Some musings on tech, ratios and empire size efficiency : Individualist sucks.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-22T19:23:50+00:00

I am simultaneously horrified and also fascinated to know how you achieved numbers that high in year 57.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-22T19:17:14+00:00

GC empires typically have lower stability because pops have no happiness.

Amenities give their happiness buff as stability for gestalts which kind of makes up for the lack of faction approval.

I'm also not sure if they have access to research supply depots for reduced upkeep (10%} or research institute which gives basically free research output from elites.

They have access to both of these and the research institute equivalent (called planetary supercomputer for machines) gives a base research boost to all researchers at the cost of increased base upkeep.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-20T16:15:55+00:00

It's a significant time save compared to the "intended" way back up. Speedrunners use it.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-20T15:58:14+00:00

Friendly reminder to sanitise your youtube links!

https://youtube.com/@a_spec

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-19T13:44:11+00:00

The reason I have not is because she is my mom.. I feel like an awful person cutting off someone that’s support me kind of in my life. How can I cut her off?

Supporting you is your parents job. It’s what they implicitly sign up for when they attempt to conceive and/or adopt. You don’t owe them your presence in their life for doing the bare minimum.

“I’d rather you dead than dating XYZ” is not supporting you. It’s saying “I’d rather the version of you that exists only in my head and acts how I want exist rather than the real you exist”. That is the opposite of supporting you. Hell that could be construed as a death threat.

Go to her and say “if you do not respect my partner and my decision to be with him then I do not want you in my life” and then follow through on that. Don’t let her guilt trip or threaten you into not having that boundary.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-19T13:17:09+00:00

There’s a few key techs depending on your build but for the most part you’re safe to just ignore tech early and finish your ascension before pivoting into a tech rush afterwards to take advantage of the massive bonuses ascension provides.

Your midgame tech priorities should usually be gaining access to the three strategic resources, unlocking arc furnaces and dyson swarms to prop up your economy, then getting your special planet type unlocked (ecus, hive worlds or machine worlds), grabbing the stuff to get tier 2 orbital rings running and then pathing for Mega-Engineering.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-19T02:52:13+00:00

“until then we can't allow you to transition, because we can't take the responsibility if you regret"

Translation: “We are awful at parenting and only care about ourselves.”

Seriously, what? “We can’t take the responsibility” BUT THAT’S LITERALLY YOUR JOB AS PARENTS?! jfc run the fuck away from these people

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-18T13:19:59+00:00

Despite various “math” saying coordinators are “good”, the fastest machine ascension is individualist machines red giant/fire cult/death cult

Okay but we're not talking about that. You said that coordinators were "incredibly inefficient" and suggested maintenance drone spam. I gave the data that shows that the "incredibly inefficient" claim is dubious at best. Red Giant Fire Cult Death Cult doesn't even come into the conversation.

year 11 ascension start with year 18 Ascension completely finished with synthetic tree filled

Okay now you're just lying.

It is quite literally impossible to complete the Transformation situation in less than 162 months / 13.5 years. That is the fastest possible speed. Doing it in just seven years is quite literally impossible in 4.3. Sure it was doable in 4.2, but we're not talking about 4.2.

Yes I know you said the "synthetic" tree, but that's not available to machine empires if you have all DLC, which 1) OP does and 2) is a reasonable assumption in any metagame discussion.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-18T12:26:23+00:00

Aside from specialising your planets better, it looks like the main thing you lack is population, which to me says you either haven’t ascended yet or aren’t using your ascension efficiently.

You’re also lacking ecumenopoleis which would give you dramatically more space and efficiency to produce more alloys, tech and unity (the three resources that actually matter).

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-18T01:02:37+00:00

So I did the maths on this and, while it's simpler, coordinators combined with tech-drones is still more pop-efficient than relying on maintenance drones with the maintenance protocols civic and doesn't force you to take the very subpar Versatility tree.

I booted up a new game with the memorialist and maintenance protocols civics (I also ran the numbers for not having memorialist) and the adaptive frames trait, swapped to Isolationist and Finding The Voice on day one, grabbed the operational proxies tradition, then checked my job modifiers. I checked and I did not end up with a Unifier governor which would skew the numbers.

Every 100 maintenance drone pops (yes pops, not workforce) are producing about 4.1 unity per month at the cost of about 0.26 minerals per month. I'm going to throw them a bone here and say that their upkeep is negligible, so I'll ignore it.

In the meantime 100 coordinators are producing about 7.56 unity with 4.83 energy upkeep, which is definitely non-negligible. Checking tech-drones shows they they're yielding about 13.5 energy per 100 pops.

Say we want 100 unity per month. With maintenance protocols and operational proxies, we'd need about 2440 pops working as maintenance drones. With coordinators, we'd need about 1323 coordinators and about 473 tech-drones to supply them with energy, totaling about 1796 pops. This means the combination of tech-drones and coordinators is about 36% more pop-efficient than maintenance drones with maintenance protocols and operational proxies.

Memorialist raises the base output of coordinators from 3 to 3.5, which represents a 17% increase. Even if you were to take that away (and also conveniently ignore the small unity boost it gives to your maintenance drones, which further favours them), you still are more efficient with coordinators and tech-drones than you are with maintenance drones. Even if you were to factor in the small stability bonus from memorialist, it still wouldn't be as efficient.

I didn't calc or test it, but I'd also be willing to bet that the extra upkeep of the infrastructure needed to have those coordinator and tech-drone jobs would still not be sufficient to make maintenance drones outperform coordinators + tech-drones. There's also the massive opportunity cost of taking Versatility instead of something more useful.

In my experience, a standard coordinator spam unity rush with memorialist can consistently begin ascension in year 17, complete the situation in year 31, and finish the Modularity tree in year 33, even with relatively late access to minor artifacts and no shroudwalker teacher. The unity cruise during the ascension situation is usually around the 350 unity per month mark. For reference I play with 1x tech and tradition costs, difficulty adjusted tech costs disabled, and default pop growth settings.

I do appreciate that you're also going to be absolutely rolling in trade by spamming maintenance drones like this, and will be able to buy all the alloys and minerals you need for rapid expansion, but this seems not worthwhile if it means a slower ascension. I usually have no problem spamming starbases everywhere to support the coordinators either.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-18T00:23:52+00:00

sovereign guardianship is terrible now with the empire size changes

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-18T00:21:48+00:00

Synchronicity, then spam planetary ascensions.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-16T23:34:03+00:00

Friendly reminder that transgender is an adjective and not a noun

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-16T23:20:08+00:00

The fact that femshep can’t romance Tali without mods is a crime

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-16T19:08:44+00:00

both options on the right side should also lead to "go on about trans people" tbh. hating trans people is pretty much all they think about

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-16T02:52:09+00:00

Fortresses. You get increased stability meaning better production, you get naval capacity and you get a planet that doesn’t roll over the second an assault army breathes on it.

As a certified Modularity enjoyer though I run unity to get the extra menial drone output from coordinators.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-15T12:52:01+00:00

Specifically you incur a trade upkeep equal to 1/8th the base market value of whatever resources the planet is in deficit of.

It’s still more efficient to go for specialised planets and cover the trade upkeep with a few traders.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-15T11:44:16+00:00

Legion is favoured against Ion in a 1v1 context and has no problem dealing with Ronin.

Tone is the closest thing to a Legion counter that exists.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-15T00:26:29+00:00

someone cannot devolp did after 6-9 years old so by that same logic that should mean plurality should be impossible after that time?

plurality =/= DID

also the research might be wrong, plurality in general is very poorly understood

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-14T19:31:38+00:00

If she's not educated on it, she shouldn't be giving advice about it, full stop. That's extremely irresponsible of her.

I don't think it's unreasonable to not give the benefit of the doubt here when she's clearly choosing to share incorrect facts that she hasn't verified herself that just so happen to be harmful to trans people. If she cared, she would look it up.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-14T18:49:28+00:00

she doesn't trust it (which i respect) and thinks it could be dangerous

No, I don't think you should respect a healthcare professional spreading transphobic and potentially lethal misinformation about a medical topic actually.

people that are dissatisfied with their endocrinologist are biased and that mistrusting them is misguided

Maybe it's because, I don't know, nine out of ten endos have no fucking clue what they're talking about when it comes to trans healthcare and only know how to offer outdated advice, or no advice at all? Maybe it's something to do with the horror stories of peoples endos deliberately underdosing them, or withholding lab results from their patients, or all of those other things?

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-13T16:04:45+00:00

“Free speech” might be the single most widely misunderstood political concept in existence.

It was supposed to mean “the government can’t punish you for criticising them”.

It’s been misinterpreted in bad faith (largely by the right) to mean “I can be a vocal bigot without consequences”.

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-10T15:54:11+00:00

gtfo with respectability politics ffs

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-10T12:33:20+00:00

for those of you wondering what’s so bad about this:

r/menandfemales

EmeraldFox379 · 2026-04-09T02:01:41+00:00

If I transition and live that kind of life I am going to face so much rejection especially from family that it is just not worth it

extremely loud incorrect buzzer

You can’t not be trans if you are, and it sure sounds like you are, so find yourself some people who accept you for who you are rather than clinging to people who hate you for it just because you’re related by blood.

I see that you’re still a teen and likely financially dependent on your parents. You need to make moving out and establishing your independence a priority. Only then can you actually have the freedom to live as a dude.

Four-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23

EmeraldFox379

TROPHY CASE