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Stellaris Dev Diary #47 - Guardians

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today we'll continue talking about the Leviathans Story Pack, specifically its headline feature: the Guardians.

The Guardians (Paid Feature)
The Guardians, or Leviathans as they're also known, are space-dwelling beings of immense power. They vary a great deal in biology and composition: Some are enormous space creatures, some are technological remnants of ancient civilizations, and some are something far different altogether. How you find them also varies - some you may encounter in their home systems, jealously guarding their territory, others may be unleashed on the galaxy by exploring the wrong planet or star.

The chance of a particular Guardian being present in your game will depend on the size of your galaxy - a tiny galaxy might only have one or two, while a Huge galaxy might contain nearly all or even all of them if you explore far enough. Defeating them, or in some cases, helping them, will unlock rewards in the form of resources, empire-wide modifiers and unique technologies. Guardians vary in power, but are meant to be a serious challenge for a mid-game empire, so don't expect to be able to bring them down in the first decades of the game.

Below I am going to talk a little about a few of the Guardians. These are just a sample and not nearly all of them, but we want to avoid showing off everything there is for a player to find in the Leviathans Story Pack for those who wish to explore and find out for themselves.
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The Space Dragon
The Space Dragon is a capricious being, jealously guarding its hoard. With this particular Guardian, there is no reasoning or dialogue... it wants to be left alone, and will attack any and all trespassers in its territory. If you wish to get at its hoard, you will have to slay it, and you had best be sure to bring a large enough fleet - anger it enough, and it will not settle for simply driving you off. Should you bring it down, however, the vast mineral riches of its hoard will be yours to claim... and who knows what you might find among the treasures. Technology, artifacts... perhaps even a dragon egg?
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The Infinity Machine
The Infinity Machine, a strange metal sphere, sits at the edge of a massive black hole, unmoving. It does not attack as you approach, does not communicate, does not even react. It seems to be waiting for something. Perhaps if you find a way to speak with it, you can find out what it wants. Perhaps you can even help it? Or, if you choose, you could simply order your fleet to attack... after all, how much of a threat could a mere metal sphere be?
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Stellarite
What can live inside a star?

What sort of being can withstand, and even thrive in, such immense heat and pressure?

What could be its purpose?

... what does it eat?
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That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about changes to the graphics and sound of Stellaris coming in the Heinlein update, as well as a teaser on the more than 20 minutes of new music by Andreas Waldetoft included in the Leviathans Story Pack.
 
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And if you read my post I'm saying that the "who knows what you might find" part is a must because just getting 30 energy and minerals per month by that time is next to meaningless.

And my doomstack fleet that killed that dragon is large enough to destroy all my enemies anyway. It's a nice role-playing thing but won't really have an impact on the game vs. the enemies I'm facing.

What would be 1000 times better is if the Curator had a secret way of defeating the dragon. Otherwise the dragon is so strong that even a 100K fleet has trouble. Now that baby dragon is OP to the max as your enemies must find the secret from the curator.

Otherwise it's if I have a large enough fleet to kill the dragon and my enemies don't then that means my fleet can already rule the galaxy.

What I hope is the end game crises is about 100 times harder where you need these special things to be a ble to defeat it. Make them useful.
They said the curators will help you kill/tame the guardians if they like you enough.
 
Just take my money already!
 
Seeing that first picture, I invented a new word to describe it:

SCAREFYING!

I think it matches the creature itself pretty well. Also, I'm not going to read more than the upper phrases and I will only glance slightly at those pictures, because I want to be surprised by the Guardians.
I'm not sure wether or not I should watch the feature stream. I don't want Guardian spoilers...
 
My hope is a Fanatic Spiritualist empire can find a repeatable mission or Edict to ritually sacrifice pops to the mighty Space Dragon (works like purge) or something like it to gain it's favor (control it or just have it as an AI ally) for an amount of time.

Have it work like elections. Get a prompt "Your Dragon God demands Sacrifice" and if you fail to deliver then it goes hostile and you better hope it's not near anything you own.

It angers most any Ethos that is not "Fanatic Collectivist". Individualists hate it more than slavery.
 
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Seeing that first picture, I invented a new word to describe it:

SCAREFYING!

I think it matches the creature itself pretty well. Also, I'm not going to read more than the upper phrases and I will only glance slightly at those pictures, because I want to be surprised by the Guardians.
I'm not sure wether or not I should watch the feature stream. I don't want Guardian spoilers...

The feature stream shows the dragon only, but it does show it in some detail.
 
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Great stuff, looking forward to it. :)
 
They said the curators will help you kill/tame the guardians if they like you enough.

I know that. I'm saying it would be a better game and better rewards if the guardians were basically invincible except for very late game doomstacks, UNLESS you were able to get the secrect from the curators.
 
so can the dragon's hoard actually be called Ender? because slaying an Ender Dragon would be pretty kewl...
 
The feature stream shows the dragon only, but it does show it in some detail.
Well, um, hehe.. :oops: I actually kinda already began watching it, like, a few seconds after I wrote that comment, so... :oops:

so can the dragon's hoard actually be called Ender? because slaying an Ender Dragon would be pretty kewl...
An Ender Dragon would be far too tiny for this game. I mean, just look at the size of that Space Dragon of Death, Doom and Destruction! And then compare it to the few metres of an Ender Dragon! ;)
 
Nice DD, but I still hope to hear about fleet combat changes (priority fire, ship behaviour, fleet formations, additional fleet order etc)
I asked wiz on Twitter about fleet formations, he said it won't be making it into Heinlein unfortunately. He did say they improved to current formation though. Don't know what else this means for the other combat improvements mentioned in Heinlein.

https://twitter.com/Martin_Anward/status/778667831080718337
 
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An Ender Dragon would be far too tiny for this game. I mean, just look at the size of that Space Dragon of Death, Doom and Destruction! And then compare it to the few metres of an Ender Dragon! ;)

okay Space Ender Dragon then! because everything is larger and/or more epic in space!:p
 
As someone else suggested it would be nice if the events surrounding and behaviour of each guardian is randomized in some ways for replayability sake.
 
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I really like these Guardians! I'm interested to see what else we may find in the galaxy with this new dlc.