Robots seem unplayable

[Urza1234]

I'm honestly starting to find the number of things that are broken, or that could be designed much better, to be depressing.

There are some things that modders can fix, but really there is still so much that only Paradox can fix, or perhaps break.

 

[Black_Shade]

I'm honestly starting to find the number of things that are broken, or that could be designed much better, to be depressing.

There are some things that modders can fix, but really there is still so much that only Paradox can fix, or perhaps break.

2.2 was obviously rushed and came out at an unfortunate time right before the devs went on a ridiculously long vacation (those Scandinavian holidays!), so the game has been at HoI4 levels of broken for longer than it should have been. I think most of the bugs will be ironed out in the next month, though.

I'm much more pessimistic about the balance, as all the of the changes up to this point in the beta patches have been further nerfs to ME. And those comments from Wiz are just... mind boggling. ME are clearly not fine, and significantly weaker than organics. It's really not even close. But they genuinely seem to believe this given what they've been doing with the patches so far, which is not encouraging.

 

[Chthon]

They are't unplayable (or weren't until 2.2.4 broke purging), but they are significantly weaker than organic empires.

Things you should do:

1) Take exploration first. This is required. Don't colonize anything until you get the +2 pops on new colonies from exploration. Get to 5 pops on newly colonized worlds immediately by transferring from your home world and other colonized planets.

As an example, if you colonize 3 planets at similar times in the early game, resettle one pop each from your homeworld and 2 of the colonies to the 3rd colony- this will get you to 5 pops on that colony immediately and double the growth rate on that planet. This is why the additional pop from exploration is so important. Then wait for the next pop growth cycle, and transfer to the next colony to get to 5 pops. Then finish up the last colony to 5 pops. Do the same thing to 10 pops, where you resettle all pop growth from all colonies to a single planet to get it to 10 as quickly as possible. A pop 10 planet has triple the growth rate compared to a new colony. You do not want to let the colonies grow to 10 pops naturally without resettling. Getting to 10 pop ASAP is imperative, as the base growth rate for robots is abysmal.

As an aside, I generally don't colonize anything until my homeworld has reached 35-40 pops- that will let you have 2-3 alloy foundries and enough energy districts to have a good surplus, which is necessary for all the resettling you're going to do at the start. 40 pops is also means that the planetary administration tech is good to take if it pops up early, as that will also boost your pop growth rate even further.

2) Turn off coordinator and hunter drone jobs on new colonies until they reach ~10 pops. The hunter drones aren't needed until then, and the coordinators a big energy sink that makes colonies an economic blackhole at the start if you don't disable them. If you do this and make your first couple districts energy on new colonies they will be energy neutral/slightly positive from the start! Once you hit 10 pops you can reenable those jobs and it will be fine, but you need a few pops working as technicians first or your economy will tank early on.

3) Try and only have one dedicated shipyard starbase, and make every other starbase filled with solar panels early on. You need those solar panels. Unless you have a scary enemy nearby, try and avoid wasting any starbases on defenses at a chokepoint, because you don't have the energy to spare. Every starbase that isn't on solar panels is costing you a ton of energy. Organic empires have a lot more flexability with their starbases, and can afford to waste a few on things like anchorages or defenses at key areas, but you can't. You need more solar panels. Always more solar panels.

4) Only play with 2.2.3. Patch 2.2.4 breaks pop displacement and gives you the genocide penalties for any type of purging, which means all ME play like exterminators, but without the bonuses. This is... not good.

Sadly, what you should really do though is #5:

5) Play an organic empire. They're just way better. Against the AI it doesn't matter, even on the higher difficulties you can play ME just fine. It's just you'd be twice as strong if you were an organic empire instead of ME.

Umm... how does 2.2.4 break pop displacement? Are you saying that if you displace pops it doesn't work?

Also, I thing you are overreacting now to their energy needs. It isn't that severe anymore now that you get free tech-drone jobs when you build a housing district.

 

[Black_Shade]

Umm... how does 2.2.4 break pop displacement? Are you saying that if you displace pops it doesn't work?

Well, it still works in that the pops will disappear!

But it doesn't matter what option you choose, the pops will be exterminated (even if you choose displacement) and give you the genocidal penalty, causing everyone to DoW you at once. It's good times.

 

[Arkton]

Also, I thing you are overreacting now to their energy needs. It isn't that severe anymore now that you get free tech-drone jobs when you build a housing district.

Well if they hadn't nerfed the maintenance drones from 5 to 4 amenitites in the same step, i would think so too. But now you need one maintenance drone for every 3 working drones instead of 4. This was a proper 25% Nerf.

 

[Volapyk]

Anyone actually checked the % of pops different empires need for basic needs, like food, consumer goods, energy (for robots), amenities and crime/deviancy. Would be interesting to see if this is a bit part of why robot empires struggle.

Before bonuses you need 1 energy per pop, a single job provides 4 energy so that is 25% (will be better when you get techs and other bonuses), another 25% needs to be working on amenities. That is ½ your pops right there, on top of that you will need to deal with housing and crime and paying for growth, both costs energy and minerals and so on and on. Wouldn't be surprised if robots ends up needing ~60-70% of their pops just to be self sustainable, which is a huge slow down, with later techs going down to ~40-50% pops. Fairly sure in my last ME game I had ~1/3 of my population dedicated only to energy production, with each job giving about 7 energy, so 40-50% doesn't sound too unreasonable.

Anyone got a late game organic empire where they can check the % of their pops dedicated to sustainability, and an early game for comparison

 

[Chthon]

Well if they hadn't nerfed the maintenance drones from 5 to 4 amenitites in the same step, i would think so too. But now you need one maintenance drone for every 3 working drones instead of 4. This was a proper 25% Nerf.

Listen, I'm not saying that they are still without need for tweaking, only that it wasn't a 25% nerf overall as you suggest. It traded one problem for what is actually a somewhat better problem to maintain. After all you can get amenities from other sources too.

Capital (1/2/3/4) produces: 3/5/8/10
Replicators also produce 5 a piece, and you get 1/2/3/4 from Captials and 1 from Machine Assembly plants
Drone Storage gives you a flat +3/+5 (No more jobs from these)

For 80 pops, the capital plus replicators are an additional 35 (10 + 25 from replicators) amenities, meaning you need 45 from Maintenance drones. That's 12 maintenance drones for 80 pops, this is only 15% of your population at this point.

For 40 pops, it's 28 base plus 12 from maintenance drones which is 7.5% of your pop

For 10 pops, it's 20 base, so you don't need maintenance drones at all.

So you need an increasing % of maintenance drones starting at 20 population, but you don't need 25% of your population ever. It does approach that for absolutely huge colonies in the end, but at that point you have the resources to afford that.

 

[KingAlamar]

FYI: I normally REX [rapidly expand] in SP. So you can REX and you can ignore bio-fuels early on. Just prepare to be significantly weaker than your organic brethren and it can be done.. Harder but still theoretically doable at least in Commodore to Admiral difficulty vs vanilla AI.

 

[Arkton]

Listen, I'm not saying that they are still without need for tweaking, only that it wasn't a 25% nerf overall as you suggest. It traded one problem for what is actually a somewhat better problem to maintain. After all you can get amenities from other sources too.

Capital (1/2/3/4) produces: 3/5/8/10
Replicators also produce 5 a piece, and you get 1/2/3/4 from Captials and 1 from Machine Assembly plants

So you migth also want to include the negatives then, which are a base -5. Machine capital will provide another 10 amenities, but well, its a one time bonus. Plus in the future u get a 5% Bonus to amenities and a 10% reduction amenitites usage. If we argue with numbers, they should be complete. I wont include the latter in the example.

Drone Storage gives you a flat +3/+5 (No more jobs from these)

I dont play beta, but given the numbers it should be more like +3/+6. So next Nerf to this structure, great. Though I rarely used these to begin with. Plus when losing Jobs and made the modifiers static, you loose all the pop modifiers, which could have aided here aswell.

For 80 pops, the capital plus replicators are an additional 35 (10 + 25 from replicators) amenities, meaning you need 45 from Maintenance drones. That's 12 maintenance drones for 80 pops, this is only 15% of your population at this point.

For 40 pops, it's 28 base plus 12 from maintenance drones which is 7.5% of your pop

For 10 pops, it's 20 base, so you don't need maintenance drones at all.

So you need an increasing % of maintenance drones starting at 20 population, but you don't need 25% of your population ever. It does approach that for absolutely huge colonies in the end, but at that point you have the resources to afford that.

As stated above, u need to subtract a flat 5 from your amenities. Plus I would argue that replicators are maintenance drones aswell and therefore count towards your pops. They only tied the growth mechanic to them. And they themselves still need housing. Funnily enough, they fixed the amenities they produce, so no traits kann influence them.

So for an 80 Pop colony I would need 85 Amenitites - 25 from Replicators - 10 from Building = 50 Amenities -> 13 Maintenace Drones + 5 Replicators. That's 18/80 = 22,5% of the population. And from there it only will get worse the more Pops u get.

For a 40 Pop colony I would need 45 Amenitites - 20 from Replicators - 8 from Building = 17 Amenities -> 5 Maintenace Drones + 4 Replicators. That's 9/40 = 22,5% of the population.

For a 10 Pop colony I would need 15 Amenitites - 15 from Replicators - 5 from Building = -5 Amenities -> 0 Maintenace Drones + 3 Replicators. That's 3/10 = 30% of the population.

 

[Chthon]

As stated above, u need to subtract a flat 5 from your amenities. Plus I would argue that replicators are maintenance drones aswell and therefore count towards your pops. They only tied the growth mechanic to them. And they themselves still need housing. Funnily enough, they fixed the amenities they produce, so no traits kann influence them.

I'll have to check about the base -5 to amenities. I don't think I've ever noticed that.

As far as the mechanics, you are going to have them anyways because otherwise you don't have growth at all. That is their primary purpose. Why count them towards dragging you down when they're the only thing holding you up?

 

[LeanneKaos]

During my play through, I was playing tall to start with, so that may have been why I was able to manage my energy problems, and I purposefully targeted every possible thing I could to increase growth rates. Also, playing with post 2.2 AI (not with Glavius AI mod) my neighbours were never threatening, so make of that what you will.

I keep hearing this, but it's been the exact opposite of my early game experience playing Assimilators.

OTOH, if I don't get steamrolled before about 2250 I'm usually in good shape. It's hard to say how much of that is AI failure vs the Assimilator economy (which I'll admit is different from 'regular' machines) kicking in, though.

1) Take exploration first. This is required. Don't colonize anything until you get the +2 pops on new colonies from exploration. Get to 5 pops on newly colonized worlds immediately by transferring from your home world and other colonized planets.

Nitpick: it's Expansion, not Exploration.

In terms of timing: if I go Expansion, Signal Relays, Automated Colonization Units (which is the one that gives you extra pops on new worlds,) even if I'm rushing the first colony I still get the ACU online just before the colonization finishes.

 

[1Evilgenius]

They are far from unplayable. I played every ME except assimilators in 2.2.3. Difficulty grand admiral, 30 agressive AI. Normal ME and rogue servitors have a more difficult start, but not that hard to overcome and they snowball after the early game. I had alot more diffculty with the exterminators, i'm not great at early wars, so it took me 7 or 8 restarts before i got an empire going that could conquer the galaxy. All in all i would say that only in the early game they are weaker, but they are very strong in the mid and late game.

 

[Maethendias]

one way i have found that gets rid of your energy problems is to play murder machines and literally play reaper... dont invade planets (cause admincap and flavour) and instead just.... steal pops via raiding

youd be suprised how much more efficient it is to abduct pops than to conquer planets and resettle those pops yourself (and much more cheaper too)...


unfortunately you cant "block" planets from recieving abducted pops... so somethines your virgin colonies get swarmed by criminal biopops... but oh well

This strategy also helps with your pop growth problems (since you know, you basically steal huge amounts of pop growth from your neighbours)

also, if you see a planet with huge amounts of food districts (or other strategic boni that apply to bio empires).... bombard those planets to oblivion.... creating tomb worlds is a great way to cripple organics, especially when you do it to their farm worlds

 

[-Marauder-]

If you constantly nerf and forget about something that started out weak, it will eventually become pretty much terrible. Who'd have thought? This is a long-standing issue that won't be addressed. If anything you should expect to see more technologies being taken away from Machine Empires or changes to be introduced that completely ignore them.

 

[Maethendias]

If anything you should expect to see more technologies being taken away from Machine Empires

what technologies... they only have like...6, and none of them are/feel "uniquely machine"

 

[-Marauder-]

what technologies... they only have like...6, and none of them are/feel "uniquely machine"

Oh, that's an old issue. Some techs were taken away from them as far back as 1.x. Stuff like Positronic AI. Which was never compensated for. It took a prolonged campaign on the forums to even give them access back to t4 computers back then. They're still missing some, many of whom are simply % bonuses or deductions. Some of them were removed not for balance reasons but for "thematic" ones.

 

[LayZboy]

I keep hearing this, but it's been the exact opposite of my early game experience playing Assimilators.

OTOH, if I don't get steamrolled before about 2250 I'm usually in good shape. It's hard to say how much of that is AI failure vs the Assimilator economy (which I'll admit is different from 'regular' machines) kicking in, though.

Many of the people who think ME are fine or even good play with vanilla AI, which is so weak right now you can use defense platforms to stop their fleets for early to mid-game. If you play with Glavius it's far harder because the AI tries more, and ME flaws become more apparent. ME will obviously seem okay if your opponents can't even build shipyards or repair buildings at all.

 

[Chthon]

Many of the people who think ME are fine or even good play with vanilla AI, which is so weak right now you can use defense platforms to stop their fleets for early to mid-game. If you play with Glavius it's far harder because the AI tries more, and ME flaws become more apparent. ME will obviously seem okay if your opponents can't even build shipyards or repair buildings at all.

They're building shipyards just fine in 2.2.4, and are conducting themselves pretty well in war now too.

Not saying they're good, but I don't normally do this well against them as a megacorp, but now I'm steamrolling them as a robot. About to hit 22 planets, and I'm #4, just 20% behind the 3rd place fallen empire.

 

[LeanneKaos]

Many of the people who think ME are fine or even good play with vanilla AI, which is so weak right now you can use defense platforms to stop their fleets for early to mid-game. If you play with Glavius it's far harder because the AI tries more, and ME flaws become more apparent. ME will obviously seem okay if your opponents can't even build shipyards or repair buildings at all.

Patch notes on 2.2.4 claim they've fixed at least those specific issues, as well as crediting Glavius for a fix on some pop control issue.

 

[Chthon]

Patch notes on 2.2.4 claim they've fixed at least those specific issues, as well as crediting Glavius for a fix on some pop control issue.

I concur, as I said, they are more effective 2.2.4, still not as good as 2.0, but we're getting there. I think they actually conduct war better though.