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This is the sixth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Stellaris. See the previous reviews here:
Stellaris: Paradox Among the Stars
Leviathans: There Be Dragons Here!
Utopia: No Place Among the Stars
Synthetic Dawn: Synthetic Intelligence
Apocalypse: Colossal Expansion

After the major changes of patch 2.0, Stellaris development went back to a smaller story pack, Distant Stars, which was announced on April 23, 2018, and released, along with patch 2.1, on May 22.

Anamolous

Anomalies were reworked for the patch. They always had a difficulty level, but previously they had been part of a success/fail mechanic that just had not added any fun to the events. Now, there are still some anomalies that can fail, but that usually kicks off an alternate event.

The main thing is that levels now determine is how long it takes to research an anomaly. If a scientist is of the same level as the anomaly, it will take 120 days to investigate (various empire-wide modifiers can change this; notably the discovery tradition will speed it up by 20%), while being lower level than the anomaly will cause the times to get longer. The display will warn you if the scientist is more than a level below. The absolute worst case would be a level 1 scientist working on a level 10 anomaly (which are thankfully rare), which would take 5760 days (16 years).

Gated Community

The main feature of Distant Stars is a new kind of gate. Like the regular gates, they are large artificial structures that can take ships to far-off systems… once they’re made operational again.

In fact, they are gates as we’ve seen before, however the ancient builders heavily modified these, and they will not activate nor work with the normal gateway network (nor can new ones be built). These L-Gates take a long-form investigation to open akin to researching precursor species. An empire needs to gain 7 insights to be able to get a project to open the gates. These show up in various ways, including a repeating technology. Once all seven insights are achieved, there’s a special project to bring them back on-line again.

But one might wonder why they were closed in the first place….

Extras

And there are a few of other additions to the game with the expansion, including forty-three new anomalies, and four new unique monsters akin to what Leviathans introduced.

A few special species traits were added for use with the outcome of certain events. They only come from the events, so you cannot take them at species creation, or by modifying a species during the game.

Conclusion

This is a smaller, focused expansion, and it is surprising how few later features got “hooks” in this one (i.e., no new origins, relics, etc.). With much of the content being new anomalies, I am reminded of the Children of Abraham expansion for Crusader Kings II, which had surprising depths in the number of new events included.

The main feature is good, and has a random result each game. However, there’s a very limited set of options for it (four), including a mid-game crisis. Once you know what to expect, it loses a lot of appeal, because any of the results are fairly limited.

That said, I am always happy to see more anomalies, and the various large creatures are worthwhile as well. This is not a top pick for an expansion for me, but it is well worth getting just for the extra general content to help round out the game.