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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 1, 2018 17:34:22 GMT
Would you guys recommend getting all the DLCs for Stellaris in order to get the "full experience"? I would say yes, but then again I'm a bit biased. Much like I did with Total War: Warhammer I have been buying the DLC as it comes out so the prospect of having all the content is not as a big deal to me as someone who has only just gotten into the game. That being said, you can easily skip the humanoid and planetoid packs without missing much aside from some cosmetic choices; plus theres tons of free mods to download that do just as good a job, if not better, at giving players new options. The Leviathan DLC is cool looking, but it ultimately doesn't really add that much to the game, aside from some "Super Space Monsters" for your empire to kill; its a nice feature to spice up the game, but it's nothing ground breaking. Utopia is a must have DLC (IMO), since it adds mega structures, like Dyson Spheres, into the game as well as allows you to play the game as Hive Mind empires in addition to bringing in late game accession paths for your species to take. Want to upload your people's minds into robot bodies? Become a race of physic gods? Genetically modify yourselves with the best traits in the game? Then Utopia is the DLC for you. Synthetic Dawn is another cool one, allowing you to start the game as a planet wide network of AI robots, but aside from that one new feature (more or less a robot version of hive minds) and some epic synth-y music tracks, it doesn't really add much to the table. Apocalypse is the newest DLC, and I am personally going to get it as it adds in Planet Killer mega weapons and titan class ships for your empires to build; along with several other smaller features. There's also a degree of interchangeability between the various DLCs as well; for instance if you have both Utopia and Synthetic dawn, your machine empire can unlock ascension perks to create Machine Worlds and you have unique traditions, different from that of organic species. TL;DR version: Utopia and Apocalypse look to offer the most drastic changes to gameplay, but the "smaller" DLCs like Leviathan and Synthetic Dawn are great if you're looking for a change to your typical games. The appearance packs hold the least amount of value, but they offer new looks to use in a vanilla game should you want to use them.
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Post by Iakus on Feb 1, 2018 18:12:52 GMT
Definitely no problems with using a pregen race until I get my feet under me. Next question, what's a good size and ratio for a fleet? I mean how many corvettes is "enough" before I start adding bigger ships? Or is there no such limit? Also, should I build multiple fleets for rapid response, Or one ginormous Stack of Doom? Well fleet composition is different for each player, but I personally go with about 15 - 20 corvettes, 10 - 12 destroyers (various classes i.e. gunships, picket ships etc.), 7 - 8 cruisers (again different variant types), and about 3-4 battleships. Granted that is a more late game setup, but keeping a similar ratio of ship diversity while growing your empire will work just as well. As for the end-end game, spamming is king. I personally never had a game go on that long, but its not unheard of to have fleets pushing 500k + in military power when you start to cap out your tech trees. I'm definitely going to keep that in mind I think I'll wait until the update then. I don't really like putting all my eggs in one basket.
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Post by alanc9 on Feb 1, 2018 19:18:35 GMT
I just colonized a planet which looks like it once had a pre-FTL race on it. Named, lots of primitive farms and factories -- but no inhabitants. It doesn't seem to have ever been in anyone's territory. Do AIs go around bombing primitives from space, or is there some other mechanism at work?
(It's possible that this world was once occupied by an AI empire which exiled the population -- I did get a large influx of refugees from a compatible species, who I've actually used to colonize the planet. But then how did the AI lose the planet? Pop exterminated by another AI?)
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 1, 2018 19:35:08 GMT
Alright, I got the bundle. Any tips for a new Stellaris player? Also, holy shit, I want those DLC's but the price seems rather outrageous... Yeah that's Paradox Interactive for you. If you think Stellaris is bad you should see what the DLC costs are for Crusader Kings II Really the biggest challenge I had when I first started playing was feeling overwhelmed by the sheer size of the galaxy maps and at how I would ever be able to manage all that info. It's not too bad once you get used things however. A major tip I can offer in terms of exploration is get a second science ship and recruit a second scientist first thing, really helps spread the exploration around and you're not completely boned if your lone science ship bites the bullet. Also, with your science ship selected you can right click any star systems your ship can reach and tell it to survey things from the galaxy map; you can even chain survey missions together by holding down the shift key while you issue the orders. That one little tip alone helped me not feel so intimated with 800 - 1000 star galaxies. It gets even better when you unlock the automatic exploration technology, since you can just click a button and the science is done for you. As for other tips, pretty much everything I mentioned earlier in the thread still applies, though I am by no means an expert player so take everything you heard with a tiny grain of salt.
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 1, 2018 19:41:10 GMT
I just colonized a planet which looks like it once had a pre-FTL race on it. Named, lots of primitive farms and factories -- but no inhabitants. It doesn't seem to have ever been in anyone's territory. Do AIs go around bombing primitives from space, or is there some other mechanism at work? (It's possible that this world was once occupied by an AI empire which exiled the population -- I did get a large influx of refugees from a compatible species, who I've actually used to colonize the planet. But then how did the AI lose the planet? Pop exterminated by another AI?) Could have been one of several things really: Pre-FTL species from the Atomic Age onward to the Early Space Age all have a chance of wiping themselves out via nuclear holocaust creating a Tomb World. The planet could have indeed been bombed from orbit by an advanced species, Fanatical Purifiers, Determined Exterminators, and Devouring Swarms all tend to hate other species and have no qualms about removing those that can't defend themselves. Or the population could have been evicted from the planet altogether like you said. If any of your colonies have zero biological or mechanical pops on them then the planet is counted as uninhabited and you will automatically abandon it and have to re-conlonize it again if you want it.
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 12, 2018 13:18:49 GMT
So, Iv'e been playing for awhile now, and for the life of me I can't tell the difference between flak and guardian point defense. I read somewhere that one prefers to target fighters/bombers, and the other prioritizes missiles, is any of it true? From what I've seen during one of my recent battles I'm somewhat confused, my picket ship are armed with an even mix of Guardian and Flak, and when the enemy fleet attacked with a mix of attack-craft and swarmer missiles, it seemed that the for the most part the missiles were ignored, and only the attack-craft targeted. (judging by the distinct flashes of point defense fire and the fact that the attack craft were actually blown up in large numbers, while the swarmer missiles were mostly free to hit) Or perhaps it's just that swarmer missiles are just extremely good Vs. point defense? Flak is good against fighters and bombers, even other ship classes at a high enough level, whereas guardian point defense is better against missiles and torpedoes. That being said, both can target the other's counter, albeit at less efficiency. Swarmer missiles are designed to overwhelm point defense, but fighters and bombers can pull that duty as well, if given enough numbers and tech upgrades. Unfortunately, there's no way to prioritize what flak and guardian point defenses will target, and the strike craft are faster than missiles in this game due to have much longer range and so usually wind up being in-flight towards the enemy fleet before the first swarmer is launched. All of this results in both flak and guardian weapons targeting the fighter/bomber waves, and with appropriate upgrades those strike craft can survive point defenses long enough that your weapons can't re-target the inbound missiles before they hit their targets. Getting your own strike craft squadrons will help alleviate this problem somewhat. Flight wings of fighters will prioritize bombers and missiles and generally act as a tertiary point defense. They will out range your fleet as they move towards the enemy and will engage the bombers before they can get within range of your picket ships, enabling their point defenses to focus on any missiles or enemy stragglers that happen to get through. It is also important to note, that if the enemy researches proton or neutron torpedoes then those armaments will completely nullify your point defense as they are classified as energy weapons and as such can't be targeted. The trade off for this is that torpedo slots are few and far between on ship classes, and they have a rather long cooldown time between volleys.
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 12, 2018 14:48:29 GMT
It is also important to note, that if the enemy researches proton or neutron torpedoes then those armaments will completely nullify your point defense as they are classified as energy weapons and as such can't be targeted. The trade off for this is that torpedo slots are few and far between on ship classes, and they have a rather long cooldown time between volleys. *facepalm* I didn't know that. I had a whole strategy in mind, to have proton torpedo ships use missiles in conjunction with them, in order for those torpedoes to survive point defense fire, but if they can't be targeted anyway... Would you say that it's better to go all in with one type of point defense? Either Guardian or Flak? Also, generally speaking, how much point defense is enough? 25% of ships? Less? More? I would say going all flak will tend to work out better since they can also damage enemy ships as well as target strike craft and missiles, though flak is generally an early mid game tech so you'll still get some use out of guardian defenses in the early game. As for how much point defense is enough, well that varies depending on what type of enemy fleet you are engaging. Enemy compositions of mass missiles and/or strike craft will require more point defense than those that focus more on energy weapons or mass drivers. Don't be afraid to retrofit your fleet to deal with changing opponents as keeping a rigid, jack-of all-trades fleet will suffer if and when an enemy starts to spam a particular weapon type; this is doubly true when you encounter end game crisis invasions. As a general rule of thumb though, I tend to keep more picket class destroyers than I do other destroyer class versions; usually at a 2:1 ratio. For every one artillery ship I build two picket ships, same thing for the gunship. Of course all of this advice could very well become obsolete once the 2.0 update drops on the 22nd. The new version of the game is going to make all weapon types available to players at the start, as well as roll missiles and torpedoes into the same slot.
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 15, 2018 17:22:41 GMT
Looks awesome, can't wait to jump back into things on the 22nd.
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Post by CHRrOME on Feb 15, 2018 18:03:35 GMT
Shieeee with all the DLCs this game costs like two AAA games on my end. That's the reason I never picked TW Warhammer, it's too fucking expensive with the DLCs, literally 2 games for the price of one. Granted, with Stellaris you can do a bit of nitpicking with the DLCs and perhaps ignore the "cosmetic" ones, but why a bunch of portraits as DLC is so expensive?
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 22, 2018 14:21:08 GMT
Already picked up my copy of the DLC, can't wait to play it with the new shiny 2.0 update.
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 22, 2018 15:23:24 GMT
Shieeee with all the DLCs this game costs like two AAA games on my end. That's the reason I never picked TW Warhammer, it's too fucking expensive with the DLCs, literally 2 games for the price of one. Granted, with Stellaris you can do a bit of nitpicking with the DLCs and perhaps ignore the "cosmetic" ones, but why a bunch of portraits as DLC is so expensive? If you think Stellaris and Total War: Warhammer are bad then you should see Crusader Kings 2 and all it's DLC But yeah, trying to step into the game fresh it can be a bit pricey to get everything on offer. Not sure I necessarily agree with their reasoning behind the cost of the cosmetic DLCs, but according to the developer: modeling, texturing, and animating all the various portraits and ship appearances takes a lot of man hours to accomplish, hence why they cost as much as they do. Personally, I have seen modders put out more content for free, but I like this game and I want to support it so I don't shy away too much from the cost of things. Really, you can find cosmetic mods that do the same, or an even better job than the paid content available. The only "necessary" pieces of DLC for this game is Utopia (Mega Structures, Hive Minds & Ascension Paths) and Apocalypse (Titans & Planet Killers). The other pieces of content such as Synthetic Dawn (Robot Empires) and Leviathans (Space Dragons) are only worthwhile if you're really looking to flesh out your gameplay with some new takes on base game mechanics, or those added with the two high end DLCs.
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Post by Daft Arbiter on Feb 22, 2018 18:31:09 GMT
Probably going to wait a few weeks before I try the DLC out. They always release a post-release patch that fixes major bugs and inconsistencies so no real reason to try a serious playthrough just yet. It looks good though. Stellaris is shaping up to be a really solid game after its somewhat shaky release.
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 23, 2018 14:14:08 GMT
Already picked up my copy of the DLC, can't wait to play it with the new shiny 2.0 update. Do you have some impressions already? Unfortunately not. I wanted to take the game for a spin yesterday, but coinciding family visits and social events prevented me from doing anything more than loading up the (cool & new) main menu and recreating my two favorite empires again; though I suppose that in itself is an impression to use. Not sure if it was unique to me, but all of the custom species I had made over the course of my use of Stellaris were gone when I loaded up 2.0. Luckily I didn't have any with crazy long backstories or massive write ups, but I did have to create my species of hyper capitalist space turtles and rogue servitor planetary AI all over again. I'm assuming that this is because of the grand changes done to facilitate the change to 2.0 and/or my heavily modded game suddenly being snapped back to vanilla settings, but be prepared to remake all your custom empires again.
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 23, 2018 14:40:46 GMT
Unfortunately not. I wanted to take the game for a spin yesterday, but coinciding family visits and social events prevented me from doing anything more than loading up the (cool & new) main menu and recreating my two favorite empires again; though I suppose that in itself is an impression to use. Not sure if it was unique to me, but all of the custom species I had made over the course of my use of Stellaris were gone when I loaded up 2.0. Luckily I didn't have any with crazy long backstories or massive write ups, but I did have to create my species of hyper capitalist space turtles and rogue servitor planetary AI all over again. I'm assuming that this is because of the grand changes done to facilitate the change to 2.0 and/or my heavily modded game suddenly being snapped back to vanilla settings, but be prepared to remake all your custom empires again. Assuming this thing looks good, I think I might try recreating the either the SW galactic empire (because planet-cracking super-weapons) or the Imperium of Men from WH40K. (a shame I can't start the road with a "chosen one" psyker as a "God Emperror"... ) Well if you're looking to recreate the "God Emperor" an immortal psychic being, leading your species to galactic domination, then I would highly recommend the Origins Civics Mod
As per the description on the workshop page: Eternal Leader (Utopia Required): Start the game with your leader being an Eternal, an immortal psychic. In the event of a crisis your leader can use his/her powers to help your nation at a potential cost. If your leader dies expect changes for your empire.
Spiritualist or Materialist: You must be some degree of spiritualist or materialist to use this civic.
Dictatorship or Imperial: You must be a dictatorship or an imperial government to use this civic.
Eternal: Your leader is an Eternal, an immortal being that wields incredible psionic power.
Eternal Agenda: As a spiritualist Eternal, your leader desires to be worshipped. As a materialist Eternal, your leader desires progress over religion.
Sacrifice: When in a crisis, your Eternal may choose to use their psionic energy to help your nation.
Death: If your Eternal Leader dies, a chain of events will occur that pushes your nation to become either more spiritual or more materialist.
It's not compatible with 2.0 just yet but it was released only a few days ago, and the author should still be working on it.
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Post by Iakus on Feb 23, 2018 17:25:36 GMT
Okay, I think I've id-ed one problem I have with Stellaris.
I'm too used to playing Civilization.
I get really hung up on constantly building or upgrading stuff, when I have to wait so resources can accumulate. Makes early game at least, very frustrating.
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 24, 2018 16:29:38 GMT
Okay after playing some multiplayer with my friends late last night I can give my early impressions of the 2.0 update. I can't really comment on the Apocalypse features as neither my buddies or I have been able to advance far enough to unlock all the new toys; even after playing in a match for nearly four hours.
That's the biggest change I've noticed, the pace of the game is much, much slower now with the new interstellar terrain mechanics, as well as the fact that all of your ships have to physically cross the individual systems, traveling from one side to the other in sub-light, before jumping to FTL. I won't say that this change is necessarily a bad thing, since I haven't really had that much experience with it, but it does tie into one of the more interesting tactical elements added with 2.0: Starbases and the Fleet Manager so I'm inclined to say I will like it once I can get the hang of things.
As someone who would always have the smallest fleet size when playing with my friends, this new fleet system, as well as the fact that traveling from one end of your empire to the other is a chore, more or less forces you to build multiple navies to help secure important choke points near the boarders of your space. By the time my friends and I got off for the night, I had two separate fleets patrolling my borders; having them close at hand for when pirates inevitably spawned.
Speaking of pirates they are much more prevalent and dangerous to unprepared empires, though more predictable in where they will spawn. Any space on the edges of your control, systems where you haven't built outposts in order to secure the area, will be eligible to spawn in a pirate station. If you were looking to farm some for your admirals to level up, you can always leave a fleet parked outside a non-colonized system and wait for the pop-up alert and then send in your ships to reap juicy XP off of them. What's more Hive Minds and Machine empires can have pirates spawn for them as well (fluffed for their unique empire type), so now they can get in on the action alongside the regular species out there.
That's it for an early impression, I'll try and fill in more details as my time with the new content increases, but if anyone has any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer them.
TL;DR: I'm liking what I see of the Stellaris 2.0 update. It is a definite change of pace from what I was used to, but all the systems make the game feel much more tactical.
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Post by CHRrOME on Feb 25, 2018 21:13:58 GMT
Here's a video review if anyone's interested it's roughly 8 minutes long, I find it to be rather "to the point" . It's done by Darren, he's a former employee of Creative Assembly (Total War games), who actually quitted because he didn't agree with a lot of CA's policies and practices in general DLC wise and what not.
The game appears to have changed a lot, for the good. I've seen streams pre 2.0, and the first thing I notice is the borders between empires is much more clear.
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Don't knock the little winds. They're important - for morale.
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem
Origin: correctamundo1
Prime Posts: A thousand and then some.
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Post by correctamundo on Feb 26, 2018 12:22:57 GMT
Shieeee with all the DLCs this game costs like two AAA games on my end. That's the reason I never picked TW Warhammer, it's too fucking expensive with the DLCs, literally 2 games for the price of one. Granted, with Stellaris you can do a bit of nitpicking with the DLCs and perhaps ignore the "cosmetic" ones, but why a bunch of portraits as DLC is so expensive? And worth every penny! But get them on sale if you feel that they are to steep.
I will probably start a new campaign tonight. this will be grand.
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 26, 2018 14:56:01 GMT
So, I'm reading some complaints on Steam in regards to some of the changes that were introduced. Like the fact that you need influence for absolutely everything now, the hard cap on fleet strength (?), the game supposedly becoming very slow mid game, some complaints in regards to the new hyperspace mechanics. Thoughts? Influence is a more common requisite for things yes, but outside of defensive alliances and federations there is no more monthly influence cost for edicts and policies. Building outposts or laying claims to enemy systems is just a flat, one-time cost. Whats more, you don't have to spend influence on 'everything'. Recruiting new leaders, and colonizing planets no longer costs influence, and there are even empire-wide campaigns you can enact (new name for edicts) that only cost energy. Sure, when you are trying to expand and you don't have the 300-600 influence to dump into a nice campaign like "Mining Drone Optimizations" it can suck, but you will generally earn all that back over time, even moreso if you are making your factions happy and/or are in a rivalry with another species. As for fleet strength, the command limit places a hard cap on how big an individual fleet can be, but there is no limit on how many fleets you can construct in terms of naval capacity. You will suffer an increasingly harsh penalty of ship upkeep the more over your naval capacity you go, but there is nothing stopping you from having 50+ fleets patrolling 2 star systems if you wanted. The new gameplay doesn't' allow you to form the singular doomstacks of old, so maybe that's were a lot of the complaints are coming from, but there is no cap on how many total ships you can field at a single time. In regards to the slow pace of the game and new hyperspace mechanics... on that I would have to agree somewhat. Its not necessarily game-breaking for me, mind you, but even the late early game can be a drag when you are waiting 5+ minutes for your science ships and fleets to just make it across your empire's boarders. The new push to have multiple fleets stationed on either end of your systems can alleviate the time it takes for you to respond to direct attacks against your holdings, but trying to push on the offensive for anything further than 3-5 stars away from you is a major time sink. A perfect example of this was on display in a game that a couple friends and I had picked up over the course of the weekend. I had set up the galaxy map generation to spawn each of us players near each other, and all three of our empire's were butted up against each other. We had just all formed a federation, and one of my allies wanted to go to war against a neighboring species for some high resource systems. No big deal, the enemy was just on the other side of my ally's boarders so all my other buddy and I had to do was send our fleets across our mutual friend's empire and join in on the fighting. 25 minutes later (on the 'Fast' time acceleration mind you) our one ally, who had initiated the war, was mopping up the last of the stragglers from the enemy fleets and our ships were still one or two systems away from the front lines. More than that, all the battle debris left in the wake of our ally, as he pushed into enemy territory, timed out and disappeared before I could even get my closest science ship into position to study the wreckage. Again, this is not something that completely turns me off to the game, but it is one of the bigger frustrations I have noticed. As my friends and I continue our game, and we start unlocking better FTL and sub-light engines it should help with this somewhat, and the endgame techs in form of the gate network should more or less eliminate this hassle entirely, but yeah it's very slow going in the beginning.
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Post by Iakus on Feb 26, 2018 19:02:43 GMT
and we start unlocking better FTL So, just to make sure I understand, what exactly happens to all the FTL methods from before? If I load up an old save where I have, say, Psionic jump drives, do I still have them? Or was this technology simply removed? Old saves don't work anymore, I think. I believe you have to research techs to get the other FTL methods.
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, KOTOR, Jade Empire
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 26, 2018 19:40:00 GMT
Yeah old saves are no longer compatible.
Hyperspace is the only FTL method available at game start, with Jump Drives, Wormholes and Gateways becoming unlocked as you research technologies.
Your ships can also no longer enter FTL from the systems's edge when traveling through hyper lanes.
For example: Say you have systems A, B, and C all in a line on the galaxy map, with A linking to B which then links to C in a single hyper lane chain. With the new system your ships will have to travel from A to B, cross the entirety of B in sub-light, and then re-enter FTL once on the C-ward side of system B.
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Champion of Kirkwall
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8,023
Sifr
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquistion, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire
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Post by Sifr on Feb 27, 2018 3:02:30 GMT
Hyperspace is the only FTL method available at game start, with Jump Drives, Wormholes and Gateways becoming unlocked as you research technologies. That's a change that seems both more balanced game-wise and realistic in-universe. Hyperspace is far more plausible for being the easiest method of FTL for newly emergent species to crack, rather than starting off the bat with something infinitely more complex like a Jump-Drive or Wormhole generation.
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2,202
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vortex13
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, KOTOR, Jade Empire
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 27, 2018 14:03:38 GMT
Hyperspace is the only FTL method available at game start, with Jump Drives, Wormholes and Gateways becoming unlocked as you research technologies. That's a change that seems both more balanced game-wise and realistic in-universe. Hyperspace is far more plausible for being the easiest method of FTL for newly emergent species to crack, rather than starting off the bat with something infinitely more complex like a Jump-Drive or Wormhole generation. It also allows for empires to set up actual choke points along the hyperspace lanes. In the earlier version of the game species with warp or wormhole drives could just bypass any heavily defended areas and just wreck havoc on the undefended sections of your empire.
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vortex13
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, KOTOR, Jade Empire
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 27, 2018 14:08:32 GMT
Anyone has thoughts about the new weapon balance? Everything became much more extreme, energy weapons became REALLY bad against shields, and kinetics REALLY bad against armor. So I'm guessing the new meta is mostly Kinetics early game, and late game depends on enemies? There's a bit of a balance change, but since all base weapon types are available for all empires at game start there's really no need to focus on one type over the other. A simple retrofit at one of your star bases will let your fleets react to any changes in enemy composition, and adding in new ship designs to counter new threats is pretty straightforward. I personally run a fleet of ten corvettes at the beginning of the game, five with lasers and coil guns, and five with missiles and lasers. The new and improved ship behavior modules means that I can have my missile boats sit at range and fire their ordnance, while my swarm vessels move in to keep enemy forces occupied.
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3,223
Vortex13
2,202
Aug 17, 2016 14:31:53 GMT
August 2016
vortex13
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, KOTOR, Jade Empire
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Post by Vortex13 on Feb 27, 2018 14:43:33 GMT
There's a bit of a balance change, but since all base weapon types are available for all empires at game start there's really no need to focus on one type over the other. A simple retrofit at one of your star bases will let your fleets react to any changes in enemy composition, and adding in new ship designs to counter new threats is pretty straightforward. I personally run a fleet of ten corvettes at the beginning of the game, five with lasers and coil guns, and five with missiles and lasers. The new and improved ship behavior modules means that I can have my missile boats sit at range and fire their ordnance, while my swarm vessels move in to keep enemy forces occupied. What exactly does "shield penetration" on missiles or torpedoes mean? I'm assuming it means that they ignore shields rather than cause double damage to them? Also, it seems that energy torpedoes are now anti-armor. Missiles ignore shields with torpedoes being able to ignore both shields and armor though being slower than missiles; if I am remembering correctly. I haven't been able to get far enough into the tech tree to unlock energy torpedoes, but if that's the case I approve of that change. A weapon type that is better in a certain area is more pereferable than one that is just a flat out upgrade across the board (IMO). The upgraded version of the various weapon types are just that, upgrades. I rather like how auto cannons aren't necessarily better than coil guns, or how plasma throwers aren't just a superior version of lasers in this version of the game. As much as I dislike the speed of ships moving from system to system, Paradox did a really great job of balancing out the weapons and ship behaviors.
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