Hello Stellaris Community!

We hope you all have had/are having a great holiday season! Last week’s War and War Resolution Feedback Form had over 4000 responses, and we’d like to take the time to thank you all for your feedback. There are certainly some insights to be gained from the feedback you offered, and we’re excited to see some trends emerging - and combined with the rather large sample size - we feel we have a solid amount of community feedback that can inform potential future development on War and War resolution in Stellaris.

For those of you who didn’t see last week’s feedback post, we are taking advantage of the break in dev diaries to collect feedback to inform future Stellaris development. This is not a promise or a guarantee that there will be a rework on any of these mechanics at any point, this is to collect community feedback in a centralized place so that if the devs do a rework in a particular area, we have an idea of the community’s expectations and what you like and dislike about the current implementation of features in Stellaris.

Today we’re taking another look at another topic from Dev Diary #364 -Sights Unseen: Pirates and Crime.

This is what Eladrin said in DD# 364:

Pirates and Crime
Space Piracy is a popular fantasy - we touched on it a bit with the Treasure Hunters origin in Grand Archive, but they could mesh well with the Nomads idea mentioned earlier or even a factional political expansion. Crime and Deviancy aren’t terribly engaging systems at the moment either, and might benefit from wider examination.

So, Stellaris Community, what do you like/dislike about Pirates and Crime in Stellaris? Fill out our Piracy and Crime Feedback form and let us know!

From all of us here on Stellaris, thank you for taking the time to offer your feedback, and thanks for playing Stellaris!

by MrFreake_PDX

Hello Stellaris Community!

With the devs off on holidays, and a rare four Thursdays in a row free, we decided we would commandeer your regularly scheduled Thursday dev diary slot to gather some feedback that may help inform development at some point in the future. Here on Stellaris, we work on rather long timelines, the content for 2025 has been in-development for some time already, and while we can't wait to share those things with you, our objective here is to inform potential future development based off the topics discussed in Stellaris Dev Diary #364 - Sights Unseen.

We are going to spend the next four weeks collecting feedback on what the Community likes and dislikes about the current version of Stellaris, and their expectations for certain features that were discussed.

While having an open conversation worked really well for Dev Diary #364, and we thank you for sharing your thoughts there, a more structured approach is required for something that might sit for a year or two before it gets used, if it gets used at all.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author

Warfare and War Resolution
At some point in the future, I’d like to see us revisit war and war resolution, and enable more of the scenarios that occur in the “Stellaris Cinematic Universe” of our trailers. When the Gamma Aliens attacked the UNE colony of Europa VII, the Commonwealth of Man did not wait patiently for an invitation to war before summoning the Apocalypse. Humanity was threatened, and they acted. More fluid rules around joining and leaving wars are needed, and betrayal is not supported to my satisfaction. (Secret Fealty exists, but I don’t find it enough in its current state - other mechanics currently prevent them from seizing the chance for freedom at what would be the most opportune moments.)

Without further ado, we present the War and War Resolution feedback form. This form will be available to leave feedback on until next Thursday, at which point we will read through the feedback, and prepare a report for the developers that outlines what the community likes/dislikes, and their expectations for a future rework or expansion.

Thank you for taking the time to offer your feedback, and thank you for playing Stellaris!

by Eladrin

Happy holidays everyone!

As is tradition, in the last dev diary of the year I like to look over what we’ve done and insert sneaky leaks about next year.

We began 2024 with a technology open beta that ran over the holidays, which was released as the 3.11 “Eridanus” Custodian update. Since we’re planning on having another Open Beta next year, I want to point out how successful that Open Beta was, finding critical issues related to the breakthrough technologies and giving us a much better release overall. I’m hoping that next year’s Open Beta will be equally effective.

We had some really cool cinematics too.

In March, we saw the light..


You too will see the light.​

And soon became part of something greater with the release of The Machine Age and Stellaris: Season 08.


Become part of something greater.​

The Machine Age began our remastering of the Ascension Paths, starting with Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension. It significantly expanded Machine gameplay, and added Cosmogenesis, our technological victory condition.

It also added our first new End-Game Crisis in years, the Synthetic Queen Cetana.


My children, at last I am returned to you.​

In the latter half of the year, we had two releases back to back, starting with Cosmic Storms:


At first, they did not understand.​

Quickly followed by the Grand Archive Story Pack:


Good boy.​

This was also the first time we ever localized one of our story trailers into another language:


好孩子。​

We ended the year with our discussions about the vision of the game and its future, with what I feel were some of the best dev diary responses we’ve ever had.

All in all, it’s been a busy year, and I’m generally pretty happy with where we ended up.

Speaking of being a busy year, during 2024 Stellaris had 16 releases.

If you have ever had the desire to go through over 1200 lines of release notes, I’ve got you covered.

That’s the summary of this year in Stellaris. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and I look forward to seeing you all in the coming year.





Purchase Stellaris: Grand Archive alone or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!
Stellaris: Season 08 will remain available as a dynamic bundle on Steam until January 9th.

by Eladrin

Hello again, Stellaris Community!

Last week we looked back at where we’ve been, and today we’re going to look at possible themes I think we might explore in the future. Like the past few dev diaries, this is one where we’re actively soliciting your thoughts.

If you haven’t had a chance to add your bit of feedback to The Vision, you still have a couple of days left - it’s going to stay active until the end of November.

Today is the 3.14.1592 release day, so before we get to the main diary I’ll start with the final release notes.
The 3.14.1592 patch addressed the following issues - I’ve bolded new additions (all under Bugfixes) since last week’s diary:

Balance​

• Add energy activation cost to Propagandosphere
  
• Cloaking strength on Camouflage mutations are now consistent throughout sizes
  
• Give -15% cloning cost and -10% fauna upkeep to Beastmasters civics
  
• Reduce Space Fauna cloning cost by 10%
  
• Reduce Space Fauna energy upkeep by 25%
  
• Remove minor artifacts production from Decentralized Research edict
  
• Rework Mutated Voidworms fleets content and scaling, aligning them similar to Prethoryn Brood Queen fleets

Bugfix​

• Clone Soldier Ascendants can now cyberize
  
• Fix to AI machine empires spawning as Despicable Neutrals without The Machine Age
  
• Necrophages no longer create an endless series of replacement pops when purging on the Synaptic Lathe
  
• Accelerate juveniles animation speed
  
• Added Insider Trading and Trade Focus traits to each other's opposites block to stop them appearing together since they almost cancel each other out.
  
• Added Orbital Ring variants for Beastport/Hatchery/Vivarium descriptions in all supported languages
  
• Civics added in Grand Archive can now be swapped from the regular to corporate version and vice versa
  
• Clarified the texts of the Cultivated Worldscaping decision and planet modifier
  
• Deleting a design now keeps you in current designer type
  
• Enclaves and Marauders satisfy Xenoist Contact Demand
  
• Extreme Contortionist DNA now gives rare crystals instead of motes to be more consistent with the event that gives it
  
• Fix an issue where Cognitive Node should be selected by the Leader Infected event
  
• Fix blocked Tiyanki Graveyard event chain when capturing them
  
• Fix Boarding Cables capturing literally anything - thanks for the fun screenshots
  
• Fix Breeding Status displayed in view that was not always correct
  
• Fix Fossilized Endoskeleton specimen localization
  
• Fix Mercenary Enclave Stations unable to build ships
  
• Fix Cloaked Patternwalker missing string
  
• Fix scoped localizations for Memorial For Bubbles specimen
  
• Fixed an unlocalized string showing up when you tried to return starbases at times. Also added linebreaks to the same tooltip.
  
• Fixed recommended DLC tooltips in multiplayer
  
• Fixes a bug with too wide portrait on Empire Design Selection View
  
• FX for ship auras are now displayed
  
• Improve Cordyceptic Drones fauna damage modifier text in tooltip to make it clearer what it exactly affects
  
• Life Tree Protectors now don't move away from their system
  
• Lost colony parents using Sol as their system will no longer spawn two Siriuses if the guaranteed habitable worlds slider is set to 1.
  
• Mutated Voidworms fleets now don't use naval capacity
  
• Mutated Voidworms now don't show they can upgrade anymore
  
• Orbital Assembly Complex holding now correctly boost Beastport and Hatchery on Orbital Ring
  
• Precursors can no longer be discovered on Astral Scars
  
• Prevent duplicate specimens from being found in the same empire
  
• Removed the unused h_dna string
  
• Stop showing upkeep part of message when leader upkeep is zero in hire leader confirmation dialog
  
• The Diplomacy Tradition Finisher now properly refers to Officials and not Envoys.
  
• Voidworms now stop bombarding if the Immunity technology is researched (before crisis)
  
• Worm-Riddled Gate is now correctly accessible if Voidworms are captured instead of killed

AI​

• AI won't build infinite science ships when trying to build frigates anymore
  
• Fix AI that was not willing to build Shipyards

Stability​

• Fix a crash when a tooltip references the concept of a tradition that doesn't exist
  
• Fix crash when Voidworms try to act on empty fleets
  
• Fix OOS when riftworld station is built
  
• Fix saves affected by the crash when an AI without a Grand Archive tries to capture a Space Fauna
  
• Fix Voidworms CTD
  
• Fixed issue with resolving the user home dir on linux that leads to CTD

Unless critical bugs in need of a hotfix arise, this will be the last planned Stellaris release of 2024. I want to avoid potentially destabilizing the game just before the winter holidays.

Now, on to the main dev diary.
Over the past few weeks we’ve looked at the basic vision of Stellaris and discussed how Stellaris has changed over the years.

This week I want to talk about things we potentially might want to explore in the future.


Biological and Psionic Ascension
First things first, I strongly believe that remastering the remaining Ascension Paths is a top priority. The Machine Age dramatically improved Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascensions, and gave machine empires proper ascension choices, but left the others behind. Biological Ascension isn’t in a good state right now mechanically or as an overall experience. Psionic Ascension is better off as it is affected tangentially by most content releases, but is a bit too reliant on random events and luck. Both of these Ascension Paths will be revamped, though since they are very distinct from one another, I intend on having them focused on in two separate releases.

Warfare and War Resolution
At some point in the future, I’d like to see us revisit war and war resolution, and enable more of the scenarios that occur in the “Stellaris Cinematic Universe” of our trailers. When the Gamma Aliens attacked the UNE colony of Europa VII, the Commonwealth of Man did not wait patiently for an invitation to war before summoning the Apocalypse. Humanity was threatened, and they acted. More fluid rules around joining and leaving wars are needed, and betrayal is not supported to my satisfaction. (Secret Fealty exists, but I don’t find it enough in its current state - other mechanics currently prevent them from seizing the chance for freedom at what would be the most opportune moments.)

Biological Ships
While rearing and mutating space fauna was added to Stellaris in the Grand Archive story pack, I feel that it’s not the same fantasy as true bioships. These are vessels that your people grow and fly around in, or that have more symbiotic relationships with their pilots. I think those systems would probably pair nicely alongside Biological Ascension.

Factions and Politics
Governments in Stellaris may hold a grudge against you for centuries for your atrocities but pops and factions are very quick to forgive and forget. There are no revanchist or irredentist factions that make trouble when borders change, nor variety within the factions themselves. I’d also like to see factions have their own tenets and goals and different ways that you can deal with them. There have been a lot of calls for an “internal politics” expansion, but I think that it would really be politics and culture in general, affecting both your empires and those around you.

If we were to do something along those lines, I’d also want to add some variant of factions to Gestalt empires - maybe Instincts for Hives that grow more dominant based on your behavior or Directives that compete for priority in Machine Intelligences. They’d have to feel different from individualistic factions, however. Among individualistic factions, I could see the tenets of an Egalitarian faction from a Shared Burdens empire being very different from the Egalitarian faction in a non-Worker Coop MegaCorp, and these tenets might also be used to define the beliefs of your Spiritualist factions. I’d certainly want to explore spreading my factions into other empires.

Espionage
Espionage is a related system that isn’t satisfying its promise currently, as Mr. Cosmogone reminds me during every design meeting.

It’s difficult to keep track of spy networks, is generally of low impact, and has no real counterplay. But he’s got schemes.

Playable Nomads
Finding different ways of playing the game can be popular - landless adventuring in Crusader Kings III, for example, makes me wonder what we could do with nomadic fleets in Stellaris. The key questions there end up being “why are they nomadic”, and “how do they interact with more standard empires”. Origins could also be opportunities to “table flip” the normal economic or political models of Stellaris.

Pirates and Crime
Space Piracy is a popular fantasy - we touched on it a bit with the Treasure Hunters origin in Grand Archive, but they could mesh well with the Nomads idea mentioned earlier or even a factional political expansion. Crime and Deviancy aren’t terribly engaging systems at the moment either, and might benefit from wider examination.

Species Packs
When it comes to species, I could see us examining what kinds of life could arise on molten or frozen worlds, much like we did with Toxoids. Like Toxoids, they’d likely need some restrictions on what they can do with those worlds (as they’re 10x more abundant than normal habitable worlds), but they’d be interesting to explore. Players often ask for gaseous or energy creatures - the first are already represented to an extent by the Dathnak and the latter by the Unbidden. I feel that energy beings may go too far into fantasy “elementals”, so I’d like to stay away from them if possible. Expanding the existing species phenotypes could also potentially be interesting - Plantoids II, for example.

Scenarios
“Scenarios” are another proposal that I’ve seen a number of times over the years - would it be interesting to have scripted game modes with custom rules, and events already in motion?

They could lean hard into already established universes with asymmetric starts. Perhaps the game starts off with communications from a Xenophile empire that tells you, Pre-FTL Earth:


Hacked together example. Not anything real.​

A system like this could allow for challenges or narratives that can be completed in a relatively short play session compared to a standard Stellaris campaign, or could otherwise completely change the pace or nature of the game. It could also be used to craft competitive experiences - at past PDXCons we’ve featured mods like Survival: Necroid Invasion or Ark of Ascension - I could see things like that fitting into the system.

Alternate game modes tend to be fairly binary though - they’re either not used very much, or they’re incredibly popular - not much in between. What kinds of things would you want to see in these sorts of game modes, if anything?
This was a bit of a stream of consciousness dev diary, so I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface of possibilities.

What do you think I missed? Are any of these especially attractive or repellent? Where do you want us to go?
​Next week we’ll be reacting to your responses to this one.

The days are getting shorter and the snows are starting here in Stockholm, so I expect I’ll keep this one pinned for the next two weeks.

Hello Stellaris Community!

We hope you’ve been enjoying the content from Stellaris: Season 08! We’re here to let you know that as of today, November 26th, Season 08 will transition from a Steam Package to a Dynamic Bundle.




If you already own Season 08 then these changes won’t affect you or your content, and you can stop reading now and go back to loading pops into your Synaptic Lathe.

If you only purchased one or more DLCs from Stellaris: Season 08, and want to pick up the rest at a discounted price, changing to a Dynamic Bundle now allows you to do that without paying for content that you already own. If you bought them all individually, and are sad that you don’t get the Rick the Cube bonus portrait, you should also be able to claim it as part of the Season 08 Dynamic Bundle after this change.

Early in the New Year, this Dynamic Bundle will be retired and the content added to the Ultimate Bundle, to make way for Season 09. But first, we wanted to give those people who didn’t pick up the Season 08 Expansion Pass - and instead purchased only one or two of the DLCs - a chance to get the rest of the content at the same discount we offered the initial adopters.

We will update you again closer to the retirement date with an exact date.


Stellaris: Season 08 contains all the major Stellaris releases from 2024, including The Machine Age, the Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion, and Grand Archive Story Pack and the illustrious non-spherical Rick the Cube machine species portrait.

Read on to check out all the content included in this new Dynamic Bundle!
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39193

• Individualistic Non-Gestalt Machine Empires
  
• Gestalt Machine Intelligence Empires (also unlocked by the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack)
  
• A new End-Game Crisis - The Synthetic Queen
  
• A new Player Crisis Path - Cosmogenesis
  
• Three new Origins
  
• -Cybernetic Creed
  
• -Synthetic Fertility
  
• -Arc Welders
  
• Civics
  
• -Guided Sapience
  
• -Natural Design
  
• -Obsessional Directive
  
• -Protocol Droids
  
• -Tactical Cogitators
  
• -Augmentation Bazaars (requires Megacorp)
  
• Two Mid-Game Structures
  
• -Arc Furnace
  
• -Dyson Swarm
  
• Three New Ascension Paths
  
• -Virtuality
  
• -Nanotech
  
• -Modularity
  
• Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension (also unlocked by Utopia)
  
• Exploration of the effects of the cyberization or synthesization of society, with Advanced Government Forms for those who complete it.
  
• New Species Traits for Cyborgs, Machines and Robots
  
• Cybernetic portraits that change based on advancement through cyberization
  
• Synthetic portraits with both organic and synthetic variants that changed based on synthesization, usable by either organics or machines
  
• Two new Shipsets, Diplomatic Rooms, and City Sets
  
• 7 new music tracks synthetic and cybernetic inspired music tracks

8 New Space Storms
Storm Chasers Origin
3 New Civics
-Planetscapers
-Astrometeorology
-Storm Devotion
Galactic Weather Control Ascension Perk
Weather Forecasting Map Mode
Two new Precursor narratives, with two new Relics
Events, Anomalies, and Archaeology Sites
Storm-related technologies, Edicts, and Galactic community resolutions



Space Fauna capture, breeding, and modification systems
151 Specimens to collect and display across events from Grand Archive and the base game
Over 240 Specimens total including those distributed across other Stellaris content
15 new Relics
New Megastructure - The Grand Archive
Two new Tradition trees
-Archivism
-Domestication
Two new Origins
-Primal Calling
-Treasure Hunters
Two new Civics
-Beastmasters
-Galactic Curators
Two new forms of spaceborne life
-Cutholoids
-Voidworms
A new possible mid-game crisis - the Voidworm Plague
Three new music tracks
Events, Anomalies, Archaeology Sites, Technologies, Galactic community resolutions, and more!


Season 08 Bonus Portrait: Rick the Cube

You can get all the content above, plus the bonus Rick the Cube portrait at a 20% discount, plus now you don’t pay for content you already own!

Thanks to the Stellaris Community for your support over the past year, we can’t wait to be able to show off what’s coming next year!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39193

by Eladrin

Hello, Stellaris Community!

Today we’ll start with preliminary release notes for 3.14.1592, then look back at the past at all of the changes Stellaris has gone through and summarize the feedback you all gave in the dev diary two weeks ago - The Vision. We’re still reading the responses to that one and will continue doing so, so if you haven’t had a chance to add your thoughts, please add them!

If all goes according to plan, we’ll be releasing the 3.14.1592 patch sometime next week.

These are our preliminary release notes:

​

• Add energy activation cost to Propagandosphere
  
• Cloaking strength on Camouflage mutations are now consistent throughout sizes
  
• Give -15% cloning cost and -10% fauna upkeep to Beastmasters civics
  
• Reduce Space Fauna cloning cost by 10%
  
• Reduce Space Fauna energy upkeep by 25%
  
• Remove minor artifacts production from Decentralized Research edict
  
• Rework Mutated Voidworms fleets content and scaling, aligning them similar to Prethoryn Brood Queen fleets

​

• Accelerate juveniles animation speed
  
• Added Insider Trading and Trade Focus traits to each other's opposites block to stop them appearing together since they almost cancel each other out.
  
• Added Orbital Ring variants for Beastport/Hatchery/Vivarium descriptions in all supported languages
  
• Civics added in Grand Archive can now be swapped from the regular to corporate version and vice versa
  
• Clarified the texts of the Cultivated Worldscaping decision and planet modifier
  
• Deleting a design now keeps you in current designer type
  
• Enclaves and Marauders satisfy Xenoist Contact Demand
  
• Extreme Contortionist DNA now gives rare crystals instead of motes to be more consistent with the event that gives it
  
• Fix an issue where Cognitive Node should be selected by the Leader Infected event
  
• Fix blocked Tiyanki Graveyard event chain when capturing them
  
• Fix Boarding Cables capturing literally anything - thanks for the fun screenshots
  
• Fix Breeding Status displayed in view that was not always correct
  
• Fix Fossilized Endoskeleton specimen localization
  
• Fix Mercenary Enclave Stations unable to build ships
  
• Fix Cloaked Patternwalker missing string
  
• Fix scoped localizations for Memorial For Bubbles specimen
  
• Fixed an unlocalized string showing up when you tried to return starbases at times. Also added linebreaks to the same tooltip.
  
• Fixed recommended DLC tooltips in multiplayer
  
• Fixes a bug with too wide portrait on Empire Design Selection View
  
• FX for ship auras are now displayed
  
• Improve Cordyceptic Drones fauna damage modifier text in tooltip to make it clearer what it exactly affects
  
• Life Tree Protectors now don't move away from their system
  
• Lost colony parents using Sol as their system will no longer spawn two Siriuses if the guaranteed habitable worlds slider is set to 1.
  
• Mutated Voidworms fleets now don't use naval capacity
  
• Mutated Voidworms now don't show they can upgrade anymore
  
• Orbital Assembly Complex holding now correctly boost Beastport and Hatchery on Orbital Ring
  
• Preccursors can no longer be discovered on Astral Scars
  
• Prevent duplicate specimens from being found in the same empire
  
• Removed the unused h_dna string
  
• Stop showing upkeep part of message when leader upkeep is zero in hire leader confirmation dialog
  
• The Diplomacy Tradition Finisher now properly refers to Officials and not Envoys.
  
• Voidworms now stop bombarding if the Immunity technology is researched (before crisis)
  
• Worm-Riddled Gate is now correctly accessible if Voidworms are captured instead of killed

​

• AI won't build infinite science ships when trying to build frigates anymore
  
• Fix AI that was not willing to build Shipyards

• Fix a crash when a tooltip references the concept of a tradition that doesn't exist
  
• Fix crash when Voidworms try to act on empty fleets
  
• Fix OOS when riftworld station is built
  
• Fix saves affected by the crash when an AI without a Grand Archive tries to capture a Space Fauna
  
• Fix Voidworms CTD
  
• Fixed issue with resolving the user home dir on linux that leads to CTD

Okay, now on to the main dev diary.

A long time ago in a galaxy generated far, far away, on May 9th, 2016, Stellaris was released.

We all took our first steps out into the stars, filled with a universe of possibilities and wonders. I was there picking my FTL type and favored weapons and experiencing those early days the same way many of you did.

Each of the Expansions changed Stellaris in their own way.

The first really major changes came to Stellaris in 1.5 in the Utopia expansion, when Ascension Perks were added. These shook the game up so drastically that when Apocalypse changed the face of war in 2.0, they ended up moving into the base game.

Apocalypse and 2.0 included a huge number of other changes as well, changing how system control works and removing the different FTL types. I mark this moment as the point where Stellaris began moving from a pure 4X game to more of a hybrid of 4X and GSG. That transition continued in the next major shakeup with MegaCorp and 2.2, which replaced the economic model, changing from tiles to the pop and job system we still use today.

Federations and the 2.6 update added the Galactic Community, revamped Federations, and changed the way we think about empire creation by adding Origins to the game. Most of the Origins started off relatively simple, but as we added more they steadily grew in complexity. (Knights of the Toxic God, I’m looking at you.)

The intel and exploration changes of Nemesis brought us to the 3.0 update, as they fundamentally changed the early stages of the game. Nemesis also brought us our first player Crisis path, Galactic Nemesis, which was originally simply called “Become the Crisis”.

3.1, the Lem update, wasn’t an expansion release, but it changed how the Stellaris team operated, for the better. This was when we began the Custodian Initiative. The Custodians have done an excellent job polishing old content up to our modern expectations, fixing bugs, adding new quality of life features, and generally improving the game.

Overlord and 3.4 added improved subjugation mechanics and added the Situations system which has become an incredible tool for the content designers. We also expanded automation at this time, revamping planetary automation and letting unemployed pops find their way using the automatic resettlement system.

The leader system underwent massive changes in 3.8 when Galactic Paragons added leader traits and attempted to make them a more interesting system to play with. This system remained in flux until 3.10, when they finally reached a state where we were happy with the results. Sometimes change needs a little iteration. 3.8 also added Cooperative gameplay, making it much easier to teach your friends how to play Stellaris.

This year brought the Expansion Subscription option to make it easier to get into Stellaris, and The Machine Age and 3.12 began the process of elevating the Ascension Paths to new heights. The positive reaction to The Machine Age and the success of the Season 08 Expansion Pass strongly affected our plans for 2025, and made us also reflect upon questions like “what is a Crisis anyway", “what is ‘winning’”, and “can we remaster two very different Ascension Paths in a single year”.

The Story Packs, Species Packs, and other content added to Stellaris in their own ways as well, adding to the deep lore of Stellaris and expanding the possibilities.

I want to thank everyone for the enormous outpouring of feedback that we’ve received over the last couple of weeks. As I noted last week, I’ve been reading every response to Dev Diary 361, and I’ve been keeping tabs on responses on several different platforms. If you haven’t had a chance to give your feedback, don’t worry, you’re not too late. I’ll be keeping The Vision pinned in our forums until the end of November.

This section will be my musings on the feedback and some of the things it made me think of. Not everything I talk about here is viable or going to happen, but if you’re being this open with me I owe it to you to return the favor.

Based on the feedback you’ve all given, the consensus is that you’re very amenable to change to address engine or system limitations, and that we should not feel constrained by what is already there if we feel we can find a way to make things better. Many of you did note that the initial implementations of changes aren’t typically perfect, and that they take iteration to achieve their goals. (So we should be careful with what we decide to take on at once!)

Some of the questions that I offered as proposals were a bit leading - I did want to know what you all thought about the existing pop mechanics, for example, because I’m very interested in improving their performance and addressing several other quality of life and mechanical issues with the current systems. Your responses have strengthened my belief that tackling planets is a correct course of action, and you should expect some experimentation in next year’s Open Beta.

I’d like to move us over to a system more similar to the pop groups used in Victoria 3 - though with a Stellaris spin on things. We’re not likely to go as deep in the simulation as Victoria does, but I think that we can likely split pop groups based on species, ethics, and factions. Some of the granularity we have right now might slip though, so I’m eager to get to doing some prototyping and seeing what the pros and cons are of such a change, as well as what the performance implications would be. The economic implications are huge.

Fleets are unlikely to get major changes this year, but a number of you identified them as a place where we can do a lot of major improvements, along with many aspects of war. We’ll talk a bit more about these next week.

Trade is almost certainly going to change. Very few of you seemed terribly fond of the current system, and it’s both terribly bad for performance and mechanically difficult to understand for new players. While I like the general idea behind the trade routes, I don’t think they add enough benefit for their costs. We’re likely to revamp it into a proper resource, though I’m also considering ways of also using it to simulate supply lines and local planetary deficits. If we end up pursuing the latter, gestalt empires would need access to trade or at least, something similar. That could potentially open up more opportunities for MegaCorps and diplomatic pacts, and we’ll have to find new ways of using pirates.

Next week I want to look at some of the things I think we’re still missing. Player fantasies that we either do not support or do not support well enough in Stellaris at this time. Like The Vision dev diary, I’ll be asking for your feedback there too, so think up on this over the next week if you want to help influence where we go next.

See you then!

written by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

Today we’re going over the release notes from Tuesday, talking about the further plans for the Circinus cycle, and exploring the reaction to last week’s dev diary, The Vision.


3.14.159 Release Notes
[expand type=details expanded=false]
We released the 3.14.159 patch on Tuesday, and these were the release notes:
Improvements

• By popular request, greatly expanded the basement storage of the Grand Archive. You now have 18 slots of overflow instead of 4.
  
• Replaced the Mysterious Labyrinth event image
  
• The Metalheads AI personality can be gained by Individualist Machines or Organic empires that are Very Strong (instead of just Strong)

Balance

• The Treasure Hunter Origin now starts leaders with level 3 of Adventurous Spirit, meaning it should no longer constantly be offered as an upgrade.

Bugfixes

• Add Beastport, Hatchery and Vivarium Tank to orbital rings, and add Shipyard exclusion rules
  
• Added a hyphen to the X-Ray Eye Beam mutation
  
• Added the missing loc to Sapient Specimen species rights
  
• Added the missing space in the credits' title
  
• Added the missing word "Food" to the Arboreal World planet modifier
  
• Adjusted perfected genes concept tooltip to align with reality
  
• Cyber Democracies no longer get leaders without upkeep
  
• Fallback to Weapon ranges if strike craft is used but there's no strike craft component range
  
• Fix a bug where, under certain circumstances, a Grand Archive was still considered destroyed after being rebuilt
  
• Fix a crash where an AI could capture fauna even if they shouldn't be able to.
  
• Fix Captain Ness not being legendary
  
• Fix Large Shard Accelerator tags
  
• Fix livestock modifier for Wrangler jobs
  
• Fix Mutations' Strike Crafts behaviour
  
• Fix Mysterious Chart event chain that could get blocked
  
• Fix Primal Leaders not being renowned
  
• Fix scores for Grand Archive Relics
  
• Fix Space Amoebas being hostile to Beastmasters bespite Amoeboid Pacification
  
• Fixed some Black Needle ships not displaying their bow section
  
• Fixed 2 cosmic storms projects not requiring scientists
  
• Gravity Snares can now only re-target to fleets they can capture
  
• Gravity Storms no longer cause Obsessed Gestalts to crave consumer goods for their drones
  
• Habitat Orbitals should no longer attempt to evade enemy fleets
  
• Habitat System Control now provide a Roboticist job for Individual Machines.
  
• It is now possible to use Space Fauna as the federation's fleets
  
• Reanimated space fauna uses half ship size of their living counterpart
  
• Removed tooltip for GOG and MS store achievements to require login to paradox account since this is not the case.
  
• Rogue Servitors are now also on energy duty during Gravity Storms
  
• Ships modifiers are correctly updated with their new fleet's modifiers before fleet's values calculation
  
• Space Fauna uses every components to calculate range
  
• Specimens acquired from trades now don't trigger Galactic Curators' unity bonus
  
• The Alien Box Event no longer has a nonsensical tooltip for gestalt empires.
  
• The Tachyon Beam mutations have found their way to the Tachyon Lance technology.
  
• Told the Artillery combat computers to stay at max range
  
• Voidworms shouldn't attack empires with Voidworm Immunity before crisis

Stability

• Defensive check for nullobj when dealing with auto exploration orders
  
• Fix crash when Voidworms try to act on empty fleets
  
• Fixed issue with diplomatic distances differences after hotjoin/resync leading to OOS
  
• Fixing potential crash when trying to create a ship from a scripted design that contains unusable components for the creator
  
• Fixed potential CTD when using FromFromFrom scope in "on_planets_zero_pops" on action
  
• Fixes CTD on espionage operation phase tooltip
  
• Fixes CTD when ship is killed by missile

[/expand]
Please keep posting any bugs and Out of Syncs you encounter in the bug report forum. Saves able to reproduce the bugs make the fixing go much more smoothly.

If all goes according to plan, we currently expect to have another patch, 3.14.1592, a couple of weeks from now.

The Vision, Continued

Last week we posted a dev diary on The Vision of Stellaris, and the response has been absolutely overwhelming. As of writing this dev diary, we’re up to around a thousand detailed responses split across various platforms, and we’re reading all of them. I’ve been reading and taking notes since the dev diary was posted, and it’ll take us a little while to get through all of it.

I’m absolutely thrilled with the amount of feedback and the high quality, constructive nature of pretty much every single post. Thank you, everyone.

As a quick initial summary, there seems to be a general consensus with the vision statements, and a high level of support for future changes that improve the game, even if they change existing systems. There seemed to be a pretty strong agreement for exploring alternative systems - especially when it comes to warfare resolution and fleets. There were more diverse feelings around the current pops and job systems, but a large number of you want a more performant system as long as it still captures the general fantasies of the current one. Many of you appear to strongly dislike the current trade system or are at best ambivalent towards it.

The Stellaris community also appears to be much more willing to embrace change than many others - not too surprising considering the number of major changes we’ve made since launch.

Next Week

Next week we’ll review the changes that Stellaris has undergone over the years, go into more detail about more of the conclusions I’ve reached based on the feedback you’ve given, and might have some preliminary release notes for 3.14.1592.

See you then!

Purchase Stellaris: Grand Archive alone or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863080/Stellaris_Grand_Archive/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08__Expansion_Pass/

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

Now that the Grand Archive Story Pack is out, I want to do something a little different. With 360 Stellaris Dev Diaries complete, I thought it was time to circle right back around to the beginning: what was, will be.

Stellaris Dev Diary #1 was “The Vision”, and so is #361.

The vision serves as a guiding tool to keep the entire development team aligned. As the game evolves, we work hard to update it regularly to remain accurate and consistent with our core vision.

Here’s how I currently answer “What is Stellaris?”:

---

For over eight years, Stellaris has remained the ultimate exploration-focused space-fantasy strategy sandbox, allowing players to discover the wonders of the galaxy.

From their first steps into the stars to uniting the galaxy under their rule, the players are free to discover and tell their own unique stories.

Every story, trope, or player fantasy in science fiction is within our domain.​
​

---

Over time, Stellaris has evolved and grown to meet the desires of the player base.​

• At launch, Stellaris leaned deep into its 4X roots.​
  
• It evolved from that base toward Grand Strategy.​
  
• As it continues to mature, we have added deeper Roleplaying aspects.​

All of these remain part of our DNA.

Stellaris is a 4X Grand Strategy game with Roleplaying elements that continues to evolve and redefine itself.​

---

We desire for players to experience a sense of novelty every time they start a game of Stellaris.

They should be able to play the same empire ten times in a row and experience ten different stories.
A player’s experience will differ wildly if their first contact is a friendly MegaCorp looking to prosper together or if they’re pinned between a Fallen Empire and a Devouring Swarm.

Stellaris relies on a combination of prescripted stories (often tied to empire Origins) and randomized mechanical and narrative building blocks that come together to create unplanned, emergent narratives.

A sense of uncertainty and wonder about what could happen next is core to the Stellaris experience.
​

---

Fundamentally, as the players, Stellaris is your game.

Your comments and feedback on The Machine Age heavily influenced our plans for 2025. We work on very long timelines, so we’ve already been working on next year’s releases for some time now. Most of what I’m asking will affect which tasks the team prioritizes and will help direct our direction in 2026 and beyond.

We’re making some changes to how we go about things. Many people have commented that the quarterly release cadence we’ve had since the 3.1 ‘Lem’ update makes it feel like things are changing too quickly and too often, and of course, it disrupts your active games and mods. The short patch cycle between Vela and Circinus was necessary for logistical reasons but really didn’t feel great.

We’re going to slow things down a little bit to let things stabilize. I’ve hinted a couple of times (and said outright last week) that we have the Custodian team working on some big things - the new Game Setup screen was part of this initiative but was completed early enough that we could sneak it into 3.14.1. My current plan is to have an Open Beta with some of the team's larger changes during Q1 of next year, replacing what would have been the slot for a 3.15 release. This will make 2025Q2, around our anniversary in May, a bigger than normal release, giving us the opportunity to catch up on technical debt, polish, and major features.

How does this match what you think Stellaris is, and where it should go? Would you change any of these vision statements?

What systems and content are “sacred” to you, which would make Stellaris not Stellaris anymore if we changed them?

Some examples to comment on could include:

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

I want to spend most of this year’s remaining dev diaries (at least, the ones that aren’t focused on the Circinus patch cycle) on this topic, talking with you about where our shared galactic journey is heading.

Next week we’ll be talking about the 3.14.159 patch.

​
Before I sign off, I want to commend the Chinese Stellaris Community for finding the funniest bug of the cycle. I’ve been told that they found that you can capture inappropriate things with Boarding Cables from the Treasure Hunters origin, and have been challenging each other to find the most ridiculous things to capture.

You know, little things like Cetana’s flagship. The Infinity Machine. An entire Enclave.

I’m not going to have the team fix this for 3.14.159, but will likely have them do so for 3.14.1592. I want to give you a chance to complete your collection and catch them all. After all, someone needs to catch The End of the Cycle and an Incoming Asteroid. Post screenshots if you catch anything especially entertaining!

See you next week!

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

The Grand Archive Story Pack and the Stellaris 3.14.1 ‘Circinus’ update released on Tuesday. Go forth and collect things and capture space creatures!



The update appears to be a very stable and clean release so far, with few critical issues reported.

A 3.14.15 hotfix is being prepared for today, which includes fixes for two crashes that have occurred a handful of times, and a bug that let you power your economy exclusively through chain-firing Gravity Snares:

Bugfixes​

• Gravity Snare costs can no longer go negative.
  
• Fixed a case where lured space fauna were uncapturable.

Stability​

• Fixing potential crash when trying to create a ship from a scripted design that contains unusable components for the creator
  
• Fixed potential crash when using FromFromFrom scope in "on_planets_zero_pops" on action
  
• Fix a crash where an AI could capture fauna even if they shouldn't be able to.

The vast majority of the other crashes are related to incompatible UI mods, so please remember to disable your mods that haven’t updated to the latest version before playing. Several players have reported their mods not fully uninstalling, so you may need to manually clear your mods folder if you continue having issues.

Please keep reporting issues you encounter in our Bug Reports forum.
If everything goes according to plan, I expect that our next patch, 3.14.159, will be released on Tuesday, November 12th. This will let us include some fixes to issues that are reported this weekend and early next week.
​
We held a developer Q&A last week, and have exported a transcript for you here:

[Click through to the Paradox Forums to see the entire Q&A transcript]

​
Next week is going to be a little bit different.

We’ll be looking at the internal vision statement of Stellaris and compare it to how the game has developed over the years, and I’d like to begin a conversation about how we’ll continue to evolve over the next few years.

The Custodian team has been up to something, and I want you to help guide them.

The Grand Archive Story Pack is available now!



Get it today, or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!

The Grand Archive Story Pack includes:

• Space Fauna capture, breeding, and modification systems​
  
• 151 Specimens to collect and display across events from Grand Archive and the base game
  
• Over 240 Specimens total including those distributed across other Stellaris content​
  
• 15 new Relics​
  
• New Megastructure - The Grand Archive
  
• Two Tradition trees - Archivism and Domestication​
  
• Two Origins - Primal Calling and Treasure Hunters​
  
• Two Civics - Beastmasters and Galactic Curators​
  
• Two forms of spaceborne life - Cutholoids and Voidworms​
  
• Mid-game crisis - the Voidworm Plague​
  
• Three new music tracks​
  
• Events, Anomalies, Archaeology Sites, Technologies, Galactic community resolutions, and more!​

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863080/Stellaris_Grand_Archive/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08__Expansion_Pass/


The Grand Archive preserves and exhibits the most valuable artifacts we have collected throughout the galaxy. Reserved within is also a dedicated Vivarium for live Space Fauna containment and observation.



Constructing the Grand Archive allows for the exhibition of specimens you have found, as well as the containment, breeding and ultimately cloning of captured space fauna in the Vivarium.


Specimens are rare and valuable objects that you collect while exploring the galaxy. Each Specimen has a Display Effect, providing small modifiers to boost your production across a wide variety of metrics, with their effects scaling based on the rarity of the specimen in question.

Specimens also provide additional information about the discoveries you have made, adding new details and information about events in the galaxy.




Cutholoids

Cutholoids are massive organisms that inhabit asteroids in order to provide suitable protection for their otherwise soft bodies. This creature swallows its prey whole, using radioactive digestive fluid to slowly consume its prey.

Cutholoids are ambush predators that disguise themselves as asteroids. They will ambush and devour lone ships - these ships can be rescued by either capturing the Cutholoid or defeating it in battle. When cloned from Hatcheries by the player, these creatures can steal enemy ships by swallowing them whole.



Voidworms

Voidworms are parasitic organisms that must deposit spores on inhabited worlds with suitable biomass in order to reproduce. Mature individuals form mating trios, known as "Troikas", and will construct nests near black holes to shelter and raise their young.

Voidworms are aggressive parasites and will often bombard colonies in order to increase their numbers back in their nests. If their population is left unchecked, they will attempt to take over the galaxy in the new Voidworm Plague mid-game crisis.




The Voidworm population has reached a critical mass. The parasites no longer spare the planets they feed from. A breeding frenzy on the galactic scale is upon us.

This Mid-Game Crisis can be triggered if Voidworm populations reach a critical mass in the galaxy. Swarms of Voidworms will invade colonies and bombard them with abandon, adding to their numbers.




Primal Calling

Masters of animal handling and ranching, their relationship with fauna has grown according to their ethics. How will this bond evolve on a galactic scale?

This mechanically-driven origin introduces a new Wrangler job, which changes based on the player's ethics and choices. Primal Calling empires also start with the ability to build Voidlures, and is ideally suited to support a creature-focused playstyle.



Treasure Hunters

Armed only with a mysterious map, race across the stars to secure a legendary pirate treasure.

This narrative-focused origin follows the trail of a forgotten pirate legend in search of her hoard. The Black Needle stands in your way, a long-standing pirate organization that will do anything to secure this treasure. On your journey, you will face deadly threats, memorable characters and maybe even the Pirate Queen herself.




Galactic Curators

The meticulous collection and preservation of historical artifacts has always fascinated this civilization. But now, with the mysteries of the galaxy at their doorstep, there is everything left to learn.

Galactic Curators empires start with a set of three specimens and get a head start on building their Grand Archive thanks to insight into Galactic Archivism technology and a reduced cost and build time. Additionally, Galactic Curators gain bonus unity when completing an Archaeological Site or finding a Specimen.

As fellow Curators, they have increased starting opinion with the Curator Order and receive a discount on their services.

Beastmasters

Coming to full technological maturity in a system that serves as a feeding ground for Space Amoebas, this society has acquired a deep knowledge of their life cycle. They now work to nurture, raise, and ultimately clone these creatures for mutual benefit.

Start with the ability to capture Space Fauna and a fleet of Cloned Space Amoeba instead of Corvettes. Standard military ships use 3x naval capacity, so you must learn to harness the power of Cloned Space Fauna in order to succeed.

Find out more:
Watch the playlist on YouTube
Read the Developer Diaries

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863080/Stellaris_Grand_Archive/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08__Expansion_Pass/