Robots OP Again

[The Bored Chairman]

Now that Alloys are district related, rather than Building slot related, Robot empires are back to their snowballing ways. The drawbacks of Alloy upkeep simply no longer exist when you can build 16 districts that produce Alloys and can colonize every planet.

I spawned next to Determined Exterminators and they were able to rebuild their fleets almost instantaneously, even after I obliterated them. And then 5 more fleets showed up, meanwhile I'm stuck with only 2 habitable planets to work with, and they have 10.

Can we just get an option to ban certain races? So we don't have to deal with this nonsense every time there's a new patch and balance gets thrown out the window? I just want to play the game again.

 

[King Harkinian]

Robots were literally nerfed so hard that robot assembly is completely worthless by midgame now, taking a decade to make a single robot while paying monthly alloys in upkeep for its construction ON TOP of the wasted pops working in the robot factory.

They are the weakest they have been in a long time right now.

 

[Less2]

Biological empires got doubled growth rate for free across all their planets past the early game, but robots are OP now? yeah no lol.

You're right that there are more alloys in the early game, but that's true for all empires. Everyone can spam alloy districts.

 

[Objulen]

Now that Alloys are district related, rather than Building slot related, Robot empires are back to their snowballing ways. The drawbacks of Alloy upkeep simply no longer exist when you can build 16 districts that produce Alloys and can colonize every planet.

I spawned next to Determined Exterminators and they were able to rebuild their fleets almost instantaneously, even after I obliterated them. And then 5 more fleets showed up, meanwhile I'm stuck with only 2 habitable planets to work with, and they have 10.

Can we just get an option to ban certain races? So we don't have to deal with this nonsense every time there's a new patch and balance gets thrown out the window? I just want to play the game again.

HM's get more fabricator jobs per district than SE's before buildings, but I'm not sure if that's going to really break things without other factors. Are the DE's devoting more of their economy to industry and war? Do they have more planets? Habitability can make a given ME more powerful than a SE if the ME ends up near several planets and the SE doesn't have many habitable worlds.

I'm not sure about the double growth cap atm for BE's, since I haven't fully played through a SE yet, but in an ME built for pop production getting 5 to 10 pop growth per month per planet isn't that difficult.

 

[The Bored Chairman]

Robots were literally nerfed so hard that robot assembly is completely worthless by midgame now, taking a decade to make a single robot while paying monthly alloys in upkeep for its construction ON TOP of the wasted pops working in the robot factory.

They are the weakest they have been in a long time right now.

The pop assembly takes a while, sure, but they can colonize literally every habitable planet. Maybe they grow slower, but having 10 planets producing Alloys vs 2 being forced to produce Food and Consumer Goods (along with Alloys) can't compete.

Maybe there's some RNG involved with planets. But I kid you not, every time I won a battle, they'd just show up again with a full fleet of Corvettes and Destroyers. They were able to double my naval capacity and replace any losses immediately.

Could be that it was just a run of bad luck. Entirely possible. But I had to fully optimize my empire to War production and I still couldn't compete.

 

[The Bored Chairman]

HM's get more fabricator jobs per district than SE's before buildings, but I'm not sure if that's going to really break things without other factors. Are the DE's devoting more of their economy to industry and war? Do they have more planets? Habitability can make a given ME more powerful than a SE if the ME ends up near several planets and the SE doesn't have many habitable worlds.

I'm not sure about the double growth cap atm for BE's, since I haven't fully played through a SE yet, but in an ME built for pop production getting 5 to 10 pop growth per month per planet isn't that difficult.

I mentioned this in my original post. The DEs had around 10 planets under their belt (at least that I knew of, they could've had more). Meanwhile, I was stuck with 2, despite owning around the same space as them.

So it could totally be due to a horrible spawn. I've had a few of those lately, the worst culprits are the Archeological Precursors who want to spawn their colonies 10 Hyperlanes away but TECHNICALLY right next to each other (I still think the spawn algorithm operates on Warp Drive tech and was never updated for Hyperlanes only).

 

[Bankipriel]

Can we just get an option to ban certain races? So we don't have to deal with this nonsense every time there's a new patch and balance gets thrown out the window? I just want to play the game again.

Yes. We already have this option.

You will need to spend a bit of time creating enough custom empires to fill up the galaxy size you want to play.

Then set all of your custom empires to be force-spawned into the game.

I don't play with random AI empires, and haven't for years.

Once you fine tune the AI empires you want to go up against, the game get's really interesting, and you can create all kinds of interesting customized scenarios. For a while I played with 1/2 of all empires as megacorps; it's the only time I've seen constant wars over commercial access to planets.

My current favorite set-up is 10-15 (depending on what I'm playing) of the 24 empires on an 800 star map as exterminator empires. It leads to very strong AI empires because of all the total wars. If you want to get crazy, turn the advanced starts up to 60%+ of total empires. An advanced start exterminator that gets rolling with a lead on planets and systems can provide a very strong mid or late game challenge. It also makes for interesting alliances and forges the GC into a more cohesive body politic when *everyone* is fighting for their lives the whole game.

 

[Objulen]

I mentioned this in my original post. The DEs had around 10 planets under their belt (at least that I knew of, they could've had more). Meanwhile, I was stuck with 2, despite owning around the same space as them.

So it could totally be due to a horrible spawn. I've had a few of those lately, the worst culprits are the Archeological Precursors who want to spawn their colonies 10 Hyperlanes away but TECHNICALLY right next to each other (I still think the spawn algorithm operates on Warp Drive tech and was never updated for Hyperlanes only).

Yeah, that sounds like a bad start. I'm not sure how limited it is to just one play through. I've got a bunch of planets near me in my SE play through, and only the 2 guaranteed habitable ones are green. It's a big motivator to get Habitats in this run.

The alloy cost of star bases and a few other factors are supposed to limit ME's compared to SE's, but that can easily fall out of whack if an ME stumbles across a system with 4 planets, especially with the changes to basic resource buff buildings.

 

[Less2]

When you say you have 2 planets, do you have 2 planets total or 2 planets that are green habitability? Because its still profitable to colonize low habitability worlds. If there are actually zero other potential colonies then either you have horrible luck or you weren't scouting well enough to beeline for the planets. The production malus for low habitability absolutely gets clobbered by the production bonuses for basic resources, which is what you should focus on for these planets.

For reference here's my economic output as a biological empire with what I'd call a fairly average start. Obviously, I have a lot more planets, but you can definitely get enough alloys as a biological empire to beat grand admiral AIs

 

[Pornek]

The pop assembly takes a while, sure, but they can colonize literally every habitable planet. Maybe they grow slower, but having 10 planets producing Alloys vs 2 being forced to produce Food and Consumer Goods (along with Alloys) can't compete.

Maybe there's some RNG involved with planets. But I kid you not, every time I won a battle, they'd just show up again with a full fleet of Corvettes and Destroyers. They were able to double my naval capacity and replace any losses immediately.

Could be that it was just a run of bad luck. Entirely possible. But I had to fully optimize my empire to War production and I still couldn't compete.

Try playing a Megacorp with +4 starbases civic and whatever other civic you want. If you spawn close to a Nebula its insane. Starbases with Hydroponic Farms/Nebula Refineries, Trade, Branch Offices and normal mining stations means you wont need any Farmers, Miners or Technicians. You'll be playing only with specialist and ruler jobs past a point. Its economy on steroids.

 

[The Founder]

I spawned next to Determined Exterminators and they were able to rebuild their fleets almost instantaneously, even after I obliterated them. And then 5 more fleets showed up, meanwhile I'm stuck with only 2 habitable planets to work with, and they have 10.

Sounds like you are playing with 2 habitable planets vs their 10 - not taht Robot growth is OP.

 

[Less2]

Try playing a Megacorp with +4 starbases civic and whatever other civic you want. If you spawn close to a Nebula its insane. Starbases with Hydroponic Farms/Nebula Refineries, Trade, Branch Offices and normal mining stations means you wont need any Farmers, Miners or Technicians. You'll be playing only with specialist and ruler jobs past a point. Its economy on steroids.

It's amazing how well starbase-based production scales in the early game. Hiveminds are even better with solar panels.

Actually makes supremacy/early starbase techs/grasp the void/fortify the border valid economic choices.

 

[Pornek]

It's amazing how well starbase-based production scales in the early game. Hiveminds are even better with solar panels.

Actually makes supremacy/early starbase techs/grasp the void/fortify the border valid economic choices.

Yes I love it. First time since I started playing the game that Im actively seeking out something new (Nebulas). I didnt even know the refineries give exotic gas once you have the appropriate tech.

 

[The Bored Chairman]

Welp, it's clear that I was a bit hasty with my judgment. I withdraw my objections.