by Eladrin

Hi everyone, long thyme no see.

This week we’re continuing our exploration of the improvements the Custodian Team is making to Species Packs in the upcoming Stellaris 3.9 ‘Caelum’ Update, as well as some of the other stuff we’ve been up to.


Too much reading for a Thursday? Watch the video Dev Diary instead!

First up are some improvements to the Environmentalists civic.
Although the initial version of the Ranger Lodge and the Ranger jobs for the Environment civic were good, we felt that they could be improved upon.

Changes this civic has seen are:

• The number of Ranger jobs provided by the Lodge now scales with the number of Natural Blockers on the planet.
  
• Environmentalist empires can now choose to expand their Nature Preserves, increasing the number of Blockers (and thus Ranger jobs) on the planet.

You should give the Nature Preserves as mushroom as possible.​

• In addition to producing Unity for Environmentalists, each Natural Blocker on the planet (with the exception of Nature Preserves), now gives Ranger jobs a small amount of production of basic resources

Gardeners everywhere know the threat of invasive species.

Now you too can have a Plantoid or Fungoid species that grows like weeds.



The root of the problem.​

Invasive species get +5% habitability and + 5% pop growth speed for each negative trait they possess, and can only select negative or botanical traits.

Will you use them to propagate yourselves across the galaxy, or make that xenophile regret signing that migration pact?

Or perhaps they can hitch a ride to nearby planets using the…

Many plants spread their seeds far and wide through animal dispersal.

Plantoid and Fungoid civilizations now have that option as well.





This origin is so wholesome it’s a little sappy.​

Empires with the Fruitful Partnership origin will begin the game in contact with the Tiyanki, and Starseed Gardens already built on their home Orchard Station.



Space fauna that visit the system are lured to the station, where they partake in the provided fruits, and carry your seed pods with them as they travel the galaxy.


Where are they going to take them…?​

When passing near a habitable world, the seed pods can find a home…


…All clover the galaxy!



And by completing a special project, new life can bloom - wherever it is they brought the seeds.




It was mint to be.



Having your seeds carried away by space fauna can allow colonization of planets far from your home system, but you can also be a little more direct about seeding an enemy planet.


Dropping some sick beets.​

While these seed blockers are primarily just a nuisance to your opponent, if you end up taking the planet and clearing them yourself, you’ll be able to turn them into pops, similar to how Lithoid blockers work.

The Lithoid Theians from last week came from a close encounter with Earth eons ago, our new Plantoids actually start on Earth and explore the possibility of “what if humans were plants”. Naturally, empires that branched out from Earth like the Commonwealth of Man will share your leafy heritage. (Their reputation pre-seeds them.)


Say aloe to my little friend.

SPOILER: FIRST TIME EVER?
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Now, on to some other things coming in 3.9, and no more terrible plant jokes.

During the development of Galactic Paragons and First Contact, we wanted to revisit some of the older interactions with the various Enclaves scattered around the Galaxy, but never found the time, namely:

• Hiring a Scientist from the Curators
  
• Hiring a Governor from the Trader Enclaves
  
• Hiring a Teacher from the Shroudwalkers
  
• Hiring a Salvage Overseer from the Salvagers

As the development of the 3.8 hotfix patches wound down, we were able to get some additional code support for Empire Councilors and got to work.

Coming in the 3.9 update, each of these decisions will grant recruitment of a Level 5 Scientist or Governor, each with their own unique trait (and for owners of Galactic Paragons, a unique Council Position that only they can be appointed to).

This leader recruitment replaces the existing Shroudwalker Teacher planetary modifier and Salvage Overseer empire modifier and improves upon the leaders recruited from the Curators and Trader Enclaves.



The Governors from the other Trader Enclaves provide bonuses to Rare Crystals or Volatile Motes instead.​

However, just because you’ve recruited these Renowned Leaders from Enclaves, don’t expect them to sit by idly if you attack their former home.




The main change that we want to highlight here is:

• NInterface has been moved from commom/defines/00_defines.txt to unchecked_defines/interface.txt. This means that any mods that alter defines listed under NInterface will no longer block achievements or Ironman.

As mentioned in Dev Diary #307, we were looking at some adjustments to the over-cap formulas to reduce their negative effects until the greater rework is ready.

Rather than a linear progression that abruptly hits -100% XP, we’ve replaced the current XP scaling for leaders with a formula that follows a curve.


XP curves for being over capacity (at the base of 6 leaders)​

Humanoids and Necroids will be next week’s primary topic. Alfray will give an update on how Habitats have been going, and what’s this I hear about an Open Beta?

See you then!

SPOILER: PROGRESS
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Sorry about all of the puns in this one.

by Eladrin

Welcome back!

In this week’s dev diary, we’re going to explore some improvements the Custodian Team is making to the Lithoids Species Pack in the upcoming Stellaris 3.9 ‘Caelum’ Update, and then a few other new features.

Before that, I have an announcement to make regarding Species Pack Pricing.

Stellaris Species Packs started as purely cosmetic add-ons, consisting of portraits, ship sets, city sets, and advisor voices. They’ve come a long way since them, now including a much greater variety of content. While the exact spread of features varies by pack, they now all include things such as origins, civics, traits, events, and new mechanics.

As Game Director, I’m especially pleased with how the Custodian Team has improved the quality of the older packs. They’ve added new playstyles and enabled many more sci-fi tropes to be explored during your games.



With the changes coming in 3.9 ‘Caelum’, we believe that the older Species Packs will be on par with the newer ones, and we’re planning an increase in the base price of the Plantoids, Humanoids, Lithoids, and Necroids Species Packs from $7.99 to match the $9.99 base price of the more recent Aquatics and Toxoids Species Packs.

Per the promise made by Fredrik Wester several years ago, we are announcing this change ahead of time so anyone that wishes to purchase them at the current base prices will have an opportunity to do so. They will be available with the current base price for at least 30 days, and will be changing alongside the release of 3.9 ‘Caelum’.

Stellaris will be taking part in the Steam Strategy Fest. This will give you a chance to get the affected Species Packs at a discounted price before the price change goes into effect.

I’ll now detail the improvements made to the Lithoids Species Pack. Improvements to the other Species Packs will be a major focus of dev diaries over the next few weeks.

My very first Stellaris Dev Diary was #157 - Things That Rock.

The Lithoids Species Pack was the first one that wasn’t exclusively an art pack. The Lithoid trait added interesting game mechanics to the phenotype, we had a few Lithoid specific traits, some event changes, and the Terravore variant of the Devouring Swarm.

The purely cosmetic Species Packs were updated in subsequent releases, but while it did get an Origin in Federations and more traits in 3.5 ‘Fornax’, Lithoids hadn’t gotten quite as much of an update from the Custodian Team as the packs. Of quartz I thought that we should dig up some improvements.

I’ll turn things over to Iggy now to talk about some of the changes.

—

Greetings all, Iggy here!

Since the release of Galactic Paragons, the Custodian Team has been working on improving the value and quality of older DLC’s. Today I will be talking about what we have done for the Lithoid Species Pack.


As previously shown in DD #305 we returned to Calamitous Birth to give it some love. This includes removing the habitability loss from Lithoid Craters for Lithoid pops as well as increasing the effectiveness of lithoid exclusive traits such as Gaseous Byproducts on the Massive Crater world.







We also talked about how terravores have gotten a glow up. No longer will you need to sit and click a decision every 6 months as you consume your world! Now it’s all handled in a handy compact situation. The output should still be exactly the same as before thanks to clever script math so don’t worry about this being a nerf to acquired pops or resources.


Crunch crunch!


Not satisfied with only buffing these two old pieces of content we also felt like the species pack could do with a bit of a polish to stack up to current species packs.

First up: Void Hive


I love this icon so much

As you can see it’s a Hive Civic with quite a unique effect and if the habitat changes discussed in DD #306 go through it would be a powerful addition to your Void Dweller Hiveminds.


Iggy making potentially game breaking hive content? SHOCKER!

This civic plays around with the flavor of a Hive Mind that is capable of surviving out in space and the dangers of vacuum. While you still can build gathering stations it goes against your nature to instruct specific drones to do so and will cost you some Unity. They also excel at creating structures in space, whether they be habitats, dyson spheres, or hyper relays, so get out into the dark void already!

The other new civic added to the Lithoid Species Pack is Selective Kinship.

This civic is not for the xenophiles so please, avert your ocular organs.


Meat. They’re made out of meat!

This civic also comes with the lithoid species pack and lets you create an empire consisting only of your primary phenotype such as Lithoids, Aquatic, Mammalian, etc. Though don’t think it will be smooth sailing because you won’t like anyone not conforming to your standards and they will really not like your bigoted thinking. However if you really want to have some friends the Hegemon and Common Ground origin will ensure that your member nations are your phenotype if you choose to start with this civic.


Thanks, Iggy.

We’ve been having a lot of questionnaires and feedback sessions with players, and one of the things that is often requested is some more relatable characters in the various phenotypes. While we’ll of course continue creating horrific alien monstrosities, the art team took this opportunity to add a few new portraits to Lithoids, Plantoids, and Humanoids.



For Lithoids, the Federated Theian Preserves will be a new prescripted empire that begins on the Desert World of Theia, in the Titawin system.

Billions of years ago, two planets formed from the primordial material in orbit of Sol - ancient Earth, and Theia.

Rudimentary life evolved on both worlds, biological in the case of Earth, and lithoid on Theia. For eons, these sister planets maintained a peaceful revolution around their star. Then came the cataclysm.

The planets collided, and in the moment of impact, microbial life was exchanged. Earth survived, and Luna was formed. What remained of Theia was jettisoned from the system.

On this rocky colony ship, life from ancient Theia traversed the void before it was caught in the gravity well of the star Titawin. Crashing into one of the system's worlds, a new species was introduced to the local biosphere. A few short millennia later, the Theians took to the stars, seeking to understand the universe as well as their own heritage.


Work is still being done on the lava shader.

May they find their way home!

On to some other 3.9 changes…

Some players have commented that they often find themselves saving an Ascension Perk slot for an indeterminate amount of time, waiting for the required research for their desired Ascension Path to appear.

The Ascension Perks that unlock the four Ascension Paths have had their requirements changed so that they now be taken as your third AP at the earliest instead of as your second AP. We have removed the Technology requirements and moved those to progressing down the Tradition Tree associated with that Ascension Path.





Each Ascension Path now has an Agenda that grants 25% progress in technologies associated with that Ascension Path, which should ensure that you are no longer reliant on random chance to acquire these technologies. These Agendas have a reduced cost and cooldown compared to normal Agendas, though some have modifiers based on Empire Ethics compatibility with the Ascension Path.





These agendas advance to the next relevant technology if you finish some research while the agenda is ongoing.


One of the complaints we’ve had with Gestalt Councils is that Nodes cannot be replaced unlike the Councilors for regular empires. This means that you are no longer locked forever to traits that might be useful for your Nodes in the early-game but fall off in the mid- to late-game.

To solve this, we’ve added three new Society technologies to Machine Intelligences (and Hive Minds) which unlock a set of new Council Agendas that replace the existing Nodes, after a bit of reformatting (or vivisection).


TODO: Icons



The first technology will unlock the Agendas themselves, while the following technologies will unlock modifiers that improve both the Agendas and your Council.

The newly created Nodes will initially start at level 1, though this can be improved to a maximum starting level equal to the level of the reformatted/culled Node depending on Technologies, Traditions and Civics.

Next week we’ll be going over improvements to the Plantoids Species Pack and some more other changes coming in 3.9 ‘Caelum’. Humanoids and Necroids will be the following week.


These are not plantoids. But you’ll get to meet them in the plantoids dev diary.

Spoiler: Updated Progress Image
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by Eladrin

Happy Thursday!

This week we’re looking at another of our Summer Experiments, though this one unfortunately didn’t work out as well as we had hoped.

Class-based leader limits.​

Galactic Paragons reintroduced a limit to the number of leaders you could recruit at one time, and while it was a soft cap that you could exceed, experience gains were reduced and once you hit twice the cap, all leader experience gain stopped. In subsequent patches, we relaxed some of the numbers and added more ways to increase the cap, but it’s still a rather unpopular system that could use some work.

Currently, the presence of a less valuable leader (like a General) takes up the same “space” as something like a Scientist or Admiral, which leads to some unsatisfying gameplay decisions.

I mentioned a few things we were planning on looking at back in Dev Diary #302, along with some of the issues we expected to run into.

During our experiments we added the ability to have individual leader caps by class, so that General mentioned above would use up General capacity, but Scientists would be governed by their own limit. “Over cap” effects would likewise be per-class, so if you had too many Admirals, their progression would slow, but other leader classes would be unaffected.

We also experimented with retaining “wild-card” capacity, so you could always get a few over before starting to run into penalties.

This experiment largely failed due to UX issues. Stellaris isn’t always the easiest game to parse information from, but this turned out diabolically bad and difficult to fix.

The information transfer is made even harder by Envoys acting as their own “special version” that have their own capacity but behave entirely differently from all of the other leaders.


It says we have 1 leader out of 3, but we actually have 4 out of 5-8. Oh no.


1/1 Admirals, 0/1 Generals, 1/2 Scientists, 2/1 Governors, 0/3 Envoys (but actually 3 Envoys, 0 of which are being used), plus the Wildcards. This could possibly have been shown as something like 1/0/1/2 (+2) | (3), but that’s very confusing.​

Five different leader types plus the wildcard was too difficult to explain clearly in the top bar (where the limited space is a major issue) and even in the expanded space available in tooltips.

After several variants and some UX design time, we deemed this variant a failure. We could have continued spending time refining this - but decided that we’d rather pursue a greater rework that we’re hoping to release alongside the 3.10 update. (Custodian initiatives do not generally have hard release dates - if it’s not ready by 3.10 freeze, it’ll move out to 3.11.)

I’ll go into full details after Caelum is released, but the quick summary involves consolidating the five leader classes down to three (Commanders, Diplomats, and Scientists) and reworking how Envoys are used. (As they would be merged into the Diplomat class.)


Yes, we've had one, yes, but what about second leader rework?​

Until then, we’re planning on making some adjustments to the over-cap formulas to reduce their negative effects until the greater rework is ready.

Like the Stellaris 3.1 ‘Lem’ update, 3.9 ‘Caelum’ has a lot of general improvements scattered across a great number of game systems.

Common Ground and Hegemony are getting some improvements:

• Your starting federation members no longer own your immediately neighboring systems, allowing both you and them some room for early expansion.
  
• The Federation now starts with 0 Cohesion (instead of -100) and halfway to Level 2 (600 XP instead of 0 XP).
  
• The requirements for the Origins have been relaxed to allow non-genocidal Hive-Minds and Machine Intelligences to take them. This also allows your AI federation members to occasionally spawn as Hive-Minds or Machine Intelligences.

We also have some balance changes done for Archaeotechs:

• Halved the energy upkeep of the Facility of Archaeostudies.
  
• Added the Archaeotech Focus admiral trait, which grants increased damage and fire rate with Archaeotech weapons.
  
• Decreased the research speed and draw weight for Archaeotech from the Expertise trait, but made it reduce the Minor Artifact cost for ship components.
  
• The starting head of research for Remnants empires now has the Expertise: Archaeostudies trait.
  
• The Archaeoengineers AP now reduces Minor Artifact cost for ship components by 10%
  
• Increased the range of Macro Batteries by 50%.

Here are some things that we’ll be talking about in the next few weeks:


Pixelated collage of lots of tooltips that I figure you'll have deciphered by the end of the day. We’ll reveal all of these, and more.​

We’ll be starting with all the improvements to the Lithoids Species Pack, that are intended on bringing it up to the level of the others..

See you then!

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

I hope your summers have been going well! I got a bit sunburnt, but today we’re back and ready to talk about some of the promising experimentation we’ve been doing with the Habitat system.

We’ll be going through the entire development process in this dev diary, so there’s going to be a lot of ideas that were interesting but were subsequently discarded for various reasons.

The Stellaris Custodian team looks to three primary categories when deciding what to pursue:

• Directives: Things dictated by me, the Game Director, usually for long term strategic reasons.
  
• Community: Things you ask for. Pain points, quality of life improvements, bug fixing, and other good ideas from the community.
  
• Passion: Things the individual developers really want to do.

Conveniently, a lot of times all of these align quite nicely.

Let’s start by looking at the history of Habitats in Stellaris.

Habitats were introduced way back in the 1.5 ‘Banks’ update in Utopia.

In 2.3 ‘Wolfe’, alongside Ancient Relics, we removed the Voidborne requirement to build Habitats, adjusted their habitability a little bit, and gave them varying districts based on what they were built over.

The 2.7 ‘Wells’ patch made the next major change to Habitats, adjusting their costs, requirements, and adding multiple tiers.

Since then, we’ve added a couple of special Habitat variants, and various other reworks have shifted their fortunes up and down in the overall balance of the game. Recently, there have been many requests from the community to review the tendency of AI empires building dozens of Habitats when they’re otherwise unable to expand.

Due to how production and population work in Stellaris, this led to an interesting quandary - it is theoretically “correct” for the AI to create many Habitats if it was blocked in, but it was tedious as a player to deal with invading up to a dozen Habitats per system. (The current interactions with population growth have also always been troublesome on the game balance side.)

Habitats were feeling far too common, were too good at certain things, and weren’t capturing the base fantasy that we were looking for. They’re the central pillar of a very popular playstyle that we wanted to preserve, though, so this made them a perfect target for “summer experimentation”.

Everything in this dev diary is considered experimental, and may or may not make it live.
All numbers are placeholders for prototyping purposes only. There is no set release date for any of these changes at this time, but we welcome community feedback.

One of the most common requests from the Community was to add a Galaxy slider to restrict the use of Habitats. Options could have ranged from banning Habitats entirely, to “Nobody (except Void Dwellers) can create Habitats”, requiring the Ascension Perk to build them again, restricting only the AI, or placing (hard or soft) limits to the number of Habitats that could be built.

We also discussed “what if Habitats cost fractional Starbase Capacity to build” - with Void Dwellers and the Voidborne AP granting discounts to this value. This was more appealing, since the soft cap would control AI use of Habitats nicely without significantly hindering players that wanted to go all-in on them.

These discussions led to some questioning about whether Stellaris Habitats were satisfying the general fantasy well enough, and whether Habitats should be more “hard sci-fi”, with lower habitability bases or even ceilings for those accustomed to planetbound life, and whether we could make changes that would address balance challenges like Hive Void Dwellers.

We made a list of some of the current challenges caused by the existing Habitat system, and this led to the idea of “what if all the Habitats in a system were linked?” We could retain the interesting expansion of Habitats across a system while reducing the burden when seizing the system, and potentially address some of the other problems introduced by an excess number of Habitats in the galaxy.

Alfray threw together an incredibly hacky and utterly unshippable version of this, and continued iterating on it during the Summer.

Under this variant, the first Habitat built within a system is the Central Habitat Complex. Additional Habitats are Support Habitats that add additional space and versatility to the Central Complex. A reminder, many values are grossly unbalanced placeholders in the following screenshots.

At this point I went on vacation, so I’ll turn this over to Alfray to talk about his investigations.

Keep in mind that the numbers shown in the below screenshots are never intended to be the final values, but were used purely for testing purposes of how the systems felt to use and play with.

Firstly, to counteract the expected changes that with minimal Support Habitats, the Central Complex would be small, cramped and overall not great to live on, I gave Void Dwellers extra districts and building slots as a unique modifier (This saw further refinement in a later prototype).



Support Habitats as Megastructures:​
The first iteration of these prototypes made use of Support Habitats as additional megastructures.









In this prototype, we had the maximum amount of each type of resource collection district (Energy, Minerals, Research) limited by the size of the deposits the habitats were constructed over, similar to how buildings for Strategic Resources are limited.

Support Habitats provided additional Districts, Building Slots, and Housing to the Habitat Central Complex, while reducing the Habitability (to reflect the civilian traffic between habitats) as they are upgraded. The final tier also allowed the Habitat Complex to use deposits on moons of their orbited planet.

On the surface, this prototype seems to satisfy our initial requirements and more:

• Conquering systems with Habitat-spam was easier due to there only being one functional “planet” per system.
  
• Constructing multiple Habitats per system felt rewarding as it upgraded your existing colony.
  
• The removal of multiple starting colonies removed one of our main concerns for allowing Hive-Minds to have access to the Void Dweller origin - their high pop growth rate due to excessive numbers of spawning pools in the early game. (Iggy had some thoughts on this that he’ll be mentioning in a future Dev Diary).

A Void Dweller Habitat Complex.


The rather cluttered system said Habitat Complex is in.​

However, the Support Habitats couldn’t be interacted with outside being upgraded, which felt like a major downside. Enemy ships would happily fly past and ignore the Support Habitats, they couldn’t be specialised or downgraded.

All things considered, this prototype showed that making habitats into a single logical planet spread across many entities in a solar system felt good, but megastructures were not the path forward.

Support Habitats as “Starbases”:​

Keep in mind that the numbers shown in the below screenshots are never intended to be the final values, but were used purely for testing purposes of how the systems felt to use and play with.

The below screenshots feature placeholder art and the default art for starbases, their buildings and modules.

The second iteration of this prototype investigated treating Support Habitats as special Starbases (much like Orbital Rings).

In this prototype, the districts available to Habitat Central Complexes depend on the configuration of any Support Habitats in the same system. Thus construction of a Habitat Central Complex would automatically build a neighbouring Support Habitat in orbit of the same planet.

When built, a Support Habitat would start with a module that matches any deposits on the planet it orbits. Each <District> Module on a Support Habitat, gives +3 Max Districts of that type to the Habitat Central Complex.

Upgrading the Support Habitats, still provides the same modifiers as shown in Megastructure Prototype. Additionally each tier of the Support Habitat allows construction of an additional Support Habitat module and the second and third tiers allow construction of a Support Habitat building.


Expanded Support Complex v2 -- The starting Habitat Central Complex and its neighbouring Support Habitat for a Void Dweller empire.


New Habitat Complex v2 -- A newly constructed Habitat Central Complex, completely unspecialised.​

Allowing the choice of which districts the Habitat Central Complex has access to via specialisation of the Support Habitats brings some interesting changes to how Habitat-dependent empires play.

Due to the nature of the prototype, the buildings for Support Habitats haven’t seen much investigation yet, but would likely include buildings much like those on an Orbital Ring, the lunar extraction support that Advanced Support Habitats experimented with in the Megastructure Prototype above and other such buildings.


Research Habitat Complex, v3 or so? A Research Habitat Complex, using some of the district capacity to provide hydroponic districts.​

Due to the nature of summer experiments, we can’t say if or when this prototype might make it into the live version of the game, but it’s something that we’re interested in exploring further.

Thanks, Alfray.

That variant listed achieved a lot of the goals we were looking for, but was cobbled together out of the scripting equivalent of sticks and twine as a quick and dirty implementation. It also required a lot of back and forth clicking that we really weren’t too fond of. So after that one burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp, we came up with another iteration.

My feedback: Simplify things.

The latest variant we’ve been playing with has been especially promising. In this one, we turned the “Starbase” style Support Habitats into single tiered “pre-specialized” units (renamed to “Orbitals” for UX purposes) rather than requiring Modules to be built on them - so you could build a Mining Orbital, Research Orbital, and so on.

This dramatically simplified the flow of building out Habitats while simultaneously improving the implementation.


Pre-Specialized Research Orbital.


Habitat Transit Hub. Hey wait, Maintenance DRONES? Unique buildings on the primary habitat complex can increase the effects of the orbitals.


Upgraded Habitat Transit building.

We’re still doing some experimentation with this model, but so far we’re liking what we’re seeing. Technologies can add special Orbital types or buildings that can modify the primary Habitat Complex, and it’s very easy for us (or modders) to add new types.

We've been looking at jobs per districts too - the Complexes have different challenges from the older Habitat system, and further updated the Voidborne Ascension Perk. Void Dwellers will start with its effects (similar to how Teachers of the Shroud empires effectively start with Mind over Matter).




Void Dwellers get Habitat Build Cost reductions in Traditions.​

For now, I’d like to get some of your thoughts on what you’ve seen today, which we’ll bring into our internal design discussions. It would also be great to get feedback on whether you like this sort of diary, where we go through the overall process (including the failures).

Next week I'd like to talk about a Summer Experiment relating to leaders that didn’t pan out quite so well, and our plans on how to proceed with that.

See you then!

written by: MrFreake, jasonpepe, AlphaAsh, Jamesfire, corsairmarks, michaelmakesgames

Hello Stellaris Community!

You’ll be pleased to know that dev diaries are currently scheduled to return next week! In the meantime, we are going to take this opportunity once again to highlight some of the lesser known mods from the Steam workshop.

This week, we will be looking at mods that add internal political interactions within your empire, from new factions, to leveling your rulers, new mechanics for vanilla civics and even an industrial overhaul. This is an exciting lineup of mods, and – judging by the sheer number of people who are interested in an Internal Politics rework – one of these could be just the mod you were looking for. handwave

If you’re a Modder, and are interested in having your mod featured in a future Mod Highlights, please fill out this form. After this week Mod Highlights will be moving to a longer-form biweekly or monthly publication (depending on the number of interested modders we get), and either taking the place of Dev Diaries when there’s no news (eg. Summer and Winter holidays), or the second Monday of each month.

So if you are liking this format, keep an eye out for future Mod Highlights!

# # # #



Features

• Up to 15 new extremist factions can now form in a run.
  
• There's one extreme faction for Xenophobes, and two for all other ethics. Sorry gestalts - you get no extremist factions. Sad face.
  
• There are pros and cons to promoting or suppressing extremist factions.
  
• ...and also banning each of the factions. Yes, you can ban extremist factions.
  
• Some factions oppose each other. Think before you promote/suppress/ban one. Another faction may be very pleased... or very upset.

Summary

This mod includes 15 new extremist factions, one for Xenophobes, and two for all other ethics. There are pros and cons to promoting, suppressing and banning each of the factions.

Some of the factions are also opposed to each other, in such a way that promoting one faction will pee off any opposing faction, or suppressing or banning a faction will please any opposing faction. You aren't told which factions oppose which - experiment and find out.

You absolutely should not use this mod if you dislike red indicators in the factions screen. Or dislike not being able to get 100% approval from all factions all the time.

No, really. I get it, it's not for everyone. With this mod it is intended to be very difficult to keep all factions happy at the same time. It is intended for you to make tough decisions about which factions to promote, suppress or ban. It is intended that you will make compromises with policy, ascension and a few other areas of running your empire when managing factions. It is intended that your Unity from factions may fluctuate, sometimes seeming excessive, or lacking.

Inspiration
Factions are a feature that needed more bite. This mod does that.




# # # #

This next mod was hard to classify, since it has a mix of both diplomacy and internal politics. I put it in the internal politics highlight, because I write these things and that’s what I wanted to do. Stop judging me.

# # # #



Features
Adds new mechanics to the following civics for increased depth and RP:
- Exalted Priesthood
- Nationalistic Zeal
- Parliamentary System
- Shadow Council
- Technocracy
- more on the way!

Summary
Exalted Priesthood:
- Lead a Galactic Faith that other Spiritualist empires can join
- Use the Ideology casus belli to forcefully convert empires to your faith
- Compete with other Exalted Priesthoods to win followers
- Contend with the spread of unorthodox beliefs -- reform your faith or declare heresy!

Nationalistic Zeal:
- Balance your nation's Zeal
- If your zeal gets too low, you get Nationalistic Disgrace
- High zeal grants strong military bonuses, but too much causes Nationalistic Hubris
- If you lose a war or any territory while you have Hubris, you are immediately Disgraced

Parliamentary System:
- Planets elect factions to represent them in parliament
- Each faction has a unique effect on the planet
- The factions and political power of the planet's pops determines who wins (with a bit of randomness)
- If you don't like the election result, you can "find some more votes" for your preferred candidate, but you risk a scandal!

Shadow Council:
- Appoint your non-Councilor leaders to positions in your Shadow Council
- The more Shadow Councilors you have, the less experience your "legitimate" Councilors earn
- Six different Shadow Council positions, each with a unique effect that scales to the leader's skill
- Shadow Councilors can get exposed, and you'll face a tough choice

Technocracy:
- Your non-scientist leaders can start with the Technocrat trait, producing a little science
- At level 4, your Technocrats choose a specialization (Physicist, Social Scientist, or Engineer), with a unique effect depending on the leader's class

Each civic's new mechanics can be individually turned off if you don't want to play with them all.

Inspiration
I like playing civics that have a big impact on gameplay! Sometimes I want to choose a civic that fits with the RP of my empire, but the effects are a bit boring... So I made Uncivic to add some new life to conceptually interesting but mechanically simple civics.





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Those of you who remember MODJAM2020, might remember this as a mod that started off as an Origin, but now contains almost a total overhaul of how vanilla industries work!

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Summary
Industry in Stellaris is simple, and abstracted to the point of not making much sense. Not only that, but critical methods of industry that should be utilized by space-faring empires are missing entirely.

Features
Rise of Cosmic Industry is composed of 7 modules that can be independently disabled at game start, and come with minimal overwrites:

• Orbital Infrastructure is an implementation of Orbital Districts on planets, opening up more options for planetary development.
  
• Realistic Development overhauls how things are built, using a Labour-like system called Industrial Production, so that 2 planets don't build twice as fast as 1 for some reason.
  
• Factory Automation implements Automated Factories, for making resources without pops.
  
• Space Exploitation is an expansion to Space Mining using Minor Colonies, allowing you to exploit celestial bodies more thoroughly.
  
• Fallen Empire Buildings provides a third tier of Buff Buildings, that increase the production of their appropriate job, as well as produce some resources on their own.
  
• Cargo Ships provides Cargo Ships that can be used to form trade routes with other empire's planets, granting both planets resources based on their existing production.
  
• Shipping Costs makes planet-level deficits cost some energy credits to represent shipping in materials to cover the deficit.

In Rise Of Cosmic Industry, I provide new mechanics and new content that better match how I feel this should work, and in some cases just add missing tech.




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Want to get your ruler to the next level? Jasonpepe has you covered with this next mod!

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Features
Unique Skill System for every empire Ruler(s).
1. Customize their focus
2. Spend their Execution points for campaigns when necessary
3. Leaders are self-learning and will level up over time

Summary
A mod that allows player to customize their Ruler's abilities, which includes:

1. Ruler Foci: A UI which allows players to customize their Ruler's Focus and Categories.

2. Every leader has Execution Points and Idea Points.

• Execution Points: Spend to level up categories and launch Ruler Campaigns.
  
• Idea Points: Used to unlock or skill up focuses.
  
• Rulers can only have up to 15 Execution and 15 Idea points.

3. Each Ruler has their Charisma, Affair, and Inspire skill levels.

• Charisma: Determines the speed of gaining Execution Points.
  
• Affair: Determines the progress speed Ruler Campaigns.
  
• Inspire: Determines the speed of gaining Idea Points.
  
• Ruler’s species traits will also effect the base-value of the 3 skills.

4. Ruler Campaigns: Short-Term, powerful Campaigns that appear from time to time. More Campaigns can appear with higher Affair skill levels.

5. Over time, Rulers will gain Skill Points (scaled by their Affair skill level). Skill Points can be used to improve Ruler's Charisma, Affair, and Inspire skills. Skill Points can also be converted to Execution & Idea Points.

Inspiration
In my gameplay of Stellaris, the Ruler is the main leader in my mind. Yet I always find a Ruler’s ability to rule a country being a lackster, as they should never appear to be a figurehead.

Putting the mind that I want my Ruler a 6-6-6 one, not 0-0-0 (EU4), a ruler mod is made.

This mod has a lot of history, the very first version was released in 1.5 (Utopia DLC). In pre 2.0 version, the mod still used the classic annoying popup events with randomized options. After 2.0 released, the first rework introduced the Ruler Campaign(s) edicts. Then in 2.6, the first version of Ruler Focus was introduced. The mod also got a complicated and massive rework in version 3.0, with a completely new custom-made UI, and an even more recent one in 3.8 with Ruler Directions getting an overhaul update.





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If an empire is subjugated and there’s no atmosphere to carry the sound, does it make a sound? No.. I don’t think that’s how the expression goes. Anyway, this mod will do the next best thing, and allow you to keep the leaders of integrated Subjects and pre-FTLs.

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Features

• Have the option to keep (and maybe assimilate) leaders in a variety of situations when gaining control of another empire:
  
• When integrating subjects
  
• When infiltrating or conquering pre-FTLs
  
• When firing the Nanobot Diffuser on a pre-FTL world
  
• Custom story text for different kinds of "Retain Leaders" situations, including integration between regular/hive/machine empires and interactions with homicidal civics
  
• Uses the new "Recruit Leader" functionality added in Stellaris 3.8 "Gemini," with additional background art taken from official Stellaris art
  
• Empires with assimilation available to them (or necrophages) can opt to transform leaders based on the available assimilation type(s)
  
• Updates the "Promising Officer" events (both the standard and the variant during fleet maneuvers) to use the "Recruit Leader" functionality - other built-in Stellaris events similarly enhanced, including expanded story text
  
• Adds special traits for former rulers - including those who lose an election or are otherwise forced out of rulership (includes variants for different empire types and leader classes)
  
• Designed to work with other mods published by corsairmarks, including additional gameplay interactions

Summary
Have you ever wondered what happened to the former leaders of your subject after you integrated them? Or perhaps where that pre-FTL leader went after you annexed their planet? Wonder no more! With this mod you will be prompted to choose what to do with the now-unemployed leaders whenever you integrate a subject, conquer a pre-FTL planet, "allow" pre-FTLs to join you via covert infiltration, or convert then via a colossus weapon.

Scientists and Admirals are automatically assigned back to their pre-integration roles, if they were commanding a science ship or fleet. Notably, if you play with "pause-on-event" the science vessels will then continue their assigned orders after the leader is reassigned for command.

Inspiration
I developed this mod over two years ago and it was first published to the Steam workshop in July 2021. Its functionality dovetails nicely with the enhanced focus on fewer, more memorable leaders as part of Stellaris 3.8 "Gemini" update (and Galactic Paragons expansion). Although it's less likely players will be integrating empires (since the Overlord expansion), the flavorful gameplay options still enhance interaction with pre-FTL empires.




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That’s it for this week! Next week Game Director Eladrin will be back with our first regularly scheduled Dev Diary after the summer!

written by: MrFreake, Mute, Risker34, corsairmarks, michaelmakesgames

Hello again Stellaris Community,

Welcome to our third mod highlight! It’s been quiet around the office this week, as most of the devs are off enjoying the 15 minutes of Swedish summer. So we’re back with another Mod Highlight on Thursday! We expect to see weekly Dev Diaries start up again in this spot on July 27th.

In the meantime, because we like talking about Stellaris, we’ve been doing these Mod Highlights – with the assistance of some of our Modders – to show off some Community-made mods that might not necessarily show on the frontpage of the Stellaris Workshop.

This week’s mod highlight is themed around diplomatic mods. These mods will allow you to perform new diplomatic actions against the empires around you, build new things, new ways to generate trade, and new ways to conquer enemy worlds (obviously the ultimate form of diplomacy).

Let's get into it!

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Features:

• New Traditions (Cooperative, Combative, Convictionative, Rebellious, Imperial, Subservient)
  
• New Federation Types (Closed Circle, Social Commonwealth, Intergalactic Soviet)
  
• New GalCom Resolution (Galactic Solidarity)
  
• New Ascension Perks (Machiavellian Machinations)
  
• New Espionage (Slander, Support Opposition, Backstab, Set Trap, Coup de Grace)

Summary:
Plays into the themes of DLCs such as Federations, Nemesis and Overlord. Offers some roleplay potential and interesting gameplay options for the Galactic Community, Federations, Overlords, Subjects and Espionage.

Cooperative, Combative and Convictionative Traditions are mutually exclusive and grant Players additional Bonus based on their Federation Type and more.

Imperial, Subservient and Rebellious Traditions explore what the relationship between Overlords and Subjects can look like. Subservient Empires have special interactions with their Overlords such as choosing to adopt their Traditions for free or joining them in Defensive Wars unrequested. (This is basically the loyalist fantasy of serving dutifully and fighting side by side with your leader/s until the very last breath).

On the other hand, the Rebellious empires are the complete opposite, constantly displeasing their overlords and gaining a massive bonus whenever they are facing a stronger empire. (the opposite, disregarding authority, attempting to topple dictators throughout the galaxy)

Machiavellian Machinations unlocks Espionage Operations; these focus on manipulation and ruthlessness, allowing players to initiate wars in new ways, such as entering wars uninvited or performing a mercy kill against pathetic empires.

This also pairs well with the Closed Circle Federation, a highly exclusive secret organization where only members willing to adopt the leader's authority are welcome. Perks focus on Espionage, Diplomatic Weight, Sensors and Cloaking. (it's the Illuminati)

The Galactic Solidarity Resolution is a socialist utopia, increasing worker happiness, political power, helping with the recovery of recently attacked empires, banning being unfederated or being uncooperative and enabling the founding of a unique Federation with which redistributes a percentage of resources each month equally amongst all members.







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This next mod expands what you can do with branch offices, offering several upgrade paths to unlock bonuses and has the potential to amplify a planet’s specialization.

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Summary:
Here at Moar Branch Offices we want to provide you with a wider array of buildings to help you expand not only your economy, but the galactic economy as a whole! We do this by creating new buildings for you to build, including a new system that allows you to tailor your branch offices to the specialization of the planets that they're on.

Features:

• 20 New Branch Office Buildings for both Megacorps and CrimeCorps
  
• System to Specialize Branch Offices via the Buildings on them
  
• Ability to provide goods and services on planets with Branch Offices
  
• Ability to be a thorn in the side of planets with branch offices

Inspiration:
I was playing as a Megacorp with a friend and was having a hard time making enough strategic resources since Megacorps generally want to keep their planet count low and strategics scale off of planets. I got frustrated that I could gain just about every resource I needed from branch offices except the strategic resources I needed, so I decided to add strategic producing buildings. My friend came up with the idea of having lower level buildings unlock the ability to make bigger cooler versions, in lieu of actual upgrading, with it being balanced off the fact you have to dedicate an entire office to gain the highest level of each path.










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Specialist Subject types are something we’re excited to see more of. Dial your trade game up to 12, with this next mod.

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Summary:
This mod adds a brand-new specialist subject type - the Mercatorum! As an overlord, you can now charter one of your subjects as your very own megacorporation. Unlike other other specialist subject types, overlords are limited to a maximum of one Mercatorum, however that Mercatorum subject does not count for purposes of Divided Patronage (the loyalty penalty for having multiple subjects).

Features:

• Adds a new Specialist Subject type: the Mercatorum
  
• Charter your very own megacorporation - Mercatorums are converted into megacorporations and must remain so as long as they are specialized as a Mercatorum
  
• Includes all features of a Specialist Subject:
  
• Custom specialist perks
  
• A new overlord holding
  
• Special leader traits (specialist level 2)
  
• Special trade actions between Overlord and Subject
  
• Selection of agreement presets for the AI
  
• Updated agreement terms apply standard specialist restrictions (e.g. no integration)
  
• Specialist-specific diplomatic background
  
• All-new icons relating to the specialist subject type, themed on the Energy Credit symbol
  
• AI personalities for Mercatorum subjects - they prefer to avoid war, alternate flavor allows slavery
  
• Mercatorum subjects are heavily integrated into their overlord's economy
  
• Maximum of one Mercatorum subject, but does not count for Divided Loyalty
  
• Overlord can choose to bail out their subject in the event of a resource deficit (the AI knows how to use this)
  
• If a Mercatorum subject defaults on their debt, the overlord suffers penalties as well
  
• Overlord periodically receives special dividends (similar to Mercenary Enclave dividends) and the Subject keeps a percentage as commission
  
• New trade-related edicts available for regular empires, unlocked by existing technologies
  
• New branch office building exclusively for Mercatorum subjects: National Corporate Headquarters, which can be built once in their overlord and each of the overlord's other subjects
  
• Built-in compatibility with four flavors of Ethics & Civics (Bug Branch, Classic, Redux, FunEFork)
  
• Sub-mod to add compatibility with Vassals Expanded and Reworked (FunEFork)
  
• Works with all other mods by corsairmarks, including additional gameplay interactions

Inspiration:
I built this mod as a challenge myself to understand as much as I could about the new subjugation features introduced by Overlord. It also fills the economic niche that I feel the three built-in specializations did not cover. I hope that other modders can use this mod as a framework to help build their own specialist subjects.






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This next mod adds new mechanics to conquering planets. I assure you our blockade is completely legal.

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Features:

• When a starbase is occupied, all planets in that system are considered Under Siege
  
• Besieged planets must produce their own resources
  
• Planets that don't produce their own resources face worsening shortages
  
• Stockpile resources on a planet to delay shortages when besieged

Summary:
Shortages are tracked separately for Energy, Minerals, Food, and Consumer Goods. The effects of the shortage are fully dynamic based on the species on the planet and the empire's civics. Out of minerals? Your lithoid pops will be unhappy and stop growing. Catalytic forge world out of food? It won't be producing many alloys.

Critically, both Energy and Mineral shortages affect orbital bombardment damage. A self-sustaining fortress world will last much longer!

As an alternative to self-sustainability, you can transfer resources from your empire's stockpile to a planet's local stockpile. During a siege, planets will use resources from their stockpile before they face any shortages. And if that sounds like micro-management, fear not! You can set a monthly budget to stockpile resources on your highest-priority planets, based on the population, local production, and how long the current stockpiles would last. The AI understands all of this, and will stockpile resources appropriately too!

Anecdote:
Sometimes, the simple things are the hardest. At about 2000 lines of script, the tooltip is the most complicated part of this mod.




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Yes, Mod Enjoyer. I see you. No conflicts detected this week! All of these mods should be fine to use with one another.

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That’s it for this week’s Mod Highlights. Next week we’ll be talking to the people who ought to know, and they’ll tell us how it ought to be!

by MrFreake_PDX

Hello Stellaris Community!

During this year’s summer vacation in Stockholm, we’re doing something a little different: each week we will be highlighting a selection of the fantastic mods made by our modding community. As some of you may know, unless you own one of the most popular mods, or submit something brand new to the workshop, getting discovered on the workshop is.. difficult. We hope to help out some of our modding community, and highlight some of those mods that might not otherwise be seen.

In this week’s Mod Highlights, we have a selection of mods that will add more unique species and give you more abilities for existing species in your galaxies.

Apparently we’re not the only ones who have seen calls for gaseous/energy based species, as our first mod clearly shows:

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By Exakan



The mod adds everything a new species pack can offer - origins, civics, traits, perks, and more. It adds a new playable species of energy beings called "Electroids". They live in the orbit of stars or black holes and many features are built around energy.

Features:
- New colony type: "Aurora" habitats are the homes of Electroids - pure energy spheres!
=> Each star class where the Aurora is being built adds different bonuses and districts to the colony.
- 5 Origins: You live in the orbit of stars, black holes or a distant star cluster.
- 10 Civics: From playing the Unbidden, to eating stars and more!
- 11 Traits: Add unique bonuses & pop production.
- 2 Perks: A new colossus with an own mechanic & a trait ascension.
- 3 Shipsets: All 3 Unbidden shipsets are usable (blue, orange, green).
- 1 Fallen Empire (Electroids): They are neutral but can be very strong if attacked.
=> FE is called the "Realm of Nova".

Inspiration
I always wanted an energy species in Stellaris, so I used ~2.5 weeks of my available time to design & create my own pack instead of just dreaming about it. I remember it was so much fun to create this one, I plan another species pack very soon!








Get the Unofficial Electroids Species!​

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This next mod is for those of you who really believe that unit just doesn’t have a soul.

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By Corsairmarks



Are you looking to end the pernicious threat of artificial intelligence? Maybe play the inverse of Determined Exterminators, or the slightly friendlier cousins of Fanatic Purifiers? Look no further, this is the mod for you! Play as the Organic Zealots who seek to outlaw and curtain development of cybernetics, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Should they encounter an abominable Machine Intelligence, or should the worst come to pass and an organic empire synthetically "ascend..." - that's what the Anti-Thinking Machine war goal is for. Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of an organic mind.

This mod adds a lot of gameplay content, but unfortunately needs to get heavily involved in altering built-in gameplay from Stellaris in order to add restrictions. It has a reasonable chance of conflicting with other mods focused on the same areas, but is supported by The Merger of Rules and has built-in support for Vassals Expanded and Reworked (FunEFork) (one agreement term value that is affected by both mods) and Forgotten History (playable with the Banished Threat origin).

Features:
* New homicidal civic Organic Zealots - friendly to organic empires, but hostile to robotic empires (the inverse of Determined Exterminators) with two council seat options
* Fully implements all features of being homicidal:
* Has a special Total War (Anti-Thinking Machine) against robotic empires
* No need to claim the territories of the foul machines
* Opinion modifiers impacted by empire ethics and ascension choices
* Diplomatic actions are restricted appropriately against robotic empires
* Purge robotic Pops to create Unity and Alloys
* Policy option restrictions similar to other homicidal empire types
* New Casus Belli/Wargoal (Force Policy/Outlaw AI) to force organic empires to outlaw robotics - the casus belli could be reused by others who want to add custom wargoals to force other kinds of policies
* New building Clone Birth-Labs (and corresponding job) available for regular (non-gestalt) empires to gain a small amount of organic Pop assembly
* New assimilation type Expurgatory Transfiguration to remove cybernetics
* Restricts Organic Zealots from researching AI-related technologies or selecting AI-related ascension perks/traditions
* Replacement technologies for Organic Zealots, including accessing a special leader trait instead of being able to research Positronic AI
* Special option for Organic Zealots to Sunder the Disconnected Contingency Core in order to create a powerful monument on their capital planet, or keep at a unity penalty in order to build more megastructure
* Works with all other mods by corsairmarks, including additional gameplay interactions

Inspiration
I was inspired to create this mod by player suggestions on the Stellaris Modding Den Discord. The idea of not-fully-homicidal empires intrigued me, and there was a good example to follow because Determined Exterminators get along with (most) other machine empires.

It was a lot of fun to write, so this mod includes overrides of almost all built-in Stellaris events that deal with artificial intelligence or cybernetics, in order to add additional story text or options for Organic Zealots. I carefully verify these events for changes with every official patch to Stellaris so that players can continue to purge robots without worrying about missing features from the base game. Clone Birth-Labs are an homage to novels written by C.J. Cherryh, and are to compensate for Spiritualists and Organic Zealots generally wanting to avoid robotics.





Get Organic Zealots!​

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For those of you on the other side of the robot debate, we have our next mod which adds a ton of new content for our mechanical “friends”.

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By XVCV



A few years ago, I made my first big mod for Machine Intelligence and Synthetic Ascended Empires. This mod is a rework of that. Thank you for your interest in my mod and this Mod Highlight! Have a nice day. :)

Features:
- 2 Custom GUIs for adding & removing Traits for the Ruler & Leaders
- 1 Ascension Perk for Unique Planet Classes for Popless Resources Production
- 1 Ascension Perk for Abyss (a Modified Version of the 'Shroud' in Vanilla) Access for Machine & Synth Empires
- 1 Ascension Perk for gaining & becoming a Biological & Mechanical Hybrid Species (which can have some of Biological and Mechanical Species Traits together, and has Food Pop Upkeep that is adjustable using a Policy)
- 2 Ascension Perks for adding & removing Gestalt Consciousness Ethics (i.e., Machine Intelligence <-> Synthetic Ascended Empire)
- 1 Ascension Perk for Determined Exterminators for triggering Machine Uprising against Another Empire via an Espionage Operation
- 1 Ascension Perk for Rogue Servitors for providing more various Pop Jobs for Bio-trophies
- 1 Ascension Perk for becoming a Determined Exterminator or Driven Assimilator or Rogue Servitor (or a Standard Machine)
- 2 Origins for starting as a Synthetic (Ascended) Empire (One for Normal Synth Start, Another with a Unique Homeworld)
- 1 Civic for starting with a Situation that slowly gains Progresses by Player Actions (i.e., Player adopts a Tradition, declares a War, surveys Stars, etc...) and gains Buffs for Resources Production
- 1 Civic for Machine Empires to form a Trade Route and send Trade Ships for earning Resources (with a Policy to determine the Type of the Resources) based on the Opponent's Trade Value or Monthly Energy Credit Production (for Gestalts)
- 1 Civic for Machine Empires to utilize Consumer Goods for better Unity Creation
and more!

Inspiration
I enjoy playing as machines or synths in Stellaris, but I feel that machines, in particular, lack content. For example, gestalts 'usually' cannot access 'Trade Value', 'Shroud', 'Factions', 'Consumer Goods' (as well as 'Foods' for standard machines), etc.

I believe this is due to an attempt to give them different play styles compared to non-gestalts. However, I think this should be achieved by providing more unique content for them, not by reducing it. Therefore, I decided to add this content myself.

That's how I started modding this game of my life. And now that was four years ago, considering that the original mod (Unofficial Machine & Synthetic Empire DLC) was released on June 6, 2019. Wow, time DOES fly so fast!






Get Machine & Robot Expansion!​

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Our final mod asks the question, why not play with your food?

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By corsairmarks



Lithoids can pick the Agrarian Idyll civic, but the benefits are still applied to farming districts. This mod creates a swapped Agrarian Idyll just for lithoids - now your miners will generate amenities instead of farmers! This mod also features English localisation for these effects.

Features
* Lithoids have a special civic swap for Agrarian Idyll, named Lithorian Idyll
* Miners (and miner-related) jobs to generate amenities instead of farmers
* Mining Districts grant bonus housing instead of Farming Districts
* Interacts with Origin: Subterranean for more stacking bonuses
* Swapped councilor seat that boosts mining instead of farming
* A new technology that mirrors Agrarian Utopias, instead further improving housing from Mining Districts
* Both versions of Agrarian Idyll gain partial bonus building slots from rural (Mining, Farming, and Generator) districts
* Both versions of Agrarian Idyll begin the game with more of their "preferred" rural district instead of City Districts
* Built-in support for Planetary Diversity
* Fully compatible with all other mods by corsairmarks

Inspiration
I wanted Lithoids to benefit more directly from Agrarian Idyll, which is already a very flavorful civic. Stellaris has evolved since the mod was originally published, making the mod more and more compatibility-friendly with other mods over time.



Get "Agrarian" Idyll for Lithoids!​

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Some of these mods are not compatible with one another. We’ve put together a (sort of) tested compatibility patch that will (hopefully) let these mods be run together. This patch will not be maintained past the current version, and if anyone wants to maintain it moving forward, please let me know in the mod comments.

Get the Compatibility Patch!

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That’s it for this week, be sure to check out Mod Highlights again next week, where we'll learn to love our neighbors!

by MrFreake_PDX

Hello Stellaris Community!

One of the things I’ve always wanted to do as a part of the Community team is to try and come up with a format to better highlight Community mods. The Steam workshop is a wonderful, almost magical place, but from a Mod Creator’s perspective unless you’re in the top 20 most popular mods (a hard place to reach after mods that have been there 7 years), or post a brand new mod (that gives you 7 days on the front of the Workshop, if you’re lucky), your mod will never be seen by someone who doesn’t actively search for it.

Since it’s summer, and it’s the time for experiments, we’ve started a small-scale experiment to see if we can highlight some of the lesser well known mods in the workshop. This is currently limited to a small group of modders, but should it turn out to be popular, we would like to eventually expand this to the broader modding community.

Each of these modder highlights will be geared towards specific aspects of the game, new species, politics, etc. Today we’re here to show off four warfare related mods.

Let's get into it!

This first mod is something a lot of you’ve been asking for. While this isn’t a likely direction that the base-game will go, maybe this is the Ground Combat Rework you were looking for. handwave

By Risker34


Major Features:

• Re-imagined Ground Armies
  
• Origin/Civic/Authority unique Army Types
  
• Improved Army types via research
  
• Industrial Connection to Army construction

Summary

Ground Command is a mod that attempts to expand upon the ground battles in Stellaris. It does this in several ways allowing for more control and greater roleplay potential. This is done by reworking the system to no longer use a single "Assault Army" but instead to use the components that an Assault army would be made of.

By giving the player the ability to recruit individual divisions it opens the door to a wide variety of different army types. These army types can be tailored to reflect the empire they come from by making certain civics, origins, authority types, or even ascension perks part of unlocking them.

There is also a system wherein more industrially taxing units, such as armored units, atmospheric air wings, and the theorized Mecha-Walker can only be built on planets that have at least 1 industrial district or have the industrial buildings (consumer goods factory/ Alloy forge). This was done both to reflect the actual challenges that armies have historically faced with producing equipment but also to give a sense of strategic importance to an empire's more industrialized worlds.

Inspiration

The inspiration came when I was playing my weekly multiplayer game with a friend and we were discussing how tedious invading worlds was. We both quickly accepted that we weren't experienced enough to make an alternate system mechanically but I had the idea of at least making it more interesting to engage with. I believed that if the ground portion of the game was as immersive as the political and naval aspects then the tedium would be a bit more bearable and so far it seems at least a few people agreed with me.

It was also a good opportunity to give some civics and origins that the community tends to neglect a little bit of love. Maybe someday someone will find all the wacky unique army types that I've hidden throughout the civics list.







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This next mod introduces new galaxy shapes and sizes to conquer, as well as new win condition mechanics that are guaranteed to spice up your next war focused run.
By Mute



Major Features:

• New Galaxy Shapes (Gemini, Triple, Islands, Split, Helix)
  
• New Galaxy Sizes (100,300,500,700,900)
  
• New Galaxy Size variants (Spotted & Aftermath)
  
• Galactic Seasons (Gameplay Modifiers)
  
• Extra Win Conditions (Emperor's Throne)
  
• Sudden Death Mechanics (Eclipse, Attrition)

Summary

Everything this mod adds are optional additions; the goal is to let players have more control over their current "campaign" via the Menu offered on game start. Customizability is the main focus, with many interesting combinations which allow for a unique experience each playthrough.

• Emperor's Throne has the Players fighting over a unique System at the Galaxy's Core, ensuring victory for whoever controls it long enough.
  
• Eclipse dooms the Galaxy to a gruesome and dark fate as all suns begin imploding into black holes starting from the Galaxy's edge and slowly creeping towards the core.
  
• Attrition plagues all life in the Galaxy, increasing costs and reducing growth, until finally pops begin dropping dead left and right.

Inspiration

The main reason I started creating this mod was to get some of my friends to finally try out Stellaris, as the lengthy playthroughs Stellaris suffers from put them off - that's where Win Conditions and Sudden Death come in. Both are inspired by other games' mechanics, such as Emperor's Throne which is a variant of a "King of the Hill" gamemode, and are intended to bring the game to an end quicker than usual, all while feeling more like a "natural end" than simply having a low victory year.







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Ever wanted to play as a Private Military Corporation? Well, with this next mod, you can!

By dimuch62



Major Features:

• transfer of fleets to other players
  
• sale of fleets to other players
  
• auction of fleets
  
• lease of fleets
  
• AI uses the functions of the mod

Summary

The mod allows you to play as a private military corporation that offers its fleets for rent to other empires. Or you can play with a friend with one player focusing on military dominance and the other on scientific dominance. The first player can always transfer fleets to the second. Or you can help an empire that is losing the war, but the defeat of which will be unprofitable.

Inspiration

It all started with a friend's phrase "can you make it so that I can transfer the fleet?" and one line of code "set_owner = player2".
Now this is a good mod that can be useful in various multiplayer games.





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And of course, in your next warfare playthrough, you’ll probably want a way to put that SPQR Namelist to good use. Want to make all roads lead to Deneb IIb? This next mod will give you the tools to do just that!

By Risker34



Major Features:
3 origins depicting different stages of Roman history, from the early Republican period, to the high Augustan Imperial Period and the late Imperial Period.

• The Republic:
  *Cheaper election costs
  * Faster ship build speed
  * +3 Admiral & General level cap
  * +25% army morale and +100 starting xp
  * Unique Ruler, Specialist, and Soldier jobs
  
• The Empire:
  * +3 General & Governor level cap
  * +100 army starting xp
  * -15% building & district cost
  * +15% megastructure build speed
  * +10 stability on all planets
  * Unique Ruler, Specialist, and Solder jobs
  
• Late Imperial State:
  * +3 Admiral & General level cap
  * +1 Limitanei job per 30 pops
  * +25% ship fire rate
  * Big Ruler class political power
  * Stability from soldier jobs +1
  * Unique Ruler, Specialist, and Soldier jobs

Summary

The mod consists of 3 origins, each with unique jobs and bonuses. The vanilla politician jobs will be completely replaced with more thematic versions along with a unique specialist job and unique soldier jobs.

Inspiration

As a big fan of Roman history I noticed that Stellaris had a SPQR name list but no actual reason to use it. The Prosperous Unification origin was a bit too overtly modern future and things like Remnants would be too detached from being future Rome. So I decided to add roleplay origins to go along with the SPQR namelist.






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Do they all work together?​

What sort of Chad-mod-enjoyer would you be if you didn’t ask this question? There are no conflicts between these four mods, meaning you should be able to run them altogether without any issues!

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That’s it for today’s Mod Highlights! We’ll be doing these all summer during gaps in the Dev Diary schedule, so stay tuned!

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

Midsummer approaches, and with it, holidays.
We want you and your friends to have a reason to celebrate too. As we announced last week, Stellaris will be free to play on Steam from the 22nd to the 26th.

With the addition of Co-op (that is, up to five players playing as the same empire), there’s never been a better time to introduce your friends to Stellaris!

Remember, as host, your friends will have access to all of your DLC.



Stay tuned to our social media channels during the Free to Play event - they have plans.

Stellaris Nexus is a simultaneous turn-based multiplayer 4X game offering the full spectrum of a thrilling, strategic 4X experience. Choose a unique faction and leader and challenge up to 5 other players, plotting and battling your way to galactic dominance; all in about 1 hour.

As part of Steam Next Fest, it’s also playable for free until the 26th!


Hello! This is MordredViking, the Community Manager for Stellaris. We recently asked the community for their input on what DLCs to recommend to new players, and we thought we should share some of our findings.

We got 420 responses from you all, and among the questions we asked was, for how many hours had you played Stellaris? The answers ranged from a couple of hundred to a whopping 13,000! This came out to an average of 855 hours among all respondents. A pretty hardcore group!

The core of the questionnaire however, was of course which DLCs to recommend to a new Stellaris player, and here’s the top 10:



From these results, we wanted to have a bundle that provided a representative selection of available content, catering to a range of different play styles and fantasies. With this criteria and the survey results in mind, we settled on Utopia, Federations, Distant Stars and Synthetic Dawn.

Utopia allows for a broader range of empire choices, by providing new tools to develop the empire and ultimately allowing players to transform their nation into a paradise. Federations taps into a more diplomatic playstyle, and really ramps up the potential for in-game alliances and also enables power projection through bodies like the Galactic Council. Distant Stars entices eager explorers with new discoveries throughout the galaxy. Then finally, Synthetic Dawn brings those robot dreams to life with expanded robotic gameplay options.


We will return with dev diaries on July 27th with Habitat discussions, and start going into detail regarding what’s planned for the 3.9 Caelum update.

Like 3.1 Lem, 3.3 Libra, and 3.6 Orion, Caelum will be a Custodian update focused on revisiting old packs, catching up on technical debt, and generally improving the game.

[expand type=show more]

The newly clarified Calamitous Birth tooltip.


The home crater gets a bit of a boost.


A minor tweak to the craters makes a big difference.


What do Lithoids eat?


Pom-a-granites!


Placeholder icons on the approaches.


Once you start feasting, it's really hard to stop.
Om nom nom.

[/expand]

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

The ‘Gemini’ 3.8.4 update has been released today. In it, we’ve continued post-release balance work. Some of the bigger changes in the release include the conversion of several leader traits into Council Traits either to reduce micromanagement (moving a governor from planet to planet to maximize benefits of some traits) or to address undesired stacking issues.

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#################### VERSION 3.8.4 ######################​
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Balance

• Rebalanced a number of leader traits: Some general and governor traits that previously encouraged moving leaders from planet to planet have been made council traits or had their modifiers changed to discourage this. Resource production traits now require the leader to have at least level 2 to gain the first tier.
  
• Empire Size now has a floor of 50, and thus can no longer go negative.
  
• Increased the bombardment effectiveness of large fleets.
  
• The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops has been dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 2 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony)
  
• Renormalised political power from living standards and reduced base faction unity gain to better fit intended unity production. The Shared Burdens civic no longer grants an increase to the base unity of the Egalitarian faction, as the benefit is now rolled into their living standards.
  
• Sequential End-Game Crises now get +2 strength multipliers instead of +1.5.
  
• The Khan now has terrifying admiral traits.
  
• The opinion modifier from Defender of the Galaxy now only affects normal, non-fallen/awakened, empires that are capable of independent diplomacy.
  
• Colonists now increase planetary build speed by 10% instead of creating defensive armies.

AI

• Fixed AI hiring a governor without having a planet to assign them to.
  
• Fixed AI hiring scientists without having science ships to assign them to.

Bugfixes

• Broken Shackles Origin event "Homesick" no longer casts affected Pops into the void
  
• Adjusted width of MP lobby chat entries so that they don't overlap the scroll bar.
  
• Council Agenda Costs now benefit from Empire Size Effect modifiers.
  
• Cyborg general trait will now add +2 combat width, as stated in the tooltip
  
• Empires with the Under One Ruler origin no longer ignore the initial 20 year cooldown on government reform.
  
• Federation project Flocks of Cloud should no longer get stuck ad infinitum in the situation log
  
• Fixed an error in which you may have been prevented from using Operation Crisis Beacon again - beyond the intended 4-year lockout period - if said Operation was aborted after confirming its target.
  
• Fixed duplicate tradition names in French
  
• Fixed Imperial Heirs not having a starting leader trait.
  
• Fixed queued move orders from a system with an FTL inhibitor not being displayed correctly.
  
• Fixed randomly generated empires having DLC-locked civics.
  
• Fixed randomly generated species having DLC-locked traits.
  
• Fixed randomly generated species having invalid trait and climate preference combinations.
  
• Fixed randomly generated species not having enough traits if it has traits (such as Aquatic) that are required by something else.
  
• Fixed the bonus leader trait from Aptitude Traditions not applying to Imperial Heirs.
  
• Fixed tooltip for Beacon of Liberty and Fanatic Purifiers, now they do mention that they are incompatible with Crusader Spirit
  
• Imperial Heirs are excluded from the effects of The Orb.
  
• Imperial Heirs that are generals or admirals in empires with Distinguished Admiralty now benefit from the +2 starting level.
  
• Invalid civics will get removed when authority is changed through event for Under One Rule
  
• Leaders excluded from the upkeep cost now correctly produce resources
  
• Pharma State civic is now correctly blocked by Payback and Broken Shackles.
  
• Removed DLC lock on some faction demands that were introduced in 3.8
  
• Set the AI weight for reorganizing the council to 0.
  
• Void Dweller MegaCorps with the Pharma State civic now correctly replace their starting Holo-Theaters with a Gene Clinic, unless they also have Permanent Employment (in which case it is replaced with the Employment Center).
  
• Warform no longer has the synth trait and has the second tier of the skirmisher trait.

Improvements

• Imperial Heirs are now up to 10 years younger than regular leaders of the same species. Starting Imperial Rulers are now up to 15 years older than regular leaders of the same species.
  
• Imperial Heirs that benefit from bonus starting levels now have selectable traits for those levels for owners of Galactic Paragons.
  
• Imperial Rulers and Heirs now have a 5% chance to start with a negative trait and an additional positive trait. The Philosopher King civic negates this.

UI

• Fixed leader portrait clipping in the level up window.
  
• Fixed position of Speech To Text button in the MP lobby.
  
• Fixed width of MP lobby chat text for large fonts and text to speech.
  
• If a player in your coop group adds a leader trait while you have the level up window open and there are no more traits to add, it will show the last selection.
  
• Reworked the planet occupation icon frame
  
• Selecting a ship by clicking it will now ignore its bounding box if it has a collision mesh.

Modding

• Empire size string now uses the actual defines instead of localized numbers for its message.
  
• Made it possible to set what leader portrait container to use for each location of the new portraits
  
• Made reload_gui console command more stable

[/expand]

More changes to leader traits and some of the mechanics surrounding them will be coming in 3.9 in the fall. We’re placing some of the ideas and suggestions we’ve received into our “Summer Experimentation” bucket and we’ll see which ones pan out.

At this point we feel that 3.8 Gemini is in a stable state, and barring the need for a 3.8.5 hotfix, the next planned release will be 3.9 Caelum. (Caelum, “the Chisel”, represents a sculptor’s tools. Perfect for a balancing and polish update.)


A pass has been done on living standard political power and unity generation to normalize them when compared with one another - living standards like Shared Burdens and Utopian Abundance were not generating enough, while Academic Privilege was previously the “champion of Unity” - a little odd for the Materialist living standard.

After these changes, Utopian Abundance should be at the top of the charts, followed by Shared Burdens. (Which no longer needs the “double Unity from the Egalitarian faction” crutch.)

These changes have gone live in today’s update.


A few people [ed: a few?!?] have discussed the tendency of late game systems to become flooded with extreme numbers of habitats. We have some ideas on different ways to curb this behavior while still ensuring that habitats are thematic and effective, especially in the hands of Void Dwellers.

I’ll have a broader feedback discussion later on during the summer where we present some of our ideas, discuss how experiments with them went, and collect additional feedback from the community.

Stellaris with a Twist is our streaming event, where Ep3o and AlphaYangDelete play co-op multiplayer, and try to accomplish goals suggested and chosen by the Community.


If you have a suggestion for the final stream's goals, you can submit it here, and if you've missed part of this event you can get caught up here!

The last session of Stellaris with a Twist is next week, at 1500 CEST! Don't miss the exciting conclusion and find out which of our streamers will accomplish their Community-Suggested Goals for the Stream!

But wait, there's more!


What's better than having a galaxy full of wonder to explore? Conquering that galaxy with a friend, obviously!

From June 22nd to June 26th, Stellaris will be Free to Play; there will never be a better time to introduce a friend to Stellaris -- and with the addition of co-op, you can now work together to conquer liberate the galaxy like never before.

In Stellaris multiplayer, the host's DLC is shared between all the players in the game -- the same holds true for co-op, even if one of the players is playing for free. So grab a friend, your planet cracker, and be sure to play during the Free to Play weekend! Thinking of trying Stellaris for the first time during the Free to Play, but don't know where to start? Join us on Discord; from the 22nd to the 26th, our Player Helpers will be running "Learn to Play" Stellaris sessions!

That's it for this week, see you next week!