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I agree with the idea that the 1st major expansion will be a BIO ascension rework, but seeing as evolution is on a much larger time scale than synthetic advancement, I would love to see some kind of FE enhancements thrown in. The 'War in heaven' is a direct take on Babylon 5, however the parties involved are not entirely analogous to the vorlon/shadows who both had millions of years of biological advancement over the other races.
I would love to see some kind of mechanic where you could steal genetic traits/ or techs from these empires (and incur their wrath)
There are quite a few things you could do with biological evolution and techs, I am very excited to see what the Dev's include
I would love to see some kind of mechanic where you could steal genetic traits/ or techs from these empires (and incur their wrath)
There are quite a few things you could do with biological evolution and techs, I am very excited to see what the Dev's include
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That's the question though - can it be improved by expanding it?
There's a maximum amount of "stuff" at once any given person can or wants to deal with. It would undoubtedly be "more developed" if we had relevant information down to the name of the metallurgist working at the 56th station of the 32nd alloy district on the fourth forge world of the planet Overloadia. But would you want to play that? I can't answer for you, but I don't and I don't think many others do either.
Taking this over to ground forces then, what is the level of detail that people actually want to deal with, given the amount of detail they have to deal with in other areas already? And, mechanically, how can it be added without making other parts of the game worse?
Answering the second question first, because it kinda of answers the entire "why not expand ground combat" idea - it can't. Ground battles are too short, you'd need to significantly drag them out to add any real detail. You could make an army designer like we have a ship designer, but does having two cloned mechanics add to the game? That just means you have to essentially do it twice. Not much of a benefit.
As for the level that would be, more or less, information overload - it appears from the number of people who complain about ground combat existing at all that we may actually have passed that point already.
If you have an idea that circumvents those problems, feel free to tag me in the suggestion thread for it. I'd like it either improved or removed, currently removed because I've yet to see a good idea to improve it.
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Actually, a Fallen Empire story pack in a similar vein to what First Contact was for Primitives would be very interesting.
Perhaps it would involve giving the Fallen Empires unique shipsets to differentiate them, and maybe even specific portraits and identities so that every time you meet a Xenophobic FE it's always the same one, similarly to how when you meet a species of Fanatic Purifiers stuck behind a planetary shield it's always the Prikkiki-Ti.
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I suspect we'll have a Hive Mind-centric expansion somewhere along the way to bring them up to the level Machine Intelligences are currently at.
To make some random guesses as to what that would entail, I'd say 2 new game-defining civics: Dominating Mind and Deity. Dominating Mind is the Driven Assimilator equivalent that can assimilate non-hive minded pops from day 1 and use the Subsume Cassius Belle. Deity has your Hive Mind worshiped as a god by a non-Gestalt species on your home-world and you have buildings and mechanics to support having non-Gestalt subjects, and have the options needed to decide if you are a benevolent god or a cruel one.
2 new origins, Organic Singularity and Awakened Hive. Organic Singularity gives you the ability to play as the end result of the pre-FTL situation of the same name (presuming it occurs in an Early Space Age civilization of course), having you deal with the issues of being a Hive Mind in a civilization that didn't evolve as one, and the remnants of the old civilization that made it off world before being absorbed into the Hive. Awakened Hive has you play as a Hive Mind that has been slumbering since before the Fallen Empires became fallen, and thus gives you unique interactions for good and ill, and a storyline where you investigate places that you remember might have lost technology.
2 new Ascension Paths (new for Hive Minds anyways), Psionic Hive and Enlightened Hive. Psionic Hive is basically the existing Psionic path that's adapted for Hive Minds, biggest difference is that you have an entirely new set of Patrons, other than the End of the Cycle, where the bonuses and penalties are specialized for Hive Minds. Enlightened Hive is about supercharging your government-level abilities instead of improving your pops, it also gives you a one-time power to add or remove civics that are usually unchangeable. So a Hive Mind, upon discovering non-Gestalt sapient life, might decide to set itself up as a god by adopting the Deity Civic...or decide that those xenos look really tasty and become a Devouring Swarm.
(in the specific case of adopting a genocidal civic the AI will take both difficulty and diplomatic relations into account. Basically a Hive Mind with good relations with it's neighbors will never chose to become a Devouring Swarm, and on lower difficulties they will weigh good, or just not terrible, relations with the player very heavily.)
To make some random guesses as to what that would entail, I'd say 2 new game-defining civics: Dominating Mind and Deity. Dominating Mind is the Driven Assimilator equivalent that can assimilate non-hive minded pops from day 1 and use the Subsume Cassius Belle. Deity has your Hive Mind worshiped as a god by a non-Gestalt species on your home-world and you have buildings and mechanics to support having non-Gestalt subjects, and have the options needed to decide if you are a benevolent god or a cruel one.
2 new origins, Organic Singularity and Awakened Hive. Organic Singularity gives you the ability to play as the end result of the pre-FTL situation of the same name (presuming it occurs in an Early Space Age civilization of course), having you deal with the issues of being a Hive Mind in a civilization that didn't evolve as one, and the remnants of the old civilization that made it off world before being absorbed into the Hive. Awakened Hive has you play as a Hive Mind that has been slumbering since before the Fallen Empires became fallen, and thus gives you unique interactions for good and ill, and a storyline where you investigate places that you remember might have lost technology.
2 new Ascension Paths (new for Hive Minds anyways), Psionic Hive and Enlightened Hive. Psionic Hive is basically the existing Psionic path that's adapted for Hive Minds, biggest difference is that you have an entirely new set of Patrons, other than the End of the Cycle, where the bonuses and penalties are specialized for Hive Minds. Enlightened Hive is about supercharging your government-level abilities instead of improving your pops, it also gives you a one-time power to add or remove civics that are usually unchangeable. So a Hive Mind, upon discovering non-Gestalt sapient life, might decide to set itself up as a god by adopting the Deity Civic...or decide that those xenos look really tasty and become a Devouring Swarm.
(in the specific case of adopting a genocidal civic the AI will take both difficulty and diplomatic relations into account. Basically a Hive Mind with good relations with it's neighbors will never chose to become a Devouring Swarm, and on lower difficulties they will weigh good, or just not terrible, relations with the player very heavily.)
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Another one that could be really cool (and should be able to fit quite well, mechanically with the new planetary rework) would be 'Planetmind' where your don't inhabit a planet as much as you are a (collection of) planet ... prerequsite being that you need to have Lithoids as a species (but lore-wise is more alike blood cells, transporting around resources and defending the planetary 'lithology'), and you have a quite low ammount of pop (and even further decreased pop-growth), but your planets get various scaling flat bonuses to workforce, and reduced Job Upkeep
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We essentially got 3 newish ascensions in machine age, I believe we will get 2 new ones for Hiveminds one representing psionic potential of a hivemind breaking into the shroud and becoming a being of great power possible rivaling the ones other individual psionics make pacts with. The ultimate organism ascension bringing the hive mind to be closer to the ultimate superorganisms like Prethoryn Scourge, flood, zerg, necromorphs, formics etc. Basically a hivemind centric BIO evolution, like modularity is to robots, what synthetic is to organics.
Finally a new BIO ascension for all organics hivemind and individuals. Clone ascension. Think of it like clone army, but going down the ascended version. In fact I could see Clone army being the fast track to going down this ascension.
I also see a new origin that is the fast track to normal BIO ascension. Hopefully a origin for living worlds+a version for individual robots, for that authentic cybertron roleplay. Also one origin that deals with polymorphic species( like ants,termites, bees and butterflys etc, that is the fast track for living ships, as the ships are versions of your own species.
2 different BIO shipsets.
New BIO player crisis, maybe dealing with a spread of a created plague, that changes others into your species kinda necrophage but through spreading a virus or bacteria.
I also see us getting a species pack this year and one story pack hopefully a one focused on fallen empires and internal politics.
Finally a new BIO ascension for all organics hivemind and individuals. Clone ascension. Think of it like clone army, but going down the ascended version. In fact I could see Clone army being the fast track to going down this ascension.
I also see a new origin that is the fast track to normal BIO ascension. Hopefully a origin for living worlds+a version for individual robots, for that authentic cybertron roleplay. Also one origin that deals with polymorphic species( like ants,termites, bees and butterflys etc, that is the fast track for living ships, as the ships are versions of your own species.
2 different BIO shipsets.
New BIO player crisis, maybe dealing with a spread of a created plague, that changes others into your species kinda necrophage but through spreading a virus or bacteria.
I also see us getting a species pack this year and one story pack hopefully a one focused on fallen empires and internal politics.
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Interesting that this is marked as "DLC 38" and Grand Archive was "DLC 34".
I really like the idea of an infernal species pack btw.
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Given the name of the possible species pack, I wonder if, in addition to some new species types (maybe both extremophile organic and molten Lithoid), we could see Volcanic Worlds as a new rare world type and Molten World terraforming.
In the distant past, Earth went through several periods of heightened volcanic activity lasting millions of years. These were not fun times for life, and are usually associated with mass extinction events. But life still existed so if we were to find a planet in Stellaris undergoing such a period of volcanism, it wouldn't technically be uninhabitable.
Admittedly It would be less habitable than tomb worlds for most species and only Infernal Species could truly thrive there. Which would give them some interesting gameplay options since they could easily make their worlds virtually uninhabitable to anyone else.
In the distant past, Earth went through several periods of heightened volcanic activity lasting millions of years. These were not fun times for life, and are usually associated with mass extinction events. But life still existed so if we were to find a planet in Stellaris undergoing such a period of volcanism, it wouldn't technically be uninhabitable.
Admittedly It would be less habitable than tomb worlds for most species and only Infernal Species could truly thrive there. Which would give them some interesting gameplay options since they could easily make their worlds virtually uninhabitable to anyone else.
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There's almost no interpretation of "infernal species pack" that wouldn't be really neat, assuming it's both real and actually makes it to live if so.
look closely at the number system, 38 doesn't mean 4 dlcs from now necessarily. It probably 3ish.
I think infernal species pack is really cool, I hope we get a energy being ascension.
If infernal is not a placeholder name, I would theorize it has to do with nomads.
We dont need volcanic species if we have lithoids.
And energy based beings is not only something the devs want to avoid but we already have versions of that. That is the shroud entities whose interactions with the galaxy are all weird, the lithoids again since some of them look like crystals possesed by enegy forces and virtuality where everyone is pure energy and data without being in the shroud.
I think nomads because hell is "a bad place" and the stellaris galaxy is not necesaryly that. Im thinking beings who enter the galaxy fromanother "terrible" place either for safety or to bring ruin with them.
This gets me thinking about them maybe expanding the hell portal mechanica, giving us new warped or evil species, new civics to detail why they became nomads and allowing nomad mechanics for all. And a new origin or two to materialize the actual hellscape in stellaris
We dont need volcanic species if we have lithoids.
And energy based beings is not only something the devs want to avoid but we already have versions of that. That is the shroud entities whose interactions with the galaxy are all weird, the lithoids again since some of them look like crystals possesed by enegy forces and virtuality where everyone is pure energy and data without being in the shroud.
I think nomads because hell is "a bad place" and the stellaris galaxy is not necesaryly that. Im thinking beings who enter the galaxy fromanother "terrible" place either for safety or to bring ruin with them.
This gets me thinking about them maybe expanding the hell portal mechanica, giving us new warped or evil species, new civics to detail why they became nomads and allowing nomad mechanics for all. And a new origin or two to materialize the actual hellscape in stellaris
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With a probable DLC announcement in a few days, the more I think about it the more I'm leaving towards it being the Infernal Species pack.
It would explain why it alone was found in the files, and there's good reason to to think that the first DLC of season 9 will be light on new mechanics. It would be silly to spend so much time getting and responding to feedback on 4.0 if there was a strong risk of the new mechanics screwing up the game's balance if you get the new DLC. So a species pack is pretty much guaranteed.
As for the content, I think fire-assosiated species is inevitable since a lot of people are going to think that when they see the word "infernal". Hellish themes are possible, probable even, but wether this is merely an ascestic choice or something more story driven isn't something I can make a confident prediction.
It would explain why it alone was found in the files, and there's good reason to to think that the first DLC of season 9 will be light on new mechanics. It would be silly to spend so much time getting and responding to feedback on 4.0 if there was a strong risk of the new mechanics screwing up the game's balance if you get the new DLC. So a species pack is pretty much guaranteed.
As for the content, I think fire-assosiated species is inevitable since a lot of people are going to think that when they see the word "infernal". Hellish themes are possible, probable even, but wether this is merely an ascestic choice or something more story driven isn't something I can make a confident prediction.
You're right, technically, but keep in mind this was a datamined pack name and not one they announced.
It could be a different theme than you're thinking because internal and external names aren't necessarily the same. It could also not exist at all, it could be an entirely different species pack or not a species pack at all.
If they'd announced it, I would agree - fire is virtually guaranteed. But since they didn't, I wouldn't get too invested in that being a thing soon just yet.
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I'm just really hoping the Bio ascension DLC includes a Biological ship/building start for a proper Zerg/Tyranid type empire
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That seems roughly equivalent to the Cybernetic Creed and Synthetic Fertility origins (in quickstarting you into it, although CC also changes it). I would be very surprised if that wasn't an option for Hiveminds, at least.
I do agree in principle. I'm just thinking in terms of "okay, because 4.0 is so mechanically dense the accompanying DLC probably won't be mechanically dense. A species pack makes sense as it's mechanics will be relatively isolated to the new species type(s). Since there is evidence of a species pack in the files maybe it's that one, and "Infernals" being reference to fire makes sense because we don't have fire-oriented species yet."
Nothing is guaranteed, but I like speculating on future releases in games and that always requires some conjecture, guesswork, and leaps of faith.
I absolutely agree that it's the most likely pairing (mainly because I think they'll want the system to settle for a patch before ALSO overhauling either remaining ascension).
I just want to make sure nobody gets too attached to "fire-based species pack" before it actually gets released. It's what I expect, and it sounds good (especially because it'll probably have interesting mechanical changes), but it's not guaranteed.
But isn't paradox pretty into launching the years "big" DLC first in the grouping and accompanying the big changes in the game. Iirc same happened with 2.0 upgrade and the rest I can remember, though it has been a while and I have the memory of a goldfish.