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Stellaris Dev Diary #69: Beyond Utopia

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is going to briefly cover our plans for future Stellaris updates, and what you can expect from us going forward.

The Adams Update
With Utopia and Banks now out, the next thing we have planned for you is the 1.6 'Adams' update. This update, named after Douglas Adams, is going to focus completely on bug fixing and quality of life changes, with no major feature additions and no accompanying paid DLC. Work on 1.6 actually started almost immediately after Banks/Utopia went into code freeze, and it already contains hundreds of bug fixes and usability/UI additions and tweaks. A particular focus of Adams has been to work on our backlog of old issues, taking care of many of the smaller issues and annoyances that have been present in the game since release. We've also made time for some of the things that were originally planned for Banks, but had to be cut due to time constraints. While I can't give you an exact release date for Adams yet, I can say that you shouldn't have to wait too long.

Beyond Utopia
Back in Dev Diary #50, I listed a number of priorities for us going forward from Heinlein/Leviathans. A number of these things have since been added to the game, so I'm going to go ahead and list it again to give you an idea of where our focus will lie in future updates, expansions and story packs, with the items that are already completed noted with a strikethrough. The list is NOT in order of priority, and something being crossed out does NOT mean we aren't going to continue to improve on it in future updates, just that we consider it to be at a satisfactory level.

As before, THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE OR FINAL LIST, AND NOTHING BELOW IS CERTAIN TO HAPPEN (unless it already did)!
  • Ship appearance that differs for each empire, so no two empires' ships look exactly the same.
  • More potential for empire customization, ability to build competitive 'tall' empires.
  • Global food that can be shared between planets.
  • Ability to construct space habitats and ringworlds.
  • Factions that are proper interest groups with specific likes and dislikes and the potential to be a benefit to an empire instead of just being rebels.
  • Ability to set rights and obligations for particular species in your empire.
  • Deeper Federations that start out as loose alliances and can eventually be turned into single states through diplomatic manuevering.
  • Superweapons and planet killers.
  • More story events and reactive narratives that give a sense of an unfolding story as you play.
  • More interesting mechanics for pre-FTL civilizations.
  • A 'galactic community' with interstellar politics and a 'space UN'.
  • Buildable Dreadnoughts and Titans.
  • Reworking the endgame crises to be more balanced against each other and the size/state of the galaxy.
  • Reworks to war to address the 'doomstacks' issue and make the strategic and tactical layers of warfare more interesting and less micro-intensive.
  • Deeper mechanics and unique portraits for synthetics.

With Utopia and Banks, we decided that rather than divide our focus, it was better to have the update and expansion focus almost exclusively on empire customization and internal politics, and this is the policy we intend to continue with for future expansions. As always, I can't tell you specifically what the next expansion, update or story pack is going to be about, but the above list should at least give you some ideas of where you can expect Stellaris to go in the future.

That's all for today! Next week we'll start going into specifics of the 1.6 'Adams' update so until then, I leave you with this picture of some of the free graphical content coming in Adams:
2017_04_20_1.png
 
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I hope they push the Warfare up to the top of the list. I think its an urgent issue, personally. Its simply quantitative power with no dimensions of diversification.
 
- I do not see the usefulness of having titans AND dreadnought
Titans, in theory, have only one caliber. And it only works against massive objects like Battleships and Spaceports. We see this Titans in the Stagnant Empires, at last.
What about Dreadnoughts... well, it's hard to say. It can be a fattened Battleship, which can not shoot down destroyers and corvettes. But without the possibility of having aviation. Slower, more armored, more expensive. It makes sense.
 
  • Reworks to war to address the 'doomstacks' issue and make the strategic and tactical layers of warfare more interesting and less micro-intensive.
Please make this above all else if possible. The game is so war-intensive that it seems like this would have a big bang for the buck improvement. Thanks!!
 
Titans, in theory, have only one caliber. And it only works against massive objects like Battleships and Spaceports. We see this Titans in the Stagnant Empires, at last.
What about Dreadnoughts... well, it's hard to say. It can be a fattened Battleship, which can not shoot down destroyers and corvettes. But without the possibility of having aviation. Slower, more armored, more expensive. It makes sense.
I agree, titans should be station and planet killer killers, but not be set up for smaller ships
 
Merely some cosmetic concerns, but ones that I feel certainly affect immersion for many:
Will the various superstructures be given different architectural appearances/designs for the different ship styles?
Will there be variation in the planetary structure's images that also differ based on the selected city-scape's?
Will we eventually have additional variations of existing ship designs to choose from?

As it stands now, we are rather forced to accept that two completely different species from opposing corners of the galaxy would have somehow managed to independently develop and adopt identical architectures.
 
I would absolutely love to see a dlc with multiple galaxies. Kinda like an after game objective, you do whatever in the first half of your game, then you gain the tech to venture beyond your galaxy. Tougher foes, or primitive galaxies which you can enlighten and show them the way to divinity.
 
Please give us some more Options in the Launcher:
Disable all mods currently enabled - and an undo button for this
Some sort of own mod-packages so that we can say: hey i like to play this mod with this and this and this mod, so i put them in a package and then, if i want to start a new gamr with those, i simply disable all mods with the disable mods button mentioned earlier and then i click on one button for the package so that all mods of the package get enabled
 
I would absolutely love to see a dlc with multiple galaxies. Kinda like an after game objective, you do whatever in the first half of your game, then you gain the tech to venture beyond your galaxy. Tougher foes, or primitive galaxies which you can enlighten and show them the way to divinity.
YES PLEASE!!!!
 
And please give us some kind of Star wars centerpoint station - a station that can move whole stars / planets maybe also star systems from afar.
Ofc this would have to be REALLY late game and you couldnt use it on enemy systems fir example because you have not enough telemetrical data or so.
 
I would absolutely love to see a dlc with multiple galaxies. Kinda like an after game objective, you do whatever in the first half of your game, then you gain the tech to venture beyond your galaxy. Tougher foes, or primitive galaxies which you can enlighten and show them the way to divinity.
And we NEED a way to invade other dimensions like the unbidden do. For example it would be an idea that you would have to be psionic ascensioned and the unbidden must have been killed. Then you can research some technologies or get an ap or whatever to invade another universe
 
First and foremost, I wanted to thank the creators for the great game. I think I grew up long ago, but thanks to Stellaris I felt like a long time ago when I was playing the first Master of Orion. Taking into consideration other DLC, after Utopia, I have some suggestions and ideas:

- A conscious planet, something like the planet Solaris, from S. Lem's book. It is a biosphere that has passed directly from the state of unicellular organisms to a global, conscious ocean.

- Atrocities and genocide. Actions that cause widespread condemnation: spreading diseases that destroy entire races, converting planets into desolate deserts, genetic specimens, particularly cruel types of weapons,

- A more extensive model of federation: joint declarations, trade agreements, common internal and external policies, voting.

- von Neumann probes (Bracewell, Berserk)

- Faith and Religion: Cosmic crusades, holy places and holy relics, prophets, apostles. Imposing worldview to other races, ecumenism, peaceful or aggressive conversion.

- Finding Generation Ships (a kind of contact with a primitive race)

- Possibility of total destruction or climatic destruction of planets. And even stars (extremely expensive and available only for the high end of advanced civilization.

- More types of celestial bodies: brown dwarfs, multiple star systems, rogue planets (floating alone in space), artificial empty moons,

- Space elevators as buildings on planets surface.

- Supernova events (very rare, maybe as ending crisic). It completely destroys the solar system, leaving some wretched remains. The star turns into a pulsar or black hole. Nearby solar systems are sterilized from life, slightly further suffer losses. Relocation of the population is required,

- Diseases spreading through the galaxy, spread by the traveling population.

- Contact with almost omnipotent beings as a very rare event (Example is Q from Star Trek series)

- Probability Drive, for high end tech civilization. It allows you to move immediately to any solar system. With some risk.
 
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I've been considering super late game stuff. I've taken over the galaxy, am I able to be the "ancient empire" and watch as the galaxy then begins to reform around me? While I'm sure some people would rather just start over at game over, I get pretty attached to my empires and want to continue to see them grow and prosper. Would love to see new life forms becoming sentient on random planets in the galaxy. Not just enlightened, but new species that gain this status.

To summarize, I'd like to play as a stagnant ascendancy.
 
I think what would be nice to add is a galaxy generation feature that allows you to pick where your empire is placed relative of the core (next to core, middle, on the outer rim) and which side of the galaxy you want to be on (Top, bottom, right, left)
 
You know, I think maybe a complete rework from the ground up of any systems a large portion of the playerbase has had a problem with them from day one and still does might be in order?

If any such system still exists, of course. It's odd to think one might for this long without being properly addressed, considering the otherwise Stellar dev work on the game (Pun intended.)
 
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I had an idea about the end game:
Many people really want to build the special FE buildings, but they are very over powered.
So how about playing a late game empire you could retreat into one corner of your former empire and build a bunch of ring worlds. Then you would be able to evacuate the pops from your outer planets to those ring worlds, and for every planet you cleared, you would be able to build one OP-FE building.
The empty planets could then be used to genetically engineer new presentient races.

Thats all a bit gamey, but it would fill the gap between a super high developed player empire and a FE.
 
I will see the Titan.... as the ship like in independance day 2. And which would provide a supply point to the attached fleet.

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It would go well with the option "born in space". a colonial ship. And play a race of nomadic civilization.
And give the choice of differents modules like ... planet killer ... home ... mobile base
 
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I would love to see more planet types, there is already perfect mod for it. Just take it and include in your game. With only 9+1 planet types every planet feels same. Another thing that would be great is making fungoids somehow benefit from colonizing tomb worlds. Muschrooms are not affected by radiation same way as other species and even thrives in places with radiation :)