Stellaris Dev Diary #229 - Aquatics Species Pack

[Me_]

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.

Rather than ensuring equal blandness to satisfy pedantic min-maxing, it would be better to one-by-one add unique element to every world type. Obviously, this needs to start somewhere.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

No.

Those who favor things being grounded in science fiction versus those who favor space fantasy.

and make no mistake that Aquatic is a trait created for min/max purposes, as the lack of that trait would have NO impact on the Space Fantasy players

Look.

You're trying to restrict the trait to only appearing randomly on the species *you* want to see it on, and ignoring where other people have species *they* want to see it randomly appearing on.

In other words, you're trying to impose your specific preference on the entire player base, and doing this by using earth biology as if it applies everywhere, and cannot possible happen differently on other worlds.

Science fiction could easily have the majority of portraits apply to a race with an entirely aquatic existence, without edging into "space fantasy" - whatever that's even meant to mean these days, since I only see it come up as a perjorative these days. Some, yes, are not suited to it. But it's not as simple as cut out an entire category

Your point is if I use a categorical word to describe a group of people I disagree with, then it has to be a pejorative, and it has to be an insult.

It’s true that I don’t like mix/maxers and power gamers meddling with games I like as it generally disrupts balance so badly you have to at least pseudo power game to at least work within the system they are demanding.

Calling them power gamers is not, and should be considered, flinging insults

The good news here is that the majority of your arguments have nothing to do with power gaming.
The bad news is that you're using "power gamer" and so on as if they're doing something wrong, and yours is the "one true way to play", as if you're the only roleplayer involved here.

 

[Helicopter200]

Damn 30 Size planet? thats a big planet

 

[Zoomy]

Ah, yeah I didn't read this well, sorry about that, my bad.

Anyways that could make coral boys a possibility and undead coral possible too, we'll need to wait for the portraits.

Yeah, a coral-themed addition to the lithoid pack would be pretty ballin'. Not even as part of Aquatics, just add it to Lithoids.

 

[Ren Nobody]

1.) Find system with lots of planetary bodies.

2.) Build Dysonsphere, freezing all the Planets.

3.) Build IceMining thingy.

4.) Profit???

 

[LucasG21]

Very extensive! When you say that ice asteroids can be mined only once, is it because they will be destroyed afterwards, or simply not be usable for the decision anymore.

 

[Zoomy]

Ok I love all of this, this is some great new stuff and I wanna try it so badly but Devs hear me out. I'm a lithoid main and a massive lithoid fan so what about an aquatic lithoid (since you guys have allowed necroid lithoids)? It could have a coral looking portrait picture!

To quote the dev diary "It doesn’t require you to have an Aquatic portrait", so hopefully that means not only aquatic lithoids but necrophage aquatic lithoids.

 

[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.

 

[oreopirate]

And that doesn't really matter since the intent is clearly that they are water breathers which needs water to survive in. If they don't have it they're just air breathers with ocean habitability.

How does this imply filtering Oxygen from water only?

To be honest, this makes me think that you do not understand how gills work.
Gills can pull oxygen from air. Really, really easily. However, if they dry, they can't pull oxygen out of the air. In a sufficiently humid environment, they are several fish species on earth that can live outside of water for hours if not days. Mudskippers (subfamily Oxudercinae) can spend up to two thirds of their lives out of water. The Epaullette Shark of North Australia can survive for over an hour in ~90 F (Give or take 39C) water, with no oxygen. Similar to many other tidepool fish species. Hell, to be even more specific, the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic Tarpons (Megalops cyprinoides, and M. atlanticus) are ocean dwelling fish who are also obligate air breathers. Their gills are poorly developed and their swim bladder functions like a lung. So they have to surface to breathe by gulping down air, similar to a beta fish, or a lungfish.

Now at around medium dog size, a fish's organ start to crush each other, when out of the water because they use the buoyancy of water to support their organs within their body cavity. This is also why Cetaceans and Sirenians die when on land. So "Like a fish out of water" could easily refer to this, instead of oxygen.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

I was kind of hoping for the new Leviathan to be more unique and I would prefer for the trait to be tied to portraits. I am already annoyed at all the "underwater butterflies" AI empires that I will encounter.

Whilst I can see how the underwater butterfly thing might be annoying, there are plenty of portraits suitable to an aquatic species in the current list.

Humanoid #3 or Humanoid #4 could be aquatic humanoids - from an ocean world with small areas of land, but primarily resident in the sea; think mermen/mermaids.

Mammal "Normal 6" is our favourite space otter.

Reptilian "Massive 12" is more fish than reptile already; "massive 11" is frog-like; "reptilian #16" could be a coastal lizard (and an ocean world with a lot of islands could have a lot of coast).

Arthropoids include "Arthropoid 19", a Mantis Shrimp; "Massive 14", which is some sort of tentacled shellbeast and could be aquatic; "Massive 12" and "Massive 17" could again be coastal based; "slender 05" could be derived from a burrowing shallow water creature.

The Molluscoid category as a whole is quite suitable, especially "Molluscoid 17", the cuddly starfish; "Normal 07", a potential jellyfish; "Massive 11" and "Massive 15" which appear to be cuttlefish with a humaniform body.

Fungoids are more tricky.

Plantoids "Normal 08", "Slender 02" potentially could be piles of sapient seaweed.

And the lithoids could potentially all be rock formations from deep sea environments.

And that's just at a quick glance, and ignores any "normal" development that might have paralleled Pacific Islander development, with island hopping civilisation in the portion of the planet that has land.

 

[Critical Ethics]

This is not a horror game.

*looks up from genetically engineering an entire space faring civilisation to be extra delicious so I can free up some landmass to better fuel my star imploders* sorry what?

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

I second this.

Let the option for player and custom empire but for randomly generated empire make it so that only aquatic / Molluscoid portait can be aquatique.

Meeting an aquatic ape would be weird.

Maybe the Aquatic trait could be restricted from random species generation, making it so that only Aquatic and Molluscoid portraits can get it through random empire generation, but otherwise allowing custom designs to use whichever portrait they want?

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.

 

[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).

 

[Zoomy]

I think it's a case of like Lithoids where the trait comes about because of the portrait, Lithoid Necroids is only possible because the Lithoid portrait supplies one trait and the Necroid origin supplies the other, so there would need to be one portrait in either Lithoid or Aquatics (most likely the latter) that supplied both traits. Then you could have the triple threat of undead coral... which sounds really cool.

What are you talking about? Aquatics is not bound by portrait, why are you talking about aquatic portraits. I literally quoted the section of the dev diary where they make it clear the aquatic trait is not bound to the aquatic portrait set.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Anglers replace farmers on wet worlds for agri districts, hydroponics and the food processing buildings.

So the hydroponics building is a fish pond in the ocean? This is not a complaint.

Yeah totally agree, there should be a restriction about aquatic species trait for AI, so that it didn't turn out in whole aquatic galaxy.

Randomly generated aquatic empires being limited to molluscs and fishes is fine by me. Or at least heavily weighted. Maybe have a small chance for any waterworld empire to get the trait but suitably fishy or molluscy portraits get it automatically?

Suggestion: new Sol variant where earth is a waterworld full of dolphinoids and Kevin Costner

 

[The Wolf with the Dragon]

I'm excited for this, but I'm a little bit concerned about a few things:

The descriptions on what many of these civics and traits are and what they do is messy. I get that we want to make as interest civics as possible, but the sheer variety of what one civic actually does is a bit much and the restrictions are a bit too relaxed. I at least feel that for new players this will be a bit too much.

This for example. The fact that this doesn't require you to at least start on a wet planet feels a bit weird. But the fact that it doesn't require you to not have picked the Life-Seeded Origin feels like an oversight. It opens the door for so many new players to pick this without fully realizing how useless it might be for them, because Life-Seeded doesn't mention the fact that habitability on any other worlds than Gaia aren't just bad, it's zero.

So yeah, all this freedom comes with making the game just a bit less accessible to new players in general. Because there is so many things to keep track on and they will start to feel like "okay, what civics can I actually pick?", because the game doesn't openly state that Anglers-Life Seeded isn't a good combo. We don't want players to have to know mechanics of the game before they have even tried it. We tell Lithoid-players to avoid Shattered Ring for a reason.

Speaking of Life-Seeded, isn't Ocean Paradise just stupidly better than Life-Seeded? I know I might attract mockery talking about balance and people going "what game have YOU been playing", but let's ignore that.

Life-Seeded gives you a 25-size Gaia World, which in turn gives you 100% habitability, +10% happiness, +10% Pop output, increased capacity and one of each exotic resource. (None of this is actually stated when picking the Origin by the way. It just says "Some rare planetary features")

Ocean Paradise meanwhile gives a 30-size Ocean World with what seems like many of the same resources that Life-Seeded get and "Rich Food deposits". You lose out on 100% habitability but in turn you are in no way limited to just living on one world, or even just ocean worlds. And coupled with the Aquatic trait, which is a free trait, you gain your 100% habitability, -10% housing, +10% output on most menial jobs, +10% Hull strength and then you're not even strictly limited on living on just one world. And then combine it with Anglers civic, to give you uncapped Agricultural Districts and even more resources from them.

But then combine this with an ascension perk made specifically for you which gives you +50% more bonuses from your trait and makes it easier to terraform even more ocean worlds!

What I'm afraid of is that this level of synergy is the start of a power creep that is leaving old origins and civics behind. I know they we're very recently buffed but it almost feel like nothing else comes close to synergy like this. How good it'll be we'll find out, but it feel like Ocean Paradise by itself leaves Life-Seeded behind as it just plainly a better world that doesn't limit your habitability on other planets. 1 exotic gas, 1 rare crystal and 1 volatile mote feature just doesn't feel like it can compete.

 

[LystAP]

Anglers replace farmers on wet worlds for agri districts, hydroponics and the food processing buildings.

Wouldn't Arctic worlds have oceans under their frozen surface?

Does this also mean that the preset Scyldari Confederacy will be updated with the Aquatic trait and Anglers civic? It seems to fit them, considering you had also updated the Maweer Caretakers preset empire as well.

The Scyldari are a perfect example of an Aquatic species not using a molluscoid or the new Aquatic species portrait. They been around almost forever as a preset empire, and have it in their description from the start that they inhabit the deep sea and exploited ocean resources sustainably.

 

[LadyEleanor]

Agree with this strongly.

and if the goobers want their “ocean butterflies” they can program them themselves and put them in the rotation to randomly show up

but what about sea snails, sea otters, underwater lithoids, marine reptiles, sea plants, etc
the concept of the hive mind in stellaris is more outlandish than any of the portraits being aquatic

 

[oreopirate]

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.

I mean... I hate to break it to you, but Sea Otters spend most of their lives in the water. In fact, they really only go on land when there is a storm coming.


Am I the only person who has fun coming up with the biology of aliens in this game? Made even more fun by contrasting occurrences. Like if I got a horse with Aquatic as an AI empire, I'd have a lot of fun coming up with a workable evolutionary history. With a lack of fins, that means either air bladders, or they are demersal and live on the bottom. They have little reason to get off the bottom, everything they need, evolutionarily speaking is on the bottom.
Like for all the complaints coming from people who want some portraits locked, do you not do this?

 

[oreopirate]

So no new planet graphics, the aquatics just build the city on top of a regular ocean world? No representation of fluid in the room graphic. So it’s just a paid skin. Nothing new

So what does a new civic, two new origins, a trait, and an ascension perk count as? Mind you, this is more content and unique gameplay than any other species pack.