• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Stellaris Dev Diary #381 - Time to Get Wild

Hello there everyone, PDS_Iggy here! We’ve had a busy week, now let's see what Eladrin wanted me to talk about… The Hive Fallen Empire and the Wilderness origin? In the same diary?


Okay… Buckle up for a Wild ride!

Hive Fallen Empire​

For the first time since Synthetic Dawn, a new ancient will join us in the galaxy: a Hive Mind, once united in purpose, now lies fragmented. Each embodiment is stuck trying to execute its own directive. Each has plans for becoming the dominating force within their former collective… and you might be able to nudge who ends up in charge.
image11.png

Stellaris supports conference calls now?

After an uncertain but definitely horrible disaster splintered their consciousness, The Hive was left in 3 fragments: Growth, War, and Control. Each one with its distinct personality, system, and tasks. Though don’t let differences fool you. They are all in a federation with each other, and declaring war on one will see you fight all three.
image1.png

So different, yet refusing to be far apart.

This Fallen Empire will spawn surrounding a central system. Each of the fragments branches off with its own unique system. They all surround the central system, Last Thought, but refuse to claim it. Curious. Like most Fallen Empires, they are content seeing the universe pass by them by… unless you do something that interests or annoys them.

image4.png

Pretty reasonable imo

image9.png

No, you really can’t refuse

image10.png

I made some of these events work on AIs. Don’t worry about the fragment’s Traits.


Each fragment has multiple tasks, and each one is quite a bit more reactive than the old “Hey, give us your scientists” events from Fallen Empires in the past. So, make friends where you can and try not to unleash something horrible on the galaxy.
image6.png

This shipset had the working name of “Antagonist” in-house.

Something that has always distinguished Fallen Empires from regular empires is that their ships are extra advanced. Well, the same is true here, but instead of using the same old technology of the other Fallen Empires, the fragments use Biological Ones! A special, older, and more intimidating version of the Spinovore shipset.

Just like all other Fallen Empires, this will be your primary source for Dark Matter technology.


image13.png

Politics is an old species game.

When the sleepers awake, one must end up on top. Absorbing the other fragments, one of three awakened empires will form, each with different goals and behaviors. Two of them will be participating in the war in heaven, the third one has other plans. Here is Control.

Wilderness​

This, without a doubt, is the most transformative Origin we have ever added to the game. The Wilderness is a Hive Mind exclusive origin, requiring you to play with Biological Ships, and leaves behind mechanical buildings and nasty things like colony ships. The experience we want to bring you here is experiencing the galaxy as a living planet.
image5.png

How do you show in a tooltip that everything is different?

As you can see in the tooltip, and what I want to emphasize is that you don’t share a single base building or district with regular empires. You do have some overlap when it comes to civics and such, but in general, you will live as a planet.

image12.png

Greetings from Tellon
image8.png

Not an asphalted road as far as the planet can feel.

The Wilderness comes with a unique City Set and Diplomatic room; any empire can play with it, but it was made for the Wilderness. The avian-eyed among you might have spotted that we have a new resource icon up there, Biomass. Biomass is gained by growing new pops and is used for developing your planets and colonizing new ones. Since you are spending Biomass to grow buildings, we won’t expect you to have enough around to work them. That is why all Wilderness pops come with a +1000 Workforce modifier. Please don’t figure out some exploit to smuggle them out of the empire.

image2.png

Everything is used and reused in the Wilderness.
image7.png

The Wilderness does not need colony ships. If they can terraform it, they can become it.

Once you have relearned how to navigate the economy as a living planet, you can spread your spores outward, terraforming a new world by using Biomass, awakening a new colony in your image.

image3.png

Plant Houston, we have liftoff!

The Wilderness Origin is compatible with most civics available to hiveminds, but I managed to satisfy an edgy little primal part of myself when I designed the automatically generated names for the Devouring Swarm variant: the Blood Forest.

image14.png

People making reaction videos to these, please read them with the intensity and melodrama they deserve.

There is so much more we could show you about the Wilderness, the tradition swaps, the altered technologies, the many unique buildings, but at this point I would like you to find it out on your own!

Next Week​

Next week, it will finally be time to reveal our most primal secrets. Join @Cosmogone as he shares all our new civics and the Behemoth Fury crisis path!

Meanwhile, I have some Hive Minds to appease.
 
  • 107Love
  • 74Like
  • 3
  • 3
  • 2Haha
Reactions:
I would love a plant-based biological shipset. Flying trees would fit perfectly with this origin!
Agreed, hopefully we'll get more Bioshipsets in the future to expand the roster

I can see plant-like and fish-like Bioshipsets as Custodian updates for Plantoids and Aquatics respectively

Maybe even a few more thematically open ones like the Spinovore and Shellcraft Sets we're getting with BioGenesis
 
  • 5
Reactions:
I don't get your point here. Of course Genetic Symbiotes doesn't work.
You are all. The main species. The plants. The wildlife. All of that is you.
Why would you grow an inferior non-hive species of wildlife and have them live off of feeding on you?

Because I can I want to! I'm fine with non-sapient wildlife living on me, while I become their guardian. The living Garden of Eden.
 
  • 3Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Wilderness is everything I could've wanted and more. It is what I am most excited for with this expansion and will be my first run. The whole thing has made me wonder what it'd be like to see a planet wake up...


"I am a UNE scientist, station onboard an observation post above an unremarkable world. I have observation drones out, watching the wildlife, studying these amazing alien creatures, along with planet side observation posts...but things have...changed. I've noticed some behaviors spreading from species to species, I have noticed new sections of the planet appear and change.
I was not, ready however, for what came next as I observed.
Every drone went offline, every signal producing system went dead, plunging the station into a silence I found myself wholly unfamiliar with...until...one signal came through, then two...then four, then 50, 100, 1000, every drone's data stream suddenly flooding back, every planet-side post lighting up, a cacophony of data flooding through, repeating one thing over and over and over.
'Awake'"
 
  • 3Like
  • 3Love
Reactions:
A non Wilderness empire invading an Wilderness planet will be faced with blockers instead of developed districts
That makes sense and is a rather easy and elegant solution, actually.
The more developed the planet has been, the more districts are blocked. Putting quite the time and resource investment into taking over the planet.
Good idea!
 
  • 5
  • 1Like
Reactions:
What about wilderness attacking non wilderness planets. Can i send my spores on a inhabitated planet? And overwhelm them with my growth? :)

Also is wilderness limited to humid worlds? Arctic and Arid wilderness kinda doesnt mane sense.
 
We I could do with some context with the "Control Splinter." It asks us to abandon our control of the Hazra system. Would that be a system that's adjacent to the fallen empire's borders, just like how the militaristic fallen empire don't like it when you expand next to them? Or will they demand we just randomly abandon a system nearish to them, because we have the audacity to exist?
I suspect it's more of a random system they think will make your border look like the equivalent of a smiley face
 
OH. MY. GOD.

There is so much content in a single origin. Since only Purity bio ascension is available for them, could you, perhaps, answer: does this origin provides advanced authority unique to it, akin to Evolutionary Predators, or no?

Also, props for the new FE. It's probably the most mechanically complex out of all of them and I can see the Red King making a looong lore video about them.
It does seem to replace hive mind from the start, does that count as "advanced" authority?