The Big update that was 2.0 has already shaken up one of my favorite games to play multiplayer in greatly but seems Paradox is bent on shaking things up even further.
The cryptically named “Niven update” aims to further solve some of the issues tackled by 2.0 while also fixing some problems that have persisted for a while now. You can read all about the update on the Paradox forums here. The short of it is, that firstly, the update changes the algorithm which generates hyperlanes, making them even more clustered. This is nice, because civilizations in Stellaris really benefit from being able to occupy a well-defined plot of galactic space and waging wars is much more intuitive with designated choke-points, just like it works in the Europa Universalis series. Meanwhile the devs assured us that galactic-level threats like the Aether Drake or the Enigmatic Fortress will not spawn in those points, which is great, because I can’t tell you how many times I had to restart the game because a Drake spawned in an awful location.
Additionaly, a long-overdue rework to the anomaly research system is coming. No longer will there be a failure chance for researching anomalies, instead it will take variable amount of time depending on the relative levels of the anomaly and the scientist researching it. Again this is great because I found myself save-scumming way too often and just reloading the game if I got a critical failure from an important anomaly.
There’s also some more stuff like multiple-star systems, again very cool, and all of it sounds great for multiplayer where reloading the game due to research failure or unlucky starting position is just not an option. I didn’t even manage to get any game to the point where I can use all those new cool planet-destroying toys and it seems I’ll be starting over again. Also, you guessed it, it will break the mods. Ah Paradox, never change.