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[Cruxador]

Eh, looks like they're pushing harder to stop the octopus -> cell wall -> "I'll claim all the interior stuff eventually" school of expansion.

They did change how the influence cost for new colonies works in order to do that, but it doesn't at all address the fact that right now it's optimal to dismantle all but the best outposts once you've got stations blocking off chokepoints.

[ZeroGravitas]

Eh, looks like they're pushing harder to stop the octopus -> cell wall -> "I'll claim all the interior stuff eventually" school of expansion.

They did change how the influence cost for new colonies works in order to do that, but it doesn't at all address the fact that right now it's optimal to dismantle all but the best outposts once you've got stations blocking off chokepoints.

well pirates, but yeah

generally kind of a dumb design

[Flying Dice]

Eh, looks like they're pushing harder to stop the octopus -> cell wall -> "I'll claim all the interior stuff eventually" school of expansion.

They did change how the influence cost for new colonies works in order to do that, but it doesn't at all address the fact that right now it's optimal to dismantle all but the best outposts once you've got stations blocking off chokepoints.

Dunno about that. Almost every system has at least a single 2-energy resource. If you drop a mining station on that you're already covering the cost of system ownership. One high-tech energy plant is enough to cover a ton of systems.

Frankly, the whole reworked territory control feels far less resource-intensive compared to how much of a pain in the ass it was building up enough influence to colonize every shitty planet you could, or god forbid build multiple frontier outposts. All we really need now is for AI to not cheat on maintenance and it ought to feel good. Not hard at all to run an energy surplus unless your build-up is incredibly unbalanced or you're leaving fleets/colony ships idling in empty space.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Unity and I believe science costs scale with system control now, so that's what Cruxador is referring to. The more systems you control, the most unity you need to purchase a tradition or the more research you need for a tech. Admittedly only +1~2% percent per system but it does add up.

[Cruxador]

Eh, looks like they're pushing harder to stop the octopus -> cell wall -> "I'll claim all the interior stuff eventually" school of expansion.

They did change how the influence cost for new colonies works in order to do that, but it doesn't at all address the fact that right now it's optimal to dismantle all but the best outposts once you've got stations blocking off chokepoints.

Dunno about that. Almost every system has at least a single 2-energy resource. If you drop a mining station on that you're already covering the cost of system ownership. One high-tech energy plant is enough to cover a ton of systems.

It's not really about the energy, that's just a cherry on top. The exact math changes depending on your research output and number of systems/planets, but generally you would have needed about three research per system to break even. Now you need three research and one energy, on top of the energy that you need to pay for the mineral mining and research stations. And you're taking a loss on unity no matter what you do.

Frankly, the whole reworked territory control feels far less resource-intensive compared to how much of a pain in the ass it was building up enough influence to colonize every shitty planet you could, or god forbid build multiple frontier outposts. All we really need now is for AI to not cheat on maintenance and it ought to feel good. Not hard at all to run an energy surplus unless your build-up is incredibly unbalanced or you're leaving fleets/colony ships idling in empty space.

The current system hasn't really changed the degree to which you want to colonize new planets, if anything you'll want it more now as it allows you to produce resources without incurring as much of a percentage malus as you'd get from enough systems to produce the same amount.

[Flying Dice]

While that's true, research costs increasing proportionate to territory isn't a particularly unfair mechanic. If it helps, parse it as including the cost of retooling and distributing developments throughout your empire. If you want fast research, play small.

Admittedly, I do miss GalCiv's research costs scaling proportionate to the size of the galaxy. That was interesting, since it directly incentivized over-extension to secure more planets and research resources. Stellaris is a more straightforward concern where even the inherent inefficiency of a large empire is mostly irrelevant, since that same state also means that you can lock down enough resources to steamroll the dumb AI even when they're cheating. Normal just isn't very hard, you can easily grab a quarter of the galaxy in the initial land grab if you get a decent spawn.

That was actually one point where GalCiv really got things right. Despite using warp-style FTL, the life support techs created natural barriers and also heavily slowed the expansion process. That's one point where Stellaris suffered both before and after 2.0, it's way too easy to rapidly leapfrog through territory since your ships don't have any limits on travel beyond closed borders and the arbitrary slowdown of FTL outside your own. It's like playing EU4 with all of the Colonization ideas automatically unlocked and infinite support range for navies.

[Cruxador]

While that's true, research costs increasing proportionate to territory isn't a particularly unfair mechanic. If it helps, parse it as including the cost of retooling and distributing developments throughout your empire. If you want fast research, play small.

That's a good theory and that's how it's worked in the past, but at this point, dismantling the the less efficient outposts (creating the "swiss cheese empire") is giving you upwards of 20% research bonus for only about a 4% decrease to energy/minerals in a now somewhat famous example before the beta patch. Thoe specific numbers were aiming for an optimal ratio, so the exact numbers can be different depending on how zealous you are in purging inefficient outposts, but though the unity numbers are better now, the energy has only gotten worse. And science progresses you into the late game, a big difference in science takes a whole lot longer to rectify than a big difference in minerals - one good war can do that.

That was actually one point where GalCiv really got things right. Despite using warp-style FTL, the life support techs created natural barriers and also heavily slowed the expansion process. That's one point where Stellaris suffered both before and after 2.0, it's way too easy to rapidly leapfrog through territory since your ships don't have any limits on travel beyond closed borders and the arbitrary slowdown of FTL outside your own. It's like playing EU4 with all of the Colonization ideas automatically unlocked and infinite support range for navies.

Yeah, there's a lot of problems with Stellaris that have been solved elegantly in other games. Much as I'm loathe to criticize a dev for trying new things, if there's a problem that you don't have a great solution for there's no shame in choosing not to reinvent that particular wheel.

[Radsoc]

By using loads of assumptions, like five systems per colony, colonization will always pay off research wise if each new colony manages to produce at least one third of the planetary average science. For unity you need at least 80% in the long run, but it's quite generous at low colony counts, e.g. ~10. Beta patch.

[ZeroGravitas]

One expansion limiter I liked was in Distant Worlds. You could only expand as fast as you could build fuel sources in further out locations, unless you enjoyed wrestling with the auto-refuel AI. But then, wouldn't work in this game due to a complete lack of fuel systems.

oh, something like it could work, just not called "fuel." in fact i think the game would be immeasurably better if they:

1. remove construction ships, science ships, and colony ships from the game.
2. level 1 starbases can send "Expeditions" to other star systems. Initially this is just neighboring systems, with longer distance expeditions unlocked through tech.
3. There are four types of Expeditions:

• Exploration Expeditions survey the system (takes time, of course) and identify resources and anomalies. They have to be completed before other expedition types. On completion, they construct a navigational beacon in-system. The beacon allows the other kinds of expeditions.
• Mining expeditions claim the system and upgrade the navigational beacon to an outpost, and begun constructing mining stations in all known. Requires a special starbase building.
• Science expeditions don't claim the system, but investigate anomalies and complete special projects. Requires a special starbase building.
• Colonization expeditions colonize planets. Requires a special starbase building, but you can just pick any pop in your empire as the original pop.

4. make a bunch of necessary balance and infrastructure changes, like increasing starbase building slots dramatically and making your initial starbase start with all the buildings listed above. pacing of the game would probably change dramatically which would require any number of changes, etc.

if they were really ambitious, the above would result in all kinds of automated NPC ships flying around and simulated resource tracking, like the non-FTL mining ships dropping ore off at the in-system outpost, which processes it into Minerals, and then FTL cargo ships automatically ship the ore to the nearest planet/starbase/whatever, which is then building ships/buildings/whatever per your orders based on resources actually received. and then pirates are actually trying to attack those instead of spawning in random empty systems you never bothered to claim because you didn't want a 1% hit to unity

anyways

[Flying Dice]

Aurora's also a great example of 4X logistics limitations. Not only is travel slow, after the drive rework everything is very fuel-intensive. Most ships are range-limited to at most going a few systems away from places where you've built up colonies or uninhabited fuel depots. Atop that, ships have both maintenance and morale timers based on their construction (functionally, how much space is set aside for engineering work and crew recreation) that mean spending too much time out of port can result in anything from decreased efficiency to a ship losing its drive and eventually blowing up because half the critical systems failed due to lack of maintenance.

That's actually surprised me about Stellaris, the lack of logistical limitations, since PDX is normally fairly harsh about the penalties of constantly running units around outside your territory for years on end.

[Shadowgandor]

One expansion limiter I liked was in Distant Worlds. You could only expand as fast as you could build fuel sources in further out locations, unless you enjoyed wrestling with the auto-refuel AI. But then, wouldn't work in this game due to a complete lack of fuel systems.

oh, something like it could work, just not called "fuel." in fact i think the game would be immeasurably better if they:

1. remove construction ships, science ships, and colony ships from the game.
2. level 1 starbases can send "Expeditions" to other star systems. Initially this is just neighboring systems, with longer distance expeditions unlocked through tech.
3. There are four types of Expeditions:

• Exploration Expeditions survey the system (takes time, of course) and identify resources and anomalies. They have to be completed before other expedition types. On completion, they construct a navigational beacon in-system. The beacon allows the other kinds of expeditions.
• Mining expeditions claim the system and upgrade the navigational beacon to an outpost, and begun constructing mining stations in all known. Requires a special starbase building.
• Science expeditions don't claim the system, but investigate anomalies and complete special projects. Requires a special starbase building.
• Colonization expeditions colonize planets. Requires a special starbase building, but you can just pick any pop in your empire as the original pop.

4. make a bunch of necessary balance and infrastructure changes, like increasing starbase building slots dramatically and making your initial starbase start with all the buildings listed above. pacing of the game would probably change dramatically which would require any number of changes, etc.

if they were really ambitious, the above would result in all kinds of automated NPC ships flying around and simulated resource tracking, like the non-FTL mining ships dropping ore off at the in-system outpost, which processes it into Minerals, and then FTL cargo ships automatically ship the ore to the nearest planet/starbase/whatever, which is then building ships/buildings/whatever per your orders based on resources actually received. and then pirates are actually trying to attack those instead of spawning in random empty systems you never bothered to claim because you didn't want a 1% hit to unity

anyways

Oh man this sounds a lot like Sword of the Stars 2. It was an unintuitive mess and compared to the first, which was my favourite game ever, made the second one completely unplayable.

[ZeroGravitas]

One expansion limiter I liked was in Distant Worlds. You could only expand as fast as you could build fuel sources in further out locations, unless you enjoyed wrestling with the auto-refuel AI. But then, wouldn't work in this game due to a complete lack of fuel systems.

oh, something like it could work, just not called "fuel." in fact i think the game would be immeasurably better if they:

(blah blah blah)

Oh man this sounds a lot like Sword of the Stars 2. It was an unintuitive mess and compared to the first, which was my favourite game ever, made the second one completely unplayable.

never played sots 2. basically i just want to automate the fucking construction and science ships because the only thing they are doing is covering up the lack of gameplay. and colony ships don't even really need to exist.

troop transports and ground warfare is a whole different problem so i'm not sure what to do there but obviously that needs to change too

[Wiles]

I would prefer if troop transports did not exist. I feel like it would be better if your ships just had troops on them by default. Bigger ships could have more troops, and maybe you could throw on a troop transport module in an auxiliary slot if you wanted extra/better troops. I'd also like it more if you didn't need to train the troops at planets, instead maybe you could design regiments based on pops in your empire and tech you have unlocked. These regiments could be on your ships by default and auto-invade when the odds are in your favour, or manually told to invade if you'd rather take more losses to finish your invasion sooner. If they ever did add in supply lines it would be interesting the troops on your ships replenished through that system.

[forsaken1111]

So, no surprise but yeah the AI is still dumb. not AS dumb, but dumb. My empire of thousands of synth robot pops is still producing over 250 food in its sectors for no reason. I invaded a robotic empire, one with no organic pops, and they had hydroponic bays on all of their stations. sigh

[Wiles]

Do you set up your sectors to replace buildings, not respect tile resources and give it a non-balanced focus?