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Stellaris Dev Diary #229 - Aquatics Species Pack

Hello everyone!

Today we’re back to talk a little bit about the recent news that has no doubt sent ripples throughout the community by now, namely the newly announced Aquatics Species Pack!


The Aquatic Species Pack will include:
  • 15 new Aquatic Portraits
  • 1 aquatic-themed Robotic Portrait
  • Water themed Ship Set
  • Here Be Dragons Origin
  • Ocean Paradise Origin
  • Anglers Civic
  • Hydrocentric Ascension Perk
  • Aquatic Species Trait
  • Aquatic Advisor, inspired by high seas adventure fiction
  • 4 Aquatic Name Lists
Remember to w(f)ishlist it on Steam right now!

For many years now, I have been forced to play Stellaris without dolphinoids... but no more! I can proudly say that we’ve made the perhaps greatest additions to Stellaris yet!

Dolphinoids have finally been added to the game, and the future is looking brighter than ever before. Dolphinoids have been used in narrative examples during design meetings for many years, even prior to the release of Stellaris back in 2016, so I am particularly happy to see them finally becoming a reality. I hope you will enjoy playing them as much as I will!

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Tidal Wave of awesomeness.

I’m sure you’re all excited to take a look at the gameplay details, so let’s dive right in!

Anglers Civics
This new Civic will allow you to harvest the bounty of the ocean, by replacing your Farmer jobs with Anglers and Pearl Divers on your Agricultural Districts. The Anglers Civic is also available to empires with a Corporate Authority.

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Under the sea, there’s plenty of shinies to see!

Hydrocentric Ascension Perk
One of our first ideas related to the aquatic theme was to be able to mine ice and bring it back to your Ocean Worlds, to make them larger. The idea originally bounced between being a Civic or an Origin, but we realized it would make much more sense as an Ascension Perk. This is the first time we’re adding an Ascension Perk with a species pack, which in itself is also fun.

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If you live underwater, raising the sea level can be quite useful.

As you could see in the trailer, the Deluge Colossus Weapon can be unleashed to create a watery grave for your enemies! Ice Mining stations will increase mining station output in a system, as well as enable the Expand Planetary Sea decision, which will increase the planet size by 1.

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Aquatic Species Trait
We’re adding a new (zero point cost) Aquatic species trait. It doesn’t require you to have an Aquatic portrait, but it will require your species to start on an Ocean World. We hope that this covers those of you who want more freedom of choice for your species portraits, while still keeping the aquatic theme intact. The trait also gains additional bonuses whenever the Hydrocentric Ascension Perk has been selected.

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From the deep we come!

Ocean Paradise Origin
The ultimate watery start, Ocean Paradise allows you to start on a chonky size 30 planet filled with a plentiful bounty of resources. When combined with the Aquatics Species Trait, and the Hydrocentric Ascension Perk, the Ocean Paradise origin gives significant advantages to starting with an Aquatic species. You will want to keep your friends close, and your anemones closer.

You will also start in a nebula and with ice asteroids in your home system.

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Where there is water, there may be life. Where there is lots of water, there may be lots of life.

Here Be Dragons Origin
Perhaps the most unique Origin yet, Here Be Dragons starts you off in a unique symbiotic relationship with an Ether Drake. Without spoiling too much, the drake will essentially protect you while you keep it happy. The drake is not controlled by you, but can rather be seen as a guardian ally, as long as you keep it happy.

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Hostile neighbors? No problem, ol’ Hrozgar will scare them off (at least from your home system)! This unique ether drake features a unique aquatic-inspired appearance.

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That is it for this week! I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the gameplay features. Next week we’ll submerge ourselves even deeper into the Aquatics Species Pack by taking a look at the art behind the aquatic ships and the unique model for the ether drake.

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Isn’t she a beauty? Come back next week to learn more about the art in the Aquatic Species Pack.
 
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Are these numbers final?

Aquatic is a free trait that gives positive and negatives for the type of planet you are on. I love the habitability and housing bonus/malus but I am concerned a little about the +10% production especially when buffed further by the ascension perk.

The balancers out there will probably argue it is too strong or makes hive/machine worlds less amazing. Or they will say it is not good enough because it still not as good as hive/machine worlds. Most of all I fear people will want similar species traits for other world categories. Which may be more "balanced" but really takes the flavor out of things when it is the same across the board. I love the current way stellaris "balances" (e.g. not balanced by stats across the board but balanced with the flavor and "story" of each thing) some things are just inherently stronger and should be. It just makes sense and adds to the flavor.

Oherwise this dlc looks great and fills me with warm fuzzies. Thanks for all your hard work!
 
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Is there a cap on the times you can increase one planet's size(other than how much ice you can get)? might have missed this part.
 
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Looks good! I wonder what will happen to the existing Molluscoids, will they also get some love like the Plantoids and Humanoids previously or will this Species Pack only include content for the Aquatics?
 
Can we have a similar civic for hive minds too? Currently it looks like aquatic is just worse hive worlds for them and they can't take the civic :c.

Oh and pearl divers seem awful at first glance. Why can't we at least pick whether to focus on anglers or pearl divers? This civic will make it harder to produce food, not easier.
I don’t understand these requests. Did the folks asking for this even look at the jobs? What exactly are Hive minds suppose to do with Consumer Good producing Pearl Divers?
 
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Neat. I will probably buy for the new shipset and portraits themselves, but the rest looks quite interesting too.

I'd rather figure out a way to optionally list portraits by either DLC or by "biology" sometime in the future. Ideally portraits could belong to multiple categories.

This.
If you guys do something like this in the future, I will be very happy.

Also just started a new game (with StarTech AI, admittedly, but it's not hard to get it and it's too tough for a rookie player).
The game plays much more smoothly than in the past (I started around 2.5-2.6).
All of the newest upgrades really make the run very enjoyable - I think changing the number of pops was a good idea (I play on a 6 year crappy laptop and everything runs fine after 150 years into the game).

Looking forward to 3.2 and 3.3.
 
All we need now is a pirate ship set, with a Sea Monster protect our home the 12 Galactic Rims shall have a new captain: Dolphers Flipperface
 
Agree with this strongly.

and if the goobers want their “ocean butterflies” they can program them themselves and put them in the rotation to randomly show up
but what about sea snails, sea otters, underwater lithoids, marine reptiles, sea plants, etc
the concept of the hive mind in stellaris is more outlandish than any of the portraits being aquatic
 
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It makes sense that aquatic trait would not be limited to the new portraits as many of the old lokes like they could fit aquatic species, for example the molluscoids. Being able to play as aquatic robots, lithoids and plants is also good. Unnecessary limitations in species and empire creation should be avoided.
 
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Is the aquatic trait limited by portrait? What about Arthropods(crabs), Molluscoid(snails and octopus) and even Reptilian(turtles)? There's just too many things that can be aquatic in other portraits.
 
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It's all fun and games until the inevitable first game with Aquatic Elves, Dwarves, Porcupines, Dragons, Parrots, Peacocks, Butterflies, Spiders, Radishes, Cacti, Holograms, Skeletoids and semi-robotic Zombies.
Maybe the Aquatic trait could be restricted from random species generation, making it so that only Aquatic and Molluscoid portraits can get it through random empire generation, but otherwise allowing custom designs to use whichever portrait they want?
 
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I second this.

Let the option for player and custom empire but for randomly generated empire make it so that only aquatic / Molluscoid portait can be aquatique.

Meeting an aquatic ape would be weird.
Maybe the Aquatic trait could be restricted from random species generation, making it so that only Aquatic and Molluscoid portraits can get it through random empire generation, but otherwise allowing custom designs to use whichever portrait they want?
As I mentioned earlier, there are portraits in almost all groups that are perfectly reasonable with aquatic.

Just limiting it to aquatics and molluscs doesn't work well, as it excludes such stellar "aquatic themed" creatures as the mantis shrimp and the kelp-looking plantoid.
 
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Shouldn't the Aquatic trait give bonus evasion rather than hull strength? It would make far more thematic sense. I get why there are stronger hulls, but a fluid interior of a ship would also allow a *massive* advantage of manuverability given that g-forces would be significantly reduced on the occupants. (In the case of inertial dampeners, this would mean having to work less-hard, which in turn means more power to things like thrusters)
I feel like this would be counteracted by the increased weight of a water-filled interior. There might be more power for boosters but they'll also have to do a lot more work.

-Aquatic does seem to have trap potential as well. Any chance of restricting that too wet worlds in empire creation? Anglers also seems to potentially have this issue as well and probably should be limited to wet worlds only in the empire creation screen. Let's not give new players or casuals a bad time by leaving traps for them to waltz into.
It's restricted to Ocean planet starts.