Stellaris Dev Diary #283 - The Vision of First Contact

[Alfray Stryke]

Nice.

I use a mod which allows me to sometimes steal a moon -- (Gigastructural Engineering of course) -- so I hope it will be easy for them to hook into this same event when I steal someone's moon in the future.

Modders will be able to easily connect their content to the Awareness system.

 

[Eladrin]

So do different ages and ethics affect how a civilization reacts to something they see? For example, a spiritualist machine age empire might see a space battle as fighting gods as their telescopes are too primitive to get a clear shot of the action, while a materialist bronze age empire might see the same battle, and imagine warfare on a scale that shakes them to their bones trying to understand how dangerous it is

The way we implemented most of them is that lower ages are less likely to trigger Awareness increases for stuff going on in-system.

A Stone Age civilization might have a 1% chance to notice something an Early Space Age civilization with a Radio Telescope is almost certain to notice.

 

[CheerfulGoth]

Will Minamar Specialized Industries be a pre-made civilization?

Yes - and while I understand the concerns, it's a choice we made for a reason.
Many of our narrative-heavy origins (Shoulder of Giants, Toxic God) focus on giving your empire an unique background. This time we wanted to try something different: giving players a memorable enemy, and letting you free to decide how you want to deal with it. It's like having your own personal mini-crisis, in a sense.

By making the MSI a regular empire, instead of an enclave, players can write a story through their own actions instead of having to go through a pre-scripted storyline. We hope this choice will ultimately make the origins more replayable.

I'm very amused that the talk is about moving from a less dystopian view of the future after a couple sort of violent packs.

Annnnd the very first origin is escaped slaves, and the second is fighting off an alien invasion.

Ah, but it's about fighting an alien invasion and winning! An uplifting, heartwarming story! About revenge!

 

[Eladrin]

I'm very amused that the talk is about moving from a less dystopian view of the future after a couple sort of violent packs.

Annnnd the very first origin is escaped slaves, and the second is fighting off an alien invasion.

I'm so very bad at being utopian...

Ah, but it's about fighting an alien invasion and winning! An uplifting, heartwarming story! About revenge!

Luckily however, my content team is awesome and can find the silver lining in any cloud.

With cloaking tech being a component, I wonder if we are going to be able to design our science ships and not have a one size fits all, automatic upgrad Science ship.

We experimented a little with it and it didn't feel great, so we kept automatic upgrades for the civilian ships.

 

[Eladrin]

It's utterly absurd that you need to occupy every system, every planet, of every member of an alliance, with all of them fighting until they are ground into paste for no reason, in order to gain these 4 systems I want that no one even lives in.

You don't. If you have claims on the systems then under most CBs, Settle Status Quo will transfer ownership of them if you occupy them. The extended tooltip should describe what changes of ownership will occur for each option.

Claim the four systems, occupy them fully, and when war exhaustion hits 100% you can force an end to the war.

 

[Eladrin]

Can cloaking be used with a quantum catapult to allow your fleets to remain undetected until they can regroup?

Yes.

Like all ships that get launched through a Quantum Catapult, they'll also have the Quantic Ambush benefit, which I haven't spoiled yet.