Dietary Requirements

[GuesssWho]

The species creator should have a diet toggle. Something along these general lines:

Carnivore: +10% army damage, -5% food production
Obligatory Carnivore: Double Carnivore traits, always has Livestock slavery option
Herbivore: +10% defending army damage, -5% attacking army damage
Lithovore: Can terraform barren world into random world in opposing type from home world, no food use
Omnivore: As standard
Photosynthesis: Bonus energy becomes food, cannot colonize planets too far from star
Toxins: Can only colonize toxic worlds, can toxify worlds instead of terraforming them

 

[InvisibleBison]

I don't see why being a carnivore or herbivore would affect army damage. Soldiers in Stellaris are armed with guns. Having sharp teeth isn't going to help them fight. And being an herbivore doesn't make a creature less dangerous on the attack; hippos are herbivores but also are extremely aggressive and one of the most dangerous kinds of animals in the world.

Lithovores are an interesting idea and one often suggested, though I don't quite see what the terraforming feature you've described has to do with eating rocks.

Photosynthetic beings are also a good idea, though I don't think having them eat energy is appropriate. Photosynthesis means you use sunlight to make nutrients, you don't plug into a wall outlet.

Colonizing toxic worlds is not really thematically connected to a species' diet, so I don't know why you grouped it in here. That being said, I think it's an intriguing idea, albeit one that requires careful examination. Toxic planets are about as common as habitable planets, I think, so a toxic inhabiting species have something similar to a machine intelligence's ability to painlessly colonize all types of planets. Thus, it would be reasonable to say that toxic species would need some sort of significant drawback to how they grow new pops, similar to how machine intelligences need to spend minerals to build pops.

 

[GuesssWho]

Mindset, mostly. Predators naturally think about attacking, prey about defending/evading. And they are, yes--because herbivores are territorial. That's defense.

Lithovores don't need to grow food, so they can live on barren worlds a lot easier. Hell, you can even find them on a barren world as an anomaly.

So maybe have excess energy add to food stocks?

Well, toxic creatures would live off the chemicals that cause everyone else so much trouble. I might suggest it separately too, though.

 

[GuesssWho]

Okay, edited things a bit.