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

[dezzmont]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Factions aren't a huge deal if you know what you are doing, they are a very short term problem that only becomes dangerous if you mismanage influence or have no way to boost happiness.

[Steelpoint]

I'm in a war with two far more powerful empires, and despite me destroying a 5k enemy fleet (their most powerful fleet) I barely got any points added to my war score...

Now I have to go into a dynamic economy and pump out a new fleet to replace my loses.

[Timbrewolf]

Factions aren't a huge deal if you know what you are doing, they are a very short term problem that only becomes dangerous if you mismanage influence or have no way to boost happiness.

Yep.

Factions don't pop up because of divergent ethics. They pop up because of unhappiness, and divergent ethics are a source of that.
If you are having trouble with factions appearing and spiraling out of control make sure you are focused on fighting unhappiness first, not ethics divergence.

Pro-tip: Solitary is probably the second worst trait you can pick for your species (after Nonadaptive, holy shit this trait is suicide only pick this if you want to play the game on Insane difficulty).
It's possible to game Solitary once you get into techs for happiness structures and such, or if you're a fanatic spiritualist it's going to be a free trait point a lot of the time.
For everyone else though it's going to be a constant pain in the ass, and any empire-wide events that cause a dip in happiness can cause massive rebellions.

I'm in a war with two far more powerful empires, and despite me destroying a 5k enemy fleet (their most powerful fleet) I barely got any points added to my war score...

Now I have to go into a dynamic economy and pump out a new fleet to replace my loses.

We mentioned it before ITT but fleetsmashing is really only good against other players. If you've done it, immediately run for their homeworld and claim it. Otherwise empires don't really care, you may be surprised how fast you can replace an entire main fleet if you've got spaceports littered around your empire and decide on a rally point for their production.

[Ricotez]

latest devblog post has some funny screenshots of bugs they squatted during development

"fabalien":


socially awkward cthulhu:





and my favourite one, the result of a bug that made rebellions instant

[Zilenan91]

Those borders are pure pain

[Grazyn]

Dynamic economy is pain, I got into a war to get some planets from the lesser member of an alliance, with the other big guy blocked by another empire, I quickly conquered them but there was no way to raise the warscore enough to let me win, since I couldn't reach the other enemy. I found out that I could easily snatch those few wargoal points I needed thanks to a "military power" modifier, too bad that I was winning the war so dynamic economy kicked in and every ship cost got bumped to 200%. I had to wait until the "length of war" modifier let me reach the wargoal, something like 10 years of war exhaustion later

[Zilenan91]

Dynamic economy is only useful if you're in a defensive war, not in offense. If you're attacking it'll fuck you. It's basically completely useless since in the late game if you lose a big fleet it's going to take longer than the heat death of the universe to replace it, and early-game space stations actually matter so rebuilding isn't too important.

Also afaik it only effects the mineral cost, in mid-late game minerals aren't a thing anymore and you have a basically unlimited amount of them.

[Ikarrus]

You can still use it for it's defensive effects but not the penalties if you're looking to take territory.

This is why I love the insult and rivalry buttons. Just tank their opinion of you by doing things to offend them and they'll attack you, sometimes even if your military is superior to theirs. Since they initiated the war, it's considered a defensive war.

If they won't because they're too scared of you still, then why are you even worried about the penalty anyways?

I always have Dynamic on, especially for those times where I'm at risk of being pulled into a two-front war, or an aggressive neighbour is eyeing my weakened fleets after I just finished an exhaustive war with someone else. It saved me from a few AI dogpiles already.

[Timbrewolf]

War Economy isn't affected by who declared the war but rather by who is winning or losing it.

If someone wardecs you and you turn around and start kicking the shit out of them you'll still start accruing penalties, just as if you wardec someone else and then they start pushing your shit in you will start to reap the benefits.

It's great in every situation but where you want to attack someone who has an equivalent force, and you expect a long ass war you will eventually win. Turn that shit off before you do that. If you are trying to slowly grind out a victory is when it hurts you badly. If your forces are superior and you know you can just bumrush their homeworld in a blitzkrieg / swamp a bunch of targets-of-opportunity very quickly then the war wont last long enough for the penalties to really affect you.

Seriously if you are having trouble winning via invasions of key planets put a raiding party together and just go system to system blowing up random mining constructs, outposts, whatever.
Just be prepared to jump to a fleet and retreat fast-as-fuck when you see enemy fleet engagement notifications popping up. Stop slugging it out and fight smarter.

[Zilenan91]

That situation has never ever come up for me tbh. It's either been I crush the enemy completely or they crush me completely with no inbetween. The only time it was ever different was when it was still all corvettes and he didn't have enough to roll over my space stations.

[Timbrewolf]

It's been a while since I've gotten in any war that wasn't me accomplishing a lightning raid on someone else, but I can say that the War Economy did help me the few times where someone attacked me and I was caught unprepared. I was able to struggle back from 100% loss to making them my first vassal over years and years of some of the worst grind and wholesale slaughter of life you've ever seen.

It's ugly as shit and if the warscore system worked like it should it probably wouldn't help, but I would say the War Economy was at least 75% responsible for me turning it around and winning with the other 25% being suicidal liberation fleets bumrushing system and holding out long enough to be a defensive screen for landing troops to retake planets and get dug in before their ground forces can muster and push me back out.

[Zilenan91]

I wish that there was more of an emphasis on armies. Also generals can only give their benefits to one army WHY.

There should be a trait generals can give called blockade runner that lets them act while under attack so they could bypass spaceports and other defenses. Downside would be that fortifications would still be full.

[Timbrewolf]

Generals are really questionable investments IMO. 50 influence for someone who will give your army a slight boost in effectiveness in situations where they should be guaranteed to win anyway...meh.

They level up so slowly too, I've had generals take multiple planets over the course of like 3-4 wars only come out with 2-3 stars of exp. Compared to Admirals who skyrocket through the ranks.
Generals also have much lower life expectancies. Admirals sometimes die randomly in fights, but most of the time you can recognize a bad fight and just fucking run.
Generals are stuck. They're gonna die on that rock when those space assholes land.

A good Admiral with an evasion bonus can make a fleet OP as fuck. Turns a questionable slugfest into a win.
A General doesn't change a defeat into a victory. They're "win more" additions to an army that just end up costing you influence and then dying like anyone else when you wish they would make the difference.

[Zilenan91]

Defense platforms are fucking LEGIT

They can equip FTL snares and have around 2000 hull points. This means if matched with equivalent weapons and even basic deflectors in the early game they'll kill 5-6 corvettes before going down. However, the best part about them is that later on against non-hyperlane FTL drives, you can put these on snare in the middle of a star system with no modules or anything and force enemy fleets to jump to these and then crawl their slow-ass way back to the edge of the star system to get out. All for the maintenance cost of a corvette. If you're running a hyperlane only game the slowdown strat doesn't work as well but it's still very good and I definitely recommend defense platforms for how cost-effective they are.

[Steelpoint]

Yeah, littering your empire with Snare only Stations is a good way to massively slow down invading fleets.

[Ikarrus]

Yeah, littering your empire with Snare only Stations is a good way to massively slow down invading fleets.

Does anyone know if having two FTL inhibitors on a Fortress stack their effects?




Also, after over 3000 months, I finally integrated the massive Clan of Saar into my empire, who was almost equivalent to me in power. My screen is ridiculous now, with an energy deficit of 3356 per month.

[Zilenan91]

Clarke is dropping in a day or two.

[Ikarrus]

It's out. Just in time for half the galaxy to declare war on me.

Does anyo e feel like playing another game this weekend?

[Timbrewolf]

We should play on the smallest map with no AI's for that Twilight Imperium feel.

[Ikarrus]

It might even end a t a reasonable time

We'll also play on Fast

[Zilenan91]

I'm probably gonna hold off until Asimov before I start playing again to be honest.

[ThanatosRa]

Didn't clarke just drop? I am eager to try it myself.

[Ikarrus]

Yeah, the AI is a lot more competent at waging war now that they actually try to take back occupied worlds. Before I made do with just 12 gene warriors, but now you need to leave behind a garrison.

That and the warscore changes made waging war a lot more enjoyable and less of a tedious grind.

The really big thing that bothers me now is that transport ships can't retreat, which can really fuck you over if you don't protect your armies. Which is cool, but it feels more like a bug because they'll just stand around paralyzed with fear over an enemy spaceport that's under construction.

[Ricotez]

Will we be using mods? There are a lot of neat aesthetic mods, like more empire colours, more races and also functional ones like civilian trade.

EDIT: Or the No Clustered Starts mod? It makes sure that all empires start equal distances away from each other.

[ThanatosRa]

I feel like a weirdo for intending to get the Elite faction emblems mod. The Alliance of Independent Systems must conquer the galaxy!

[Zilenan91]

I 100% recommend you guys running with the mod that removes influence maintenance from frontier outposts. It speeds the game up so much and when playing I am frequently glad that I have the mod installed because of how much more fun the game is.

[Zilenan91]

People are finding exploits in Multiplayer. Editing the starting weapon tech in your species file with the name of any other tech will make you start with this tech, also you will have a random level 1 weapon tech too.

http://imgur.com/a/kGGkl

[Zilenan91]

AYY LMAO YOU CAN USE THIS TO START THE GAME WITH TACHYON LANCES

[Incomptinence]

Well to avoid shit like that maybe whoever hosts (probably space dad man you guys have some isssues) can just seed in his fallen empire themed races first then we late join as them.

[Timbrewolf]

Yeah, the AI is a lot more competent at waging war now that they actually try to take back occupied worlds. Before I made do with just 12 gene warriors, but now you need to leave behind a garrison.

That and the warscore changes made waging war a lot more enjoyable and less of a tedious grind.

The really big thing that bothers me now is that transport ships can't retreat, which can really fuck you over if you don't protect your armies. Which is cool, but it feels more like a bug because they'll just stand around paralyzed with fear over an enemy spaceport that's under construction.

I found it really bizarre that transports even enter combat at all. I guess now that you can somewhat customize the ship and MAYBE give them a fighting chance (yeah, right) it makes a little more sense for them to try to throw down, but previously it was mind-numbingly stupid watching them turn around to fly into an enemy fleet, then just sit there staring at them while they get pecked to death by a single corvette or something.

Meta strat: never group your transports. Let them be a gigantic fucking cloud of individual ships. When the enemy fleet engages it will drag one of them into the fight and the rest will continue plodding along like nothing happened.

[Incomptinence]

That won't really help the reason they act that way is they got into enemy weapons range so the enemy fleet would just cause them all to charge back and be moped up, especially if the enemy has tachyon lances or something stupid then they engage just within battleship module range.

I just had an early win being a militarist dick getting my war jollies, clarke AI actually tries to raid unfortunately for the AI its small raiding force got just within starbase weapons attacking a mining station range and my inferior fleet beat them to shit till they ran away broken.

I really would like more complicated ground combat. Maybe have attachments be replaced by actual defensive buildings on an alt grid or something trying to beat back invading enemy armies supported by vehicles. Would beat the pants off this herdy gerdy goo if you don't wipe the fortifications you take double damage if you do they take double damage whee army stats almost irrelevant short of fucking gene warriors!

[Timbrewolf]

That sounds fun but it's a poor design for something where the clock is always running.

You have this neat little ground invasion you want to micromanage, and you can do that, but by the time you've sorted it out even on normal speed two or three months have passed.

If the game is intended to have any kind of multiplayer balance it gets even worse, as now a player is tasked with zooming in on each planetary invasion and micromanaging it while other players are freed up to command their space fleets, or manage all kinds of other more broadly-sweeping systems.

Tactical combat is great for single player games where there's time dilation. The galactic scale pauses and you move to a scale of hours/days to resolve individual conflicts.

For stuff meant to be played multiplayer, or where there's a constant clock, it's really bad. You either rope the player up in one conflict (which they're stuck resolving while everyone else operates on a larger scale) or you force everyone else to sit around waiting wondering why the turn wont end, or why they have to be paused suddenly with nothing to do.

I like that your influence on combat in this game is limited to unit composition and appointing leaders. You make the units, you decide what proportion of which goes into the overall force, but the leading and such is left to someone else. Like combat in Endless Space or Dominions, you mostly just watch it play out and most of the time you've won or lost before the fight even begins.

[Incomptinence]

Oh I am not saying active control I just wish these assets were more involved than +10% damage that's boring.

The entire bombardment focus really needs to be toned down all that shit should be up to armies sure ships should help but it shouldn't be a case of utter dependency until your armies are literally over twice as strong as the defenders. Like the only guys tied to the worst bombardment type are bad at a scrum anyway and the full bombardment isn't good enough compared to limited to I have no idea what the point is. If I could swing by pop the space port then drop an army with no ridiculous modifiers we could actually have army focused game play for invasions armies would be managed by other armies instead of just waiting in space as a token coup de grace.

Edit: Wait the numbers are 90% damage reduction to 200% damage boost. So about a fucking 20 times swing in effectiveness dependant on fleet support plus regen prevention no wonder army related traits and techs are pointless.

[dezzmont]

The thing is that the game is primarily about space combat, and X4 games where you can lose a planetary invasion easily get super god damn boring.

Armies need to matter more though. Hell, planetary invasion needs to matter more, like way more. As is it does almost nothing besides add to war score, the planets you invade essentially don't matter.

The way I would handle it would be having it so that armies don't vary so much in damage from bombardment anymore, but also that their base damage should be toned down and bonuses and attachments should be tuned up. Armies should grind away at each other, taking over 100% of an earth sized country should be a hard prospect, let alone a planet. Armies also shouldn't all attack each other at once, there should be a number of forces at any given time attacking each other directly, to represent fronts, with more attachments existing that support other armies.

This would give defenders time to rally without really changing your odds of winning too much when you take a planet with the same size force, instead upgrades would speed up or slow down this process, allowing you to grind away a planet faster, or to force an opponent to bring more to grind with, and would prevent you radically speeding up the process with more armies.

Of course this only matters if a planet is significant, which is why I think the war goals could use an update. "Total war" should be an option, where the goal is the planets themselves which can then be incorporated or liberated at a massively reduced penalty when held for a year, and this would help out in MP a lot with refusing wargoals, it should only unlock when your warscore gets too high and the enemy hasn't surrendered yet. Also, if you invade a planet that is your goal for a year, you should automatically gain that planet and a massive warscore boost.

Also, generals need to be re-worked, there probably should be one empire wide general slot, that affects all your armies, and then the option to grant a general to a given battlegroup. It simulates how we generally think of military leaders.

Basically ground combat needs to be made to matter in a way like An0n3 said, where it doesn't force you to micromanage it and it doesn't risk upsetting the overall goal for the war outside of extreme circumstances, like an enemy hiding an amazing general and powerful defensive units on a planet, but does encourage you to think of it as an important part of your war strategy.

[Incomptinence]

Basically the static defences either need the modifiers toned way down like maybe -40 to +20 or -20 to +10 or something like that or just made a much smaller number that just gets plinked off to allow invasion so fresh spaceport-less colonies aren't utterly naked. Armies need to focus down some units at a time or maybe do that fronts thing way it is you win you win almost all the way then your guys just regenerate in short order like t2000s. With the -90% to double damage range basically anything not twice the strength of a basic assault army is pointless. The defences system is the biggest pro blob thing in the game, why can't a 1k stack just blast down a space port then get to hammering the planet for an invasion? IT TAKES FOREVER so everyone blobs up even more then they get to the point their damage evaporates the defences super fast but then the army is still fucked in the arrangement because you need so few of them compared to fleets.

Raiding parties could become crack invasion forces with troops but as anyone on the winning side of an early war would know those small forces take forever to siege decent planets. Trash the anti bombardment trait or just make it a big defensive bonus I dunno its such a stupid trait.

Maybe even implement actual ship boarding as a replacement to having a science ship come in and stare at some wreckage while also freezing your engineering research (ugh), it would give the poor fellows something to do between planet bashes.

[Ikarrus]

>Enemy destroys spaceport
>Sector Governor immediately starts building another spaceport
>1HP spaceport gets destroyed by enemy
>Enemy gets a warscore point for "winning" a space battle
>Governor builds another spaceport 3 seconds later
>This repeats ad infinitum until I finally notice and make the system a Core system

So fucking stupid.

Actually, you can do this to enemy AIs as well. Don't barricade or bombard planets. Just park your fleets nearby on Passive and watch as they rack up warscore by repeatedly destroying 1HP spaceports

[Timbrewolf]

That's really, really bad.

Both because it's fucking stupid of the AI to do that, and also because it means they either have a huge wealth of minerals saved up they aren't spending on other, better things.

Alternatively the AI is cheating scum and gets spaceports for free, but I doubt that.

Regarding invasions: they're huge. The impact they have on wars is ridiculous unless your opponent has a a ton of planets. They're worth a fat chunk of warscore and you deny your opponent the income they provide.

I think we'll see more effects from invasions as DLC and more features get added to the game. Expect some kind of espionage system that lets you steal techs from races whom planets you occupy, attempt to indoctrinate their citizens, export slaves during a war, or execute pops to give the rest of their empire negative moodlets. Shit like that. As far as expanding the invasion mechanic goes maybe we'll see more focus on the units themselves, similar to how ships get built maybe you'll design more goodies for your ground forces, but I'm afraid anything beyond that will just slow the game down or hamper you playing the rest of it.

More ground forces stuff sounds great, until you keep rolling it during your tech rolls when you really want something like ugpraded lasers, shields, sublight engines, econ techs, whatever. There's already enough stuff in the tech "decks" that it can be annoying not pulling the upgrades you want. Having different rifles and armors and tanks for your ground dudes mixed in there wont help that.

[dezzmont]

Yes, invasions are big on warscore, but a specific invasion means jack shit.

It is surreal and doesn't really reflect how things play out, Putin didn't anex Poland from the EU by invading Ukraine, toning invasion warscore way down unless the planet is a core world of the enemy or is what you are after anyway would help a lot with making things more relevant and would prevent just popping in on fresh colonies because they are easy. The planets you invade themselves should be relevant in some way beyond 'get warscore. If you take a world, it should matter that you took that world for reasons beyond income.

As is the warscore system and invasion system is weird and doesn't play well with multiplayer or the concept of a total war. Taking an entire empire after taking over 4 colonies was stupid, but so is the idea of being forced to give up your dreams of conquest because you took over 4 planets in a dictatorial military junta. Feels like its more out of CK than an X4, and not in a good way because it lacks the depth of the CK war system.

And yeah, I don't think making the tech deck more complicated is a good idea. But making it so that ground invasions are less of a total afterthought is a good idea. Numbers changes and rolling in support attachments would be enough to make your generals and army tech matter, you don't need a unit designer because that would be ridiculous.

[Incomptinence]

Oh anon you know that edict cost strat you theorised.

Um well turns out there is a ruler trait which you can luck out and get and pretty early game techs you can luck out and get, and to put the cherry on top the advanced government form irenic monarchy gives a 50% discount. If the stars align and you get the right leader... um you can have 100% free edicts. Like some dude reported it on the forums and it totally checks out.

Edit: Oh word on their twitter says core planets are becoming core systems so thing don't melt down to as much sector no fun when you get multiplanet systems.

[Zilenan91]

You guys should probably all download mods to raise core planet cap until they fix sectors rebuilding space stations during wars.

Also in other news, in Asimov core planets will be replaced with core systems. This means that three colonies in one star will now count as what would currently be one core planet rather than three core planets, meaning you have to rely way less on dogshit sectors.

[Timbrewolf]

Yes, invasions are big on warscore, but a specific invasion means jack shit.

It is surreal and doesn't really reflect how things play out, Putin didn't anex Poland from the EU by invading Ukraine, toning invasion warscore way down unless the planet is a core world of the enemy or is what you are after anyway would help a lot with making things more relevant and would prevent just popping in on fresh colonies because they are easy.

I think that's already the case, actually.

Homeworlds count for a fuckton, and I'm pretty sure sectored worlds or underdeveloped worlds are also worth less. That's why certain planets cost more or less when you're setting your war goals.

The political system and how that all interacts with wars is wacky anyway. It's like there's some supra-level court overlooking everyone's affairs to make sure they don't violate treaties, or disregard amnesties to fuck someone up. That kinda makes sense in CK2, because if you broke the laws of the land everyone would want to fuck you up and you'd lose all your titles. In outer space where we're all completely independent factions without common territory it makes less sense.

[Zilenan91]

Oh also you can emancipate the slaves of other empires if you've discovered the planet. This works in multiplayer.

[Incomptinence]

Set yourself to start the game with terraforming and go around freeing bitches like moses.

[Timbrewolf]

Oh also you can emancipate the slaves of other empires if you've discovered the planet. This works in multiplayer.

Wait wut

I can just click on other people's pops and emancipate them from the planetary view even if I don't control that planet?

[Ikarrus]

Yep lol.

I found that out when I was inspecting planets overthrown by the Machine Consciousness

[dezzmont]

To be fair that is pretty much literally what Lincoln did.

[Zilenan91]

Well yeah but he crushed the South first. You can emancipate from the other side of the galaxy. They just enslave them again but it's funny.

[dezzmont]

Actually he emancipated the slaves, which caused a breakdown in the southern economy because suddenly now massive parts of the workforce were aware that if they made sure their side lost they would become free, and then crushed The South.

[Zilenan91]

I just discovered Particle Lances from an anomaly before I'd even researched colony ships what the fuck

Edit: I can't even use these yet http://i.imgur.com/7zuPVA3.png

[Incomptinence]

Get into your battleship soldier its time to melt face.

[Zilenan91]

It's taking 99 months to research destroyers but it'll be so fucking worth it