Virtuality production

[Agent]

I'm trying a Virtuality empire for the first time and my understanding from reading both online and the description in the tradition tree is that once you unlock it on the tree you get a 175% production boost across the board, -25% for each planet you have colonized.

I didn't read ahead so I actually had 8 colonies when I adopted the tree. So I burned through the rest of the tradition as fast as possible so I could do Server Shutdown. Unless I'm misunderstanding, when I shut down my 2 smallest planets I should have seen an immediate 50% boost in production but I didn't, I saw a decrease in production equal to the jobs that were eliminated on the planets I shut down.

Everything I've read says that's not right? Why did I not get a big production boost. I'm playing Iron Man so I don't want to shut down a bunch more colonies just to test it and screw up my game. Where do I see the production boost/penalty I'm getting from number of colonies; hovering over the pops on the planet screen doesn't seem to do it.

Thanks.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Just click on any pop working a job on a planet and look at the production modifiers. Note that your overall output (top bar) isn't updated until the start of the next month.

To demonstrate.

3 worlds (+100% production): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3339130550
Shutting down 1 world (+125% production): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3339130491

[CrUsHeR]

Not sure if you expected the planetary output to increase by 50%? That's not how the bonus works.

Virtual bonuses stack additively with anything else.
So if you gain another +50%, this is just 50% of the basic job output.

For example, a researcher produces a base 3 society research.
No matter how many other bonuses you already have, adding a +50% bonus will only add exactly +1.5 society research.

[Agent]

Thanks, yeah the problem as it turns out was that not all my pops were actually virtual yet even though they all had the "virtual" trait in the species view. I had to assimilate them. I guess I assumed they would only get the "virtual" species trait once they were virtual, so I never set them to "assimilate"! D'oh!

[CrUsHeR]

You can colonize a planet, move all your non-virtual pops there, use server shutdown.

At least for Xenophiles, this is the only method to remove foreign non-virtual pops.
This is also what i do with planets i am forced to conquer, like from genocidal- or fallen empires. Then abandon all the star systems after the war, or trade them to other empires.

Otherwise you probably could sell them on the slave market, or purge them.
The shutdown method has absolutely no repercussions though.

[-=EDF=- Kouta Seto]

Virtuality is in fact the weakest of those 3 things... a 3 to 4 planet species? Sorry with 15 planets i totaly obliberate you on every turn. You would need 3x or even 4x the buff to match that.... and trust me i was the one yelling at first how OP it is to have infinite pops instantly... nanites are where its truly at XD

[Dev1L]

The point of virtuality is that you get massive bonuses very early, while nanites is about scaling into later stage.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by -=EDF=- Kouta Seto:

Virtuality is in fact the weakest of those 3 things... a 3 to 4 planet species? Sorry with 15 planets i totaly obliberate you on every turn. You would need 3x or even 4x the buff to match that.... and trust me i was the one yelling at first how OP it is to have infinite pops instantly... nanites are where its truly at XD

Yeah... the whole community, including youtubers who do nothing else than theorycrafting builds, must be wrong about Virtuality

Virtually completely wrong, even more wrong than just wrong

[Dev1L]

To be honest they speak mostly from competative multiplayer perspective, they don't play for 200-300 years here. In such short sessions virtuality indeed absurdly strong.

[NixBoxDone]

Originally posted by -=EDF=- Kouta Seto:

Virtuality is in fact the weakest of those 3 things... a 3 to 4 planet species? Sorry with 15 planets i totaly obliberate you on every turn. You would need 3x or even 4x the buff to match that.... and trust me i was the one yelling at first how OP it is to have infinite pops instantly... nanites are where its truly at XD

You're wrong.
The problem you'll have with your ten to fifteen planets is that Virtuality will have 4 FULLY BUILT OUT planets by the time your 8th colony still has three pops huddled in a shelter.

The whole plan there is to rush it so you have the advantage of instant pops when wide empires are still trying to figure out how to get enough pops to make their first planet productive.

Virtuality might only have 4 planets, but those 4 planets will be fully online and boosted by 75 % across the board on zero empire spread before your first one is getting anywhere close. At that same time in the game you probably won't have one full planet worth of pops unless you already conquered someone.
They'll go from 50 pops to 400, go for a full tech rush and have battleships and megastructures when you're still watching time click down on your cruiser research.

That same boost also affects unity, so they'll likely be three traditions ahead of you when you meet unless you happen to be neighbours.

Those pops will be massively more productive not only because of the base buff for virtuality but also because that base buff allows them to crush research for more pop production and advanced building upgrades.
By the time you're done counting the buffs their pops will be ten times more productive than yours and since they just copy and paste pops as they need them with zero wait time, the only obstacle between them and a full planet is how long it takes to build the structures.

Eventually they'll switch to 4 ringworld sections or 4 ecumenopoli, which is when they really take off.

While this is going on they'll use this massive advantage to subjugate surrounding empires and integrating them into a Hegemony Empire. This allows them to make use of their extra planets, share their research with their underlings to make them less useless and appropriate up to 50 % of their naval cap and a healthy chunk of their resource production to build and maintain a federation fleet to make up for the lacking naval cap of a 4 system empire.

Virtuality falls off lategame when your alloy production allows you to mass produce ring worlds and you can use quantity to overcome quality, but only if the virtuality empire refuses to make use of that ludicrous early advantage and simply decides to squat on its four planets in a corner somewhere.
That's less of a weakness in virtuality and more of a player error though. The equivalent of building a wide empire and not colonizing more than a few planets - your player choices gimping you, not your choice of ascension.

It's basically the ultimate snowball option and the only difference between it and others is that it leverages other empires more than usual to become and stay the biggest threat in the galaxy.

[CrUsHeR]

Virtuality might only have 4 planets, but those 4 planets will be fully online and boosted by 75 % across the board on zero empire spread before your first one is getting anywhere close

It is much, much more than 75% with 4 colonies.


You get +80% research from the Virtual Research Focus. It reduces your Unity from jobs by 50%, but (in my builds) you only generate unity through Trade.

And since clerks still increase trade by 1% each, you should have a trade habitat generating maybe 5k to 10k, with your other habitats and the ecumenopolis still a significant fraction of that.

But the clerks also increase all resource output by 1% each. So with the habitats, you'll have a ton of these too. Six habitation districts would add 27 clerk jobs for another +27% research.

So in this example we have 75% + 80% + 27% = 182%. And if you built your research habitat in a system with maybe 10+ major orbitals, you get a lot more space for habitation districts than just six.


Alloys are simply not a problem if you can get a Relic World.
My last game, i was producing around 3.3k on the 4th planet (ecumenopolis) while still leaving 6 districts for Housing (clerks giving +81% output).


And yeah sorry, but the other ascensions are a joke. When you look at the game date, it is 2250 and your first expansion colony just got 25 pops. At that point the Virtual habitats are already full with mentioned bonuses. And they keep getting even better with the extra unlocks, which are coming in super fast.

Getting the endgame techs in 5-10 months, a new tradition every 6-12 months.
Unity ambitions not even costing notable upkeep, planetary ascension costing almost nothing due to not having empire size.

[Speed Malus]

Virtuality is ALL about going as tall as inhumanly possible.

If you can, try your hardest to go for a ring world.

Either shattered Ring start.

OR

Pray to rngesus you get either the Precursor/Derelict one.

Arc Welders are the easiest and one of the only ways to guarantee Mega-Engineering.
Using that you make your own Ring World (With the ascension perk). Just straight up move your capital and empty all your planets into your Ring World segments and live like a king.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Speed Malus:

Either shattered Ring start.

I guess this may be the problem, when people played Shattered Ring and then think

"well that was pretty good, but my nanotech / modularity empire was pretty close"

Because the three shattered ring segments are complete garbage until you restore them to ring worlds. First you need to get Mega-Engineering, then it takes another 10 years to restore. Want to upgrade a building during these 10 years, it gets paused. And then it takes many many years to rebuild the segments.

Until you manage that, you're already like a century behind on tech compared to a Voidforged Virtual empire.


Check out this video for example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEf0JmFRkK4

Habitats are so much better. Because you get 4.5 x 12 or so researcher jobs from districts (minimum) which don't cost gas upkeep, plus research buildings. While the shattered ring only gets the buildings. Effectively not even producing half as much as the habitats. There is no designation bonus either.

Habitats also get 3 industrial jobs per district compared to 2 on the shattered ring, again winning by 50%.

Habitats also can have at least 25 districts from 9 orbitals (default on your capital), with 13 orbitals you already have 29 districts.

Needless to say that the districts on the shattered ring itself are very very bad. Trade districts with 1 trader and 1 artisan.