[mod] [Stellaris] Lustful Void

[TheCaptn]

This has to be a bug... I started a species that was Exclusively Female with Intercompatible Wombs, inspired by the Asari in Mass Effect.

I was expecting a really difficult game with no Pop growth until I could get migrants in to provide breeders for my citizens; and I found it odd when my Pop growth seemed unchanged.

 

Then about 60 years in I get an event that says all of my population has become exclusively male and can only breed with robots because there are no females left... Um. What?!?

 

There is clearly some funky interaction happening between those traits. Surely the Exclusively Female trait should make that event impossible? At least without some long intermediate stage of 'balanced' genders?

[Lithia<3]

23 minutes ago, TheCaptn said:

This has to be a bug... I started a species that was Exclusively Female with Intercompatible Wombs, inspired by the Asari in Mass Effect.

I was expecting a really difficult game with no Pop growth until I could get migrants in to provide breeders for my citizens; and I found it odd when my Pop growth seemed unchanged.

 

Then about 60 years in I get an event that says all of my population has become exclusively male and can only breed with robots because there are no females left... Um. What?!?

 

There is clearly some funky interaction happening between those traits. Surely the Exclusively Female trait should make that event impossible? At least without some long intermediate stage of 'balanced' genders?

There is actually a check to stop that from happening and this is the first time someone reported something like that...try the new version and if it happens again I'll see what I can do.

[TheCaptn]

I don't know which version I was using, but I just updated and reloaded an earlier save. So far so good.

[Zorlond]

On ‎4‎/‎8‎/‎2019 at 9:08 PM, Lithia<3 said:

Changelog:

v0.3.1 "hot-fix"
All interbreeder traits cost 4 now. And yes I know I can make them not be randomized.
More trait points and picks to compensate.

This kinda threw my custom species into chaos a bit. In particular my poor Succubi ended up with -20% Habitability overall, their home planet is only 90% Habitable, and identical biomes are only 60%. : / But I'm giving it a fresh shot. No bugs so far...

[Dagome_Iudex]

Is it possible to have a interbreeder trait that does not produce hybrids? So something that would increase the growth of the species with other Xenos around on the planet, whilst decreasing the Xenos growth rate, slowly changing the planet population to favour the interbreeding species? 

[Ozvelpoon]

So trying out the new hotfix now, I will let you know if I find any bugs.

 

My hot take on the balance changes: The change to cost 4 on the breeding traits seems... inelegant. Interbreeding of species is king of the reason we are all here, so making this cost 4 along with the "all female/male" traits feels like a limitation of creative freedom rather than a progressive balance change. It makes it prohibitively expensive to take one of both. Is there any way to code these traits to be less appealing for the AI to pick? I feel like these sexy traits are more descriptive rather than hard stat modifiers so I am of the opinion that they should be cheep and not consume many choice slots.

 

Keep up the good work!

[cniht]

Thank you for taking on this project and it's nice to get back into Stellaris in a way that wouldn't bore me to death.

 

I do wish to double down on the lag issues people speak of in mid-late game understanding that this mod is a WIP.

 

Right now the primary thing I see as an issue are the temporary inter-breeding traits.  While they are a nice idea they turn your species pages into a nightmare and add a massive load to an already weakly optimized Stellaris primary engine.

 

While they are a creative idea I'd like to recommend they get shelved for the time being until a more load friendly way to put them into play is discovered.

[blightedmarsh]

One solution to the hybrid bloat is to make the hybrid event do something other than make hybrids. Lock actual hybridization behind the accention perk.

 

You could make it so it boosts stability, xenophile attraction and population growth.

 

Another thought is that it could give you a tempory modifire to your pops, Some kind of "hybrid vigor". Like habitability for a given type or population growth or the cost to run the modifide species project. You could make it random, maybe with negative modifires as well as a they might have a bad mix.

 

 

[Ozvelpoon]

1 hour ago, blightedmarsh said:

One solution to the hybrid bloat is to make the hybrid event do something other than make hybrids. Lock actual hybridization behind the accention perk.

 

You could make it so it boosts stability, xenophile attraction and population growth.

 

Another thought is that it could give you a tempory modifire to your pops, Some kind of "hybrid vigor". Like habitability for a given type or population growth or the cost to run the modifide species project. You could make it random, maybe with negative modifires as well as a they might have a bad mix.

 

 

 

Locking it behind the ascension perk limits it to xenophile races so that may not be optimal. If you could force the perk on at the beginning of the game for everyone that may reduce the overhead as you are making use of an already implemented system. The problem as I understand it though is the developer might not have that much freedom to play with the system as they want to without risking breaking other interrelated systems already in the game.

[vunrtdofrt]

12 hours ago, TheCaptn said:

This has to be a bug... I started a species that was Exclusively Female with Intercompatible Wombs, inspired by the Asari in Mass Effect.

I was expecting a really difficult game with no Pop growth until I could get migrants in to provide breeders for my citizens; and I found it odd when my Pop growth seemed unchanged.

 

Then about 60 years in I get an event that says all of my population has become exclusively male and can only breed with robots because there are no females left... Um. What?!?

 

There is clearly some funky interaction happening between those traits. Surely the Exclusively Female trait should make that event impossible? At least without some long intermediate stage of 'balanced' genders?

Are you sure it actually changed your starting species, and not some other species that migrated to your planet?  Because yes, both being all-female and having intercompatible wombs each make it impossible for that to happen.  And conversely, having intercompatible wombs means your species can cause that to happen to other species.

[snarfies]

2 hours ago, Ozvelpoon said:

 

Locking it behind the ascension perk limits it to xenophile races so that may not be optimal.

 

How do you figure?  Aren't most of the ascension perks universal?  Plus, I'd think intercompatible races would be inherently xenophilic anyhow.

 

I think its a pretty good idea, though I don't know if it would actually fix the problem, since non-player empires could take those perks anyhow, right?

[Ozvelpoon]

2 hours ago, snarfies said:

 

How do you figure?  Aren't most of the ascension perks universal?  Plus, I'd think intercompatible races would be inherently xenophilic anyhow.

 

I think its a pretty good idea, though I don't know if it would actually fix the problem, since non-player empires could take those perks anyhow, right?

Specifically the xeno-compatability perk requires xenophile; at least one other race; and gene tailoring researched. The benefit and potential flaw with using xeno-compatability as the base for a larger mod project is that it is already integrated into the game. The ai is programmed to work with the system and should be able to use it more capably then something grafted into the game; conversely fiddling with something that is already embedded into the game is a lot more difficult to do without breaking other parts of the code in unexpected ways. At least that is my limited understanding of the problem.

[vunrtdofrt]

While we wait for the next version, I'm completed my efficiency overhaul of the events assigning temporary inter-breeding traits; if anyone who was finding the mid/late game slow wants to try with these replacements, I'm curious to see how much (if any) of an improvement you see.  I believe it should(?) be possible to simply drop them into an existing game safely, but it might screw up existing species traits.  Not sure about that one.

It also blocks off the AI from randomly starting with or modding its species to have all female/male, or to be brood parasites, or have intercompatible organs, though custom-designed empires species can still have these traits if you set them to spawn.  Adds in an (currently unlocalized) temporary trait for all-female species breeding with xeno males, like the one for the reverse situation.

 

Additionally, I've reconfigured the hybridization event so that a hybrid can only be created if at least one of the contributing species has not created a hybrid before, with the resultant species also counting as "hybridized" for this check.  It's not quite perfectly sensible (it means, for example, that if A makes a hybrid with B, and C makes one with D, then A and C cannot hybridize when they meet each other.)  But it should certainly cut down on the species spam, which I think is good.  (And the most common situation, player species A making hybrids with B, and C, and D, and E... still works).

 

(It also reverts the species points/max traits from the hotfix, along with the 4 point cost of the cross-breeding traits)

 

Just unzip the contents into the mod folder, overwriting as necessary, if you want to give it a try.

 

alterations.zip

[ErikModi]

Well, I use All-Male/Female and Intercompatibility to represent one gender having enslaved the other, and run a Xenophobe Empire to turn everyone I conquer (who's cute) into green-skinned space babe sex slaves.  So. . . your mileage may vary, is what I'm getting at.

[Ozvelpoon]

1 hour ago, vunrtdofrt said:

Just unzip the contents into the mod folder, overwriting as necessary, if you want to give it a try.

 

alterations.zip 28.55 kB · 1 download

Thanks vunrtdofrt I will take a look. was going to start a new game anyways. I will let you know how it feels.

[cniht]

2 hours ago, vunrtdofrt said:

While we wait for the next version, I'm completed my efficiency overhaul of the events assigning temporary inter-breeding traits; if anyone who was finding the mid/late game slow wants to try with these replacements, I'm curious to see how much (if any) of an improvement you see.  I believe it should(?) be possible to simply drop them into an existing game safely, but it might screw up existing species traits.  Not sure about that one.

It also blocks off the AI from randomly starting with or modding its species to have all female/male, or to be brood parasites, or have intercompatible organs, though custom-designed empires species can still have these traits if you set them to spawn.  Adds in an (currently unlocalized) temporary trait for all-female species breeding with xeno males, like the one for the reverse situation. 

 

Additionally, I've reconfigured the hybridization event so that a hybrid can only be created if at least one of the contributing species has not created a hybrid before, with the resultant species also counting as "hybridized" for this check.  It's not quite perfectly sensible (it means, for example, that if A makes a hybrid with B, and C makes one with D, then A and C cannot hybridize when they meet each other.)  But it should certainly cut down on the species spam, which I think is good.  (And the most common situation, player species A making hybrids with B, and C, and D, and E... still works).

 

(It also reverts the species points/max traits from the hotfix, along with the 4 point cost of the cross-breeding traits)

 

Just unzip the contents into the mod folder, overwriting as necessary, if you want to give it a try.

 

alterations.zip 28.55 kB · 2 downloads

Crazy question because I was thinking about this as I was playing.

 

Why not move the modifier to the planet level?  And apply all applicable ones at once, sure some will cancel each other out but it is what it is.  Even in a 1000 star game it's got a be a lot fewer checks than every population point across the map.

 

PS:  Played with the Alterations and it did make a world of difference.  Works much better now.

[vunrtdofrt]

26 minutes ago, cniht said:

Why not move the modifier to the planet level?  And apply all applicable ones at once, sure some will cancel each other out but it is what it is.  Even in a 1000 star game it's got a be a lot fewer checks than every population point across the map.

Because that wouldn't distinguish between the species that should be benefiting from the boost and those that shouldn't.  Particularly, a monogendered species with interbreeding capability, presuming that the monogender trait keeps a fertility malus, would be chosen for growth only very infrequently; the additional pop growth due to their interbreeding would mostly go to the secondary species which are capable of normal growth on their own.

 

You could avoid that by not giving any fertility malus to monogendered aliens.  But then the internal logic breaks down somewhat.

 

Quote

PS:  Played with the Alterations and it did make a world of difference.  Works much better now. 

Excellent.  You know, I was halfway through with that when I realized it could be done even more efficiently with planetary events that fire every time a planet's population changes, and perform a single assessment for each pop on that planet.  I'll probably get around to re-doing them like that...not quite yet, though.

[TheCaptn]

9 hours ago, vunrtdofrt said:

Are you sure it actually changed your starting species, and not some other species that migrated to your planet?  Because yes, both being all-female and having intercompatible wombs each make it impossible for that to happen.  And conversely, having intercompatible wombs means your species can cause that to happen to other species.

Maybe? So I only had two planets at that point; the homeworld and one colony... I did have a group of caravaneers stay behind prior to that, but the references in that event were to my 'Angels of Ecstacy' species, not to the 'Racket' caravaneer species.

[vunrtdofrt]

32 minutes ago, TheCaptn said:

Maybe? So I only had two planets at that point; the homeworld and one colony... I did have a group of caravaneers stay behind prior to that, but the references in that event were to my 'Angels of Ecstacy' species, not to the 'Racket' caravaneer species.

That's gotta be it, that it was converting the caravaneer.  The event description actually refers to the planet on which it happened, an ambiguity which I agree can be a bit confusing.

[laurentius1978]

I remember there used to be a civic in one of the mods (MASSA I think) called Tentacle Symbiosis that was supposed to make tentacled beings spawn on habitable planets across the galaxy (including your original home world) but was taken out because the maker of the mod never got around to fully implementing it. Any chance of this civic or a similar one making it into Lustful Void?

[Raana]

18 hours ago, Ozvelpoon said:

So trying out the new hotfix now, I will let you know if I find any bugs.

 

My hot take on the balance changes: The change to cost 4 on the breeding traits seems... inelegant. Interbreeding of species is king of the reason we are all here, so making this cost 4 along with the "all female/male" traits feels like a limitation of creative freedom rather than a progressive balance change. It makes it prohibitively expensive to take one of both. Is there any way to code these traits to be less appealing for the AI to pick? I feel like these sexy traits are more descriptive rather than hard stat modifiers so I am of the opinion that they should be cheep and not consume many choice slots.

 

Keep up the good work!

I kind of want to second this. Personally I wouldn't want to give these traits more than a cost of 2 while 4 just feels unnecessarily expensive.

 

I'm probably going to feel this cost change harder than most as well because the species I created to play myself uses -both- of the intercompatible traits, since I wanted both genders of the species to be intercompatible and there isn't a trait that covers both at once, and that adds up to a whopping 8 point cost leaving little room for much else.

[Zorlond]

Well, been playing all day, and most of the bugs I think are buried in the vanilla game, not in the mod. (why don't my people eat food? why is the sector AI pulling money out of my pocket instead of the Stockpile I gave it? why did the game put three planets that were close together into three different sectors all by their lonesome? why am I having to grind my way through 50-ish stars against an AI that can't comprehend it lost until I take star 51?)

 

But there is one non-vanilla thing I noticed that seemed a little off. Later in the game I was going through my researches quickly when one popped up for me. A 1000-point research (among the 20,000-point techs I was grinding at the time) about breeding. It was clearly mod tech from the text, describing how my all-female race needed to study the wildlife to learn how to mate with them. I took it, then quickly a 2000-tech popped up that was similar, talking about psionically reading the wildlife to safely mate with it. Did you intend for these techs to show up so far late in the game that they get blown through in a month or two?

 

(also with all the sexy new traits, the Genetic Template screen gets really crowded and overflows trait options top and bottom, but I'm not sure if anything can or should be done about that)

[Mirrond]

Somebody earlier posted here a patch that removes hybrids, could you add that as optional in Patches? If this thread grows to a hundred pages, I won't waste hours searching for it ;v

[Dagome_Iudex]

Guys, keep in mind Lithia did mention that at the moment her primary concern is reworking the way Hybrids work to remove the lag. I don't know how it differs from the way Vurtdorft programmed it, so I suppose we'll see, but I don't expect any work done on trait balance until she deals with the elephant in the room. 

 

The mod has to be playable first before it's balanced  

[Canaris]

So does this mod work with Sexy Xenos 1.9 ? Because im little confused.