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[ChairmanPoo]

Now that you mention it, Iīve seen it happen. But I think itīs more a matter of Clausewitz tending to "blob". AKA, once a certain empire gains enough momentum it tends to keep moving. Case in point the resilience of the Byzantines.

I think in part itīs because all these empires are composed of independent kings that often do their own thing and wage their own wars, and itīs more likely that the current ruler will be overthrown by one of the kings than by a foreigner.

[Loud Whispers]

Tbh differentiating the galaxy is a start but differentiating species traits and governments is mandatory. Meaningful differentiation like between organic and mechanical pops, as it stands, the differences within the two main groups are negligible

[Karnewarrior]

I think that's also a big step, yeah. Don't robopops already eat energy instead of food though?

I would like to see different governments be significantly mechanically different though. Something like Communist-type governments being best for building up a lot of industry really fast, but being not great at research and being prone to factional infighting; Autocratic governments are great at all kinds of war, but are god-awful at managing morale and have a lot of potential for rebellions; and Democracies are good at being stable and happy, but can't fight offensive wars without huge maluses and are subject to the whims of their people. Then all the governments in the game right now can be arranged somewhere on that triangle.

Then there's a strategic layer to picking and sticking with a government type. Should you start autocratic and then try to move to a more egalitarian or communal government later? That would do fine in getting you a big empire, but maybe the recently conquered pops don't feel culturally in tune with your people and try to secede, or they outbreed your home pops and take over your empire. Stuff like that.

Then have the premade races get more character and be almost certain to show up if the little box is checked. I always play with the premade races on, but they hardly ever show, even when I let the AI spawn in non-primitive races (I like to play Fermi Paradox a lot). They could carry a lot of flavor if they had unique lines, special AI or traits, stuff like that.

Although speaking of Fermi Paradox, I'd love to see a DLC dedicated to mechanics and systems designed to make the game fun even for a player in an empty galaxy. Better primitives, more and better colonizing rules, special events to fracture particularly large empires, that sort of thing.

[Egan_BW]

Obviously hive minds should have to deal with factions not in the normal form of people creating a council to yell at you or whatever, but in the form of competing elements of your own psyche. Like catching a severe case of sympathy for your fellow sentient creature, causing a penalty to the strength of all your ground troops because you suddenly don't want to be personally tearing apart thousands of sapients simultaneously.

[Karnewarrior]

I'd figure hiveminds would have a malus to, say, research. Remember how two heads are better than one? Or maybe have a malus to pretty much everything, but they don't have to deal with factions at all, meaning they have extra resources to spend to make up for their deficiencies.

Although the different psychological problems would be an interesting twist. No factions, but maybe a bunch of events unique to hiveminds that cause modifiers to reflect "trauma" and such? Probably weighted or caused by player/AI action. So like, if you're a hivemind and you're killing loads of other sapients, you have a high chance of getting an event that gives you PTSD and gives you really bad maluses to diplomacy (and thus causing more wars), or another which changes your civics to more violent and mad civics, eventually driving the whole hivemind insane under the strain and turning you into a conquering war machine and a crisis for the other races.

That could actually be modded in, probably. That would be pretty cool, now that I think about it, and could encourage a certain style of play that would make hiveminds feel unique.

[ZeroGravitas]

That is nonsensical. I don't want to play CK2 in space. I want to play Stellaris.

then you wouldnt select the "Feudal Politics" civic.

sorry, i was probably unclear. the point was to create more varying gameplay styles based on civics, which they kind of do to an extent right now, but only a little.

having the option to play pacifist vs determined exterminator vs driven assimilator vs hivemind etc etc etc is one of the best features of stellaris right now imo. the idea is to vary the game more based on your civics.

indeed, one of the best features of CK2 is how much variety you can get out of being feudal vs horde vs merchant republic.

[Telgin]

I'm all for expanding feudal governments, especially if other government types get some logical extensions.  As I've said before, it's bizarre that scientists end up as leaders so often, or that factions have no impact on elections in democracies, and so on.

Shifting gears a bit, but how dangerous are marauder raiding fleets?  I finally got Apocalypse and have to contend with these for the first time, and after reading up on the horde mechanics and their lolhuge fleets, I'm afraid to actually fight marauders and so have been paying them off with food.  I'm currently sitting around the year 2290 and have about 6K of fleet power outside of stations, with no defensive stations near the marauder empire that's threatening me.

My guess, based on reading the Stellaris wiki, is that my fleet is of roughly comparable power to a raiding fleet at this year, but I'd rather not lose most of my ships repelling that when I could just give them food.

[ZeroGravitas]

there's little reason to fight them if you can pay in food. their ships are generally badly loaded but high in quantity. with current travel times, in early-mid game it's quite tedious to fight them and cost you significant minerals to replace your losses. sizes scale with time in my experience, so something like a 5k-15k fleet is possible.

[Nelia Hawk]

marrauders are the "midgame enemy" with mostly tech level 3 stuffs and around 10k or so stuff... so if you got maxed fleet and tech 3 stuff and can guard with a starbase its not too bad holding them off.... even if you just let them raid a planet they leave pretty quick again and its not too disastrous

[Trekkin]

Is there a list somewhere of everything Gestalt Consciousnesses miss out on regarding events and so forth? I know they can only hack the Technosphere, for example, and can't do anything with the Horizon Signal chain.

[Mephansteras]

I had some good luck one game setting up a heavily defended station at a checkpoint and taking on their fleet to get some tech out of it.

[Telgin]

Next time I play I'll try upgrading one of my stations and add some defense platforms where I expect the marauders would come from, then try fighting them off.  I suspect that they keep amping up their demands, and next time I probably won't be able to afford it.  Last time I literally gave away my entire food stockpile of 1000 food, which fortunately has no consequences when you have a food surplus.

Is there a list somewhere of everything Gestalt Consciousnesses miss out on regarding events and so forth? I know they can only hack the Technosphere, for example, and can't do anything with the Horizon Signal chain.

Not that I'm aware of.  The Stellaris wiki doesn't seem to even have a complete list of events to begin with, or at least I couldn't find the one with the gas giant inhabitants that want you transport them to another planet.  Some of the event chains that are there aren't fully mapped out either, unless I'm just too obtuse to figure out how they have the stages organized.

Speaking of events, since I get the Ransomeers event in literally every game, is it random whether or not you succeed in rescuing the captives?  3/4 times I was successful, but on my last attempt the prisoners died.  Pretty sure I didn't do anything differently.

[pisskop]

I dont understand war and attrition mechanics at all.  I take multiple systems and planets from the enemy and  beat their fleet down multiple times but I suffer war exhaustion when the best they can do is attack the galaxtic backdoor with nothing but empty staroutposts?

if I can have war goals and am forced to waste influence on claims then why can I status quo it and take half their empire instead?  Why can i make multiple claims?

I picked up the game and decided that, after a brief stint as a hu-man, to take a custom feudal batman race living in tundra who expands for less influence and collects more minerals and engineer points. 'sworked outpretty well so far, because I can almost always expand in any given direction and barring the obnoxious early game event popping and the stupid damn space pirates Im not really under pressure to waste energy on fleets until 15 or so years in when I have decent economy set up.

I also made a slow breeding turtle trading conglomerate and a mantis shrimp war machine that relies upon bull and betty netch to farm and mine.

The ai is pretty bad at aggression though,

[Criptfeind]

\
if I can have war goals and am forced to waste influence on claims then why can I status quo it and take half their empire instead?  Why can i make multiple claims?

Status quo gives you any systems you have occupied and a claim on. Winning a war and pressing a wargoal means the winner gets to get all their claims on the looser, even if they have not occupied it. You can have multiple claims because in wars with allies you might have a situation with multiple people claiming the same system, and so when the war is over it goes to whoever put the most claims on the system, or in a tie whoever has the oldest claims on the system.

I dont understand war and attrition mechanics at all.  I take multiple systems and planets from the enemy and  beat their fleet down multiple times but I suffer war exhaustion when the best they can do is attack the galaxtic backdoor with nothing but empty staroutposts?

Attrition is in theory there to allow someone who would loose a war to fight a defensive battle to minimize losses and eventually force the opponent to accept status quo and loose less then they would if they just eventually were ground down into nothing and lost everything.

The ai is pretty bad at aggression though everything

Yes. This is one of stellaris fatal flaws right now imo.

[Persus13]

I dont understand war and attrition mechanics at all.  I take multiple systems and planets from the enemy and  beat their fleet down multiple times but I suffer war exhaustion when the best they can do is attack the galaxtic backdoor with nothing but empty staroutposts?

if I can have war goals and am forced to waste influence on claims then why can I status quo it and take half their empire instead?  Why can i make multiple claims?

War exhaustion goes up over time as well as from any losses or occupations you suffer. While you may be suffering from war exhaustion, your opponent is probably suffering worse from it if the situation is as you described.

You still need claims to be able to take territory in a status quo peace. The difference is that in the status quo peace you only take territory you claimed and occupied, while if they surrender, they give you everything you asked for in the war goal (land, vassalage, etc.).

PPE: Ninja'd.