Stellaris Dev Diary #379 - You Are What You Eat

[Ajacoba]

I am sceptical about negative traits whose effects can easily be avoided. For instance, the Weak penalty to Worker jobs can be easily avoided by building robots or obtaining other species, and then this "negative" trait basically becomes a free trait point.

In my opinion, negative trait effects need to be unavoidable in order to be balanced.
Repugnant pops could consume +25% Amenities, rather than (mostly only theoretically) producing -20% Amenities from jobs,
Quarrelsome could affect Faction Unity rather than job output Unity,
Slow Learners, Jinxed and Fleeting should always be unavailable for pops that can't produce leaders (like Serviles),
and so on.

You can't actually micromanage your pops like that though, they will just work whichever job is available
Also your founding species will automatically be the majority of your populace, meaning it would be very hard to get enough pops to replace them in the first place

 

[wisecat]

Please make the Habitats destructible and make it possible to turn them off in game setup.

 

[Dlin369]

I am sceptical about negative traits whose effects can easily be avoided. For instance, the Weak penalty to Worker jobs can be easily avoided by building robots or obtaining other species, and then this "negative" trait basically becomes a free trait point.

In my opinion, negative trait effects need to be unavoidable in order to be balanced.
Repugnant pops could consume +25% Amenities, rather than (mostly only theoretically) producing -20% Amenities from jobs,
Quarrelsome could affect Faction Unity rather than job output Unity,
Slow Learners, Jinxed and Fleeting should always be unavailable for pops that can't produce leaders (like Serviles),
and so on.

For me the point of negative traits is to balance out the positive ones. Even for people doing genetic ascension you’re limited in not just how many trait points but trait picks. Having more negative traits just gives you some more diversity in the ones you can use.

Adding minimizeable trade-offs like slow learners, jinxed, and fleeting to serviles for me is just good management - for planets with a negative modifier to mineral production for example, you’d just do a different specialization for that planet and make a mineral world elsewhere. Finding ways to avoid negative traits being an issue is part of the game.

 

[brabadab]

How does the overturned origin interact with the new ascension?

 

[stilgarpl]

How does the overturned origin interact with the new ascension?

Overtuned will probably want to go into Purity to make their traits even stronger. In previous dev diary they show "Planned polymorphism" tradition, which makes adaptive traits stronger. Since Overtuned can have two of those it seems like it would be a strong combo.

 

[BlastFilms_]

are you seriously claiming becoming the Crisis doesn't count as legitimate play?!

it is legitimate play but since its' a one-direction path it inherently can't be applied to the general case of "machine pop growth." It'd be like me claiming that Bios have great pop growth cause I played Clone Army.

 

[Red Earth]

Looks good and the Evolutionary Predators looks hilarious.

But I have not been fan of the portrait locked traits ever since they were introduced and would like to have non-mod way for the player to make custom empires freely even if randomly generated empires follow them. If I want to grow roots as a human I should be allowed to.

I can see both sides of this. I would find mammals with plant traits ridiculous, but I would like to have arthropods with Idyllic Bloom. Insects tending the garden based on the Uva Mosk from the old Deadlock: Planetary Conquest game. I can't though.

Here's my idea: allow rule breaking for custom starting species/empire's (with like a check box or shift-click to unlock) but not in-game with gene-modding or government reform, and don't allow rule breaking species/empire's to spawn randomly. You'd have to design and force spawn them yourself.

Additional idea: Sometimes we want to create something that isn't available at start-up. Like Mass Effect's Asari interbreeding with aliens, which is an ascension option. So I'd like to have AI player only options when creating custom empire's. Let us set a goal that the AI will aim for. Like guys you want to develop into cyborgs, or their identity absolutely must involve Executive Vigor! Would be useful for gestalt consciousness especially because without ethics it's hard to give them personality. I might see these drones as warriors but not conquerors, so assigning them Defenders of the Galaxy would help with that.

 

[Lazy Name]

I would find mammals with plant traits ridiculous

Hearing that suddenly makes me want to create a "Vegetable Lamb of Tartary" empire.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

You can't actually micromanage your pops like that though, they will just work whichever job is available

The job weights system automatically prioritizes pops with suitable traits for the right jobs, while pops with bad traits are less like to take and keep those jobs.

Also your founding species will automatically be the majority of your populace, meaning it would be very hard to get enough pops to replace them in the first place

The majority species does not need to become a minority to make a negative production trait irrelevant; it is sufficient to just get enough robots and xenos to fill all of the job slots concerned.

(And that is before we get into genemodding territory, where even a mono-species empire can exploit production penalty traits by splitting into 2 or more templates, where each gets a "negative" trait or two that will never have any negative effects - making them essentially free trait pick points, when compared to all of the other negative traits that have constant negative effects.)

 

[Ajacoba]

The job weights system automatically prioritizes pops with suitable traits for the right jobs, while pops with bad traits are less like to take and keep those jobs.


The majority species does not need to become a minority to make a negative production trait irrelevant; it is sufficient to just get enough robots and xenos to fill all of the job slots concerned.

(And that is before we get into genemodding territory, where even a mono-species empire can exploit production penalty traits by splitting into 2 or more templates, where each gets a "negative" trait or two that will never have any negative effects - making them essentially free trait pick points, when compared to all of the other negative traits that have constant negative effects.)

even getting enough robots to fill all the basic jobs would take quite some time
also obviously "genemodding territory" takes bad traits that aren't crippling

which proud slave empire wouldn't make their slaves bad leaders?
double stacking aquatic and the wet skin thing is also a no-brainer since aquatic builds literally specialize in never leaving the ocean worlds in the first place

meanwhile those "free picks" will become an issue when an AI empire gets them and you have to make the best out of them
that's the charm of managing a multi-species empire - you have a planet suitable for one third of the populace but two thirds absolutely hate being there :3

 

[Toby-wan_Strife]

I think it would be interesting if there were more resource based traits. We already have traits that boost resource output, but not many that reduce (or increase) resource upkeep. I think it would be interesting if there were a "picky eaters" trait that reduces food upkeep, and alternatively a "voracious" trait that greatly increases food upkeep. Along with many other traits that could be added in later on. Imagine a trait that boosts army damage but it costs alloys in upkeep.

 

[Newbee53]

Imagine a trait that boosts army damage but it costs alloys in upkeep.

genetic traits are supposed to be biological, so alloys are right out. Would work for a cyborg trait however.

I think it would be interesting if there were more resource based traits. We already have traits that boost resource output, but not many that reduce (or increase) resource upkeep. I think it would be interesting if there were a "picky eaters" trait that reduces food upkeep, and alternatively a "voracious" trait that greatly increases food upkeep. Along with many other traits that could be added in later on.

While upkeep traits are useful, I don't know if they are interesting. Plus, being able to get free pops would be rather bad for gameplay. On the other hand, something that changed upkeep would be interesting. Like some hybrid trait that switched some organic pop upkeep to minerals, or the other way around of lithiods.

 

[Lenk]

Got a question, Shouldn't the civic Natural Design (and its counterparts) be allowed to take only the Purity genetic path since thematically it seems appropriate?

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Got a question, Shouldn't the civic Natural Design (and its counterparts) be allowed to take only the Purity genetic path since thematically it seems appropriate?

The idea with Natural Design is that you're *already* perfect, whereas the ascension path is seeking to *become* perfect. At least that's my reading.

 

[xXDaBossModzXx]

Oh, okay. So nobody lays eggs unless I shell out 2 points for it. Lovely. Garbage. Ew. And also, how in the world does a genetic memory, of all things, improve HABITABILITY?!

Maybe they have better “mating time”

 

[Ajacoba]

Maybe they have better “mating time”

Yes, like chickens! Daily ovulation as long as they're well-fed, but notably less when they aren't

 

[Lazy Name]

Like some hybrid trait that switched some organic pop upkeep to minerals

Would make sense, with animals on earth that eat clay or fungi that break down rock or whatever.

 

[SupremeGodEmperor]

Please make the Habitats destructible and make it possible to turn them off in game setup.

There's a problem with this. If you are allowed to turn habitats off, then the game would be unbalanced. That is, if having habitats is the default (and not having them not the default), then the game would be designed for them. If you turn them off, you'd be a lot weaker. Basically, if you want this option to turn them off, you would have to accept that your non-default setting would require additional tweaks in the main menu to get things right (like faster research speed, etc). Either this, or the devs would have to fully remove habitats completely from the game.

While I like habitats, I think having them just adds too much micromanagement (too many worlds), and they are best placed instead as (unlimited) mega-structures that you don't have to handle like worlds (planets). This would ruin one of the origins, but it's better to destroy one mere origin to greatly improve overall gameplay.

Anyway, back on the topic of the thread: I am happy that the devs are moving in this direction of having exclusivity (such as phenotypes having exclusive traits), as it makes choices more meaningful.

 

[Ajacoba]

tbh you can go threw whole games without ever seeing a single habitat
also aren't AI empires soft capped to a fixed (low) maximum they can build anyways?

 

[Incompetent]

Hive Mind Evolutionary Predators sounds like a perfect Zerg run.

According to the Starcraft 2 storyline, Evolutionary Predators is actually the most fundamental characteristic of the Zerg - all the hive mind stuff got bolted on later when they were uplifted by Amon. It might be even more interesting to imagine what an uncorrupted, "primal Zerg" empire would look like (assuming they stopped eating each other long enough to develop FTL travel).