Stellaris Dev Diary #112 - The L-Cluster

[Astax]

So we are in agreement then? We are calling it L-gate because F-gate is just too damn obvious?

 

[Zergor]

What is L-cluster even short for???

I imagine it's only to have the play on word on the gate itself.
The L-gate is I imagine a "hellgate" in the sense that opening it will be bad.

 

[steveh11]

Any ideas as to what will be found behind the L-gates?
Wiz did say in the Distant Stars live stream that there would be nods to Niven in the story pack.
My guess is we'll find a bunch of "Moties", as in the 1974 book "The Mote in God's Eye". They'll attempt to flood through into normal space, breeding like space-rabbits, expanding their numbers until they threaten the entire galaxy.

That would be my guess as well, though it would be funny if an alternative was the Vampires from Ringworld Engineers who flood the galaxy filling it with lust and rishathra... ;-)

 

[Warchild421]

I suppose once you are inside the L-cluster you can build your own non-L gateway?

I hope not, hope they keep it so you have to have an L-Gate to get there. With a normal gate you could bypass the L-gate then, unless they put in some new logic for gates that only allow normal gateways in the L-Cluster to not be able to connect outside of it.

 

[KopiG]

I figured it out. The L Cluster is the Leisure Cluster where all retired people go to chill in their late years. So all you will find there are very old people not giving a sh*t to the goings in the Galaxy. Why would you want to bother them in the first place I dont understand?

 

[Darkspysrival]

Wait... so this new patch is about stars and black holes? And here I thought you'd name it the "Hawking" Patch.

 

[steveh11]

I figured it out. The L Cluster is the Leisure Cluster where all retired people go to chill in their late years. So all you will find there are very old people not giving a sh*t to the goings in the Galaxy. Why would you want to bother them in the first place I dont understand?

Ah, so Niki and Susie will present the stream, as the demonstrate the "People Management" cluster!

 

[RELee]

Atta boy, Wiz!

 

[Takfloyd]

Would be cool, if stars wouldn't be visible at the start as well.

It would be a little odd at the same time though - how do you end up with invisible stars? Why can't astronomers spot them?

In real life, we can only see about half of the stars in our galaxy - the other half is obscured - either by nebulas or on the opposite side of the galactic core, behind layers and layers of interstellar dust as well as the densely packed stars near the core and in the galactic disk.

In other words, it might be really cool if stars within nebulas and on the opposite side of the galaxy were hidden from view at the start in Stellaris. Also, black holes are almost impossible to detect from a great distance, and so are red and white dwarves not to mention the almost invisible brown ones. So imagine if in Stellaris, you couldn't see those star types on the map until you get within a close distance to them! The more interesting exploration, the better if you ask me.

 

[Phantomiux]

Guys, am I only one who almost instantly remembered old good Mass Effect 2 and that "Omega Relay" and "Alpha Relay"? :-D

 

[Warchild421]

What if the 'L' stands for Lovecraft and behind the gate hides some Lovecraftian type horror. The Elder Gods locked behind a gate that a new FE was barely able to close.

 

[themunck]

Okay, two people have already suggested it, but I'll just straight up ask. Devs, is this an intentional or unintentional reference to L-space, the pocket dimension in Terry Pratchett's books that connect all libraries in both time and space?

 

[Mitchz95]

I love that the L-cluster gateways are inside the system's gravity well. Are all gateways moving there, or just these ones?

 

[TheDungen]

I like the idea in of itself the end game crisis part of it seems kind of boring though but I feel that way about endgame crises in general.

 

[Ur-Quan Lord 13]

Any ideas as to what will be found behind the L-gates?
Wiz did say in the Distant Stars live stream that there would be nods to Niven in the story pack.
My guess is we'll find a bunch of "Moties", as in the 1974 book "The Mote in God's Eye". They'll attempt to flood through into normal space, breeding like space-rabbits, expanding their numbers until they threaten the entire galaxy.

Hmm, you know, the old ai crisis used to be the only one that worked like a regular empire (did research, worked tiles for resources, etc). Though they were still at war with everyone.

Would be cool to have something like that back. A "crisis" faction where the pops have +500% growth speed, huge bonuses to everything to represent their extremely specialized caste system... And, of course, the unavoidable fracturing and infighting as they run out of space, and their leader caste turn on each other.

And then we could eventually get a special project to neuter them. Though, I believe the original moties accepted the neutering willingly? Since they weren't all too happy about how their reproductive rates kept making them bomb each other back to the Stone age.

 

[Diezy]

Hopefully it'll be 100% foolproof to unintended entry!

A random star being in range of Jump Drive, the crisis choosing to spawn there or even primitives becoming advanced in there would be the more straightforward ways L-Sector could be 'breached' early...!

Though to think of it, I suspect they'll work more like Precursor home systems, and not spawn until the gates are opened... Which rules out a lot of problems, except the possibility of it being reachable via Jump Drive once it does spawn.

Which wouldn't be half bad, since there's going to be a monopoly on the gateway, and they cannot be used by enemies!

EDIT: They work different from normal gateways, they should be very interesting if they cannot be closed, and are usable by the enemy!

 

[LunarMongoose]

The "L-" clearly stands for Llama.

You can tell because Llama has 2 back-to-back L's, which trumps anything that starts with just one L.

I, for one, welcome our new Llama Overlords...

 

[James Fire]

I figured it out. The L Cluster is the Leisure Cluster where all retired people go to chill in their late years. So all you will find there are very old people not giving a sh*t to the goings in the Galaxy. Why would you want to bother them in the first place I dont understand?

So the Xenophobe FE is no longer going to spawn in the regular galaxy?

 

[Twimak]

Why is the L cluster outside the galaxy and not in the galactic core?

 

[James Fire]

Why is the L cluster outside the galaxy and not in the galactic core?

Cause some mods already put stars in the core.