written by Eladrin and Gruntsatwork
Today we’ll be taking a look at some of the features coming in the Toxoids Species Pack. As we’re on an accelerated dev diary schedule, there’s no time to lose! Let’s jump straight into this and turn it over to Gruntsatwork.
One of our two new Origins for Toxoids, Overtuned is the grim but exalting reminder that a brief life burns the brightest. Through invasive surgery and by modifying biochemical pathways you can impart your pops with 13 new overtuned traits. Each of these traits is a mirror to an already existing, far more survivable trait.
As you can see, the overtuned traits can even be picked with their “natural” opposing traits, or stacked with their mirrors for all your double-dipping needs. There are next to no restrictions on mixing them with other traits, so feel free to create whatever biological monstrosities you can imagine.
In practice, the overtuned traits are all about as strong or slightly weaker than their mirror traits, usually cheaper in trait point cost and reduce your leader lifespan depending on their point cost.
In addition to their normal effects, the origin will also grant you access to a new edict called “Damn the Consequences”.
This edict doubles the positive effect of all overtuned traits, but also doubles the upkeep of those pops. Its unity cost is a percentage of your own unity income, so you will always be able to damn the consequences. Furthermore, the edict has a lock-in period of 5 years, which means you will not be able to cancel the edict until it has been active for those 5 years.
With Toxoids, we are adding 4 new traits to the game, available to all portraits and 3 of these traits will be available at gamestart.
Incubator pops will enjoy only a modest bonus on their capital worlds given their starting number of pops but fresh colonies will quickly reveal its full power.
A small but flavorful addition to our trait roster, to better support your exotic needs.
Noxious pops will decrease the happiness of all non-noxious pops on the same planet, while in turn receiving a happiness bonus for every non-noxious and therefore unhappy pop. Talk about toxic neighbors.
Exotic Metabolism however, is an advanced Trait and will thus require fully finished Genetic Ascension, as it requires a robust economy to support their exotic upkeep.
Its benefits are strong, its upkeep severe and it requires a deep investment into biological enhancements, we hope to see some interesting builds with this.
Toxoids will also bring 3 new civics with it, to give you more of that slimy but satisfying feeling.
Our first civic that does not start you out with its special building, Mutagenic Spas, and all of its alternate versions, give you the option of boosting your pop growth on highly industrialized worlds, as your pops enjoy the fruits of your pollution.
Relentless Industrialists will have to deal with an ongoing situation about the environmental effects of their increased efficiency in alloy and consumer goods production. Of course, should you be cold-hearted and profit-oriented enough, it becomes a self-solving problem, if you can afford to work in such a hostile environment.
Arriving hand in hand with one of our changes for the free patch, namely the ability to choose what you wish to gain from debris, alloys or research, the new Scavenger civic will allow an empire to gain both benefits as well as salvage some actual ships from the debris.
Megacorps have access to all three civics.
Even the toughest species can’t quite survive in a world that is entirely poisonous.
50% poisonous however is another beast altogether.
With the Detox ascension perk, empires will be able to turn those giant balls of death into giant balls of not-quite-death.
Given how perilous toxic worlds are, this act of terraforming will be a bit more involved than normal, since even after the initial phase makes them colonizable, there will be remnants of their toxic pasts interfering with their prosperity.
This Thursday we’ll have a dev diary from the Artists, including some interesting things about the character’s outfits and what we’ve done differently there.
See you then! Don’t forget you can Pre-Order Toxoids Now!
