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

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I haven't played servitors, but couldn't you make a ring world and habitats for all your organic pops and get the bonus from having them around plus the bonus of machine worlds as your core production worlds? I'm not familiar with the organic pops rules though with that strategy. Are you able to relocate them to other planets?

If you are able to move your 'biological trophies' around, I can't figure out how to. I don't think they have permission to recolonize, and no way of giving them said permission.

[Sian]

If you are able to move your 'biological trophies' around, I can't figure out how to. I don't think they have permission to recolonize, and no way of giving them said permission.

They're movable just fine, they resettle just as any other pop, and count as slaves for the purpose of Influence cost

[Olinser]

If you are able to move your 'biological trophies' around, I can't figure out how to. I don't think they have permission to recolonize, and no way of giving them said permission.

You move and resettle them just like any other population, by clicking and dragging them.

It just won't let you move them to a square that has a building on it, so if you really want to move them to that square you have to demolish the building first.

[Name_Here]

Just took down my first leviathan the dimensional horror. Was a little over eager so went in with a 17k fleet that he turned into a 6k fleet. Feeling pretty good even if pretty much every other civilization has an overwhelming fleet advantage.

[Silverraptor]

Just took down my first leviathan the dimensional horror. Was a little over eager so went in with a 17k fleet that he turned into a 6k fleet. Feeling pretty good even if pretty much every other civilization has an overwhelming fleet advantage.

As long as you're not Fanatical Purifiers or an equivalent, you should be fine for the time being.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Wow, some people are really BAD at this game...

For example, this one guy, EnterElysium, was doing a LP. He refused to upgrade his energy or mineral buildings, claiming that 'it was more efficient to just use a construction ship to put down mining depots', completely ignoring the fact that a) he hasn't been doing THAT either, b) it's not a matter of either/or, it's a matter of BOTH, and c) he was running an energy deficit and yet still refused to build his energy infrastructure.

Then goes on to say how he's 'one of the better players out there'...

[Olinser]

Wow, some people are really BAD at this game...

For example, this one guy, EnterElysium, was doing a LP. He refused to upgrade his energy or mineral buildings, claiming that 'it was more efficient to just use a construction ship to put down mining depots', completely ignoring the fact that a) he hasn't been doing THAT either, b) it's not a matter of either/or, it's a matter of BOTH, and c) he was running an energy deficit and yet still refused to build his energy infrastructure.

Then goes on to say how he's 'one of the better players out there'...

That's not really unique to Stellaris, though. LPs are entertaining not to watch people play games, but for demonstrating how unbelievably BAD some people are at an awful lot of games. Seriously go watch some LPs of earlier Nintendo games like Mega Man or Super Mario 3 and you'll literally be facepalming at how bad some people (often prominent streamers) are at really not particularly complex games.

My recent entertainment is watching streamers try to play Cuphead. Seriously, its hilarious how bad some of them are at the early, not particularly complex, fights.

For Stellaris there IS possible justification, though I don't know if it applies not having seen the video myself. In the early game I frequently run an energy deficit when settling colonies #2-4 because that's only temporary. For instance, if you're -12 energy normally that's bad, but if you have 2 colonies under development and are going to be done in 6 months, then you're ACTUALLY only going to lose 72 energy stockpile before going back to +4 energy without having to build anything. If you're not going to zero out on your energy stockpile you don't need to waste money on energy production, you can spend that money on MOAR MINERALZ now and get energy later.

And he is actually correct, the cost for upgrading Power Plants and Mines is one of the least efficient uses of minerals (90 minerals for only +1), so if you have mining stations to build it is more efficient to build them first and upgrade later. But that only applies if you're actually using all of your minerals - if you're sitting on minerals in the bank that aren't earmarked for a colony ship or combat ships then you should be upgrading.

Not saying that's necessarily what he was doing but its at least possible he's not good at communicating what he's actually doing.

[tonberrian]

Alright, working on endgame in my game currently. Vanilla machine empire, running like 18 colonies (no sectors), 1k minerals, 300 energy, 700 science or thereabouts. Haven't yet gutted a FE, spent some time on leviathans. Do all the leviathans spawn in a given game? Killed the ether drake, wraith, dreadnought, and enigmatic fortress (though got the dumb encoder), still haven't found anything else. Only empires left are one smaller than me, and the FEs (no robot FE, sadly).

[Silverraptor]

So I'm now playing Dreaded Assimulators and tried out someone's advice on enhanced memory trait. It's working brilliantly. Made the organic race I start with as intelligent/Thrifty/Conservationalist to reduce the consumer goods cost of cybernetics, made them unadaptive/sedentary because they are not going anywhere off the home planet except for habitats. And it's working really great! Because they grow, I only needed to build robots for mining bonus and all the other research and energy spots on my homeworld were worked at optimal capacity by the organic pop. And with robomodding making a bunch of variants, I have several higher level leader robots that don't die and every resource spot on all my planets at pure optimum efficiency.

And the funny part where one of the races that randomly generated in this game was my Fanatical Purifiers Spiritualist race I made! It was great, they spawned on the opposite side of the galaxy, wiping out all the other races on that side, allowing me to build up and get equivalent to them. And with maxed Energy Credits and Minerals in my stockpile, they decide after conquering their little corner of the galaxy to Declare war on me. And *ALL* of my stations went into full ship building thanks to Bulwark of Harmony. I just watched as they went from equivalent to inferior as all my stations pumped out constant ships, where I was at naval capacity when I started. Next thing I knew, I blinked and had over twice my naval capacity in ships. And instead of waiting for them to come to me, I marched over there to them. They had a 30K fleet. It bumped heads with my 68K fleet and disappeared just as fast as all my ships suddenly showed up! And they are my last race to assimilate before getting the achievement. Oh well, time to absorb me some Fanatical Purifiers!

[Olinser]

Alright, working on endgame in my game currently. Vanilla machine empire, running like 18 colonies (no sectors), 1k minerals, 300 energy, 700 science or thereabouts. Haven't yet gutted a FE, spent some time on leviathans. Do all the leviathans spawn in a given game? Killed the ether drake, wraith, dreadnought, and enigmatic fortress (though got the dumb encoder), still haven't found anything else. Only empires left are one smaller than me, and the FEs (no robot FE, sadly).

No, Leviathans are random and won't necessarily all spawn in a game, especially smaller galaxies. Actually having 4 like that is semi-rare - I usually only see 2-3 in a medium sized galaxy.

[Silverraptor]

And so, apparently the fanatical Purifiers have decided to poke the sleeping Ether Drake in the eye in their territory and not have the fleet power to destroy it. Because it is now flying all around the galaxy killing Curators. I'm nervous it will decide to come into my territory, so I need to ask, what fleet power rule of thumb would you guys generally have before tackling an Enraged Ether Drake?

[tonberrian]

About 20-30k. You want plasma and tachyon lances to skip through its massive armor. It looks like it hits back with similar stuff, so shields are your best defense, but I don't have the specs of the dragon's weaponry in front of me so I'm not sure.

[Silverraptor]

About 20-30k. You want plasma and tachyon lances to skip through its massive armor.

How about now 58K Fleet power loaded up with large and Medium Gamma Lasers?

[tonberrian]

How about now 58K Fleet power loaded up with large and Medium Gamma Lasers?

Should be good. Probably will loose a few destroyers and maybe a battleship or two, but nothing irreplaceable.

[Silverraptor]

Should be good. Probably will loose a few destroyers and maybe a battleship or two, but nothing irreplaceable.

Eh. They're only hardware. We can easily build more for the Collective Assimilators.

[Olinser]

How about now 58K Fleet power loaded up with large and Medium Gamma Lasers?

Should be more than enough you'll probably lose a couple ships to the breath weapon but that's standard. If you're nervous contact a Curator Enclave and buy the +25% damage for 5000 energy.

[The Glyphstone]

How smart is the internal AI when it comes to spontaneous migration? Say, if I have three species in my Empire, one with Intelligent (+Research), one with Industrious (+Minerals) and one with Thrifty (+Energy). If I built three Habitats and stock each one respectively with Laboratories, Mines, and Power Plants, will the Pops best suited to the buildings migrate there? Or is it random and I need to micromanage individuals into place?

[Kaptin Keen]

How smart is the internal AI when it comes to spontaneous migration? Say, if I have three species in my Empire, one with Intelligent (+Research), one with Industrious (+Minerals) and one with Thrifty (+Energy). If I built three Habitats and stock each one respectively with Laboratories, Mines, and Power Plants, will the Pops best suited to the buildings migrate there? Or is it random and I need to micromanage individuals into place?

I find that hugely unlikely. But I'm guessing.

It seems each planet has an attraction rating. More attractive planets will be more likely to get migrants. And there's edicts to boost this, but I'm sure you know that. If I had to guess, unhappy pops are more likely to migrate. Old pops are likelier to migrate than young ones, I'd guess.

But nothing like what you're looking for.

[Silverraptor]

Should be more than enough you'll probably lose a couple ships to the breath weapon but that's standard. If you're nervous contact a Curator Enclave and buy the +25% damage for 5000 energy.

Can't do that. It killed all the curators in the game as its first act of being pissed off.

[Olinser]

How smart is the internal AI when it comes to spontaneous migration? Say, if I have three species in my Empire, one with Intelligent (+Research), one with Industrious (+Minerals) and one with Thrifty (+Energy). If I built three Habitats and stock each one respectively with Laboratories, Mines, and Power Plants, will the Pops best suited to the buildings migrate there? Or is it random and I need to micromanage individuals into place?

Its really, really stupid, actually.

First it generally only migrates populations when a colony is 100% full, it doesn't seem to actually take into effect target habitability into effect when choosing who to go (I've literally had a population move from a desert world to an arctic world despite only 40% target habitability), and it will migrate populations EVEN IF THEY AREN'T ALLOWED TO STAY - I played a main species core sector only group that had forced migration for any other species away from core worlds and it auto-migrated species that would immediately get flagged to forced migrate right back out.

[factotum]

(I've literally had a population move from a desert world to an arctic world despite only 40% target habitability)

I think that's down to happiness, though, as Kaptin Keen says. If the pop in question is at below 40% happiness on the planet it's already on, it might well be happier moving to a place with 40% habitability than it is staying put, so it'll migrate. Yes, it could potentially get happier at some unspecified future date by staying on the higher habitability planet, but it seems actually kind of realistic that they'll go after bread today rather than jam tomorrow.

[Olinser]

I think that's down to happiness, though, as Kaptin Keen says. If the pop in question is at below 40% happiness on the planet it's already on, it might well be happier moving to a place with 40% habitability than it is staying put, so it'll migrate. Yes, it could potentially get happier at some unspecified future date by staying on the higher habitability planet, but it seems actually kind of realistic that they'll go after bread today rather than jam tomorrow.

It was at 75% happiness on its previous planet and dropped to 30% on the new planet on arrival.

[Aotrs Commander]

It was at 75% happiness on its previous planet and dropped to 30% on the new planet on arrival.

That sound awfully realistic, though, doesn't it? Grass is greener and all that. Especially considering non-government-sanctioned migration, migration SHOULD be a bit stupid not infrequently, because people (the thing it's collectively modelling) are collectively stupid. (Obvious exception for Hive Minds and Machine Intelligences, though do you even have migration with those?)



I imagine everyone already knows, but for the sake of it, in case you were on the 1.8.1 beta and didn't happen to notice (I nearly didn't), the 1.8.2 patch is now officially out as of, about two days ago, I think?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

That's not really unique to Stellaris, though. LPs are entertaining not to watch people play games, but for demonstrating how unbelievably BAD some people are at an awful lot of games. Seriously go watch some LPs of earlier Nintendo games like Mega Man or Super Mario 3 and you'll literally be facepalming at how bad some people (often prominent streamers) are at really not particularly complex games.

My recent entertainment is watching streamers try to play Cuphead. Seriously, its hilarious how bad some of them are at the early, not particularly complex, fights.

For Stellaris there IS possible justification, though I don't know if it applies not having seen the video myself. In the early game I frequently run an energy deficit when settling colonies #2-4 because that's only temporary. For instance, if you're -12 energy normally that's bad, but if you have 2 colonies under development and are going to be done in 6 months, then you're ACTUALLY only going to lose 72 energy stockpile before going back to +4 energy without having to build anything. If you're not going to zero out on your energy stockpile you don't need to waste money on energy production, you can spend that money on MOAR MINERALZ now and get energy later.

And he is actually correct, the cost for upgrading Power Plants and Mines is one of the least efficient uses of minerals (90 minerals for only +1), so if you have mining stations to build it is more efficient to build them first and upgrade later. But that only applies if you're actually using all of your minerals - if you're sitting on minerals in the bank that aren't earmarked for a colony ship or combat ships then you should be upgrading.

Not saying that's necessarily what he was doing but its at least possible he's not good at communicating what he's actually doing.

Yea, no. This was like Episode 9 of the LP, he'd pretty well established himself and was building his fleet, complete with building the docking umbilical things in his home system, and was still energy and mineral short. Probably because there was a base 30ish or so energy and minerals he wasn't taking advantage of, his construction vehicles completely idling.

It was simply a refusal to build up anything less than a three energy or three mineral station, and refused to upgrade energy or minerals. Well, he also didn't upgrade science, but that at least makes marginal sense since you need to build your economy first.

Came up with an interesting idea that would work really well with Determined Exterminators, but would probably work out for nearly any of the Synthetic Dawn robotic races.

Four templates

1) 'Leader' template. This is the one that has all your leader bonuses. This population is permitted to be leaders, and is only really built on Unity buildings which otherwise don't produce much in the way of energy or minerals or science. The purpose of this template is to provide you with superior governors, admirals, and scientists which provide across-the-board bonuses to your entire empire.

2) 'Miner' template. Remove the leader stuff, add on the bonus minerals. Remove any 'bulky' or other negative traits that matter and replace them with traits like 'leaders gain xp slower' which won't matter on this template. Fill in with useful traits like Double Jointed. This template is NOT permitted to be leaders.

3) 'Energy' template. Remove the leader stuff, get bonus energy on it, stack negative traits that won't matter for the template to get all the good things. This one you do kinda wanna focus double-jointed because your base colony building is an energy producer. Again, this runs all your power plants et all, and again, is NOT permitted to be leaders.

4) 'Science' template. Remove leader stuff, put in science bonus, stack with penalties that won't matter. Done. Again, NOT permitted to be leaders.

Using this setup, only your 'leader' template is permitted to be leaders. You have a few of them around, but definitely the minority of your race. Call them your 'one percenters' if you want to be all edgy and political like that. Because you have a few bumming around, this works out quite well for you. Other than that, various specialty bots run various specialty tiles for an effective race that has all the bonuses.

Have your cake, and eat it too.

[GloatingSwine]

AFAIK you cannot restrict whether robit templates can be leaders or not individually.

[Yuki Akuma]

AFAIK you cannot restrict whether robit templates can be leaders or not individually.

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.

[tonberrian]

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.

This is not my experience? All my robots that I have pops of can and have been leaders. Is why I make sure they all have the +2 leader level trait on them. I tried making different portraits but I can't be arsed to look at portrait when hiring, apparently.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

This is not my experience? All my robots that I have pops of can and have been leaders. Is why I make sure they all have the +2 leader level trait on them. I tried making different portraits but I can't be arsed to look at portrait when hiring, apparently.

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.

[The Glyphstone]

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

[Olinser]

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

Not alone, but corvettes do make a good cheap screen against high end enemy fleets, the AI targeting is really bad and they tend to try to shoot corvettes first despite the low accuracy.

You need your own cruisers/battleships behind the corvettes but they're still worth building.