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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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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...
they don't spawn much, so i don't really care.
 
12 dislikes and only 2 likes? Is this really what the community wants at this point? A little bit confusing, but well... there is the great update to look forward to (the one that recently caused an uproar).

I stopped caring about realism right around Leviathans. Orks and Squats are a little silly, but so are fox people. It's not that much of a tone-change. I'm just gonna lean into it I like the ship sets, I'll roll with the dwarves, and I think the orc guys actually look pretty cool.

I think my first game with the portrait pack will be some brutal punk-orc conquerors. Sounds fun
 
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...

you're not alone my friend. I had already bad time to play with all those immersion killer copy/pasted bipedal earth animals (either cutties or fox,anteater,pinguin,cat,slugh,toad,turtle etc...) now we have fantasy in space it's a bit to much for me. I would love to have a toggle on/off portrait option please!
 
I personally wouldn't actually use it, but I can see the abstract argument for a built-in portrait enabler/disabler for those who prefer the more alien-looking aliens and prefer to be the only hairless apes in space.

Or those who consider it vitally important that their galaxy is populated with space elves, adorable fox-cats, cuddly gecko-people, and caterpillars straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
 
I think the art for the new stuff is pretty good.
I'd never use it myself as I find humanoids to be pretty boring overall (they've been done to death in all these types of games). But as with all Paradox DLC, I'll end up buying it to support Paradox and hope that some other DLC will be more to my taste (like the Synthetic stuff).

Personally I have much more fun playing as non-humanoid races. The humanoid form is actually horribly inefficient, and I doubt it would be so common with actual alien life.
Humans have more long distance stamina than any other land mammal. The earliest form of hunting was to chase an animal until it collapsed from exhaustion.
 
Humans have more long distance stamina than any other land mammal. The earliest form of hunting was to chase an animal until it collapsed from exhaustion.

Coincidentally, this is still the most common method of hunting potential mates.
 
While I find the humanoid portraits to be among the most boring by in the game, they're still pretty well made and the new ships and voices are pretty sweet. I'll probably wait until a bigger sale than I usually do, but I'll probably buy this eventually.
 
I don't know how anyone else feels about this, but I think that the "Orc" portrait looks like an emo orc/space frog. Will there be an option to get rid of the hair in place of horns or other regalia? Maybe something like a skull helmet or such would be more fitting for an Orc-like species. Other than that, the Star Trek ships are looking particularly nice, and the demonic portrait is very well done, great job artists!
 
I love love love the new voices for the two default humans, and I love the new ships. I always play as humans but the default ships are just not my cup of tea. I'm sold for those alone.

New humanoid portraits are icing on the cake. Can't wait for 12/7.
 
While I understand that some of the new portraits might ruin immersion, I encountered space faring penguins day one. It'd be *nice* to have a toggle on/off for each individual portrait, but since you can already populate the galaxy with customs that fit your exact ideal in regards to immersion I don't see a mighty *need* for that option.
This new DLC will definitely be enough for me to start up a game before 2.0, as I try and make empires that fit portraits I like rather than making empires and picking a portrait for them (If that makes any sense).
 
Humans have more long distance stamina than any other land mammal. The earliest form of hunting was to chase an animal until it collapsed from exhaustion.

more on this. we have echolocation, and our sound detection is among the highest in fidelity (we can accurately determine the direction of a sound within half a degree).

we have among mammals the most color sensitive eyes defeating almost all camouflage in the animal kingdom. (brown is the same color as green to most animals, hence brown fur making sense).

this combined with above is why our instinct when we hear a sound is to look at it, while most animals will pivot their ears.

let's not even get into the advantages of bipedalism.
 
I personally wouldn't actually use it, but I can see the abstract argument for a built-in portrait enabler/disabler for those who prefer the more alien-looking aliens and prefer to be the only hairless apes in space.

Or those who consider it vitally important that their galaxy is populated with space elves, adorable fox-cats, cuddly gecko-people, and caterpillars straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
I can get behind a portrait enabler. It wouldn't really be that different from the spawn options for custom empires.

I hate Halflings with the burning passion of a thousand exploding stars. Worst fantasy race ever made.
 
I still refuse to buy DLC for a game that has not even reached a point worthy of being called a Beta.
Yeah, the announced changes for "V2.0" are implying, that the game was some sort of an Alpha ("V1.0") and is still some sort of a Beta ("V1.8.3") ...

This game-release-method ensures, that paradox doesn't waste money to develop the game into the "wrong" direction since they get feedback from the players from the start ...

The thing is, that I can't really agree on this as a customer since paradox gets the tendency to program and release poorly thought-out, buggy and (especially) bare-bone games from the start, but nevertheless, they're labeling these games as "completed/tested/finished/..." + they're (immediately) initiating their DLC-waves for these games.
 
Hello,

hope, we can get some difference room-designs too. I mean, i created some plant-empires/machine-empires and i cant really find plant-designed rooms or machine-designed rooms for them. Most rooms loooks like are human-made. Smooth walls, a glass-window etc., its boring.

Why no bio-matter rooms or raw metal/silicate (stone) walls. Or non closed wall rooms for machines.