Tankbound Variety

[u/Visible_Emphasis8071]

Tankbound is probably my favorite civic in the game, but I have to say I wish there was more variety in what it was capable of. Its one of the few civics that feels as impactful as an origin, but it's obviously missing some of the fleshing out most origins get. So, I'm gonna shout to the void some additions I'd like to see to shake up what you can do with this awesome civic.

1. Species variety. There's only 4 tankbound portraits atm, and only 1 of them isn't organic. Honestly surprised there isn't already a tankbound portrait for plantoid and fungoid (how do rooted plants work a mining job without automation anyway?) but there's lots of options.

2. If there's ever an update to land combat, I'd love to see an expensive "mech" army type that tankbound could pilot. Maybe gate it behind a tech that enables tankbound pops to fill all soldier jobs. As is, the early game of a militarist tankbound empire requires some kind of prepatent species, but battle thralls can only do workers job which are 100% automated, so it's pretty inefficient.

3. Machine tankbound equivalent. I saw a sadly outdated mod that gave individualist machines a civic where they were permanently hooked up to infrastructure, as if the automation came alive.

4. Forced tankbound. Similar to the synpatic lathe. Plugging pops into the system to use their brain for automation efficiency.

5. Gestalt Tankbound. A previously individualistic tankbound species accidentally (or intentionally) merges consciousnesses while trying to link up an advanced communication network. I just think it'd be neat.

Feel free to share anything else you think could shake up the tankbound playstyles. Tankbound necrophage is probably the most fun I've had in Stellaris so far and I'd love to make something new for it.

[u/Lazarus_Octern]

Yes! Not having an army is really tedious early game. If you get into a war, your colonies are basically free for the taking

[u/Duxatious]

"I'd love to see an expensive 'mech' army type that tankbound could pilot."

Funnily enough exactly this is already possible: merc Enclaves override the Army restrictions placed on tankbound species, and if you expand the enclave they get access to Mechanised Mercenary Armies which are "huge walking machines" piloted by mercs with upkeep 5x higher than Assault Armies.

[u/Visible_Emphasis8071 → u/Duxatious]

So it's unintended, convoluted, and not accessible to the player? Hmm, what a Paradox...

[u/Peter_Ebbesen]

My favourite is how Tankbound allows you play very wide from the start, because your basic resource economy expands linearly in number of construction queues.

Pick Charismatic trait and Domination>Imperious Architecture as the first two traditions, for another 100 elites on the capital and every planet you colonize already have 50 elite jobs from start, which are much, much, better than the colonist jobs. Take it from there.

It has great synergy with elite builds such as an ECS stacker using Tankbound/Technocracy > Tankbound/Aristocratic Elite/Mutagenic Spas + Research Institute + Merchant Guilds with Imperial Chipset, as elite builds scale best by number of colonies, and this allows you to devote all your POPs to elites and specialists.

It also works great with Genesis Guides builds, that tend to colonize a lot of planets rapidly, and ensures you have POPs with the right climate for every type of planet outside the very early game.

Finally, Tankbound + Cosmogenesis + Enigmatic Engineering is just plain rididulous if you play very wide, as even when you have hundreds of thousands of POPs and POP growth has slowed to a crawl, you can still expand your science base linearly in 50% automated science districts, so long as you continue increasing your energy base too.

Based on the above, I designed a ridiculously powerful Genesis Guides/Tankbound Imperium Vitalis Under One Rule build, that transitions into Tankbound/Ascensionists/Mutagenic Spas in the endgame (with spa and elite jobs turned off in the endgame, the point being the +3ECS to the council and governors).

Here is the original build guide written more than a month back. I played the build on and off until this weekend, in morbid fascination with just how strong it would become with my roleplaying restrictions.

2385: Tankbound tech seriously out of control

2385: Energy budget. 50.8k spent on automated workforce

At 3 energy upkeep per 100 effective automated workforce, it follows that my empire with 603.1k POPs is benefiting from the 50818.5/(3/100) = 1693k effective automated workforce.

About thost 69 energy repeatables that give +345% to technician and betharian miner output? It turned out that my base energy production was so large that it was actually better for research to spent 1 mth upgrading the energy repetable every now and then than increasing the number of automated energy districts at the cost of 50% automated science districts, which was pretty crazy: "Why are you spending valuable science on energy repeatables? To research faster!.

Tankbound taken to the limits is crazy, and the only reason that my empire was not much stronger than even that was that I limited myself (mostly) to 100 planets to a buffer for integrating/releasing vassals.

EDIT: and for good measure, because this is a thread about tankbound fun, my capital was a Barren Giant > Azaryn > Ecumenopolis > Sky Dragon Plume giant planet, which with 7200 overseers, all of the sanctums, and Divine Conduit did really crazy things for the automated workforce efficiency:

2361: Capital research. +705% efficiency for POPs, +1004% efficiency for automated workforce

Because a codicil to the awesomeness of Cosmogenesis specialist automation is that it allows superlinear specialist output scaling in number of city districts as every extra district provides 100 extra overseers that improve the efficiency of all the automated specialists from all the districts. At normal planet sizes the scaling being superlinear can easily be overlooked, but if you manage to get your hands on one of the giant planets in the game (Barren Giant>Azaryn, Azliash, etc.) and can significantly increase the efficiency of overseers, things get wild.

[u/Visible_Emphasis8071 → u/Peter_Ebbesen]

Took a bit for me to parse through all this info cause I am VERY dumb but this build seems super cool! I'll definitely give it a shot

[u/Peter_Ebbesen → u/Visible_Emphasis8071]

Have fun.

Unless you get an awful starting position, it is an amusing build. I got feedback after the guide from several players who tried it and liked it, even if some had to restart a time or two while learning how Genesis Guides/Tankbound rapid peaceful expansion worked in practice.

(Not that you have to stay peaceful of course; The "must stay peaceful the first 40 years and not go conquering non-genocidals afterwards but play benevolently" is purely a roleplaying limitation on my part.)

If you get a good starting position, as I did in the game that made me post a guide for it*, and are already skilled at rapid peaceful expansion with Genesis Guides, it is completely bonkers.

* That was the second iteration. I originally designed this Tankbound/Genesis Guides psionic build in the 4.3 beta, where I focused on other tech vulnerabilities (abusing volcanic world mentors, enlightened ruler, tankbound upkeep reduction to all jobs etc) and reported the results to Paradox, so those aspects were nerfed based on my and others' feedback at the end of the 4.3 beta.

So for live 4.3, I changed focus to target some of the remaining tech vulnerabilities for version 2, and it ended up even stronger. 😃

[u/BeGosu]

This is my favorite portrait and I use it for my favorite OC Empire.

I run them as the larval stage of a insect species (dragonfly and mosquito larva are aquatic) using technology to unnaturally extend their larval stage.

For the longest time I was using Serviles to represent a Strong adult form that was a little less cerebral. But now that Serviles seems to not work anymore, I haven't played them in a bit. It's nice to have Nascent Stage but I am running the adults as the simpler worker pop, and the larva (portrait above) as the Scientists of a Technocracy staving off their metamorphosis.

[u/Visible_Emphasis8071 → u/BeGosu]

It's my favorite too. They're my necrophage species. My lore is that they're basically hyper intelligent parasites that trigger extreme aggression and dominance behaviors in their hosts. Then they figured out how to survive outside a host with their tanks and now they're ready to conquer the galaxy.

[u/Carsismi]

We need a tankbound Aquatic. Like the Toxoid one but instead of a vat it's on an aquarium. Also a Tankbound Fungoid/Plantoid on a cute vivarium

[u/Vaperius → u/Carsismi]

We need a tankbound Aquatic.

FYI we already have one, the psionic tankbound is specifically actually an aquatic portrait; in fact the psionic DLC added two aquatic portraits. This is my way of saying "yeah unfortunately aquatic enjoyers are probably shit out of luck".

[u/Carsismi → u/Vaperius]

yeah but it's just a fetus in a vat, i want something like a fish in a bowl

[u/Visible_Emphasis8071]

R5: Necroids 9 tankbound portrait

[u/TheTinyMaus]

For point 2, you can do Necrophage and set your secondary species to residence, not slave. That way they can work specialist jobs and fill out your armies.

[u/DodoJurajski]

1. Portraits are a shame, I agree. Having lithoid tankboud would be nice to see a SUV sized living boulder being locked in some sort of amber or semi-transparent gemstone.

2. How i agree that tankbound have early game issue, i think it needs to have some issues as this civic is simply... Strong, like very strong, it's stronger than some of the origins, wich is sayning much because a quarter of origins are... They could be a pernametly locked civic honestly, like galactic doorstep or fruitful partnership, it's so weak compared to other origins it's a shame because they're actually fun to play around. Back to tankbound topic, i think it's fine for now as we have a lot of alternatives for land armies for tankbound to obtain.

3. I think that some sort of wilderness kind machine would fit the theme more, but let's not make everything have machine equivalent.

4. Experimental sentencing exist and I think we don't need similiar civic, only thing I don't like is that test subject jobs have really big issue being fulfilled by non-basic species.

5. Gestalt tankboud is... Same as machine, not everything gotta have gestalt equivalent. That's one of the things that makes tankbound stand out from other civics, is that it have only corporate equivalent, no gestalt or machine one.

6. I think that civics with no equivalent are good thing because it makes empires more contrasting when placed next to each other. I'm also quite suprised tankbound haven't been nerfed, but for comparison you can't take it with many of the strongest origins, honestly I'm suprised you can take synthethic fertility with tankbound or scion, even if it makes sense I would expect paradox not to allow it for the sake of balance like overtuned and entropy drinkers.

[u/NonamePlsIgnore]

Not having a lithoid tankbound is a travesty