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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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Some of the new civics look quite fun in combination with other things.

Cybernetic Creed + Augmentation Bazaars + Gospel of the Masses Fanatic Spiritualist Megacorp would be very thematically coherent, but also potentially quite strong as a trade/unity build.

With Obsessional Directives, the obvious combo is with Rogue Servitor which can already get to insane CG output levels, but I'm interested in what can be done without Rogue Servitor.
a) With this civic, do your Industrial Districts work like non-Gestalts, i.e. they give Metallurgist/Artisan jobs depending on planetary designation, rather than just Metallurgists?
b) As a paperclip maximizer, naturally you want to turn planets into the ultimate paperclip factories, i.e. Ecumenopolises. Does this civic give access to Arcology Project? I don't mind if the Ecumenopolises only have habitation and factory districts available, but it needs to get to at least this level of industrialization for me to take it seriously compared to Rogue Servitor.

Tactical Algorithms looks potentially game-breaking depending on how hard you can stack the shield/armor penetration. Turning kinetic artillery, neutron launchers and autocannons into full bypass weapons is going to lead to some pretty ridiculous battles in the mid-to-late game.
 
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Hold on. Obssesionable directive?
Is this potentially the new player crisis?
To turn the galaxy into consumer goods?
I know nothing has been said to even indicate this, but consider me intrigued.

The entire galaxy shall be turned into paper clips.
 
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You know, with a name like the Arc Furnace, I'd very much been hoping that we'd finally get a megastructure that produced alloys in vanilla like the Neutronium forge in the gigastructual engineering mod.

That being said, is there a limit to the amount of Dyson Swarms that you can upgrade into Spheres? If you can only upgrade 1, is there any chance that you could add a game rule when starting a new game (such as the game rule to disable xeno-capatability) that uncaps the amount of Dyson Spheres and Matter Decompresors you can build? It's always felt really immersion breaking to me (and not to mention downright silly) when I have an empire that literally cannot spend alloys faster than they can stockpile them, that has arbitrarily decided that 1 Dyson Sphere and 1 Matter Decompressor is enough, despite the fact that I could easily afford to build a half dozen more of each.
 
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Maybe I'm missing something or I just cannot into math, but I fail to see how the output of an Arc Furnace is worth the 100 energy upkeep.
If you have ten other planets and asteroids that becomes 60 minerals, plus 40 alloys, plus whatever bonuses you have to mining, plus the base deposits. Solidly worth. It gets even better with more additional planets.
 
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This is really about last week's diary, but I just thought of it: will synthetic ascension empires be able to take the new machine APs (e.g. virtual) too? I really want to take my humans from sacks of meat all the way to pure information.
 
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Auto modding as a trait is inadequate. The problem is, and that Psionic, Synthetic, and to a lesser extent Cyborg (who at least can assimilate the core leader trait) ignore the micro of a species level. Adaptive traits make worker traits more useful, but who cares about them to be honest, it's microing on all the core traits (Erudite and Robust for Genetic for example if you are running a multi species empire). Still having to go through and both correct stupid AI templates and manually add on core traits means Genetic will stay in unpleasant micro-hell

Edit: please tell me at least something has been done to assimilation that it doesn't fubar species rights. Also please reconsider cube portrait for base game, unlike C4 it genuinely fits in and would make a perfect machine empire.
 
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The upkeep seems a bit steep for those kilostructures, especially for tall empires, where they have limited space/systems to choose from for optimized use of the Swarm and Furnace.

In regards to automod, I am happy to see some effort be made to reduce micro, and this certainly does the job, but the extra trait point cost kinda stinks. I was hoping to see some planetary decision attached to Assembly Plants and Clinics, ceasing any pop assembly/growth, in exchange for pops' traits to automatically shift and match their respective jobs. Maybe alongside a tab where one could designate x amount of trait points/picks to be used and the planetary decision will gradually decide which traits best fit with the alotted budget. Just an idea.
 
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Maybe I'm missing something or I just cannot into math, but I fail to see how the output of an Arc Furnace is worth the 100 energy upkeep.

I tend to play Trade based empires like Megacorps, and find I usually have around +1k Energy around mid-game, but only around 300 Minerals. Being able to trade 100 Energy for 60 Minerals and 40 Alloys would definitely be worth it.

It really depends on what kind of Empire you're running and your situation to decide.
 
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Actually, at this particular moment in time we have a teeny tiny minor bug with it where failing a quota automatically turned it on for every species in your empire including your primary species, but that's not intended.
That is dedication! I vote for throwing ourselves on the assembly line! (Maybe after we've burned through the rest of the galaxy though...)
 
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When you say "pops in Augmentation Bazaar civs get a random basic trait," do you mean that every pop will have the same random trait? Or that each pop will have a different random trait?

Because the latter is slightly annoying, but the former is an incredibly obnoxious and bad idea. Please, for the love of Cyborg Jesus, don't do it that way.
 
I like the natural design thing in principle, but I don't like how that would exclude me from any kind of biological pop building as well. I think I'd only pick that civic if cloning buildings were still available. The increased pop growth from that new building simply doesn't compare.

Also, what if you put the cybrex starbase building in the same system as an arc welder? Will it stack?
I mean, you can still use budding, spawn pools and crystalization
 
I miss the Basic/Machine/Gestalt/Corporate versions of civics being slightly different.
 
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Hold on. Obssesionable directive?
Is this potentially the new player crisis?
To turn the galaxy into consumer goods?
I know nothing has been said to even indicate this, but consider me intrigued.

The entire galaxy shall be turned into paper clips.
Not consumer goods.
Paperclips.
Glorious paperclips.
Once the whole galaxy is paperclips we shall ascend, turning our humble material forms into paperclips.
Then shall the Prime Directive be fulfilled.
 
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I've thought of what my first 3.12 playthrough build is gonna be: Cybernetic Creed + Megacorp (with Augmentation Bazaars & Gospel of the Masses). I'll seek out Empires to deal with, establishing my Holy Augmentation Bazaar Churches, upgrading the bodies of the galaxy as I fill their minds with faith (for a tidy sum, of course), and overflow with Unity, Credits, and Engineering Research. The Financial Analysis Machine-God wants us to be both effective AND rich!
This seems perfect for my preferred Tall, Unity-focussed playstyle. LUV IIITTT.

Also: hey Devs, is that a sly change to Merchants? The Tooltip in the Augmentation Bazaar Building screenshot says "Merchants turn CGs into Unity, Amenities and Trade Value". But currently Merchants don't produce Unity. Is this a 3.12 change, or is it that the screenshot was made with the Marketplace of Ideas policy active?
 
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I mean, you can still use budding, spawn pools and crystalization
Yeah, but spawn pools is only for hives, and budding + cystalization are... nice, but really not much more than supplementary. Giving up on android construction/clone vats is really not worth the civic. At least to me. Might try it sometime just for fun, but probably no more than once.
 
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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.

View attachment 1110119
Not listed in these screenshots, but other “hostile” civics like Devouring Swarm and origins like Necrophage are also excluded from these.

Next Week​

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

See you then!

I wonder if this means there will be a civic/option to create pre-FTLs in the future from pre-sapients?

A chill game where you have a empty galaxy and you fill it with life, and defend from crises. A true precursor run.
 
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Yeah, but spawn pools is only for hives, and budding + cystalization are... nice, but really not much more than supplementary. Giving up on android construction/clone vats is really not worth the civic. At least to me. Might try it sometime just for fun, but probably no more than once.
I guess you never play psionic ascension either then? they too don't get pop assembly, so imo it's hardly an issue when this "ascension" doesn't either
 
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