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I can't believe there was all this buildup and all that spam for a fleet that starts off weaker than the starter fleet at game start. A lot of events scale, for example the payouts for finishing the precursor at the start compared to finishing it 80 years later. So I figured it would spawn a sizeable fleet, if you thought going 41k fleet strength was a bit much, I had the battleships enroute as well that were lagging behind.
Monumentality is from the planetary wonders mod and buffs those up. Also I may be wrong but I believe adopting this tree is required to unlock the techs for it? Anyways the perks are:
Planetary wonders will provide 5 unity and districts will have their build costs reduced.
Megastructure build speed increased by 15% and planetary build speed increased by 25%
Each planetary wonder provides +3 stability and buildings have their cost reduced by 10%
For each step when a megastructure is concluded there is a payout between 500 and 1500 unity. Also you get +1 megastructure build capacity.
Unlock a decision that removes the 1 district cost for wonders, but you can't build any additional wonders on the planet
Completion lets you build multiple planetary wonders on a planet and it unlocks the wonders beyond ambition edict, which increases upkeep and gives an extra bonus to each wonder.
Deep space stations are the only way to "secure" a wild space sector. These stations have a ship designer so you can pimp them out and you can only build 1 per sector. Oh and they provided an FTL inhibitor.
There are several ways to make another empire serve under you, and with each request you can get a CB to force the other empire into serving under you. Vassalization is the only one that will let you integrate with them later one. There is protectorate which gives them bonuses to researching any tech you have and when they 50% of your tech then they become vassals. Which never happens, ever. Tributaries will give you 25% of their credit and mineral income each month for protection.
I've been so used to vanilla stations that I got surprised by the stations being as strong as they were. This is the first tier station, which in vanilla would be like 7k fleet power max. So I saw on the overmap it was a tier 1 station, figured "yep gonna punch through" and bam, its 21k! I did keep my fleet at the edge of the sector... but then they just attacked the station anyway? I don't know what happened here, I went to look at the western front and suddenly they were routed.
And this shows why space stations dramatically drop off when the longer range weapons come into play, beyond not keeping up in fire power. Long range weapons can fire beyond the engagement range of space stations, so the station just sits there and eats damage with no way to retaliate. Ideally with the heavier modded slots our stations will be able to actually fight back.
So what happened here is that a fleet I blew up earlier just so happened to jump back into this sector from an FTL jump, ambushing my fleet mid-engagement with the station and wiped them.
Which makes it all the more bullshit that their fleets that I've been smacking down left and right return in months, meanwhile mine got knocked out for 8 fucking years. That was it, that fleet was completely eliminated. This is another thing that is frustrating in wars in Stellaris, especially late game when there are few empires that have hundreds of sectors. Their retreated fleets can respawn in any of their other sectors, away from your fleets and start catching everything right back.
And then things like this happen, where there will be a bunch of small fleets that are *just* strong enough to take out outposts that run amok. Sure this is my fault for not having any defense stations on that border, but imagine this happening inside the Qwe's own sectors where I don't control where the space stations are built.
I have no idea why the Kelbrid went all the way around the galaxy to come in from the south rather then come in from the north. In the end though I appreciate it, meant I didn't have to worry about grabbing the southern Qwe sectors.
Allegedly vassals, tributaries and such empires can revolt against their host state. In fact, other empires can support the independence of an underling and offer to join the war if the subject wants to cede. But I have never seen this actually happen.
Chivalry has some solid perks and honestly, would be a good one to grab near the start if you want to both war and federate. The perks are:
+10% ship fire rate
+30% trust growth and +20 opinion with other empires
+5% energy credits, food and minerals from jobs.
-15% army cost and upeekp along with +25% army morale
Destroying enemy ships and stations provide unity
When maxed out you pick a code that your leader follows, which changes on leader change. They provide bonuses and a penalty of some sort, like more happiness but a credit penalty, or ship fire rate increase but disengagement chance decrease.
Each precursor also has a secret that you need to pay a chunk of minor relics and research for. Yuht get a decision that costs energy credits and will cause some devastation on the planet that gets fixed in exchange for a permanent habitability increase. Again, would've been nice a long time ago!
Planetary wonders adds a lot of really cool things, I wish they came into play far sooner. The Helios Tower provides 2 technician jobs and an energy director job. The energy director takes consumer goods to provide energy credits, amenities and increases energy production. This pairs off well with the energy grid building that also increases energy credits from jobs.
There is a sizeable mineral cost for wonders, and they take up a district slot. At first you can only have one planetary wonder on a planet until you finish the monumentality tree. Though at this point I got so many construction cost reductions that I don't need to pay at all for these wonders.
It amuses me greatly that its possible to do this. How does this planet get any sunlight? The shipyard in this sector can support building 27 ships at the same time and builds them at 180% speed. And this is the sector with the 4 planets, I could throw a dockyard on the remaining 3 planets.
Eco-arcologies are ecumenopolis but for administrative matters, swapping out material production for administrative, research or trade. The arcologies are:
Bureaucratic provides 6 bureaucrat jobs and 10 housing and requires a rare crystal for upkeep.
Research is the above but for researcher jobs and it requires exotic gas.
Commercial provides 2 entrepreneur jobs, 4 clerk jobs and 10 housing and requires a rare crystal.
Leisure provides 4 entertainer and 4 culture worker jobs.
As empire sprawl exploded this planet is going to go all in on bureaucrat arcologies. Also I'd like to note you can see little space ships flying around on the planet 
Little behind the scenes here, you cannot change a species to look like a species outside of its species group. So I had to make some changes to add this portrait to each species group. I also had to do this for robots
Ring worlds are almost like ecumenopolis, their segments provide large amounts of job and housing and they have 100% habitability with every species. The segments they got are:
City segments give a whopping 35 housing, 2 enforcer jobs and 3 clerk jobs.
Commercial gives 10 housing, 2 entrepreneur jobs and 6 clerk jobs and require 2 rare crystals for upkeep
Research gives 10 housing and 10 research jobs and require 2 exotic gas
Agricultural gives 10 housing and 10 farmer jobs and require 2 volatile motes
Siphon Ports is from a mod, it provides 10 housing and 10 siphon pilot jobs. Weirdly enough besides bringing in motes they also provide research, maybe they're flagged as a science job?
Now there is kind of an issue with ring worlds: You get them pretty late and the game is drastically slowing down pop growth. Those segments that provide 10 jobs? The regular pop growth slot is gonna take 74 months to produce its pop. And thats with the bar already at 20% filled. The clone vat is going to take another 68 months... and thats with the bar nearly half full! So thats like 8 years to get a pop growth, and its only going to get harsher. Its going to have to get its pops from other planets, which is why I'm not gonna expand a bunch of our planets past a certain point so I can throw unemployed pops into the ring world.
I believe the ideal growth rate happens around 35ish pops, so that will be where I cap off the majority of planets.
Through this event it is possible to snatch some higher end techs from the fallen empire. But of course they will dislike you if you get caught.
Getting the perks for the high end construction stuff can be like pulling teeth. Getting this one requires fixing or building a megastructure. In this case it was the ring world. To get gigastructures I need to build up one of those and uh... its going to be a very, very long time.
Fighting with the Qwe and I noticed they had a lot of missiles going on. Besides that, I see that a lot of people claiming that strike craft are a counter to corvette fleets. Having a bunch of point defense on corvettes as they rush into the enemy fleet will also have them take shots at any missiles or strike craft going for the battleship fleets.
There is one exception though for point defense: Neutron torpedoes. They cannot be shot down, they're considered an energy weapon. They're giant balls of "fuck you", they hit hard, can't be shot down, have long range and have 90% accuracy. I will have to start throwing shields on my ships soon because neutron launchers also get a +50% damage to armor and +75% damage to hull. They can one shot any corvette if I don't heavily shield them.
I haven't talked much about the non weapon/armor bits of ship building. For the most part its just better parts that make your ship move faster, have more power, have better sensors. But a big thing is their combat computer, which not only assigns a "role" to the ship but also gives stats for that role. Swarmers will fly right into the enemy and get a bonus to evasion and ship fire rate. Artillery will hang back and get a bonus to range and so on. There is advance forms of the computers that give better bonuses, with the best coming from either sapient combat computers or precognitive interfaces that come with going psionics, which also provides a bonus to tracking, which negates evasion.
The colossus project has a very useful perk, even if you don't plan on killing planets: You get the total war CB, which lets you declare war on anyone without having to do any claims and when you capture a sector it immediately flips over to your control. Of course it works the other way around, someone can do a total war on you and flip your sectors to theirs. This effectively removes the need for influence on taking over sectors. You still can do the claim thing if you want smaller wars and not worry about your own stuff flipping.