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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.
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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.
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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.

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Pretty reasonable imo

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No, you really can’t refuse

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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.
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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.


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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.
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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.

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Greetings from Tellon
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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.

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Everything is used and reused in the Wilderness.
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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.

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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.

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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.
 
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Considering they added a steal pops espionage mission, I'd say negative 11 days (today) till someone theorycrafts it, 3 days till someone pulls it off. Only thing I'm unsure how to do right now is how to keep them alive after stealing them...
Steal / Nihilistic Acquisition in to the Synaptic Lathe, maybe. Works on normal hive minded pops, until they expire in the lathe.

They shouldn't produce at 1000x on forced labour purge, I'm sure that's been thought of.
 
The "Multitude of diverse lifeforms" makes we hope wilderness get a start with multiple species, like broken shackles. Just imagine all the horses, bugs, elephants, birds all turn to look at you speaking in unison. Now that's scifi
I think the preview for Wilderness before being altered for the Zone planet system had all jobs fulfilled by various pre-sapients, like an organic Digital empire. It's a shame they decided to replace that, it would've been so satisfying to see a cacophony of species portraits filling out jobs.

hyrt303l3ore1.jpeg
 
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I think the preview for Wilderness before being altered for the Zone planet system had all jobs fulfilled by various pre-sapients, like an organic Digital empire. It's a shame they decided to replace that, it would've been so satisfying to see a cacophony of species portraits filling out jobs.

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According to the stream, that idea kept breaking so they ended up going with the new option instead. Quite a shame it didn't work out, though.
 
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Anu update/reconsideration to the leader changes? I have been asking about it since the open beta announcement and have not received a single word about it. SoI hsve no choixe but to ask here.

To, again, touch on this, with another (short) exsmple on one (there are more) reasons why it is bad:
In Stellaris the most important traits are those after level 4,which is when you unlock the leader class. As such, in 3.14 once you reach 5 you get to chose your first class trait. As an example lets pixk Refinery foxused from an industrialist (though this applies to all scenarios). In 4.0 you would need to wait until level 6 to pick the aforementioned trait, it does not matter id it will be a level 2,as in 3.14 I could upgrade it and we would be even.

Clearly this makes it all worse. Not to mention that the higher the level, rhe higher the ezp requirements. So, in 3.14 inxe you reach level 7 you get a bonus for several years, while in 4.0 it is a dead level that adds nothing.

And all this for what? Save 4 picks? Because thats it, 3,5,7,9. Leaders are getting rekt (feel worse with said dead levels), are more vulnerable to RNG and are definitely worse power wise foe 4 picks? This is nonsense.

Not to mention that a leader dying midway level 5, 7 or 9 in 3.14 did get to benefit from that level trait for a while, but in 4.0 it is awful because you have been since level 4,6 or 8 without getting anything.

And this is just one of the bad things with the new system. I have explained several examples in total since this change was announced all with at least one reason why the change is very bad. Not to mention that just by having 'dead levels' feels bad, at that point I would just prefer leaders to reach level 6 max really, instead of them only picking sometimes.

Can one dev please look at this and if possible say us something about it? A lot of people love leaders, and this change spits in the face of all those who bought and loved paragons for minimal gain. Not fair for those that loce it, not only the change, but also not having a single response about it even though it has been talked abput in several Dev Disries so far. Please someone tell me something.

Now, back to this DD, I don't see myself playing this origin, except to try it, but it certainly looks very special and original. Also very curious about the new FE.
 
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I love the origin but I kind of wish Wildernesses had a unique portrait or two (like just an alien tree), or maybe no portrait/species at all (since they're literally the planet)
 
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I love the origin but I kind of wish Wildernesses had a unique portrait or two (like just an alien tree), or maybe no portrait/species at all (since they're literally the planet)
That would be great for more orgins and all gestalts.
Why have a normal portrait when playing Under One Ruler. special ruler portraits would be great.
Also allows for more orgins (like a organic empire ruled by a AI)
 
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It's a shame that the pre-sapient aspect of Wilderness couldn't be made to work properly, as that was really cool thematically! If it was just a matter of being unable to get it ready in time for release, then perhaps the Custodian team could spend some time working on it in the near future?

Or maybe, since Genesis Symbiotes is still blocked anyways, you could just automatically uplift a native species to act as the "Heart Pops" on each new planet instead of or in addition to your main species?
 
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There are some mods that add an Ecocentric ethic, which I found interesting and somewhat radical. But this... this just floors me. The tree-hugging Nature-lovers can go sit in a corner, I will try out playing as the ecosystem itself! As terrifying as the flora and fauna all gaining a collective intelligence to make goals and decisions together, this needed to happen. I love it.
 
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