Stellaris

Byr

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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That was added the patch after Trump tweeted it.

Ive got my start up to being as fast as it was before the patch. Typicalling aiming for a +225-250 mineral income within 30 years. The problem I run into is how much influence it takes to conquer your first neighbours. Before the dlc I would start snowballing out of control at this point but I just cant take someone over quick enough anymore. Next Im going to try vassalizing/tributarying my first neighbour.
 

velk

Trakanon Raider
2,542
1,130
Is it worth getting Utopia, Leviathans or Synthetic Dawn at this point? Or should I just skip straight to Apocalypse?

Depends on what you want out of them:
Synthetic Dawn adds robot empires and mechanics, no benefit unless you like robots and want to play as or against them.
Leviathans adds lots of raid boss type encounters for mid-game, with associated perks and technologies etc for defeating them as well as assorted neutral factions and storyline stuff.
Utopia adds some high end traits and megastructures like Ringworlds and Dyson Spheres to make the late game more entertaining.
Apocalypse adds some bigger but very limited ship classes ( Titans are 3 per empire, Colossus is just one )

None of them change base gameplay that much ( Utopia used to, but they made the biggest mechanic changes baseline in 2.0 ), so if you aren't sure if you'd like the game, I'd just get the base game and try it out. If you already have base game you can probably judge if the content they have meets your interests.
 

Loser Araysar

Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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Whats up with this pathing? Fighting a war and instructed my battle fleet to go from Debbux to Onab and this is the route chosen. This is fucking retarded.


upload_2018-2-27_19-28-17.png
 

Byr

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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hard to comment with hyperlanes turned off on the map.
 
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Loser Araysar

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War is completely unplayable now. The White peace mechanic that is forced on you is ridiculous. Planet invasions are like 5x as hard now. Orbital bombardment doesnt even seem to work anymore. Once planetary damage gets to 100%, its just resets back to 0% and starts all over again. I just had a 40 Transport Army with a general defeated by like 13 defending units
 
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Byr

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Looks like its avoiding his space stations for some reason. Its using the passive AI for a fleet in aggressive stance.
 

cyrusreij

Trakanon Raider
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There is an FTL blocker in the way. Until you take both the station and the planet in Lythorius you cannot pass through
 
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velk

Trakanon Raider
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There is an FTL blocker in the way. Until you take both the station and the planet in Lythorius you cannot pass through

This - it's the little magnet symbol on the system, it means the planet has an FTL inhibitor, you'll need to either conquer the planet or destroy it before you can pass.
 

velk

Trakanon Raider
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1,130
War is completely unplayable now. The White peace mechanic that is forced on you is ridiculous. Planet invasions are like 5x as hard now. Orbital bombardment doesnt even seem to work anymore. Once planetary damage gets to 100%, its just resets back to 0% and starts all over again. I just had a 40 Transport Army with a general defeated by like 13 defending units

That one was non-obvious to me at first, but the health bar on the planet is for the current bombing target, when it hits zero, that targets is destroyed and it starts bombing something else. For invading only a few of your guys can attack at one time, that's the 'combat width' you can see on the planet defenses. In addition to this, the defender can get huge bonuses from buildings like bunkers and fortresses - you absolutely have to destroy those through bombing before invading ( it will target them first when bombing ). Also pay attention to the types of race is on the planet - all soldiers are not equal, some races have enormous advantages in planetary combat.
 

Loser Araysar

Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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This - it's the little magnet symbol on the system, it means the planet has an FTL inhibitor, you'll need to either conquer the planet or destroy it before you can pass.

so just taking over a starbase is not enough? i need to land troops on a planet in the system that has an FTL inhibitor?
 

Loser Araysar

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That one was non-obvious to me at first, but the health bar on the planet is for the current bombing target, when it hits zero, that targets is destroyed and it starts bombing something else. For invading only a few of your guys can attack at one time, that's the 'combat width' you can see on the planet defenses. In addition to this, the defender can get huge bonuses from buildings like bunkers and fortresses - you absolutely have to destroy those through bombing before invading ( it will target them first when bombing ). Also pay attention to the types of race is on the planet - all soldiers are not equal, some races have enormous advantages in planetary combat.

alright that makes more sense. still gay though!
 

khorum

Murder Apologist
24,338
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Yeah. The inhibitors are pretty expensive upkeep too. Actually, turtling with more than a handful of citadels gets prohibitively expensive. I got into a mid game cash/mins crisis after updating a few key citadels with ion beam platforms. Had to downgrade/sell off a ton of shit just to get into black. The costs aren’t strictly from the starbases either, it’s the maintenance costs of the attached defense platforms. Also even after you downgrade a citadel all the way down to an outpost their defense platforms are STILL THERE accruing upkeep costs and you need to manually disband the platforms in the outpost’s defense tab.
 
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LachiusTZ

Rogue Deathwalker Box
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so just taking over a starbase is not enough? i need to land troops on a planet in the system that has an FTL inhibitor?

"Fully occupy"

Yeah. The inhibitors are pretty expensive upkeep too. Actually, turtling with more than a handful of citadels gets prohibitively expensive. I got into a mid game cash/mins crisis after updating a few key citadels with ion beam platforms. Had to downgrade/sell off a ton of shit just to get into black. The costs aren’t strictly from the starbases either, it’s the maintenance costs of the attached defense platforms. Also even after you downgrade a citadel all the way down to an outpost their defense platforms are STILL THERE accruing upkeep costs and you need to manually disband the platforms in the outpost’s defense tab.

Shit that's good to know, and will likely be patched.

The inhibitors are applied (I think?) to all bases once you have the tech.
 

Loser Araysar

Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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Once i figured out the "new" planetary invasions i stomped the entire galaxy in the next 3 hours and won the game. Didnt even get a chance to finish building my Colossus
 

Onigen

Golden Knight of the Realm
163
232
Beta patch out yesterday on steam, including some fixes to war exhaustion. I'll put the notes on a spoiler 'cause there's a lot of them

#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.0.2 ###########################
#################################################################

###################
# Feature
###################
* You are no longer forced to make peace at 100% war exhaustion, instead your Influence and Unity monthly gains are reduced to 0 and a happiness penalty is applied to all Pops until you make peace
* Occupation no longer contributes to War Exhaustion, but instead is displayed as a separate factor in war overview, to make it clearer what you need to do in order to enforce demands
* War Overview no longer attempts to calculate a winner in battles, but simply displays war exhaustion gained by each side
* Marauder raiding fleets are now neutral to everyone except their intended target so they won't wreck everything in their path when they go a-viking
* Fixed Gestalt Consciousness empires using Trading Hub starbase module and Offworld Trading Company starbase building, they now use Resource Reprocessor and External Acquisitions Area (name/flavor difference only)
* It is now possible to test-fire a World Cracker on habitable (but uninhabited) planets in your space
* Added tier 5 Dark Matter thrusters that can only be gained by scavenging Fallen Empire ships
* Transcendent Learning ascension perk has been added to the game, and it increases leader level cap and empire leader cap
* Megastructure resources are now affected by country modifiers
* Ship sizes now have a default combat behavior and will prefer computers of that type if auto-generated (Picket for Destroyers, etc)
* Added some more logic for making sure ship auto-complete doesn't switch your desired combat role
* Space stations now use the country_mult modifier instead of the tile_mult modifier and no longer get the tile_add modifier
* When a new ruler is elected, the previous ruler that was voted out of office (if alive) will now attempt to take over the job that was opened up by the newly elected ruler, assuming the leader class matches. Back to the mines, Mr. Ex-President.

###################
# Balance
###################
* Reduced War Exhaustion per ship and army killed
* Militarist ethics now gain -10%/-20% war exhaustion gain instead of army damage bonus
* Technologies that reduce claim cost now also decrease war exhaustion gain
* You now get war exhaustion a bit slower while fighting a Liberation War
* Increased energy upkeep of all Starbase sizes by +1. Outposts now cost 1 energy maintenance
* Base unity income increased from 1 to 2
* Base tradition cost increased from 56 to 100 (does not affect the cost increase from number of traditions)
* Tradition unity cost per system reduced from 2% to 1%
* Corvette/Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship build speed techs now also reduce build cost of that ship type by 5%
* Habitats now have their own fortress building (Security Zone) that is effective at unrest reduction but provides only a few defense armies and no FTL inhibitor or bombardment protection
* It is now possible to mod away serviles & pre-sapient traits if you have completed biological ascension
* Egalitarian ethics effect on faction influence increased from +15%/30% to +25%/50%
* Corvette Focus trait now requires Destroyers tech (as it's hardly a 'focus' if it's the only ship type possible)
* Scout admiral trait reduced from 20% to 10% speed (so Gale-Speed is faster)
* Admiral now always dies when last ship in fleet is destroyed and there are no disengaged ships to move to
* Drone Mining Lasers are now a bit worse against hull and a bit better against shields
* Broken and shattered planets spawned on galaxy generation can now have deposits
* Thrusters now cost different amounts of minerals and give different amounts of evasion based on which ship size they are for (corvette thrusters are cheaper and add more evasion, etc)
* Reduced cost of hiring Marauder leaders to 2000 energy
* Having an enclave in your border now gives +1 opinion per year instead of +1 opinion per month, as the latter made all other opinion boosts rather meaningless
* Increased opinion bonuses for ally of ally and mutual rivals
* Increased opinion penalties of allying rivals
* Tributary wargoal is now a bit easier to enforce
* Combat computers now give evasion_mult instead of evasion_add
* Asteroid Sighted can no longer pop after the first 50 years, to avoid it happening in large sprawling empires with limited time to respond
* First pirate event now tells you the system where they are based
* Increased time limits of all Special Projects requiring a ship in orbit (new minimum is 3 years)
* Federation fleet is now limited to an absolute max naval capacity of 500
* It is now possible to get the gateway activation tech if you know any other empire that has the technology
* When a Federation enforces ideology on an empire, that empire now gets opinion boosts with the entire federation

# Civics
* Citizen Service civic now also increases unity output from fortress and strongholds by 1
* Aristocratic Elite civic now gives +2 leader cap and +2 governor max level instead of +4 leader cap and -50% leader recruitment cost
* Distinguished Admiralty civic increases leader cap by +2
* Driven Assimilators now have the 'Assimilate' total war CB
* Purifier and anti-Purifier CBs no longer require neighboring status (was confusing and unintuitive to players)
* Nationalistic Zeal civic now gives -10% war exhaustion gain instead of +1 rivalries
* Free Haven now gives xeno migration attraction instead of migration attraction

# Traditions
* Expansion adoption effect now gives +50% colony development speed (down from +100%)
* Galactic Ambition expansion tradition now gives -20% starbase upkeep instead of +2 starbase capacity

# Ascension Perks
* Shared Destiny effect on integration cost reduction changed from -50% to -75%
* Nihilistic Acquisition can now be taken by purifier-style empires

# Edicts
* Drone Campaign food cost increased from 100 to 500
* Learning Campaign food cost increased from 50 to 500
* War Drone Campaign food cost increased from 50 to 500
* Patrol Drones planetary edict is now available to all Gestalt Consciousness-empires

###################
# UI
###################
* Added building descriptions to traditions that unlock buildings
* Starbase upgrade cost and Module/Building building cost now properly show modifiers affecting them
* Renamed Growth Speed to Pop Growth Speed to be clearer
* Added the correct icons for megastructures and starbases in the control-groups UI
* Contacts view has been improved
* Government view now displays ruler & heir skill stars
* Heir tooltip no longer displays skill effects (as heir has no skill effects until they become ruler)
* Clicking your ruler or heir name in Government View will now allow you to change their name and/or title
* Galaxy resources now show the amount actually collected, and the tooltips give you the list of applied modifiers
* Resource modifier no longer show decimal values
* Removed pointless decimals for starbase caps, planet caps, naval command cap, and naval capacity
* Added the country resources add and multipliers modifiers to the budget tab
* Improved how the speed modifiers are shown in the starbase upgrade time tooltip
* Added a more clear warning that deleting templates will also disband ships
* Fixed several instances of a Status Quo peace being called a White Peace in peace messages
* Alert for High War Exhaustion is now more helpful
* Traits that are already present in species can now always be re-added while in process of modifying template
* Aura tooltip now differentiates between system-wide friendly auras and fleet-only friendly auras
* Changed the current value of template designs in fleet manager to show the current amount of ships including ones that only are scheduled for retrofit

###################
# AI
###################
* AI now activates some of its anti-crisis logic when under threat from a mid-game crisis like the Great Khan
* AI no longer picks shared destiny unless it has at least one vassal
* Added separate definitions for mid-game and end-game crisis factions, with slightly different AI logic to respond to them
* Fixed another cause of AI endlessly inviting player to the same war

###################
# Modding
###################
* Added a country modifier for war exhaustion gain (when multiple countries are involved on the same side in a war, the averaged modifier of all of them is used)
* add_threat effect now once again takes country scope (generates threat scaled towards whole target empire)

###################
# Bugfix
###################
* Fixed system/colony tradition costs being multiplied on each other instead of additive
* Fixed additional potential out of sync issues in multiplayer
* Afterburners can no longer be installed on defense platforms, as lovely as it was to uselessly vent fuel in to space as a gesture of contempt to environmentalists
* Deep Space Black Site now requires you to own a planet in the system, instead of erroneously using the same trigger as trading hub
* All Satrapies are now properly liberated when the Horde fractures into the Diadochi
* Fixed bug where the planet class transition effect started too late
* Fixed adopting the Domination tradition tree not unlocking certain diplomatic actions for eligible Machine Empires
* Fixed auto-exploring science ships doubling up (exploring the same system simultaneously)
* Fixed a CTD. Could sometimes try to merge invalid fleets.
* No longer possible to hold Casus Belli on non-empire factions such as Crises and Marauders
* Galactic core visibility is now lifted when you explore all systems adjacent to it, instead of just one
* Fixed empires not being able to see primitives in other empires' space due to lack of comms spread
* Ships merging in to fleets directly from stations now behave properly
* Fixed scientists not dying when their science ship was destroyed in battle
* Fixed raiding stance not having bombardment graphics on planet being raided
* Fixed tooltips for status column in contacts view to reflect accurately what they represent
* Fixed raiding not always abducting pops when it should, due to bad habitability calculation
* Fixed raiding stance not having the correct pop limit (would abduct at >6 instead of >4 pops)
* Fix a freeze when trying to upgrade technologies more than their max levels
* Fixed Determined Exterminators starting with a farm building
* Construction is now paused for starbases in combat
* Fixed force ethics not correctly calculating a government for the defeated empire's new ethics
* Enigmatic fortress now properly disables even after saving and loading the game (status was not properly saved)
* Iron Fist governor trait is no longer available for Hive Minds, making it disabled for all types of Gestalt Consciousness-empires
* Fixed being unable to land armies on a colony seized by Mutants
* Fix bug where queued items wasn't moved to the new fleet design when a design upgrade becomes available
* Fixed Slaving Despots being far too common an AI personality because of wrongly scripted weights
* Disables the bypass cache when calculating the distance to capital modifier, hopefully solving an OOS issue
* Fixed a crash when quitting to the main menu in the middle of a war
* It should no longer be possible to try to spawn a star system with an invalid star class
* Fix crash when comparing the relative power of a country that has no power
* Prevented fake country from trying to initialize a technology module it does not have for some reason
* UNE now uses correct name list when spawned in Commonwealth games
* Fixed revolting slaves greedily snatching the capital planet when they're not supposed to
* No longer possible to force ideology on Fallen Empires
* Fixed Omega Theory tech sometimes not appearing at the end of the Horizon Signal chain
* Fixed an event-spawned science ship not getting a hyperdrive
* Fixed planet unrest modifiers not being properly recalculated
* Fixed Ascension Theory tech not being available to players who do not own Apocalypse
 

Aaron

Goonsquad Officer
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Once i figured out the "new" planetary invasions i stomped the entire galaxy in the next 3 hours and won the game. Didnt even get a chance to finish building my Colossus
Care to elaborate?
 

LachiusTZ

Rogue Deathwalker Box
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How did you lay claim to systems with colossus ascendancy but no actual colossus? Or did you win with another mechanic?
 

Zajeer

Molten Core Raider
544
448
Beta patch out yesterday on steam, including some fixes to war exhaustion. I'll put the notes on a spoiler 'cause there's a lot of them
I downloaded the beta patch and have been playing it over the weekend. Imo it fixes a bunch of silly bugs that needed fixing quickly and the game feels much better after this update.

The starbases costing energy didn't really faze me - I go down the expansion tree 100% of the time for cheaper starbase influence costs, and now the tradition that adds starbases was changed to reduce starbase maintenance, which is great. I'm playing a Spiritual/MegaCorp (Roleplaying as space lizardman Joel Osteen) and have been finding myself flush with energy to do everything I want.
 
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Aaron

Goonsquad Officer
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Same, the beta patch is a must. Though I do think they need to do a bit more balancing with regards to the costs of owning shitty systems. You need to claim everything just to keep pirates at bay (and because for fucks sake PDI games are all about painting the earth/space with your colour!) but it feels such a waste with a shitty system with 2 research and nothing else in. Again, games like these should not penalise you (at least not too much) for expanding.