You either die a hero, or live long enough to become a villain. Stellaris’ recently announced upcoming expansion – Nemesis – seeks to test players like never before. Last week, the developers went into more detail as to what ‘becoming the crises’ entailed in everyone's favourite space grand strategy game, where instead of trying to resist an endgame uber-enemy, you simply become that enemy yourself.
In this week's dev diary, the developers have explained more about the other side of the expansion’s coin – becoming the custodian. While dominating space as a true galactic supervillain does sound fun, plenty of people are going to enjoy the power fantasy of being the great defender, and now there are mechanics for that too.
As soon as the galactic community becomes aware of each other and the galactic council forms, any council member may be elected to become the official ‘custodian’ of the entire galaxy. The AI is more likely to actually vote on such a resolution, though, if there’s an actual crisis going on, like the end-game content or a marauder crisis. Whoever gets voted in as custodian will have three main areas of special powers to play around with.
The custodian can affect which future resolutions actually make it to the senate floor, even ending voting early. There are many custodian-specific resolutions that can be passed, and finally the custodian can form a galactic defence force – similar to how Federation fleets work – that is under the sole control of whoever is custodian.
The most interesting bit of information however is right at the end of the diary, with this line (emphasis ours): “After you have gloriously hammered the crisis into obscurity, your service as a Custodian is no longer needed, and the powers that came with the responsibility could be returned.”
Finally, you can shout “I am the senate” at your screen as you refuse to give back your emergency powers, and thankfully there’s no pesky Jedi around that could permanently scar you and require purging. In case you were wondering, the header image is actually from an excellent Star Wars-themed Stellaris mod called Fallen Republic. Hopefully they can make good use of these new mechanics.
Stellaris: Nemesis doesn’t currently have a release date, but will be released for PC via Steam and the Paradox Store.
Image credit: the SW Fallen Republic team