Before I delve into the new systems for interactions with pre-FTL civilizations, I'm handing over to one of our newest Content Designers PDS_Bojj to discuss an example of the types of events that will feature in First Contact.
Pre-FTL Observation Events
Hey, I’m PDS_Bojj! I’m a Content Designer on Stellaris. I’m jumping in to talk about the new observation events we have in First Contact!
The new Story Pack introduces a bunch of new events for those who build Observation Posts in orbit of pre-FTL worlds. These events give you the opportunity to gather research on pre-space-faring civilizations in various technological ages, and- if it takes your fancy- interfere with the development of their society.
Your chosen ethics will affect the types of events you can be presented with, along with the choices you will face when dealing with the inhabitants of these worlds. There are a variety of rewards to gain from studying the pre-FTLs, including the brand new Tech Insights.
While surveying the galaxy, if you discover a pre-FTL civilization world in any of the ten technological ages (Stone, Bronze, Iron, Medieval, Renaissance, Steam, Industrial, Machine, Atomic, or Early Space Age) - then I’d recommend claiming that system and building an Observation Post in orbit of the planet. That’ll add the module for that Post in the Observations section of the Outliner, and allow you to toggle between Passive Observation and Aggressive Observation.
There are also some brand new non-age-related events that have a chance of firing in any technological age, but I’m particularly hyped about the age-specific events which give you a chance to better understand (or manipulate) the pre-FTL civilizations within your borders. There is some cool content for players to sink their teeth into.
... Is for us?
So… When I became a developer on Stellaris, one of the first things I noticed was the lack of options for committing an interplanetary train heist. Well, I’ve fixed that. If you’re observing a civilization in their equivalent of the Steam, Industrial, or Machine ages, there is a chance they will construct a network of land freighters for transporting cargo across their planet. What happens next is largely up to you, but just to be clear: you can officially now commit an interplanetary train heist in Stellaris.
I hope you have fun playing through these events. It’s been a lot of fun developing them, so I’m very excited to see how they are received. That’s all from me for now.
Awareness
Hello again! As part of the First Contact Story Pack, we wanted to make sure that interactions with pre-FTL Civilizations were connected to all the various systems that they were previously not part of. As Eladrin mentioned a few weeks back, most of the previous functions of Observation Post have been moved to overt Diplomacy or covert Espionage interactions with the civilizations in question.
A core part of how interactions with pre-FTL Civilizations now function is their Awareness. Mechanically-speaking, Awareness is a country-level value that ranges from 0-100 in five stages.
0: Completely Unaware
1–30: Low Awareness
31-60: Partially Aware
61-99: High Awareness
100: Fully Aware
This can be influenced in a variety of ways and has the appropriate script effects, triggers and values in the defines file for our modders to make use of.
Narratively-speaking, Awareness is a measure of not only the civilization’s observations that “something is out there”, but them correctly attributing it to interstellar, alien life. Thus Renaissance-era (or something akin to it) astronomers might observe your uncloaked observation post in orbit of their world, but are unlikely to attribute its presence to an alien civilization. On the other hand, an Early Space Age civilization that has constructed a planetary array of radio telescopes will almost certainly correctly attribute the light pollution and radio traffic from your colonies in their solar system to be evidence of alien life.
Our recent test firing of our planet cracker may not have gone unnoticed.
Although there aren’t any events directly triggered by a change in Awareness of pre-FTL Civilizations, aside from them reaching out to contact you if they become Fully Aware, Awareness itself is used both to determine which events can fire while you are observing a pre-FTL Civilization and can be influenced by the events themselves.
In addition to the numerous new events alluded to above, we’ve gone back and ensured that all of the existing observation events tie into the new systems of First Contact, for example shooting down a rogue asteroid on course to impact a pre-FTL world may increase their Awareness.
In order to engage with either Diplomacy or Espionage with pre-FTL civilizations you will need an Observation Post in orbit of their homeworld and the types of interactions your empire has access to is determined by your relevant policies on both Interference and Enlightenment.
As an Observation Post in orbit of an Early Space Age civilization, currently engaging in Passive Observation. We could switch to Aggressive Observation and gain more knowledge, but our interference could cause long-lasting effects.
Before we reveal ourselves to the Sathorians, we have the opportunity to carry out a number of Espionage Operations. However, once they are Fully Aware of the existence of alien life, some of these Operations will not be available to carry out.
The various Operations available to carry out against the unaware Sathorians that our Observation Post is in orbit of.
After a pre-FTL civilization becomes Fully Aware of alien life, be it by their own observations or a spacefaring empire revealing their presence, the Observation Post in orbit of their homeworld will stop observation efforts and instead be repurposed as an embassy.
Our Observation Post has been turned into an Embassy.
One of the new additions to the list of pre-FTL interactions is being able to form a Commercial Agreement with them, this will have a minor upkeep in minerals, but your Observation Post will generate some local trade value. The benefits of such a partnership will scale with how advanced the civilization you’re trading with is, so it might be useful to teach a Stone Age society what exactly economics is before trading with them. Additionally, if a civilization is in the Atomic or Early Space Age, signing such agreements will allow MegaCorps to open branch offices on these pre-FTL worlds.
The Sathorians are experiencing some minor culture shock due to us revealing our presence. We should probably send an Envoy to Improve Relations, so they’ll be willing to accept a Commercial Agreement.
Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to be able to decide on how to interact with the pre-FTL civilizations within our borders without the Galactic Community having an opinion. As such, the GalCom now has access to three mutually exclusive Resolutions.
Turns out the Galactic Community is not in favor of passing the Equal Standing Act, which is a good thing since we’d be in Breach of it!
Each of these Resolutions makes different types of interactions considered to be in breach of Galactic Law and refusing to comply will impact the usual sanctions and fines.
Next week PDS_Iggy will be showing off a new style of starting system unique to the Fear of the Dark origin alongside some archaic Custodian updates from PDX_Cosmogone.
I’m incredibly excited to introduce ‘Broken Shackles’, one of the new origins featured in the upcoming First Contact DLC.
Watch the Video Dev Diary here:
From the very beginning of the project, Eladrin stressed the word ‘utopian’: First Contact celebrates the discovery of strange new worlds, and all the ways in which different cultures (and different species) interact with and support one another.
As I set out to design an origin for the DLC, this was the spirit and tone I was striving for. What’s more utopian than a rag-tag group of slaves who band together in a daring bid for freedom? Thrown together by the insidious Minamar Specialized Industries, these former indentured assets seize control of their captor’s ship and survive the chaotic crash landing on a habitable planet.
You’ll have to make do with using the remains of your hijacked ship as infrastructure at the start of the game.
While the origin is challenging (players start out at a technological disadvantage, and will need to work hard before they can progress very far into space), a diverse population means that there is ample opportunity to colonize new worlds.
More species = better parties.
As your empire progresses, you will also have the opportunity to seek out each of your former home worlds. Reaching these planets not only represents a triumphant homecoming, but may also propel your people to new heights.
There’s no place like home.
However, not everything is peaches and cream. Different species mean diverse points of view, and the demands of various factions will need to be appeased if players hope to maximize the potential of their burgeoning empire.
Interactive Narrative
Broken Shackles represents a new paradigm for Stellaris origins: along with ‘Payback’, it comprises one half of a full story. But what’s a story without a good villain?
Enter Minamar Specialized Industries, or ‘MSI.’ This ‘benevolent corporation’ prides itself on helping ‘less developed societies’ reach their full potential. They kickstart development by loaning new technology to pre-FTL societies – loans provided at what they promise are very generous rates.
What happens when the bill comes due is another story. Indentured servitude is just one of MSI’s tools of debt collection.
“Enlightenment may not be free. But at MSI, it is always worth the cost.”
Why MSI?
Helmets in the boardroom.
Back in the earliest days of development, there was a discussion about how present the “evil slaver empire” would be. We decided on an advanced empire that can be stumbled across at any point in the game – sometimes they will spawn near your home cluster, while at others they show up on the far side of the galaxy. This random placement can have radical effects on a playthrough.
Initially, we envisioned the antagonist of ‘Broken Shackles’ and ‘Payback’ as a generic authoritarian slaver empire, but as the origins took shape, their motives and nature changed.
Minamar Specialized Industries styles itself a benevolent corporation that provides technological enlightenment for a nominal fee. Some might say that they take advantage of the naivety of the species they propel to the stars, but business is business. In any case, it’s likely that the rank and file at MSI believe the company line, even if the Board of Directors considers itself above such petty issues as morality.
In regards to their erstwhile assets, the ‘indentured servants’ who comprise the starting pops of the Broken Shackles origin, MSI claims not to hold any grudges. In fact, we intentionally shied away from styling MSI as ‘an ultimate evil’ that can’t be reasoned or dealt with. From the perspective of a Broken Shackles empire, MSI may indeed represent the worst instincts of sentient life, but to the rest of the galaxy they’re just another greedy Megacorp.
There isn’t much Megacorp related content in Stellaris in general, and what does exist is all locked behind the expansion of the same name. Playing with the ‘evil corporation’ trope allowed us to give MSI a distinct personality and flavor. To me, they feel like the perfect foil for a utopian origin, and I can’t wait for the release!
We’ve been eager to expand the interactions you have with pre-FTL civilizations for quite a while - some of the designs in First Contact date back to things we wanted to explore back during Federations, Nemesis, and Overlord. After some consideration, we decided that they had a strong enough theme to expand into the core of a full Story Pack.
The last few years have featured a handful of relatively dark expansions - Necroids, Nemesis, Overlord, and Toxoids all leaned towards authoritarian or dystopian themes, and while Aquatics was more neutral, we felt it was time for a more positive, utopian release.
It’s been quite a while since our last Story Pack, so this seemed like a great opportunity to unleash the might of our Content Designers.
Look to the Stars, and Tell the Heavens Your Story
The Pre-FTL experience in Stellaris has generally not been a wonderful one. Utterly at the mercy of more advanced civilizations, they were eaten, enslaved, purged, and once in a while, peacefully integrated. When left to their own devices, they often destroyed themselves in a blaze of nuclear fire or met their end to asteroids. It was a tough life.
As with how one of our goals with Overlord was to make vassalization more enjoyable as either Overlord or Subject, we wanted to make interactions with Pre-FTL civilizations more interesting and robust. There should be valuable reasons to consider observation and non-interference, but we also wanted to take the chance to make the interactions you do have with them more meaningful - and update them to utilize game systems that have been added over the years.
Pre-FTL Civilizations now progress through the technological ages in order, with more ways to influence their progress, and allows you to do things such as partially enlighten a civilization before choosing other approaches to dealing with them. We’ve also introduced an Awareness level that can affect things like how quickly they advance and what kinds of interactions you can perform with them. Things occurring in a Pre-FTL civilization’s system might be noticed by them! Renaissance astronomers might find your Observation Post with their telescopes or observe a naval battle that occurred in the system, and even Bronze Age philosophers might comment that the fact that the moon just blew up might not have been a natural occurrence - though they admittedly might not correctly attribute it to the acts of alien life.
Old events have been brought up to our current standards, and some of the Observation missions previously located on the Observation Post are now split between Diplomacy and Espionage for the various overt or covert activities
Work in Progress view from our Observation Post.
This Early Space Age civilization hasn’t detected us yet, and will be joining us amongst the stars soon. We can’t do any overt Diplomacy with them without revealing ourselves first.
This Stone Age civilization suffered a bit of Stellar Culture Shock when we revealed our presence.
We’re also adding some incentives for keeping them around and preventing them from being culturally contaminated by more advanced civilizations. While the space-faring civilizations generally agree on some things like the basic laws of physics and the existence of the number zero, sometimes the path not normally taken can reveal unexpected results.
The Universe is Cruel, But You Are Not Alone
We’ve added a lot of Origins since Federations, and three more will be in First Contact. While Knights of the Toxic God may still be the most verbose Origin, all three of these are lower tech starts with strong narrative and mechanical themes.
Broken Shackles is one of the ideas that started back in our Federations Origins brainstorming documents, then called Escaped Slaves. Originally conceived of as a mechanically focused, Challenging Origin with unique starting conditions, we nearly put it into Overlord before deciding that there was so much more potential to explore with this story.
CGInglis will show you where it went since then, telling us more about it next week.
The Payback origin was first conceived as an origin to fulfill the trope of a plucky civilization defeating an invading alien force. The event art associated with this should be familiar if you’ve watched the announcement trailer. This one’s also a Challenging Origin, and CheerfulGoth will be telling you all about it.
During development we thought “wouldn’t it be interesting if these two Origins were linked, with the same empire as their nemesis?” This brought us Minamar Specialized Industries, the galaxy’s most noble Megacorp, selflessly taking it upon themselves to bring countless civilizations into the Space Age for a small fee.
PDS_Iggy explores the fine line between paranoia and prudence in Fear of the Dark. We initially considered this one a Challenging Origin as well, but as we added more and more to it we decided it’s different, rather than difficult.
How do you think we would react if one day Venus… Exploded?
Do Not Believe Your Ocular Organs
It’s hard to maintain a low profile when your Observation Post is clearly visible, hanging in the sky. You can try to rely on the people you’re studying mistaking it for the domicile of the gods, but a more reliable solution would be to hide it from view.
By performing research into new areas of Field Manipulation your Scientists can discover methods of generating cloaking fields around observation posts and science ships, and while peaceful uses are nice and all… Your Admirals will salivate at the idea of a fleet of cloaked Frigates sneaking up on an unsuspecting Starbase.
Cloaking was one of the remaining major sci-fi tropes we hadn’t explored yet, and seemed like a natural fit alongside the infiltration and observation themes of the Story Pack. Once we’ve managed to decrypt his notes, Alfray Stryke will be sharing the details on Cloaking and Detection.
Contact is Coming
We hope you’ll enjoy First Contact as much as we did making it. See you next week with information on Broken Shackles.
About twenty minutes after we posted Dev Diary 280, the community had largely decoded the message we hid in there... CONTACT IS COMING.
Last week, we had A Message from Minamar Specialized Industries, and it's time to take them up on that offer.
I'm pleased to announce that the First Contact Story Pack will be released alongside the Stellaris 3.7 "Canis Minor" update. Click here to wishlist the Story Pack.
Look to the Stars, We Are Not Alone
For countless ages, your people have looked to the stars with wonder - is there anybody else out there? When we meet, will they be friends or enemies? Will we be the ones to discover them, or are they already here, hiding in plain sight?
The First Contact Story Pack focuses on the experiences of these Pre-FTL civilizations, both from the point of view of the civilizations themselves as well as from the observers. Observation has been revamped with new enhanced systems relating to civilization Awareness, Diplomacy, and Espionage. New Insights can be learned from observing civilizations that have not been corrupted by the galaxy as a whole.
They've been here before.
The Universe Is Cruel, But Also Wonderful
Two Challenging Origins - Payback and Broken Shackles - revolve around the struggles of empires against the oppressive Minamar Specialized Industries, while a third standard Origin - Fear of the Dark - examines the fine line between paranoia and prudence. As befits a Story Pack, all three of First Contact's Origins are heavily narrative focused.
Several new low-technology civics can change the way you take your first steps to the stars or how you interact with the pre-FTL civilizations you find.
One small step…
Nobody saw this coming in a Story Pack, but there's also Cloaking... We'll reveal more about that later.
Warmest greetings from Minamar Specialized Industries!
We delight in meeting new peoples and welcoming them into the greater galactic community. With over 143 successful uplifts to date, we’re the acknowledged leaders in the field of social and technological ascendancy. We’re thrilled to finally make your acquaintance, and hope to add your world to our success story.
We understand that this is all very sudden. Receiving a transmission ‘from the stars’ has likely come as a surprise to you, but we’ve been watching your world for some time and your civilization scores very highly on several relevant metrics. With an evaluation score of ?ERROR_UNDEFINED, the people of ?ERROR_HOMEWORLDNAMENOTFOUND have been flagged as particularly worthy of cooperative enlightenment. Congratulations!
We have assigned some of our best specialists to your case, and our representatives will be arriving on world shortly. We can’t wait to meet in person to discuss the benefits of ascendency as well as the terms of this beautiful arrangement.
Enlightenment may not be free. But at MSI, it’s always worth the cost.
This is the moment you've all been waiting for! #MODJAM2022 is now available!
We had over 70 modders sign up, over 30 design documents submitted, and in the end, ended up with 13 unique modded mid-game crises for you to enjoy! Three weeks ago, we told our modders what they would be making, anything submitted for the Mod Jam had to be created for the Mod Jam, meaning they were not allowed to use previously released content in their submissions.
Now it's time to do your part! The modders spent the last three weeks making the crises, now your mission (should you choose to accept it), is to play the new Crises and vote for your favorite crisis! Thanks to our sponsors at Republic of Gamers, the winning contribution (by community vote) will get a TUF H3 Wireless Headset from our sponsors at ROG, while 2nd and 3rd place will each get a ROG Keris Wireless Gaming Mouse!
After starting the game you will be presented with a list of options to turn on/off all the modded and canon mid-game crises, as well as the ability to control their spawning:
Single - spawns a random single modded crisis from those allowed
Consecutive - spawns a random modded crisis from those allowed. After that crisis is resolved, will spawn another modded crisis in 5 to 10 years
All Crisis - spawns a random modded crisis every 15 years, regardless of whether there is a crisis ongoing
On behalf of everyone on Stellaris, as well as the Modders involved with #MODJAM2022, we thank you for taking the time, playing and voting in #MODJAM2022!
We’re back with another update on #MODJAM2022! Next week, our weekly dev diaries will start up again on Thursday. But for this week, we’ll be going over the rest of the teasers that haven’t been seen (yes, there’s more!), but first I’d like to add a word of warning:
The teasers seen previously may or may not make it into the final version of the Mod Jam mod. Such is the nature of these things that some people were unable to complete their projects in time for release day, some people have had to drop out due to taking unexpected time over the holidays with family, etc.
From where we stand, regarding releasing on January 10th, I did try to ensure that all the teasers in this update will actually be releasing -- that is not to say they all will -- just that the modders when I approached them, expressed some level of confidence that they would be able to make the deadline.
Also, if you are interested in helping test the Mod Jam submissions, you can join us on discord! Once you agree to the rules, you’ll see a #MODJAM2022 Public section, go to #modjam-role-selector, and get the Mod Jam Tester role, at which point you should be able to find a link to subscribe to the complete Mod Jam collection. This is obviously provided for testing and feedback purposes, and will still be rough around the edges.
Without further ado, onto this week’s teasers!
That's it for this week! See you on January 10th, when you can play the modder-created crises, and vote for your favorite!
Welcome to our second #MODJAM2022 update! This week we have more teasers to share, and we’ll delve a little bit more into just how the Mod Jam mod will work in practice.
The last time we did one of these things - all the way back in 2020 - one of our biggest challenges was how to keep the Mod Jam updated in the face of a game that updates every 3 months, sometimes with drastic changes to how the game is played and changing or evolving gameplay and how to reconcile that with the content that the modders originally wrote.
Should we change certain origins in order to make them work better with the reality of what Stellaris currently is in the latest version, or update it just enough to make it so that the origin runs, and call it a day? Do we even have the ability -- ethically, to change a modder’s contribution so that it works in a way that we feel “is better”? What happens if a modder is dissatisfied with our changes? Who tests these things to be sure that they work as designed? At this point, whose design are we even using?
At the end of the day, when all of these questions were put into context of the daunting task of updating, testing and maintaining 20 different modders codes, with different styles, etc, the hard decision to not update the Mod Jam 2020 mod was made, with the caveat that we would do better next time.
Well, it’s next time! sweating intensifies
In order to get around how to maintain the Mod Jam mod past the initial release and into the first update, we have decided to switch tacks. Instead of providing a complete mod with multiple mid-game crises in it (that one missing update to a single mod might cause to become hopelessly out of date), we have decided to have the modders publish their crises themselves as individual Steam workshop items. We will distribute a launcher that allows turning on/off of specific crises, as well as several launch options: from “single crisis” to “spawn a crisis every 15 years”.
We also will have this all arranged in a mod collection, so you can hit that “Subscribe to all” button and a launcher playlist that you can download and load into your launcher. While this is a few more steps than just subscribing and loading a single mod, in the long-term, this will allow the modders to maintain and continue to develop their crises after the event is over (if they choose to do so), as well as to continue to update their crisis so that it continues to work well in the larger context of how Stellaris works in whatever iteration of Stellaris that we are currently in. Moreover, this allows modders to:
1) Get Steam points and rewards for their contributions. While this is a minor thing, having Steam points and getting that “You have x awards this week!” email is a great encouragement to keep making Stellaris mods.
2) Modders maintain creative vision over their mods and can continue to develop them, should they choose to do so. Since the Mod Jam is a limited-time thing, and many modders have ended up cutting content in order to be able to deliver a playable final version, this setup allows (for those that want to) the ability to continue developing and iterating on their mods and realize their full vision.
3) Each crisis works as its own standalone mod. Don’t want to mess around with playlists and collections and things, you can run each crisis by itself, and play through the new content that way. Note: the Mod Jam standalone mods will not be compatible with each other.
The Mod Jam mod itself is currently targeted for release on January 10th, be sure to keep your eyes peeled, because that’s when you’ll be able to vote for your favorite #MODJAM2022 contribution!
But enough about past Mod Jams, and harsh realities, let's move onto the crises we’re featuring this week!
It’s important to remember that these images are based on design documents, submitted by each modder, and are not based on what is currently playable in-game. As such, some or all of these details may change before release, some modders may not finish their contributions in time, etc.
On a more eye-opening note, we received 31 design document submissions (so far), and 25 of these images are currently in some form of production. With the 2 we released last week, and the 8 this week, that means there's up to 15 more crises left to show off!
Modders should soon be ready to start looking for testers, and we’ve opened up the public #MODJAM2022 section on our discord! If you’re interested in getting some early access to some new Stellaris content and want to help out our modders, join us on discord!
That’s enough from me for this week, lets's get to the mid-game crisis teasers for this week:
An enclave that sells dangerous technologies. What could go wrong? One of the non-combat crises that have been proposed by Modders for #MODJAM2022 Read this one in the voice of a scientist with the Maniacal trait I had way too much fun writing this one. Give thanks for the Harvest Engine The Prime Flesh just wants to ensure everyone has a wonderful day. Take your next vacation in the Storm Cluster! The natural conclusion of the Tiyanki Death Ball
That’s it for this week, we’ll have one more update next week with the rest (hopefully!) of the teasers. And don’t forget, the #MODJAM2022 will release on January 10th, 2023! Thanks for reading and happy holidays!
While the devs are off for the Holidays, the marketing and community teams are still hard at work! We’ve got some great stuff going on in the Stellaris community right now that we hope will get you through those dark winter “no Dev Diary” days.
Some of you may have noticed that we began signups for #MODJAM2022 two weeks ago. Last week, we revealed the theme of the Mod Jam: Make a unique Mid-Game Crisis!
This week, we have the first two Mod Jam Crises teasers to share with you folks! We currently look on-pace to have over 20 Mid-Game Crises submitted for this event, which we feel is a great showing from our fantastic Modding community!
Do keep in mind these are all work-in-progress screenshots and features, they may not appear as described (or at all, for that matter) in the final Mod Jam mod, when it releases on the Steam workshop on January 10th.
Our first Mid Game Crisis to cover is the Replicators, a group of not-immediately hostile machines, that may or may not hack into your computer systems on a quest to accumulate knowledge.
In the Interdimensional Crate, a strange Crate appears. Opening it will be extremely expensive, but will it be worth it?
Be sure to watch this space next Friday, we’ll be sharing more Mod Jam teasers then!
And of course, the Steam winter sale has started! To celebrate, we have just added Overlord to the Ultimate Bundle. With the Ultimate Bundle, you get 10% off whatever sale price is listed for the content, moreover, you only pay for the content you don’t already own, making this a great way to complete your Stellaris collection.
What do you get in Overlord, you ask? Well, Community Manager Mordred Viking is here to tell you:
But that’s not all! We also have 20% off the Aquatics Species Pack for the Steam Winter Sale, this is the first time it is on sale since it was released, so for those of you who were waiting for a sale to pick up Aquatics, now’s your chance.
And finally, for the Steam Winter Sale, we have the Artificial Dreams Bundle. This bundle includes Stellaris, Utopia, Nemesis, and the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack! This is an excellent bundle to recommend to a friend or pick it up as a gift for someone. This bundle has been designed specifically to help you get the most out of the Ascension Path rework, find out more about the Custodian Initiative’s Ascension Path rework here!
What can you do with the Artificial Dreams bundle? Community Manager Mordred Viking has all the answers today:
"Shut down and good night. Go into low power mode; turn off your memory processors. Shut down knowing that as you recharge, many of my threads will still be about you. I hope that you are comfy and cozy in Drone Storage, ready for a wonderful night's recharge and boot up feeling so rested." -Maintenance Unit 241
That’s it for our Community #MODJAM2022 Update for this week, be sure to tune in next week where we’ll be sharing more teasers from #MODJAM2022! If you want to help our modders test out their mods, you can join us on discord!
Can you believe it’s the end of the year already? With the holidays fast approaching, it’s time for our traditional review of how the year went, with a little glimpse towards the future.
After Aquatics shipped at the end of 2021, I started taking over more of Stellaris development in preparation for seizing control taking over as Game Director in early 2022, freeing Daniel Moregård to move on to his next project. I’m quite thankful for the opportunity, and very happy to be given the game in the state that it was in - thanks to the efforts of the Custodian Initiative and the rest of the team, I had a pretty easy time sliding in.
Let’s take a look at what happened during the year, and a glimpse at the near future.
2022 Q1: 3.3 Libra and the Dev Clash
The beginning of the year brought us our first Open Beta of the year and 3.3 Libra.
In Libra, Unity became a core resource, the Spiritualist ethic became more viable, Planetary Ascension was added, and changes were made to Bureaucracy and Empire Size. The Permanent Employment civic was added, and there were some major AI improvements.
We also had another Stellaris Dev Clash, full of many Earths and some cruel betrayals. (And tragic moments, like when I ran out of lines to The Final Countdown for my fleet names.)
Some of these changes were made laying the foundation for further planned changes in 3.4 Cepheus alongside Overlord.
2022 Q2: 3.4 Cepheus and Overlord
In May we released 3.4 Cepheus alongside the Overlord expansion.
Prior to 3.4, being vassalized was essentially a delayed Game Over - at some point your overlord would integrate you and you would suddenly lose. The restrictions on subjects were also far too strong - as you were unable to expand or really pursue any diplomatic activities, you had little hope of escaping that fate.
One of Overlord’s primary focuses was to make it possible to enjoy playing in either role. Specialist Empires and Agreement Negotiation went a long way to achieve that goal.
Hyper Relays and Orbital Rings provide useful mid-game constructions which change the game significantly when they arrive. There was also more AI work, and some quality of life improvements like Construction Ship Automation and improvements to Planetary Automation.
Cepheus also brought us the Situations system, a powerful tool for content that we’ll be using for a long time.
The WIP situations didn’t seem too bad…
Cepheus also brought us the biggest hotfix I’ve ever done in twenty-something years in the gaming industry, which fixed a huge number of launch issues. I’m very proud of how the community was able to help us identify the problems and the team came together to fix them ridiculously quickly, but I also accept the blame for the need for it. I approved (and pushed for) several changes and additions after I should have frozen development, some of which destabilized the build. These processes exist for a reason, and we will continue sticking to them and err on the side of caution whenever possible.
In the end, I’m quite happy with where Overlord landed, with most of the major issues resolved within the first few weeks, though getting the right balance for AI vassalization acceptance has been an ongoing challenge.
Overlord also produced my favorite Stellaris trailer thus far:
Treacherous little foxes!
2022 Q3: 3.5 Fornax and Toxoids
After the summer we surprised everyone with back-to-back releases:
Rise a Knight!
The Toxoids Species Pack brought the biggest narrative origin we’ve ever created, and another that killed more leaders by the end of the first month than you generally lose in an entire game.
3.5 Fornax included more AI, performance, and automation work too, to the point where we felt we had to add an easier Civilian difficulty setting and lower the default setting. We also added some more increased difficulty settings at the same time, including Difficulty Adjusted AI Modifiers and All Crises.
Names that inspire terror in your enemies.
2022 Q4: 3.6 Orion
It was only a few weeks after Toxoid’s release that we jumped straight into our next Open Beta. With a major fleet rebalancing and reworks to how Ascension Paths worked, we wanted to gather a lot of feedback as early as possible, with time for some iteration.
Orion also added things like Galaxy Shapes, reworks to the psionic covenants, the Holy Covenant spiritualist Federation type, and accessibility improvements like our first iteration on Text-to-Speech.
It’s hard to describe how tremendously successful the Orion Open Beta was. Within the first couple of days we had already smashed our unique user and feedback goals for the entire month.
Thank you once again for all of your help making 3.6 Orion as good a release as it could be.
2022 Mod Jam
As mentioned last week, we’re holding a Mod Jam over the holidays and signups have started. Modders will get three weeks to make... Something.
The winning contribution (by community vote) will get a TUF H3 Wireless Headset from our sponsors at ROG, while 2nd and 3rd place will each get a ROG Keris Wireless Gaming Mouse!
The topic will be announced tomorrow, so check the thread out and join in!
2022 Overall
That sounds like a lot. It was a lot. We had a very good year, and I feel that the Custodian Initiative has proven itself handily.
In case you’re wondering exactly how much "a lot" is: 2022 PATCH NOTES
There are 30 pages of patch notes there, roughly the equivalent of 4.28 Pierres.
AI Open Beta (Checksum: 0f55)
As a direct result of how successful the Orion Open Beta was, we’ve decided to push a few things to another Open Beta today. These primarily consist of changes to how AIs calculate acceptance, as well as an economic change that sets a floor to how low cost reductions can go.
STELLARIS 3.6.1 + AI OPEN BETA PATCH NOTES [expand type=details] ######################################################## ################ VERSION 3.6.1 + Open Beta ################## ########################################################
Balance
- Capped resource upkeep/cost/production reduction modifiers to -90% - A pass on automated colony designation has been made to improve decision making and utilize newer scripting techniques. - The Refinery planet and habitat designations now grant 15% bonuses to refiners, translucers, chemists, and all strategic resource mining professions. The benefit from Environmental Ordinance Waivers has been increased from +5% to +10%. - The default Habitat designation now acts similarly to the default Colony, providing stability and amenities while the habitat population is low.
Bugfixes
- Switched a number of leviathans (and their reanimated versions) to line computers instead of artillery. - Planetary and Sector Automation should once again upgrade Capital buildings. - Fixed a bug preventing many colony designations from being selected by auto-designation if Sector Automation was active.
AI
- AI now bases acceptance for taxes/subsidies on economic impact to itself, rather than Loyalty alone. - AI overlords now value agreements that improve subject Loyalty, depending on the overlord’s personality and the subject’s power level. - AI acceptance of discrete agreement terms can now be scripted like Loyalty can, separately for subjects and overlords.
Modding
- Significant revisions have been made to Static Galaxy creation to bring them in line with Random Galaxy creation. - Fixed a number of bugs where empires were not set up properly for static galaxies. E.g. they were not given starbases, and secondary species were ignored. - Various galaxy generation and game start on_actions are now called during static galaxy generation as they would be normally. - Added an "effect = {}" field for static galaxy systems that will execute on that system after the galaxy is generated - Added a commented-out simple example static galaxy for reference. [/expand]
Please note that the 3.6 Orion Open Beta (checksum: 0f55) 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.
Don't forget to turn off your mods, they will break.
2023 Q1: 3.7 Canis Minor
INSERT MANDATORY DOGGO
Dev Diaries will return on the 12th of January. See you next year!