Yeah though if they even move slightly they will be engaged and normal die. I think I triggered the movement with a construction ship and then engaged with my fleet after some time.
Quality of life - starting fleet size
- Thread starter Zogist
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I like that the realism argument appears in opposite extremes in subsequent posts.
I tend to agree with the first; it seems pretty odd that any relatively sane civilization which has seen no signs of alien life (note: not true for all origins) in the preceding decades or centuries as they’ve moved towards interstellar travel would hold off on exploring the galaxy until they’d completed the enormous endeavor of constructing useful interstellar warships.
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So... I am coming back to this after quite a while. There is some confusion. I am not saying gave 10 or 20 ships to star. Rather, I am saying increase the potential fleet size from 3 to 10 so you can reinforce the fleet.
Yep @Zogist - just open the fleet manger and hit the ‘+’ next to your ship name until you hit 10. Or even 20 (the current starting fleet cap limit).
Incidentally, I’ve always been against the idea of a ‘Starship Enterprise’ jack of all trades type ship, but actually now I’m wondering if this isn’t a solution - what if each empire started without a navy fleet and the science ship, but with a constructor and a unique ship that does both roles of the science ship and the 3 ships you start with? In effect, this would obviate the need to degrade and delete your initial ships.
If this were included, I would also make this a complete one-off ship. You shouldn’t be able to build it if it’s destroyed. Think of it as a ‘combined effort of our nation’ type thing.
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Its somehow useless to introduce a fighter/explorer hybrid class ship because a single one of those ships would still be not powerful enough to beat any of the hostile NPCs right now... if it would be powerful enough to beat one, it wouldn't make sense to build frigs... the only possible way would be to give those ships like a +500% damage bonus against those NPCs... i don't really see a benefit for the game...
That's just because the idea is these vessels explore the vast reaches of space and new species so they may meet hostile aliens its also because the exploration fleet and military fleet are one and the same.
Yeah, one of the thoughts for early exploration I posted was making fleets the game unit (instead of ships being the units, and fleets just being a ball of individual ships).
Early on you'd have an Expeditionary Fleet, with 6 corvettes, one science ship, and one construction ship. You can do several things at once in a system, but you can't just send a bunch of unescorted science ships off into the unknown.
The corvettes would do things like cover the civilian ship's retreat, losing cheaper (non-Leader) ships while protecting the more valuable member. Then you'd have a choice of going home to reinforce, or carrying on with less protection.
If you meet a hostile alien, like a Fanatical Purifuer's expeditionary fleet, that fleet would of course include military ships just like your fleet does -- so the narrative of firing upon your ships and and vivisecting your crew could have more mechanical weight behind it, since you can see them shooting at you, and they'll probably get at least one of your corvettes even if your scientist escapes.
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I really like this idea, and I think it deserves to be posted to the Suggestions sub-forum. With that said, I'd recommend rebalancing it somewhat, both for actual balance and for flavor. Here's one suggestion:
- Pricing justification: Trying to balance the value of extra stuff that everybody starts with, while keeping everything in theme and also avoiding anybody's starting stuff being worthless.
- Using the standard conversion rates as seen in game, where 1 alloy = 2 CG/Unity = 4 Food/Mineral/Energy.
- Valuing stored research at 1/3 of Unity per type (so, same as unity if you get each resource type)
- Making a constructed corvette worth 75 alloy (300 base value), as a compromise between "it's useful as a 100 alloy ship" vs. "it's useful as 45 alloys from de-fitting".
- Making science ships are worth their full 100 alloy; you're going to want those regardless.
- Machine colony ships are valued at 350 alloys (equivalent of 1400 base resources) instead of 400; you'll definitely want them soon, but they're not immediately useful.
- Making a hired leader worth 150 Unity (300 base value) because you don't get to choose them and let's be honest, leader traits aren't even balanced in general, much less equally useful at all times.
- Aiming to make every ethic point worth about 600.
- Remember that Gestalts use all three points in one place.
- "Flavor text" in quotes that explains the idea behind each bonus.
- Base start numbers:
- 1 Corvette. You really don't need much power projection (in the literal sense of "mobile combat platforms") early on. You can still downgrade it if you want to but there's much less benefit (or cost to not doing so). Its main actual use would be to harass cultist ships that spawn in your system (which might also need to be nerfed accordingly).
- 2 Science Ships (with crew of course). Almost everybody tries to build at least one of these immediately anyhow. It also somewhat mitigates the new high cost of early Scientists.
- Everything else (construction ships, starbase, mining / research stations, starting districts, starting resources, etc.) as it is now.
- Materialists:
- +300 of each Research stored per level.
- "With the incredible discovery of the hyperdrive behind us, already our scientists are hard at work on the next phenomenal breakthroughs."
- Spiritualists:
- +300 Unity per level.
- Yes, this means you can start with a tradition if you want to.
- "Our faith has always been the center, and greatest driver, of our culture."
- +300 Unity per level.
- Militarists:
- +1 corvette and an admiral for the first point.
- Since admirals gain experience from piracy suppression even in systems with a starbase, this means your initial admiral would have likely gained at least one level and maybe two by the time you run into an enemy.
- Add +2 corvettes on top of that for Fanatic.
- "Our forces stand ready in this newest, and most critical, warfighting domain."
- +1 corvette and an admiral for the first point.
- Pacifists:
- -1 Corvette but +50 alloys.
- This is more efficient than immediately downgrading today, as that only gets you 45 alloys, but still short of the expected value of a starting corvette if you might want one.
- Start with all possible mining/research stations built.
- About 300 minerals total value, plus increased starting income.
- +300 energy and +50 CG for the first point.
- For fanatics, add an extra +400 Energy and +100 CG on top of that.
- "Peace and prosperity have always gone hand in hand, and will surely continue to do so in our new, interstellar economy."
- -1 Corvette but +50 alloys.
- Xenophiles:
- +1 science ship and survey Scientist, per level.
- "To seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."
- Xenophobes:
- +150 alloys per level.
- "We must prepare whatever materiel may be required in the event of an encounter with xeno lifeforms."
- Authoritarians:
- +200 of each base resource (energy/mineral/food) per level.
- If all Lithoid, -200 Food but +200 Minerals per level.
- If mixed Lithoid and Biological, -100 Food but +100 Minerals per level.
- If Mechanist, Phototrophic, or Radiotrophic, -50 of the relevant species' nutritional resource but +50 Energy per level.
- "It is right and proper that the labors of the lower classes go to support our glorious civilization."
- +200 of each base resource (energy/mineral/food) per level.
- Egalitarians:
- +100 CG, +100 Unity, and +100 of each stored Research per level.
- Supports higher standards of living, and matches the rewards you'd get from having some unemployed Utopians for a while.
- "Through science, art, and industry, a better standard of living for all."
- +100 CG, +100 Unity, and +100 of each stored Research per level.
- Machines:
- For all machines, +1 colony ship (primary species), +50 Alloys, and +200 Energy.
- For DAs: -50 Energy but +50 of the appropriate nutritional resource.
- For RS: -25 Alloys but +50 CGs, -150 Energy but +50 of the appropriate nutritional resource and +50 Unity.
- "Acquiring resources and spreading across the stars are the primary characteristics of a successful civilization."
- Hives:
- +1 Science ship with Scientist, +400 Unity, +400 Food.
- Lithoids -400 Food but +400 Minerals
- Phototrophic and Radiotrophic -200 Food but +200 Energy.
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TBH those first three corvettes won't see action for decades unless that one cult event fires.
Replace them with a second science ship and scientist, change that event so it only fires once you have N fleetpower.
Replace them with a second science ship and scientist, change that event so it only fires once you have N fleetpower.
That depends entirely on your playstyle and galaxy generation. I've had games where I've conquered an entire nation by 2220.
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Maybe there could be dismantle button for fleets. Which allows you to destroye the fleet (your) but you get refund of some resources.
This must be performed at peace time in your territory and maybe starbase.
This must be performed at peace time in your territory and maybe starbase.
That sounds like a whole lot of trouble just to end up in exactly the same place soon after the game begins. Why bother?
We could bother for the same reason initial sensor ranges were reduced not long ago: for in-game consistency (no adjacent system surveyed, and yet exploration data up to 3 or 4 jumps away, right from start: powerful space telescopes could perhaps do it (tenths of light years in range, though), but how to detect hyperlane jump points?).
I never scrap my initial fleet. To me it breaks immersion (why did my species go to the trouble to build them just to tear them down again)?
How I deal with initial fleet buildup depends on how I am playing the species. For instance, after the Aquatics DLC came out, I came up with the backplot for an aquatic species that shared a binary system with a land-bases species. The other species achieved space flight first and tried to subjugate my species. Not only did we fight them off, we copied their tech and took the fight to them and wiped them out.
So is my now xenophobe fanatic militarist species going to scrap or neglect its navy? Hell no!
How I deal with initial fleet buildup depends on how I am playing the species. For instance, after the Aquatics DLC came out, I came up with the backplot for an aquatic species that shared a binary system with a land-bases species. The other species achieved space flight first and tried to subjugate my species. Not only did we fight them off, we copied their tech and took the fight to them and wiped them out.
So is my now xenophobe fanatic militarist species going to scrap or neglect its navy? Hell no!
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Its not really clear how Stellaris hyperlane FTL technology works... so the entry and exit points of the hyperlanes could be Lagrange points.... which can be calculated if you know how the star system looks like
"You put us in fish tanks. Now we build our own tanks."
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Or allow construction and upgrades of such ships but make them expensive, like x1.5-2 times the cost of building 3 corvettes and a science ship of equal capabilities. That way they can be useful in outlier cases (at game start mostly) but will always be inferior to dedicated ships and won't have enough firepower to be a serious contender against even a minor fleet.
Yet we have hints. They stand at the edge of the star's gravity well, hence they are not Lagrangian points (that are like saddle points between planetary gravity wells). They break shortcuts through normal space to link to some special very distant star systems (not in the few light years neighborhood), so they are like natural wormholes, some kind of hazard and rare anomaly. As a side not, this extreme rarity is very convenient for the devs and players' computers to depict only galaxies with so few accessible stars.
Nonetheless, I'm open to any consistent explanation about the pre-2200 exploration process. For example, we could have FTL-probes, or fomerly lost science ships (that managed to send data back, before slowly dying in the cold space). All I'd need is some flavor text at game start, either in the historical introduction, or as a very first country event (on the same level the one I proposed with non-FTL starting ships before the first experimental science ship paves the way). The only issue with FTL probes is: why not FTL strikecrafts then?