Stellaris

I don't want to wait a month.

 

Just crash your car into something and wait it out in a coma

 

but then I might be waiting longer than a month.

 

but you'll be in a form of stasis, so it'll really feel like you go to sleep and then wake and everything you've been waiting for is already out!

 

Like a time machine. And i traveled to the future.

 

precisely, and it's only a few months so you won't even notice having gotten older, just need to shave like Rip van Wilder or something.

 

DD 64: Misc

Empire-wide Food
Probably one of the most hotly requested features since the release of the game, we've changed food in 1.5 so that it is no longer local to planets. Instead, all food produced by planets goes into a 'global' food stockpile, which is used to feed the entire empire. The maximum size of this stockpile depends on your Food Stockpiling policy, and once your food stockpile is full, any additional food produced is instead converted into faster Pop growth across the empire at a rate relative to the size of the population (so an excess of 5 food/month will produce much more growth in a 10 Pop empire than in a 100 Pop empire). Conversely, if the stockpile runs out and food growth is negative, the empire will suffer starvation, halting all Pop growth and applying increasingly severe happiness penalties for all biological Pops.


Terraforming Candidates
As explained in earlier dev diaries, one of the decisions taken early on when it comes to terraforming in Stellaris is to not have every planet be terraformable. This is both for practical reasons (a Stellaris galaxy can contain thousands upon thousands of planets, and having them all be inhabited would be completely unfeasible from a gameplay perspective) and thematic ones, as we want habitable worlds to feel rare and special. However, this means that one of the great staples of sci-fi - terraforming Mars - isn't possible in Stellaris. To resolve this, we've introduced a new type of anomaly called a 'Terraforming Candidate'. Sometimes when surveying Barren worlds, you will find ones that while they do not support life, could theoretically do so if you possess the right technology. Once you have unlocked the Climate Restoration technology, you will be able to terraform these worlds into habitable planets. Mars will always be a Terraforming Candidate, and you will be able to find randomly generated Terraforming Candidates when exploring the rest of the galaxy.


War Demand Costs
A frequent complaint about the mid and late game in Stellaris is that the warscore costs for taking planets simply do not scale well to the size of lategame wars. You can have a gigantic conflict involving dozens or hundreds of planets that results in only a few planets exchanging hands at the end. To address this, we've rebalanced war demands to still be quite expensive in the early game (when conquering a handful of planets is a significant increase in power) but added numerous ways to reduce the cost as the game progresses in the form of traditions and technologies, allowing for vast swathes of territory to change hands in late-game wars.


Stone Age Primitives
Having Stone Age primitives use a system of modifiers and tile blockers always felt a bit odd, owing to the fact that it is a legacy system designed before pre-sentients and later primitive civilizations were given proper Pops. For 1.5, we've reworked Stone Age civilizations to use the same systems as regular primitives, meaning they have Pops, can be studied and conquered using armies.


Picking Room Backgrounds
Another occasionally requested feature has been the ability to pick your own room background when designing your species, instead of having it automatically generated by your ethics. In 1.5, you will be able to select your room background in the Ruler customization screen. We've also added a new room background in a Hive Mind style.


Small, but needed changes and features.
"Global" food is definitely helpful as food-rich planets are now bit counterproductive after they are fully populated. With galactic food, these planets can greatly contribute to empire and allow other planets specialize more.
Wiz also mentioned in one of the streams that both federation and war mechanics are probably next ones on the list to receive major changes and tweaks. The war demand cost changes will still help a lot.

 

Most excited for the global food.

 

DD 65: Music

Utopia Music (Part of Utopia Expansion)
My name is Andreas Waldetoft and I am fortunate enough to be the senior music composer here at Paradox.

From the get go when we started discussing Utopia music and what it should be, we talked about having large scale music. What better way to get that kind of music then with a full live orchestra with synths added on top!.
But why stop there, we extended the brass section with more horns and more low brass. What we ended up with was a rather loud sounding ensemble to say the least.
In fact, we had to record the brass by themselves on a few tunes just because it was hard to hear all the other instruments as the brass leaked way to much in the other sections mics.

We had decided to go for the Budapest Film Orchestra as we had heard they had done a good job on quite a few games already and knew the drill.
This first piece I want to share is a song called “Towards Utopia”, this excerpt section is in the middle of this long tune.

(Music sample: Excerpt från “Towards Utopia”)



I always get impressed when going on these recording sessions, the musicians were really top class. They had to endure gut wrenching long breaths, really weird time signatures and really fast runs for extended periods of time. I was actually surprised at some difficult passages how they nailed it after just a few runthroughs. Thanks to this we actually had time to record some extra stuff which I had written in half a day or so before going to Budapest. This next tune I want to share is one of those bonus songs. I am extra pleased that we got to record this one because it is a lament to one of the greatest scientist Stellaris has ever produced!
The song is called “In Memory of M.R” and it was recorded in one take, 5 minutes before we had to pack up and end the recording session. The musicians had never seen the music sheets before and this is what happened.

(Music Sample: Youtube video of “In Memory of Mercedes Romero”)

I hope you guys will like the new music for Utopia and I can’t wait to do more music for Stellaris when I get time off from all the other games we are doing.

This is a list of the songs included in Utopia with a running time of 24 minutes and 30 seconds:
“A New Dawn”
“Towards Utopia”
“The Imperial Fleet”
“Cradle of the Galaxy”
“In Memory of M.R”

/Andreas


The Music Player (Free Feature)
Thank you Andreas! I also wanted to touch briefly on the Music Player. The Music Player is an in-game tool that allows you to browse the music tracks available in the game and pick specific tracks you want to listen to. It also allows you to set which tracks should be on your playlist, whether they should play sequentially or use random shuffle, and also lets you go back to previously played tracks and skip forward to the next track. In other words... it's a music player, exactly as it says on the tin.


Finally, I'll leave you with a cryptic little note: There's something special that's been added to the audio for Banks by none other than our Audio Director, Björn Iversen, himself. Keep your eyes peeled for it in the patch notes...


More music from Andreas (and Budabest Film Orchrestra) is always more than welcome. Definitely some Star Trek/Star Wars vibes in there.

 

2 weeks!

 

DD 66: Graphs and interface

Ship Coloring
Something that's hardly gone unnoticed in the screenshots and streams is that the ships in Banks look different than from before. We've mentioned wanting to make each empire's ships more distinct so that no two Fungoid empires would have the exact same ships. In Banks, your flag color will affect the coloring and lighting of your ships, as well as the color of the engine trails they leave. The exact way in which the coloring affects the ships depends heavily on the ship style you're using, but the overall effect should be that your empire's ships feel much more distinct and that it's easier to tell apart the ships of different empires at a glance.


Map Colors
Another tweak we've done to make empires more distinct is to add a bit more color variety on the map. Instead of each empire having the exact color shade of their flag, there is now a number of valid colors for each map color, so that two empires with the same blue flag will have at least slightly different shades of blue on the map. Who gets what shade is determined by the spawn order of the empires, so in most instances the player will get the 'original' flag color, and other empires with the same flag color will get other variants. While this change won't eliminate every case of border confusion (there's only so many distinct shades of light blue), it should at least help cut down on it.


Primitive Galaxy Map Icons
Another interface addition in Banks is the ability to see Primitive Civilizations on the galaxy map. Any system containing a Primitive Civilization you have discovered, either through surveying or acquiring star charts, will show up as a special icon in the galaxy map informing you of their presence in that particular system. If an Observation Post is constructed above that Primitive Civilization's planet, the icon will change to reflect this.


Details Mapmode
The last topic we're going to cover is how we've reworked the Details Mapmode in Banks. Or more specifically, how we've reworked the Details Mapmode when it's toggled off. Previously, having the Details Mapmode off would show you almost no information, while having it toggled on would show you everything. In Banks, having the Details Mapmode on works exactly the same way as before, showing you all information about system resources, colonizeable planets, anomalies, etc. Having it off, however, will now aim to show you all *important* information. What this means is that it will show you unexploited resources in your own and unclaimed systems, but hide resources that are either already being exploited by you or are inaccessible to you due to being inside another empire's borders. It will show you planets you are able to colonize, but hide planets that cannot be colonized, and so on. This should make for a better default mode that leaves your map cluttered without hiding important information you need to expand your empire.

Nothing special here. Good QOL changes.
Do like ship coloring very much. Always wanted blue "Gallente" fungoid ships.
Next week we'll get full patch notes for Banks and Utopia. Gonna be quite a read, me thinks.

 

Banks is the patch, which is free of course. Utopia will be the expansion part and cost around 20 Woolongs depending on your currency.
If you look through the DD's, "Paid Feature" marks features that are partly or fully Utopia specific. Megastructures and Ascension Perks beings most notable ones.

 

I prefer the same usually. The intention of megastructrues, habitats and perks was to help with this style of gameplay. And to give unfortunate smaller empires a bit better change at mid/late game.

 

I'm assuming the orbitals will help the small/medium empires far more than they would the large empires.

 

They are locked to size of 12 if memory serves and have their own set of buildings, geared towards energy cred and science production. They are treated as planets gameplay wise. Wiz said destruction of habs and megastructures will be looked into when they tweak warfare mechanics.

Habitats also require "Voidborn" ascension perk. It's a choice among lot of other useful perks. And you can gain unity only so fast.

To wrap it up, if you can colonize planets or don't mind grabbing some from other races/empires, habitats have less of a benefit, but are still useful if you have spare resources. But, for example, if you are playing pacifist empire with solid territory but no willingness to expand by force, habitats will be great way to grow in power.

 

this would be my problem, the game drains time like missing the bottom of your cup of cherry limeade. You sit down to start playing and 12 hours later you feel like you just started but your juice is gone and now you've got to face the fact that you may never get to come back to this empire