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Stellaris 3.3 Unity Open Beta AvailableJan 22, 2022 - Community AnnouncementsHello Stellaris Community! The Stellaris team is pleased to announce that we’re running a 3.3 Open Beta until February 3rd. This open beta contains the unity rework (among other things). We’re looking for your feedback on how this rework feels, including balancing issues. Please note: this Open Beta is a work in progress and is currently missing localisations in non-English languages. The full release version will be fully translated. If you find a bug in the 3.3 Open Beta, please report it here. Please leave your feedback in the Feedback thread on the Official Forums. What does the unity rework change? All means of increasing Administrative Capacity have been removed. It is still possible to reduce Empire Sprawl generated by various sources, and this will help differentiate gameplay between empire types. It will no longer be possible to completely mitigate Sprawl penalties. Empire Sprawl penalties and generation values have been changed significantly. Autochthon Memorials (and similar buildings) now increase planetary Unity production and themselves produce Unity based on the number of Ascension Perks the Empire has taken. Being monuments, they no longer require workers. The Edicts Cap system has been removed. Toggled Edicts will have monthly Unity Upkeep which is modified by Empire Sprawl. Each empire has an Edicts Fund which subsidizes Edict Upkeep, reducing the amount you have to pay each month to maintain them. Things that previously increased Edict Capacity now generally increase the Edicts Fund, but some civics, techs, and ascension perks have received other thematic modifications. Several systems that used to cost Influence are now paid in Unity. Planetary Decisions that were formerly paid in Influence. Prices have been adjusted. Resettlement of pops. Abandoning colonies still costs Influence. Manipulation of internal Factions. Factions themselves will now produce Unity instead of Influence. Since Factions are no longer producing Influence, a small amount of Influence is now generated by your fleet, based on Power Projection - a comparison of your fleet size and Empire Sprawl. Leaders now cost Unity to hire rather than Energy. They also have a small amount of Unity Upkeep. We understand that this increases the relative costs of choosing to hire several scientists at the start of the game for exploration purposes, or when “cycling” leader traits, as you are now choosing between Traditions and Leaders. Most Megastructures now cost Unity rather than Influence, with the exception of any related to travel (such as Gateways) or that provide living space (such as Habitats and Ring Worlds). Authority bonuses have (unsurprisingly) undergone some changes again, as several of them related to systems that no longer exist or operate differently now. The generic “Administrator” job is being renamed to “Politicians”, with “Administrator” being the category term for Bureaucrats, Priests, and other “unifying” jobs that guide your Empire. The Bureaucratic ...Stellaris 3.3 Unity gets a Beta available on SteamJan 20, 2022 - GamingOnLinuxParadox Interactive are gearing up ready for the next major update to their space strategy game Stellaris. A new opt-in Beta is available for the 3.3 Unity update. Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/01/stellaris-33-unity-gets-a-beta-available-on-steam Stellaris Dev Diary #238 - Ascensions, Betas, and MoreJan 20, 2022 - Community AnnouncementsДоступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/46b5dfd5244d16b7afeea414eea3ce8c31620810.png written by Eladrin Hi all! Last week we talked about the basics of the Unity Rework. This week we have multiple features and announcements to discuss. Ready? Planetary Ascension Tiers Tied to unlocking Ascension Perks, Planetary Ascension Tiers are a way of improving your core worlds by expending Unity. In normal empires they represent the active will of the people supporting your government and giving a little extra to do things the way they’ve always been done. In machine and hive empires, it’s more the well oiled machinery of the world gaining efficiency or drone instincts becoming better honed with endless practice. In either case, an Ascended planet does whatever it focuses on better. Once you’ve unlocked three Ascension Perks (you do not need to actually spend them for this feature), you can Ascend each of your planets to Ascension Tier 1. This increases all of the effects of the planet’s Designation by 25% - whether it be Technician Output from a Generator World or Trade Value on a Commercial Ring World. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/9e86f8465fd32b39c88cabadd9f110351c788486.png Each additional Ascension Perk you unlock increases the maximum Ascension Tier by 1, with an extra 4 tiers unlocked once you unlock all of the Perk slots. This lets you Ascend planets up to ten times, for a maximum bonus of 250% of the base Planetary Designation effects. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/d901c5813616c3898377e9095246ee1153ddcd4d.png A fully Ascended, Tier 10 Fortress World. Vi Valam will break before its defenders. Ascending a Planet costs Unity, and this cost is heavily affected by both Sprawl and the total number of Ascension Tiers you have across your entire Empire. Currently it costs the same amount of Unity to raise your first planet to Ascension Tier 2 as it would to raise two planets to Ascension Tier 1, so you’ll want to pick and choose which planets you want to improve, and decide whether you would rather raise all your planets to low Ascension Tiers or focus on reaching the heights of Ascension on your most productive core worlds. We’ll be watching how you use Planetary Ascension Tiers and will be very interested in your feedback regarding the current costs and perceived benefits during the Open Beta. Currently Planetary Ascension Tiers are only lost if a planet permanently changes owners (not merely from temporary occupation) or is abandoned. Unity Rework, Continued We’ve continued refining some of the elements of the Unity Rework, and as mentioned last week, some civics and authorities have undergone some changes. One change from last week is that we swapped out the Sprawl bonus from the Capital worlds for a production bonus. We’ve also found that starting with penalties isn’t very fun, so Sprawl under 50 is ignored. Death Cults will now be able to build either regular Temples or Sacrificial Temples to suit their needs, and the Mem...Stellaris Dev Diary #237 - Reworking Unity, Part OneJan 13, 2022 - Community AnnouncementsДоступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/79089f3377b14a06eed94e3fb571b21d065650ec.png written by Eladrin Welcome back! We hope you’ve all had a wonderful few weeks. Today we’ll start with some more information about the goals of the Unity Rework mentioned in Dev Diary 215 (and briefly in 234), some updates on how things have been going so far, and our plans going forward. Please note: All values and screen captures shown here are still very much in development and subject to change. Identified Problems and Design Goals Currently in Stellaris, Unity is an extremely weak resource that can generally be ignored, and due to the current implementation of Admin Capacity, the Empire Sprawl mechanic is largely toothless - leading to wide tech rushing being an oppressively powerful strategy. Since Unity is currently very easily generated through incidental means and provides minimal benefits, Empires have little need to develop a Unity generation base, and Spiritualist ethics are unattractive. Influence is currently used for many internal and external interactions, making it a valuable resource, but it sometimes feels too limiting. Our basic design goals for the Unity Rework can be summarized as: Unity should be a meaningful resource that represents the willingness of your empire to band together for the betterment of society and their resilience towards negative change. Unity should be more valuable than it is now, and empires focused on Unity generation should be interesting to play. Spiritualist empires should have a satisfying niche to exploit and be able to feel that they are good at something. The number of sources of incidental Unity from non-dedicated jobs should be reduced. Empires that do not focus on Unity (but do not completely ignore it) should still be able to acquire their Ascension Perks by the late game. Reward immersive decisions with Unity grants whenever possible. Internal empire matters should generally utilize Unity. Provide more ways to spend Unity. Rebalance the way edicts work (again). Reduce the oppressive impact of tech rushing by reintroducing some rubber-banding mechanics. Make tall play more viable, preferring to balance tall vs. wide play in favor of distinctiveness, and emphasizing differences between hives, machines, megacorps, and normal empires. (This does not necessarily mean that tall Unity-focused empires will be the equal of wide Research-focused ones, but they should have some things that they are good at and be more competitive in general than they are now.) In the late game, Unity-focused empires should have a benefit to look forward to similar to the repeatable technologies a Research focused empire would have. In this iteration we have focused on some of these bullets more than others, but will continue to refine the systems over future Custodian releases. So What Are We Doing? All means of increasing Administrative Capacity have been removed. While there are ways to reduce the Em...Happy Holidays from the Stellaris Team, the C6 Mod is available now!Dec 24, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsCharismatic, Curious, Elegant, Enigmatic, Friendly. Definitely not a fanatic purifier. This mod is brought to you by popular demand and Stellaris Animator Hanna and Senior Artist Frida, from PDS Arctic. C6 was first presented as concept art in DD#231 - “Aquatics Portraits and Art”. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/dd8792d92f6e7b48f7c41e8a01ede5ff2d1eaa0a.png We saw dozens of responses demanding the ability to play as C6, and because we’ve never been a group of people able to let a meme die, Frida and Hanna worked on this in their spare time to bring this mod to the community. Now you can make friends or devour the galaxy as the Stellaris community’s favorite arm-flailing egg! Get the C6 Mod now!Stellaris Finfluencer Shellebration (All VODs Available!)Dec 22, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsHello Stellaris Community! Here on Stellaris, we love our community content creators. This holiday season, join us and meet some of our favorite community content creators that you might've never seen before! Each streamer will play 30 years, and then pass the save file onto the next streamer. Each of these saves we’ll post on this thread, so that you can play along. Miss an episode? Don’t worry about it, we’ll update this post with the links to the VODs after the stream. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/3eb1b99abc9da20252efca49a440b5cb16d1ac58.png What’s a Stellaris playthrough without a punny name? SEE WHAT I DID THERE? Each stream will be hosted on the content creators channels, and every stream starts at 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 ET, 1100 PT. CET is UTC+1). Please stop by and give our streamer friends a like and follow! Want to play along? You can grab the save from the forum post here! Completed VODs KomradTruck - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1241592556 Chakerathe - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1244073593 DolphinDivePro: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1246007598 OldManMordaith: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1248035306 AlphaYangDelete: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1250916273 Ep3o: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usJFLgui5Tc SimasTV: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1254993245 Melomaniac: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1257229005 But enough from me, let’s get to the influencers: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/efae35241f7d1bef5310313b9499c96efa52558e.png Name: Komrad Truck Stream Date & Time: Dec 23rd @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1) Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/komradtruck Introduction: Komrad Truck is a Competitive Stellaris PvP streamer who also shows some analytics and strategies with good music and vibes. All in all, a welcoming place to get an introduction to the competitive side of the Stellaris community! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/4a2ec9c9082e5f9fe9e9b3c199e6497f4891fc49.png Name: Lord Lambert Stream Date & Time: Dec 26th @ 2000 CET 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1) Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/LordLambert_ Introduction: Lord Lambert is a youtuber and streamer primarily geared towards strategy and grand strategy titles. Lambert is a big believer in building a strong community, with multiple multiplayer games being run from his Discord server every week by the community for a variety of titles that he takes part in and streams. These multiplayer games, along with solo Let’s Plays, Grand Strategy News, and reviews of future titles make up the bulk of the content on Lambert’s youtube channel, though it is not uncommon for something very different to show up once every so often. In short, Lambert is a community focussed strategy content creator that just wants to have a good time playing games with his friends, and sharing that good time with others. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/4d3960430ab63a2dc978970782d0bcd7d0a4012a.png Name: DolphinDivePro Stream Date & Time: Dec 28th @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 East...Stellaris Dev Diary #236 - Happy Holidays and thanks for all the fishDec 9, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsRead in Russian on VK/Доступно на русском в ВК {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/87f7acf99ddf381720c66b213def2f4afe9519b2.png written by grekulf Hello everyone! We aren’t quite ready to show the things we are working on currently, but from the beginning of January we’ll be back with more dev diaries to talk about things like the Unity rework or the new Situations system. For now, we’ll be taking a hiatus until January 13th. We want to instead take this opportunity to celebrate the year that’s gone by and thank you all in the community for your continued support. Looking back at the year: We released Nemesis and the 3.0 ‘Dick’ Update, after Philip K Dick, which added the Intel system and Espionage Operations, among other things We released a number of updates to 3.0 with bug fixes and improvements following your valuable feedback We onboarded many new members to our team, which let us provide you with even more Stellaris updates We announced the Custodian Initiative and released the first Custodian patch with the 3.1 ‘Lem’ Update (Stansilaw Lem) which features a lot of great improvements and new features We “buffed the backlog” for older DLC by adding new content to the Plantoids- and Humanoids Species Packs. We released 3.2 ‘Herbert’ Update (after Frank Herbert) and the Aquatics Species Pack, which is the best-selling and best-reviewed species pack of all time (by a great margin). Most importantly, we added swolephins. I am incredibly happy about what we’ve achieved this year, and with our great team we should be able to keep making Stellaris better than ever before. For next year I hope we can keep working together with you, the community, and release more great updates to Stellaris. I’m very excited, and I hope you are as well. Here’s some pictures gathered during the development this year: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/032341f6e6ad9a79463bdf0626f0cb488af9d555.png Hmm. What happens if you try to add weapons to a Tiyanki? Oh… {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/0c836f5f3f79f557a2d27588b9b8d9a7bec1a054.png Assets wouldn’t randomize their appearance during early development. Clone spies? {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/6317e4319c02fce4a7f2d96fac52764ec5b3be62.png Working on pathfinding can be… interesting at times. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/c8279663c2e589a42df90dfaa54c2c0870f14244.png QA testing bugs relating to Mechanist Origin + Agrarian Idyll Civic. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/a7481a332784a658025d90e40b8f1b8b641573f4.png General pandemic mood. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/4d649f68d365348271c0d84aff984eb3fdb78a4e.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/c5ef2658e6a67c42506a3734ab7658bbf75fc5c0.png Early Here Be Dragons work can lead to unexpected heroism. And as a little bit of a gift, here’s some teaser images from things in development: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/45c994857510893bffe2f10126e0b4f49680a418.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/f03b4f83e470c69d5b168ccf65ecff5572538bdd.png ----- Thanks for this year! We will be back with our next dev diary on January 13th, and until then we...Stellaris Dev Diary #235 - AI Feedback and Future PlansDec 2, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsRead in Russian/Доступно на русском в ВК {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/13c13089c21e1c8c2ccecd25f1effcd0051b4771.png written by Narkerns {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/227e23267490dd8d50e7124387d771b521c8863e.png Hello and welcome to a new Dev Diary, This is Guido again with a follow-up on the AI side of things. AI Feedback First of all I wanted to thank you all for all the good and supportive feedback we got for our last changes on the AI. It’s really encouraging seeing so many of you engage with the changes and letting us know what works and where there’s still room for improvement. It’s nice to see that lots of people appreciate that we’re putting some serious effort into making the AI better. In general, the AI does a lot in 3.2 compared to 3.1 and 3.0. For the moment we’re still playing a bit of catch up, adapting the AI to the updated balancing changes of the game and some of the new features that have been added in the last months and even years. But there is even more economic buffing on the horizon. One of my favorite comments on our internal communication was this bit, that I wanted to show you: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/d9532c045535b821100109cc02304d7f4747fc88.jpg And that is what we counted as a big success now. Beating our QA people is not an easy feat. Of course there are still some areas where the AI has problems and doesn’t work very well. It’s those cases where we really appreciate your help in letting us know, because we can never find all those cases on our own. For example, the AI still has problems when playing as Void Dwellers. They can’t decide where to build habitats depending on what they would need. If they are missing minerals, they don’t know how to build a habitat on mining stations. They still have problems handling slaves and robots effectively and in some cases the AI can still end up in an economic death spiral. Especially if they, somehow, manage to run out of food and consumer goods at the same time. Finally, AI is also not good at using planet designations. For example using the designation that turns a planet’s industry districts into purely alloys is not something that they can consider at the moment. Meaning, if it conquers a planet from a player who has set the Forge World designation - it will not be able to handle that planet very well. Future agenda That being said, we do have some more points on our agenda. A short disclaimer here, thought, is that things may always change, not work out as intended or prove more difficult than anticipated. So don’t take the following points as guaranteed. It’s areas that we are looking into and that are, most likely, going to be improved: Scaling Economic Plans: We want the AI to be better in the mid- and especially late-game. With the current plans the requested income is static. Meaning, once it reaches a monthly income of +500 it will not try to increase it further. That’s good for a good chunk into the mid-game, but it’s not good enough to compete with a player in the late...Stellaris devs outline "spicy" plans for patch 3.3 and beyondNov 25, 2021 - PCGamesNSpace strategy game Stellaris just received a new expansion pack that introduces aquatic species, along with a whole host of other neat add-ons for the five-year-old game. Today, the devs have taken a moment through their weekly dev diary update to explain what the plan is going forward. First and foremost, there's the 3.3 patch due around February, which tracks with what the devs have said previously about the near-term plan. One thing the team has confirmed it will be working on is changes to how Unity (a resource for unlocking powerful perks) works, with the goal being having everything ready for the next patch. The dev diary also notes that, since the changes are a bit "spicy", the team is considering running a beta ahead of the 3.3 patch to collect community feedback. The devs will release more details on the Unity rework and potential beta run towards the end of the year. There are some other big things in the pipeline as well - more AI improvements will be coming, for example, and the team also wants to create a new system called 'Situations'. This is going to be similar to the Disasters system from historical grand strategy game Europa Universalis IV. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Stellaris Enigmatic Fortress - a quick guide The best Stellaris mods Stellaris dev diary - all the latest information Stellaris Dev Diary #234 - Aquatics is out, what now?Nov 25, 2021 - Community Announcements{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/86dcf88ef4ca6204149066636fe14914dfa31c14.png written by grekulf Come all you young spacefarers, listen to me! I’ll sing you the song of this dev diary! Space shanty? Sing-along version? Amazing. Today we’re back with another dev diary, and today we’ll be talking a little bit about our next steps. But first and foremost I’d like to thank everyone in the community for showing such great appreciation for Aquatics and the 3.2 update. The Aquatics Species Pack is the best-selling species pack to date, and going by the Steam review it also seems like it’s very well-liked. The future is looking bright, and together we will be able to make Stellaris bigger and better than ever before! Speaking of the future, let’s take a look at what we have on the horizon for the game. Unity Rework Back in dev diary 215 we mentioned a Unity rework that we’ve been working on. Progress is fairly good, and we’ve made some interesting changes that we’ll be talking about SoonTM. The target for this change is currently the 3.3 February Update, but due to the spiciness of the changes, we’re also looking into the possibility of making an open beta with the changes earlier than that, so that we can include more community feedback for the 3.3 February Update. You’ll be getting more information about the details of the unity rework and a possible open beta as we get closer to the end of the year. AI We’re very happy to see that many of you have reacted positively to the AI improvements done in 3.2, and we appreciate your feedback and help. We still have a lot of more changes we’re working on, such as additional economic improvements and taking a look at the Take Point feature, to only mention some examples. Just like with the Unity rework, we’ll be talking more about these in detail in the near future. Situations We are looking into creating a new Situations system, similar to the Disasters system in EU4. The goal is to be able to move things like Deficits and Revolts, and similar struggles, into this new system. Since we don’t want to undertake too many changes at once, it’s likely that new Situations will be added over multiple updates after the system itself is released. Although work has started very recently, we’re very much looking forward to being able to share more progress about this in the future as well. Buffing the Backlog In terms of adding new content to older DLC, the priorities going forward will be to buff Nemesis and Necroids. We have no concrete plans we’re ready to share yet, but if you have thoughts for additions you’d love to see, please let us know! And more…! There’s a slew of other improvements, bug fixes, content additions to look forward to in future updates. I can’t really mention them all, because in all honesty, a lot of things like this aren’t planned and happen because we have a passionate team that works on many small things they think would make you, the players, happy! ---------- That is all for this week folks! Here’s ...Stellaris: Aquatics Species Pack and the free 3.2 'Herbert' patch out nowNov 23, 2021 - GamingOnLinuxSomething smells a bit fishy here! Paradox Interactive has released the Stellaris: Aquatics Species Pack DLC along with another big free update for all players. Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/11/stellaris-aquatics-species-pack-and-the-free-32-herbert-patch-out-now The Aquatics Species Pack is Available Now!Nov 22, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsThe Aquatics Species Pack and free 3.2 “Herbert” update, named for Sci-Fi author Frank Herbert, is available now! Embrace the life of a seafaring civilization as you sail the open expanses of the galaxy. The Aquatic Species Pack includes: ● 15 new Aquatic Portraits ● 1 Aquatic-themed Robotic Portrait ● Water themed Ship Set ● 2 New Origins ○ Here Be Dragons - Start in a system guarded by the Sky Dragon, this dragon will protect you from harm, as long as you keep it happy. ○ Ocean Paradise - Start on a large-sized Ocean world with rich food deposits, and get production, happiness, and pop growth bonuses on your homeworld, but start with no guaranteed habitable worlds. ● Anglers Civic - Harvest the Bounty of the Deep, Agriculture Districts produce Angler and Pearl Diver jobs ● Hydrocentric Ascension Perk - Allows you to use the Expand Planetary Sea decision on Ocean Worlds, and unlocks the Deluge Colossus Weapon (requires Apocalypse DLC) ● Aquatic Species Trait - Gain production and habitability bonuses for living on Ocean worlds, and penalties for living on non-Wet worlds. ● Aquatic Advisor, inspired by high seas adventure fiction ● 4 Aquatic Name Lists We hope you enjoy this latest addition to the Stellaris galaxy, and you can get the Aquatics Species Pack today! Stellaris multiplayer - everything you need to knowNov 19, 2021 - PCGamesNSo, you want to know about Stellaris multiplayer? Like all of Paradox's iconic grand strategy games, even though Stellaris is primarily geared towards solo play versus AI opponents, everything can be done in multiplayer as well. Up to 32 players can compete for dominance over the galaxy, although smaller groups can always work together in co-op as well to take on the other AI-driven empires. Multiplayer in Paradox strategy games has always been a bit of an inconsistent aspect of the game - the backend infrastructure has historically been a bit weak, desyncs can happen frequently, especially with high player counts, and overall online players only make up a small percentage of any one game's player base (it will vary from game to game). As of August 2021, Stellaris uses the Nakama infrastructure to power its multiplayer backend. This was developed by the third party, and completely replaces Paradox's previous internal infrastructure, and most notably enables cross-platform multiplayer between stores. The developers believe this version will be way more stable than their previous version, and it's also been rolled out to other older games such as EU4. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Stellaris Enigmatic Fortress - a quick guide The best Stellaris mods Stellaris dev diary - all the latest information Stellaris' next species pack features aquarium ships and a space dragonNov 22, 2021 - Strategy GamerNovember 22, 2021: Stellaris' Aquatics Species Pack is available now. Stellaris has another species pack coming out to coincide with the release of the grand strategy game's 3.2 'Herbert' update. The Aquatics Species Pack, as you might well guess, adds an oceanic origin, along with a marine-themed new civic, trait, and ascension perk. The Aquatic people fly through space in capital ship-sized aquariums, and seek to please the dragon that circles their homeworld. Playing with the aquatic origin, you'll begin on a peaceful ocean homeworld. There's one issue, though: it's orbited by a mythical space dragon, whose attitude toward you and your people will determine whether it protects or seeks to destroy you. Apart from that, the aquatics' new Anglers civic means you'll be able to take advantage of the bounties of the sea, and thrive on other oceanic worlds. For planets that aren't quite as watery, don't worry: the new hydrocentric ascension perk means you'll be able to terraform other worlds, even importing oceans from other planets if need be. To help do that, you'll have a full fleet of ships that function as interstellar aquariums, accompanied by a new adviser who has a distinctive 'Seafarer' voice. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Stellaris Enigmatic Fortress - a quick guide The best Stellaris mods Stellaris dev diary - all the latest information Stellaris Dev Diary #233 - Aquatics and 3.2 "Herbert" Patch NotesNov 18, 2021 - Community Announcements{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/328b3a28d02d49947d039625f6a1991aaf6986d4.png Hello everyone! Yesterday we announced that Aquatics will be released this coming Monday, November 22nd, for USD $9.99/€9.99 or regional equivalent. We’re super excited to bring you this new Species Pack and we’re really happy to sea the positive reactions you all have had to the ships and portraits that we’ve shared over the past few weeks. And as is the time-honored tradition, here follows the changelog for the Aquatic species pack, with the accompanied 3.2 ‘Herbert’ Update, named after renowned author Frank Herbert, that the Custodian team has been working on 😁 3.2 "Herbert" Patch Notes ################################################################# ######################### VERSION 3.2.0 ########################### ################################################################# ################### # Aquatics Species Pack Features ################### * Added a new Aquatic pre-scripted Empire. * Added a new Phenotype with 16 new portraits (15 normal + 1 robot) of fishy looking Aquatics. * Added a new City Set and room backdrop for Aquatics. * Added a new bubbly Ship set. * Added a new Advisor Voice. * Added a new Civic: Anglers. * Added a new Species Trait: Aquatic. * Added two new Origins: Ocean Paradise and Here be Dragons. * Added a new Ascension Perk: Hydrocentric. ################### # Humanoids Species Pack Features ################### * Added a new Civic: Pompous Purists. ###################### # 3.2.0 "Herbert" Features ###################### * Multiplayer hosts that own the DLCs now unlock portraits as well as ship and background sets from the Plantoids and Humanoids Species Packs for clients that do not own them. * Added the ability to pick your main species' gender during game setup. * Added over 200 new star names for random galaxy generation. * Added 13 random events to terraforming to make the feature more engaging. * Added 4 new asteroid-related anomalies to spice up old anomaly categories. * Added 4 new Gas Giant anomalies. * Added 4 new anomalies to existing, uninhabitable worlds anomaly categories. * Added new options to several old anomaly events which share categories with the newly added ones above. * Enabled the Ship Browser for all players. ###################### # Improvements ###################### * Reinforcement fleets will now attempt to find a safe but longer path if the shortest path to the target fleet is not considered safe. This will reduce how often reinforcement fleets are spawned at the shipyard at the cost of increasing the MIA time (due to taking a longer path) in these cases. * Reinforcement fleets now consider systems that have both hostiles and allies in them to be safe for pathfinding purposes. * Reinforcing fleets using jump drives no longer require a safe hyperlane path to the fleet they are reinforcing. * Improved how shipyards are selected when constructing reinforcements to better utilize stations with multiple shipyards an...Aquatics Species Pack releases November 22nd!Nov 17, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsEmbrace the life of a seafaring civilization with the release of the Aquatics Species Pack on November 22nd for USD $9.99! Choose to originate on a large Ocean Paradise world, with increased pop happiness, output, and growth. Or choose the Here Be Dragons Origin, and start guarded by a sage-blue - and occasionally very hungry - space dragon, which will protect you from harm, as long as you keep it happy. Specialize your species with the Aquatics Species Trait, which further optimizes your species for living on Ocean worlds, but penalizes living on Cold and Dry planet types. Become interstellar seafood harvesters with the Anglers Civic, and harness the bounty of the ocean with fresh seafood and rare pearls as staples of your Empire’s economy. Ascend into the deep with the Hydrocentric Ascension Perk, and your species becomes more adept at terraforming planets into ocean worlds, as well as the ability to harvest ice asteroids to expand the planetary ocean even further. The Aquatics Species Pack also includes: 15 Aquatic-inspired portraits plus a new Robotic portrait Aquatics-themed ship set New Advisor Voice, inspired by high-seas adventure fiction New prescripted empire, the Sathyrelian Bliss New diplomacy room New city set 4 new Aquatic name list Wishlist the Aquatics Species Pack today! "3.2 “Herbert” Update (Free): Launching alongside the Aquatics Species Pack, the 3.2 Patch, named after renowned Sci-Fi author Frank Herbert, brings along with it many bug fixes, improvements to performance and AI, as well as new features for the Humanoids Species Pack and the base game. Pompous Purists Civic In our latest addition to the Humanoids Species Pack, the Pompous Purists Civic allows for a diplomatic playstyle, but for Xenophobes. The idea is based on an elven fantasy, where they are willing to negotiate with other species, but only on their own terms. To that end, empires with the Pompous Purists Civic cannot receive diplomatic proposals, but may still send them. They will also get bonus trust growth and extra envoys. Terraforming Improvements With the focus on Terraforming in the Aquatics Species Pack, the Custodian Team has been hard at work to improve the experience of terraforming as a whole. Terraforming planets now have a chance to randomly trigger events, to add more flavor to the overall process of terraforming. These events vary in power and complexity and will only trigger the first time a planet is terraformed. But there’s more, we’ve also done some work with the AI budgets to make the AI more likely to terraform planets to optimal planet types, and will be more likely to pick Terraforming technologies and Ascension perks under certain circumstances. More to Explore We have added new anomalies for the Gas Giant, Asteroid, and uninhabitable anomaly categories. This will add more depth to some anomalies that previously only had a single outcome (for example the Gigantic Skeleton Anomaly). We also have revisited some of the older anomaly event...Stellaris Dev Diary #232 - 3.2 Balance Changes and Performance ImprovementsNov 11, 2021 - Community Announcements{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/170b47a3092536ca35400c82b9aff9db2231ccf3.png written by Gruntsatwork and Caligula Hello everyone, today we would like to tease you with some of the upcoming changes coming with the 3.2 "Herbert" patch, named after Sci-Fi author Frank Herbert, which we will release along with the Aquatic Species Pack. For Balance Changes, we have the following changes in store for you: Functional Architecture and Constructobot: Reduced the free building slots granted from 2 to 1. Agrarian Idyll empires now get one planet building slot per four Agricultural districts built. Reduced the ship upkeep cost modifier for clone army admirals to 5/10/20% based on their decisions. Ruins of Shallash arc site no longer has a chance of giving quite as much unity as defeating an endgame crisis. You can no longer use planet killer weapons on primitives inside your borders if you lack the appropriate primitive interference policies. Pops working the Livestock job now have 10% less political power. A lot of anomalies were rewarding 3 Society Research deposits, there is now more variety. Made Awakened Fallen Empires use Traditions (but not Ascension Perks). Several productivity-improving technologies are now no longer of dubious benefit, as their upkeep (and production) effects now only apply to jobs actually primarily producing resources. Nerve Stapled Hivemind pops can no longer perform complex drone jobs. Reduced the amount of jobs added by Leisure Arcology Districts to bring them into line with other Ecumenopolis districts. Ion cannons are no longer free to maintain, and have an upkeep cost of 8 energy. Necro-Hives: Cut Necrophage pop assembly penalty to 50% from 75% Made pop output modifiers (positive and negative) no longer apply to hive minds. Made the -50% organic upkeep also apply to energy, for photosynthesis. Devouring Swarm Necrophages now spawn with extra infrastructure to account for the lack of chambers of elevation. Of note here is the Functional Architecture change, we are aware that the extra building slot was the main draw of the civic but it was also way over-represented even after the initial release-hype While not a pre-planned balance pass like we did for the Lem patch, we still found a few places to tweak and adjust and we will continue to do that in future patches. ...and now, handing over to Caligula Caesar for a look at some performance improvements and moddability topic. A Look at Script Performance Hi! You are probably used to me writing lengthy prose about new moddability and scripting language features. This time, we only have a few things to show off in that regard, but there are nevertheless some cool, technical things I can speak about. Knowing the script language pretty well, I always found the performance impacts of our scripts to be a big unknown to me. Was what I was adding going to mess with performance? Well, I could do plenty of guessing as to how to script most efficiently, and general concepts of programming such...Stellaris Dev Diary #231 - Aquatics Portraits and ArtNov 4, 2021 - Community Announcements{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/4ac7c7e5819d44979d3e49b4459e912d9ea8a5de.png written by Fenni Johansson, Hanna Johansson, and Nicolas Lennman Hi! My name is Fenni and I’m an Art Producer for Stellaris. Today, I will talk a bit about our art processes and give you a little behind-the-scenes look at how our amazing team of artists worked when creating the Aquatics species! Exploring the narrative When creating a new species, we first start by exploring the theme, story and narrative of the species. When creating a character inspired by an existing animal, we also first explore why this animal looks the way it does and what specific characteristics we can identify. How did the animal evolve to look like this? How has the environment it lives in shaped it’s appearance and behaviour? This helps us understand what elements and why something looks and feels the way it does, and we can use it as inspiration for creating an alien species. For example, we can start by exploring the deep sea as a source of inspiration. Our team of artists start by looking at what common identifiers can be found in deep sea creatures, and what emotions they convey. This helps us create a strong narrative. We always explore several different narratives and sources of inspiration, and we use these to create unique characters. Below is an example of one of these narrative explorations, when our artists explored the deep sea: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/2830a23de675dd78e9501eb16113d4c1afaa6934.png Here our amazing artists defined some identifiers and shared visuals between deep sea creatures, and what emotions they convey. This helps us understand how we can create unique species that also clearly tells the story of a "deep sea dweller". After identifying these kinds of themes, materials, and narratives, our team uses it to create individual characters. Telling a story with visuals While we always make sure to stay true to the overall theme of the species, we also focus on making sure each character is unique and tells their own story, conveying a range of different emotions using their visual language. Small changes in a character's design, shape, silhouette can help convey completely different emotions and characteristics. As an example of how we explore how positions, silhouettes and shapes convey different emotions, let's have a look at the exploration process for creating one of our new aliens! This is an exploration of an alien which was based on crustaceans: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/dd8792d92f6e7b48f7c41e8a01ede5ff2d1eaa0a.png Made by art director Frida Eriksson and artist Emma Jonsson As you can see, the artists explored several different uses of poses and silhouettes to convey a range of emotions. This is important to explore at the beginning of the species creation process, to make sure we create a cohesive visual language that’s in line with the emotion and story we want the character to convey. After our artists have settled on a narrative and direction for a species, th...Stellaris Invicta, a fake documentary about fake space empires, wraps second seasonNov 1, 2021 - PCGamesNOne of the most powerful things about grand strategy games is their ability to generate amazing stories, even if it's only in your head. Someone with the right drive, creative thinking, and who knows their way around editing software might be able to do something more elaborate with these narratives, which is where the people of the Templin Institute come in. This group of Youtubers and streamers like to explore science-fiction and fantasy worlds, and one of their projects - Stellaris Invicta - has just wrapped up its second season. This is a faux-documentary show that follows the exploits of the 'Greater Terran Union' and other fictional polities, and involves input from community members and collaborations with other artists, as well as using footage from Stellaris itself. Marc Gerst, one of the Templin Institute's co-founders, says the response has been better than expected. "I've been really happy with the response," he tells us. "Even taking into account the natural growth of our channel since the first run of Stellaris Invicta, we've seen a much larger viewership.... Even years later, people still get excited about season 1's Greater Terran Union and it's so gratifying to see that same type of reaction to Season 2. We were definitely worried that Season 2 might not reach the heights of Season 1, but that hasn't been an issue." Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Stellaris' next species pack features aquarium ships and a space dragon Stellaris multiplayer - everything you need to know Stellaris megastructures - a quick guide Stellaris Dev Diary #230 - The Art of Aquatics Ships & the DrakeOct 28, 2021 - Community Announcements{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/8b59afd3431917e6df66e42c1c7214c15c9d36dd.png written by Pavel Golovii and David Strömblad Lindh Hello! My name is Pavel Golovii, I am a concept artist from the art team that has worked on the Stellaris Aquatics Species Pack. I am going to highlight the process of developing ship designs from a concept artist perspective. I will talk about the initial ideation process, inspiration, visual language and defining the look of individual ship classes. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/57d3c1227db3f1e1f4deae69dc0d62cee171b337.jpg Brief The work of a concept artist is to suggest a clear visual interpretation of game aspects often based on initially vague ideas and definitions. At this very first stage our goal was to probe for the style for the aquatic ships, invent a sort of a visual language that we then could use to create the entire aquatic ship set that would also fit the existing Stellaris universe. Our art director, Simon Gunnarson, articulated main pivot points for the concept art team. The ships' style had to convey the aquatic and sentient origin of the species that built them and yet artists should avoid too literal interpretations (e.g. converting sea animals into a spaceship). While striving toward non-traditional organic forms we also had to clearly show they are artificially created. These statements served us as navigation beacons leaving a very broad fairway for our art experiments. Inspiration Starting a new concept work can be both exciting and intimidating. As a first step I try to get more information on the topic as it helps to feel myself on solid ground and start off. I had some starting advantage because long before participating in the project the underwater world theme was already part of my interests and passion. Being a seasoned diver and amateur underwater photographer gave me a lot of personal emotional experience and fueled my work. A lot of inspiration I gained from modern architects like Zaha Hadid and Santiago Calatrava. Their works are a great example of organic form interpreted as constructive elements. And of course nature itself is an inexhaustible source of ideas. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/258216a4ec0a49f8ad91445d9c9a58a73ac6d3eb.jpg Radiolaria drawings by Ernst Haeckel(left) became an inspiration for many ships’ elements, including the titan's bow gun. Modern architecture and design gives great examples of organic form interpretation(right). Finding style Starting from big design entities I try to find what proportions, shapes and patterns would distinguish the ships of aquatic species. Will they be thin and streamlined or bulky and rounded? What associations does that particular form bring up to the viewer? We already have Molluscoid species in the game and they are somewhat related to the aquatic theme. So it was critical that new designs are read as different and do not utilize the same shape language. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/9703436/eb8f409d8812d2a4533679510879b834b0e677a2.jpg Early ship style ...
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