by Eladrin Welcome back! In this weeks dev diary, were going to explore some improvements the Custodian Team is making to the Lithoids Species Pack in the upcoming Stellaris 3.9 Caelum Update, and then a few other new features. Before that, I have an announcement to make regarding Species Pack Pricing.

Announcement Regarding Species Pack Pricing

Stellaris Species Packs started as purely cosmetic add-ons, consisting of portraits, ship sets, city sets, and advisor voices. Theyve come a long way since them, now including a much greater variety of content. While the exact spread of features varies by pack, they now all include things such as origins, civics, traits, events, and new mechanics. As Game Director, Im especially pleased with how the Custodian Team has improved the quality of the older packs. Theyve added new playstyles and enabled many more sci-fi tropes to be explored during your games.
With the changes coming in 3.9 Caelum, we believe that the older Species Packs will be on par with the newer ones, and were planning an increase in the base price of the Plantoids, Humanoids, Lithoids, and Necroids Species Packs from $7.99 to match the $9.99 base price of the more recent Aquatics and Toxoids Species Packs. Per the promise made by Fredrik Wester several years ago, we are announcing this change ahead of time so anyone that wishes to purchase them at the current base prices will have an opportunity to do so. They will be available with the current base price for at least 30 days, and will be changing alongside the release of 3.9 Caelum. Stellaris will be taking part in the Steam Strategy Fest. This will give you a chance to get the affected Species Packs at a discounted price before the price change goes into effect. Ill now detail the improvements made to the Lithoids Species Pack. Improvements to the other Species Packs will be a major focus of dev diaries over the next few weeks.

Things That Rock

My very first Stellaris Dev Diary was #157 - Things That Rock. The Lithoids Species Pack was the first one that wasnt exclusively an art pack. The Lithoid trait added interesting game mechanics to the phenotype, we had a few Lithoid specific traits, some event changes, and the Terravore variant of the Devouring Swarm. The purely cosmetic Species Packs were updated in subsequent releases, but while it did get an Origin in Federations and more traits in 3.5 Fornax, Lithoids hadnt gotten quite as much of an update from the Custodian Team as the packs. Of quartz I thought that we should dig up some improvements. Ill turn things over to Iggy now to talk about some of the changes. Greetings all, Iggy here! Since the release of Galactic Paragons, the Custodian Team has been working on improving the value and quality of older DLCs. Today I will be talking about what we have done for the Lithoid Species Pack.

Buffing the Old

As previously shown in DD #305 we returned to Calamitous Birth to give it some love. This includes removing the habitability loss from Lithoid Craters for Lithoid pops as well as increasing the effectiveness of lithoid exclusive traits such as Gaseous Byproducts on the Massive Crater world.


We also talked about how terravores have gotten a glow up. No longer will you need to sit and click a decision every 6 months as you consume your world! Now its all handled in a handy compact situation. The output should still be exactly the same as before thanks to clever script math so dont worry about this being a nerf to acquired pops or resources.
Crunch crunch!

In With the New!

Not satisfied with only buffing these two old pieces of content we also felt like the species pack could do with a bit of a polish to stack up to current species packs. First up: Void Hive
I love this icon so much As you can see its a Hive Civic with quite a unique effect and if the habitat changes discussed in DD #306 go through it would be a powerful addition to your Void Dweller Hiveminds.
Iggy making [strike]potentially[/strike] game breaking hive content? SHOCKER! This civic plays around with the flavor of a Hive Mind that is capable of surviving out in space and the dangers of vacuum. While you still can build gathering stations it goes against your nature to instruct specific drones to do so and will cost you some Unity. They also excel at creating structures in space, whether they be habitats, dyson spheres, or hyper relays, so get out into the dark void already! The other new civic added to the Lithoid Species Pack is Selective Kinship. This civic is not for the xenophiles so please, avert your ocular organs.
Meat. Theyre made out of meat! This civic also comes with the lithoid species pack and lets you create an empire consisting only of your primary phenotype such as Lithoids, Aquatic, Mammalian, etc. Though dont think it will be smooth sailing because you wont like anyone not conforming to your standards and they will really not like your bigoted thinking. However if you really want to have some friends the Hegemon and Common Ground origin will ensure that your member nations are your phenotype if you choose to start with this civic.

Shine Bright!

Thanks, Iggy. Weve been having a lot of questionnaires and feedback sessions with players, and one of the things that is often requested is some more relatable characters in the various phenotypes. While well of course continue creating horrific alien monstrosities, the art team took this opportunity to add a few new portraits to Lithoids, Plantoids, and Humanoids.
For Lithoids, the Federated Theian Preserves will be a new prescripted empire that begins on the Desert World of Theia, in the Titawin system. Billions of years ago, two planets formed from the primordial material in orbit of Sol - ancient Earth, and Theia. Rudimentary life evolved on both worlds, biological in the case of Earth, and lithoid on Theia. For eons, these sister planets maintained a peaceful revolution around their star. Then came the cataclysm. The planets collided, and in the moment of impact, microbial life was exchanged. Earth survived, and Luna was formed. What remained of Theia was jettisoned from the system. On this rocky colony ship, life from ancient Theia traversed the void before it was caught in the gravity well of the star Titawin. Crashing into one of the system's worlds, a new species was introduced to the local biosphere. A few short millennia later, the Theians took to the stars, seeking to understand the universe as well as their own heritage.
Work is still being done on the lava shader. May they find their way home! On to some other 3.9 changes

Ascension Path Agendas

Some players have commented that they often find themselves saving an Ascension Perk slot for an indeterminate amount of time, waiting for the required research for their desired Ascension Path to appear. The Ascension Perks that unlock the four Ascension Paths have had their requirements changed so that they now be taken as your third AP at the earliest instead of as your second AP. We have removed the Technology requirements and moved those to progressing down the Tradition Tree associated with that Ascension Path.

Each Ascension Path now has an Agenda that grants 25% progress in technologies associated with that Ascension Path, which should ensure that you are no longer reliant on random chance to acquire these technologies. These Agendas have a reduced cost and cooldown compared to normal Agendas, though some have modifiers based on Empire Ethics compatibility with the Ascension Path.

These agendas advance to the next relevant technology if you finish some research while the agenda is ongoing.

rm -rf /nodes/regulatory

One of the complaints weve had with Gestalt Councils is that Nodes cannot be replaced unlike the Councilors for regular empires. This means that you are no longer locked forever to traits that might be useful for your Nodes in the early-game but fall off in the mid- to late-game. To solve this, weve added three new Society technologies to Machine Intelligences (and Hive Minds) which unlock a set of new Council Agendas that replace the existing Nodes, after a bit of reformatting (or vivisection).
TODO: Icons
The first technology will unlock the Agendas themselves, while the following technologies will unlock modifiers that improve both the Agendas and your Council. The newly created Nodes will initially start at level 1, though this can be improved to a maximum starting level equal to the level of the reformatted/culled Node depending on Technologies, Traditions and Civics.

Next Week

Next week well be going over improvements to the Plantoids Species Pack and some more other changes coming in 3.9 Caelum. Humanoids and Necroids will be the following week.
These are not plantoids. But youll get to meet them in the plantoids dev diary. Spoiler: Updated Progress Image [expand type=spoiler]
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