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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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a5ehren said:
There have been 316 other DDs with minor changelog bullet points, all of ya'll whining about this one just sound like giant babies. They could do these monthly and nothing would be lost.

FWIW, I'm glad this one came out because I forgot STI was coming out and bought it, as the 90s Trek Aesthetic is my jam.
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1. We're not whining.
2. Our criticism is legitimate and valid.
3. This is the Stellaris forum and we're Stellaris fans. Don't come into our house and tell us we're wrong.
4. If they did monthly, a lot would be lost - at least 75%, in fact.

KNakamura said:
Considering we were warned last week this diary could very well be about Infinite..

Well, ok. Personally I'm glad to hear the two might share ideas.
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We were not "warned". What happened was that they left a slightly cryptic sign-off note at the end with a Star Trek reference, but nothing outright said we weren't going to get a Stellaris Dev Diary. Being charitable, you could assume a phrase like that would include some Star Trek talk, but nobody expected it to be entirely Star Trek talk.
 
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I'm hoping we get Star Trek ship sets and portraits in Stellaris, now that would be an awesome way to advertise this game. I'm a huge Star Trek fan and this game peaks my curiosity, but that being said not sure if I'll pick it up, I play out most of my Scifi fantasies in Stellaris.
 
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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.
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Gosh, what a wonderful, positive, and community-friendly ethos that is. Comments like this are fantastic representation for your company, and I'm sure in no way will a remark like that - and the underlying attitude it implies - be considered unacceptably arrogant and tone-deaf.
 
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I've been trying to update a mod but I'm kinda blocked on 3.9.2 crashing-to-desktop randomly for some events.

Is there an expected 3.9.3 patch to fix those crash-to-desktop events?
 
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Panzerslothen said:
Gosh, what a wonderful, positive, and community-friendly ethos that is. Comments like this are fantastic representation for your company, and I'm sure in no way will a remark like that - and the underlying attitude it implies - be considered unacceptably arrogant and tone-deaf.
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In the UK it is quite a bullish and rude thing to say and a bit beyond ‘assertive’ - but I chose to give benefit of the doubt and it maybe just a poor choice of phrase. But it seems a fair few others share the same sentiment as you, I think.
 
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CassCD said:
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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He was great till the last couple of seasons, and the finale stuff was just god awful you're right. But overall I think it's ridiculous to call him an "idiot" or suggest he's incompetent for the vast majority of his tenure on the show.
 
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Foxosaur said:
In the UK it is quite a bullish and rude thing to say and a bit beyond ‘assertive’.
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Yes, indeed it is.

I've caught s**t for less-than-perfect phrasing on this forum before, so I cannot excoriate someone for it - at least without the chance to revise, moderate, clarify or withdraw it. But I'm not excoriating, I'm "pointing it out" (which has also been done to me). And of course, I'm not Paradox Staff...

It's crazy that a Paradox Staff member would write that...or think it was fine to hit 'send' on... and subsequently not revise or delete.
 
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Is there any known playthrough video out there by a player? I'd like to see what's like for the first 20 odd minutes? I saw the blocky outliner and it immediately gave me the big red flag "unfinished" vibe.
 
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Foxosaur said:
Is there any known playthrough video out there by a player? I'd like to see what's like for the first 20 odd minutes? I saw the blocky outliner and it immediately gave me the big red flag "unfinished" vibe.
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Aspec has a 40min video going over the game.


Montu had a long playthrough yesterday


As did E3po

 
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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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I have no problem with this week's Dev blog being dedicated to Star Trek infinite and appreciate the breakdown and insight its provided. But you could have stuck to points 2 and 3 which are both excellent reasons / rationales for the decision and left it at that.

Given that this is the first time most of us here have come across you, it's a terrible first impression of yourself and your leadership style if you think that's an acceptable means of communicating with your audience.
 
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Panzerslothen said:
We were not "warned". What happened was that they left a slightly cryptic sign-off note at the end with a Star Trek reference, but nothing outright said we weren't going to get a Stellaris Dev Diary. Being charitable, you could assume a phrase like that would include some Star Trek talk, but nobody expected it to be entirely Star Trek talk.
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I actually suspected it would be at least half Star Trek. I'm not fussed. It's clearly cross-promotion. Also: STI is clearly a Stellaris based game. Eh. Meh.

I don't even get the fuss. One DD is about a game promotion. It happens. Mounta-

Panzerslothen said:
Gosh, what a wonderful, positive, and community-friendly ethos that is. Comments like this are fantastic representation for your company, and I'm sure in no way will a remark like that - and the underlying attitude it implies - be considered unacceptably arrogant and tone-deaf.
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I mean, a producer saying they'll do what they want for promotional work is arrogant, yes, but tone-deaf?

Sure you aren't just making mountains out of a mole hill?
 
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Calvax said:
Aspec has a 40min video going over the game.


Montu had a long playthrough yesterday


As did E3po

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Cheers. Just skimmed through A-Specs video, looks cool and I noticed they kept the leader screen we use to have (and maybe preferred)! Wonder if Guinen and Tasha Yar will make appearances anywhere.
 
Okay now do Star Wars.
 
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Panzerslothen said:
*Sigh*. You wait all week for a Stellaris Dev Diary, and you get a Star Trek Infinite Dev Diary instead.

I'm not dumping on your achievement; a release is a significant event in its own right, and it's great that Stellaris offers a framework for development of a whole other game. Congratulations on the release (I actually thought it had come out already, so I suppose it's news!)

I was just hoping for more juicy details about the game I love, particularly more about the fascinating Leader Re-Work, or perhaps about the 3.9.3 patch. I cannot contain my disappointment, although I'll try to suppress it.

Still, there are some definite innovations provided in the screenshots here. Spy Ships? Governor Ships? How intriguing! Definite UI improvements too - I particularly love that Alloys icon, and wish we could get it for Stellaris (I've never much understood why Stellaris's alloys are big purple blocks). Also, I don't see any Hyperlanes. That's interesting - does ST:I use a form of Warp transport similar to pre-2.0 Stellaris?

I look forward to hopefully getting back to Stellaris discussions, and learning more the same time next week.
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they probably slowed down a bit since it was another major update and subsequent fix updates.
startrek universe has no hyperlanes, warp from early stellaris was mostly ported directly from the ST IP
 
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Three DLC for eight dollars each on top of the thirty to forty dollar base cost is a bit silly.
 
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Galactic Emperor Darth Jeff is very disappointed that his weekly dev diary has been replaced by this heretical Trekkie propaganda.




LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!
LONG LIVE THE SITH LORD!
 
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