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Stellaris Dev Diary #39 - Back in Action

Hello Stellaris fans! I hope you're all having a lovely summer. The holy month of July is now over, and Paradox developers are slowly trickling back into the office, tanned and rested. Having just returned to work today myself, I just thought I would write a short dev diary to tell you briefly what is coming.

With the 1.1 "Clarke" and 1.2 "Asimov" patches released, we are now going to start working on 1.3, dubbed "Heinlein". We previously mentioned Heinlein in dev diary 33, but we've since changed the scope for it somewhat. Ever since we released the game, we've received some fantastic feedback from our players, far more than we felt that we were able to address in 1.1 and 1.2. As such, Heinlein will be a patch focusing on addressing community feedback and implementing community suggestions.

Mind you, the change in focus doesn't mean none of the things mentioned in the previous dev diary will show up, as we know several of them to be highly desired features. It just means we are going to adjust our plans to get some of the things we know that you want to you sooner than was previously planned. There will also be a small patch this week on Thursday, August 4th along with the release of the Plantoids Species Pack.

Next week's dev diary will have more details about Heinlein. Until then, enjoy the August sun (or just sit inside and play Stellaris, I won't judge).

 
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First of all, glad to have you back. Over the past month I have been actively looking through the workshop as well and found quite a few mods that add new aspects to the game while imho not straying too far from the feeling of the vanilla gameplay. I enjoy quite a few of those so I decided to do a short list of mods I think will enhance Stellaris and could be added to the base game either through patches or DLC.


Let’s start with the “simple” things, quality of life improvements:

There are a few small mods that should really make it into the base game imho and could save everyone a bit of hassle while also improving immersion a bit in some cases.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=701739734 "Color coded pop status icons": Self-explanatory, really. Just a great help overall.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=693310104 "Planetary Rally Points": Same.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=688576380 "Complete Colors": Everything that increases our options and is easy to implement is a must-have for me. It also solves the problem that sometimes borders aren’t clear enough due to empires with the same primary color bordering each other.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=708752579 "A Fine Selection of Quality Mapmodes, Probably": More mapmodes are always useful for a variety of reasons. I especially like the ethos mapmode.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=725151626 “Plentiful Mapmodes”: Not that plentiful yet, but being able to check which type of FTL travel they use saves a lot of time.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=684509976 “Remove stranded foreign stations”: Another small, self-explanatory thing that helps out immensely. It seems to be an often requested feature as well if we are going by the download numbers.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=701434781 “Hidden Hyperlanes” : I know Rikard mentioned on Twitter that not hiding hyperlanes was a conscious decision on the dev team’s part, but I’d appreciate the option to start a game in a fashion that is similar to this. I’d be overjoyed if this could be some sort of optional setting. Maybe there can be a special technology that reveals hyperlanes outside of your explored space for this optional start alone.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=687226658 "No Clustered Starts": Another possible additional starting option, the less clustered start mixes things up a bit both in SP and MP and I would welcome such an addition.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=682691478 "Cybrxkhan's Assortment of Namelists for Stellaris": I like the existing name lists, but let’s face it: There are not enough of them. Of course, adding namelists from other IPs is not an option but there is really no sound argument against adding some more human namelists to enhance roleplaying (Space China, here I come!) as well as community-created ones. Especially if there are as well crafted as this one, for example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=703759718 “Name List German Empire”
One of the many nice lists that serve as a good starting point imho.
You may argue that those are compatible anyway, but I’d like to see random AI empires use them regardless. I can understand if this is not high-priority, though.


Moving on, here are some small to middle sized mods which enhance only a single aspect of the game – but this in an imho natural way that feels very in line with vanilla gameplay. I will start with the smaller ones and work my way up:


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=712991814 "Special Systems": Exploring and the early game are the strong sides of Stellaris atm and this mod enhances both in a great way by providing both interesting, yet dangerous modifiers that affect combat and exploration. The technologies to combat said dangers are also great for immersion imho.


I will expand this post later today, but for now allow me to thank you once again for your continued updates of this game...Nvermind, got too busy this week to expand on it.

I am very interested in the new patch!
 
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Well, that's ominous.
 
Good to hear that you are back! Hope you all had nice holidays.
 
Prior to release paradox told us alot about the importance of research ships and their ability to open up very nice research opportunities via anomalies/exploration.
I would like to see this actualy present ingame. Whatever you can loot from space creatures so far is useless, or even hurtfull.
I havent seen many or any blueprints from thouse research opportunities, and about 30-40 years in, you are not going to find anomalies anymore.
 
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Happy bug-hunting and patching.

Please add map button to toggle hyperlane grid on/off on galactic map. It messes up the nice map, especially if you use warp or wormholes but have researched the tech.
 
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Well, that's ominous.

Just to be clear, this does not mean we don't have plans beyond Heinlein - we absolutely do. Besides more patches (1.4 will be called 'Banks'), we also have plans for lots of content to expand and build on the game. I just can't talk about it yet. :)
 
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Are all the things originally planned for 1.3 still gonna make it? TBH i've been waiting for 1.3 to even start playing again as the game in its current state started to feel more and more bland.
 
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Since this game sold well and got good reviews, I believe it will see a large amount of expansions, much like EU4, unless sales in those somehow drop too much.
 
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Are there any plans to tweak the modified combat so that science ships that jump into a system with any hostiles can actually escape again? Because if not, I don't really see myself playing Stellaris again; the early game was already the least fun part without a total inability to explore before I manage to get my military built up.
 
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