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Stellaris Dev Diary #286 - Fear and Archaeotechs in First Contact

Hello everyone! I am PDS_Iggy, and I’m here to tell you all about Fear of the Dark!

This new narrative origin for First Contact focuses on a people divided. After a planet in your solar system blew up, fear and xenophobia spread to such a degree that a large portion of your population decided to flee your homeworld. Their goal? To hide from the rest of the galaxy.


Incoming Transmission:​

You mean, “The sane individuals of our species took the only prudent action possible when being attacked by an alien force capable of destroying planets!
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This split in your population is reflected in the effects of the origin. With a sizable section of your empire living on a neighboring world, your research alternatives and choices for leaders are reduced. Yet, even more inquisitive than a regular empire, you will have no difficulty discovering more anomalies as you explore the void.

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No doubt you’ll return from your galavantings the next time we reach a breakthrough! Our scientific research is one of the few way we can even hope to delay you from dooming us all. Once you lead the aliens back to our home, it will all be over.

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Additionally,Fear of the Dark starts with quite a unique system, one that will have you starting with binary planets - your ‘cousins’ are living just a rocket jump away. (a Sol start will have them placed on Mars).

It will be up to you to make the best of this situation. Your partner planet can be a powerful ally, yet they are also very skittish. Ensure that they don’t torpedo your entrance on the galactic stage.

Perhaps you will stop treating the alien threat so lightly when our upcoming study of ‘the Divider’ is finished. Just you wait. We won’t be hunted.



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Whatever happens, remember that you are one people and you are stronger together. Oh, and your partner planet has cloaked ships.


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Now off to MrCosmogone and his wondrous archaeo-technologies for this patch's custodian update!



Did you ever think, as you pass by an old laser cannon in a glass case, that not everything belongs in a museum? That perhaps, the Irassian tractor beam could be used for your cause instead of gathering dust?

Well, so do I. And if you own Ancient Relics, I have good news!

Excavated dig sites will now sometimes generate minor artifact deposits that can be exploited by orbital stations, or by colonizing the planet.

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There could always be more trinkets to find!

Your income in minor artifacts can then be put to good use with the new archaeo-technologies that will unlock buildings, starbase modules and ship components, all costing minor artifacts to build.
There are several ways to acquire these archaeo-technologies. Completing the Secrets of the [PRECURSOR] special projects will now give you a research option to unlock some unique archaeo-components:
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The power of a precursor in the palm of your hand.

Several of our dig sites can now grant you access to one of the new technologies. This is a very reliable way of acquiring them.

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Get to work, Oxygal, I want this research on my desk by the end of the week!

All these new technologies are found in the society field, in an all new “Archaeostudies” category which is all about fitting ancient tech into your machines and weapons. Discovering these archaeo-technologies by yourself is a long and hard process, but luckily, you can be assisted by dedicated researchers who share your interest in ancient things.

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They largely just make old things go boom.

Should you decide to pick the Remnants origin that starts you on a relic world, you will now start the game with the Faculty of Archaeostudies unlocked and replacing your starting research lab.

And if this still does not quench your thirst for specialization in archaeo-technologies, if you still want to dig deeper, we even have a new ascension perk for you!

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For all you history lovers!



With increased minor artifact generation, the scale of the existing economy needed to be increased, but we also took this opportunity to now display artifacts in the topbar alongside the other strategic resources.

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Bigger numbers mean better game, right?

And while you still can’t buy them on the market, you can trade them to other empires!

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It belongs in MY museum!

I don’t really have the space here to show you ALL the things, but here, have a tease.

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Archaeotitan go brrrrrrrr

Oh and one last thing before we wrap things up. I might have made a Devolving Beam for colossi, to return those pesky humans from the UNE back to their origins:

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Return to Monke!

8rA6Cq62fXkJkMccZdGfylOhAhq4l0nX32rI_9cwX0vKVEqAAOUdct0_K4LlI7f4PN_nh695KKAzuHd7n2ek6iGXswUu9Bl-dZWll9tSXAD-pFuiFRuf9u2AkYC-AJwJ6eoKyqjhO5ruMoSOQhRAuaI

They’ll make good pets.
 
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Ok this is important.

If you take this origin, and you start in Sol, and the splinter colony goes to Mars, I need this colony to continue to be called 'Mars' not something from the name list.

This expansion can't be released until this is addressed.
You can rename the colony to whatever you want. Enjoy all the binary planet RP you can muster!
 
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I don't know what scifi reference that is to(it sounds really familiar) but I appreacite option to play evil empire that wants to return everyone to blissful ignorance x'D
 
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Only a Image from my Extra-Soft and Extremely Weird Sci-Fi World, Izchyzioworld, Where a Event known as Cosmic Collapse happened 100 Million years ago, Leaving the Former Multiverse a Total Wreck with Half Dead Physics but somehow Life Thrives and instead of Electronics we have Magitroniks
Cool. Poseidon is Neptune?
 
I don't know what scifi reference that is to(it sounds really familiar) but I appreacite option to play evil empire that wants to return everyone to blissful ignorance x'D

I don't know if it's a specific reference but All Tomorrows is a popular speculative evolution SciFi work that features this idea. An ancient super advanced race sweeps through the solar system and performs genetic experiments on humanity, creating dozens of different species, many of which are "devolved" to non sentience.
 
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Man, the Fear of the dark origin is cool (we all have read the 3 body problem by now, I guess) but the update to Ancient Relics has caught me completely off-guard. Super nice surprise, hell, I might end up buying thanks to this. Also, super interested in monkey-fier colossi and knowing what the archeology AP is all about.
 
Really liking the idea of the artificial storm - now I can create my own pulsar chokepoint at will!

Buuuut - to really make that work, I really really really need to be able to modify my starbase loadout to get rid of the then-useless shields and kinetic weapons. Please can we have this? Pretty please? With Jeff on top?
 
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Would it be possible to do cloaked actions in closed borders? Such as exploring an anomaly cloaked, gathering intel in a more effective yet riskier way? Land troops suddenly with little time to reaction?
Will the primitives from Early Space Age deploy more/or other kinds of probes across their systems? (Like more attempts at space, instead of an orbital station, somethings across the boundaries of their system or even attempts of primitives at colonizing another planet in their system? Will we have that degree of enrichment?
 
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Will the archaeo tech be much stronger than late game techs normally are or will they have specific unique benefits?

Also this storm generator, can that Technologie also be found in other ways it seems very strong.
 
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Would it be possible to do cloaked actions in closed borders? Such as exploring an anomaly cloaked, gathering intel in a more effective yet riskier way? Land troops suddenly with little time to reaction?

There's a dev diary planned for the future which will detail the opportunities and limitations of cloaking.

If you do a Sol FOTD start, which planet gets exploded? I hope it's Uranus.

Venus
 
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This has me pretty excited, and it addresses the problem of those secondary uses for artifacts being completely useless! Though for my tastes, the numbers seem pretty high. Surely we couldn’t do a deposit of 0.1 artifacts per month, implying it takes a lot of work to find an artifact?
 
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You can rename the colony to whatever you want. Enjoy all the binary planet RP you can muster!
Acceptable.

Still change it like I said, though.
 
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Hello everyone! I am PDS_Iggy, and I’m here to tell you all about Fear of the Dark!

With increased minor artifact generation, the scale of the existing economy needed to be increased, but we also took this opportunity to now display artifacts in the topbar alongside the other strategic resources.

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Bigger numbers mean better game, right?
Whilst I think about it and I know it's not directly related to this patch, but can you change it so that we can buy Nanites on the market please? If we're in a federation or have the GDF fleet, we can't build any tech that uses nanites that we have indirect access to and it's really annoying!
 
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So does anything in this dlc interact with gestalts at all?
Because this time it doesn't look like they will get access to even one origin and nothing about the new interactions seem to affect them either.

Just doesn't look good, if they still just invade every primitive world and integrate/kill everyone.
Would have been a good place to flesh out interactions like grid amalgation, etc.
 
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Really liking the idea of the artificial storm - now I can create my own pulsar chokepoint at will!

Buuuut - to really make that work, I really really really need to be able to modify my starbase loadout to get rid of the then-useless shields and kinetic weapons. Please can we have this? Pretty please? With Jeff on top?
Can't you just make blueprints for defense platforms?
The main starbase doesn't do much work in the first place

On another note, could be fun to play isolationists, fortify your borders with the storms and then just sit there with highly specialized fleets that have undeniable home advantage in the storm
 
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Interesting that this start has two FTL capable civs sharing a system without the star base owner automatically taking ownership.

I wonder if this is just using the standard primitive mechanics, or if we could see this being used for uplifted civilisations that aren’t given control of their system
 
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Not quite sure how I feel about turning Minor Artifact into something I can get as a resource deposit. I love all the things you can do with them, and I can see that for that to work you probably need a few more, but I kind of liked that they were an actual limited resource, that you had to consider a bit how and when you used. And a resource deposit seems like a very low cost to get them, even if it is a very rare resource.

I do like the effects. Great to see another use for Zro (I hope you might have done something similar for Dark Matter or Living Metal), and I like the system boost of the Cybrex tech.
 
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