You probably remember that at launch Stellaris included an army "Attachment" system. This let you modify armies, upgrading them in fun ways like mounting them as cavalry or deploying swarms of killer drones. With 2.2 the army attachments were removed due to player complaints about excessive clicking. Rather than improving the UI, Paradox removed the lot and unfortunately threw a bunch of great colour, story and lore content in the bin.

What you likely don't remember is that during a dev stream at the time, the game director, Wiz, speculated he would bring attachments back. That never happened. Wiz is gone and the modern devs have talked about being uninterested in ground combat.

What you almost definitely have no idea about is that there are many unused yet incredibly cool and professionally written attachment ideas by Paradox in the game files. They were cut right before launch, likely due to the changing ideas for ground war pre-release and then crunch. I get the feeling that these attachments were left visible in the hope a mod maker would pick up the torch. That's what this is.


This mod adds six technologies to your game that bring back army attachments! Attachments do two things: They confer an empire wide bonus to all your troops and also spawn armies when combat begins.

There are roughly 70 attachments to discover, inside you'll find:

• Pre 2.0 attachments, like Xenomorph Cavalry, Power Armour, Neo-Concrete Fortifications
  
• Unreleased attachments, such as Raptor Flocks, Exploding Slave Collars, Battle Worms, Class-A Psionics, Shadow Assassins
  
• New attachments, to fill balance holes in the mod, hopefully still cool like Mechs, Active Camouflage, Xeno-morph Queens and more.
  

There are more than ten paths to play through, with attachments for all kinds of empires, armies and ascension paths.




Attachments are broken into five specialisations. You decide the order you unlock them and can prioritise the ones most suited to your empire.

• Equipment, like Flame-Throwers, Jet-Packs and Cybernetic Replacements
  
• Infrastructure, like Air-Defence artillery, Neo Concrete, Tremor or Storm Generators
  
• Reinforcements, like the Military police corp, Cybernetic Infiltrators, Genetic Shock Troopers, or Suicide Clone Brigade
  
• Beasts, like Mutant Hordes, Xenomorph Brood Coordinators, War Canines or Battle Worms
  
• Vehicles, like Hover-Tanks, Battle Striders, War Speeders, Dropships or Mechs
  

Unlike Vanilla, in which equipping attachments required hundreds of tedious clicks, you now apply attachments to all armies at once.

• First, research any of the six technologies. (They're all in Military theory.)
  
• Second, select your attachment specialisation on the pop-up.
  
• Third, and finally, head to the Attachment Library (found in edicts) to equip whatever you want!
  
• That's it!
  

Attachments come in varying strengths. As you progress through the tiers you'll be able to equip more and more of them, up to a maximum of six at once. The rarities are:
Basic (T1), Complex (T2), Advanced (T3), Exotic (T4), Master (T5) and Grandmaster (T6).


In addition to an empire bonus, each attachment spawns a unique army to fight for you. For example, if you use the Military Police attachment, you'll gain units of Military Police Corps in your ground invasions.

These new armies are completely micro-free. They have no cost, they do not have to be manually recruited or taken in transport ships: They automatically spawn when combat begins, and leave when combat ends.

There is a unique army for every single attachment, and I really enjoyed dreaming them up. They can be anything from Flame-Thrower Brigades, to Clone Decoys, to Android Snipers to Xenomorph Queens.




For full documentation I have a google sheet here.


Check out the thread below.

• My planet view mod improves the army screen and has special interaction with this mod, giving all the attachment icons fancy and unique icons.
  
• My mod Dangerous Wildlife Expanded gives you bonus attachment content (the cavalry feature) and has code to make these two mods work together.