Stellaris Dev Diary #157 - Things That Rock

[Methone]

Cities have districts - planets have urban or agricultural regions.

For an interstellar nation, planets are cities.

 

[Kimberly]

Shift+clicking on ship count in the Fleet Manager now adds ships up to the nearest unit of ten, using ctrl fills up to the template max size (for realzies this time)

Now I'm no UI expert, but isn't this contrary to the way this works in every other number input in the game? I would expect to Ctrl+Click for 10 more and Shift+Click for 100 more, until you hit the maximum.

 

[Methone]

Now I'm no UI expert, but isn't this contrary to the way this works in every other number input in the game? I would expect to Ctrl+Click for 10 more and Shift+Click for 100 more, until you hit the maximum.

At the same time, you're not exactly gonna need to ctrl-shift for 1000 ships.

 

[pengoyo]

It'd be cool to see some of the other species groups get a similar trait (though maybe less game changing). I think the most natural one would be the plantoids consuming energy and food (energy representing the full spectrum lights they'd run to feed the population in more urban environments, and food representing water and fertilizer). Being autotrophs should make plants play differently.

Maybe do that they consume less food per pop, but as the population on the planets increase and the become more developed they can't rely on natural sunlight as much (since the tall building required by their growing civilization block the sun and more individuals have to work indoors). Thus their pops start consuming more and more energy as they become more reliant on full spectrum light bulbs. Could even have some cool building plantoids could build to reduce this energy cost.

 

[Methone]

(since the tall building required by their growing civilization block the sun and more individuals have to work indoors).

Any civilization that can use artificial gravity for luxury housing can generate photosynthesis-friendly sunlight as a parlor trick.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

My lithoid homeworld has decided the smart thing to do is to build an agriculture district as it's first build. Not the smartest choice.

 

[PalmettoExplorer14]

Hi everyone!

I’m Eladrin, Game Designer on Stellaris, and I’m one of the newer members of the Stellaris team. I joined the team during the development of Ancient Relics, and it’s been a blast. It was awesome meeting so many of you at PDXCON, and getting to hear so many ideas and excellent stories directly from you.

Back in Diary 152 and Dev Diary 153, Grekulf mentioned some of the Summer Experimentation that we did - but in today’s dev diary I wanted to talk about one of the things I worked on during the summer - game mechanics for the Lithoids.

The Lithoids Species Pack is very sedimental to me. When I wanted to dig deeper into the systems and get my hands dirty in the code, I looked at the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” list, and saw “...Lithoids ate minerals instead of food?” up near the top. This seemed like a solid foundation to start with, and a gneiss stepping stone to get my feet on the ground that fit my apatite - it seemed like a pretty simple change after all.

Okay, I’ll stop with the rock puns.

There are fifteen Lithoid portraits (and one new machine portrait), some of which have appearances that resemble some of the other phenotypes so you can do some interesting things with Syncretic Evolution.

Look at me! I'm a sparkly space unicorn!​

The ships use a beautiful asymmetrical crystal design. Remember that the colors of your ships reflect your flag. You can use this to your advantage to make a pretty sweet looking fleet.

This is my favorite Titan in the game.​

There’s also a Lithoid Advisor Voice. I may have stopped with the puns for now, but there’s no force in the universe that can stop the Lithoid Advisor.

Changing the Lithoids to consume minerals was simple enough, but we also wanted to embrace the sci-fi trope of slow growing rock beings living in inhospitable climates. We started by giving them a massive boost to habitability which they still retain today, and a much larger pop growth penalty than they eventually ended up with. For flavor they receive a bonus to Army Health, and we increased their leader lifespans (but have their leaders start somewhat older as well).

Every little change leads to several more, however. If a species eats minerals instead of food, their homeworld should start with extra mining districts and no agricultural districts built. In fact, if a species evolved to eat rocks, their homeworld should probably by mineral rich and food poor. But wait, what about if they’re a Syncretic Evolution species, or if a Rogue Servitor wants to start with pet rocks? What about if they want to be a Devouring Swarm?

Many minor changes came along with what started as a simple economic change. Just a few examples include the Lithoids being tragically unable to be declared the most delicious species in the galaxy if there are any alternatives, loosening restrictions a bit on Bio-Reactors, modifying the Fleeting trait to be -25 years for Lithoids instead of -10, and a handful of Tradition changes. We also added a few Lithoid specific traits that allow them to generate small amounts of special resources every month.

After many rounds of qualitative feedback and a huge number of playdays, we ended up with the following as the Lithoid species trait:

The large habitability boost that Lithoids receive allow them to colonize worlds that would be marginal for other species, allowing them to work around their slower pop growth speed. Empires with a Lithoid primary species also begin with Lithoid Monolith blockers on their homeworld that can be removed at a large mineral cost for an additional Lithoid pop. (A Lithoid specific Origin in Federations modifies these a bit, and… we’ll talk more about that in another Dev Diary.)

So very sleepy.​

The Lithoid trait is automatically applied to any species that uses a Lithoid portrait. For the Xenophiles out there, Half-Lithoids generated by Xeno-Compatibility follow this rule as well, so if the portrait is a Lithoid it will consume minerals instead of food, produce minerals when purged, and so on.

We’ve exposed this ability so modders should be able to similarly add phenotype forced traits to species they create by adding trait = "trait_lithoid" to the species class entry. (Replacing the Lithoid trait with their own custom species trait, of course.) I look forward to seeing what you do with it.

As for the Lithoid Devouring Swarm… They don’t have precisely the same motivations as a regular Devouring Swarm. While they will still press organics inhabiting the worlds they take into nutritive paste for the Bio-Reactors, their hunger is a bit more ambitious. Renamed Terravores, they operate largely the same way as a regular Devouring Swarm, but once off their homeworld they have an additional planetary decision to consume the habitable worlds of the galaxy, leaving devastated husks in their wake:

Are you going to eat that?​

Terravores are barred from Terraforming (and thus do not have access to Hive Worlds) and cannot clear the devastation they leave behind, but other empires can clean up after them, though it takes a major effort.

Modders will now be able to change the name and description of a civic out for another based on species class, similar to how traditions can be swapped.

Spoiler: Species Class Civic Name/Description Swap

civic_hive_devouring_swarm = {

>snip existing stuff<​

swap_type = {

name = civic_hive_devouring_swarm_lithoid
description = "civic_tooltip_devouring_swarm_lithoid_effects"​

trigger = {

local_human_species_class = LITHOID​

}​

}​

}

I’m quite pleased with how the Lithoids turned out, I think they're a real gem. I hope that you all enjoy it just as much.

In a few hours the free 2.5.0 patch will be up and the Lithoids Species Pack will be available for shale, so pick it up, rock out, and leave the galaxy gravelling at your feet!

Spoiler: 2.5.0 Patch Notes! WOO!

#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.5.0 ############################
#################################################################

###################
# Balance
###################
* The Pop Growth Reduction for Bio-Trophies now actually reduces their growth rate. Driven Assimilators now apply their organic growth penalty as a multiplier the same way as Rogue Servitors do, and is now also 50%
* Defensive Platforms placed on Outposts now provide 2 points of Piracy Suppression for their system. The Great Game tradition from the Supremacy tree now also reduces the cost to build Defensive Platforms by 33%


###################
# UI
###################
* Shift+clicking on ship count in the Fleet Manager now adds ships up to the nearest unit of ten, using ctrl fills up to the template max size (for realzies this time)
* The Shared Burdens civic will no longer appear by itself in the civics list when you select Gestalt Consciousness ethics but have not yet selected Machine Intelligence or Hive Minded authority
* Added a notification when one empire guarantees the independence of another

###################
# AI
###################
* Automated building now checks that upkeep cost is covered by income

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
* Fixed wrong save file being loaded from the resume button in the launcher, caused by a conflict between local and cloud saves
* Fixed the game complaining about mods not being in UTF8-BOM3 for no good reason
* Fixed a potential crash in AI when evaluating market values
* Fixed cases where planetary events could fire multiple notifications
* Odd Factories no longer sometimes block pops from getting purged, because you monsters should be free to purge whatever you want
* Mod load order is now the same as the order in which the mods are displayed

Known Issue: Lithoids are currently affected like other biological pops when there is a food deficit, instead of being upset by mineral deficits. They’re very empathetic.

I love this! Plus we get space crystal unicorns! And I don't mind rock puns! Those were good actually!

 

[ShamanMcLamie]

I can't be the only one who misread Volatile Excretions the first time.

Very clever Paradox.

 

[Cruel_]

I would like to add my voice to those who would like developers' attention to late game performance.

 

[Breloom1994]

Give us back the old launcher please! Can't even upload my mod without issues, the mod tool is completely broken, is there no one cares? Thought there will be fix soon, but I have been so disappointed after waiting so long when today's update has been released.

 

[Jorlem]

The ships use a beautiful asymmetrical crystal design. Remember that the colors of your ships reflect your flag. You can use this to your advantage to make a pretty sweet looking fleet.

Any chance that this could be shown on the page of the empire designer where you pick the flag colors?

Look at me! I'm a sparkly space unicorn!​

Woo!

 

[FiddleSticks96]

I'm debating holding off on getting this DLC for now until I know what all the new bugs that came with Lithoids/2.5.0 are. Will someone enlighten me? Also, given that Lithoid's starve when they don't have food, how is the AI handling playing as a Lithoid? I know that the AI already can't handle managing its economy, but this seems like it could make an AI controlled Lithoid empire death spiral even faster.

 

[Koopatin]

ah yes.. the worm loves my lithoids.. soon... soon i have tomb world plus lithoid! yes! good! good!

 

[Inny]

2.4.x launcher made it hard to upload a mod.
2.5 no longer sees local mods so I can't even upload them. That's a way to "fix" the problem, I guess.
Edit: so we have to put back an extra .mod file in the general mod folder in addition to the specific mod folder itself.
Another issue: mod versions are not updated at all in mods_registry.json when a mod is updated. This is a big issue.

 

[PhantomNova7]

Is it an oversight that lithoids cant enact a decision similar to encourage planetary growth, just costing minerals instead of food? Or was this intentional?

 

[Ffc]

Is it an oversight that lithoids cant enact a decision similar to encourage planetary growth, just costing minerals instead of food? Or was this intentional?

It seems to be totally intentional, and part of their disadvantage in growth speed.

decision_planet_food_boost = {
    owned_planets_only = yes
    sound = event_administrative_work
    icon = decision_resources

    resources = {
        category = decisions
        cost = {
            food = 1000
        }
    }

    potential = {
        owner = {
            is_regular_empire = yes
            is_lithoid_empire = no
        }
        NOR = {
            has_modifier = planet_growth_discouraged
            has_modifier = planet_population_control
        }
    }

 

[Aeon of Chasm]

Thank you for reaching out and giving us this info on the forums! I felt in the dark while pdxcon was active, waiting for something here but only seeing outside links posted. Really appreciate the diplomatic channel straight to us.

 

[PhantomNova7]

It seems to be totally intentional, and part of their disadvantage in growth speed.

decision_planet_food_boost = {
    owned_planets_only = yes
    sound = event_administrative_work
    icon = decision_resources

    resources = {
        category = decisions
        cost = {
            food = 1000
        }
    }

    potential = {
        owner = {
            is_regular_empire = yes
            is_lithoid_empire = no
        }
        NOR = {
            has_modifier = planet_growth_discouraged
            has_modifier = planet_population_control
        }
    }

Then that is a massive 50% disadvantage in growth, which I don't think their habitability modifier correctly compensates for, considering that 50% habitability accounts for the 25% growth rate, the extra 25% malus is just superfluous. While it's not a straight 25% penalty since habitability affects output and happiness, as the game shifts to when terraforming is widespread and organics can enact growth encouraged on every planet, lithoids have a massive disadvantage because that habitability isn't doing anything for them anymore and they're only being hurt by the double -25% growth penalties. Even the rare resource traits are underwhelming and don't provide any real difference, they don't even save building slots because you need 100 pops for 1 rare resource, so you'll need refineries/chemical plants/translucers anyway, besides you always want to take industrial in every circumstance, as it will just outperform any of the special traits.

Instead why not change the rare resource trait to .04 so it is a noticeable reduction in upkeep and worth taking? This change effectively reduces the upkeep of pops by 20% by translating that .2 minerals into rare resource production of the same efficiency as a refiner.

Also, can we get a unique version of agrarian idyll for Lithoids?

Thanks.

 

[Ffc]

Then that is a massive 50% disadvantage in growth, which I don't think their habitability modifier correctly compensates for, considering that 50% habitability accounts for the 25% growth rate, the extra 25% malus is just superfluous. While it's not a straight 25% penalty since habitability affects output and happiness, as the game shifts to when terraforming is widespread and organics can enact growth encouraged on every planet, lithoids have a massive disadvantage because that habitability isn't doing anything for them anymore and they're only being hurt by the double -25% growth penalties. Even the rare resource traits are underwhelming and don't provide any real difference, they don't even save building slots because you need 100 pops for 1 rare resource, so you'll need refineries/chemical plants/translucers anyway.

I think the bonus of habitability (plus the Lithoïd Monolith blockers giving pops) is really strong in early game and you're meant to "snowball".
I agree with the fact that their rare resource traits are not really good, I don't think it's even worth playing (for others reasons than fun and roleplay).

 

[DrNukeLear]

@Eladrin could I suggest four small things for you and your team?

1) First! Celebrate a job well done! I’m enjoying the terravore play style at the moment.
2) Lithoid prewritten nations.
3) Fix the slightly irritating food bug.
4) Can we have presentient Lithoids?