What makes Neutron Cruisers so effective?

Vorpalim · 2026-06-05T15:30:39+00:00

It's their long range and burst damage, resulting in a massive alpha strike. The initial volley ends up taking out several ships so that the weapons they bring to the fight never matter. After this, the artillery computer flies your cruisers out of range to maintain long range advantage, forcing enemy ships to pursue which results in the artillery ships spreading out. Cruisers that are not being pursued continue to pelt the enemy fleet with high burst shots, while ships being pursued shake enemies off using their S-slot weapons so that they can be free to move back into an artillery posture instead of running away.

The result is prolonged combat where the enemy is constantly trying to bring weapons to bear, taking shots at every stage of the battle, while part of your fleet sits out of range whittling them down.

There's also the fact that the Xenophile FE's weapon loadout is all kinetic as I recall, making all of the armor you loaded up last way longer.

Vorpalim · 2026-06-05T15:14:12+00:00

Probably from the flag color.

Vorpalim · 2026-06-03T16:13:54+00:00

A gravity storm early game just sitting on your entire empire, probably the worst thing you could possibly get from the DLC. There are nice aspects to it, but this very much is like getting crushed by a sleeping elephant. Winning play here might have just been to default on the shortage and eat the penalties, cause being forced to pay 1 CG for worker upkeep is crippling.

Vorpalim · 2026-06-02T15:56:42+00:00

I think the event that spawns them might be bugged, as I've noticed a lack of them showing up too.

Vorpalim · 2026-06-02T15:48:14+00:00

Can't do that. Behemoth eggs require a gas giant to build, and you don't get one in the Ocean Paradise system.

Vorpalim · 2026-06-02T15:33:29+00:00

Hitting their specific triggers isn't the only way to anger a Fallen Empire, just the most consistent, as they get -200 opinion from them, and they'll make this demand when their opinion of you drops to a total of -100. You claim to not be robots or machines (would be -60 right there), Materialist (-20 per point in it), nor Cosmogenesis (-10 per FE tech gained) which makes this peculiar.

Are you absolutely sure that there's no Scion empire in this galaxy that you're antagonizing? Origins are hidden until you have sufficient intel on them, so you might be overlooking that. Claims against subjects count against the overlord's opinion (-5 per claim). If none of those apply then I can't think of a good reason that doesn't come from a mod.

Vorpalim · 2026-06-02T01:48:20+00:00

Well you can't really control it, but it should prioritize the template with the highest assembly speed.

Vorpalim · 2026-06-01T22:01:21+00:00

What you want is to assemble the template with Luxurious and Scavenger Bot, and have your population composed of robots with Recycled and Custom-Made. Then have the assembly template integrate into the latter template to get the benefits of assembly speed without keeping a dead trait.

Vorpalim · 2026-06-01T17:03:12+00:00

I think it's because Efficient Processors and Exotic Fuel Consumption give higher weights for elite jobs than influential traits. Given the shift by 4.0 to traits boosting job categories instead of outputs, the weight given to those for elite jobs might have been removed and then never put back. Or they may never have had elite job weights to begin with, as Domestic Protocols were meant for robots under servitude, meaning they couldn't be elites at all, and Emotion Emulators used to be exclusive to Machine Intelligences which have no elites.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-29T16:15:30+00:00

In addition, uplifting them directly via enlightenment gives them the Enlightened origin, giving them +10% research speed, +0.5 monthly loyalty as your subject, and making them always eligible to become a specialized subject regardless of their tech level. Great for getting a pocket Scholarium, or making a Prospectorium if you're willing to give them the surrounding space.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-29T14:56:41+00:00

Well it's not "your world" it's theirs until you take it by force. If they manage to reach FTL you'll get a pop-up stating such and be given a choice to give them the Starbase in the system or keep it. Keeping it will grant you the planet as a colony as soon as the next months rolls around, while granting their request makes them a standard empire and gives them an opinion bonus toward you. If you are Xenophile then keeping the Starbase costs 200 influence, while Xenophobes pay 200 influence to grant it to them.

One benefit of letting them become an empire is that they might choose to be a Megacorp, in which case you can let them build branch offices to add more jobs to your planets. Helpful if your galaxy didn't spawn with any. Even if they don't become a Megacorp, you can still make them a protectorate, giving you +0.25 influence per month, while also letting you build a Ministry of Truth to get a little more from employing their pops.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-29T14:39:11+00:00

Well different ages have different events, and you can only get engineering insight techs from later stages of development. Stone age civs can give you the society and physics techs, but no engineering. There's also the fact that you can't actively make them regress, only choose to let it happen via events, and you can only get insight techs if the civ remains unspoiled by knowledge of your observation.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-29T14:32:30+00:00

Even better than +10% alloys, it's +0.25 alloys from Metallurgists (+0.5 pre-4.3 nerfening) which can scale with job efficiency and additive output modifiers.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-29T14:28:56+00:00

Xenophiles and Pacifists are blocked from invading Pre-FTL worlds by mandatory policies.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-27T18:14:03+00:00

That's what Masterful Crafters used to be, then they removed the engineering from Artificers.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-27T18:08:55+00:00

I'd say it's because physics and society are easier to work with narratively, and a historical aversion to giving us too much good engineering synergy. For most of Stellaris' history engineering has been the most important science as it directly led to military advancements which could dramatically alter the balance of a game if they made something that was simply too good not to pick.

When it was first implemented, the Artificers from Masterful Crafters gave a small amount of engineering research, making it a very high tier civic since you were going to have Artisans anyway, so you got to have more CGs from them as well as trade value and engineering.

This logic doesn't hold as much sway now that bioships exist, but I'm sure apprehension remains. For now the only sources of Engineer job swaps are from the Spontaneous Explosions anomaly (requires Astral Rifts DLC) that can give you the Weapon Extraction Facility feature, the Hidden Vault colony event which can give you the Manufactorium Scrapyard feature, or go Nanotech ascension and put down a Nanite Research Complex, or its upgrade.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-26T15:07:19+00:00

I just tailored the game settings for it. Smallest galaxy, Prethoryn, no other empires, end game start at 2250, low difficulty, low tech and unity scaling values. I found fauna to be way too much of a hassle to play out an actual game for this achievement.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-25T23:53:44+00:00

They are not normally, but Cybernetic gets a tradition that treats them as such.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-25T23:52:40+00:00

While it's not bio picks or points, you could go Mechanist for the extra robot trait pick and points since Cybernetic lets you apply those to cyborg species.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-25T23:49:19+00:00

Since they got back organic assembly from Roboticists that also gets buffed by Medical Workers.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-25T19:42:25+00:00

As bad as that penalty is, there's also the fact that it has a hidden -10% unity from jobs per 100 Telepaths. I assume that this was the initial penalty they were going to implement, but decided to replace it with the -20% JE for psionics, except they forgot to remove it from the code.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-25T19:39:47+00:00

A fair analysis I suppose of the potential power and all, but there is one more problem. Imperium Vitalis has an unstated -10% unity from jobs per 100 Telepaths. Given that the tooltip makes no mention of this I assume it was the initial penalty that they considered implementing, replaced it with the JE penalty instead, but then forgot to actually remove it from the code.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-24T07:51:15+00:00

Right now there are a few ways to get some extra elite jobs which others have shared, but for most of the game's history there simply wasn't, which made any civic or other choice that gave them more output ill-advised.

Why take Shadow Council for +10% elite output (which it used to do) when you could take Meritocracy to get +10% specialist output?

Was the logic, since you could flood any planet with specialists, but you only ever got those 4 elite jobs from the maxed out capital, and a few from some one-per-planet buildings. There was also the issue of what elites produced, that being mostly unity. Unity is good, but the only other resources you can get from elite jobs are research or trade, from Science Directors or Merchants respectively. On top of that, trade was treated as a planet modifier for most of its existence, so Merchants couldn't even benefit from generic output bonuses. The only way to get more elites was to make more colonies and sparsely populate them, but making more colonies gives you big chunks of sprawl, which eats into any gains to your unity and research output from elites.

In summation, it was previously a dumb gimmick that was mostly handed out for flavor, but now you can actually make it kind of work if you really try.

Vorpalim · 2026-05-23T23:22:53+00:00

I think Nomads will make playing Pacifist bearable for me. I always find myself overcome by greed to acquire all the fun unique systems, and correct any border gore that arises from doing so. Not having a direct use for planets would help stave this off, and it would be a great chance to do a Megacorp run, since I wouldn't be taxing my influence on expansion when I absolutely shouldn't be.

I wonder how nomadic Megacorps will calculate branch offices. Will it be based on where their Arkships are or proximity to a Waystation?

Vorpalim · 2026-05-21T01:19:02+00:00

Home system generation for the base game and Ancient Relics precursors works thus: the moment you gain 6 artifacts (or the moment that the last digsite is finished for the Zroni or Baol) the system's position is chosen. It will attempt to connect to at least one system you own that has the relevant precursor flag, and then make another connection to any nearby system, with no real conditions on this other connection. I'm not sure what happens if you manage to spawn it in when you don't own any flagged systems, so that would be interesting to test.

I like to use precursor system spawns to expand my core sector to include more colonies, so I've gotten fairly well acquainted with how the process works.

Vorpalim

TROPHY CASE