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Stellaris turns Twister with new Cosmic Storms you can bend to your will

Space 4X strategy game Stellaris launched in 2016, but Paradox can't stop adding to the universe. Last time I checked in, it was school trips to other dimensions. Now, it's Cosmic Storms. Due for release alongside the Stellaris 3.13 Vela update on September 10th, these are a paid "mechanical expansion" (priced at a rather chunky £11, $13 or €13, and available as part of the current season pass) that builds upon the game's existing Space Storms, "providing a deeper experience with strategically meaningful gameplay and beautiful upgraded visuals". Wash that down with new civics, precursor narratives, anomalies, archaeology sites, techs, edicts, a new Ascension perk, and new galactic community resolutions.

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Stellaris Cosmic Storms expansion will launch September 10

Might be time for another run in Stellaris with the Cosmic Storms announced today to release on September 10th. Developed in collaboration with Behaviour Rotterdam, it's set to expand space weather in a big way.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/08/stellaris-cosmic-storms-expansion-will-launch-september-10

A Storm is Brewing: Announcing Cosmic Storms

[h2]A phenomenon is sweeping across the galaxy.[/h2]



I’m excited to announce that Episode 2 of Stellaris: Season 08, the Cosmic Storms mechanical expansion, will be released alongside the Stellaris 3.13 ‘Vela’ update on September 10th, 2024.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Note: Tooltips shown in the video were from a development branch that has already been updated, more info next week.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863060/Stellaris_Cosmic_Storms/

[h2]Dark Clouds Gather ...[/h2]

For some time we have been unsatisfied with the Space Storm that currently exists in Stellaris. Cosmic Storms gave us the opportunity to revamp the system entirely, providing a deeper experience with strategically meaningful gameplay and beautiful upgraded visuals.

With this expansion, eight new storms with varying positive and negative effects are set to spiral across the galaxy.

We’ve also added a new weather map mode for forecasting these storms and predicting their motion, with technologies and buildings to attract, repel, or with an Ascension Perk, even create storms.



[h2]... But Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining[/h2]

Storms may pass through your planets with intriguing effects, leaving behind a changed landscape or unearthing long buried treasures.



[h2]"Burn Fast and Die Radically - That's Always Been Our Way"[/h2]

What's life without the rush?

Other empires may obsess about heinous things like economy and population. The Storm Chasers have long since mastered the challenges of their homeworld. The time has come to blast off screaming into the void.

At last, a whole new opportunity to shred the limits of experience!



[h2]Embrace the Storms[/h2]

Prepare your empires to weather the cosmic tempests with three new Civics, each offering unique strategies to harness the power of the elements.

The Corporate, Hive Mind, or Machine Intelligence versions of these Civics require access to their Authorities - MegaCorp, Utopia, and either Synthetic Dawn or The Machine Age, respectively.



[h2]Uncover the Past[/h2]

Embark on a journey through the annals of time with two new Precursor Event Chains, each offering a glimpse into the ancient history of the Stellaris universe. These chains weave tales of civilizations long lost to the cosmic winds, with untold secrets buried beneath the stars.



Stellaris: Cosmic Storms includes:
  • Cosmic Storms that ravage the galaxy
  • Storm Chaser Origin
  • Civics
    • Planetscapers
    • Astrometeorology
    • Storm Devotion
  • Two new Precursor narratives, with two new Relics
  • Events, Anomalies, and Archaeology Sites
  • Storm-related technologies, Edicts, Galactic community resolutions, and an Ascension Perk



[h3]Dev Diary Schedule[/h3]
  • Aug 15 - Announcing Cosmic Storms
  • Aug 22 - The Storms and their Aftermaths
  • Aug 29 - Storm Chaser Origin, Civics, and Precursors
  • Sept 5 - 3.13 "Vela" and Cosmic Storms Release Notes


Cosmic Storms can be purchased as part of the Stellaris: Season 08 Expansion Pass, or as a standalone purchase for $12.99 (regional pricing may vary). It is also included as part of the Stellaris Expansion Subscription


Pre-Purchase Stellaris: Cosmic Storms alone, or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!

Mod Highlight #8 - Landscape of Dreams



Hello everyone!

Welcome to another mod highlight! This will be the final mod highlight of the summer, and we will be returning to our regularly scheduled dev diaries on Thursday!

This mod highlight is all about new technologies, and all of the mods add new techs to expand on vanilla mechanics.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Extra Ship Components NEXT​[/h3]
By NHunter

Written by NHunter​

Extra Ship Components aims to provide an extended and expanded technology tree that features upgraded versions of all vanilla weapon and utility components, as well new technology branches such as extra-large autocannons and missiles, and new kinetic and energy weapons. In addition to that, entirely-new types of weapons are introduced:

  • Psionic weapons that allows one to unleash the full might of their empire's most powers psionics,
  • Biological and Crystalline weapons based on spacebourne creatures, showcasing the empire's mastery over genetic engineering,
  • Gravitic and Chrono-spatial weapons that utilize fundamental forces of nature to great and devastating effects,
  • Nanite weapons with the power of very hungry synthetic life
  • Special components obtainable only by defeating great leviathans to serve as a proof of an empire's might.


And with optional add ons, one can also change and improve the loadouts of FE fleets, giving them more power and thematic weapon sets, as well as unique components, some of which can be reverse engineered. Leviathans, Endgame Crises, Gray Goo and Curator Enclaves also receive a glow-up with improved ship designs to serve as a better challenge to the player.

[h3]Sparble's Stellar Hyper Constructs​[/h3]
By Sparble

Written by Sparble​

Hyperconstructs expands Stellaris' Megastructure features by adding 27 different new Megastructures to the game along with plenty of other content surrounding these. These structures currently reach from the relatively small Tier A ones, such as Shellworlds, to Tier G ones, which only the most advanced civilizations would be able to build.

At last, Hyperconstructs has integrated fully dedicated support for mods like Planetary Diversity and Gigastructural Engineering & More in the form of compatibility overrides, additional Gigastructure stages, and other effects.

More content is planned in the future, with an ever-growing list of megastructure ideas, event chains, and more, so stay tuned!

Features:
  • Plenty New Megastructures
  • New Planet & Star Classes
  • New Become-The-Crisis Route
  • New Endgame Crisis
  • New Strategic Resources
  • New Origins
  • New Events
  • New Technologies, Ship Components, Traits & Bombardment Stances
  • New Jobs along with Districts & Buildings
  • Dedicated Gigastructures + Planetary Diversity Support


Inspiration:
A huge inspiration for some of the megastructures have been Isaac Arthur's videos on Youtube. He has a great series of megastructure concepts and other space related stuff, and the initial idea for adding Shellworlds and the Stellar Hoop came from his videos.

Another initial inspiration for Hyperconstructs was that when Nemesis was released I liked the (back then) newly added player crisis mechanic, but wanted to stay ingame after ascension. This is how I came up with the idea of the Dimensional Tearer, allowing players to ascend into a higher plane of existence, but still being able to stay ingame after their ascension to mess with reality as they like.

Huge thanks to the Stellaris Community as they really helped me over time with my modding questions; I most likely wouldn't have advanced that much into modding without their help!

[h3]Nanite Expansion Continued​[/h3]
By Sunconure11

Written by Sunconure11​

Exploring hypothetical technologies in scales from the Micro to the Atto and everything between, the mod offers a plethora of new options for empires, many of which are derived from the sci-fi encyclopedia at Orion's Arm. All heavily integrate Nanites and make them an essential component of cutting edge empires. Three variations of the ascension perk to start your nanotechnology journey have been included; one for Organic Empires, one for Synths, and one for Machine empires.

Features:
  • 40+ new technologies
  • 5 new ship components
  • two new buildings
  • two new megastructures
  • one of which is a giant AI entity who’s “personality” you get to influence
  • a series of upgradable planet modifiers
  • a new planet bombardment stance
  • three new armies with a unique icon
  • a set of traits for Synths and Machines equivalent to the Brain Slug for Organics
  • And more!



[h3]Dawn Of Ascension[/h3]​
By Daniellm

Written by Daniellm

Dawn Of Ascension is a Vanilla+ mod that expands on the mid to end game content of Stellaris. It adds multiple event chains to learn the secrets of dark matter power, including infiltrating a Fallen Empire's Master Archive, digging up old abandoned Precursor shipyards or even putting your best scientists at the major task of inventing it yourself!

The major feature of the mod is "the ascension project" , a long situation where you invent a bunch of dark matter related technologies, and even go beyond what the fallen empires did before you, however... the ancient guardians will not sit idle and watch the primitive empires do the ascension project.

Are you ready for the next step in your technological evolution?

Features:
  • 3 new event chains to gain Dark Matter Power
  • new civics allowing everything from putting dark matter cores into your machine worlds, to having scion wargoals so everyone fights to unite the galaxy under your banner
  • The ascension project, a long project allowing you to go beyond those that came before you.
  • New ascendant shipset
  • 3 tiers of FE+ automated industries
  • New ships allowing you to match the power level of FE ships and beyond
  • 2 New tech tiers for components
  • Custom weapon effects for all weapons
  • Doa is made with mod compatibility in mind and should be compatible with everything!
  • 2 different ascension mechanics depending on what mods you have installed


That’s it for this Mod Highlight! Hope you’ve found some new mods to discover, and new things to learn out in the galaxy.

Thanks for reading!

Mod Highlights #7 - A Star to Steer By


by MrFreake_PDX

Hello everyone!

Welcome to another mod highlight, Michael_Stellaris has some great mods lined up for us this week, and this week’s theme is exploration! These mods will make the galaxy more interesting and diverse, and who doesn’t love new things to find out in the galaxy. I’m sure nothing bad will happen.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Dangerous Wildlife Expanded is a very unique mod, adds much more depth to dangerous wildlife, and should make planets feel much more unique, and can even alter the course of your playthrough.
[h3]WP's Dangerous Wildlife Expanded​[/h3]
By WoodenPotatoes

This section was written by WoodenPotatoes

Firstly, I really liked the idea of expanding on the sorts of non-intelligent fauna we might find around the galaxy, like T-Rexes and Mammoths and whatnot. Stellaris is utterly fantastic with intelligent aliens, primitive aliens, and even has pre-sapients. But what kind of wildlife is out there? What alien monsters and creepy crawlies lurk on foreign worlds?

Secondly, I really liked the concept of mounted alien cavalry.

So I made this!

Features:
  • Diversify the flavour of the "Dangerous Wildlife" planetary feature
  • Defend your colonies from these creatures as they attack you
  • Eventually, recruit them for yourself


Inspiration:
I was really inspired by one of the launch army attachments "Xeno Cavalry", and have a lot of fond memories of mounting my psionic warriors on them.

I do have a funny bug story from development on this one: In one early prototype of the attack events I hadn't set a flag to tell the monsters to stop attacking if they had already won. This meant that if you, the player, lost to a horde of, let's say, dire wolves, then a couple of years later you might look at your planet see that even more dire wolves had now come out of hiding to attack the new top dogs in charge! This was happening everywhere, best of all on planets with multiple types of wildlife at once. You'd have swarms of giant cockroaches trying to eat T-rexes, Woolly Rhinos duking it out against alien Yeti, Bats vs Spiders, you get the picture. An entire galaxy of raging wildlife.



More Events Mod is one of the most popular event mods out there, it definitely deserves to be featured. It contains some really fun event chains, systems, and new things to find out in the galaxy.
[h3]More Events Mod​[/h3]
By Malthus

This section was written by Malthus

Our mod started out shortly after Stellaris' release back in 2016. A lot of people have worked on and contributed to it over the years, among them great scripters, writers and 2d/3d artists who all shared the same goal of adding more to the the game experience in terms of short stories through anomalies and bigger story arcs with digsites, quests and even some mid game crises (Broken Clock, Vazuran Menace, Surveyor Probe). All of which is meant to add to the Stellaris lore while staying true to it without contradictions - a vanilla+ basically.

Over the time it grew quite a bit from just being a few anomalies and events at the start, to now having nearly two dozen digsites, three mid game crises and even custom species portraits which were made for their respective events but are also fully usable for ai empires. It may be bloat to some, but it is just a big package by now.

Features:
  • dozens of anomalies
  • early and mid game events, multiple archaeological sites and a few origins
  • multiple mid game crises
  • various species portraits


Inspiration:
The mod was originally created by vonMourn shortly after the initial Stellaris release. I joined a few weeks later, when he asked around for people interested in contributing to it. Back then I had no idea about scripting and just wanted to add my "Event Horizon" knockoff story about a possessed ship that took its crew into hell. So writing was all good and well, but getting into scripting afterwards was a lot of trial and error back when there weren't such cool helpers like CWTools around. It was a great help though that all the stuff in Stellaris is as easily accessible with a text editor as it is.

The Broken Clock system from More Events Mod

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Guilli's Planet Modifiers and Features adds a ton of new anomalies, relics, and modifiers to make planets, and outer space more interesting.
[h3]Guilli’s Planet Modifiers and Features​[/h3]
By Guilliman

For version 3.12+ of the game, section written by Guilliman

A big content expansion mod focusing on Planetary Modifiers. With hundreds of modifiers and lots of content that interacts with them.

Features:
  • Over 400 new Planet Modifiers
  • Many new planet features and blockers
  • Terraforming improvements through planet modifiers
  • New planetary decisions to interact with planet modifiers
  • Tons of story events
  • New Anomalies and exploration events
  • New policy: survey expeditions
  • New Precursor Dig Sites that interact with precursor planet modifiers
  • Precursor Discoveries (technologies, components, bonuses,..)
  • 29 new relics
  • Relic War Goals (claim relics!)
  • Espionage to steal relics
  • Relic galaxy map overlay to see who has relics and how many (based on intel)
  • New precursor planet: "Archaeopolis" (requires Ancient Relics DLC)
  • Minor Artifacts uses, techs, armies (requires Ancient Relics DLC)
  • Broken Mini-Megastructures that spawn across the galaxy
  • Wondrous Planets
  • Custom options menu at the start of the game


Inspiration:
I always found planets a little boring but I was mostly curious if I could mod a single planet modifier to see how hard it would be. It got a little bit out of hand from there.. :)



More Primitives adds more content for primitives. It adds new events, 11 new Primitive eras, pre-FTL colonization of other habitable planets, and more!

[h3]More Primitives​[/h3]
By Sparble

This section written by Sparble

More Primitives, as the name suggests, is a mod all about Pre-FTL civilizations, with its main focus being Pre-FTL Ages, Events, Situations and Special Projects.

The mod started with a handful of primitive events, such as particle accelerator construction with mysterious events related to that, Pre-FTL world war with multiple outcomes, primitives entering a fanatic philosophical age from which they could turn into primitive purifiers, begin to worship multiple benevolent or malicious shroud entities, or embrace deeply philosophical debates such as anti-natalism.

These events were expanded over time, and new event chains came along, such as primitives colonizing their solar system before reaching FTL, their reaction to megastructures in their system, or Pre-FTLs entering a robotic age and developing a technological singularity, which would eventually become self-aware an either trigger a global catastrophe or ultimately become the benevolent savior of the primitive species.

It's also worth mentioning that More Primitives does not require the First Contact DLC, but adds additional content on top of that if used along with it.

Features:
  • Plenty of new Pre-FTL Events & Event Chains
  • 11 New Pre-FTL Ages
  • Pre-FTL Machine Intelligences
  • New special projects & interactions related to Pre-FTL events
  • Other flavor stuff related to primitives (Pre-FTL buildings, modifiers, planet class, traits)
  • Dedicated Cross-Mod Support


You can never have enough primitive content!

More Primitives was my first ever Stellaris mod and, with the help of the great modding community, inspired me to expand my initially very limited knowledge about modding, which has resulted in much new and improved content and the release of various other mods over time, expanding and adding new features to expand the Stellaris Universe.



That’s it for this week, we have one more Mod Highlight scheduled for August 10th before Dev Diaries resume on August 15th!

See you then!