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Stellaris Dev Diary #199: Become the Crisis

Hello everyone!

Today we’re back with another exciting dev diary to talk about a new feature in the upcoming Nemesis expansion for Stellaris.


For far too long has the galaxy remained safe from player hands. In fact, more often than not, the player has needed to be the defender of said galaxy. No more! Finally has your time come to become the crisis!
Becoming the Crisis
Your first step towards becoming the biggest threat to the continued existence of the galaxy is to pick the associated ascension perk. You need to have 2 other Ascension Perks unlocked before you can select Become the Crisis. The Ascension Perk is available to most types of empires, but xenophiles, pacifists and rogue servitors are unable to have the color purple as their favorite.

There is no limit to the number of players that can pick it, but the AI will be less likely to do so if there is another empire that already has it.

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Donning the purple, the Stellaris way.

Upon picking the Ascension Perk, your path of destruction has begun. You will forfeit other opportunities to focus on your newfound goals.

Becoming more menacing
As soon as you have chosen to Become the Crisis, you get access to a new UI tab where you can see your current crisis perks, and menace objectives.

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Work in progress. Names or descriptions may not be final.

As you perform certain evil deeds, you’ll be rewarded with Menace. Some of these are rewarded upon reaching an objective, while others are rewarded over time while certain conditions are met (such as having a vassal).

To reach the next Crisis Level you will need a certain amount of Menace, and you will also need to finish a special project to take you to the next level. You will need to repeat the process of gaining more Menace and finishing a special project 4 times before you can reach the final Crisis Level.

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Finishing the 1st special project, which takes you to Crisis Level 2.

Crisis Perks
Each Crisis Level unlocks certain Crisis Perks, which can unlock bonuses or new types of ships. As you become more menacing, you’ll also become more powerful through these perks.

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A crisis needs to keep its options open.

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Some of these ships cost minerals to build. Crazy concept, isn’t it?

You can unlock the following ships:
  • Menacing Corvette
  • Menacing Destroyer
  • Asteroid Cruiser
  • Star-Eater
The further you progress, the more interesting things start to become.

Existential Crisis
The final level for the crisis is no mere label, as you will be able to threaten the very existence of the galaxy.

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As the final level is unlocked, an Aetherophasic Engine Frame appears in your capital system. The frame requires a lot of dark matter to upgrade, and upgrading is something that you definitely want to do. Other empires may be less happy about the outcome.

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Getting such a large amount of dark matter is no easy task, so a special gathering device has to be used – let us present the Star-Eater. Star-Eaters do exactly what it sounds like – they eat stars.

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Behold! A large dark matter deposit.

Your new goal as a crisis is now to gather as much dark matter as you can, so that you can upgrade your Aetherophasic Engine. The stars are now your fuel towards a different future.

Should you succeed, everyone else will lose.

The galactic community will also get their own tools to try to stop you, which is something we’ll dive deeper into next week.
 
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This does make me wonder if the possibly of becoming an Awoken/Ascended Empire is on the table for potential DLC. It will need alot of work though to bring something new to the table that mods haven't already done.
 
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Do we know if Federation fleets being unupgradable are going to be fixed in the next patch? Not only does this bug make federation fleets go hopelessly obsolete in a decade or two, the retrofit exploit that comes with this bug also allows people to go over the titan limit. I hope this gets fixed, since this has been an issue since 2.6.2 at the very least.
 
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I don't want to be the crisis, but I want to fight it. It would be nice if I could create a civilization specially designed to play this role (I could give it some technological advantage from the start, for example).

I know that the forums are mostly populated by fanatical purifier players, but the data of average players that was presented some time ago indicated that the most popular ethics is Xenophiles.

Anything for them in this DLC?
You people forget that there's also the option for the galactic custodian, which was NOT shown. I expect it to have a similar tab with options and/or mechanics.
 
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The trailer makes it seem like you're making these stars go super nova. So do they become black holes after?
There are many types of remnants of super novae beyond black holes. It's not a 100% conversion.
But we don't have empty systems in stellaris thus far.
 
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You people forget that there's also the option for the galactic custodian, which was NOT shown. I expect it to have a similar tab with options and/or mechanics.
And whom should they fight?
The existing crisis which are already a pushover? An AI that takes this perk?
 
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So go kill the thing that is going to destroy it if you sit pondering your navels.

Or. Or, instead of leaving home, you build something to protect yourselves. There, you don't have to get involved with all those disgusting xenos, you can continue contemplating, the Giant Shield In The Sky will keep you safe.
 
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After gathering some intel, I predict it's coming out between April 2nd and May 11th :)
Because steam leaks... :p
 
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From a pure gameplay perspective that would make some sense, but less so if your empire has had some degree of Pacifism all game.
"We never could hurt anyone; it's not within our nature(/nurture?). Now go forth and set out to the Commonwealth of Man and slaughter every last one of it's inhabitants, it's the only way to be sure!!"

I'd say for the same reason the Federation couldn't handle the Borg or Dominion via strongly worded letter.

From a role playing perspective, I think it's perfectly fine for the game to throw you a challenge that doesn't meet any given player's preferred play style. An empire might be dedicated to peace and isolation, so how do they handle an opponent that sees this philosophy as weakness? How do they handle an opponent that can smash their walls or that builds a galaxy-spanning weapon?

From a strategy game perspective, this is a great conflict driver. The game should have threats that you can't ignore. If an empire on the far side of the galaxy is winding up a machine that will end all life as you know it, then your empire needs to figure out how it will deal with that.

Stellaris isn't a simulation game. Whether you address the new crisis through alliances, conquest, manipulating others into attacking them, leaning hard into the new espionage mechanics, that's all up in the air. But just ignoring them and avoiding conflict is not an option. Nor should it be.

I mean... it feels little different than sharing a border with a fanatic purifier/exterminator/assimilator. Or even just a particularly aggressive conqueror. They, too, don't take "but I'm a pacifist" for an answer. In a strategy game, playing as a pacifist should just be a different type of challenge, not a way to avoid conflict altogether.
 
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In this case, Winning is still about staying alive so it's different .

Also, that's how you see the thing but Pacifism includes self-defense, and in Stellaris, Pacifists can still fight during a Defensive war.
It's a defensive war
I get that, and I agree with you.
It's just this "accumulate points and once you have passed a certain threshold, you automatically score a win" scenario that I don't like. Just like you could be on the backfoot during an ordinary war in Stellaris, have large parts of your space be taken, including your capital, and spend the next few years successfully building up your forces (while the AI is busy flying in circles), make a push into contested space and reclaim most of it - and then be forced into a peace you never agreed to ~20 days before your now superior fleet arrives in your occupied capital system because some artificial timer said so.
Alternatively, to tie in a bit into my pacifism/isolationism example, it's like being in a defensive war against Purifiers with an AI as the main defender, who then racks up ~40% War Exhaustion before you can get there to help due to how arbitrary hyperlanes are set up and, due to that initial difference in War Exhaustion, eventually capitulate to the FP, ceding all their territory and people to aliens who'll put them in death camps, and take you with them because you were on the same side during the war, applying their total surrender to you by proxy, even though your own population only suffered loss in the form of the ships and crew you sent in and you yourself never formulated a surrender on your own.

Edit: Agreeing with basically everything that methegrate has replied above as well, for some reason you can't insert quotes when editing an already written comment.

It's not that I want isolationist empire to be immune to all kinds of attack, I was just listing an extreme example of an empire (I mean, Fanatic Pacifist?) that may either not act this way due to RP, or straight up be incapable of answering this sort of threat (unless the Player Crisis automatically enters a sort of WiH style war with everyone as soon as the perk is selected. Otherwise Fan. Pacifists wouldn't be able to do anything about them, and normal Pacifsits won't quite work either, I'd imagine: Sure you can vassalize the Player Crisis or change it's Authority to match yours, but you cannot remove it's Ascension Perk, so it could just keep going despite that).
If an aggressive neighbour attacks you and you don't defend yourself, that's on you. Obviously, being Pacifist in Stellaris doesn't mean you're demilitarized and should never fight back if you're attacked. My problem is that you could lose the game against an empire that supposedly kills you, without you two actually having fought at all.
 
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What happens when you finish building the Aetherophasic Engine?

I know that you will win, but what does the Engine do exactly to cause you to win?
my guess is

1.Collect dark matter
2.Build Aetherophasic Engine
3.???????
4.PROFIT!!!
 
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What a pointless thing. I guess there's some desire for it as there seems to be a desire for anything in a large enough populaiton, but Fanatic Purifiers, Devouring Swarms, and even just regular empires who achieve the capability of launching a total war (hello colossi!) are already the same basic threat to the galaxy in player hands.

Sure, they don't get the super-special "evil goals", but since those goals include "destroy other empires" and "destroy enemy ships" they will play the same.

Nah that would be grand for the first level or two but I'd say youd need to be purging half the galaxy to get to the last level
 
is there only "one way" to be the crisis?
like the one described in the post or are there "more" ?
don't think it feels good to do the same as a machine empire on crisis mode in comparison to a hive mind ?!
 
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