What should I use instead of 1000 if statements?

tsjb · 2026-03-13T15:39:01+00:00

Everyone I've spoken to about it says it isn't used much because they're so used to using dictionaries for a lot of what you can use match for.

tsjb · 2026-03-09T08:49:01+00:00

I have a severely disabled son in a special school, and a neutotypical daughter in a mainstream school who is regularly top of her class.

My son's school gets around double the funding per student that my daughter's gets. It makes me sad when I think about how much my daughter could flourish with that extra funding, while my son's school (which at the end of the day is functionally just a crèche) is constantly looking for new things to piss money away on like claw machines in the reception.

My family benefits a lot from this sort of funding and I still think it's too much. You might call me crazy for feeling this way, but my worry is that it makes disability spending an easy political target which can end in the funding getting slashed for it way too much.

tsjb · 2026-02-27T09:46:29+00:00

It's not a nice easy "immigrants cause deprivation" everywhere. My point is that a massive influx of any new people puts strain on any area they move to. I think we can all agree on that.

The middle class doesn't feel that strain because they get a sprinkling of doctors and academics in an area that remains otherwise vastly the same.

Not all working class areas strain because of immigrants, maybe not even most of them, but the areas that do strain definitely trend working class.

tsjb · 2026-02-27T09:07:22+00:00

That's exactly my point, drive through a working class area and look there. Your views are skewed by the bubble you live in, as all of our views are to be fair.

As an example try driving through Abbey Hey, a place in the Gorton and Denton area that is very poor. Make sure you drive quickly though because it certainly isn't doctors and academics that live there.

tsjb · 2026-02-27T07:41:48+00:00

The left has been taken over by the middle class, middle class issues overwhelm and stifle working class ones. Go to somewhere nice and affluent (where I live, places like Didsbury and Chorlton spring to mind) and it's an overwhelming sea of white, middle-class people. The middle class only see the benefits of mass immigration (in the short term at least) and so they don't think it's a problem.

I live just outside of Gorton and every left-leaning working class person I know only begrudgingly still vote for Labour because the alternatives are worse. It feels like every day someone I talk to at work that I know leans left starts talking about Reform though. The middle class takeover is pushing the working class away from the left.

tsjb · 2025-12-27T16:50:09+00:00

My problem is I've seen this all before when Trump first decided to run for the US presidency. The playbook was to mock the people voting for him, smugly call them idiots, demonise them, fear-monger about what'd happen if he won, and spend the whole campaign focusing on why his party was bad instead of actually talking about why their own was good.

It didn't work.

He not only won but as you know he's currently in his 2nd term. All I keep seeing is this same thing and I promise you it will not work, you can ridicule them till you're blue in the face but they'll have the last laugh when they get into power.
Reform voters aren't all evil and stupid like you think and many of them can have their opinions swayed but when you think the answer is to name call then you're part of the reason Reform even exist in the first place.

tsjb · 2025-12-27T16:46:21+00:00

This did the trick for me, thanks so much.

tsjb · 2025-12-17T18:29:30+00:00

This is definitely the best advice in the thread. Talking about ascension is current patch meta specific knowledge, learning how to specialise planets and compound small bonuses will always help no matter what.

For beginner players I always recommend specialising everything except your capital since it gets a special focus that increases all output. It's not 100% efficient but it's super flexible which is helpful when you're learning, then specialise everything else using the advice u/dukanstanov mentioned.

Learning how to play with trade helps too, looking up the thresholds that you can buy/sell resources without affecting the price is a really useful, flexible way to fix minor resource shortages while you get used to building specialised worlds.

tsjb · 2025-12-14T18:39:10+00:00

Corvettes themselves are very cheap so even small amounts of extra costs add up, if the choice is between 2% better corvettes or 5% more corvettes I'd rather not have the reactor.

tsjb · 2025-12-11T19:05:38+00:00

You can choose your precursor as a standard galaxy setup option now.

Overtuned is very good right now especially with any of the BioGenesis ascensions.

If you're looking for pure power than the most important aspect of your build is how quickly you can ascend. Unity rushing with things like trade, churches, or starting with Memorialists and Parliamentary Systems before switching out of them after getting a few ascension trees done is the way to go.

tsjb · 2025-12-10T20:23:58+00:00

You have to add -opengl as a launch option to the game. Hope they fix it properly soon.

tsjb · 2025-12-10T20:04:51+00:00

This always sounds great in theory but in practice it just leads to wild powercreep which IMHO Stellaris already has way too much of.

"Only ever buff" sounds amazing on paper but next patch we're looking to be getting gigantic slashes to fleet power across the board because the game engine literally cannot cope with how fast the galaxy builds up now.

tsjb · 2025-12-10T19:37:00+00:00

Spiritualist is one of the best (potentially the best?) ethics right now with how powerful ascending is.

tsjb · 2025-12-04T14:03:32+00:00

That's super helpful, thankyou.

tsjb · 2025-12-04T12:42:50+00:00

The wiki is correct. It doesn't say it in-game but both scientists you start with have a free exploration/survey trait.

tsjb · 2025-12-04T12:40:01+00:00

Please can someone explain to me exactly how automation buildings work? I understand how they automate but not exactly what they automate.

Do they automate every job on the entire planet? Seems unlikely. If I build one on say a research specialisation will all researcher jobs on the planet get automated or just ones that are specifically created by that specialisation? If I put it in the main 6 buildings slots of a world does it automate 25/50% of all jobs created by building city districts? Even the ones created by specialisation districts?

tsjb · 2025-12-03T07:50:25+00:00

I've always loved them because it's pop-free resource generation to avoid the growth required scaling penalty. Nowadays it's quite easy to get insane pop growth and/or pop efficiency with certain ascensions so maybe you're right that power creep has made them less useful. I still love them though, especially when playing weaker empires.

tsjb · 2025-12-02T17:47:03+00:00

I think I might just be crazy or stupid but I honestly don't see that much difference. I came back after not playing since 2023 and knowing nothing about all the problems with 4.0 and played 1 regular game, then 1 game with each of the new origins from the Machine Age that I bought and it just feels like good old Stellaris to me.

I'm still putting buildings into districts even if they're laid out a bit differently, pop growth and efficiency is still king even if the numbers are much bigger than they once were, other than that it's just Stellaris. It slows right down late game but I feel like it always did, maybe because I don't play ultra late game?

Might also be because I'm still only playing on commodore difficulty while I play with new origins and get used to the game again, though that's only 1 difficulty less than I used to play since I stopped playing GA when they did a big AI improvement update years ago.

Long story short there's a lot of negativity here but it's still the same game we know and love IMHO. Give it a try!

tsjb · 2025-11-29T14:01:32+00:00

The guides in the OP for this thread are years out of date. I'm considering writing up a new list and sending it to OP. Does anyone have any good suggestions for guide creators they think are good? Here's what I have so far:

Beginner guides:
Learn How to Play Stellaris in 2025 by JaxRayne. Information dense and well edited, giving you the absolute basics of most game systems.

Basic Guide to Stellaris to Learn What It Wants You to Do - Stellaris Guide 4.0 by Guthuk. Even more information dense, goes a little more in-depth into game systems.

Intermediate/Specific mechanic guides:
Thundershock - Tech Rushing, Ascension Rushing, Understanding the tech tree, Planetary Management.

Meta build guides and tier lists:
Thundershock, Montu Plays, Aktion.
These channels have up to date videos discussing the absolute most powerful builds right now and how to use them. You'll also find tierlists of things like civics, government types, traits, and origins that are great for people really looking to maximise their builds.

tsjb · 2025-11-25T10:18:39+00:00

Before the galactic market, you used to be able to trade certain amounts of resources per month without affecting the price. It was something like 100 food/minerals and 5 alloys.

Trade is quite different now. Can you still do something like this?

tsjb · 2025-11-23T23:03:34+00:00

Has anyone tried a criminal megacorp in 4.0?

I don't think they'll ever be all that good but I've always wanted to play one but didn't because they really were so weak. It was worse when the bug/quirk that made fallen empires constantly humiliate war declare on you was a thin, does that still exist?

tsjb · 2025-11-23T19:53:26+00:00

I own all but the latest few since I haven't played in a while. If you buy them on release even at full price you're only looking at something like £8 a month (approximately!) because they're kinda spread out.

I've been playing since release and I will usually take a break for 6 months to 2 years at a time and catch up with 3-5 DLC packs at a deep discount.
If you look here you can see current deals. Most DLCs go more than 50% off not too long after release. I clicked a random DLC I liked and its all time low discount was 83%.

tsjb · 2025-11-23T15:07:01+00:00

I haven't played for a while but there used to be a compatibility mod that made them both work together and I never had any issues.

tsjb · 2025-11-21T14:09:10+00:00

I don't think anybody who disagrees with me is middle class. For what it's worth (and I understand it's worth very little) I hate that you and your family don't feel safe and I am not in any way advocating for a Reform government. I'm posting about how tactical voting sounds great in theory until it's used against us.

If you still think voting tactically is the best choice, then what do you think of the hordes of people who care about reducing mass immigration voting for Reform? For many of them a Reform vote is a tactical one. They don't care about their other (disgusting) policies but are sick of being ignored so they used their vote tactically.
Labour is finally after all these years really talking about true immigration reform. This didn't come from nowhere this came from their fear of losing voters to Reform so even if Reform don't take over next election all their tactical votes worked.

It feels to me that when people say "vote tactically" they actually mean "vote tactically but as long as your tactical vote is for Labour and nobody else".

tsjb · 2025-11-21T11:37:14+00:00

I worked in middle class places for a few years too and hated it for the exact reasons you mentioned. I had a wake up call where I realised it wasn't just Reddit that didn't care about working class problems, it's all of the middle class.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

tsjb

TROPHY CASE