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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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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.
The new traits are stronger than the old ones though
So you just lose out on variety and don't have leaders anymore that specialize into EVERYTHING and leave you wondering what the heck they actually do as you carefully try to read their 20 traits
But they will still be as strong as they currently are
Having less diverse military leaders might also motivate you to try out new ship designs to use the cool traits the gacha gave you
 
In the stream I saw that Cloning had access to some advanced traits, but it seemed to be because they had encountered them in other species. Where exactly have the advanced traits been put in the new system? I know Leviathan traits were sent to Mutation, but did all the others get sent to Purity? Is it a mix, are some in multiple, can the variable tree dictate which traits you obtain?
Don't all three routes get the advanced traits?
 
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This could be just me being thick, but why is this origin expected to have workforce issues far beyond any other empire? Reading this sentence, I'm seeing biomass as some resource that is gained by pop growth, but is unrelated to the actual pop system. Is it that the biomass itself represents population, so you're spending your pops themselves in order to develop the planet?
It gets biomass instead of pop growth. The planet itself is the only pop the empire gets - at all.
 
A non Wilderness empire invading an Wilderness planet will be faced with blockers instead of developed districts

How does the Wilderness works in offencive?
For example, Wilderness empire has conquered planet which cannot be terraformed due to lack of technologies. What will happens to that planet? It will be purged from aliens and then abandoned?

More over, what happens with "special" planet such as Ecumenopolis or Relic (and maybe HIve and Machine)?
How does Wilderness interacts with Habitats or Ring Worlds?
 
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How does the Wilderness works in offencive?
For example, Wilderness empire has conquered planet which cannot be terraformed due to lack of technologies. What will happens to that planet? It will be purged from aliens and then abandoned?

More over, what happens with "special" planet such as Ecumenopolis or Relic (and maybe HIve and Machine)?
How does Wilderness interacts with Habitats or Ring Worlds?
I assume it's the same as when you conquer a hive or machine world

You land your armies, beat up all the locals, realize the place sucks and abandon it

Planets with literally 0% habitability aren't actually a new thing
 
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I do wonder when you say 2 personnalities will participate in the war in heaven do you mean as one of the two awakened empires that kick it off or a third party that joins the fray against both sides for its own reasons.
 
I do wonder when you say 2 personnalities will participate in the war in heaven do you mean as one of the two awakened empires that kick it off or a third party that joins the fray against both sides for its own reasons.

Reading it more as, of the 3 personalities, 2 of them is able to participate in a war in heaven, whereas the 3rd won't participate (just as Machine FE)
 
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Reading it more as, of the 3 personalities, 2 of them is able to participate in a war in heaven, whereas the 3rd won't participate (just as Machine FE)
No i mean they say the 2 personnalities participate not "initiate" so i was wonder if they were simply gonna trigger the ancient rivals event or if 2 other empires trigger the ancient rivals event and start the war in heaven and it would join in as a three way conflict just because it wanted in on the fun.
 
I wonder if the Fallen Hive will have a unique interaction with the Prethoryn like the Machine FE and the Contingency. One mind might see them as a rival that must be destroyed while another might be able to commune with them and decides to join forces with them to prepare for the Hunters.