Stellaris 229x, Part I
Jul. 11th, 2018 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackPirates
My first priority, alongside building up my resource income again, was to get rid of the pirates who'd had a bit too much of a free hand while I'd been pursuing Fungus War II.
At first this was ok -- there was a fairly weak fleet I took care of immediately with my existing strength.
Then I spent some time building up a stronger fleet to be able to take on the stronger pirate fleets head on (which sort of a minimum to be a serious force against my neighbours).
And then a lot of panic happened. Another fleet, either the original one I'd just defeated repaired, or another one spawned from the same base, appeared heading for my homeworld.
I rushed my fleet over there, but spaceflight doesn't really do "rush". And built some more ships near there too. And I wasn't in time to stop them fly past, but they aimed for one of my systems down a dead end.
Fortunately I'd only rebuilt a small part of the mining stations there. The pirates fortunately don't seem to try to attack my planets, and if they attack my starbases they self-repair, but they totally destroy all the mining/research stations they fly past.
However, I *was* able to assemble a decent fleet on my home starbase and ambush them as they flew home. It was a bit touch and go -- my fleet was disabled when they still had a couple of ships left, but they then flew into one of my reinforcements and minor starbases on the way out. Problem solved, kapow.
Unfortunately, during the same time, I detached a couple of laggardly ships to deal with the *other* pirate base. One that sadly spawned right next to a primitive world I was trying to establish an orbital watch on[1] and destroyed that a few times in the inter-war period.
[1] Apparently talking to them is MORE unethical than secretly spying on them, who knew?
The bases are fairly ramshackle, so that was ok, but as soon as it was destroyed, another base spawned from the ashes! Along with another, larger fleet that totally stomped my few ships and started flying for the frontier end of my empire near the front of the fungus war.
Then as soon as the first battle was complete, I needed to heal all my ships, build reinforcements, and fly them all *back* again to try to head off the pirates.
I ended up with two major fleets and a variety of stragglers absorbed into one or the other. One was there in time but not strong enough to take on the pirates by themselves. But they blocked their approach at a starbase and fought valiantly, and incredibly fortunately, the other fleet arrived just in the nick of time before the battle was over and handily wiped out the remnants.
And then I *was* able to divert the healthy part of the fleet to mop up the pirate bases. I sent enough that if another fleet spawned I wouldn't just lose. Which leaves me with little defences, but just *having* the ships puts off the AI empires from attacking quite a bit.
That took quite a while because it meant flying the long way round twice, but while I was doing other stuff, they did get there eventually.
Territory
I'd made some bold territorial grabs to claim systems up against other empires to keep the systems between for my future expansion, and to claim any particularly interesting systems near my borders.
That left me with an original blob near my home world and a few adjacent systems with habitable planets. A small blob with my Gaia world about half way between that and the following. A forward base up against the funguses, along with an adjacent system or two for additional buffer and good resources, plus the three tasty systems I claimed in the war.
Also, two further single-system buffers up against the Romulizards who used to like me but changed their mind when they found that out.
And a blob in the middle, just about contiguous with my home systems where there were several interesting systems including a world with a pre-space civilisation. Particularly badly, that ended up with one unclaimed system in the middle completely surrounded, which is apparently a super-double piracy lure.
Whereas the single-system forward bases, while very expensive in influence to build and increasing the risk of pirate spawns, are themselves fairly pirate-proof, as they usually just have a starbase and no mining stations.
The first territorial expansion I made after the war was to build a forward base up near the Fox Tapir Theocracy, which staked a few more systems for my future expansion but more importantly increased my diplomatic options with them in several ways.
But after that, I filled in my earlier patchwork mess a lot, claiming the systems inbetween a few gaps, which even though (unlike the AI) I still had several separate blobs, reduced the piracy risk quite a bit once the bigger blobs were more self-contained and less swiss cheese.
At the same time, I made an effort to claim several systems with interesting things I'd wanted to claim earlier but hadn't got round to. Rare resources. A wormhole gateway (I'm hoping that gives me a chance to research the tech necessary to traverse it.)
And most notably, a ruined ringworld!
Only about 8 times bigger than a planet, rather than 3 million, but still very attractive if it could be repaired. The first fallen empire, the one who I haven't really interacted with at all, had two systems, the something of something, and a neighbouring system was named the same way. I hadn't even thought to look, but apparently their systems have ringworlds in, and so does this one!
I think what happened is, the map generator reduces their territory a bit so it doesn't completely block off anti-clockwise expansion through the galaxy. It nearly does already, and if they'd has both systems, I think there would have been only a single connection between clockwise and anticlockwise of them. But didn't remove the ringworld.
Building ringworlds is one of the expansion packs; I'm not sure if repairing one is possible without that or not.
My first priority, alongside building up my resource income again, was to get rid of the pirates who'd had a bit too much of a free hand while I'd been pursuing Fungus War II.
At first this was ok -- there was a fairly weak fleet I took care of immediately with my existing strength.
Then I spent some time building up a stronger fleet to be able to take on the stronger pirate fleets head on (which sort of a minimum to be a serious force against my neighbours).
And then a lot of panic happened. Another fleet, either the original one I'd just defeated repaired, or another one spawned from the same base, appeared heading for my homeworld.
I rushed my fleet over there, but spaceflight doesn't really do "rush". And built some more ships near there too. And I wasn't in time to stop them fly past, but they aimed for one of my systems down a dead end.
Fortunately I'd only rebuilt a small part of the mining stations there. The pirates fortunately don't seem to try to attack my planets, and if they attack my starbases they self-repair, but they totally destroy all the mining/research stations they fly past.
However, I *was* able to assemble a decent fleet on my home starbase and ambush them as they flew home. It was a bit touch and go -- my fleet was disabled when they still had a couple of ships left, but they then flew into one of my reinforcements and minor starbases on the way out. Problem solved, kapow.
Unfortunately, during the same time, I detached a couple of laggardly ships to deal with the *other* pirate base. One that sadly spawned right next to a primitive world I was trying to establish an orbital watch on[1] and destroyed that a few times in the inter-war period.
[1] Apparently talking to them is MORE unethical than secretly spying on them, who knew?
The bases are fairly ramshackle, so that was ok, but as soon as it was destroyed, another base spawned from the ashes! Along with another, larger fleet that totally stomped my few ships and started flying for the frontier end of my empire near the front of the fungus war.
Then as soon as the first battle was complete, I needed to heal all my ships, build reinforcements, and fly them all *back* again to try to head off the pirates.
I ended up with two major fleets and a variety of stragglers absorbed into one or the other. One was there in time but not strong enough to take on the pirates by themselves. But they blocked their approach at a starbase and fought valiantly, and incredibly fortunately, the other fleet arrived just in the nick of time before the battle was over and handily wiped out the remnants.
And then I *was* able to divert the healthy part of the fleet to mop up the pirate bases. I sent enough that if another fleet spawned I wouldn't just lose. Which leaves me with little defences, but just *having* the ships puts off the AI empires from attacking quite a bit.
That took quite a while because it meant flying the long way round twice, but while I was doing other stuff, they did get there eventually.
Territory
I'd made some bold territorial grabs to claim systems up against other empires to keep the systems between for my future expansion, and to claim any particularly interesting systems near my borders.
That left me with an original blob near my home world and a few adjacent systems with habitable planets. A small blob with my Gaia world about half way between that and the following. A forward base up against the funguses, along with an adjacent system or two for additional buffer and good resources, plus the three tasty systems I claimed in the war.
Also, two further single-system buffers up against the Romulizards who used to like me but changed their mind when they found that out.
And a blob in the middle, just about contiguous with my home systems where there were several interesting systems including a world with a pre-space civilisation. Particularly badly, that ended up with one unclaimed system in the middle completely surrounded, which is apparently a super-double piracy lure.
Whereas the single-system forward bases, while very expensive in influence to build and increasing the risk of pirate spawns, are themselves fairly pirate-proof, as they usually just have a starbase and no mining stations.
The first territorial expansion I made after the war was to build a forward base up near the Fox Tapir Theocracy, which staked a few more systems for my future expansion but more importantly increased my diplomatic options with them in several ways.
But after that, I filled in my earlier patchwork mess a lot, claiming the systems inbetween a few gaps, which even though (unlike the AI) I still had several separate blobs, reduced the piracy risk quite a bit once the bigger blobs were more self-contained and less swiss cheese.
At the same time, I made an effort to claim several systems with interesting things I'd wanted to claim earlier but hadn't got round to. Rare resources. A wormhole gateway (I'm hoping that gives me a chance to research the tech necessary to traverse it.)
And most notably, a ruined ringworld!
Only about 8 times bigger than a planet, rather than 3 million, but still very attractive if it could be repaired. The first fallen empire, the one who I haven't really interacted with at all, had two systems, the something of something, and a neighbouring system was named the same way. I hadn't even thought to look, but apparently their systems have ringworlds in, and so does this one!
I think what happened is, the map generator reduces their territory a bit so it doesn't completely block off anti-clockwise expansion through the galaxy. It nearly does already, and if they'd has both systems, I think there would have been only a single connection between clockwise and anticlockwise of them. But didn't remove the ringworld.
Building ringworlds is one of the expansion packs; I'm not sure if repairing one is possible without that or not.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-11 11:35 pm (UTC)(Hm. What if they're general purpose scumbags, who turn to piracy only when no-one's hiring them as mercenaries?)
no subject
Date: 2018-07-12 01:42 pm (UTC)I think it makes sense to have some sort of reason for your ships to need to deal with smaller skirmishes. If there weren't pirates, you'd only be fighting empires with formally declared wars, where you often need to fight their entire fleet strength if the war gets serious. So *some* pirates seem a natural way of doing that, although I don't know if there's a better way, and I don't know how typical my experience has been.
In stellaris it's notionally a balancing mechanic to have a reason not to just grab the most attractive systems and ignore any contiguity. But I don't know how well that works in practice. It makes some sense flavour-wise, but seems a little artificial. Many people on the forums who played before the big 2.0 update definitely found it really quite annoying.
I hadn't realised this was a feature of other games, I'd assumed it was mostly a stellaris thing. I don't know why it's a common idea, or what the right balance would be.
Stellaris does have some other related concepts which (I think?) aren't tied to the main piracy mechanic. I think they have pirate systems occasionally, which act like temporary empires, attacking you if you go close, but not raiding in the same way. And there are (I think?) marauders, who act like mongol hordes, and may attack you, or accept bribes to go attack someone else.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-15 07:13 pm (UTC)Space pirates often seem a bit off; we get pirates in the Age of Sail because with a few guns and a lot of bodies any merchant ship can become a pirate; on the other hand Stellaris is already in "wet navies in space" space opera, so perhaps it can be left to slide.
Contiguity seems like it might be encouraged just by the usual mechanism where a spread-out empire is hard to defend...
[1] It doesn't discourage the player - it's always better to be big - but it does help to prevent the AI from taking over the world.