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Game play notes 10



I absolutely love this. There is a lot more that the Se'ikh hate about us, but the bluntness of this is great.



The primary reason I grabbed Liberty is for the +1 influence it gives. The perks are:

+1 monthly influence

+20% governing ethics attraction

Colonies start with 1 extra pop (so now we get 4 pops) and a +20% happiness to the planet for the first 20 years.

+5% happiness to all factions if you aren't suppressing anyone.

-15% leader cost and +2 leaders in the leader pool.

You also get a nice -25% upkeep to specialists, which should be the majority of your pops.



Secrets of the Universe gives a few techs that provide some decent enough bonuses, like an extra envoy or influence gain. More importantly it gives more techs for the archivist perk that gives more unity for every 4 techs researched!



The galactic core pops at 2300 and there are 2 types of centers you can get, the quasar or the black hole. While I'm not positive on the black hole, I know the sectors that pop up with the quasar has been the same for me each time. The exact same layout with the exact same sectors, including one the dead end one with a primitive civilization. Just be sure you're at the edge of the core somewhere before doing your research! The AI absolutely bumrushes the core.



I really don't understand why my pacifist isolationists have been the most militarily powerful thus far and has taken the colossus perk



In the past voidborne was a requirement to build habitats. Now you can build them and can take this only if you really want to go hard on habitats, which is nice when you were limited to 6 or so ascension perks. Whats neat is that they also affect the planetary diversity habitats, so you get your extra building slots there as well.



I just did not have the influence to spend to reform my government when I unlocked more civic slots. One I got my second I figure alright, lets do it.

Corvee System will remove the influence cost of moving pops across planets, except for the last one. To abandon a planet you need to spend 200 influence to move that last pop.

War Engineers gives a lot of bonuses, first lets talk about the penalty: +15% to ship build costs. In exchange you get +5 to hit, +1 sensor range, +10 tracking, +10% ship weapon range, +5% shields, +10% sublight speed, +10% evasion and +25% research speed to propulsion and particle categories.



I'd like to point how that for 590 influence, while not a low amount (especially since the cap is 1k), is far cheaper to get every single sector than it would be claiming them all. A lot less tedious to click on them all too.



When you start the colossus project you choose whether you want a planet cracker or a neutron sweeper that simply kills all life on the planet and not the planet itself. You can go into the ship designer to swap these out, along with a few other options like a pacification ray that puts a shield over a planet.

It cannot participate in battles, it has no weapons to fight with. It is also ungodly slow. Thankfully you can put a jump drive on it, but don't expect it to get where you want it anytime soon.

Obviously the empire whose planet you blow up will absolutely hate you, but other empires wont like it either. Start blowing up too many planets and suddenly the entire galaxy will hate you.



Because we are materialist we literally cannot do this.



The Qwe capital is a bioluminescent world and besides looking cool it also gives a few really good bonuses. The modifier for being a bioluminescent plant provides +10% consumer goods from jobs, +5% society research, +5% food, +4 max agriculture districts, +5% biological and lithoid happiness, +25% immigration pull and -10% planetary build speed.
Because of the rich growing conditions, this glittering planet is an ideal place for farming. Also the unique creatures and planet life is a boon to researchers and an inspiration to artists.

It also has a unique building, a biolumen nature preserve that gives +1 bioluminescent ranger job per 20 pops. These gives a good chunk of society research.

Two planets in the Qwe sector has the Arachnophobia modifier on it which gives a penalty of pops requiring an extra 40% amenities, -20% happiness and -20% biological pop growth speed.
A world overrun by packs of giant arachnids. It seems like madness to even think of setting foot on this world. Early explorers tell stories of night time hissing coming from the treetops and caverns, of endless thumping sounds as they hear these arachnids walk over their ship. It is not known if any of the early explorers actually set foot outside of their ship or if they just sent a drone and lied in their reports



Nerrt'Bekt has the Cities in the Sky modifier, giving +20 housing, +2 building slots and +10% habitability
The landscape is dotted with remnants of an unknown civilization. Bright metal spires and monoliths reach up beyond the cloud cover. The towers are shaped to concentrate sunlight on certain areas, and provide excellent living and working environments.

Maybe one day we can make our own cloud city. Then there is a planet with Sapphire Rains which provides +10% trade value
The extremely high precipitation of aluminum oxide in the upper atmosphere of this world causes the weather to form microscopic sapphires that clump and crystalise together forming tiny sapphire gems that rain down everywhere.

Shame it isn't raining amethysts, then I'd make Purple Rain jokes.



Besides getting an eco-arcology out of it, I was happy to have gotten this event with the clingy robots. There is supposed to be an event that fires after this where a few battalions of robots attack the colony but near instantly gets destroyed. Sadly that part didn't fire off, the event just ended here. But I remember the text after which basically said that the robot's programming to be helpful interfered with their combat capabilities cause they would ask colonists if they were alright after getting shot.

If you don't do this you get a second species of robot that you can mod and stuff. Dunno why you would want that, but its an option.



So it turns out I didn't need to add even more tradition perks, there is a repeatable for ascension perks. This isn't vanilla, but it does let you research 1 ascension perk. So I no longer need to worry about not having them available when I unlock the gigastructure stuff.

Hopefully the majority of the perks I picked should be self explanatory, but biophilia may need some explaining. Rare plentary features are things that are kinda like blockers, but they don't occupy any district space. They often give the planet a buff of some kind, like powerful auroras that give happiness and physics research. That said though uh... I don't think it works. I'm looking at our planets and a lot of them straight up don't have any, and I know its been well over 5 years since they've all been colonized.

Biophilia is a prerequisite to garden worlds, which reduces mineral, alloy and consumer goods output and housing by 25% but provides a +25% buff to food output, immigration pull and pop growth plus +10% habitability. It also increases max agriculture districts by 3 and farmers will provide unity. So this is going on any planets that will be feeding our pops.



Let's talk about some of these planetary wonders we got going on. The Helios Tower provides +1 energy director job who increases energy credit production, along with giving amenities and their own energy credit production. It will also create an extra technician job for each generator district you build, up to 15. It's upgrade, the Helios Translucent Obelisk, provides 2 energy director jobs, 2 technician jobs (this is independent from the bonus with the districts), +3 translucer jobs which turn minerals into rare crystals and gives a +5% bonus to translucers. While you can make multiple Helios Towers, you can only have 1 Obelisk.

And this is when I learned that planetary wonders are more than just a reskinned district with more jobs provided. Why have I not used these sooner?



The Particle Supercollider provides a science director job, which is basically a researcher that also provides amenities, 4 researcher jobs and multiple supercollider researcher jobs, which provide physics research. The reason I don't have a hard number is because the event chain that you go through will add additional supercollider jobs to the building. It also has an upgrade that I haven't gotten yet, but when you upgrade it I believe you can build a second super collider (but can't upgrade that) and that second version gets the bonus jobs as well.

The events go into your situation log and requires your physics researchers to study on it, much like any other situation log. Some might require you to scan something with some scientists. Upon completing all the events in a chain you get not only bonus jobs but more techs to research. I'll spoil it by saying there is a wonder building for engineering and society as well, and completing all their stuff can get you some pretty cool toys. While some techs are simple +5% energy damage and the like, some provide buildings that will let you get some of the rare resources like zro, nanites and living metal. And they also provide buildings that use up that resource for some bonus to your planet. Its a good way to access to some stuff that you just don't find.



The Panopticon can only be built on your penal colony, or if you have the police state civic you can plop one anywhere. This building provides a further -20% crime to the entire empire. Besides that there is a lot of jobs added: +1 administrator, +5 telepaths (provides unity, reduces crime), +1 metallurgist, +1 artisan, +2 soldiers and +1 researcher. I want to say there is an upgrade to this building, but I'm not sure. So far it hasn't popped any event chain.



The Astronomical Model Bureau gives a +10% bonus to administrative capacity as well as providing 1 administrator job, +8 bureaucrat jobs as well as an additional bureaucrat job per 25 pops. It gives you several events where you need to use a construction ship to fix a slight change in trajectory on an asteroid or move mountains. At the end of the chain you unlock the tech to upgrade it and its upgrade will occasionally add resource deposits to random celestial bodies.



The Mantle Crucible provides 4 metallurgist and 4 artisan jobs. Simple. It occasionally causes devastation to the planet though, but it also gives some techs to boost production motes, crystals and gas. There are 2 upgrade options, the only one I've used is the Titan Forge which removes the artisan jobs to have a total of 7 metallurgist jobs and an administrator job. This building also reduces habitability by 25% but provides a unique army called the War Titan. It has 4 times the strength of a gene modded unit... that is, on the low end it has 4 times the strength of a gene modded unit's high end.



I love that you can fix a destroyed planet with some glue. Thing is though... its so long in the game to get this tech that you aren't exactly itching to get a planet restored unless something has gone completely wrong. The only modifier from restoring this planet is +60% unity from jobs... when we are basically done with traditions, and a whole +3 society research from research jobs. Oh and don't forget the absurdly long terraform time... to make it a dry world. 20k days, with all my techs and bonuses I got it dropped to 8k. So from 54 years to 21. And then if I want to terraform it into something else once the options open up....

I mean its cool as a bragging right I guess.



The spire kicks ass. On completion you get +15 housing, +10 clerk jobs, +2 administrator jobs, +2 medical worker jobs, +2 telepath jobs, +20% pop growth speed and a solide +5 to organic pop assembly. Thats for the clone vats, which normally gives +3 by itself. And then on top of that you can choose the spire's name which provides more bonuses:

Living gives a flat +15% resources from jobs in exchange for +15% more upkeep

Commerce gives +25% trade value for +10% pop upkeep

Please boosts pop growth what the fuck it doesn't? It does provide +5% happiness and +15% amenities for +10% pop upkeep

Progress Gives +20% researcher output in exchange for +15% job upkeep

Industry gives +20% alloys and consumer goods from jobs in exchange for +15% upkeep for jobs

Tradition gives +20% unity from jobs for +10% upkeep for jobs

Administration gives +2 Bureaucrat jobs and -25% upkeep for them. No downsides!

I'll be throwing one on every planet as resources alloy (by which I mean alloys)



So... to get gigastructures you need to finish a megastructure. And I'm pretty sure I went with the most expensive, time consuming option And I'm so far into sunk cost fallacy that it would probably take just as long finishing this than it would to make another megastructure.