Is it me or we get Megastructures and Ascensions too late?[

[Curator Sapidianus]

Even when playing Pacifist Xenophobe Materialst on insane with focus on Unity and Research I get Megastructers or Robot Ascension when I no longer need them. By the time I can build ring world, dyson sphere I am so ahead of everybody, I dont really need them. I also tried to rush robot ascension and managed to get in 2270s, which also was a bit too late for my taste.

I believe that changing some things, including making it possible to ascend and build megas earlier would actually make the game more fun, because it's fun to build and protect dyson spehere when it can become a game changer instead of the era of players utter dominance. It's also much more fun to actually build a robot or psionic empires instead of going full robo or psy when all your enemies are already weaker then you and your empire is established and stable.

The balance should be handled no by a unity grind, but by fun factors. For example: make it possible to become cyborgs and go full robot before 2250, but let players suffer a powerful revolt instigated by anti-cyber factions.

 

[Emraldis]

I think slowing the whole game down so that it's harder to become a galactic superpower in only 50-70 years would be a better choice...

 

[Mrakvampire]

I would prefer if devs would change mid-game balance to avoid snowballing of power that happens during that period.
Expansion should give more mitigation factors, conquered species should be harder to manage, pops should grow slower overall.

 

[Dementor4]

Even when playing Pacifist Xenophobe Materialst on insane with focus on Unity and Research I get Megastructers or Robot Ascension when I no longer need them. By the time I can build ring world, dyson sphere I am so ahead of everybody, I dont really need them. I also tried to rush robot ascension and managed to get in 2270s, which also was a bit too late for my taste.

I believe that changing some things, including making it possible to ascend and build megas earlier would actually make the game more fun, because it's fun to build and protect dyson spehere when it can become a game changer instead of the era of players utter dominance. It's also much more fun to actually build a robot or psionic empires instead of going full robo or psy when all your enemies are already weaker then you and your empire is established and stable.

The balance should be handled no by a unity grind, but by fun factors. For example: make it possible to become cyborgs and go full robot before 2250, but let players suffer a powerful revolt instigated by anti-cyber factions.

Generally I agree that megastructures come too late, and to me it seems like the blame for that lies more in the "card" tech system than anything else. Even with a voidcraft-specialist scientist fronting engineering, the master builder perk, AND a captured FE ringworld (and, yes, the fortress and battleship techs) it STILL took me ~50 years of stalling the game for the mega engineering tech to actually show up.

Suggestion: You can make a card more likely to pop up by parking a Science Vessel at something relevant and setting it to "Study", which lasts as long as you want it to. The longer you study it, the more likely a relevant card is to pop up. So if you scan a megastructure (from a FE or another empire) for 10 years you've got a guarantee for the card to come up assuming you have the prerequisite technologies.