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Stellaris Dev Diary #164 - Summary of the Year 2019

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 our announcements. Next year we hope to be better, and as mentioned previously, we will be starting 2020 with a bunch of Q&A dev diaries related to different topics each week. The schedule for the Q&A will be posted next year, with our first dev diary on January 16th. Our plans for 2020 are looking very good, and we’re very excited for the future.

In dev diary #141 I outlined some of the concepts that I wanted to explore for the game. Let’s take a look at some of the things we’ve achieved:

  • 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 tool.
    A lot of work has been done with this, such as creating sectors, manual designations and planet automation. All work isn’t finished however, and we want to add more improvements.
  • Backgrounds: Split up some civics into backgrounds, and add more backgrounds.
    This is being implemented as Origins, and we’re very happy with how much value this adds to the game.
  • Civic flavour: Spend more time on making the civics feel more unique and fun.
    We’ve done some work towards this, but we don’t consider it finished yet. There are still a bunch of Civics we would like to make more fun.
  • Institutions: Define which institutions make up your empire’s 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.
    We added Archaeology in Ancient Relics, and we’re very happy with how the system allows us to tell stories in chapters.
  • 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.
    This will be done with the reworked Federation system coming with the 2.6 update next year.
  • Galactic Council: Create a sort of a ‘space UN’ with galactic politics and diplomacy.
    This will be done with the Galactic Community coming with the 2.6 update next year.
  • Primitives: Allow for more interactions with primitive pre-FTL species
With everything we’ve been working on during 2019, we will be adding a lot of depth and customization to Stellaris. We are especially looking forward to when you all get a chance to play with Origins and the Galactic Community.

And because we can’t have a dev diary without some sort of sneak peak, we will show you this:

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The previous design that we outlined in dev diary #158 showed Strongest (Economy) and Diplomatic Weight as two succession types. We weren’t entirely happy with that, so we have separated the Strongest Succession Type from which category is used to determine who is the strongest. Setting Strongest as the Succession Type now requires High Centralization. The cool thing is that this now allows you to have a Research Cooperative federation that is led by whichever empire has the best technology.

Producer Switch
And now a message from @Jamor:

Hi all. Firstly, I want to wish you all a happy and safe holiday season. Play lots of video games, spend time with your loved ones, and start 2020 in the best style.

I became the producer (called Project Lead back then) of Stellaris back in February 2017. While I wasn’t new to the games industry, for me it was an amazing moment to finally work on the sort of hardcore, deeply nerdy strategy games that I myself played at home (having started with Paradox games in 2007 with HOI 2). I look back upon the starry-eyed character who wrote this, and reflect upon the journey so far: contributing to three full expansions, three story packs, and two species packs, seeing the title through absolutely massive changes, and all in all patching on 37 separate occasions - some great, some not so hot (I’m sure some of you remember the great dawning of galactic peace that arose from the 1.6 patch, by the simple expedient of making the AI actually incapable of declaring war). All in all it’s been the most intense and memorable era of my career in this crazy industry.

The only constant is change, however, so now I’m moving over as producer to Imperator: Rome. They are a great bunch of folks who are bringing out the immense potential of that game more and more, in the classic Paradox style. It is my honour to lead them forward as the game continues to grow and evolve.

Of course that means I’m leaving my beloved Stellaris team. After sharing so many experiences, some magic, some tragic, it is not without emotion that I do this. But ultimately, you cannot keep doing the same thing forever, and I’m eager to get started on this new challenge. I want to thank my guys, who have so fearlessly and loyally pushed on towards the objective no matter what. I also want to thank you, the fans, without whom there would be no Paradox, and as a fellow fan reaffirm my commitment that I’ll always do the best I can, on whatever team I’m in, to uphold our Special Secret Thing (™). We’re Paradox, we’re different from everyone else, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. @Obidobi will take over leadership of the Stellaris team, and he has my complete confidence.

And now, I set down my laser, and gird on my gladius. LETS GO PDS!


A message from @Obidobi:

Hello everyone!

I'm Obidobi, some of you may have seen me around as I've been working at Paradox (and Stellaris for that matter) for the past 5 years. I started my journey as a newcomer to the gaming industry as a Paradox QA in 2014 where I saw Stellaris in its pre-alpha stage and I've been on this spaceship ever since. In 2018 I joined the producer team helping @Jamor on Stellaris and some other projects, including the Console Edition of Stellaris. Stellaris is basically running through my veins at this point, and I don't think I'll know what to do if I ever move projects. So as my dear mentor @Jamor leaves for more ancient lands, like any proper Shounen Protagonist, I will have to pick up the mantle of Hokage and become stronger than ever before (Look forward to these kinds of references).

I'm really looking forward to see where the team and I can take Stellaris going forward and I'm truly excited about getting an opportunity to hold the steering wheel. I hope you guys will accept me with open arms as you did with @Jamor!

I hope you’re all as excited as I am for the future, but for now I just want to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

---

That is all for this week and the year! We will be back again on January 16th!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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I'm cautiously optimistic about espionage in Stellaris as HOI4's system (see the dev diaries) actually seems to be more engaging and thought out than "hire spy, send spy, roll die, blow up enemy battleship", so I hope Stellaris can have a better intel/subterfuge/espionage system than that. Just please, no stupid systems like "lolololol I rolled a die and now there is a civil war in your country".
 
Any chance of unifying the console and PC editions? Cross platform would be cool. But mainly once you have the engine running the same across all platforms future changes are easier because you can bring more people to bear on the same issue.
 
Any chance of unifying the console and PC editions? Cross platform would be cool. But mainly once you have the engine running the same across all platforms future changes are easier because you can bring more people to bear on the same issue.
There is a better chance of The Bug being fixed than of the console edition ever coexisting with the PC version. Which is to say, none.
 
There is a better chance of The Bug being fixed than of the console edition ever coexisting with the PC version. Which is to say, none.
I agree completely with your assessment, still a man can dream,
 
I dunno about you guys but, after Federations and this lead developer shift, I hope next year focuses heavily on improving the existing mechanics of the game rather than adding new stuff. Brand new systems are all very well, but there are so many issues with the current game holding them back. Bad AI, increasingly bad lag, and a general vapidity of mechanics like Primitives and Piracy.
 
I've loved all the new DLCs... The only thing I am missing is machine, hive or Ecumenopolis ring worlds.

For the Lithovores, I'd love to see a "Gaia" version specilized for them. Like lava world or some such. It'd make sense for them to not care about tiny little birds and flowers, but rather easy access to yummy nummy minerals.
 
Institutions and religions are at the top of my wishlist for 2020 along with espionage. All three of those in my opinion would create a lot of story and roleplaying opportunities.

Along with alien reindeer for Christmas 2020. :D
 
Institutions: Define which institutions make up your empire’s internal departments (such as Diplomatic Corps, Xenology Bureau etc.), and their funding, size and power.
One thing that may help factions become more unique instead of samey, would be for Institutions to directly change your factions issues. An institution could affect one or more factions, and determine what each one cares about. You can start out with factions/institutes based around your starting conditions, and gain "neutral" factions with vanilla issues and goals. But if they get powerful enough, they could gain their own institution(s).

Institutions can be based around your government/ethics/and even certain civics to make your factions different. So if Machine cults become a thing, they could gain an Institute that makes the Spiritualist faction like robots. Or some sort of Institute that promotes Bio-Engineering over Cybernetics for Materialists. To help Institutions and factions feel more involved in your Empire, they could have short and long term goals/issues to address as well.
 
One thing that may help factions become more unique instead of samey, would be for Institutions to directly change your factions issues. An institution could affect one or more factions, and determine what each one cares about. You can start out with factions/institutes based around your starting conditions, and gain "neutral" factions with vanilla issues and goals. But if they get powerful enough, they could gain their own institution(s).

Institutions can be based around your government/ethics/and even certain civics to make your factions different. So if Machine cults become a thing, they could gain an Institute that makes the Spiritualist faction like robots. Or some sort of Institute that promotes Bio-Engineering over Cybernetics for Materialists. To help Institutions and factions feel more involved in your Empire, they could have short and long term goals/issues to address as well.

I like this idea. it creates a lot of stuff to play around with and structure our empire our way. This could also work for religions and cults.
 
I like this idea. it creates a lot of stuff to play around with and structure our empire our way. This could also work for religions and cults.
You're right! Institutions should be the core, while Religions and Cults could be the bonus for Spiritualists.
 
Perpetual development remains a terrible practice - deadlines are what force difficult decisions, and ever-shifting design targets mean nothing is ever stable in terms of tweaking/addressing unforeseen effects of new systems/bug fixes - and changing leads every year or two just exacerbates the problems, because there is no consistent vision (hence the radical change in design goals for this game, apparently when Jamor took over). Your AI hasn't been able to competently play the game (and is an atrocious - and mandatory - substitute for player decision-making in the capacities where it's supposed to aid the player and reduce micromanagement) for nearly two years, because changes to fundamental design goals have meant that it has to be redesigned from the ground up rather than tweaked a little to deal with with new features (though clearly neither truly have been attempted, given that there are mods that give better AI decision weighting than the base game).

I wish all of you the best, and PDX management needs to shape up quickly and stop leaning in to the worst emerging practices of the industry, or the studio is going to lose the credibility that took two decades to build. If people are getting sick of working on your games, it's a sign that development is extending far past the point that it should. Determine your final feature sets for major versions and stick to that; resist the appeal of perpetual development (because the problems it introduces are worse than the benefits). Your core audience will be happy to buy new major versions rather than endless DLC, and potential new players will be far less turned off by the upfront price of buying e.g. CK3 or EU5 or Stellaris 2 rather than dropping hundreds of dollars (euros, pounds, whatever) on a years-old game with 20 expansions. Especially when the old game engine can't actually run the new features in a playable manner.

I, for one, hope that new project management means a radical change - in development practice, if not feature set. Though I would still welcome rolling back everything that has been introduced since version 2+ and proceeding from there, even if it didn't come with a refund of all DLC purchased after the major design overhaul (though it should). Functional AI scripting and late-game engine are mandatory, not optional. Unless both the AI and engine issues stand to be entirely resolved in Federations (ha!), you're just piling more fuel onto a burning fire, in which case admitting the failure and reverting to the last functional version as a new starting point is the best option. I enjoy Stellaris, but I haven't been able to recommend it (and have actively warned people away from purchasing it) for years now. At the very least, increase time between adding new features to allow for bug fixes and AI updates to address the existing feature set; overall, though, I'd seriously rather pull the entire team from current Stellaris development, leave it a broken mess, and move on to making a Stellaris 2 with a unified vision and stable design goals right from the start. It's the ongoing hucksterism of pitching new features for an increasingly broken game that bothers me the most.

Of course, you're still better than Valve, which hasn't shipped a game developed in-house since The Orange Box (and HL2:E2 was the only part entirely developed in-house; the original concept for TF2 was acquired by Valve hiring the TFC team, though there were subsequently enough redesigns that we can maybe credit Valve internal development, while Portal was mostly developed by an external team that was subsequently absorbed; L4D2 isn't so much a new game as an expansion of L4D, which was again developed externally and then acquired, though it DOES demonstrate the viability of new major version releases as full games even if they are basically an old-school expansion pack). But that's setting the bar at ground level. Paradox HAS been better, so I know it CAN be better, especially when it has additional income from an expanded role as a publisher. I'm rooting for you, I want to see you succeed, and that's why I'm not going to pretend that the last several years have been rainbows and sunshine instead of a mess.

I don't envy anyone who has to helm this particular ship, but I hope Obidobi has a better idea of the destination and the course required to reach it. And I hope Jamor is a better fit in the new role.
 
You're right! Institutions should be the core, while Religions and Cults could be the bonus for Spiritualists.

That would be cool!

Another thing I hope to see in the future is more interactions with primitives: maybe we can have an event where we can use either a science ship or military ships to stop a nuclear war from happening. That always bothered me that I couldn't stop a nuclear war from taking place and all I could do is sit back and watch! Dang it! I want to save the primitives from nuking themselves! Or if you fail to conquer a primitive world the natives might have a chance to reverse engineer your tech to either move into the next age or two or even gain FTL travel! Of course if that happens they have a bit of negative Diplomacy modifier as they remember that you tried to invade them in the past!