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Stellaris Dev Diary #155 - Origins

Hello everyone!

I have just returned from a belated vacation in Japan, and although I had a great time there it is also fun to be back to work. Today I want to talk about some of the cool things happening with Stellaris this year. As many of you have probably guessed, Stellaris will announce a new expansion at PDXCon this year. This expansion will feature a lot of cool new things, most of which will be revealed at PDXCon. But I do also have something really neat that I want to share with you now!

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Good ol’ civics. Gotta love ‘em.

Back in Utopia we introduced a lot of cool new features to improve how you could customize and specialize your empire. Civics were a great addition to the game (in fact I consider them to be one of the best), but they are also awkwardly split between “backgrounds” like Syncretic Evolution and “institutions” like Distinguished Admiralty or Imperial Cult. Civics have added a lot of really cool options to how you can play the game, and that is something I want to expand upon – this is where the Origins come in.

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Materialistic, mechanist, mushroom madness?
Origins is a new feature that is very similar to Civics, and will now represent your empire’s background. An empire can only select one Origin, and an Origin cannot be changed. We will be adding a bunch of new Origins (some of them are really cool!) and we will also be changing some Civics into being Origins instead. Examples of Civics that will be converted into Origins are Mechanists, Post-Apocalyptic, Life-Seeded and Syncretic Evolution.

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Life-Seeded Origin, now open to hive minds.

Certain types of empires were previously unable to access some of these backgrounds since they have their own set of Civics (Gestalts and Megacorps for example). Because some of those Civics have been turned into Origins, those backgrounds will now be available to more types of empires. This means that it should now be possible to have a hive mind with the Life-Seeded origin or a Megacorp with the Mechanists origin. We know this is something people have been asking for for a long time now, and it’s really great to be able to add Origins to the game.

Like I mentioned earlier, we will also be adding a whole lot of new Origins that will add interesting starting positions for your empire. Right now we have 16 in the current version of the game, and we will probably see a few more until it's finished. I think Origins will be a great addition to the game that will surely help to facilitate a lot more player stories and player fantasies.

We won’t be showing all of these yet, but it will probably be immensely hard for us to not tease a few every now and then ;)

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Who isn’t curious about Remnants and Scions?

PDXCon is rapidly approaching and Stellaris fans will have a lot of cool things to look forward to! In two weeks we will be back again with another dev diary, where we’ll talk a bit more about PDXCon.
 
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Am I correct in guessing that Scion origin is basically what the Commonwealth of Man is? That you have originated on a different planet and your main species has another empire on it's own somewhere in the Galaxy?

I was thinking that too but the image doesn't suggest it's the same species

Very cool.

Here are some origins I'd like to see;

Eugenicists: +1 starting trait points, +20% bio modification
Invaded: survived an alien invasion as primitives, +20% xenophobe attraction...
 
I've been hoping for exactly this feature for a while now. Nice!

There is something to Methone's point that one can currently take two 'origins', but this will no longer be possible. (AFAIK the specific combo of Life-Seeded and Mechanist has never been allowed in the unmodded game, but it was banned for 'balance' reasons rather than reasons of base mechanics.) I think this is more than compensated for though by the ability to take one origin and two civics at game start. Also, since everyone has an origin slot to fill, it means no empire will a totally generic blank slate to be rewritten later, which I think is good for the flavour of the game.

One thing I'm wondering: will all the locked civics become origins, or are locked civics staying as a category? There are a few, such as Fanatic Purifiers, which have to be locked because they'd cause chaos if you could switch them in and out during the game, but which are maybe not strictly speaking 'origin stories'.
 
Such a welcome inclusion to the game, Origins as been one of the things I've been wanting for a while, and do hope we get some good ones, like Refugees who fled their homeworld for one reason or another, or lost colonies such as the Commonwealth of Man. Might even be nice if they also bought with them their own set of story arcs.
 
This is great thank you!


But can we make it so that Empire descriptions are readable somewhere in game?

I play with many custom empires and once I'm in game I can't read their descriptions.
 
One thing I'm wondering: will all the locked civics become origins, or are locked civics staying as a category? There are a few, such as Fanatic Purifiers, which have to be locked because they'd cause chaos if you could switch them in and out during the game, but which are maybe not strictly speaking 'origin stories'.

I was wondering that too. On the one hand, putting Fanatic purifier, Determined exterminator and devouring swarm under a specific origin would make things a little cleaner, it would also mean I couldn't do a Fanatic purifier-post apocalyptic empire which was pretty cool.
 
Sounds very exciting!

Will this finally be the patch where you expand the civics of Hiveminds aswell? Since you have ignored these completely after the huge non-Gestalt civic rework in 2.2.

I'm hoping this patch will properly balance the game for the sake of more diversity. Robots should no longer be the end-all be all. They shouldn't be used all the time because they are the best source of pop growth and cheapest/best pops. I hope you will expand on civics/origins like Syncretic Evolution, maybe add something like this for Hiveminds aswell.

In the end, DLC should always add more options and improve variety for different gameplay choices. This DLC is another opportunity to do that.

Please, don't repeat the same mistake you did with 2.3 which made Machines/Robots/Synths utterly overpowered and reduced playstyle variety massively due to the sheer imbalance of Machines vs Organics.
 
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Oh man, it's a dream come true! I've been burning time on Crusader Kings II: After the End and Age of Wonders: Planetfall lately, but this might be the kick I need to hop back into Stellaris come patch time.
 
I was wondering that too. On the one hand, putting Fanatic purifier, Determined exterminator and devouring swarm under a specific origin would make things a little cleaner, it would also mean I couldn't do a Fanatic purifier-post apocalyptic empire which was pretty cool.
Fanatic Purifier sounds more like a civic to me anyway.
 
No it isn't. Not unless you have mods to allow it.View attachment 514956
Huh. I could've sworn.

Despite that example, there are ones that do seem like they'd be excluded. Life-Seeded Purifiers, for instance. It's unlikely Purifiers WON'T be an Origin, given that they don't want people swapping in and out of it.
 
I was wondering that too. On the one hand, putting Fanatic purifier, Determined exterminator and devouring swarm under a specific origin would make things a little cleaner, it would also mean I couldn't do a Fanatic purifier-post apocalyptic empire which was pretty cool.

Fanatic Purifier with Tomb world start is my favorite way of playing purifier. My lore reason is that my spiritualists survived nuclear fire and only interact with other species who are worthy. So far no other species has survived after the Armageddon bombardment to interact with.
 
Huh. I could've sworn.

Despite that example, there are ones that do seem like they'd be excluded. Life-Seeded Purifiers, for instance. It's unlikely Purifiers WON'T be an Origin, given that they don't want people swapping in and out of it.

I see no reason they would do that. Purifier, Devouring Swarm and the special robot civics fundamentally change the way your empire plays and the mechanics you have available while the origin civics just change where you start from. They're not the same thing.
 
There are currently 16 (OP said so):
1. Prosperous unification
2. Mechanist
3. Syncretic evolution
4. Life seeded
5. Post apocalyptic
6. Remnants
7. [Redacted]
8. [Redacted]
9. Scion
10. ?
11. ?
12. ?
13. ?
14. ?
15. ?
16. ?

That means 9 we know nothing at all about!

Edit: the OP did actually say 16 currently existing, so that’s all.
Edit 2: confirmation from PDX that rogue servitor, fanatic purifier etc are not origins. Updated the above to reflect.
 
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