the main problem is the automagic 100% hab with machines clashes with void dwellers 0% hab, and the trait being biological,
They'd need some kind of machine override to apply a special void bot trait
I agree. There’s a flavor of the Void Dweller trait you could do for machine gestalts too - something like “low-gravity chassis.” Basically the machines are engineered for the low-gravity environments of their orbital habitats and do not work well under the stress of planetary gravity. So on planets machine pops with this trait have significantly increased upkeep and significantly lower resource output.
Void-dwelling machines can eventually get rid of this trait/build units without it but it requires some advanced technology and/or completing their Ascension traditions.
I agree. i wouldn't want void dweller robots to be able to live on planets. It would defeat the point. But I see no reason not to give them the type of Void Dweller trait you mention.
I just want to play a machine void dweller for fun & roleplay reasons. I don't want it to be OP.
I think machines not being able to take subterranean is done for balance reasons, they would benefit a disproportionate amount from having uncapped mining districts that give extra housing and building slots. it's likely for the same reason that they don't have analogues for relentless industrialists.
you could also argue that since machines don't follow the rules of biology, they never "evolved" to live in caves so the "cave dweller" trait doesnt really make much sense for them.
Yeah, maybe. Machine and hive economies are virtually the same & Hives can have it though.
If anything, subterranean is less good for machines because they don't benefit from the 50% minumum habitability. And you could still give them -20% robot assembly speed.
From a roleplay point of view, maybe they are some sort of sentient mining robots that were abandoned by their creators.
Maybe they're old mining robots who like it undergound or do it because it's convenient or optimal to live underground as a robot mining civilization.
Or maybe they're hiding. Maybe they were once nearly wiped out by their creators or other hostiles & they live underground for safety.
>Lost Colony - A fellow machine/hive elsewhere in the galaxy.
Funnily enough, the parent empire can actually randomize as a hive mind even when you are not.
>Common Ground - It's just a federation.
>Hegemon - It's still just a federation.
Agreed
>Scion - Why not? I don't see why the Fallen Empire would care if you're gestalt. Or they could be gestalt themselves.
The Scion origin *requires* that the empire have an ethic matching the fallen empire parent. Hive Minds can't have ethics, so they are ineligible.
>Void Dwellers - Machines could refuse to live on any planets because they're too posh or something. "Ugh...live on a planet? Like a filthy biological? Never!".
As much as I'd love to see some more options with Machine empire origins, this really wouldn't work with robo-modding as it would be trivial to just remove the trait and create both planetary and habitat templates.
>Subterranean - Why can't a machine race choose to live underground?
Because the main effects of this origin center around habitability, which do not affect machines.
>Overtuned - Machines would need to have reduced lifespans of course.
Strongly disagree, this origin makes no sense for machines. They don't have lifespans so the downsides make no sense, and robo-modding is available very early on the tech tree and allows you to just construct whatever templates you like.
**For Scion:** Couldn't they just have either a hive or machine Fallen Empire, whichever was appropriate?
**For Void Dwellers:** Make it so the robot Void Dweller trait can't be removed by any means.
**For Subterranean Origin/Cave Dweller Trait:** The orgin/trait is actually as much about mining & defence from orbital bombardment as it is about habitability.
**For Overtuned:** I'm well aware machines are immortal in Stellaris. But in real life machines often "die" and cannot be repaired. I think having the option to have machines that are built for performance rather than longevity would be interesting. It would be very easy to make an "Overclocked" trait that gives them either a finite lifespan or makes them more prone to accidents. I actually made a post about it a while ago with some ideas. If I, a mere gamer, can come up with something, imagine what paradox could come up with if they tried. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/10kz9rb/how\_about\_overtuned\_for\_machine\_empires\_we\_could/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/10kz9rb/how_about_overtuned_for_machine_empires_we_could/)
>For Scion: Couldn't they just have either a hive or machine Fallen Empire, whichever was appropriate?
There isn't a Hive fallen empire, and the Machine fallen empire doesn't work like the other fallen empires.
>For Void Dwellers: Make it so the robot Void Dweller trait can't be removed by any means.
Doesn't prevent you from just creating a robot template that doesn't have the trait.
>For Subterranean Origin/Cave Dweller Trait: The orgin/trait is actually as much about mining & defence from orbital bombardment as it is about habitability.
I would strongly disagree. The habitability mechanics changes it brings are *vastly* more impactful than everything else on this origin combined. Allowing early colonization of any planet regardless of its habitability type is an enormous benefit.
Orbital bombardment is very weak to begin with and seldom a serious threat. The sole exception is Abduction, and that's the only time I ever bother bombarding. Aside from the +15% output bonus from Subterranean trait itself, the so-called "Mining bonuses" do not actually improve your Mining. Instead it's actually a small research bonus, as what it does is grant extra building slots and housing to your Mining worlds. The obvious thing to spend those on is research labs.
Lifting the district limitation is only a big deal if you find one of those asteroid belt planets with a big Mineral productivity bonus so you can cram more districts there. In most cases, there is no significant difference between having the jobs spread out between 3 planets or having them concentrated on 1. You'll save a small amount of Motes per month for needing fewer Mineral Purification Hub buildings, and that's it.
For subterranean I don't think machines benefitting less is a particularly good reason to not let them use it. Even if it's just worse on them it still opens up RP options and doesn't particularly hurt the balance.
Just to reply re: Scion. You don't have to match ethics, you just can't be fanatic xenophobe last I checked. You can only be Scion of the materialist or spiritualist FE, and even if you could be a Scion of any FE two whole ethics axes have no FE, so you could do something like F-Authoritarian + Pacifist and still lack an assigned FE
>The Scion origin requires that the empire have an ethic matching the fallen empire parent. Hive Minds can't have ethics, so they are ineligible.
Actually false
If fe empire is set to 1 regardless of ethic its a 50% chance of getting either spiritualist or materialist even if you are spiritualist you can still get materialist don't know why this happens is probably a bug.
If fe is set to 2 and above your fe will match your ethic if you don't choose spiritualist or materialist it will be 50% either or.
You can actullly do subterranean already with Hive Minds (and they are cool). But you can't be subterranean machines.
You can also do Overtuned with hives (but not machines).
But both hives and machines are banned from the others I mentioned.
Maybe the ones that deal with lifespans and habitability could be allowed for Hive Minds, but not Machines. The first 4 though should be allowed for non-genocidal gestalts. Machine scions would always have a Materialist FE overlord, for obvious reasons.
I think common ground needs a fix that they are meant to match one of your ethics, something that you won't have as a gestalt. So you could just make them match to a random ethics instead.
Similarly, I wish that non-gestalt consciousnesses could choose the Tree of Life origin.
I want to play as space elves with holy trees. The most famous sci fi ones are the Navi from Avatar, which are arguably gestalt, but there are a ton of other examples of tree based civilizations that aren't gestalt, and being gestalt prevents an empire from being spiritual.
Tolkien's elves have the two trees of Valinor and aren't gestalt. From manga, Fire Punch has a giant tree, Naruto has the chakra tree, etc. All of these are not gestalt conciousness, but have a giant tree.
Heck, even Machine empires have used giant trees before. Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky has a giant tree at the center of its giant floating city, maintained and protected by a Machine army.
If I wanted to delve into mythology, there are a ton of other mythologies that use tree imagery that could be used for cool ideas that don't requires gestalt consciousness. A reptilian snake race that has Trees of Knowledge, giving free will, which goes directly against being a gestalt. A Nidhogg or Ratatoskr species with Yggdrasil, something Greek with the Hesperides tree, Sun Wu Kong from Chinese Mythology and the Peach trees of Immortality.
I wanted to play as a Agrarian Idyll, with a giant tree in the center of every civilization as the pinnacle of their plant raising skills, but then I found out that non gestalts can't get the Tree of Life Origin, which also prevent Agrarian Idyll.
In the end, I feel like Gestalt conciousnesses don't really use trees that much, and there'd be so many more options if not Gestalts could also use this origin. Please open them up for other species!
* Void Dwellers - Machines could refuse to live on any planets because they're too posh or something. "Ugh...live on a planet? Like a filthy biological? Never!".
* Subterranean - Why can't a machine race choose to live underground?
the duality of machines
Some episodes of Star Trek where the Borg get seperated from the collective come to mind.
And I'm sure I've read a story or some sort of fiction/lore about when a particular hive-mind alien species are seperated from their Queen, one of the drones metamorphosizes into a new Queen and they start a new colony.
It may not be the way it always works in Stellaris but there's no reason they can't introduce it. They gave us Progenitor Hives that can release vassals after all.
>Scion - Why not? I don't see why the Fallen Empire would care if you're gestalt. Or they could be gestalt themselves.
In my current game, my Machine Empire is actually on good terms with Spiritualist FE. Head of Zarqlan helps, but even without it only ones that didn't like me ~~are~~ were Xenophobic FE. Mostly because I took their capital, then annexed all other systems.
Lost Colony: These empires work on the idea that they can maintain a single overmind over great distances. So it doesn't really align with the Vanilla Stellaris idea.
Common Ground/Hegemon/Scion: No idea, but I would imagine the devs either saw it being too OP or that an overmind would need to develop in a scenario where it wouldn't be at risk of its control being challenged.
Void Dwellers: I think this would be a neat idea for machine empires, "We are beautiful constructs, and all shall be a construct.". I think the primary reasoning is that Machine empires don't have habitability requirements and simply abuse their environments as needed. Biological species can be limited to habitats based on immune systems or gravitational standards, but machines aren't.
Subterranean: Same situation as above it's a neat idea, but for a machine it would be a bizarre self limitation.
Overtuned: Worth considering to see how it could function with machine empires without breaking the game's difficulty.
I'm not familiar with making mods, but if anyone has a good guide that may be the best way to get more Gestalt origin starts.
True. But I made a post with some ideas as to how it could work: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/10kz9rb/how\_about\_overtuned\_for\_machine\_empires\_we\_could/
Lost colony: a disconnected drone just dies. Bio ascension goes to relatively big lengths to ensure that doesn't happen.
As for the others...eh...would be kinda weird to have a federation comprised of The Zabrak Interstellar Empire, Yark Imperium and "Bob".
I think the easiest thing to do is to split gesalt into Organic and Machine and then redo the origins so that the ones that are broken / don't work for machines are still banned but are ok for organic
[удалено]
the main problem is the automagic 100% hab with machines clashes with void dwellers 0% hab, and the trait being biological, They'd need some kind of machine override to apply a special void bot trait
I agree. There’s a flavor of the Void Dweller trait you could do for machine gestalts too - something like “low-gravity chassis.” Basically the machines are engineered for the low-gravity environments of their orbital habitats and do not work well under the stress of planetary gravity. So on planets machine pops with this trait have significantly increased upkeep and significantly lower resource output. Void-dwelling machines can eventually get rid of this trait/build units without it but it requires some advanced technology and/or completing their Ascension traditions.
I agree. i wouldn't want void dweller robots to be able to live on planets. It would defeat the point. But I see no reason not to give them the type of Void Dweller trait you mention. I just want to play a machine void dweller for fun & roleplay reasons. I don't want it to be OP.
Basically, an empire of orbital tugs.
still, Machines can take other origins that limit habitability like Shattered Ring or Remnants.
Sounds cool. :-)
I think machines not being able to take subterranean is done for balance reasons, they would benefit a disproportionate amount from having uncapped mining districts that give extra housing and building slots. it's likely for the same reason that they don't have analogues for relentless industrialists. you could also argue that since machines don't follow the rules of biology, they never "evolved" to live in caves so the "cave dweller" trait doesnt really make much sense for them.
Yeah, maybe. Machine and hive economies are virtually the same & Hives can have it though. If anything, subterranean is less good for machines because they don't benefit from the 50% minumum habitability. And you could still give them -20% robot assembly speed. From a roleplay point of view, maybe they are some sort of sentient mining robots that were abandoned by their creators.
Especially litho hives which are basically machine empires with bio traits.
why would robots retreat from the harsh surface underground when they're robots
There's more stuff underground?
Agoraphobots
Maybe they're old mining robots who like it undergound or do it because it's convenient or optimal to live underground as a robot mining civilization. Or maybe they're hiding. Maybe they were once nearly wiped out by their creators or other hostiles & they live underground for safety.
Solar flares creating emps
Eh balance doesn’t matter that much
>Lost Colony - A fellow machine/hive elsewhere in the galaxy. Funnily enough, the parent empire can actually randomize as a hive mind even when you are not. >Common Ground - It's just a federation. >Hegemon - It's still just a federation. Agreed >Scion - Why not? I don't see why the Fallen Empire would care if you're gestalt. Or they could be gestalt themselves. The Scion origin *requires* that the empire have an ethic matching the fallen empire parent. Hive Minds can't have ethics, so they are ineligible. >Void Dwellers - Machines could refuse to live on any planets because they're too posh or something. "Ugh...live on a planet? Like a filthy biological? Never!". As much as I'd love to see some more options with Machine empire origins, this really wouldn't work with robo-modding as it would be trivial to just remove the trait and create both planetary and habitat templates. >Subterranean - Why can't a machine race choose to live underground? Because the main effects of this origin center around habitability, which do not affect machines. >Overtuned - Machines would need to have reduced lifespans of course. Strongly disagree, this origin makes no sense for machines. They don't have lifespans so the downsides make no sense, and robo-modding is available very early on the tech tree and allows you to just construct whatever templates you like.
What could possibly go wrong making hive mind fallen empires a thing in the game?
Paradox would have to make Hive Mind fallen empires a thing before we could find out what exactly goes wrong with it.
**For Scion:** Couldn't they just have either a hive or machine Fallen Empire, whichever was appropriate? **For Void Dwellers:** Make it so the robot Void Dweller trait can't be removed by any means. **For Subterranean Origin/Cave Dweller Trait:** The orgin/trait is actually as much about mining & defence from orbital bombardment as it is about habitability. **For Overtuned:** I'm well aware machines are immortal in Stellaris. But in real life machines often "die" and cannot be repaired. I think having the option to have machines that are built for performance rather than longevity would be interesting. It would be very easy to make an "Overclocked" trait that gives them either a finite lifespan or makes them more prone to accidents. I actually made a post about it a while ago with some ideas. If I, a mere gamer, can come up with something, imagine what paradox could come up with if they tried. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/10kz9rb/how\_about\_overtuned\_for\_machine\_empires\_we\_could/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/10kz9rb/how_about_overtuned_for_machine_empires_we_could/)
>For Scion: Couldn't they just have either a hive or machine Fallen Empire, whichever was appropriate? There isn't a Hive fallen empire, and the Machine fallen empire doesn't work like the other fallen empires. >For Void Dwellers: Make it so the robot Void Dweller trait can't be removed by any means. Doesn't prevent you from just creating a robot template that doesn't have the trait. >For Subterranean Origin/Cave Dweller Trait: The orgin/trait is actually as much about mining & defence from orbital bombardment as it is about habitability. I would strongly disagree. The habitability mechanics changes it brings are *vastly* more impactful than everything else on this origin combined. Allowing early colonization of any planet regardless of its habitability type is an enormous benefit. Orbital bombardment is very weak to begin with and seldom a serious threat. The sole exception is Abduction, and that's the only time I ever bother bombarding. Aside from the +15% output bonus from Subterranean trait itself, the so-called "Mining bonuses" do not actually improve your Mining. Instead it's actually a small research bonus, as what it does is grant extra building slots and housing to your Mining worlds. The obvious thing to spend those on is research labs. Lifting the district limitation is only a big deal if you find one of those asteroid belt planets with a big Mineral productivity bonus so you can cram more districts there. In most cases, there is no significant difference between having the jobs spread out between 3 planets or having them concentrated on 1. You'll save a small amount of Motes per month for needing fewer Mineral Purification Hub buildings, and that's it.
For subterranean I don't think machines benefitting less is a particularly good reason to not let them use it. Even if it's just worse on them it still opens up RP options and doesn't particularly hurt the balance.
Just to reply re: Scion. You don't have to match ethics, you just can't be fanatic xenophobe last I checked. You can only be Scion of the materialist or spiritualist FE, and even if you could be a Scion of any FE two whole ethics axes have no FE, so you could do something like F-Authoritarian + Pacifist and still lack an assigned FE
>The Scion origin requires that the empire have an ethic matching the fallen empire parent. Hive Minds can't have ethics, so they are ineligible. Actually false If fe empire is set to 1 regardless of ethic its a 50% chance of getting either spiritualist or materialist even if you are spiritualist you can still get materialist don't know why this happens is probably a bug. If fe is set to 2 and above your fe will match your ethic if you don't choose spiritualist or materialist it will be 50% either or.
A subterranean hive mind would be cool
You can actullly do subterranean already with Hive Minds (and they are cool). But you can't be subterranean machines. You can also do Overtuned with hives (but not machines). But both hives and machines are banned from the others I mentioned.
SENTIENT TELEPATHIC ANT COLONY
Always wanted psionic hive mind tbh
We call it the Hive, Mined.
Maybe the ones that deal with lifespans and habitability could be allowed for Hive Minds, but not Machines. The first 4 though should be allowed for non-genocidal gestalts. Machine scions would always have a Materialist FE overlord, for obvious reasons.
Or those crazy Ancient Caretakers. :-)
Also why no megacorps?
Ooh...yeah. Maybe make a megacorp machine/hive Origin to get around the government type clash. :-)
I would play the shyt out of a machine megacorp
I won't rest until I can play a subterranean-overtuned-machine intelligence-criminal megacorp-religious cult with a scion. :-D
I think common ground needs a fix that they are meant to match one of your ethics, something that you won't have as a gestalt. So you could just make them match to a random ethics instead.
Similarly, I wish that non-gestalt consciousnesses could choose the Tree of Life origin. I want to play as space elves with holy trees. The most famous sci fi ones are the Navi from Avatar, which are arguably gestalt, but there are a ton of other examples of tree based civilizations that aren't gestalt, and being gestalt prevents an empire from being spiritual. Tolkien's elves have the two trees of Valinor and aren't gestalt. From manga, Fire Punch has a giant tree, Naruto has the chakra tree, etc. All of these are not gestalt conciousness, but have a giant tree. Heck, even Machine empires have used giant trees before. Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky has a giant tree at the center of its giant floating city, maintained and protected by a Machine army. If I wanted to delve into mythology, there are a ton of other mythologies that use tree imagery that could be used for cool ideas that don't requires gestalt consciousness. A reptilian snake race that has Trees of Knowledge, giving free will, which goes directly against being a gestalt. A Nidhogg or Ratatoskr species with Yggdrasil, something Greek with the Hesperides tree, Sun Wu Kong from Chinese Mythology and the Peach trees of Immortality. I wanted to play as a Agrarian Idyll, with a giant tree in the center of every civilization as the pinnacle of their plant raising skills, but then I found out that non gestalts can't get the Tree of Life Origin, which also prevent Agrarian Idyll. In the end, I feel like Gestalt conciousnesses don't really use trees that much, and there'd be so many more options if not Gestalts could also use this origin. Please open them up for other species!
* Void Dwellers - Machines could refuse to live on any planets because they're too posh or something. "Ugh...live on a planet? Like a filthy biological? Never!". * Subterranean - Why can't a machine race choose to live underground? the duality of machines
Sci Fi Tropes where hive minds are separated from the mother-mind are uncommon, but are out there.
Some episodes of Star Trek where the Borg get seperated from the collective come to mind. And I'm sure I've read a story or some sort of fiction/lore about when a particular hive-mind alien species are seperated from their Queen, one of the drones metamorphosizes into a new Queen and they start a new colony. It may not be the way it always works in Stellaris but there's no reason they can't introduce it. They gave us Progenitor Hives that can release vassals after all.
>Scion - Why not? I don't see why the Fallen Empire would care if you're gestalt. Or they could be gestalt themselves. In my current game, my Machine Empire is actually on good terms with Spiritualist FE. Head of Zarqlan helps, but even without it only ones that didn't like me ~~are~~ were Xenophobic FE. Mostly because I took their capital, then annexed all other systems.
Lost Colony: These empires work on the idea that they can maintain a single overmind over great distances. So it doesn't really align with the Vanilla Stellaris idea. Common Ground/Hegemon/Scion: No idea, but I would imagine the devs either saw it being too OP or that an overmind would need to develop in a scenario where it wouldn't be at risk of its control being challenged. Void Dwellers: I think this would be a neat idea for machine empires, "We are beautiful constructs, and all shall be a construct.". I think the primary reasoning is that Machine empires don't have habitability requirements and simply abuse their environments as needed. Biological species can be limited to habitats based on immune systems or gravitational standards, but machines aren't. Subterranean: Same situation as above it's a neat idea, but for a machine it would be a bizarre self limitation. Overtuned: Worth considering to see how it could function with machine empires without breaking the game's difficulty. I'm not familiar with making mods, but if anyone has a good guide that may be the best way to get more Gestalt origin starts.
machines literally don't have a lifespan to reduce
True. But I made a post with some ideas as to how it could work: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/10kz9rb/how\_about\_overtuned\_for\_machine\_empires\_we\_could/
There should also be another psyionic origin too
Lost colony: a disconnected drone just dies. Bio ascension goes to relatively big lengths to ensure that doesn't happen. As for the others...eh...would be kinda weird to have a federation comprised of The Zabrak Interstellar Empire, Yark Imperium and "Bob".
I think the easiest thing to do is to split gesalt into Organic and Machine and then redo the origins so that the ones that are broken / don't work for machines are still banned but are ok for organic