What we call noob trap is an in-game feature often seems useful to newbies but actually very bad. Insert meme here: Sounds good, doesn’t work. Like many games, Stellaris also has some noob traps in it. On this page, I’ll lay down Stellaris noob traps so that you can dismantle them.
Stellaris have a steep learning curve because it has many mechanics, features, utilities, and playstyles. It’s definitely worth investing your time though. Because Stellaris is one of the most rewarding 4x grand strategy game ever, especially for sci-fi enthusiasts. Kudos to Paradox.
STELLARIS GALAXY SETTINGS FOR BEST PERFORMANCE
Oh, don’t feel sorry about being a Stellaris noob. Everyone was a noob at the start. Besides, almost all single-player games are much more fun when you’re noob. The better you are, the less fun you have. That’s the true nature of single player gaming I think.
10 Stellaris noob traps:
1. Bad Origins
There are 38 origins in Stellaris and some of them are real noob traps. Most of the bad origins have this Warning: Challenging Origin sign on them. I’m not talking about challenging origins. I’m talking about normal looking origins that are actually really bad for mid-late game.
Stellaris noob trap origins:
- Clone Army: Can’t modify species, ever! Plus -40 lifespan. Not worth for +50% army damage because land combat means nothing in Stellaris.
- Cybernetic Creed: Building slots locked, final ascension adds random traits instead of letting player choose the bests.
- Fear of the Dark: Starting pops -8. Every ascension perk will have negative reaction from fearmonger faction.
- Ocean Paradise & Life Seeded: Both origins rants very good capital but removes 2 guaranteed habitable worlds. It’s bad!
- Galactic Doorstep: Adds nothing of a value to the game. The galaxy is filled with gateways anyway.
2. Useless Ascension Perks
There are 31 total ascension perks in Stellaris. One can pick only 8 ascensions per run. Therefore, every available ascension slot is highly important. Wasting even one ascension perk slot can be devastating in the long run.
Noob trap ascension perks:
- Interstellar Dominion: Gives -20% starbase influence cost. That’s the biggest noob trap ever in Stellaris. When I was a new player, I though interstellar dominion is the best perk and always took it first. Unfortunately, that’s far from truth. You really don’t need influence for wide borders. All you have to do is expand to the chokepoints ASAP, get the borders, and expand inward from then on. It’s a waste of perk slot.
- Detox: Enables terraforming toxic worlds. They’re very few, besides you don’t need that many worlds. If you really need new space, create ring worlds instead.
- Executive Vigor: It’s one of the first perks from the Stellaris 1.0v. Right now, very useless because it has no scaling.
- Shared Destiny: +2 envoys is meaningless. +1 subject exempt from divided patronage? You don’t need that many vassals, or loyal vassals as long as you have strong fleet.
- Enigmatic Engineering: Makes your destroyed ship debris unidentifiable to other empires… How can an enemy destroy your ships if you’re technologically advanced anyway? Useless.
3. Counterintuitive Civics
I only use handful of civics now that I think about it. Most civics are either bad or useless in Stellaris. We need a civic rework dear Paradox.
Noob trap civics:
- Relentless Industrialists: Increases alloy and consumer goods production. Will turn owned planets into tomb worlds overtime. Reduces pop growth. Reduced pop growth is horrible and can’t inhabit tomb worlds unless you’re playing with post-apocalyptic origin.
- Catalytic Processing: Metallurgist replaced with Catalytic technicians. Mineral upkeep replaced with food upkeep. Useless except you’re a Korean professional doing a very niche advanced build.
- Mutagenic Spas: Pop growth bonus, reduced happiness and habitability. Not a good trade in my book.
- Crusader Spirit: It gives somewhat good ship damage bonuses. But can only use liberation wars policy. Which is pointless, you can’t conquer or gain anything.
- Diplomatic Corps: Just gives bunch of diplomacy bonuses. It’s useless because unfortunately diplomacy in Stellaris is trash at this point.
4. Unnecessary Traditions
16 tradition and 7 ascension tradition trees available in Stellaris. You can only unlock 7 traditions in each run. And once you unlock a tradition, it’s locked and cannot be changed from then on. Thus, one must choose wisely.
Noob trap traditions:
- Subterfuge: Gives intel to see where the enemy fleets. But Sentry Array megastructure already does that. There is no point wasting a tradition tree on subterfuge.
- Unyielding: Unless you’re playing on very high difficulties and 25x crisis strength, unyielding is pointless because best defense is offence.
- Enmity: If you play your cards right, you’ll find no rivals in the galaxy anyway. Don’t really need enmity unless you are role playing. Because AI is trash, no offence Paradox but that’s the reality.
- Aptitude: Gives bunch of random leader bonuses. Make no mistake, leaders are very important in this game. However, aptitude gives useless leader bonuses like -25% leader cost, -25% leader upkeep, etc.
- Adaptability: Gives slight economy bonus and %10 habitability. None of the bonuses from adaptability makes a real difference. Trash overall.
5. Empire Size
You want to expand your empire as wide as possible, colonize every planet, and build every district to build strong economy. Unfortunately, every action you take will increase empire size. That’s why moderation and careful planning is very important.
Going way over empire size will make your empire fall behind in both tech and traditions. That’s why you need few planets, each focused on different resource.
Stellaris empire size reduction:
- Unlock traditions with empire size reduction bonuses.
- Get imperial prerogative ascension perk.
- Modify your organic pop and robot pop traits to add empire size reduction from pops modifier.
- Don’t build star-post on systems with no meaningful hyperlanes or resources.
- Don’t build many districts unless you have pops working on them.
- Stop colonizing every available planet unless necessary. (7-8 planets max until all traditions are completed.)
- Upgrade ascension tier of planets after completing all traditions.
6. Auto Planet Specializing
Never let AI auto designate planetary focus and set planet automation on. AI doesn’t really do well with planning. Just look at AI empires in the late game, they have no agenda and fall behind in everything.
Doing everything isn’t that much of a hassle. You’ll micro-manage a little bit but that shouldn’t be a problem unless you colonize everything you see. After a certain point, every planet you get reduces tech research because of empire size.
- Auto designated: Multiple planetary focuses are available in Stellaris. Each focusing on a different resource, research, or unity. Focused resource will get a boost of minimum +15% at ascension tier 1. Increasing ascension tier and stacking bonuses will take you to the moon. So, 1 planet 1 resource focus policy is very profitable.
- Planet automation: You only need 7-8 planets anyway. There is no need for automation. Automated planets quickly become liabilities because AI sucks unfortunately.
7. Planetary Ascension
Planetary ascension is a feature in Stellaris unknown to many players. It’s because ascendancy button is very small, almost hidden. Honestly, I can’t understand the logic behind its placement.
What is ascension? Ascended planets will have reduced empire size and increased planetary focus effects. Meaning, +15% energy boost planet focus can go way up to +50% or more. But ascending is very costly, you’ll need lots of unity. It’s a late game feature in my opinion, I spend all my unity on completing traditions first. Because tradition costs will increase with the unstoppable growth of empire size.
STELLARIS PLANETARY ASCENSION GUIDE
Pro tip: Ascending ring worlds, ecumenopolis, and capital worlds absolutely worth it. But if you spend your unity on useless worlds, it’s terrible because planetary ascension cost is cumulative. It takes tremendous amount of unity after fully ascending your first 3 planets.
8. Machine Uprising Event
Any non-machine empire with robot servitors can face a machine uprising civil war. It’s a nice flavor actually. But can be game ender for new players.
Pop growth without any boost is very slow, especially at the beginning. Building new robot pops simultaneously is very beneficial and can start a long-term snowball effect. But one must be very careful and pre-plan what to do about robots in the future.
Machine uprising can trigger once sapient combat simulations or artificial administration technologies are researched. You’ll know them when you see them because those techs are tagged as dangerous research.
Machine uprising can be stopped in 3 different ways:
- Setting up artificial intelligence policy to citizen rights. (Basically, granting citizenship to robots, now robot pops will consume consumer goods.)
- Neutralize Rampant AI: 30,000 physics research. −10% research speed for 20 years.
- Panicked Measures: 10,000 physics research. −25% research speed for 20 years.
Unless it’s stopped in time, a machine empire will be created and assume the control of 25% to 75% of player empire. Imagine losing %75 of your empire instantly. That’s a game over.
9. Ship Designer
Ship designer is a waste of time if you don’t know a lot about how Stellaris naval battles work. Learning it will take hundreds of hours of playing, testing, reading, etc. Same goes for the fleet manager.
Besides you can mess up your fleets if you do a bad design. That’ll cripple your fighting capabilities. What a noob trap ship designer is…
Just set it to auto-upgrade and do your thing. There are many other things to focus your attention in Stellaris that are actually meaningful.
10. Gene Clinics
Building gene clinics for population growth is horrible because it increases pop growth very little and takes -2 pop workers from other jobs. Takes 25-30 years for the job to replace itself… That’s waste of pops and resources. It’s also occupying a precious building slot for no benefit.
However, if you have colonized a planet with %60-70 habitability, then you need to build gene clinics for extra +%10-20 habitability bonus. That’s the only valid use of gene clinics. Though it should be replaced with another building once the planet hits +110-120% habitability via tech, event, and artifact bonuses.
Thanks for reading Stellaris noob traps / tips guide. Do tell me about your Stellaris noob moments via comment section below. I would like to read it!
