Art Installation: Just a big museum? Disappointed

[Losttruppen]

Megastructures also have different textures depending on shipset

Science Nexus, Dyson Sphere, and the Matter Decompressor have the same asset for all shipsets, I'm not sure about the others but I'm pretty sure it's only Ringworlds. You seem to care about the scale when you compare it to starbases, and want a LHC circumnavigating a star system. These things are already the size of a Habitat that can house multiple times the population of Earth 180 years from now. You seem to want everything to be on the same scale as a Ringworld or Dyson Sphere, which while cool, are completely ridiculous in any practical way and are only as big as they are to try and match their references in popular science fiction.

I'm not sure anyone here is debating that, to be honest

The OP did. Most of my comments here are about his absurd suggestion that a museum/library/reliquary/temple larger than mars isn't as memorable as the Statue of Liberty or the Arc de Triomphe. I guarantee more people go to Paris for the Louvre or Notre Damme than the Arc.

you spend a similar amount of resources encircling a star in entirety, or building a ring with a habitable area comparable to the surface of the Earth multiplied five or six times. And you get: a big museum

this is enough metal to build a planet

 

[Flame13223]

Yeah it looks kinda underwhelming to be honest.

 

[Paradoxon]

You seem to care about the scale when you compare it to starbases, and want a LHC circumnavigating a star system. These things are already the size of a Habitat that can house multiple times the population of Earth 180 years from now. You seem to want everything to be on the same scale as a Ringworld or Dyson Sphere, which while cool, are completely ridiculous in any practical way and are only as big as they are to try and match their references in popular science fiction.

I'll just repeat what I said in my previous message: scale is one thing, but it's not everything. I'm annoyed at Megastructures smaller than regular structures but you need more than size to make a structure "Mega". Them being too small is just the negative "icing on the cake". And what's so wrong about Ring Worlds and Dyson Spheres being "ridiculous in any practical way" ? They're megastructures, them being incredibly massive and imposing is sort of their point past the the bonus they give. That's the difference between building a Megastructure and using Edicts/Ambitions to boost your production, it's the recognition that megastructures have a value beyond their resource bonus.

The OP did.

I'll just repeat myself again: they're talking about the resource cost, but not in gameplay considerations. What they're saying is, if you use the same amount of alloys on a Dyson Sphere than on a Mega Art Installation, you'd expect both to have the same sense of grandeur, the same visual impact on a system. At no point do they talk about the cost being not realistic or not balanced to their resource output, the whole discussion is about flavour, which these megastructures lack.

 

[Arrias117]

In regards to differentiation, you could go the route of making 10 (one for each ethic, a hive, and a machine) and then for shiggles throw an associated ethics attraction on there. When you build it, you can choose which ethic (from a short list of your current empire's ethics) to use. They wouldn't necessarily have to be all that distinct either, maybe the militarist art installation is just a bit spikier, but of course the option is there to go much wilder.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Science Nexus, Dyson Sphere, and the Matter Decompressor have the same asset for all shipsets, I'm not sure about the others but I'm pretty sure it's only Ringworlds.

Nope, dyson spheres have unique textures too.

 

[th3freakie]

They rushed it to create "content" for MegaCorp, and it sucks. Same with the Assembly. That's really all there is to it. Perhaps some modder will come up with a substitute model that sucks less, but I doubt Paradox will waste precious resources correcting past mistakes.

 

[Currywurst44]

I think three different art installations would be more than enough. Just assign 3 ethics to two of them and 2 ethics to the other. You always get the art installation for which you have the most ethics points spend. In case of a tie when your ethics are one point from each group you just choose one fallback art installation for example the one that has only two ethics in its group. In practice this means you always get the structure for your fanatic ethics or the one that represents your ethics best.
The individual art installation could be some intimidating power demonstration(for authoritarians, xenophobes and militarists) ,a rainbow light show(for egalitarians, materialists and xenophiles) and maybe you could just keep the current one(for pacifists and spiritualists).

 

[FleetingRain]

Isn't there something that every empire would appreciate as art?

 

[Retry]

As for this, for each fanatic makes sense, but a generic for a 3 ethic empire makes no sense. A 3 ethic empire would require more or at least the same number possibilities that a fanatic empire has. Anyways the larger issue is that even if we stuck with 8 monuments for normal empires and 2 or 3 for gestalt empires, they'd still have to be monuments that are cool and make sense for all empires of those types. It's very unlikely that you could do that without either being too generically lame or too specifically minute. I mean look at the symbols for xenophobe and xenophile, and you'll see what I'm talking about. They're just pentagons with lines and dots. The devs obviously had trouble creating xenophile and xenophobe symbols that are both cool and accurate for all empires. The same thing would happen for any space monuments. I think it's entirely possible that your idea already came up in development and had to be turned down because of these limitations as well as time constraints. Though you should make a suggestion in the suggestion forum if you haven't already.

A generic for a three-ethic empire makes sense: They have policies in a broad number of areas but there's no single trait that "defines" their empire. There's no reason there has to be a totally unique model for every single combination of ethics. Alternatively, someone had the idea to base it on the empire's building art style or ship art style instead of ethics.

For the record, it's not my idea and I have no personal stake in this thread.