Stellaris Dev Diary #318 - Announcing Astral Planes

[Chrysostom15]

It is about time for Stellaris to finally have an alternate reality race like Stars! Did way back in the 1990s. That's at least my first thought about this, other than the obvious need for more details. Lol.

Thus far, Stellaris has mostly tried to hit the basics of any interstellar 4x game like robot empires and pops that eat other pops. The only obvious, kinda surprising hole, has been the lack of real species diversity in terms of alternative reality races.

It looks like astral rifts are finally going to fill this and probably add a new origin or species type for a species that functions in a different plane of existence. One that can't make ground troop armies of its citizens and can only interact in this universe through technology because they are native elsewhere. Again, like the stars! Alternate reality race pick.

Honestly, I had thought it wasn't going happen. Early on, stellaris had the different types of ftl, with some empires using worm holes, others using jump lanes, and others using drives allowing them to fly to any star. Early on stellaris had the event about the gas giant dwelling species like masters of Orion had. Back then, it looked like stellaris was really focused on touching all of the traditional science fiction 4x basis to have available all the features that different groups of people loved. Then, it looked like stellaris made a switch to focus more on simplicity and getting rid of some of the diversity from one empire to another. Probably in the name of easier balance and lower learning curve. Looks like the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way.


I think the alternate reality is a good addition. Hopefully it will not just be meeting these alternate reality races as events or only relics. Hopefully, it will be possible to play them as an origin. Tangentially, it would be nice to be able to play fallen empires as well. Lol.

I actually think alternate reality could be either a completely different play style option or more complex, or the exact opposite and be very much as simplified. I am really interested to find out. I just hope it isn't just some events where this is pure flavor. I hope it is, like, a real new thing that opens up a totally new area.

For example, with Stars!, the AR race had a new, bigger type of Starbase. I think any alternate reality race is going to need massive power or technology to cross over from a different reality. It would make sense for these folks to bring with them a bigger size Starbase able to do more, and also either different housing or habitats. I would think that would they either can't survive on planets or need special structures where they die if they shut down.

I am interested to see how this developes and hopefully it will be a real thing that improves the game not just flavor.

 

[SkyGuy7617]

What we really need are customizable space religions and events to go along with them.

 

[Dragmire]

Ooh, my kind of addition!

Maybe I'll finally find out what happened to my home planet that disappeared for reasons that totally completely WEREN'T MY FAULT I SWEAR!

... cough...

Damn space centipede...

 

[Maethendias]

"Astral Planes is a narrative-focused expansion"

i SINCERLY hope that with narrative focus you dont mean bs like the minmatar origins OR anomalies/digsites

because as i have said before... doing that RUINS the sandbox more than it adds... perfect example are broken shackles and payback... the fact that they are PREWRITTEN storyorigins instead of mechanical sandbox origins prevents them from being used by ethics that make much more sense, simply by virtue of "storyrelevant issues"... talking about gestalts here btw... (for why they would fit, i suggest reading chrysalis for an amazing dexterminator fiction)

stellaris, despite its heavy focus on it, does not do prewritten stories well at all... in fact its QUITE bad at it simply by virtue of it being a sandbox grandstrategy...

you cant have a game focused on emergent storytelling, with repeated playthroughs.... combined with prewritten stories and expected them to be interessting after the second playthrough...

its significantly better for stellaris to focus on introducing mechanics and new tech, than storyblurps that are gonna get ingored after the 10th playthrough...

stellaris was always an emergent storygenerator at first, i really hope that astral planes is gonna go the route of eve online wormholes rather than being another anomaly system which is gonna become utterly irrelevant aside from things like ressource gains


heres hoping

 

[Mythox]

Are we going to receive our forum icons ? It's been over 2 and a half years now (since Nemesis dlc) that there haven't been any new icons and it's frustrating....

 

[SirBlackAxe]

I loved Ancient Relics, always excited to see more exploration / narrative content!

I hope that this mid to late game exploration encourages keeping the explorers you used in the early game around, rather than firing the scientists with survey traits in order to free up the leader capacity to build up new ones with separate rift exploration traits.

 

[Strager]

​

The Stellaris team has been working with Abrakam Entertainment since October 2022, and they've been working on Astral Planes in close collaboration with the rest of the Stellaris team.​

Really glad to see Paradox bringing in outside developers to work on expansions. Hopefully this will translate into more expansions per year and more content in those expansions. One of the most important things for a game like this is to have as many options as possible to make the games as varied as possible.

 

[FortunaDraken]

Looking forward to this pack, I'll take all the new exploration stuff.

Also I need wallpaper versions of the three images in this dev diary, please. They all look neat.

 

[Geredis]

Really glad to see Paradox bringing in outside developers to work on expansions. Hopefully this will translate into more expansions per year and more content in those expansions. One of the most important things for a game like this is to have as many options as possible to make the games as varied as possible.

I'm actually concerned by this. Especially considering the fact that Abrakam Entertainment's only past experience from what I can tell are two (admittedly well-received) card games that appear to have been built with an eye towards mobile gaming...but which happened to also get a PC port.

 

[Fulgrymm]

My theory is that since they're bringing in outside developers to release these DLCs, it's because the main team has started work on Stellaris 2 and is now too busy to do its own DLCs.

 

[Edorath]

I want to take this opportunity to again appeal for a fifth Shroud 'Covenant' option - something neutral, ideally. It never makes sense to me that my Spiritualist Empires are pious and committed to their old gods, and would just happily renounce that for the first mysterious bad boy Shroud Entity with long hair and a motorbike that comes along and steals our innocence, making us ditch our longstanding faith in the process. Where's the "we denounce you, filthy daemons! Away with you and your heresy!" option?

It could also be a case of syncretism:
"oh hey look it's a god that won't stop screaming about war, death and hunger, surely it is our god of war chaddanoth who has appeared before us to bestow us His blessings", there's never been one such thing as a static religion to begin with.

 

[captainbeastfeast]

DLC looks cool excited

Devs, please can you ask the custodian team to add purging for Rogue servitor empires if they choose to pick the Mechromancy ascension perk?
More options and choice, flavour etc are ALWAYS a good thing in my book.

 

[captainbeastfeast]

I think that's meant to be a rift sphere, not a planet. The perspective's a bit wonky but the big sphere is a planet and the smaller sphere to the right is like a probe sent into the rift. Or at least that's my read going by his steam image

View attachment 1032711



I could be wrong of course. I've just seen a few posts on reddit and elsewhere really focising on that exploration description and theorycrafting new map layers, which seems to setting up for disappointment.

I believe this is a reference to the 1998 sci-fi horror film "Sphere."

 

[Phuckyou]

are we gonna get our ruler portraits fixed after ascension and genetic modification in 3.10?

 

[ruzen]

Galactic Paragons was this year's major expansion. Major expansions usually release in April/May.

Double No. You can even find yourself about this by checking store page in 10 seconds.

 

[kwanzaabot]

Interesting!

I'm not bouncing off my seat with excitement or anything, but I'm cautiously optimistic. Might be fun.

 

[Emperica]

Still no religions for spiritualists? Big sad.

 

[Beauty Nova]

I was sure/really hoping for an energy beings species pack (think about it, the necroid one could be a ghost!) but I'm not gonna complain about 4 new unique civics and an origin. Empire designing is one of my favorite parts about this game and more toys to play with are always nice.

 

[Ajacoba]

That is why you go down the Psitronic ascension path with special implants, compatible with organics and machines, it's a technological interface granting all the bonuses psionic pops have, or maybe Psitronic Traits somewhat like cyborgs.
That way you can have Psionic Shields in your machine ships for example, instead of observing the evidence that it exists as a superior technology and ignoring it completely.

that technology isn't really superior though
also your people are busy researching and modifying their cyborg/synth/biological bodies

not to mention that psionic tech can't even reverse engineered in the first place
you have to find it IN A DREAM
it's way easier to simply research better techs to crush their weird mages with sheer numbers and superior technology

psionic shields are kinda bad anyways, they eat insane amounts of energy and even the fallen empire's darkmatter reactor can't properly fuel them
while the psionic combat computer is "only" on par with the sentient one
and cloaking? most of us don't actively use that anyways XD

getting powers from selling the souls of your people to some mysterious void cloud isn't exactly of interest to most materialists either
and regular chosen one candidates will regularly die horrible deaths until after the sixth try or so finally someone survives the process

 

[Ajacoba]

What we really need are customizable space religions and events to go along with them.

Like rimworld?