Holy shit. With that mod missiles actually feel right now. And i am loving my torpedo cruisers/corvettes now. It was silly that the range of the missiles was not much better than the kinetics. But now. I still would not say go overboard on them (because a close range fleet will probably shred a missile based fleet. Also any torpedo ships you make. I say put other ahort range weapons on them (autocannon, lasers or flak)
gee, that kinds sounds like they're encouraging you to use weapon synergies and combined arms rather than focusing strictly on one type ^.^
You could mix energy and kinetics just fine. But missiles for the most part were pretty much useless.
Have you been playing Stellaris? There is very "little advantage" (arguably no advantage) to cross training in weapon types because increased weapon damage is mostly linear. Also, vanilla missiles offer no significant advantage over ballistics or energy weapons. Make no mistake, one fleet with missiles will ALWAYS be outdamaged by the same sized fleet with energy and/or projectiles. As the game is now, they are actively discouraging weapon synergies that use missiles.
He was commenting on the mod you linked and I was commenting on his comment. Ergo, not the vanilla game.
so the fallen empire that likes to ask for people to preserve your race asked for some of my people and I accepted. A few seconds later they give me a goddamn battlecruiser (no mod on that adds a battlecruiser class). I think at this point in the game no one even has tier 5 stuff (I only have tier 4 at the moment.)
DD 72: Crises and The Contingency Crisis Improvements & AI Some time back, when I was asked about issues with the crises and the AI crisis in particular, I said that I did not want to put a great deal of resources into improving the end-game when those resources could be put into the mid-game instead, and that these improvements and fixes would come when we felt the mid-game were in a good enough place to justify them. I now feel that we are in that place, and as such we are going to make a major push to improve, balance and rework the endgame crises for future updates. Probably the most significant change to the non-AI crises is the addition of a Crisis Strength setting in game setup, replacing the old setting to turn endgame crises on or off. It also replaces the scaling to galaxy size and habitable worlds, and has a default setting for each of the galaxy sizes. This setting allows you to control the strength of crises, all the way down from 0.25x of their base power to a massive and likely unstoppable 5x power boost to their fleets. As before, you can also turn off crises entirely. Additionally, we've also spent a considerable amount of time improving the crisis AI, both in terms of how the crises themselves behave and how regular AI empires react to them. Crises should now expand in a more logical fashion and be better at defending and fortifying the space they have taken over. AI empires, in turn, should be far better at understanding when they are under mortal threat and react to a rapidly spreading crisis by banding together against it and coordinating their fleets to fight it. The Contingency The old AI rebellion crisis suffers from a number of issues, mostly stemming from the fact that it's so different from the other crises. While the Extradimensionals and Scourge are large invasions that have to be fought with fleets, the AI rebellion is supposed to be primarily an internal crisis, with the dangers stemming from infiltration and subversion rather than outright warfare. The problem with this is twofold: The game mechanics do not support it, and it is inherently unsatisfying. Whereas huge fleets roaming around scourging the galaxy of life is an easily understood threat that can be fought by empires coming together and pooling their resources against the invaders, the AI crisis mostly ends up as a series of frustrating events affecting empires in isolation, or 'Spaceport Destruction Simulator' as it's been called. In addition to the gameplay problems, there is also the narrative problems: Why exactly do rebelling synths pose a galaxy-wide threat? If sapient machines are so powerful, why are ascended synthetic empires not on the power level of an endgame crisis? Even if we were to simply boost the AI crisis by giving it massive fleets, this really doesn't make much sense that a handful of rebelling synths from a handful of regular empires were able to amass such fleet assets in the first place. It's for this reason that we decided to go back to the drawing board and remake the AI crisis in the mold of the other two endgame crises, while retaining as much as possible of the 'synth infiltration' flavor from the old crisis. Enter the Contingency. Without wishing to spoil too much, The Contingency is an ancient AI whose purpose appears to be to sterilize the galaxy of all higher biological life and control or destroy all other Synthetic life forms. At the start of the game, it is dormant, broadcasting a weak signal across the galaxy that affects Synthetics in unpredictable ways. The chance of the Contingency waking up is directly tied to the prevalence of Synthetic life in the galaxy, and should it wake, it will attempt to use its signal to control Synthetics and force them to aid it in its implacable task of galactic sterilization. Unlike the previous AI crisis, the Contingency has formidable fleet assets with which to carry out this task and has to be fought both in space and at home, as it makes use of subversion and infiltration to soften up its targets before the sterilization units arrive. Just as with the Extradimensionals and Scourge, there is additional events and hidden lore to be discovered regarding the Contingency, and synthetic empires will have special interactions and challenges related to it. The Contingency completely replaces the old AI uprising crisis, but we are currently looking at also implementing a new AI uprising, not as a galactic scale crisis but as a midgame event localized to one or a few empires. But more on that later! Not bad. Lot of Reaper influences in there, which I don't mind. Good to know AI will react to crises with more gusto.
Yea the one thing I do think they need to improve on is the within the empire politics, society, etc. Its pretty shallow, plus espionage and a little bit more on diplomacy would be great, currently the focus is very much on material expansion and warfare.
The mod that adds x slot missiles actually seems pretty balanced against the energy and kinetic x slot weapons. The missiles do have a much higher range (150) and i believe they do more damage but balanced it out is the travel time and the fact they can be shot down. Now i wish missiles had an aoe. You start with nukes. Where are the massive exploaions (probably wouldn't be performance friendly). It would make missiles much more useful if one could damage multiple ships.
Robots, androids and synths will get some updates in 1.8, which is now called "Čapek", which is quite fitting if you know the name. The theme of Čapek leans towards synths. Considering the pictures, looks like we are getting unique synth portraits for species groups and possbile synth hive minds. Maybe even psionic hive minds. Could also be unique fallen empire trait, but feels unlikely. Seems like these "Caretakers" are also connected to, or affected by the Contingency in some ways. Genemodding will also get some tweaks. Main change being templates for modding. Sub-species for main race pretty much. Helps keeping track of your engineered pops and assigning pops to certain sub-species. Point costs and effects will also be tweaked a bit so that genetic ascendancy isn't lackluster compared to almost instant rewards of synth and psi paths Habitability will be tweaked a bit too. In general, minimum habitability is dropped to 20% but overall number of planets will be toned down, making terraforming (and orbital habitats) more important in long run. Happiness modifier will be rebalanced along with these changes to make colony spamming risky. Different planets will also get modifiers to deposits. For example, dry planets getting more energy deposits and physics research, cold planets more minerals and engineering, wet planets more food and society and gaia worlds will be mixed. There's still RNG in play but the difference will be visible. Terraforming candidates will also get special flag so they are shown in habitable planets screen. 'Cause honestly, nobody remembers those damn canditates past early game. Hoping for some tweaks for warfare and diplomacy too, but I have gut feeling those will be prime material for next proper expansion. Wait and see.
To me they both look like plantoid synths with color variations. Similar to color variations of the humanoid synth portraits we have now. Purple/blue being proper synths and the green/yellow for androids.
Seems like they actually were new fallen empire. DD 75: Fallen Machine Empire Ancient Caretakers (Story Pack) Those with the Story Pack will be able to encounter a brand new Fallen Empire - the Ancient Caretakers. The Ancient Caretakers is a fallen synthetic civilization that appears to be the remnant of some great conflict in the distant past. From what they tell you, they appear to have been part of something called the 'Custodian Project', an initiative to construct and maintain a number of ringworlds as a refuge for biological sapients fleeing some unknown menace. Their erratic behavior and speech, however, suggests that something may be very wrong indeed with this Fallen Machine Empire. The Ancient Caretakers have a new attitude called 'Enigmatic' and an obscured opinion score to represent their bizarre and unpredictable nature. They may help you with gifts of ships of technology, request your assistance with tasks that may make little apparent sense, or even make demands of your empire that you would be unwise to ignore. They do not awaken like a regular Fallen Empire, but instead have a particular 'triggering event' that, if it happens during the course of the game, will automatically awaken them... though they will not always awaken in the same way. All in all, they behave quite differently from the other Fallen and Awakened Empires, and have their own backstory to explore, as well as unique interactions when dealing with other synthetic civilizations. Fallen Empire Tweaks & Changes (Čapek Update) In addition to the Ancient Caretakers, there are also some changes coming to the current batch of Fallen Empires. First of all, because the Ancient Caretakers also make use of ringworlds, we decided that you'd end up with just a few too many ringworlds to conquer and restore kicking around. Thus, for those with the Story Pack, we made a new initializer for the Keepers of Knowledge with a more traditional Fallen Empire setup of Gaia Worlds and outlying colonies, including some unique features and buildings to suit their archivarian ways. The old initializer with its three ringworlds still exists, however, and will spawn for those that do not have the Story Pack, so those without do not have their Fallen Empire ringworlds taken away. Other than that, the following changes were done to the existing Fallen Empires: - Keepers of Knowledge were changed to have their behavior (Hatred of AI) no longer directly conflict with their ethos (Materialist). Both their Fallen and Awakened variants no longer hold a grudge against AI, but instead have doubled down on their obsession with collecting and hoarding knowledge. Satellites of Awakened Keepers of Knowledge are no longer required to ban AI, but will have to contribute a major share of their research to their overlord. - Holy Guardians were changed to be a bit more interactive, and are now able to offer tasks and give gifts to the younger races, though they will mostly only deign to do so to fellow Spiritualists. They have also taken over some of the Keepers of Knowledge's hatred of AI, and you can expect their Awakened variant to offer no quarter to synthetic civilizations. - Militant Isolationists and Enigmatic Observers have mostly been left unchanged, asides from some updates to their initializers and ship designs, such as removing the Synths previously used by the Militant Isolationists and giving them to the Keepers of Knowledge instead. They will now also start with more trait points for their species than the other Fallen Empires, to represent their focus on the biological. Finally, a change was done to the way you establish contact with Fallen Empires. Previously, unless you had done something to anger them (for example colonize a Holy World) FEs would open communications only when you directly entered their space. This has been changed so that Fallen Empires will now instead contact you when your ships enter any system adjacent to their space. This should make it harder to accidentally colonize next to Militant Isolationists and also make it so that your exploring science ship isn't immediately hurled back to your capital just because it happened to take a wrong turn after Omicron Persei. Hive minds getting some changes and dynamic tradition swapping sound interesting too. Hive minds are different and fun, but definitely need some fleshing out. Wiz also mentioned they want to make sure 1.8 won't be similar mess as 1.6 was at relaease, so the patch is still some ways out.
Hive minds and special goverments like purifiers will get unique traditions. 'Cause purifiers studying diplomacy was legit as heck.
DD 76: Hive Minds and traditon swapping Hive Minds Hive Minds was a feature in Utopia that we were not unhappy with, but felt we could have done more on. While it works fine from a gameplay perspective, offering a different mode of play for those who do not wish to concern themselves with internal politicking and just want to get on with building their glorious empire among the stars (and eating those that stand in their way), Hive Minds ended up somewhat lacking in the flavor department, and suffered narratively from gameplay text that does not fit a Hive-Minded society, such as early exploration events. For 1.8, we've decided to make a major push to improve Hive Minds, both narratively and gameplay-wise. Many events have been changed, disabled or rewritten to fit Hive Minds and their unique societies. We've also tried to address a number of non-event related narrative breaks, such as replacing the 'Sprawling Slums' starting planet tile blocker with a unique tile blocker only found on Hive Mind homeworlds. A new system for relocalising technologies based on government authority types was also created, and a number of technologies will now have different, more suitable names for Hive Minds (such as renaming Administrative AI to Synaptic Enhancers). Some new, unique interactions were also added to the game to emphasise the inherent psionic nature of Hive Minds. We've also changed the way Hive Minds interact with non-Hive Mind pops. While we still do not want non-Hive Minded Pops to be regular citizens of Hive Minds (for numerous reasons, the main one being keeping Hive Minds distinct from regular empires in how they are played), we have added the option to keep them around as Livestock instead of simply being processed or displaced. AI-controlled Hive Mind empires now also vary in how they treat Pops of other species, with some preferring displacement and others making use of livestock or processing. Livestock/Processing have been buffed from 3/6 food per Pop to 6/8 respectively, and a number of fixes have been made to ensure that Pops that are kept as livestock do not incur building maintenance or similar issues. Devouring Swarms In addition to the changes to regular Hive Minds, we've also devoted some more attention to the Devouring Swarm civic that was added in 1.6. Devouring Swarms have had their bonuses increased to be more on par with their Fanatical Purifier non-Hive Mind variant, and a new government type and AI personality was created for Devouring Swarms that you encounter while exploring the galaxy. They also have a few new flavor texts and unique interactions. Assimilation Finally, we've improved the process of assimilating non-Hive Minded Pops into the Hive. Instead of having to genetically modify the project (and complete said project before the Pops are eaten or forced out), Hive Minds now have access to a new type of citizenship species right, that is unlocked once they unlock the Evolutionary Mastery ascension perk. This citizenship type, called 'Assimilation', will convert non-Hive-Minded Pops into a Hive-Minded variant of that species, allowing them to be integrated seamlessly into your Hive Mind empire. The process is gradual, with a certain number of Pops converted at regular intervals rather than all being modified at the same time. Non-Hive Minded Pops will of course be quite upset by this, selfishly holding on to their individuality rather than simply surrendering to the glory of the collective. This new method of assimilation was also made available to Synthetic empires, and can be used to convert Pops to cyborgs (if partway through Synthetic Ascension) or upload them into robot bodies (if fully Synthetically Ascended). It can also be used to by non-Hive Mind empires that have unlocked Evolutionary Mastery to de-assimilate Hive-Minded Pops. Tradition Swapping Another issue both gameplay and narrative-wise that affects Hive Minds, but is not unique to them, is that certain traditions simply do not fit certain kinds of empires. When creating the tradition trees, we tried to keep them as broad as possible, but ultimately you're never going to be able to design seven full trees that fit perfectly into every possible society and playstyle. It's for this reason that we have created a new system that we call 'Tradition Swapping'. Tradition Swapping allows any Tradition Category (such as Diplomacy) or individual Tradition (such as Trans-Stellar Corporations) to be set up with a number of potential 'swaps'. These swaps have conditions and weights for each individual empire, and can be anything from a simple name and description swap to a full replacement of name, description, icon and effects. A number of such tradition swaps have been created for empires with specific playstyle, such as Hive Minds and Fanatical Purifiers. For example, Hive Minds have replaced 'Trans-Stellar Corporations' (Private Colony Ships make very little sense in a Hive Mind...) with Warrior Forms, a tradition that reduces army upkeep. They also have the entire Diplomacy tree replaced with Adaptability, a new tree focused on growth, habitability and genetics. Though Tradition swaps may appear to be completely different from what they are replacing, they still occupy the same 'slot'. This means that the system is able to easily handle any change in the empire that would affect the tradition trees - if a Fanatic Purifier has the Purity tree (replacing the Domination tree) filled out and stop being Fanatical Purifiers, they will not lose their unlocked traditions and ascension perks, instead they are simply swapped for whatever variant of the same slots are valid for the empire - in this case reverting the Purity tree back to being Domination. While this may seem slightly strange, we felt it is nonetheless the preferrable way of handing such switches, as all sorts of issues would arise from simply yanking a number of unlocked traditions from empires that could no longer fulfill the conditions for them. By keeping the system as robust and dynamic as possible, it allows us to make far more adjustments to individual traditions for different playstyles than would be otherwise possible. The Tradition Swapping system is, of course, fully accessible to modders. Seems like we'll be getting quite hefty patch again with 1.8. Tradition swapping is relatively minor but still very good addition. And it has clear effects on special goverments, making them more distinct. Good thing Hive Minds will get unique flavor too.
