Stellaris coming soon

[ardem]

It is not Aurora, but I still found it fun, to be it better then GalCiv 3 was.

But with future DLC I am sure it will get more depth we are used to seeing.

[boggo2300 (OP)]

it could not run at all and be better than GalCiv!

[Thanatos]

My ally disbanded my 50k worth of minerals federation fleet............. LOL. And when I thought that going full retread was the final frontier, Paradox Interactive comes to expand the horizon. This game is worse than I thought it would be.

[Starslayer_D]

Well, I am happy, the game is not fast-paced but I am having fun. Right now still on first game and learning, I am certain next run through I'll avoid many mistakes, like buildinga  nmining station on every 1 resource rock etc.
also at least in this game habitables are scarce for me.

[Erik L]

Well, I am happy, the game is not fast-paced but I am having fun. Right now still on first game and learning, I am certain next run through I'll avoid many mistakes, like buildinga  nmining station on every 1 resource rock etc.
also at least in this game habitables are scarce for me.

I usually build one on planets I cannot colonize. And at the beginning only planets that give a +2 or more EC. The minerals I've usually been swimming in.

[boggo2300 (OP)]

yeah I've been bouncing off the mineral stockpile cap pretty much my entire game,  influence on the other hand.. too many long borders I think maybe I should start conquering my neighbors (er after I finish getting my fleet infrastructure smashed by the Herons in space suit aliens

[Paul M]

I have been having fun with the first game...making mistakes left and right but that is ok.  So far the UEC has not managed to engage in significant combat...I have been boxed in so this may change.  At least one of the races is bigger than me so I likely should take out the smaller one first.  But at the moment I've been stuck with a low energy credit production due to not having power plant III (just got it) and that was interesting times.  Though what was interesting is several NPCs came to my rescue with 1:1 energy for mineral trades.  I had oodles of minerals just not so much energy.

My fleet is building up now I have started slowly to produce BBs.  That has reduced one NPR from overwhelming to only superior.  They are expensive on my energy budget though.

I've also started to terraform and have made several errors there oh well I'm learning.  The other NPC has some of the terraformer stuff and so that may be the reason we are soon at war as I need more of it to terraform the desert and tundra worlds to something I can use.  I've also had NPCs ask for migration treaties...so I am beginning to accumulate aliens in the UEC.

Game is a sleep pattern destroyer.

[sublight]

I went ahead and installed Stellaris despite my iMac's Radeon HD 6770M graphics card only having 512MB, and it plays with only trivial issues at 1920x1080. Biggest issue is that ship-view (max zoom) drops to single digit FPS whenever the associated fleet engages in battle, but I can always fire up Gratuitous Space Battles whenever I want to watch space battle cinematics.

The game is a little slow, but that just enables you relax and savor each moment without RTS pressure. I also have to second the sleep destroying bit. Game's worse than the Civilization series in that respect.

Gamewise I just colonized my 5th planet and have a fleet that can now take out mid-tier minor spoilers for fun an profit. I'm currently only blocked in on one side by two foreign powers, and while I would love to pick a fight with one they had the nerve to form an alliance. So far I've managed to avoid hitting the mineral cap by building mining and research stations on ever rock in reach, but I haven't yet figured out what I'm supposed to be spending my energy surplus on.

[boggo2300 (OP)]

I've discovered the joys of a 4 arm spiral galaxy,  hemmed in by a roughly equal but hostile (rivalled me immediately we contacted) mob Coreward of me, and a happy go-lucky, overpoweringly strong, but friendly bunch of merchant insects to Rimward.  I'm up to about 20 planets,  though I recently lost one when one of my Science Officers decided to play with an ancient terraformer found buried on a planet (oops) wonder how big a Pop is, 'cos there were 8 of them on that planet that recently acquired an unpleasant atmosphere!

I've kinda been unlucky with my draws from the tech deck,  I'm at my fleet cap of 80 and only got 1 fleet with a strength about 5500   might have to scrap all the corvettes and fill the space with cruisers, need more of the raise fleet cap tech's to drop dammit! at least I've currently got Battleships researching that'll give me some more cap (though I imagine building BB's will chew that up pretty quick)

[Paul M]

Well your fleet cap is dependent more on the number of spacestations you have and your population then on the techs.   They add a total of 30% of my 350 or so.

The UNE just had its first war....  24 years of brutal attrition warfare.  But the aliens submitted to vassalization.  What is interesting is when they were winning they would not accept a white peace...but somehow got offended when I kept turning down their offers once I got the war back in my direction.  They have hyperlanes which meant fast fleet movement, which caught me off guard.  Then they out teched me seriously...and so it was due to the sacrifice of several science ships I got some of their tech advantage via reverse engineering.  I was using serious numbers of bases....Sol and Sirus are still plastered in bases.  I lost several fortresses but the minefields cut him down...and just kept using my economic advantage to hammer out fleet after fleet.

Eventually had to emergency FTL out my surviving BBs in the last battle but by now I had taken over his home world and 3 others.  My fleets were rebuilding and more to the point he could not keep killing my space stations and eventually the next time I went in with a 10K fleet he surrendered just before my troops started dropping.

One defence base stood off a missile fleet for months as its fighters and point defence kept killing everything they fired at it...and its return fire slowly but surely ate through the enemy force.   I managed to force engagement in my favour a few times as well.  But it was just a long brutal grinding match.

The war was over getting Terraforming liquid.  In the end vassalizing the race didn't get me it directly but it allowed me access into a spiral arm area where some was.  So now my terraforming efforts are going full bore.

I don't want to think about the cost of that war.  I had 25K in minerals at the start of it and that got used up quickly.  Probably 30K in fleet strength were lost on both sides if not more.

Just so you know...Corvettes can kill BBs and heavy ships as the heavy ships usually don't mount that many weapons that can shoot back at them.  You need Small weapons from what I understand.  The enemy force at the end was like 1 BB, 1 DD, and 50 CTs.  I killed the heavy stuff and then I lost my CT/DD screen and should have pulled out as he still had 40-ish CTs.  Had to emergency FTL away but 4 BBs survived that and well that was the last major fleet engagement he had at that point 26 CTs.  That and the two other ones before it had broken his back basically.

Currently my "standard fleet" is:  2 BBs, 1 BB(CV), 4 CAs, 10 DDs, and 30 CTs.  Mix of weapons:  missiles, torpedoes, Kinetics, lasers (Mining drone or Xray) and fighter/bombers plus point defence.  I recommend not using missiles on your space stations.  Point defence can blunt their firepower too easily...either lasers or projectiles I'd say.

[boggo2300 (OP)]

well I have 20 colonized planets all with Spaceports, and mining and research stations on everything I have inside my sphere,  I may build a couple of Frontier stations see if they make a difference (I haven't actually built any, as I've been lucky with colonisable worlds doing my border expansion for me) It may be my Fanatic Spiritualism that's holding me back.

[sublight]

Congratulations on your victory.

In my alternate universe the UNE suffered a disastrous defeat after an ill-advised attack intended to gain access to a promising bunch of primitives.

The "short victorious war" took a promising start when the destruction of our rival's frontier stations allowed for territorial expansion and while the destroyers of 2nd fleet were destroyed in close action they paved the way for 1st fleet torpedo corvets to finish the job and blockade their home world.

However in a disastorious setback the absent advance fleet of our rival managed to bypass our defensive line, and link up with their ally to jointly assault Sol from an unexpected direction via hyperdrive with no prior warning. Their combined strength decisively crushed 3rd fleet and blockaded Earth in retaliation. We attempted to rebuild a liberation fleet in the colonies, but opposing fleet caught on and switched from a static blockade to a roving band of destruction that systematically destroyed our colonial shipyards before turning to break our own blockaded.

Per the terms of our surrender the German treatment was forced upon us as we were compelled to liberate the majority of our colonies over whom was established a hippy peace-loving government. This dropped the UNE from the 2nd most powerful independent power in known space to the 3rd weakest. Figuring out how to quietly reestablish control of our former colonies is now a much much more pressing concern than how to colonize some random tundra worlds.

[boggo2300 (OP)]

I hate it when losing a war means Hippiefying worlds!

I had an interesting one where my least powerful neighbor (with 2 worlds to her name) declared war on me,  lost the war due to his 2 warfleets being nothing but 5 destroyers and 20 corvettes,  my terms were independence to her second world, who then asked me to vassalise them,  nice,  then their home world was vassalised by my other neighbor on that side,  so one ill advised war ended up with them losing their empire entirely (my vassalised world is now integrated)

[Paul M]

Thanks!  I'm still twitching from the war...two days of intense concentration...

At the worst of it the warscore was at -64% and it ended at +35% when they accepted vassalization as my troops were landing on their 6th of 10 worlds to be occupied.  Last I looked they are now up to 2 "Star Flocks" of 7600 combat value.  I've rebuilt as well and just got an offer to join a federation.  I think I am going to accept.  The alien to my other side is rated as "overwhelming" in all catagories and views me as lunch or something.   I expect it is not worse only cause my diplomats are very busy at the embassy.

A few comments on base construction from my combat experience.  I don't recommend that you go full strike craft....unless it is essentially a defensive base.  I also recommend always having point defence.  I found interceptors/scout wing very usefull as they will protect the base from missiles.  So for a fortress I would do 1 hanger, 1 small, 1 medium (or a second small) and 1 large section.  I found the middle sized station very useful.  I would give them a mix of weapons but as far as I can see they need to kill the smaller ships as opposed to slugging it out with the bigger ones. 

For the special items I equiped my fortresses with the FTL snare and a minefield.  I have to admit that it worked but the fortress died because the fleet ended up on top of it.  I would suggest rather the shield damper and the minefield on the fortress.  The mine field on the middle sized one worked very very well.  The smallest I would make two varients one with the nano repair and one with the FTL snare.  Put the snare in the middle of 4 other bases so they have to leave through a minefield.  Basically you have to start looking at overlaping and mutal support.

My BBs use the snare and my BB(V) use the nano-repair field.  The NPRs still managed to emergency out of the snare...but it was a major morale victory for me when they started doing so. 

On invasions I used 12 units half equipped with hunter-killer drones and half with "engineers" (fortification) attachments.  I never lost an invasion or an invading ground combat unit.  New Conventry beat back a ground invasion but I had the maximum number of defensive armies on the planet.

Intel is also crappy...formations merge and so on...so it is hard to keep track of what is going on with the enemy fleets.  Here observatories and enhanced sensor tech really comes in handy.

Also that combat value is...well not quite a lie but it is at best indicator more than anything.   What I wish I could find better is what each ship seems to have for weapons and defences.  Being able to see the designs a bit better would help a lot...this is very well done in Endless Space and enables a bit of tailoring to match the enemy.  The enemy switched over from initally using plasma weapons to autocannons and missiles....not quite sure why.

[Erik L]

I've noticed that if you use the "auto-design" feature, the ships are designed with the most DPS they can put out. So that is possibly why the NPC ships do the same.