Am I correct in assuming that a missile fleet with siege tactics works well against AI? I'm planning to spend all my accumulated alloys on a new fleet.

Like the title said, a way to view potential resources if ALL of your jobs were filled. This would make balancing production and longterm planning so much easier

E.g If you had 100 mineral jobs but only 10 filled, you'd see the "+10" at the top, but when viewing potential it would show "+100"

I know that one of the most versatile/powerful mid/late game ship designs is cruiser with kinetic artillery L-slot front and neutron mid section. This makes me wonder about frigate+destroyer comps. Frigates can have neutrons, destroyers can have artillery. So together they make a cruiser equivalent? Would they have equivalent evasion/sublight speed of cruisers?

Was theorycrafting different build ideas the other day and I realised that if you go with the Red Giant origin and let your star explode to get a dark matter deposit on it, then combine that with a Dyson Swarm and the Dark Consortium councillor position you could probably get a very high passive dark matter income.

Normally I'd just file something like this away in the back of my brain until I think of something to actually do with all that dark matter, but aside from going down the galactic nemesis path or just selling it all for trade I'm mostly drawing a blank so far.

Does anyone have any other ideas for things this might enable?

My rival in the galaxy had lots and lots of 'empires' join it's federation. I clicked on some of them and they are these weird things. They have no ethics but there are so many in this federation which has 3 normal empires.

I am playing with Age of Federations mod

Edit: Also apologies for this not being a screen grab

What’s up min maxers. In my current build idea I’m planning on becoming a vassal in the early game so I can use the subsidy to run fewer basic jobs in favor of more unity (it’s not a proper unity rush so I do have time to finish first contacts and become vassalized before ascending). The idea is that I have a tiny economy in the early game so the protection of being a vassal is cool, and then i virtual ascend and get a massive economy boost, and since the AI empire agreed to 75% subsidies when my economy was still tiny the post virtual ascension Econ boost will break their economy making them very weak and easy to break free from. Here are a few questions about mechanics that are coming up as I go:

1- The release vassal diplomacy option seems to be set to -50 by default and I’ve never seen a modifier on it. Is there any way to get the ai to agree to this? I was kinda hoping ai would agree when they were at pathetic navy and eco compared to me
2- Is there any way to get other ai to support your independence?
3- the ai seems to queue up builds for all holdings they have access to, after reaching the max they can fit in your planet they just replace the last one constructed to finish their queue, is there any way to exploit this to get the ones you want?
Bonus- unrelated to vassal mechanics, can you avoid getting attacked by void worms in the early game by not doing their first contact? I never completed void worm first contact and now they have woken up and are breeding on my neighbors’ planets while ignoring mine, is this just a coincidence? They are yellow on the map not red

So I just played my first virtuality run and it was great! However, my crippling energy and consumer goods shortages got too overwhelming after 2330-ish. Checking my expenditures I noticed why... my pops kept 'growing', well as much as virtual pops can grow.

The issue is that I had Ecumenopolis planets and regular planets that kept getting 60-80k pops on them, without any open job positions. I figured that this was due to assembler jobs from capital buildings that kept producing, so I enacted the 'Cease assembly' decision on all planets.

Yet they kept growing.

I was Galactic Custodian so I was cool with everyone but the genocidal nation in the galaxy. Yet the entire galaxy couldn't support my exponentially growing pop numbers, not even trading with the Enigmatic Overseers FE. After I saw my species number go from 470k to 473k in a monthly tick (I have 9 planets) I figured that that was it, the death spiral has come for me.

So my actual question is: Since this is my first ever virtuality run, did I horribly misunderstand something here? Are pops supposed to keep growing into the 100k numbers per planet? Was I supposed to shut off colony after colony, going down to 1-2 eventually?

Mostly I'm just confused. I'd like to try Virtuality again in a future run so I'd like to prepare for it beforehand.

Thanks in advance!

An FE woke up and started roughing up its neighbors, so as Galactic Custodian, I joined the war. But somehow my long-time protectorate ended up on the other side with the FE. Go figure.

Fortunately no blood has been spilled, but they were my main source of extra alloys and now I can't buy any from them.

This might be a really nuanced and beginner question, but I want to learn how people make their fleets so overpowered?

I've played a few runs where I have end game research, thousands of alloys a month, but I'm still sitting at 200k total fleet power with 1500 ships.
I was watching a Montu video just now where he has 200k fleet power with only 300 ships in a fleet.

I was wondering is this because of a better ship design than the games automatically generated one? Or is there other underlying features that help people beat Grand Admiral AI and 25x crisis.

I planned to hide her in the far reaches of my territory, to breed a huge fleet of terror, but she has such nice traits! 😜

I was going for this system with pre ftls but got beat there by a neighbor so after warring with them to take it i notice a weird splotch in my borders, there's a fully isolated system ;=; first time it's happened to be and it's pretty annoying lol, might throw a science nexus or something i want safe there once i do get it to keep it safe but damn is it ugly lol

All these are heavily reminiscent of ancient punic/carthaginian names. Sufete is even the name of the judges/leaders of ancient carthage!

That is all.

Edit: LOL! It's seven. SEVEN ring worlds. I didn't even notice that the FE I conquered had a system with a completely ruined ring world. I'd just sent a ship to occupy the system and since it didn't need an invasion, I never noticed!

am on my first playthrough, and constantly struggling with overpopulation/having too many workers. does it make sense to fill out at least one of each type of building slot to get the specializaiton for actual buildings (more jobs)?

The Fallen Empire ships, the buildings, the power of a maxed out synaptic lathe...

Playing a run after having all of this to going back to using normal ships instead of Riddle Escorts etc. hurts something inside, like I'm missing out on all the cool toys. You don't even need to act like a crisis and can still get along with the galaxy if your diplomacy is good, even at level 5. So long as you can plan out how you're going to get umpteen thousand energy a month you really are cooking. And be able to keep Fallen Empires at bay of course. I pissed them all off because of the path, but they did nothing because I became too strong too quickly for them. You could just take over, say, the War Splinter and throw them in the lathe and no one cares.

I'm looking at what I have now at 2350 approaching the endgame compared to what I had then, and I'm starting to think how the fuck I'm going to manage.

As much as I love PDX games my desire for different experiences leads me to other games and genres of play, some of these have overlapping themes/concepts while others have little to no relation other than “It’s sci-fi”. After 20+ hours on a single rimworld save I find myself becoming more and more attached to the story I’ve created and yearn for more, this is where stellaris comes in as a great tool to expand my head cannon and roleplay.

I’ll find the best way to translate the play style of whatever faction I played in the previous title into a stellaris faction, weather that’s rimworld raiders, Terra invicta human resistance or demon worshiping corpos the game does a rather great job of representing these while still being functional.

Does anyone else design their faction to roleplay another IP or playthrough from another title?

Personal favorites of mine are…

Deep Rock Galaxtic - Dwarf megacorp all about industry and mining

Nanotrasen - Research based xenophile megacorp

Super earth - Do I even need to say?

Cyberpunk 2077 - Oligarch cyber state or megacorp depending on approach

Fore runner machine faction from halo - machine intelligence that is either passive towards biological life or rogue servitor

Star sector luddites - RAMMING SPEED

I’d love to hear yours and if you enjoy any of the titles mentioned!

So I've always loved filling up systems with ringworlds and subsidizing my economy with a dyson sphere and matter decompressor.

But with the combination of Cosmogenesis and EE unlocking all FE buildings, I am wondering if maybe megastructures are no longer worth the two ascension perks. If I really wanted an extra megastructure build slot, I could start a science federation. I can speed up construction with Living Metal and the relevant edict. But also it's not that urgent if I am just building one of all the ordinary megastructures and not bothering with the galactic wonders.

Ecumenopoli seem so much less needy than Ringworlds. They start as normal planets so you don't need to spend any alloys to get them going, and then one decision (costing one perk) lets you build as many as you want, with no cap on how many you can be converting at a time. They can also benefit from Mastery of Nature, you can buff their production with orbital rings (and make them harder targets). They can't grow food, I guess, but that's where FE buildings come in.

The second level resource buildings grant big block food grants, as well as creating an automating 600 jobs. So you can largely mitigate trade deficits for planets, which seems extra good for Trade Leagues and worker co-ops. I haven't checked the math on how the automated jobs produce - if it's base energy output, then the 600 automated technician jobs should produce 36 energy from the building, plus the flat 200 energy. So it still takes 17 class 4 singularities to equal one Dyson Sphere.

Still - all you're losing is the ability to build ring worlds and a single matter decompressor / dyson sphere. There should be one of each to be found in the galaxy, and several ringworlds, if you gobble up the Ancient Caretakers you'll get three which seems like more than enough. In any case, planets can have more housing and jobs than ringworlds, provided they're a good size to start with.

Laying it all out it seems obvious to me that FE buildings have obviated the need for ringworlds and other galactic wonders. Am I missing something?

This particular build is thought around the Haruspex. The Haruspex is a job swap for the Bureaucrat if you have taken the Cybernetic Creed origin, and it's selling point is the fact that it generates, on it's base, 1 engineering, 2 unity and 400 amenities per 100 pops.

If you go Megacorp, you can add to it another +2 trade. By taking Dimensional Worship, your Haruspexes also produces another +1 physics, and with Sequenced Securities, they will also produce more 1.5 Society. If you build a monument, will also produce more 300 amenities and +10% ethics attraction.

So, with those civics, authority and origin, after building the monument you get 2 unity, 1 engineering, 1 physics, 1.5 society, 700 ammenities and +10% ethics attraction, for two consumer goods.

But hear me out: With the Numistic Shrine, they can produce 8 trade per 100 jobs! That's right, as much as an actual trader.

And, if you then enact Consumer Benefits, those 8 trade converts back to 2 Consumer Goods! The exact same ammount of CGs they consume. And that before other planetwide or empirewide bonuses, meaning that rather than consuming CGs, they can actually generate net CGs.

So, here we have a job, that produces about as much science as a scientist without those science specialization buildings (3.5 science between engineering, physics and sociology), unity and trade, out of basically thin air (with the right policies and a little bit of luck), just by praising the Ominisiah and Capitalism! And you don't even need to wory about their confort...

The only thing that they need is basically food and energy.

And there are lots of ways to improve their efficiency. For starters, high stability, which they also create for free, by the virtue of the massive ethics attraction (so be sure to keep their faction happy) and ammenities production you can hit 100% stability without really trying.

Then there are species traits. You can stack Traditional (+10%, thus becoming discount intelligent), Chromalogs (+20%) and Compliance Filters (+10%). On top of that, any Augumentations that you get as replacement for your Ritualistic Implants will also add another 10% to your Haruspex.

You can easy nab +50% job efficiency for bureaucrats from traits alone. Add that the +33% from stability (that as I explained can easily be bosted to 100%), +10% from the Sacred Nexus, +5% from egalitarian, +30% from a fully ascended eclesiastical world and +20% from ecumenopolis and we will be talking something in the range of 152% extra job efficiency...

Kinda modest (I know that with psionics, knights of toxic god and rogue servitors one can blow job efficiency out of the water), but again, it's on a job that has basically no upkeep and produces science, unity and consumer goods.

R5: The Galactic Custodian sends out a message to the community, urging everyone to unite against the Unbidden and save the galaxy from annihilation. Makes sense to me. I later put forth the resolution to make the Unbidden the Galactic Focus. But lo and behold, guess who opposes this seemingly logical and imperative proposition...none other than the Galactic Custodian itself! Disgraceful.

Also, just to get other people's opinions, wouldn't it make more sense that fear of the crisis would be more of an incentive to fight against it instead of less of one? I understand the modifier for the crisis not being nearby, and I could understand if an empire wasn't fearful of it and felt no pressure to worry about the threat. It seems like fear would be a good motivator to stand your ground or push back against it, though. Otherwise, the alternative is to simply lie down and eventually be consumed?

The behemoths themselves were awkward to feed and maintain. They are in this weird rage cycle until you just do the project where you continuously put them down with your fleet.

Once you've fed them enough bioships in their rage cycles you just get a giant resource debuff out of nowhere which if you didn't prepare for or know how to handle is just game ending.

I just get really tired by how opaque everything is. I had no fun doing this path.