Chemical Bliss, why?

[AppleBeam]

A short chemblissing guide for masochists who enjoy the micro.

How to chem-bliss a specific profession?
You need to create a sub-species, cut for a job, and then chem-bliss the sub-species.

BIG BOLD WARNING: don't do it with non-slave species as Xenophobe. Otherwise some horrible things will start to happen everywhere.

You were warned.

What jobs are generally worth chem-blissing?

• Nobles (no one can tell the difference anyway)
  
• Clerks (slaves only, otherwise the CG consumption will be massive).

Note that stoned clerk slaves must be Battle Thralls. Apart from the flavor, it's actually a requirement for chemblissing.

What jobs are conditionally worth chem-blissing?

• Enforcer (the same output)
  
• Soldiers (the same output)
• Medical workers (what, we never promised a decent healthcare in our empire)

Beware that this may increase the CG consumption compared to your current standards (any chemblissed non-slave pop requires 1CG, any slave requres 0.1CG) Of course if your planet is at 100% stability anyway, don't.
I hope I didn't miss anyone important.

Can I drug my livestock? They look somewhat unhappy for some reason.
Don't. This ruins their taste.
Actually, I'll use this opportunity to spread the knowledge that agrarian livestock is 15% more nutritious for some reason. Who knew? I didn't. But now you do!

Now that my relevant pops are properly stoned, how do I maintain the pop distribution?
Either manually control the pop growth for the rest of the game, or set the pop control on (same menu where you found the drugs) and grow them on demand. This is a feature for masochists (I mean, for people who like to optimize their empire just for the sake of optimizing their empire), you were warned.

How do I make pops work slots I want them to work?
Annoy Paradox in every single thread by reminding that the current system is cancer and should not exist. Sometimes you just can't, and it somewhat randomly depends on your pop's traits, on which events you got etc.

Seriously, let me whine for a while. So, I had this situation where a planet with 2 slaves and 2 robots had 2 clerk jobs and 2 miner jobs (and some colonists, but they were way above this). It is impossible to work all 4 slots! A slave always kicks the robot out, and then the robot doesn't know how to clerk. I tried locking and unlocking slots in various orders, all was useless (a very specific combination of bonuses made it so the slave always had a higher priority for manual jobs). Have a similar story? Go tell the devs about it and DEMAND manual job locking, or at least manual per-species "you are allowed to do this but not that". Otherwise this is ridiculous. I mean, I can't even...

Inhales.
Exhales.
Sorry, I'm done.

 

[Sea_Scourge]

Sorry to bring back an old thread, but it popped in my search engine when searching chem bliss. I *really* would like to know what " horrible things will start to happen everywhere" means. I am a noob to the game (running through my first game on ensign, had to go back to previous save after one empire attacked me while I was attacking another one (who was busy fighting 3 others, but still managed to send a decent sized fleet after me. Was not prepared for war on 2 fronts), don't want to spend the time creating a new game just to find out.

 

[AppleBeam]

Sorry to bring back an old thread, but it popped in my search engine when searching chem bliss. I *really* would like to know what " horrible things will start to happen everywhere" means. I am a noob to the game (running through my first game on ensign, had to go back to previous save after one empire attacked me while I was attacking another one (who was busy fighting 3 others, but still managed to send a decent sized fleet after me. Was not prepared for war on 2 fronts), don't want to spend the time creating a new game just to find out.

At the moment of writing of the post (and possibly now too, didn't check the game in a while) xenophobes always treated their own sub-species as xenos. All of them. Including the ones that appear randomly due to self-modification events. So even just researching Gene Tailoring could completely ruin your playthrough, unless most of your planets are already terraformed, which prevents random self-modification events.

The scripted consequences for having non-slave xenos on your planets when you play xenophobes are all terrible: pops are murdering each other, buildings are exploding, stability is plummeting, etc.

This guide is suggesting to make a lot of sub-species of your own race, hence the warning. I was mildly worried that someone would murder me IRL after applying the guide and watching their whole empire burning down in front of their eyes.

 

[Sea_Scourge]

Wow, now that I know what I'm getting myself into this sounds like fun, have to try it sometime LOL

Did I mention I have a sadist streak when playing these games?

 

[AppleBeam]

Wow, now that I know what I'm getting myself into this sounds like fun, have to try it sometime LOL

Did I mention I have a sadist streak when playing these games?

It's not fun.

The events are not really actionable, and the game is too unstable to play around it. The same few popups will just keep trigger from time to time, making your experience worse. No interesting quest lines or ethics shifts, no decision making, just more clicking.

What's worse, is that due to bugs, it can be really annoying to fix the situation when you got tired of it. The game is more or less abandoned by the devs, so for many months no one is fixing the obvious bugs related to genetic modifications not applying correctly to developing colonies, colony ships etc. And if you are unlucky, the events may keep triggering even after you are done, for no apparent reason (possibly reacting to non-sentient robots, but it's hard to tell).

 

[Sea_Scourge]

I wasn't planning on seriously planning through it, just get into it far enough to see it happen ....

Also if game is "abandoned" by the devs, why are there new patches coming out, like the one last month?

 

[AppleBeam]

Also if game is "abandoned" by the devs, why are there new patches coming out, like the one last month?

You mean "patches" that don't actually fix the problems, and just closing the bugs without changing anything? Sure.

Since 2.3 I'm waiting for them to fix the issue with unemployed pops refusing to work in slots of their own correct strata. The game is borderline unplayable if you like the micro-management aspect. You know what they did? They reported that it's fixed in 2.3.2 without actually fixing it. Then 2.3.3 happened, and it's still as broken as it was, even on fresh saves.

If one dude is closing a few tickets once a month, and everyone else is working on other projects, and the game stays unplayable for half a year, that's pretty much what "abandoned" means.

 

[Ungerargh]

My current game is a slaver type, vassal heavy, Fanatic Authoritarian/Xenophobe empire with the Aristocratic Elite, Police State, and Cutthroat Politics civics, and I have taken the genetic ascension path. I replaced almost all of my food districts with energy/mineral districts and gene modded another species to breed explosively, be highly delicious, and nerve stapled so they don't give me any fuss. I named them Soylent Green and they are my main source of food. My pops eat what I tell them to eat. Dissent if forcefully discouraged.

Now that I know that the agriculture trait affects livestock output I will add that to their genetic formula too.

Don't forget to make them very strong, too! Which also makes them handy as assault armies, if you happen to need any. Just imagine you're sending waves of cattle with laser beams attached to their heads against the enemy.

 

[Sinister2202]

We should get option to apply species rights on individual planets vs empire-wide, like how we do for species modification.

 

[nfmarque]

We should get option to apply species rights on individual planets vs empire-wide, like how we do for species modification.

Never used chemical bliss, even if it was planet based doesn't martial law give less penalties?

 

[Karlington]

At the moment of writing of the post (and possibly now too, didn't check the game in a while) xenophobes always treated their own sub-species as xenos. All of them. Including the ones that appear randomly due to self-modification events. So even just researching Gene Tailoring could completely ruin your playthrough, unless most of your planets are already terraformed, which prevents random self-modification events.

This is not the case any more. Sub-species are now treated as the same species.

 

[Karlington]

IThe game is more or less abandoned by the devs

Also if game is "abandoned" by the devs, why are there new patches coming out, like the one last month?

You mean "patches" that don't actually fix the problems

That's you thinking that the developers are focusing on the wrong things, or that they're not doing a good job. The game's not abandoned, though, since they are actively working on it.

just closing the bugs without changing anything? Sure.

Since 2.3 I'm waiting for them to fix the issue with unemployed pops refusing to work in slots of their own correct strata.

This bug is fixed AFAIK. I don't have this issue at all any more.

 

[daisha]

Defining living standards by planet would be great, but only if resources actually had a location instead of just sitting in the ether ready to instantly be used anywhere in your empire (apart from amenities, I guess.) If living standards were planet-definable as things are now, it would be deeply anti-realistic. As nearly everyone in the thread has noted, they want chemical bliss or utopia on recently conquered worlds in revolt. It takes military ships months or even years to cross an empire, so it doesn't narratively fit that resource transport is instantaneous and effortless. It's just a useful abstraction (and few enough of us want to deal with the micro of supply lines), but per-planet living standards would turn a useful abstraction into an odiously unrealistic one. If resource transport were not instantaneous and effortless, recently conquered worlds at the edge of your empire is exactly where you would NOT have chemical bliss or utopian living standards. That would be a feature of the core worlds. Far from your most productive worlds, live would be comparatively nasty, poor, brutish, and short.

 

[Sinister2202]

Never used chemical bliss, even if it was planet based doesn't martial law give less penalties?

Sure but it could still be utilized for a lot of different things. Different colonies could be more diverse. Too bad the game wouldn't be able to recognize such a thing, unless there were whole different set of species created.