Stellaris News

New Stellaris update will let you play a race of decadent Star Wars-style clone troopers

Grand strategy game Stellaris is gearing up for another free update next month, which will include new content for past Stellaris DLC in addition to the usual round of fixes and improvements. Last week we saw some new content coming to the Plantoids Species pack, and this week's dev diary explores new content for the Humanoids Species pack.

The new content will span two new civic options, and one new origin and the latter will let you play as a cast-off army of clone soldiers. Abandoned by their creators, clone soldiers can't breed - instead, they can only replenish their numbers via a new building called an 'ancient clone vat'. As a species, you'll be quite proficient at waging war, but your leaders will be short lived and you won't be able to genetically modify your species.

This new origin can combine with either - or both - of the new civics, Masterful Crafters and Pleasure Seekers. The former replaces the artisan job with a new artificer role, which along with creating consumer goods also gives trade value and engineering research. The latter turns your race into a bunch of decadent thrillseekers, and offers a big happiness boost at the expense of increased consumer goods upkeep.

Read the rest of the story...

Nakama Infrastructure - Changes to Cross-Store PC Multiplayer

Hello everyone!

I’m here to announce a surprise update to the game. But before we get our expectations blown out of proportion, this update contains only a change to our Multiplayer Backend. We are rolling out the Nakama infrastructure to host cross-store PC multiplayer.

With this update we are completely removing our internally developed Multiplayer backend (PDXMP) that is currently used by all stores excluding Steam, which uses the built in Steam backend. The reason for this change is because we believe that Nakama, developed by an external partner, is more stable than our current in-house solution.

What this will mean for you as a player is hopefully nothing different from how you normally play the game. This update should not affect your single player experience whatsoever and if you have the game installed on Steam and don’t have friends on other platforms you won’t be affected by the Multiplayer change either.

The only people this will affect are those of you that play the game on Steam and want to play multiplayer with your friends that have bought Stellaris on other platforms (such as the Microsoft store). You might already know about the crossplay Steam Beta branch we have had in place prior to today, but from this update and forward you will now be able to launch the Crossplay version straight from the launcher!

All you have to do is go into “Game Settings” in the launcher and scroll down to “Cross Store Multiplayer” and click “Launch” as shown below:

If for some reason that doesn’t work, you can also add “-nakama” as a launch option in Steam. Do this by Right-Clicking Stellaris, Going to Properties, General Tab and adding “-nakama” to the Launch Options. This will force the game to switch from the Steam multiplayer backend to the new one for crossplay purposes!

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######################### VERSION 3.0.4 ###########################

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# Performance and Stability

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* Replaced PDXMP multiplayer backend layer with Nakama.

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Thank you for playing Stellaris, and if you experience any issues with Nakama Multiplayer please report them on the Bug Report forums!

Stellaris Dev Diary #220 - Additions to Humanoids Species Pack

Hello everyone!

It is Thursday and that means it is time for your weekly dev diary. Today, we will talk a bit more in-depth about the upcoming additions to the Humanoids species pack.

First, let us take a look at the civics that will be added:

[h3]Masterful Crafters[/h3]

The Masterful Crafters Civic, previously teased in Dev Diary 214, will replace your artisans with a new job type called Artificiers. They will fulfil the same basic production needs as Artisans, Consumer Goods that is, while also producing some extra Trade Value and Engineering Research. As you might expect, since they focus on consumer goods, this civic will not be available for gestalt empires.

To facilitate you focusing your empire more on the industrial branch, this civic will also make industrial districts grant building slots.

Our hope is to allow you a bit more leeway in how you want to play your empire, whether you go hard into artificers to capitalize on their bonus production or use their superior production to cut back on how much you have to build up your consumer goods industry.

And of course, before anyone can ask, let me assure you, yes, it's dwarfs, it's most definitely dwarfs.
For the more materialistic among us, megacorporations will have their own mirror version of this civic.

[h3]Pleasure Seekers[/h3]

Now let us talk about our second new civic, Pleasure Seekers. This new civic grants you access to the Decadent Lifestyle Living Standard, which increases happiness and consumer goods upkeep for all affected pops.

In addition, the Entertainer job will now also grant +1% pop growth and Servants jobs will produce an additional 5 Amenities.

Quite a potent mix of happiness and the means of keeping it up. Of course, if you are interested in an experiment or two, you could fill entire worlds with entertainers for the pop growth bonus, one might
even call it a planet-wide shore leave on Risa.

Now with both of these civics covered, it is time to talk about our biggest addition to the Humanoids DLC, the topic of this weeks spoiler tweet and our new origin.
As with the civic above, Pleasure Seekers also has a mirror-version for megacorporations.

[h3]Clone Army[/h3]

What do you do when you outlive your usefulness/your creators? That is the question you can dive into with the Clone Army origin.

As Clone Soldiers, your empire will be perfectly suited for warfare, even though you may not currently have any enemies. Your lifes and continued existence will depend on your Ancient Clone Vat buildings, which support your population.

Did we mention that there is a limit to how many Ancient Clone Vats you can have in your empire at the same time? There is, it is 5.

Now, you could be a good little clone-soldier and simply wage war as you were designed to, or, you could dive into the secrets of your own history, that choice will be left to you for every playthrough.
Oh, you can also combine Clone Army with both Masterful Crafters and Pleasure Seekers.

One more thing worth mentioning, all 3 of those additions are NOT portrait-locked. Some have ethic or competing civic restrictions though.

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And with that I shall leave you be for this week and I hope to see you for the next dev diary.

Stellaris set for a big 'Lem' update in September with 'The Custodians' initiative

It appears that Paradox will continue to push ahead with upgrading Stellaris with a new team formed to help with free upgrades for all players every few months.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/08/stellaris-set-for-a-big-lem-update-in-september-with-the-custodians-initiative

Stellaris Dev Diary #219 - Selectable Traditions

Greetings and salutations space fans!

Today we’re back with another dev diary, and the topic at hand is the feature improvements coming to the Traditions system. Back in dev diary 214 when we announced the Lem Update and the Custodians Initiative, we also talked about how to make Selectable Traditions.

Selecting your Traditions

We know there’s been mods that have extended the amounts of traditions for some time now, and we also know that it's something that parts of the community have been asking for as well. For us, Traditions have always been an important part of customizing and specializing your Empire during play, and although we of course like giving players more customization options, we also need to maintain a balance. We didn’t simply want to keep adding new traditions without having the UI support it well, and we didn’t also want to give players too many options right away, which can lead to Choice Overload. We felt like it was a good time to review the Traditions system, because we wanted to add a few more Tradition Trees, and open up the avenue for doing more of that in the future, where it makes sense.

Let’s dive into the changes, and keep in mind that nothing is final and there’s missing art. Feedback is still very welcome though.

We are improving the traditions system so that you are no longer locked to the same set of 7 traditions (with some swaps), but you can rather pick which Tradition Tree you want to go into one of these 7 slots.

All the Tradition Trees currently available to the United Nations of Earth.

Some of the Tradition Trees, that were previously swaps of other trees (like Adaptability being a swap of Diplomacy), are now their own trees again. This means that Adaptability, for example, is now available to all non-machine empires. Synchronicity is still mutually exclusive with Harmony (one will appear if you are a gestalt empire, the other if you are a regular one). Versatility is available to all machine empires.

Changes to existing Traditions

Other than allowing you to select your own Traditions trees, we’ve also changed some of the traditions within the existing trees. Let’s take a look at some of those changes:

[h3]Domination[/h3]

Judgment Corps: no longer increases crime prevention, but rather makes your Enforcers produce 1 Unity.
Finisher: no longer provides +1 monthly influence, but rather increases +10% ruler output for regular empires, or +10% admin cap for gestalts

[h3]Diplomacy[/h3]

Open Markets replaced with Diplomatic Networking: Embassy pacts now produce 3 Unity
Secure Shipping replaced with Eminent Diplomats: Diplomatic Acceptance increased by +5, and your Envoys that are Improving Relations have a 1% chance per month to gain a Favor from the target empire.
Insider Trading replaced with Trust or Bust: Trust Cap +50, Trust Growth +33%
Finisher: no longer increases Trust Cap or Trust Growth, but rather increases Diplomatic Weight by +10% and +1 Envoy.

[h3]Harmony[/h3]

Mind and Body: now also increases Leader Skill Cap by +1
Kinship: effect on demotion time buffed from -50% to -75%
Bulwark of Harmony moved to Unyielding, replaced with Harmonious Directives: +1 Edict Cap

[h3]Supremacy[/h3]

Adoption: no longer increases Starbase Cap by +2, but instead increases Naval Cap by +20
The Great Game: old effects removed, now increases damage done to Starbases by +20%

[h3]Prosperity[/h3]

Finisher: no longer provides Merchant Jobs per Pops on a planet, but rather increases Stability by +5.

New Tradition Trees

We are adding 3 new Tradition Trees to the game: Mercantile, Unyielding and Subterfuge. Unyielding and Subterfuge are currently unlocked by Nemesis, while Mercantile (originally supposed to be unlocked by Megacorp) is available to everyone. The reason being that we wanted to see how it felt to have the Trade Policies unlocked through this tree. It will therefore no longer be possible to convert Trade Value into Energy + Consumer Goods/Unity unless you have the (3) Adaptive Economic Policies tradition.

New art is still coming in.

[h3]Mercantile (Free)[/h3]

Adopt: Starbase Collection Range +1, Trade Protection +5
(1) Trickle Up Economics: Clerks provide an additional +1 Trade Value
(2) Commercial Enterprises: Commercial Zones Building now provides 1 Merchant Job.
(3) Adaptive Economic Policies: Can convert parts of their Trade Value into Unity or Consumer Goods
(4) Marketplace of Better Ideas: increases trade value by +10%
(5) Insider Trading: moved from Diplomacy Traditions, -10% Market Fee
Finisher: increases trade value by +10%

[h3]Unyielding (added to Nemesis)[/h3]

Adoption: Starbase Cap +2 and Starbase Upgrade Speed +50%
(1) Resistance is Frugal: Stronghold buildings now produce 3 Unity and Defense Army Health is increased by +33%
(2) Never Surrender: reduces Planet Bombardment Damage by -25%, war exhaustion by -25% and increases hostile claim costs by +25%
(3) Bulwark of Harmony: moved from Harmony Traditions, effects are as before
(4) Fortress Doctrine: increases the Hit Points and Damage of Starbases and Defensive Platforms by 33%, and reduces the upkeep cost of starbases by -20%
(5) Defense in Depth: increases Starbase Cap by +2 and reduces Starbase upgrade cost by -50%. In addition, owners of Nemesis will also increase Hostile Operation Difficulty by +4 for the Sabotage Starbase Operation.
Finisher: Max Defensive Platforms +50%

[h3]Subterfuge (added to Nemesis)[/h3]

Adoption: +1 Codebreaking
(1) Information Security: +1 Encryption
(2) Operational Security: +1 Codebreaking, +2 Operation Skill
(3) Non-Disclosure Agreements: Hostile Operation Difficulty is +1, and Hostile Operation Cost and Upkeep is increased by +50%
(4) Double Agents: Whenever a Hostile Operation targeting us fails, we gain 10 Intel on the offending empire
(5) Shadow Recruits: increases Infiltration Speed by +50%
Finisher: Successful Operations refund half of their cost on Infiltration Level

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That is all for this week folks! Let us know which Tradition Trees you like to pick, and why. Any feedback is very welcome.

Next week we’ll be back to talk about the additions we’re making to the Humanoids Species Pack.