Stellaris Dev Diary #229 - Aquatics Species Pack

[Ramidel]

I sea what you did there.

On another note, are aquatics penalized on relic/ecu worlds?

 

[Red Death]

I love the decision to make Aquatic trait optional for everyone. New origins excite me very much as well.

I would have preffered limiting it to aquatic and molluscoid portraits. I don't like seeing AI empires with portraits that don't match this mechanic.

 

[Mythox]

What a Tsunami event/news , wohooii that is one of the improvement what always I want . Thx PDC Team

 

[Ridixo]

Now i think of it, ocean paradise:

https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/754214/1634807079971.png

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?

 

[Strangedane]

SHAME!

SHAME!

SHAME!


To quote myself from the announcement thread:

"Awakening old ones.
If this is not one of the new origins, I'll be horribly disappointed.
It could be doomsday on crack for all I care and utterly unplayable, but if we're getting aquatics and no cult of cthulhu, everybody working on this pack should be ashamed of themselves."

 

[DeanTheDull]

Hm. Interesting. Wasn't expecting the early-rusher/slaver synergies.



Anglers is a strong economy civic that will power science-rushes, since it'll provide a significant reduction in your early-game Mineral and Consumer Good chokepoint. You'll need both fewer industrial districts and fewer miners to feed those districts with CG coming straight for farmers, while the Pearl-trade value will mitigate your need for energy workers. All told, you'll be able to afford a heavy science investment early.

Combo-wise, obvious combo with Mercantile trade boosting is obvious. Agrarian Idyll would have been much fun, but alas. It probably also combos well with Catalytic Converter, in that it further mitigates the need for a heavy early mineral economy. The early-game CC doesn't really need the food districts, but it would be a great aid mid-game by removing your alloy resource upkeep from the RNG of space deposits and mineral district roles. More surprisingly, this is a very strong combo with slavery builds- you'll be able to use conquered slaves for CG production, rather than turn them into indentured servants, letting you get more use of the 10% chattel slavery buff.

(Would agree this trait seems deserving of a Mega-Corp equivalent.0



Aquatic as a trait is definitely an early-rusher candidate, but also a great genetic manipulation trait on conquered species. 10% boosts on your homeworld's basic resources are hard to get, and the boosts applying to guaranteed worlds will also be strong. Those 10% minerals would stack with miner guilds, authoritarian, slavery, and so on, all of whom also synergize with accelerating alloy production for early conquests. Later on, it'd be a great thing to put on a conquered slave species, since it stacks with the Chattel slavery bonuses. That'd be somewhere around a 20% resource economy workers.



Hydrocentric is a wide-playstyle buff, thanks to it's terraforming focus, it's increase to mining stations, the planetary size booster, and the turning Aquatic into a 15% buff to resource jobs. That said, I'm not sure where it will fare in the meta. Gestalts could get more use of the mining base bonus since their starbases aren't as pop-centric as organics (if you want to reap that black site ethics attraction bonus), but hive worlds are straight-up preferable thanks to the pop-assembly bonus and the 10% buff to specialists. Gaia worlds are similar, in that it's the specialist economy that wins and Hydrocentric doesn't really buff that. On the other hand, Hydrocentric terraforming comes on line significantly earlier, would combo with bio-ascension, and would better support Arcologies which are the real specialist production end-game. This is especially true with Cataltyic Converter, where your unlimited farms could probably surpass your limited mining districts in raw resource input.




For the Origins, they're surprisingly modest.


Aquatic Paradise has a really sharp sting in the lack of guaranteed worlds. Even if you can terraform them later, in the first few decades extra districts you don't have the pops to man aren't worth the trade off, even if the homeworld pop growth bonus matches 3 worlds natural growth. This is especially true since early starbases can cover all your empire's early-food, and you don't want to be using your homeworld for resource districts anyway due to planetary designations. If the growth boost matches the two colonies and their pop assembly potential, maybe, especially for gestaalts, but there would still be the issue of you not getting the early-game colony specialization bonuses.

In practice, I expect this to be the more modest version of Clone Army, where you leverage an early pop-growth and economic advantage into the military advantage to take over your neighbors in order to get expansion. Unlike Clone Army, however, which gave massive pops, this wouldn't.




Here-Be-Dragons is a hard-counter to a capital being early-rushed, but that's going to be middling at best unless the dragon leaves your homeworld to protect your other systems. It's almost just as bad for your long-term prospects if you lose your colonies, so unless your capital is the literal edge of your empire because you spawned beside a genocidal, it's not really a shield per-see. If you could win the war without it, you don't need it, and if you couldn't protect your colonies anyway, you're probably going to lose the snowball anyway. Since the dragon isn't under your control, it's fleet power doesn't even deter being attacked.

The defense is very niche, and unless there's some way to make use of the dragon later, probably going to not be worth it outside of those rare times you spawn next to a mauradeer empire. (In which case, if Bubbles killing them gave you reverse engineering, that'd be a thing, but it probably doesn't since it's not your faction.)

On the other hand, this is the sort of origin that would definitely affect the human players adjacent to them, especially on hyperlane-restricted maps. You won't be able to rush the homeworld, or vassalize the entire empire until you're at the Cruiser-carrier mid-game, so this would be a Huge Annoyance for players, but a passive one unlike Criminal Cartels. You'd prune their outer colonies, leave the homeworld alone, and then basically ignore them for the rest of the game until the Guardians are obsolete.

Except the Necromancers. Necromancers will love re-animating these babies, even if it's not meta.


(If possible, this origin should be coded to spawn with the homeworld always in a hyperlane chokepoint. That way, the dragon serves its purpose of stone-walling all expansion through this empire's core.)

 

[Blayze]

Can we shift water between planets? I was hoping to be able to drain enemy planets of all that water I can put to better use.

 

[Ridixo]

I sea what you did there.

On another note, are aquatics penalized on relic/ecu worlds?

Probably yes. The Aquatic species trait cares about ocean worlds on particular, but gives a penalization on non-wet worlds. Continental, ocean and Tropical are wet. Relic and Ecu aren't. Still the penalization is above all housing and habitability. Isn't that much of a problem

 

[Vlad Lenn]

Loving the new portraits and the ice mining idea. Ocean Paradise is nice, but it seems a bit OP, especially combined with the new ascension perk and Aquatic trait. Size 30 vs size 25 for Life Seeded, plus the debilitating Gaia world preference... I also think that the Aquatic trait should have been tied to the new portraits - the same way as Lithoids work - because there are many species portraits out there that are so obviously not aquatic, like some winged mammalians, avians, and arthropods, or a lava lithoid for example. I feel seeing those species having Aquatic trait can break the suspension of disbelief.

I like the user's Me_ idea to have a galaxy generation option "only Aquatic (plus maybe Molluscoid) Aquatics" that would restrict this trait to Aquatic and Molluscoid portraits. I even think that there can be another option to restrict the Necrophage trait to Necroid portraits. There can even be three options: a) no portrait restrictions; b) portrait restrictions for generated AI empires; c) portrait restrictions for all empires. That would be perfect - more freedom of choice for everyone. Should everything look more 'realistic' and true to style or should it be more random, fun and goofy - let the player decide!

 

[Nyrael]

I would have preffered limiting it to aquatic and molluscoid portraits. I don't like seeing AI empires with portraits that don't match this mechanic.

The developers can, and should, make it so that generated AI empires can only get the Aquatic trait if they have the Acquatic Portrait (unless it is one of the Empires made by the player). That's a better solution than just limiting it for everyone.

 

[Goodwood Empire]

So excited. I already have a few empires I'm gonna change up once this pack is released.

One of my Fanatic Purifiers is based of the Maormer from the Elder Scrolls world and the 'Here there be dragons' will be perfect for them.

 

[G S Palmer]

Hopefully there will be an aquatic themed room too!

EDIT: I should have looked closer at the first picture.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

I like that these perks all push towards variety, allowing an ocean-focused playstyle.

Anglers, if it only provides one Angler Job per districts makes food more scarce, which is weird, if it treplaces all farmer jobs and the pearl divers are extra it is a great boon.
Also I do like that we can no shift towards a more food-based economy.

The rest of features are a bit hard to evaluate without exact data. Does the guardina dragon move around, and what does it need to be kept appeased? What are the bonuses of the ocean paradise exactly? How does it all interact with gaia worlds?
Also the "expand planetary seas" decision probably could have a reduced influence cost, given that it is already capped by available ice. and 1 extra size is really not that much on an ocean world.

I have to remind you that the portraits in stellaris barely show from the head to the chest of the character. How do you suppose we differentiate a human being from a mermaid or newt then? Do we add a badge on the chest that says "I'm a mermaid"?

Seashell-Bra Outfit for human, elf, dwarf, halfling and orc portraits?

No cap for how many times the "Expand Planetary Sea" decision can be used?
Hydrocentric empires will harvest the galaxy for all its frozen water, eventually achieving three-digit planet sizes?

Hidden feature: Once planet size reaches 666 due to gravity it will collapse into a black hole.

So the hydroponics building is a fish pond in the ocean? This is not a complaint.

Aeroponics incoming

 

[CHOCOLATE TOMATO]

Will there be a possibility to tame and, consequently, control the drake? Also, will we be able to resurrect it as Reanimators?

 

[hart30]

Maybe a bit too op. You combine the positive sides from voiddwellers (without their negatives, no overcrouding, no expensive habitats to build) with 100% habitability and uncapped planets, which makes wet planets better than hive worlds. This is better than any gaia start as all oceanic planets are basically treated like gaia + u get the guaranteed habitables while terraforming is way easier. Not to forget the mining station buff.
Combine this (aqatic trait, civic and perk) with the necrophage origin instead of an aquatic origin u easily can get a 30k fleet in year 2230.

 

[StellarXe]

this huge amount of content makes me look forwards for future species packs , it's really good, thanks developers.

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

Can we name the ether drake as part of the origin? If I were playing a particular theme I would like to give the ether drake a thematic name.

 

[CaptainShootALot]

I'd love it you could change the graphics for districts if you are playing as aquatics, to really sell the idea of a species living under the water

 

[korvmaskin]

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.

Something like that would be awesome. You probably need to rework how the portraits work mechanically too right? Athropoids should like each other more, and I think dolphins should feel closer to other mammalians than the fishies. QoL is always welcomed.

 

[Me_]

SHAME!

SHAME!

SHAME!


To quote myself from the announcement thread:

"Awakening old ones.
If this is not one of the new origins, I'll be horribly disappointed.
It could be doomsday on crack for all I care and utterly unplayable, but if we're getting aquatics and no cult of cthulhu, everybody working on this pack should be ashamed of themselves."

While I'd appreciate a Cthulhu reference, I think it would be better as a planet one can find somewhere in space. Knowing for certain that there are old gods living on your planet kind of takes the mystery away.

But if there were to be a thing like that, let me rehash an old idea.

New Origin Idea – Star Spawn

„Eons ago it came from beyond the furthest stars. Alien not only to our planet but to the whole galaxy, it has slumber for untold millennia until it has finally awakened. At first, we resisted, but at last, it has defeated everything we could...

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