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[Rolan7]

The bonuses from "leveling up" a federation are pretty nice, but the rate of growth is static (when you're at maximum cohesion, which usually be the case) so it pays to form a federation early, or even join an existing one.  This is the power of the federation origins which otherwise seem like a waste of your local habitable worlds.  The trade federation's bonuses are particularly sweet, and it unlocks a unique trade policy that gives you the CG *and* the unity!

I don't know exactly which parts are locked behind the DLC, but I'm pretty sure several of the wacky origins like Void Dwellers are.  I love playing a habitat-based empire, though I always end up settling friendly xenos on a lot of planets as well.  I should do a *pure* habitat run sometime though - by stationing the habitats at resource deposits you unlock pretty good mining/generator/research districts, and I think the origin boosts all your hydroponics workers.  Trade benefits since you can mostly place the habitats within your home system's collection range.

Oh, speaking of collection range - I just noticed that hyperlane registrars increase trade collection range by 1!  That means a range of 7 for a fully upgraded station)!  That means systems 8 jumps out can be collected without any piracy at all (the trade station goes *adjacent* your capital system and still doesn't generate piracy since there's no route passing *through* a system).  Upgrading a starbase in a system with colonies ruins this, though.  The local starbase insists on collecting the trade and generating a route, even if it has no trade posts and the system was already being collected.  Bah.  (Obviously in the late-game, gateways let you get that piracy-free collection zone throughout the galaxy, but you still don't want starbases in colony systems.  Unless you reaaaaally want the deep space black site module I guess.)

[MrRoboto75]

IIRC most of the free (at least not federation) origins were the old start-altering civics, like life seeded and such.

[Telgin]

The bonuses from "leveling up" a federation are pretty nice, but the rate of growth is static (when you're at maximum cohesion, which usually be the case) so it pays to form a federation early, or even join an existing one.  This is the power of the federation origins which otherwise seem like a waste of your local habitable worlds.  The trade federation's bonuses are particularly sweet, and it unlocks a unique trade policy that gives you the CG *and* the unity!

I always tech hard so take this with a grain of salt, but the research federation's bonuses are pretty crazy too.  If I remember right you can get +60% research speed from it, though some of that only applies during crises.

[Dunamisdeos]

The bonuses from "leveling up" a federation are pretty nice, but the rate of growth is static (when you're at maximum cohesion, which usually be the case) so it pays to form a federation early, or even join an existing one.  This is the power of the federation origins which otherwise seem like a waste of your local habitable worlds.  The trade federation's bonuses are particularly sweet, and it unlocks a unique trade policy that gives you the CG *and* the unity!

I always tech hard so take this with a grain of salt, but the research federation's bonuses are pretty crazy too.  If I remember right you can get +60% research speed from it, though some of that only applies during crises.

Holy fuck lol I want that XD

[Paul]

Not sure if it still works as it has been a few versions since I played, but you could actually kick and force vassalize one of the fed members and then conquer the other. You keep the federation and its bonuses, get two home worlds, and you don't have to compete with the other fed member. I did it in a multiplayer game once before and pissed off my friends because it let me snowball so much faster than them.

[Dunamisdeos]

I just discovered that I can't conquer primitives and immediately send them to my core worlds.

!!!!╰(°Д°)╯!!!!!

!!!! (ノ°Д°)ノ︵ ┻━┻


EDIT:
Why the fuck would I conquer primitives only to wait like a fukkin' decade before they have any use whatsoever? This is ass lol

[MrRoboto75]

I just discovered that I can't conquer primitives and immediately send them to my core worlds.

!!!!╰(°Д°)╯!!!!!

!!!! (ノ°Д°)ノ︵ ┻━┻


EDIT:
Why the fuck would I conquer primitives only to wait like a fukkin' decade before they have any use whatsoever? This is ass lol

I think that change came with necroids, as their origin hands you a bunch of primies to eat/convert into geckos or something.

[Dunamisdeos]

I just discovered that I can't conquer primitives and immediately send them to my core worlds.

!!!!╰(°Д°)╯!!!!!

!!!! (ノ°Д°)ノ︵ ┻━┻


EDIT:
Why the fuck would I conquer primitives only to wait like a fukkin' decade before they have any use whatsoever? This is ass lol

I think that change came with necroids, as their origin hands you a bunch of primies to eat/convert into geckos or something.

How the hell do you even get xeno slaves now? Wait to buy off the market?

[Duuvian]

Goodluck with that, I tried a Despoilers empire a few DLC releases ago and slaves are bought up off the market by the AI almost as soon as they appear. I did capture a whole bunch of pops once over the course of a short border war when I forgot about a patrol fleet I had taken off pirate patrol and set to raid for slaves to try it out and then was distracted by the main fleet blowing stuff up. I think it was a primitive planet they had uplifted.

EDIT: Is it me, or do non corvettes go obsolete late game because corvette evasion is the only thing keeping ships alive against the big guns of the late game? Maybe I don't build them right.

I dislike having big gun ships that can shoot halfway across the system but the ranges on the fire controls are either too close by being well within the big gun range or too far at carrier range. It makes them vulnerable and they can't get anywhere near the evasion cap like corvettes can easily. Even Destroyers, which are close to the cap, seem frail.

EDIT2: Is there a way to turn off this popup? Other than managing populations better, that's a PITA

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Rolan7]

That freakin popup is one of the biggest reasons I usually go egalitarian.  Utopian Abundance prevents it from occurring (while also making all those unemployed pops modestly productive).  Not the most universal advice, I know, but from what I've seen it's either that or halting pop growth on a per-planet basis - which obviously sucks for various reasons.  IIRC you can't restrict apply species-wide population controls to your "primary" species, but I could be wrong.  Even freakin gestalts have to deal with unemployment popups - why are robot drones expensive and micromanag-y to warehouse??

I'm pretty sure Social Welfare isn't sufficient to prevent the popup, though the pops are otherwise content and give a little Unity.  There's lategame habitat/ringworld spam, but natural migration doesn't occur nearly fast enough to keep the unemployed from piling up.
As for corvettes...!  Haha, I am probably so bad at the combat in this game.  These are my two types of fleets:

A horde of corvettes. 
Pros:   Fast to move, low-latency to produce en masse, anti-piracy bonus, seem to trade favorably against equally "sized" fleets due to natural evasion and accuracy.  Powerful weapons inefficiently "overkill" them, if they manage to hit
Cons:  More likely to get destroyed.  Enemy ships get a chance to retreat with every hit after their hull is damaged enough, which means most of them will escape the thousand-cuts
They seem ideal for capturing systems and "pushing back" enemy fleets, particularly with an alloy surplus

A mass of battleships
Pros: Bigass guns inflict losses on the enemy fleet, and low-accuracy long-range attacks are effective against starbases.  Much less dependent on reinforcements, particularly with some form of regenerative armor or an engineer admiral.
Cons: They just aren't as effective as corvettes.  Painfully slow.
So, great for stomping non-threats or for neutralizing star fortresses with less hassle, though the speed is annoying.  Helps to have a gateway system up.

I'm sure these simplistic tactics would get me destroyed in multiplayer, heh!  Like, I don't typically use PD, and tend to use shields, so presumably a fleet that goes HAM on missiles would wipe my corvettes out.  Maybe corvette-clearing destroyers and cruisers are a thing, but the AI likes to diversify with a torpedo and PD and stuff.  I dunno though...  Sometimes I do put a PD on.  It's a significant decrease in damage, but it's funny to watch ALL the enemy missiles get shot down.  Probably worthwhile in a war I'm already winning.

The big question is what's effective against the end-game factions.  I don't get there very often, the micro gets to be a lot even with Utopian Abundance.  Using federations and/or vassalizing helps a lot with reducing my burden as a player, though sometimes that's a bit trickier than simply conquering is.

Not sure if it still works as it has been a few versions since I played, but you could actually kick and force vassalize one of the fed members and then conquer the other. You keep the federation and its bonuses, get two home worlds, and you don't have to compete with the other fed member. I did it in a multiplayer game once before and pissed off my friends because it let me snowball so much faster than them.

I bet it works!  It sounds tricky to me, doing an invasion so early game, but I guess it's worth it for the pops and the second homeworld having good districts.  I'm sure federation cohesion takes a serious hit   But that's still faster than working up the Diplomacy tradition.

I still giggle whenever I see the empire I formed this trade federation with.  Totally Independent Bank, a 2-system sector released for tax purposes, then invited by us Tavurite Free Traders into the Intergalactic Free Traders.  No creative bookkeeping/rebranding going on here    (Protip though:  Trade collection auras don't extend through allied territory, only trade lanes.  So I kinda goofed there - but soon Gateways will fix all that!)

The amazing thing is that they (and a third member) voted to let me use my diplomatic weight for decisions.  I only had to call in one favor... an extremely profitable investment!

[Telgin]

I can confirm that the social welfare living standard doesn't prevent the unemployment popup and attendant problems.  I don't often play egalitarians, so I usually resort to disabling population growth on planets, which I think is what the devs intended despite the fact that it's a real handicap compared to resettling pops to other planets.  That's way too much micro for me so I don't bother.

The updates to pop growth and migration in the next major patch will be very welcome.

[Great Order]

If you get the "better than ourselves" worker's rights senate proposal through, it gives you an empire edict that forcibly resettles unemployed pops to planets that have jobs free in your empire.

I've had it once, and that one time it was insanely useful. Not only does it mean you don't have to worry about resettling, but your colonies develop super fast on account of the excess pops in your empire automatically moving to them.

[Dunamisdeos]

I just turn off population growth on planets that reach the level I want them to be at, resettle the one or two that went over, etc

[MrRoboto75]

I just turn off population growth on planets that reach the level I want them to be at, resettle the one or two that went over, etc

I understand the micromanagement avoidance, but why not take advantage of multiple planets worth of pop growth to grow those border planets even faster.

[Telgin]

Having a few dedicated pop producing planets does make sense, and if I ever really try to minmax a game I'll probably try it unless the next version comes out first.  Seems like one way I could get strong enough to fight the 25x crisis myself, but the 10x crisis is a little dicey if the Contingency rolls up so I'm not sure I'll be trying it any time soon...

If you get the "better than ourselves" worker's rights senate proposal through, it gives you an empire edict that forcibly resettles unemployed pops to planets that have jobs free in your empire.

I've had it once, and that one time it was insanely useful. Not only does it mean you don't have to worry about resettling, but your colonies develop super fast on account of the excess pops in your empire automatically moving to them.

Warning: it'll also ruin buildings on your planets if you don't have buffer pops and you don't really have any way to stop it once it's turned on.  Found this out the hard way.

It works well for egalitarians who have significant overpopulation and room to expand, though, I agree.