Stellaris III: Shop at the Paradox Megacorp!

[Guancyto]

Of all the things that Stellaris is lacking, the most tragic loss is that the only Titan weapon is energy-based.

The second most tragic loss is that the Colossus weapons are energy-based, too.

(Give me my world-cracking giant cannon, pdx plz!)

[tonberrian]

Of all the things that Stellaris is lacking, the most tragic loss is that the only Titan weapon is energy-based.

The second most tragic loss is that the Colossus weapons are energy-based, too.

(Give me my world-cracking giant cannon, pdx plz!)

Technically the titan weapon isn't energy-based mechanically. It doesn't get improved by any of the Energy or Kinetic techs, actually. It's the same weapon throughout the entire game, perfect, unable to be improved.

[The Glyphstone]

So in theory, a humble Red Laser could, with sufficient endgame tech, outdamage a Titan cannon.

[Guancyto]

*math*

2334.

That's how many of each endgame tech (attack damage and attack speed) it takes to let a Small Red Laser outdamage a Perdition Beam.

So you know. If you're good at the game it's no big deal. Have you specialized your planets at all?

[factotum]

Technically the titan weapon isn't energy-based mechanically. It doesn't get improved by any of the Energy or Kinetic techs, actually. It's the same weapon throughout the entire game, perfect, unable to be improved.

It also doesn't have as severe a shield penalty as regular energy weapons do--only 25% reduced damage against them.

[tonberrian]

It also doesn't have as severe a shield penalty as regular energy weapons do--only 25% reduced damage against them.

Energy weapons run the gamut on shield penalties - void beams have 400% BONUS. And Disruptors, Cloud Lightning, and Arc Emitters are all energy and bypass all shields and armor.

[BannedInSchool]

Shoot! Shoot at the extra-dimensional horror. With your space ships. It's what the lasers are for!

And now the one Awakened Empire is doing the bit were a fleet sits on a planet waiting for the non-existent troops ships to show up. I guess it's better than attacking me, but I wish there were stopping the Unbidden in that part of the galaxy instead.

[Sian]

been trying to get back in a serious campaign for Stellaris after a reasonably long hiatus (before the planet rework), and tried a couple of times. But i keep getting war-Decced after some 20 years where I seemingly am unable to have enough fleet power, in spite of seemingly trying to focus as much as possible on alloy production. Anyone got an estimate as of how much alloy production i should have at which point to get through the initial sprawl without getting hemmed in by getting out expanded or acting as the loot piñata?

[KillianHawkeye]

been trying to get back in a serious campaign for Stellaris after a reasonably long hiatus (before the planet rework), and tried a couple of times. But i keep getting war-Decced after some 20 years where I seemingly am unable to have enough fleet power, in spite of seemingly trying to focus as much as possible on alloy production. Anyone got an estimate as of how much alloy production i should have at which point to get through the initial sprawl without getting hemmed in by getting out expanded or acting as the loot piñata?

I would say that building a second alloy building on your homeworld ASAP is usually a high priority. Try to have three before you need your first really big fleet. After that, it kinda depends on your economy, but if you need a lot more alloys in the mid-game you should probably set up a secondary planet dedicated to that.

Another advice is to start early and build up your fleet gradually whenever you have a few spare alloys. Also, upgrade your ships with new technology reasonably often. If you have a weak fleet, that encourages other empires to declare war on you. If your fleet is kept up, the AI will view you as less of a push-over and think twice before declaring war. You can get a general comparison on relative fleet strength and tech level on the diplomacy window when you talk to another Empire.

Don't neglect your naval capacity and fleet capacity limits, either. And don't forget to assign Admirals.

[sihnfahl]

You can get a general comparison on relative fleet strength and tech level on the diplomacy window when you talk to another Empire.

Or just open up the Contact list; it's part of the info screen, isn't it?

Fleet strength, technology level, economy, if you hover over the relative power.

[Silverraptor]

Yeah, keep everyone around equivalent. If they are superior or overwhelming, bribe them as much as you can to get them to like you (or atleast not hate you). Give into every demand they have until you can get stronger. You are their new butler until you are stronger.

[Anonymouswizard]

And when you are stronger it's time to lend that strength to taking over the galaxy! Even if you never seemed to get much in the way of engines or hyperdrives, meaning it takes your fleets three years to cross your empires and vassals.

Seriously, I'm currently reintegrating some rebels because getting my fleets where I want them is taking me about three years, but once this war is over I'll be completely set to move my fleets into the empire I'm actually interested in Vassalising. Especially as my massive amounts of Fleet Power means that nobody is actually willing to declare war on me, the only thing I actually have to worry about is a Fallen Empire awakening.

It's not a bad way to spend my first mid-game, but I can see what people mean about the AI not being the best. I now control nearly half the galaxy either directly or indirectly, and I don't think it'll be a century before I have the other half under my thumb.

[Silverraptor]

And when you are stronger it's time to lend that strength to taking over the galaxy! Even if you never seemed to get much in the way of engines or hyperdrives, meaning it takes your fleets three years to cross your empires and vassals.

Seriously, I'm currently reintegrating some rebels because getting my fleets where I want them is taking me about three years, but once this war is over I'll be completely set to move my fleets into the empire I'm actually interested in Vassalising. Especially as my massive amounts of Fleet Power means that nobody is actually willing to declare war on me, the only thing I actually have to worry about is a Fallen Empire awakening.

It's not a bad way to spend my first mid-game, but I can see what people mean about the AI not being the best. I now control nearly half the galaxy either directly or indirectly, and I don't think it'll be a century before I have the other half under my thumb.

I hear gateways work well in transporting your fleets across your massive empire.

[Guancyto]

Gateways are also great for preventing piracy - when no trade starbase is without its gateway, all the Trade Value goes directly to the homeworld and there's nothing for pirates to prey upon, and a single bastion can spread its piracy suppression through the entire gateway network!

[GameMaster_Phil]

Good morning,

I tried to install the Glavius mod, but it appears to be deprecated. I found StarNet AI as a replacement and installed Extra Ship Components 3.0. Can't really speak about the Components mod yet, but neat so far.

But holy crap, the AI mod is nice. AI gets more aggressive, more grateful for help, and is able to actually support an economy. And your vassals actually help you in a war! Highly recommended. As a side effect, I delegated one sector to AI-development and it is not a burning hellhole yet.

Any current mods to recommend?

[Corvus]

PDXCON has announced two new things coming to Stellaris.

The first will be in just a few days with the release of the Lithoids species pack - yup, we are finally getting rock people.

The pack has a bunch of new portraits, including a lithoid robot, a new voice advisor and new ship type design (which looks amazing), as well as new rules for lithoids.

The lithoids eat minerals, not food and get the lithoid trait, which is -25% pop growth, +50% army strength, +50 habitability and +50 leader lifespan. So they can colonise near anywhere but grow real slow. Not quite as good as robots but still very good.

The other announcement was the next expansion - Federations. It is an overhaul of the federation and diplomacy side of things, including multiple different types of federations (such as trade, research etc), voting of federation laws to customise them, a galactic community (sort of like a space UN), favours and envoys to help sway voting etc.

In addition there is also the new origins choice when creating races - life seeded and post-apocalyptic will become origins and join a whole range of other ones, including starting as a vassal of a fallen empire, starting on a relic world or ruined ring world or starting in habitats amongst others.

And two new mega constructions - a mobile starbase and a mega shipyard.

A fuller run down can be found here; https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/c...oids_infodump/

[KillianHawkeye]

Lithoids species pack - yup, we are finally getting rock people.

I am 110% stoked for this. The Silicoid Empire will rise again!!

[Silverraptor]

Yup! This is how I heard about the new dlc, and I'm so stoked!

[factotum]

While all this stuff sounds great, can't help but hope they actually fix some long-term issues with the game as well, like the late-game lag or the bug that's been around forever whereby your fleets simply don't fire back when they get into battle.

[Sian]

In addition there is also the new origins choice when creating races - life seeded and post-apocalyptic will become origins and join a whole range of other ones, including starting as a vassal of a fallen empire, starting on a relic world or ruined ring world or starting in habitats amongst others.

They've also explicitly said that Mechanist and Syncretic Evolution would become Origins

[Narkis]

Reading their traits, Lithoids seem pretty overpowered. Their closed equivalents, if you want to recreate them, are:

Slow Breeders	Growth Speed	-10%	-2 points
Extremely Adaptive	Habitability	+20%	4 points
Resilient	Army Damage	+20%	1 points
Venerable	Lifespan	+80	4 points

Adjusting the points-per-benefit to fit the Lithoid numbers we'd have something like:

Growth Speed:	-25%	-5 points
Habitability:	+50%	10 points
Army Health:	+50%	0.5 points
Lifespan:	+50	2.5 points

So Lithoids start with the equivalent of a ~7.5 point build, depending on how exactly you count army health to army damage. Even if equivalent traits were available, that wouldn't be possible to recreate with a normal empire. I may be underestimating how big of a drawback eating minerals is, but my initial thought is not very when you can simply make more mines instead of farms. I don't remember any game where I filled all the mineral districts in my empire.

[factotum]

I suspect we'll have to play them to figure out how balanced they are. Worth noting that them eating minerals does make around a third of the worlds you find much less useful, e.g. the ones with lots of farm districts.

[Artanis]

Reading their traits, Lithoids seem pretty overpowered. Their closed equivalents, if you want to recreate them, are:

Slow Breeders	Growth Speed	-10%	-2 points
Extremely Adaptive	Habitability	+20%	4 points
Resilient	Army Damage	+20%	1 points
Venerable	Lifespan	+80	4 points

Adjusting the points-per-benefit to fit the Lithoid numbers we'd have something like:

Growth Speed:	-25%	-5 points
Habitability:	+50%	10 points
Army Health:	+50%	0.5 points
Lifespan:	+50	2.5 points

So Lithoids start with the equivalent of a ~7.5 point build, depending on how exactly you count army health to army damage. Even if equivalent traits were available, that wouldn't be possible to recreate with a normal empire. I may be underestimating how big of a drawback eating minerals is, but my initial thought is not very when you can simply make more mines instead of farms. I don't remember any game where I filled all the mineral districts in my empire.

Eh...kinda. It's been a while since I poked around the official forums, but last I checked, growth speed was considered a REALLY big deal. Having -25% growth speed is going to dramatically reduce the number of pops you get, and thus the power of your empire. Meanwhile, I consider army stats to be some of the least relevant things in the entire game.

Having played a lot of robots, I can say that eating not-food is kinda...meh. It gets a little annoying when you find a planet with ALL THE FARMS that you can't make use of, but it was never really a big deal. However, the fact that they eat minerals specifically (as opposed to robots "eating" energy), along with presumably still having to funnel minerals into Consumer Goods (which robots don't), could put a real strain on your mineral income.

[Narkis]

I suspect we'll have to play them to figure out how balanced they are. Worth noting that them eating minerals does make around a third of the worlds you find much less useful, e.g. the ones with lots of farm districts.

I agree that we won't know for sure without playing. But my gut tells me we'll see nerfs in a patchnote soon.

Eh...kinda. It's been a while since I poked around the official forums, but last I checked, growth speed was considered a REALLY big deal. Having -25% growth speed is going to dramatically reduce the number of pops you get, and thus the power of your empire. Meanwhile, I consider army stats to be some of the least relevant things in the entire game.

Having played a lot of robots, I can say that eating not-food is kinda...meh. It gets a little annoying when you find a planet with ALL THE FARMS that you can't make use of, but it was never really a big deal. However, the fact that they eat minerals specifically (as opposed to robots "eating" energy), along with presumably still having to funnel minerals into Consumer Goods (which robots don't), could put a real strain on your mineral income.

Habitability is a massive, massive benefit though. Lithoids have every planet in the same category as their homeworld at 100%, and everything but Tomb Worlds at 70%. They can go ultra wide with very little investment. They're almost equivalent to robots in that regard, only without being a hive mind at game start, and growing organically instead of being assembled. I suspect this benefit more than outweighs the pop growth penalty.

[The_Snark]

Habitability is a massive, massive benefit though. Lithoids have every planet in the same category as their homeworld at 100%, and everything but Tomb Worlds at 70%. They can go ultra wide with very little investment. They're almost equivalent to robots in that regard, only without being a hive mind at game start, and growing organically instead of being assembled. I suspect this benefit more than outweighs the pop growth penalty.

On the other hand, machine empires get 100% habitability on everything, with a similar ability to completely ignore food/agricultural districts, plus leaders who are not just long-lived outright immortal. If you compare lithoids to robots, they don't seem to have many advantages? You get your choice of ethics rather than being locked into a hive-mind, that's potentially nice. You sustain your population with minerals rather than energy - that seems like an even trade at best. They grow like organics (only slower) instead of needing to be assembled, I don't know enough about the numbers to say who comes out ahead there.

I can't remember exactly what other bonuses/penalties machine empires get right now, because they keep changing stuff. But overall lithoids seem like a kind of halfway point between organic and machine empires.

[Sian]

Worth noting that Machine Civics is kinda poor (or prehaps rather, unimaginative and boring) outside of the uniques, and that you'll also get the bonuses available from Ethics...

[Guancyto]

Robots can't trade.

They make up for it in spades with the rest of their advantages, but a race with robot-like advantages that can simultaneously access the unending energy/unity smorgasbord that is Trade Value promises to be very strong.

[tonberrian]

UGH i can never get trade to work for me. I feel like i spend too much on corvettes patrolling to be worthwhile, and it's a pain to figure out where to set up trade nodes.

[The_Snark]

I tend to consider "doesn't have to bother with trade" more of a plus, yeah, since it means I don't have to care about piracy. And I've rarely run short of energy as a machine empire anyway. But I acknowledge that someone better at managing trad could probably get more out of it.

Robots are generally nice for when you don't want to deal with quite as much economic micromanagement. Food? Consumer goods? Trade? Habitability? Don't need to worry about any of that.

[Aresneo]

UGH i can never get trade to work for me. I feel like i spend too much on corvettes patrolling to be worthwhile, and it's a pain to figure out where to set up trade nodes.

Like so many other things the best way to deal with piracy is to build defense platforms in your systems with outposts. They help suppress piracy and help slow enemy advances when you get invaded.