Stellaris Dev Diary #276 - Death is the Beginning

[CorpusIurisCivilis]

I was wondering when the idea of a parasitic infective hivemind was going to be created. It seemed to me that Necrophage Hiveminds are rather weak and cant really manage to control the species they assimilate.

 

[nikkythegreat]

It would be nice if reanimator civics would have techs that increase space fauna combat in late game as they fall off too much combat wise in mid to late game.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Could you also add a way for xenophiles to bring back Tiyanki and Amoebas if Tiyana Vek, Tiyum Ort, or Amor Alveo are ever scoured? Maybe even allow it for all Galactic Community members if Tiyanki Conservation Act and Amoeba Protection Act are passed, respectively.

Not through reanimation obviously, rather through breeding and cloning. And maybe it could use a unique Starbase building as well?

It's kinda sad to see them gone from the galaxy altogether whenever someone or something attacks their systems.

 

[Me_]

Any plans to use zombie pops outside Megacorps?

I could see a new sort of purifier-style civic that seeks to make all other species in he galaxy into obedient zombies.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Could you also add a way for xenophiles to bring back Tiyanki and Amoebas if Tiyana Vek, Amor Alveo, or Tiyum Ort are ever scoured? Not through reanimation obviously, more through breeding and cloning. Maybe it could use a unique Starbase building?

It's kinda sad to see them gone from the galaxy altogether whenever something attacks their systems.

Also it'd be cool if Amoebas within the borders of an empire with Amoeboid Pacification were neutral to other empires too, so that my allies don't have to kill my pets to get through.

And also, I say this often, but please let Rogue Servitors and Empath Hive Minds pacify Amoebas too.

Any plans to use zombie pops outside Megacorps?

I could see a new sort of purifier-style civic that seeks to make all other species in he galaxy into obedient zombies.

Oh, I definitely have a Fanatic Purifier empire with the Reanimators civic where that would fit right in. I'm not sure whether that wouldn't step too much into Permanent Employment's niche, but perhaps allowing xenophobic Reanimators and Permanent Employment empires to create Zombie pops through purges could work.

And if you're a Fanatic Purifier Empire with Reanimators, zombie pops would be the only alien pops that default to slavery instead of purging (although you would still have the option to just purge the zombies as well)

And on a related note, Zombie pops should either produce undead armies (like the ones from the Reanimator civic), or produce no armies at all.

 

[incifan]

Shame Cordyceptic Drones is such a rng civic where you either have a fun RP game or just nothing. And even with a good start it seems very weak compared to just building normal ships and have a combined fleet instead of some weak space fauna either idling at home or trailing behind the rest of your space force.
Don't really want to have to restart a game until you spawn near one of those special systems just to make use of it.

 

[Rafss]

I'd like to theorize a bit on the new machines civic, I feel quite hyped lol
Let's see, besides reanimating Leviathans::

• Regular empires get undead armies.
• Megacorps get undead pops.
• Hive Minds get undead fleets.

Machines already have Grid Amalgamation purge that turns organic pops into energy, which is kind of recycling. They could get a better purge option, which is not exactly flavorful and would lock you out of assimilators and servitors civics.
Still in the recycling theme, Caravaneers will rarely sell you the blueprint for an organic reprocessing building you can build in all your colonies, which makes 10 energy and 10 minerals out of thin air (in the lore, it is reprocessing all the colony trash). The machines could either start with it or have their own building for that; but that is not flavourful either.
In terms of pop management besides purge, Assimilators already turn organic pops into controlled pops, so I think zombie pops is either out of question or they're locked from complex jobs and leadership, but then again Megacorps already have that; not very flavourful.

We're left with very few options for really unique things, but I have a couple ideas:

• Have a building that transforms all the planet organic matter into machinery, slowly terraforming it into a Machine World. It is Gaia seeders with a twist, plus people always wanted Machine Empires with easy access to Machine terraforming option without the perk; this is a very legit way of doing that as Gaia Seeder also dismisses a perk.
  Difficult to apply this lore to Leviathan resurrection, but my next idea also elaborates on that.
  I will call this the "Undead Planet" Option.
• What if it wasn't about recycling organic things but instead their own broken machines? There already is a Recycled trait for Machine pops, so one way of having a different kind of Recycled Drones is making it an innate trait just like Aquatic or Cave Dweller, free, with the same limitation as Megacorp' Zombies; cannot generate leaders and unable to do complex jobs.
  Recycled Drones would use the Monthly Assembly slot but much faster and cheaper than regular Machines, to make up for the conflicting assembly. While the pop assembly requires some micro, you could easily robomod those drones with all the negative leader traits free of worry about them making leaders.
  The problem is how do you justify the access to Undead Leviathans? Do you change it to instead be able to reconstruct the Scavenger Bot, Nanite Ships, a buffed Dreadnaught and maybe even build Enigmatic Temple defense platforms on your Starbases? That would be quite flavourful, but I doubt Paradox would have time for something so ambitious, and there's also the galaxy geography RNG factor but Cordycept Drones already suffer from that and the devs think it is fine.
  I will call it the "Undead Machines" Option, as absurd as it sounds.

I ran out of ideas, how else could it work?

 

[Scourgeclaw]

Are Reanimators / Corporate Reanimators getting an equivelent starbase building to the Cordyceptic Reanimation Facility?

 

[Lorenerd11]

Are Reanimators / Corporate Reanimators getting an equivelent starbase building to the Cordyceptic Reanimation Facility?

Nope, reanimating space fauna is specifically the Cordyceptic Hive Mind's niche.

 

[Ridixo]

Kudos to the art team for the zombie units art

 

[Helicopter200]

Reanimating using cordyceps? This gives ''The last of Us'' vibe

 

[V-Metamorph]

Wait, so if all of the tyanki is dead in tyanki vek, it won't spawn new tyanki zombies from the reanimation facility?

It will

 

[V-Metamorph]

I've had quite a lot of fun playing around with Cordyceptic Drones in the beta. You made a fun Civic!
I hadn't even thought about being able to resurrect Prethoryn, haven't gotten that far in my games yet.
Those zombie Leviathans look amazing, too!
I just got one question: Does that mean we are getting zombie Prethoryn too, or is the team out of souls to give to the Art Director at this point?

I think it doesn't work, but what he meant is that you are likely to get better modifier than the actual crisis using their weapon against them, since scourge missile are "faunae weapon", which the civic buff to absurd ends

 

[Methone]

Also including the new Hivemind Government Type Parasitic Overmind!​

Alright, but does this change Personality? Government type is... very minor.

 

[V-Metamorph]

Personaly, I'd welcome the existence of a machine empire that slowly devolve into something as its recycling procedures and redundancies become more and more invasive for itself and for others. Like a combo between death priest and reanimator, and maybe add a situation in the mix.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Alright, but does this change Personality? Government type is... very minor.

Nope.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

The Reapers look forward to that teaser at the end. Also, with organic Hiveminds having the ability to ressurrect organic leviathans, that gave me the idea that machine intelligences should be able to hack and restart defeated machine leviathans. I know we can already get the Dreadnought, so I'm not sure about that, but I think it would be interesting if machine intelligences could get a (maybe one-time-only) level of station higher than a Citadel that uses the Enigmatic Fortress tech, and wouldn't it be cool to be cruising around with the Scavenger bot? Actually, I think that Psionic empires should be able to tame/create the Psionic entities. I've got a picture in my head of my Aethrophasic Engine nearing completion, only to see the combined military power of every species in the galaxy (I've got all the Mass Effect species created) followed by all the Leviathans they've tamed appear at the edge of the system, challenging the doomstacked invincible Reaper fleet for control of the galaxy-destroying machine.


I so want the feature to exist where if another empire is in control of your engine at the time of activation, it destroys your species, rather than everyone else

 

[Methone]

Nope.

oh boo

 

[Brakinger]

With those changes, I just realized how starved I am for Story Pack DLCs, similar to Leviathan and Distant Star DLC packs.

 

[Ikael]

This civic is a blast. It kinda fades out in the late game, due to the impossibility to upgrade space fauna (and thus, you end up relying on regular spaceships), but until then it is fun snowball-y RNG. The art team is doing good work, as always.

And now that I think about it, a robotic empire that turns purged organics into "recycled material" for gaining robotic assembly... yeah, that's creepy as hell. Major "Blame!" vibes. But an eco-friendly recycling robotic empire could also rule something fierce. I mean, I certainly would welcome more good-guy empires and non-genocidal things to do.