Stellaris Dev Diary #229 - Aquatics Species Pack

[Earth Dragon]

The issue is that makes ocean worlds strictly better than any other basic type. As far as I know the best used to be tropical worlds simply because they had a higher chance of being fertile (I think), but it was so minor there wasn't really a point in min maxing so much, but now that we know many aliens we will meet will want ocean worlds it becomes too much of a no-brainer decision to always pick that.

Maybe as a solution the generation should only make a species aquatic if it rolled for ocean world, so no more than 1/9 of empires have that and add some civics to other planet types to balance it out; like bonuses to mountainous for living underground and something to do with sun energy on hot ones.

This is the OTHER reason Aquatic needs to be rather limited from the AI: saturation of ocean worlds. If anything and everything has a chance to be rolling this trait up, then naturally players should be playing from oceans, or in the very least wet, to take advantage of them as slaves and specialist workers.

I have noticed that origins seem to be limited to “one per galaxy generation” as far as the AI goes, but traits and preferences, at least the last time I bothered to pay attention, can be very lopsided

 

[hart30]

Besides growth, but we all know that's a dump-stat anyway.

But really, I think you're overlooking the resource crunch dynamic you'll be facing- the shortage will be in specialized worlds that are efficient in the early/mid-game. Robot factories are a medium-term investment that won't pay themselves off until well after year 50, but it's the resource economy within the 50 years that shape the game most. Aquatics are either going to face a painfully restricted resource economy or a painfully inefficient alloy economy.

Your homeworld- by lack of designation- still isn't where you want to be keeping energy districts or mines or anything, and if you're using farming districts for CGs you don't want to be building industrial districts there as well because you won't have the minerals for it the actual-Industrial District upkeep. Angler farm districts are only a resource savings if you're not using industrial districts for CG anyway, but with split inudstiral districts that's implicit unless you dedicate an off-world planet as your alloy world. This amounts to +1 to your number of needed early-game worlds compared to most empires, who would ditch the farm districts on the homeworld in favor of industrial districts.

But this is where the good-habitability planet shortage kicks in. You could set up an alloy world on one of your guaranteed worlds, and reap that 100% alloy production efficiency from habitability, but Aquatic doesn't boost specialist production. Further, if you're doing alloys on a world you're not doing the alloy-upkeep resource, either minerals or food, which is what Aquatics actually excel in. And if you're using one of two guarantee worlds for alloys, you can only specialize the other in food, minerals, or energy, pick one because you're not getting 25% efficiency on the rest.

At which point, you're still going to need to get 2 basic worker resources from other worlds, at which point you're most likely going to have a 10% output penalty over what you'd already be facing in order to support your early-economy alloys. Long before you have robots to be workers, you're going to need energy and minerals to afford the alloys to build them (and yes, you will need energy districts to be efficient in energy upkeep).

Or, alternatively, you could keep your guaranteed worlds as resource colonies, and move the Alloy factory to one of these off worlds- at which point you're looking at a job robots won't be able to fill early on, filled more slowly by growth penalties, and with a significant output penalty. Setting how long it realistically takes you to establish the third colony, you are going to be tight on alloys as a matter of pop-growth throttling throughput.

Angler will let you have strong food and CG production, but one way or another your alloy production is going to be weak unless you commit to Catalytic Converters- even weaker as you invest in robots, who take 2-3 growth cycles to cover their own upkeep, and another few decades to pay off the energy/alloy cost it took to create them.

That lack of specialist production bonus is no issue at all. You just take the necrophage origin and still have the second civic to choose from whatever u like (slaver or mercantile for example). Add the aquatic and intelligent trait and u gain a species, which has incredible buffs in everything. Its as i said, the agrarian, industrious, extremely adaptive and ingenious traits become basically obsolete, if the ressource bonus of aquatic does not get reduced. And the malus has basically no effect, as it only applies to planets which would have been bad anyway. It just slows down their use as popfactories for ur wet planets.

 

[hart30]

A lot here say the chance to get a good planet is 1/9. Thats just wrong. It is 1/3, as all wet worlds can be counted as "good". Even less, if u count the 3 guaranteed ocean worlds (capital included) to the calculation.

 

[Rezca]

You had me at Dolphin People and benevolent(ish) Ether Drake. Having a symbiotic relationship with a Leviathan - particularly the Drake - was a long standing wish of mine!

 

[tanny]

Climate choice used to be something which doesn't matter in a significant manner. Now, depending on your origin, the world type can have big differences. Would the devs be interested in adding more unique effects for different world types?

 

[Lord_Gong]

Nothing seems too broken. And I am a sucker for Dragons

 

[CaptainGrimlock]

Having finally read (well, skimmed for some) through everything, I have to say that this seems like a nice change. I bet we’ll get an arctic species pack next, but that!s speculation.

Anyways, I don’t mind any portrait being aquatic, even for AI. It feels weird though that the devs seem to be in a lose-lose situation, since the stellaris community can effectively be divided into 2 groups. Min-maxers, who don’t care about theme and just want to win (a broad generalization that doesn’t apply to everyone in the group), and roleplayers, who want to come up with stories about their empire and the rest of their galaxy. Those groups generally want different things from the game, so will ask devs to do things that contradict what the other group wants.

 

[hart30]

Here are some predictions if everything stays as it is:

 

[GOLANX]

Do Gaia worlds count as wet worlds for Aquatics? Or are they going to hit the big negative modifiers?

 

[Earth Dragon]

Having finally read (well, skimmed for some) through everything, I have to say that this seems like a nice change. I bet we’ll get an arctic species pack next, but that!s speculation.

Anyways, I don’t mind any portrait being aquatic, even for AI. It feels weird though that the devs seem to be in a lose-lose situation, since the stellaris community can effectively be divided into 2 groups. Min-maxers, who don’t care about theme and just want to win (a broad generalization that doesn’t apply to everyone in the group), and roleplayers, who want to come up with stories about their empire and the rest of their galaxy. Those groups generally want different things from the game, so will ask devs to do things that contradict what the other group wants.

Aquatic is just a terrible trait. Having an Ocean world preference is already designating you as a species that is tied to water in a variety of different ways. The trait is insinuating the need, even as an intelligent species capable of making starships, for vast water biomes.

Just look at the picture of the Desert: it is of a river. The bulk of intelligent species trying to utilize the Dust Deserts of that planets surface seem like they could figure out a way to make that area work to stage rudimentary living arrangements. This was how it was already represented in game with “ocean preference”.

The aquatic trait says that even this large river is insufficient as we need our homes in the water, our recreation has to be submerged in water, etc etc.

Long story short, aquatic is a garbage trait for this game. World preference has it all covered already. It leaves it on you to come up with a reason why they are tied to those planets. Aquatic is a trait built purely around min/maxing and has little thought to thematic impact and galaxy creation balance.

people are asking for cold and dry equivalents, but why? What about the “preference” system didn’t have this covered? Why do the min/maxers and goobers get to throw a layer into the game that only serves them and really hammers thematic, alluring galaxy creations. Can’t wait for the Desert locked Dolphins, Arctic locked Reptiles, and Ocean locked fur bags to go along with humanoid hive minds.

This post with get red X’d for sure, and a bunch a responses will be fired that, again, more resemble what the preference system already stands for.

 

[Lorenerd11]

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).

I mean, I guess you could add exceptions for these specific portraits that do fit the Aquatic trait thematically, but this would also involve a lot more work. And the Aquatic trait should certainly not be rolled by any arthropoid.

 

[Earth Dragon]

I mean, I guess you could add exceptions for these specific portraits that do fit the Aquatic trait thematically, but this would also involve a lot more work. And the Aquatic trait should certainly not be rolled by any arthropoid.

And the thing they keep dodging:

Why should these reptiles get a further -20% on the Desert portrait? The type of environment where many “aquatic” reptiles live (since we insist on using a loose interpretation of the word, and not the way it’s being presented here).

 

[majikero]

The aquatic trait says that even this large river is insufficient as we need our homes in the water, our recreation has to be submerged in water, etc etc.

Low habitability does mean they can't live there. It just expensive and terrible. Aquatic as a trait means they breath water. Oceanic only means you live ON water, not really IN water.

 

[NilQ]

Would there be aquatic-based bonuses or penalties to ship combat? Two potential examples:

1. “3D Combat Awareness” (+ Evasion): most aquatic species have instincts to hunt/survive in 3 dimensions while land-bound species typically think in 2D and have to be trained to think in 3D.

or….

2. “Liquid Mass” (- Ship Speed): Aquatic species’ ships should be full of water or at least have extra equipment on board to handle the liquid filtration of their staff’s life support. I would think the increased mass should make their ships harder to maneuver. Maybe this is more of an evasion penalty instead.

Im sure there is some other bonuses or penalties that could play off of the fact that liquid water is considered an incompressible substance.

Maybe the first example could be a boon for Avian or a future Aerial Species Pack (think gas giant species that never land).

 

[Earth Dragon]

Low habitability does mean they can't live there. It just expensive and terrible. Aquatic as a trait means they breath water. Oceanic only means you live ON water, not really IN water.

Are you seriously stating the exact point I’ve been making this entire thread and throwing it in my face as if I’m the one not understanding the concept?

 

[Critical Ethics]

As the resources are food and CG, both of which are upkeep resources, it's nice but not overwhelming. The CG economy is a net-positive compared to mining and industrial districts, but the farming output is only a merit if you take the opportunity-cost of the Catalytic Converters and Bio-Ascension routes.

I don't think it's actually intended to be an excess food production civic. You only get 8 (10) base food per district* compared to a standard empire's 12 (16) so an "uncapped" size 18 planet is only producing as much as a planet "capped" at 12 districts. In a standard empire those spare districts could be used for cities + a bonus hydroponics bay from the unlocked slots. You could ramp up food faster than another empire by prioritizing the boosted food producers, but at the extra mineral cost of having to overbuild districts.

*has it been confirmed it's 1 Angler and 1 Pearl Diver per district? If not this post is all gibberish and can be ignored.

It seems to me that the uncappedness is just to avoid being messed over by the RNG rather than a main selling point. The actual benefit of this civic is you are, effectively, "spending" 4 to 6 food (before modifiers) to gain 4 trade and 3 to 5 consumer goods (before modifiers). Basically an obfuscated, and better implemented IMO, CG version of catalytic converters.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Low habitability does mean they can't live there. It just expensive and terrible. Aquatic as a trait means they breath water. Oceanic only means you live ON water, not really IN water.

Dolphins and whales aren't aquatic?

 

[Peko?]

Aquatic is just a terrible trait. Having an Ocean world preference is already designating you as a species that is tied to water in a variety of different ways. The trait is insinuating the need, even as an intelligent species capable of making starships, for vast water biomes.

Just look at the picture of the Desert: it is of a river. The bulk of intelligent species trying to utilize the Dust Deserts of that planets surface seem like they could figure out a way to make that area work to stage rudimentary living arrangements. This was how it was already represented in game with “ocean preference”.

The aquatic trait says that even this large river is insufficient as we need our homes in the water, our recreation has to be submerged in water, etc etc.

Long story short, aquatic is a garbage trait for this game. World preference has it all covered already. It leaves it on you to come up with a reason why they are tied to those planets. Aquatic is a trait built purely around min/maxing and has little thought to thematic impact and galaxy creation balance.

people are asking for cold and dry equivalents, but why? What about the “preference” system didn’t have this covered? Why do the min/maxers and goobers get to throw a layer into the game that only serves them and really hammers thematic, alluring galaxy creations. Can’t wait for the Desert locked Dolphins, Arctic locked Reptiles, and Ocean locked fur bags to go along with humanoid hive minds.

This post with get red X’d for sure, and a bunch a responses will be fired that, again, more resemble what the preference system already stands for.

You know, being a bit less aggresive and refraining from calling people who disagree with you names might engender a better discussion.

 

[Earth Dragon]

You know, being a bit less aggresive and refraining from calling people who disagree with you names might engender a better discussion.

I’m not seeing you discuss anything. Don’t see any name calling, unless mix/maxer has moved to the taboo list, and I’m pretty sure spongebob destigmatized goober a long time ago.

but if you’d like you can replace them with “power gamer” and “goofball for the lulz”

 

[Primarch Victus]

Now I think there should be a seal-like mammalian portrait, unless that is covered by one of the 15 as well.

And let's not forget of the Sea Elves.