Hello everyone!

We’re finally back at the office and we’re very excited to be back working on Federations! We will be continuing to focus on AI and stability, while also polishing our features. As a couple of examples of something we are working on right now; we are looking at the economic AI as well as making more unique behaviors for the end game crisis AI. As we continue polishing we’ll also be making improvements here and there.

To share some polish progress, as one example, we’ve added a new slavery type called Indentured Assets, which will be a part of the Utopia (as its a part of the expanded species rights). We wanted to have a slavery type that works better for your more dystopian and evolved empires, which has a greater need for many specialists.


While slaves only have 25% political power of free pops, indentured assets will retain 75%.

As promised before vacations, we will be doing a number of Q&A sessions related to different topics. The first Q&A will be about the Federation Rework and you can already post your questions in our forum thread here. We will be answering some of your questions next week, on Jan 23rd.

Future topics:

• Jan 23rd: Federation rework Q&A
  
• Jan 30th: Galactic Community Q&A
  
• TBA: Diplomacy Q&A
  
• TBA: Origins Q&A
  
• TBA: Mega shipyard & juggernaut Q&A

The reason why we cannot release an exact schedule right now is because there might be dev diaries related to other topics between the Q&A ones. The thread for collecting your questions will always be posted one week in advance.

We are looking forward to answering your questions and showing off more of Federations during the coming weeks!

Hello everyone!

Christmas is fast approaching, and before the team disappears for some well-deserved rest, we thought it would be good to sum up the year and share some thoughts.

2019 has been a challenging year for us, with many different challenges that we’ve had to tackle. The year began with an extended period of patching, which had us starting on a bad footing. We had a lot of issues to address, but we also had plans for the year, plans that included small side projects as well as developing new content for the game.

The year made it clear that we need to slow down and refocus our efforts, because we’ve been running at a high pace for too long now. We are working hard with Federations to make sure we have time to address any outstanding issues, and to make the expansion a great release.

Our communication hasn’t been the best during the year either, and a lot comes down to us not having a lot to communicate (as we were busy working on things), and that we decided to use PDXCON for all our announcements. Next year we hope to be better, and as mentioned previously, we will be starting 2020 with a bunch of Q&A dev diaries related to different topics each week. The schedule for the Q&A will be posted next year, with our first dev diary on January 16th. Our plans for 2020 are looking very good, and we’re very excited for the future.

In dev diary #141 I outlined some of the concepts that I wanted to explore for the game. Let’s take a look at some of the things we’ve achieved:

Pop growth: Look into how immigration/emigration works, try to make base growth across multiple planets less powerful, make habitability matter more again

Sectors & automation: Allow players to nudge which sectors planets belong to, reduce micromanagement by improving sector management tool.
- A lot of work has been done with this, such as creating sectors, manual designations and planet automation. All work isn’t finished however, and we want to add more improvements.

Backgrounds: Split up some civics into backgrounds, and add more backgrounds.
- This is being implemented as Origins, and we’re very happy with how much value this adds to the game.

Civic flavour: Spend more time on making the civics feel more unique and fun.
- We’ve done some work towards this, but we don’t consider it finished yet. There are still a bunch of Civics we would like to make more fun.

Institutions: Define which institutions make up your empire’s internal departments (such as Diplomatic Corps, Xenology Bureau etc.), and their funding, size and power.

Espionage: Intel to determine how much you know about another empire, spy actions, cloaking, sabotage & general mischief.

Religion & Cults: Similar to factions, cults could appear in your empire during certain circumstances. Spiritualist empires would most likely have “imperial” cults. Worship of powerful entities etc.

Archaeology: Explore the ruins of ancient civilizations.
- We added Archaeology in Ancient Relics, and we’re very happy with how the system allows us to tell stories in chapters.

Subject contracts: Allow overlords to better customize what type of subjects they have, tribute levels, benefits to subject etc.

Federation depth: Allow federations to level up, have different election types, taxes etc.
- This will be done with the reworked Federation system coming with the 2.6 update next year.

Galactic Council: Create a sort of a ‘space UN’ with galactic politics and diplomacy.
- This will be done with the Galactic Community coming with the 2.6 update next year.

Primitives: Allow for more interactions with primitive pre-FTL species

With everything we’ve been working on during 2019, we will be adding a lot of depth and customization to Stellaris. We are especially looking forward to when you all get a chance to play with Origins and the Galactic Community.

And because we can’t have a dev diary without some sort of sneak peak, we will show you this:



The previous design that we outlined in dev diary #158 showed Strongest (Economy) and Diplomatic Weight as two succession types. We weren’t entirely happy with that, so we have separated the Strongest Succession Type from which category is used to determine who is the strongest. Setting Strongest as the Succession Type now requires High Centralization. The cool thing is that this now allows you to have a Research Cooperative federation that is led by whichever empire has the best technology.


Producer Switch
And now a message from Jamor:

Hi all. Firstly, I want to wish you all a happy and safe holiday season. Play lots of video games, spend time with your loved ones, and start 2020 in the best style.

I became the producer (called Project Lead back then) of Stellaris back in February 2017. While I wasn’t new to the games industry, for me it was an amazing moment to finally work on the sort of hardcore, deeply nerdy strategy games that I myself played at home (having started with Paradox games in 2007 with HOI 2). I look back upon the starry-eyed character who wrote this and reflect upon the journey so far: contributing to three full expansions, three story packs, and two species packs, seeing the title through absolutely massive changes, and all in all patching on 37 separate occasions - some great, some not so hot (I’m sure some of you remember the great dawning of galactic peace that arose from the 1.6 patch, by the simple expedient of making the AI actually incapable of declaring war). All in all it’s been the most intense and memorable era of my career in this crazy industry.

The only constant is change, however, so now I’m moving over as producer to Imperator: Rome. They are a great bunch of folks who are bringing out the immense potential of that game more and more, in the classic Paradox style. It is my honour to lead them forward as the game continues to grow and evolve.

Of course that means I’m leaving my beloved Stellaris team. After sharing so many experiences, some magic, some tragic, it is not without emotion that I do this. But ultimately, you cannot keep doing the same thing forever, and I’m eager to get started on this new challenge. I want to thank my guys, who have so fearlessly and loyally pushed on towards the objective no matter what. I also want to thank you, the fans, without whom there would be no Paradox, and as a fellow fan reaffirm my commitment that I’ll always do the best I can, on whatever team I’m in, to uphold our Special Secret Thing (™). We’re Paradox, we’re different from everyone else, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. Obidobi will take over leadership of the Stellaris team, and he has my complete confidence.

Now, I turn in my laser, and gird on my gladius. LETS GO PDS!

A message from Obidobi:

Hello everyone!

I'm Obidobi, some of you may have seen me around as I've been working at Paradox (and Stellaris for that matter) for the past 5 years. I started my journey as a newcomer to the gaming industry as a Paradox QA in 2014 where I saw Stellaris in its pre-alpha stage and I've been on this spaceship ever since. In 2018 I joined the producer team helping Jamor on Stellaris and some other projects, including the Console Edition of Stellaris. Stellaris is basically running through my veins at this point, and I don't think I'll know what to do if I ever move projects. So as my dear mentor Jamor leaves for more ancient lands, like any proper Shounen Protagonist, I will have to pick up the mantle of Hokage and become stronger than ever before (Look forward to these kinds of references).

I'm really looking forward to see where the team and I can take Stellaris going forward and I'm truly excited about getting an opportunity to hold the steering wheel. I hope you guys will accept me with open arms as you did with Jamor!

I hope you’re all as excited as I am for the future, but for now I just want to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

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That is all for this week and the year! We will be back again on January 16th!

Remember you can also read this Dev Diary and comment on our forums.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hello everyone!

Today we’ll be talking about some big stuff – namely the Juggernaut and the Mega Shipyard.

Both of these new behemoths are a part of the upcoming Federations expansion.

Juggernaut
Stellaris has been in development for many years and, and if there’s something we know for sure its that big ships are cool, and bigger ships are even cooler. With this flawless logic in mind, we obviously wanted to add something even bigger than a Titan.

Mobile starbases is something that we know has been widely requested, so why not hit two avians with one lithoid?


Visually, the Juggernaut has the shape of a giant pair of wings.
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The juggernaut is as much a mobile starbase as it is a massive warship. Although the Juggernaut works like a mobile starbase in some regards, it will not project borders or control ownership or systems. A Juggernaut instead functions like a forward base of operations during offensive campaigns where you can repair your ships. The Juggernaut will not have starbase modules or buildings – instead it will count as always having 2 Shipyards (which means it can build, repair and upgrade ships).



The Juggernaut can be designed in the ship designer, and features 2 XL turrets, 6 hangar slots and 5 medium turrets.

​

In addition, the Juggernaut gets access to a couple of new and unique aura components.



The Juggernaut will be unlocked by a technology which requires Citadels and Battleships to be already researched. A Starbase will also need to have a Colossal Assembly Yard in order to be able to construct one. The Colossal Assembly Yard is required for (and unlocked by) both the Colossus and the Juggernaut.




The Juggernaut will have an empire limit of 1.

Mega Shipyard
New Megastructures are always nice, because we all want more ways to show off the glory and magnificence of our empires. The Mega Shipyard is exactly what it is, a giant shipyard that allows you to build a lot of ships really fast.



The Mega Shipyard will also provide ships with +100 starting XP, so that it will not matter where you build them. Generally speaking, are trying to avoid design that creates incentives for players to engage in more micromanagement that may not be fun. We believe the choice of where to build a ship (because it would cost less, or gain more XP somewhere) is an example of micromanagement that is not very fun. The only incentive is to avoid loss aversion, which is not a good. Incentives should generally be positive.



The Mega Shipyard is unlocked by a technology which requires Mega-Engineering (like the others). It’s found in the Society tree and belongs to the Military Theory category.



The Mega Shipyard will have 3 stages (in addition to construction site):
Mega Shipyard Framework - 10 Shipyards, +33% Ship Build Speed, +100 Starting Ship XP
Mega Shipyard Core - 20 Shipyards, +66% Ship Build Speed, +100 Starting Ship XP
Mega Shipyard - 30 Shipyards, +100% Ship Build Speed, +100 Starting Ship XP

The bonuses to Ship Build Speed will be empire-wide.

Keep in mind that these numbers are work-in-progress and may change.

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That is all for this week! Next week will be the last dev diary of the year, before the holidays, and we will be doing a round up of the year.

Also keep an eye on our social media channels, as we will be sharing some more screenshots of the Juggernaut and Mega Shipyard.

As always, you can also read this Dev Diary and comment on our forums.

Hello everyone!

Today we thought we’d talk about some of the smaller changes coming to diplomacy with the free 2.6 update. Although the Galactic Community and the reworked federations are sure to have a large impact on galactic diplomacy, it's also important to talk about the smaller things!

Envoys
One of the more important things we’ve added are the Envoys. Envoys function very similar to Diplomats in EU4, and they are required for certain diplomatic actions such as:

Improve / Harm Relations – it is now possible to send an Envoy to improve or harm relations which can affect Opinion by up to (-400 / +400 ). More on Opinion and Relations later.
Assigned to Federation (to increase monthly Cohesion by +1)
Assigned to Galactic Community (to increase Diplomatic Weight)

Improve Relations


In Federation


Galactic Community


Although Envoys are characters, they do not currently have any character-mechanics such as traits. We didn’t think it would be fun to have to micromanage and switch Envoys around to better fit certain jobs depending on their traits.

Diplomacy Interface Updates
We’ve finally gotten around to give a bunch of diplomacy-related interfaces a facelift! First up, let’s talk a little about the general diplomacy screen.

You are now able to more clearly see things such as Civics, Origins, Relative Power breakdowns, your ongoing diplomatic agreements, and also the new diplomatic stances!


This Hegemonic subordinate was kind enough to act as a model for the new diplo screen!​


Declaring rivalry never looked so appealing.​



The diplomatic offers are now a bit more clear on what is going on (not final text). A downside, however, is that it's now much harder to fool colleagues into becoming your vassal in our internal multiplayer sessions.

Diplomatic Stances
Sometimes we like concept that our colleagues have put into some of our other games, and the diplomatic stances from Imperator: Rome were a good example. Although not exactly the same, we like the general idea. We wanted empires to be able to set a diplomatic stance that dictates their behaviour towards other empires on a galactic stage.



Diplomatic Stances are Policies and can be changed once every 10 years. There are a bunch of different stances, and some may also be unique to certain empire types (e.g. Isolationist is called Mercantile for Megacorporations).



Stances are designed to be quite different, and to facilitate different playstyles. Perceptive readers might notice that the Belligerent stance seems very similar to Supremacist, and that is true, except that Supremacist stance is designed for all empires that want to be “a big player”. Supremacist empires will dislike other empires with the same stance, so it is almost like a soft rivalry of sorts.

Stances also have some effect on internal politics, as some of your factions may have certain preferences when it comes to your foreign policy.

Relations and Opinion
We wanted an easier way to measure how the diplomatic relations between two empires is doing, so we’ve added a new aggregate value called Relations. Relations exists in different levels ranging:

Terrible <- Tense <- Neutral -> Positive -> Excellent

They do have an effect on which type of diplomatic actions that are available.

We want diplomacy to be less fickle, and more mechanical. Players should now have more ability to influence what other empires’ opinions are of them. Overall diplomacy should feel less static and more prone to evolving over time.

Form Federation requires Excellent Relations, and pacts like Migrations, Research or Commercial require Positive Relations. Similarly, Rivalries require Terrible Relations. This is also the case in player-to-player diplomacy, so it’s important to maintain a good standing.

Some of these restrictions can be bypassed by having an Envoy to harm or improve relations.



Favors
Finally we want to talk about Favors. Although Favors were primarily added to give players agency within the Galactic Community, they can also be used to influence the AIs likelihood of accepting certain diplomatic agreements.



Favors is a new mechanic that allows you to increase your Diplomatic Weight for certain votes or proposals in the Galactic Community. An empire can owe another empire up to 10 Favors, and each Favor will increase Diplomatic Weight by “10%”.

For example – Empire B owes 10 Favors to Empire A. Empire A spends influence to call in all 10 Favors and adds 100% of the Diplomatic Weight that Empire B has. Empire A will add the Diplomatic Weight from Empire B, for a specific vote, without Empire B losing their Diplomatic Weight.

In effect, Favors allows an empire to manipulate vote results towards their point of view. It is not possible to Call in Favors when an empire is already voting the same way as you are. Multiple empires can call in favors from the same empire, and it's designed in this way to reduce the complexity of having to figure out which favors should have priority, or which favors should matter more.


Pretty please. You owe me.​

In addition to the Galactic Community, Favors can also be called in to increase acceptance chance by +5 when offering certain diplomatic deals.

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That is all for this week! Next week we’ll be back with some more details on the Juggernaut and the Mega Shipyard.

Remember, you can always read this Dev Diary and comment directly on our forums.

Hello everyone!

For this week’s dev diary we chose to switch the order of a couple of dev diaries to be able to give you some updates earlier rather than later.

The Stellaris brand has understandably been under more scrutiny than usual for the last few months, and we want to address situations related to work-in-progress art in Federations. As an example, we had some UI design mockups (shown during PDXCon) that contained placeholder art. We want to make clear this is not how the game will appear in its final version.

Moving on to Federations: During PDXCON 2019 we said that we would give more information on the expansion later during the year – and today we want to share some news that Federations is targeted for release in early 2020. Although we understand that some of you might be disappointed that Federations will not be released in December, we want you to know that we are taking more time to make sure that the next update is going to be amazing.

In addition, to give us the best chance of improving some of the pain points you’ve shared with us, we have assigned some of our team members to focus solely on trying to improve performance and AI. It is very important to us that 2.6 does not compound any of the current issues with the game, and that we can take the time we need to address some of the issues remaining from 2.2. It’s important to remember, however, that working on these kinds of issues is not a sprint, but a marathon – it's something that is constantly being worked on over longer periods of time.

If you want to read more about performance, and how we work to maintain it over time, we shared some more information on this topic in Dev Diary #149.

While we have been unable to give concrete information or specifics related to these issues, we can say that it is very important to us. With that said, it's important for us that you know that your feedback is not being ignored, even if we have no news to share.

We want to thank you for being such a dedicated community and helping us by providing feedback and reporting issues with the game. We appreciate this to no end and encourage you to continue voicing your thoughts to us.

From the beginning of next year, we’ll be doing a series of dev diaries dedicated entirely to answering questions related to specific topics each week. The schedule for those dev diaries will be released later in December when we’ll summarize and round up the year.

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That is it for this week! Dev diaries will resume their regular schedule, and as promised last week, next week we will be talking about some of the new things affecting diplomacy, such as Envoys.

P.S:
Since this dev diary had no pictures I felt it was necessary to add something, so here's a picture of the premade Lithoid empire that some of you have been asking us to add to the Lithoids Species Pack! (Will also be updated with 2.6)



As always, you can also read this dev diary and give us feedback directly, on our forums.

Hello everyone!

In our previous dev diary #155 we talked about Origins, and today we will be returned to the topic by going through Origins again, but in more detail.

Please note that although this is a pretty exhaustive list, there is no guarantee that these Origins will necessarily match what will be in Federations once it is released.

What are Origins?
Origins allows you to pick a background story for your empire. An empire can only pick one Origin.​


Prosperous Unification is the “default” Origin.​

There are currently 18 Origins in the game, where some of them were converted from previously being Civics. Origins that were converted will be unlocked by the same DLC that they were unlocked by when they were civics.

The Origins
Prosperous Unification: Start with 4 additional Pops and 2 additional Districts. (Available to everyone)

Mechanist: Start with 8 Pops being robots, and the ability to build more. (Utopia)

Syncretic Evolution: Start the game with 12 Pops being of another species. (Utopia)

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Life-Seeded: Start on a Gaia World. (Apocalypse)

Post-Apocalyptic: Start on a Tomb World. (Apocalypse)

Remnants: Start on a Relic World. (Federations)

Shattered Ring: Start on a Shattered Ring World. Your empire lives on the only intact section of the ancient megastructure, and it is possible to repair most of the other sections. (Federations)

Void Dwellers: Start on a Habitat above your destroyed, former homeworld. Adept at living in habitats, and start with the technology to build new ones. (Federations)

Scion: Start as the vassal of a Fallen Empire. (Federations)



Galactic Doorstep: Start with a dormant Gateway in your home system. (Available to everyone)

Tree of Life: Only for Hive Minds. Start with a powerful Tree of Life on your homeworld. Disastrous if you would somehow lose control of it. (Federations)



On the Shoulder of Giants: Start with an Archaeological Site related to a mysterious benefactor. (Federations)

Calamitous Birth: Lithoid Only. Start with a Massive Crater on your Homeworld. You are also able to build Meteorite Colony Ships, which colonize planets in a more dramatic fashion. (Lithoids)

Resource Consolidation: Machines only. Start with a Machine World as your homeworld. (Synthetic Dawn)


Comfy federalized start.​

Common Ground: Start with as the leader of a Galactic Union federation, and with The Federation tradition unlocked. (Federations)

Hegemon: Start with as the leader of a Hegemony federation, and with The Federation tradition unlocked. (Federations)



Doomsday: Your homeworld is doomed and it will explode after 64 years, so you need to find a new home for your species. (Federations)

Lost Colony: Another empire with the same species as you will exist somewhere in the galaxy. (Available to everyone)

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That is it for this week! Next week we will be back and we will be talking about some of the new things affecting diplomacy, such as Envoys.

Remember you can also read this Dev Diary on our forums.

Hello everyone!

Today we will be talking about a new feature coming with Stellaris: Federations – the Galactic Community!

The Galactic Community is very similar to a United Nations in space. Members can propose and vote on Resolutions, which are laws that affect all the member empires.


Resolutions
The Resolutions are intended to be divisive, so that even empires that are allies can have very different agendas when it comes to which Resolutions should be passed.


Resolutions exist in categories and have a couple of steps in each category.​


Go big or go home.​


Passing a Resolution
The first step to passing a Resolution is proposing it! Any member of the Galactic Community can propose a Resolution, but they can only have one ongoing. When a Resolution is proposed, it moves into the proposal queue.


The Galactic Community deals with matters of critical importance to the continued well-being of the galaxy and all of its inhabitants.​

Only one Resolution can be voted on at a time on the senate floor, and the proposal that moves into session next will be the proposed Resolution with the highest amount of Diplomatic Weight supporting it.


Senate in session, voting on a Resolution.​

When a Resolution is in session and is being voted on, empires can support, oppose or abstain. Voting for or against will add an empire’s Diplomatic Weight to either side, and when the current session ends the votes will be counted. A Resolution will pass if the Diplomatic Weight in favor of the Resolution is higher than the amount opposing it.


Diplomatic Weight
Diplomatic influence will be calculated using a new scoring system called Diplomatic Weight, and it will be composed of things like economy, technology, fleet power to name a couple of examples.


Cooperative Diplomatic Stance increases Diplomatic Weight by +25%.
​
There will also be a number of different ways to influence how much Diplomatic Weight you are getting from different sources. There are Resolutions that can modify how much Diplomatic Weight you gain from your economy, and there are Diplomatic Stances that increase how much Diplomatic Weight you gain from fleet power or other areas (more on Diplomatic Stances later!).

So as you can see, there are many different ways to make yourself more influential on a diplomatic, galactic stage!


Favors
For Resolutions, empires have the possibility to call in favors to strengthen their votes. An empire can owe another empire up to 10 favors, and each favor is worth 10% diplomatic weight. For example, if an empire calls in 10 favors, they can add 100% of the other empire’s diplomatic weight to theirs. Calling in favors this way will only affect votes on Resolutions. This also means that favors will work the same between player empires as it will between player and AI empires.


Calling in favors costs Influence.​

Favors can also be used to increase the likelihood of AI empires accepting diplomatic deals.

Favors can be traded through the trade diplomatic action.


Galactic Council
It is possible to reform the Galactic Community to include a Galactic Council. The council will be composed of a number of empires with the highest Diplomatic Weight. By default, the council will have 3 members, but the number can be changed through Resolutions.

The Galactic Council also gets access to special powers such as veto rights or emergency measures.

Veto rights allows a council member to veto a Resolution that is currently in the proposal queue.

While the galactic senate is in recess it is possible for Galactic Council members to declare a proposed Resolution an emergency. This will immediately put the senate into session and will initiate a vote on the emergency Resolution.


Galactic Focus
It is possible for the Galactic Community to set a Galactic Focus. This will mean the Galactic Community together have decided to achieve something or to deal with a crisis.

There will be Resolutions to declare the galactic invaders a threat to the galaxy, which means it will be against galactic law to have closed borders to any other Galactic Community member while the crisis is ongoing.

The Galactic Market is now founded through a Galactic Focus to “Found the Galactic Market”. When the Resolution to form the Galactic Market has been passed, the bidding process to be the market founder will continue as it previously did.


Creating/Joining/Leaving the Galactic Community

When an empire has established communications with half of the empires in the galaxy, an event will trigger to suggest the formation of a Galactic Community. This means that forming the Galactic Community will be similar to how it used to work to form the Galactic Market.

It is possible to join the Galactic Community (and to see it!) as soon as you have established communications with any member of it.

Leaving the galaxy community is something an empire might choose to do if they become the target of too many sanctions or if there are too many Resolutions that negatively impact them.

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To read this Dev Diary on our forums, click here.

Next week we will be showing all the Origins!