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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 both Farmer jobs from Agriculture District replaced with 1 Angler job?

Dumb question, did a reread. Pearl Diver and Angler Job seems pretty great from 1 Agri District

And do tech and civics that benefit food output from Farmers benefit Anglers?
 
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Neat fact: to add an extra layer of water just 1 inch deep across the entire surface of the Earth, you would be covering 196.9 million square miles (510 million square kilometers) - converting to square inches, at 63,360 inches per mile, it's 790.5 quadrillion cubic inches (13 quintillion cubic centimeters) being added. That's equal to 3.4 quadrillion gallons (13 quadrillion liters) or a sphere 18.1 miles (29.1 kilometers) across. (Depending on your view of the size of Colossus ships, especially relative to other warship sizes, that's either incredibly massive or quite dinky compared to something like Death Star #1.)

If you're interested in just how destructive a much smaller sphere of water dropped from a MUCH smaller distance above a planetary surface would be, take a look at xkcd's What If for the question "What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop?"
 
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Will it be possible to have an aquatic servile species as a non-aquatic empire? Will you be able to get the aquatic trait on new species through genetic ascension?
 
This Species Pack looks pretty loaded with features. It's almost as if it got some custodian love even before launch. I can't wait to try Here Be Dragons origin in a galaxy populated by advanced start genocidals.
 
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Is there a way to make Aquatics also work with Continental and Arctic worlds?
 
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My favourite thing about this dev diary is the decisions about how these can be taken and by who just make a lot of sense to me. Aquatic being planet rather than portrait locked wouldn't have occurred to me, and ice harvesting absolutely works best as an ascension while really raising the flavour bar for ascenscions in general.
 
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I was kind of hoping for the new Leviathan to be more unique and I would prefer for the trait to be tied to portraits. I am already annoyed at all the "underwater butterflies" AI empires that I will encounter.
Whilst I can see how the underwater butterfly thing might be annoying, there are plenty of portraits suitable to an aquatic species in the current list.

Humanoid #3 or Humanoid #4 could be aquatic humanoids - from an ocean world with small areas of land, but primarily resident in the sea; think mermen/mermaids.

Mammal "Normal 6" is our favourite space otter.

Reptilian "Massive 12" is more fish than reptile already; "massive 11" is frog-like; "reptilian #16" could be a coastal lizard (and an ocean world with a lot of islands could have a lot of coast).

Arthropoids include "Arthropoid 19", a Mantis Shrimp; "Massive 14", which is some sort of tentacled shellbeast and could be aquatic; "Massive 12" and "Massive 17" could again be coastal based; "slender 05" could be derived from a burrowing shallow water creature.

The Molluscoid category as a whole is quite suitable, especially "Molluscoid 17", the cuddly starfish; "Normal 07", a potential jellyfish; "Massive 11" and "Massive 15" which appear to be cuttlefish with a humaniform body.

Fungoids are more tricky.

Plantoids "Normal 08", "Slender 02" potentially could be piles of sapient seaweed.

And the lithoids could potentially all be rock formations from deep sea environments.

And that's just at a quick glance, and ignores any "normal" development that might have paralleled Pacific Islander development, with island hopping civilisation in the portion of the planet that has land.
 
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Will it be possible to have an aquatic servile species as a non-aquatic empire? Will you be able to get the aquatic trait on new species through genetic ascension?
I'm more interested in the other way around, I assume you will be able to but you're still hamstrung by the base habatibity system so no merfolk lording over humans
 
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I turns the guarantee habitable plantes into frozen planets. Which are "Uninhabitable celestial bodies" and "These worlds can't be colonized or terraformed (unless it has the Terraforming Candidate modifier)". Do this frozen worlds got the Terraforming Candidate modifier or are they giant ice cubes to add to our ocean worlds? Have you think of making the Hydrocentric Ascension Perk give frozen worlds the TC modifier? :)
I had a frozen terraforming candidate in my current game, which I could only terraform to an ocean world. I'm not sure if this is something that was added recently, but I've never seen it before in 3000+ hours of play.
 
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Oh Wow.
Thank you soo much. This is by far the best species pack so far. Thanks for that. I'm going to have so much fun playing dolphins.
Cetcean Ops is now a feature on all ships. :)
 
We looked into it, but there was no reasonable way to significantly change the appearance of the planet views or diplomatic screens to be dynamic and underwater.
Will there be an aquatic room that has some aquatic effect/look? Some species dlc have a unique room and some don't. Might be some topic for the custodians to give al species dlc an unique room.