Stellaris News

Stellaris Dev Diary #362 - Overwhelming Power

written by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

Today we’re going over the release notes from Tuesday, talking about the further plans for the Circinus cycle, and exploring the reaction to last week’s dev diary, The Vision.

3.14.159 Release Notes
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We released the 3.14.159 patch on Tuesday, and these were the release notes:
Improvements

By popular request, greatly expanded the basement storage of the Grand Archive. You now have 18 slots of overflow instead of 4.
Replaced the Mysterious Labyrinth event image
The Metalheads AI personality can be gained by Individualist Machines or Organic empires that are Very Strong (instead of just Strong)

Balance

The Treasure Hunter Origin now starts leaders with level 3 of Adventurous Spirit, meaning it should no longer constantly be offered as an upgrade.

Bugfixes

Add Beastport, Hatchery and Vivarium Tank to orbital rings, and add Shipyard exclusion rules
Added a hyphen to the X-Ray Eye Beam mutation
Added the missing loc to Sapient Specimen species rights
Added the missing space in the credits' title
Added the missing word "Food" to the Arboreal World planet modifier
Adjusted perfected genes concept tooltip to align with reality
Cyber Democracies no longer get leaders without upkeep
Fallback to Weapon ranges if strike craft is used but there's no strike craft component range
Fix a bug where, under certain circumstances, a Grand Archive was still considered destroyed after being rebuilt
Fix a crash where an AI could capture fauna even if they shouldn't be able to.
Fix Captain Ness not being legendary
Fix Large Shard Accelerator tags
Fix livestock modifier for Wrangler jobs
Fix Mutations' Strike Crafts behaviour
Fix Mysterious Chart event chain that could get blocked
Fix Primal Leaders not being renowned
Fix scores for Grand Archive Relics
Fix Space Amoebas being hostile to Beastmasters bespite Amoeboid Pacification
Fixed some Black Needle ships not displaying their bow section
Fixed 2 cosmic storms projects not requiring scientists
Gravity Snares can now only re-target to fleets they can capture
Gravity Storms no longer cause Obsessed Gestalts to crave consumer goods for their drones
Habitat Orbitals should no longer attempt to evade enemy fleets
Habitat System Control now provide a Roboticist job for Individual Machines.
It is now possible to use Space Fauna as the federation's fleets
Reanimated space fauna uses half ship size of their living counterpart
Removed tooltip for GOG and MS store achievements to require login to paradox account since this is not the case.
Rogue Servitors are now also on energy duty during Gravity Storms
Ships modifiers are correctly updated with their new fleet's modifiers before fleet's values calculation
Space Fauna uses every components to calculate range
Specimens acquired from trades now don't trigger Galactic Curators' unity bonus
The Alien Box Event no longer has a nonsensical tooltip for gestalt empires.
The Tachyon Beam mutations have found their way to the Tachyon Lance technology.
Told the Artillery combat computers to stay at max range
Voidworms shouldn't attack empires with Voidworm Immunity before crisis

Stability

Defensive check for nullobj when dealing with auto exploration orders
Fix crash when Voidworms try to act on empty fleets
Fixed issue with diplomatic distances differences after hotjoin/resync leading to OOS
Fixing potential crash when trying to create a ship from a scripted design that contains unusable components for the creator
Fixed potential CTD when using FromFromFrom scope in "on_planets_zero_pops" on action
Fixes CTD on espionage operation phase tooltip
Fixes CTD when ship is killed by missile

[/expand]
Please keep posting any bugs and Out of Syncs you encounter in the bug report forum. Saves able to reproduce the bugs make the fixing go much more smoothly.

If all goes according to plan, we currently expect to have another patch, 3.14.1592, a couple of weeks from now.

The Vision, Continued

Last week we posted a dev diary on The Vision of Stellaris, and the response has been absolutely overwhelming. As of writing this dev diary, we’re up to around a thousand detailed responses split across various platforms, and we’re reading all of them. I’ve been reading and taking notes since the dev diary was posted, and it’ll take us a little while to get through all of it.

I’m absolutely thrilled with the amount of feedback and the high quality, constructive nature of pretty much every single post. Thank you, everyone.

As a quick initial summary, there seems to be a general consensus with the vision statements, and a high level of support for future changes that improve the game, even if they change existing systems. There seemed to be a pretty strong agreement for exploring alternative systems - especially when it comes to warfare resolution and fleets. There were more diverse feelings around the current pops and job systems, but a large number of you want a more performant system as long as it still captures the general fantasies of the current one. Many of you appear to strongly dislike the current trade system or are at best ambivalent towards it.

The Stellaris community also appears to be much more willing to embrace change than many others - not too surprising considering the number of major changes we’ve made since launch.

Next Week

Next week we’ll review the changes that Stellaris has undergone over the years, go into more detail about more of the conclusions I’ve reached based on the feedback you’ve given, and might have some preliminary release notes for 3.14.1592.

See you then!

Purchase Stellaris: Grand Archive alone or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863080/Stellaris_Grand_Archive/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08__Expansion_Pass/

Stellaris updates will "slow down a bit" as Paradox considers its next direction

With new Stellaris DLC The Grand Archive now out in the world, developer Paradox is considering what the future of its spectacular space 4X game looks like. As it considers the game's future, game director Stephen 'Eladrin' Muray says the team is going to slow down the speed of updates "a little bit" to minimize disruption for players. Furthermore, he asks the game's community to give feedback on what elements are most core to their experience as the team looks to determine what comes next.

Read the rest of the story...

Stellaris Dev Diary #361 - The Vision

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

Now that the Grand Archive Story Pack is out, I want to do something a little different. With 360 Stellaris Dev Diaries complete, I thought it was time to circle right back around to the beginning: what was, will be.

Stellaris Dev Diary #1 was “The Vision”, and so is #361.

[h3]What is Stellaris?[/h3]
The vision serves as a guiding tool to keep the entire development team aligned. As the game evolves, we work hard to update it regularly to remain accurate and consistent with our core vision.

Here’s how I currently answer “What is Stellaris?”:
[hr][/hr][h3]The Galaxy is Vast and Full of Wonders[/h3]
For over eight years, Stellaris has remained the ultimate exploration-focused space-fantasy strategy sandbox, allowing players to discover the wonders of the galaxy.

From their first steps into the stars to uniting the galaxy under their rule, the players are free to discover and tell their own unique stories.

Every story, trope, or player fantasy in science fiction is within our domain.
[hr][/hr][h3]Stellaris is a Living Game[/h3]
Over time, Stellaris has evolved and grown to meet the desires of the player base.

At launch, Stellaris leaned deep into its 4X roots.
It evolved from that base toward Grand Strategy.
As it continues to mature, we have added deeper Roleplaying aspects.

All of these remain part of our DNA.

Stellaris is a 4X Grand Strategy game with Roleplaying elements that continues to evolve and redefine itself.

[hr][/hr][h3]Every Game is Different[/h3]
We desire for players to experience a sense of novelty every time they start a game of Stellaris.

They should be able to play the same empire ten times in a row and experience ten different stories.
A player’s experience will differ wildly if their first contact is a friendly MegaCorp looking to prosper together or if they’re pinned between a Fallen Empire and a Devouring Swarm.

Stellaris relies on a combination of prescripted stories (often tied to empire Origins) and randomized mechanical and narrative building blocks that come together to create unplanned, emergent narratives.

A sense of uncertainty and wonder about what could happen next is core to the Stellaris experience.
[hr][/hr]
[h3]What is this About?[/h3]
Fundamentally, as the players, Stellaris is your game.

Your comments and feedback on The Machine Age heavily influenced our plans for 2025. We work on very long timelines, so we’ve already been working on next year’s releases for some time now. Most of what I’m asking will affect which tasks the team prioritizes and will help direct our direction in 2026 and beyond.

We’re making some changes to how we go about things. Many people have commented that the quarterly release cadence we’ve had since the 3.1 ‘Lem’ update makes it feel like things are changing too quickly and too often, and of course, it disrupts your active games and mods. The short patch cycle between Vela and Circinus was necessary for logistical reasons but really didn’t feel great.

We’re going to slow things down a little bit to let things stabilize. I’ve hinted a couple of times (and said outright last week) that we have the Custodian team working on some big things - the new Game Setup screen was part of this initiative but was completed early enough that we could sneak it into 3.14.1. My current plan is to have an Open Beta with some of the team's larger changes during Q1 of next year, replacing what would have been the slot for a 3.15 release. This will make 2025Q2, around our anniversary in May, a bigger than normal release, giving us the opportunity to catch up on technical debt, polish, and major features.

[h3]What is Stellaris to you?[/h3]
How does this match what you think Stellaris is, and where it should go? Would you change any of these vision statements?

What systems and content are “sacred” to you, which would make Stellaris not Stellaris anymore if we changed them?

Some examples to comment on could include:

How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

[h3]To the Future, Together![/h3]
I want to spend most of this year’s remaining dev diaries (at least, the ones that aren’t focused on the Circinus patch cycle) on this topic, talking with you about where our shared galactic journey is heading.

Next week we’ll be talking about the 3.14.159 patch.

[h3]But First, a Shoutout to the Chinese Stellaris Community[/h3]
Before I sign off, I want to commend the Chinese Stellaris Community for finding the funniest bug of the cycle. I’ve been told that they found that you can capture inappropriate things with Boarding Cables from the Treasure Hunters origin, and have been challenging each other to find the most ridiculous things to capture.

You know, little things like Cetana’s flagship. The Infinity Machine. An entire Enclave.

I’m not going to have the team fix this for 3.14.159, but will likely have them do so for 3.14.1592. I want to give you a chance to complete your collection and catch them all. After all, someone needs to catch The End of the Cycle and an Incoming Asteroid. Post screenshots if you catch anything especially entertaining!

See you next week!

Stellaris Dev Diary #360 - The Archive is Open

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

The Grand Archive Story Pack and the Stellaris 3.14.1 ‘Circinus’ update released on Tuesday. Go forth and collect things and capture space creatures!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]The Release Thus Far[/h3]
The update appears to be a very stable and clean release so far, with few critical issues reported.

A 3.14.15 hotfix is being prepared for today, which includes fixes for two crashes that have occurred a handful of times, and a bug that let you power your economy exclusively through chain-firing Gravity Snares:

[h3]3.14.15 ‘Circinus’ Hotfix Release Notes[/h3]
Bugfixes

Gravity Snare costs can no longer go negative.
Fixed a case where lured space fauna were uncapturable.

Stability

Fixing potential crash when trying to create a ship from a scripted design that contains unusable components for the creator
Fixed potential crash when using FromFromFrom scope in "on_planets_zero_pops" on action
Fix a crash where an AI could capture fauna even if they shouldn't be able to.

The vast majority of the other crashes are related to incompatible UI mods, so please remember to disable your mods that haven’t updated to the latest version before playing. Several players have reported their mods not fully uninstalling, so you may need to manually clear your mods folder if you continue having issues.

Please keep reporting issues you encounter in our Bug Reports forum.
[h3]The Plan[/h3]
If everything goes according to plan, I expect that our next patch, 3.14.159, will be released on Tuesday, November 12th. This will let us include some fixes to issues that are reported this weekend and early next week.
[h3]Dev Q&A Transcript[/h3]
We held a developer Q&A last week, and have exported a transcript for you here:

[Click through to the Paradox Forums to see the entire Q&A transcript]

[h3]Next Week[/h3]
Next week is going to be a little bit different.

We’ll be looking at the internal vision statement of Stellaris and compare it to how the game has developed over the years, and I’d like to begin a conversation about how we’ll continue to evolve over the next few years.

The Custodian team has been up to something, and I want you to help guide them.

Stellaris: Grand Archive and a free update are out now

Paradox have released Stellaris: Grand Archive, a pretty fun sounding story pack for their popular sci-fi grand strategy game. There's also a free update out now as well.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/10/stellaris-grand-archive-and-a-free-update-are-out-now