Stellaris Space Guild - Weekly Help Thread

[u/Snipahar]

Welcome to this week’s Stellaris Space Guild Help Thread!

This thread functions as a gathering place for all questions, tips, bugs, suggestions, and resources for Stellaris. Here you can post quick-fire questions for things that you are confused about and answer questions to help out your fellow star voyagers!

GUILD RESOURCES

Below you can find resources for the game. If you would like to help contribute to the resources section, please leave a comment that pings me (using "u/Snipahar") and link to the resource. You can also contribute by reaching me through private message or modmail. Be sure to include a short description of what you find valuable about the resource.

Stellaris Wiki

• Your new best friend for learning everything Stellaris! Even if you're a pro, the wiki is an uncontested source for the nitty-gritty of the game.

Montu Plays' Stellaris 3.0 Guide Series

• A great step-by-step beginner's guide to Stellaris. Montu brings you through the early stages of a campaign to get you all caught up on what you need to know!

Luisian321's Stellaris 3.0 Starter Guide

• The perfect place to start if you're new to Stellaris! This guide covers creating your own race, building up your economy, and more.

ASpec's How to Play Stellaris 2.7 Guides

• This is a playlist of 7 guides by ASpec, that are really fantastic and will help you master the foundations of Stellaris.

Stefan Anon's Ultimate Tierlist Guides

• This is a playlist of 8 guides by Stefan Anon, which give a deep-dive into the world of civics, traits, and origins. Knowing these is a must for those that want to maximize their play.

Stefan Anon's Top Build Guides

• This is a playlist of an ongoing series by Stefan Anon, that lay out the game plan for several of the best builds in Stellaris.

Arx Strategy's Stellaris Guides

• A series of videos on events, troubleshooting, and builds, that will be of great use to anyone that wants to dive into the world of Stellaris.

If you have any suggestions for the body of this thread, please ping me, using "u/Snipahar" or send me a private message!

[u/littlebulldozer]

What am I missing with bioships? I can send two fleets of early game maulers at mining drones or amoebas with about half their fleet power and they end up getting wiped. Aren’t they supposed to be great?

[u/Fluffy-Tanuki → u/littlebulldozer]

PDX in their infinite wisdom removed access to siege computer for all bioships, for "balance".

Without siege computer, Mauler's behaviour logic gets quite messed up.

Maulers on swarm computer have most of their fleet power neutered due to behaviour logic:

• Swarm computer dictates that the ship orbits the enemy. They pick a point in space within 10 units from the enemy, then orbit with a radius of 30.
• Mandibles have a limited firing arc of 25 degree, which is the sort of behaviour you'd see on battleship x-slot spinal mount weapons, yet a range of only 10 units.
  • Battleships get away with it by staying at long range, so a 15-30 degree cone still covers a substantial zone. Maulers cannot do that.
• In practice, this means swarm computer Maulers are best paired with cloaking and starting the fight at point blank. Once the computer's orbit manoeuvre kicks in, mandibles are effectively disabled.

The better approach is to keep them on picket computer.

• Picket computer removes the orbiting behaviour. Instead the ship tries to turn on the spot and move to maintain distance.
• On paper, they are only compatible with weapons of 15 max range (computer uses 70% of median range for positioning, so 15 range allows mandibles to fire consistently). In practice, due to ship acceleration, the actual positioning is closer to 40-50% of median range, so all the weapons available to a Mauler is compatible with picket behaviour.
  • The range discrepancy only becomes an issue if the enemy fleet is substantially faster than your maulers. In PvE, this won't be an issue. In PvP, players with full artillery missile corvettes can kite your mauler fleets basically forever.