Stellaris Dev Diary #207: Challenging Origins

[EU3NOOB]

I kind of want something for CKIII where you get a very rare event where a weird creature enters your court babbling incoherent nonsense and you get two choices:

1) Burn it at the stake! It's clearly a daemon! KILL IT WITH HOLY FIRE! This continues the game normally.

2) Attempt to communicate with it. This leads to an event chain that ends in a special gameover screen that when you close out of it it then boots you from the game and loads Stellaris, if it's installed, otherwise it sends you to the Stellaris store page.

 

[Olterin]

So there won't be any patchnotes next week, right?

Thanks for the laugh, but ... please sir, may we have some more?

 

[A2ch0n]

I like April fools Especially the Crusader Kings one is nice!

 

[grommile]

I'm not a fan of AFD nonsense, but this was really rather good

 

[Ffc]

Nice to see that PDX consider the AI to be a joke too.

Well they're able like most humans to read memes

 

[Beer Fiend]

Where's the Cities Skylines origin? Where you fly around the galaxy in space blimps, terraforming takes longer because your species really wants that tree in the exact right spot and the leaders refuse to inform their public about anything new they are working on until the very last minute?

 

[Valleo]

What Origins would you create if you wanted a special challenge?

Now you are asking, I have some ideas about challenging origins :

- The rift :
there is a rift inside your main system leading to the unbidden dimension. It is slowly opening up. To prevent the undbidden crisis to start within 50 years right above his capital, the player will have to invest massive amounts of alloys and research into a project having several steps (maybe through the form of a 'kind of' mini megastructure). If another empire conquers this system, he will be able to be the one completing the special project before the end of the timer

- The sterilization V1 :
After a disaster involving an alien artifact, the population has been massively sterilized, causing a very low pop growth rate (like very low, less than 1) and a happiness debuff affecting the main species. Searching for a cure will be critical. It can be obtained through several archeology sites to investigate around the capital (just like the boals), and finally a costly project becoming available. Of course, colonizing will be impossible before finding the cure, and securing those archeology sites will be so critical that it could cause wars...

- The sterilization V2 :
It is the same idea (depending on what you prefer), but instead of a very slow growth, the pop is slowly decreasing. We would start with a little bit more pops than with the prosperous unification to compensate.
the clock is ticking before the end of the species... (it is inspired from the show Crusade)

- The survivors :
After a major disaster on their homeworld, few settlers managed to escape their dying planet, and reached another habitable world located in their home system. Having saved all the knowledge from their civilization, they must rebuild from almost nothing.
The species starts on a size 25 gaia world (or a normal world could also do the trick), but with only 2 pops (maybe even 1) and no districts at all. Some mining stations would give minerals and energy, and why not a little bit of alloys, but catching up will be really challenging...

- The terraformation :
After a collision with an asteroid, the orbit of the planet has been altered. Now, the biome of the staring planet has changed into a random one, granting only 20% habitability !!
So +80% of pop upkeep and -40% of pop production !!
The player will have to figure out how to save his economy...

Well, that's all for my ideas.

 

[Ffc]

There is a way to diplomaticly expand tho. Its called just being so powerful other empires willingly become your vassal. Then you integrate them.

Also Federations

 

[GnoSIS]

Just 20 districts on a Sun???? This is NOT FINE

 

[Colonizor48]

Don't fall for the illusion. Everything in Stellaris is just a means for war. You cannot win without waging war.
Now if you could buy systems or take them over via diplomatic action, you'd have at least an Economic way to win the game. But as of now, the only means of seizing systems, and therefore win the game, is to declare war. No amount of espionage will change this in the current form.

You can play a tall inwards perfection empire? This update isn't everything i would ever have hoped for ever but it is a massive step in the right direction.

 

[Colonizor48]

Sure you can. Someone else declares war on you then (or coax them into doing so), if you want more systems.
If not, you stay the same size the whole game.

The only meaningful way to interact with other empires (which is seizing systems) is by military force. Espionage is just an add-on to that.

There is a way to diplomaticly expand tho. Its called just being so powerful other empires willingly become your vassal. Then you integrate them.

 

[Arcvalons]

There's actually some information to be gleamed from the screenshots.
The Prision Architect one for example, shows a ringworld, which as they had mentioned, has 10 districts per segment rather than 5. Seems it has 1 agri district, 1 energy district, and 1 housing district active. Organic Sanctuaries seem to take building slots as normal, even after the building rework, though we don't have info about the changes to the bonuses they provide because they've been replaced for the joke.
It also has one roboticist job which is producing 3.4 drones monthly, which seems similar to current version despite the changes in pop growth. That might be broken IDK.

 

[Vanhal]

That's actually the worst April Fools day joke i have seen because those would be unironically fun and original ways to play.

 

[rus-chel]

good jokes, lads!

 

[domein]

I would actually love to be able to give full control to AI, and only focus on doing broad strokes

 

[nikkythegreat]

Call me crazy but Crusader King and Prison architect origin actually sounds fun.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Nemesis DLC should have new origins and there's nothing innately ridiculous about any of these origins. A Primitive rework and letting players start at a disadvantage is great, enhanced diplomacy including marriages, mercenaries and silly events would be amazing, New Gestalt Origins that don't need lots of new mechanics to feel different seems simple and obvious but is actually just mocking those asking for "There should be more Origins available for Machine Empires" a very recent active thread. And I'd love a working AI...

But it's the tease of starting Scenarios that hurts me most. I'd really like to have custom galaxies, starting after a major event, like the joke one after the Nemesis/crisis has damaged the galaxy. But starting games with any other specific goal in mind would be great (capture the flag, king of the hill, Regicide, hold the Relics etc.)

I'd love to see even a handful of special scenarios, Sword of the Stars had things like Progression Wars where you keep moving to new galaxies carrying over ships and techs from the last one, or The Antiquarians where you hunted for relics and also hinted at the sequel. As well as competitive maps with mirrored starts, or starting with advanced techs, or telling specific stories. It also had lots of different galaxy shapes (lines, spirals, clusters, globular clusters, cubes etc.) and that would be great too.

Civ 6 added:
Zombies, Vampires, secret societies and lots of stuff that sound much more like April fools jokes. Silly stuff sells.

You could make something far sillier than any of these (fairly normal) ideas and people would still buy them. This "joke" is rather similar to the "joke" of a fake winning lottery ticket, needlessly cruel and mocking rather than fun.

 

[Elordis]

Prison Architect origin is actually quite cool and can really work in a normal game with some tweaks.

 

[klopkr]

Prison architect is literally a better origin of a run I'm already playing.

10/10 would love to play as a prison warden.

AFD joke or not, the idea of an origin where one tries to survive in a galaxy-scale post-apocalypse sounds very interesting to me. I would play it if it were a real origin. Or even its own galaxy setting independent of origin. lol

I've thought of this setting a lot too. Not sure what you'd do in a stellaris run of it though.

 

[Dragatus]

I expect that our modding community will have all of these playable by the end of the week.

I know what day it is, but I actually would like to see these implemented in-game.

The first one is already on the Stem workshop.

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