John_DeVries, thanks for the hints.
Amenities for Gestalt represent "maintenance" things they need to function, different from the Amenities of regular empires. Confusing? Yes.
Was it that way right from the beginning when Gestalt was introduced?
Wihtout knowing it, I got the impression like there was an original design that wouldn't need amenities and then the devs somehow thought it op and introduced the need for amenities again thru the backdoor.
For Hive Minds you'll need Maintenance Drones and Synapse Drones (once you unlock the right tradition from Synchronicity, check the descriptions).
Synchronicity: Instinctive Syncronization
It can be chosen as one of the first picks right after adopting Synchronicity and gives +2 amenities (fixed) per synapse drone job.
+2 fixed amenities doesn't look like much but are surely helpful since one need to spam Synaptic Node buildings (or Synaptic Clusters at level 2) anyway to gain the admin cap against sprawl.
You get more Maintenance Drones from Hive Districts (+3 base, +4 with Anti-Gravity Engineering technology)
Yes, I've just reached that stage. But having enough jobs available for maintenance drones hasn't been a problem yet, those are usually plenty.
It's rather like
CrazyJ said, surprisingly you have more micro with amenities as a hive gestalt than as a "normal" empire. If you care about it, you have to check regularly how your drones were allocated and wether you need to free or enforce some maintenance jobs.
while Hive Warrens can be useful sometimes, particularly on Habitats
Equivalent to Luxury Residences (+3 housing, +5 amenities (fixed)) and who would build those... me, for the first time ever when playing hive gestalt, sigh., only temporarily to allow allocation of some maintenance drones as technicians instead of providing a meagre 4 amenities.
and more Synapse Drones from Synaptic Nodes.
Probably the best unique job Gestalt Hive has to offer:
+5 admin (fixed)
+3 unity
+2 amenities (fixed, with tradition Synchronicity: Instinctive Syncronization)
+2 stability, +1% menial drone output (fixed, for 10 years with a decision that costs 2 minor artifacts)
The initial hive admin level 1 building provides already 2 synapse drones, at level 2 you get 3. This means every new colony cares right away for its initial raise in sprawl plus some more, at least once the colonization process is finished. Definetly better than Reassembled Ship Shelter of normal empires and comes without the -50% pop growth malus.
The finisher of Prosperity will also give you 1 Synapse Drone every 20 pops, but it's not that useful.
But helpful... once you get thru the prosperity tradition which is, in my games, rather mid-game (in this game it will be only the 4th or 5th taken tradition).
The Charismatic trait will help your Maintenance Drones, but it's currently bugged for Synapse Drones, which will always just give 2.0 Amenities (with tradition).
Which makes it too ineffective IMHO to spend 2 trait pts on it. So I went the other way and took repugnant which, I have to admit, proved not as easy to handle as I thought but came in handy once I got the engineered evolution perk.
For further Amenities improvements you'll want to pick the Ascetic civic, One Mind ascension perk, have Hive Worlds (which have Hive Districts with double Housing/Jobs) and build a Mega Art installation.
Ascetic civic, One Mind ascension perk... really?
I mean, absolutely correct answere for how to handle amenities problems but would you judge that civic and perk also as a good pick in genreal for hive gestalt?
I had rather planned to go for:
trait subsumed will (+20% sprawl from pops)
trait subaspace ephapse (+15% nav cap)
and many other perks which don't include One Mind (guessing you mean One Vision: +10% unity, -10% pop amenities usage, +50% govern ethics attraction).
What I didn't mention, I am playing at:
0.25 hab worlds
no guaranteed hab worlds
And the start was more "interesting" than I expected, my starting world was a desert and the first other desert I found exactly on the other side of the galaxy with such a weird distribution of free worlds and AI-worlds towards arctic I've never seen before. By now (year 2248) I can see almost all the galaxy and if I haven't overlooked one, I think in all the small 400-star-galaxy there are only 2 desert planets (which includes my HW)... or rather were, no hive worlds yet, but terraforming some worlds to desert has helped tremendously.
In hindsight, having to cope with amenities on mainly arctic worlds (after having run out of generator districts) while my hive wants deserts, has probably led me to an overexaggerated dim view on it. It looks better now, although I am still kind of disappointed (due to not expecting it) that amenities are such a chore for hive gestalt. I should had read not only the general description (and believing it) but also the fineprint.
As a sidenote and also in hindsight, while I suspected that gestalt might have energy problems and gave my hive the ingenious trait (+15% from energy jobs), I still completly underestimated the impact of having no trade as gestalt (and with no option to trade with AIs how fast it is possible to bring the local market prices down). The severity of the problem was rather also connected with my starting conditions (GA, the usual 3 wars on me declared by advanced AI-empires within a few years after 2220) and only arctic worlds to conquere. But never before in a game I did run into such econmic problems that at one point I realized that it was as threatening that I had to shut down all research and alloy buildings for some time to reconfigure my whole economy.
So, I am not complaining, Hive Gestalt are quite different to as expected but especially this proved to be quite a challenge to cope with and I am confidently, year 2248, to also trash the 4th, 5th and 6th AI-empire which, for whatever reasons, still think my Hive are an easy punching ball to declare war at. Normallly I am doing the declaring war stuff...
