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by Alfray Stryke

Hello everybody! Welcome to our first BioGenesis development diary!

Today we will talk about ships. That are made of meat.

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Several weeks ago, Eladrin mentioned that the ship designer changes originally planned for 4.0 "Phoenix" would not be included in the Open Beta, as they’re now needed for our upcoming Q2 DLC release. We’ve since seen a fair amount of speculation as to what we might have been cooking that’d require such changes… So please allow me to introduce our Biological Ships!

MEAT SHIPS! MEAT SHIPS! MEAT SHIPS
In BioGenesis, we are adding two distinct Biological shipsets, with unique ship classes and technology.

Our goals in adding Biological Ships to Stellaris were to ensure that they are not only different in appearance from mechanical ships (and space fauna), but also in gamep... Read more

by Eladrin

Today's update includes some AI improvements and fixes to the new breadthwise job allocation.

Stellaris 3.99.4 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes
Fixes and Improvements​

• Significant improvements to the breadthwise job assignment distribution.
  
• AI now understands the use of Zones.
  
  • (Known Inssue: Scripting weights are not yet balanced.)
• Fixed cloaking detection tooltip overwriting value breakdown with generic description
  
• Fixed demotions not working as they should
  
• Fixed factions not forming.
  
• Fixed the integration cost for subjects
  
• Fixed tooltips for Commercial Zone building mentioning clerks and soldiers
  
• Tier 1 Development focus tasks now award progress
  
• ...

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by Eladrin

Another update today for the weekend! Lots of important changes in this one.


Stellaris 3.99.3 ‘Phoenix’ Open Beta update Fixes and Improvements

• Habitats are now semi-functional in the Open Beta.
  
  • Habitats now derive their maximum mining, generator, and science district development based on the resources in the system. Orbital deposits grant 1 + (half their base value, rounded down) maximum district development.
    
  • Habitat orbitals are automatically constructed for free when a new district is completed on the central habitat complex, if one can be built
    
  • Habitat orbitals are now megastructures instead of dummy fleets, preventing them from being attacked (and therefore attempting to to flee from attackers)
    
  • Habitat orbitals now coll...

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by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

We’ve entered our second week of the Stellaris 3.99 ‘Phoenix’ Open Beta, and if all goes according to plan are planning another update tomorrow morning with some major changes to the starting situation of your planets. (Goodbye, primitive factory debuffs. I'd say we'll miss you, but... we won't.)

What Have We Learned So Far?​ While we recognize that the early state of the Open Beta makes it difficult to provide balancing feedback, it’s proven itself invaluable already.

The Open Beta has found several issues with growth and decline - from robots causing the inevitable decline of your empire to Fallen Empires and Pre-FTL societies being doomed due to not using standard growth models. You’ve found economic death spirals and identified needs that will help our designers produce a better balanced and fun e... Read more

by Eladrin

We have another update to the Open Beta today, and are planning for another later on this week.

Stellaris 3.99.2 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes
Fixes and Improvements

• Added an Industrial Zone for mixed alloys and consumer goods
  
• The focus task "Embrace a Faction" is changed to "Promote a Faction"
  
• Added two focus tasks for MegaCorps to establish branch offices
  
• Updated costs of special projects that have costs that scale with the number of pops
  
• Changed every_owned_pop to every_owned_pop_group, so now looping through groups
  
• Made ethic changes work on pop groups instead of pops
  
• Updated robot pop checks to pop groups
  
• Zones now have icons associated with their type.
  
• Zones now ...

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by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

We've updated the Open Beta to 3.99.1, with the following changes:

Stellaris 3.99.1 ‘Phoenix’ Open Beta update​
Fixes and Improvements

• Fallen Empires are blocked from using the Existential Expulsion casus belli
  
• Negative effects added to the Magnetic Disruption planet modifier
  
• Assembling robots will no longer cause the slow and inevitable decline of your growing pops
  
• Changed auto pick leader traits setting to default to off
  
• Made Species Rights button different for pre-sapients

Pops and Workforce

• Fixed traders not being created from trade zones
  
• Adjusted amenities and housing from luxury housing
  
• Pops now have appropriate Diplomatic We...

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by Eladrin

Surprise! An early Stellaris Dev Diary!

Last week I mentioned that on Friday we’d evaluate the current build, and I’d see if I could provide a timeline for the Open Beta. Things have been progressing well, so we’ve decided to put a very early version of some of the 4.0 changes to test a few aspects of the new systems.

The Stellaris 4.0 update changes a lot of things - you can find a lot of the details in the dev diaries of the last two months. This first build of the 3.99 Open Beta only contains a focused subset of the changes, and many are still in a work-in-progress prototype state. It is not polished, or even done yet.

The 3.11 Technology Open Beta very quickly found some performance issues with the Breakthrough Technologies that we were experimenting with, and as the pop systems have advanced far enough to be mostly f... Read more

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

We’re still hard at work getting the features we’ve been describing into the game, but this week we’re giving you a bit of a progress update, and I’ll be giving my thoughts on what shape they’ll be in when we begin the Open Beta. As with everything over the past couple of months, all of this is still subject to change.

We’ve successfully gotten past the critical milestone of “the game is no longer completely broken”, and things are starting to come together very nicely.

DD #367... Read more

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

This week, Gruntsatwork will discuss the technical details of pop group scripting. This topic is likely to be of most interest to the modding community.

The systems we’re implementing now are just scratching the surface of where we want to go with them - we’re looking forward to some of the things we’ll be able to do with these tools over the next few years as well as seeing what you do with them.

As with all of these dev diaries, some of this is still subject to change during implementation and during the beta.
Pop Groups and Jobs​ Hello everyone, Gruntsatwork here! Let us talk about some of the script changes that are coming with 4.0 when it comes to pops and jobs…

As Eladrin already mentioned in Dev Diary 370, we are changing the way we look at Pops by grouping them together int... Read more

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

This week we’re looking more at the economic changes of the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, and how we’re going to update the Planet UI to work with them.

As this is all still in development, things are still subject to change, and I’m going to be using a lot of the UX Design Mockups in this dev diary. The final versions will not match these work-in-progress designs precisely. The Open Beta will definitely not be at these polish levels. Also be aware that numbers on these mockups are all placeholders meant to help the rest of the team get the layout right, so things like the Pop Counts or Production numbers aren’t accurate.

Planets - Districts - Zones - Buildings - Jobs​ As mentioned last week, one of the fundamental changes we’re making to the economy behind the scenes is that planets are now the s... Read more

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

This week we’re going to look at the upcoming changes to Pops in the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update.

Last week I said we might also look at the Planet UI, but I’m going to save that until next week since there’s quite a bit to cover here (especially if you’re into the technical details), and I’d rather not split the feedback.

Pop Groups and Workforce​ As mentioned in Dev Diary 366[forum.paradoxplaza.com], the Pop and Jobs system introduced in... Read more

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

Today we’re going to take a glance at the Trade and Logistics changes coming in the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, then check out some new portraits.

Trade and Logistics ​
Trade as a Standard Resource​

The Trade system introduced in the Stellaris 2.2 ‘Le Guin’ update was raised as an especially frequent point of confusion for many players. UX issues around disconnected trade stations combined with some quirks of being a modifier based system (like ignoring habitability) made some of it unintuitive. The system had a major impact on performance as well, so while examining Stellaris for optimizations, we decided that we wanted to revamp the system.

In 4.0, Trade will become a standard advanced resource, generally produced in the same way as before, but will follow all of the standard rul... Read more

Hello everyone!

Today we’re going to take a deeper look at some of the ways we’re adjusting game pacing through changes to Galaxy Generation, Message Settings, Events and Anomalies. Then we’ll take a peek at the Focus system, the Empire Timeline, and a few other changes.

Some of this has already been covered in the announcement diary, but I’ll be providing more up-to-date screenshots and more details. As this is from a build that is still in active development, there will be placeholder icons or temporary text in some of these screenshots, and all of these are still subject to change.

Pacing Adjustments Stellaris is a game with many moving parts, each of which interact with other elements to produce a complex whole. Small adjustments in one spot can have significant effects in another, and in the end there can be unexpected impact to the general pacing of the game and overall economy.
Galaxy Generation As mentioned in ... Read more

by Eladrin

Greetings, Stellaris Community!

Last week we announced the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, today we’re going to start going through some of the changes coming in it. As mentioned before, the changes we’ll be going through in the next few dev diaries are still scorching hot on the development branch, and may change drastically before final release.

That said, the ones I’ll be talking about today have cooled off a little bit and are pretty stable at this point.

Precursor Selection​ Let’s start with a simple one that I already leaked to you back in December.

The Advanced Settings tab when you’re setting up a new game will now have a section that lets you set which Precursors are available in your galaxy.

... Read more

Hello everyone!

We’re happy to announce that Stellaris is part of Steam’s Real-Time Strategy Fest!



From now until Monday, get up to 75% off Stellaris basegame and up to 50% off Stellaris DLCs. There’s never been a better time to get your friends into the best space grand strategy game, plus if you play with your friends in multiplayer, they can borrow your DLC for that game!



See what's on sale here:

... Read more

by Eladrin

Happy New Year! It’s good to be back!

I want to start by welcoming all of the new Stellaris players who joined us during the Winter Sale, and to our Chinese community, which has grown so much over the last year, 欢迎光临。

Next, I want to draw your attention to several feedback threads that have been running for the past few weeks. These threads have forms you can fill out to share your thoughts.

• War and War Resolution[forum.paradoxplaza.com]
  
...

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Hello Stellaris Community!

The devs have started trickling back into the office, and we expect to resume our regularly scheduled dev diaries next week! This means this is our final feedback post of the holiday break, but we’re ending strong with something that we know a lot of you have been wanting for a long time: factions and politics.

Internal politics is such a nebulous term, and it means many different things to different people, and we’ve discussed internally many times just what “Internal Politics” means to us. But this is our opportunity to ask:

What does internal politics mean to you?

Here’s what Eladrin said in ... Read more