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

Welcome back!

In this week’s dev diary, we’re going to explore some improvements the Custodian Team is making to the Lithoids Species Pack in the upcoming Stellaris 3.9 ‘Caelum’ Update, and then a few other new features.

Before that, I have an announcement to make regarding Species Pack Pricing.

Announcement Regarding Species Pack Pricing​

Stellaris Species Packs started as purely cosmetic add-ons, consisting of portraits, ship sets, city sets, and advisor voices. They’ve come a long way since them, now including a much greater variety of content. While the exact spread of features varies by pack, they now all include things such as origins, civics, traits, events, and new mechanics.

As Game Director, I’m especially pleased with how the Custodian Team has improved the quality of the older packs. They’ve added new playstyles and enabled many more sci-fi tropes to be explored during your games.

Species Pack Changes Since Release


With the changes coming in 3.9 ‘Caelum’, we believe that the older Species Packs will be on par with the newer ones, and we’re planning an increase in the base price of the Plantoids, Humanoids, Lithoids, and Necroids Species Packs from $7.99 to match the $9.99 base price of the more recent Aquatics and Toxoids Species Packs.

Per the promise made by Fredrik Wester several years ago, we are announcing this change ahead of time so anyone that wishes to purchase them at the current base prices will have an opportunity to do so. They will be available with the current base price for at least 30 days, and will be changing alongside the release of 3.9 ‘Caelum’.

Stellaris will be taking part in the Steam Strategy Fest. This will give you a chance to get the affected Species Packs at a discounted price before the price change goes into effect.

I’ll now detail the improvements made to the Lithoids Species Pack. Improvements to the other Species Packs will be a major focus of dev diaries over the next few weeks.

Tired of reading? Watch the video dev diary on YouTube!

Things That Rock​

My very first Stellaris Dev Diary was #157 - Things That Rock.

The Lithoids Species Pack was the first one that wasn’t exclusively an art pack. The Lithoid trait added interesting game mechanics to the phenotype, we had a few Lithoid specific traits, some event changes, and the Terravore variant of the Devouring Swarm.

The purely cosmetic Species Packs were updated in subsequent releases, but while it did get an Origin in Federations and more traits in 3.5 ‘Fornax’, Lithoids hadn’t gotten quite as much of an update from the Custodian Team as the packs. Of quartz I thought that we should dig up some improvements.

I’ll turn things over to Iggy now to talk about some of the changes.



Greetings all, Iggy here!

Since the release of Galactic Paragons, the Custodian Team has been working on improving the value and quality of older DLC’s. Today I will be talking about what we have done for the Lithoid Species Pack.

Buffing the Old​


As previously shown in DD#305 we returned to Calamitous Birth to give it some love. This includes removing the habitability loss from Lithoid Craters for Lithoid pops as well as increasing the effectiveness of lithoid exclusive traits such as Gaseous Byproducts on the Massive Crater world.

Calamitous Birth Tooltip
Massive Crater Tooltip
Lithoid Crater Tooltip

We also talked about how terravores have gotten a glow up. No longer will you need to sit and click a decision every 6 months as you consume your world! Now it’s all handled in a handy compact situation. The output should still be exactly the same as before thanks to clever script math so don’t worry about this being a nerf to acquired pops or resources.

Consume World Tooltip

Crunch crunch!

In With the New!​


Not satisfied with only buffing these two old pieces of content we also felt like the species pack could do with a bit of a polish to stack up to current species packs.

First up: Void Hive
Void Hive Civic Icon

I love this icon so much

As you can see it’s a Hive Civic with quite a unique effect and if the habitat changes discussed in DD#306 go through it would be a powerful addition to your Void Dweller Hiveminds.

Void Hive civic, now with more clarifications!

Iggy making potentially game breaking hive content? SHOCKER!

This civic plays around with the flavor of a Hive Mind that is capable of surviving out in space and the dangers of vacuum. While you still can build gathering stations it goes against your nature to instruct specific drones to do so and will cost you some Unity. They also excel at creating structures in space, whether they be habitats, dyson spheres, or hyper relays, so get out into the dark void already!

The other new civic added to the Lithoid Species Pack is Selective Kinship.

This civic is not for the xenophiles so please, avert your ocular organs.

Selective Kinship Civic Tooltip

Meat. They’re made out of meat!

This civic also comes with the lithoid species pack and lets you create an empire consisting only of your primary phenotype such as Lithoids, Aquatic, Mammalian, etc. Though don’t think it will be smooth sailing because you won’t like anyone not conforming to your standards and they will really not like your bigoted thinking. However if you really want to have some friends the Hegemon and Common Ground origin will ensure that your member nations are your phenotype if you choose to start with this civic.

Shine Bright!​


Thanks, Iggy.

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.

Concept Art for new Lithoid Humanoids

For Lithoids, the Federated Theian Preserves will be a new prescripted empire that begins on the Desert World of Theia, in the Titawin system.

Billions of years ago, two planets formed from the primordial material in orbit of Sol - ancient Earth, and Theia.

Rudimentary life evolved on both worlds, biological in the case of Earth, and lithoid on Theia. For eons, these sister planets maintained a peaceful revolution around their star. Then came the cataclysm.

The planets collided, and in the moment of impact, microbial life was exchanged. Earth survived, and Luna was formed. What remained of Theia was jettisoned from the system.

On this rocky colony ship, life from ancient Theia traversed the void before it was caught in the gravity well of the star Titawin. Crashing into one of the system's worlds, a new species was introduced to the local biosphere. A few short millenia later, the Theian's took to the stars, seeking to understand the universe as well as their own heritage.


The Federated Theian Preservers

Work is still being done on the lava shader.

May they find their way home!

On to some other 3.9 changes…

Ascension Path Agendas​

Some players have commented that they often find themselves saving an Ascension Perk slot for an indeterminate amount of time, waiting for the required research for their desired Ascension Path to appear.

The Ascension Perks that unlock the four Ascension Paths have had their requirements changed so that they now be taken as your third AP at the earliest instead of as your second AP. We have removed the Technology requirements and moved those to progressing down the Tradition Tree associated with that Ascension Path.

Engineered Evolution Tooltip

Psionics Tradition Tooltip

Each Ascension Path now has an Agenda that grants 25% progress in technologies associated with that Ascension Path, which should ensure that you are no longer reliant on random chance to acquire these technologies. These Agendas have a reduced cost and cooldown compared to normal Agendas, though some have modifiers based on Empire Ethics compatibility with the Ascension Path.

Mind over Matter Agenda, granting Psionic Theory progress

The random number generator will not keep us out of the Shroud!

Engineered Evolution Agenda Tooltip, Granting Genome Mapping

These agendas advance to the next relevant technology if you finish some research while the agenda is ongoing.

rm -rf /nodes/regulatory​

One of the complaints we’ve had with Gestalt Councils is that Nodes cannot be replaced unlike the Councilors for regular empires. This means that you are no longer locked forever to traits that might be useful for your Nodes in the early-game but fall off in the mid- to late-game.

To solve this, we’ve added three new Society technologies to Machine Intelligences (and Hive Minds) which unlock a set of new Council Agendas that replace the existing Nodes, after a bit of reformatting (or vivisection).

Reformatting Technologies

TODO: Icons

Reformatting Agendas


The first technology will unlock the Agendas themselves, while the following technologies will unlock modifiers that improve both the Agendas and your Council.

The newly created Nodes will initially start at level 1, though this can be improved to a maximum starting level equal to the level of the reformatted/culled Node depending on Technologies, Traditions and Civics.

Next Week​

Next week we’ll be going over improvements to the Plantoids Species Pack and some more other changes coming in 3.9 ‘Caelum’. Humanoids and Necroids will be the following week.

A Heart Full of Birds

These are not plantoids. But you’ll get to meet them in the plantoids dev diary.
Updated Teaser Image

Edit: Updated Void Hive civic tooltip.
 
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About Selective Kinships "Other pops are banned from full citizenship". I think this is prime example among other similar design choices where you might be missing something huge. Why prevent player from making a decision? Maybe something like: "ALL your FACTIONs get really mad if player decides to allow citizenship for other pops". Preventing player to make a choice feels lazy, letting player to make bad decisions with consequenses via factions is imo the way to go.
 
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Ah, *Ruler* creation, not *Species* creation like you said. Gotcha.

Yeah I imagine that box will be renamed.

Just like the NPC ship class "Frigate" got renamed when player ship class "Frigate" came online?

Nah, it's going to be multiple different mechanics using the same word.

Yeah there is a bit of a problem with names due to the early nature of the concepts, we will have to avoid taking things literally for now.

Yeah but even if we try not to misunderstand, it's still more difficult to communicate than if they used distinct words for things.

About Selective Kinships "Other pops are banned from full citizenship". I think this is prime example among other similar design choices where you might be missing something huge. Why prevent player from making a decision? Maybe something like: "ALL your FACTIONs get really mad if player decides to allow citizenship for other pops". Preventing player to make a choice feels lazy, letting player to make bad decisions with consequenses via factions is imo the way to go.

The weird thing is that Xenophobes already kinda had that -- preferring species from their portrait category, and banning other species from full citizenship.
 
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Lithoid changes are all well and good, but oh boy, more birds! I do have a bit of affection for owls, particularly barn owls. While it seems like those specifically might not be planned here, I do appreciate the diversification of portraits. If you were feeling ambitious then I'd love to see all of the groups get a pass that applied the lessons you learned from the Toxoids pack so that they felt even more diverse.
 
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About Selective Kinships "Other pops are banned from full citizenship". I think this is prime example among other similar design choices where you might be missing something huge. Why prevent player from making a decision? Maybe something like: "ALL your FACTIONs get really mad if player decides to allow citizenship for other pops". Preventing player to make a choice feels lazy, letting player to make bad decisions with consequenses via factions is imo the way to go.
I would argue that hard restrictions let ethics and civics be more interesting and impactful. It gives a reason for other empires to dislike you and buys them power budget for their hefty happiness increases.

Though, faction happiness actually serves as a counterpoint for this. This civic gives you two things: pop happiness and faction unity (through increased political power). Plus slavery synergy, through the combination of those two, like a less crippling Noxious. Taking a faction happiness nerf for allowing any non-phenotype pops to be citizens would nicely cancel out those two effects, so I suppose it works.

If you wanted to do that, though, I'm not sure why you'd take the civic in the first place.
 
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Necroids wanting all their leaders to go Lich for immortality is a no-brainer. Make this so, @Eladrin , or I shall release the Mummy.
 
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Pushing the ascension path to have to be your third pick is awful, I want it sooner not later. I hoard points as it is because I don't want most of the ones that are immediately available, now I have to take a third option I don't want before I can get what want?
 
About Selective Kinships "Other pops are banned from full citizenship". I think this is prime example among other similar design choices where you might be missing something huge. Why prevent player from making a decision? Maybe something like: "ALL your FACTIONs get really mad if player decides to allow citizenship for other pops". Preventing player to make a choice feels lazy, letting player to make bad decisions with consequenses via factions is imo the way to go.
You do have a decision: Don't take the Civic.
 
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i'm kind of glad I didn't see my latest mod implentation in this dev diary, i only finally finished it: crystal required set components exclusive for lithoid graphical culture. so this dev diary had me a touch worried :sweat smile:
 
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The Theia backstory is a bit weird. From what we can tell abiogenesis massively postdates the postulated Theia collision, and if microbial life was exchanged wouldn’t Stellaris Earth have lithoid microorganisms? A bit weird. I think the idea was to tie the humanoid lithoids to Earth but with 4.5GY between them and now there’s no real connection.
 
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so... this hivemind build will have access to a big sum of energy , those special resources can get a good price on the market earlygame , it can be a nice boost to your early game economy .

too bad there are not realy much other uses of special resources outside giving you access to special resources related tech and selling them onthe market.

i don't remember , the edicts that use special resources come from having access to them , or the tech to have access to them ?
 
i don't remember , the edicts that use special resources come from having access to them , or the tech to have access to them ?
I think just having them, considering the Lithoid strategy of using crystalline sensors at the start to map out your postion and find neighbors early. Plus the events that give nanites, giving you a boost to research speed when you activate nanite actuators, though some like Terraforming gases are likely gated by technology.
 
Please give us an option to turn off some of the portraits in Species Packs, for example I like how ship set for Necroids look but I absolutely don't want to see a few portraits from that packs in my games so I can finally buy that pack.
 
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Billions of years ago, two planets formed from the primordial material in orbit of Sol - ancient Earth, and Theia.

Rudimentary life evolved on both worlds, biological in the case of Earth, and lithoid on Theia. For eons, these sister planets maintained a peaceful revolution around their star. Then came the cataclysm.

The planets collided, and in the moment of impact, microbial life was exchanged. Earth survived, and Luna was formed. What remained of Theia was jettisoned from the system.

On this rocky colony ship, life from ancient Theia traversed the void before it was caught in the gravity well of the star Titawin. Crashing into one of the system's worlds, a new species was introduced to the local biosphere. A few short millenia later, the Theian's took to the stars, seeking to understand the universe as well as their own heritage.
So they are acutually originated from the Solar system.

Then will it guarantee that Sol will always appear? (just like the CoM)