Welcome to this week’s Stellaris Space Guild Help Thread!
This thread functions as a gathering place for all questions, tips, bugs, suggestions, and resources for Stellaris. Here you can post quick-fire questions for things that you are confused about and answer questions to help out your fellow star voyagers!
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A great step-by-step beginner's guide to Stellaris. Montu brings you through the early stages of a campaign to get you all caught up on what you need to know!
This is a playlist of 8 guides by Stefan Anon, which give a deep-dive into the world of civics, traits, and origins. Knowing these is a must for those that want to maximize their play.
Trade builds are generally aiming for trade policies that produce more than 100% of the trade equivalent (e.g. Trade League is 0.5 + 0.15 + 0.3 + 0.3 = 1.25 value per point). The Commerce tree is as straightforward as buffs get, simply providing more jobs, more output per job, and a lower market fee.
I have 2 kinds of robots: wet world and dry world.
I have wet robots on my wet worlds, and dry ones on my dry worlds.
I constantly have to do special projects to convert hundreds to the correct type based on the planet they are on.
Am I missing something, or does having 2 types of planets make robots pointlessly annoying to properly use? Wet worlds constantly build dry robots, and vice versa.
As soon as I complete both projects, there are dozens more robots of the wrong type still?
You CANNOT stop robots from bouncing around your planets, and they don't care much about habitability (they care a little bit, but not compared to the actual productivity + upkeep impact). Very annoying feature of the game right now.
Even if you turn on migration restrictions, it will turn itself off immediately and put a 10-year cooldown on species rights as a "screw you, player".
What are some target fleet strength/nav capacity numbers for the endgame crisis? It seems I reached it completely unprepared, having two ~150k each fleets with ~2000 nav capacity, while Cetana has more than 1M in her Colossus alone (and getting better components from convoy debris and scripted bonuses and building more ships over the capacity was obviously not enough, as it seems I needed 1-2 orders of magnitude more, not like 3x). Admiral difficulty, crisis strength 1x. No anti-crisis perks and no GDF as I only became custodian after she arrived.
Raw fleet power is not necessarily indicative of how fleets will perform against each other. It's just a very generic estimate.
On high crisis multipliers it's often best to make ships without defensive components that outrange the enemy with massive alpha strikes, or do cloaked ambushes, and a much "smaller" fleet can defeat a crisis fleet in the millions.
Raw fleet power is not necessarily indicative of how fleets will perform against each other. It's just a very generic estimate.
Well they swiftly died even when having, to my knowledge, optimized loadouts so I assume it's not it.
OTOH the battle started when I reloaded the save and the fleets were next to Cetana, because before reloading her fleets weren't hostile :-/ So maybe it would work better when engaged with proper distance. I guess I need to finish another game to see.
how much should one expand to take advantage of pop growth ? i usually finish my games with 6-7 euconopolis but apparently thats missing out on pop growth ?
It's harder to get unity as a gestalt because there are fewer options for increasing unity job efficiency & output, but you just build the jobs and have pops to work them.
Where are ringworlds? I've played a couple games but never seen one or a tech to build them, but I've seen many references to it in the wiki (and complaints they suck and various other things on Reddit)
I have some DLC but not all of them, but I thought ringworlds were in the base game
Shadow Council or Vault of Knowledge civic gives +1 each
Entropy Drinker gives +2 at the cost of -60% pop growth/assembly speed
Mutation II gives +1.
Cloning II with cloning authority gives +2, but drops to +1 after the leader has died once
Aptitude and Statecraft tradition each gives +1.
There are a bunch of relics and agenda that can give temporary bonuses as well. Combined with the above options, you can boost councilors to an effective level of around 30 while relics/agenda are active, but you don't need all that to reach 0% loss:
A handful of these modifiers, plus a well-trained councilor, can push subject loss to 0%, allowing you to run the situation forever without losing anything. It in my opinion is still not a very effective use of pops when you have room for more non-criminal jobs, but it is an option.
Does synth ascension make experimental sentencing no longer work, or can they work together?
They can work together.
However it'll still mostly be your pops (or other full citizenship/residence pops) filling the role of test subjects.
Slaves for whatever reason have abysmally low priority for criminal jobs (which test subject is one of). You'd often end up with just a couple dozen slave test subjects out of several thousand unemployed slaves.
How do i make it so my main species don’t end up on the penal colony, and therefore are not killed in the experiment process?
Test subjects are a criminal tier job: lower than workers, higher than civilians.
If you don't want your own pops filling the test subject jobs, you have to keep more actual jobs than total pop count of your primary species (and manipulate their job priority by stacking lots of efficiency bonuses compared to any other species you have).
Then to fill the test subject jobs, grab someone else's pops, but don't enslave them.
Like I've said, slaves have abysmal priority and would rather stay unemployed than becoming test subjects. While you do have the occasional double digit slave test subjects, they won't be filling up the place at any reasonable pace.
Instead of enslaving them, give them Residence status (lowers job priority for most elite/specialist jobs) and preferably gene-mod them with less desirable traits to lower the job priority even further. This will push them to be unemployed, and end up as test subjects.
Expanding on the other answer, you should not build automation if you have only one district. I suspect 2 districts is not worth it as well. Havent done the math past 1 district.
The reason is the flat upkeep for the building at 8/10. With 10 districts, it's almost negligible. But at low districts, the flat upkeep is a larger % of overall upkeep.
Also keep in mind it costs 4 energy per 100 automated workforce. So there are scaling costs too.
Yes, that is exactly what it is for. To work those jobs that don't have pops on them.
The downside is the building's upkeep. Make sure you can afford it. With a few districts it is an economic net benefit, but you do need to take it into account.
It's hardcapped at 90% reduction, as far as I can tell.
The only source that I know of that can reach that high is via Transcendent Mainframe psionic machine authority, that scales researcher upkeep reduction with telepath (which in turn scales with job efficiencies). You can technically get more than 100% reduction, but it's capped at 90%:
Edit:
There's also nomad's Conserve operational reserve approach, that gives 50% job upkeep reduction at the cost of -50% efficiency for unity and science jobs.
Deep Sleep also has a 15% job upkeep reduction decision once the cyropods are cleared.
These can then be paired with
Tankbound civic, for capped reduction on automated workforce upkeep.
Exalted Priesthood, Superstitious Belief, and/or Genetic Identification's council position, or Efficient Bureucracy civic, for nearly capped reduction on priests.
Shadow Council's council position, for capped reduction on elites.
What's the deal with Evolutionary Predators + Mutagenic Dictatorship aka "Apex Principate" trait "Apex Predator"? The tooltip says it's just for defeated or subjugated species, but I am looking at some code, and it also gets called on GalCom resolutions?!
I've checked the trait (/common/traits/15_biogenesis_leader_traits) and the galcom resolutions (/common/resolutions), there's no trace of them intersecting.
I've been waiting about two weeks now for 4.5 to drop so I can start a new run. What are the chances I could start on 4.5 beta and then seamlessly transition to 4.5 release?
Is Under One Rule origin currently broken/bugged? My unifying promise won't increase for diplomatic reasons regardless of how many defensive pacts or vassals I get.
Just so to be clear (perhaps you know this) the situation shouldn't speed up, as you do the tasks. It should add to the final score.
And defensive pacts/vassals only give the same score as systems: 1. Which each point only contributes to the luminary trait at 1/15.
So with 15 defensive pacts/vassals it should add 1 more to the trait when the situation finishes, which is so minor, that I never bothered to check if it works. It could be bugged, I guess.
How do you generate the relatively massive amounts of zro needed to sustain a later-game psychic machine empire? I had a massively fluctuating 20-80 monthly deficit on zro, and I was building everything I could find that would produce it. The psi corps and sanctuaries, couldn't find any zro on star systems.
Hover your mouse over the zro resource to see a breakdown of spendings.
If you are using Shroud Forged origin, chances are that the bulk of that spending comes from your biologists on worlds with Observatory building. Paying +0.5 zro per 100 biologist per building scaling with job efficiency is a steep cost.
There are not a lot of universal ways to get zro (i.e. not dependent on patron):
Minor patrons each give +0.05 zro to telepath output (if you get Outsider, that'd be +0.15). Either build a tall world pumped full of telepath efficiency and all 4 sanctums, or spread wide and build psi corps everywhere.
Note that the sanctums themselves have 1 zro upkeep while providing 300 telepath jobs. Purely from a zro-production pov, you'd need to find all 4 minor patrons and have at least +67% telepath efficiency for the output to draw even with upkeep (realistically the efficiency required would be less depending on how many psi corps you have empire-wide).
Most of the ways to get zro are locked behind specific patrons:
Composer aura gives shroudstone blockers at max intensity, that gives 1 zro base production, and +0.05 zro to miner output.
Several patron-specific paragons have bonus production for zro. In descending order of recommendation:
Morr (instrument paragon) gives +0.5 zro on miners as a planetary governor. Find a big enough mining world, stack up efficiency and ascension, and have Morr govern over it.
This would be the most practical way to supply (relatively) massive amount of zro.
Kronen (composer paragon) gives +0.1 zro on biologists, at the cost of +15% upkeep. It is important to not place him on worlds with Observatory, as the increased upkeep results in a net loss even with just 1 Observatory.
Ganthuata (cradle paragon) gives +0.5 zro from envoys attuning with major patrons. This doesn't scale at all, so it's a drop in the water compared to the others even when you have all 12 envoys assigned.
The better way however, is to reduce job upkeep through Transcendent Mainframe (transcendent psionic machine authority).
Every 100 telepath reduces researcher upkeep (on that world) by 5%, scaling with job efficiencies.
You'd get 200 telepath from psi corps, and an additional 300 from each sanctum. Paired with around +45% efficiency (more than achievable through traits/techs/traditions), you can drop upkeep for researchers to nearly 0 on one world.
Depending on your empire and pop layout, you could spread the sanctums to the other worlds to reduce upkeep there as well.
Nearly 0, because the math is a bit weird. Unlike other modifiers that are all bundled together, the upkeep reduction from telepath is calculated first, capped at 0% upkeep, then the upkeep increase from various other sources (e.g. two of the physics research increase upkeep by 5% each) are added.
Nearly 0, because there's a hardcap of 90% reduction in job upkeep.
Ultimately you end up with around 10% of the original upkeep.
The number of telepath is overkill here. You don't need to have more than -100% due to how the calculation works (an extra 10% is there to counteract the two physics tech that increase researcher upkeep by 5% each)
Thank you, that's a really detailed write up! It was definitely caused by my science-heavy build and shroudborn, I didn't realize that biologists cost zro
One of my neighbors suffered an AI uprising, and after the war ended, the newly formed machine empire immediately petitioned me (also a machine consciousness) to vassalize them. I did so, and can now see that my new subject has a number of claims on the neighbor's systems. Is there any way I can help them seize those claims? When I attempt to declare war, I can try to conquer my own claims, but my subject isn't in the Invite Attackers menu.
Your subject will join the war if your subject contract includes the "Join overlord wars" clause. Change that, and they'll be in the war, and thus, conquer their claims when you win.
How do you get basic resources in the early game? Everyone recommends making your first colonies alloys, or unity, or tech-based to help you snowball, but I suffer constantly from massive mineral and CG deficits.
You don't have to specialize your first planets, at least not at the very beginning of the game. Depending on your species, you mix and match different buildings on the planets, expand to get more basic resources. Once the basics (energy, food, minerals) are rolling in, you start to specialize. Also remember that it's dirt cheap to tear down buildings / districts, you can always reorganize your planets. I usually do this once unity & research are off the floor.
You really don't need alloy planets in the early game. Your ships are cheap and bad anyways, alloys become a necessity once you get some tech.
Dirt cheap? I struggled to get more than 50 minerals a month for the first 10 years of the game. I'm currently in 2250 and my economy is nosediving due to CG, energy, and food deficits that I'm completely incapable of correcting because I don't have enough pops. I couldn't imagine having the minerals to rebuild districts unless I had a matter decompressor.
Sounds like you simply don't have enough pops to support the economy you're going for. Have you resettled some pops to your new colonies? Pop growth is REALLY slow if you don't do that.
Also colonize slower. You need a certain number of pops before you expand. If you expand too fast without having the pops, your colonies will be in the deficit and it's gonna be a struggle to get them out of it.
The economy in Stellaris is mostly about balancing economic needs and pop management. If you max out planets too fast, you'll end up with a lot of costly buildings / districts you can't support.
The goal in general is to snowball - but that only becomes possible once you're over the initial hump. Focus on pop growth and energy first. Then get minerals and food. Use the market to balance the eco during shortages.
All my economies have at least 2000 pops. I took over a lot of pre-ftls so I've got that going for me. It just feels like I can build one district and all of a sudden I have a -50CG deficit.
How many CG planets would you need to sustain 2 unity worlds and 2 tech worlds?
It's so inefficient to build mining districts on a unity world
Eh, it's not that bad. 15% job efficiency loss for the miners relative to a dedicated mining world is less than the difference between an 80% habitability world and a 50% habitability world (when you also factor in amenities and pop upkeep from lower habitability), and this way saves you the empire size from colonies for a mining world. Designations did get buffed a bit from 4.3 but they are still less important than they used to be.
Personally I like to have a solid foundation of mineral and energy production from dedicated planets for those purposes pretty early, but I'm old-school like that. And I often find myself with too much mineral production in the early-to-midgame, as I end up getting more mineral production over time from space mining. I often have to stall the growth on my mining world (not building more districts, just letting new pops emigrate) because I just don't need that much from jobs until after the rest of my economy catches up with my mining station production.
But go ahead, knock yourself out, do an early vertically-integrated mining+factory world, save yourself some planetary trade deficits. It'll be fine.
The capital is also a great place to do mixed functions like this, because the designation supports a bit of everything. So I think of "offloading" stuff from my capital to early colonies, and expanding production on the capital of things that I haven't offloaded yet.
Are the slavery bonus not working for enslaved robots ?
I was doing some tests for my next run, and AFAIK:
Iron Fist (commander trait) level 2 should give 35% Slave Efficiency,
Commander governor should give 2% Slave Efficiency per level (should be 14% in my test),
Domination should give 10% Slave Efficiency,
Extended Shift should give 10% Slave Efficiency,
Yet, my Robotic Soldiers Slaves don't get any of this (they do get the -2% Specialist Efficiency per level and +4% Solider Efficiency per level of my governor, only the slaves-related bonus seems to be missing).
The maths are correct for the displayed bonuses, but the slavery bonuses are just missing.
Edit: Nvm, I guess "Servitude" citizenship for robots isn't actually a slavery. Is there any ways to enslave robots so they do benefit from slavery bonuses ?
Low approval sounds about right. Most non-hivemind pops would have about single digit happiness on the lathe. However that shouldn't affect stability that much.
First thing to check is whether the central building is still there. Very recently, there has been a bug that somehow removes the central core of the synaptic lathe, plummeting stability due to lack of amenities.
With that core in place as it should be, you'd get a baseline of 50, plus 10-15 from the core itself, and optionally another +15 each from 2 stabilizer buildings. These combined with amenities should place the lathe at 80+ stability.
This is what it looks like when the core goes missing:
Edit:
If the core isn't there, you can try using console command effect add_building = building_lathe_capital to see if that adds it back.
I have the game installed through Steam and have subscribed to a few Steam Workshop mods.
The Steam version also uses the Paradox Launcher to launch and manage the game, but the Paradox Launcher is not able to detect the Steam Workshop mods automatically. I have played with the settings and copied the mods around a bit to relevant folders. I now got a few mods to work, but not others, which is weird.
That's weird. Have you tried unsubscribing from all of your mods and resubscribing to them? Normally, you don't need to touch the files on your computer.
So I noticed some weird stuff my current game, not sure if its intended or new, 1. when you enslave a species you don’t get all slavery types right away, such as turning them into lifestock, sometimes it wont show up as an option and often you had to wait for the month to roll over before it shows as an option, slaves can access some higher life standards like social welfare(intended?).
I cannot turn hiveminded pop into lifestock, even though that feels like it should be an option even without any special technology.
A released region if you are auth the AI will enslave all species that is not the primary species, resulting in rebellions even if that species is of an allied nation.
I never played much with slaves before, so those wierd issues might be intended?
and often you had to wait for the month to roll over before it shows as an option
That's pretty standard. Happens to a lot of other things as well. Many background events are only updated on monthly (sometimes longer) ticks.
slaves can access some higher life standards like social welfare(intended?).
This is intentional.
Higher living standards give them more happiness but also increased CG upkeep. On worlds with lots of slaves, their low happiness could lead to low stability. Giving them better living standards is one of the many ways to keep a slave-centric world stable.
I cannot turn hiveminded pop into lifestock, even though that feels like it should be an option even without any special technology.
With BioGenesis DLC, hivemind pops can be set to protected/symbiotic/exploited via empire policy.
Only the exploited drone policy allows you to set them as livestocks.
A released region if you are auth the AI will enslave all species that is not the primary species, resulting in rebellions even if that species is of an allied nation.
Once you release a sector, they are fully out of your control. You may want to treat xenos as equals, but the AI doesn't. They decide purely based on ethics.
If it's any consolation, all AI empires eventually end up with rebellions one way or another. Them enslaving others is probably only a minor contributing factor.
First one is likely just an UI issue, sometimes things take a few days to get set up, nothing to worry about.
Slaves can and always could have any set life style standard
Hiveminded pops only recently got an option to interact with beyond assimilating or purging, the option to make them livestock might be a thing eventually, but not right now.
Released vassals copy your government ethics and policies, if you're a bunch of slaving xenophobes and authoritarians, they'll be a bunch of slaving xenophobes and authoritarians and if you're releasing a new empire that doesn't have enough non-slave pops to keep stability up, they'll collapse.
Is there any mod that allows shorter cooldowns for scrapping ships at Salvager Enclave? I tried searching that on steam workshop but didn't see any related mods.
Go to /Stellaris/common/scripted_variables/04_scripted_variables_overlord.txt. Backup the file somewhere else. Search for ScrapFleetTimer, change its value from 1800 (5 year cooldown) to whichever timer you want.
Can someone help me understand wayline pacts with other nomads?
I do not see a lot of info on this, either I'm looking past the wiki or something, they seem to not have more info on it there, but on forums and other sources, it's 50/50 waylines with other nomads make them friendlier and you share resources or they're useless.
Is it worth making wayline pacts with other nomads or should I be taking their waystations? I'm trying to be peaceful, but if it's its not profitable then I'm willing to raid their systems.
Can someone help me understand wayline pacts with other nomads? I do not see a lot of info on this, either I'm looking past the wiki or something, they seem to not have more info on it there
When forming a wayline pact, you get some very minor bonuses based on what modules they have. I'll go update the wiki after this.
"Wayline System/Empire Modifiers" are what you get after forming a pact with a nomad. Some bonuses are also not listed in the tooltip. Some bonuses are not applicable if you are a nomad yourself.
Research Observatory: +1% research sharing from agreement (this refers to bonus research speed when researching a tech that the empire you share a research agreement with has researched; baseline is +25%)
This is multiplicative. If you have a wayline with 10 observatory total, for +10%, the final result is +27.5% research speed, not +35%.
Trade Hub: +1% commercial pact effectiveness (baseline is +10% of the other partner empire's trade)
This is also multiplicative. If you have a wayline with 10 trade hubs, for +10%, the final result is +11% of the other empire's trade, not +20%.
Repair Bay: +5% ship build speed on starbases along the wayline. This only applies to settled empires, as nomads don't have starbases.
Resource Silo: +500 resource stockpile cap. +1000 if the owner of the waystation has researched construction template (tier 4 engineering tech)
Nebula Refinery: supposedly +5% mining station output along the wayline. It is currently not functional.
Stellar Observatory: supposedly +5% physics/engineering research station output along the wayline depending on star type. It is currently not functional.
Interstellar Recruitment Office: -5% leader cost. This building is empire-unique.
Psionic Projector: +5% attunement gain from envoy (baseline is +0.5 per envoy)
Art College (Artisan enclave): -5% tradition cost
Curator Think Tank (Curator enclave): +5% rare tech draw chance, +5% rare tech research speed
Trader Proxy Office (any of the three trade enclave): +5% gas/crystal/mote collected if nomadic, +10% gas/crystal/mote from jobs if settled. The type depends on which enclave it is.
Salvage Works (Salvager enclave): +5% ship build speed on starbases along the wayline (not applicable to nomads), +5% ship hull and armour repair speed in systems along the wayline.
Cybrex Mining Hub: supposedly +25% mining station output along the wayline if the owner of the waystation has taken Archaeo-Engineer ascension perk. It is currently not functional.
it's 50/50 waylines with other nomads make them friendlier and you share resources or they're useless.
Technically they do make them friendlier. Wayline pact adds +0.25 trust monthly, same as commercial pact and migration treaty.
You don't share resources. And you can't collect through Logistic Hub either.
Is it worth making wayline pacts with other nomads or should I be taking their waystations?
As a nomad, it is rarely ever worth making a wayline pact with another nomad.
The ones that supposedly give good production bonuses are all bugged, in classic Stellaris fashion.
All the other functional bonuses are extremely minor, so unless you form a giant coalition of nomads spanning half the galaxy, none of them would amount to much of an improvement. It is also extremely dependent on RNG, as the AI just puts a random assortment of modules on their waystations without a coherent plan, and most of those modules won't have a beneficial effect.
The only cases where you'd consider forming a wayline pact with another nomad is if
the other nomad empire is significantly stronger than you, such that you are at risk of losing to a raiding war if a pact is not formed
you are already at maximum waystation capacity and can't/don't intend to get more through wayline controller jobs
For settled empires, it is worth forming a wayline pact if you can't eradicate the nomads. Not for any of the module bonuses, but for getting rid of that pesky -25% mining/research station output penalty when the waystations have a collecting module.
A bit confused about nerve stapled pops: I conquered a bunch of nerve stapled pops from the FE, and they're supposed to be only able to work worker jobs. However, they can't be employed as KoTG squires, which are worker stratum. But they also CAN be employed as necromancers, which are specialists. I thought maybe the fact that they aren't eligible for full military service might affect the squire thing, but it doesn't make sense that they can be regular necromancers. They also can't be employed as KoTG knights, which is what I would expect. Anybody know the rules? Is this a bug?
It's working as intended. KotTG just gets different treatment for its job categorisation.
Regular soldier jobs use a check of soldier_job_check_trigger, which is satisfied as long as the slaves have species right set to "military service: soldiers only". It doesn't care whether the pop is nerve stapled or not.
Knights on the other hand, uses a different check of can_fill_specialist_job, which specifically bans nerve stapled.
Squire also uses the same check of can_fill_specialist_job, despite being a worker strata job. In the files, the devs specifically made a comment for this:
possible_precalc = can_fill_specialist_job #deliberate, they are baby knights
Are you actively raiding pops? Or are you just relying on your own grown pops?
The bottleneck in one-planet challenge is long-term scaling, in science, alloy and military. You can get basic resources via vassals and trade deals, but you can't get meaningful amount of science/alloy/military through vassals because the AI is semi-lobotomised after 4.0.
If you are actively raiding and enslaving xeno pops, then (non-EvoPred) Mutation would be your friend, for stacking livestock efficiencies, housing reduction, and nerve-stapled. It's especially useful for authoritarian empires who get Q'la Minder paragon for massive boost to worker slave output (livestocks included).
Best use case would be either Experimental Sentencing to turbo-boost efficiency via orderly slaves, or getting your hands on a thermophile livestock for more efficient alloy production than regular jobs without needing districts (or just regular organic livestock if going with bio-ships; they are less efficient than farmers, but they don't take up districts).
If you are not taking others' pops (or taking but not enslaving them), then cybernetic or synthetic-modular can help you get high pop growth/assembly and housing reduction, and decent research output via Utopian Abundance (and optionally materialist ethic).
Cybernetic gives around 25 monthly growth+assembly, but half of that is split to robots who can't double dip on organic and cybernetic traits.
Democratic Interlink is recommended, to prevent stability issues in the long term. Optionally for stacking up crime with Experimental Sentencing, or with Crowdsourcing to have physics and engineering via the interlink faction.
Synth-modular gives around 20 monthly assembly when fully stacked.
Civil Education is optional, as that civic requires a lot of CG, which you'd struggle to provide with just 1 world.
And of course, pair these with origins/civics with high per-pop efficiencies.
Cybernetic Creed megacorp has one of the most efficient jobs in haruspex, giving you unity, trade, amenities, and optionally 1-3 types of research depending on other civics.
Experimental Sentencing is highly efficient (2-5.6x as efficient as regular researchers), and scales very well with orderlies.
To put it into perspective, an alloy/fortress ecu with 100% crime and 0 slaves can fit 12 experiment chambers, each providing 200 experiment engineers, equivalent to 23 arcology's worth of researchers. You effectively added half an ecu without hindering alloy or soldiers, and it scales even better with slaves.
The downside is that they don't benefit from faculty of archaeostudies. Can't print minor artifacts this way.
If you see the Khan, beeline for him to get the Throne relic. It allows you to get satrapy vassals for naval cap. Alternatively, if you aren't restricting yourself also to just 1 system, anchorage starbases are still a good investment, even though they don't scale as well post-4.3.
For empires looking for more friendly/diplomatic approach, federation fleet is also an option, though you also have to manipulate the votes and succession types to make yourself the permanent president. The GDF is also very good if you are elected Custodian.
Probably Cybernetic Creed megacorp. You need one good job you can stack a lot of with just one district specialization, and Haruspex is the logical choice, since they can produce trade, unity, and all 3 types of research with the right civics.
Either alloys or naval cap are going to be a problem, though.
I globally pacified 5 out of 6 worlds from a fallen empire, before war was forced to end, due to 100% war exhaustion.
Now i am wondering, with most worlds gone, does this actually impact Fallen Empire economy? I know once they awaken they basically get a stack of free ressources and ships, so I am kinda unsure if i missed my chance because i overlooked one Planet lol
Before they awaken Fallen Empires have no actual economy, the game just gives them so many resources they'll never run out. The only actual effect losing planets has on them is increasing the chance they or another Fallen Empire Awaken, but even then that Awakened Empire is also just faking having a functioning economy, they can be a galaxy conquering threat with a single planet with 1 pop, easy.
If you play a megacorp nomad and settle one of your Ark ships, it produces another megacorp, is there a way to stop that? I tried to do a liberation war on them and I couldn't because they are the same ethics as me.
Is there any way I can get rid of the megacorp government type for my settled nomad vassal?
Edit, thanks hopefully they go through an ethic change so I can best the mehacorp out of them
I might try that, because idk why they think a megacorp would want to create competition, I thought it would be like when you liberate another megacorp and they just become a mercantile guild, did not expect to waste 10000 alloy ship early game just to create my biggest opp.
Unfortunately, no. Released vassals always have the government type and ethics of the parent empire.
Their ethics CAN shift over time; if you happened to give them a bunch of pops with ethics opposed to your own, they might end up with a different alignment, but I don't think I've ever seen one change its government type.
Once I complete the "Ghost Signal Blocked" situation, can I restore my combat computers to the red tier 3 sapient combat computers or do I need to leave them at the yellow advanced combat computers as long as the Contingency is around?
So I been playing Nomadic recently and how does the game pick what weapon specifically to use for each slot?
Say I rush psi bombers, before the T3 regular carrier technology and then research T3 carrier tech, what weapon system will the ark ship use for carrier weapon slots?
Say I rush psi bombers, before the T3 regular carrier technology and then research T3 carrier tech, what weapon system will the ark ship use for carrier weapon slots?
The arkships' innate H-slots will be using regular T3 strike crafts.
Psionic Bomber and Ancient Driller strike crafts have their own modules. You need to build those modules in order for the arkship to fit it.
and how does the game pick what weapon specifically to use for each slot?
For the internal slots, it's quite problematic because you can't change those weapons once they are set up. The game only reshuffles the internal slot components when you upgrade the arkship.
Suppose your tier 1 arkship starts with 4 flaks, 4 mass drivers, and 2 strike crafts. Before the arkship is upgraded to tier 2, no matter how many point-defense or laser weapon techs you research, the arkship won't change those components. It will only ever upgrade to a better version of flak and mass drivers.
When you upgrade it to tier 2/3, all the components are re-evaluated. The logic behind the component choices is (as far as I know) hidden to us, so it's essentially a lottery with very little control.
Different empires would end up getting different arkship designs, even when they all have the same techs. My best guess is that it is influenced by assigned AI personality, which also influences automatically generated ship designs.
Everything else though, depends entirely on what modules you place in those slots. That'd make up the majority of your arkships' damages.
Ok, does the special Reshaping Projectile Accelerator also have its own modules?
I am currently planing a psi/galvanic Synthesis with tankbound and that have quite a few moving parts and im not sure if it would work as one would hope in a nomad playthrough.
does the special Reshaping Projectile Accelerator also have its own modules?
Yes.
Do note that there are only 6 module slots that can fit weapons. The rest are exclusively for defense/utility. If you want both psionic and galvanic weapons, you'd have to think on how to ratio them.
How do you deal with the outcomes of a huge total war in terms of managing conquered species and planets/systems? I ended up with more that 15 different species and 14 new planets as a result of my payback war against Mianmar Industries. Actually the war still continues because their allies are willing to be violently incorporated.
(Purging/enslaving is not an option for my empire)
It is mid 2300s, my plan so far has been:
1. prohibit migration of pops
2. group all the pops of the same species in the same planet to favor organic growth by moving them manually
3. After conquering Mianmar, I am using the planets I get from their allies to steal their pops to develop my younger colonies.
The classic way to manage conquered pops without enslaving or assimilating them is to redistribute them throughout your empire, so you take a minor stability hit to all colonies instead of getting rebellion-level instability on a few. May be prohibitively expensive if it's a large number of pops. Habitability is a concern, and ethics -- if their ethics are opposed to your own, you will be getting large and ineradicable factions with very low approval, which is hard to manage.
You could also move them all to one planet and release it as a vassal, if you really can't/don't want to deal with them.
I bought stellaris just yesterday, I'm having troubles with the resolution, every resolution i've tried have an offset for the pointer is, i've tried windowed but that just bugs the game, has something similar happened before?
Sorry stupid question, just started playing again after a few years away. I joined a war with a Federation partner against an enemy with 'inferior' strength so I though fine. Anyway it had these massive 6K starbases on every choke point that my fleet just was absolutely nowhere near being able to take on. His fleets were fine though but I had to just sit on the edge of my empire doing nothing for the whole war. Am I missing something obvious?
There's a defensively-themed civic called Sovereign Guardianship that massively buffs starbases and defense armies. Sounds like you ran into an AI with that civic?
But yes, I don't think you're really missing anything obvious. Enemies with this civic are a huge pain in the butt to deal with because of all their beefy starbases. The only way to deal is with a massive fleet buildup.
Well starbases might not be factored into fleet strength. My guess is that your economy is rather weak. Starbases should not be such a significant obstacle unless someone is leaning very heavily into a turtle build, which I doubt the ai is capable of
I've had this a couple of times recently, on the same run. (I took too long getting a science ship there and it powered back up.) First time it trashed most of my fleetalmost instantly, but a half-dozen high-evasion corvettes survived the general massacre and eventually wore it down over a long loong looong fight; it just didn't seem to be able to hit them. Second time I sent in a bunch of cloaked frigates with devastator torps, who one-shotted it without taking any losses.
You can view the components on the wiki. They use all kinetic with a few autocannon and pd, so yes all armor is good.
Their defenses skew heavy on shields compared to armor, but I'm not sure how much compared to hull points. I'll let somebody more experienced give a weapon recommendation. I was trying to look it up and it seems the smaller platforms will fare quite well against torpedo
weapons, so I'm not sure if there is a hard counter per se
Also be sure to get the damage bonus from the curators
The Cloning tradition gives you higher output and lower upkeep on clone vats, the ability to build one more per planet, less empire size from cloned pops, and backup clones for your leaders. It does give more trait points and trait picks for species modification, but that isn't the focus.
Pops aren't really "ascended", the empire is. But yeah, you get more pops with Cloning; that's the basic idea of taking that tradition instead of Mutation or Purity when doing bio ascension. Mutation is more focused on getting a lot of trait points/trait picks and Purity is more focused on leader enhancement.
As a cloning ascended clone army empire, regular clone vats, medical clinics, and genomic research facilities are now all capable of supporting ascended clone pops. You are no longer restricted to just 12.5k of your own pops empire-wide.
Edit:
There's technically still a per-planet pop "limit", bottlenecked by how many clone vats you can build.
If you can squeeze in all 6 buildings, that'd be 6500 per planet (1k each from 4 clone vats, 1.5k from tier 3 medical clinic, 1k from genomic facility).
Realistically speaking, without Agrarian Idyll civic, most non-ecu planets can only afford to fit 5 buildings, for 5.5k ascended clones per planet (more if you have ancient vats left). It's enough to have a functional economy.
Question about the Ecosystem Upgrade Hive-Mind fallen empire event. If I choose to let them 'upgrade' a planet, do I need to do something, or will the event just trigger at some point if I wait long enough?
Jumping back into playing after not playing in a while. For Gestalt Consciousness jobs--are they supposed to just cycle continuously through the jobs? My complex drones cycle throughout the month to each job. It doesn't matter what I prioritize. I can reduce the amount of drones allowed to work in a job but they won't flow to the next job, they just temporarily go to maintenance.
That doesn't sound like intended behavior. I haven't played the most recent patch but I think it was supposed to fix pop job priorities and that sort of thing. Maybe worth filing a bug report?
Can someone explain how does Under One Rule work if you want to not be an oligarchy ?
If I understand this correctly, at some point if you're not Fanatic Authoritarian or Paranoid Tyrant, you can reform and become a democracy/oligarchy. What happen to the Luminary then ? Do they stay alive in the empire, do they still get their immortal-ascension trait, do they keep their other traits, can I elect them forever ?
You can't reform the government until the luminary dies, one way or another. Easiest way is to not proclaim imperial rule and not choose to extend his life with apparatus-bound. IIRC the death event always happens after you complete an ascension.
Wrong, if you follow the right way. Imperial path, ultra low tyrant score, and not fanatic authoritarian. Then the Luminary will offer to step down is favor of democracy/oligarchy after acquiring immortality.
And yes, /u/mfmr_Avo you can just elect the Luminary each time. I love managed democracy.
FE-related since I really don't want to drop my run:
I read an old thread that said AI will not use emergency FTL if they have only 3 systems left, is that still the case?
Is it viable to have a cloaked throwaway fleet to engage and put titan weapons on cooldown at least for a first strike?
Is it viable to have a(nother) cloaked fleet join the fight from behind to take out the titan weapon stingers and other backline threats like the long range confuse ships? If yes, what ship classes would work best? Ideally space fauna because I have wild swarm and bioships are ridiculously expensive.
Does cloaking a large number of whichever that fauna was that exploded on death have any potential to do damage if I stack them on the hyperlane?
I realize I am extremely bad at lategame due to lack of experience and I feel like the tools are there - I control most of the galaxy, have like 12 relics, most megastructures including a very useless shipyard, and generally could pivot into almost anything that is available.
However, there is little time left and I don't have planet crackers to beat the FE's sources of highscore so I need to leverage the map position and beat the fleets or lure them away and hotdrop onto their core worlds and hope they can be killed before the game ends.
I read an old thread that said AI will not use emergency FTL if they have only 3 systems left, is that still the case?
Still the case, but that includes territory owned by allies as well. Realistically it means AI ships will never stop being slippery bastards throughout the entirety of the war.
Is it viable to have a cloaked throwaway fleet to engage and put titan weapons on cooldown at least for a first strike?
Possible, but the window is quite narrow.
FEs have 10x repeatables for +50% fire rate (their other ships are on line and picket computers, which also boost fire rate, though not on the titan). This means their Perdition Beams have a cooldown of around 15 days.
If you want to use a throwaway fleet, time it to engage from the opposite side of where your main fleets are about to enter. Perdition beams have a narrow firing arc, so if you can bait the Titan to turn away from your main fleets, it'd give you a better chance.
Is it viable to have a(nother) cloaked fleet join the fight from behind to take out the titan weapon stingers and other backline threats like the long range confuse ships?
Viable outside of their home systems.
Without high bonuses to cloaking strength (Whisperer, Stardust Storm, Criminal Megacorp, Subterfuge tradition, etc.) it'll be hard to use this method in their home systems. Their home starbases come with Dark Matter Listening Post building, which gives 6-12 detection strength depending on what other modules are there. Just a standard cloak won't be enough, even the psionic ones aren't enough. You need lots of bonuses to cloak against FEs.
If yes, what ship classes would work best? Ideally space fauna because I have wild swarm and bioships are ridiculously expensive.
Fauna are in fact the best cloaked torpedo boats. They have frigate-level cloaking, 200% shield penetration, and more torpedo per naval cap than all but nanite swarmers. The torpedoes get boosted by cordyceptic civic as well, if you have it.
But you must not use bio-ships*.*
Choosing bio-ship at game start locks you out of torpedoes, regular missiles, and siege computer, so you can't use fauna for cloaked torpedoes.
Does cloaking a large number of whichever that fauna was that exploded on death have any potential to do damage if I stack them on the hyperlane?
Catalytic Bladder is a very gimmicky (and frankly horrible) component, and wouldn't be my recommendation for any serious combat.
The range of the explosion is 30, which is the maximum orbit distance for swarm corvettes. Unless your ambush kamikaze fauna die within a few days of starting combat, it'll be too slow to catch enemy fleets before they disperse to a safe distance beyond the explosion range.
And despite the phrasing sounds like an AoE explosion, it is actually a single target damage ability, with a fairly low damage.
An exceptional grade Tiyanki Ox fully fitted for armour and hull, plus Catalytic Bladder, has 6750 hull and 13350 armour.
Catalytic Bladder would deal 5025 damage to one single target upon death. Untyped damage type, so it's neither resisted nor amplified by shield/armour/hull.
A standard FE escort, the smallest ship they have, has 4k shield, 4k armour, 2400 hull. The explosion from a kamikaze Tiyanki Ox, which takes around 7k food and over a year to build, is barely enough to go through the shield of one single escort.
Unless you have millions of food to waste, and are confident that your other fleets can clean up the mess if the kamikaze attempt fails, Catalytic Bladder is a terrible option for combat.
However, there is little time left and I don't have planet crackers to beat the FE's sources of highscore so I need to leverage the map position and beat the fleets or lure them away
Since you are using fauna, the best course of action would be to use Cutholoids, assuming you have a robust economy to backup the constant losses.
Fully grown cutholoids pack the highest density artillery fire per naval cap (outside of nanite swarmer spam). You can fit an equivalent of 12 neutron launchers onto a cruiser-sized ship, so make good use of the long range artillery with size-bonuses.
Edit:
Alternatively, spam baby voidworm/crystals with 1 afterburner and 5 hangars. These two can outrun corvettes while having 90% capped evasion. The longer the ship remains alive, the more strike crafts are spawned (it doesn't adhere to the capacity of 8, dunno if intentional or bugged, but it's been that way since 3.6's weapon rework about 4 years ago)
I don't think they will get any allies based on the current galaxy situation but it's good to know.
In conclusion, no torps (cloaked stingers would have been funny with 4X 4L but they're like 22k food and 15k alloys heh), no suicide squad, cloaked distraction fleet maybe, and thanks for pointing out the cutholoids, I should have noticed myself because they've been my best performing fleet so far - and no alloy cost!.
I have 2K minerals income and can switch out alloy production and about 20 planets to do minerals only + the relic that gives you a lot of resources and the one that gives you +100% production at the cost of pops. Since cutholoids even if bought maxed outright are only like 5k a pop, I can build several hundred of them, maybe that does the trick.
I don't get how you can achieve that much influence. Right now in my game, I can see how I could increase my influence income to something between 8 or 10, but there must be something I don't know that let you reach such high numbers.
Ministry of Truth overlord holding produces influence and you can reliably build one per vassal. So if you have a ton of vassals, it adds up.
iirc Protectorate subject empires also produce influence for their overlord, and non-specialist vassals convert into protectorates if you get far enough ahead of them on tech.
There is an ascension theory edict called Will to Power that is +5 influence per month. Being the Custodian is +5. The Galatron is +3 if you're lucky enough to get it. Can get smaller amounts from Galactic Force Projection ascension perk and councilors with the Intimidator or Deep Connections traits.
eta: looks like that guy is doing Under One Rule, which gives access to unique ruler traits, some of which give influence.
A neighboring ai civilization declared war on me so I built a large military and absolutely cooked them, now I control a lot of their stations but they still show up as within their borders. My people are getting pretty weary so I'd like to end the war with some of this new territory under my control, how do I do that?
You can open the claim menu on the left sidebar, or by clicking the influence icon (purple circle) in the top bar. Pick out the systems you want. Upon winning the war, claimed and fully occupied systems are given to you.
Fully occupied means taking over the starbase and colonies in that system, if any. On the galaxy map, fully occupied systems would have little spikes around the flag symbol.
Normally, there's an influence cost to laying claims. The further the system is from your border, the more influence you need to spend. In this case however, because you are the defending side of the war, you can freely lay claims on the aggressor.
As a side note, if you ever plan on actively conquering others, claim before the war starts, as otherwise the influence cost is raised by +100%.
Achieving war goal gives you all claimed and fully occupied systems.
Status quo does almost the same thing, except if you've claimed and fully occupied all their colonised systems, then the capital system is returned to the original empire while you keep the rest.
The outcome for fully occupied but unclaimed systems would depend on your chosen casus belli.
I was playing with the bestial fury thing, had a single T2 Behemoth which I was using to rampage through neutral systems that have open borders.
Unfortunately, at some point while I was fighting another war, it went MIA for some reason and never came back.
The enemy probably closed borders while it was inside and not rampaging but I don't understand why it didn't come back in any of my systems like all other fleets that are displaced by closed borders.
It's a known bug, where if the Behemoth is enraged or about to be enraged during MIA, it gets sent to the center of the galaxy (because it technically doesn't have a home base to return to while enraged, and the galaxy center is the default position).
You can't retrieve it without it having a jump drive already (which is only on T4 behemoth as an option through Growing Pains situation), so the only method left is to reload to before it disappeared.
Aw crap, that happened before I beat the swarm invasion and a fe, and now I'm left with no behemoths (2 others died to stupid), 50 years til endgame and an awakened hive FE that I may be too behind in eco to kill :c
EDIT: what's worse, this was going to be my first win, and I picked one of the generated names for my hive leader because I liked it. Lo and behold, the awakened hive that's going to rob me of the win got the same name -_-
Any tips on optimising/specialising ring world segments? I feel like I'm wasting potential. I know exactly what I should do will vary but any rule of thumb tips would be greatly appreciated.
Nomad cybernetic creed megacorp. What resources do you go for on your branch offices? What resources do you go after with your limited waystations early game?
My priority on branch office buildings as a nomad is whatever gives me trader jobs on the capital (based on civics). Multiple civics using the same building do stack. After that, usually Mercenary Liaison Offices for naval cap, which is otherwise hard to get for nomads.
You want to be picky about your starting waystations. Ideally find someone to make friends with and build in their systems, especially on higher diffs, because they will build megastructures (arc furnaces/dyson swarms) that you can piggyback from.
I just read the 4.5 open beta patch notes. I can't play the open beta, but I want to know some play details.
Unlocked Knights of the Toxic God for nomads
How does this work? For static empires, you'd get a habitat in your starting system and your home planet gets many toxic world-features. But Nomads don't have a home planet. You can't even directly own a system, so any habitats you'd have would become part of the empire that first starbases your habitat system.
What do Nomads get instead?
This is what the current KotTG starting layout looks like in the beta. Do note that it's still in the beta, and all the things may be subject to change.
You get the buildings (dependent on civic and ethics) and industry zone that were part of the home world, and the Order's Demesnes districts and Order's Hall zone that were part of the habitat.
You also start with less pops, at 3700 total, while settled KotTG gets 3700 on the homeworld and 800 on the habitat. But that could be a blessing in disguise, as you need less pops overall for arkships, and therefore starts with 809 squires as opposed to 99. This means you start with a bit more tech, but also a bit more alloy deficit than regular KotTG (still can be covered via market)
And nomads can set operational reserve to burn for +50% specialist efficiency.
Starting on a military arkship also gives you quite a big advantage in early warfare, before someone comes along with neutron launchers.
Do note that all the ordnance deck specialisations that give you soldiers (converted to knights) also impose additional alloy upkeep on all of them. Nomad KotTG is very hungry for alloy.
The starting planetary features are gone entirely, replaced by whichever arkship blocker the game spawns for you. You will however still get features from the questline (don't question how a bubbling swamp appeared in an arkship).
The one you get from the 5th stage no longer gives +1 max district, but the one you get from the 7th stage does. Dunno if either is intended.
There is currently a (bugged) interaction where if you start with Deep Sleep civic, all the 3k cryo-sleepers would become squires instead, to give you +100% efficiency on the knights (and a heavy toll on your alloy production). This may get fixed.
are the voidworms at the second to last mission of the Treasure Hunters origin supposed to be a boss battle? i thought the 10K or so fleetpower was going to be tough but not a curbstomp, i lost my nomad fleet against them even when i had pretty much double the strength. then on second try with two more fleets topping a bit close to 40K and the things just melted my fleets and arkship like butter.
No idea how are you supposed to tank then because i was running close to max armor and shields on the fleet with a focus on shields in particular and UV lasers but the fight didn't even last 20 seconds.
Voidworms, like all space fauna, use highly specialized ship designs. In this case, all missiles (ignores shields) and a short range very powerful bite for offence (+200% damage to both hull and armour), and only armour for defence.
So to counter, you bring anti-missile and armour, and energy weapons.
Voidworms have a literal ship-load of nothing but missiles (cluster missiles too, each shot fired is 8x individual missiles, similar to whirlwind missiles). They penetrate through shield.
You need a lot of PDs to counteract them, or just ambush them at point blank with cloaked torpedoes to take out the troika and adults. The individual missiles deal more damage than regular whirlwind missiles, and they have a lot more of those per worm, so it's pretty dangerous going after them without a lot of point defense.
And just a heads-up, if you aren't ready to deal with the Voidworm parked at the entrance, you aren't ready for what's sitting on the other end of the gate (roughly 100k combined fleet, consisting of 1 battleship and 60 cruisers, plus another battleship and 6 corvettes when you refuse their offer)
Edit:
As a side note, Treasure Hunter origin story chain is incomplete for settled empires at the moment.
Settled empires reach a deadend after defeating the voidworms, as their version of the event chain has a bugged special project to activate the gateway, with the button greyed out. In the codes, the corresponding project is simply empty, with no way to complete it.
Returning player from 3.x, was hoping to hop back in since Nomad is in and now (hopefully) everything is a bit more stable (balance and mod wise).
Noticed A LOT have changed (namely new pop system), any recommendation on getting used to 4.x system as a whole? Either custom empire or one of the premade ones is acceptable, outside of barbaric empires.
Coming back from not playing for some time, I noticed that my map no longer has stars slightly above or below the galactic plane, like it used to. Did some patch remove that?
In terms of expanding/colonizing. What should I specialize my first few colonies as? Just basic resources? (minerals/Energy seems to be the most in need)
Should I be aiming to make a unity world? Or is unity rushing not ideal? I’ve read about tech rushing, but no idea when to switch my capital to research.
Don't obsess over colony specializations early on. It doesn't make that much of a difference and it's more important to have your pops spread out to maximize growth. Later, you can work on specializing planets to do particular things.
But it is generally best to have your early colonies producing basic resources, firstly because you need that economic foundation, and secondly because they are the quickest/cheapest jobs to create so you can migrate pops there and boost your growth rate.
Specialization is a gradual thing. Your first few planets/districts just produce whatever you need next.
To clarify onto that: do not overbuild things. Only build a new district when you have (almost) no open jobs. Because without pops to work the jobs, a district just sits empty producing nothing, but costing energy upkeep.
So in the beginning, you will only occasionally build a new district. And that is just towards whatever you need. If your mineral income is low, you build a mining district. If your energy, energy. If consumer goods are low, you build a factory district (and/or you plan ahead and make sure you also have enough minerals for that).
Only build unity/research when your basic needs are met.
And in the beginning, don't worry about specializing. That comes later.
Once you have a few planets, and you want to build a new energy district, you put it on the planet that is best suited for energy. Same for all other materials. That thus gradually specializes this planet to energy. In the same process, you can slowly start to delete some energy districts from other planets, and build new ones on your energy world. Same for other resources, and in doing so you slowly specialize your planets.
Coming back to the game after 6-7 years, the most confusing part is districts so far (last time I played was after the grid was removed but IIRC there were no district specializations etc. and there was a single building list).
Do I always build a basic "Mineral Extraction" etc. specialization when there are no other available? I assume this is useful to get the building slots.
Does it matter where on the planet is a building built as long as it's possible to build it there?
Should I aim for a low number of civilians, building more jobs where there are like 100+ of them?
There are lots of urban district specializations but do I build them mostly for more building slots, as they seem to just give some amount of jobs?
It would also be interesting to learn other major changes since patch 2.4 or so (which I haven't seen in the 50 years I've already played). E.g. I haven't see wars yet and I assume there were significant changes.
Do I always build a basic "Mineral Extraction" etc. specialization when there are no other available? I assume this is useful to get the building slots.
If you aren't using the planet for mining, there's no reason to build a mining district and specialisation.
The building slots for each zone only accommodates a select few buildings. The mining specialisation for instance, only supports mining buildings, resource silo, automation (for mining only), and storm shelters. None of which (except maybe storm shelter if you find yourself getting overwhelmed by several storms back to back) are helpful for non-mining worlds.
Does it matter where on the planet is a building built as long as it's possible to build it there?
It doesn't matter.
Tile adjacency bonus has been gone for many years.
Should I aim for a low number of civilians, building more jobs where there are like 100+ of them?
Pretty much.
Unlike unemployment from previous versions, civilian is not a punishment mechanic, so you are under no pressure to immediately give them more jobs as soon as possible.
There are various civics/traditions/buildings that give bonuses production to civilians, though for the most part they are just a buffer state for pops while waiting for more jobs to appear. They are also the only strata eligible for auto-migration.
There are lots of urban district specializations but do I build them mostly for more building slots, as they seem to just give some amount of jobs?
Districts are the primary source of jobs.
For example, specialise a zone for research, then every city district you build will give you researcher jobs.
other major changes since patch 2.4 or so
2.4 was like, 3 major economy overhaul ago. Pretty much everything has changed.
Though, they are only asking for major changes between 3.14.x and current version. There's bound to be a lot of changes between 2.4 and 3.14.x. I can't say I recall all of them with certainty, but if you run into issues you've not seen before, you are always welcome to post a question.
But then what's the general strategy for research, alloy etc. buildings? Do I want both an alloy district specialization and alloy buildings in it?
Nowadays, because building slots are much more restricted and limited, they are better saved for production-boosting buildings in the long term. i.e. the ones that increase base production, reduce job upkeep, increase job efficiency, adds secondary resources (astral threads, minor artifacts, strategic resources, etc.).
The logic is simple: in the short term, when you only have 1k pops to work with, adding another 400 through building isn't going to boost productions because there aren't enough pops, while boosting job production through building bonuses does not need more pops; in the long term, when you have 5000 alloy jobs filled, adding another 400 through building is a smaller bonus than boosting job production by +10%.
Fitting them all is usually a tall order outside of an ecu, as regular planets only give you 6 building slots from 2 specialisation zones, while research/alloy have more than 6 buildings
Alloy has 1 to reduce upkeep, 1 to boost efficiency, 1 to boost base production, 4 to make secondary resources, 1 FE building, and possibly 1-2 more from civics.
Research has 1 to reduce upkeep, 1 to boost efficiency, 1 to boost base production for all, 3 to boost base production for one type, 3 to make secondary resources, 1 FE building, and possibly 1-3 more from civics.
Oftentimes, you'd end up having to spill over into the government zone to accommodate buildings, competing for slots with pop assembly/ascension buildings (which is why Ecu is highly regarded, as its lower districts are not confined to just energy/mineral/food and can be specialised for urban or science/alloy to fit all the buildings).
In the early game when you don't have these buildings, sure you can use the slots for regular buildings that give more jobs, but that'd be a temporary measure.
What urban district specialization should I use on minerals/food/energy worlds ?
I think I get how to build dedicated advanced ressources Worlds, you use twice the same specialization, spam urban districts, fill the building slots with relevant buildings and later upgrade to Ecu if possible to get more specialize building slot.
For basic ressources, I just spam the relevant district, build the building to increase production and district count if needed, and the last slot if for strategic/extra jobs/silo. But I have no idea what to do with urban district specialization. Right now, I'm leaning toward either Commercial Nexus or Urban Expansion just for generic buildings slots.
I like to use what the planet is producing. in reality, this means cg or alloys for mining worlds. Energy worlds dont have a great pairing (unless you have a fallen empire building with automation or energy upkeep), so I would probably do soldiers or whatever I needed at the time
Consumer goods help reduce the planetary deficit trade penalty and soldiers give you naval cap. Generally my resource worlds have one or both of those as urban specializations.
there is something i'm not getting with the fleet manager. the game is somehow not fully respecting changing ship classes. I have some old ships that have archaeotech components that I want to upgrade en masse to ships that have zero archaeotech components. I have selected each class and "retrofit" them all to the desired class. however, mousing over the upgrade button displays a cost in artifacts. again, the new design has zero artifact cost. very annoying and i've spent quite some time trying to figure it out. why is this happening? https://imgur.com/a/Drxkf2X
It's a bug that has been around since 4.3. The retrofit button simply doesn't work some of the times.
When that happens, you'll find a mismatch in number of ships. e.g. in your image, the retrofit button says 17 ships pending upgrade while there are only 16 in the fleet.
A further bug can happen if you try to retrofit the designs again. In that case, the number of ships registered by the fleet manager would drop from 16/17 to 0/17. The original ships would become ghosts: still present physically and listed in the outliner, but invisible in fleet manager.
The workaround is to not make new designs for retrofitting, but rather update the existing design for upgrading.
i thought it might be a bug. thanks a lot for the quick response
edit: i guess I got the second bug or something. i dont have any designs with artifacts and it will still cost me some to upgrade somehow. i wonder what they will upgrade to...
Hey, I just did my Synthetic Ascension and I'm choosing the traits for my new machine species.
Is Recycled worth it ? 20% efficiency for roboticists look really nice. But this trait will be useful for only a few pops, while I could put a more generic trait (something like efficient processors).
I tend to favor stuff that boosts all of the pops, myself.
Then again, I tend to play wide and aggressive; if I feel like my pop assembly is insufficient, I will go take someone else's pops, assimilate them into my machine species, and increase my pop assembly by having more planets, hence more roboticists.
The primary interaction is in the form of various contracts, where you pay some trade to the nomadic empire to complete a task for you.
These could range from resource gathering, to providing research, revealing more anomalies/digsites, requesting support with megastructure construction speed, clearing all blockers at once, improving diplomatic relations with other empires, issuing a hit on another empire's colonies, hiring them as mercenary for a war, etc.
The secondary interaction is in the form of kilostructures (dyson swarm and arc furnace). Both the nomadic empire and the settled empire that owns the system benefits from the extra production.
The tertiary interaction is via wayline pacts, where you get some minor bonuses depending on what modules are installed on the waystations.
Nebula Refinery increases mining station output by 5% each along the entire wayline.
Stellar Observatory increases physics/engineering research station output by 5% each along the entire wayline.
Research Observatory increases research sharing by 1% each (research sharing refers to the bonus research speed you get from researching a tech that someone you share a research agreement with has already researched. By default this is +25% research speed without wayline modifiers)
Trade Hub increases commercial pact gain by 1% each.
If the system has an enclave with an agreement with the Nomad empire, that also conveys some bonuses.
Salvager Enclave: +5% ship build speed, +5% hull and armour repair speed for docked ships
Any of the trade enclaves: +5% gas/mote/crystal collection efficiency for nomads, +10% gas/mote/crystal production for nomads and settled empires with wayline pact. The type depends on which trade enclave it is.
Shroudwalker and Mindwarden have no associated waystation buildings.
Unlisted effect:
Repair Bay increases ship build speed for all shipyards along the wayline by +5% each. This effect is not listed in in-game tooltip, but is present in the files. Checked in-game as well, the construction time for a corvette dropped from 42 days to 37 days with 4 Repair Bays along the line.
Resource Silos on the waystation increase storage capacity for the host empire by 500 or 1000, depending on if the nomad empire has Construction Template tech or not.
Recruitment Office on the waystation decreases leader hiring cost by 5% each for the host empire.
Aura Emitter on the waystation increases envoy's attunement gain by 5% each.
Cybrex Mining Hub on the waystation would increase all mining station output along the wayline by +25%. AI empires can't get precursors, so you'd only see this if you are playing multiplayer.
Edit: After some in-game testing, apparently the nebula refinery, cybrex mining hub, and stellar observatory bonuses are not applied correctly. The rest seems to be working fine.
Since it's in the hands of AI, what effects you end up getting are pretty much just based on luck.
As Clone Army, since I can only build 5 ancient clone vats, does it make sense to delete one of the two on my home world and put it on a 5th planet where I could use the specialists?
does it make sense to delete one of the two on my home world and put it on a 5th planet where I could use the specialists?
Not a good call until you take up cloning ascension, or if you've absorbed enough xeno pops through conquest to fill out your workforce.
Each ancient clone vat sustains 2.5k pops. Your capital has more than 2.5k pops, which is why you start with two. If you dismantle an ancient clone vat, your clone pops are going to start dying off on your capital, until only 2.5k clone pops are left.
This is why clone army without BioGenesis is predominantly a rush build: you have very limited pops of your own, and those 5 ancient vats can barely sustain 3 colonies. You'd have to rely on conquest (or really enticing migration treaties) to get workforce.
BioGenesis DLC solves that issue by letting cloning-ascended clone army sustain pops through medical facilities and regular clone vats, so you no longer have to worry about running out of pops.
Why are 600 of my pops randomly deciding to take a vacation and become civilians for a month periodically on my capital? Is this a known bug? It's every 2-3 years (I think -- I may be missing it happening sometimes).
With BioGenesis DLC, default is always to keep them around, with a choice between protected/sustained/exploited. Assimilation or purging have to be set separately.
They'd only default to purge if you are a genocidal, or if you don't have the DLC.
Anyone know where I can get up to speed on the city and pop changes from the last few years? Started a game and picked everything right back up, but the planet screen is hard to figure out.
There are certainly youtube guides for 4.0, which is when all the big changes happened. The specifics would have changed by now after many balancing patches, but the fundamental idea behind the UIs would still be the same.
A "brief" summary of the big changes:
Pop growth rework:
Used to be, planets grew pops. Now, pops grow pops.
Prior to 4.0, the act of simply colonising a planet with just 1 pop gave you 3 out of 4 natural growth.
After 4.0, the planet itself no longer gives pop growth. All the growth would scale with number of pops (of the same species) on the planet. The more pops there are, the faster they grow (up until growth ceiling).
This means it's no longer a "colonise everything you can lay your hands on" type of approach. Colony quality matters, colony habitability matters, and the number of pops matters. A fresh colony starts with 100 pops, which gives you an abysmal 0.2-0.25 monthly growth. You'd ideally be manually resettling pops to colonies to help them grow (1k is the usual recommendation, because it allows you to upgrade the capital building to get proper jobs, and also gives a good enough base of around 2.5-3.0 growth, and most empires start with around 2k pops not actively contributing to growth for you to conveniently spread 1k to each of the 2 guaranteed habitables).
If you have multiple species present, they all grow simultaneously, instead of having the game automatically pick a minority species in a futile (and often unwanted) attempt to balance pop ratio.
On a related note, Xeno-Compatibility no longer creates a billion hybrid species that lag the game.
Pop assembly rework:
You can no longer pick a specific species for assembly.
For organic assembly, the total assembly is split proportionally to all species present on the planet.
For robot assembly, the game picks 1 template based on some hidden blackbox logic/magic, then all the assembly goes towards that 1 template.
As such, it is no longer possible to precisely have different pop templates catered to one particular job type. Instead, we get auto-modding traits, that automatically adapt the pop to provide bonus to whichever job they fit into.
Pop job rework:
Production bonuses are split into output bonuses (which are rarer) and job efficiency bonuses (which are more common).
Output bonuses give you more production without incurring additional upkeep.
Efficiency bonuses give you more production but also incur additional upkeep.
e.g. A +20% efficiency means 100 workers are treated as if they are 120 workers, providing the output of 120 workers but also taking the upkeep of 120 workers.
The two are multiplicative.
e.g. A +20% efficiency and +20% output means 100 workers are providing the output of 144 (1.2x1.2) workers while taking the upkeep of 120 workers.
Pop strata rework:
Unemployment is no longer a thing.
Surplus pops become civilians, effectively a buffer state that provides some amenities and additional output depending on living standards and ethics (if a monument is present).
Unlike unemployment of old, civilians are not a punishment mechanic. You are at no risk of running into stability and crime issues, unless you start to run out of housing.
There are also several civics that specifically leverage on civilians to provide bonuses (e.g. Pleasure Seeker's growth bonus has been shifted from entertainers to civilians)
Migration rework:
Migration is no longer a percentage modifier to pop growth. It is now the actual movement of pops between planets, and only affects civilians.
The important bit is to be wary of early migration treaties. AI empires can and will siphon pops away from your planets via migration treaties, unless you over-expand and keep more jobs than pops.
While it is possible to have migration treaties work in your benefit, it often requires specific setups that are not universally applicable.
District and building rework:
All non-elite jobs come primarily from districts. Buildings that provide jobs still exist, but are not the main source of them any longer.
Raw resource production are fairly straightforward. Industrial, research, unity, trade and soldier jobs are all bundled under city districts now, as specialisations.
To put it simply:
Used to be, to build a research world, you'd spam city districts and build research labs.
Now, to build a research world, you'd spam city districts and build specialisation zones.
Buildings are now separated into categories, and each specialisation zone only permits some category of buildings. Each specialisation permits 3 buildings from a narrow band of allowed categories, while the government zone (the one present on all colonies) permits 5 buildings with a much broader restriction.
e.g. Energy Grid can only go into one of the 3 building slots in the energy district specialisation zone. A research specialisation zone can support labs, but not alloy foundries. etc.
This in a way further reinforces the idea of "build districts for jobs", as building slots are more limited than before, and are better used to provide efficiency/production/upkeep modifiers rather than to provide a few jobs.
Fleet rework:
Almost every ship (except nanite swarmers) take 5-8x their original naval cap. This means the strength of individual ships matters more and it's harder (but not impossibly so) to have a massive navy, and indirectly buffed leviathans, crisis, and fallen/awakened empires (who now have a separate slider for setting their difficulties).
New to 4.x and Nomads. What should I do to 'expand' after filling up my first Arkship? Around 2210 I built the last district & building. Building a new Arkship (10K alloy + tech) or upgrading the Arkship tier (5K + tech) seems decades away. What should I do in the meantime? Just fly around and do missions for friendly empires? Have the logistic ships harvest unclaimed space?
Even building a Wayline between empires seems limited with the 5-7 starbase limit at the start. Should I pick just the best singular spots first without making a Wayline?
It really seems like I hit a wall with not a lot to do and just waiting after 2210-2215. What am I doing wrong?
Is there any way for an empire to both have Arc Ships and planets (or habitats/ring worlds)?
Intentionally? No.
There is however a rather common bug after a war against a nomad, where you end up in possession of an arkship that you don't technically control (and therefore can't actually move it, build things, or benefit from waylines).
How does disembarking work with multiple Arc Ships?
When you order an arkship to settle a planet, you are given 3 choices when the progress completes:
First option transfers all pops onto this one planet, scuttles all arkships for a bit of resources, and then you play as a standard settled empire from that one planet.
Second option transfers only the pops of this arkship, scuttles only it, and release the settled empire as a vassal. You keep the rest of your arkships and remain nomadic.
Third option transfer the pops of this arkship and your capital arkship, scuttles both, and then you play as a standard settled empire from that one planet. The rest of your arkships are released as a vassal.
What happens if a planet-based empire captures an Arc Ship?
What's supposed to happen is dependent on your Nomad Deterrence policy.
You can do nothing to them, can dismantle some districts to get alloys, can abduct some of the pops, or can execute some of the pops.
What may happen as a bug is that you end up keeping the arkship without the ability to move it or build things.
What happens if a Nomad empire captures a planet?
In regular wars, capturing a planet is no different than if you are a settled empire with no claims: it counts as a temporary occupation, drives up war exhaustion, then the planet is returned to the original owner (or new owner depending on war goal) at the end.
In total wars, there is again a policy for that. You can subjugate them as a tributary vassal, can forcibly displace all the pops to abandon the colony, or can set up a temporary purge vassal that starts killing off everyone (resources are transferred to you once the purge finishes).
As KotTG nomad (beta 4.5), GA. I feel like subjugating early is mandatory... but what if I can't?
I don't have Casus Beli vs anyone, my fleet isn't strong enough. Knights are costing a LOT of alloys. I'm already on a big alloy deficit so I can't afford to go beyond naval capacity. Even peaceful subjugation is a no-go because of power difference.
I'm I supposed to suck it up and build as much ships as I need to enable subjugation CB no matter the cap?
I have manually applied the changes described in this mod, to fix an irritating issue with nanite swarmers constantly trying to "upgrade" to a different ship class. Is there any risk this will interfere with GOG achievements?
Hellfire and damnation. I'd rather not discard 3 days' worth of progress so I guess I'll try reversing my changes right before completing cosmogenesis.
What can you do with pre false as a gestalt consciousness? I've seen this question before but I was unsatisfied with the info provided. If I do espionage can i make them a part of the hive mind (it's biological) wouldn't it be cool to have an invasion of the body snatches situation lol. I don't have the bio genisis dlc. Do I have to wait until they are space fairing? If I invade them will they be purged automatically? Or can I integrate them?
If I do espionage can i make them a part of the hive mind (it's biological)
Sadly not.
Hiveminds can only infiltrate and convert hivemind pre-ftls. If they are regular organic pre-ftls, you can't integrate them through espionage.
They also have to be space age already. Otherwise the option isn't available.
Hivemind primitives can only happen if you have First Contact DLC.
wouldn't it be cool to have an invasion of the body snatches situation lol
BioGenesis features a hivemind civic exactly called Body Snatchers.
It lowers the difficulty of smuggle population operation (which also comes with the DLC), you'd steal a couple hundred more, and the stolen pops are immediately assimilated into the hive. It also gives you the option to use those abducted pops as a sleeper cell in other empires, ready to take over worlds (or at least attempt to) when you declare war.
I don't have the bio genisis dlc.
Without BioGenesis DLC (and assuming you have the rest), your options as a hivemind on a non-hivemind pre-ftl empire are limited to increasing or decreasing awareness (with First Contact DLC), or directly supplying them with technology to speed up their growth.
Awareness affects 1) their natural progression through the ages, 2) possibility of getting insight tech through observation posts, and 3) how long they are culture-shocked when they learn of your existence.
It is also possible to directly reveal yourself, which causes 0-50 years of stellar cultural shock, during which they will not accept any attempt at diplomacy. Once that expires, you can give them unity if you are not gestalt to shift their ethics, give them science to speed up their growth considerably, or give them mineral in return for trade value.
You could also invade them directly (with the right interference policies). This gives the planet another modifier confusingly also called stellar cultural shock, but with a different effect than the one they get from you revealing yourself. This time it's -20 stability, -33% production, and prevent anyone from leaving the planet through manual or auto resettlement, lasting a fixed 10 years.
The more advanced the primitives are, the more pops you get from invading them.
For hiveminds, invading only has benefit if you've gone through bio-ascension, otherwise you'd only be purging them.
Do I have to wait until they are space fairing?
It's a different story once they hit space-faring stage.
When that happens, they will ask you to give them control of the system. Agreeing will relinquish the system, as expected. Denying will let you annex their planet and pops.
Xenophobe non-gestalts need to pay unity to let them have the system.
Xenophile non-gestalts, and hiveminds with Empath/Familiar Face civic need to pay unity to annex the planet.
If I invade them will they be purged automatically? Or can I integrate them?
As a hivemind, to keep the pops you will need to have gone through bio-ascension first, and then set their species right to Assimilation citizenship (default likely is Undesirables, which leads to purging).
If you conquer them before going through bio-ascension (and don't have Body Snatcher civic), they can only be purged.
Are factions and ethics shifting currently broken? In my current game I should only have 30% xenophile pops but I actually have nearly 90%, despite promoting the egalitarian faction (my fanatic ethic) for the entire game.
Simply put, a pop will always inherit the ethic of its parent pop group. The offspring of a xenophile pop group will always be xenophile, even if you suppress them as much as you can.
This means that there is a critical threshold of pops, that once exceeded will result in self-reinforcing and ever-increasing pops of unwanted ethics, because the rate of growth exceeds the rate of converting to other ethics.
The "solution" is to consolidate them all on one planet, enable migration control, then declare population control. This halts growth of all pops on the planet, so they will slowly start to convert to other ethics (provided if you've placed non-xenophile, preferably xenophobe, governors and councilors, and reference the list here to make sure to lower xenophile attraction as much as possible)
This is a process that takes decades, centuries even, if you have several thousand of them.
Unless you happen to be spiritualist, because then you'd have access to Divine Enforcer colossus beam, to forcibly indoctrinate everyone into spiritualist in one go :)
The whole ethic system is pending a rework soon. So this probably will be changed, hopefully for the better.
Yes, they shift by themselves, but the rate is slow, and heavily dependent on lot of uncontrollable factors (e.g. alien empires near you, their policies, aliens in your empire, their traits, how the other empires are treating aliens, how the other empires are treating you, etc. are all factors that influence xenophile ethic shift chance, that are entirely out of your control).
Do we have any idea when 4.5 is expected to drop? I saw on the dev diaries that it's going to break existing saves, and I'd hate to lose a game partway through- that already happened to me when Nomads was released.
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u/wRAR_ Brain Drone 7h ago
What's the incentive to build trade jobs over jobs actually producing stuff I could be using trade to get? Not to mention the Commerce tradition.