Greetings!

Today we’ll touch upon a subject dear to the hearts of many galactic rulers - namely Edicts!

Background
Edicts are meant to be a way for your empire to focus on certain issues without necessarily taking a permanent stance on them. More permanent stances on issues would be covered by Policies.

Although we felt that Edicts do fit this role pretty well, there were a couple of issues with the system that we think could be improved. The fact that Edicts would always time out felt like a little bit of unnecessary micromanagement at times, and didn’t really emphasize the feeling of “I am choosing to focus on these 2 things right now”. We felt that it would fit better if Edicts had a greater emphasis on making choices that you can go back and change, rather than being things you constantly go in and refresh.



An old friend with a slight makeover. Some Edicts are now toggled on/off instead of being on a timer

Edict Capacity
Enter Edict Capacity – a new mechanic that puts a soft limit on how many Edicts of a certain type that you can have active at once. Similar to Starbase Capacity, your empire will suffer penalties if you exceed it, and the penalty in this case being Empire Sprawl. For every toggled and active Edict above the Edict Capacity, your Empire Sprawl will be increased by +25%.

By default, an empire will start with an Edict Capacity of 2, and can be modified by things like Authority, Civics and Ascension Perks. These values are very prone to being changed as more balance feedback comes in.



Dictatorial and Imperial Authority now increases Edict Capacity by +1.



The God-Emperor knows best.



You can now vigorously enact more Edicts.

Not all Edicts will use Edict Capacity, but rather only the ones that last until cancelled will. Edicts that can be toggled will have an Activation Cost and a Deactivation Cost, which is usually Influence. This means that you are paying the Influence when you are making changes, rather than paying to upkeep the Edicts you want.

Edicts that last until cancelled will be marked with a different icon from the edicts (and campaigns) that expire once their duration runs out.




An example of two different Edicts. Red: toggled - lasts until cancelled and uses Edict Capacity. Blue: temporary - lasts for 10 years and does not use Edict Capacity.

Edicts
Some of the Edicts have changed and we have added a couple of new ones, to better fit with the Edict Capacity. Let’s take a look at a few of them:



Whenever you need to stimulate your economy, subsidies can be the way to go. There are Farming, Mining, Energy and Industrial subsidies.



Neighbors suddenly turned hostile? Need to secure your borders? Pass this Edict to refocus your efforts!



Has the galaxy become more hostile? Do you need to build a powerful fleet to project your power? Focus on Fleet Supremacy for a more powerful and imposing fleet.

Pop Growth is problematic, so we have made some changes in the upcoming patch that will reduce Pop Growth from different sources across the board (more on that later). Food Policies are no more, and the popular Nutritional Plenitude is now a toggled Edict instead.



No longer a food policy (they don’t exist anymore). There are different versions for Hive Minds and Rogue Servitors.

Resource Edicts, Campaigns and Unity Ambitions
The model for the new Edict Capacity doesn’t fit very well for all types of Edicts, which is why the rare resource Edicts, Campaigns and Unity Ambitions remain unchanged and keep working like you are used to. This is also better for modding purposes, so that modders have the opportunity to use Edicts however they see best.

Finishing thoughts
Overall we feel like the new system better allows us to structure how the players get the tools they need to focus their empires for certain tasks. As we make more additions to the game in the future, this new system will also allow us to give the players more tools to address certain issues.

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That is all for this week! We will be back again next week with another dev diary, this time about some federation-related content!

Hello everyone,

Since the beta patch hasn't introduced any major issues, we've decided to put patch 2.6.3 live today :)

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

Save games shouldn't be adversely affected by the switch from 2.6.2 to 2.6.3, 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.

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