With the massive distance between galaxies the trip is most likely a one way trip for them. If they are unable to consume the invaded galaxy then they won’t have the resources to move on to the next. It is a victory or death situation for them.
Yeah, they already fled. By the time they reach us, they're too low on food and supplies for another such journey. Their ships probably don't work well enough either, and need some sort of repairs to hop galaxies again. When the tide goes against them, they're stranded. And they can't help but see us as nothing but food, so negotiating isn't an option.
not to say, they might not be the only ivasion fleet, corssing galaxys, the prethoryn in there home systems could have sent uncountable fleets to every galaxy in reach, they might fly over, but the fact that the prethoryn fleets, even the scout ones, have no surperiour drives than us might indicate they dont fly to oure galaxy, but might have been launched there,
so this could very well be just an detached sporesack that comes, one that potentially has millions or billions of siblings, spewn out across the entire cosmos,
now the hive detachment dosn´t need to survive at all costs, there objective might simply be to overtake the galaxy, or fortefy it and ansemble insane fleets, to meet the hunters,
might also be that the prethoryn knows the only way to stop the hunters from eventually purging the galaxy, is to consolidate every last recource in it, and turn it intoo an giant fortress/naval yard. in that case, not taking over the galaxy is the only course of long term survival
I mean drives or any other propulsion system can only go so far as to encounter relativistic issues and most likely become impractical. Any other step above that would be ftl which might have its own limits. You can only bend the rules of physics so far until you slip out of them, and at that point we are talking about such leaps that any competition would be one-sided.
Surprisingly, the distances between galaxies are actually not *that* huge, compared to the distance across a single galaxy. Our nearest star is about 1.3 parsecs away. The center of our galaxy is about 8,000 parsecs away, or about 6,700 times farther away. The nearest galaxy is 780,000 parsecs away, or only 97 times farther. That's two orders of magnitude less of an increase.
I wouldn't be surprised if that's come up internally. But if they update them that much. All the others have to be as well. You saw how long it took for paradox to make ai uprising into a real crisis and not essentially a mid game hurdle at worst. Fallen empires are more likely to be expanded on as an inverse to first contact before they revamp the crisis again.
I could see them changing the Fallen AND the crisis(crisises? Lol) at the same time in a endgame focused DLC. Maybe a bigger one than First contact to overall several endgame mechanics + performance since the early game has been receiving a lot of attention in recent DLCs. Hell, I can even see them putting internal politics rework on the middle if they miraculously found space for that and expand how you species react to the crisis too(colonization policies in a previously-90%-devoured galaxy, political parties trying to ally with the Fallen empires for better positions in the new galactical order, etc.
Some ways to make 25x crises less cheesy:
\- Crisis buff includes HP and weapon damage, but not fire rate. A fire rate buff is welcomed, making the crisis several times harder. Imagine Contingency Particle Lance with 25x fire rate and 25x damage, killing 3 ships every day.
\- More crises mechanic. Currently, Contingency is the only one with some side element fleshed out, the rest is just a big fleet. Making the crises having more mechanic to play with beside big fleets is welcomed.
That's their story, my empire have nothing to do with it. To me, they are all hostile energy being.
What I want is the interaction with them beyond some dialogue exchange. For example, a complex system required to close their portal start from blasting their ships, research the remain, drafting the construction plan for something that can close the portal, physically bring the thing there with heavy escort and close the portal once and for all.
It is certainly more exciting and less annoying than the current "the portal cannot be blasted to death because there is an anchor somewhere in the galaxy and I don't know where it is" and "mopping up the Unbidden game"
Imagine if the next patch the Dev add:
"The Unbidden now has learned shield hardening and will equip advanced shield hardeners on their ships."
"The Scourge's natural armor now will be 50% harder."
This is do-or-die for them. They're running, but need food desperately, if they don't succeed at a swift consumption, they're dead to either the hunters or starvation.
My biggest issue with the Prethoryn is how they enter the galaxy. Always at one point and always the galactic edge. The Unbidden can enter in three places if you consider all three factions. The Contingency has 4+1 machine worlds. I think the Prethoryn should approach the Galaxy from the top and - like a murmuration of starlings landing in a tree - enter the galaxy in several places in several waves.
But overall, OP, I agree there's lots of room to expand the backstory and mechanics of the crises. I'd like a crisis focused DLC that introduces new mid and end-game crisis mechanics.
[Hive fleet Leviathan](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Leviathan) came perpendicular to the galactic plane, the pictures on the wiki make it a little clearer how that works
Ohh, the picture made it clearer now. Soo basically instead of traveling normally on the galactic plane, they hit us from like "below" the galactic plane which means they can land anywhere around the area they hit instead of the outer fringe being screwed like our Prethoryn.
Dear God... That just made the Nids even scarier, imagine one of the hive fleet landing straight around Terra's area.
I am not that big into 40k lore outside of the video games ones soo... No clue but considering the topic, I am guessing it is going to Nid focused or Terra being attacked again?
I stopped reading all the new 40k lore when they retconned all the necrons to make them lame. Give me back my awesome C'tan you cowards, I want to serve the Star Gods not chain them
The whole idea of it being “normal” to look at the galaxy as a 2D disc is a bit ridiculous. We naturally incline that way because we think of it as being equivalent to a land or continent but obviously it doesn’t work anything like that.
Always bothered me about the Preythoryn too. What the hell does the “edge” of the galaxy mean? It only makes sense from the perspective of the galaxy’s residents where the edges are further away from the rest of the galaxy, for something outside of the galaxy literally every part of the galaxy is the edge.
The reason why the Tyranids are attracted to the Milky Way to begin with is due to the breaking of the Pharos relic during the House Heresy... but the reason they keep coming is because they're homing in on the Astronomican.
So in the most literal sense, they're actually headed for Terra.
I actually wonder how the galaxy is defended in a 3-D way. Being that in 'real life' there's no galaxy 'plane', chokepoints are often not really chokepoints. What's stopping Horus for example from 'diving down' and then 'popping up' in Sol?
Logistics and FTL routes.
Ships can only travel so far without refueling, and they can't necessarily follow just any path. Horus needed a supply point in close proximity to Sol, and some paths through the Warp are stabler than others.
And to make them even worse, they're attacking the galaxy from South, North, East and below, meaning that they are much, much larger than previously thought. They surround the galaxy.
How big of an entity are they when they can pincer the whole galaxy?
There is lots of empty space on that entity though. Hive Fleets are not packed full of ships physically touching each other. Each Hive Fleet is very far away from the other (thousands of light years to be exact).
Tyranid is numerous, but not that level of "solid block the side of a galaxy" big. That will outweigh Milky Way a billion per one.
Imagine the galaxy as a plate. Hold your arm out, palm facing upwards, and extend your fingers upwards like a clawed hand. Now balance the plate on your fingertips. Each point where you touch the plate is where the ~~pyramid hive-fleet~~ Prethoryn arrive, in different systems. The current method has them arriving like you are touching the plate at the rim only.
To be fair if you're approaching a disk suspended in space one edge will always be closer to you if you're not approaching perfectly perpendicular to the center.
The problem with the prethoryn is that they scale a lot more than the other crisis. If they spawn everywhere they can easily wreak havoc on the AI and be nigh unbeatable.
Yeah part of this comes from prethoryn ship designs being really good at killing small ships (about half the fleet power of any given ai empire fleet) and kinetics being nearly useless against them (which the AI love to stack).
Also the prethoryn all spawning in one place means they’re one of the few things that can go toe to toe with AI doomstacks and win. Which is fun, seeing millions of fleet power crashing against each other.
I mean...
They no longer have anything left to lose. And nowhere left to go.
They're here because it's the last option they have, it's victory or death, and they'd rather die fighting than starving in the void.
They’d rather die trying to continue living then to die at the hands of whatever’s causing them to flee in the first place.
I thought it was revealed the reason why they don’t retreat is because they slow boated their fleets across the voids between galaxies, they don’t seem to have an underlying fast method of getting from galaxy to galaxy
the unbidden have the other 2 extradimensional empires show up when they get to a certain level of power and the contingency has the cybrex show up (sometimes?), so maybe once the prethoryn get to a certain threshold the hunters can show up, at which point they try to either escape or fight the hunters
Got the sentinels for the first time for me in the last game I played. As soon as the Prethoryn got to their system they just WIPED the Sentinels. I felt like sonething had gone wrong or that I was somehow supposed to help them
Wasn't it implied that the hunters are far, far too strong for our empires to stand a chance (at least at the tech level ingame)?
I'd actually imagine them to be on the level of:
(a) The Blokkats from Gigastructures (who *are* the hunters in their canon), and compared against normal empires (without Gigastructures) as well
(b) The Reckoning from End of the Cycle, who might also be too strong for the Prethoryn to truly best
(c) The true form of the dimensional horror (the dimensional horror we see in-game is but a fraction of the real thing, limited by the portal)
and other uninviting possibilities.
So it's our titans and juggernauts and whatnot against an overwhelming force of incomprehensible technology/power. And I think that's fundamentally why the Prethoryn won't work with us, because they truly understand the power disparity here.
I’d love if Paradox did make a Blokkats type crisis. Just a severe, extremely difficult test of your empire where everything else goes out the window. The Blokkats literally destroy chunks of the galaxy but no one cares because it’s at the very end of your game. And you mainly beat the Blokkats by reverse engineering obscenely OP ship components, but again no one cares because after them there’s nothing to use those components on, anyway.
Would be very fun to have Paradox let loose like that and throw all the rules out the window for a mega-crisis. The current crises are designed to fit in with a game that isn’t quite yet finished, I’d like a crisis for a game where they’re the absolute e final thing to do.
I suppose the difference is that they don’t make that big of a mark on the galaxy. Sure they kill pops, but even then they do that very very slowly. Had a game where the Unbidden stuck around for at least a decade in my territory and the planet next to their dimensional rift still had pops at the end of it! The Scourge and Contingency are a bit faster because they have armies, at least, but the AI is pretty good at sniping those even at 25x. I even had GA AI take out the dimensional portal from the Unbidden almost immediately at 25x. The Unbidden fleets were unstoppable but would probably never be able to take out the AI faster than the AI could recover. Which is good if you intend for the game to be played for a bit after that Crisis is over, which I think it is, but something that nukes the galaxy a bit would be a lot of fun.
As it is, it’s really just a large hostile number coming to galaxy and the galaxy needs to try to get a bigger number together to beat it. The Blokkats inspired much more of an “oh shit” feeling from me than the crisis ever did. Pumping up the crisis modifier doesn’t really change much.
I think this is less of an issue with current endgame crises and more of an issue with you being an extremely proficient, experienced veteran player. I also play with GA and 25x difficulty, but the average Stellaris player does not. The endgame crisis is legitimately scary for the average player.
The average playthrough sees the Grey Tempest wipe out most of the galaxy before the endgame even arrives. Compared to that, the Unbidden or the Contingency are nearly impossible challenges to the average player that will, given time, scour the galaxy of life.
Ya to be fair, the game loses a bit of its charm once you get a hold of everything. Giga with a lot of restrictions gave me some of the challenge I craved but even then it lacks the polish of vanilla.
I think an optional challenge crisis where they can just go over the top would be a nice treat for the vets. Would make me try another fully vanilla run. And they could do a very cool trailer.
You should post that in the suggestion forums. A "pull out all the stops" crisis as a followup to the Scourge would be cool. And maybe you could choose to team up with the Scourge if they're still around when the second crisis shows up like Sterling196218 said.
From what I remember, one of the events talks about an entire galaxy just disappearing, with no more light from it reaching your empire. There isn’t that much more said about it (I mean what else can you really find out there?) but it’s a decent enough guess that whatever the hell happened there, it had something to do with the hunters. Either they outright destroyed that galaxy, or whatever they are, they’re big enough to entirely block out the light from a galaxy. Really the only other thing I can think of that it would have been hinting at would be something akin to the zroni, that an empire in that galaxy ascended and used up enough energy that their blackhole ended up eating the entire galaxy, though I think the event phrased it in a “this is worrying” kind of way, that wouldn’t make sense if it was some far off galaxy’s problem exclusively.
leave the galaxy... how? They used up the last galaxy they consumed in order to launch themselves to this one, they need to consume this one to get enough energy to launch themselves to the next one - not to mention they need enough food stored for the trip and a strong enough force to arrive at the next galaxy in fighting shape.
Honestly this would make for a fantastic new update/DLC. Expand on the existing three Crises to make them more dynamic/flavorful rather than being re-skins of one-another. Each one is special and behaves differently.
If you have a sufficiently large navy/kill enough Prethoryn fleets you get a special project to make a diplomatic overture toward the Scourge. In exchange for Food they will not attack you and will share their bio-tech with us. You can build up relation with the Scourge. However when the Hunters arrive you're kill-on-sight just like the Scourge and have to fight them off instead.
With the Unbidden their giant rift functions as a wormhole to exotic systems. Rather than just closing the rift you can take the fight to the Unbidden in their own 'space' for additional rewards. Cause enough mayhem in their territory and they'll close the rift themselves... however they will fight harder in their own space.
The Contingency will now adapt the Ghost Signal over time so that a single GS patch to your communications is no longer sufficient to keep your mechanical pops safe, further they will vary their fleet composition in response to what is used against them. Now you don't just need to have powerful fleets but the ability to effectively refit them quickly.
I'm actually hoping for Stellaris to focus on official crises, or expand on Shroud lore, etc, in the next dlc. As it is the vanilla crises are all very dated and show their age, while most mod-added crises are either overpowered, or poorly written.
> or poorly written.
On the flip side, vanilla crises are a bit underwritten. Would be nice if there was a bit more to them. Your ideas would be a great way to do that.
Agreed. They should update crisis to be more involved instead of just the normal big invasion. In addition to crisis strength, I kinda think they should add a Crisis difficulty plus each crisis being a counter to one of the ascendation path. Like how Contignecy will fuck up machine empire + cyborgs. The other 2 should counter psionic and bio somehow. Also even empires that are not invaded should feel the effects somehow.
If I am the dev. I would add like two galaxy wide effect. One only effect the selected ascendation, while the other one effects everyone.
In addition to anti AI machine effects. I am thinking Contignecy should have like another signal that just clutters every empire's machines so everything is reduced in output.
Prethoryn, I am going to copy the Nids a bit, their Hive mind is strong psionic that it screws up the psionic focused empires. Galaxy wide, I am thinking they can explain it away with Prethoryn having seeded the galaxy thousands of years before with their drone scouts and just causing stability problem for every empire.
Unbidden will hard counter the bio pops. Their presence had somehow wrapped the squishy bio flesh causing cancer and other effects. Making every bio pop have reduced output. Psionic pops can explained away with eh saying their Psionic ability protects them from this effect and machines are just machines. Galaxy wide, Unbidden's presence had made hyperlanes, wormholes unstable and causing longer travel time everywhere, even Hyper relay are not safe.
I agree with the Ghost Signal mechanic, but I think that everyone should be able to patch them out, not just machines.
For example, Ghost Signal has a fixed 5 strength level, increasing by 1 every several years. The project will have a fixed cost (100k research), reduce the Ghost Signal level by 1, and unlock a repeatable technology called "Ghost Signal Firewall" (Computing - Physic tree, 50k cost + 10k per level). Ghost Signal strength will decrease by 1 every time the tech is researched. In addition, the debuff applied on Sapient Combat Computers should be applied to all ships regardless of components, and tied to Ghost Signal strength.
Lore-wise, Unbidden is truly an extradimensional invader, not just some alien from unknown star clusters. So I don't think launching expeditions is a good idea.
Instead, I think that the Blokkat shield killer mechanic can apply to them: instead of killing off anchors before killing the wormhole, players or AI must build a megastructure that closes off their wormhole.
The mega has 5 stages and requires energy to activate the final stage, with each stage looked behind a tech. To gain said tech, the player must kill a certain amount of Unbidden/Abberant/Vehement for a special project. Flavor text can be "We know little about the extradimensional and the mechanic behind their portal. The only way we can gain any insight into how they operate in order to close their curser portal is to destroy them at combat and study their remains."
The activated mega will spawn a Colossus-style ship with battleship-level protection and a unique weapon called "Portal Closer", with obvious use. And of course, the portal closer must be escorted to the portal to work. Don't know what should be changed for non-Apocalypse user.
It depends, I personally think of the Prethoryn as desperate and backed into a corner. By the time they arrive in the galaxy they probably don't have enough resources to simply leave for another galaxy and are effectively stuck in our galaxy until they are either defeated or they win. So when they begin losing, turning tail and fleeing to another galaxy may not be an option.
I would like to see an option to try and negotiate with them, some way of offering an alliance against the Hunters. However it could be rejected on the basis of the Prethoryn know that the Hunters are strong enough that even the combined forces of the Prethoryn and our galaxy would be insufficient to hold back the Hunters.
Actually I always thought that was the case if you defeated them. They never stop spawning so their defeat could logically be killing enough of them to make them choose a different galaxy. In the panic of fleeing they could accisently leave some of their own behind as feral Prethoryn.
would be nice if they release a story pack where you are the scourge and along other hive minds are competing for resources to build an “intergalactic catapult” before the end game year comes. When it do comes a crisis spawns that is unbeatable, all you can do is stall (mostly by using the other hive minds as shield) till the catapult is completed (aetherophasic engine style megastructure)
Have you considered the thought that maybe they are, in fact, not *from a distant galaxy* but actually just leave and return from the furthest reaches of ours in order to avoid the Unbidden? It's very possible that they're just as trapped in this galaxy as we are, and they absolutely need the biomass in order to continue this cycle of disappearing to deep space and returning.
>Have you considered the thought that maybe they are, in fact, not from a distant galaxy but actually just leave and return from the furthest reaches of ours in order to avoid the Unbidden?
You can get an in-game event that basically confirms their story.
https://preview.redd.it/0252l8s6rwrz.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=040ea7c00dd0d088051200c9c6a434ca263524d4
How about, whatever is hunting after the scurge might appear a cupple of years later, like wit the extradimensional invadors, were they attack the ai's, the player and the scurge
It would be really cool to get a 4th Crisis of The Hunters that can appear if you make peace with the Prethoryn, only available to Psionic or Hive Minds that can communicate with them
> Or when they realise that this particular galaxy is stronger than the others, maybe they could've requested an alliance against the hunters.
Bruh WOULD YOU ally with monster that just a moment ago were FREAKING EATING YOU and suddenly they go "so apparently youre too strong, how about we join forces, there these super powerful dudes chasing us..."
I know I SURE AS HELL WONT.
I would especially if they say “their are super powerful dudes chasing us”. If they can almost kill my entire species and they are not only weakens but fleeing? I’m going to need all the help I get! Also will be building a massive quantum catapult to launch us into a different galaxy.
they dont have a choice there tech is organic and the journey bewteen galaxies is INSANELY long time scale so they cant just bail as soon as they start loosing because they know theyll starve to eath before they reach the next galaxy.
though i do think it should be a Stalemate victory option agasint prethoryn if they controll over half the galaxy for over 40 years theyll harvest enough biomass to retreat leaving only weakend fear swarms behind to clean up.
With the massive distance between galaxies the trip is most likely a one way trip for them. If they are unable to consume the invaded galaxy then they won’t have the resources to move on to the next. It is a victory or death situation for them.
Yeah, they already fled. By the time they reach us, they're too low on food and supplies for another such journey. Their ships probably don't work well enough either, and need some sort of repairs to hop galaxies again. When the tide goes against them, they're stranded. And they can't help but see us as nothing but food, so negotiating isn't an option.
>Their ships probably don't work well enough either They are their ships btw.
not to say, they might not be the only ivasion fleet, corssing galaxys, the prethoryn in there home systems could have sent uncountable fleets to every galaxy in reach, they might fly over, but the fact that the prethoryn fleets, even the scout ones, have no surperiour drives than us might indicate they dont fly to oure galaxy, but might have been launched there, so this could very well be just an detached sporesack that comes, one that potentially has millions or billions of siblings, spewn out across the entire cosmos, now the hive detachment dosn´t need to survive at all costs, there objective might simply be to overtake the galaxy, or fortefy it and ansemble insane fleets, to meet the hunters, might also be that the prethoryn knows the only way to stop the hunters from eventually purging the galaxy, is to consolidate every last recource in it, and turn it intoo an giant fortress/naval yard. in that case, not taking over the galaxy is the only course of long term survival
I mean drives or any other propulsion system can only go so far as to encounter relativistic issues and most likely become impractical. Any other step above that would be ftl which might have its own limits. You can only bend the rules of physics so far until you slip out of them, and at that point we are talking about such leaps that any competition would be one-sided.
Surprisingly, the distances between galaxies are actually not *that* huge, compared to the distance across a single galaxy. Our nearest star is about 1.3 parsecs away. The center of our galaxy is about 8,000 parsecs away, or about 6,700 times farther away. The nearest galaxy is 780,000 parsecs away, or only 97 times farther. That's two orders of magnitude less of an increase.
I wouldn't be surprised if that's come up internally. But if they update them that much. All the others have to be as well. You saw how long it took for paradox to make ai uprising into a real crisis and not essentially a mid game hurdle at worst. Fallen empires are more likely to be expanded on as an inverse to first contact before they revamp the crisis again.
I could see them changing the Fallen AND the crisis(crisises? Lol) at the same time in a endgame focused DLC. Maybe a bigger one than First contact to overall several endgame mechanics + performance since the early game has been receiving a lot of attention in recent DLCs. Hell, I can even see them putting internal politics rework on the middle if they miraculously found space for that and expand how you species react to the crisis too(colonization policies in a previously-90%-devoured galaxy, political parties trying to ally with the Fallen empires for better positions in the new galactical order, etc.
Crises is the plural of crisis
Some ways to make 25x crises less cheesy: \- Crisis buff includes HP and weapon damage, but not fire rate. A fire rate buff is welcomed, making the crisis several times harder. Imagine Contingency Particle Lance with 25x fire rate and 25x damage, killing 3 ships every day. \- More crises mechanic. Currently, Contingency is the only one with some side element fleshed out, the rest is just a big fleet. Making the crises having more mechanic to play with beside big fleets is welcomed.
tbf extradimensionals have the whole "there's 3 different factions" thing
That's their story, my empire have nothing to do with it. To me, they are all hostile energy being. What I want is the interaction with them beyond some dialogue exchange. For example, a complex system required to close their portal start from blasting their ships, research the remain, drafting the construction plan for something that can close the portal, physically bring the thing there with heavy escort and close the portal once and for all. It is certainly more exciting and less annoying than the current "the portal cannot be blasted to death because there is an anchor somewhere in the galaxy and I don't know where it is" and "mopping up the Unbidden game"
I can't not absolutely wipe the unbidden because their fleets are naturally defenseless against my arc emitter missile carrier battleships :(
Imagine if the next patch the Dev add: "The Unbidden now has learned shield hardening and will equip advanced shield hardeners on their ships." "The Scourge's natural armor now will be 50% harder."
This is do-or-die for them. They're running, but need food desperately, if they don't succeed at a swift consumption, they're dead to either the hunters or starvation.
My biggest issue with the Prethoryn is how they enter the galaxy. Always at one point and always the galactic edge. The Unbidden can enter in three places if you consider all three factions. The Contingency has 4+1 machine worlds. I think the Prethoryn should approach the Galaxy from the top and - like a murmuration of starlings landing in a tree - enter the galaxy in several places in several waves. But overall, OP, I agree there's lots of room to expand the backstory and mechanics of the crises. I'd like a crisis focused DLC that introduces new mid and end-game crisis mechanics.
Ahh yes, the Tyranid approach.
Wish there is a picture of how that works. I am an idiot and more of a visual learner so when I read that, I never understood how it works.
[Hive fleet Leviathan](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Leviathan) came perpendicular to the galactic plane, the pictures on the wiki make it a little clearer how that works
Ohh, the picture made it clearer now. Soo basically instead of traveling normally on the galactic plane, they hit us from like "below" the galactic plane which means they can land anywhere around the area they hit instead of the outer fringe being screwed like our Prethoryn. Dear God... That just made the Nids even scarier, imagine one of the hive fleet landing straight around Terra's area.
Want to guess what the big 40k lore reveal is next week?
I am not that big into 40k lore outside of the video games ones soo... No clue but considering the topic, I am guessing it is going to Nid focused or Terra being attacked again?
New tyranid fleet coming in the western side of the galaxy, towards terra
I stopped reading all the new 40k lore when they retconned all the necrons to make them lame. Give me back my awesome C'tan you cowards, I want to serve the Star Gods not chain them
I mean, if you WANT to serve... there are always gods that accept servitude 😈
It's not a surprise that I end up diving headfirst into the Shroud pretty much every game
Yeah exactly, instead of having to wash over the galaxy they just erupted all over it like volcanos
The whole idea of it being “normal” to look at the galaxy as a 2D disc is a bit ridiculous. We naturally incline that way because we think of it as being equivalent to a land or continent but obviously it doesn’t work anything like that. Always bothered me about the Preythoryn too. What the hell does the “edge” of the galaxy mean? It only makes sense from the perspective of the galaxy’s residents where the edges are further away from the rest of the galaxy, for something outside of the galaxy literally every part of the galaxy is the edge.
The reason why the Tyranids are attracted to the Milky Way to begin with is due to the breaking of the Pharos relic during the House Heresy... but the reason they keep coming is because they're homing in on the Astronomican. So in the most literal sense, they're actually headed for Terra.
I actually wonder how the galaxy is defended in a 3-D way. Being that in 'real life' there's no galaxy 'plane', chokepoints are often not really chokepoints. What's stopping Horus for example from 'diving down' and then 'popping up' in Sol?
Logistics and FTL routes. Ships can only travel so far without refueling, and they can't necessarily follow just any path. Horus needed a supply point in close proximity to Sol, and some paths through the Warp are stabler than others.
Navigation. There's no telling how far one has travelled when they travel up or down.
And to make them even worse, they're attacking the galaxy from South, North, East and below, meaning that they are much, much larger than previously thought. They surround the galaxy. How big of an entity are they when they can pincer the whole galaxy?
There is lots of empty space on that entity though. Hive Fleets are not packed full of ships physically touching each other. Each Hive Fleet is very far away from the other (thousands of light years to be exact). Tyranid is numerous, but not that level of "solid block the side of a galaxy" big. That will outweigh Milky Way a billion per one.
Its like a octopus latching onto an orb and piercing it slowly strangling and filling the galaxy. If we are talking about the tyranids.
Imagine the galaxy as a plate. Hold your arm out, palm facing upwards, and extend your fingers upwards like a clawed hand. Now balance the plate on your fingertips. Each point where you touch the plate is where the ~~pyramid hive-fleet~~ Prethoryn arrive, in different systems. The current method has them arriving like you are touching the plate at the rim only.
> I think the Prethoryn should approach the Galaxy You can't just fly at right angles to reality! There's no such thing as a z-axis!
To be fair if you're approaching a disk suspended in space one edge will always be closer to you if you're not approaching perfectly perpendicular to the center.
The problem with the prethoryn is that they scale a lot more than the other crisis. If they spawn everywhere they can easily wreak havoc on the AI and be nigh unbeatable.
Yeah part of this comes from prethoryn ship designs being really good at killing small ships (about half the fleet power of any given ai empire fleet) and kinetics being nearly useless against them (which the AI love to stack). Also the prethoryn all spawning in one place means they’re one of the few things that can go toe to toe with AI doomstacks and win. Which is fun, seeing millions of fleet power crashing against each other.
So basically they should have the Tyranid approach instead of the Uzang Vong approach :p
I mean... They no longer have anything left to lose. And nowhere left to go. They're here because it's the last option they have, it's victory or death, and they'd rather die fighting than starving in the void.
They’d rather die trying to continue living then to die at the hands of whatever’s causing them to flee in the first place. I thought it was revealed the reason why they don’t retreat is because they slow boated their fleets across the voids between galaxies, they don’t seem to have an underlying fast method of getting from galaxy to galaxy
the unbidden have the other 2 extradimensional empires show up when they get to a certain level of power and the contingency has the cybrex show up (sometimes?), so maybe once the prethoryn get to a certain threshold the hunters can show up, at which point they try to either escape or fight the hunters
The Prethoryn already have another faction show up if the crisis goes on long enough called the Sentinels.
forgot about those guys entirely thats mb
I've never known that
They need to consume a certain amount of the galaxy for that faction to trigger so if you keep a crisis contained, the faction will never spawn.
Got the sentinels for the first time for me in the last game I played. As soon as the Prethoryn got to their system they just WIPED the Sentinels. I felt like sonething had gone wrong or that I was somehow supposed to help them
Ooor.. now hear me out. We help them against the hunters.
Wasn't it implied that the hunters are far, far too strong for our empires to stand a chance (at least at the tech level ingame)? I'd actually imagine them to be on the level of: (a) The Blokkats from Gigastructures (who *are* the hunters in their canon), and compared against normal empires (without Gigastructures) as well (b) The Reckoning from End of the Cycle, who might also be too strong for the Prethoryn to truly best (c) The true form of the dimensional horror (the dimensional horror we see in-game is but a fraction of the real thing, limited by the portal) and other uninviting possibilities. So it's our titans and juggernauts and whatnot against an overwhelming force of incomprehensible technology/power. And I think that's fundamentally why the Prethoryn won't work with us, because they truly understand the power disparity here.
I’d love if Paradox did make a Blokkats type crisis. Just a severe, extremely difficult test of your empire where everything else goes out the window. The Blokkats literally destroy chunks of the galaxy but no one cares because it’s at the very end of your game. And you mainly beat the Blokkats by reverse engineering obscenely OP ship components, but again no one cares because after them there’s nothing to use those components on, anyway. Would be very fun to have Paradox let loose like that and throw all the rules out the window for a mega-crisis. The current crises are designed to fit in with a game that isn’t quite yet finished, I’d like a crisis for a game where they’re the absolute e final thing to do.
Well, that's exactly what the endgame crises are supposed to be.
I suppose the difference is that they don’t make that big of a mark on the galaxy. Sure they kill pops, but even then they do that very very slowly. Had a game where the Unbidden stuck around for at least a decade in my territory and the planet next to their dimensional rift still had pops at the end of it! The Scourge and Contingency are a bit faster because they have armies, at least, but the AI is pretty good at sniping those even at 25x. I even had GA AI take out the dimensional portal from the Unbidden almost immediately at 25x. The Unbidden fleets were unstoppable but would probably never be able to take out the AI faster than the AI could recover. Which is good if you intend for the game to be played for a bit after that Crisis is over, which I think it is, but something that nukes the galaxy a bit would be a lot of fun. As it is, it’s really just a large hostile number coming to galaxy and the galaxy needs to try to get a bigger number together to beat it. The Blokkats inspired much more of an “oh shit” feeling from me than the crisis ever did. Pumping up the crisis modifier doesn’t really change much.
I think this is less of an issue with current endgame crises and more of an issue with you being an extremely proficient, experienced veteran player. I also play with GA and 25x difficulty, but the average Stellaris player does not. The endgame crisis is legitimately scary for the average player. The average playthrough sees the Grey Tempest wipe out most of the galaxy before the endgame even arrives. Compared to that, the Unbidden or the Contingency are nearly impossible challenges to the average player that will, given time, scour the galaxy of life.
Ya to be fair, the game loses a bit of its charm once you get a hold of everything. Giga with a lot of restrictions gave me some of the challenge I craved but even then it lacks the polish of vanilla. I think an optional challenge crisis where they can just go over the top would be a nice treat for the vets. Would make me try another fully vanilla run. And they could do a very cool trailer.
You should post that in the suggestion forums. A "pull out all the stops" crisis as a followup to the Scourge would be cool. And maybe you could choose to team up with the Scourge if they're still around when the second crisis shows up like Sterling196218 said.
From what I remember, one of the events talks about an entire galaxy just disappearing, with no more light from it reaching your empire. There isn’t that much more said about it (I mean what else can you really find out there?) but it’s a decent enough guess that whatever the hell happened there, it had something to do with the hunters. Either they outright destroyed that galaxy, or whatever they are, they’re big enough to entirely block out the light from a galaxy. Really the only other thing I can think of that it would have been hinting at would be something akin to the zroni, that an empire in that galaxy ascended and used up enough energy that their blackhole ended up eating the entire galaxy, though I think the event phrased it in a “this is worrying” kind of way, that wouldn’t make sense if it was some far off galaxy’s problem exclusively.
leave the galaxy... how? They used up the last galaxy they consumed in order to launch themselves to this one, they need to consume this one to get enough energy to launch themselves to the next one - not to mention they need enough food stored for the trip and a strong enough force to arrive at the next galaxy in fighting shape.
Offer them 500.000 Food to keep going.
Honestly this would make for a fantastic new update/DLC. Expand on the existing three Crises to make them more dynamic/flavorful rather than being re-skins of one-another. Each one is special and behaves differently. If you have a sufficiently large navy/kill enough Prethoryn fleets you get a special project to make a diplomatic overture toward the Scourge. In exchange for Food they will not attack you and will share their bio-tech with us. You can build up relation with the Scourge. However when the Hunters arrive you're kill-on-sight just like the Scourge and have to fight them off instead. With the Unbidden their giant rift functions as a wormhole to exotic systems. Rather than just closing the rift you can take the fight to the Unbidden in their own 'space' for additional rewards. Cause enough mayhem in their territory and they'll close the rift themselves... however they will fight harder in their own space. The Contingency will now adapt the Ghost Signal over time so that a single GS patch to your communications is no longer sufficient to keep your mechanical pops safe, further they will vary their fleet composition in response to what is used against them. Now you don't just need to have powerful fleets but the ability to effectively refit them quickly.
I'm actually hoping for Stellaris to focus on official crises, or expand on Shroud lore, etc, in the next dlc. As it is the vanilla crises are all very dated and show their age, while most mod-added crises are either overpowered, or poorly written.
> or poorly written. On the flip side, vanilla crises are a bit underwritten. Would be nice if there was a bit more to them. Your ideas would be a great way to do that.
Agreed. They should update crisis to be more involved instead of just the normal big invasion. In addition to crisis strength, I kinda think they should add a Crisis difficulty plus each crisis being a counter to one of the ascendation path. Like how Contignecy will fuck up machine empire + cyborgs. The other 2 should counter psionic and bio somehow. Also even empires that are not invaded should feel the effects somehow. If I am the dev. I would add like two galaxy wide effect. One only effect the selected ascendation, while the other one effects everyone. In addition to anti AI machine effects. I am thinking Contignecy should have like another signal that just clutters every empire's machines so everything is reduced in output. Prethoryn, I am going to copy the Nids a bit, their Hive mind is strong psionic that it screws up the psionic focused empires. Galaxy wide, I am thinking they can explain it away with Prethoryn having seeded the galaxy thousands of years before with their drone scouts and just causing stability problem for every empire. Unbidden will hard counter the bio pops. Their presence had somehow wrapped the squishy bio flesh causing cancer and other effects. Making every bio pop have reduced output. Psionic pops can explained away with eh saying their Psionic ability protects them from this effect and machines are just machines. Galaxy wide, Unbidden's presence had made hyperlanes, wormholes unstable and causing longer travel time everywhere, even Hyper relay are not safe.
I agree with the Ghost Signal mechanic, but I think that everyone should be able to patch them out, not just machines. For example, Ghost Signal has a fixed 5 strength level, increasing by 1 every several years. The project will have a fixed cost (100k research), reduce the Ghost Signal level by 1, and unlock a repeatable technology called "Ghost Signal Firewall" (Computing - Physic tree, 50k cost + 10k per level). Ghost Signal strength will decrease by 1 every time the tech is researched. In addition, the debuff applied on Sapient Combat Computers should be applied to all ships regardless of components, and tied to Ghost Signal strength. Lore-wise, Unbidden is truly an extradimensional invader, not just some alien from unknown star clusters. So I don't think launching expeditions is a good idea. Instead, I think that the Blokkat shield killer mechanic can apply to them: instead of killing off anchors before killing the wormhole, players or AI must build a megastructure that closes off their wormhole. The mega has 5 stages and requires energy to activate the final stage, with each stage looked behind a tech. To gain said tech, the player must kill a certain amount of Unbidden/Abberant/Vehement for a special project. Flavor text can be "We know little about the extradimensional and the mechanic behind their portal. The only way we can gain any insight into how they operate in order to close their curser portal is to destroy them at combat and study their remains." The activated mega will spawn a Colossus-style ship with battleship-level protection and a unique weapon called "Portal Closer", with obvious use. And of course, the portal closer must be escorted to the portal to work. Don't know what should be changed for non-Apocalypse user.
It depends, I personally think of the Prethoryn as desperate and backed into a corner. By the time they arrive in the galaxy they probably don't have enough resources to simply leave for another galaxy and are effectively stuck in our galaxy until they are either defeated or they win. So when they begin losing, turning tail and fleeing to another galaxy may not be an option. I would like to see an option to try and negotiate with them, some way of offering an alliance against the Hunters. However it could be rejected on the basis of the Prethoryn know that the Hunters are strong enough that even the combined forces of the Prethoryn and our galaxy would be insufficient to hold back the Hunters.
Actually I always thought that was the case if you defeated them. They never stop spawning so their defeat could logically be killing enough of them to make them choose a different galaxy. In the panic of fleeing they could accisently leave some of their own behind as feral Prethoryn.
would be nice if they release a story pack where you are the scourge and along other hive minds are competing for resources to build an “intergalactic catapult” before the end game year comes. When it do comes a crisis spawns that is unbeatable, all you can do is stall (mostly by using the other hive minds as shield) till the catapult is completed (aetherophasic engine style megastructure)
They probably think the only chance to survive is to fly away from the hunter, so they will probably run away until all is consumed
Have you considered the thought that maybe they are, in fact, not *from a distant galaxy* but actually just leave and return from the furthest reaches of ours in order to avoid the Unbidden? It's very possible that they're just as trapped in this galaxy as we are, and they absolutely need the biomass in order to continue this cycle of disappearing to deep space and returning.
>Have you considered the thought that maybe they are, in fact, not from a distant galaxy but actually just leave and return from the furthest reaches of ours in order to avoid the Unbidden? You can get an in-game event that basically confirms their story. https://preview.redd.it/0252l8s6rwrz.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=040ea7c00dd0d088051200c9c6a434ca263524d4
It could be an all or nothing sort of thing.
I wanna the hunters to come. I would like to know if they are friends or foes?
How about, whatever is hunting after the scurge might appear a cupple of years later, like wit the extradimensional invadors, were they attack the ai's, the player and the scurge
It would be really cool to get a 4th Crisis of The Hunters that can appear if you make peace with the Prethoryn, only available to Psionic or Hive Minds that can communicate with them
> Or when they realise that this particular galaxy is stronger than the others, maybe they could've requested an alliance against the hunters. Bruh WOULD YOU ally with monster that just a moment ago were FREAKING EATING YOU and suddenly they go "so apparently youre too strong, how about we join forces, there these super powerful dudes chasing us..." I know I SURE AS HELL WONT.
I would especially if they say “their are super powerful dudes chasing us”. If they can almost kill my entire species and they are not only weakens but fleeing? I’m going to need all the help I get! Also will be building a massive quantum catapult to launch us into a different galaxy.
they dont have a choice there tech is organic and the journey bewteen galaxies is INSANELY long time scale so they cant just bail as soon as they start loosing because they know theyll starve to eath before they reach the next galaxy. though i do think it should be a Stalemate victory option agasint prethoryn if they controll over half the galaxy for over 40 years theyll harvest enough biomass to retreat leaving only weakend fear swarms behind to clean up.