The Aquatics Species Pack and Free 3.2 "Herbert" Update will release November 22nd!

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MrFreake_PDX

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Embrace the life of a seafaring civilization in the Aquatics Species Pack on November 22nd!

Choose to originate on a large Ocean Paradise, with increased pop happiness, output, and population growth, or choose the Here Be Dragons! Origin, and start guarded by a sage-blue - and occasionally very hungry - space dragon.

Specialize your species with the Aquatics Species Trait, which further optimizes your species for living on Ocean worlds, but penalizes living on Cold and Dry planet types.

Become interstellar seafood harvesters with the Anglers Civic, and harness the bounty of the ocean with fresh seafood and rare pearls as staples of your Empire’s economy.

Ascend into the deep with the Hydrocentric Ascension Perk, and your species becomes more adept at terraforming planets into ocean worlds, as well as the ability to harvest ice asteroids to expand the planetary ocean even further.

The Aquatics Species Pack also includes 15 new Aquatic-inspired portraits, a new Aquatics ship set, and a new Seafarer advisor voice, inspired by high-seas adventure fiction.

Wishlist the Aquatics Species Pack today!

3.2 “Herbert” Update:​

Named after renowned Sci-Fi author Frank Herbert, the 3.2 Patch brings along with it many bug fixes and AI improvements as well as new features for the Humanoids Species Pack and the base game.

Pompous Purists Civic​

In our latest addition to the Humanoids Species Pack, the Pompous Purists Civic allows for a diplomatic playstyle, but for Xenophobes. The idea is based on an elven fantasy, where they are willing to negotiate with other species, but only on their own terms.

To that end, empires with the Pompous Purists Civic cannot receive diplomatic proposals, but may still send them. They will also get bonus trust growth and extra envoys.

Terraforming Improvements​

With the focus on Terraforming in the Aquatics Species Pack, the Custodian Team has been hard at work to improve the experience of terraforming as a whole.
Terraforming planets now have a chance to randomly trigger events, to add more flavor to the overall process of terraforming. These events vary in power and complexity and will only trigger the first time a planet is terraformed.

But there’s more, we’ve also done some work with the AI budgets to make the AI more likely to terraform planets to optimal planet types, and will be more likely to pick Terraforming technologies and Ascension perks under certain circumstances.

More to Explore​

We have added new anomalies for the Gas Giant, Asteroid, and uninhabitable anomaly categories. This will add more depth to some anomalies that previously only had a single outcome (for example the Gigantic Skeleton Anomaly).

We also have revisited some of the older anomaly events and added new options, to add more depth to these older anomalies.

AI Improvements​

As part of the Custodian Initiative, we have set goals for ourselves, one of which is constantly working on and improving AI empires in Stellaris. The long-term goal is to move towards having a challenging AI, while still keeping the game entertaining to players and making AI empires feel more distinctive so that all AI empires do not feel strong in the same way.

Previously, AI used to follow an economic plan based on the stage of the game they were in. For the 3.2 Update, we have updated the economic scripts used by the AI. The AI now uses a single base plan but relies more heavily on sub plans, which allow the AI to react more easily to unexpected developments throughout the game. The AI also has the ability to turn these sub plans on and off based on their economic situation, allowing them to react to unexpected resource deficits, and in our testing has lowered the frequency of AI economic collapses.

We also have gone over the Building and District weights for AI empires, which will further improve your AI opponents’ economy. Finally, AI starbase construction has been improved and will now use more varied setups when building their starbases and making use of special buildings where it makes sense.

Fleet Manager and Reinforcements​

We have addressed several issues that arose in the 3.1 update, namely that it was possible to create fleets larger than the command limit, which resulted in large amounts of single-ship fleets when attempting to reinforce those fleets. Fleets containing one ship type and one ship should now appear in the fleet manager.

Fleet reinforcements will be considerably faster after the 3.2 update in most cases. Fleet reinforcements will now make better choices when selecting shipyards to reinforce from and should better consider systems with multiple shipyards as well as systems connected by bypasses.

We also have improved the reinforcement pathfinding: reinforcements will now attempt to find a second, longer route if the shortest reinforcement route is considered unsafe. Systems with friendly and enemy fleets will no longer be considered unsafe, and ships with jump drives will no longer require a safe path for reinforcement purposes. In addition, Reinforcing fleets that fail to find a safe path to the target fleet will now merge with other fleets orbiting the same shipyard if both fleets intended to reinforce the same target fleet.

Improved Ship Browser​

Back in May, we talked about a Ship Browser Experiment, where roughly half of our players would be getting an improved ship browser, that allows viewing all of the ships in a shipset, and manipulating them so that they can be viewed from any angle.

We’re happy to announce that this experiment will be going out to all Stellaris PC players with the 3.2 “Herbert” update!

And More​

Including Performance improvements, Modding improvements, Multiplayer stability improvements, Balance changes, and over 80+ bug fixes in total.

We hope you enjoy these latest additions to Stellaris on November 22nd with the release of Aquatics and the 3.2 “Herbert” Update and don’t forget to Wishlist the Aquatics Species Pack Now!
 

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Can't wait to test the water on this, and dip my feet in the ocean. I've always been a more glass half full of water than half empty, but I guess there is always plenty of more fish in the sea. Excited for this, glad for the early announcement drop
 
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We also have gone over the Building and District weights for AI empires, which will further improve your AI opponents’ economy. Finally, AI starbase construction has been improved and will now use more varied setups when building their starbases and making use of special buildings where it makes sense.
And here I was just gearing up to report a whole host of designation and weighting bugs. Guess I'll hold off and see what's fixed next week!

Interested to see the terraforming changes.
 
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Monday release, ample time for hot-fixes. Hope they aren't necessary :D
In any case glad this coming out :D
 
I know tradition would dictate that the adorable floppy eared guys in the middle would be the fanatic purifier race, but out of real-world comparisons I will be disappointed if it isn't the dolphinoids. That way at least I will feel justified purging them from the galaxy.
 
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A thought I just cant get rid of now. Passive research needs a total revamp. starting/mid/end boring...

The galactic map doesnt really offer allot, events/chokes thats it. Very boring.

I feel all strategic options should be linked to research. For example if partially tier v research were linked to a shipyard, or a research station, planets, moons etc have those be valnable strategic assets. (send in a skirmish fleet take out research bases and disable enemies ai ability to build tier v modules or something)

Just dont get passive research anymore, I dont like it. But things like warfare have been slated for a long while now, it hasnt been interesting since the travel modes changed.

Not sure what the AI fixes are suppose to do if the game design isnt really there.

Isnt it like we're all trying to fix the AI to do what exactly? Its not the AI, can the AI suddenly use a friendly claim system or a friendly ping system? NO ITS GAME DESIGN & Warfare systems*
 
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Still don't really understand the purpose behind the new origins. It feels like Ocean Paradise just occupies the same design space as Life Seeded - like, the exact same. And the Dragon one... I A) don't see what it has to do with aquatics B) am not a fan of YET ANOTHER space dragon.

The portraits though... hoo man. Ho boy.
 
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That ocean paradise origin, looks nice, but is it not very overpowered compared to other origins??
If you mess with my fantasy of a dolpin-dominated Water World galaxy, I swear I WILL raid your Homeworld for Livestock!
 
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(Excitedly typing!) Modding improvements? Can't wait! Will ther be a percentage damage reflected modifier and a percentage damage absorbed modifier (cannot stack of course)? Hmm...how about a self-destruct modifier doing a percentage of damage of the military power of the ship?
 
Man those custodian changes are delicious! The fleet issue is one that's been bugging me for AGES! I think this is a dawn of a very nice new version of stellaris. One I can really recommend to my friends without caveats.
 
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Oh gosh, I thought the little front-and-center portrait was meant to be a Gungan expy, but after seeing it in-game, it's clearly [Baby] Yoda-inspired and I love it

EDIT: Actually on a second look it feels more like an amalgamation of Yoda's species (general headshape vibes), Gungans (ears), and Nautolans (eyes), and I find that even more interesting because it's like a love letter to a lot of Star Wars' aquatic species

The kelp branch species was also super unexpected
 
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What about:
Empire sprawl
Admin cap
Unity
Burocracts
And topic that connects all of that?
 
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