Stellaris Dev Diary #318 - Announcing Astral Planes

[PanzergrenadierBBC]

No, just no. After Paragons, I am not buying another expansion pack for or game based on Stellaris until I see absolutely glowing reviews for it>

Don't know why you get some disagreements. I'm feeling the same. Paragons was for me the break with Stellaris. Too much changes i didn't like (everyhting around Leader Cap for me) and till now there is still no real fix for the changes (i know there will changes with 3.10).
Because of how Paragons and the changes were handled i totally understand that anyone does not want to buy a new Expansion Pack, Story Pack or DLC without a review or something similar.

 

[Calvax]

It’s been a while since we’ve had a story pack so cool to see. Astral actions in particular look very interesting. Looks like we unlock them through exploring different rifts and activate them with a new resource?

 

[Methone]

Gonna be a bit cynical here: This just seems like 'we try and fix archaeology, but instead of improving the existing ones we just charge you for it again'.

 

[Shaded Moon]

i mean, it's less that they deny the supernatural and more that they believe there has to be a scientific explanation for everything
so those "fools" who dabble into psionics and negotiate with things they do not understand are just uneducated and reckless

also there are some silly materialist exclusive beliefs as well
for example fanatic materialists can discover that the simulation theory is in fact true and can then use that knowledge to actively rewrite the "simulation" to their own advantage

The problem is that doesn't come across mechanically or with flavor text. Psyonic gives a huge boost towards spiritualist iirc. Sure it's something that can be counter acted, but still. And when another empire goes psyonic ascendancy, the materialist response isn't "we must study this obviously real phenomenon...", it's "what a load of frak"

 

[Smarti12]

Sounds very interesting! Definitely looking forward to hear more about it, and glad it's another story pack (or narrative expansion). I wasn't a big fan of the previous DLCs, partly because of it actually not brining emerging stories to the game in a way I hoped. This is probably a different way of storytelling, but as with the (curators) additions of anomolies and archeology sites I quite like these anyway. And this should be better than that.

 

[Goodwood Empire]

That'll be cool if one of these rifts leads us to the Star Trek universe and we can steal the Enterprise.

 

[MadCow94]

So.

Stellaris: Star Trek was made by a different team.
Astral Archeology Narrative Pack is being made by a different team.

...what is the Stellaris A-Team working on?

Stellaris 2 confirmed.

 

[JacketReturns]

If this is a Pack with a lot of Story events will the [ESC Key Autoselect Bug] Be fixed?

I feel that as a player who uses hotkeys, As painful as it is in current patch, Autoclosing any of these new events would be exceptionally painful and expect others would feel the same. Since I'd risk lose out on so much new content by trying to tab out of the planet builder or ship designer.

 

[Gaspi2]

I see huge missed opportunity to kick unbidden energetic butts in their own home planet...invaders should be invadeable

 

[King Harkinian]

It’s been a while since we’ve had a story pack so cool to see. Astral actions in particular look very interesting. Looks like we unlock them through exploring different rifts and activate them with a new resource?

View attachment 1032614

This looks a bit concerning. Seems to be a "gotta catch 'em all" type of system which means you'll be entering a whole bunch of rifts each game, which will make them very mundane and quickly deplete replay value., as well as probably turn them into busywork(like anomalies, archeology sites, espionage missions and so on tend to be) when they should be individually exciting and special. I would have preferred to see a couple of them at most in a single playthrough.

The problem is that doesn't come across mechanically or with flavor text. Psyonic gives a huge boost towards spiritualist iirc. Sure it's something that can be counter acted, but still. And when another empire goes psyonic ascendancy, the materialist response isn't "we must study this obviously real phenomenon...", it's "what a load of frak"

You seem to think that the Shroud is a physical place that you enter, like the rifts in this DLC. It's not. It's purely in the minds of the people who go there. Outside observers can't tell anything is happening at all, they have no reason to believe it's real.

 

[Rafss]

Paradox, listen seriously:

It is time you add Psitronic Implants as an ascension path for materialists, with expensive projects to objectively get all or most of the psionic Techs instead of shroud RNG, no covenants no spiritualist fluff.

How about that? You please everyone that way, no downsides at all.

It is time Materialists study the Shroud phenomena instead of negating it like conspirational lunatics. That makes no sense at all, the Game Writing is flawed, but we can sit down and fix it with the help of this amazing community!

 

[SteelCrow]

I just want to drop some appreciation for the alliteration of 'astral action'.

 

[Eladrin]

With the 4 civics, is it one for each empire type (normal, robot, corpo, hive)?

Four unique civics. We didn't count the variants.

 

[Calvax]

Paradox, listen seriously:

It is time you add Psitronic Implants as an ascension path for materialists, with expensive projects to objectively get all or most of the psionic Techs instead of shroud RNG, no covenants no spiritualist fluff.

How about that? You please everyone that way, no downsides at all.

It is time Materialists study the Shroud phenomena instead of negating it like conspirational lunatics. That makes no sense at all, the Game Writing is flawed, but we can sit down and fix it with the help of this amazing community!

It's more of an argument to change the flavour text. There's nothing wrong with sci fi that proposes a metaphysical and somewhat conscious dimension that is not amenable to technology. The issue is the text that implies materialists don't believe observable phenomena exist. It should be changed to them a) not believing it is what spiritualists think it is and b) not something materialists are able to reproduce

 

[Ancient Den]

It's all interesting, space fantasy, all that...


However, the question is: is there still any point in being a materialist? I mean, you go out into space, and there are straight up spiritualists doing D&D stuff, traveling along the astral planes and all that

 

[prismaticmarcus]

whoa

 

[Rafss]

It's more of an argument to change the flavour text. There's nothing wrong with sci fi that proposes a metaphysical and somewhat conscious dimension that is not amenable to technology. The issue is the text that implies materialists don't believe observable phenomena exist. It should be changed to them a) not believing it is what spiritualists think it is and b) not something materialists are able to reproduce

Yeah it makes no sense at all, they see enemy ships using psionic shields and they simply negate the existence of this superior technology, that's childish, flawed worldbuilding.

 

[Methone]

I see huge missed opportunity to kick unbidden energetic butts in their own home planet...invaders should be invadeable

Hahaha no

Their little funtime hunting excursion is a dire crisis for an entire galaxy of type 2 civilizations. If we bring it to their home we're gonna get our asses kicked in ten different dimensions.

 

[Lenk]

So.

Stellaris: Star Trek was made by a different team.
Astral Archeology Narrative Pack is being made by a different team.

...what is the Stellaris A-Team working on?

Stellaris 2 confirmed.

Well they have worked on First contact that was in march, but the last full expansion was Overlord and that released over a year ago. The producer did say people on the team were helping out the Star trek game so I wouldn't be surprised if that temporarily stop development or slowed it a little on whatever their working on. Plus with them holding off the 4.0 designation kind of tells me their not wanting to use that unless it was something big. To be honest though, I would rather have them take their sweet time and make something good and with few as bugs as possible then it be rushed.

 

[DarkSafire]

So its just basically "Archaeology+", but in purple? Could have been worse, i guess. Devs sure love archaeology site system.