Paradox Grand Strat meets Sci-Fi 4X; Boners Explode

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 2:33 pm #171341

Bottom post of the previous page:

Once more for JOIN THE GROUP

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SpessFriends

There's stuff you can do via research options and governmental postures to mitigate all kinds of stuff like ethos divergence and xenophobia. Typically the issue there is that, while neat, you're spending time correcting your faults when another empire would be adding new improvements.

Venticular · Post by **Venticular** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 3:15 pm #171346

>research jump drives
>create a gigantic border fleet next to your neighbors
>create a fast and almost maintenance free jump ship
>declare war on neighbor
>decimate their invasion attempts, but don't invade them
>use the jump ship and jump all over the enemy's territory
>open a rift to another dimension
>laugh as your enemies are vaporized
>laugh as you decimate the other dimensioners
>laugh as you get all the unique tech
>laugh as you conquer the universe

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 3:20 pm #171347

Do you even need to bother with the declaration of war?

Just repeated "test flights" of your dimensional-tearing space ship inside friendly territory should go over fine unless the other player notices what you're ACTUALLY doing.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 4:06 pm #171352

There will probably be consequences for ripping the fabric of reality a new one on your ally's doorstep

Venticular · Post by **Venticular** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 4:09 pm #171353

The declaration of war is to draw their fleets to your borders, where you rip them to shreds, while the jump ship tears a hole through dimensions and the extra dimensional creatures rape their empire that they can't defend because their fleets are dead. Also I doubt any player or AI empire will be very willing or happy to accept any kinds of flights in their space.

only two more weeks lads

EDIT: this thread needs more memes

Skorvold · Post by **Skorvold** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 4:54 pm #171359

I'm sure some cancerous funnies of our own will develop when we finally play.

Venticular · Post by **Venticular** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 5:29 pm #171364

save the multiplayer game related memes for the steam group, this is for general stellaris discussion
also because the game hasn't been released yet, I had to release some emergency placeholder memes

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 5:41 pm #171365

Venticular wrote:Also I doubt any player or AI empire will be very willing or happy to accept any kinds of flights in their space.

True Space Friends agree to that open border pact.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 2:39 am #171510

The whole focal point of that plan is hoping your ship tears a hole in the fabric of reality.

What if it never does?

starmute · Post by **starmute** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 8:31 am #171561

An0n3 wrote:
Venticular wrote:Also I doubt any player or AI empire will be very willing or happy to accept any kinds of flights in their space.
True Space Friends agree to that open border pact.

> Open borders to anon
> Anon's fleet swoops in
> Anon declares war
> You are forced into a humiliating peace
> Cluck slave for anon

Rigghhtttt

Venticular · Post by **Venticular** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 10:21 am #171572

Steelpoint wrote:The whole focal point of that plan is hoping your ship tears a hole in the fabric of reality.

What if it never does?

I guess if it never does for like 20 years of jumping around, you can just go "fuck it' and invade them.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 10:57 am #171573

Of course we have no idea how these extra-dimensional invaders are triggered via these super jump drives.

It can't be on occasional use since from what we've seen all the Fallen Empires use these SJump Drives without consequence.

Who knows what triggers it, it can range from a flat low %chance on every use, or the more powerful you upgrade these Jump Drives the more likely you risk triggering something bad.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 11:02 am #171575

is it one of the late game disasters? if so you probably can't trigger it until it actually is the late game

Venticular · Post by **Venticular** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 12:34 pm #171583

All red, or "dangerous" techs, can cause late game disasters, such as Jump (or Yump, as said in the stream) Drives or sentient AIs. Not sure what exactly triggers them, could be certain factors with how strong the strongest non fallen empire is.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 12:52 pm #171585

Its likely a combination of how widespread the technology is (one or two empires using Super Jump Drives versus Everyone using them) and how possibly how much technology related to it is researched.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:19 pm #171588

starmute wrote: > Open borders to anon
> Anon's fleet swoops in
> Anon declares war
> You are forced into a humiliating peace
> Cluck slave for anon

Rigghhtttt

You'll learn to enjoy it. Plenty have.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:20 pm #171589

The counter to that strat is the formation of the "Fuck An0n3 Federation".

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:21 pm #171590

Steelpoint wrote:The counter to that strat is the formation of the "Fuck An0n3 Federation".

That already exists http://singulo.io

Venticular · Post by **Venticular** » Wed Apr 27, 2016 2:30 am #171839

also even if the game flops (which it might (but probably won't)), already there is talk

meme that is slightly out of context
am I memeing right?
I need more memes I'm sorry

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:30 pm #172126

The 40k mod looks interesting but its still early days.

I managed to scounge up enough money from a combination of my wiki award winnings and selling useless items off to the steam market to get Stellaris without having to spend any of my money. So I'm set.

Also there's some interesting news. Next week (Wednesday n Thursday about) there's going to be a bunch of multiplayer streams in anticipation for the upcoming launch, and at minimum I can tell that Quill18 has a high chance of hosting one of these streams. So that's some more Stellaris potential content to get a look at.

Also from the Blorg stream, Federations are pretty good. While you lose automony over your own foreign affairs, but one of the benefits (aside from everything else) is that all border friction you have with any other Federation members is removed utterly, in the stream this gave the Blorg a near 150+ boost to their relationship with one of their allies since they no longer were really pissed with the border friction.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 7:58 pm #172179

Did they stream today? I thought they said last week they weren't going to.

Venticular · Post by **Venticular** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 8:27 pm #172183

they did

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 10:49 pm #172207

God dammit! I missed it!

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Fri Apr 29, 2016 12:39 am #172233

You can always watch their vod on their channel.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Fri Apr 29, 2016 12:45 am #172235

ive been slowly making my way through the adventures of Blorg, the original Space Friends

it's basically a tutorial for the game so watch it if you haven't already

Fri Apr 29, 2016 6:31 am

An0n3 wrote:Did they stream today? I thought they said last week they weren't going to.

It's next week that they're not streaming any Blorg on Thursday.

Instead there's going to be streams on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Fri Apr 29, 2016 6:39 am #172296

Ah word.

>that Frienderation
>that greedy President taking all the war trophies
>we never getting to Sol now

Man, out-played by the AI. They totally took advantage of the Blorg's military power so they could go conquer some shit and claim it for themselves. A shame we may never get to see the end of this now, with the game's release coming closer.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Fri Apr 29, 2016 8:57 am #172313

Why would they stop playing when the game releases? That's an excellent time to advertise it even more.

Venticular · Post by **Venticular** » Fri Apr 29, 2016 10:06 am #172319

Paradox is great and extremely active with their fanbase, especially on digg. For example, they originally weren't going to include map modes at all, but they say they will include them in a patch after release if enough people want them.

Also, the AI looks really smart and should be pretty hard to play against or steamroll.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Fri Apr 29, 2016 6:08 pm #172383

Ricotez wrote:Why would they stop playing when the game releases? That's an excellent time to advertise it even more.

I meant more because we'll all be too busy playing to follow along.

Venticular wrote:Paradox is great and extremely active with their fanbase, especially on digg. For example, they originally weren't going to include map modes at all, but they say they will include them in a patch after release if enough people want them.

Also, the AI looks really smart and should be pretty hard to play against or steamroll.

Yeah, it seems like a no brainer but the way they have their UI designed it doesn't appear super necessary. Every inhabited system is plainly labeled with a flag that depicts its owners empire, the space cloud of influence grows on its own, etc. etc. Being able to view the map in a way that shows macro-level alliances like federations, vassalage, etc. would be neat but I can see why they didn't include that at first.

starmute · Post by **starmute** » Sun May 01, 2016 10:33 pm #172900

SOTS 2 was the publisher being too ambitious. They had a great game in SOTS 1. If they would have expanded upon that just a little instead of overdoing it with 3d combat, worked on making it playable rather than graphically intense (very intense but ugly however)... it would have been much better.

That being said the game had great lore though. Loved the Lords of Winter intro.

Incomptinence · Sun May 01, 2016 10:48 pm

I think you mean developer there, Kerberos did a little migration up their own ass due to their main interaction with the players of sots 1 being in their own heavily controlled hug box forum.

Sots was a game that was mostly pretty straight forward and clean and the main thing complained about was trade micromanagement they set out to add even MORE micro shit and bureaucratic nonsense like the ship mission system and an extra layer on their tech availability system where you needed to do a "viability survey" before being kicked out on your ass and told cool space bug mens will never understand torpedos. All the money was spent of shiny graphics and making the game MORE TEDIOUS without checking that if was in working order before they ran out of cash. Like to this day as the best case scenario is you only crash once an hour for some it crashes instantly and I hear shit about it crashing if you click a button on the interface.

Like I could jokingly propose we all trial it and have a survival multi player where the last one to crash wins and all of us would still get steam refunds.

XSI · Post by **XSI** » Sun May 01, 2016 10:54 pm #172906

I can confirm that is the SOTS2 experience

Incomptinence · Sun May 01, 2016 11:05 pm

Kerberos productions went onto then making sprite based roguelites (which I bought sue me) and other cheap games.

The game basically kicked their ass out of the third dimension.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Mon May 02, 2016 12:33 am #172928

Incomptinence wrote:Like I could jokingly propose we all trial it and have a survival multi player where the last one to crash wins and all of us would still get steam refunds.

I

I actually want to do this

starmute · Post by **starmute** » Mon May 02, 2016 12:37 am #172930

Incomptinence wrote:I think you mean developer there, Kerberos did a little migration up their own ass due to their main interaction with the players of sots 1 being in their own heavily controlled hug box forum.

Sots was a game that was mostly pretty straight forward and clean and the main thing complained about was trade micromanagement they set out to add even MORE micro shit and bureaucratic nonsense like the ship mission system and an extra layer on their tech availability system where you needed to do a "viability survey" before being kicked out on your ass and told cool space bug mens will never understand torpedos. All the money was spent of shiny graphics and making the game MORE TEDIOUS without checking that if was in working order before they ran out of cash. Like to this day as the best case scenario is you only crash once an hour for some it crashes instantly and I hear shit about it crashing if you click a button on the interface.

Like I could jokingly propose we all trial it and have a survival multi player where the last one to crash wins and all of us would still get steam refunds.

I can run it. Its just tedious and the AI is shit. Nothing of value was gained in the new game aside from the cool lore.

tedward1337 · Post by **tedward1337** » Mon May 02, 2016 2:04 am #172956

What is this SOTS you people speak of

Incomptinence · Mon May 02, 2016 2:05 am

Sword of the stars, still a pretty good game downright amazing when it first out. It has aged a bit but turn based 4x with optional rts command of battles is pretty cool.

Sequel was trash.

K-64 · Post by **K-64** » Mon May 02, 2016 4:19 am #172977

My main beef with the sequel was that (aside from the abysmally shitty release version) there was far too much fiddly busywork for everything. I mean, the amount of stuff you had to keep track of in combat was staggering, since each ship had a goddamn Breakout level for their armour that you had to keep track of on 3 sides, and that was if you had even managed to find the sodding enemies in the first place. Seriously, that level of complexity isn't in single-ship space sims, let alone what's supposed to be a 4X strategic title. It's a shame since there were some really good ideas in there, just the execution as a whole was horrid.

The first game however, is pure gold. Simple enough to get the hang of easily, but not brain-dead simple. Plus space-bugs with Stargates.

starmute · Post by **starmute** » Mon May 02, 2016 2:06 pm #173034

K-64 wrote:My main beef with the sequel was that (aside from the abysmally shitty release version) there was far too much fiddly busywork for everything. I mean, the amount of stuff you had to keep track of in combat was staggering, since each ship had a goddamn Breakout level for their armour that you had to keep track of on 3 sides, and that was if you had even managed to find the sodding enemies in the first place. Seriously, that level of complexity isn't in single-ship space sims, let alone what's supposed to be a 4X strategic title. It's a shame since there were some really good ideas in there, just the execution as a whole was horrid.

The first game however, is pure gold. Simple enough to get the hang of easily, but not brain-dead simple. Plus space-bugs with Stargates.

That wasn't so bad (the breakout armor). I mean it was bearable... The issue I had was you're defending a whole star system and the random enemies are likely to show up anywhere. Psyonics was a whole load of other things. Essentially I think I can say that the developers looked at all the ideas that could possibly go into a game and then threw them all in without considering how they would mesh and interface.

starmute · Post by **starmute** » Mon May 02, 2016 2:09 pm #173035

tedward1337 wrote:What is this SOTS you people speak of

SOTS 1+ all the expansions
http://store.steampowered.com/app/42890/

Worth the cash if you're into 4x games. The lore is good, the ideas are fresh... its fun.

Don't bother with SOTS 2, its like MOO3 of the MOO series. Better left unplayed.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Mon May 02, 2016 3:03 pm #173050

starmute wrote:Don't bother with SOTS 2, its like MOO3 of the MOO series. Better left unplayed.

Speaking of: is that new MOO any good?

starmute · Post by **starmute** » Mon May 02, 2016 3:42 pm #173056

An0n3 wrote:
starmute wrote:Don't bother with SOTS 2, its like MOO3 of the MOO series. Better left unplayed.
Speaking of: is that new MOO any good?

Its OK. Its not a turn based strategy combat so people have their knickers in a twist seeing as MOO1+2 had TBS. Its not done yet either . Lore wise it's fantastic, the characters are very well drawn out and the intro's are done by Worf from star trek. The voices are done perfectly... and it seems very in-line with the lore.

The AI in combat is abysmal however. In the over-game the AI does well but has a tendency to exterminate the minor independents quickly. In my gaming experience the silicoids and psylon do the the best in game.

They have yet to bring in the antarians, planetary governors, fleet commanders ect. Also spying is currently broke. Its not a finished product yet. Its definitely playable though.

Unless you really want the Terran Khanate (Which I did) then don't buy it till it's release. There's a bunch stuff they need to fix by the time it's released, but it could turn out pretty good.

Its definitely smaller scale and different than Solaris seems to be.

TlDR

Its a decent game, needs polish and a bunch more effort into RTS combat sytem and AI.

Incomptinence · Wed May 04, 2016 8:41 am

Recordings of the multiplayer stream are out, they went with like 20 players 10 AI three of those being fallen empires. Pure madness before they even started imma watch this.

Edit: Earth... oh no

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Wed May 04, 2016 1:28 pm #173747

Yeah they seem to want to balance the game around a table of 32 players, combined AI and humans.

Somewhere in the second episode they talk about how they seed people in clusters and their intentions behind that. Interesting stuff. Makes me think we should just go all in for our game and fill the rest of the 32 slots in with AI.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Thu May 05, 2016 11:23 am #174038

Stellaris made it to #1 on Steam's top seller list

Incomptinence · Thu May 05, 2016 11:26 am

Not for me guess Australians are buying things more important to them. Like the new soulless shallow doom mimic.

Alex Crimson · Thu May 05, 2016 11:31 am

Quill18 has started releasing his Lets Play of the game, if anyone cares for that kind of thing. He knows his Paradox games, i suppose.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu May 05, 2016 11:33 am #174043

A lot of people have started to release videos of playthroughs of the game. The embargo on streaming and showing videos ended earlier today. So you can get your fill now.

Note for future reference, kill the Unbidden early on. Don't wait until they can stomp over Fallen Empires to take action.

starmute · Post by **starmute** » Thu May 05, 2016 7:18 pm #174129

Steelpoint wrote:A lot of people have started to release videos of playthroughs of the game. The embargo on streaming and showing videos ended earlier today. So you can get your fill now.

Note for future reference, kill the Unbidden early on. Don't wait until they can stomp over Fallen Empires to take action.

I don't want to watch!` Too many spoilers!

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Thu May 05, 2016 7:23 pm #174131

If you haven't joined SPESS FRIENDS already, do so! We'll probably be communicating through that group and maybe TS when we setup our game to play. Your one stop shop for backstabbing and secret plots with other players.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SpessFriends