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Pscion

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I'm new to the game, and yes i already understand the entire minor artifact system is complete trash unless you maybe use mods - I'm just curious what all the effects are, as nobody has ever (or anywhere i could find) spelled out the entire list. We all know about the subpar weapons and shields, but I'm more specifically wondering about the buildings. I know the faculty of archaeo studies gets extra jobs and the refinery gets 25% output, but are those it?
 
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First League, Vultaum and Baol buildings have some of their effects doubled (edict fund, physics from researchers, and CG/energy from farmers).

It's pretty good, partly because some of the weapons are actually also really good. The defensive components are not, however. Starbase stuff is also good.

I'd say it's somewhat disappointing that you can't really use MA at an effective level without a curator civic from Grand Archive.
 
Allow me to clarify a detail before I give you a list:

Minor artifact ship modules are decent and roughly T3 in strength. With the Archhaeo-Engineers perk, they are actually very good and usually on par with T5, just a side grade in some form.

So why does everyone agree artifact weapons suck?

Well a lot of people look at the modules WITHOUT the perk, or they look at the "relative scaling" factor. For example, "+60% Shields" may sound good but if you already have +100% shields from other sources then the "Relative" bonus isn't as strong when compared to other modules since these effects don't change the base. Basically, 100 shields modified by +160% is 260 but 150 shields modified by +100% is 300. I think this is a slightly foolish way to look at it since not every build is going to spend every single opportunity cost on +damage% and +firerate%. Most importantly, you are able to get Minor Artifacts and AE perk very early in the game, before most people have collected all their buffs, or reached T5 technology.

But more importantly: Minor Artifacts suck.

Minor artifacts suck to get, you have a tiny max stockpile, there is zero trading involved, and no policies or resolutions or anything you can really do to improve this issue. Oh, and you probably are better off using the minor artifacts on something like the refinery. Your best bet to utilize them large-scale in your fleets is to make sure every single councilor has "Expertise: Archaeostudies" because each leader with that trait maxed out sitting on your council gives -10% Minor Artifact cost for ships. If min/maxed this can be up to -60% minor artifact cost for ships, but realistically is more like -40% and even lower if you are monarchy or dictatorial.

For the effects:
In addition to the obvious "+33% Artifact Weapon Damage", you also have these:
  • Shield
    +60% Shields from Ancient Suspension Field components
  • Shield
    +100% Shields from Ancient Pulse Armor components
  • Armor
    +5% Armor from Ancient Rampart starbase modules
  • Armor
    +10% Armor Hardening from Ancient Rampart starbase modules
  • Spaceport 1.png +33% Effects from starbase buildings unlocked by Archaeostudies
Specific things of note:
+60% Shields from ASF is actually very good. This means that they are basically T5 shields with slightly fewer shield HP (200 instead of 220 for small) in exchange for +15% shield hardening per ASF (shield hardness is much harder to get than shield HP increase).

+100% Shields from APA is interesting. This means that they are T3 armor modules AND T4 shield modules that have the power need of T3 shield modules. Mathmatically this is probably the most HP per slot you can put into a module when you combine both the armor and shield values, at least until late game. The downside is that since it is split between armor and shields, you cannot do the arguably stronger tactic of focusing on shields or armor and getting +100% hardening in just that one, though if you somehow have high hardness in both armor and shields this is a very good option until repeatables come into play.

For the +33% damage for artifact weapons, they make most of the weapons about T5 in strength. They usually sacrafice a little damage in exchange for a benefit that DOES scale into the late game. Unlike defensive modules, which can fall off later in the game with lots of stacking modifiers and especially repeatables.

For example, the T5 energy weapon (Gamma Lasers) deals on average 31.5 DPS (Damage per Second)
The artifact energy weapon (Ancient Cavitation Collapser) deals on average 21.25. With the +33% damage, it's dealing an extra 7 DPS, or about 28.33 DPS.
However, the ancient artifact weapon has a different bonus spread (higher armor damage instead of bonus hull damage) but most importantly ignores 50% armor, and for anyone who doesn't know ships attack slower the more hull damage they have taken. This has the potential to also ruin late-game armor-heavy ships since there are no hull repeatables but there are two energy weapon repeatables.

Another weapon I will shout out is Ancient Miner Drones, which are a strike craft weapon with a bizarre and fascinating 100% armor penetration instead of 100% shield penetration of all other strike craft. You can do nasty things to shields with a variety of things, but armor nullifcation I don't think exists normally so this can be very strong. Most people get shield hardening and ignore armor hardening as well, since many weapons have shield penetration.

Now for the buildings (to actually awnser your question):

Facility of Archaeo-Studies gets +2 more scientists (5 in total) and +2000 minor artifact capacity (+3000 total, but I think nothing else in the game increases this limit and this is a empire unique so the total is 5000).
Ancient Reinferies get +15% (+40% total) to their output.
First League Filing Offices get double edict fund (so from +50 to +100).
Vultuam Reality Computer gets double effects, so +2 Physics on scientists instead of +1.
Baol gets double CG production per farmer (so 1 instead of 0.5) and double energy if you don't use CG (2 instead of 1).

In addition, did you know there's a bunch of starbase stuff gets bonuses? I'll include them since they are related:

Ancient Ramparts (module): +5% Armor (+20% total), +10% armor hardening (hypothetical +60% from 6 of these)
Ancient Shield Overcharger: +17% Shields (+50% total), +17% Shield Hardening (+50% total)
Cybrex Mining Hub: +50% Mining Station Output (+150% total)
Irassian Yards: +10% Ship Build Speed (+30% total)
Yuht Astronomical Interferometer: +3 Sensor Range (+10 total), +6 Hyperlane detection range (+20 total)
Zroni Storm Caster: "-10% Daily Hull on enemy ships"
Hyperlane Detailer +5% ship speed in system (+15% total)


My final complaint is that Remnants utterly sucks as an origin, with zero long-term potential and locks you out of many interesting playstyles like Cybernetic Creed or Necrophages. Only slightly related since remnants is technically "the minor artifact" origin.

What would I do to fix minor artifacts?

Two changes:
1. I would make Facility of Archhaeo-Studies no longer unique (neither empire nor planetary) and reduce the research speed bonus.
2. I would make the bonuses granted by the Archaeo-Engineering perk increase the base stats of the weapons/modules/buildings, so that they are multiplied by all other modifiers.

Alright thank you for reading, have a nice day.
 
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My personal general fixes for MA would be:
1. Halve the cost of all components and AT LEAST double the stockpile max
2. Add more total deposits, everyone should have at least a little, and remove the dig site RNG (guarantee some MA deposit, no more incentive to wait to dig until you have a scientist boosting the chance)
3. A couple weapons are actually too strong with the perk, and most defensive components are too weak even with it, so a slight rebalance would be nice

They're too scarce to get any of, and they're a little user-unfriendly.

My personal shout out weapon is actually the Ancient Macro Batteries, which have worse DPS because of worse accuracy but 50% more range than normal kinetic weapons. If you compensate for the accuracy loss by components, leaders, etc, they become extremely effective.
 
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Halve the cost of all components and AT LEAST double the stockpile max
Disagree. This should remain something that requires specialization, not something you just passively drift into because you feel like it. Going archaeotech should be a conscious and intentional choice, you should have to go out of your way for it. It feels more special that way. The way to do this would be to give players a way to boost income, or specialization should provide more cost reductions, not across the board reduction of costs for the tech. The stockpile limit is very lame though I agree, it needs to be raised or removed.
Add more total deposits, everyone should have at least a little, and remove the dig site RNG (guarantee some MA deposit, no more incentive to wait to dig until you have a scientist boosting the chance)
I agree, that needs to happen. Getting a Dyson swarm on a "message in a bottle" star feels awesome. Having the ability to boost income through investment like that feels very rewarding. There should be additional tech/industrial methods added to boost minor artifact output on existing deposits. It would also solve the problem of bad rng for players that were trying to specialize down that path but couldn't get enough deposits to justify it. So if you had planned on going archaeotech in the beginning, but had very bad luck, you aren't totally SOL because additional investment was still possible. It just would not be ideal.
A couple weapons are actually too strong with the perk, and most defensive components are too weak even with it, so a slight rebalance would be nice
Disagree, hyper specialization/heavy investment should give higher rewards.
 
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Allow me to clarify a detail before I give you a list:

Very informative post, thank you!

My final complaint is that Remnants utterly sucks as an origin, with zero long-term potential and locks you out of many interesting playstyles like Cybernetic Creed or Necrophages. Only slightly related since remnants is technically "the minor artifact" origin.

Remnants is great in combo with Eager Explorers, and it's a cheap & early way to get a capital Ecumenopolis. The minor artifacts are there I guess but they're not the focus for me.

Cybernetic Creed was a huge disappointment IMHO.
 
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Uncapping Faculty of Archaeostudies (and making it give +50% research speed, only on Relic worlds, instead of doubled on them) would go a long way to making it more usable. At that point it becomes a much cleaner version of Astral Threads, where you can spam the building for capacity, but not to increase your total income (so spamming it isn't obligatory). It would also make Relic worlds valuable beyond the first one; currently once you have a single Relic world you've already got your artifact income and +50% research speed locked in, and further ones give no benefit.

But it not being particularly useful to spam outside of relic worlds (beyond a few for storage) is important: there are already too many obligatory "one per planet at most, but as many as possible, so one on every planet" buildings, like siphons, monuments, and the obligatory ascension builings.
 
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Cybernetic Creed was a huge disappointment IMHO.
I completely agree with you, sorry. I forgot I made a mod that preserves all four creeds (and the unified one) and does things like makes their buildings unable to be built alongside rival creed buildings on the same planet. I think I was experimenting with each creed's happiness causing various effects from their buildings, but eventually I put down Stellaris for some time.

The real hair-puller for me was discovering that cybernetic ascension offers a bunch of cool stuff tied to mutually exclusive and completely random events that only get one shot to fire. I'm STILL working on an overhaul for that since even Psionic RNG lets you keep rerolling.
 
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I usually dont use minor artifacts for ships. Mainly because i am too lazy to redesign ships in order to have a second no artifact ship template ready to quickly replace lost ships.
And due to the end game crisis no matter how much u try to conserve ur fleets u will still run out of artifacts due to large ship losses and tiny artifact storage.
 
I usually dont use minor artifacts for ships. Mainly because i am too lazy to redesign ships in order to have a second no artifact ship template ready to quickly replace lost ships.
And due to the end game crisis no matter how much u try to conserve ur fleets u will still run out of artifacts due to large ship losses and tiny artifact storage.

There are some designs which I don't spam -- like Corvettes & Destroyers -- which still linger because of my hoarding instincts.

I spam Cruisers & Battleships with as many Titans as I can get.

So for me at least it's safe to put MA weapons on Corvettes & Destroyers, because I won't build an unlimited number of them.
 
Allow me to clarify a detail before I give you a list:

Minor artifact ship modules are decent and roughly T3 in strength. With the Archhaeo-Engineers perk, they are actually very good and usually on par with T5, just a side grade in some form.

So why does everyone agree artifact weapons suck?

Well a lot of people look at the modules WITHOUT the perk, or they look at the "relative scaling" factor. For example, "+60% Shields" may sound good but if you already have +100% shields from other sources then the "Relative" bonus isn't as strong when compared to other modules since these effects don't change the base. Basically, 100 shields modified by +160% is 260 but 150 shields modified by +100% is 300. I think this is a slightly foolish way to look at it since not every build is going to spend every single opportunity cost on +damage% and +firerate%. Most importantly, you are able to get Minor Artifacts and AE perk very early in the game, before most people have collected all their buffs, or reached T5 technology.

But more importantly: Minor Artifacts suck.

Minor artifacts suck to get, you have a tiny max stockpile, there is zero trading involved, and no policies or resolutions or anything you can really do to improve this issue. Oh, and you probably are better off using the minor artifacts on something like the refinery. Your best bet to utilize them large-scale in your fleets is to make sure every single councilor has "Expertise: Archaeostudies" because each leader with that trait maxed out sitting on your council gives -10% Minor Artifact cost for ships. If min/maxed this can be up to -60% minor artifact cost for ships, but realistically is more like -40% and even lower if you are monarchy or dictatorial.

For the effects:
In addition to the obvious "+33% Artifact Weapon Damage", you also have these:
  • Shield
    +60% Shields from Ancient Suspension Field components
  • Shield
    +100% Shields from Ancient Pulse Armor components
  • Armor
    +5% Armor from Ancient Rampart starbase modules
  • Armor
    +10% Armor Hardening from Ancient Rampart starbase modules
  • Spaceport 1.png +33% Effects from starbase buildings unlocked by Archaeostudies
Specific things of note:
+60% Shields from ASF is actually very good. This means that they are basically T5 shields with slightly fewer shield HP (200 instead of 220 for small) in exchange for +15% shield hardening per ASF (shield hardness is much harder to get than shield HP increase).

+100% Shields from APA is interesting. This means that they are T3 armor modules AND T4 shield modules that have the power need of T3 shield modules. Mathmatically this is probably the most HP per slot you can put into a module when you combine both the armor and shield values, at least until late game. The downside is that since it is split between armor and shields, you cannot do the arguably stronger tactic of focusing on shields or armor and getting +100% hardening in just that one, though if you somehow have high hardness in both armor and shields this is a very good option until repeatables come into play.

For the +33% damage for artifact weapons, they make most of the weapons about T5 in strength. They usually sacrafice a little damage in exchange for a benefit that DOES scale into the late game. Unlike defensive modules, which can fall off later in the game with lots of stacking modifiers and especially repeatables.

For example, the T5 energy weapon (Gamma Lasers) deals on average 31.5 DPS (Damage per Second)
The artifact energy weapon (Ancient Cavitation Collapser) deals on average 21.25. With the +33% damage, it's dealing an extra 7 DPS, or about 28.33 DPS.
However, the ancient artifact weapon has a different bonus spread (higher armor damage instead of bonus hull damage) but most importantly ignores 50% armor, and for anyone who doesn't know ships attack slower the more hull damage they have taken. This has the potential to also ruin late-game armor-heavy ships since there are no hull repeatables but there are two energy weapon repeatables.

Another weapon I will shout out is Ancient Miner Drones, which are a strike craft weapon with a bizarre and fascinating 100% armor penetration instead of 100% shield penetration of all other strike craft. You can do nasty things to shields with a variety of things, but armor nullifcation I don't think exists normally so this can be very strong. Most people get shield hardening and ignore armor hardening as well, since many weapons have shield penetration.

Now for the buildings (to actually awnser your question):

Facility of Archaeo-Studies gets +2 more scientists (5 in total) and +2000 minor artifact capacity (+3000 total, but I think nothing else in the game increases this limit and this is a empire unique so the total is 5000).
Ancient Reinferies get +15% (+40% total) to their output.
First League Filing Offices get double edict fund (so from +50 to +100).
Vultuam Reality Computer gets double effects, so +2 Physics on scientists instead of +1.
Baol gets double CG production per farmer (so 1 instead of 0.5) and double energy if you don't use CG (2 instead of 1).

In addition, did you know there's a bunch of starbase stuff gets bonuses? I'll include them since they are related:

Ancient Ramparts (module): +5% Armor (+20% total), +10% armor hardening (hypothetical +60% from 6 of these)
Ancient Shield Overcharger: +17% Shields (+50% total), +17% Shield Hardening (+50% total)
Cybrex Mining Hub: +50% Mining Station Output (+150% total)
Irassian Yards: +10% Ship Build Speed (+30% total)
Yuht Astronomical Interferometer: +3 Sensor Range (+10 total), +6 Hyperlane detection range (+20 total)
Zroni Storm Caster: "-10% Daily Hull on enemy ships"
Hyperlane Detailer +5% ship speed in system (+15% total)


My final complaint is that Remnants utterly sucks as an origin, with zero long-term potential and locks you out of many interesting playstyles like Cybernetic Creed or Necrophages. Only slightly related since remnants is technically "the minor artifact" origin.

What would I do to fix minor artifacts?

Two changes:
1. I would make Facility of Archhaeo-Studies no longer unique (neither empire nor planetary) and reduce the research speed bonus.
2. I would make the bonuses granted by the Archaeo-Engineering perk increase the base stats of the weapons/modules/buildings, so that they are multiplied by all other modifiers.

Alright thank you for reading, have a nice day.
I don't see the 33% buff from the archaeo-Engineering Ascencion perk anywhere. I have started over about 35+ games in 4.0 now because when I try things, they don't work.
 
There are two situations where Ma equipment are very spammable :
  • Wilderness origin have an swapped archaeologist tech, giving MA for each society researcher. You can easily reach something like 500 Ma/month.
  • Nanite ascension's new ships have a fixed cost, completely independent from its components ; you can spam them and it won't cost you a single MA.
 
  • Wilderness origin have an swapped archaeologist tech, giving MA for each society researcher. You can easily reach something like 500 Ma/month.
  • Nanite ascension's new ships have a fixed cost, completely independent from its components ; you can spam them and it won't cost you a single MA.
speaking of ships that don't cost minor artifacts no matter what you put on them, don't nemesis ships do this too if you become the crisis? only minerals, nothing else?

i think the biggest problem with the storage cap is that as soon as the war in heaven breaks out, you are never going to be able to reinforce your ships. we need to be able to rebuild a million fleetpower on the fly, and the cap just makes that impossible.

that being said, some of the effects mentioned here i had no idea about, so i will need to do a playthrough with archeoweapons again soon.
 
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The only thing better in a 50-50 shield armour balanced setup with full pulse armour and Archaeo engineers.
Is a 50-50 setup of dragonscale armour and Psionic shields, where it's better than Enigmatic dark matter shields and Neutron armour out of the water.
The only downside is less shield regen, which isn't TOO bad in the current armour meta
 
Facility of Archaeo-Studies gets +2 more scientists (5 in total) and +2000 minor artifact capacity (+3000 total, but I think nothing else in the game increases this limit and this is a empire unique so the total is 5000).
After 4.0 rework of the Faculty of Archaeostudies, the building also gets +0.5 Minor Artifacts with Archaeo-Engineers perk (without Relic World, but also gets +0.5 with Relic World) per 100 job.
So, it gets easier to produce more minor artifacts.
 
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I'd note that an advantage of archeotech is that it doesn't suffer from the tech bloat. I have had trouble getting the conventional ship tech. Not seeing armor for decades and the like. Archeotech, at least on larger galaxies that I play on, is much easier to get. You might not find everything, but you can certainly find most or all of what you need for ships, beyond some auxiliary modules. And they're just one research each.
 
With some luck, I think you can liberate a couple of Facilities of Archaeo-Studies from your neighbours, in addition to your own. Especially if there is an AI Remnants start around. That would help with the MA flow and storage cap. But the cap is not good, increasing it could at least be a boon from the archaeology tradition, it fits with all the museum/dig site stuff.
 
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I think resource depots should increase how many minor artifacts you can store, or maybe research buildings and districts. I don't think there's really a big balance reason to keep the number low.
 
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Well a lot of people look at the modules WITHOUT the perk, or they look at the "relative scaling" factor. For example, "+60% Shields" may sound good but if you already have +100% shields from other sources then the "Relative" bonus isn't as strong when compared to other modules since these effects don't change the base. Basically, 100 shields modified by +160% is 260 but 150 shields modified by +100% is 300.
The +60% shields is just how the wiki frames it.
In actuallity you get it as flat amounts equal to the written percentages.
Example:
The Ancient Pulse Armor is stated to get +100% shield from Archaeoengineers, but that is false. It gets +450 shield.
So, say you have +50% shield from other sources, it would not be:
450 + (100% + 50%) = 1125
It would instead be
(450 + 450) + 50% = 1350
Now, this is NOT true for the weapons bonus. I assume that one just stacks with every other weapons bonus in that classic Stellaris way.
 
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This also means that Ancient Pulse armor is actually quite a bit better than normal armor and shields, even surpassing normal armor and Dark Matter Deflectors and rivaling the stats offered to a cosmogenesis empire (Or those lucky enough to find the ether dragon).

Stats Gained (From Large Slots)1 Neutron Armor + 1 Hyper Shields1 Neutron Armor + 1 Dark Matter Deflector1 Dragonscale Armor + 1 Dark Matter Deflector2 Ancient Pulse Armor2 Ancient Pulse Armor (Archaeoengineers)
Armor17401740222020402040
Shield1320168016809001800
Shield Regen8.711.111.110.210.2
Power Consumption180220220200200
Cost101 Alloys, 1.33 Exotic Gasses115 Alloys, 1 Dark matter132 Alloys, 1 Dark Matter176 Alloys, 24 Minor Artifacts176 Alloys, 24 Minor Artifacts
 
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