• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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.

1662388911682.png


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!
 
  • 99Like
  • 46Love
  • 14
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
I like the overall DLC, but I love, love the new traits that go with it. They go exactly in the direction I wanted: thematic, multiple-effects, linked to origins/civics, with drawbacks and possibly game-changer. Would love to see a rework of the old vanilla traits in that vein.
 
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Everything seems flavorfull and fun!

Yet, I think that some of the traits, Inorganic breath and maybe Noxious could be a bit weak.
The same way than with rare ressource producing Lithoid traits, I don't think Inorganic breath gives enough ressource to match the value of a trait like Industrious.

About toxic worlds, have you thought about reducing the number of those during the galaxy generation? In order to keep the ascension perk relatively balanced if needed.

I'm waiting for the other Toxoid origin which already sounds great!
 
  • 2
Reactions:
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.
We as humanity use technology both ways (both to progress and save us and to self-destruct, even if it seems like a paradox). So it can actually make sense. Also because in reality every description of every ethics seems to be written by an empire with that ethics, it only shows the benefits and not the problems.
 
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
Some great new content here, but please, get someone with an English major to do the writing and naming, as I'm sure it used to be in the past.

For instance, it's "breathe new life", not "breath new life".
 
  • 8
  • 1
Reactions:
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.
It requires origin, whereas aquatic does not. Aquatic is much stronger.
 
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
We as humanity use technology both ways (both to progress and save us and to self-destruct, even if it seems like a paradox). So it can actually make sense. Also because in reality every description of every ethics seems to be written by an empire with that ethics, it only shows the benefits and not the problems.
I still think relentless industrialists shouldn't require materialism. Simple lack of interest in long-term sustainability is sufficient.
Even the less materialist countries (in terms of the stellaris ethic) are very, very enviromentally destructive often times. The USA has significantly higher religiousity than most industrialised countries, but it is certainly not incentivising them to implement large scale enviromental protections. Especially the main party appealing to the major religious groups (especially the fundamentalists) is the one more opposed to such protections. Similar pattern with German major parties of explicitly religious origin (it's in the name).
This is just to illustrate that those do not need to go together.

I genuinely disagree that opposing spiritualism (in terms of the stellaris ethic) is at all required for a lack of interest in sustaining your enviroment.
Can you be enviromentally destructive and materialist? sure. Can you be that and spiritualist? definitely.
Just take away this limitation, please. I do not think it fits. I do not think any ethic limitation would fit this.
 
  • 5Like
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
I just wanna know where the hell those venomous insects are coming from.
toxic worlds are shown to have a lithosphere, they're not balls of toxic gas meaning there was plenty of burrowing/nesting space on it, so they're probably one of the planet's original inhabitants before you decided to do a funny and terraformed the entire world.
 
toxic worlds are shown to have a lithosphere, they're not balls of toxic gas meaning there was plenty of burrowing/nesting space on it, so they're probably one of the planet's original inhabitants before you decided to do a funny and terraformed the entire world.
Yeah but toxic worlds aren't just 'ammonia worlds'. They span all the way to VENUS.
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
you're saying this on the game where you can find out neptune was a barren world all along my dude
Yeah but we already have metrics for how deadly toxic worlds are, with the Nivlac; the 'impossible organism' that barely eeked out a living on a toxic world but bloomed when taken off.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I genuinely disagree that opposing spiritualism (in terms of the stellaris ethic) is at all required for a lack of interest in sustaining your enviroment.
Can you be enviromentally destructive and materialist? sure. Can you be that and spiritualist? definitely.
Just take away this limitation, please. I do not think it fits. I do not think any ethic limitation would fit this.
I mean, I agree, any limitations that don't keep logic in the game are foolish. I was just saying that it is not a contradiction.
 
I just wanna know where the hell those venomous insects are coming from.
Probably introduced during the Detox process, to convert something bad on the planet into something somewhat less bad. It's just when the something bad ran out, they still needed to be removed.
 
  • 20Like
  • 5
  • 1Love
Reactions:
Probably introduced during the Detox process, to convert something bad on the planet into something somewhat less bad. It's just when the something bad ran out, they still needed to be removed.
Neat. While you're here:
A) Can machines use Relenetless Industrialists?
B) AI Personalities when?
 
  • 2Like
  • 1
Reactions:
In the Detox ascension trait, you spelt breathe without the e. Without the e it's a "breath of fresh air" rather than "needing to breathe" for example.
 
Last edited:
Toxic worlds are not abundant, so you will waste a slot to terraform some planets here and there and still deal with a more difficult process and some bad blockers.
Aren’t they?

I never counted, but anecdotally, they seem pretty common.

Maybe not common enough to justify an entire perk, but they still seem pretty common.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
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.
It makes sense for the planet to be half-detoxed if it's too toxic, but toxoids should like toxic stuff. Instead of removing these obstacles it would be more original to be able to convert them into something useful, for example poisonous algae could be converted into an edible but disgusting algae farm (only toxoids like them), which provides an extra crop slot on the planet, and the rotten soil could become a chemical fertilizer that increases food production by a small percentage. The planet should still remain visibly toxic ... just a little less toxic.
 
Neat. I wonder though if we'll see energy based lifeforms at some point, with maybe star colonization (stars of course having no support for farming obviously, at least naturally and maybe very little in the way for mining, since it's all plasma so they might have collection and cooling facilities for mining?) for them and late tech terraforming worlds into micro stars / plasma worlds and what not.