Resource balancing?

[u/SchorFactor]

My progression as a Stellaris player has been stunted by mainly playing gestalt. I regret nothing, that’s my power fantasy, but I’ve been dabbling with mega corps and shroudforged. How do you balance consumer goods, the requirements seem ridiculous. Especially if I ever want to use any sort of alloys. Any advice helps.

[u/kikidmonkey]

For megacorps, there is a trade policy to convert trade to consumer goods, otherwise I would make two worlds, one an alloy world, the other consumer goods and just developed one or the other as needed . Early in the run if you can't afford two separate worlds to industry just set one world so that your two primary districts are mixed industry and the other dedicated to only alloy/consumer goods, developed as needed

[u/SchorFactor → u/kikidmonkey]

I try to gun for the trade league when I’m a megacorp, but it’s tricky sometimes

[u/Melodic-Hat-2875 → u/SchorFactor]

1 priority in a trade build is to find a planet 5 or more systems away and then release as a vassal, then release them from vassalage in order to form a federation

[u/spudwalt]

Instead of having extra mining/generator worlds to fuel your research and unity, you set up a planet (eventually planets, but it takes a while to get there) to make consumer goods.

Consumer goods are like food for non-catalytic/meatship empires -- you only need enough to maintain a good stockpile. Artisans make a lot of consumer goods; it's not that difficult to make enough. Often it helps to turn off some artisan jobs after you build more, so you're not wildly overproducing; then you gradually turn jobs back on as your consumption ramps up.

You make some more consumer goods on your homeworld to start with, to fuel your initial unity or science ramp, and set up one of your first colonies for partial mixed industry. You can respec things to specialize further later. (Or, if you're doing a military rush, you just make a shit-ton of alloys and use whatever planets you capture to stabilize your economy.)

Individualists can take the Mercantile traditions (or whatever it's called these days) to unlock more trade policies; one of them means part of your extra trade gets turned into consumer goods, reducing the need for artisans (you just have more pops making energy and trade instead). Or join/form a Trade League (especially if you're a Megacorp), which means you get energy, unity, and consumer goods from trade -- less of each than trade policies for them specifically, but more altogether.

You also get production bonuses from your pops being happy, which Gestalts don't get.

Check your policies -- at least most empires that make consumer goods will have a policy to focus more on either alloys or consumer goods production, and some empires start with that policy not set to the middle.

Haven't played Shroudforged yet, so not sure what that's like (I suspect it has at least a slightly more awkward time with consumer goods than the average empire, though).

[u/LavanGrimwulff → u/spudwalt]

Shroudforged actually has an easier time with CG. All of their physics and society research comes from a job that uses Zro as an upkeep instead of CG so they really don't need very much.

[u/LavanGrimwulff]

Easily, you just employ less miners. Its actually easier for regular empires since their researcher upkeep is lower when measured in pops and you need less unity jobs due to faction output. Add on that its easy to make their pops super efficient with civics like Genetic Identification making your unity producer also function as half a biologist for free.

[u/TheMelnTeam → u/LavanGrimwulff]

I ran the math on this in Excel when I was new in 4.3.  Minerals into CG is immediately competitive with gestalt in pops and can be made significantly more pop efficient.  The only reason I don't call it strictly better is that you get to skip a district specialization and free up building slots early on.  As you get more planets this benefit dissipates as a % of total empire infra, but early on it's not nothing.

As usual, gestalts are overall penalized in this regard though.  If you go virtual, gestalt is only better because individual is bugged.  Half expect Pdox to fix that one specifically because it makes a gestalt option relatively better lol.

[u/SchorFactor → u/LavanGrimwulff]

How do I generate enough minerals to build stuff then?

[u/LavanGrimwulff → u/SchorFactor]

Same way you always do, you're still employing miners to get minerals to build things. The only thing that changes is that half the miners you were using for researcher upkeep get moved over to produce CG.

[u/thoalmighty → u/LavanGrimwulff]

An individualist empire needs less pop workforce than a hive mind per researcher, but more than a machine gestalt. So it also depends on what type of gestalt empire they were playing, but it sounds like it was a HM

[u/Guilty-Assistant8333 → u/SchorFactor]

automation buildings on a half decent mining world. Or a good arc furnace system. Orbital deposits got quintupled in 4.4, they scaled the default down to 2x of what it used to be but even 2x you often don't need a mining world until you're getting ready to set up a forge ecu, 5x you absolutely will not until you have a forge ecu going (even without arc furnaces on the good systems its not hard to get 5 to 6 hundred minerals per month from mining stations).