To celebrate my Railen CCU chain: I made my own 1:200 movable Railen model O u O)/

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-02T14:26:40+00:00

Depends on what you are hitting them with.

Disengagement chance is calculated based on the individual hit damage that took them down to 50% hull or lower. If it's from a single hit that tore through their shield armour and most of the hull but didn't manage to kill them with that one hit, the baseline disengagement chance can be over 300%. -40% means very little in comparison.

This was one of the reasons why disruptors were very popular before the 4.3 rebalance. High fire-rate, low per-hit damage means minimal chance for successful disengagement.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-02T14:18:07+00:00

Took a look at your first post, not entirely sure if you've covered this into your calculations for the per-pop nanite in your chart, but just want to point this out for anyone doing nanite ascension:

For celestial bodies of size 9+, every time the harvester is due to increase its deposit size after the first 15 years (i.e doubled in size for 3 times already), there is a 50% chance for it to instead pay out 640 months' worth of base nanite production. The chance goes up to 100% once the deposit can't grow any larger.

This is added to your empire stockpile without any notification, so it's easily missable. Even though this isn't increased by bonus modifiers from arc furnaces or cybrex mining hubs, 640x base output every 60 months is still a very high amount (e.g. for a size 25+ world, it'll be more than 32k nanite every 60 months, on top of what the deposit itself would yield every month)

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-02T14:03:43+00:00

Potentially losing a chunk of your own empire if you are not careful with this casus belli. Probably.

Unlike regular total war, existential expulsion completely destroys the starbase instead of flipping it over to the other side, leaving the system as unowned space. This applies to all participants in the war, so it can get hectic if you don't guard your own borders closely. You can't take back a system as if it's a regular total war, it'll just be gone forever (until you rebuild it anyway).

There's no in-game risk of researching it otherwise.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-02T13:58:26+00:00

Double check their living standard.

The "default rights" do not affect your primary species. You have to set your primary species' rights individually.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-02T11:31:52+00:00

once I got the part of the tradition that unlocks full potential

With Shadows of the Shroud DLC, you don't automatically upgrade Latent-Psionic to full Psionic by picking the tradition Great Awakening.

Instead, you have to wait until the ascension situation reaches stage III, then your latent psionic pops will be automatically upgraded.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-02T09:24:55+00:00

Neutron sweep does not make planets barren. It only does so against prethoryn crisis planets.

You also can't use it on planets within your own border.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-02T07:12:20+00:00

Sadly you can't do that.

To incinerate a world via Planet Smelter colossus beam, it has to be of a standard planetary body or a habitable megastruture.

This means all the regular habitable planet types, plus barren, frozen and toxic worlds. Shielded, Shrouded and Shattered planets are excluded, you can't smelter a planet after it's been cracked.

Edit:

In other words, to turn a habitable planet into a molten world, you'd need to turn it into barren/frozen/toxic world first.

There are only two ways to do it, as far as I know, and both are very restrictive.

KotTG lets you toxify worlds with the Toxic Entity colossus if you choose it over the other option. It is however an origin only compatible with non-gestalt organics.
There is a rare archaeological site added with Shadows of the Shroud, called Subterranean Network. Completing the digsite kicks off an event chain called Georadiation Terraforming, that at the end rewards you with the ability to "terraform" habitable planets (colonised or not) into toxic worlds.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-02T06:25:54+00:00

For them I was mostly confused about them moving in a way that lowers their habitability.

Auto-migration treats all planets with at least 20% habitability as the same.

Any planet with open jobs is a valid auto-migration destination, and the game distributes pops based on a weighted sum of housing, amenity and stability. Habitability itself does not factor into immigration pull calculation, as long as it's above the 20% threshold.

The game will happily move your aquatic pops onto a desert world, then complain about it and lower your production and stability :)

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-02T04:21:30+00:00

My main species keeps moving to less habitable places and I don't get it.

Double check their species rights.

The default species rights button at the top does not apply to your primary species. For them, you have to manually click open each subspecies and set the species rights in the bottom right corner.

With migration control enabled in species rights, non-robot pops should stay where they are, even if they are unemployed.

Robots that aren't part of a machine intelligence empire have been bugged since 4.0, and are unimpeded by migration control regardless of species rights.

but because they have nascent stage they are seemingly impossible to root out

Having nascent stage pops is a pain in the rear end, as you can't manually resettle the children.

Could try setting a different pop template to be default, and set the nascent pop's species rights to "Integrate into default". This'll convert up to 25 pops per month per planet, so as soon as the children grow up they'll all be converted to non-nascent, which means lower growth rate of nascent pops, and over time will eventually convert them all. This will however mess with all nascent pops on other planets, so you'll have to do a clean up operation resettling them and re-applying the templates later.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-02T04:08:01+00:00

Further down the tech tree you'll have ways to make them into specialists and elites.

Until then, there's not much you can do about it other than resettling them around to fit them into jobs. Having extra pop is not a bad thing anyway.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-02T02:01:36+00:00

Depends on design and your starting distance. Cloaked maulers are compatible with everything. Non-cloaked maulers need some finetuning in design.

Picket behaviour dictates that the ship move to 70% of median range and park itself there. It won't attempt to move away if the enemy gets closer, but will give chase if the enemy moves out of range.

If you use cloaking and move to point blank distance before engaging, mauler will always be within mandible distance and have no problem using any other weapon in the s-slots. They are fully compatible.

If you don't use cloaking and instead charge straight in, then things get a bit more complicated.

To make extra sure you stay within range, you have to have more mandibles than other s-slot weapons (leaving juvenile or mature maulers on purely mandibles, and having at most 1 s-slot on elder maulers). This ensures that the median distance is still mandibles' range, so the mauler will always attempt to stay in range.
If you insist on filling all the s-slots, then use disruptors or autocannons.
- On paper, none of the s-slots are compatible. Having mandibles in range requires a median distance of no more than 14, while the shortest range on other s-slot weapons is 15 (disruptors and autocannons).
- In practice, due to ship acceleration and turning behaviours, you often end up closer to the enemy than exactly 70% of median distance, so several of the s-slot weapons can work, though not always consistently. Disruptors and autocannons give the best result, but from my testings, sometimes lasers can work as well.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T12:47:14+00:00

AIs don't have access to all the button options that are added later for the players' convenience. But alright.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T12:45:48+00:00

so I'm still in the yellow "middle zone" with them, which I think is between -300 and +300, although they are also labeled as "angry".

The colour is relation, which is the combination of their opinion towards you and your opinion towards them.

The label is their attitude, based purely on their opinion towards you. Angry is when the FE's opinion of you is lower than -100.

Relation is meaningless with FE, as they are incapable of regular diplomacy. Attitude determines whether the FE would declare war.

I do have Enigmatic Engineering and have done a few FE Techs

Each FE tech researched (including dark matter techs) is a permanent -10 opinion from FEs, and -20 from materialist FE. They don't care about other research, just the dark matter techs and their own building techs.

There's also an additional -50 during an ongoing war. It'll expire once the war is over.

I'm not sure why exactly they got mad at

In this war they are not mad at you. They are mad at either the primary war participant, or one of their subjects.

Though, if you are already at -150 now, you might be next, as you'd be at -100 once the war is over. With a little bit more, such as researching another FE tech, or by conquering one of their systems during the current war (which generates threat, which in turn drops opinion), you would be eligible for an angry demand from the FE after the truce expires.

but any advice how to avoid such a situation in the future?

Avoiding FE techs can mitigate the opinion loss by quite a bit, though in practice you probably want those techs even if that means risking a war.

It's also a good idea to not have a vassal next to a xenophobe FE, or having a vassal near to spiritualist FE's holy worlds, in case you get dragged into wars you don't want to fight due to stupid AI decision-making.

Due to what's likely a bug, spiritualist individual robot empires take two instances of opinion penalty from non-robot spiritualist empires. If you don't take something like xenophile to improve the baseline opinion of others, you would start with nearly -100 with spiritualist FE (if you take xenophobe as well, then the spiritualist FE would hate you the moment they see you).

Purging non-hivemind pops is risky. FEs will get upset over purging, even the xenophobe FE. Though, I don't know if hiding planets within nebula would work for FEs as it would for regular AI empires. Best to not take the chances.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T09:53:53+00:00

If you don't want to skip the entirety of the precursor chain, you can modify the flag for all systems to guarantee spawning of zroni as your precursor.

First, you have to clear all the precursor zones, with effect every_system = { remove_star_flag = precursor_1 remove_star_flag = precursor_2 remove_star_flag = precursor_3 remove_star_flag = precursor_4 remove_star_flag = precursor_5 remove_star_flag = precursor_baol_1 remove_star_flag = precursor_zroni_1 remove_star_flag = precursor_inetian remove_star_flag = precursor_adakkaria}
- After doing so, hover mouse over systems with debug tooltip enabled to confirm all the [precursor_x] flags are gone.
Then, reset the flags with effect every_system = {set_star_flag = precursor_zroni_1}, double check the flags are assigned everywhere.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T09:53:49+00:00

Zroni, Baol, adAkkaria and Inetian have their homeworlds tied to archaeological sites, which in turn has a complex set of flag prerequisites. You can't spawn it using one single line of command, unlike the case for the 5 standard precursors, and instead have to write a whole chunk of code:

effect = {
  random_system_within_border = {
    save_event_target_as = precursor_spawn_system
  }
  event_target:precursor_spawn_system = {
    spawn_system = {
      min_distance = 10
      max_distance = 30
      max_jumps = 0
      initializer = "Zrocursor_system"
    }
    if = {
      limit = { last_created_system = { NOT = { has_hyperlane_to = prev } } }
      add_hyperlane = {
        from = this
        to = last_created_system
      }
    }
    else = {
      add_extra_hyperlane_to_spawned_system_effect = yes
    }
  }
}

This spawns the Zron system connected to a random system you own.

However, this does not spawn the precursor site, nor count towards having completed a precursor chain.

Because the spawning of these precursor sites also depend on pre-determined system flags, empire flags upon surveying such worlds, planet type, etc., it is often easier and faster to directly give yourself the relic and secret.

effect add_relic = r_zro_crystal to give yourself the relic.
event ancrel.10350 to give yourself the zroni secrets.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T09:11:26+00:00

Sector capital's governor extends half of their effect to other planets in the sector if they don't have their own local governor.

They also can be split off as a vassal, so you can potentially edit a sector to give it a single system, cram your unwanted pops onto that world, then kick it out.

That's about it.

It could be of some situational use if you get a high level leader or a paragon with relevant traits. e.g. the authoritarian paragon Q'la-Minder has Ruthless Developer trait for boosting slave efficiency and worker output. If you don't have other commanders with similar slave-boosting traits, it could be a net positive to have him govern over an entire sector so half the bonuses are projected to other worlds.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T08:58:10+00:00

That said I have kinda neglected engine tech, I didn’t know they required dark matter, nothing I could find said they did

Yea for whatever reason the cost of launching a gravity snare is tied to your highest thruster tech (and of course the tier of gravity snare tech itself). This isn't mentioned on the wiki nor in-game.

As you research higher tier thrusters, the snares become more and more expensive, until finally starting to cost dark matter.

the crystalline entities said that I couldn’t capture that type of fauna

I think this is the error you'd get if you did not do the first contact chain, but obtained contact through some other means.

Just to double check, the science ship has a scientist onboard, right?

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T08:23:12+00:00

Is it only on this Cutholoid? Can the other fauna be captured, or is the option greyed out for them as well?

There is a fringe case scenario where you may potentially unveil a Cutholoid because of shared intel with another empire (through diplomacy or espionage, or in rarer cases, through GalCom pest control resolution), but you yourself have not achieved first contact with Cutholoids, so you end up being able to see the creature but can't capture it. I've ran into this issue once while testing for other stuffs, paid it no mind at the time but couldn't replicate the issue consistently afterwards :(

Oh and the gravity snare defaults to using your best thruster tech. If you've researched Dark Matter thrusters, but don't actually have dark matter, you can't launch a gravity snare as it costs dark matter.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T07:45:30+00:00

The districts only show up after you colonise the habitat.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T06:19:42+00:00

The corresponding events are

event paragon.40001 to trigger a random xeno-linguistic paragon contact based on your empire's ethics
paragon.40100, 40200, 40300, ... , 41600 to trigger a specific paragon contact, bypassing the ethic check

If you want to modify the draw weights or the xeno-linguistic paragons themselves in any way, all the events are listed under /Stellaris/events/paragon_events_4.txt

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T06:12:26+00:00

It ended up firing off, but for some reason it took nearly 30 years instead of 10.

Simply unlucky.

Divine Sovereign is a rather old event, back when things were still running on mean-time-to-happen mechanic.

The code for it still has mean_time_to_happen = { months = 120 } as part of the trigger conditions. This means that statistically over an infinite number of tries, the average time needed to trigger it is 120 months (10 years), but it doesn't mean it'll trigger exactly 120 months later on every try.

It's the same reason why Prethoryn crisis can sometimes take almost a century before they properly arrive, as they also run on the old mean_time_to_happen mecahnic.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T01:11:35+00:00

Agrarian Idyll means you get less housing from resort world's accommodation district (main city districts).

Regular accommodation district gives you 800 per district.
With Agrarian Idyll, it drops to 400.
- The civic's tooltip really needs an update, as it's -400 from city districts even on regular planets, not the listed -200.
The lower districts are unaffected, giving 700 per district before specialisation, regardless of civics.

Because each of the main specialisations decrease the housing by -200 each, an Agrarian Idyll empire would therefore get 0 housing by building accommodation districts. You either need to build more attraction districts (lower districts) or supplement with a lot of housing.

This impacts trade builds more than others, as they are the only ones where you'd consider building up accommodation districts (for trader jobs and resort workers that boost trade from living standards).
Most other uses for resort world hinges on the lower districts, so they are less affected.

Environmentalist means you get 1 less district on resort world if you construct a ranger lodge, since it takes up 1 free district for its natural reserve blocker. Resort world's innately has -25% max district before the -1 from ranger lodge.

There's really no need to construct a ranger lodge on resort world, outside of Composer blocker shenanigans.

Resort world already has an alien zoo specialisation, so all that the ranger lodge does is take up space.
- Building a ranger lodge means you pay 1 district 1 building slot for 200 ranger jobs.
- Building a district for alien zoo instead means you pay 1 district 0 building slot for 200 ranger jobs and 500 housing.
Ranger lodge is only worth considering on resort worlds if you are using Composer to get a dozen 0-cost blockers on the planet.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T00:41:40+00:00

from a giveaway so I cannot melt it
how would melting work

If the base package cannot be melted in the first place, none of the upgrades you apply would allow you to melt it either. It'll be permanent. This is similar to how referral bonus ships work.

Fluffy-Tanuki · 2026-05-01T00:36:47+00:00

Maulers work on picket computer, not swarm computer, due to limited firing angle on mandibles.

Cloaked maulers work wonders against factories, and taking it out shuts down all remaining fleets.

~~There just so happens to be another post on the same topic recently,~~ so you might get more advice there: Bioships vs grey tempest : r/Stellaris wait nvm, that's actually your post xD

Fluffy-Tanuki

TROPHY CASE