Stellaris End-All

I'll also add there is a useful auto queue for surveying and building outposts by selecting the unit, going to map overview and right clicking on the relevant system to eXplore/eXploit. But I think it commits the entirety of the resource cost rather than staggering as the constructor builds each outpost.

Tanglebones wrote:

Culture ship names mod:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...

Awww yeah.

I normally use Culture names for my ships in Elite.

You can queue up multiple actions by holding down shift.

As an offshoot of that, if you right-click on a star in the star map with a construction ship highlighted, you can build all the mining facilities or all the research stations in one click. It takes just as long as normal, but you can queue up every station in the system at once. If you then shift-click to add the other type, you've queued all the improvements for an entire system in about five seconds.

Note, however, that you have to pay up front for the whole queue. It doesn't deduct per station, it takes it all at once, so this isn't very useful in the early game. You do get a refund for what wasn't built if you change your mind or if the ship gets interrupted, so you're not really risking any particular loss, but you can't queue the whole star unless you can pay for everything.

Gremlin wrote:

Some tips and observations:

- You can queue up multiple actions by holding down shift. This is handy when you're sending your science ships out into unexplored territory, though if they encounter something hostile and run it'll clear their queue.

Heh, I just discovered this one by accident. NEED A MANUAL PARADOX.

For anyone experiencing game play stutter, they have released a beta patch via steam that you can try (right click/ beta tab/ opt-in).

Veloxi wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

Some tips and observations:

- You can queue up multiple actions by holding down shift. This is handy when you're sending your science ships out into unexplored territory, though if they encounter something hostile and run it'll clear their queue.

Heh, I just discovered this one by accident. NEED A MANUAL PARADOX.

Yeah, I rarely miss a big ol' spiral bound manual full of graphs and charts like BioWare used to provide, but this is one game that needs one.

Hrdina wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Culture ship names mod:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...

Awww yeah.

I normally use Culture names for my ships in Elite.

Ya'll are going to make me read that series, aren't you?

So, aside from the fact that I'm loving this game, I'm hopeful that a future DLC has nomadic races. I realized that, while I can play a pre-attack President of the Colonies, my hopes for a Battlestar-Galactica playthrough are going to have to wait a bit.

Recreational Villain wrote:

edit because 'important': the ones that look like a sad faced, anthropomorphic Alice In Wonderland caterpillar... but more sluggish.

Do you mean the ones that they called "Smug Slugs" in the Blorg videos? I love those guys.

IMAGE(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/277347139903270975/6E56D4F669850BC6353B60F44B4C3DCDA2F5A646/)

pyxistyx wrote:

I have to say, despite wanting to really like games like this I normally bounce off of them HARD. This one though seems to be clicking properly with me in that "just one more turn/event" way that the Civ games do.

I tried to explain yesterday how ironic it was that I definitely get the "one more turn" vibe from this, even though it is not turn-based.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/fyaWcUA.jpg)
Here's our galaxy, or at least what we know about it right now. As you can see, the Adnorian Commonwealth is expanding in that formerly empty void up and to the right: our surveys showed that it has multiple arid planets perfect for colonization. This means that we're starting to edge up against the Aramathi Confederation, a group of crazy zealots who are major players in the north-east quadrant of the galaxy.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/sK54OJk.jpg?1)
We outgun them, but we're pacifists. And they're big enough and have enough friends that we probably wouldn't want to mess with them right now, even without our other priorities.

These four-eyed birds are our good buddies, the Ozkox:
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/YQsFpIr.jpg?1)
They're more into spirituality than we are, but they're just as xenophilic, so we get along really well. Their emblem looks like an envelope, so I associate them with mail delivery for some reason.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/saEJ5l3.jpg?1)
The Jibru are materialists, but they're even more xenophiliac than us and the Ozkox put together, so of course they're a part of our federation. They're a bit more advanced than we are, and definitely have bigger fleets. We're not sure which end their head is at, but we're too polite to ask.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/287s0aC.jpg?1)
And, lastly, we have the Reyubb Union. They're at about our level, and they like us. They're also weird fungus creatures, but we try not to hold that against them. (Secretly, we don't mind: we find aliens fascinating.) They're also pacifists.

So it's probably no surprise that four highly-xenophiliac species with a shared interest in federation building formed an alliance, and that it's a pretty amicable one.

But what about the neighbors?

In the aftermath of their defeat, the Nharr State split in two:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/g95zhV0.jpg?1)
The Nharr Coalition inherited what I believe to be the core systems, and whatever legitimacy the original government retained. Plus their rivalries.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/nyYngf3.jpg?1)
Nharr Interplanetary Empire is the breakaway group. While internally despotic, they're much more open to outsiders. And I think they're impressed with our fleets. They get along well with Bureaucratic Coordinator Timaphon.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/jodbWtk.jpg?1)
These birds, on the other hand, are the Inari Progenitors, who have been spacefaring for thousands of years, and are now sitting on the galactic rim keeping to themselves. Our expansion north has been getting closer to them, but there hasn't been much contact, other than them telling us to leave them alone.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/53RoQeP.jpg?1)
Down south, the purple area is Hazar. Their Star Empire has been pushing into that open space between us and the fallen empire on the southern rim of the galaxy. There aren't very many planets that interest us down there, so it wasn't as high a priority, but they're grabbing a lot of territory. And they're much more militaristic than we are.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/o21KZ7l.jpg?1)
Remember that striped area where the Hazar gave a pre-warp civilization starflight? That's these guys. They don't like us much; I think the Hazar have been telling them things. We certainly don't fit into their theocracy very well.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/RRTRLVd.jpg?1)
We don't have a lot of contact with these folks, since they're at the southwestern side of the galactic center, but they're one of the major players over there.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/ZZWbCho.jpg?1)
There's also a bunch of other civilizations that we have very little interaction with, some quite large. But neither the Hazar nor the Arimathi are willing to let our ships through (I asked) so for practical purposes they're out of reach.

I'd like some additional charts in the contacts tab to parse out the relationships more easily, but right now our neighbors are the only practical interactions to worry about. Besides, we've got a different project that's occupying our time right now. See that mollusc-like critter in the corner there, the Alvothari? Isn't it cute? We're going to be uplifting its species to sapience.

Yes, our colonization efforts have put us in position to bring another species to the stars.

One thing I wish more games would do is take the Supreme Commander economics, where you don't pay for something up front, you pay for it as you build it and control its pace through the number of constructors assigned to it up to the limits of your resource income.

I find myself wanting to start on a colony ship but it costs 3x more resources than I currently have. I dont mind if it takes longer and even ends up costing more in the long run if I could dedicate some resource income to start construction.

How do you combined a ship to a fleet? The option is greyed out. Anyone know why?

Select both the ship you want to add and the fleet you want to add to (shift click or click and drag around both), the button should light up. (figured this out after about an hour )

Do you mean the ones that they called "Smug Slugs" in the Blorg videos? I love those guys.

That's the picture I picked for my race, the Sejethari Technocracy. They're kinda similar to the Blorg, because I liked the Venerable power (more time to gain experience for leaders), and Repugnant and Solitary looked to be the least painful ways to pay for it. Unfortunately, the typo in the tooltip messed me up... it's not -1%, it's -15%. I might have chosen something different if I'd realized. -15% happiness for other pop types really hurts.

I got to the point that I developed genetic engineering, and started a massive project: I changed every Sejethari in the galaxy to no longer be Repugnant . It took more than ten years, maybe fifteen. But... we still have that racial modifier when dealing with enemy civs.

There's not a repugnant Sejethari left anywhere, yet we're still officially Repugnant in the diplomatic screens. Sigh.

edit: Repugnant, not Repulsive. Oops!

Oh, and as an aside, if you have trouble with a bug, try saving, quitting, and reloading the game. It might just straighten out.

I just had a problem where a governor picked up a new positive trait; it was listed in the tooltip on his window, but he didn't get the icon or the ability. But a full save/quit/reload cycle fixed it.

The same thing happened with that raised race that got the placeholder government type.

I don't know if you actually need to quit. I just do it out of an abundance of caution. A simple save/reload might suffice.

I'm really liking it so far but wow the medium sized galaxy is big. A little too epic-ly big. After 5 hours I decided to start over on a small galaxy and it feels a little more manageable while I learn the ropes. I'm mostly playing peaceful but a neighbor decided to declare war and then promptly did nothing. No war, no fleets...just war in name only.

One thing I'm having trouble with is keeping my energy up. It was easy until my empire got to a certain size, now it's declining rapidly. I unlocked level 2 power plants and have a bunch of level 1 power plants in sector planets, but apparently you can't build or upgrade in a sector which is kind of disappointing...are sector planets doomed to only have level 1 versions of buildings?

OK I added this one to the pile. I really think I'm going to get into this game. Will be traveling for work so will have some down time with my AlienWare and my fledgling space empire.....

Hotfix claims to have fixed the issues with wormholes and other people's empires so if you were waiting for the fix to try 'em like I was, now's the time.

On my second game already as the first one went, um, poorly. Mineral poor start and a nasty neighbor with enough military to wreck both me and my ally. I can't complain about the AI there at all, the nasty with the big fleet did what he should and my ally did send a larger fleet than what I'd managed to cobble together with my poor start. Unfortunately both of us together were still only about 90% of Mr. Bad Guy's fleet and we only took out about 60% of him before dying.

Second game going much better as I astutely grabbed a border popping tech really early as it looked like I would be cut off in hyperlanes. I was, but the border tech kicked in about a year later and got me an exit into a largely empty spiral arm allowing me to expand like mad until I ran into a militant Fallen Empire who will conveniently guard that entire section of my empire for me as long as I don't tick him off. Playing on ironman and hard, so it might be a bit premature, but I feel like I can win this one.

My only complaint is that this seems like it'll be another game where the AI doesn't know how to conquer worlds. One AI and I were crushing silly little guy who was sandwiched between us, but even though I've seen big AI with fleets of 8k and 2k in the same system, he can't take the worlds of little AI who actually has nothing. Biggest fleet of little AI was 94. Not 94 ships, strength. 2 corvettes vs 10k of fleet and the corvettes cut off big AI's transport fleet, shot down 20+ transports in the same system where the big fleets were and big AI never sent his 10k worth of fleet to shoot down those 2 corvettes and save his ground troops. 20 years later and still Big AI can't take a world, even though little AI has literally no ships and no stations because I shot them all down. Paradox definitely needs to teach the AI something about invading and perhaps even escorting transport ships.

Chiming in as another gamer new to grand strategy, and I can echo most of the sentiments, I'm really enjoying it so far and despite there being so many choices and decisions I'm not feeling overwhelmed. Having the tutorials on has been enjoyable so far in giving me just the right amount of guidance but still allowing for jumping ahead if you see something you're working for that hasn't been shown to you just yet. I've found the search button in the bottom right very helpful to jump ahead if you know you need something but don't know how to get it (getting governors for my first colony for example).

So, has anyone mentioned Spore yet in reference to this game? As sh*t as that game was, this is like the final tier of that game but done really, really, really well. How they've managed to make every decision I make interesting, with depth but still graspable even from the get go is astounding.

Another fun night. This game ticks my "just one more turn" type button. After a neighbor destroyed my scanning science vessel, I got into my first skirmish. I had just upgraded my only fleet and sent it over and to my benefit, they won. Watching the automated battle was quite entertaining with lasers vs missiles. That was my people's wake-up that the galaxy was not always friendly.

There was a neat feature where they provided an Upgrade Your Fleet button when I created an updated version of a ship. But now, my newest ship design didn't triggering the Upgrade button. Anyone know what the magic sauce is to make the Fleet Upgrade button work? The only thing I saw was that I deleted the old ship plan the first time around, but I don't know if that is what triggered the option.

Nice fleet composition guide written up here

Stellaris Fleet build guide

thyarcher wrote:

There was a neat feature where they provided an Upgrade Your Fleet button when I created an updated version of a ship. But now, my newest ship design didn't triggering the Upgrade button. Anyone know what the magic sauce is to make the Fleet Upgrade button work? The only thing I saw was that I deleted the old ship plan the first time around, but I don't know if that is what triggered the option.

I don't remember an automatic one, but whenever I need to upgrade fleet it's one of a set of 4 small square boxes in a rectangle about in the middle right side of fleet selection. So select the fleet, then there'll be 4 squares that are options to repair fleet, upgrade fleet, make new fleet (useful for separating one ship that needs repair from a large fleet and sending it back on it's own), and split fleet.

Just click on upgrade and the fleet will head back to your nearest base on it's own and upgrade; might want to split it first if it's a large fleet and manually send half to a different star base. Now if that button is what you meant by it asking you to upgrade and it quit working, then I have no idea Maybe if you designed the same size ship but with a different core choice it can't upgrade to that, I haven't tested that yet.

Step 1 - declare a war on jerk alien who keeps throwing insults my way all of a sudden out of the blue for no apparent reason.

Step 2 - realise with growing horror that my two 1k+ armadas are outmatched and outgunned by jerk alien's forces and the bugger probably just wanted to make his religious fundamentalist loser jerk empire look like the good guys.

Step 3 - new game? yes...time for a new game I think!

Outlandish wrote:

Just click on upgrade and the fleet will head back to your nearest base on it's own and upgrade; might want to split it first if it's a large fleet and manually send half to a different star base. Now if that button is what you meant by it asking you to upgrade and it quit working, then I have no idea Maybe if you designed the same size ship but with a different core choice it can't upgrade to that, I haven't tested that yet.

Yep, that's the button I was attempting to describe. It worked the first time, but I think it was greyed out the second time. I'll keep digging, it just wasn't clear why. I'm sure it will be something simply obvious in a day or two.

I'm also curious as to how real-time everyone is playing? I've been pausing quite frequently just to queue up stuff or figure out what is happening. With these games, do you tend towards keeping it real-time and plan on the fly, or do you pause and decide a lot?

I had to laugh when I stared some ships wondering why they weren't finishing their scans and construction only to realize I had a big glowing Paused at the bottom of the screen.

Also, how important is keeping track of the date during play? It has affected my elections since I missed some campaign promises, which is a cool concept, but I'm not sure whether I should make it a habit to mentally track date deadlines.

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.

I am debating a re-roll solely because I've been toying the idea of going Ironman mode. Part of me wants to go for it before I get too deep into my first campaign. Oddly, I'm not afraid of the no-turning-back commitment factor as much as the Quality of Life element of having the game constantly auto-saving. Ironman bugged me in CK2 & EU4 'cause it always felt like the game was hitching up during annual auto-saves and that frustrated me. It distracted and pulled at my immersion if that makes any sense.

Are you guys Ironmanning on your first run? I just need a nudge to dive in myself.

What are you guys doing in this respect.

polypusher wrote:

Select both the ship you want to add and the fleet you want to add to (shift click or click and drag around both), the button should light up. (figured this out after about an hour )

Thank you sir

This looks intriguing, enjoying your writeups too Gremlin.

One question, What is the replayability like?, is it different every time you play?, like Civilization for example.

Aaron D. wrote:

Are you guys Ironmanning on your first run? I just need a nudge to dive in myself.

What are you guys doing in this respect.

I started my first game as ironman. I'm not a save scummer anyway. I figure, the game is telling a story and I can't turn back and change it. That's what the next game is for.

Jacknine wrote:

This looks intriguing, enjoying your writeups too Gremlin.

One question, What is the replayability like?, is it different every time you play?, like Civilization for example.

Yes, the map is pretty much completely random. And there are all kinds of different map sizes/shapes/etc.

Wayfarer wrote:

Nice fleet composition guide written up here

Stellaris Fleet build guide

That is a great link!

PWAlessi wrote:
Aaron D. wrote:

Are you guys Ironmanning on your first run? I just need a nudge to dive in myself.

What are you guys doing in this respect.

I started my first game as ironman. I'm not a save scummer anyway. I figure, the game is telling a story and I can't turn back and change it. That's what the next game is for.

I also did. I refuse to save scum on a regular basis, so Ironman made a whole lot of sense to me . I'm also pretty sure that's what was holding me back from learning EU4, the utter refusal to save scum.