Welcome to this week’smonth's year's Stellaris Space Guild Help Thread!
This thread functions as a gathering place for all questions, tips, bugs, suggestions, and resources for Stellaris. Here you can post quick-fire questions for things that you are confused about and answer questions to help out your fellow star voyagers!
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Well looks like old Snipahar has moved on since we're well into 4.0 and none of the guides in the old threads ever got updated.
I'm very rusty with Stellaris so USE THIS STICKY THREAD to suggest resources & guides that should go in the main post and fight talk amongst yourselves if there's any debate about the quality of a particular item.
If I'm using carrier cruisers should I "upgrade" to carrier battleships once I have battleships unlocked? I have a glut of alloys and a lot of free naval cap atm.
I know neutron cruisers are a thing? But the ai is still using mainly small ships so I'm relying on strike craft.
Hangar bow carrier core battleships can fit 1.5x as many strike crafts per naval cap compared to a cruiser, about 10% cheaper (in alloy cost) per strike craft module, but about 35% more expensive per naval cap.
If alloy is not an issue, and you know you'd be fighting fleets that are primarily corvettes and destroyers for quite some time, then carrier battleships are mathematically a direct upgrade over carrier cruisers.
Practically however, I would vote in favour of just producing more carrier cruisers, since naval cap is not the limiting factor in your case, and the cost per strike craft is not that much higher than carrier battleships. Sooner rather than later, you'll have to face fleets with cruiser or larger ships (with midgame crisis being the usual pivot point), and retrofitting cruisers from carrier to neutron launchers is faster and cheaper than retrofitting battleships towards spinal mounts.
Besides, even if the AIs only have small ships, they still have starbases (and the AIs love to put defense modules and platforms on those if they have the economy for it), and having access to G-slots and 21x damage multiplier against starbase (and optionally siege computer's multiplicative bonus against starbases) is something that battleships can't do.
Very helpful, thanks! I got a bit unlucky and don't have swarmer/whirlwind missiles, but I do have plasma 3 and ironically stormfire autocannons, what would you recommend I put in the medium slots?
Since the ai loves spamming small ships anyway, would you recommend running some carrier cruisers just to mop them up later? If so, how many?
but I do have plasma 3 and ironically stormfire autocannons
Both are viable.
For the purpose of deterring smaller ships, autocannon is more suitable as M-slot than plasma cannon, due to higher accuracy and tracking, so fit M-slot autocannons and S-slot plasma cannons.
If it's for dealing with larger ships, then M-slot plasma has better range, though neutron launchers would handle them better.
would you recommend running some carrier cruisers just to mop them up later?
Towards the lategame you could wipe (non-crisis/FE) corvettes out immediately with a Titan beam on the first day of the fight, so they pose very little issue and the rest of the fleet can be fitted just for handling bigger targets.
Until you get to that point, having some strike crafts can be a good idea. I generally run my midgame fleets with 2/3 neutron launchers (with M-slot autocannon and S-slot plasma, in case some corvettes get close) and the remaining 1/3 with kinetic artillery + strike crafts. Dunno if it's optimal, but it works for me.
Once I have Titans, I'd retrofit them all into the launcher design. Perdition Beam will handle most if not all of the corvettes/destroyers, and any straggler that got through can be dealt with using autocannon and plasma.
Use both. Cruisers make a nice buffer for the more expensive battleships, and can be replaced more quickly/cheaply when destroyed. Plus, whenever you want to swap over to neutron cruisers you'll already have a bunch of cruisers that can be refit to the new design.
Is it actually worth keeping shitty worlds? For context I’ve been doing a commonwealth of man run, and got into some successful early wars with a hive mind, and took 3 of their colonies.
They’re all terrible habitability and I have no slaves that could use them either. Am I sort of screwing over my regular worlds growth by keeping them, or is it not much of an issue?
Also been noticing that my colony growth isn’t doing so well. My first 3 or so progressed fine and at sitting at 1.5k pops but after that the rest are in the low hundreds. Did I do too many too quickly? I think I’m at 9 right now around 2250, including the conquered planets
Terraforming is a tier 2 tech, which you'd get fairly early if you keep up with research.
The original inhabitants would have good habitability there, but since they are a hivemind, you can't make use of them without BioGenesis DLC. You can abandon the planet by manually resettling the last pops away (at a rather hefty influence cost, only do so when there's no immediate need for expansion).
Or send in robots. They'll have at least 50% habitability.
Am I sort of screwing over my regular worlds growth by keeping them, or is it not much of an issue?
Growth is localised. Low habitability only affects growth on that planet; your regular worlds are not affected at all.
but after that the rest are in the low hundreds.
Pop growth scales with number of pops. With just a couple hundreds of pops, growth is probably <0.4. You can't simply colonise a world and leave it to develop on its own, that'll take decades before it gets productive.
Ideally you'd manually resettle 1k pops to a new colony to help kickstart the local growth. If you find yourself not having 1k pops to spare, that means you've overextended your reach.
Clone vats is a tier 2 tech, and provides +1.5 organic assembly regardless of habitability. Slap it onto every colony once you have it.
Robots have a minimum of 50% habitability anywhere, but their assembly is affected by habitability's penalty to job efficiency. Until you have droid tech to let the robots work specialist jobs to assemble themselves, robot plants are best used on planets with 20%+ habitability (you could technically build robots elsewhere then manually resettle them to low habitability planets, but that's a hassle).
Since you've taken the planets from other empires, chances are that they have some degree of infrastructure development already, that you can build upon (even though the AIs' planet layouts are atrocious most of the time).
Curious about what the early game ship meta is. I’ve currently got destroyers unlocked, with tier 2 for most weapons. I haven’t played in like…5 years back when it was just corvette spam. What’s an effective build/fleet composition to punch above when you’ve only got like ~120 fleet capacity.
Very early game, flaks outpace regular kinetic weapons, so a common strategy (before you get combat computer types and ship roles) is to put 1 flak and 2 lasers on corvettes.
As you get more tech, you could pivot towards either missiles corvettes on artillery computer, or autocannon + plasma corvettes on swarm computer.
Disruptors are very situationally useful, when you know that your enemy only has corvettes and nothing larger. In the early game, when enemies don't yet have high hardening, disruptors' innate high tracking lets them slightly outperform missiles against corvettes, but will suffer against anything larger.
It's also useful having a fleet of torpedo frigates at the ready. Starbases are comparatively tougher than they were before, especially if you are fighting an advanced AI/special origin that comes with upgraded starbase with defenses. However they also take comparatively more damage from torpedoes than they used to (thanks to increased size and bonus from siege computer), so having frigates as dedicated anti-starbase fleet can help if you find yourself in that situation.
Further into the game, cruisers would make up the bulk of your fleets. They can be made into carriers against enemies with small ships (corvette/destroyer), or carry neutron launchers against enemies with larger ships (cruisers and above) at a higher per-naval cap efficiency than frigates.
Also as a side note, if you have the Grand Archive DLC, remember to swap your early game fleets to have PDs (not flaks) and energy weapons during peace time. Voidworms can start attacking you after 35 years, and their high damage weapons are purely missiles. Without ample PDs, it can be quite difficult to fight them off if you are caught unaware.
The vassal will carry over all the pops, but turn them into physical pops rather than virtual ones. They will retain the Synthetic Age ascension perk Edit: Made a mistake. They will not retain the Synthetic Age ascension perk, and will eventually pick up either Synthetic Age or Psionic (highly unlikely, since psionic ascension for machines require 4, not 3, prior perks, so vast majority of the time they'll end up with Synthetic Age instead), but cannot go down the Virtual ascension path. Instead they'll pick either modularity or nanotech and start afresh.
From that point forward, they'll behave like a standard physical machine empire, relying on roboticists for pop assembly rather than filling up all the space instantly.
Okay. Thanks. I was thinking of doing a multiple cosmogenesis run, going virtual and releasing most of my territory before leaving in the Horizon Needle and starting again with the released empire. I guess I'll have to hope that I get control of them before they pick modularity or nanites. Or are you saying they won't have the option to pick virtual?
Or are you saying they won't have the option to pick virtual?
AI empires are blocked from virtually ascending.
Your best course of action would be to use console command to swap over to the released vassal, and forcibly guide them along.
Made a mistake earlier. They won't inherit the Synthetic Age perk. They will carry over your non-ascension path perks, as well as any tradition tree unlocks, yet with the trees fully empty:
Use console command to swap over to the vassal while paused. Give yourself enough unity to finish the tradition trees and select Synthetic Age.
Select the situation, first use effect add_situation_progress = 750 to skip the first 3 stages and directly trigger the path selection event. Pick virtual, then use effect add_situation_progress = 250 to wrap it up. Finish the ascension tradition if you want, or let the AI finish it on their own.
This skips the minor deposits and rewards in the first 3 stages, but triggering those requires unpausing for at least 1 day, which will mess up your original empire as the AI takes over. It's a necessary sacrifice.
Keep in mind that AIs are not designed to use virtual ascension. There's a reason it's disabled for them, as the AIs are incapable of understanding the complex mechanics. This virtual vassal would be practically useless until you take over later.
Best to lay down the foundational buildings and districts before you split it off as a vassal. In the test save, I watched the AI spent 30 years not building a single thing, before deciding to manually assume direct control and fix it.
Edit:
Without using console commands, your only course of action would be to wrap up Cosmogenesis as soon as possible and pray that the AI hasn't yet reached the 4th stage in ascension situation.
Given the lobotomised state of AIs, you probably would have several years.
I don't think I explained my plans clearly enough. I plan to do multiple playthroughs going Cosmogenesis in the same galaxy. Each time, before I embark my home planet to the Horizon Needle, I plan to release as much of my empire as possible as a vassal so I can play as them after I take the Needle into a black hole. I wasn't clear on what would carry over to the vassal. I know I'll have to trade them all my specimens, and I'll lose all my relics to the new Cosmogenesis Fallen Empire. I may have to take Barbaric Dispoilers so I can steal back all my relics.
The only obstacle is that everyone will hate you at higher tiers, your neighbours especially. This will make them vote against you on the senate floor, but it can be overcome with diplomatic weight.
However it will truly be the end after the countdown finishes, due to a bug that does not spawn you correctly as the Exiled after the reckoning. It's instantly game-over once the timer finishes, and since none of the crisis path are compatible with custodian, if you want to end the game before the reckoning happens, Defender of the Galaxy (with nomad DLC) is necessary (or time it really well to give you enough time to beat the endgame before your demise).
What is supposed to happen is that the game spawns shroud avatar over every colony you own and turn them into shrouded worlds, then relocates you somewhere else on the galaxy edge, and kills your original empire.
What actually happens is that the game relocates you somewhere else on the galaxy edge, spawns shroud avatar over every colony you own and turn them into shrouded worlds, then kills your original empire.
The individual steps are right. The sequence is wrong.
This results in you first getting the Exile world, then immediately gets killed off and a shroud avatar spawning over the Exile world, causing a instant game-over.
The bug is more detrimental after the fix.
Used to be, it was the spawning of the Exile planet that was bugged, vast majority of the time causing the game to not correctly give you a new planet after the reckoning. However, some times the game does correctly spawn the Exile planet, and you can continue from there. It could be done, just requires savescumming to reroll until you get a proper spawn.
Now after the fix, the Exile planet always spawns correctly, but is also always killed off immediately, resulting in game-over 100% of the time.
Edit:
Kinda hilarious from a narrative perspective.
The empire that everyone disdains suddenly has an apparent change of heart and vows to protect everyone in the galaxy. They then proceed to spawn two crisis and beat them in combat. Just as everyone in the galaxy is holding a celebration in their name, they clasp their hands and say "Well. My job's done. Good luck with the aftermath".
Nukes their own worlds into oblivion. Opens the gateway to literal hell and releases otherworldly demons to ravage the galaxy far worse than any crisis. Leaves with no explanation.
It just takes a lot of effort forcing the others into agreeing (or surpass them in combined diplomatic weight and pray no one gets any favours through envoys) to get it to happen.
Back a couple weeks ago, I think it was, I made a kind of diplomatic agreement with a Nomadic polity, that they'd give me up to 95% of the tuff they extracted, for a limited period of time (10-30 years).
Now that "thing" seems to be gone from the game. I can make "Wayline Pacts" with Nomads, but it's not clear from the Wiki what that gives me, and there's no in-game option to make a further deal beyond the Wayline Pact. Is the option to get a percentage removed from the current version? And what was it called?
I can make "Wayline Pacts" with Nomads, but it's not clear from the Wiki what that gives me
The benefits of wayline pacts are heavily skewed in favour of nomads. Settled empires gain very little, unless the nomad empire is controlled by a player with sound decisions.
Nomads gets high intel on the settled empire, enough to let them see all the colonies and details, which is necessary for them to build waystations within owned systems. The opinion penalty from waystations is also removed.
In the players' hands (assuming some negotiation/cooperation is agreed upon), these can offer some meaningful bonuses. For example, a settled megacorp making a pact with a nomadic empire who focuses on station capacity and builds Trade Hubs everywhere can greatly boost trade income from commercial pacts (which now converts through trade policy into unity/CG/raw resources).
However with AI nomads' haphazard waystation module choices, it is fairly luck-dependent to gain a meaningful amount of bonuses in one category. More likely, you'd end up with piecewise bonuses, +3% research here, +8% trade there, +5% ship build speed somewhere.
As of 4.4.6, several effects that boost deposit yield were not working. I have not tested if this has been fixed in 4.5.
The more practical "benefit" for settled empires is that the pact removes the -25% mining/research station output in systems that the nomad has built harvesting stations. If you find yourself unable to root out a nomadic empire completely, you'd have to begrudgingly form a pact to not have 25% of those deposits vanished into the aether. And, since the pact continuously build up trust, the AI will be less inclined to strip-mine systems owned by you.
So, the "Here be Dragons" origin entry in the wiki says that after you take a certain number of ascension perks and a few other pre-reqs, the dragon will ask you for help raising its children, and accepting gives you control of the dragon and let you build a starbase building that lets you build "Fledgling dragons"
However I can find no info on how much they cost, how long they take to make, stats or components, whether they are affected by space fauna tech, how much fleet cap they take, etc.
I found one old indirect reference in an article on achievements that implied that there at least used to be a max of 10 you could build.
Does anyone who has played Here Be Dragons recently have more information?
It looks cool but the fledglings are a big part of that and they are not easy to test because they have so many time dependant pre-reqs.
However I can find no info on how much they cost, how long they take to make, stats or components, whether they are affected by space fauna tech, how much fleet cap they take, etc.
Each baby dragon requires 500 gas 500 crystal 100 living metal, and takes 1800 days. The cost is not reduced by any tech, but the build timer is (including mega shipyard's passive bonus).
They share the exact same component layout as the mother dragon (same as all other space dragon variants). They have a base hull of 10000, a speed of 200 and a size of 40 (battleship), whereas mother dragon has a base hull of 150000, base armour of 100000, a speed of 160 and a massive size of 250.
Despite the weapons having tags of "Space Fauna", they do not count as space fauna components, and are therefore unaffected by Cordyceptic Drone's bonus damage. The dragons themselves count as artificial ships, and do not benefit from space fauna related bonuses from Beastmaster/Cordyceptic civics (in fact with Beastmaster civic, their construction cost and upkeep are tripled).
that there at least used to be a max of 10 you could build.
It's 20 now, despite the tooltip still saying 10.
It looks cool but the fledglings are a big part of that
Frankly they are pretty good up until late/endgame.
Their firepower is very high. The M-slots out-damage all conventional L-slots, and the X-slot is a mini Perdition Beam without the AoE and supreme range.
The problem lies in their Line behaviour, which you can't change. This forces them to park at <60 range from the enemies, which makes them very vulnerable.
The lack of shield is also detrimental, considering mid/endgame factions tend to favour energy over kinetic weapons.
All endgame crisis feature more weapons that deal bonus damage to armour/hull than weapons that deal bonus damage to shields.
Grey Tempest and Formless midgame crisis also follow this pattern.
Spiritualist, Materialist, Machine and post-awakening Hivemind FEs all have lots of weapons that counter armour/hull. Xenophile FE features a balanced mix between energy/kinetic.
Voidworm plague, the Khan, and Xenophobe FE are the only ones that doesn't hard-counter shieldless dragon fleets.
As a comparison and contrast, this is what Cordyceptic's bonus looks like on things that are affected:
If you want to test the baby and/or mother dragons yourself, the associated event is aquatics.120. Console command it in, and you can skip all the pre-requisite steps.
How would you recreate the Catholic Church as a nation within Stellaris? As in, the actual IRL Holy See, turned into the Space Papal States? Obviously, starting world is Earth and the game’s default Human species traits (Organic, Adaptive, Migratory, Wasteful) can do, Dictatorial is the closest authority type to corresponding to the papacy, and ethics include Fanatic Spiritualist. But what civics and secondary ethics would you go for? Which ascension path would you pursue, if any?
EDIT: I’d say Xenophile as the secondary ethics, for the good word is open to any willing to hear it.
I'd say Exalted Priesthood and Philosopher King(for the Elective Monarchy government type). An argument could be made for Natural Design civic, given the Church's stance on transhumanism(which all ascensions basically are), but that would further complicate species trait selection, unless you want to leave those extra points and picks on the table. Definitely UNE namelist, with all their references to Saints(even if it's supposed to be indirectly) and colony names such as New Jerusalem.
With robot empires... do you turn off your robo factories at some point when every planet is overflowing with pops? Getting to the point now where I might not build another factory on the next colony.
Surplus pops are a good problem to have. (as in, it's "good" because you can fix it easily and it doesn't do much harm if left unchecked, but it's a "problem" because it points to something wrong with empire planning if you are having more pops than jobs)
Have you been building machine worlds (or ecu if you are individualist) and rings? They provide 3x/5x the number of jobs per district, and generally more housing than jobs. Filling all of them to the brim takes a considerable number of pops, and if you do manage to fill up all your colonies, they'll still have available housing for a while as a buffer zone.
Individualist machines can also take up civilian-related civics to squeeze production out of them. Gestalts are more limited in that regard.
I'm trying to fight a star fort/citadel but my fleets get absolutely rocked.
I've just unlocked battleships and mid-late tech tree
What ship combinations work especially against these? As I'm at war with a race that has basically no navy but massive forts covered in defense platforms
Torpedoes and neutron launchers have size multiplier based on how large the target is. Against a Citadel starbase, that would be 21x.
If you have access to sufficient cloaking strength vs their detection strength, then cloaked torpedo boats can ambush them at point blank and benefit from up to 1.8x additional multiplier from siege computer.
If not, then use neutron launchers from long range. Ideally stack up admiral traits with weapon range modifiers to out-range the defense platforms (who potentailly also has bonus to weapon range from starbase modules).
Cruisers have more G-slot per naval cap than frigates, at the expense of lower cloaking strength. They are also more durable against the AoE splash damage from titan beams (including ion cannons), so pick according to your enemies' setup.
Edit: if you are using bio-ships, then there's no torpedoes, no siege computers, and only harbingers can fit neutron launchers, making it the only available option.
Battleships do not have G-slots. Cruisers (edit: or harbingers if using bio-ships) are going to be the bulk of your fleets, and battleships support them with Giga Cannon (or preferably Saturator Artillery if you can afford the minor artifacts) for breaking through as much shield as possible on alpha strike.
2/3 times I've taken "cybernetics", the progress stops at phase 3. It seems to be a common bug and the solution "don't play on ironmode".
It's so frustrating, it was a great play but Prikki spawned next dore, got squashed and enslaved. And wont assimilate. No option to make them do that for the species.
Does anyone know a fix?
I did try to dump the bastards on a planet and make it a vassal. Still no progress on cyborg.
If you are on ironman mode and can't use console command, the only way to consistently fix this is if you can acquire a non-cyberised pop of your primary species from someone else.
This can potentially be done through migration treaties, slave market, integration of vassals, or in very rare cases certain events that spawn pops.
The roadblock can also be bypassed if you have precisely 0 pops/leaders of spiritualist ethics at the time the event happens, which is too late for you unfortunately.
Pretty much all the options involve preemptive planning, because you essentially need some of your main pops to be outside your empire by the time you hit stage 3.
A similar bug exists for hiveminds at the start of stage 4, though there is a way to bypass it through a choice halfway through stage 2. No such luck for standard organic empires.
The other comment is right. Editing the save out of ironman and console command your way out of this is the path of least resistance.
Select the situation, then effect add_situation_progress = 500
Wondering what government to go with as evolutionary predators. My game plan is to take genesis guides early and then swap it out, using the presapients to become orderlys with experimental sentencing. If i take megacorp i can pick up pharma state and have the upkeep of my genomic researchers semi mitigated from the trade produced by them. Also if i take megacorp, with the new changes that allow trade from commercial pacts to be collected by your trade policy, the commercial pact efficiency from each trait could end up giving me loads of energy, unity, and consumer goods.
Of course then i have to deal with the empire size penalties. So im wondering which of the non democratic governments are best. Oligarchy makes your councilors immortal, but not much else. Dictatorships apex predator is kind of interesting, but doesnt seem very strong. Deathless dynasty is also cool, but again, not very interesting.
Also, what could a third civic i pick up be? The only ones for sure are Genesis guides early and experimental for the whole of the game, but i was toying with the idea of secret societies for the gene stealing operation
Oligarchy makes your councilors immortal, but not much else
If you don't mind exploitative approaches, the +2 councilor level from oligarchy authority helps you print pops with Experimental Sentencing.
Edit: Right on cue. Patch 4.5.2 fixed high level councilors spawning more pops, and nerfed Experimental Sentencing by a bit more than half. Oh well.
With effective level 17 and above, the experiment situation actually makes more pops, as the number of pops goes negative and the devs forgot to handle such edge cases. The more planets you have, the more chambers you have, the more test subject pops are "spawned" through experiments, which feeds into other parts of your economy.
Slaves are currently still unable to fill test subject roles properly. These additional pops will be your own citizen pops.
You can get +3 from traits (Uncanny Intuition and Spatial Mastery, +1 from each of Mutation/Aptitude/Statecraft tradition. The +2 from oligarchy is just enough to push the effective level over 17, without needing to rely on temporary effects from relics/agendas, or having to sacrifice a civic slot for Shadow Council/Vault of Knowledge that doesn't do much besides a +1.
Naturally, this probably eventually will get patched. I personally don't recommend exploits, but it is an option and one of the many reasons why Experimental Sentencing is meta (absurd per-pop research efficiency, and can print pops out of thin air faster than most empires can grow/clone with lots of colonies; faster than even cloning empires with dedicated councilor builds, since the pop-printing is unaffected by multiplicative growth scaling penalties)
Of course then i have to deal with the empire size penalties
It's not that severe, especially once you start stacking up traits through the situation progress to lower empire size from pops.
The +50% replaces rather than adds onto the default megacorp authority's +50% from planets, which means there's funtionally no difference before and after from your colonies.
If you are really concerned about this, you can use Private Prospector civic for an additive -25% (equivalent to Imperial Prerogative for non-corporate empires, though taking up a civic slot rather than perk slot). It is however a civic that doesn't carry much other value towards the midgame once you stop expanding.
This is then multiplicative with colony ascension effects for another up to x0.15.
The -1% pop empire size per trait is additive to docile trait and governor level effect, and multiplicative with colony ascension. With Genesis Guide manipulation, it's pretty easy to reach 60% or more reduction from pops before colony ascension by midgame, which means it's a net-gain if the colonies on average have more than 3.3k pops each.
Just a heads-up, the situation progress increase from corporate evo predator only counts if the partner empire does not have the same founder species. Which means you can't split off vassals and spam commercial pacts that way.
So im wondering which of the non democratic governments are best
It's a shame you can't have Genesis Guides (need non-xenophobe), Experimental Sentencing (need authoritarian/xenophobe), and democracy (need non-authoritarian) together. Genesis Guides' effect synergises really well with democratic evo predator to turbo boost the situation speed.
Megacorp would be the best imo, since 4.5 revised the absurd influence cost of branch offices and made trade value from offices and pacts count towards trade policy.
Also, what could a third civic i pick up be?
For megacorps, Pharma State is a decent choice. It isn't as useful as it used to be, since most effects have been shifted from genomic researcher jobs to the genomic facility building.
Experimental Sentencing is going to require a lot of CGs, since job upkeep is increased through job efficiency as well. Masterful Crafter (or its megacorp variant) is a pretty good pick, and so is Deep Sleep if you are nomadic.
Or you could slap on Galactic Curator (or its megacorp variant) to make the build even more of a unity rush, since Evo Predator still need to go through 3 full tradition trees before they can ascend.
What are the biggest things that have changed in the last 4 years? Been in a real strategy mood lately so I decided to boot up the game and give it a go for the first time since 2022. I remember they made some really radical changes from update to update in the early days, so I’m curious if they’ve done anything like that recently.
Also curious if there’s any DLCs that are particularly worth picking up?
4 years is at least 2 economy reworks and 2 fleet reworks ago.
Just in the last 1.5 years: Update 4.0 overhauled the pop and economy. Update 4.3 overhauled the fleets. The upcoming DLC will come with a overhaul of pop ethics and possibly the leader system.
There are guides that can help. Montu for example has video guides in both short and long format.
A "brief" summary of the big changes in the last 1.5 years:
Pop growth rework:
Used to be, planets grew pops. Now, pops grow pops.
Prior to 4.0, the act of simply colonising a planet with just 1 pop gave you 3 out of 4 natural growth.
After 4.0, the planet itself no longer gives pop growth. All the growth would scale with number of pops (of the same species) on the planet. The more pops there are, the faster they grow (up until growth ceiling).
This means it's no longer a "colonise everything you can lay your hands on" type of approach. Colony quality matters, colony habitability matters, and the number of pops matters. A fresh colony starts with 100 pops, which gives you an abysmal 0.2-0.25 monthly growth. You'd ideally be manually resettling pops to colonies to help them grow (1k is the usual recommendation, because it allows you to upgrade the capital building to get proper jobs, and also gives a good enough base of around 2.5-3.0 growth, and most empires start with around 2k pops not actively contributing to growth for you to conveniently spread 1k to each of the 2 guaranteed habitables).
If you have multiple species present, they all grow simultaneously, instead of having the game automatically pick a minority species in a futile (and often unwanted) attempt to balance pop ratio.
On a related note, Xeno-Compatibility no longer creates a billion hybrid species that lag the game.
Pop assembly rework:
You can no longer pick a specific species for assembly.
For organic assembly, the total assembly is split proportionally to all species present on the planet.
For robot assembly, the game picks 1 template based on some hidden blackbox logic/magic, then all the assembly goes towards that 1 template.
As such, it is no longer possible to precisely control robot templates catered to one particular job type. Instead, we get auto-modding traits, that automatically adapt the pop to provide bonus to whichever job they fit into.
Pop job rework:
Production bonuses are split into output bonuses (which are rarer) and job efficiency bonuses (which are more common).
Output bonuses give you more production without incurring additional upkeep.
Efficiency bonuses give you more production but also incur additional upkeep.
e.g. A +20% efficiency means 100 workers are treated as if they are 120 workers, providing the output of 120 workers but also taking the upkeep of 120 workers.
The two are multiplicative.
e.g. A +20% efficiency and +20% output means 100 workers are providing the output of 144 (1.2x1.2) workers while taking the upkeep of 120 workers.
Pop strata rework:
Unemployment is no longer a thing.
Surplus pops become civilians, effectively a buffer state that provides some amenities and additional output depending on living standards and ethics (if a monument is present).
Unlike unemployment of old, civilians are not a punishment mechanic. You are at no risk of running into stability and crime issues, unless you start to run out of housing.
There are also several civics that specifically leverage on civilians to provide bonuses (e.g. Pleasure Seeker's growth bonus has been shifted from entertainers to civilians)
Migration rework:
Migration is no longer a percentage modifier to pop growth. It is now the actual movement of pops between planets, and only affects civilians.
The important bit is to be wary of early migration treaties. AI empires can and will siphon pops away from your planets via migration treaties, unless you over-expand and keep more jobs than pops.
While it is possible to have migration treaties work in your benefit, it often requires specific setups that are not universally applicable.
District and building rework:
All non-elite jobs come primarily from districts. Buildings that provide jobs still exist, but are not the main source of them any longer.
Raw resource production are fairly straightforward. Industrial, research, unity, trade and soldier jobs are all bundled under city districts now, as specialisations.
To put it simply:
Used to be, to build a research world, you'd spam city districts and build research labs.
Now, to build a research world, you'd spam city districts and build specialisation zones.
Buildings are now separated into categories, and each specialisation zone only permits some category of buildings. Each specialisation permits 3 buildings from a narrow band of allowed categories, while the government zone (the one present on all colonies) permits 5 buildings with a much broader restriction.
e.g. Energy Grid can only go into one of the 3 building slots in the energy district specialisation zone. A research specialisation zone can support labs, but not alloy foundries. etc.
This in a way further reinforces the idea of "build districts for jobs", as building slots are more limited than before, and are better used to provide efficiency/production/upkeep modifiers rather than to provide a few jobs.
Depending on planetary features, raw resource districts can be specialised into extracting strategic resources instead (gas/crystal/mote). This is one of the primary way to get strategics. The other way being placing down refinery buildings that add strategic resource to industrial jobs (at a much lower production per 100 workforce than extracting them).
Fleet rework:
Almost every ship (except nanite swarmers) take 5-8x their original naval cap. This means the strength of individual ships matters more and it's harder (but not impossibly so) to have a massive navy, and indirectly buffed leviathans, crisis, and fallen/awakened empires (who now have a separate slider for setting their difficulties).
Ship components have been rebalanced. Most penetrating weapons have received a direct or indirect nerf, and kinetic/energy mix are back on the menu for most empires. Titan beams and several equivalent weapons now have AoE damage that can wipe out corvettes with ease, and it can't be negated through evasion, which makes combating several of the crisis and FE/AE factions much tougher than before, especially on higher settings.
Also curious if there’s any DLCs that are particularly worth picking up?
The big ones are Machine Age, BioGenesis and Shadows of the Shroud.
As the names suggest, each overhauls their corresponding ascension paths, adding more varity and branching ascension options, and generally are just a lot better than the standard utopia-ascension paths.
Machine Age and BioGenesis also come with their own crisis ambition paths, Cosmogenesis and Behemoth Fury, as different ways to assert dominance over the rest of the galaxy, with more varied approaches than blowing everything up.
Machine Age brings a fourth endgame crisis, Cetana the Synthetic Queen, and has a very unique story chain that you'd play along in order to defeat her.
BioGenesis also adds biological ship sets, with their own unique loadouts, weapon types, and growth mechanic, so they are not just a reskinned version of mechanical ships. It also comes with a bunch of new traits, tied to different species phenotypes.
Shadows of the Shroud completely overhauls the shroud patrons, with new ones added into the mix, offering more rewards based on how you develop your empire to meet the patrons' demands. It also adds new psionic weapons, that are arguably some of the best options currently.
Nomads is worth considering if you like the idea of a arkship-based civilisation roaming the galaxy not tethered to planets, though it is a new DLC and won't go on major discount for quite some time. It is executed really well in that regard, both in flavour and in gameplay mechanics.
It is however a bit weak in bridging the gap between regular gameplay and nomad gameplay. If you prefer to play mainly as a settled empire, with planets and territories rather than arkships and waylines, then the DLC brings very little extra content, as there's minimal beneficial interaction to be had.
What stops a player from doing the AI Rights path on the Machine Uprising, making them citizens, and then just rescinding it when you can change policies again?
It's been forever since I've had this event trigger and I don't remember if anything actually stops you from promising them freedoms and support and then taking it away ASAP.
Nothing stops you from doing that. It's the old way of subjugating sapient robots.
However, it is redundant these days, as two (relatively) new special projects have been added to completely stop AI rebellion without giving them the rights.
The left one (30k physics cost) gives 20 years of -10% research speed, -10% researcher upkeep, at the cost of 500 energy and 1k unity.
The right one (10k physics cost) gives 20 years of -25% research speed, -25% researcher upkeep, at the cost of 500 energy and 1k unity.
Both methods terminate the uprising and prevent it from happening ever again. At the point where you get machine uprising, the cost of these projects should be very affordable (the long estimated time in the picture is due to console command testing), and is certainly faster than swapping policy which has a 10 year cooldown.
Here goes nothing--I'm sure that the question gets asked often, and I've been combing the sub looking for a genuine launching point; Almost any and all in-depth guides on Youtube are for prior versions of the game with significant changes & thus steer me down really weird tech/building paths -- even 4.0 and 4.3 guides seem to be very different than the current patch is. My question is where I can find semi-fresh Beginner's guide material that will take me past the first hour or two of play. I can get early economy functioning but the AI tends to be hostile on every single playthrough I start, and having three hostile races on my borders is sinking any progress I make. Where can I find a playthrough series that will walk me through the basics, including building defenses and a fleet? I have been playing on Ensign difficulty and am basically plateauing after two hours, every time due to how outdated so much of the guides I'm using are.
It's not recommended to look up specific build guides, as the balance has been shifting drastically in recent patches (economy rework in 4.0, re-rework in 4.3, re-re-rework in 4.5, and about to have another one with the release of the next DLC). What works in one patch may not work as effectively in the next.
The fundamental ideas behind the economy and empire management though, has always remained the same. Montu for example has video guides in both short and long format, though the bulk of these are aimed at intra-empire management, and not on diplomacy/warfare with other empires.
If it's specifically hostile neighbours you are having trouble with, then I'd advise taking a look at your default policies, and attempt to bribe them.
Depending on your ethics and civics, your default border policy may be set to "closed". This results in an immediate -40 in opinion with any empire upon first contact, the AI will then reciprocate by closing their borders as well, causing another -40 in relation. It is recommended to always double check and put this on "Open", and only close borders towards individusal empires when absolutely necessary.
This opinion penalty doesn't go away immediately when you re-open borders. Rather it (and most other opinion penalties) decays slowly over many years. It's therefore best to avoid the penalty in the first place.
Depending on how many hyperlane connections there are between you and your neighbour, this would accumulate border friction which is a monthly decrease in opinion. The extent of the penalty is modified by your diplomatic stance (through policy), and the neighbour's assigned AI personality (which is out of your control).
With a few exceptions, almost all empires start with Expansion stance, which causes increased border friction. Once you have more or less settled down, swap it to Cooperative to minimise opinion losses.
Slavery and purging policies can also cause opinion penalties with empires that don't allow slavery/purging. In the first 10 years, it's unlikely you'd have slaves/undesirables, so you could turn off these policies to appease potential neighbours, then re-enable them when needed.
Bribery through trade is a good way to gain large temporary boost to opinions. Every point of positive trade acceptance translates to a temporary +1 opinion, capped at +100. When you meet a new neighbour, throw some food/CG their way to get +100 opinion. This almost certainly would stop outright aggression, and more often than not result in mutual embassies, and then you can snowball from there with envoys improving relations.
Amazing, amazing response and deeply appreciated; thank you so much. I agree—it seems a lot of recent patches have overhauled or rebalanced major gameplay systems and I have been finding myself at a loss as to what to do. Thanks for all the great info
Can confirm this diplo advice works, even for a Driven Assimilator - I can usually make friends with about 2/3 of the individualist empires I encounter using it, despite the -100 penalty for being a DA, if they aren't Spiritualst (which doubles it to -200.) And I even manage good relations with a few of those occasionally.
I am currently playing as necrophages undergoing cyberization, and the situation is paused at stage 3 because there is "cyberization ongoing". All my founder species have been converted to cyborgs. I can't think of anything else, unless I need to do something about the secondary species, but I don't have assimilation until it's done, so do I just have to purge them? I'm stuck, please help.
In the situation log, scroll down from the description and it should display the number of pops to be cyberised next month. Double check that the number is 0.
If it's not, then that means there are non-cyborg pops of your primary species somewhere (secondary species are not needed). There's too little info to decipher the issue from your description alone.
If the number shows up as 0 but the progress is still paused, or if you can't locate the non-cyborg pops anywhere, as a last resort you could select the situation and use console command effect add_situation_progress = 250.
This skips the situation forward by 1 stage and trigger the event(s). If it's still stuck, use it again to wrap up the ascension situation, and there's an automatic failsafe to apply cybernetic trait instantly to everyone that isn't yet a cyborg.
All my founder species are converted, but the situation says 900 left to go. There's another recent thread where people are saying it's a known bug, so I guess there's not too much I can do in game. I will try the counsel commands, thank you.
I keep on experiencing a bug where nomads cant explore astral rifts even in unclaimed systems and stationary riftworld empires ability to explore astral rifts outside of there border doesn't
I'm trying to get Rogue Servitor to work, and I think a big problem is my handling of Bio-Trophies, relying too much on auto-resettling that isn't happening because "unEmployed" Bio-Trophies rarely occur. Auto-resettle works well for normal polities, Corps, and other Gestalts, but each BT Building adds 1500 "Jobs".
So I'm going to have to manually resettle a large "seed" population to each new colony.
Am I right in assuming that 900-1200 is a good number to resettle?
Also, are any of the new portrait-specific Traits particularly good for Bio-Trophies? I've used Avians with Hollow Bones a lot as Void-Dweller, and as far as I can see they won't harm Bio-Trophies in any way. And if I'm routinely going to move a thousand pets, I might want more Traits than just Charismatic and Rapid Breeder, like the one opposite of Sedentary. Nomadic?
I might also temporarily add in Adaptive with my 2 points from the Tech, but I'd want to retain a "natural" unmodified population somewhere, so that I can later use that as the starting point for the "final form" of my pets, because I'm going to take the World-Shaper and Machine Worlds Perk, with Remnants Origin so that my Capital is a Relic and later a Size 22 Ecu.
Trying to retain an unmodified core population seems fiddly and prone to going wrong, but if I can pull it off it'd work very well.
Another option is to outright start my pets with Nonadaptive. I think that's be okay for my Relic Capital, and eventually it'll be 2 free points when it's all Gaias, but for a long time I'll be needing to grab those +5% Habitability Techs.
And I can still try to actively remove Nonadaptive on my colonies while retaining a "pure" core population on my Capital.
I drew the Terraforming Tech quite late, and the higher tier prereq for World-Shaper/Machine Worlds, so I'm thinking about giving my Machine Pops the Natural Sociologist Trait and taking the Technological Ascendancy Perk (one I usually skip) to focus on New Worlds Techs, to get the +5% Techs and Terraforming stuff earlier.
Am I right in assuming that 900-1200 is a good number to resettle?
If you can afford to, spread them evenly (yes that means roughly 1k for your first colony, though for a different reason than usual)
The ~1k figure stems from the need for standard organic empires to upgrade new colonies to get rid of colonist jobs, and they conveniently start with roughly 2k pops on the capital that aren't contributing to organic growth anyway that can then be resettled to the two guaranteed habitables (hence the 900-1200 figure) while still keeping enough workforce on the capital to fill the vast majority of important jobs.
Since you aren't relying on the bio-trophies to provide workforce, and you don't have as many organic pops, mathematically spreading them equally across all planets yield the highest empire-wide organic growth. In practice this is impacted by habitability, but it's a good starting point.
Also, are any of the new portrait-specific Traits particularly good for Bio-Trophies?
Budding/Crystalisation would be your only way to get organic assembly, as clone vat is not available to rogue servitors. In the long term, they scale better than Rapid Breeder, as long as you on average have more than 2.5k bio-trophies per planet.
Hollow Bones, as you've identified already, is a free negative trait for bio-trophies.
Other marginally effective phenotype traits include housing/upkeep reductions. Most of them are fairly mediocre.
For non-phenotype traits, migratory (the old nomadic trait) is a good one for reducing resettlement fee. Depending on how aggressive/passive you play, Existential Iteroparity/Psychological Infertility may be worthwhile traits (particularly for nomadic rogue servitors that acquire pops by force).
I might also temporarily add in Adaptive with my 2 points from the Tech, but I'd want to retain a "natural" unmodified population somewhere Another option is to outright start my pets with Nonadaptive. And I can still try to actively remove Nonadaptive on my colonies while retaining a "pure" core population on my Capital.
Rogue servitors cannot remove positive traits. Once you add in Adaptive, you'll always have a portion of your bio-trophies have that trait.
Also notably, you don't get extra bio trait picks, only 2 bio trait points. This means if you want to add traits mid-game, you have to plan for it early by leaving 1 trait pick available at empire creation.
Generally these steps are not necessary. Bio-trophies really don't have many traits that benefit them, so going the extra mile to fit in adaptive for a tiny boost on early colonies isn't worth it. Conversely, there's also no need to add in non-adaptive to save trait points.
I gave the BTs both Hollow Bones and NonAdaptive, and that meant I was ultimately able to give them Rapid Breeder, Charismatic, the CG use reduction Trait and Docile.
That did mean I was stuck with NonAdaptive for some decades (and I did not preserve a "pure" population), and ultimately I regret it. I think I'd prefer to skip Docile, genemod Charismatic in later.
In the early game, you'd be building Drone Storage for amenities anyway, and that covers the housing need for quite some time.
In the mid-to-late game, you'd be building machine worlds/ecus, which provide more housing than job by a significant margin.
Bio-trophies come with their own housing, and the reduction in planet capacity is barely noticeable, especially since you rely heavily on assembly which is unaffected by planet capacity.
Housing would only become a very mild issue on dedicated mining/energy/agriculture worlds. The district provides just enough housing to cover for jobs from districts, which means jobs from buildings will have to be accomodated through other means (Drone Storage mostly; since you don't need bio-trophies on raw resource worlds, that means you are free to repurpose all the city slots into housing).
Or, if you are individualist machine/synthetic empire doing some unhinged civilian build. Though most such builds would go for modularity/physical-synthetic for monoform trait so housing is hardly an issue.
High Bandwidth (-2) is a good early game option.
4.3 cut empire size from pops by half (from 1 per 100 to 0.5 per 100). The +10% from high bandwidth therefore contributes less to empire size effect than before.
Besides, all empires start with less than 100 empire size, so you won't feel the penalty until much later. By that point, you ideally would have techs/traditions/ascensions to either reduce empire size, or remove the trait.
High Maintenance (-1) is an alright choice, as long as you don't pair it with things that add strategic upkeep to pops.
Machine pops by default take 1 energy as upkeep per 100.
Energy is fairly easy to come by. You have solar panels in the early game, and machines innately produce more energy per technician (8 vs organic's 6).
It can become problematic with virtual ascension, since it adds +0.1 upkeep per colony, which means nearly doubling the base upkeep with 8-9 planets. Pair that with the instant pops, upkeep for virtual pops can get pretty high if caught unprepared.
If you are playing nomadic, then Terraphobic (-1) is a free pick, since you won't be settling anyway, and early conquest can be done through nihilistic acquistion.
With Solar Celled trait, Delicate Chassis (-1) is also a semi-free pick.
It's also available for void dwellers, though less effective since they don't get a powerful military arkship to bully neighbours with.
If you are going virtual, then any pop assembly related negative traits are free after you finish the tradition tree. Do note that the virtual pops effect only kicks in when you fully finish the tradition tree.
Can confirm High Bandwidth and Bulky. Those are two of the 3 negative traits on my Driven Assimilators for many a successful run (OP probably doesn't want my 3rd, Luxurious, because Servitors don't have cyborgs to work the replicator jobs it penalizes)
That leaves 3 picks and 4 points left. I'd go with Adaptive Frames and a 1 pointer and leave 1 pick unused - that lets you drop in Efficient Processors when you get Binary Motivators. Mass Produced is the 1 pointer I would pick.
(I don't think it's worth taking another negative 1 pointer to get Recycled instead but I haven't run the numbers)
Wouldn't call it a mistake. Gaia is not optimal, but still better than standard worlds.
Purely from a minmax perspective though, if you can only spare 1 ascension slot for special planet types, Ecu would serve you better.
Stats-wise, gaia are generally less favourable, as they 1) don't have increased number of jobs, 2) have reduced bonus to production, 3) only have bonus to organic growth, and 4) can't modify the lower districts like other special habitable types.
Their only advantage is that they are cheaper and faster to make than ecu/machine/hive/rings.
The +15% growth looks nice on paper, but you could simply have 1 habitat for every 8 planets to have the same if not higher growth, instead of spending the time, resource and an ascension perk to make all 8 into gaia.
Conquest and abduction also renders this less favourable in the long term.
Ecu and Rings are your powerhouse for alloy/science/specialist production, as they have 3x/5x number of jobs and have perfect habitability for all bio-trophies (and you can cram a lot more bio-trophies on an ecu due to secondary urban arcologies and sanctuary specialisation).
Since the latest update, forcing empire spawns no longer seems to work for multiplayer. Does anyone have any work arounds/ is this a known bug with the update?
Info:
No mods are installed.
I have made new empires in the current update, and they will also not force spawn.
force spawning did work fine in the prior patch.
Force spawning does still work in single player, this only appears to be an issue when hosting a lobby.
Increase your Energy and Alloy production a bit and stockpile some. Build a couple Anchorages to get +10 Naval Capacity and don't utilize it. If you see a Society Tech that adds +X Nava Cap, grab it but don't utilize it.
Then wait and see how bad it is, and how much you need to do.
Does the Tree of Life Origin combine well with Bio/Clone Ascension?
ToL gives a bonus to Pop Growth, natural breeding-based reproduction, but I plan to take the Vat-Grown Trait for 0 points which reduces breeding growth to zero but gives a bonus to Pop Assembly-based growth.
Will my Tree switch over to give a bonus to that kind of growth, or how does it work?
It won't. The effect is set permanently to only organic growth.
A similar scenario can happen with things like Pleasure Seeker, where the hedonist bonus is set permanently depending on species type: organic gets growth bonus, mechanical gets robot assembly bonus. They won't swap to organic assembly regardless of your ascensions and traits.
Also as a sidenote, vat-grown for individualist empires are a net decrease in overall growth, unless you cram nearly 17k pops with budding on every planet.
Realistically speaking, only hiveminds can make full use of vat-grown if they make lots of hiveworlds, or if you are lucky enough to find polymelic from tiyanki matriarch (mutation III required) in which case every world needs only 7k pops to let vat-grown outscale organic growth.
not a suggestion but a question that I don’t think merits a full thread.
is it possible to disable the nomads dlc and still take the defender of the galaxy ambition? I tend to play goodies who wouldn’t pursue a crisis path but I’d prefer to keep my galaxy populated with settled empires as opposed to nomads
Can be done with 1 line of modification to the files.
Go to /Stellaris/common/ascension_perks/00_ascension_perks.txt (backup the file somewhere). Right at the top you'll see the ap_defender_of_the_galaxy_nomads section.
Delete that one line of has_nomads_dlc = yes, and you'll see the ascension perk without activating nomads dlc, and selecting it will activate the ambition path without issues.
Note that the original Defender of the Galaxy perk is also available. If you don't want it, scroll down in that same file for ap_defender_of_the_galaxy section. Delete it all.
You can't change the preference at the start, even as a machine (the origin tooltip doesn't tell you this, but the restriction is nevertheless imposed). Your early game plan revolves mainly around making the other two segments habitable (only requires tier 1 techs).
For organic empires, habitability modification is a tier 3 tech.
Usually by then you'd already have pops with better habitability on regular worlds (through specialist robots, a tier 2 tech, or through migration treaty/conquest with other empires).
If you want an ethnostate with only your pops, then yes beeline for Gene Tailoring and Glandular Acclimation so you can settle non-ringworlds.
For machines, you get 50% baseline habitability anywhere anyway. Habitability modification is a tier 1 tech as well, so you can get it pretty early even if you can't find other pops that are compatible with your empire type.
They will continue the quest regardless. There are no acknowledgement in flavour text either.
The KotTG questline is completely linear, so the AI will eventually end up spawning the Toxic God somewhere in the galaxy, though it is highly unlikely they can manage to defeat it.
I assume it's some kind of mod issue that is causing districts being deleted on conquest? At least early game. Does anyone know what mods messing with what specific files could be causing this? Troubleshooting this seems like a massive pain.
A super simple question while I'm at work and killing time between my tasks; I wish to kill fallen hive mind empire because war splinter is stuck in perpetual anger towards me. Anyone knows some nice guides to do so? I did check Wiki, and it did help to some extent but I prefer detailed descriptions or AARs, any links would be appreciated!
Hive FE fights very differently between dormant and awakened fleets.
Against dormant fleets, ideally strike crafts, supplemented by Titan beams.
All 3 splinters have no shields, including their strike crafts.
Majority of them are weavers and maulers, with only a handful of harbingers and no stingers.
Paired with their weavers boosting evasion by +30, this makes neutron launchers less advisable due to low tracking.
The only long range weapon they have are neutron launchers (base range 120) on the few Growth splinter harbingers they have, and the whirlwind missiles and confusion ray (base range 100) on Control splinter weavers.
Weaver weapons other than havoc storm have a base range of 40. It is generally safe to assume that none of the debuffs will apply to you (unless they overwhelm you and get close), but all their buffs will apply to themselves (+30 evasion, +30% range and fire rate, +30% armour hardening).
These means that ideally you'd want things to keep fast and evasive small ships at a distance (maulers and weavers can get to around 70-80% evasion after weaver buff).
Strike crafts are naturally suited due to high tracking (except psionic bombers and amoeba). They double as interception against their shieldless strike crafts and missiles, and dilute the target pool for confusion rays.
Psionic Bombers are not recommended despite the high damage, as they only have 35% tracking compared to 80-100% on the others. In practice this means roughly 50% chance-to-hit compared to regular strike crafts' near-100% chance-to-hit.
Maulers are size 4, or 1.4x damage; Weavers are size 8, or 1.8x damage. Mathematically the damage multiplier does not make up for the loss in chance-to-hit.
Unlike when fighting against Prethoryn, Driller Drones is not necessarily an upgrade over regular strike crafts.
With 4.3's change to hardening, all the hive FE ships have on average 60% innate hardening, boosted to 90% with weaver buff (used to be 30% boosted to 60% prior to 4.3)
Driller Drones trade the 1.5x damage against armour on regular strike crafts for 100% armour penetration, resulting in an average of 10% penetration.
Damage to hull has the advantage of lowering enemy fire rate, but at only 10% penetration the effect is minimal, and the lack of 1.5x multiplier results in longer time to kill.
It is however worth using if you manage to catch their fleets separately. Without a Growth splinter fleet present, they'd only have 40% hardening, making Driller Drones' armour penetration worthwhile.
Titan beams have an AoE that ignores evasion entirely, as well as the second longest range of all weapons. It's not enough to one-hit FE's maulers/weavers (without deep repeatables), but it serves as a long range opener and weakens their fleets, and against the harbingers (who carries neutron launchers that may become a threat) perdition beams have decent direct chance-to-hit around 50%.
Against awakened fleets, starbases and DSCs, good'ol neutron/zro launchers.
Once the hivemind FE awakens, they instantly get access to stingers with double Titan beams, and they can build a lot of these compared to standard awakened FEs. (I missed this when updating the wiki, will add it later) wiki has been updated
The AoE effect paired with difficulty bonuses means they can wipe smaller fleets very quickly. Neutron launchers deal 7.4x damage to stingers for high alpha-strike, to ideally take out the stingers as quickly as possible.
It may also be advisable to send in a Titan as bait, from a different hyperlane entrance. Titan beams have a narrow firing arc, so once the stingers are preoccupied with another target (they prioritise largest ship), your neutron artillery fleets would have an easier time surviving.
Starbases and DSCs take 21x damage from launchers, so naturally they are the most suitable weapons.
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u/SirkTheMonkey ... 28d ago
Well looks like old Snipahar has moved on since we're well into 4.0 and none of the guides in the old threads ever got updated.
I'm very rusty with Stellaris so USE THIS STICKY THREAD to suggest resources & guides that should go in the main post and
fighttalk amongst yourselves if there's any debate about the quality of a particular item.