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Stellaris Dev Diary #187 - Post-mortem

Zaztl’s time had come. The Ritual of Elevation was soon to begin, and as she was inching ever closer to her own final destiny, she wondered “Is this perhaps the start of a new life?”. She couldn’t help but to latch on to hope in her moment of dread, but she also knew the futility of the question.

No Jeferian would ever know the answer to that question.

Shumon ins-Beth was born, the newest individual to join the Pasharti species.


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The result of dark experimentation by the Jeferians - the former owners of the planet Taralon - the Pashartians are the ultimate parasites. Originally a semi-sapient creature dwelling in the depths of Taralon's mountains, the Jeferians uplifted and augmented them to act as a subservient slave race. However, their uplifting was rather too effective, and they unleashed a monster. Horrified at the capabilities of their creation - which included the ability to absorb other sentient species and turn them into Pashartians - the Jeferians tried to shut down the experiment. However, a small group of uplifted Pashartians escaped.

Over the years, they bided their time, managing not only to evade capture, but also gradually increase their numbers and develop a technological base to rival the Jeferians. Eventually, the Jeferians noticed that something was amiss, but by then they were powerless to resist.

Soon the Pashartians had seized control of the planet, unleashing violent pogroms on their erstwhile oppressors - all the while further increasing their numbers. Now poised to take to the stars, the Pashartians stand ready to pursue what they see as their solemn duty - the conversion of all lesser life forms to their likeness.


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Hello everyone!

Two weeks ago we announced the Necroids Species Pack, and today we’ll be giving you more information about the gameplay aspects. But first, I’ll take the opportunity to link the trailer once again, in case you missed it.


For Necroids we wanted to add some new gameplay that would be available to many more different types of empires and species. Unlike Lithoids, these Civics and Origins will not require you to use a Necroid portrait. For Lithoids we felt like it made sense, but in this case we didn’t want to impose any limitations on your imagination and creativity.

Necroids gameplay includes:
  • Necrophage (Origin)
  • Memorialist (Civic)
  • Death Cult (Civic)
  • Reanimated Armies (Civic)

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Necrophage is a new Origin that means that your primary species has a very hard time to procreate by themselves, but is instead dependent on transforming other Pops into themselves.

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Necrophage Trait - live long and consume

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Chamber of Elevation - when regular Uplifting isn’t enough

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Necrophytes - Hey, what does the necro part of my job title stand for anyway?

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In addition, there is also the Reanimated Armies civic that we showed in DD #185. This civic replaces the Military Academy with a Dread Encampment, and can recruit Undead Armies that are unaffected by morale.

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Reanimated Armies - the ultimate in recycling.

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Dread Encampment Building - wouldn’t want to get caught dead here

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Undead Army - it’s not wight how they work them to the bone, but they don’t complain

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Necromancer job - some say it’s a dead end job, but they’ve made a grave mistake
(Note: Above image includes the bonus from Ground Defense Planning)

This civic has a few restrictions - no pacifists, and it conflicts with Citizen Service since it replaces the Military Academy. Some subtle differences exist between Soldiers granted by Military Academies and the Necromancers from Dread Encampments - they’re Specialist tier and provide more defense armies, provide some research benefits, and will summon additional defense armies under Martial Law instead of increasing Stability.

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That is all for this week! Next week we’ll take a look at the art process and all the effort that goes into creating the Necroid portraits!

We’ll be eagerly reading your responses, and remember that...
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Jeff sees all
 
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Eeerr... did you ever heard about a Civic called Driven Assimilators for gestalt (machine) empires, Daimonin?


have you ever heard about the.... i dont know... NECROPHAGES from endless legend? a literal necrophaging hivemind?
 
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have you ever heard about the.... i dont know... NECROPHAGES from endless legend? a literal necrophaging hivemind?

Sure, but it seems that there is a dogma in Stellaris Dev team concerning Gestalt, one core tenet of it being the hiveminds have to sucks, and machine empires have to be OP.

So, if you, as a Dev, introduce a new feature or civic, your first action has to be taking it away from Hiveminds. Introduce hive worlds? Make it the same thing as machine world, but worse (OK they fix it...)
New fédération type ? Make sure hiveminds just get the basic crappy one.

Introduce Necrophage origin? Obviously hiveminds can't get it, even if it's a classical sci-fi trope, and let it avaible for Fanatic Purifiers, even if it's totally stupid.

I don't know, maybe someone in Dev team was bullied at school as a child by a very mean hivemind and suffer PTSD since, so he take some kind of revenge? I don't have any better explanation.
 
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let it avaible for Fanatic Purifiers, even if it's totally stupid

What does even happen if you combine it? You start with 12 pops of a secondary species. My guess is they will start instantly purging them, crippling your economy. Pops that get purged can't work a job, so they can't get converted by the new building. Yeah it is totally stupid from a gameplay and a lore perspective.
 
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What does even happen if you combine it? You start with 12 pops of a secondary species. My guess is they will start instantly purging them, crippling your economy. Pops that get purged can't work a job, so they can't get converted by the new building. Yeah it is totally stupid from a gameplay and a lore perspective.

Yeah, totally agree, I made a post about this in the "why necroids?" thread.
It's so dumb it's really funny, if you combine the Necrophage origin with a lithoid specie and FP civic, you can't grow by yourself and kill your only mean of reproduction.
Your dark overlord rock-space-vampire specie can't work the worker strata, so you just have space deposit to get basic resources. Quite a beautiful oversight, or maybe they try to make the unchallengeable specie for Darwin Awards, Idk.
 
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I'm soooooooo tired of every empire being balanced. I do my best with mods to make the game asymmetric, but at this point, the game is an empty shell that merely holds all the things (mods) that allow for an interesting grand strategy game. Which is great, from one perspective.

Lol what game are you playing? This game is far from balanced.
 
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I'd just like to say, in defense of Paradox here:

Games Workshop did not invent the idea of eerie green lights with a dark colour scheme being indicative of advanced, frightening technology and associations with body horror. That was Star Trek with the Borg in 1989, nor did they invent calling a fictional race/faction necro- something, the earliest example I can (be bothered to) find is Unreal Tournament (1999) with the 'Necris'.

So I really do find the idea that they 'ripped off' the necrons more than a bit unfair. Geniunely.

The stuff about how they should fix the game is legit, though. They should totally do that.
 
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Sure, but it seems that there is a dogma in Stellaris Dev team concerning Gestalt, one core tenet of it being the hiveminds have to sucks, and machine empires have to be OP.

So, if you, as a Dev, introduce a new feature or civic, your first action has to be taking it away from Hiveminds. Introduce hive worlds? Make it the same thing as machine world, but worse (OK they fix it...)
New fédération type ? Make sure hiveminds just get the basic crappy one.

Introduce Necrophage origin? Obviously hiveminds can't get it, even if it's a classical sci-fi trope, and let it avaible for Fanatic Purifiers, even if it's totally stupid.

I don't know, maybe someone in Dev team was bullied at school as a child by a very mean hivemind and suffer PTSD since, so he take some kind of revenge? I don't have any better explanation.


machine empires suck too, just because they are doing better than other empires, doesnt mean that they have more interessting gameplay than hiveminds.... both are way too ... "bland" , especially considering WHAT THEY ARE
 
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Yes OP AF, but boring to play, but driven assimilator are quite good, unique mechanic, unique colossus, and interesting in RP because of their ambiguity, nore good or bad guys
 
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Because some of us really hated linking portraits to mechanics. Why can't I have rock eating dwarfs or food eating rock creatures? Or for that matter use the golem looking rock creatures for machine empires?

Rock eating dwarfs and food eating rock creatures didn't make any sense -- and the same can be said about golem looking rock creatures being used for machine empires.
 
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have you ever heard about the.... i dont know... NECROPHAGES from endless legend? a literal necrophaging hivemind?

I'm not a fan of the Endless games -- I prefer Stellaris and Haegemonia: The Legions of Iron.
 
machine empires suck too, just because they are doing better than other empires, doesnt mean that they have more interessting gameplay than hiveminds.... both are way too ... "bland" , especially considering WHAT THEY ARE

Did you ever tried to play your Hiveminds using this mod?
 
Rock eating dwarfs and food eating rock creatures didn't make any sense -- and the same can be said about golem looking rock creatures being used for machine empires.

Sure in a hard science game like stellaris with its space dragons it would be out of place to imagine a organic life form that sustains itself with non-organic "food". We will just ignore the species that meanwhile do this on earth.
 
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Sorry pal, but I prefer to see any fantasy elements in my sci-fi constrained inside very, very rigid limits. That means I will never accept anything that would not make sense in the real world -- like necromancers raising armies of undead, dwarves eating rocks and robots made of stone.
 
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Sorry pal, but I prefer to see any fantasy elements in my sci-fi constrained inside very, very rigid limits. That means I will never accept anything that would not make sense in the real world -- like necromancers raising armies of undead, dwarves eating rocks and robots made of stone.

tenor.gif
 
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Sorry pal, but I prefer to see any fantasy elements in my sci-fi constrained inside very, very rigid limits. That means I will never accept anything that would not make sense in the real world -- like necromancers raising armies of undead, dwarves eating rocks and robots made of stone.
I don't see why a humanoid species having evolved to sustain itself on minerals instead of organic matter makes less sense than summoning gods to get doubled resources before they basically explode your empire
 
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Sorry pal, but I prefer to see any fantasy elements in my sci-fi constrained inside very, very rigid limits. That means I will never accept anything that would not make sense in the real world -- like necromancers raising armies of undead, dwarves eating rocks and robots made of stone.

OK, so you want to stick with reality?

What about FTL and hyperlanes, instant travel always focused laser beam, ships traveling in straight line across entire solar systems ignoring gravity, inertia, speed of light and applying acceleration/deceleration so strong it could flatten a whole planet, energy shields, psionics powers, noise in space, billions of individuals instant-teleporting between planets in different stars systems, gateways and crossable wormholes, incredible convergence of intelligent life who evolve to space travel the exact same year, instant communications in empires probably dozens of light-years large, ship hull able to endure relativistic speed kinetic impacts, and extracting matter from black holes?

All of this goes from highly improbable (wormholes) to total bullshit (the rest) regarding the laws of physics in our real world. So space zombies, rock eating dwarves, or golem-machines don't make less sense that all of this above ;)
 
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OK, so you want to stick with reality?

What about FTL and hyperlanes, instant travel always focused laser beam, ships traveling in straight line across entire solar systems ignoring gravity, inertia, speed of light and applying acceleration/deceleration so strong it could flatten a whole planet, energy shields, psionics powers, noise in space, billions of individuals instant-teleporting between planets in different stars systems, gateways and crossable wormholes, incredible convergence of intelligent life who evolve to space travel the exact same year, instant communications in empires probably dozens of light-years large, ship hull able to endure relativistic speed kinetic impacts, and extracting matter from black holes?

All of this goes from highly improbable (wormholes) to total bullshit (the rest) regarding the laws of physics in our real world. So space zombies, rock eating dwarves, or golem-machines don't make less sense that all of this above ;)
It's not 'reality', for me at least. It's theme. Silicon-based life is common in sci-fi. FTL is too, and so is messing around with black holes and psionics.

These, however, are literal Undead Armies and literal god-damned Necromancers. Trying to point to 'But space dragons!' or some obscure piece of sci-fi as proof that it fits is just disingenuous.
 
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