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Stellaris Dev Diary #195: Happy Holidays & Help Stellaris

Hello everyone!

We’re approaching the end of 2020 and we in the Stellaris team wish you the happiest of holidays! This year has certainly been a challenging one for many reasons, but under the circumstances we’re still fortunate to be working in an industry that has been relatively untouched by world affairs. All we can do is be thankful for what we have, and try to help those around us.

We’re also thankful for the many fans that support us and are excited for the things that we have in store for you all. There’s still a few months of development left, and starting next year our dev diaries will be showcasing the remaining features. I hope you’ll be as excited to read them as we’ll be about talking about them!

While Federations was about cooperation and order, our next upcoming addition to Stellaris is sure to provide a different experience. The fate of the galaxy may be in your grappling appendages, and to what end will you guide it?

Although those hints may be subtle, what I can unveil is the topic of the dev diaries we’ll be starting the new year with. Many of you have astutely noticed that we have been showing clear indications of Espionage being added to the game, and that is indeed what we’ll be talking about in the beginning of 2021.

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Work in progress. Game development is fun, and sometimes during development, unintentional circumstances can occur.

I won’t reveal too much about Espionage yet, but I can say that it will tie heavily into Intel and information gathering, but also other things. Similar to how we work with a lot of other systems (like archaeology), we usually combine the new game system with fun and interesting content. We don’t want a feature where you just perform an action and wait until you get a result – we want there to be events and random occurrences along the way.

Starting in the new year we’ll be talking about all of these new features, covering everything from spy networks, to operations, assets and how they tie into Intel. We’re very excited to soon be able to share the progress our team has made.

A lot of teamwork goes into making new features for a game, and each profession contributes to different parts. We’re currently looking for a lot of talent to add to our strength, so that we can keep improving Stellaris and making more new cool content. We have great ambitions for the future, and we need to bolster our ranks!

We’re currently looking for:
Senior Producer - Do you want to help us run our game projects?
Senior Game Programmers - Do you want to help us implement cool new features in the game? Do you want to help us with performance, AI or is something else your speciality?
Mid-level Game Programmers - Do you want to help us implement cool new features in the game? Do you want to help us with performance, AI or is something else your speciality?
Lead Artists - Do you want to help us lead our artists and make sure we can deliver the right assets at the required quality?
Tech Artist - Do you want to be the interface between our artists and our programmers? Do you want to help us create the correct tools so that your colleagues have an easier time with their tasks?
Senior Concept Artists - Do you want to help us add more cool things to the game? We need more people to help us draw things like space dragons, cool new ships or JEFF.
Senior 3D Artist - Do you want to realize the concepts drawn by your colleagues, and perhaps build ships or megastructures?

If any of those roles sounds interesting and well-suited for you, or if you know someone who might be, please don’t hesitate to apply!

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Our next dev diary will be on January 14th, but until then: Happy Holidays and stay safe out there! Happy New Year, and let’s make 2021 a great year!
 
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Huzzah! A Dev Diary! It's a Christmas Mirale! :D Or rather, a promise of further diaries.

I sure do like the sound of "Assets". I was a little afraid that the Intelligence system wouldn't go into what some people are calling the "Secret Agent" approach of tactical black ops/espionage missions (targetted things), and that as a result, it would be mostly around the initial fact-finding and not have utility and interest on an ongoing basis. This suggests otherwise, and I'm glad!

I have to admit, with the really interesting run of things since November, I was REALLY looking forward to more details last week. I was greatly bothered by no dev diary last week, and considered it a bit unpleasant that you didn't have the consideration to tell us it wouldn't be coming here on the forum (not everyone has Twitter, guys!). Likewise, I was really hopeful for some juicy nuggets this week, which we don't really have so much.

Anyway - I'm grateful for the new of news and I'll look forward to finding out more in the New Year. As one of those people who's been calling for Espionage for at least 2 years, I'll await with baited breath. I'm so pleased that it's coming.

Have a good Christmas, Devs. But please have something juicy for us come the New Year ;)
 
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Thank you for your hard work and happy holidays :)

I'm really exited about the upcoming espionage feature and i like the hint about the "different experience". The perfect lie at the right time in the proper ear can win a war. Or at least start one. See you next year!
 
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I hope we will be able to influence other empires, like make them leave a federation of change their ideology. ;)
 
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If You guys are looking for someone without any experience who will just suggest "cool" ideas, then You know where to find me. :cool::cool::cool:

Jokes aside Happy Holidays mates!
 
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While Federations was about cooperation and order, our next upcoming addition to Stellaris is sure to provide a different experience. The fate of the galaxy may be in your grappling appendages, and to what end will you guide it?
I hope for a more integrated Federation, that will look from the outside as a monolith while we can squabble in the internal struggles.
 
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I love espionage mechanics and I've been really looking forward to finding out what that tab is, so please know this is not some kneejerk reaction: Please, no sabotage.

Using spy networks to find out information about other empires sounds fun as hell. Using spies to copy tech advances from other empires, hell yeah. Using spies to influence other empires' attitudes to each other: personally I like it, other people may not. But please, I'm begging you, no "An enemy empire blew up your factories!" or "Spies are siphoning your energy income!" or "The enemy has sabotaged your science progress!". I've played a lot of games where espionage boils down to my stuff exploding because I didn't spend enough points on spy mana; I've never found that fun and from the talk on another forum I post on I'm far from alone. I'm not saying I could never enjoy confrontational espionage; agent provocateurs influencing faction attraction could, if done well, be really cool, as could long, involved quest chains with plenty of interaction events for both sides and a suitably impressive payoff. But please, please, please, nothing that boils down to once-a-month popups of "This building exploded! Click the button and spend some resources OK thanks by".

I know this can be cool, and I love all the stuff already posted, please don't aheheheheh sabotage my fun aheheheheheh (seriously though)
 
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Amazing news, thank you!

If anyone here is old enough to remember THE original (IMO) 4X space game: Star Wars Supremacy (Star Wars Rebellion, if you aren't in the UK), then this new update fills me with joy. The espionage and sabotage system worked so well in that, and I can't wait to see how Stellaris (THE best 4X space game) will develop it.
 
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Many of you have astutely noticed that we have been showing clear indications of Espionage being added to the game, and that is indeed what we’ll be talking about in the beginning of 2021.
I'm not sure how i feel about this. We saw it coming for some time and there's definitely a lot of fun stuff that we could do with espionage. At the same time there's a lot of very unfun stuff that could happen to us due to espionage. Many "interesting" espionage options would require removing some player's control over their empire if the AI was to use them (such as changing alliances or ethics) and that's definitely not something you want to do in a game.
Alternatively you could have missions that only the player can run, but that would result in making the AI even more laughable than it is (was) already so unless you really succeed in making the AI a serious threat, giving more toys to players alone is probably not such a clever move either.

Either way, it's way too soon to judge a system that was just barely hinted at, and i wish you the best success possible, honestly, but i fear you're on a dangerous path with such a feature. I've played a number of strategy games over the years and i have yet to find a single one that implements a satisfying espionage system. Let's hope Stellaris will be the one.
 
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Finally, Salarian STG and Citadel SPECTRE!
 
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But please, please, please, nothing that boils down to once-a-month popups of "This building exploded! Click the button and spend some resources OK thanks by".
I fully agree with this. Espionage is more like getting intel about the other empires, how strong are they where are the colony worlds and so on. I won't mind the occasional sabotage or assasination mission but those should be hard, long tasks that happen only from time to time and would give you some sort of immunity as your security is up to their tasks after the enemy killed a governor.

Speaking of Espionage I'd like to to a Cato and repeat my biggest wish, no reveal of an empires homeworld after a first contact. Thats either up to the information policy or a very good espionage agency to determine where the homeworld is.

Do you have any plans to give the espionage against an empire a slight boost after you've occupied one of their colonies?
 
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I might have to... interact with my family or something to fill the void left by the dev diary.
 
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