What's the point of playing as a machine intelligence?

[kirb]

Point of playing as it if you're not a warmonger.

I'm new to the synthetic dawn DLC, and to be honest I don't actually see anything that machine empires could be good at that organics couldn't do better. They can't have ethics, and literally all of their available traits and civics are focused around nothing but robot assembly speed and cost, mineral and energy acquisition, army stats, and science. It seems like the game is basically forcing you to either do determined exterminator or driven assimilator and absolutely nothing else.

[Iskaka]

well you also have playing as caretakers. plus they can inhabit everything which is handy, not to mention the rp possibillities, personally i like it just for the latter if nothinfg else

[kirb]

Originally posted by Iskaka:

well you also have playing as caretakers. plus they can inhabit everything which is handy, not to mention the rp possibillities, personally i like it just for the latter if nothinfg else

That's a good point, to be fair. Also, I've heard people talking about how doing caretakers makes them be absolutely swimming in more unity than they know what to do with.

[Archmage MC]

Originally posted by Kirbcake:

Originally posted by Iskaka:

well you also have playing as caretakers. plus they can inhabit everything which is handy, not to mention the rp possibillities, personally i like it just for the latter if nothinfg else

That's a good point, to be fair. Also, I've heard people talking about how doing caretakers makes them be absolutely swimming in more unity than they know what to do with.

Rogue Servators are one of the only ethic/civic combos that can compete with Crisis empires in raw production thanks to their ability to easily colonize a new world and get 10 pops on it, their massive unity production, and their unity pops also giving 1% complex drone output per. So if you say have an ecumenopolis with 200 bio trophies and 100 forge drones, thats equal to having 300 forge drones on a single planet.

[kirb]

Originally posted by Archmage MC:

Originally posted by Kirbcake:

That's a good point, to be fair. Also, I've heard people talking about how doing caretakers makes them be absolutely swimming in more unity than they know what to do with.

Rogue Servators are one of the only ethic/civic combos that can compete with Crisis empires in raw production thanks to their ability to easily colonize a new world and get 10 pops on it, their massive unity production, and their unity pops also giving 1% complex drone output per. So if you say have an ecumenopolis with 200 bio trophies and 100 forge drones, thats equal to having 300 forge drones on a single planet.

holy moly. ok.

[V1]

I think you've got it totally backwards man, if we're just talking about what's the most optimal (versus fun) then machine empires can just blow organics out of the water in most aspects. The 100% habitability everywhere is HUGE, them not needing food or consumer goods lets them streamline their economy massively, and they're actually better at producing alloys (3 foundry drones per industrial district vs organics who get 2 metallurgists).

Their labs give calculator jobs that just require energy instead of consumer goods like researchers for organics need, so this also lets you get the research rolling really fast. Speaking of energy, while organics get trade districts on habitats and ringworlds and trade hubs for starbases, the machines can just skip all that crap and make generator districts and solar panel modules for starbases, which tends to be much more efficient.

Their leaders are immortal too, which is also nice. I'm pretty certain than in most scenarios gestalt conscienses (both machine and hive) can also grow their pops considerably faster than organic empires. The recent changes to logistic growth curves are arguably quite advantageous to machines in particular since their growth comes entirely from assembly and doesn't taper off as you near planet capacity.

I dunno man, I don't play as machines too often because I'm just convinces they're an easy mode and that they're OP. But if you're looking for something interesting, there's a cool strategy that involves machine empires with the doomsday origin. It's a serious build (not just a meme or challenge one) and quite powerful at earlygame rushing, since the habitability and food penalties from your dying homeworld don't affect machines at all and in the years leading up to the explosion of your homeworld it gets an increasingly large bonus to alloy and mineral production, if I recall correctly.

[BigTurnip]

If you want a Rogue Servitor Challenge run your entire empire on Ecu only and build a trade empire with normal AI empires to get all your energy, minerals and food.

You can trade 1 Consumer Good for 2 base goods, a single consumer goods drone can easily make 30 and trade those 30 for 60 minerals etc.

[Iskaka]

rouge servitor also bout to get a buff with just unity resettling

[Catalyst]

glad to see machines are still cracked

[Bumc]

If you want to amp the cheese to the max, you can skip energy generation altogether.
Most robot professions cost energy for upkeep, and robots themselves do so as well.
Unlike food for bio pops, lack of energy does not reduce assembly speed, and -75% mineral generation is much less than you'd think due to how additive bonuses stack and most minerals early game being produced by stations anyway.
Early wars are out of the question, so might consider investing in envoys, but having pretty much unlimited researchers and bureaucrats means by year 70 you'll be so much ahead in tech that you can body anyone even with -75% weapon damage.

[ScreamCon]

I can't say exactly as I have all dlc. But for stellaris 3.2 prior the advantage of the machine empire was or is;

-Research uses energy (the amount of energy used to ratio of science is insane when compared next to the 6 minerals needed with hive, or needing industrial compared to regular) This is insane as minerals make less scale slower and goods are more efficient but not at same time and scale to a limit.

-pops use energy
-energy producing jobs are boosted (thus much of empire can consolidate on energy)
-alloy production intake is higher but output is higher, effectively being more efficient (helps compensate for needing to build pops)
-Pops do not need consumer goods
-Pops have +200% habitability, so as you expand can do so at maximum rate. (might be why more stages to their capital and some things are made more expensive)
-Bureaucrats of machine empire produce the most administrative capacity (3.2) (compensates for the harsher sprawl penalty over capacity)

Basically even if your not running rouge servitor a regular empire would have to do a good amount of hauling or min maxing. And even then that might only make them break even.

Now if you compare to a hive empire the lacking qualities is needing to spend alloy for pops. which by far seems to be the greatest drawback in the sense regular empires can grow from nothing. They don't need food for pop grow function.

You got the variants of machine empire that have fleshies they can grow but will do so at a slower rate.

[HappySack]

It's to not deal with the hassle of making consumer goods and food as well as colonize anything and everything you want.

Also, it's a lot easier to turn all your worlds to machine worlds than it is to make an ecumenopolis.

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by V1:

I think you've got it totally backwards man, if we're just talking about what's the most optimal (versus fun) then machine empires can just blow organics out of the water in most aspects. The 100% habitability everywhere is HUGE, them not needing food or consumer goods lets them streamline their economy massively, and they're actually better at producing alloys (3 foundry drones per industrial district vs organics who get 2 metallurgists).

Their labs give calculator jobs that just require energy instead of consumer goods like researchers for organics need, so this also lets you get the research rolling really fast. Speaking of energy, while organics get trade districts on habitats and ringworlds and trade hubs for starbases, the machines can just skip all that crap and make generator districts and solar panel modules for starbases, which tends to be much more efficient.

Their leaders are immortal too, which is also nice. I'm pretty certain than in most scenarios gestalt conscienses (both machine and hive) can also grow their pops considerably faster than organic empires. The recent changes to logistic growth curves are arguably quite advantageous to machines in particular since their growth comes entirely from assembly and doesn't taper off as you near planet capacity.

I dunno man, I don't play as machines too often because I'm just convinces they're an easy mode and that they're OP. But if you're looking for something interesting, there's a cool strategy that involves machine empires with the doomsday origin. It's a serious build (not just a meme or challenge one) and quite powerful at earlygame rushing, since the habitability and food penalties from your dying homeworld don't affect machines at all and in the years leading up to the explosion of your homeworld it gets an increasingly large bonus to alloy and mineral production, if I recall correctly.

Robots have downsides too.

-Needing to waste a lot of Pops on Amneties production
-Needing to waste Pops to produce other Pops
-Needing to waste some Alloys to produce other Pops
-Can't make full use of conquered Pops unless Assimilator, or specific use if Servants
-Using less types of resources means you get less benefit from job resource bonus multipliers
-Dont have access to Ruler Traits
-Dont have access to Ruler Agendas
-Less Civic variety and benefits
-No Ethic variety of benefits
-No bonus growth from planet capacity
-No accidental Trade Value to boost energy gains
-Super low base Unity gain on start, and a harder time to build Unity
-Low Stability. Have to settle for 50, where regular empires can easily get 80-100 for up to a 30% bonus from resources. For Gestalt high stability requires minor artifacts and synapse/etc drones.

I stopped playing them for the most part, because they are lot less flexible in their builds and thus a lot less fun for me. Hiveminds have a lot of limitations too, but somehow feel way more fun.

[V1]

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Originally posted by V1:

I think you've got it totally backwards man, if we're just talking about what's the most optimal (versus fun) then machine empires can just blow organics out of the water in most aspects. The 100% habitability everywhere is HUGE, them not needing food or consumer goods lets them streamline their economy massively, and they're actually better at producing alloys (3 foundry drones per industrial district vs organics who get 2 metallurgists).

Their labs give calculator jobs that just require energy instead of consumer goods like researchers for organics need, so this also lets you get the research rolling really fast. Speaking of energy, while organics get trade districts on habitats and ringworlds and trade hubs for starbases, the machines can just skip all that crap and make generator districts and solar panel modules for starbases, which tends to be much more efficient.

Their leaders are immortal too, which is also nice. I'm pretty certain than in most scenarios gestalt conscienses (both machine and hive) can also grow their pops considerably faster than organic empires. The recent changes to logistic growth curves are arguably quite advantageous to machines in particular since their growth comes entirely from assembly and doesn't taper off as you near planet capacity.

I dunno man, I don't play as machines too often because I'm just convinces they're an easy mode and that they're OP. But if you're looking for something interesting, there's a cool strategy that involves machine empires with the doomsday origin. It's a serious build (not just a meme or challenge one) and quite powerful at earlygame rushing, since the habitability and food penalties from your dying homeworld don't affect machines at all and in the years leading up to the explosion of your homeworld it gets an increasingly large bonus to alloy and mineral production, if I recall correctly.

Robots have downsides too.

-Needing to waste a lot of Pops on Amneties production
-Needing to waste Pops to produce other Pops
-Needing to waste some Alloys to produce other Pops
-Can't make full use of conquered Pops unless Assimilator, or specific use if Servants
-Using less types of resources means you get less benefit from job resource bonus multipliers
-Dont have access to Ruler Traits
-Dont have access to Ruler Agendas
-Less Civic variety and benefits
-No Ethic variety of benefits
-No bonus growth from planet capacity
-No accidental Trade Value to boost energy gains
-Super low base Unity gain on start, and a harder time to build Unity
-Low Stability. Have to settle for 50, where regular empires can easily get 80-100 for up to a 30% bonus from resources. For Gestalt high stability requires minor artifacts and synapse/etc drones.

I stopped playing them for the most part, because they are lot less flexible in their builds and thus a lot less fun for me. Hiveminds have a lot of limitations too, but somehow feel way more fun.

Of course you're right in that there's some caveats, but I still am of the opinion that most of what you list is more than mitigated by the variety of advantages that they get. For instance, them spending alloys on pop assembly is more than offset by them being just generally better at producing alloys.

I think their comparatively lower unity (for non servitors anyways) is the only significant downside that requires some serious consideration and playing around. Unity has been somewhat easily ignored in the past but it's about to be a lot more important, and I haven't been doing anything with the 3.3 beta, so maybe they'll soon start to feel quite a bit weaker for their bad unity production. I'd welcome that change honestly, because as I'd already stated I don't play them often. Like you I find their streamlined gameplay to be comparatively boring.

[crgzero]

On a 1 to 1 basis in an actual game, with all things being equal as far as events, early wars etc. Gestalt will come out on top easily.

[BigTurnip]

Originally posted by crgzero:

On a 1 to 1 basis in an actual game, with all things being equal as far as events, early wars etc. Gestalt will come out on top easily.

not really since it doesn't have access to the best early snowball war origin Hegemony.

The early Hegemony fleet is probably the scariest thing you will ever see. If you neighbor it your done.

Now thanks to take point when it goes to war the entire Hegemony comes for you

Only a Scion origin can defend against it.