Is this a recent bug? I had 38 waystations available before then suddenly dropped to 25. I'm suddenly scrambling for resources and it ain't suddenly fun. Any wisdom to shed light on this?

With Willpower focusing on the Ethics system, I think it is time to reevaluate how Megacorp governments work.

The problem

'Corporate' is currently a government Authority type - specifically, it's a modified variant of the Oligarchic Authority. That means that it cannot be taken by a Fanatic Egalitarian (who are limited to Democratic governments) or a Fanatic Authoritarian (who is limited to Dictatorial or Imperial). This limits gameplay and roleplay opportunities.

In addition, it means that megacorps are strangely limited to one particular fantasy when it comes to governance. Privately or family held companies are common in the cyberpunk fiction where the Megacorp trope comes from (for example, Arasaka from Cyberpunk 2077), and largely can't be created in Stellaris.

The solution

Megacorps should be a set of new authorities mirroring the regular individualist authorities. This would resolve both problems:

Fanatic Egalitarianism and Fanatic Authoritarianism could still limit the authority types as they do for regular empires, but one could still choose to play a Corporate authority.

Different authorities could then be flavoured around different types of corporate ownership.

New Authorities

All corporate authorities should retain the basic effects of the current Corporate authority: +50% Empire Size from planets, the Mercantile diplomatic stance, +1 envoy, and branch offices. However, they can have different bonuses otherwise.

Here are a few ideas for how varied megacorp authorities could be themed, though I would be interested in hearing other people's ideas.

• Public: Democratic elections for shareholder representatives. Provides the same cooldown resets on election as Democratic and +15% Faction Output.
• Managed: The current type, themed around a board of directors that aim to maximize profit. Provides +10% trade from jobs/contracts.
• Private: Dictatorial equivalent, elections on death. Themed around a strong governing vision, providing +50% Governing Ethics Attraction and +5% Manager output.
• Family-owned: Imperial equivalent, with the Company Director having a designated Successor. Themed around long-term planning, providing -15% influence cost for diplomatic agreements and espionage.

I’ve played the game on and off for many years now, but I’ve never gotten around to playing a megacorp. I just never bothered to learn how they play. Does anyone have favourite/fun builds to play an evil megacorp? Im also gonna try to be a benevolent one with the Worker Owned Company civic, so if you have suggestions in that regard I’ll also look at those

I could have sworn Paradox mentioned patching this, but I could be mistaken? If anyone knows how to get this to stop, it would be much appreciated.

Playing Payback Origin, with the Minamar Specialized Industries (to the tune of Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated, let's be honest) added the civic Permanent Employment, which means pops are still employed well after they are dead.

First of all, thank you for the work done and inspiration by BloodStainedCrow. From the beginning of my Stellaris playthroughs up until this day you are a pulsar in our tech tree nebulae.

I had my own local fork of it for a long time, but now since this age of AI and me being a software engineer, I wanted to have my own go at this. So I crafted and built something that I as a devote Stellaris player (call it Maniacal) player always wanted.

This is a personal project of my own, which I just want to share with you. As said I'm a (professional) software egineer this is just a hobby project. But any feedback is welcome. But first and foremost I hope this helps you with any of your playthrough, be it for min-maxing to beelining to techs, to just having better overview of your empire. I built this to how I use it, and would want to use it.

I hope you enjoy it.

https://ythibos.github.io/Stellaris-Tech-Tree/

If the docs or more importanly the tool itself are not clear on how to use it, then the docs and/or tool are wrong.
https://github.com/YThibos/Stellaris-Tech-Tree

Read it, use it, let me know about the look and feel. o7

To me, its overwhelmingly the early game. maybe a tad into the midgame.

starting to set up the empire, understand its origin, how its traits, civic, etc all work with each other, a bit or rp in choosing the most fitting ascension. climbing your way to the top of the galactic community, etc etc.

all brilliant, love it.

then you start to become a true powerhouse, (in my way of playing i dont focus much on military early on) and can take out the guardians, the mauraders, and any other empire is more a nuisance than anything but...

things start to get repetitive, any empire except FE are nothing, most of your eco is working fine, at most you have to add a few districts when the pops grow.

you can start to add gateways and megastructures and even colonize more planets but its truly just a "win more" at this point. same with making even more fleet.

sure, you can have a real goal of beating the FE and crises but, its so snowbally that you either did everything right 100 years ago and you will get there, is just a matter of time, or you were stomped in one way or another and will lose.

not to mention how the game starts to lag in the later stages so its both more boring (less things to do) and takes longer to "tick".

so i usually never even make it to the crises... i did a couple times to get the lore and stuff but... usually i just get bored of that empire and start wanting to start a new one until i just abandon the save.

what are your thoughts on this?

Intro

I was looking forward to Willpower, a lot. However, today's dev diary appears to take the approach of treating ethics as monoliths, which only sands down the edges of external politics- quite the opposite of what we'd want this DLC to do.

I love politics in strategy games. Whether Stellaris or another 4x/GS game, I rarely declare war myself, rather focusing on managing a complex web of diplomatic relations- factions, vassals, rivals, and the Galactic Community. Managing the populace as well, though basically no game I've played focuses on this- Stellaris at least has some internal politics mechanics.

Therefore, I have been patiently awaiting a politics DLC for ages- internal or external, I'm hungry. My favourite DLC, easily, is Overlord for this reason, and I've been patiently waiting for something to scratch the itch harder since. So when Willpower was announced, I jumped for joy- screw Nomads, screw scenarios, I had tunnel-vision- there's only one thing I need from Season 10 and that is politics!

My Political Dream

There had been good signs up to this point. For one, in 3.11, factions were given the ability to hold multiple ethics at once. This was good news, as the static nature of Stellaris' factions always bothered me- they weren't dynamic or immersive. While the coat of paint changed, they were basically the same for every country with the same ethics and Issues- I longed to see a system where factions had two ethics (or a fanatic ethic) each that could possibly change, and dynamic Issues based on their ethic crossover and your current gamestate.

3.11 also did away with faction leaders, which I would ideally one day like to see return in an internal politics update, but Paragons had already done leaps and bounds improvements on that. The new faction ethics functionally changed little, but they signaled hope for what could be to come.

My dream was to see situations such as this: As a xenophile-militarist country, you may have two separate militarist factions splitting your militarist voting block; you may be forced to choose between promoting a xenophile-egalitarian or xenophile-authoritarian faction; or your xenophile party may even switch to being pacifist, forcing you to pick between promotion or suppression. A faction's demands could even change over time, as their ethics, their leader, the gamestate changes, keeping you on your toes.

Point being, what I longed to see in politics (in this example, internal) was:

• Represent the crossover between different ethics and how they interact
• Encourage the player to make difficult decisions about your society
• Be dynamic and changing in reaction to the above, responding to changing ethics and player choices

Of course, external ideological politics would ideally follow the same outline. Stellaris already is great in that regard- I love, for instance, how you get three trait points that force you to never be one-note- you may be fanatic in one ethic, but you've always got to choose a second minor ethic to balance it out. Two fanatic egalitarian countries may see eye to eye in many ways, but may also have very different opinions on xenophilia/phobia, or materialism V spiritualism.

An ideology system would ideally take this further- allowing you to craft your own sci-fi belief system that takes elements from more than one ethic to create a distinctive identity. So when Willpower was announced, I was ecstatic- finally this dream could, at least in part, be realised.

Last Week- The Announcement

So when the DLC's features were announced last week, I came away with a bit of the wind out of my sails. To the point, because of Absolute Ethics. As said, the fact Stellaris forces you to have at least two ethics is a complete strength, as it encourages diversity (sorry xenophobes)- an Absolute Ethic, imo, is sanding down the edges of your country to make it utterly one-note.

Now, I'm not against this entirely. To play a silly extremist gimmick country sounds fun. I'd much prefer the ability to unlock another ethic point (like you unlock civic points) later in the game as a feature, but I'm also not against Absolute Ethics ever being implemented. What worried me, rather, was that it signaled an approach to the ethics system the DLC would take that simply appeals to me significantly less: centering ethics as monoliths. I held my breath though, waiting to be proven wrong.

I'm afraid I was right.

Today- Ideologies

There's a lot of hype for today's announcement, but I am afraid I came away disappointed.

Firstly, the Fanatic Factions.

Well, I think they are a neat idea in context- if factions themselves were more dynamic and varied, it'd make sense that some of them would be fanatic. But as it is, it seems they are just taking the already lackluster and boring factions and wiping away the very little remaining sauce they had.

And the worst news- they are essential to forming ideologies!

Ideologies are entirely one-note. They are defined- it appears at least- by a singular ethic, with that ethic supplying a list of tenets. There is, ultimately, very little two Authoritarian Ideologies have to set themselves apart, other than these tenets, which themselves appear to just be a choice of mechanical bonuses. Two Spiritualist Ideologies are functionally significantly less different than one's choice of shroud patron- meaning Shadows of the Shroud is probably the closest we'll ever get to the religion system people have been begging for for years to give spiritualists some sauce!

That's all the system is, really- a new Shroud Aura system, except now there are eight patrons rather than five and you get to customise the bonuses. Woop. From what it appears, your ideology will oppose exactly 1 out of every 8 others, but have no substantial interactions with the others. Rather than adding diversity to Stellaris' politics, it's homogenising it.

Waiting and Seeing

Of course, there is an element of 'wait and see' to all this. We've yet to see what future dev diaries have to say. Ultimately, however, the foundations we've seen today suggest their creative direction is simply going off in the complete opposite direction to what I think would be interesting.

That being said, the one way this could be salvageable, by my reckoning, is in the tenets system. If you are able to select tenets based on your country's ethic rather than just from your ideology- and if these tenets change your ideology's relationship with other ideologies (a materialist tenet causing friction in a spiritualist country, for instance), then my interest may be brought back on board. However, from what we saw today, it appears tenets are exclusive to each ideology- I can only hope this is simply just for ease of demonstration in the dev diary, otherwise it will be really, really boring.

Unfortunately, dev diaries today are better, more complete than they used to be- unfortunate as they are usually quite clear on what to expect, being mostly feature-complete and rarely leaving room for surprises. Which is great if they're filled with hype moments- but I'm only left dreading that what we saw today is all we'll get. Gestalts, Diplomacy, and Espionage are all to come, but when it comes to Ideologies, future dev diaries are likely to only flesh out the nitty-gritty.

But I will wait and see. I don't want to wish this to be the first DLC to outright disappoint me, but today's dev diary only dampened by momentum for it- to use its own terminology! I hope it can be salvaged. I'll wait and see.

^{A.I. Disclaimer: I am broadly an A.I. skeptic, and appreciate transparency when it is used to any degree. For full transparency, the complete first draft of this post was entirely human-written, but I then had Claude go over it to check spelling, grammar, suggest formatting, and offering suggestions- ironing out kinks. No text was directly generated by the LLM, but it was involved in the writing process to review- though the real reviewer is you, the human reader, whose opinion is the only one that ultimately matters.}

As a virtual empire, the best number of planets to have is 8. So far I'm planning on having a ring world (segments for consumer goods, alloys, research, and trade), my capital (for the rare resource deposits you get when ascending), and one normal planet for each strategic resource (gas, crystals, and motes). Is there a more efficient method that I'm missing for getting those strategic resources?

A researcher unit at base turns 1.5 consumer goods into 3 research, for a conversion rate of 2 research to 1 consumer good. Thus an artisan unit, which produces 6 consumer goods, can support the job upkeep of 4 researcher pop units. One of the specialized labs at tier 2 improves the output to 3.5 research at the same consumer goods upkeep, for a conversion rate of 2.33 research per consumer good.

The Research Institute adds another 0.5 to these jobs, but adds 1 extra consumer good in upkeep.

This means that without a laboratory, the conversion rate becomes 3.5 research for 2.5 consumer goods, at a rate of 1.4 research per consumer good. That's a 30% efficiency decrease. And now a pop unit of Artisans can't even keep 3 researcher pop units supplied.

With a laboratory, the conversion rate is 4 research for 2.5 consumer goods, for a rate of 1.6 research per consumer goods. That's a 32% decrease in scientist efficiency.

In fact, even if the Research Institute would get giga-buffed and now give the 0.5/0.5/05 buff to every researcher type individually, 4.5 research for 2.5 consumer goods is still a 10% decrease in researcher efficiency. Labbed, it's a 12.6% decrease in efficiency.

And before anyone asks, since these affect the base input/output, the efficiency ratio is not affected by the Research Supply Depot or Data-Driven Theorem Facility. With those you'll get more for less, but the rate between institute and no institute stays the same

So. Why. Does. This. Building. Exist?

Why. Is. It. A. Tech?!

Does nobody working on Stellaris have a calculator? Now it's not even the biggest sack of shit among high-end buildings (looking at you, Auto-Curating Vault), but why can't it not be more like the Ministry of Production?

I fed my behemoth an enemy planet (I don't know its pop count since it was out of my border) and a fleet of 59 juvenile harbingers. It only gained ~30 growth. It is taking too long for me and at this point i am getting bored. On a 10 month old thread I saw someone suggest feeding 38x Juvenile harbingers for 2nd upgrade. My behemoth is class 2 and got a fraction of the growth i expected.

Am i doing something wrong?

Played around with star boosting (this was after 1 Stellar Ignition, 3 Deep Scans and 4 Mining Drones Scans), technically it can be repeated infinitely and since the Cybrex system only has one stellar body the Relic hits everytime.

Decided to post since I saw noone else posting similar before

I have a long mod loadout from the previous version. When the last update dropped, I set the game to use the rollback version, and I used Irony Mod Manager to merge the mods so none of them would update. I even opened the save and played on it for several hours yesterday. And today, it's broken.

I am so f**king sick of this game repeatedly ruining my hours of creative work no matter how hard I try to preserve it.

Play the vanilla face game for years recently the season passes and expansions were on sale and I bought all of them at once

What should my first play through Be as?

I have smashed their fleets , captured all of their planets and systems and yet occupation is only at 25 , how can I increase it ? (Btw their planets despite having 0 army, when I bomb them they don’t surrender , although I have the policy for planetery surrender )

Hi! I haven't played stellaris since the 4.3 (?) patch that reworked both how pops and ships work and something i've noticed is how much i struggle to build efficient planets/fleets compared to before. The year is 2282 and i only have a fleet power of around 4k which is horrid. I'm unable to actually build bigger fleets since pops seem to grow extremely slow as well. I've read about the pop changes and how the "peak" growth is at half capacity. Even though I get pops to fill half the planet, the pop growth never reaches higher than 5, (6 with clone tanks). What am I doing wrong? I've noticed that since the 4.3 change the ai seem to struggle a lot too. Most ai's have equivalent or pathetic fleet power, which feels crazy compared to the fleets before 4.3 which were in the tens of thousands.

was playing 1000 stars with no mods and I found an AI planet with a very familiar name

So i tested behemoth fury's elder voidspawn, and here are the results.

Can it go through FTL inhibitor? No. It will get stuck at the inhibitor, if you are behind it, and there is no other route. Keep in mind that it destroy space stations, but colony inhibitor can totally block it.

Can it go through locked wormhole? No. Same as FTL inhibitor. It just get stuck.

Can you lure to Cetana? Sort of. Cetana's aura may, or may not destroy it when it enters. But if not destroyed, then unlike normal fleets the elder does not go missing in action. With a bit of savescumming you can make it reach Cetana. Their battle is infinite. On 1x crisis strength at least it can beat Cetana's shield, and armor, but her hull regeneration is just too large to be defeated. The elder also can't be beaten, because of the damage reduction until quest is done.

If the Elder gets destroyed what happens with the event? Further testing is currently on the way. But it does not end, or get interrupted right away. I'm currently waiting for the situation to finish.

EDIT: situation finished. If Cetana's aura kills the elder, then shortly after the situation is done the game registers it, and the endgame event is triggered. It's basically easy win.

i do like the flavor of mind over matter tough

Hello, i've been playing a modpack containing all of Planetary Diversity's mods, and Ancient Cache of Technologies.
I've started to turn my planets into ecumenopolies, a known issues that I have is that arcologies (aside from the main one) can't be specialized with enigmatic disctrict. However I have encountered a new (and more debilitating) issues with Planetary Diversity's Ecumepolies.
Once turning planets into garden ecumenopolies, I cannot used any Enigmatic disctrict specialization. I have added the merger of rules, hoping that it would do something, but apparently not. I was wondering if there was a patch somewhere that would help me change that.

Load order:

! Reworked Advanced Ascension

Planetary Diversity

Planetary Diversity - Unique Worlds

Planetary Diversity - Exotic Worlds

Planetary Diversity - Gaia Worlds

Planetary Diversity - More Arcologies

Planetary Diversity - Ascension Worlds

Planetary Diversity - Vanilla Replacements

Planetary Diversity - City Sets

Gigastructural Engineering & More (4.5)

Ancient Cache of Technologies

Ancient Cache of Technologies: Override

Ancient Cache of Technologies: Extra Defines and Changes

ACOT: Secrets Beyond The Gates - Updated

Ethics and Civics Classic

Kek's Civics (4.5.*)

War of Wreaths — Authoritarian Expansion

NSC3

NSC3 Module: Extra Shipsets (Offical Addon)

Psionic Species Expansion

Secrets of the Shroud

Spacefleet Tactica

Expanded Stellaris Traditions (Delta)

More Ascension Perks

255 Tradition Slots + 256 AP Slots

Tradition UI 4.2~4.0

More Events Mod

Magic & Psionic Traits

More AI Personalities

More Enclaves

DarkSpace

Vassals Expanded and Reworked - FunEFork

Machines & Robot Expansion Continued

Species Diversity

Cybrxkhan's Assortment of Namelists for Stellaris

UTD: Flags: Emblems & Backgrounds

UI Overhaul Dynamic

UI Overhaul Dynamic - Tiny Outliner

UI Overhaul Dynamic - Tiny Options

UI Overhaul Dynamic - Extended Topbar

UI Overhaul Dynamic - Extended Topbar for DLCs

UI Overhaul Dynamic - SpeedDial

UI Overhaul Dynamic + Planetary Diversity

UI Overhaul Dynamic + Gigastructural Engineering

UI Overhaul Dynamic + Multi-Patcher (Giga/SpeedDial/PSE)

UI Overhaul Dynamic + Bug Branch

UI Overhaul Dynamic + Ethics and Civics Classic

Five Civics Points

More Leader Traits

More Astral Rifts

[4.5] Stellar Manipulation Rewrite/Revival

Necroid & Spooky Traits

Federation Overhaul

Dynamic Galaxy Overhaul

Plentiful Traditions 4.4.x

Plentiful Traditions 4.x - Extra Perks

Toxoid Traits

Hydra's More Galactic Community Resolutions

Hydra's More War Doctrines

Hydra's More Civics

Hydra's More Species Traits

Hydra's More Origins

Hydra's More Minor Patrons

GC Overhaul

Viable Feudalism and Imperialism - Empire Federation

Federations Expanded Updated

Great Federation

FP's Evacuation Protocal

Ethic Intolerance

Ethic Intolerance - Civics

Ethic Intolerance - Personalities

Ethic Intolerance - Bug Branch Submod

Ethic Intolerance - More AI Personalities Submod

Planetary Mega-Engineering Reborn

Extra Events 4.5 Continued

Archaeology Story Pack 4.5

Forgotten Empires 4.5

Age of Federations

AoF and EaCC Patch

Expanded Stellaris Ascension Perks

Ascension Perks Broadened 4.0

Planetary Bugversity (PD + BB Patch)

PD-RS:NF Compatibility Patch

ACOT - SBtG Stellarborne 4.4 Fix

Planetary Diversity + E&C Classic Compatibility Patch

Compatibility Patch: Ethics and Civics Classic + Plentiful Traditions Extra Perks

!!Universal Modifier Patch (4.4.*)

!!!Universal Resource Patch [2.4+]

Age of Federations + Galactic Overhaul Suite Compatibility

Age of Federations + Ethics and Civics Classic Compatibility

Great Federation+Age of Federations

Galactic Overhaul Suite + Ethics and Civics Classic Compatibility Patch

Compatibility Patch: Ethics and Civics Classic + Gigastructural Engineering

Hi, I've been playing this game since it's release. I have all DLCs, almost 1500 hours of gameplay, beaten the game multiple times in max difficulty in the past with max difficulty crisis spawning at 2350 (so still had room to improve considering the stuff some people is able to do, I'm not a top player) played most of the origins (except the new ones) and have tried many mods (before changing jobs I almost got the hardest challenge from gigastructures mod, leaving that challenge aside hurt my soul).

I wanted to preface this to make clear that I don't consider myself someone who is unable to adapt to changes. The first hard wall I faced was the change to leaders (and I made a post about it back in the day) and soon found out that the issue was that I had not bought that DLC. After getting the DLC, everything improved.

But I can't keep up with the pace of the last 2 years, and believe me when I say I have tried. Am I getting old? Is it a shared feeling?

- Can I build a "Gaia Seeder" on a Gaia world?

- Does a Gaia Seeder count as "terraforming," and can it therefore trigger related events? (I’m assuming not.)

- Can the "Gaia Preference" trait replace the version of "Gaia Preference" obtained through event "unexpected mutations" ?

To clarify: as I recall, there’s a specific event ("Unexpected Mutation") that grants "Gaia Preference," but the trait itself includes an additional bonus (the buff is baked directly into the trait).

So, if a pop with that specific trait undergoes "blooming," does it get replaced by the standard "Gaia Preference" (losing the buff)?

My goal is to convert all my worlds into Gaia worlds and have all my pops possess both the Gaia buff and the Seeder buff, i’m just not sure if that’s technically possible.

Perhaps one of you has already tried this combination?

pre-ftl spaceship ignoring the BIG enigmatic cache

Hello there, it’s basically what the title says! I’m not particularly amazing at the game but I’ve beaten the AI quite frequently and I’m interested in finding some multiplayer events, just not particularly to win but just try fun builds and be part of a more dynamic galaxy. I like the RP multiplayer games that YouTubers do, so I was curious if there are any events/tournaments that get hosted that focus more on RP than really strong builds?

Thanks for any recommendations!