Mod "StarNet AI" for Stellaris (2.2.x)

This mod intends to create an action-packed experience with AI not only being able to manage their economy, research and military but also willingness to put their fleets to use.


There are some good AI mods which fix some of the issues (notably, Glavius Ultimate AI and Decai) but I found that they don't completely remove AI passiveness and you never feel truly afraid of your neighbour.

This mod tries its best to fix the issue, AI opponents are more than willing to make sizable militaries and more importantly use the ships to conquer weak neighbours, both human and other AIs.


When would you want to try this mod?

1.You want to be challenged by AI.
Starnet will be very trigger-happy and if they ever see that someone (be it another AI or a human player) decided to cut off their military spending they will invade, fights can happen as soon as 2220, so be aware!

2.You want to try playing Crime syndicate.
Both vanilla and modded AIs frequently like to turn their planets into Police State dystopias, Starnet usually fights crime in other way.

3.You want to fight midgame "final boss".
Due to the way Starnet was designed, adding few Advanced Start empires will make quite the difference. Nations with advanced start usually will end up either killing their neighbours or subjugating them creating a nice midgame challenge.

4.You want to experience the game in a new way
Even if you tried other AI mods, Starnet will feel different. Galaxy is a scary place where most alliances are made just to kill somebody else and peace is always temporary.

Recommended settings

Unless you are totally sure what you are doing, I recommend starting with Ensign or Captain first, but generally all difficulties are well-tested. Defeating grand admiral is very hard and practically impossible, and I suspect for most people even Captain with no scaling will create some problems.

Advanced starts add quite a lot to experience, heavily recommend using them.

The most well-tested aggressiveness setting was high, hence I recommend using it. In the future I will make it so on low aggressiveness ai is more research-focused so you will be able to pick the pace you are most comfortable with.

Unless you have personal preferences, I suggest using elliptical shape of galaxy and 1.25 hyperlanes, AI often can have issues dealing with chokepoints (difference isn't large, but it will prevent situations where a player or an AI is blocked and has only one neighbour or worse, blocked by Marauders/Fallen Empire).

Human players tend to be able to use primitives better, so keep it in mind (Starnet will handle them better than vanilla though).

Performance

I benchmarked performance with vanilla and glavius mod and turns out that performance on the same savefile is pretty indistinguishable (+-20 days across 10 years) and pretty much can't be improved unless the game engine is improved.

But you need to understand that you will never get the "same savefile", Starnet is very good in creating huge fleets and continously smashing them in galactic wars. Depending how these wars end, you will either have better performance (if one-two nations kill all the others) or worse (if few simultaneous wars happen at the same time).

I suggest trying small or tiny galaxies first to make sure the game is enjoyable, but usually depending on your PC you would be able to play larger galaxies too.

Compatibility

This mod is *not* compatible with any other AI mod. In general most AI mods are incompatible with each other unless otherwise specified and loading them together will break everything and none of them will work properly. Note that some interoperable parts of GAI were included in Starnet.

As for other mods, due to its name it is at the bottom of the load order, so any other mod will override it. For example if another mod adds new weapon, Starnet will not know it exists and will use the weight provided by that mod. If another mod changes vanilla techs then tech focus system of Starnet will not be used, etc. It is hard to predict how different mods will work together, but you can have a rough idea.

I hope that if things break due to incompatibility they won't break too hard, but you can't be sure.

Any UI mod or mod which adds new things should easily be compatible (but AI will use new things only if that mod told it to use them). Most important part of Starnet is building management, if your mods don't change them then everything is great and even if other things break overall you should see good performance.

If you are using any mod changing districts, you should use Universal Districts Patch which will make everything work (note that AI will not build new districts without further compatibility patch, but at least it will not break and will manage resources well).

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Glavius and Todie for their wonderful mods and their both passive and active help.

Additional shoutout to people at Stellaris Modding Den discord who are very happy to provide help and give suggestions.

Future

The mod is still in heavy construction, there is quite a lot of things I can teach AI to do. For now it already hit the stage where it can pose a challenge but ultimately I will try to make even low difficulty AI as scary as possible.