Stellaris thread

So I finally started playing Stellaris after the weekend sale and I've got a few questions:

1. How can anyone afford a giant fleet? I've got just 3 fleets of a few corvettes, destroyers and cruisers with around 1k+ power each and they're a huge drain on my mineral economy
2. Given question 1, why are so many of the techs based around the minutae of ship combat? I'm sick and tired of having to research "insert laser X" tech to get to the juicy econ and colonization techs
3. Oh god I built too many starbases and I'm running out of energy how do I fix this

That being said, I'm having fun playing a hedonistic empire of capitalist tentacle monsters and I just hope no one (especially the Bavi Combine) notices that I've got a paper-thin fleet

also feel free to criticize me for being way too far behind. Like I said, this is my first game and I'm learning as I'm going

Press ~, and type
"minerals" and an amount, "energy" and an amount, and "food" and an amount. Default values are 5000. It will let you build a fleet of whatever size you want, if you keep using those commands whenever your resource pool gets low.

really? I'm not cheating just because I can't make my economy work

1. Get more minerals and energy
2. Because the game has random techs so you have to research stuff to get more stuff.
3. Dedicate some of your star bases to being trade hubs. Just stack them with the trade hubs and then a galactic trading company and you can help your energy crisis.

Anyone got the new Superweapons yet? I hear it can be configured to generate Slave Shields

Look up on every planet you own (especially those in sectors) minmax mining outposts, try to get II and III tiers of mining. Strategically place starports on borders with empires you think are gonna attack or you want to attack, and build with crew addons to decrease upkeep.

>1. Get more minerals and energy

Energy was never a problem until very recently, but I've always had problems getting my minerals per month above 50. Should I just scrap my fleet until I'm actually at war with someone? Because right now they're a pretty useless waste on my econ unless some pirates show up

>Year 2318
>3 fucking planets and like 20 systems
You gotta step it up user.

like I said, it's my first game and I don't know what I'm doing.

And I've got 2 sectors with 2 worlds each

Isn't that like 100 years after start date? If you still only have three planets you are doing it wrong

Colonise everything and throw it into a sector, have entire planets dedicated to mining. Build Habitats for energy and science generation if you can build megastructures.

Expansion is basically the be-all-end-all in the early to mid game. Fleet size is now essentially dictated by number of starports, and starports is dictated by number of planets/systems. You want to zerg out and claim as much territory as humanly possible because more resources = faster expansion = more resources = faster expansion, until you get to previous pic related where every single empire around you is dwarfed and you can systematically eat them. You have to find a careful balance though since tech/unity scales up with number of planets claimed, and there is a point of diminishing returns. This is my first game with the new update so I'm still trying to figure out where that sweetspot is, but that pic is 19 planets and it feels like research is too slow even for that size of an empire.

The problem I faced in the early game is that I started playing around with factions for a while before I realized that I was accidentally sabotaging my Influence and only now can I get a good colony-per-year thing going

Might be time to chalk that one up to learning experience and start over.

You say you are playing a hedonistic empire. Did you actually take the wasteful trait? If so that is where a good portion of your minerals are going

nah, I tried not to take any negative traits. I took Materialist though

I played at lauch and a few months after. Is this game finally playable now? Has the eventual bugfix after the big updatw came out yet or is it still a few weekd away?

which are the best traditions to get?
I always get discovery first but what do i get next?
also how do i not run out of food?

Yeah at this point I'd say just start over. You're also playing on a piss-poor small map, which really fucks up the experience. Go for a spiral with 1000 planets, you'll have a much better time when there's 14 empires and a LOT more space to fight over, especially early on.

I get the paradise dome early and build one on every planet. I don't need more than that for food unless I spam Habitats

I've been asking for planet crackers since day one of this fucking game, finally it came out.
How do I get them though? Started a new game and everything
Also
Any mods you guys recommend?

Discovery looks like it got nerfed super fucking hard because it stops being useful by year 2300, easily. The new way they do planets means once another empire captures a system, once you capture it from them you auto-discover everything in it. Discovery is only good when there's tons of undiscovered systems around, but by 2300 basically the entire galaxy will be claimed and you'll never have to scan another planet ever, rendering the 10% bonus to your research per-planet-scanned useless and the tree as a whole a pretty huge waste. From the new updates and changes I'd say, for a warlike race anyways, Expansion+Supremacy+Prosperity, in that order, is a good way to go.

What ya gotta do is get a fleet of 75k or so, and go bully the nearest fallen empire. Take their planets/ring and never want for resources again

>get paradise dome early
Nigga you aren't even going to see that shit till like year 2400 the fuck do you mean 'early'.

Protip; jumpgates are the most OP things in the fucking universe mid to late game now since you can't just build them everywhere. If you manage to claim them, get ready to invalidate every future war with your massive fleets going across the entire galaxy in seconds.

Though they really need to change how they operate I think
>have an active jumpgate
>enemy nation has an active jumpgate
>officially declare war
>I still can't use their jumpgate because 'they have disallowed it'
Sort of ruins the point of protecting and guarding them since only you will every be able to use them and even if an enemy empire has them active, they will never be able to jump into your space. Shame.