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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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Critical Ethics said:
Yes, but if you're going with catalytic converters or other excess food based strategy you don't care about miners, you care about farmers, and farmers are already reliable because you can build them with hydroponics.
Click to expand...

Ish- you still need significant minerals to pay for districts and building, and then significant energy support to them. It's something like 900 minerals and 4 energy upkeep to get 2 farmers, which is not always an economical trade, since every 2 catalytic technicians would require 5-ish pops behind them providing upkeep support in energy and food. 900 minerals needs a fair number of miners, even as you're obligated to have a nearly 2-pops-to-producer support ratio, which is a heavy tax on your early empire's pop economy. Especially not when the comparison is 1 angler for 250 minerals and 1 energy. That's far cheaper to afford, quicker to build, and requires fewer pops behind each technician.

But hey- say you still have building slots. Now considering that hydroponic bays on wet worlds will be producing Angler jobs...


Critical Ethics said:
The production-per-pop point is very valid, I suppose it comes down to whether you run out of pops or run out of space first, which is pretty circumstantial.
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Catalytic-Anglers win at both. In terms of space, they're solely limited by planet size for both farmer and industrial distircts- you never have a RNG roll where your guaranteed worlds have only 4 food districts between them. In terms of pops, Catalytic technicians will need less than one farm-world angler pop to produce 3 alloys, while pearl-divers will beat the pop-efficiency of homeworld CG work. You'll need fewer pops for the same Alloy the entire game, and for CG for most of the early game.
 
What does happen to the frozen planets/asteriods after you mine them to expand your ocean worlds?
Also, let us allow random terraforming of cold planets(they should become either hot/wet) which takes twice as long/expensive as normal terraforming and which would increase the counter of available expand planetary sea decisions. Basically, you are mining away all the ice in the cold planet forever changing its ecology. I know this could become a ice farm via switching it back to a cold planet, but that requires a lot of energy and it can become a valid use of all the late game energy for that very small increase in planet size
 
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Lord Valdyr said:
Huh? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_snail
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Like I say, I'm not convinced that they're ideally suited to being aquatic, but I'm not going to object too hard. They on't exactly work for me, but they might work well for other people.


majikero said:
The trait specifically refers to being waterbreathers. The dolphin people doesn't prove anything. If dolphins grew arms and legs, they'd move on to land and live there because its easier to build civilization. They're at least an ocean habitability, not aquatic. An air breathing dolphin isn't going to have a 30% increase in housing because they need to live inside a water dome and take up more space because they breath air and not water to actually live.
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No it doesn't.

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It says they're adapted to living in the depths, but that could be a deep diving whale or other species. Technically it could also be a non-breathing species.
A dolphin would potentially need more housing compared to a human on a "dry" planet because they need the water volume for support, as well as the water purification works needed to keep the water clean.

But sure, let's exclude some of the aquatic pack from the aquatic trait shall we?
 
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James Fire said:
Fix? Why would you fix that? That's one of the things Planet Size affects.
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Why wouldn't you?

Increase Planetary Sea (and the other decision that increases planet size whose name escapes me right now) should not make the planet physically larger. Ideally, how large a planet is and how much usable terrain it has would be two different stats. Failing that, a workaround would be to make it so that changing the planet's size after it's generated doesn't change how large the model is.
 
grekulf said:
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!
Click to expand...

Please mix these portraits into the existing categories instead of making a new category.

Dolphins are mammals, and belong in the Mammal portraits, same as the current Sea Otter mammal portrait (which can also count as Aquatic) -- the zero-point trait already does the work of designating which is aquatic.

Thanks!
 
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HFY said:
Please mix these portraits into the existing categories instead of making a new category.

Dolphins are mammals, and belong in the Mammal portraits, same as the current Sea Otter mammal portrait (which can also count as Aquatic) -- the zero-point trait already does the work of designating which is aquatic.

Thanks!
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What about fish?
 
HFY said:
Please mix these portraits into the existing categories instead of making a new category.

Dolphins are mammals, and belong in the Mammal portraits, same as the current Sea Otter mammal portrait (which can also count as Aquatic) -- the zero-point trait already does the work of designating which is aquatic.

Thanks!
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I want to be able to easily find the portraits I want to us. Mixing the new portraits in with all the others will just make it hard to find them. Plus, what robot people use is based on archetype, and we are getting a new aquatic robot. So mixing them doesn't really work.
 
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ZomgK3tchup said:
Why wouldn't you?

Increase Planetary Sea (and the other decision that increases planet size whose name escapes me right now) should not make the planet physically larger. Ideally, how large a planet is and how much usable terrain it has would be two different stats. Failing that, a workaround would be to make it so that changing the planet's size after it's generated doesn't change how large the model is.
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So those things shouldn't increase the planet size. They should add a deposit or modifier to add more district slots. You're looking at the wrong thing. Planet Size and District Cap are two different stats. You can change how many districts a planet has completely separately of increasing the planet size.
 
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Also, congrats to the art team to make a dolphinoid look like someone a loan shark (will this be in the DLC, too?) would send to someone who refuses to pay his debts. That takes some skill.


...

Great, now I really want to play a Syncretic Evolution Criminal Megacorp with sharks at the top and dolphins as muscle
 
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I'm really glad that the Aquatic trait isn't tied to the Aquatic portraits! There's so many portraits in the other categories I'd like to play as aquatic species, so it's great to hear that I can.
 
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That is one beautiful starship. Loving the origin and civics, too.
 
Can you please use the same shade of green for every civic and trait! It triggers me more than it should, but why do you do this? Is it too hard to have a guideline for the icons that mentions the hex code of the background colour or to have a blank green icon as a template? Just why does every new icon has to be slightly different in colouration?
 
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Pale Blue said:
Can you please use the same shade of green for every civic and trait! It triggers me more than it should, but why do you do this? Is it too hard to have a guideline for the icons that mentions the hex code of the background colour or to have a blank green icon as a template? Just why does every new icon has to be slightly different in colouration?
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Oh god I just noticed that. I think they might have accidentally used the trait background rather than the civic one. For sure report this as a bug if it's still in when release comes. Literally Unplayable.
 
I know this is a bit of a split one and I completely get each point of view, but personally I'm a big +1 in the "please tie species traits to portraits" column, especially when generating AI for the game. How it was done with Lithoids was perfect for me personally, but I'd happily let the player choose if there was a way to lock the AI factions in - I have control over my choices, but not how they are generated.

Other than that, super useful diary thanks - pack is looking thematic without being too OP at this point - looking forward to seeing more about the shipset next time.
 
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I hope with you guys doing stuff like this we might get more stuff to make the various species groups or even playing on specific planet preferences be more interesting early on.

Granted, I also hope in the future we can have a chance to get some very different planet preference classes. Methane types or something like the Tholians on suphuric, toxic hell/demon worlds.
 
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