3.6 "Orion" Open Beta - Discussion Thread

[Lorenerd11]

Maybe the problem of Cybernetics being too early/fast and a bit barebones could be alleviated by nerfing its power somewhat and allowing you to still take Synthetic ascension later if you want? Taking Synthetics would then get you better pops in the end, but at the cost of rendering the Cybernetics tradition tree and ascension perk dead weight, meaning you'd have an incentive to stick with just Cybernetics as well. And taking Cybernetics early would give you a boost in the early game, so you wouldn't always just wait for Synthetics even if it's better. If balanced well, it could be an interesting strategic decision depending on the current state of the game.

Wouldn't that just be a waste of an entire tradition slot and ascension perk?

 

[Sutopia]

My main comment is that the Spiritualist/Harmony federation is incredibly weak for a number of reasons:

1: Max fed fleet is medium. This is a bit of a double-edged sword because of the arbitrary fed-fleet caps, but it also means the federation fleet is perpetually weak
2: NO crisis bonus: This is the only federation that does nothing for fighting the endgame crisis. Considering every other federation gets at least +25% Crisis damage you really feel this loss
3: Edict cap for the president at level 5 is meaningless, because edict cap is useless come late game
4: The "killer app" as it were requires Zro. Zro is still a rare resource and means it's very easy to not be able to use it (I have roughly 1/4 the galaxy on a small map, and no Zro. So I don't even get to know what it does.
5: Planetary Ascension bonuses are nice and all, but still rely on planetary ascension being vialbe/desirable. Too few planets other than capital are really worth it (though yes, it will be a nice capitol)
6: Spread the holy word feels weak. A bonus to one tree of the Galactic Community which feels largely a distraction most times is just mediocre
7: Shroud Delving: Feels out of place. Yes, psionics are the Spiritualist thing, but the president doesn't HAVE to have gone Psionic, and most the rest of the federation is more about planetary ascension

Suggestions:
Spread the Holy Word: gain some military bonus when fighting ideology/defensive wars. Possible rename to "Defender of the Faith"
Reverent Edits: Remove this entirely, give federation wide bonus to fighting the crisis instead. Yes this breaks symmetry but there really isn't much a place to put it and the other bonuses on the tier feels weird.
Shroud Delving: This also could be a crisis based bonus, or if you want to keep the edict thing a lot, move it here.
Zro Catalysis: Not able to find out what this does the best I can say is also allow the creation of artificial Zro
Heavenly Accord: Add one priest job per ascension tier in addiction to existing effects, just to make it feel a bit more useful

Zro catalysis is also very bad due to it only benefit psionic pops. I think it should be a universal buff, otherwise it's punishing anyone not psionic for no good reason.

 

[Lorenerd11]

The only thing I would like to see changed is the Assembly Standarts. I don´t wanna have to choose between cyborg pops or robots, instead let me make this choice on a planet to planet basis. For example, my original species is geared towards trade/research and my robots are geared towards mining/alloy production. No need for robot assembly on my research world and no need for pop assembly on my mining world.

I agree. Just let players switch which one they're assembling on each individual planet, just like we currently do with Robot Assembly vs Cloning.

 

[Arutar]

It also does not look like vassals rebel under almost any circumstances. I've seen empires with a single vassal twice as strong as they happily paying taxes, and empire with three equivalent vassals at -100 loyalty, and both of these situations just kept going on with no changes. Galaxies just feel extremely stagnant compared to pre-Overlord times.

Yes. So many wars are only fought becasue of rebellious vassals / secret fealties.

Though I am not even sure if there is some change in there of if its just because there are SO many vassals now.

Voluntary / peaceful vassalization should be a rare case and not the norm, as its right now.

 

[Siren Soule]

Cybernetic Ascension is weakest path in overall perspective but you can get it as soon as you finish tier 2 tech. You can easily pick it as 2nd AP and get 3rd tradition as Cyborg tradition. This gives snowball effect, +20% habitability bonus in early game is really useful.
For Psionic / Bio Ascension, you have to finish tier 3 tech, so you'd normally have to grab it in 4th tradition.
Synthetic Path... you have to finish tier 4 tech, so you'd have to wait til mid game at least. But still, Synthetic Ascension is powerful in long run, so it's kind of late game high return path.

For Psionic, I have wondered what the balance implication would be if Psionic theory was a tier 2 tech instead of tier 3, but has the same cost and effect as it has now.

Having more opportunities to roll it from earlier makes entry into psionics more likely for normal empires as they get more rolls, however the tech may come at an inconvenient time while an empire is still searching for e.g. Terraforming, planetary capital techs, the good stuff they really want as well, so it's an investment with opportunity cost.

 

[guiskj]

My main comment is that the Spiritualist/Harmony federation is incredibly weak for a number of reasons:

1: Max fed fleet is medium. This is a bit of a double-edged sword because of the arbitrary fed-fleet caps, but it also means the federation fleet is perpetually weak
2: NO crisis bonus: This is the only federation that does nothing for fighting the endgame crisis. Considering every other federation gets at least +25% Crisis damage you really feel this loss
3: Edict cap for the president at level 5 is meaningless, because edict cap is useless come late game
4: The "killer app" as it were requires Zro. Zro is still a rare resource and means it's very easy to not be able to use it (I have roughly 1/4 the galaxy on a small map, and no Zro. So I don't even get to know what it does.
5: Planetary Ascension bonuses are nice and all, but still rely on planetary ascension being vialbe/desirable. Too few planets other than capital are really worth it (though yes, it will be a nice capitol)
6: Spread the holy word feels weak. A bonus to one tree of the Galactic Community which feels largely a distraction most times is just mediocre
7: Shroud Delving: Feels out of place. Yes, psionics are the Spiritualist thing, but the president doesn't HAVE to have gone Psionic, and most the rest of the federation is more about planetary ascension

Suggestions:
Spread the Holy Word: gain some military bonus when fighting ideology/defensive wars. Possible rename to "Defender of the Faith"
Reverent Edits: Remove this entirely, give federation wide bonus to fighting the crisis instead. Yes this breaks symmetry but there really isn't much a place to put it and the other bonuses on the tier feels weird.
Shroud Delving: This also could be a crisis based bonus, or if you want to keep the edict thing a lot, move it here.
Zro Catalysis: Not able to find out what this does the best I can say is also allow the creation of artificial Zro
Heavenly Accord: Add one priest job per ascension tier in addiction to existing effects, just to make it feel a bit more useful

Thank you for pointing out that Psionic Ascension is not always how we want to play Spiritualist empires! Spiritualism doesn't have to mean deity worship either. I'd love to have a more animalistic (totemism also good) or animistic spin on Spiritualists.

 

[Sutopia]

So, when you have overwealming firepower and greater range (you have successfully focused your doomstack), you destroy the enemy without taking any damage in return. Short range weapons meanwhile take damage even in an overwealming situation to a far greater degree.

Do you have test results to support your premises?

 

[Masked Ermine]

Do you have test results to support your premises?

I mean that's just logic, right. If my long range fire power can wipe out your forces before getting into their range, then...well...I'm going to win...even if they don't get wiped out in the alpha strike, or beta strike, their numbers should be even more reduced before getting into firing range, at which point I should be either into my beta strike or working on my gamma strike.

 

[Sutopia]

I mean that's just logic, right. If my long range fire power can wipe out your forces before getting into their range, then...well...I'm going to win...even if they don't get wiped out in the alpha strike, or beta strike, their numbers should be even more reduced before getting into firing range, at which point I should be either into my beta strike or working on my gamma strike.

No it’s not. It takes an overwhelming amount of technological and economical difference to achieve one shot alpha kill which is unrealistic, except for against unbidden that have fundamental design flaws (brawler without speed). That’s really just re-stating the old meta of alpha dominance but even back in 3.5 you’re not gonna get that insta alpha wipe. In 3.6 your only spammable long range weapon is kinetic artillery which means small ships can easily meta with all armor build and take no loss at killing artillery ships.

This pretty much falls in the definition of cloud players, which means attempting to assert arguments without actually putting your hands on the mechanism itself. With your “wise” logic it is never possible to make alpha strike balanced since as long as you have “enough” firepower alpha always wins. I do not think the change is attempting to do anything for situations where there is an already significant military power difference, but rather when both sides field similar amount of firepower (as in power level is in the same magnitude).

 

[NotAYakk]

Do you have test results to support your premises?

Yes?

Play a game and fight the unbidden. They have 70 max range. Use KA battleship fleets with good tracking. You have 120+ range. I bias towards careful admirals, which boosts this to 144 range, nearly twice the enemy range.

I have fights where I take basically zero damage.

Do the same with autocannon fleets. They close to range, and don't all do it at once. So the enemy gets to fire on my fleets, and on the vanguard has a temporary force advantage.

When I have mixed fleets, my super-fast engage ships get chewed to pieces. They move fast and close within enemy fire range.

This is an extreme example - the unbidden have a design problem - but using them to illustrate the point is valid. The point is that with close ranged ships, even with overwealming firepower, you will take losses.

...

In any case, my point is that if evasion was a *defensive* feature instead of a debuff of the enemy attack ability, it would work better in the face of overwealming firepower.

If a ship with 50% evasion (after tracking) has a 50% chance to simply not get hit in a given time window, then having 1, 2, or 2000 ships shooting at it won't matter when it evades.

And if it takes 3 "evasion time windows" to close with the enemy fleet, at least 1/8 of such ships can make it through even an intense barrage.

As opposed to right now, where the barrage can completely wipe out the advancing force before they close.

In less intense environments it will help less, but it continue to help, especially against heavy weapons.

 

[HFY]

The new galaxy shapes are really nice.

Is thee a script-y way to find empty regions, like the empty arm in Starburst? I'd love to be able to spawn disconnected clusters in empty areas.

 

[Sutopia]

Yes?

Play a game and fight the unbidden. They have 70 max range. Use KA battleship fleets with good tracking. You have 120+ range. I bias towards careful admirals, which boosts this to 144 range, nearly twice the enemy range.

I have fights where I take basically zero damage.

Do the same with autocannon fleets. They close to range, and don't all do it at once. So the enemy gets to fire on my fleets, and on the vanguard has a temporary force advantage.

When I have mixed fleets, my super-fast engage ships get chewed to pieces. They move fast and close within enemy fire range.

This is an extreme example - the unbidden have a design problem - but using them to illustrate the point is valid. The point is that with close ranged ships, even with overwealming firepower, you will take losses.

...

In any case, my point is that if evasion was a *defensive* feature instead of a debuff of the enemy attack ability, it would work better in the face of overwealming firepower.

If a ship with 50% evasion (after tracking) has a 50% chance to simply not get hit in a given time window, then having 1, 2, or 2000 ships shooting at it won't matter when it evades.

And if it takes 3 "evasion time windows" to close with the enemy fleet, at least 1/8 of such ships can make it through even an intense barrage.

As opposed to right now, where the barrage can completely wipe out the advancing force before they close.

In less intense environments it will help less, but it continue to help, especially against heavy weapons.

That’s shifting the goal post. As my previous reply pointed out, such statement will always be true because as long as you have “sufficient” firepower you can always alpha win without taking damage, which is not the goal of the combat rebalance.

Edit: moving the change to damage immunity approach doesn’t sound realistic at all as dodge being a multiplicative damage negating measure is already OP. It would inevitably revert back to defenseless corvette meta where you can abuse the dodge, now even stronger being complete damage immunity, and deal damage to enemy that otherwise have to rely on actual defenses. In a 1:1 resource matchup corvettes will always win without question.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Sorry about the posts that had to be moved here, when I made those I completely forgot we're not meant to reply in other threads.

 

[dulahan]

Yes. So many wars are only fought becasue of rebellious vassals / secret fealties.

Though I am not even sure if there is some change in there of if its just because there are SO many vassals now.

Voluntary / peaceful vassalization should be a rare case and not the norm, as its right now.

A million agrees.

It's pretty ridiculous how many very powerful nations are vassals of others. I can only imagine it's something to do with how come I keep getting offers from AI nations even remotely higher in score than me, so the AI must think I'll accept (and likely the AI nations in that case would).

So yeah, far too many vassals out there. Should only happen in a war loss with it as a very hard to get war goal (easier than full conquest, but not much) or if the nation is substantially weaker and threatened by a mutual enemy to boot and some other positive factors (similar ideals?)

My latest game has far more Overlords + Vassals than it does Federations, and it's not even close. the Overlords are way more powerful too.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Zro catalysis is also very bad due to it only benefit psionic pops. I think it should be a universal buff, otherwise it's punishing anyone not psionic for no good reason.

If you're cybernetic/synthetic: why are you in a spiritualist federation? The fact that you can't/won't benefit is it WAD, I think.
If you're genetic, just steal some psionic pops and set them to grow (or form a migration treat with someone who has them so they'll assimilate your main species).

My concern is the opposite: Zro Catalysis is so good that it feels like they intended a decent portion of Psionics power to come from it, which makes them bound to this particular federation type.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Are we supposed to get relics after defeating the first crisis in All crisis modes? I killed every one of the Unbidden's portals by myself (and I'm fairly certain I killed all the dimensional anchors myself, though there may have been some other empire's fleets there), but I didn't get the Dimensional Warlock. The Prethoryn have since spawned.

Did one of the AIs snipe it, or are you just not supposed to get crisis relics on this mode? Or some other reason (I killed the portals out of order: Aberrant, Unbidden, Vehement).

Edit: it was "some other reason".

 

[Dr_Gentech]

Are we supposed to get relics after defeating the first crisis in All crisis modes? I killed every one of the Unbidden's portals by myself (and I'm fairly certain I killed all the dimensional anchors myself, though there may have been some other empire's fleets there), but I didn't get the Dimensional Warlock. The Prethoryn have since spawned.

Did one of the AIs snipe it, or are you just not supposed to get crisis relics on this mode? Or some other reason (I killed the portals out of order: Aberrant, Unbidden, Vehement).

I also want to know about this. Being able to use those Relics is a big part of why I'm playing All Crisis.

 

[hart30]

I also want to know about this. Being able to use those Relics is a big part of why I'm playing All Crisis.

This issue has been there since the introduction of relics. Once the second portal spawns u cannot get the unbidden relic anymore, even if u destroy all 3 dimensional portals urself. U have to kill the unbidden before the abberant and vehement appear in order to obtain the relic. No clue if this is WAD or a bug.

 

[jedavis]

I've been trying to figure out why AI empires seem to be falling apart left and right in the midgame on difficulties where they don't get any bonuses like Cadet and Ensign. I don't know what of this is new in the beta, but some observations (looking at troubled empires around 2310):

• Almost no use of raw resource designations. I looked at ~7 empires each of 10+ planets and found exactly one raw resource designated planet and two or three raw resource designated habitats. Lots of Urban Worlds, Forge Worlds, and Factory Worlds, zero Tech Worlds or Unification Centers. Some of these Urban Worlds would be better off as Rural Worlds; others might be better off as Tech Worlds or Refinery Worlds.
• No use at all that I saw of pop base output booster buildings like mineral purification plants, energy grids, or the upgraded civilian industries or mega-foundries. Orbital Ring buildings that boost pop base output are entirely out of the question. Also no use that I saw of Ministry of Production, Planetary Supercomputers, etc, though I did see a Galactic Stock Market.
• They're mostly doing decent jobs of keeping net energy and food incomes between 30 and 100 per month and net mineral incomes between 75 and 150 per month, and keeping their banks pretty thin. Typical mineral bank is about 1.5k. There is one case where he's got a mineral bank of 260 and 0 net minerals per month; I'm not sure exactly how this happened but he's already got one rebellion on and he's in the red on monthly energy, food, and CGs too. Definitely in a pickle.
• Tons of refineries. They're making decent use of their gas for research complexes and their crystals for hyper relays but aren't using their motes for anything besides ship components.
• Occasionally massive unemployment. One empire I'm looking at has 317 total pops and 92 of them are unemployed, and it's all one (recently synthetically-ascended) species plus their robots. This wasn't an influx of refugees or a recent conquest or something. Did they just immediately demolish all of their farms when they became perfect immortal machines without building anything to replace them, leaving all of their farmers unemployed? That still couldn't be a third of their population... Amusingly they're also still using Gene Clinics for their amenities even though the habitability and pop growth bonuses don't help them now that they're robots.
• "Luxuries Distributed" on most worlds, even when they don't really need the amenities. Non-mercantile empires that don't have the CG trade policy are often running monthly CG deficits.
• They build both holo-theaters and gene clinics on the same worlds and then deprioritize the entertainer jobs but leave the medical worker jobs to be worked.
• Some brutally-mismanaged 0-stability habitats full of unemployed slave pops, unemployed refugees, etc. That's a rebellion just waiting to happen.
• Materialists running monthly net alloy deficits because they built too many robot assembly plants.
• They don't seem to fire governors with the Corrupt trait, and the planets in sectors such governors run end up with 35+% crime.
• Some cases of settling planets with very low habitability. I saw one where they had 20% base for their species and then Hazardous Weather brought it down to 10% habitability, and they colonized it anyway. That's not a world that is going to have positive RoI.

It feels to me like they're trying to build economies focused on tech and CG and to a much lesser extent alloy production and want to sneak in raw resource production districts on the side rather than having specialized raw resource worlds. Generally they do a pretty bad job specializing planets. Maybe this works better on higher difficulties where they have the +% resources from all jobs and stations to make up for poor or nonexistent specialization? But down here it feels like there are a lot of problems that they could build their way out of if they had the minerals and were just a little less fixated on labs and refineries. You can solve unemployment by building more districts and buildings. You can at least mitigate not knowing to fire a Corrupt governor by building enforcer buildings.

So they've got these research-heavy economies built on a very thin raw-resource-production base and then if they suffer a disruption they don't have the raw resource (eg mineral) slack to deal with it. They're getting the vast majority of their minerals from mining stations, so when systems get temporarily occupied during a war (say, a rebellion from a 0-stability habitat) their mineral income dries up and they lose the ability to respond to anything else that goes wrong by building stuff, since they have thin banks, and then their problems cascade and they can't recover.

A human player can run a raw-resource-thin tech-rushy economy by reacting cleverly to things that go wrong. A GA AI can run a raw-resource-thin tech-rushy economy on the AI bonuses. An Ensign AI doesn't have either of those options.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

No use at all that I saw of pop base output booster buildings like mineral purification plants, energy grids, or the upgraded civilian industries or mega-foundries. Orbital Ring buildings that boost pop base output are entirely out of the question. Also no use that I saw of Ministry of Production, Planetary Supercomputers, etc, though I did see a Galactic Stock Market.

I can't say I've seen the same. The AI is using mineral purification plants/civilian replicators/etc. in my game (though it's GA). It may be that they're undervaluing these and not building them unless they have surpluses.

Some cases of settling planets with very low habitability. I saw one where they had 20% base for their species and then Hazardous Weather brought it down to 10% habitability, and they colonized it anyway. That's not a world that is going to have positive RoI.

This is an example of the AI playing well, not poorly, as long as they're not trying to develop these worlds. Settling low habitability worlds is like getting a free roboticist: the one pop you get when you colonize makes at least 1.5 growth for you, and (if you get them a worker job), they'll be roughly even on upkeep/production even with a 50% production penalty and a 100% upkeep penalty. Even colonists aren't so bad.