Part 2

After site one has been completed.

The disasterous place has brought into question wheither or not we should continue to the next four sites, the readings are much more radical with each numbered site, should we continue or cut our losses and seal the planets in sheilds?

Answer1: we must see this through to the end -to the other planets we go.
(Continues chain)
Answer 2: we must stop our search -this place is too much of a disaster to continue spending lives over (stops chain -sets up sheild generator scans over the planet to be scanned by a construction ship, when all sites have been scanned gain 1000 influence 2000 energy and minerals)

If chain continues.

After Site 2 scanned:

The radiation on the planet seems to be coming from a power station located in the top polar region, it seems like an easy fix that could reduce the radiation on the planet by several factors, what caused the power station to break is unknown -perhaps we will learn more from the stations logs.

After scanned.

We have found that the staff inhabiting the station have purposefully left it in this state to defend themselves from tunnel-dwelling robots, the machine apparently act like a organic hive that were supposed to have been the future of quick mass scaled construction and destruction however they underwent massive malfunctions when they hit another facility -that was previously unknown to the original species on the planet-, our engineers have also run into problems getting the power station to function properly again without running the risk of allowing the robots to roam free as the radiation emmited from this facility somehow keep them passive.

Answer 1: we must prepare this world for colonisation someday -today is that day send in our armies we shall show those bots whose boss!
Result, gives planet 5 roboworms armies with a 10.00 attack point, also gives a tile the -unusual power station- building which gives 15 power.

Answer 2: perhaps we can reason with them -open channel.
Result, "000110101010201000021110101000001022000?" +Side chain starts "making new friends"

(Side chain answers allow for background story for rest of main event:
Answer 1: find their purpose
Result: 001100203000012111122200? (If answer 2 asked first --we were made to flatten, we flatten for other to build over us we-we-we errorrorror...what is your purpose?)
Answer 2: translate their words
Result: we have freedom, we are free, we -MuSt conti-ti-tinue work for foreman Asturk, NO/YES...stop the poisoning!
Answer 3: see if they are friendly or a new enemy.
Result: 0000121000022221110101100010? (If answer 2 was asked before- we are not dangerous we do as told, but we are fr-fr-freeozon in this state, the generous mind showed us how to be free...)

After question 3 answered and translated:

Answer 4: what happened to this place?
Result: the owner! They found ruins, they made too many of us, then they found the worlds other owners, the older ones that left this place before them, but we didn't know what we did, we did as we were told, make the world flat, we hit a strange rock that killed all the others, then everything else over time...

Answer 5: where is this...'generous mind' you speak of?
Result: itititititit -other side of the poisioning place, world is quieter there, less painful to work in.

Regardless if side quest accepted or not the chain continues with...

Psyonics and radiation:
The signals we are detecting are not -as we previously thought- a single source, in fact we have found two facilities close to each other, that seem to be at odds radiation wise, one seems to be attacking the other but with no success.

Answer 1: find the attacking psyonics
Result: what we have found is astonishing, a gigantic...brain of sorts is attatched and growing around a very powerful sensor array and is being maintained by a food and power source nearby, for some reason the logs in the facility seem to have been copied and then deleted from the main archives to the brain itself, the research equipement however suggests that this place was a biological wifi network, the designers apparently connecting themselves through specialised chips that allowed for a semi-hive mind like effect which in the head scientists words "is like picking up a holophone and looking online for an answer" (reward- 1500 social points +psyonics tech)

Answer 2: find the defending unusual radiation
From what we can tell the radiation is not being purposefully eminated from whatever the structure eminating it is meant to be, from the logs we could translate it is apparently part of a dampening field that was supposed to contain or prevent whatever psyonics are coming from the other strange facility, which apparently saved the builder enough time to "prevent madness from occuring" (reward- 1500 physics points)

After both sites have been scanned

Putting the data collected from both sites we have been able to identify that the brain we encountered was in fact far larger than it was supposed to be, apparently it became self aware with half of each persons thoughts stored inside it and began to grow to contain its new awareness, the facilitys surrounding it managed to disconnect the owners from the psyonic network in time before they became dependant on it to survive, which was the brains intention -the goal was to enslave the populace and then build many colony ships to spread out more brains and form a galaxy spanning psyonic net that would be able to absorb all information ever used and gathered, obviously it failed and thanks to the structure we have remained unaffected.

Answer 1: shut the brain down, we need to prevent any risk of it ever harming us. (Reward 500 influence)

Answer 2: it may be of use to us, repair the other facilities around it to working order and lets see what we can learn from this mind. (Tile gains building -contained brain shich gives 8 of each science type)

After all site 2 events have been completed gain new part of the questline: strange effects

Our staff and drones working on the stations have found that each site was not build at the same time period -apparently we are not the second species to find this place we are the sixth or seventh, each empire before us apparently found relics and science stations before us and built atop them, regardless of their ambitions and theories they all fell to some kind of fault, unwitting entrapment or disaster within a decade or two, the final logs before us apparently point to "a mystierious force or being that wishes to cause pain and torture to the beings in this system" and that "it draws in new victims with riches and then when it has learned enough it strikes down the empire from within"

Answer 1: ominous at best (reward -50 influence)
Answer 2 : a madmans journal at the end of its life, ignore those ramblings and find the next treasure trove. (50 influence -science vessel used to scan gains the careless trait -10% more likely to fail at anomalous research.
Answer 3: these logs are history -learn well from them (50 influence and all research gain 50 points)

Continues in part 3

An idea for a precursor-like event chain: You find the remnants of a psionic empire that had ascended to a higher plane of existance, leaving their stuff behind. Stuff to find could include abandoned research stations, "haunted" former colonies, evidence of people who wouldn't or couldn't ascend, maybe a tie-in with the horizon signal if it is active, ext.

A mid-game event idea: an empire from the future escapes the end-game crisis via time travel, spawning in the game as a one-system fallen empire within the borders of an existing empire. Diplomacy has to work out how their relations will develop. The fallen empire could be flagged to become a Guardian for when the crisis shows up. Could be teased in advance with various events.

At the edge of one of your systems, with an uncolonized but habitable planet, an unknown ship arrives. It appears to be a pre-ftl Seedship, carrying a population of colonists in stasis. The ship is somewhat damaged, it appears to have been flying through space for some time. Cursory examinations leads you to believe the ship is maintained by an AI. It has no communications capabilities, so you'll either have to jury-rig a communications solution, destroy the ship outright (xenophobe-only, maybe), or let it continue to its destination. If undisturbed, the ship colonizes the habitable planet in the system with a special type of primitives: Pre-FTL Seedship Colony, equivalent to an Early Space Age civilization. They can then be interacted with, and develop on their own, as primitives.

If communications are established with the AI, it will explain that its ship was sent out to find a new planet for their species as their home planet was dying. The colonists in stasis onboard its ship are the last of their kind. You can then allow the ship to go on its way normally, or, depending on your ethics, welcome them as a protectorate, force them to colonize as part of your empire, blow up the ship and scrap it for parts/science, or hack the AI to read the habitable planet as unsuitable, making it leave the system searching for another on its slow voyage.

The species itself could be randomly generated, or maybe garaunteed to be Nomadic and Materialist.

@IrishBandit

We actually have approximately this in testing stage. After nailing some issues, it would probably make it into the next update.

Were galactic olympics already suggested? Is space race from this mod? If so, there is a bug: even after the race is over whenever a war starts a message about race being unable to take place appears.

Yes, Space Race cancellation sets the wrong flag in the wrong place.

Should be fixed in the next update.

How about events allowing you to do stuff for fallen empires, and they give you ships/tech as a reward.

There are a few ideas floating around related to fallen empires. None so far have text for them and proper reflection on mechanics.

been playing alot of machine species lately, and i came up with an idea i would love that replaces food strike pops when they are amalgamated. 'Screams of the amalgamate' if unrest gets too high in on a planet of amalgamated pops this event fires with some options. either immediately purge them which gives you a diplo debuff. or spending a some time with science points to 'mute' the psionic screams. or you can ignore them all together and still gain a diplo debuff but of a weaker form than genocide.

I got this idea from star wars. Randomly in the early to mid game after 2-3 planets or more are settled. You get a message that as your empire expands so to does the issue of law enforcement. There's also the problem of criminals skipping town and going outside your law enforcement's jurisdictions. So an enterprising group of individuals approaches with an idea. What if the government authorized or at least allowed a group of bounty hunters to begin operating with the empire? At that point, you would get about 5 options

1. You refuse

2. You allow them, but provide no support (+5% unity and -5%happines. they fight crime bringing unity, but they are reckless and upset people.)

3. You allow it and put forward support to make it a guild to better control it (say about 1000 energy and 50-100 influence up front, and +5% unity with no unhappiness as they are better organized)

4. Available to militarist or authoritarian empires. you make an official organization of bounty hunters under government control (+10% unity as they have more resources and management. An unhappiness debuff for authoritarian as the funds come from more taxes on citizens, and a -5% to -10% energy for militarists instead.)

5. Available to pacifists and egalitarians. you allow it, but put strict regulations on them (requires influence say about 50-150. +5% and +5% happiness as not only do they help enforce the laws they won't go and possibly upset your neighbors.)

Each of these would also have certain effects on the chances of a few follow up events. Say a major criminal is caught giving you an influence boost. A fugitive is caught in another empire and possibly upsetting them (prevented by option 5.) or even bringing evidence of one of your leaders involved in a criminal group.

I love how your mod adds more thought to the game and hope this idea can get added in to make it even better. I know your busy and thank you for all the hard work.

I think there are some events that needs to rework for machine empire, because the responses of the events seem a little bit human.

Here are some of the events that need to have a better response
1. "Of Fire and Blood"
"Do WE have enough boots?" - robot doesn't wear boots
2. "Archaic Rituals" - there is no way a determined exterminator will accept a challenge while it is purging the locals
3. Sludge Deposit
"Digusting. But interesting" - Robots has 100% habitability and they are not afraid of radiation
4. The Elusive Carcosa
- it seems improbable for machine scientist to show interest in such creatures, many needs a better narrative for the intro
5. Lost Prototype Ship Discovered
- it seems the responses seem a little bit too human, and the event assumed that the ship is made by organic, probably need a better narratve.

If you have a full list of the events or raw txt. I can go over all the events and see what are the proper responses for the mahcine empire including exterminator, asslimator and servitor.

Most of these should probably be restricted to fitting empire types. The lava fortress event may be ok with a more robot style response. To make the lost prototype ship event fit for machines would be more work than it is worth it i think. It is basically Event Horizon if you have ever seen that movie, so yes it may be a bit humancentric but afterall this is the only thing we all can relate to.

You should do an event chain based off "The Inner Light" by Star Trek TNG. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inner_Light_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)#Plot

A lot of books and movies have at least taken some inspiration from that episode, and I think it would still work in Stellaris.

Special planet class (unterraformable, uninhabitable) that replaces a normal planet if you let the ancient food constructor go on for too long. I dunno, I just think it would be neat to see a colony literally drown in food.