Don't forget that Expansion tradition for yet another extra district!

@@NoxietyPrime Good call, edited to reflect true chad status.

A shame mastery of nature doesnt give 3 anymore

Still have available districts layout of 9 though

39 size ecumonopolis

_sigh_ *Colossus enters system*

@@Vox_Popul1 The Planet Broke Before The Guard!

@@Grounders10 cadia moment

@@Grounders10 but the guard still broke, down with the corpse empire!

*resilient lithoid-reanimator subterraneans*

To be fair, starbases tend to be more or less immobile, and with no speed loss to friction, physical projectiles should be able to hit them (eventually) from just about anywhere.

@@kylewelch552 To counter that, they don't have to move the mass, so each gun could be more massive and they would have way more power to use as they don't need to use engines to move it all.

You can also go full Ion, if the ring station is further back. As the massive alpha really takes a lot of potentiale damage out of the fight fast.

Comes down to game balancing. You have to setup the game so the attacker always has the advantage, or the game simply becomes stagnant, as turtling becomes the default. Don't forget that both sides have fleets of their own, thus the defender has both fortresses and fleets to counter the attacker, who only has fleets.

@@AaronCMounts isnt this where mercenaries can come into play? you can contract lots of mercs, over- stack your fleet like crazy and attack with overwhelming force to decide the war in a single engagement for MP? or they can let you destroy their stronghold systems to buy time for their own merc and regular fleet recruitment making the big defensive systems as delay, rather then support artillery for the main battle. now this wont work with SP since the AI loves to have lots of little fleets around everywhere, so i think is fine to give them better defenses.

Hive worlds with orbital rings can output the same energy credits as a dyson sphere :)

I hoped the reference wasn't too obscure!

@@Jernsaxe WOW thats really op

@@janaejoaodosacramento9731 You can also hit 5k alloys on a single (size 25) Ecumonopolis as Rogue Servitor :)

@@Jernsaxe had a machine planet with maxed out labs and energy districs and it was +600 energy

Unless they fixed it, strike craft are the most reliable weapons for a DP since you don't lose the strike craft until the station dies. It lets you still do damage with the DP even after it dies (and it dies very easily). At least 1 ion cannon is good since it triggers a fight from farther away (makes it impossible to avoid since Ion cannons have more range than titans which is good because the crises will otherwise fly around and avoid it)).

@@SuperThest I would agree. I usually go full strikecraft, no ion. Also strikecraft don't have the range limitations so they can begin defense immediately. Also, as you stated, they keep going even if platform is downed.

I would love to know how to get more use out of them, I like the idea of building defences but so often until now it would just be a waste of good alloys.

@@jameshildebrand907 another benefit of strike craft is that they usually give you a higher fleet power score which can scare the AI off, so even if the station can't win, it makes the AI think it can. Strike craft will only deploy when the fight starts, which can be after the enemy shoots and kills some DP if you're not careful. Strike craft do have a limited engagement range though which is usually determined by the your longest range gun. Ion cannons will trigger your strike craft to deploy sooner. I wouldn't build that many though since Ion cannons didn't get any buffs like the DP got, so they're an even more questionable investment then they were before.

@@SuperThest I'll correct you on one detail there, strike craft continue to spawn even after the battle begins, but only at half of the construction time quoted on their stat sheet (8 days I think). They will continue to snowball until the weapon that spawns them is destroyed, but stick around until the battle is over or the strike craft is destroyed.

lol

Normally, they keep themselves up their, so unless the Ring was broken at one point, that shouldn't happen.

they're on orbit. so they'll stay up there forever unless you use massive force to drop them.

@@babstra55 Most orbital ring designs are active support structures, using magnetics and large masses to sustain themselves at low altitude while keeping their rotation matched with the surface of the earth. They don't actually spin at orbital velocity, and can instead be treated as a suspension bridge with no ends. This lack of orbital rotation also introduces an instability in the rings position around the planet. Uneven gravitational forces will tug the ring unevenly, eventually resulting in a dangerous wobble as one side shifts to be closer to the surface than the other. This can be managed in a number of ways, but the most useful and cost effective would be ground to ring tethers, effectively space elevators except much shorter, and that you can run at angles to most of the planet, rather than requiring the equator. Of course, all this stops applying if you build a ring further out and spin it at orbital velocity, but even then spinning rings can have stability issues, requiring attitude control systems to maintain orientation.

@@aajjww121 sure that's possible, but more like atlas pillars than orbital rings. a typical orbital ring has a rotator, a sort of cable trapped inside a vacuum tube. you spin that rotator at orbital speed or greater, and build your structures on top of the vacuum tube. the masses are suspended with maglev so that there's no actual contact. you keep your magnets superconductive so the system never stops unless you actually break it. the advantages are you don't need atlas pillars, everything but the rotator is geostationary, and you can run it at any height even inside atmosphere or 1m above ground because the rotator is inside a vacuum tube. you can even build it on surface, spin it up and lift it up to space. or land it for upgrades/maintenance, even use it for massive cargo hauls to other rigns above it.

It's still painful.

I never even notice the planet size, when expanding. I just take the planet, and build it up over time. Because of the logistic pop growth modifier, I almost never max out planets, anyway.

@@AaronCMounts Yeah, these days planet size is a small factor in usefulness. Even the smallest possible size at 8 is still enough that if you just spam city districts you can get enough housing for researchers and use all the building slots. Before the pop and districts rework a planet was greatly limited by its size, especially even further back when the planets still used the tile system.

Noted!

Stations do have an upgrade button for their defense platforms. There's even a notification icon when they can be upgraded in the outliner.

@@alistairgrey5089 he means reinforced

@@alistairgrey5089 upgrade isnt rebuild/reinforce

There's a mod that gives platforms the same ability as the station: making then inactive rather than destroying them.

You know what I miss, I miss being able to build Defense Platforms anywhere.

One thing I'm hoping is that they make the megastructures more vulnerable. Like that if you take a system that has one you can deconstruct it. Strong defenses require valuable targets to defend.

finally some midgame to endgame flavor

Gigastructural Engineering is therefor handsdown the best mod for stellaris, period. I never NEVER play without that. Having the ability to turn EVERY planet into a livable one is just fucking bombastic.

​@@Karl_der_Genosse overhyped mod

Why would WANT you deconstruct a a megastructure since you gain the benefits when you take the system it is in?

Nice profile picture

Or does it make it less powerful? Seeing as wide empires can use rings and there isnt a limit to how many. I would think more worlds, more rings, more power.

@@vdKingpin But fewer planets means less empire size, therefore cheaper/more edicts, faster tech and traditions.

@@biggsdarklighter0473 the cost doesn’t matter if you’re far outpacing it with your sheer amount of production across the board. If it does become a problem you can just release sector vassals which is probably even better than not having vassals now thanks to the specialist types. The only real issue you could run into is pop growth slowdown, but you can fix that by having a dedicated sector that you release, let them grow pops, reintegrate and simply resettle to your core worlds, rinse and repeat. The math says that wide is simply better in terms of performance. At the end of the day though, unless you’re playing high difficulties with AI enhancing mods or comp multiplayer, what’s best doesn’t matter all that much as long as you do enough to keep up.

Tall empire will always be a handicap then a strength until they make heavy demerits to owning too many systems

So turtling wins.

@@AaronCMounts you could jump past it. Especially since they added juggernauts. Supply lines are less of an issue for refitting repairing and replacing lost ships. Even more if you could get a foothold and take a gateway or even build a gateway in said system. The ai wouldn't do it for sure. Imo I think they need a legit update for combat. Cruisers have very little use and destroyers can be hit or miss. Everyone uses battleships and corvettes. They have a decent road map from hoi4 they could utilize but I understand stellaris is so much more then a war game like hoi4 so it's not necessarily a priority.

@@hersh1138 plus I don't know if the dev teams of both games are the same, they could be different

@@lol9334 I'm sure they are different team but it's the same company so it's not like they would be stealing others work.

@@hersh1138 I always use Destroyers for PD but I’m not sure if PD only affects the ships that they are on or if they will try and cover the whole fleet. Cruisers are kind of useless as battleships are just better at almost everything. The only thing they are slightly useful for are missiles.

Looks too strong to me to be honest.

@@anyname4306 Ecu-planets are only useful to huge empires, with huge mineral, food, and energy surpluses. If you're not running massive surpluses in the basic resources, a, Ecu-planet can quickly become a crippling resource sink.

@@AaronCMounts I am not sure I agree. Nowadays you can produce tons of basic resources on a couple of good planets. There are so many modifiers and buffs that you don't need a huge empire. And the resources that are used by the ecu would otherwise be used up by a bunch of planets that wouldn't do anything else that what the ecu does, just worse.

Same here I wouldn't have known where to stop without aspec and stefon videos thanks Montu

The turtle strategy is usually to survive until the victory year if you have that enabled.

Defencive does not mean dont have a mega fleet ready to deal with endgame tho (or any other fleets). And you CAN attack as a defencive player when your fleet is ready. Then you defences will keep it safe while you deal punishment out. Sure it is abit more tricky, but it is diffinently possible. For one you could ask an AI ally to attack someone and join them in the war. Sure the "ally" takes the territory you attack. But so what ? The fallen empire is gone.

I always had a go to turtle build I called the fanatic pacifiers. Play inwards perfection, and early and mid game I only ever focused on defense at chokepoints and science. Then sit back and play a city building Sim with my planets. Then when I get collosus unlocked I declare a change ideology war on everyone, (pacifist can't use the total war cb) then go around and shield every enemy planet in the galaxy until I am the only one left.

@@UltraSuperDuperFreak Ally as Inward perfectionnist? Meh, I do not babysit lesser beings

Become the Crisis to win perhaps?

That never made sense to me how those planets could be habitable when there isn’t a star to give them heat.

@@luigimrlgaming9484 If the black hole is active and large enough, it could pose as a "pseudo-sun" where light and heat radiates from its accretion disk. If you google "could a habitable planet orbit a black hole" you'll find several scientific articles dealing with this topic.

@@berlindude75 what about light? Wouldn’t it just be eternally dark?

@@luigimrlgaming9484 The dust and gases circling at very high speeds in the accretion disks of large black holes emit a lot of light (and other electromagnetic radiation such as infrared) from superheating friction. This emitted light of the accretion disk will be bent around the black hole resulting in the typical depiction of a black sphere enveloped in strands of light. It's also why very distant galaxies billions of lightyears away with active SMBH cores can still be seen as a single source of light (so-called super-luminous quasars).

@@berlindude75 Stellaris blackholes don’t, but that would make sense.

If you build the transit hub on the ring it affects the whole system (and you won't be able to build it on the station. Just one per system).

So I assume the same is true for the secret installation? If so, one can just build both in the planetary rings around a planet, making the pops both loyal and easy to resettle.

Orbital rings act like secondary starbases when it comes to those kinds of modules. They always effect the entire system regardless of if they are on the station or the ring.

It counts for the whole system (all planets and habitats in it) and you can only build it once. So if a system only has one colonized planet, I would put the Transit Hub on its constructed ring saving me an outpost-to-starbase upgrade (unless the system has a specific role or feature to protect). If there are more than one colonized planets, I would put it on the central starbase so that all planets have the same amount of slots to work with in their separate rings. Double-dipping is possible with Black Hole Observatories and Nebula Refineries.

If you find a system with a lot of uninhabitable bodies, you can build habitats around some of those too, stretching the benefit further (can't stack a megastructure on a megastructure though, so no ringed habitats).

The orbital rings get placed where a habitat would go, so you can’t have both you gotta pick if you want a habitat or a orbital ring

Another thing to note is that you can only build orbital rings on planets that have pops on them. You cannot just make them on any celestial body unlike habitats

i think it counts, isn't it?

Honestly, how do you even use it all up? By the time I hit 1k a month I can't use it enough

@@randomstuff1019 I was Void Dweller origin and had multiple fortress habitats so my naval capacity even after the galactic reforms and high contribution in federation, was still over 2400 which supported 13 titans with battleships.

I can answer your second part: avoid engaging these strongholds. They outrange you and therefor deal a lot more damage then an equal sized fleet. If you rally have to engage them then the good old arti battleship is the right choice.

building defense platforms isn't exclusive time-wise with fleets right?

I just wish you could do that for the Starbase/orbital ring itself.