Seeing as you worked on NSC2's most recent release, I was wondering if you'd extend support for it with your mod or not, example being all the different ship types and ship focus perks one can give a machine empire's leader. Could be just a extension mod to add NSC2 only features with this mod and NSC2 as prerequisites.

@PQUNDCAKE
I will consider it. But for now, I want to focus on making a modmenu for NSC. :)

Hello.

I haven't played stellaris in months and haven't launched your new mod yet. If the proposal has already been implemented, please excuse me.

You are welcome

1. Make "coolers" for "Auto-machine World". Not fixed production.
2. Make resource consumption dependent on planets with "coolers". In the old fashion, resource consumption did not change when efficiency changed.
3. "Ringworld-machines".

The Organic Skin Civic I feel needs a change, especially since it's not removable later in the game. I feel it's very underpowered ESPECIALLY if you go Bio-Mechanical Hybrid ascension.

Without Bio-Mechanical Hybrid, the Civic at least lends us an energy upkeep reduction which is arguably the biggest part of the civic, and going Bio-Mechanical ends up removing the species trait completely and you're left with the civic just providing 30 opinion and 30 food. Extremely weak for a civic that's not removable.

My suggestion would be to change the civic so it's removable and replace the 30 opinion with 2 envoy slots, or if you wish to keep it from being removable, keep the 30 opinion and add 3 envoy slots so that the civic retains power for the specific game-play people would use it for outside of RP.

In Optimized Gameplay, I would only ever use this civic with Trading Machine so I could get organic empires to like me a tiny bit faster, but the gain isn't even that fast if you compare it to an envoy adding +1 opinion every month up to a total of +200, which matches the civic's opinion gain after 30 months.

Alternatively, you could just make it so if one took ascension paths that lead to becoming a Determined Exterminator or Bio-Mechanical Hybrid the civic would be removed, kind of like how your Divide by 0 civic now gets replaced by Infinity Equation upon completing the research (kudos on that btw, it's a civic I always took and now it looks so much cleaner).

--MOVING ON FROM ORGANIC SKIN--

Could we have a civic either provide more maintenance drone jobs or increase their amenity output? So far in my two games with your updated mod I've been SWAMPED with housing because I need the maintenance drone jobs even with the Emotion Emulators species trait. I would kill for something to add 2 or 3 maintenance drone jobs to Nexus Districts, or have a civic that did what Modular Depots used to do and add 2 maintenance drone jobs to uplink nodes.

On the same point, The Maintenance Depot civic sounds good until you realize that because of the way Machine Empires play without your old mod's Processing Capacity, we're already over-stocked on housing and under-stocked on amenity production.

Right now my machine gameplay is essentially the same as it was with the previous version of your mod, just replace processing capacity buildings with admin cap buildings, because they give my drones jobs and use up the tons of housing i get, and if I'm some-what lucky with minor artifacts they also provide stability and menial drone production for 10 years, which is very easily kept active on a tall machine empire. Essentially keeping amenities at 0 or slightly above and use minor artifacts to buff my planets for 100% stability and drone production, turns into one hell of a snowball.

@PQUNDCAKE
More diplomatic advantages for the Organic Skin civic? Hmmm, it might be a good idea. I'll consider this.

Actually... the Maintenance Depot civic's former effect was reducing a pop's amenity consumption. I think this is somewhat related to a person's playstyle, you know, in my case, it was housing which wasn't enough. Anyway, I'll think about more means to acquire amenity.

I appreciate your opinion.

Something I would like to see is a civic or something that uses branch offices, there are at least a couple uses I can think of but the big one would be a contingency/machine uprising type.
Tech and/or resource stealing buildings, robot pop subversion, etc.

honestly I'm a little surprised people have used the no treaty branch office so rarely, It's like everyone forgot about the mega-corp dlc lol.

edit: the unofficial hive dlc has a civic mutualistic behaviour which may help btw

Would it be possible to make the Planet Cracker civic leave cracked planets on mining completion instead of removing the planets from the game entirely? Of note, since Gigastructural Engineering includes a megastructure to repair a cracked planet, leaving cracked planets would enable an empire that in the late game finds itself reinvesting in some of the previously destroyed home planets, adding a different spin on that civic.

Any chance of the Abyss integrating with Gigastructure's shroud structures?

Also, have you considered extending more of the machine features to synthetic ascended empires? World Machines and leader creation are my wants.

Do you have any plans to start a discord server for the mod?

@CoruptedUsername
https://discord.com/channels/378985949373399040/676376359513227304/676377612297437207

I really liked the idea behind the Virtualization ascension perk. Do you plan to do anything with that?

Hello friend, me again :)

I came to tell you that you should nerf synthetics.

Unlike robots, they use minerals instead of alloys to make themselves
They are made faster than robots or biological pops
They have the same habitability as robots
But they have access to the ethics, trade and principles of organic

At the moment I have had to ban them in our online gaming group xD

@Bald
I tested in the vanilla condition without any mod except this one.

"Unlike robots, they use minerals instead of alloys to make themselves" My test showed a different result.

https://postimg.cc/VSSwT7Jf

I guess some of your mods overwrite an old vanilla file.

"They are made faster than robots or biological pops" You are right.

https://postimg.cc/PpQdzCLY

Synthetics have 4 default assembly rates, while Machines have 3. But they have consumer goods upkeep, can't use some features in this mod. (things like the 'World Machines' AP, Leader Drone Assembly, Core Intelligence Modification) For now, I have no plan to nerf synth empires.

Hey, this mod is amazing. Been waiting for one that could allow me to play as machines without having to be a gestalt. That being said, I was wondering if you might be able to add a way to make it possible to use any species/portrait pack with your mod.

See, i've been trying to make a Necron mod, and let me tell you, your origins are pretty much spot on to get the feel for them lore wise. But as I need to choose a look for them from your list of portraits to get the special trait needed to play with your origins and such, I can't use the portrait pack I really wanted to use for my species.

Perhaps there is a way that you could add a civic that we can take at the start that adds that racial trait to the custom species we are creating? One that would be blacked out for any species starting with your unique portrait packs so you can't accidently stack them?

Don't know if that's possible, but I thought i'd ask. If not, maybe you could share how we could make a mini mod adding more species to your collection?

@Cthulhu The 3rd
You know, if you want to check my codes, there is actually no way that I can prevent it. Also, I want to say that the Synthetic Ascended origin was selectable with any species before.