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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
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  • UNE_Vir.wav
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  • Voor_VIR.wav
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ashbery76 said:
How many started with plain old human? I am betting most.I think humans like playing humans but still want alien looking alien to eat,enslave etc,
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A bit less than 30% last I checked. Used to be higher.
 
I am super stoked for this species pack! The ship style is especially pretty :)

I do have a question for all those clamoring for more "alien" species though. What, exactly, do you expect from a "truly alien" species? The species of Earth evolved their forms for a reason; they confer a competitive advantage. There's good reason to believe these will still be advantageous forms/traits on other (roughly) similar worlds to earth.
 
DaStormDragon said:
Except Warp Drive, the problem is just the amount of energy needed
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But Warp Drive is a staple of SF. Science is, by definition, temporary knowledge and as SF is written during different stages of this iterative process (or different paradigms, if you want) it's bound to have some things that prove to be very unlikely down the line.

ashbery76 said:
That cant be true as I have some PSI abilities.Surely most humans have experience it too.
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I don't think anecdotal evidence is the point here. The point is that PSI in science fiction isn't really among the most preposterous things.
 
Wonazer said:
> ...close to half of games started is with some variant of humanoid.

Ok, data is beautiful and you must share more!

What other data are you collecting on our habits?
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Stuff around galaxy size and games actually 'completed' would be interesting! If you can share it, something around the hours played would be fascinating, average, % in a few brackets (over 1000, over 500 etc.)... average number of mods, top 5 mods actually in use by category might shed some light on areas people feel really need to be expanded upon as well etc.

Might make an interesting Dev Diary in it's own right around playerbase behaviour / insights.
 
The portrait usage goes roughly Humans -> Humanoids -> Machines -> Cuties -> The Rest in terms of what people play with.

Mind you, 'The Rest' is still a large chunk of players. There's plenty of players who play things other than Humanoids, Humanoids are just very popular compared to everything else.
 
@Wiz

Since ship sets require a good chunk of time to make can the Stellaris team hold some sort of poll with 4+ choices to determine interest in new sets? Or maybe a "community build" series of polls to make a ship set with each poll being one aspect of the creation process.
This would be a good way to gauge interest and help to justify the expenditure.

Also, would it be possible to have ships take one whatever flag colors you are using? or maybe some sort of camo/skin option on a slider?
 
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's a very good question and I definitely know what you mean. Certainly it couldn't be worded as "supernatural", which is why I only suggested an option "like" the CKII one. Luckily, your reply to Mouthwash suggests you already know pretty much the sort of thing that would be covered.

Here are some ideas: most of the Guardians and maybe the tiyanki and some other spaceborne aliens; the Unbidden; the tree of life; and of course psi and the Shroud. If you can think of more, great; there may be other isolated events that would qualify, but obviously I don't know all of them off the top of my head.

Just to be clear, I totally understand your general principle that you dislike including excessive amounts of options because the game should be played how you designed it. I think most people will have a better experience as a result of your approach, and I have no problem with you not including this option - it's just a suggestion that I would personally enjoy playing. :)
 
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