The one planet empire. The OP-OPM.

[Edmon]

If what you're saying about the A.I. is true, then why are you the only non-Fallen Empire (that you know of) to have a lot of land? Even if you are using abandon planet, you wouldn't be able to get away with that as easily as you would be if there were more empires because those empires would ally with each other. You might not even be able to expand as much as you did using Frontier Outposts because the game purposely spawns empires right next to you to make the early game harder.

As for the second part of your post, what that is telling me is that you are actually cheating. Cheating, in my mind, isn't always using console commands. If you are purposely exploiting a bug in the game, you are cheating. It's even worse because you're not saying what that bug is.

I already said that the A.I.'s that I can see, I have been using active strategies to dramatically limit their growth.

I am not cheating. Sorry to disappoint you, but this game has lots of systems and features that have apparently never been visited by a video game designer and min-maxing them for comedy gold is a trivial enterprise.

 

[Nesos]

I already said that the A.I.'s that I can see, I have been using active strategies to dramatically limit their growth.

I am not cheating. Sorry to disappoint you, but this game has lots of systems and features that have apparently never been visited by a game designer such as myself and min-maxing them for comedy gold is a trivial enterprise.

As I said before, in my mind, what you are doing is cheating. You're exploiting a bug that, as you stated, would be quickly fixed if you said what it was. You can have a different opinion, but that doesn't change mine.

I accounted for your "active strategies" to limit their expansion in my last post. I don't think you read all of it.

 

[Edmon]

As I said before, in my mind, what you are doing is cheating. You're exploiting a bug that, as you stated, would be quickly fixed if you said what it was. You can have a different opinion, but that doesn't change mine.

I accounted for your "active strategies" to limit their expansion in my last post. I don't think you read all of it.

It's not a bug. Using systems exactly how they were designed is not a bug. Paradox changed 15 year truces from 5 year ones in EUIV because they wanted good players to be stuck waiting for longer, allowing bad ones to catch up. It just made the game more of a wait and less fun but didn't change that bad players still lost anyway. Players attacking every 5 years was not a bug either and the change was one of a change of pace than anything else.

I don't want to be the one to remove actual strategy from the game because it's "badwrongfun".

I can't change your opinion because you don't want it to change more than you want to be correct.

If I found an actual bug, I would report it.

 

[Parallel Pain]

Why is this a bad thing? Does a empire with twice as many labs, twice as much money and twice as many space things to study not progress faster than an empire without those things?

Actually no. It doesn't. And this is easily seen in everyday life. (Besides plenty of examples in history, I worked in the banking sector before, and of all the firms I've seen the most technologically backward one is HSBC, the firm with the most global reach).
Research is not just coming up with stuff in the lab. If one of your lab successfully come up with "Research Process X" which speed up the efficiency of your lab by 10% (assuming it's actually a cost-efficient process unlike tonnes of discoveries you hear about every month in the news), the next step is implementing it in all the labs and computers throughout the galaxy, teach every single one of your scientists and actually have them abandon the old way for the new. The more research labs you have, the slower this process will be. When Microsoft came out with Office 2013, a freelancer can get 100% of his computer updated in a few hours. A company of 500 however probably haven't even made the decision to upgrade from Office 2007 years after the program's out.

I'm not saying how a game should be balanced. Everyone's idea of fun is different, and I personally think whatever you did is ingenious.

I'm just pointing out that if we use Real Lifetm as our comparison point, then no, a larger empire with twice as many labs and twice as much money and twice as many space things to study should actually progress technologically slower than an empire with only a quarter of that count (though OPE is probably another thing).

 

[quicklyrainbow]

It's not a bug. Using systems exactly how they were designed is not a bug.

Completely agree. The only question is whether one has an obligation to clue designers in to unintended consequences of their mechanics.

 

[Edmon]

Actually no. It doesn't. And this is easily seen in everyday life. (Besides plenty of examples in history, I worked in the banking sector before, and of all the firms I've seen the most technologically backward one is HSBC, the firm with the most global reach).
Research is not just coming up with stuff in the lab. If one of your lab successfully come up with "Research Process X" which speed up the efficiency of your lab by 10% (assuming it's actually a cost-efficient process unlike tonnes of discoveries you hear about every month in the news), the next step is implementing it in all the labs and computers throughout the galaxy, teach every single one of your scientists and actually have them abandon the old way for the new. The more research labs you have, the slower this process will be. When Microsoft came out with Office 2013, a freelancer can get 100% of his computer updated in a few hours. A company of 500 however probably haven't even made the decision to upgrade from Office 2007 years after the program's out.

I'm not saying how a game should be balanced. Everyone's idea of fun is different, and I personally think whatever you did is ingenious.

I'm just pointing out that if we use Real Lifetm as our comparison point, then no, a larger empire with twice as many labs and twice as much money and twice as many space things to study should actually progress technologically slower than an empire with only a quarter of that count (though OPE is probably another thing).

While I certainly agree that the "twice as much stuff" empire will not research at 200%, I do think it will be somewhere between 100% and 200% and not slower than the 100% "half as much things" baseline.

 

[Nesos]

It's not a bug. Using systems exactly how they were designed is not a bug. Paradox changed 15 year truces from 5 year ones in EUIV because they wanted good players to be stuck waiting for longer, allowing bad ones to catch up. It just made the game more of a wait and less fun but didn't change that bad players still lost anyway. Players attacking every 5 years was not a bug either and the change was one of a change of pace than anything else.

I don't want to be the one to remove actual strategy from the game because it's "badwrongfun".

I can't change your opinion because you don't want it to change more than you want to be correct.

If I found an actual bug, I would report it.

If I cared that much about being correct, I wouldn't have called my opinion an opinion. I would have called it a fact.

Your "actual strategy" would, according to you, be patched out very quickly be Paradox. That's why I refer to it as a bug, because it's something Paradox would not have allowed to happen in their game if they knew about it. If I have my terminology wrong, I apologize. I'm not a video game designer.

 

[moridin84]

Why is it a problem? If someone is Snowballing out of control, the other empires should band together to give them a right kicking. This is the same problem EUIV has. The punishment for "winning" should be everyone realising you are a serious threat and kicking your teeth in.

Almost every critically acclaimed game has this "Snowball problem". It really isn't a problem, better players should get ahead, that's how it should be. Now controlling the pace of the snowball needs careful consideration. But punishing players for success just makes your game less fun.

Diminishing returns is a better system, because it does not punish success, but it does make it harder to get further and further ahead over time.

Let's say you have 5 empires. One with 100 planets, the other 4 with 25 planets each.

The 4 empires should be stronger right? Because they have 125 planets between them.

Except that the first empire is probably much further ahead in technology. The four smaller empires can pool their ships, but they will always have a research level of a 25 planet empire. Plus their energy/minerals will be lower as well because the bigger empire can concentrate less on research buildings.

-----
I don't get people's problem with research being limited by population. I follow an equation I saw on Reddit. For every 5 population, you need at least 3 research points.

30 population? 18 research points
100 population? 60 research points
600 population? 360 research points

The population/research modifierer simply makes sure that you build enough science buildings as you expand.

 

[Parallel Pain]

While I certainly agree that the "twice as much stuff" empire will not research at 200%, I do think it will be somewhere between 100% and 200% and not slower than the 100% "half as much things" baseline.

If this was real life, it's extremely likely this empire's research speed is less than 100% if we're comparing a say 10 world with a 20 world.

 

[Edmon]

If I cared that much about being correct, I wouldn't have called my opinion an opinion. I would have called it a fact.

Your "actual strategy" would, according to you, be patched out very quickly be Paradox. That's why I refer to it as a bug, because it's something Paradox would not have allowed to happen in their game if they knew about it. If I have my terminology wrong, I apologize. I'm not a video game designer.

Paradox has this habit of having a "ONE TRUE WAY" that their games should be played.

For example, they removed "faster" westernisation from American Natives in EUIV, even though there was nothing really wrong with it. Since it wasn't their idea of how Native Americans should be played. Needless to say, this made Native Americans basically tedious to play and everyone stopped playing them. They weren't even that powerful anyway, even with "faster" westernisation.

 

[quicklyrainbow]

Your "actual strategy" would, according to you, be patched out very quickly be Paradox. That's why I refer to it as a bug, because it's something Paradox would not have allowed to happen in their game if they knew about it.

Speaking harshly, then they should maybe have figured it out themselves. Design mechanics have consequences. I don't know what Edmon's trick is, and I don't much care. Whatever it is, it's a far more niche case than other cases of under-considered mechanics that've been present in Stellaris since release.

 

[Edmon]

If this was real life, it's extremely likely this empire's research speed is less than 100%.

No. By that argument, an organisation with nothing to research, no resources and no labs would be the fastest research organisation on earth and would have already solved physics.

 

[Edmon]

Let's say you have 5 empires. One with 100 planets, the other 4 with 25 planets each.

The 4 empires should be stronger right? Because they have 125 planets between them.

Except that the first empire is probably much further ahead in technology. The four smaller empires can pool their ships, but they will always have a research level of a 25 planet empire. Plus their energy/minerals will be lower as well because the bigger empire can concentrate less on research buildings.

-----
I don't get people's problem with research being limited by population. I follow an equation I saw on Reddit. For every 5 population, you need at least 3 research points.

30 population? 18 research points
100 population? 60 research points
600 population? 360 research points

The population/research modifierer simply makes sure that you build enough science buildings as you expand.

TO quote an old StarCraft II idiom:
"How do you stop 30 Battle Cruisers?"
"What were you doing during the rest of the game while they were building all that stuff?"

 

[Parallel Pain]

No. By that argument, an organisation with nothing to research, no resources and no labs would be the fastest research organisation on earth and would have already solved physics.

Appeals to extremes fallacy.

Again, research is not just discovery, it's also implementation. Implementation is the pain.

HSBC is so backwards technologically because it has so many branches to go through with every single change and so much bureaucracy to go through to make sure something works for the entire firm.

Going back to my example with Microsoft Office. A small firm of 15 people might be slow upgrading because they don't have enough money to pay for the new software. However a large firm of 5000 people will be slow upgrading because by company policy they must conduct a research project to first figure out what the new software means for the firm, how it would be implemented, what's the time and cost of doing so, then pass a meeting of the executives to do so, then have the IT team of 30 people go around installing on every single of 5000 computers and 300 laptops, and then 20% of the employees would not know how to properly navigate the new software efficiently for three months. A medium firm of 40 people with the money for the software (or the small firm if it has the money) could just each install it on their own computer after a small team meeting agreeing the new software is good.

Again I'm not saying this is how the game should be. I don't really care either way.
I'm just pointing out larger and larger organisations slowing down is a fact and challenge faced by large organisations in real life every single day, be it governments or corporations or NGOs.

 

[quicklyrainbow]

Again, research is not just discovery, it's also implementation. Implementation is the pain.

Is this not (intended to be) modeled in the upgrading phases? A small empire will be able to upgrade its fleet more quickly than a large one, and will have fewer power plants to upgrade to Power Plant III. I wonder if perhaps there's something to be said for making the penalties for techs individual to particular techs rather than a blanket one. So perhaps the +tech speed% techs scale badly with the number of labs in your empire. And while the next tier of mining buildings doesn't, you can also only upgrade so many of them at a time.

 

[Guardian54]

Congratulations - you did the equivalent of stealing candy from a AI baby. I guess candy stealing is OP now?

Anyone who says stealing candy from a baby is easy has obviously never in their life taken candy from a baby.

(Obviously excluding looting during a genocide/race riot/other similar event, where you can kill the baby afterward)

 

[Parallel Pain]

Is this not (intended to be) modeled in the upgrading phases? A small empire will be able to upgrade its fleet more quickly than a large one, and will have fewer power plants to upgrade to Power Plant III. I wonder if perhaps there's something to be said for making the penalties for techs individual to particular techs rather than a blanket one. So perhaps the +tech speed% techs scale badly with the number of labs in your empire. And while the next tier of mining buildings doesn't, you can also only upgrade so many of them at a time.

For upgradable fleet components, partially. And I could definitely say that increasing research less as the empire got wider for ship components would be more realistic since we got the upgrade phase (though there should still be an increase, because factories and docks need to be retools, workers retrained, etc).

But, for example the research for AI research assistant. Or all those 10% damage/armor/shields. In game the moment it's researched you get an empire wide bonus. But in real life it's going to be a huge pain in the ass to implement these improvements.

 

[quicklyrainbow]

For upgradable fleet components, partially. And I could definitely say that increasing research less as the empire got wider for ship components would be more realistic since we got the upgrade phase (though there should still be an increase, because factories and docks need to be retools, workers retrained, etc).

But, for example the research for AI research assistant. Or all those 10% damage/armor/shields. In game the moment it's researched you get an empire wide bonus. But in real life it's going to be a huge pain in the ass to implement these improvements.

Well yeah. I think that goes to my random thought of changing the tech speed penalties to be more focused on the tech and what it does. So the AI research assistant might take longer depending on the number of labs you have, and the 10% d/a/s ones based on the dps, armor or shield totals of your fleet. Further off the top of my head tech could be split into a discovery phase and an implementation phase, with multiple things being allowed in one phase but not the other. So perhaps one could work at discovering better lasers, better computers and better power plants all at once, but could only implement one of those things into the empire at once.

There are a lot of different things that could happen, I think, and I'm pretty sure that before the end of Stellaris's lifespan the tech system, like most other systems, will look quite different.

 

[Lt Loco]

As "OP" as you think your strategy is, at 2260 I have a 10k fleet and 96 pops across 16 worlds. In another 40 years to match your time, I expect to have 4 times that fleet and system count with my planets filling in over the years. I don't care that your tech is that far ahead. I'll just overwhelm you and enjoy your research efforts. Try your strategy on Insane with a full galaxy. I already can outproduce you. Only 94 minerals and your energy credits are negative. What do you do when your only spaceport is destroyed?

 

[Edmon]

Appeals to extremes fallacy.

No, not really.

That is literally your argument. That less resources increases effectiveness while more resources decrease it. If you'd have said large organisations can be less efficient than smaller ones, I might have agreed with you.