Stellaris Dev Diary #364 - Sights Unseen

[Kataclyszm]

d the latter by the Unbidden.

On this topic, can we pretty please get a way to get the old Unbidden art back? Imo the flat geometric shapes floating near each other is a SUCH better representation of bizarre extradimensionals than the new one, which looks like something out of an Amoeboids species pack.

 

[Lude_has_come]

Just to put that in there, I believe that modularity is necessary for mechanics like origins, ascension paths and civics. What I mean by that is to not automatically link too many features together, like linking biological ascension with bio ships. What if I just want genetically perfected space elves? Forced Tyranid ships would be awkward here. Or for cybernetics, do I want the 40k version or the sleek futurist one? For such ascensions, the best scenario would be to either make different "subpaths" available like in the "stellaris evolved" mod, or to keep the most detailed features (most importantly those linked with important rp elements) separate in distinct civics or origins, for example bio ascension is only for perfecting your species while bio ships remain a civic (like now but with true bio ships) or origin feature.

 

[Archael90]

Hello again, Stellaris Community!

Last week we looked back at where we’ve been, and today we’re going to look at possible themes I think we might explore in the future. Like the past few dev diaries, this is one where we’re actively soliciting your thoughts.

If you haven’t had a chance to add your bit of feedback to The Vision, you still have a couple of days left - it’s going to stay active until the end of November.

Today is the 3.14.1592 release day, so before we get to the main diary I’ll start with the final release notes.

3.14.1592 Release Notes​

The 3.14.1592 patch addressed the following issues - I’ve bolded new additions (all under Bugfixes) since last week’s diary:

Spoiler: 3.14.1592 “Circinus” Release Notes

Balance​

• Add energy activation cost to Propagandosphere
• Cloaking strength on Camouflage mutations are now consistent throughout sizes
• Give -15% cloning cost and -10% fauna upkeep to Beastmasters civics
• Reduce Space Fauna cloning cost by 10%
• Reduce Space Fauna energy upkeep by 25%
• Remove minor artifacts production from Decentralized Research edict
• Rework Mutated Voidworms fleets content and scaling, aligning them similar to Prethoryn Brood Queen fleets

Bugfix​

• Clone Soldier Ascendants can now cyberize
• Fix to AI machine empires spawning as Despicable Neutrals without The Machine Age
• Necrophages no longer create an endless series of replacement pops when purging on the Synaptic Lathe
• Accelerate juveniles animation speed
• Added Insider Trading and Trade Focus traits to each other's opposites block to stop them appearing together since they almost cancel each other out.
• Added Orbital Ring variants for Beastport/Hatchery/Vivarium descriptions in all supported languages
• Civics added in Grand Archive can now be swapped from the regular to corporate version and vice versa
• Clarified the texts of the Cultivated Worldscaping decision and planet modifier
• Deleting a design now keeps you in current designer type
• Enclaves and Marauders satisfy Xenoist Contact Demand
• Extreme Contortionist DNA now gives rare crystals instead of motes to be more consistent with the event that gives it
• Fix an issue where Cognitive Node should be selected by the Leader Infected event
• Fix blocked Tiyanki Graveyard event chain when capturing them
• Fix Boarding Cables capturing literally anything - thanks for the fun screenshots
• Fix Breeding Status displayed in view that was not always correct
• Fix Fossilized Endoskeleton specimen localization
• Fix Mercenary Enclave Stations unable to build ships
• Fix Cloaked Patternwalker missing string
• Fix scoped localizations for Memorial For Bubbles specimen
• Fixed an unlocalized string showing up when you tried to return starbases at times. Also added linebreaks to the same tooltip.
• Fixed recommended DLC tooltips in multiplayer
• Fixes a bug with too wide portrait on Empire Design Selection View
• FX for ship auras are now displayed
• Improve Cordyceptic Drones fauna damage modifier text in tooltip to make it clearer what it exactly affects
• Life Tree Protectors now don't move away from their system
• Lost colony parents using Sol as their system will no longer spawn two Siriuses if the guaranteed habitable worlds slider is set to 1.
• Mutated Voidworms fleets now don't use naval capacity
• Mutated Voidworms now don't show they can upgrade anymore
• Orbital Assembly Complex holding now correctly boost Beastport and Hatchery on Orbital Ring
• Precursors can no longer be discovered on Astral Scars
• Prevent duplicate specimens from being found in the same empire
• Removed the unused h_dna string
• Stop showing upkeep part of message when leader upkeep is zero in hire leader confirmation dialog
• The Diplomacy Tradition Finisher now properly refers to Officials and not Envoys.
• Voidworms now stop bombarding if the Immunity technology is researched (before crisis)
• Worm-Riddled Gate is now correctly accessible if Voidworms are captured instead of killed

AI​

• AI won't build infinite science ships when trying to build frigates anymore
• Fix AI that was not willing to build Shipyards

Stability​

• Fix a crash when a tooltip references the concept of a tradition that doesn't exist
• Fix crash when Voidworms try to act on empty fleets
• Fix OOS when riftworld station is built
• Fix saves affected by the crash when an AI without a Grand Archive tries to capture a Space Fauna
• Fix Voidworms CTD
• Fixed issue with resolving the user home dir on linux that leads to CTD

Unless critical bugs in need of a hotfix arise, this will be the last planned Stellaris release of 2024. I want to avoid potentially destabilizing the game just before the winter holidays.

Now, on to the main dev diary.

Infinite Frontiers​

Over the past few weeks we’ve looked at the basic vision of Stellaris and discussed how Stellaris has changed over the years.

This week I want to talk about things we potentially might want to explore in the future.

This is not intended to read as a timeline or a list of promises, but an open discussion about things I consider possibilities and why.​

Biological and Psionic Ascension
First things first, I strongly believe that remastering the remaining Ascension Paths is a top priority. The Machine Age dramatically improved Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascensions, and gave machine empires proper ascension choices, but left the others behind. Biological Ascension isn’t in a good state right now mechanically or as an overall experience. Psionic Ascension is better off as it is affected tangentially by most content releases, but is a bit too reliant on random events and luck. Both of these Ascension Paths will be revamped, though since they are very distinct from one another, I intend on having them focused on in two separate releases.

Warfare and War Resolution
At some point in the future, I’d like to see us revisit war and war resolution, and enable more of the scenarios that occur in the “Stellaris Cinematic Universe” of our trailers. When the Gamma Aliens attacked the UNE colony of Europa VII, the Commonwealth of Man did not wait patiently for an invitation to war before summoning the Apocalypse. Humanity was threatened, and they acted. More fluid rules around joining and leaving wars are needed, and betrayal is not supported to my satisfaction. (Secret Fealty exists, but I don’t find it enough in its current state - other mechanics currently prevent them from seizing the chance for freedom at what would be the most opportune moments.)

Biological Ships
While rearing and mutating space fauna was added to Stellaris in the Grand Archive story pack, I feel that it’s not the same fantasy as true bioships. These are vessels that your people grow and fly around in, or that have more symbiotic relationships with their pilots. I think those systems would probably pair nicely alongside Biological Ascension.

Factions and Politics
Governments in Stellaris may hold a grudge against you for centuries for your atrocities but pops and factions are very quick to forgive and forget. There are no revanchist or irredentist factions that make trouble when borders change, nor variety within the factions themselves. I’d also like to see factions have their own tenets and goals and different ways that you can deal with them. There have been a lot of calls for an “internal politics” expansion, but I think that it would really be politics and culture in general, affecting both your empires and those around you.

If we were to do something along those lines, I’d also want to add some variant of factions to Gestalt empires - maybe Instincts for Hives that grow more dominant based on your behavior or Directives that compete for priority in Machine Intelligences. They’d have to feel different from individualistic factions, however. Among individualistic factions, I could see the tenets of an Egalitarian faction from a Shared Burdens empire being very different from the Egalitarian faction in a non-Worker Coop MegaCorp, and these tenets might also be used to define the beliefs of your Spiritualist factions. I’d certainly want to explore spreading my factions into other empires.

Espionage
Espionage is a related system that isn’t satisfying its promise currently, as Mr. Cosmogone reminds me during every design meeting.

It’s difficult to keep track of spy networks, is generally of low impact, and has no real counterplay. But he’s got schemes.

Playable Nomads
Finding different ways of playing the game can be popular - landless adventuring in Crusader Kings III, for example, makes me wonder what we could do with nomadic fleets in Stellaris. The key questions there end up being “why are they nomadic”, and “how do they interact with more standard empires”. Origins could also be opportunities to “table flip” the normal economic or political models of Stellaris.

Pirates and Crime
Space Piracy is a popular fantasy - we touched on it a bit with the Treasure Hunters origin in Grand Archive, but they could mesh well with the Nomads idea mentioned earlier or even a factional political expansion. Crime and Deviancy aren’t terribly engaging systems at the moment either, and might benefit from wider examination.

Species Packs
When it comes to species, I could see us examining what kinds of life could arise on molten or frozen worlds, much like we did with Toxoids. Like Toxoids, they’d likely need some restrictions on what they can do with those worlds (as they’re 10x more abundant than normal habitable worlds), but they’d be interesting to explore. Players often ask for gaseous or energy creatures - the first are already represented to an extent by the Dathnak and the latter by the Unbidden. I feel that energy beings may go too far into fantasy “elementals”, so I’d like to stay away from them if possible. Expanding the existing species phenotypes could also potentially be interesting - Plantoids II, for example.

Scenarios
“Scenarios” are another proposal that I’ve seen a number of times over the years - would it be interesting to have scripted game modes with custom rules, and events already in motion?

They could lean hard into already established universes with asymmetric starts. Perhaps the game starts off with communications from a Xenophile empire that tells you, Pre-FTL Earth:

View attachment 1221982
Hacked together example. Not anything real.​

A system like this could allow for challenges or narratives that can be completed in a relatively short play session compared to a standard Stellaris campaign, or could otherwise completely change the pace or nature of the game. It could also be used to craft competitive experiences - at past PDXCons we’ve featured mods like Survival: Necroid Invasion or Ark of Ascension - I could see things like that fitting into the system.

Alternate game modes tend to be fairly binary though - they’re either not used very much, or they’re incredibly popular - not much in between. What kinds of things would you want to see in these sorts of game modes, if anything?

So What Did I Miss?​

This was a bit of a stream of consciousness dev diary, so I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface of possibilities.

What do you think I missed? Are any of these especially attractive or repellent? Where do you want us to go?

Next Week​

Next week we’ll be reacting to your responses to this one.

The days are getting shorter and the snows are starting here in Stockholm, so I expect I’ll keep this one pinned for the next two weeks.

See you next week!

Purchase Stellaris: Grand Archive alone or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!​

Unless critical bugs in need of a hotfix arise, this will be the last planned Stellaris release of 2024. I want to avoid potentially destabilizing the game just before the winter holidays.

So you are gonna leave fauna fleets useless even in hands of Primal Calling wild swarm of cordyceptic drones with all domestication traditions?
I know that fauna fleets should not be superior to regular ships, they should not be even on pair with them due to them being build by basic resourcess and able to grow. But if i use all tools i have to buff them and at the same time i cripple my ability to use regular ships, those fauna HAVE TO be superior over regular ships. Amoeba mother should destroy every cruiser of simmilar tech level, every culuthoid should swallow battleship of other empire, and troika should be MORE usefull than Titan as long as i used all of this: origin, tradition tree and two civics. Because if not, there is no point of taking those traits, especially alone. There should also be a Jaggernaut and collosus equivalents of space fauna. And those buffs should shows up before winter break.

 

[Hawawaa]

Those mining drones randomly sprinkled in space could use an update.

Bring the Hunters to bear.

Czerka Corporation in Star Wars or other big corps in other IPs merge them into the trade enclaves (maybe they have ties to the mining drones).

Allow Psi ascension to taken along side bio ascension and cyborg ascension.

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

With nomads, they have so many different origin stories it's ridiculous!

-Your species is/was being chased away by hostile attackers and you are the last remnant (Battlestar Galactica)
-Your planet blew up and you decided that you were not going to go down with it. Your civ now lives on ships. (same as void dwellers without habitats)
-You've always been scavengers. That's the way it is and the way it's always been. Your story is lost to time.
-You rose above planet-dwellers a long time ago. Your culture is led by a group of warlords that protect/lead/exploit the denizens of gravity wells.
-Many, many others

I think the first thing I'd want with this is for regular player empires to be able to become nomads at some point (maybe when they lose the game or something else happens?) in their history, having their "Origin" bonuses altered and transformed into new origin + nomad origin bonuses.

That way, you can account for many more origin stories than just "You start as a nomad, and being a nomad is your whole origin story".

 

[Draelian]

If they put nomadic civic / nomadic origin to be one and they are going to to remove me with a disintegrator.

In another order, we have elves and dwarves, they put tiefling and I buy that race dlc at the price they want, SHUP UP AND TAKE My MONEY

 

[ItThatAltersSanity]

Warfare and War Resolution
At some point in the future, I’d like to see us revisit war and war resolution, and enable more of the scenarios that occur in the “Stellaris Cinematic Universe” of our trailers. When the Gamma Aliens attacked the UNE colony of Europa VII, the Commonwealth of Man did not wait patiently for an invitation to war before summoning the Apocalypse. Humanity was threatened, and they acted. More fluid rules around joining and leaving wars are needed, and betrayal is not supported to my satisfaction. (Secret Fealty exists, but I don’t find it enough in its current state - other mechanics currently prevent them from seizing the chance for freedom at what would be the most opportune moments.)

Note that I couldn't get into I:R for one main reason: I couldn't accurately grasp what would happen when I declared war. Huge land grabs would happen (for tribal tags) with little indication what army sizes would be fielded. Vic3 likewise had this problem on launch which was addressed in a subsequent release. In a vanilla declaration of war, the player needs to have a good summary of the likely combatants on either side. We agree that right now it's too rigid in Stellaris. Then with espionage, the AI must be able to occasionally trick the player with fake opinions: "I will totally not join this war you're about to declare on a third party, good luck". The player must be able to uncover such ruses with espionage or have a reasonable way to guess at the possibility of treachery from other cues (claims being one option, tip offs from allies being another, psychic visions also possible). So whatever warfare system you come up with, please make the information war clear: vanilla expectations for who joins and then reasons to not trust the tooltip so readily.

The other design goal I must emphasise is that a mega blob player surrounded by smaller AI states should feel threatened. If the mega blob empire sends their entire fleet in one direction as a doom stack, empires in the other directions should be able to jump in, grab some systems and actually have a good chance of keeping them because the new war resolution rules allow this. I think war exhaustion should be global per empire instead of being a separate timer for each war that empire is in. A doom stack should be a risky glass cannon strategy.

Factions and Politics
Governments in Stellaris may hold a grudge against you for centuries for your atrocities but pops and factions are very quick to forgive and forget. There are no revanchist or irredentist factions that make trouble when borders change, nor variety within the factions themselves. I’d also like to see factions have their own tenets and goals and different ways that you can deal with them. There have been a lot of calls for an “internal politics” expansion, but I think that it would really be politics and culture in general, affecting both your empires and those around you.

If we were to do something along those lines, I’d also want to add some variant of factions to Gestalt empires - maybe Instincts for Hives that grow more dominant based on your behavior or Directives that compete for priority in Machine Intelligences. They’d have to feel different from individualistic factions, however. Among individualistic factions, I could see the tenets of an Egalitarian faction from a Shared Burdens empire being very different from the Egalitarian faction in a non-Worker Coop MegaCorp, and these tenets might also be used to define the beliefs of your Spiritualist factions. I’d certainly want to explore spreading my factions into other empires.

Pirates and Crime
Space Piracy is a popular fantasy - we touched on it a bit with the Treasure Hunters origin in Grand Archive, but they could mesh well with the Nomads idea mentioned earlier or even a factional political expansion. Crime and Deviancy aren’t terribly engaging systems at the moment either, and might benefit from wider examination.

I've been running a Pop & Job design thread for the past week. The conversation meandered and included "pops of different ethics don't feel different". We threw around ideas for making pops take different actions when unhappy depending on their ethics (revolt? crime? flee the country? selling state secrets? smuggle xeno pets to endanger public health? cessation?) Whether it's by direct pop ethics/traits or indirect factions, pops should have agency and personality. Right now it's too easy to pile on police and justice leaders to the point pops can't express their dissatisfaction. A police state should have some way to be vulnerable if they overstretch militarily somehow.

The other design goal for this carries over from EU4. Early on, there are many tags and they have some vibrant interactions going on. Lategame, the player is a mega blob and huge swaths of the galaxy go radio silent as they are meekly obeying the government. That pop & job design thread I link above delved into ideological schisms as an inevitable lategame crisis that the player sees coming and can only prepare, not prevent. Something they can see on the map as "this will boil over as I keep conquering, but it's still more efficient to conquer than to stop and consolidate".

Espionage
Espionage is a related system that isn’t satisfying its promise currently, as Mr. Cosmogone reminds me during every design meeting.

It’s difficult to keep track of spy networks, is generally of low impact, and has no real counterplay. But he’s got schemes.

I've mentioned above how I'd like espionage to be involved in the treachery of AI joining wars they swore they'd stay out of. There is one other group of things I want from a new espionage system: choosing a target in a specific location. "I can't blow up the entire starbase with spies" is one thing, "I can't choose which starbase to disrupt" is another.

• For that matter, I want the ability for spies to hamstring a specific fleet on trigger to hamper the doomstack: split or everyone moves slow?
• Also the ability to incite a cessation on a particularly unruly enemy world.
• Oh and unleashing a storm capsule at a particular system.

Playable Nomads
Finding different ways of playing the game can be popular - landless adventuring in Crusader Kings III, for example, makes me wonder what we could do with nomadic fleets in Stellaris. The key questions there end up being “why are they nomadic”, and “how do they interact with more standard empires”. Origins could also be opportunities to “table flip” the normal economic or political models of Stellaris.

The two key questions to me are:

• Can a landed empire go landless and vice versa?
• What player goals are there to play this alternate mode?
  • As happens I've been exclusively playing as landless adventurers in CK3 since that DLC launched. There's many ideas but make sure the gameplay loop is tight. Certain no-brainer clicks are going to be repetitive, which will wear down on the player after a while.

As I said in my The Vision post, narrative is important to some players, mechanics is important to more players. I could see this pitched as "vanilla empires will be disincentivised to form a doom stack. Play as these guys to doom stack all the time".

Scenarios
“Scenarios” are another proposal that I’ve seen a number of times over the years - would it be interesting to have scripted game modes with custom rules, and events already in motion?

They could lean hard into already established universes with asymmetric starts.

A lot of potential provided players don't feel the base game is neglected because of scenario development. There are many benefits:

• Standardised examples for bug reproduction and tutorials
  • I believe it was the Tinkerpop graph database querying language that went out of its way to make stock-standard datasets you'd invoke to play around with. They were valuable for communication and learning.
• Marketing teasers for DLCs
  • A new player with no DLCs can try out a specific DLC's highlight features in a tiny sandbox
  • Veteran players can quickly experiment to learn the grizzly numeric details of new features without committing a whole campaign for this knowledge
• Asymmetric PvP scenarios giving handicaps for asymmetric player skill or arranging a 3v1 on stream/con event

What do you think I missed? Are any of these especially attractive or repellent? Where do you want us to go?

Most of these ideas are toppings. The glittery cream that gets players to keep coming back. Necessary for the commercial future of the game. The UX experience of the base game (i.e. after novelty wears off, what veterans with all the DLCs play for) is... well not terrible as we keep coming back, but it's not stellar to the point we stay each time. I refer to the above-linked Pop & Jobs thread: the conversation didn't move much when trying to focus on fantasies and narratives. It moved much faster when we were trying to fix the pain points of the base game, i.e. "where are my alloys coming from?" and "why is my 37th mining planet demanding the same amount of player micromanagement as my 1st mining world?" How we want to focus on the "crown jewel" planets of our empire, not give every planet in the late game the same care and attention as our first handful of colonies when resources are scarce.

I'll start a separate design thread for how the doom stack problem might be addressed. Point is, fixing core pain points with major overhauls doesn't have to be a grind with no creativity. There's a lot of narrative potential around formally acknowledging "some planets are just more important than others, how do the citizens (and other empires) feel about this reality?"

 

[ClavintheGreat]

Leave pops alone! The current pop/job system is my favorite part about Stellaris and Vic3 is godawful.

 

[Helicopter200]

Why adding energy beings is considered too fantasy like we have unbidden already and how about Drej from titan AE or Vorlons from Babylon 5?

 

[Troyen]

If you do Biological Ships, I think you should also revisit the space fauna ship system. Sure fauna aren't quite the same, but if we're an empire that can grow and nurture our own ships to live on, we should be able to do the same for fauna. They should use a similar ship growth system (with perhaps fauna being a limited version of it) rather than two distinct systems managed completely independently from one another.

That's also my request for many of the other changes. As you work on reworking systems, see how they can be integrated with other mechanics in the game. I'd rather have five mechanical systems that can accomplish 20 different things than 20 systems that each do one individual thing because DLC kept them self-contained. I know you don't like stacking systems behind multiple layers of DLC, but between the bundles and now the expansion pass, mechanics that interact with the rest of the system or other DLC mechanics tend to make the game feel more cohesive. It's more clunky when they're isolated, like how the GDF ships are designed separately from regular ships which use a different designer than the federation ships.

Something else I don't see on your list is diplomacy. There is a lot of legacy AI diplomacy logic (especially in the galcom which is using resolution weights from 2.6) which feels very out of date. Nobody wants to vote for a focus crisis resolution even if they're currently being bombed by an awakened empire because they're too afraid to anger their attackers (-700% penalty), but everyone will happily vote for the first custodian to nominate themselves as long as any crisis exists. Everyone wants to dive down the mercenary resolution line, even empires that wouldn't really benefit from it. Every empire also wants to rival the first empire they meet for the influence bonus, even if ethics would suggest they should band together instead. The easiest way to influence an AI diplomatically is by rivaling their rivals to make them like you. Better AI diplomacy would help keep the game more varied and also more believable.

Also, can you please make envoys immortal (outside events) as a QoL change, or at least auto-replace them when they die? It's annoying to think your envoys are assigned only to find out you're not actually building infiltration/relations anymore because your envoy died from old age without any notification.

 

[Draelian]

About the topic of electric species, I think the Drej (Titan AE) are the most obvious route Stellaris could go, not medieval fantasy golems.

 

[ewancarey]

Can we please get Vassals for Finatical Purifiers and the like.
Makes no sense that they cannot release vassals, Yes they want to destroy other races, but that does not mean they want to own everything themselves! Maybe some sort of system where I can take over territory from other empires and set up client states of varying levels, perhaps one where my species is the ruling one presiding over slaves, or one where my species rules and focuses on purging others before being reintegrated (or left outside of) my territory. Or perhaps even one where my species rules and has all power but keeps aliens alive in a reserve as to either study the xenos or preserve them from going totally extinct. (Maybe we are monsters but not the most evil monsters)

 

[DevWolf]

I'm looking forward to a potential genetic ascension rework. I've always liked the idea of genetic mastery in science fiction, I've imagined societies who use it in various ways. So it was my favorite ascension path for a long time, up until the Machine Age was released. I'm sure you'll do a good job of reworking it, to put it on a similar level to cybernetic and synthetic. A couple of features I wish for are an immortality trait and the ability to assimilate organic species.

 

[ewancarey]

Can we please get Vassals for Finatical Purifiers and the like.
Makes no sense that they cannot release vassals, Yes they want to destroy other races, but that does not mean they want to own everything themselves! Maybe some sort of system where I can take over territory from other empires and set up client states of varying levels, perhaps one where my species is the ruling one presiding over slaves, or one where my species rules and focuses on purging others before being reintegrated (or left outside of) my territory. Or perhaps even one where my species rules and has all power but keeps aliens alive in a reserve as to either study the xenos or preserve them from going totally extinct. (Maybe we are monsters but not the most evil monsters)

Perhaps even having the ability to design "reserve worlds" where a planet is turned into a pre FTL planet where my empire can dump xenos pops. I can set up an observation post and maybe even espionage or contact with them like any pre FTL but they will of course hate me.

Perhaps if they see me too weak or I neglect to station a big enough fleet in their system / starbase, they can launch a revolut against me and spawn a broken chains start empire against ME!

Idk cool ideas, idk if they will work?

 

[Resistance91]

I love all of these ideas. The idea of playing a Nomadic empire would be amazing and sounds the best to me out of everything suggested. Making gestalts more interactive with trade and factions would be great. Please also give them a form of destiny traits. Even if it’s only the nodes!

 

[Landon Reynolds]

One fantasy that I don't feel like is strongly supported at the moment is the empire that is ruled by an AI. They don't especially use a lot of robots, and biologicals still do most of the work, but the decision making and administration has largely been outsourced to a governing AI mainframe. I'm thinking kind of like the Sophons from Endless Space 2, and probably more sci-fi empires besides. I know there are several different directions from which Stellaris begins to approach this fantasy, but it never quite gets there in my opinion. I think it would be neat to have an origin or something that leaned into this idea.

 

[Asperge Blanche]

I would love a further development of plantoids, fungoids etc. But while you're at it, could you give them an exclusive penalty similar to lithoid pop growth? I find that often when I'm doing a biological empire there's no reason to take an animal species because plantoids and fungoids are just upgrades of them. Maybe plantoids could be more sedentary or dumb, and fungoids could be repugnant or weak. Another way to do this would be to give animal species unique bonus or traits.
Side note for the custodian team: I feel like the species appearance and their genetics should be split in the empire creation screen. You should first have to select between machine, lithoid, plantoid/fungoid and biological and then have access to the relevant portrait.

 

[Lenk]

Hopefully we can get a story pack that buffs out colorization, like colonies developing nobility or their own religious dogma. That would be neat, gives each colony a bit more uniqueness then just Mining World #57.

 

[The be]

I really would like to see the trade rework that was mentioned. Making trade more logistical, having trade ships transporting goods across your empire would be great, and make nomad gameplay fun because of all the piracy options. That said, plenty of other good ideas present here as well, such as factions.

 

[DCHY]

So you are gonna leave fauna fleets useless even in hands of Primal Calling wild swarm of cordyceptic drones with all domestication traditions?
I know that fauna fleets should not be superior to regular ships, they should not be even on pair with them due to them being build by basic resourcess and able to grow. But if i use all tools i have to buff them and at the same time i cripple my ability to use regular ships, those fauna HAVE TO be superior over regular ships. Amoeba mother should destroy every cruiser of simmilar tech level, every culuthoid should swallow battleship of other empire, and troika should be MORE usefull than Titan as long as i used all of this: origin, tradition tree and two civics. Because if not, there is no point of taking those traits, especially alone. There should also be a Jaggernaut and collosus equivalents of space fauna. And those buffs should shows up before winter break.

My blorg, the developers said that fauna is nothing more than funny pets back in the very first diary associated with them
They won't create anything super-powerful until it comes to real biological ships