Stellaris Dev Diary #437 - Willpower Release Date, Galactic Halls, and Gestalts

Greetings!

Today I have the Willpower Story Trailer to share with you as we’re ready to provide a planned release date. Willpower and the Stellaris 4.6 ‘Corona Borealis’ update will be released on Monday, November 23rd.

Hello again.

Last week we discussed the basics of Ideologies and how they function. Naturally, there’s a lot to unpack about how ideas take shape and spread across the galaxy, and we left plenty of questions unanswered. Today, we’re picking up where we left off and getting into some more of those details.

Hey, I saw this in the trailer.

Galactic Halls are the physical manifestation of your empire's ethos, reinforcing its guiding principles and projecting its values across the stars. Once you’ve adopted an Ideology and gained enough Ideological Strength, Galactic Hall technology becomes available to research.

You’ll generally want to build your Galactic Hall in orbit around a colony to take advantage of its bonuses, some of which depend on your guiding Ethic. The last post was a bit Blorg-focused, so let’s explore this using another empire as an example.

First, we need to build the thing.

Each Ethic has its own unique Galactic Hall 3D model.

Egalitarian example.

Here we have the Hall of Qell'Nudaran Communism. Since it’s an Egalitarian Hall, it increases the political power of Pops on the colony below. The other effects shown here are shared by all Galactic Halls.

That said, Galactic Halls don’t have to orbit colonies. You can place them around any celestial body you control, which can be useful for projecting your Reach in a particular direction beyond your borders.

Let's look at our current situation.

An ideological sandwich, before and after building a Galactic Hall.

We’re caught between two empires following the same Spiritualist Ideology, with a Gestalt empire to our left and Nomadic waystations to our right. Here, we’ve built a Galactic Hall above one of our larger colonies to push back against their influence.

Nomads, by the way, can of course adopt Ideologies… but like everything in Stellaris, they operate a little differently. Rather than spreading Reach directly from their Arkships, they project it through their waystations. The amount of Reach these waystations emit depends on the strength of their Arkships. They also build Galactic Halls as modules rather than standalone structures.

Relocating the Galactic Hall to the Ibacca system

The Galactic Hall is a moveable megastructure. To spread our Ideology further, we can elect to Relocate our Galactic Hall. Doing so costs some Energy and has a 10 year cooldown.

Here, we’ve moved our Hall to the Ibacca system, pushing the borders of our Ideology into Mu Ophiuchi, home to a Gestalt colony. Let’s see what’s happening there.

Backattanionism versus Communism, a tale as old as time.

This Gestalt colony happens to worship a Spiritualist Ideology (or Religion) called Backattanionism. It is named this because it was originally generated by the Nomadic empire on our right, "The Roaming Backattan." Looks like they were able to spread it to this empire as well.

For the screenshot above, we’ve switched to the Gestalt empire’s perspective. The panel shows their own Ideological Reach and its sources, alongside the Foreign Reach Pressure now exerted by Qell'Nudaran Communism. To get our ideas out of their head, they’ll need another 100+ Reach from this colony.

Since this is a Gestalt colony, Pops cannot be directly converted, as every drone shares the same consciousness. Gestalt Pops either all follow an Ideology together, or they don't. Instead, when foreign ideas are present in their systems, they begin to experience Deviancy. Inflict enough Deviancy onto a Gestalt empire and you may be able to win them over to your way of thinking.

An indie Egalitarian building, versus a Gestalt Spiritualist building.

One way for the Gestalt to push back is to construct an Ethical Building. These colony-unique buildings unlock with Galactic Hall technology and increase Ideological Strength, among other benefits.

You'll notice Culture Workers are back. These jobs are provided by more than just Ethical Buildings, you'll find them on others such as the Autochthon Monument as well. Culture Worker production can vary depending on the Ethic they celebrate.

Ethical Buildings can be upgraded twice to increase their effectiveness, which requires researching special Ideological Society Technologies.

Oh yeah, Galactic Halls have modules, let's take a look at those. We'll get to the Beacon in a second.

Choosing our Chamber.

Each Galactic Hall starts with one available Chamber slot. You can choose any Chamber, provided you don’t follow the opposing Ethic. For example, Authoritarians can’t install the Egalitarian-themed Chamber of Welfare.

Anyway, back to the Ideological Beacon we just unlocked.

Very different from the bacon of Qell'Nudaran Communism.

Ideological Beacons are buildings you can place on any of your Starbases, which will produce some Unity and increase your Ideological Push. Ideological Push is a multiplier that pushes your Reach score further. Resistance works in the opposite direction.

We’ve touched on Gestalts already, but let’s take a closer look at how they interact with Ideologies.

Developing an Ideological system for Gestalts was a challenge because they effectively move and think as a single entity. You’re not going to get very far trying to convince an individual drone that it holds the wrong values. Many of their interactions with Ideologies therefore work a little differently. We’ve already seen how foreign ideas cause Deviancy, but creating an Ideology is different too, since Gestalt empires have no initial concept of Ethics.

We are… different.

Hive Minds will be able to codify Instincts, while Machine Intelligences adopt Directives. These are based on the ethical concepts they discover after contacting independent empires and completing a special project. An Agenda can trigger this process, though you may also be prompted by an event.

Ideological Tenets adapt to different empire types. For example, a Tenet that improves Specialist output for an independent empire would instead improve Complex Drone output for a Gestalt.

A Machine's point of view.

Gestalt Empires also generate Ideological Strength slightly differently. Much of it depends on how much Deviancy your empire is experiencing: the more Deviancy you have, the less strength you'll get. Experience a lot of deviancy and you'll risk your Momentum dipping low enough to be a concern.

You can see which foreign Ideologies are causing Deviancy within your empire in the Ideology tab. Looks like those pesky Qell'Nudarans are at it again.

Speaking of Gestalts, Willpower comes with a new Origin exclusive to Machine Intelligences: Lost Makers.

Daddy, are you out there?

Gestalt Machine Intelligence only.

Lost Makers sends you on a quest to discover who built you, and why. So much time has passed that even your oldest surviving records offer no answers. But somewhere out in the galaxy, there may still be clues.

The Yuht perhaps?

Your story unfolds differently depending on which Precursor you’re assigned. Each offers a different explanation for your origins, with a unique outcome. In this example, it looks like the Yuht may have had something to do with those strange bits of hardware we’ve never quite understood.

Oh, so that's what this thingy does.

You’ll start the game with the negative Redundant Module trait. At some point during your search, you’ll get the chance to reconfigure this module and restore its original purpose. How this plays out also depends on your Precursor.

You'll also unlock an Origin-unique Civic along the way, as you work on restoring your memory banks.

Yuht Protectionism

Lost Makers is also one of two new Origins that allows you to generate a special Ideology at the end, if you so choose. Each of these comes with a unique Tenet depending on (you guessed it) your Precursor.

That's enough spoilers on this one, you get the idea. Have fun piecing together the rest!


Willpower and the Stellaris 4.6 ‘Corona Borealis’ update are coming as part of Stellaris: Season 10 on November 23rd!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4241400/Stellaris_Season_10/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4241440/Stellaris_Willpower/