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United Kingdom20326 Posts
Sitting down to play a lot more now, damn the AI seems to have gotten better in general as well. I'm 100 years into a devouring swarm play and getting wardecced a lot by 2-3 guys at a time so that they can match or beat my fleet power, actually not that easy to play against. I laughed at the reworked pacifict unity bonus to defensive wars but that thing would have been great to have!
With ultra-wide playstyles being gone (half the planets aren't there, not even enough to claim big areas of space without a lot of border bonuses or frontier outposts) a lot of the AI's are closer in power to me too. With tech being more relevant and unity scaling being a bit better (slower early game, faster lategame) it's silly to take all of the size 10-12 planets so i have around 1/3'rd of the planets that i'd have in a game from a previous patch to play somewhat optimally.
The reworked food system is great. Dev.swarm got some changes to the unity trees and eating people mechanics and can grow pops a lot faster than before, easily >2x faster than last patch in the midgame and there is huge reward for frequent wars to eat people (they give 8 food each base, can be closer to 20 after a unity talent and a lot of bonuses..)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/kCdYfwe.png)
^3x growth multiplying the final pop growth rate, exactly as strong as it sounds
Dev.swarm also gets -50% to resettlement cost out of the box, this stacks directly with the other -25% bonuses so if you have a -50%, a -25% and another -25% it's completely free to resettle infinite pops whenever you want - another fix for one of the glaring design flaws of previous patches.
The AI will also group up more and move around multiple fleets from different empires as one
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On September 24 2017 06:14 Archeon wrote:@rocket-discussion: Fought rockets vs kinetic a few times since the patch and it seems to be okay as long as PDD isn't on the field. The timing with PD before swarm is out is ridiculous though, expect to deal less than 10% of your normal dps. Especially static rocket defense has absolutely zero impact vs PD. Show nested quote +On September 24 2017 03:46 darthfoley wrote:On September 24 2017 02:29 darthfoley wrote:
Is this game worth buying? I like EU4 a lot and space games are sexy. Well, I bought it and all the DLC for like $36, so we shall see Imo EU has a much stronger gameplay, Stellaris needs some mods to feel refined and each match feels fairly similar to me. Also lots of time I basically do nothing but micro my empire. It has more of an exploration focus though, and designing ships is still fun. The game isn't bad and definitely addicting, there are just some areas where they went for more simple or more automatized solutions than EU (diplomacy, asynchronous starting positions, anti-snowball), with the result that they work a lot worse. The devs are fairly active though and listen to the community a lot.
That was my experience when I tried it as well (vanilla). Game is great but replay value is fairly low because most things are the same no matter what race you put together. For example the ship construction- the fact that there's an auto build feature pretty much tells the tale. In Master of Orion (the OG of 4x games) there were dozens of different ways to approach ship building- in Stellaris there are so many restrictions. Like the slots- If I'm the one bloody designing the ship, why am I only allowed to put specific things in specific places? It makes no sense.
Lets hope paradox gives the player more room for creativity in future versions.
edit: Oh my god I just remembered the computers you build into ships. Holy shit it pisses me off just thinking about it. You want your battle ships to fly in close range? Sorry guv, can't do that we don't have the technology!
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
That reminds me of Gratuitous Space Battles, that game let you make some extra/different choices with funny outcomes. One of the best strats that i figured out (which was later patched out for being weird and OP) was just not adding any engines to ships. That didn't let them move at all so that they would sit in the blobby formation that you started them out with and all focus fire on whatever entered weapons range first. Without that, the AI was pretty meh and they'd all fly off and attack different things, fail to break through shield regen etc
I'd like to see a bit more customization in the stellaris system as well as a more user friendly system, it's supposed to be one of the highest priorities for development now so we will probably see something soon-ish
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Rofl PD deals far more dps on every level than normal weapons.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
It does AFAIK but extremely low range
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On September 25 2017 02:11 Cyro wrote:
It does AFAIK but extremely low range
Buffed from 10 to 30 range, which is 25% lower than laser f.e. But between 1.5 and 2x as much dps.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
On September 25 2017 02:19 Archeon wrote:Buffed from 10 to 30 range, which is 25% lower than laser f.e. But between 1.5 and 2x as much dps.
Not sure about PD since i don't have it max upgrade
The flak max level seems considerably stronger than small gun, actually - the weapon type bonuses are of a much lower effect on small guns and the damage loss doesn't make up for the 1.5x range difference. Two flaks better than a Medium, though? The weapon bonuses for non-flaks get significantly larger and the range difference increases to ~2.25x.
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On September 25 2017 02:27 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2017 02:19 Archeon wrote:On September 25 2017 02:11 Cyro wrote:
It does AFAIK but extremely low range Buffed from 10 to 30 range, which is 25% lower than laser f.e. But between 1.5 and 2x as much dps. Not sure about PD since i don't have it max upgrade The flak max level seems considerably stronger than small gun, actually - the weapon type bonuses are of a much lower effect on small guns and the damage loss doesn't make up for the 1.5x range difference. Two flaks better than a Medium, though? The weapon bonuses for non-flaks get significantly larger and the range difference increases to ~2.25x.
PD lvl 1 crushes laser 1 and 2. The main thing speaking against running only PD into PD-Carrier all game long is the lack of tracking before flack.
Overall it depends on what you are fighting. Against AE Plasma will still beat PD easily in damage output, but the difference in base dps probably still makes them more efficient against low armor compositions than kinetic or rockets. Against the normal AI corvette swarms f.e. mass Flack is probably the way to go.
They are also the only way to deal with the massively buffed strikecraft (and usually share a slot with them).
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Hard AI feels pretty fair now. Since it still messes up planet management, so that in the end they are on your eco level. And they also dont have this huge fleet advantage anymore.
So I am happy with the new Hard difficulty. But ship design still needs some love.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
PD lvl 1 crushes laser 1 and 2
You don't start the game with PD though, i had level 3 of the main weapon before even getting PD as an option; it's supposed to do that.
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@Cyro there is no love for eve eh?
Anyways, I bought the latest exp and ready to roll.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
On September 25 2017 18:09 Laserist wrote:
@Cyro there is no love for eve eh?
Anyways, I bought the latest exp and ready to roll.
Yo get on discord 
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On September 25 2017 18:55 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2017 18:09 Laserist wrote:
@Cyro there is no love for eve eh?
Anyways, I bought the latest exp and ready to roll.
Yo get on discord
o7
Discord is for sissies but I'll manage.
It's been a while since I last played Stellaris, I can use some friendly advice. Maybe write an AAR after that kek.
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The most annoying thing about Hyperlanes is that awakened empires and crysis dont give a shit :D
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
I've had my whole fleet get stuck on one system with hyperlanes for years about 3 times too many
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How approachable is this game? Ever since I played spore a long time ago I never managed to find an intergalactic empire game that was as easy to get into (alhtough I definetly could do with some more options). My tolerance for research tree navigating and text reading goes about as far as total war. If it gets more than that I simply lose interest.
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There is no visible research tree in Stellaris. You get 3 choices to chose from whenever you finish a tech.
Hard for me to say how hard it is to get into, I've played these games a lot since MoO 1 but I think Stellaris isn't bad in that regard either. There are no sliders you have to play with. Planet development is picking what building to put on a given tile (most often simply matching the resource said tile naturally produces).
There is an adequate AI option (Sectors). The game even tries to limit the amount of colonies your controlling yourself and steers you towards handing some off to the AI as you grow large.
Space combat is automated. you lose control of a fleet when it engages combat, your only able to signal a retreat.
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I think Total War is a fair comparison for Stellaris in terms of approachability.
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Stellaris can be played without reading to much I would say. But I would say some more micro management needed compared to Total War. (exception are battles :D)
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On September 25 2017 21:46 B.I.G. wrote:
How approachable is this game? Ever since I played spore a long time ago I never managed to find an intergalactic empire game that was as easy to get into (alhtough I definetly could do with some more options). My tolerance for research tree navigating and text reading goes about as far as total war. If it gets more than that I simply lose interest.
Very approachable for a 4x game. Very little information hiding, no huge techtrees and everything is fairly straightforward. Most elements are a bit flat, but there are a lot of them, which might be overwhelming at first.
There is some minor RNG manipulation you can do with the techtree, but that's advanced stuff that you don't need in order to play the game at all.
On September 25 2017 13:38 Cyro wrote:You don't start the game with PD though, i had level 3 of the main weapon before even getting PD as an option; it's supposed to do that.
Idk, PD1 is comparable to laser 2 in research cost. The main reason speaking against it is the lack of Tracking, PD1 has like 20% hitrate vs corvettes. But going MSS main + 2PDs on destroyers is probably the way to go now and there are a lot of reasons to go main 2/3 and then max PD+Aircraft once you get cruiser tech.
Especially since Flaks deal extremely well now with corvettes and Bombers do a lot of DPS vs armor.
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EPT
