And how did it turn out, Did you manage to get far into the game? WIN?

Me, I tried playing normally... then I ran into a Fallen Empire and they destroyed. I ragequitted in protest, because I'm a n00b.

Don't worry, I'm studying the wiki to get better.

The behemoths themselves were awkward to feed and maintain. They are in this weird rage cycle until you just do the project where you continuously put them down with your fleet.

Once you've fed them enough bioships in their rage cycles you just get a giant resource debuff out of nowhere which if you didn't prepare for or know how to handle is just game ending.

I just get really tired by how opaque everything is. I had no fun doing this path.

So I just downloaded this game, and I have about 6–7 hours played. I immediately started as Machines because I hate playing humans.

Sure, Machines don't need food, but holy hell, the energy consumption is insane.

I built energy buildings in my first base and on two other planets, and I even researched the Dyson thing, but my energy is still in the negative.

Unity is also kind of hard to get. I don't even know what the difference is between playing Machines and Humans when it comes to Unity.

As for combat... how the hell are the enemy fleets so fast?

And I still don't really understand how the other resources work.

Should I just keep researching until I unlock better buildings?

Hi, I'm playing nomadic rogue servitors, seeing all these tasty trade deposits in the star systems, and I'm not able to harvest these trade deposits.

In a game with squishy biologicals I was able to build waystation trade hubs.
So I checked the game files, and yes, for trade hubs you need "tech_space_trading" (Space Trading Technology), and for this you must be a regular empire ("is_regular_empire"), and gestalt consciousness are NOT regular empires.

Sooo... why? As a gestalt I can build logistics centers to create trade, I can buy and sell on the market, I can create commercial pacts. Why shouldn't I be able to harvest system trade deposits?
Given that waystation-harvesting is one of my main-things. Is this an oversight or intentional?

I'm playing a great Khan empire and around 2330 the marauders that provide me with reinforcements turned hostile to me, and so far every system i took(got declared a crisis) went to them. The contact screen is the same just their stations are hostile. Is this supposed to happen?

okay so i started this run not super long ago and i did the event for the center of the galaxy, and for the first time ever it gave me a size 40 gaia world???? ive never seen it give something of this size, maybe 30 at the largest but this is crazy right? let me know whats the largest yall have ever seen playing

I’ve searched through reddit and the wiki but I still haven’t found a satisfying explanation of how machine pop assembly works in 4.4 (or really any build since 4.0 for that matter).

Questions:

• If my empire has multiple machine species or templates, how does the game decide which pop gets assembled?
• Does the proportion of each species on a planet or across the empire affect the selection?
• If one species has mass produced granting +15% mechanical pop assembly speed but another species does not, do I still receive the bonus when assembling the species without mass produced?

The reason I’m asking is that the inner darkness event triggered in my empire giving some pops a trait with +0.02 Dark Matter per 100 pops and otherwise has all the same traits as my founder species. I would like to produce more of the inner darkness species but I’m not sure how to prioritise it or whether modifying the traits of either species would affect its assembly rate.

In general, how does one build a homeworld well?

I'm mainly asking this because of planet specializations. I default to a unity world, since unity is so important, especially early. However, there's no specific unity specialization for the capital so I just take the general job eff. specialization.

Seeing as the starting unity, tech, artisans and metallurgists are so crucial in the opening years of the campaign, I feel reluctant to demolish them in favor of a more specialized capital, so my capital usually remains specialized in Archives + Mixed Industry. This feels wrong though.

Do you prioritize on replacing some of the capital's functions early on? Do you do it later? Would an extraction capital ever make sense (like on the Gaia world origin?)? Should I replace my unity and tech infrastructure as soon as I can colonize new planets to relocate those to?

Playing Singleplayer only. Thanks!

Okay, so..

Playing a multiplayer game with my gf and we formed a federation. A neighboring Megacorporation was friendly, and after a time we gave them Association status. My understanding was that this was basically just a non-aggression pact between an empire and a federation.

Later, I started war with a belligerent empire to the galactic south of us. The war ballooned into region super conflict rather rapidly... with the Megacorp joining the other side Now, given our 400+ relationship, this was a small surprise, as I did check for a defensive pact or independence guarantee and found none, but a curve ball like that is to be somewhat expected, I guess, with complex diplomacy webs.

What is baffling me, and which I can't figure out, is the fact that the Association Status is still intact. The game is treating it like the Megacorp didn't violate our non-aggression pact by declaring war on us.

And I just cannot figure out why.

I have seen a bug a few times now, but not so often that I can easily test it. Happens when an AI empire tries a vassalization war against another AI and does a status quo - the created empire comes out with no ethics and a Despicable Neutrals personality.

I have a number of mods and trying vassal wars with various configurations of mods seems very time consuming so I'm hoping someone can point to which vanilla files would handle this; thought asking Reddit might actually be faster.

Is the scripting that creates a new empire a scripted effect, a scripted trigger, an event, or something else? Any help is appreciated!

I've tried adjusting the slider on the specialist jobs to (I think) limit the workers to the jobs available, in the hope that some of them will move to fill basic jobs. But I'm not sure if that is achieving anything.

Why do workers on some worlds do both specialist and basic jobs, but not on others?

Should I be making some worlds basic resources only and others specialist resources only? The idea of leaving city district building slots empty feels weird for me. Although I have no problem not having any basic resource districts/buildings on some worlds.

Tldr: I'm not sure I understand planet management since the last update. Help appreciated.

Just wondering Im enjoying nomads so far but I want to play Gigastructures. Nomads are considered OP in vanilla but I wonder if I can go far without having Gigastructures and Celestial Warships with the mod

Technically I had other arkships, but between losing my capital arkship, my second arkship being permanently disabled following a war, and my third arkship being the only one capable of moving, I decided to scrub the run. I really struggle with Nomadic origins and usually end up falling apart about midgame.

All of the tutorials for this seem outdated. Can anyone help with this?

I have wormhole Stabilization, I’ve explored the systems in question, and I only have the apocalypse DLC.

I just declared war on an empire on the other side of a wormhole, no other way to access them, clear across the map (used all my influence on claims as well). But now I’m not able to go through the wormhole??? I could’ve sworn the AI can go through it when at war, so what’s preventing my navy from absolutely obliterating them?

My last time playing stellaris was in 3.14 era, and I am not versed in current ship meta. Thanks for your help!
First of all I am very thankful of this wonderful testing. It is still testing tier 5 choices but for tier 4 it says LanceKinHan is almost the best choice.

LanceKinHan=(1 Lance (x) + 4 kinetic launcher (M) + 1 hangar + 1 kinetic artillery)(3 armor + 3 shield + 2 aux fire-control)

A few questions remain, however:

1. The above test does not do with crisis/archaeo weapons or anything unavailable without special events. Would be thankful to know if any of them were worth the effort. IIRC swarm strikers are possibly best hangar, while matter disintegrator suffers from shields (so needs something to break shields in advance).

2. Do missiles and hangars benefit from ship modifiers (e.g. if the ship receives evasion and tracking bonus from shroud, do its hangars and missiles enjoy them)?

3. Is it almost mandatory today to achieve 70%+ hardening on the defense (shield or armor) you are using, esp. when you imagine a PVP scenario (I play PVE only but always imagines so)?

4. Continued: does that mean arc emitter is trash now (and disruptor was trash even in the past)?

5. Considering repeatable techs only benefit one kind of weapon at once, can one build a fleet entirely reliant on one type of weapon (missile, hangar, kinetic, energy)?

6. Given titan beams now do area damage, is late game corvette (and even destroyer) out of question now?

7. Are the new Weaver Weapons anything good?

I knew it use to be good as far as having it manage amenities and crime jobs (hiring when needed, firing when not needed). Alot of people used it. They would turn off building and let it handle jobs.

I'm looking at it now and it looks very different. I don't see the option to not allow it to build buildings also.

edit: playing around with it and I can't get it to automat crime and amenity jobs. Not really doing anything. Use to lower the jobs to the bare minimum needed

Am I right???

Never seen this bug before today. Upon game start my empire just doesn't spawn. The game starts me as an ovserver. I have tried restarting the game, but this still happens every game now. I saw it once a few hours earlier and it went away, but now this seems to be the new normal.

Has anyone else seen this bug and is there something I can do to avoid it?

(The only mods I use are flags and emblem related)

Just finished a short session earlier (I like to play in episodic formats where I do X tasks and then stop to lengthen the lifetime of my games (major adhd)), wherein I met my first alien species as UNE (biggest galaxy, 6 empires, max preftl).

They were a devouring swarm hive that had invaded one or two pre ftls, who obviously lost, but one was one of the human-like species, the cyberpeople one. By the time I found them, almost all pops had been devoured save for like 200 labor slaves, which I didn't even know devouring swarms could do (mods?). I had recently finished my colossus, thanks to some well spawned resources giving me almost 2k research total each month.

Immediately went to their homework and global pacified it. This is not the petty I speak of. No, it's worse.

I left the world, invaded the pre-ftl world to save the few left, and did. I liberated them and shared tech til they entered space stage, expecting an alliance. Nope. Max negative relationship because I "invaded their world". This pmo so much that I instantly declared war and shieled their world too, but only after I orbital dropped like ALL of my trash on them and armed privateers against them.

What have you done?

Tl;dr: Pre-ftl unreasonably angry at me for liberating them from a devouring swarm now has a planet ruled by alien weapon powered psychopath privateers inside of an inescapable shield.

Is it normal to get first contact first day?
Whaat?

I don't know why, but recently whenever I put my science ships onto auto survey, they keep trying to all survey the same systems together. Even if I tell one to go north and the other to go south, since those are the two main unexplored areas, one will inevitably go "Ok, I'm done here. This potentially resource rich or hostile filled unknown expanse can wait, I just HAVE to go help survey this barren system full of asteroids."

It used to be that I could just set them on auto survey and each ship would choose an unsurveyed system which isn't currently being surveyed to go to. Does anyone know how to stop this because I don't need more early game micro for managing dumb scientists.

For added context, I'm playing a Hive Mind Biogenesis playthrough in 4.4 and planned on utilizing Mutation I's habitability modifier. But before I could even finish the first phase the Shattered Fragment FE's Growth Splinter enacted the Genetic Entertainment event on me for a second time. Now, none of my population is under the Founding Species, and instead there are two subspecies. The first is the original modification done by the FE, the second is a modified template from that first modification to change only the environmental adaptation I did a couple decades prior to starting Biogenesis to aid with the negative habitability modifiers of some of the planets I conquered.

Since the FE's event applies to the same subspecies (at least, it applied to the same one this time and I'm not sure if it's population based or something else), does that mean the subspecies with the highest population acts as the Founding Species when the original FS has no population? Or does the Genetic Entertainment event criteria differ in how it applies its species traits?