There’s a pretty massive dev diary up today that talks about how your Space Illithids can use other races as livestock.
The next update expands how citizenship, species rights, and slavery work, making them much more granular. Slavery is no longer a yes/no thing, it’s based on species and there’s many different types of servitude, ranging from livestock to battle thralls.
There’s also many more ways of dealing with the filthy xeno in your empire, ranging from race-wide extermination, labor camps, sterilization, and “Processing” for the host species.
It’s not all grim, though. You can play the benevolent race that opens up your worlds to refugees (either relegating them to your Sectors on the periphery of your empire, or even your Core worlds themselves) fleeing the pogroms and nutrient vats of their oppressors.
It’s all very interesting, and I’m excited about how the Banks update may play out. On the other hand, the intersection of these rules with sectors reminds me that the whole sector thing is still kind of half-baked.
Yeah, the sector AI has been surprisingly problematic. Paradox aren’t a bunch of rookies who don’t know what they’re doing, so I have to imagine that there are factors that make it much more complex than I expect it to be (Lord knows, I just had to spend 2 weeks squashing a bug that looked like something that should be fixable in a couple hours. Sometimes the rabbit hole goes deep!). The sector AI is a lot better than at release, but that’s an awfully low bar.
It was quite the grim dev diary. It seems like it’s a common theme in scifi settings to have your tyranids, your zerg, and your War of the Worlds tripods and this adds mechanics for that. So I wouldn’t say I’m weirded out, no.
They’re adding a set of new mechanics for benevolent/xenophile gameplay as well, but they weren’t the topic of this dev diary.
As soon as I read that about refugees, I immediately thought “TRIGGERED!!!” and avoided reading any replies. I usually like following up on the Q&A after a dev diary, but not this time. I might have to go back and read Martin’s responses, though. :)
I think it’s a sad state of affairs when it was the acceptance of refugees part that I thought might set people off, not the forced sterilization, slavery, or boiling people down to nutrient goo.
There is a weird and unfortunate parallel community in Paradox games for whom the ethnic/nationalist/religious conquests are for them the whole point. It’s kind of sad to see that they kind of cater to them.
Like the guy on Twitter that @CraigM just linked? (EDIT: I meant the people that Twitter user was referring to) No thanks. It’s the right-wingers that are pissed off for Martin being a leftist pussy, so if they are catering to them I don’t think they’re doing a good job.
Instead of trying to turn this into some grand political statement or catnip for racists, I’m just going to enjoy crushing space illithids and tyranids.
I’m pretty sure the dark underbelly of Paradox games has always been seedy. I didn’t think was controversial. There was always a small but vocal elements of nationalist/ethnicism in their community. I haven’t been to their forums in years but considering contemporary politics I can only imagine it only being worse. So it’s not like everyone didn’t already know this element was there.
There are many, many themes they could focus their efforts on. For example, uplifting species could have a ton of depth, so could diplomacy and building alliances. They could put more into exploration or science, they could add more to their fleet combat models, they could do all kinds of stuff. Instead, they focus on having lots of options for killing and enslaving people. That’s their choice, but it is also my choice to be unhappy with their decision making.
Yeah, there are these dark sides that lurk there. Hell any time they ‘nerf’ a country in EU4 it’s not hard to spot them. They get all pissy because their precious nation is no longer the conquering hero it rightfully deserves to be in their mind.
But, like @LeeAbe says, I don’t think Paradox actually courts these people. It is more that their games, by their nature and historical bent, are the place where these people find the way to express themselves best. To create the dream vision of their national destiny, whatever that is. So while for us the mechanics of religion, political systems, trade, etc are a way for us to ride the wave of history, for them it is a disturbing expression of their identity.
They are a small but very vocal minority of idiots. They are in no way an audience I think Paradox cultivates. Now it may be arguable that Paradox doesn’t do enough to distance themselves either, but Martin’s answer was pretty good.
They haven’t been working on those things? Many of them have already been worked on and improved. The expansion is also months away, this is literally one dev diary in an expansion that will likely have 15+ dedicated to it by the time it ships.
I mean, that’s cool that you don’t find a particular feature/mechanic interesting, but it’s not as if Stellaris is going to be nothing but an alien-eating simulator.
EDIT: Other dev diaries already posted regarding the expansion.
Any serious sci-fi aficionado knows that apex predators in the form of god like thinking machines will someday get around to consuming the earth, burp and move on.
But it doesn’t have to be “people” and you don’t have to play that way. You can play as some sort of moral empire that has to put a stop to the evil slaver reptiles next door though. I think that’s pretty neat. Instead of most games where this stuff is just flavor text, there is an actual mechanic for it that you have to contend with. The more possibilities, the better.
I was really lamenting that slavery, ethnic cleansing and genocide were taking up any Dev resources at all, and giving suggestions as to what else they could spend their time on. I understand that they are doing things other than the above, I just would rather see them do more stuff replacing rather than in addition to.
I understand that slavery and genocide are featured in science fiction, but “is” is not the same as “ought”, and for me that is not sufficient reason to put them in a game.
