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Stellaris Dev Diary #276 - Death is the Beginning

Greetings, ghouls and ghasts! Chief Reanimator Iggy here to report the most recent innovation in the field of necromancy. With the 3.6 update, we will bring you the Cordyceptic Drones civic! These delightful fungi will allow you to dominate the galaxy with zombie space fauna, as this is the third Reanimation civic! I know many of you have been enjoying this on the Beta, but if you give me a moment, I will have something new to show you!


Cordyceptic Drones

If you have been following how I made Permanent Employment, you would know that I want all these different reanimation civics to have access to the Leviathan Reanimation feature while still having unique gameplay. Cordyceptics follow this trend giving hives a much more biological reanimation method.

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Also including the new Hivemind Government Type Parasitic Overmind!

The civic can be incredibly powerful based on the space fauna you encounter. If you find Tiyana Vek early game, then you are in for a fun game while you have to restructure your entire economy to produce enough food to keep your dread fleet flying. Yet that is not all! Cordyceptic Empires are masters of all things biological, so your Amoeba Flagella will now be a force to be reckoned with in the early game. And if you happen to get the Prethoryn as your crisis, you might be able to use those missiles better than the Prethoryn themselves!

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Now, who would want to start with some boring old Corvettes?

As a final little flavor feature for you, I present you with the Cordyceptic Reanimation Facility, capable of resurrecting space fauna continuously for a food upkeep! However, it requires that you find systems rich in organic life.

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A new Tiyanki fleet is ready to be deployed!

The Other Thing

Back when Eladrin and I first introduced Reanimatable Leviathans for 3.1 “Lem” there was one piece of feedback we kept hearing internally. Will the Leviathans look like Zombies? While we couldn't deliver it back then. After much finagling, bartering, and pledging my soul to our Art Director, we are here to bring you Reanimated Leviathans as you have never seen them before.

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Someone call in the Fire Department ‘cos it’s SMOKING in here!

This collaboration required the cooperation of each discipline within our art team, with beautiful concept art, new shaders, and breathtaking VFX!

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What is Next for Reanimators?

Machines will repurpose dead organic matter.
Eventually…
Now go out and raise some dead!
 

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This civic is a blast. It kinda fades out in the late game, due to the impossibility to upgrade space fauna (and thus, you end up relying on regular spaceships), but until then it is fun snowball-y RNG. The art team is doing good work, as always.
I think it'd be cool if we could at least upgrade the bio thrusters, allowing the space fauna to move faster.
 
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Those leviathans look great! I actually am in the middle of a Progenitor Hive Playthrough with the Cordyceptic Drones civic, and it is fun having to have a kind of "shepherd" ship in with my Tiyanki and Amoeba.
However, the Matriarch and other leviathans are so slow since they can't be merged, they're almost unusable except as guards in the offspring systems. Any way around this? The unmitigable -50% feels really bad.
Also, this just occurred to me: any chance lithoids could reanimate crystals?
 
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Machines will repurpose dead organic matter.
Eventually…
Ooh this sounds interesting. I might be wrong but will this be something like undead machine cyborgs akin to the Strogg from Quake II? Wanted to make an empire like that but even with mods I couldn't get it quite right.
 
Please, explain one thing to me... if these Cordyceptic Empires are really "masters of all things biological" so that means they will start the game with their own organic fleet and stations? Just asking.
 
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Uh, I kinda preferred when they looked alive... like, when I could pass them off as not being totally decrepit shells of their former selves.

Is it just me?

Also, the Sky Dragon is significantly different from the Ether Drake and Shard, so will its undead model represent that-- oh, I see it now.
 
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IMO now we just need an origin that gives people a bio shipset with a few unique features and maybe give them a city background that reflects their mastery of biology to such an extend before FTL. Done right it would be unique from the reanimator civics, so that taking those further augments the theme, while adding the pros and cons of the reanimator civic to the mix. Maybe it could be a way to save an AP, by letting empires with the origin be to access biological accession without the AP required for it.

This also would open up the option to add a new AP that could also be accessed by Cordyceptic Drone empires that improves bioships and space fauna, perhaps even give them access to some unique ship related techs.
 
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Acceptable as long as it does not create a daemon world or an Eye of Terror.

Right!

Those should be exclusive to Psi Ascension.
 
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Scavengers should have something with repairing mechanical leviathans, as a counterpart to organic reanimators. And then a scavenger-Machine civic.
 
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