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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!

upload_2019-9-26_13-21-43.png

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.

upload_2019-9-26_13-21-24.png

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.

upload_2019-9-26_13-22-7.png

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 ;)

upload_2019-9-26_13-24-19.png

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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Fanatic Purifiers, Rogue Servitors etc. will not be Origins, because we you to be able to use those playstyles and still have be able to have different starts with Origins.

As usual, the Origins system will be free and in the free patch that arrives with the expansion. Certain Origins will be free, while others will be a part of the coming expansion.
I think it would be better if some Origins could simply be combined with each other.
 
there should be a Machine Cult origin for Spiritualist empires, similar to Mechanist. Praise the Omnissiah!

Yes please, praise the Omnissiah indeed!

Instead of making a whole new background, I would take the Post-Apocalyptic approach.
Make Mechanist available to non-fanatical spiritualists and make taking the origin remove the "Empty Shells" issue from the faction.
That way the spiritualists will accept robots but still hate Abominable Intelligences.
 
The Origin civics, Life-seeded, Mechanist and that will become origins, there will be not an life-seeded civic and origin, so no split, no more mechanist civic.

It is understood that no duplication is to happen. What I am getting at is the possibility of breaking up of certain (cq. genocidal) civics into new parts.

Indeed @greykulf's recent post made clear these civics are not converted to origins, but he did not specifically said they remained exactly as they are. Meaning these civics could still be alternated. Maybe converted into another category of their own. Or like I was thinking, the concept of the genocidal civics being split into a newly designed origin that can be combined with one of multiple reworked civics to recreate the same effect.

Let's see what the future holds.
 
Only now do I remember something I've wanted for quite a while: an "Environmental Collapse" origin where the homeworld's climate doesn't match the species' habitability preference. It'd fit well with the Chinorr Combine's backstory, and I myself have a species whose jungle homeworld turned into a big ball of ice a few millenia before the start of the game.

Utterly pointless in terms of gameplay (assuming the species still get 100% habitability on their homeworld no matter what), but pretty cool for RP purposes.

Not necessarily pointless, they could work it so that you have 100% habitability on your pre-catastrophic home world preference and +50% or +70% habitability on another climate.

Alternatively they could do something wholly unique like starting the game with some of the terraforming tech researched/half researched and a mission to return the homeworld to its original climate. Then after you've done it you get a ton of unity/society research/influence/happyness/stability or something, and get unity for every other planet you terraform after than.
 
The Chinorr were changed to use the Post-Apocalyptic Civic when the Apocalypse update happened, but switched back to having a dessert world when Megacorp Came out and they were given the titular authority type, sense Megacorps lack a version of the Post-Apocalyptic Civic.

sure the description of the Civic/Origin both say that it was nuclear war, but the fluff of a Civic/Origin can likely be ignored if you want to imagine alternative reasons/causes for the effects they cause, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinorr are going to be a Post-Apocalyptic Mega Corporation once this update drops
The Chinorr never had post apocolyptic, to my knowledge.
 
Hi. The change mainly influences the civics but should we take a step back and look at the ethics. I think that previous collective and individualist system was a better one.

In current scheme setting up Authority (government type: Democratic-Imperial) and Authoritarian-Egalitarian ethics axis basically represent one and the same idea and it's redundant to set it up on two places. Note that any other ethics axis do not restrict the government type - only Authoritarian-Egalitarian since they are interwoven and it's a bad thing.

Instead we can change mentioned ethics axis to represent economics, more left and right leaning - with collective and individualist system. It will be independent from authority type so you can choose any government you like. Empires not using this ethics will be on economic center and will represent a mixed economy or something among those lines.

It will force the devs to rearrange some things but offers players better empire customization and therefore better playability.
 
Instead of making a whole new background, I would take the Post-Apocalyptic approach.
Make Mechanist available to non-fanatical spiritualists and make taking the origin remove the "Empty Shells" issue from the faction.
That way the spiritualists will accept robots but still hate Abominable Intelligences.
I love the padoxical nature of the cult mechanicus.
 
While you're working on origins, I hope you add that feature we've been dreaming of where you can designate a species as related to another, and have that species recognise you as such when you encounter them. For example that lost human colony that's called Empire of Man or whatever it was, especially if you can program event chains to be triggered when two "sister species" encounter one another.
 
Indeed @greykulf's recent post made clear these civics are not converted to origins, but he did not specifically said they remained exactly as they are. Meaning these civics could still be alternated. Maybe converted into another category of their own. Or like I was thinking, the concept of the genocidal civics being split into a newly designed origin that can be combined with one of multiple reworked civics to recreate the same effect.

If they didn't say anything, at least for me, is because nothing will change with that civics. They will remain as they are right now. They are changing what they call the origin civics, life-seeded, mechanist and that into origins, the other civics, what they call institutions civics, the rest will remain. Some people worried about the possibility of Fanatical purifier and that other kind of civics, that just like origins can be changed once you start the game, would be transformed on origins, mainly because that impede to have post-apocalyptic Fanatical Purifiers. I for one think they wouldn't change anything about that civics, no other category or split between origin and institution :)
 
While you're working on origins, I hope you add that feature we've been dreaming of where you can designate a species as related to another, and have that species recognise you as such when you encounter them. For example that lost human colony that's called Empire of Man or whatever it was, especially if you can program event chains to be triggered when two "sister species" encounter one another.

Isn't that the case between the United Nations of Earth and the Commonwealth of Man? They are the same species, garden-variety humans, and one can spawn the other on the galaxy.
 
While you're working on origins, I hope you add that feature we've been dreaming of where you can designate a species as related to another, and have that species recognise you as such when you encounter them. For example that lost human colony that's called Empire of Man or whatever it was, especially if you can program event chains to be triggered when two "sister species" encounter one another.
That should already work as long Species Portrait, -name, -plural and -adjective match.
You can even have wildly different traits.
 
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.
Hoping for an "underground" origin! As far as I can remember, Ix'Idar was first an underground species. It would also work for event countries, like ratlings and underground empires.
For empires created after "Limbo"(The Awokens) and settling nomads, they may also have their own origin. It is the same with Great Khan 's Diadochis.
 
01011001 01100101 01110011 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101 00101100 00100000 01110000 01110010 01100001 01101001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001111 01101101 01101110 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01100001 01101000 00100000 01101001 01101110 01100100 01100101 01100101 01100100 00100001

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

010100000111001001100001011010010111001101100101001000000111010001101000011001010010000001001111011011010110111001101001011100110111001101101001011000010110100000100001
 
More like this imo
01010011 01100011 01110010 01100101 01110111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001111 01101101 01101110 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01100001 01101000 00100001 00100000 01000110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110111 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101101 01100001 01101110 01111001 00100001 00100000 01010111 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01001100 01100101 01100111 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100001