Stellaris II: I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Fungus Hivemind Overlords

[Kaptin Keen]

Or C) you make frequent use of the Galactic Market or a Trader's Enclave to avoid capping out.

I've heard of it, but it remains unestablished, so I have no idea whether I can run at a defecit indefinitely and just buy what I need.

As for the second, I make predictions based upon my current and anticipated future needs.

See? Cheating!

But seriously, that's what I mean. I don't want to be calculating stuff. This is my free time, numbers are the unrelenting and tireless enemy of fun. It's work, I hate it (will not quite, but I'd rather be drawing a map on graph paper playing one of those old D&D dungeon crawlers than calculating future demand in Stellaris).

I want quick and intuitive fleet control.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I've heard of it, but it remains unestablished, so I have no idea whether I can run at a defecit indefinitely and just buy what I need.

There's also an internal market. Just click on any of your resource icons at the top of the screen and it brings it up. The local market is available from day one, although it isn't as efficient as the galactic market.

See? Cheating!

But seriously, that's what I mean. I don't want to be calculating stuff. This is my free time, numbers are the unrelenting and tireless enemy of fun. It's work, I hate it (will not quite, but I'd rather be drawing a map on graph paper playing one of those old D&D dungeon crawlers than calculating future demand in Stellaris).

I want quick and intuitive fleet control.

Uhhh... I think you may be reading too much into that. I don't break out the spreadsheets, I just look at it like "Okay, I'm going to want x number of advanced alloy smelteries, so I'll need that number of Motes for upkeep, one to one ratio... so a single mote collector can service several alloy smelteries. So let's start out at one. If I start running a deficit, I'll build a second, but that'll realistically be all I need".

It's all back-of-the-napkin and WAG's, but it seems to be working out well for me so far.

And that means I don't spend a good chunk of my time in the planet screen, and more time playing around with my fleets

[Aotrs Commander]

2398 and I have FINALLY started to be able to snowball, after spending almost the entir elast century twiddling my thumbs and waiting on techs. After much time, I got Mega-Engineering (finally I could start repairing that rignworld) and even more FINALLY, I got the repeating admin cap tech (after pretty much every repeating tech but that one showed up...) I can now start expanding more (keeping below the admin cap. Yes, I know you're supposed to go above it, but Megacorp. Besides, 's a thing, innit?

Picked up Arcology project, found you couldn't use it on ringworld (darn), colonised a nice size 20 planet that's bee floating around (after terraforming it), colonised it... And found you need to cover it with city districts. (So... need a population of about forty-odd then before it's too worth it..!) Also found you can't make mining districts on ringworlds. Bollocks. Gonna have to fill the rest of my other planet's districts with mines I think (maybe even slowly convert my current breadbasket world over to mining as the first ringworld segement takes up the job).

We're still all going to be slaughterd by the Crisis, I'm sure...! (Deliberately not getting Jump tech. I even have Gateways tech and construction, but I a) don't need to go anywhere and b) opening Gateways causes massive lag, according to the Stellaris forums at the moment.)

[ShneekeyTheLost]

With this new update, do you think habitats will finally be worth building? I mean, if they normalized the buildings across the board, then habitats might actually have buildings that don't suck...

[Sian]

With this new update, do you think habitats will finally be worth building? I mean, if they normalized the buildings across the board, then habitats might actually have buildings that don't suck...

Habitats probably earned more from the fact there aren't any penalty from number of settlements, so 2 size 12 planents are the exact same (if not even ever so slightly better) as 1 size 24

[Eldan]

I've heard of it, but it remains unestablished, so I have no idea whether I can run at a defecit indefinitely and just buy what I need.

I'm doing that. My early game currently seems to consist of buying 3-4 science ships and 2 construction ships (I need some tech for additional influence to make it work) and just going to town building everything. Sure, I'm at -10 credits per month, at least, but I'm also running something like +40 minerals and +50 food which I don't need, so I just keep selling everything every few months.

My current civilization is Nice Dudes. Egalitarian Pacifist Spiritualist, with the Life-seeded start and Agrarian Idyll. They are really chill.

[Grif]

What are the odds internal markets will be hit with a nerfhammer in due time? Currently, it trivializes energy production so long you have something in excess. And you usually produce something in excess anyway.

[Eldan]

Oh, absolutely. I find it trivializes almost everything. I pretty much don't have to check what I actually produce, it's pretty much all the same.

[Artanis]

So I just found an exploit. Last night, I decided to sell off a thousand surplus Exotic Gases on the Galactic Market, then immediately changed my mind and bought it back...and found myself with my original amount of Exotic Gases, but quite a bit more energy than before. Repeating a few times gave me enough energy to terraform several planets while upgrading two starbases to Citadel and building a half-dozen districts.

I haven't tried it with other resources, or with the internal market, but...yeah

[Sholos]

Sounds like you crashed the market. XD

[Aotrs Commander]

They are trying to fix that (supposedly on the beta poatch it's better than it was, but it's still not fixed yet, it seems).

[Kaptin Keen]

Hm ... my energy income just plummeted from +78 to -91 for no reason I can discern.

Ah. Never mind then. Seems market fluctuations can be quite severe. Wow =D

[Sian]

In more meta news, appearently Wiz (game director) are just about to step down from his role, transferring to an unannounced pdx game

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

In more meta news, appearently Wiz (game director) are just about to step down from his role, transferring to an unannounced pdx game

This is both worrying (Wiz had great vision for Stellaris), but also promising (#Vicky3).

[Sian]

the new game director is going to be Grekulf, who were one of the primary designers behind Apocalypse and MegaCorps, and got the second-longest seniority of the Stellaris team.

So I'd say its in safe hands.

Also, Stellaris forums are running with a minor meme that it'll still won't be Vicky3 that Wiz is moving to, but rather a Fantasy inspired Grand strategy

[tyckspoon]

Also, Stellaris forums are running with a minor meme that it'll still won't be Vicky3 that Wiz is moving to, but rather a Fantasy inspired Grand strategy

So.. Crusader Kings, then? Seriously though a Paradox take on Dominions could be pretty cool.

[Narkis]

In more meta news, appearently Wiz (game director) are just about to step down from his role, transferring to an unannounced pdx game

Damn. I really liked the way he steered the game after he took over. I hope the other guy does as good a job and it doesn't end up like EU4.

[Artanis]

but rather a Fantasy inspired Grand strategy

So Vicky3 then.

[Rockphed]

So Vicky3 then.

Ah, the paradox fans' hope springs eternal.

[Kaptin Keen]

So .. a question:

I got the Event Horizon, and completed it, and now my home system has literally 10 inhabitable worlds. Which is patently absurd, I have planets of 23, 23, 20, 17, 12 and on down to 5 or some such.

With the new adm. cap., should I colonize all of them - or not?! oO

[InvisibleBison]

So .. a question:

I got the Event Horizon, and completed it, and now my home system has literally 10 inhabitable worlds. Which is patently absurd, I have planets of 23, 23, 20, 17, 12 and on down to 5 or some such.

With the new adm. cap., should I colonize all of them - or not?! oO

In the long run, the admin cap penalties aren't a huge problem. That being said, they can be difficult in the short run sometimes. Maybe colonize the planets two or three at a time? That should prevent your penalties from shooting up suddenly before you can get the new planets to produce enough to offset the increase.

[Narkis]

In the long run, the admin cap penalties aren't a huge problem. That being said, they can be difficult in the short run sometimes. Maybe colonize the planets two or three at a time? That should prevent your penalties from shooting up suddenly before you can get the new planets to produce enough to offset the increase.

Yes, do this. I never let the admin cap stop me from colonizing absolutely everything, but you don't want too many new colonies draining your resources at the same time.

[The Glyphstone]

Has anyone written a tutorial for the new mechanics? The default tutorial is completely useless at explaining anything now.

[houlio]

In the long run, the admin cap penalties aren't a huge problem. That being said, they can be difficult in the short run sometimes. Maybe colonize the planets two or three at a time? That should prevent your penalties from shooting up suddenly before you can get the new planets to produce enough to offset the increase.

Yeah, the admin cap is basically just the old penalty for empire size except it has a buffer before it really kicks in. If you have a decent number of other "mature" planets, the immigration should really fill up new worlds quickly.

[Narkis]

Has anyone written a tutorial for the new mechanics? The default tutorial is completely useless at explaining anything now.

I haven't seen anything, unfortunately. Not even the Stellaris wiki has been fully updated yet. I learned by lots of trial and error and googling specific question. And I'm stìl figuring out stuff.

[NEO|Phyte]

Got the Horizon Signal, discovered that the free tomb worlds you get come with no planetary features so all you can make is city districts.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Got the Horizon Signal, discovered that the free tomb worlds you get come with no planetary features so all you can make is city districts.

This strikes me as an oversight. You should bring this to PDS's attention so they can fix this. Not that heavily specialized worlds are always bad, but still.

[houlio]

Has anyone written a tutorial for the new mechanics? The default tutorial is completely useless at explaining anything now.

Here's an attempt by yours truly.

Pop Growth

Before, pops would grow per species and robot on planet tiles. The visual layout made it easy to plan out how any given planet would develop over time. Now, pop growth happens significantly slower (only 1 biological grows at a time). Additionally, you as a player have much less direct control over what job that pop ends up doing without a lot more manual fiddling. Where previously minerals were the most important thing, now pop growth is king.

1) pops automatically go up in social strata if an opening is available but have a long period of being grumpy and unemployed before moving down in social strata. This means that certain buildings can really gimp your economy in the early game while your generator/mining/farm districts take decades to fill up with workers again.
2) nomadic and sedentary are now big deal species traits. Nomadic gives you extra pop growth after emigration has happened while sedentary subtracts after emigration. This means that both traits increase in effect as the game goes on and your planets mature with more pops that migrate.
3) you can set restrictions on specific pop growth by clicking on the portrait of a growing pop. This allows you to set some restrictions about what pops can grow on what planet. The same works for robot construction.
4) Having extra food no longer provides extra pop growth like it used to. Instead, you can do 2 things. You can use a policy which increases pop growth but increases food consumption, and you can use a decision on a planet for 1k food to increase pop growth at that planet. Food still helps pop growth, just not how it used to.

Resources

The introduction of the market has made all resources much more evenly balanced and the priorities you use as a player much more dependent on the context of a given game. Minerals are no longer the king, but you are still allowed to player like they are. Trade has also been added, but that is mostly another way to get energy. It is collected by starbases and sent back to your capital. You need small fleets of corvettes to patrol those trade routes in order to keep piracy at bay (which is now how pirates are spawned and can also just straight up reduce your trade income). Before in the late game, your energy would probably have come from mines and orbital resources, it is now most likely to mostly come from trade.

Resource Tips:
1) Minerals are no longer the easy to grab resource to win the game. Minerals are now directly used for planet construction, being smelted into alloys for space construction, or being turned into consumer goods for pops/unity/research.
2) Energy and food are now more useful simply as things that can be traded into whatever you need on the internal/galactic market. The internal market is available right away by clicking on the resource icons, and the galactic market shows up to replace it once enough empries meet each other.
3) Specializing planets is an incredibly good idea. The specialist planet types give a 5% bonus to resource production over the 2% to everything that "rural world" gives to districts, but with limited space on a planet the specialized production becomes much more valuable.
4)The strategic resources are incredibly valuable now as upgradable buildings require a constant upkeep of them. The best for these is just getting orbital sources, as those don't require pops to harvest. The natural planetary sources are next as they take less energy upkeep and no mineral upkeep to run, but they do require the same pop investment as the artificial strategic resource production buildings. Getting the highest pop numbers on your planets will require decent production of all the strategic resources. In a similar vein, any orbital source of alloys is always worth grabbing.
5) Deficits are not damning. You can use the internal (and later galactic) market to basically correct whatever issue you might have if you have any one resource as a surplus.
6) Housing and Amenities are never shared between planets. All other resources have a global stockpile.

Planetary Infrastructure

Planets now divide their features in 2 ways: buildings and districts. Districts are limited to planet size and the features on a planet. There are four kinds of districts: cities, generators, mines, and farms. Cities give you a lot of housing for your pops to live in, but no resource producing jobs. The other districts correspond to the three basic resource types: energy, minerals, and food. Each of these latter three districts provides 2 housing and 2 jobs. While sufficient in the short term, they will not give you enough housing over time.

Buildings are entirely based on the amount of pops on a planet. Every 5 pops on a planet unlocks a building slot. Buildings allow you to create the more advanced resources as well as improve your planet/empire by increasing amenities, pop growth, naval capacity, etc. Additionally, certain buildings create enough jobs for some planets to rely on city districts instead of the basic resource districts.

Infrastructure tips:
1) There are now "job" buildings that provide a large number of jobs provided you have the pops to run them. I would include research labs and commercial center buildings here.
2) Resource buildings are primarily to increase your monthly gain in a resource. These are the alloy foundries, civilian factories, and various strategic resource factories.
3) Civilian factories produce consumer goods which fuel most of the other advanced factories besides alloy foundries and robot plants. These are the bedrock of your economy in a lot of ways.
4) Artificial strategic resources factories might only give a single job, but they provide an income of 2 of their strategic resource. Given that correlates to a 3-5 job increase, these are really important buildings to keep your economy rolling as the game progresses.
5) Certain buildings seem like you just build them on a need-only basis such as precincts, luxury housing, and holo-theaters.
6) Having open building slots is fine. Always remember that your pops will instantly move up to any open jobs in the next social strata and leave worker-level jobs open.

Admin Cap and Sectors

Stellaris previously had a cap on how many "core" systems that player could directly manage. Additional systems had a severe penalty or could be placed under the jurisdiction of an AI controlled sector. That has been removed entirely. Now, we have admin cap. Admin cap is essentially the same penalty empires received for having more planets/systems in previous versions. Now there is a small buffer before penalties start applying. One of the huge changes to this is that the number of planetary districts are now counted instead of just the number of planets. This means that in terms of size, two size 12 planets are almost the same size as a single size 24 planet (there still is a separate counter for number of planets owned). Gone now are the days when habitable planets become useless. Any world that you can plop down settlers is now valuable just for that.

Sectors are auto-generated based on the map itself instead of by player input. This means your starting set of planets might be divided into three sectors or all in the same one. This is less of an issue since the leader cap has now become a soft cap similar to the admin cap. Having more and more leaders increases the monthly energy upkeep of all your leaders.

[Aotrs Commander]

Here's an attempt by yours truly.

As of the beta patch, they've changed the wording to "empire sprawl" and "admin capacity" respectively, so as to avoid the connotation of "cap" that were confusing the heck out of people.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I would note that sector automatization seems to be optional now. I haven't noticed any difference in how my first few sectors vs my core sector have been working.

I would also note a few things on Districts. I'm sure you've noticed there are different amounts for different planets, guiding you to specialize, especially with some of the buildings that give +% bonuses to production. Secondly, if you have the requisite expansions, Ecumenopoli and whatever the space station things are called have unique Districts (or possibly no districts for the space station ones?) that differ from the usual city/generator/mining/farm ones.