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Stellaris Dev Diary #15 - Fallen Empires

Hello and happy new year! I’ll be your substitute Doomdark for today and in this week’s dev diary we’ll take a closer look at Fallen Empires.

The galaxy is vast, old and unknown. New species constantly flare into existence and some are even able to take their first cautious steps towards other stars. Of those that do some are arrogant enough to assume that they are the first and only chosen. They fail to realize that others may have taken those same steps before them, others who have found amazing wonders and unraveled their secrets, others who reached the furthest edges of knowledge only to crumble away. Those others are called Fallen Empires.

These are once-glorious empires that for unknown reasons have stagnated and often fallen to infighting or crippling apathy. That which once covered hundreds of systems have shrunk to a fraction, barely held on to by superior technology and what little remains of a once glorious fleet. Fallen Empires are isolationist and will look at newer species with disinterest or outright contempt. Diplomatic attempts are futile and they will most likely attack any unknown ships entering one of their remaining systems.

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The response of Fallen Empires vary greatly when approached. It is rarely friendly though.

Design Reasoning

We’ve added Fallen Empires to the game for a couple of reasons. They have the potential to enable some really cool stories and there is a bunch of different directions we can take to ensure players get a different experience from game to game. Players should never feel confident in how a Fallen Empire may react to different events in the galaxy. If left alone they might resurge as a reaction to a galaxy-wide threat or become outraged when their most holy planets are colonized by lesser races.

Gameplay-wise the Fallen Empires can act as a potential source of advanced technology for players willing to invest the military forces required to defeat one of their fleets in battle. In Stellaris, all ships destroyed in combat will leave debris behind and through reverse engineering a player may discover the technologies required to build the weapons and components equipped by those ships. Players can also invade planets belonging to Fallen Empires, allowing them to utilize whatever advanced buildings placed there. This of course means dealing with a new species within the Empire.
While the rewards may be tempting, players may want to consider the risks before attacking a Fallen Empire. Who knows what horrors they have unearthed during the ages, what forbidden secrets their planets hold within, what captives might be unleashed should their wardens be struck down.

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Fallen Empires will use a separate series of models for their ships and stations.

Next week the good Goosecreature will be back with a dev diary on the events and mishaps that may befall colonies and their inhabitants. Until then!
 
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With Fallen Empires, I'm picturing the species-scale equivalent of a legendary thinker who is now very old and suffering from dementia. He could share profound wisdom with you, or he could behave like a confused infant, maybe both at the same time, depending on how much of his brain is functioning today.
 
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I was thinking about fallen empires, if they could use some of Star Wars technology just like a death star, we could see some asteroids fields which was a planet once. Using this technology could have a negative relation with the rest of the known species. Also, the fallen empires could steal technologies from other empires.
Finally with fallen empires, we could see some planet which had become barren after having used some weapons which could transform a luxury once planet into another type.
 
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I wonder if mankind can be a fallen empire?
Thats actually an interesting thought, could Humanity be a fallen Empire when we start the game?

As we know they can exist on our tech level and go along like the player race and others, or they could be extinct or pre ftl tech. But i think it would be really cool to also have the chance of coming across a Human Empire in decline as one of the old powers.
 
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Aye, the more vanilla models, the better; I like how the Fallen Empire would get unique looks that, but even if I didn't or changed my mind, simple modding would enable their models for other species.
 
I'm not sure if anyone has already made this point (I apologise if someone has), I've seen a couple of people saying that it'd be cool to play as a Fallen Empire. While I agree, it would be pretty great, advanced tech, small but advanced fleet, you'd also need to have some major problems and pre-existing crises with your chosen empire, otherwise it wouldn't be a Fallen Empire. If you could resurge right at the start of the game, that'd be pretty game-breaking. Just my two cents!

I love the idea of finding a Fallen Empire, and the only system they have left is a prison world containing an even older more evil race, and all of the remianing resources are bent towards keeping this race (or even perhaps a single entity) contained.
I really hesitate to say this, but given they aren't playable unmodded and would need significantly different gameplay (probably requiring significant dev time)...

...playable Fallen Empires might make a good DLC.
 
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So with fallen empires we find an existing technologicaly advanced Empire or the pieces of such. Are we also going to find systems with only archaeological remains of such an Empire? If we create our own Empires/races in the game, is there a possibility we will find such remains of the empires created in those earlier games later in another game?
 
I think based on examples of planets we've seen so far, we can safely say that we will be able to archaeological remains. To back this up, I'll point out a picture that had "Sol 3" on it, with atomic wasted ruins. I think we can safely say that wreckage and ruins will feature and they'll probably be remnants of Fallen Empires too.
 
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And can several Fallen Empires find eachother (maybe with player help ;)) and could they then start a war? It would be amazing to see fleets of two different types venturing through my territory without even noticing me, because they want to eradicate eachother. Or they form a union of fallen empires, and then they are a new late game crisis (which may not be limited to the late game).
 
I cannot wait for Foundation and Empire-esque shenanigans with the former Galactic Empire and its attempts to emulate ancient Rome/Byzantium.
 
Horrors, do you mean like Xenomorph from Alien, Floods from Halo or Replicators from Stargate SG1?
 
I really hesitate to say this, but given they aren't playable unmodded and would need significantly different gameplay (probably requiring significant dev time)...

...playable Fallen Empires might make a good DLC.

Yeah this occurred to me as well. Not unlike how Islamic rulers were non-playable when CKII released, but with some time put into unique mechanics made for any obvious early DLC. I do hope some of the DLC like this fall into a lower price range than some of the larger more expansion-like (and therefore pricier) DLC we've seen of late.
 
Personally I wouldn't mind if they kept some things unplayable to keep them truly 'alien'

Well, one way the developers have achieved this is that they implemented this multi-layered, procedurally-generated race mechanic, such that through numerous play-throughs, the player will encounter what seems to be a familiar species....only to discover their not the same this time around.

Quite alien indeed.
 
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Well, one way the developers have achieved this is that they implemented this multi-layered, procedurally-generated race mechanic, such that through numerous play-throughs, the player will encounter what seems to be a familiar species....only to discover their not the same this time around.

Quite alien indeed.

It's yet to be seen if this actually feels like anything other than +1 aggression compared to +2 aggression last play through.
 
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It's yet to be seen if this actually feels like anything other than +1 aggression compared to +2 aggression last play through.

This is correct.We have seen lots of names with stats but how that actually makes races have personality or different gameplay is not known.In CK2 leaders have traits but none had any personality in gameplay like TotalwarAtilla does.
 
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