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[ZeroGravitas]

Yeah, for some reason PDS is obsessed with arbitrary caps when maintenance caps are always the real limit. In CK2, it's mostly demesne limit; but in EU4 it's army and navy cap, diplo relations cap, etc.

Starbase cap is extremely dumb and there are many other ways they could have limited starbases instead of just creating a new 'starbase cap' mechanic.

[umiman]

It's because they balance for multiplayer first and putting hard caps on everything makes it easier to control for multiplayer cheese.

[ZeroGravitas]

It's because they balance for multiplayer first and putting hard caps on everything makes it easier to control for multiplayer cheese.

i'm not sure your explanation really makes sense. in both MP and "competitive SP" (or whatever you want to call it) you go to war with the army you can afford. this routinely means going over FL and taking loans. if there was no FL but the maintenance cost was the same regardless* then you'd still see exactly the same behavior.

*i mean, X.0 regiments cost Y.0 ducats. that could be because the first X.1 regiments cost Y.1 ducats on your way up to FL, and then remainder cost Y.2, or it could be because the cost of each regiment was higher, or because each incremental regiment was more expensive without having the FL breakpoint, or whatever.

I think they implement something like Starbase Limits because fundamentally they don't think any deeper than "If we make this thing why won't someone just build them everywhere" and they say "ok just give it a soft cap that's unusable much past that."

[umiman]

It's because they balance for multiplayer first and putting hard caps on everything makes it easier to control for multiplayer cheese.

i'm not sure your explanation really makes sense. in both MP and "competitive SP" (or whatever you want to call it) you go to war with the army you can afford. this routinely means going over FL and taking loans. if there was no FL but the maintenance cost was the same regardless* then you'd still see exactly the same behavior.

*i mean, X.0 regiments cost Y.0 ducats. that could be because the first X.1 regiments cost Y.1 ducats on your way up to FL, and then remainder cost Y.2, or it could be because the cost of each regiment was higher, or because each incremental regiment was more expensive without having the FL breakpoint, or whatever.

I think they implement something like Starbase Limits because fundamentally they don't think any deeper than "If we make this thing why won't someone just build them everywhere" and they say "ok just give it a soft cap that's unusable much past that."

That's literally what cheese means. You just said you think I'm wrong then wrote the exact same explanation.

[ZeroGravitas]

It's because they balance for multiplayer first and putting hard caps on everything makes it easier to control for multiplayer cheese.

i'm not sure your explanation really makes sense. in both MP and "competitive SP" (or whatever you want to call it) you go to war with the army you can afford. this routinely means going over FL and taking loans. if there was no FL but the maintenance cost was the same regardless* then you'd still see exactly the same behavior.

*i mean, X.0 regiments cost Y.0 ducats. that could be because the first X.1 regiments cost Y.1 ducats on your way up to FL, and then remainder cost Y.2, or it could be because the cost of each regiment was higher, or because each incremental regiment was more expensive without having the FL breakpoint, or whatever.

I think they implement something like Starbase Limits because fundamentally they don't think any deeper than "If we make this thing why won't someone just build them everywhere" and they say "ok just give it a soft cap that's unusable much past that."

That's literally what cheese means. You just said you think I'm wrong then wrote the exact same explanation.

No... I just said that

1) nothing about balancing for MP suggests you'd use soft caps, because people can and do breach the soft caps anyway.
2) using caps is simply their core approach to everything, regardless of whether it's for MP or SP.

[EnigmaticHat]

Tried the game with no DLC.  Ended up creating a species of fuedal fox people with a divine emperor, styled off of ancient China.  They had an authoritarian government with a lot of influence, and bonuses to having vassals (particularly tributaries).  I called the Hu Dynasty, because Hu is supposedly the name for fox in Chinese.  Also called them the Hulijing for spirit fox, not that I trust internet Chinese translations.

I ended up getting a huge territory and mineral income.  My authoritarian faction was EXTREMELY happy with me, and between that, my rivals, authoritarianism and some other bonuses I got a huge influence income that I used to colonize and build frontier outposts.  This in turn put a metric fuckton of space mining within my grasp.

Sadly I might end up restarting.  I made the mistake of trying to build the mines first, then get my military up to snuff and got invaded.  They took my homeworld, I took it back, now we're both throwing ships into a meatgrinder.  I'm always just a *little* behind them in fleet power.  I know my potential in terms of mineral income and fleet size is so much greater if I could just get a break.  I might be able to get out of this with minor concessions or a white peace; my concern is it I give any ground whatsoever it will start the death spiral of me being invaded.  Or getting outpaced by other factions.  If I could just win one war and get a tributary, then I could start really throwing my weight around.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I really dislike where this game is going.

Between "galactic terrain", forced hyperlanes, and an emphasis on static defenses, they're turning what used to be a "realtime space 4X grand strategy game", into a "realtime 'space-themed' 4X grand strategy game". Stellaris post-1.9 is going to turn into a reskin of a boring old land-bound grand strategy game, literally taking away the thing that best differentiated it from other similar games. :|

[Egan_BW]

What they really need is to have each galaxy have a few different procedurally generated FTL methods which your species starts with at random, and then you're allowed to switch or use different ones for different kinds of ships.

[ZeroGravitas]

I really dislike where this game is going.

Between "galactic terrain", forced hyperlanes, and an emphasis on static defenses, they're turning what used to be a "realtime space 4X grand strategy game", into a "realtime 'space-themed' 4X grand strategy game". Stellaris post-1.9 is going to turn into a reskin of a boring old land-bound grand strategy game, literally taking away the thing that best differentiated it from other similar games. :|

So what is it that you think makes Master of Orion 2 and/or Endless Space 2 so different from Civilization and/or Endless Legend?

[Dunamisdeos]

I have often been frustrated by the lack of ability to prevent enemies from entering your space. However, I always felt that this was outweighed by the additional variety found in the FTL drives.

I'm willing to give it a shot, but this does feel like they are taking away a bit of the unique character of the game.

[ZeroGravitas]

I personally think it's both necessary and should have been totally expected.

The rule for Paradox games, since CK2 (and somewhat before that), is, "ship the game incomplete and finish it later via DLC."

By "incomplete" I don't mean it doesn't work, or that it isn't a recognizable game. It's more like "prove that you can make a working game with this premise, and worry about the details later."

With Stellaris you can easily see where that happened: the FTL system never really made sense. The fact FTL type was just a customization choice, with no implications for balance or anything else, also suggests they were more worried about simply showing off a bunch of methods with no idea what system they'd eventually end up with.

I mean, cmon: a single patch where they're going to revamp from the ground up: 1) borders 2) space stations 3) movement on the map 4) the wargoals system 5) apparently something about combat as well? Stellaris 2.0 is the game they should have released.

The building/tile/economy system is another one that's ripe to be rewritten from the ground up. Just watch, in another year it'll be "sooooooo it turns out that Tiles don't actually add anything to the game because adjacency bonuses are too tedious to work with..."

[StagnantSoul]

Adjacency bonuses are ridiculously easy? Just plop a building that benefits from it beside it?

[Criptfeind]

Yeah... It's really just. Build either an energy, a food, or a mineral next to the planetary capital. You have to worry about the adjacency of a total of 4 squares, and you've probably already dealt with it when you decided where to put the colony ship.

I was surprised to learn there wasn't actually any other relevant adjacency in the game. Afaik the only other one is the mineral silo, but that seems like a pointless building (even if you maxed out the adjacency bonuses it'd still give less then just putting a mine in it's place, and the increased storage cap seems sorta pointless unless you're trying to build mega structures without the megaengineering technology.)

Anyway, I think the FTL changes are probably going to be a good thing. Like, yah, I can see the potential for all the different types of ftl in the game. But it just doesn't work out. They are just a morass sorta pressing against each other in an uninteresting way. Narrowing it down to one that you can then make actual decisions with seems much more interesting.

[ZeroGravitas]

Adjacency bonuses are ridiculously easy? Just plop a building that benefits from it beside it?

Yeah, and that's what I mean. Some PDS have even said that they had more adjacency bonuses in earlier versions (like many building used adjacency bonuses) but that it was really not fun, so they dialed it back to just a couple on the capital and that's it.

The problem with doing that is that... Why are there Tiles? Literally the only point to Tiles is to arrange worker slots graphically. If adjacency is meaningless then a 5x5 planet is identical to a 25x1 planet. In other words it's the same as just having specialist slots like Civilization or MOO2, and you invent in each slot to unlock it (ie blockers) and increase its output (ie Stellaris buildings).

Adjacency bonuses can get extremely complicated if you have Level 1 Buildings, followed by Level 2 buildings determined by adjacency to Level 1 buildings, followed by Level 3 buildings determined by adjacency to Level 2 buildings, etc. It can be an extremely complex system (though not necessarily fun). You CAN attach things like ground combat to this system. You CAN do a lot of things. Stellaris just doesn't do any of them.

[Dostoevsky]

AlphaMod (at least, last I played Stellaris) has many, many different buildings with adjacency bonuses done in interesting ways. The author is currently working on updating it for 1.8, though.