Video Games

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed May 18, 2016 11:19 am

ah.

I am starting to suspect that you are simply not meant to win this game . .
Because as soon as i had taken up about 25-33% of a ring formed galaxy, the Unbidden appeared with several 20k fleets and started growing exponentially by simply wiping out whatever was around them . .
All the other AI, even the guy i attacked earlier, pleaded for me to come join their alliance and federation to deal with that new menace.
That is how i know i probably can not beat them either.
I have, so far, basically been bankroling the other races fleets, because i have 5k credits and get about 58 per time unit and 22k minerals and get 508 per time unit.
i have also tried to set down some military stations that are by now 2k each, but that pretty much immediately means i go bancrupt for some reason <.<

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed May 18, 2016 4:19 pm

This is starting to sound like copy-protection done to fuck up pirated copies. Like how Dark Souls 1 had the Black Phantoms everywhere and Batman: Arkham Asylum changed the gliding so you couldn't make it over one gap.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed May 18, 2016 4:43 pm

it's a regular steam copy.
i don't really pirate much anymore, especially not in terms of computer games, because i may end up wanting to play with mods and other people . .
yes, i know, sounds weird right? but it does happen from time to time!

Basically, the unbidden are doing war the simple way.
Move in, wipe out opposition, secure systems with bases, move on with thier territory expanded . . they do not actually settle the systems though, as far as i can tell . .
but that should have been how warfare for players should work as well.
because it fucking works!
the stupid warscore thing basically means you have to have individual wars for every little planet as far as i can tell, because you warscore goes down in the time it takes you to move on to the next target <.<

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Wed May 18, 2016 5:06 pm

Stahlseele wrote:it's a regular steam copy.
i don't really pirate much anymore, especially not in terms of computer games, because i may end up wanting to play with mods and other people . .
yes, i know, sounds weird right? but it does happen from time to time!

Basically, the unbidden are doing war the simple way.
Move in, wipe out opposition, secure systems with bases, move on with thier territory expanded . . they do not actually settle the systems though, as far as i can tell . .
but that should have been how warfare for players should work as well.
because it fucking works!
the stupid warscore thing basically means you have to have individual wars for every little planet as far as i can tell, because you warscore goes down in the time it takes you to move on to the next target <.<

You just need to git gud. I vassalized an entire three-nation alliance at once by crushing their doom stacks and occupying their homeworlds. The warscore doesn't go down that quickly.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed May 18, 2016 5:10 pm

hrm . . ok, so despite all your actually very helpfull tips in here, i am still too dumb to play the game properly ._.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed May 18, 2016 6:59 pm

Warscore does not decay over time in vanilla so far as I can tell, so if it does the timer is generous and blocked by controlling one of your wargoal planets. You are losing battles or having planets blockaded. There are mechanics for ticking warscore, but they do not seem to be used and if you're having a problem with that you need to seize control of your war targets and it will stop. Note that you can only specifically demand a planet be ceded or liberated if you've launched a ground invasion, but the AI surrender offers can include other planets and at 100 warscore they'll auto-surrender and give you everything in your list of demands. Warscore calc is a bit fucked; you get 0 warscore for a fleet engagement where the other fleet retreats no matter how many of their ships you blow up first, even if you blew up 90% of a fleet big enough to give you 30 warscore if you completely destroyed it.

The Unbidden are showing up because someone who isn't a Fallen Empire got their hands on jumpdrive tech and tore a hole in the universe, and they do not play by everyone else's rules. You need to find and collapse their portals.

The third Galactic Crisis is the Petryon invasion, when a bunch of biological monsters fly in from outside the galaxy and commence wrecking shit. The mechanics are bugged in vanilla at the moment but fixed by a mod and slated for patching in 1.1, but basically if they sieze a planet it cannot be retaken but must be burned (this is what's bugged; you apparently cannot burn them properly) and you need to find and capture their queen and then you can have them as pets.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed May 18, 2016 11:41 pm

interesting O.o
also, i have seen a rare tech that allows you to actually have the geiger alien xenomorphs as assault armies . .

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Wed May 18, 2016 11:43 pm

Stahlseele wrote:interesting O.o
also, i have seen a rare tech that allows you to actually have the geiger alien xenomorphs as assault armies . .

There's a "Morphogenic Field" manipulation which allows you to turn members of your species into unspeakable war-ready horrors. But it's actually not the best army type. The gene-modified soldiers are.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed May 18, 2016 11:49 pm

looking at the wiki, i haven't even seen half of the stuff that is listed there . .

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu May 19, 2016 2:52 pm

The fucking AI sucks!
just about 5 seconds before my armies would have taken over the home world of another race, they went and vassallized themselves to the only bigger race than me! who also happened to be my neighbour ON THE OTHER SIDE OF MY EMPIRE! where i had, due to ongoing conflict, no military at all at the time -.-

Furthermore:
Fuck the starting positioning crap!
Fuck it sideways! with a rusty spoon!
When i make a galaxy with 4 arms, and i make 3 AIs, i expect me to have an arm for myself entirely. Same for the 3 AI players.
Buut nooo! THEY ALL START IN MY ARM OF THE GALAXY!

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu May 19, 2016 2:57 pm

Huh? I think you either hit a bug, or the vassal was already being conquered by the bigger race before you began your war. AFAIK, you can't ask to become a vassal while the war is in progress.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu May 19, 2016 3:02 pm

So either a bug, or the ai cheating me out of my first real satisfactory victory ._.
I wish war worked like it does for the unbidden <.<
Anybody found a mod that does that yet?
I am reading up on a mod that at least allows the player to use the same war goals as fallen empires. Such as force to abandon planet. All enemy Pop leaves, but buildings remain intact.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu May 19, 2016 6:17 pm

Why would you want to do that? Set slavery and purge policies to allowed for xenos and enslave or genocide uncooperative pops. Or on the milder end of the scale, set resettlement to allowed and disperse them throughout your empire while bringing in replacements.

Even if you're playing sissy pacifists, though, your genetically enhanced clone legions can keep the revolts down until the conquest penalty wears off and it'll be faster than repopulating the planet. Pops are very slow to replace.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu May 19, 2016 9:49 pm

Next question:
i managed to bully and bribe my way to a vassal for the first time. yay go me!
now the timer on the integrate button has ticket over and . . i still can not integrade them to make us one empire instead of one empire and one vassal . . any idea what i am doing wrong?

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu May 19, 2016 9:56 pm

You need to wait ten years after first vassalizing them, then you need to spend a bunch of influence at a rate of 3 per month for however long it takes to reach the total for that particular vassal.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu May 19, 2016 10:10 pm

well, the timer did tick over.
and then it went from you need to wait untill date of integration to protectorates can not be integrated.
it never gave me any indication or means to spend influence on gobbling them up completely.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu May 19, 2016 10:18 pm

Oh, they became a protectorate. That's because their tech fell behind "enough" whatever that means exactly and they're no longer considered full vassals. They've got a big tech bonus to researching any techs you have and should theoretically catch up enough eventually.

Civilization uplifts are supposed to start as protectorates but don't for some reason, at least in my experience.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu May 19, 2016 11:10 pm

so . . they are too dumb to become a part of my empire? @.@

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat May 21, 2016 9:31 pm

Some things that either bother me or annoy me about Stellaris:

1) Energy is a maintenance cost so +2 Energy per... time unit? is amazing. But minerals are like SC minerals, where you never pay maintenance, and have periodic huge as fuck expenditures, so you want +50 or 100 or something weird like that.

2) I kind of wish any non energy weapon was viable at all...

3) there needs to be a way to delete things from the situation log (or an intuitive way?) because there are like 500 battle debris that I just do not care about at all because the act of micromanaging science ships to every one is worth less than leaving those same ships assisting research at home (not that they do that, because see 4). And when something I care about comes under all that, it's really annoying.

4) The survey stuff is not terrible at the beginning, because you don't have a lot going on, and few actual choices. But then... even mid game it becomes an annoying chore, because all your science vessels flee the second they see an enemy in the system, and lose all orders, so you have to order everything again. And of course, there are so many goddam planets to survey, and you definitely can't afford to churn out 30 ships like you can with everything else, because each ship has to have a leader to survey.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat May 21, 2016 9:47 pm

There's a button on the info panel thing for science ships that lets you switch them from evade (run like hell) to passive (ignore hostile fleets). Then you need to micro them when there is a fleet in a system, of course, but it's very good if you have hyperdrive and want to skip a system and move on to the next or if you want to research battle debris while your fleet intercepts incoming threats.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat May 21, 2016 10:07 pm

name_here wrote:There's a button on the info panel thing for science ships that lets you switch them from evade (run like hell) to passive (ignore hostile fleets). Then you need to micro them when there is a fleet in a system, of course, but it's very good if you have hyperdrive and want to skip a system and move on to the next or if you want to research battle debris while your fleet intercepts incoming threats.

This is a terrible idea. I guarantee you'll miss the notification and lose a science ship.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat May 21, 2016 10:10 pm

I don't even want the battle debris, I just want it to go away

. Obviously a big part of that is that who gives a shit about projectile weapons, so engineering XP might actually be the least valuable (only for Power plants, and then like, hull integrity?).

Oh also:

The Next One) FUCKING SPECIAL RESOURCES! I have literally never found one ever. I can't terraform, or build special buildings, because I literally never find these things. Are they that fucking rare? Do you have to resurvey every planet after you research the tech?

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sat May 21, 2016 10:18 pm

Things about stellaris that took me more play to discover that I'm annoyed with...

1) The economy is stupid tipping point swingy all over the place. A tip here a tip there and your energy is fucking CRASHING. And robots? Don't start building fucking robots. The game economy hates you for building robots.

2) And fuck you no I shouldn't have to periodically put ALL of my empire into auto-manage sectors for optimal cost blow out reduction. My core planets SHOULD be able to be at my core planet number plus a bunch of non-colony mining and research station systems. Also. Isn't the core planet number just a TEENSY bit stingy. You know. All things considered?

3) Stagnant Ascendancies should damn well let themselves be known sooner at a further distance. All bar one I have EVER encountered has only shown itself after I placed a colony basically IN their territorial border, not even in the buffer that isolationists want, IN their fucking border itself. Then BAM Stagnant Ascendancy RIGHT ON TOP OF YOU. Not cool game, not cool as the standard way these fuck you level empires appear. They should announce themselves earlier with room to spare.

4) Fuck you no tolerance borders appearing out of nowhere fuck you your exploration and TOTALLY fuck up the constant "go to six different places" science ship missions. Yes I know they have for some reason only NOW realised this and intend to change it... like months from now or something. But it still fucking sucks and shouldn't have happened.

5) Fuck you swingy bullshit diplomacy. Oh hey, you have barely net green diplomatic rating. OK so you can bribe several hundred units of something to get access for your research ships to that fucking mission. Oh but wait you have BARELY net red diplomatic rating, oh dear, sucks to be you, civilian ship access in barely net red is MINUS ONE THOUSAND chance of agreement (if not infinity disguised as a maxed out minus 1000?). So its NOT HAPPENNING. Burn a limited embassy on it and WAIT UNTIL THE END OF TIME ITSELF. Oh wait, look a barely green rating again? No wait, that guys bugged he just NEVER ANSWERS YOUR POSITIVELY RATED DIPLOMACY MESSAGE. No access for you. AGAIN.

6) Bugged missions. OH GOD SO MANY OF THE EXPLORATION MISSIONS JUST BUG OUT. Even when they DON'T bug out they are so inconsistently programmed that sometimes they are visible automatically as exploration points of interest, sometimes they are only visible like that zoomed in on systems, sometimes you need to find them in the log and select "Track On Map", sometimes once they are visible on the galaxy map you can right click research from there, but sometimes you cannot, and sometimes they are JUST BROKEN.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat May 21, 2016 10:43 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:4) Fuck you no tolerance borders appearing out of nowhere fuck you your exploration and TOTALLY fuck up the constant "go to six different places" science ship missions. Yes I know they have for some reason only NOW realised this and intend to change it... like months from now or something. But it still fucking sucks and shouldn't have happened.

5) Fuck you swingy bullshit diplomacy. Oh hey, you have barely net green diplomatic rating. OK so you can bribe several hundred units of something to get access for your research ships to that fucking mission. Oh but wait you have BARELY net red diplomatic rating, oh dear, sucks to be you, civilian ship access in barely net red is MINUS ONE THOUSAND chance of agreement (if not infinity disguised as a maxed out minus 1000?). So its NOT HAPPENNING. Burn a limited embassy on it and WAIT UNTIL THE END OF TIME ITSELF. Oh wait, look a barely green rating again? No wait, that guys bugged he just NEVER ANSWERS YOUR POSITIVELY RATED DIPLOMACY MESSAGE. No access for you. AGAIN.

These too. I literally went to war with a bunch of pacifists really really really far away from me and turned them into a protectorate, because they had one planet in one system, and I started the game with a quest that "Your planet is going to explode! Scout these planets to see if you can stop it." So I sent Scientists really far away to scout planets, but because I contacted them and researched the contact, it declared that I couldn't even complete my mission because it was inside their territory. And it was literally on the very edge of the bubble created by their single fucking planet.

So I flew my ships in and literally conquered their home planet to make them a protectorate.

It was actually really easy, because their only weapons were nuclear missiles. It was cute. My point defense shot down every one before they hit me.

Meanwhile, I sent my ship back into the area they couldn't even see to research the planet.

I had to go to war, because when I tried to negotiate, they had a rating of +93, and civilian access was -1000, so I offered them every single thing I could, total access, a one way promise to go to war with anyone that goes to war with them, and literally handing them all my minerals and energy, and it still stayed at -1000.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat May 21, 2016 10:46 pm

Kaelik wrote:I don't even want the battle debris, I just want it to go away . Obviously a big part of that is that who gives a shit about projectile weapons, so engineering XP might actually be the least valuable (only for Power plants, and then like, hull integrity?).

Oh also:

The Next One) FUCKING SPECIAL RESOURCES! I have literally never found one ever. I can't terraform, or build special buildings, because I literally never find these things. Are they that fucking rare? Do you have to resurvey every planet after you research the tech?

Either you bugged out or are terribly unlucky. I found quite a few of them (though there were only two planets with Zro in the entire galaxy). Do you have the detailed view box ticked on on the map screen?
However, since sector mechanic is the worst, sectors will never trade resources with each other. Any special resource buildings you build must have the special resource located in the same sector they are in.