Greetings to the void-dwellers and planet-bound alike!

This week we’ll be talking about some changes we’re planning on making to the engineering marvels that are Orbital Habitats. These are currently slated for the May update that Game Director Daniel mentioned two weeks ago.

Introduced in Utopia, Orbital Habitats provide a way to continue some form of limited expansion after colonizing all of the habitable planets within your empire. In the 2.3 “Wolfe” update, we added some specialized districts to them based on the celestial body they orbited, opening up the possibility for things like building dedicated astro-mining facilities, and recently in Federations, we added a Void Dwellers origin which let you start your empire among the stars in three habitats.

This May, we’ll be introducing multiple tiers of habitats. These will be accessible to anyone with the Utopia expansion or using the Void Dwellers origin from Federations.

The first tier of Orbital Habitats now comes a bit earlier in the tech tree and require fewer alloys to build. The basic Orbital Habitat is smaller than the old version, starting with 4 district slots. They also have a simpler appearance than the ones currently in the game, a core of a station to build upon later.


Fungoid Orbital Habitat

The Habitat Expansion engineering technology is placed around where the Habitat technology used to be in the tech tree, and will allow you to upgrade an Orbital Habitat that has filled all of its districts to an Advanced Habitat using a planetary decision that costs some time and alloys.



Upgrading to an Advanced Habitat provides 2 additional district slots and allows basic housing buildings to be built even for normal empires.

The Advanced Habitat upgrade adds a ring of modules around the central core.




Avian Advanced Habitat

A third technology permits upgrading a fully developed Advanced Habitat that has a Habitat Central Control into a Habitat World.



Habitat Worlds have 8 districts, shown as another ring of modules around the habitat.




If you want to read more about the upcoming habitat tiers, see the full forum post here!

Hello everyone!

Last week we briefly mentioned that we would release 2.6.3 as an opt-in patch "soon", and soon has arrived! This opt-in beta is on steam only, so cross platform Multiplayer won't work until we officially release this patch. However, you can opt in to "crossplay_rollback" to continue your 2.6.2 games :)

Here's the forum post with the full changelog for 2.6.3:

Please note that 2.6.3 is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.

Also note that save file compatibility between versions is not guaranteed. If you have an important 2.6.2 game going, don't try to load the save in 2.6.3

Hello everyone!

As we mentioned last week, we have begun working on a larger free update targeted for May, and it would be fun to share some of the new things you will be able to discover.

2.6.3 is still planned to be released as an opt-in beta SoonTM, so stay tuned for more information about that.

But for now, let’s continue and talk a little bit about what you’ll expect to see in the free May update.
We’ve felt that the galaxy sometimes feels a bit empty now, compared to how it used to back in the day. Since the AI is a bit more proactive in hunting down hostile space fauna you are encountering these alien lifeforms much more seldom. We wanted to reinvigorate the galaxy with more alien life, and allow them to continue existing for a longer period of time.

The tiyanki now have a home system, Tiyana Vek, which can continue to spawn more space whales throughout the continuation of your game, unless the tiyanki in the system have been hunted to extinction. The spawning of new tiyanki will also depend on galaxy size, which sets an upper limit for how many fleets can spawn (in relation to already roaming around).


Tiyana Vek, in all its gaseous glory.

The tiyanki themselves have also been updated, and there are now hatchlings in addition to the previously existing Bulls, Cows and Calves. The roaming tiyanki fleets are now also a bit more randomized in their compositions.

Space whaling.

Hunting the tiyanki will yield energy credits and exotic gas, but xenophile empires will not approve.


Successful hunt. No, bounty numbers are not final.

If you want to find out what other features will be in the free update, have a read in the forum post

These are the first steps we’re taking towards reinvigorating the galaxy a bit. We’ll give you more information in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned for future dev diaries!

Hello everyone!

Federations was released a little bit over a week ago, and we hope it's still giving you much joy.

There’s much to celebrate as the community has broken a bunch of records! We had 64-thousand people playing Stellaris on Saturday, which is the highest amount of concurrent players since its release 4 years ago. We want to thank you for the massive amount of support we’ve received with this expansion! We hope everyone has found this expansion as fun and enjoyable as us.

While you are busy enjoying the game we’ve been planning updates and working on patches. We are currently working on a 2.6.3 that we’re planning on releasing as a beta sometime soon. 2.6.3 should hopefully be the last of the smaller patches, as we will be switching focus to a somewhat larger free update in May.

The May update (TBA) will contain more bug fixes, but also a bunch of new things for you to play with. We are very interested in hearing your feedback and ideas regarding Federations, and if there was anything you would have wished for us to add. We are especially interested in feedback related to Resolutions and Federation Laws. Although I will not promise they will be added, I still wanted to leave some room open in case there were ideas that the community really wanted.


Will you protect the Tiyanki or hunt them for profit?

We will give you some more information about the May update at a later stage, so stay tuned! Until then, keep enjoying the game :)

Hi everyone!

Today we are releasing a hotfix to some of the larger issues that you guys have pointed out since the release last week. This isn't the last patch for Federations, and we are making sure to address community feedback as we move along. We just thought that these fixes would be a good way of addressing some of the more common issues!

• Fixed strike craft damage modifiers not being applied.
  
• Fixed so a designable starbase updates correctly on upgrading. This fixes the issue with juggernauts that have been upgraded, disappearing.
  
• Fixed the sectors trying to clear blockers they can't.

Save games shouldn't be adversely affected by the switch from 2.6.1 to 2.6.2, but just in case you do encounter issues, you can roll back to a prior version via right click on Stellaris in library -> properties -> betas -> choose the desired version.

If you want to do crossplay MP between Steam and our other release platforms (Plaza/GOG/MS Store), you need to opt in to the crossplay beta "stellaris_test" by the same method.

Thank you all for your support!

Hi everyone!

Thank you for playing Federations! Your participation and feedback have helped us make a decision to release the 2.6.1 patch to the live build of the game, and it's now available to you all!

This version of the game includes fixes for out of syncs, missing localisations and a ton of other fixes! (Note: You will need to opt-out of the stellaris_test version to play the live version)

You can read the full patch notes for the 2.6.1 version in this post

Thank you all for keeping us in the loop, and we'll make sure to address community feedback as we are moving forward!

// AC, Community Manager Stellaris

Hi everyone!

Today marks the release of Stellaris - Federations and the free 2.6.0 "Verne" update[/i]! We hope you are as excited as we are and that you'll enjoy the new content as much as we do.



Like we mentioned in last week's dev diary, we will also be putting 2.6.1 as a beta version. If you want to read the full patch notes for 2.6.0 as well as 2.6.1 it can be found in the dev diary above.

2.6.1 Beta Information

Please note that 2.6.1 is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch. The beta should have checksum [65d2].

Save games shouldn't be adversely affected by the switch from 2.6.0 to 2.6.1, but just in case you do encounter issues, you can roll back to a prior version via right click on Stellaris in library -> Properties -> Betas -> choose the desired version.

We hope you will be having fun with this one! We will be eagerly awaiting your feedback and reactions!


Get your copy of Federations and watch the release trailer down below!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1140001/Stellaris_Federations/?utm_source=fb-owned&utm_medium=social-owned&utm_content=post&utm_campaign=fede_stpc_20200317_ste_rel&fbclid=IwAR3MOENe9EuZRaDGDeM3tTzbkVtBSLZBLN7FcWgsTnlwUtdP8I2PblevxZY

Hello everyone!

In a couple of days we will finally bring you Federations, an expansion that we’ve worked incredibly hard on for quite a while now. We’re extremely excited to get it into your hands and see what you all think of it!

I’m posting today to bring you the Patch Notes for 2.6.0 (Verne). But before I do that, I want to talk a bit about something we’re doing a bit differently this time around. In game development there are several milestones and key dates that you need to hit to make sure that a game is made. That’s where the Producer (that’s me!) comes in to oversee that things are done in a prioritized manner (within the time/resource constraints we have) and as we get closer to what is called a “Release Candidate” (RC), we have to be as certain we can that we don’t add things that could risk the stability of the version we will put out into the public.

So what did we do differently this time around? The RC we created was ‘frozen’ earlier to ensure an as stable build as possible. Because once an RC is frozen, it is sent to QA for rigorous testing with not only our in-house testers, but also our outsourced partners. Scheduling this requires weeks (sometimes months) of advanced notice, so it’s not something we take lightly. So during this time of testing, we need to limit the amount of times we send them a new RC. Because, a new RC means the testing needs to start over and all the previous testing would have been wasted!

But as everyone knows, especially you guys, a build is never bug-free. We could work on Stellaris on now until forever to fix every bug imaginable, and there would still be a typo in a tooltip somewhere. That is the nature of our industry and software development in general. Which means that after the RC was frozen, we found some issues that we wanted to fix but didn’t want to risk the overall integrity of the RC and put in.

Which brings me to “branching”. Since there were still bugs to be fixed and features to be balanced, we “branched off” from the RC and started working on the first patch we plan to release. That patch is something we would love to get into your hands as early as possible, but as I mentioned before, stability and integrity of a build something that’s extremely important to us. So instead of putting the patch live immediately, we will be putting 2.6.1 as an opt-in beta! Which means that those of you who want to check it out early, will be able to do it on release day.

I hope this has given you some more insight into the inner workings of game development, and if you want to know more feel free to ask questions about our processes (or request another Dev Diary ;) ) !

Please note that 2.6.1 is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.

Also note that save file compatibility between versions is not guaranteed. If you have an important 2.5.0 game going, don't try to load the save in 2.6.0 or 2.6.1.

But without any further ado, if you wanna read the full patch notes as well as added features, have a read here!
And last, but not least, here’s the feature breakdown video for Federations!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hI9jUsW4gs&feature=emb_title

Bonjour everyone, it’s the French Paradox speaking! For those who don’t know me, I’ve joined the Stellaris team this December after a year and a half as a programmer on Europa Universalis IV.

Today, we are gonna talk about AI.


A good introduction for those new to the field

There are several AI modules in Stellaris. For historical reasons we call them “ministers” as each one is supposed to handle a specific role in an AI empire.

There are 3 broad kinds:

• The AI foreign minister handles diplomacy, federations, galactic community, peace deals and the like
  
• The AI interior minister is in charge of the economy. He keeps budgets and order constructions, both civil and military.
  
• The AI military minister is in command of all troops and military fleets, and also responsible for laying out strategic plans when at war.

For each of those ministries there are different “ministers” there are several options that can be selected for every empire in the game. All of those have generic one which behaves more or less like we’d expect a player to and is used for most AI empires. Then we have a bunch of specialized ones for special tags such as space monsters, fallen empires, crisis, marauders and the like.

As almost everything in our games, AI is configurable in script for our modders, although I’m not exactly sure what would happen if you assigned a space monster military AI to the caravaneers ;)

In guise of a welcoming gift when I joined the team, I was tasked with reworking the military one...

To give you a little bit of background, there were several generations of military AIs in Stellaris. The generic one (used by most “classic” empires) was redone by the great @sidestep last year, while the more specialized ones (crisis, space monsters) have kept close to what they were on release. In the midst of the sad and dark swedish winter, I managed to bring some improvements that I’ll showcase today.

First of all, I worked on visualization to help us debug how the AI “thinks”. Funny thing is, it already made it look “better” to audiences even if it didn’t actually change any behaviour. It’s actually something that’s been observed in video games: a good AI tells you what it does, which makes it look smarter. One of my favourite examples of that would be the enemies in FEAR.

So by typing 'debug_ai' in the console and observing an AI empire, you can see what it has in mind:


“I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead. Hey uh, you want a drink?”

As a simple analogy, imagine that the AI has a war minister that looks at the big picture and rates every potential target, a general staff who assign fleets to some of those objectives, and then admirals who try to lead those fleets on a tactical level to achieve those objectives...

Wanna read more about the AI rework? Check out the full post in our forum here!

Hello everyone!

This week we’re back with another dev diary! We apologize in advance for it being a shorter one, but don’t worry, we aim to make up for it with a stream!

Later today at 17:00 CET we will be hosting a stream over at Twitch where we will be talking about Federations and showing off all the features in more detail (such as all the federation perks). We will also be announcing the release date for the Federations expansion and showing off a cool new trailer!

If you have things you want us to show on stream, please don’t be afraid to mention them here!

See you on the stream!

(This post will be updated with more information during the day)