See every monthly roundup: Stellaris Mod Roundups

The purpose of these roundups is to cast a spotlight on some mods that have caught my attention over the past month or so.

You can find all of the mods featured in this month’s roundup and others in my Steam Workshop Collection “Odin Gaming Mod Roundup“.

The avalanche of post-Banks mods has slowed slightly, but there are still some interesting concepts being pushed out by the community. This month also sees an exploration of some more well-established mods that haven’t yet been featured.

List of features this month:

Advanced Ship Behaviour Modules

Author: [REF] Issen

Workshop link

Advanced Ship Behaviour Modules improves ship combat manoeuvres by the introduction of additional ship combat computers. This adds a number of permutations so you can independently select bonuses (such as combat speed and evasiveness) and behaviour, such as artillery, flanking, hit and run, and charge.

This adds another level to fleet composition meta in Stellaris, something that is arguably in need of the injection of genius that this mod brings.

This is compatible with NSC, and there are a number of compatibility patches on the Workshop page, including a patch for use with ISB (featured below).

Automated Behaviour Adjustment

Authors: folk and twiedrich

Workshop link

Automated Behaviour Adjustment is compatible with all mods and add-ons and fixes ship behaviours across all of these mods and add-ons, including those that add new ship types. There is no user-facing interface or other in-game representation, it works seamlessly behind the scenes.

What the mod actually does is adjusts ship AI, including targeting, movement fluidity, and other behaviours. I love how elegant this mod is and how it targets an area of the vanilla game in so much need of attention. The fact that it’s compatible with everything is just the icing on the cake.

Enhanced Gene Modding

Author: ParasiteX

Workshop link

So you’ve finally genetically modified a select few of your human galactic civilisation to carry out your planetary invasions; strong, obedient, the perfect soldier. But what if you want them to look a bit meaner? Give them a more suitable name?

Enhanced Gene Modding is the answer here, allowing you to rename species, change their appearance, modify existing leaders and armies of the same sub-species, set new dominant species, and so on. All options that are most welcome in the genetic transcendence advancement line.

(This mod is so on-the-money that similar features are getting an official implementation in 1.8 Čapek.)

Gwen’s Subject Types

Author: GwenBlanketKnight

Workshop link

This is one of the more unique mods that I’ve encountered on the workshop and adds new subject types for all of your subjugation needs. Included are six more subject types (at the time of writing), expanding the total number of subject types to nine (including the vanilla Tributary, Vassal, and Protectorate).

Each new subject type has detailed behaviour; check out the Workshop page for more information.

This mod makes for a welcome injection of flavour to an otherwise overlooked component of the game in the Steam Workshop.

Improved Space Battles

Author: Ankain

Workshop link

Improved Space Battles (or ISB) stands as one of the most popular mods for Stellaris and likely doesn’t need much of an introduction, but for the uninitiated, it comprises a collection of five mods, although just one core mod:

The core component aims to speed up the early game, encourage strategic wars in the mid-game, and set up the end-game for massive battles with other empires and galactic invaders. There are also some modifications to the fleet AI to make large battles less of a mess.

The graphics component of the mod collection makes these battles look even prettier than they otherwise would be. The Doomsday Weapons & Ships component is a personal favourite of mine, with weapons capable of obliterating entire fleets, planets, and star systems.

If you use NSC, make sure to grab the NSC compatibility patch too.

Pirate Codex Government Type

Author: BrutishMrFish

Workshop link

This is another very creative mod that adds a pirate-themed government authority along with 46 unique civics. Some of the more interesting ones are:

Leviathan: Creates a controllable guardian dragon in your system at the start of the game, but decreases your monthly mineral gain by 65% and your monthly energy gain by 10%.

One Banner: Gives you control of all pirate fleets at the start of the game, changes your country type to a custom one that ignores empire borders and can survive without a planet, increases your fleet capacity by 500 and reduces your ship upkeep costs by 100% (you will have to pay for the first few months), but every other faction will hate you and you cannot form alliances

Spy Cabal – Gives you the option of assassinating enemy governors for influence or kidnapping and reprogramming them to work for you after your army takes control of a planet (does not work on sector governors); also gives you an edict that makes you kill your enemy’s ruler after you win a war against them.

If you’re a fan of the Ethic & Government Rebuild mod, this mod is unfortunately incompatible with it. (Ethic & Government Rebuild is unfortunately incompatible with a lot of mods due to the sweeping changes it makes to empire creation.)

Planetary Shields

Authors: Malthus and Space Core

Workshop link

This mod has a singular reason for existence, and a worthy one; to improve the next-to-useless vanilla planetary shield generator. The stats of the shield generator are improved, a tier two option is available for research, and it comes with the gorgeous graphics shown above.

Note that this is a stand-alone component from the More Events Mod – the two are not compatible!

Real Space

Author: Annatar

Workshop link

PayPal donation link

Real Space adds a touch of graphical diversity to the star systems in Stellaris, with more types of star, multiple star systems (binary, ternary, and more – oh my!), plus more planet skins. It also reduces the size of some celestial objects for a greater sense of realism. (This works well with Downscaled Ships.)

There are multiple patches available to combine this mod with other mods, including a patch for AlphaMod and a patch for Planetary Diversity (if you really want to expand the celestial body diversity).

Plentiful Traditions: Update

Author: Birdy

Workshop link

PayPal donation link

For the third month in a row, Plentiful Traditions continues to feature highly in the list of Stellaris players’ “must-have” mods, and for good reason: it continues to receive high-quality updates.

This month, the author has added another two tradition trees called “mysticism” – a spiritualist/pacifist/ecological tradition tree with unity benefits – and “syndicalism” – with benefits to the economy and fleet power.

Also included in the most recent update are new factions: the Mystics and the Miners!