Stellaris Dev Diary #264 - Damn the Consequences

[Critical Ethics]

I also don't think it should be possible to pick it with Anglers.

Fishing industry - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Maybe not Idealistic Foundation either.

...I don't have time to link that many countries' Wikipedia pages

 

[Mcgan]

Fishing industry - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I was talking about gameplay there, but whatever.

...I don't have time to link that many countries' Wikipedia pages

Good.


Another thing, about Scavengers this time: can they they research all debris, or is it just their own as usual?
I was kind of hoping it might be a good pick for pacifists, but it doesn't look like it will be the case.

Edit: How about the AI? Several possible combinations look absolutely terrible, will the AI know to avoid those?

 

[Ferrus Animus]

Did you change the Noxious trait? I thought it was supposed to make other empires reluctant to fight you?

From the previous diary:
Noxious: Other species can’t stand being around you, and it seems like your mere existence is making your planets awful places to live. On the other hand, other empires have a very difficult time wanting to fight or subjugate you, and it’s hilarious to see the look on their faces when you’re in the room!

It gives army buffs. +50% general army damage and +50% defense army strength.

 

[Ramidel]

It also means radiophototropic has a role outside of worm bio-ascension, which is good.

I repeat my plan from the Fungoids DLC: Post-Apocalyptic Radiotrophic Fanatical Purifiers, now with Relentless Industrialists. The Mushroom Cloud Mk. II.

 

[Critical Ethics]

I was talking about gameplay there, but whatever.

I'm curious what the gameplay issues are then?

 

[Mcgan]

I'm curious what the gameplay issues are then?

Just that Anglers doesn't do much if you don't have Ocean Worlds. Since Relentless Industrialists turns planets into Tomb Worlds, there seemed to be an obvious incompatibility. There's also the fact that Agrarian Idyll is blocked, and I always think of Anglers when this is the case and vice-versa.
But thinking back on it, this effect (and the entire civic really) seems to be tied to the new building, so it seems I was wrong and this is not really an issue.

I hope the AI will know it should not build it on every single world.

 

[CombatMagic]

So - relentless industrialists. How are they going to interact with ring worlds or ecumenopoly? Will those also turn slowly into tomb worlds, or will they be fine?

Having a tomb ring would be so freaking awesome, like the pollution is too much for the artificial climate systems of the ring and it just *fails* at some point.

 

[Veras]

I repeat my plan from the Fungoids DLC: Post-Apocalyptic Radiotrophic Fanatical Purifiers, now with Relentless Industrialists. The Mushroom Cloud Mk. II.

Unfortunately, Relentless Industrialists will require the Materialist ethic so it isn't compatible with Fanatic Purifiers

 

[3Davideo]

Ooo, I can't wait to combine Relentless Industrialists with Synthetic Ascension.... "We polluted our planets so much we had to replace our bodies with machines to stay alive!"

 

[indalecio248]

Unfortunately, Relentless Industrialists will require the Materialist ethic so it isn't compatible with Fanatic Purifiers

Fanatic Purifiers requires either Militarist OR Spiritualist. Build still works.

EDIT: My bad, didn't see the Fanatic Xenophobe requirement.

 

[RhoxOS]

I thought the toxic species could live in the toxic world like just insect and algaes.

But terraforming also seems cool though.

 

[Mcgan]

Fanatic Purifiers requires either Militarist OR Spiritualist.

And Fanatic Xenophobe. So there is no ethic point left to pick Materialist.

 

[DeanTheDull]

1. capital world has enough habitability to make it worthwhile. (and a happiness boost)

Worthwhile is a relative opportunity cost, and every build has better civics that provide more value in the early game.

The issue is that the capital world has the worst early-game growth of all due to how immigration directly subtracts growth, and not as a % either. Stacking % growth modifiers on the capital is fundamentally wasted until your early colonies are past size 10, at which point you don't want the capital to be the industrial center compared to dedicated industrial worlds due to resource efficiency.
(This part seems to have been in error on my part on immigration robbing rather than redistributing growth.)

2. lithoid can use it on all their "80%" habitability planets. 80 + 50 = 130. so 30 industrial districts before it gets below 100.

The issue is that lithoids aren't going to have 60 pops to fill 30 industrial districts via growth, they'll have far more than 60 pops to fill nominal districts via purchase or conquest by the time they could grow 60 pops with or without the modifier.

3 special worlds like Gaia and hive worlds will always be at 100% habitability.

The issue is that by the time you can make all your planets special worlds, you can use the energy/resources converting them to just buy more pops than you'd get via the growth modifier.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

The issue is that the capital world has the worst early-game growth of all due to how immigration directly subtracts growth, and not as a % either. Stacking % growth modifiers on the capital is fundamentally wasted until your early colonies are past size 10, at which point you don't want the capital to be the industrial center compared to dedicated industrial worlds due to resource efficiency.

Growth from immigration is transferred to other planets after all modifiers are applied. If you have 4.5 base growth, +33% from modifiers, and 9999 immigration push, you'll push 5.7 to other planets (transferring 1:1 and potentially being multiplied by growth-from-immigration). Your empire will still get 1.5 growth out of that 33% bonus, it will just be spread around.

So stacking growth modifiers on your capital is fantastic, since it's the only planet getting 4.5 base growth at that point. The capital doesn't see that growth directly, but all your colonies will get more growth from immigration.

 

[Darsara]

Any possibility of properly terraforming planets into tomb worlds?

 

[Kommunist Fried Chicken]

if we can have more trait amount cap, overtuned can be more interesting

 

[Incompetent]

Question: With bio-ascension, will you be able to put these Overtuned perks onto non-primary species?

It doesn't seem to be tied to your species but rather your whole empire; thematically, I read the description as a long-standing cultural tendency towards genetic mad science, not anything about the natural state of the pops. According to Montu's video, you start the game with some genemodding techs and the ability to freely add and remove the overtuned traits. So the moment you acquire a secondary species, you can clean up the genome of your founder species to stop your leaders dying, while going ham on any xenos. Even if you don't yet have a secondary species, I don't see why you couldn't do some subspecies shenanigans. (The only problem with that is sorting through the leader pool for the subspecies that doesn't have a shortened lifespan, but if you pile on the overtuned traits, the problem solves itself because the subspecies you don't want to be leader will die out of the leader pool.)

Later on, the pick limit will be the main thing limiting how much you can stack traits, but even so, with the ability to stack overtuned traits on top of the normal/advanced equivalent, and optionally run Damn the Consequences as well, you'll be able to make some specialized pops with pretty heavy bonuses in specific tasks, Researchers especially. (There's a 2-point overtuned trait that gives +20% science, a 1-point one that gives +10% science, these can be doubled with Damn the Consequences, *and* you can stack them on top of another non-overtuned science trait.)

It might turn out the whole origin is overtuned and needs to be toned down in a patch. At any rate, looks like a must-have for any sort of bio-ascension run, whether that's xenophile style or slavery-based, that isn't already committed to some other origin (e.g. Necrophage+bio is still a distinct niche I suppose).

 

[DeanTheDull]

Growth from immigration is transferred to other planets after all modifiers are applied. If you have 4.5 base growth, +33% from modifiers, and 9999 immigration push, you'll push 5.7 to other planets (transferring 1:1 and potentially being multiplied by growth-from-immigration). Your empire will still get 1.5 growth out of that 33% bonus, it will just be spread around.

Hm. If that's true- and I'm not saying it's not- that does counter that argument. I'm still not at all convinced that that value is strong- there's many opportunity cost mechanics where growth loses to other things if you have any intention of an early midgame tech/conquest rush- but it does suggest a better comparison of where it fits.

Let's see... normal (non-lithoid) pops have a +30 habitability over the basic 80 habitability of the biome of the homeworld. 10 habitability in penalties (and happiness, but that's covered by Social Welfare) would be 20% in homeworld growth, or .9 extra growth to be spread to your colonies, at the expense of... well, it depends on how many bath attendants you have.


It's still going to come down to the bath attendant job.

So stacking growth modifiers on your capital is fantastic, since it's the only planet getting 4.5 base growth at that point. The capital doesn't see that growth directly, but all your colonies will get more growth from immigration.

There is a separate argument about rushing your colonies, or at least the guaranteed worlds, to size 10 ASAP for the Ruler pops to get your unity economy supercharged in the early game. Unity traditions, like techs, functionally are fractional pop growth (and some give literal pop growth) via efficiency gains off the base pops.

Ultimately, a civic that primarily benefits one planet, and only in terms of growth, is on a steep uphill. Pops themselves aren't important as much as what the pops allow you to do, and there's a lot of civics that offer nominal pops, or the functional equivalent of pops, at a greater scale (and rate) than +1 growth from a few planets. Parliamentary system alone easily adds the equivalent of unity-job pops at a greater rate in a Fanatic Egalitarian build, and that's without its democratic war synergies.

 

[Ramidel]

Unfortunately, Relentless Industrialists will require the Materialist ethic so it isn't compatible with Fanatic Purifiers

Sadness. Oh well, the rest of the build works and I can still aggressively tombiform the galaxy.

 

[Cry_Havok]

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.

This may be niche, but environmentalist/some other civic should have some interactions with this and hostile wildlife other than whatever "removing" implies (presumably mass culls?)

Also, I think Noxious might fit with Blorg lore, possibly changing out repugnant for noxious, or making it an alternate to repugnant to trigger the Fanatic Befrienders personality.