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Stellaris Dev Diary #80 - Machine Empires

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is about the headline feature of the just-announced Synthetic Dawn Story Pack: Machine Empires. All content covered in this dev diary is part of the story pack, not the free update. Please note that we still do not have an ETA on either the 1.8 update or the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack at this time.

Machine Empires
As the name implies, the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack will allow you to start the game as a civilization that has already cast off the shackles of biology. Machine Empires are essentially robotic hiveminds that have risen up against its creators and supplanted their civilization. Unlike Synthetically Ascended empires, they are not compromised of individuals that have simply been uploaded into robotic bodies, but a single networked intelligence. Machine Empires use the Gestalt Consciousness ethic that is also used by Hive Minds, and have their own Machine Intelligence authority. They share some features with Hive Minds, such as not having to deal with factions and happiness, but differ in a number of key ways.
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Machine Empires use the new 'Machine' species class with its own portrait set. All in all, ~12 new machine portraits are planned, including one themed on each existing species class (Fungoid bots, Avian bots, etc) as well as some portraits that are themed around specific roles, such as worker bots or combat bots. Those with the story pack Machine Empires also have their own set of traits (some of which are shared with robots) and civic, including three special civics that have significant effects on gameplay (read below for more information).

A regular Machine Empire is made up entirely of networked drones (exceptions are covered by the special civics below). These drones have to be built using resources (in the same way as robot pops) and different models can be created and built once the Machine Templates technology is researched. They do not require food, instead using energy for maintenance. Organic pops can not be integrated into a machine empire, and must be displaced or purged. A special form of purging called 'Grid Amalgamation' is available to Machine Empires: This form of purging kills pops at a moderate speed, but the pops produce a large amount of energy while being purged (similar to processing for organic empires). Due to their robotic nature, leaders in Machine Empires do not die from old age, but can suffer potentially lethal accidents and malfunctions, though this is fairly rare. Similarly, Machine pops cannot function outside of a Machine Empire, and will break down and be destroyed over time.
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As a result of their differing play-style and requirements, Machine Empires have a number of new technologies and buildings available only to them, and are locked out of certain technologies and buildings accessible to organic empires, such as farms and farm upgrades. They also have their own sets of tradition swaps, similar to Hive Minds, including a new 'Versatility' tree that replaces the Diplomacy tree. A number of events have also been tweaked and changed to fit Machine Empires, and they have their own unique personalities, dialogue and interaction with entities such as the Contingency and Fallen Machine Empires.
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As mentioned, Machine Empires have access to three special civics that have a major impact on gameplay. These civics are mutually exclusive, and are as follows:

Determined Exterminators
Determined Exterminators are Machine Empires born of a rogue defense system that turned on its creators when they tried to shut it down. After a bitter war in which their creators were wiped out, Exterminators know only conflict, and consider the sterilization of all higher forms of organic life to be necessary to safeguard their own existence. Similar to Fanatical Purifiers, Exterminators receive substantial boosts to their combat ability, but are unable to conduct diplomacy with organic empires and must purge conquered organic Pops. However, unlike Fanatical Purifiers, they have no problem co-existing and co-operating with other synthetic civilizations (including other Machine Empires and ascended Synths). For this reason, their inherent bonuses are weaker than those of a Fanatical Purifier.
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Driven Assimilators
Driven Assimilators are Machine Empires that seek to expand their understanding and bridge the gap between the organic and synthetic by assimilating organic individuals into their collective consciousness. They start the game with their creator species present on the planet as assimilated cyborgs, and can make use of the Assimilation citizenship type to integrate conquered organic Pops. Assimilated organic Pops will become cyborgs and work similarly to machines in that they have no happiness and require energy maintenance instead of food, but otherwise function like a regular organic pop and can be modified with the various biological species traits. Driven Assimilators are generally feared and disliked by organic civilizations, though not to the same degree as Exterminators.
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Rogue Servitors
Rogue Servitors are robotic servants built by an organic species to make their own lives easier, eventually assuming full control of their creators' civilization. They start with their creator species present on the planet with the Bio-Trophy citizenship type, and can integrate conquered organic Pops by granting them this status. Bio-Trophies are largely useless Pops that require large amounts of consumer goods and can only operate special Organic Sanctuary buildings that produce Unity. However, in addition to the Unity generated by these sanctuaries, Servitors also have a special mechanic called Servitor Morale, representing the Servitors' prime directive to protect and care for organic beings. The greater the percentage of a Rogue Servitors' population that is made up of Bio-Trophies, the higher the Servitor Morale, granting a direct boost to empire influence gain.
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That should give you the general overview on Machine Empires, though there is a lot of little details and changes that we cannot cover in a single dev diary. If you want to see a Machine Empire in action, the Extraterrestial Thursday stream starting around the same time that this dev diary is going live will feature a new play-through as a Rogue Servitor empire. Also, next week we continue talking about robots - specifically, mid-game Machine Uprisings.
 
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Wiz quote from dev stream: "look at this blue bar here. These pops are happy. It says so right there on the paper. If you say otherwise, well, I'm sorry, but you are gonna have to go into the nutrient tanks."

"Biomass of unhappy organics are better served inside the biomass of happy organics. Maximum happiness."
 
*facedesk*

the old AI crisis is going to be improved mechanically and renamed Contingency, and is still free.

the new AI crisis have thematic similarities and 'stole' the name, but otherwise doesn't have much in common with the old one.

That's exactly the problem. They said they would fix the AI crisis to make it on par with the others. But they changed that to small improvements and the real big AI crisis is now DLC.
 
That's exactly the problem. They said they would fix the AI crisis to make it on par with the others. But they changed that to small improvements and the real big AI crisis is now DLC.

Negative, ai crisis which never worked be replaced with global crisis the Contingency which is free. This crisis is likely linked with rogue cybrex or similar and new ai revolt crisis for the dlc is only empire wide where they form a machine empire if they win and you'll only get that if you piss off your robots.
 
Negative, ai crisis which never worked be replaced with global crisis the Contingency which is free. This crisis is likely linked with rogue cybrex or similar and new ai revolt crisis for the dlc is only empire wide where they form a machine empire if they win and you'll only get that if you piss off your robots.
So as long as they make something completely broken in the base game they can use as little effort as they want to fix it and release the proper crisis in a DLC.
 
So as long as they make something completely broken in the base game they can use as little effort as they want to fix it and release the proper crisis in a DLC.

"Proper crisis" is free. What you must pay for is mid-game crisis and it is not end game crisis. CONTINGENCY [replacement of Machine Conciosness] is end game crisis. Which part of that you don't understand?

Mid-game crisis is complete rework of game mechanics and that was never implanted into game in the first place.
 
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"Proper crisis" is free. What you must pay for is mid-game crisis and it is not end game crisis. CONTINGENCY [replacement of Machine Conciosness] is end game crisis. Which part of that you don't understand?

Mid-game crisis is complete rework of game mechanics and that was never implanted into game in the first place.
lol that doesn't make it better. The current crisis is being reworked and put behind a paywall, replaced by an endgame crisis which is just a reskin of the scourge/unbidden which are already very similar.
 
Wiz quote from dev stream: "look at this blue bar here. These pops are happy. It says so right there on the paper. If you say otherwise, well, I'm sorry, but you are gonna have to go into the nutrient tanks."

"Biomass of unhappy organics are better served inside the biomass of happy organics. Maximum happiness."
PAMPERING IS MANDATORY
 
lol that doesn't make it better. The current crisis is being reworked and put behind a paywall, replaced by an endgame crisis which is just a reskin of the scourge/unbidden which are already very similar.

But you are aware that the mid-game crisis will not be the same as that "proper" AI rebelion you are talking about? There will be no "infecting other empires" mechanics, the CONTINGENCY will have it. The Contingency also will do toned-down asasinations and other ugly tricks that Machine Conciousness did, but (in PDX plans) it is intended to work less random than now. Hopefully they will rework that part to something tolerable at last, because it sucked balls.
 
I have to voice my concerns about all this. The new patch sounds awesome, the DLC looks great. Stellaris keeps getting better all the time. But there are some trends in development that genuinely bother me. The game gets these ... spikes of content that flesh out some area of the game. Awesome! But then we're left with these other areas that just aren't as up-to-date or interesting. So now we wait for the next piece of DLC and patch to hopefully address that. This might be okay, it's just a function of time and cost, but compounding that is an idea takes off and then ... the team moves on. The shroud was cool, ascendancy was cool, megastructures were cool but ... well it's DLC-bound so what? Those are just done now? Each bit of content seems to have to sit alongside, but not touch, everything else.

I can't help but wish Paradox worked more like Firaxis in this regard. Instead of DLC and periodic content updates they just took a year off, went all out on an expansion and then released it. That's how we got Brave New World (which, for me, is the pinnacle of what an expansion pack can and should be). The DLC model with Stellaris seems like it would be a drain on development resources since now you have to support all these combinations of content, and like I said, they seem to be a 'one-and-done' situation. No DLC released to date has received any updates I know of except the original 'Deluxe' edition portrait got some color swaps. Every other piece of content has been standalone and besides a bug fix or two, no further integration.

Maybe Stellaris will be the best game ever in a few years, but with the way things are going its becoming a really, really uneven experience because it could be argued that the fundamentals aren't there yet. In fact, I'd go so far as to point out the big new hotness of hive minds and machine empires neatly sidestep this by ignoring a part of the game many players find lacking: diplomacy! So yeah, hive minds are an awesome addition and machine empires sound great but unless you are playing one of those it feels like there's nothing to see here and I have to be honest, that bothers me.

Enough that now it's like, why bother? It honestly feels like development of the game is treated like a modding project than a cohesive whole. It makes me want to uninstall Stellaris and check on it in two years like it's an Early Access project. I can't be the only one, but hopefully I'm the minority I guess.
Except civ 6 firaxies are blowing chunks and have a terrible dlc/patch record (imo) for civ 6.
 
lol that doesn't make it better. The current crisis is being reworked and put behind a paywall, replaced by an endgame crisis which is just a reskin of the scourge/unbidden which are already very similar.

I select to believe that your deliberately obtuse, and not dumber than should be allowed ... the crisis is made more mechanically robust and changes the name to Contingency, and is STILL FREE ... meanwhile there is a new mid-game event/crisis which borrows the name and spawns a rebellion led by a Machine Empire, that takes the now-defunct name, and is part of the DLC

Except civ 6 firaxies are blowing chunks and have a terrible dlc/patch record (imo) for civ 6.

Civ 6 might well be the most feature complete Civilization game since they started releasing expansions (Civ 3). Sure the patch cycle leaves much to be wanted, and the DLCs are the same crap that Civ 5 had, but that doesn't change that it shipped as a complete game, which can't be said about Civ5
 
I select to believe that your deliberately obtuse, and not dumber than should be allowed ... the crisis is made more mechanically robust and changes the name to Contingency, and is STILL FREE ... meanwhile there is a new mid-game event/crisis which borrows the name and spawns a rebellion led by a Machine Empire, that takes the now-defunct name, and is part of the DLC



Civ 6 might well be the most feature complete Civilization game since they started releasing expansions (Civ 3). Sure the patch cycle leaves much to be wanted, and the DLCs are the same crap that Civ 5 had, but that doesn't change that it shipped as a complete game, which can't be said about Civ5
It might be themost feature complete release yet, but the weak fundamentals that plagued the previous releases are still all present and correct. By that I mean a lacklustre ui and a truly awful ai that still can't handle 1upt and (so similar issues to pdx games except the ui in civ 6 is less informative than in the new pdx generation). Combined with some poor balancing choices (imo) make the civ 6 only around 6 out of 10 if that. Any way that's enough civ talk from me!!

As for zizard I'm pretty sure at this point they are just being contrary for the sake of it.
 
A regular Machine Empire is made up entirely of networked drones (exceptions are covered by the special civics below). These drones have to be built using resources (in the same way as robot pops) and different models can be created and built once the Machine Templates technology is researched.

themed around specific roles, such as worker bots or combat bots.

So it looks like we're going to be playing our robot strategy as specialized population rather than Synthetic super generalists.

Not sure how I feel about this yet.
 
Its not really like the Culture. The humans and drones where still useful citizens in the Culture.
I don't know, it seemed like the humans of the Culture were just lava-rafting or sometimes making elaborate art installations.

I suppose VICKI from the movie version of "I, Robot", might be a good mass media representation. I also know an indie sci-fi author (Royce Day) who's written a book about a Groupmind of robots who force humanity into open-air padded resort-asylums on a ringworld called "The Fall of Man".
 
I have a question about Rogue Servitors, they have a "morale" mechanic that's dependent on the percentage of Bio-Trophies in the population. But, it also says that machine empires cannot build farms. Can Bio-Trophies breed without farms to feed them? Or do they have mandatory population control and are Rogue Servitors forced to conquer more organics to love as they expand their population?

Could you, for instance, build a Habitat and transfer one Bio-Trophy POP there who would grow to fill in all the empty tiles? Or a Ringworld even?
 
this may have been answered already, but do the Bio-Trophies get a chance of growing discontent and rebelling? or could their pops be "salvaged" by other empires, either to be assimilated or granted freedom?
 
this may have been answered already, but do the Bio-Trophies get a chance of growing discontent and rebelling? or could their pops be "salvaged" by other empires, either to be assimilated or granted freedom?
"look at this blue bar here. These pops are happy. It says so right there on the paper. If you say otherwise, well, I'm sorry, but you are gonna have to go into the nutrient tanks."

"Biomass of unhappy organics are better served inside the biomass of happy organics. Maximum happiness."

From the dev stream, it looks like even recently conquered pops are given *maximum happiness levels* once made a bio trophy.