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Stellaris Dev Diary #339 - Civics and Structures of The Machine Age, and Auto-Modding

Hello Stellaris Cube-munity!

Today’s dev diary looks at the civics and “kilostructures” in The Machine Age, as well as looking at a 3.12 “Andromeda” feature - Auto-Modding.

As with all of our previews, some of this is still in development, so there are still some placeholder icons and some details may still change before release. (Which is good, since it lets us incorporate some of your feedback.)

The Civics of The Machine Age​

civics.png

Let’s go through each of the new civics that are coming in The Machine Age in detail.

Guided Sapience civics​

The Guided Sapience civics focus on coexistence with natural or created pre-sapient species and the environment around them. Their homeworld and Genesis Ark colony ships uplift some of the most promising local wildlife to pre-sapient status, creating a Genesis Preserve that increases Society Research and Unity.

The bonuses from the Genesis Preserve are doubled on Gaia worlds.

genesisguides.png

Not listed in these screenshots, but other “hostile” civics like Devouring Swarm and origins like Necrophage are also excluded from these.

Natural Design civics​

While other empires seek to improve themselves through genetic modification or through ascension, others are quite certain that they are already at the apex of evolution.

naturaldesign.png

02_INSULT_CLOTHES:0 "Behold the [From.GetSpeciesAdj] form, glorious and bared for all to admire. Contrast with the paltry [Root.GetSpeciesNamePlural], cowering under their layers of cloth, knowing that the world does not want to see their sad frames."

Obsessional Directive​

In 2003, human philosopher and professor Nick Bostrom created a thought experiment about the potential existential threat an artificial general intelligence could pose even if given seemingly harmless directives.

Nick Bostrom said:
Suppose we have an AI whose only goal is to make as many paper clips as possible. The AI will realize quickly that it would be much better if there were no humans because humans might decide to switch it off. Because if humans do so, there would be fewer paper clips. Also, human bodies contain a lot of atoms that could be made into paper clips. The future that the AI would be trying to gear towards would be one in which there were a lot of paper clips but no humans.

Available to gestalt machine intelligences, Obsessional Directive lets you enjoy faulty programming that drives you to produce ever increasing numbers of useless Consumer Goods... At any cost.

obsessional.png

Object permanence is not necessarily one of your strengths.
The directive was to acquire the consumer goods, now that you’re done, there’s nothing preventing you from digging them back up again.

If you meet or exceed your quota, you will have options regarding what to do with your stash of office supplies, toasters, handheld electronics, or whatever other form you imagine your Consumer Goods take. Until you make friendly contact with other empires you will only have the option to create a Spire of Commodities, but later on you could trade them away for various resources. Most of your consumer goods will be removed, but the reward will scale with the amount that you produced.

Failing to meet your quota will result in a bit of a breakdown until your new, lower quota is met. On the other hand, the experience of failure does unlock a new “direct to Consumer Goods” purge type to make it easier to achieve your next goal. (Determined Exterminators start with this purge type unlocked.)

Diplomatic Protocols​

In The Machine Age, gestalt Machine Intelligences will also be getting their own variant of the diplomatic civics.

diplomatic.png

The other diplomatic civics have also been buffed to match the Diplomatic Protocols.

Tactical Algorithms​

Some machines were designed to study war in all its forms.

tactical.png

How about a nice game of chess?

These gestalt Machine Intelligences can create Mercenary Enclaves (if the game host has Overlord), have immortal Commanders, and gain military benefits from getting the opportunity to study the strategy and tactics of other empires.

Augmentation Bazaars​

At the Augmentation Bazaars, you can build a better you, and all it will cost is an arm and a leg.

augmentation.png

Now I’ll let @Gruntsatwork talk about some new space structures.

Dyson Swarms​

The path to a Dyson Sphere of your own is long and arduous, filled with empty building platforms and non-functional intermediate stages, or at least, it used to be.

Fresh with the Machine Age, we are introducing the Dyson Swarm, a predecessor and proof of concept for your Dyson Sphere plans. By putting many small satellites into orbit around a star, you can collect some of its output and enhance your research capabilities. But Paradox you say, we don’t get research from Dyson Spheres. Correct, but you do get it from Dyson Swarms, IF you place them correctly.

Dyson Swarms function slightly differently than Spheres. Instead of producing energy all on their own, they amplify whatever resources their star produces, up to 30 times. Yes, that delicate little 3 energy star will now produce 90 energy and if you were to put it on a 3 physics star, that would be a decent 90 physics research from 1 star.

And if you get really lucky and have an event spawn an even rarer resource on a star? Go right ahead, collect it all.

1712134703732.png

So swarmy.

But with all that said, there are certain restrictions on building Dyson Swarms. Those restrictions exist for a simple reason. You can upgrade one of your Swarms directly into a Stage 2 Dyson Sphere, for those juicy 1000 energy per month.

That is why you may not build Swarms around Black Holes, Neutron Stars nor upgrade them past Swarm state in systems with thriving colonies.

The Arc Furnace​

For our second new Kilostructure, allow me to introduce the Arc Furnace to you. A splendid planet-based megastructure, meant to help you alleviate your industrial needs.

Just like the Dyson Swarm, to get the most out of your shiny new Arc Furnace requires a bit more effort than merely finding a molten world and putting it down. Instead of producing resources itself, it allows you access to more of the systems resources.

In less flowery language, that means at each stage, the Arc Furnace will create deposits on every planet or asteroid in the system. First 1 Mineral deposit, then another 1 Mineral deposit. Third 1 Mineral and 1 Alloy and for the final and fourth stage, 1 more Alloy deposit.

This gives you a total of 3 Minerals and 2 Alloys on every planet or asteroid in the system, however, in addition to the deposits, the Ard Furnace also makes mining in general more effective in the system, which manifests as a small bonus to your mining station output, at the final stage a measly 100%.

So to get the most out of your Arc Furnace, you want to find molten worlds in large systems, with plenty of planets and asteroids.

1712134835326.png

Hot.

Both of those Kilostructures will become available in the early midgame, hopefully around the time you start to feel the constraints on your expansion as borders solidify and you begin to get cut off from the resources you desperately need.

Now in contrast to most Megastructures you are not limited to merely 1 of each, however, unlike Relays and Gates they have some limits. You will unlock the capacity to build 5 of these in total, spread out through the relevant technologies (6 for Arc Welders)

Species Auto-Modification (“Auto-Modding”)​

I’m back now to talk about Auto-Modding. No, we’re not automatically updating your outliner mod for you when an update releases. (Sorry modders!)

Biological and Cybernetic Ascensions were particularly vulnerable to being very micromanagement heavy playstyles. You had a lot of power available to you if you adjusted, tweaked, and applied various species templates to your pops. This was effective, but very time consuming and often tedious.

With the 3.12 “Andromeda” update, we have introduced a new class of traits that will, over time, replace themselves with temporary versions of other traits based on the job the pop is currently filling. For example, a Machine pop filling a Farmer job will eventually have their Adaptive Frames change to replicate the Harvesters trait, and if they move to a Mining job they’ll eventually switch to mimicking Power Drills.

AutoMod traits have a defined list of available traits to choose from for each trait, and one pop per month will adapt to their jobs, modified by buildings like the Robot Assembly Plants or Gene Clinics.

automod.png

AutoMod traits exist for Mechanical (Adaptive Frames), Biological (Vocational Genomics), Cybernetics (Universal Augmentations), and Overtuned Traits (Fleeting Excellence).

Vocational Genomics becomes available with the Targeted Gene Expression technology, and the others are immediately available once you have access to the appropriate category of traits.

We recognize that these traits are extremely strong, but the quality of life benefits of having your pops modify themselves to fit their jobs is very high. As such, Auto-Modding and the associated traits are part of the free 3.12 “Andromeda” release.

Traits can now be categorized into normal/cyborg/robotic/psionic/advanced_genetic/overtuned.

Here’s the script for the biological auto_mod trait:
Code:
trait_auto_mod_biological = {
    cost = 3
    auto_mod = yes
    category = normal

    allowed_archetypes = { BIOLOGICAL LITHOID }
    initial = no
    randomized = no
    species_potential_add = {
        hidden_trigger = { exists = from }
        from = {
            has_technology = tech_gene_expressions
        }
    }
    species_possible_remove = {
        always = yes
    }
    species_possible_merge_remove = {
        always = yes
    }
    potential_crossbreeding_chance = 1.0
    slave_cost = {
        energy = 1000
    }
    assembly_score = {
        base = 2
    }
    custom_tooltip_with_modifiers = automodding_trait_biological_tooltip
}

Traits themselves should also include a category if you want them to be included as auto_mod possibilities:
Code:
trait_agrarian = {
    cost = 2
    category = normal
    species_possible_remove = {
        can_remove_beneficial_genetic_traits = yes
    }
    species_possible_merge_remove = {
        always = yes
    }
    potential_crossbreeding_chance = 1.0    # 1.0 = 100% chance of being considered for new traits when forming half-species. does not guarantee the trait will be added if it costs points.
    allowed_archetypes = { BIOLOGICAL }
    modifier = {
        planet_jobs_food_produces_mult = 0.15
    }
    slave_cost = {
        energy = 500
    }
    assembly_score = {
        modifier = {
            add = 1.5
            from = { has_farming_designation = yes }
        }
        modifier = {
            add = 0.5
            from = { has_rural_designation = yes }
        }
    }
}

Jobs themselves need to have a list of traits associated with them. We’ve created a number of inline scripts to handle these.

So our farmer job has the following inline script at the end of the script block:
Code:
inline_script = "jobs/automodding_priority_food"

Which expands into:
Code:
auto_trait_prio = {
    #Farmers
    trait_agrarian
    trait_farm_hands
    trait_robot_harvesters
    trait_cyborg_harvesters
}

Next Week​

Next week we’ll explore the new End-Game Crisis that’s coming in The Machine Age.

See you then!
 
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Presumably you could also mod a species to have Intelligent + the Auto-Trait. If you put those pops into a Research world, the auto trait would adapt to become Intelligent-like, effectively doubling your Science output per that pop that way.
It's a lot of points to do it, but it could work.

One of the Dev replies is that AutoModding can't turn into a trait you already have
 
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Lets answer your question by another question that effectively ask the same

Can i add Intelligent on my species twice?

No.

What you can do (confirmed by dev) is add the Vocational Genomics (Biological Traits), Universal Augmentations (Cybernetic Traits) AND Fleeting Excellence (Overtuned Traits) on the same pop
I think you understood me wrong, its not about a doubled Bonus,it is about the same collective trait, that when applied will diversify into different variants (and thus No doubling of traits)
 
Furnance and Swarm are useless, lmao. So much alloys to build to gain... nothing.
I mean, in the screenshot it's producing 48 minerals and 32 alloys, that's definitely more than you could get for just a hundred energy

At the very least they will be great for anyone with trade agreements
 
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I think you understood me wrong, its not about a doubled Bonus,it is about the same collective trait, that when applied will diversify into different variants (and thus No doubling of traits)

You (appear) to be asking if you can take the same automod trait twice...

When you can't take any trait twice
 
I'm really excited for this update. However, I'm having a hard seeing how auto-modding isn't just "+15% resource output, but sometimes it's delayed". It also doesn't fix the micro problem. Maybe some high-end min-maxers are designing custom subspecies for each individual job, but for most people the micro problem is that new pops keep migrating in with different templates, and then they end up spreading instead of the modified version you've created. And the only way to stop this is to periodically click on a bunch of menus and turn off your research for a few months. I was really hoping auto-modding would be something more akin to Assimilation, where you can set a template for a species and any new pops of that species get converted to the template.
I'm almost 100% sure this auto thing will create more lags as pops will get constantly changed with the jobs
 
One of the Dev replies is that AutoModding can't turn into a trait you already have
Curses and drat. Ah well! Nevermind then.
 
Personally, I'm kinda looking at a Overturned Cybernetically ascended Permanent Employment / Indentured Assets with 3 Auto-mods (bio/cyber/overturned), and thinking 'this could be interesting'
 
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虽然我同意它可能会破坏游戏规则,除非它对堆叠有限制,但请记住,+60% 的舰船能量维护在功能上是 -37% 的海军容量削弱。我不认为我曾经关心过船舶维护的合金部分,但对能源部分的严重削弱是毁灭性的。它必须让你的船只在个人层面上难以置信地被压倒,才值得失去那么多的经济。
I agree with you.I concur that a +60% ship maintenance cost, or even higher, is an astonishing burden when it comes to energy. However, as the dpd calculations reveal, in practical combat scenarios, you might sacrifice 37% of your fleet capacity, but the overall dpd increases fivefold. In my view, this trade-off is acceptable. Moreover, we’ll actually have lower naval capacity requirements and fewer monthly alloy demands (and we can always shift those alloy-producing pops to generate energy reserouce).
 
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Yeah, you may no longer be as brave with going above capacity, but while staying within capacity you will have pretty strong fleets

You may consider a trade build to inflate your energy production, or at the very least trade agreements

The alloy upkeep reduction should also help maintaining a stockpile to replace casualties, in serious wars where I am not just bullying my lessers, especially when fighting the crisis, I often run out of alloys for new ships Q_Q
 
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So about auto-modding:
The 1 month adapting period per Pop per Planet is so short i don't really get why it's even in. Usually new buildings/districts provide 2 new Jobs and - unless you provide New Jobs or ritualisticly resettle/unemploy everyone to remind them of their insignificance - Pops won't change their Jobs (mostly).
So 2 month for them to finish adapting, thats like a quarter of the time it takes to finish the next building/district. You can't really get to the point where the waiting period matters unless you really try or have just applied the trait to your species.

It would also be pretty annoying if the waiting period was any longer, but it's almost pointless now so why not just let the trait work instantly?
The speed up from specific buildings is kinda funny in this regard because the effective benefit is, depending on the specific day of Job change, you may get one month tick with the trait already applied, which it may not have been without the building... Thats like 1 more energy credit once every blue moon.
Instead of being a monthly check of whether automod pops have the right trait adaptation, the automod adaptation check could occur
  1. upon a pop being assigned to a new job, and
  2. upon a template being modded and either
    1. gaining an automod trait, or
    2. gaining a trait that may interfere with the automod trait adaptation?
 
I agree with you.I concur that a +60% ship maintenance cost, or even higher, is an astonishing burden when it comes to energy. However, as the dpd calculations reveal, in practical combat scenarios, you might sacrifice 37% of your fleet capacity, but the overall dpd increases fivefold. In my view, this trade-off is acceptable. Moreover, we’ll actually have lower naval capacity requirements and fewer monthly alloy demands (and we can always shift those alloy-producing pops to generate energy reserouce).
Right now I'm just wondering where I learned to speak Chinese
 
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Next week we’ll explore the new End-Game Crisis that’s coming in The Machine Age.
Now that a new player crisis path is being added, perhaps it would be a good time to consider renaming Become the Crisis to something more distinct and more in line with other ascension perk names. It could help avoid (new or returning) player confusion. Also, it is more or less the only ascension perk that has a verb in the name; it does not fit in with the others.

Perhaps "Nemesis", after the DLC it is part of?
(I suspect that label is also already translated, as part of the feature that displays owned/non-owned DLC content.)
 
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Now that a new player crisis path is being added, perhaps it would be a good time to consider renaming Become the Crisis to something more distinct and more in line with other ascension perk names. It could help avoid (new or returning) player confusion. Also, it is more or less the only ascension perk that has a verb in the name; it does not fit in with the others.

Perhaps "Nemesis", after the DLC it is part of?
(I suspect that label is also already translated, as part of the feature that displays owned/non-owned DLC content.)
Counter argument: "The Flesh IS weak"
 
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