https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfBJjAhaJXw

Paradox Interactive is proud to announce the new expansion coming to Stellaris - Nemesis!
Determine the fate of the galaxy by pulling strings behind the scenes with new espionage mechanics. Choose to become the Galactic Custodian to counter Galactic threats, or take the menace option to BECOME the crisis - Nemesis gives you the most powerful tools ever available in Stellaris.

Ultimately, you will have to decide whether to grasp the reins of a galaxy spiraling into chaos – or ferment the chaos yourself.

Will you find a way to take power through diplomacy and subterfuge, or will you stand on the sidelines as the stars go out one by one?

You can wishlist Nemesis now here!

Hello everyone!

Today we’re back with another exciting dev diary to talk about a new feature in the upcoming Nemesis expansion for Stellaris.

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

For far too long has the galaxy remained safe from player hands. In fact, more often than not, the player has needed to be the defender of said galaxy. No more! Finally has your time come to become the crisis!
​
Becoming the Crisis
Your first step towards becoming the biggest threat to the continued existence of the galaxy is to pick the associated ascension perk. You need to have 2 other Ascension Perks unlocked before you can select Become the Crisis. The Ascension Perk is available to most types of empires, but xenophiles, pacifists and rogue servitors are unable to have the color purple as their favorite.

There is no limit to the number of players that can pick it, but the AI will be less likely to do so if there is another empire that already has it.



Donning the purple, the Stellaris way.​

Upon picking the Ascension Perk, your path of destruction has begun. You will forfeit other opportunities to focus on your newfound goals.

Becoming more menacing
As soon as you have chosen to Become the Crisis, you get access to a new UI tab where you can see your current crisis perks, and menace objectives.



Work in progress. Names or descriptions may not be final.​

As you perform certain evil deeds, you’ll be rewarded with Menace. Some of these are rewarded upon reaching an objective, while others are rewarded over time while certain conditions are met (such as having a vassal).

To reach the next Crisis Level you will need a certain amount of Menace, and you will also need to finish a special project to take you to the next level. You will need to repeat the process of gaining more Menace and finishing a special project 4 times before you can reach the final Crisis Level.


Finishing the 1st special project, which takes you to Crisis Level 2.​

Crisis Perks
Each Crisis Level unlocks certain Crisis Perks, which can unlock bonuses or new types of ships. As you become more menacing, you’ll also become more powerful through these perks.




A crisis needs to keep its options open.



Some of these ships cost minerals to build. Crazy concept, isn’t it?

You can unlock the following ships:

• Menacing Corvette
  
• Menacing Destroyer
  
• Asteroid Cruiser
  
• Star-Eater

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The further you progress, the more interesting things start to become.

Existential Crisis
The final level for the crisis is no mere label, as you will be able to threaten the very existence of the galaxy.



As the final level is unlocked, an Aetherophasic Engine Frame appears in your capital system. The frame requires a lot of dark matter to upgrade, and upgrading is something that you definitely want to do. Other empires may be less happy about the outcome.



Getting such a large amount of dark matter is no easy task, so a special gathering device has to be used – let us present the Star-Eater. Star-Eaters do exactly what it sounds like – they eat stars.


Behold! A large dark matter deposit.​
Your new goal as a crisis is now to gather as much dark matter as you can, so that you can upgrade your Aetherophasic Engine. The stars are now your fuel towards a different future.

Should you succeed, everyone else will lose.

The galactic community will also get their own tools to try to stop you, which is something we’ll dive deeper into next week

Hello again!

Now that we've gone over several of the basic Operations, this week we want to go over Provocations.

Operations vary in risk and consequences. The simplest Operations such as Gathering Information and Acquiring Assets will only rarely cause major issues between the two Empires, while Stealing Technology or Sabotaging Starbases is more frowned upon and can cause some diplomatic issues. Provocations are the types of acts that the galaxy as a whole will generally take a dim view to, treating them as war crimes. Expect blowback and repercussions from them, even when they are successful.

Part of these repercussions is modelled by the loss of Infiltration - whether it be that parts of your Spy Network are compromised, security holes have been closed in response, or "friends" within the empire stop being quite as friendly. The flashier and messier the operation is, the more your network will be impacted.

Provocations will usually cause the greatest losses of Infiltration, making it difficult or impossible to run other operations in that network until it is built back up.

One Provocation that we're planning is Arm Privateers (Provocation, Economy). It's a fairly advanced Operation requiring an Infiltration level of 60, and has the primary objective of disrupting the target empire by providing weapons and funding to violent and unstable individuals.



Surely nothing will go wrong with this plan.

The weapons are untraceable, so it'll be fine.



These are a trustworthy group, right?

Your spymaster makes a good point there though.



Last chance to back out.



Privateers or pirates?

The Privateer fleet disabled the local starbase and set up their own little pirate base. Their fleet strength is based to a degree on the fleet strength of the empire it was created in, so while it is likely to be only a temporary annoyance, it can prove incredibly useful if deployed at the right time.

As noted during the events, these fleets are hostile to everyone, including their original patrons.

The nastiest Operation to date is the Crisis Beacon (Provocation, Technology).



Surely nothing will go wrong with this plan either.

Crisis Beacon is an extremely difficult Operation to pull off, but if successful, will add the target's capital system as a target of interest to an ongoing End-Game Crisis. It currently has the highest Infiltration level requirement (80) and cost of any Operation. This will typically require an extremely well developed Spy Network with numerous Assets.

If all goes according to plan, this will usually result in the Crisis sending a fleet to "investigate" it in the friendly way that they do when visiting systems.



Goodbye! We'll miss you!

As with many Operations, things can develop in different ways depending on what's going on.



The last time we'll hear from them.

Shortly thereafter, the bait is set.



It's like Prethoryn catnip.

The sacrifice of our operatives (and the rest of the Spy Network that we had built up in the Anathurian Nation) bought us a bit of time as it diverted a Prethoryn fleet away from our own territory. The Swarm chose to support that fleet with other resources, leading them away from our border nicely.

Now, this sort of Operation is definitely an act of war, and we're currently discussing exactly what the consequences should be if you get caught performing such a heinous deed. At the very least, your target is not going to be happy at all with you. (And if you have a Xenophilic faction they might not be too pleased.)

That's this week's dossier of secret information. Next week we'll continue to talk about the Crisis a bit.

Hello!

Today we’re going deeper into some of the things you can do with the Spy Networks your envoys carefully built up last week.

As noted there, building up a Spy Network will passively provide Intel on the empire they are in as their Infiltration Level increases. (This was previously called “Spy Network Level” but has been renamed for clarity.) Once they've built up enough strength, you can choose to run Operations within the empire. A strong Spy Network can have sufficient bandwidth to run multiple Operations simultaneously.

Like First Contact, Operations use a variant of the Archaeology system first introduced in Ancient Relics. Unlike Archaeology and First Contact, however, when Operations complete objectives necessary to complete their mission, they usually do not require your intervention unless something important has come up.

When starting an Operation, you have the option of assigning a single Asset to the mission.

Operations have an energy credit cost to initiate as well as energy upkeep while ongoing. Most Operations pause for your final approval before they initiate their final step, but your operatives can be given permission to launch as soon as it is ready in the UI.

Covert missions are a little tricky, and sometimes things are a little unpredictable. If problems arise during the mission, your spymaster may contact you seeking guidance. Do you provide them with additional resources to bribe the problem away, have them dedicate a larger portion of the Spy Network to the mission (assuming they have any unallocated Infiltration available), or do you scrap the mission and leave the Asset assigned to the mission out to dry? Likewise, even when things go according to plan, sometimes your operatives have to take what they can get - while other times they may stumble upon far more than they expected.



Yes, you can run operations within a hive.

Completing Operations often has an impact on your Infiltration Level - some resources get compromised or otherwise unusable, and depending on the Operation you performed, a hornet’s nest of security may have been stirred. If you had an Asset assigned to the Operation, you will often be given a chance to use them as a scapegoat, burning them to protect the rest of the Network.


We’ve split Operations into four different categories, and here’s a more detailed summary of each type and a few of the Operations we’re planning. (As always with in-development sneak peeks, these are subject to change.)

Subterfuge Operations are common Operations that work to improve the state of the network or do good old fashioned spying on the target empire. Gather Information, Acquire Asset, and Steal Technology are examples of planned Subterfuge Operations.

Sabotage Operations are dedicated to destruction of tangible or intangible things. Sabotage Starbase and Diplomatic Incident are examples of planned Sabotage Operations.

Manipulation Operations twist the truth and replace it with better truths that serve your empire’s needs. Smear Campaign and Extort Favors are examples of planned Manipulation Operations.

Provocations are the most extreme Operations that are almost guaranteed to have blowback. These tend to be relatively difficult to pull off but have major results. Arm Privateers is an example of a Provocation.


Gather Information (Subterfuge) is one of the simplest Operations, requiring an Infiltration of 20 or higher to initiate. Your spymaster will send their operatives out to, well, covertly gather information. After a relatively short period of time the spymaster will deliver a dossier containing the intelligence to you, which might grant a bonus to current Intel level or provide an Intel Report granting increased Intel on a category for a time period.

It’s not the most glamorous of missions, but should rarely backfire in a spectacular manner. Since Intel decays slowly (currently set to 1 point per year), the Gather Information Operation provides a fairly consistent way to learn more about the galaxy.

Assigning an Asset to the mission will skew the results towards the Asset’s interests, significantly increasing the chance of getting an Intel Report targeting the empire’s Government, Diplomacy, Military, Economy, or Technology.



Many Jeferians died to bring us this work-in-progress screenshot.




Operations do not always produce the same results.

Steal Technology (Subterfuge, Technology) is another one that has created a stir on the forums. Through a variety of means, your agents will attempt to gain access to the research databases of the target. Depending on how things go, several outcomes could occur - they might be able to get some hints as to how a technology works (granting it as a research option and providing some progress), they may be able to leave a backdoor (increasing your empire’s research speed for a time), or if things get messy, they could just destroy whatever research they can (inflicting penalties on the target). Your operatives can only take research that your empire has the hope of understanding, so you must meet all appropriate prerequisites.

This leads to an interesting situation where you ideally want to be spying on an empire of greater technological prowess than your own, but that in itself is riskier since they may have a better chance of catching your operatives.



These blueprints are like an Escher drawing.

The Enigmatic Engineering Ascension Perk will block these attempts, as it makes your technology impossible for other empires to reverse-engineer. The spying empire will not know this, however, until they try.



The Sensor Range effect has been replaced as well.

Smear Campaign (Manipulation, Diplomacy) is dedicated to working against the relationship two empires may have. After the first chapter completes, you'll have the choice of which relationship you wish your operatives to attempt to diminish. Later, your agents will inform you of the tactics they want to use, with different schemes proposed based on the nature of the selected empires.

In this example, I'm trying to create rifts within a nearby federation by running Smear Campaigns.



And finally my agents have informed me that they're ready to unleash misinformation upon an unsuspecting foe.





Meanwhile, over in the Ztrakpor Confederated Domains...



Since their Counter-Espionage measures did not detect our shenanigans, it seems that our agents chose to kick things up a notch and add sabotage of research facilities to the false charges. They've caught wind of our false-flag operation as if they had actually uncovered an operation being being performed by their so-called ally!

The galaxy shall hear of this!


Assets have been mentioned a few times now, and the Acquire Asset (Subterfuge, Government) is the most consistent way to gain them. It’s possible to gain Assets through random events during other Operations, but tempting them into your service is much more reliable.

Each Asset has two categories they excel at - one of each from Subterfuge, Sabotage, or Manipulation, and Government, Diplomacy, Military, Economy, or Technology. When an Operation is initiated, you can assign the Asset to be part of it, and for each category that matches, the Asset will make completing the mission easier.

Assets in regular empires are generally everyday people - a disgruntled bureaucrat, an ambitious criminal underling, or a sympathetic pop icon. In gestalt empires, they may be deviant drones that your operatives have found a way to utilize to their advantage, or they might be objects that they have taken control of - a damaged pheromone emitter, a deviant labor drone, a hacked coordination system, or a virus introduced into an engagement protocol.



Blorg. James Blorg.

Hask'Endek here specializes in Subterfuge and Government related activities, making them especially effective when assigned to the Acquire Asset mission. It turns out that having a bureaucrat able to sift through government records to find other potential marks is incredibly helpful!

If complications arise, having an expendable lackey around to take the fall for your operatives can also be attractive. While you may lure them into service with promises of support and glory, they’re really just pawns in your greater galactic schemes. Often, their true fate is to be "cleaned up" as a loose end to preserve the Spy Network's Infiltration Level after an Operation completes.

That's it for this week. Next week I plan on going over some of the other, nastier Operations. redacted.png

See you then!

-ðsžšåÞя©Â£ŠŘ§Ů½æآé-
Attn: Spymaster Utra, daughter of Roba,

Our operatives have provided information on the activities of the vile Paradoxians. Despite their attempts at secrecy, we have managed to acquire some intel. The images our agents have taken appear to be of crude prototypes that they are still refining, but we thought it best to pass this dispatch along now so you can better prepare for the future.

Agent Tiny Sorbet signing off.
-‚ا© ŘŮ æ¢Ã£»£æ¢Ã -•

Hello and happy new year!

In Dev Diaries 193 and 194 we explored the mysteries of first contact, hidden information, and intelligence gathering through diplomatic means.

It may come as a surprise to many, but sadly there are starfaring civilizations out there with whom peaceful co-existence and mutually beneficial diplomatic ties are simply not an option. Against these threats, it may prove useful to utilize the more intrigue-oriented members of your society, and turn to espionage.

Espionage and covert operations are a frequently requested feature that seem to be natural extensions of the intel system that we’ve described in the recent dev diaries. With the obfuscation of knowledge, naturally there should be systems to acquire that information.


Envoys will have a new diplomatic task available to them called Build Spy Network. They will take their place as the Spymaster of a network of covert operatives and agents that they will grow in power over time. Needless to say, the other empire will not be informed of your envoy's new position.


Build Spy Network diplomatic action


Baby steps.

While an envoy is managing a Spy Network as Spymaster, the Network will grow over time - quickly at first, but slower as the Network gains in strength. Networks are far faster to build in large, sprawling empires, and if the target empire’s Encryption rating is much stronger than the spying empire’s Decryption, growth may also slow to a crawl. (Machine Intelligences have a natural knack for Encryption and Decryption, while Hives and psionic empires tend to excel at Counter Espionage.)

Unmanaged Spy Networks (those without an envoy directing them) pause all ongoing activities and rapidly decay.

Spy Networks initially cap out at a maximum level of 50. Several things such as civics or edicts can increase it, and if you have acquired (disposable) Assets within the target empire they also provide a boost - each Asset increases the Spy Network cap in that empire by 5.

Assets are useful pawns, hacked backdoors, deviant drones, or other resources that could come in useful to your Spy Network. An Asset could be a disgruntled Bureaucrat that's been passed over promotion one too many times, a faulty Pheromone Emitter that your operatives have found a way to manipulate, or even a Logistics System that you've hacked into. More details about the acquisition of Assets and their uses will be in a future diary.


Here’s a non-comprehensive sample of some civics, ascension perks, and edicts that have been updated during this espionage pass. Several new Encryption and Decryption related technologies have also been added. (Numbers are still subject to change!)



Some civics lend themselves nicely to covert activities.




Others can modify Counter Espionage, making the lives of enemy Spy Networks easier or more difficult.


Tell us your secrets.


No, really.



More of the new Edicts.


Now that you’ve built up your Spy Network, what can you do with it?

Back in Dev Diary 194 we had a redacted value shown in the Intel breakdown tooltip - Spy Network level is that third hidden value alongside Diplomatic Pacts and Trust.


No more redactions here.

While your Spy Network passively provides intelligence, you can also have them be more active. Your Spymaster envoy can send agents out, using the Network's bandwidth ("Spy Power") to run Operations within the targeted empire while they stay safely at their base.

Operations exist in the following major categories:

• Subterfuge - Information gathering and operations that improve the spy network itself
  
• Sabotage - Ruining things (physical or immaterial)
  
• Manipulation - Replacing the truth with your own improved version
  
• Provocations - Don't do these, they're bad

Most Operations also have a subcategory of Government, Diplomacy, Economic, Technology, or Military, matching the Intel Categories.

More details on how to perform Operations (and how Assets can be used to improve them) will be the focus of next week’s diary. See you then!

Hello everyone!

We’re approaching the end of 2020 and we in the Stellaris team wish you the happiest of holidays! This year has certainly been a challenging one for many reasons, but under the circumstances we’re still fortunate to be working in an industry that has been relatively untouched by world affairs. All we can do is be thankful for what we have, and try to help those around us.

We’re also thankful for the many fans that support us and are excited for the things that we have in store for you all. There’s still a few months of development left, and starting next year our dev diaries will be showcasing the remaining features. I hope you’ll be as excited to read them as we’ll be about talking about them!

While Federations was about cooperation and order, our next upcoming addition to Stellaris is sure to provide a different experience. The fate of the galaxy may be in your grappling appendages, and to what end will you guide it?

Although those hints may be subtle, what I can unveil is the topic of the dev diaries we’ll be starting the new year with. Many of you have astutely noticed that we have been showing clear indications of Espionage being added to the game, and that is indeed what we’ll be talking about in the beginning of 2021.


Work in progress. Game development is fun, and sometimes during development, unintentional circumstances can occur.

I won’t reveal too much about Espionage yet, but I can say that it will tie heavily into Intel and information gathering, but also other things. Similar to how we work with a lot of other systems (like archaeology), we usually combine the new game system with fun and interesting content. We don’t want a feature where you just perform an action and wait until you get a result – we want there to be events and random occurrences along the way.

Starting in the new year we’ll be talking about all of these new features, covering everything from spy networks, to operations, assets and how they tie into Intel. We’re very excited to soon be able to share the progress our team has made.

A lot of teamwork goes into making new features for a game, and each profession contributes to different parts. We’re currently looking for a lot of talent to add to our strength, so that we can keep improving Stellaris and making more new cool content. We have great ambitions for the future, and we need to bolster our ranks!

We’re currently looking for:
Senior Producer - Do you want to help us run our game projects?
Senior Game Programmers - Do you want to help us implement cool new features in the game? Do you want to help us with performance, AI or is something else your speciality?
Mid-level Game Programmers - Do you want to help us implement cool new features in the game? Do you want to help us with performance, AI or is something else your speciality?
Lead Artists - Do you want to help us lead our artists and make sure we can deliver the right assets at the required quality?
Tech Artist - Do you want to be the interface between our artists and our programmers? Do you want to help us create the correct tools so that your colleagues have an easier time with their tasks?
Senior Concept Artists - Do you want to help us add more cool things to the game? We need more people to help us draw things like space dragons, cool new ships or JEFF.
Senior 3D Artist - Do you want to realize the concepts drawn by your colleagues, and perhaps build ships or megastructures?

If any of those roles sounds interesting and well-suited for you, or if you know someone who might be, please don’t hesitate to apply!



Our next dev diary will be on January 14th, but until then: Happy Holidays and stay safe out there! Happy New Year, and let’s make 2021 a great year!

Hello everyone!

Last week we started talking about some of the changes we’re making to establishing first contact, and as promised, today we will continue talking about how you can learn more about alien empires.

All of the things we are talking about today is work in progress and may not accurately reflect the finished product. That said, we still want to hear your thoughts and read your feedback!
It always felt like there was so much missing potential when it came to learning more about alien civilizations in the game. We didn’t like that you had so much information as soon as you established communication with an alien empire – all of their borders would be revealed, and the diplomatic window would reveal most of the other information. We aim to change a lot of that.

We want alien civilizations to feel more mysterious and unknown. We want the experience of learning more about alien empires to be an equally important and fun aspect of exploration.

As we briefly showed last week, we are making some changes to fog of war, and what type of information you will be getting about other empires.

You will no longer see all of the systems and borders occupied by the empire you have recently contacted, but it will now instead be tied to how much Intel you have. This really makes alien empires feel way more mysterious, which is something that we really like.


The information on the empire to the galactic south-east is very limited. We can see their homeworld and the borders explored by our science ship.


The galaxy as seen from the yellow empire in the top-right. There are a bunch of empires that we know very little about, and there are still more that are undiscovered.​

Like mentioned above, our primary objective is to make alien empires feel more mysterious and unknown. We wanted to hide information and allow you to learn more about other empires as you gain more Intel on them. Our goal is to make the Intel game a part of the exploration aspect of Stellaris.


An alien empire recently established communications with us. Friends..?​

Let’s take a look at how we have designed the Intel game to work.

First off there is Intel, which is a value between 0 and 100. You have a current Intel value, and you have a “target” Intel value, up to which it can grow. You usually have an Intel floor, which is the lowest value it can be, depending on a couple of factors such as:

• Diplomatic Pacts (Research Agreements, Commercial Pacts etc.)
  
• Trust
  
• REDACTED (doesn’t look like anything to you)

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Depending on things like diplomatic pacts, trust or other things, your Intel will grow over time.​
Information is split between different Intel Categories, such as Government, Military, Diplomatic, Economic, Technology. Categories can have different Intel Levels as well, ranging from None to Full. The Intel categories and their levels are what determines what information you have access to. Here are some examples:

• Low Government Intel (Intel: 10) would reveal basic things like empire name, authority, ethics, capital location.
  
• Low Military Intel (Intel: 40) would reveal starbases and relative military power.
  
• Medium Government Intel (Intel: 40) would reveal civics and origin.
  
• Medium Diplomacy Intel (Intel: 50) would reveal the opinion breakdown and let us see which diplomatic pacts they have with other empires.
  
• The Intel you have on another empire heavily influences the Intel Categories, but it is not the only driving factor. It is also possible to have a higher Intel level in a certain category than what you would normally get from your level of Intel. One such example is Intel Reports, and we’ll talk about some other examples in future dev diaries.

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Intel Reports allow you to gain more information in a certain category, on a timed basis. It would be, for example, possible to gain an Intel Report which lasts for 720 days and gives you a High level of Military Intel, whereas otherwise High Military Intel might require you to have 80 Intel on the empire.

It is said that knowledge is power, and intel is a form of knowledge. Power usually fades, and so does Intel. It is possible to lose access to information that was previously accessible. In some cases, this information will now be displayed as stale.


Intel, now in the scent of working from home for months.​
The last information you had about the empire was that they were far weaker than you on many accounts, but perhaps they have strengthened their fleets by now? Stale Intel can also mean that you may no longer see if the borders for an empire change or not.

-------

That's it for this week! Hopefully you've gained some Intel into how the game is changing for the upcoming expansion

Hello everyone!

This week we are going to talk about something new that we’ve been working on - namely improving first contact and extending the exploration aspects of the game. All of this is work in progress and may not accurately represent what the game will look like once all of this work is finished. A lot of UI is very much work in progress, so don't pay too much attention to icons or such.

Exploration has always been one of the best parts of Stellaris, and it is perhaps what sets us apart from other games that follow similar themes. Looking back, Stellaris has mostly revolved around the physical exploration of space, discovering an ancient galaxy full of wonders. We believe that exploring and uncovering the galaxy is such an important and fun aspect of the game that we really want to dive deeper into those experiences. We intend to take the next steps by improving the means by which you can establish communication and make the process of learning more about alien civilizations a part of the exploration gameplay.

In this dev diary we will be outlining some of the changes and additions that we are currently working on, so that you can get an idea of what to expect from our next big update.

The first steps we are taking is that we are changing how first contact works. First contact is now a much more engaging process with interesting choices that are supported by great narrative.

When you first have an alien encounter you are able to set a policy for what your approach will be. First Contact Protocols is a policy option that lets you dictate your stance when it comes to dealing with newly discovered alien civilizations. Each option has different effects that should suit different types of diplomacy.



Friends..?




First Contact Protocol Policy options.In order to establish communication with the alien contact, an Envoy will need to be assigned to the First Contact Investigation. The investigation will then be able to begin, and it will run through stages and will contain events similar to an archaeological dig site. The reason why we chose a system similar to archaeology is because its a great way of letting a process run over time in a way where it can also deliver some narrative along the way. The difficulty of the first contact investigation will be affected by things like how friendly the target is, or how difficult it is to translate their signals.

Since First Contact now uses an Envoy, that also means that it no longer pauses Society Research, and it is possible to run multiple first contact investigations simultaneously as long as you have the Envoys required.

(Envoys do still currently not have traits or levels, but it is something we are actively discussing.)




The events that you can get depend on the type of empire you are, and on the type of alien you are trying to contact.

There are friendly/peaceful paths as well as ... less so.

As a xenophobic empire with an aggressive first contact protocol it is possible to secure a couple of specimen for a closer look.





The choices you make during first contact can also have long-term effects on your relationship with the alien empire. Choose wisely and decide which trade-offs you are willing to make. Are you perhaps a materialistic and xenophobic empire that values scientific progress above all?




Stay on your side of the galaxy and all can be well.


Let’s agree to disagree.


That is all for this week! Next week we’ll be showing you some new features that allow you to explore maps like the one posted here below.

Hello!

This week we’re going to look at some more changes we're planning, as well as a review of how some of the experiments mentioned in the last few dev diaries have evolved.

Thank you for the massive amount of feedback in those threads.


Due to the effects on performance and a desire to reduce the micromanagement burden in the mid to late game, some of the things we’ve been deeply looking into are different ways of dramatically reducing the number of pops in the galaxy.

These experiments have generally revolved around modifying the growth (or assembly required) for pops as an empire’s population grows, with some variants trying a logistic pop growth (where growth follows an S-shaped curve as planets develop, based on a carrying capacity of a planet). These experiments have reduced the end date pop count to somewhere around one half of the old numbers with the expected performance improvements.

Organic pops will follow a curve where they begin at standard population growth, increase growth as the approach a midpoint between population and the planetary carrying capacity, then slow down to zero as they reach the top of the curve. Pop Assembly, on the other hand, is generally slow but consistent. The biggest change is that producing a new pop no longer costs a static amount of pop growth - it increases as the empire population does.

A significant reduction in pops has a cascade of major implications for the overall economy, production, and other gameplay effects. As such, these also require a pass on buildings, technologies, and even seemingly minor ripple effects like what the value should be for the trade value generated by pops.

There will be a lot of patch notes.

Most buildings have been standardized to now give 2 jobs per tier rather than the old 2/5/8 progression.


Just one example of many.

We’ve also changed a few buildings to have new or additional features, such as the Spawning Pool and Clone Vats, which have had their Pop Growth modifiers replaced with the new Organic Pop Assembly. This fills the same slot on the planet as Robotic Pop Assembly, so generally you’ll want to pick one or the other. (Clone Vats also picked up a food upkeep cost to represent simple materials to break down.)



Pops is Soylent Green!

A few other jobs got minor perks added to them, like the Medical Workers from Gene Clinics making it a little easier to live on less hospitable worlds.



Doesn't normally produce exotic gas, this one happens to be a lithoid.

And a few new techs have been added to help compensate for lost productivity. One tech line increases both the job production of a planet as well as job upkeep - those fewer pops are still capable of producing the work of more on a developed planet.


As part of the balance pass, Ring Worlds have been bumped up to 10 segments from 5, and the jobs per segment have been adjusted.

Regular Empire Ring World Segments






The Shattered Ring origin now possesses a warning that it may be a Challenging Origin for Lithoids due to a scarcity of minerals, and now also applies the Ring World Habitability Preference to your pops. We’re considering adding a similar warning for Hives selecting the origin, since the habitability preference change puts a serious crimp in their expansion.



Put a ring on it?

Their starting blockers have also been adjusted to give a more balanced spread of jobs.


Like the Ring Worlds, these start with all building slots open. As mentioned before, you can now use the Arcology Project decision on a planet that has a mix of City and Industrial Districts.

Regular Empire Ecumenpolis Arcologies

Note: Empire has all technologies but no traditions active.





The ecumenopolis has a unique distinction of being able to have both the Factory and Foundry building lines on the same planet.


The changes to Habitat modules are much smaller in scope, but here’s the list of their districts.

Regular Empire Habitat Districts







Void Dwellers have gotten a bit of attention as well with some tradition swaps for those that had minimal or no beneficial effects for them.

Void Dweller Tradition Swaps




Replacing Public Works Division:


And for Void Dwellers with the Adaptability tree:

Interstellar Franchising and Imperious Architecture now also function for Habitats.

Some of these updates may not be new to people following the forum threads, but it's easy to miss things so I figured we should go over them.

Many people requested the ability to fully specialize their foundry and factory worlds. We've modified the Forge and Industrial World planet designations to shift one pop on each Industrial District to the appropriate job if possible.





We've also upgraded the Food Processing Center, Mineral Purification Hub, and Energy Nexus to provide an extra job to each of their associated resource production districts. (The Food Processing Center will also improve Hydroponics Farms.)





One of the suggestions made in the thread was to add a civic that increases unlocked Building Slots. Sounded like a great addition to Functional Architecture.


Functionality increased!


We’ve explored some additional options regarding the resettlement system we outlined in Dev Diary 191, and after trying a few things, and have settled on some extensive modifications to the system.

All planets with sapient unemployed pops that are not locked down by migration controls will have a small chance every month of moving one to another planet within their empire that has jobs that they are willing and able to work, housing, and habitability of 40% or higher. This chance is increased if there are multiple unemployed pops that meet the criteria.

The system now prefers to move higher strata pops first, so rulers and specialists will move before workers, and this system also functions for gestalt empires. It will not relocate non-sapient robots. It will generally prefer to move pops to the planets with the most free jobs.

After some experimentation we’ve chosen to keep the Transit Hubs as Starbase Buildings that provide a system wide buff to the chance of auto-resettlement occurring. (Rather than being essential to have it occur in the first place.)


Doubles the chance the pops choose to resettle themselves.

Greater Than Ourselves has been rewritten to also massively increase this chance when the edict is active, with a +200% bonus.

We initially had these pops considering destinations available through Migration Pacts as well, but decided against keeping that since it introduced a new Migration Controls micromanagement element that we didn’t find desirable.

We’ve also done a minor update to the Authority bonuses that seemed a little bit weak.




Democracies now have a bonus encouraging their pops to seek their dreams, and Dictatorships have a bit of an easier time holding things together when they’re a bit overstretched.

Closing Thoughts
One other little quality of life improvement that was just added is this filter on the colonization interface.


That’s probably long enough for today. We’re looking forward to your feedback on these as well.

Next week we'll talk about... [losing transmission]

Hello everyone!

We are finally ready to release 2.8.1 on all platforms. First of all, I'd like to thank all of you for the feedback that you have given us to help us make the best version of Stellaris yet. And secondly, with this release we are hoping to end the post-launch support for Necroids as we shift our focus to [redacted].


Balance
* Added a define OVERCROWDING_ABSOLUTE_THRESHOLD_FOR_NO_GROWTH that sets the minimum number that overcrowding must be for a planet's population to stop growing, set it to 5.
* Redid sector automation scripts and code with the following goals:
** Closed vital gaps in sectors' knowledge concerning the likes of nonstandard planet (habitat etc) districts and bureaucracy buildings.
** All sectors now know about all buildings, i.e. if you put an alloys foundry on a science sector, it will still know how to upgrade it (it will of course still favour research buildings).
** Made checking for whether building a certain building would cause resource shortages and whether there were pops ready to take the job more reliable by shifting them to hardcoded checks.
** The automation will no longer clear blockers before districts are blocked by them.

Stability & Performance
* Moved the calculations for attack radius to threaded code instead of serial.
* Update trade routes every 7 days instead of every day.
* Fixed a nasty slow down when owning many many many planets and opening the planet view
* Fixed an OOS related to fleets.
* Fixed an issue where loading would get stuck when trying to load a lot of mods.
* Fixed being unable to load 2.7.2 saves in 2.7.2 made after installing Necroids.

UI
* Added debug tooltips to the fleet view header and rename button.
* Experimental DX11 mode now supports Chinese, Polish and Russian

AI
* The AI will not try to build a megastructure if it's already building or upgrading one.
* Fixed a case of the AI wanting to attack disabled starbases and getting stuck in a loop.
* The economic AI will now take better account of the resources a district would provide when choosing whether to build one.
* The AI will now check whether it would have any pops on the planet willing and able to take a job before building a building providing that job (i.e. Necrophages will not spam consumer goods buildings when there are no necrophage pops on the planet).
* Made the contingency constructor choose better systems to build in, and fixed their getting stuck after a while.
* Massively sped up all types of purging, with the crisis factions now purging 2 pops per month.
* Various improvements to crisis military AI.
* Fix issue with military AI ping-ponging fleets.
* Fixed AI not changing fleet bombardment stances.
* Crisis countries will now use Armageddon Bombardment.
* Augmented the distance at which AI looks for targets on larger maps.
* The Unbidden will no longer wait patiently to be allowed out of their initial system.
* The AI will no longer sell the last pop of a planet.
* Made the crisis worry less about ship health and more about taking over the galaxy.
* The Necrophage AI will no longer build Houses of Apotheosis so as to make it less likely it'll run out of necrophytes.
* AI considers "Take Point" fleet as objective when appropriate(*)
* The AI is now drastically more likely to know to build shipyards and titan/colossus factories

Modding
* Added "ignores_sapience" flag to job types to say a job works for both sapients and presapients.

Bugfixes
* Corrected name for necroid titan engine effect so the effect spawns in the correct position.
* Added missing undead army translations for Chinese.
* Fixed a layering issue with Necroid Portrait 11.
* Fixed a black face-tentacle on a Necroid Portrait to have color.
* Fix Ships not reaching their assigned slots when there are too many ships
* Evasive fleet now cancel order if the path to their targets contain hostiles
* Made it so the positions of hostile forces are remembered while you're at war.
* Fixed purging and assimilation not working on presapients
* Setting a sector to Production focus now correctly updates the icon in the UI.
* Necrophages with Glandular Acclimatisation will now make pops that suit the local planet, even if they have Necrophage pops that don't on the planet already.
* Death Priest job upkeep raised to 3 Consumer Goods in addition to the baseline level for specialist workers.
* Fixed the Pasharti Absorbers' default purge type being Displacement rather than Necropurging
* Fixed a bug with a Necroid Battleship weapon slot.
* Increased Necroid Corvette size and optimized some other textures.
* Fixed leader clearing by right-clicking.
* Fixed impossibility of swapping scientists between research areas.
* Fixed the Death Cult sacrifice effects so that the counting of Mortal Initiates proceeds as intended.
* The option to play as the Machine Uprising when that happens is now back.

Both countries must have the "follow allies" flag, or the leading country has to be human
if both countries are in a war:
- Vassals will follow their Overlords.
- If they're in the same war:
- - The AI will follow the war leader if they're in a defensive war.
- - The AI will also follow a stronger ally if they're close enough.
- - They'll follow a human player if they're not human.
- If the AI is fighting the Crisis.
- - If they're in a federation, they'll follow the federation leader (or a human player).
- - If the AI isn't under attack by the crisis they'll follow someone who is.
- - They'll follow a human who is also fighting the Crisis.


We hope you enjoy this patch and we appreciate your continued support :)

If you want to play crossplay multiplayer with your friends on non-steam platforms you can opt into the "crossplay" branch in Steam by right clicking on Stellaris in library -> Properties -> Betas -> choose the desired version.