I did try to get it running but have not managed it, sorry

p.s, yes Paradox is hoping into bed with a new [pay to play] system and part of that change looks to be a kill all mods policy

I wish them luck and like playing most of their games but their forum support is worthless

Thanks for trying.

About paradox and steam, I think what's behind it is more ocmplicated as more dangerous.

From the vast number of mods and modders there, steam seems to have hit the right thing when opening the "workshop". People are willing to make mods which run ONLY at a play-to-pay-service without getting any pay or wage. This directly helps the monopolizing strategy of steam. Besides protection from trolls, probably also the reason why you can't post in a steam forum before you haven't spent at least 5 EUR. Don't allow any other platform, reseller next to you, don't cooperate but only exterminate.

What's surprising: Ususlly mods would be the primary concern and field of the game programers who usually don't like it. So steam offers workshop, forum and interfaces to install/sub a mod... and paradox seems to think this a good deal instead of: "Hey, we are making ourselves dependent on one single game distributor, is this wise?"

But it seems the time and age for it, may it be google, amazon, microsoft, steam or whatever, establishing a monopoly as the business strategy is back again: Welcome to the 21st century, greetings to the 19th and Marx (I always found it a bit ridiculous when Marx insisted that companies left alone strive and fight for monoploy).

Alright, I've installed GOG stellaris in addition to steam edition. Steam Stellaris got a bunch of mods installed, they all show up in Gog stellaris launcher. Not all of them are functional, it does appear that most mods are no longer supported.

The Mod Creation Tool is how I get mods to work. I just make New Mods based on the downloaded mods I want to use and copy the folders over to the new mod folder and they work fine after that. I don't use the old mods "insertname.mod" or descriptor file.

I have no reason why but this system works for me.

be aware that installing Gog & Steam Stellaris on the same system at the same time will make them fight... which ever one you installed last is what you are in fact playing

Well those mods are the same except the mod info file , easiest to fix is to make a new mod using the launcher and just copy the files into the folder

How long has it been since paradox released their useless, non-functional launcher, and they STILL haven't fixed it?

the fed dlc does live today so Paradox just changed everything [again] anyway