Stellaris's next DLC adds starships which eat stars
New ways to win by destroying the galaxy
Stellaris, the scifi 4X stratey game, is getting a new major expansion. Stellaris Nemesis will add espionage tools that allow you to prevent endgame crises, and new "Menace" powers that let you "become the crisis". This involves new spaceships which are able to eat planets.
The announcement trailer above didn't mean much to me, a Stellaris rookie, but developers Paradox talked about the additions more in a new development diary.
"Become The Crisis" is a new ascension perk players can select after they've already unlocked two others, and it grants you access to "crisis perks" and "menace objectives". Committing evil deeds will grant you Menace and allow you to advance through Crisis levels, with new ships unlocked as rewards.
At the final level, "an Aetherophasic Engine Frame appears in your capital system," according to the dev diary. The frame requires a lot of dark matter to upgrade, and you get dark matter via Star-Eaters, a new type of starship. They eat stars. Gobbling stars will let you upgrade the Aetherophasic Engine and win the game by ending the galaxy.
This sounds an awful lot to me like Galactic Civilizations 2. Specifically it sounds like my friend Tom Francis's GalCiv 2 diary, Plan B, which appears to only be on the internet via this Pastebin copy someone made. If you've not read it, then you should know it's very good. It has 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.
There's no release date on the DLC, though it's up on Steam now.
How do we feel about Stellaris, these days? I've heard so many things about it being broken on release and fixed or not fixed or worse now or the best 4X game or the worst that I've lost track.