So with Ancient Relics, we're going to have Archaeology now. New precursors, dig sites, etc. That's great! The galaxy is getting richer all the time.
But doesn't it feel a little dead?
Thus, this thread. The Alien Specimen Procurement chain has always been one of my favorites, because it makes the galaxy seem more alive. It's fun to look at a planet and think "oh, yeah, this planet has Snirans living under the dunes". But once the project is done, you forget about them, just like you forget about where most anomalies happened. Which is the reason Daniel Moregard cited in the Ancient Relics reveal stream for making dig sites a thing you can see on the map.
So what if the species stuck around? To that end, I suggest the creation of a new "Biosphere" tab in the planet screen, which would look something like this:
This would add several new things, but I don't think any of them would stretch Stellaris' engine very much. Breakdown of my ideas:
Animals, Plants, and Fungi
Upon galaxy generation, each planet would get 3-5 unique species, which could be either animals, plants, fungi, silicoids, or machine lifeforms (rare synthetic beings, probably anomaly only). Earth might get Cows, Rats, and Dogs, for example. These would be defined by a) their group and b) their diet. For instance, an animal could be a Herbivorous Crustacean, while a plant could be a Photosynthetic Tree.
Each species would also get 0-3 Traits, which could impact the planet and your population in different ways.
Species would be sortable by name, Traits, Domestication type, Status, Population, and whether they had a research project tied to them.
Name
The species' names would be randomly generated based on 4 different templates: 1) "[adjective] [name]", 2) "[adjective] [adjective] [name]", 3) "[name]", and 4) "[name] [group]" (you can see examples of all except 3 in the images I posted above). For each adjective, the game would also need to keep track of synonyms (for the description) and antonyms (to avoid conflicting descriptions, such as the Wooly Hairless Snirkell).
Domestication type
Fairly simple. The species would either be Wild, Domesticated, or Feral (wild species that aren't native).
Status
The conservation status of the species. This could be Safe, Threatened, Endangered, Collapsing, or Extinct.
Population
The size of the population on the planet. This could be None, Rare, Uncommon, Common, Plentiful, or Abundant. None would only be for extinct species, while Plentiful and Abundant would usually only apply to domestic or invasive species.
These translate to population levels 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively, which are multipliers applied to any traits the species has (for instance, Edible provides +5% farmer food output per population level, meaning an Abundant species would provide a 25% boost.
Different species would naturally fit into different population levels. An insect might be Abundant, whereas a large, slow-breeding mammal could very well be rare without being threatened.
Other stuff
When you expanded a species' entry you would also be able to read it's description (randomly generated based on type, adjectives, planet type, etc), see it's type (ie Carnivorous Plant), set its domestication type (if domesticated) to either livestock (boosting food production) or pets (boosting amenities), see whether it is native or not (this could be either Native, Imported (domesticated aliens only), Invasive (wild aliens only), or Naturalized (aliens that have integrated into the biosphere)), export the species to another planet (ie, send a particularly valuable domesticated livestock creature to one of your agri-worlds), and set your policy toward the species.
So species would not be static, and would be able to grow and decline. Which leads us to:
Biodiversity
Biodiversity would be a new mechanic introduced alongside this. Basically, every planet would start out with a biodiversity score., which would run from, say, 0-1000. This score would translate to the health of the biosphere, which could be either Healthy (1000-751), Stable (750-501), Unstable (500-251), Collapsing (250-1), or Dead (0).
Once a planet was colonized, or following certain events, the score would begin to decrease. Each year, the game would roll a dice to see if the biosphere would decline. The percent chance would be calculated based on the biodiversity score minus a number of factors, such the number of pops, the number of districts, the number of buildings, the planetary designation, the number of extinct species, the number of invasive species (and their population level), and whether the planet was being terraformed. Conversely, the number of native species (and their pop level) would be added to the score, decreasing the decline chance. Each of these would be weighted differently, for instance a pop with conservationist would have less impact that one with wasteful, or a temple would be less destructive than an alloy foundry/civilian industry. This would also cause biodiversity decline to be a snowball effect, because the lower the score, the higher the chance of rolling a decrease.
Extinction
Lower biosphere health would also increase the chance of a species declining, say moving from uncommon to rare and from safe to threatened. This would be determined by a species' hidden hardiness score, which would also determine how easy it was for a species avoid eradication or develop a population on an alien world as an invasive. So a rat would have a massively high hardiness score, while, say, a delicate alien avian that only feeds on one type of fruit would have a disastrously low one.
Dead Worlds
Once your score hit zero, the planet would become dead. This would cause something like a -20% habitability malus, because a planet without any plant life to produce oxygen, among other things, isn't going to be very habitable.
There would be ways to prevent this, which wold be:
Biosphere Rejuvenation
When activated, the planet would gain something like a -20% to -50% malus to job production, but the biodiversity score would recharge over time. The malus would go away when the score was full, or when you cancelled. You could also establish a
Nature Preserve
Which you can see in the image above (I forgot to change the text from National Park). This would greatly reduce the score decline at the cost of 1 max district, but would also give you amenities.
Additionally, a few new modifiers would be added to the game, such as Hardy Biosphere and Sickly Biosphere, which would lessen or increase the chance of decline.
Alternatively, if you're RPing a race of smog-loving industrialist bastards, you can instead use
Exploit Biosphere
which you can see the button for right beside the Rejuvenation one. This would give you a bonus to production-based jobs while greatly increasing the rate of biosphere decline. Once the planet became a dead planet, continuing to use it might start to provide a stacking habitability debuff to simulate excessive pollution.
How would this work with current planetary types?
I'm glad you asked. Gaia worlds would probably be resistant to decline, considering they were specially engineered to be perfect. They would also come with an assortment of unique special species with powerful bonuses. These species would probably be unable to live off planet (represented by having their export button disabled even for domesticated species).
Ecumenopoli would be dead worlds, because, y'know, we paved them. That wouldn't mean there was no life: there could totally be things like rats or things in the sewers (like alligators or the Dianogas on Coruscant from Star Wars).
Tomb Worlds: those that generated at galaxy start would have a special biosphere that was extremely resistant to decline, because anything that's still alive survived the fires of nuclear annihilation. However, they would require extremely high hardiness, meaning other species couldn't survive and any species that made it off them would be an extremely disruptive invasive.
Tomb worlds that were created in game by Apocalypse bombardment would become dead worlds, and all species would go extinct.
What to do with Dead worlds
So, nobody wants to live on a planet with a -20% habitability malus. What now? Well, there would be a planetary decision to Create a new biosphere. This decision would probably be unlocked by the Climate Restoration tech. The project would naturally take a while. As it ran its course, it would generate various special projects to secure animals and plants from other worlds to seed the planet with (similar to alien specimen procurement), and projects to help them adapt to the environment (probably stopping society research). This would generate a new biosphere that would start out as unstable (although this could probably be fixed by techs). You could then prop it up with Rejuvenate Biosphere.
Working this into current mechanics
This is where the idea came from. I really liked the idea of Ancient Relics, but thought to myself, "when are zoology and botany going to get their share of the spotlight?"
Certain planets would get unique species, such as the above seen Crimson Borfa, that are worthy of researching further. This would issue a special kind of project called a Biological Survey. It would work much like Ancient Relics, and would probably be the draw for people who want story-driven content. I've included a mockup of what that could look like below.
The Biological Survey icon as seen on the map:
An example of a Biological Survey (missed one leftover from the Archaeology window I modified it from).
The survey window would be available either by clicking on the icon in the map view, or from a special icon on the species tab (that's the magnifying glass you were wondering about, @Methone).
Final stuff
(unless I think of something else)
(I knew I would think of something else).
In addition to Environmentalist and Agrarian Idyll being reworked to fit into this system, the expansion would add two new civics:
Big Game Hunters
Survival of the Fittest
This species evolved on a particularly hostile planet. Life for them has been a constant struggle to survive.
But doesn't it feel a little dead?
Thus, this thread. The Alien Specimen Procurement chain has always been one of my favorites, because it makes the galaxy seem more alive. It's fun to look at a planet and think "oh, yeah, this planet has Snirans living under the dunes". But once the project is done, you forget about them, just like you forget about where most anomalies happened. Which is the reason Daniel Moregard cited in the Ancient Relics reveal stream for making dig sites a thing you can see on the map.
So what if the species stuck around? To that end, I suggest the creation of a new "Biosphere" tab in the planet screen, which would look something like this:
This would add several new things, but I don't think any of them would stretch Stellaris' engine very much. Breakdown of my ideas:
Animals, Plants, and Fungi
Upon galaxy generation, each planet would get 3-5 unique species, which could be either animals, plants, fungi, silicoids, or machine lifeforms (rare synthetic beings, probably anomaly only). Earth might get Cows, Rats, and Dogs, for example. These would be defined by a) their group and b) their diet. For instance, an animal could be a Herbivorous Crustacean, while a plant could be a Photosynthetic Tree.
Diet types
- Omnivorous, Herbivorous, Carnivorous, Scavenging, Parasitic, Planktivorous, Photosynthetic, Chemosynthetic, Decomposing, Lithovorous, Electrovorous, Detritovorous, Hemovorous
- Animals: Mammal, Reptile, Synapsid (aka reptomammals), Amphibian, Mollusk, Avian, Insect, Arachnid, Crustacean, Fish, Worm, Gastropod, Cephalopod, Medusoid, Animal (for ones that don't fit the above)
- Plants: Flower, Tree, Moss, Weed, Grain, Fruit, Reed, Tuber, Kelp, Algae, Plant (again, default)
- Fungi: Mushroom, Spore, Mold, Fungi
- Microbes: Bacterium, Virus, Algae, Fungi, Protozoa
- Amorph: Slime, Blob, Gas, Liquid
- Machines
- Silicoids
Dangerous Predator trait, reduces happiness with each Population Level (I'll get into that)
Migratory trait, reduces the Export Species cost (see below)
Edible trait, boosting farmer food production
Parasitic Worm trait, increasing pop food upkeep
Fragrant trait, giving increased pop happiness
Explosive Fungi (a rare species, tied to a research project) that gives Volatile Motes
Plus, here's a picture of the last species tab expanded, because I made it and don't want it to go to waste.
Migratory trait, reduces the Export Species cost (see below)
Edible trait, boosting farmer food production
Parasitic Worm trait, increasing pop food upkeep
Fragrant trait, giving increased pop happiness
Explosive Fungi (a rare species, tied to a research project) that gives Volatile Motes
Plus, here's a picture of the last species tab expanded, because I made it and don't want it to go to waste.
Name
The species' names would be randomly generated based on 4 different templates: 1) "[adjective] [name]", 2) "[adjective] [adjective] [name]", 3) "[name]", and 4) "[name] [group]" (you can see examples of all except 3 in the images I posted above). For each adjective, the game would also need to keep track of synonyms (for the description) and antonyms (to avoid conflicting descriptions, such as the Wooly Hairless Snirkell).
Domestication type
Fairly simple. The species would either be Wild, Domesticated, or Feral (wild species that aren't native).
Status
The conservation status of the species. This could be Safe, Threatened, Endangered, Collapsing, or Extinct.
Population
The size of the population on the planet. This could be None, Rare, Uncommon, Common, Plentiful, or Abundant. None would only be for extinct species, while Plentiful and Abundant would usually only apply to domestic or invasive species.
These translate to population levels 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively, which are multipliers applied to any traits the species has (for instance, Edible provides +5% farmer food output per population level, meaning an Abundant species would provide a 25% boost.
Different species would naturally fit into different population levels. An insect might be Abundant, whereas a large, slow-breeding mammal could very well be rare without being threatened.
Other stuff
When you expanded a species' entry you would also be able to read it's description (randomly generated based on type, adjectives, planet type, etc), see it's type (ie Carnivorous Plant), set its domestication type (if domesticated) to either livestock (boosting food production) or pets (boosting amenities), see whether it is native or not (this could be either Native, Imported (domesticated aliens only), Invasive (wild aliens only), or Naturalized (aliens that have integrated into the biosphere)), export the species to another planet (ie, send a particularly valuable domesticated livestock creature to one of your agri-worlds), and set your policy toward the species.
If Wild:
- None
- Domestication - attempt to establish a domestic population of the species. If successful, it will appear as technically a new species, a duplicate of the wild one but with the domestic trait instead of wild.
- Eradication/Extirpation - speaks for itself
- Hunting - produce a small amount of food
- Captive Breeding - attempt to increase the wild population size. Used if a species is about to go extinct, and you want to prevent that.
- Study - society gain
- Conservation - protects the species from decline, without actively increasing its population like Captive Breeding does.
- None
- Proliferation - increase population
- Strict Control - keep population stable
- Slaughtering - equivalent of Eradication
- Sale - provides trade value, lifeform can be bought on the Galactic Market by other empires
Biodiversity
Biodiversity would be a new mechanic introduced alongside this. Basically, every planet would start out with a biodiversity score., which would run from, say, 0-1000. This score would translate to the health of the biosphere, which could be either Healthy (1000-751), Stable (750-501), Unstable (500-251), Collapsing (250-1), or Dead (0).
Once a planet was colonized, or following certain events, the score would begin to decrease. Each year, the game would roll a dice to see if the biosphere would decline. The percent chance would be calculated based on the biodiversity score minus a number of factors, such the number of pops, the number of districts, the number of buildings, the planetary designation, the number of extinct species, the number of invasive species (and their population level), and whether the planet was being terraformed. Conversely, the number of native species (and their pop level) would be added to the score, decreasing the decline chance. Each of these would be weighted differently, for instance a pop with conservationist would have less impact that one with wasteful, or a temple would be less destructive than an alloy foundry/civilian industry. This would also cause biodiversity decline to be a snowball effect, because the lower the score, the higher the chance of rolling a decrease.
Extinction
Lower biosphere health would also increase the chance of a species declining, say moving from uncommon to rare and from safe to threatened. This would be determined by a species' hidden hardiness score, which would also determine how easy it was for a species avoid eradication or develop a population on an alien world as an invasive. So a rat would have a massively high hardiness score, while, say, a delicate alien avian that only feeds on one type of fruit would have a disastrously low one.
Dead Worlds
Once your score hit zero, the planet would become dead. This would cause something like a -20% habitability malus, because a planet without any plant life to produce oxygen, among other things, isn't going to be very habitable.
There would be ways to prevent this, which wold be:
Biosphere Rejuvenation
When activated, the planet would gain something like a -20% to -50% malus to job production, but the biodiversity score would recharge over time. The malus would go away when the score was full, or when you cancelled. You could also establish a
Nature Preserve
Which you can see in the image above (I forgot to change the text from National Park). This would greatly reduce the score decline at the cost of 1 max district, but would also give you amenities.
Additionally, a few new modifiers would be added to the game, such as Hardy Biosphere and Sickly Biosphere, which would lessen or increase the chance of decline.
Alternatively, if you're RPing a race of smog-loving industrialist bastards, you can instead use
Exploit Biosphere
which you can see the button for right beside the Rejuvenation one. This would give you a bonus to production-based jobs while greatly increasing the rate of biosphere decline. Once the planet became a dead planet, continuing to use it might start to provide a stacking habitability debuff to simulate excessive pollution.
How would this work with current planetary types?
I'm glad you asked. Gaia worlds would probably be resistant to decline, considering they were specially engineered to be perfect. They would also come with an assortment of unique special species with powerful bonuses. These species would probably be unable to live off planet (represented by having their export button disabled even for domesticated species).
Ecumenopoli would be dead worlds, because, y'know, we paved them. That wouldn't mean there was no life: there could totally be things like rats or things in the sewers (like alligators or the Dianogas on Coruscant from Star Wars).
Tomb Worlds: those that generated at galaxy start would have a special biosphere that was extremely resistant to decline, because anything that's still alive survived the fires of nuclear annihilation. However, they would require extremely high hardiness, meaning other species couldn't survive and any species that made it off them would be an extremely disruptive invasive.
Tomb worlds that were created in game by Apocalypse bombardment would become dead worlds, and all species would go extinct.
What to do with Dead worlds
So, nobody wants to live on a planet with a -20% habitability malus. What now? Well, there would be a planetary decision to Create a new biosphere. This decision would probably be unlocked by the Climate Restoration tech. The project would naturally take a while. As it ran its course, it would generate various special projects to secure animals and plants from other worlds to seed the planet with (similar to alien specimen procurement), and projects to help them adapt to the environment (probably stopping society research). This would generate a new biosphere that would start out as unstable (although this could probably be fixed by techs). You could then prop it up with Rejuvenate Biosphere.
Working this into current mechanics
- The alien zoo would allow you to import species onto a planet and give them the special domestication type Captivity, granting amenities and trade value per species. They would have the unique Representative pop level.
- Pre-sapients would be changed from a pop to a species with the presapient trait, unlocking the Uplift species policy (once you researched it, of course). Following this, you could have events where a particular species begins to show signs of intelligence and gains the trait.
- The recruitment of Xenomorph armies could be dependent on having a population of xenomorphs on the planet, which you could create through a special project. These would have the special domestication type Containment. (With these new domestication types, you would have to change it to a drop down menu instead of my current toggle).
- Perhaps (and this is a big perhaps) genetic engineering could be changed so you can only engineer traits similar to a species you've studied. This would incentive the use of the Study species policy.
- Beyond Alien Specimen Procurement, other anomalies could be turned into species, for instance, Titanic Life, Invasive Exofungus, Hostile Fauna, the ice-slug guys (can't remember, sorry) (EDIT: Azizians), Savage Wildlands, the Ancient One, Migrating Forests, the pollen that makes everyone lazy, etc.
This is where the idea came from. I really liked the idea of Ancient Relics, but thought to myself, "when are zoology and botany going to get their share of the spotlight?"
Certain planets would get unique species, such as the above seen Crimson Borfa, that are worthy of researching further. This would issue a special kind of project called a Biological Survey. It would work much like Ancient Relics, and would probably be the draw for people who want story-driven content. I've included a mockup of what that could look like below.
The Biological Survey icon as seen on the map:
An example of a Biological Survey (missed one leftover from the Archaeology window I modified it from).
The survey window would be available either by clicking on the icon in the map view, or from a special icon on the species tab (that's the magnifying glass you were wondering about, @Methone).
Final stuff
(unless I think of something else)
- You could pick up invasive species from any planet within your borders, or from anyone that you have a migration treaty or commercial pact with.
- Terraforming would always initially create a dead world until you get the Ecological Adaptation tech, which would unlock a new Terraforming policy, allowing you to choose between fast but destructive terraforming and slow but low-impact terraforming.
- The Harmony tradition tree would be updated to include a tradition which lessens biosphere decline chance.
- This expansion would come with new technologies to reduce your impact, i.e. one that reduces the impact of mining districts, one which reduces the impact of pops, etc.
- You would not be able to stack infinite creature bonuses on a planet - for instance, if you have two livestock species (with the edible trait) they will "cancel each other out" - you'll only be able to get up to a population level of 5 between them (i.e., one will be pop level 3, the other level 2).
- A new planet class, Synthetic Biosphere. The biosphere has been specifically engineered to meet the needs of sapient beings, and as such is almost completely unaffected by biosphere decline. Also, only domesticated species can live on the planet.
- Devouring Swarms would have access to the Consumption species policy, and would in general greatly increase biosphere decline rate.
- This expansion would also add a new living standard that would be more ecologically friendly
- as well as a new purge type, Composting, that would use pops as fertilizer to rejuvenate the biosphere
- It would also have a new, eco-friendly cityscape - possibly giant treehouse buildings
(I knew I would think of something else).
In addition to Environmentalist and Agrarian Idyll being reworked to fit into this system, the expansion would add two new civics:
- Populations set to "Hunting" produce unity and +1 extra food per population level
- Extra damage to spaceborn organisms. Killing them grants unity
- New Casus Belli, Grand Hunt which kills 1-3 pops per enemy planet upon victory and gives the other empire the Hunted modifier, giving reduced happiness and unity. This will give them the -1000(?) Hunted opinion modifier towards you, and other (non-genocidal) empires a Barbaric Hunters opinion malus.
- Unlocks special Quarry/Game slavery type, giving amenities and food.
- Can use the Hold Grand Hunt planetary decision, giving the Hunting Ground temporary modifier, which gives +amenities but increases biosphere decline chance. Empire gets the Held Grand Hunt modifier, giving +happiness +militarist attraction
- Unity buildings are replaced with Hunter Memorial/Trophy Hall/Shrine of Spoils/Museum of Conquest
- Must be militarist, cannot be xenophilic
- Also: only empire that will not declare that "Hunting them is a net loss anyway" about the Tiyanki
This species evolved on a particularly hostile planet. Life for them has been a constant struggle to survive.
- Starts on a planet with the Savage World planetary modifier, giving -habitability, -pop growth speed(?), +army starting experience
- Planets with savage world also will only spawn with dangerous species that have a very high hardiness, making them nigh-impossible to eradicate
- Instead of producing food, all species set to "Hunting" produce 0.5(?) (rounded down) Hunter jobs per population level, which produce +4 food and +stability. To balance this out, Farmer jobs would have reduced output.
- Basically, it's for people who want to RP the Idirans from the Culture series.
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