I do not care for the Aquatic robot

[Quinzal]

I know Stellaris isn't the most realistic game, at least based on our current understanding of the universe, but they've also made it a point to keep anything close to magic strictly confined to Psionics. I'm very grateful for that. Magic doesn't seem like it would fit in a game like Stellaris considering it's very heavily sci-fi, not fantasy, and I guess the Shroud makes sense trope-wise considering that the Force and the Warp are large parts of sci-fi culture, which the Shroud takes inspiration from both.

Enter the Aquatic robot.

It... doesn't look like a robot.

At best, it looks like an Unbidden with skin and some papier mâché glued to it.
At worst, it's a Warcraft water elemental that turned bipedal and ate an aquarium.

I understand what they were going for here, and it really is an amazing piece of art; I'll probably use it for a Machine Intelligence run pretty soon.

But, for an Aquatic species that has barely gotten off of their planet?

When every other species type has big metal toasters?

(Disclaimer: I pulled this image off of Google because I'm lazy, the annotations aren't mine)

What makes Aquatics so special that they get shiny walking bipedals with no exposed parts or wires? They're just... shiny.

The biggest outlier previously was probably the Molluscoid, and it at the very least still looks mechanical. Aquatics robot just looks like a guy.

And it's weird to me, because if you look at some of the concept art,

It looked like they had a really good idea going. If one of these, especially the right one, was colored in and animated like the current one, I would 100% be on board.

So, what happened?

 

[jaketoms16]

For clarity, the one you have labeled as Reptilian is Mammalian; and the one you have labeled as ??? is Reptilian

 

[Slaughter]

Is it inspired in those weird aliens from the end of the movie AI - Artificial Intelligence?

 

[Quinzal]

For clarity, the one you have labeled as Reptilian is Mammalian; and the one you have labeled as ??? is Reptilian

I know, I pulled that image off of Google because I was lazy.

Looks like it actually comes from this thread in the far off year of 2017.

 

[Mitchz95]

I like it, personally. I think it looks like an "alternate techline" robot, which makes sense for an aquatic civilization to build.

We have a more squid-like robot in the Synthetic Dawn lineup, the molluscoid design.

 

[exi123]

Who says that robots or mechanic workers always need to have straight, machine looking (in our eyes) shapes? These are entities from civilizations build up next or in water, that enclosed artificial look fits well imo. The other two artworks are looking more like a humanoid for me.

 

[Zenicetus]

Is it inspired in those weird aliens from the end of the movie AI - Artificial Intelligence?

It reminds me of that too. Those were supposed to be future robots, if I remember it right. I guess it makes sense that an aquatic robot should be somewhat streamlined, I just wish it was less humanoid and more fishy or crab-like to fit the theme.

 

[xeleth12]

They clearly went for something based off of coral (remember the concept arts) but this thing ended up waaaay too organic. This looks like a proper organic creature like someking of plankton/krill/coral super-colony taken a humanoid shape with a protoplasm for skin. Personally, that's what it makes me think of straight away, but surely not a robot/synthetic in any way. And the concepts were going with a more mechanical nature originally. That is... yeah, I think that was an artistic bad bad choice.
Take all the concepts and everything out of the picture. This is the first time you see this being popping up in your game, would you first go "Oh that's an AI ."? Of course not. "those are strange people" not "machines".
In my personal opinion I found this whole pack, when it comes to portraits, quite uninspired to say the least, but those aquatic synths' ? They must be the worse of it all, for a robot. This portrait should have been either more mechanical or made into an organic one.
PS: Don't get me wrong, it looks absolutely amazing and is actually one of my favorite portraits of this pack... if only it actually looked like a synthetic being or was actually organic.

 

[Quinzal]

Who says that robots or mechanic workers always need to have straight, machine looking (in our eyes) shapes? These are entities from civilizations build up next or in water, that enclosed artificial look fits well imo. The other two artworks are looking more like a humanoid for me.

I'm not saying that all robots have to have straight machine looking shapes, I'm saying I want it to look like a robot.

Every other robot you can tell is a robot just from a glance. There is next-to-nothing robotic about the Aquatic one. It looks like a giant genemodded amoeba more than an automaton.

 

[Zagreb 887]

I would say that most of the stuff in Stellaris has more in common with "space magic" than our current understanding of the law of the Universe. FTL/Teleportation/instant communication stuff breaking causality, noise in space, antrhopocentric space civilizations... It's ok. So this golem like robot don't bother me at all.

 

[Quinzal]

FTL/Teleportation/instant communication stuff breaking causality

FTL is a sci-fi trope and is the minimum suspension-of-belief required to make pretty much every sci-fi story work.

noise in space

It's a gameplay contrivance; unless you want your game to be completely silent with just a soundtrack.

antrhopocentric space civilizations

I don't understand what you mean by this. The entire point of the game is about the interaction with species with each other, not just with humans.

 

[Rakonat]

It looks more like a lithoid than an aquatic to me, but I guess I'm biased.

 

[Elth]

Well my point to look at it is aquatic species may have developed differently kinds of power usage unlike our use of metallic cables for electricty, maybe they use some more biological kind of mean to transport energy with the external shiny thing being some kind of biological-looking syntethical material like some aquatic creatures have.

The whole point of an aquatic based civilization is their technological development might look heavily different from ours (seeing as an example their ships look like they are full of water inside)

 

[Ridixo]

It's a robot, how it looks doesn't matter. Without a problem it simply got a water filled outer chassis to make it appear like that while it's completely mechanical on the inside. It's like having a robot modeled after a medieval suit of armor, even if it got separated parts to make it look like an animated suit of armor it can still be robotic

Could also be that the blue thing is just watertight outer shell for the robot. You don't want your robot to get wet, even more if it works underwater all the time

 

[Quinzal]

Without a problem it simply got a water filled outer chassis to make it appear like that while it's completely mechanical on the inside.

That's... a little bit of a stretch, considering no other robot in the game is like that.

Could also be that the blue thing is just watertight outer shell for the robot. You don't want your robot to get wet, even more if it works underwater all the time

No, because you can see the insides shimmering during it's animation.

how it looks doesn't matter

When one of the big selling points of your DLC are the portraits, it kinda does matter.

 

[Slaughter]

It reminds me of that too. Those were supposed to be future robots, if I remember it right. I guess it makes sense that an aquatic robot should be somewhat streamlined, I just wish it was less humanoid and more fishy or crab-like to fit the theme.

If memory fails me, I think the movie never makes it clear wherever they are future robots or aliens, its just implied that whatever they are, they own the Earth long after humanity's passing.

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

If memory fails me, I think the movie never makes it clear wherever they are future robots or aliens, its just implied that whatever they are, they own the Earth long after humanity's passing.

They and their society appeared heavily artificial, and the fact that the movie's about an android to begin with strongly suggests they're future androids, probably the result of humanity becoming more android-like over time.

Anyways, I think the aquatic robot is a little too odd. There are three problems I have with it:

1. Its plating is irregular both in shape and surface texture, looking much more like a creature's armor plates than something you'd assemble.
2. The swirling lights inside look too "magic" for something you can be easily making in year 10.
3. The form has very thin joints holding bulkier ends, which is a terrestrial feature of animals and robots for high motion range and low mass.

The concept art would only solve issue 1, but admittedly, the molluscoid robot definitely has issue 2 as well. What I'd really expect is more something with a body shape like the plantoid robot (for streamlined propulsion) and the appendages of the molluscoid robot (for non-segmented articulation).

 

[klopkr]

I think it's fine as a robot. It gives me the impression of a soft-robot. For many aspects of robotics hydraulics are actually completely viable solutions and imo this robot looks like it has soft hydraulics on the inside of a soft skin.

The 'shell' parts imo could still have been metal or non existant because they seem more like tacked on armour but using shell like materials as aquatics makes sense.

The problem for me with him though is that he looks like a human... for an aquatic robot. I feel like it would have made much much more sense with a squid, or fish, starfish, or clam, or any aquatic body lay out rather than human. I always imagine it has tentacle legs because it makes no sense otherwise.

Unfortnetly he'll always be Mr. Galaxy wide because of his human look. It's really too bad.