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2022-08-25

The Aquatics Species Pack for Stellaris: Console Edition is now available!

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The Aquatics Species Pack is available now!

The Aquatic Species Pack includes:

  • 15 new Aquatic Portraits

  • 1 Aquatic-themed Robotic Portrait (requires Synthetic Dawn Story Pack)

  • Water-themed Ship Set

  • 2 New Origins 

    • Here Be Dragons - Start in a system guarded by the Sky Dragon, this dragon will protect you from harm, as long as you keep it happy.

    • Ocean Paradise - Start on a large-sized Ocean world with rich food deposits, and get production, happiness, and pop growth bonuses on your homeworld, but start with no guaranteed habitable worlds.

  • Anglers Civic - Harvest the Bounty of the Deep, Agriculture Districts produce Angler and Pearl Diver jobs

  • Hydrocentric Ascension Perk - Allows you to use the Expand Planetary Sea decision on Ocean Worlds, and unlocks the Deluge Colossus Weapon (requires Apocalypse)

  • Aquatic Species Trait - Gain production and habitability bonuses for living on Ocean worlds, and penalties for living on non-Wet worlds.

  • Aquatic Advisor, inspired by high seas adventure fiction

  • 4 Aquatic Name Lists, room backdrop, city set

We hope you enjoy this latest addition to the Stellaris galaxy, and you can get the Aquatics Species Pack or as part of Expansion Pass Five!

But that’s not all, the Aquatics Species Pack also releases with the 3.1 “Lem” and 3.2 “Herbert” updates, which include a ton of new free features for the base game as well as content added to existing DLC!

Selectable Traditions (free)

Traditions are now selectable, adding more depth and strategic choice to your Stellaris games. We’ve rebalanced many of the existing Tradition Trees while also adding a new Tradition Tree to the base game (Mercantile), and two new Tradition Trees to previously released DLCs (Unyielding with Apocalypse and Espionage with Nemesis).

Masterful Crafters Civic (requires Humanoids Species Pack)

The Master Crafters civic changes Artisans to Artificers. Artificer jobs produce trade value and engineering research, in addition to the standard Consumer Goods output of Artisan jobs. Every third Industrial District built also unlocks a building slot.

Pleasure Seekers Civic (requires Humanoids Species Pack)

The Pleasure Seekers Civic unlocks access to the Decadent Lifestyle living standard, which adds +20% Happiness at the cost of +10% Consumer Goods upkeep. As well, pops with the Servant living standard will produce 5 extra amenities, and Entertainer jobs produce an extra 1% pop growth a month.

Clone Army Origin (requires Humanoids Species Pack)

The Clone Army Origin represents your species starting as genetically engineered Clone Soldiers, the perfect warriors. Your species, however, is infertile and short-lived, and you are reliant on building Ancient Cloning Vats on your planets in order for your population to reproduce (or to maintain a stable population).

Each empire with the Clone Army Origin is limited to producing 5 Ancient Cloning Vats, with each cloning vat able to support a population of up to 20 clone soldier pops. The Clone Army Origin also starts with a dig site on their homeworld that may reveal the secrets of their origins.

Pompous Purists Civic (requires Humanoids Species Pack)

In our latest addition to the Humanoids Species Pack, the Pompous Purists Civic allows for a diplomatic playstyle, but for Xenophobes. The idea is based on an elven fantasy, where they are willing to negotiate with other species, but only on their own terms.

To that end, empires with the Pompous Purists Civic cannot receive diplomatic proposals, but may still send them. They will also get bonus trust growth and extra envoys.

Phototropic and Radiotrophic (requires Plantoids Species Pack)

Phototropic is a new species trait added in the Lem update. This species trait converts half of a pops’ Food upkeep into Energy, representing their reliance on solar energy as a food source. 

Radiotrophic pops consume radiation as a food source, also converting half the pops’ upkeep into energy. Radtiotropic pops, however, do not pay any energy upkeep when they live on a tombworld and get bonus pop growth and habitability on Tomb Worlds, as they can consume the natural background radiation of the planet as their secondary food source. Radiotrophic pops also get +30% habitability on tomb worlds.

Budding (requires Plantoids Species Pack)

Budding is the third species trait added to the Plantoids Species Pack, this trait adds latent organic pop assembly to the pops of that species, with each pop contributing 0.02 organic pop growth a month.

Catalytic Processing Civic (requires Plantoids Species Pack)

The Catalytic Processing Civic replaces the Metallurgist jobs created by Industrial districts with the Catalytic Technician job. Catalytic Technicians for regular empires and hiveminds convert 9 food into 3 alloys. Machine Intelligences convert 12 food into 4 alloys.

Note: This is also available to Rogue Servitors and Driven Assimilators

Idyllic Bloom Civic (requires Plantoids Species Pack)

This civic allows the construction of the Gaia Seeder building on planets of their ideal planet class. This building has four upgrades, and the fourth and final upgrade will change the planet type to a Gaia world, a paradise for all but the most limited organic species. This civic can be taken by regular empires and hiveminds.

Reanimators (requires Necroids Species Pack)

The Undead Armies Civic from the Necroids Species Pack has been renamed Reanimators civic. Reanimators can now build Dread Encampments by default, and provide two Necromancer jobs (instead of one). Necromancers also produce six society and physics research each (up from four). Building a Dread Encampment also replaces your Defensive Armies with Undead Defense armies. When Reanimators defeat organic armies in battle, they gain a 33% chance of the armies joining their forces immediately, this ability also extends to certain Space Fauna, which they can also get a Special Project to reanimate.

Necrophage Origin (requires Necroids Species Pack)

Hiveminds can now take the Necrophage origin and you can also combine Necrophage with Devouring Swarm (or Terravore). A special exemption has been added for Hivemind Necrophytes, allowing them to live on Hive Worlds. Necrophage Hivemind’s livestock species will also reproduce, unlike normal Hiveminds.

Pops undergoing Necrophage purge are more likely to escape. Non-purging Necrophages start with two fewer pops, and all Necrophage primitives will now be less advanced (Iron Age) and spawn more defensive armies than normal primitives.

Terraforming Improvements

With the focus on Terraforming in the Aquatics Species Pack, the Custodian Team has been hard at work to improve the experience of terraforming as a whole.

Terraforming planets now have a chance to randomly trigger events, to add more flavor to the overall process of terraforming.  These events vary in power and complexity and will only trigger the first time a planet is terraformed. 

But there’s more, we’ve also done some work with the AI budgets to make the AI more likely to terraform planets to optimal planet types, and will be more likely to pick Terraforming technologies and Ascension perks under certain circumstances.

More to Explore

We have added new anomalies for the Gas Giant, Asteroid, and uninhabitable anomaly categories. This will add more depth to some anomalies that previously only had a single outcome (for example the Gigantic Skeleton Anomaly). 

We also have revisited some of the older anomaly events and added new options, to add more depth to these older anomalies.

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We hope you enjoy these latest additions to Stellaris: Console Edition. You can get the Aquatics Species Pack today, as well as a part of Expansion Pass Five!

Release Trailer

Stellaris: Console Edition Aquatics Species Pack