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[Zangi]

Crap, more I play, the more fundamental bugs/issues I notice.  Its similar to CKII. 

Now I see that a number of those fixes are coming in next update.  I have a nice game full of purifiers and other similar crazies too.

[Loud Whispers]

A pity that habitats are... indestructible?  (Or is it?)

They're destructible if you are a belligerent foe, as you can destroy habitats with a wargoal. As these xenos enclaves are independent factions, you can destroy them if you want (but why would you want to kill these defenceless xenos?)

@Loud Whispers: That is brilliant and I kinda want to do that now.

Thanks!

Update on the enclaves, so far I have two of them. The first is led by the Ugarlak, a species of proletariat industrialists who command 5 habitats and total 60 xenos pops. Sharing their Empire with one molluscoid and one plantoid species, the Ugarlak formed a peaceful, if brutally authoritarian police state - with a grand bureaucracy quelling any dissent from the plantoid pacifists and molluscoid industrialists.

The second was considerably more intricate in its experimentation. Its founding pops came from the Ekwynian Empire, a race of mammalian xenophiles who formed a close relationship with the neighbouring moth-people called the Naftkanians, and themselves formed the southern frontier of a grand federation that was particularly concerned with destroying my Imperial lineage, and replacing it with a democratic regime. Honestly I was rather content to let them be, but they continued expanding and wouldn't let my ships through a northern pass to protect my protectorates. As the southern route was cut off by my hiveminded ally turning into a devouring swarm, I had to declare my first ever war to secure this route. The war was successful, seizing the minimal planets required (only 2), and all of the Ekwynian planets on my border were liberated under a new regime. Unfortunately this new regime became fanatical purifiers, and all of the worlds which were inhabited by a multicultural population were plunged into civil war as this fanatical regime tried to exterminate them - resulting in a split between the East Ekwynian and West Ekwynian Empires.

Thus, with pops subsumed from other peacefully assimilated Empires, the second enclave was born. This one contained 5 species in total, only they were so unique as to be all sub-species of other species. Thus there were 8 variants of pops all in this enclave, with some having latent psionic abilities unlocked by my ascended species. Once that enclave was given independence, they began developing as a theocratic monarchy of mechanist scientists, the Ekwynian species being an altogether intelligent race of physicists engineered by us to be natural researchers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Before long they began their path to technological singularity, consolidating their subspecies through cybernetic enhancement. Crazily, this included some pops who possessed latent psionic potential, becoming cyborgs with latent psionic energy.

To compound matters, a single Ekwynian pop remained under my control, this one unlocking its full psionic potential to become the only fully psionic Ekwynian pop in the galaxy. Neither West Ekwynia nor East Ekwynia has developed full psionic potential. Thus, I am thinking, if a third enclave is hosted by the sole psionic Ekwynian community... Can the materialist and spiritualist transcendence paths be reconciled? Amusingly, the single psionic Ekwynian I have is called the Ultra-Ekwynian Superior. It has gotten a bit mad with power.

Can these xenos enclaves create machines with true souls, more connected to the shroud than most of the living? Rather tragically, after I conquered those two planets, three Empires I previously had peaceful relations with grew threatened and cut off their borders to me. I now have to absorb even more Empires, which shall at the least, mean I have more test subjects to see if it is possible to create the Ultra-Mega-Ekwynian Superior

[Karnewarrior]

Meanwhile, the last interesting thing to happen to Karne in a video game was Casey McAnthony killing her baby over a pick back about 5 years ago.

Keep going LW, I follow your story with bated breath (and rustled jimmies)

[Zangi]

I've seen the light.  Missiles are just bad in everywhere possible. 

... Well, they are mildly ok if they are part of a military station defense network, but only cause my current enemies don't have pd/flak and they get off more attacks cause range. 

Plus that 1 military station they spawn on top of being closer, but then I'm better off with other weapons there cause instant damage is still better then waiting 5 days for my missiles to maybe hit that.

Facing off against fleets with more then just corvettes/destroyers?   Equal-ish power rating?  Overwhelming loss.

Which also explains why starport missiles are so lethal against muh corvettes.  They got swarm setting so they sitting right on top of the starport.  Less then a day travel time, which is less pd opportunities for my frigates.

A pity that habitats are... indestructible?  (Or is it?)

They're destructible if you are a belligerent foe, as you can destroy habitats with a wargoal. As these xenos enclaves are independent factions, you can destroy them if you want (but why would you want to kill these defenceless xenos?)

Maybe cause I don't like where the habitat is located. 
All the justification I need.

[Teneb]

Dev Diary #77 - Ethics Voice Packs

Spoiler: You know, I really dislike when people misuse 's to do plurals (click to show/hide)

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. This week’s diary I’m taking charge and going to write about Voice Over’s for the (unannounced) Story Pack coming alongside the 1.8 ‘Čapek’ update! We still can’t tell you any further details about the name or release date of the Story Pack, but stay tuned for future dev diaries!

For the upcoming Story Pack we felt that we wanted to experiment with VIR, our friendly advisor, see how it would feel to have different set of VO cues depending on your Empire’s ethic. A VO Cue is a term that we use to describe a Voice Over line that triggers at a certain point in the game as for example “Hostile Fleet Detected” or “Research Complete”.

We started with a test case in-house to try it out and we concluded that it was a great experience! From then on we moved on with the process and allocated time to write unique script for each role, character description, casting, auditions and finally recording sessions. It has been personally a long and hard process but in the end I’m really pleased to finally show of 3 samples out of 10 Voice Packs!

Youtube video

There will be a automatic settings for the VO Packs in the game so that the VO will switch depending on what Ethic you start with in the game and also switches while you're playing if you decided with switch Ethic's in your campaign. If you're not into that you will be able to select with set of VO Cues you want to play and you will always be able to switch back to the original VO if you desire.

Now that you have heard some of the results you might ask yourself how the whole procedure works with recording VO? So I’ll describe to a certain detail how the whole process goes by.

First of you need to write a script and if you have talented Content Designers. and we do have in our team, there is no problem to get good a script. Once the script is complete and approved it gets handed to me and I take it to the next step: Casting!

Casting of it’s own is also a long process which takes time. With help of a Casting Director you can get in touch with several possible Voice Actors that can help you to deliver the best result out of each script. When you have picked out potential actors that you think will suit for the role, you bring them in for a audition. In an audition you let the actor read a certain part of the script which usually depict the character the most and also give the best material for the Voice Actor so that they can perform as good as possible. After all the auditions are done you pick the actor that suited the best for the role. Sometimes during auditions actors comes for a certain role to read but during the session you realize that the actor would be more fitted for another role and that happened to our Militarist! We brought her in to do a audition for another role first but while she was reading the part for the first role I heard that she might be better suited as a angry general, so I asked her to try out for the Militarist and it was a really good fit! So good that we ended up with her as the Militarist.

With all the casting/auditions done you move on to the actual recording session, get as much possible material from your actors. It is important that you’re there to act as a “director” for the actors so that you can give the instructions and guidelines so that they can give you all the right emotions and takes that you require for your character in the game.

As soon as the recordings were done I moved on to editing. There is a lot of editing when it comes to VO since it is not only about how the recording equipment sound but also the sheer amount of assets you need to go through..



While editing you usually “zoom in” really close in the waveforms of the recordings to mess around/cutting noise such as clicks and pops. So yes, we Sound Designers tend to get really nerdy when it comes to VO editing:



After you have done all the editing which is removing “clicks” and “pops”, ugly breath takes, add fade in/out, you move into adding “effects” to the VO so we can get that cool Robotic style. For each VO I gave them something else than just using the same settings as for “Default VIR”.

So in short terms that is how you record VO!

That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about robots and robotic modification.

[Loud Whispers]

Keep going LW, I follow your story with bated breath (and rustled jimmies)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The third enclave did it. After much patience, they succeeded in creating the NEO-MEGA EKWYNIAN SUPERIOR

ALL PSIONIC POTENTIAL UNLOCKED
ALL GENETIC POTENTIAL UNLOCKED
CYBERNETIC ENHANCEMENTS IMPLANTED

Upon the success of the first enclaves I had made it my mission to collect the rarest xenos specimens, preserved for all time in my paradise habitat enclaves, distrusting the foreign federations to keep the peace and preserve galactic life. Three centuries of work and effort, bringing all of these xenos willingly (at least, mostly), into the peaceful perfection of my inescapable Empire. With baited breath I watched, my immortal leaders patrolling and observing their data banks and orbiting habitats, watching with concern and intrigue as the species modified themselves with cybernetic implants. We could not have known they would do this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They called themselves the supravex. Synthetics, machine bodies with artificial personalities uploaded, copies taken from the minds of the soulful creatures they once belonged to. Every species was annihilated at once, my once diverse and unique collection of the cosmos's most endangered species eradicated overnight. Thus they destroyed their souls in one swift movement, their link to the shroud gone, all lost and replaced by the calculated shambling of automata. The Neo-Mega Ekwynian Superior, the sole existing pop in the galaxy too, was amongst the ashes.
So proud and so foolish were these religious mechanists. It had perhaps been better for them to have been devoured by the Jhoolian Swarm long ago. Now the doom is fulfilled, and their warrior drones fly forth from their habitat - they will be disassembled, and this calamity completed.

[ZeroGravitas]

Their scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should!!

[Spehss _]

Artificial life uh, uh, uh, finds a way.

[EnigmaticHat]

They achieved perfection beyond perfection.  And then discarded it like trash.

[Karnewarrior]

Dev Diary #77 - Ethics Voice Packs

Spoiler: You know, I really dislike when people misuse 's to do plurals (click to show/hide)

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. This week’s diary I’m taking charge and going to write about Voice Over’s for the (unannounced) Story Pack coming alongside the 1.8 ‘Čapek’ update! We still can’t tell you any further details about the name or release date of the Story Pack, but stay tuned for future dev diaries!

For the upcoming Story Pack we felt that we wanted to experiment with VIR, our friendly advisor, see how it would feel to have different set of VO cues depending on your Empire’s ethic. A VO Cue is a term that we use to describe a Voice Over line that triggers at a certain point in the game as for example “Hostile Fleet Detected” or “Research Complete”.

We started with a test case in-house to try it out and we concluded that it was a great experience! From then on we moved on with the process and allocated time to write unique script for each role, character description, casting, auditions and finally recording sessions. It has been personally a long and hard process but in the end I’m really pleased to finally show of 3 samples out of 10 Voice Packs!

Youtube video

There will be a automatic settings for the VO Packs in the game so that the VO will switch depending on what Ethic you start with in the game and also switches while you're playing if you decided with switch Ethic's in your campaign. If you're not into that you will be able to select with set of VO Cues you want to play and you will always be able to switch back to the original VO if you desire.

Now that you have heard some of the results you might ask yourself how the whole procedure works with recording VO? So I’ll describe to a certain detail how the whole process goes by.

First of you need to write a script and if you have talented Content Designers. and we do have in our team, there is no problem to get good a script. Once the script is complete and approved it gets handed to me and I take it to the next step: Casting!

Casting of it’s own is also a long process which takes time. With help of a Casting Director you can get in touch with several possible Voice Actors that can help you to deliver the best result out of each script. When you have picked out potential actors that you think will suit for the role, you bring them in for a audition. In an audition you let the actor read a certain part of the script which usually depict the character the most and also give the best material for the Voice Actor so that they can perform as good as possible. After all the auditions are done you pick the actor that suited the best for the role. Sometimes during auditions actors comes for a certain role to read but during the session you realize that the actor would be more fitted for another role and that happened to our Militarist! We brought her in to do a audition for another role first but while she was reading the part for the first role I heard that she might be better suited as a angry general, so I asked her to try out for the Militarist and it was a really good fit! So good that we ended up with her as the Militarist.

With all the casting/auditions done you move on to the actual recording session, get as much possible material from your actors. It is important that you’re there to act as a “director” for the actors so that you can give the instructions and guidelines so that they can give you all the right emotions and takes that you require for your character in the game.

As soon as the recordings were done I moved on to editing. There is a lot of editing when it comes to VO since it is not only about how the recording equipment sound but also the sheer amount of assets you need to go through..



While editing you usually “zoom in” really close in the waveforms of the recordings to mess around/cutting noise such as clicks and pops. So yes, we Sound Designers tend to get really nerdy when it comes to VO editing:



After you have done all the editing which is removing “clicks” and “pops”, ugly breath takes, add fade in/out, you move into adding “effects” to the VO so we can get that cool Robotic style. For each VO I gave them something else than just using the same settings as for “Default VIR”.

So in short terms that is how you record VO!

That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about robots and robotic modification.

I'm not a huge fan of the dogs of war quote, loathe as I am to agree with Youtube.

Different VIR will be nice though.

[Teneb]

Dev Diary #77 - Ethics Voice Packs

Spoiler: You know, I really dislike when people misuse 's to do plurals (click to show/hide)

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. This week’s diary I’m taking charge and going to write about Voice Over’s for the (unannounced) Story Pack coming alongside the 1.8 ‘Čapek’ update! We still can’t tell you any further details about the name or release date of the Story Pack, but stay tuned for future dev diaries!

For the upcoming Story Pack we felt that we wanted to experiment with VIR, our friendly advisor, see how it would feel to have different set of VO cues depending on your Empire’s ethic. A VO Cue is a term that we use to describe a Voice Over line that triggers at a certain point in the game as for example “Hostile Fleet Detected” or “Research Complete”.

We started with a test case in-house to try it out and we concluded that it was a great experience! From then on we moved on with the process and allocated time to write unique script for each role, character description, casting, auditions and finally recording sessions. It has been personally a long and hard process but in the end I’m really pleased to finally show of 3 samples out of 10 Voice Packs!

Youtube video

There will be a automatic settings for the VO Packs in the game so that the VO will switch depending on what Ethic you start with in the game and also switches while you're playing if you decided with switch Ethic's in your campaign. If you're not into that you will be able to select with set of VO Cues you want to play and you will always be able to switch back to the original VO if you desire.

Now that you have heard some of the results you might ask yourself how the whole procedure works with recording VO? So I’ll describe to a certain detail how the whole process goes by.

First of you need to write a script and if you have talented Content Designers. and we do have in our team, there is no problem to get good a script. Once the script is complete and approved it gets handed to me and I take it to the next step: Casting!

Casting of it’s own is also a long process which takes time. With help of a Casting Director you can get in touch with several possible Voice Actors that can help you to deliver the best result out of each script. When you have picked out potential actors that you think will suit for the role, you bring them in for a audition. In an audition you let the actor read a certain part of the script which usually depict the character the most and also give the best material for the Voice Actor so that they can perform as good as possible. After all the auditions are done you pick the actor that suited the best for the role. Sometimes during auditions actors comes for a certain role to read but during the session you realize that the actor would be more fitted for another role and that happened to our Militarist! We brought her in to do a audition for another role first but while she was reading the part for the first role I heard that she might be better suited as a angry general, so I asked her to try out for the Militarist and it was a really good fit! So good that we ended up with her as the Militarist.

With all the casting/auditions done you move on to the actual recording session, get as much possible material from your actors. It is important that you’re there to act as a “director” for the actors so that you can give the instructions and guidelines so that they can give you all the right emotions and takes that you require for your character in the game.

As soon as the recordings were done I moved on to editing. There is a lot of editing when it comes to VO since it is not only about how the recording equipment sound but also the sheer amount of assets you need to go through..



While editing you usually “zoom in” really close in the waveforms of the recordings to mess around/cutting noise such as clicks and pops. So yes, we Sound Designers tend to get really nerdy when it comes to VO editing:



After you have done all the editing which is removing “clicks” and “pops”, ugly breath takes, add fade in/out, you move into adding “effects” to the VO so we can get that cool Robotic style. For each VO I gave them something else than just using the same settings as for “Default VIR”.

So in short terms that is how you record VO!

That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about robots and robotic modification.

I'm not a huge fan of the dogs of war quote, loathe as I am to agree with Youtube.

Different VIR will be nice though.

Yeah. That militarist was more like a Warhammer-esque Chaos cultist ("Blood for the Blood God!") than an actual member of the military. So I'm guessing the spiritualist one will go off about Deus Vult.

[Egan_BW]

That ain't a Khornate, dude. She wasn't screaming, for one.

[Trekkin]

Yeah. That militarist was more like a Warhammer-esque Chaos cultist ("Blood for the Blood God!") than an actual member of the military. So I'm guessing the spiritualist one will go off about Deus Vult.

Yeah, given the nature of combat in Stellaris, that much aggression doesn't say "An appreciation of warfare is a core tenet of our culture" to me. Rather, it says "I have been chained to my captain's chair after yet another attempt to fire myself out the airlock at our enemy with swords drawn."

Sure, it's crazy, but I don't think it's the right kind of crazy for a world where most combat involves plotting a firing solution at a tiny speck millions of kilometers away before they kill you with physics. "Let slip the target motion analysis algorithms of protracted long-range bombardment" lacks the same ring, though.

If you were to encapsulate Stellaris-style militarism in a set of phrases, I'd perhaps try for overconfident pugnacity rather than enthusiastic bloodthirst. Like having them alert you of a war declaration by saying "another species has asked to die by our hand" or something, the sort of thing you could read as either viscera-munching blood simplicity or supreme self-esteem depending on how you saw your militarists.

[Descan]

To be fair, it was one line, and it was playing over a close-in battle.

It might also only be for *fanatic* militarists, which would probably be closer to the sentiment.

[Rolan7]

I mean there's *technically* ground combat, it just isn't very complicated or likely to matter from what I saw.