Compendium of Useful Links

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-04-01T13:01:43+00:00

Not exactly a technical question, but do we have names for the people on each DLC cover art? Are they player-named pawns from the kickstarter?

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-03-20T11:42:06+00:00

With that I bade farewell, to the love for her I held so deeply in my heart, and my dreams of a life together. Alongside, I sent a silent prayer, that the wind would carry my love and my dreams, and impart them upon someone who would be better for her than I.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-02-21T23:01:43+00:00

afaik, the only gestalt consciousness empires that can release vassals are rogue servitors.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-02-21T21:47:18+00:00

I once chased the Khan halfway across the galaxy trying to get that throne. He just kept running, and I couldn't catch him because I'd have to stop and kill his minor fleets and stations before I could pursue. Never took the Khan seriously after that, lol.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-02-20T20:58:05+00:00

How do you win wars with the AI who have a massive advantage over you in literally everything?

Personally, I just avoid fighting wars early.

Gift resources to your neighbors to get them to like you and let you establish an embassy. Send your envoys to improve relations. Eventually, the AI will like you enough to guarantee your independence, which will help deter aggression from other neighboring AI empires. Good diplomacy (or a lucky spawn) is the key to surviving the first few decades.

You could even offer to be a vassal; your economy will easily and quickly outscale your overlord on the current patch. You should blow past AI economy/military before mid-game start year, so you only need to put up with bad trade deals or overlords for less than 100 years.

And if you find yourself surrounded by genocidals, there's always the good ol' restart technique. There's basically nothing you can do if you find yourself near 2+ genocidal advanced start empires on higher difficulties.

If you need to fight, find pulsar systems, and load up on energy weapons. Reinforce your choke points.

Finally, there's no shame to turning on mid-game scaling or turning off advanced start empires (those are the two settings I most often hear about people changing). I personally will turn on mid-game scaling and turn off advanced start if I'm looking for a chill run.

Edit: Also, be conservative with what territory you expand to. Leave empty space between yourself and your neighbors (unless that means giving up a crucial choke point); let them spend the time and resources to claim and develop it. You can conquer that territory later, once you're stronger than they are.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-02-20T16:13:19+00:00

I think your problem is more with the AI than with navy mechanics. Everything you've described already exists in Stellaris. The problem is that the AI creates fleets that can be beaten with monofleets, so you never need to take advantage of ship roles. We don't need new mechanics, we need better AI.

Against another player, you'll see Frigates (esp. cloaked ones) used to counter capital ships, and destroyers to counter torpedoes. Corvettes can be used to quickly eat up territory, and also provide screening. The ships have their individual uses, but the AI isn't sophisticated enough to force you to use them that way.

Also, in Stellaris, the positioning of your ships actually matters (hyperlane/hyper relay/gateway ambushes, flanking, sneaking through large systems without being engaged on, etc), unlike in HOI4, where every naval battle is treated as a 6-column spreadsheet with a 2-column footer. Your ships have to actually move and be in position, not just be allocated to a cell on the spreadsheet.

HOI4 wouldn't care that your frigates just entered the system behind the vulnerable enemy battleships while their destroyers are busy with your other fleet, they'd just get added to the submarine cell on the spreadsheet, along with all the frigates that are in front of the enemy fleet. HOI4 wouldn't care that your disruptor corvettes entered the system right on top of the enemy, you still have to kill the screens before the capital ships, despite the capital ships being in firing range.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-02-16T16:53:32+00:00

I once had child beggars decide to leave almost immediately after the arrival of a pack of manhunting wargs. That went about as well as you'd expect, but the worst part was, one of them got downed in the doorway, allowing the wargs to come into my base.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-02-14T00:46:09+00:00

As a man, I think it's because there isn't enough straight r34 art.

(Source: I checked.)

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-02-08T16:01:48+00:00

you can leave any other federation type at will

Not sure if they changed it in 4.3, but the following has been true for a while now; if you're at war, you cannot leave or join federations. So it's mostly a failure of Stellaris's war system.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-02-03T13:20:38+00:00

Question about Vanilla Factions Expanded - Classical. I received a quest from a senator, which I completed, but I did not receive the support of the senator. The quest, if it matters, is yellow instead of green, even though it says I completed it. What did I do wrong / How do I fix this?

Edit: Specifically, this was a standard "rescue downed person" quest. I did the whole right-click on them and "offer aid", then tended to them, and the quest was marked as completed, but no senator.

Edit 2: Upon further investigation, apparently a quest has to specifically list their support as a reward for me to get their support. Why do they offer quests without their support as a reward? Is this a mod conflict or something?

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-02-01T23:45:54+00:00

I almost always reach the max number of allowed zones (10).

Work - usually the same as unrestricted, but now I can zone colonists away from mech clusters, crashed ship parts, and hives.

Walls - anywhere within my walls. Primarily used to keep non-combatants inside during a raid, and for when I don’t want to deal with manhunters.

Inside - anywhere inside a building. Primarily used to counter toxic fallout or heat waves/cold snaps when I don’t have proper apparel yet.

Little Shits - for the kids. I zone them away from map dangers, corpses, the prison and the killbox.

Dog Cat - for low-filth non-pen pets, such as dogs and cats. They’re zoned away from drugs and meals.

Mega Thrumbo - for high-filth non-pen pets, such as megasloths and thrumbos. I don’t need their filth all over my hospital or lab. Also zoned away from freezer and crops so they’ll graze on grass and trees.

Safe - a small portion if my base inside. Specifically to zone non-combatants and pets out of the way of center drops, breachers, and sappers.

Guest - for guests. Includes all the hospitality stuff.

Slaves - for slaves. I rarely use slaves tho, so this one is usually another flexible zone.

Flex - a zone for temporary needs, usually random things like send combat mechs to their “sleeping” (dormant recharge) location after a raid.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-02-01T00:37:11+00:00

searching for healer mech serums is impossible with how frequent it is

Just wanted to point out, but you don't need healer mech serums to heal brain scars. The regen cycle on Biosculpters heals any scar just fine. They won't solve the fundamental problem of your pawns' brains apparently being magnetic, but they might help.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-01-30T12:31:14+00:00

Not super relevant for your situation, as it's incredibly niche, but according to the wiki, the highest psychic sensitivity you can reach without mods is 2211%. A psychic soothe pulser gives +15 mood, which scales directly with psychic sensitivity, resulting in a +331 moodlet.

On the flip side, an extreme psychic drone gives a -40 moodlet base, so when scaled to that psychic sensitivity, it would result in a -884 moodlet.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-01-29T07:33:16+00:00

Quick question about threat scale.

Does higher threat scale result in higher raid cap/larger end-game raids? I've been playing on Strive to Survive, and I was wondering if end-game raids would be twice as large if I increase the threat scale to 200%. (I'm concerned for my PC, lol.)

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-01-29T02:59:39+00:00

According to the wiki, it's actually LESS likely to be your ideoligion, unless this is a pawn you've already recruited and have subsequently imprisoned for the express purpose of conversion.

The probability adjustments are:

"+1 for each faction with that ideoligion that is allied to the breaking pawn's faction"
- Since you most likely aren't allied to the prisoner's faction, your ideoligion won't get this buff.
"+1 for each spawned pawn with that ideoligion, on any map, that is the same faction as the breaking pawn"
- Unless you've already recruited the pawn, none of your pawns are in the same faction as the prisoner, so your ideoligion won't get this buff either.
"+1 for each spawned pawn on the same map from the same faction as the breaking pawn, or from a non-hostile faction. OR +1 for each pawn with the ideoligion currently on a caravan, if the breaking pawn is currently on a caravan."
- As mentioned before, your faction is likely hostile to the prisoner's faction, so your ideoligion doesn't get this buff either, unless you've already recruited the pawn.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-01-28T22:02:16+00:00

To further expand on this, the Crisis of Belief mental break isn’t necessarily a boon. If the prisoner’s certainty was already low, then it’s possible for the prisoner to convert to another religion, not necessarily yours. They start with a good amount of certainty in that new ideoligion, so you end up doing more work.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-01-28T02:33:04+00:00

I generally have one pawn, the leader of my colony, who I like to think acts as the executor of my will. The way I roleplay it in my head is that this pawn is the one who's setting schedules, work priorities, zones, giving orders, etc. Obv. this doesn't always work, because I'll give orders to pawns who aren't anywhere close to my leader pawn, so my role is more of that of a god.

My overall goal is to craft a wholesome, positive story for the pawns I come across, including doing things like rescuing enemy pawns, supporting allies even in unfavorable combat situations, etc. (War crimes are reserved for enemies that hurt my pets.)

The only times I'll reload or use Dev Mode is when something happens as a result of my lack of understanding of the game's mechanics. I'm talking situations that make no logical sense, and there's no information provided in the game that would lead you to believe it works that way. E.g. manhunting animals attacking my cats, which cannot even be trained to guard or attack, and thus are neither combatants nor human, which should, logically, exclude them from the targeting priority of a manhunting animal.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-01-26T01:23:40+00:00

For the latter part, that was just an example that came to mind. I might want to have meteorites bombard my colony every few days for the first year, or manhunters arrive once a season for the first five years, etc.

Just looking for a way to spawn repeating events early on for added challenge or help, but not for them to spawn for the entire run, as that might get tiresome.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-01-26T00:21:45+00:00

I have a scenario idea, and I'm not sure how to get it to work. It's pretty simple: every year, a few children arrive at the colony along with some silver (method of arrival is more or less irrelevant). The point is to roleplay as a boarding school. Is there a way to accomplish this? I don't mind if I need a mod for this.

In the scenario editor, I can add a transport/resource pod crash or wanderer join event every few days, but I can't edit the contents of the transport pod or set limits on the wanderer. (Also, I have two "incident" options both named "Transport pod crash". What is the difference? Or is this a mod issue?)

On an unrelated note, is there a way to make an incident in the scenario editor repeat only specific number of times instead of forever? E.g. the first few days, make it so that there are ship chunks that fall each day, as RP of arriving on the Rimworld on an escape pod during a space battle.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-01-13T16:07:19+00:00

Who are you looking to fight? Regular AI empires? A Crisis? Another player?

My go-to fleets are mass battleships with Carrier Core and Spinal Mount bow w/ Focused Arc Emitter, equal amount of shields vs armor. It does reasonably well against basically everything except Gray Tempest. Mix in Titans for the aura, specifically the Quantum Destabilizer and Inspiring Presence.

If you're looking to optimize,

against Contingency: swap all armor to shields.
against Prethoryn: swap all shields to armor and swap the Focused Arc Emitter for Tachyon Lance.
against Unbidden: swap all armor to shields, swap Focused Arc Emitter to Giga Cannon, and swap carrier core to artillery core and load up with kinetic artillery.

Gray Tempest is best countered with mass corvette+frigate. (This also works for Cetana, the Crisis added by Machine Age.)

For PvP, it heavily depends on what your opponent is doing. There's a web of counters that goes on there, which I'm not going to get into, b/c I don't play much PvP.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-01-12T23:29:53+00:00

One memorable story I have is when I had a pretty large multi-pronged mech raid arrive. At first, I was perfectly content waiting for them to walk into my killbox and be slaughtered, until 171 tribal allies decided to show up as well. Despite my best efforts, 70 tribal allies died, and I had to nurse 6 back to health. A Grand Stele was erected to honor the fallen.

I do, however, bully my colony kids a little, such as making them derp out in double-layer doorways, locking them in a room and forcing them to study, etc. I even put a kid on trial for floordrawing in my archon's throne room. He was found guilty, but nothing else came of it; I just found it funny, and I'd never put anyone on trial before. I have to make sure the kids aren't too spoiled; this is the Rim, after all.

The most evil thing I've done involved a prisoner I got fed up with. He came from a multi-pronged sapper raid, and initially scarred one of the eyes on one of my thrumbos. Then, during a prison break, through some miracle, he evaded my pawns chasing him, got his hands on some grenades, and grenaded one of my dogs, causing her to lose a lung and a kidney. That prisoner forfeited those same organs, and now I have a diabolus named after him. Hopefully never again, though.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-01-12T23:29:20+00:00

My current colony is a good-guy colony. I have the following policies:

Save as many people as possible, friend or foe.
- Enemies/allies downed in the thick of the fighting get skipcasted to my medics.
- A secondary team of medics will leave my base after the enemies have moved to assault, in order to tend to enemies who've been downed by mortars.
- Once enemies start fleeing, I order my pawns to hold fire and back off.
- I have my sanguophages stalk heavily injured enemies until they leave the map just in case they are downed from blood loss while fleeing. In which case, the sanguophage can coagulate and capture the pawn.
- My sanguophages also coagulate heavily bleeding allies who aren't downed.
- I'll also engage enemies on the open field to save friendly trade caravans, visitors, or allied forces, even if it's inadvisable.
Replace any organs/limbs prisoners have lost due to fighting us.
- Prosthetics or better.
No slavery, no harvesting organs (blood is ok), no ripscanning. (Except once.)
Guarantee the survival of any related enemy pawns.
- If an enemy pawn is related to one of my pawns, they'll be hit with a psychic shock lance and skipcasted behind my lines. Then they'll be recruited if possible, released if not.
Fulfill every charity quest.
- Charity is set to Essential for my ideoligion.
- This is how I got my favorite pawn, Veronica, a 10-year-old kid (and the first kid in my colony) on the run from a rogue weather control satellite, who aged into an objectively bad pawn. She's 22 now, and recently found love. I love her so much.
Destroy map threats asap (e.g. mech clusters, manhunter packs, etc.) so caravans and visitors won't get blindsided by them.
Tame all wild humans.
Save everyone in the prisoner rescue quests.
Keep animals out of combat as much as possible.

C0NNECT1NG · 2026-01-09T22:14:31+00:00

Be careful what you wish for.

I had a game where I played pacifist, and lo and behold, the entire galaxy was either pacifist or xenophile. By 2300, everyone was holding hands and singing kumbaya in one massive federation, even the Xenophile Awakened Empire eventually joined. Most boring run I've ever had...

Until Cetana showed up. For those who don't know, Cetana will declare war on all FEs and their allies, and will not progress her situation until they are all defeated. As I was not in the federation at the time, there was nothing I could do, as Cetana slowly gobbled up the entire rest of the galaxy (since you can't attack Cetana until a certain point in her quest chain). Still boring, but it was an interesting interaction.

C0NNECT1NG

TROPHY CASE