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Stellaris Dev Diary #305 - Midsummer Festivities

Hello everyone!

Midsummer approaches, and with it, holidays.

Stellaris: Free to Play​

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

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

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

Stellaris Free to Play June 22nd to June 26th

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

Stellaris Nexus​

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

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

Stellaris Nexus demo available during Steam Next Fest, June 19th to 26th

Community Designed Starter Pack

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

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

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

Which DLCs would you recommend to new players?

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

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

What’s Next?​


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

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

Calamitous Birth tooltip

The newly clarified Calamitous Birth tooltip.

Massive Crater: Now with bonuses to Lithoid Traits.

The home crater gets a bit of a boost.

Lithoid Craters now only reduce habitability for non-Lithoid pops.

A minor tweak to the craters makes a big difference.

Consume World now starts a situation that auto-consumes the planet.

What do Lithoids eat?

Consumption Situation progress bar.

Pom-a-granites!

Details on the Consumption situation. Produces Minerals, Alloys, or Pops every six months.

Placeholder icons on the approaches.

The Restraint approach ends the situation, but is very expensive Unity-wise as it is not in a Terravore's nature to save some for later.

Once you start feasting, it's really hard to stop.
Om nom nom.
 
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Have a good summer holiday!

Will there be experiments on leader cap? A few dev dairies ago a variety of approaches were mentioned as under consideration like category specific caps or free minor leaders.

Also will vassal spam be addressed? I vaguely remember that changes to trust mechanics and diplo-vassalisation were planned for 3.8 but in the pre-release streams for paragons it was mentioned as pushed to 3.9.
 
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Utopia allows for a broader range of empire choices, by providing new tools to develop the empire and ultimately allowing players to transform their nation into a paradise
Ah yes, Utopia, the expansion that introduced Fanatic Purifiers and related mechanics.
*poker face*
 
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Ah yes, Utopia, the expansion that introduced Fanatic Purifiers and related mechanics.
*poker face*
I mean, its my sole reason to keep playing. Pre-1.5 and Utopia, empire factions were not really a thing. And I loved it. Post 1.5 factions became really aggravating because it forces you to play your empire in a specific way to please the factions, not allowing me to do what I want without some pesky politicians going "hey that makes me mad". But 1.5 also brought with it Utopia and HIVE MINDS, I have almost not touched baseline empires since, hive mind just feels like the best playstyle to me.

edit: For the record, back then factions gave INFLUENCE, not unity. They were vital to please in order to expand faster.
 
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Aw yeah, time to eat the delicious planets, *in style!*
 
Not surprised about Utopia's dominance, a lot of what was introduced in that expansion is part of the core game for me. It's the definition of "essential".

However, I find it shocking to see Overlord so low on that list. I would have thought that the current vassal meta and things like planetary rings were actually quite popular.
 
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OMG Its finally happening! Attention attention! This is not a drill! Automatic devouring of planets and you dont have to go to every planet every 6 months and press the decision button.
 
Will there be experiments on leader cap? A few dev dairies ago a variety of approaches were mentioned as under consideration like category specific caps or free minor leaders.
Yes. We'll be talking about those later on as well.

Also will vassal spam be addressed? I vaguely remember that changes to trust mechanics and diplo-vassalisation were planned for 3.8 but in the pre-release streams for paragons it was mentioned as pushed to 3.9.
Diplomacy and trust changes are planned for 3.9.

Federations is that high? Really?
It's got a lot of Origins.

I'm more shocked that Overlord and Galactic Paragons are that low on the list and even more that Nemesis is completely missing...
This is the top ten list, anything on it is pretty high overall.
 
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I wonder what the big news is? Is it relevant to even current players, including single player (like me), or just multiplayers?
Not surprised about Utopia's dominance, a lot of what was introduced in that expansion is part of the core game for me. It's the definition of "essential".

However, I find it shocking to see Overlord so low on that list. I would have thought that the current vassal meta and things like planetary rings were actually quite popular.
I'd have to say that despite that, it's more recent and fewer people have it. I don't have it yet, though I am planning to get the rest later this year.

As for the update itself, I'm really looking forward to the Calamitous Birth update, as I said on the reddit thread of favorite/least favorite origins, it felt punishing to play, because the only planets you'd use the meteorites on would be planets that were already suitable for you, or as a terravore, planets you were going to consume, the rest would be regular colony ships, so I'm very glad it's bring changed.

Did you get other ideas from that thread? I believe Eladrin chimed in with his own favorite.
 
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This is the top ten list, anything on it is pretty high overall
More precise: I did expected to see Nemesis in the top 10, even somewhat around the top 5. But i guess thats only my personal preference and not really objective. But thank you for the details!
 
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That sentence is wonderful. Love the fact that old content gets revisited! I love the Custodian Team!
Definitely. I like the general direction of Stellaris and getting new features to play with, but going back to older stuff and bringing it up to parity with the current game feels like it breathes new life into it that I really enjoy.

Stellaris has a lot of mechanics and features, so just bringing everything else to the same level as we have now is great, and personally, the Custodian changes are the reason why I got humanoids and plantoids in the first place.
 
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Massive Crater.png

The home crater gets a bit of a boost.


Good, now change that +25% pop growth speed to +25% Lithoid pop growth speed (lithoid_pop_growth_speed) and it will all make sense.
 
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Legitimately confused why Apocalypse is so high, given the absolute F-all it comes with.

My guess is that it's primarily due to the strength of the Colossus player fantasy, and the mechanical benefit of having a relatively easily accessible Total War. That frees up Influence for other stuff.
 
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