Please, improve Barbaric Despoilers

[Nevars]

Plundering another government's people and territory is inherently an act of war, so I don't see how the idea of plundering without it being an act of war could possibly be coherent even within the game-format that Stellaris provides.

Maybe make it that BD need to investing in creating a proxy entity first like by giving up some system and create a unique pirate that's friendly to you but hostile to all then you could use them to raid without war against other empire.

Basically creating proxy and invest in deniability to unlock raiding stance.

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

Now, that could be a way of actually doing it without incurring a war, as that provides at least nominal plausible deniability.

 

[Pancakelord]

Maybe make it that BD need to investing in creating a proxy entity first like by giving up some system and create a unique pirate that's friendly to you but hostile to all then you could use them to raid without war against other empire.

Basically creating proxy and invest in deniability to unlock raiding stance.

CK3 does this, hit "go raid bois" ... then go and raid. it effectively does this by declaring a silent war, with limited targets for each side, from what I can see, I think if no combat has gone on for 3 months it kills the war via script.

In Stellaris I'd just change it up so that raid-CB wars work either by

1. raiding planets (as we do now) for pops.
2. OR you earn 1/3 the alloy cost of a ship as EC - for each ship blown up.
   • Think of it as picking through the valuable components.
   • Maybe raiders could even get a 3-point policy so you can get either
     • 1/3 the alloy cost as EC from Kills,
     • 1/3 the alloy cost as Unity from kills or
     • 1/3 the alloy cost as Science from kills (for those tech-priest raids lol).
       • So blowing up a 8k alloy titan would net you 2k phys, soc and eng.

And moreso for the AI than players:

1. I'd make the war declaration "silent"
   • it would only pop up on your screen when AI ships enter your territory, continuing as normal thereafter. This is because I always do this, I stack my ships up right on the jump-point into enemy space before declaring war, which is rather unfair to an AI that always uses starbase docks and then needs to mobilise whilst ive taken half its space over already lol.
2. I'd make peace immediately enforced within 4 months if there have been
   1. no conflicts in unclaimed space bettween the raiders and target and
   2. no raiders present in the target's territory (either intentionally leaving, or because they all emergency retreated).

Peace could still be manually settled the usual way, though by paying off the raiders, or beating their fleets down to force an end.

 

[Dragatus]

It's not BD that is good, it's Diplomacy tree that's not very good.

That is another way of looking at it, yes.

But adaptability it's not very good for Void Dwellers, because building bonus apply only to planets and habitability it's not very useful, when you live in an habitat (but it's good if use slave to works planets). So, if, like me, you play BD with VD, than...

I just tested in-game and the 1 free building slot bonus works on habitats just fine with no mods active so if it isn't working for you then a mod is likely breaking it. You are correct that the habitability bonus is wasted on your main species, but captured slaves still benefit from it. So it's not completely wasted, though it certainly is less valuable than for a planetary species. On the other hand -10% pop housing usage is even more useful than normal and so is the extra building slot. I find this balances out the reduced benefit of the habitability bonus.

 

[Katsue]

The base problem with Barbaric Despoilers is that if you have the fleet strength to steal someone's pops with raiding, you also have the ability to just conquer their planets and get all their pops and more with zero downsides.

This isn't entirely correct. I have definitely raided pops from stronger Empires in the past, and you don't have infinite influence - you usually can't fully annex an enemy in a single war.

 

[Netherim]

 country_war_exhaustion_mult = -0.5
        ship_interstellar_speed_mult = 1.0
        planet_jobs_slave_produces_mult = 0.2
        pop_resettlement_cost_mult = -0.75
        ship_disengage_chance_mult = 0.5
        empire_size_penalty_mult = 2
        ship_home_territory_fire_rate_mult = -0.10

And, off course, BD now require only Xenophobic or Auth, not militaristic.

That's are my (new) personal modifications for BD. Tomorrow I'll try. I think I'll try a Technocracy with Xenophobic and void dwellers origin.
Edit: I've also improved the bonuses gained after victory on a plunder war.

It worked very well with a war at start. The enemy territory was on a nebula, so the ability to go ahead and retreat in a moment was very needed, war exaustion gave me te possibility to literally do a war of attrition. And the victory gave me thousand of all resources. Pop resettlement cost and slave bonus are good to boost your economy.