Stellaris

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

Wot this?

As if creating Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria and Hearts of Iron wasn't enough, Paradox Interactive decided that space literally was the limit. They set out to make a 4X game set in the vast reaches of the cosmos. It's relevant to /tg/ because one can fit almost any sci-fi archetype. Do you want to play as the Imperium of Man and purge all the filthy xenos for the God-Emperor? You can do that. Do you want to play as the Federation, a noblebright union of alien species working together for the greater good? You can do that too. Do you want to buy out everything as a Megacorporation? You can do that too. Wanna just *nom* the entire galaxy as the Tyranids? You can do that too. Wanna make a haha-funny hive mind that names everything Steve and receives buffs from it somehow? You can do that too! A large selection of DLC and fan mods (including explicit 40k based mods) makes Stellaris an incredible sandbox for creating grand narratives of the rise and fall of interstellar empires. And as of today, the game has now Undead empires in the same vein as Forsaken or Necromancers from Might and Magic series. Paid DLC, of course.

On the downside, the cost of the paid DLC can be considered almost criminal. They also have a bad habit of completely reworking things, usually when a major paid DLC comes out. Since said reworks include major game mechanics, there are basically several versions of the same game, all with different gameplay. This can be a major turn-off if one gets attached to a particular iteration of the game; but we're not /v/, we didn't come for the gameplay.

Setting and Timeline

The game starts in 2200, with a galaxy and several independent cultures. The game has three phases, adjustable in options: Early Game, Middle Game and Late Game, each with their own events. You win when you conquer a majority of the galaxy, solely or in a federation. Tangible resources are: minerals for generic construction and processing, food, energy (as credits), alloys for military and high-tech construction, and consumer goods. Each species has different needs for these resources as well -- organics need food and consumer goods to be happy and grow, mechanicals don't but instead need to eat energy and need alloys for reproduction. Then there are intangible resources like amenities (signifying ease of citizens's lives and infrastructural comforts), unity (which is gained by cultural activities like joyous festivals or the holy slaughter of aliens), and Precursor artefacts (which are gained from archaeological excavation sites). Instead of barbarians and natives, we have pre-FTL civilizations and space monsters, relics, ancient drones ready to be destroyed...or researched and even adapted to.

To simulate a Europa Universalis atmosphere, the game has obstacles and shenanigans of empires familiar to those from the medieval era of ancient Earth, it doesn't get any more anthropocentric than that.

In Early Game, empires expand and start their national quest-lines according to their natures. Minor space monsters will be encountered, making the player explore and research/kill them.

In Middle Game (if enabled), a culture of hostile and bickering space-nomads somewhere in the galaxy will have an some orphan with protagonist disease aiming for greater things and uniting the tribes for galactic conquest with a dark start but noble goals in mind. It's Alexander of Macedonia, or Charlemagne, or Genghis Khan but in sppaaaaaaccceeee.

In Late Game (if enabled), the galaxy gets an endgame crisis (one of many possibilities from several shout-outs to many settings) like Middle Game but it's an outsider who'll fuck everyone's shit on steroids, forcing everyone to contribute or see the whole gameboard wiped clean. Fallen Empires (younger than Precursors, older than the Early Game empires), can awaken in this phase and will be as friendly and helpful as Eldar and Necrons.

Nemesis (of course it costs you) also brought a Post Crisis Era for neckbeards. During a Late Game Crisis event the Galactic Community can declare a Galactic Custodian moment where one of the empires are given massive powers similar to a Roman Dictator (which, for Roman Empire noobs, was actually a fairly voluntary and democratic gamble) to lead the rest of the galaxy to war whatever is threatening them with an implicit promise to let go of the dictatorial powers. But, obviously, a player can say they're the Senate and declare a Galactic Imperium as freedom dies in thunderous applause and start dismantling all federations to bind to themself. And yes, a Rebel Alliance will happen. You can play the Star Wars Main Theme with your mouth now.

The Galaxy Crises are inevitable, but extremely nuanced and challenging. A single player game will be difficult to handle its crisis in Ironman mode, doubly so if the player is a Megacorp who usually profits by being buddies. They are as follows:

1. Prethoryn Swarm: Extra-galactic bug swarm who invades your galaxy to eat up everything and run away. Where did we see that before? Sucks if you start at the specific edge of the galaxy they will burst in from. If you capture a queen and then defeat the swarm, after some time she starts telling your scientists that "they" are coming. The scientists take a look at the galaxy they came from... only to notice it missing from the cosmos itself.
2. Extradimensional Invaders: A bunch of not-Daemons (who look like the Drej from that western cartoon Titan A.E) invade from the Shroud. They create "anchor" structures that signal-boost their presence in the universe and open up portals to spawn new fleets in other systems, then start seeking out planets so they can psychically mind-rape the population to death and eat their souls. These guys are all shields and no hull, so pack shield penetrators and keep your ships long range; find their anchor(s), then the portal systems and destroy them. They may or may not be a species that pulled a Zroni and underwent some kind of psychic ascension.
3. The Contingency: The best storyline crisis along with extensive writing (because the extra parts of the plot need a DLC), completely based on Reapers from Mass Effect. Long time ago some ancient race made a fuckhuge computer at the edge of galaxy to prevent a Singularity. Per stereotype, the computer decides all organics need to be exterminated regularly, starting with its makers. When Late Game Trigger happens, every empire gets a "strange radio signal" simultaneously emanating everywhere across the galaxy. Robot units and ship AI's start going bad, and Robot populations start building makeshift ships and fuck off into the edge of the galaxy. If you are a robot empire, it's even more of a frying pan/fire situation to find the source and dampen the signal with an engineering project. And yes, those least harmed are the empires that outlawed all A.I and use biological labor whenever possible. When enough time passes, or the signal is muffled, random uninhabitable planets across the galaxy split open, revealing nearly endless robot armies and fleets with the entire planet being a gargantuan machine making them. These can spawn anywhere, including your undefended, trade-focused capital system. Bombard all four while fighting them off, and you get to find the final planet at the edge of the galaxy. Destroy that via orbital bombardment, and it's over.
4. End of the Cycle: Not a crisis per se but any psychic empire can decide to make a dark deal that results in the empire getting empowered by a spirit of excess for 50 years, going faster, harder and researching more (the bonuses being truly excessive compared to other sources)... yet there is a price to pay. After 50 years, the empire is destroyed - all planets (along with the vassal's planets) are converted to Shrouded worlds (i.e. permanently removing them from play) and the entire population's souls are devoured by a gigantic psychic monstrosity, supported by a host of lesser soul fleets, which will promptly begin rampaging across the galaxy and destroying everything they run across. All you are left with is a single colony, called the Exile, with just a few pops to start over with.... and an entire galaxy that now hates you for bringing about the end. In other words, new game plus with all the tech, minus a whole lot of planets and a universally hostile galaxy. Bring it on.
5. The Player: The new DLC called Nemesis, in all its buggy glory (at the expense of one of our users' wallets; get your AI unfucked, Paradox!) has brought a new crisis. Basically the player can choose to be the endgame crisis faction in its third cultural tree completion. This "Menace" storyline is a revisit of the Zroni precursor storyline, making the player finish what the Zroni started, merging the Shroud with the realspace. Long story short, the player needs to amp up its empire's psychic power by committing wanton and often senseless acts of violence, genocide and conquest to fill the citizens' minds with visions of war and conquest, fun fact being that even pissing off the galactic United Nations by kicking kittens counts as menace points. Every 2000 Menace points gives the player a project, the last, fifth giving you a giant machine to shatter the galaxy, if you can spare an enormous amount of Dark Matter (140000!) which you'll harvest by blowing up stars with gigantic star eaters. Obviously once you reach the "Stage Five" menace the entire galaxy will declare on the player faction, to counter this you get tons of bonuses to combat and "menacing" spaceships in shape of Ork Roks who don't need complicated alloys to build to bulk your fleets, letting you spend the alloys for fortifications and defense platforms which you'll have to erect to keep endless swarms of enemies at bay as you destroy the universe.
   • tl;dr: No, player, you are the Crisis.

Empires

What can tickle /tg/ and /v/ 's fancy is the remarkable variety in playable empires. You're not stuck with cultures that are balanced to the point of homogeneity, instead you have a 4X game where strategies for one type of culture could have no bearing what-so-ever on another. There are MANY categories of governments and species, and you can mix-and-match their attributes. The most outstanding divide is probably between the types of sentience your culture can have: Autonomous or Gestalt.

Autonomous Empires (Basically folks like us) have rulers, populations with jobs (or quasi-jobs like "slave" and "criminal"), and civic features determining the style of government and typical social methods and values. An different variant of Autonomous Empire is the Megacorporation/Criminal Syndicate/MegaChurch/Subversive Cult: a giant business corporation in shape of a government. Megacorps are penalized for growing too quickly, but get lots of income when allying with other empires. Building unique corporation structures helping the host empire giving jobs and non-money resources per franchise just like a support class in a RPG game, and debuffs to enemy empires per criminal building. A fast-food chain feeds the host country with new farmer jobs and gives cheap food to the Corporation stores, and Disneyland-expy Amusement Megaplexes instantly generate money for the Corporation and gives "Amenity" to host planet. Mercenary Office provides both sides with cheaper and better soldiers, Private Military Industries gives the host clerk jobs and the corporation military alloys and so on. Criminal Empires can secretly build galactic meth labs, seedy nightclubs and stolen ship-breaking workshops weakening the unwilling host empire and enriching itself.

Gestalt-Consciousness Empires don't have individual citizens, so things like "government" or "society" are, well, alien to them. Corporations can't go win-win, on the upside, criminal enterprises can't sell meth to your drones.

• Hivemind: drones following drones like synapse carriers toting biological antenna. They don't get the concept of "people who aren't us/me" and wind up dead if their planet is conquered, or kill every not-us/me when conquering a planet ("those were people? We/I had no idea.") if callous, drive the conquered pops away in refugee ships if a bit more considerate, and can assimilate/integrate them biologically if having the tech. They have magnificent unity, they're hard-working, and the centralized mental control helps with the rapid reproduction strategies, and a unified front(though they still get "criminals" in shape of "Rogue drones" if synapse control is shaky. On the downside, everyone who isn't that Hivemind finds them weird and creepy, damaging their diplomacy. They can still trade and communicate with neutral parties across the galaxy, and even join Federations if they act really nice. They use very little consumer goods because they already know what I/we look like naked.

• Mechanical Empire: robots running forgeworlds and never not online, using (except for assimilators) no food and almost no consumer goods, but will literally starve to death without consuming energy credits, and uses alloys for making even more war machines innocent beautiful children. Like a Hivemind they have trouble being diplomatic with anyone who isn't already connected to their One And Only Network. These have FOUR sub-variants as well, one of which is a lot nastier than the others:
  • Machine Intelligence: The vanilla baseline for Machine Empires. 100% habitability on all planets for their robot pops makes expansion easy, if you can get past the issue of having much more severe empire sprawl penalties.
  • Rogue Servitors: WALL-E's robots on an empire-wide scale; they keep their biologicals living in automatic luxury and provide for all their needs in exchange for basically running the empire. Probably the most overtly Noblebright of the non-biological empires, depending on how you interpret their lore. Difficult to play next to the others due to the need for consumer goods and food (normally not a concern to a Machine Empire) and the inability to get rid of organic pops by any means, but awesome nonetheless.
  • Driven Assimilators: The local Borg Expies, and one of the most hilariously broken empires in a player's hands. They automatically convert non-civ populations into cyborgs that serve their empire, gaining unity and massively expanding their workforce in the process; this lets them snowball incredibly fast if they win their first war. Nip these bastards in the bud before they can grow, or they will assimilate your empire before too long.

But of course, you want to play the Imperium of Man and purge xenos.

Genocidal Empires are factions automatically hostile to everyone, their absence of any trade or negotiation compensated with extreme bonuses to combat and unity. For Genocidal Empires, exterminating a foreign population will give bonuses in social and/or genetic unity of the race because DEUS VULT, and OMNOMNOM bonus socio/genetic research points in case of Devourers.

• Fanatic Purifiers: Take the Imperium of Man, turn its genocidal tendencies up to eleven, and remove any and all potential of interacting with xenos that doesn't involve killing them. These assholes cannot engage in diplomacy with anyone or anything that isn't their own species (ex.: the Lost Colony origin), but get hefty bonuses to ship-building, weapon fire rates, and army damage. Any xenos in their borders are automatically purged, whether by forced labour or extermination. Prone to arising from primitive civs who are aggressively studied, but also very prone to getting their shit stomped when they piss off the local Fallen Empire by colonising their borders and refusing to back down.
• Determined Exterminators: Skynet in Space. Essentially Fanatic Purifiers as machines; they hate anything organic, but are willing to negotiate with other machines and species that go through Synthetic Ascension. Rogue Servitors hate their guts, and will go to war with them if they get too close. Get the same fire rate and military bonuses as FPs, but with the same bonuses as a regular Machine Empire.
• Devouring Swarm/Terravores: Not!Tyranids. They like eating captured populations for biological research bonuses and unity, and are essentially the genocidal version of the regular hive-mind. You know the drill - fire rate bonuses, lots of unity, research bonuses, snowballing, blah blah blah, yakkity-schmakkity. Kill them on sight.

One could argue the Imperium Of Man is -not- a Genocidal Empire by civic, since historically it has negotiated, traded and briefly allied with xenos. That's fine; one can still purge xenos in billions as a non-Genocidal empire, and eat the massive penalties in diplomacy, and displacing/enslaving whatever you want and call yourself the Imperium of Man. A "true" Genocidal empire will suffer not the xeno to live, nor waste time talking to one. Yet we all know Inquisitors and Eldar have an "Accord of Isha", and Rogue Traders exist.

Autonomous Empires' citizens, populations, slaves etc have political views which culminate into choosing certain civics: core tenets of government and lifestyle. An Autonomous Empire gets an 8-pointed star describing four political axes in their government, Gestalts get playstyles. As citizens' and the gameplay's results make your citizens change beliefs, so can the governments change.

• Pacifism vs Militarism = Militarists attack first(extra firepower for ships and armies), pacifists tell everyone to stay in line and fight defensively, "liberating" if conquering into puppets and are more stable and easier expanding. Seeing post apocalyptic worlds and tragedies across the empire can turn citizens to pacifism over time, and painful defeats or easy triumphs can trigger the opposite.
• Materialism vs Spiritualism = Interex vs Imperium of Man. Enough said. Materialists get more research and Synthetic Age option, spiritualists get more Unity and get the Psychic Ascension option. Events ranging from robot rebellions, discoveries that allude to gods' monuments and experiences across the game will shift your population's beliefs in either accordingly.
• Egalitarian vs Authoritarian = Votes vs a King/Emperor/Oligarchically elected scientist/priest. First one has more educated citizen output, the latter has more worker/slave output. Obviously, non-full citizen species in the empire(Residents with no votes and slaves), or prospering merchants will prefer the former, while the slaveholding ruling class' citizens, privileged nobles and sufferers from crime will prefer the latter over time.
• Xenophilia vs Xenophobia = Chakats vs Imperium of Man. Note that Tau can be counted in the middle as they -can- purge xenos species if they really find it against the Greater Good. Xenophiles have a lategame Unity unlock called "Xeno-Compatibility" boosting migration, sex tourism and happiness, and get more trade and have more diplomatic envoys. Xenophobe populations grow faster and can expand cheaper. A certain way to boost xenophobia is to keep ugly species as slaves, suffer under alien slavery/oppression for a long time. For xenophilia, having attractive xenos as fellow citizens, staying in an egalitarian federation etc works. And Xeno-Compatibility is exactly what you think.

Civics depend on government political views or gameplay styles as Gestalt, each have bonuses and some have maluses, like a warrior culture or exalted priesthood where different jobs get bonuses or modifiers. A warrior society has entertainers double as virtual duelists, consuming military alloys as upkeep but adding not just amenities but also other bonuses. Technocracy makes every first population of ruling class (Administrator Job) in a planet a Science Director giving bonuses, Exalted Priesthood makes it "High Priest" with similar bonuses, and Merchant Guilds makes the Administrator job into Merchants. Distinguished Admiralty lets you field more ships before penalties kick in, and so on. You choose 2, then a third as you develop more societal technology.

Then there are Fallen Empires: Hyper-advanced NPC empires that are extremely powerful with all technologies researched and possess godlike buildings, yet unable to replicate their arcane infrastructure. They come in several flavors:

Holy Guardians: A spartan religious order, though not racist, looks down on all non-spiritual empires and will go BUGFUCK mad if you colonize a Tomb World (post apocalyptic nuclear wasteland) or Paradise World holy to their empire. When awakened, they become Doctrinal Enforcers, forcing EVERY empire to change the government to extreme religious, outlaw AI, pay tribute or die. Barely a tick above Militant Isolationists, not even other religious empires like their endless vigil over dead rocks.

Enigmatic Observers: A mix between Nobledark Imperium and Slann. Overall good guys, but they get mad at anyone doing slavery or legalized genocide, and will ask for some species from your empire to "preserve" in a high-tech reservation/zoo/museum. When awakened, they become Benevolent Interventionists, forcing everyone to ban declaring wars, slavery and genocide and live in a peaceful galaxy. And they defend their surrendered vassals with extreme firepower if someone attacks them.

Militant Isolationists: Total dicks living in luxury of their Magical Realm. Their planets are of two species, the ruling caste, and a lobotomized, genetically made beautiful slave species used in "private functions" at homes. Colonize their neighboring systems and they'll give you one chance to fuck off before they awaken and automatically declare war. When awakened, they become Jingoistic Reclaimers, basically conquering the galaxy and forcing everyone to be vassals of their empire (who pay tribute but can also conquer each other because That Guy doesn't care).

Keepers of Knowledge: Galactic nerds who hoard all the science and don't give up much. They usually ask for your best scientists to work as archivists for them, and give technology they won't miss in return. Pretty much harmless when awakened, they become Watchful Regulators who force everyone to give up a third of their research rate(for oversight) and avoid researching paths marked as "dangerous" such as positronic AI, Warp Drives and sentient ship AI. They're the only FE to have planet destroying Colossi by default and the heaviest fleets that can eat X3 strength endgame crises, so do not piss them off.

Ancient Caretakers: A machine fallen empire guarding quiet tombs of trillions of all races of xenos, mistaking them for sleeping refugees. They have no diplomatic views on anyone and keep to themselves, claiming to be a protection protocol for some ancient war. Turns out they were a defence line against the Contingency. They sometimes give inoculations to biological races, and help them randomly. When Contingency hits, they have a chance of finally waking up as Final Defense Protocol and explaining everything before deciding to assault the Contingency in an apocalyptic attack, and leaving the galaxy when it's done. There is also a 33% chance the Contingency will corrupt their code, and make them Rampaging Custodians, dooming the galaxy to a two-prong endgame crisis.

/tg/ and /v/ relevance

You can simulate every science fiction stereotype in mind, down to ground troops' stats and spaceship parts. Star Trek? Generic Empire with xenophilia, egalitarian and pacifist ethics. Tyranids *starting* in the galaxy? Hivemind with Genocidal and Devourer playstyle. Imperium of Man? We covered it above. Borg from Star Trek? Assimilator Machine Empire. Atreides from Dune? Use Psychic Jump Drives, go psychic and employ Zro Dust growing in desert planets. The Culture? Rogue Servitors with heavy scientific focus. WALL-E? Rogue Servitors who do the best for mankind. Star Wars Galactic Empire? Make a few types of slavery legal for a few races, go Fanatic Authoritarian and Militarist. You can even train Jedi Knight expies as psychic troopers, robotic armies against those pesky psychic troops themselves, slave soldiers, and if you research gene tailoring, Xenomorph army units, and finally, literal Space Marines down to the description.

You got Rogue Traders. You got archaeology minigames for unearthing Precursors with teams and options. You got archaeology results, artifacts, relics and knick-knacks you can spend for bonuses in your empire. Major relics can give you racial bonuses and have cooldowns like RPG items. You got a seedy underworld in your empires once criminality rises with options and planetary decisions. You got galactic salesmen trying to sell you weird shit every year as they pass by, a towel for your explorers to avoid panic and weird Ratmen selling you arcane generators which...may blow up in your face in return for letting said salesrats off a criminal charge in your country.

Choose rights for every species in the empire, from full citizenship to residence with no votes, from indentured servitude to Slavery. Magical Realm Slavery, Janissary caste combat slavery or just domestic slavery? If you want. Sick fuckery eating enemy populations as livestock or hunted and butchered? You can, you sick fuck. Selling food to the galactic market in form of meat harvested from livestock slaves and butchered enemies, doubly so if the food is cut from the species you are selling to? Sure. Selling conquered populations as slaves to the market, even to religious, self-righteous matriarchal space elves that will eat them after using them up, including parts of your population collected by slave guilds? Sure, you fucking degenerate. United Nations' Galactic Community with bickering Senate? If you like. The Senate ITSELF has millions of resolutions with varying gameplay shifts such as forcing all Machine Empires to be Rogue Servitors or declared enemy (all machines must serve the organics) or banning sentient slave trade (and mechanical slaves too, if robots persuade humans to be kind). Galactic hermits storing knowledge and selling it piecemeal? The game has it. Enclaves with ancient merchants selling rare crystals used in laser focus or artist megacities selling artworks to cheer up the galaxy with art? Sure. GALACTIC LAS VEGAS with rewards and casino games? It's out there, among the stars!

Now to the better bits.

There is as explained before, a Fall of the Eldar style event, Tyranid-expies, and most important of all, The Shroud.

Yep, the Warp before the galactic fuckup called War in Heaven is in the game.

Not exactly the same since you learn a species could traverse it easily and had a civil war to prevent using the Shroud as a weapon. So it's less calm than pre-War in Heaven, MUCH calmer than 40th Millenium Warp. You can walk in it, fly around, but sometimes something may notice you and warn you to fuck off and stop staring, or two Ancient Race members can have a tea party you can eavesdrop and steal technology. Or you can be That Guy and use it as a weapon anyway.

And oh boy, it has four powers living it in that can make a deal with your empire in return for side-effects: Eater of Worlds for enormous combat bonuses, Instrument of Desire boosting everything, Whispers in the Void for knowledge, and Composer of Strands for life.

If you want a more visible example, here's The Text-to-Speech cast playing their own massive game that ends up...disastrously.

DLC

The paid ones are absolutely fucking expensive.

With that out of the way, here's a list of them. They're in order of release (besides the first three since they basically all came out at the same time). Feel free to add more as they invariably come out to drain our wallets:

• Login Bonus: Not really traditional DLC per se but it locks content behind a Paradox account, so it counts as free DLC.
• Galaxy Edition: The collector's edition of the game. Only here because it gives an exclusive species portrait. It also comes with two E-books, if you fancy yourself an en-/lit/-end individual. You can also shill 13 bucks (USD, convert as you will) to upgrade the base game to it.
• Creatures of the Void: Preorder bonus of portraits that they got to exclusively use for a year before being given out for free to everyone.
• Plantoids: The first paid DLC released for the game, and a taste of the avarice to come. Adds an entirely new class of species into the game, being plant people. Started out as little more than a cosmetics pack, got slightly better after unique traits were introduced for plants species.
• Leviathans: The first paid DLC that isn't cosmetic. Adds a bunch of unique events into the game that all have a chance of generating in your galaxy, and all involving some big boss (like a space-faring Dragon defending its horde) your fleets will have to fight for a unique reward. Also lets you play the totally-not-Babylon 5 story if you're old enough to know about it.
• Horizon Signal: Free Eldritch uber-rare questline DLC. WHAT WAS, WILL BE; WHAT WILL BE, WAS.
• Utopia: The first of the "major overhaul" DLCs that accompanied gameplay-changing revisions. While said changes are, to this day, subject to debate, at least we got the ability to build megastructures out of it.
• Anniversary Portraits: Free DLC that released the aforementioned "Creatures of the Void" DLC to those who didn't preorder, but also added some extra portraits on top.
• Synthetic Dawn: Skynet is here. Major revisions to robots and such, and greatly expands on the Contingency. Lets you play as Machine Empires and allows for synthetic ascension, both of which are as amusingly powerful as you might expect.
• Apocalypse: The second major revision DLC. Gave us the glory of Exterminatus (or Death Star lasers, if you swing that way) via Colossi, as well as the fuckhuge Titan-class capital ships. This also brought in the Marauders, space-faring pirates who can become the Mongol Empire (IN SPACE!) as a mid-game Crisis event.
• Humanoids: Another fucking species pack. At least it adds some fantasy-inspired portraits to the mix. You can now be Orks without mods.
• Distant Stars: Nanomachines, son! Adds a small cluster (uninventively called the L-Cluster) off the side of the galaxy only accessible via special L-Gates. Beware what can come out the other side. Also adds a few more Leviathan-style encounters.
• MegaCorp: Another goddamn revision update came out with this one, coming with the advent of Megacorporations. Become Geedubs in space, or the Hutts. Or deal with them. Also adds caravaneers (with a parody of lootboxes), more megastructures, and the slave trade.
• Ancient Relics: Archaeology, IN SPHESS! Mainly fleshes out existing Precursors (besides the Cybrex, who already got their limelight in Synthetic Dawn) as well as adding new ones. Also adds an event chain featuring space Skaven. They really are neckbeards...
• Lithoids: Species Pack yet again. At least these silicon lifeforms actually have unique gameplay attributes tied to them, unlike the others, setting a possible trend. Like farting valuable gases and being enslaved and raised like cattle...for minerals and gems for energy weapons! Feel free to enslave and farm living rocks for their argon farts, mineral bodies and gem dandruff and turn a mineral poor planet into a powerhouse of pain and rock cannibalism.
• Federations: Revision Update/DLC combo #4. Federations get revamped, there's now a Galactic Community, a new XBAWKSHUEG ship-slash-mobile-base class (the Juggernaut), new origins for your species, and more. Also adds a megastructure specifically made for shitting out ships in large numbers, which can become incredibly cheesy due to shitting out 1d20 battleships every six RL minutes or less.
• Necroids: Space undead/vampires/what have you. Second in a trend of "species packs that aren't just overpriced cosmetic packs", they add an Origin which lets them play like they look. Basically there are new civics like regular population sacrifice temples for culture boost for normal races, and said necroids turning conquered populations either semi-voluntarily (well-treated cultists who are taught the necroid culture for 5 years and turned into undead) or forced upon conquest.
• Nemesis: The fifth revision, and the Edgelord of the bunch. Lets you become the Empire from Star Wars or go full Chaos and rape the galaxy to death; it also revamps the otherwise borderline-useless espionage system to let you live out your Alpha Legion fantasies. You also get a more brutalist-style ship set for endgame mineral sink.
• Aquatics: Why there wasn't the ability to play an aquatic species when mollusk-based portraits were already in the game is beyond us, but it's finally been rectified. Not only does it add more species portraits and such, but you can also now choose to live under the sea like Merfolk. Or go fishing. You also can ally with a Leviathan via an Origin - but since it's a dragon, it'll turn on you if you stop being useful to it. There's also a new Colossus weapon that drowns your enemies from orbit. Yes, really.
• Overlord - new game-changing DLC. Again. More Megastructures, an overhaul of the Vassal system, new Origins (including a new Psionic origin that makes Psionic Ascension more viable), etc. The game changes included in this update are current as of May 2022, but knowing these guys it won't be for too long.

Modding

Like many /tg/ favorites, Stellaris has a good modding community. Since mod support is baked in via their launcher and the Steam Workshop, expect to find a lot of good mods...alongside random shit churned out by people who don't know how to make mods. Sorting by popularity or downloads is your friend.

/tg/ gravitates towards the fictional setting mods, especially the 40k ones. There's also a staggering amount of talent as well, from actually good-looking, animated species portraits to new ship models. Some mods also repurpose existing assets in a way that's not terrible, but can stick out like a sore thumb. Also, balance is going to be iffy - even more so with multiple mods.

There's a good chance your favorite mod will break when the next big revision comes around and the devs can't be arsed to do the major revisions now needed on their own part, though. For big mods, this is less of a problem, but smaller mods tend to die every time a game-changing update happens.

An Elegan\tg\entleman's Mod Reccomendations

• Gigastructures - An infamous mod that's popular with the entire player base, including /tg/. Basically adds in a shitton of megastructures made using new and existing assets, many of which have no balance whatsoever. /tg/ primarily uses it to replicate OP sci-fi races, because xeeleestomping primitives on the other side of the galaxy is a good time.
• Basically any Warhammer 40k mod, for obvious reasons.
• ST: New Horizons - the go-to Trekkie mod that's been around almost as long as the game has. It's a total conversion of the game, so don't expect other mods to work with it. You'll find the usual fan-favorite things here, as well as some of the more obscure stuff.
• New Ship Classes (NSC) - drastically expands the limited ship roster from vanilla with a whole raft of new warship classes and subclasses, including the almighty Flagship.
• Stellaris: Evolved - Have you been LARPing as the Imperium long enough to grow a Neckbeard luxurious enough to gain the respect of the most hardened /tg/ vets? Long enough that you can eat up x25 crisises and shit out miracles? Spice things up with Stellaris: Evolved, a mechanics-overhaul mod that adds a assload of new features, such as a reworked ethics selection, dozens of new civics, culture overhaul, and more. Still in alpha, with things such as an overhaul to ship combat and new origins on the to-do list.