Stellaris Dev Diary #229 - Aquatics Species Pack

[Peko?]

Shouldn't the Aquatic trait give bonus evasion rather than hull strength? It would make far more thematic sense. I get why there are stronger hulls, but a fluid interior of a ship would also allow a *massive* advantage of manuverability given that g-forces would be significantly reduced on the occupants. (In the case of inertial dampeners, this would mean having to work less-hard, which in turn means more power to things like thrusters)

I feel like this would be counteracted by the increased weight of a water-filled interior. There might be more power for boosters but they'll also have to do a lot more work.

-Aquatic does seem to have trap potential as well. Any chance of restricting that too wet worlds in empire creation? Anglers also seems to potentially have this issue as well and probably should be limited to wet worlds only in the empire creation screen. Let's not give new players or casuals a bad time by leaving traps for them to waltz into.

It's restricted to Ocean planet starts.

 

[SilentReflection]

How does the aquatic trait interact with artificial constructs (Ecumenopoli, Ring Worlds, and Habitats)?

 

[CaptainGrimlock]

Damn 30 Size planet? thats a big planet

Technically, if you cheese the worm into the contingency home system, you can make a size 50.

 

[Lord Valdyr]

I feel like this would be counteracted by the increased weight of a water-filled interior. There might be more power for boosters but they'll also have to do a lot more work.

I assume you mean mass, since weight is irrelevant in space. (Weight is just a measure of the effect of gravity on an object) Yes, it would require more energy to reach higher speeds, but that would be offset by the higher maneuverability meaning you could maintain those speeds because you could turn sharper, potentially. This is actually exactly how pilot G-suits work. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-suit) I've seen this idea explored in many scifi books, and is even an active field of research for possible spaceflight methods right now. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing#Space_travel)

I specifically remember reading a very good scifi book where the 'mystery' of the alien's extremely maneuverable ships was solved by discovering they were an aquatic species and had ships filled with liquid.

It's very possible in reality the mass-to-thrust ratio might not have a solution, but we're already abstracting into theoretical scifi stuff anyway, so there's no reason to believe liquid-filled ships would not be your Empire's solution to inertial dampening. Therefore, evasion bonuses would actually be the most realistic representation of that in game, as higher-g maneuvers can be performed.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Are we sold on the “+20% Ocean Habitability” thing? This doesn’t actually make sense.

It’s essentially assumed that most species living on an ocean world was aquatic/amphibious before anyway. But water isn’t water isn’t water isn’t water. Just on Earth we have dozens of clearly different biomes determined by different factors.

Salt vs Fresh
Warm vs Cold
How close to the beach are you
Coral reefs
What’s the depth

Etc.

It’s not hard to imagine an Ocean world that is colder then what a certain Ocean species is used to, and with varying pressure based on depth, their preferred depth wouldn’t match up with the preferred temperature.

This is also falsely assuming that all ocean worlds would have high levels of salt there. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that a planet could have higher amounts of Potassium in the water instead, which could easily be an irritant to any species used to one over the other. This may take time to adjust, or even force natural birth in that environment for those members of the species to be comfortable on that planet.

Maybe there are no predators your size or larger on your home world. Having to adjust to having Sharks, what would be “standard fare” and not even warrant the “hostile wildlife” planet perks, might be so out of your comfort range, it’s causes huge amounts of adjustment (represented by increased amenity needs and decreased production due to spending increased time ensuring your people’s safety).

When you start to combine all of these factors, giving auto 100% Habitability of seems inappropriate just because your species comes from another Ocean world. There are already traits for players to bridge this gap fully. Even a 10% increase mark would be much more appropriate, and avoid an “auto 100%” for this species type.

thanks for reading!!

It also seems kind of unnecessary? You're already incentivised to settle on water worlds for the bonuses and you can pick up +20% from other sources pretty easily. It also makes adaptive/extremely adaptive a mugs choice and nonadaptive practically free points. Maybe swap it for a +10% bonus to the other wet worlds instead?

 

[majikero]

It also seems kind of unnecessary? You're already incentivised to settle on water worlds for the bonuses and you can pick up +20% from other sources pretty easily. It also makes adaptive/extremely adaptive a mugs choice and nonadaptive practically free points. Maybe swap it for a +10% bonus to the other wet worlds instead?

Not really. Non-homeworlds are still 80%. The text says "perfectly adapted" so its at 100% with it. Non-adaptive isn't free since all the other wet worlds will have lower habitability.

More admiral traits to stack with clones is pretty nice. I feel like its too good to be a free trait. Phototrophic is better choice for a free trait than this.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

Why is the new civic exclusive with agrarian idyll and certain origins? Combining it with agrarian idyll was my first thought, to get some more interesting pacifist playstyle but its excluded. There are way stronger things in stellaris than an angler+idyll synergy and I don't think it warrants an exclusion. Same with the origins. If I want to play as anglers living in an habitat where there are no agrarian districts that could benefit from the civic, why shouldn't I be allowed to. If I want to "waste" a civic slot in this let me do it. It feels like the Devs unnecessarily make desicions for th players in the above cases.
Players should be allowed to make suboptimal or synergistic choices.

In my opinion there is just one case when Devs should restict the combination of options during empire creation and that's balance considerations.

Thinking about it, the Trickle Up Economics Tradition should be reworked to add +1 TV to all worker stratum jobs, so that Prosperity Preachers and any new jobs with TV can benefit. Could also make it apply to specialists so that Managers would see a buff, but that would also help Artificers too.

Not wanting to speak for the devs, but bonuses currently are all allocated at the job level.
So behind the screen it doesn't give +2 amenities to farmers, but farmer jobs check if you have Agrarian Idyll and if you do they produce 2 amenities.

So making them compatible means programming in a check into both the Angler job as well the Pearl Diver job.
I imagine that isn't done because it requires by hand adjusting everything that is affected and the more similar features are added the more this workload increases. Easier to just prevent combinations and also has less chance to produce balancing headaches.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Not really. Non-homeworlds are still 80%. The text says "perfectly adapted" so its at 100% with it. Non-adaptive isn't free since all the other wet worlds will have lower habitability.

Yes I wasn't trying to say it was of literally 0 benefit, I meant that it seems like overkill given the housing and production benefits while also generating a disproportionately large amount of weird (mechanical and, uh, flavoural?) edge cases compared to what it brings to the table.

 

[starkwolf]

I like the idea in general, and that it comes with new traits, ascension perks, etc.

But one thing that really does bother me is the profile for aquatic buildings. Why are they above ground on their homeworld? It really hurts the aesthetic for me, though I understand it is probably more convenient than trying to have the game discern whether a world is wet or not to use it. I really hope there is some chance that on wet worlds the above-ground dwellings are replaced with an underwater seascape. Any chance of this?

It makes no sense for a species that evolved underwater on a planet that is overwhelmingly ocean to go out of their way specifically to overcrowd their population and live on that tiny spec of land in uncomfortable, modified dwellings on their own home planet.

 

[Critical Ethics]

I like the idea in general, and that it comes with new traits, ascension perks, etc.

But one thing that really does bother me is the profile for aquatic buildings. Why are they above ground on their homeworld? It really hurts the aesthetic for me, though I understand it is probably more convenient than trying to have the game discern whether a world is wet or not to use it. I really hope there is some chance that on wet worlds the above-ground dwellings are replaced with an underwater seascape. Any chance of this?

It makes no sense for a species that evolved underwater on a planet that is overwhelmingly ocean to go out of their way specifically to overcrowd their population and live on that tiny spec of land in uncomfortable, modified dwellings on their own home planet.

The buildings are for the landlubbers to visit so they don't get scared and confused trying to find where the civilisations are. Nobody actually lives in them.

 

[Magnumiso]

Will there be any sort of event exclusive to aquatics on the sea of consciousness planet?

 

[Lorenerd11]

Just limiting it to aquatics and molluscs doesn't work well, as it excludes such stellar "aquatic themed" creatures as the mantis shrimp and the kelp-looking plantoid.

It wouldn't be limited for player-made empire designs, only the randomly generated ones.

 

[starkwolf]

The buildings are for the landlubbers to visit so they don't get scared and confused trying to find where the civilisations are. Nobody actually lives in them.

I hadn't thought of it like that. Actually that makes a lot of sense, clever!

 

[Orinsul]

More fish! We need more fish

 

[DeanTheDull]

No it's not, you know it's not, and I'm not sure why all of us have to suffer through the 75% of portraits that make no sense whatsoever as "ocean-locked" species just so some of you can get a chuckle.

No one, that I've seen at least, is advocating for players losing the choice to do whatever they want. We are hoping that the AI have limited ability to roll Ocean-locked butterflies and horses

So... no seahorses?

 

[LoLuecoLueco]

Ocean Paradise isn't quite the equivalent of an Ecumenopolis, but its certain good in its own right.

We looked into it, but there was no reasonable way to significantly change the appearance of the planet views or diplomatic screens to be dynamic and underwater.

This one picked my atention, not saying that you guys are lazy of course but what makes it so difficult to create a underwater communications screen for aquatic species? I tought that it was just a background image that changed according to the state of the planet the capital is set in.

 

[Tamwin5]

As I mentioned earlier, there are portraits in almost all groups that are perfectly reasonable with aquatic.

Just limiting it to aquatics and molluscs doesn't work well, as it excludes such stellar "aquatic themed" creatures as the mantis shrimp and the kelp-looking plantoid.

As long as players can select any portrait they want, I think restricting naturally generating traits is fine. Having too many portraits qualify for aquatic can be immersion breaking, but only having a few won't be. Still, looking at the portraits I think more than half of portraits would make total sense as aquatics, and there isn't a single species archetype that doesn't have at least two.

 

[Druplesnubb]

There should be a new Sol variant where Earth is a tomb world inhabited by Posadist commie dolphins (sadly you can't be spiritualist, militarist and communist at the same time).

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

This is the best options and all what I think most are asking for.

The people asking for "aquatic reptiles" and "aquatic mammals" are missing that it is far more thematic for them to NOT have the Aquatic trait then to have it.

Sea Turtles need to lay their eggs outside of water. They need land. They can rough out a living on a desert world with an Oasis in a way a fish species, who need to live exclusively in water and build their cities there, can't.

An Otter isn't going to sleep in water, breathe while under water, and for the most part, isn't going to eat or breed under the water. So even if they are from an Ocean planet, they still need land mass. They can make it work on a Tundra planet with a lake or an Alpine planet with wide rivers full of fish with their dwellings on the land beside it. Again, that's how it's currently presented in game. The aquatic trait doesn't make any true sense to limit them as "exclusively on water planets". They are more likely to find Ocean worlds that don't fit their exact needs, even when that's where they come from, then to find a cold weather planet that has no biome they can operate in whatsoever.

"Ocean" planets canonically have islands. (" Oceans cover more than 90% of the surface, with scattered islands making up the remaining percentage. ") These could provide the land required for a sea turtle. Or perhaps *this* world's sea turtles are hatched as water breathers rather than air breathers. Perhaps they lay their eggs on storm debris from the said islands, but spend the rest of their time in the deep ocean, living a water-breathing lifestyle *because they're not earth turtles*.

An "otter" which has developed on an ocean world might well be able to sleep in water, breathe underwater, and eat and breed there too. You're thinking in too limited terms and assuming the alien species has earth biology. And of course we have examples of sea mammals that live exactly that sort of life here on earth.
Perhaps though the otter only has to sleep, eat, and breed under water, and is a deep diving air breather. There's a lot of possible alternatives, and we shouldn't necessarily be limited to just "deep ocean fish" and the like.

And of course limiting it to molluscs and aquatics means you'd never see a random shrimp from an aquatic world, despite them being, you know, based on an aquatic species.
You'd never see an aquatic lithoid by this measure either.

Not all the molluscs are necessarily aquatic-suitable either, with the snail and the slug (although yes, there *are* aquatic snails and slugs, but that argument goes for the shrimp, the more "crabby" and "spider-like" arthropoids as well. The frog and fish reptilloids fit fairly well with an oceanic/coastal life style too. And of course, plantoids could be formed from drifting algal/seaweed forms, and lithoids could be either deep sea or island based.

No it's not, you know it's not, and I'm not sure why all of us have to suffer through the 75% of portraits that make no sense whatsoever as "ocean-locked" species just so some of you can get a chuckle.

I don't think it's quite that bad. Some are going to be more out of place than others, but *most* can be justified - even some of the apparently winged species.
You seem to object specifically to the butterflies in some of your posts - well, perhaps those "wings" in that case are used to "fly" underwater, with the "butterfly" actually being a large bulky creature rather than a tiny little insect. Perhaps the membrane of the "wing" is more like the bell of a jellyfish than an insect wing. Not everything has to work by earth biology.

It wouldn't be limited for player-made empire designs, only the randomly generated ones.

But in the case of what's suggested, we'd *never* see a random aquatic mantis shrimp, an aquatic lithoid, an aquatic kelpoid, or an aquatic version of Massive 12 (the reptiloid that looks a bit like a deep sea fish).

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

As long as players can select any portrait they want, I think restricting naturally generating traits is fine. Having too many portraits qualify for aquatic can be immersion breaking, but only having a few won't be. Still, looking at the portraits I think more than half of portraits would make total sense as aquatics, and there isn't a single species archetype that doesn't have at least two.

If they had a more sophisticated system where they could knock out specifically unsuitable portraits for a given scenario, then that might work, but restricting it to the (random) AI only being able to have aquatics from two classes seems overly restrictive.