Void Dwellers in 3.9 are... good... in an uninteded way (2024)

After a few days of trying 3.9 beta, i wanna leave my few cents here. I want to be more specific about void dwellers origin.
They got a huge nerf to growth in general and a weird buff of sorts.

Bad stuff:

• the capital is fantastically tiny. Dwellers start with some ~2.6 growth, with rapid breeders and communal traits. Thats about HALF other empires growth.
• Major Orbitals are a joke. Half the price of a habitat for a whopping... 0.5 district... Planets get habitation modules for a whole district, costing 19 inf 150 alloys.
• small growth in the capital also means your early habitats grow really slowly. Planet dwellers, upon colonizing a planet, get a massive immigration bonus, coming from the capital. Void Dwellers don't really have this, due to a slow growing capital.
• specialization is not possible. Resources are scattered, so you will have a dozen miners spread across many habitats, which requires a building and strategic resource consumption, leading to overall inneficiency.
• fractional building slot and districts are confusing. Techs and traditions give +10% districts (???) instead of a number of them. Major Orbitals grant you 0.5 district.
• energy deposits are fantastically rare. Seriously... 40 or 60 technician jobs won't take you to the point you can build a Dyson.
• 2 guaranteed richs systems are nice, but are nowhere near the things a guaranteed planet have (in terms of districts)

Good stuff:

• Void Dwellers got a massive boost to their arcane generator, so they start with a large alloy income. And the economy is properly set from day 1 (unike 3.8, where you had a MASSIVE food income for no good reason).
• And here is the weird stuff... Void dwellers are awfully good at corvette rushing a close nighbor, provided you do that EARLY. Flaks + lasers (tier 1 is enough), 40 of them.
• Expansion is not an "optatory" (optional, but mandatory in practice) tradition tree anymore.
• Minor Orbitals are just right... no more unusable resources in your systems. Your habs can use any deposit (except stars).

So, the only way I managed to... Fix... Void Dwellers is to rush a neighbor. That solves most of the problems. I get 3 planets with "planet dweller" pops to populate them, lots of mining/energy districts available, and they cost no Major Orbital to reach (they get some anoying blockers though). But that must be done fast. Void dwellers get peak power at day 1, that advantage goes away in a decate or two.

My few cents on this:

• that arcane generator make Void Dwellers strong in an uninteded way, it needs a nerf.
• That capital is too tiny, it must be A LOT larger, which takes us to ....
• Major Orbitals are trash... I didn't build ONE of them. Minors are fine, Majors are abysmal.

expansion tree definitely is optatory for that extra district.

the biggest problem i've run into trying to make a non-trade building work for void dwellers is lack of useable energy deposits. most systems just have them on stars, which don't count towards the habitat complex's districts, which really sucks

Agree with you on most/all of the Bad Stuff. I did make it to a dyson with a slim number of technicians but it was a little ugly.

I did kind of have the thought that since you can't cram as much stuff into a single system and major orbitals are so expensive, you probably just want to spam unupgraded habitats for as long as possible, which means you need more space, which means you should go take someone else's space... and while you're there, why not the pops, too?

An unupgraded habitat now is in some ways better than the old size-4 habitats. They're less alloy-expensive (750 for the complex plus 100 for the outpost vs 1200 for the old habitat with Expansion), only a little more influence-expensive (again assuming Expansion, 75 influence for the habitat and 67 for the outpost = 142 vs 120 influence for the old habitats), more planetary capacity hence better pop growth, and three instead of four raw resource districts but you were spending two of those four districts on housing anyway to not pop stall - so now you get three districts of production and three of housing instead of two and two. The one thing I'm not sure about is the higher alloy upkeep on the new habs. Earlygame your specialized production worlds aren't any worse than they were in 3.8 (modulo sector governor bonuses and empire size from systems I guess) - it's just that adding more districts has gotten more expensive, and the loss of the two starting habs sets you back like ten years. The incentives to spam unupgraded habitats have only gotten stronger, but now you need space to do it. I haven't actually tried this because I don't really miss managing 40+ habitats but I'm curious to see what wide void dwellers look like now.

But yeah, doesn't feel good for Inward Perfection anymore. Sads.

Hive void dwellers using unyielding and running StarBase's early for energy fixes the energy problem.

Minerals are no longer a problem on habitats which is good.

Note I haven't tried it, but Mega Corp should also not have a problem with energy since they can get it from their branch offices.

igor_srs said:

So, the only way I managed to... Fix... Void Dwellers is to rush a neighbor.

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So things are looking up after all! Still not good enough for a genocidal build though if the pops need to stick around to work the planet resources.

theBigTurnip385 said:

Note I haven't tried it, but Mega Corp should also not have a problem with energy since they can get it from their branch offices.

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Takes energy to make energy as a Mega Corp. - Which is awfully realistic I might add.

I agree with pretty much everything OP wrote.

To fix multiple problems, I would suggest the guranteed habitable systems actually come with pre-built habitats. There was a reason 3.8 void dwellers had 3 habitats to begin with instead of one unique super-habitat.

To fix majors and the lack of specialization, I'm not entirely sure how I would handle it. One idea I had was a major unlocks unlimited districts of that deposit, and further majors in the system can either unlock a different district type (in case someone really doesn't want to specialize) or you can just improve the max district decently at a cost-effective rate.

The district modifiers needs to be something else, it's practically an all or nothing modifier which is extremely difficult to get it to feel good or to balance it.

Terravore Void Dweller run I just did was awesome.

Eat all planets live on habitats.

Start is slow until you get your second habitat up which is a general problem for void dweller

Rafss said:

Thanks for the insight, although in my very own opinion I am sad we got yet another "early rush" origin instead of the unique aspects we had before, this kills playstyle diversity, a sign of bad game design.

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Void Dweller in Competitive MP was already dependent on being an early rush origin and has been for a very long time. Granted, this is more a sign of why Competitive MP should be thrown in the trash when it comes to considering balancing the game in favor of what is actually fun to play.

Daedwartin said:

Void Dweller in Competitive MP was already dependent on being an early rush origin and has been for a very long time. Granted, this is more a sign of why Competitive MP should be thrown in the trash when it comes to considering balancing the game in favor of what is actually fun to play.

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I did not know I'm not a very MP person, what I always liked about Void Dwellers was starting with three "capitals" instead of one, and also building dense in a few easily defended systems; I never imagined it could be used to rush others militarily.

It was quite good in rushing thanks to +15% resource production on habitats for your pops. Corvette spams in year 2010 and race against time. But also they were not meta for what? Over a year now? More like close to 2 years since they got nerfed via Merchants CG upkeep. + MP is around assumption that there is no AI and wars start in 2030. By which point you are expected to have Cruisers to be competetive. Playing Voidborne Authoritarian once Paragons dropped I struggled way more that Remnants that I played previously. Both were not strong Origins at the time.

I might be one of few players who enjoyed general play pattern of voidborne before. Had plenty of games where I managed 90+ Habitats while being mostly Pacifist. I just like games with heavy macro play. It just synonymous with "Population being your strenght" for me.

Good thing they fixed initial setup but shame similar change wasn't there for pop growth. Also it somewhat reduces how tall you can build when it comes to jobs/building slots per system. This probably changes initial game goals of of having 8 star systems to be good to go.

I wonder if AI manages new habitats well - if so we can start counting down for people to start complaining about AI having habitat in every system x].

Daedwartin said:

AI does understand how to build the new orbitals. It manages them about as well as it does normal planets. As for people who inevitably complain about them being in every system, I mean...a human player is likely to do it anyways.

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Yea but we are cool. And... RESISTANCE FROM AI IN MY GRAND STRATEGY GAME ;<?

amib said:

expansion tree definitely is optatory for that extra district.

the biggest problem i've run into trying to make a non-trade building work for void dwellers is lack of useable energy deposits. most systems just have them on stars, which don't count towards the habitat complex's districts, which really sucks

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same.
kinda i have feeling that you dont have enough energy and dyson is too far away.
specialization isnt possible, slow growth. This pretty much kills this origin.

Raiwons said:

same.
kinda i have feeling that you dont have enough energy and dyson is too far away.
specialization isnt possible, slow growth. This pretty much kills this origin.

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Ehh... the change to allow orbitals to be built over stars has helped the energy situation a lot. I agree that building good specialized habs is hard but I've got a couple with 9 mineral or 9 energy districts which is tolerable / comparable to what I'd expect on a specialized planet.

So void dwellers turned into a war rush origin like shattered ring (and clone army too I guess)?

I hope that it's better than those two in some aspect then cuz with SR at least you got ruined ring worlds for mid game snowball too and the clone army has insane pop growth in early game and special admiral trait for war rush.