Stellaris Aquatica

[Strager]

I think an awesome new feature could be aquatic races. To allow for this, the habitat system would need to be changed:

1. Ocean Worlds would be moved from "Wet" to "Aquatic"
2. Swamp would be added to "Wet" to replace Ocean
3. Ocean Renamed to "Surface Ocean"
4. Subsurface Ocean added
5. Great Lakes (Fresh Water) added

Selecting the new "Aquatic" worlds could allow for 3 new prototypes:

• Crustations
• Fish
• Aquatic Mammals

Could be real fun:

 

[Untrustedlife]

You mean phenotypes?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Phenotypes should not be locked to a planet type. Ocean worlds already exist in the game and even the mostly clearly aquatic of the Molluscoids are not restricted to them.

Stop suggesting gameplay effects or restrictions for portraits.

 

[CocoCincinnati]

It's an interesting idea but ultimately hard to balance and as some have said, introduces restrictions. I would be content with an option to have "underwater" city pictures for ocean worlds. I usually RP that anyway and just think of the picture on each world as the international space port where the land dwelling races can come to trade.

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

I am definitely on board with more Crustaceans in my Arthropod phenotype, right now all we've got is that one weird crab looking guy and the rest are all clearly insects. I want a lobster man. And if there are enough Crustaceans, I'm not averse to splitting them off onto their own line like Arachnids did. Aquatic mammals and fish may be more difficult to do well, given any playable race needs to be believably able to craft and use tools, but they made fungus work and a snail so, I'm on board with any new phenotype or race portraits they want to add. Related note, I'd like a bush inspired plant phenotype, or Spanish Moss. I've got an idea for a Hivemind. Back on topic, I'd even drop some real world money if an entire Crustacean phenotype was as gorgeous as their plant people.

Releasing this phenotype pack at the same time as an addition of a fourth habitability type causes me no grief, and in fact would be solid marketing. Having a fourth habitability type causes me no grief either, habitable planet numbers can be tweaked so that it has no impact on the early game, and further rewarding the type of play that opens up new climates for colonization seems solid. Tweaking the random faction creator to give preference to these habitability types to spawn on aquatic type worlds I have no problem with, so long as it doesn't mess up the mix of planets. Simply adding a few prefab factions that pair the new phenotypes with the new climate would also be a great idea that wouldn't restrict play or upset balance.

Restricting these phenotypes to only having homeworlds on that fourth habitability type is too much of a departure from game mechanics to get my thumbs up. If I make lobster men, i want them to be from an Alpine world and survive in those harsh climates via a naturally produced form of anti-freeze in their digestive and lymph juices.

I'm gonna give the idea a tentative thumbs up, because I do want to play the Lobster Knights of Crustaria, a holy crusader order who reaches into the stars to right wrongs and slay dragons.

 

[KingKone]

I wonder how fish would work, would they need to be in a special suit to survive out of water? Be cool if fish had a goldfish bowl for there helmet lol. The parrot for some reason is the only one to have a helmet.

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

Google image search for Fishman shows a wealth of ways to make them look cool. Whatever they do, so long as they have one based on a lantern fish. I want to be the fish who puts the Illuminated in this Technocracy.

 

[Strager]

You mean phenotypes?

Stupid spellchak

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

I wonder how fish would work, would they need to be in a special suit to survive out of water? Be cool if fish had a goldfish bowl for there helmet lol. The parrot for some reason is the only one to have a helmet.

Mudskippers have both gills and lungs, and regularly hop and crawl between muddy ponds.

There's no reason that fishmen couldn't just be standing there flapping their weird fish-mouths. A portrait or two wearing a goldfish bowl or reverse-scuba gear would be interesting, mind, but the phenotypes are a purely visual thing- they're categories to fit portraits into by looks. The closest to a gameplay mechanic is that they also provide a hook for flavour text in diplomacy.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

This sort of thing would work better with a biome system. Stellaris sticks firmly to 'planet types', so you can't have dolphin-people using Earth'soceans for example.

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

A game where having aliens or synths actually increases the number of useable tiles on a planet would have been interesting. To make it significant and diverse though, they'd have probably needed alot more tiles per planet.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

The tough part would making races to use the additional biomes on your planet useful rather than 100% mandatory. Possibly why they didn't bother.

Stars in Shadow does this fairly well, but the benefits from additional population are quite circumscribed compared to the benefits from additional POPs in Stellaris

EDIT -

It might work as a planetary tag, like Titanic Life or Subterranean Civilization.

Oceanic Sapients: -food production, +society research, +happiness

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

Allow habitability technologies and partial terraforming to open up the tiles to your original race as well. Just have that require a bit more of a technology investment so that it becomes a less effective way of unlocking the same potential.

 

[Strager]

Stop suggesting gameplay effects or restrictions for portraits.

I'm not suggesting a "restriction" per-say(sp?) - more an alternative set of portraits specifically for aquatic worlds.

I suggested only 3 world types and 3 phenotypes in order to keep the feature manageable to a DLC - really i'd like to see a full second set of phenotypes, and a full set of new planets. Worlds could be cross-colonized with the right techs.

This sort of thing would work better with a biome system. Stellaris sticks firmly to 'planet types', so you can't have dolphin-people using Earth'soceans for example.

To take the idea a little further, perhaps you could give every world type X number of water tiles - X would be based on the world type (Deserts would have 0-1, Oceans would have all but perhaps 1 land tile) They could also be converted back and forth with the right ascendancy paths?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

I'm not suggesting a "restriction" per-say(sp?) - more an alternative set of portraits specifically for aquatic worlds.

Don't try to weasel out of this- you are suggesting that a certain phenotype or set of phenotypes be restricted to only being selectable if you've chosen a certain type of homeworld.

Like, lots of people want an Aquatic Phenotype pack- there's no reason to screw all the people who just want to play some cool fish or sharks or whatever by then forcing them to play with certain planets.

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

To take the idea a little further, perhaps you could give every world type X number of water tiles - X would be based on the world type (Deserts would have 0-1, Oceans would have all but perhaps 1 land tile) They could also be converted back and forth with the right ascendancy paths?

If they're going to do that, why not just go all in and remake all worlds in a granular fashion, with each tile having its own climate? Looking at earth, we see examples of every different environment, which makes sense given that earth's environments were the inspiration for every climate in game, but still. Why give ocean dwellers special treatment when earth has plenty of desert that's either completely or only marginally inhabitable? Earth has two Arctic environments that are barely inhabited. We have Savannahs, Tundras, Arids, Jungles. We have it all, and realistically any other planet in the galaxy would be a mix/match of different environs.

The reason this isn't done is, of course, that it would be an annoying amount of micromanagement. And while if we just limited it to special treatment for a single environ it would be less micromanagement than more even implementation, it would also seem disjointed.

 

[Elfwind]

Google image search for Fishman shows a wealth of ways to make them look cool. Whatever they do, so long as they have one based on a lantern fish. I want to be the fish who puts the Illuminated in this Technocracy.

Just don't make them as deadly as groupers in darkest dungeon. We'd all die!

 

[Cruxador]

When Stellaris first came out, there were lots of folks clamouring for plant and mineral phenotypes, and sharing their ideas for how those might work. Then Plantoids came out, and had literally no new mechanics. I haven't seen people ask for mineral races in a while.

And before someone jumps down my throat about tying mechanics to portraits, consider: A photosynthetic trait (-100% food consumption) and a rooted trait (can't move pops between tiles) would allow you to play as plants pretty well and would do so without necessarily being tied to the portrait itself, just as a plant-themed add-on to the DLC. I mean, modders do that level of content addition for something as simple as elves, why can't Paradox do it for something as broad as plants? But they don't do things like that, so don't expect something that would require as much change as differentiating between aquatic and terrestrial.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I don't really see how a being photosynthetic would massively or even notably decrease industrial needs relating to food or food-equivalents. Food is an abstraction, and intelligent mobile creatures (or unintelligent drones controlled by immobile plants, or w/e...) need lots of energy to conduct the day to day business of civilization. Working off energy like robots would make more sense than Magical Pops. Even within the realm of a plant-based lifeform, there are numerous possible implementations in SF, many of which wouldn't even be photosynthetic, let alone photosynethetic enough to operate on a human-equivalent level. Thus, an abstraction using normal race mechanics makes at least as much sense as anything else, whether you are producing fertilizer or operating massive sun lamps.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

When Stellaris first came out, there were lots of folks clamouring for plant and mineral phenotypes, and sharing their ideas for how those might work. Then Plantoids came out, and had literally no new mechanics. I haven't seen people ask for mineral races in a while.

And before someone jumps down my throat about tying mechanics to portraits, consider: A photosynthetic trait (-100% food consumption) and a rooted trait (can't move pops between tiles) would allow you to play as plants pretty well and would do so without necessarily being tied to the portrait itself, just as a plant-themed add-on to the DLC. I mean, modders do that level of content addition for something as simple as elves, why can't Paradox do it for something as broad as plants? But they don't do things like that, so don't expect something that would require as much change as differentiating between aquatic and terrestrial.

Extra traits are fine. I love suggestions for more traits.

What I can't stand is suggestions that then go on to say "But you should only be able to take those if you've picked X phenotype" and/or "Those traits are extra-weighted for phenoptype X".