Stellaris Dev Diary #308 - Rock On! (Also an Announcement Regarding Species Pack Pricing)

[Mech_infect]

Do you have any plans to add ascension in the every race rework?

I see it this way - by building an empire with good rights for only one species (any species), you can take different special ascension perks for different races , which strengthens and develops a special species idea

 

[VoodooDog]

U cant just pick a human form and put an rock looking texture on it, thats lazy and uncreative

 

[Starfire Breeze]

To add to what Eladrin's said above, if you don't have the tech for the resource (say you have a rare crystal deposit), you'll be able to harvest those rare crystals, albeit with a penalty due to missing the tech.

More importantly, why do you want to delete mining stations?!

Remember that not having the extraction technology doesn't prevent mining stations from extracting resources, at least as of 3.8, and that that applies to all empires (unless you've revised this behavior).

Consequently, as described with the information that has been provided, the proposal actually adds an incentive to delete mining stations- because those mining stations are much more valuable to opposing empires who don't have this civic if neither empire has the extraction technology (say Zro/Living Metal/Dark Matter), you're particularly incentivized to destroy rare strategic resource mining stations that you are likely to lose in a war (so long as the civic applies to those deposits; no information to the contrary seems to have been provided that I could see at a glance). That's on account of both an enemy empire not having the penalty to mining station output on account of not having the civic, and that the enemy may get a free mining station providing a rare strategic resource decades ahead of when they might otherwise do so.

(This also sounds as though it likely disadvantages empires with the new civic with respect to the various (longstanding) buggy anomaly events that turn a research deposit into a living metal deposit, which gives one an effective free living metal income if one had a research station built ahead of time. That's on account of it sounding, based on information available, as though the deposit would likely produce much less output. The broken behavior of the various cases where deposits switch types is virtually certain to be a bug, though one could argue that it's exacerbated by these changes should one not have elected to fix those bugs along the way.)

 

[velles]

We’ve been having a lot of questionnaires and feedback sessions with players, and one of the things that is often requested is some more relatable characters in the various phenotypes. While we’ll of course continue creating horrific alien monstrosities, the art team took this opportunity to add a few new portraits to Lithoids, Plantoids, and Humanoids.

Relatable design doesn't necessarily mean Rubber Forehead humanoids. It might be something like uplifted animals. IMO there should be mammalian species pack with new mammalian aliens and extra mammalian city and shipset (or even two - isn't that weird that all mammalian empires use the same city and ship designs?). There are space fennecs, space horses, space otters (Scyldari) and space cats but what about other mammals like wolves, bears, rabbits, hyenas, deers, ferrets, bats, raccoons, possums, etc.? I think mammals are varied enough to get their own species pack with new portraits.
Also about humanoids - can you slightly rework Humanoid #5 portrait pack (a.k.a. Space Elves)? The animesque hairstyles are IMO a massive turn-off. They neither fit the elves archetype and are even worse if you want to create Vulcan-like empire (and this is the only pointy-eared humanoid in the game)

Or is it finally being made available on custom empire creation due to popular demand?
Will we finally at long last gain vanilla access to the Greenpunk room and cityscape?

You don't need to cheat to get solarpunk background and cityscape, all you need it to do is find "user_empire_designs" file in Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris and replace city_graphical_culture="mammalian_01" with

solarpunk_01

There are also primitive citysets:

preindustrial_01

industrial_01

First one looks like Space Byzantium, basically Naboo, second one is Steampunk (Zeppelin included). The best part is you won't see any of these details in pre-FTL civilizations since their cities are not large enough.

 

[SeraphAscending]

Do gestalt nodes count towards "leaders reached level 8" for neural vaults?
And if yes, do they count multiple times? (after reformatting)
Would be funny just to supercharge your leader experience gain with an overtuned, short-lived hivemind species and still have powerful leaders, even if they just live a few decades. Would be an extremely stupid build, but definitely a fun idea.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Is there a reasonable situation in which you would actually not want a free mining station?

Mining stations over 1-mineral deposits have an upkeep greater than the cost of just buying that one mineral on the market (at base price and market fee), unless you can push the yield from the station higher than is normally possible. In some niche cases (where you're trying to buy more minerals each month than the market can supply without price fluctuation, or if the galactic market has driven the mineral price sky-high) this might be worth it anyhow, but in reality, such deposits are basically worthless (they aren't even useful for habitats in practice, since the only place I ever see them is on moons and asteroids and for some reason you can't have habitats orbiting anything other than a "real" planet...)

The situation is fuzzier with research deposits, but it mostly applies there too. A 2-research deposit is almost never worth the upkeep. Even though you can't directly convert energy into research, you can work out an equivalency using pop labor comparisons: a researcher takes one pop (obviously) and the output of 1/3 of an artisan who in turn takes 1/2 of a miner's output as upkeep. So a researcher produces (at base values) 12 research using 1+1/3+1/2 = 11/6 (just under 2) pops worth of labor (it's actually a little higher because of food and living standard upkeep, but also in practice it's always lower because if you're only producing base output from your miners/artisans/researchers, something has gone deeply wrong). A research station's upkeep is 1/3 of a technician's (base) output. As such, two pops can power 12 research worth of 2-deposit research stations (by working as technicians), or slightly more by just working as researchers (and their supply chain). The fact that you can't just buy (or sell) research and that more research is always useful (unlike more minerals, or to a lesser extent energy) makes this less blatantly a terrible deal than mining one-mineral deposits (also, the fact that it's much closer to breaking even), but it's still not good.

And the sad fact is, Stellaris map generation hasn't updated research deposit sizes since... well, I started playing in 2.1, and they haven't been updated in at least that long. Even though the rest of the economy has been completely re-worked, and the average size of mineral deposits was at least increased a little bit (a 6-mineral desposit is actual competitive with a miner, one of the lowest-yield jobs in the game!). Back in 2.1, space resources were a major part of your research income, and quite valuable. Since 2.2, they've been nothing but a rounding error; by midgame, it's rare for them to account for even 2% of my total science income (and that's even with observation stations, which arguably shouldn't count). Anyhow, point is, 2-research deposits are a plague: they're everywhere, and they're awful. Even a 3-research deposit isn't good, though it does at least most likely break even (depending on bonuses to job outputs). Bigger deposits are solidly if boringly worthwhile, but too scarce.

 

[G S Palmer]

I will say I was slightly concerned about the "more relatable species" because I don't want everything to be humanoid and I really feel like we need some more properly alien aliens, but if it's just one or two per phenotype I don't have an issue with that.

I also kind of like the new humanoid lithoid. It reminds me of the Kastrians from the Doctor Who episode "The Hand of Fear".

I saw somebody say it felt like something from an old cheesy sci-fi movie. Is that necessarily a bad thing?

Also.. is that last picture a hint towards a bird species pack? :3

My guess is we're getting a plantoid portrait with birds perching on it.

 

[Foxosaur]

After watching Guardians of the Galaxy 3, I think we need more animals either way

 

[rubert]

Yes, Selective Kinship forces Citizen status for same-Phenotype pops, even in a Xenophobe empire. (And it interacts as expected when combined with Slaver Guilds - Full Citizenship for the species, but partially enslaved anyway.)

How does Selective Kinship interact with Faction attraction? At least in the past free alien citizens (especialy full citizens) increased Xenophile attraction by a huge amount - eventually turning empires to Xenophile. If Xenophile attraction is still high it might cause huge Xenophile faction sooner or later...

Disclaimer: I don't know if Attraction values have been changed since 2021 when I posted https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/reduce-xenophile-attraction.1471138/ - haven't been just playing very much Stellaris to pay attention to that.

 

[Verx90]

A e.g. 2 motes deposit for this hive mind will give .25*2*10*.7-1=2.5 energy, on the market, every month.

It goes up quite a bit with mining station modifiers (going up to 12.3 energy with +70% mining station output from all techs and Prosperity), but in the early game they'll be extremely limited if you want to sell them.

And after they research the relevant tech, they're on the same footing as everyone else.

mhh... thats 250 extra energy for year , without the initial cost of 75-100 minerals , decreased by the upkeep of the station .

this origin is quite economical in early game , any other empire has an investiment on anything they build that require years to pay back , depending on the speed this civ build minning stations , they will have a big advantage on the economy .

space is your earlygame economy , 50% of your resources will come from space , if you are expanding , because colonies will take years to actualy start giving back what they cost .

 

[Rafss]

The humanoid rock portrait looks like the old human portraits which almost got removed from the game, sadly they scream uncanny valley, they need a rework. I hope the Paradox artist understands, if anything it is their own fault for setting the quality of species portraits so high!

Now about the birds teaser, I had an idea that maybe it would be a Syncretic-like origin but with the second species being Pre-sapient Avians, in a sort of harmonious relationship with the Plantoids from a distant past of making nests on them and getting used to them, idk. A pre-sapient origin would be cool.

 

[Spaceception]

Sure, let's make the lithoid habitability bonuses even more overpowered.
AND completely negate the malus of reduced pop growth if you have a crater on your planet...

The growth bonus is only negated on your capital planet, which is fine, it only allows them to grow at normal rates there

Without taking the Calamitous Birth origin, all planets (except tombs) are at 70%+ habitability before planet modifiers, due to the Lithoid trait giving +50% habitability on top of the default 20%.

When you take Calamitous Birth now, you get a special colony ship that's cheaper to build (only costing minerals), but impacts the planet, giving -50% habitability, negating the +50% advantage of the Lithoid trait.

So why would you use the meteorite ship at all if it ruins the habitability advantage?

Now the -50% habitability only affects non Lithoids, allowing you to actually take advantage of the meteorite ships for all of your colonies rather than ignoring its main feature (and might as well be using a different origin).

So I'm not sure what your complaint is. That Calamitous Birth should actively hurt your Lithoid playthrough?

 

[Primarch Victus]

We already have such case now.

View attachment 1012008

However if you try to edit the room, you will never be able to get it again.

View attachment 1012009
View attachment 1012010

There is a mod in the Workshop that lets you use Pre-FTL rooms: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2950973816&searchtext=rooms

...How to not sound like a downer...

...The new Lithoid species... looks a little racist. Just a little. That probably reflects badly on me more than anything else, so sorry about that.

Being able to brute-force your way into the same Ascension path in every single game... will make every run the same, won't it? Do people really hate randomness in a procedurally-generated game like Stellaris?

Group Racism... a.k.a. "widening the in-group a bit more and stigmatizing the out-group even more in-turn"... I mean, I guess you would make that a Civic, but why not just make that a setting/policy for minor Xenophobes or something? You have the opposite of it in Imperator: Rome.

Too much randomness is boring. I would love to be able to craft my galaxy the way I want -- by choosing what empires won't pop-up and which will; by choosing which empires will be part of a Federation (Common Ground Origin) and which ones will be part of a Hegemony (Hegemon Origin), etc.
And I see nothing wrong with Selective Kinship. This Civic will let me finally to roleplay in Stellaris the prejudice that Atlanteans in both the Marvel and DC universes feel for those blasted surface dwellers.

 

[Rafss]

I took the freedom to do some editing on a mobile app (away from PC), pardon for the poor quality, but I think I could nail down the uncanny-ness to the face, so I made it slightly more alien and got this:

I think it feels more stellaris like, slightly badass even, what do you people think?

 

[Primarch Victus]

Relatable design doesn't necessarily mean Rubber Forehead humanoids. It might be something like uplifted animals. IMO there should be mammalian species pack with new mammalian aliens and extra mammalian city and shipset (or even two - isn't that weird that all mammalian empires use the same city and ship designs?). There are space fennecs, space horses, space otters (Scyldari) and space cats but what about other mammals like wolves, bears, rabbits, hyenas, deers, ferrets, bats, raccoons, possums, etc.? I think mammals are varied enough to get their own species pack with new portraits.
Also about humanoids - can you slightly rework Humanoid #5 portrait pack (a.k.a. Space Elves)? The animesque hairstyles are IMO a massive turn-off. They neither fit the elves archetype and are even worse if you want to create Vulcan-like empire (and this is the only pointy-eared humanoid in the game)

Exactly. Those anime hairstyles are a huge letdown. Luckily, I found a mod that removes those blasted hairstyles from the game: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2034808518

 

[Primarch Victus]

I took the freedom to do some editing on a mobile app (away from PC), pardon for the poor quality, but I think I could nail down the uncanny-ness to the face, so I made it slightly more alien and got this:

View attachment 1012095
I think it feels more stellaris like, slightly badass even, what do you people think?

Great! Now, instead of looking like a monster coming from a trash movie, this Lithoid now looks like a villain from a japanese tokusatsu TV show...

 

[Rafss]

Oh no you found my secret!

I want Lord Zedd in the game

 

[King Harkinian]

I'm disappointed about the change to ascension paths. This continues a trend of making things simpler and more predictable, and thus more boring. The random element of the tech draw used to make it so you would adapt to the circumstances, and often this would lead to trying new things that you otherwise wouldn't. Is the change meant to please players who just want to go the same ascension path every game and hate the idea of variety? I strongly doubt those represent the majority.

I think this especially hurts Psionic, which has already been dumbed down so much recently. It used to have a mysterious appeal because it was reliant on a rare technology to get into, but now there's multiple ways to get easy access to it. The origin, enclave and now just an instant "get psionic" button that you have every game. The mystery of the shroud has also been lessened because covenants have been systematized and made less dangerous.

Don't lose sight of the main appeal of Stellaris - discovery. The more straightforward its is to unlock a feature, the less replay value the game has because players will quickly get everything.

 

[FleetingRain]

I'm of the opinion that if you play with humanoids you're a coward

But I think the issue with these models is that they're too humanoid, if that makes sense. It's almost like they're wearing super-hero collants. Hell, they have crystals for hair, it looks too goofy. Maybe their bodies should look less human-shaped, or maybe the crystals should grow anywhere else on the body (you can't go wrong with elbow crystals), maybe their face features could be holes in a rocky face etc

 

[Starfire Breeze]

I'm of the opinion that if you play with humanoids you're a coward

But I think the issue with these models is that they're too humanoid, if that makes sense. It's almost like they're wearing super-hero collants. Hell, they have crystals for hair, it looks too goofy. Maybe their bodies should look less human-shaped, or maybe the crystals should grow anywhere else on the body (Iyou can't go wrong with elbow crystals), maybe their face features could be holes in a rocky face etc

Looks more like TNG - "Identity Crisis" than anything else to me.