by PDX-Ruk

Stardate 23779.5 - Temba, his arms wide

In this week's dev diary, I am taking the reins from Eladrin. I am a producer on Stellaris and usually help Eladrin as best I can, but today I want to talk about my other project and let Stellaris have a week off before they talk about their next thing. And that Project is: Star Trek: Infinite
[previewyoutube=eVQSfknYsjk;full][/previewyoutube] Watch the video version of this Dev Diary

Who are you? And why are you Putting Star Trek in my Stellaris Dev Diary?!

I joined Paradox back in the start of 2021, and was given the task to bring Star Trek: Infinite to Launch. Today is that day: we launch Star Trek: Infinite. Why am I talking about Infinite in the Stellaris Dev diary? To start off, I am a producer on Stellaris, but also the producer for Star Trek: Infinite - I love playing both games, and I think some of you might feel the same. Secondly, as all of you can easily identify, Star Trek: Infinite is built on the Stellaris Engine, with little effort to hide it. Everyone here on the Stellaris team has been giving feedback and tips since its inception, and we are all fully behind it. While Star Trek: Infinite is not a Stellaris Team project, it is a distinguished member of Stellaris Selective Kinship.

So why did you want to make Star Trek Stellaris? Err, I mean Star Trek: Infinite?

From a product point of view, Stellaris is the best Space/Emergent Story/Strategy game out there. Star Trek has a great tradition of 4x strategy games, and several story driven games. With that in mind, was there a possible way to mix this peanut butter gameplay of Stellaris with the strawberry jelly of Star Trek? I for one believed it could be done. The big takeaway from Stellaris we wanted in this game was exploration, choice and evolving gameplay. From Star Trek I wanted recognizable factions, lore authentic events and leaders. This has been our north star since the start. We dont want to make a game that only explores the existing timeline, nor do we want a game with complete randomness. A balance between the two had to be maintained, and I think we might have pulled it off.

OK, as a Stellaris Player? Why Should I get this?

It really depends on what type of Stellaris player you are. I love making themed factions that are not optimized, but thematically attractive. Setting the difficulty to Ensign/Captain, and seeing how it all plays out. I will usually restart if I get boring neighbors, or I get an unwanted precursor. My favorite Origins are Post-Apocalyptic+UNE, Toxic God, Payback+UNE, or Machine Empire with Eager Explorers. I also lean heavily away from micromanagement and build optimization. If you play anything like me, Star Trek: Infinite might be for you. If you think seeing Klingons going to war with Romulans over their claim to Kithomer gives a different flavor than seeing UNE being attacked by Kel-Azaan Republic over a claim in Parvus, Star Trek: Infinite might be for you. If you think you can be a better Gul than Dukat, and that there should be a statue of you on Bajor. Star Trek: Infinite might be for you If you think Romulans should reunite with Vulcan, but it should be done with force, and not diplomacy? Star Trek: Infinite might be for you.

What about Mods, Custodian Support, Long term life of the game?

This is one of the reasons we wanted to make this game a standalone, rather than part of Stellaris. We wanted this game to have its own track and not cause limitations on Stellaris, or Stellaris cause limitations for it. Stellaris should continue to evolve as the best Sci-fi sandbox strategy game in existence, and Star Trek: Infinite should be the definitive Star Trek strategy game. Mods are already being made, and we have full Steam Workshop support. We will be paying a bit more attention to our terms and conditions, but we have not made major changes to the existing one. So if this sounds like it could be appealing, check it out here. Until next time, PDX_Ruk