'Normal' Origins

[Democratic Monarchy]

The Origins we have been getting lately have all been awesome, but also quite fantastical. I have a lot of wishes for the future, but one thing I think would be particularly beneficial would be more Origins that don't involve event chains or radical play styles like Arc Welders, Treasure Hunters or Wilderness, but are instead more similar to Prosperous Unification or Mechanists.

There was a mod called More Default Origins that scratched this itch, but I would prefer official content so that we don't have to wait on mods, and so that it could help fill out the galaxy with Origins that are unique yet not narrative-focused to help people determine their custom empire's lore.

Here are some ideas:

Virtual Assistants
This species managed to develop true artificial intelligence despite its lack of advancement in robotics. Their roles are to supplement the existing power structures of society and help in whatever way is required of them.
Your Empire starts with Administrative AI, Self-Evolving Logic and Positronic AI already researched. In addition, every Leader of your Empire gets the Virtual Assistant Trait, which gives boosts to everything from Ship Damage to Research Speed, but it comes at a cost: there must be at least one Virtual Nursery in your Empire. This special building is where the Virtual Assistants are raised and trained, and the more there are the better the effects the VA Trait gives, but if all Virtual Nurseries are destroyed, then all Leaders lose the VA Trait until a new one can be built. If that does happen, your Leaders have a greater-than-usual chance of getting negative traits such as Substance Abuser, Paranoid or Nervous, representing their mental breakdowns at the loss of the VAs whom they've come to value as family.

All These Worlds
This species found itself in a system full of life-bearing worlds. They were very different from the homeworld, but that did not stop this civilisation from settling them.
Empires with this Origin start in a system with 4 additional settled planets on the same level of development as their Homeworld, but the planets have climates that are different from the Founder Species' Climate Preference.

Jump Start
This civilisation somehow managed to develop jump drives, perfecting it in a way that allows for precise and safe travel. Unfortunately, this means that they have not yet learned about hyperspace.
Empires with this Origin start out with Jump Drives which do not count as dangerous technology, and they are more precise than regular Jump Drives. However, the same cooldown effects still apply, and the hyperspace network is not even visible, let alone usable, meaning that, while travel is faster, expansion will be slower.

If you all have Origin ideas in this manner, feel free to share!

 

[Harvey Gomez]

Not going to lie. I LOVE this idea! Thank you.

 

[Twogs]

World Spirit

Your homeworld is alive, in a spiritual sense. Allows more ascension (maybe even infinite) and has a bunch of unique designations.

Apart from that it would play normal, only thing special would be your homeworld and even then this special factor won't be really noticable in the early game I guess

 

[Matthias.]

Something like a "unification through imperial conquest" origin would be cool. Where one empire conquered all its rivals and unified the planet. It could start with more military capabilities (tech, leaders, buildings) , but some minor leftovers of the destruction from the war.

 

[RingworldUtopia]

The Origins we have been getting lately have all been awesome, but also quite fantastical. I have a lot of wishes for the future, but one thing I think would be particularly beneficial would be more Origins that don't involve event chains or radical play styles like Arc Welders, Treasure Hunters or Wilderness, but are instead more similar to Prosperous Unification or Mechanists.

There was a mod called More Default Origins that scratched this itch, but I would prefer official content so that we don't have to wait on mods, and so that it could help fill out the galaxy with Origins that are unique yet not narrative-focused to help people determine their custom empire's lore.

Here are some ideas:

Virtual Assistants
This species managed to develop true artificial intelligence despite its lack of advancement in robotics. Their roles are to supplement the existing power structures of society and help in whatever way is required of them.
Your Empire starts with Administrative AI, Self-Evolving Logic and Positronic AI already researched. In addition, every Leader of your Empire gets the Virtual Assistant Trait, which gives boosts to everything from Ship Damage to Research Speed, but it comes at a cost: there must be at least one Virtual Nursery in your Empire. This special building is where the Virtual Assistants are raised and trained, and the more there are the better the effects the VA Trait gives, but if all Virtual Nurseries are destroyed, then all Leaders lose the VA Trait until a new one can be built. If that does happen, your Leaders have a greater-than-usual chance of getting negative traits such as Substance Abuser, Paranoid or Nervous, representing their mental breakdowns at the loss of the VAs whom they've come to value as family.

All These Worlds
This species found itself in a system full of life-bearing worlds. They were very different from the homeworld, but that did not stop this civilisation from settling them.
Empires with this Origin start in a system with 4 additional settled planets on the same level of development as their Homeworld, but the planets have climates that are different from the Founder Species' Climate Preference.

Jump Start
This civilisation somehow managed to develop jump drives, perfecting it in a way that allows for precise and safe travel. Unfortunately, this means that they have not yet learned about hyperspace.
Empires with this Origin start out with Jump Drives which do not count as dangerous technology, and they are more precise than regular Jump Drives. However, the same cooldown effects still apply, and the hyperspace network is not even visible, let alone usable, meaning that, while travel is faster, expansion will be slower.

If you all have Origin ideas in this manner, feel free to share!

jump start is just eager explorers, no? it even has the restriction of being unable to use hyperlanes, just disable hyperlanes on your map and voila. maybe they can make the origin toggle the hyperlane view off by default lol.

 

[GreyOgre]

I like the "All these Worlds" idea, and the reference. But for balance, they probably shouldn't get the usual guaranteed habitable planets in the neighbourhood, and they should start with the same amount of pops as everyone else, just split among the planets.

 

[HFY]

Relentless Environmentalists -- "We ruined our planet, now we're going to preserve every other planet we find." -- Void Dweller variant where you start over a Tomb World with "natural" blockers, and gain a variant of Environmentalist but for blockers on the world below your Habitat instead of on your colony. Founders can't ever migrate to a natural planet and the empire pays heavily increased Sprawl for each natural planet colony they conquer; but pay zero cost for abandoning a natural world colony. The only form of Environmentalism which is compatible with Relentless Industrialists.

 

[Nabil ad Dajjal]

I think the current origins actually do a good job of covering a ton of bases in terms of SF tropes, but could stand to be more generic.

Right now a lot of them, especially many of the newer event chain driven ones, give you essentially no room to roleplay or explore a concept because they're so tightly locked in on one specific vision of that trope.

I would love to see the lore stripped off of e.g., Payback and Broken Shackles to make them play more like Lost Colony: someone came in and ruined your pre-FTL's day but maybe it's not the same one empire every time. You can still have MSI as a preset NPC empire which spawns in for the preset Payback and Broken Shackles empires the way UNE does for CoM.

We need more like Synthetic Fertility or Wilderness and fewer like Treasure Hunters or Knights of the Toxic God.

 

[MadCow94]

All These Worlds would be great if your guaranteed habitables were in your starting system. Or if not, give me one or two terraforming candidates in my system (looking at you here, Sol start)

 

[Red Death]

I think the current origins actually do a good job of covering a ton of bases in terms of SF tropes, but could stand to be more generic.

Right now a lot of them, especially many of the newer event chain driven ones, give you essentially no room to roleplay or explore a concept because they're so tightly locked in on one specific vision of that trope.

I would love to see the lore stripped off of e.g., Payback and Broken Shackles to make them play more like Lost Colony: someone came in and ruined your pre-FTL's day but maybe it's not the same one empire every time. You can still have MSI as a preset NPC empire which spawns in for the preset Payback and Broken Shackles empires the way UNE does for CoM.

We need more like Synthetic Fertility or Wilderness and fewer like Treasure Hunters or Knights of the Toxic God.

Absolutely, I was quite sad when Payback/Broken Shackles were announced because I don't particularly care about hyper-specific storylines (I play Stellaris for the stories that emerge from many different factors). And I knew it would essentially kill the chances of Paradox making "normal" origins for those tropes.

At the time many people heavily disagreed with me. I wonder how people feel about them now after having been available for so long.

 

[Nakkivene]

Authoritarian origin where only your elites are biopops and the rest is robotic workforce and exterminator bots, and every time a biopop would be placed in a lower stratum it gets exterminated.

 

[klingonadmiral]

Roommates (Base Game)

"From early on, this civilization has known that it was not alone in the cosmos, as its home system contains a second inhabited planet. With these two being in contact for centuries, their societies have slowly but surely melded together and now they stand side by side, ready to face the challenges of the galaxy."

Requirements: Is not Gestalt Consciousness, is not genocidal, is not machine

• Homeworld size: 15
• Home system starts with a second size 15 planet owned by the player empire, inhabited by an alien species that does NOT share the climate preference of the main species
• Secondary species will always have full citizen rights and not be considered Xenos for the xenophobe faction
• Starting pops are equally split between the two planets
• Guaranteed Habitables do not spawn
• if using Sol as the starting system, Mars will be the second inhabited planet

Introverted Hive (Utopia)

"This hive is unusually ill-adapted at the management of outlying colonies, and is instead focused on internal growth and keeping its territory save from foreign threats."

Requirements: Gestalt, not Devouring Swarm/Terravore

• homeworld starts as a size 20 hive world
• the Hive Worlds Ascension Perk does not require the Climate Restoration technology
• empire starts with the "Careful Guidance" modifier (+20% monthly unity, -20% empire size from pops, -20 Deviancy)
• can NOT form sectors other than the core sector
• can NOT move capital
• every owned planet that is part of the frontier sector grants the scaling "Overstretched Hive" empire modifier (-5% monthly unity, +5% empire size from pops, +5 deviancy per frontier sector planet)
• claim influence cost: +500%
• megastructure build speed: +10%

Mechanophobe (Synthetic Dawn)

"Scarred by a war with its mechanical servants gone rogue, this society is now deeply hostile to any sapient machine, viewing them as an inherent threat to organic life in the galaxy."

Requirements: Not gestalt consciousness, not Fanatic Purifier, not pacifist

• Starts with 400 less pops
• planet starts with "Warbot Debris" blockers, which grant engineering research upon removal
• spawns an additional advanced starts machine empire
• Starts with the Powered Exoskeletons technology, but can not research any further technology concerning Robotics
• can not Research Positronic AI and Sapient Combat Computers
• can not pick Synthetic or Cybernetic ascension paths
• if materialist: gains +20% survey speed, materialist faction will not demand robots
• AI is set to outlawed
• can not engage in positive diplomacy with Machine Empires
• Opinion with Machine Empires and Synthetic Ascended Empires: -500
• Opinion with Cybernetic Creed, Cyborg Ascension and Hard Reset Empires: -200
• Opinion with Empires with Robotic Pops: -100
• gains Unity for purging robotic pops
• gains the "Anti-AGI Intervention" total war against machine empires
• Damage to Automated Mining Drones: +20%
• Damage to Machine and Synthetic Empires: +20%
• Damage to Gray Tempest: +33%
• Damage to Ancient Caretakes Fallen Empire (and Awakened variants): +25%
• Damage to Contingency: +50%

PlanetCorp (Megacorp)

"This corporate society is mostly unconcerned with outward expansion, instead having focused its attention on covering its homeworld in an unending urban sprawl fed by a bustling space resource extraction sector."

Requirements: Is Pacifist, has Corporate authority, can not have the Private Prospectors or Trade Posts civics

• Homeworld is replaced by a size 13 Ecumenopolis (species retains it's selected habitability however)
• Homeworld starts with an unique "Farming Spires" planet modifier, granting +1 food per 100 pops
• Homeworld starts with the "Insufficient Construction Methods" modifier (-500 housing per arcology district, +33% district cost, -50% resources from jobs)
• The "Urban Renewal Initiative" decision can be taked once Anti-Gravity Engineering Technology is researched, removing the aforementioned modifier and granting the "City of Cities" modifier (+10% resource output from jobs. +12 maximum districts). The decision costs 10000 minerals, 100 influence and takes 5 years
• Starbase Influence Cost +100%
• War Policy is locked to Defensive Wars Only
• Colony Ships additionally cost 100 influence to construct
• Resources from Mining Stations: +50%
• Guaranteed Habitables are replaced by systems with above-average resources

 

[Madae]

I've wanted this for awhile, too. Could do more specific planet bonuses, like the gaia and ocean world options.

 

[Falrinn]

I recently posted an idea along these lines on the suggestions forms.

Grand Partnership:
Half of your founding species is replaced by a second sapient species. The second species has their citizenship status set at empire creation, and may be granted full citizenship even if normally disallowed by government ethics or civics. It will also be treated as a founder species for the purposes of Ascension paths. Xeno-Compatibility may also be chosen even if disallowed by government ethics.

The idea is that unlike Syncretic Evolution, the second species has not been rendered a docile slave species but is in fact a fully sapient species in a partnership with your main founder species. The player gets then to define to parameters of this partnership, whether it's a fully equal alliance or one that was imposed on the other. You can decide if this a case where the two species have so much shared history that they don't really see each other as a separate people in spite of their biological differences, or if it was a recent partnership formed so that they could journey to the stars together.

You can also decide if their shared planet of origin made them more open to working with alien life...or if unlike normal fanatical purifiers they think the galaxy is big enough for precisely two sapient species.

 

[HFY]

Almighty Algorithm - costs 1 Ethic point, prohibits access to Materialist - Spiritualist axis (both are forbidden)

You're an Individualist empire with a Gestalt (machine) Council, plus one Civic slot which expands to two slot choices when you get a 3rd civic.

When you research Droids, you also unlock Temples and their expansions. Priest jobs can only be worked by Robots.

-50 opinion penalty from both Materialists and Spiritualist (double for Fanatic) because the only thing they agree about is that you're doing it wrong.

 

[Falrinn]

I'd argue that an AI ruler origin is perhaps beyond the scope of this particular thread since it would have such a significant impact on gameplay, but I do like the idea.

 

[Dragatus]

All These Worlds
This species found itself in a system full of life-bearing worlds. They were very different from the homeworld, but that did not stop this civilisation from settling them.
Empires with this Origin start in a system with 4 additional settled planets on the same level of development as their Homeworld, but the planets have climates that are different from the Founder Species' Climate Preference.

I'm not particularly enthusiastic about origins that modify the home system, because they require a special Sol variant and we already have quite a few Sol variants. Otherwise this is quite neat.

Jump Start
This civilisation somehow managed to develop jump drives, perfecting it in a way that allows for precise and safe travel. Unfortunately, this means that they have not yet learned about hyperspace.
Empires with this Origin start out with Jump Drives which do not count as dangerous technology, and they are more precise than regular Jump Drives. However, the same cooldown effects still apply, and the hyperspace network is not even visible, let alone usable, meaning that, while travel is faster, expansion will be slower.

This would play too similar to the Eager Explorers civic.

Virtual Assistants
This species managed to develop true artificial intelligence despite its lack of advancement in robotics. Their roles are to supplement the existing power structures of society and help in whatever way is required of them.
Your Empire starts with Administrative AI, Self-Evolving Logic and Positronic AI already researched. In addition, every Leader of your Empire gets the Virtual Assistant Trait, which gives boosts to everything from Ship Damage to Research Speed, but it comes at a cost: there must be at least one Virtual Nursery in your Empire. This special building is where the Virtual Assistants are raised and trained, and the more there are the better the effects the VA Trait gives, but if all Virtual Nurseries are destroyed, then all Leaders lose the VA Trait until a new one can be built. If that does happen, your Leaders have a greater-than-usual chance of getting negative traits such as Substance Abuser, Paranoid or Nervous, representing their mental breakdowns at the loss of the VAs whom they've come to value as family.

This one isn't bad though.

But it's easy to be critical, so let me try my hand at this and we'll see if I do any better.

1) One thing I dislike about Teachers of the Shroud is how your people have been taught psionics by the Shroudwalkers instead of developing psionics on your own. Also, the Mechanists origin help you go Synthetic, but it doesn't lock you into Synthetic ascension, so there can be multiple origins that help with ascension. So here is my idea for an alternate psionic origin, which is simultaneously an alternative to Under One Rule (a good origin, but a little heavily scripted).

The Chosen One:
- ruler gets Chosen One trait
- start with Psionic Theory as free technology
- must have Imperial authority
- must be some degree of Spiritualist

This might looks like it isn't much, but Chosen One trait gives you +1 Influence a month, which is quite a lot at the early stages of the game. You are also free to research whatever you want and still go Psionic as soon as you have the AP. On the other hand, you are free to decide that since you already have a Chosen One leader, you could go the genetic route instead.

2) There is a general consensus that Juggernaughts are underwhelming and I've always insisted that the problem is that it comes too late because by then you already have gateways and relays and you can just build ships at starbases and send them almost instantly to anywhere in your empire. The obvious solution is to find some way to unlock it sooner and that's what this origin is for.

Superweapon:
- start with a Juggernaught
- start with Juggernaught technology
- start with a special Colossal Shipyard megastructure around home star (allows building ships of any size)

 

[--Yigito123--]

Absolutely, I was quite sad when Payback/Broken Shackles were announced because I don't particularly care about hyper-specific storylines (I play Stellaris for the stories that emerge from many different factors). And I knew it would essentially kill the chances of Paradox making "normal" origins for those tropes.

At the time many people heavily disagreed with me. I wonder how people feel about them now after having been available for so long.

This, this is my biggest problem with the more narrative origins, I hate how we don't have more generic alternatives to them and probably won't. You can't just have a crusader state without the toxic god storyline. You can't have an empire that was invaded by aliens without those aliens having been the MSI. You can make your narrative origin and they are very cool and neat, but just let me access these sci-fi tropes without that pre-set narrative so I can also do my own thing if I want to.