Hello everyone!Christmas is fast approaching, and before the team disappears for some well-deserved rest, we thought it would be good to sum up the year and share some thoughts.2019 has been a challenging year for us, with many different challenges that we’ve had to tackle. The year began with an extended period of patching, which had us starting on a bad footing. We had a lot of issues to address, but we also had plans for the year, plans that included small side projects as well as developing new content for the game.The year made it clear that we need to slow down and refocus our efforts, because we’ve been running at a high pace for too long now. We are working hard with Federations to make sure we have time to address any outstanding issues, and to make the expansion a great release.Our communication hasn’t been the best during the year either, and a lot comes down to us not having a lot to communicate (as we were busy working on things), and that we decided to use PDXCON for all ... Read more

Hello everyone!Today we’ll be talking about some big stuff – namely the Juggernaut and the Mega Shipyard.Both of these new behemoths are a part of the upcoming Federations expansion.Juggernaut
Stellaris has been in development for many years and, and if there’s something we know for sure its that big ships are cool, and bigger ships are even cooler. With this flawless logic in mind, we obviously wanted to add something even bigger than a Titan.Mobile starbases is something that we know has been widely requested, so why not hit two avians with one lithoid?
Visually, the Juggernaut has the shape of a giant pair of wings.

The juggernaut is as much a mobile starbase as it is a massive warship. Although the Juggernaut works like a mobile starbase in some regards, it will not project borders or control ownership or systems. A Juggernaut instead functions like a forward base of operations during offensive campaigns where you can repair your ships. The Juggernaut will not have starbase modules or... Read more

Hello everyone!Today we thought we’d talk about some of the smaller changes coming to diplomacy with the free 2.6 update. Although the Galactic Community and the reworked federations are sure to have a large impact on galactic diplomacy, it's also important to talk about the smaller things!Envoys
One of the more important things we’ve added are the Envoys. Envoys function very similar to Diplomats in EU4, and they are required for certain diplomatic actions such as:Improve / Harm Relations – it is now possible to send an Envoy to improve or harm relations which can affect Opinion by up to (-400 / +400 ). More on Opinion and Relations later.
Assigned to Federation (to increase monthly Cohesion by +1)
Assigned to Galactic Community (to increase Diplomatic Weight)Improve Relations
In Federation
Galactic Community
Although Envoys are characters, they do not currently have any character-mechanics such as traits. We didn’t think it would be fun to have to micromanage and switch Envoys around to be... Read more

Hello everyone!For this week’s dev diary we chose to switch the order of a couple of dev diaries to be able to give you some updates earlier rather than later.The Stellaris brand has understandably been under more scrutiny than usual for the last few months, and we want to address situations related to work-in-progress art in Federations. As an example, we had some UI design mockups (shown during PDXCon) that contained placeholder art. We want to make clear this is not how the game will appear in its final version.Moving on to Federations: During PDXCON 2019 we said that we would give more information on the expansion later during the year – and today we want to share some news that Federations is targeted for release in early 2020. Although we understand that some of you might be disappointed that Federations will not be released in December, we want you to know that we are taking more time to make sure that the next update is going to be amazing.In addition, to give us the best chanc... Read more

Hello everyone!In our previous dev diary #155[forum.paradoxplaza.com] we talked about Origins, and today we will be returned to the topic by going through Origins again, but in more detail.Please note that although this is a pretty exhaustive list, there is no guarantee that these Origins will necessarily match what will be in Federations once it is released.What are Origins?
Origins allows you to pick a background story for your empire. An empire can only pick one Origin.
Prosperous Unification is the “default” Origin.There are currently 18 Origins in the game, where some of them were converted from previously being Civics. Origins that were converted will be unlocked by the same DLC that they were unlocked by when they were civics.The Origins
Prosperous Unification: Start with 4 additional Pops and 2 additional Districts. (Available to everyone)Mechanist: Start with 8 Pops being robots, and the ability to build more. (Utopia)Syncretic Evolution: Start the game with 12 Pops being of anot... Read more

Hello everyone!Today we will be talking about a new feature coming with Stellaris: Federations – the Galactic Community!The Galactic Community is very similar to a United Nations in space. Members can propose and vote on Resolutions, which are laws that affect all the member empires.Resolutions
The Resolutions are intended to be divisive, so that even empires that are allies can have very different agendas when it comes to which Resolutions should be passed.
Resolutions exist in categories and have a couple of steps in each category.
Go big or go home.Passing a Resolution
The first step to passing a Resolution is proposing it! Any member of the Galactic Community can propose a Resolution, but they can only have one ongoing. When a Resolution is proposed, it moves into the proposal queue.
The Galactic Community deals with matters of critical importance to the continued well-being of the galaxy and all of its inhabitants.Only one Resolution can be voted on at a time on the senate floor, and t... Read more

Hi all, Jamor here, with the news that after a weekend in beta without new breaking issues being introduced, I'm putting patch 2.5.1 fully live right now.It contains a number of bug fixes for the Lithoids release.#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.5.1 ##########################
####################################################################################
# UI
###################* The tooltip for Livestock now mentions that Lithoid Livestock produce Minerals instead of Food
* Chat muting commands now work consistently between in-game and lobby chat###################
# Bugfixes
###################* Lithoid Empires with the Terravore civic should no longer occasionally end up blocked from social research
* Fixed so that players get the correct visual representation of chosen parts for the lithoid ships
* Fixed Lithoids wrongly getting unhappiness and growth penalties from negative food, this comes from negative minerals for... Read more

Hello everyone!It was great to finally reveal what we’re working on at PDXCON, and today we’re back with yet another dev diary where we will dive into some more details on the reworked federations.The screenshots still feature a bunch of work-in-progress stuff, like every federation perk using a placeholder right now. Numbers and effects aren’t necessarily final either.Federation Types
Like we mentioned at PDXCON, federation will now come in different Federation Types. Each federation type has a unique passive effect and can unlock federation perks as they level up.
Certain federation types have requirements on what type of empire can suggest to form them, but there are no limitations on who can join a federation (except for killer empires & inward perfection). Yes, this also means that Barbaric Despoilers and Criminal Syndicate are no longer excluded.

Galactic Union
This will be a more generic type of federation that will fit most groups of empires. This federation makes it easier to coop... Read more

Hello everyone, it's your friendly neighborhood Associate Producer, Obidobi. We've seen your feedback and have put together a small patch to fix some of the major annoyances. To bring it to you faster, we're putting it up on a beta branch in Steam as we continue our verification process in-house.While this patch will be put as a Beta branch on Steam, we are setting it as default on both GoG and Plaza. This means that if you want to play Multiplayer with your friends on other platforms, you'll have to switch to the Steam beta branch.Here's the full changelog for 2.5.1:#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.5.1 ##########################
####################################################################################
# UI
###################* The tooltip for Livestock now mentions that Lithoid Livestock produce Minerals instead of Food
* Chat muting commands now work consistently between in-game and lobby chat#################... Read more

Hi everyone!I’m Eladrin, Game Designer on Stellaris, and I’m one of the newer members of the Stellaris team. I joined the team during the development of Ancient Relics, and it’s been a blast. It was awesome meeting so many of you at PDXCON, and getting to hear so many ideas and excellent stories directly from you.Back in Diary 152 and Dev Diary 153, Grekulf mentioned some of the Summer Experimentation that we did - but in today’s dev diary I wanted to talk about one of the things I worked on during the summer - game mechanics for the Lithoids. The Lithoids Species Pack is very sedimental to me. When I wanted to dig deeper into the systems and get my hands dirty in the code, I looked at the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” list, and saw “...Lithoids ate minerals instead of food?” up near the top. This seemed like a solid foundation to start with, and a gneiss stepping stone to get my feet on the ground that fit my apatite - it seemed like a pretty simple change after all.Okay, I’ll stop wit... Read more

Hello Players!The PDX Con 2019 is here and we have great announcements for you!We're streaming the announcement show on Twitch! Join your fellow xenos here[www.twitch.tv]! We start at 10a.m. CEST. In 30 minutes!See you on the other side!

Hi all, Jamor again. We're deploying a small, quick hotfix to address two issues we were able to solve today: inability of the launcher to display incompatible mods, and an economy bug related to artisan jobs and consumer goods.Given that it's early yet and some may not have seen the original changes in 2.4.0, I'll repost those. Please note that due to a human error, namely this producer managing to transcribe fixes from the wrong dev branch in to the patch notes (!), a few of the listed changes in 2.4.0 are not actually present in the build. In the interest of getting the hotfix to you all with maximum speed, those will come in a future update when they can be properly merged and tested. I'll put them in the notes for reference, but crossed out.#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.4.1 ##########################
####################################################################################
# General
###################*... Read more

Hello everyone!As we mentioned in our last dev diary, this week we will be talking about some of the cool things you can be expecting to see at PDXCON 2019!Announcement show
What: PDX will be announcing new titles and expansions. Stellaris will be featured.
When: Saturday (Oct 19) 10:00 CEST
Where: PDXCON main stage or Twitch[www.twitch.tv]Stellaris talk
What: I will be holding a talk where I will be talking about future updates to Stellaris.
When: Saturday (Oct 19) 18:00 CEST
Where: PDXCON main stage or Twitch[www.twitch.tv]Paradox Awards
What: Paradox celebrates its community by recognizing outstanding achievements in our community.
When: Saturday (Oct 19) 20:00 CEST
Where: PDXCON main stage or Twitch[www.twitch.tv]Stellaris booth
What: Play new content, meet the devs, talk to other fans
When: Saturday (Oct 19) 11:00 - 20:00 CEST
Where: At PDXCONStellaris meet-and-greet
What: Meet the devs!
When: Sunday (Oct 20) 12:00 - 13:00 CEST
Where: AuditoriumStellaris LAN
What: Play new content, meet the devs,... Read more

Hi all, Jamor here, with some news for you just before our biggest event of the year, PDXCON.Today we are releasing version 2.4.0 “Lee”. The primary objective of this version is to get our new Paradox launcher in to Stellaris:Why are we doing this? There are two main reasons: Firstly, as you know, Stellaris is available on Steam, Paradoxplaza, GOG, and as of today, the Microsoft Store. Currently, there are hoops that someone has to jump through if they want to do a multiplayer game with users on another platform, involving opting in to beta branches. Our long term goal is to unite all Paradox gamers under one universal MP umbrella, so everyone can play with anyone they want at any time, on any release platform, with a minimum of fuss. To do that, a single unified launcher for all our of various platforms is a key prerequisite (just to clarify, this is the end goal, it does not change how you play Stellaris in multiplayer today). The launcher also has its own dedicated personnel which m... Read more

Hi team! It's time for another Dev Diary and our Game Director Daniel has a cool new feature to share with you today! :)-----------------------------Hello everyone! I have just returned from a belated vacation in Japan, and although I had a great time there it is also fun to be back to work. Today I want to talk about some of the cool things happening with Stellaris this year. As many of you have probably guessed, Stellaris will announce a new expansion at PDXCon this year. This expansion will feature a lot of cool new things, most of which will be revealed at PDXCon. But I do also have something really neat that I want to share with you now!
Good ol’ civics. Gotta love ‘em.Back in Utopia we introduced a lot of cool new features to improve how you could customize and specialize your empire. Civics were a great addition to the game (in fact I consider them to be one of the best), but they are also awkwardly split between “backgrounds” like Syncretic Evolution and “institutions” like Dist... Read more

Hello all, this is Hildor Anduv, the UX Designer on Stellaris. I’ve been with the team since December, and have really enjoyed working on such a great game. With my first Dev Diary I’m going to be sharing how I have been approaching UX Design on Stellaris.Disclaimer: We're not quite ready to announce our plans just yet (we're saving that for the big stage, PDXCon), so this is going to be more process oriented without delving into specifics about any new feature. If that's not your thing, you can safely give it a miss, but if you're interested in the nuts and bolts of how games are designed and made, let us lift the curtain a bit.Whiteboarding: The UX Corner
Whiteboards are a great place for getting your ideas out quickly. When whiteboarding I try to get team members from multiple disciplines and rough out ideas, together. It’s a great way to discover gameplay and player needs, as well as find any potential development pitfalls early on.We wanted to create a permanent space for this, and... Read more

Hello everyone!We’re back with yet another dev diary to showcase some more fruits of summer experimentation. As with the previous dev diary, this involved a lot of work carried out during the summer and involves something I’ve wanted to explore for a good while now.Today we’ll be talking about empire sprawl and administrative capacity. Do note that these changes are still fairly young in their development, so numbers and implementation details may not be representative of what it will look like in the end.As a background, I can mention that I have a grander idea of where I want to take these mechanics, but it will not all happen at once. These changes aim to mimic state bureaucracy or overhead created by managing a large empire. As a minor aspect I also wanted you to be able to experience the funny absurdity of having a planet entirely dedicated to bureaucracy. The movie Brazil is a great source of inspiration here :)Empire Sprawl
We wanted to expand on how empire sprawl is used, so tha... Read more

Hello everyone!Summer vacations are reaching their end and most of the team is back as of last week. Work has started again and we're really excited for what we have in store for the rest of the year.While most of us have been away during most of the summer, we’ve also had some people who worked during July. July is a very good time to try out different designs and concepts that we might not otherwise have time to do, and today we thought it might be fun for you to see some of the experiments we ran during that period of hiatus.Although we learned some useful insights, these experiments didn’t end up being good enough to make a reality.Industrial Districts
As I have mentioned earlier, I have wanted to find a better solution for how we handle the production of alloys and consumer goods. I often felt like the experience of developing a planet felt better with an Ecumenopolis rather than with a regular planet. I think a lot of it had to do with their unique districts and that it feels bett... Read more