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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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Maybe. But I am more inclined to think that it is the female Dwarf portrait.

I HOPE it is the female dwarf portrait. No need for Space Hobbits.
Although I must admit it is quite fitting for a corrupt rat faced space mega church that is will accept donations and stab you in the back.

Please no space Hobbits and no space “insert lord of the rings”. Although you can start a game with WoW races; space Tauren already exist
 
Looks cool and I appreciate the great work that your design and music team always do. Bar none STELLARIS has my favorite music of any PDX game, and the game looks beautiful.

Having said that, I'm staying on the sidelines of STELLARIS until combat and diplomacy are finally made as interesting as other PDX titles. There's a long way to go on that front, and it's boggling to me that the company responsible for EU4's outstanding diplomacy and peace conference mechanics can put their name on STELLARIS. I love the early game's excellent exploration and build-up phase, but the first major war and its aftermath always expose how sub-par other key elements of the game still are.
 
I'm not racist or anything but that newest humanoid Wiz posted looks like a complete asshole and if any of them end up in one of my empires they might find themselves subjected to some pretty harsh travel restrictions.
 
This is not the thread for an argument about whether psionic powers actually exist. Take it elsewhere.

Reposting this warning from Wiz from a page earlier. The above goes for any other off-topic discussion too of course.
 
Looks wonderful!
Will defiantly be picking this up when it launches.
 
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.
If you ever need a filler dev diary, I would love one about all these kind game stats in more detail. Also, what is the least popular portrait?