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Stellaris Dev Diary #262 - Ringworlds, Reliquaries, Relics, and More

Hello again!

This week we’re going to look at some more things that are going into the upcoming Stellaris 3.5 “Fornax” release.

Megastructures in the Outliner​

One of the things going into Fornax is something we’ve wanted for a very long time on PC - a Megastructure section in the Outliner.

Megastructures in the Outliner


As shown here, the Megastructures section will list all megastructures within your territory, including ruined ones as well as Gateway Sites (but not completed gateways, as that would be too much clutter).

Never again will you lose track of where you left that Gateway Site or Ruined Sentry Array!

Accessibility Improvements​

We talked about some accessibility improvement goals before the summer, and some of them are going into Fornax.

Accessibility Settings


When enabled, Mouse Side Button Mode allows Mouse 4 and Mouse 5 to toggle pause state and galactic/system views.

Page Up and Page Down will also now adjust the camera zoom level.

Other accessibility improvement projects are ongoing for future updates. I hope to have text to speech available in an Open Beta later on in the year for the 3.6 “Orion” update.

Golden Tiyanki Status​

The Caravansary Caravan Coalition will now reward their most loyal patrons with Golden Tiyanki status. Those who have purchased a sufficient number of Reliquaries will now be granted the honor of being able to purchase as many as they like, directly for credits, with no more cooldowns for their best customers.

Golden Tiyanki Status with the Caravaneers


Good luck, the Galatron is waiting!

(This should make a couple of related achievements significantly less painful to acquire. They do eventually get pretty expensive, however.)

More Achievements​

Continuing from last week, here are the rest of the new Species Pack achievements we're planning for Fornax.

Aquatics:
Holy Water

Holy Water - Drench a Fallen Empire’s holy world.

There Be Dragons

There Be Dragons - Have at least 13 dragons you own in your capital system.

Necroids:
With Great Power

With Great Power - As a Necrophage, do not invade any pre-ftl civilisations until you defeat the crisis OR have at least 10 observation stations around pre-ftl worlds.

Recent History

Recent History - As a Memorialist empire, have Galactic Memorials on five tomb worlds that did not start the game as tomb worlds.

Lithoids:
Room for Desert

Room for Desert - Consume another empire’s desert homeworld.

Can you Smell What the Lithoids are Cooking?

Can You Smell What the Lithoids are Cooking? - As a Lithoid empire, keep another Lithoid pop as Livestock or Process them.

Plantoids:
 Growing Like Weeds

Growing Like Weeds
- As a budding species that does not have the Clone Army origin, achieve a base organic pop assembly of at least 10/month on your capital.

Tend the Garden

Tend the Garden - Become the custodian of Wenkwort Artem, designating it a resort world with a Ranger Lodge and all original blockers present.

Humanoids:
Directive 67

Directive 67 - As a Clone Soldier empire, denounce a Spiritualist fallen empire as a crisis in the Galactic Community then destroy them, without blowing up their final planet.
(We're so mean to the Spiritualist Fallen Empire!)

Destroy the People of Earth!

Destroy the People of Earth! - As the Commonwealth of Man, destroy the United Nations of Earth with your ruler being a human with a symbiotic brainslug, without blowing up their final planet.

We also have one more being added to Synthetic Dawn:
Machine Supremacy

Machine Supremacy - Win the game as a machine uprising.

Now I’ll turn it over to Iggy for an update on Relics.

Relic Updates​

Hello everyone! I am Iggy and I am back to show you the fruit of our collaboration from back earlier in the summer. Firstly we reviewed some of the feedback about the untouched relics so please enjoy even more relics with enhanced flavor and fewer pain points.

Khan's Throne


The Khan’s Throne now grants you access to the Satrapy Subject Preset letting you extort fleet capacity from your subject.

Also the Defragmentor will now have a usage for non-robot empires granting 10% energy upkeep reduction to all jobs buildings and districts.

Head of Zarqlaan


And finally the Head of Zarqlan now has the spiritualist ethics attraction locked to the active, and the size of the fleet increases with activation, up to a max after 5 uses. Also due to popular demand the head will now spawn for the AI instead of the player 25% of the time and the AI will colonize holy worlds when they possess the relic.

Further Changes to Already Balanced Relics:
  • The Psionic Archive now allows Gestalt Empires to find Psionic Theory which in turn will grant them access to Zro Mining.
  • The Brood Queen will now grant a stacking empire modifier to swarm type weapons (Missiles and Strike Craft) for each use and will also spawn the Carrier variant on use.
  • The Pox Sample will increase the likelihood that you find Biological Technologies
  • The Omnicodex now gives +25 relation with non robot empires if you are a robot one.
  • The Reality Perforator active modifiers now last 2-5 years instead of 1-5 years

For the rest of the changes please see Dev Diary #259.

Next Week and PDXCon​

Next week is PDXCon at Münchenbryggeriet here in Stockholm, but we’ll still have a dev diary taking a peek at some of the content coming out with Fornax. If you come visit us at the convention, we’ll have Fornax up and running, a Stellaris Q&A Panel where we'll be taking questions from the audience, and I’m planning on holding a small workshop where we’ll reveal how our summer experiments have gone.

There are still a few tickets left if you're in the area.

See you next week!
 
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Megastructures in the Outliner​

One of the things going into Fornax is something we’ve wanted for a very long time on PC - a Megastructure section in the Outliner.

Megastructures in the Outliner



As shown here, the Megastructures section will list all megastructures within your territory, including ruined ones as well as Gateway Sites (but not completed gateways, as that would be too much clutter).

Never again will you lose track of where you left that Gateway Site or Ruined Sentry Array!
Have you also considered adding planet designation icons to the default planet listing in the Outliner, so we can easily see both planet climate and planet designation?

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Tend the Garden


Tend the Garden - Become the custodian of Wenkwort Artem, designating it a resort world with a Ranger Lodge and all original blockers present.
Wait, Ranger Lodge? Does that mean we have to be a vassal of an Environmentalist empire, and we need to count on the Environmentalist empire building a Ranger Lodge?
 
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Since you mention ringworlds can you make them decent again? Since the addition of orbital rings and their base production enhancing buildings ringworlds became pretty bad. Could you please look into that? Maybe ringworlds could always have access to a max level ring (they are themselves huge ring anyway) or add the base production to their jobs by default.

Currently ringworlds are this late game wonder that requires a huge amount of Tech, an ascension perk, large amounts of alloys and a long time to build, just to get someting that is now inferior to any regular planet when it comes to producing anything.

At least make them equal to planets if not better. But they definitely shouldn't be worse than planets.
 
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If gateway site were marked on the map like disabled gateways no one would miss them.
It's just adding one line to the foundation bypass=gateway...

relic steal should be possible for the defender, too.
ATM only the attacking side can steal a relic.
A trade option for relics would be nice:
e.g. I gene ascended and found Zoni, my human ally found a gene focused relic and psi ascended.
And integrating vassals should give you their relics, and some techs they had.
 
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Since you mention ringworlds can you make them decent again? Since the addition of orbital rings and their base production enhancing buildings ringworlds became pretty bad. Could you please look into that? Maybe ringworlds could always have access to a max level ring (they are themselves huge ring anyway) or add the base production to their jobs by default.

Currently ringworlds are this late game wonder that requires a huge amount of Tech, an ascension perk, large amounts of alloys and a long time to build, just to get someting that is now inferior to any regular planet when it comes to producing anything.

At least make them equal to planets if not better. But they definitely shouldn't be worse than planets.
Honestly, the origin could use some work as well.
 
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Since you mention ringworlds can you make them decent again? Since the addition of orbital rings and their base production enhancing buildings ringworlds became pretty bad. Could you please look into that? Maybe ringworlds could always have access to a max level ring (they are themselves huge ring anyway) or add the base production to their jobs by default.

Currently ringworlds are this late game wonder that requires a huge amount of Tech, an ascension perk, large amounts of alloys and a long time to build, just to get someting that is now inferior to any regular planet when it comes to producing anything.

At least make them equal to planets if not better. But they definitely shouldn't be worse than planets.
I know not what kind of ringworlds you are building, but specialized ringworlds outperform specialized size 25 planets easy... they do hurt you with ungodly upkeep though.
 
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If gateway site were marked on the map like disabled gateways no one would miss them.
It's just adding one line to the foundation bypass=gateway...

relic steal should be possible for the defender, too.
ATM only the attacking side can steal a relic.
A trade option for relics would be nice:
e.g. I gene ascended and found Zoni, my human ally found a gene focused relic and psi ascended.
And integrating vassals should give you their relics, and some techs they had.
... unless that system has 2 of the following:
  • starbase
  • archeological dig site
  • hyper-relay
  • megastructure
  • L-Gate
 
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Machine Supremacy


Machine Supremacy - Win the game as a machine uprising.
This would be cooler if we could set the machine uprising's species portrait, species name, empire flag, and empire name.

Right now this basically means playing as a completely random machine empire, which feels a bit weird.
 
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I know not what kind of ringworlds you are building, but specialized ringworlds outperform specialized size 25 planets easy... they do hurt you with ungodly upkeep though.
I don't know what ringworlds you are building. Any modifier you can get on a ringworld you can get on planets as well. Except the base resource production which is multiplied by all your production modifiers. Pops on planets are far far more efficient than pops on ringworlds. The only exception is tech, because there is no orbital ring building that improves tech.
 
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