Minor Catastrophes?

[General Karthos]

We see mentions of Late-Game catastrophes that are problems on a Galactic scale. I'm wondering if it's possible to have minor catastrophes that only destroy a planet or solar system. Like turning on a super LHC creates a micro black hole that obliterates the planet but doesn't do anything beyond. Or some sort of generator that creates an exotic radiation that causes the sun in the system to explode. I don't know. We see this all the time in Star Trek and Stargate and other Science Fiction shows where it is stopped at the last minute by the main characters.

What if they weren't there? What if they failed? Could we see that sort of thing happening?

And if so... how about off-world research bases so that we don't blow up our home system/planet?

 

[KonradKurze202]

There are Anomalies, which if they get a Critical Fail result, can do horrible, horrible things. We've seen a Scientist die, we've heard about altering the course of asteroids so they ram planets, and unleashing man-eating plants. So they do that kinda.

 

[General Karthos]

There are Anomalies, which if they get a Critical Fail result, can do horrible, horrible things. We've seen a Scientist die, we've heard about altering the course of asteroids so they ram planets, and unleashing man-eating plants. So they do that kinda.

Ah, I hadn't seen any of this.

But death by science is the sort of thing I was looking for.

 

[King of Malta]

Ah, I hadn't seen any of this.

But death by science is the sort of thing I was looking for.

Take a look at the Colony Events Dev Diary.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-16-colony-events.901906/

 

[General Karthos]

Take a look at the Colony Events Dev Diary.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-16-colony-events.901906/

That takes me back. I've read all the dev diaries.... But most of them only once, and it's been a while since diary 16. Thanks for the refresher.

 

[CatsPajamas]

Along these lines, we've seen a failed Anomaly investigation explode a science ship and kill the scientist, which definitely seemed like a catastrophe since it was the only one! (Looks like KonradKurze202 beat me to mentioning this - good call!)

However, the reason that happened was because the player took the risk of whatever reward the anomaly could have given. Any kind of Minor Catastrophe like this ought to be the result of player's choices, and/or players should be able to take some kind of action to mitigate or even benefit from it. Having the RNG punish you randomly tends to not be fun - the various disease events in Victoria II are examples there since the only player interaction involved is a choice better two very similar bad effects (and you'll always want to choose the lesser one if you can afford it).

I would be glad to see story events or something similar that could cause Minor Catastrophes but also featured quality player interaction. For instance, something like discovering a moon having a mineral rich core giving the player different mining choices, with the most dangerous one resulting in a huge amount of minerals but possibly exploding the moon or sending it on a collision course with another celestial body. That way the player has a real risk/reward choice and having the different options increases replay-ability as well.

Good thought General Karthos! Hopefully Stellaris will have a number of scenarios like this on release, and on top of that it seems Minor Catastrophes would be easy to simulate via modding in more anamolies or such.