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

Welcome back!

In this week’s dev diary, we’re going to explore some improvements the Custodian Team is making to the Lithoids Species Pack in the upcoming Stellaris 3.9 ‘Caelum’ Update, and then a few other new features.

Before that, I have an announcement to make regarding Species Pack Pricing.

Announcement Regarding Species Pack Pricing​

Stellaris Species Packs started as purely cosmetic add-ons, consisting of portraits, ship sets, city sets, and advisor voices. They’ve come a long way since them, now including a much greater variety of content. While the exact spread of features varies by pack, they now all include things such as origins, civics, traits, events, and new mechanics.

As Game Director, I’m especially pleased with how the Custodian Team has improved the quality of the older packs. They’ve added new playstyles and enabled many more sci-fi tropes to be explored during your games.

Species Pack Changes Since Release


With the changes coming in 3.9 ‘Caelum’, we believe that the older Species Packs will be on par with the newer ones, and we’re planning an increase in the base price of the Plantoids, Humanoids, Lithoids, and Necroids Species Packs from $7.99 to match the $9.99 base price of the more recent Aquatics and Toxoids Species Packs.

Per the promise made by Fredrik Wester several years ago, we are announcing this change ahead of time so anyone that wishes to purchase them at the current base prices will have an opportunity to do so. They will be available with the current base price for at least 30 days, and will be changing alongside the release of 3.9 ‘Caelum’.

Stellaris will be taking part in the Steam Strategy Fest. This will give you a chance to get the affected Species Packs at a discounted price before the price change goes into effect.

I’ll now detail the improvements made to the Lithoids Species Pack. Improvements to the other Species Packs will be a major focus of dev diaries over the next few weeks.

Tired of reading? Watch the video dev diary on YouTube!

Things That Rock​

My very first Stellaris Dev Diary was #157 - Things That Rock.

The Lithoids Species Pack was the first one that wasn’t exclusively an art pack. The Lithoid trait added interesting game mechanics to the phenotype, we had a few Lithoid specific traits, some event changes, and the Terravore variant of the Devouring Swarm.

The purely cosmetic Species Packs were updated in subsequent releases, but while it did get an Origin in Federations and more traits in 3.5 ‘Fornax’, Lithoids hadn’t gotten quite as much of an update from the Custodian Team as the packs. Of quartz I thought that we should dig up some improvements.

I’ll turn things over to Iggy now to talk about some of the changes.



Greetings all, Iggy here!

Since the release of Galactic Paragons, the Custodian Team has been working on improving the value and quality of older DLC’s. Today I will be talking about what we have done for the Lithoid Species Pack.

Buffing the Old​


As previously shown in DD#305 we returned to Calamitous Birth to give it some love. This includes removing the habitability loss from Lithoid Craters for Lithoid pops as well as increasing the effectiveness of lithoid exclusive traits such as Gaseous Byproducts on the Massive Crater world.

Calamitous Birth Tooltip
Massive Crater Tooltip
Lithoid Crater Tooltip

We also talked about how terravores have gotten a glow up. No longer will you need to sit and click a decision every 6 months as you consume your world! Now it’s all handled in a handy compact situation. The output should still be exactly the same as before thanks to clever script math so don’t worry about this being a nerf to acquired pops or resources.

Consume World Tooltip

Crunch crunch!

In With the New!​


Not satisfied with only buffing these two old pieces of content we also felt like the species pack could do with a bit of a polish to stack up to current species packs.

First up: Void Hive
Void Hive Civic Icon

I love this icon so much

As you can see it’s a Hive Civic with quite a unique effect and if the habitat changes discussed in DD#306 go through it would be a powerful addition to your Void Dweller Hiveminds.

Void Hive civic, now with more clarifications!

Iggy making potentially game breaking hive content? SHOCKER!

This civic plays around with the flavor of a Hive Mind that is capable of surviving out in space and the dangers of vacuum. While you still can build gathering stations it goes against your nature to instruct specific drones to do so and will cost you some Unity. They also excel at creating structures in space, whether they be habitats, dyson spheres, or hyper relays, so get out into the dark void already!

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.

Selective Kinship Civic Tooltip

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.

Shine Bright!​


Thanks, Iggy.

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.

Concept Art for new Lithoid Humanoids

For Lithoids, the Federated Theian Preserves will be a new prescripted empire that begins on the Desert World of Theia, in the Titawin system.

Billions of years ago, two planets formed from the primordial material in orbit of Sol - ancient Earth, and Theia.

Rudimentary life evolved on both worlds, biological in the case of Earth, and lithoid on Theia. For eons, these sister planets maintained a peaceful revolution around their star. Then came the cataclysm.

The planets collided, and in the moment of impact, microbial life was exchanged. Earth survived, and Luna was formed. What remained of Theia was jettisoned from the system.

On this rocky colony ship, life from ancient Theia traversed the void before it was caught in the gravity well of the star Titawin. Crashing into one of the system's worlds, a new species was introduced to the local biosphere. A few short millenia later, the Theian's took to the stars, seeking to understand the universe as well as their own heritage.


The Federated Theian Preservers

Work is still being done on the lava shader.

May they find their way home!

On to some other 3.9 changes…

Ascension Path Agendas​

Some players have commented that they often find themselves saving an Ascension Perk slot for an indeterminate amount of time, waiting for the required research for their desired Ascension Path to appear.

The Ascension Perks that unlock the four Ascension Paths have had their requirements changed so that they now be taken as your third AP at the earliest instead of as your second AP. We have removed the Technology requirements and moved those to progressing down the Tradition Tree associated with that Ascension Path.

Engineered Evolution Tooltip

Psionics Tradition Tooltip

Each Ascension Path now has an Agenda that grants 25% progress in technologies associated with that Ascension Path, which should ensure that you are no longer reliant on random chance to acquire these technologies. These Agendas have a reduced cost and cooldown compared to normal Agendas, though some have modifiers based on Empire Ethics compatibility with the Ascension Path.

Mind over Matter Agenda, granting Psionic Theory progress

The random number generator will not keep us out of the Shroud!

Engineered Evolution Agenda Tooltip, Granting Genome Mapping

These agendas advance to the next relevant technology if you finish some research while the agenda is ongoing.

rm -rf /nodes/regulatory​

One of the complaints we’ve had with Gestalt Councils is that Nodes cannot be replaced unlike the Councilors for regular empires. This means that you are no longer locked forever to traits that might be useful for your Nodes in the early-game but fall off in the mid- to late-game.

To solve this, we’ve added three new Society technologies to Machine Intelligences (and Hive Minds) which unlock a set of new Council Agendas that replace the existing Nodes, after a bit of reformatting (or vivisection).

Reformatting Technologies

TODO: Icons

Reformatting Agendas


The first technology will unlock the Agendas themselves, while the following technologies will unlock modifiers that improve both the Agendas and your Council.

The newly created Nodes will initially start at level 1, though this can be improved to a maximum starting level equal to the level of the reformatted/culled Node depending on Technologies, Traditions and Civics.

Next Week​

Next week we’ll be going over improvements to the Plantoids Species Pack and some more other changes coming in 3.9 ‘Caelum’. Humanoids and Necroids will be the following week.

A Heart Full of Birds

These are not plantoids. But you’ll get to meet them in the plantoids dev diary.
Updated Teaser Image

Edit: Updated Void Hive civic tooltip.
 
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That's correct of course, but honestly should'nt be "forced" upon the Player- if anyone wants to roleplay as i don't know an iron based lifeform (which would probably be the worst element to do so) nothing should stop them (as in events that directly state "You are C/Si based - deal with it"). These distinctions should remain in the realm of mods while the base game should let you head-canon as much as possible imo.
You are very correct there, it's just my own nitty-pitty that want's a SciFi game to hold on to some minimum of Sci. I'm actually surprised that Paradox hasn't put out a Fantasy based game with Orcs and Elves and sorcery and the like. I'm sure that would sell like beer on a summer night.
 
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That's correct of course, but honestly should'nt be "forced" upon the Player- if anyone wants to roleplay as i don't know an iron based lifeform (which would probably be the worst element to do so) nothing should stop them (as in events that directly state "You are C/Si based - deal with it"). These distinctions should remain in the realm of mods while the base game should let you head-canon as much as possible imo.
Exactly. Personaly, I don't like of this new Lithoid portrait and I find it boring -- I mean, I don't know, maybe if it was more similar to the inhabitants of planet Rock in the Shadow Raiders cartoon, I would agree with the idea: imagine playing the game as rock-made Lithoid Dwarfs. But this portrait the way it is? No, thanks! I should not be forced to having this ugly thing in my PC if I don't want it.
 
and the crystal sensor edict "quick switch" will help you further :)
oh great an exploit helps you winning the game more.
or at all in MP case.

but seriously: pleas fix the "edict for free one day" thing. (e.g. have a 1-3 month activation cost or something like this) - or a one month activation period (becomes active on monthly tick).
And/or a few month cooldown after deactivating.

All of those have gameplay implications beyond fixing the exploit (e.g. not seeing what effect something would have number wise before clicking)
currently you can click, check and then decide if you like it (which i find nice).
 
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Exactly. Personaly, I don't like of this new Lithoid portrait and I find it boring -- I mean, I don't know, maybe if it was more similar to the inhabitants of planet Rock in the Shadow Raiders cartoon, I would agree with the idea: imagine playing the game as rock-made Lithoid Dwarfs. But this portrait the way it is? No, thanks! I should not be forced to having this ugly thing in my PC if I don't want it.
Can't say that I like that portrait either, looks like the artist was on vacation and asked their "friend" to finish it up for them, all the same, portraits count less than 1% of my enjoyment of the game. I do like the description of the Theia background. *meh*
 
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I like the portait, not specifically because it leans heavily towards Humans in particular, but because it leans toward having a similar build as other portraits, which in turn leans nicely into various thematically connecting Necrophage fantasies
 
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because you can't cut up a mammal and get another mammal that's not how they work.
I could definitely imagine some Molluscoids with budding, though, especially since worms that can get cut in half and split into two worms already exist (Technically not molluscs obviously, but the closest phenotype we have).

Given that we're polishing old Origins, any chance that Syncretic Evolution could get a look-see, with Necrophage effectively having superseded them, doing it better?
Personally, I'd love the idea of a more customizability in the secondary species. Instead of always being Servile, it might be interesting to have a number of special Syncretic Evolution traits (e.g. "Cerebrals", a secondary species which specialize in specialist jobs but are frail and have bad habitability, "Elders" which are long lived and make for good rulers and leaders but are slow breeding, etc) to allow for a wider range of possible playstyles and roleplays.
 
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Also, I personally feel like while the Void Hive civic is very nice, considering how interesting the idea behind it is it's a bit disappointing that their only effects are related to building things. In my opinion, it might be nice to add on:
  1. A small buff to space infrastructure in general, so that the civic doesn't feel wasted if nothing is being built at that very moment. Something simple, like a -X% upkeep to space infrastructure, +X% mining/research station output, etc.
  2. Some level of synergy with Strike Craft? It's a common trope for the spacefaring hives in sci-fi to overwhelm opponents with legions of smaller targets, not to mention it makes sense (Drones that can survive in space means that strike craft need to spend less space on life support systems, and thus can use that space on better weapons/components/etc). Imo Hives could really use a strike craft themed civic to fulfill that aspect of the Hive Mind fantasy, and Void Hives would make perfect sense for it.
 
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oh great an exploit helps you winning the game more.
or at all in MP case.

but seriously: pleas fix the "edict for free one day" thing. (e.g. have a 1-3 month activation cost or something like this) - or a one month activation period (becomes active on monthly tick).
And/or a few month cooldown after deactivating.

All of those have gameplay implications beyond fixing the exploit (e.g. not seeing what effect something would have number wise before clicking)
currently you can click, check and then decide if you like it (which i find nice).
Huh... the last time I checked, Paradox still were the creators of this Stellaris and I think their knonwledge of gameplay balance still is far more advanced than yours. Besides, not everything in the game resumes to numbers. Many of us play Stellaris for the roleplay it provides.
 
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Looks like we'll be rocking a new look :cool:

Will there be anything moving forward with lava or volcanoes with Lithoids? I've done some modded things with the idea but given there's this new portrait, content around volcanoes or molten worlds would be awesome!
 
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but seriously: pleas fix the "edict for free one day" thing. (e.g. have a 1-3 month activation cost or something like this) - or a one month activation period (becomes active on monthly tick).

We are. In 3.9, Edicts will have an activation cost equal to their monthly upkeep.
 
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We are. In 3.9, Edicts will have an activation cost equal to their monthly upkeep.
The UI acts as though this is enforced for all edicts in 3.8, even though it only applies to the (now poorly named) "Unity Ambitions", prior to the overhaul you mention for 3.9. This situation seems to confuse players; it might be worth considering whether the UI could be updated to explain why an edit cannot be activated if the cost cannot be paid up front, if this is being overhauled in 3.9...
 
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Some level of synergy with Strike Craft? It's a common trope for the spacefaring hives in sci-fi to overwhelm opponents with legions of smaller targets, not to mention it makes sense (Drones that can survive in space means that strike craft need to spend less space on life support systems, and thus can use that space on better weapons/components/etc). Imo Hives could really use a strike craft themed civic to fulfill that aspect of the Hive Mind fantasy, and Void Hives would make perfect sense for it.
I really like this idea. Would really help play into the Swarm aspect of Hive Minds.
 
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Reading through 11 pages of replies is a lot when you are Stealth-reading forums at work, so I just ask:

How does Teachers of the Shroud work now? Has it changed, or is it the same as usual, you start with the option to research Psionic Theory, and after that you can start on the Psionic tradition tree?
 
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So, I have a question regarding an idea similar to "Shared Kinship," but specifically regarding robots. Would it be possible to implement some kind of civic which enables a Materialist Xenophobe empire to give their AI pops full citizenship rights, rather than relegating them to residence at best? After all, in a galaxy filled with alien horrors, surely our machine brethren, forged in our own superior image, deserve to stand beside us as equals? Who else can we truly trust if not our children? (Also, it's always been a bit strange to me that Synthetic Evolution xenophobes still subscribe to there being an inherent "inhumanity" to their creations, as though they're not literally the exact same thing using the exact same methods to create new members of their species as the synths who were never anything else).
 
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"So, I have a question regarding an idea similar to "Shared Kinship," but specifically regarding robots. Would it be possible to implement some kind of civic which enables a Materialist Xenophobe empire to give their AI pops full citizenship rights, rather than relegating them to residence at best? After all, in a galaxy filled with alien horrors, surely our machine brethren, forged in our own superior image, deserve to stand beside us as equals?"
0 or 1 I think would be their view, they're better with more absolute differences. Just making them the same as organics, but shiny makes them less interesting because then you're just playing the same thing.
 
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So, I have a question regarding an idea similar to "Shared Kinship," but specifically regarding robots. Would it be possible to implement some kind of civic which enables a Materialist Xenophobe empire to give their AI pops full citizenship rights, rather than relegating them to residence at best? After all, in a galaxy filled with alien horrors, surely our machine brethren, forged in our own superior image, deserve to stand beside us as equals? Who else can we truly trust if not our children? (Also, it's always been a bit strange to me that Synthetic Evolution xenophobes still subscribe to there being an inherent "inhumanity" to their creations, as though they're not literally the exact same thing using the exact same methods to create new members of their species as the synths who were never anything else).
Materialist Xenophobe will be pretty aware -- maybe more than the sophonts of other ethics -- that their creations could turn against them any second. So sorry, but your idea sounds as both uninteresting and ilogical. Remember: xenophobe means that you and your species have fear of EVERY SENCIENT BEING that don't belongs to your species. And that includes your own machines.
 
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Materialist Xenophobe will be pretty aware -- maybe more than the sophonts of other ethics -- that their creations could turn against them any second. So sorry, but your idea sounds as both uninteresting and ilogical. Remember: xenophobe means that you and your species have fear of EVERY SENCIENT BEING that don't belongs to your species. And that includes your own machines.
I don't see how accepting that machines forged by your own appendages and created using your own minds as guides are closer to you than other species is somehow less logical than deciding that completely alien species, with different histories and mindsets, deserve to be treated as equals because they JUST SO HAPPEN to look sort of like you do. I am not saying that materialist xenophobes should, by default, accept their creations as kin, but that a civic existing which permits you to accept machines wouldn't be beyond the pale. Racial discrimination is by its nature generally arbitrary and illogical, so deciding that you find your synths more agreeable than the disgusting xenos of foreign empires hardly seems like it should be out of the question. Call it "In Our Own Image" and you're balling.

Also, it would offer a way to make pleasing the materialists less obnoxious, since you'll want their approval and yet getting science agreements from three empires will be difficult with the low trust xenophobia brings. I don't think synth envy should force every M-X empire to keep a permanently dangerous and unruly second class of machines just because there's no other way to satisfy them. This is to say nothing of the fact that Materialists cannot purge their synths, and that this distinction will persist even if your own race ascends and becomes synthetic. (For this reason, I'd also support some ability to forcibly combine different "species" of robots into the main species, because dealing with two dozen different kinds of synths with the EXACT SAME traits is annoying as hell.)
 
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