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Stellaris DD#213 - "Ship Previews Experiment and PDXCON Q&A Transcript"

Hi everyone!

Today I want to talk about two things - one is a new experiment that we are running for an alternative ship appearance browser in empire generation, and the other is the Q&A session that we held during PDXCon.


[h2]Ship Appearance Browser
[/h2]
Currently in Empire creation, when selecting the appearance of your ships, we display a preview of a sample ship utilizing your empire's colors.


Current Ship Appearance Selection

We have a bit of an experiment coming that will be rolling out to a portion of you soon that temporarily replaces this with an in-game ship browser that lets you switch between any ship and manipulate them so you can get a better look at them from different angles.

Cropped 3D Ship Preview

In our quest to constantly improve Stellaris we want to measure what impact a change like this can have, so that it would be easier for us to know how to prioritize these kinds of changes in the future. If everything goes well, the change will become permanent for everyone going forwards.

If you end up in the trial, we'd love to hear what you think of it!

[h2]PDXCon Q&A Transcript
[/h2]

During PDXCon, we hosted a developer Q&A session on the PDXCon Discord server, with seven of us answering almost a hundred of your questions. It was a tremendous amount of fun and we hope to be able to schedule more of these. (Most likely on the Stellaris Official Discord server. Join us!)

Here's the transcript of the questions and the answers, as well as a rundown of all the Stellaris panels and activities during this year's PDXCON.

Next week we'll give an early peek at our autumn plans, after which we will take a break from dev diaries for the summer.

See you next week!

Stellaris devs "not done yet" with the game, "there's plenty of stuff to do"

While Stellaris' PC incarnation may not have had any specific news to share from PDXCon Remixed this past weekend, it is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year. Launched in 2016 - the same year as Hearts of Iron IV - the sci-fi grand strategy game struck new ground for Paradox by tackling 4X game concepts, as well as being the studio's first foray into something that wasn't historical.


During Stellaris' five-year journey so far the strategy game has gone through some major revisions. With patch 2.0 and the Apocalypse expansion, warfare, conquest, and FTL changes dramatically changed the pace and foundations of the game. The 2.2 patch completely reworked planetary economics and population mechanics, and the changes that accompanied the most recent Nemesis expansion were so game-changing that the developers decided to skip a version number and proclaim a new era with patch 3.0.


We caught up with the dev team in the run up to PDXCon Remixed to get a sense of how they felt about the game at its five year anniversary. Older grand strategy games, such as Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV, faced increasing backlash against DLC packs and design decisions in the later stages, so we asked the dev team if they even wanted to go on for another five years. "We have so many different ways to expand," Stephen Murray, Stellaris' game designer told us. "Personally, yes, I would love another five years."


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

The best Stellaris mods

Stellaris, Cities: Skylines, and Surviving Mars are free for PDXCon weekend

Stellaris tech tree - everything you need to know

Stellaris, Cities: Skylines, and Surviving Mars are free for PDXCon weekend

PDXCon Remixed 2021 is over, but the fun has only just begun. This year's show had plenty of announcements for everyone; from new expansions for Empire of Sin, Prison Architects, and Crusader Kings III, to the fact that those heroes at Paradox are actually making Victoria 3!


There were plenty of smaller announcements too, with several games celebrating major events. Stellaris turns five this year and has sold over four million copies, while popular city-builder game Cities: Skylines is releasing new content creator packs which are available right now. Both are getting free play weekends to celebrate.


Finally, Surviving Mars' revival plans are continuing apace. Step one involved talking to the new developers and releasing an annoyingly vague teaser image for the new content coming down the pipe. Step two involved the soundtrack coming to Vinyl? Step three is to also run a free weekend to get people excited about the space game once more. If you didn't catch PDXCon Remixed, an archive of the show's announcements should be available soon via Paradox's twitch channel.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

The best Stellaris mods

Stellaris devs "not done yet" with the game, "there's plenty of stuff to do"

Stellaris tech tree - everything you need to know

Stellaris is free to play for the weekend along with a big Paradox sale ahead of PDXCON

Paradox are running another PDXCON from today for the weekend, where we expect a new strategy game to be announced. To get things going Stellaris is free to play for the weekend and a big sale is on.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/05/stellaris-is-free-to-play-for-the-weekend-along-with-a-big-paradox-sale-ahead-of-pdxcon

Multiple Paradox titles free to play this weekend along with a big sale for PDXCON

Paradox are running another PDXCON from today for the weekend, where we expect a new strategy game to be announced. To get things going Stellaris, Surviving Mars and Cities: Skylines are free to play for the weekend on Steam and a big sale is on.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/05/multiple-paradox-titles-free-to-play-this-weekend-along-with-a-big-sale-for-pdxcon