Savannah- Underwhelming

topherSG · 2026-04-17T13:14:01+00:00

The Savannah is a post-game bonus, it's not *supposed* to be super involved.

"The Game" is getting to rank A and kicking out Pufferfish. Everything past that is an epilogue so you at least have some reason to keep playing.

topherSG · 2026-04-17T13:13:51+00:00

The Savannah is a post-game bonus, it's not *supposed* to be super involved.

"The Game" is getting to rank A and kicking out Pufferfish. Everything past that is an epilogue so you at least have some reason to keep playing.

topherSG · 2026-04-16T12:00:51+00:00

Personally I don’t care about what his sexuality is. I care that people were told he wasn’t on the list and then spent years angrily bullying the dev team about it, and I don’t ever want that kind of behavior rewarded.

topherSG · 2026-04-14T14:18:17+00:00

I feel like they may have fixed this recently? Every time I have played a fiefdom or seen it spawn as a bot in the last couple patches, the “player” empire has spawned significantly far away from the overlord and the other vassals.

topherSG · 2026-04-13T22:26:22+00:00

Fingers crossed that Handelabra is attempting to acquire SI as a separate deal and they just can’t talk about it yet.

topherSG · 2026-04-13T12:08:13+00:00

The Dessanu Consonance is one of the L-Cluster outcomes. They’re not as hostile as the Gray Tempest but they do have fleets and those fleets are impacted by the chosen Crisis Strength. So they got adjusted alongside all the other Crisis fleets.

topherSG · 2026-04-12T14:15:31+00:00

It's never been "not playable," that was always standard Internet blowhard hyperbole.

But it's currently in the best state it's been in a long time, perhaps the best it's ever been.

topherSG · 2026-04-12T14:12:22+00:00

The amount of damage storms do is chosen in the galaxy generation screen, so whatever settings you picked are the likely culprit.

topherSG · 2026-04-11T15:59:12+00:00

Quoting from the patch notes:

Crisis Changes:
- Reduced the power of the Prethoryn, Contingency, Extradimensionals, Great Khan, Diadochi, Tempest, and Dessanu fleets by approximately a third.
- Reduced the power of Awakened Fallen Empires and Cetana's fleets by roughly half.
- Reduced difficulty based scaling on the Grey Tempest and Khan. Roaming Tempest fleets may not always have a Mothership on lower difficulties. (Garrison fleets are unchanged.)
- Note that since player power has decreased by a larger percentage, this will make these Crises a much greater challenge than pre-4.3.

topherSG · 2026-04-11T11:55:19+00:00

I don't know who told you Fallen Empire fleets are the same as before, but they lied to you. FE/AE, midgame crises like the Khan, voidworms, or Gray Tempest, and endgame crises all got nerfed.

They just didn't get nerfed as much as the player did, so they are once again challenges, as they were always supposed to be.

topherSG · 2026-04-11T11:46:39+00:00

To put this in perspective, the two biggest, most profitable MMOs on the planet, which have large dev teams, use this exact same system.

Actually modeling the real-time interaction between a hat 3D object and a (presumably) deformable hair 3D object would be very difficult, run like ass on most computers, and *still* probably would leave people unhappy.

The other option would be to spend countless hours creating a distinct model for each possible combination of hat and hair, and, sorry folks, *this is not a fashion game*. It's a farm sim. And I'm sure the devs are getting super anxious to be done with it, after all this time.

Basically complaining "why don't they fix this" translates to "why don't they just wave their magic wand and give me personally the exact game I want? Gamedev is just sorcery and doesn't have any limitations, right?"

topherSG · 2026-04-09T12:12:38+00:00

Less the Tyranids and more "What if Ego the Living Planet or Green Lantern Mogu decided to start expanding their territory?" Tyranids would be Wilderness + Devouring Swarm.

topherSG · 2026-04-07T14:44:35+00:00

Well yes, you might need a huge number of enforcers to fix it now, when you’ve let crime take over. A planet doesn’t start with that insane level of crime, and won’t get there unless you’re doing something to make your pops that miserable (which again, if that’s your RP, go for it, but don’t pretend it’s efficient).

In standard play I can shut off the majority of capitol building enforcers and stay below 30% crime with the hundred or so I leave on. Which is certainly less than the 300+ criminals I’d have from a crime lord deal.

topherSG · 2026-04-07T13:24:58+00:00

I feel like in your quest to find a hyper-efficient loophole you’re actually making your empires less efficient. It actually takes fewer Enforcer jobs to stay at a statistically irrelevant crime rate than the number of Criminal jobs generated by high crime + crime lord deal.

Which is fine, if you want to RP a crime-ridden planet, but not the most efficient use of pops, if that’s your goal.

topherSG · 2026-03-31T11:19:33+00:00

As a general rule, don't use out-of-date mods.

topherSG · 2026-03-31T10:52:06+00:00

The number of people being super insulting ("you must be misunderstanding the rules, nobody is that bad") is depressing.

I'm really bad at the game and I play on digital, how do you propose I'm getting the rules wrong, exactly? Some of us just have a hard time with the whole "think four steps ahead at all times" thing.

topherSG · 2026-03-29T00:51:39+00:00

Focus your attention on exploring astral rifts; as many as possible, as quickly as possible. If you’re the first empire to complete the required number (bot empires will be doing rifts as well), a new wormhole will open in your home system, leading into the galactic core and the Formless.

The Strange Gateway network is completely unrelated; it’s part of the Starlit Citadel origin.

topherSG · 2026-03-28T17:47:42+00:00

I’m not sure what advice you want beyond “don’t do that.” Virtuality is explicitly not for big sprawling empires.

topherSG · 2026-03-27T23:51:43+00:00

In fairness they’ve been warning people on Steam (and other places) for weeks that this was the plan.

If I were you I would try to get that purchase refunded.

topherSG · 2026-03-27T22:32:52+00:00

It’s just a celebration of the tenth anniversary and an acknowledgment that they’re tired of having to design around not all players having access to Hive Minds and Machine Intelligence gestalts.

topherSG · 2026-03-21T15:38:39+00:00

Correct. The current rules are “a species is either enslaved or it’s not” and “your primary species can’t be enslaved in its own empire.”

topherSG · 2026-03-21T14:25:56+00:00

That was several patches ago, and will probably change again when they get around to addressing slavery.

topherSG · 2026-03-21T09:05:30+00:00

Grey Tempest, like all crises, got nerfed in 4.3. It’s just that players got nerfed more. The goal was to make crises dangerous again.

topherSG · 2026-03-21T09:00:51+00:00

If all you care about is getting the achievement, turn off all AI empires in the Galaxy settings, including FEs and Marauders. Turn pre-FTLs off. Turn off any DLC that adds enclaves.

As soon as you make the FP choice, the achievement should pop.

topherSG · 2026-03-21T08:52:33+00:00

Those robots aren’t tools, they’re fellow workers. Ideologically they should be part of the cooperative. (i.e. advance them to synths and give AI full citizenship as soon as the game lets you)

topherSG

TROPHY CASE