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Stellaris Dev Diary #95: Humanoids Species Pack

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris dev diary. As said last week, today's dev diary is not about the Cherryh update at all, but rather something much more imminent: The Humanoids Species Pack
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Humanoids Species Pack
Over the last year or so, and especially in the last few months, there has been a lot of clamoring for more portraits and another ship-set like the one we added in Plantoids. Because of the amount of coder and content designer time we're putting into the major overhauls in the Cherryh update, we ended up with a lot of extra art time, and so we decided to oblige. Back in the Heinlein update, we added a bunch of free humanoid portraits that proved to be immensely popular - close to half of games started is with some variant of humanoid. Combine with there seeming to be a demand for a more 'classic western sci-fi' ship-set with sleeker lines and curves than the Mammalian one, and the design for the Humanoid Species Pack was born. Our artists have been quietly working away at it behind the scenes, and now it's almost ready.

So what's in the Humanoid Species Pack? Here is the feature list:
- 10 new Humanoid portraits
- A completely new ship set inspired by classic western sci-fi
- A new city set for Humanoids
- A new pre-scripted empire, the Fanatic Authoritarian/Materialist Voor Technocracy, with a portrait inspired by the 'loading screen aliens' from our own official art
- 3 new advisor voices offering alternative takes on existing ethics, based on the United Nations of Earth ('Dignified Xenophile'), Commonwealth of Man ('Disciplined Militarist') and Voor Technocracy ('Ruthless Materialist'). Samples from each of the new voices has been attached to the bottom of this post.
- 3 new music tracks that are remixes of classic Stellaris songs

Of course, the 5 Humanoid portraits that are already in the base game will remain free and available to everyone.

The Humanoids Species Pack will come out on December 7th, 2017 and will cost $7.99 US dollars or your regional equivalent. For those who want to buy it right now, pre-orders are available through the Paradox Shop. To pre-order, follow this link.

Next week we'll get back to talking about the Cherryh update on the topic of doomstacks (for real this time). Until then, I leave you with these awesome screenshots:
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Attachments

  • Commonwealth_VIR.wav
    1,6 MB · Views: 15.110
  • UNE_Vir.wav
    1,4 MB · Views: 12.588
  • Voor_VIR.wav
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Garfazz Steamfang said:
Yep. Uninspired for the most part: rubberhead humanoids, or copy/pasted earth animals. We only have a few that are a little bit more creative than the others. Stellaris was supposed to be "the mysteries of the unknown" and what do we found? An animal zoo and rubberhead humanoids... You speak about mysteries, aliens and unknown lifeforms! By the way what's the game you are speaking about? I'm quite interested to see the design of the species you talk about.
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I don't think this pack is too bad, but I think the devs should enabled humanoids to be toggled on/off at game set-up.

I love Warhammer 40k but that doesn't mean I want my games of Stellaris to have space orks.


I think a lot of players also don't want FANTASY IN SPAAAAAAAACE, so it'd be a sensible move.

I'd still have bought this pack even if I didn't want fantasy/rubberhead humanoids all over my game for the shipset alone probably, unfortunately due to Cherryh cutting paid-for content that's no longer a concern for me.
 
LeSingeAffame said:
These ones look pretty angelic if you ask me
Plantoid_12.png
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Or the one I have as my profile pic.

Garfazz Steamfang said:
Yep. Uninspired for the most part: rubberhead humanoids, or copy/pasted earth animals. We only have a few that are a little bit more creative than the others. Stellaris was supposed to be "the mysteries of the unknown" and what do we found? An animal zoo and rubberhead humanoids... You speak about mysteries, aliens and unknown lifeforms! By the way what's the game you are speaking about? I'm quite interested to see the design of the species you talk about.
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I don't know my big problem with the current portraits is that 50% of them seems to have 4 or more eyes.There is a as far as I can tell little reason for more than two eyes, once you have two you have depth perception.
 
208 said:
Maybe you can just sneak DDRJake into the sound booth on weekends.
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Actually, now that you brought this up, the Scottish [Jake & Chris] sound good for the role.

Edit: Though it would be kinda strange hearing them in-game. I don't think I'll be able to trust them not to give me bad advice on purpose :p
 
chrisjwmartin said:
Agreed, although, maybe you could add an option to the start like the one in Crusader Kings II that eliminates supernatural events?
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What exactly would be your definition of 'supernatural' in a sci-fi game? Because 'looks like it could be in a fantasy universe' is certainly not a good one.
 
Mouthwash said:
I think the psionic stuff?
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How is that anymore supernatural than half the Leviathans, or the Unbidden for that matter?

Honestly I don't think that request was very well thought through.
 
Wiz said:
How is that anymore supernatural than half the Leviathans, or the Unbidden for that matter?

Honestly I don't think that request was very well thought through.
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Giant space monsters and interdimensional invaders aren't *explicitly* invoking anything beyond the natural.

I agree, though, psionics is too big a part of the game to be optional.
 
Wiz said:
How is that anymore supernatural than half the Leviathans, or the Unbidden for that matter?

Honestly I don't think that request was very well thought through.
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I mean, like, argueably one of the biggest scifi franchises out there centres around (often a bit too much, if you ask me) magic space samurai with laser swords.

And the other arguably biggest one has telepaths and effectively omnipotent beings who are magic in all the ways that matter...

Where's the line?
 
Mouthwash said:
Giant space monsters and interdimensional invaders aren't *explicitly* invoking anything beyond the natural.

I agree, though, psionics is too large a part of the game to be optional.
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FTL travel invoke actually anything beyond natural. Some theory exist but are just extrapolation from curent physic theory.
Like i said before don't mix Common space opera with Science fiction.
Science fiction is based often on current knowledge but add some fictionnal element ( magical or physic ).
 
If I had my own 4x space game or science fiction franchise I probably wouldn't put psi in it, but I don't think I'd go so far as to say it has no place in science fiction.

I mean, if it was good enough for Babylon 5...
 
Wiz said:
What exactly would be your definition of 'supernatural' in a sci-fi game? Because 'looks like it could be in a fantasy universe' is certainly not a good one.
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It would be easier to point out the non supernatural parts of the lore, we have monsters from the nightmare realm (without a proper unicorn horn), souleating vampires, sentient black holes, spacedragons ...
 
I think some Asimov short stories have mind powers in them, and the entire premise of Stranger in a Strange Land was, if I recall correctly, 'if you have enough sex, you get magic powers'.

Are you going to go ahead and tell me Asimov or Heinlein aren't science fiction enough for you?

With your bare faces hanging out?

No?

Didn't think so.
 
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