Stellaris Dev Diary #361 - The Vision

[Avenpone]

I play the game sometimes so I just want to be here to share my thoughts, English isn't my first language so please forgive me if I sounds like I'm having a stroke.

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  
  I don't like how the AI handle my planets so it's important to me in the early game where I micro managing it a lot, especially with the organic hive mind since they tend to have a lot more pops. Reassigning pops out from Clerk and Maintenance is tedious but it's a part of the early game I will accept. I care less about this system later on in the game when I have a lots of other things to do but overall it's an important system for me.
  
  
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  
  I'm fine with the current fleets system, I'm up for changes if you guys have great ideas about how to improve or rework it, as long as it remains an important part of the game.
  
  
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  
  The fleets, the military is the most important part of my civilization. I like to play on a higher difficulty so no matter what style of empire I want to play, whether it is a peaceful trading or warmongering empire, I will always have to build a capable fleet in the early game to not get rekt by the aggressive AIs and I will always have to build a functional fleet for the end game crisis.
  
  
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  
  I usually have 2 goals for myself whenever I started a new game, the first is whatever my RP focused empire want to do and the second is to beat or survive the end game crisis. The first goal changes a lot and the second goal is almost always there, the only thing I change about the second goal are the crisis start year and the strength of it.
  
  
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  
  Absolutely not important when I don't do a trade focused empire and very important and tedious when I am a trade focused empire. You can imagine me having 5 little fleets patrolling everywhere to prevent pirates before I have Gateway.
  
  
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  
  I would say it's easy, but I never colonize planets that have less than 80% habitability anyways so yes, you should make it matter more.
  
  
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  
  None that come to my mind.
  
  
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be?
  
  I don't want to remove anything. Nothing in the game is SO bad that it needed to be removed, I don't want less content in the game.
  
  
• Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion?
  
  Ground warfare or Warfare in general. I'd be glad to have anything new to play with in this system.
  
  
• Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
  
  Espionage, I want to enjoy espionage so bad and to this day I still use it to get intel and stuffs, but it just doesn't feel good or fun to do it, the current implementation doesn't work for me. Unlike ground warfare where I can do something fun with it like having 300k super death robot to invade every single planet with ease, or use the ground fleet as cannon fodder for my actual fleets.

 

[Dayday103]

For me, what I love about Stellaris is the massive amount of variety, and the great number of unique encounters while exploring. The idea of exploring a new galaxy, with interesting and unique empires, every game is what keeps me coming back.

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  • The current system is alright, thought it is rather annoying to manage wide empires, as the planet automation system is extremely inneficient and ruins planets.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  • I will admit that warfare is not my expertise, as such, I tend not to customize my ships much. I think making it easier to specialize ships would be nice.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  • Exploration and discovery take presidence, and by far are the most fun parts of the game.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  • In any paradox game I play I tend to set goals based on achievements that I want to acquire.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  • I almost never focus on trade, so I can't say.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  • I think the current system is fine. However, more interesting interactions with planets or more unique planet modifiers would be welcome.
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  • Can't think of any off the top of my head.
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
  • I think an expansion focused on making system exploration and encounters with new species or space fauna more engaging would be ideal. Or putting more variety and use into anomolies, astral rifts, and special projects.

Whatever the case, I am excited for the future of Stellaris and hope to see the game become even more exciting and unpredictable.
Also, please fix the long running bug with hegemony federations that allows people to ask members other than the leader to leave, it makes the federation type extremely frustrating to use.

 

[Dollt28]

Hello! Stellaris is awesome and I love it

Since you asked for feedback: ground combat is in bad state - just some icons and numbers changing - might have been fine 8 years ago but it feels way more outdated compared to other core mechanics of this game (and capturing/defending planets is very important). Capturing a homeworld of opposing civilisation should be a major part of your playthrough, yet just in my previous playthrough I couldnt really tell if I caputed small planet with 8 pop or giant one fully built with 70 pop. Show us the combat/the units/make it more engaging/add events like in EU IV or something similar to that

Internal politics could use some update as well - especially in democratic based civilisations I feel like they could play a bigger role. Could be nice if population reacted more to stuff which players decides to do in their playthrough and how much it does (not) reflect the civilsations ethnics and civics.

My favourite updates and dlcs were the one which leaned into the roleplaying aspect - I'm looking forward to the new and expanding lore of the Stellaris universe! So please keep at it!

 

[Minjaben]

To start off, I would like to thank the Stellaris dev team for all the hard work that has been put into this game. This one of my most played games and I seem to be constantly coming back to it with almost every update.

Stellaris to me is a game about young civilizations reaching out into the stars beyond their own for the first time. About how they react during first contact with the various alien beings and forces that populate the galaxy. I often find myself going with a plan, only to not quite be able to execute it to a tee and that's why I enjoy it. While I do enjoy being able to define a general direction for my playthrough, having the nuances be created over the course of the game makes things far more interesting for me.

That being said I believe that Stellaris development should push in this direction and that many if not most of the game systems, current and future, should tie into your empire's story. While I won't go into specifics, development, in my opinion, should focus on enabling ways to play that don't necessarily involve amassing as much fleet power as possible.

The system I consider most sacred is the empire/species designer, specifically choosing ethics. While I by no means consider it immutable, I do believe it is core to the games experience. It shows your empires out look on life. It dictates how the ai reacts to you and to other ai. It dictates civics and origins you can choose and therefore empires society is structured. to lose that would be to lose a lot of the game's charm. Another system I consider sacred (but not immutable) are events. Events help build the narrative of your game; Without them, the game would feel very bland.

Now answering some of the examples given:

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  
  • Frankly, I'm in the middle with pops. While having them can in some ways make planets and your empire feel more alive, they are also very fiddly to work with sometimes
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  
  • As long as fleet maintain a physical presence in the galaxy and ships exists as individual units, you could do quite a bit with them.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  
  • As I mentioned above ethics are very important, I also think that civics are quite important as well as I often try to make my third civic be in line with how I feel my empire is.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  
  • I often just plan how my empire is at the beginning of any game with maybe some vague goals for ascensions and actions with foreign empires. I often find myself changing my intentions as the game goes on.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  
  • Needs to be replaced with something that actually interacts with other empires.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  
  • I am content with how it is currently is but would be interested to see it being more involved, at least in the early game.
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  
  • None that I can think of.
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be?
  
  • None that I can think of.
• Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion?
  
  • Trade or factions
• Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
  
  • Trade or factions

 

[AndrewJStark]

I think using percentages for population in jobs like with Victoria 2/3 would be better than 1 pop = 1 job.

I think seeing trade ships going back and forth between colonies and nations would help make the galaxy feel more alive. They could be transporting credits, resources, pops, etc. and allow the trade network to have an impact on the galaxy as a hole. (e.g.; if a planet gets blockaded you loose access to the credits, resources, pops, etc. from that planet until it’s unblockaded.)

I think it would be a great improvement to have habitability and planet climate matter more rather than just the type of planet.

I would love to see a way of recording my gameplays history (events, wars, first contacts, etc.), it would really help for a story telling point of view.

I think the war system is ok, but could be improved, similar to the one from EU4.

 

[Blackened30]

I'll hit all the examples you gave, and see if I have others to add at the end. First though I want to say I love Stellaris, its evolved into the best space strategy game I've ever played and I'm glad it moved from its 4x roots to something deeper and more meaningful that's all its own.

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation? Absolutely vital. I enjoy managing specific populations in their current graphic format. I enjoy finding jobs for pops and considering pop jobs in future development of planets. I would not want an abstract system at all, the individual pop is one of the things that makes Stellaris unique and adds to the roleplaying identity of each empire. If pops and jobs went away a lot of my interest in the game would very likely disappear.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love? Honestly alot here could change. Combat in Stellaris is so so, its not really why I play. I'm one of those people that loves naming individual ships, creating specific task forces and heirarchy for a given purpose or sector and so on. I'd like to see fewer ships overall, and for those ships to be more meaningful. The individual ship experience system is somewhat underused and ships die so quickly that keeping a few historic and beloved ships is largely not possible since every ship in stellaris is cannon fodder to be replaced.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization? Civics, traditons and Asscension Perks form the backbone of defining what kind of empire I'm running, along with settings such as slavery, how I intereact with alien civilizations and how active and what type of policies I support in the senate. All of it is a cohesive whole and helps aid my roleplaying. Without systems like that each empire would feel the same.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play? I set a theme at the beginning. For example I'm playing a robotic empire and my goal is to have a strong robotic labor force while my populace works on "important" jobs like science and allow creation. Or if I'm playing a xeno hating civ then my goal will be to create a strong civilization with a powerful navy who can stand alone with no allies against a galaxy full of unknowable aliens. Or a trade civ who is focused on proffit, either with a spiritual element or without. I enjoy the varioud types of megacorp available, as each lend themselves well to rp.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital? I think a trade system is vital. I wouldn't mind if the trade system got a bit more specific and also included friendly alien nations. I enjoy it as it is now in its abstract form, playing a trade focused empire is alot of fun. It would harm my enjoyment of the game if it were removed.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more? The current system works fine, though I do use the Palentarty Diversity mod as part of all my playthroughs. I usually run 25-50% habitable planets becuae I like them being rare jewels to fight over rather than plentfiul.
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins? Any origin that does not truly deal with the origin of the species could probably be a civic. Syncretic Evoloution is a good example of a origin that makes sense as an origin since it deals with how two species have existed through long stretches of time. Mechanist could probably be a civic as it deals with a more recent choice a society has made to focus on robotic forms. However I don't have any real issue with how they're all categorized.
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you? There isn't a current system I would remove, I think the game is in a good spot. There are several areas where exapnsions could help alot. Internal politics is the one big glaring missing thing from what is a grand strategy game. If I'm playing a democracy the citizens should have alot more say in what I do and don't do with the empire, and a kind of space congress or parliament would be fun to interact with that might at times make demands of me. As far as a feature I want to enjoy more, I'd say I wish combat and ship mechanics were a bit more realistic, the 500 year old science ship that we made back at the beginning being still around always bothers me. Upgrading is good, but there should be a practical limit. I'd also just reiterate that I want ships to matter more than they do, instead of being disposable and dying in the hundreds in large battles. I'd also point out armies as something that feels very undercooked. I wouldn't want them removed, its just something that an expansion focusing on it could massively improve. I'm pretty happy with the current state of the game, and I specifically enjoy the efforts made to go back and make older content more interesting and exciting to play with.

 

[marginoferror]

My comments:

• The "unknown" aspect of Stellaris is very appealing. However, the game is awfully swing-y in the earliest stages when you find out immediately, or don't find out for quite a while, who your neighbors are. There is an enormous difference in game experience depending on some random aspects. This could be smoothed out a bit. Who your neighbors are, especially if you start on the edge of the galaxy, could be the difference between conflict-free expansion to fifteen planets or three.
• The "Crisis strength" difficulty setting is impossible to set. The default settings, if I recall correctly (since you can't save settings, I haven't resetted to see what the defaults are in years) result in a crisis that spawns significantly too late, so the late midgame is too boring, and a crisis that is weak for that power level in the game, so the endgame is also too boring. But changing the crisis setting means deciding at the beginning of a tens-of-hours-game how strong you and other players in the galaxy will be at the very end.
• In general, start-of-game settings have impact that you need hundreds of hours of experience in the game to fully understand, and before you understand it, messing with them will result in unfun games. But the default isn't great either. The main reason this is so is beacuse "difficulty" is not fully expressed only by the difficulty setting.
• Pops don't sort themselves by habitability or job suitability very well, which strong incentivizes tedious micromanagement in multicultural empires.
• The slave/pop market is a concept that could be a lot more fleshed out. I could write a separate post about this one.
• Criminal megacorps are kind of... Well, if you happen to get one, the impact on the game is substantial, but sometimes you just don't get any. Maybe corporations should have a way to arise organically later on. Speaking of megacorps, it would be really interesting, if overpowered under the current rules, if you could spawn and release a megacorp as a subject.

Prompt (all of which are great!) answers:

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  • Not that important, but see above re: sorting via habitability or jobs.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  • To fleets? I am not attached to anything specific about fleets. The fleet manager template is quite hard to work with; ordinary splitting/merging/fighting and losing ships tends to throw it off. I have never gotten the hang of it.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  • I find that the combination of civics, species traits and ethics does a lot of work. None of them are perfect, but together they fit pretty well. However, some civics are underpowered and hard to justify even if they fit for a roleplaying perspective, and I would like more of them. I don't like the "add a civic later in the game with technology" thing, since I like to define my civilization before that point. Being able to change my civics is in theory cool, though I can't recall ever having done it.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  • I generally only set rough objectives built around the concept of my core ethics, especially egalitarian/xenophile, authoritarian, or materialist if I pick them.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  • It's modestly interesting but I'm totally open to adjustments. Economic agreements with other nations seems like it should be incorporated into the trade system more.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  • Colonization is uncomfortably bursty - all matching climates at once as you frantically expand, then try to make it to terraforming with just those, then terraform everything, then all of those as soon as you can afford it. I don't especially like how much the pop growth system pushes you to colonize everything as fast as possible. I never colonize poorly habitable planets because terraforming is right around the corner, and colonizing would delay terraforming. Maybe that's poor play on my part, if you're asking if habitability should matter more.
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  • Can't think of any. I don't want to limit aquatic civics stuff to the aquatic origin, sometimes I want to play my fishies with a different origin.
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
  • I think probably we could do without L-gates and focus that energy and time on other mechanics.
  • I would focus an expansion on trade - of pops/slaves, materials, trade value, and so forth - and add a lot of sinks for extra resources that make you not want to just waste them (or at least have pops automatically reallocate jobs to avoid wasting them).

 

[AtomicWraith]

I just want to start by saying I have overall enjoyed the direction the game is going.
I like the new space creatures, all the new little artifacts, space weather systems.

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?

I haven't really visualized the game without the pops and jobs. If you had some new system in mind it would be cool to get some previews and examples like when you introduced districts. This is the only paradox game I play, so I am not familiar with the systems from other games that you might want to use.

• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?

I would be open to a complete overhaul. Preferably in a direction that made fleets a bit smaller and more interesting, making each ship matter more.
There is the ship experience system, but it is relatively hidden and when an individual ship dies it is hard to notice.
I like designing the ships, and choosing weapons and components.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

I usually decide what kind of empire I want to play first and then pick origins and civics and ascensions to get as close as possible.

• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?

How many planets and how wide I play depends on what empire I am playing. Then it all changes based on what situation I end up in. As the game progresses I try to stick to the plan while reacting to threats and making alliances when I have to. I usually always end up going wider than I want just to grab more arc sites. By the end I usually turtle up and focus on tech to beat the crisis.

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?

If a pirate doesn't show up I forget it exists. I usually don't play trade empires.

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

I think habitability should be much more difficult and resources should be more of a struggle with more scarcity. Most planets feel the same, and it is easy to get to full habitability so I usually don't bother with gaia worlds.
If I had to put a number on it I would prefer most planets be at 40-50 percent habitability or less, with Gaia and special worlds being more at a 70,
I noticed recently a metallic planet in the game that had big bonuses to minerals -50 habitability. I would like much more planet variety like this to really make each planet feel special. More strip mined planets that are barely habitable but full of resources would help the lush food and habitable planets feel more special. More destroying the environment to get at the resources. Make terraforming also matter for resource production, getting rid of a pesky atmosphere or an ocean to get at the good stuff underneath.
Maybe have the same overall number of "habitable planets", but only 10-20 percent of those would be somewhere you would want to live, while the rest are harsh and unforgiving.

• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?

This is low priority to me, the only time I think about it is if I am trying to create a specific empire and the civic origin combo doesn't work.

• If you could remove one game system, what would it be?

Not sure if these count as game systems, but I would remove gateways and things like the sentry array. Or at the very least rework and limit them.
They trivialize and overlap with new more interesting systems like the hyper relays, quantum catapults, shroud tunnels, L-gates, spy networks and cloaked ships.
The sentry array trivializes and eliminates the need for espionage and spy networks. And gateways trivialize travel and defense. Why bother building up multiple patrol fleets, or defensive fleets if you can just teleport around one doomstack from one side of the empire to the other?
I usually use mods to remove these from the game.
Maybe add more detailed options to galaxy generation, like if certain technologies are allowed like gateways, or to turn off ruined megastructures from spawning.

• Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

Some ideas that would be nice to have:

Trade expansion:
I think the trade routes should be completely reworked into an actual logistic system. Trade routes between your planets and between empires should be super important. You should need to guard them, supplies and resources should actually need to travel through them.
One of the biggest immersion breaking things for me is the global resource stockpile where I can have several completely disconnected planets and systems yet somehow the food and minerals instantly get from one place to another.
Adding local resource stockpiles to each system and having production be a flow of resources to other planets would be amazing and make the trade route system feel like it matters.
Not to mention the new stories and gameplay that could be built around blockades, resource shortages, starvation, unemployment, heists, raiding and sabotaging supply depots.
Piracy and espionage would feel way more impactful if they stole a shipment of volatile motes you needed to keep your forges working.
I don't think I have ever used the resource silo building ever. But keeping some planet side behind the planetary shields to feed the civilians while the planet weathers an orbital bombardment, blockade, or storm would be cool, otherwise the planet would need to surrender once the people start to starve.
Crime, piracy, and espionage could be greatly expanded if resources were actually moving from place to place.
I feel like a lot of the systems in place would already work well with localized resources. There are already situations for resource deficits and rebellions, they would just be on a planet/system scale instead of empire wide.


Genetic ascension:
I love what machine age did for synths and cyborgs, but now the other ascension paths are feeling pretty neglected, especially genetic. Right now genetic just feels like a weaker less interesting version of synth and cyborg.
I would like an update to the other ascensions of a similar scale, maybe full on bioships or an overhaul of species templates and genetic modification could be a way to make genetic ascension feel more unique and powerful.

The current genetic ascension just doesn't feel like how I expect a genetic ascension to feel.
When I think of genetic ascension the first thing that comes to mind are the engineers from the alien universe, or the genetically advanced Venusians from battle angel, making custom species, weapons, suits, ships and anything else they need from living materials. Terraforming a planet by just releasing a virulent resilient xenomorph style lifeform from orbit.
Maybe create a new Javorian pox to covertly kill off or mutate an enemy species.


Larger more detailed star systems:
I wish there was more space in between, wild space/frontier to explore. The borders in Stellaris feel too solid for my preference. and I feel like I spend too much time in the galactic map just looking at color blobs.
I think updates focusing on smaller system scale conflicts and discoveries would make the galaxy feel much larger without more stars. Maybe have multiple factions per system on different planets and stations.
Old Stellaris had multiple empire controlled systems, I would like a move back in that direction. More internal politics, independent stations, and civilians to make the systems feel lived in using planet control instead of system control.
Making the systems larger more detailed, increase in system travel time and scale, would make the galaxy feel much larger without more stars. Building hyper relays would be like building highways past the more rural areas, so who knows what could move into these mostly empty wild systems.

 

[Nakkivene]

Is this a popular vote?

1, I'd switch out pops for a demographics system or just about anything else at this point OR return to tile system. Just play Boulle and see how the basic gameplay feels in comparison. Also perhaps people don't need to mine rocks with pickaxes in the future?

2, You could do anything to fleets and I would be happy.

3, Defining civilization is making a build of some sort, such as "I want to have all the edicts fund possible", or making some origin/civic work.

4, I don't set goals for myself. I consider the crises etc the end boss to beat.

5, Might as well remove trade system or rework it into something intresting. Could even make it so that trade is crucially important for any empire.

6, Colonization is easy and simplistic. Dunno what it could be. At the very least habitability doesn't matter enough, in that it doesn't matter at all. It's too easy to beat.

7, I have no opinion on origins and civics. They feel quite fine, other than the ones that are boring.

8, I'd remove goddamn pirates outpost spam and that method of control of space. It's so much work. Why not have something like how it used to be where planets and outposts project control over some distance?

 

[Automaton_101010]

Stellaris for me is relaxin game that do not need constant focus. Pause anytime, and automation of low level tasks. I mostly play wide so there is many colonies to handle.

And on automation department I hope it gets better, currently it works and don't.
Colony automation currently:

• amenities and crime setting is good on that part it handles jobs that it moves pops other jobs when those jobs are not needed
• update building is allmost useless since it do not update buildings outside designation

I do not know what is a best way to build colonies, but my take is that colony automation should work on logic when available jobs hit <1:

1. update; is there any building that could be updated?
2. special resources, like betharian power plant
3. primary; designation
4. secondary; logic would look what is built. If there are 3 mining districts built in tech colony it would enable to build mineral purification plants
5. tertiary; tech colony is all built up with research, build resource districs with most slots

Planets sidestrip that would filter out colonies that do not need attention, is automated? filter out, is automated and has unemployment that unable to migrate? filter in, is automated and has unemployment that are able to migrate? filter out.

Starbases; option to auto upgrade defense platforms, and option auto rebuild defense platforms back what was destroyed.

Military Fleets; option to auto upgrade ships when idling long enough in system when updating is possible.

Also on my recent game I noticed that my regular pops over take robot jobs, some policy setting that what pops have priority to what jobs, in this case I would want robots to have primarly miner, technican and farmer jobs and my regular pops would be primarly researchers.

Auto upgrade colony achension, would turn that on when all traditions are adapted, just to that colonies with lowest achension would get updated automatically.

 

[Samitte]

The Vision I think is quite good and speaks to how I experience and what I enjoy(ed) about Stellaris over the years. I think leaning into what it does well, and adjusting other things to also lean into that would make the game even better. Two of these are mentioned in the top post, Trade and Fleets, which feel somewhere between bad and uninteresting at the best of times to engage with. And dont engage much with the rest of the game in many cases. Edicts are another that needs work, or can be removed entirely and I'd probably enjoy the game more. I feel like the Council could be a bit more tied in to Factions. But mostly more variety, more jobs, more civics and origins doing interesting things.

I think a much greater variety of districts, buildings, and jobs (amongst other things) can be created to really lean Stellaris into the kind of sci-fi it feels like it wants to be. Like Star Wars/Star Trek/Warhammer/etc with many different planets under 1 empire/federation/state each with their own niches, societies, and cultures determined by the planet themselves.

• What systems and content are “sacred” to you, which would make Stellaris not Stellaris anymore if we changed them?

Civics, origins, traditions, districts, jobs, planetary modifiers, different planetary types, buildings, and pre-ftl species are things that spring to mind with being sacred. I think some changes are possible here but removing them would be bad, and I'd rather see more variety of them and really expand upon them as the basis for building different empires (and thus create replayability.)

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?

The system of individual pops and jobs made for a much more immersive game. The problem with the individual Pops is that it still feels like too much of an abstraction to really feel immersive and simulated. 1 Pop is what, a million, a billion, a thousand? Especially when combined with Jobs. I would rather move to a system with larger numbers, but I don't know if thats possible without creating lag. But if the choice is between going back to something like we had with old Stellaris vs the pops and jobs system I would take the pops and jobs over it 100%. Its so much more immersive already. I'd rather see more different jobs and ways to really push planets into niches.

• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?

If specifically talking about groups of ships - you could alter a lot. Ship building is ok, but the fleet aspect of things is one of the least interesting parts of the game for me. It often becomes about having large enough doomstacks vis a vis your neighbours/enemies instead of anything meaningful or interesting. And the way it interacts with non-empire threats (creatures, pirates) becomes more annoying when you have large fleets and travel times.

It also feels extremely disconnected from what I see as the fantasy/immersive side of the game, and the actual gameplay. I'd much rather see systems/sector fleets, building up regional fleet infrastructure, and then tying that into the jobs system which it is disconnected from. I'd love to see the Fleet equivalent of a fortress world with large shipyards and support infrastructure to really hit that immersive feel of the fleet system being part of the rest of the game. Additionally, I'd also like to see Starbases much more connected to planets.

• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?

Sort of hooking this into the first answer, but the way my worlds take shape through their populations and jobs. If I play with mods its the primary thing I expand upon, with things that create more variety on my planets through modifiers or via different and new jobs. This is then supported by civics, origins, traits, and traditions which I often plan around a central idea.

• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?

I set initial goals based on what kind of empire I created, then as the game develops I sometimes change around that depending on how flexible I feel like the empire would be. I tend to start out with an idea of what I'd like to do, often dictated heavily by the traits, civics, and origins of my species and state. Roleplay. This determines what traditions I pick, sometimes technology and event choices as well. I dont care much for powergaming, and might even purposefully weaken myself to fit my chosen goals.

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?

Not at all, its a bit like fleets in where it hardly ties in to anything else in the game. Its boring, but at least connects to the jobs system somewhat. Trade right now feels too abstracted to even be called trade. Its a credits generation system and nothing else. There is no trade going on, nothing being exchanged between planets and systems.

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

Colonization is too easy, because its too abstracted. Its just a costly investment that takes time to pay back, but it doesnt require much player input or choice for the first part at all. You find a world through exploration, colonize it... Then build some stuff and wait (especially early on where you cant really move pops there from other worlds). I'd much rather see much more variety here, and many more ways to colonize stuff that might not be optimal to your species, but has important resources. Habitability and climate should matter more, and maybe not be made easier over time to through just habitability % boosts. But instead via new buildings that allow you to inhabit worlds not tolerant to your species, regardless of low habitability. Just gating that behind the habitability malus feels too abstracted. Maybe special districts for low hab worlds as well. But I'd love to see a much larger variety of districts in general. This ties back to my 2nd paragraph at the top, to allow the game to really lean into that idea of many planets with many varieties of geographies and habitats which in turn create different societies on those worlds with different jobs.

• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?

Some of the permanent Civics straddle the line between the two, but I think they are fine for now.

• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

Kiss/Marry/Kill the Stellaris Edition? Alright

Remove: Edicts - Its just a resource dump for modifiers right now and is super uninteresting. Oh and maybe the Intel/Spy stuff.... I forgot its even there because I ignore it as hard as I can.

Central Focus: Fleets, tie them into planets and sectors, maybe even make the fleets themselves automated and have the player focus on expanding and building up fleet infrastructure across their space, and the supply and support systems for them. Supply lines, tactical strikes... Anything to get away from this ugly doomstacking.

Want to enjoy: Trade, its super gamey and becomes more annoying the more you engage with it. And it just feels bad (see my above answer). A space-trader empire is kind of a classic in sci-fi, but it really does not feel like a possible way to play. In one way this could also be a possible Central Focus.

Spoiler: Some examples/ideas

Agricultural worlds - Here modifiers/features could determine one planet to be say a Ranching world with low population capacity (much space needed for the herds) but producing Food, Consumer, and Trade Goods, while another with a good climate can become just a large food-producing or fishing worlds that produces more normal food. Yet a third with large forests can produce a mix of food and minerals, each with their own set of jobs and some supportive buildings next to them that change/improve their output.

Mining worlds - Large open mines that slowly destroy the planet vs worlds with large refinery capacities that turn into toxic hellscapes with much crime needing policing vs a world with a small number of crucial resources, but its low habitability and thus you build expensive domed mining towns that turn an immense profit and leave the rest of the world relatively intact but also uninhabitable. Each thus with different districts [Open Cast Mining District], [Refinery Districts], and [Special Resource Mining] districts that require different upkeeps and change the job and output/input of a planet.

 

[Sletchman]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?

Not at all. If anything Pops seem like a holdover that really only exist for the sake of it and create late game lag. I don't think anything would be lost by switching to some kind of "planetary production level" that rises as the colony grows and evolves and has the various buildings operate at higher values, which are then buffed by techs. That's a random idea that'd need prototyping and playtesting of course, but effectively ends the same way as current Pop Growth does - planet starts out producing nothing, grows to produce lots - and should reduce the lag because all that's being calculated is the planet's total output with a much simpler set of formulas.

• What systems and content are “sacred” to you, which would make Stellaris not Stellaris anymore if we changed them?

None. Might sound crazy, but the it's the combination of systems that create game feel, and I feel like literally any of them could change in a variety of ways and still end up with the game feeling "right". It'd be easy to say "Origins are sacred", but you could theoretically overhaul the entirty of empire generation and remove Origins entirely and still have the created empire or race feel like it did in the current version. I think rather then systems or content being sacred, it's concepts that are sacred - the ability to customise, make choices, roleplay, etc. That combination of stuff listed at the start of this blog post are what makes Stellaris, Stellaris. You can change the mechanics and keep the concepts nailed and the game can still feel right.

• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?

Pretty dramatically. In the late game fleets become a mess - both visually and mechanically - blobbing on top of one another in systems and moving through each other which hobbles immersion. They also massively contribute to lag. Some sort of representative "fleet" like is used in CK3, EU4, etc would fix those problems, albeit at the cost of the pretty light show (except at end game when you have to scroll out to the galaxy view to get any frames). Looking at the competition, Endless Space 1 and 2 has their fleets represented by a single ship and an auto-battle system, and there is an optional procedural fight cinematic. It'd be a massive undertaking to do something like that, but it'd be a win for both frame rate and spectacle.

• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?

I set goals in one of 2 ways. 1 - I come up with an RP idea and RP through the game to see how it evolves as the galaxy does. 2 - Come up with a specific mechanical goal (get X Achievement, Beat X Crisis at Y Strength, Speedrun Devouring Swarm) and try to achieve it. I come up with those before I even click play, and it only rarely changes during gameplay aside from microgoals that result as part of the bigger goal (an RP that's super prideful could add a short-term goal to humiliate someone who "deserves" it).

• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?

Entirely unimportant. I'd rather see something with logistics so that a breadbasket planet that feeds your empire has to have policed trade routes for their food to your empire or you lose it to pirates (same for Consumer Goods, Mining Planets delivering to Alloy foundries, etc). Failing internal logistics routes, I'd like actual trade routes to trade partners that need to be patrolled and otherwise kept safe. Even if these aren't feasible (because of late game lag production for example) I can't imagine someone being sad that the current Trade system was being overhauled into anything more interesting.

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

100% yes. A few techs in and you can almost ignore the habitability of most planets you'll find. I liked back when you used to have to research to settle new types of planets, and I think habitability should in general be lower and planet type matter more. Even for Robots - as Robots are they're a uniform design, and a Robot designed for Aquatic work is not going to have the same design considerations as one for Desert work. They should have an Engineering project to produce a suitable modified chassis for the new planetary type rather then having a massive flat buff.

Also other planetary features should matter and/or require overcoming for it to be a good colony - like every species is Gravity agnostic for example. Gravity level should matter.

• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

War. The War and end of war system doesn't really feel fun or engaging to engage in. You can't negotiate for peace, or make offers to end the conflict, you either surrender and undo what was done, or take the often awkward status quo or war goals, and often the outcome doesn't make sense given the situation you're in. Especially when you as the aggressor is forced into peace against your will and can't attack again for 10 years. The only time I enjoy being at war is as someone who gets to mostly ignore the existing systems, like a Devouring Swarm or Killbots. Could double dip problem solve because a major expansion and overhaul of War could also fix up the fleet systems in an effort to combat end-game lag (see the second bulletpoint), since fleets are heavily tied into war.

• Random Extra Thing - Ascending A Species

As a roleplayer, Ascension Perks, despite being really fun and interesting, are super weird to me. At the moment you click it and everyone under your control just has it inflicted on them. Every time I take one I think "what would happen if some president / prime minister / king declared that we all had to become cyborgs overnight on Earth?" It'd be anarchy, there would be outright war if it was actually demanded. I'm not sold that you could get an entire country on board, let alone a whole planet (or multiple). I think it'd be cool for the less unified species (via Ethics and maybe Factions?) to have consequences? Drawbacks? Maybe a civil war or schism? Like half the population just secedes because you tried to force them all to get nanite injections and become Psionic or whatever.

• Second Random Thing: Grand Archive

Give us tech that lets us expand the size of the Grand Archive. It's weird that you can technically have more major artefacts then minor ones because the major section gets a scroll bar and more space. It's also sad when you want to roleplay The Collector or Trazyn or similar that you can fairly easily hit the cap and have to sell part of your collection. Make it expandable like the Vivarium is with buildings, or add repeatable research that bigs it up. Or make it a building upgrade or Ascention option.

 

[DurianKing]

I’ll admit I haven’t played much in the past year. Ironically I think a big part of that has been knowing about the upcoming DLCs so early on and not wanting to start a game until I had them. But also I’ve just been busy.

I haven’t read every reply here, but i agree with the posts about habitability not really being much of a concern, especially from the mid-game on.

One thing I've always felt is that colonies grow way too quickly. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that a colony population might grow to be as large as your home planet’s within the timeframe of a typical Stellaris game. imho, colonies could develop critical specializations (esp around certain resources) but should grow much more slowly (even with forced resettlement, the fleets in Stellaris could not practically move a billion people from one planet to another). This would make home planets far more valuable (as well as some pre-ftls) and could help with the tall vs wide balance that’s been a perennial issue.

That said this sort of huge change would probably cause a mass revolt among the player base because it would fundamentally change gameplay, so I’m not sure it’s the best idea! Just something that’s always been at the back of my mind.

A new trade system should definitely focus on trade between empires, and allow for a small empire at a strategic choke point in the hyperlane network to become fabulously wealthy (space Singapore, etc). Empires could offer incentives to bring trade to and through them, and the galactic economy could take major hits during wars. L-Gates and Gateways could also reroute galactic trade and devastate old trade centres, forcing them to adapt their strategy as new techs are developed (or try to dominate the new chokepoints). Could make for a really fun thematic expansion.

Though they’re annoying to some players, I think that unprotected trade routes should still attract pirates. Trade between empires could make this all much more interesting: empires would have a new incentive to expand into open areas that trade routes pass through to protect them, you could even have internal factions demanding that sort of thing. And pirates have historically been used by states to enforce tolls and direct ships into certain ports. Imagine if your neighbor, who your traders have to pass through to get to an advanced trading empire, used pirates to skim a bunch off your trade profits, but if that empire was weakened internally the pirates would just do their own thing and make things much worse for trade. Difficult to implement perhaps but a very common historical dynamic.

New origin: Galactic Chokepoint, your empire starts on a particularly valuable trade route between advanced start empires. You’d be in a crowded neighborhood near people who would readily vassalize you, but you’d be able to build up your economy quickly (and perhaps tech would be diffused more quickly along trade routes…)

Anyway, two thumbs up to any changes to galactic trade, there’s a ton of interesting stuff that could be done that would be much less disruptive than my colonies idea!

 

[captainmancub]

Thank you very much for seeking the feedback and "vision" of your players- it shows you really care about our experience. I will go ahead and say Stellaris is my favorite PC game. I'll play others for a bit, but I always end up coming back to Stellaris, usually getting a playthrough in per update cycle. And thank you for acknowledging the tightness of the recent updates / new DLC- it has been a challenge for casual players like myself to fit in a whole game, but still fun!

Ok, here are responses to your questions:

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  • I like it, as I'm used to it, but I would appreciate more control of which jobs pops are working.
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  • Big point for me here: fleets and ships in Stellaris feel a little too impersonal, simply because there's so many of them in a fleet. I don't really care what happens to any of them when I send them into battle, and there's very little strategy when it comes to fighting actual battles- just have to be sure my fleet power is greater than my opponent's. I'd like to see fleets and ships reworked to include fewer ships (instead of a fleet made up of 40 corvettes, 10 was more like it- or where you could conceivably have only 1-2 ships in a small engagement against a Raider), taking longer and more resources to construct each one, each individual ship (or ship's captain) earning separate XP and upgrades/traits/levels (like Leaders), and each ship lost feeling very personal. I'd also love for their to be more class and hull options, and a few specific weapon / tech tracks that would be chosen at Civ creation.
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  • It's good here- Traits, Civics, etc. I use mods to increase the amount of Traits and Civics each civilization gets though. Wish that was included in the base game.
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  • I don't really do this.
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  • I'd like to see Trade reworked, something similar to what Gal Civ 4 does, but better. I'd like to actually have to build the civilian trade fleet, and establish their trade routes manually between systems. Make it so you could select multiple bases for the trade ships to fly between, increasing the value the longer they go, but making them attackable by raiders / enemies.
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  • I think it's good the way it is- in fact sometimes I find myself frustrated (in a good way) that colonization is too HARD. I think Terraforming should take longer than 10 years, and be more expensive, and also have multiple stages (like building a Megastructure). I'd like the Guaranteed Habitable worlds slider to include more planets (like up to 5 maybe) and have a slider for how far away you want them (1-3 systems).
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  • No opinion on this. I don't play with very many Origins, and I like the ones I use.
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
  • I have several ideas for "tweaks," not necessarily removing whole game systems, some of which I have already mentioned:
    • Control / direct building of the civilian fleet- trade ships, supply ships, diplomatic ships, private ships that do specific things, etc. And we see them moving on the map. If anything maybe the next Expansion could focus on this.
    • Science vessel expansion: can build bigger/more varied classes of them as the game goes on, they can be armed, etc.
    • Borders are not fixed (like Gal Civ 4)- in space, a civ would never be able to literally "close" their borders. But if you had negative relations with a species, you'd make them angrier by passing through their borders without permission, and if it was a Fanatic Purifier or Exterminator species, you'd risk attack if they could catch your ship.
    • Fleet movements / ships in general (mentioned above).
    • I don't see a need for Starbase Capacity or Empire Size soft cap, as long as there's balanced upkeep. Feels like an artificial restriction to me.
    • I wish each system didn't automatically contain an Outpost- like with Influence you just claimed systems, and built Starbases in just the ones you want. And I'd like Starbases and Shipyards to be completely separate buildings- and you could conceivably build both in a system.
    • I'd like Resources to be less uniformly distributed to feel more realistic- like one system might have 25 Minerals because of a mineral-rich asteroid field, and others may have none, or only 1-2. Same with Energy, Alloys, etc.
    • I want more interaction with other Empires- like quests are given, specific issues come up, etc. Make you really have to get to know your neighbors a bit.

 

[sly_1]

I have over 2,900 hours in Stellaris and am no longer interested in the game, not due to being bored at all but rather the game feels like it more and more forces specific meta empire builds and optimized gameplay to beat harder difficulties where before it was more forgiving.

I can guess it's more to do with me not being interested to continually learn every min/max strategy and micro manage every last aspect, but beating say 10 or 25x crisis after the science nerf(s) feels like it boils down to meta strat a, b, or c, micro manage every aspect exactly so, and any deviation from all that = failure.

Where before there was a lot more variety of approaches that could beat 25x crisis.

So yeah, maybe stop forcing dlc purchases on players that want to challenge the deeper endgame? Maybe have more player agency in system interactions, like ways to focus science outside of synthetic races with god mode science bonuses etc.

There should ALWAYS be base game solutions to beating every game mode that is fun. After relearning this game dozens of times over the years now, even if there's a way to do that now, I'm just tired of starting from square 1 relearning the game every few patches and the ever increasing amount of micro management required to beat higher end crises.

As it sits the game is either too easy at low difficulty or too hard at higher.

 

[ItThatAltersSanity]

• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?

Oh, addendum. While I still stand by my previous post on planet climate, there is one exception: tomb worlds. I feel it's wrong that colonies on those worlds can flourish just fine if you solve the habitability puzzle. That pops should actively be declining in those worlds unless additional infrastructure is invested in. Even mech pops should decline: extreme radiation corrupting data storage and messaging. For the origin which starts on a tomb world, instead of a big boost in habitability to starting pops, I feel it'd be more appropriate to treat it like the Doomsday origin and encourage the empire to migrate off of the death trap - with narrative event when the empire returns after mastering mitigation tech in midgame. I'm thinking a small colony of less than 10 pops would survive on a tomb world with building slots devoted to extreme life support. That'd fit narrative purposes for "these armies were recruited from the most hardcore worlds" and similar.

On a related note, I think the relentless industrialists thing of "we polluted the planet so bad it became a tomb world" should be a mechanic all empires deal with for hyper-specialised industrial worlds. Together with the above harsher tomb world vision, it'd introduce an interesting tension into the economy: keep expanding to find new worlds to pollute, or invest in mitigation for suboptimal but persistent yields.

 

[Jstanley3]

Just make multiplayer more stable. The game isn't fun when I can't play with friends due to desynchs. Desynchs tend to happen after a hotjoin, after integrating an empire, or due to UI mods. Fix those issues!

For the integration and hotjoin desynch issues, just program Stellaris to send the out-of-synch reports to the devs automatically (instead of relying on the devs troubleshooting their weekly game, which doesn't help me or the wider community, even if it works for the dev's play group.) Find out what caused the desynch. Patch it. Fix the broken game.

For the UI mod desynch, I don't expect devs to troubleshoot mods. But the checksum system should prevent this from ever happening in the first place. But if that doesn't work, then give hosts an option to block UI mods from being used. Set up the new feature so that if the "No UI mods" option is checked by the game host, the player's clients don't load UI mods. This is just one way to prevent UI mods from causing desynchs, you could pick a different one. This sacrifices some freedom, but being in synch is necessary for players to play with their friends. Without staying in-synch with our friends, we aren't playing with our friends. Without playing with our friends, we aren't playing multi-player.

Two years ago, a paradox community manager told me that paradox doesn't prioritize multiplayer issues because "Only 1% of our active players play multiplayer". But why? Is it because we want to play alone, or is it because the game isn't stable enough to play with our friends? Last month, the same community manager told me that patching one bug leads to more bugs. I'm just a customer that wants a working product, and I don't want more excuses. Your competitors put out stable games. You can too. I just want to play with my friends without desynchs.

When the game becomes fun to play with friends, then players who care about playing with their friends will return, and some of them will buy your DLC.

 

[Ziral]

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
  -) Not super important. I think it could be further developed. I don't think there is a problem with it as of right now, and if it is developped or changed It's completly alright. I do think the pops system is very interesting and shouldn't be ditched, though.
  
  
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
  -) PLEASE DO ! War is definitely needing some work and love. As another poster said as well, I prefer full measures (if they are good to the game and well implemented) than half-measures. If a complete alteration is done and the result's good, go for it !
  
  
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
  -) I LOVE the origin. I usually orient my roleplay around it and I tend to avoid any origin that can feel very ''one-use'', as in they tend to not be relevant at all after the first few years. I also really like roleplay-oriented origins or origins that bring unique features rather than just some arbitrary modifiers. I like Toxic gods, fruitfull partnership etc. in that sense.
  
  
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
  -) I don't necessarily set goals. I just have a set idea of what kind of empire I want (Origin, ascension path and sort of ''roleplay'' and then go on with it.)
  
  
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
  -) Not at all ! I think the trade system could use some rework and if it means changing it completly its fine ! I think that the market could have a more prominent place.
  
  
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
  -) Yes, but not necessarily because it's too easy but rather that it's not immersive enough. It feels a lot like a ''click and done'' to me, rather than having to make decisions on how to build the colony, maybe even approvisionning being difficult in the first few years or smth (I am not sure ahaha, those are just ideas on the spot).
  
  
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
  Not sure ! I will let others answer that for me.
  
  
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?
  
  INTERNAL POLITICS : and I will never say it enough. Crime is vastly underworked and basically is just pops having a different job that bring negatives instead. I think that internal politics and planetary management should be tied more, as well as having some decisions depend on your form of government.
  
  It would be super interesting to have crime be tied to espionnage or corruption. We can also imagine a world where some decisions (council priority, edicts, major changes like civics, would be subject to internal politics. Internal parliament deciding when a democracy ? Pleasing nobles or your commanders ). Make factions actually matter. Make the choice of leader and their beliefs (civics) actually matter. Make espionnage a real mechanic. Make it so that managing 18 planets is actually hard : Maybe the further away from the capital, the less it's easy to make decisions. Why is it as easy to build something on the capital than a world halfway across the galaxy? I want better internal mechanics please! (this can also be something to take into account for colonization)
  
  TRADE : I want to see much more empire cooperation in all aspect of the game. Maybe mega-megaprojects that alliances can work on together, gigantic trade hubs, etc. ! As another commenter said ''Multi-empire trade networks, smuggling and hidden smuggler bases, bribery, bounty hunters, privateers, and most importantly - pirate rework.''.
  
  I want to be able to play - TRULY play with other nations. Good trade system and some rework to add common projects, megastructure and other stuff would really add flavor.

 

[Cheshire42]

How does this match what you think Stellaris is, and where it should go? Would you change any of these vision statements?
Your guys statement is good. I couldn't think of how to really change it, as you've noted aspects of grand strategy and RP.

What systems and content are “sacred” to you, which would make Stellaris not Stellaris anymore if we changed them?
It's hard to say. What system HASN"T changed since I started this game back in 2016?

How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
Fairly important, I rather enjoy the new job system and think it does wonders for the game's RP. Likewise, it's an improvement over the original tile system, as nostalgic as that is.

If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
Hard to say, I've been around since the begining, and have seen the drastic changes you guys have made. You'd have to go into a brand new system to really throw me off.

What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
Keeping the flavor of each Government and its people. A Xenophilic Megacorp should play differently than an Imperial Merchant Government. Civics, Origins, Governmental Types, and Species traits all play important aspects of RP.

How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
My goal is typically to survive the current run I'm on. I typically focus on creating a few core planets while establishing good relations with surrounding governments. I send out scientists to go get new stories and build my ships to protect myself. I spend as much as I can, then attempt to claim as much as I can.

I typically rush an ascension Tradition (typically genetic). I keep the long-term plan of becoming Galactic Custodian for life, with occasional foreighs into Galactic Imperiums.

My goals grow as I gain access to more items. I set them when I see that I need to head that way.

How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
Trade systems are moderately important to me, especially since I typically play Megacorps. They act as a useful supplemental income, and an ill-timed pirate raid can result in me losing both money and political power.

Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
Colonization is fairly easy, however I feel that it's done fairly well with habitability and planet climate. I enjoy the random events that occur with a new planet, and do think there should be one for every new planet/habitat that a player builds. But otherwise, this form of the game is fine.

Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
For the most part, you do well when determining whether a civic or origin should be what it is. The biggest problem is, if I suggest a Civic turn into an origin, that means you can't play that Origin with any other origins. For example Inward Perfection, Genocidal civics, Warrior Culture or Natural Design feel a lot more like origins, however, I feel it'd be frustrating in not being able to pair them with the other origins that are currently available.

So yeah, you're fine on this front.

If you could remove one game system, what would it be?

The space storm system. Sorry, that DLC is my least favorite.

Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion?

I would love to see a "Villains" style DLC. One that focuses on minor villain's or Antagonists who'd bother you and your empire. It'd make pirate raids more interesting.

Other suggestions would be a Genetic Ascension DLC, a Spiritual Ascension DLC (potentially religions and beliefs), or a Internal Politics DLC, but those are more usual.

Also, leaning into civilization, I'd love to see a "notable person and places" DLC, which focuses on people and places of influence. Though the "persons" is less important, as we've already gotten a lot of that via Galactic Paragons.

NOTE: All the link I posted were to my own ideas and such.

Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

Spycraft. I always take the spycraft tradition, however it's quite underpowered when compared to other systems. Also, please give us the ability to rename Envoys.

Some Generic Requests for things to add to the game:
A Shapeshifter Origin.
A Hyena-themed Alien
Memetic-themed Aliens and items (Dragons, clowns, emotions, cryptids, etc).
Electric and Gas themed aliens.
A Megacorp Fallen Empire
Friendly-Face Civics: Civics which attempt to appease other governmental types.

 

[Venefcus]

Hi everyone!

Now that the Grand Archive Story Pack is out, I want to do something a little different. With 360 Stellaris Dev Diaries complete, I thought it was time to circle right back around to the beginning: what was, will be.

Stellaris Dev Diary #1 was “The Vision”, and so is #361.

What is Stellaris?​

The vision serves as a guiding tool to keep the entire development team aligned. As the game evolves, we work hard to update it regularly to remain accurate and consistent with our core vision.

Here’s how I currently answer “What is Stellaris?”:

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The Galaxy is Vast and Full of Wonders​

For over eight years, Stellaris has remained the ultimate exploration-focused space-fantasy strategy sandbox, allowing players to discover the wonders of the galaxy.

From their first steps into the stars to uniting the galaxy under their rule, the players are free to discover and tell their own unique stories.

Every story, trope, or player fantasy in science fiction is within our domain.​

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Stellaris is a Living Game​

Over time, Stellaris has evolved and grown to meet the desires of the player base.​

• At launch, Stellaris leaned deep into its 4X roots.​
• It evolved from that base toward Grand Strategy.​
• As it continues to mature, we have added deeper Roleplaying aspects.​

All of these remain part of our DNA.

Stellaris is a 4X Grand Strategy game with Roleplaying elements that continues to evolve and redefine itself.​

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Every Game is Different​

We desire for players to experience a sense of novelty every time they start a game of Stellaris.

They should be able to play the same empire ten times in a row and experience ten different stories.
A player’s experience will differ wildly if their first contact is a friendly MegaCorp looking to prosper together or if they’re pinned between a Fallen Empire and a Devouring Swarm.

Stellaris relies on a combination of prescripted stories (often tied to empire Origins) and randomized mechanical and narrative building blocks that come together to create unplanned, emergent narratives.

A sense of uncertainty and wonder about what could happen next is core to the Stellaris experience.
​

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What is this About?​

Fundamentally, as the players, Stellaris is your game.

Your comments and feedback on The Machine Age heavily influenced our plans for 2025. We work on very long timelines, so we’ve already been working on next year’s releases for some time now. Most of what I’m asking will affect which tasks the team prioritizes and will help direct our direction in 2026 and beyond.

We’re making some changes to how we go about things. Many people have commented that the quarterly release cadence we’ve had since the 3.1 ‘Lem’ update makes it feel like things are changing too quickly and too often, and of course, it disrupts your active games and mods. The short patch cycle between Vela and Circinus was necessary for logistical reasons but really didn’t feel great.

We’re going to slow things down a little bit to let things stabilize. I’ve hinted a couple of times (and said outright last week) that we have the Custodian team working on some big things - the new Game Setup screen was part of this initiative but was completed early enough that we could sneak it into 3.14.1. My current plan is to have an Open Beta with some of the team's larger changes during Q1 of next year, replacing what would have been the slot for a 3.15 release. This will make 2025Q2, around our anniversary in May, a bigger than normal release, giving us the opportunity to catch up on technical debt, polish, and major features.

What is Stellaris to you?​

How does this match what you think Stellaris is, and where it should go? Would you change any of these vision statements?

What systems and content are “sacred” to you, which would make Stellaris not Stellaris anymore if we changed them?

Some examples to comment on could include:

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesn’t quite work for you?

To the Future, Together!​

I want to spend most of this year’s remaining dev diaries (at least, the ones that aren’t focused on the Circinus patch cycle) on this topic, talking with you about where our shared galactic journey is heading.

Next week we’ll be talking about the 3.14.159 patch.

But First, a Shoutout to the Chinese Stellaris Community​

Before I sign off, I want to commend the Chinese Stellaris Community for finding the funniest bug of the cycle. I’ve been told that they found that you can capture inappropriate things with Boarding Cables from the Treasure Hunters origin, and have been challenging each other to find the most ridiculous things to capture.

You know, little things like Cetana’s flagship. The Infinity Machine. An entire Enclave.

I’m not going to have the team fix this for 3.14.159, but will likely have them do so for 3.14.1592. I want to give you a chance to complete your collection and catch them all. After all, someone needs to catch The End of the Cycle and an Incoming Asteroid. Post screenshots if you catch anything especially entertaining!

See you next week!

Stellaris: Grand Archive is now available as a standalone purchase or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!
​

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Edit:
It's come to my attention that an Incoming Asteroid has been captured! Excellent job!

Most systems in this game I personally don’t feel beholden to. I also know that with the number of systems in this game a lot of players would like more things streamlined. Pops being the primary focus, I am no different here.

That said, there is one thing that I absolutely love and would hate to see simplified away for the sake of streamlining the game. That is the ability to design ships, before Stellaris I played space empires, which let me do the same. Other space games I’ve tried just gave buffs to ships, or had pre made designs. There is no chance I would have kept up with Stellaris had I not been able to mess with components. I never want to see it get to the point where you research tech and now all your ships basically get a bonus and I’m not choosing the weapons I actually use keep this if nothing else.

That said, I’ve heard complaints of too many ships late game to the point where you can’t even tell what’s going on in a battle. I agree, I like the spectacle, so I’d prefer systems to reduce maximum number of ships but I know there are other systems to make it more abstract just don’t streamline away the star wars space battles if you do.

Any other systems I don’t hold sacred. You’ve already said you want it a deep strategy game with every trope under the sun, so I don’t think I have to fear you gutting my empire rpg character sheet, which is basically how I see empire building (which honestly I spend almost as much time in as playing the game.)

Last thing, overturned and teachers of the shroud should be civics. Seems more like how a society lives, rather than how it got to space in the first place.

Eager explorers should be an origin. Just my opinions.