when the shadows eventually show up will their be an option to join them like you can join the OE

Technically yes, but, "joining" the Shadow will result in game over

So reading through this thread it sounds like the suggested fleet power to start the OE event is around 5 million. In my game another empire just broke the seal when my navy(The strongest in the galaxy by a large margin) only has like 500k power. Is the AI supposed to do this?

Had a read through this thread. So following on im excited to hear more is coming for this mod and the shadow... love the effort gone into the lore. Been pretty new to mods for last few months. Honestly thought zenith fallen empires was extensive and massive but this and ancient cache has blown me away futher. Gotta credit this was amazing to play. And you guys weren't kidding against stellarborne. Turned up with a good few mil of Fleet power thinking im big stuff and I got demolished quickly on my.first playthrough. Respect the warning.

So I've had a game playing as the stellaborne and it was great being god. Looking down on all as mortals even the FE's. Now im glad more is coming. I won't complain but playing as the OE ain't a lot to do in terms of events and interaction with other empires. Hoping some special stuff will come up expanding on playing as an OE especially relating to the FE's and normal empires But as ive observed a lot more to come so im excited for where this mod goes next. Proper gem this is.

Yeah currently playable Stellarborne is just a an experiment and a power trip, it is in no way finished yet, but I have a lot of plans and things to do for now so its not my priority yet.

so i will admit i did not read up on any of the documentation prior to experiencing this, and it lead to one hell of a PTSD-inducing series of events

so i started playing as a machine empire, and had my own little corner of space with an outer gate in it. i was curious about it, and wanted to open it, so i gradually worked on doing that. in the first shield barrier bypass puzzle, i failed, and it set off a bomb that wiped out a civilisation (by happenstance, because their only colony was within 4 light-jumps), and damaged many others, you'd think that'd teach me a lesson, no?

well, a couple hundred years pass, and everything's pretty much great, i've got some decent endgame tech, and i think i'm hot ♥♥♥♥, so i bring down the final barrier only to be informed that i will be challenged

boy bring it on, i've got the best fleet in the game, come at me

well evidently, they did, and they obliterated my entire navy (+ juggernaut) in about 5 seconds

i eventually tried to throw everything i had at them (2 fleets comprising of 1.5 million strength vs 1 recon fleet of 3 ships) and i could not even dent their shields

so i temporarily surrendered while the rest of the galaxy was annihilated by the stellarborn, leaving only about 4 other empires who also surrendered, and the fallen empires were swept away like they were nothing

and now here i am, biding my time until i can gather enough strength to break my surrender, and launch my final all out attack against the bastards that put me in this situation, while bearing the weight of my incompetent sins on my shoulders

top tier, 10/10 experience

I had roughly 30+M in fleet strength with a sigma citadel in the chokepoint system, the fleet came through and I saw 7 ships and i thought "Pshhhh, this isnt gonna be too bad" and one thing led to another and I lost 1368 ships and i almost killed one of theirs. One thing led to another and I surrendered only to then dowload a mod to test out their stength, this mod allowed me to add dmg and firerate to my ships. So I added 5000% on each to ym fleets and of course it caused an overflow error turning my 12M fleet to 64, but hey I knew my damage and ♥♥♥♥ still applied right? well I got more fleets like this until about 50+m and ended my surrender before getting promptly shat on by the assault fleet in less than 3 SECONDS. aM i DOING SOMETHING WRONG? because I always play on ironman to stop myself using the research finish command to finish up useless research because I always get tempted by it so I legit just wasted like a 30 hour playthrough. To be clear, before I started the event I had 30+M, I could literally roflstomp the fallen empires/awakened empires bc they just didnt matter. I had stellarite tech and 30+ repeatables in each type of repeatable and I got absolutely murdered. Is there some mod scaling issue im not aware of? Because that seems really, REALLY excessive.

you can change the stellarborne diffculty with an edict, but yeah they are pretty bad, i always ♥♥♥♥ them with console tho, spawn a arkship and give them a taste of their own meds

but the lowest they go is normal and thats what they were at :(

oof, yeah that's why invincible exists

They should add extra settings that add debuffs to the OE units, like difficulty settings going from normal to Subpar, then Easy, then Cakewalk with debuffs going in the opposite directions that the other increase in difficulties go

Because I honestly dont want to waste another playthrough on that bs, like this mod was really fun with the tech and ♥♥♥♥ I just dont find it enjoyable to be denied the thing i wanted (light energy tech) by an exceedingly op enemy that completely curbstomped me despite the fact I could have easily 1v1ed a 25x crisis with my fleets and tech.

there are 2 tiers of light energy, flowing and static. you get static by reverse engineering and flowing by beating them also the command event sofe_test_event.3 will give you all the static light techs

ngl the only ship i have that is even remotely effective against them is 5 moons and 3 planets glued to a sun (systemcraft, dunno which mod it's part of)

so far i've killed over 800 of their ships but i've literally had to isolate myself from the rest of the galaxy (by breaking hyperlanes with a nicoll-dyson beam, thank you gigastructural engineering) so they don't kill all my people, they got me down to two systems lmaooo

GIGASTRUCTURES, is what the systemcraft is from, also, if you get the Quasi-Stellar Obliterator, attract them to a bait system, and blow them to ♥♥♥♥, or just cut off their route out of that system, so they cant use those fleet and cant reinforce themselves with more fleets (because fleet cap)