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

[Sian]

anyone know if there's any way for Assimilators to ramp up their Cyborg growth rate?

[tonberrian]

Not really going to be doing a whole lot of hiring after the initial portion of the game either, so it doesn't much matter, as long as you leave some of your initial race, or some iteration of the original race with all your leader bonuses.

I mean, there's the three scientists doing Research, plus two or three scientists in science ships, plus one admiral, plus maybe sector governor for sectors? That's really all the leaders you're going to need.

Also, having a second scientist right off the bat is mandatory, I think we can all agree. So what I do is immediately hire a new scientist, before looking at who to assign where for my three researchers. Anyone who has 'spark of genius' gets immediately slotted into one of those three, and if I have one available, I'll get it unless something like easier projects shows up for one of my roving scientists.

Also, another thing... explore with 'vettes, not with science ships! That way, if/when you run across something unpleasant, you have lost a 'vette, not a valuable scientist.

I find that a dozen or so scientists assisting research are pretty necessary.

[GloatingSwine]

You can't with synths, but with machine empires it'll simply be the template you started the game with - or whatever you modded that entire template into later.

No, any template can produce leaders.

Having a leader-bot template doesn't work unless you are very careful which offered leaders you recruit and that means getting the actual trait you want (way more important than +2 levels) is more annoying.

Are torpedo boat corvettes worth using at all, against a cruiser/battleship-heavy fleet formation?

No. If you want to use torpedoes, use them on cruisers.

I find that a dozen or so scientists assisting research are pretty necessary.

But why?

Science is rubbish.

Also, another thing... explore with 'vettes, not with science ships! That way, if/when you run across something unpleasant, you have lost a 'vette, not a valuable scientist.

Better to just take the scientist off a science ship and send that everywhere first. It gets to retreat in 10 days not 30 so it's more likely to survive, and you can just teleport your scientist to it if it's safe.

[tonberrian]

Science is rubbish.

Unity isn't, though.

[GloatingSwine]

Unity isn't, though.

Unity isn't (until you have all the good traditions when it is), but traditions which only produce unity to get more traditions with are.

The best value you get out of Assist Research is scientist levels.

[tonberrian]

Unity isn't (until you have all the good traditions when it is), but traditions which only produce unity to get more traditions with are.

The best value you get out of Assist Research is scientist levels.

The assist research Unity value is one of the few exceptions. It currently provides more than a 5th of my total unity output and generally cuts 10-20 months off a tradition grab. Since you need unity-boosting traditions to pick up ascension perks anyways, it's a good deal.

[Olinser]

The assist research Unity value is one of the few exceptions. It currently provides more than a 5th of my total unity output and generally cuts 10-20 months off a tradition grab. Since you need unity-boosting traditions to pick up ascension perks anyways, it's a good deal.

If assist research is that big a portion of your unity then you aren't unitying right.

[GloatingSwine]

More to the point, you only need what, four traditions. Expansion, Prosperity, Supremacy, and Harmony.

[Silverraptor]

anyone know if there's any way for Assimilators to ramp up their Cyborg growth rate?

Make them Rapid Breeders. That's it. But do keep in mind that each pop do cost 1 energy for maintenance when completed in place of food plus consumer goods. For me, I mad my assimilated starting race to be Intelligent/Thrifty/Conversationalist with the negative traits Sedentary/Unadaptive because I don't intend for that race to be leaving the home planet for any reason. I'd rather build robots everywhere that I can customize each design and varient to get bonus on each resource I need. For the homeworld, it will be mainly my original cyborgs for all the energy and science tiles on the planet, making robots only for mining bonus.

[Olinser]

Make them Rapid Breeders. That's it. But do keep in mind that each pop do cost 1 energy for maintenance when completed in place of food plus consumer goods. For me, I mad my assimilated starting race to be Intelligent/Thrifty/Conversationalist with the negative traits Sedentary/Unadaptive because I don't intend for that race to be leaving the home planet for any reason. I'd rather build robots everywhere that I can customize each design and varient to get bonus on each resource I need. For the homeworld, it will be mainly my original cyborgs for all the energy and science tiles on the planet, making robots only for mining bonus.

Plus you can get the additional bonus by terraforming to Machine Worlds if you don't have Cyborgs on the planet.

[tonberrian]

If assist research is that big a portion of your unity then you aren't unitying right.

How should I be "unitying right" then? The only unity building i'm not using is the spare parts depot. The Assist Research unity perk simply gives a massive amount of unity (but not, apparently, 2 per level - looks like more for higher levels). Aside from being rogue servitors from the beginning I'm not sure what you mean.

The real question is how much influence you should spend on leaders vs. expansion. Which probably falls more on expansion than I've got going.

[Silverraptor]

Plus you can get the additional bonus by terraforming to Machine Worlds if you don't have Cyborgs on the planet.

I do eventually turn my homeworld into a machine world, but that's after I have enough habitats for my cyborgs to migrate off to. Then I just load that full of power and I'm good to go!

[Olinser]

How should I be "unitying right" then? The only unity building i'm not using is the spare parts depot. The Assist Research unity perk simply gives a massive amount of unity (but not, apparently, 2 per level - looks like more for higher levels). Aside from being rogue servitors from the beginning I'm not sure what you mean.

The real question is how much influence you should spend on leaders vs. expansion. Which probably falls more on expansion than I've got going.

It doesn't give a 'massive amount', it gives 2 per scientist level (which is increased by any % unity bonuses you may have which also apply to any other unity you get).

By the time you're no longer exploring every individual world should be producing 1-3 unity from their Capital structure (depending on how big it is of course), +2 from a Gene Clinic upgrade, +4-6 from a unity building (depending on whether you have the Hypercomms forum researched), and +2 from an Energy Grid assuming you've maxed out prosperity.

So that's a total of +9-13 unity per planet for not even a unity focused race, depending on exactly what you researched. A full level 5 scientist only gives +10 unity at the cost of a huge amount of time to level him and significant influence.

If you're actually getting 20% of your unity from scientists then you have wasted way, WAY too much influence and not spent nearly enough on colonies.

A single Hypercomms forum produces the same unity as a level 3 scientist doing assist research with the tradition.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Plus, unless you are Determined Exterminators, you can talk to the artsy-fartsy enclave and purchase Unity buildings, something like 5k minerals for an 8 unity building? Plus if you kill the Netherdrake, you get the Dragon Killer Monument for... what was it, 15 unity? On top of the Energy for percentage to Unity.

If you are DE, well... unity is always going to be a bit of a struggle if you aren't actively exterminating at the moment. That's the downside of DE, which is otherwise stupidly insanely powerful. Well, that and potential diplomatic issues and early-ending due to being overwhelmed by a nearby advanced-start race.

[boomwolf]

Ok, the wierdest thing just happened on the macro level.

I have a fresh install on a formatted computer.

Now, I expected to lose all my custom races and all, but what I DIDN'T expect is to lose my preset races too!


So, right now my empire list has three mod-created races, and nothing else.
An oddity to be sure.

On the bright side, I get to play around with the empire creator a bit?


EDIT:
Well, apperantly my empire creator is unstable as hell. keep crashing in different zones.
Each time i crash, I try to turn off a few mods that MIGHT be SOMEHOW related, and try again.

Now, the fun part? I fixed ships, then city caused crash, tried to turn some stuff off to fix cities, and now ships crash again?
And my preset races are back for no apparent reason?


GHA!
Why on earth does ship selection cause a CTD when i disabled every single ship related mod?! what can POSSIBLY cause this!?

Ship appearance, and City appearance are the current guilty parties.
Anyone has any clue what might be causing these two to act up? because I'm pretty sure I've disabled every mod that related to them.
Might as well try to run a game and see if its stable in game...

[Sian]

multiple mods have a chance to make things unstable when added to a game which had a patch the other day ... more news at 11

[tonberrian]

It doesn't give a 'massive amount', it gives 2 per scientist level (which is increased by any % unity bonuses you may have which also apply to any other unity you get).

By the time you're no longer exploring every individual world should be producing 1-3 unity from their Capital structure (depending on how big it is of course), +2 from a Gene Clinic upgrade, +4-6 from a unity building (depending on whether you have the Hypercomms forum researched), and +2 from an Energy Grid assuming you've maxed out prosperity.

So that's a total of +9-13 unity per planet for not even a unity focused race, depending on exactly what you researched. A full level 5 scientist only gives +10 unity at the cost of a huge amount of time to level him and significant influence.

If you're actually getting 20% of your unity from scientists then you have wasted way, WAY too much influence and not spent nearly enough on colonies.

A single Hypercomms forum produces the same unity as a level 3 scientist doing assist research with the tradition.

Except, and I have checked this, those numbers are inaccurate (and presumably bugged). What I've seen.

[GloatingSwine]

The unity you get from FiS also gets your planetary production boni.

The point remains though, that many of the traditions are not particularly worth having, especially the ones that are just "spend unity to get more unity", which is a worryingly large number of time. As a thing which you have to spend unity on, in order to be able to specifically do a thing which only serves to get you more unity, FiS is bad.

It's better to just take one of the good traditions instead that will actually help you win.

[tonberrian]

The unity you get from FiS also gets your planetary production boni.

No, I've checked this, and it's plainly not true.

As for unity vs other traditions, aside from immediately after grabbing this tradition you are always ahead on numbers of non-unity granting traditions by using Faith in Science, so you are absolutely wrong in that respect too.

[Olinser]

Except, and I have checked this, those numbers are inaccurate (and presumably bugged). What I've seen.

What you've seen is a dead link that nobody else has permission to see.

And no, you're not 'always ahead'. You get a paltry amount of unity without a massive influence investment, and even then it takes decades to cross the point where you make up for investing in a dead tradition that gave you more unity.

[GloatingSwine]

What you've seen is a dead link that nobody else has permission to see.

And no, you're not 'always ahead'. You get a paltry amount of unity without a massive influence investment, and even then it takes decades to cross the point where you make up for investing in a dead tradition that gave you more unity.

It's not even just a dead pick, it's four. You have to grind through four picks where arguably the only useful thing is leader XP gain and before that's useful you need lots of other things to boost the level cap as well. The whole Discovery tree is poor because, well, science is poor and that's mostly what it is.

[tonberrian]

What you've seen is a dead link that nobody else has permission to see.

And no, you're not 'always ahead'. You get a paltry amount of unity without a massive influence investment, and even then it takes decades to cross the point where you make up for investing in a dead tradition that gave you more unity.

Quoting because apparently you don't want to register your game to report bugs:

Running 1.8.2 135b, but this has been the case since Faith in Science was a thing. I have several science ships of varying level researchers Assisting Research, and only one of them is giving 2 per level (according to what is supposed to happen with Uplink Miniaturization). Tooltip seems accurate save for a 30% modifier that's being applied (I assume it's Materials Analysis). Easily duplicable, just send different scientists to assist research.

What I have available:

Level 9, 40% research, 36 Unity
Level 8, 37% research, 30 Unity
Level 7, 35% research, 24 Unity
Level 6, 32% research, 19 Unity
Level 5, 30% research, 15 Unity
Level 4, 27% research, 11 Unity
Level 3, 25% Research, 7 Unity
Level 1, 20% Research, 2 unity

[boomwolf]

multiple mods have a chance to make things unstable when added to a game which had a patch the other day ... more news at 11

Except my mods are 1.8.2, or pure cosmetics.
Nothing that SHOULD cause such a crash.


And to make it wierder, the game itself seems to be completely stable. only the city apperance and ship apperance tabs in empire creation causes crashes.

But the wierdest? they two WORKED FINE, until I took away a few mods.
So something broke it, but something else I had on fixed it and when I took out that second thing it broke again? wtf?

[tonberrian]

Except my mods are 1.8.2, or pure cosmetics.
Nothing that SHOULD cause such a crash.


And to make it wierder, the game itself seems to be completely stable. only the city apperance and ship apperance tabs in empire creation causes crashes.

But the wierdest? they two WORKED FINE, until I took away a few mods.
So something broke it, but something else I had on fixed it and when I took out that second thing it broke again? wtf?

Well, I'd guess that it's a cosmetic mod that's causing your issues, what with city appearance and ship appearance being the effected tabs. What's custom there?

[Silverraptor]

What happens if you remove all mods and run the game? If it works fine, then start adding 1 mod at a time until it starts crashing again.

[boomwolf]

That would take much longer than just not modifying city and ship appearances.

The issue is, I'm pretty sure I turned off all mods that contain ships, cities and even races. Still can't track it down.

[Grim Portent]

My current game has hit it's first snag for a while.

My synthetically ascended fairy dragons have defeated two fallen empires and integrated their worlds into the empire, one spiritualist FE and one machine one. But sadly this has woken up some xenophobes off to the side of the galaxy. In an attempt to zerg them before they could start building up I declared war immediately to try and delay them because we shared no borders and they had no open borders.

Sadly they declared war on a shared neighbour in order to reach me. When my fleet got caught by theirs it was a slaughter. The battleships that wrecked the FE fleets was outnumbered and outgunned.

Fortunately they're in that slow stage of war where they move around a lot and don't do much invading, so I'm getting time to build a corvette armada to take them on. Supposedly corvettes are the most effective against their loadout. Lots of anti-large in their fleet and not much that works on high evasion targets.

[GloatingSwine]

Fortunately they're in that slow stage of war where they move around a lot and don't do much invading, so I'm getting time to build a corvette armada to take them on. Supposedly corvettes are the most effective against their loadout. Lots of anti-large in their fleet and not much that works on high evasion targets.

Not sure where you heard that, but you're running into 4x Small Autocannon on every one of their escorts and 4x Medium Gauss on their battlecruisers. Every escort will also have 4x Flak so you can forget getting any torpedoes through.


Armour stacked battleships, 90% armour, Lance/2KA/2LP. Only put shields on once you have reached 90% armour. 2 Decoder*>2 Crystal Plating>2 Shield Capacitor for your aux slots. That is the best design at killing Fallen Empires of any stripe.

No other ships. Just Battleships. Just that design. Crank them from every spaceport you have.



* Despite long being thought useless, this is actually really good on XL/L Battleships, and especially against Fallen Empires.

[Grim Portent]

https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Fallen_empire#Ships is citing their current loadout as being primarily Large kinetic artillery, fighters/bombers and point defenses.

Might be out of date, but it's generally not steered me wrong in anti-FE loadouts before.

By this point I have over 300 anti-armour corvettes built anyway and only a small chunk of my old battleship fleet left. I'm basically going to zerg their home territory and see if I do much damage. They're in 3 wars at the moment and seem to have decided to camp over a world they have occupied for the past few years anyway.

[GloatingSwine]

It is out of date. You can look at the actual designs in the text files in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Stellaris\common\glob al_ship_designs

Their Large ships are 1x Giga Cannon, 2x Kinetic Artillery, 4x Medium Gauss, their Small ships are 1x Kinetic Artillery, 4x Small Autocannon, 4x Flak Artillery.

(Edit: Site may not be out of date, may just be wrong. Almost no ships are described accurately. Closest are the Machine Empire ones but their Titan uses lasers not plasma and their other ships have Battleship/Destroyer computers.)

Anyway, read the back end of this thread for how to murder FEs.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...048858/page-11