Stellaris Dev Diary #88 - 1.8 Post-Release Support | Page 11

Kayden_II · Oct 7, 2017

Hopefully, this defence-stuff hasn't any restrictions aka "Well, this thing is able to handle a 500k-fleet - Ok let us attack with 4x500k-fleets !" since we have this already.

Edit:
By the way - You're already in the next development-stage before you've finished the mandatory post-release-patches of such a big one like V1.8 ? - Rethink your scheduling !

Droopstone · Oct 7, 2017

Riftwalker said:
because I merely wanted to understand your definition of orginization. Under that definition I would say they are also organized.

If elements of the list preserve their order, they are definitely organized

Kayden_II · Oct 7, 2017

By the way - Number 03:

"People keep saying I'm a tease, so to prove them wrong, here's another screenshot from the internal development build. This one with lasers!"

Mastah Jedi · Oct 7, 2017

There is the same theme with all the screenshots i seen thus far. This station structure, is always anchored at the star. I wonder why is that. Any thoughts?

evilon · Oct 7, 2017

Mastah Jedi said:
There is the same theme with all the screenshots i seen thus far. This station structure, is always anchored at the star. I wonder why is that. Any thoughts?

I guess that's where people go to "chargin' up ma lazahs"

In regards to planet sorting, could we get something to put in the names on planets to prioritize them being moved to the top of the sorting?
Like a # or something else nice. Or even sort by numbers. Or even #numbers.

Mastah Jedi · Oct 7, 2017

To be quite honest with you Paradox, the way border expansion works, and FTL ( particularly my favorite variety, warp drives ); makes defense grid of any kind, useless. The only way I made it work, is fortifying the entire system (like my capital world) in a layered circle of stations around the entire system. But that is not very efficient, and usually late game, by which point, stationary defenses are just pointless. You can buff, a super OP fortress, but that's not gonna change game mechanics, and create more problems down the line. To make any meaningful improvements to warfare, like defensive strategies becoming viable, you need to rework border expansion and all of the FTL drives. Only drives what are somewhat good as they are, are hyperdrives, and jump drives for late game. Wormhole and my personal favorite, warp drives, make entire astro geography, pointless; or any kind of defensive warfare.

For balancing inspiration of the hyperdirve vs warpdrive vs wormholes, I'd look at sword of the stars (original one); warpdrive should not allow a player to zip across super wast distances with impunity; thats what psy jump drive for. Its range should be much more limited. Warmholes, should allow instant travel in its area of range, and that range should not be gigantic ether. Nebula clusters could add additional geography, where certain drives don't function or function very poorly in. Larger spacing between star clusters. Wider spiral arms. Border growth should be tweaked too. Once that is solved, all those defense stations have a purpose. Attrition and defensive warfare, becomes a thing. Huge OP fortress, does not solve those things.

As for doom stacks control, if that is the issue you wish to correct with that fortress, there are simpler, more elegant solutions. Tech tree. We already have a fleet capacity, for total number of ships we can build. Add another mechanic in there. Logistics capacity tech. Let this tech determine maximum number of ships a player can group in one formation. This would not prevent a player from sending all of his fleets in one place, but it would at least separate them. If each starport reduces maintenance for one fleet at a time, the player will also spread those fleets out.

Cheers!

Mrakvampire · Oct 7, 2017

No need to invent a wheel. Just implement supply mechanic from EU4 or CK2. That's all! If you have more fleet capacity in one system than X, then you get something bad. It's not rocket science.

Princess Stabbity · Oct 7, 2017

Mrakvampire said:
It's not rocket science.

Actually it is when you're supplying missiles and thrusters Kappa

I agree, yes. Perhaps also with the ability to increase a system's supply by building forward stations, communication relays and such. AsaTJ posted a similar idea on Reddit a while ago, I loved it.

Mastah Jedi · Oct 7, 2017

Mrakvampire said:
No need to invent a wheel. Just implement supply mechanic from EU4 or CK2. That's all! If you have more fleet capacity in one system than X, then you get something bad. It's not rocket science.

Supply mechanic brakes immersion. This is a game of galactic control. Supply mechanic of Planet based warfare, doesn't really work, or makes sense. What stops an interstellar civilization, with FTL technology, from provisioning their ships with all the supplies they would ever need. Figuring out how to maintain supplies in deep space missions, kinda less complicated then FTL tech it self. We might very well, here on Earth, if we manage not to destroy our selves before hand, build food production and manufacturing in space, by the end of this century. FTL, on the other hand, may take us centuries or eons, if at all.

Princess Stabbity · Oct 7, 2017

Mastah Jedi said:
Supply mechanic brakes immersion. This is a game of galactic control. Supply mechanic of Planet based warfare, doesn't really work, or makes sense. What stops an interstellar civilization, with FTL technology, from provisioning their ships with all the supplies they would ever need. Figuring out how to maintain supplies in deep space missions, kinda less complicated then FTL tech it self. We might very well, here on Earth, if we manage not to destroy our selves before hand, build food production and manufacturing in space, by the end of this century. FTL, on the other hand, may take us centuries or eons, if at all.

It doesn't have to be realistic. The purpose of such a system would be to kill doomstacks once and for all. And I feel that anything that does it is good and needed as soon as possible. Even if it requires a little suspension of disbelief.

Mastah Jedi · Oct 7, 2017

Solution I have offered, with regards to tech tree, would work perfectly, would not require a ton of coding; would not brake immersion, and frankly, it can be modded in, if someone wants to try. The game should improve, not quick fix the problems in way that make it worse. Im sure, there are other elegant and simple solutions too.

DeathSheep · Oct 8, 2017

ISitOnGnomes said:
Is this system even based on distance from capital? From my experience it is actually organized based on distance from the center of the galaxy, which is super confusing and not helpful most of the time.

The list ordering is supposed to be based on distance from the capital. Unfortunately, somebody at Paradox apparently had a brain-fart while the code for the 1.8 organizer was being written, and so what was implemented in 1.8 & 1.8.1 was distance from galactic center. The only part of the change to the organizer that actually worked as intended was making sure that planets in the same solar system are always next to each other in the list regardless of when they were colonized.

ISitOnGnomes · Oct 8, 2017

Mastah Jedi said:
Supply mechanic brakes immersion. This is a game of galactic control. Supply mechanic of Planet based warfare, doesn't really work, or makes sense. What stops an interstellar civilization, with FTL technology, from provisioning their ships with all the supplies they would ever need. Figuring out how to maintain supplies in deep space missions, kinda less complicated then FTL tech it self. We might very well, here on Earth, if we manage not to destroy our selves before hand, build food production and manufacturing in space, by the end of this century. FTL, on the other hand, may take us centuries or eons, if at all.

So, dont make it have anything to do with supply, and more about coordinating large fleets during combat. You could have penalties to fire rate and evasion as you go over the cap.

Riftwalker · Oct 8, 2017

for those that still care about the weird debate on organization for some reason, I've put together the best response I can manage, if it's still unclear, I am sorry.

Hype said:
Yes, I understand those words and the fact that you're trying to use them to appear smart.

Sigh

Hype said:
It's irrelevant as the list as always been organized with intention. This isn't an organic construct but a man made data array. There is no state of being it always had an architecture. They aren't adding structure to something that had none before, they are changing an existing structure which has no bearing on whether the change is good or bad.

Once again, I don't know why this is hard to understand. I'm not going to respond to you further as I think you're being willfully ignorant.

I personally don't understand why you can't seem to understand that prior to now, they were effectively writing down the list of planets on a piece of paper and then reading from that list from top to bottom. And now they're interpreting the nature and information of the planets instead to display them in a specific ordering.

your stating that incidental organization on the front end, is entirely equivalent to purposeful organization during the display method. This isn't hard to understand either, and i completely understand your position. I have am not declaring that, that, incidental organization is not there, and I don't understand why you keep insisting I am.

I AM however stating that prior to now the devs were not intentionally sorting the data for a purpose.

No functionality is lost as you can Sector out any sort of system of information management you had in place before. So claiming you can no longer organize your planets in some way is false as with the removal of sector build limitations you can organize your planets however you want them to.

to declare that the old system is somehow functionally superior to the current proposed one (that isn't even working yet), I can't help but assume you're viewing it with rose tinted glasses, having some resistance to change and resistance to adapting to a functional equivalent system, even one might say more powerful, with greater control over your organizational power.

The whole organization debate started because someone declared that the new system isn't organized. To which i told them the previous wasn't either, and the current one is buged. To say the last was superior when their is no loss of functionality and gain of functionality to the overview is inane.

now, specifically, once and for all cover the organizational debate.

They aren't adding structure to something that had none before, they are changing an existing structure which has no bearing on whether the change is good or bad.

Existing structure is still there, but they have added additional structure between the Update method and the Display method, to put it bluntly I just don't think you know enough about programming to know why the distinction is important.

It's irrelevant as the list as always been organized with intention. This isn't an organic construct but a man made data array.

intention being the important word here.

If I make a detour in a river so that it MUST start pooling in a basin, assuming this basin is a natural one, did I organize the water inside the basin? have I determined where every water molecule has ended up? if I DID, was it intentional? I intentionally diverted the water, but I had no intention on where a particular water molecule ended up, I didn't even make the basin assuming any specific amount of water. The same is with this list, I needed a list, but had no intention to the ordering. You might say now that "the list isn't natural, it isn't a natural basin" you are correct, but what if instead the Basin was created from the machinery needed to divert the water, that the basin wasn't intentional, but the machinery being where it was, and what machinery it was, was intentional. Is the part of the computer the list is generated on intentionally a list? No, it's simply mathematics editing specific memory addresses on your CPU and them shipping them off to your RAM and then maybe your harddrive. To claim the intent of your computer being used to generate this list that then also intentionally fills up with planets in a specific intentional order is folly. This isn't even a fully laid out list of differing and compoundary intentions, to claim that they all intended in the end to create the planets in a specific order

You could say there is a difference between a 1 dimensional array and a 3 dimensional pool of water, that a 1 dimensional array must be organized by entry time and thus is inherently different than a 3 dimensional array, but well, both arrays can easily be computed as stacks as all you'd have to do was reverse the flow of water and flow of planets into the list to gain the exact same ordering they arrived into your list. Just because the 3d array is more complicated does not make it inherently different from the 1 dimensional. On top of this a 1 dimensional array can still be ordered on other things than time entry. If I have the 1d array created in RAM (which is most likely the case) I can easily place planets in between other entries on the array provided I can update the table of contents the program might use to randomly access the memory, but they did not do this, they went with the least computationally heavy option, the default, the natural choice, the... unorganized.

yes, the list is intentionally a list, but the contents of the list are put in the array organized without intent, the intention ended at the creation of a list and the decision for something to be in the list or not. To go further requires additional claims and additional evidence.

I can go on and on with evidence as to the substantive difference between the current system and what it is now and how much 'organization' this entails, but I think this is the best metaphor i can give on this, so if you still believe the original list was ordered with intent I believe it impossible to make it any clearer.

now, if you want to refute this, you need to show me how my metaphor is wrong, or how I intentionally ordered the water molecules in a pool of water i created.

tl;dr;

Droopstone said:
If elements of the list preserve their order, they are definitely organized

a well ordered list, does not require that it have been intentionally organized. It merely shows that it is ordered. a list being ordered and organized are fundamentally different for the purposes of this discussion. For instance, all positive whole numbers will always be a positive list of whole numbers in order, no person intentionally placed them in that order, the order was required by the nature of the listing. Fibonacci's sequence, did not intend for any specific number to be on the list, but it is still well ordered.

Riftwalker · Oct 8, 2017

Mastah Jedi said:
Supply mechanic brakes immersion. This is a game of galactic control. Supply mechanic of Planet based warfare, doesn't really work, or makes sense. What stops an interstellar civilization, with FTL technology, from provisioning their ships with all the supplies they would ever need. Figuring out how to maintain supplies in deep space missions, kinda less complicated then FTL tech it self. We might very well, here on Earth, if we manage not to destroy our selves before hand, build food production and manufacturing in space, by the end of this century. FTL, on the other hand, may take us centuries or eons, if at all.

not necessarily. There is a cap to how much energy can enter an area at once safely, but there is no cap for how much energy is needed to keep an area alive. square cubed law and all that.

for me however, this (implamenting EU4/ck2 style attrition) would just make unnecessary micro around piling on your ships after the battle has started and spreading them out otherwise to keep attrition down. it ultimately just creates micro with no real interesting gameplay coming from it.

Mrakvampire · Oct 8, 2017

So EU4 works fine, and doesn't create unnecessary micro, but Stellaris implementation of same mechanic will?
And I'm really confused why for somebody supply mechanic will break immersion. In you imaginary future supply and logistics problems suddenly doesn't exist anymore? So combat fleets already have significant warp wind-down and this doesn't break your immersion, but fact that supply ships are unable to cross a galaxy in 1 min does? I'm really confused with you imaginary future, really.

Legal Assassin · Oct 8, 2017

Mastah Jedi said:
Supply mechanic brakes immersion. This is a game of galactic control. Supply mechanic of Planet based warfare, doesn't really work, or makes sense. What stops an interstellar civilization, with FTL technology, from provisioning their ships with all the supplies they would ever need. Figuring out how to maintain supplies in deep space missions, kinda less complicated then FTL tech it self. We might very well, here on Earth, if we manage not to destroy our selves before hand, build food production and manufacturing in space, by the end of this century. FTL, on the other hand, may take us centuries or eons, if at all.

See: The Forever War, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Dune, A Mote in God's Eye, The Reality Dysfunction, and basically most books or movies involving interplanetary conflict. Hell, even Star Trek had the sense to be like "Oh yea, matter replicators, that's why we can miraculously make stuff out of energy.". Except for Voyager, where not being able to use the magic deus ex machina replicators all of a sudden creates the entire reason the series is exciting. Because they, in a starship, run out of supplies, in deep space.

Interstellar supply not only isn't immersion breaking, I don't know what you're referring to, but it's a major component in hard sci-fi and all space operas.

Riftwalker · Oct 8, 2017

Mrakvampire said:
So EU4 works fine, and doesn't create unnecessary micro, but Stellaris implementation of same mechanic will?
And I'm really confused why for somebody supply mechanic will break immersion. In you imaginary future supply and logistics problems suddenly doesn't exist anymore? So combat fleets already have significant warp wind-down and this doesn't break your immersion, but fact that supply ships are unable to cross a galaxy in 1 min does? I'm really confused with you imaginary future, really.

both games revolve around small standing armies relying on either raising troops or hiring mercenaries during war time. it even has mechanics specifically to reduce micro of raising large quantities of troops. and yes when my main army was too big for attrition i had to split it and then join them when the battle happened.

as for immersion breaking, the idea is if you can figure out how to FTL across a universe, you should theoretically have supply issues resolved with equally advanced technology. like i said, though, i don't particularly hold this view.

Jorlem · Oct 8, 2017

Riftwalker said:
No functionality is lost as you can Sector out any sort of system of information management you had in place before. So claiming you can no longer organize your planets in some way is false as with the removal of sector build limitations you can organize your planets however you want them to.

Just pointing out, by putting systems in sectors you lose out on at least 25% of their resource generation, so "sectoring out" systems is not a good organizational tool.

Riftwalker said:
To say the last was superior when their is no loss of functionality and gain of functionality to the overview is inane.

Except, as I stated in my earlier reply to you, the old system where planets were just appended to the end of the list was more useful for me than the intended new system, as the old system had planets remain at the same spot on the list for the entire game. That allowed me to specialize planets for certain purposes and be able to easily and quickly find them, unlike the current system or the intended way the new system is meant to work. This is a significant loss of usefulness, to the point where I find the old system to be far far superior to the new system.

ISitOnGnomes · Oct 8, 2017

Jorlem said:
This is a significant loss of usefulness, to the point where I find the old system to be far far superior to the new system.

The new system is currently broken and orders planets by distance to the center of the galaxy rather than distance to capital. I think someone said its fixed in 1.8.2, so its probably best we hold any final judgement until then. It would be nice if there was an option to select which sort order you wanted to use.

Banned

Corporal

Banned

Data Curator

Major

Data Curator

Captain

Random Nonsense Generator

Data Curator

Random Nonsense Generator

Data Curator

Captain

They know what they did

Field Marshal

Field Marshal

Captain

Corporal

Field Marshal

Field Marshal

They know what they did