Stellaris Dev Diary #160 - Origins Full Reveal

[kviiri]

What the hell are you talking about?

Let me go through this one more time, and if you can't be civil, don't bother replying.

The Tree of Life gives a very powerful numerical bonus and, by what we know, balances it out by penalizing its owner if they screw up and lose their homeworld. Does that induce meaningful strategic difference? I say not. One is always trying to protect their homeworld because it's a super valuable asset, and one'll only lose it if they've screwed up bad. The numerical bonuses, on the other hand, are always going to be useful. Therefore, any player who, y'know, doesn't intend to lose, should take the Tree, which makes it strategically uninteresting. There is simply no way the penalty for losing the tree --- assuming it has no hidden kinks we haven't been told about --- can offset the benefits, since they only kick in in the super rare occasion you lose your homeworld AND wouldn't have practically lost the game by then anyway. In all other cases, it either has effectively no penalty or the penalty only makes a lost cause even more lost, which doesn't really matter --- if you lose in Russian roulette it's not of much concern if the bullet's a dum-dum.

 

[DreamerGhost]

wasn't the doomsday origin a mod at some point?

I never played stellaris modded since i want ironman achievements so i'm not too shure about it....i will play a lithoid doomdsday origin at some point though............

It was, or rather is. Supernovae - Cosmic Fury. If you're done with achievements for now you can give it a practice run.

 

[Pale Blue]

Let me go through this one more time, and if you can't be civil, don't bother replying.

The Tree of Life gives a very powerful numerical bonus and, by what we know, balances it out by penalizing its owner if they screw up and lose their homeworld. Does that induce meaningful strategic difference? I say not. One is always trying to protect their homeworld because it's a super valuable asset, and one'll only lose it if they've screwed up bad. The numerical bonuses, on the other hand, are always going to be useful. Therefore, any player who, y'know, doesn't intend to lose, should take the Tree, which makes it strategically uninteresting. There is simply no way the penalty for losing the tree --- assuming it has no hidden kinks we haven't been told about --- can offset the benefits, since they only kick in in the super rare occasion you lose your homeworld AND wouldn't have practically lost the game by then anyway. In all other cases, it either has effectively no penalty or the penalty only makes a lost cause even more lost, which doesn't really matter --- if you lose in Russian roulette it's not of much concern if the bullet's a dum-dum.

The tree is only on your home world. Giving your species penalties on every other planet that is not your home world until you plant a sapling of the tree on other worlds and probably until the sapling has grown enough.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Let me go through this one more time, and if you can't be civil, don't bother replying.

The Tree of Life gives a very powerful numerical bonus and, by what we know, balances it out by penalizing its owner if they screw up and lose their homeworld. Does that induce meaningful strategic difference? I say not. One is always trying to protect their homeworld because it's a super valuable asset, and one'll only lose it if they've screwed up bad. The numerical bonuses, on the other hand, are always going to be useful. Therefore, any player who, y'know, doesn't intend to lose, should take the Tree, which makes it strategically uninteresting. There is simply no way the penalty for losing the tree --- assuming it has no hidden kinks we haven't been told about --- can offset the benefits, since they only kick in in the super rare occasion you lose your homeworld AND wouldn't have practically lost the game by then anyway. In all other cases, it either has effectively no penalty or the penalty only makes a lost cause even more lost, which doesn't really matter --- if you lose in Russian roulette it's not of much concern if the bullet's a dum-dum.

Means more when dealing with AI empires. AI are regularly taken apart piecemeal, and cutting through to their homeworld is generally an important milestone for larger empires. Having it be extra-catastrophic for Tree of Life hiveminds is fine by me.

 

[kviiri]

Means more when dealing with AI empires. AI are regularly taken apart piecemeal, and cutting through to their homeworld is generally an important milestone for larger empires. Having it be extra-catastrophic for Tree of Life hiveminds is fine by me.

All I'm saying is it could, and IMO should be more.

 

[Druplesnubb]

What if you can destroy the Tree of Life simply by bombing the capital? That would make it much easier to lose, and would affect the way you defend your capital way more.

 

[holyrome]

I had a question: If we set Max Fallen Empires to 0, will it ensure that no scions will appear in the game? Both Human and AI. I sometimes like to play without any fallen empires

Shattered Ring: One of the sections is permanently shattered. The celestial object responsible and the ring segment itself can be mined. (Note: Lithoids still have a really tough start here, since they'll eat most of the minerals, and they can't acquire minerals from their home section.)

Void Dwellers: One of the habitats you start with is a mining habitat. Hydroponics for food.

Remnants: Your homeworld has decayed enough that all four basic district types are represented.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

Let me go through this one more time, and if you can't be civil, don't bother replying.

The Tree of Life gives a very powerful numerical bonus and, by what we know, balances it out by penalizing its owner if they screw up and lose their homeworld. Does that induce meaningful strategic difference? I say not. One is always trying to protect their homeworld because it's a super valuable asset, and one'll only lose it if they've screwed up bad. The numerical bonuses, on the other hand, are always going to be useful. Therefore, any player who, y'know, doesn't intend to lose, should take the Tree, which makes it strategically uninteresting. There is simply no way the penalty for losing the tree --- assuming it has no hidden kinks we haven't been told about --- can offset the benefits, since they only kick in in the super rare occasion you lose your homeworld AND wouldn't have practically lost the game by then anyway. In all other cases, it either has effectively no penalty or the penalty only makes a lost cause even more lost, which doesn't really matter --- if you lose in Russian roulette it's not of much concern if the bullet's a dum-dum.

I do agree its bad practice to simply add origins that are so good they will always be picked.

However, Hiveminds are in a terrible state ever since 2.3. We have been asking for a huge civic rework. We have asked for more Hivemind civics and not plain re-name of old ones like Devouring Swarm. We have asked for buffs to all the things of Hiveminds which are literally worse versions of regular empires: No agendas, no Ruler traits from level up, Synapse Drones <<< Coordinators, Hive worlds <<< Machine worlds, Synapse Drones draining ressources, Traditions being much weaker etc.

For the longest time there was no point to even play non-Devouring Swarm Hivemind because the civics are so poor and boring and you always got a mediocre empire with no lategame scaling compared to what others can achieve. Tree of Life could be a way to finally open up the possibility to play a somewhat-competitive version of non-DS Hivemind. It will still need tons of fixes, buffs and Civic reworks. But its a start.

On the other hand, there is the Machine world start. Once again, Machine empires who are already gamebreaking overpowered get an insane boost. Machine worlds start is so much stronger than life seeded because its not only better than Gaia worlds, it also doesn't penalize you because Machines colonize anything.

I know many people who might straight up quit Stellaris if this Machine world origin goes through because the balance in this game is abysmal ever since 2.3 and giving the #1 empire type and even bigger boost is killing the very last hope of ever having some kind of empire diversity.

Long story short: Its impossible to create balance origins as thats clearly not the goal. But Paradox has to get back to balancing this game like 6 months ago. They haven't done anything worthwhile to create a healthy meta since 2.2.5/2.2.6 when they took Machines/ Synths from their terrible state and made them playable and strong. They have to do it again: For Hiveminds, for Spiritualists. For empires that do not put down a Robot factory on their 2nd building slot on every single planet. For Psionic, Bio and Synth ascension. For a galaxy that has had 100% of its pops either turned into Synths, or conquered by Machine empires ever since 2.3

 

[Fermi's_Solution]

I know many people who might straight up quit Stellaris if this Machine world origin goes through because the balance in this game is abysmal ever since 2.3 and giving the #1 empire type and even bigger boost is killing the very last hope of ever having some kind of empire diversity.

This is especially bad with Paradox's DLC model, which relies more heavily on player retention for profits.

 

[Mr Thursday]

The current plan is for machine empires to be more reliant on keeping their administrative capacity in line with their empire sprawl, so machine empires will suffer a much harsher penalty for exceeding their cap. We want machines to feel “centralized” and to perhaps favor a more “tall” playstyle.

From Stellaris Dev Diary #153

I expect that this is why Machine worlds are not going to trash the game balance. The Devs have stated that Machine Empire re-balance is on the cards, so the Machine World Origin may confirm this.

 

[brbonfire]

Wait. Wait. About the tree of life. Looking at what I've seen so far, a few things stand out:

• Your empire gains bonuses or penalties dependent on the presence or otherwise of the Tree. This is specifically living on a planet with a Tree of Life present. There isn't just one Tree of Life.
  
• Colony ships are more expensive, but will provide a tree of life sapling.
  

Put these two things together, and, although this is just conjecture so far on my part, a few conclusions can be drawn - There is no proviso for putting a Tree on worlds you conquer, meaning that you effectively get penalties to conquering planets. While this can be circumvented by vacating or purging the planet then sending a colony ship, this is still quite the time sink. Furthermore, colony ships are more expensive. While this probably won't mean much past early game, what you get is basically a hive that can't really rush per se, and has to jump through hoops to take planets from others without rocking their own economy in the process. A... kind of sort of inward perfection/pacifist hive, if you will.

 

[Methone]

Wait. Wait. About the tree of life. Looking at what I've seen so far, a few things stand out:

• Your empire gains bonuses or penalties dependent on the presence or otherwise of the Tree. This is specifically living on a planet with a Tree of Life present. There isn't just one Tree of Life.
  
• Colony ships are more expensive, but will provide a tree of life sapling.

Put these two things together, and, although this is just conjecture so far on my part, a few conclusions can be drawn - There is no proviso for putting a Tree on worlds you conquer, meaning that you effectively get penalties to conquering planets. While this can be circumvented by vacating or purging the planet then sending a colony ship, this is still quite the time sink. Furthermore, colony ships are more expensive. While this probably won't mean much past early game, what you get is basically a hive that can't really rush per se, and has to jump through hoops to take planets from others without rocking their own economy in the process. A... kind of sort of inward perfection/pacifist hive, if you will.

Of course, the AI will still have the Hive Mind personality and try to conquer people.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

What do you want from me bro? Someone said it was 50%, I said it wasn't; Which was true, it is not 50%. Now you're talking at me about, what? And why?
View attachment 526088

I... want you to contribute true and useful things to the conversation, instead of misleading or outright false things? Like that a former-relic ecu gives only a 10% bonus to science production, when in fact it gets the same 30% (total) bonus it did as a relic world (using the current model of every relic world since Ancient Relics; I guess they're going to add code to generate different ones with fewer bonuses for Federations). I wasn't even really addressing you; I just quoted your post so people would know what misleading information I was correcting without me needing to type it all out again.

If that's beating a dead horse to you, I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm not going to stop correcting misinformation just because it was posted by you.

 

[brbonfire]

Of course, the AI will still have the Hive Mind personality and try to conquer people.

AI gonna AI. It's honestly about time Hives got some actual personalities though so maybe we'll see. Maybe, just maybe, things like the tree of life will prompt new personalities. We could even end up with something more akin to the Baol.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Of course, the AI will still have the Hive Mind personality and try to conquer people.

Hopefully (assuming that @brbonfire 's speculation is at least mostly correct, which seems likely), they'll tweak the AI for hives with that origin. It's actually pretty easy to add personality types, and they can presumably crib everything *except* the violent expansion preferences from existing ones.

Not saying it'd surprise me that much if they don't do this, but - again, assuming it works that way at all - I have some hope they'll tweak the AI. Then hives will have three whole AI personalities!

 

[brbonfire]

This also means that it's possible the Tree of Life saplings will level up and become full blown trees of life themselves overtime.

...I really, really hope that you can't just put the tree on a conquered planet via decision or something. That would be a little crazy. Hives need buffs, but they need well designed buffs.

 

[Fermi's_Solution]

This also means that it's possible the Tree of Life saplings will level up and become full blown trees of life themselves overtime.

...I really, really hope that you can't just put the tree on a conquered planet via decision or something. That would be a little crazy. Hives need buffs, but they need well designed buffs.

That's an interesting idea, if you're right. Non-aggressive hives would be pretty new (and the fact I can say that at all is frigg'n bizarre).

A few weird edge cases come to mind, though: conquering primitives who don't have a proper capital building might have it default to the Tree of Life version, for instance.

 

[youstas]

Looking forward to Federation DLC. Finally we have space-UN, a proper federations mechanics and ability to transform federation in single state. I have been waiting for that since release of the game. I'm a little surprised that we have Prosperous Unification but don't have unification by blood and iron when a state or warlord unites planet by conquest. And I hope that one day we will have opportunity to choose organic space ships playing for devouring swarm.

 

[Methone]

Looking forward to Federation DLC. Finally we have space-UN, a proper federations mechanics and ability to transform federation in single state. I have been waiting for that since release of the game. I'm a little surprised that we have Prosperous Unification but don't have unification by blood and iron when a state or warlord unites planet by conquest. And I hope that one day we will have opportunity to choose organic space ships playing for devouring swarm.

Keep in mind that none of that will work without some serious overhauls to basic diplomacy. We've gotten some teasers about what it'll be, but I have strong doubts it'll be enough to make the space-UN and such work.

 

[Prometheus_1]

Syncretic evolution?


They did some edits to the original DD, they are improvements (or corrections, don’t want to assume) but the confusion is understandable. Originally, it just said that it spawned there with no explanation.

Nope , its different.
Just two normal species on the same planet.
They can befriend or be in war.