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Stellaris Dev Diaries #317 - Ad astra per aspera

Stardate 23779.5 - Temba, his arms wide

In this week's dev diary, I am taking the reins from Eladrin.
I am a producer on Stellaris and usually help Eladrin as best I can, but today I want to talk about my other project and let Stellaris have a week off before they talk about their next thing.

And that Project is: Star Trek: Infinite

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Watch the video version of this Dev Diary:

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

I joined Paradox back in the start of 2021, and was given the task to bring Star Trek: Infinite to Launch.
Today is that day: we launch Star Trek: Infinite..

Why am I talking about Infinite in the Stellaris Dev diary? To start off, I am a producer on Stellaris, but also the Producer for Star Trek: Infinite - I love playing both games, and I think some of you might feel the same.

Secondly, as all of you can easily identify, Star Trek: Infinite is built on the Stellaris Engine, with little effort to hide it. Everyone here on the Stellaris team has been giving feedback and tips since its inception, and we are all fully behind it.

While Star Trek: Infinite is not a Stellaris Team project, it is a distinguished member of Stellaris Selective Kinship.

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

From a product point of view, Stellaris is the best Space/Emergent Story/Strategy game out there. Star Trek has a great tradition of 4x strategy games, and several story driven games. With that in mind, was there a possible way to mix this peanut butter gameplay of Stellaris with the strawberry jelly of Star Trek?

I for one believed it could be done. The big takeaway from Stellaris we wanted in this game was exploration, choice and evolving gameplay. From Star Trek I wanted recognizable factions, lore authentic events and leaders.

This has been our north star since the start. We don’t want to make a game that only explores the existing timeline, nor do we want a game with complete randomness. A balance between the two had to be maintained, and I think we might have pulled it off.

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

It really depends on what type of Stellaris player you are. I love making themed factions that are not optimized, but thematically attractive. Setting the difficulty to Ensign/Captain, and seeing how it all plays out. I will usually restart if I get boring neighbors, or I get an unwanted precursor. My favorite Origins are Post-Apocalyptic+UNE, Toxic God, Payback+UNE, or Machine Empire with Eager Explorers. I also lean heavily away from micromanagement and build optimization.
If you play anything like me, Star Trek Infinite might be for you.

If you think seeing Klingons going to war with Romulans over their claim to Kithomer gives a different flavor than seeing UNE being attacked by Kel-Azaan Republic over a claim in Parvus, Star Trek: Infinite might be for you.

If you think you can be a better Gul than Dukat, and that there should be a statue of you on Bajor. Star Trek: Infinite might be for you…

If you think Romulans should reunite with Vulcan, but it should be done with force, and not diplomacy? Star Trek: Infinite might be for you.


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

This is one of the reasons we wanted to make this game a standalone, rather than part of Stellaris. We wanted this game to have its own track and not cause limitations on Stellaris, or Stellaris cause limitations for it. Stellaris should continue to evolve as the best Sci-fi sandbox strategy game in existence, and Star Trek: Infinite should be the definitive Star Trek strategy game.

Mods are already being made, and we have full Steam Workshop support. We will be paying a bit more attention to our terms and conditions, but we have not made major changes to the existing one.

So if this sounds like it could be appealing, check it out here.


Until next time,

PDX_Ruk
 
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As a committed Stellaris player, I can't describe the joy I feel at reading this.

I grew up playing Star Trek Birth of the Federation and did not in a million years think you would officially reskin Stellaris into a Star Trek title. Not only that, to realise that this exists on the day it's being released is just incredible.

Thank you so so so much. Can't wait to play it, and I promise not to abandon Stellaris in favour of this.

Next stop, a Star Wars Supremacy (*Rebellion) reskin?
 
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Does this game start with the nations already owning systems/planets etc, or is it a 4X that is in the Star Trek universe?
 
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Navar said:
Does this game start with the nations already owning systems/planets etc, or is it a 4X that is in the Star Trek universe?
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From Montu's early access stream empires start with a few systems. Playing as the Federation you start with the founding homeworlds.


I'm not sure if the positioning of the empires is always the same. Here the Federation and Romulan Star Empire don't share a border which is odd (unless the neutral zone is something you can create)
 
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Calvax said:
From Montu's early access stream empires start with a few systems. Playing as the Federation you start with the founding homeworlds.


I'm not sure if the positioning of the empires is always the same. Here the Federation and Romulan Star Empire don't share a border which is odd (unless the neutral zone is something you can create)
Click to expand...
neutral zone is that in between the 2.
 
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PDX-Ruk said:
The first time I understood that Infinite was special, was during a pre-alpha build, where we had some basic systems up and running (warp, some ship models, some events) and I was tracking along and saw the message that Bajor had invaded Qo'nos. This hit me in a way that no event popup in Stellaris had ever done, and I knew we had struck gold.

In a internal preview, I read the line that they were playing normally, doing events, clearing notifications, until a message saying "Admiral Picard has died at the age of 103" and it was at this point they paused the game and took a deep breath.

These moments are the real reason the game resonates, and I worry that if you don't have any familiarity, the game might feel hollow.

I know my marketing manager will hate me for saying this, but target audience is Trekkies. We put in a good bit of work to streamline the game, but Trek knowledge was something we expected everyone to have on game start.
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Small thing but I hope the starting/max ages were increased a little from the pre-alpha build (Bones was 137 during Encounter at Farpoint for example, so max ages incurring death chance should probably be above 120 not 100 for humans, although combat deaths could happen much sooner... and to reference another great franchise:
"I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice."
– CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "MorganLink 3DVision Interview"
I'd like to research enough technologies to avoid ever seeing that particular notification.

I've been rewatching DS9 on the run up to release and I'm trying to imagine what ships Bajor would use to mount an offensive against Klingons? Repurposed Cardassian warships? lots of transports?

It's got to be difficult trying to adapt ship designs from a show that reused a small number of inconsistent assets, like the almost Klingon looking Bajoran interceptors or the very pretty (partially wooden) light ship, or ex-cardassian transports. So... I'm picturing the series of events that could lead to this outcome... perhaps the Duras sisters were blamed for the bilitrium provided in the attempt to destroy the wormhole, which unfortunately ignited on the Bajoran side of the wormhole, the bilitrium traced to Klingons and the damage caused seen by the Federation as an act of war. Bajor, angry at Klingon involvement assist using assault transports and transporter raiding parties and contribute via their skills in Guerrilla warfare, even stealing a few combat-capable starships. Major Kira becomes commander of a captured Bird-of-Prey and eventually part of the interim government over occupied Qo'nos...

Anyway, I hope after new features are added to Stellaris or Star Trek Infinite that the technological distinctiveness can be adapted to service the other game, assimilated into the collective works and in the process, brought closer to perfection (I hope the two teams bet on who can find and fix the enigmatic invincible fleet bug)... while remaining distinct, having two diverging paths for Stellaris sounds great when you get bored of a game you like and want a bit of comfortable variety.
 
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I prefer Earth Alliance over Federation but the game looks interesting. I am not going to buy it right away but it goes to my wish list for the future. Or if it gets added to Game Pass.
 
Calvax said:
As a huge trek fan I'm certainly interested. In terms of events how does the game approach canon events? One of the fun parts about popular total conversion mods is how you can play through different historical eras and have events from the shows appear.

Also will there be progression through eras or is the game focused on the late 24th century?
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Check out the subforum. There’s several dev diaries there explaining the game
 
PDX-Ruk said:
If you think you can be a better Gul than Dukat, and that there should be a statue of you on Bajor.
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This makes me laugh, that really doesn't seem hard at all. ANYBODY could be a better Gul than Dukat, he was an idiot and a lunatic.

And in my personal opinion, an impotent villain. The writers jerked around that character WAY too much trying to find a direction for him.
 
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So it really is Stellaris Dev' Diary about Star Trek: Infinite, huh.
I was not expecting that with Star Trek: Infinite having it's own sub-forum with it's own Dev' Logs there but hey....

But next weeks Stellaris Dev' Diary will be about Stellaris again, right ?
 
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PDX-Ruk said:
Three reasons:
1) I am the Producer for Stellaris, I throw my weight around, I do what I want.
2) We launch on a Thursday. Stellaris Dev Diary go out on Thursday, Infinite Dev logs go out on Friday. It made sense to align the efforts on this and have Stellaris support its sibling game.
3) We are worried Stellaris players will think this is Stellaris 2.0 or something, some type of sneaky cash grab. We need to step up and say that yes, it exists, it's not Stellaris, but it's still a part of the family. We love it for what it is, and we all love Trek.
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Then just post the dev diary there on Thursday/today as a special announcement? Or have a special announcement there?
 
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PDX-Ruk said:
I won't block you from buying it, but when an internal review starts with "I don't know anything about Star Trek" I am usually in for a negative review. A lot of the good feels from this game is how it resonates with existing knowledge, in the same way that say, Crusader Kings, or HoI does. You know the factions, you understand the conflicts and when events happen it hits harder.


The first time I understood that Infinite was special, was during a pre-alpha build, where we had some basic systems up and running (warp, some ship models, some events) and I was tracking along and saw the message that Bajor had invaded Qo'nos. This hit me in a way that no event popup in Stellaris had ever done, and I knew we had struck gold.

In a internal preview, I read the line that they were playing normally, doing events, clearing notifications, until a message saying "Admiral Picard has died at the age of 103" and it was at this point they paused the game and took a deep breath.

These moments are the real reason the game resonates, and I worry that if you don't have any familiarity, the game might feel hollow.

I know my marketing manager will hate me for saying this, but target audience is Trekkies. We put in a good bit of work to streamline the game, but Trek knowledge was something we expected everyone to have on game start.
Click to expand...
Thank you very much for this, I do appreciate the honesty. Long term is better I guess, to not buy the game than to buy it, dislike it and muster resentment for Paradox because of it. I'm sure it'll be a very special experience for the Star Trek fans though. Enjoy it, you klingons! (the only Star Trek reference I know).
 
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As someone who is likely to buy STI, I still think "bad show" for using up the one weekly communication that Stellaris gets. I need info about 3.10 and any upcoming DLC. Instead I get a blurb from a game that makes me think this is why Stellaris hasn't had a DLC in months. Been helping the STI team get ready to release?
 
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What on earth is a ‘governor ship’?

I can’t think of anything in trek that seems close to such a thing that is specifically called as such.
 
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