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Hi and welcome to another Stellaris dev diary. Today we’re going to talk about some of the things we’re adding in the upcoming Kennedy update.

The Extradimensionals didn't work quite as we had imagined them. Players were more or less forced to throw everything they had at their dimensional portal, but there was no way to slowly push them back. The mechanics through which they received reinforcements also felt a bit too arbitrary, so we decided to shake things up a bit.

As before, the Unbidden care little for planets (aside from harvesting their populations). They are an entirely space-based civilization, but now they will also build a new class of station: Dimensional Anchors. These Anchors increase the ability of the Unbidden to bring in reinforcements from their portal. The more Anchors they have constructed, the shorter the time between their reinforcement waves. In addition to that, they will also bring in a new fleet from their portal every time an Anchor finishes construction.

As long as an Anchor is active, the Dimensional Portal will be indestructible.

Anchor.jpg


Anchors are very large stations, and they take a long time for the Unbidden to build. They also function as Frontier Outposts, in that they generate borders. If you see one under construction, you may want to consider a preemptive strike before it comes online…

Overall these changes mean that the Extradimensionals can no longer simply be defeated with a single surgical strike once they have had time to establish themselves in the galaxy, but also that they don’t get unlimited and instant reinforcements, so you can wear them down in a war of attrition.

Our illustrious Art Department has not been idle while we worked on these changes. They have added new death animations for all Extradimensional ships and stations:

ed_effect'.jpg


Extradimensional Constructors have also been given a new effect when they are building stations:

ED_construction_effect.png


We have also revisited the Precursor anomalies. It was much too difficult (sometimes impossible) to collect all six artifacts needed to finish their chains. As you approach the mid-game now, there is a chance that you will get a new event that spawns an additional anomaly somewhere inside your space.

lrCyMQI.png


That’s all for today! Next week we’ll be talking about new Achievements coming in the Kennedy update.
 
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It isn't. All you have to do is set the flag galactic_crisis_happened (iirc) early in the AI revolt chain, and it stops both other crises from happening.
To be honest, I have no idea why it isn't already a thing. I was kinda expecting it to be. Looks like an oversight to me.
 
I've had the AI crisis once, Unbidden twice and the Scourge three times since Heinlein's release, all in 1000 star galaxies. Seems to be that if the Sanctuary system spawns, you're getting the Scourge but that could just be a coincidence that the only times it spawned where in the Scourge games.

Unfortunately, Sanctuary seems useless now for trying to get the Sentinels event during the crisis. An FE almost invariably awakens before the Scourge hits and it takes out the Sanctuary system when it encounters it.
 
I've had the AI crisis once, Unbidden twice and the Scourge three times since Heinlein's release, all in 1000 star galaxies. Seems to be that if the Sanctuary system spawns, you're getting the Scourge but that could just be a coincidence that the only times it spawned where in the Scourge games.

Unfortunately, Sanctuary seems useless now for trying to get the Sentinels event during the crisis. An FE almost invariably awakens before the Scourge hits and it takes out the Sanctuary system when it encounters it.
It's actually randomized by a hidden game start event, with a chance for the crisis to never occur. It can occur at the earliest after 120 years +/- 500 days (20% chance IIRC), and there are 4 other longer, fixed intervals with a few hundred days of randomization.
 
Um no. Alexis Kennedy, the writer who did some work for them recently, I'm sure. The patch names are all sci-fi authors, and while JFK was many things, I do not know of any sci-fi stories by him. :)
 
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The pretorian swarm (or whatever is called) are kinda dumb, never really fought them before so I cannot comment on them being better or worst off.

They just sat with their huge fleets bombarding some random empire planets on "light bombing" and kept their transports guarded by a puny 25k fleet.

I just took my time rebuilding my fleets that where kinda beaten over the last FE war and ate them raw in a single strike.
Now they are just bombarding the planets looking at themselves.

I can safely go back to handling the awaken FE that decided to declare war on my liberated FE for some reason.
 
Is ther going to be a possibilty of non military ways to beat the crisises?

These strategies don't beat the Crises themselves, but they can keep you somewhat safe from them and/or give you a domination/federation victory by exploiting the crisis.

Prethoryn: Run away from their fleets while they slowly lose their armies invading AI countries. (Or snipe the transports with your navy, or conquer the worlds at the breach point and garrison them with the strongest armies possible.) The Prethoryn don't get anymore troops to invade planets other than the ones they get in the beginning, so you can safely aim for a Domination/Federation victory once you do. Infested worlds don't count as habitable for the purposes of these victory conditions, but the Prethoryn do count as an independent empire and you can't win a conquest victory while they exist. I have done this successfully in 1.3.0

AI revolt: You have a chance of getting an event that makes your pops immune to the rebellion. This does not prevent the Machine Consciousness from attacking you, but it does prevent your own synths from joining it. (Haven't tested.)

Unbidden: Pray to the RNG that the portals open on the opposite side of the galaxy.
 
So to clarify, they crises are all being tweaked so the stop petering out at 30-40% of the galaxy? Cause they always seem to stop there and not move on. It's very sad my games.
 
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Leviathans has only made it worse, since Awakened Empires use jump drive with abandon and presumably drive the counter through the roof.
I thought FE's jump drives specifically didn't count for the Unbidden?

Well that is certainly an interesting take considering the dev diary specifically says the portal is invincible while dimensional anchors are active.
That was edited into the diary later, in response to concerns raised in the thread.
 
Cheers for the DD Goosecreature, and some quality changes there :). The anomalies being available is something I'm particularly a fan of - I'm yet to get further than four events in, even with very exploratino-focussed games (although extradimensional changes sound good as well - much more dynamism to taking out those extradimensionals - my most enjoyable endgame challenge yet :)).
 
So to clarify, they crises are all being tweaked so the stop petering out at 30-40% of the galaxy? Cause they always seem to stop there and not move on. It's very sad my games.
There has been no answer to this question.
So no reason to believe this is not still the case.
It is a shame as it makes the so-called end-game crises about as harmless as kittens as long as you stay out of their way.
 
Unbidden only spawn in empires that have research jump or psi jump drives.
Nope. In my most recent, 1.3.1 game, they spawned in my empire and I was using WHs and hadn't researched either technology. I actually picked them up from wars after the Unbidden were eliminated.

I have a feeling it was from another empire that I hadn't closed my borders to who sent their jump-drive equipped science vessels to survey my territory.
 
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