What is stellaris dangerous technology?
Stellaris dangerous technology is a preview of the future of Stellaris. It features an unintended, yet highly realistic, space disaster that compels players to think about how much damage a nuclear war could do in space.
This futuristic tech was first released for the public on October 20th 2017 and has been talked about quite a lot ever since. In this article I’m going to explain what it is, when you will be able to check it out in game, what impact it has on you if you play as anyone from the Umatilla species and finally I’ll review its pros and cons.
It is a common thing in science fiction that a catastrophe, usually big, spectacular and catastrophic as well as unexpected happens. The most known example of this are the events of the TV show, “The Day after Tomorrow”. In this film, the Earth suddenly freezes and turns into an ice world without getting damaged at all. The same thing happens with Skyrim: elven race rises from ashes again and conquers some cities. Along with that event there is ever more Hollywood adaptation of apocalyptic fiction.
What is the use of it?
This is not an apocalypse based on the same events of “The day after tomorrow”. This is a technology that allows to play as any civ with resources, production and science cap, which means that your empire will get hit by this danger without losing it, even if you go to a higher difficulty level. The disaster will take place in the year 2112 and you can trigger it if you play as any civ from Umatilla species, who were made for such a situation.
The main purpose of the tech is to promote the safety of mankind and make it possible that more people live on our wonderful Earth. It also makes the unique Umatilla species available. They are a notable species that try to prevent a nuclear disaster which can happen in the future, as it has been explained before. The event doesn’t only apply for this race but for any civ that previously benefited from the “Uplifted” tech, which is essentially all of them.
What are the features?
Let’s start from the basics. The tech requires your empire to have researched the “Uplifted” tech and then you won’t be able to apply it again until you research the “Reclamation” tech. So please look at it as a “meta-game mechanism”. This means that if you are playing as a civ that previously benefited from this tech, it will happen in game and any further research into “Uplifted” will be nullified. You will still get their special bonuses, but they will no longer trigger the disaster.
You can also choose to turn on/off the event by pressing F8. Depending on the game speed and difficulty level, the disaster occurs in a different way: You will be prompted to turn it on/off as soon as you start a new game. Sometimes it also happens right after choosing your species. If you start at 20% energy, the event will occur and you won’t be able to apply “Uplifted” anywhere in the galaxy until 20 years later. You can also trigger it by loading a save that was made before playing this tech (and at least one other chosen civ). After playing it once, the disaster won’t occur again unless you play this tech again (or load a save).
What makes it so different?
In the normal game, you’ll be able to use all the Uplifted techs as much as you want, including the ones that have been researched up to this point. But after playing this, in addition to getting the bonuses that they previously gave to your empire (and other civs), they will also spread a global fear that may still spark a nuclear disaster. You can read more about it in previous articles and in the dev diary on 7 November 2017.
As already mentioned earlier, applying “Uplifted” or a similar tech before playing this one will make all other bonuses of “Uplifted” vanish. The event can also occur if you load a savegame made after playing this tech (but before it was applied). However, in that case you won’t be able to apply any other Uplifted techs and the “Uplifted” bonuses won’t be erased. The disaster can even spread if you use a save game that was saved before applying the tech.
On the detailed part: The same tech will cause different effects on different civs. You are able to switch it on/off if you play as Umatilla, but not as many other civs that previously benefited from the “Uplifted” tech and were more likely to get affected by this disaster than Umatillia.
What are the benefits?
You can earn different amounts of Affinity points, depending on the game speed and on whether you play as Umatilla or not. In general, the lower your difficulty level and the faster your game speed is, the more points you will earn. The amount of points is higher if you play as Umatilla and there are no limits to how many points you can get (i.e. there’s no way that you’ll lose Affinity regardless of your actions). You will unlock new traits for Umatilla species in the future but since this article is about Stellaris Dangerous Technology we’ll talk about it later and just note that regular traits for this species are also available if you trigger this tech and play as them.
