Stellaris Dev Diary #155 - Origins

[Holzwurm]

Short question: If you remove jobs from buildings, make them produce a fixed income, increase the pop growth and assemble time, reduce the jobs and housing on districts and reduce the amount of pops to unlock a building slot... That would be a massive performance boost for lategame right? Of course the pop number would be smaller but you could just add a zero next to the popcount for immersion, right?

 

[tapewormlondon]

Please add more flavour to these starting orgins in game - The fact we get to choose them is great, but it would be a shame if it is just a few modifiers or a couple of unique pop types.

There should be event chains unique to each one. Stellaris does such a great job of telling the story of your empire exploring the galaxy through its events, but it really lacks in the big impact events for any other areas.

While you are at it add some for characters too...and politics...and other empires...ah, just more events please!

 

[kpipersburg]

The two of you are COMPLETELY misunderstanding.

Right now, today, it is 100% possible to be an empire that is BOTH Life-Seeded and a Mechanist.

With this change as shown, however, that will NOT be possible anymore.

lol you got lots of disagrees here, but you read it the way it was actually written. As it appears, if you can only choose one origin, you cant be both mechanist and life seeded. but let the others delude themselves... life seeded mechanist is a silly way to exploit life seeded until you can make gaia worlds.

 

[Methone]

lol you got lots of disagrees here, but you read it the way it was actually written. As it appears, if you can only choose one origin, you cant be both mechanist and life seeded. but let the others delude themselves... life seeded mechanist is a silly way to exploit life seeded until you can make gaia worlds.

The reason I'm getting disagrees is because I'm being nitpicked. I just-so-happened to pick, as an example, a combination that's already not possible: Even today Life-Seeded and Mechanist lock each other out.

This was before we were told stuff like Purifiers and Swarm and such - usually lumped together with the other 'unremovable' civics like Mechanist - were staying civics and not also becoming Origins, too.

 

[Slignerd]

Since you're gonna have to revisit Xanid Suzerainty to give it a new civic, how about giving it a better flag, too?

Current flag:   Proposed flag:
 

 

[InvisibleBison]

Since you're gonna have to revisit Xanid Suzerainty to give it a new civic, how about giving it a better flag, too?

Could you please explain, for those of us who don't have your exact aesthetic sensibility, what is wrong with the old flag and why the proposed one is better?

 

[The Traitor]

What about expanding the ethics and civics. Something similar to this mod. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1329351538

 

[PirateJack]

I completely missed that, but I seriously doubt that will be the case. I think it's more along the lines of redundancy.

Yeah, this is what I expect, but I can hold out hope for ethically inclined Hive Minds. I'd love to have some variety in the type of Hive Mind I create beyond civics and for the actual personality of the Hive to matter beyond roleplay.

 

[Piotrzeci]

How will that affect PreFTL species?

 

[Gaen]

I just ran that through a Binary to English translator. I was hoping for something more along the lines of:

010100000111001001100001011010010111001101100101001000000111010001101000011001010010000001001111011011010110111001101001011100110111001101101001011000010110100000100001

01000010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101001 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100100 00100000 01110011 01100001 01111001 00100000 01110000 01110010 01100001 01101001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001111 01101101 01101110 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01100001 01101000 00111111

 

[mammonmachine]

As a complement to origin, it would be great to have a civic slot for your Empire's 'purpose' - what is it trying to achieve? A lot of the 'fixed' civics could go in this slot, such as Fanatical Purifier or Inward Perfection. For flavour, this could become 'Directive' for Machine Empires, including e.g. Assimilators and Servitors, but also a few special ones such as machines that want to become individuals. Like Origins, you could generate some more generic ones, such as prosperity, spiritual thriving, conquest, knowledge. But the idea would be not that this is a fixed slot throughout the game but something that could evolve. This could be a quite nuanced evolution - perhaps prosperity because fixated around credits and consumer goods for one empire, population happiness for another. This could affect not just bonuses, but with careful balance, points gained for different states and achievements in the empire. It might be that certain Purposes could offer dramatic flips - what if, under specific conditions, fanatical purifiers become redeemers, trying to make up for their crimes by defeating a galactic menace. Inward perfectionists, having achieved true enlightenment, decide to share it with the galaxy.

 

[Orinsul]

That's actually an interesting idea: having a bunch of unique origins only one empire can have in each game, that grants a unique starting system (like Earth) and a starting quest. At least that would help the story building.

Not only one, we could have many children of earth out there. and get randomly named hunt for the arkship missions maybe?

 

[Diputs]

As a complement to origin, it would be great to have a civic slot for your Empire's 'purpose' - what is it trying to achieve? A lot of the 'fixed' civics could go in this slot, such as Fanatical Purifier or Inward Perfection. For flavour, this could become 'Directive' for Machine Empires, including e.g. Assimilators and Servitors, but also a few special ones such as machines that want to become individuals. Like Origins, you could generate some more generic ones, such as prosperity, spiritual thriving, conquest, knowledge. But the idea would be not that this is a fixed slot throughout the game but something that could evolve. This could be a quite nuanced evolution - perhaps prosperity because fixated around credits and consumer goods for one empire, population happiness for another. This could affect not just bonuses, but with careful balance, points gained for different states and achievements in the empire. It might be that certain Purposes could offer dramatic flips - what if, under specific conditions, fanatical purifiers become redeemers, trying to make up for their crimes by defeating a galactic menace. Inward perfectionists, having achieved true enlightenment, decide to share it with the galaxy.

I like this suggestion, a way to take the most unique civics and turn them into something meaningful. It could even be a little bit like a 'Golden Age' from Europa, where the empire's purpose has a number of conditions you fulfill in order to accumulate glory. Obviously, purging for the genocidal civics, having certain high-level technologies or traditions unlocked for some inwards focused perks, having so many types of alien species as a Xenophile, switching to Utopian Abundance for all citizens as an Egalitarian, getting ahold of the galactic market as a Megacorp...

It might still need a little work, but I like the idea. Also, semi-related, giving Federations something to share as well - even if it's just an Ethic "You must be a tick of Egalitarian because we actually believe in rights" or "This league is meant to spread the faith, so you have to be Spiritualist". Seems like it shares a similar concept. I wonder what you'd call an expansion that focused on that - Stellaris: Telos?

 

[Epic_mushroom]

While I do love this idea, and am very happy to finally see it being brought into action, I think it could be taken even further. Planetary Origin is one thing, your planet helped shape your catgirl purifiers into the terror of the galaxy they are today (and the sole living sentient species tomorrow), but Civics such as Syncretic Evolution, Fanatic Purifiers and Barbaric Despoilers seem more like inherent cultural values than planetary traits. Many of the most entertaining Civics are those that cannot later be changed, and being unable to combine them with the more fluid Civics of the game seems like such a waste. The game could well benefit from a second type of Origin Civics, namely those that pertain to ingrained cultural traits, though probably not until this first batch of Origins have been fielded and tested

 

[Slignerd]

Could you please explain, for those of us who don't have your exact aesthetic sensibility, what is wrong with the old flag and why the proposed one is better?

Purple circle on a yellow background is not a great color combination, especially when its shape overlaps with a round logo... and the colors of yellow and purple don't feel like a good fit for that empire, either.

 

[Melendor]

Hello everyone!

I have just returned from a belated vacation in Japan, and although I had a great time there it is also fun to be back to work. Today I want to talk about some of the cool things happening with Stellaris this year. As many of you have probably guessed, Stellaris will announce a new expansion at PDXCon this year. This expansion will feature a lot of cool new things, most of which will be revealed at PDXCon. But I do also have something really neat that I want to share with you now!

View attachment 514927
Good ol’ civics. Gotta love ‘em.​

Back in Utopia we introduced a lot of cool new features to improve how you could customize and specialize your empire. Civics were a great addition to the game (in fact I consider them to be one of the best), but they are also awkwardly split between “backgrounds” like Syncretic Evolution and “institutions” like Distinguished Admiralty or Imperial Cult. Civics have added a lot of really cool options to how you can play the game, and that is something I want to expand upon – this is where the Origins come in.

View attachment 514926
Materialistic, mechanist, mushroom madness?
​

Origins is a new feature that is very similar to Civics, and will now represent your empire’s background. An empire can only select one Origin, and an Origin cannot be changed. We will be adding a bunch of new Origins (some of them are really cool!) and we will also be changing some Civics into being Origins instead. Examples of Civics that will be converted into Origins are Mechanists, Post-Apocalyptic, Life-Seeded and Syncretic Evolution.

View attachment 514928
Life-Seeded Origin, now open to hive minds.​

Certain types of empires were previously unable to access some of these backgrounds since they have their own set of Civics (Gestalts and Megacorps for example). Because some of those Civics have been turned into Origins, those backgrounds will now be available to more types of empires. This means that it should now be possible to have a hive mind with the Life-Seeded origin or a Megacorp with the Mechanists origin. We know this is something people have been asking for for a long time now, and it’s really great to be able to add Origins to the game.

Like I mentioned earlier, we will also be adding a whole lot of new Origins that will add interesting starting positions for your empire. Right now we have 16 in the current version of the game, and we will probably see a few more until it's finished. I think Origins will be a great addition to the game that will surely help to facilitate a lot more player stories and player fantasies.

We won’t be showing all of these yet, but it will probably be immensely hard for us to not tease a few every now and then

View attachment 514929
Who isn’t curious about Remnants and Scions?​

PDXCon is rapidly approaching and Stellaris fans will have a lot of cool things to look forward to! In two weeks we will be back again with another dev diary, where we’ll talk a bit more about PDXCon.

Idea


Terraformed Home Planet

Your specie terraformed its home planet in order to make it adequate to its needs.

Start with Terrestrial Sculpting tech

Terraforms with -10% cost and time

When finished one terraform gains 3 (?) months of unity.

 

[Zergor]

Hum scion and remnants...

My guess is that remnants would be the survivors of a cataclysmic event of a very advanced civilization (maybe even fallen empire level).
I could imagine them start on a relic world or have a relic world in their system.

Scions... both the name and image seem to show that a superior entity has shown them the way but probably want something in return. That could be something like starting as a vassal of a fallen empire.

 

[Tyrannical Prince]

It looks like Origins are going to be limited to these characteristics

1. unique planetary state (post-apocalyptic, life-seeded...)
2. early unlock of technology (mechanist...)
3. unique pop situation (syncretic evolution...)
4. unique political formation (vassalization, liberation, preftl civ, fallen empire): these ones are probably not accessible to the player but I could be wrong

We don't know what prosperous unification, remnants or scion are yet.
Perhaps Scion means you are not native to your planet? (unique planetary state) but I wouldn't know the associated bonuses with that.
I wouldn't be surprised if remnants involved starting on a relic world.
Planetary unification probably gives you some basic stat bonuses (ethics attraction, influence...)

So here are some theoretical origins on the above categories

start on a habitat, ring world, ecumonopolis or relic world(I personally don't find these interesting but I know some people do)
start with the ability to modify organic pops right away (eugenacists)

 

[Colonel Science]

It looks like the "remnants" origin might start you off on a relic world. If that's the case I imagine that it would need a way to put agriculture districts on a relic world. Maybe a special planetary feature, "ancient hydroponics arcology" or something that adds agriculture district slots

 

[G S Palmer]

It looks like the "remnants" origin might start you off on a relic world. If that's the case I imagine that it would need a way to put agriculture districts on a relic world. Maybe a special planetary feature, "ancient hydroponics arcology" or something that adds agriculture district slots

I started work on a civic mod that would let you start on a relic world (got it mostly done, but probably won't post it now with origins around the corner), and the way I did it was have the agriculture districts added by a tile blocker. Having said tile blocker be covering the Dense Ruins feature would help to balance it out a bit.

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

I started work on a civic mod that would let you start on a relic world (got it mostly done, but probably won't post it now with origins around the corner), and the way I did it was have the agriculture districts added by a tile blocker. Having said tile blocker be covering the Dense Ruins feature would help to balance it out a bit.

Hopefully there’s a tech requirement on clearing that feature so no person or ai clears it too early and starves.