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Stellaris Dev Diary #264 - Damn the Consequences

‘Sup, trash bangers?

Today we’ll be taking a look at some of the features coming in the Toxoids Species Pack. As we’re on an accelerated dev diary schedule, there’s no time to lose! Let’s jump straight into this and turn it over to @Gruntsatwork .

Overtuned​


One of our two new Origins for Toxoids, Overtuned is the grim but exalting reminder that a brief life burns the brightest. Through invasive surgery and by modifying biochemical pathways you can impart your pops with 13 new overtuned traits. Each of these traits is a mirror to an already existing, far more survivable trait.

An Overtuned Empire being made


As you can see, the overtuned traits can even be picked with their “natural” opposing traits, or stacked with their mirrors for all your double-dipping needs. There are next to no restrictions on mixing them with other traits, so feel free to create whatever biological monstrosities you can imagine.

In practice, the overtuned traits are all about as strong or slightly weaker than their mirror traits, usually cheaper in trait point cost and reduce your leader lifespan depending on their point cost.

In addition to their normal effects, the origin will also grant you access to a new edict called “Damn the Consequences”.

This edict doubles the positive effect of all overtuned traits, but also doubles the upkeep of those pops. Its unity cost is a percentage of your own unity income, so you will always be able to damn the consequences. Furthermore, the edict has a lock-in period of 5 years, which means you will not be able to cancel the edict until it has been active for those 5 years.

New Traits​


With Toxoids, we are adding 4 new traits to the game, available to all portraits and 3 of these traits will be available at gamestart.

Incubators
Incubators

Incubator pops will enjoy only a modest bonus on their capital worlds given their starting number of pops but fresh colonies will quickly reveal its full power.

Inorganic Breath
Inorganic Breath

A small but flavorful addition to our trait roster, to better support your exotic needs.

Noxious
Noxious

Noxious pops will decrease the happiness of all non-noxious pops on the same planet, while in turn receiving a happiness bonus for every non-noxious and therefore unhappy pop. Talk about toxic neighbors.

Exotic Metabolism however, is an advanced Trait and will thus require fully finished Genetic Ascension, as it requires a robust economy to support their exotic upkeep.
Exotic Metabolism

Its benefits are strong, its upkeep severe and it requires a deep investment into biological enhancements, we hope to see some interesting builds with this.

Civics​


Toxoids will also bring 3 new civics with it, to give you more of that slimy but satisfying feeling.

Mutagenic Spas
Mutagenic Spas and Gestalt variants

Our first civic that does not start you out with its special building, Mutagenic Spas, and all of its alternate versions, give you the option of boosting your pop growth on highly industrialized worlds, as your pops enjoy the fruits of your pollution.

Relentless Industrialists
Relentless Industrialists

Relentless Industrialists will have to deal with an ongoing situation about the environmental effects of their increased efficiency in alloy and consumer goods production. Of course, should you be cold-hearted and profit-oriented enough, it becomes a self-solving problem, if you can afford to work in such a hostile environment.

Scavengers
Scavengers

Arriving hand in hand with one of our changes for the free patch, namely the ability to choose what you wish to gain from debris, alloys or research, the new Scavenger civic will allow an empire to gain both benefits as well as salvage some actual ships from the debris.

Megacorps have access to all three civics.

Detox Ascension Perk​

Detox Ascension Perk

Detox Ascension Perk

Even the toughest species can’t quite survive in a world that is entirely poisonous.

50% poisonous however is another beast altogether.

With the Detox ascension perk, empires will be able to turn those giant balls of death into giant balls of not-quite-death.

Given how perilous toxic worlds are, this act of terraforming will be a bit more involved than normal, since even after the initial phase makes them colonizable, there will be remnants of their toxic pasts interfering with their prosperity.

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Next Dev Diary​

This Thursday we’ll have a dev diary from the Artists, including some interesting things about the character’s outfits and what we’ve done differently there.

See you then! Don't forget you can Pre-Order Toxoids Now!
 
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Very nice.
I love it that we now can colonize Toxic worlds, in a way.
 
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Would love to see Relentless Industrialists grant some sort of environment destroying branch office building or overlord holding. Missed opportunity.
 
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Interesting. The release video showed what looks like a toxic-creating Colossus; will we be able to unleash that kind of new war crime on our enemies?
 
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@Eladrin @Gruntsatwork
Overtuned is absolutely brilliant feature design, allowing creativity over balance, whilst limiting it to an origin to keep that somewhat under control and to provide awesomeness to the theme of the pack.
Well done, very very well done!
 
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You might want to take a look at spliced adaptability, thats definitely one trait that’s overpowered.

+20% habitability (a 4 point effect) for only 1 point and 10 years of leader lifespan, it’s effectively 3 times the value of taking fleeting and extremely adaptive individually and is only one trait pick. It’s another aquatic.
 
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Would Inorganic Breath, since its stated here it is available to all portraits... Could Lithoids pick it and stack it with their Gaseous Byproducts? Actually looking at it, depending on cost Inorganic Breath is just straight better. 0.02 rather than the lithoid's 0.01, and the lithoid traits all cost 2 each and are mutually exclusive. If this trait cost 1 or 2 or even 3 trait points its superior to the Gaseous Byproducts, though if it goes into the cost range of 2-3 it faces the same problem the lithoid traits does. Too expensive for too little value.
 
Quick question; what happens if you build the coordinated fulfillment center on an ecumenopolis? Does it become a tomb world over time too? Or is it not possible to build on special planet classes like that?
 
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Will relentless industrialist become a mega-corp civic too? It is very fitting and would be a shame if not!
 
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Exotic Metabolism however, is an advanced Trait and will thus require fully finished Genetic Ascension, as it requires a robust economy to support their exotic upkeep.
View attachment 873724
Its benefits are strong, its upkeep severe and it requires a deep investment into biological enhancements, we hope to see some interesting builds with this.
Are you guys sure that +habitability is still viable for an advanced trait?

By that point in the game you should have +20% habitability from techs and a whole host of options to get your planets to at least 80% base, which would render (a large part of) the additional habitability moot.



Also, I think I've found a civic for a post-apocalyptic origin :cool:
 
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Relentless industrialist requires some form of materialism? why?


did you yourself now mix up the 2 meanings of materialism?

Nothing in your own ingame description

"As we reach for the stars, we must put away childish things; gods, spirits and other phantasms of the brain. Reality is cruel and unforgiving, yet we must steel ourselves and secure the survival of our race through the unflinching pursuit of science and technology."

Screams be stupid and destroy your planet in pursuit of maximum profits.

edit*

by that logic spiritualist could fit as good... i mean.. in the real world we have enough people who think the world can not be destroyed by humans because only the one true god will end the world.
 
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What if my guys like venomous insects :mad: but yes, very excited for another way to make "new" planets and guilt-free terraforming.

Very glad to see megacorps getting some love; A post-apocalyptic relentless industrialist megacorp will make a great villain empire. Seconding that holdings would be very thematic. A relentless industrialist criminal megacorp... *shudders*

I don't know how possible it is but it would be great if scavengers could scavenge other empires' battles. Watching two neighbours duke it out and sneaking in to take a quick first peek at the results would be great (obviously without interfering with the other empires' ability to scavenge their own debris).
 
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Relentless industrialist requires some form of materialism? why?


did you yourself now mix up the 2 meanings of materialism?

Nothing in your own ingame description

"As we reach for the stars, we must put away childish things; gods, spirits and other phantasms of the brain. Reality is cruel and unforgiving, yet we must steel ourselves and secure the survival of our race through the unflinching pursuit of science and technology."

Screams be stupid and destroy your planet in pursuit of maximum profits.
Like all ethics materialist is a bit of a grab bag of various philosophies. You can view it purely as "science good and ghosts bad" (which is how I play it), but it also encompasses the "facts and logic" crowd who think emotions and ethics are nonsense and all that matters is number go up. Turning the entire planet into an uninhabitable wasteland is a small price to pay for +10% FPS in Call of Blorgball!

Personally I'd change it to materialist OR xenophobe - who cares if all the goolantha go extinct if it means real people get floaty leather couches? That opens up spiritualist xenophobes destroying the planet because "God gave them dominion", which may sound familiar.
 
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