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[umiman]

I'd be happy with a way to stop calling Hyperlane Breaching "speculative" after centuries of using it safely and start using it on military ships.

Alternatively, a Colossus that served as a mobile Gateway would be cool.

Or maybe just make it have a chance to fail or something.

Right now it's safer, easier, and faster than regular hyperlanes. Hell, it's faster than warp drives over long distances.

[Trekkin]

I'd be happy with a way to stop calling Hyperlane Breaching "speculative" after centuries of using it safely and start using it on military ships.

Alternatively, a Colossus that served as a mobile Gateway would be cool.

Or maybe just make it have a chance to fail or something.

Right now it's safer, easier, and faster than regular hyperlanes. Hell, it's faster than warp drives over long distances.

Ordinarily I'd agree, but it occurs to me that more special-case rules for FTL in Stellaris are probably not going to go over well right now. We've already got hyperlanes, Jump Drive, two kinds of gateways and wormholes as well as this weird science-ship-only warp-anywhere thing on top of the MIA mechanics. It does not feel at all cohesive, let alone unobtrusive enough to be the foundation for half of what we do (the other half being planet development.)

Honestly, that might be the single biggest core flaw with Stellaris that's fixable in a way that won't suck massively before it gets better: they tried to make the business of running the empire interesting instead of smooth, so all the really interesting things fade into the nonstop torrent of alerts about fleet repairs and idle science ships and nonaggression pacts between tiny empires half a galaxy away and too many planets and too many starbases and this sector over here needs more minerals and the ringworld frame is finished so you need to tell us whether or not to put the habitats on or leave it a giant waste of time and minerals and Science Officer Whoevertheheck can't decide if he should eat this weird rock he found so can you pick for him before you go do that interstellar war thing?

"Tell me everything that happens in the galaxy so I can rubber-stamp the obvious good choice personally" should not be the default way to run an interstellar empire.

[EnigmaticHat]

You just described being a politician.

[Trekkin]

I just described being the only politician. It's one thing to have complicated mechanics and quite another to keelhaul the player through every step of every process every time in literally excruciating detail.

It feels like a very deliberate design choice, too, with auto exploration being gated off for the first four years. Like Wiz is afraid I might have too much fun to notice everything.

[Teneb]

I just described being the only politician. It's one thing to have complicated mechanics and quite another to keelhaul the player through every step of every process every time in literally excruciating detail.

It feels like a very deliberate design choice, too, with auto exploration being gated off for the first four years. Like Wiz is afraid I might have too much fun to notice everything.

Interestingly enough, I've lately been having auto-explore show up in the third or even the second batch of physics research options.

[MorleyDev]

If you balance the trade so that the number in the middle is a green 1, that's literally a guarantee that they'll accept the trade.

I've had them reject a 1 before, actually. Not sure if that's due to it being chance based, or just their economical situation changed just enough to put it down to 0 in the game time between sending the request and them deciding whether to accept it or not though.

I think Experimental Subspace Navigation exists to solve a specific design problem: Getting a random event that requires a science ship, and no science ship close enough.

Also it's the "Voyager" idea of a space ship making an experimental hop and getting lost. I'd almost like it to have a chance to break after you use it (so you need to go to a spaceport to get it fixed), but enable it so you can use it to go to unexplored star systems. A "It's unreliable and too small to work on a military ship, and if you use it you may get stranded half-way across the galaxy" kind of tech.

[ZeroGravitas]

yeah, that's definitely a change situation - or it could be a rounding difference between the AI logic and the trade UI. maybe it rounds up to 1 for the UI and down to 0 for the AI's logic.

[Trekkin]

I think Experimental Subspace Navigation exists to solve a specific design problem: Getting a random event that requires a science ship, and no science ship close enough.

Also it's the "Voyager" idea of a space ship making an experimental hop and getting lost. I'd almost like it to have a chance to break after you use it (so you need to go to a spaceport to get it fixed), but enable it so you can use it to go to unexplored star systems. A "It's unreliable and too small to work on a military ship, and if you use it you may get stranded half-way across the galaxy" kind of tech.

Sure, but it's just another special case for the ships that are not ships. Civilian ships can't be manually upgraded, can't be in fleets, and now have odd FTL options. What would be so wrong about just making science and construction sections as corvette bows or whatever, letting scientists occupy admiral slots and just having all ships use the same mechanics?

[Chiefwaffles]

Because it's a balance and feature thing first, and lore second.

The point of Emergency Subspace FTL is to allow science ships to effectively ignore borders and other hazards (like space monsters or whatever) and still explore the galaxy, meaning that if you eventually find yourself boxed in by hazards or other borders it won't be impossible to continue exploring.
Allowing military ships to do the same would remove half the point of border/hyperlane mechanics. Science ships can do it because it allows them to explore more effectively and because they don't have weapons.

[MorleyDev]

I can see an argument for an end game tech that lets you jump other ships at an energy cost and massive 'recharge' penalties, to prevent it being cheesed with teleporting straight to the enemies capital. Maybe give Science Ships a smaller energy cost too.

Could make Fallen Empires *terrifying* if the AI could do it because they could teleport behind you, wait for the recharge penalty to wear off and attack where your weakest defences are.

...okay, yeah I'm convinced: That'd be awesome!

As an aside, fun little sandbox play I've done: No other empires except fallen ones and marauders, but 5x the primitive civs. You basically another fallen empire for the rest of the galaxy, will you protect and nurture, or conquer and destroy? Combine mods that let you do things like engineer life for extra spice...

[MorleyDev]

I was thinking that Jump would faster recharge and lesser penalties. So Jump is for short tactical hops, since it only covers a certain radius around you, but 'Warp' is for the long distance travel.

Could make an interesting mod if possible, at least, even though I don't know if it'd actually balance xD

[Trekkin]

I didn't realize until today that machine empires, including synthetically ascended ones and rogue servitors (both of whom hypothetically have need of food), are hardcoded so they cannot trade food at all. There goes my plan for Prandialist rogue servitors.

EDIT: Spelling.

[pisskop]

Thats actually dumb.

the surplus exists, its free monies.  stockpile beef jerky, sell to the humies

[Trekkin]

Thats actually dumb.

the surplus exists, its free monies.  stockpile beef jerky, sell to the humies

That is one of two arguments I've found in support of machine empires not trading food: that since they don't need it, it would be unbalancing to let them trade it. I have to say it doesn't seem like a particularly strong argument. Machine pops working farms are consuming minerals and energy to  produce something useless; it is difficult to see how trading it away for minerals and energy will ever be as useful as just having them make minerals and energy in the first place.

The other argument I've seen is that the AI can't handle cases where it does not need a resource. It would seem to me that it'd be better to special-case the AI's commodity valuation function so empires won't buy any (non-strategic) resource for which their current and projected consumption is 0.

[Nelia Hawk]

arent there some robot empires that have humans as "pets" or are like making sure they are doing well? (some civic(?) that starts them with a 2nd race) i would guess them can get food for their non machine pops and trade it?