Hello everyone! Today Im back with a bit of a larger dev diary to share some of my thoughts and ideas. Weve been busy focusing on the tasks at hand, and now I think it's important for us to share something on a higher level.

A look back

Stellaris has come a really long way since its release on May 9th, 2016, and has undergone a lot of changes since 1.0. The game has been championed by different people over the years, and Im the third person to be handed the reins. We can look back at posts like The Maiden Voyage or the The Journey Ahead to see how much weve achieved already.

Why Stellaris is great

Stellaris is a game with almost infinite potential, and I think theres a lot of things that set us apart from other 4X strategy games. Stellaris is like a multiverse without a fixed timeline or story. I usually describe it as a table of action figures, and a player picks a bunch of those action figures and puts them in a bag. The bag is their player story, and every story is equally important. Stellaris has endless possibilities and opportunities for players to enact their own fantasies or sci-fi tropes, and that is truly what sets Stellaris apart. I want to enrich the Stellaris multiverse by adding more of these action figures (and gameplay mechanics, of course). I think we all love Stellaris for its depth, customization and ability for us to tell our own player stories (while still being a complex strategy game).

What we have been working on recently

Weve been hard at work getting 2.2.6 ready for you to play, and the current plan is to get it into your hands next Thursday (March 7th). In 2.2.6 we have managed to make lots of improvements to the game, with some things highlighted here below: Patch highlights:

• Planet interface: The UI has been polished up, and should now look much nicer! It should especially feel much better for habitats, ecumenopolises and similar.
• Ship upgrading: Fleets will now upgrade ships individually, so if cancelled mid-way, a lot of the ships will already be upgraded. Upgrading also makes use of multiple shipyards. Its pretty great.
• Unique features: Weve started the process to update a bunch of civics and ascension perks to have more unique effects instead of just being a number bonus. This will be an ongoing process for future updates, and my goal is to replace as many as creatively possible.
• Military AI: We have been working on a new military AI, which should now prove more challenging to face off versus in wars! It's not perfect yet, but it's a very good step in the right direction. With your valuable feedback it can only get better!
• Improvements & bugs: Weve made a bunch of smaller QoL improvements and squashed a large number of bugs. More details can be found in the patch log below.

This means that 2.2.6 will go live next week, which also means that the changes from 2.2.5 (beta) will also be a part of that release. ################################################################# ######################### VERSION 2.2.5 ########################### ################################################################# ###################### # 2.2 Le Guin Free Features ###################### * Added the new "Legion" flag set, with 6 new flag emblems ################### # Balance ################### * Pop growth: Reduced Random factor in pop growth, habitability has more of penalty on growth selection, lessened bias towards new species, and traits have a larger effect on Robot selection * Strike craft now do more damage, have longer range, are faster, and turn and accelerate quicker * Machine Empires get 50% more resources from mining bases * Machine Empire Tech Drones now produce 6 energy (up from 4) base. Agri Drones now produce 5 food (down from 6) base. Both of these also apply to Synth Empires. * Machine Empire Colony ships now add 2 pops to a new colony, but cost 400 alloys (up from 300) * Machine Empire Outposts now cost 150 alloys * Machine Empire Fabricators produce 4 alloys (up from 3) at the cost of 8 minerals (up from 6). * New Machine Empire colonies start with 2 replicator jobs to give a bit of early boost (up from 1), upgraded capitals reduced to give the same number overall. The extra Replicator jobs beyond the 2 granted by upgraded capital buildings now depend on the planet still having >= 10/40 pops, to remove a tedious exploit with resettling pops to unlock the upgrade, then moving them again * Machine capital planet grants +5% drone output * Unemployed Machine Pops now use 0.25 Energy for upkeep (down from 1) * Replicators now also produce 1 Engineering research * Coordinators now produce 1 of each Research (was 3 Society) * Each Coordinator on a planet now boosts Simple Drone resource output by 1% * Energy grids/nexus' are more expensive, but give an additional 5% bonus and add 2/4 Max Generator Districts to their planet. This also applies to Synth empires * Mineral purification plants/hubs are more expensive, but give an additional 5% bonus and add 2/4 Max Mining Districts to their planet. This also applies to Synth empires * Robots with Emotion Emulators are now more likely to become maintenance drones * Citizen Service civic effect on soldier unity generation increased from +1 to +2 * Eco Simulation, Gene Crops and Nano-Vitality Crops technology effect on farmer output increased from +10% to +20% * Geothermal Fracking, Deep Core Mining, Mineral Isolation technology effect on miner output increased from 10% to 20% * Field Modulation, Quantum Energy States, Quantum Field Manipulation technology effect on technician output increased from 10% to 20% * The Repugnant/Uncanny trait now has less of an effect on pops avoiding amenity producing jobs * Maintenance drone job priority now considers amenity level of the planet * Simple drones now ponder the empire level food/mineral/energy income when choosing a job * Made the bad outcome of the Abandoned Terraforming Project event produce a Tomb World, rather than a totally unusable Toxic World * Added potential negative outcomes the Atomic Clock chain, since previously there was no real choice involved * Made Fanatic Purifiers always able to choose "no retreat" war doctrine * Scaled back bonus resources from planet modifiers to just be for chthonian planets and carbon world, for now... * When freed from the time loop, the Prikkiki-Ti lizards will start with the same level of tech as their closest neighbour. Also their economy and fleet power has been improved * Telepaths, head researchers, high priests, administrators, executives, researchers, enforcers and entertainers now have weights for ascension/events/uplifts related traits * Returned removed orbital deposits to uninhabitable Precursor homeworlds * Species with very low habitability will not generally be selected to grow new pops * Ministry of Culture for Hive Mind empire now adds Synapse drone jobs, rather than Coordinators ################### # UI ################### * Added missing modifiers on army strength to some tooltips * Fixed some text overlaps in the empire creation screen for Robot Empires in Russian language * Fixed missing tooltip on leftmost trait, if a leader had more than three traits * Removed some obsolete modifiers from the shipyard UI * Fixed resource cost display in colonization menu showing all required resources as red, even if you were only short on one of them * Updated Machine inteligence food tooltip to mention that Cyborgs need food too. Don't let your Cyborgs starve! * Unhallowed Ground Traditionalist pop faction demand tooltip now clarifies that even terraforming tombworlds upsets them * Clarified relative power requirement to offer subsidiary status in the tooltip for this diplo action * Fixed the Expansion Tradition finisher effect not being displayed in tooltip about max district numbers, making the math look really broken * Fixed bug where closing planet view side panel brings up redundant window for a split second * Plasma Accelerators no longer display Caravan Cannon tooltips * Migration pull tool tip now displays actual pull with factors * Fixed tooltip that wrongly stated that only full citizens can take ruler jobs * Fixed debug string shown in the tooltip of certain diplomacy interactions with fallen empires * Fixed broken string in tooltip for event option you absolutely should not click, you have been warned ################### # AI ################### * Machine and Mechanical AI empires will favor generator districts a bit more * AI will not build housing buildings when it doesn't need them * AI will no longer start scrapping buildings immediately once it decides it doesn't need more of them, it will just stop building new ones for a while * Improved AI budgeting for megastructures * AI empires will generally not build more than 2 buildings of the same type per planet * AI should be keen on building Organic sanctuaries if their bio-trophy pops are unemployed * AI only becomes more interested in building commercial zones if it needs energy and amenities (was previously overbuilding these) * AI will check for surplus population before making buildings * AI now budgets the full total available resources into categories ################### # Performance ################### * Reduced performance cost of the outliner * Threaded calculations for rendering planet icons on the galaxy map * Cached habitability calculations for planet icons on the galaxy map ################### # Modding ################### * Changed scope of the faction_approval trigger from pop scope to pop_faction scope, making it not broken anymore ################### # Bugfixes ################### * Fixed broken targeting for strike craft that caused them to meander out to the edges of the system rather than engage enemy fleets * Fixed some Planetary Features (and thus Districts) not surviving the terraforming process to Gaia planet class, because what's a paradise planet if you can't strip mine it and turn it in to a honeycombed shell?! * Foundry level 3 now correctly gives Machine Empires Fabricator jobs instead of Foundry Drones * Fixed Private Colony Ships being generated without names in some circumstances * Fixed an issue where the "Galactic Market Hub Nomination" Decision would once again become available if a nominated planet's rating was boosted past a certain point * Orc and cyclops portraits from the Humanoid species pack no longer have a shoulder clipping through their clothing * Fixed an out of sync due to parallelization of pops calculation * Fixed a source of OOS on reconnect * Fixed OOS introduced by caching starbase related values * Fixed clicking "colonize" on a planet not working for Machine Empires (planet naming didn't work, colony ship insta-builds but did nothing, this bug was a real champion) * Free movement faction demand no longer cares about robots or their rights * Pops without military service rights will no longer take soldier or enforcer jobs * Fixed not being able to assign/unassign leader (by clicking portrait) from fleet manager view * Fixed literally unplayable typos in certain Italian names in the human namelist * Fixed a case where a build outpost command inside space you already own would wrongly claim you were trying to build in another empire's territory * Finally got around to adding a proper confirmation click sound when adding claims on the galaxy map * Fixed cases where pop growth would not overflow properly after a new pop is spawned (99+3 used to = 100), causing all sorts of weirdness with pop growth modifiers * Fixed cases where science ships on auto-explore would just stop, or randomly choose a crazy indirect path to the next unexplored system * Fixed the supply ship wreckage event to not fire if the other party is a genocidal empire, since it makes little sense for them * Fixed Expansionist Overtures leader agenda appearing before you've made contact with any other empires * Fixed an issue where a Fallen Empire's Shielded World would not spawn * You can now build multiple habitats at the same time, in the same system * Fixed the "Ships Lost" outcome of the Fleet Maneuvers event sometimes not having any effect, by preventing it firing if there are too few ships in the fleet to destroy * Updated the text in some of the Synth Uprising events to better convey the scale of the disaster, since while we'll never tell how many beings compose a Pop, it's probably more than a dozen * Removed nonfunctional and unintended "merge fleets" button for things like the lost amoeba, that are not supposed to merge with normal fleets * Fixed a pathfinding issue that would cause fleet to not move towards their destination * Fixed ship losses not being correctly counted in the battle list in the war overview * Fixed a bug from 2016 (!) where if you split a fleet, then tried to drag-box select both, only one would be picked * Atomic clock follow-up anomaly rewards that grant Engingeering deposits will now correctly convert any existing Mining Stations into Research Stations * Fixed duplicate component slot and moved slots around on the Automated Dreadnought * Fixed bug where deposits granting districts wouldn't actually grant the districts until a game reload * Bonus minerals from planet modifiers will no longer overwrite the dragon hoard * Fixed bountiful plains (level 1 food deposit) not showing up on savannah worlds * Fixed workers abandoning the mines to displace specialists, leading to basic resource starvation and a lot of unemployed high strata pops later in the game. No social mobility for you! * No longer possible to sometimes rival countries that have pathetic relative power * Made sure to cull the old, empty lost amoeba fleet from the fleet manager as the amoeba matures * Ensured capital buildings can convert to the correct type when a planet of primitives/machines/hive minds is taken over by another empire type * AH4B from Distant Stars can no longer change composition to prevent naval capacity bypass exploit * Dead/killed slaves are now properly culled from the slave market, so no more invalid entries, you heartless monsters * Added checks to help ensure that buildings specific to one empire type are properly destroyed/converted when the world is taken over by a different empire type * Fixed primitives and fallen/awakened empire pops not being purged by the Prethoryn and Contingency (Valar Morghulis) * Fixed the Horizon Signal's "waiting world" events erroneously occurring on Ecumenopolises * Coloniziable planets will no longer be clear-cut and paved over to hold a single mineral or energy deposit by survey teams who become over-excited at their planet modifiers * Caravaneer weapons should no longer appear at game start * Fixed pop growth bravely continuing even while the planet was being purged by the Prethoryn * Fixed coming across the Caravansary home base (before encountering a Caravaneer Fleet) not giving you communications with them * Added fixes for more cases where the Scourge would sometimes stop expanding * Fixed Contingency and Scourge not being able to purge the final pop on an occupied planet, because thoroughness is important * Fixed An Odd Factor event triggering even if no pop had the Odd Factory Worker job, and pops not actually being removed by event despite claims to the contrary * Fixed broken pirate ship turret graphics ################################################################# ######################### VERSION 2.2.6 ########################### ################################################################# ###################### # 2.2 Le Guin Free Features ###################### * Added a new, more user-friendly planet screen, with better organization and display of info and buttons * Ship upgrading is now handled individually, on a per ship, per shipyard basis. This means if the process is interrupted part way, some of the ships will still be upgraded, rather than losing the entire upgrade progress. Also, alloy costs are now deducted one ship at a time, rather than for the entire fleet in one go, so you don't have to wait until you can afford everything to start the upgrade process * Warrior Culture civic no longer reduces army upkeep, but instead makes Entertainment buildings replace Entertainers with Duelists. Duelists turn 1 alloy into 3 unity, 12 amenities and 2 naval capacity * Added Logistical Corps tradition custom flavour text swap for Hive Minds * Added Great Game tradition custom flavour text swap for Devouring Swarms * Added new animation to Plantoid 13 (cactus) portrait. It will now have some butterflies as company! ################### # Balance ################### * Pop growth further adjusted to put less priority towards minority pops * Battle Thralls can now take enforcer jobs * Hallucinogen Removal special project cost reduced from 5000 to 3000 * Breaching the Shroud special project cost reduces from 50000 to 20000 * Transcendent Learning ascension perk effect on leader pool removed and replaced with Leader Experience Gain +50% * Reduced the machine empire bonus to orbital station production to 10% (was 50%, which turned out to be rather OP) * Rogue Servitor tweaks: -Organic Sanctuary/Paradise no longer provide housing, instead Biotrophy jobs eliminate those pop's need for housing -Artisan Drones produce 8 Consumer goods for 8 minerals (up from 6 of each) -Biotrophy Jobs now also increase Complex Drone putput on their planet by 0.25% each -Starts with 1 additonal Nexus District * Driven Assimilator tweaks: -Bio pop growth reduced by 40% -1 fewer Replicator job per level of capital -Now start with +100 food, and 100 less energy * Ship upgrades are cheaper due to refund amount from old components being increased to 90% (was 50%) * Pops have a wider possible range of Political power, so for example you can care less about unhappy slaves since it's not as though they can vote or anything * Meritocracy Civic effect on leader pool size removed and replaced with specialist output +10% * Clone Vats are no longer required to build Clone armies, they are now unlocked by the Gene Banks tech (resolves an issue where this tech had no benefit for assimilators) * Technological Ascendancy ascension perk now also makes rare technologies 50% more common * Shroud entities have been tweaked slightly. Corrupted Avatar now has lower total HP, but has increased regen. Shroud Avatar is now slightly stronger in its total HP and regen. End of Cycle entities have also been tweaked similarly * Transcendence, Evolutionary Mastery, Synthetic Evolution ascension perk slot requirement reduced from 4th to 3rd * World Shaper ascension perk slot requirement reduced from 3nd to 2nd * Imperial Prerogative ascension perk no longer has any slot requirements * Eternal Vigilance ascension perk no longer has any slot requirements, but instead requires the Star Fortress technology * Eternal Vigilance ascension perk now also increases starbase hull points by 25% * One Vision ascension perk now also reduces pop amenities usage by 10% * Numistic shrine now costs 4000 energy to buy and 1000 minerals to build * Upped Machine Empire colony ship cost to 750 alloys, to balance recent changes from beta * Clerks and Preachers job weights no longer care about being strong, weak, or proles * Miner job weights DO care about being proles * Synth Empires pay only alloys for Colony ships, like Machines ################### # UI ################### * Added missing modifier icons for mote harvesting traps and extractors, also updated old icon * Added a bunch of shortcuts to the planet view * Added shortcut "U" to upgrade starbase platforms button * Added shortcuts for upgrade "U" and trade route "T" buttons in starbase interface * Strategic resources summary on the top bar will now show in red to let you know if any are in deficit * Fixing devastation progress bar reaching 100% and disappearing ################### # AI ################### * Big rework of military AI making it a lot smarter and more aggressive in war: better selection and maintenance of the aim, better follow through on invading worlds they are bombarding, not so easy to kite with tiny decoy fleets, more willing to reinforce neighboring friendlies under attack, etc * AI is not so maniacal about crime that it rush builds 3 precinct houses on every planet * The sector AI should now be better at upgrading buildings relevant to its selected focus * Improved the AI's budgeting of Alloys * AI will now only consider enacting population control if it cannot produce more housing * Sector automation will now clear blockers if able, and if it is not building a building or district at that moment * Rogue Servitors Less keen on building organic sanctuaries unless bio-trophies need them * Sector AI will now upgrade buildings if possible * All Sector Focuses will now try to upgrade their colony capital buildings if there are no other pressing needs * AI will no longer obsessively shuffle scientists from one role to another every few days * Lowered the AI's mineral budget allotment for ground armies (they were producing way too many) * AI empires with alternative cost types for colony ships will now budget the correct resource for it * AI prefers City districts over Housing buildings a bit more * Fixed some edge cases where the AI would attempt to build its way out of unemployment with districts and buildings that its pops can't work ################### # Performance ################### * Removed redundant double calculations related to end game crisis that caused them to very negatively affect late game performance * Reordered some operations in the invasion calculations to make sure the most expensive are done last ################### # Modding ################### * Added 'hyperlane_distance = { min max }' and 'hyperlane_jumps = { min max }' to system initializer 'neighbor_system = { ... }' block * Pops now use the asset_selector again to choose their clothes * Added new "is_scope_type" trigger that lets you know if you're a scope of a particular type: "is_scope_type = fleet" * Removed the forced clothes index in pop categories and job types, to let the clothes selector do its magic * There are now multipliers for previous job, previous tenants, survey and unemployment to the AI score used to fill in jobs ################### # Bugfixes ################### * Fixed edge case where multiple megastructures could be built in the same system * Fixed missing missions for primitive observation posts * Fixed planets still being colonized generating emigration push to other worlds. I know the offworld colonies weren't the paradise the holovid adverts made them out to be, but give them another generation or two... * Fixed a broken string in the tooltip for the Egalitarian ethic * Fixed guaranteed ideal nearby systems generating based on absolute distance rather than max jumps from homeworld, which could cause them to be isolated by unlucky jump lane network generation * Fixed population controls disabling robot construction as well, so you can now improve the meatbag to metal ratio of your society * Planets under colonization will no longer generate low stability alerts * Fixed Strategic Resource notifications appearing for resources hidden behind Anomalies * Winning an "impose ideology" war will no longer overwrite the defeated empires civics * Impose Ideology war now properly creates an ally instead of a vassal * Fixed a crash that happened when a ship was destroyed while being upgraded * A lack of Nanites will now properly trigger a deficit warning and stop the resource production of Nanite Transmuters * Fixed robots/synths being treated as organic when conquered by hive mind empires, and getting locked in the livestock job * Fixed vassal integration wrongly costing no influence * Fixed an issue where conquering Hive Minds could take over inappropriate buildings they have no use for, like Holo-Theatres * Maintenance drones now correctly increase in priority when amenities are negative, and now don't have increased priority from traits when amenities are high * Slave processing centers should no longer vanish when build anywhere but a Thrall-World * Fixed some edge cases where the Life-Seeded Civic would not create a Gaia homeworld * Head Researcher and Executive now have Amenity output modifiers and weights for several relevant traits (Repugnant, Charismatic, etc) * Fixed Strong, Very Strong, Weak traits not being applied properly when playing as a gestalt empire * Fixed displacement purge type wrongly applying the genocidal diplomatic opinion penalty * Fixed "The Shattered Loop" event firing twice upon death of the Worm-in-Waiting * Fixed a literally unplayable localization error in the Xeno-Compatibility tooltip * Fixed Prikkik-Ti empire spawning on a planet without enough districts to support it * Prikkiki-Ti will no longer spam player with multiple communications established messages * Planets taken over by the Scourge or Contingency will now swap any capital buildings to a correct Machine or Hive capital * Preferred habitability is no longer strictly tied to starting planet class if a civic changes the starting planet * Fixed developing colonies being hidden in the outliner's Sectors group if on completion a new sector would be created * Fixed pre-sapient policies disappearing if you purge all of them from your space, making fulfilment of certain faction demands impossible, because what are the screams of the innocent next to that sweet, sweet influence? * Changed wording on the Strong/Very Strong traits. It was wrongly implying that is should affect the outcome of ALL worker strata jobs, not just basic resource extraction ones. Even if your clerks never skip leg day, they probably shouldn't benefit from these traits * Added piracy suppression values to event generated ships that were missing them * Fixed a few more cases of techs with the wrong specialty group assignment * Fixed a minor discrepancy in the tooltip of the Sins of a Sun anomaly vs its actual in game effects * Fixed a nasty exploit with downgrading fleets that could result in free alloys (thanks for the heads up on this, Reddit user nonium) * Added missing torpedo components from the Spiritualist Fallen Empire Zealot-Class ship type * Added a basic Zro income to Spiritualist Fallen empires to allow them to properly produce reinforcements for their damaged fleets * The modifier for Refinery worlds should also now affect Gestalt jobs * Fixed several ship weapons which had incorrect resource costs * Energy/Culture Habitat districts should convert properly if a gestalt empire takes it from a normal empire, or vice versa * Fixed a crash when a country gets a trade route that used to belong to someone else * Fixed tooltip that hilariously claimed that setting a species to purge (except neuter) was a requirement for the Decent Living Standards

The future

I have a lot of thoughts of what I want Stellaris to explore over the next coming years, but first I would like to talk about some of the things we want to tackle in the near future. Pop growth and sectors are two systems that we feel are not in a place where we would like them to be. For sectors we want to give players better control and automation, so that sectors can better help alleviate the need to micromanage very large empires. We havent decided on the details yet, but the ability to shift planets between sectors seems like something we would want, as would the ability to give a sector monthly subsidies for its development. As always, your thoughts are very valuable to us, so we would love to hear what it is that you want the sectors to do for you. The pop growth system is problematic in the sense that it introduces a lot of unnecessary micromanagement at the moment. In an ideal world, pop growth would migrate to where the jobs are, to save you the need to resettle pops to where you need them. Balance-wise, multiple planets are also a bit too strong in terms of pop growth right now, and we will be looking into how we can make it work more like we would like. Although were a lot happier with how the tweaks have worked out, were still not entirely happy with habitability and base pop growth being exponentially too powerful. We will be looking into what can be done here, without having to do too many sweeping changes. Although it is far too early to make any promises, I do feel like I would like to share my thoughts on things I would like Stellaris to explore sometime in the future. With diplomacy obviously being one of the bigger boxes we havent tackled yet, Id love to see better interactions with subject empires, expanded federation features and much more. Espionage, religion & cults are other concepts that I would like to explore as well. DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST, NOR IS ANYTHING FINAL OR CERTAIN TO HAPPEN Future goals (in no particular order):

• Pop growth: Look into how immigration/emigration works, try to make base growth across multiple planets less powerful, make habitability matter more again
• Sectors & automation: Allow players to nudge which sectors planets belong to, reduce micromanagement by improving sector management tools
• Backgrounds: Split up some civics into backgrounds, and add more backgrounds.
• Civic flavour: Spend more time on making the civics feel more unique and fun
• Institutions: Define which institutions make up your empires internal departments (such as Diplomatic Corps, Xenology Bureau etc.), and their funding, size and power.
• Espionage: Intel to determine how much you know about another empire, spy actions, cloaking, sabotage & general mischief.
• Religion & Cults: Similar to factions, cults could appear in your empire during certain circumstances. Spiritualist empires would most likely have imperial cults. Worship of powerful entities etc.
• Archaeology: Explore the ruins of ancient civilizations
• Subject contracts: Allow overlords to better customize what type of subjects they have, tribute levels, benefits to subject etc.
• Federation depth: Allow federations to level up, have different election types, taxes etc.
• Galactic Council: Create a sort of a space UN with galactic politics and diplomacy
• Primitives: Allow for more interactions with primitive pre-FTL species

As previously mentioned, this is not a promise of features to come, I am merely sharing some of my more high level thoughts and ideas. Tune into our livestream today where Ill be talking about the future and taking questions! Starting at 16:00 CET over on https://twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive