11:02 minor issue with the economy. You only have 18 pops on your planet which means you took the Roccan resistance, changed the origin, then added eager explorers. Your economy complaint isn’t exactly bulletproof here.
Oh goodness, you're entirely right! I grabbed an empire from the shelf to look at/show off the economic start of remnants and I picked one with Eager explorers without noticing! The 'correct' econ numbers should be +32E +29M +10F +1CD +12A +19U. Which is not as bad as shown in the video (due to eager explorers of perhaps the megacorp one)! Sorry about that
@@lioninjawarloc they’re pretty good at least where components are concerned. You’re right though it loves ancient macro batteries, and they’re just worse gauss cannons
They kinda do if you take archeo-engineering. But then you're using an entire ascension perk for parts you can put on maybe 20% of your fleet, plus the massive undertaking of micromanaging ship designs and fleet layput. Just isn't worth imo
@@scotthoover1568 Only in early or mid game. once you have t4 they even out, t5 only the swarm missiles are worth while. the rest of the tech is kind of crap.
If you want to make full use of archaeo-components take the Become the Crisis perk. Menacing ships *always* have a fixed cost, regardless what components you equip them with, so you don't even need any minor artifacts. You can make swarms of menacing corvettes loaded with nothing but nano-missile cloud launchers and pulse armor and all it will cost you is minerals.
I am playing it right now and it is about as insane as you can imagine. Nano missiles are basically better disruptors, pulse armor is basically better tierV armor+shield combo, bot are relatively easy to obtain and cost useless Society research compared to most good weapons and armor being locked in precious Engineering. There is also a better point-defence if you want Menancing Destroyers.
I've never been one to sell the minor artifacts to collectors; usually just saving them up so I had the 50 needed for the Precursor Insight. having played through the Remnants (one of my fav origins), I agree that start is brutal now with the 20 credit upkeep.
Currently on a megacorp remnant playthrough and honestly never noticed the energy cost. The relic income did help me blow through the precursor chain really fast. I even have the rubricator world and this is the first game I've had it where I haven't been desperate to complete the archaeological site because my original archaeostudies relic income was enough for what I needed.
@@ShummaAwilum I actual had one play through where I had the Rubricator, got the Relic World from the Moon Base, and then the First League Relic World, so I kept the size 12 one as the relic world to keep the good version of the Archeology Lab
there has been plenty of games where for whatever reason the gods of luck just flat out refused to give me the 50 minor artifacts needed to do the precursor insight. Those games always left me with a bitter taste in my mouth so i am glad that you can now have monthly income. Even if you have to save up at least now its guaranteed.
Yes, some balancing needs to be done and the max storage limit doesn't make sense. You forgot to mention that you can build these archeo-weapons on crisis ships without the need for minor artefacts. :b
I'd certainly make a significant connection between Archeoengineering, Minor Artifacts, and Fallen/Awakened Empires. Fallen empires should strictly run with specialized Archeo weapons, maybe a tier or two above the archeoweapons we can research normally. Their capital planets when taken should be a veritable treasure trove of minor artifact income and of course the cap removed.
My problem with Minor Artifacts in general right now is that you only get rewarded for going into them if you get very lucky. I think it would be a lot better if the current minor artifact tech instead of costing minor artifacts to construct, could be unlocked as a research option through an expenditure of minor artifacts (with a long CD, like 5-10 years). Then once researched you could just equip your fleets, this would make archeostudies and minor artifact producing sites extremely valuable and maybe even worth declaring a war over.
I like this idea. It makes more sense too. After studying the artifacts you learn to create the tech. Otherwise it is like orks strapping things that they find and don't understand on the outside of a ship and declaring it a weapon.
Archeotech weapons need a unique niche, contributing to their rarity and making them more useful in specific scenarios rather than them being a replacement for tiered weapons so you can outfit your entire navy with them.
I think so too. Minor artifacts, should they play a role in ship components, should really have some profound weaknesses and benefits to make them stand out. But they should be unique, and not a whole-navy type of thing. Unique as in, oh maybe the Irassians had biological ships, should we put organic components on our ships, they will have no armor nor shields, but have extremely fast regeneration. Or the first league had anti-gravity weapons, and putting their components on your ship would boost neutron launchers damage, but disable all other weapons. Like, they should have archeotech components that feel unique for specific types of roles in your navy, not just, it's better than the tiered equivalents so let's have everyone put these on.
@@barryevans791 that doesn't address my point. Increasing their damage just puts them on par with the basic tiered weapons or makes them strictly better, exasperating the problem only further. If they're supposed to be rare weapons and components that you don't necessarily fill your entire ship with, then making them strictly better than the tiered components is counterproductive because players will want to always make their ships as powerful as possible, making the need for artifact deposits extremely high. If they're just weaker however then there's no point in using them at all. But if they fill a unique niche that can't be replaced but isn't strictly better than the tiered weapons, then it makes more sense to include a few of the components without necessarily decking out your entire ship with them, making them too specialized with exploitable weaknesses.
@@AndrewChumKaser I don't think they are meant to be rare, I think they are faction specific/thematic. Relic world origin boosts it further for example.
I did not realize that they were that rare. In my current playthrough I am getting something like 7 per month and keep running into the issue of my maximum storage on them. I did notice that the dig sites were low for the payout, but the income was very good, 7 total on like 4 sites.
Honestly, my inclination would be to start with increasing every minor artifact value by *10 (eg., add a zero to the end of the minor artifact cap, minor artifact deposits, costs in minor artifacts and minor artifact gains from interactions), then rebalance around the wider reasonably possible range of costs and gains that starting point allows.
on the point of the rewards not being scaled, its the same with most of the older events, like look at the freighter event, you can keep a whole 300! minerals or return them for influence and positive relations. 300 minerals gets you next to nothing.
The minor artifact cap in some ways makes your fleets glass cannons (although not in the traditional sense). With enough dig sites and the Rubricator you can build an armada of nothing but archaeo-tech ships. But if you happen to lose a significant number of them -- I'm looking at you, 25x crisis -- you'll need decades to rebuild them regardless of how many alloys and strategic resources you have saved up.
Ancient Refinery is by far the best building; after Archeotech building. My worlds run amazingly more efficient now since I typically build motes, gases, and crystals on every world for sake of redundancy and also to maximize fleet flower through edits. Now with one building, I can produce more than those three buildings combined.
As far as the weapons and ship modules are concerned, I feel like they need to feel more like a Tier 6 option. Outside of the nano-cloud missiles I've not really seen a point to the others
I would say that they should be tier 5, but with the ap they should be similar to dark matter but worse than psionic. Another way would be to add 2 levels of archaeotech, like a mid game one that is lvl 3 and an end game version that is lvl 5, then the ap would make them lvl 4 mid game and just above dark matter at end game.
I really have to wonder what the person who gave the Ancient Macro Batteries stats was thinking. Its base damage is weaker than t4 kinetic, has less accuracy than any basic kinetic, and has no damage modifiers which set it apart from basic kinetics. The only thing it does better is that the L-slot version has no minimum range, meaning there is literally no reason to use the S or M-slot versions over t4 kinetic. Archeotech parts look like they're best suited to being sidegrades to standard components, at least without investing the AP to buff them.
@@JabberwockOclock , Well... it's probably the same person who wanted the player to progress from UNSC (Halo), to Rebel Alliance (Star Wars), to Dominion (Star Trek), while also keeping the weapons _exactly_ the same... Projectile Weapons to take down Shields... Energy Weapons to take out Armour+Hull... Missiles to take out Armour + Hull by avoiding Shields... Use Flak to take out Fighters... The difference between T1 weapons and their T5 counterparts... is just damage. That's it, that's all. That's the only difference for _all_ the tech... the most basic of numbers. Shields, more shields, faster recharge rate.... so what if you have barriers and shields... there isn't a difference between them, except some numbers... Psi Barriers, Psi Shields... Dark Matter Shields... all are just numbers. Don't think about this logically, think about _none_ of this logically... and you won't be questioning reality... why do large projectile weapons have greater range?! Why?! Why?! Energy weapons should be the biggest threat at range since they have a much greater, at or near, light speed velocity they close the difference with! But, it's the Kinetic Energy Weapons which have that range... Because they need that range to better take out the shields of the enemy before the energy weapons enter range... that's why. They introduced an entirely new class of ships, frigates, to be used as torpedo boats... because the developers don't know how to design a game with logic. At great distance, what weapon is the greatest threat? Missiles. They should have the longest range... and the highest damage output... as the game advances, they should become the primary anti-ship weapon... eventually, fighters and small ships would be replaced with larger ships with better anti-missile capabilities... so that true brawlers/battleships can duke it out in energy range... as kinetic energy weapons are a thing of very distant past as they are slow/inaccurate and only good at point range combat. The game has a decent foundation... but the developers want the players to play the game in a specific,, counter intuitive way... and will make design choices to _force_ the players to play that way... no more battleship fleets with just neutron launchers... it's now torpedo cruisers... or Battleships fleets equipped with the Kinetic Batteries...
@@aralornwolf3140 Lasers have spread at range where they lose focus and start down the inverse square path. That's why energy weapons technically have a max range. Kinetic projectiles don't lose velocity in space, so you would be able to hit stations from far outside their range. Max effective range depends on the capability of ships to dodge.
I'm not sure if limiting the technologies you can get would be a good idea, we already have that whole debacle about having to restart for precursors and this might make it even worse, where the cool stuff is gated behind rng
Remove limit, increase costs. Then you still need to pace yourself on what you use them on, but are not limited by artificial caps. Or let cap increase with number of bureaucrats.
The only archeotech I find that's actually worth using: 1. Nanocloud missiles. As you said, they're essentially disruptors 2.0. Or as I call them: Disruptors for bigger ships (since disruptors in my experience go on smaller ships.) 2. Ancient Suppression Fields (I use them as alternative shield hardeners on my bigger ships (cruisers on up) so I can stick armor hardeners on them and have both armor and shield hardening. I don't 100% replace shields with them. It also means I never use anymore than 7.) 3. Pulse Armor (only a small amount of them, and only on bigger ships.) 4. Web Slinger (But only on carriers since PD destroyers are by this stage expendable and I don't want my corvettes and destroyers having expensive archeotech.) Anything else is poop.
My biggest peev is that restored ecumenopolis don’t give the archeostudy faculty bonuses despite it being established (in the planetary feature) that restored ecumenopolises are still sprinkled with ancient stuff
@8:15 Really don't like the idea of RNG getting to decide if we get to roleplay an Archaeological Arms Race or not: I want uniquely powerful fleets that are crippling to lose or expensive to use, not some minor bonuses who's loss you can just shrug off.
I absolutely love the idea in theory and archotech buildings in practice. However, they do have some major design flaws that should be addressed: 1. The precursor based buildings are not balanced and further punish the player for rolling a bad precursor. Making precursors more unique is a good idea in theory, but needs to be balanced correctly to not feel arbitrarily punishing. 2. I agree with you on the lackluster archeology dig sites. It would be best, if the dig site events themselves were more impactful, but the minor relic deposits do make them quite worthwhile. Again, though, it feels arbitrarily punishing to not roll a deposit. The easiest solution is to make all dig sites yield minor artifact deposits no matter what. 3. The minor artifact ship components are a complete fuck up. I like the idea of having limited access to very powerful components, which clearly is what they were going for, but the implementation is abysmal. First of all the components are way to weak to deserve being limited so drastically and need to be severly buffed. Secondly they interact extremely poorly with the fleet manager. Not being able to "build all ships" in the middle of a war, because you are lacking minor artifacts is a huge pain in the ass. They should either make it so that the fleet manager resorts to a ship variant without minor artifact compontents instead if you are lacking artifacts, or - and this is what I would go for - make it so that minor artifact component ships do not count towards fleet size limit, so that you can fill your fleets in fleet manager to the max with normal ships and just throw in some minor artifact ships on top of that.
Remnants has always been my favorite origin from a roleplay perspective, and I'll be honest that's about the only use any of the rework has been. Roleplay. I love the flavor, I just wish it was more viable beginning to end.
First: buff relic world origin HARD. Second: tweak minor artifacts in general. Not sure which way they should be tweaked, but definitely in a way that makes them more accessible.
if you are crisis empire, your "crisis" ships with ancient tech will cost only minerals, and this is super powerful combo when you are using only corvettes.
I have rarely made ship designs myself, usually for the crisis, and relied mainly on the auto-design to make my ships better but now I either avoid the archaeotechnology or probably make really bad ships because you can't rely on the auto-design when you get those techs. I can barely get enough minor relics in my games with the lowest so far being 6 and the max being 21 and everything costing like 10x that it is essentially impossible to use anything besides the buildings. At least the buildings aren't forced on the player like the auto-design.
So, what we need to do is hammer out exactly what niche archaeotech offers. A wild card boost in power for a limited number of ships and planets. They should also be different for each empire to keep archaeotech the wild card it is. To that end... Archaeology technologies should be seeded to the various dig sites in the game from the start so that each empire will be limited in the archaeotech available to ships. This will keep archaeotech feeling unique per empire based on what they find. Archaeoengineers should grant the ability to acquire archaeotech technologies from other empires be diplomacy, collaborative effects, or theft. Who better to incorporate more esoteric ancient technology across the galaxy into their collective than the empire that has dedicated themselves to unlocking the secrets of those that came before? Archaeotech for ships should be a step above your available tier level. You're not meant to be able to outfit the full fleet, so throwing advanced ancient tech on the odd ship or two? The tech should be worth it for having to baby your ship designs and fleet loadouts. Have archaeotech cap out at tier 5-- a way to say you're on the cusp of being equal in power to the lost empires. Archaeoengineers have modules up to two tiers above their level, and cap at tier 6. End game archaeoengineers have learned to exploit the lost technology in a way to equal the very forces of the universe. Archaeotech on planets should have a cost that limits being able to shove it on each planet. Maybe an increasing cost of minor artifacts every time a new archaeotech building is built. This means you have to pick and choose where archaeotech is going for the citizens of the empire. Archaeoengineers should get variants on the archeotech buildings that are better than their standard counterparts and cost less. Again, this is an empire that has dedicated itself to exploiting lost tech in all forms.
I don't think I've seen a mechanic in this game that I like conceptually as much as the artifact rework that let me down so badly on the implementation. Hopefully it gets tweaked all over soon.
Excess artifacts are worse then excess food or minerals. I was constantly getting alerts about full stockpiles until I converted my fleet in the midgame to all the archeotech I found - At which point every upgrade ground to a halt and took forever even with control of the rubricator. I almost feel like not having a cap or 10x the cap would be best.
I agree with making more technology mutually exclusive, so that certain empires only have certain unique techs, so long as they're not locked behind RNG. It'd be extremely irritating to want nano-missiles, but never "roll" them in your select few archeotechs if you did only get a certain amount. I don't really see the cap as much of an issue since I agree with the idea of having a limited-but-stronger fleet, but the costs and damage values of the weapons need to be tweaked slightly. There also needs to be a tall way of getting artifacts, since playing wide is currently the only way to get them. Maybe the archeostudies building generates a few relics even without a relic world and generates even more if it's on one.
Add in a reduction to minor artifact usage with the acension perk, as well as with the origin so those specific builds can pump them out easier. Also allow minor artifact trades on the galactic market as a secondary option since it's now a resource. This'll allow those who want to use them to buy them up, and those who don't care about them to profit off of them.
It feels really balanced, and only getting a few random technologies instead of all after investing so much like an ascension perk would be breaking to a point where it would be to risky to run. The buff to dig sights could be 50 to grant you a single sale to collectors. The only change I think needing to be considered is archaeological dig sites guaranteeing monthly artifacts, in case you only land one or two dig sites and can't even mine the resource.
I think the only artefact weapon I use sometimes is the new Titan main weapon. That one is a good alternative to the Perditions Beam and since you won't end up with many Titans anyway, you can keep the costs in check. The rest is mainly pointless. If they would be good enough to warrant the bother to design and build "artefact ship-types" to equip like an elite fleet or 1/4 of your ships of every fleet or something, but they just aren't in most cases.
@@fjohn4892 I'll be honest even within the first 39 years 500 energy credits ain't gonna cut it. Wth am I going to use It for? I've never found myself constrained by energy.
More minor artifact rewards, better minor artifact weapons, increased cap for minor artifacts. I agree. Also add a market option. I really want the minor artifact fleets to be the quality over quantity approach. Your ships will be super strong but super expensive and difficult to replace.
I really like the The Archaeo-Engineers Ascension Perk both thematically and as a concept. A society wide dedication to eccentric if not outright bizarre technology, which not even those who create/rediscover it fully understand. It shouldn't try to chase the META, to be the next top tier choice for all. It just needs to have an interesting niche. I really like the suggestion of limiting the number of Minor Artifact technologies you can get in a given play-through. (And maybe prevent them from being reverse engineered from debris.) I think this would contribute greatly to the uniqueness and enjoyment of each play-through and Archaeo-Technology. Though I'm not very fond of removing the stockpile cap. I think there should be some circumstantial elements to making use of Archaeo-Technologies.
I put a X slot weapon on my battleship design that cost artifacts and then burned through my 3k stock before I could replenish my fleets. Proceeded to never make designs that used artifacts again. The technologies are minor upgrades or side grades from my experience and just add one more resource bottleneck when you're engaged in a rough war. The intentions were good and should be praised, but the execution fell short of making this feature something I'd consider including in my play :(
What about adding a choice late game Mutually exclusive Tier 5 Tech to either: Reverse engineer the archeotech removing the need for Minor Artifacts OR Improve Archeology keeping the requirements in Minor Artifacts but making it better than Tier 5.
Paradox: “We’re limiting minor artifacts because we don’t want people running around with fleets of ships armed with artifact weapons”. Me: “Why would I want to do that?” The problem with artifact weapons is that after hearing Montu talk about them, and Ep3o play a game as an archeotech empire (he actually did well in that game, but he came to the conclusion that the artifact weapons were actually holding him back) is that artifact weapons aren’t a good investment. Early on you can’t afford them, and by the time you can (sort of) afford them, you have better options. Paradox really needs to rebalance artifact weapons so they’re a more practical option. At least the archeotech buildings seem to be good - maybe you’re better off just saving your minor artifacts for them?
I guess I will just remain a noob as I still quite enjoy this Origin very much and I love minor artifact weapons and using the discovery tree to hunt down dig sites and act like a historian!
The archeo shield with the shield hardening is totally OP. Shields are the ones that get penetrated first anyway usually, so it's already better, then let's say an armor with similar effect would be, so getting a lot of it without giving up support slots is just so good.
I played with the relic world start with a bunch of friends recently and I found the weapons to be very effective. You can’t spam them yea, but making a single super powered fleet was a genuine threat for even the guys who were massive in comparison to me. My strat was putting the ancient giga cannon variant on a battleship as well as the the ancient strike craft with a bunch of screening destroyers and a few cruisers to round it off. The giga cannons would pop the shield shields with their alpha damage and the strike craft would rip apart what was left. Very effective against fallen empires and pretty much everything else except for probably evasion destroyers
Honestly, I feel Minor Artifact and Archaeotech should be a viable 'playstyle' - if you go down that path it should be comparable with any of the other options. The weapons should be unique, interesting, worth taking (ESPECIALLY with Archaeotech) and late game viable. that said, I have a weird play preference - ALWAYS at 3x (or more) tech cost and max galaxy with low numbers of habitable worlds. I like the slower feel. Either way, in this I'm always running against my Artifact Cap when I played as a Relic World Origin, to the point I sometimes struggled to even spend my minor artifacts! In this weird case a higher cap would be useful too.
The devs should add in a building that generates minor artifacts, like artifact Hunters, or 3D printed artifact buildings or buildings that give jobs to people who buy artifacts from sellers.
3.7: Minor Artifact storage is always full because I have no way to meaningfully spend them. Increasing storage would be nice. 3.8: "Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 1,000 or by 3,000 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken." ...thanks.^^
Honestly how archeological sites and minor artifacts work before was completely fine and Guilli's mod made a bettere job to make minor artifact more useful.
I'd like it if they made the minor artifact weapons feel like something. It's a complaint I also have with Titans: sure, they're good; they're better, but you don't feel them. I'd like Minor Artifact fleets (and Titans and Juggernauts) to really punch above their weight when they're in the fleet. Almost to feel like the same power spike you got from unlocking Battleships pre-3.6.
I’ve had the opposite problem in all my games where I have way to many minor artifacts that I can’t spend them all. When I’m not using gigastrutual engineering I usually only put all artifact weapons on the GDF or imperial armara since I can have a 800 fleet cap fleet but that’s all, it lets me get a 1 mill fleet much faster than otherwise and let’s me dominate the galaxy and crisis
Build fleets with nothing but archaeo-tech weapons and armor. That'll solve that artifact glut IMMEDIATELY. I literally blew through 3k artifacts re-outfitting two destroyed fleets after fighting the crisis...and I had another 4-5 fleets I couldn't rebuild after that! Luckily I had the Rubricator which could generate 500 minor artifacts pretty quickly. That made an otherwise impossible situation into something that was slightly less impossible.
If they are less powerful than normal T4 and T5 weapons, why does the Auto-fit always put artifacts weapons on my ship? Should they not use the T4 and T5 variation instead? I wish there was a checkbos under the Auto-upgrade to say "Use artifacts" as well.
If you want to try out a mod that balances minor artifact weapons (so they scale better) check out this one by @regunes5780 steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2947769627
Yay ! small disclaimer tho, this is a rather conservative balance mod. It does : - Fix ArcheoLaser and ArcheoKinetic for late game usage - Fix the brokenness of getting a pseudo-T7 weapon year 25 (nanomissile ;_;) what it doesn't do : - Doesn't fix ship designer - Doesn't buff minor artifact income or cost. If this draw enough attention I'll make subsequent versions that will appeal more people I believe. (ps : I need to tweak the minor artifact cost x Size )
I actually like that they are limited. Makes application more niche and requires you to sacrifice an ascension perk for the full benefits. Was really fun designing a designated heavy hitter archeo fleet for the crucial battles while using standard fleets to hold the rest of the front. But I see why people might dislike the restrictions.
I think the issue that people generally have is that they aren't strong enough for the limits put on them, generally. Like, if you're making trade offs, sacrifices, whatever, it feels like you should get more for them, and outside of a few edge cases, most of the time your archeo ships aren't going to be better *enough* than other well designed ships to validate having to micro them as special or whatever.
I had a lot of games were either I have no dig sites or only one but no option to build an artifact station on top from the chanced rolled. Wished it was at least maybe 1 or 1.5 minor artifacts as a guarantee at least from doing a dig site.
I just wish this game leaned on YOU being the powerhouse, not some empire thousands of years ago that you have have to siphon their tech. I want everything to be made off my OWN back. This is also why I dislike dark matter tech, because it's all based on fallen empires. Why can’t I discover and make the tech myself? Why can't I rp the way I want to and am always forced into this 'ancient civilizations better' role? The game wants you to be able to rp, but how can we if it's always the same thing over and over?
I am not so keen that you would be limited to what tech you can pick up. They're hard enough as it is to get at random, I feel. So even if you decide to specialize, you may not get the tech you really want. I do feel it a lot more beneficial for people who like to spread out a lot, and it is hard for those who get unlucky can get not gain access to a permanent deposit. Now sure how to fix this. Technically, you can trade with other civilizations, but I am not sure how effective this is. And there is no open market for Artefacts. Maybe there should be a few galactic communities related decisions for this. That goes both ways of course, trying to clamp down on illegal trade as well as trying to promote trade for it. Which mirrors a bit on how the real world works when it comes to the trade of artefacts, relics and old art object. Oh, and of course, we should have the British way of going around and plundering to get them. ;) I do feel that big ships benefit a lot more from it than small ships. Small ships are more likely to get destroyed. And so you're more likely to need to replace that tech. One idea is that one should be able to try to salvage those ships. Even if it is your own ships. And no matter what setting of type of salvaging. And of course, the civic gives you an even better bonus. As well as the Ascension perk Enigmatic Engineering giving you protection from others trying to salvage it, giving it a bit of a synergy with the system. Enigmatic Engineering is hardly an overpowered perk. And it fits well thematically. Power wise, I do feel that it should be at least comparable with end tier 5 stuff. At least when you have the ascension perk. And a few items feel like they are. But a fair few things feel a bit underpowered. I feel they should be side grade in general. But for them to work like that, they need to have an end game use. (And a few do) Overall, I like that they feel rare enough that you do not just spend them willy-nilly. I like how I actually did design special archeotech ships and saved the more cool stuff for some special ships. I put it on my big, important ships. Not my minor ships.
I would personally be against limiting the number of archeo-techs that you can get. Its already a very RNG dependent system, which is not ideal, and capping the number of them you can get means that you are permanently less effective if you don't roll good ones. I'm also not sure why the devs feel that the weapons need to be limited. With a few exceptions, they mostly feel like very niche tools with large trade-offs, and definitely don't hit hard enough to require limitations.
I get what you're saying and to some degree I concur with you however I feel overall what the devs went for works. Having only a few of these ships in your fleet makes them special and gives you the opportunity to roleplay some fleet flagships. I can dig that.
I’m only able to implement them into every ship I make because I use a mod that can set the galaxy age upon spawning to “Old” so there’s more archaeology and permanent deposits on some populated planets and relic worlds (kinda like the ones that let you build mote harvesting traps) that can be harvested in perpetuity with artifact labs
You lose the bonus from upgrading your relic worlds. If you randomize the tech maybe some of them you can always find like the refineries. Some of them seem fairly niche.
Paradox are trying to get players used to the idea of using diverse ship designs. So a system that soft forces you to only deploy artifact tech to some of your ships contributes to that goal. It also forces your opponents to adapt, and only fill out some of their ships with the tech to counter it. I would cautiously say that this is how dark matter, nanites, zro, and living metal should be.
Civ 3 went that route and it was an absolute nightmare due to rng. Had multiple games where 0 rubber spawned and 1 aluminum. Needless to say it gave 1 civ such a tech advantage when one has modern units and the other is stuck in ww1.
@Waterking 101 it was to the initial post if paradox would limit the strategic resources more in terms of ships tech. Least that's how I understood it.
Yeah I totally agree on your assessment of the artifical cap restriction. I found this out the hard way. Had a fleet of 300 hit a difficult enemy citadel. two thirds of the fleet got wiped out. I hit the fleet replenishment button and all of a sudden the artifical bottle neck on artifacts throttled my ability to replenish the fleet. The enemy took advantage. I had to quicly update all of my ship templates to remove artifact weapons and gear to get back into the game. I also think your proposal for supporting the dev's ideas for archeotech to be rare (ie: you don't get all of the tech each game, rather a random selection of tech) is a good solution however I would like the ancient refinery to always be a tech option. That building in and of itself deals with another bottle neck, namely the rng nature of finding either rare tech deposits and/or the random situation where you have crap mineral planets and cannot provide the material base to artifically create the rare resources.
They don't need to make it possible to outfit your entire fleet with these mods, but they could rather buff their power and make the ascension perk increase the power by a greater %.
On my very first game after the artifact changes, I got the Rubricator and decided to take the Archaeotech Ascension Perk, thinking it a good idea. Well, I equipped a lot of my ships with Archaeotechnology and when I went to Fleet Manager to build the fleet, it costed over twice my minor artifacts storange for a single fleet, which means I would have to build said fleet throughout 50~60 years of using the Rubricator and passive sources (mind you, I was at maximum capacity when I set out to do this). At that point I just went back to ship builder, deleted all ship design of that type except for Archaeo-Corvettes, and just built regular fleets with some coverttes thrown in.
It would be great to have a way of keeping on Auto-Design of your navies, but toggling on or off which special resources the AI can use to design them. That way we could just keep the AI designing our fleets and updating them with our current tech, but without having to worry about scarce resources.
yeah i agree. they are in weird place right now and i dont think the upcoming changes will fix it. I would really like the 'can only research a few archeotechs' idea and think that would go well with a general buff to them
I agree i run an artifact game, i even found a relic world and i slowly upgraded my fleets over many years. my fleets destroyed all the enemies back then, but if you lose too many ships with artifact tech, you can't rebuild them fast enough because of the limited artifact cap. if you are in a big war and the enemies are using T 4/T 5 weapons, i only had to use a medium fleet as backup in my teretory with those weapons, all other fleets had to use standard tech. i personally think that's a mistake because then it's hard to keep a steady support of artifacts/cap. i mean what's the point of using artefact tech if you can't use it. i would rate the artefact cannons as T 4 +, a bit better than standard but that's it, once you have T5 weapons/gear there's not much difference except for the nano cloud launchers, those are great. the artefact shields and armour are also good, but i would also rate them as T 4 +. after you have neutronim armour or psi / dark matter tech, they lose a lot of their value. especially at that price. of course, that's just my opinion.
To put it into perspective, aside from the monthly deposits you can unlock, most artifact rewards went up by between 200-1000% while the cost of the existing minor artifact uses went up by 2.000-10.000%. Unless you get really lucky and get several deposits of minor artifacts you are way worse off and you will likely never use a single archeo tech all game. I used to LOVE Reverse Engineer Minor Artifacts, but it went from 5 to 500 minor artifacts and now I skip the tech in half my games ...
The artifacts rework feels extremely hit and miss, with some questionable design implementation in places. The missiles are amazing, and some of the starbase upgrades are solid, along with the ancient refinery (which frankly is maybe a bit OP). But if the tech is supposed to be limited to "elite ships" of your fleet, then they should be at a power level that feels elite, and I agree that the storage cap seems really artificially small. And frankly, it seems you need the ascension perk to even get the most out of what you can even field, and if you get unlucky with digsite producing minor artifact deposits, or even finding dig sites you can claim at all, then you're just out of luck. They're in this awkward position were you need to get really lucky to get enough to be meaningful, but then close to useless if you don't get lucky. The idea of "we don't necessarily want them to be rare to find, but rare to use" feels kind of bad because they're giving us all these toys and then telling us they don't want us to really play with them. Still, ancient ramparts, shield overcharger, and defense platforms that are nothing but those missiles and shield armor make for some pretty effective castles. They're the first defense point I've had where the enemy fleets charged in and retreated with minimal losses of defense platforms (which are usually largely evaporated at the end of any combat). Not sure what the damage was on the enemy fleet, but the AI actually attacked 3 different such chokepoint systems trying to get in and were repelled every time. And if you can get a handful of archeotech missles on early game corvettes with the research speed boost from Remnants, that is a fairly decent early game military power spike.
Was so happy when a 'rare' ancient artifact weapon popped up in my research... Went to design a sexy new gun cruiser with them... could only afford to build 1-2. Very sad.
I love what they've done with archeotech, if anything I would rectify it by making it an ascension path, the tradition trees could grant more capacity, income, and further value increases. Could even capstone it with a second/extra precursor
I just use archaeotech on my battleships and titans early game, and late game only titans. I don't mind the lack of them... They're powerful. Just use them on your titans :)
It seems like having a single archeoweapon grants the 33% damage bonus from the ascension perk to ALL weapons, including the regular ones. I actually really like this bug, weird as it is.
The income is so much more valuable than you're letting on. No more precursor dead ends, reverse engineering no longer a meme, constant peace parade/spiritual revelation buff. Yeah, a lot of archaeo ship parts are trash and because of that you will NEVER make a battleship like that, poor synergy and a waste of 170 artifacts. My only real complaint with this update is the arbitrary cap. Resource silos should increase ALL resource caps, even if it's something small for artifacts like +100 per silo.
I mean what my friends and I do is pull all of our resources into the federation fleet. It makes sense because we are working towards bringing everything we have to create the best fleet we possibly can. With barter of alloys, gases, and consumer goods we give artifacts and we put all our efforts into using battleships and titans to have those deadly weapons. Imo i like what they did and i do agree with how some of the weapons feel lackluster, but they do give you a general idea that you have to be selective in how you want to use your ancient tech.
I would love to see the method you mentioned of them being rare. And I mean incredibly rare. Somewhere on the level of relics. Where, which acheo tech being something that can define the trajectory of your empire. Have it be a new level of rarity of technology. Something you'll almost certainly never get more than 2 or 3 of in a single game. Perhaps having the ascension perk could raise the number of techs you get up to 4-5. Of course, many of them would need to be buffed for this to work balance-wise. This could also have cascading effects as well, which I think could help. Remnants could become an incredible origin, where choosing whether to keep your relic world or reform it into an ecumenopolis could be a real choice. Also, the enigmatic engineering ascension could become amazing with this. Risking losing a key technology in war would finally matter. It could also help each empire feel more unique in a given game with their strategies. Discovering that one empire's 'signature tech' is missile based could be vital to forming a strategy to beat them.
Would you considering doing a video on the applications of cloaking and any build recommendations etc. where best to put decloaking stations and ways to rush cloaking?
Honestly everyon should play with Guilli's Planetary Features mod which buffs minor artifacts a lot (and in general just adds so much flavor and texture to the galaxy with planetary features that buff & nerf planets to make them feel more unique than just their type)
Archeotechs should be gained the same way Primitive Insights are gained: through situations, except each time the situation requires more progress and you can use an approach that costs minor artifact upkeep. Completing a situation should give you a choice of one of three Archeotechs research options through an event. Remnant should start with a weaker Faculty of Archaeostudies (Archaeostudies Digsite?) that only gives one Archaeongineer job, lower research speed (+15%?) but only costs 5EC upkeep. This can be upgraded to a Faculty once Archaeostudies tech is researched. This is in addition to the actual starting lab, not replacing it.
I don't mind artifact ships to be a bit rare, but then you must make them really worth it and add some flavor. Sounds cooler to me this way. "Oh shit, he's sending his artifact fleet that has like 50% more fleet power than any other. YIKES" but knowing that any damage you deal to it is going to ACTUALLY hurt their feelings. I'd like also to see an (A) artifact module that increase in disengagement chance significantly, so that you can protect those expensive and rare ships a bit more. Then over time they tend to survive battles and through this you build up 'Ancient' fleets that have served for decades, with a lot of experience with wack alien tech on them. You'll still lose them through attrition, but it they survive more often than not. Like, not wanting to use the artifact supplied weapons because they're statistically inferior to T5 weapons is just wack. Completely unsatisfying. @.@ They should 100% be outside the tech level. Maybe on par with T5 or better yet, a side-grade. Something unique! My dreams are a bit too specific to include though, granted.
The worst is the AI autodesign. There ships where never able to upgrade properly. And also que Federation Fleet is a mess all the time if you don't control it, i was never able to fully upgraded it. I think only the Titan and Starbases upgrades are worth it right now. Generally i save for the "Reveal secrets".
You're really hung up "Sell to private collectors". Just make a well rounded economy instead of "min-maxing" your economy. Do you have to win to have fun? Do you not RP? The artifact cap is ridiculously low but other than that the whole rework is amazing.
I can see that they may have overcorrected, but I really didn't like the "sell to private collector" meta that existed pre-rework and I don't want to see that back. Minor artifacts should be impactful, yes, but just selling them for money is not the way to do that.
I.have used this effectively in a high difficulty game. I used it to be a smaller power without high tech and relied on amoebas and acheo weapon/defences to make my ships rival top tech empires. Beyond my acheo ships, I had my honestly crappy mainline ships. Like T1 shields and T2 armor T2 missiles on them, plus ameobas. They had 1/3 the armor+shields and 1/2 the damage output of my acheo ships. In fights they died first and I replaced them first. By the time of the great galactic war, I could win fights and spam science ships and started upgrading my non acheotech ships using the debris based science. This was Grand Admiral, early mid/end game, 25% more expensive tech, 10x crisis (x3), scaling AI tech boost, max fallen empires, 50% advanced start empires, playing payback origin. Still haven't hit the crisis, but am mopping up MSI while researching Titans. My fleets are aboht 1/4 archeotech; those ships are 33% higher damage and 50% tougher still.
There's something you missed when it comes to the ancient tech, the game seems to consider them better than any other piece of comparable tech. While this can be mitigated for ships via designing your own, when it comes to starbases and their modules if you inspect them you'll find them equipped with the suspension fields even if you have darkmatter and/or psionic shielding researched. The game considers them better than even a tier 6 or 7 component
The problem is that Paradox tends to choke you on resources. For example and imo diplo's are a resource because they are auto generated and you never have enough of them. Influence is also something that you never have enough of. Try expanding and also having diplomatic pacts as well as trying to stake claims to your rivals system. Can't be done because Influence is so limited at the best of times. I do note that some of this may have changed since I last played because my PC is not working.
I may be wrong(haven't played for a year or so so don't know about current meta), but can't minor artifact weapons be used on dreadnoughts and titans only(or carriers if having a separate carrier fleet that stays behind the main one can be implemented)
There should be museum curator jobs that consume artifacts and archaeologist jobs that produce artifacts. Both could be alternatives to researchers (I miss when theocratic jobs gave society research, this proposal would be in the same vein). That way small amounts of artifacts could be put to use early on.
11:02 minor issue with the economy. You only have 18 pops on your planet which means you took the Roccan resistance, changed the origin, then added eager explorers. Your economy complaint isn’t exactly bulletproof here.
Oh goodness, you're entirely right! I grabbed an empire from the shelf to look at/show off the economic start of remnants and I picked one with Eager explorers without noticing!
The 'correct' econ numbers should be +32E +29M +10F +1CD +12A +19U. Which is not as bad as shown in the video (due to eager explorers of perhaps the megacorp one)!
Sorry about that
If you let the game auto-design your ships for you, Minor Artifacts will absolutely screw you.
Yeah, it's unpleasant
i have NO idea why the auto designer loves those weapons so much
@@lioninjawarloc they’re pretty good at least where components are concerned.
You’re right though it loves ancient macro batteries, and they’re just worse gauss cannons
This is the biggest issue with minor artefacts.
God this, I absolutely hate this its so bad, I wish you could filter out rare materials in your designs so I don't have to manually update them all
If archeotech should be rare, then it should blow the hell out of regular weapons.
They kinda do if you take archeo-engineering. But then you're using an entire ascension perk for parts you can put on maybe 20% of your fleet, plus the massive undertaking of micromanaging ship designs and fleet layput. Just isn't worth imo
Or have niche applications where they're absolutely unbeatable (as some already do).
I guess we know why the ancients died out though; their tech sucked.
@@fletcherreder6091 Yeah, the trebuchet will not be particularly strong today either.
@@scotthoover1568 Only in early or mid game. once you have t4 they even out, t5 only the swarm missiles are worth while. the rest of the tech is kind of crap.
If you want to make full use of archaeo-components take the Become the Crisis perk. Menacing ships *always* have a fixed cost, regardless what components you equip them with, so you don't even need any minor artifacts. You can make swarms of menacing corvettes loaded with nothing but nano-missile cloud launchers and pulse armor and all it will cost you is minerals.
You know, that _does_ sound like a proper Crisis.
That's a great idea.
I am playing it right now and it is about as insane as you can imagine. Nano missiles are basically better disruptors, pulse armor is basically better tierV armor+shield combo, bot are relatively easy to obtain and cost useless Society research compared to most good weapons and armor being locked in precious Engineering.
There is also a better point-defence if you want Menancing Destroyers.
Holy shit you just solved this game
Goddamn, I gotta try this sometime. Though playing The Crisis is somewhat of a pain, since I like to avoid warmongering.
I've never been one to sell the minor artifacts to collectors; usually just saving them up so I had the 50 needed for the Precursor Insight. having played through the Remnants (one of my fav origins), I agree that start is brutal now with the 20 credit upkeep.
Currently on a megacorp remnant playthrough and honestly never noticed the energy cost. The relic income did help me blow through the precursor chain really fast. I even have the rubricator world and this is the first game I've had it where I haven't been desperate to complete the archaeological site because my original archaeostudies relic income was enough for what I needed.
@@ShummaAwilum I actual had one play through where I had the Rubricator, got the Relic World from the Moon Base, and then the First League Relic World, so I kept the size 12 one as the relic world to keep the good version of the Archeology Lab
there has been plenty of games where for whatever reason the gods of luck just flat out refused to give me the 50 minor artifacts needed to do the precursor insight. Those games always left me with a bitter taste in my mouth so i am glad that you can now have monthly income. Even if you have to save up at least now its guaranteed.
Yes, some balancing needs to be done and the max storage limit doesn't make sense.
You forgot to mention that you can build these archeo-weapons on crisis ships without the need for minor artefacts. :b
I'd certainly make a significant connection between Archeoengineering, Minor Artifacts, and Fallen/Awakened Empires. Fallen empires should strictly run with specialized Archeo weapons, maybe a tier or two above the archeoweapons we can research normally. Their capital planets when taken should be a veritable treasure trove of minor artifact income and of course the cap removed.
My problem with Minor Artifacts in general right now is that you only get rewarded for going into them if you get very lucky. I think it would be a lot better if the current minor artifact tech instead of costing minor artifacts to construct, could be unlocked as a research option through an expenditure of minor artifacts (with a long CD, like 5-10 years). Then once researched you could just equip your fleets, this would make archeostudies and minor artifact producing sites extremely valuable and maybe even worth declaring a war over.
yes, please!
Great idea!
I like this idea. It makes more sense too. After studying the artifacts you learn to create the tech. Otherwise it is like orks strapping things that they find and don't understand on the outside of a ship and declaring it a weapon.
Archeotech weapons need a unique niche, contributing to their rarity and making them more useful in specific scenarios rather than them being a replacement for tiered weapons so you can outfit your entire navy with them.
I think so too. Minor artifacts, should they play a role in ship components, should really have some profound weaknesses and benefits to make them stand out. But they should be unique, and not a whole-navy type of thing. Unique as in, oh maybe the Irassians had biological ships, should we put organic components on our ships, they will have no armor nor shields, but have extremely fast regeneration. Or the first league had anti-gravity weapons, and putting their components on your ship would boost neutron launchers damage, but disable all other weapons. Like, they should have archeotech components that feel unique for specific types of roles in your navy, not just, it's better than the tiered equivalents so let's have everyone put these on.
There is a perk you can pick up that boosts the damage output and the rubicator now increases damage output too.
@@barryevans791 that doesn't address my point. Increasing their damage just puts them on par with the basic tiered weapons or makes them strictly better, exasperating the problem only further. If they're supposed to be rare weapons and components that you don't necessarily fill your entire ship with, then making them strictly better than the tiered components is counterproductive because players will want to always make their ships as powerful as possible, making the need for artifact deposits extremely high. If they're just weaker however then there's no point in using them at all. But if they fill a unique niche that can't be replaced but isn't strictly better than the tiered weapons, then it makes more sense to include a few of the components without necessarily decking out your entire ship with them, making them too specialized with exploitable weaknesses.
I think that was their intent, but using minor artifacts as the means to limit their use is probably not the best way to do that.
@@AndrewChumKaser I don't think they are meant to be rare, I think they are faction specific/thematic. Relic world origin boosts it further for example.
I did not realize that they were that rare. In my current playthrough I am getting something like 7 per month and keep running into the issue of my maximum storage on them. I did notice that the dig sites were low for the payout, but the income was very good, 7 total on like 4 sites.
Only use for Archeo rn is on Titans. Gives them extra punch and you can't build enough to empty your reserve of artefacts.
Juggernaut too, obviosuly
Im still a bit on the Edge for the Titan Archo Weapon. It has half the Cooldown, and therfore double the DPS.
But it also has only half the Range
Honestly, my inclination would be to start with increasing every minor artifact value by *10 (eg., add a zero to the end of the minor artifact cap, minor artifact deposits, costs in minor artifacts and minor artifact gains from interactions), then rebalance around the wider reasonably possible range of costs and gains that starting point allows.
Coud get tied to the intergalactic market.
on the point of the rewards not being scaled, its the same with most of the older events, like look at the freighter event, you can keep a whole 300! minerals or return them for influence and positive relations. 300 minerals gets you next to nothing.
The minor artifact cap in some ways makes your fleets glass cannons (although not in the traditional sense). With enough dig sites and the Rubricator you can build an armada of nothing but archaeo-tech ships. But if you happen to lose a significant number of them -- I'm looking at you, 25x crisis -- you'll need decades to rebuild them regardless of how many alloys and strategic resources you have saved up.
This is why I have designs for archeotech and "budget" versions of ships.
and at that point you would have been better to become the crisis and just churn out endless shitty armadas of ships
Ancient Refinery is by far the best building; after Archeotech building. My worlds run amazingly more efficient now since I typically build motes, gases, and crystals on every world for sake of redundancy and also to maximize fleet flower through edits. Now with one building, I can produce more than those three buildings combined.
As far as the weapons and ship modules are concerned, I feel like they need to feel more like a Tier 6 option. Outside of the nano-cloud missiles I've not really seen a point to the others
I would say that they should be tier 5, but with the ap they should be similar to dark matter but worse than psionic. Another way would be to add 2 levels of archaeotech, like a mid game one that is lvl 3 and an end game version that is lvl 5, then the ap would make them lvl 4 mid game and just above dark matter at end game.
Still waiting for an energy counterpart to kinetic artillery.
I really have to wonder what the person who gave the Ancient Macro Batteries stats was thinking. Its base damage is weaker than t4 kinetic, has less accuracy than any basic kinetic, and has no damage modifiers which set it apart from basic kinetics. The only thing it does better is that the L-slot version has no minimum range, meaning there is literally no reason to use the S or M-slot versions over t4 kinetic. Archeotech parts look like they're best suited to being sidegrades to standard components, at least without investing the AP to buff them.
@@JabberwockOclock ,
Well... it's probably the same person who wanted the player to progress from UNSC (Halo), to Rebel Alliance (Star Wars), to Dominion (Star Trek), while also keeping the weapons _exactly_ the same...
Projectile Weapons to take down Shields... Energy Weapons to take out Armour+Hull... Missiles to take out Armour + Hull by avoiding Shields... Use Flak to take out Fighters...
The difference between T1 weapons and their T5 counterparts... is just damage. That's it, that's all. That's the only difference for _all_ the tech... the most basic of numbers. Shields, more shields, faster recharge rate.... so what if you have barriers and shields... there isn't a difference between them, except some numbers... Psi Barriers, Psi Shields... Dark Matter Shields... all are just numbers. Don't think about this logically, think about _none_ of this logically... and you won't be questioning reality... why do large projectile weapons have greater range?! Why?! Why?! Energy weapons should be the biggest threat at range since they have a much greater, at or near, light speed velocity they close the difference with! But, it's the Kinetic Energy Weapons which have that range...
Because they need that range to better take out the shields of the enemy before the energy weapons enter range... that's why.
They introduced an entirely new class of ships, frigates, to be used as torpedo boats... because the developers don't know how to design a game with logic. At great distance, what weapon is the greatest threat? Missiles. They should have the longest range... and the highest damage output... as the game advances, they should become the primary anti-ship weapon... eventually, fighters and small ships would be replaced with larger ships with better anti-missile capabilities... so that true brawlers/battleships can duke it out in energy range... as kinetic energy weapons are a thing of very distant past as they are slow/inaccurate and only good at point range combat.
The game has a decent foundation... but the developers want the players to play the game in a specific,, counter intuitive way... and will make design choices to _force_ the players to play that way... no more battleship fleets with just neutron launchers... it's now torpedo cruisers... or Battleships fleets equipped with the Kinetic Batteries...
@@aralornwolf3140 Lasers have spread at range where they lose focus and start down the inverse square path. That's why energy weapons technically have a max range. Kinetic projectiles don't lose velocity in space, so you would be able to hit stations from far outside their range. Max effective range depends on the capability of ships to dodge.
I'm not sure if limiting the technologies you can get would be a good idea, we already have that whole debacle about having to restart for precursors and this might make it even worse, where the cool stuff is gated behind rng
Remove limit, increase costs. Then you still need to pace yourself on what you use them on, but are not limited by artificial caps. Or let cap increase with number of bureaucrats.
The only archeotech I find that's actually worth using:
1. Nanocloud missiles. As you said, they're essentially disruptors 2.0. Or as I call them: Disruptors for bigger ships (since disruptors in my experience go on smaller ships.)
2. Ancient Suppression Fields (I use them as alternative shield hardeners on my bigger ships (cruisers on up) so I can stick armor hardeners on them and have both armor and shield hardening. I don't 100% replace shields with them. It also means I never use anymore than 7.)
3. Pulse Armor (only a small amount of them, and only on bigger ships.)
4. Web Slinger (But only on carriers since PD destroyers are by this stage expendable and I don't want my corvettes and destroyers having expensive archeotech.)
Anything else is poop.
My biggest peev is that restored ecumenopolis don’t give the archeostudy faculty bonuses despite it being established (in the planetary feature) that restored ecumenopolises are still sprinkled with ancient stuff
@8:15 Really don't like the idea of RNG getting to decide if we get to roleplay an Archaeological Arms Race or not: I want uniquely powerful fleets that are crippling to lose or expensive to use, not some minor bonuses who's loss you can just shrug off.
I absolutely love the idea in theory and archotech buildings in practice. However, they do have some major design flaws that should be addressed:
1. The precursor based buildings are not balanced and further punish the player for rolling a bad precursor. Making precursors more unique is a good idea in theory, but needs to be balanced correctly to not feel arbitrarily punishing.
2. I agree with you on the lackluster archeology dig sites. It would be best, if the dig site events themselves were more impactful, but the minor relic deposits do make them quite worthwhile. Again, though, it feels arbitrarily punishing to not roll a deposit. The easiest solution is to make all dig sites yield minor artifact deposits no matter what.
3. The minor artifact ship components are a complete fuck up. I like the idea of having limited access to very powerful components, which clearly is what they were going for, but the implementation is abysmal. First of all the components are way to weak to deserve being limited so drastically and need to be severly buffed. Secondly they interact extremely poorly with the fleet manager. Not being able to "build all ships" in the middle of a war, because you are lacking minor artifacts is a huge pain in the ass. They should either make it so that the fleet manager resorts to a ship variant without minor artifact compontents instead if you are lacking artifacts, or - and this is what I would go for - make it so that minor artifact component ships do not count towards fleet size limit, so that you can fill your fleets in fleet manager to the max with normal ships and just throw in some minor artifact ships on top of that.
My head canon is that minor artifacts are just a bunch of old toasters you glue together to make a gun.
And a few floppy disks right?
Remnants has always been my favorite origin from a roleplay perspective, and I'll be honest that's about the only use any of the rework has been. Roleplay. I love the flavor, I just wish it was more viable beginning to end.
First: buff relic world origin HARD.
Second: tweak minor artifacts in general. Not sure which way they should be tweaked, but definitely in a way that makes them more accessible.
if you are crisis empire, your "crisis" ships with ancient tech will cost only minerals, and this is super powerful combo when you are using only corvettes.
It is very painful to win with artifact empire builds, the pain.... 😂
I feel like it would be interesting if ancient weapons were even more difficult to acquire large amounts of, but significantly stronger.
I have rarely made ship designs myself, usually for the crisis, and relied mainly on the auto-design to make my ships better but now I either avoid the archaeotechnology or probably make really bad ships because you can't rely on the auto-design when you get those techs. I can barely get enough minor relics in my games with the lowest so far being 6 and the max being 21 and everything costing like 10x that it is essentially impossible to use anything besides the buildings. At least the buildings aren't forced on the player like the auto-design.
So, what we need to do is hammer out exactly what niche archaeotech offers. A wild card boost in power for a limited number of ships and planets. They should also be different for each empire to keep archaeotech the wild card it is. To that end...
Archaeology technologies should be seeded to the various dig sites in the game from the start so that each empire will be limited in the archaeotech available to ships. This will keep archaeotech feeling unique per empire based on what they find.
Archaeoengineers should grant the ability to acquire archaeotech technologies from other empires be diplomacy, collaborative effects, or theft. Who better to incorporate more esoteric ancient technology across the galaxy into their collective than the empire that has dedicated themselves to unlocking the secrets of those that came before?
Archaeotech for ships should be a step above your available tier level. You're not meant to be able to outfit the full fleet, so throwing advanced ancient tech on the odd ship or two? The tech should be worth it for having to baby your ship designs and fleet loadouts. Have archaeotech cap out at tier 5-- a way to say you're on the cusp of being equal in power to the lost empires.
Archaeoengineers have modules up to two tiers above their level, and cap at tier 6. End game archaeoengineers have learned to exploit the lost technology in a way to equal the very forces of the universe.
Archaeotech on planets should have a cost that limits being able to shove it on each planet. Maybe an increasing cost of minor artifacts every time a new archaeotech building is built. This means you have to pick and choose where archaeotech is going for the citizens of the empire.
Archaeoengineers should get variants on the archeotech buildings that are better than their standard counterparts and cost less. Again, this is an empire that has dedicated itself to exploiting lost tech in all forms.
I don't think I've seen a mechanic in this game that I like conceptually as much as the artifact rework that let me down so badly on the implementation. Hopefully it gets tweaked all over soon.
Why is it not already great?
Why Pdx isn't able to release great content before testing bad one first?
Excess artifacts are worse then excess food or minerals. I was constantly getting alerts about full stockpiles until I converted my fleet in the midgame to all the archeotech I found - At which point every upgrade ground to a halt and took forever even with control of the rubricator.
I almost feel like not having a cap or 10x the cap would be best.
I agree with making more technology mutually exclusive, so that certain empires only have certain unique techs, so long as they're not locked behind RNG. It'd be extremely irritating to want nano-missiles, but never "roll" them in your select few archeotechs if you did only get a certain amount. I don't really see the cap as much of an issue since I agree with the idea of having a limited-but-stronger fleet, but the costs and damage values of the weapons need to be tweaked slightly. There also needs to be a tall way of getting artifacts, since playing wide is currently the only way to get them. Maybe the archeostudies building generates a few relics even without a relic world and generates even more if it's on one.
Add in a reduction to minor artifact usage with the acension perk, as well as with the origin so those specific builds can pump them out easier. Also allow minor artifact trades on the galactic market as a secondary option since it's now a resource. This'll allow those who want to use them to buy them up, and those who don't care about them to profit off of them.
It feels really balanced, and only getting a few random technologies instead of all after investing so much like an ascension perk would be breaking to a point where it would be to risky to run. The buff to dig sights could be 50 to grant you a single sale to collectors. The only change I think needing to be considered is archaeological dig sites guaranteeing monthly artifacts, in case you only land one or two dig sites and can't even mine the resource.
As long as I get those Ancient Refinieries, I'm golden
I think the only artefact weapon I use sometimes is the new Titan main weapon. That one is a good alternative to the Perditions Beam and since you won't end up with many Titans anyway, you can keep the costs in check. The rest is mainly pointless. If they would be good enough to warrant the bother to design and build "artefact ship-types" to equip like an elite fleet or 1/4 of your ships of every fleet or something, but they just aren't in most cases.
Honestly don’t think the ‘Sell to private collectors’ decision is as useful as you think it is
I have never used it in my life tbh
That was used as an example. As it's the cheapest decision on the list. Replace with (1.5 corvettes or equivalent if that helps)
It does fall off pretty hard and pre-rework it was better, but 500 credits is a lot in the first 30 years
Heretic detected
commencing purging protocols
@@fjohn4892 I'll be honest even within the first 39 years 500 energy credits ain't gonna cut it. Wth am I going to use It for? I've never found myself constrained by energy.
More minor artifact rewards, better minor artifact weapons, increased cap for minor artifacts.
I agree. Also add a market option.
I really want the minor artifact fleets to be the quality over quantity approach. Your ships will be super strong but super expensive and difficult to replace.
What if you can sell them, for 10 energy per artifact, but can't buy them?
I really like the The Archaeo-Engineers Ascension Perk both thematically and as a concept.
A society wide dedication to eccentric if not outright bizarre technology, which not even those who create/rediscover it fully understand.
It shouldn't try to chase the META, to be the next top tier choice for all.
It just needs to have an interesting niche.
I really like the suggestion of limiting the number of Minor Artifact technologies you can get in a given play-through.
(And maybe prevent them from being reverse engineered from debris.)
I think this would contribute greatly to the uniqueness and enjoyment of each play-through and Archaeo-Technology.
Though I'm not very fond of removing the stockpile cap.
I think there should be some circumstantial elements to making use of Archaeo-Technologies.
I put a X slot weapon on my battleship design that cost artifacts and then burned through my 3k stock before I could replenish my fleets. Proceeded to never make designs that used artifacts again. The technologies are minor upgrades or side grades from my experience and just add one more resource bottleneck when you're engaged in a rough war.
The intentions were good and should be praised, but the execution fell short of making this feature something I'd consider including in my play :(
I'll take a hard pass on randomising archeotech availability per run. Just balance it's quality to it's cost, and reign in the ship designer.
What about adding a choice late game Mutually exclusive Tier 5 Tech to either:
Reverse engineer the archeotech removing the need for Minor Artifacts
OR
Improve Archeology keeping the requirements in Minor Artifacts but making it better than Tier 5.
Paradox: “We’re limiting minor artifacts because we don’t want people running around with fleets of ships armed with artifact weapons”.
Me: “Why would I want to do that?”
The problem with artifact weapons is that after hearing Montu talk about them, and Ep3o play a game as an archeotech empire (he actually did well in that game, but he came to the conclusion that the artifact weapons were actually holding him back) is that artifact weapons aren’t a good investment. Early on you can’t afford them, and by the time you can (sort of) afford them, you have better options. Paradox really needs to rebalance artifact weapons so they’re a more practical option. At least the archeotech buildings seem to be good - maybe you’re better off just saving your minor artifacts for them?
I guess I will just remain a noob as I still quite enjoy this Origin very much and I love minor artifact weapons and using the discovery tree to hunt down dig sites and act like a historian!
The archeo shield with the shield hardening is totally OP. Shields are the ones that get penetrated first anyway usually, so it's already better, then let's say an armor with similar effect would be, so getting a lot of it without giving up support slots is just so good.
I played with the relic world start with a bunch of friends recently and I found the weapons to be very effective. You can’t spam them yea, but making a single super powered fleet was a genuine threat for even the guys who were massive in comparison to me. My strat was putting the ancient giga cannon variant on a battleship as well as the the ancient strike craft with a bunch of screening destroyers and a few cruisers to round it off. The giga cannons would pop the shield shields with their alpha damage and the strike craft would rip apart what was left. Very effective against fallen empires and pretty much everything else except for probably evasion destroyers
Honestly, I feel Minor Artifact and Archaeotech should be a viable 'playstyle' - if you go down that path it should be comparable with any of the other options. The weapons should be unique, interesting, worth taking (ESPECIALLY with Archaeotech) and late game viable.
that said, I have a weird play preference - ALWAYS at 3x (or more) tech cost and max galaxy with low numbers of habitable worlds. I like the slower feel. Either way, in this I'm always running against my Artifact Cap when I played as a Relic World Origin, to the point I sometimes struggled to even spend my minor artifacts! In this weird case a higher cap would be useful too.
The devs should add in a building that generates minor artifacts, like artifact Hunters, or 3D printed artifact buildings or buildings that give jobs to people who buy artifacts from sellers.
3.7: Minor Artifact storage is always full because I have no way to meaningfully spend them. Increasing storage would be nice.
3.8: "Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 1,000 or by 3,000 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken."
...thanks.^^
It's a harsh but sound argument. The amount of artifacts you get are pretty small compared to the cost of using any of the archaeostudies stuff.
Honestly how archeological sites and minor artifacts work before was completely fine and Guilli's mod made a bettere job to make minor artifact more useful.
I'd like it if they made the minor artifact weapons feel like something. It's a complaint I also have with Titans: sure, they're good; they're better, but you don't feel them. I'd like Minor Artifact fleets (and Titans and Juggernauts) to really punch above their weight when they're in the fleet. Almost to feel like the same power spike you got from unlocking Battleships pre-3.6.
I’ve had the opposite problem in all my games where I have way to many minor artifacts that I can’t spend them all.
When I’m not using gigastrutual engineering I usually only put all artifact weapons on the GDF or imperial armara since I can have a 800 fleet cap fleet but that’s all, it lets me get a 1 mill fleet much faster than otherwise and let’s me dominate the galaxy and crisis
Build fleets with nothing but archaeo-tech weapons and armor. That'll solve that artifact glut IMMEDIATELY. I literally blew through 3k artifacts re-outfitting two destroyed fleets after fighting the crisis...and I had another 4-5 fleets I couldn't rebuild after that!
Luckily I had the Rubricator which could generate 500 minor artifacts pretty quickly. That made an otherwise impossible situation into something that was slightly less impossible.
If they are less powerful than normal T4 and T5 weapons, why does the Auto-fit always put artifacts weapons on my ship? Should they not use the T4 and T5 variation instead?
I wish there was a checkbos under the Auto-upgrade to say "Use artifacts" as well.
If you want to try out a mod that balances minor artifact weapons (so they scale better) check out this one by @regunes5780
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2947769627
Yay ! small disclaimer tho, this is a rather conservative balance mod. It does :
- Fix ArcheoLaser and ArcheoKinetic for late game usage
- Fix the brokenness of getting a pseudo-T7 weapon year 25 (nanomissile ;_;)
what it doesn't do :
- Doesn't fix ship designer
- Doesn't buff minor artifact income or cost.
If this draw enough attention I'll make subsequent versions that will appeal more people I believe.
(ps : I need to tweak the minor artifact cost x Size )
Mods to the rescue again.
Honestly Stellaris is like any Bethesda Game Studios game to me. No mods, no play.
I actually like that they are limited. Makes application more niche and requires you to sacrifice an ascension perk for the full benefits. Was really fun designing a designated heavy hitter archeo fleet for the crucial battles while using standard fleets to hold the rest of the front. But I see why people might dislike the restrictions.
I think the issue that people generally have is that they aren't strong enough for the limits put on them, generally. Like, if you're making trade offs, sacrifices, whatever, it feels like you should get more for them, and outside of a few edge cases, most of the time your archeo ships aren't going to be better *enough* than other well designed ships to validate having to micro them as special or whatever.
I had a lot of games were either I have no dig sites or only one but no option to build an artifact station on top from the chanced rolled. Wished it was at least maybe 1 or 1.5 minor artifacts as a guarantee at least from doing a dig site.
I just wish this game leaned on YOU being the powerhouse, not some empire thousands of years ago that you have have to siphon their tech. I want everything to be made off my OWN back. This is also why I dislike dark matter tech, because it's all based on fallen empires. Why can’t I discover and make the tech myself? Why can't I rp the way I want to and am always forced into this 'ancient civilizations better' role?
The game wants you to be able to rp, but how can we if it's always the same thing over and over?
I am not so keen that you would be limited to what tech you can pick up. They're hard enough as it is to get at random, I feel. So even if you decide to specialize, you may not get the tech you really want.
I do feel it a lot more beneficial for people who like to spread out a lot, and it is hard for those who get unlucky can get not gain access to a permanent deposit. Now sure how to fix this. Technically, you can trade with other civilizations, but I am not sure how effective this is. And there is no open market for Artefacts. Maybe there should be a few galactic communities related decisions for this. That goes both ways of course, trying to clamp down on illegal trade as well as trying to promote trade for it. Which mirrors a bit on how the real world works when it comes to the trade of artefacts, relics and old art object. Oh, and of course, we should have the British way of going around and plundering to get them. ;)
I do feel that big ships benefit a lot more from it than small ships. Small ships are more likely to get destroyed. And so you're more likely to need to replace that tech. One idea is that one should be able to try to salvage those ships. Even if it is your own ships. And no matter what setting of type of salvaging. And of course, the civic gives you an even better bonus. As well as the Ascension perk Enigmatic Engineering giving you protection from others trying to salvage it, giving it a bit of a synergy with the system. Enigmatic Engineering is hardly an overpowered perk. And it fits well thematically.
Power wise, I do feel that it should be at least comparable with end tier 5 stuff. At least when you have the ascension perk. And a few items feel like they are. But a fair few things feel a bit underpowered. I feel they should be side grade in general. But for them to work like that, they need to have an end game use. (And a few do)
Overall, I like that they feel rare enough that you do not just spend them willy-nilly. I like how I actually did design special archeotech ships and saved the more cool stuff for some special ships. I put it on my big, important ships. Not my minor ships.
I would personally be against limiting the number of archeo-techs that you can get. Its already a very RNG dependent system, which is not ideal, and capping the number of them you can get means that you are permanently less effective if you don't roll good ones.
I'm also not sure why the devs feel that the weapons need to be limited. With a few exceptions, they mostly feel like very niche tools with large trade-offs, and definitely don't hit hard enough to require limitations.
I get what you're saying and to some degree I concur with you however I feel overall what the devs went for works. Having only a few of these ships in your fleet makes them special and gives you the opportunity to roleplay some fleet flagships. I can dig that.
I’m only able to implement them into every ship I make because I use a mod that can set the galaxy age upon spawning to “Old” so there’s more archaeology and permanent deposits on some populated planets and relic worlds (kinda like the ones that let you build mote harvesting traps) that can be harvested in perpetuity with artifact labs
You lose the bonus from upgrading your relic worlds.
If you randomize the tech maybe some of them you can always find like the refineries. Some of them seem fairly niche.
Paradox are trying to get players used to the idea of using diverse ship designs. So a system that soft forces you to only deploy artifact tech to some of your ships contributes to that goal.
It also forces your opponents to adapt, and only fill out some of their ships with the tech to counter it.
I would cautiously say that this is how dark matter, nanites, zro, and living metal should be.
I could get behind that idea, if it wasn't the case the T5 is actually better. My physic shields are way more powerful then artifact ones.
@@Scylon1 psycic shields are meant to be strongest shields
Civ 3 went that route and it was an absolute nightmare due to rng. Had multiple games where 0 rubber spawned and 1 aluminum. Needless to say it gave 1 civ such a tech advantage when one has modern units and the other is stuck in ww1.
@@hersh1138 have you got the wrong comment
@Waterking 101 it was to the initial post if paradox would limit the strategic resources more in terms of ships tech. Least that's how I understood it.
Yeah I totally agree on your assessment of the artifical cap restriction. I found this out the hard way. Had a fleet of 300 hit a difficult enemy citadel. two thirds of the fleet got wiped out. I hit the fleet replenishment button and all of a sudden the artifical bottle neck on artifacts throttled my ability to replenish the fleet. The enemy took advantage. I had to quicly update all of my ship templates to remove artifact weapons and gear to get back into the game.
I also think your proposal for supporting the dev's ideas for archeotech to be rare (ie: you don't get all of the tech each game, rather a random selection of tech) is a good solution however I would like the ancient refinery to always be a tech option. That building in and of itself deals with another bottle neck, namely the rng nature of finding either rare tech deposits and/or the random situation where you have crap mineral planets and cannot provide the material base to artifically create the rare resources.
They don't need to make it possible to outfit your entire fleet with these mods, but they could rather buff their power and make the ascension perk increase the power by a greater %.
On my very first game after the artifact changes, I got the Rubricator and decided to take the Archaeotech Ascension Perk, thinking it a good idea.
Well, I equipped a lot of my ships with Archaeotechnology and when I went to Fleet Manager to build the fleet, it costed over twice my minor artifacts storange for a single fleet, which means I would have to build said fleet throughout 50~60 years of using the Rubricator and passive sources (mind you, I was at maximum capacity when I set out to do this). At that point I just went back to ship builder, deleted all ship design of that type except for Archaeo-Corvettes, and just built regular fleets with some coverttes thrown in.
It would be great to have a way of keeping on Auto-Design of your navies, but toggling on or off which special resources the AI can use to design them. That way we could just keep the AI designing our fleets and updating them with our current tech, but without having to worry about scarce resources.
Those new weapons are great on my Menacing type ships though!
Since they only cost minerals whatever you equip them with.
yeah i agree. they are in weird place right now and i dont think the upcoming changes will fix it. I would really like the 'can only research a few archeotechs' idea and think that would go well with a general buff to them
I agree i run an artifact game, i even found a relic world and i slowly upgraded my fleets over many years. my fleets destroyed all the enemies back then, but if you lose too many ships with artifact tech, you can't rebuild them fast enough because of the limited artifact cap. if you are in a big war and the enemies are using T 4/T 5 weapons, i only had to use a medium fleet as backup in my teretory with those weapons, all other fleets had to use standard tech. i personally think that's a mistake because then it's hard to keep a steady support of artifacts/cap. i mean what's the point of using artefact tech if you can't use it. i would rate the artefact cannons as T 4 +, a bit better than standard but that's it, once you have T5 weapons/gear there's not much difference except for the nano cloud launchers, those are great. the artefact shields and armour are also good, but i would also rate them as T 4 +. after you have neutronim armour or psi / dark matter tech, they lose a lot of their value. especially at that price. of course, that's just my opinion.
To put it into perspective, aside from the monthly deposits you can unlock, most artifact rewards went up by between 200-1000% while the cost of the existing minor artifact uses went up by 2.000-10.000%.
Unless you get really lucky and get several deposits of minor artifacts you are way worse off and you will likely never use a single archeo tech all game.
I used to LOVE Reverse Engineer Minor Artifacts, but it went from 5 to 500 minor artifacts and now I skip the tech in half my games ...
The artifacts rework feels extremely hit and miss, with some questionable design implementation in places. The missiles are amazing, and some of the starbase upgrades are solid, along with the ancient refinery (which frankly is maybe a bit OP). But if the tech is supposed to be limited to "elite ships" of your fleet, then they should be at a power level that feels elite, and I agree that the storage cap seems really artificially small. And frankly, it seems you need the ascension perk to even get the most out of what you can even field, and if you get unlucky with digsite producing minor artifact deposits, or even finding dig sites you can claim at all, then you're just out of luck. They're in this awkward position were you need to get really lucky to get enough to be meaningful, but then close to useless if you don't get lucky. The idea of "we don't necessarily want them to be rare to find, but rare to use" feels kind of bad because they're giving us all these toys and then telling us they don't want us to really play with them.
Still, ancient ramparts, shield overcharger, and defense platforms that are nothing but those missiles and shield armor make for some pretty effective castles. They're the first defense point I've had where the enemy fleets charged in and retreated with minimal losses of defense platforms (which are usually largely evaporated at the end of any combat). Not sure what the damage was on the enemy fleet, but the AI actually attacked 3 different such chokepoint systems trying to get in and were repelled every time. And if you can get a handful of archeotech missles on early game corvettes with the research speed boost from Remnants, that is a fairly decent early game military power spike.
Minor Artifacts pretty much force you Not to use Auto-Complete ship as they just always place the worst weapons or make fleets unsustainable
Was so happy when a 'rare' ancient artifact weapon popped up in my research... Went to design a sexy new gun cruiser with them... could only afford to build 1-2. Very sad.
I love what they've done with archeotech, if anything I would rectify it by making it an ascension path, the tradition trees could grant more capacity, income, and further value increases. Could even capstone it with a second/extra precursor
I really feel like every dig site should give you 1 with a chance to 1-3.
I totally agree!
I just use archaeotech on my battleships and titans early game, and late game only titans. I don't mind the lack of them... They're powerful. Just use them on your titans :)
It seems like having a single archeoweapon grants the 33% damage bonus from the ascension perk to ALL weapons, including the regular ones.
I actually really like this bug, weird as it is.
The income is so much more valuable than you're letting on. No more precursor dead ends, reverse engineering no longer a meme, constant peace parade/spiritual revelation buff. Yeah, a lot of archaeo ship parts are trash and because of that you will NEVER make a battleship like that, poor synergy and a waste of 170 artifacts. My only real complaint with this update is the arbitrary cap. Resource silos should increase ALL resource caps, even if it's something small for artifacts like +100 per silo.
I mean what my friends and I do is pull all of our resources into the federation fleet. It makes sense because we are working towards bringing everything we have to create the best fleet we possibly can. With barter of alloys, gases, and consumer goods we give artifacts and we put all our efforts into using battleships and titans to have those deadly weapons. Imo i like what they did and i do agree with how some of the weapons feel lackluster, but they do give you a general idea that you have to be selective in how you want to use your ancient tech.
I would love to see the method you mentioned of them being rare. And I mean incredibly rare. Somewhere on the level of relics. Where, which acheo tech being something that can define the trajectory of your empire. Have it be a new level of rarity of technology. Something you'll almost certainly never get more than 2 or 3 of in a single game. Perhaps having the ascension perk could raise the number of techs you get up to 4-5. Of course, many of them would need to be buffed for this to work balance-wise.
This could also have cascading effects as well, which I think could help. Remnants could become an incredible origin, where choosing whether to keep your relic world or reform it into an ecumenopolis could be a real choice. Also, the enigmatic engineering ascension could become amazing with this. Risking losing a key technology in war would finally matter.
It could also help each empire feel more unique in a given game with their strategies. Discovering that one empire's 'signature tech' is missile based could be vital to forming a strategy to beat them.
Would you considering doing a video on the applications of cloaking and any build recommendations etc. where best to put decloaking stations and ways to rush cloaking?
I love the idea of strapping a couple of ancient toasters to a ship to deal damage
Honestly everyon should play with Guilli's Planetary Features mod which buffs minor artifacts a lot (and in general just adds so much flavor and texture to the galaxy with planetary features that buff & nerf planets to make them feel more unique than just their type)
True, but a lot of people prefer to play without mods like myself. The issue for me is I shouldn't have to mod my game to get the effect I want.
Archeotechs should be gained the same way Primitive Insights are gained: through situations, except each time the situation requires more progress and you can use an approach that costs minor artifact upkeep. Completing a situation should give you a choice of one of three Archeotechs research options through an event.
Remnant should start with a weaker Faculty of Archaeostudies (Archaeostudies Digsite?) that only gives one Archaeongineer job, lower research speed (+15%?) but only costs 5EC upkeep. This can be upgraded to a Faculty once Archaeostudies tech is researched. This is in addition to the actual starting lab, not replacing it.
I don't mind artifact ships to be a bit rare, but then you must make them really worth it and add some flavor. Sounds cooler to me this way. "Oh shit, he's sending his artifact fleet that has like 50% more fleet power than any other. YIKES" but knowing that any damage you deal to it is going to ACTUALLY hurt their feelings.
I'd like also to see an (A) artifact module that increase in disengagement chance significantly, so that you can protect those expensive and rare ships a bit more. Then over time they tend to survive battles and through this you build up 'Ancient' fleets that have served for decades, with a lot of experience with wack alien tech on them. You'll still lose them through attrition, but it they survive more often than not.
Like, not wanting to use the artifact supplied weapons because they're statistically inferior to T5 weapons is just wack. Completely unsatisfying. @.@ They should 100% be outside the tech level. Maybe on par with T5 or better yet, a side-grade. Something unique!
My dreams are a bit too specific to include though, granted.
The worst is the AI autodesign. There ships where never able to upgrade properly. And also que Federation Fleet is a mess all the time if you don't control it, i was never able to fully upgraded it. I think only the Titan and Starbases upgrades are worth it right now. Generally i save for the "Reveal secrets".
You're really hung up "Sell to private collectors". Just make a well rounded economy instead of "min-maxing" your economy. Do you have to win to have fun? Do you not RP? The artifact cap is ridiculously low but other than that the whole rework is amazing.
I can see that they may have overcorrected, but I really didn't like the "sell to private collector" meta that existed pre-rework and I don't want to see that back. Minor artifacts should be impactful, yes, but just selling them for money is not the way to do that.
I.have used this effectively in a high difficulty game.
I used it to be a smaller power without high tech and relied on amoebas and acheo weapon/defences to make my ships rival top tech empires.
Beyond my acheo ships, I had my honestly crappy mainline ships. Like T1 shields and T2 armor T2 missiles on them, plus ameobas.
They had 1/3 the armor+shields and 1/2 the damage output of my acheo ships. In fights they died first and I replaced them first.
By the time of the great galactic war, I could win fights and spam science ships and started upgrading my non acheotech ships using the debris based science.
This was Grand Admiral, early mid/end game, 25% more expensive tech, 10x crisis (x3), scaling AI tech boost, max fallen empires, 50% advanced start empires, playing payback origin.
Still haven't hit the crisis, but am mopping up MSI while researching Titans. My fleets are aboht 1/4 archeotech; those ships are 33% higher damage and 50% tougher still.
I mean, if you're running with the become the crisis perk. it's pretty decent
There's something you missed when it comes to the ancient tech, the game seems to consider them better than any other piece of comparable tech. While this can be mitigated for ships via designing your own, when it comes to starbases and their modules if you inspect them you'll find them equipped with the suspension fields even if you have darkmatter and/or psionic shielding researched. The game considers them better than even a tier 6 or 7 component
"Slightly missing the mark" actually means utterly screwed in mp if you chose this origin and probably screwed in sp.
The problem is that Paradox tends to choke you on resources. For example and imo diplo's are a resource because they are auto generated and you never have enough of them. Influence is also something that you never have enough of. Try expanding and also having diplomatic pacts as well as trying to stake claims to your rivals system. Can't be done because Influence is so limited at the best of times. I do note that some of this may have changed since I last played because my PC is not working.
they should make sure all archeological place thingy to have at least 0.5 minor artifact instead of 0 tbh.
I may be wrong(haven't played for a year or so so don't know about current meta), but can't minor artifact weapons be used on dreadnoughts and titans only(or carriers if having a separate carrier fleet that stays behind the main one can be implemented)
There should be museum curator jobs that consume artifacts and archaeologist jobs that produce artifacts. Both could be alternatives to researchers (I miss when theocratic jobs gave society research, this proposal would be in the same vein). That way small amounts of artifacts could be put to use early on.
it fills all of the default gun slots that you cant change on star bases with macro batterys and it gives me brain rott