I would like to start by saying that this is a very impressive mod. Your new traditions are both flavorfully and mechanically interesting, and for the most part they seem to be very well balanced between each other and the ones from vanilla. It's really rare to find a big expansion/overhaul mod that is anywhere close to being as even-handed as this mod is balance-wise, so kudos to you on that.

I have only just started playing with this mod, so the following ramblings are mostly based on my first impressions from looking over your new tradition choices. I have a few thoughts and suggestions for you regarding some things that stick out to me as being especially over- or under-powered.

((I would like to apologize in advance for my impending verbosity.))

TRADITIONS:

[Cybernetics] Deep Neural Networks & Unsupervised AI Researchers

These two traditions were the first and biggest concern that I had with this mod; frankly, they strike me as being rather crazy-bananas. In addition to more-or-less nullifying the primary drawbacks to going materialist/robots, (a very powerful strategy to start with,) the really broken thing about these two comes in once you get droids and can therefore use them to colonize. Droids is a very easy tech to get early-game (I can reliably grab it by 3rd or 4th pick going Mechanist/Technologist and starting with Mass Drivers) - being able to use droids to develop any non-habitable world into a mineral planet (long before you would otherwise be able to colonize) is largely what makes materialists so strong. Being able to develop said worlds into tech/energy planets as well, allows you to effectively ignore habitability limitations right from the beginning of the game. Colonizing in this way costs a fraction of what terraforming would (and doesn't require two semi-rare techs), and comes in centuries before gene modding would be an option.

On a less balance-y and more game-design-y note, I also think that removing research/energy penalties from robots makes for a more boring early game for robo-materialists. Whereas previously developing a robot economy involved balancing biological pop/energy production with the demands for your robot/mineral production, having robots able to do both really just means that you can spam them everywhere, on every planet, without thinking, and have no significant drawbacks.

Of course, I still haven't really played around with these traditions too much - I could be wrong about all of this.

SUGGESTIONS: You could think about reducing the penalties for robots producing energy/research instead of eliminating them entirely, but I think that might make these traditions very weak from a practical gameplay perspective. You would still not want robots on energy and research, and want them on minerals and food, so a partial reduction would make no real difference in how you actually use them.

If you would consider alternative bonuses to research/energy based on the use of robots... Maybe have a tradition that reduces the energy cost of building new robots/droids/synths? Or (not sure this is possible) something that makes robotic pops count as half a pop for research cost scaling? (That might break synthetic ascension HARD, though, now that I think about it - maybe make it like, 75% less for robots, 50% for droids, 25% for synths? Too complicated?) Maybe other bonuses could fit instead, such as reducing robot upkeep, or increasing their build speed? But the Mechanist tree already does that, so maybe not.

I guess I don't really have many good ideas here.


[Industry] Grand Forgeries

This was the other BIG alarm bell that I came across when looking over the new traditions. Between its base +5 bonus and +2 adjacency, we are talking about a single structure here that gives a maximum of +13 minerals. For reference, that’s 1 more mineral than a fallen empire building, and 2.6x more than a Tier 4 mine! The real kicker, though, is that you can build these things regardless of your tech level(!), without needing a planetary capital and without going through iterative upgrades: basically, you can start dropping them RIGHT at the start of the game, even before you begin colonizing. The structure also builds nearly twice as fast as a Tier 4 mine would, and costs less than HALF as much... and while the building itself is planet unique, the tradition is essentially a scaling bonus for anything but the tallest of tall-built empires: you can keep plopping them down on every planet you colonize or capture as you expand. In the early game, just one of these buildings could potentially produce as much as an entire specialized mineral world would without it; in the late game, with one on every planet, they'll produce hundreds of minerals for you, at the cost of one single tradition point and a trivial amount of resources/upkeep.

Now, here's my concern with all of this: Stellaris, as it stands now, and especially since Utopia, is pretty much gated by mineral production for the entire course of the game before it becomes "mop-up & win-more". If you have minerals, you can make pretty much any other resource or thing that you need, and by the time you have too many of minerals, you've probably already won the game. While not inherently broken, a tradition tree revolving around producing minerals is inherently extremely powerful, and this one tradition in particular is just screaming bananas to me. I'll probably mess around more with the Industry tree first thing when I start to really use your mod, (my playgroup has a casual multiplayer game coming up, so probably then) but the other Industry traditions seem to be at least somewhat more tempered in the early- and mid-game bonuses they give. I could be misunderestimating some other Industry perks, but I really don't think I'm overestimating this one.

SUGGESTIONS: What you might do with this tradition depends heavily on your vision for it: how much you want it to be an early-game boost vs. a late-game empire-wide turbocharger?

If you want the former: maybe consider reducing it to 4 minerals produced with a +1 adjacency bonus (for a maximum of +8, the equivalent to a capital-only Tier 5 mine.) This way, it would remain an EXTREMELY good building in the early and middle years of the game (before you've reached tier 4 technology), and still remain useful into late-game (when the other bonuses from the Industry tree become more prominent anyway.) Keep in mind that, even with these nerfs, the building would still be faster, cheaper, and easier to build than a high-level mine, and be overall better than anything but the FE fabricators and capital-only structures. I would personally up the cost to at least 300 minerals as well; the building would pay for itself in about 3 years that way, assuming no building cost reduction, which is still a WAY better turnaround than anything past a T1 mine or mining station (For reference, a T2 mine upgrade pays for itself in 7.5 years.)

If you're set on keeping the building exactly as it is now, maybe you could at least consider locking it behind having a Planetary Capital? This way, it would at be less immediately game-warping if adopted right at the start, while still being yellow and delicious in the late game.


[Nature] Natural Riches

Less vital than the first two suggestions, I'm a tiny bit concerned about this tradition as well (though maybe because I don't really understand how it works.) Just from the sound of it, 33% more tile bonuses seems like it would be a HUGE deal for a wide empire: enough to turn mediocre planets into good ones, and great planets into bananas. This, coupled with the 10% habitability and other goodstuff™ in the Nature tree, strikes me as being a bit more powerful than most of the other traditions you've added. Of course, I could be overestimating this thing - if the bonuses are like, adding a couple of 1-energy and 1-food tiles, that's one thing. 3-mineral tiles, however are something entirely different. And is it 33% more tile bonuses on all worlds, or more tile bonuses on 33% of worlds (I assumed the latter.) I really guess I should test it more.

SUGGESTIONS: I suggest to myself that I test the damn tradition before vomiting up even more words for people to read.


[Prosperity] A Golden Age

Getting into the other end of the spectrum: this tradition strikes me as being extremely weak compared to almost everything featured in the mod - to the point of being nearly useless. Going back to what I said about the Forgeries, I really think that by the time any player actually gets 10000 minerals banked, they're practically God in this game anyway. Next to this, a +1 bonus to influence income is… Kind of comical, in my opinion. It seems to me that this is a tradition that is completely worthless for the 90% of the game where it might really matter.

SUGGESTIONS: Honestly, I think that dropping the required bank of mineral/ec down to 2000-3000 would be just fine for this tradition - it would still keep with the "stuff for other stuff" theme that you added to the Prosperity tree, and would synergize nicely with the prosperity faction demands to boot. I don't think that there's much risk of overpowering this tradition by lowering its cost, either - you've added a couple of traditions which already provide flat "conditionless" influence boosts, and ime keeping 3000 minerals uninvested would be enough of a challenge to merit some payout (though maybe that's just my playstyle.)

If you want to keep this as an endgame Donald Duck tradition, though, I would sincerely suggest that you at least increase it's influence payout to something more substantial (maybe +3 or something), OR make it provide a bonus that is more relevant/useful to that point of the game.


[Justice] Constitution

Just a minor note on this tradition: while I think that it is super-cool that you're tying two tradition trees together like this, I really think that you should consider adding some sort of second, unconditional bonus to it as well. As things stand now, this tradition makes the Justice tree a bit of a hollow choice for any empires that aren't playing as space-Hitler and going for Purity as well, which is… pretty funny, actually. "You want to be just? The only way to be just and true is to PURGE THE XENO SCUM!"

Seriously though, I think that this tradition is really dragging down/limiting the Justice tree, both in terms of thematics and practical gameplay. At best, you're a just Xenophobic empire and it puts together two trees you'd already use. At worst, it’s a 100% dead pick that you NEED to do to get an ascension perk out of a tree you might otherwise be interested in. Now, it's true that there are some other lackluster/token traditions floating around both in your mod and in vanilla, but having something that gives NOTHING just kinda strikes me as… sad I guess? I don't know.


Anyway, I hope some of this is helpful. Sorry again for the text wall.
-Fish

Thanks a lot forbthe dand tailed comments. I'm travelling right now and can't make any changes untill I get home, at which point I will look through your suggestions again. Only a few comments:
- The blast furnace building is planet unique, limiting its uses significantly.
- Natural riches mostly produce 1 resource deposits (can do 2, but less likely). It can also add non matching deposits. E.g. It can add 1 mineral to a tile with 1 physics, which somewhat limits it.
- Constitution works for both founder and xeno pops (although the display is a bit different. You see me he reduction as a - for each founder pop, but the penalty for each xeno pop is reduced by an equal amount. Start an empire with syncronic evolution, add under ty via command and check the tradition cost breakdown before/after you pick it and you should see a difference (or there is a bug).
I probably should try and clarify some of the descriptions.

Thanks again for the detailed feedback, you comments are interesting, especially on cybernetics. You are also not the first to suggest A Golden Age being weak, so that should get a buff. Maybe +0.4 influence for each 2000 stored (to a maxi mum 2 or 3).

The traders is nuts every empire with border access turns into a 10k+ moneybag.

I'll have to agree about "A Golden Age" in Prosperity. Feels weak even without its requirement. Perhaps let it give influence or/and energy or/and unity, in lower increments so that it's also useful earlier on? Doesn't have to be a large bonus, but so that it's a bit more fun. =)

@Girion
Eep, I just realized that I never actually responded to this before. Sorry :(

Firstly, now that I have played with and tested them, I agree with you regarding Natural Riches and Constitution. The former is a rather potent, but not overpowered (I think) option for mid-game development. Having tested it, I agree that all Constitution could use is maybe a tooltip clarification.

Having played with Grand Forgeries a bit, though, I have to stick to my original opinions on the blast furnace: the planet unique quality keeps it from being hideously broken, but the tradition nonetheless strikes me as being a little nuts if taken in the first 20 years or so. Blast furnaces' investment/return ratio is extreme, and getting them up early on my first 3 planets can be enough to triple or quadruple my mineral production on 2-3 low-tech worlds, right at the point of the game where it matters most.

Even approaching late game, I calculated that blast furnaces were responsible for upwards of 700 minerals/month out of my ~3.5k mineral/month empire (about 20% of my total mineral production, after factoring in all bonuses & multipliers added on top of the buildings themselves.) This isn't as sizeable a boost as early game, being more comparable to the other Industry traditions, but it still seems extraordinarily powerful.

I will say that I underestimated how difficult it would be to tag the adjacency bonus on new planets (it took longer than I thought to dedicate the necessary 5 pops for minerals, at least in early game.) That said, I had initially misread the +3 adjacency bonus as +2... As it is, the building produces at total of 17 minerals, compared to, say, the FE building's 12.

Looking at it in terms of opportunity cost, It just seems like this tradition gives SO MUCH more for a point than perhaps any other, regardless of circumstance. I suppose it could partly be a matter of my playstyle, though.

I'm glad that some of my ramblings may be useful to somebody at least!

(PS: I haven't played much stellaris lately, so I haven't seen any recent changes you may have made to any of the aforementioned traditions.)

Blast Furnace - Industry: I think its to strong just like the others above already said. Perhabs u could make it like the "Market Excange" or lower the adjacency
Deep Neural Network & Unsupervised AI Researchers - Cybernetics: Same as TehFishey, just makes Robots and Droids way to strong, but i dont know how to fix it. I would prefer other Traditions.
Produktion Centers - Foundation: Like the idea of making the main building stronger but 10Energy is a bit insane. I can understand if its 10energy overall (+4). Its just like giving every planet 2 additional powerplants. And i would prefer if u wouldnt buff the habitats even more. Thay are strong enough already and it goes a bit against the foundation principle(from a flavour text point of view). The Empire Capital complex is kinda strong (+20 would be more than enough), but thats a matter of taste.
Forged Worlds - Industry: 50% is a bit to much. 25% is ok if u compare it to 10% for all buildings from the Prosperity Tree. The mines are often the heaviest energy consumer in the game.
Finisher Effect - Militarism: If u compare the 25% to other finisher effects like "Mystery" or "Mechanicum" its kinda unfair. 15% perhabs enough.

PS: Still like the mod alot just some thing are a bit of a overkill. I just think Tradition shoudnt give huge boni. Bit by bit is strong enough and then the acension perks should be impactfull.

Love Abatty^^

Since I got several peaopl talking about the Blast Furnace I might give it a small nerf.

Not super happy with Production centers (had to redo it for better compatibility with other mods), will probably think of an replacement, but do not know when.

Have some ideas for Deep Neural Network & Unsupervised AI Researchers, but won't change it until the new expansion (and will add replacement traditions for empires which do not use robots).

Militarism Finisher, I intentionally made it a bit stronger than similar traditions. The entire tree lack actuall fighting bonuses (which I wanted to avoid), but I slapped that one on at the end and wanted it strong enough so that you could "feel" a difference.

I agree as well with the previous comments that the Blast Furnace is way too good for a single tradition pick building. It just gives so many minerals so cheap and so quickly it's a no-brainer.

The Autonomous States tradition in Confederacy feels misplaced to me. I know the reasoning is that an overlord with lots of vassals can be considered a similar confederacy to a regular empire with lots of sectors, but mechanically it seems at odds with the rest of the tree. With all the sector bonuses you get, you'd be better served taking the planets directly and sectoring them rather than vassalizing (or if you do integrating them ASAP). Don't get me wrong, I love the bonuses it gives, it pairs beautifully with Domination, but I feel like I have 4 other dead picks if I want the vassal bonus (worst case scenario) or 1 dead pick if I'm going ultra-wide (best case scenario).

Finally, I want to discuss Cybernetics, specifically the finisher of the Autonomous buildings. Firstly, the tooltip is missing the energy building in the list, but you can see a double space where it should be so it must be unintentional. Minor quibble but I wanted to get that out of the way. They are insanely cheap and fast to build and accelerate the expansion of your empire/colonies far more than the titular tradition tree does. You can, far faster than even a single pop can grow, exploit half a dozen tiles or more. Once you get Mastery of Nature, you can just benefit from every single tile within the first year of colonization. Them giving only +1 of their resource type and no adjacency bonus is trivial when compared to the fact that they are still affected by general empire-wide buffs to resource collection (such as Galactic Stock Exchange or Powered Exoskeletons) and that they still collect the tile's deposits. This gets especially out of hand when using your Expanded Stellaris Ascension Perks mod, as Biophilia (or even without that, Industry's Forge Worlds or Nature's Natural Riches tradition picks) ensures you have significant tile deposts to quickly exploit on the cheap. The only thing stopping me from snowballing completely out of control early game is influence costs for colonizing, as otherwise each new colony you get and automate lets you get your next one that much faster. These even cost less energy maintenance than the basic Reassembled Ship Shelter buildings, on top of costing 1/3rd less, building in almost half the time, and requiring no pop to use. Considering that mechanical pops cost more energy than that, I'd say these Automated buildings should have at least a maintenance cost of 1 energy per month, at the very least this forces the player to build a greater ratio of automated power plants to keep things going.

I increased the blast furnaces maintenence in the last update, but I will think about increasing it a bit more, especially in this version were thw mines don't have reduced maintenence.

Thanks for the report on cybernetics finisher, I have not had a serious playthrough with it myself and these kinds of reports are really helpfull. What about a bitg increase to build timr as well as a maintenence increase?

I think the "Mystery" tradition tree needs the +50% FTL speed bonus nerfed. That's a pretty massive bonus during large scale wars when hunting down enemy fleets... I don't recall ever seeing any other FTL speed bonuses higher than 10% anywhere else in the game.

Also, certain trees like Adaptability and Nature are almost completely useless to organics-turned-info-synthetics. Could you make such races instead switch over to using the synthetic/machine version of the tradition tree? Or if not possible, just throw in one or two secondary bonuses that syntethics can benefit from in the Adaptability and Nature trees.

And an unrelated question: Do the Forge World and Natural Riches tradition picks apply to every world or just a single random world?

Apply to every world. Eventually I pkan to have replacements for all traditions (havd designs for most but implementations takes time). For now you'll just have to avoid nature for empirws that lkjes machines :p

A build time increase for the Automated buildings might be good, as right now it's not very hard to build one in only 15 days, that's 2 per month and they immediately start giving you resources back. That could work well, as you gotta build all the automation in addition to the standard farm/mine/power plant stuff in it eh?

The Mystery tree grants -50% election influence cost. But the Shadow Council civic also gives -50% election influence cost... which as you can guess results in -100% election influence cost (or free, basically).

This seems like a bit of an exploit since it gives you the stability of a dictatorship, but the influence bonuses and ability to rotate out leaders whenever you want like a democracy. Seems a bit overpowered.

Unless there is a specific balance reason not to, could we get a Foundation-esque tradition swap for Subminds? Before the last update, gestalt consciousness could get Foundation, making taller hive minds and machine empires more interesting and more viable.

Could possibly happen. Do anyone have a suggestion what could be the name and theme of such a tradition? (gameplay wise the theme would be playing tall, but immersion wise).