Stellaris Dev Diary #218 - Plantoids Gameplay

[Kaoru Sen'nin]

You could even play a lithoid necrophage hive-mind with catalytic processing and use the food gathered from your livestock to build your spacecraft.

Just out of curiosity does Stellaris collect data about what people play (like origin or traits) to analyze which ones are overused / never used so that you can determine if something need fixing ?

I mean like data collected and transmited at game start or something ?

 

[Snorro Soliman]

You could even play a lithoid necrophage hive-mind with catalytic processing and use the food gathered from your livestock to build your spacecraft.

Wow. That is an amazing idea. And horrifying....

'Admiral, the Silicate Reformers are hailing us'
<comlink established>
'Greetings, fleshlings...as per the terms of our now defunct armistice, WE have crossed into Terran space to extend an invitation: your countrymen, ask you to join US.
They have ascendend into celestial beings, carrying US across the stars. Join them and achieve in transformation what your flawed,divided species could never do on its own. Refusal will be disregarded'

 

[Cpt.IvanDrago]

I wonder if "budding" would work with a plantoid necrophage? You provide growth for your food who, in turn, become you in a grisly symbiotic circle of life.

 

[Frikkoso]

I LOVE AND WANT NOW!!!

 

[Critical Ethics]

I'm going to be That Guy and point out there are no photosynthetic fungi (lichen are a composite organism containing photosynthetic algae or bacteria)

 

[Fulgrymm]

I'm going to be That Guy and point out there are no photosynthetic fungi (lichen are a composite organism containing photosynthetic algae or bacteria)

That's okay, since fungoids are not fungi, just fungoids.

 

[Ketrai]

Please make Catalytic Processing less expensive food-alloy wise. Minerals are far, FAR more efficient. Where a mineral hub level 2 will provide a 50% increase in the base value of minerals, food hubs only increase the base amount by 33% total. Comparatively mining guilds is a 25% benefit from the get-go (Which then stacks with techs strongly). The only real benefit here is ignoring mineral techs. But it comes at the cost of effectively wasting most of your early game space minerals, especially as a hive who doesn't even need consumer goods.

 

[Ketrai]

On that note, please add a food station designation for habitat colonies. Would make Catalytic processing more useful.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

Best example that I can share of an earlier design is Budding originally was a lot more powerful (around 0.05 assembly IIRC) but also increased housing usage and reduced normal pop growth. We decided that was a bit too complicated for the design and scaled it back.

In my opinion this was a mistake. This was your chance to make housing usage matter. Because as of the addition of carrying capacity, housing usage almost does not matter at all! I hope you reconsider and do something with housing usage to make it matter again.


You guys are aware of the fact that housing usage is a joke at this point, are you not? Solitary (increasing housing usage by 10%) is 1 free trait point for everyone.

With the implementation of carrying capacity, you want to build housing districts to increase your carrying capacity aswell as unlock building slots to make sure you stay at the maximum growth spot. Obviously this leads to the side effect that you always end up with a ton of unused housing.

In turn this makes all bonuses which reduce housing usage pointless, since you are never at 0 housing. And a small increase of 10% housig usage is just 1 free trait point for everyone. Housing has never been as unimpactful as it is in this iteration. And once you get to the point of habitats you can already remove the 10% additional housing usage via gene modding.

 

[st360]

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Um, am I the only one who feels like the pop growth gaia building bonuses are better than the higher upgrades (including in some situations even making the world gaia)?

 

[laptor]

@grekulf please introduce the mechanic of Idyllic Bloom also for Tomb Worlds

 

[HFY]

I thought Stellaris had already reached peak villainy with Nemesis, but with the new Food-to-Alloys civic we can reach new levels of evil. I'm of course talking about Livestock and purging pops to turn them into ships. You conquer enemies to turn them into ships to conquer more enemies to turn them into ships to...
It's brilliant. "Juggernaut is pops!"

You could even play a lithoid necrophage hive-mind with catalytic processing and use the food gathered from your livestock to build your spacecraft.

 

[Balesir]

You could even play a lithoid necrophage hive-mind with catalytic processing and use the food gathered from your livestock to build your spacecraft.

Aha, hooray for the confluence of games! This reminds me of Settlers of Catan, where you can build roads with sheep, if you have enough of them...

 

[Commander Tobe]

I totally agree. That is still something GOOD to have indeed !

I just think there is so much more concept that could have been explored : Scent (plants sometimes smell really strong), color, torns, poison, root, bark...

Not quite sure what to do with those though so it's already great that we got something.

Love this idea!
"Scent" could translate into something similar as charismatic trait and additionally boost opinion of other empires at first contact.
"Poisonous/Throns/Bark" could give infantry boni in battles and/or extended lifetime for leaders.
"Deep roots" could give a combined bonus to habitability and pop growth since they can extract nutrients from deep soil on otherwise not ideal planet types.

Now that I think about it they might also just be rephrasings for existing traits, simply for flavour. It would still be more thematic for very little effort on developers side.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

While it's good to see you return to old content, most of this seems borderline OP. Except for 50% energy upkeep without buffing energy production - efficiency-wise that is a pure debuff, and thus should be a negative trait.

 

[klopkr]

ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT! Even seeing some suggestions coming through here!

Very excited to see what other ideas you guys have.

 

[Anonim97]

Just a simple idea but currently Idyllic Bloom works only on "ideal planets" which probably mean - the same type as the Homeworld.

But maybe have you thought about making it habitability dependent - like if habitability "is equal or above 80% you can built Gaia Seeders"?

It would add some more "perfect" planets, give bonus to habitability technology and add some randomisation to it (planet modifiers adding or decreasing habitability would be more rewarding/punishing).

 

[Dragatus]

@Alfray Stryke Not a fan of Phototrophic/Radiotrophic making your pops require Energy instead of Food. Why would photosyntheitc plants have to hook themselves into the power grid? Wouldn't they produce their own food from natural light?

It would be more logical if they required minerals as fertilizer. But since Miners are less efficient than Farmers the required amount should be lowered. So something like instead of 100% Food you require 50% Food and 25% Minerals and the final 25% is free. Could also adjust habitability for cold planet types (less sunlight) and increase it for warm planets (desert, savannah, tropical).

 

[Alfray Stryke]

@Alfray Stryke Not a fan of Phototrophic/Radiotrophic making your pops require Energy instead of Food. Why would photosyntheitc plants have to hook themselves into the power grid? Wouldn't they produce their own food from natural light?

It would be more logical if they required minerals as fertilizer. But since Miners are less efficient than Farmers the required amount should be lowered. So something like instead of 100% Food you require 50% Food and 25% Minerals and the final 25% is free. Could also adjust habitability for cold planet types (less sunlight) and increase it for warm planets (desert, savannah, tropical).

The rationale was that in highly urbanised societies there would be those that wouldn't be able to get sufficient energy from sunlight and thus the energy upkeep is to represent using of artificial lighting to replace or supplement this.

 

[Critical Ethics]

The rationale was that in highly urbanised societies there would be those that wouldn't be able to get sufficient energy from sunlight and thus the energy upkeep is to represent using of artificial lighting to replace or supplement this.

Have phototrophic farmers lose the energy costs, like radiotrophic on tomb worlds