Stellaris coming soon

[Paul M]

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.

Yeah but I had more trouble with the disrupters and so on then I did stopping missiles as all my ships have point defence and I carry interceptors on my captial vessels.  I had the issue that my missile tech was low.  I think I started the war with fusion missiles on my ships but over the course of it things upgraded.  My biggest advance came when I reverse-engineered zero point power plants as that boosted my ships power generation and enabled me to use better shields.

I'm also not sure how to factor in the special abilities...for example the drone mining lasers I'm using with +100% armour penetration compared to the X-ray laser with only +50% armour penetration.  The DPS meter in game doesn't include these factors.  I'm going a bit more role playing anyway.

One thing I didn't like was that my construction and science ships "evasion AI" was blatently idiotic...I mean the course didn't attempt to avoid the alien presence and worse undid my plotting of a path away from the aliens manually.  Or when they ran for the "protection" of the space station???   Realy???  I mean give me a break...a space station has pathetic defences I had no trouble destorying them and taking no serious losses.   My current spacestations I think are 450 combat value which is about 6-9 CTs.  I think the game could use some re-adjustments around the defense stations and where they can be built, but the space station really needs a substantial power update.

The building part of the military stations isn't very clear as red areas show up but it seems to forget that a station was destroyed.  But in those cases you can build in the red anyway.

Refits are also borked a bit as it isn't clear if you have more designes for a ship class which one they will refit too.  My CTEs kept getting refit to CTGs for example.  I'm not sure if my BB(V) will refit to the next BB(V) or to my standard BB design.  I wish there was an interface which asked what design you want to refit it too.  Right now it is a bit too "streamlined."

[Erik L]

My constructors and science ships always ran for another system if there were mobile hostiles in the system. Even if the hostile was combat power 100 and I had a combat power 2k fleet in system heading towards it. They would run.

[boggo2300 (OP)]

sigh,  after some expansion and causing neighbors empires to collapse (  ) I now find myself hemmed in by Fallen Empires,  3 of them which I believe is the maximum generated per game

What I find annoying about ship refitting is you have to overwrite the design to get the refit button to work,  which means you lose the existing design.

Incidentally I just inherited a Space Amoeba as a warship from integrating a vassal

[sublight]

No overwriting is required. I've had success with overwriting, series names (Vengance-A, Vengance-B...), and random names. I wish only overwrite upgrades worked because it is horribly annoying when you upgrade Alpha-V2 and it becomes Gama-V2 instead of Alpha-V3.

Anyway, I'll try to resurrect the UNE at a later date. I've written that game off as my newb learning experience, and I am now a collectivist hive of rapid breading bugs using the hyperdrive myself for a change. This time the middle-age primitives are within my boarder, but our ethics insist on observing the prime directive with no ground invasions or uplifting allowed. Bah. At least the xenophobes have agreed that probing in the name of science is permitted...

[TMaekler]

Just researched a Tech 3 propulsion and got the galactic invasors - at the other end of the galaxy. Since I have no access to them I have to wait until they have overrun 2/3 of the galaxy to be able to enter their territory. Hope I will still have a chance by then... 

[boggo2300 (OP)]

I've been fighting them for awhile,  cleared out 3 remote pockets of them,  then started on their main area, but since I was doing it with a single expeditionary fleet (fleet strength 21000) when they bounced me with 2 fleets of 16000 I ran home,  then my stupid Federation started ANOTHER war, last time I join a Federation! once I win this war so another of my stupid federation mates can claim some systems I'll head back to kick invader butt with 3 fleets.  (last Federation war was to conquer a fallen empire,  kinda sucks my neighbour federation mate got the fallen empires 2 ringworld systems when I won the war!)

[TMaekler]

Yes, Federation Mechanics will be changed, they already announced. It kinda sucks...

[boggo2300 (OP)]

so far my big take away from joining a Federation is,  I now want to crush all my Federation mates!

Federation,  the greatest incentive to galactic genocide!

[Paul M]

Yeah my UNE was the federation leader when some baddies showed up and then the neighboring local menace decided to attack one of the federation partners...but when I look at the war demands it is nearly all UNE systems they want.  Just joy....I mean just joy.  I did however design some impressive Federation fleet ships and was starting to build them...so we will have to see how that goes.

Wormhole stations are awesome mind you.  Hyperspace lanes less so.

Have been setting up a bunch of different starts and enjoying the variety of things.  Anomalies though need to be expanded.  Also it isn't clear what is happening with research bonus points you get from them when at the same time you are researching say "the alpha aliens".

In one game infilitration was my get the job done thing.  That works awesomely great I have to say.  Enslaving stone age primatives...interesting concept...to say the least.  But rebellious factions are hard to deal with when you occupy a races planets...that is right tricky.  Not sure how effective bribing the leaders is...media suppression is a temporary thing...but you have at least 10 years of issues until that damned -25 happiness goes away. 

The game is too addictive in the "just another turn" sense though...limiting play is necessary.

[Vandermeer]

I have been reading this thread, and want to play too, but no time. I barely managed to start one first game, where I got to cruisers over the last weeks until all around me joined into one alliance. My territory is pretty expansive even without any war though. Actually the largest in existence - why is the AI so slow at colonizing?
Well, it seems if I would start war now, I will be crushed, even though I have 11k fleet and all the members hopefully only 3-4k like I see all the time.
Also: Should have taken that xenophobic trait, because letting xenos live and be rebellious, and not my smart industrious super-species, is annoying.

Anyways, it seems there are some rather large management issues to the game, like it befalls pretty much any real time strategy, but otherwise: I anticipated to be secretly bad, but it is not.(as far as I can tell) No Aurora, and no Caveman to Cosmos in space, but fun, and lots of novel concepts.

[SwordLord10]

I'm only in early game, but I am a despotic Empire, the Hythean Empire, and I have conquered or vassalized all but 1 colony world's, I have all the slaves(being enslaved increases happiness for some reason) and by the end of the second century, I will control my entire cluster. It is my second game and I am using wormholes. My weapons are blue lasers and fusion missiles.

[Starslayer_D]

We got any nice ethos/governement trait combinations yet. i'm not to sold on pacifism... not after having several colony planets in early game blocked due to stone-age primitives living on them. 8The ones you can't even uplift ). any advise what edict I have to issue to allow that planet to be settled? Or do I have to learbn Uplift (allthough doesn't that onyl work on non-sentients?). on the other hand, smae game I found Sol inhabited by early space age humans. Now have to buold an observatory and teach them how to be spacefaring allies.

[JacenHan]

Unfortunately, stone-age natives are a little bit broken right now. They are too advanced to uplift, but not advanced enough to enlighten. The only way to do anything with them is to colonize the planet yourself, at which point you can enslave them or put them into reservations. However, with certain ethos, you can't colonize the planet either, so it becomes completely useless to you, unless they are able to advance a level on their own (which can take a very long time).

[sublight]

New tiny Ironman game to claim steam achievements. I'm a militaristic collective this time. The bad news was I started in an extremely mineral poor region. The good news is that I started near a couple of primitive civilizations and that armies are much cheaper than colony ships. Mineral shortage solved. Today over half of the galaxy is either under my control or else is privileged to serve as my loyal vassals. Only one major power remains to question my supremacy, so the question is do I begin my final conquest now or after I uplift the cockroaches on Earth?

[boggo2300 (OP)]

uplift=achievement...