Stellaris News

Hello everyone!

As we’re approaching the 4th anniversary of the release of Stellaris, I thought we would take a look at what Stellaris is, and how much has changed since its release on May 9th 2016.

Stellaris was the studio’s first original IP in many years, so when we released the game we didn’t really know exactly what makes Stellaris. As a natural consequence of that the game has changed a lot since release as we explored what the game is really about, and which experiences we think are fun and valuable.

Stellaris is an exploration-focused space-fantasy strategy game that explores dystopian and utopian themes in a playful and light-hearted manner. There is no one “true” timeline and it's important that players are able to tell their own stories – every story is equally true.

The best thing we can do is provide more tools for storytelling, and of course new gameplay to make playing the game more interesting.

[h2]A Look Back[/h2]
Stellaris has had time to really grow in these last 4 years, and I thought it would be fun to take a look back and see how far we’ve come.


In the last 4 years we have (in no particular order):

• Added a whole bunch of new anomalies to explore
  
• Tweaked the galaxy multiple times to feature more interesting things to discover
  
• Added a new Archaeology system
  
• Added Relics & Minor Artifacts
  
• Added terrifying Leviathans
  
• Reworked the economic system to feature jobs
  
• Added Civics & Authorities for more options during empire creation
  
• Added Traditions & Ascension perks for more customization of your empire while you play
  
• Added a whole bunch of new portraits for you to choose from
  
• Added Starbases and changed how you take ownership of star systems
  
• Added Hive Minds & Machine Intelligence empires
  
• Added bigger and bigger ships like Titans, Juggernauts, Colossi and Juggernauts
  
• Reworked Federations and added new Federation types
  
• Added the Galactic Community
  
• Added a whole bunch of diplomatic actions, such as federation associate, improve relations or defensive pacts
  
• Added Curator, Artist and Trader enclaves
  
• Reworked space combat & balance multiple times, and added new weapons such as the extra large Tachyon Lance or Mega Cannon
  
• Added a lot of megastructures such as the Dyson Sphere or the Mega Art Installation
  
• And so much more....
  

We have come a long way since the release of Stellaris, and our story has just barely begun. I think we have a lot to be excited about for the future, as Stellaris has almost infinite potential.

Let’s take a look into the future together!

[h2]
Announcing the 2.7 ‘Wells’ 4th Anniversary Update[/h2]



To celebrate these 4 years, and to take another step into the future, we will be releasing the free 2.7 ‘Wells’ update next week on Tuesday the 12th of May!

For this update we’ve been looking at a lot of your feedback from 2.6 Federations, and added a couple of new features and made some tweaks to already existing ones.

We will be releasing 2.7 ‘Wells’ as 2.7.1.

If you wanna read the full pach notes, have a read in the forum post here.


Thank you all for your continued support! We’re very thankful for being able to work on such a great game and to have such an engaged and great community!

Let’s celebrate many more anniversaries to come!

Hello everyone!

Today’s dev diary will show you some of the improvements we’ve made to federations for the upcoming free update!

Federation Voting
Since the release of Federations and the 2.7 update we’ve wanted to make some improvements to how voting in federations is handled. Most of the improvements are related to UI and better feedback, but there’s also been some changes to functionality.

You are now able to use Favors to increase the acceptance chance for your AI-controlled federation members.



You are now able to use Favors to increase the acceptance chance for federation law proposals.

We’ve also changed how AI acceptance works for federation laws, so that it is more transparent and more consistent with other features in the game. We look at the AI attitude a lot more now, and it will affect which laws the AI is attracted towards. For example, militaristic empires, or those with either Honorbound Warriors or Federation Builders personalities will be more likely to accept a higher fleet contribution law.

Generally speaking, the best way for you to pass new federation laws is to get the Federation Cohesion to 90 or above, and then suggest a new law change.

When it comes to suggesting changed, the AI will still not attempt to suggest changes very often, unless they are the federation president.



The AI will generally not want to increase Centralization unless Cohesion is 90 or higher. Cohesion also directly affects the acceptance chance by a factor of x0.25 (100 cohesion equals +25 acceptance).




The UI for voting on war declarations has received a face-lift. It’s now more clear which war goal is used, and you can see a summary of the target of the war, and which their allies are. This should hopefully make it easier for you to decide if you are in favor of the war or not.



Whenever a federation law has been voted on, you will now get a pop-up that clearly informs you on what the results of the vote were, and how your federation allies voted.



We’ve also improved the feedback you get whenever your federation unlocks a new level.

[h3]Joint Operations[/h3]
Something we wanted to do, but couldn’t do for 2.6 due to lack of time, was to add some more flavor events to federations. We had some cool ideas for things we wanted to try, and we’re very happy that we’ve been able to add some events for the upcoming 2.7 update.

Joint Operations are events to which each member of a federation can contribute, and the types of events will depend on your federation type.

Research Co-operatives have the chance to engage in a joint archaeological dig across their region of federated space. Galactic Unions and Research Co-operatives alike may also find themselves dealing with strange new stellar phenomena at their federation capitals. Hegemonies will have the option of a grand project to celebrate cultural uniformity – and to see who’s still willing to tow the line. Military Alliances can partake in a joint training exercise, while Trade Leagues may seek to improve their collective worth through harmonized logistics.

In all cases, collaboration will bolster cohesion within your federation – however members may sometimes be tempted by individual gains, and further challenges may arise if the federation does not act as one.



[h3]Origins[/h3]
A small change we’ve made, albeit probably a welcomed one, is to make it far less likely for the leader of a Common Ground or Hegemony start to be blocked off by their federation members. It’s very likely that they will have at least one open hyperlane to an unexplored star system.

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That’s it for this week! Next week we’ll be back with some more information regarding the upcoming free update!

Greetings!

Today we’ll touch upon a subject dear to the hearts of many galactic rulers - namely Edicts!

Background
Edicts are meant to be a way for your empire to focus on certain issues without necessarily taking a permanent stance on them. More permanent stances on issues would be covered by Policies.

Although we felt that Edicts do fit this role pretty well, there were a couple of issues with the system that we think could be improved. The fact that Edicts would always time out felt like a little bit of unnecessary micromanagement at times, and didn’t really emphasize the feeling of “I am choosing to focus on these 2 things right now”. We felt that it would fit better if Edicts had a greater emphasis on making choices that you can go back and change, rather than being things you constantly go in and refresh.



An old friend with a slight makeover. Some Edicts are now toggled on/off instead of being on a timer


Edict Capacity
Enter Edict Capacity – a new mechanic that puts a soft limit on how many Edicts of a certain type that you can have active at once. Similar to Starbase Capacity, your empire will suffer penalties if you exceed it, and the penalty in this case being Empire Sprawl. For every toggled and active Edict above the Edict Capacity, your Empire Sprawl will be increased by +25%.

By default, an empire will start with an Edict Capacity of 2, and can be modified by things like Authority, Civics and Ascension Perks. These values are very prone to being changed as more balance feedback comes in.



Dictatorial and Imperial Authority now increases Edict Capacity by +1.



The God-Emperor knows best.



You can now vigorously enact more Edicts.

Not all Edicts will use Edict Capacity, but rather only the ones that last until cancelled will. Edicts that can be toggled will have an Activation Cost and a Deactivation Cost, which is usually Influence. This means that you are paying the Influence when you are making changes, rather than paying to upkeep the Edicts you want.

Edicts that last until cancelled will be marked with a different icon from the edicts (and campaigns) that expire once their duration runs out.




An example of two different Edicts. Red: toggled - lasts until cancelled and uses Edict Capacity. Blue: temporary - lasts for 10 years and does not use Edict Capacity.


Edicts
Some of the Edicts have changed and we have added a couple of new ones, to better fit with the Edict Capacity. Let’s take a look at a few of them:



Whenever you need to stimulate your economy, subsidies can be the way to go. There are Farming, Mining, Energy and Industrial subsidies.



Neighbors suddenly turned hostile? Need to secure your borders? Pass this Edict to refocus your efforts!



Has the galaxy become more hostile? Do you need to build a powerful fleet to project your power? Focus on Fleet Supremacy for a more powerful and imposing fleet.

Pop Growth is problematic, so we have made some changes in the upcoming patch that will reduce Pop Growth from different sources across the board (more on that later). Food Policies are no more, and the popular Nutritional Plenitude is now a toggled Edict instead.



No longer a food policy (they don’t exist anymore). There are different versions for Hive Minds and Rogue Servitors.
Resource Edicts, Campaigns and Unity Ambitions
The model for the new Edict Capacity doesn’t fit very well for all types of Edicts, which is why the rare resource Edicts, Campaigns and Unity Ambitions remain unchanged and keep working like you are used to. This is also better for modding purposes, so that modders have the opportunity to use Edicts however they see best.

Finishing thoughts
Overall we feel like the new system better allows us to structure how the players get the tools they need to focus their empires for certain tasks. As we make more additions to the game in the future, this new system will also allow us to give the players more tools to address certain issues.

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That is all for this week! We will be back again next week with another dev diary, this time about some federation-related content!

Hello everyone,

Since the beta patch hasn't introduced any major issues, we've decided to put patch 2.6.3 live today :)

Here's the forum post with the full changelog for 2.6.3:

Save games shouldn't be adversely affected by the switch from 2.6.2 to 2.6.3, but just in case you do encounter issues, you can roll back to a prior version via right click on Stellaris in library -> properties -> betas -> choose the desired version.

If you want to do crossplay MP between Steam and our other release platforms (Plaza/GOG/MS Store), you need to opt in to the crossplay beta, stellaris_test, by the same method.

Greetings to the void-dwellers and planet-bound alike!

This week we’ll be talking about some changes we’re planning on making to the engineering marvels that are Orbital Habitats. These are currently slated for the May update that Game Director Daniel mentioned two weeks ago.

Introduced in Utopia, Orbital Habitats provide a way to continue some form of limited expansion after colonizing all of the habitable planets within your empire. In the 2.3 “Wolfe” update, we added some specialized districts to them based on the celestial body they orbited, opening up the possibility for things like building dedicated astro-mining facilities, and recently in Federations, we added a Void Dwellers origin which let you start your empire among the stars in three habitats.

This May, we’ll be introducing multiple tiers of habitats. These will be accessible to anyone with the Utopia expansion or using the Void Dwellers origin from Federations.

The first tier of Orbital Habitats now comes a bit earlier in the tech tree and require fewer alloys to build. The basic Orbital Habitat is smaller than the old version, starting with 4 district slots. They also have a simpler appearance than the ones currently in the game, a core of a station to build upon later.

Fungoid Orbital Habitat

The Habitat Expansion engineering technology is placed around where the Habitat technology used to be in the tech tree, and will allow you to upgrade an Orbital Habitat that has filled all of its districts to an Advanced Habitat using a planetary decision that costs some time and alloys.



Upgrading to an Advanced Habitat provides 2 additional district slots and allows basic housing buildings to be built even for normal empires.

The Advanced Habitat upgrade adds a ring of modules around the central core.



Avian Advanced Habitat

A third technology permits upgrading a fully developed Advanced Habitat that has a Habitat Central Control into a Habitat World.



Habitat Worlds have 8 districts, shown as another ring of modules around the habitat.




If you want to read more about the upcoming habitat tiers, see the full forum post here!