Is highly adaptive OP?

[Dojaeni]

I have just tried a few starts to get an early game feel for some of the traits, however, with highly adaptive i am able to grow rapidly to 7 colonies, which is usually my limit without any tech as i am not playing pacifist.

With other traits i seem to be locked into a very limited space, to the point where at the 7 system marke i have 3 distinct areas of space as opposed to one nice growing empire.

Thoughts and exoeriences pleas

[Jimmy McGill]

You can grow even faster with traits that increase your minerals.

[Red Bat]

No. But non-adaptive is pretty bad. It's fairly easy to find a way to expand even with very few habitable worlds. One way is to use droids. Another is to uplift an alien civilization and then intergrate them. Another way is terraforming, although that's expensive. You can also either conquer an alien world, or accept rebels in order to get colonists who can colonize worlds your founder species can't.

Keep in mind you only need a habitability rating of 40% to colonize, as long as you are fine with a low happiness cap.

[Xcorps]

Nah.

Dynamic Ecomorphism, Atmospheric Filtering, Hostile Environment Adaption, Visitors Centers.

All available before/during the midgame.

[starrynite120]

OP? No. Good? Yes. Don't forget colonizing all those planets fast will skyrocket your tech and tradition costs. Its great for aggression and mineral boost, but colonizing that fast can be bad.

[markdb92]

if you want to secure your border fast its a good trait to take for sure.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

It kinda is, especially early on. Depends on populaion density. There were enough 'hivemind is OP' threads when Utopia was just released, mostly because of this trait.

The only theoretical counter I see is going heavily into mineral production and starting early war with extremely adaptive while you still can pump out more ships. Alternatively, invading some primitives to settle other planets might work, but it's a lot of RNG.

[Scar Glamour]

When using Extremely Adaptive early on to colonize you have to live with the fact that worlds with radically different habitability will have "unhappy" pops until you can genemod them into matching the environment. However, at that point their Adaptive trait becomes absolutely useless, so unless you go with Bio Ascension this trait will be a suboptimal for your species on the non-matching planets in either case.

Hiveminds don't care about happiness though, and they are also locked in Bio Ascension by design. So this trait is stronger for them at the start than for any other government type.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by Heresiarch:

When using Extremely Adaptive early on to colonize you have to live with the fact that worlds with radically different habitability will have "unhappy" pops

How so? They just capped at 40% happiness, which is just as productive as 60%, no drawbacks. How much happiness can you realistically expect early on? 70%? 80? That's what 10% extra production? maybe 15%? Is that worth it compared to couple dozen extra planets from the get-go? Especially since in the long run you can increase habitability by 20% from research alone, and there are lots of other ways to increase it further?

[Dojaeni]

well thanks for the feedback, time t restart. nothing like a hyperlane only game when you finde yourself stuck by a fe one direction and adv emire fanatic purifies the other direction

[Scar Glamour]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

Originally posted by Heresiarch:

When using Extremely Adaptive early on to colonize you have to live with the fact that worlds with radically different habitability will have "unhappy" pops

How so? They just capped at 40% happiness, which is just as productive as 60%, no drawbacks. How much happiness can you realistically expect early on? 70%? 80? That's what 10% extra production? maybe 15%? Is that worth it compared to couple dozen extra planets from the get-go? Especially since in the long run you can increase habitability by 20% from research alone, and there are lots of other ways to increase it further?

I was talking about mid-game when you research gene-modding. At this point +10% productivity for all pops at 90% happiness is significant.

Research gives you at most +20% habitability so even with a Visitor Center your pops on "wrong" planet types cap at 65% habitability. No happiness bonuses for them.

Furthermore, getting dozens of planets on the get-go is a bad idea, since you get a 10% research penalty with each planet.

[Keltosh]

Honestly, it depends on your race and playstyle. If you are playing fanatical purifier, or hive mind, then yes it's very good.

Because anything you conquer will die, so you need to resettle populations to the planets you conquer. And you cannot relocate population unless you have at least 40% habitability. And trusting the tech tree can be risky. So a VERY solid pick for those playstyles.

If you are not playing a purging race, then no, because you don't actually mind having aliens in your empire. Just conquer a race that can colonize different planet types and you're good to go.

[Keltosh]

Originally posted by Heresiarch:

Furthermore, getting dozens of planets on the get-go is a bad idea, since you get a 10% research penalty with each planet.

I disagree, it depends. It can be bad or not depending on what race and governemnt you're playing. Meet my fleet 4 times as big as yours because of all the additional spaceports . Your tech advantage won't mean a thing in that case, and I can just salvage combat tech from the debris.
The tech penalty is simply not big enough, provided you also build research stations which kinda keep you afloat anyway.


Seriously speaking, I mostly ignore the tech penalty. The only limiting factor is minerals, as long as you can build ships....
It is also true that more colonies = more territory = more mining stations = more military ships= more fleet power = crushed enemies = more tech.


Of course that's just for a super aggressive playstyle. Other ways of playing are possible, and in fact I often do not play ultra aggressive. But still, it's not true that more planets is bad. It can be if you want to play tall, but it's not a problem otherwise.

[Scar Glamour]

No matter if you play tall or not, gobbling up planets without the minerals to build infrastructure and without pop-capped planets for emigration will slow your progress down considerably.

Not to mention that you still need minerals to build all those spaceports and fleet. If you lag behind in tech significantly you wouldn't be getting either the best tier mines and powerplants or the larger spaceports, ship designs or ship tech.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by Heresiarch:

Research gives you at most +20% habitability so even with a Visitor Center your pops on "wrong" planet types cap at 65% habitability. No happiness bonuses for them.

You also forgetting 10% diplomacy tradition you can't get visitor center without, so 75%. There are two strategic resourses for another 10% (not that hard to find, especially with territory you can grab). So you're looking at 85+ by the end-game on most planets.

Originally posted by Heresiarch:

Furthermore, getting dozens of planets on the get-go is a bad idea, since you get a 10% research penalty with each planet.

Irrelevant, and perfectly negatable by building one lab per planet.

Originally posted by Heresiarch:

No matter if you play tall or not, gobbling up planets without the minerals to build infrastructure and without pop-capped planets for emigration will slow your progress down considerably.

Not to mention that you still need minerals to build all those spaceports and fleet.

It's about grabbing territory. More territory = more resources (especially with prosperity that makes mining stations cheaper and colony ships built with energy). Unless your species into heavy mineral production, space mining is the way to go. Can do it with ourposts, to a degree, but they are frigile and need constant influence and energy supply (thus private colony ships are arguably cheaper, especially in the long run). What you grab with planets is yours until war resolution. Then it's just a matter of time. Planets will 'catch up', eventually.

As for pop-capped planets... by the time you get that, chances are, every free planet in the galaxy will already be taken. Besides, every settled colony ship = extra pop. So, unless you start turning neighbouring primitives into nutrient paste with default 200 food cap right away, your population won't possibly grow faster.

Originally posted by Heresiarch:

If you lag behind in tech significantly you wouldn't be getting either the best tier mines and powerplants or the larger spaceports, ship designs or ship tech.

Research on second-tier mines, powerplants and spaceports is quite achievable in first 10-15 years (it depends way more on rng than research penalty) - those are three separate branches. Since piracy event is guaranteed (except hivemind), you'll also have shields by that time too (if you even want to bother with researching them). Early wars can be won by spamming stock corvettes - no need for upgrades of any kind; by the end you'll have tech you need.

[Scar Glamour]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

*snip*

There's so much wrong with this we must be either speaking different languages or playing two different games.

You don't​ have enough minerals in early game to go around colonizing everything and building mining and research stations all while building, upgrading, clearing tiles on your seven colonies and building throwaway corvettes outfitted with basic tech. Nor do you have adequate energy income to support a large-scale space mining operation.

I am not even going into why putting your planets into sectors in early game and letting sector AI develop them is a terrible idea.

Also 85% habitability is not enough for any type of happiness bonus anyways, so it doesn't matter if you have those resources and traditions or not.

But I guess to each his own.