History Stellaris / TropesAToH

** The Knights of the Toxic God origin from the Toxoids DLC has a world that's been despoiled by the titular god. The titular order is dedicated to finding it. F

** The Knights of the Toxic God origin from the Toxoids DLC has a world that's been despoiled by the titular god. The titular order is dedicated to finding it. F

** Three of the four possible backstories for Machine Empires have this as as their background. Default Machine Empire homeworlds possess "Long-Abandoned City" and "Metal Boneyards" as planetary features, suggesting that whatever built them is long gone. Driven Assimilator capitals are littered with open landfills and mass graves of the organics who committed suicide rather than face assimilation. Determined Exterminators begin on a Tomb World, and the backstory notes that they're the ones responsible for wiping out their creators.

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: Something called "the mono-meta", the practice of making fleets entirely out of one ship type, held sway over ''Stellaris'' players for years.
** First there was the "Naked Corvette swarm", back when the smallest ships (the Corvettes) were cheap enough that floating them without any defensive components let you ZergRush others and still beat them in attrition. This persisted even after Paradox provided numerous buffs to bigger ships and weapon sizes Corvettes couldn't handle, and maintained some favor until the economy was reworked with 2.2 [=LeGuin=].
** Breaking Corvettes replaced the swarm with "BB", the practice of using only Artillery-type Battleships, who by then [[MasterOfAll were cheap and reliable enough that their only cost-effective counters were other Artillery-type Battleships]]. 3.6 [=Orion=] sought to break this by reworking Torpedoes and Disruptors to do better against bigger ships, and currently players favor mixed fleets prominently featuring Torpedo Cruisers to counter Artillery Battleships; the Frigate, a thicker-but-slower Corvette added to cheaply spam Torpedoes against Battleships, has not been quite as popular.
** For an InUniverse example, 3.6 also [[GameBreakingBug broke AI weapon preferences]]; it now uses whatever provides the highest Fleet Power score for the uniformly-balanced assortment of ships it floats, in complete disregard for the situation at hand or [[PlanetOfHats what type of equipment the empire it's playing prefers]]. The current weapon of choice is the Autocannon, which the update enabled for larger weapon slots, and which is completely out-ranged by anything that isn't a Strike Craft. The AI ''also'' disregards Frigates.

** For balance reasons, if you manage to fell a Technological Leviathan and then turn it to your purposes,[[note]]The Enigmatic Fortress being the one exception, and even then you have to be careful with it to prevent it from going kaboom[[/note]] you won't be able to reverse-engineer its' technology.

** For balance reasons, if you manage to fell a Technological Leviathan and then turn it to your purposes, [[note: Enigmatic Fortress being the one exception, and even then you have to be careful with it to prevent it from going kaboom]] you won't be able to reverse-engineer its' technology.

* BenevolentDictator: The Harmonious Collective [[NonPlayerCharacter NPC]] personality is a benevolent dictatorship in a nutshell: a clearly authoritarian personality type that tends to concern itself with the needs of absolutely all strata of its society, including the lowest and poorest of them, while also being highly averse to violence. Unlike the Decadent Hierarchy, which is another similar personality, they generally do not allow slavery in their empire (although, as authoritarians, they can technically have it). In addition, they sincerely believe that in order to maintain the delicate balance within their society, they need to spread a collectivist mentality throughout their entire population [[IndividualityIsIllegal while simultaneously eradicating individualism]] in all its manifestations as a [[TheEvilsOfFreeWill possible source of disagreement and separatism within society]].

* BenevolentDictator: The Harmonious Collective [[NonPlayerCharacter NPC]] personality is a benevolent dictatorship in a nutshell: a clearly authoritarian personality type that tends to concern itself with the needs of absolutely all strata of its society, including the lowest and poorest of them, while also being highly averse to violence. Unlike the Decadent Hierarchy, which is another similar personality, they generally do not allow slavery in their empire (although as authoritarians they can technically have it). In addition, they sincerely believe that in order to maintain the delicate balance within their society, they need to spread a collectivist mentality throughout their entire population, [[IndividualityIsIllegal while simultaneously eradicating individualism]] in all its manifestations as a [[TheEvilsOfFreeWill possible source of disagreement and separatism within society]].

* CyberneticsEatYourSoul: Spiritualist empires believe cybernetics are unholy and Spiritualist factions are unhappy if cyborgs exist in your empire.

* BizarreAlienBiology: There are a large number of avatars for your species. While there are some fairly standard Humanoid portraits to choose from, the options run the whole gamut of weirdness, whether it's something as mundane as the number of eyes on a mammalian species, round to being some kind of alien cockroach, and eventually, sentient floating plantoids. Even most of the robot species are freakishly bizarre, begging the question of just what kind of species built them.

* BrainUploading: En masse with the ''Utopia'' DLC. With the developed robotics technology, your empire will ascend into a robotic civilization after completing the ''Synthetic Ascension'' route, turning all of your pops into unique Synthetics. Spiritualist fallen empires, however, regard this as a form of mass suicide and will likely attack what they deem [[JustAMachine hollow shells pretending to be sapients]].

* HostileWeather: Habitable worlds can spawn with the Hazardous Weather modifier (symbolized by a funnel cloud) that gives bonuses to energy production for the price of reduced habitability and pop happiness. {{Terraforming}} the planet removes the modifier, though.

* FullConversionCyborg: Ascension perks allow empires to embrace the machine. At the first step, this simply involves cybernetic parts -- reflected by the addition of the Cyborg trait to pops and leaders. The general population become hardier and more productive, whilst leaders become more effective in their general areas and live longer. A second level perk allows empire to transcend their fleshy/vegetal/fungoid/etc. bodies entirely and become true machines... though many other empires will be horrified (as they think Cybernetics Eat Your Soul) and try to wipe out the offending transcendents as a result.

* {{Cyborg}}: In the ''Utopia'' DLC, your entire empire can turn into one as they ''ascend'' through the Synthetic route, making your race more powerful before ultimately BrainUploading into fully fledged Synthetics.

* GlobalCurrencyException: You cannot buy Nanites from the Market; you can only get them from planets in the L-Cluster, from a single planet defended by the Scavenger Bot outside of the L-Cluster, in lump sums from a few rare Anomalies, and/or by asking other empires for them. Nanites are used by the Scavenger Bot's defeater to recreate some of its components, specifically the best [[RegeneratingHealth ship-repairing components]] in the galaxy and (with the 3.6 "Orion" update) the best [[AntiAir P-slot weapons]] in the game. Nanites can also be transmuted into the lesser strategic resources (Gases, Motes, and Crystals) without using Pops, making them similar to PremiumCurrency.
** There are also Minor Artifacts (compared to the "Major" Artifacts, the [[AncientArtifact Relics]]), things that are only valuable because they were made anywhere from thousands to ''billions'' of years ago; these can be sold for 500 Energy Credits each, but you can't buy them. Aside from archeology, the only way to get them in large amounts is through the Rubricator and the Galatron; the former is an esoteric MatterReplicator that apparently recreates ancient alien trinkets from nothing, while the latter is a bottomless LootBox that converts your civilization's dignity into a [[RandomNumberGod random]] mountain of resources.

* BlackBox: L-Gates and the nanotech found in the hidden sector of space they lead to. After extensive research you can learn how to turn them on, but you can't turn them off and you can't make more.

** Some mods, the most popular of which is ''VideoGame/GigastructuralEnginneringAndMore'', fill it in with their own challenges.

** The ''Horizon Signal'' story pack, written by Alexis Kennedy of ''VideoGame/FallenLondon'' and ''VideoGame/SunlessSea'' fame, is an event chain of purest cosmic horror. The end result is, however, in no way horrible: you either become a goffik-looking race with Tomb World as your native planet type (very useful, because it lets you live comfortably on any type of planet) and all planets in your capital system become habitable, or you kick an EldritchAbomination in the nuts for bragging rights and increased research speed.