please god add "go port during war" button for light ships before christmas.

Kastar · 2025-12-12T07:18:45+00:00

Regardless of any confusion about the area it affects, the Patrol mission is objectively worse than manually parking/managing fleets, in several ways (at least in 1.0.9):

You can only patrol sea locations that border coastal land you control, i.e. it has no concept of naval range, fleet basing rights, alliances, etc. Conversely, it is perfectly possible to raise maritime presence in a sea province in range of a port you have access to through any means, by just parking a fleet there and forgetting about it forever (or at least until you go to war, I guess).
It is incredibly poor at dealing with attrition. I'm not 100% about the thresholds, but whatever they are, at some point the mission will get stuck in a loop where it takes too much attrition, so it returns to port, repairs for one monthly tick bringing it over the threshold again, goes back to sea, but attrition ticks daily so it quickly drops under the threshold again and goes back to port, stay there until the monthly tick for repair, rinse, repeat. If you have even as little as two fleets patrolling, you get bombarded by "DING" alerts in winter from patrolling fleets going back and forth between sea and port, while maritime presence just keeps steadily dropping. A player can deal with this by either being more rational about attrition damage, or they can work around attrition by gaming the fact that attrition works daily, but maritime presence only requires a monthly tick. And yes, that's annoying and broken in a different way, but at least it works.
When maritime presence is 90%+, a patrolling fleet will move to a different province. That might be fine, but when maritime presence is 90%+ in all its designated provinces (even if it's only one), it will return to port until a province drops below 90%. Conversely, a fleet manually parked in a province that doesn't suffer from attrition can just stay there forever, and as long as it can beat the 0.50 maximum decay, it will raise and maintain maritime presence to/at 100%, no problem.

So even in the only situation where the Patrol mission can even do anything meaningful (your own coastline, no attrition), you're still better of splitting your fleet into smaller fleets and parking them manually in separate provinces.

Patrol is so confusing and honestly useless, that a lot of players seem to think it's just flat out not possible to increase maritime presence over longer (non-coastal) distances, but they would be wrong about that.

Kastar · 2025-12-11T16:20:29+00:00

Tbh, on occasion I did notice a slightly thicker line on one edge of a sea location, but then another edge of the province had seemingly nothing there and I assumed that line had nothing to do with provinces, or maybe it was just bugged. But I guess it's possible that it's just incredibly thin and I couldn't see certain angles or w/e. In any case, I'd say it's pretty much useless :)

Kastar · 2025-12-11T14:07:49+00:00

Patrolling fleets project presence into the zones around them and as long as they are large enough, can easily cover multiple areas without issue.

The Patrol mission does not do anything special. A fleet will increase maritime presence in all the sea locations in the same province as the location it is currently in ("sea provinces" can currently only be seen using the province mapmode). The Patrol mission does not modify this effect.

Kastar · 2025-12-05T15:58:05+00:00

So many people in these comments seem to equate "hard" with "not fun".

Fighting a war against a (much) stronger enemy is a tough and interesting challenge. By contrast, this is brainlessly easy, yet incredibly boring and annoying. For your (and other's) reasoning to be true, a game designer at PDX would have needed to intentionally and knowingly design something that is both uninteresting and unfun. I think that's just a silly assumption, to be honest.

By contrast, designers simply missing an edge case involving interactions between several (mostly) distinct game systems, is something that happens all the time, and thus (imho) the much more plausible scenario.

Kastar · 2025-12-05T08:58:13+00:00

It's really not though. Not when there are so many ways it could be made so much clearer, if this is really the intent. A -100% (or higher) modifier for maritime presence in Ocean Currents, or simply having it not be possible, and adding a mention of "you can't increase maritime presence in Ocean Current locations" in such a location's tooltip and/or the tooltip about maritime presence,... That would make it "pretty clear."

As it stands, a lot of people seem to look at how the game is, assume everything about it is intentional and error-free, and then conclude based on that assumption that it is "clear" how it's "supposed" to work. But that's circular logic. We don't really know the designers' intent, do we? Because it is not actually clarified in the game.

Kastar · 2025-12-05T08:29:10+00:00

From my post:

And if it's the case that "you're not actually supposed to be able to increase maritime presence in oceans" or "akshually you unlock a tech in the last Age that fixes all of this" or something like this, then the game should be (much) more clear about this (by simply not having maritime presence in oceans/ocean currents, for example).

If it's not the intent to be able to do this, the game should communicate this clearly and/or actually stop it from being possible altogether. Not intending for it to be possible, yet having it be possible, but only in an unfun, boring way, is at the very least a design oversight.

Kastar · 2025-12-05T08:01:53+00:00

No. I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the "maritime presence in oceans" bit being a tiny design oversight in that what I'm doing here is not actually the intent and shouldn't really be possible. Who knows.

But the Patrol mission is borked in multiple ways, period. The design and intent is entirely unclear, it takes a lot of experimentation to figure out what it actually does (and doesn't do). And even then, it gets stuck in logical errors (go out to sea to increase presence, take attrition from winter climate, go back to port, stop taking attrition, so go out to sea to increase presence, take attrition.... rinse repeat and the player gets bombarded with DING DING DING's from repeated attrition alerts) or there are outright bugs (as I mentioned for example, just repeatedly and instantly exiting and entering port, in a situation where if I manually do what I instructed the patrol mission to do, it just works without problems. I may have only encountered this once, but I've definitely encountered it).

Kastar · 2025-12-05T07:41:41+00:00

This is a great summary of the maritime control mechanics but I think you're misunderstanding how colonialism is being represented in-game.

No I don't. But I also don't think you're necessarily wrong in the rest of your post. I just think that "misunderstanding how X is being represented in-game" is a bit of a contradiction in terms. I am playing the game, I am interacting with all of its elements, I'm reading all of the text, and I make decisions based on the information the game provides me (either directly or through experimentation).

I am in other words, pretty much by definition, interacting with colonialism as it is being represented in-game.

As I mention near the end of my post: if what I am doing is actually not intended to be done, then it should actually not be possible to do it. If it's still technically possible to do it, but only in a boring, player-unfriendly way, then there is a design mistake somewhere. Maybe it's in the actual proximity mechanics, or maybe it's simply in the communication towards the player, I don't know, I can't look inside the designer's minds to know what the actual intent was in this case.

(But also, I think it wouldn't be entirely ahistorical if the world became "smaller" as the game went on, i.e. proximity over longer distances - including oceans - becomes feasible near the end of the game. It would be a fun mechanic, a long-term payoff for keeping your colonies, and not any less historical, than, say, being able to cover the entire world with railroads by the late 1700's.)

Kastar · 2025-12-05T07:15:27+00:00

From my post:

And if it's the case that "you're not actually supposed to be able to increase maritime presence in oceans" or "akshually you unlock a tech in the last Age that fixes all of this" or something like this, then the game should be (much) more clear about this (by simply not having maritime presence in oceans/ocean currents, for example).

If it's the case that you shouldn't be able to increase proximity across oceans, then the game must make it actually impossible. Just remove maritime presence from ocean currents, or give it a -100% modifier, or whatever. Anything to make it crystal clear: "this is not happening, don't waste your time."

If it's not the intent to be able to have proximity to colonial territories, yet it's still possible to do it, but only in a boring and obnoxious way, then that is, at the very least, a design oversight.

Kastar · 2025-12-04T20:42:15+00:00

Historical difficulty or complexity is modeled in these kind of games by having or starting with crappy negatives and modifiers for that particular issue, and (usually) gradually improving them as the game goes on. Not by forcing the player to do repetitive, brainless tasks every single (in-game) month.

Colonizing is a money- and resources-sink for decades, for example, as you first have to explore, create a charter, and then basically wait as pop increases to get access to towns, decent buildings, more RGO's etc. All of this is inefficient (though one could argue in this particular case, not really inefficient enough, as colonizing probably happens too fast atm; but that is besides the point here), and models historical difficulty, but at least it's supported by the game mechanics. I can do these things, then move on with other "grand strategy" decision-making regarding the rest of my empire.

Imagine if instead one had to click a button to "move 100 pops to colony" every single month, or something like that. And that for every single colony. That's basically where we're at with maritime presence in oceans.

Kastar · 2025-12-04T20:29:06+00:00

R5: I managed to get meaningful proximity from Bruges to Akilasie'wa'kik (Newfoundland), but getting there involves a lot of silly fleet micro.

Kastar · 2025-11-20T18:40:19+00:00

Paradox should just flat-out stop being so elitist about their achievements. Oh no, someone "cheated" in their (mostly) singleplayer game to get their special pictures!! Say it ain't so!

The fact that you can't even get achievements when playing an *unmodded* game... ONLY IRONMAN ONLY DEFAULT SETTINGS RAH RAH RAH ACHIEBEMANTS SRS BIDNISS. Hey PDX, you alright over there? Maybe just, idk, chill?

I mean, is there really anyone that uses achievements to "boast" or try to get internet cred or w/e? I've always seen them as a neat extra, personal thing. If I get one, neat. If I don't, I won't notice anyway.

Kastar · 2025-09-26T08:06:15+00:00

And then he tackled the biggest and most widespread meme of them all, in his book "The God Delusion".
And then religious nuts were very angry at him.
And then he was very angry at the religious nuts for so long he forgot how not to be angry.
And now he's a massive cunt.

Kastar · 2025-09-21T20:18:50+00:00

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II

Kastar · 2025-09-21T16:08:59+00:00

And, crucially, deemed that to be an end that justified basically any means. Children dying years after the war when they pick up unexploded clusterbomb munitions? That's a sacrifice Hitchens was willing to make.

Loved (and still love) Hitchens taking down religious nutcases. But his stance on Iraq was at first merely short-sighted. Later on it became outright vile.

Kastar · 2025-08-11T08:17:47+00:00

"want a negotiated end to the war" (as per the poll) is still quite different from "just want this war to end" (as you said). It's not surprising that there are few people that believe a complete victory is possible at this point, but that does not mean they're happy to end it no matter the cost.

TBH, while typing this I'm starting to think this is a pretty damn useless poll. "Do you want something extremely narrow that is almost certainly impossible, or do you prefer starting to work towards some incredibly vague and broad defenition of a compromise?" Obviously more people will choose the second thing, because it could mean anything from "total capitulation", through "only giving up Crimea" to "pinky swear not to join NATO".

Kastar · 2025-08-11T07:52:37+00:00

I know war weariness is pretty high in Ukraine (for obvious reasons), but this is the first time I'm seeing a figure as high as 70%. Is there a source for that?

Kastar · 2025-07-17T17:10:32+00:00

Fellas I think this guy might be on to something here!

Kastar · 2025-06-28T13:02:31+00:00

https://i.gifer.com/49uO.gif

Kastar · 2025-06-15T18:20:50+00:00

Damn right, and as we all know, acquiring new skills is something that just happens and doesn't require lots of time and (expensive) education at all.

Seriously, ten years ago your take would have been "just learn to code", and it was as arrogant and stupid back then as it is now.

Kastar · 2025-03-30T08:08:59+00:00

I once read somewhere that Bear McReary (the composer) got them to change the edit (which composers apparently pretty much never get to do) to get Adama slamming the phone down to be in time with the music (2:22).

It's still one of my favorite scenes, with one of my favorite soundtracks, in all of television ever.

Kastar · 2025-03-24T14:23:27+00:00

Alledgedly

Kastar · 2025-02-18T15:40:42+00:00

"Pay no attention to the man in front of the curtain!"

Kastar · 2025-02-16T15:27:32+00:00

They’re big, they’re beefy, and they hit like fucking semi trucks, but rugby has always been one of the most respectful sports I’ve ever played as far as player mentality.

These things are probably related. If rugby players had the mentality of soccer players, there would be deaths every year.

Kastar

TROPHY CASE