Paradox Studio Thread

[Slap47]

Paradox is an enigma.

 

[Cisna H. Scumale]

View attachment 2209762

Paradox is an enigma.

This would be more based if it was 50 crime and +15% pop growth

 

[Jarolleon]

This would be more based if it was 50 crime and +15% pop growth

The modifier grows through the event chain, but eventually you find out it's because of some shrooms that can be harvested for exotic gases.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

You can't help but wonder if there's two competing internal visions at Paradox. One woke, the other reasonable.

The modifier grows through the event chain, but eventually you find out it's because of some shrooms that can be harvested for exotic gases.

So it's because of drug abuse. Still accurate.

Have they managed to de-stupid the Stellaris AI yet?

 

[vulg]

You can't help but wonder if there's two competing internal visions at Paradox. One woke, the other reasonable.

No, I think the internal battle in Paradox is whether strategy should be instant gratification or longterm reward.

EU4's vision has been steadily growing towards a mobile game: click button - get reward, conquer province - more map paint. Imperator was created with this same vision, Stellaris wasn't.

Things like ideology and accessibility seem like non-negotiable things that come from the top down, Vicky3 will be ideologically in line and very accessible. The real battle is in the game's design philosophy.

 

[Jarolleon]

You can't help but wonder if there's two competing internal visions at Paradox. One woke, the other reasonable.

So it's because of drug abuse. Still accurate.

Have they managed to de-stupid the Stellaris AI yet?

Nope, because anyone who wants smart AI just downloads the Starnet mod. Though I did see a Pdox poster on the forum say they were unsatisfied with how awful the AI was at technology in this patch. I've seen the AI still using coilguns in 2300 on Captain, and this is with the empire wide growth slowdown turned off.

 

[Slap47]

The modifier grows through the event chain, but eventually you find out it's because of some shrooms that can be harvested for exotic gases.

Its a pretty nice event. You can create a Mexico planet with insanely high population growth and high emigration.

 

[>tfw no Asian gf]

I don't know about you guys, but I hope the next Stellaris update brings a massive overhaul to the government, sector and leader mechanics because right now they are godawful, governments outside of hive-minds and megacorps are essentially the same, I want more depth, like democracies having things like senates or hereditary monarchies having a legitemacy system.

Leaders should have something like a loyalty mechanic that affects how they behave, for example and admiral with low loyalty might disobey your orders and start doing whatever he wants, like attacking random enemy fleets or go alone into enemy systems, if that leader is a faction leader and has low loyalty he might try a coup or start a rebellion for power; another idea I have is adding a new spying mechanic that allows you to kidnap foreign leaders, if you kidnap an admiral or a general they might show you their total fleet power and current military tech. if you kidnap a scientist they'd tell you what their nation is investigating right now and if you kidnap a sector administrator they'd tell you about their economic state and about the current issues they have, this brings me to my next point, sectors.

Sectors as they currently stand are completly useless, my general idea is this: the further away you get from your home system the more expensive it becomes to mantain and build new things like mining stations or outposts, however that can be negated if you establish a sector, the sector is going to get a third of all the materials in their region, they'd use the materials to build their own things like buildings, and more importantly, fleets, those fleets will act as independent of you so they won't occupy space in the naval capacity and you won't have to mantain them, in times of war they'd be under your control and go back to the sector when the war ends. But that'd be the just at the beggining of the game, as time moves on, sectors would start acting with more autonomy, for instance, they might ask you to let them elect their own leaders, if you say yes they go and have an election making and if you say no they'll lose happiness and might even do a strike, they might choose a different economic policy or maybe act differently towards primitives and things like that, here you could force them to adopt your politics wich would cause them to grow unhappy and make the sector become more disloyal, a disloyal sector will start to send in less resources to their father empire and during war it might outright refuse to give it's fleets to you, if too many sectors become unhappy and disloyal they'd band together and send you an ultimatum about sector rights, telling you to let them do what they want, if you refuse to comply they declare war and if they win they would either choose to become fully independent or choose to remain in your nation but with far more autonomy; however that wouldn't be the only way sectors can cause a civil war, if a sector becomes too succesful, let's say, producing thousands of goods and have a decent fleet they might ask you for independence, if you say yes they become their own nation BUT will have excelent relations and be have a mutual-defense treaty signed with you, if you say no they declare war, if they win they'll have hostile relations with you but if they lose then the pops of the sector would have all sorts of debufs and the defeated sector will become disloyal. All those things would make sectors useful and necessary but also potentially dangerous in the longrun, meaning that you would need to know how to handle not only external enemies but also the growing internal ones, wich would make in my opinion for a more dynamic game, specially in the mid and late game.

Those are my ideas, I'd like to hear your opinions on them, weather they're autistic or dumb, or if you like them.

 

[Emperor Julian]

Its a pretty nice event. You can create a Mexico planet with insanely high population growth and high emigration.

I used the planet as a hotbox for rapid growth on other worlds to counter my slow breeder trait. combined with genetic modification ascention and dumb luck on events and ai ascentions I bred the ubermench.

 

[Cisna H. Scumale]

Leaders should have something like a loyalty mechanic that affects how they behave, for example and admiral with low loyalty might disobey your orders and start doing whatever he wants, like attacking random enemy fleets or go alone into enemy systems, if that leader is a faction leader and has low loyalty he might try a coup or start a rebellion for power; another idea I have is adding a new spying mechanic that allows you to kidnap foreign leaders, if you kidnap an admiral or a general they might show you their total fleet power and current military tech. if you kidnap a scientist they'd tell you what their nation is investigating right now and if you kidnap a sector administrator they'd tell you about their economic state and about the current issues they have, this brings me to my next point, sectors.

I think leaders are fine where they are. If there is going to be a rebellion mechanic, I'd rather it be tied to pop ethics and factions. My latest game can run a fanatical xenophobe population and yet only influence growth is the cost to doing xeno alliance mechanics in mid-game, end game. Seems pretty dumb to me.

 

[Kane Lives]

I don't know about you guys, but I hope the next Stellaris update brings a massive overhaul to the government, sector and leader mechanics because right now they are godawful, governments outside of hive-minds and megacorps are essentially the same, I want more depth, like democracies having things like senates or hereditary monarchies having a legitemacy system.

Leaders should have something like a loyalty mechanic that affects how they behave, for example and admiral with low loyalty might disobey your orders and start doing whatever he wants, like attacking random enemy fleets or go alone into enemy systems, if that leader is a faction leader and has low loyalty he might try a coup or start a rebellion for power; another idea I have is adding a new spying mechanic that allows you to kidnap foreign leaders, if you kidnap an admiral or a general they might show you their total fleet power and current military tech. if you kidnap a scientist they'd tell you what their nation is investigating right now and if you kidnap a sector administrator they'd tell you about their economic state and about the current issues they have, this brings me to my next point, sectors.

Sectors as they currently stand are completly useless, my general idea is this: the further away you get from your home system the more expensive it becomes to mantain and build new things like mining stations or outposts, however that can be negated if you establish a sector, the sector is going to get a third of all the materials in their region, they'd use the materials to build their own things like buildings, and more importantly, fleets, those fleets will act as independent of you so they won't occupy space in the naval capacity and you won't have to mantain them, in times of war they'd be under your control and go back to the sector when the war ends. But that'd be the just at the beggining of the game, as time moves on, sectors would start acting with more autonomy, for instance, they might ask you to let them elect their own leaders, if you say yes they go and have an election making and if you say no they'll lose happiness and might even do a strike, they might choose a different economic policy or maybe act differently towards primitives and things like that, here you could force them to adopt your politics wich would cause them to grow unhappy and make the sector become more disloyal, a disloyal sector will start to send in less resources to their father empire and during war it might outright refuse to give it's fleets to you, if too many sectors become unhappy and disloyal they'd band together and send you an ultimatum about sector rights, telling you to let them do what they want, if you refuse to comply they declare war and if they win they would either choose to become fully independent or choose to remain in your nation but with far more autonomy; however that wouldn't be the only way sectors can cause a civil war, if a sector becomes too succesful, let's say, producing thousands of goods and have a decent fleet they might ask you for independence, if you say yes they become their own nation BUT will have excelent relations and be have a mutual-defense treaty signed with you, if you say no they declare war, if they win they'll have hostile relations with you but if they lose then the pops of the sector would have all sorts of debufs and the defeated sector will become disloyal. All those things would make sectors useful and necessary but also potentially dangerous in the longrun, meaning that you would need to know how to handle not only external enemies but also the growing internal ones, wich would make in my opinion for a more dynamic game, specially in the mid and late game.

Those are my ideas, I'd like to hear your opinions on them, weather they're autistic or dumb, or if you like them.

There's one problem with this:

Paradox do not play, or understand their own games. Ergo, you probably put more thought into the mechanics than the entire dev team ever did after 2.0.

 

[>tfw no Asian gf]

I think leaders are fine where they are. If there is going to be a rebellion mechanic, I'd rather it be tied to pop ethics and factions. My latest game can run a fanatical xenophobe population and yet only influence growth is the cost to doing xeno alliance mechanics in mid-game, end game. Seems pretty dumb to me.

Well I think leaders should be more important to the internal stability of the Empire, it's kinda dumb that your leaders can also act as faction leaders but that never affects how they behave, I think ideally pops, factions and leaders would all be somewhat tied to one another through a general rebellion/loyalty mechanic.

There's one problem with this:

Paradox do not play, or understand their own games. Ergo, you probably put more thought into the mechanics than the entire dev team ever did after 2.0.

Probably, although the Stellaris team seems to be the 'better late than never' type of team, a lot of people wanted an overhaul to the diplomacy system since the game launched and we eventually got that in Federations and Nemesis so I have hope, although re-reading what I've written I realise that the current AI would be incapable of properly managing all of those mechanics so it would probably be better first make an uptade solely focused on the AI.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I don't know about you guys, but I hope the next Stellaris update brings a massive overhaul to the government, sector and leader mechanics because right now they are godawful, governments outside of hive-minds and megacorps are essentially the same, I want more depth, like democracies having things like senates or hereditary monarchies having a legitemacy system.

Leaders should have something like a loyalty mechanic that affects how they behave, for example and admiral with low loyalty might disobey your orders and start doing whatever he wants, like attacking random enemy fleets or go alone into enemy systems, if that leader is a faction leader and has low loyalty he might try a coup or start a rebellion for power; another idea I have is adding a new spying mechanic that allows you to kidnap foreign leaders, if you kidnap an admiral or a general they might show you their total fleet power and current military tech. if you kidnap a scientist they'd tell you what their nation is investigating right now and if you kidnap a sector administrator they'd tell you about their economic state and about the current issues they have, this brings me to my next point, sectors.

Sectors as they currently stand are completly useless, my general idea is this: the further away you get from your home system the more expensive it becomes to mantain and build new things like mining stations or outposts, however that can be negated if you establish a sector, the sector is going to get a third of all the materials in their region, they'd use the materials to build their own things like buildings, and more importantly, fleets, those fleets will act as independent of you so they won't occupy space in the naval capacity and you won't have to mantain them, in times of war they'd be under your control and go back to the sector when the war ends. But that'd be the just at the beggining of the game, as time moves on, sectors would start acting with more autonomy, for instance, they might ask you to let them elect their own leaders, if you say yes they go and have an election making and if you say no they'll lose happiness and might even do a strike, they might choose a different economic policy or maybe act differently towards primitives and things like that, here you could force them to adopt your politics wich would cause them to grow unhappy and make the sector become more disloyal, a disloyal sector will start to send in less resources to their father empire and during war it might outright refuse to give it's fleets to you, if too many sectors become unhappy and disloyal they'd band together and send you an ultimatum about sector rights, telling you to let them do what they want, if you refuse to comply they declare war and if they win they would either choose to become fully independent or choose to remain in your nation but with far more autonomy; however that wouldn't be the only way sectors can cause a civil war, if a sector becomes too succesful, let's say, producing thousands of goods and have a decent fleet they might ask you for independence, if you say yes they become their own nation BUT will have excelent relations and be have a mutual-defense treaty signed with you, if you say no they declare war, if they win they'll have hostile relations with you but if they lose then the pops of the sector would have all sorts of debufs and the defeated sector will become disloyal. All those things would make sectors useful and necessary but also potentially dangerous in the longrun, meaning that you would need to know how to handle not only external enemies but also the growing internal ones, wich would make in my opinion for a more dynamic game, specially in the mid and late game.

Those are my ideas, I'd like to hear your opinions on them, weather they're autistic or dumb, or if you like them.

Paradox put no effort into the game at all. Imperator Rome functions a lot more like what Stellaris should have.

They should have made it possible to change Ethos from the start, but instead they waited forever to do that. Sectors ought to be like vassals which are directly controllable have sectoral governments, the type of which can be chosen (like imperial appointed viceroys, federal states, etc.). If a sector is old enough and/or has a strong enough political identity (ie, shared faction/ideology predominates on most of its worlds) and/or a strong enough ethnic identity (common species), then the sector should be able to spawn in the equivalent of cores in other Paradox games, representing a nascent nationalism. Alternatively, we could imagine that pops might have a "Nationalism" identifier that represents the state that they want to align with (which by default is the one of their parent pop that spawned them), and sectoral nationalism can introduce new ones, so you have issues both with assimilating conquered/immigrant Pops and with your own species fracturing into regional identities as the colonies become more established. Sector size management should be a factor where sectors can overextend like their parent states, but you also have limited ability to manage multiple sectors (like vassal limits), and fractured sectors are more demanding in that sense but also less politically threatening. Whatever sector the capital is in should always be regarded as the cosmopolitan/"state" sector, like a primary culture/crown land.

When a sectoral government is angry enough and has enough of a power base behind it it should be able to launch a civil war to seize the government or (if it has cores) for independence. If one rebellion breaks out, it should make other sectors more confident to rebel, even if they weren't that eager to; conversely, loyal sectors should bolster support for the government, and neutrals potentially negotiate for concessions to both sides. When sectors rebel, they should be able to recall their supporters, resulting in them spawning in armies and having subsidized ship construction, along with shitty ships spawned. (Might even have something like sectoral militias that act like a cheap reserve, but pose a threat in times of unrest) while penalizing the loyalist regime's forces temporarily (representing understaffed armies and ships before defectors can replace them). Fortifications and ships stationed in sectoral harbors can flip or not, representing struggles to violently or nonviolently seize installations in preparation for war. Officers can defect and military defections and the presence of things like War Academies (or whatever Stellaris calls them, I think there's some building like that) should have disproportionate effects.

This is really separate from the political aspect, but I think Stellaris' army system is the laziest, shittiest thing I've ever seen. The Paradox fanbase didn't care because they said sci-fi isn't about armies, which is ridiculous, most science fiction focuses on land combat (iconic things like the Droids and Clones and Jedi in Star Wars, or Starship Troopers, or other such). I don't know how you'd change it when there's no maneuver, other than maybe through representing some kind of maneuver on the surface or combat events where you make strategic decisions. Conquering a planet ought to feel like an achievement. Fleets ought to have a representation of manpower. Although classic space operas don't represent this - space travel is really casual in them - any warship is basically going to be staffed by a ton of the best engineers and scientists available. I would imagine even people like the lowliest astronauts on warships would be the equivalent of both military officers and graduate students. In real-life space opera I'd think that the real cost of space warfare wouldn't be raw materials, which are trivial, but extremely expensive (in monetary terms) machining of the ships and the servicemen who would take much longer to replace. Navies would be terrified of losing ships less because they'd lose ships and more because they'd lose a generation of experts. Sailors in the Age of Sail were actually like a less extreme version of this - a highly-skilled workforce that served as a practical constraint on navies - and Paradox tried to represent that in EU4, but they fucked it up by making it a trivial mechanic and having galleys take up more sailors than sailing ships, which is accurate in the sense that galleys had more hands, but inaccurate in the sense that galley sailors were low-skilled mongs who could be easily replaced, Mediterranean sailing fleets were massive in part for that reason whereas Atlantic fleets were tiny.




Oh, it also could have used some attempt at a trade system and markets. For example, the Investment Pool in Victoria III is brilliant. Instead of having market economies be "command economy but extra Energy," have it be that you have different pools with different restrictions. If you go Collectivist, you have lower efficiency (unless you're something like a Hive Mind) but you get to expropriate more of your investments, so you have lower growth potential but can pour more of it into non-consumerist goals. If you go Individualist, you get high efficiency but less choice. Those should have been split up anyways, what it tries to convey with Individualist vs Collectivist is a combination of Authoritarian vs Democratic, Totalitarian vs Liberal, and a sort of cosmopolitanism vs traditionalism that's kind of represented by Materialism vs Spiritualism and Xenophilia vs Xenophobia. Energy credits are a sci-fi staple but a retarded one: the ideal means of exchange is something that can actually be stored up and is not consumed. It should have just had the alternative cliche of generic credits, something like a world of cryptocurrencies. Energy should be something which is more like an infrastructure limit on a world, like how many nuclear plants, hydro-dams, solar farms, etc. you've got running, with the possibility of exceeding local limits by doing things like important uranium (so you can exceed local mining rates). For planets to export and import would require a Merchant Marine, which demands Space Elevator/Harbor/Shipyard infrastructure to service, maintain it, and expand on it. Heavy Merchant Marine presence and low military presence would dynamically incentivize piracy. I think it'd be great if Minerals were split into common and rare ones, Electronics added as an advanced resource (used in other advanced resources) made from the rare minerals, Spaceship Parts added on top of that, and Pops working in "Astronaut" and "Space Force" jobs that contribute to a slowly-replenishing pool of astronauts (be fun if you could have Space War of 1812 over space-impressment) to crew the ships.

I think it would have been cool if Mining Stations were little one-Pop colonies that are captured in warfare.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Although classic space operas don't represent this - space travel is really casual in them - any warship is basically going to be staffed by a ton of the best engineers and scientists available. I would imagine even people like the lowliest astronauts on warships would be the equivalent of both military officers and graduate students. In real-life space opera I'd think that the real cost of space warfare wouldn't be raw materials, which are trivial, but extremely expensive (in monetary terms) machining of the ships and the servicemen who would take much longer to replace. Navies would be terrified of losing ships less because they'd lose ships and more because they'd lose a generation of experts. Sailors in the Age of Sail were actually like a less extreme version of this - a highly-skilled workforce that served as a practical constraint on navies - and Paradox tried to represent that in EU4, but they fucked it up by making it a trivial mechanic and having galleys take up more sailors than sailing ships, which is accurate in the sense that galleys had more hands, but inaccurate in the sense that galley sailors were low-skilled mongs who could be easily replaced, Mediterranean sailing fleets were massive in part for that reason whereas Atlantic fleets were tiny.

I doubt there would be much you couldn't teach in a couple months at the Redshirt Training Course at Starfleet Academy or whatever. It's not any different than how aircraft (especially military aircraft) are insanely complex and technical machines as are the computers used to manage things but the Chair Force still manages to find and train aircraft mechanics and computer technicians. Not everyone has to pass Hyperdrive School or whatever equivalent to the shit nuclear power technicians in the Navy go through. And realistically your humans are mostly there to ensure the machines are keeping things repaired and in order. If you had a truly complex task, your crewman isn't putting on a spacesuit and going out there himself, he's stepping into a spacesuit-like control device to manipulate a remote-control robot to do the task instead.

Stellaris is by intention (at least originally) meant to be a giant mashing of science fiction tropes together, so it makes sense the Redshirt Training Course can teach everything (as it probably would in the real world if we ever had space warships).

 

[Slap47]

Stellaris gets pretty slow in the late game so a lot of these suggestions are a bit much.

 

[RA-5C Vigilante]

So no one seemed to be talking about Victoria 3, they just released a July Update video and uh


Here we go boys. All joking aside, if the constant DLC price gouging, CK3's issues, the entirety of Imperator, the terrible community, and dev reactions to any criticism don't make you head for the hills, you deserve to lose all the money on this probable shitpile.

 

[wopirish]

Its probably going to suck a big fat one. And will most likely get the imperator treatment if I had to place a bet

 

[highlighter_shitposting]

Anyone else feels like stellaris is unplayable without mods? The main ethics axis restrict empires way too much for my taste, there is lack of things to do mid and end game, not enough control over settings, way too limited dlags and portraits, nowhere enough shipsets, etc.

 

[Cisna H. Scumale]

Anyone else feels like stellaris is unplayable without mods? The main ethics axis restrict empires way too much for my taste, there is lack of things to do mid and end game, not enough control over settings, way too limited dlags and portraits, nowhere enough shipsets, etc.

eh, it's more mediocre without mods and good with mods like Starnet. They were supposed to address the mid and late game slump with the latest DLC expansion but it isn't enough and mostly just added more shit you'll likely won't do in a game.

 

[Slap47]

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