Stellaris News

Stellaris #MODJAM2024 - Feature Freeze and Testing

Hello Stellaris Community!

We’re back with another update on our annual Modder event: #MODJAM2024! Today is feature freeze for the Mod Jam. Essentially, Modders will have until 5 PM CET today to submit a feature-complete version of their submission.

It’s important to note at this stage, that not everything will work correctly. Modders still have another week to bugfix and polish their submissions. Would you like to help our modders test their submissions? Join us on Discord! Join the Discord, get the PC role, and then look for the #help-test-the-mod-jam channel.

Later today or early tomorrow, we will be posting a link in that section of our Discord so the Community can play this content early, and each leader has a forum channel where you can report bugs directly to the modders.

Today, we have another eight Legendary Leaders to highlight! These leaders range from a damaged and dormant AI Weapons Platform, to an Interdimensional Phantasm that transcends space and time.

[h3]The Forgotten One by AlexMeowler[/h3]

Inspiration: The main idea of this mod is to enhance the Player Crisis gameplay, and encourage players to select the Become the Crisis ascension perk (or at least make them consider the option). To implement that idea I set two goals:

The first goal is to make the game more dynamic (like, what if you try to play defensively and speedrun the Aetherophasic Engine?) but also with some extra additions to make it more interactive and not forcing the player to get crisis stage 5, for unlocking full mod potential, just get new tech and components and keep playing the “standard” game any way they want.
The second goal was to give the player more means to really oppose the whole galaxy, all those mighty alliances and vassalages, As A True Crisis Should.

From that idea and modjam theme emerged the common idea of someone who had “crisis” experience, but obviously failed (because if they succeeded, none of this would have happened). The rest (dialogues, terminology, descriptions) are based on Crisis Event Chain and the information the game is giving to me, along with some cool scientific definitions from physics .

[h3]Inanis of the Void by DaGinger[/h3]

Inspiration: I’ve always found the concept of time dilation incredibly interesting. After bouncing around a few ideas for the modjam, this concept stuck out to me. How could it be used by an empire for their benefit? If it affects a whole planet, what would benefit? Stuff like production and growth speed? but also what downsides would it have? Increased upkeep for jobs and buildings? Would people be happy ageing at a faster speed than everywhere else? I kept asking myself these questions until eventually, I had a word document full of answers ready to be used.

I also tied the story into a rare bit of lore from Stellaris that I adore which is partially related to the concept, I’m sure most will understand the link if they have seen it before. Being interested in the science behind these things made it really easy to keep my motivation and interest in the mod high which certainly helped create this mod.

[h3]Professor of ZIR by Tanner[/h3]

Inspiration: The main bit of inspiration for The Professor was the Stellaris tutorial AI, VIR. A few days into programming, I thought, “What if VIR was an awful college professor?” The idea of turning the Stellaris tutorial into an overly strict college professor, who viewed themselves as the arbiter of all knowledge was something I adored too much.

As for the portrait, I chose Necroids 9 simply because it’s one of my favorite portraits. My friends and I have an inside joke where we obsess about the amount of eyes the portrait has. We came to a consensus that 4 eyes is not enough, so this time the portrait has 6.

[h3]Warpeo - The Dimensional Phantasm by RegiZero[/h3]

[h3]The Jailer by Evereal[/h3]

Inspiration: The idea that resonated most with me was the concept behind the champion Ryze from League of Legends, a lonely but powerful mage who has lived for millennia and charges himself with keeping ancient and powerful magical runes from falling into the wrong hands.

I thought it would be cool to make a similarly enigmatic, but grounded, leader that also charges himself with withholding some incredibly dangerous object/entity from the galaxy. I iterated on many ideas and landed on The Jailer. This concept inspired me.

Firstly, he is a character whose fundamental theme, seeking redemption, is relatable, grounded, and has a major opportunity for character growth. Secondly, there is instantly a major story hook worth exploring, what does he imprison, and why is it so dangerous? Finally, it allowed me to explore game mechanics and narratives that are IMO overlooked in Stellaris; crime, corruption and penal colonies.

[h3]Weapons Platform Asset ID-02 by bpainecraft[/h3]

Inspiration: My thought process when creating the features of the mod was primarily practical. With the requirement to make something balanced and a lack of knowledge about the legendary leaders, I decided to view the Stellaris Wiki and create features similar to the existing leaders. As for the story that I created to accompany my leader, it was more a spur of the moment thing than a planned chain of events, each project and event being written based on the one before.

[h3]Ascendant Neochadamus by mem_malthus[/h3]

Inspiration: Despite having been a big fan of Star Trek in the past, it happened more by coincidence/subconsciously that my leader’s personality and background have big similarities with Q, and I wasn’t even aware of it until someone pointed it out to me. It is never a bad thing, though, to have someone around, who can fill the entire room with his ego alone. It just gives so many more options for crazy stories you could never have with a normal character.

[h3]Convergence by The Wandering Modder[/h3]

Inspiration: Inspired by the Illithids in DnD, Convergence is a psionic mastermind driven mad by the multiverse. He will sacrifice anything to complete his master plan, foiled millennia ago by the entities in the Shroud.

[h3]Heist on Dawn’s End by TheRingBearer[/h3]

Inspiration: While the idea of trying to steal from under the very noses (if they have one) of a Fallen Empire was the core idea from the beginning. I originally wasn’t sure of the leader’s origin. Was he a god-king with the power of foresight trapped on a pre-ftl world, looking to recover that which was stolen from him? Or was he a charismatic criminal, looking to launch a heist that would make him the greatest thief the galaxy has ever known?

After some early discussion and feedback, I ended up merging the two ideas a bit and focused a bit more on the idea of a Leader who has their own agenda which is at odds with your own, as that felt like a much more interesting take on a Legendary Leader.

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That's it for this week folks! Next week we'll be back with the release version of #MODJAM2024! And if you're interested in helping test the Modder's submissions, join us on Discord!

Stellaris #MODJAM2024 - Update #1

Hello Stellaris Community!

#MODJAM2024 is well under way. This year we had over 100 modders sign up, and over 60 design documents submitted. While we aren't expecting to have 60 Legendary Leaders submitted at the end of the competition (wouldn't that be awesome though?). Today, we're going to give you the first sneak peek at the Legendary Leaders our modders are currently working on, as well as give you a peek at how the final mod package will work.

The #MODJAM2024 is still currently on-pace for a January 11th, 2024 release. You can subscribe to the Mod Jam mod and get this content as soon as it releases!

Last year, we tried something a little different, in which the mid-game crises were posted by the modders themselves. For something like a mid-game crisis, this approach makes sense. Mid game crises can be iterated on for a long time, and (hopefully) these mods will continue to be supported into the distant future. However, for this year, we have decided to go for an all-in-one package, to make it easier for players to install and run the Mod Jam mod -- since last year's approach with a workshop playlist and wrapper mod was a little convoluted.

The Mod Jam Package

When starting a game with the Mod Jam mod enabled, when the game starts you will get a popup to choose which Legendary Leaders will be allowed to spawn.

We've also hooked up the vanilla Legendary Leaders to this system for the Mod Jam mod.

Clicking each leader will allow you to turn them off -- if its a leader you didn't like, or you want to guarantee which leader you play with, so you get to experience all the content. Each leader will also have a tooltip that describes in a loose sense what the leader does, so you will not be going into this completely blind.

Leaders are currently spawned one of three ways:

Random Spawns - this behavior is the most like the vanilla spawning of Legendary Leaders. The game will choose 3 to 6 Legendary Leaders to spawn randomly throughout the galaxy, from the list of Legendary Leaders that are allowed

Random Leader for Players - This option will spawn a random Legendary Leader from the list of allowed leaders within four jumps of each Player's homeworld. We could've allowed leaders to spawn for AIs as well, but that opens the opportunity to break things in interesting ways, and with the time constraints put on our modders, I didn't think it was a good idea to add an additional requirement.

Players Choose - This will spawn a choice for each player in the game of what Legendary Leader they want to spawn within four jumps of their home system. This is the option you should probably use if you want to play each and every one before you vote.

Azaryn is not in the list of choices, since Azaryn was disabled in the startup menu.

And that's the limit of the modding that I've done for this event. But you're not really here to see the stuff I made, you're here to see what the Modders have made. Like last year, we have prepared some (and are still working on) promotional assets for each one of the submissions. I know I've said this about a dozen times already, but thanks again to the Gigastructural Engineering team for letting us use their Stellar Systemcraft for the Mod Jam promotional art.

I've also invited the modders to each write about the inspiration for their mod (if they like). This explains why there are some that contain inspirations, and some that do not.

The Chronomancer by Rodahtnov and Zyralynn

Inspiration:

The leader idea is based around the fantasy of “genies”, fantastical creatures that provide wishes to the person they are bound to, but with some limitations, drawbacks and potential twisted results; In this case we are tied that concept to a specific sci-fi trope, which is the “manipulation of time” and, in some degrees, “reality”; the Chronolord is bound to a specific place and a specific relic, which resembles the “genie lamp” and as such becomes a desirable target for other empires, whether it is for envy, fighting its positive economic effects or just gaining another relic for their use.

Mircorv Core by Metallichydra

Access to some Legendary Leaders will be restricted to owners of other DLCs, such as the Mircorv Core, which will require Astral Planes in order to explore the Rift.

The Fragment by Ezraneilson.micahn

Inspiration: The Two largest Inspirations were the AEON 14 universe (Multinodal AI) and Mass Effect: Andromeda (Extragalactic Origin).

The Celestial Wayfarer by madeincanada

Perplexing Shadow by shadow_101084

Aevum T. Dohrnii by tr33

Inspiration: I spent too much time on stellaris. With this leader, you also can spend your time. Literally. Jokes aside if I had to name an inspiration it would probably be all the Dagoth Ur Memes. Aevum’s way of talking is heavily influenced by Dagoth’s cryptic speeches. The Chronomancer idea came along somewhere in the process.

The Timeless Warrior by MadamLava

Inspiration:

I’ve always been a sucker for a good time loop story, and finished a game (In Stars and Time) containing the best I’d ever seen by a wide margin the day before the modjam theme was announced and work began. While I’m drawing more broadly from time loop tropes in general, the concept was very much on my mind.

Some commonalities from some of these stories/media I enjoyed and seek to implement for my Leader were the concepts of an impossibly large goal at the end of the loop as its breaking condition, the looping character being affected by the dissociation that repeating time enough would cause, gradually becoming more and more powerful each loop, and how they might keep certain bits of knowledge about the future concealed until the right times.

Ultimately, I picked the idea for the fundamental reason that I am presently enthusiastic about the particular flavor of time shenanigans involved as a story device, making it much easier to come up with and work on my ideas. This perfectly falls in line with my own personal axiom that I’ve been using to stay focused, that being that modding should be fun.

Contingency Processing Core 1A6F by Draconas

Inspiration:

I wanted the concept of a leader that had their own agenda, and was going to try and achieve that, with or without you. The contingency gave me a great template to work off, since we all know what its goal is, and as a bonus it lets me explore taking synthetic evolution to its ultimate conclusion with machine intelligence.

Thanks for reading! We'll be back same time next week with more Mod Jam Legendary Leaders to show off!

Stellaris Dev Diary #327 - 2023 in Review

by Eladrin

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Happy holidays everyone!

Much of the Stellaris team has already taken off for a winter break, but it’s time for our annual retrospective on the year and thoughts about where we’re going next.

We had three major releases in 2023 and a Custodian release.

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We started the year by telling the story of how you got the stars, with 3.7 “Canis Minor” and the First Contact Story Pack. In this story pack, we focused heavily on narrative origins, each one rivaling Toxoid’s Knights of the Toxic God for the depth of content contained within them. Broken Shackles and Payback told an interlinked story of pre-FTL civilizations that suffered under the sinister Minamar Specialized Industries, while Fear of the Dark explored the Dark Forest theory and questioned whether it was a good idea to step into the void at all.

First Contact also brought cloaking into Stellaris, giving Science Ships some new versatility, and providing Frigates a new role as sneak attackers. “Canis Minor” brought Archaeotech additions to Ancient Relics.

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Our anniversary in May gave us the 3.8 “Gemini” update and the Galactic Paragons Mechanical Expansion. This release added the Council and greatly increased the influence of leaders in Stellaris. Whether you were grooming your own leaders to serve on the Council or finding Renowned and Paragon leaders, they were much more powerful and relevant than before.

The “Gemini” update also added experimental Cooperative gameplay - Stellaris is a complex game, and we’ve found that the best teachers are you, the players.

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The “Caelum” update In the autumn focused on improving a number of the old species packs and reworked habitats. We added the Enmity tradition tree to Humanoids along with some new traits, Void Hive and Selective Kinship civics to Lithoids, the Fruitful Partnership origin and Invasive Species trait to Plantoids, and Worker Cooperative and Mechromancy to MegaCorp and Necroids. A few new portraits came in as well, taking Plantoids from the second least played Species Class to the second most played the month after release.

Also, birds.
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And most recently, we released 3.10 “Pyxis” and the Astral Planes Narrative Expansion. "Pyxis" included the Leader Consolidation that finally got leaders in a state that we're generally happy with them, and once the patch cycle was complete, gave us a fully customizable outliner. Astral Planes, meanwhile, is the largest Story focused expansion Stellaris has ever released. The Astral Rifts from Astral Planes have branching narratives with multiple endings, making each one several times the size of the linear Archaeology sites of the past, and there are over 30 of them in the pack.

I have some regrets that the release was tarnished by technical issues that we introduced, and we've made some internal changes to how the team will operate to reduce the chances of these sorts of things going wrong in the future.

I'm delighted with the respect and love that Abrakam Entertainment gave to our universe and lore. Astral Planes brings new insights to some old friends and enemies, greatly expanding on narrative questions that have been asked for years.

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We have a Technology Open Beta running until January 15th, 2024. Based on how that goes, it may or may not end up being rolled into the 3.11 “Eridanus” update planned for the first quarter of 2024. I've found that the data and feedback we get from the community during these to be invaluable, and I look forward to seeing everything we've compiled when we get back. Thank you for helping us make Stellaris a better game.

We spent a lot of this year doing incremental rebalancing of the leader system following the “Gemini” update, which took more Custodian resources than I liked. We’ve gotten a few things in from the list we posted in Dev Diary #314 like the new Outliner, but for 2024 we’ll likely try to focus the Custodians on that list of topics. “Eridanus” will largely be a stabilization update, with the Custodian team focusing on bugfixing, game balance, and general stability.

Looking back, we had a share of unexpected issues and problems, but I'm proud of how we've all navigated the year together. I'm looking forward to what we can bring you next year and beyond.

See you next year!

- Eladrin
Stellaris Game Director

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Tofu, looking back at the year.
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[h3]Stellaris Dev Diaries will return on January 18th. Happy holidays![/h3]

Stellaris open beta lets you test its "experimental" new tech tree

Stellaris is one of the finest grand strategy games on Steam, and time has only made it better as developer Paradox Interactive continues to develop it more than seven years after its original launch. It's a crown jewel in the roster of the publisher behind the likes of Crusader Kings 3, Age of Wonder 4, Cities Skylines 2, and Europa Universalis 4, yet its development team shows a consistent desire to deliver regular upgrades - even if that means making bold changes, like its latest set of "experimental" tweaks now available in a Stellaris open beta.

Read the rest of the story...

Stellaris Technology Open Beta Released [ef75]

by Eladrin

I'm pleased to announce that the Technology Open Beta that we first talked about in Stellaris Dev Diary #325 is now available for your feedback.

Stellaris has undergone a significant amount of power creep over the years, and the speed at which we're able to burn through the entire technology tree is much higher than is healthy for the game. Due to the large number of stacking research speed modifiers, repeatable technologies are reached far too early in the game. Another power creep issue mentioned by many players, it's also become trivial to stack large numbers of ship build cost and ship upkeep reduction modifiers.

The Holiday Open Beta will be a feature branch that contains the following changes, which may or may not go into 3.11 (or 3.12, or any release at all for that matter). Similar to how we handled Industrial Districts several years ago, we're intentionally keeping these separated from core 3.11 development, isolating this in a parallel track.

The dev diary linked above contains more details regarding the intents behind some of the changes. While some changes planned for 3.11 “Eridanus” have snuck into this release (like some improvements to Galactic Doorstep), the overall technology rebalance is considered experimental and may or may not end up being released. It is likely to undergo some changes if it does go live.

We have created this feedback form to collect your impressions on both the partial tech rebalance and the military and economic changes that are present on the branch.

[h3]TECHNOLOGY OPEN BETA RELEASE NOTES[/h3]
Features

Replaced basic research technologies such as Quantum Theory with Breakthrough Technologies. Breakthrough Technologies will only appear once you have researched enough techs of your current tier and are required to research to reach the next tier.
Breakthrough Technologies become easier to research based on the number of other empires you have low Tech intel on that have already researched them.
Enigmatic Engineering blocks your Breakthrough Technologies from spreading.
Events that give progress towards random technologies can grant progress towards Breakthrough Technologies, but will not give as much as they would a regular technology.

Improvements

Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup.
Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)

Balance

Adjustments made to the Galactic Doorstep origin:
- Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin.
- Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.
Rebalanced research speed modifiers. Most sources of Research Speed now have a corresponding increase in Researcher job upkeep
Removed or adjusted many sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked.
Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies.
The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
Reduced output of researcher jobs
Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
Knights of the Toxic God balancing:
- Slightly reduced the research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
- Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
- Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
- Slightly reduced the unity and research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
- Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
- The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
- Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% not 2% per Squire.
- The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors.
Reworked and rebalanced the Erudite, Cyborg, Synthetic, Psionic, Chosen One, and Chosen of X traits to include new leader assignments.

Bugfix

Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events.

Modding

Added `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger

The Technology Open Beta will run until January 15th.

Thank you for your help in improving Stellaris!

[h3]Please note that the Technology Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test - Technology Open Beta" branch.[/h3]
Please disable mods for the Technology Open Beta, they are likely to break.

Link to feedback form.