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Stellaris Dev Diary #155 - Origins

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!

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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.

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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.

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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 ;)

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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.
 
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What are all the origins we know so far, and what do they do?

Besides the one shown on this dev diary there were shown:

Shattered ring:
You start on a shattered ring world.

Void dwellers:

You start on a habitat above a cracked planet. Get habitats earlier and cheaper.

Scion:
You start as a vassal of a fallen empire and get unique interactions with them.

Remnants:
You start on a relic world with unique dig sites to uncover the past glory of your ancestors.

Tree of Life:
Hiveminds only. On your home world grows a tree of life granting your home world and empire powerful effects. If the tree dies or you lose access to it eg. your home world is conquered you get negative effects. It has currently a baol tree as picture, the origin might lore wise be connected to them.

There is also a origin for every different type of federation. So you can already start as part of a federation.
Every federation has 2 bonus effects for every member and one that only applies to the president. Federations can level up to grant more and better effects.
The types of federation we currently know are:

Trade League: Can only be founded by megacorps or empires with merchant guilds civic. One passive bonus is all members gain access to a special trade policy that combines the benefit of all current ones.

Research Federation: passive bonus is all members have free research agreements with each other.

Military federation: starts with the option to build a federation fleet, other federation need to unlock this first. Can have a larger federation fleet.

Hegemonic federation: every member just gets one bonus effect, the president gets 2 instead. Unique wargoal of the president to force other empires in the federation. Members can't leave the federation without permission of the president.
 
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There's also a Galactic Union federation that has an easier time making new members join.
 
Void dwellers:

You start on a habitat above a cracked planet. Get habitats earlier and cheaper.
Reminds me of the Alternate Reality trait in Stars!. Would be awesome if species with this trait could only live in habitats and starbases. Would be hard as heck to balance, probably, and would probably require one or more special rules, but would be great if it could be done.
 
Besides the one shown on this dev diary there were shown:

Shattered ring:
You start on a shattered ring world.

Void dwellers:

You start on a habitat above a cracked planet. Get habitats earlier and cheaper.

Scion:
You start as a vassal of a fallen empire and get unique interactions with them.

Remnants:
You start on a relic world with unique dig sites to uncover the past glory of your ancestors.

Tree of Life:
Hiveminds only. On your home world grows a tree of life granting your home world and empire powerful effects. If the tree dies or you lose access to it eg. your home world is conquered you get negative effects. It has currently a ball tree as picture, the origin might lore wise be connected to them.

There is also a origin for every different type of federation. So you can already start as part of a federation.
Every federation has 2 bonus effects for every member and one that only applies to the president. Federations can level up to grant more and better effects.
The types of federation we currently know are:

Trade League: Can only be founded by megacorps or empires with merchant guilds civic. One passive bonus is all members gain access to a special trade policy that combines the benefit of all current ones.

Research Federation: passive bonus is all members have free research agreements with each other.

Military federation: starts with the option to build a federation fleet, other federation need to unlock this first. Can have a larger federation fleet.

Hegemonic federation: every member just gets one bonus effect, the president gets 2 instead. Unique wargoal of the president to force other empires in the federation. Members can't leave the federation without permission of the president.

Thanks!
 
I think he also mentioned that the downside is Void Dwellers also have some kind of penalty when colonizing planets?

Correct. I forgot that and probably more. That's just what I remembered from watching the stream. A full write down of all stream information would be the best, but I don't have time for that. Maybe someone else want to do it?
 
I really love that! i had some ideas that i couldnt realize, like a megachurch coming from a Post Apocalyptic race (what better reason to believe in a god than surviving that).
I possibly still wont be able to do a gestalt mega corp, but hey, it sounds great!
 
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 ;)

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Who isn’t curious about Remnants and Scions?
So Scion, Remnants and others have been revealed at PDX con, but one thing I did not find adressed:
What is the default origin?
None of those origins would particulary fit the UNS.

Peacefull Unification was shown at PDX con, but not explained. Based on the existing backstopry, that would propably be the origin of the UNS/default origin.
But what does it "do" for your empire? I mean it has to be soemthing on par with Post Apocalyptic, Live Seeded, Mechanist and Synchretic Evolution. Do you have any clear idea/concept on what it will do?
 
I think he also mentioned that the downside is Void Dwellers also have some kind of penalty when colonizing planets?
If the Void Dwellers have the Habitat Habitability trait (which is the default if their (game-mechanical) homeworld is a habitat) then that gives them a starting 0% to all the normal 9 planets, which would be quite the downside.
I just hope they give this trait to Maraurders and give them an actual habitat too.
 
I think he also mentioned that the downside is Void Dwellers also have some kind of penalty when colonizing planets?

If the Void Dwellers have the Habitat Habitability trait (which is the default if their (game-mechanical) homeworld is a habitat) then that gives them a starting 0% to all the normal 9 planets, which would be quite the downside.
I just hope they give this trait to Maraurders and give them an actual habitat too.
It is the same penalty as for Ring Worlds and Gaia Worlds. With only those two being actually used in that one System and only Gaia World Habitability being somewhat common.
Of course unlike those two, Habitats are relatively easy to build. I can not remmber if they start with that tech already, but I guess at least some Habitat related bonuses are in that Origin.

Also IIRC, Habitat, Ringworld and Gaia Habitability overrides the Habitability trait. Nobody except guys with that habitability has explicit 100% habitability on gaia and ring or 80% on Habitats. The "Planetary" Habitabiltiy of those structures overrides the Habitability Trait, if it is higher.
 
Will Origins be moddable where one can have more than one, like say Life-Seeded + Syncretic Evolution?
It seems clearly intended that there can be only one origin.

It might be possible they keep the Civics around as a fallback however. So you could have Life Seeded as Origin and Synchretic Evolution as Civic, or vice versa.
 
Does this mean inward perfection + gaia world might be gone. That could suck. I would almost prefer inward perfection if it removes the need for xenophobia. I don't know why that matters. It should be a thing on it's own. Most of the restriction are the restriction to good RPing and stuff. Why does it matter if I'm xenophobic if I can't do most of the team based stuff. It has enough downsides.

BTW, will this stuff be available without the expansion? Like will the older pre existing stuff still be there?

This game just needs to be optimized for 64 Cores is all. Everyone must buy threadrippers.

Still don't know why all games aren't multicore. It's been decades and still nothing. When will that byte them in the ass. This games already ridiculous enough that it isn't. It's one game that absolutely should have been on that band wagon from the start. None of there current problems would exist and they could have developed unimpeded from the start. I don't know how they and others justify it.
 
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Does this mean inward perfection + gaia world might be gone. That could suck. I would almost prefer inward perfection if it removes the need for xenophobia.
Only Civics that change your start seem to be changed into Origins.

AFAIK, stuff like Fanatic Purifier stays a Civic that can not be removed. It will not turn into a Origin.
It seems like Inward perfection would work similary, being the "Fanatic Pacifist" Civic.