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Stellaris Dev Diary #161 - Development Update

Hello everyone!

For this week’s dev diary we chose to switch the order of a couple of dev diaries to be able to give you some updates earlier rather than later.

The Stellaris brand has understandably been under more scrutiny than usual for the last few months, and we want to address situations related to work-in-progress art in Federations. As an example, we had some UI design mockups (shown during PDXCon) that contained placeholder art. We want to make clear this is not how the game will appear in its final version.

Moving on to Federations: During PDXCON 2019 we said that we would give more information on the expansion later during the year – and today we want to share some news that Federations is targeted for release in early 2020. Although we understand that some of you might be disappointed that Federations will not be released in December, we want you to know that we are taking more time to make sure that the next update is going to be amazing.

In addition, to give us the best chance of improving some of the pain points you’ve shared with us, we have assigned some of our team members to focus solely on trying to improve performance and AI. It is very important to us that 2.6 does not compound any of the current issues with the game, and that we can take the time we need to address some of the issues remaining from 2.2. It’s important to remember, however, that working on these kinds of issues is not a sprint, but a marathon – it's something that is constantly being worked on over longer periods of time.

If you want to read more about performance, and how we work to maintain it over time, we shared some more information on this topic in Dev Diary #149.

While we have been unable to give concrete information or specifics related to these issues, we can say that it is very important to us. With that said, it's important for us that you know that your feedback is not being ignored, even if we have no news to share.

We want to thank you for being such a dedicated community and helping us by providing feedback and reporting issues with the game. We appreciate this to no end and encourage you to continue voicing your thoughts to us.

From the beginning of next year, we’ll be doing a series of dev diaries dedicated entirely to answering questions related to specific topics each week. The schedule for those dev diaries will be released later in December when we’ll summarize and round up the year.

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That is it for this week! Dev diaries will resume their regular schedule, and as promised last week, next week we will be talking about some of the new things affecting diplomacy, such as Envoys.

P.S:
Since this dev diary had no pictures I felt it was necessary to add something, so here's a picture of the premade Lithoid-empire that some of you have been asking us to add to the Lithoids Species Pack! (Will also be updated with 2.6)

upload_2019-11-21_15-28-57.png
 
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Hello everyone!

For this week’s dev diary we chose to switch the order of a couple of dev diaries to be able to give you some updates earlier rather than later.

The Stellaris brand has understandably been under more scrutiny than usual for the last few months, and we want to address situations related to work-in-progress art in Federations. As an example, we had some UI design mockups (shown during PDXCon) that contained placeholder art. We want to make clear this is not how the game will appear in its final version.

Moving on to Federations: During PDXCON 2019 we said that we would give more information on the expansion later during the year – and today we want to share some news that Federations is targeted for release in early 2020. Although we understand that some of you might be disappointed that Federations will not be released in December, we want you to know that we are taking more time to make sure that the next update is going to be amazing.

In addition, to give us the best chance of improving some of the pain points you’ve shared with us, we have assigned some of our team members to focus solely on trying to improve performance and AI. It is very important to us that 2.6 does not compound any of the current issues with the game, and that we can take the time we need to address some of the issues remaining from 2.2. It’s important to remember, however, that working on these kinds of issues is not a sprint, but a marathon – it's something that is constantly being worked on over longer periods of time.

If you want to read more about performance, and how we work to maintain it over time, we shared some more information on this topic in Dev Diary #149.

While we have been unable to give concrete information or specifics related to these issues, we can say that it is very important to us. With that said, it's important for us that you know that your feedback is not being ignored, even if we have no news to share.

We want to thank you for being such a dedicated community and helping us by providing feedback and reporting issues with the game. We appreciate this to no end and encourage you to continue voicing your thoughts to us.

From the beginning of next year, we’ll be doing a series of dev diaries dedicated entirely to answering questions related to specific topics each week. The schedule for those dev diaries will be released later in December when we’ll summarize and round up the year.

---

That is it for this week! Dev diaries will resume their regular schedule, and as promised last week, next week we will be talking about some of the new things affecting diplomacy, such as Envoys.

P.S:
Since this dev diary had no pictures I felt it was necessary to add something, so here's a picture of the premade Lithoid-empire that some of you have been asking us to add to the Lithoids Species Pack! (Will also be updated with 2.6)
Really wanted some information on the free update. This seemed kind of redundant.

Edit: To clarify I'm pleased the Paradox want to take as long as it takes to meet a good standard of quality. I think it's unfortunate that it took a dev diary to say.
 
Nice, at least the last year error of early update release will not happen again.
 
Important things to remind the community of.
Too many people just assumed that the devs never communicate about bug fixing or just ignore the performance issues. Too many people assume that Paradox is just greedy and is ready to release DLCs for Christmas no matter what.

I'm glad you took the time to write this dev diary. I can only hope the community will be a bit more rational from now on.
 
In addition, i know many of you have mentioned jobs performance specifically, and I'd like to add we're investigating it.
 
In addition, to give us the best chance of improving some of the pain points you’ve shared with us, we have assigned some of our team members to focus solely on trying to improve performance and AI. It is very important to us that 2.6 does not compound any of the current issues with the game, and that we can take the time we need to address some of the issues remaining from 2.2.

Thank you, this is extremely appreciated!
 
Really wanted some information on the free update. This seemed kind of redundant.

With how vocal a part of the community was about a update on performance, "how they were ignored, there was no communication on that topic" and some hard feeling etc.

I hope that this should make these people feel better and stop the rampage of "but what about performance" posts in almost every thread.
 
Thanks for the general update, and a more concrete idea of release! And thank you (and the devs) for not rushing anything, I'm looking forward to this update more and more :)

As a question related to already revealed content: I'm curious, what's the role of the great Khan in the GC, and if they form into a nation, will it have temporary sanctions against them, or is that not planned yet? And will mid-game crisis' get a similar response to late-game crisis'?
 
I like the answer to feedback and saying that we are being heard, but on the same time I feel cheated that a dev diary was spent just to announce this and no news about Federations...
 
Personally I hope you'll be focusing on performance more than AI, given that there are already AI mods out there.

If I make an AI request though, would it be possible to expose the AI decision making on what systems to build outposts in, to script, rather than a couple defines? There are AI mods that make the AI deal with the resource economy decently, but in the end they still lag behind the human player, simply because the human is better at scouting and early expansion, focusing on settling new worlds asap.
 
I was getting more and more worried that the late 2019 release would be pursued... So... boy am I relieved to hear it's getting more time in the oven! Take all the time you need, we'll be here after the holidays just as surely as before :)
 
I like the answer to feedback and saying that we are being heard, but on the same time I feel cheated that a dev diary was spent just to announce this and no news about Federations...
We did get news that Federations is in 2020, no rushed pre-Christmas release. This alone is worth more than any tidbits about Envoys we could've gotten.
 
Really glad to hear you're taking the performance issues seriously. I do not plan on buying any more expansions until it is addressed.

I look forward to playing Federations once the late game is playable again.
 
Seems like all the rumble had it's result and big bosses decided not to force release of unfinished content this time. Nice to hear. Looks like i'm buying this dlc after all. :rolleyes:

Since this dev diary had no pictures I felt it was necessary to add something, so here's a picture of the premade Lithoid-empire that some of you have been asking us to add to the Lithoids Species Pack! (Will also be updated with 2.6)
Do ya plan to add unique set of buildings to lithoids?

In addition, i know many of you have mentioned jobs performance specifically, and I'd like to add we're investigating it.
Maybe automatic migration too? :rolleyes: