Has anyone tried the DLC from the Stellaris Stories Pack?

No. The target workflow has been for a while now Custodian Patch -> Minor DLC -> Custodian Patch -> bigger expansion over the course of approximately a year. Custodian patches do general fixes/reworkings as well as adding features to older DLCs. The next one due in February will deal with the big issue of the Unity rework, although it might not be in the initial patch because it's slightly big.
Dev diaries hit the official forum every Thursday afternoon European time. At least in the runup to a patch/DLC they are usually weekly.

When Stellaris originally hit on GOG I was desperately looking for a distraction to work through some personal grief and Stellaris was a round peg for a round hole. Additionally, the launch discount on the existing older DLCs was pretty darn good so by the end of the weekend that included the promo time I pretty much had most/all of Stellaris up to that point. A side effect of that is that I don't have a good feeling for what vanilla Stellaris is.

My personal opinion is that the expansions for that price are probably the biggest deal.

The story packs are a bit more subtle in their content and according to the initial remark above I don't have a good feel especially regarding what Distant Stars adds. I wouldn't want to miss Synthetic Dawn though (play as a machine empire) and all the archeology in Ancient Relics is darn nice as well.

The species packs used to be just eye candy but since Lithoids (that means Lithoids, Necroids and especially Aquatics) they contain more and more mechanics to differentiate the different phenotypes. The Custodian patches have since also added smaller non-eye-candy additions to the older species packs.

The sequence in which I listed the different types of packs would be my priority if I had to rebuy them nowadays.

Edit: the Wiki I linked above is probably the best resource to do some personal digging for more details.

Edit 2: I just noticed that the story pack is cheaper than the species pack which is the inverse of what I had in my head when I wrote it. I flipped their sequence in my list since bang/buck works out a bit differently for me with the correct values.

Would be nice if these packs adjusted to what you already own.

Thanks for the info!

For completeness sake, I noticed a problem since when I initially wrote that and made modifications to post #34. See Edit 2 for details.

So many DLC's for just one game. That really is a "surprise". o.O

Thanks for the info !

I guess I should have got the whole kit and kaboodle via that special discount email, but it was bad timing for me, especially as I had some questions that were answered too slowly.

Hopefully that offer will get presented again. :)

I have half the expansions and stories packs. So deals arent useful to me at this point. Having said that, imagine both those packs are probably the worthwhile ones if you have got any of the DLC yet. Not sure how anyone can complain about either packs pricing tbh.

The current offer hasn't expired, it is valid until 5th March 2022, 4 PM UTC.

Do you have a link for the full game and all DLCs offer, discounted?

I get special price discount emails all the time, and I am yet to see the one again for the complete Stellaris collection.

The base game is currently free IF you have Amazon Prime subscription.
Some people have the game already so they are sharing their codes from Amazon Prime.

The one thread where they do that and you can get the base game is here: there are (at this moment) 11 such codes for Stellaris on giveaway. But first please read the rules listed in first post of that other thread.

And if you manage to get the base Stellaris game then all packs will start to be discounted for you.

EDIT: I've nominated you for one of Stellaris base game codes in the thread I linked. If you don't have Amazon Prime subscription and my nomination gets the accept then you should receive the game code from this giveaway.

and the mods, i'm currently running only with ASB ironman for the nice and flashy effects but once i have all those achievements i feel i need to have then i will add ASB normally and maybe dive deeper into the ones that expand on the naval combat