Stellaris News

by PDS_Iggy

Hello everyone! I am PDS_Iggy, and I’m here to tell you all about Fear of the Dark!

This new narrative origin for First Contact focuses on a people divided. After a planet in your solar system blew up, fear and xenophobia spread to such a degree that a large portion of your population decided to flee your homeworld. Their goal? To hide from the rest of the galaxy.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Incoming Transmission:​

You mean, “The sane individuals of our species took the only prudent action possible when being attacked by an alien force capable of destroying planets!​"

This split in your population is reflected in the effects of the origin. With a sizable section of your empire living on a neighboring world, your research alternatives and choices for leaders are reduced. Yet, even more inquisitive than a regular empire, you will have no difficulty discovering more anomalies as you explore the void.



No doubt you’ll return from your galavantings the next time we reach a breakthrough! Our scientific research is one of the few way we can even hope to delay you from dooming us all. Once you lead the aliens back to our home, it will all be over.​



Additionally, Fear of the Dark starts with quite a unique system, one that will have you starting with binary planets - your ‘cousins’ are living just a rocket jump away. (A Sol start will have them placed on Mars.)

It will be up to you to make the best of this situation. Your partner planet can be a powerful ally, yet they are also very skittish. Ensure that they don’t torpedo your entrance on the galactic stage.

Perhaps you will stop treating the alien threat so lightly when our upcoming study of ‘the Divider’ is finished. Just you wait. We won’t be hunted.​



Whatever happens, remember that you are one people and you are stronger together. Oh, and your partner planet has cloaked ships.



Now off to MrCosmogone and his wondrous archaeo-technologies for this patch's custodian update!

Did you ever think, as you pass by an old laser cannon in a glass case, that not everything belongs in a museum? That perhaps, the Irassian tractor beam could be used for your cause instead of gathering dust?

Well, so do I. And if you own Ancient Relics, I have good news!

Excavated dig sites will now sometimes generate minor artifact deposits that can be exploited by orbital stations, or by colonizing the planet.

There could always be more trinkets to find!​

Your income in minor artifacts can then be put to good use with the new archaeo-technologies that will unlock buildings, starbase modules and ship components, all costing minor artifacts to build.
There are several ways to acquire these archaeo-technologies. Completing the Secrets of the [PRECURSOR] special projects will now give you a research option to unlock some unique archaeo-components:
The power of a precursor in the palm of your hand.​

Several of our dig sites can now grant you access to one of the new technologies. This is a very reliable way of acquiring them.



Get to work, Oxygal, I want this research on my desk by the end of the week!​

All these new technologies are found in the society field, in an all-new “Archaeostudies” category which is all about fitting ancient tech into your machines and weapons. Discovering these archaeo-technologies by yourself is a long and hard process, but luckily, you can be assisted by dedicated researchers who share your interest in ancient things.

They largely just make old things go boom.​

Should you decide to pick the Remnants origin that starts you on a relic world, you will now start the game with the Faculty of Archaeostudies unlocked and replacing your starting research lab.

And if this still does not quench your thirst for specialization in archaeo-technologies, if you still want to dig deeper, we even have a new ascension perk for you!

For all you history lovers!​

With increased minor artifact generation, the scale of the existing economy needed to be increased, but we also took this opportunity to now display artifacts in the topbar alongside the other strategic resources.

Bigger numbers mean better game, right?​

And while you still can’t buy them on the market, you can trade them to other empires!

It belongs in MY museum!
​
I don’t really have the space here to show you ALL the things, but here, have a tease.

Archaeotitan go brrrrrrrr

Oh and one last thing before we wrap things up. I might have made a Devolving Beam for colossi, to return those pesky humans from the UNE back to their origins:

Return to Monke!

They’ll make good pets.

written by Alfray Stryke

Hello!

Before I delve into the new systems for interactions with pre-FTL civilizations, I'm handing over to one of our newest Content Designers PDS_Bojj to discuss an example of the types of events that will feature in First Contact.

[h2]Pre-FTL Observation Events​[/h2]
Hey, I’m PDS_Bojj! I’m a Content Designer on Stellaris. I’m jumping in to talk about the new observation events we have in First Contact!

The new Story Pack introduces a bunch of new events for those who build Observation Posts in orbit of pre-FTL worlds. These events give you the opportunity to gather research on pre-space-faring civilizations in various technological ages, and- if it takes your fancy- interfere with the development of their society.

Your chosen ethics will affect the types of events you can be presented with, along with the choices you will face when dealing with the inhabitants of these worlds. There are a variety of rewards to gain from studying the pre-FTLs, including the brand new Tech Insights.

While surveying the galaxy, if you discover a pre-FTL civilization world in any of the ten technological ages (Stone, Bronze, Iron, Medieval, Renaissance, Steam, Industrial, Machine, Atomic, or Early Space Age) - then I’d recommend claiming that system and building an Observation Post in orbit of the planet. That’ll add the module for that Post in the Observations section of the Outliner, and allow you to toggle between Passive Observation and Aggressive Observation.

There are also some brand new non-age-related events that have a chance of firing in any technological age, but I’m particularly hyped about the age-specific events which give you a chance to better understand (or manipulate) the pre-FTL civilizations within your borders. There is some cool content for players to sink their teeth into.

... Is for us?​

So… When I became a developer on Stellaris, one of the first things I noticed was the lack of options for committing an interplanetary train heist. Well, I’ve fixed that. If you’re observing a civilization in their equivalent of the Steam, Industrial, or Machine ages, there is a chance they will construct a network of land freighters for transporting cargo across their planet. What happens next is largely up to you, but just to be clear: you can officially now commit an interplanetary train heist in Stellaris.

I hope you have fun playing through these events. It’s been a lot of fun developing them, so I’m very excited to see how they are received. That’s all from me for now.

[h2]Awareness[/h2]​
Hello again! As part of the First Contact Story Pack, we wanted to make sure that interactions with pre-FTL Civilizations were connected to all the various systems that they were previously not part of. As Eladrin mentioned a few weeks back, most of the previous functions of Observation Post have been moved to overt Diplomacy or covert Espionage interactions with the civilizations in question.

A core part of how interactions with pre-FTL Civilizations now function is their Awareness. Mechanically-speaking, Awareness is a country-level value that ranges from 0-100 in five stages.

• 0: Completely Unaware
  
• 1–30: Low Awareness
  
• 31-60: Partially Aware
  
• 61-99: High Awareness
  
• 100: Fully Aware
  

This can be influenced in a variety of ways and has the appropriate script effects, triggers and values in the defines file for our modders to make use of.

Narratively-speaking, Awareness is a measure of not only the civilization’s observations that “something is out there”, but them correctly attributing it to interstellar, alien life. Thus Renaissance-era (or something akin to it) astronomers might observe your uncloaked observation post in orbit of their world, but are unlikely to attribute its presence to an alien civilization. On the other hand, an Early Space Age civilization that has constructed a planetary array of radio telescopes will almost certainly correctly attribute the light pollution and radio traffic from your colonies in their solar system to be evidence of alien life.

Our recent test firing of our planet cracker may not have gone unnoticed.​

Although there aren’t any events directly triggered by a change in Awareness of pre-FTL Civilizations, aside from them reaching out to contact you if they become Fully Aware, Awareness itself is used both to determine which events can fire while you are observing a pre-FTL Civilization and can be influenced by the events themselves.

In addition to the numerous new events alluded to above, we’ve gone back and ensured that all of the existing observation events tie into the new systems of First Contact, for example shooting down a rogue asteroid on course to impact a pre-FTL world may increase their Awareness.

In order to engage with either Diplomacy or Espionage with pre-FTL civilizations you will need an Observation Post in orbit of their homeworld and the types of interactions your empire has access to is determined by your relevant policies on both Interference and Enlightenment.

As an Observation Post in orbit of an Early Space Age civilization, currently engaging in Passive Observation. We could switch to Aggressive Observation and gain more knowledge, but our interference could cause long-lasting effects. ​

Before we reveal ourselves to the Sathorians, we have the opportunity to carry out a number of Espionage Operations. However, once they are Fully Aware of the existence of alien life, some of these Operations will not be available to carry out.

The various Operations available to carry out against the unaware Sathorians that our Observation Post is in orbit of.​

After a pre-FTL civilization becomes Fully Aware of alien life, be it by their own observations or a spacefaring empire revealing their presence, the Observation Post in orbit of their homeworld will stop observation efforts and instead be repurposed as an embassy.

Our Observation Post has been turned into an Embassy.​

One of the new additions to the list of pre-FTL interactions is being able to form a Commercial Agreement with them, this will have a minor upkeep in minerals, but your Observation Post will generate some local trade value. The benefits of such a partnership will scale with how advanced the civilization you’re trading with is, so it might be useful to teach a Stone Age society what exactly economics is before trading with them. Additionally, if a civilization is in the Atomic or Early Space Age, signing such agreements will allow MegaCorps to open branch offices on these pre-FTL worlds.

The Sathorians are experiencing some minor culture shock due to us revealing our presence. We should probably send an Envoy to Improve Relations, so they’ll be willing to accept a Commercial Agreement.​

Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to be able to decide on how to interact with the pre-FTL civilizations within our borders without the Galactic Community having an opinion. As such, the GalCom now has access to three mutually exclusive Resolutions.



Turns out the Galactic Community is not in favor of passing the Equal Standing Act, which is a good thing since we’d be in Breach of it!​

Each of these Resolutions makes different types of interactions considered to be in breach of Galactic Law and refusing to comply will impact the usual sanctions and fines.

Next week PDS_Iggy will be showing off a new style of starting system unique to the Fear of the Dark origin alongside some archaic Custodian updates from PDX_Cosmogone.

written by CGInglis

[h3]Free at Last![/h3]

I’m incredibly excited to introduce ‘Broken Shackles’, one of the new origins featured in the upcoming First Contact DLC.

Watch the Video Dev Diary here:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

From the very beginning of the project, Eladrin stressed the word ‘utopian’: First Contact celebrates the discovery of strange new worlds, and all the ways in which different cultures (and different species) interact with and support one another.

As I set out to design an origin for the DLC, this was the spirit and tone I was striving for. What’s more utopian than a rag-tag group of slaves who band together in a daring bid for freedom? Thrown together by the insidious Minamar Specialized Industries, these former indentured assets seize control of their captor’s ship and survive the chaotic crash landing on a habitable planet.

You’ll have to make do with using the remains of your hijacked ship as infrastructure at the start of the game.​

While the origin is challenging (players start out at a technological disadvantage, and will need to work hard before they can progress very far into space), a diverse population means that there is ample opportunity to colonize new worlds.

More species = better parties.​

As your empire progresses, you will also have the opportunity to seek out each of your former home worlds. Reaching these planets not only represents a triumphant homecoming, but may also propel your people to new heights.

There’s no place like home.​

However, not everything is peaches and cream. Different species mean diverse points of view, and the demands of various factions will need to be appeased if players hope to maximize the potential of their burgeoning empire.

[h3]Interactive Narrative[/h3]

Broken Shackles represents a new paradigm for Stellaris origins: along with ‘Payback’, it comprises one half of a full story. But what’s a story without a good villain?

Enter Minamar Specialized Industries, or ‘MSI.’ This ‘benevolent corporation’ prides itself on helping ‘less developed societies’ reach their full potential. They kickstart development by loaning new technology to pre-FTL societies – loans provided at what they promise are very generous rates.

What happens when the bill comes due is another story. Indentured servitude is just one of MSI’s tools of debt collection.

“Enlightenment may not be free. But at MSI, it is always worth the cost.”​

[h3]Why MSI?[/h3]

Helmets in the boardroom.​

Back in the earliest days of development, there was a discussion about how present the “evil slaver empire” would be. We decided on an advanced empire that can be stumbled across at any point in the game – sometimes they will spawn near your home cluster, while at others they show up on the far side of the galaxy. This random placement can have radical effects on a playthrough.

Initially, we envisioned the antagonist of ‘Broken Shackles’ and ‘Payback’ as a generic authoritarian slaver empire, but as the origins took shape, their motives and nature changed.

Minamar Specialized Industries styles itself a benevolent corporation that provides technological enlightenment for a nominal fee. Some might say that they take advantage of the naivety of the species they propel to the stars, but business is business. In any case, it’s likely that the rank and file at MSI believe the company line, even if the Board of Directors considers itself above such petty issues as morality.

In regards to their erstwhile assets, the ‘indentured servants’ who comprise the starting pops of the Broken Shackles origin, MSI claims not to hold any grudges. In fact, we intentionally shied away from styling MSI as ‘an ultimate evil’ that can’t be reasoned or dealt with. From the perspective of a Broken Shackles empire, MSI may indeed represent the worst instincts of sentient life, but to the rest of the galaxy they’re just another greedy Megacorp.

There isn’t much Megacorp related content in Stellaris in general, and what does exist is all locked behind the expansion of the same name. Playing with the ‘evil corporation’ trope allowed us to give MSI a distinct personality and flavor. To me, they feel like the perfect foil for a utopian origin, and I can’t wait for the release!

written by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

Earlier this week we announced that the First Contact Story Pack is arriving later this quarter, alongside the 3.7 “Canis Minor” update.

Today we’ll combine a quick summary of some of the features and go into why we wanted to do this Story Pack.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Wishlist First Contact​

Tl;dr? Watch it on Stellaris Official on YouTube:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We’ve been eager to expand the interactions you have with pre-FTL civilizations for quite a while - some of the designs in First Contact date back to things we wanted to explore back during Federations, Nemesis, and Overlord. After some consideration, we decided that they had a strong enough theme to expand into the core of a full Story Pack.

The last few years have featured a handful of relatively dark expansions - Necroids, Nemesis, Overlord, and Toxoids all leaned towards authoritarian or dystopian themes, and while Aquatics was more neutral, we felt it was time for a more positive, utopian release.

It’s been quite a while since our last Story Pack, so this seemed like a great opportunity to unleash the might of our Content Designers.

[h2]Look to the Stars, and Tell the Heavens Your Story​[/h2]

The Pre-FTL experience in Stellaris has generally not been a wonderful one. Utterly at the mercy of more advanced civilizations, they were eaten, enslaved, purged, and once in a while, peacefully integrated. When left to their own devices, they often destroyed themselves in a blaze of nuclear fire or met their end to asteroids. It was a tough life.

As with how one of our goals with Overlord was to make vassalization more enjoyable as either Overlord or Subject, we wanted to make interactions with Pre-FTL civilizations more interesting and robust. There should be valuable reasons to consider observation and non-interference, but we also wanted to take the chance to make the interactions you do have with them more meaningful - and update them to utilize game systems that have been added over the years.

Pre-FTL Civilizations now progress through the technological ages in order, with more ways to influence their progress, and allows you to do things such as partially enlighten a civilization before choosing other approaches to dealing with them. We’ve also introduced an Awareness level that can affect things like how quickly they advance and what kinds of interactions you can perform with them. Things occurring in a Pre-FTL civilization’s system might be noticed by them! Renaissance astronomers might find your Observation Post with their telescopes or observe a naval battle that occurred in the system, and even Bronze Age philosophers might comment that the fact that the moon just blew up might not have been a natural occurrence - though they admittedly might not correctly attribute it to the acts of alien life.

Old events have been brought up to our current standards, and some of the Observation missions previously located on the Observation Post are now split between Diplomacy and Espionage for the various overt or covert activities

Work in Progress view from our Observation Post.

This Early Space Age civilization hasn’t detected us yet, and will be joining us amongst the stars soon. We can’t do any overt Diplomacy with them without revealing ourselves first.


This Stone Age civilization suffered a bit of Stellar Culture Shock when we revealed our presence.​

We’re also adding some incentives for keeping them around and preventing them from being culturally contaminated by more advanced civilizations. While the space-faring civilizations generally agree on some things like the basic laws of physics and the existence of the number zero, sometimes the path not normally taken can reveal unexpected results.



[h2]The Universe is Cruel, But You Are Not Alone​[/h2]
We’ve added a lot of Origins since Federations, and three more will be in First Contact. While Knights of the Toxic God may still be the most verbose Origin, all three of these are lower tech starts with strong narrative and mechanical themes.



Broken Shackles is one of the ideas that started back in our Federations Origins brainstorming documents, then called Escaped Slaves. Originally conceived of as a mechanically focused, Challenging Origin with unique starting conditions, we nearly put it into Overlord before deciding that there was so much more potential to explore with this story.

CGInglis will show you where it went since then, telling us more about it next week.



The Payback origin was first conceived as an origin to fulfill the trope of a plucky civilization defeating an invading alien force. The event art associated with this should be familiar if you’ve watched the announcement trailer. This one’s also a Challenging Origin, and CheerfulGoth will be telling you all about it.

During development we thought “wouldn’t it be interesting if these two Origins were linked, with the same empire as their nemesis?” This brought us Minamar Specialized Industries, the galaxy’s most noble Megacorp, selflessly taking it upon themselves to bring countless civilizations into the Space Age for a small fee.



PDS_Iggy explores the fine line between paranoia and prudence in Fear of the Dark. We initially considered this one a Challenging Origin as well, but as we added more and more to it we decided it’s different, rather than difficult.

How do you think we would react if one day Venus… Exploded?

[h2]Do Not Believe Your Ocular Organs​[/h2]

It’s hard to maintain a low profile when your Observation Post is clearly visible, hanging in the sky. You can try to rely on the people you’re studying mistaking it for the domicile of the gods, but a more reliable solution would be to hide it from view.



By performing research into new areas of Field Manipulation your Scientists can discover methods of generating cloaking fields around observation posts and science ships, and while peaceful uses are nice and all… Your Admirals will salivate at the idea of a fleet of cloaked Frigates sneaking up on an unsuspecting Starbase.

Cloaking was one of the remaining major sci-fi tropes we hadn’t explored yet, and seemed like a natural fit alongside the infiltration and observation themes of the Story Pack. Once we’ve managed to decrypt his notes, Alfray Stryke will be sharing the details on Cloaking and Detection.

[h2]Contact is Coming​[/h2]

We hope you’ll enjoy First Contact as much as we did making it. See you next week with information on Broken Shackles.

Click here to wishlist the First Contact Story Pack!