Stellaris

Aaron said:

Though I do think they need to do a bit more balancing with regards to the costs of owning shitty systems. You need to claim everything just to keep pirates at bay (and because for fucks sake PDI games are all about painting the earth/space with your colour!) but it feels such a waste with a shitty system with 2 research and nothing else in. Again, games like these should not penalise you (at least not too much) for expanding.

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Ya agreed. Right now I just have ugly as hell border-gore, which is something most Paradox fans know to try and shy away from. Sadly I still do it for min/maxing, so my early empire looks ugly AF

It's a fairly easy problem to solve, just link the system penalty to the number of unconnected systems. Or just remove the system penalty and increase the planet penalty (I think this is appropriate) since basically size 8 planets are always a benefit right now.

Furry said:

I feel like the scaling for empire scale could be done more intelligently with math. Right now the game seems to heavily favor moderate empire sizes in terms of reeeesearch and tradition. Also, pirates are not an issue at all. Keep your military not shit and they are free loot and do.

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So how I've been playing it, I'm still thinking in terms of a 1 planet strategy from before, but that strat isn't viable at all now with systems making tech/tradition cost more expensive.

So what I've been doing is, I don't expand to another planet until my first planet is 1 pop away from population cap (starting planets are usually like 18 pop, so around 17 pop or so). And then each planet I expand to after, I wait until that planet is at least size 10 (for the 2nd level of the capital building). That pacing has felt pretty good to me for both tech and unity gain. In terms of how I expand starbases - I overemphasize science ships + scientists early to explore, even going so far as assigning a scientist off of science at start of game to man the 2nd science ship you can build right at the start of game. And then I just find some high value mineral system and expand to it, and then expand towards planet 2.

I'm finding with a more compact and deliberate expansion speed, you end up getting ahead on both techs and traditions over your neighbors, at the cost of land. But then by mid-game you just conquer for land instead.

Yeah, I actually waited to war until late 2200 because by then I had Psi Jump Drives. The Jump Drive penalty is pretty silly (-50% move speed, -50% weapons speed) but I found by then I had 2-3x the power of my neighbors, so I'd jump in with superior forces and just wipe stuff out. I dislike micro-managing multiple fleets, so I just run 2 fleets - 1 attack fleet with all 4 ship types, and 1 "speed fleet" of just corvettes + cruisers with afterburners and a gale speed or trickster trait. The speed fleet has decent sub-light speed to handle hyper-lane travel, while I use the attack fleet's jump drives to get around quicker and take out the bigger stacks.

But I agree, combat/ship movement just feels super slow. They either need to reduce hyperlane jump times or increase sub-light speeds. I end up heavily favoring sub-light speed admirals now.

Wait till you’re close to winning. You pretty much need regional fleets with a set of starbases to facilitate upgrades/ replenishment.

After posting my hunch about Cherryh’s pacing rewarding fanatic pacifist/xenophile build I tried it out a hyper-growth fanatic pacifist/xenophobic Inward Perfection build and won by Domination by the mid 2359s. Your expansion is only braked by influence for starbases and i was able to block off a third of the galaxy via key chokepoints long before I was able to occupy them. I won so fast I wasn’t able to get some of the low-hanging achievements.

I did notice that the AI is waaaaaaaay less aggressive for empire AI’s after comparing them to the Great Khan crisis tho. I was playing on very hard/high aggressiveness and although I had fought a couple wars against a fanatic purifier neighbor, it was nothing like the aggressive expansion from the Great Khan who spread to a third of the galaxy before the Khan died. Then the successor Khanates behaved just like normal AI and played as cautiously as before.

Prior to Cherryh, you’d have to keep your fleet strength pretty close to cap to avoid provoking opportunists and offsetting high border friction, now I think being provocatively weak just gets you claimed on unless you really had a shit fleet.

Aaron said:

What are your tactics with regards to ship design? I've tried to go both ways since the expansion, one is to have many different types of ships that I micromanage how they are supposed to function, the other is to only use the auto-generated ones. To be honest, I haven't found there to be so much of a difference, at least not one that is worth the extra work of microing the former.

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Scout out your targets and refit to counter their weapons and armor except point defense, which is pretty much useless, and strike craft which are awful.

Cruisers are bad ( mostly because of strike craft sucking )

Destroyers with L weapons can be generally useful

Corvettes have the most speed, the most dps and combat rating per mineral ( especially with missiles), but will take high casualties

Battleships take lower casualties, leading to lower war exhaustion, and are capable of mounting weapons that let them destroy stations of any size without getting touched, so they are generally better at invasions than corvettes unless the enemy is running corvette fleets ( battleships have a hard time hitting them ).

Titans are situationally useful but really aren't powerful enough for their cost and limitations, you'd bring it for the buffs not the combat strength.

Cruisers are weak now but for me they only have 1 function - playing the role of meat shield for fast movers (afterburner) corvettes to deal with Pirates, Mercenaries, and smaller fleets which try to circumvent your main fleet. Outside of that, I don't use cruisers.

In terms of fleet comp, I generally don't like auto-generate but I also don't like to min-max later in the game. Once I unlock a new hull, I just build 2 different types of ship for that hull (except Covettes and Cruisers, where I make "speed" versions). I use 2 fleets, and here's how each looks:

Speed Fleet
1) Afterburner Corvettes with Missiles
2) Afterburner Cruisers with small guns (they hopefully tank the damage)

Main Fleet
1) Missile Corvettes
2) Short Range Corvettes with kinetic + lasers
3) Artillery Destroyers
4) Medium/short range destroyers
5) Large weapon (With Spiral Mount) Battleship
6) Spiral Mount meat shield Battleship

khorum said:

I did notice that the AI is waaaaaaaay less aggressive for empire AI’s after comparing them to the Great Khan crisis tho. I was playing on very hard/high aggressiveness and although I had fought a couple wars against a fanatic purifier neighbor, it was nothing like the aggressive expansion from the Great Khan who spread to a third of the galaxy before the Khan died. Then the successor Khanates behaved just like normal AI and played as cautiously as before.

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Just like civilizations that followed in the wake of Genghis Khan. There is only one Flail of God.

Zajeer said:

Cruisers are weak now but for me they only have 1 function - playing the role of meat shield for fast movers (afterburner) corvettes to deal with Pirates, Mercenaries, and smaller fleets which try to circumvent your main fleet. Outside of that, I don't use cruisers.

In terms of fleet comp, I generally don't like auto-generate but I also don't like to min-max later in the game. Once I unlock a new hull, I just build 2 different types of ship for that hull (except Covettes and Cruisers, where I make "speed" versions). I use 2 fleets, and here's how each looks:

Speed Fleet
1) Afterburner Corvettes with Missiles
2) Afterburner Cruisers with small guns (they hopefully tank the damage)

Main Fleet
1) Missile Corvettes
2) Short Range Corvettes with kinetic + lasers
3) Artillery Destroyers
4) Medium/short range destroyers
5) Large weapon (With Spiral Mount) Battleship
6) Spiral Mount meat shield Battleship

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Yeah if your opponent isn’t fielding much PD or strike craft, torpedo boat corvettes and fast cruisers with double afterburners can easily destroy starbases long before a response fleet can engage them and simply run away.

With two afterburners a cruiser is the same speed as a destroyer with 1 (speed 221) and only slightly slower than a corvette without afterburners, which lets you beef up the torpedo boats a bit.

I usually refit my fast fleet with torpedoes and have them wreak havoc in the enemy hinterland destroying anchorages and shipyards and generally kiting the enemy fleet while my heavy fleet ferries my invasion force sllloooowly.

I played a few hours and liked it so far. My empire was basically divided into 2 parts because I rushed to block both neighbours.

Did some war with a neighbour. It was slow and I dread endgame wars.

Aaron said:

Cool advice, thanks!

Still, I've decided to rest this game for a few weeks til the beta patch is officially launched, maybe even a second one. It does seem the game needs more tweaking.

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Yeah it might be a bit of a bug or at least an oversight. If you notice fleets disperse WIDELY upon engagement now but they travel in far tighter packs. So once a fleet engages you'll see fast ships spread out to try to get each ship beyond the retargetting range of torpedoes...

...Starbase defense platforms DO NOT disperse in this way, so even a moderately-sized torpedo boat fleet can kill several platforms with their first torpedo salvo, since all of the platforms are well within retargetting ranges of even the slowest torpedoes. So all the overkill torpedoes cascade onto the next platform and so on. Starbases and defense platforms probably the best-case use for torpedoes.