by Eladrin Hello again! Today were looking at some general gameplay changes being made to Machine Empires, Individualistic Machines, and the new Machine Ascension Paths. Some of these still include placeholder assets, and values will continue being adjusted until release. Take it away, @Gruntsatwork.

Machine and Synthetic Gameplay Changes

History Traits One of the first things youll find in The Machine Age when creating a Machine empire are the history traits weve added for Machine species. These 0 point traits let you choose a little more of your backstory - these define your original purpose. Were you originally created as Research Assistants, Conversational AI chatbots, Workerbots, or perhaps a domestic servant Nannybot meant to make life easier and pass the butter? Six backgrounds with relatively minor bonuses are available for you to choose from. These are available to both gestalt and individualistic machines.
Youll find a handful of other new traits or variants of existing biological traits for Machine species as well, including having a dedicated Engineering or Sociology Core or Integrated Weaponry to a Delicate Chassis or Scarcity Subroutines.
Please put down your weapon. You have twenty seconds to comply. Machines, Aging, and Unplanned Obsolescence Immortality is a funny thing in Stellaris - under some circumstances (especially as the game goes on), due to the accident and death events that could target machines, you can end up in a state where a theoretically immortal machine leader is actually far more vulnerable to death as the years went on than a normal biological leader. Machine leaders will now instead use lifespan rules, but enjoy some extra benefits:

• As real go-getters, their starting age lies between 5-10 years, so at the age of 30 they can run your science department with 20 years of experience.
• All machines also have an additional +20 years to their default lifespan of 80, resulting in a base lifespan of 100 years.
• They are now affected by lifespan-increasing technologies and modifiers, for example, those from Ascension Paths, which we will cover later in this dev diary.

In summary, your machine leaders no longer need to fear random death and will live to the ripe old age of 100 years without any additional improvements. Some forms of immortality, however, have been retained, like the Gestalt Councils and some special ascension traits. All Virtual machine leaders are immortal while Modularity has access to advanced lifespan-increasing traits that can be applied to your machines. Similar rules will apply to robots, though they have a starting age of 1-5 years, and do not get the +20 lifespan bonus that machines have. Both biological empires going Synthetic and Machine empires will also reset their age upon completing Ascension to reflect receiving their new bodies. Somewhat paradoxically, all together, these changes should actually result in your Machine leaders being able to better withstand the test of time than they could were when they were theoretically immortal.
100 years is a lot better than how long my last smartphone survived. Habitability Habitability is also undergoing some changes. Having +200% Habitability as a base for all machines limited what we could do with them - it was what previously prevented us from allowing them to be Void Dwellers or using several other Origins, for instance. We still wanted to retain the flavor of Machines having an easier time dealing with alternate climates though, so Machines now use habitability systems similar to organics, with some significant changes:

• As a base, all machines have a 50% Habitability floor, so they will never have below 50% habitability on any world. We felt that this was important because we wanted to retain the feel that machine empires could colonize anywhere reasonably well.
• Machine habitability traits cover entire planet categories rather than a specific biome.
  • They start with Dry, Wet, or Frozen Habitability, which provide a base 75% habitability on all three biomes associated with the trait and 50% for all other natural biomes.
  • As usual, these habitability traits can be changed through robo-modding.
    • Most machine empires will have access to robo-modding from game start.
    • Origins like Life-Seeded or Subaquatic Machines will start with Gaia World or Ocean World Habitability and will have to research the technology to change their habitability trait, but retain the 50% Habitability floor for being a machine.
• Just like for Lifespan, they will now also gain bonuses from technologies, extra habitability from ascensions and new traits. They now also have access to the standard array of habitability technologies.

We believe this will still give them a simplified but more nuanced gameplay experience, with niches and combinations that will come close to the old playstyle while also allowing new fantasies. (Subterranean Machines, for instance, have a 100% Habitability floor and thus are guaranteed perfect habitability everywhere.)

Using partial habitability mechanics opened up the ability to use origins such as Ocean Paradise. Assimilation An important quality of life improvement for Machine empires - we have extended the capacity to assimilate other machines or robots into your main species to all machine empires.
They may have shared our name, but they did not share our form. These false Zenak will soon become actual Zenak, including adhering to our charging standards. (This is what I get for not being careful with my force-spawned empires.) The Aging, Habitability, and Assimilation changes (and Origin improvements listed later) are all part of the free 3.12 Andromeda update. Individualistic Machines Gestalt Machine Intelligences were originally introduced in the Synthetic Dawn story pack, but the authority and most of the civics (other than Determined Exterminator, Driven Assimilator, and Rogue Servitor) will also be unlocked by The Machine Age. The Machine Age will also allow you to create non-Gestalt Machine Empires, using regular authority, ethic, and civic choices. These individualistic machines are not guided by an overall gestalt intelligence, and thus have their own motivations, desires, and disappointments. Individual machines possess happiness like fully recognized synthetics, can and will form factions, and consume consumer goods. As non-Gestalts, their leaders will draw from the standard array of leader traits. This of course includes fan-favorites like Substance Abuser. With all ethics available to you, your empire can be spiritualist machines, fully capable of rationalizing their own spiritual superiority compared to lesser machines and organics. Your factions have been adjusted to fit your mechanical existence, since it makes no sense for spiritualist robots to despise all robots. (Its okay to hate some.) You will receive roboticists from your capital building with the additional option of building an assembly plant to boost your production even more. This all comes at the cost of alloys, so carefully decide between expansion, war, and pop assembly. As individual machines are very much capable and willing of entertaining unique needs, they have no restriction on allowing organics in their empires and can even start the game with Syncretic Evolution as their Origin of choice. As such, they have access to technologies for food production, genetic modification, and other organic focused technologies, with a sharply reduced, but not zero, chance at drawing those technologies if you have no organics in your empire. You are at the very least capable of theorizing about meat and its needs compared to gestalt machines. Depending on your ethics and authorities, you can enfranchise, disenfranchise, enslave, or empower organics or even other machines in your empire as you wish. The only limits to your ability to tread upon those fragile organics and your fellow machines are the limits of your imagination. Individual Machines have access to most civics organic empires have access to, as well as a few machine civics, like Warbots and Static Research Analysis, which have been adjusted for them.
Decadent, Deviant, Hedonistic Crime-Bots? Sure, why not.

More Origins now available to Machines

As part of the 3.12 Andromeda release, weve done a pass on Origins to see if there were any that could have their restrictions on Machines relaxed. The full list of Origins that Machine Empires have access to as of the 3.12 Andromeda release is:

• Syncretic Evolution (Individualist Machines only)
• Life-Seeded
• Post-Apocalyptic (Radioactive Rovers)
• Void Dwellers (Voidforged)
• Hegemon
• Ocean Paradise (Subaquatic Machines)
• Subterranean (Subterranean Machines)
• Arc Welders
• Prosperous Unification
• Remnants
• Shattered Ring
• Galactic Doorstep
• Resource Consolidation (Gestalt Machine Intelligence only)
• Common Ground
• Doomsday
• Lost Colony
• Here Be Dragons
• Slingshot to the Stars
• Imperial Fiefdom
• Riftworld

Transformation Situation and Ascension Paths

With The Machine Age, Individualistic Machines and Gestalt Machines have access to 3 new Ascension Paths (which replace the current Synthetics tree). By taking the Synthetic Age Ascension Perk, you will begin a new Situation to guide them through this momentous transformation.
Virtuality Embrace a virtual existence for the majority of your pops. From the cloud, your pops are created and to the cloud they return when their job is done. Spreading your servers across the stars is an expensive endeavor but your concentrated efforts are unmatched.

• Your pops gain a unique Virtual Trait that becomes stronger as you progress through the tree
  • You gain a massive bonus to production that is reduced by the number of colonies you have
  • Your housing usage is reduced by 90%
  • Your habitability floor is increased
  • The more colonies you gain, the weaker your Virtual Trait and the bigger its upkeep will become
  • Your leaders become immortal
• You gain a new Policy to focus your intangible virtual economy
  • You may choose to focus intensely on Research, Unity or Governance, at the sufferance of the 2 categories you did not choose
• You gain a bonus to encryption and decryption
• You gain additional districts and jobs from districts

Once you finish the tree, you will transition from a pop-limited playstyle into a planet-limited playstyle, as open jobs will be instantly filled with virtual pops as needed, while unemployed virtual pops will be turned off.
Nanotech Big Things are made of Small Things. By becoming a flood of nanites, your empire changes not just its makeup, but also its economy and growth strategy. Grow. Exploit. Replicate. While Virtual Machines may seek a Tall playstyle, Nanotech Machines flood across the galaxy like an off-white or silvery tempest, specializing in the physical.

You gain access to:
• Ways to transform basic resources into nanites and nanites into advanced resources
• A new decision, similar to Terravore world consumption, to turn colonies into nanite worlds
• A new starbase building to harvest nanites from uninhabitable worlds
• New Edicts to vastly increase your productions or combat capability at the cost of nanites
• Nanite probe ships, to bolster your fleets

Modularity The most advanced traits require the most advanced minds. By embracing Modularity, your empire will have access to traits other machines can only theorize at. The rarest of resources will fuel your enhanced shells.

• Your Metallurgists will produce Living Metal
• Your roboticists will be boosted by utilizing living metal as an upkeep
• Your workers/simple drones will be boosted by your priest equivalent
• Your soldiers and enforcers will grant more stability and be stronger
• You unlock 9 advanced machine traits, several trait picks, points, and reduced modification cost
• All your leaders will gain the Synth leader trait

If you have Synthetic Dawn but do not have The Machine Age, you will retain access to the Synthetics Tree, but with reworked Traditions. These will include bonuses to lifespan, habitability and pop assembly.

Resistance is [strike]the Ratio of Voltage to Current[/strike] Futile

For owners of Synthetic Dawn, Driven Assimilators will gain two advanced authority possibilities in The Machine Age, the Memory Aggregators and the Neural Chorus. Upon completing the Cybernetic tradition tree, the Assimilator will receive the option to determine their stance on the variance of thought permitted within the gestalt consciousness. This is the Neural Chorus:

The Machine Ship Set

In last weeks dev diary we snuck the Machine Corvette into the Arc Welders screenshot. Heres a glamor shot of the Machine ships that was arranged by our artists:
We finally have a Machine shipset.

Next Week

Next week well look at the Civics and Structures of The Machine Age, as well as Auto-Modding. See you then!