Stellaris

[Kordanor]

The sensor ship problematic was more of a GalCiv3 thing though where you just designed one ship, built it in turn 2 which ended the exploration part of the game.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

After reading the patch changelog, it looks as they are in damage control mode.

The board staticness does not come from a lack of agressivity from the AI. It comes from the lack of ways for the AI to be aggressive.

Increasing the AI level of aggression wont make for the lack of ways.

At the moment, wars are terminal: wars mean utter destruction. Various lids exist to prevent that feature from collapsing any game.

The biggest stack wins (until late game)

Before reaching that point, though, the game is mainly fielding equivalent stacks.
That is one first lid: when you want to win a battle through the bigger stack feature, you need to wait. Aggression is postponed.

Now, in the case of equivalent stacks, the more appropriately geared stack wins. And it wins in a very dominant way.

When 1k is pitted against 1k, if one side is geared to be a hard counter, losses are low while the other side is utterly crushed.

Now when 750 (hard counter) is pitted against 1k, the outcome is less clearcut, losses are going to be massive both sides.
When 500 is pitted against 1k, the hard countering effect usually do not match the gap.

What prevents the player from taking advantage of the hard countering side is the lack of intelligence. Early technologies are researched blind without knowing the enemy tech. That is another lid.

In the case of a one planet aggression scenario:
Usually, with one planet, the fleet is maxed out at around 14 corvettes.
Any enemy discovered early (and not benefiting from an improved start) is likely to field the same amount of corvettes.

So an aggression on a one planet means 14 corvettes against 14 corvettes. If any side is hard counter geared, that side loses 0 to 3 corvettes while the other is crushed.

At this point, it is over since it is not possible to come back. The winning side is in such shape that it can wreck the economy and the losing side puts out a fleet that is going to be crushed (no adaptation possible, no transition possible)

In the current version, another lid prevents the scenario of being crushed on a one planet only: the starport and the mandatory occupation of the planet to cede. Without that condition, the winning side can not force the peace agreement.

It usually takes two planets to be able to aggress successful.

An additional point: the AI makes full use of the hard counter feature. The AI wages one sided wars.
This deters the player from taking advantage from two AIs at war with each other to weaken the stronger side.
When a stronger side goes at war with a weaker side, the stronger side suffers few losses so there is no point in declaring war against it since the player confronts a full fleet.

The next patch is told to remove the condition of occupation to settle peace.

This will allow to see if the AI is made aggressive. If it is made aggressive, then aggression on a one planet must turn frequent. As soon as the AI realizes its fleet hard counter the enemy, aggression must be triggered.

In the early game, it is not possible to defend an aggression.

The board staticness did not come from the lack of aggressivity. It comes from war being terminal.

There are other lids taking action like the impossible to capture more than four planets at a time (war score) etc This postpones the collapse.

Nevertheless, though, in the early game, it is only one planet.

 

[Arhu]

A link would have been nice:

Stellaris Beta Patch 1.1.0 Clarke

 

[Kordanor]

Just argued with a friend about the patch. Regarding the Ethics changes I am not too impressed. Yes, they are more balanced now...but militarism and individualism are also more boring now. Also they didn't tackle the issue with the 0% Edict cost yet as it seems.

Also the sector management quick links seem rather pointless.

All in all some necessary changes in the patch. But nothing which makes me want to give it another try.

 

[Thrasher]

No new victory conditions?

 

[Kordanor]

Nope. But they aren't even listed as target for the the next two patches.

 

[Thrasher]

Too bad. I seem to remember multiple victory conditions in Master of Orion. I wonder why they can't do the same thing?

 

[wiretripped]

Too bad. I seem to remember multiple victory conditions in Master of Orion. I wonder why they can't do the same thing?

They said they will add more (they initially had more put removed them prior to release because they didn't have time to balance them properly), but I think they have bigger fish to fry atm. There's bigger issues than a lack of victory conditions.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

I wonder why they can't do the same thing?

Just wondering how they would do the same thing gives the answer.

Stellaris, structurally, only supports a certain kind of victory conditions, based on expansion.

The sensor ship problematic was more of a GalCiv3 thing though where you just designed one ship, built it in turn 2 which ended the exploration part of the game.

In Stellaris, it is nothing better.

Sensors, at the moment, are one of the worthless features.

At start, the player surveys the planet within the zone of influence. It is mandatory to take advantage of the discovered resources.
Sensor technology is not that involved in the process of surveying.

Once it is done, the player will no longer survey systems. The player will scout systems, looking for appropriate planets. At this stage, a better sensor technology would be useful since any system taken in the sensor range is scouted.

The problem is that the sensor technology is barely available. It will take time to research it, move the ship back for upgrade and send it back to its latest scouting location. It is not worth the investment.

Later on, the player has less and less interest to scout as the closest planets to the empire and fitting an expansion scheme are enemies' planets.
At this stage, the player also suffers losses among scientists. One of the quickest way to level up a newly recruited scientist is to survey systems. The player shall survey every single system possible to reach that end.

So, in the early game, when the technology would be useful, it is not available.
In the mid and late games, when it is available, it no longer fits any purpose.

They probably failed at getting what they wanted:

- a zone of influence, where the player could build mines, research stations etc
-a zone of control (covered by the sensors) that the player could effectively forbids.

Fleets were supposed to be able to move freely around. Giving the option between flying in no man's space (the zone of influence minus the zone of control) or intruding onto the zone of control.

Sensors have no value in Stellaris.

 

[Kordanor]

Well, I agree there. Stellaris has a nice concept about weapon counters, but this only works if you could scout your enemy before that. Strangely enough sensors are completely useless for that as they are for everything else.
That said, a useless feature is still better than an overpowered feature.

Leaders in stellaris have a similar status. I don't see any point in them but being annoying when they die and need to be replaced.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

And yeah static defences do not work.
1. because of the stack of doom mechanic. How can a 1k station defend vs a 10k army? and it won't even slow it down much as they will just blast it away before the defense force arrives.

Static defences are worth the support mobile troops grant them.

The problem lies here. To get something out of static defences, the player must force the place of engagement to occur where the static defence sits.

There is obviously not manoeuvering in Stellaris so it is not possible to drive the enemy fleet toward the static defense.

Other situations like placing the static defense in a compulsory transit point seldom click.

Warp or worm hole drives make it easy to bypass the system where the static defence lies.While the player parks his fleet near the static defence, hoping for the enemy to run into the system, the enemy has it easy to wreck everything around.

The hyperlane drive provides rare opportunities to use the static defence, when the empire zone of influence is such there is a compulsory point of entry.

It takes that the enemy uses that type of jump engine (with the current level of intelligence, it is hard to know beforehand), that the player knows the hyperlane map (either the player uses himself the hyperlane drive or the research was performed)

With the bizarre system of research, no guarantee of this tech shows up.

Better not to research the static defence tech in the first place.

 

[Kordanor]

Yeah, might be worth it if the galaxy travel is limited to hyperlanes though.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Even in hyperlane drive, the occurrences are very rare. Too rare to make it worth.

 

[Nyx]

I am absolutely positively addicted to this game . Clocking over 180 hours played already and even with it's balance issues (lance + point defense to win) and lack of midgame/endgame content I can still find enough to challenge myself into having stuff to do anyway (mouseclicking still beats waiting for timers to run out). Hyperlane only games also makes for a different gameplay experience.
Also I found it enjoyable to reduce the amount of AI empires so I can run around focusing on all the quests you get at the start. There is some nice story telling and quite a bit of humor in the game as well. Really looking forward for upcoming content ^.^

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Stellaris has few balancing issues since so many features have no weight.

As to lance plus point defense to win, it looks more like a byproduct of the biggest stack wins.

Lance is a large weaponry, point defense counter acts missiles (counter action is based on the difference in level of technologies)

A player going for lance only would get the uphand.

It is hard to tell whether the ship design system is balanced or not. Apparently, 180 hours+ are not enough to avoid reaching flawed conclusions.
The ship design balance does not matter though.

 

[Nyx]

Stellaris has few balancing issues since so many features have no weight.

As to lance plus point defense to win, it looks more like a byproduct of the biggest stack wins.

Lance is a large weaponry, point defense counter acts missiles (counter action is based on the difference in level of technologies)

A player going for lance only would get the uphand.

It is hard to tell whether the ship design system is balanced or not. Apparently, 180 hours+ are not enough to avoid reaching flawed conclusions.
The ship design balance does not matter though.

Oh trust me, lance + point defense have so far killed anything that tries to come close to me. With that setup I can beat fleets higher than me without losing more than 5 ships. But given time paradox will surely balance things out so I don't see it as an issue.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

How?

Point defense counter missiles. It is useless against anything else. So a mirror fleet equipped with something else than point defense (an offensive attachment possibly) wins.

At to losing few ships, it is a major feature in the game (already mentioned earlier)

 

[Nyx]

When it comes to point defense it's about balancing the amount you use. For example I use a small amount of my corvettes and the spare small slots of larger ships to deal with the eventual missiles. This way I still deal a lot of damage and can deal very well with any incoming missiles should there be some. Obviously if you spam too much PD you'll be in big trouble.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

In the current version, the ship design feature balance must not be assessed through a strict equivalence, like any 10 k fleet is equivalent to any 10k fleet.

The way to balance is different: for any 10 K fleet, a counter 10k fleet exists.

Any fleet composition, armament can be countered.

Any time a fleet composition is countered, if the fleet forces are equivalent, then the countering fleet force is conserved.

The conservation feature is an essential feature as it allows the AI to wage war without the player taking an advantage of it. It is also possible that Paradox tries another approach.

In their other titles, they aimed at curbing expansion. Countries were plagued by war fatigue that decrease their potential to renew a war effort. When a country ran out of manpower, it had to wait before declaring a new war.
In Stellaris, there is nothing of the sort.
The limiting factor is the speed at which a fleet is retrofitted and repaired.
A player who plays counter conserves its fleet through a war. Once the war is over, the interval of time between that truce and the next war against another enemy is the time to retrofit and repair the fleet.
The war effort could be perpetual in Stellaris.

So lance plus point defense cant be ultimate: to any fleet composition, there exists a counter composition that ensures that the counter fleet is conserved.

 

[Kordanor]

For those of you who speak German - and made it to that point of this thread - I published my review and overview of the game over here: