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[Gotchaye]

Looking at the numbers I'm not sure that there's a good reason to research most weapon techs. My corvettes started with nuclear missiles. Equipping them with fusion missiles makes them cost 10% more and do about 10% more damage. Equipping them with Space Torpedoes Mk 2 (and required power generators) is similarly about a 50% increase in damage and cost (and maintenance). Other weapon types scale similarly. Salvaged weapons like crystal throwers seem to mostly be worse than comparable researchable weapon types (though you can get them for free by doing enough salvaging). Power generators similarly scale terribly although here at least it's useful to be able to save on space if you're running other power-hungry components.

Armor might be cheap enough to be worth it. I haven't played around with point defense yet. Shields are convenient if nothing else and are one of the only techs where components become more efficient with tech level. I got a rare tech that seems like it should be giving me a component that gives a ship a shield regeneration aura but I can't seem to find it in ship designer.

Combat computers are nearly free and provide huge bonuses.

Unless war score is computed based on ship class rather than on ship power or unless you're coming up against the fleet cap I feel like the way to go is to load up ships with relatively low-tech weapons and power generation while prioritizing combat computers and maybe shields.

Questions:

Do vassals give you tribute like protectorates do?

As far as I can tell my research only stockpiles at something like a 20% rate when I'm doing a special project. Is that right?

 

[schlynch]

Have not been able to sink a ton of time, but just want to say the tech tree "deck of cards" system is fucking rad.

I think it's quite terrible. Good to hide that your team wasn't able to implement a proper, balanced tree which consider your ethics and politics. One of the things I hope a DLC will fix, besides espionage, intrigues, trading, diversity and politics in the own empire... sometimes the game feels half finished. I'am totally sure that Paradox will make it great over time though, like they did with their other games too.

 

[HariKari]

Unless war score is computed based on ship class rather than on ship power or unless you're coming up against the fleet cap I feel like the way to go is to load up ships with relatively low-tech weapons and power generation while prioritizing combat computers and maybe shields.

You hit the naval cap eventually, at a certain size. It starts to become more about quality. A 20% hike in combat power at the same size is no joke on a 10k stack. So you could start cheap but keep some expensive designs to upgrade to when you've got the time and resources.

There's plenty of good straight buffs like attack speed to research as well. You also tend to get weapons with more range and accuracy, so that's less exposure. Lances are gold.

 

[cyress8]

Ok, had my first major war. Was pretty damn awesome. My Alliance consisted of myself that had 3 vassals split from one empire that was blocking my path of expansion since I was using hyperdrives to get around. ( Fucker would not let me through because he was a xenophobe. ) The other one had 4 different small vassals of all different types of aliens and had 10+ planets somehow. The other was barely an empire which the attacking empire wanted to expand into their territory.

I'm still trying to figure out if this is a bug or not but my allies sent their fleets to my main fleet and we all were a giant blob of destruction. They followed my fleet like I was their admiral the whole time. Felt awesome since I could direct what to hit and when, but I had to make smaller fleets to handle bombarding planets and destroying the enemy's wormhole generators.

 

[John Dunbar]

i feel there aren't enough techs in the game for there to be many meaningful choices with the random deck, and the ones you actually need are so common they will show up again almost instantly if you pick one of the rarer ones. i don't think it is a terrible system, but i also don't think it is significantly different from just having a traditional tech tree.

 

[NandyRewman]

Just got wrecked by a Fallen empire. Lost a 26k fleet, but took down about 10k of their ships in return - they swarmed my home planet with about 40k ships overall. Had to give up half my planets, which stings, but they left some debris behind so I'm hoping I can get some decent tech from that at least.

 

[bjaelke]

Steam should update your Stellaris version to 1.0.1 momentarily.

This hotfix contains the following:
- Fixed CTD when showing tooltip for an ambient object that gets destroyed
- Fixed CTD when an ambient object gets destroyed while selected
- Fixed fleets getting stuck trying to use wormhole stations belonging to other empires
- Improved performance issues and fixed issues with stuttering in early game

We are also currently working on a second hotfix that fixes various bugs and stability issues. The work with the first larger patch has also begun, no final release date set for that one yet.

Thanks to all of our players for making space great again!

Hotfix 1.0.1 Released [checksum 4d15]

 

[Kvik]

So I ventured down to Steam Workshop to check out some mods, and some already made nekomimi waifu playable race, they sure didn't waste any time. :-\

 

[Chariot]

So I ventured down to Steam Workshop to check out some mods, and some already made nekomimi waifu playable race, they sure didn't waste any time. :-\

Don't forget top nep

 

[Trickster]

How are you supposed to manage factions? I have one faction only, but it just sucks and wants to be free.

My manage factions tab doesn't seem to offer me a lot of options other than just letting them go free, or pumping tons of resources into making small reductions in some political parties influence?

 

[Kvik]

Don't forget top nep

Eh, kinda want. But hopefully there will be monmusu of some kind .

 

[Chariot]

Eh, kinda want. But hopefully there will be monmusu of some kind .

Supreme Spider Empire.

 

[a3den]

The OST is just fantastic.

Deep Space Travels is awesome and has a really cool Interstellar vibe.

Put this shit on loop and yell out "I'm coming, Murph!"

Which makes me now want to play an empire based on the evolved humans from Anne Hathaway's colony. It was a great... Paradox.

That's my favorite track as well. Organ is such a sick instrument.

 

[Krisprolls]

I had a funny moment yesterday.

Another avian civ wants to ally. They look similar to me (materialist, xenophile), they're powerful and they love my civ so I accept.

Like 5 seconds later, a fallen empire declare war on him. As I'm now allied I'm also at war with the fallen civ. I feel I just made a big mistake.

Less than a minute later a 20k fleet comes to my planets and destroy every single one of my ships and my 2 space stations. I had a full 1k fleet but it got destroyed in a few seconds.

Fortunately, the war stops after that and I see the fallen empire was just trolling as their war goal was only to "humiliate" my ally and nothing else. I'd say they mostly humiliated my civ.

So at least I lost no planet. As soon as the was was over, I quitted the alliance.

Funny thing is my old ally asked multiples times to come back. No thanks...

 

[Eduardboon]

I need a good video tutorial to play along with. Quill18 is nice and all, but he is a far better strategist than I am, so some stuff is lost on me. (Why do edicts, for example?)

I am still playing my "learner" game; picked the UN Humans and am now in an alliance with one good race of cat people, but somehow everyone has a -1000 when I want to trade anything.

Also; when I go to the situation log and want to start research from there, I can't. The button is always grayed out and it always says: need 1 science ship. I have 2 available doing nothing. It works when I manually put a science ship on the task, but this requires finding the anomaly first.

Overall; really stellar game, so much more fun than I've had in civ, but I really need that tutorial play-along.

 

[Aiii]

Also; when I go to the situation log and want to start research from there, I can't. The button is always grayed out and it always says: need 1 science ship. I have 2 available doing nothing. It works when I manually put a science ship on the task, but this requires finding the anomaly first.

It needs both a science ship and a science leader apointed to that ship, click the ship, click the empty portrait and pick an available scientist (or if none are available since 3 of them are working on researching, recruit one). After that, you can send your science ship to do research.

 

[John Dunbar]

so what the hell were the folks at paradox thinking when they did not include map modes? even on a medium map i have no fucking clue who is allied to whom or who hates me and so forth without annoying menu hunting and then looking them up to see are they powerful enough for me to care.

no maps and ledgers was a boneheaded decision.

 

[Noaloha]

- Fixed fleets getting stuck trying to use wormhole stations belonging to other empires

Yesss. And off I go!

"Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gaaal. Send me a kiss by wire, baby my heart's on fiiiire"

 

[Eduardboon]

It needs both a science ship and a science leader apointed to that ship, click the ship, click the empty portrait and pick an available scientist (or if none are available since 3 of them are working on researching, recruit one). After that, you can send your science ship to do research.

All my science ships have scientist appointed to them.

 

[Anno]

All my science ships have scientist appointed to them.

It's really wonky trying to fire it up from the log. I think you literally need the science ship to be within range of the project, which is almost never the case unless that scan completed their current move. I think it's just something that Paradox needs to work on improving in the future and you just have to do it some other way for now.

 

[Brohan]

I'm having a blast! I made an Enlightened Kingdom and have been doing amazing for myself.

I have been swimming in influence and due to the Enlightened Kingdom bonusses i have been able to use edicts for a lot of stuff like keeping my pops happy etc.
Have had 0 problems with rebellions even when taking over planets through war.

I do have to say that i feel like it's been to easy so far, especially since i have never played grand strategy before and have only played a bit of Civ V but i'm not complaining.

Looking forward to a multiplayer match.

 

[Trickster]

How does your 5 planet limit work exactly? I got a sixth by winning a war, and it showed up as 6/5 in my overview and gave me a penalty, but I'm watching a streamer who is much later in the game than me, and he seems to have a shitton of planets in his space, yet his overview still only says 5/5?

 

[Khoryos]

Also; when I go to the situation log and want to start research from there, I can't. The button is always grayed out and it always says: need 1 science ship. I have 2 available doing nothing. It works when I manually put a science ship on the task, but this requires finding the anomaly first.

The science ship needs to be in orbit - I've found the easiest way to do it is to click the Go To button on the log, then select your ship from the outliner and right click > research project.

 

[Aiii]

How does your 5 planet limit work exactly? I got a sixth by winning a war, and it showed up as 6/5 in my overview and gave me a penalty, but I'm watching a streamer who is much later in the game than me, and he seems to have a shitton of planets in his space, yet his overview still only says 5/5?

Putting your planets in a self-controlled sector removes them, you can have more planets, but only five under your own control.

Costs 25 influence per planet though, so if you don't have influence you're shit out of luck.

 

[Brohan]

How does your 5 planet limit work exactly? I got a sixth by winning a war, and it showed up as 6/5 in my overview and gave me a penalty, but I'm watching a streamer who is much later in the game than me, and he seems to have a shitton of planets in his space, yet his overview still only says 5/5?

You have to make Sectors.

You kind of let those planets work for themselves and then you can colonize other planets again.

 

[Noaloha]

I need a good video tutorial to play along with. Quill18 is nice and all, but he is a far better strategist than I am, so some stuff is lost on me. (Why do edicts, for example?)

I am still playing my "learner" game; picked the UN Humans and am now in an alliance with one good race of cat people, but somehow everyone has a -1000 when I want to trade anything.

Also; when I go to the situation log and want to start research from there, I can't. The button is always grayed out and it always says: need 1 science ship. I have 2 available doing nothing. It works when I manually put a science ship on the task, but this requires finding the anomaly first.

Overall; really stellar game, so much more fun than I've had in civ, but I really need that tutorial play-along.

-Think of edicts as short-term nudges in a certain direction for specific planets. Maybe you want to do the food one just to kickstart growth, or use the energy one on your capital planet for a decent %-boost to the resource while you improve your overall empire-wide energy generation, or you have a problem with external ideas and you throw your influence at reaffirming your own empire's ethics for that planet's population. Just keep in mind that, since they're percentage boosts, you get much greater bang from your (valuable) influence if used on bigger values.

-For the -1000 trade willingness, hover over the value on that screen and a tooltip should specify where that modifier stems from. It'll likely be from their beliefs (Xenophobic Isolationists, for example).

-I only use the 'Research' button directly on the situation log if it's a surface research for your main science team. For any research involving objects in space, I click the 'Go To' button (taking my screen to the system), then select my scientist from the Outliner down the right and right-click the researchable object that way. (edit:, yeah, as Khoryos mentioned already)

 

[Aon]

Putting your planets in a self-controlled sector removes them, you can have more planets, but only five under your own control.

Costs 25 influence per planet though, so if you don't have influence you're shit out of luck.

It only costs influence to return a sector world back to your own control. Costs nothing to add planets to a sector, or even to move planets between two sectors.

 

[NandyRewman]

Turns out being stomped by a Fallen empire was the best thing that could have happened to me - my fleet is now equipped with, I think, some of the best tech in the game. Just need to build up my force limit a bit, and then I think it's time for a little revenge.

 

[Khoryos]

Still six hours till I can play some more... I'm tiding myself over by reading the classic Tom Francis GalCiv diary at work. Knowing the influence details is going to make such a big difference, the wait is driving me nuts! I haven't been grabbed by a game so hard since SMAC.

 

[tmespe]

So it turns out if you have a decent connection at home and work, this game plays very well in Chrome Remote Desktop...

 

[Durante]

Looking at the numbers I'm not sure that there's a good reason to research most weapon techs. My corvettes started with nuclear missiles. Equipping them with fusion missiles makes them cost 10% more and do about 10% more damage. Equipping them with Space Torpedoes Mk 2 (and required power generators) is similarly about a 50% increase in damage and cost (and maintenance). Other weapon types scale similarly. Salvaged weapons like crystal throwers seem to mostly be worse than comparable researchable weapon types (though you can get them for free by doing enough salvaging). Power generators similarly scale terribly although here at least it's useful to be able to save on space if you're running other power-hungry components.

Armor might be cheap enough to be worth it. I haven't played around with point defense yet. Shields are convenient if nothing else and are one of the only techs where components become more efficient with tech level. I got a rare tech that seems like it should be giving me a component that gives a ship a shield regeneration aura but I can't seem to find it in ship designer.

Combat computers are nearly free and provide huge bonuses.

Unless war score is computed based on ship class rather than on ship power or unless you're coming up against the fleet cap I feel like the way to go is to load up ships with relatively low-tech weapons and power generation while prioritizing combat computers and maybe shields.

Questions:

Do vassals give you tribute like protectorates do?

As far as I can tell my research only stockpiles at something like a 20% rate when I'm doing a special project. Is that right?

I haven't even waged a war yet and I am not that far from the fleet cap. Given my current production capacity I think I would run into it almost immediately with a "many cheap ships" strategy in an all-out war.

 

[Octavianus]

Stuff is going pretty well in my current game. Decided to use the same species / goverment from my last game (fanatic materialist xenophile Science Directorate) and I'm lucky not to be running into as many spiritualists this time.
Even managed to find an ally with the 'federation builder' ai personality.
Even better, they have a different planet type preference and we have free migration which just opened up a lot of previously uninhabitable planets in my empire.

Oh and I had a war about 20 years into the game against a bunch of xenophobes. We crushed them together and they surrendered completely. They've succesfully integrated into my empire and are now fanatical passivist xenophiles. And they too have a different planet type preference

 

[Wanace]

Put in 7 hours so far, liking it quite a lot. There are a ton of UI and quality of life improvements I would like to see but I have no doubt that'll cone with time.

I just annexed a vassal of mine and their faction for independence is growing like crazy. What's the strategy in this situation? Should I purge their pops?

 

[Aiii]

It only costs influence to return a sector world back to your own control. Costs nothing to add planets to a sector, or even to move planets between two sectors.

Oh snap, knowing this yesterday evening would have made my life a whole lot easier...

So it turns out if you have a decent connection at home and work, this game plays very well in Chrome Remote Desktop...

I'm trying my hardest to not cave and play at work, and here you go posting this. Damn you.

 

[Trickster]

Okay so I thought sectors were supposed to run their own shit? Why do I have to build land a spaceports manually for them? Not to mention there's a dumb faction that keep destroying tiles that I can do jack shit about

 

[Gotchaye]

I haven't even waged a war yet and I am not that far from the fleet cap. Given my current production capacity I think I would run into it almost immediately with a "many cheap ships" strategy in an all-out war.

Are you building (and upgrading, maybe) spaceports? I had a fleet cap in the teens for a while but that blew up to over a hundred very quickly when I started dumping minerals into spaceports. And spaceports are cap-free planetary defense plus slots for energy and food generation.

To be clear, I don't think that "many cheap ships" is much more cost-effective than equipping ships with your highest tech weapons - once you start using your ships' utility slots you're probably going to be at least getting your money's worth out of upgraded weapons (although of course using high tech everything is going to require more power generation). But I doubt that it's worth taking the time to research those weapons in the first place until your other military techs are at least a tier or two ahead of where your weapons are. I think I'd research almost anything useful-looking before going for a weapon upgrade at this point, but even if you're strictly concerned with winning an upcoming war I think the right answer is almost always non-weapon military techs.

 

[la_briola]

Is anyone using the ship builder? I'm just using "auto-best" when I build new ships in my spaceports.

 

[Uzzy]

Just seen that there's a lovely mod called The Quintessential British Name List, which adds in a mass of names from the Royal Navy and British Army.

As such, my next game will feature the return of the British Empire, conquering space in the name of the Queen. Tea can be a strategic resource too.

 

[HundredEyeMonk]

Is anyone using the ship builder? I'm just using "auto-best" when I build new ships in my spaceports.

I am, more for the flavor of doing it with some personalization.

It comes in handy when you want to min-max your ship and if you want to customize. For instance, I have 3 models of Battleship right now. One is a carrier, one is a long-range torpedo boat, one is a support boat that heals. I try to integrate one of each into my fleet. I set my torpedo and support boats with Defensive Computers, my Carriers with Offensive.


Not sure how good the auto-generated ships are- haven't used it yet.

 

[Lashley]

Is anyone using the ship builder? I'm just using "auto-best" when I build new ships in my spaceports.

Same here, no idea what im doing

 

[bjaelke]

Ship Builder interface could use some work. It becomes somewhat overwhelming to look at when you reach 20+ designs.

 

[Octavianus]

Is anyone using the ship builder? I'm just using "auto-best" when I build new ships in my spaceports.

Yes because I don't feel like it always makes the best decisions.

 

[CloudWolf]

Is anyone using the ship builder? I'm just using "auto-best" when I build new ships in my spaceports.

Auto best in Paradox games (or 4X games in general) is often far from the best.

 

[Aaron D.]

LOL, I feel like I'm behind the curve with most of you guys in regards to campaign progress. Wrapped up session two last night and still only have 5 hours total game-time logged.

I'm finally getting comfortable navigating both the UI and my fleets, making the game experience feel more deliberate and focused. It's really a smart interface once you start absorbing what tabs & keystrokes reveal info types. Along with the shortcut menu system at the top of the page, a Paradox staple, I'm loving the bindable hotkeys at the bottom. One press pulls up your assigned ship/planet interface, two presses takes you there. This is so brilliant in that you can quickly issue orders even when you're not in the same system or conversely immediately leapfrog over to the target's system if you want to take a closer look. Just a quick example of how intelligent and satisfying the UI interface is.

So I'm obviously still in Baby Steps mode, but man am I smitten thus far. While there's obviously room to grow, the polish and possibility available right now makes me giddy with excitement. Loving what I'm seeing thus far.

 

[fanboi]

Some small improvments that should be considered (the game is fantastic but some stuff):

• Map modes, not sure why they don't have these but they are needed
• When queing up orders, and you want to add a order which is in the same system, it should be placed before in the queue before the vessel leaves the system
• More fleshed out diplomacy (this is something we will get I am sure of as a DLC)
• A casus belli system would be nice

 

[Jintor]

is there somewhere that just lists anomolies you've stumbled over? After losing a science ship I'm wary of trying anything with a 30% failure rate, but I have no idea where my shit is anymore without looking at every galaxy individually.

 

[Tacitus_]

Uh what?

What does this mean? Anybody?

A wormhole will appear with a bunch of hungry critters coming through. Mine appeared across the galactic core from my empire.

 

[Octavianus]

A wormhole will appear with a bunch of hungry critters coming through. Mine appeared across the galactic core from my empire.

I'm sure this stuff will just work itself out. I mean, it's on the other side of the galaxy so what could possibly go wrong?

 

[Maiorum]

I'm still trying to figure out if this is a bug or not but my allies sent their fleets to my main fleet and we all were a giant blob of destruction. They followed my fleet like I was their admiral the whole time. Felt awesome since I could direct what to hit and when, but I had to make smaller fleets to handle bombarding planets and destroying the enemy's wormhole generators.

Not a bug; that's how alliance wars work. I wish you could give them a heads-up and converge your fleets before declaring war, since it can take a bit for their fleets to reach your position, but when they do, it's pretty rad.

Is anyone using the ship builder? I'm just using "auto-best" when I build new ships in my spaceports.

It actually becomes quite important to use the ship builder to design types of ships as you progress through the game, since you can be absolutely destroyed by empires whose ships counter your weapons. The fleet strengths displayed when in combat are based off the hard values of the weapons and equipment on your ships, and doesn't take into account counters; for example, your 10k strength fleet equipped with laser weapons could be beaten by a 5k strength fleet with strong shields.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the builder, just keep in mind:

- Lasers are good against armor but not shields
- Kinetic weapons are good against shields but not armor
- Missiles do ok against both (I think?) but can be shot down by point defense cannons

So taking Corvettes, for example, I have four designs- one each with lasers, kinetic weapons, missiles and PDCs, and I make sure that my fleet has a healthy mixture of all kinds (maybe only a couple PDCs though, unless I know that the empire I'm fighting likes missiles).

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Some small improvments that should be considered (the game is fantastic but some stuff):

• Map modes, not sure why they don't have these but they are needed
• When queing up orders, and you want to add a order which is in the same system, it should be placed before in the queue before the vessel leaves the system
• More fleshed out diplomacy (this is something we will get I am sure of as a DLC)
• A casus belli system would be nice

The pdox team has gone through a phase where they said "wouldn't it be good if we didn't need map modes?" and it's only now occurring to them that they have functionality and that without them the UI is extremely busy. It's good they're enhancing the "regular" map mode but the specialist ones absolutely have their place for presenting critical information in a clean, no nonsense fashion. HoI4 is pairing it down to like 3 or 4 mapmodes or something tiny.