Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[chuft]

Finally played to an interesting end. Was trying to vassalize someone, didn't pay attention and found out they were in a massive federation so the war was not going great and I was deep in enemy territory, and then I got stabbed in the back by an awakened empire. I fell back from my conquests like Germany in 1943 and scrambled to react to the new front. That perk I had been saving? Galactic Contender, stat.

I had been planning to attack them anyway so my fleet was all armor and shield piercing weapons. Forced a status quo on the original target and took on the awakened empire. Managed to take all his stuff before he could force me to a white peace. I was pondering attacking another fallen empire so I kept my fleet in piercing-weapon mode while I tried to vassalize someone else.

As I was deeply embroiled in that, the Contingency decided to appear with 800k of force in each of four different spots, two of which were in my empire. Um. The other perk I had been saving? Defender of the Galaxy please.

Well I went around cleaning them out, liberating planets they were exterminating - the empires being exterminated still hated me - until I got rid of all four of their extermination nodes using my planet cracker colossus. Then their home system appeared, a couple jumps from my homeworld. I sent in a science ship to scout, suspicious, and sure enough they were the reverse of their original fleets - this time they were all hull with relatively little armor and shields. I refit my 1.1m fleet back to regular weapons, then went in there and put them out of business. The rest of the galaxy then proceeded to insult me and close all their borders, but too late - I won the game.

I read somewhere that if you don't planet crack the manufacturing planets, but just bombard them normally, you can get living metal. So I bombarded their final world rather than crack it, but no living metal appeared. Hmm.

 

[chuft]

My empire had become a ridiculous micro hell due to being so gigantic, this despite the fact I planet cracked a bunch of enemy worlds rather than deal with the micro of managing their captured populations. The Contingency was still a challenge to take on. How do people beat it while playing tall/small/pacifist/xenophile etc empires?

I always tend to see xenophiles be pacifists as well, but maybe that's a fluke. Do people play xenophile/militarist/authoritarian empires? You love aliens so much you want to force them to all be in your empire?

 

[Storyfag]

Also, here's an amazing console command I've never seen mentioned

Oh, Stellaris has console commands. Oooh, those might make the game interesting.

 

[Goliath]

Also, here's an amazing console command I've never seen mentioned that basically fixes performance: ticks_per_day x. Set it to 2-10 and experience a massive performance increase.

You are fundamentally changing the game by altering ticks per day. The world simulation in Stellaris happens in "ticks" not days. If you lower the number of ticks per day the date will increment faster but less things will happen each day, the time it takes for things to happen will change.

E.g. it takes 20 ticks before a shield that is fully depleted will start to recharge. Thus if you set ticks_per_pay to 10 it will take two in-game days, while if you set ticks_per_day to 2, it will take 10 days.

 

[Average Manatee]

You are fundamentally changing the game by altering ticks per day. The world simulation in Stellaris happens in "ticks" not days. If you lower the number of ticks per day the date will increment faster but less things will happen each day, the time it takes for things to happen will change.

E.g. it takes 20 ticks before a shield that is fully depleted will start to recharge. Thus if you set ticks_per_pay to 10 it will take two in-game days, while if you set ticks_per_day to 2, it will take 10 days.

Doesn't appear to be the case.

Also I fucked up, the command is "ticks_per_turn"

 

[oldmanpaco]

What is the deal with psionic armies? I recruited a bunch and went to war. They got mostly killed fighting some gene warriors or something. (How do you get xenomorph armies anyway? Got them one game and never again.).

Now I can’t recruit any more psionic armies. Have they permanently been used up?

Xenomorph is a rare tech that has have full gene splicing to unlock, and I think the Uplift tech.

Isn't Xenomorph tied to that alien you find in ice that you can freeze until your tech is high enough?

 

[Goliath]

You are fundamentally changing the game by altering ticks per day. The world simulation in Stellaris happens in "ticks" not days. If you lower the number of ticks per day the date will increment faster but less things will happen each day, the time it takes for things to happen will change.

E.g. it takes 20 ticks before a shield that is fully depleted will start to recharge. Thus if you set ticks_per_pay to 10 it will take two in-game days, while if you set ticks_per_day to 2, it will take 10 days.

Doesn't appear to be the case.

Also I fucked up, the command is "ticks_per_turn"

Just start a new game, fastest speed, select your corvettes, move them to the edge of the starting system, and then make them fly to the sun in the center and record how many days that takes.

Then move them to the edge of the system again, set ticks_per_turn to 2, and make them fly to the center again. Record the number of days it now takes and compare. You will find that it suddenly takes a lot longer in in-game days while the corvettes may fly faster in real-time. That's the effect of messing with that value.

It doesn't make Stellaris run any faster, it messes with the world simulation which creates effects like your ships moving faster in real-time (while moving slower in in-game time), but again that's because less is happening behind the scenes.

 

[Average Manatee]

Just start a new game, fastest speed, select your corvettes, move them to the edge of the starting system, and then make them fly to the sun in the center and record how many days that takes.

Then move them to the edge of the system again, set ticks_per_turn to 2, and make them fly to the center again. Record the number of days it now takes and compare. You will find that it suddenly takes a lot longer in in-game days while the corvettes may fly faster in real-time. That's the effect of messing with that value.

It doesn't make Stellaris run any faster, it messes with the world simulation which creates effects like your ships moving faster in real-time (while moving slower in in-game time), but again that's because less is happening behind the scenes.

No, that's due to the game visually interpolating and smoothing shit so that ships fly smoothly and accelerate/decelerate smoothly rather than stuttering along with the game.

Start a game, make a save, tell your science ship to explore a system and see what day it gets there. Reload the save and change the tickrate. It should be exactly the same. I dunno, maybe its half a day off due to the tick arriving at a different time, but it's certainly not 10x as long to get anywhere with a tick of 10x as long.

 

[Goliath]

Just start a new game, fastest speed, select your corvettes, move them to the edge of the starting system, and then make them fly to the sun in the center and record how many days that takes.

Then move them to the edge of the system again, set ticks_per_turn to 2, and make them fly to the center again. Record the number of days it now takes and compare. You will find that it suddenly takes a lot longer in in-game days while the corvettes may fly faster in real-time. That's the effect of messing with that value.

It doesn't make Stellaris run any faster, it messes with the world simulation which creates effects like your ships moving faster in real-time (while moving slower in in-game time), but again that's because less is happening behind the scenes.

No

Yes. Everything I wrote is true and everyone can confirm that by doing the experiment described.

Start a game, make a save, tell your science ship to explore a system and see what day it gets there. Reload the save and change the tickrate. It should be exactly the same. I dunno, maybe its half a day off due to the tick arriving at a different time, but it's certainly not 10x as long to get anywhere with a tick of 10x as long.

That's something different. System to system jumps have day-based delays. And 10 days stay 10 days, no matter matter what the ticks_per_turn value is. That doesn't mean things based on ticks don't change.

Again, do the experiment. It clearly proves that the game changes when you change that value.

 

[Average Manatee]

That's something different. System to system jumps have day-based delays. And 10 days stay 10 days, no matter matter what the ticks_per_turn value is. That doesn't mean things based on ticks don't change.

Again, do the experiment. It clearly proves that the game changes when you change that value.

No, I'm talking doing it from day 1. Your science ship is in the center of the system, flies to the edges, and warps to the next system. The date it will arrive at the target is the same. Visually it will look like the ship isn't reaching the edge of the system at the same date, but that's because the visual representation is being interpolated. The internal game mechanics that decide where the ship is are the same regardless of tick speed.

 

[coldcrow]

Manatee could be correct. This is also corrobated by the performance monitoring some user was doing, after which he concluded that most lag results from the game drawing the new gamestate.
Did you test some other game mechanics with lower ticks-per-turn settings?

 

[thesecret1]

So I started up Stellaris after a year or two of not playing, and did they completely replace literally every system the game had on launch? Like damn, this isn't even the usual Paradox DLC-fest, it's basically a different game.

 

[IDtenT]

So I started up Stellaris after a year or two of not playing, and did they completely replace literally every system the game had on launch? Like damn, this isn't even the usual Paradox DLC-fest, it's basically a different game.

If you're not playing these games as they develop, then you're missing out on half the fun imho.

 

[chuft]

So does anyone use the automated governors/sectors? Or are we all in micro hell once you have a lot of planets?

 

[IDtenT]

I just submit to micro hell. Don't trust AI at all.

 

[Storyfag]

Yeah, Stellaris AI gives the term 'Abominable Intelligence' an entirely new meaning.

 

[chuft]

“Artificial Idiot”

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i wonder why the tile unlocking and the ruins mechanics. i mean, building already have a fixed upkeep even if the have no employees, let me build everything (and suffer the vacant jobs) and be done with it. this way microing is still more efficient but i'm not constantly punished by the need of it.

 

[chuft]

I love the Fallen/Awakened Empires whose worlds are overcrowded with unemployed, whose buildings are awesome but provide no jobs, and if you shift pops off the planet, it ruins the irreplaceable buildings. You are forced to maintain a welfare state or destroy the Star Trek-tech matter replicators due to no unemployed people being around to spray graffiti on them.

 

[Storyfag]

I love the Fallen/Awakened Empires whose worlds are overcrowded with unemployed, whose buildings are awesome but provide no jobs, and if you shift pops off the planet, it ruins the irreplaceable buildings. You are forced to maintain a welfare state or destroy the Star Trek-tech matter replicators due to no unemployed people being around to spray graffiti on them.

This is, in general, only an issue with their capitals, which are fully developed. Even then, you can usually replace a shitton of city districts with some job-providing ones. Then you need to get creative with auto-curating vaults and research complexes, but you should pull it off with minimal output loss.

Fallen Empire colony worlds are another matter. Their building slots are usually filled only halfway up, so just go ahead and build new ones, with large amounts of jobs.

 

[Delterius]

I love the Fallen/Awakened Empires whose worlds are overcrowded with unemployed, whose buildings are awesome but provide no jobs, and if you shift pops off the planet, it ruins the irreplaceable buildings. You are forced to maintain a welfare state or destroy the Star Trek-tech matter replicators due to no unemployed people being around to spray graffiti on them.

Funnily enough, I've been experimenting with a xenophobe/spiritualist/egalitarian lifeseeded empire that stacks conservationist and environmentalist and maintains a quasi 'fallen empire' vibe from the beginning. With Utopian Abundance I end up saving on building spots for a nice while, am able to focus near exclusively on forges until habitats come about which allows me to constantly colonize the same 5 planets and resettle people back onto the homeworld. It works surprisingly well for both unity and research.

 

[Storyfag]

which allows me to constantly colonize the same 5 planets and resettle people back onto the homewxorld. It works surprisingly well for both unity and research.

Wait, wat? Are you exploiting the colonization fever perk this way? :D

 

[Delterius]

which allows me to constantly colonize the same 5 planets and resettle people back onto the homewxorld. It works surprisingly well for both unity and research.

Wait, wat? Are you exploiting the colonization fever perk this way? :D

Yep. Every time I colonize the planets I get 2 free quick pops that I immediately send back to the homeworld. It can't compare to the pop growth of 10 planets at once, but you can get by without the obvious ways to deal with Lifeseeded (robots, migration).

 

[chuft]

Even then, you can usually replace a shitton of city districts with some job-providing ones.

Not sure what you mean here. City districts provide as many jobs (clerks) as any other district, at least if you have Prosperity traditions. Plus, if you get rid of them, you now have tons of homelessness as well.

 

[Storyfag]

Even then, you can usually replace a shitton of city districts with some job-providing ones.

Not sure what you mean here. City districts provide as many jobs (clerks) as any other district, at least if you have Prosperity traditions.

Clerks are shit.

Plus, if you get rid of them, you now have tons of homelessness as well.

You only need 75 pops to unlock the highest amount of buildings possible. Therefore, on a conquered Fallen Empire world, you need no more than 75 housing and 75 jobs. Any excess population can and should be resettled to improve productivity of other worlds.