Stellaris Next Update Will Move Away From Warfare

With Apocalypse done and gone, the team over at Paradox Development Studio is shifting gears away from war and into other aspects of Stellaris.

In the latest development diary, Martin "Wiz" Anward gives a (very) short rundown of post-Cherryh support. According to the game director, the team is "now going to be moving on to other, non-war related priorities for future updates, expansions and story packs".

Among the planned features that have absolutely no ETA nor order of priority, are:

Old Goals

A 'galactic community' with interstellar politics and a 'space UN'.
Deeper Federations that start out as loose alliances and can eventually be turned into single states through diplomatic manuevering.
More story events and reactive narratives that give a sense of an unfolding story as you play.
More interesting mechanics for pre-FTL civilizations.
'Living systems', making empire systems feel more alive and lived in

New Goals

Less micromanagement and more focus on interesting choices in regards to planets, the ability to grow planets beyond current fixed size.
Empire trade mechanics and trade agreements.
A galactic market where resources and strategic resources can be imported and exported.
Espionage and sabotage mechanics.
Improved galaxy/hyperlane generation with better placed systems and dangers.
More anomalies and unique systems to explore.

In the immediate future, however, the team is fully dedicated to fixing whatever went wrong with Cherryh and Apocalypse, including bugs, addressing balance/feature feedback, and working on quality of life and performance improvements. Wiz says they're maintaining a "running 2.0.2 beta patch" that will be continually updated every few days until they're happy with the state of the game.