Interview with Paradox Interactive on 4X space exploration game, Stellaris

A: Out of all the species, which one is your favorite? Or portrait? I don’t know what to call them since they change all the time.

H: We have created a lot of portraits but I think it will have to be the Red Mushroom Man. I see you laughing, but he is a really beautiful character.

A: Of the 4 available ship hull sizes, are options endless for players to create their own ships?

H: Well, how they look can’t be changed that much, they have three sections, a front section, a mid section, and an aft section. They can be changed around, but there aren’t endless options to change the look of the ships. However, there is an enormous variation in what you equip them with, even if you can’t see it for free, with different weapon systems and such.

A: Can we bomb a civilization back to the stone age?

H: Yea, sort of. They won’t got back to the stone age but you can really destroy a planet with orbital bombardments.

A: Something I missed in Civilization V was vassal states and map sharing?

H: We've got it, absolutely. We have vassals, protectorate, and “sectors” which is a mix between a vassal and an administrative entity, a micromanagement alleviation. In Stellaris you will always have direct control over about five planets for the start to the end of the game. So the rest are under some sort of vassal control.

A: So politics are important to have an eye on?

H: Definitely! Internally you have different political parties, or factions, where population units group up politically and can cause a lot of problems for you if you don’t keep an eye on them.

A: You have to keep the people happy while ruling the galaxy?

H: There is a bit to keep an eye on internally, so a good tip is to enslave grumpy “pops” before they start causing trouble.

A: Great solution!

H: Classic.

A: If you conquer you get to name it, that is the rules?

H: Yes.

A: Will Stellaris come to consoles sometime in the future?

H: I’m not going to say “no,” it’s one of those things that depends on how the game is received and such.

A: Are these types of games considered “too complex” for consoles? There aren’t too many 4X games on them.

H: No. I see that as an opportunity to. I would like to announce it to consoles, but we have no plans for it, but it is not impossible at all. There is a chance

A: Have you managed to conquer the whole galaxy?

H: Well, I have played a fair bit, I got more than 800 hours in it, but I think that the biggest was somewhere between 400-500 stars.

A: Will the galaxy keep on growing or does it stop somewhere?

H: No, it doesn’t expand. If is finite and you see the whole map from the start but it is under “fog of war” so players don’t exactly know what and who lives among the various star systems.

A: How do you communicate with the different species? Do you just walk up to them and say “hello”?

H: No, it’s a bit different in Stellaris because the first time you encounter a new alien you don’t really know what they are, they get a classification and nothing more. They might just be called “The Bogies” or “The Screamers” or something and you have to research them. If it turns out to be another empire then the communications with them opens up and then you can start doing deals and such. Before you do that all aliens are pretty much the same. You can attack other empires before you make contact with them, they will always remember that, of course, if you were to do that. So you get some sweet initial hostilities that you would expect in a sci-fi world.

A: So it will be like in many other games, if you attack then they will remember for thousands of years and kill your women and children for it?

H: Yes, that’s roughly how it will go, “we can never trust you” and “you can never trust a Klingon”.

A: Will all the civilization you encounter be space travelers?

H: No, you can encounter those who are living in the middle ages or the stone age. You have an important choice on how you should act towards them. The different “ethics” you chose when you created you empire will affect this as well. If you are a pacifist or a xenophile, you can’t just invade and kill the poor people or enslave them, but if you play as a different type of empire then you can kill and enslave as much as you’d like. Pacifists for example usually builds observation posts, it's a bit like the Star Trek “Prime Directive” where you only observe the cultures that haven’t discovered space flight yet.

This also goes hand in hand with the replayability, I want the game to have different rules for the different ethics combinations you chose at the beginning.

A: How steep is the learning curve in Stellaris?

H:  It's looking good in Stellaris, that’s one of the good things with 4X games, everyone starts small and you get to learn the game while growing. It gives us the advantage to games like EU IV where you can start as an already big nation like the Holy Roman Empire and have a lot to take care off which can be very overwhelming, but here we can introduce the players to one feature at a time. You have rather few technologies and buildings at the beginning, like you usually do in these types of games, and that makes the learning curve much easier to get through.

A: Will the tech-tree be randomized every time as well?

H: The system we have is quite special and it is also connected to the game feeling new and fresh each time. It’s not a visual tree you can look at and see like “I want gamma lasers so I have to take this way”. You could say that it is like a card game or something similar where you draw three cards, technologies, from the deck and you choose one technology to do research on and the other two card goes back in the deck. But it’s not completely random, techs that are cheap, or fits your combination of ethics tends to float to the top of the deck. It is some kind of tech-tree, you can expect to get certain technologies in certain order but it is all depending on many factors, empire ethics, and what scientist is leading the science.

A: So the main scientist matters as well?

H: Yes, scientists has different traits, so if one scientist is good at “Rocketry” then things like “missile techs” tends to get pulled from the deck.

A: Will it be like in EU IV where you get to marry away people to create relations?

H: No, characters doesn’t have that role in Stellaris, it would be fun to maybe develop that at some point, but we don’t have it now.

A: Community mods, it that something you want to support?

H: Absolutely, modding is one of our cornerstones. We really expose the game to the mod community. We have a Mod Community Managers who takes requests from modders so we can add it to our games and make it easier for them.

I think people are already working on total conversion mods, and on this Monday the first Dev Diary about modding gets released. It will be in detail, like a modding guide so people can start making mods now.

A: Will the get released on Steam Workshop or do you have your own platform?

H: It will be on Steam Workshop and most likely on our site as well. And probably on other sites as well.

A: When playing Stellaris, will gamers be able to leave their computers or will the “one more turn” mentality kick in?

H: I think you’ll get sucked in once you start, we don’t have turns but the same feeling will be there.

A: You said that there won’t be turns, will time keep on ticking so you won’t have to press “end turn” all the time?

H: Exactly! It will be exactly like in EU IV with pausable real time with a normal speed with the option to slow it down or speed it up, you can also stop time completely to see what’s up, give orders, and such. That’s the format we make games in, and it works well in multiplayer as well, in our opinion.

A: What does the combat look like? Will it be in real time or simulated?

H: The combat is in real time, you see all your ships in your fleets, how they act during battle, how they are shooting and getting blown to bits. But you can’t give orders to individual ships, it’s not tactical combat.

A: You send them to battle and they will do their thing?

H: Yes, that’s how it works.

A: Is Stellaris playable already?

H: Absolutely, we are releasing it May 9, so it would be pretty sad if it wasn’t. We are just checking that everything is working the way it is supposed to work.

A: That was all the questions I had, it was great meeting you.

H: Likewise.

Well, that was a read and a half. It sure looks like Stellaris will be the game that puts Paradox on the map even for those who generally don’t play their games. It will be a complex game yet easy to understand.

On May 9 the world will get to see if they managed to create the sci-fi 4X games fans of the generation so desperately wants.

Oh, I also didn’t get any socks like I did when I visited Fatshark.