by Eladrin

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Happy holidays everyone!

Much of the Stellaris team has already taken off for a winter break, but it’s time for our annual retrospective on the year and thoughts about where we’re going next.

We had three major releases in 2023 and a Custodian release.

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We started the year by telling the story of how you got the stars, with 3.7 “Canis Minor” and the First Contact Story Pack. In this story pack, we focused heavily on narrative origins, each one rivaling Toxoid’s Knights of the Toxic God for the depth of content contained within them. Broken Shackles and Payback told an interlinked story of pre-FTL civilizations that suffered under the sinister Minamar Specialized Industries, while Fear of the Dark explored the Dark Forest theory and questioned whether it was a good idea to step into the void at all.

First Contact also brought cloaking into Stellaris, giving Science Ships some new versatility, and providing Frigates a new role as sneak attackers. “Canis Minor” brought Archaeotech additions to Ancient Relics.

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Our anniversary in May gave us the 3.8 “Gemini” update and the Galactic Paragons Mechanical Expansion. This release added the Council and greatly increased the influence of leaders in Stellaris. Whether you were grooming your own leaders to serve on the Council or finding Renowned and Paragon leaders, they were much more powerful and relevant than before.

The “Gemini” update also added experimental Cooperative gameplay – Stellaris is a complex game, and we’ve found that the best teachers are you, the players.

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The “Caelum” update In the autumn focused on improving a number of the old species packs and reworked habitats. We added the Enmity tradition tree to Humanoids along with some new traits, Void Hive and Selective Kinship civics to Lithoids, the Fruitful Partnership origin and Invasive Species trait to Plantoids, and Worker Cooperative and Mechromancy to MegaCorp and Necroids. A few new portraits came in as well, taking Plantoids from the second least played Species Class to the second most played the month after release.

Also, birds.
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And most recently, we released 3.10 “Pyxis” and the Astral Planes Narrative Expansion. “Pyxis” included the Leader Consolidation that finally got leaders in a state that we’re generally happy with them, and once the patch cycle was complete, gave us a fully customizable outliner. Astral Planes, meanwhile, is the largest Story focused expansion Stellaris has ever released. The Astral Rifts from Astral Planes have branching narratives with multiple endings, making each one several times the size of the linear Archaeology sites of the past, and there are over 30 of them in the pack.

I have some regrets that the release was tarnished by technical issues that we introduced, and we’ve made some internal changes to how the team will operate to reduce the chances of these sorts of things going wrong in the future.

I’m delighted with the respect and love that Abrakam Entertainment gave to our universe and lore. Astral Planes brings new insights to some old friends and enemies, greatly expanding on narrative questions that have been asked for years.

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We have a Technology Open Beta running until January 15th, 2024. Based on how that goes, it may or may not end up being rolled into the 3.11 “Eridanus” update planned for the first quarter of 2024. I’ve found that the data and feedback we get from the community during these to be invaluable, and I look forward to seeing everything we’ve compiled when we get back. Thank you for helping us make Stellaris a better game.

We spent a lot of this year doing incremental rebalancing of the leader system following the “Gemini” update, which took more Custodian resources than I liked. We’ve gotten a few things in from the list we posted in Dev Diary #314 like the new Outliner, but for 2024 we’ll likely try to focus the Custodians on that list of topics. “Eridanus” will largely be a stabilization update, with the Custodian team focusing on bugfixing, game balance, and general stability.

Looking back, we had a share of unexpected issues and problems, but I’m proud of how we’ve all navigated the year together. I’m looking forward to what we can bring you next year and beyond.

See you next year!​
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– Eladrin​
Stellaris Game Director ​

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Tofu, looking back at the year.
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