Voidborne sucks for Void Dwellers?

[Nobelissimos]

Am I missing something or is it just not a very good perk when you're playing void dwellers? The only thing it really does void dwellers is +2 building slots on habitats and lets you upgrade your housing buildings, but the housing doesn't look very compelling because it's not that much. I guess in the long run if you really build dozens and dozens of habitats it would be good?

I guess it makes it worse that in my current game I can colonise planets anyways so im not totally dependent on habitats.

[Half Phased]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Even with the nerfs, it still plays just fine and works great against the AI. Which is not surprising, since it was on a very high power level for its time. Now it's certainly nowhere near the top anymore, but saying it's "the worst" out of the the "challenging origins" is just absurd.

The "core" benefit of the build is that you get easy access to research districts, all of your three planets from day 1 and a Head Researcher per habitat really easily. All of this frees you from a lot of the investments that other empires have to make early, which allows you to focus heavily on research.

As for your arguments, the 5 Alloys upkeep per habitat was already there when the build was Meta, as were Industrial Districts, and Empire Size in particular doesn't matter to the rush, since you won't be hitting 100 until shortly before you start conquering your neighbors. You're not meant to build more Habitats afterwards, you're meant to conquer the galaxy. And Functional Architecture is generally only used for the Trade-focused version of Void Dwellers as far as I'm aware, the Technocracy-version does not need it.

Void dweller tech rush was at its best when it was first introduced when the origin was first made available (2.4 feels about the right time period). Back then habitats had no alloy upkeep, meaning that void dwellers could build as many as they liked and didn’t suffer economically for it. The research districts aren’t as good as they used to be, these used to be god tier on habitats as consumer good production was done *entirely* through the civilian fabricator building, meaning that research districts allowed a player build research districts on their capital and then fill the building slots with civilian fabricators, turning their capital into a research center that supplied itself with consumer goods. Which wasn’t possible for normal planets at the time.

Now that consumer goods and alloys come from industrial districts, that competes with the research districts. Which hampers the void dwellers.

Next, industrial districts widened the gulf between planets and habitats. Since habitats can only have 4, 6 or 8 districts max, that means 4, 6 or 8 industrial districts max. Which is a fraction of what a conventional empire can do on their home planet. 8 metallurgists from a habitat, 10 with the foundry building, early game, isn’t impressive. Back before industrial changes, habitats could compete far better with planets, as their entertainment districts removed the need to spend building slots on theaters meaning more foundries.

The change of building slots from population to city districts also did a number on habitats, as a decent habitat could have enough pops to easily unlock all building slots. Now you need to practically min max to achieve that.

But hey, we’re going on an early game rush build. Unfortunately, because of how void dwellers start the game with their population spread over 3, poor growth habitats, they don’t actually gain over a regular empire that can hit 5+ pop growth on one planet, meanwhile due to penalties a void dweller will more likely be hitting 4.5 -> 5 total due to the pop logistic growth (another whack indirectly with the nerf bat.) unless you want to spend districts on housing districts, those things that you are severely limited on. There’s also significantly less districts to make alloys and consumer goods with compared to a regular empire, so good look there as if your tech rushing into an early conquest, you need a lot of both.

Ultimately, void dweller has been hit with the nerf bat indirectly so many times that it’s past power is a ghost of what it used to be, from its glory days of the tech rush and economic god it once was to a shadow of its former self. A standard planet origin could beat it in long term tech rush and definitely in economy at all times. For a rush build, a more conventional origin will also beat it as it just has more districts to spend on making alloys, rather than the void dwellers paltry 14.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Yeah that's what i expected. Your "super-awesome" VD build only works with max players and warmonger politics..

Where did I call it a super-awesome VD build? I was very clear about what is is, a tech rush build that's in the upper half of the more mediocre Origins.

But no it does not require max players. You get aggressive around year 30 only, until then there's more than enough time for empires to get closer to each other.

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

But what if you start on the empty side of the map, and don't make contact for at least 50 years? No Pre-FTL, presapients, no Caraveneer pops?

Presumably you will use clustered starts if you're planning to be aggressive, so that's not a realistic outcome.

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Or, god forbid, you want to play a peaceful utopian empire?

Then you don't use the build.

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Void Dwellers on their own are barely half as good as regular empires, as Half Phased explained the ratio of alloy production vs. upkeep is completely off the scale. You would need about every third or fourth habitat being a foundry with corresponding mineral needs.

I didn't say "Void Dwellers is a good Origin", I said "Void Dwellers still have some of the strongest tech rush openers in the "not obviously broken"-category of Origins.", which is true.

The fact that you got so triggered by my statements that in your head you turned them into something that I have not said is not my fault.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Half Phased:

Void dweller tech rush was at its best when it was first introduced when the origin was first made available (2.4 feels about the right time period)..

Void Dwellers has been a meta build multiple times during its lifetime.

Among others, in 3.0 partially due to the introduction of Industiral Districts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_WSSjuaduU

Then later the trade-focused version due to the changes to trade in 3.1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tSgP8xSoFo

These are videos from youtube content creators, but they're essentially showcasing what were multiplayer meta builds at that time, hence their focus on having a strong fleet 30 years in, when the truce of such games usually ends.

The core of how the build functioned back then was and is still the same. There have been nerfs, but half of the changes you're talking about happened before the phases above happened.

Originally posted by Half Phased:

But hey, we’re going on an early game rush build. Unfortunately, because of how void dwellers start the game with their population spread over 3, poor growth habitats, they don’t actually gain over a regular empire that can hit 5+ pop growth on one planet, meanwhile due to penalties a void dweller will more likely be hitting 4.5 -> 5 total due to the pop logistic growth (another whack indirectly with the nerf bat.) unless you want to spend districts on housing districts, those things that you are severely limited on.

Yeah no, you're ignoring or unaware of the existence of Incubators. Your Habitats all start with +4.8 growth each, from day one, and keep most of that growth going for the period of the rush until they start hitting low capacity, but then they're ready to go aggressive.

Overall, your knowledge seems severely confused. You're making a lot of correct statements about the times when void dwellers got hit with the nerf bat, but you also seem to think that void dwellers were only good in 2.4, completely ignore the fact that they were extremely strong in 3.0 and in 3.1, and that Incubators has been a huge buff to their power level recently.

[Half Phased]

Originally posted by Ryika:

I didn't say "Void Dwellers is a good Origin", I said "Void Dwellers still have some of the strongest tech rush openers in the "not obviously broken"-category of Origins.", which is true.

The fact that you got so triggered by my statements that in your head you turned them into something that I have not said is not my fault.

Oh. Ooooooh. Oooooooooooooh…

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by Half Phased:

Void dweller tech rush was at its best when it was first introduced when the origin was first made available (2.4 feels about the right time period)..

Void Dwellers has been a meta build multiple times during its lifetime.

Among others, in 3.0 partially due to the introduction of Industiral Districts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_WSSjuaduU

Then later the trade-focused version due to the changes to trade in 3.1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tSgP8xSoFo

I never said that void dweller hasn’t been strong since 2.4. I said 2.4 was the height of its power.

Originally posted by Ryika:

The fact that you got so triggered by my statements that in your head you turned them into something that I have not said is not my fault.

But that enough fun, twisting people’s words, isn’t it? Or would you prefer to carry on?

Anyway, the videos are from Montu, who is very good at stellaris and finding meta builds. I often use his videos to figure out what strategies to ban from my own multiplayer games. The thing about Montu’s strategy videos is that they are A: focused on multiplayer, meaning builds optimised for the early game rush more often than not and B: getting the most of an obscure origin.

Also, in 3.0 technocracy still provided unity from scientists, one of the reason why technocracy is now trash.

Originally posted by Half Phased:

But hey, we’re going on an early game rush build. Unfortunately, because of how void dwellers start the game with their population spread over 3, poor growth habitats, they don’t actually gain over a regular empire that can hit 5+ pop growth on one planet, meanwhile due to penalties a void dweller will more likely be hitting 4.5 -> 5 total due to the pop logistic growth (another whack indirectly with the nerf bat.) unless you want to spend districts on housing districts, those things that you are severely limited on.

Yeah no, you're ignoring or unaware of the existence of Incubators. Your Habitats all start with +4.8 growth each, from day one,

Hang on, just gonna stop you there. I actually did cover this by saying “unless you build housing districts”. As incubators +30% on 1 pop growth is 1.3, so to get 4.8+ a month you have to actually build housing…

Huh. Pretty funny. Anyway, nice try at a gotcha, but oh well. Carry on.

and keep most of that growth going for the period of the rush until they start hitting low capacity, but then they're ready to go aggressive.

Overall, your knowledge seems severely confused. You're making a lot of correct statements about the times when void dwellers got hit with the nerf bat, but you also seem to think that void dwellers were only good in 2.4, completely ignore the fact that they were extremely strong in 3.0 and in 3.1, and that Incubators has been a huge buff to their power level recently.

But anyway, moving on from the past and back to present, the technocracy rush strategy shown in the video is no longer possible as researchers no longer give unity. All you get is the research directors and better research direction with technocracy these days, not the extra unity which made it such a good combination.

Incubators may boost void dwellers, but you know what they’d also do? Boost a conventional empires first few colonies. Which means that the benefit void dwellers get from having 3 planets from the get go is diminishes as those colonies build up rapidly.

But regardless, at this point, void dwellers are pretty awful as an origin and down on their power for long term playstyles. It can be stated that the one place where they could have value is a 30 year tech rush before using that base to conquer fast, which is a highly minmaxed MP strategy which may or may not be allowed MP games depending on their forced peace rules. And could also be beaten by any other well played MP strategy, particularly one that doesn’t want to be sat in a corner for 30 years all alone.

[Half Phased]

Addendum,

Reading the weekend stellaris club discord and seeing what their players think the best builds are for a tech rush build.

Year 30: Void Dweller Technocrat Parliament system (understandable, to get unity.)

Year 35 - 40: any non-clone bio empire.

Year 50: hive.

So, yeah. Void dweller is only good for a forced peace tech rush in a window of 5 years.

But stil, highly optimised MP builds going for a tech rush, relying on a forced peace window to survive (weekend Stellaris club runs with a 20-40 year forced peace window in their usual rules). So I’m still not going to say void dweller is good in general.

But I will say it’s good… if it has a forced peace period to protect it and can get a snowball going in 5 or so years.

So it’s good* ** ***.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Half Phased:

I never said that void dweller hasn’t been strong since 2.4. I said 2.4 was the height of its power.

That's a fair correction, I did indeed misrepresent your statement there. My apologies.

Originally posted by Half Phased:

Anyway, the videos are from Montu, who is very good at stellaris and finding meta builds. I often use his videos to figure out what strategies to ban from my own multiplayer games. The thing about Montu’s strategy videos is that they are A: focused on multiplayer, meaning builds optimised for the early game rush more often than not and B: getting the most of an obscure origin.

Like I said, Montu and Stefan are the ones presenting those builds, but they were popular Multiplayer Buids that also worked well in Singleplayer.

Originally posted by Half Phased:

Also, in 3.0 technocracy still provided unity from scientists, one of the reason why technocracy is now trash.

Technocracy is not trash, it's just not top tier anymore. You seem to jump one extreme to the other really quickly.

Originally posted by Half Phased:

Hang on, just gonna stop you there. I actually did cover this by saying “unless you build housing districts”. As incubators +30% on 1 pop growth is 1.3, so to get 4.8+ a month you have to actually build housing…

Sorry, I meant 3.8, not 4.8. It's 3 base * 1,27/1,28/1,28.
You start with a total of 11.4 Growth spread among three habitats.

Originally posted by Half Phased:

But anyway, moving on from the past and back to present, the technocracy rush strategy shown in the video is no longer possible as researchers no longer give unity. All you get is the research directors and better research direction with technocracy these days, not the extra unity which made it such a good combination.

You still get a free Research Director on each of your Habitats, which is what still keeps the combo useful. The bonus to trade selection chance is very useful, too, as it heavily improves your chances to get Cruisers in time.

Yes, the fact that Researchers no longer produce Unity hurts, but again, I have already acknowledged that. Being nerfed while supremely overpowered does not mean that the Civic is now trash, you are once again going from one extreme to the other.

Originally posted by Half Phased:

Incubators may boost void dwellers, but you know what they’d also do? Boost a conventional empires first few colonies. Which means that the benefit void dwellers get from having 3 planets from the get go is diminishes as those colonies build up rapidly.

Yes, but they don't benefit from it in the same way Void Dwellers do. On your Capital, it's +5% Growth at the start of the game, less than Rapid Breeders, and that's the planet that will the Capacity bonus on it, so not having Rapid Breeders there hurts actively.

A few years will go by until you have colonized your guaranteed habitables - a few more if you're unlucky with where they spawn. By the time you finally have them, you will be on equal footing when it comes to total growth (or rather, slightly ahead due to excess planet capacity, but at that point Void Dwellers are already ahead of you in research by a lot due to having 100% Habitability on their planets, a productivity bonus, and fewer investment costs to set things up.

I mean let's not forget that you've just sunk 400 Alloys, 400 Consumer Goods, and 400 Food into setting up those planets while Void Dwellers get them for free.

Originally posted by Half Phased:

But regardless, at this point, void dwellers are pretty awful as an origin and down on their power for long term playstyles. It can be stated that the one place where they could have value is a 30 year tech rush before using that base to conquer fast, which is a highly minmaxed MP strategy which may or may not be allowed MP games depending on their forced peace rules. And could also be beaten by any other well played MP strategy, particularly one that doesn’t want to be sat in a corner for 30 years all alone.

Not really for MP as there are builds that do what VD does much better these days, unless specifically those builds are outruled. It's a playable, and decent build mostly for Singleplayer, but lacks the extra oomph of the more obviously powerful Origins.

But I do agree with the rest, it's not a good option if you're trying to do anything else other than build up to a rush.

[Half Phased]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by Half Phased:

Also, in 3.0 technocracy still provided unity from scientists, one of the reason why technocracy is now trash.

Technocracy is not trash, it's just not top tier anymore. You seem to jump one extreme to the other really quickly.

Reason why I call it trash these days is that when compared to other civics, it kinda is.

Meritocracy gives +10% specialist output. It’s insanely good.
Functionally architecture reduces build cost and gives a whole building, for free. That’s a whole unneeded city district on a planet, meaning that you can get another industrial or rural districts. Useful districts. And major mineral savings.
Mastercraft adds a plus +1 to consumer goods output, meaning it stacks multiplicatively with percentage modifiers. And trade value. And free buildings.
Relentless industrialists gives alloy and consumer goods production.
Beacon of liberty is a reduction of empire size from pops and extra unity.

Meanwhile technocracy is a ruler pop swap and an increase to the leader specialisation effect on research draw weights. The ruler pop swap isn’t particularly powerful for conventional empires, as most of your research will becoming from researchers and researchers benefit from more bonuses than rulers do. Meanwhile the tech weight effect is asking for more micro if you really want to drive your tech in specific directions to get key things, or it’s not something you’re going to use much. The tech alternative techs and traditions are more valuable in my mind.

Even though the Gaia seeder civic may be weaker than technocracy in terms of its raw gameplay power, it offers more benefit from a RP point of view which in my mind makes it better than technocracy.

To me Technocracy currently provided no major benefit compared to other gameplay civics or no RP benefit, which places it in a position of not being worth picking for either purpose.

The power was combined tech and unity in one job. The research directors were always the bonus. Even at the height of void dweller tech rushing.

[Ryika]

But we aren't talking about a generic empire, we're talking about a void dwellers tech rush, where you get 3 Science Directors nearly from the very beginning.

That's +18 Research in each category compared to not having the Civic, after 2 years or so if you resettle a pop and upgrade each of your capital buildings. It's also -12 Unity to be fair, but as long as you finish Supremacy in time - which you will - that's not too much of an issue.

For Meritocracy to give you that much research, you'd have to hit 45 Scientists with it. That's obviously not a fair comparison since it neither accounts for the reduction of unity production, nor for the fact that Meritocracy also boosts your other specialists, but it does show how well the Civic does exactly what it is good at, to maximize your early research production as a Void Dweller.
So calling the Civic weak in that context seems misguided to me, it is just very similar to Void Dwellers, good in only a very specific situation. But in that situation, it's at least one of the best options available.

The Civic also gives +1 Tech Alternatives btw, which is quite a strong effect by itself.

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by Half Phased:

TLDR, what made void dweller meritocracy technocracy good was the absurd research and unity gain at no major cost increase over regular empires. Now, without the unity generation and the extra 5 alloy upkeep per habitat, the build no longer has the economy to keep up with other empires.

I always thought the Unity it provided was underwhelming. I recall having argued about that too, but forget with whom.

Well regardless of the discussion about that, it certainly gave a hell of a lot less Unity then that build does now.. once you factor in the Academic Priviledge living standard and faction Unity. (the reason why Parliament is such a strong civic now)

So its not like you actually need the unity from Technocracy.

[Nobelissimos]

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

Be sure to fill out the Mercantile tradition tree. Habitats you aren't sure what to do with can be made into big contributors to your economy by loading them with trade districts and commercial buildings and disabling all the clerk jobs. Just a habitat with a politician and a pile of merchants. If you can get into a trade federation or start one, enjoy the unity and goods income those will get you. :D

Why disable clerk jobs? Doesn't it contribute to trade value?

[Big [REDACTED] Marty]

Originally posted by Nobelissimos:

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

Be sure to fill out the Mercantile tradition tree. Habitats you aren't sure what to do with can be made into big contributors to your economy by loading them with trade districts and commercial buildings and disabling all the clerk jobs. Just a habitat with a politician and a pile of merchants. If you can get into a trade federation or start one, enjoy the unity and goods income those will get you. :D

Why disable clerk jobs? Doesn't it contribute to trade value?

shhhh, don't tell him that the cleark jobs will be filled last, and that they will help grow the hab faster via making it better for immigration

[HappySack]

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

Why disable clerk jobs? Doesn't it contribute to trade value?

Clerks are the second worst job in the game (only behind Maintenance drones but those are required for balance), they are nothing more than a filler job that should only ever be used if you have no other jobs available as you get much more benefit if they were working literally any other job for resources directly.

[Big [REDACTED] Marty]

Originally posted by HappySack:

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

Why disable clerk jobs? Doesn't it contribute to trade value?

Clerks are the second worst job in the game (only behind Maintenance drones but those are required for balance), they are nothing more than a filler job that should only ever be used if you have no other jobs available as you get much more benefit if they were working literally any other job for resources directly.

they've been buffed quite a bit my guy, for most empires, yes they're filler, for dedicated trade builds they're quite potent, especially on trade habs

[pete3great]

Originally posted by Big Dicc Marty:

Originally posted by HappySack:

Clerks are the second worst job in the game (only behind Maintenance drones but those are required for balance), they are nothing more than a filler job that should only ever be used if you have no other jobs available as you get much more benefit if they were working literally any other job for resources directly.

they've been buffed quite a bit my guy, for most empires, yes they're filler, for dedicated trade builds they're quite potent, especially on trade habs

Maintenance drones are also awesome, if you're smart enough to take Charismatic and its variants. Let them breed (you did take all literally everything that increase your pop growth, right?) until you need to fill out a new colony. Pow, instantly populated planet.

I've learned that, when comes to Stellaris, when somebody claims something is "Bad" in the game, they just mean "I haven't figured out how to use this." But I suppose it's a function of also putting too much faith in concepts like "meta" and Youtube talking heads.

[Tiasmoon]

Maintenance drones are awesome?
As gestalt you take stuff like Charismatic so you dont have to waste as many pops on that job. Ideally you want to have none of them.