Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[MoLAoS]

Really, a game where the ship balance is so shitty that fleet composition and tech barely matters, you can't control battle maneuvers, and the sole winning strategy is to pump out more ships than the other guy is pretty off-putting. From what multiple people have been saying, that's pretty much the case.

"Crank up the difficulty and the AI will shit out thousands more ships than you" isn't a particularly compelling argument in that context.

I was telling everyone the whole time that the game was gonna be shit and everyone was raging at me. On like every place that discusses 4x. But now I am vindicated!

 

[Jimmious]

I can't vouch for it, but I'm pretty sure the AI was raping even more because I was almost solely equiped with lasers and they had a bazillion deflectors on each ship.
Now I can't say if that was on purpose but I did fuck me up.

Of course it can just be that I just need to git gud or whatever.

 

[Mortmal]

By the way at which time its considered to be mid game\late?

Midgame starts around ~2400.

But, but, I was researching the endgame society techs only like at 2342. Even had most of the other 2 kinds of techs. This was on a huge map. And next time I know how to do it even faster. How the hell is midgame only starting at 2400? Does midgame just mean that you have every fucking tech in the game and then you just have to slog through boring wars with enemies?

2299 and i am already researching the dangerous techs. Tbh theres not even a real reson to research them either, why would i need sentient robots and take that risks when i am overflowing with minerals already.
EU4 was not that barebone at launch, i dont think i will put hundreds of hours in stellaris as of right now there's only one way to play.

 

[Kane]

By the way at which time its considered to be mid game\late?

Midgame starts around ~2400.

But, but, I was researching the endgame society techs only like at 2342. Even had most of the other 2 kinds of techs. This was on a huge map. And next time I know how to do it even faster. How the hell is midgame only starting at 2400? Does midgame just mean that you have every fucking tech in the game and then you just have to slog through boring wars with enemies?

I am not that far through tech, perhaps it depends on your race.

I am going by map coverage. Roughly the first 200 years are spend painting the map and then the elimination wars start. Perhaps that too is entirely map dependent, idk. I am definitely rolling with a smaller map next play through though, as the default setting is way too big. It's like playing "no rush" mode.

 

[MoLAoS]

By the way at which time its considered to be mid game\late?

Midgame starts around ~2400.

But, but, I was researching the endgame society techs only like at 2342. Even had most of the other 2 kinds of techs. This was on a huge map. And next time I know how to do it even faster. How the hell is midgame only starting at 2400? Does midgame just mean that you have every fucking tech in the game and then you just have to slog through boring wars with enemies?

2299 and i am already researching the dangerous techs. Tbh theres not even a real reson to research them either, why would i need sentient robots and take that risks when i am overflowing with minerals already.
EU4 was not that barebone at launch, i dont think i will put hundreds of hours in stellaris as of right now there's only one way to play.

Dangerous techs are not even endgame techs though. I'm talking about the kinds of techs you research after all the actual techs are gone and they just add the same bonus over and over. I was on +1 Core Sector Planet XI by the time I quit and also like +10% Border Range X and some other shit like that in Society research.

 

[MoLAoS]

Has anyone else noticed that the Careful trait for anomaly fail risk seems to work but the archaeologist trait does not? It pissed me off cause Arch seems like its so amazing.

 

[Average Manatee]

Is anyone of you playing in at least Hard difficulty?
I just got impressively raped by a Mega Corporation who started war on me and my allies.
He walked over us with like 4K sized fleets while together we massed 2K at most.

So yeah, the AI wasn't passive and the game is not so easy, for me at least.
Restart.

Hard gives +50% to all AI production and Insane probably gives +100%. Just ridiculous all around. For reference Civ usually gives Deity about +40-50% to most things and Deity is considered ridiculous bullshit artificial difficulty in all games but Civ 5 (which is broken), with most people considering Immortal to be the best difficulty that can be beat without huge exploits. So the fact that Hard starts above Civ's Deity is pretty telling of how bad the AI is.

 

[Beowulf]

Doesn't hard also give you relation penalties?

 

[Blaine]

I can't vouch for it, but I'm pretty sure the AI was raping even more because I was almost solely equiped with lasers and they had a bazillion deflectors on each ship.
Now I can't say if that was on purpose but I did fuck me up.

A fair number of space 4x games, notably GalCiv, have used the tripartite lasers vs. shields/drivers vs. armor/missiles vs. PD weapons and defense structure. MoOII of course had beams vs. shields/missiles vs. PD/torpedoes vs. jamming, and also mass drivers, and probably had the best implementation of all of the games that have used this sort of structure.

In my opinion, this tripartite structure belongs in the garbage, at least as the primary determinant of attack and defense power. The min/max/optimal range, "projectile" acceleration/velocity, targeting resolution (accuracy vs. different-sized targets), lock-on time, orientation, coverage, degrees turned per second (in the case of turrets and articulated weapons), damage of course, and other discrete characteristics of weapon systems should be emphasized, so that varying sizes and types of ships can fulfill specific roles in battle (AKA, fleet composition and doctrines).

Take a destroyer, for example. In the context of space battles, a destroyer should be fast for its size and mount numerous 360-degree-radius turrets with fast lock-on times, fast turn rate, high targeting resolution, above-average range, and below-average damage, in order to effectively track and destroy several small, fast, short-range attack ships at any given time, thereby effectively defending the larger ships in its fleet. In turn, other ship types can be designed to counter destroyers, fighters can be designed to evade destroyers as best as possible, etc. A large dreadnought might mount a spinal superweapon effective against large, slow capital ships, starbases and so on.

Formations should matter, too.

I'm probably just dreaming at this point, though. Maybe that's a little too granular to work in space 4x, who knows?

 

[MoLAoS]

Fucking pirates spawned and immediately killed my frontier outpost. Tons of turns of minerals for a fleet and then minerals and influence to rebuild and cutting my research from 19 to 10 or so until I rebuilt. Luckily my stations swapped back to my control afterwards or I woulda rage quit.

 

[Jimmious]

Doesn't hard also give you relation penalties?

Yes it does. -25 from the boot. It's brutal I tell ya

 

[Jimmious]

I can't vouch for it, but I'm pretty sure the AI was raping even more because I was almost solely equiped with lasers and they had a bazillion deflectors on each ship.
Now I can't say if that was on purpose but I did fuck me up.

A fair number of space 4x games, notably GalCiv, have used the tripartite lasers vs. shields/drivers vs. armor/missiles vs. PD weapons and defense structure. MoOII of course had beams vs. shields/missiles vs. PD/torpedoes vs. jamming, and also mass drivers, and probably had the best implementation of all of the games that have used this sort of structure.

In my opinion, this tripartite structure belongs in the garbage, at least as the primary determinant of attack and defense power. The min/max/optimal range, "projectile" acceleration/velocity, targeting resolution (accuracy vs. different-sized targets), lock-on time, orientation, coverage, degrees turned per second (in the case of turrets and articulated weapons), damage of course, and other discrete characteristics of weapon systems should be emphasized, so that varying sizes and types of ships can fulfill specific roles in battle (AKA, fleet composition and doctrines).

Take a destroyer, for example. In the context of space battles, a destroyer should be fast for its size and mount numerous 360-degree-radius turrets with fast lock-on times, fast turn rate, high targeting resolution, above-average range, and below-average damage, in order to effectively track and destroy several small, fast, short-range attack ships at any given time, thereby effectively defending the larger ships in its fleet. In turn, other ship types can be designed to counter destroyers, fighters can be designed to evade destroyers as best as possible, etc. A large dreadnought might mount a spinal superweapon effective against large, slow capital ships, starbases and so on.

Formations should matter, too.

I'm probably just dreaming at this point, though. Maybe that's a little too granular to work in space 4x, who knows?

While I do agree that it's an overly simplistic approach I do think going too much away from that will make if really complex as a game.
Certainly "realistic" and nice for us autists, but I guess these companies want to make some profit too..

The thing now is if the AI at least uses this tripartite (excellent choice of wording here man) efficiently. Meaning that it tries to counter your technology as much as possible.

Galciv2 was decent in that regard, after all patches and extensions etc.
That's why it was a somewhat pleasant surprise to see it happen in Stellaris, but I want more data before I can make a certain assumption.

Average Manatee I know there are AI advantages in Hard but it certainly made the game much more fun for me so far. The AI was active, aggressive and frequently stronger than me. I guess eventually I'll manage it but why bother with "fairness" if it gets boring?

 

[Sranchammer]

Ive yet to get DOW'd against Insane AI.

Im weaker than just about everyone around, too. The saving grace is they just fight eachother and let me nibble.

 

[Blaine]

While I do agree that it's an overly simplistic approach I do think going too much away from that will make if really complex as a game.

Good.

Certainly "realistic" and nice for us autists, but I guess these companies want to make some profit too..

When I saw my brother-in-law playing Stellaris on Steam, I knew that Paradox must now be gunning for the casual crowd, if they haven't been already. Press F to pay respects, etc.

The thing now is if the AI at least uses this tripartite (excellent choice of wording here man) efficiently. Meaning that it tries to counter your technology as much as possible.

Yeah. In fairness, one potential issue with a complex and elegant ship-to-ship fleet combat system in space 4x games is that even good AI would likely be pretty retarded about fleet composition and doctrine, at least without some very specific AI routines to help guide it. It's surely a lot easier for your average game AI to cope with a slightly shaken-up bigger + more = better system.

Supercomputers can now consistently beat human champs in both chess and go, but alas, those are supercomputers and beyond the scope or reach of mere computer games, at least for the time being.

 

[MoLAoS]

Utter fucking bullshit. Fucking pirates going to kill one of my fucking frontier stations yet again and I had a fleet this time but they kill them faster than my fleet can make 4 warp jumps. So much bullshit. 400 Influence down the drain from pirates and there really wasn't anything I could do. Also, they've never done this before.

 

[Anthedon]

Don't use Warp, it's horrible compared to the alternatives.

 

[MoLAoS]

Warp is really good. The AI is just using a totally new behavior and somehow picking the exact most annoying structure to kill and most annoying place away from my fleet to do it. I was just about to build a new frontier station for some cool stuff but no... Or maybe I'll just have to have a larger standing fleet which is annoying.

 

[Zewp]

Really, a game where the ship balance is so shitty that fleet composition and tech barely matters, you can't control battle maneuvers, and the sole winning strategy is to pump out more ships than the other guy is pretty off-putting. From what multiple people have been saying, that's pretty much the case.

"Crank up the difficulty and the AI will shit out thousands more ships than you" isn't a particularly compelling argument in that context.

Pretty much. Unless you perfectly micro-manage your fleet loadouts to deal with enemy ships, you're fucked in cases where the enemy outnumbers you. No guerilla tactics. See the previous discussion about the Unbidden dimension gate. If I could select which targets to engage I could take the gate down and buy time to come back with a bigger army. But instead my fleet gets stuck shooting mini fortresses and I can't get them to disengage without leaving the system entirely. Then the fleet gets swarmed and I die and the Unbidden threat keeps growing, making it impossible to deal with.

It's all rather dumb. I can't see any reason why they wouldn't give players the ability to manually select targets.

 

[Inspectah]

Nothing seems to beat wormhole though, the abillity to just teleport on top of other empire's capitals is just to good to pass up.
Maybe in multiplayer it's a different story, but still

 

[Jaedar]

Nothing seems to beat wormhole though, the abillity to just teleport on top of other empire's capitals is just to good to pass up.
Maybe in multiplayer it's a different story, but still

The drawback with wormhole is that exploration is a lot more costly early on though, since you have to build wormhole generators. Warp and Lane FTL just go, letting you use those minerals for other things (more survey/ships/colony/buildings).

Wormhole with the two range upgrades is insane though.

 

[Average Manatee]

Wormhole really doesn't cost that much more early game. Unless you want to map all the way to the other side of the galaxy and find enemies to rival who won't hurt you. But as soon as colonization starts wormhole lets you reach so many more colonies through long winding paths.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

I made a De-Librulizer Mod/Race Mod:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=684518306

Make Space Great Again
This mod:

Replaces all the default leaders with male ones.

Makes a new white European only name list. (humans3)

Makes a new white European only race.

Makes a new empire using said race and name list called "The Empire of Man" with Donald Trump as the leader.

 

[MoLAoS]

Well, that's definitely my last game. I was kicking ass with 6 planets with very high development and then I got wardecked. 3 of the 4 nations were like 4 hops + away. All of them have either inferior or pathetic tech. Sadly it appears that was because of my advanced society research. I was forced to liberate 3 planets which was my 3 science planets so I just gave up. I was just about to kick military research into gear, too. Also I had a 25 tile energy credit planet I was boosting. Woulda been worth like 250 energy credits or something. I maybe could have defended if I had time to build fleets off that. I was maxed out on minerals but I couldn't build anything due to my lack of energy credits. Perhaps I went into research mode too early. I had 3 nearby fallen empires that were totally quiet cause I was careful with their rules.

I'm gonna wait for a couple expansions before I go back. It just annoys me how much fleet you need to have. I guess I was thinking of most Paradox games where no one ever attacks you when making decisions. I had a pretty solid fleet. Just not a 4v1 against equal or superior military tech.

 

[Jimmious]

Sorry but you're almost asking for it...


*Seriously though, your experiences should be an answer to anyone who claims that the AI is passive and they are roflstomping everything. Nice stuff, next time have some allies bro

 

[Orobis]

Well, that's definitely my last game. I was kicking ass with 6 planets with very high development and then I got wardecked. 3 of the 4 nations were like 4 hops + away. All of them have either inferior or pathetic tech. Sadly it appears that was because of my advanced society research. I was forced to liberate 3 planets which was my 3 science planets so I just gave up. I was just about to kick military research into gear, too. Also I had a 25 tile energy credit planet I was boosting. Woulda been worth like 250 energy credits or something. I maybe could have defended if I had time to build fleets off that. I was maxed out on minerals but I couldn't build anything due to my lack of energy credits. Perhaps I went into research mode too early. I had 3 nearby fallen empires that were totally quiet cause I was careful with their rules.

I'm gonna wait for a couple expansions before I go back. It just annoys me how much fleet you need to have. I guess I was thinking of most Paradox games where no one ever attacks you when making decisions. I had a pretty solid fleet. Just not a 4v1 against equal or superior military tech.

This is a good sign, a damn good sign. In fact, this post makes me want to buy the game even more now. I love aggressive A.I. in strategy games.