Just an FYI for anyone who is playing the 4.5 beta. Unfortunately the AI's economic plans are not functioning at the moment. The scaling mechanism that they use does not work at all which causes it to heavily undershoot alloys and eventually, though its so bad it probably isn't practically reaching this, crash out entirely. Also the weighting system it is supposed to use seems to have been completely broken in 4.5.

I checked it against 4.4.6 which did not have these bugs and behaved nearly the same as 4.2-4.4

There is plenty of good stuff in the beta but if you are wondering why the Ai is somehow even worse than before, you are not crazy.

Hopefully it gets fixed. Figured people here should know since it isn't obvious unless you go and edit the code to observe the bug like I did. It is very annoying though.

When you build a way station, you need to build the modules that collect the resource that you want to vacuum up from the system for example alloys, minerals is the mining array module. You can tell if they are being collected because they turn green. If a module does not do anything it cannot be placed. Some modules create output and thus can always be placed like Stellar observatory. 99% of the time you just want to place:

Solar array (energy)
Mining array (minerals/alloys)
Processing bay (rare resources)
or Research observatory (research+darkmatter+astral threads+nano+zro)

When you build your waystations into a wayline you want to setup ONE of the waystations with the module "logistics hub" which allows every other connected one to be collect through that single waystation. Leave one ship in orbit of that way station. You now collect from everything. You will see a blub of text in the top right of the waystation UI that says "On going transfer" in the waystation you built the logistics hub in and "Remote transfer" in the other waystations which lets you tell if they are connected or not. Unfortunately the UI is jank even by stellaris standards and does not show up in your monthly expected production, note thats really bad and I haven't poked at the AI yet but I am 99% sure it is a disaster for them.

This works through wormholes and a am 99% sure it works through the other bypasses as well.

Also MAKE SURE YOU UPGRADE THE WAY STATIONS to max LEVEL regardless of if you need the building slots or not. The game doesn't show you this easily but they get a bonus to "collection rate" which multiplies the output of the underlying resources and gives it to you. I am get +140% on most resources that way resulting in me collections absurd amounts of alloys from AI arc furnaces.

Also (and this is 99% a bug) you can double dip on your Dyson swarm outputs. Because those are collected by the megastructure. And can be collected by your waystations.

You should be hunting to connect yourself to a lot of arc furnaces and dyson swarms as well as placing your arch furnaces and dyson swarms strategically to boost vassals or allys. Using them on vassals lets you double dip the resources.

I haven't touched nano machine builds yet but I assume they do something absurd.

So there was a post earlier about the increasing amount of money being spent on ABA "clinics"

And well that annoyed the ever loving fuck out of my soul!

SO I PRESENT: DEATH OF THE ABA VIA WEAPONIZED CAPITALISM!!!

First fun fact, the main reason ABA clinics are still heavily funded despite the constant fucking protest of everyone is they are more or less the only "recognized treatment". Why does being a recognized treatment matter? Well its illegal for insurance companies to deny recognized treatment without an alternative.

The main place you can see this has been weaponized by the pharmaceutical industry is in modern drug approvals. Where targeting conditions with used but not FDA approved drugs/medical devices makes it difficult for insurance to avoid paying for the new expensive drugs. See crohn's. The insurance step therapy for treatment is just "give steroids" and/or "something else" prior to biologics. Which usually just means give steroids and ignore the second option. That is completely not how it is treated globally but how it is functionally treated in the US. Most other countries require trying a long term DMARD or immune suppressive drug because they are fuck loads cheaper.

So what we need to do is provide insurance companies an off ramp to allow them to require a "step therapy" before paying for ABA therapy. Since ABA therapy costs an ungodly amount of money 10K. This actually gives us some EXTREME laterals as to what we can invent.

MY PROPOSAL!!

AUSTISTIC STIM TOYS!!!!

NO LONGER SHALL OUR YOUNGER PEERS NEED TO SUFFER FROM LACK OF TEXTURES TO RUB!!!

All we have to do is create a medical device and pay for a study to show it reduces incidents of autistic self harm! Submit it to the FDA for medical device approval and BOOM. VALID RECOGNIZED ALTERNATIVE TREATMENT. We just simply need to let kids stim out there feelings without resorting to the forbidden but endlessly alluring desire to smash our faces into the wall.

Given our competitions price is 10k, we can even pay to have our young autistic brethren be taught how to properly STIM EVILY. We can use these device education classes to also explain to parents what autism is actually is. And how to safely allow there kids to use there stim toys. Spend time identifying the best stim toys for the child. Customizing the stim toys etc. Allowing us to abuse the medical device training loopholes to approve "parental education" as a recognized and specific medical service!!!

Given that ABA therapists have 0 fucking actual transferable skills and the employees can do nothing but abuse children, the companies should approach insolvency within a year or two of insurance companies mandating step therapy with stim toys before moving onto ABA therapy.

It will take a fuck load less energy then convincing the US government to actual end ABA therapy. Simply bankrupt these fuck stains. Two birds one textured stone.