Stellaris — Cheat Codes

Cheat Codes:
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Submitted by: David K.

The console can be accessed by tapping the "tilde ~" (between the Tab and ESC keys) 
while in-game. A complete list of console commands can be listed by typing "help" 
in the console. Below are some that you might be most interested in. 
Note: This won't work in Ironman games.
 

Result                                            Code
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Cash. Add [amount]. Defaults to 5000. 
example: Cash 10000                             - cash [amount]
Adds Engineering points                         - engineering [amount]
Adds Minerals                                   - minerals [amount]
Adds Influence                                  - influence [amount]
Adds Physics                                    - physics 50000
Adds Society                                    - society [amount]
Add trait to species [species index] 
[trait key] Example: add_trait_species 
human intelligent                               - add_trait_species
Enables instant build                           - instant_build
Unlocks all technologies                        - research_technologies
Adds specified amount of specified resource     - resource [resource] [amount]
Adds specified number of skills to leaders      - skills [value]
Invincible / God Mode                           - invincible
Selected ship takes x damage                    - damage [amount]
Crash The Game                                  - crash
Enable/Disable unlimited ftl                    - ftl
Enable/Disable contact with all                 - contact
Fills all free slots on selected planet 
with pop. (Doesn't remove tile blockers.)	
[Select Planet] populate Survey all planets     - survey
Re-generates the tech tree of the player        - techuptade
Sets to game up for an overnight session. 
Example: overnight 2                            - overnight
Attempt to change computer lights with Alien FX - alienfx
Makes all fleets target all other fleets        - attackallfleets
Toggles allowing player to change governments 
without the time limit                          - free_government
Finishes all active researches                  - finish_research
Toggles allowing player to change policies 
without restriction, including policies 
previously disabled.                            - free_policies 
Colony ships will no longer take time to 
settle.                                         - instant_colony
Used with tweakergui. Ships will teleport 
instantly to right click cursor. FTL has no 
spool up or travel time. Example: tweakergui 
instant_move                                    - instant_move
Toggles enemy AI on or off                      - ai
Jumps forward in-game days by specified value   - fast_forward [value]
Instantly kills entire country                  - kill_country [country ID]
All AI-controlled nations never agree with 
your deals and proposals.                       - debug_nomen
All AI-controlled nations always agree with 
your deals and proposals.                       - debug_yesmen
Starts a ruler election.                        - election
 

Planet Resource Console Commands

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The 'planet_resource' command fills random tiles on a selected planet with a 
definable resource. 
Here is the full list you can enter into the command 'planet_resource [resource name]':
 
sr_lythuric - Lythuric gas
sr_alien_pets - Alien pets
sr_betharian - Betharian stone
sr_dark_matter - Dark matter
energy - Energy
engineering_research - Engineering Research
sr_engos - Engos vapor
food - Food
minerals - Minerals
sr_neutronium - Neutronium ore
sr_orillium - Orillium ore
physics_research - Physics research
sr_pitharan - Pitharan dust
sr_satramene - Satramene gas
society_research - Society research
sr_teldar - Teldar crystals
sr_terraform_gases - Terraforming gases
sr_terraform_liquids - Terraforming liquids
sr_zro - Terraforming liquids

Random Tips and Info

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Written by Obsidian Shadow.

Red color empires look cool on the map but make it difficult to spot enemy 
fleets who are also red.... You have been warned.

Split your starting corvettes and send them to explore the nearest systems to identify 
potential colonizable planets so you can tell your science ships which systems to survey 
first.

Wait for pops to fill a planet before clearing tile blockers and prioritize energy and 
minerals in early game.

Some factions are really annoying because of the unhappiness they generate. I was 
successful in eradicating one once by spending 1 influence a month for many months. 
Soon afterwards 3 annoying ones appeared. My personal opinion is: influence is too 
valuable to waste on those whackos and since you are the leader and their agendas are 
often incompatible with sensible management... ignore them. One player on the forums 
compared faction suppression to a child's game called whack-a-mole.

Brief review of traps waiing to spring on new players:
* Outposts
* Holy worlds belonging to Spiritualist fallen empires and colonizing / outposting 
  in the exclusion zone around xenophobe fallen empires.
* Activating terraforming machinery found by a science ship on a perfectly habitable 
  world. There is a much higher probability of terraforming a hellish inferno than a 
  gaia planet. Pops get really unhappy when habitability drops below 60%.
* Defense pacts can draw you into unwanted wars you are not ready for.
* Allow us to guide you "The treaty calls out to you" that is a nice way for a fallen 
  empire to ask you to be their vassal Generals. Only good for ground assault troops. 
  Waste of influence and leader slot. Instead build 15 assault troops and give them 
hunter killer drone attachments (to each one manually).

Stay on Target Achievement Guide

---------------------------------
Written by Imba Xeno Snipar

A comprehensive guide on how to obtain the "Stay on Target" achievement.

-=Galaxy Settings
* Galaxy size: Huge (1000 stars)
* AI empires: 0
* Fallen empires: 5 (or 4 if you don't have Synthetic Dawn)
* Marauder empires: 0
* Tech/Tradition cost: 0.25
* Crisis strenghth: off
* End-game start year: 3000

The other options don't really matter that much, so adjust as you want. 
For civics I recommend Fanatical Purifiers with Militarist ethos. 
The idea is to have maximum fire rate, so you can quickly shred the FE fleets.

Important: After you generate a new game, exit to main menu and open the save game 
file in a text editor. If the save game file contains the text 

design="SHIP_COLOSSUS_SECTION"

this means that one of the FEs has spawned with a colossus. If that text is not there, 
then you will most likely not fight against a colossus this game, so you need to 
abandon it. Keep making new games until you create one where a colossus is spawned 
at the beginning.

-=Buildup=-
Since all of your enemies are sleeping Fallen Empires, you are free to build and 
expand your empire with no danger. You need to find the FE which has the colossus. 
Either build a sentry array to locate it or find that FE with your science ship (which 
should have good sensors). It's important to have intel on the colossus before you 
proceed. It's also important to have good intel around the FE where the colossus is.

Once you have identified the FE with the colossus, then this is obviously the FE 
which you will fight. The next step is determine which is the most likely planet that 
the AI will attack after you declare war on the FE (or you bait the FE to declare 
on you). This can be difficult to determine, but as a general rule, colonize a planet 
which is very close to the FE. This is most likely the planet which the FE will 
attack. However be mindful of wormholes / gateways, you need to take those into 
account!

Once you have colonized a planet close to the FE, you have to fortify it like 
crazy. Do not upgrade the starbase in the system, because it will be used against 
you. Only fortify the planet! Build a military academy, a planetary shield generator 
and fortresses on all other tiles. The idea is that this planet will be so 
well-defeneded that the FE will not be able to conquer it and would therefore 
use the colossus to wipe it.

You should also construct a gateway in that system as close to the planet as 
possible. The idea is that you will be able to use the gateway with all your 
fleets to ambush the enemy FE. Of course, your own fleets should be sitting on top 
of another gateway somewhere else in your empire.

-=The Engagement=-
Important: Savescum!

It's very important to savescum here. You should have a backup of your savegame 
before you declare war on the FE or you bait the FE in declaring on you. This 
can easily go wrong and the colossus has a big chance of doing an emergency FTL. 
In that case you might not get the achievement.

After you have fortified the planet and you have build several massive fleets 
(It's a good idea to have at least twice the fleet power of the FE) you can 
now prepare for the engagement.

You should have at least one Titan which has the FTL offensive aura on. 
This would double the time it takes for the enemy to do an emergency FTL jump. 
Even with this, I only got the achievement on my second try (which is why it is 
important to savescum).

Ideally you should declare a rivalry or insult the enemy FE so that it declares 
war on you. This would provide you with a +33% increase fire rate because of 
the defensive war bonus perk. But even if you can't bait the FE, you can still 
do it, by just declaring war on them.

Make sure that you have a massive fleet and before you engage:

* Use the unity ambition that buffs the fire rate
* Use the No Retreat war doctrine that buffs the fire rate
* Have a good admiral with buffs to fire rate
* Basically do everything you can to buff fire rate / damage of your fleet.

After war is declared by either party, the FE should attack the bait planet which 
you have fortified like crazy. In my case, the FE had 2 fleets. The first (bigger 
one) was sent to the planet along with armies to capture it and the second fleet 
was holding back protecting the colossus in a nearby system. 
As soon as the bigger fleet started bombarding the planet, I jumped on them from 
the gateway and shred the fleet along with the transports. 
Then I moved out of the gateway back into the other end of the gateway 
(which the FE cannot access).

Then the FE sent the remaining (smaller) fleet along with the colossus in order 
to wipe the planet.

Important: You should jump on the colossus after it is in the firing state, not 
when it is charging. If you click on the colossus you will see the difference 
between charging and firing. It first charges and then fires. When it fires 
it's, of course, obvious, because there is a beam coming out of the colossus. 
This is when you have to jump in through the gateway and shred the fleet and 
the colossus.

How to Start on Any Planet Class You Want

------------------------------------------
Written by Colonizor48

How to start on any habitable planet class you want whilst being able to choose whatever 
origin you want. This is very broken so make sure its okay with the host if your using it 
in multiplayer. For example as a machine empire you can start on a machine world while 
using the prosperous unification origin. Basicly meaning you get the bonuses of a machine 
world and the bonuses of prosperous unification. And also some ideas on how to exploit 
this to full effect to create some truly overpowered empires.

-=How to Do This=-
Okay. Before you do this make sure if your playing multiplayer it is okay with the host 
because this is very very broken. This is only for windows right now. But if your on 
another os you can probably find the directory for this. All you will need for this is 
a copy of stellaris and a text editor. Do this with stellaris closed as you would have 
to restart stellaris anyway.

* Go to (insert your user folder here)/documents/paradox interactive/stellaris
* Find user_empire_designs.txt i would recommend backing up this file.
* Open it with the text editor of your choosing.
* Find the name of the empire you want to change.
* Find "planet_class = (insert your specie's planet class here)".
* Change it to planet_class = (insert what planet class you want to change it to here).

Here is a reference table for different planet types you might want to start out on.

* pc_gaia = gaia world
* pc_machine = machine world
* pc_city = eucemenopolis
* pc_relic = relic world
* pc_nuked = tomb world.
* pc_hive = hive world

* Save the file and launch stellaris.
* Choose any origin you want while being able to start on a special planet class.
* Profit.

-=Some OP Builds Using This=-
Okay. This is why you came here. These are some overpowered builds i have found using this. 
Keep in mind that if you get a planet class in this way 2 things will happen.

Your species will gain preference for that planet (if you start on a tomb world using this 
you get tomb world preference).

Your guaranteed habitable worlds will be this planet class. Albeit if your using a machine 
world as your starting planet it will be covered in very expensive blockers for whatever 
reason. But you can probably do some exploity stuff to make sure the blockers don't take 
as much to clear. But that wont be covered here. And you get 2 free machine worlds once 
you clear the blockers. Also i havent tested any of these yet. These are just powerful
based on what i know about the game.

The prosperous unification machine world lithoid driven assimilator of doom.

Starting planet: machine world.
Origin: Prosperous unification.
Civics: Rapid replicator, Driven assimilator.
Ethics: Gestalt conciousness.
Primary species traits: Efficent Processors, Mass Produced, Emotion Emulators, repourpused 
hardware, High bandwith.
Secondary species traits: Lithoid, Industrious, volatile exresions or ingenous, strong, 
Unruly, deviants.

Basically this is very very op. All of your lithoids have machine world preference. 
Meaning they can work on machine worlds as if they were normal planets. And because they 
are lithoids they have 50% habitability on other planets. On top of this they consume 
minerals insteald of food. Meaning you can have a simple economy. As food ony effects 
pop growth speed. And you can just population control all of the alien races you conquer. 
Volitile extressions is here so you can buy motes on the market and use the edict to 
make clearing blockers easier on your guaranteed machine worlds.. But if you dont care 
about that you can go with ingenous. Your lithoids will be your underclass workers 
while your robots will be generalists here. And you can robomod your robots to suit your 
planets. In adition you get the bonuses of a machine world and prosperous unification at 
the same time on your homeworld.

New Console Commands to Spawn Primitives

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In the game, there are two categories of species that never reached FTL: pre-FTL societies 
and pre-sapient species. By using the galaxy generation settings, they can either be made 
abundant or completely stopped.

-=How to Spawn Pre-FTL Species=-
To open the console, simply press the [~] Tilde key.

effect generate_pre_ftls_on_planet = yes
effect generate_very_early_pre_ftls_on_planet = yes
effect generate_early_pre_ftls_on_planet = yes
effect generate_late_pre_ftls_on_planet = yes
effect generate_subterranean_pre_ftls_on_planet = yes

Federation Tips for Pacifist

-----------------------------
Just because you’re not a psychopath/genocidal doesn’t mean you can neglect your military, 
people won’t even want to listen to you if you’re weaker, so you’ll need to optimize and 
produce great fleets anyway.

One trick I’ve heard people talking about is spamming autocannons as they have very high 
fleet power, but in reality they suck and can’t take on a station half as strong, but 
that’s still good enough to impress your neighbors if you can afford to avoid going to 
war with them.

As you won’t be expanding much playing tall should be a better idea, the easiest way would 
be spamming habitats wherever you can, since paradox decided late game structures are not 
meant to be used and ringworlds are never going to get filled up, you can safely ignore 
them, specially if you’re not going to conquer over 1k pops to transfer to those big worlds 
leaving behind empty breeding planets.

Also, playing as a regular pacifist may be ideal, just so you can unlock ideological wars, 
just because you’re being diplomatic it doesn’t mean you can’t use war in your favor, some 
empires just won’t accept you no matter what, but you can change them with this CB, making 
it much easier to invite them to your federations, or even as a vassal.

Early/Mid Defense

------------------
Defensive pacts deter invasion. If you want to go with a non-aggressive diplomatic expansion, 
sign one early. Your first ally doesn’t have to be nice or likeable. The early defensive 
pacts are about mutual survival, not ideological agreement.

Keep your fleets near your starbases. In the early game, even an outpost gives you a huge 
defensive advantage.

Getting steamrolled isn’t the end of the story in this game. Practice patience, be willing 
to surrender a little territory in the name of the learning experience. If the AI isn’t a 
“galactic threat” it won’t be able to take all of your territory in one bite, so don’t be 
afraid to cede a little territory on your frontier in order to get out of a war you don’t 
want to fight.

Defensive platforms are basically just ships that can’t move. They’re not an efficient 
investment of resources in the early game unless you have a large alloy surplus.

Soldiers increase your fleet capacity, so build strongholds to supplement the acnchorages 
in your starbase if you don’t have enough ships. You can lay the soldiers off during peace 
time then hire them back when you need to gear up your fleet.

Wars are long, let the enemy come to you for a bit first. Once he’s inside your space, cut 
him off by retaking your frontier starbases. Then hit his fleet where the conditions are 
favorable to you.

Systems with shield nullification can be really strong terrain if you double up armor in 
your early corvettes and your enemy is running around with two shields or are using lots 
of guns instead of lasers.

Unlimited Potential Tall Build with Limitless Wide Capacity

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Just be virtual, create lil sectors, and release those sectors as specialized vassals, 
if you reach the max vassals/subjects, just release them and form a federation, this can 
then scale basically infinitely and you’d have a sprawling multi-empire nation of semi-
independent systems under your control (especially with a hegemony).

Cuz virtual is awesome tall, but only if you are restricted to a small handful of planets, 
but if you have any room to grow you are just limiting your maximum potential growth, 
however, if you evade this restriction but just building subject virtual micro empires, 
then can each specialize and afford you the access to more virtual worlds, without 
impacting your virtual productivity bonus.

Additionally, you could theoretically also use this to avoid the megastructure cap, but 
just building a megastructure, then releasing that sector as a vassal, and that should 
allow you to build more megastructures right? Limitless tall growth!

To be more specific, you can do this with planets, habitats, or ringworlds, some systems 
have 3 planets which 3-4 planets is the optimal virtual empire, and ringworlds have 4 
planets in one system, meaning you can create a powerful micro-empire with a ringworld, 
otherwise, you can basically populate every single system you have and turn those 
otherwise useless, uninhabitable low resource systems into a micro virtual empire using 
habitats, which that micro empire could then be a specialized vassal or a member of a 
federation. with this, you could then basically just ally yourself with only your 
microstates and just keep expanding your boarders, continuing to create new microstates.

-=To explain the optimal virtual empire planets capacity=-
Each planet costs 25% productivity bonus, so every planet you add past 4 planets is a 
hit to your overall productivity because you are adding less than 25% productive capacity 
in exchange for -25% productivity bonus. With this you could theoretically build a super 
wide virtual empire to negate the max -90% productivity bonus, but it’d be far more 
efficient to just build lots of micro empires that each have +100% productivity assuming 
they each only have 3 planets.