Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[LoSboccacc]

Regarding fleet behavior in combat: Ask and ye shall receive.

PRAISE BE, testing now

Please do tell how it goes. Especially if battleship with range 60 weapons only and PD with Offensive comp do rush to point-blank. Also if it balances ship sensor (in vanilla 1.03 you get 100% accuracy with EVERY weapon as long as you use sensors t2+ of course deducting evasion).

I tested with strike craft ranges, 100 scout, 75 bomber and 65 fighters, they do get released far enough but then snipe the enemy from ridiculous distance instead of closing in and fighting. maybe I missed something.

[Noel.se]

Random question, how many of you actually terraform?
It's a huge investment of time, requires a bunch of techs and (admittedly common) strategic resources. More importantly, I never felt the need to. I guess it could be useful when you are boxed in and also unwilling to expand through force (as well as unwilling to accept xenos, including gene-modded members of your own species),
Plus the fact that the planet needs to be inside your border is quite limiting.

I've never terraformed anything, and odds are decent I never will, not because it's hard but because I dislike how... fluid, it makes the galaxy. It's like, having an arctic world and an arid world around that one star is a feature of the galaxy, and it feels like it cheapens said galaxy to just shrug and say "no, they're oceans now."

Funnily enough, I think that late game megaprojects that modify the galaxy in some long lasting way are something that would improve this game. We have terraforming and gene-modding, and that's it. What about building ringworlds, deathstars and orbital habitats and glassing planets? All of this should be very expensive and require advanced technology, of course. It should also require strategic resources, this way they could become a source of conflict. Finally, you'd get something to do lategame that doesn't necessarily involve conquest.

Currently, habitable planets are common, and 1/7 of them are perfect for your species. In my current game, I haven't even colonized all perfectly habitable planets inside my borders due to the potential research penalties. If they were less common, they (as well as the resources needed to terraform them) could become more precious.

[Majestic7]

I really think you should be able to construct new hyperlanes as a megaproject.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, diplomacy is definitely bare-bones. You have to get clever with your RP for now. I'm playing my current campaign as my splinter-group of humans and their tyrannical government slowly being brought back into the light of humanity by prolonged contact with lesser races they originally sought to enslave-the first internal questioning of Terran policy came when an infiltration agent eloped with an alien lover and condemned the rest of the unit devoted to the takeover as monsters-ultimately culminating with them shifting towards an inclusive, honorable state devoted to rescuing and protecting weaker and less-developed races from the galactic powerhouses while participating in a grand federation which is inevitably being formed by our jolly democratic mouth-faced neighbors.

Regarding fleet behavior in combat: Ask and ye shall receive.

PRAISE BE, testing now

Please do tell how it goes. Especially if battleship with range 60 weapons only and PD with Offensive comp do rush to point-blank. Also if it balances ship sensor (in vanilla 1.03 you get 100% accuracy with EVERY weapon as long as you use sensors t2+ of course deducting evasion).

I tested with strike craft ranges, 100 scout, 75 bomber and 65 fighters, they do get released far enough but then snipe the enemy from ridiculous distance instead of closing in and fighting. maybe I missed something.

Meh, still less broken than they are in vanilla. I'll get my current game up to speed for mixed-fleet testing as I can.

[jhxmt]

I'm playing my current campaign as my splinter-group of humans and their tyrannical government slowly being brought back into the light of humanity by prolonged contact with lesser races they originally sought to enslave-the first internal questioning of Terran policy came when an infiltration agent eloped with an alien lover and condemned the rest of the unit devoted to the takeover as monsters-ultimately culminating with them shifting towards an inclusive, honorable state devoted to rescuing and protecting weaker and less-developed races from the galactic powerhouses while participating in a grand federation which is inevitably being formed by our jolly democratic mouth-faced neighbors.

Except, of course, that your civ's ethics remain the same, so while your government is doing the honourable thing your day-to-day citizens are still rampantly xenophobic, right? 

[Flying Dice]

No, they were never xenophobic. Fanatic Materialistic and Militaristic. I'm going to change government type from an autocratic one to a democratic one in a few years game-time and move a bunch of policy sliders to match. Though yeah, it's fucked how traits are basically set in stone instead of being affected by player actions. If you start thirty goddamn wars as a Fanatic Pacifist civ, you shouldn't be Fanatic Pacifist any more.

There's a lot of potential for good storytelling here, it's just constrained by the bare-bones mechanics. A few games ago I formed an early alliance with one of my neighbors, and it was called the [Avian word salad name of their homeworld] Pact. A few years later, a third race joined. That seems so petty, but it really drove it home for me, the vision of human diplomats traveling in rickety starships to this far-off alien world to sign a treaty to ward against the aggression of our zealous, militant third neighbor. The pride and relief when it holds, when a third civilization closes ranks with us. Shit like that is what we need more of.

--

REGARDING SHIP BEHAVIOR:

Here's another option. Very limited changes with this one. It removes the behaviors from the vanilla computers and leaves them as pure stat modifiers, as well as adding a second computer module which allows you to EITHER choose one of the vanilla behavior modules OR lock the class's engagement range at 5/15/25/35/45/55 units. I think I might switch to this one.

[sprinkled chariot]

Random question, how many of you actually terraform?
It's a huge investment of time, requires a bunch of techs and (admittedly common) strategic resources. More importantly, I never felt the need to. I guess it could be useful when you are boxed in and also unwilling to expand through force (as well as unwilling to accept xenos, including gene-modded members of your own species),
Plus the fact that the planet needs to be inside your border is quite limiting.

I've never terraformed anything, and odds are decent I never will, not because it's hard but because I dislike how... fluid, it makes the galaxy. It's like, having an arctic world and an arid world around that one star is a feature of the galaxy, and it feels like it cheapens said galaxy to just shrug and say "no, they're oceans now."

Funnily enough, I think that late game megaprojects that modify the galaxy in some long lasting way are something that would improve this game. We have terraforming and gene-modding, and that's it. What about building ringworlds, deathstars and orbital habitats and glassing planets? All of this should be very expensive and require advanced technology, of course. It should also require strategic resources, this way they could become a source of conflict. Finally, you'd get something to do lategame that doesn't necessarily involve conquest.

Currently, habitable planets are common, and 1/7 of them are perfect for your species. In my current game, I haven't even colonized all perfectly habitable planets inside my borders due to the potential research penalties. If they were less common, they (as well as the resources needed to terraform them) could become more precious.

We can glass our own planet already without being 23d century high tech guys with AIs doing research for them.

[BFEL]

1) Pre-sentient creatures, which appear as pops on planets.  You can uplift these if they're in your empire's territory, but you don't need to colonise the planet they're on.  You can also gene-mod them when you uplift them, assuming you have the requisite technologies.

Note that these are hilariously amazing because they start with a unique, potentially gamebreaking trait. Oh, and they'll ALWAYS have +20% happiness because you uplifted them.
In my Invincible Dragons game I uplifted a few molluscoids whose trait was +20% society research at the cost of a few negatives to minerals and food production. You can stack this with Intelligent. You can stack this with Natural sociologists. So I basically have the most amazing genetics researchers who are always happy, giving them a further boost to research.
Also saw one with extra habitability at the cost of some happiness I think. Or maybe it was migration time.
Anyway, the uplift traits tend to specialize them hilariously well into some niche or another.

[sprinkled chariot]

DNA modifying is truly amazing, however, there is no some sort of infinitely researchable tech for getting extra trait points for making intellegent super strong higly adaptable constantly happy supersupermen.

[Noel.se]

We can glass our own planet already without being 23d century high tech guys with AIs doing research for them.

True that. I suppose the cost of glassing a planet is the planet itself.

[BFEL]

DNA modifying is truly amazing, however, there is no some sort of infinitely researchable tech for getting extra trait points for making intellegent super strong higly adaptable constantly happy supersupermen.

Well there IS actually a mod for that, but what I was referring to is that an uplifted pop can start with unique traits that give them an edge in a field. They can then be modified with OTHER traits that also give an edge in said field, giving you at least one "super" stat. And the happy part just comes from them being uplifted, as simply being uplifted gives a huge happiness modifier.

[Sirus]

I was doing some basic experimentation with starting system generation, trying various combinations to see if certain empires naturally get an advantage at start or if every game I've ran with custom species has just been incredibly unlucky.

So far I'm leaning towards the first possibility. I took the basic United Nations of Earth and generated them three times: once in Sol, once in Deneb, and once in a random system. All other parameters in both empire statistics and galaxy setup remained the same.
In Sol, I started with 3 EC, 2 Minerals, and 4 Engineering.
In Deneb, I started with 4 EC, 3 Minerals, 2 Engineering, and 2 difficult anomalies.
In a random system, I started with 11 EC, 11 Minerals, and an easy anomaly.

None of my custom empires in random systems have started with anything near that huge of an early-game advantage, instead starting with 2 of a single resource at best.
I'm going to move on to testing the other pre-made empires, before going back to customs.

Commonwealth of Man
Sol: 6 EC, 3 anomalies (all difficult with 50% base fail rates, one at level 3 and thus with an 80% chance to fail at the moment)
Deneb: 3 EC, 1 medium anomaly
Random: 2 EC, 3 minerals, a medium anomaly

Tzynn Empire
Sol: 8 EC, 4 minerals, 6 engineering
Deneb: 3 EC, 10 minerals, 2 physics
Random: 4 EC, 2 physics, 1 medium anomaly

Kingdom of Yondarin
Sol: 5 EC, 4 minerals, 2 medium anomalies
Deneb: 2 EC, 2 minerals, 4 engineering, 1 easy anomaly.
Random: 7 minerals

Ix'Idar Star Collective
Sol: 3 EC, 6 minerals, 1 medium anomaly
Deneb: 4 EC, 4 minerals
Random: 4 minerals and a medium anomaly. Also an unemployed pop right away and an event that gave -15 happiness.

Chinorr Stellar Union
Sol: 10 EC, 8 minerals, 1 medium anomaly
Deneb: 4 EC, 3 minerals, 2 medium anomalies
Random: 6 EC, 5 minerals, 2 engineering

Jehetma Dominion
Sol: 12 EC, 4 minerals, 1 social, 1 engineering, 2 medium anomalies
Deneb: 6 minerals
Random: 4 EC, 3 engineering, 1 medium anomaly

Scyldari Confederacy
Sol: 2 EC, 4 minerals, 1 social, 1 engineering, 1 medium anomaly
Deneb: 9 EC, 3 minerals
Random: 2 EC, 2 minerals, 2 engineering, 1 medium anomaly.

So that's all the pre-built species. 24 games, three per species. Average starting resources are as follows:
EC: 4.4583333....
Minerals: 3.9583333...
Physics: 0.16666...
Social: 0.083333...
Engineering: 1.0416666...
Anomalies: 0.916666...

Next up, custom species.

[EuchreJack]

No, they were never xenophobic. Fanatic Materialistic and Militaristic. I'm going to change government type from an autocratic one to a democratic one in a few years game-time and move a bunch of policy sliders to match. Though yeah, it's fucked how traits are basically set in stone instead of being affected by player actions. If you start thirty goddamn wars as a Fanatic Pacifist civ, you shouldn't be Fanatic Pacifist any more.

Technically, the term is "Ethics", traits you can muck up all you want with gene modding.
But yeah, I have no idea why they can't change.  Take my Empire: Human Xenophobic Individualist Militant.  Only: The Xenophile aliens we mistakenly took in now outnumber the humans, and because all the wars are focused on the Human colonies, the goodly Fungus guys are only ones able to make warships.  We'd be screwed without them, and I even changed some laws to make them happier (they can now vote, and we moderated our pre-FTL stance).  But even after I likely lose the human colonies in the current war, we'll still be Xenophobic.

Speaking of which, I'm on the fence about Xenophobic's benefits, being limited to enslaving aliens.  At Xenophobic 1, it still pisses off everyone.  And you're annoying all your neighbors, making yourself a victim.

[Flying Dice]

PSA: It's been found that the Aggressive computer module doesn't actually apply its statistical buffs to ships created with it. Only the Defensive one does.

So yeah. Use the second ship behavior mod I linked a bit back to set your behaviors and only ever pick the defensive stat one.

[Cruxador]

DNA modifying is truly amazing, however, there is no some sort of infinitely researchable tech for getting extra trait points for making intellegent super strong higly adaptable constantly happy supersupermen.

I'd prefer if there was... A rare and expensive tech, to be sure, but becoming a race of super men seems like a reasonable goal to have once you run out of non-repeatable techs. Certainly more interesting than most of the repeatables.