Stellaris Dev Diary #229 - Aquatics Species Pack

[NilsFabian]

Are there any plans to make Terraforming more interesting rather than klick the button and pay 5000 Credits?
I'd love to see to have to set up a real space industry to terraform planets. Harvest Ice asteroids in a neighboring system and transport them to the planet.

Or create Ice asteriods while transforming an ocean planet into the nice desert my pop demand.


But I like the idea of hostile terraforming by the Water colossus. Just press the button and enjoy an ocean planet.

 

[Critical Ethics]

This is not a horror game.

*looks up from genetically engineering an entire space faring civilisation to be extra delicious so I can free up some landmass to better fuel my star imploders* sorry what?

 

[Tyrendian]

Question: will the size of a planet with "expand planetary sea" be reduced if a non-aquatic species terraforms the planet?

 

[Lord Hoosier]

This a solid DLC.

One question - will we also get Aquatic species name lists? Because we would need those

Probably, as we got them for all the other species packs iirc.

 

[Blackadder23]

*looks up from genetically engineering an entire space faring civilisation to be extra delicious so I can free up some landmass to better fuel my star imploders* sorry what?

I know, but invoking Kevin Costner is beyond the pale.

 

[Lord Valdyr]

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)

 

[gepe87]

Wondeful! Now I will be able to create a Trilarian (Mo2) and Mon Calamari (SW) empire and do some RP

 

[Grave461]

As you could see in the trailer, the Deluge Colossus Weapon can be unleashed to create a watery grave for your enemies!

I'm assuming the Deluge turns worlds into ocean/wet worlds?

If so, what are your thoughts on an opposite effect Colossus Weapon, the Dehydrator, that turns wet worlds into dry ones?

 

[Skyfus]

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.

View attachment 766729
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.

View attachment 766730
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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View attachment 766738​

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.

View attachment 766733
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.

View attachment 766734
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.

View attachment 766735​

View attachment 766736

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.

View attachment 766737
Isn’t she a beauty? Come back next week to learn more about the art in the Aquatic Species Pack.​

Love to see this, I always welcome new traits/origins and the ability to specialise, I also appreciate the little detail that admirals from an ocean planet would probably know more about hull integrity and pressure. I have quite a few questions I'd like resolved, though, regarding some of the details above:
- Does Anglers agriculture districts ignoring cap include planetary cap? I.e, can you theoretically build an infinite number of agriculture districts or can you just fill up your planetary district slots with agriculture?
- Can only aquatic species or Megacorps use Anglers civic, or is it available to anyone with a wet/ocean habitability preference?
- Will throwing an ocean at a planet via terraforming or colossus induce any combat penalties/bonuses for unsuited/suited armies?
- Does an ice mining station just increase its own output by 15% or all mining stations in that system regardless of material? If all, why?
- Will the lack of need for aquatic portrait be reflected in lithoids, robots and fungoids/plantoids for the purposes of species traits, origin type and government type? People have been saying for a while that they'd like to let their imagination run wild with (for example) human-looking robots that are androids.
- Is there any significant downside for doubling down on Aquatic trait + Ocean paradise, considering that the comparable "life-seeded" origin gives you a planet with 5 less size and ocean worlds are more common than gaia?

 

[2dme]

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.

So this is really disappointing, and honestly, how is just a blue background for diplo screens not possible? You have all the art from the trailer, the list image on this forum post is underwater! Why can't you use those? It's not as if the rest of the ground-dweller ones are hyper dynamic with birds flying around or something.

 

[Veras]

I was hoping to see some kind of habitability rework along with the free patch to better accommodate the concepts of this DLC. Any possibility of that?

 

[Millbot]

I'm a bit hyped for this pack because a number of things look really cool. Anyways some questions.

-I know grekulf mentioned that in the future they want to go with a different approach for organizing species portraits and have some even belong to multiple categories. Until such a thing happens could we perhaps get a stopgap fix that will make many happy because I for one do not look forward to having aquatic butterflies in my games from random spawn empires. I realize it's probably to much resources and code to individually specify all the portraits that would make sense as well. So could the spawn generator be scripted that it only uses portraits from molluscoid, acquatic, necroid (I mean they are dead and that could have been a result of drowning) and lithoid portraits? I'll admit some of the latter two's portraits don't fit well, but I think most are feasible. I'm iffy on plantoids but I think most could probably fit. Anyways this would be a nice middle ground on RNG generation. People have freedom to make empires to force spawn if they want acquatic species outside of those groups as AI empires.

-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.

-Also could we get some clarification on how zero cost point traits work in regards to gene modding and xenocompatibility, when they are things not portrait locked? Haven't played too many games with either. So would be nice to know if there are specific rules that come up. I know in my current game where I did xenocompatibility for the lols with a post-apocalyptic origin, half-breads don't seem to get the survivor trait, but don't have too many of those yet.

-What do Gaia worlds count as in regards to wet worlds? In fact, for my curiosity and probably a number of modders are want to know for well. Where do the more unique worlds fall into this in the grand scheme of things. Like let's not just get the question settled for Gaia, but let's also talk about tomb, relic ecumenopolis, machine, hive, habitat and ring worlds. I have guesses on what all those may or may not be. I'm also hoping this pack is a sign of things to come when it comes to playing with world types. So even though I don't mod, I think a number of them wouldn't mind having an idea for some small future proofing and those of us that don't mod, might like the heads up in regards to our custom empires (be that future proofing or holding off on creating one).

-Finally, going back to portraits. Has the team considered making theme portraits for stuff that already has a species pack, when you're dropping a new one. For example, this pack is pretty ripe for making some new portraits that aren't aquatic or machine. For example, someone already mentioned a coral themed lithoid. I'd argue you could have aquatic themed plantoids and even do a necroid or two that fit the aquatic them as well. I'm sure there are other examples. Also just one aquatic themed robot? Surely you could do more.

 

[Maethendias]

considering how "here be dragons" ends, do you REALLY want this origin?

 

[Veras]

I was hoping to see some kind of habitability rework along with the free patch to better accommodate the concepts of this DLC. Any possibility of that?

I really like the idea of each planet type having its own proportion of dry and underwater housing. It could go from max underwater housing and min dry housing on Ocean planets to the opposite on desert planets (I'm thinking the order from more water to less water should go something like Ocean > Tropical > Continental > Arctic > Tundra > Alpine > Savanna > Arid > Desert)

I'm assuming the Deluge turns worlds into ocean/wet worlds?

If so, what are your thoughts on an opposite effect Colossus Weapon, the Dehydrator, that turns wet worlds into dry ones?

And to complete the planet wheel, there could be a freezing Colossus to turn any planet into a frozen one.

 

[jwk4heels]

I can finally create an empire called Masters of the Universe based on their home planet of Eternia, led by the fearless Dolphin Lundgren.

 

[SalivatingPanda]

This made me think that it would be neat to have a species trait for all species groups, with an exclusive origin and Ascension perk for each species.

Maybe even species a specific civic and tradition tree for all species.

Maybe something for the future?

 

[SalivatingPanda]

This was a good opportunity to add some Lovecroftian content and Laviathans. Hopefully something to add in the next patch.

 

[LadyEleanor]

I was hoping the aquatic trait wouldnt be tied to ocean world, i rly liked the idea of jungle fish especially
itd b more fun to make it open to all, or at least to all wet worlds?

 

[Tamwin5]

Does the new origin (Ocean Paradise) make life seeded even more outdated?

What life seeded gives you is 1 planet of 25 and ocean Paradise gives you a planet of 30.
Also, you can still colonize wet planets with ocean paradise while life seeded species are stuck.

Can Lifeseeded get a little buff so it stays special rather than become Ocean paradise light (make the planet 30 or give the planet a habitable moon)

With Ocean paradise now being a better world to go full one planet challenge on, I think an appropriate buff for life seeded would be to make their guaranteed habitable planets be Gaia as well. Considering those planets already spawn (just as whatever non-gaia habitability you selected originally), it's not an increase in planets. For people using migration pacts it would only be a small buff, but for people sticking with just their main species it would make not just a world of difference, but two worlds

 

[Pale Blue]

Why is the new civic exclusive with agrarian idyll and certain origins? Combining it with agrarian idyll was my first thought, to get some more interesting pacifist playstyle but its excluded. There are way stronger things in stellaris than an angler+idyll synergy and I don't think it warrants an exclusion. Same with the origins. If I want to play as anglers living in an habitat where there are no agrarian districts that could benefit from the civic, why shouldn't I be allowed to. If I want to "waste" a civic slot in this let me do it. It feels like the Devs unnecessarily make desicions for th players in the above cases.
Players should be allowed to make suboptimal or synergistic choices.

In my opinion there is just one case when Devs should restict the combination of options during empire creation and that's balance considerations.


Will there be an equivalent to anglers for hive minds that does something similar?


Will special planets like Gaia, habitats, ring world, ecumenopolis, relic, hive etc. count as wet planets, non-wet planets or neither?

The new ascension perk seems to be intended as an alternative to world shaper and hive worlds. In my opinion it doesnt succeed at this yet. Gaia worlds get 10% resource output to all resources and more happiness, which further increases all resources production. Hive worlds also get 10% to all resources plus other benefits. The new ascension perk can't compete with that yet. It needs some additional benefits like also 10% resources or something else.


How often can you take the ascension perk desicion? Just one time, a fixed amount of times, until the planet reaches a certain size, is it purely limited by the amount of ice asteroid mining sites?


I really like the desicion not to bind the aquatic trait to a certain portrait, but can it be combined freely? Is it possible to create sentient sea weeds species that it phototrophic or some stone coral species that feeds on minerals?


Any plans to improve life seeded origin so it won't be just a worse version of ocean paradise?

Can ocean paradise origin roll zro deposits in the home nebula? Would be really cool if it is guaranteed to roll at least 1 zro deposit in your home nebula. That would make it a nice origin for spiritualists and help them to fuel their psionic ship components.