Stellaris III: Shop at the Paradox Megacorp!

Well this is all making me feel a bit less stupid, even if I have a constructor just standing around doing nothing.

Haven't been able to get back to the game yet, but my current plan is to explore and claim the surrounding bunch of systems exploiting then for mining and research, whip up a few patrol fleets just in case people come looking, and then I'll jump on the colonisable worlds in fifty years or so. Thankfully I spawned right next to a system where an ancient space battle or something took place, so I've had one ship surveying that while the other went further afield. Need to check how my research is doing as well.

The early game is pretty calm and casual, so spend your time reading the anomaly texts and building the odd mining base. There's pretty little chance of anything eating your face immediately.

(I once had an unlucky game where a Wraith Leviathan came rampaging through my systems when I only had a fleet of 2k or so.)

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Originally Posted by Eldan

The early game is pretty calm and casual, so spend your time reading the anomaly texts and building the odd mining base. There's pretty little chance of anything eating your face immediately.

(I once had an unlucky game where a Wraith Leviathan came rampaging through my systems when I only had a fleet of 2k or so.)

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That's concerning.

I'm almost ready to call my game won: I am by far the strongest empire in the game (I can't rival anyone - every single other Empire that is not a Fallen one is "pathetic", and I've found all but one or two in the most distant corner), have like 40 planets colonized or in the process (having just managed to unlock the "change the prefered biome tech... now wondering if I should just go planet by planet applying it to all the citizens, since I keep sending ideal colonizers, only to see un-ideal ones pop up through immigration).

And yet, with 120 fleet, two won wars, another one coming that will be a cakewalk, and like 5 traditions trees fully completed, I only have a naval strength of maybe 4k. How early am I in the game? Or how badly is my naval strength when compared to random rampaging monster?

Grey Wolf

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Originally Posted by Caelestion

If you had only 30K fleets in 2400 or so, you were likely going to lose, whatever happened.

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So what should my fleet strength have been? I haven't played in over six months, maybe more, so the game's economy and balancing are completely different. I was judging myself in good shape as my 30k of combined fleet power (plus about 10k in captured monsters from a Dreadnought and a Young Drake) outstripped my combined Federation fleet strength of 20k, with every other non-FE in the galaxy having at most 10k fleet power to their name. The Crisis spawned with almost 100k of vanguards, and looks like 300-400k worth of main body fleets.

If they hadn't popped practically adjacent to my core world sectors, I'd have a shot by turtling until the Guardians and/or Sentinels woke up to help, as well as being able to refit my fleets for anti-Preythoryn loadouts. As-is I'm now defenseless bug food, but I want to learn for next time.

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Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c

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That's concerning.

I'm almost ready to call my game won: I am by far the strongest empire in the game (I can't rival anyone - every single other Empire that is not a Fallen one is "pathetic", and I've found all but one or two in the most distant corner), have like 40 planets colonized or in the process (having just managed to unlock the "change the prefered biome tech... now wondering if I should just go planet by planet applying it to all the citizens, since I keep sending ideal colonizers, only to see un-ideal ones pop up through immigration).

And yet, with 120 fleet, two won wars, another one coming that will be a cakewalk, and like 5 traditions trees fully completed, I only have a naval strength of maybe 4k. How early am I in the game? Or how badly is my naval strength when compared to random rampaging monster?

Grey Wolf

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Check the ship designer and make sure your ships are using all the latest tech. With that much fleet capacity, I would expect you to have much more fleet power. What weapons and shields/armor are you capable of using?

(The bright side is, if you have to upgrade all those ships, it won't appreciably increase your maintenance costs as far as I'm aware.)

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Originally Posted by CarpeGuitarrem

Check the ship designer and make sure your ships are using all the latest tech. With that much fleet capacity, I would expect you to have much more fleet power. What weapons and shields/armor are you capable of using?

(The bright side is, if you have to upgrade all those ships, it won't appreciably increase your maintenance costs as far as I'm aware.)

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I can’t be arsed to design ships so they are on the default “AI thinks best”. I literally can’t spend alloys fast enough so redesigns aren’t an economic issue. But I’m three times over the empire cap so tech costs are substantially higher than they could be. I might have to wait for the patch so the cap raisers are strengthened.

Grey Wolf

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Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c

I can’t be arsed to design ships so they are on the default “AI thinks best”. I literally can’t spend alloys fast enough so redesigns aren’t an economic issue. But I’m three times over the empire cap so tech costs are substantially higher than they could be. I might have to wait for the patch so the cap raisers are strengthened.

Grey Wolf

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Never let the AI design your ship. There's a fatal flaw in the current weighting system that literally drives them to put useless weapons. In this case, they put PD modules where they can. Why? Because PD modules have the highest theoretical DPS for the most part of the game, to counter missiles and strike crafts. Of course, being PD, they have absolutely abysmal range and are actually useless vs ships.

Turn off auto-design. For your own sake.

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Originally Posted by The Glyphstone

So what should my fleet strength have been? I haven't played in over six months, maybe more, so the game's economy and balancing are completely different. I was judging myself in good shape as my 30k of combined fleet power (plus about 10k in captured monsters from a Dreadnought and a Young Drake) outstripped my combined Federation fleet strength of 20k, with every other non-FE in the galaxy having at most 10k fleet power to their name. The Crisis spawned with almost 100k of vanguards, and looks like 300-400k worth of main body fleets.

If they hadn't popped practically adjacent to my core world sectors, I'd have a shot by turtling until the Guardians and/or Sentinels woke up to help, as well as being able to refit my fleets for anti-Preythoryn loadouts. As-is I'm now defenseless bug food, but I want to learn for next time.

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If you don't have at least 150k in fleet power by the time crisises spawn, then it's effectively game over. So yes, that's a good rough baseline to start with. Do not use the AI to gauge your power; they're pathetic in this patch. Like, more pathetic than even 2.1 standards, as they are unable to handle the new system effectively.

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Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c

I can’t be arsed to design ships so they are on the default “AI thinks best”. I literally can’t spend alloys fast enough so redesigns aren’t an economic issue. But I’m three times over the empire cap so tech costs are substantially higher than they could be. I might have to wait for the patch so the cap raisers are strengthened.

Grey Wolf

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Yeah, that’s your problem right there. Ship design is also extremely straight forward, and basically anything you can scrape together will be better than what the AI designer makes.

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Originally Posted by Grif

If you don't have at least 150k in fleet power by the time crisises spawn, then it's effectively game over. So yes, that's a good rough baseline to start with.

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If you also don’t mind being a little scummy about it, you can look up the weapons and defenses used by the different crises and retrofit your fleets accordingly when you get the initial warning for them. That helps make even lower scoring fleets do much better against them.

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Originally Posted by houlio

Yeah, that’s your problem right there. Ship design is also extremely straight forward, and basically anything you can scrape together will be better than what the AI designer makes.



If you also don’t mind being a little scummy about it, you can look up the weapons and defenses used by the different crises and retrofit your fleets accordingly when you get the initial warning for them. That helps make even lower scoring fleets do much better against them.

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I already habitually turn Crisis strength to 0.5x because I know the AIs will be pants-on-head useless when it comes to helping fight them, so scumming vs. their design comp is totally within reason.

This talk of the endgame crises reminds me of my own story of luck and nail-biting doom. This is from pre-LeGuin patch.

I also got the Scourge, which spawned in my backyard. (I was playing as the UN of Earth, minor story detail.) So they chew right through the defenses of Earth and my other starting worlds, and start invading them. Lemme tell you, it's downright depressing watching my planets' pops get marked for purging. After a disastrous clash with fleets far bigger for me to handle, I hike my ships back onto Paradiya, and wait for the inevitable doom. It...never comes. My only guess is that the Scourge couldn't see through the nebula in that area of space, and so the AI was scared of my potential fleet power? Anyhow, I huddle up, I rebuild, and...I start constructing a Gateway in Paradiya.

And that's when the long, slow, painful, amazing war of attrition began. Soon enough, both Fallen Empires started sending their fleets through the Gateways and into the backdoor of the Scourge. I started rebuilding fleets and regrouping them on Paradiya. And we began the grand campaign to retake Earth. And the other worlds, but that's not nearly as theatrical. It was cathartic like nothing else to blow the living daylights out of the infested worlds that were once my homelands.

Then I re-terraformed Earth et al after the crisis ended, and recolonized it, this time with a diverse array of species from my entire federation. (Previously, the silly humans had kept filling slots as soon as they opened, and I didn't want to bother resettling people just for narrative sake.) I got lucky, but wow did the whole thing feel like an incredible sci-fi epic.

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Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c

I can’t be arsed to design ships so they are on the default “AI thinks best”. I literally can’t spend alloys fast enough so redesigns aren’t an economic issue. But I’m three times over the empire cap so tech costs are substantially higher than they could be. I might have to wait for the patch so the cap raisers are strengthened.

Grey Wolf

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Yeah, I'll echo what the others are saying; Grif's explanation of "the AI sticks point-defense weapons on all your ships" would make a lot of sense and explain why your fleet power is so low.

What I usually do, and this isn't even heavily optimized, is to just take the default designs, turn off auto-design, replace the weapons with my highest-rated lasers and railgun-style weapons, and set up the best blend of shields and armor I have available. Then I check the auto-upgrade box, save the design, and never touch it again. Whenever I research a higher-level laser or a higher-level railgun, it'll automatically slot that into the design. Ditto for the armor/shields. It requires a small bit of extra work upfront, but it winds up doing a decent job of keeping fleet strength reasonably competitive.

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Originally Posted by Grif

Never let the AI design your ship.

Turn off auto-design. For your own sake.

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Originally Posted by houlio

Yeah, that’s your problem right there.

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OK, so it seems my problem is that I want the game to be enjoyable, but it is not. To be clear: I tried to design my own ships, once. But the interface is atrocious (by which I mean, I spend a lot of time squinting and trying to remember DPS, fire rate, distance and other numbers that are meaningless so I can compare 12 different variations of "shooty" to one another, while also trying my best to decide if "50% damage to shields" is better than "75% damage to hull" etc.), the amount of effort involved is excessively high and the rate at which upgrades are needed meant I spent way too much time fiddling with it for no good reason.

So if the issue is that I have to play the stupid redesign "game", I'm definitely calling this game done.

I'll keep an eye out for when they make the game playable for me. Thought 2.2 might have been it (I really loved the new trade system), but seems not quite there yet.

Thanks everyone,

Grey Wolf

You don't actually need to optimize optimize unless you're under-strength with an endgame crisis coming.

(And those will give you advanced warning. It goes:
The Ghost Signal - Design for Shields, Disruptors and Torpedoes/missiles. If you have Sapient Combat Computers, design to not use them.
The Coming Storm - Design for Point Defense, Armor, and Energy Weapons, especially Plasma.
The Other One (Whispering in the Void Or Something? I Never Get Unbidden Any More) - Design for Long Range and Cannons. Kinetic Artillery and Giga Cannons are best here.)

On the other hand if you notice that literally all of the ships the AI is designing are point defense and it's giving your battleships extra-large forward gun slots and then not actually giving them any extra-large forward guns, and it's forgetting to give your titans and ion cannon platforms their giant laserbeams, you can go ahead and correct that and give them real guns. You can't screw up too badly with a mix of cannons and lasers and a mix of shields and armor, assuming you've kept up on tech and your macro is solid.

Hey - is there any way these days for federations to be advantageous, at all? I've tried on several occasions, and it's always enormously annoying and pointless. If you're in command, it's essentially like being on your own, and when your 'partners' are in command, they suicide the way the AI is wont to do.

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Originally Posted by Kaptin Keen

Hey - is there any way these days for federations to be advantageous, at all? I've tried on several occasions, and it's always enormously annoying and pointless. If you're in command, it's essentially like being on your own, and when your 'partners' are in command, they suicide the way the AI is wont to do.

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I became associate with one because one of the members liked me, which gave me an in to commerce with another one that wouldn't have liked me without me being an associate, so that was nice.

But yeah, I don't full-join, no. Not in Stellaris, not in any game where occasionally the AI might try to stop me from playing the way I want with no recourse.

Grey Wolf

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Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c

OK, so it seems my problem is that I want the game to be enjoyable, but it is not. To be clear: I tried to design my own ships, once. But the interface is atrocious (by which I mean, I spend a lot of time squinting and trying to remember DPS, fire rate, distance and other numbers that are meaningless so I can compare 12 different variations of "shooty" to one another, while also trying my best to decide if "50% damage to shields" is better than "75% damage to hull" etc.), the amount of effort involved is excessively high and the rate at which upgrades are needed meant I spent way too much time fiddling with it for no good reason.

So if the issue is that I have to play the stupid redesign "game", I'm definitely calling this game done.

I'll keep an eye out for when they make the game playable for me. Thought 2.2 might have been it (I really loved the new trade system), but seems not quite there yet.

Thanks everyone,

Grey Wolf

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Trust me, I do the bare minimum of designing. As Guancyto said, you cannot go wrong just throwing in the latest in laser/railgun tech. I have never once tried to memorise the numbers, and frankly, I probably never will.

Optimized design only matter when you want to keep wars (and tedium) short, and usually versus endgame crisises. With normal AI, you basically can get away with anything, even with the auto-design AI, because their ships are also designed in the same manner. (Hence, you being able to dominate the galaxy with such a minuscule fleet.)

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Originally Posted by Kaptin Keen

Hey - is there any way these days for federations to be advantageous, at all? I've tried on several occasions, and it's always enormously annoying and pointless. If you're in command, it's essentially like being on your own, and when your 'partners' are in command, they suicide the way the AI is wont to do.

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Unfortunately no. Federations in Stellaris has always been annoying. They have tried multiple times to fix this, to not much avail. (First by forcing revolving leaderships, then now back to strongest power. Used to be able to call a war without voting, which made the AI drag you into pointless wars, then they added voting, which made the AI spam you when they're leader, etc.)

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Originally Posted by Kaptin Keen

Hey - is there any way these days for federations to be advantageous, at all? I've tried on several occasions, and it's always enormously annoying and pointless. If you're in command, it's essentially like being on your own, and when your 'partners' are in command, they suicide the way the AI is wont to do.

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There is a way, but you're not going to like it.

Play multiplayer and have your Federation buddies be your actual buddies. :smalltongue:

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Originally Posted by Grif

Trust me, I do the bare minimum of designing. As Guancyto said, you cannot go wrong just throwing in the latest in laser/railgun tech. I have never once tried to memorise the numbers, and frankly, I probably never will.

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So I should ignore all the side-techs that I get? Like the flamethrower thing and the blue wavy gas? Stick to just guns and lasers? And put about 50/50?

(honestly, my primary method to speed up wars is to improve the drive system. 90% of the war is me waiting for the ships to get to where they need to be)

Grey Wolf

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Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c

So I should ignore all the side-techs that I get? Like the flamethrower thing and the blue wavy gas? Stick to just guns and lasers? And put about 50/50?

(honestly, my primary method to speed up wars is to improve the drive system. 90% of the war is me waiting for the ships to get to where they need to be)

Grey Wolf

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You won't suffer much an efficiency loss, yeah. They're generalist weapons that will do damage no matter what. At the very least, you're not stuck with PD as your main guns, which is kinda the point. :smalltongue: (Although fair warning, against Awakened/Fallen Empires/Endgame Crises, prepare to take quite severe losses, because they usually pack XL guns, which hit hard, and they outrange the generalist weapons you get.)

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Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c

So I should ignore all the side-techs that I get? Like the flamethrower thing and the blue wavy gas? Stick to just guns and lasers? And put about 50/50?

(honestly, my primary method to speed up wars is to improve the drive system. 90% of the war is me waiting for the ships to get to where they need to be)

Grey Wolf

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Honestly, yeah. I definitely pretty much ignore them. I know that disruptors and plasma throwers et al have uses, but I can't be bothered to actually figure them out and then custom-design ships that utilize them specifically. I just stick lasers and railguns on ships, and eventually DOOM LASERS (the X-sized weapons) when I get them.

I've played around a bit with hangar components on battleships, but I don't understand what they're useful for. I just like the idea of making a Protoss Carrier. :smallbiggrin:

Specialist weapons are specialist. Plasma (flamethrower) will melt Prethoryns or anybody else without the sense to put shields on their ships. Disruptors (wavy gas) will mess up Contingency reasonably well (their shields and armor are very strong but their hull strength is garbage).

If you want to expend a minimum of effort solving the design problem, yeah, don't worry about tools other than Hammer 1 and Hammer 2.

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Originally Posted by Kaptin Keen

Hey - is there any way these days for federations to be advantageous, at all? I've tried on several occasions, and it's always enormously annoying and pointless. If you're in command, it's essentially like being on your own, and when your 'partners' are in command, they suicide the way the AI is wont to do.

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They changed it so that the most powerful member is now automatically the president, so at least they aren't going to do anything that bad anymore. I strongly suspect the next big DLC is going to revamp those systems anyway.

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Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c

So I should ignore all the side-techs that I get? Like the flamethrower thing and the blue wavy gas? Stick to just guns and lasers? And put about 50/50?

(honestly, my primary method to speed up wars is to improve the drive system. 90% of the war is me waiting for the ships to get to where they need to be)

Grey Wolf

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My fleets consist of a grand total of 2 designs: Corvettes with torpedoes, autocannons, and afterburners are my initial fleet and later my rapid response forces. And Battleships armed with the biggest, baddest guns they can fit form eventually the hammer to my corvettes' anvil. It's worked pretty well so far, and my thought process never went beyond comparing the raw DPS numbers, ignoring everything else.

Since 2.0 all my admirals start with gale-speed. It's mandatory.

Man, all this talk of ship design is making me want to get home and boot the game up again.

Although I know I'll fall back into my classic pattern of a bunch of small, fast ships to engage and stall the enemy while the big guns get into position. Probably won't use much in the way of specialist weapons, at least for my first run.

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Originally Posted by Narkis

They changed it so that the most powerful member is now automatically the president, so at least they aren't going to do anything that bad anymore. I strongly suspect the next big DLC is going to revamp those systems anyway.

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So long as they follow my lead, or don't do anything, I'm ok with them.

It's when I actually invest ressources in building a full federation fleet, and then as soon as they're in charge, they go suicide all my beautiful ships. That makes me ... basically not go federation tree until I have nothing left I actually want. And never use it.

Well I'm now essentially in alloy overdose, just building them up because there's nothing I want to spend them on yet. Not even a third science ship, it might be a little bit supoptimal but I'm finding two is enough for now.

I am having problems with energy, I just built so many mining stations that I started bleeding energy without noticing. I've started a colony just so I can get some generator districts running, so I can build stuff without bleeding energy again.

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Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard

Well I'm now essentially in alloy overdose, just building them up because there's nothing I want to spend them on yet. Not even a third science ship, it might be a little bit supoptimal but I'm finding two is enough for now.

I am having problems with energy, I just built so many mining stations that I started bleeding energy without noticing. I've started a colony just so I can get some generator districts running, so I can build stuff without bleeding energy again.

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You can always sell alloys on the internal market (third thing on the sidebar). Alternately, you can upgrade a starbase if you need a trade hub or another shipyard.

On the topic of Ship Designs, make sure you make atleast 6 different Titan Designs with each having a different Aura. If you have the same Titan Aura in the system, the effects don't stack, but if you have different Titan with each having a different aura, those effects do stack if they are in the same solar system. Just a tip.:smallsmile:

Say ... what does trade value actually do?! I'm sure I ought to now, but I haven't stumbled on it yet =)

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Originally Posted by Kaptin Keen

Say ... what does trade value actually do?! I'm sure I ought to now, but I haven't stumbled on it yet =)

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As far as I understand it, trade value is collected by starbases (normally they only collect within the system they're in, but you can add trade hub improvements to extend their range) and then sent via trade routes to the empire capital, where they're turned into energy credits. I'm only just learning about this myself, though, so I could be entirely wrong there!

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Originally Posted by factotum

As far as I understand it, trade value is collected by starbases (normally they only collect within the system they're in, but you can add trade hub improvements to extend their range) and then sent via trade routes to the empire capital, where they're turned into energy credits. I'm only just learning about this myself, though, so I could be entirely wrong there!

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You can also, via policy, change it from 1:1 TV to energy, to 1TV to 0.5 energy and 0.25 (or 0.1?) commercial goods or energy and and unity. (I think that's right, can't remember off the top of my head and don't have time to oroperly check.)

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Originally Posted by factotum

As far as I understand it, trade value is collected by starbases (normally they only collect within the system they're in, but you can add trade hub improvements to extend their range) and then sent via trade routes to the empire capital, where they're turned into energy credits. I'm only just learning about this myself, though, so I could be entirely wrong there!

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Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander

You can also, via policy, change it from 1:1 TV to energy, to 1TV to 0.5 energy and 0.25 (or 0.1?) commercial goods or energy and and unity. (I think that's right, can't remember off the top of my head and don't have time to oroperly check.)

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So in other words - to figure out whether it's at all worth it, you need to calculate the cost of starbase maintainance against the income the TV generates. I'm ... gonna call that slightly dubious? I'm not 100% certain what a starbase costs, but it's certainly not free, especially not if you equip it with defences. Hm.