another great show, thanks.
@stellaris: i’m currently enjoying the ST: new horizons mod a lot!
feels like a remake of birth of the federation….especialy with the ST music mod active 🙂

Stellaris 2.2 was a buggy release as hell… but it is also so underrated on steam! . Paradox devs are doing their job fixing things. Now I am enjoying quite a lot the new economic and pop systems. Very deep and fun. Well, true is I don’t mind to have to micromanage my planets, but maybe some QoL improvements would help. Only playing games like Distant Worlds or Space empires IV give me this awesome feeling. BTW, I am waiting for your review about it… Altough I guess Nate is not the biggest fanboy of Stellaris. Greetings, good episode!

What you said about the stellaris into the future part was completely wrong, the majority of the stuff mentioned there is new and is not in the game in any actual form in any way right now. I will copy that section and paste it below and when something is new accomapny it by a <- arrow and an explanation as to why it is new, so you can understand more sufficiently.
Future goals (in no particular order):
Pop growth: Look into how immigration/emigration works, try to make base growth across multiple planets less powerful, make habitability matter more again
Sectors & automation: Allow players to nudge which sectors planets belong to, reduce micromanagement by improving sector management tools
Backgrounds: Split up some civics into backgrounds, and add more backgrounds. <- these are new, a new type of thing called backgrounds which has a big impact on your empire/how your empire works. No it isn't just a background on the contact screen you silly person. Eg its probably something like "you started as a lost colony" "you are spaceborne" etc. all which would presumably have huge impacts on gameplay.
Civic flavour: Spend more time on making the civics feel more unique and fun
Institutions: Define which institutions make up your empire’s internal departments (such as Diplomatic Corps, Xenology Bureau etc.), and their funding, size and power. <– this is also completely new, and looks awesome. Empires DO NOT have internal departments in any way right now.
Espionage: Intel to determine how much you know about another empire, spy actions, cloaking, sabotage & general mischief. <- there is no espionage in the game at all so this is also new
Religion & Cults: Similar to factions, cults could appear in your empire during certain circumstances. Spiritualist empires would most likely have “imperial” cults. Worship of powerful entities etc. <- there is no actual religion and cults in the game, aside from as flavor for one civic and 1 government type, these "cults and religions" are actual cults and actual religions this is completely new, a new type of some kind of religion system.
Archaeology: Explore the ruins of ancient civilizations <- also completely new
Subject contracts: Allow overlords to better customize what type of subjects they have, tribute levels, benefits to subject etc. <- also new these do not exist in any way in the game, all we have are a few types of subjects, we cannot customize them in anyway.
Federation depth: Allow federations to level up, have different election types, taxes etc. <- federations right now do not really have any customization this seeks to remedy it by allowing for in-depth federation management which doesnt currently exist in the game
Galactic Council: Create a sort of a ‘space UN’ with galactic politics and diplomacy <- also completely entirely new, we have no space UN right now or anything close to that.
Primitives: Allow for more interactions with primitive pre-FTL species