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Paradox changes Stellaris season pass to make completing your collection cheaper

If you've had your eye on the Stellaris Season 8 bundle but were put off because you already owned some of the content included, your mind might be about to change. Paradox Interactive, makers of Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings, has just altered its space 4X strategy game's 2024 collection to make it a better purchase for players who already have at least one of the included items, while letting those who bought them separately claim the free bonus for owning them all.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Stellaris updates will "slow down a bit" as Paradox considers its next direction

New Stellaris DLC turns the goal of the entire game on its head, and is out now

New Stellaris Grand Archive DLC lets you build a museum megastructure

Changes to Stellaris: Season 08

Hello Stellaris Community!

We hope you’ve been enjoying the content from Stellaris: Season 08! We’re here to let you know that as of today, November 26th, Season 08 will transition from a Steam Package to a Dynamic Bundle.



[h3]What does this mean to me?[/h3]

If you already own Season 08 then these changes won’t affect you or your content, and you can stop reading now and go back to loading pops into your Synaptic Lathe.

If you only purchased one or more DLCs from Stellaris: Season 08, and want to pick up the rest at a discounted price, changing to a Dynamic Bundle now allows you to do that without paying for content that you already own. If you bought them all individually, and are sad that you don’t get the Rick the Cube bonus portrait, you should also be able to claim it as part of the Season 08 Dynamic Bundle after this change.

Early in the New Year, this Dynamic Bundle will be retired and the content added to the Ultimate Bundle, to make way for Season 09. But first, we wanted to give those people who didn’t pick up the Season 08 Expansion Pass - and instead purchased only one or two of the DLCs - a chance to get the rest of the content at the same discount we offered the initial adopters.

We will update you again closer to the retirement date with an exact date.

[h3]What is Stellaris: Season 08?[/h3]

Stellaris: Season 08 contains all the major Stellaris releases from 2024, including The Machine Age, the Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion, and Grand Archive Story Pack and the illustrious non-spherical Rick the Cube machine species portrait.

Read on to check out all the content included in this new Dynamic Bundle!
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39193



[h3]The Machine Age contains:[/h3]
  • Individualistic Non-Gestalt Machine Empires
  • Gestalt Machine Intelligence Empires (also unlocked by the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack)
  • A new End-Game Crisis - The Synthetic Queen
  • A new Player Crisis Path - Cosmogenesis
  • Three new Origins
  • -Cybernetic Creed
  • -Synthetic Fertility
  • -Arc Welders
  • Civics
  • -Guided Sapience
  • -Natural Design
  • -Obsessional Directive
  • -Protocol Droids
  • -Tactical Cogitators
  • -Augmentation Bazaars (requires Megacorp)
  • Two Mid-Game Structures
  • -Arc Furnace
  • -Dyson Swarm
  • Three New Ascension Paths
  • -Virtuality
  • -Nanotech
  • -Modularity
  • Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension (also unlocked by Utopia)
  • Exploration of the effects of the cyberization or synthesization of society, with Advanced Government Forms for those who complete it.
  • New Species Traits for Cyborgs, Machines and Robots
  • Cybernetic portraits that change based on advancement through cyberization
  • Synthetic portraits with both organic and synthetic variants that changed based on synthesization, usable by either organics or machines
  • Two new Shipsets, Diplomatic Rooms, and City Sets
  • 7 new music tracks synthetic and cybernetic inspired music tracks




[h3]Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion contains:[/h3]
8 New Space Storms
Storm Chasers Origin
3 New Civics
-Planetscapers
-Astrometeorology
-Storm Devotion
Galactic Weather Control Ascension Perk
Weather Forecasting Map Mode
Two new Precursor narratives, with two new Relics
Events, Anomalies, and Archaeology Sites
Storm-related technologies, Edicts, and Galactic community resolutions



[h3]Grand Archive Story Pack includes:[/h3]
Space Fauna capture, breeding, and modification systems
151 Specimens to collect and display across events from Grand Archive and the base game
Over 240 Specimens total including those distributed across other Stellaris content
15 new Relics
New Megastructure - The Grand Archive
Two new Tradition trees
-Archivism
-Domestication
Two new Origins
-Primal Calling
-Treasure Hunters
Two new Civics
-Beastmasters
-Galactic Curators
Two new forms of spaceborne life
-Cutholoids
-Voidworms
A new possible mid-game crisis - the Voidworm Plague
Three new music tracks
Events, Anomalies, Archaeology Sites, Technologies, Galactic community resolutions, and more!

Season 08 Bonus Portrait: Rick the Cube

You can get all the content above, plus the bonus Rick the Cube portrait at a 20% discount, plus now you don’t pay for content you already own!

Thanks to the Stellaris Community for your support over the past year, we can’t wait to be able to show off what’s coming next year!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39193


Stellaris Dev Diary #363 - A Journey of Exploration

by Eladrin

Hello, Stellaris Community!

Today we’ll start with preliminary release notes for 3.14.1592, then look back at the past at all of the changes Stellaris has gone through and summarize the feedback you all gave in the dev diary two weeks ago - The Vision. We’re still reading the responses to that one and will continue doing so, so if you haven’t had a chance to add your thoughts, please add them!

[h3]Preliminary Release Notes for 3.14.1592​[/h3]
If all goes according to plan, we’ll be releasing the 3.14.1592 patch sometime next week.

These are our preliminary release notes:

[h3]Balance[/h3]​
  • Add energy activation cost to Propagandosphere
  • Cloaking strength on Camouflage mutations are now consistent throughout sizes
  • Give -15% cloning cost and -10% fauna upkeep to Beastmasters civics
  • Reduce Space Fauna cloning cost by 10%
  • Reduce Space Fauna energy upkeep by 25%
  • Remove minor artifacts production from Decentralized Research edict
  • Rework Mutated Voidworms fleets content and scaling, aligning them similar to Prethoryn Brood Queen fleets

[h3]Bugfix[/h3]​
  • Accelerate juveniles animation speed
  • Added Insider Trading and Trade Focus traits to each other's opposites block to stop them appearing together since they almost cancel each other out.
  • Added Orbital Ring variants for Beastport/Hatchery/Vivarium descriptions in all supported languages
  • Civics added in Grand Archive can now be swapped from the regular to corporate version and vice versa
  • Clarified the texts of the Cultivated Worldscaping decision and planet modifier
  • Deleting a design now keeps you in current designer type
  • Enclaves and Marauders satisfy Xenoist Contact Demand
  • Extreme Contortionist DNA now gives rare crystals instead of motes to be more consistent with the event that gives it
  • Fix an issue where Cognitive Node should be selected by the Leader Infected event
  • Fix blocked Tiyanki Graveyard event chain when capturing them
  • Fix Boarding Cables capturing literally anything - thanks for the fun screenshots
  • Fix Breeding Status displayed in view that was not always correct
  • Fix Fossilized Endoskeleton specimen localization
  • Fix Mercenary Enclave Stations unable to build ships
  • Fix Cloaked Patternwalker missing string
  • Fix scoped localizations for Memorial For Bubbles specimen
  • Fixed an unlocalized string showing up when you tried to return starbases at times. Also added linebreaks to the same tooltip.
  • Fixed recommended DLC tooltips in multiplayer
  • Fixes a bug with too wide portrait on Empire Design Selection View
  • FX for ship auras are now displayed
  • Improve Cordyceptic Drones fauna damage modifier text in tooltip to make it clearer what it exactly affects
  • Life Tree Protectors now don't move away from their system
  • Lost colony parents using Sol as their system will no longer spawn two Siriuses if the guaranteed habitable worlds slider is set to 1.
  • Mutated Voidworms fleets now don't use naval capacity
  • Mutated Voidworms now don't show they can upgrade anymore
  • Orbital Assembly Complex holding now correctly boost Beastport and Hatchery on Orbital Ring
  • Preccursors can no longer be discovered on Astral Scars
  • Prevent duplicate specimens from being found in the same empire
  • Removed the unused h_dna string
  • Stop showing upkeep part of message when leader upkeep is zero in hire leader confirmation dialog
  • The Diplomacy Tradition Finisher now properly refers to Officials and not Envoys.
  • Voidworms now stop bombarding if the Immunity technology is researched (before crisis)
  • Worm-Riddled Gate is now correctly accessible if Voidworms are captured instead of killed

[h3]AI[/h3]​
  • AI won't build infinite science ships when trying to build frigates anymore
  • Fix AI that was not willing to build Shipyards

[h3]Stability​[/h3]
  • Fix a crash when a tooltip references the concept of a tradition that doesn't exist
  • Fix crash when Voidworms try to act on empty fleets
  • Fix OOS when riftworld station is built
  • Fix saves affected by the crash when an AI without a Grand Archive tries to capture a Space Fauna
  • Fix Voidworms CTD
  • Fixed issue with resolving the user home dir on linux that leads to CTD


Okay, now on to the main dev diary.

[h3]Where We’ve Been​[/h3]
A long time ago in a galaxy generated far, far away, on May 9th, 2016, Stellaris was released.

We all took our first steps out into the stars, filled with a universe of possibilities and wonders. I was there picking my FTL type and favored weapons and experiencing those early days the same way many of you did.

Each of the Expansions changed Stellaris in their own way.

The first really major changes came to Stellaris in 1.5 in the Utopia expansion, when Ascension Perks were added. These shook the game up so drastically that when Apocalypse changed the face of war in 2.0, they ended up moving into the base game.

Apocalypse and 2.0 included a huge number of other changes as well, changing how system control works and removing the different FTL types. I mark this moment as the point where Stellaris began moving from a pure 4X game to more of a hybrid of 4X and GSG. That transition continued in the next major shakeup with MegaCorp and 2.2, which replaced the economic model, changing from tiles to the pop and job system we still use today.

Federations and the 2.6 update added the Galactic Community, revamped Federations, and changed the way we think about empire creation by adding Origins to the game. Most of the Origins started off relatively simple, but as we added more they steadily grew in complexity. (Knights of the Toxic God, I’m looking at you.)

The intel and exploration changes of Nemesis brought us to the 3.0 update, as they fundamentally changed the early stages of the game. Nemesis also brought us our first player Crisis path, Galactic Nemesis, which was originally simply called “Become the Crisis”.

3.1, the Lem update, wasn’t an expansion release, but it changed how the Stellaris team operated, for the better. This was when we began the Custodian Initiative. The Custodians have done an excellent job polishing old content up to our modern expectations, fixing bugs, adding new quality of life features, and generally improving the game.

Overlord and 3.4 added improved subjugation mechanics and added the Situations system which has become an incredible tool for the content designers. We also expanded automation at this time, revamping planetary automation and letting unemployed pops find their way using the automatic resettlement system.

The leader system underwent massive changes in 3.8 when Galactic Paragons added leader traits and attempted to make them a more interesting system to play with. This system remained in flux until 3.10, when they finally reached a state where we were happy with the results. Sometimes change needs a little iteration. 3.8 also added Cooperative gameplay, making it much easier to teach your friends how to play Stellaris.

This year brought the Expansion Subscription option to make it easier to get into Stellaris, and The Machine Age and 3.12 began the process of elevating the Ascension Paths to new heights. The positive reaction to The Machine Age and the success of the Season 08 Expansion Pass strongly affected our plans for 2025, and made us also reflect upon questions like “what is a Crisis anyway", “what is ‘winning’”, and “can we remaster two very different Ascension Paths in a single year”.

The Story Packs, Species Packs, and other content added to Stellaris in their own ways as well, adding to the deep lore of Stellaris and expanding the possibilities.

[h3]So Much Glorious Feedback​[/h3]
I want to thank everyone for the enormous outpouring of feedback that we’ve received over the last couple of weeks. As I noted last week, I’ve been reading every response to Dev Diary 361, and I’ve been keeping tabs on responses on several different platforms. If you haven’t had a chance to give your feedback, don’t worry, you’re not too late. I’ll be keeping The Vision pinned in our forums until the end of November.

This section will be my musings on the feedback and some of the things it made me think of. Not everything I talk about here is viable or going to happen, but if you’re being this open with me I owe it to you to return the favor.

Based on the feedback you’ve all given, the consensus is that you’re very amenable to change to address engine or system limitations, and that we should not feel constrained by what is already there if we feel we can find a way to make things better. Many of you did note that the initial implementations of changes aren’t typically perfect, and that they take iteration to achieve their goals. (So we should be careful with what we decide to take on at once!)

Some of the questions that I offered as proposals were a bit leading - I did want to know what you all thought about the existing pop mechanics, for example, because I’m very interested in improving their performance and addressing several other quality of life and mechanical issues with the current systems. Your responses have strengthened my belief that tackling planets is a correct course of action, and you should expect some experimentation in next year’s Open Beta.

I’d like to move us over to a system more similar to the pop groups used in Victoria 3 - though with a Stellaris spin on things. We’re not likely to go as deep in the simulation as Victoria does, but I think that we can likely split pop groups based on species, ethics, and factions. Some of the granularity we have right now might slip though, so I’m eager to get to doing some prototyping and seeing what the pros and cons are of such a change, as well as what the performance implications would be. The economic implications are huge.

Fleets are unlikely to get major changes this year, but a number of you identified them as a place where we can do a lot of major improvements, along with many aspects of war. We’ll talk a bit more about these next week.

Trade is almost certainly going to change. Very few of you seemed terribly fond of the current system, and it’s both terribly bad for performance and mechanically difficult to understand for new players. While I like the general idea behind the trade routes, I don’t think they add enough benefit for their costs. We’re likely to revamp it into a proper resource, though I’m also considering ways of also using it to simulate supply lines and local planetary deficits. If we end up pursuing the latter, gestalt empires would need access to trade or at least, something similar. That could potentially open up more opportunities for MegaCorps and diplomatic pacts, and we’ll have to find new ways of using pirates.

[h3]Next Week​[/h3]
Next week I want to look at some of the things I think we’re still missing. Player fantasies that we either do not support or do not support well enough in Stellaris at this time. Like The Vision dev diary, I’ll be asking for your feedback there too, so think up on this over the next week if you want to help influence where we go next.

See you then!

Stellaris Dev Diary #362 - Overwhelming Power

written by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

Today we’re going over the release notes from Tuesday, talking about the further plans for the Circinus cycle, and exploring the reaction to last week’s dev diary, The Vision.


3.14.159 Release Notes
[expand]
We released the 3.14.159 patch on Tuesday, and these were the release notes:
Improvements
  • By popular request, greatly expanded the basement storage of the Grand Archive. You now have 18 slots of overflow instead of 4.
  • Replaced the Mysterious Labyrinth event image
  • The Metalheads AI personality can be gained by Individualist Machines or Organic empires that are Very Strong (instead of just Strong)
Balance
  • The Treasure Hunter Origin now starts leaders with level 3 of Adventurous Spirit, meaning it should no longer constantly be offered as an upgrade.
Bugfixes
  • Add Beastport, Hatchery and Vivarium Tank to orbital rings, and add Shipyard exclusion rules
  • Added a hyphen to the X-Ray Eye Beam mutation
  • Added the missing loc to Sapient Specimen species rights
  • Added the missing space in the credits' title
  • Added the missing word "Food" to the Arboreal World planet modifier
  • Adjusted perfected genes concept tooltip to align with reality
  • Cyber Democracies no longer get leaders without upkeep
  • Fallback to Weapon ranges if strike craft is used but there's no strike craft component range
  • Fix a bug where, under certain circumstances, a Grand Archive was still considered destroyed after being rebuilt
  • Fix a crash where an AI could capture fauna even if they shouldn't be able to.
  • Fix Captain Ness not being legendary
  • Fix Large Shard Accelerator tags
  • Fix livestock modifier for Wrangler jobs
  • Fix Mutations' Strike Crafts behaviour
  • Fix Mysterious Chart event chain that could get blocked
  • Fix Primal Leaders not being renowned
  • Fix scores for Grand Archive Relics
  • Fix Space Amoebas being hostile to Beastmasters bespite Amoeboid Pacification
  • Fixed some Black Needle ships not displaying their bow section
  • Fixed 2 cosmic storms projects not requiring scientists
  • Gravity Snares can now only re-target to fleets they can capture
  • Gravity Storms no longer cause Obsessed Gestalts to crave consumer goods for their drones
  • Habitat Orbitals should no longer attempt to evade enemy fleets
  • Habitat System Control now provide a Roboticist job for Individual Machines.
  • It is now possible to use Space Fauna as the federation's fleets
  • Reanimated space fauna uses half ship size of their living counterpart
  • Removed tooltip for GOG and MS store achievements to require login to paradox account since this is not the case.
  • Rogue Servitors are now also on energy duty during Gravity Storms
  • Ships modifiers are correctly updated with their new fleet's modifiers before fleet's values calculation
  • Space Fauna uses every components to calculate range
  • Specimens acquired from trades now don't trigger Galactic Curators' unity bonus
  • The Alien Box Event no longer has a nonsensical tooltip for gestalt empires.
  • The Tachyon Beam mutations have found their way to the Tachyon Lance technology.
  • Told the Artillery combat computers to stay at max range
  • Voidworms shouldn't attack empires with Voidworm Immunity before crisis
Stability
  • Defensive check for nullobj when dealing with auto exploration orders
  • Fix crash when Voidworms try to act on empty fleets
  • Fixed issue with diplomatic distances differences after hotjoin/resync leading to OOS
  • Fixing potential crash when trying to create a ship from a scripted design that contains unusable components for the creator
  • Fixed potential CTD when using FromFromFrom scope in "on_planets_zero_pops" on action
  • Fixes CTD on espionage operation phase tooltip
  • Fixes CTD when ship is killed by missile

[/expand]
Please keep posting any bugs and Out of Syncs you encounter in the bug report forum. Saves able to reproduce the bugs make the fixing go much more smoothly.

If all goes according to plan, we currently expect to have another patch, 3.14.1592, a couple of weeks from now.

The Vision, Continued

Last week we posted a dev diary on The Vision of Stellaris, and the response has been absolutely overwhelming. As of writing this dev diary, we’re up to around a thousand detailed responses split across various platforms, and we’re reading all of them. I’ve been reading and taking notes since the dev diary was posted, and it’ll take us a little while to get through all of it.

I’m absolutely thrilled with the amount of feedback and the high quality, constructive nature of pretty much every single post. Thank you, everyone.

As a quick initial summary, there seems to be a general consensus with the vision statements, and a high level of support for future changes that improve the game, even if they change existing systems. There seemed to be a pretty strong agreement for exploring alternative systems - especially when it comes to warfare resolution and fleets. There were more diverse feelings around the current pops and job systems, but a large number of you want a more performant system as long as it still captures the general fantasies of the current one. Many of you appear to strongly dislike the current trade system or are at best ambivalent towards it.

The Stellaris community also appears to be much more willing to embrace change than many others - not too surprising considering the number of major changes we’ve made since launch.

Next Week

Next week we’ll review the changes that Stellaris has undergone over the years, go into more detail about more of the conclusions I’ve reached based on the feedback you’ve given, and might have some preliminary release notes for 3.14.1592.

See you then!

Purchase Stellaris: Grand Archive alone or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863080/Stellaris_Grand_Archive/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08__Expansion_Pass/

Stellaris updates will "slow down a bit" as Paradox considers its next direction

With new Stellaris DLC The Grand Archive now out in the world, developer Paradox is considering what the future of its spectacular space 4X game looks like. As it considers the game's future, game director Stephen 'Eladrin' Muray says the team is going to slow down the speed of updates "a little bit" to minimize disruption for players. Furthermore, he asks the game's community to give feedback on what elements are most core to their experience as the team looks to determine what comes next.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

New Stellaris DLC turns the goal of the entire game on its head, and is out now

New Stellaris Grand Archive DLC lets you build a museum megastructure

New Stellaris DLC makes Steam's biggest space 4X game even better