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Stellaris Dev Diary #146 - The Baol and The Zroni

Hello everyone!

As promised last week, we’re back to talk about something old that’s new – which, as many of you correctly guessed, is about new precursors. Adding new precursors has been something we’ve been wanting to do for quite a while now, and we’re very happy that we can now finally provide what’s been asked for.

In the next DLC you will be able to explore the fate of two new precursors, namely the Baol and the Zroni. To not spoil too much, I’ll only give a basic description of their respective backgrounds and lore.

The Baol
The Baol Organism was once a sprawling interstellar Hive Mind comprised of trillions of psychically-linked plantoids. With their ability to slowly terraform a planet's ecosystem and atmospheric gases via centuries of sustained photosynthetic processes, the Baol civilization produced a plethora of rich flora and fauna on otherwise unremarkable worlds. The Baol Organism curated lush planetary gardens and arboretums across many systems, forming mutualistic symbiotic relationships with local alien wildlife.

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The Zroni
The Zroni were possibly the most powerful psionics to have ever existed, or at least they were the first to discover the dimension which has come to be known as The Shroud. Once the Zroni population reached a certain critical mass it seems that their collective unconscious minds began to make contact with the proto-shroud in dreams, leading to mass lucid dreaming. Soon the phenomenon was studied and the Zroni discovered how to psionically project themselves into the Shroud, where they found that they could manipulate the very fabric of reality with their psionic powers. It wasn't long before the Zroni discovered they could physically enter the Shroud and live like Gods, transforming the dimension to suit their whims.

Precursor changes
One of the more impactful changes we’ve made is that we have now made the precursor spawns randomized so that they will no longer spawn in a specific part of the galaxy.

We have also added some more features and rewards to the old precursors. For example, after having found the Irassian home system, you can now spend minor artifacts to unravel some of the secrets of the Irassians. The new artifact actions aren’t the only new things though, and there’s some more cool things that you will be able to find.

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Additional precursor plans
Some of you have been asking about archaeology and adapting some of the old precursor content to use the new system. In regards to that question I will say that it is something that I always planned to do, but due to other things taking priority we can’t promise that it will happen immediately. If those changes don’t make it into the next update, it's very likely they will appear in the next big update after that. Changing that content would of course still be a part of the base game.

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That is all we had to share for this week’s dev diary. Next week we’ll be back again, which also happens to be the 3 year anniversary for Stellaris :)
 
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Do anyone know or remember, if all the precursors lived in the same time? If so, i have an idea for some adittional fluff. Let's add some story about how they interfered with one another and give us the option to find some places where they have fought or where they any other kind of interaction. Certainly that has to be more specifically, but sounds interesting to me. What you think about it?
They didn't. The Vultaum (Worm guys who found out they're in a game) blew up 12 million years ago. The Yuht got exterminated 6 million years ago. The Cybrex went into hiding 600,000 years ago.
 
I have a feeling that the Precursor projects will balance out the precursor rewards. IE: Right now, everyone "knows" that the First League ecu is the best precursor reward. But what if their precursor archaeology projects are kind of terrible? Irassian, Vult, and Yuht have flipping amazing projects (as pictured, SERIOUS research bonuses, etc) while Cybrex and First League are less great projects but better planetary rewards.
 
Sorry if this has already been answered, I haven't read the whole thread.

How's this randomisation going to work? Will the individual artifacts be scattered throughout the whole galaxy? Can you have multiple chains active at a time? How are you supposed to complete them in a reasonable amount of time?
 
Speaking of which, could you fix a bug where the precursor home system spawns somewhere the player can't reach, and gets taken by another empire, resulting in the player never being able to survey the system to claim the rewards? Personal suggestion is to put an archaeological project on the planet instead of requiring it to be surveyed.

Seriously this bug annoys me a lot, even if I take the home system in war, I can't survey it. Even when I dismantle the outpost, the precursor homeworld is still "surveyed", there's nothing short of console commands that can get around it !
 
I already want the rewards for their chains. @grekulf if the devs are working on the precursors have you considered having multiple precursors in a same game or changing the rewards for the precursors that already exist, Irassians, Vultaum and Yuht and don¡t have a special reward?
 
This looks like an amazing side dish!
Full of flavour and compliments the main course.

Speaking of meat instead of potatoes, any update on the sector system revamp?
 
With their ability to slowly terraform a planet's ecosystem and atmospheric gases via centuries of sustained photosynthetic processes, the Baol civilization produced a plethora of rich flora and fauna on otherwise unremarkable worlds.
I can sense some suspicious connections between the Life-Seeded and the Baol Organism.

It will be interesting if you add special interactions between this precursor and the empires who have Life-Seeded civic.
 
Good stuff but can you please address some of the annoying unnecessary clicking ? Like for an example can you please integrate the automatic growth encouragement mod and the automatic pop migration one ? It will also be greatly appreciated if you make the renewing of your edicts easier with 1 click or be automated as well.
 
Sorry if this has already been answered, I haven't read the whole thread.

How's this randomisation going to work? Will the individual artifacts be scattered throughout the whole galaxy? Can you have multiple chains active at a time? How are you supposed to complete them in a reasonable amount of time?
No, it's exactly like it works now. Right now though, the precursor events are "fixed". Depending on where you start in the galaxy determines which precursors you get. You literally ALWAYS get the same chain depending on where you spawn. From now on it won't be set in stone, so every galaxy you won't know until you get that first event, which will be cool.

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As other users have previously said, I'd like to play with multiple precursor chains in the same game. Perhaps we can choose how many we want as a game setting
 
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01. This looks (still) like the usual "over-prioritized" new feature(s) in order to have "something" to sell for the new DLC ...
02. Nevertheless, it looks "OK" ...
03. According to this dd: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...uctures-habitats-and-minor-artifacts.1168096/, "minor artifacts" are a part of the new DLC, so that the following is the only "free" thing so far ?:
Precursor changes
One of the more impactful changes we’ve made is that we have now made the precursor spawns randomized so that they will no longer spawn in a specific part of the galaxy.
04. Anything new, what's DONE (aka NO plans or similar stuff like this) in regards to ONGOING problems ? ...
05. What's in the next dd ?
 
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Well thats really great Looking.
Speaking of Looking, may we look Forward to a release two days after PDXCon :)

Are there any plans to tie in the three Ascension paths into the endgame Crisis? Psionic beats Synthetic, Flesh is weak beats Unbidden, Biological beats the Prethoryn?
 
This looks like an amazing side dish!
Full of flavour and compliments the main course.

Speaking of meat instead of potatoes, any update on the sector system revamp?

In a dev diary in the near future I'm planning to outline some of the changes to the sector system to explain what has been done, how things work, and what's left to do.
 
In a dev diary in the near future I'm planning to outline some of the changes to the sector system to explain what has been done, how things work, and what's left to do.
Has the dev team also taken in some the suggestions made since that dev diary?
 
Hopefully not, while I do love a good Story Pack, we do need a mechanic pack more. Diplomacy is really needing a complete do over.
I will repeat what I said earlier.

We JUST had an enormous game-changing rework in 2.2, and you're expecting another one immediately after?

2.0 - Big Change
2.1 - Smaller Stuff
2.2 - Big Change
2.3 - Looking Like Smaller Stuff
2.4 - Looking Like Bigger Stuff (And devs have all-but-confirmed this will be the diplomacy thing people keep harping on and on about)
 
I hope that First League will be fixed. Even with tile blockers, ecumenopolis before 2250+ is too strong and just breaks game balance.

Agreed. It needs to be toned down a bit or the other one brought up.

You can add a set of cool things, liek for Cyberex just have one of the sections restored already. Add few habitats to another one, and add few gias to a third.
 
Honestly, I'd like to see 2 story packs in a row to let the tech-debt catch up a bit. Let's let the grekulf catch up as the new game lead, get the project under control, sort out the mess that 2.2 left behind, fix some of the lingering disasters (lookin' at you here, sectors and economy) and let the development team really, really get the underlying mechanics fully functional while fleshing out many of the background details into full-fledged story and game depth anyway.

Two story packs in a row would give the game some breathing room. Precursors-ethics-backgrounds as 2.3 followed up with a 2.4 that reworks traditions/ascension perks would not hurt my feelings at ALL.

Then 2.5 can be diplomacy

2.6 is factions/revolts/civil-wars

2.7 fixes the abysmal world-classification and makes it a better grid (cold/warm/hot arid/humid/wet whatever) adding another set of world types and hability

Etc
 
"It wasn't long before the Zroni discovered they could physically enter the Shroud and live like Gods, transforming the dimension to suit their whims."

I don't know about you guys, but after reading these words, I am starting to have a bad feeling about the Zroni... :eek: Remember that gods like to act at whim and their followers love to add more sheeps to the flock -- no matter if they are using brute force for that or not.