How to keep the AI from popping the L-Gate way too early?

[Harmsway]

Then you risk making the Gray Tempest, Great Khan, and other midgame crises all too easy.

The post was specifically about the Tempest, nothing to do with other midgame events.

Nobody has a problem with midgame events having midgame difficulty. The complaints are entirely about a specific midgame event with endgame difficulty being uncontrollably spawned.

 

[MathyM]

The post was specifically about the Tempest, nothing to do with other midgame events.

Nobody has a problem with midgame events having midgame difficulty. The complaints are entirely about a specific midgame event with endgame difficulty being uncontrollably spawned.

Re-read the post I was replying to (which you also quoted in your first post).

 

[Harmsway]

Re-read the post I was replying to (which you also quoted in your first post).

Yes, and I specifically said *even if it only does <specific thing>*, and you're objecting to something unrelated to that.

We're looking for a solution to the problem, not reasons to avoid solving it.

 

[jrmoserbaltimore]

Is there any way to slow them down with empire settings? I'm getting tempest within decades of the game start. There's just nothing to do when the tempest comes when I only have 5k fleet total. I don't want to play with No AI and small galaxies, there's gotta be other ways right?

Set your research and unity gain to be twice as fast as normal. The AI will keep opening the gates at like 2230-2250.

Set them to normal and it takes 90-120 years. Time to build up your economy, which is just as fast even when research is slow.

Analyze anomalies and buy insights from the Curator Order in the mean time (my current record is 4 insights by 2206, eventually opened the gates without spending any research on L-gate insights).

 

[Masked Ermine]

Yes it is. It is a completely valid statistical argument, unlike your bogus comparisons. A virus cannot be seen, and the Grand Canyon cannot be seen if you don't go there.

An actual legitimate comparison would be if you flew across Nevada between two random points on the state border 50 times at low altitude. It's exceedingly unlikely you wouldn't see the Grand Canyon at least once in those 50 flights. That is what we are dealing with here. I have played a whole lot of Stellaris games, and the posited problem has never arisen. That means that the problem is exceedingly unlikely to exist. Instead, it must be explained by the users manufacturing it themselves, likely by choosing galaxy settings or mods that cause it. Solution: Use different settings.

For a long time I was playing Grand Admiral with the end game crisis shut off/so far into the future that I would never be able to see it given my set up, with the midgame crisis also set ridiculously late. That was the whole point, I could play a game without having to constantly game the system just to be prepared for some bunk 'half story event' that really just is an unnecessary 'end campaign' for a game that doesn't need to have a 'story resolution'. Which is why the Grey Tempest is so damned frustrating because if you play with distant stars on, regardless of your midgame settings, regardless of shutting off end game crisis, the damned tempest shows up at 2250, or I think once 2235, because the AI just sees 'ah rare tech tree' and bee-lines it, resulting in them opening the damned gates and releasing nanite death on the galaxy because it arrives with 60K fleets and the AI rarely has more than 30K at most in total, sometimes the Galactic community doesn't even have a council yet. Hell with whatever the f**k they did to the Fallen Empires where they have all their fleets bunched up in packets of 15K fleets rather than in massive 250K fleets (like they used to do), the Tempest usually blows them out of the water too as it snipes the half-formed fleets around the edges.

I finally just went into the game files and altered the script so the Grey tempest event vomits out L-drakes instead, admittedly it's an imperfect solution as it absolutely makes it so the L-cluster doesn't even render thus making the L-gates nothing more than an origin point for the L-drakes, you can't even use them to travel between 'in galaxy' L-gates. But maybe for some....it is the perfect solution.

 

[Masked Ermine]

Then you risk making the Gray Tempest, Great Khan, and other midgame crises all too easy.

Good, they are distractions more often than not, and interrupt how I WANT TO PLAY THE GAME I BOUGHT TO PLAY HOW I CHOOSE TO PLAY IT.

 

[Masked Ermine]

Set your research and unity gain to be twice as fast as normal. The AI will keep opening the gates at like 2230-2250.

Set them to normal and it takes 90-120 years. Time to build up your economy, which is just as fast even when research is slow.

Analyze anomalies and buy insights from the Curator Order in the mean time (my current record is 4 insights by 2206, eventually opened the gates without spending any research on L-gate insights).

Or they could let us shut the damned things off, and let us play how we want to play without constantly having the Grey Tempest shoved in our face and ruin our experience.

 

[klopkr]

Set your research and unity gain to be twice as fast as normal. The AI will keep opening the gates at like 2230-2250.

Set them to normal and it takes 90-120 years. Time to build up your economy, which is just as fast even when research is slow.

Analyze anomalies and buy insights from the Curator Order in the mean time (my current record is 4 insights by 2206, eventually opened the gates without spending any research on L-gate insights).

My research is already set to normal. You're just wrong.

Interestingly enough setting it as slower or longer causes the same problem but worse. The point where AI can open the L gate is way earlier than they can ever handle it. If you set it fast they'll still have low fleets by the time they open it early, if you set it slow they'll open it a hundreds years later than usual but still everyone's fleets will be around 4k.

It seems that the only way to have the necessary 30k minimum is to be a min maxer and focus on tech leaving all the AI deeply inferior in the dust. I shouldn't have to out compete the AI by 10x just to kill off the mid game RNG boss and keep playing my game.

 

[MathyM]

The post was specifically about the Tempest, nothing to do with other midgame events.

Nobody has a problem with midgame events having midgame difficulty. The complaints are entirely about a specific midgame event with endgame difficulty being uncontrollably spawned.

The 30K fleets of the tempest are not endgame difficulty. Endgame difficulty is 60K+ iirc. The issue can be addressed by making the insights harder/impossible for the AI to obtain, without toning down the difficulty of the tempest to a level where it’s just a breeze. The tempest is fine as a midgame crisis. The issue is this midgame crisis in particular spawning before the midgame. That’s what should be addressed. A midgame crisis difficulty slider does nothing in that regard.

 

[Masked Ermine]

The 30K fleets of the tempest are not endgame difficulty. Endgame difficulty is 60K+ iirc. The issue can be addressed by making the insights harder/impossible for the AI to obtain, without toning down the difficulty of the tempest to a level where it’s just a breeze. The tempest is fine as a midgame crisis. The issue is this midgame crisis in particular spawning before the midgame. That’s what should be addressed. A midgame crisis difficulty slider does nothing in that regard.

The last time I played a game where the Gray Tempest emerged...they had 60K fleets upon emergence in 2250. The rest of the galaxy was rocking 10-20K fleets (and that's cumulative to each civilization), the one with cumulative 20K fleet was a devouring swarm and it was chunked up into eight fleets of like around 1.2K maybe like 5 around 1.2 and one that was 10K and another mid-sized fleet. Which meant my 15K fleet (fully edicted out to the max) was the biggest thing out there in the 'normal galaxy'. The only hope was for the FE to wake up, which of course when a tempest fleet emerged near them they did, and then the FE fleets promptly got curb-stomped as they sent in single-ship 15K fleets into the maw of the Tempest which just chewed them up and spat them out....so that yeah, the FE's may survive longer behind their citadels they weren't going to 'win back the galaxy'. I think I had barely gotten my first Battleships up, and didn't even have any X weapon tech.

 

[Archael90]

My idea is to remove mid-game crisis from mid-game and makes tham an end-game crisis (with more power).
But if we want leave Grey tempest as its is, then maybe it should have much more much weaker fleets do it would be a swarm of little, easy to deal with, bugs that we cant just repell. They would destroy undefended outposts, and smaller colonies, but would not destroy empires. The L-gate on its own should be heavily defended.

 

[Toybasher]

Can't wait for the next patch, which supposedly may fix this.

I think the cause is, since the AI's been improved, they research tech faster, (Since their economy is better and they don't death-spiral anymore) which also means they discover L-gate insights faster, which means they open the L-gates earlier than before. (Before, I've never seen them open the L-gates before endgame crisis hits on default settings and difficulty)

I think maybe it should depend on the AI personality of the empire how much they want to open the L-gates. Isolationist ones likely wouldn't really care for the L-gates, while a xenophile materialist should want to open them to see what's on the other side out of curiosity.

I also think maybe there should be some galactic community resolutions for the L-gates. Not sure what (Choosing to research an L-gate insight puts you in breach of Galactic Law for a bit?) but I feel you should be able to use the galactic community to try and discourage empires from opening it. I can't think of a good in-universe justification, but from a meta perspective as players, we obviously know if they're opened it can burn down the entire galaxy. (Or maybe you don't want people from obtaining nanites for whatever reason)

 

[klopkr]

My idea is to remove mid-game crisis from mid-game and makes tham an end-game crisis (with more power).
But if we want leave Grey tempest as its is, then maybe it should have much more much weaker fleets do it would be a swarm of little, easy to deal with, bugs that we cant just repell. They would destroy undefended outposts, and smaller colonies, but would not destroy empires. The L-gate on its own should be heavily defended.

It would be kinda cool to have an enemy who functions on spamming small annoying fleets everywhere with a huge defensive hub.

Imagine if there was a huge bastion in the Terminal Egress and instead of sending out 30K fleets on occasion they endlessly spammed 1-5k fleets that just leave every L-gate constantly going out in every direction.

Anyways the way the Tempest play is fine to me. It's just that they're kind of a 36% RNG chance to have a strict pass fail on whether you can continue the mid game based on whether you can beat a minimum of about 60k fleets (at least beat one 30k fleet over and over).

 

[Archael90]

It would be kinda cool to have an enemy who functions on spamming small annoying fleets everywhere with a huge defensive hub.

Imagine if there was a huge bastion in the Terminal Egress and instead of sending out 30K fleets on occasion they endlessly spammed 1-5k fleets that just leave every L-gate constantly going out in every direction.

Anyways the way the Tempest play is fine to me. It's just that they're kind of a 36% RNG chance to have a strict pass fail on whether you can continue the mid game based on whether you can beat a minimum of about 60k fleets (at least beat one 30k fleet over and over).

Also, whole l-cluster with all l-gate systems should became owned by nanites do that You cant just build a citadel there and kill each bug that came from there.
But swarm of 1-30k (depending on year or avarage power of empires im galaxy) fleets destroying outposts but getting destroyed by patrol fleets, with heavily defended (around 100-300k) hub both on terminal egress and in center of L-cluster, and stronger fleets (like 30-60k) patrolling whole cluster, should dramatically change grey tempest so it could both - feel not do unfair but stay a danger.