You need to have more planets for more fleet capacity. More planets means more planets that you will have to make part of a sector. And that means more planets which likely will grow out of control...
Are planets and population actually useful ?
- Thread starter Akka le Vil
- Start date
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Population gives you:
(I) Border Range
(II) Naval Force Limit
(III) Flexible and powerful yield options
(I) Border Range
(II) Naval Force Limit
(III) Flexible and powerful yield options
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fleet size limit is also dependent on
- number of pops
- number of spaceports (1 per planet)
- number of pops
- number of spaceports (1 per planet)
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This. I noticed that after having colonized much more than the AI did.
I never seemed to outpace any AI in research, but could easily conquer them with my fleet.
Then I looked at my science cost and noticed "Oh crap".
The extra research output you get from extra planets is so negligible compared to the cost.
However, there does seem to be some middle ground for "optimal play", having a decent fleet with decent tech and empire size.
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Might be, but it currently feels absolutely counter intuitive all around and is in some ways hurting the fun that is early planet rush. I would love for them to increase base cost of tech by let's say the factor of 10, while decreasing the added pop bonus by to 0,2%. You'd ultimatively end up with the same number needed (2% of 1000 is 20. 0,2% 0f 10.000 is also 20!) while not punishing expansion quite as severely as it currently does.
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Starvation stops pop growth but doesn't actually kill pops, right? I'm itching to try out some kind of strategy where I expand quickly as is normal and fun and then starve planets once I've filled all the resource tiles I want.
Someone advised using a single robot pop to settle planets. Robot pops do not grow additional pops therefore they can be fired and forgotten. It's an odd system that encourages this kind of behaviour imo.
That's not how it works. Since that's tech per month, not per tech researched.
It's important to remember also that tech costs aren't proportional to 1 + population/50.
To illustrate: The tech cost penalty starts at 10 pops. From 10 pops to 60 pops the tech cost doubles. If your tech per population were to remain constant you'd have 6 times as much research however. In reality your tech per population won't remain constant (your tech from research stations wouldn't increase as fast) but if it did it would always be beneficial to increase your population.
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And the best part is, you then salvage the enemy wrecks and pick up all the techs you were missing.
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Yeah, which is completely and absolutely realistic. This is a mechanic not unsimmilar to break one guys legs before the 100 meter dash because he was doing so well before to "level out the playing field". This mechanic serves no other purpose beyond that, which makes it inherently unfun as it punishes you for doing well.
A society the size of the USA is going to produce MORE research and do more progress than one the size of Liechtenstein. It is inevitable. Just because there's 400m~ people in the US doesn't mean it will suddenly take them several thousand times as long to write a thesis, come up with new ideas or new developements. In fact it's very much the other way around.
And we're already seeing this encourage weird behaviour, such as people settling all planets with a single robot pop so they can go "MINE!" anyway, get all the benefits in terms of starport, border expansion etc while not having any of the adverse affects. So all this does, is make planets bad in many ways.
A society the size of the USA is going to produce MORE research and do more progress than one the size of Liechtenstein. It is inevitable. Just because there's 400m~ people in the US doesn't mean it will suddenly take them several thousand times as long to write a thesis, come up with new ideas or new developements. In fact it's very much the other way around.
And we're already seeing this encourage weird behaviour, such as people settling all planets with a single robot pop so they can go "MINE!" anyway, get all the benefits in terms of starport, border expansion etc while not having any of the adverse affects. So all this does, is make planets bad in many ways.
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With research costs a simple illustration:
<11 Pops 100%
60 Pops 200%
110 Pops 300%
and so on.
So for 60 pops you have 6 time more population than base and 2 times the cost
for 110 pops: x11 pop, x3 tech
for 310 pops: x31 pop, x6 tech
for 1010 pops: x101 pop, x18 tech
As long as you keep focusing some planets on science, you should stay on top of research., not mention the massive economic superiority.
<11 Pops 100%
60 Pops 200%
110 Pops 300%
and so on.
So for 60 pops you have 6 time more population than base and 2 times the cost
for 110 pops: x11 pop, x3 tech
for 310 pops: x31 pop, x6 tech
for 1010 pops: x101 pop, x18 tech
As long as you keep focusing some planets on science, you should stay on top of research., not mention the massive economic superiority.
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If science was only given by the principal sector (planet you manage directly), then they can delete this system of growing tech cost.
I don't think you're looking at this the right way. The equation X(1.02)^Y=tech cost represents this situation, where X=original tech cost and y = pops above ten.
Lets say I have 10 pops generating 15 research (which is, in my opinion, a generous estimate.) It would take 96 months to research a tech with a cost of 1440.
Now, if I built a lab of each type (which would add 4 research for each type) for every 10 pops I got, the tech cost would be 1440(1.02)^30=2608 if I had 30 pops. However, my research for each type would now be 27, although, granted, it would now take 97 months to research this. However, this is assuming you have no base research on any of your tiles, you never upgrade past level 1 labs, and you have no modifiers that would increase your research speed ie. intelligent, natural engineers, free thought edict, despotic hegemony, materialist, etc. Any of these factors would make it better to have more pops than less, providing you're willing to spend 450 minerals for every 10 pops you get.
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That's not how this work !
Yes 2% of 1440 is 28.8 tech but the question is in how much time do you do those 1440 points otherwise ?
Let say you produce 50 points per month. 1440 would be done in 29 months, so even adding only +1 with the pop would be enough to compensate the additional pop.
As you would create in 29 months 1479 tech which is equivalent to 1440 + 28.8.
But after you need to pay for the research lab, feed the people... hard to say if it's good or not considering it provide more than the +1 I used..
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Once again, while many of these help alter the tech cost needed, you still need a tremendous output per pop to break even and it's leagues beyond what you can realistically reach, especially since those research institutes need to be fed, supplied with energy and be build in the first place. Unless a pop breaks even, it's a bad investment and you simply wont break even.
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For 653 POPs, year 2406, without knowing anything about this game's mechanism, sector never set on science focus :
So is it really an issue? research length doesn't seems too long
So is it really an issue? research length doesn't seems too long
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The usefulness of science declines dramatically as the games goes on. Lots of the later weapons are either fluffy alternatives that improve little, or only useful for very large ships fighting other very large ships (which a large empire with lots of naval capacity can ignore, just massing absurd amounts of corvettes or destroyers).
You guys are even considering waiting 50 years to begin expansion? By 2275 I had 30% of the galaxy colonized (as according to the victory indicator, territorial-wise I probably controlled closer to 40-50%). I was knocking down fallen empires. With about 1.1k pop I had 500-550 research in all categories. That's a tech penalty of 22x cost, giving the same research as a 10 pop planet that had 22-25 research in all categores. Quite confidant no one is getting a huge research lead on me.
I'd recommend mentally ignoring the tech penalty from pop almost entirely. It's not there punishing you for expanding, its stopping you from running away with the game. Imagine if my big empire was not only 100x as large but also 25x as fast on research. Just don't do silly stuff like use robots to research or keep around pops that will never be happy.
You guys are even considering waiting 50 years to begin expansion? By 2275 I had 30% of the galaxy colonized (as according to the victory indicator, territorial-wise I probably controlled closer to 40-50%). I was knocking down fallen empires. With about 1.1k pop I had 500-550 research in all categories. That's a tech penalty of 22x cost, giving the same research as a 10 pop planet that had 22-25 research in all categores. Quite confidant no one is getting a huge research lead on me.
I'd recommend mentally ignoring the tech penalty from pop almost entirely. It's not there punishing you for expanding, its stopping you from running away with the game. Imagine if my big empire was not only 100x as large but also 25x as fast on research. Just don't do silly stuff like use robots to research or keep around pops that will never be happy.
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Second hand, but someone said it was mentioned a bug in the Blorg stream
Colonisation growth maintains tech rate. Conquest growth slows down your tech rate. That seems to have more to do with the AI struggling at maximizing its tech income more than anything. Especially true when I imagine a lot of players are using tech bonuses for their main race so aliens cant compete. Since conquest will end up overtaking colonization expansion by a huge margin as the game goes on you will get a bit of drag but it won't be anywhere near the levels claimed earlier in the thread.
As others have mentioned though tech is not king in Stellaris. You get some of the best weapons in the game fairly early and the actual top tier weapons are reverse engineered so tech rate doesn't matter as much.
It is a bit weird that Paradox went back to tying size and tech again though considering they dropped it after EU3.
Also, claiming planets with a single robot could backfire massively if someone triggers the robot uprising.
As others have mentioned though tech is not king in Stellaris. You get some of the best weapons in the game fairly early and the actual top tier weapons are reverse engineered so tech rate doesn't matter as much.
It is a bit weird that Paradox went back to tying size and tech again though considering they dropped it after EU3.
Also, claiming planets with a single robot could backfire massively if someone triggers the robot uprising.
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