Stellaris Dev Diary #229 - Aquatics Species Pack

[DeanTheDull]

What resource shortage? You'll be hiting a pop shortage long before you hit resource shortage. Trade is pretty good here since the CG from farm district means you can stay on full energy trade which means you'll easily run a surplus of energy and just buy the minerals you need to build anything. You can keep non-wet planets with good farm districts as pure farms to pump up alloy production.

Alloys, energy-at-scale to support terraforming, and/or the minerals to support it all if you don't also take Catalytic.

If you're using your homeworld for science, and an ocean world for farming, your third guaranteed ocean world can only focus in one of three things not already covered- energy, alloys, or minerals. No matter what, you're going to need them to maximize the build.

The Pearl trade value is nice, but it's a cherry on top, not an energy income substitute. It's good enough to cover the upkeep of city or industrial district or a specialist building, but it's not going to be driving the profits you need for tens of thousands of credits for terraforming. It won't even be enough to cover robot factories and robot upkeep. You'll need energy, and mechanically they'll be best on your second guaranteed world. If you don't use it for them, however- if you put energy workers in the outback, or a dry world- you're looking at 50% energy workers due to how heavy the habitability bat hits them. That pushes back your terraforming by years if not decades.

But the same 50% applies if you use that dry world for alloys instead. On the guaranteed world, your alloy output would be the full 3 alloys per worker, plus stability/other bonuses. On what should be a 20% habitability but is now a 0% world, that's 1.5 alloys per worker. Each industrial factory would only be producing an amount for about 3 robot factories of upkeep, which is a terrible ratio.

And god forbid you don't use catalytic converter, because then you'll need the minerals to food the alloy world districts. Instead of a nearly 1-to-1 mineral-to-alloy worker support ratio if your miners were on an ocean world, you'd have a nearly 2-to-1, and the miner pops would be growing half as fast, meaning a slower alloy expansion. Which- again- could itself be at 50%.

Depending on how wide and varied your planetary ecosystem will be, it's going to be hit- hard- by the habitability bat unless/until you get appropriate pops, which is itself RNG dependent.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

With all these Traits, Civics, Origins, etc., favoring Wet worlds and Oceans specifically, there's been some discussions about this making those planets more valuable than Cold and Dry worlds. Now I doubt you'll be able to tease us with the possibility of future Desert-themed or Mountain-themed packs (but feel free to tease all the same), but has there a been any internal consideration on how this pack tweaks the desirability of certain planet types?


Seems like we'll get that next week.

I suspect bringing the other portraits/worlds up to par is falling to the custodian team now. Which I welcome but I suspect means there will be a bit of a lag.


Maybe now is a good time to make suggestions for ways other world types can be boosted/have habitibility trait synergies?

 

[majikero]

The Pearl trade value is nice, but it's a cherry on top, not an energy income substitute. It's good enough to cover the upkeep of city or industrial district or a specialist building, but it's not going to be driving the profits you need for tens of thousands of credits for terraforming. It won't even be enough to cover robot factories and robot upkeep. You'll need energy, and mechanically they'll be best on your second guaranteed world. If you don't use it for them, however- if you put energy workers in the outback, or a dry world- you're looking at 50% energy workers due to how heavy the habitability bat hits them. That pushes back your terraforming by years if not decades.

Merchants, bureaucrats and soldiers don't care about habitability. I colonize tomb worlds all the time, stuff it with commercial and admin building. When you get robots, it starts getting minerals or farms or energy.

The only resource shortage I ever get is consumer goods.

 

[TheDungen]

Aquatic Species Trait
We’re adding a new (zero point cost) Aquatic species trait. It doesn’t require you to have an Aquatic portrait, but it will require your species to start on an Ocean World. We hope that this covers those of you who want more freedom of choice for your species portraits, while still keeping the aquatic theme intact. The trait also gains additional bonuses whenever the Hydrocentric Ascension Perk has been selected.

View attachment 766733
From the deep we come!​

Cool any chance we might get to use lithoid portraits for machine empires? I think the golem portrait would be really cool for a machine empire.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

The developers can, and should, make it so that generated AI empires can only get the Aquatic trait if they have the Acquatic Portrait (unless it is one of the Empires made by the player). That's a better solution than just limiting it for everyone.

Why not just limit aquatic to need an ocean planet start?

Technically the Scyldari are aquatic mammalians so I see no conflict here.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

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.

All three types of Wet worlds are currently strictly worse than the other planet categories, because they have a bias towards food production, and food is the most worthless resource.

The Aquatics pack will balance them with the other categories, not make them overpowered.

 

[Al Davoodi]

I hope i can create a "little mermaid" species with a fitting nice portrait.

 

[giant_sloth]

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 is very unfortunate. Hopefully modders will be able to do something about this.

 

[TheDungen]

Damn, I was hoping to combine Agrarian Idyll with Anglers, but at least we still have Catalytic Processing. I suppose the job swaps made it play badly? Or it was a balance choice?

Will there be any new features for dry and cold worlds in the future? Were there discussions of harvesting habitable cold worlds for your oceans? Or would that have overlapped too much with the habitable planets system?

But this looks really fun, I'm considering using the Aquatic trait for oceanic space plants, using phototrophic as well. And with thrifty, Merchant Guilds looks like an excellent civic choice that would work really well. Since you're adding civics which give trade value to other jobs, could the mercantile tree give +1 or +2 additional trade value to those jobs as well as clerks?

I think the idea is that Anglers is not really agriculture.
Also why would you take agrarian idyll these days it's competently useless since they restricted building slots to city districts.

It's all fun and games until the inevitable first game with Aquatic Elves, Dwarves, Porcupines, Dragons, Parrots, Peacocks, Butterflies, Spiders, Radishes, Cacti, Holograms, Skeletoids and semi-robotic Zombies.

With huge number of other portraits, it is obvious that without any limitation the odds of find an actual Acquatic Acquatics are going to be extremally slim.

Yes it would be nice to be able to set weights to certain combinations.

Is there an achievement for killing:

• the space dragon,
• a nanite dragon,
• Shard,
• the aquatic dragon.

All in one game?

"Here be Dragonslayers"

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.

Maybe for Stellaris 2 then?

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

Maybe it should change names for Anglers to fish farms

But what about the guys? Seashell-armor?

Green and orange tights.

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.

I was hoping it would work with Gaia worlds.

Is there a way to make Aquatics also work with Continental and Arctic worlds?

At least Arctic

Can the "expand planetary sea" decision be used 1 time per planet or unlimited times or?

I hope unlimited, consuming a frozen world every time you use it.

Question: will the size of a planet with "expand planetary sea" be reduced if a non-aquatic species terraforms the planet?

Oh yeah it should really jut down the original size of the planet and have it revert to that if it's terraformed.

considering how "here be dragons" ends, do you REALLY want this origin?

Ends? What are you talking about? I assumed it was a reference to old time maps?

This was a good opportunity to add some Lovecroftian content and Laviathans. Hopefully something to add in the next patch.

There are already fairly Lovecraftian portraits.

The reason the civic is exclusive with a agrarian Idyll is that agrarian Idyll only gives bonuses to farmers, which anglers remove. There is also a bit of a flavor clash, but I could totally see the role of being a fisher being idolized in the same way, so hopefully they extend the amenity bonus to anglers as well and let both civics be picked.

You can play as anglers living in any habitat. It's the aquatic trait that is limited.

Well it doesn't matter much since Agrarian Idyll doesn't work at the moment anyway.

To clarify, do Gaia worlds count as Wet climate for the civic and trait?

I hope so.

Is it just me or is Angler just an outright better Agrarian Idyll? Not limited to pacifist and has consumer goods and trade value. Stack it with catalytic and you make both alloy material, consumer good and energy from one district type.

Everything is better than Agrarian Idyll these days.

Surface of the earth is 70% ocean.

Perhaps, within the conceptual world of Stellaris, an “ocean” world is orders of magnitude more water, and a very different evolutionary factor than our oceans.

Which is why I think aquatics should have been a COMPLETELY different and unique thing. Planet type included.

Doesn't really matter, life in the ocean exists relatively close to the surface. Below the photic zone (down to 200 meters) you have much less productivity, once you get out of the aphotic zone (from the end of the photic zone down to 4.000 meters) you have almost no life at all in most of the ocean Some places like black smokers have primary production too but mostly it's just the surface. Everything living in the ocean lives of the primary production in these places.
It's been said the ocean is a desert, and there is some truth to it that.

Aquatic as a free trait is probably a little bit too good, which is strange considering Phototrophic just came out and literally hurts you, but costs a point. Please consider making Phototrophic free or giving it some energy upkeep reductions based on world types.

Phototrophic is really powerful if you know how to use it. I just did a playthrough with a phototrophic, voidborne megacorp and since I as a voidborne megacorp was constantly swimming in energy it was basically just halving the food consumption on all my pops.

 

[Cassilda]

The "Here be dragons" origin, while part of the DLC, is strictly restricted to aquatic species or is available for others as well? In the announcement the Ether drake is shown around a water planet for "thematic" reasons I guess, but as origin it seems quite adaptable to other kind of civilizations as well.

 

[Earth Dragon]

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.

No I'm not. I'm sure I can make a list I wouldn't mind it appearing on, but that list is different for everyone.

My point is there are possibly immersion breaking situations where 3-4 aquatic species show up and NONE of them look the part. So having it only applied to species on the aquatic list just prevents those clashes. Some of us don't spam through games and appreciate a more immersive approach. This is no different from having 3-4 high minds stem up from cloth wearing species with hair styles, showing obvious signs of individualism.

Leave it to the players to pregen what aquatics they are okay with if they want. Don't leave it in the hands of the AI. It's just not that difficult of a concept are a tall ask. YOU are the one ignoring what others want. I recognize we all have a path to get what we want

 

[Idle America]

Is anyone else reminded of that one episode of Duck Dodgers, where he stops a war (that he started) between sharks and dolphins by ramming his ship through the glass dome of their world?

 

[Peko?]

I suspect bringing the other portraits/worlds up to par is falling to the custodian team now. Which I welcome but I suspect means there will be a bit of a lag.

I suspect that it is on the priority of "we might want to look into that someday". The other portrait packs have already had something of an expansion and I don't think that it's necessarily necessary that Dry or Cold worlds have corresponding mechanics.

Why not just limit aquatic to need an ocean planet start?

It already is.

This is very unfortunate. Hopefully modders will be able to do something about this.

I sort of doubt that modders will get there. I think that tying an effect or a background to a specific trait might not be as trivial as people seem to assume.

 

[oreopirate]

My point is there are possibly immersion breaking situations where 3-4 aquatic species show up and NONE of them look the part.

Look, what we see in a portrait is a phenotype. Phenotypes are very misleading, and tell one very little. Like, for example, Echidnas use electroreception.

Or, lets look at a more complex example.

In the spoiler above is a hyrax, a Rock Hyrax (Procavia capensis). You might struggle to know what this mammal is at first unless you are familiar with it. It is an Afrotherian (Relative of elephants, and Sirenians (Dugong and manatees)).
Now, all mammals, as vertebrates have hemoglobin, which an iron based oxygen binding protein. We also have another type of iron based binding protein in our muscles called Myoglobin. Diving animals have more of it, and theirs is better at holding onto oxygen.
In 2013, some researchers performed a study looking at Paeungulate myoglobin (Hyrax, Manatee, and elephant clade). Well they found that all three had elevated levels of myoglobin, and each were really good at holding onto myoglobin. Well, after some deciphering and molecular analysis, turning out the ancestor of all three groups was aquatic. It returned to land after being a diving animal, at which Hyrax split off. Then the ancestor of Elephants and Sirenians returned to the water, where the elephants split off while Sirenians remained in the water.
Hyrax and elephants still retain the myglobin that's great for diving, even if the modern Hyrax species are poor swimmers.

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

Here's another example.

Tell me what that is if you can, just by looking at it. Appearances can be very, very deceiving. So I recommend not looking at even earth like life so stringently. There are many examples where a species looks completely unsuitable at it's niche, but actually excels.

 

[MrReaper182]

I believe a species that evolved high intelligence just by living under water would never be able to progress beyond the stone age as they would lack the resources to do so. I myself wish the Molluscoid species would get a rework as I much prefer the idea of a species who are able to live both underwater and on the land. Still having said all of that, playing a race of high intelligence dolphins, wales, sharks and seashores (really hope seashores are in the portrait set) does sound very cool.

 

[Lord Valdyr]

I actually think it would be odd to have the room images be underwater; they're clearly meant to represent diplomatic chambers, and you wouldn't want to invite non-aquatic species to meet on your world to a building they can't breathe in, so the actual diplomacy room would have air. It also makes sense to have cities be air-filled, given that non-aquatic species could still live there. Think Otoh Gunga from Star Wars - an underwater city that still has air inside the city.

I'm still not sure why the city background can't be changed, though. The only think I can think of is that the background terrain that the buildings sit on is somehow hardcoded into each planet type and can't be changed.

 

[Lord Valdyr]

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).

Liquid interiors actually make maneuvering better because the liquid interior allows for much higher g-forces to be sustained.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-suit)

Liquid breathing has been explored by NASA as a possibility for spaceflight for this very reason.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing#Space_travel)

 

[Tamwin5]

An origin for starting with Aquatic on the wrong planet could be called "Fish Out of Water". I think this idea has legs. Or maybe fins.

Considering how two of the default empire designs involve climate shifts on their home planet, a "Climate Change" origin is sorely needed.

 

[TheDungen]

I believe a species that evolved high intelligence just by living under water would never be able to progress beyond the stone age as they would lack the resources to do so. I myself wish the Molluscoid species would get a rework as I much prefer the idea of a species who are able to live both underwater and on the land. Still having said all of that, playing a race of high intelligence dolphins, wales, sharks and seashores (really hope seashores are in the portrait set) does sound very cool.

You mistake our technological path for the only available one. A underwater civilisation may use volcanic vents for metallurgy or use materials they can create via chemistry rather than heating.

 

[Lord Valdyr]

No I'm not. I'm sure I can make a list I wouldn't mind it appearing on, but that list is different for everyone.

My point is there are possibly immersion breaking situations where 3-4 aquatic species show up and NONE of them look the part. So having it only applied to species on the aquatic list just prevents those clashes. Some of us don't spam through games and appreciate a more immersive approach. This is no different from having 3-4 high minds stem up from cloth wearing species with hair styles, showing obvious signs of individualism.

Leave it to the players to pregen what aquatics they are okay with if they want. Don't leave it in the hands of the AI. It's just not that difficult of a concept are a tall ask. YOU are the one ignoring what others want. I recognize we all have a path to get what we want

Except your entire argument revolves around "Immersion", which is entirely subjective.
What is "Immersion Breaking" to you might not be for others, and your proposed solution might very well be Immersion breaking for another.
Your argument implies that all species in the galaxy must comply with earth-like biology and earth-like evolutionary tracks. There is absolutely no reason for that to ever be the case. Seeing a species of Aquatic Butterflies is more Immersive for me, since it would feel so much more alien - and isn't that what an Alien species should be?

Yet your argument would mechanically force that to never happen - which would inherently weaken my Immersion by forcing aliens to comply with earth biology, which alien species would have no reason to do.

You aren't looking to make the game "More Immersive", you're looking to mechanically enforce YOUR immersion standards on everyone else.

The examples given don't even really make sense. Even sticking with earth biology, there are examples that break your standards anyway. Aquatic Does not mean "Breathes Underwater". Dolphinoids are confirmed, which inherently proves that idea wrong - they don't breath underwater, they breathe air. So the trait must inherently mean a species that lives in and around water to a large extent. So with that idea settled, lets see:

Mammals? There's already a Platypus portrait, which is a creature that spends its entire life in water. Otters do as well, and many species of seal have fur too, though it's hard to tell because it's always slicked back and they are generally not amenable for people to pet them to find out. Those are all most certainly aquatic.

Reptile? There's a couple amphibian portraits in this category, and things like Marine Iguanas are a reptile that is very much an aquatic species in real life. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_iguana)

Avian? Seabirds are an entire category of bird species, plus penguins are inherently an aquatic species as well. (Not to mention the parrot with the dome helmet, which would technically work but is more of an amusing aside.)

Arthropods? There are tons of aquatic arthropod species in real life. Some of the portraits are even based on them already.

Molluscoids? 23% of all the known forms of sea-life on earth are molluscoid, so again, no brainer.

Fungoids? Aquatic fungal species are extremely common. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123706263001290)

Plantoids? Should be obvious. There's already a kelp-based portrait.

Lithoids make sense as there are rocks in the ocean, after all.

Necroids are a special situation, as they are basically just spooky humanoids.

As for humanoids, we don't have real world examples, since the few that exist that could be classified as such are inherently non-aquatic, but the popular cultural ideas of things like Merfolk and Sea Elves more than explain most of these possibilities.


As you can see, literally every category makes sense as possible aquatic animals.
I hate to be a bit blunt with this, but every single "My immersion" argument always breaks down to either a lack of imaginative creativity of the possibilities (Such as a race of Sea-Elves for the Elven portrait with the Aquatic trait, which is well within the realm of plausible science fiction, and thus easily justifies that portrait taking that trait) or a simple misunderstanding or lack of understanding of real-world counter examples.

Restricting portraits like that is inherently uncreative - it's forcing earth-based biological rules onto something that has absolutely no reason to follow them. We already are a bit restricted in the fact that all the portraits in game are kind of inherently based on real-world animals, which "real" aliens, should they exist, probably don't look like anything we could even think of, let alone put into the game. We have literally no reference point for what the "average" alien looks like. (Yet, as of this post.) There are many sci-fi stories about this very idea; about both truly alien aliens, and aliens that look like earth animals yet have an entirely alien biology. Maybe on their homeworld, conditions were so different that the most successful biological form for an aquatic species to evolve might just look very suspiciously like a cat here on earth. Hence, justified Fishcats.

Don't force others to be mechanically compliant with your immersion standards simply because you can't think of why they would make sense. Instead of limiting others, try expanding your own definitions. It's better for everyone involved.