Stellaris III: Shop at the Paradox Megacorp!

[Fyraltari]

Yeah, I'm not big on mods in general, and there's already so much stuff to keep track of (I have no ****ing clue what the galactic community has been doing for a while)
that I am in no hurry to try and tweak them.

[DataNinja]

Yeah, I'm not big on mods in general, and there's already so much stuff to keep track of (I have no ****ing clue what the galactic community has been doing for a while)
that I am in no hurry to try and tweak them.

If I know the Galactic Community? Trying to pass a law and then unpass it as soon as possible.

[Fyraltari]

If I know the Galactic Community? Trying to pass a law and then unpass it as soon as possible.

Sounds about right.

[The Glyphstone]

If I know the Galactic Community? Trying to pass a law and then unpass it as soon as possible.

Sounds about right.

Probably regarding Tiyanki or Space Amoeba.

The only real use for the community is access to the Galactic Market, if you can score the nexus. All the other bonuses and penalties are inconsequentially minor.

[KillianHawkeye]

If I know the Galactic Community? Trying to pass a law and then unpass it as soon as possible.

Sounds about right.

Makes sense, that's also what all our IRL governments do.

[Eldan]

Yeah, I have never really bothered looking at the community since it was released. Occasionally, I open up the window and vote on laws that vaguely look like they could help me, but apart from that, I just use it as a kind of in-universe score board.

[Silverraptor]

What I do for the community, once the market is established, is to try and get Custodianship and then quickly migrate to create the FIRST GALACTIC EMPIRE!!! For a Safe and Secure... Society!

[Grim Portent]

I do quite like pushing for policies that promote my civ ethics over others, helps me avoid the community passing laws that force me to change my ways or drop out of the club. I'd rather my policies be dictated to the AI than the AI's policies dictated to me. Plus becoming Emperor is always funny.

I did drop out to protect the Tiyanki in my space at one point. Had Tiyana Vek in my space and the 'murder the space whales' lobby was too powerful to beat in the senate, so I dropped out and closed the borders.

[Fyraltari]

So the Unbidden crisis decided to spawn far away from me, right between an Awakaned Empire and the most powerful non-fallen empire.

Well, that sorted itself out.

[HalfTangible]

So the Unbidden crisis decided to spawn far away from me, right between an Awakaned Empire and the most powerful non-fallen empire.

Well, that sorted itself out.

Ha! Nice.

[Fyraltari]

Ha! Nice.

Right. But I'm still surrounded at 90% of my borders by an hegemonistic hostile empire with vastly more ressources and firepower than me.

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[ShneekeyTheLost]

Right. But I'm still surrounded at 90% of my borders by an hegemonistic hostile empire with vastly more ressources and firepower than me.

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Chokepoints are a wonderful thing. If you can restrict access to your territory to two or three choke points, then you can stave off a much larger force. Static defenses don't really punch as their numbers suggest they should, but a Star Fortress with a single slip and otherwise filled to the brim with hangar bays can push 10kish of combat potential. That's... not insubstantial. They're going to have to build an actual fleet to deal with that. More importantly, it can support your actual fleet with some of the things you put on it, and if nothing else, it will add its firepower to your fleet's if they happen to be around. Can they be overwhelmed? Of course they can. But are they enough of a speedbump that it will take a battleship fleet to do the job? Yes, yes they can. And the thing about battleship fleets is that they're really expensive, and they also take a while to build. So build your fleet and keep it as a mobile strategic reserve to use whenever it looks like they've got enough force to be able to punch through, and see if you can't suck enough of their forces into your other chokepoints to be defeated in detail.

You can somewhat beef up your static defenses with support platforms. I'd suggest one hangar and one Large weapon slot, personally. And you can build quite a few of them if you have enough resources. Basically, each one has roughly the firepower of a cruiser, but you can have a dozen or so supporting your static defenses, and more importantly, they don't eat up fleet capacity.

In other words, be the Taurian Concordant. Sure, the Star League is many times larger, and wealthier, and even has many times the production capability. However, they're also going to simply throw numbers at you, and do so in a fairly suboptimal way. Meanwhile, you deploy your assets to start pissing out fires, having a mobility advantage by having a shorter distance to get from fight to fight, and requiring a certain rather expensive minimum investment to even start playing, then punishing them for trying.

[Silverraptor]

I keep forgetting you can't be the galactic emperor and the leader of a hegenomy at the same time...

[Fyraltari]

Hey, Mega-Engineering dropped! In the middle of two simultaneous defensive wars against A) my martially superior neighbour who's been a recurring pain in my butthole and B) an Awakaned Empire with "Reconquerors" in its name.

Yeah, peace has been signed but I've only got three systems left (none of which are my homeplanet), each separated from the other two by half a dozen system at least and entirely surrounded by my two former ennemies. I've got no ship left and only basic space stations.

I think I'll end that game there.

[The Glyphstone]

Much like Dwarf Fortress, sometimes the best way to learn is by losing.

[KillianHawkeye]

Hey, Mega-Engineering dropped! In the middle of two simultaneous defensive wars against A) my martially superior neighbour who's been a recurring pain in my butthole and B) an Awakaned Empire with "Reconquerors" in its name.

Yeah, peace has been signed but I've only got three systems left (none of which are my homeplanet), each separated from the other two by half a dozen system at least and entirely surrounded by my two former ennemies. I've got no ship left and only basic space stations.

I think I'll end that game there.

RIP

[ShneekeyTheLost]

You know, a Robotic Gestalt is a pretty interesting way to play. There's a lot of mechanics that simply aren't in play for your faction, which makes it less complicated to play, but also can be a hindrance. For example, Robots don't do trade. Period. This means Megacorps are largely a thing you can ignore in the game, but it also means you can't rake in all those energy credits from trade either.

But the one thing they are really, really good at is churning out Alloys. Like, thousands of alloys. Because you don't have to worry about manufacturing goods, all of your industry can focus on alloys. I routinely set up at least one purely dedicated forge-world which does nothing but produce alloys. Granted, in the very beginning, you're actually behind on alloy production because your population is built with alloys, which is an additional drain. However, once you start to get going, you can snowball your production quite rapidly.

Being able to colonize any planet, including tomb worlds, also means never having to worry about habitability. And even if a planet has no resources whatsoever, you can either use it for a forge-world, or a Unity producing planet, or even a research nexus. So pretty much ANY large world (size 20+) is a must-have even if it has zero minerals or energy or food available.

Robots are effectively immortal, barring misadventure, so it is also worth your time early-game to find Genius researchers for that extra 10% research speed universal. Although I suppose an argument can be made for eccentric for a 5% universal bonus plus an additional bonus for rare tech appearances. Unless they happen to divide by zero themselves or similar mishap, you'll have them throughout the entire game. This also means you can afford to take the -25% leader xp gain because sooner or later, it simply won't matter, making it a free racial trait.

Tradeoff being an inability to really use edicts of any kind at any stage of the game, because of your increased sprawl penalty and no way to mitigate it makes it basically impossible to afford any edicts.

[Silverraptor]

I'm trying subterranean megacorp and I have to say, you can colonize basically everything since you have a minimum 50% habitability on all the planets. Mix that with private colony ships and you can devote all your excess energy credits to the colony ships while you devote all your other resources to everything else. It has been a great start so far.

[Alcore]

For example, Robots don't do trade (1). Period. This means Megacorps are largely a thing you can ignore in the game, but it also means you can't rake in all those energy credits from trade either.

Robots are effectively immortal (2), barring misadventure, so it is also worth your time early-game to find Genius researchers for that extra 10% research speed universal. Although I suppose an argument can be made for eccentric for a 5% universal bonus plus an additional bonus for rare tech appearances. Unless they happen to divide by zero themselves or similar mishap, you'll have them throughout the entire game. This also means you can afford to take the -25% leader xp gain because sooner or later, it simply won't matter, making it a free racial trait.

Tradeoff being an inability (3) to really use edicts of any kind at any stage of the game, because of your increased sprawl penalty and no way to mitigate it makes it basically impossible to afford any edicts.

1) they do too... you are correct in no trade value and your empire is a no mans land for any megacorp. My early game is filled with me selling ore for energy and buying alloy at times (I am usually alloy poor until the first forge world gets going). With the birth of the galactic market (that my planet occasionally hosts) i can sell any biofilth from my perfect worlds through the slave market. You can still trade in normal trades between empires.


2) you can make it literal as death mechanics happen once a decade. Once a decade it decides if someone should die and then selects a leader position. If there is a leader doing that position they die. Cycle out your admirals once a decade and they won't die if they are doing nothing when death time comes (even if it was selecting an admiral).

fun fact; your fleets (and admirals) continue to suppress piracy. If you have an organic ally with more than one starbase/planet plant your fleet along the route and gain free XP.


3) By late game with a dyson sphere you should have more than enough energy to support multiple planets doing nothing but generating control to support the empire sprawl gained by edicts (which might be more useful than yet another forge world making more alloys that you can hold). You might still not have as many going but some are irrelevant.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

1) they do too... you are correct in no trade value and your empire is a no mans land for any megacorp. My early game is filled with me selling ore for energy and buying alloy at times (I am usually alloy poor until the first forge world gets going). With the birth of the galactic market (that my planet occasionally hosts) i can sell any biofilth from my perfect worlds through the slave market. You can still trade in normal trades between empires.

As a pedantic correction to your pedantic correction, that's the *market system* and not the *trade system*. You can still participate in the market to buy and sell resources, and even host the Galactic Market for a 10% reduction in the market fees. But you can never produce trade value to earn a single credit in trade value.

2) you can make it literal as death mechanics happen once a decade. Once a decade it decides if someone should die and then selects a leader position. If there is a leader doing that position they die. Cycle out your admirals once a decade and they won't die if they are doing nothing when death time comes (even if it was selecting an admiral).

The more annoying ones are when your Spark of Genius physics researcher accidentally point-singularity's himself. I can handle an admiral or general offing themselves, it is more annoying when a physics or engineering researcher ends up downloading themselves to dev/null.

fun fact; your fleets (and admirals) continue to suppress piracy. If you have an organic ally with more than one starbase/planet plant your fleet along the route and gain free XP.

Even more fun fact: If you have two or more biological races on either side of you and one of their trade routes passes through your territory, you can do the same thing.

3) By late game with a dyson sphere you should have more than enough energy to support multiple planets doing nothing but generating control to support the empire sprawl gained by edicts (which might be more useful than yet another forge world making more alloys that you can hold). You might still not have as many going but some are irrelevant.

By that time you create a Dyson Sphere and also colonize multiple planets for producing Unity, the Crisis Event is already happening, rendering it moot. Not that it matters much as you've still got over 1k fleet cap worth of battleships and titans to steamroll anything in your path, generating over 5k alloys per month and trying to figure out some way to deal with all of your surpluses and being unable to spend money fast enough.

[Alcore]

By that time you create a Dyson Sphere and also colonize multiple planets for producing Unity, the Crisis Event is already happening, rendering it moot. Not that it matters much as you've still got over 1k fleet cap worth of battleships and titans to steamroll anything in your path, generating over 5k alloys per month and trying to figure out some way to deal with all of your surpluses and being unable to spend money fast enough.

By the time the crisis happens?! If I am that far behind i don't deserve to survive the crisis. I usually have decades with all of them done...