Stellaris Dev Diary #308 - Rock On! (Also an Announcement Regarding Species Pack Pricing)

[Abdulijubjub]

so... this hivemind build will have access to a big sum of energy , those special resources can get a good price on the market earlygame , it can be a nice boost to your early game economy .

too bad there are not realy much other uses of special resources outside giving you access to special resources related tech and selling them onthe market.

i don't remember , the edicts that use special resources come from having access to them , or the tech to have access to them ?

A e.g. 2 motes deposit for this hive mind will give .25*2*10*.7-1=2.5 energy, on the market, every month.

It goes up quite a bit with mining station modifiers (going up to 12.3 energy with +70% mining station output from all techs and Prosperity), but in the early game they'll be extremely limited if you want to sell them.

And after they research the relevant tech, they're on the same footing as everyone else.

 

[luanmameili]

We’ve been having a lot of questionnaires and feedback sessions with players, and one of the things that is often requested is some more relatable characters in the various phenotypes. While we’ll of course continue creating horrific alien monstrosities, the art team took this opportunity to add a few new portraits to Lithoids, Plantoids, and Humanoids.

To be honest, I will be glad if there could be more cute portraits for other phenotypes like these:

Currently, reptilian, arthropoid, fungoid and molluscoid have such portraits. Molluscoid even has two.

 

[Idle America]

My two usual requests:

1. Base template for Fallen Empires' slaves, so we can remove the nerve-stapling without the Genetic Ascension perk
2. Nuclear War should be an event chain, instead of the RNG just going "Oop, everyone's dead now" without warning. At least some warning of rising tensions. Really, almost anything would be better.

And with that new Theia origin, I would like to resurrect a third request:

3. The ability to select PDX-created empires to spawn. I want a game where the only spacefaring nations are Earth, the Commonwealth of Man, and the Lithoids of Theia, with the unique interactions that come with that. If I simply copy them and force-spawn the copies, the Commonwealth refers to the people of Earth as hideous aliens.

 

[M@ni@c]

I like the concept of Selective Kinship. You should increase the civic effects though. Now you can get at most the same happiness boost you can get from Idealistic Foundation, while that civic has less conditions to gain its effects.

 

[Commander Tobe]

Don't really dig the new Lithoid portraits and default empire. The rest looks neat.

 

[Commander Tobe]

3. The ability to select PDX-created empires to spawn. I want a game where the only spacefaring nations are Earth, the Commonwealth of Man, and the Lithoids of Theia, with the unique interactions that come with that. If I simply copy them and force-spawn the copies, the Commonwealth refers to the people of Earth as hideous aliens.

That sounds like there should be a scenario option similar to campaign missions of Age of Empire: Pre-defined empires but randomized maps and starting locations. Maybe pre-defined event chains and some sort of missions which could start when certain things happen like first contact. That really would be great to have as a play-setting

 

[FleetingRain]

"Kilostructures"

Please just call them Structures

 

[Miguelinileugim]

I sure hope the humanoids rework has something about the fact that UNE and CM have the "humanoid" buildings assigned by default instead of the Earth-like "mammalian" buildings which would make way more sense to use by default. I find myself having to edit the savefile to give the CM the appropriate building type after they've spawned so they don't look strangely alien for no reason. Also playing UNE/CM default is no longer convenient for me without changing the building type but that's a minor inconvenience by comparison.

 

[Red Earth]

I'd like to request something that I was previously against. A loosening of trait and Civic restrictions but only for custom Empires.
One time I saw someone request being able to have budding on non-plantoids and I thought that's crazy because you can't cut up a mammal and get another mammal that's not how they work. However I did want something similar but in my opinion less ridiculous. I wanted an anthropod to have the Idyllic Bloom civic. I wanted to have insects that essentially pollinate planets like they would flowers. But that's restricted to plantoids. However I would agree that having randomly generated Empires have these things would would probably be immersion breaking to most players. Like the affirmation cut up a mammal get two mammals scenario. So I'd like to suggest having this ability but only if you custom create an empire, not ones created by the game on the fly.

 

[Foxosaur]

If it's not too late, I think having a blue (and even a purple) lava-type portrait would be great. My original "Theias Lost Children" always had a planet preference of arctic worlds. Anyway thanks again for a great dev diary.

 

[Spaceception]

"Megastructure" bonuses currently do apply to all of the "Kilostructures" like Hyper Relays, Gateways, Orbital Rings, Habitats, and Orbitals.

With 5 Kilostructures in the game soon, it might be worth it as a QOL feature to separate the construction ship icons into your main Megastructures and these so they're not cluttering each other.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Is there a reasonable situation in which you would actually not want a free mining station?

More importantly, why do you want to delete mining stations?!

You need to delete mining stations in order to build habitats and megastructures in their place.

It’d be the world’s most minor inconvenience, but one scenario is that you delete the mining station and there’s already a replacement by the time the construction ship gets there to build your habitat.

Kind of like this:

 

[Wendigo514]

You need to delete mining stations in order to build habitats and megastructures in their place.

It’d be the world’s most minor inconvenience, but one scenario is that you delete the mining station and there’s already a replacement by the time the construction ship gets there to build your habitat.

Kind of like this:

I'm quite sure this is no longer the case since some major patches. You should be able to order the construction of megastructure even with mining/research stations already in place and they get deleted at the completion.

 

[Dsingis]

The price increase is totally fair and understandable. I think the amount of content and the change in scope totally justify this, and the increase isn't ridiculous, so it's totally fine with me.


Also.. is that last picture a hint towards a bird species pack? :3

 

[Rafss]

Wait, that room background is only available to primitives, did you cheat it?

Or is it finally being made available on custom empire creation due to popular demand?
Will we finally at long last gain vanilla access to the Greenpunk room and cityscape?

 

[DeanTheDull]

The other new civic added to the Lithoid Species Pack is Selective Kinship.

This civic is not for the xenophiles so please, avert your ocular organs.

View attachment 1011127
Meat. They’re made out of meat!​

This civic also comes with the lithoid species pack and lets you create an empire consisting only of your primary phenotype such as Lithoids, Aquatic, Mammalian, etc. Though don’t think it will be smooth sailing because you won’t like anyone not conforming to your standards and they will really not like your bigoted thinking. However if you really want to have some friends the Hegemon and Common Ground origin will ensure that your member nations are your phenotype if you choose to start with this civic.

Well, some thoughts.


First, the ask for Role Play means: Can this Civic substitute for Xenophilia for the Xeno-Compatibility ascension perk?

And more wisetfully: in the future could there be flavor events for if the children are the 'citizen' phenotype or not?

As a Role Play civic, this has some delicious potential for hybrid species. Are the children citizens? Held as disgraced half-breeds? You could have some nice flavor text events and a modifier, or even build a situation behind how the empire deals with it, such as justifying ethic shifts depending on whether you embrace or oppose such unions. (Celebration / good things for the cross-citizen pops, or egalitarianism or xenophobic pressures for the non-citizen progeny).




For the strategizing-

This looks like a mostly xenophobe- role-play civic whose primary strategic benefit is in enabling faction unity and negative-amenity economies. The diplomatic effect could be potent. Collectively, this could support xenophobe-egalitarian builds by mitigating the usual issues.

The most significant mechanic here is the citizenship / residency front. This is what makes this a Xenophobe-themed ethic. As a rule, citizenship trumps residency due to having the same CG cost but citizens having more happiness and more faction unity. The only real advantage of residency is the amenity requirement reduction, but it's generally hard to build to exploit that. In current Stellaris, only Xenophobes are forced to use the residency status, so expanding the span of citizens is mitigating what is normally a weakness.

This is also more broadly a benefit for Egalitarian-Xenophobes. Egalitarian-Xenophobes have some jank in that there are some happiness benefits that only apply to citizens, including excess amenities, the Xenophobe culture-worker bonus, and the Egalitarian civic Idealistic Foundation, which is +10% happiness to citizens. Happiness bonuses are relevant not simply for stability, but for the sake of negative-amenity economies, where you let happiness buffs substitute for amenities, and just employ more pops beyond the point you'd normally choose to employ an entertainer. Now X-E empires can have a stronger early worker economy without hitting the point where happiness drives ethic divergence, which is very, very powerful for the same reason that unemploying an enforcer early on is powerful- every pop matters.

Further, the Egalitarian bonus to faction unity was heavily countered by Residency, as faction-unity scales with political power, and Residents have a -50% penalty. These bonuses were generally wasted on multi-species xenophobes, and while Incubators as a trait made mono-species empires far more viable due to combating habitaiblity-growth issues, it didn't address implications of conquest. That doesn't make this civic great- the implications for residency don't outweigh other civics instead- but it is a thing.

It's also apparently a Xenophobe-slaver civic. With citizen species getting +7.5% happiness normally, but also +2.5% if another phenotype is subjugated, this only reaches the max happiness if you have a token slave per planet. Xenophobes have typically struggled in the stability department, but with the Council position increasing citizen political power, this will be most relevant when citizens have high political power (social welfare/utopian abundance), which will have the net effect of stabilizing slave worlds better.



The real value is more early-game, though.

The origins this is more relevant to are Syncretic Evolution and Necrophage, the only empires with 2-species starts. Typically the Xenophobe-Egalitarian divide interfered with a Parliamentary opening with these civics, as your growth species was likely to be the resident, who wouldn't be able to provide as much unity or execute negative-amenity strategies as much. These all matter more early.

Further, the diplomacy value is RNG-dependent but potentially impactful. In the early game, positive opinion is more valuable than avoiding negative opinion. In the expansion phase AI generally won't attack if they can still expand, and you can always avoid rivalries by unarming your fleet. It's positive opinion which gets someone- anyone- to do things like secure independence- a free defensive pact- or agree to diplomatic agreements- including federations- or join a war as a co-belligerant, or just to allow good bilateral trades. If you're going to do any of these, it often doesn't matter 'who' you align with as long as SOMEONE is willing to, and +100 is 2/3rds of a maxed envoy will get your fewer candidates far closer to doing it.

The maximum utility of the diplo buff will be to facilitate bilateral trade deals for things like CG trading. These deals tend to be more profitable at higher levels, and having a few +100 partners early is a major jump in capability for early trading. You'll need to explore quickly for the contacts to do this, but if you can make the contacts, you have a massive leg up.

The value of this will be very unreliable- it may be nothing but a negative, or the positives may be too far away- but the flip side is that empires it does play well with will be very easy early partners.

You'll just have to be good at managing the early contacts and rivally management to play the diplo game well.

 

[Siren Soule]

I'm a fan of ascension path perks being moved to perk 3. I know the new agenda stuff is a big change too, but I always felt the power on offer was far too much for a second perk. Now they're in direct competition with other really powerful perks, like Arcology Project, and I think that can only be a good thing for balance and diversity.

 

[Primarch Victus]

This shocks me! I always thought that Stellaris tended a bit too much towards the Rubber Forehead aliens rather than the really weird stuff (although Aquatics and Toxoids are much better about this, especially Aquatics). I was hoping that future portraits would be more weird, not less.

Yeah, I would love to see portraits in the style of the Alien Suns mod.

I, frankly speaking, consider human-lithoids so-so in execution. Would prefer less 1:1 human features, some warping, some dorf inspiration perhaps. After all, they have 0 in common with earth-life.

What I find interesting is Necroid AP. Does that mean Zombification Ascension is on the slab? It better be!

Yeah... humanoid lithoids sounds like something coming from a sci-fi trash film. I think I would prefer more insectoid/arthropoid Lithoids (like the Tholians in the Star Trek franchise) over these "Theians".

 

[DeanTheDull]

I like the concept of Selective Kinship. You should increase the civic effects though. Now you can get at most the same happiness boost you can get from Idealistic Foundation, while that civic has less conditions to gain its effects.

The conditional to consider is Xenophobe, which seems to be the implicit- though not required- ethic for this civic to be an upgrade. In which context they are complimentary, with Idealistic Foundation expanding the span of pops that can benefit from Idealistic Foundation.


If you want to increase overall happiness, you wouldn't want residency with its -10% in the first place. If you want to maximize citizen happiness, you'll take both, so that with these and a good living standard you have a good 27-40 happiness to employ pops with in the negative amenities.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

I'm quite sure this is no longer the case since some major patches. You should be able to order the construction of megastructure even with mining/research stations already in place and they get deleted at the completion.

Huh, TIL.

I definitely haven’t been manually deleting stations this whole time. Nope, not me, not at all.