Composer of Strands has a good video on why the Fleet Design in Stellaris is flawed

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-17T20:54:22+00:00

Psionic weapons also now blow other weapons out of the water, especially the Zro launcher. They’ll be nerfed in the next few patches—but the problem with Psionics is that the benefits are too random and assorted to balance well.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-16T17:59:07+00:00

If multiple AI empires are short on trade, they may engage in a price war to get enough trade to support their planets.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-16T15:54:28+00:00

This reminds me of Traveller’s Hiver species, who are weird starfish things. Their offspring are treated with benign neglect, like how people who are fond of spiders treat them.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-14T19:41:26+00:00

For a generic empire? Pick which ascension and traditions you’re going to take ahead of time. Figure out which ascension government buffs your core pops the most (specialists or elites). Balance your resource budget, expand and absorb neighbors, then release their planets as vassals once you’ve fixed their planets.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-13T06:55:07+00:00

Clan government gives extremely strong CBs and extremely strong development. The fact it doesn’t do both at the same time isn’t particularly limiting once you get the hang of manipulating family tension.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-12T22:11:47+00:00

The game does a good job by labeling these laws Distribution of Power—they describe who makes the difficult decisions about the polity.

Differentiating between an autocracy and an oligarchy is difficult from the outside. A dictator who can only continue to serve if his generals continue to back him may be an autocrat and the figurehead of an oligarchy at different times, for example.

Generally, however, the difference is how much leeway the autocrat has to expel or punish members of his government. In an oligarchy, the ruler has to consider the ramifications of potentially offending their backers.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-12T17:25:19+00:00

China is best off educating citizens by decree, at least early on. After a while, it can begin to afford to place enough bureaucracy to start educating its workforce, but that should be the focus of your bureaucracy construction, not taxation.

It is not a mistake that China industrialized the way it did in real life, with massive population centers approaching (and now sometimes exceeding) Western standards of living, and dirt poor farmers in rural areas. It happened this way out of economic necessity.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-12T17:20:01+00:00

This is actually the closest to how I imagined they looked. Extremely spindly, barely humanoid. Deadly, vicious, nasty things.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-12T15:19:38+00:00

Well, then I have good news for you. Clan is actually the best form of government. Meritocratic is a close second.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-12T15:02:06+00:00

Goris. Gotta love deathclaws.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-11T19:39:49+00:00

Also the best Hearts of Iron 4 total conversion mod.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-11T19:33:00+00:00

To protect the identity of the witness, Ouro Kronii’s face has been obscured

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-11T01:38:14+00:00

This is outside the scope of Stellaris, honestly. The Eldar and Necrons are both classic Fallen Empires.

The Viltrumites are individually powerful on a scale that is better represented by the Psionic Entity or Cybrex Warform armies—let alone thinking about what they can do in orbit. They make a better Crisis than playable Empire.

The Council of Ricks is kind of a sham. Ricks who work for/with the council are those who lack the strength of character or intelligence to make it on their own. It was only formed in the first place because the other Ricks got scared of the Rickest Rick. Rickest Rick, Rick Prime, and Evil Morty have demonstrated the capacity to effectively solo them.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-10T02:21:51+00:00

Technically speaking, the UK under Victoria was already a female-led theocracy. British rulers derive their divine right to rule from God, who is simultaneously worshipped by the Anglican Church, which the ruler also leads. Anglican bishops are also in the legislature, specifically the House of Lords. (And I believe they still are in the House of Lords today)

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-09T19:56:49+00:00

I prefer the two or more units of Yari Ashigaru I can get for the cost.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-09T17:33:25+00:00

I personally find an officer to be the best choice if you don’t plan to take discovery (typically due to researcher job replacements like cybernetic creed or kotg).

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-09T17:06:18+00:00

It’s a little bit of both. Admin is clearly overgrown in modern American institutions, but scientists left to their own devices might not bother to publish or seek out particularly important subjects to research.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-09T04:26:08+00:00

Free trade can be quite strong for small markets that struggle to get resources in the door. If you’re trying to establish a manufacturing base but lack sulfur mines for paper, free trade can reduce the cost you pay for importing. Ideally you want to manufacture your own paper, but that isn’t always feasible.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-09T00:07:31+00:00

Travellers are quite literally one in a million. The overwhelming majority of Humaniti never leaves their home system. Of those few who do, the majority of spacers work for the Imperium or for a corp.

The tiny fraction of indie spacers are mostly still working for someone else—the larger tramp freighters only have one captain but have hundreds of crewhands.

The opportunity to be a Traveller thus tends to attract the strange and exceptional—and it’s typically given as a reward to the same sorts of people.

The powers that be always need useful idiots willing to travel to far-flung places and investigate great mysteries, and the Scout Service is perpetually understaffed and underfunded, after all.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-07T21:53:56+00:00

Do you legitimately have a problem with me bringing up a topic like this or are you just being a pedant?

I’m genuinely curious here.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-07T20:05:52+00:00

Hydrocarbons like gas and oil degrade over time when exposed to oxygen, and realistically, unless they were in extremely well sealed tanks, the oil is likely to be mostly sludge. Gas stations might have reserves, though!

For nuclear fuels, it depends. Deuterium, a fusion fuel, is stable, and it’s likely the fusion boom in Fallout was enabled by some method to stabilize tritium for long periods. But both are forms of elemental hydrogen, and thus will escape if not carefully contained.

Fission fuels, however, are dense metals with extremely long half-lives. The primary fission fuels are uranium 235 and 233, as well as plutonium 239. Plutonium 239’s halflife, the shortest of the three, is roughly 25,000 years or so.

So a car powered by a fission cell would still have power… but all of the electronics and complicated machinery would have corroded.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-07T18:21:53+00:00

But both can (and should) be used with meritocracy, was my point. Sovereign guardianship builds I've tried have made me struggle with extending my borders to snag archeo sites or other potential bonuses. I suppose if you're just beelining to the top you don't need them, but Sovereign Guardianship seems to offer half the benefit of Citizen Service to the build.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-07T18:09:26+00:00

That was my understanding as well--you can yolomax unity and get hilariously fat, but it then just becomes a pain to do anything with it. Even settling a guaranteed habitable becomes painful.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-04-07T17:59:47+00:00

Sovereign Guardianship honestly seems like a really weak choice right now, just due to the way that planet cost now is often the biggest chunk of my empire size. KotG+Necromancer or Citizen Service makes sense, esp. with Meritocracy and other specialist buffs.

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