Stellaris III: Shop at the Paradox Megacorp!

[tonberrian]

Like so many other things the best way to deal with piracy is to build defense platforms in your systems with outposts. They help suppress piracy and help slow enemy advances when you get invaded.

I play on normal I never get invaded. And the best way to deal with piracy is to never trigger piracy by having no trade routes.

[KillianHawkeye]

I play on normal I never get invaded. And the best way to deal with piracy is to never trigger piracy by having no trade routes.

Trade routes are automatic now.

Anyway, I am disappoint that lithoids (or robots, for that matter) can't colonize barren planets. I mean, I guess it's for game balance, but if my race of rocks that eat other rocks can't live on a giant rock in space, what's even the point?

[tonberrian]

Trade routes are automatic now.

Anyway, I am disappoint that lithoids (or robots, for that matter) can't colonize barren planets. I mean, I guess it's for game balance, but if my race of rocks that eat other rocks can't live on a giant rock in space, what's even the point?

Solution to trade routes is never upgrade a station in a system with a trade bonus or a habitable world. You can go all game without trade routes.

[The_Snark]

Trade routes are automatic unless you're a collective intelligence that doesn't do trade, which I believe is what tonberrian was alluding to.

Being able to colonize barren planets seems pretty much impossible to balance, yeah. You can probably come up with some explanation, like barren planets lacking an atmosphere and therefore not offering any protection against radiation.

[factotum]

I play on normal I never get invaded. And the best way to deal with piracy is to never trigger piracy by having no trade routes.

This seems an odd stance to take, IMHO. Firstly, you're leaving *huge* amounts of energy (and potentially Consumer Goods, if you pick that policy) on the table by not having any trade. Secondly, once you have gateways you can pretty much forget any piracy worries, because you just link your major trade hubs together with them and the trade routes then go through them, bypassing any piracy problems. Even without that, I find the small cost of having a couple dozen patrolling corvettes is far outweighed by the additional income trade brings in.

[Artanis]

This seems an odd stance to take, IMHO. Firstly, you're leaving *huge* amounts of energy (and potentially Consumer Goods, if you pick that policy) on the table by not having any trade. Secondly, once you have gateways you can pretty much forget any piracy worries, because you just link your major trade hubs together with them and the trade routes then go through them, bypassing any piracy problems. Even without that, I find the small cost of having a couple dozen patrolling corvettes is far outweighed by the additional income trade brings in.

Especially if you use completely empty corvettes for the patrolling. Seriously, an empty, unarmed hull with a tier 1 engine on it is just as good at suppressing pirates as a maxed-out doom-vette.

[Silverraptor]

I don't mind having to setup corvette patrols. I've played a couple games where when I was being invaded and my main fleet was not enough or tied up elsewhere that I was able to pull the corvette fleets together and use them as extra firepower to stop the enemy with. Also, it gives me a reason to continue using the corvettes, which I tend to stop doing at the destroyer level in the past.

Also, trade value is just damn good to have. Especially if you have the unity boost. That gets you your ascension perks in a hurry with more trade goods coming in.

[GloatingSwine]

Solution to trade routes is never upgrade a station in a system with a trade bonus or a habitable world. You can go all game without trade routes.

Trade routes can satisfy most of your consumer goods need if you set that as trade policy, freeing up valuable building slots.

(Plus late game you can just plop gateways in all your trade stations and delete piracy forever)

[KillianHawkeye]

I've found that having periodic starbases with fighter bays in important locations is generally enough to prevent most piracy on its own.

[Thufir]

If you're smart about where you put your trade hubs, you really don't need that many corvettes to patrol with. Also, by a certain point I find that any pirate fleets which spawn end up losing to unupgraded starbases anyway.

[Sian]

pff ... having Zroni in my current game as Lithiods (Authoritarian/FXenophobe Oligarchy with MiningGuilds/Functional Architecture, and Industrious/Volatile Excretions/Sedentary/Fleeting) and my third Zroni Excavation is in the Dreadnought system

[GameMaster_Phil]

I use any of my critters which do not fit into fleets to kill pirates off if they appear. Sheriff Bubbles for Law and Order.

Also: I would pay money for the Extra ship component mod (3.0). It is that good. New titan weapons, tech options from all leviathans, more resources, exclusive fighters for Megacorps. And there is one tech which summons the Unbidden. You can have 2 Crises at the same time now. Ask me how I found out. Go on.

The StarNet A.I. mod seems to have dropped off with the new patch, but on average it increases difficulty by 1 step. Sadly, sector governors are still useless drunkards who do nothing but waste energy and minerals and run their fiefdoms into the ground. What does automated sector development actually do except generate costs? This leads to the (IMO big desing) problem, that I reduce the habitable planets during galaxy generation because I can't be arsed to maintain 40+ planets manually. It just becomes tedious.

I also got Amazing Space battles, ASB Shorter Battles and ASB More particles (as in, more dakka). Very happy so far.

[Silverraptor]

So new federation DLC seems AMAZING!

[Narkis]

So new federation DLC seems AMAZING!

Yep. The game will be in a pretty good place after it releases. I only hope Glavius can fix the AI now he's on the inside.

[The Glyphstone]

They hired Glavius? That's a good sign.

[Silverraptor]

Well, I just lost my first game in a long while. After losing 2 wars back to back, the enemy managed to claim all of my ship building yards and destroyed all my fleets. Meaning that in 10 years, they were going to finish me since I couldn't repair my fleets and defenses fast enough, so I deleted the game. 2 species on either side of me were attacking me at once each war. Also, in what universe is 7k fleet power equivalent to 4k fleet power?

Edit: Also, question about authoritarian empires. How come only some of my pop miners/farmers/technicians would be slaves and some were not? I would have rathered they all be slaves for the extra output. That's kind of why I was playing authoritarian.

[Silverraptor]

Just made one of the greatest species build ever. Machine Empire as Rogue Servators with the bio-pop being Lithoids that poop out motes (or whatever strategic resource you want). Gave the bio pops also extra unity generations and I have the civic with the rogue servators to generate extra unity. Negative traits for the pops I gave that does not matter in the slightest as they are literal couch potatoes. And being lithoids, they can colonize any planets as well like my robots! This will be so much fun!

[GloatingSwine]

Edit: Also, question about authoritarian empires. How come only some of my pop miners/farmers/technicians would be slaves and some were not? I would have rathered they all be slaves for the extra output. That's kind of why I was playing authoritarian.

A set percentage of your population will be enslaved at any one time, there are various things like the Slaver Guilds civic that affect that percentage.

"Equivalent" means "within 50%", so equivalent to a 7k fleet means anything between 3500 and 10500.

[KillianHawkeye]

Just made one of the greatest species build ever. Machine Empire as Rogue Servators with the bio-pop being Lithoids that poop out motes (or whatever strategic resource you want). Gave the bio pops also extra unity generations and I have the civic with the rogue servators to generate extra unity. Negative traits for the pops I gave that does not matter in the slightest as they are literal couch potatoes. And being lithoids, they can colonize any planets as well like my robots! This will be so much fun!

Sounds cool! I might have to try this, too. Did you also use the new lithoid machine race portrait for your robots?



Also a general question: Which rare resource (crystals/motes/gases) do people think is the most useful to have your rock-men poop?

[GloatingSwine]

Also a general question: Which rare resource (crystals/motes/gases) do people think is the most useful to have your rock-men poop?

Motes.

Motes make alloys make spaceships. Spaceships make you win at Stellaris.


It does sound like a pretty shiny approach, having bio-trophies that can live anywhere.

That said, you can hard specialise planets with servitors, having pure extraction worlds with only menial drones and worlds with all your specialist jobs and bio-trophies with minimal menial jobs, so you don't need to have bio-trophies everywhere even if you can.

[Silverraptor]

Sounds cool! I might have to try this, too. Did you also use the new lithoid machine race portrait for your robots?



Also a general question: Which rare resource (crystals/motes/gases) do people think is the most useful to have your rock-men poop?

In general, the resources you want is motes/gas/crystals in that order. Motes make more alloys, gas makes batter research, and crystals make consumer goods. And yes I used the new Lithoid robot portrait.

Edit:

A set percentage of your population will be enslaved at any one time, there are various things like the Slaver Guilds civic that affect that percentage.

"Equivalent" means "within 50%", so equivalent to a 7k fleet means anything between 3500 and 10500.

Is there any way you can physically set the slavery rate? Because if I'm playing Slaver, I want to go all the way and make it very decadent and have a few elite rely on the grunt work of the slaving masses.

[GloatingSwine]

Is there any way you can physically set the slavery rate? Because if I'm playing Slaver, I want to go all the way and make it very decadent and have a few elite rely on the grunt work of the slaving masses.

Not for your founder species.

If you want all your menial work done by slaves, you need to get some xenos to do it with species-wide slavery living standards. Slaver Guilds will enslave up to 40% of your founder species to fill in where you don't have enough.

If you need to grab some workers, take Nihilistic Acquisition (or play Barbaric Despoilers). Grabbing pops through raiding bombardment is a great way to bootstrap your economy given how valuable pop growth is in the early-mid game at the moment.

[Silverraptor]

Not for your founder species.

If you want all your menial work done by slaves, you need to get some xenos to do it with species-wide slavery living standards. Slaver Guilds will enslave up to 40% of your founder species to fill in where you don't have enough.

If you need to grab some workers, take Nihilistic Acquisition (or play Barbaric Despoilers). Grabbing pops through raiding bombardment is a great way to bootstrap your economy given how valuable pop growth is in the early-mid game at the moment.

Okay. And if I don't have slaver's guilds, what's the slaving rate then?

[GloatingSwine]

Okay. And if I don't have slaver's guilds, what's the slaving rate then?

I think it's 20% without.

Either way, if you want all your gruntwork done by Prisoners With Jobs then you need to get your pincers on some xenos.

[Silverraptor]

I think it's 20% without.

Either way, if you want all your gruntwork done by Prisoners With Jobs then you need to get your pincers on some xenos.

Or Syncratic evolution could work, I guess.

[Thufir]

I think it's 20% without.

Actually as far as I know it's 0% without. Slaver Guilds (Or Indentured Assets for Megacorps) is the only way to enslave a specific % of your population - otherwise it's all done through species rights, and you can't set Slavery rights on your primary species.

[factotum]

Giving a hive mind a go, haven't tried it before. Discovered that conquering enemy planets really messes things up, because you end up with a bunch of undesirables who can't work any buildings, so the planet runs at a massive deficit. Your energy takes a hit, and either you purge the undesirables, in which case your food income goes to heck as well, or you turn them into livestock, in which case your relations with everyone in the galaxy takes a hit because you're eating people and your planet stability suffers because livestock actually have an opinion that counts toward it, whereas undesirables don't. I mean, you can demolish a few buildings to try and even things out, but I really don't like doing that if I can avoid it, and transferring pops from your other worlds just moves the income deficit somewhere else.

Sounds like I'm complaining, but I actually really like this--having it be a struggle to maintain your income 100 years into a game is an unusual situation to be in.

[Eldan]

Actually as far as I know it's 0% without. Slaver Guilds (Or Indentured Assets for Megacorps) is the only way to enslave a specific % of your population - otherwise it's all done through species rights, and you can't set Slavery rights on your primary species.

Pretty sure authoritarians can have slaves by default? Via species rights?

[Silverraptor]

Giving a hive mind a go, haven't tried it before. Discovered that conquering enemy planets really messes things up, because you end up with a bunch of undesirables who can't work any buildings, so the planet runs at a massive deficit. Your energy takes a hit, and either you purge the undesirables, in which case your food income goes to heck as well, or you turn them into livestock, in which case your relations with everyone in the galaxy takes a hit because you're eating people and your planet stability suffers because livestock actually have an opinion that counts toward it, whereas undesirables don't. I mean, you can demolish a few buildings to try and even things out, but I really don't like doing that if I can avoid it, and transferring pops from your other worlds just moves the income deficit somewhere else.

Sounds like I'm complaining, but I actually really like this--having it be a struggle to maintain your income 100 years into a game is an unusual situation to be in.

The current game I'm playing spawned me next to a hivemind that pissed me off by taking the only system I could use to move out into the solar system, boxing me in to the edge of the galaxy. He also only had is homeplanet colonized and I got a few free ships from anomalies and was fanatic militarist and Lithoids so full scale war it was. Successfully took over his planet and the purged commence. Took the hit to my energy credits for a bit as the purge happened, but then I stopped caring and went into a negative deficit for about 10 years. Didn't particularly care about the ship effect consequences because I didn't meet anyone yet. My biggest concern was getting a Lithoid pop to grow on the planet in time before the purge was complete and the planet despawned as a colony. Got me nervous for a second since Lithoids have 50% pop growth penalty, but then one grew with about 12 hivemind pops to go so it was okay. Once the massive penalties of the planet reduced the deficit to acceptable levels, I sold a large part of the motes surplus I was saving from my Lithoid pops and then everything went back to normal. To this day, none of the other empires even knew a hivemind once roved around my corner of the galaxy. And if anyone asks, I'm going to respond with "I don't know what you're talking about."

Moral of the story hiveminds, don't box in a fanatic militarist Lithoid that has nothing to lose and only 1 objective to take in your territory.

[factotum]

Got a question. In my current game there is a machine intelligence race a ways away from me who are just *ridiculously* powerful for a non-FE--they have something like 70k fleet strength at 2330 (for reference, I have about 15k right now). Is this just because this is my first time on Commodore difficulty, are machine empires just that OP, did they just luck out and get a nice empty part of the galaxy to expand in, or is it a bit of column A, bit of column B situation?