Stellaris Dev Diary #246 - Announcing Overlord

[Kekmek]

Every time I see the human in the trailer I just want to shout ATREIDES ATREIDES ATREIDES

 

[Kiwibaum]

Eh, not the most important focus of an expansion imo. Empires weak enough to be vassalised tend to not be really that important players. I also think players will mostly only see the overlord part of this.
Will probably add some interesting depth there, but I was really hoping for an internal politics update, since keeping together big empires doesn't really take any effort, the game tends to be obviously won at some point and tall vs wide still heavily favours wide.

Still excited to see how this new system works and what those origins are going to be.

 

[Getty]

I've said it several times and I will say it, once again, for all the people asking for internal politics, and for the developers if they're listening to this, just go and apply the overwhelming majority of the internal politics systems of imperator rome and adapt them to adjust for ideological differences in stellaris. Would be very difficult, but imperator rome possibly has (with the exception of maybe the character-driven development of crusader kings or the incredibly byzantine systems of the old Victoria 2) the most engaging internal affairs game cycle of any paradox game, and the systems of imperator correspond far more to stellaris than either crusader kings or even Victoria.

 

[Bayes]

View attachment 819577
My guess: vassal origin, chosen one origin, planet with halo, subterrenean origin, unatural hive origin.

I hope so, a spiritual focused origin would be pretty cool.

 

[Getty]

I've said it several times and I will say it, once again, for all the people asking for internal politics, and for the developers if they're listening to this, just go and apply the overwhelming majority of the internal politics systems of imperator rome and adapt them to adjust for ideological differences in stellaris. Would be very difficult, but imperator rome possibly has (with the exception of maybe the character-driven development of crusader kings or the incredibly byzantine systems of the old Victoria 2) the most engaging internal affairs game cycle of any paradox game, and the systems of imperator correspond far more to stellaris than either crusader kings or even Victoria.

Like the ideological system in republics in imperator rome is based around 3 factions (with the oligarchs and the democrats being largely opposed to one another, and the traditionalists being more of crusty conservative bystanders), so it can be applied quite literally almost one to one to stellaris, with each faction representing one ideology, and with fanatical empires having 2 factions for one ideology (one for the moderate version and one for the fanatical version of the ideology, with both pulling against each other for a more moderate or radical approach to the application of official government policy around the empire's main ideology). The family system from imperator could then be reused for racial groups, political institutions, or whatever in order to add extra complexity. This would require probably revamping the entirety of the leader system, yes, but we're toying with that every day of the week basically already.

And I will like this expansion anyways even if it doesn't have internal affairs, because vassals DESPERATELY needed some work, and because Stellaris is already a good game, but the longer the system of internal institutions remains unaddressed, the more difficult it will be to adequately integrate with every DLC and feature already included, so I really hope that that won't get stalled too much into the future, or that, if it does, it won't be too difficult to pull off by then. And I, quite frankly wouldn't want a good stellaris, I would hope for the best one.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

View attachment 819577
My guess: vassal origin, chosen one origin, planet with halo, subterrenean origin, unatural hive origin.

I don't think it's going to be a chosen one origin, because we already have the art for the unused Messiah Cult and Shroud Touched origins:

Note that the art for the Subterranean origin (yup, that's what the file's named) comes from the same folder.

 

[drawar]

It's sad to have waited a week for this for this mini Dev Diary, if we can use that name.
Basically, we are shown a box with a nice appearance, but nothing concrete.
As always, we have a video, but which is generally empty as often, well, some are nice, but there, it seems really empty to me. Afterwards, I know that Paradox is not Blizzard... I take back everything I said, finally, Paradox's videos are generally nice.

See you next week... I hope... If no one blows up the galaxy by then.

 

[Nevars]

Finally, vassal play might be more than tributary swarm and hegemon federation lol

 

[Millbot]

I'm really hoping we are getting a subterranean origin and by subterranean origin, I mean we start as the subterranean empire, not start with an empire that went through the event chain to be sharing a planet with one. I loved the origin in modjam and really want it to be in the game proper.

Also excited by the fact that it looks like we're getting orbital rings. The one thing from gigastructures that I wanted in the game was orbital rings. I see them as a great feature to let us get more value from worlds; especially, small ones. Depending on how they set things up, could be an additional feature to help with tall play, while being bells and whistles for a wide empire (aka tall has a setup that let's them get the most out of these, while wide is building them at the expense of being able to do something else. BTW this really should be the case of habitats as well).

Will have to see what else they are doing. I was under the impression that the overall free update that will come out with this will include stuff dealing more with internal politics and if it does, then this is looking to be a pretty fun update

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

In Federations, we expanded diplomacy between equals with the federations themselves and the politics of the Galactic Community. Nemesis included more hostile forms of diplomacy with espionage operations, and some empires declaring themselves more equal than others with the Custodians and the Galactic Imperium.

In Overlord, we will explore diplomacy between empires that are explicitly not equal.

So still no federation-level diplomacy? Or ways to break federations apart?

 

[Yurichenko]

Yea, yea, yea paradox. But you're not fooling meXD Not everything can be so pretty and rosy. If this will be an expansion that seeks to expand the game once the galactic empire is established, then I deduce that "SOMETHING" new will appear on the horizon of the galaxy. A new threat bigger than anything we've seen. Will the hunters approach the extragalactic invaders? or nine galaxies await us?... What are you hiding up your sleeve paradox!

 

[klopkr]

Possibly yeah
Also, the "planet with halo" is probably starting with a planet with the "planet ring megastructure"

What do you call "unatural hive" ?

Basically instead of a species evolving as a hivemind it was once an non hivemind and came together to form a hivemind. Hard to really know though because the icon is just 4 dudes.

I don't think it's going to be a chosen one origin, because we already have the art for the unused Messiah Cult and Shroud Touched origins:
View attachment 819606View attachment 819607
Note that the art for the Subterranean origin (yup, that's what the file's named) comes from the same folder.

Interesting. It's definitely going to be spiritualist related and it reminds me of the shroud art. It could be starting with psionic. I pitched something like that before but suggested a superhero type origin instead.

 

[Nuclear Elvis]

Paradox invoked the Trademarked version of "Soon" for a DLC?
Put me back in hypersleep...

 

[Emperica]

Overlord, huh? You know the last DLC I bought named Overlord had a twisted human-machine hybrid screaming at me to "make it stop" the entire time. Needless to say, I hope this DLC will be even more evil.

Which game and DLC was that? A steam link would be greatly appreciated. Asking for research purposes, of course.

 

[Timurtash]

I hope consider about Primitive start option soon.

 

[Cyber Cavalier]

Any chance that this DLC with have some interaction with the "Scion" starting origin, since that's an origin that would directly relate to the contents of this DLC? Would be nice to have more interactivity with being a subject of the Fallen Empire, after all.

 

[KermitxTheFrog]

Which game and DLC was that? A steam link would be greatly appreciated. Asking for research purposes, of course.

Its mass effect 2

 

[Bezborg]

Eh, not the most important focus of an expansion imo. Empires weak enough to be vassalised tend to not be really that important players. I also think players will mostly only see the overlord part of this.
Will probably add some interesting depth there, but I was really hoping for an internal politics update, since keeping together big empires doesn't really take any effort, the game tends to be obviously won at some point and tall vs wide still heavily favours wide.

Still excited to see how this new system works and what those origins are going to be.

This is true, doesn't seem like a very relevant addition to the game.

I mean, I would enjoy complex subjugation mechanics bcs personally I hate expansion. So it will give me something to do, for sure.

I'd just go in another direction for the next expansion, definitely something internally-focused

 

[Knotz]

The Shrouded origin might be what finally pulls me away from void dwellers, hope it's sufficiently spoopy and mysterious.

 

[Bezborg]

Yea, yea, yea paradox. But you're not fooling meXD Not everything can be so pretty and rosy. If this will be an expansion that seeks to expand the game once the galactic empire is established, then I deduce that "SOMETHING" new will appear on the horizon of the galaxy. A new threat bigger than anything we've seen. Will the hunters approach the extragalactic invaders? or nine galaxies await us?... What are you hiding up your sleeve paradox!

Well...

This looks to me like something's "eating" the ships, not that they're passing through a gateway of some kind.