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[pisskop]

I know they nerfed it recently, but Raiders used to be able to get a planet in a couple years

Nothing quite like making off with 40 pops from a capital world to kill your oppenents

p:  I typically play spiritualist, because it plays well into how I play the game. I've been adding machines, robots enter my game, and the pop grow from them is spectacular.

if and when I do cloning or get a budding pop, I can just disassemble the robot station

[Rolan7]

I really like the habitat changes still, and I just noticed that hive minds can start voidborne now!  It's even a little customized for them!  I also ran into a federated hivemind start which confused the metagamer in me a lot at first.

For now I'm playing the base UNE with a single mod that adds a certain alien race.  Mod's SFW, the race is... not.  That mod makes it a bit of a challenge run, on top of some personal challenges Utopian Abundance from the *start* and gene clinics everywhere ASAP.
My UNE (star trek Federation essentially) is offering a democratic alternative to the Affini Compact.  Everyone still enjoys post-scarcity living, plus free gene clinics and cyber-augmentation.  The difference is that all sophonts have an equal voice in government, and are free to live and work wherever they want.

The early game helped set the stage by boxing us behind three aggressive, allied hiveminds.  We only survived by allying with some friendly "Klingons" (Spiritual militants, toxoids) and a distributed silicon-based intelligence.  Together we forged a sector where anyone can be free or, uh, a computer.  The Klingons happily accepted UN governance as long as they get to fight, and the computer is happy to compute (and exchange its research for protection).

From this basis, the UNE (pending rebrand) crusaded for democracy.  Somehow autocracies had made it to the stars, and their citizens cried out for aid.  It went quite well for a while!  Now the galaxy is mostly stabilized into four groups:

The UNE Greater Prosperity Sphere
The Free Information Pact, a powerful but pacifistic federation encircling the core.  Research partners with the UNE, and a steady source of immigrants.
The Meme Zone, a chaotic area where the Eldar fight Clan Snek Cobra.  A small group of servitor robots promise paradise to organic beings, but between the Affini and the UNE, nobody takes them seriously.
The Affini Compact.

Spoiler: Map (click to show/hide)

With superior technology and good intentions, the Affini easily vassalized the Galactic South.  Only the egalitarian Confederation of Juss still has their independence, for now, by signing a military alliance with the Affini.  The equally egalitarian Syldaeans have become battle-thralls, though the "nonviolent" Affini call them a bulwark.  The Andarian star-empire received a... less respectful vassalage, but they're fascists so fuck'm.

It's a pretty nice galaxy, actually.  Other than the Meme Zone getting rescued from itself, this might be a peaceful state of affairs.  Sophonts are treated well in all three serious powers, and 2/3 of them enjoy freedom of movement.  Is this a mythical "good end"?

Well... the Affini's Syldaean "bulwark" has come to the UNE, pleaing for help.  Life under the Affini is wonderful, but it is not free.  Will the UNE come to their aid?
(if we do, space-Italy will join the revolt too because fascists hate being happy.  It's okay- we'll save their citizens from their stupid government as well.)

...

Or... maybe I won't be doing that.

[Sirus]

Hive Minds can start voidborn now, but if I remember correctly machine intelligences still cannot. Paradox is a bunch of cowards, forcing robots to colonize dirty planets instead of living entirely in clean habitats.

[Rolan7]

I guess Resource Consolidation is basically a nice clean habitat
Actually it is weird that machines still can't be voidborn AFAIK.  Originally the problem was that the species was split between three habitats which recently reunited... but that's no longer the case, hence why hives can spread their wings.  Why not robots?  Strange.
I just had a funky diplomacy happen.  Lemme try to recount it:
A system wanted to rebel from a vassal of the Affini
I was in a defensive pact with the Affini
I promised to support the system's independence even though it "could be considered an act of war"
oh gods oh no it was considered an act of war, and I was way too busy to fight Affini and their vassals _{even if I wanted too}
I surrendered, getting Humiliated and obviously returning the system.  To the vassal, looks like.
I lost like 50 trust with the Affini but almost immediately re-signed our defensive pact, phew
...
About a decade later, some spiritualists rebel against the authoritarian vassal of the xenophile Affini
I'm called in to "defend" the overlord because I'm "guaranteeing their independence" (actually it's a defensive pact but ok)
The rebellion only has two systems including the system that joined me before.
The overlord wins easily, but takes one of the systems... and gave me the other!

I loaded an autosave (weird not playing ironman, but this is modded) and I had *10* claims on the system that had temporarily joined me O_o.  And the overlord had a claim on the other rebel system for whatever reason, so they simply took it rather than return it to their vassal.  kinda funny how that works, particularly since I think they were tied with their vassal with 1 claim each.  Weird that it gave me 10, though.

In any case this is perfect because it finally clears the big "distance" malus that was preventing me from federating our thirds of the galaxy together.  Xenophiles my butt...  We were merely one step removed from being hyper-relay linked, in case that would have helped too.
Finally, we can join together in autonomous negotiated harmony <3
(And, I'm hoping, sneak around their civic's denial of migration pacts...)

[Telgin]

On the subject of weird things you can't do, I'm still disappointed that you can't play as non-gestalt robots and am shocked that you still can't play a psionic hivemind.  I mean, for organic hiveminds is it not implied that's how they even work?

Anyway, my last game was a bit humbling at the end game.  I decided to try a pure strike craft + missile ship build to see how it would work, and was stunned when the War in Heaven triggered and the awakened empires absolutely trashed my fleets.  Their fleets were around 700K in power while mine were close to 1M each due to being able to focus on one set of repeatables per science field, but I needed like 4M of my ships to beat one of their fleets.  I accidentally engaged one in a system that nullified shields and lost 6M of my ships to one of their fleets, which only took maybe 50% losses.

It was amazing how much the crisis ships were a pushover by comparison.

Also, on the subject of diplomacy, that game was pretty frustrating on that front too.  I usually play inward perfectionists so this time I decided to play federation builders.  And, of course, nobody wants to be my friend because the game generates empires that hate you to keep the game "interesting."  I ended up having to form a federation with a single system primitive civilization I found that reached the space age.  Which... works, but feels like it's cheating.

[Grim Portent]

On the subject of weird things you can't do, I'm still disappointed that you can't play as non-gestalt robots and am shocked that you still can't play a psionic hivemind.  I mean, for organic hiveminds is it not implied that's how they even work?

The idea is that the Hivemind's version of low level intra-species telepathy isn't the same as the kind that can tap into the Shroud. Same or similar medium, but the method involved is too distinct for one to become the other, though I can't remember the event or phrasing used that makes me think that atm.

Wouldn't be hard to rewrite or write around though, nor would it be the first time they've done it. I think they're paranoid that it'd be unbalanced in some way, same with non-gestalt non-ascended robots.

[Telgin]

I think one of the devs recently said that they wanted to allow psionic hiveminds but hadn't had dev time to do it well yet.  Which makes sense I suppose, since they'd get raked over the coals for releasing something bad, but it's still surprising they haven't done it yet.  I almost expected that they'd do it as part of the next DLC since it looked like it was related to the shroud from the previews, but now that we know it's a more general extradimensional exploration thing it probably won't touch on that.  Guess we'll see what origins and civics they add.

I suspect it's a similar problem with non-gestalt robots, though that feels like a smaller issue to tackle.  They could probably give them similar pop assembly as gestalt robots with everything else being like a normal empire except they use energy instead of food.  Leaders and techs would need work too.  People say it would be unbalanced because of how synths have such big bonuses to everything, but they don't have to give them those traits.  Those could be late game techs like they are for normal empires, even if it would make less logical sense that intelligent and individual robots from one robotic empire are less advanced than those of an organic empire.

[Telgin]

I just had what I think is my most unlucky endgame in Stellaris ever.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I typically play with 5x crisis power and in all crisis mode.  I can comfortably beat that with some challenge, assuming I don't get the Unbidden 50 years early.

If I lose to the crisis, it's almost always because the Unbidden do that, or because I have 3+ L-gates in my space that are impossible to protect against crisis fleets.  I've been turning the L-gates off ever since that option was added to remove that chance, but decided to turn them back on for a change of pace.

Shockingly, I ended up with 2 black holes in my territory and no L-gates, so I thought I was golden.  I had a rough early-to-midgame because I was playing Life-Seeded isolationists, and because of bad tech rolls I didn't even get the much needed World Shaper ascension perk until after 2300, and didn't get cybernetic ascension until after 2360.  The struggles meant I suffered through a couple of costly wars that delayed my economy more, so I was worried I wouldn't make up for it in time for the crisis.

But, I got lucky and didn't get the Unbidden until 2430, so only 20 years early.  My economy was doing pretty well, with +15K science and about +1.5K alloys per month.  I finished the Unbidden off with 3 million fleet power across 10 fleets of mixed kinetic, energy, and carrier battleships.  I thought I was overbuilding for the second crisis even, and way over extended my economy.  I had a ton of fortress worlds to get my naval capacity up so I could get back to positive energy per month.

Then the Contingency spawns.  The second system was my Dyson Sphere.  Immediately go from about +150 energy per month to -3850 per month.  They have 5 million fleet power in the system, so I know I can't fight them directly, but I hope that I can pick off their roaming fleets as they leave, overpower the machine world guardian fleet, and bombard it down in time to reclaim the Dyson sphere bfore my economy becomes totally unsustainable.

Contingency system 3 pops up next to my borders.  Contingency system 4 pops up on the other side of my empire, also on my borders.  Both immediately attack me.

To my shock, my 500K bastion stations fend them off due to the extra range defense platforms get, though I lost all of the platforms.  I can rebuild them later.

I try attacking the roaming fleets in the middle of my empire, only to realize the engagement happens in a system with a pulsar.  No shields + massive damage bonus for the crisis = all of my ships get fried.  I barely manage to destroy half of the Contingency roaming fleets.

I'm left with nothing, a 300K alloy bill to replace them, only 100K alloys in the bank, and no time as the roamers start eating my other systems.

Haven't gotten kicked in the teeth that hard in a very long time in this game.

On the other hand, it was an otherwise unusual game.  I had 8 toxic terraforming candidates in my empire so I took Detox for the first time.  Still a waste because none of the planets got over 10 pops due to how pop growth works in the late game, but whatever.

The astral rifts also turned out to be surprisingly interesting and engaging, but I'm sure they'll end up background noise like most events after I see them a couple of times.

[Ulfarr]

I'm not sure if it'll be useful to anyone but here it goes anyway.

Paradox has dropped win 7 support on stellaris, since version 3.8 or 3.9 (i'm not sure on which one). Of course being professionals (sic) they said nothing about it except for some forum post some time later, when people asked why the game didn't launch. Based on the gog version, the problem lies solely with stellaris/paradox launcher and not with the game itself, which works fine so far (version 3.9.2 no gamebreaking bugs in ~15 hours of multiplayer).


How to keep playing on win7:

Single player:

• Just launch the game directly through "stellaris.exe" (found in the installation folder)

Multiplayer (for while it lasts at least):
 

• Launch the game as above and *try* to login with your paradox account through the ingame menu. Choose the option to remember you.
• If the above doesn't work, ie connection timeout, you'll have to use a win10 pc and log in, via the ingame menu, with your account through that. Choose to remember you! After you log in using the win10 pc, exit the game. Go to Users\Username\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris and find the pdx_login.txt. This file contains the encrypted information for the automatic login. Transfer that file from the win10 pc to win7 (in the corresponding directory). The win7 pc should now be able to connect to paradox's server and host/join games.

All these because stellaris has no LAN support

[Great Order]

If it's on Steam you can try to add --skip-launcher in properties. I know it'll let you skip Larian's game launcher.

[MorleyDev]

Hard to blame them for dropping support, considering Windows 7 support from Microsoft ended in 2020 and it hasn't received security updates in 3 years now for average consumers (or start of this year if you were on ESU). Frankly no internet connected device should still be on Windows 7. And I'd say the default assumption should be anything released after Jan 10th 2020 doesn't support Windows 7 unless explicitly stated otherwise, so I wouldn't have expected anything after 2.5.1 to officially support it.

Stellaris and the launcher both work on Linux via Proton if you don't want to update Windows. You're much better off switching to an actively maintained Linux OS than staying on a dead Windows OS.

[Putnam]

I think we've dropped Vista support by accident, so I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they didn't even know until later.

[Ulfarr]

Hard to blame them for dropping support, considering Windows 7 support from Microsoft ended in 2020 and it hasn't received security updates in 3 years now for average consumers (or start of this year if you were on ESU). Frankly no internet connected device should still be on Windows 7. And I'd say the default assumption should be anything released after Jan 10th 2020 doesn't support Windows 7 unless explicitly stated otherwise, so I wouldn't have expected anything after 2.5.1 to officially support it.

Stellaris and the launcher both work on Linux via Proton if you don't want to update Windows. You're much better off switching to an actively maintained Linux OS than staying on a dead Windows OS.

You are missing the point of my post but it doesn't really matter. 

PS. Gog still has it listed as win7 compatible though that might not be paradox's mistake.

[MorleyDev]

You are missing the point of my post but it doesn't really matter.

I wasn't really deriding your comment, just adding thoughts on Windows 7 support as an idea. Namely, please don't have a Windows 7 machine connected to the internet DMZ that shit at the very least.

[Haspen]

Meanwhile, I'm playing co-op with Solymr and we're currently a totally original, not-mongol warrior horde (warrior culture + barbaric despoilers).

We've already found a trustful, to-be-diplovassalized-later, merchant state right next to our borders. We also found few planets full of primitives so our workforce comes from them, mostly, for rapid development, and we enough planets and galactic arms for ourselves to settle in before we will have to toss our armadas at anyone.

And we also found out that Paradox still haven't fixed an exploit: namely, trait picks for your Leaders are synched, right? But the pick itself only sets in after the 'toast' (popup) message disappears, so you have those 3 seconds' window where you and your coop partner can pick different Traits, be they regular or Veteran traits. Of course, if you pick the same Trait as your coop partner, nothing happens, but usually you have 3 picks to choose from.

We have for example Statistician-Explorer who has 2 levels Roamer, 2 levels Perfectionist and 1 level of Adaptionist, I believe, tossed in - and he is barely lvl4.