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Stellaris Dev Diary #220 - Additions to Humanoids Species Pack

Hello everyone, it is Thursday and that means it is time for your weekly dev diary. Today, we will talk a bit more in-depth about the upcoming additions to the Humanoids species pack.

First, let us take a look at the civics that will be added.

Masterful Crafters

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The Masterful Crafters Civic, previously teased in Dev Diary 214, will replace your Artisans with a new job type called Artificiers. They will fulfil the same basic production needs as Artisans, Consumer Goods that is, while also producing some extra Trade Value and Engineering Research. As you might expect, since they focus on Consumer Goods, this civic will not be available for gestalt empires.

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To facilitate you focusing your empire more on the industrial branch, this civic will also make industrial districts grant building slots.

Our hope is to allow you a bit more leeway in how you want to play your empire, whether you go hard into artificers to capitalize on their bonus production or use their superior production to cut back on how much you have to build up your consumer goods industry.

And of course, before anyone can ask, let me assure you, yes, it's dwarfs, it's most definitely dwarfs.

For the more materialistic among us, megacorporations will have their own mirror version of this civic.

Pleasure Seekers

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Now let us talk about our second new civic, Pleasure Seekers. This new civic grants you access to the Decadent Lifestyle Living Standard, which increases happiness and consumer goods upkeep for all affected pops.

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In addition, the Entertainer job will now also grant +1% pop growth and Servants jobs will produce an additional 5 Amenities.

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Quite a potent mix of happiness and the means of keeping it up. Of course, if you are interested in an experiment or two, you could fill entire worlds with entertainers for the pop growth bonus, one might call it a planet-wide shore leave on Risa.

Now with both of these civics covered, it is time to talk about our biggest addition to the Humanoids DLC, the topic of this week's spoiler tweet, and our new origin.

As with the civic above, Pleasure Seekers also have a mirror-version for megacorporations.

Clone Army

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What do you do when you outlive your usefulness/your creators? That is the question you can dive into with the Clone Army origin.

As Clone Soldiers, your empire will be perfectly suited for warfare, even though you may not currently have any enemies. Your lives and continued existence will depend on your Ancient Clone Vat buildings, which support your population.

image (4).png

Did we mention that there is a limit to how many Ancient Clone Vats you can have in your empire at the same time? There is, it is 5.

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Now, you could be a good little clone-soldier and simply wage war as you were designed to, or, you could dive into the secrets of your own history, that choice will be left to you for every playthrough.

Oh, you can also combine Clone Army with both Masterful Crafters and Pleasure Seekers.

One more thing worth mentioning, all 3 of those additions are NOT portrait-locked. Some have ethic or competing civic restrictions though.

----

And with that, I shall leave you be for this week and I hope to see you for the next dev diary.
 
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Is there a mechanical or balance concern that pleasure seeker is mutually exclusive with slaver guilds? A decadent ruler group surrounded and served slaves is a rp staple. Would be nice to use the civics to reflect that.
 
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Nice. I like the fact that these are not portrait-locked, as unlike the Plantoid traits, it would make little sense for these to be portrait locked.

I do wonder, though, since you have decided to include cloning updates in this change, is this all that cloning has in store for Stellaris? I always hoped there would be more involved mechanics for cloning, especially with regards to cloning leaders.

Can Clone Soldiers utilize ordinary Clone Vats as well as the ancient ones?

Also, any plans to improve gene modification UI? Bit of a shame about clones being unmodifiable, I feel like they may end up becoming a minority in their own Empires rather quickly due to being less adaptable.
 
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Why Pleasure Seekers are not compatible with Shared burden :( Pleasure Seekers + Shared burden + Mechanist origin would be perfect Fully automated luxury gay space communism
Not only that, but pleasure seekers is not compatible with slaver guilds which kind of undermines the whole "regardless of a cost typycally borne by others" thing. There is an argument that the fully automated gay space communism is already achievable through utopian abundance, but the fact that a society specifically structured around the hedonism of the privileged above the unwashed masses doesn't have compatibility with slaver guilds is incredibly bizarre in my opinion.
 
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I do believe the restrictions on pleasure seekers are both for mechanical and flavour reasons, as well not wanting to infringe upon stratified economy.
 
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There is a limit of 5 Ancient clone Vats, but only 2 starting ones. Does that mean that there are 3 more to find scattered across the stars, or can 3 more be built at any point?
 
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Does "cannot be genetically modified" also mean that they are unmodifiable in other ways?
Can they go through Technological Ascension and be robo-modded then? Can the Cyborg-Versions be edited or is that also considered genetic modification?
Can they become psionic?
 
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Hello everyone, it is Thursday and that means it is time for your weekly dev diary. Today, we will talk a bit more in-depth about the upcoming additions to the Humanoids species pack.

First, let us take a look at the civics that will be added.

Masterful Crafters

3Q0-6afqrHzVC2MpuuqYlU8Cio0FJdfDcBdAZzqKk5SuGiUxssZYwmYEsUpmVTHH496Y8CMvwZwuttar4xEGkTRcCO3bxbnZrwQGr7a9uagIRA2t03TQo3uLRTPMEDZfcq_CfRex


The Masterful Crafters Civic, previously teased in Dev Diary 214, will replace your Artisans with a new job type called Artificiers. They will fulfil the same basic production needs as Artisans, Consumer Goods that is, while also producing some extra Trade Value and Engineering Research. As you might expect, since they focus on Consumer Goods, this civic will not be available for gestalt empires.

xyND8updVpz8EjuNI6iPB_MSuLfFj5BdU_4wAuz_AOWHZfxUAwIGa2c68VfTahCGTMWC00wkIq99NZ_v_aenYnUPkNcocrY_6wy4ySZzy58eYluuwM0VDuI3P0fQYDHWCdOx0cNp


To facilitate you focusing your empire more on the industrial branch, this civic will also make industrial districts grant building slots.

Our hope is to allow you a bit more leeway in how you want to play your empire, whether you go hard into artificers to capitalize on their bonus production or use their superior production to cut back on how much you have to build up your consumer goods industry.

And of course, before anyone can ask, let me assure you, yes, it's dwarfs, it's most definitely dwarfs.

For the more materialistic among us, megacorporations will have their own mirror version of this civic.

Pleasure Seekers

82d9vH9rqdPK7p0s_BL9rchIfekQhr1PHPuGnhgGSA8293Rc83utU6agaaQqknaOw9SVKA70kjTZLW8wQXFRAW-s0-cny9_jptDPKgJsah0PJ-SIzFafP0zvW2yiAopTifZBHx0E


Now let us talk about our second new civic, Pleasure Seekers. This new civic grants you access to the Decadent Lifestyle Living Standard, which increases happiness and consumer goods upkeep for all affected pops.

UIkd0oWFh9iMRUUlXO06GvItOnMmzPagN0qSwM7bFlGHpKuHGFNCYNrloA8F0KxtIZONCm4RNpO-6m9M_kxZrrkVpPXXgqfhIenFWDe6xmcVDjhjUohHf2FeFc5Xk2HyQfxe1xn2


In addition, the Entertainer job will now also grant +1% pop growth and Servants jobs will produce an additional 5 Amenities.

96K1D6ktqDVxh-K3PcUj9oTenzHW9sTrLHAP8nVtaHa7FsMcbEBMECG42GS0dbGNGMyMMwtnDPfVCBJJrEFab_Ld3IPeIiYQECje8MBX7G_R2GNqTddg-Efbm7oRcdCviVRArzFM


Quite a potent mix of happiness and the means of keeping it up. Of course, if you are interested in an experiment or two, you could fill entire worlds with entertainers for the pop growth bonus, one might call it a planet-wide shore leave on Risa.

Now with both of these civics covered, it is time to talk about our biggest addition to the Humanoids DLC, the topic of this week's spoiler tweet, and our new origin.

As with the civic above, Pleasure Seekers also have a mirror-version for megacorporations.

Clone Army

nPD5iKP_4V4XUWCQbmjfeszUUmJ395fjIkL0_HxdFAj-ZbMQHRKkCDs35p6ywQO1NETSeVOr64ydFLnntmjxNgIeIF8KLM2ehm00k__HIZ5egg-9R4a2C3aAOjLduGJyPLSnglhZ


What do you do when you outlive your usefulness/your creators? That is the question you can dive into with the Clone Army origin.

As Clone Soldiers, your empire will be perfectly suited for warfare, even though you may not currently have any enemies. Your lives and continued existence will depend on your Ancient Clone Vat buildings, which support your population.

View attachment 749287
Did we mention that there is a limit to how many Ancient Clone Vats you can have in your empire at the same time? There is, it is 5.

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Now, you could be a good little clone-soldier and simply wage war as you were designed to, or, you could dive into the secrets of your own history, that choice will be left to you for every playthrough.

Oh, you can also combine Clone Army with both Masterful Crafters and Pleasure Seekers.

One more thing worth mentioning, all 3 of those additions are NOT portrait-locked. Some have ethic or competing civic restrictions though.

----

And with that, I shall leave you be for this week and I hope to see you for the next dev diary.

1) I predict Masterful Crafters is going to be a civic you take for the building slots from Industrial Districts or for very specific combos (like if you want to run Decadent Lifestyle/Utopian Abundance). The jobs I find thematically counter-productive. Highly productive Artisans = fewer Artisan jobs needed = fewer Artisans = reduced benefit from having Artisans that get other bonuses.

2) In regard to Pleasure Seekers and the Decadent Lifestyle, 10% more CGs doesn't sound all that decadent. Especially if you're a worker and you still only get 0.27 CGs. The living standard is extremely strong, giving you 99% of the benefits of Utopian Abundance for a fraction of the cost. Yes, I understand Utopian Abundance also gives benefits to unemplyoed pops, but the Dick patch eliminated 99% of unemployment with reduced pop growth over time and auto-migration. The increase in CG upkeep should be much higher than 10%. I would also suggest having a happiness penalty rather than bonus for workers and slaves, mimicking the Decadent species trait.

I do like though how Entertainers increase pop growth. That's a fun bonus.

3) The origin is cool. What's particularly interesting is to have a primary species with leaders who are constantly dropping dead and finding ways to overcome that.
 
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Cool idea about the clones, but one sanity question. For a species that cannot breed, have short life span, why doesn't their pop die off over time (like purged)? Is it balanced by the ancient clone vats? But what about pops that are conquered or taken or migrate out of the empire? What replenishes them? Second, will the clone vats in Engineered Evolution ascension perk stack?
 
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I do believe the restrictions on pleasure seekers are both for mechanical and flavour reasons, as well not wanting to infringe upon stratified economy.

You could make it a standard that sits half-way between Stratified Economy (which benefits rulers at the cost of workers) and Utopian Abundance (which benefits everyone) by having it increase the upkeep of rulers and specialists (and gives them a happiness bonus), but not workers and slaves (who get a happiness penalty).
 
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Does "cannot be genetically modified" also mean that they are unmodifiable in other ways?
Can they go through Technological Ascension and be robo-modded then? Can the Cyborg-Versions be edited or is that also considered genetic modification?
Can they become psionic?
I hope they can genemod themself if they go genetic ascension.
 
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I do believe the restrictions on pleasure seekers are both for mechanical and flavour reasons, as well not wanting to infringe upon stratified economy.
I do think that the restrictions on shared burdens and maybe on warrior society may be justified, the first one because utopian abundance is accessible to them, the second one because of balance, though i do think that even if you combined warrior society with pleasure seekers and you had a society with a high chaste of hedonistic martial elites that increased both pop growth and naval cap that still wouldn't be terribly overpowered when compared to some of the more optimized tech builds.

In the case of stratified economy however I wonder how that works, since it seems that pleasure seekers gives a 20% bonus happiness to all strata in exchange for 1.1,0.55 and 0.27 consumer goods. Are we supposed to have a race built to occupy positions with high political power to tilt the happiness balance in that direction while other secondary races take the stratified economy living standards and are relegated to either slavery under a xenophobe empire or worker strata jobs under xenophiles?

The clone army origin looks extremely cool BTW. It's grineer time ;)
 
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Do these work?
I noticed that it happens fairly regularly that pictures are not shown correctly in Dev diaries, not just Stellaris ones. Either the way pictures are implemented is too complex or the forum software has bugs. Either way I think someone should investigate into that to avoid problems in the future.
 
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