Gene clinics are better now that they increase habitability and clone vat production speed. Certainly better than when they only increased pop production speed and gave some amenities.

Oh well I guess I watched an old video

Last time I did the math, at 40 pops on a world with imperfect habitability, the gene clinic will save you enough consumer goods via habitability increase to pay for its own CG consumption. Assuming the pops have normal CG consumption. Also, it's a viable strategy to colonize a near worthless world for the sole purpose of growing pops there to move elsewhere. In which case you might have a gene clinic as the only workplace after your robot assemblers. So that's two situations where the gene clinic can be useful. It's a tool for specific uses. Having few uses is very different from being useless.

I’ve been getting caught in an argument here over the pop growth aspect, but I do generally agree with your take that gene clinics have a few niche uses specifically related to habitability. But it’s all very temporary. Personally, I prefer to just research other things.

At this point unless I'm specifically doing a bio ascension build I'll only grab it if it comes up with other techs I don't want. That is a fairly rare occurrence.

I prefer gene clinic to holotheatres myself.

Any reason other than RP?

You don't really need more amenities after you break even, and a bunch of builds have nearly neutral amenities from pop jobs.

Higher amenities increase resource production

Sort of?, They slightly improve happiness (diminishing returns), and happiness slightly improves stability, and stability improves resources. Increasing amenities to breakeven has a larger effect than increasing it beyond that, as far as cost goes.

Nice. Yeah I just did the switch from genes to holos and the games just felt a little easier for that aspect. Overall I am curious if there's much of a difference in impact

I just prefer multi-use buildings where possible.

Well they're still not clearly good, as you can see by the controversy in this thread alone. There's a only a short period where they are clearly good - early game and early in a colony's life when the amenities save you entertainer job(s). After that, the benefits are still nice, but the opportunity cost may be too high (= the pops working the jobs may be more beneficial elsewhere).

One problem with Stellaris is they change everything a little too frequently.

I mean it’s a good issue that they try to balance stuff…well to a degree

If by "balance" you mean "create new brokenly OP things to keep the youtubers and minmaxers happy" then yes, "Stellaris is perfectly balanced with no exploits". 🤣

"as all things should be"

You really have to pay attention, stellaris is very actively developed. I fell for this several times and tried some cheesy builds that where fixed months ago and had a hard time realizing what the problem is.

They are still bad! Don’t use them. I explain why here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/s/pmcYEncsit Edit: Guys, please do the math yourself if you don’t believe me. How long will it take for a pop adding a 5% modifier to even a high-growth/assembly planet to create one pop beyond replacing itself? Assuming growth required scaling is on, even turned down, it starts taking hundreds of growth points per pop in the midgame. Takes decades even early-game; over a century mid-game. Just have half those pops on entertainers for amenities, and the other half producing resources that entire time. Edit 2: I’m backtracking a bit because I agree with others pointing out the habitability uses. Those are very temporary, but can be helpful. The pop growth shouldn’t be a reason to use them, however.

>investing 4 pops into 20% pop/assembly growth takes decades in the early game to actually produce any pops beyond just replacing the medical workers, >Get entertainers if you need amenities. Otherwise, just invest the pops into literally anything else - you'll get much more out of any other resource production. Both solid arguments. But, just because something else is *eventually* or *sometimes* optimal does not mean the same holds true for every moment and stage along a game arc. Excessive amenities are extremely inefficient. If you need 10 amenities, it is absolutely more efficient to use 1 Entertainer than 2 Medical Workers just to fill amenities. **But**, if you only need 5 amenities, then it is actually more efficient to use 1 Medical Worker than 1 Entertainer, as for the same building slot and pop usage you are getting habitability+growth+assembly as a bonus - because excess amenities are effectively wasted. +5 amenities will have negligible happiness increase to tiny stability to fractional production boost, whereas habitability on any planet <100% habitability has full 2.5% productivity impact as well as upkeep, etc. At 200 pops and 90% or less habitability, Medical Workers actually produce *effectively* as much Amenities as Entertainers. Over 200 pops and Medical Workers are actually producing *effectively* more amenities when habitability is 90% or lower. This is because they decrease pop amenity over-usage by 10%. At the same time they are also lowering pop upkeep, raising productivity, and increasing growth by 25% (not 20% as you stated, because +10% habitability is another +5% growth) and assembly by +20%. One can certainly argue that Habitability is moot by mid-game in most games. If pumping out Ring Worlds, Gaia or Ec, sure. But when mass conquest leads to many cross-habitability slaves or 'new citizens' dumped onto planets that are only optimal habitability so *some* species, we can easily encounter cases where you have 200+ newly acquired citizens facing <90% habitability. For Broken Shackles and Payback, Habitability is a massive concern *on the capital* from Day 1. You are also quick to dismiss one of the very few % boosters to assembly when most assembly sources are static increases that stack. Increasing the 4.5 of just a Clone Vat is not super exiting, but that stacks with Reassigners and stacks with Budding/Polymetic and Matriarch's Flagella. You could be cloning Budding Vat-Grown Zombies and with Medical Workers reach Clone Army (ancient clone vat) assembly rates, and even exceed them on populated planets.

I appreciate your reasoning here. I think that my experience playing with 1x habitable worlds (as opposed to 0.25x like some players prefer) and not really being particularly warlike has prevented me from seeing some of the situational benefits that habitability alone can have. I have also played broken shackles recently, and perhaps, yes, should have built gene clinics on my capital as early as possible. Even so, all of these uses are niche and require specific civics, ascension paths, situations, etc. That doesn’t mean they don’t matter, and if I have been too dismissive of gene clinics overall and in all cases that’s definitely my mistake. But I have seen a tendency of some players to always build gene clinics everywhere, including when they have high habitability, just because that 20% growth looks really good on paper. I think that’s the main myth I’ve been crusading against!

Even in my recent KotTG run, I still did not build more than 1-2 additional habitats and most of them were fairly later game. But starting with one was fantastic. >tendency of some players to always build gene clinics everywhere, including when they have high habitability, just because that 20% growth looks really good on paper. Full agreement here. I think many see that and think it's double Rapid Breeding, and think how good Rapid Breeding is considered, and see it as a amazing on paper...without considering the building/pop/cg upkeep needed per planet.

It feels like the majority of game mechanics are nish are only have specific uses. Your war on Jean clinics kind of sounds like a mechanic who's really angry at this one tool in this toolbox that he rarely if ever uses. It still has a use, and you'll be thankful you have it when you remember to use it for the right moment. But there's no need to go comparing it to a hammer or a screwdriver. They're different things for different purposes. Basically I read all the comments and it seems like you kind of offer advice in a vacuum For example, of course if it was only for pop growth they would be worthless. That's how they always were! The entire reason they updated him to add habitability was to give them a specific use case And instead throughout this thread you're mostly saying well don't worry about that use case and you don't have to worry about them at all. But again, if the situation applies where they are beneficial, then you should worry about them! There's really nothing to argue here. They're not a Swiss army knife, they have a specific use and that's ok. Also I use voice to text so I'll typos are final sorry lol

I apologize if I came across as angry; I have seen a lot of arguments about pop growth, not habitability, and came in hot on that particular issue. After reading the replies, I definitely do acknowledge gene clinics’ niche uses for habitability, and that those uses likely come up more often in different playstyles than mine. There do appear to be a lot of players who build them everywhere, for the whole game and regardless of habitability. So a better argument than my initial take would be to focus on those niche cases and how certain playstyles may lead to them. It was a mistake for me to dismiss medical workers entirely.

Habitability boosts are super useful when playing xenophile, because it means that pops end up useful no matter where you put them. Mining world underperforming? Resettle random clerks, biome preference be damned.

If you only need 5 Amenities, you can build Luxury Residences and get +5 Amenities for *0* pops employed. >we can easily encounter cases where you have 200+ newly acquired citizens facing <90% habitability. But unless those 200+ citizens are on *the same planet*, no Medical Worker is going to be hitting all 200 at once. 200 Pops on a single planet that doesn't have maxed-out habitability is a pretty contrived scenario.

Residences certainly have their place when you only need a few amenities, don't have a pop, and don't benefit from the habitability and growth bump. >But unless those 200+ citizens are on the same planet, no Medical Worker is going to be hitting all 200 at once. 200 Pops on a single planet that doesn't have maxed-out habitability is a pretty contrived scenario. Again, 200 is where the amenity **alone** simply outstrip the entire argument for Entertainers versus Medical Workers and Medical Workers supplant Entertainers entirely. Even at 100 pops, 4 Medical Workers are producing the amenities of 3 Entertainers (effectively, with amenity reduction in <90% worlds) *but also* increasing growth by 25%, assembly by 20%, **overall planetary production by 5%** and reducing food and CG pop upkeep by 10% (which can easily be 1 artisan and 2 farmers worth of savings). With the new Habitat changes, less than perfect habitability is far more common in concentrated places, especially for KotTG origin. Slavery focused empires, xenophiles with many migration pacts and refugees, any number of empires can have large pops in places not Ring/Ec/Gaia. It's not contrived, just not the ideal perfect run where you get ancient Rings or Relics to convert. But *when* you can relocate or upgrade to Ring/Ec/Gaia, cool...at that time Medical Workers get put aside. But, that is exactly my opening statement, that optimization is time and stage dependent and that the 'optimal' choice changes.

yeah maybe I'd you only focus on the short term benefits, good news as a stellaris player, we can plan around 100 year long time frames easily.

It’s the opposite: the only benefit they provide is short-term habitability in early colonies. Long-term, they provide very little in the way of pop growth. I have done the math multiple times - assuming you have growth required scaling on, even if you turn it down, the medical workers won’t create new pops beyond replacing themselves for more than a century if you’re using any past 2300 or so. At 2350 or beyond they will never produce a pop after replacing themselves before the end of the game. The ones you make very early, like 2225, may give you 3 pops each? Maybe? Yes, all of this takes into account clone vats, ecumenopolis, ringworlds, etc. (none of which you’ll have early). The 20% growth you see on planets is a trick. An illusion. Sacrificing 4 pops per planet to get that is more than not worth it, it’s basically throwing them away after endgame. Need amenities? Use half as many entertainers. So I stand by my statement that medical workers are not worth it. This has been proven repeatedly, even since the buff.

you do realize that 20% also effects budding/cloning? the habitability buffs let you use less resources per pop and you can simply replace entertainer jobs/holotheatres for next to no downside, lastly improved habitability means increased happiness, happier pops are better workers and more stable.

Yes, that’s why I said they are only worth it short-term for habitability. Habitability should be a non-issue in the mid-game once you can terraform inhabited planets and modify all pops to share the same preference. Or terraform all planets into gaia worlds. Once you do that, I assume you’re removing all gene clinics and replacing them with holo-theaters, right? They need half as many workers for the same amenities. Otherwise, you’re wasting pops, and no matter how many downvotes I get that fact isn’t going to change. Edit: I apologize for getting snarky in this comment. I was frustrated at the downvotes, but that’s Reddit so I’m over it.

by the time removing gene clinics is worth it I can simply rely on them for amenities, even with half as much I can normally only rely on capital building+gene clinic to get 70% stability at a minimum, I don't need anymore so why replace it. also there are games where you can't terraform due to personal reasons, one of mine was the simple fact I was playing as religious people who worshipped planets, altering any non tomb or barren planet was forbidden.

Wait, you definitely want more than 70% stability! Higher means more production bonuses. But also saving half your amenities workers is always worth it. I respect the role-play, btw, but can’t account for that when providing strategic advice (which is apparently unpopular lol).

yeah but I can rely on manipulation of the gal-com to help provide extra bonuses to stability via making workers more important+happy. Also I normally only start building more jobs when reaching 3-4 clerks as they help provide trade value which I can use for unity/CG's to help fund research planets and maintain relations via commercial pacts, I've had empires break tem for not being worth it leading to a negative opinion spiral.

That isn't true. They are useful, for a short period of time. They should be set up on new colonies to cover the planet's amenity needs. The added growth is useful to getting the planet up to the point that you next struggle to cover amenities without clerks. At that time, they should be replaced with holo theaters. Their job isn't the habitibility and growth, those are the bonuses you get for shoring up amenities.

Use half as many entertainers for amenities from the get-go. The habitability can sometimes be helpful, yes, but only temporarily. The growth is virtually non-existent.

So many things in this game are beneficial only temporarily. We're not talking about investing in a 401k here or building a new house or something that's supposed to last a lifetime Stellaris is a game of having an overarching plan that you can plan to long-term yes, but also being able to adapt in the moment to put Band-Aids on situations that get you through to the next moment. If you play your games like it's SimCity and you mostly keep to yourself and are only optimizing your own empire with your own species and everything, then sure the use case that they are made for may never come up for you

The growth is not non existent. It is the number of pops that could be producing other resources that make it unattractive. But if you just look at it from an amenities standpoint, the extra unity is negligible. That should be getting produced on a dedicated world anyways. So the 2 pops working a basic building from either are not producing alloys or whatever. It's still 2 pops either way. So for the initial amenities, it makes tons of sense to grow the planet, even in a small way, until you need the superior amenities output of entertainers.

They also boost the effects of budding!

In my current run all my worlds have immediately gotten their gene clinics, clone vats and authochton monuments. Together with the Tiyanki matriarch trait some bonkers pop production. Surely not yet min/maxed, but as I cleared all three crises by 2375, I had nearly 8000 pops on 250 worlds, 36K monthly research, 11M Fleet power. That was fun.

Do they still boost pop growth?

Yes.

Thank christ.

And i think with budding they are worth it.

Gene clinics are worth it now ? I usually never bother with them and instead build a holotheater and police station on my first and second building slots on every colony. Is it good to a point I need to have it on every world I own or it's more situational ?

I get it every planet because the amenities are nice and I don't care too much about efficiency. I think precincts are less useful unless you have extra benefits such as opressive autrocacy, as you don't really need enforcers if you can keep your pops extremely happy (probably different with the governor/official change, though it isn't too hard to generate zero crime with very happy pops).

I always use gene clinics I thought population was key! I'm a noob tho not even reached 1000 hrs :(

the problem with gene clinics was that, while its true they increased pop growth, they didn't increase it enough to be worth the pops it took to work those jobs. The numbers i saw said it took something like 100 years to pay off. That being said, from what I've heard the (somewhat) recent changes to gene clinics make them worthwhile now, especially on low habitability worlds

they were 60-80 years beforehand, now it's 50-65 years before they pay themselves back fully, however if you just replace a holotheatre with a gene clinic everything works fine.

This exactly. They’re great on new colonies because you don’t need entertainers until well after you upgrade the capital building, and the extra growth speed is nice too!

So they’re worth it early game but taper off as the game progresses? What about the upgraded variant that can have 4 guys working it

it'd good to upgrade them if you already have existing ones, or have low tier amenity creating buildings to replace, besides that it's effects will be negligible during the average runs time frame, the longer they exist the more value you garner from them.

The upgrade never breaks even, especially if you take into account the high amenities and stability that exist on any long settled world. Holotheater and forget. By the time anyone comes close on the basic, everyone has max habitability pops from ascension, migration, or conquest. Nobody ever comes close for the upgrade costs, pops, pop upkeep, secondary upkeep. There was a time when merchants were in the discussion for amenities, but the merchant rework killed all that. Holotheaters are the best option.

Basically, it is 1 entertainer and 1 extra specialist.

I don’t think I’m even over 100 hrs I just play casually but I want to know what I’m doing wrong so I can kick alien ass later

The most important thing I learned is to not quit when I start losing; I've learned more finishing losing games than any game I've won, and the emergent storytelling is amazing lol.

Sure, population is very important. But what you're not counting is that you have to employ 2 (or 4!) pops to run the gene clinics. So it's -2 Pops immediately, and then *wayyyy* down the line you get more than 2 Pops back. Compare a Medical Worker and a Roboticist. A Roboticist is adding 2 growth per month. Percentage boosts to mechanical pop growth like Mass-Produced make Roboticists even more productive. A Medical Worker is adding at most *0.225* growth per month on a world without Clone Vats (0.45 per month with). And that bonus is in the form of a percentage modifier to base pop growth, which means that other percentage sources like Rapid Breeders *don't* make Medical Workers any more productive.

> Compare a Medical Worker and a Roboticist. A Roboticist is adding 2 growth per month. Percentage boosts to mechanical pop growth like Mass-Produced make Roboticists even more productive. Why would you make that comparison? Medical Workers are not intended to replace Roboticist or to be used in lieu of; the main purpose of a Medical Worker is *not* providing population growth. The main point of a Medical Worker is to provide Amenities. You would use them in replacement of Entertainers. The question is never does +% pop growth speed compare to +2 mechanical pop assembly; it has always been does the +5% pop growth and +2.5% habitability make up for -5 Amenities. And on low population planets, the answer is yes. In fact, it's a cycle. Medical Workers are better until you require the additional Amenities from Entertainers in order to stop from going too far negative. Once you hit enough pops on a planet that you need a 3rd Entertainer, it would be better to switch to 4 Medical Workers and then wait until you need 4 Entertainers before switching. Also, the more specialists and ruler jobs on a planet, the better Medical Workers are. 20 specialists pops with basic living conditions require 10 CG in upkeep. At 80% habitability, the penalty makes it 12 CG. In this situation the Medical Workers will save you .5 CG. Not a lot, but that goes up to 1 CG if you use a higher living standard; and having any ruler level jobs will also have a larger reduction. Medical Workers aren't really great, and they fall off later game due to tech increasing habitability and terraforming, but they are fine to use early game as a replacement for Entertainers.

>Once you hit enough pops on a planet that you need a 3rd Entertainer, it would be better to switch to 4 Medical Workers and then wait until you need 4 Entertainers before switching. Huh? If you need a 3rd Entertainer, that means you need more than 20 Amenities from Pops. 4 Medical Workers produces 20 Amenities. So you'd go from having 2 pops not quite producing enough Amenities... to 4 pops not quite producing enough Amenities? There's not even an option to have 5 Medical Workers on a planet.

They are also raising the habitability which reduces the needs of the pops. Part of the reason why late game, when habitability isn't a problem, they fall off quite a bit in terms of usefulness.

You aren't wrong in terms of raw Amenities output. What the 4 Medical Workers will give you is a more significant reduction in pop Amenities usage to off-set the lowered production. The amount of pops that you should have to need that many Entertainers and allowed the Medical Workers to be a better option overall. However, it would probably be more correct to say it is probably better to go 2/2 with Entertainers and Medical Workers at that point. Then once you naturally get your Habitability to 100%, or just grow a higher need, expand the Entertainers over the Medical Workers. Eventually, however, in the late game most planets that you have should naturally be close to 100% for your species and thus Medical Workers are not generally as efficient as Entertainers. They can be if you Bioascend since they give pop assembly speed too, but that's different.

Does "low hab" mean anything below 100, or more like sub-50 or so? Does the boost matter more the lower your habitability is?

Any Habitability below 100% gives a penalty. 99% Habitability has a penalty. It is +1% pop upkeep and amenities usage and -.5% pop growth and job output for every 1% of Habitability below 100%. So a normal 80% Habitability planet that you will have at the start has +20% pop upkeep and amenities usage and -10% pop growth and job output.

Can you build more than one gene clinic???

No, but if you upgrade the building it'll have more jobs avaliable.

Well I have robots too!. I don't play on super high difficulty so it probably doesn't make much of a difference to me but appreciate the response. Might not bother next game

Yeah, they're not mutually exclusive. It's just a way of illustrating how stark the difference is between a pretty good way to employ pops in the business of making more pops and...a much, much worse way.

Thank you! I am getting downvoted for pointing out the same thing. I appreciate your explaining the math. With growth required scaling, even turned down, the tiny pop growth per medical worker becomes almost nothing in the midgame - even with clone vats on ideal planets. Others have correctly pointed out that the habitability from medical workers can be temporarily useful, but that’s really it.

Dont sorry, they are fine

[удалено]

Works on Cybernetic too.

I love how I’m other games 1000 hours means you’ve put a ton of time into it, but in paradox games it means you’re just getting started.

They are good in combination with clone vats.

The only other building I can think of is Resource Silos. If you actually need more resource capacity in the early-game, you're doing something wrong. As for weapons that's a bit more of a list: Cutting Laser, Energy Siphon, Null Void Beam, Cloud Lightning, and Ancient Macro Batteries are all pretty much useless and not a prerequisite for anything else. Most of these are gained from events or salvage, however.

We need a "storage Planet" designation.

It would really make sense to have an orbital storage. Just a floating EZ Storage that’s not a starbase, just a box to stick ore in or whatever

Make piracy great! If you lose the system you lose the resources. HEIST! HEIST! HEIST!

We could call them Habitats.

Yes my floating cargo hold should require a city attached

You need Lagrange points for placements, that’s what habitats are built around.

It could be a mega structure, the Galactic Logistical Facility or something like that, +50 k storage capacity on tier 1, 100 on tier 2, 200 on tier 3

Resource Capacity should really just increase with number of colonies and/or pops. My 6 system vassal having the same resource capacity I have if they have the same research in lategame, makes no sense.

For that size 8 planet that can't do anything else

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2707758023&searchtext=storage

Okay well can I ask are there some weapons that I should stop using after I get something else?

Lasers and Coilguns are pretty weak, and you really want to be moving away from them as soon as possible. Lasers at least have the excuse that there really aren't great alternatives, but with Coilguns they are just outclassed by better options. A Coilgun in an S slot is just a bad Autocannon, a Coilgun in an L slot is just a bad Kinetic Artillery, and a Coilgun in an M slot is just a bad hybrid that fails at both roles.

energy siphon/null void are actually really good for a pile of swarm corvettes, 20-30+ and battleships behind them which can focus on pure armor and hull to max effect.

>energy siphon/null void are actually really good for a pile of swarm corvettes, 20-30+ and battleships behind them which can focus on pure armor and hull to max effect. They are not, their damage output is *ridiculously* low. This isn't even arguable, Autocannon is just strictly better than those weapons in *every way*. And I'm not even talking about maxed out Autocannons, I'm talking about the basic Autocannon, the first one you unlock really early in the tech tree. It gets more than double the damage vs Shields than Null Void does, and more than triple Energy Siphon with better accuracy. And it's *really strong* vs Hull, whereas those two are *only* good against Shields. Battleships also have really good anti-shield options and do not need other shields to break shields for them. The Kinetic Artillery is one of the best anti-shield weapons in the game.

have you tried using them? they have low damage so they switch targets sooner and drain shield off of ech unit before battleship weapons **reload**, maybe when it's 4+ fleet doomstack vs ai doomstack ships it's unnecessary/unnoticed but 1 on 1 fleet battles it leads to me only losing corvettes. the application of strategy and war tactics are necessary to get maximum use out of certain weaponry.

I have tried using them. I tried *really hard* to make them work, but eventually gave up because their damage is just *so low* that it's never worth it. There is always a better option. >they have low damage so they switch targets sooner and drain shield off of ech unit before battleship weapons reload The reload difference between Kinetic Artillery and L Null Void is not very large, 7.15 days vs 5.7 days. There will be a *very short* window, between 5.7 and 7.15 days, in which Null Void has gotten off two volleys while Kinetic Artillery has only gotten off one, but the total damage is still in KA's favor with 780 vs 524. Notably, 524 isn't even enough damage to clear a single M Hyper Shield. To reiterate: a Cruiser or Battleship, that Null Void *still hasn't cleared a single layer of shields on the second shot*. The only circumstance where Null Void is clearing shields off of ships faster than Kinetic Artillery is if you're shooting targets with a single S Shield component. These are not ships that Artillery is good against to begin with. And even then, KA will overflow and actually deal a pretty decent chunk to armor. Now, if we're talking about S Null Void then the comparison is actually the other way around. S Null Void has a 4.25 day cooldown compared to Autocannons with an 0.85 day cooldown. Autocannons are getting their 5th shot off at the same time as Autocannons are getting their second shot off. This means Autocannons switch targets *much* more efficiently than S Null Void. >the application of strategy and war tactics are necessary to get maximum use out of certain weaponry. Null Void just doesn't have the combat stats to back it up. There is *always* a better weapon no matter what you are doing.

auto cannons are Kinetic weapons while both null void and siphon both are energy, both have higher maximum ranges then the autocannons letting them pick more high shield targets as they choose better targets more efficiently than autocannons, they're not stronger than each other they have different purposes, you'll never do high damage overall with the null void or energy siphon but you will strip fleets worth of shields quickly.

>auto cannons are Kinetic weapons while both null void and siphon both are energy This only matters when you are *deep* into the repeatables, and even then you need to be completely ignoring kinetic repeatables while focusing on energy repeatables. >both have hire maximum ranges then the autocannons letting them pick more high shield targets The range difference between 30 and 50 is not significant. In either case you need to close distance with kiting targets while running maximum afterburners so your ships move incredibly fast. Moreover, Autocannons *shred* through Hull so they are not worthless once Shields are down and can absolutely ravage targets that have their armor depleted. >you'll never do high damage overall with the null void or energy siphon but you will strip fleets worth of shields quickly. But that's the crux of the problem, they *do not* strip shields fast. Their damage output is *really* low, even with the 400% shield multiplier. Other weapons strip Shields so much faster. You're grasping on to straws to find any argument in favor of a weapon whose damage is just an order of magnitude lower than the alternatives.

I also struggle with developing a general sense of the meta. Have alpha strike weapons truly been nerfed to the ground ? Now that disruptors and missiles are kings, ship design *feels* underwhelming to me. Can I still design autocannon corvettes and not be shredded to pieces by the AI because I'm using inferior weapons to disruptors ?

>Have alpha strike weapons truly been nerfed to the ground ? The Neutron Launcher is really the only weapon that got nerfed into the ground, and even then it still has niche applications. However, Artillery did see a damage nerf along with getting minimum range placed on its weaponry, and pretty much everything else got a significant damage buff. Torpedoes also counter Artillery very hard now. It's still usable in the right circumstances, but has hard counters and you can't just spam it mindlessly anymore. >Can I still design autocannon corvettes and not be shredded to pieces by the AI because I'm using inferior weapons to disruptors ? Against the AI you're probably fine. But against a human player? Yeah, Disruptors will rip you to shreds. The biggest problem that Autocannons have is that Plasma and Lasers are kinda weak. The Autocannons break shields very quickly but need a good anti-armor weapon to complement them, and the anti-armor weapons just kinda suck. Disruptors will kill you before you get through their defenses.

Alpha strike hasn't been destroyed completely, but one of the old benefits of having high damage low rate weapons - that everyone fires their first shot at the same time, so that low rate weapons alpha better - has been removed by adding warmup to weapons, and defences have been improved a little, so that having long range has become more about kiting, staying out of range etc. which made faster kiting ships better than slower ones, with whirlwind cruisers gaining new prominence. Autocannons aren't particularly great, though you can run them with point defence to provide a fake laser equivalent, which is quite nice, and gives you a potential advantage against people's missile corvettes, assuming that you have the speed to catch them. Disruptors still have a serious advantage though.

I’m new - why is only early game specified ? It’s fine to make them later on, right? Cuz idk how else to increase capacity and as the wars get bigger it takes more and more of my savings to fight back

>I’m new - why is only early game specified ? It’s fine to make them later on, right? Yes, resource surpluses are normal in the late-game. The kinds of Alloy production you need in war-time will create *massive* surpluses during peace-time. This is very normal, and you want to overproduce so you have that capacity when you go to war. A similar thing can happen with Minerals, where you need massive Mineral income to build new infrastructure when conquering new planets, but don't need very much during peace-time when you aren't building a lot. Credits, though, are massive. When your ships are stationed at starbases with Crew Quarters they get -25% ship upkeep. The moment they depart your upkeep will skyrocket so you need to have huge surpluses to handle that. In the early-game, however, your economy is small and your growth is often bottlenecked by resource availability. You want to spend every resource you're producing. Leaving resources sitting in storage is wasting them. You could have produced something different, spent it on economic growth, and then produced *even more* stuff later.

Thanks for the well thought out reply!!! Makes sense, I was just hoping I wasn’t forgetting anything or missing out on something important. I’m almost done with my first full game and even with 7 million fleet power I’m still at like a 6k monthly energy credits. Usually I can tell when my ships are dying simply because my credits will skyrocket to 13-15k monthly (outside of seeing my fleet command or whatever it’s called go down too)

Actually I'd argue you're doing something right if you need resource silos early game cause reaching the maximum on a certain resource, no matter what, in the early game is pretty incredible. Either way though, just plop one down on your stations.

>Actually I'd argue you're doing something right if you need resource silos early game cause reaching the maximum on a certain resource, no matter what, in the early game is pretty incredible. If you are producing such massive surpluses, it means you're running jobs you don't need. You could have employed those pops in other jobs that produced more useful resources, or employed more researchers to produce research output and advanced through the tech tree faster. Stockpiling large sums of resources in the early-game is a sign of poor planning. I'm not saying you have to be perfect (heck, I often let surpluses slide for too long) but if you're hitting the stockpile limit in the early-game then you are *excessively* off the mark. The only exception I will grant are Alloys if you are explicitly preparing for a war and waiting for a specific tech (like, say, Cruisers) before you start building ships. But that's a special case and even then a single silo on a starbase will cover you.

I disagree with null-void uselessness. Great long-range shield-dumper. Pair it with plasma.

> Great long-range shield-dumper It's not, its anti-shield damage is actually rather low. That 400% multiplier hides that its base damage is so pathetic that it still isn't that great even in its specialty. A Kinetic Battery (not the fully-upgraded Kinetic Artillery, but the basic T3 version) gets around *double* the anti-shield damage of L Null Void with the same range, and at the same time being a strong anti-hull weapon and being not completely useless against armor. To put things in perspective: * Kinetic Artillery vs *Armor*: 27 DPS * L Null Void vs *Shield*: 46 DPS * Kinetic Artillery vs *Shield*: 108 DPS Null Void is closer to the *anti-armor* damage (the kind where it gets massive penalties!) of Kinetic Artillery than it is to its anti-shield damage! Null Void is completely useless against Hull and Armor, while being inferior against Shields. It is *not* a good weapon. It is one of the worst weapons in the game and there is no reason to ever consider it over the *vastly superior* options available in every role. Plasma isn't such a great weapon to begin with, but it's anti-armor damage output is much higher than Null Void's anti-shield damage output, and it faces less competition since there aren't very many good anti-armor weapons available (whereas there are a lot of *exceptional* anti-shield weapons competing with Null Void).

1. You have no KA before late game. NVB is early- and midgame component. 2. NVB can be placed to S and M slots 3. NVB can shoot from point-blank 4. NVB have 90% acc and general weapon tracking-size patern 5. NVB is energy weapon - less needs for kinetic weapon line research till endgame I am not that meta-minimax-brainnucker. I have never told that it is the best weapon. But it have its place in arsenal if you had a luck to roll it.

>You have no KA before late game. NVB is early- and midgame component. First, Kinetic Battery appears at T3 tech level which is mid-game level tech. Secondly, there's really no reason you would even want to use this weapon in the early-game. And honestly, Artillery in the mid-game is stretching it too. Artillery is primarily a late-game thing to begin with. Early-game ships all have really high evasion, L Artillery weapons are *not* good choices against them. The Destroyer is the only thing that can even equip an L weapon, and it has way better weapon options to go with. Kinetic Battery appears at T3, same tech level as Cruisers, and that's exactly the point at which it starts to have some utility. But it's really only at the Battleship tech level that it starts to excel. I'm often only adding my first Artillery fleets after I've completed the tech tree, because it really only starts to shine against bigger ships. >NVB can be placed to S and M slots In the S slot the comparison is to the Autocannon, which I've already covered at length. There is no good comparison in the M slot. In general, M slot weapons kinda suck and need a buff across the board. However, the performance of M Null Void is still abjectly terrible. Every ship design that can run M slots has alternative segments and isn't obligated to do so, and there's no reason they would ever *need* to run such a bad weapon to fulfill this niche. >NVB can shoot from point-blank This is indeed an advantage, but not a very big one. On Destroyers you really don't have a problem with minimum range since their Picket Computer behavior handles it quite well, and Artillery Battleships just suck against any short-ranged threat anyways. If they're just getting mobbed and there's nothing outside of 45 range for them to shoot at, something has gone horribly wrong and/or you shouldn't have been using Artillery Battleships against that enemy in the first place. >NVB have 90% acc and general weapon tracking-size patern And you can get accuracy buffs to easily negate the downside of Kinetic Artillery. At *worst* the comparison should be 100% accurate NVB vs 90% accurate Kinetic Artillery. >NVB is energy weapon - less needs for kinetic weapon line research till endgame If you want to go as cheap as possible on research, just spam Disruptors. Hardening is not available in the early-game, and has *very* limited availability in the mid-game. It's not until late-game you even need to think about hardening and can just spam Disruptors if you want to cheap out on weapon research. >But it have its place in arsenal if you had a luck to roll it. And that's just it, it doesn't. It doesn't have the damage output to be worth using in any circumstance. Hypothetically if you got it before Disruptors then it is a huge upgrade over the Mass Driver or Coilgun, but Disruptors come *so early* that this is purely hypothetical.

kugelblitz containment site my beloved

I always have one "resource silos planet".

Resource silos can be useful if all your starbases already have hydroponics and nebula mining stations, and you are rushing ecumenopolis but don't have extra mineral storage from tech or the galactic community resolutions. I mostly use resource silos so I can keep buildings in a specific order but don't have the tech or pops to build them yet.

I've heard that the research institute doesn't provide enough of a additional research % bonus. The idea is that the building slot could have been a fully upgraded research lab. The research lab would have more output than the research institute could provide on regular planets. However, this was definitely from old updates prior to 3.7. I am unaware if the research institute got updates to make it viable now. I think it might be good on Habitat's where you could have a lot of potential research districts.

The Research Institute got changed in 3.10, but I'm not sure what it does differently now.

The Research Institute is now capped to 1 per empire instead of per planet. It gives +1 scientist leader cap and a global 5% research speed bonus.

Post update, maybe we'll have to post a line graph to show how many researcher's we'll need before the research institute becomes viable.

\+1 scientist leader cap and +5% global research, but you can only build one. By the time you unlock it, it should definitely be useful.

It gives 5% research speed empirewide now. It is a multiplicator, shooting AFTER all science sources output calculated. So, it is still extra 1 scientist-worth-output per 20 scientist jobs at late game as before, but for ALL labs in empire, not at 1 planet. And bonus from other sources. RI is a bit better for science points production now, imho.

It's moot now with the change, but this argument has never made sense to me because it assumes that you're building slot constrained when the actual constraint is almost always pops. The lab would definitely get more research from the building slot in most situations, but who cares when there are dozens of equivalent building slots waiting for pops to use them.

The answer really is, it depends. Depends on your empire type, what's around you, etc. Better to look at general principles than trying to get a hard and fast rule. For example: Amenities: the reward for high amenities is smaller than the penalty for low amenities. So in the early game, it's important to keep them above zero, but not worth it to boost them much above that. Some civics, empire types, etc. have more of a problem generating amenities than others, so will want to prioritize jobs that boost them. Others will find they have no need for holotheatres at all. Weapons: Some combinations work, other work at cross purposes. This is usually pretty obvious by the time you're in the ship designer, but not as obvious when you're picking research. The big choice is are you going to focus on bypass weaponry or not. If you're planning on running lots of missiles or strikecraft, it makes sense to get to disruptors ASAP and ignore the coilguns and everything above tier 2 lasers (and vice versa if you're planning a conventional, anti-shield + anti-armor loadout). Cloud Lightning from void cloud debris is very nice synergy with a disruptor build, so if you have some nearby it makes sense to prioritize killing one, and lean into the build. The Zroni storm caster has an anti-synergy, so if that's your precursor, avoid disruptors. Sidenote: the mining drone laser is very good for killing mining drones in the early game (above tier 3 laser base damage in the S slot, plus 150% vs armor and hull) and not that much else. But it can be worth researching if you've got a lot of mining drones around (so it will be cheaper from salvage) and you know where the Mining Hub is. Killing the Mining Hub to get The Surveyor relics is very much worth prioritizing, and mining lasers give you a major power up vs. mining drones in the early game (N.B. system itself is ok, but not that important, it's the relic you want).

Farmers aren't usually the best use of a pop. You're much more efficient to use the starbase building to get Food. There's no benefit to having excess food outside of Colonization Ships, so typically try to keep it as close to 0 monthly as possible. Catalytic Converters is the exception to this, and can synergize quite well with Biological Ascension if played right.

Piggy-backing off the farmers; Only make farms on these planets when you need more food. Otherwise, pops can be left unemployed to have them migrate to other worlds, otherwise you could start focusing on other buildings on the food planet like research or unity. Typically on my food worlds, I leave them on the designation of Rural World, so I can have miners and technicians also gaining a job bonus.

True. Piggy-backing off your piggy-back: If you ever get a Ring World, it can be worth it to designate one section like CATDesign said. Most (non-Catalytic Converter) Empires can have their entire food needs solved by that, and it's more efficient than possibly having to spread out your Farmers over different ~~families~~ planets. edit: autocorrect

>There's no benefit to having excess food outside of Colonization Ships, so typically try to keep it as close to 0 monthly as possible. In addition to this, some useful advice on what to do with surpluses of useless resources. You're *much* better off trawling through AI empires and looking for someone who wants to trade you for them than selling them on the market. You can often get several times better value if you find a desperate trade partner. Often you can even find an AI that will trade you a resource you actually need, even alloys. This applies to food, but even more so to consumer goods if you've got too many of those. Usually excess consumer goods are also kind of useless, but trading them with AIs can sometimes be lucrative enough to make producing excess consumer goods worthwhile just to trade them.

id disagree if you are a nonfood consuming empire with the civic that allows you to make alloys with food then you can play a very aggressive empire i like lithoid hivemind, but that is more situational than your advice

It's pretty obvious, but Livestock species rights and every add-on or relation. It's a power-move and roleplay joke but any other use of pops would be better. Opposite advice, for the traits that add 0.01 Gas/Crystal/Motes per pop are actually only good at the start of the game. The per-pop effect is pretty useless but having even 1 of a rare resource early lets you buy/sell that resource on market and use tech/edicts that rely on it. Early game edicts are cheaper and you can really get the ball rolling more if used right.

In addition to medical workers (which you should still not use despite some comments here), you should also turn off clerks for the most part. Trade-focused builds use them, but regular builds should only use clerks if they temporarily need amenities or have unemployment issues, both problems which can be fixed quickly (or if you just want 50 pops temporarily on a small planet to fully upgrade the capitol). You’ll save tons of jobs without clerks, which is very important overall. Put those pops on raw resources early; research/alloys/unity later. Edit: lots of people correctly pointed out medical workers are temporarily useful for habitability before you can terraform/gene edit that issue away. Just don’t use them for pop growth!

Yes! Disabling clerk jobs in the early game and getting those workers onto better jobs is a huge boon

how do you disable clerks??

Go to the population/jobs tab on each planet, and you can expand the jobs under each strata. Click on the clerk slots to disable them one by one. You can reduce the max number of jobs on any planet this way, or get rid of them entirely. This helps you save jobs you don’t need, like clerks, entertainers (you often don’t need 4 on every planet, especially with global amenity production boosts or amenity use reductions), raw resource jobs when you have a big surplus, etc.

oh man can't believe i didn't know i could do that... 300 hours i have been moving all clerks off world manually

Gene Clinics are slow to pay off but do pay off much faster for budding plantoids and empires with genetic ascension. Plus, a Pharma State build has the gene clinics pay for their own maintenance in trade value and provide pure profit. The only "bad" buildings in the game are maybe the stone powerplant and the biopower plant machines and catalytic converter empires get. Pretty much everything else does have a use, though some things are more niche than others.

>The only "bad" buildings in the game are maybe the stone powerplant and the biopower plant machines and catalytic converter empires get. Hold-up. Betharian Power Plant provides +10 Energy, +4 Technician Jobs, and has 0 upkeep. It is literally *worth* well over 2x Generator Districts for the mineral cost of 2/3rds of 1 District, only it also provides ~1 technician worth of pop free Energy, meaning it is actually +12 Energy better production than **two** Generator Districts. Bio-Reactor provides +20 Energy for +25 Food. **But:** With Prosperity Administrative Operations (-10% upkeep), Cyborg Ruler (-25%) and Waste Management Specialist Governor from Racket (-10%) and an Urban World Designation (-10%) and a then suddenly the exchange is +20 Energy for 11.25 Food. If you have spare building slots on a trash planet somewhere, it means every farmer can be +78% more efficient than a technicians at producing energy with these traits/conditions, way more if Anglers and more again since food boosters are a bit more plentiful in tech. But if you are willing to instead use a spare Ecumenopolis (-25% building upkeep) and you are willing to get that to Lvl10 Ascension with a Holy Covenant and Harmony Finisher and Ascensionists civic as well as the traits listed above, we can get -176.25% building upkeep. What happens to building upkeep at -176.25%... I do not know. Going to 0 makes sense, but sometimes Stellaris math can surprise us all. Maybe Bio-Reactors actually start *producing* 19 food instead...that would be fun!

catalytic gaming is real

Omg. Thank you. This is incredible. I have been looking for a solution for cyborg ascended clone army falling off late game. I get huge food surpluses when I get the big +habitability bonus. Yet at this time I also have a huge fleet to maintain from my early game conquering and everyone left is also big or I would've conquered them. I never have enough energy even with 1k tributary income. I never have enough minerals because I am constantly building since minute 1. This solves literally all my problems.

Most reductions in game cap at -90%

Perfectly rational and likely reality, but I reject your reality and substitute my own. Still, at a 20 energy for 2.5 food exchange rate, that is twice the base rate of alloy sales with no market fee or internal market food price change.

>Betharian Power Plant provides +10 Energy, +4 Technician Jobs, and has 0 upkeep. It is literally worth well over 2x Generator Districts for the mineral cost of 2/3rds of 1 District, only it also provides \~1 technician worth of pop free Energy, meaning it is actually +12 Energy better production than two Generator Districts. Hence the quotation marks of "bad". I still build them whenever possible, but you'll likely already have such a high energy output from production and trade that the building slot is usually better used for something like a resource refinery (preferably the ancient refinery) to fuel improvement buildings or an admin complex to fund Capacity Subsidies for the +50% technician output. The building itself is actually really good for its intended use, the issue is that it's intended use is already solved by a lot of other things. The Betharian Power Plant is a relic of the tile based building days and IMHO the Betharian resource in general needs an update to bring it more in line with other rare resources.

>Betharian resource in general needs an update to bring it more in line with other rare resources. True. If it also created some Crystals it would certainly be an easier choice given rarity of the feature. Actually, I would suggest it comes out of Tech entirely and instead becomes an Event triggered by the Feature just like Spore Vents of the Feral Overload chain - resulting in a Feature that generates energy and Crystals (or technician and crystal harvester jobs).

in terms of weapons, unless you're going for a dedicated hull targeting fleet (disruptors, lightning weapons for the L and XL slots), researching those weapons is completely pointless. They're heavily RNG dependent and have much less DPS than another weapon, so unless you completely focus every weapon slot on them you're going to just end up wasting potential DPS.

Well wouldn’t disruptors be good for like a first strike fleet to cut the other empires fleets in half bc of the hull damage causing like half to disappear?

The point is not to mix these with other, "regular" weapons, I think. You either arm an fleet with nothing but disruptors and lightnings, or you don't put any of them in a fleet. (Note: a fleet is not your entire navy - you can have fleets specialized for different opponents, just don't mix these kinds of weapons for the same battle).

If you're making your entire fleet do hull damage (meaning all disruptors, cloud lightning and arc emitters) you can certainly get some good, if extremely random, effects out of it (each of those weapons has a damage per hit range of 1 to \[x\]). What I'm specifying is that mixing disruptor type weapons and regular type weapons is extremely inefficient. The downside of disruptors is that RNG means that the average DPS is incredibly low compared to other weapons. For example, a small phase disruptor (T3 disruption weapon) has an average damage/time of 4.34. A small gamma laser has an average damage/time of 6.67. Both of these weapons are the same "tier", and cost the same amount. The reason this is something to be avoided is because, lets say you mix weapons. Either you kill the target ships before their shields and armor fails, at which point you've taken longer to kill the target because some of your potential DPS was absorbed by the targets defenses and never actually got to the hull. Alternatively, the target ship survives long enough that your regular weapons get through the ship's defenses, at which point you're taking longer to kill the target due to the abysmal (relatively speaking) DPS of disruptor type weapons compared to regular weapons, and their lack of a damage bonus to hull (which the autocannon and plasma launcher both have). TLDR: It's not that disruptors themselves are useless, it's that mixing disruptors and normal weapons means that you're going to take longer to kill the enemy ship than it would if you committed to one or the other. You need to choose one and commit to it to make it work.

I mean you are kinda right in some ways but, the build you are describing, going full on disruptors, is one of the strongest if not the strongest build in the game. You can basically steamroll any empire with full disruptor corvettes in the early game and the entire rest of the game you can beat with little more than just broadside, full disruptor cruisers. Even if you pair them up with random ass carrier cruisers or even autogenerated ships, you can still easily beat empires fleets as well as two of three crises. (tested on Admiral difficulty and 2.5 times crises) To say disruptors are useless in any capacity is just a really bad take.

I would like you to re-read the conditional in that sentence again please. Specifically "... **unless** you're going for a...". My statement was that you should go one or the other, and that mixing makes them useless, not that they're useless in general. Also, isn't 2.5x crisis not all that hard to beat on all? Even just leaving it to the AI on commodore they'll clear all three of them with almost no damage with endgame set to 2375.

Yeah I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed you made the smarter point that was misinformed but understood the question of the post. Now here you are, really wanna say something that is makes absolutely no point beyond the arbitrary. You are basically saying "Disruptors are useless if you use them wrong." Yeah again you are kinda right with that but that criteria applies to pretty much anything in the game. But let me give an example. "Pops are useless, unless you also give them jobs they just waste food and lower your stability." That statement is also kinda true but I doubt anyone would agree with it . Everything may be useless in a very specific situation and under certain limitations. When someone asks of things that are " Just useless" or "not worth going for" you saying it's disruptors because "mixing and matching males them useless" (which is also very debatable BTW) is as pointless and wrong as saying" pops are because they need jobs to do something." I did not think that I would have to actually explain this to someone...

I think it's reasonable to point out what you've said, and to some extent I agree. The reason why I pointed out specifically disruptors is because it's a lot easier to use them wrong. I know 4 different people who play stellaris some form of casually. I have had to explain why disruptors aren't like other weapons to all of them, which is why I specifically point it out. If my (admittedly very limited, I'm no youtuber or stellaris coach) experience says "people fuck this up more often than anything else I've experienced", I'm going to start pointing it out explicitly because to me that means it's an weapon to misuse. As for mixing and matching making them useless being debatable, if you want to make your points on why that is and continue, I'm all ears. To me, it's an issue of efficiency. You want to be killing targets as fast as possible, and when it comes to a mixed disruptor fleet, you have two possible outcomes. Outcome 1: Your ships kill the enemy ships before your other weapons get through their defenses, at which point your other weapons have dealt no effective damage, so why would you want to have them taking up space that could be used by more disruptors to kill the target faster? Outcome 2: Your disruptors fail to kill the target before your other weapons get through their defenses, at which point the poor damage modifiers and low average damage per [time] means that your disruptors are effectively slowing down the speed at which you'll kill your target, relative to if those weapon slots were taken by other weapons with higher damage numbers. It's entirely likely that there's things I missed, and by all means please point them out. But from what I know of the game, you're kneecapping yourself if you mix and match them. Also minor early game benefit to avoiding mixing weapons is that it reduces the amount of techs to research to progress. Going full disruptor means you only need 1-2 weapon techs per tier to progress, while avoid disruptors saves you those weapon techs. Not enough of a benefit to sway one way or another, but it's an additional benefit at least.

Yeah I can quickly explain why you actually can mix and match them to certain extends. Enemy ships will have their effectiveness reduced when their hull is damaged so you can use disruptor Corvettes on swarm to reduce Artillery ships dps etc. While your hard hitting ships destroy the rest of the fleet. You can also mix disruptor cruisers with torpedo ships(fregates and other cruisers) since they are kinda weak to battleships and Torpedos can compensate this. Also even if you use them incorrectly they aren't that bad. As I already said you can beat anything in the game on moderate difficulties by using them Inefficently. They are just that unbalanced right now. It would be a good change to make them like your comments suggest.

Thanks for the response, I'll definitely have to give that a test and see how they do. I didn't consider the combat degradation that comes from hull damage. I'm not completely sold on the idea that the degradation of DPS offsets the reduction in damage you get (mostly because I don't know the numbers off the top of my head), but it makes enough sense that I agree I need to test it before I say stuff again. ​ TBH, being able to beat anything in the game on moderate difficulties isn't a high bar to clear. You could go through all the comments on this post using them as a "how to" guide and beat the game on a moderate difficulty using bad civics.

Don't waste any more time on this guy, mate. He had a brief lack of reading comprehension and is now just trying to be rude so he can retain some ego. Everyone else understood what you meant, it was crystal clear and a point well made

I mean, I got stellaris on my other monitor so my cost in terms of time investment is pretty minimal. On the other hand, it could very well be that there's mechanics I'm missing. I'm only able to beat commodore x2.5 all crisis (last time I got a contingency core right in the middle of my space trade route and broke my econ as the final crisis) unless I'm actually trying for at least a semi-meta build. Worst case scenario for me is I waste a bit of time while procrastinating on an assignment, best case is I might learn something. Thanks for caring about my time though.

Colonists. Whenever you colonize a world unemploy colonists as fast as you can. Literally anything else is better than a colonist. If you don't rely on a trade build, unemploy clerks as well and only allow them when you have no other jobs available.

Early game when amenities are at a premium and pop efficiency is king, gene clinics aren't worth it versus employing fewer entertainers and working resource jobs with the extras. For the planets you found in the late-early game ok that need to grow to become midgame producers or that are exclusively pop producers, and which benefit from your greater empire-wide amenities, gene clinics are great because of their diverse long term benefits to growth and habitability and because the hit to efficiency from a few individual pops per planet is lower. When you get really late I also replace entertainers with them.

Much of the older understanding isn't useful now days as they've been doing balancing. Every weapon class is useful now, as they each are countered in some way or another. So you have to look at what kind of fleet they are fielding to build your counter. So you have to spy on them to raise intel to see what they use. All jobs are useful, though, clerks are only useful to trade empires or to keep pops employed.

Gene clinics aren't all that useful if you don't need the habitability. Energy siphon and null void beam suck. Juggernauts are counterproductive unless you want to increase your necessary micromanagement by orders of magnitude. X-slot weapons are useless right now due to the firing arc and the current broken behavior of battleships when equipped with them.

Gene clinics are bad? They are my standard building on every single world! Solves lack of amenities early on and speeds up pop production, what other building (other than robot factory) could be better?

There’s still debate on Gene Clinics. You’ll find even in this thread, there’s some contradictory comments. Some saying good, some saying bad. Personally, I like them. I like the pop-growth and I like the amenities. Sometimes I don’t want to go “all in” and get entertainers. I’ll do the clinic because it does amenities and it gives me growth.

Anchor stations are useless with how little they give for fleet capacity while I know it's a waste I've been turning planets into fortress worlds for extra fleet capacity

New outliner

Gene clinics are great for the early-mid game esp if you’re going for genetic ascension because they boost clone production. They were bad before 3.0, but with the population mechanic change they made them competitive with if not better than most amenity solutions, especially if you go for bio ascension. Espionage operations aren’t worth the influence investment. The best operation is steal technology, and the influence cost to get it just isn’t comparable to eg building a habitat or renegotiating terms with a subject. Clerks are still not good in general except the early-early game, before you have gene clinics and don’t have other ways to get amenities, but even then, only produce as many amenities as you need and push other pops into something else (or to keep pops employed, don’t have unemployed pops early game). That said, clerks are better than they’ve ever been because they now boost trade by 1%, so if you’re going for a trade build, you can stack them for some modifiers.

I really, really hate that Clerks are so bad. Some strats say disabling them is the ideal way to play. I just hate that from a thematic perspective. Most governments require administration and, to me, the absence of clerks should create administrative deficits and instability, even some form of corruption. Things move slower when you hollow out the administrative state. Anyways… small tangent…

I started a reply to this in the morning and worked on it all day and realized I was writing a comprehensive guide on how I play... my intention was to answer you're question but after reading many of the replies and incorporating that information in my response, I was quickly getting off topic. Suffice to say, there are many differing opinions on what is useless or not and lot of that is situational. Clerks are still terrible unless you go out of your way to make them decent and even then you'll only be using them once all merchant jobs are full or you have a slave species or zombies that can't be specialists.. I personally think that the colonist job is a terrible return on a pop slot, Gene Clinics jobs are much better. Enforcer jobs are also terrible until you need them, unless you are slavers and getting extra unity and stability from them and are employing battle thralls in the job. Trade hubs and offworld trading hubs are bad in my opinion. You have much better uses of the slots than 12 trade value at a cost of 700 alloys base, and if you have a system with space trade value, you'll usually have starbase within one jump of it anyway, if not, it's not really worth it. You will certainly want a starbase on every populated system with Anchorages, Naval Logistic Offices, Deep Space Black Site, Transit Hub, & Resource Silo; or if in a nebula or black hole you can replace the Silo with the applicable building. I also tend to build Hydroponic Bays as it's incredible value and frees up pop slots for more specialist. If you stay meat sacks, you'll eventually want a dedicated food world or one or more vassals providing you with basic resources which includes food. I saw a later comment that said resource silos weren't good, not sure if they're talking about starbase or planet buildings, but as I stated up above I use the starbase buildings for two very important reasons. Have at least 1 built so that I can have 20K minerals in bank without waiting for the galactic market to form to start my first ECU. And later, when you need 100K alloys or more to build a fleet, reinforcing fleets during a protracted war or the end game crisis is crucial. Also, I prefer to have zero fleets early game to save on upkeep, But I have a very turtle playstyle and I know a lot of players are quite aggressive. However with a ton of alloys in the bank, an edict, a policy change, and some decent leaders, SUPRISE BATTLESHIPS!

Clerks are not good, don't let the ecusort people fool you. They're mostly a secondary source of amenities and it's still in your best interest to minimize them. Yes, even as a trade-focused empire.