Zroni precursor seems pretty useless unless you're going for psionic ascension

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Zroni also give you...
...a lot of guaranteed Scientist Experience through their many, relatively easy digsites
...an above average amount of Minor Artifacts for a Precursor
...a few Zro deposits on habitable planets (which will be added to your income once colonized, even if you don't have the tech)
...Psionics as a tech option (and 25% free progress on it - only if you're organic of course) through one of the digsites. Even if you're not going for Psy Ascension, that tech has a pretty useful passive bonus of -10% empire size from pops and is quite hard to get if you're not spiritualist and fishing for it with the appropriate scientist. This also means that Zro Distilation and the pretty big economic boost you'll get from harvesting all the Zro spawned by other digsites is only one rare tech roll away.

Is that on par with a free ringworld? Well, it's probably nowhere close. But it's certainly not "COMPLETELY useless" either (unless you're a machine, then that's almost true).

Overall... in a vacuum I actually like how it's designed since it actually gives you a reason to diverge from your original plan... but I totally understand why people find it annoying. It's the only one that pushes you towards a specific playstyle, while the others just give you something that's, more or less, universally useful. I'm not sure a Precursor is really the right place for such a mechanic, especially when it can trigger for empires that really have no use for most of the bonuses.
HARD disagree, sure a little bit of Zro is nice I guess, (+100 a month from zro max, or I guess you can trade it? still not that great...) -10% empire size from pops is NOT worth a precursor race, and scientist experience is useless (it's really not that hard to get leader exp growth boosts).
 
Wrong, you need zro distillation, which is a psionic thing (or at least SUPER rare)
You need Zro Distillation to harvest space deposits. You don't need Zro Distillation to harvest the planetary deposits created by the Zroni dig sites.
That's literally impossible... what's your point?
My point is that, contrary to -Marauder-'s assertion, the Yuht are not "beyond useless".

Also, if you intend to reply to a bunch of posts, you might want to use the multi-quote feature.
 
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A lot of these small modifiers aren't very meanignful on their own, but can add up a little.

Yuth Cleansing for example is accidentally helpful for Xenophobic Lithoids (Base 20% Habitability on off-category worlds, +50% from Lithoid, +20% from tech, allows Yuth to get them to a full 100. And 10%less upkeep and 5% more production does add up over 2/3 of habitable worlds).

These things aren't exactly useless, but very situational and of minor impact. Which is a valid critcism.
As an almost free bonus, they are better thaan nothing, but there is the question of what Precursors should provide:
- Minor benefits like the Yuth?
- An encouragement and improvement of a particular build like the Zroni?
- An earlier access to late game benefits like the Cybrex and First League?
- Unique minor aspects like the Cybrex Warfoms?
- Notable minor benefits?

Precursors are all over the place and suffer a bit from being mostly a 1.0 design that by now lacks clear focus as what it should provide.
 
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These things aren't exactly useless, but very situational and of minor impact. Which is a valid critcism.

Well, thing is that those minor bonuses don't come for free. The Precursor anomalies need to be researched, and considering that they are high-level anomalies it will take years worth of scientist-time to research them, time those scientist could've spent surveying or assisting research.

- An encouragement and improvement of a particular build like the Zroni?

The problem is that I decide on my gameplan during empire creation. My Mechanist slavers don't need no Zroni.
 
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Well, thing is that those minor bonuses don't come for free. The Precursor anomalies need to be researched, and considering that they are high-level anomalies it will take years worth of scientist-time to research them, time those scientist could've spent surveying or assisting research.

Then delay them. If it is not a precursor that is useful for you, you can wait until the cost-benefit-analysis makes it worthwhile. A single scientist is nto a big investment and there is the accompanying resource rewards from the anomalies and home system.
It's not like it's all cost.


The problem is that I decide on my gameplan during empire creation. My Mechanist slavers don't need no Zroni.

Not everyone does that. And if you do then an incompatible precursor is one of the downsides of that approach.

And it's not like such an empire couldn't get good benefits from going psi. Yes, there is some luck involved, but Psionic Ascension is not as bad as most people make it out to be, especially with the psionic archive.
 
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Wrong, you need zro distillation, which is a psionic thing (or at least SUPER rare)
You can get it as anyone but Materialist. It's just more rare. And even materialists can get it in some ways. It's just not very useful to them.
 
Zroni are useless for non-gestalts (Ariphaos Unofficial Patch restricts it from gestalts) but actually quite useful for normal, non-psionic empires as well. Zro is extremely valuable, and you get a ton of it, along with a ton of minor artifacts, letting you float your economy on those for decades.

The Baol are crap for machines, so no arguments there. But incredibly good for other empires (pop speed, gaia worlds/free pops, and minor artifacts? Yes please!).

That being said, the precursor that's worst (by far) is the Yuht. Unlike the Zroni/Baol who are useless for a small subset of empires, the Yuht are useless for everyone.
I mean the baol are okay for rouge servitor i guess. Those gaia worlds are good for bio trophies probably. Zroni is 100% useless for gestalts. But the zroni can allow materialists to go down psionic ascension if they want to. Tbh they should already be able to. As it makes sense a race interated in science would be facinated by psionics once they knew they existed. Even if they werent religious. I guess to problem is figuring out they exist in the 1st place? But it seems pretty hard to ignore all your neighbors being psycic and the spiritualist fallen empire being psionic. But perhaps instead of worshiping the shroud they try to figure out how to exploit it and how to make robots psionic. And while were at it why do spiritualists hate machines? Why not have a spiritualist empire that likes machines?
 
I mean the baol are okay for rouge servitor i guess. Those gaia worlds are good for bio trophies probably. Zroni is 100% useless for gestalts. But the zroni can allow materialists to go down psionic ascension if they want to. Tbh they should already be able to. As it makes sense a race interated in science would be facinated by psionics once they knew they existed. Even if they werent religious. I guess to problem is figuring out they exist in the 1st place? But it seems pretty hard to ignore all your neighbors being psycic and the spiritualist fallen empire being psionic. But perhaps instead of worshiping the shroud they try to figure out how to exploit it and how to make robots psionic. And while were at it why do spiritualists hate machines? Why not have a spiritualist empire that likes machines?
Materialists can go psionic without the Zroni's help; they just need to acquire psionic pops and/or roll a psionics expert among their scientist leaders and stick 'em in the society research spot.

Gestalts are SOL, though.
 
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It should be know by now, that Paradox pretty much adds stuff to the game (most of which breaks the AI even further) and then forget about it.

Do you remember how long it took until someone bothered to fix the XP gain for admirals? Or the fact, that the interface resolution would work on a C64?

Its so sad
 
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Then delay them. If it is not a precursor that is useful for you, you can wait until the cost-benefit-analysis makes it worthwhile. A single scientist is nto a big investment and there is the accompanying resource rewards from the anomalies and home system.
It's not like it's all cost.
The issue here is that the some relic passive effects which are already pretty small get even less useful. For example if you take the relic that gives one more pop per colony. If you don't even get it until the main colonization phases is over it's pretty much useless. Meanwhile most other relic passive are good throughout the game.
 
The issue here is that the some relic passive effects which are already pretty small get even less useful. For example if you take the relic that gives one more pop per colony. If you don't even get it until the main colonization phases is over it's pretty much useless. Meanwhile most other relic passive are good throughout the game.

A) you can get it during or before your main colonization phase if you're quick. And you know you'll get it formt he first precursons anomaly.
B) It works for later colonies too, like habitats, ringworlds and terraforming candidates
C) If you destroy enemy colonies and settle them them later (neuron sweep, bombardement) it applies.

Again, useless is very relatice and there can be an argument made to make the effect more significant, but that passive bonus is just one of the rewards of the event chain.
And the only one that has a chance to be completely useless is the Zroni one for non-psionics.

As for the matter of "Small effects"...welcome to Stellaris, it has always been that way, sadly. Interest accumlator with competetive MP is the design Steallris went for and the result is that there can't be significant bonsues, especially not as early acessable as precursors are.
 
A lot of these small modifiers aren't very meanignful on their own, but can add up a little.

Yuth Cleansing for example is accidentally helpful for Xenophobic Lithoids (Base 20% Habitability on off-category worlds, +50% from Lithoid, +20% from tech, allows Yuth to get them to a full 100. And 10%less upkeep and 5% more production does add up over 2/3 of habitable worlds).
Wholly disagree here. If you play Xenophobic you get the Adaptability traditions. Which give you the necessary 10% habitability. Also, by the time you finished the 20% habitability researches you can long since terraform, including habitable planets.
 
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Wholly disagree here. If you play Xenophobic you get the Adaptability traditions. Which give you the necessary 10% habitability. Also, by the time you finished the 20% habitability researches you can long since terraform, including habitable planets.
That's wrong. Adaptability is for Hive Minds, Necrophages, Purifiers, Despoilers and Perfectionists. Normal Xenophobes keep Diplomacy.

And the latter depends wholly on research priorities and luck of the draw. Terraforming also costs more and gives a long happiness penalty.
 
Materialists can go psionic without the Zroni's help; they just need to acquire psionic pops and/or roll a psionics expert among their scientist leaders and stick 'em in the society research spot.

Gestalts are SOL, though.
I don't get why biological hive minds are excluded from psionics tbh. I know some like the 40k Tyranids have their mind link being entirely psionic for example so I don't really see why a Stellaris race couldn't develop a similar collective psychic presence.
 
Because you can't milk fanboys with a balance update, so, they don't care. You should look on the workshop, there are some who rework the poorly balanced relics, and add news one (expanded events)

Oh, I have.
It's just that the blatant corporatism baffles me.
 
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