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Author Topic: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE  (Read 1739940 times)

Sirus

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5400 on: November 12, 2017, 04:01:55 pm »

The game is unfortunately staggering in other ways. Aside from the black hole where the Horizon Signal emerged, the nearest systems are almost uniformly sub-par. I'm running into an energy crunch and there aren't enough energy-rich systems to justify the expense of frontier outposts. At best, I'd be breaking even on each one without building mining or research stations. Thanks to a quirk in the hyperlanes combined with the game's tendency to generate worlds matching your preference "nearby", I have exactly one colonizable world in close proximity to the home world. The other one is thirteen jumps away. Every other nearby world requires terraforming to be more than marginally useful, unless they're useless tomb worlds.

To top it all off, I have two Fallen Empires very close by and cutting off most of my possible expansion. One's a xenophobic isolationist, the other is a xenophilic observer. Chances are, they'll start fighting eventually and pull me into it.

I just wanted to conquer other sapients and turn them into living blood banks, is that so wrong?  :P

EDIT: Aaaaaaaaand the isolationists declared war because I dared to construct a frontier outpost that might have given a net energy gain. So much for that.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2017, 04:48:03 pm by Sirus »
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andrea

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5401 on: November 12, 2017, 05:01:34 pm »

Well, if you complete the event quickly, the situation may change. Not spoiling anything. Although, it is a fairly long chain, with a lot of time between some events.

Sirus

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5402 on: November 12, 2017, 05:03:41 pm »

Yeah, I've had a few events pop up that I'm 90% sure are connected to the signal. Got a couple of technologies I've never seen before that look interesting.
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USEC_OFFICER

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5403 on: November 12, 2017, 05:12:46 pm »

I was going to say that they were underwhelming but thankfully I double-checked the wiki to confirm. They must have gotten a buff since I got them because they're definitely better than I remember. Especially if it's early in the game and you haven't developed the alternatives yet.
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Sirus

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5404 on: November 12, 2017, 05:40:54 pm »

I swear that I had turned off Advanced Start AIs. I can only assume that I had missed that, because I just encountered an empire that is, frankly, bullshit. It's massive, encompassing 9 inhabited systems and a ton of other systems. Their fleet capacity and military power are overwhelming, which is to be expected, but their tech is also superior to mine despite being so huge. I'm still in a single system! Sure, I've had no real luck with extra-solar sources of research, but I'm still a single world with a single world's population, and therefore I should be going through techs at least as quickly as them.

To make matter worse, they're Evangelizing Zealots and they prefer the exact same worlds I do. My poor vampires are getting their asses kicked this game.
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ZeroGravitas

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5405 on: November 12, 2017, 07:04:31 pm »

I swear that I had turned off Advanced Start AIs. I can only assume that I had missed that, because I just encountered an empire that is, frankly, bullshit. It's massive, encompassing 9 inhabited systems and a ton of other systems. Their fleet capacity and military power are overwhelming, which is to be expected, but their tech is also superior to mine despite being so huge. I'm still in a single system! Sure, I've had no real luck with extra-solar sources of research, but I'm still a single world with a single world's population, and therefore I should be going through techs at least as quickly as them.

To make matter worse, they're Evangelizing Zealots and they prefer the exact same worlds I do. My poor vampires are getting their asses kicked this game.

In the early game, there's no real reason to think that larger empires mean slower tech. The gap between tiers is way more significant than the tech penalty for additional colonies. Going from tier 1 to tier 2 techs almost triples the cost. If you're not expanding your borders somehow, you're falling behind simply because you can't keep up with tech tier increases.

Can you attach a save game? I'm kinda curious.
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Sirus

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5406 on: November 12, 2017, 07:37:42 pm »

Not sure I should bother. These Zealots continue to expand, and in fact my fleet and a survey vessel are now completely cut off from friendly space due to encroaching borders + no trespassing policies. Short of declaring war (which would probably be suicide) I can't get my ships back, nor can I reinforce them. I could disband the entire damn fleet (not to mention the survey vessel) but that would be a lot of minerals down the drain compared to what I have available.

I dunno. If I hadn't gotten the Horizon event so damn early I'd probably have dropped this game by now. There's just too many systems devoid of resources, or with so few resources that they aren't worth the costs involved in building frontier outposts to exploit.

I'm gonna try to do something stupid and deliberately antagonize the Zealots by building an outpost or two close to their borders. Maybe it'll push their border just far enough back that my ships can get home. If not...well, fuck.
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andrea

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5407 on: November 12, 2017, 07:49:06 pm »

how far along are you with the horizon event chain?

Culise

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5408 on: November 12, 2017, 07:53:41 pm »

Not sure I should bother. These Zealots continue to expand, and in fact my fleet and a survey vessel are now completely cut off from friendly space due to encroaching borders + no trespassing policies. Short of declaring war (which would probably be suicide) I can't get my ships back, nor can I reinforce them. I could disband the entire damn fleet (not to mention the survey vessel) but that would be a lot of minerals down the drain compared to what I have available.

I dunno. If I hadn't gotten the Horizon event so damn early I'd probably have dropped this game by now. There's just too many systems devoid of resources, or with so few resources that they aren't worth the costs involved in building frontier outposts to exploit.

I'm gonna try to do something stupid and deliberately antagonize the Zealots by building an outpost or two close to their borders. Maybe it'll push their border just far enough back that my ships can get home. If not...well, fuck.
There's a Return button on the fleet select screen that lets you force it to jump back to the nearest shipyard.  If it cannot find a natural path, it'll ask you if you're sure you still want to force the fleet to return.  If you confirm, it'll go into "Fleet Missing" mode (the same as if a closed-border power expanded their borders to cover the fleet or if a power closed its borders) and reappears there out of the aether in a few months or years.  It looks like an arrow going in a circle from a dot on back to the same dot, but let me rummage up a screenshot quick...
Spoiler: Ping (click to show/hide)
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Sirus

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5409 on: November 12, 2017, 08:22:35 pm »

how far along are you with the horizon event chain?
Well
Spoiler: just in case (click to show/hide)

There's a Return button on the fleet select screen that lets you force it to jump back to the nearest shipyard.  If it cannot find a natural path, it'll ask you if you're sure you still want to force the fleet to return.  If you confirm, it'll go into "Fleet Missing" mode (the same as if a closed-border power expanded their borders to cover the fleet or if a power closed its borders) and reappears there out of the aether in a few months or years.  It looks like an arrow going in a circle from a dot on back to the same dot, but let me rummage up a screenshot quick...
Spoiler: Ping (click to show/hide)
Oh snap, I had no idea. Thanks.
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ZeroGravitas

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5410 on: November 12, 2017, 09:03:41 pm »

Spoiler: just in case (click to show/hide)

so about that colony...
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Sirus

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5411 on: November 12, 2017, 09:14:46 pm »

Spoiler: just in case (click to show/hide)

so about that colony...
...what about it?
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ZeroGravitas

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5412 on: November 13, 2017, 07:42:33 am »

Spoiler: just in case (click to show/hide)

so about that colony...
...what about it?

I'm not going to spoil it.  Just enjoy the worm chain!
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Teneb

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5413 on: November 13, 2017, 10:19:50 am »

One thing about the Horizon Signal chain that is not obvious is that you absolutely need to research those techs and build a particular building to complete it.


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EnigmaticHat

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Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« Reply #5414 on: November 14, 2017, 05:06:20 am »

Sirius' idea has prompted me to produce the Sanguins, a technologically advanced race of vampiric birds.  I was originally going to produce pacifist egalitarian jellyfish to build tall, which would have been a much nicer play-through.  They share their worlds with large furry Blood Beasts, huddling in their primitive wooden villages.  Seen here massively over-producing food, but I'm going to play without farms for RP purposes so I don't have much of a choice there.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For extra fucked-uppedness, the wealthy aristocrats among the Sanguin employ their own kind as slaves, for they are too decadent to enjoy life in which they must work for a living.  Thus Sanguin society is one part sentient livestock, one part horribly mistreated workers, one part landed gentry.  The landed gentry is the smallest group.  The Sanguin are slow breeding; I had a concept that this might make research faster, which it kind of has, but it also had the effect of causing the blood beasts to outbreed them and slow Sanguin growth to a halt.  Fortunately curtailing Blood Beast breeding rights has fixed this.  If I start to run low on food, I'll return breeding rights for a time.

Speaking of faster research, I'm on only two planets and churning out a metric buttload of society and engineering research.  Sanguin are great researchers and learners, and as a result I've got two level four brilliant researchers producing tech.  I discovered that an ancient, dark religion on my world is in fact interstellar in origin.  My scientists managed to track down multiple pieces and use them to unveil a prophecy that our race is meant for greatness.  Being godless materialists, we promptly sold this tale to religiously themed mega-corporations, and then used the credits to buy data from a conclave.  Then I spent a lot of influence to put a leader in charge who's agenda is increased research.  All of this combined is giving us almost 50%+ research rates in society and engineering; we're churning out a tech each year and still having research time to spare.

The only nearby race aside from some fallen empires happens to share our climate type (artic for me, tundra for them).  I'm sure nothing horrifically violent will result from that.  The race themselves are actually amazing tho.  Check this out:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The fucking faerie butterfly hive mind!  My only regret is I won't be able to integrate them as slaves since I'm told they'll die without their collective.  They would really add a splash of color to my worlds.  I tried to cut them off from expansion but they went around and apparently found an ancient mine producing 14 minerals!  Since that's basically as valuable as a world unto itself, and the world is also quite good, I've put a hold on any colonization efforts in favor of researching and then building destroyers.  I think I'll take their world with the mine and then turn them into a tributary.  That will give me access to their resources without slowing down my research.  Once I have terriforming up and I'm enclosed on all sides then I will likely return to conquer them.  Although... I am a race of vampiric slavers.  Isn't a tributary gestalt consciousness nothing but a single vast, planets spanning servant?
« Last Edit: November 14, 2017, 05:10:09 am by EnigmaticHat »
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