm and was utterly and completely wiped out in less than a year.

I don't know how I feel about this.  I get it, losing is fun, do better next time, etc.... but ffs, that was a 30+ hour game, lost in something like 15 minutes due to something completely out of my control that I had no chance to prepare for (I like to play games as spoiler free as possible) and absolutely no chance to beat no matter what I did.

I don't know, it just felt so hollow.

[Descan]

To be fair, the end-game crises are balanced for a more... Um. Developed player. 30k by the time the swarm arrives is rather lack-luster, tbh.

[Shadowgandor]

To be fair, the end-game crises are balanced for a more... Um. Developed player. 30k by the time the swarm arrives is rather lack-luster, tbh.

I had 170k and it was still quite lacklustre. Didn't wipe me out but instead easily wiped them out before they could even become a threat. This game has so much potential but most of the things in game feel like near-misses, mostly due to lack of character of your empire (look at Sword of the Stars for a well done example) and lacklustre AI. Here's hoping the next patch will fix these things, as seems to be the case.

[BurnedToast]

To be fair, the end-game crises are balanced for a more... Um. Developed player. 30k by the time the swarm arrives is rather lack-luster, tbh.

Yeah, it was my first game so I was slow getting started that's for sure. But it's not like I was that far behind - if we don't count the awakened empire I was actually in second place for fleet strength (and planets, I think), the only AI stronger than me had a ~100k stack which still probably would not have been enough.

It's frustrating because by every measure available to me I was actually doing relatively good, but then it turns out somehow the whole galaxy is actually falling behind an invisible schedule that you don't, and can't (without spoilers) even know exists or measure yourself against.

That's what makes it bad (imo). You're secretly competing with some hidden doomclock with a sign that says "you must be X strength by Y date" regardless of all other considerations, and you can't know what the required conditions are in advance.

I'm not opposed to some kind of external doom force mixing things up and stopping the game from stagnating, if it's done properly, but it feels like it's handled in pretty much the worst possible way here.

[Descan]

I think the problem there is balancing. They recently did a bit of a balance pass and added two differences; one is that there is now a crisis strength modifer on game creation, where you can bring it up or lower it. Second, and more important, is that they buffed up the crisis strength because players were rolling over them easily. But those are experienced players, so new players kind of missed that boat.

(They also said they made the AI more reactive to crises but I don't know how well that worked out. Paradox AI in general and Stellaris in particular is... lacking.

[Zangi]

You mean the AI considering them another typical empire to do diplo with?  (AI in general ain't really proactive against looming threats like the purifiers and what-not either.)

Maybe if the balancing included some way to use the overall strength of the galaxy as a marker for crisis difficulty.  Instead of it being either a non-threat or a curb-stomp-you affair.

Cause choosing crisis strength at game creation isn't really a solution.

[Karnewarrior]

Admittedly, Crises are meant to be fought by everyone banding together against this horrible looming threat. In typical paradox and historical fashion, nobody actually bands together and the threat wins because people couldn't bury a 600 year old hatchet about which side to break the egg on.

Prethoryn Mongolia?

[Persus13]

Unfortunately the Prethoryn don't quit when their leader dies from drinking too much and they all have to haul themselves back to another galaxy to elect a new one.

[Egan_BW]

That would be awesome though.