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

[BannedInSchool]

Declare them your rivals, set your war philosophy to Liberation (Unrestricted may also work) and you will be able to use the Ideology cassus belli.

Unrestricted war doesn't work for the ideology war. Oh, well. The mutual rival bonus *almost* makes the other neighbor accepting of a federation, though.

[Silverraptor]

Okay. I need this confirmed. A friend of mine just told me that Federation fleets have no fleet cap limit. They also don't appear to have a maintenance cost. And, if you are strong enough, like he is in his current game, you can perma-lock yourself into the federations leadership role.

Can anyone definitively confirm or deny this? Because if this ends up to be really true, then federations are now entirely broken!

[The_Snark]

Federation fleets have no maintenance cost, but they do have a cap; the federation has its own naval capacity, drawn from but independent of its member nations. (That is to say, anyone who joins a federation loses a percentage of their naval capacity - I don't remember exactly how much but I'd guess 10-20%? - and the federation gains that much.) However! Federation fleets don't have an individual command limit, meaning that you can lump your federation's entire fleet into a single doomstack under a single admiral. Maybe that's what your friend meant?

As for being president... the wiki says that presidency automatically rotates between any members who qualify? If you can arrange to be the only member who owns >10% of the total planets in the federation, then I guess you might be stuck as perpetual president. It looks like you'd have to be pretty careful about managing your federation's members, though.

[factotum]

Yeah, can confirm there is no individual Federation fleet cap--when I was president of my federation last night one of the Fed fleets was over 40K with no admiral attached, when the biggest fleet I could field was 17K *with* admiral assistance. It wasn't a difference in tech, it was just the fleet was ignoring my own fleet cap and so could be much larger.

I think the total fleet size allowed by the federation as a whole was 384, with my fleet cap being 110? Something like that, anyway. The AI seems to prefer putting the federation fleets into single doomstacks.

[GloatingSwine]

Okay. I need this confirmed. A friend of mine just told me that Federation fleets have no fleet cap limit. They also don't appear to have a maintenance cost. And, if you are strong enough, like he is in his current game, you can perma-lock yourself into the federations leadership role.

Can anyone definitively confirm or deny this? Because if this ends up to be really true, then federations are now entirely broken!

In 2.0 there's no Fleet limit for the Federation fleet, but there is a Naval cap for it.

In 2.0.2 the Fleet limit for the Federation fleet is, IIRC, 500.

(Though since the AI changes what it's doing with the Federation fleet every time the president changes, and the greatly reduced movement speed means it does less in between changes. I've watched a Federation wander its fleet towards the Prethoryn, swich members and send it home again over and over again for decades).

[Olinser]

Yeah, can confirm there is no individual Federation fleet cap--when I was president of my federation last night one of the Fed fleets was over 40K with no admiral attached, when the biggest fleet I could field was 17K *with* admiral assistance. It wasn't a difference in tech, it was just the fleet was ignoring my own fleet cap and so could be much larger.

I think the total fleet size allowed by the federation as a whole was 384, with my fleet cap being 110? Something like that, anyway. The AI seems to prefer putting the federation fleets into single doomstacks.

It does have a fleet cap - its just based on the total of its members and its in a really weird place in the UI to check the federation fleet cap. In general, the Federation fleet cap WILL be significantly larger than any individual member (unless one member is just that much more powerful). Each member contributes a % of their fleet cap towards the Federation, so the more and more powerful members a Federation has the bigger the fleet can be, but each member is weaker because of it. The only time I was a member of a Federation (League of Non-Aligned Worlds), the fleet cap was around 600 with me contributing nearly half of it because I built enough extra fleet cap to still be at 1000 even after the federation debuff to my cap.

I believe its 20% of fleet cap of each member - so theoretically if you have 5 members with 1000 fleet cap before, the Federation would have a fleet cap of 1000 and each member would now be at 800.

The Federation fleet is also upgradeable to the highest technology level ANY member currently possesses - so you only need 1 member to research weapons tech to be able to put the design in the Fed fleet and upgrade the Fed fleet to it, but you still can't build them for your own fleet until you research it yourself.

[factotum]

Just to clarify here, when I said my fleet cap was 110 that was my individual fleet size cap--my total empire-wide one was 250 or thereabouts. The federation 40k fleet was around 250 on its own, and there was another 10k federation fleet wandering around as well.

[Silverraptor]

Hey guys, so you know that let's play I started on here for my first playthrough? Well I royally screw up and get involved in a downward spiral of unrest and empire fracturing. Do you all think I can recover, or did I lose my first playthrough in 2.0? Place your bets now!

[factotum]

Had an annoying bug nearly derail my current game--myself and my federation had royally kicked seven bells out of a fallen empire, to the extent that he only had a single 20k fleet left. I sent my 55k fleet that had already had no issues destroying these ships in, and for some reason it just could not damage the opposing fleet at all? I think that fleet was down to about 20k when I realised something was very wrong. Had to do a quit to desktop and reload, at which point the FE fleet's magical immunity evaporated and I was able to destroy it with the assistance of a Federation partner who just jumped in-system.

[Cikomyr]

Had an annoying bug nearly derail my current game--myself and my federation had royally kicked seven bells out of a fallen empire, to the extent that he only had a single 20k fleet left. I sent my 55k fleet that had already had no issues destroying these ships in, and for some reason it just could not damage the opposing fleet at all? I think that fleet was down to about 20k when I realised something was very wrong. Had to do a quit to desktop and reload, at which point the FE fleet's magical immunity evaporated and I was able to destroy it with the assistance of a Federation partner who just jumped in-system.

Edit: What the.. i apparently quoted in the wrong thread?!

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, I'm up to two bug reports today as I discover all the myriad silliness that the Demand Tribute wargoal can produce.....

(Also I tried out the new "Scaling" difficulty where the AI is supposed to get scaling buffs over time. It's 2360 and the strongest AI fleet I've seen was 6k, making this a bit of a comedy game I'm mostly carrying on for the sake of it.


I also do have a bit of a quandary though. I'm Militarist/Authoritarian/Spiritualist who goes around kicking people in for "donations", and there are two Machine Empires. So do I turn their profane industry to the service of the divine by kicking them in the face for money, or do I build a colossus and eliminate any evidence they ever existed.

I'm leaning towards the former because it's less effort and I don't really want to spend an ascension perk on collossi when I could get Ringworlds and Master Builders instead.

[Silverraptor]

What bug and sillyness happens with demand tributary?

[GloatingSwine]

What bug and sillyness happens with demand tributary?

If you force someone to be a tributary through war, they keep the "At War" opinion modifier forever. And if one of your tributaries has planets rebel (which is common for the AI at the moment due to starvation spirals) they're incorrectly assigned as rebels of your empire, and clone your tech instead of the empire they're rebelling from.

[Silverraptor]

If you force someone to be a tributary through war, they keep the "At War" opinion modifier forever. And if one of your tributaries has planets rebel (which is common for the AI at the moment due to starvation spirals) they're incorrectly assigned as rebels of your empire, and clone your tech instead of the empire they're rebelling from.

Wow. Also, is the starvation spiral as intended? I nearly lost my game from a little starvation.

[GloatingSwine]

No, I think they just forgot that they had to fix it once before and undid the fix.

In the next patch food production will be unaffected by unrest again.

[GungHo]

Edit: What the.. i apparently quoted in the wrong thread?!

Parallel universe dark event.

[Narkis]

(Also I tried out the new "Scaling" difficulty where the AI is supposed to get scaling buffs over time. It's 2360 and the strongest AI fleet I've seen was 6k, making this a bit of a comedy game I'm mostly carrying on for the sake of it.

There's apparently a bug with "scaling" where it works the opposite than it should. It currently gives large bonuses at the start, lessening them as time goes on.

I also do have a bit of a quandary though. I'm Militarist/Authoritarian/Spiritualist who goes around kicking people in for "donations", and there are two Machine Empires. So do I turn their profane industry to the service of the divine by kicking them in the face for money, or do I build a colossus and eliminate any evidence they ever existed.

I'm leaning towards the former because it's less effort and I don't really want to spend an ascension perk on collossi when I could get Ringworlds and Master Builders instead.

You are not a true believer if you allow the abominations to continue existing.

[Kaptin Keen]

I've done something terrible.

There was a species - the Yaanari - who were trudging about in the mud, slinging flint spears and crude language at each other. I decided, on their behalf, to have grander ambitions for their race, and invaded. For the greater good. 'This hurts me more than it hurts you!' And I dumped down a single robotic pop to help them build a better society. For tomorrow. All the tomorrows.

I also had a migration treaty with the Tebbran Imperium. Who, as it happens, shared a perverse love of water worlds - rather than glorious desert.

I had not entirely imagined that the ingrates would up and leave - all of them.

So while one perspective is that the primitive sods did this to themselves, I still realize that it might not have helped my popularity that insects rained down from the sky and took over their world. I feel guilty. I've never purged or relocated a pop, ever before. Hell, when a hive mind attacked me, I still felt guilty when they lost and their planets depopulated.

So now the long, heavy road of atonement begins: Scour the galaxy for another ocean world, settle it (with a single robot pop), and try to lure back into the fold.

Of course the alternative is to invade the Tebbran, but I feel like that didn't entirely work out the first time around.

[GloatingSwine]

They wouldn't have left from a migration treaty. Migration doesn't happen until the planet is full and only one pop at a time can migrate to or from a planet. (Migration treaties usually do the sum total of bugger all).

You probably had them set to Undesirables and Displacement purged them.

[factotum]

Dealing with the Prethoryn invasion in my game now. Now I've finally got control of the Federation fleet and got all my allies following me, I think I ought to be able to break the back of the problem quite quickly--even those 80k fleets melt away pretty fast when I have 300k+ in system! I also revamped all my ships to have only armour, plasma and point defence, but that didn't make the task of taking down Prethoryn fleets as easy as online suggestions said it would...

[GloatingSwine]

My last game I found corvette swarms highly effective against Prethoryn*.

Fight swarm with swarm, 400 1 plas/scourge missile corvettes (use Torpedoes first then transition to scourge missiles once you've harvested some Prethoryn bits) camping hyperlane entrances so that whenever the scourge fleets enter a system they get jumped.

Only tended to lose 1-5 ships per fight.

Finally after ~1400 hours got the achievement for having a tame queen, only three Prethoryn crises in all that time.


* Corvette swarms are highly effective all round, the latest 2.0.2 beta update does nerf torpedoes a bit though. I only built corvettes all game that time. And only had 1 planet and 3 habitats for most of it.

[Olinser]

My last game I found corvette swarms highly effective against Prethoryn*.

Fight swarm with swarm, 400 1 plas/scourge missile corvettes (use Torpedoes first then transition to scourge missiles once you've harvested some Prethoryn bits) camping hyperlane entrances so that whenever the scourge fleets enter a system they get jumped.

Only tended to lose 1-5 ships per fight.

Finally after ~1400 hours got the achievement for having a tame queen, only three Prethoryn crises in all that time.


* Corvette swarms are highly effective all round, the latest 2.0.2 beta update does nerf torpedoes a bit though. I only built corvettes all game that time. And only had 1 planet and 3 habitats for most of it.

God the queen achievement was one of the stupidest. I literally got it by sitting on the single Prethoryn system for over an hour waiting for the thing to finally spawn.

Still not as bad as the perpetually bugged Voight-Kampff or the ludicrously low % chance Outside Context, though.

Although I think the new low for achievements is Stay On Target. I have yet to see an AI empire build a Colossus at all, much less use it.

[GloatingSwine]

Although I think the new low for achievements is Stay On Target. I have yet to see an AI empire build a Colossus at all, much less use it.

Awakened Empires tend to have them, I've seen them try to use them on Crisis worlds.

Of course Awakened Empires are a bit broken at the moment, given that they have no cassus belli defined and so cannot in fact declare war.

[Kaptin Keen]

They wouldn't have left from a migration treaty. Migration doesn't happen until the planet is full and only one pop at a time can migrate to or from a planet. (Migration treaties usually do the sum total of bugger all).

You probably had them set to Undesirables and Displacement purged them.

Core worlds population: All species
Default rights: Full citizenship
Resettlement: Prohibited
The purge setting is displacement only, but there's no reason any race should be purged - and the other primitive race I ... brought into the fold ... wasn't purged. Also, it's quite possible the planet was full, and that the natives left in an orderly fashion, one at a time. I made it a sector, and then didn't notice anything until it was too late, and the entire planet was populated only by robots.

Unimportant, anyways: It happened. I mean to get them back. If luring them back with a nice, juicy ocean work doesn't do it, I'll have to invade. My only true ally - they'll propably dislike that.

[Silverraptor]

My last game I found corvette swarms highly effective against Prethoryn*.

Fight swarm with swarm, 400 1 plas/scourge missile corvettes (use Torpedoes first then transition to scourge missiles once you've harvested some Prethoryn bits) camping hyperlane entrances so that whenever the scourge fleets enter a system they get jumped.

Only tended to lose 1-5 ships per fight.

Finally after ~1400 hours got the achievement for having a tame queen, only three Prethoryn crises in all that time.


* Corvette swarms are highly effective all round, the latest 2.0.2 beta update does nerf torpedoes a bit though. I only built corvettes all game that time. And only had 1 planet and 3 habitats for most of it.

Really? I thought the scourge used missile variant weapons. How were your corvettes able to dodge those and stay alive? Doesn't missiles have 100% hit chance?

[GloatingSwine]

Really? I thought the scourge used missile variant weapons. How were your corvettes able to dodge those and stay alive? Doesn't missiles have 100% hit chance?

They have 100% Accuracy but only 5 Tracking. Scourge ships don't have any inherent tracking (they use unique sensors and computers with no bonuses), so against 90% evasion corvettes their missiles do not hit a lot.

My corvettes however have +45 tracking vs a Swarmling's 65% evasion. Which means I evade 85% of their missiles and they only evade 15% in return.

[factotum]

Been a bit of a frustrating evening. First of all, it turns out that a bug which existed back in 1.0 has either not been fixed or they broke the fix in 2.0.1, because the last planet of the Prethoryn would simply not fall no matter what...it was being bombarded for literally years of in-game time, but all that would happen is that it would get to 100% damage and then flip back to Undamaged. Eventually I had to end the Scourge of the Void chain by using a colossus to crack the planet.

Then, the Awakened Empire that had joined my federation for the duration of the crisis immediately left, which means the federation only controls 173 of the 179 habitable planets needed for victory. I was thinking I'd win the game as soon as the Prethoryn were gone, but seems not! There aren't enough habitable planets in the hole left by the Prethoryn invasion to make up the difference via simple colonisation, so I now need to find some other empire we can stomp on to get the Federation past the winning line.

[GloatingSwine]

Been a bit of a frustrating evening. First of all, it turns out that a bug which existed back in 1.0 has either not been fixed or they broke the fix in 2.0.1, because the last planet of the Prethoryn would simply not fall no matter what...it was being bombarded for literally years of in-game time, but all that would happen is that it would get to 100% damage and then flip back to Undamaged. Eventually I had to end the Scourge of the Void chain by using a colossus to crack the planet.

Then, the Awakened Empire that had joined my federation for the duration of the crisis immediately left, which means the federation only controls 173 of the 179 habitable planets needed for victory. I was thinking I'd win the game as soon as the Prethoryn were gone, but seems not! There aren't enough habitable planets in the hole left by the Prethoryn invasion to make up the difference via simple colonisation, so I now need to find some other empire we can stomp on to get the Federation past the winning line.

Or build some habitats.

You can win the game by increasing the number of planets as well.

[factotum]

Or build some habitats.

I already have six, plus two segments of a Ringworld, I don't want to think about how many years it would take to build enough more to win!

[GloatingSwine]

I already have six, plus two segments of a Ringworld, I don't want to think about how many years it would take to build enough more to win!

With Master Builder and Architectural Renaissance it only takes two years to build a habitat.

And you can build more than one at once.

So if you've got a decent mineral income you could just spam them on every valid planet until you win.