1. Stellaris
  2. News

Stellaris News

Stellaris goes into uncharted territory with the Astral Planes expansion

Stellaris Astral Planes is the latest main expansion announced today for Paradox Interactive's popular space strategy game, and this one sound delightfully different to their previous additions and quite exciting.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/10/stellaris-goes-into-uncharted-territory-with-the-astral-planes-expansion

Announcing Astral Planes

[h3]A nearly infinite number of universes connect to our own.​
Ours is not the only one that is full of wonder…​[/h3]
Wishlist Astral Planes today!

It's my great pleasure to announce that Astral Planes will be released alongside the Stellaris 3.10 ‘Pyxis’ update.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Every adventure requires a step into the unknown.

Astral Planes is a narrative-focused expansion that adds mid to late game exploration content with over 30 Astral Rifts with branching narratives and storylines. Unlike the relative safety of Archaeology sites, the Rifts you explore will lead to completely different realms of existence, where fundamentals that were certain at home may not always be true.



Astral Planes includes:
  • Over 30 Astral Rifts to explore
  • 8 new Relics
  • 4 Civics
  • 1 Origin
  • Astral Threads and Astral Actions
  • 3 new music tracks composed by Andreas Waldetoft


...as well as some insights into some old friends and enemies.

The Stellaris team has been working with Abrakam Entertainment since October 2022, and they've been working on Astral Planes in close collaboration with the rest of the Stellaris team. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be turning the dev diaries over to them so they can get to know you better, so you can feel some of the love they share for Stellaris, and so you can see why we trusted them to help with this release.


[h3]Wishlist Astral Planes today![/h3]

3.9.3 "Caelum" Patch Released



Hello all,

We're proud to release the 3.9.3 "Caelum" Patch promised for mid-October. This patch brings with it a balance pass on subjugation and diplomatic acceptance in-general, as well as other balance changes, bug fixes, UI, AI and modding improvements.

Please find the patch notes below.

############################################################​######################## VERSION 3.9.3 ######################### ​############################################################​

Balance

  • AI Empires are more likely to seek a federation if their rivals have federated.
  • Federations (except for Hegemonies) now default to not permitting subject members.
  • Having less than 50 Trust with an empire imposes a -100 Acceptance to them becoming your subject or overlord.
  • Hydroponics Designation on habitats now swaps all jobs on the housing districts for farmers.
  • Increased the importance of being more powerful than your vassal for loyalty purposes.
  • Insulting someone decreases their Trust of you by 5.
  • Rebalanced requirements for diplomatic treaties to require trust.
  • Reduced how excited subjects get about things like shared sensors.
  • Reduced the effect differing war philosophies has on federation acceptance.
  • Removed the ability to trade favors.
  • Replaced all +10% Districts on Habitats from technologies and traditions with +1 District on Habitats
  • Replaced the upgrade habitat decisions with checks for habitat capital level instead.
  • The Intimidation menace perk now allows you to ignore diplomatic requirements for proposing subjugation.
  • The Pharma State civic now provides +1 Medical Worker job to capital buildings.
  • The Unity from Rivals from the Animosity Diplomatic Stance has been reduced to 10 per rival.
  • Trade Designation on habitats now has the housing district swap a clerk for a trader.


Improvement

  • Research, Energy and Mining District capacity on habitat complexes now have their own planetary features to clearly show the number of districts, current number of orbitals and maximum number of orbitals.
  • The Crisis event chain will now use their bespoke event chain icon.


Bugfix

  • Added is_scope_valid checks for anchorages.
  • Fix to hiring events not being dismissed for other players in coop
  • Fixed concept tooltips for starbase components.
  • Fixed issue with nested tooltips and mouse tendency being incorrect when using UI scaling
  • Fixed issue with some portraits being blurry on lower graphics settings due to mip levels being skipped. Disabled the functionality for portraits and related textures.
  • Fixed the Node Culling gateway leading to an unlocalized string.
  • Fixed Tiyanki occasionally not spawning correctly at the start of a Fruitful Partnership playthrough
  • Massive Crater got its 25% pop growth back
  • Restoring the Payback habitat when your homeworld is a moon now grants a minor orbital instead of a major orbital.
  • Rewrote math for calculate tendency between mouse and nested tooltip window. This should fix issue with tooltips below and above mouse cursor behaving somewhat differently.
  • Stopped interactions allowing multiple gaia-seeder buildings on a planet.
  • The bonus provided by Eclipse from Enmity now correctly grants a 2% modifier instead of a 20% modifier.
  • Updated the Eclipse tradition tooltip
  • Updated the massive crater concept tooltip to accurately display the actual deposit.


AI

  • Certain AI personalities (Federation Builders, Spiritual Seekers, Migrating Flocks, and Peaceful Traders) are now 25x more likely to select Diplomacy traditions.
  • The AI will no longer request to be subjugated by empires that are equivalent or weaker than them.
  • The AI will no longer request to become the subject or overlord of another empire unless they have 50 Trust with the other party.


UI

  • The ship viewer's zoom speed is now scaled to the ship's size.
  • Tooltips to select agendas now show the estimated time to launch the agenda, based off of your current agenda progress rate
  • Trust between nations is now visible in the main diplomatic screen.
  • When switching ships in the ship viewer, the zoom distance will now be preserved relative to the ship's size.


Modding

  • Added documentation for concepts.
  • Added support for more object types in concept tooltips.
  • Fixed gridbox left and top padding not working.
  • Some objects' auto-generated tooltips can now be shown as concept tooltips.
  • Support building concept tooltips without valid scope.
  • Calling non existing events should no longer crash the game.


[h3]Please note that save file compatibility between versions is not guaranteed.[/h3]

If you have an important game going, please back up the save file before trying to load the save in the new version. You can roll back to a prior version by right-clicking on Stellaris in your library -> Properties -> Betas -> choose the desired version from the drop-down.

If you experience crashing or other issues, first disable all mods and start a new save. If the issue persists, please report it on the Bug Report forums.

Stellaris Dev Diaries #317 - Ad astra per aspera

by PDX-Ruk

[h3]Stardate 23779.5 - Temba, his arms wide[/h3]

In this week's dev diary, I am taking the reins from Eladrin.
I am a producer on Stellaris and usually help Eladrin as best I can, but today I want to talk about my other project and let Stellaris have a week off before they talk about their next thing.

And that Project is: Star Trek: Infinite



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Watch the video version of this Dev Diary

[h3]Who are you? And why are you Putting Star Trek in my Stellaris Dev Diary?![/h3]

I joined Paradox back in the start of 2021, and was given the task to bring Star Trek: Infinite to Launch.
Today is that day: we launch Star Trek: Infinite.

Why am I talking about Infinite in the Stellaris Dev diary? To start off, I am a producer on Stellaris, but also the producer for Star Trek: Infinite - I love playing both games, and I think some of you might feel the same.

Secondly, as all of you can easily identify, Star Trek: Infinite is built on the Stellaris Engine, with little effort to hide it. Everyone here on the Stellaris team has been giving feedback and tips since its inception, and we are all fully behind it.

While Star Trek: Infinite is not a Stellaris Team project, it is a distinguished member of Stellaris Selective Kinship.


[h3]So why did you want to make Star Trek Stellaris? Err, I mean Star Trek: Infinite?[/h3]

From a product point of view, Stellaris is the best Space/Emergent Story/Strategy game out there. Star Trek has a great tradition of 4x strategy games, and several story driven games. With that in mind, was there a possible way to mix this peanut butter gameplay of Stellaris with the strawberry jelly of Star Trek?

I for one believed it could be done. The big takeaway from Stellaris we wanted in this game was exploration, choice and evolving gameplay. From Star Trek I wanted recognizable factions, lore authentic events and leaders.

This has been our north star since the start. We don’t want to make a game that only explores the existing timeline, nor do we want a game with complete randomness. A balance between the two had to be maintained, and I think we might have pulled it off.



[h3]OK, as a Stellaris Player? Why Should I get this?[/h3]

It really depends on what type of Stellaris player you are. I love making themed factions that are not optimized, but thematically attractive. Setting the difficulty to Ensign/Captain, and seeing how it all plays out. I will usually restart if I get boring neighbors, or I get an unwanted precursor. My favorite Origins are Post-Apocalyptic+UNE, Toxic God, Payback+UNE, or Machine Empire with Eager Explorers. I also lean heavily away from micromanagement and build optimization.

If you play anything like me, Star Trek: Infinite might be for you.

If you think seeing Klingons going to war with Romulans over their claim to Kithomer gives a different flavor than seeing UNE being attacked by Kel-Azaan Republic over a claim in Parvus, Star Trek: Infinite might be for you.

If you think you can be a better Gul than Dukat, and that there should be a statue of you on Bajor. Star Trek: Infinite might be for you…

If you think Romulans should reunite with Vulcan, but it should be done with force, and not diplomacy? Star Trek: Infinite might be for you.



[h3]What about Mods, Custodian Support, Long term life of the game?[/h3]

This is one of the reasons we wanted to make this game a standalone, rather than part of Stellaris. We wanted this game to have its own track and not cause limitations on Stellaris, or Stellaris cause limitations for it. Stellaris should continue to evolve as the best Sci-fi sandbox strategy game in existence, and Star Trek: Infinite should be the definitive Star Trek strategy game.

Mods are already being made, and we have full Steam Workshop support. We will be paying a bit more attention to our terms and conditions, but we have not made major changes to the existing one.

So if this sounds like it could be appealing, check it out here.

Until next time,

PDX_Ruk

Ghost Signal: A Stellaris Game is available now!



Ghost Signal is a VR action roguelite set in the Stellaris universe, where you captain your ship to battle a multitude of alien species. Partake in dynamic space wars, encounter planet sized creatures, gather valuable loot to conduct research, and more. No journey is the same. Will you find the origins of the mysterious Ghost Signal?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Get Ghost Signal: A Stellaris Game! Get 20% off Ghost Signal and Stellaris with the Alternate Realities bundle! (And you don’t pay for the content you already own!)

INTERSTELLAR SPACE BATTLES
Use the full artillery of the Aurora against enemy armadas. Loot or purchase power-ups like freeze rays, atomic missiles or even dragon companions - the choice is yours.

UPGRADE & CUSTOMIZE
Scan exotic creatures for your logbook and conduct research in multiple tech trees. Asynchronous multiplayer allows you to scavenge other players' deserted ships for valuables.

A NEVER ENDING JOURNEY
Alongside the story mode where randomized maps make every session unique, Ghost Signal includes Daily Challenges with both global and local leaderboards to climb.

A UNIVERSE FULL OF WONDERS
As captain of the Aurora, encounter strange aliens in their home worlds and enter lost temples in the pursuit of the mysterious signal that seems to defy even death.