Modded ship scaling until I found something that really moistened my bones. Colony ships are as large as battleships to represent how a colonizing endeavour would require a great deal of effort. Science ships the size of a cruiser because though they have small crews, they gotta keep all that science somewhere (and evidently through events, science ships are large enough to hold rows and rows of specimens and other crap). Corvettes are the smallest, serving as a nice frame of reference for other stuff. Destroyers twice as large as corvettes, cruisers three times as large and then battleships roll in in the late game to make all the other ships feel inadequate. Then the dreadnought in the back shows up
compensating for- bringing batteries of mega-strength artillery and lances, which is very much needed since all the giant guardians have been made larger and 10x as beefy. Also having massive warships helps soak up AI navy count so they don't spam a billion corvettes
Hilariously with console commands you can take control of guardians. Given that I had also buffed them, in effect this mode of Stellaris was like playing as godzilla in the galactic playground, burninating civilizations who dared to stand opposed to you. Unfortunately the guardians would auto-move to their guarding sites, so they couldn't wipe out any civilizations - only wreck their fleets and spaceports.
Didn't stop me from summoning all the space amoebas into one massive amoeba armada. Hilariously they automoved throughout the galaxy, presumably looking for space cows, annihilating all in their way without any input from me.
After editing heavy orbital bombardments to be more lethal, on occasion I would see the aftermath of AI Empire wars that were rather intriguing - this one rattled my bones, imagining a world that was so heavily devastating by orbital bombardment that all its inhabitants were long since dead, the only survivors being a colony of droids trying to serve dead masters, unsure what to do without command.
This world I had begun orbital bombarding, when I realized that actually this world was worth observing so I halted temporarily. The planet was ruled by a master-class of genetically engineered bird scientists, ruling over billions of slaves. Once my legions destroyed the garrisoning army, and upon the end of the war, the slaves managed to overcome the sole master pop in armed insurrection
I was doing a fanatical purifier run with some spehss miroslavs when unexpectedly a war in heaven interrupted my campaigns. All of the major core world Empires united into a third party faction, which promptly wiped the floor with the awakened Empires, absorbing all their subject Empires into a horrifyingly large federation. Upon the victory of this galactic federation, I wanted to ensure the federation would crumble or at least not pose a threat to my galactic conquest efforts, so I turned all of my battleshipyards towards the construction of the diplomatic immunity class battleship. It was cheap, didn't have weapons, armour, shields or even any way to leave its solar system, and I built as many as I could while president, all under the banner of the federation. The result was that the federation navy cap was full of these pieces of shit
Also there's a glitch where you can spam click a research project and cause it to "finish" but still remain, allowing you to further spam click. With enough spam clicks on certain projects, one planet minor runs turn into one-planet-holy-exterminatus-POWEROVERWHELMING
Accidentally summoned an extradimensional starworm which tried to trap my species in a timeloop and eat my sun. Luckily when it arrived I had extradimensional avatars of the shroud to fight back
That awkward moment when two armadas warp either side of one another but can't attack or alter course because of different warp drives and cooldowns
I upgraded the accuracy of minefields, which actually made them useful - they could clear out corvettes and even destroyers given enough time, and were very useful in wearing down the shields of large fleet blobs. The minefields would then rather naturally become obsolete as better shielded cruisers and battleships came onto the field, and the minefield simply wouldn't deal near enough damage to make a noticeable difference. Nonetheless, on a hyperdrive only galaxy, I managed to block off two spiral arms for 300 years simply by spamming outposts which had no weapons but only minefields. The enemy would jump in, get bogged down by ungodly levels of mineposts, and keep attacking them until their shields would run out - then they'd emergency jump away, taking 25% hull damage, requiring starport repairs. Thus while the minefields didn't kill much, they were hilarious, cheap as hell and wasted so much time, I loved em. Goes without saying I modded the construction radius somewhat
This doesn't look like much, but there's a story behind it. In the same game where I built that horrifying minefield, my fleets and armies struck west while the mineposts kept the east at bay. I managed to overcome a technocratic frog empire to the west, but was unable to hold the large planets from the subsequent unrest, and they all gained independence one by one. To explain why they had so much unrest, well, I was exterminating them in a different way to the usual. Under the galactic Empire of "Feel Good Inc.", I would conquer some xenos, genetically engineer them to be continental environmentalists, then pump them full of so many drugs they forgot how to reproduce and died out after a century or so. They were happy as fuck during the whole process too, hence Feel Good Inc. - with the added bonus that over time I could begin terraforming their planet, transferring colonist pops to their intact infrastructure. Problem was, this was eating up loads of minerals, which wasn't an issue until the unbidden arrived and I had to swap out this careful, cautious approach with a more direct one (which caused unrest). This was rather embarrassing as before they gained independence I transported miroslav pops to their planets, meaning I lost control of my main species pops to either my enemy or to new independent empires. One such planet was made entirely of synths + 1 miroslav pop, which became independent under a new miroslav republic. This republic continued my policy of destroying all synths, when they were given an offer by a fallen Empire to transfer one pop to their xenos reserve. This fallen empire saw this tiny republic wedged between two superpowers and realized the xenos on it would likely be destroyed, thus they offered to transfer one pop to their reserve in order to ensure that species did not die in the subsequent crossfire. However this was that empire's only species pop, thus as it disappeared, only the synths were left. As the destruction of the synths continued, eventually they all died and the faction disappeared entirely, leaving behind only an empty planet - and one miroslav pop on a xenos reserve far away, on the other side of the galaxy.
After an unbidden incursion cleared the path for me, I was at last able to send my Red Banner Armada to the Fallen Empire in question in order to get my damn Miroslav pops back. Every single one of those grey dots is an enemy fighter or bomber, needless to say I did not expect the fallen empire to field so many carriers. It was a painful time, but eventually they were overcome and the pop in question rescued, though the rescue attempt did turn the fallen empire into an awakened empire
I modded army units a bit, most significantly being defence armies. I made defence armies about 500% more beefy, but with the same standard morale, with the whole idea being that defenders have all the resources and time of their planet at their disposal, while launching an extragalactic invasion is one hell of a logistical challenge. Thus there are three ways to overcome such formidable defences: Destroy their morale with psi troops or gene warriors, destroy them with overwhelming force from gene warriors, xeno hordes or droid armies, or simply swamp them in masses of assault troops, clone legions and so on.
[Flight of the valkyries intensifies]
So yeah this planet got invaded by around three hundredish clone legions with 50 psi trooper legions and one shroud avatar
Aesthetic battle versus one of the upscaled guardians
More aesthetics
First time ever seeing a human fallen Empire o_O
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Topic: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE (Read 1740965 times)