[Stellaris] Trait (and other things) Standardization Discussion Thread

[Raana]

3 hours ago, mk40 said:

Strange indeed, but note that I posted this on SSM discord last Tuesday. So, in case you're wondering if I "copied" what you had plan, it's not the case as you posted your ideas last friday.  

Nah, I think it's just a case of two ideas coincidentally being created in parallel. Haven't really had a chance to hop on discord so I suppose I've probably missed stuff.

 

I do think your idea might be the better of the two though. Having policies available to all empires rather than linked to specific civics would make them more widely available. If anything I may tag additional policy options tailored towards my civics as an add on component instead. For compatibility the other way I could list the civic tags so that some of the policy options are prevented from being available to empires where they wouldn't make sense.

 

I think I'm going to rethink the -philia traits I had been planning as well. Between the number of species traits available across the mods and what you two are working on with the research and interbreeding traits, I don't really feel like they're going to add anything significant at this point.

 

That said I've got most of my mod finished at this point, minus the heat cycle events since that's taking a bit more time, so I'll probably post the basic stuff after the war update drops just in case those changes break a few things. I might wait a little longer with the prescripted empires though. Since I'll probably want to tie some of these new traits to them.

[Raana]

I think I've mostly settled on how I want the civic / government theme mechanics to work.

 

Sexual Hedonism

Spoiler

• Empire becomes an "Exhibition Committee" if it has a Democratic or Oligarchy authority with a "Public Overseer" custom ruler title.
• Empire becomes a "Hedonistic Authority" if it has a Dictatorial or Imperial authority, but I haven't come up with custom ruler titles yet.
• Empire gains unique Empire Edicts that will come with a variety of bonuses for a monthly Influence cost.
• Empire also receives a custom building chain that replaces the vanilla Unity building chains. In addition to their normal bonuses they give a (very) small Influence gain to offset Edict costs.
  • Non-Spiritualist empires gain the "Pleasure Gardens" building chain.
  • Spiritualist empires gain the "Pleasure Temples" building chain.
  • Note: Since the buildings are planetary unique, an empire would have to have a considerable amount of worlds to truly offset the costs fully. Otherwise you'll still have to balance the unique Edicts with the vanilla Edicts and other Influence sinks.

Sexual Inhibition

Spoiler

• Empire becomes a "Temperance Council" if it has a Democratic or Oligarchy authority with a "Moral Director" custom ruler title.
• Empire becomes an "Immaculate State" if it has a Dictatorial or Imperial authority with the "Immaculate Lord" and "Immaculate Lady" custom ruler titles, and the "Incorrupt Heir" and "Incorrupt Heiress" heir titles.
• Since the empire restricts sexual behavior believing it "distracts" its population the empire receives a Population Production bonus at the cost of Growth Speed.
• The Empire acts belligerently towards empires led by sexually active species, can be very hostile towards empires with the Sexual Hedonism, Organic Incubation or Pleasure Bots civics, and will probably attempt to conquer those empires in a bid to "control" their sexual natures.

 

Organic Incubation

Spoiler

• Only available to Hive Minds, and the empire becomes a "Brood Throng" with the "Brood Patriarch" and "Brood Matriarch" custom ruler titles.
• I'll be looking into the crossbreeding traits @theman221 is working on since what I had planned for this civic was similar to those traits.
  • The Hive Mind will be able to reproduce on its own, but will gain a bonus if a non-primary species is present on their worlds.
• Empire recieves a custom building chain that replaces the vanilla Gene Clinic and Cyto-Revitalization Center. The "Brood Spire" and "Brood Lair"
  • They'll grant the same bonuses as the vanilla buildings, but will grant a Growth Speed bonus if a non-primary species pop is working the buildings.
• Also, if the empire does not have the assimilation ascension paths yet, I plan to make the purge mechanics fire off text events that will pretty much be a "lite" version of the need to breed events. Basically, rather than eating the pops as in vanilla I want to push the theme that they're just using them as incubators until the pops die off naturally due to not being allowed to reproduce themselves.
  • Mostly as a placeholder until I can figure out how to actually make a brand new purge mechanic.

 

Pleasure Bots

Spoiler

• Will require a lot more work than the others as Machine Empire mechanics are a little bit different than biological mechanics.
• Only available to Machine Empires, and the empire becomes a "Propagation Matrix" with a "Prime Progenitor" custom ruler title.
• Organic populations under the empire's control become "Infatuated Organics" and are completely unable to reproduce on their own without the primary robotic population present on the planet.
• Basically the robotic pops are essentially highly advanced sex bots that were so good at what they were designed to do that their creator population stopped reproducing on their own. So the machine intelligence was created to facilitate reproduction via the robotic units.

 

I was also considering adding one more, somewhat more aggressive, civic that could be tied to the Sexual Hedonism civic with the dictatorial or imperial authority. Effectively yielding the "Sex Empire" government type.