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Stellaris Dev Diary #185: Announcing Necroids

Hello everyone!

Today we bring you some exciting news about our upcoming Species Pack! We’re happy to announce that our next species pack will be themed around death and should allow you to live death to the fullest! Check out the trailer below:


Necroids will feature:
  • 15+1 new portraits (the +1 being machine)
  • 1 new Ship Set
  • 1 new City Set
  • 1 new Room background
  • 1 new Origin
  • 3 new Civics
  • 1 new pre-scripted Empire
  • 1 new Advisor Voice
We wanted to add ships that had a more sinister or evil appearance, and I’m very happy to say we’ve made something really great. We’ll go into more detail about the ships, and give you a peek into the art process, in a future dev diary.

True to the theme, we wanted the portraits to revolve around death, but not look outright undead or decaying. We never intended the Necroids to be specifically undead, but rather themed around death. Similar to the ships, we will be doing a dev diary in the future to give you a peek into the art process, and also reveal all the new portraits. Stay tuned!

Regarding the other features, we have already shown you some of them, such as the Death Cult Civic and the Memorialist Civic. The remaining features will be revealed over the next couple of weeks, and maybe you'll even get to learn about Jeff. But for now, let’s pass the Mishar Cabal into our memories.

---

General Donnten threw her bloodied axe next to Ostiir’s severed head. The others in the Leadership Council would remember this the next time they considered interrupting her in the Mishar Althing.

She pushed past the acolytes that were coming to deal with the corpse. They were annoyed - the rites were always harder if the head was removed - but they would just have to stitch it back together.

Smiling to herself, she left the arena. At least Ostiir would be an obedient little soldier now.


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There are a bunch of things that we're working on, including some quality of life and micromanagement changes that are too big to go alongside a species pack. We'll start discussing those once they bake a little longer and I can give firmer information.
 
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There are a bunch of things that we're working on, including some quality of life and micromanagement changes that are too big to go alongside a species pack. We'll start discussing those once they bake a little longer and I can give firmer information.

Micromanagement changes are a good thing, are you going to discuss about the AI as well?
 
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...lol... you guys (users) are really ... hmmm ... first the devs postet some dd with techical informations... users complain and get angry cause they want information about new dlc and stuff.... now the devs tell us about the new species-pack (dlc) ... and... users complain and get angry cause they want to see how game will be fixed .... seems like you guys just want to blame paradox, and thats no constructiv critic, its just shit, so what do you think wil change if you complain in every fucking post the devs make? exapt that the devs get rid of reading it?

So by the way, new species-pack is cool, the performence-optimations postet in earlier dds also sounds well, hopefully both is as well as it seems on the first look.

...so say about paradox what you want, guys, but they are still better than EA.
 
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...lol... you guys (users) are really ... hmmm ... first the devs postet some dd with techical informations...
The technical information was about an issue (loading times) few people had any problem with, and, therefore, weren't interested in (it was even strange that developer/coder time is spent on this). The issues are AI, Crisis, and (for some people) in-game performance.
 
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...lol... you guys (users) are really ... hmmm ... first the devs postet some dd with techical informations... users complain and get angry cause they want information about new dlc and stuff.... now the devs tell us about the new species-pack (dlc) ... and... users complain and get angry cause they want to see how game will be fixed .... seems like you guys just want to blame paradox, and thats no constructiv critic, its just shit, so what do you think wil change if you complain in every fucking post the devs make? exapt that the devs get rid of reading it?

So by the way, new species-pack is cool, the performence-optimations postet in earlier dds also sounds well, hopefully both is as well as it seems on the first look.

...so say about paradox what you want, guys, but they are still better than EA.

Yeah they talked techical informations of stuff that nobody cared about. I mean they said that they can't multithread stuff because it's not so simple, you can read that on wikipedia as well you don't need to come on stellaris forum. The real problem now is the sleepy (brain dead) "reworked" military AI, something they don't address by 6 months now.
 
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The technical information was about an issue (loading times) few people had any problem with, and, therefore, weren't interested in (it was even strange that developer/coder time is spent on this). The issues are AI, Crisis, and (for some people) in-game performance.
That doesn't excuse the reaction here.

In response to disagrees: Alright, yep. The devs are slaves to give us whatever info we demand, whenever we demand it. Obviously. Would you prefer no communication at all?
 
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I love the thematic and narrative ideas you're going for here. From the Borg to the Necrons, space-undead open up a lot of room for creativity.

But almost all of this is just an art and aesthetics pack. And while new civics seem to be narratively interesting, Memorialist is just a flavor-variation of spiritualist.

For players who get excited about new art this should be a lot of fun. Personally, though, I'd have a hard time getting excited. It feels like this is lining up to introduce death empires that are basically the same, but with a different picture or with slightly different modifiers here and there.

My hope upon seeing this is that they plan to down the line add a lot more flavor events and such. One of the only things I've ever found annoying is that (especially on maps with more empires spawned) how easy it is to run out of events and basically just be... sitting there doing a thing here or a thing there and just waiting for things to happen.
 
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You can release all the art that you want.

If you do not fix the game, we will not come back to give you any money.

The game is broken and it has been for way too long.

A small example of things wrong with this game:


Look at the progress since 2.2. So many systems are still broken, like the Crisis. Automation was introduced in 2.3. But its horrible and you can't recommend it to anyone. Instead you have to manage all planets yourself. Playing with 50, 100 planets is a nightmare and the mid to lategame is no fun. Don't get me started on pop micromanagement and the whole resettlement and migration nonsense.

The game features automatic migration so your growth should just go from fully developed planets with full buildings slots and districts to new planets, automatically, for 0 micromanagement. Problem solved. This is already in the game, it just needs to be adjusted. Why is no work being done on this?

But then you might say, what about all the updates since 2.2?

How many of them were actually needed changes? Hundreds of hours were wasted on changing things which did need no changes, atleast not higher priority than fixing crisis, lategame, AI and micromanagement.

Why was admin cap changed? Going wide is even stronger than before. Playing tall was never a thing in this game in the first place, but now you must conquer as much as you can, while having no option to effectively have the AI handle it.

Why did we get another update to Habitats? Thats like the 3rd change to Habitats since 2.2. Waste of time in my opinion.

Why was the influense sink changed? Now you are no longer spending 300 or 200 influence on improving energy, food or mineral output but instead use a slot for a permanent feature. There is no huge benefit from this.

In fact, this was the ultimate nail in the coffin for Spiritualists, which are already a giant meme since Paradox hates them according to how they balance Spiritualism vs Materialism. Now their ethic bonus of increasing edict duration is almost entirely worthless. What a joke!

The AI is garbage yet the developer from Starnet AI has made an AI that is actually able to play the game without any cheats on normal difficulty. And he has done so with less tools than the official developers. The unmodded AI doesn't even come close to this! How is this even possible that a modder made such a vastly higher quality AI? Or rather, how it is possible that the unmodded AI continues to be so terrible?

How can you even consider adding things like Space Whales for harvesting into the game when the Crisis doesn't work since 2.2? The game is broken and its not getting fixed.
 
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There are a bunch of things that we're working on, including some quality of life and micromanagement changes that are too big to go alongside a species pack. We'll start discussing those once they bake a little longer and I can give firmer information.
as happy as i am to hear this you'll have to forgive me if i am still going to be skeptical till i get my hands on the patch that perhaps fixes the game
 
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There are a bunch of things that we're working on, including some quality of life and micromanagement changes that are too big to go alongside a species pack. We'll start discussing those once they bake a little longer and I can give firmer information.
We've heard this time and time again. I'll believe it when I see it. Nice of you to not even mention performance :)
 
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We didn't burn cars or buildings, we just made them know that we find the current state of the game not acceptable
So far! Given it's 2020. I'd say we have shown remarkable restraint. Have stayed constructive, friendly, and polite.
 
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as happy as i am to hear this you'll have to forgive me if i am still going to be skep5tical till i get my hands on the patch that perhaps fixes the game

Me too, I mean read the message, annunced quality of life and micromanagement improvements when 99% of the complaining posts are about AI.
Looks like paradox is not listening to its community.
 
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I like that this and the previous species packs have been adding mechanics on top of portraits and models. Any chance we’ll see parasitic races?
Dear god, please no. I do not want space bot flies, or ticks, or other disgusting stuff. I'd pay them NOT to do this.
 
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Didn't buy Lithoids, won't buy this either, for the same reason:

Fix the damn game instead of pushing out ever more content for it. Crisis, AI and (still!) performance are abysmal. As are the myriad of bugs still left over from earlier version of the game you're aware of but won't fix.

Or just... Walk away and admit that you just don't care any more. Stop this facade and let it finally die.

I mean, one would assume given the way people are talking (and how often I heard it with CK2 even as they continued releasing new DLC) that the answer is that one could resonably assume they don't care? And that they aren't going to let it die because it still makes them money?

I mean, it seems like so far that they know enough people will wind up buying this anyways, given most trends for things, or that this will cost so little there's no reason not to go ahead and make it.
 
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So far! Given it's 2020. I'd say we have shown remarkable restraint. Have stayed constructive, friendly, and polite.
Derailing every thread you can to talk about the issue is none of those things.

Edit: 4 comments, many disagrees, and not one reply. Is it because everyone knows I'm right?
 
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Didn't buy Lithoids, won't buy this either, for the same reason:

Fix the damn game instead of pushing out ever more content for it. Crisis, AI and (still!) performance are abysmal. As are the myriad of bugs still left over from earlier version of the game you're aware of but won't fix.

Or just... Walk away and admit that you just don't care any more. Stop this facade and let it finally die.
That's... not what's happening at all. Pushing out species packs is exactly how they are fixing the game. Do people not understand that there is a team of people working on the game, and they are not all programmers? The artists need something to do too.
 
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