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Stellaris Dev Diary #47 - Guardians

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today we'll continue talking about the Leviathans Story Pack, specifically its headline feature: the Guardians.

The Guardians (Paid Feature)
The Guardians, or Leviathans as they're also known, are space-dwelling beings of immense power. They vary a great deal in biology and composition: Some are enormous space creatures, some are technological remnants of ancient civilizations, and some are something far different altogether. How you find them also varies - some you may encounter in their home systems, jealously guarding their territory, others may be unleashed on the galaxy by exploring the wrong planet or star.

The chance of a particular Guardian being present in your game will depend on the size of your galaxy - a tiny galaxy might only have one or two, while a Huge galaxy might contain nearly all or even all of them if you explore far enough. Defeating them, or in some cases, helping them, will unlock rewards in the form of resources, empire-wide modifiers and unique technologies. Guardians vary in power, but are meant to be a serious challenge for a mid-game empire, so don't expect to be able to bring them down in the first decades of the game.

Below I am going to talk a little about a few of the Guardians. These are just a sample and not nearly all of them, but we want to avoid showing off everything there is for a player to find in the Leviathans Story Pack for those who wish to explore and find out for themselves.
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The Space Dragon
The Space Dragon is a capricious being, jealously guarding its hoard. With this particular Guardian, there is no reasoning or dialogue... it wants to be left alone, and will attack any and all trespassers in its territory. If you wish to get at its hoard, you will have to slay it, and you had best be sure to bring a large enough fleet - anger it enough, and it will not settle for simply driving you off. Should you bring it down, however, the vast mineral riches of its hoard will be yours to claim... and who knows what you might find among the treasures. Technology, artifacts... perhaps even a dragon egg?
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The Infinity Machine
The Infinity Machine, a strange metal sphere, sits at the edge of a massive black hole, unmoving. It does not attack as you approach, does not communicate, does not even react. It seems to be waiting for something. Perhaps if you find a way to speak with it, you can find out what it wants. Perhaps you can even help it? Or, if you choose, you could simply order your fleet to attack... after all, how much of a threat could a mere metal sphere be?
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Stellarite
What can live inside a star?

What sort of being can withstand, and even thrive in, such immense heat and pressure?

What could be its purpose?

... what does it eat?
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That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about changes to the graphics and sound of Stellaris coming in the Heinlein update, as well as a teaser on the more than 20 minutes of new music by Andreas Waldetoft included in the Leviathans Story Pack.
 
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Well...

I think the words "The Guardians (Paid Feature)" say it all.

I am not sure that Paradox have said if the paid features could be activated separately from one another. In any event, thank you for your reply, Ravenmane!

EDIT: It seems to me that Paradox will release the "Leviathan Story Pack" as a single DLC, which will contain multiple features. Among these are: Guardians feature, Enclaves feature, War in Heaven feature etc..
 
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I know the feeling, I really don't want to play Stellaris right now since I want to wait on the DLC as opposed to restarting again. I'll have to retool all of the regular races I like to have spawn in though and tweak my usual mod race since I use the Ringworld Start mod on... all of them actually. Kinda enjoy using it far too much now that I think about it but I'm kinda sick of the normal kinds of starts. Sure habitability is trash (100% Ringworld & Gaia and 0% elsewhere) but its made the universal wars look like serious business all the time.

If they still work properly then the Guardians will feel even more at home in my games. It's just the scale of things when you have four planets in your starting system, so much potential. Forgive my rambling after simply agreeing, just so much want for the DLC that I can't help it.

Haha a man after my own heart!!! Although I don't do ringworld starts, I do have a full collection of races I've built for my games just like you. And just like you I cannot bring myself to start another game without the awesomeness of Heinlein! And yes, Guardians seems immense! Personally, I am seriously looking forward to the War in Heaven implementation and the overall expansion of fallen empires. I do like a good challenge!!!

I guess we are all on the edge of our seats for this one haha!!!
 
I'm not against the DLC as it is not really hindering the process of fixing the game, but you are wrong (and rude and self-important). AI still has tons of issues, and the game provides very little room for any strategy simply because it lacks any meaningful challenges or decisions. The only way to enjoy the game is to roleplay heavily, which should not be the case in a game labeled as strategy. Second, put your situation in the videogames market in perspective before you go out of your way to defend a company, will you? Should we sacrifice our first-borns to Paradox also?

You're so incredibly off-base and completely short-sighted. The game isn't a mess at all. For the depth and variety of features and playability compared to any other space 4X on the market, it's massive and stable. If you paid any attention at all you'd see this DLC and the Heinlein update are going to fix the very things you're complaining about (which after 550+ hours of playtime I haven't personally had a single issue with.) Paid content is a reality for a company that has employees to pay. They make this game content for us, which takes more work than you seem to realize, and the way they pay continued costs for this development is to charge a small amount for it. I'd easily pay $10-15 for the DLC and the Heinlein patch alone is going to add so much more. I expect I'll get well over 1,000 hours out of this game, possibly much more. I can't say that about any game comparable in genre or in price. Seriously, put your expectations in perspective and be thankful we have Paradox making this game and not EA or Hello Games who'd simply kick it out bare-bones and forget it.
 
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And, considering the size of the dragon, it should be an insta-kill on any kind of ship regardless of hp/shields/armor. Perhaps, set a nasty cooldown on it so that the dragon doesn't chomp your whole fleet too quickly?

So if we get it how long until the Galactus mod rears it's head? I'm only half-kidding here as the dragon devouring your fleet for its naive attempt to steal the behemoth's stuff is an awesome idea.
 
they also said if I heard correctly that there will be Guardians even bigger than the dragon

True, I'm more interested in the Infinity Machine and what hasn't been revealed. I do so love a good surprise, like the Reaper's Due price tag or them giving us a release date on this DLC. As a note, I meant the latter of those in a way that I wanna know already.
 
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Can a fanatic spiritualist militarist people worship and study the Dragon? Like, duh, that's my first thought upon seeing it.

Like in the sense that Vikings throw themselves impossibly against a great monster in the hopes of becoming a legend style of worship?

Cause if we're talking actually worshiping the dragon, I figured Fanatic Materialists x Spiritualists might be closer (cause of hording).

*Unintentionally starts debates on how to properly worship the dragon which begins a crusade that makes the war in heavens seem like a flash in the pan*
 
Cause if we're talking actually worshiping the dragon, I figured Fanatic Materialists x Spiritualists might be closer (cause of hording).
Those are opposite ethics, and I see no relation between the ethics and hoarding. Militarist makes sense, as it *is* an enormous, laser-shooting monster that'll kill dead anything going near it.
 
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I'm not against the DLC as it is not really hindering the process of fixing the game, but you are wrong (and rude and self-important). AI still has tons of issues, and the game provides very little room for any strategy simply because it lacks any meaningful challenges or decisions. The only way to enjoy the game is to roleplay heavily, which should not be the case in a game labeled as strategy. Second, put your situation in the videogames market in perspective before you go out of your way to defend a company, will you? Should we sacrifice our first-borns to Paradox also?

You're over dramatizing the cost of DLC that still requires people to be paid for their work on top of the huge changes the patch (which is free) will provide. For Paradox to keep kicking out fun projects along the lines of Stellaris (which was unique to their past games in the history-free 4X setting) as well as new content for an already released game they need to make a little profit as well. They're hardly asking you to give up a child. I'll defend Paradox until they give me a reason not to. Everyone enjoys different aspects of the game, sure, and your inability to enjoy the game is on you. I don't have any problem with role-play in a strategy game and the fact that it has no real-world history like EU IV, Victoria or Crusader Kings to build off of means having to use your imagination and define the goals and point-of-the-game for yourself, very clearly. It might not have the endless depth you seem to think it should have been released with - and free of course because clearly it has no value to you, but it's getting better every day and you are nitpicking things that are so small in comparison to what's been done right and what they have clearly announced as being in progress. Be realistic.
 
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