Stellaris Dev Diary #95: Humanoids Species Pack

[BrotherArdis]

The shipset looks good. We still need this one though.

 

[Bottas Heimfe]

ooooh the UNE advisor... a British AI. fucking amazing.... i had a little nerdgasm when i heard the .wav audio sample

 

[Jostarus]

The shipset looks good. We still need this one though.

This actually looks like a humanoid corvette

 

[LeSingeAffame]

The shipset looks good. We still need this one though.

I still don't understand how they are able to open a wormhole in the middle of a system

 

[bloodyglasspuppet]

I don't know... does anyone else have a huge problem with the thought of having silly fantasy creatures (dwarfs, halflings, orcs) in the game? The "space elves" were too much for me already...

 

[DominusNovus]

I’m glad that they listened to the criticism about the crazy original militant voice. The new one is much better, but she doesn’t sound militant enough in any of the two samples. Which is not a problem in and of itself; I’d probably use her for a non-militant empire. She just sounds more by-the-book than disciplined. She’ll work just as well for a bureaucratic empire.

There’s something missing, some menace, without sounding crazy like her klingon opera counterpart.

 

[Saviour of Galaxy]

I don't know... does anyone else have a huge problem with the thought of having silly fantasy creatures (dwarfs, halflings, orcs) in the game? The "space elves" were too much for me already...

Pretend that halflings are in fact Neanderthals to your alternate-Earth scenario and its ok. Orcs are tolerable too. I have a bigger problems with Elves and Dwarves. Not that I care much, but I will likely feel strange with elves and dwarves spawning in one game.

 

[Sapa Inca]

I don't know... does anyone else have a huge problem with the thought of having silly fantasy creatures (dwarfs, halflings, orcs) in the game? The "space elves" were too much for me already...

At least the elves can be justified assuming that they are a reference to vulcans of Star Trek.
Hobbits and dwarves, however, are horrible ideas.
You are playing humans, using for the first time a ftl drive, make your first contact with a alien civ and... they are bearded dwarves, really? This situation look more like a funny mod that with the official game.

 

[mysticdueler]

this is 2 days after i'm having eye surgery. WHY!?

Because the universe hates you.

 

[Seb_Jean]

At least the elves can be justified assuming that they are a reference to vulcans of Star Trek.
Hobbits and dwarves, however, are horrible ideas.
You are playing humans, using for the first time a ftl drive, make your first contact with a alien civ and... they are bearded dwarves, really? This situation look more like a funny mod that with the official game.

Since we don't know much about alien life in space, there's no way to know how sentient life will develop on other planets. Dwarves are as realistic as space birds or space cockroach. Most sci-fi references people here used have most of their alien lifeforms looking humanoids.

 

[Rafss]

Star Trek fandom went full disagree on me when I criticized the first portrait for being bland and uninspired, now they're here accusing the art team of being bland and uninspired because of the dwarves and orcs. But art has nothing to do with one's personal pet series, try judging with other criteria next time, and maybe the devs will listen to it.

In my vision, Stellaris artwork should be launching itself into lithoids and other fantastic yet feasible sci-fi lifeforms before expanding the humanoid portraits.

Yeah sure people play humanoids a lot, but maybe they just like to play with the basic humans. Is there data for Elf portrait usage? That would be useful for making the choice of expanding into fantasy.

I am not against fantasy myself, I just would prioritize unexplored life shapes way before, which I find richier in terms of inspiration and immersion.

 

[Sapa Inca]

Dwarves are as realistic as space birds or space cockroach.

No, they are not, the explanation to alien lifeforms having similarities to Earth life forms is evolutive convergence.
Evolutive convergence can easily create humanoid form, but create a alien exactly equal a small bearded human with a large nose is much more implausible that the majority of the other portraits.

There is no comparison between evolutive convergence creating aliens with analogue structures to feathers and beaks and evolutive convergence creating creatures exactly equal to medieval fantasy dwarves.
The second is much more implausible.

 

[-zezT-]

Goat people and emo space orcs. Can't wait!

 

[Tindalosihound]

indeed, there are plenty of Earth lifeforms that have more than 2 eyes, and not just the bugs either(though they certainly make up the majority of critters that do), Starfish for example have one eye at the end of each of their legs.

and then there's this thing(and other Cambrian era animals):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opabinia

A Burgess Shale portrait pack would be an excellent addition.

Although Molluscoid massive #10 does look a little like a Wiwaxia anyway.

 

[Sapa Inca]

sure people play humanoids a lot, but maybe they just lile to play with the basic humans. Is there data for Elf portrait usage? That would be useful for making the choice of expanding into fantasy.

Is perfectly possible that players prefer play humanoids and simultaneously prefer encounter non humanoid aliens to interact.

Another statistical vies is that all humanoids portraits are more polished that the other phenotypes portraits.
Humanoids portraits have sexual dismorphism, differrnt hairs, different skin tones, etc.
The other phenotypes have just differen skin tones.

 

[klingonadmiral]

This actually looks like a humanoid corvette

And the ship in the center is the mammalian troop transport.

 

[Tavior]

And despite that no creature on earth has redundancy eyes, eyes which more or less are just there in case you lose an original one. Now I'm not saying it's impossible that a creature may have more eyes I'm just saying 4+ eyes is a little over represented in the stellaris portraits. Especially avians for some reason.

Edit: I guess 4 eyes could serve the purpose of giving both 360 vision (like prey animals usually have) and depth vision (like predetorial animals usually have), but again I don't think there is any creature of earth with this combo, possibly because eyes are so fragile to begin with. Or possibly because two of everything is such a a basic thing in our genetic structure.

There was a fun alien concept, actually more than a few but one comes to mind, that exist in Peter Hamilton's Sage Commonwealth.

There was a civilization "called" Prime (yes just prime and are not really creative). To not confuse with the Prime numbers I am going to call them MLM for short; MorningLightMountain.

They had no head whatsoever. They do have chest and 4 legs and 4 arms. Both leg and arm are "flexible like an octopus arm". They have 4 "sensor stalks" and 4 neural link stalk. Four is something of an important number to them heh.

Now as for why 4 arms and 4 legs? They are position 90 degree from each other so they can fire in any direction and are extremely "hostile" to each other so they need any tiny combat edge over each other.

To give you sense of how much xenophobe they were. When the first Human scout show up on an abandoned asteroid outpost. All of the individual within MLM civilization were scrambling everything they had to meet this scout. They couldn't quite "agree" on what to do with the scout. kill? capture? establish communicate? How they resolved that conflict between the approach armada was to basically fire off at least 4800 nukes in a span of 3-5 minute between their armada and outposts.

The human of course didn't stick around to find out and promptly left.

They never really explain how they sense with their stalks but one guess would be a normal eye or something equivalent.

 

[correctamundo]

Looks very fashionable!

 

[Seb_Jean]

No, they are not, the explanation to alien lifeforms having similarities to Earth life forms is evolutive convergence.
Evolutive convergence can easily create humanoid form, but create a alien exactly equal a small bearded human with a large nose is much more implausible that the majority of the other portraits.

There is no comparison between evolutive convergence creating aliens with analogue structures to feathers and beaks and evolutive convergence creating creatures exactly equal to medieval fantasy dwarves.
The second is much more implausible.

My favorite humanoid portrait is the "space elf" because they really look like Vulcans or Romulans. Personnally, I don't see much problem with having a space dwarf. It will be different from my current game where half of the galaxy empire are plants et the rest are molluscoid.

 

[Mithrill]

Well, this new demon-like portrait would fit perfectly to my Burning Legion RP, but the Starbase system wouldn't... Shift.