[Stellaris] Actual Universalis

I'm ready go tonight. There's a party, alright. We don't need the raisin for joy, oh yeah. Tick down to midnight.
User avatar
Delthazar
Why, helllooo!
Posts: 12001

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by Delthazar » Sun Sep 23, 2018 5:32 pm

There are so many music mods in the Workshop. Just about any science fiction media released in the last thirty years with a soundtrack is probably in there. I think I'll gradually add them to the proceedings - the game OST mods, anyway, the TV/film soundtracks are maybe more likely to get muted.

like if you want the soundtracks from all things Macross or Space Battleship Yamato or Legend of Galactic Heroes it's all there.

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Sun Sep 23, 2018 5:37 pm

Just use the 10 hour loop of the Federation anthem on YouTube, my dude.

User avatar
Delthazar
Why, helllooo!
Posts: 12001

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by Delthazar » Sun Sep 23, 2018 5:41 pm

Alternatively I could disable every music mod except this one

Image

#LongRoad #OnBrand

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Sun Sep 23, 2018 5:59 pm

Vulcan did indeed become Feddie #5, stabilising our economy by upping our fleet cap. As it stands, it looks like one-system wonders Betazed will be #6.

From what I've uncovered the Antedians are dominating the Alpha Quadrant, with the Tholians close behind and then Cardassia. (If you consider the Federation to be too split between Alpha and Beta to dominate either easily) While in the Beta Quadrant, the Klingons have a military edge over the Suliban, but territory-wise it's close.

User avatar
Delthazar
Why, helllooo!
Posts: 12001

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by Delthazar » Mon Sep 24, 2018 5:19 am

Running a test game for mods and such as the Andorians. Definitely looks like they have their own events and stuff, so that's really cool.

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Mon Sep 24, 2018 5:33 am

That's cool and one of the hardest parts of doing such a mod, I imagine. Even if you focus on the major races, that's a hell of a lot of event chains to write (and all while knowing most people will probably pick Federation).

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Mon Sep 24, 2018 2:22 pm

It's 2220. No one has declared war anywhere that I can see. YAWN.

One of my captains disappeared in a ship explosion and came back like 25 years later deformed and leading a demon horde of evil spaceships so I blew her up. :'(

The BBB; Betazed, Benzar and Bolarus have joined the Federation.

Got some Gamma and Delta contacts, which I don't like. The baton-passing method of first contact in this game always leads to irrelevant distant empires popping up in your diplomacy. There needs to be a distance-based gate on that.

EDIT: 2228, the year the Klingons declared war on the Suliban. Finally!

EDIT2: Weird glitch(?) where every empire just suddenly made first contact. That's a real bummer.

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Wed Sep 26, 2018 3:41 am

Where were you when the Klingons ambushed the Suliban colony on Khitomer. By 2234, the Suliban are no more. Scary. But now there's a big gap in borders for me to expand in the Beta Quadrant so, you know.

Of course, now the Klingons have declared me their rivals, so gulp.

The "glitch" where I came into contact with literally everyone turned out to be joining the Deltans in coalition. The Deltans apparently know everyone. So I reloaded and declined their offer.

User avatar
Delthazar
Why, helllooo!
Posts: 12001

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by Delthazar » Wed Sep 26, 2018 1:40 pm

2234 lines up well with my headcanon for when the Suliban would likely drive themselves into extinction.

In my Andorian test game, I was almost in the 23rd century and the Federation hadn't formed yet, although there were two coalitions who could possibly do it. I had my borders expanded right out east to the Romulans and they were starting to make claims almost immediately after first contact.

I wonder if it's possible that even when you're playing a founding race sometimes the events to form the Federation just don't happen, and whether or not that rebalances the other major powers, which I figure would be designed to counter the combined Federation might and therefore might steamroll the individual founders if they remain independent.

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Wed Sep 26, 2018 2:00 pm

Apparently these are the requirements:

How to create United Federation of Planets
1) You must choose one of United Earth, Vulcan, Andorian or Tellarite as your starting race.
2) You must NOT be currently in the middle of a "crisis" (e.g. Xindi).
3) You must be in a Coalition with three other Coalition members.
4) At least two of these Coalition members need to be from the original four founding races (Human, Vulcan, Andorian or Tellarite).
5) At least 15 years must have passed

User avatar
Delthazar
Why, helllooo!
Posts: 12001

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by Delthazar » Wed Sep 26, 2018 2:03 pm

Wow, that's pretty cool. A Federation-less run should totally be possible then, or at least an AI-formed Federation with no player involvement.

Have you been keeping up with the 2.2 dev diaries? I can't wait to see how the total planetary rework and new trade systems will affect huge mods like New Horizons.

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Wed Sep 26, 2018 2:21 pm

I haven't. Got any cliff notes?

I'm still finding hyperlanes to be a real pain. Warp 9.1 engines, a year to go through three systems. Lovely.

User avatar
Delthazar
Why, helllooo!
Posts: 12001

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by Delthazar » Wed Sep 26, 2018 2:31 pm

Basically, planet tiles are going away entirely, which is a complicated enough rework affecting a wide enough range of mechanics that I dunno how to TL;DR it effectively. Follow Wiz on Twitter and check out some of his screenshots, that might tell the tale all on its own.

I think the trade stuff will work a little like Europa Universalis IV, so there'll be visible trade routes along your hyperlane network, with the big difference being you'll have more control over where those routes are, rather than each one being set in stone by real world history or whatever. I think there'll also be empire-level and/or galaxy-level resource exchanges.

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Wed Sep 26, 2018 4:11 pm

That'll be interesting for sure. The trade route stuff is especially intriguing.

One more hyperlane whine: When I get a distress call, it is easier for me to build a brand new ship and give it an officer and set it away than it is to recall any ship already out there. That's ridic, yo.

Some interesting stuff popping off in my game. Curious to see if some of it happens for your Fed.

Bajor and the Suliban survivor rebels have joined my Feddie. The Klingons are eating the Husnock's lunch. The Breen are making a play for Frenginar, which is a shame.

User avatar
Delthazar
Why, helllooo!
Posts: 12001

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by Delthazar » Thu Sep 27, 2018 1:17 am

thoughts aboot sluggish hyperlane travel

at least in vanilla, sublight engines will also make a difference since you don't just have to travel down each lane, but also across each system to reach the entrance of each lane. this also means larger ships will likely take more time than smaller ones, so furthermore, fleets that include multiple ship classes could possibly only be travelling as fast as its slowest class, but I haven't tested this.

so for military purposes, it's probably a good idea to keep at least one "rapid response" fleet of all corvettes, or maybe a mix of corvettes and destroyers, in the event you really need to deal with something fast.

I don't really know how this affects civilian ships, yer science ships and yer construction ships and whathaveyou, nor do I really know how New Horizons changes anything, if it changes anything at all. you can still fiddle with civilian ship designs in New Horizons, which I don't think you can't do in vanilla Stellaris as of 2.0, so maybe you can squeeze out a little more power there somewhere.

there's undoubtedly mods for this by now, but those wouldn't necessarily work with New Horizons.

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Thu Sep 27, 2018 4:02 am

That is a good point, about a fleet only moving as fast as its slowest ship. I'll have to dig into the designer and see what I can do.

Another NH thing: It does have hyperlanes. If you use a mod to show them, you can see that most every system has at least 5 lanes in and out, I guess to simulate warp range of movement. I think maybe they should give up the ghost on that if there's no way to patch warp back in and sculpt out a neat strategic map with routes and key junctions and such, although I realise the time and effort and testing that would take.

User avatar
Delthazar
Why, helllooo!
Posts: 12001

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by Delthazar » Thu Sep 27, 2018 4:28 pm

Yeah, I'd like to see New Horizons go all-in on normal visible hyperlanes, too. If that means deciding on a not-exactly-canonical lane structure, ehh, so be it.

A lot of the fun of hyperlanes as of vanilla 2.0 is figuring out your chokepoints and building your defenses accordingly, which gets a bit less fun if you can't see those lanes and also every system has at least five of 'em coming in. Like, in a normal game I'd only build massive Bastion stations in border chokepoint systems, dedicated shipyard stations a couple systems away from those chokepoints, and big anchorages deep in my territory, etc. New Horizons kinda throws that out.

e: I dunno if you need the Utopia DLC for this, but at some point in vanilla Stellaris you'll be able to build jump gates, if you're following the megastructure route on the traditional tree/ascendance perk stuff. Those gates have no travel time and you can build 'em all over the place as long as you've got the resources.

There's also more jump drive variants as of 2.0 (or earlier?) and they don't all trigger crisis events! Just... they can be ominous in other ways...

User avatar
Delthazar
Why, helllooo!
Posts: 12001

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by Delthazar » Fri Sep 28, 2018 2:50 pm

So has Stellaris totally destroyed your sleep pattern or what

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Fri Sep 28, 2018 2:51 pm

NO SHUT UP

yes

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Fri Sep 28, 2018 9:10 pm

Oh, Suliban have the Repugnant trait, so Prime Minister Sarra's election alone was enough for half a dozen neighbours to close borders.

User avatar
Delthazar
Why, helllooo!
Posts: 12001

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by Delthazar » Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:11 pm

Heh, yikes, I didn't know Repugnant was that big of a minus. Unless you were right on the edge of that happening anyway.

SLEEP. SLEEP, DATA. SLEEP.

User avatar
Delthazar
Why, helllooo!
Posts: 12001

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by Delthazar » Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:16 pm

Oh yeah, not New Horizons, but the folks at Templin Institute have a Stellaris stream campaign going.

https://www.twitch.tv/templininstitute

In their case, after every fifty years or so of game time, they stop to recap their campaign history in one of their signature YouTube historical lore pieces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2IkPaQsEIo

It's a neat approach to a Twitch/YouTube crossplatform production thingy.

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:34 pm

That's pretty rad, I wish I had the chops (and patience) to put together stuff like that.

I'm kind of tooling around with the idea of adding more empires to New Horizons myself, but I wonder if it's worth the effort. I just feel like there need to be a few more minor powers most everywhere to prevent some weird NPC steamrolling issues.

I'd also like a thin line of stars between the spiral arms. Those gaps aren't empty in reality, ya know and they already have hyperlanes traversing them, so just fill it in a tiny bit.

User avatar
Delthazar
Why, helllooo!
Posts: 12001

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by Delthazar » Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:42 pm

That's a good point (!goodpoint) about adding new empires. There's a lot of little submods doing that for the big total conversion projects in other Paradox games, specifically the Fallout mod Old World Blues for Hearts of Iron IV (something else I might stream, if I can ever totally wrap my head around HoI's eccentricities) but I don't think I've seen anything like that for New Horizons yet.

Maybe with 60+ empires already in the base New Horizons they're already pushing the limits of what the map and the average player's CPU and the lore can properly support. But if someone wanted to mod New Horizons to turn the Nausicaans or Orions into full pirate empires a la the Great Khanate mechanics added by... whatever Stellaris DLC added that... there'd be a fun twist of the existing content.

User avatar
John Layfield
Make sure John Layfield looks strong!
Posts: 2568

Re: [Stellaris] Actual Universalis

Post by John Layfield » Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:54 pm

There's certainly a critical mass of "Stuff Happening" (programming term) where Stellaris chugs on my rink-a-dink laptop (I'm getting a lot of hitching by 2400) but in theory that point is the same, or at least very close, with 100 small empires or 2 huge ones.

I think. I hope. I just want the Tak Tak in there, man. I don't think they actually have the Caitians either. Or those surrender specialist aliens from that one TNG episode. Or or or