by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

I hope that you all had a pleasant holiday season, and want to start off by thanking everyone that submitted feedback regarding the Technology Open Beta. That data we gained from these experiments was invaluable, so let’s get right into it.
As expected, the players that responded to the survey were overwhelmingly passionate players that have a ton of experience with the game. Nearly 70% of responses come from players that have over 1,000 hours played in the game. This is somewhat natural for an opt-in beta over the holidays with an intimidating feedback form, so I wanted to thank you all again for filling it out.

There was a strong consensus around the military changes (ship cost and upkeep), so we’ll likely be keeping those mostly as-is.

The technology changes were naturally more controversial. Roughly 80% of responses believed that technology (especially at higher tiers) was overall too slow in the beta, but a majority still thought that the changes were beneficial to the game overall. Several of you pointed out that so many simultaneous changes compounded too strongly, and we agree. I was happy to see that your feedback matches our expectations - we expected that the Open Beta was tuned too harshly and that we would want to pull back from it before release.

The Open Beta also revealed several technical issues, including some major performance implications from how Breakthrough Technologies interacted with diplomacy.
Overall, I view the Technology Open Beta as a great success, and as such am taking the opportunity to update it and let it run for another few weeks, after which we will decide whether or not we want to continue experimentation, integrate it into 3.11 (or 3.12), or discard the initiative.

We concur that the original Open Beta went too hard on technology. We liked some of the things we were seeing, such as tier 3 and 4 technologies becoming more valuable for an extended part of the game, but felt that it delayed other critical parts too long. Breakthrough Technologies were interesting as a slowdown mechanic, but if kept would likely need some sort of temporary (non-technology or unity related) bonuses as some form of reward for the frontrunners. The excessively high costs for late tier techs pushed some critical technologies such as Ascension Theory or Mega-Engineering too late in the game, and certain undesirable behaviors (like ignoring research entirely) were too effective.

The updated Technology Open Beta should be up on stellaris_test now, with the following changes:

Feature

• Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider added to galaxy generation. This slider adjusts technology costs based on tier and game difficulty.

Beta

• Removed Breakthrough Technologies.
  
• Reverted base technology costs to their 3.10.4 values - the increased cost between tiers is now handled by the Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider.
  
• Removed the majority of Researcher Upkeep Modifiers introduced into the Open Beta.
  
• Reverted changes to Knights research output from the Open Beta.

Balance

• Tweaked the tiers of technologies that increase naval cap and fleet command limit.
  
• Reduced the amount of Naval Cap granted by technologies.
  
• Significant changes to Bio-Reactors:
  
  • Bio-Reactors are now a tier 1 rare technology instead of a tier 0 technology
    
  • Bio-Reactors now reduce the food output of farmer jobs and give them a small amount of energy output.
    
  • Added a tier 2 Advanced Bio-Reactor technology and building.
    
  • Advanced Bio-Reactors further reduce the food output of farmers in exchange for a small amount of exotic gas output.
• Decreased the amount of research produced by unemployed pops with Utopian Abundance.
  
• Event options in the Knights' quest that improve their capital have been buffed to be better balanced compared to the options that improve knight jobs.

At player request, we have kept the older version of the Technology Open Beta available on stellaris_test_old. It will remain there until the release of 3.11 “Eridanus”.
One of the frequent points of feedback was that there was concern that newer players would be hit especially hard by the technology cost changes. We also recognize that different players have different desires for the pacing of the game, so we’ve added another slider to galaxy generation.

The Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider adjusts the base cost of technologies based on the difficulty of the game. Higher tiers of technology are affected to a greater degree than lower ones, so this slider essentially affects “tier width”. While this does overlap with the Technology Costs slider to a degree, it does so in a different way, so we consider each to have valid reasons to exist as separate sliders.


Disabling Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs will cause them to follow the 3.10.4 / Civilian difficulty curve. As with many other galaxy generation sliders, the Stellaris team will be balancing the game around the Normal setting.

Tech Curves of basic technologies on “Normal” scaling, at different difficulty levels.

The base cost of technologies is now based on 3.10.4’s formula, y=1000*2^x, multiplied by the difficulty modifier of 1 + (q*x*d), where x=technology tier, q=difficulty adjusted tech cost galaxy setting (0 - 0.10, default 0.05), and d=difficulty (Civilian = 0, Grand Admiral = 6).

TierXCost1 technologies at different difficulties, on “Normal” scaling (q=0.05).

For the players that enjoyed the larger amount of distance between tech tiers, scaling can go up to a maximum of “Extreme”, which gives Grand Admiral a curve that is similar to, but not exactly, the Open Beta numbers. Note that technology acquisition will still be faster than the old Open Beta as we’ve removed Breakthrough Technologies.

Tech Curves of basic technologies on “Extreme” scaling, at different difficulty levels.


TierXCost1 technologies at different difficulties, on “Extreme” scaling (q=0.10).


Previous Open Beta values for reference.

We have a new feedback form for this version of the Open Beta, available here. As with the previous version, you can respond multiple times if you have different thoughts after different playthroughs. Please let us know what you think, and whether you think we’ve gone back too far in the other direction.

Currently we're planning on collecting feedback from this phase of the Technology Open Beta for two weeks, until the 1st of February, but will leave the branches available until the 3.11 "Eridanus" update releases later on in the quarter.

See you all next week!

Please note that the Technology Open Beta 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 - Technology Open Beta" branch.

Please disable mods for the Technology Open Beta, they are likely to break.
In-progress games should continue on the “stellaris_test_old” branch.

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[MrFreake enters to highjack the post]
Hello everyone!

Here I am again, not reading the room. Eladrin is talking about turning off your mods, and I'm here telling you to download more mods: buuuut....

#MODJAM2024 is Available Now!



Want a sneak peek at the Legendary Leaders included in #MODJAM2024? Check out the feature video:


Voting for favorite mod will run until February 11th, so there's still plenty of time to play and vote for your favorite submission here!

Hello Stellaris Community!

We're proud to announce that #MODJAM2024 is available now! Get it here!



Now's the time where the Community gets to step in, and vote for your favorite submission. Vote for your favorite #MODJAM2024 Legendary Leaders here!

What are the prizes, you ask? This year we’ve paired up again with Republic of Gamers to deliver some great prizes to our winning Modders:

1st Place: ROG Strix G17 (2023) G713 Laptop*
2nd Place: ROG Delta S Wireless Headset*
3rd Place: ROG Spatha X Wireless Mouse*
4th - 10th Place: Stellaris branded Wallet and Keychain

* Exact specifications may vary depending on winning modder’s region

Thanks to everyone for playing and voting in #MODJAM2024!

by MrFreake

Hello Stellaris Community!

I have to start off by saying how proud I am of all the participants this year. This year saw the most signups for Mod Jam we've ever had, the most design documents submitted, and (I think) the most final submissions. The modders have really put their all into these contributions, and I think they've turned out fantastic. I can't wait to see what you all think!

The Mod Jam mod will release today around 5 PM CET! You can subscribe to the workshop mod now, and get this new content as soon as it becomes available!

Today we're going to be talking about the final 11 submissions that haven't been seen, so without further ado:


Inspiration: I had a couple of inspirations for Raffar - one was the classic trope of the scheming vizier, so I wanted to make a leader you knew you shouldn’t trust but who was rewarding enough to risk playing with fire. Then I’ve added lots of ideas loosely inspired from WH40k’s Necrons and Dr Who’s Cybermen into the mix for good measure.


Inspiration: I loved collecting and tending to my leaders long before Paragons made them cool, they can be the backbone of the kind of RP focused gameplay I enjoy most. Zob takes that leader gardening instinct to the next level, as Zob only gains power as you add your own leaders and your own story to Zobs. Trait stacking can also be a fun exercise for the min-maxer in me, and Zob facilitates that in what is hopefully, a limited and manageable way.


Inspiration: I’ve had the idea of this character in my head for some time, as the primary antagonist of an IP I never got onto paper. I decided to introduce the idea of Reinhard’s character to a wider community to see their opinions and acquire feedback. I’m aware of the power fantasy of wanting to play ‘the bad guys’, and figured that this was a good way to feed into that. Religion is also an idea I wanted to explore heavily with my as-of-yet nonexistent IP, diving into some of the benefits and drawbacks with the worship of deities and spirituality in general. Reinhard represents the bad parts of religion/spirituality; the authoritarianism, the corruption of values, the blind obedience to dogma, while his counterpart, Michael Faulkner (who is mentioned in-game, and who you may encounter in a playthrough with Reinhard) represents the good aspects; the community, the moral values, and the idea of the larger collective working together for the common good. I was heavily inspired by real-world evils associated with religion, with Reinhard himself being inspired by what I believe most cult leaders to be like; con-men who don’t actually believe anything they’re saying, but they say it anyway in order to gain power. Power is a central concept to Reinhard’s character, he’s a nihilist who believes that nothing matters except securing one’s own personal welfare, even at the expense of others. This mod is more of a proof of concept, since I wanted to make an expanded version where you could recruit Michael Faulkner as a leader as well, but I was only allowed to create a single recruitable leader for this ModJam, so I settled on this. I do intend to release this expanded version in the future, however.




Inspiration: Our inspiration for Ralph Fasmid came from movies and shows such as Casablanca, SpyKids, Chuck, The Kingsman, and Bourne. Casablanca was our main inspiration for his design, Chuck was the inspiration for him to be exclusive to Megacorps. Bourne inspired a small event that only happens if you dismiss him.


Inspiration: My inspiration for Mictla's concept originated from reading Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time trilogy, where I aimed to craft an entity that exuded a really alien and almost horror-like essence.

In terms of gameplay I wanted a leader focused mainly on one or two aspects of the game. Mictla's bonuses are heavily on what you'd expect from the society group of technologies. I also wanted them to feel to stand out, so I implemented a unique way for them to level up as they don't gain experience over time.

Lastly I wanted to design Mictla so that it could have an impact on the player's experience. So that if the player chose to, there would be drastic changes in your empire based on your decisions and approach with Mictla's events.

We're going on an adventure!









Inspiration: “To be honest I prefer Cyto”


Inspiration: In my pen & paper campaign (Pathfinder 1e) Naodeus is a benevolent magical being from beyond the outer realms trapped in the campaign world. Talil is a city founded by his adopted children. Right after I learned of the Paragon update I wanted to make this leader. This ModJAM was an excuse to do so.

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And that's it for the Legendary Leaders included in this year's Mod Jam, 26 in total! What do you think? Which one are you most excited to play?

Just a reminder #MODJAM2024 will release at 5 PM CET today! (January 11th, 2024)

Hello Stellaris Community!

We’re back with another update on our annual Modder event: #MODJAM2024! Today is feature freeze for the Mod Jam. Essentially, Modders will have until 5 PM CET today to submit a feature-complete version of their submission.

It’s important to note at this stage, that not everything will work correctly. Modders still have another week to bugfix and polish their submissions. Would you like to help our modders test their submissions? Join us on Discord! Join the Discord, get the PC role, and then look for the #help-test-the-mod-jam channel.

Later today or early tomorrow, we will be posting a link in that section of our Discord so the Community can play this content early, and each leader has a forum channel where you can report bugs directly to the modders.

Today, we have another eight Legendary Leaders to highlight! These leaders range from a damaged and dormant AI Weapons Platform, to an Interdimensional Phantasm that transcends space and time.



​
Inspiration: The main idea of this mod is to enhance the Player Crisis gameplay, and encourage players to select the Become the Crisis ascension perk (or at least make them consider the option). To implement that idea I set two goals:

• The first goal is to make the game more dynamic (like, what if you try to play defensively and speedrun the Aetherophasic Engine?) but also with some extra additions to make it more interactive and not forcing the player to get crisis stage 5, for unlocking full mod potential, just get new tech and components and keep playing the “standard” game any way they want.
  
• The second goal was to give the player more means to really oppose the whole galaxy, all those mighty alliances and vassalages, As A True Crisis Should.

From that idea and modjam theme emerged the common idea of someone who had “crisis” experience, but obviously failed (because if they succeeded, none of this would have happened). The rest (dialogues, terminology, descriptions) are based on Crisis Event Chain and the information the game is giving to me, along with some cool scientific definitions from physics .



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Inspiration: I’ve always found the concept of time dilation incredibly interesting. After bouncing around a few ideas for the modjam, this concept stuck out to me. How could it be used by an empire for their benefit? If it affects a whole planet, what would benefit? Stuff like production and growth speed? but also what downsides would it have? Increased upkeep for jobs and buildings? Would people be happy ageing at a faster speed than everywhere else? I kept asking myself these questions until eventually, I had a word document full of answers ready to be used.

I also tied the story into a rare bit of lore from Stellaris that I adore which is partially related to the concept, I’m sure most will understand the link if they have seen it before. Being interested in the science behind these things made it really easy to keep my motivation and interest in the mod high which certainly helped create this mod.




Inspiration: The main bit of inspiration for The Professor was the Stellaris tutorial AI, VIR. A few days into programming, I thought, “What if VIR was an awful college professor?” The idea of turning the Stellaris tutorial into an overly strict college professor, who viewed themselves as the arbiter of all knowledge was something I adored too much.

As for the portrait, I chose Necroids 9 simply because it’s one of my favorite portraits. My friends and I have an inside joke where we obsess about the amount of eyes the portrait has. We came to a consensus that 4 eyes is not enough, so this time the portrait has 6.







Inspiration: The idea that resonated most with me was the concept behind the champion Ryze from League of Legends, a lonely but powerful mage who has lived for millennia and charges himself with keeping ancient and powerful magical runes from falling into the wrong hands.

I thought it would be cool to make a similarly enigmatic, but grounded, leader that also charges himself with withholding some incredibly dangerous object/entity from the galaxy. I iterated on many ideas and landed on The Jailer. This concept inspired me.

Firstly, he is a character whose fundamental theme, seeking redemption, is relatable, grounded, and has a major opportunity for character growth. Secondly, there is instantly a major story hook worth exploring, what does he imprison, and why is it so dangerous? Finally, it allowed me to explore game mechanics and narratives that are IMO overlooked in Stellaris; crime, corruption and penal colonies.




Inspiration: My thought process when creating the features of the mod was primarily practical. With the requirement to make something balanced and a lack of knowledge about the legendary leaders, I decided to view the Stellaris Wiki and create features similar to the existing leaders. As for the story that I created to accompany my leader, it was more a spur of the moment thing than a planned chain of events, each project and event being written based on the one before.



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Inspiration: Despite having been a big fan of Star Trek in the past, it happened more by coincidence/subconsciously that my leader’s personality and background have big similarities with Q, and I wasn’t even aware of it until someone pointed it out to me. It is never a bad thing, though, to have someone around, who can fill the entire room with his ego alone. It just gives so many more options for crazy stories you could never have with a normal character.




Inspiration: Inspired by the Illithids in DnD, Convergence is a psionic mastermind driven mad by the multiverse. He will sacrifice anything to complete his master plan, foiled millennia ago by the entities in the Shroud.



​
Inspiration: While the idea of trying to steal from under the very noses (if they have one) of a Fallen Empire was the core idea from the beginning. I originally wasn’t sure of the leader’s origin. Was he a god-king with the power of foresight trapped on a pre-ftl world, looking to recover that which was stolen from him? Or was he a charismatic criminal, looking to launch a heist that would make him the greatest thief the galaxy has ever known?

After some early discussion and feedback, I ended up merging the two ideas a bit and focused a bit more on the idea of a Leader who has their own agenda which is at odds with your own, as that felt like a much more interesting take on a Legendary Leader.

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That's it for this week folks! Next week we'll be back with the release version of #MODJAM2024! And if you're interested in helping test the Modder's submissions, join us on Discord!

Hello Stellaris Community!

#MODJAM2024 is well under way. This year we had over 100 modders sign up, and over 60 design documents submitted. While we aren't expecting to have 60 Legendary Leaders submitted at the end of the competition (wouldn't that be awesome though?). Today, we're going to give you the first sneak peek at the Legendary Leaders our modders are currently working on, as well as give you a peek at how the final mod package will work.

The #MODJAM2024 is still currently on-pace for a January 11th, 2024 release. You can subscribe to the Mod Jam mod and get this content as soon as it releases!

Last year, we tried something a little different, in which the mid-game crises were posted by the modders themselves. For something like a mid-game crisis, this approach makes sense. Mid game crises can be iterated on for a long time, and (hopefully) these mods will continue to be supported into the distant future. However, for this year, we have decided to go for an all-in-one package, to make it easier for players to install and run the Mod Jam mod -- since last year's approach with a workshop playlist and wrapper mod was a little convoluted.

The Mod Jam Package

When starting a game with the Mod Jam mod enabled, when the game starts you will get a popup to choose which Legendary Leaders will be allowed to spawn.


We've also hooked up the vanilla Legendary Leaders to this system for the Mod Jam mod.

Clicking each leader will allow you to turn them off -- if its a leader you didn't like, or you want to guarantee which leader you play with, so you get to experience all the content. Each leader will also have a tooltip that describes in a loose sense what the leader does, so you will not be going into this completely blind.

Leaders are currently spawned one of three ways:

Random Spawns - this behavior is the most like the vanilla spawning of Legendary Leaders. The game will choose 3 to 6 Legendary Leaders to spawn randomly throughout the galaxy, from the list of Legendary Leaders that are allowed

Random Leader for Players - This option will spawn a random Legendary Leader from the list of allowed leaders within four jumps of each Player's homeworld. We could've allowed leaders to spawn for AIs as well, but that opens the opportunity to break things in interesting ways, and with the time constraints put on our modders, I didn't think it was a good idea to add an additional requirement.

Players Choose - This will spawn a choice for each player in the game of what Legendary Leader they want to spawn within four jumps of their home system. This is the option you should probably use if you want to play each and every one before you vote.


Azaryn is not in the list of choices, since Azaryn was disabled in the startup menu.

And that's the limit of the modding that I've done for this event. But you're not really here to see the stuff I made, you're here to see what the Modders have made. Like last year, we have prepared some (and are still working on) promotional assets for each one of the submissions. I know I've said this about a dozen times already, but thanks again to the Gigastructural Engineering team for letting us use their Stellar Systemcraft for the Mod Jam promotional art.

I've also invited the modders to each write about the inspiration for their mod (if they like). This explains why there are some that contain inspirations, and some that do not.

The Chronomancer by Rodahtnov and Zyralynn

Inspiration:

The leader idea is based around the fantasy of “genies”, fantastical creatures that provide wishes to the person they are bound to, but with some limitations, drawbacks and potential twisted results; In this case we are tied that concept to a specific sci-fi trope, which is the “manipulation of time” and, in some degrees, “reality”; the Chronolord is bound to a specific place and a specific relic, which resembles the “genie lamp” and as such becomes a desirable target for other empires, whether it is for envy, fighting its positive economic effects or just gaining another relic for their use.



Mircorv Core by Metallichydra

Access to some Legendary Leaders will be restricted to owners of other DLCs, such as the Mircorv Core, which will require Astral Planes in order to explore the Rift.



The Fragment by Ezraneilson.micahn

Inspiration: The Two largest Inspirations were the AEON 14 universe (Multinodal AI) and Mass Effect: Andromeda (Extragalactic Origin).



The Celestial Wayfarer by madeincanada



Perplexing Shadow by shadow_101084



Aevum T. Dohrnii by tr33

Inspiration: I spent too much time on stellaris. With this leader, you also can spend your time. Literally. Jokes aside if I had to name an inspiration it would probably be all the Dagoth Ur Memes. Aevum’s way of talking is heavily influenced by Dagoth’s cryptic speeches. The Chronomancer idea came along somewhere in the process.



The Timeless Warrior by MadamLava

Inspiration:

I’ve always been a sucker for a good time loop story, and finished a game (In Stars and Time) containing the best I’d ever seen by a wide margin the day before the modjam theme was announced and work began. While I’m drawing more broadly from time loop tropes in general, the concept was very much on my mind.

Some commonalities from some of these stories/media I enjoyed and seek to implement for my Leader were the concepts of an impossibly large goal at the end of the loop as its breaking condition, the looping character being affected by the dissociation that repeating time enough would cause, gradually becoming more and more powerful each loop, and how they might keep certain bits of knowledge about the future concealed until the right times.

Ultimately, I picked the idea for the fundamental reason that I am presently enthusiastic about the particular flavor of time shenanigans involved as a story device, making it much easier to come up with and work on my ideas. This perfectly falls in line with my own personal axiom that I’ve been using to stay focused, that being that modding should be fun.



Contingency Processing Core 1A6F by Draconas

Inspiration:

I wanted the concept of a leader that had their own agenda, and was going to try and achieve that, with or without you. The contingency gave me a great template to work off, since we all know what its goal is, and as a bonus it lets me explore taking synthetic evolution to its ultimate conclusion with machine intelligence.



Thanks for reading! We'll be back same time next week with more Mod Jam Legendary Leaders to show off!

by Eladrin

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Happy holidays everyone!

Much of the Stellaris team has already taken off for a winter break, but it’s time for our annual retrospective on the year and thoughts about where we’re going next.

We had three major releases in 2023 and a Custodian release.

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We started the year by telling the story of how you got the stars, with 3.7 “Canis Minor” and the First Contact Story Pack. In this story pack, we focused heavily on narrative origins, each one rivaling Toxoid’s Knights of the Toxic God for the depth of content contained within them. Broken Shackles and Payback told an interlinked story of pre-FTL civilizations that suffered under the sinister Minamar Specialized Industries, while Fear of the Dark explored the Dark Forest theory and questioned whether it was a good idea to step into the void at all.

First Contact also brought cloaking into Stellaris, giving Science Ships some new versatility, and providing Frigates a new role as sneak attackers. “Canis Minor” brought Archaeotech additions to Ancient Relics.




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Our anniversary in May gave us the 3.8 “Gemini” update and the Galactic Paragons Mechanical Expansion. This release added the Council and greatly increased the influence of leaders in Stellaris. Whether you were grooming your own leaders to serve on the Council or finding Renowned and Paragon leaders, they were much more powerful and relevant than before.

The “Gemini” update also added experimental Cooperative gameplay - Stellaris is a complex game, and we’ve found that the best teachers are you, the players.



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The “Caelum” update In the autumn focused on improving a number of the old species packs and reworked habitats. We added the Enmity tradition tree to Humanoids along with some new traits, Void Hive and Selective Kinship civics to Lithoids, the Fruitful Partnership origin and Invasive Species trait to Plantoids, and Worker Cooperative and Mechromancy to MegaCorp and Necroids. A few new portraits came in as well, taking Plantoids from the second least played Species Class to the second most played the month after release.


Also, birds.
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And most recently, we released 3.10 “Pyxis” and the Astral Planes Narrative Expansion. "Pyxis" included the Leader Consolidation that finally got leaders in a state that we're generally happy with them, and once the patch cycle was complete, gave us a fully customizable outliner. Astral Planes, meanwhile, is the largest Story focused expansion Stellaris has ever released. The Astral Rifts from Astral Planes have branching narratives with multiple endings, making each one several times the size of the linear Archaeology sites of the past, and there are over 30 of them in the pack.

I have some regrets that the release was tarnished by technical issues that we introduced, and we've made some internal changes to how the team will operate to reduce the chances of these sorts of things going wrong in the future.

I'm delighted with the respect and love that Abrakam Entertainment gave to our universe and lore. Astral Planes brings new insights to some old friends and enemies, greatly expanding on narrative questions that have been asked for years.




❅❅❆❄❅✼❆✼❄❆❆❄❅✼❆❄✼❅❆❄❆❆❅❄❅❅❆❄✼✼❆❄❆❄❅❄❅❅❆✼❅❅❆❄❅❆❆❄❄❆​

We have a Technology Open Beta running until January 15th, 2024. Based on how that goes, it may or may not end up being rolled into the 3.11 “Eridanus” update planned for the first quarter of 2024. I've found that the data and feedback we get from the community during these to be invaluable, and I look forward to seeing everything we've compiled when we get back. Thank you for helping us make Stellaris a better game.

We spent a lot of this year doing incremental rebalancing of the leader system following the “Gemini” update, which took more Custodian resources than I liked. We’ve gotten a few things in from the list we posted in Dev Diary #314 like the new Outliner, but for 2024 we’ll likely try to focus the Custodians on that list of topics. “Eridanus” will largely be a stabilization update, with the Custodian team focusing on bugfixing, game balance, and general stability.

Looking back, we had a share of unexpected issues and problems, but I'm proud of how we've all navigated the year together. I'm looking forward to what we can bring you next year and beyond.

See you next year!​
​
- Eladrin​
Stellaris Game Director ​

❆❄✼❄❅❄❅❅❆✼❆✼❆❄❄❆❆❄✼❅❆❄✼❅❅❄❅❅❆✼❅✼❆❄✼✼❆❄✼✼❆❄✼❄❅❄❅❅❆❄

Tofu, looking back at the year.
❆❆❆❅ ❆❄✼✼ ❆❄❆❄ ❆✼❆❆

❅❄❆❄❆❆❅❄❅❅❆❄❅❆❆✼❆❅❅❄❅❅❆❄❅❆❆❄✼❄❅❄❅❅❆❄❆❆❆❄✼❄❆❄❆❅❅❄❅❆

by Eladrin

I'm pleased to announce that the Technology Open Beta that we first talked about in Stellaris Dev Diary #325 is now available for your feedback.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author

Stellaris has undergone a significant amount of power creep over the years, and the speed at which we're able to burn through the entire technology tree is much higher than is healthy for the game. Due to the large number of stacking research speed modifiers, repeatable technologies are reached far too early in the game. Another power creep issue mentioned by many players, it's also become trivial to stack large numbers of ship build cost and ship upkeep reduction modifiers.

The Holiday Open Beta will be a feature branch that contains the following changes, which may or may not go into 3.11 (or 3.12, or any release at all for that matter). Similar to how we handled Industrial Districts several years ago, we're intentionally keeping these separated from core 3.11 development, isolating this in a parallel track.

The dev diary linked above contains more details regarding the intents behind some of the changes. While some changes planned for 3.11 “Eridanus” have snuck into this release (like some improvements to Galactic Doorstep), the overall technology rebalance is considered experimental and may or may not end up being released. It is likely to undergo some changes if it does go live.

We have created this feedback form to collect your impressions on both the partial tech rebalance and the military and economic changes that are present on the branch.

Features

• Replaced basic research technologies such as Quantum Theory with Breakthrough Technologies. Breakthrough Technologies will only appear once you have researched enough techs of your current tier and are required to research to reach the next tier.
  
• Breakthrough Technologies become easier to research based on the number of other empires you have low Tech intel on that have already researched them.
  
• Enigmatic Engineering blocks your Breakthrough Technologies from spreading.
  
• Events that give progress towards random technologies can grant progress towards Breakthrough Technologies, but will not give as much as they would a regular technology.

Improvements

• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup.
  
• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)

Balance

• Adjustments made to the Galactic Doorstep origin:
  
  • Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin.
    
  • Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.
  
• Rebalanced research speed modifiers. Most sources of Research Speed now have a corresponding increase in Researcher job upkeep
  
• Removed or adjusted many sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
  
• Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
  
• Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
  
• Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
  
• Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
  
• Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
  
• Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
  
• Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
  
• Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
  
• Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
  
• Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
  
• Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
  
• Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
  
• Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
  
• Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked.
  
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies.
  
• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
  
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
  
• Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
  
• Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
  
• The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
  
• Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
  
• Knights of the Toxic God balancing:
  
  • Slightly reduced the research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
    
  • Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
    
  • Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
    
  • Slightly reduced the unity and research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
    
  • Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
    
  • The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
    
  • Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% not 2% per Squire.
    
  • The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors.
  
• Reworked and rebalanced the Erudite, Cyborg, Synthetic, Psionic, Chosen One, and Chosen of X traits to include new leader assignments.

Bugfix

• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events.

Modding

• Added `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger

The Technology Open Beta will run until January 15th.

Thank you for your help in improving Stellaris!


Please disable mods for the Technology Open Beta, they are likely to break.

Link to feedback form.

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

The 3.10.4 "Pyxis" update has been released today. Of particular interest in this week’s update are a fix that lets AI be more willing to recruit Scientists for exploration, a fix to certain modifiers doubling up, and some adjustments to negative leader traits.

Balance

• Significantly reduced the yearly chance for leaders to gain negative traits.
  
• Due to player feedback, the Micromanager negative trait for Commanders now increases fleet upkeep instead of reducing command limit.
  
• The Lethargic negative trait for Commanders now also reduces fleet upkeep.
  
• The Nervous negative trait for Commanders now also increases disengagement chance.
  
• Having the Antagonistic Diplomatic Stance will now appease your factions asking for you to have a Strong Diplomatic Stance.

Bugfixes

• Added some failsafes to generate council positions and gestalt nodes in various edge cases where they weren't created or disappeared
  
• Clarified reformed tooltip for Dark Consortium civics
  
• Declining to Hunt for the Hyacinth should now correctly remove the event chain.
  
• Fix Astral Harvesting not available for heavily conquering empires
  
• Fixed a typo in the pre-FTL Provide Technology Tooltip.
  
• Fixed Civics not swapping to their alternative when switching Governments
  
• Fixed missing loc for the Fear of the Dark Admiral trait
  
• Fixed the Accelerated Time Astral Planes Modifier having a description for a title.
  
• Removed a redundant tooltip from the Synthetic Evolution event
  
• Ruler clothing selection in the empire designer is now respected
  
• Some planet modifiers that were getting incorrectly applied twice should now only be applied once.
  
• Updated the All Crisis Strength tooltip to accurately state that it doubles the strength of each subsequent crisis.
  
• Your ice miners will no longer make your Mercenaries homeless if they happened to have built their base above an ice asteroid.

AI

• AI Empires will now be more willing to hire leaders for their science ships as long as they believe they can afford the Unity upkeep.

UI

• Fixed XP not being shown in XP bar tooltip for gestalt rulers and councilors.

Modding

• collapsable_leader_container should now calculate the correct height no matter the amount of horizontal slots.
  
• Fixed lock_country scope change incorrectly stating that the output scope was a bypass, when it is actually a country

Barring unexpected developments, we consider the 3.10 “Pyxis” release stable at this point, and the 3.11 “Eridanus” update is the next expected release - currently planned for 2024Q1. As mentioned in an earlier dev diary, 3.11 “Eridanus” will be focused primarily on general bugfixing and stability.


We’ll be putting a Technology Open Beta up tomorrow to gather feedback and data on some possible changes to research. While some changes planned for 3.11 “Eridanus” have snuck into this release (like some improvements to Galactic Doorstep), the overall technology rebalance is considered experimental and may or may not end up being released. It is likely to undergo some changes if it does go live.

The Technology Open Beta will run from December 15th through January 15th. We’ll post a feedback form tomorrow to help gather your impressions and thoughts.

Features

• Replaced basic research technologies such as Quantum Theory with Breakthrough Technologies. Breakthrough Technologies will only appear once you have researched enough techs of your current tier and are required to research to reach the next tier.
  
• Breakthrough Technologies become easier to research based on the number of other empires you have low Tech intel on that have already researched them.
  
• Enigmatic Engineering blocks your Breakthrough Technologies from spreading.
  
• Events that give progress towards random technologies can grant progress towards Breakthrough Technologies, but will not give as much as they would a regular technology.

Improvements

• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup.
  
• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)

Balance

• Adjustments made to the Galactic Doorstep origin:
  
• Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin.
  
• Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
  
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.
  
• Rebalanced research speed modifiers. Most sources of Research Speed now have a corresponding increase in Researcher job upkeep
  
• Removed or adjusted many sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
  
• Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
  
• Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
  
• Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
  
• Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
  
• Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
  
• Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
  
• Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
  
• Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
  
• Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
  
• Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
  
• Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
  
• Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
  
• Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
  
• Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked.
  
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies.
  
• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
  
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
  
• Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
  
• Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
  
• The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
  
• Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
  
• Knights of the Toxic God balancing:
  
  • Slightly reduced the research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
    
  • Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
    
  • Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
    
  • Slightly reduced the unity and research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
    
  • Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
    
  • The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
    
  • Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% not 2% per Squire.
    
  • The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors.
  
• Reworked and rebalanced the Erudite, Cyborg, Synthetic, Psionic, Chosen One, and Chosen of X traits to include new leader assignments.

Bugfix

• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events.

Modding

• Added `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger

Game Systems Designer @Gruntsatwork did a video interview about what it’s like to work on the Custodian and Crisis teams.



No, you can’t implement trash. - E

The nights are getting cold and long, so for the last dev diary of the year it’s time for a look at the year in review.

See you then!

Hello Stellaris Community!

The Stellaris Team, and our partners at Republic of Gamers, are proud to announce the theme of this year's Mod Jam:
Legendary Leaders!



Modders will have until January 9th (feature-complete submissions are due January 4th + 5 days of polish/bugfixing) to create:​

• One (1) Legendary Leader
  
• Two (2) or more flavor events that occur after the leader has been hired
  
• One (1) or more events that lead to the option to recruit the Legendary Leader
  
• One (1) or more unique Solar System Initializer(s) where the event(s) to recruit the Legendary Leader begin
  
• One (1) scripted_effect that will spawn your legendary leader's solar_system_initializer (to be fired from solar_system scope)

The full and official rules are available on the Official Stellaris Discord. Haven't signed up yet? Sign ups will be open until 5 PM CET on December 14th! Not a modder? Subscribe to #MODJAM2024 on the Steam workshop and get the new content as soon as it's available!

This year our modders will be competing for some fantastic prizes from our partners at Republic of Gamers:

• 1st Place: ROG Strix G17 (2023) G713 Laptop*
  
• 2nd Place: ROG Delta S Wireless Headset*
  
• 3rd Place: ROG Spatha X Wireless Mouse*
  
• 4th - 10th Place: Stellaris branded Wallet and Keychain

* Exact specifications may vary depending on winning modder’s region

The winner will be determined by the result of a Community Vote, which will start on January 11th, 2024 at 5 PM CET and finish 5 PM CET on February 11th, 2024. You can read the full terms and conditions here.

Thanks to everyone who's signed up so far, and best of luck to our modders!

by Eladrin

Hi everyone,

The 3.10.3 "Pyxis" update has been released. This release focused primarily on stability, and the contents are identical to the Open Beta that was released on Tuesday.

Improvements

• Now ‘New Entries’ notification on the outliner tabs is cleared, even when switching between tabs using keyboard shortcuts.
  
• Ulastar is now an advisor
  
• Vas the Gilded is now an ambassador

Balance

• Pre-FTLs in Federation's End now have their technological progress frozen

Bugfixes

• Fixed a number of event or paragon leaders not being generated with the correct traits
  
• Fixed envoys passively gaining XP
  
• Fixed missing subtitle for Scout trait
  
• Pre-FTL Empires will now have a fully functional council when they ascend to the stars.
  
• Released Vassals will now have a fully functional council when released.

Stability

• Fix crash on startup for Linux (including Steam Deck).
  
• Fix crash related to modifiers of recently destroyed empires updating
  
• Fixed crash when surveying a planet that was just removed from the map

UI

• Removed some empty space in the topbar

Modding

• Added moddable_conditions_custom_tooltip parameter to civics modification statement to allow displaying a custom requirement key when no condition has been specified
  
• Fixed civics modifications statements not always (not) allowing the correct civic changes
  
• Improved error logging to know which federation perk is invalid

We currently have plans for another update this cycle with some more fixes, including an AI fix to encourage them to recruit an appropriate number of scientists. As with the last few, we plan on putting it on the stellaris_test branch on Tuesday, for release later on in the week.
Tentatively scheduled for next Friday, we plan on putting up a longer open beta over the holidays that seeks to collect feedback regarding some potential balance changes to ship production, upkeep, and research in general.

Stellaris has undergone a significant amount of power creep over the years, and the speed at which we're able to burn through the entire technology tree is much higher than is healthy for the game. Due to the large number of stacking research speed modifiers, repeatable technologies are reached far too early in the game. Another power creep issue mentioned by many players, it's also become trivial to stack large numbers of ship build cost and ship upkeep reduction modifiers.

The Holiday Open Beta will be a feature branch that contains the following changes, which may or may not go into 3.11 (or 3.12, or any release at all for that matter). Similar to how we handled Industrial Districts several years ago, we're intentionally keeping these separated from core 3.11 development, isolating this in a parallel track.

We’ll have a feedback form set up to collect your thoughts, and the Open Beta will run until the middle of January.

• Research Speed Bonuses now usually come with increased Researcher Upkeep.
  • By changing these to throughput bonuses (cost + production), a technology focused empire will require more Consumer Goods or other resources depending on who they use to research. This puts a partial economic break on runaway technology.
• Reduction in most Research Speed bonus modifiers.
  
• The +20% research field technologies have been turned into "Breakthrough" technologies that gate progress to the next tier of research.
  • Whether it be the transistor, the theory of relativity, or faster-than-light travel, occasionally there are technologies that redefine a field of science.
    
    • The intent of these breakthrough technologies is to slow down the front-runners a little bit, while still letting the slower empires get pulled along.
  • Once a theory has been proven, it's easier for others to replicate those learnings.
    
  • Breakthrough technologies start off more difficult than regular technologies but have a variant of tech spread - the more nations you have at least low Technological intel on who have already discovered them, the cheaper they are to research (even down to instant research once the theory is commonplace). This tech spread varies based on galaxy size.
    
    • Enigmatic Engineering prevents this tech spread.
  • Breakthrough technologies have animated borders to stand out.
• Reduced Output of Researcher Jobs:
  • Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
    
  • Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
    
  • The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
    
  • Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
    
  • All other researchers, such as Necromancers, have been left alone for now
• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
  
• Replaced or removed most sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
  • Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
    
  • Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
    
  • Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
    
  • Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
    
  • Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
    
  • Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
    
  • Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
    
  • Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
    
  • Chosen of the Eater of Worlds ship build cost reduction reduced to 5% from 15%, and no longer modifies ship upkeep.
    
  • Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
    
  • Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
    
  • Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
    
  • Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
    
  • Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
    
  • Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
    
  • Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
    
  • Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
    
  • Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
    
  • Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked​

Over the holiday period, we will be running another Mod Jam. This year’s theme will be revealed on December 12th, and sign ups will close on December 14th. The Community team will be posting weekly Mod Jam updates in place of our weekly Dev Diaries, so you can still get your weekly Stellaris fix.

We’ve currently scheduled the Mod Jam mod to release on January 11th! If you’re interested in participating, you can get more details and sign up here. You can also subscribe to the Mod Jam mod here, and get it as soon as it releases.