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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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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.
Purifier and Swarm are often lumped in with the rest of the Origin civics due to their 'unable to get removed or added' feature. I dearly hope Paradox will keep them as mere Civics, but I worry.
 
Judging by the length and position of the scroll bar, there are 6 rows of Origins in their current build, so 16-18 of them to choose.
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. ? Criminal heritage
13. ? Devouring swarm
14. ? Rogue servitor
15. ? Determined exterminator
16. ? Driven assimilator
17. ??
18. ??

I would guess that five of them are the machine empire, megacorp, and hive mind specific origins. That leaves 4-6 we know nothing at all about.
Some of those (13, 15 and 16) imho should remain civics, since they aren't really origins.
 
Judging by the length and position of the scroll bar, there are 6 rows of Origins in their current build, so 16-18 of them to choose.
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. ? Criminal heritage
13. ? Devouring swarm
14. ? Rogue servitor
15. ? Determined exterminator
16. ? Driven assimilator
17. ??
18. ??

I would guess that five of them are the machine empire, megacorp, and hive mind specific origins. That leaves 4-6 we know nothing at all about.
It is said that Tzynns are unified under a powerful warlord, the "prosperous unification" don't seem to be quite suitable for them, so...
 
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.
Custom Empire descriptions can be seen on that empire's Species Tab by hovering over the portrait.

The exception is base game empires who, for some reason, ONLY have the description visible when selecting a new game.
 
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.
Not bad...

I prefer more cliche-like world of failed XCOM.
 
A really great improvement, but could be used to add more personalized ways of playability. A post apocalyptic origin, for example, could add an ecology meter to the planets that implies benefits and harms. So that the game with post apocalyptics is something different and would reflect a thematic weakness of the empire.
 
Purifier and Swarm are often lumped in with the rest of the Origin civics due to their 'unable to get removed or added' feature. I dearly hope Paradox will keep them as mere Civics, but I worry.
Don’t be surprised if purifier and swarm are treated differently. Right now swarm is forever, but purifier CAN be removed. Just switch empire ethics so that it isn’t valid.
 
What I would like to get an artificial planet start for machines, that turns your home world into a machine world.

A broken ring world start would be cool too, but I am not sure how this would work with the new districts. Maybe require a restore segment decision similar to the one of relic worlds.

A stabilized wormhole start, that allowed your empire to claim the system on the other side with slower than light travel. You would have two starting systems connected by a wormhole. This way your empire could expand from two different points in the galaxy.
 
While the stuff sounds great so far, just one thing did strike me a bit odd.
GSwDfku.png

You better have something good for my Determined Exterminators as replacement.

------Red Dox
 
This might be a bit controversial but honestly, none of the new features that you are planning on releasing is relevant as long as the game's performance issues remain as they are.
I love Stellaris, I have almost 700 hours on the game but I simply cannot play it. My PC is very powerful but the mid-end game lag is unplayable. A second is barely 2~3 days around 2400. The only way for me to play is to play on 0.25x planets, medium - small galaxy, low number of empires and get the planet cracker to go on genocidal crusades.
As long as you don't release a dev diary explaining your efforts in solving the immense performance issues this game suffers from and show results, none of the other dev diaries will matter. None of my friends that used to play still play because of the lag. I can't recommend the game to others because of the lag. And I won't buy any new expansion unless I see that the game has become playable.
 
I do like this change and look forward to see the rest of the origins. It definitely opens a lot of fun possibilities for building the story of your empire.
I do also want to point out a small thing buried in Daniel's diary - he has once again used the word "institutions." I suspect this word choice is not accidental and I hope we learn more about this soon also.
 
So to clarify this is coming in the next big unannounced dlc? Or as a story pack all on its own?

Also will origins unlock special options in conversations? (Like if you find primitives that nuke themselves back to the stone age as a post-apocalyptic origin empire, you could have special ways to salvage them)

Or will origins add special "origin quests" like, terraform your Tombworld homeworld back into your primary species preferred type or into a Gaia world for bonus unity. Etc.