Stars in Shadow

[ShadowDragon8685]

Okay, I think I get it now. The population maximum cap is presuming all biomes are being exploited, right?

So, for example, I can have 2m humans on a small airless biome, and another 2m Wrem. But there's also a Vents biome on that planet, which I could, theoretically, fill up with another 2m of those chemisynthetic science-bugs, if I had any in my empire.

The UI could stand to better communicate this, breaking down the population by biome, both where they're living and what could live there.

It might also be nice to be able to queue up population imports; say for example, I have an ice/vents planet that only has humans on it. It'd be nice to tell it to resettle some Yoral to that planet, then pick from a list of ships and planets that have Yoral on them. If you pick a ship, the ship flies to that planet and offloads; if you pick a planet, then either a transport already in that system will be used, if available, or a ship will be pulled out of the transport pool, fly to the planet, collect your Yoral, fly them to the planet, and offload them.


Also: will the AI ever agree to a trade? The Ashdar Imperials somehow have 45K metal, but they won't sell me so much as 500 of it, at any price. Is there ever going to be a way to turn credits into metal? I have a titanic economy, but absolutely no way to turn that into a fleet, and I need a fleet.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Another suggestion:
Code combat to check to see if the defender has only immobile defensive installations (IE, stations, planetary defenses.)

Then add a second check to evaluate the maximum range of the attacker's weapons vs. those of the defender's.

If the defender's weapons are all of lower maximum range, just autoresolve in favor of the attacker, please. My rightclick finger was worn out by the time I got done killing a level 3 planetary defense installation with adamantine armor, with a single Destroyer armed with an ion cannon. The defender had a ludicrous number of Primary Defensive Beams, but my ion cannon outranged them.

[e] Also, wow. The diplomacy system is really not in, is it?
The Yoral were on the verge of wiping the Phidi out and I stepped in to save them. I reconquered their homeworld and tried to give it back to them. They wouldn't accept it. Not even for free.

[e2] Another thing I'm noticing is that, well...
Combat is very Outsider-esque, in that missiles and starfighters are absolutely useless against anyone with enough of a brain to mount so much as one PD turret on every ship. You basically need an absurd numerical superiority to get missiles through, and if you have that kind of absurd numerical superiority (which you won't because you're gonna be starved for metal,) you'd be much better off just shooting them with any thing long-ranged, particularly Railguns.

[dragoongfa]

Gameplay issue: Ground combat in need of balancing

I invaded a marauder planet, had 8 Battlemechs in 6 troopships and 2 Assault Cruisers. The opposition had around 20 of their infantry units. Battlemechs have 8 combat strength each while those infantry had 2 each. This means that they had 40 combat strength in total for the 64 of mine. Chances of success were 3%. I invaded they lost 5 Infantry and I lost 3 Battlemechs. I started bombarding again until I whittled their numbers down to 5 Infantry which was when the system finall gave me 97% of success.

I think that its obvious that the current system takes numerical superiority above combat strength which is just plainly wrong.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Gameplay issue: Ground combat in need of balancing

I invaded a marauder planet, had 8 Battlemechs in 6 troopships and 2 Assault Cruisers. The opposition had around 20 of their infantry units. Battlemechs have 8 combat strength each while those infantry had 2 each. This means that they had 40 combat strength in total for the 64 of mine. Chances of success were 3%. I invaded they lost 5 Infantry and I lost 3 Battlemechs. I started bombarding again until I whittled their numbers down to 5 Infantry which was when the system finall gave me 97% of success.

I think that its obvious that the current system takes numerical superiority above combat strength which is just plainly wrong.

Not necessarily. Tanks, hovertanks and 'mechs can only be in so many places at once. If the enemy just has more boots on the ground than you do, they own that ground, even if your boots are giant and metal and can lay waste anywhere they look.

Invading a planet without bombing it to rubble is haaaaard.


[e]By the way, are you supposed to be able to control fighters like tiny ships? Because it said they were useful for point-defense, but they don't seem to be. Any time I took them into combat, they just made a beeline for an enemy ship and were promptly shot to ribbons. There doesn't seem to be any way to use them besides waiting until one of your capital ships has closed to point-blank range and absorbed the PD fire, then launching the fighters.

It seems like the only good use for carrier space is armor squadrons.

[Tamri]

Gameplay issue: Ground combat in need of balancing

I invaded a marauder planet, had 8 Battlemechs in 6 troopships and 2 Assault Cruisers. The opposition had around 20 of their infantry units. Battlemechs have 8 combat strength each while those infantry had 2 each. This means that they had 40 combat strength in total for the 64 of mine. Chances of success were 3%. I invaded they lost 5 Infantry and I lost 3 Battlemechs. I started bombarding again until I whittled their numbers down to 5 Infantry which was when the system finall gave me 97% of success.

I think that its obvious that the current system takes numerical superiority above combat strength which is just plainly wrong.

You can make the assumption that the defenders use the protection bonus. Well, sort of as a partisan crowd undermined your 3 Battlemechs on mines (or dumped into the pits with stakes), losing 5 units, which lured them into a trap.

[Arioch]

The defender gets a defensive bonus, especially if the attacker is invading an unfamiliar biome type (terrestrial vs. aquatic). There is also supposed to be a difference between using cargo transports and dedicated military transports (troops carried in cargo bays receive a penalty during invasion, while assault shuttles negate this penalty), but that bit hasn't been implemented yet.

The advantage an attacker has is that he can bombard. But taking a planet intact should require significant effort if it is defended.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Are Marauders just supposed to be magic bullshit cheese along the lines of Skyrim-style scaling random encounters?

Because these Marauders, despite controlling only one planet - admittedly a nice planet, but still just one planet - are fielding a fleet of absurd OP battleships that each have three times as many heavy railguns as one of my battleships. No, 3.5 times as many, sorry.

There's also seven of the damn things. I would literally have to use two Liberty Stars (Dread Star with all railguns) to take out one of these fleets, and I'd probably lose a Liberty Star in the process.

[e] For that matter, can I start producing their hulls? A BB-class hull with seven Heavy mounts? Yes please!

[e2] Is there any plan in the works for being able to set your fleet's formation?
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a battle to commence, I would really rather my fleet start in a formation I choose, rather than spend three turns (possibly under fire) getting them into formation.

[e3] Another QoL improvement that would be nice: the ability to build transports directly into the transport pool.

[e4] Another QoL improvement that would be nice: the ability to change the design of Outposts/set up different space stations around, say, random gas giants/stars/whatever. That's good astral real estate going to waste with a nuclear reactor and a fuel depot!

[Arioch]

Currently the Marauders' fleets scale to rather silly proportions. This will be capped at some point; it doesn't make sense that pirates have the largest fleet in the galaxy.

Marauders use the same hulls that the playable Gremak do, so you can build anything they can build.

Formation configuration would be a significant bit of work (needing a new UI), so it's not coming any time very soon.

We will add an option to auto-send transports to the pool on construction.

I believe you can refit an Outpost if you later set up a colony on that planet. There's not currently much else to do with them.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Currently the Marauders' fleets scale to rather silly proportions. This will be capped at some point; it doesn't make sense that pirates have the largest fleet in the galaxy.

It really doesn't, because at that point, you're not pirates, you're an evil empire. I'm gonna take these guys down, but holy crap, they're gonna be tough.

Marauders use the same hulls that the playable Gremak do, so you can build anything they can build.

Seriously? The Gremak are meant to have super-OP battleships, then, and any endgame fight against them is intentionally meant to be a war of attrition? They get seven heavy slots. I get... Two heavy slots. The relatively larger number of turrets I have is basically irrelevant, if all of those heavy slots are full of the single most powerful and longest-ranged regular weapon in the game, since my ships will be evaporating as they're trying to close to bring their Force Lances to bear. (The missile launchers are completely irrelevant, since point defenses completely shred them, and one or two getting through doesn't really matter since they don't do properly BOOM types of damage.)

Endgame combat is basically dominated by how many Railguns each side can bring to bear, hence my plan to hit the pirates with Liberty Stars.

Formation configuration would be a significant bit of work (needing a new UI), so it's not coming any time very soon.

I figured, I was just wondering if it was on the roadmap.

We will add an option to auto-send transports to the pool on construction.

Glad to hear it.

I believe you can refit an Outpost if you later set up a colony on that planet. There's not currently much else to do with them.

So... When are Gas Giants going to be colonizable? I want my aerostats. Anywhere to shove some more taxpaying bodies.

[e] Also, what are Viscids? Is there anything I can do with them, or should I have just bombed every living thing on this planet to dust to get rid of them before I took the planet over?

[e2] I should probably clarify, with the outpost question: after you get the improved solar panels tech, they don't need their nuclear reactor anymore. You could fit, say, a science lab in that slot.

[Arioch]

The Gremak are meant to have super-OP battleships, then, and any endgame fight against them is intentionally meant to be a war of attrition? They get seven heavy slots. I get... Two heavy slots.

The number of weapons per slot is variable, so most battleship-class hulls are roughly comparable even when the number of slots is not the same. The Ashdar don't have a true battleship; their battlecruiser has 4 heavy slots. The Ashdar monster ship is their assault carrier; unfortunately fighters are underpowered at the moment. However, since larger vessels are proportionately more expensive to build, having larger ships is not as big an advantage as you might think.

So... When are Gas Giants going to be colonizable? I want my aerostats. Anywhere to shove some more taxpaying bodies.

At some point we would like to add special resources, which would be one thing that might make gas giants valuable (we even have ideas for gas giant inhabitants), but we probably won't be able to do that before the end of Early Access.

[e] Also, what are Viscids? Is there anything I can do with them, or should I have just bombed every living thing on this planet to dust to get rid of them before I took the planet over?

Sure, you can feed them. They give you love.

[ShadowDragon8685]

The number of weapons per slot is variable, so most battleship-class hulls are roughly comparable even when the number of slots is not the same. The Ashdar don't have a true battleship; their battlecruiser has 4 heavy slots. The Ashdar monster ship is their assault carrier; unfortunately fighters are underpowered at the moment. However, since larger vessels are proportionately more expensive to build, having larger ships is not as big an advantage as you might think.

I know that the number of weapons per slot is variable.
That's salt in the wound as humans; my BB-class hulls get two slots carrying one (2x1) weapon each, for a grand total of two (2) Heavy Railguns. That's exactly as many as I can fit on an Assault Cruiser or a Heavy Cruiser. Sure, I get two missile slots, but they're effing useless.

Meanwhile, those Gremak BB-hulls get three slots carrying two weapons each (3x2) and one slot carrying one weapon (1x1,) for a total of seven (7) heavy guns. They also carry three slots with four (3x4x2) Rapid-Fire, Accurate, Armor-Piercing Defense Turbolasers, for a total of twenty-four (24). Nothing I can throw at them in the realm of missiles or fighter craft can get through a defensive screen like that, so it has to be a ship-to-ship fight.

When those heavy guns are Accurate, long-Ranged Railguns, that means that anything I send to fight them dies. My battleships quite simply are not a 1:1 match for these evil clowns. They get seven of my best shots for every two of mine - any one of their battleships can destroy one of mine in a single volley. If I take non-battleships, they'll be able to blow up 2-3 per battleship, per round - my fleet would be evaporated before they get close enough to bring their Force Lances into play, their missile launchers might as well not be there, and the obligatory Extra Munitions slot is a giant explosive liability in the middle of my battleships, because for some reason we're carrying explosive ordnance despite the fact that the launchers are Pulsons.

Really, I'm just going to HOPE that three Liberty Stars is enough. And hope that building them doesn't scale the pirates up even more.

So... When are Gas Giants going to be colonizable? I want my aerostats. Anywhere to shove some more taxpaying bodies.

At some point we would like to add special resources, which would be one thing that might make gas giants valuable (we even have ideas for gas giant inhabitants), but we probably won't be able to do that before the end of Early Access.

Ooooh, cool.

Anyway, you don't need, necessarily, special resources. Gas Giants could be special habitat types in that they have no minerals and no fertility, but you can build extra improvement slots and habitation space - constructing more and more giant, floating cities - Aerostats, think "Cloud City" and you're on exactly the right track, and/or orbital habitats.

[e] Also, what are Viscids? Is there anything I can do with them, or should I have just bombed every living thing on this planet to dust to get rid of them before I took the planet over?

Sure, you can feed them. They give you love.

Now I wish I was an artist. I have this image in my head of Beryl on her knees, spoon-feeding a Viscid, while has its eye in a ^ shape and an anime heart over it.


[e] Oh, another question: Is research/construction capacity over the requirement always going to be discarded? I'm exceeding the last-step research/construction on my projects by a fairly wide margin now.

[Arioch]

[e] Oh, another question: Is research/construction capacity over the requirement always going to be discarded? I'm exceeding the last-step research/construction on my projects by a fairly wide margin now.

I believe that production and research overflow is carried over to the next project.

[ShadowDragon8685]

[e] Oh, another question: Is research/construction capacity over the requirement always going to be discarded? I'm exceeding the last-step research/construction on my projects by a fairly wide margin now.

I believe that production and research overflow is carried over to the next project.

I'm not sure it is. If it is, though, it's definitely not letting you completely more than one project/turn.
With two shipyards orbiting a planet that has a huge pile of factories and a large population, I should be able to put out two (or more!) transports a turn, but I'm not.

[e] Another QoL UI suggestion: A rush-buy button on the bottom summary bar when viewing the messages list on the right. Alternatively, and/or additionally, the option to pre-pay to have multiple projects rush-bought in advance, so I don't have to check a planet three consecutive turns to get three defense upgrades in, I can just order them all bought in advance and move on.

[e2] Yet another QoL suggestion: Stupidity-catching when terraforming, to be sure you don't eliminate the habitat a population is using, thus putting them into overcrowding. I tried terraforming an airless rock into a glacier, mistakenly thinking I was terraforming it into an Iceball, because I was being stupid. Wound up with a lot of unhappy Wrem.

[e3] Wow, just wow. The Phidi are supposed to be the peace & love guys, right? They just declared on the Teros. After I went to the trouble of completely stomping the Yoral's huge, deadly fleet, and wiping their government out entirely, to rescue the Phidi from the brink of extermination, what with the Yoral just wholesale bombing them.

I'm seriously going to have to annex the Phidi for their own protection, aren't I?

[Arioch]

If it is, though, it's definitely not letting you completely more than one project/turn.

That you definitely can't do.

[ShadowDragon8685]

If it is, though, it's definitely not letting you completely more than one project/turn.

That you definitely can't do.

Is that going to be fixed at some point? It's really kind of frustrating, to queue up five transports costing 31 work each, on a two-shipyard world putting out over 200 work, and have them take five turns to finish, same as if I'd queued them on a 31 work world.

I mean, I'm from a Union family, I totally support collective bargaining and reasonable working hours, but come on!

[e]More stupidity-catching that would be nice: Preventing the player from rush-buying something that will be finished in one turn anyway/hard-coding one-turn rush buys to cost 0 credits.

[Arioch]

Is that going to be fixed at some point? It's really kind of frustrating, to queue up five transports costing 31 work each, on a two-shipyard world putting out over 200 work, and have them take five turns to finish, same as if I'd queued them on a 31 work world.

The one project per turn limit is deliberate, to prevent a variety of abuses, mainly relating to rush-buy and other one-time production boosts. You shouldn't be able to build an entire fleet in a single turn. Having to wait a full turn to build an inexpensive item at a high-production planet is not (in my opinion) a problem; I don't think it's unreasonable to have to wait 5 turns to build 5 transports (build your in expensive items at lower-production if the loss in efficiency bothers you). If you're building 100 transports in a row, then there's probably something wrong with game balance.

The auto-send-to-trade-pool function should make queuing transport production less of a hassle.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Is that going to be fixed at some point? It's really kind of frustrating, to queue up five transports costing 31 work each, on a two-shipyard world putting out over 200 work, and have them take five turns to finish, same as if I'd queued them on a 31 work world.

The one project per turn limit is deliberate, to prevent a variety of abuses, mainly relating to rush-buy and other one-time production boosts. You shouldn't be able to build an entire fleet in a single turn. Having to wait a full turn to build an inexpensive item at a high-production planet is not (in my opinion) a problem; I don't think it's unreasonable to have to wait 5 turns to build 5 transports (build your in expensive items at lower-production if the loss in efficiency bothers you). If you're building 100 transports in a row, then there's probably something wrong with game balance.

Nah, that's snowballing. Right now I've got an industrial-technological juggernaut going that would make the Galactic Empire think long and hard before sending any Star Destroyers my war. They'd want at least a few Death Stars, or my Liberty Stars would shrek their Star Destroyer fleets.


Also, here's an interesting, um, situation.
If you take a planet, the people on that planet get pretty annoyed with you, even if you managed a bloodless (relatively) capture. Perfectly reasonable.

What is less reasonable is that the people I send in from my own empire to take their place as I rotate the non-dissidents off the front (scattering them to the four winds, to ensure their species propagates and thrives,) then get annoyed because "I conquered their planet." Only I literally just gave them that planet. If anybody should be annoyed, it should be the natives on whom I just pulled a massive colonial switcheroo on. (Those guys should be suuuuuper salty.)

[Arioch]

If they're of different races, that shouldn't happen, but if they're of the same race, then it's hard to avoid due to the way the game groups population.

[ShadowDragon8685]

If they're of different races, that shouldn't happen, but if they're of the same race, then it's hard to avoid due to the way the game groups population.

For the whole game, I've had exclusive control of the Wrem. I took over an iceball inhabited by the vent dwellers. Sent in Wrem to occupy the Airless Wastes, moved out the non-dissenting buggers to spread them to other vents. The Wrem got annoyed a turn later.

Nothing my markets can't handle, of course. I mean, what's a little invasion between friends when you're bringing in social welfare and Space Pokémon merchandise? Hell, if anything, the locals should be happy - their leadership cut off their access to the luxury goods of my people, I'm bringing the good times back and letting the roll! Lassiez les bon temps roullete!

Yep, I just double-checked. A pop of Yoral I just moved onto an inferno world on the turn I conquered it have the "You conquered our world!" penalty. The human pop I moved on has the "You liberated us!" happiness bonus, though.




By the way, I have to say that Othin dissidents are incredibly cute, for being horrible bug-monsters. They just look so... "Don't touch me!" Annoyed.

I mean, Yoral dissidents are literally ready to eat you, human dissidents are ready to straight-up shank a biatch and/or throw molotov cocktails and/or shank a biatch with a molotov cocktail, Teros put on their other spacesuit, Haduir ham it up like they're auditioning for a part on Game of Thrones and Phidi had to pawn their jewelry, but Othin just look put out by all of this malarky.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Are Garden-type worlds categorically superior to Island type worlds? They have all the biome types that Islands have, plus that all-precious Forest type that's so beloved by so many races.

I just think Islands are nicer, is all.