Stellaris News

written by Eladrin

Hello!

The team is working on the 3.4.4 patch as I write this - we should have a list of patch notes as next week’s DD. Today we’ll be discussing some less concrete things.

We often find ourselves with a bit of free time during the summer to experiment with different systems that strike our fancy. Previous such experiments yielded the Lithoid traits (which changed the way we make Species Packs forever) and the first trials of Industrial Districts. Often they don’t work out, or need a lot of iteration before turning into something usable, but that’s okay - these are intentionally framed as experiments with lower pressure.

Rather than doing a review of what did and didn’t work after the summer, I want to give a preview of some of the systems we’re looking to experiment with, but with the caveat that these experiments may or may not pan out.

None of this is guaranteed, and I’m not giving timelines for release even if they do work out!

[h2]Relic Balance[/h2]

Iggy has asked to look at relics and has written up proposals for a balance pass upon them. In his own words…

Originally posted by Iggy

Relics are meant to be fun and game-changing. They are supposed to be powerful and unique items that can change the course of your empire. The issue, however, is that they are not all equal. So with a future update, I hope to at least narrow the gap between the relics a bit. I have mainly split the relics into three sets.

• Event-based ones that are fine to have a niche and semi-powerful effects, think Omnicodex and Blade of the Huntress.
  
• Precursor Relics should be strong and useful for every single empire. I am not promising that the Jovian Pox will be top tier for pacifists or that the Psionic Archive will be the best machine relic. But they will at least have neat effects.
  
• Crisis Relics which are awarded for defeating the crisis should be a bit of a victory lap. You have won! It should not give you 30 society research.

With these in mind, I will be looking at every relic and attempting to bring them in line if needed. There will be a lot of buffs and a few nerfs, but hopefully, they will feel more rewarding!

I expect that we’ll post a list of the changes when we start the dev diaries up again after the summer for feedback.

[h2]Accessibility Improvements[/h2]

MonzUn has been leading a drive for improved accessibility options in Stellaris. Some of the things we’re looking at include adding more functionality for mouse side buttons, possible text-to-speech for events, and functionality like hotkeys for zooming in and out.

At his suggestion, some of us have also started playing the game with various color reshaders active to simulate different color vision deficiencies, to help find the worst issues and ways to resolve them.

If you have suggestions or accessibility problems that you face while playing Stellaris, please let us know.

[h2]Traditions[/h2]

With the flexibility in how empires can choose traditions that we introduced in 3.1 "Lem", Alfray Stryke is planning some experiments looking at introducing new tradition trees.

These are looking at how gating tradition trees behind various triggers might influence the game. There have been some ideas suggested about introducing tradition trees that are locked behind ascension perks or origins, and we're interested to see where these may lead.

[h2]Deep In the Code Mines[/h2]

Caligula Caesar has been finding places where we could expand our uses of multithreading, and experimenting with the way modifiers are calculated, with a particular eye towards the late game.

[h2]Fleet Combat Balance[/h2]

Meanwhile, my planned experiments primarily have to do with fleet combat.

Things I’m looking forward to looking at include:

• Providing a late game role for Destroyers and Cruisers, and providing incentives for mixed fleets.
  
• Increasing the length of fleet combats, reducing the dominance of alpha strikes.
  
• Experimenting with existing counters, tracking, evasion, and accuracy mechanics.
  
• This may also end up providing a role for smaller weapons.
  
• Improving ship behavior based on the roles assigned them by combat computers.
  
• Yes, Carrier Battleship, I know you have a point defense laser and you're very proud of it. That doesn’t mean you should charge into melee to use it.

These are likely the experiments most ethereal in nature at this time and are unlikely to bear fruit in the short term.

[h2]More Achievements[/h2]

Our artists had so much fun with the Overlord achievements that they cornered us and demanded that we add some to the species packs.

These aren’t really experiments, but will go live once we figure out what they’ll do and implement them. Here are a few as previews.



And then there's this one, which we've called The Darkest Timeline.



[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

These examples aren't comprehensive, there are many other things being worked on that aren't listed here (like previously mentioned Espionage improvements).

As mentioned earlier, next week will be the 3.4.4 patch notes, after which we’ll be going on a dev diary hiatus for the summer.

See you next week!

written by Tim Wiberg & Lloyd

Hi There,

My Name is Lloyd and I'll be your host for tonight. I am a concept artist working on Stellaris and for this dev diary I'm going to give you a look at how the art team brings an asset to life. Specifically I want to focus on the Salvagers station from the Overlord expansion.

[h2]Visdev[/h2]
The first step is visdev, which is short for visual development. It’s where we throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks. At this stage everyone is welcome to contribute, and ideas are often borrowed and expanded upon by other artists.

(Salvager station visdev by Avishek Banerjee)

Avishek Banerjee, a concept artist on the team made this piece showing a station that consisted of several circular openings that served as tear-down bays for ships. This is an idea that was borrowed by me and integrated into the final design of the station.

(Salvager station visdev by Lloyd Drake-Brockman)

Here you can see some of my early sketches for the Salvagers station. My thinking was to create something that looked like some kind of hive, an industrial place that was hap-hazard but didn't look too unfriendly.

(Early concept of the Salvagers station)

When I painted this sketch of the station we decided that this was the way forward, and from that point I was assigned to develop the sketch into a full concept. Although it looks quite different to the final, the shape language and some of the texture ideas are already present in this early version.

[h2]Concept[/h2]

(More early concepts of the Salvagers station)

I spent some time exploring alternate shapes for the station. Most were scrapped, but that's part of the job of a concept artist. The whole time I wanted to keep the lotus-pod aesthetic of the big dome in the original sketch. I also wanted the station to have some kind of long-axis; that way I could give the station a strong shape, and it wouldn't just be a big blob of parts. It's important to note that for each iteration the whole art team is giving their feedback and occasionally contributing their own sketches. Every stage of this process is a collaborative effort.

written by Mirror Universe Eladrin

Hi!

This week is a short one in Sweden due to holidays, so instead of a normal dev diary we've got a transcript of the Stellaris Q&A session we held on the Official Stellaris Discord Server on May 5th.

You can read the full Q&A transcript on the Stellaris forums.

Next week our concept artist Lloyd will take over with an in-depth diary on how to make a station.

We've got a video preview of this dev diary on our YouTube Channel (I didn't read all 108 questions, sorry) if you want to meet Mirror Universe Stephen. You can watch it here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Have a great week!

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