Stellaris - Missing node as gestalt consciousness (2024)

Gestalt council node bug fix
Hello I recently encountered a problem during playing. Basically the node disappeared for no reason. But fear not After looking through the save file I have discovered a solution.

How to Fix
In order to fix it you want to extract the gamestate file from the save file first.

1. Extracting the gamestate file
You can locate the file by typing the following address in windows file explorer:
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\save games

Find the correct stellaris game and copy one save file to an other location. Forinstance your Desktop. Once you have separated the .sav file we need to extract the gamestate file. Funny enough the .sav is actually a .zip file so all we have to do is rename .sav to .zip and extract the gamestate file.

2. Modifying the save file
Now we need to do a bit of searching. First open the file in one of the following programs:

• Visual Studio Code
• Notepad++
• An other text editor

2.1. Obtaining the country id
Now we need to find the country id of your empire. If it is a solo game you can skip this step and just use 0. If not you need to do the following steps:

1. Search for your empire name. (Ctrl + F)
2. You want something that matches this pattern: country_name="Your empire name here"
3. Put your typing cursor before the c of country_name and press the up arrow.
4. Repeat untill you find something like this: country=x. (The x should be a number)
5. Note this number down and go the the next steps.

2.2. Obtaining the council information
Start by searching for the following: council_positions

If you know the civics your empire uses you might be able to easily spot your empire by the civics and government type/origin. If so then you can copy the date of the council_positions and note it down. If you can not than I have sadly no easy solution for you.

Copy the council_positions info it should look something like this:

council_positions={ 16777269 33554517 89 90}

Watch out! The values are in the following order:

1. Growth Node
2. Cognitive Node
3. Legion Node
4. Regulatory Node

2.3. Obtaining the node info​

Now we need to know the info of the node(s) that is/are missing. You can use the following search terms to find the different types of nodes:

• Regulatory Node
  • key="councilor_gestalt_regulatory"
• Cognitive Node
  • key="councilor_gestalt_cognitive"
• Growth Node
  • key="councilor_gestalt_growth"
• Legion Node
  • key="councilor_gestalt_legion"

You want to use the search terms above like key="councilor_gestalt_legion" to find the node that is missing.
Depending how many gestalt empires there are there might be more than one match. This is where we use the country id.
Scrolling down you should eventually see something like: country=x (again the x is a number). If the x matches
the country id of your empire you have the correct leader. All we need to do now is note the id of this leader. To
do this we need to scroll up until we see the following:

 213= <------This is your ID (213 in this case) { name= { full_names= { key="councilor_gestalt_legion" } use_full_regnal_name=yes }

Note all the ids of the nodes by the nodes. In this case: Legion Node = 213

Now we need to add a value to assign the node as part of the council. To do this Add the following part below the level=x value:

 council_location= { type=council_position area=none assignment=none id= <------ Put here the council position that matches the node type. (In my case 89 for Legion Node) }

DO NOT COPY THE ARROW AND TEXT AFTER THAT! It should look like this:

 council_location= { type=council_position area=none assignment=none id=89 }

2.4. Searching for the link.
The last thing we need to do is search for the link. This can be done the easy way with the following search terms:

• Regulatory Node
  • type="councilor_gestalt_regulatory"
• Cognitive Node
  • type="councilor_gestalt_cognitive"
• Growth Node
  • type="councilor_gestalt_growth"
• Legion Node
  • type="councilor_gestalt_legion"

(Its now type instead of key)

Match the link id of the council_positions and the country number. It should look something like this:

 89= { country=0 type="councilor_gestalt_legion" }

Now we need to assign the leader to this link object. All we need to do is add leader=x. The x is the id of the leader. It should look something like this:

 89= { country=0 type="councilor_gestalt_legion" }

Now we need to assign the leader to this link object. All we need to do is add leader=x. The x is the id of the leader. It should look something like this:

 89= { country=0 type="councilor_gestalt_legion" leader=213 }

And that is it for modifying the gamestate file.

3. Replace the old gamestate with the new gamestate
All we need to do now is replace the old with the new. Just drag the new gamestate file into the zip file. After this is done close the zip file and change the file extention from .zip to .sav and place it back into the save folder location. Load the modified save and it should be working again.