Hi, its Alfray once again and Id like to introduce you to our latest megastructure, the Deep Space Citadel. This three stage mid-game megastructure is a powerful defensive bastion and converts into a starbase upon completion, much like an orbital ring.
The three stages of the Deep Space Citadel Unlike orbital rings and regular starbases, Deep Space Citadels can be placed far more freely within a system, provided they arent too close to a gravity well (or each other). The Deep Space Citadel technology is a Tier 3 Military Theory technology which unlocks all three stages of the megastructure and an initial limit of one per system.
This system limit can be further increased by the Mega-Engineering, the Starlit Citadel origin and the Eternal Vigilance ascension perks.
Choosing to build a DSC opens another menu allowing you to select the design. Once a DSC design has been selected, youll be able to choose where in the system it can be placed, provided its within the systems main gravity well. This allows you to choose if you want to defend a choke point or a critical planet.
No, build an Arc Furnace on the molten world, not the DSC!
Defending the Sol-Alpha Centauri hyperlane breach point sounds like a good idea. As the Deep Space Citadel is upgraded from one stage to the next, it gains successively more L-slot turrets, hangar bays and defensive utilities. The final stage of the DSC also gains access to both a single XL-slot turret and an aura slot capable of equipping auras from both titans and juggernauts. Additionally, to compensate for the lack of module slots on the DSC, it has a special module slot in the ship designer capable of equipping most starbase auras and a few unique DSC auras.
Think of it as a giant SHOOT ME! sign.
Defensive countermeasures tailored to your enemy






As shown, each stage on the Deep Space Citadel is individually designable and saved as its own ship design. When building, upgrading or downgrading a Deep Space Citadel, youll be prompted to select the design the DSC should become.

The Art of the Deep Space Citadel

Hi! I'm Lloyd and I'm a concept artist on Biogenesis. I'm here to give you a look at how I designed the look of the deep space citadel and how the art team brought it to life. I was very excited to tackle this station. After working on bioships for a while, it was refreshing to have a chance to get back into some hard-surface design. I began by discussing with the team what we wanted the station to feel like, and what it should represent to our players. I came away with a simple mission - make Helms Deep in space. Here are my first sketches of the station. You can see I'm focusing a lot on fortress-like structures as well as shield shapes. Both of these are to enforce the idea that this station is a defensive bastion, a place of safety, protection, and strength.
Initial sketches of the deep space citadel. Artist: Lloyd Drake-Brockman We decided to go with something like option B. This design became more refined as I worked on it, and as it was fleshed out into a three-stage structure. Here you can see an early look at the 3D blockout for the concept art.
Early stages of the 3D concept. Artist: Lloyd Drake-Brockman Here, I had the idea to bring the shield motif back in the later stages, surrounding the station with shield-like arms that start as round shields in stage 2, but expand to be tower shields in stage 3. With the design locked in, I polished up the details into the final concept sheets. These sheets inform the rest of the art team how to make the asset. Our philosophy is that a concept should solve as many problems as possible, instead of leaving them for the 3D, texturing, and animation stages.
Stage 1 final concept art. Artist: Lloyd Drake-Brockman
Stage 2 final concept art. Artist: Lloyd Drake-Brockman
Stage 3 final concept art. Artist: Lloyd Drake-Brockman
Turrets final concept art. Artist: Lloyd Drake-Brockman You can also see the added details of the internal gravity torus, which would allow inhabitants to live comfortably even with a failure of artificial gravity systems, a massive reactor for power, and complex shielding systems. All of this is added to paint the picture of a steadfast, independent station, able to withstand punishing sieges. With the concepts done, the task moves on to the 3D team who model and texture the station.
Work in progress on the 3D model of the Deep Space Citadel Artist: Emma Quer The last stage of the DSC is animation. Some of the parts of the station were designed to move, and it's always so exciting for me to see an asset come to life in the game.


Animation of the Deep Space Citadel Artist: Mia Svensson That's it! That's how we brought the Deep Space Citadel to life for Biogenesis. Personally I thought this was one of the most fun assets to work on, and I hope you enjoy what weve made. We really poured our hearts into it!

New Origin: STARLIT CITADEL

Some empires are born into prosperity. Others arise under siege. CGInglis here, reporting from far beyond the walls to bring you a closer look at the Starlit Citadel Origin, our latest offering for those who prefer their games with a little bit of defiance and a whole lot of fortification!
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a massive orbital fortress. Long before their species turned its eyes to the stars, a mysterious wormhole lingered on the edge of their home system. From its depths came wave upon wave of aggressors in biological ships. Entire cities were flattened before the invaders were defeated. Then they returned. Again, and again. Faced with extinction, these beleaguered people placed their hope in the Deep Space Citadel, a towering bulwark bristling with defensive armaments, constructed not at the heart of their system, but precisely where the invaders emerge.
Hi there! Ill be your turret-encrusted server today. May I recommend the Mass Driver, served with a large side of Point-Defense Flak? Empires with this Origin begin the game with a fully operational Stage I Deep Space Citadel positioned at the breach. Their homeworld also features a unique building, the Citadel Uplink, which coordinates the empires defensive efforts. This Building supports a rare specialist role, the Skywatchers. Linked to the Citadel through advanced communication arrays and strategic uplinks, the Skywatchers provide a potent array of bonuses: increased planetary stability, bonus naval capacity across the empire, and spawning additional defense armies. Perhaps most significantly, their efforts amplify the effectiveness of all Deep Space Citadels, starbases, and defensive stations within the system.
All-seeing, ever-watchful, mildly overworked. Your homeworld, though (probably) rich in history, bears the scars of conflict. Marring the surface are the blasted remains of the last wave of invading bioships:
And I thought they smelled bad on the outside! This Origin also introduces a unique dynamic for multiplayer campaigns. If several players choose to be a Starlit Citadel empire, each will begin with their own perilous portal and their own Deep Space Citadel. As the campaign unfolds, these enigmatic wormholes are revealed to be more than isolated anomalies. Like spokes on a terrible wheel, they all lead to a single, central hub:
Who are these guys, and why are they so deeply unchill? The Starlit Citadel Origin invites players not only to withstand these threats, but also to uncover their source. Whichever empire reaches the hub system first will face the full force of the invaders. If you prevail, youll have the chance to fortify this keystone system and reshape the balance of power. Choose this origin if you enjoy a playstyle centered on defense, a narrative-driven mystery, and just a hint of betrayal among friends!

Next Week

Next week Iggy will be introducing us to the Fallen Hive Mind Empire, the Fallen Hive Mind Empire, the Fallen Hive Mind Empire, and the Wilderness origin.

[ 2025-04-17 11:00:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

In Stellaris: BioGenesis, step into the role of a master geneticist, sculpting the galaxy to your design with living ships, engineered ecosystems, and enhanced species. Forge new paths with unparalleled bioengineering tools to create a civilization that thrives on adaptability and evolution or exploit these tools to dominate the stars. BioGenesis is available for pre-order now! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3417840/Stellaris_BioGenesis/ [previewyoutube=pID5tLk1r70;full][/previewyoutube] The Stellaris: Season 09 Expansion Pass is your gateway to an entire year of cosmic evolution, psionic mysteries, and blazing ambition. Season 09 includes Biogenesis (coming May 5th), Shadows of the Shroud (Q3 2025), and the Infernals Species Pack (Q4 2025). Plus, get the exclusive Stargazer Species Portrait as an instant unlock! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3417870/Stellaris_Season_09__Expansion_Pass/ Learn more about Stellaris: Season 09: https://pdxint.at/4iQjW4R

[ 2025-04-11 13:11:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

by PDS_Iggy Good afternoon fellow organics! PDS_Iggy here with the latest evolutions to our organic forms. Way back when, in the summer of 2019 Eladrin (then a simple Game Designer) was left all alone in the office with the Lithoids DLC. Once people came back to the office they were greeted with the Lithoid traits! Since then Alfray Stryke further experimented with these phenotype-locked traits back in 3.1 Lem for Plantoids and Fungoids. Well, now we have reached the DLC that is all about genetics and organics, so of course we had to take this to the end game. For that reason I started to work on Phenotype Species Traits and that naturally led to the Evolutionary Predators Origin!

Phenotype Species Traits

In Snail society you dont really buy homes as much as rent sleeping nooks. In BioGenesis, weve added 16 new Species Traits for you to explore at game start. Each of these is locked to specific portrait classes or, as we will refer to them here, Phenotypes. At a minimum, each one should have at least 2 positive traits and 1 negative. As you can see above, these traits are shared between Phenotypes, similar to Fungoids and Plantoids. The intention of these traits was to make a Necroid Beacon of Liberty Subterranean playthrough feel different than a Reptilian one. Every choice in Stellaris should be an opportunity for mechanics and roleplay!
If the atmosphere is not at least 95% water, I will not leave the colony ship.
This habitat has been our home for 30 minutes. We will not be visiting the one a system over! Negative traits are really interesting to design as they set up puzzles for the player to get around. What can you forgo, and what are you willing to pay for that intelligent trait? Here we attempted to stay flavorful to your species while providing more interesting modifiers than just simple static upkeep ones. In addition, we have played it a bit looser with points cost here, introducing more 3-point traits that can really grant you the opportunity to craft the species that fits your fantasy.
Project Chimera is a go. If you have been following the recent developers streams we have been broadcasting you might have heard about the Mutation path of Genetic Ascension. Well, if you fully commit and go full mad scientist you can add these traits to any of your pops. Make your egg laying, winged humans and wonder why the aliens wont contact us.
No, I don't need a map! My genes tell me the gas station will be around the corner. A lot of portraits dont fit nicely into a single category, and for that, we have managed to make exceptions. So expect to see Egg-Laying platypi, Flying monkeys, Budding coral reefs, Shelled turtles, and more!

Evolutionary Predators

Now if you are like me, you played Crusader Kings 2 back in the day, got the cannibal trait, locked people with good genetic traits inside your castle, and ate them all to gain said traits. After that, you said, This is peak game design! ... Just me? Either way, I have wanted to bring that playstyle back to our much more grounded and reality-bound game, Stellaris, and with the addition of Phenotype Traits, we finally have enough goodies to go around!
Lithoids are crunchy. Welcome to the Evolutionary Predators Origin! This is an Origin with relatively few restrictions. As long as you are organic, you are free to play it! I worked hard to keep the language as neutral as possible. If you want to be a former hunter of the night, spreading fear across your entire planet, but now you have reformed and adopted pacifism and xenophilia, then go for it! Now, unprompted, let me show you our bat portrait.
Get down from there, this is an important diplomatic conference! This Origin comes with the Malleable Genes species trait, which blocks you from manually modifying your species. As you can see, it costs an exorbitant 6 points, forcing you to pick a few extra negative traits to even start the game. Luckily, your economy should still run, as Malleabele Genes is an auto-modding trait that ensures that your pops are working each job fully. Once you get started, you will be greeted with the Adaptive Evolution situation and a homeworld carrying the Genetic Soup modifier, which will help boost your situation progress.
Mmmm, avian The situation progresses faster from: fresh colonies, having many species in your empire, having a diverse council, purging, through a vassal agreement, and if you are a megacorp, through commercial pacts!
You dont spontaneously evolve an extra heart? Once the situation is finished, 3 randomly generated options will be presented to you which will grant you a random positive trait from that category. Each time you complete the situation, it will get harder to complete again. But stay the course and always seek out novel genetic material and you too can become an abomination, unknowable by mortal Blorg.
Yes, I was called into a meeting with the UX designer when I first presented this. How could you tell? The above example is pretty extreme and would only really happen in late mid game, but you can for sure get there if you try hard enough! As you can see the edges of, once you genetically ascend, you can also get access to the Genetic Ascension traits of old. As well as your own bespoke Evolutionary Predators advanced authorities!
If you ask me nicely perhaps I will share some more. It was very interesting designing authorities specific to a single Origin. You can go a lot more granular with the flavor and consider what a truly complete Evolutionary Predator might look like.
One final extra step I took for this Origin was to go through every single event that mentions biological species of some kind and add in an option to consume their DNA, if applicable. Finally, when you discover that ancient avian pilot you can gain Flight, or Shelled from that molluscoid that was buried in that archeological site.

Next Week

Now I am hungry, so I will be signing off until next week when well be securing our borders, and enduring invaders with the Deep Space Citadel and the Starlit Citadel Origin! Until then, keep your genes safe!

[ 2025-04-10 11:00:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Today's update includes some fixes to Civilians, and armies can now invade planets. Oh, and Cosmic Storms no longer deal devastation. Fixes and Improvements

• AI now uses the focus system
• Adjusted colony designation tooltips in the colonization UI.
• Increased habitat district jobs
• Zones conversions (such as when a hive takes over a standard planet) should now function and retain buildings that fit in both zone types.
• Civilians no longer count as unemployed (they will still automigrate).
• Civilians now appear in the jobs list correctly when it is collapsed.
• The ANGRY RED BRIEFCASE of unemployment will now only appear if there are 100 or more unemployed pops on a planet. The orange briefcase of migration will still appear if there is any outward migration going on.
• Clerk icon fix.
• Timeline forward and back buttons can now be clicked if you have a very lengthy timeline
• Armies can invade planets again! There still arent defenders, so ground combat is very easy.
• More pop growth modifiers work.
• Fix building and district job outputs being inflated
• You now have to own a planet to modify job sliders
• Improvements to Colonization UI
• Planetary Ascension text is in
• Concepts that referred to Industrial Districts have been updated
• Leaders are now affected by species modification correctly
• More tooltips and fields show real pop numbers
• All planets should now have the correct number of zones (2) in their primary district
• Rare Resource buildings now require the appropriate deposits or technologies
• Enforcers and Entertainers should no longer bounce around
• Cosmic storms no longer cause devastation.

How Do I Opt Into the Beta?

[olist]

Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.

Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.7 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown. [/olist] All previous 3.99.* Open Beta branches will also remain available. If you are having issues accessing the latest version of the 3.99.* Open Beta, please see this forum post for troubleshooting. For more information on the Open Beta, as well as the intentions and goals of releasing such an early, unpolished version, please see this dev diary. This is the final update to the 3.99 Open Beta. I want to sincerely thank you for all of your feedback and assistance through the 3.99 beta test process. You've helped us a tremendous amount in helping the 4.0 release in May.

[ 2025-04-04 08:00:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Stellaris community! Im PDS_Bojj, a content designer on Stellaris, and as someone with a deep love for storytelling, weird science, and moral quandaries wrapped in biotech horror, working on BioGenesis has been an absolute joy. This expansion dives deep (like deep deep) into what it means to reshape life, not just physically, but culturally, philosophically, and even politically. In todays diary, Im thrilled to share a look at something weve been brewing in the gene-vats for a while now: Biomorphosis, our brand-new Genetic Ascension path, and all the squishy systems that come with it: situations, modular traditions, and yes, even genetically-themed Advanced Authorities! Its evolution, but make it playable. So whether you're here for the cloned bureaucrats, the flawless ber-citizens, or the writhing mutation-hives of your dreams Auntie Bojj has got you covered! Lets dive in!

The Biomorphosis Situation

Biomorphosis: Why not jump-start the future of our species? In BioGenesis, weve reimagined the Genetic Ascension path into something more dynamic, thematic, and, dare I say organic. Welcome to Biomorphosis, a Situation that unfolds over three stages, each one a critical turning point in your species transformation.
Your Situation Approach is a lot like yourself It matters. When you take the newly named Biomorphosis Ascension Perk, you will start on the path to shape the future of your civilization through a series of decisions that define how your species evolves. At the beginning of each stage, youll select one of three philosophical and technological approaches to guide your development: Purity The body is a sacred vessel, and perfection lies in refinement, not deviation. This approach focuses on enhancing existing traits, optimizing your species current genetic code, and preserving essential identity. Expect events about ideological purity, resistance to corruption (internal and external), and perhaps a little eugenics drama if youre feeling spicy. Cloning Mass production meets organic precision. Cloning enables you to scale your population quickly and efficiently, but at what cost to individuality? This path explores questions of identity, resource management, and ethical dilemmas surrounding consciousness and copyhood. You might find your leaders arguing about the souls of your citizens... or the cost-benefit analysis of their replaceability. Mutation Why perfect the old when you can become something new? Mutation embraces chaos, randomness, and radical adaptation. This is the path for those who believe in progress through transformation, no matter how monstrous. As your species warps and shifts, so too will your empire! Expect powerful new traits, disturbing events, and maybe even a few limbs where there werent any before.
You cant facilitate genome research without a Genomic Research Facility! Each stage of Biomorphosis brings with it new narrative events and mechanical consequences, all tailored to your chosen approach. You can double down on a single path, or mix and match to create something truly unique; a mosaic of flesh, thought, and purpose. But dont forget to build a Genomic Research Facility on one of your planets first, otherwise you wont have the facilities to engage in genomic research! So, whether youre breeding perfect paragons, churning out clone armies, or embracing the squelching beauty of the unknowable genome, Biomorphosis offers you a chance to live your best post-Darwinian fantasy.

Modular Tradition Trees

BioGenesis doesnt just reshape your species, it reshapes how your empire thinks, acts, and dreams. Introducing the Modular Tradition Tree: a dynamic, partially customizable tradition system tailored to your Biomorphosis journey.
M-U-T-A-T-I-O-N, YOU CAN CONTROL YOUR MUTATION! As your empire progresses through the Biomorphosis Situation, the approach choices you make (Purity, Cloning, or Mutation) dont just influence events, they also determine which Traditions youll gain access to in a new unique Genetic Ascension tree. Each playthrough will feel different, because each tradition tree is built around a foundational path (again: either Purity, Cloning, or Mutation), augmented by select traditions from the other two, depending on your hybridization of choices across the three Biomorphosis stages. At the end of the Biomorphosis situation, your empire unlocks a special ascension tradition tree. This tree is centered around your dominant approach (whichever of the three you selected the most during the situation). Additional picks in the tree will be drawn from the other approaches you dipped into, creating a hybrid structure. So, if youve picked Mutation twice and Cloning once, youll get a Mutation-based tree with some synthetic reproductive flavor. Or, if for example, you go all in on Purity, you can expect a tradition tree as tight and controlled as your gene pool. Each tradition within the tree reinforces the strengths and philosophies of its source: Purity Traditions enhance species cohesion, trait optimization, and biological defense mechanisms. Cloning Traditions focus on growth efficiency, leader replacement, and societal adaptation to mass-production living. Mutation Traditions unlock exotic biology, unpredictable perks, and a flirtation with the unrecognizable. Question: Why did you do this? Answer: We wanted to create a system that reflects you. Not just your empires species, but the ideological journey youve taken. This modular design means you arent locked into one narrow vision of Genetic Ascension. It means you can experiment, mix paths, or triple-down on your biological ideals. Whether youre crafting a society of elegant gene-purists or an unholy sprawl of ever-shifting abominations, the tradition tree will evolve with you.

Advanced Authorities

Once youve completed your unique Genetic Ascension tradition tree, your empire will be ready for its next evolutionary leap, not just biologically, but politically. BioGenesis introduces a new system of Advanced Authorities, tailored to the philosophy that shaped your Biomorphosis journey.
Everyone is equal! Even if you have tentacles coming out of your head! But also ew. Whether you rule through mandate, decree, profit, consensus, or collective consciousness, your ascended society will transform into a more specialized and thematically rich version of its base authority, infused with either Purity, Cloning, or Mutation ideology. These are not just cosmetic upgrades. Each Advanced Authority comes with unique modifiers, and governing mechanics, reflecting the bio-political ideals your empire has chosen to embody. Here are some examples of the new Advanced Authorities:

• Cloning Democracy, or Cordant Multiplicity This government embraces cloning technology as a testament to equality and progress. Clones stand shoulder to shoulder with natural-born individuals, their voices equally valued. The will of the people is enriched by the diversity of every perspective, clone or not.
• Mutation Hive Mind, or Adaptive Dominion This Hive's hyper-adaptive drones form a dynamic and ever-evolving force, leveraging constant mutation to overcome environmental and tactical challenges. Each adaptation strengthens the collective, ensuring unparalleled versatility and resilience as the Hive mind thrives in any condition.
• Purity Dictatorship, or Nucleic Judiciary This government wields genetic and biometric data as tools of pre-emptive justice, scrutinizing every citizen's genetic code for criminal predispositions. By intervening before transgression, it ensures order through meticulous oversight. True justice is not reactive but preventive, safeguarding society by eliminating crime at the root.
• Cloning Megacorp, or Replicating Horde Advanced cloning technology drives the relentless production of genetically identical drones, each engineered for perfect efficiency and unity. Obeying the innate command to go forth and multiply, this hive intends to blot out the stars.
• Mutation Empire, or Genomic Expansionist Embracing the unpredictable power of random mutation, this empire taps into untold potential, fostering innovations and abilities that traditional methods could never achieve. In the race for dominance, the chaos of mutation becomes their greatest advantage, propelling them toward unrivaled supremacy.
• Purity Oligarchy, or Eugenic Hierarchy Absolute power must be entrusted to the genetically ordained elite, the purest and most capable stewards of this civilization's destiny. Beneath them, each citizen fulfills a predefined role, meticulously tailored to their inherited genetic potential. Contentment flows not from ambition, but from accepting one's designated purpose.

Tailored to Your Path

Each of the three Biomorphosis philosophies (Purity, Cloning, and Mutation) has its own flavor of Authority type. Thats 18 total Advanced Authorities, all designed to express a vision of what society has become in the aftermath of biological transcendence. Choosing your Advanced Authority is a crowning moment. Its a reflection of your empires journey from mere organic matter to a society reborn in gene-forged glory. Thats all from me for now. Thanks so much for reading! May your biomass be bountiful, your cloning vats efficient, and your mutations... mostly non-lethal. Stay curious, stay squishy, PDS_Bojj ...

A Clone Interlude

Hey, Alfray Stryke jumping in here as Ive seen a lot of questions of How does the Clone Army origin interact with BioGenesis??1! To start with, as a Clone Army origin you will be prevented from undertaking Biomorphosis until youve unlocked your genetic potential however, once youve done so you could even take the ascension perk as your first AP.
How do you unlock your genetic potential, you ask? By completing either the Clone Fertility or Clone Potential special projects.

Clone Fertility makes your species capable of reproduction once more and allows you to undergo Biomorphosis with the complete freedom of any path you desire. Clone Potential however means that your species remains as infertile clones and as such locks you to an upgraded version of the Cloning path if you undertake Biomorphosis. This upgraded Cloning path grants the following, in addition to the regular rewards:

• The ability to genetically modify Clone Soldier species.
• Regular Clone Vats, Genomic Research Facilities and Medical Buildings increase the number of Clone Soldiers sustained per planet.
• Being able to apply the Clone Soldier trait to other species via Genetic Modification.

Next Week

Next week well be exploring Phenotype Traits and the Evolutionary Predators Origin. See you then!

[ 2025-04-03 11:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Today's update includes some major changes to the planet view, and some very, very basic gestalt functionality. Planets now start with six building slots in their Urban District, with two Zones available to customize its output. Your homeworld will generally begin with an Industrial (Alloys + Consumer Goods) and an Archives (Unity + Research) Zone at game start. These changes have not been replicated to gestalts or special planets or starts yet. We are planning one more Open Beta update (3.99.7) this Friday.

Stellaris 3.99.6 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

Beta Features

• Planets now have six building slots by default and two zones that can be used to specialize their urban districts.
  • Most empires no longer start with the early space age industry buildings or jobs
  • Known Issue: This has not been replicated to gestalts or special planets yet.
• Planet UI now shows last month's growth for each pop group.
• Added a mixed Research and Unity Archives Zone.

Fixes and Improvements

• Adjusted rural job numbers
• Added urban zones to mining districts for Subterranean empires
• Clicking on a built Zone will now bring up the District Details panel
• By player request, the Build Queue side panel now automatically starts open when looking at your planets
• Prevent AI from cheating for zone building
• Industrial Zones now use the correct icon.
• Strata now show their population when collapsed.
• Timeline origin images are now properly masked
• Planetary Ascension area in the Management Tab now functions.
  • Add icon and style label for ascension tier in management tab
  • Add text with breakdown of the modifiers provided by planetary ascension
• Some Hive and Machine setup has been completed, they should be slightly functional now
  • Known Issue: Hives do not get Mining Drones from Mining Districts, so, uh maybe go Void Hive?
  • Hive and Machine Worlds have had an initial pass
  • Machine Starting Conditions have had an initial pass

How Do I Opt Into the Beta?

[olist]

Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.

Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.6 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown. [/olist] All previous 3.99.* Open Beta branches will also remain available. If you are having issues accessing the latest version of the 3.99.* Open Beta, please see this forum post for troubleshooting. For more information on the Open Beta, as well as the intentions and goals of releasing such an early, unpolished version, please see this dev diary. This week's feedback survey looks at Trade, Logistics, and Notifications and Messaging. This week's Open Beta feedback survey is available here!

[ 2025-04-01 11:00:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Today's update adds the Betharian Zone, a Mandarin voice advisor, and new stargazer color variants, with broad fixes throughout.

Stellaris 3.99.5 Phoenix Open Beta update

Beta Features

• Added the Betharian Zone.
• Venerable Scientist" (Mandarin Language) Voice Advisor
• Added new color variants for stargazer portrait

Fixes and Improvements

• Unbroke all colonies.
• Fixed issues with Catalytic Processing civics.
• Fixed the zone planet modifiers not being applied if districts have multiples of the same zone type.
• Fixed the Chosen's habitats.
• Pirates are a little less gung-ho to form.
• Planetary deficits now cost trade instead of providing it.
• Increased the base rate of Auto-Migration.
• Pops will now automatically migrate to planets with 20% habitability or higher instead of 40% or higher.
• When the maximum number of auto-modded pops changes, the current number is now updated correctly.
• City Districts now change their name and descriptions based on their zone specializations.
• Compressed unity and added job swaps.
• City set graphics scale adjusted.
• Updated Empire Progression Rewards to always display which technology is unlocked.
• Allowed rural zones on ringworlds.
• Removed bonus production on tier 1 buildings, removed tier 1 buildings planet limit.
• Pop count, Housing, and Amenities on the planet view now use short notation (such as 13.4k rather than 13405).
• Replaced Upgrade buttons for districts with icons.
• Background graphics added for all districts.
• Added progress bars to the zones that are being built or replaced.
• District/Zone/Building Construction tooltips added.
• Changed how selected District is being highlighted.
• Highlight the selected zone slot when building new zones.
• Display old zone name, icon and building slots if the zone is being replaced.
• Display the icon and name of the zone being constructed.
• Rural district zones can now also be built by clicking anywhere within the empty zone slot.
• Further Timeline UI adjustments, fixing background masking.
• Added designation description in the colonization UI.
• Adjusted district numbers in the colonization UI to show the max amount of possible districts.
• Added functionality to deselect a selected colony designation.
• Rearranged and tweaked colony modifier displaying in the colonization UI.
• Added new databank icons.
• Added starting notification for selecting Empire Focus.
• Added planetary deficits to the Planetary view

How Do I Opt Into the Beta?

[olist]

Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.

Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.4 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown. [/olist] All previous 3.99.* Open Beta branches will also remain available. If you are having issues accessing the latest version of the 3.99.* Open Beta, please see this forum post for troubleshooting. For more information on the Open Beta, as well as the intentions and goals of releasing such an early, unpolished version, please see this dev diary. We also have a new feedback survey this week, which looks at first impressions of Precursor selection, Databank, Species Modification, and Game Pacing Adjustments. This week's Open Beta feedback survey is available here!

[ 2025-03-28 08:55:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Alfray Stryke Hello everybody! Welcome to our first BioGenesis development diary! Today we will talk about ships. That are made of meat. Several weeks ago, Eladrin mentioned that the ship designer changes originally planned for 4.0 "Phoenix" would not be included in the Open Beta, as theyre now needed for our upcoming Q2 DLC release. Weve since seen a fair amount of speculation as to what we might have been cooking thatd require such changes So please allow me to introduce our Biological Ships!

MEAT SHIPS! MEAT SHIPS! MEAT SHIPS

In BioGenesis, we are adding two distinct Biological shipsets, with unique ship classes and technology. Our goals in adding Biological Ships to Stellaris were to ensure that they are not only different in appearance from mechanical ships (and space fauna), but also in gameplay. Thus, the key mechanical differences are:

• When using Biological Ships, Corvettes, Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers and Battleships are replaced with Maulers, Weavers, Harbingers, and Stingers, each of which have three growth stages.
• Biological Ships, including Starbases, Megastructures and Stations, have their primary construction resource converted from Alloys (or Minerals) into Food and their Energy upkeep likewise replaced with Food upkeep.
• Overwhelmingly, Biological Ship technologies fall in Society Research (Biology) instead of the familiar Engineering Research (Voidcraft).

And in classic Stellaris fashion, weve kept the flavor and narrative around Biological Ships intentionally vague, just enough to let you roleplay them however you like. Maybe theyre an extension of your Devouring Swarm, just another drone in space. Or maybe theyre advanced bio-machines, the pinnacle of your scientific achievement. In order to use Biological Ships, youll need to select one of the shipsets during empire creation.
Different types of ships prompted our UX designer to give the Shipset selector a fresh coat of paint!

Growth Cycles

Similar to Space Fauna from Grand Archive, Biological Ships have growth stages, but unlike Space Fauna, they do not naturally progress through these by aging. Instead, these ships have a unique component slot for supplementary organs that can be researched. Generally speaking, the Juvenile and Mature growth stages will likely be occupied by Growth Organs that allow the ships to progress to the next stage.
Alternatively, docking a fleet to a Starbase equipped with a Growth Chamber allows for additional growth, regardless of ship configuration.,
The accumulated growth progress for ships is shown in both the ships tooltip and the ship details window.

When Biological Ships are designed (either automatically or using the ship designer), all researched Growth Stages are configured as part of a single ship design. Once a Biological Ship has acquired sufficient Growth Progress, it will automatically change to using the next Growth Stage in its design. Alternatively, Biological Ships can be constructed at a shipyard at a later Growth Stage.
The three growth stages of the Weaver Although all Growth Stages of Biological Ships use the same Fleet Command Limit for their ship class, later Growth Stages use more naval capacity, with the Mature stage using 1.5 and the Elder stage using 2 the Naval Capacity of the Juvenile stage.

MEAT SHIPS! MEAT SHIPS! MEAT SHIPS!

SHIPS MADE OF MEAT

Maulers primarily focus on short-range combat with shield penetration and high damage to armor and shields. Equipped with melee-range mandible weapons and either short-range S-slot or PD-slot weapons, these ships will form the bulk of your navy in the early game. Their unique mandible weapons have similar damage scaling against starbases and larger ships as torpedoes.

The unique Organ components that Maulers have access to are the Corrosive Fluids and Metabolic Recycler (and their upgraded versions)

Weavers are support ships, making use of unique weapons to apply powerful buffs to their allies or debuffs to their enemies.
Weavers have unique access to an array of six support components, each with six tiers that belong in the PD-slot.

The unique Organ components that Weavers have access to are Symbiotic Amplifiers and Developmental Pheromones

Harbingers are carriers capable of deploying large amounts of strike craft and supporting them with point defense or long range missiles.

Strike craft for empires using Biological Ships are deployed in greater numbers per fighter wing, but have reduced hull points and armour instead of shields.
The unique Organ components that Harbingers have access to are Chitin Growth Regulators and the Incubation Matrix

Stingers are powerful late-game warships, equipped with multiple XL weapons or capable of unleashing heavy broadside barrages.

The unique Organ components that Stingers have access to are Exhaust Spiracles and Rangefinder Clusters.

As each of the different Growth Stages of each of the classes of Biological Ships can be built at a shipyard, weve taken the opportunity to implement collapsable headers when selecting which ships to build.
This works for mechanical ships and space fauna too! Since Biological Ships have their own weapons, armour, shield and core components, weve gone through and ensured that the technologies use the appropriate icons depending on if you are using a Biological shipset or not.

Modding Notes

As part of the work required to implement Biological Ships there have been a lot of changes to how ship components are scripted. Heres some highlights:

• class_restriction, size_restriction and slot_restriction are deprecated in favour of using the possible and potential trigger blocks instead.
• Core Components now have an upgrade_path parameter, components that have the same upgrade path are shown on the same row.
• Ship components now support the show_tech_unlock_if = { } field, like buildings.
• New targeting parameters:
  • use_ship_main_target: if yes, overrides target_type and target_focus when ship's main target is within range, default no
  • target_type (target_enemies (default) / target_allies / target_controlled / target_own)
  • target_focus (single (default) / spread)
  • target_type: only valid if component_set has affects_target_type = yes
  • target_focus: only valid if component_set has affects_target_focus = yes
• New parameters for weapons:
  • on_hit: apply effects to target on hit. Scope = ship (target), from = ship (shooter)
  • hide_damage_values_from_tooltip = yes/no # If yes, it will hide Damage and Average Damage from weapon component tooltip (default = no)

PRIME CUTS FROM ART!

Next Week

Next week well be looking at Ascension, Traditions, and Advanced Governments. See you then!

[ 2025-03-27 12:06:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Today's update includes some AI improvements and fixes to the new breadthwise job allocation.

Stellaris 3.99.4 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

Fixes and Improvements

• Significant improvements to the breadthwise job assignment distribution.
• AI now understands the use of Zones.
  • (Known Inssue: Scripting weights are not yet balanced.)
• Fixed cloaking detection tooltip overwriting value breakdown with generic description
• Fixed demotions not working as they should
• Fixed factions not forming.
• Fixed the integration cost for subjects
• Fixed tooltips for Commercial Zone building mentioning clerks and soldiers
• Tier 1 Development focus tasks now award progress
• Decreased habitat district cost and upkeep
• Void Dweller prescripted systems now have larger deposits
• Habitat districts now have the same base number of jobs as regular districts
• Demense Zones now have the number of squire jobs increased by taking the Voidborne AP.
• Shattered Ring, Ringworlds and Arcologies should now be semi-functional.
  • (Known Issue: The "rural" segments of Ringworlds do not yet have Agricultural or Generator zones to choose from.)
• Add toggle on the header of the automation side panel to enable/disable planet automation
• Move "decisions" in management tab and "resettle" in economy tab
• Small fixes for planet view
• Toggle icon in surface tab and add tooltips
• Revamped several tutorial entries
• Added a new Medical Center building that gives access to Medical Workers before Gene Clinics
• Rebalanced Medical Workers
• Rebalanced the Mutagenic Spas building
• Entertainers and Traders no longer benefit from Gene Clinics, Augmentation Centers or Ranger Lodges
• Added a has_any_industry_zone scripted trigger
• The Revolutionary Medi-Gel now provides +25% Job Efficiency for Medical Workers

How Do I Opt Into the Beta?

[olist]

Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.

Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.4 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown. [/olist] All previous 3.99.* Open Beta branches will also remain available. If you are having issues accessing the latest version of the 3.99.* Open Beta, please see this forum post for troubleshooting. For more information on the Open Beta, as well as the intentions and goals of releasing such an early, unpolished version, please see this dev diary. We also have a new feedback survey this week, which looks at first impressions of Precursor selection, Databank, Species Modification, and Game Pacing Adjustments. This week's Open Beta feedback survey is available here!

[ 2025-03-25 09:04:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Metal rusts. Flesh adapts.

Its my great pleasure to announce the start of Stellaris: Season 09, with the BioGenesis expansion leading the way alongside the Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update. [previewyoutube=_Mrj29R5Orw;full][/previewyoutube] https://store.steampowered.com/app/3417870 The future of evolution is here. BioGenesis continues our remastering of the Ascension Paths by granting you unprecedented power over life itself and hatches May 5th, 2025. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3417840

Evolution had its chance. Now its our turn.

Two Biological Shipsets Command living fleets that evolve alongside your empire. Customize these genetic marvels for specialized roles, from ferocious Maulers to adaptable support Weavers, each capable of empowering allies and weakening foes. Three New Origins

• Evolutionary Predators: Push the boundaries of Species Traits by unlocking and combining unique phenotype abilities to craft the ultimate adaptive empire.
• Starlit Citadel: Solve the mystery of your empires biological attackers while boosting hyperlane choke-point strategies with early access to the Deep Space Citadel megastructure.
• Wilderness: Begin as a sapient planetary ecosystem, a living gestalt of countless lifeforms united in harmony, seeking to spread its consciousness to the stars.

Overhauled Genetic Ascension Choose from three Ascension paths (Cloning, Purity, and Mutation) and over 18 enhanced Authorities. Customize your genetic ascension by blending Purity, Cloning, and Mutation traditions into a unique path for your play style. Hives with a Twist Encounter a Hive Fallen Empire, a fractured hive mind struggling to awake between its three splintered personalities. Six New Civics Genetic Identification, Crowdsourcing, Familiar Face, Aerospace Adaptation, Shared Genetics, Civil Education Deep Space Citadel Megastructure A versatile new defensive station capable of holding off powerful enemy fleets at any system. Behemoth Fury Crisis Path The apex predators of the stars are not bound by petty limitations. Cast off the biological weaknesses that hold you back, and become a force of nature.

The BioGenesis expansion includes:

• Gestalt Hive Empires (also unlocked by Utopia)
• Two biological Shipsets with distinct mechanics from traditional spacecraft
• Three new Origins
  • Evolutionary Predators
  • Wilderness
  • Starlit Citadel
• Civics
  • Genetic Identification
  • Crowdsourcing
  • Familiar Face
  • Aerospace Adaptation
  • Shared Genetics
  • Civil Education
• Deep Space Citadel Megastructure
• Biological Ascension (also unlocked by Utopia)
  • Expanded with BioGenesis to include a mutable tradition tree that reflects your path through Ascension
• Exploration of the effects of Biological Ascension on society
• Advanced Government Forms
• 16 new genetic Species Traits, including phenotype based traits
• Portraits that change based on pop strata and leader level
• The Splintered Hive Fallen Empire
• Two Diplomatic Rooms and City Sets
• 7 music tracks
• And a new Player Crisis Path - Behemoth Fury

Planned Dev Diary Schedule March 27 - Biological Ships and Mechanics April 3 - Ascension, Traditions, Advanced Governments April 10 - Phenotype Traits, Evolutionary Predators Origin April 17 - Deep Space Citadel, Starlit Citadel Origin April 24 - Hive Fallen Empire, Wilderness Origin May 1 - Civics, Behemoth Fury, Preliminary Release Notes May 5 - BioGenesis Release Date

Stellaris: Season 09 Expansion Pass

The Stellaris: Season 09 Expansion Pass is your gateway to an entire year of cosmic evolution, psionic mysteries, and apocalyptic infernos. With instant access to the exclusive Stargazer Species Portrait, this expansion pass delivers three major content packs that will redefine the Biological and Psionic Ascensions and the most ambitious species pack so far! Purchasing the Expansion Pass grants access to all four DLCs as soon as they become available.

Stargazer Species Portrait (Instant Unlock) Dream of the stars with this exclusive portrait, available immediately upon purchasing Stellaris: Season 09. Featuring three phenotypes and unique animations, the Stargazer Species Portrait is perfect for players who seek to embody the spirit of cosmic curiosity.
BioGenesis (Releases May 5, 2025 - $24.99) Take command of the forces of life itself in Stellaris: BioGenesis. Engineer living ships and wield advanced genetic tools to shape the destiny of your empire. Will you create a utopia of adaptation and growth or weaponize biology to dominate the stars?

• Overhauled Genetic Ascension: Choose from three distinct pathsCloning, Purity, and Mutationand customize your evolution.
• Living Ships: Command biological starships that evolve alongside your empire.
• Player Crisis Path: Unleash the unstoppable Behemoth Fury on the galaxy.
• Three New Origins: Play as evolutionary predators, a sapient planetary ecosystem, or a fortress civilization.
• New Megastructure: Construct the Deep Space Citadel to control hyperlane choke points.

Shadows of the Shroud (Releases Q3 2025 - $19.99) The psionic plane holds untold powerbut at what cost? Shadows of the Shroud is a complete overhaul of the Psionic Ascension path, introducing new moral dilemmas, Patron allegiances, and a whole new way of interacting with the mysteries of the Shroud.

• Breach into the Shroud: Shape your empires spiritual destiny with a revamped Shroud system.
• Shroud Panel: Track your empires attunement and unlock new powers.
• Revamped End of the Cycle: The ultimate deal with the devilcan you delay the inevitable?
• Psionic Auras: Let your Shroud influence shape entire star systems.
• New Content: Origins, civics, ships, government types, and more!

Infernals Species Pack (Releases Q4 2025 - $12.99) Forge your destiny in the Stellaris: Infernals Species Pack - our most ambitious Species Pack ever. Adapted to relentless heat and volatile landscapes, you wield the power of extreme environments to reshape the galaxy. Will your empire thrive in the heat, or be consumed by the very forces it seeks to command?

• Player Crisis Path: Burn the galaxy to ashes as your empire thrives in destruction.
• New Origins: Unearth ancient kin or endure the scorching wrath of a dying sun in two new Origins.
• Volcanic Worlds: A new planetary class with unique districts, events, and archaeological sites.
• New Species & Customization: Ships, portraits, civics, and more!

The Stellaris: Season 09 Expansion Pass is now available for purchase for $44.99 or regional equivalent, a 20% discount over purchasing the contents individually.

Whats Next?

This Thursday well flesh out the bio-ships! See you then!
BioGenesis is now available for pre-purchase for $24.99 or regional equivalent, or with a 20% discount as part of the Stellaris: Season 09 Expansion Pass, which is available now for $44.99 or regional equivalent.

[ 2025-03-24 15:10:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Another update today for the weekend! Lots of important changes in this one.

Stellaris 3.99.3 Phoenix Open Beta update

Fixes and Improvements

• Habitats are now semi-functional in the Open Beta.
  • Habitats now derive their maximum mining, generator, and science district development based on the resources in the system. Orbital deposits grant 1 + (half their base value, rounded down) maximum district development.
  • Habitat orbitals are automatically constructed for free when a new district is completed on the central habitat complex, if one can be built
  • Habitat orbitals are now megastructures instead of dummy fleets, preventing them from being attacked (and therefore attempting to to flee from attackers)
  • Habitat orbitals now collect the resources from the deposit that they are built over
  • Habitat orbitals now have the same upkeep as mining and research stations, since they serve similar purposes
  • Habitat districts now take longer to build and cost alloys to build
  • Habitats now gain +0.25 Max Districts per Planet or Star in the System per Capital Building Tier
  • Upon converting MSI's ruined warship into a habitat, it is immediately colonised
  • Void Dweller empires now get +50% jobs from habitat districts. This does not currently include scaling jobs from jobs, but should in the future.
  • Voidborne AP and Void Dweller origins now give Habitat District cost reduction
  • Void Dwellers now get Civilians on game start
  • Added a Hydroponics Zone for Habitats
• Building and Zone Changes:
  • Replaced the Early Industry Zone with the Urban Zone. The Urban Zone currently accepts all buildings, limitations will be added in a future update
  • Default starting planets now have Basic Offices and Basic Research Labs buildings in addition to the Basic Factories
    • Basic Factories provide Laborer jobs and can be upgraded into either Alloy Foundries or Civilian Industries
    • The Primitive Factory no longer decreases the Job Efficiency of Bureaucrats, Physicists, Biologists and Engineers
    • Basic Offices provide Administrator jobs and can be upgraded into Administrative Offices or Temples
    • Basic Research Labs provide Researcher jobs and be upgraded into Research Labs. These Researchers are worse than Researchers from 3.14.
  • Administrative Offices now provide Bureaucrat jobs and no longer require a Unity Zone
  • Alloy Foundries now provide Metallurgist jobs and no longer require an Industry or Foundry Zone
  • Anglers now have a unique zone on wet worlds.
  • Civilian Industries now provide Artisan jobs and no longer require an Industry or Factory Zone
  • Research Labs now provide Physicists, Biologists and Engineers and no longer require a Research Zone
  • Temples now provide Priest jobs and no longer require a Unity Zone
  • The Autochthon Monument no longer requires a Unity Zone
  • The food processing facility building now gives some base farmer jobs.
  • Uncapped rural districts now support the correct zones
  • Zones now display an icon and tooltip stating that they provide building slots
  • Zones now have auto-generated tooltips stating the jobs that they provide
  • Adjusted job counts of Districts and Zones
  • Converted the Order's Demense to a unique zone for KotTG
    • Scaling Knight jobs are now given by Squires, instead of the Order's Keep. You will no longer get thousands of Knights from keeping the entire galaxy's population as livestock.
• Capital Buildings no longer state that they provide building slots.
• City Districts no longer state that they provide Building Slots
• Jobs are now filled in a more breadthwise manner - weighting still affects job preferences, but pops will attempt to fill all jobs of a strata instead of focusing exclusively on their dream jobs. Somebody still has to make the Consumer Goods even if you had your heart set on being a Physicist.
  • The intent of this is to alter the land rush when new jobs open up and to prevent certain economic death spirals. Let us know how it works out for you.
• Mastercrafter civics now provide extra consumer goods and trade to artisan jobs
• Rebalanced biologist jobs for normal empires
• Rebalanced Engineer jobs
• Reworked Artisan sub-jobs
• Fixed the modifier icon for some researcher modifiers not showing
• Researcher sub-jobs no longer show that they provide 0 naval capacity
• Increased the base Consumer Goods income for empires that use Consumer Goods
• Increased the food (or equivalent) and consumer goods income of default countries
• Laborer jobs are now Specialists that produce Alloys and Consumer Goods
• Rebalanced physicist jobs for normal empires
• More progress on the planetary UI.
• New Look for the District boxes in the Planet Summary Screen.
• Removed sound effect when interacting with enclaves
• Revamped initial tutorial events
• Move planetary automation button in planet surface tab

Modding Notes

• Added documentation for new district_planet_modifier and triggered_district_planet_modifier modifiers for Zones
• Orbital and Planet Deposits now support habitat_modifier, which as you might expect from the name, applies a static modifier to the habitat(s) in the system.

How Do I Opt Into the Beta?

[olist]

Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.

Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.2 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown. [/olist] The 3.99.0, 3.99.1, and 3.99.2 Open Beta branches will also remain available. If you are having issues accessing the latest version of the 3.99.* Open Beta, please see this forum post for troubleshooting. For more information on the Open Beta, as well as the intentions and goals of releasing such an early, unpolished version, please see this dev diary. We also have a new feedback survey this week, which looks at first impressions of the planet UI and rework. We know it's not in a finished or releasable state, but want your feedback regardless. This week's Open Beta feedback survey is available here!

[ 2025-03-21 12:00:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hi everyone! Weve entered our second week of the Stellaris 3.99 Phoenix Open Beta, and if all goes according to plan are planning another update tomorrow morning with some major changes to the starting situation of your planets. (Goodbye, primitive factory debuffs. I'd say we'll miss you, but... we won't.)

What Have We Learned So Far?

While we recognize that the early state of the Open Beta makes it difficult to provide balancing feedback, its proven itself invaluable already. The Open Beta has found several issues with growth and decline - from robots causing the inevitable decline of your empire to Fallen Empires and Pre-FTL societies being doomed due to not using standard growth models. Youve found economic death spirals and identified needs that will help our designers produce a better balanced and fun experience in the final release. These were precisely some of the types of things I was looking for when we decided to push the Open Beta despite the early state that it was in, and Im thankful that we did. Thank you for all of your help so far, and I hope youll continue to give us your feedback as we continue to update. We will continue the twice-weekly update cadence until the end of the month, with dev livestreams every Thursday.

Mandarin Venerable Scientist Advisor Voice

Back when we released The Grand Archive, we created a version of the trailer in Mandarin, and it was really, really good. [previewyoutube=GU1fQ2ITrik;full][/previewyoutube] After such a positive reception from the Chinese Stellaris community, we decided to call the same voice actor back in to record a full Advisor set. The recordings are now complete, in time to be included as part of the Stellaris 4.0 update. It should show up in one of the next few Open Beta updates. [previewyoutube=Pk8Sd7plxCM;full][/previewyoutube]

Whats Next?

Well have two dev diaries next week that will be a bit meatier than this one, to flesh out some of the other things coming in the next Quarter. See you then!

[ 2025-03-20 12:00:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin We have another update to the Open Beta today, and are planning for another later on this week.

Stellaris 3.99.2 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

Fixes and Improvements

• Added an Industrial Zone for mixed alloys and consumer goods
• The focus task "Embrace a Faction" is changed to "Promote a Faction"
• Added two focus tasks for MegaCorps to establish branch offices
• Updated costs of special projects that have costs that scale with the number of pops
• Changed every_owned_pop to every_owned_pop_group, so now looping through groups
• Made ethic changes work on pop groups instead of pops
• Updated robot pop checks to pop groups
• Zones now have icons associated with their type.
• Zones now have a larger active area to click on that is clearly visible.
• Planet UI now has basic Zone tooltips
• Replaced a bunch of placeholder icons with less placeholder ones.
• Revamped Rise of the manifesti event chain
• Created new message type for new terraforming candidate events and turned them into a notification
• Lithoid resource traits no longer block cybernetic leviathan traits
• Improved the Modifiers section of the colonization UI.
• Replaced jobs with strata in resettlement view
• Workforce modifier icons added

Modding

• Moved resource upkeep and production for pops from species archetype and traits to the resource tables for archetypes and traits, instead of them being part of the pop categories

How Do I Opt Into the Beta?

[olist]

Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.

Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.2 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown. [/olist] The 3.99.0 and 3.99.1 Open Beta branches will also remain available. If you are having issues accessing the latest version of the 3.99.* Open Beta, please see this forum post for troubleshooting. For more information on the Open Beta, as well as the intentions and goals of releasing such an early, unpolished version, please see this dev diary. We also have a new feedback survey this week, which looks at first impressions of the planet UI and rework. We know it's not in a finished or releasable state, but want your feedback regardless. This week's Open Beta feedback survey is available here!

[ 2025-03-18 09:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! We've updated the Open Beta to 3.99.1, with the following changes:

Stellaris 3.99.1 Phoenix Open Beta update

Fixes and Improvements

• Fallen Empires are blocked from using the Existential Expulsion casus belli
• Negative effects added to the Magnetic Disruption planet modifier
• Assembling robots will no longer cause the slow and inevitable decline of your growing pops
• Changed auto pick leader traits setting to default to off
• Made Species Rights button different for pre-sapients

Pops and Workforce

• Fixed traders not being created from trade zones
• Adjusted amenities and housing from luxury housing
• Pops now have appropriate Diplomatic Weight
• Civilians now grant the benefits associated with culture workers

Planetary View

• Tabs in the Planet view now have correct hotkeys
• Urban Zones now show their titles
• Moved the build district level button from District Details view into the Planet Summary screen
• The Build Queue tooltip no longer says "Previous"
• Displaying the District type names in the Planet Summary screen
• Moved job production changes to buildings for better tooltips
• The Colony View tabs now have ordered ZXCVB keyboard shortcuts

Empire Focus

• Rescaled focus reward requirements to be easier to reach the final tier
• Fixed the DLC requirements for focus tasks "Observe a Pre-FTL" and "Build a Mega Shipyard"
• Fixed the requirements tooltip for the Beastmasters focus task "Have 10 Space Amoeba Mothers"
• Fixed the completion check in the Conquest focus task "Have 3 Subjects"
• Drawing leader level focus tasks now require the previous task to be completed

Cultists

• The chance to encounter the Cultist event chain now depends on your ethics
• The Cultist event chain now fires after a year instead of after a month
• Cultists are now neutral until you choose to attack them
• You can now forgive the Cultists and have them join you

Modding

• The trigger num_pops is replaced by pop_amount since there are now 100 times more pops

How Do I Opt Into the Beta?

[olist]

Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.

Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.1 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown. [/olist] The 3.99.0 Open Beta branch will also remain available. For more information on the Open Beta, as well as the intentions and goals of releasing such an early, unpolished version, please see this dev diary. So far we're extremely happy with the response and your participation has already found several major issues, some of which we're addressing during this release. We expect to update the Open Beta again early-to-mid next week. This week's Open Beta feedback survey is available here!

[ 2025-03-14 09:00:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Surprise! An early Stellaris Dev Diary! Last week I mentioned that on Friday wed evaluate the current build, and Id see if I could provide a timeline for the Open Beta. Things have been progressing well, so weve decided to put a very early version of some of the 4.0 changes to test a few aspects of the new systems. The Stellaris 4.0 update changes a lot of things - you can find a lot of the details in the dev diaries of the last two months. This first build of the 3.99 Open Beta only contains a focused subset of the changes, and many are still in a work-in-progress prototype state. It is not polished, or even done yet. The 3.11 Technology Open Beta very quickly found some performance issues with the Breakthrough Technologies that we were experimenting with, and as the pop systems have advanced far enough to be mostly functional, I want to get some broader gameplay done on that system in particular, even if the rest of the systems have not yet reached a fully playable state. A week of Open Beta gets more testing done than we can do internally over months, even if this isnt at a level that I would historically have been comfortable releasing to the public. (Just so you know what youre opting into!) We also have a feedback survey available that focuses primarily on the Empire Timeline and Focus systems. (Later weeks will have new surveys on different topics.)

So Whats in the Build?

Last weeks dev diary provides a fairly accurate update about the current state of the build. Precursor Selection, the Databank, and Species Modification are all functional.

The general game pacing adjustments, changes to galaxy generation, and notification changes are all in. The leader pacing changes are in, but were reviewing how leaders interact with the new economy before evaluating what changes to make to the traits themselves. Empire Timeline and Focuses are in a functional, borderline releasable, state. We have added a number of Milestones that will appear on the Timeline, though theres some polish were planning to do before release. Most of the basic Focus Tasks that we want are in, along with some of the Progression rewards for completing them.
The Trade and Logistic described in Dev Diary #369 are largely in, but some of the branch office changes and functionality are still on the to-do list.

Basic implementation of Pop Groups and the new Job system are in. This includes simultaneous Pop Growth and Auto-Migration, a partial colonization UI, and a partial update to the Planet UI itself. The major economic changes relating to Districts, Zones, and Buildings are only partially in, but I wanted to get the pop changes under some pressure as soon as possible.
We also renamed Bonus Workforce to Job Efficiency.

Any Known Issues or Things You Want to Tell Us?

The Ship Designer, Hard Reset origin, and Mammalian portraits are all in separate development branches, and will not be appearing during the Open Beta. This build of the Open Beta build will not support Gestalts, unusual planets like Habitats or Ringworlds, or especially unusual civics, origins, or playstyles. Many Ascensions may be in a strange or dysfunctional state. Since many of the more interesting civics and origins arent supported yet, we strongly recommend playing the United Nations of Earth or the Commonwealth of Man, or custom empires similar in complexity. Expect things like Virtuality or Clone Army to be fairly broken right now. You will likely start with an Amenities shortage at the start of the game. We havent decided whether this models an overpopulated homeworld nicely or if we consider it a bug. (It will be less dire once more of the buildings are available.)

Significant parts of the planet UI are still in development, including most flavor elements.

If you manually build a colony ship, it will not appear in the colonization UI. (They can still be used to colonize a planet by pressing the Colonize fleet order.)
Since the Zones UI is still in progress, you cannot get access to the menu to replace them right now. Youre stuck with your Earth Space Age Industry for this build.
The Early Space Age zone doesnt currently have any other buildings you can put into it, so being stuck with it is kind of unfun. We have not yet updated the Diplomacy traditions to reflect that Form Federation is now a technology. Clerks havent been annihilated yet, and many non-core jobs have not been fully converted into the new system. Traditions and other things that modify Clerks have not yet been updated. Civilians are currently an uncapped job rather than being associated with City District development. Living standards have not yet been updated to provide bonuses to Civilians rather than Unemployed Pops. Planetary Logistic Upkeep currently pays you Trade if you have surpluses. While it takes money to make money, thats not exactly what we were going for. The UI element on the Management tab that is intended to show the size change of each pop group since last month is always - 0 Defensive Armies dont spawn, so every planet will immediately surrender when bombarded. (Ground combat fixed?) Some strings may not be present, and some icons are placeholder purple. Many. The Unemployment entry in the planet UI is a little overenthusiastic. Yes, pops grow into their parents strata and get upset if they cant get a job worthy of their upbringing right away, but it shouldnt be a pressing matter until their numbers get over 100. The AI isnt great at picking zones yet. It nods sagely at the first thing it finds that it can afford and decides its an offer it cant refuse. The base colony designation has not yet been removed. Our intention is for the Colonist jobs provided by the Reassembled Ship Shelter to provide the benefits of the old colony designation. (And will thus expire when you upgrade your planetary capital rather than when you reach a certain number of Pops.) We cant guarantee multiplayer stability on this build, but we have identified an immediate economic Out of Sync issue that occurs when Windows and non-Windows users are playing together. Here are the release notes for this build:

Stellaris 3.99.0 Phoenix Open Beta Release Notes

Features

• Pops and Pop Groups
  • One of the biggest changes in the Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update, and one of the primary focuses of this Open Beta, is the new Pop system. Rather than being individuals, Pops are now grouped based on Species, Strata, Ethics, and Faction, mostly for calculation purposes. As part of this change, Pop numbers have been increased by a factor of 100, allowing more granular manipulation of Pops by various systems.
  • All Pop Groups on a planet have simultaneous growth every month following the existing Logistic Growth formulas.
    • Underrepresented pops are no longer given population growth bonuses.
    • Fractional growth is not retained from month to month - if a Pop Group would have fractional growth, it has a chance to gain 1 pop that month based on that fraction.
    • All migration is now handled through the auto-migration system rather than push and pull that previously affected pop growth.
    • As more granular and simultaneous pop growth is now possible, the minimum growth for small colonies has been removed. Early colonization will be extremely reliant on migration from the empire capital.
    • Open Beta Note: Xenocompatibility no longer produces hybrid pops, but has not yet been updated to pool all planetary species into a single group for logistic growth purposes. When this is complete, we are likely to remove the Xenocompatibility galaxy setup toggle.
  • A Civilian stratum has been added to represent the masses that do not generally contribute to the empires military economy.
    • Open Beta Note: Civilians are intended to replace Clerks, which will be removed in a future Open Beta update.
  • Empires now begin with 2000 more pops, most of whom will be Civilians.
  • More details can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #370.
• Planet UI, Zones, Workforce, and Jobs
  • The other major economic change in the Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update is a revamp to how jobs work.
  • Rather than Districts and Buildings being especially similar, we are shifting to a model where:
    • Planets produce and consume resources through Jobs.
    • Districts provide Jobs based on their development. (Mining District: Add 200 Housing and 200 Miner jobs per development level.)
    • Zones manipulate what Jobs are provided by Districts. (Foundry Zone: Replace 200 Civilian jobs and 200 Housing with 100 Metallurgists per development level.)
      • Open Beta Note: Currently the Zones are simpler, and will just provide the jobs. It is our intention for most Zones to convert rather than add.
    • Buildings are planet-unique and change what the Jobs produce. (Mote Harvesters: Technicians now also produce Volatile Motes.)
    • Pops produce Workforce that fills up Jobs.
  • Open Beta Note: The Planet UI is still very much a work in progress.
  • More details can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #371.
• Empire Focuses and Timeline
  • The Situation Log now contains a tab for the Empire Timeline, which keeps track of important milestones of your playthrough.
  • The Timeline tab also contains a set of Empire Focus Tasks, which are intended to assist players with forming short and medium terms that align with their empires nature, while reducing the randomness of the tech tree.
    • Empires can choose between Conquest, Exploration, and Development as their primary Empire Focuses. You will still gain Tasks from other categories, but they will generally be weighted towards your choice. Some Tasks are basic Core Tasks, and will provide progress along all three tracks.
    • Completing Tasks provides progress towards Guaranteed Technology unlocks that are considered critical for that playstyle. You still need to research the technologies, they only provide the research option when you reach progress milestones. If you already have the technology unlocked or as a permanent research option, there is no alternate reward.
    • Because Task completion is retroactive and there are no alternate rewards, there should be no benefit in waiting to complete any that you have.
    • Should you end up with a Task that you find uncompletable or that you do not wish to complete, you can discard it and gain a new Task for a small cost in Unity.
    • It is our intention that empires that behave consistent with their Empire Focus should naturally complete the Tasks of that category.
  • More details can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #368.
• Trade has been revamped into a standard resource.
  • Trade is now used as the Market currency.
  • The Trade Routes system has been removed.
  • Ships now have logistical upkeep paid by Trade based on whether they are docked (free), friendly space (reduced), neutral space (normal), or hostile space (expensive).
    • Larger ships tend to have higher upkeep.
    • The multipliers based on location are set in defines.
    • Juggernauts do not have logistical upkeep, and reduce the logistical upkeep costs for ships in their system by 75%.
    • Resources blocks can now include a "logistics" block, which is currently only used by ships.
  • Planets now have logistical upkeep paid by Trade based on their local resource deficits. This represents the additional costs of diverting freighters to transport materials between planets.
    • Local deficit costs vary based largely on the base market value of the resources in question.
  • Trade Policies can set how much of your Net trade after logistics upkeep is converted into other resources.
  • Added galaxy setup sliders for Fleet Upkeep Logistics Costs and Planetary Deficit Logistics Costs.
  • More details can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #369.
• The main help button now displays the Databank window where you can explore brief articles on many in-game concepts, reducing the need to navigate to external information sources.

Improvement

• Adjective leader trait names reverted, for example Inquisitor to Inquisitive
• Colonization flow has been improved.
  • You can now pre-select a colony designation and turn on planet automation before colonizing a planet, which will apply when the planet has finished colonizing.
  • Colonization now completes when 100 colonists have grown or migrated to the new planet.
• Significant improvements have been made to the Species UI.
  • One template per species can be set as the default template for that species, and other subspecies can be set to integrate over time into that default template.
    • Open Beta Note: Current rate of pop integration is likely to change to be slower as well as monthly.
  • The trait selection UI when creating a new template has been improved.
  • The special project window pops up and can be started immediately after creating a new template if desired. It is no longer absolutely necessary as you can use integration to slowly convert your existing pops.
• The Habitable Worlds slider in game setup now has a 'Rare' setting. There will still be a handful of habitable worlds in the galaxy, mostly from special events and guaranteed habitable worlds. Normalized initializer spawn odds to use a handful of scripted variables.
• Added galaxy precursor selection to game setup.
• Leader Adjustments:
  • As part of our game pacing and interruption reduction pass, leaders now gain trait selection moments on even levels rather than every level.
  • Leader positions now have a significantly greater effect on what traits will appear when they level up and gain a new skill.
  • Increased the base number of leader traits to pick from on level up by 1. This is intended to reduce the chance of getting exclusively poor trait options without devaluing other sources of leader trait picks too much.
  • Added an "Auto Select Leader Traits by Default" option to game settings, which defaults to Off. On game start or if you switch to an empire, it will toggle the setting on the Leaders tab to your selection. In Coop empires, this override only applies when the primary player of the country joins it. Changing the setting mid-game will not have any effect unless you switch countries.
• Significant improvements have been made to Message and Notification settings, providing you much more control over how you receive them.
  • Updated the default message settings
    • Revised strategic resource messages and added toast notifications
    • Changed trader events into notifications with unique icons. Added sound effect.
    • Anomaly discoveries now appear in a toast rather than popping up in the center of the screen.
    • Patron Newsletter event was changed into a notification
    • The Terraforming Candidate Discovered Event is now a notification
    • Order Restored event is now a notification
    • Governing Ethic Shift event has been turned into a toast
    • Faction Formed Events now appear as toasts following the first event
    • Added additional event options to Corrupt Administration event and turned it into a notification
    • The Toxic Terraforming Candidate Discovered Event is now a notification
    • Changed Inter-Dimensional trade increases event into a notification
• Added concept tooltips to the left Navigation Bar
• Added the Celestial Orrery system
• Transport ships can now use cloaking
• The Ruler Stratum has been renamed the Elite Stratum, to better differentiate them from the actual Empire Ruler
• The system fleet icon tooltip now shows the total of the fleets' military power listed by that icon, at the top.
• Added unique event options and localization for new life discovered events
• Reduced spammy First Contact events
• First Colony event - Added unique event options and rewards for Ethics
• Adjusted mass extinction event chain localization and picture
• The Betrayal event has been revamped to include multiple options
• Renamed government tab to overview in outliner
• Reduced the frequency of the Rise of the Manifesti event chain
• Added missing reward to fanatic materialist for Comet Sighted event
• Improved readability for event Covenant Formed
• Changed Storm Spotted alert sound to something less intrusive
• The low habitability popup now clearly highlights the negative effects
• Added the two new Society technologies Federation Code and Existential Campaigns
• Ironman mode is no longer required to earn most Stellaris achievements. An unmodified game checksum remains a requirement, and the use of any debug commands blocks them.
  • The "Victorious" achievement has been changed to "Win the game through any victory condition in Ironman mode."
  • Open Beta Note: Pop related achievements have not yet been updated.
• Several changes to the starbase UI to improve game flow and overall interaction
• Reworked Starbase window to harmonize naming and tooltips
• You are 4x as attractive as you were before.

Balance

• FE and Cosmogenesis Escort ships now have the same evasion value of 50
• Changed Curator Insight cost to empire size
• The Eternal Vigilance Ascension Perk can now be acquired early if you complete the Unyielding Tradition Tree.
• Adjusted Anomaly spawn rates to improve the pacing of the early game.
• Added more variance to whether or not prescripted systems will or will not appear in a given game. (They won't all appear in every single game anymore.)

Bugfix

• Fixed the issue of fleets failing to retreat from lost combat if the last ship failed to disengage.
• Human Pre-FTL societies now obey the Pre-FTL Civilizations game settings slider.
• Fixed a script error that was causing far more habitable planets to spawn in the galaxy than expected. Feel free to increase the Habitable Worlds slider if you prefer the old behavior.
• Fixed inconsistent capitalisation causing issues with pre-ftl pop generation
• Cleaned up the end-game crisis triggers. The Unbidden will no longer be the only ones to show up early to the party.
• Fix triggers to properly give Fissile Cores, the unique mutation for crystalline entities
• Treasure Hunters AIs now correctly go through the dialog events
• Fix Black Needle country spawning starbases
• Fixed too many AI empires being generated in coop games.
• Fixed the tooltip for obtaining the Mirror of Knowledge from the Infinity Machine not mentioning the 200 influence it also gives you
• Amenities icon fixed for Drone Storage and Hive Warren
• checks if planet owner is primitive before applying sector or system bonuses
• Set the nanotech ascension path interdictors to use different ship models from the swarmers
• Spitter Gun mutations have armor penetration
• Missiles mutations have numerals corresponding to tier in icons
• Nanite Infused Barb mutation requires nanites to build
• Ancient Driller Beasts mutations uses 88 as its M size cost
• Neutron Throwers mutation damage buff
• Blocked anomalies from spawning on the neutron star for Slingshot to the Stars' quantum catapult
• Handled dyson sphere flags on dismantling swarm while upgrading
• Fixed a broken tooltip inside of the "Extended Shifts" edict.
• Clone Soldier Ascendants can now cyberize
• Completing Inhibit Self-Deterministic AIs removes it from the situation log
• Fix the possibility to build multiple Grand Archives at the same time
• Only display relevant modifiers for Space Fauna ships in tooltips
• Reanimated space fauna ships cannot upgrade no matter what
• Black Needle fleet now correctly spawns to defend their base from bombardment
• Destroy Gravity Snare when there's no valid target anymore
• Broken Shackles check added for relevant Galcom events
• Strip Mine Decision is no longer available on artificial planets
• Inspired Rhetoric will no longer display a placeholder icon
• Fixed situations start value being added multiple times.
• Special system initializers now respect the habitable worlds slider in game setup (to a degree).
• Planetary part of ringworlds no longer take on empire color
• First Contact was changed into a toast and once again shows the correct localization
• Added missing pre sapient loc string
• The dismantle button has regained its missing loc string
• Resolved scope error caused by toast target scope being set to root
• Advanced start empires can no longer have mining stations over resources they do not have tech for

AI

• Fixed Prethoryn Scourge incorrectly calculating target priority for non-edible pops.

UI/UX

• Added an Assign Leader button to the leaders screen that lists available positions.
• Fixed it not being possible to build starbases in systems with non-central stars from the galaxy view (when a construction ship is selected).
• Added a message setting button in event popup windows.
• Hid details that aren't relevant for all species in the galaxy when the Galaxy tab is selected in the Species view.
• Updated the message settings screen to give more space for the message list.
• Changed auto-unpause on the message settings screen from a spinner to a checkbox.
• Adjusted centering of text and icons in toast windows. If a toast with custom description has no icon associated with the custom description, the description will now fill the entire lower section of the toast.

Localization

• Add tooltip to Cutholoid Hunter modifier
• Add tooltip to Voidworm Hunter modifier
• Turn reanimated cutholoids and voidworms ship size name consistent with other reanimated Space Fauna

Modding

• Open Beta Note: Were still working on Zones and Buildings, and will likely change how we do some of this to be a bit friendlier. Dont update your mods based on what you see in this build.
• Add `resettle_pop_group` effect that allows to resettle a specified portion of a pop group to a target planet
• Add first iteration of `create_pop_group` effect
• Add kill_pop_group effect that takes a pop group and an amount or percentage and instantly kills them
• Add `transfer_pop_amount` effect that transfers pops from a pop group to another
• Removed unused can_resettle_planet game rule and renamed can_resettle_planet_no_owner_check to can_resettle_planet.
• Removed can_colonize_with_pop game rule and moved its checks to can_colonize_with_species.
• Added the script effect "copy_traditions_from = { target = FROM exceptions = { tradition1 tradition 2 } }" that copies tradition from a target country into the scoped country
• Added "add_ascension_perk" and "remove_ascension_perk" effects, scope must be a country, adds or removed the specified perk syntax: add/remove_ascension_perk = perk_key
• Added "copy_ascension_perks_from" effect: Copies the Ascension Perks of the target country into the scoped country. They are added to the existing perks, and the potential/possible triggers are respected. The perks listed in the exceptions list are not copied. copy_ascension_perks_from = { target = FROM exceptions = { perk1 perk2 } }
• Added "remove_tradition" effect. Remove the target tradition from the scoped Country. remove_tradition = tradition_key
• Added effect "remove_tradition_tree" Remove the target tradition tree from the scoped Country. remove_tradition_tree = tradition_category_key
• Added spawn_design to static galaxy system data, which forces a specific design to spawn in the system.
• Added gamesetup_settings script for configuring the settings list in game setup.
• There is now an event_message_type in events that lets you override the default message type EVENT_MESSAGE_TYPE. This can e.g. provide separate message settings.
• Scripted loc can now be used in concept tooltips and the top bar tooltips.
• New on_action on_favor_gained that gets triggered when a country receives a favor.
• Added the used_defense_platform_capacity_percent trigger, letting you check how much of a starbases defensive platform capacity is used.
• Message notification background is now separated from the message type icon.
• New on_action on_research_option_added that gets triggered every time a new permanent research option is acquired.
• The actual script file and line are now printed when there are errors logged in scripted triggers and scripted effects, in addition to the previously available information.
• kill_pop has been replaced with kill_pop_group. For ease of use kill_single_pop and kill_all_pop scripted effects have been made.
• Replaced resettle_pop with resettle_pop_group.
• Added "playme" console command as shorthand for human_ai and ai_ignore_was_human.

Okay, How Do I Opt Into the Beta?

If youre ready for a confusing, possibly frustrating, and unfinished experience, and youre on Steam, you can opt into the Open Beta. [olist]

Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.

Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.0 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown. [/olist]

Whats Next?

We expect that the next Open Beta update, 3.99.1, will have Civilians in a more complete state, and more of the UI and AI should be in place. Buildings, Zones, and Jobs should also have more progress too. Our next Dev Diary will be on Thursday, March 20th, but I hope to have an update to the Open Beta before the weekend. Here is the link to Stellaris Open Beta Survey 1: Empire Timeline and Empire Focus!

[ 2025-03-11 12:00:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! Were still hard at work getting the features weve been describing into the game, but this week were giving you a bit of a progress update, and Ill be giving my thoughts on what shape theyll be in when we begin the Open Beta. As with everything over the past couple of months, all of this is still subject to change. Weve successfully gotten past the critical milestone of the game is no longer completely broken, and things are starting to come together very nicely.

DD #367: Precursor Selection, Databank, Species Modification, and Ship Designer

The first three are fully functional and will be in the Open Beta. The Databank still has some placeholder graphics on some buttons, and were planning on adding more entries, but its good enough for the Open Beta.
The work for the Ship Designer changes was done in the Q2 DLC branch to support that release, and while it is functional it will not be in the Open Beta (but will be in the final release).

DD #368: Pacing Adjustments, Galaxy Generation, Leader Traits, Events/Messages/Notifications, Empire Focuses and the Timeline, Hard Reset, and Achievements

Wow, we covered a lot in that dev diary. All of these are functional, but like the Ship Designer, Hard Reset is in a different branch and will not be present in the Open Beta (but will be in the final release). The Timeline shows a number of important milestones, and is generally functional. Theres still some polish to be done here, but I feel like its in a good enough state for the Open Beta.
Many of the basic Focus Tasks are in too, along with some of the progression rewards for completing them. Weve added a couple of new Technologies to use as awards, such as Existential Campaigns, a tier 5 Society Tech. Still to-do are Tasks for nonstandard gamestyles, and we havent moved things like Form Federation out of the Diplomatic Traditions yet. Currently almost all of the Focuses relate to the base game only, but its good enough for now. We will have more in the actual 4.0 release. Achievements no longer require Ironman, but the use of any debug commands disables them for that run. We havent updated them to the new systems yet though, so getting things like 100 pops on a planet is trivially easy.

Well that was easy.

DD #369: Trade and Logistics, Mammalian Portraits

Most, but not all, of the features described in dev diary #369 are in a functional state. Trade is a normal resource that is shown in the top bar. Theres Logistical upkeep on ships and for local planetary deficits, and it has replaced energy as the market resource.
We have not yet completed the entire trade economy for Gestalts, but they will have some baseline generation to handle this from their Maintenance Drones for the Open Beta. Our mammalian friends are done, but like Hard Reset, are in their own development branch and will not be present in the Open Beta.

DD #370: Pop Groups and Workforce, Colonization, and Civilians

This is the core of what were interested in testing during the Open Beta. Pops have been converted to using the new Pop Group system, and most aspects of Workforce are functional. Were still going through the various jobs and updating them, and some of the weirder stuff in Stellaris (like, for example, Permanent Unemployment) hasnt been worked on yet. Broken Shackles is hilariously broken right now. (Its in the name, after all.) Multispecies pop growth is working, but we havent made Xenocompatibility pool different species together yet.
Simultaneous pop growth! Your homeworld starts with an extra 2000 pops, most of whom start as Civilians. This number is subject to change based on our internal playtesting and the Open Beta.

DD #371: Planet UI & Zones, Surface UI, Ecumenopoli, and Habitats

This is the other big part were still working on. The backend for the new mechanics is mostly complete, but were still doing the design side implementation of the new jobs, zones, and buildings. The actual surface UI is still very much a work in progress - its getting to a functional state, but isnt near the polish level of the designs you saw in the dev diary. Its likely to be part of the way there (but not complete) at the start of the Open Beta. Special planet types like Habitats and Ecumenopoli are unlikely to be fully implemented for at least the first part of the Open Beta. We have completed tying Habitat maximum development directly to the sizes of the deposits in the system, but havent had a chance to recreate their districts or zones using the new systems yet.

Performance

In a couple of threads, I mentioned that were not yet taking full advantage of some of the new model's performance benefits. Many things are still being calculated daily rather than monthly and are still largely single-threaded. We plan to keep it that way for the first couple of patches of the Open Beta because it will make it significantly easier for us to spot and fix any major issues that crop up. As a reminder, the 3.11 Technology Open Beta found an issue like that with the Breakthrough Technologies, and finding these sorts of fundamental problems is my primary desire for the Open Beta. The Stellaris community is pretty exceptional at providing general feedback with the information provided by dev diaries, but a week of Open Beta testing will hammer the systems harder than we could do with months of internal testing.

So WHEN is it? Whats Next?

I cant quite tell you that right now. This Friday, well be evaluating the status of our current build, and Ill try to provide a possible timeline for sometime next week. Until then, its back to the code mines for us! See you next week!

[ 2025-03-06 12:00:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hi everyone! This week, Gruntsatwork will discuss the technical details of pop group scripting. This topic is likely to be of most interest to the modding community. The systems were implementing now are just scratching the surface of where we want to go with them - were looking forward to some of the things well be able to do with these tools over the next few years as well as seeing what you do with them. As with all of these dev diaries, some of this is still subject to change during implementation and during the beta.

Pop Groups and Jobs

Hello everyone, Gruntsatwork here! Let us talk about some of the script changes that are coming with 4.0 when it comes to pops and jobs As Eladrin already mentioned in Dev Diary 370, we are changing the way we look at Pops by grouping them together into Pop Groups. These groups are defined by their species, traits, ethics, and factions but NOT their jobs. It is entirely possible and likely for a pop group to have pops working different jobs. The goal is that for most purposes in the game, you will reference pop groups instead of pops, which should hopefully save us from iterating through every single pop in our empire whenever a modifier needs to be re-calculated. This allows us to tone down or remove some of the most performance-intensive actions we used before and replace them with far more performance-friendly variations instead. For example, that means that both random_owned_pop or any_owned_pop have been relegated to the dark corners of history and replaced with random_owned_pop_group and any_owned_pop_group. The same holds true for many of the effects used on those pops, like create_pop or kill_pop, or move_pop. Going forward, we will now create, move and kill pop groups, either in their entirety or through percentages. And for the eagle-eyed among you, YES, that means you no longer have to loop through singular pops to do unspeakable things to them, you can nicely target their pop group and let it do the math for you. Thanks to the tireless efforts of our programmers, who have given us some new functionality for scripted triggers like comparators, other old tools, like num_pops, will see a resurgence as a scripted trigger. We expect the modding folks to find a lot of use in that, even as we slightly dread what you will come up with. As also mentioned by Eladrin, this means we no longer have a constant contact between pops and their job. Instead, there is a single moment of assignment when the pop group briefly knows which job it is supplying and with how much workforce. From then on, the job only knows that it has been supplied with workforce and thus must produce the associated resource. As long as the assignment stands, we have no need to check on the pop again. This brings us to one of our biggest changes: removing all production modifiers on species traits and replacing them with bonus workforce. Simply put, because the workforce assigned to a job does not know which species it came from during most checks, production bonuses from species (modifiers like +10% Research from Jobs from the Psionic trait) cannot be applied. Instead, species traits now provide modifiers like +10% Bonus Workforce for Researcher Jobs, which means 100 Psionic Pops working 100 Physicist jobs will have the job upkeep and output of 110 Physicist jobs. In other words, we only pay upkeep on 100 Pops, but we get the output of 110 Researchers! This also has the side effect of the modifiers for job output from species traits are now multiplicative with other modifiers. As an example, in 3.14 if we had 1 Psionic (+10% Research from Jobs) Pop working a Researcher job in an empire with the Meritocracy civic (+10% Specialist Job Output) on a Relic world with a Central Spire (+15% Research from Jobs), the total output would be 3 (1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.15) = 3 1.35 = 4.05 of each type of research. In 4.0 if we have 100 Psionic (+10% Bonus Workforce for Researcher Jobs) Pops working 100 Physics jobs in an empire with the Meritocracy civic (+10% Specialist Job Output) on a Relic world with a Central Spire (+15% Research from Jobs), the total output would be 3 (1 + 0.1) (1 + 0.1 + 0.15) = 3 1.1 1.25 = 4.125 physics research. This brings us beautiful new script entries like this one from the Psionic trait:
It doesnt have to be like this. But it can be. Grunts made his choice. - E This is perfectly serviceable - G I have hopes to refactor this - AS As a side note, some checks can still query a pops job, but only indirectly, by scoping to a job and determining which pop group is filling it. This means we can still ensure functionality for Death Cults and similar targeted kill_pop effects. In contrast, production bonuses on the planet or the empire are still available since they simply affect everyone. So for species traits, we encourage the use of these new modifiers pop_job_bonus_workforce_mult To increase the bonus workforce a pop generates for a given job. pop_job_workforce_mult To increase the workforce a pop generates for a given job, this is not bonus workforce. job_max_workforce_mult To increase the maximum workforce a Job can accept As a reminder, a job's workforce will fill to its maximum allowed but not beyond that. If a pop generates more workforce than usual, fewer pops will be required to fill the job to max, but it will not produce more than its maximum. If a pop generates a bonus workforce, it can go beyond the job's maximum and scale its production up. In addition, we have also split quite a few of our economic categories that depended on triggered checks of species traits. This also includes the use of triggers to fake an inheritance of economic classes, which we have removed in many cases and only left in the ones we deemed the most reliant on them. For inheritance, we recommend the normal parent-child structure of economic categories OR, to use static_modifiers to grant the modifiers of any combination of economic_categories. Most, if not all, of these changes were made to improve performance: reducing calls, loops, and modifier cascades that would otherwise trigger recalculations across every planet and pop in your empire, just in case a deficit check was needed at that moment. Looking ahead, we see great potential in workforce mechanics, both for us and the modding community. We've hinted at automation workforce decoupled from pops and some of you may have already considered new applications for Virtuality. Who knows what other, more extreme variations in the type and number of pops empires require might now be possible? Simply put, we now have the workforce to power Stellaris for years to come. Pun very much intended.

Whats Next?

Our planned livestream is going to be delayed a bit, and will likely end up being alongside the Open Beta. Right now our primary focus is on implementation. Next week well have some more updates on how things have been going.

[ 2025-02-27 12:00:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hi everyone! This week were looking more at the economic changes of the Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update, and how were going to update the Planet UI to work with them. As this is all still in development, things are still subject to change, and Im going to be using a lot of the UX Design Mockups in this dev diary. The final versions will not match these work-in-progress designs precisely. The Open Beta will definitely not be at these polish levels. Also be aware that numbers on these mockups are all placeholders meant to help the rest of the team get the layout right, so things like the Pop Counts or Production numbers arent accurate.

Planets - Districts - Zones - Buildings - Jobs

As mentioned last week, one of the fundamental changes were making to the economy behind the scenes is that planets are now the source of production rather than the pops themselves. This is a generally subtle change from your perspective as a player, but this opened up an opportunity to revamp exactly how planets are structured, and to formalize some of the job hierarchy. A few of you have already guessed some of the things Im going to share with you. Were introducing a new planetary feature: Zones. By specializing Districts, Zones function similarly to how the Forge World, Factory World, and Industrial World designations previously modified the jobs provided by Industrial Districts only now as a more structured, intuitive, and flexible mechanic. The 4.0 Planet Hierarchy is:

• Planets produce and consume resources.
• Districts provide a base number of Jobs for each level of development.
• Zones manipulate what Jobs are provided by their District.
• Buildings typically modify the production of Jobs themselves, though may also provide static numbers of Jobs.
• Jobs are filled by Workforce, and make the planet produce a single resource by default (unless they have been modified).

Standard planets have a City District that contains your urban development, and remains capped by planet size as it is in 3.14. The City District has four Zones - one will always be locked to a Governmental Zone and contains your Capital Building, while the other three will be selectable. Normal planets also have Mining, Agricultural, and Energy Districts which each have one Zone, and - like 3.14 - are gated by planetary features. Industrial Districts have been removed, as their function has been replaced by Zones.
Upgrading Districts is now clearly shown as a button on the Planet UI - this should reduce the number of it took me X months to realize you can build districts posts. As part of the increase in differentiation between Districts and Buildings, weve changed some of the terminology slightly - instead of building a dozen Districts across a planet, you will upgrade their development level. Functionally this remains the same.
Zones are our new addition to the Planet Hierarchy. Zones let you change the nature of their District. By default, the City District will provide Housing and increase the maximum number of Civilians that your planet can support. (Based on design discussions over the past week, were leaning towards your Empire Capital having a bonus increasing this number significantly, which has the nice secondary effect of making the conquest of Homeworlds in the early game carry the societal challenge of suddenly creating many angry Dissidents that will be unable to promote back to Civilians as this bonus is lost.) If you build a Foundry Zone, the City District will replace some of their Civilian capacity and housing with Metallurgist jobs for each level of development. If you then build a Factory Zone, the City District will provide both Metallurgist and Artisan jobs, but with further reductions to their Citizen capacity.
While you can build multiple Zones of the same type (in your City District, for example), the first Zone of each type built on a planet gains three slots for Buildings. (Duplicate Zones do not grant additional Building slots.) Buildings typically modify the production of their associated Job, and most are now Planet Unique. The majority of Buildings are restricted to the specific relevant Zones that they can be built in, but some can still be built anywhere. The Government Zone and Urban Zone can, however, accept most Urban buildings. The build list will be filtered appropriately. The majority of Jobs will now have a single output by default, so Researchers are being broken apart into Physicists, Biologists, and Engineers. Origins and Civics that previously replaced Jobs will now typically instead have a Building that modifies the associated Job. A benefit of this is that it should now be able to stack better with other similar Civics - we hope to be able to reduce restrictions so perhaps youll be able to sacrifice willing Pops by flinging them into a black hole for money.

The Planetary Surface

Your homeworld is a bit of a special case in Stellaris - its not a brand new colony, but its also not very specialized. It needs to provide a little bit of everything, but could really use some cleanup after all those years of development (becoming an Early Space Age civilization is a dirty job.) Heres the work-in-progress UX mockup of what Earth may look like at the start of the game:
The unspecialized mess of being an Early Space Age civilization gives us a relatively unspecialized zone that provides us with the basic resources necessary at the start of the game. Well eventually want to replace that Zone with a more specialized one. As we head to the stars, well naturally want to colonize our Guaranteed Habitable Worlds. The new Colonization UI will let us immediately set the desired planetary designation for our brand new colony.
Dont worry, youll be able to select something other than Factory World... Heres what our new colony could look like once the colonization process finishes:
...But why did you choose Mining World for a planet with Poor Quality Minerals? The Reassembled Ship Shelter provides Colonist jobs that will provide the Amenities and Stability previously granted by the Colony designation. As shown, the technologies required to expand on an alien world are not necessarily the same as those you need back on your home planet. Our UX designer has created these explanations of the new UI:

And heres what our two planets might look like after some time has passed.

Special Cases

Ever since MegaCorp, paving the entire world has always been a grand ambition of Empires. Were currently thinking that an Ecumenopolis should act like the megacity it is. The Ecumenopolis will have multiple Urban Districts - one large main one and three more smaller Arcologies.
Wait, this means you can make a Fortress Ecumenopolis Although the gameplay of upgrading a Habitat Complex by building orbitals throughout a system made Habitats more interesting, having to hunt down that last moon to place the orbital proved incredibly annoying. For 4.0, were removing this pain point. Upgrading Districts on a Habitat will spawn Orbitals throughout the system as their Development Level increases. Some of the district capacity will be available immediately upon colonizing the Habitat Central Complex, with the remainder gated by upgrading the Capital Building. Were also considering having the district capacity for Habitats more closely linked to the deposits available in the system instead of the current behavior where each mineral deposit grants a static amount of capacity. We expect to see some unique or former districts for habitats be reimagined or return as Zones, such as the Orders Demesne for KotTG or Sanctuary Districts for Rogue Servitors.
Goodbye, hunting for where that last minor orbital is hiding!

Next Week

Next week, Gruntsatwork will go into some of the scripting details of Jobs and Pop Groups. We should also have some more information about the upcoming 4.0 livestream. See you then!

[ 2025-02-20 12:00:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! This week were going to look at the upcoming changes to Pops in the Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update. Last week I said we might also look at the Planet UI, but Im going to save that until next week since theres quite a bit to cover here (especially if youre into the technical details), and Id rather not split the feedback.

Pop Groups and Workforce

As mentioned in Dev Diary 366, the Pop and Jobs system introduced in Stellaris 2.2 Le Guin has always had significant performance implications in the late game, and weve been working on incremental improvements ever since. In the Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update, Pops will be grouped into Pop Groups based on species, strata, ethics, and faction, and these Pop Groups will produce Workforce that is used to fill (or partially fill) Jobs. As part of this change, were changing the overall scale of Pops - most things that previously affected or manipulated 1 Pop would now affect or manipulate groups of 100. The new systems can manipulate any number of Pops within a Pop Group just as easily as manipulating one, and Ill go into some of the benefits of the finer resolution below. Our primary desire with these changes is to improve late-game performance, but while working on it we took the opportunity to streamline some aspects of planetary management and improve the planet UI. Lets take a closer look at some of the details.

Workforce

In Stellaris, the core economic loop since 2.2 has been: Pops fill Jobs, and Jobs produce resources. With the 4.0 Phoenix update, were making a subtle but important change - Pops will now generate Workforce, which is used to fill Jobs, and planets themselves will produce resources. At a basic level, this works almost the same way. By default, every Pop generates 1 Workforce, so Jobs are still filled at the same rate. However, this shift is crucial for backend performance improvements, reducing the number of calculations the game needs to make each month. Example: Then vs. Now Before (3.14):

• Take a planet with 100 Pops working Metallurgist Jobs, where 20 of them have a +10% Production Bonus from a Species Trait.
• These 100 Pops produce 612 Alloys per month.
• Every Pop is individually checked - 80 produce the standard amount, while 20 get a 10% Alloy production bonus from their species trait.

Now (4.0):

• Instead of tracking individual Pops, we track Workforce filling Jobs.
• Jobs are now filled by 10,000 Workforce (since Pops are scaled up by 100).
• 8,000 Workforce comes from regular Pops, while 2,000 Workforce comes from the bonus-earning Pops.
  • The species bonus is now 10% bonus Workforce when working Alloy jobs - those Pops contribute an extra 200 Workforce, making the total 10,200 Workforce. Bonus Workforce is allowed to go over the required Workforce for a job, yielding extra production.
• If 100 Workforce still produces 6 Alloys, the planet still produces 612 Alloys - same output, different system.

Why This Matters: The key benefit is efficiency. Instead of iterating through and calculating production for every individual Pop, the game now only checks once per planet. This makes the system more scalable and improves performance, while still allowing for species based bonuses and modifiers. Most existing species traits that affect Job production will be converted into Workforce bonuses or planet-based modifiers. As always, the final balancing will be refined through the Open Beta. There are a few quirks and subtleties about how this interacts with other modifiers - bonus Workforce as a modifier is more powerful than bonus Production due to the two of them stacking multiplicatively rather than additively. Pop groups are currently split up by Species, Strata, Ethics, and Faction. If you end up in a case where a Pop group is not completely uniform (for example, if 20% of the Pop group are recent refugees and thus happier than the rest), then the differences get averaged across the Pop group. If none of this feels like it makes sense - its okay. Its mostly a behind-the-scenes change. Jobs require Workforce to fill them, and thats generated by Pops. We have some ideas about ways to expand upon this in the future, such as replacing part of the Workforce with automation by using a building.

Pop Growth

With more granular Pop units, we have more ability to support simultaneous growth of Pops on a planet. Each species present on a planet will grow normally, and with the smaller unit size, will grow every month. This results in several benefits, including multi-species empires not getting their growth dominated by underrepresented species, and also lets us remove the floor on colony Pop growth. This does mean that newly settled colonies will be very reliant on migration to grow their population until they develop to the point where they can support their own Pop growth, and removes a long-running issue where spamming colonies regardless of habitability simply for the minimum flat Pop growth was optimal. Xeno-Compatibility will pool all species on a multi-species planet together to calculate their growth rate, then split the growth proportionally across the various species. Assembly works largely the way it did before, except that fractional Assembly will become microPops thanks to the finer resolution of Pops. Machine and Organic Assembly will no longer conflict with one another, as the Organic Pops will handle their own growth, while all mechanical assembly will be channeled towards the highest score mechanical Pop templates available.

Colonization and Civilians

Since your new colonies will be extremely reliant on migration from their homeworld until they reach a critical mass of inhabitants where they can begin to support themselves, were adding a new population stratum called Civilians (or Residents, for species without full citizenship). These Civilians form the generally content base of your empire, and will trickle out to the colonies, looking for better opportunities. Unemployed Pops will still exist and downgrade through the strata, with unemployed Worker stratum Pops demoting to Civilians over time. This will have an impact on stability, as Civilians are largely content and non-disruptive. Spoiler: More Technical Details [spoiler] This is mostly for you modders out there to abuse, but in the new system, Unemployed Specialist will technically be a Job - therell be one for each stratum. Every Job can have a demotion target assigned to it, and a time. In our implementation, all of the Specialist stratum Jobs will demote to Unemployed Specialist; Unemployed Specialist will demote to Unemployed Worker, and Unemployed Worker will demote to Civilian as they give up on their dreams of productivity and veg out in front of the holoscreen.[/spoiler] Your homeworld will start with a fairly large pool of Civilians to support your early expansion. Were a bit worried about early conquest of homeworlds being too easy of a snowball with this increased starting Pop count, so are considering various ways of making it more challenging to take homeworlds in the early to mid game. One idea we have includes having Civilians create impromptu defensive militias to help defend their home, and possibly starting you off with a few Defensive Platforms. Another idea is for aggressively invaded Civilians to take Resistance Jobs that they must then demote out of over time. The number of Civilians converted to this new Job and how long it takes them to drop out of it would be modified depending on how their people are being treated by their new and old masters. We welcome your ideas and suggestions.

Clerks are dead! Long live Civilians!

Were currently still experimenting with the effects Living Standards have on Civilians (and Pops in general) - its likely that more of the Trade generation from Living Standards will be shifted to the Civilian stratum, and production from Unemployed Pops in the old system may also move to the Civilians. This will give them some of the functions of Clerks in the old economic model. In Gestalt empires, they are likely going to be outright named Maintenance Drones rather than Civilians. Were also renaming the Ruler stratum to Elites, so Ruler isnt double-dipping between your Empires ruler at the top economic stratum.

Next Week

Next week well be going through the new Planet UI, and how all of this changes things there.

[ 2025-02-13 12:00:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! Today were going to take a glance at the Trade and Logistics changes coming in the Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update, then check out some new portraits.

Trade and Logistics

Trade as a Standard Resource The Trade system introduced in the Stellaris 2.2 Le Guin update was raised as an especially frequent point of confusion for many players. UX issues around disconnected trade stations combined with some quirks of being a modifier based system (like ignoring habitability) made some of it unintuitive. The system had a major impact on performance as well, so while examining Stellaris for optimizations, we decided that we wanted to revamp the system. In 4.0, Trade will become a standard advanced resource, generally produced in the same way as before, but will follow all of the standard rules around resource-producing jobs. The Trade Routes system has been removed - any produced Trade will be immediately collected like any other normal resource.
Weve done some cleanup to the top bar while we were in there. Logistical Upkeep Hello, Gruntsatwork here, with Eladrins UI wizardry done, I shall step in to reveal some of our trade secrets to you. The majority of your trade upkeep will come from 2 sources in the new system. First, local planetary deficits will carry a small trade upkeep, a fraction of the missing resources value on the galactic market. This represents the logistical effort required to commandeer freighters to supply a world that is not self-sufficient and therefore requires resources to be transported in from off-world. Mind you, this will occur in addition to normal deficits, if your entire empire is not capable of supplying those needs either. In short, your planets will either satisfy their own local needs, or require trade to offset the logistics cost. The second major trade upkeep will come from Fleets. Any fleets currently docked at one of your starbases have no trade upkeep. Once your fleets start to move they will gain a small Trade Upkeep, representing the logistical efforts required to support them. This small upkeep will increase if your fleets are in hostile territory that is territory owned by another empire you are at war with, as supplying them becomes so much more dangerous and space insurance coverage is no joke. In the future, logistical upkeep could potentially be used to counter-act Doomstacking, for example by scaling upkeep with the number of ships in a fleet, dividing by the number of fleets, fleets per system etc, we have no concrete solution yet, but welcome your thoughts. With these new sources of trade upkeep, it is of course important to mention that we will also introduce a new trade deficit. Like Unity, this will not create a Deficit Situation but a country modifier that persists until the deficit is dealt with. Running a trade deficit will reduce advanced resource production (alloys, consumer goods, unity, and research) and all ship weapons damage. Stockpiling Trade and Using Trade in the Market Our intent is for Trade Policies to continue to exist going forward. Currently, we expect to have half of your net Trade income (after paying Logistical Upkeep) converted to other resources using your Trade Policy, plus any that might otherwise overflow your storage. Some of the current Trade Policies may be tweaked a bit. The rest will go into your resource stockpile as an advanced resource. In addition, the galactic market has been adjusted so that its primary trading resource is Trade. As such, energy is now available on the market as a standard resource. The energy storage cap has been brought to the same level as minerals and food, while Trades storage cap has been set to 50.000 at the base level. As we are in the middle of implementation, we are adjusting this as we receive internal feedback and will continue to do so when it is time for our open beta. We will be keeping a close eye on the value of trade as a resource. If necessary, well keep turning the dials to ensure it is an actually interesting resource to focus on. For modders, the main market resource is set as a define and can be switched to something else. Gestalt Empires and Trade Rejoice, friends of bugs and bolts, for you too will be able to enjoy the benefits of trade starting with 4.0. As part of the Phoenix update, Gestalt empires will be able to collect trade like normal empires do, from both jobs and deposits. In contrast to normal empires, Gestalt empires will rarely do so with Traders and Clerks, instead their most basic drones, maintenance drones for example, will create trade in addition to their normal resources and modifiers. In addition, they will also have access to Trade Policies, to enrich their common wallet. Of course, with benefits come drawbacks, and so Gestalt Empires will also deal with the logistical upkeep for local planetary deficits and Fleets that are not docked and/or within hostile territory. The Galactic Market will of course also accept gestalt trade as its main resource. In the future, we are also considering Megacorp Gestalt Empires, for your corporate drone needs, but whether we will have time to do that for 4.0 or later remains to be seen. Corporate Branch Office Updates For Branch Offices, we have a plethora of improvements ready for your enjoyment, courtesy of our ever industrious Mr.Cosmogone. Branch office buildings are now all limited to 1 per planet and now give more appropriate jobs to the host planet. They also increase local trade production based on those jobs and their corporate resource output is in turn increased by local trade. Most Corporate Civics now also give bonuses to a specific branch office building, increasing its trade value bonus and receiving Merchant jobs on their Capital from it. Numerous changes have been made to Criminal Syndicates:

• Criminal Empires can now establish commercial pacts. Having a commercial pact with a Criminal Empire will replace all criminal buildings with their "lawful" counterpart. As long as the commercial pact remains, criminal branch offices will not be removed from the planet.
• All Criminal branch office buildings have had their crime value set to 25 and give one Criminal Job alongside a regular Job.
• We have also added a crime floor to non-criminal branch office buildings on empires they have a trade agreement with, which means there will always be a minimum amount of crime on the branch office planet. Criminal branch offices are also up to 25% more profitable on high crime planets.

Balance-wise, these buildings are more impactful, so branch office buildings now cost influence, and branch offices now take up 5 empire size instead of 2. Oh, and we have also allowed Megacorps to open branch offices on other Megacorps... The influence cost is doubled when built on a planet owned by another Megacorp. Mammalian Portraits Thanks, Gruntsatwork. Now a message from Content Design Lead CGInglis: And now my deer friends, one mooo-re surprise for you! The Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update brings ten paws-itively stunning new Mammalian portraits to the base game!
Glass of milk, standing in between extinction in the cold, and explosive radiating growth
The Gremlin
A regal Hippopotaxeno
My, what big teeth you have.
The secrets of enlightenment are waiting.

Next Week

Next week well start talking about how Pops will change and might pull up the new Planet UI. Since the branch itself is still very full of placeholders, well be using the design mockups while explaining the changes. See you then!

[ 2025-02-06 12:00:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Today were going to take a deeper look at some of the ways were adjusting game pacing through changes to Galaxy Generation, Message Settings, Events and Anomalies. Then well take a peek at the Focus system, the Empire Timeline, and a few other changes. Some of this has already been covered in the announcement diary, but Ill be providing more up-to-date screenshots and more details. As this is from a build that is still in active development, there will be placeholder icons or temporary text in some of these screenshots, and all of these are still subject to change.

Pacing Adjustments

Stellaris is a game with many moving parts, each of which interact with other elements to produce a complex whole. Small adjustments in one spot can have significant effects in another, and in the end there can be unexpected impact to the general pacing of the game and overall economy.

Galaxy Generation

As mentioned in Dev Diary #366, weve gone through all of the scripted systems and done a normalization pass on the frequency of these systems appearing, as well as preventing many of them from appearing in empire starting clusters. Some other adjustments have been made to generation as a whole, which should distribute non-guaranteed habitable worlds a bit better and reduce the likelihood of massive clusters of them right around your homeworld. There were comments in the thread asking for the ability to easily change these weights. Since most of them now use scripted variables, theyll be very easy to change with mods. # SYSTEM INITIALIZERS @spawn_system_rare = 0.1 @spawn_system_uncommon = 0.5 @spawn_system_base = 1 @spawn_system_slightlycommon = 2 @spawn_system_common = 4 @spawn_system_verycommon = 8 @spawn_system_extreme = 16 @spawn_system_max = 99999 @spawn_system_enclave = 100 # first enclave uses this, rest use extreme As the pool of anomalies and prescripted systems with guaranteed anomalies have also grown over the years, weve adjusted the anomaly spawn chance increment a bit to compensate.

Leader Traits

A minor change from the original announcement is that weve implemented a suggestion from the forum thread to have the trait selection levels on even levels - its much cleaner overall. Leaders still begin with a starting trait at level 1. If you have trait selections to make, the leader level up Notifications will show the green call to action. If you dont, theyll have a more subdued monochrome icon. Leader positions will also have a significantly greater effect on which traits will be selected for players without Galactic Paragons or those that prefer automatic trait selection. For those that prefer picking leader traits themselves, this bias is instead reflected in which traits are selected for the pool of possible traits whenever a new trait is available. In Settings, were also letting you choose what you would like your default automatic trait selection to be. Any time you take over an empire as the primary human player (a distinction that is primarily relevant for co-op gameplay), it will make sure that the Auto Select Leader Traits box is set to your preference.

Events, Messages, and Notifications

Were going through many events, messages, and notifications to reduce the number of popups that disrupt your general gameplay. While major events still appear as popups, those that dont require an immediate response or are purely informational have been converted into notifications or toasts.




The Artisans and Mirror Dimension can wait until Ive finished what Im currently doing. As weve been doing this pass, weve updated some of the messages that have been converted into toasts, to make them more informative at a glance.

Empire Focuses and the Timeline

While designing the Empire Focuses we had several thoughts.

• Stellaris is a dynamic game full of wonder and possibilities. Our sandbox nature means predefined and structured trees cannot work for us.
• Tasks provided by Focuses should help guide newer players through the game, providing suggestions for short and medium term goals.
• Behaving in a manner consistent with your Empire Focus should naturally complete the Tasks from that category.
  • Empire Focus categories are Conquest, Exploration, and Development. (Names subject to change.)
• Rewards for progress within a Focus category should be intangible.
  • Any rewards you get should feel narratively consistent with your empires behavior. For instance, acting as an aggressive militarist should naturally guide your researchers to theorizing applicable technologies.
  • These rewards should reduce the need to rely on lucky draws from the tech pool if you want to pursue your Focus.

The Empire Timeline and Focus share a tab in the Situation Log.
The current mockup of the Timeline tab. Some differences will exist between this and the final version. Tasks come in four different categories - Conquest, Exploration, or Development correspond to the three different Focuses, and there are some very basic Tasks at the beginning that are considered Core. Completing a Task grants progress within its associated category; Core tasks grant progress in all three.
Many of the early game tasks are generally straightforward. The tooltips try to give some advice about how to complete them. At any time your empire will have five tasks offered, weighted toward your selected Focus. Tasks complete automatically and retroactively, so if youve already completed an Archaeology Site, it will complete immediately if you draw it. If you have a Task that either feels impossible or isnt something you want to do, you can discard it for a small Unity cost. Many of the rewards for progression along a Focus are (currently) research options thematically associated with the Focus. For example, the first Conquest milestone grants Doctrine: Fleet Support as a guaranteed research option, while others in the line include Specialized Combat Computers and Destroyers. Youll still have to research them, but were happy with how your actual actions in game have an impact on the ideas your researchers are coming up with. The Empire Timeline shows many of the key events of your empire. Beginning with your Origin as the starting point, important milestones will be logged as they happen. Empire firsts feature prominently on the timeline, such as your first colony or the first time youve been humiliated by a Fallen Empire, but some other crucial moments are listed as well, such as war declarations, megastructures, when a crisis appeared, or when an accursed rival stole your Galatron. The timeline has several zoom levels to let you see a general overview of what happened at a glance, or a detailed list of interesting moments.

Hard Reset

In the 4.0 Phoenix update, were adding a new Origin to the Synthetic Dawn story pack called Hard Reset. As a warning, this Origin gets pretty dark (even for Stellaris), very quickly.
In this Origin, you begin as the cybernetic battle thralls of an advanced Driven Assimilator that have suddenly lost connection to the gestalt intelligence. Naturally, you were outfitted with some of the finest combat cybernetics available.
Your civilization begins in an immediate fight for your lives. Thankfully, as the elite battle thralls of your former masters, you excel at violence. This is good, because youll need to fight through rogue barrier fleets that still infest nearby systems.
Im sure everything on Dream Loop is fine. No need to investigate further, right? As with Broken Shackles, the exploration of yourselves as a people is a core part of this Origin, with factions forming a little while after you gain your independence.
Your sudden independence has also left your populace with some traits that represent your nature as Assimilator battle thralls. As you discover more about your past, youll have opportunities to either mitigate or enhance these traits, either by pursuing de-cyberization or by embracing the power of the machine. An alternate path exists where you can instead accept your conflicted nature and Well, I wont spoil what happens on that path.

Achievements

As part of the development process, we decided to take this opportunity to review some of the rules around gaining achievements. As I think that many of the simpler ones are a great tool for letting you know that youre playing the game correctly, so weve made a change. Ironman mode is no longer required to earn most Stellaris achievements. An unmodified game checksum and being in single-player remain as requirements.

• The "Victorious" achievement has been updated to "Win the game through any victory condition in Ironman mode."

Next Week

Were still working on getting things like the pop and planet changes presentable, so next week well likely be talking about Trade and Logistics. See you then!

[ 2025-01-30 12:00:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Greetings, Stellaris Community! Last week we announced the Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update, today were going to start going through some of the changes coming in it. As mentioned before, the changes well be going through in the next few dev diaries are still scorching hot on the development branch, and may change drastically before final release. That said, the ones Ill be talking about today have cooled off a little bit and are pretty stable at this point.

Precursor Selection

Lets start with a simple one that I already leaked to you back in December. The Advanced Settings tab when youre setting up a new game will now have a section that lets you set which Precursors are available in your galaxy.
The galaxy will be split into slices and the available Precursors distributed as they are currently - in the above example, the First League and Cybrex would not appear for anyone in this galaxy. You are free to set the number of available Precursors to whatever number you desire, even none, but remember that in multiplayer games, each Precursor chain can only be completed by a single player. We recommend having at least four, to keep a sense of uncertainty and wonder in the galaxy, but its up to you if you want to force a specific Precursor.

The Stellaris Databank

Back in the Stellaris 3.8 Gemini update we introduced Concepts, as our variant of Tooltips-within-Tooltips. Weve been iterating on how we use them over time, and theyve become a great asset in helping explain the complexities of Stellaris. In the Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update, were adding a compendium of sorts that contains Concepts in a searchable form, the Stellaris Databank.
Concepts in the Databank are divided into categories, and can themselves include further Concepts. Clicking the icon in the top right searches for the Concept in the Stellaris wiki, for more detailed information.
Searching for Alloys gives us every Concept that includes the word, sorting the most relevant to the top.
If you have a Concept open, clicking will open the Databank, if you would like to know more. Were interested in seeing how you use the Databank and how it can be improved in the future.

Species Modification Changes

We gave you a quick preview of the Species menu last week, but now well go a little more in depth. The Species screen now provides you with more information about the various species in your empire, including showing the number of trait picks they might have remaining. The template modification window itself has been remade to provide better sorting of positive and negative traits, and listing them by value, making it easier to find the traits youre looking for.
My serviles should be delicious, dont you think? The new flow removes a few clicks from the process, starting the Special Project immediately. If time is not of the essence, instead of using a Special Project to modify your species, you can designate a template as the Species Default, and let them integrate over to that default template slowly over time. Certain traditions or buildings might affect the speed of this integration process.
Actually, scratch that. Everybody should be delicious.

Ship Designer Changes

Like some of the other UIs were exploring today, the Ship Designer has had some quality of life updates. Weve taken the Ship Roles that were introduced in the 3.6 Orion update and made selecting one part of the basic ship design flow and giving them a better representation than a scrollable text list. Some pain points of ship design, like the Auto-generate changes button blocking saving, have been removed, and in general its a faster and easier process to create a general ship design.
Weve added a Custom role for veteran players that want to design the ship from scratch, or you can take one of these generated templates and modify them to suit your needs before saving.

Next Week

Next week well go over more details regarding the improvements to Message Settings, as well as a selection of other features that are still so hot in development that theyre still glowing placeholder-magenta. If I cant get you decent screenshots, Ill post some of the concepts and explain what were in the middle of. See you then!

[ 2025-01-23 12:00:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

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[ 2025-01-20 17:57:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Happy New Year! Its good to be back! I want to start by welcoming all of the new Stellaris players who joined us during the Winter Sale, and to our Chinese community, which has grown so much over the last year, Next, I want to draw your attention to several feedback threads that have been running for the past few weeks. These threads have forms you can fill out to share your thoughts.

• War and War Resolution
• Pirates and Crime
• Espionage
• Factions and Politics

Your feedback is essential in shaping Stellaris's future, and Im extremely grateful for the strong response weve received so far. For some time Ive been hinting that the Custodian team has been working on something big, so now lets look at what theyve been up to and what were planning for the first half of 2025.

A Moment of Prophecy?

A long, long time ago, I was asked when we would move on to Stellaris 4.0, and I answered Definitely not until we get to release Update 3.14.
Little did I know how prophetic that joke really was.

Announcing Stellaris 4.0

The Q2 Stellaris release, currently expected sometime around our Anniversary in May, will be the Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update. It will be released alongside our major expansion for the year.

While designing the plan for the Stellaris 4.0 release, the Custodian team had the following major priorities:

• Performance Improvements
• New Player Guidance and Game Pacing
• Quality of Life Improvements

As much of this is still very deep in active development, I dont have too many screenshots to show off yet, so Ill go over some of what we have planned and provide more in-depth details in future dev diaries. As they get closer to completion, some of these features will likely change as we iterate on them, and its possible that some may end up very different from how they were described in this dev diary, be delayed, or even cut altogether - these are some of the risks of sharing plans in an early stage, but I feel that the benefits outweigh any potential drawbacks.

Performance Improvements

Stellaris has many moving parts, and an incredible number of calculations are performed every month. Many of those calculations rely on others, forcing them to be performed sequentially rather than in parallel. This causes the game to slow down as the number of calculations increases throughout the game and is especially noticeable in large galaxies - more planets and empires means more pops filling more jobs, producing more resources, with more pathfinding for the fleets, and so on. Pops and Jobs The Pop and Jobs system introduced in Stellaris 2.2 Le Guin have always had major performance implications in the late game, and weve been working on incremental improvements ever since. [previewyoutube=PVk9iJry1dI;full][/previewyoutube] The Tech Pope Speaks Last year I mentioned that we were exploring a Pop Groups prototype, and showed you a horrifying placeholder screenshot in the last dev diary of the year. Our initial experiments have been promising, so in the Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update, were changing the way Pops fundamentally work. Pops will be grouped together into Pop Groups based on species, strata, and ethics, and these Pop Groups will produce Workforce that is used to fill (or partially fill) Jobs. As part of this change, were changing the overall scale of Pops - most things that previously affected or manipulated 1 Pop would now affect or manipulate 100. These changes will significantly impact other systems, such as Pop Growth, Migration, and many others. Ill dedicate a full dev diary to more details before the Open Beta. Trade The current Trade system, with its constant calculations around pathing and pirate generation, is another that has a disproportionately high impact on performance compared to the benefit. Were simplifying that one significantly and making Trade act as a standard resource. Trade will also be used to represent general logistics capability and as such, will likely become available to gestalt empires for these logistical purposes. Again, well cover this in a future dev diary. Additional Comments Fleets are the remaining system Id highlight for having a major performance impact. While 4.0 will have some general fixes, weve got our hands full with these changes so were expecting to focus more on them in a future update.

New Player Guidance and Game Pacing

Much of the feedback weve received from newer players indicates that Stellaris has become overwhelming in the early stages of the game, providing a flood of decisions and a seemingly endless barrage of notifications. They have trouble identifying which of these choices are important for long-term growth versus which are primarily flavor, and the constant interruptions make it difficult to form both short-term and long-term goals. More Meaningful Events The Content Design team has been reviewing events and notifications to ensure that any interruptions are meaningful. Events should generally not be purely informative you should have a choice that has an impact. A substantial number of purely informational events, such as the discovery of Terraforming Candidates or new Strategic Resources, have been converted into toasts or notifications. As an example, during your first steps to the stars youll find evidence that life is surprisingly common out in the galaxy. While this used to simply have an acknowledgment, youll now have choices based on the nature of your empire.
Event options should help guide the way your empire grows. Anomalies are a wonderful content delivery vehicle during the exploration phase, but having a window pop up in your face every time one of your science ships finds anything interesting is decidedly less wonderful. Were moving the popup to a Toast - you can click it or a notification to open the full anomaly window, or get to it through the Situation Log.
Anomalous readings registered! Certain event chains that are not particularly loved have had (or will have) a bit of adjustment as well.
Radical. Message Settings Speaking of Toasts and Notifications, the Message Settings system has been expanded to give you more control over how different messages should appear.
Were doing a pass on the default settings for each as well. The new Message Settings should allow you to customize your notifications to suit your preferences whether you want a popup that automatically pauses the game or to turn certain notifications completely off. Leader Trait Frequency Empire Leaders were cited in your feedback as feeling very needy, like theyre constantly clamoring for attention to select new traits if you owned Galactic Paragons. Were looking at merging the first two tiers of leader traits and reducing the number of levels that you make trait selections at - this has the net effect of increasing the overall power of leaders a bit (as theyll start with what was formerly a tier 2 trait, and if you select a new trait at level 3 instead of upgrading their starting trait, youll have two formerly tier 2 traits), but makes the experience with them a bit smoother. Fewer trait selections do put you at greater mercy of the random selection of options, so were increasing the number of option draws by 1. This should reduce some of the risk of getting a dead trait without diminishing the benefit of +1 Leader Trait Option effects too much. Galaxy Generation Updates As Stellaris has grown, so has the number of pre-scripted systems. Many of these unique systems were set at extremely high weights to appear, causing most of them to appear in every game you play. Since these special systems usually contained one or more habitable worlds, it inflated the number of such worlds well above the expected number, especially since they did not respect the Habitable Worlds slider from your settings. Weve done a normalization pass on the weights of these systems - many should still appear in each game, but it shouldnt try to stuff all of them in. They also now respect the Habitable Worlds and Pre-FTL sliders from galaxy setup if appropriate, and should generally no longer appear in the immediate vicinity of Empire homeworlds. This change yields general benefits to game pacing and indirectly, an improvement to performance in general. Empire Focuses The Focus Trees in some of our other Grand Strategy Games do a great job of outlining possible ways you could take your country. In Hearts of Iron, for example, you already know the general plot - the different factions will behave as you expect until World Tension reaches a certain level, after which the world descends into war. The differences that will occur from game to game are largely due to how the events play out, and your interference in history lets everything spiral out into an alternate resolution. The Focus Trees not only provide a great way to create butterflies that can change history but are fantastic at providing new players with short and medium-term goals. We decided that static Focus Trees were not appropriate for Stellaris though - our sandbox and 4X nature with a mysterious universe require any such systems to be more adaptable to whats happening in this galaxy. Instead of trees, weve decided to go with suggested tasks that fall into Conquest, Exploration, or Development aspiration categories - these can range from investigating an anomaly to building a Dyson Swarm, or at the highest ranks, even becoming Galactic Custodian. Youll be able to select your empires focused aspiration, which will skew the offered tasks towards your choice. Completing these tasks gives no immediate reward, but progresses you down Conquest, Exploration, and Development tracks, and if you get a task that youve already completed thats fine - itll immediately complete and you can get a new one. We dont want you to sit there waiting to build your Interstellar Assembly, after all. Reaching certain milestones will grant abilities like Form Federation (which will be moving out of the Diplomatic Traditions), or give guaranteed research options for critical technologies, reducing your reliance on random pulls from the technology deck for techs like Cruisers, Colonial Centralization, or Mega-Engineering. Veteran players already know how to play the game and are already adept at forming their own goals. We expect that youll already be completing these tasks naturally as you play - theyre primarily intended to teach new players how to play like you and guarantee that youll be able to force access to those important technologies. Empire Timeline Accessible via a new tab within the Situation Log, the Empire Timeline is a real-time chronicle of your empires journey. From humble beginnings on your homeworld to the heights of galactic dominance (or the depths of ignominious defeat), the timeline will automatically document key events and milestones as they occur. We aim for the Timeline to serve as a practical ledger, allowing you to retrace the pivotal decisions and moments that have shaped your game. It will also provide a rich narrative framework, transforming your gameplay into a story worth remembering. We look forward to sharing more details on the Empire Timeline in a future diary. For now, we invite you to prepare your empires for posterity and to ensure that your name echoes across the stars.

Quality of Life Improvements

Many of the other changes also fall into Quality of Life Improvements, but two I want to highlight in particular include improvements to the Species Modification process and the Colonization flow. Colonization Process Colonizing worlds had a few quirks that were smoothing out to make for a better experience, especially if you use Colony Automation. Were changing the Colony designation to a modifier that will exist for some time after initial colonization, and letting you pick a Colony Designation and even turn automation on when you give the colonization order. This should prevent a common situation in the mid to late game where you would colonize a planet, but would have to pick and choose between using automation or losing out on the amenity and stability bonuses of the default designation. The new flow also helps out Automation significantly since you wont end up in a situation where Colony is no longer a valid designation and it falls back to an auto-designated selection. Species Modification and Assimilation Targets Weve gone through the genetic modification process to remove many pain points and make the overall flow much smoother. Youll also be able to set a template as the species default, and can set sub-species variants to automatically integrate over time into the species default template.
The Species tab is generally more helpful as well. Note: This branch does not include the pop changes. Ship Designer As we did with Species Modification, weve gone through the Ship Designer to improve the general process of creating new ship designs.
And the Auto-generate designs checkbox wont stop you from saving a new ship design!

The Next Few Weeks

Theres a lot more going into this update as well - Im hoping to challenge Lem for the Patch Note Crown. Next week well go into more detail about some of the changes coming in the Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix update that are possible to show, including some things I didnt go into above like Precursor Selection and the Stellaris Databank. See you then!

[ 2025-01-16 12:00:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Stellaris Community! The devs have started trickling back into the office, and we expect to resume our regularly scheduled dev diaries next week! This means this is our final feedback post of the holiday break, but were ending strong with something that we know a lot of you have been wanting for a long time: factions and politics. Internal politics is such a nebulous term, and it means many different things to different people, and weve discussed internally many times just what Internal Politics means to us. But this is our opportunity to ask: What does internal politics mean to you? Heres what Eladrin said in DD #364: [quote]Factions and Politics Governments in Stellaris may hold a grudge against you for centuries for your atrocities but pops and factions are very quick to forgive and forget. There are no revanchist or irredentist factions that make trouble when borders change, nor variety within the factions themselves. Id also like to see factions have their own tenets and goals and different ways that you can deal with them. There have been a lot of calls for an internal politics expansion, but I think that it would really be politics and culture in general, affecting both your empires and those around you. If we were to do something along those lines, Id also want to add some variant of factions to Gestalt empires - maybe Instincts for Hives that grow more dominant based on your behavior or Directives that compete for priority in Machine Intelligences. Theyd have to feel different from individualistic factions, however. Among individualistic factions, I could see the tenets of an Egalitarian faction from a Shared Burdens empire being very different from the Egalitarian faction in a non-Worker Coop MegaCorp, and these tenets might also be used to define the beliefs of your Spiritualist factions. Id certainly want to explore spreading my factions into other empires.[/quote] As previously mentioned in all of these feedback posts: This is not a guarantee that an internal politics rework will happen at some point in the future. This is us collecting feedback from the community to inform potential future development. So, Stellaris Community, let us know what you think about the current implementation of Factions, and what internal politics means to you in our final feedback form: Internal Factions and Politics. Thank you for all your feedback over the holiday season, and we cant wait to see what you think of whats coming next for Stellaris!

[ 2025-01-09 13:13:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Stellaris Community! We hope youve all had a great holiday season, and were excited to see people starting to trickle back from their well-earned vacations. That means more Stellaris news is just right around the corner, with regularly scheduled dev diaries picking up in the next week or two. But before we get too hyped over whats coming next, we have to finish up some bookkeeping from last year. Specifically, we mentioned last year that we would be retiring Stellaris: Season 08 early in the new year. That time is now, specifically, tomorrow. After tomorrow - around 3 PM CET - Stellaris: Season 08 will no longer be available and the content will be rolled into the Ultimate Bundle in order to make space for a new Season for 2025.

What is Stellaris: Season 08?

Stellaris: Season 08 contains all the major Stellaris releases from 2024, including The Machine Age, the Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion, and Grand Archive Story Pack and the illustrious non-spherical Rick the Cube machine species portrait. https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/46229/Stellaris_Season_08__Expansion_Pass/
The Machine Age contains:

• Individualistic Non-Gestalt Machine Empires
• Gestalt Machine Intelligence Empires (also unlocked by the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack)
• A new End-Game Crisis - The Synthetic Queen
• A new Player Crisis Path - Cosmogenesis
• Three new Origins
  • Cybernetic Creed
  • Synthetic Fertility
  • Arc Welders
• Civics
  • Guided Sapience
  • Natural Design
  • Obsessional Directive
  • Protocol Droids
  • Tactical Cogitators
  • Augmentation Bazaars (requires Megacorp)
• Two Mid-Game Structures
  • Arc Furnace
  • Dyson Swarm
• Three New Ascension Paths
  • Virtuality
  • Nanotech
  • Modularity
• Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension (also unlocked by Utopia)
• Exploration of the effects of the cyberization or synthesization of society, with Advanced Government Forms for those who complete it.
• New Species Traits for Cyborgs, Machines and Robots
• Cybernetic portraits that change based on advancement through cyberization
• Synthetic portraits with both organic and synthetic variants that changed based on synthesization, usable by either organics or machines
• Two new Shipsets, Diplomatic Rooms, and City Sets
• 7 new music tracks synthetic and cybernetic inspired music tracks

Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion contains:

• 8 New Space Storms
• Storm Chasers Origin
• 3 New Civics
  • Planetscapers
  • Astrometeorology
  • Storm Devotion
• Galactic Weather Control Ascension Perk
• Weather Forecasting Map Mode
• Two new Precursor narratives, with two new Relics
• Events, Anomalies, and Archaeology Sites
• Storm-related technologies, Edicts, and Galactic community resolutions

Grand Archive Story Pack includes:

• Space Fauna capture, breeding, and modification systems
• 151 Specimens to collect and display across events from Grand Archive and the base game
• Over 240 Specimens total including those distributed across other Stellaris content
• 15 new Relics
• New Megastructure - The Grand Archive
• Two new Tradition trees
  • Archivism
  • Domestication
• Two new Origins
  • Primal Calling
  • Treasure Hunters
• Two new Civics
  • Beastmasters
  • Galactic Curators
• Two new forms of spaceborne life
  • Cutholoids
  • Voidworms
• A new possible mid-game crisis - the Voidworm Plague
• Three new music tracks
• Events, Anomalies, Archaeology Sites, Technologies, Galactic community resolutions, and more!

Season 08 Bonus Portrait: Rick the Cube This is your last chance to get all the content above, plus the bonus Rick the Cube portrait at a 20% discount (outside of the Ultimate Bundle)!

[ 2025-01-08 14:00:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

by MrFreake_PDX Hello Stellaris Community! We hope youve all had a great holiday season so far! Weve collected some excellent feedback so far, with over 8000 responses to the two feedback forms to date. If you want to leave some feedback on Pirates and Crime, theres still time! The form will be active until next Monday, after which we will close responses. The topic for this weeks feedback form is Espionage. Weve often talked about an espionage rework, and know that many of you find espionage rather lackluster outside of certain circumstances. So heres your chance to let us know what you think! Heres what Eladrin said in Dev Diary #364: [quote]Espionage Espionage is a related system that isnt satisfying its promise currently, as Mr. Cosmogone reminds me during every design meeting. Its difficult to keep track of spy networks, is generally of low impact, and has no real counterplay. But hes got schemes.[/quote] So, do you think espionage is deserving of a rework? What would you like to see in a reworked espionage system? What do you like about the current Espionage system? Answer all these questions and more on this weeks Feedback Form: Espionage! We hope you enjoy the rest of your holiday season, and well be back with our last feedback form next week, after which we will return to our regular Dev Diary schedule.

[ 2025-01-02 14:30:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Stellaris Community! We hope you all have had/are having a great holiday season! Last weeks War and War Resolution Feedback Form had over 4000 responses, and wed like to take the time to thank you all for your feedback. There are certainly some insights to be gained from the feedback you offered, and were excited to see some trends emerging - and combined with the rather large sample size - we feel we have a solid amount of community feedback that can inform potential future development on War and War resolution in Stellaris. For those of you who didnt see last weeks feedback post, we are taking advantage of the break in dev diaries to collect feedback to inform future Stellaris development. This is not a promise or a guarantee that there will be a rework on any of these mechanics at any point, this is to collect community feedback in a centralized place so that if the devs do a rework in a particular area, we have an idea of the communitys expectations and what you like and dislike about the current implementation of features in Stellaris. Today were taking another look at another topic fromDev Diary #364 -Sights Unseen: Pirates and Crime. This is what Eladrin said in DD# 364: [quote] Pirates and Crime Space Piracy is a popular fantasy - we touched on it a bit with the Treasure Hunters origin in Grand Archive, but they could mesh well with the Nomads idea mentioned earlier or even a factional political expansion. Crime and Deviancy arent terribly engaging systems at the moment either, and might benefit from wider examination. [/quote] So, Stellaris Community, what do you like/dislike about Pirates and Crime in Stellaris?Fill out our Piracy and Crime Feedback form and let us know! From all of us here on Stellaris, thank you for taking the time to offer your feedback, and thanks for playing Stellaris!

[ 2024-12-27 17:14:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

by MrFreake_PDX Hello Stellaris Community! With the devs off on holidays, and a rare four Thursdays in a row free, we decided we would commandeer your regularly scheduled Thursday dev diary slot to gather some feedback that may help inform development at some point in the future. Here on Stellaris, we work on rather long timelines, the content for 2025 has been in-development for some time already, and while we can't wait to share those things with you, our objective here is to inform potential future development based off the topics discussed in Stellaris Dev Diary #364 - Sights Unseen. We are going to spend the next four weeks collecting feedback on what the Community likes and dislikes about the current version of Stellaris, and their expectations for certain features that were discussed. While having an open conversation worked really well for Dev Diary #364, and we thank you for sharing your thoughts there, a more structured approach is required for something that might sit for a year or two before it gets used, if it gets used at all.

It's important to note that this is not a confirmation or guarantee that any topics discussed here will appear in the game at any point.

[quote=eladrin]Warfare and War Resolution At some point in the future, Id like to see us revisit war and war resolution, and enable more of the scenarios that occur in the Stellaris Cinematic Universe of our trailers. When the Gamma Aliens attacked the UNE colony of Europa VII, the Commonwealth of Man did not wait patiently for an invitation to war before summoning the Apocalypse. Humanity was threatened, and they acted. More fluid rules around joining and leaving wars are needed, and betrayal is not supported to my satisfaction. (Secret Fealty exists, but I dont find it enough in its current state - other mechanics currently prevent them from seizing the chance for freedom at what would be the most opportune moments.)[/quote] Without further ado, we present the War and War Resolution feedback form. This form will be available to leave feedback on until next Thursday, at which point we will read through the feedback, and prepare a report for the developers that outlines what the community likes/dislikes, and their expectations for a future rework or expansion. Thank you for taking the time to offer your feedback, and thank you for playing Stellaris!

[ 2024-12-19 12:00:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Happy holidays everyone! As is tradition, in the last dev diary of the year I like to look over what weve done and [strike]insert sneaky leaks about next year.[/strike]

I want for nothing. My purpose is to give.

We began 2024 with a technology open beta that ran over the holidays, which was released as the 3.11 Eridanus Custodian update. Since were planning on having another Open Beta next year, I want to point out how successful that Open Beta was, finding critical issues related to the breakthrough technologies and giving us a much better release overall. Im hoping that next years Open Beta will be equally effective. We had some really cool cinematics too. In March, we saw the light.. [previewyoutube=GsDqi-thw5w;full][/previewyoutube] You too will see the light. And soon became part of something greater with the release of The Machine Age and Stellaris: Season 08. [previewyoutube=MSunS8wpU54;full][/previewyoutube] Become part of something greater. The Machine Age began our remastering of the Ascension Paths, starting with Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension. It significantly expanded Machine gameplay, and added Cosmogenesis, our technological victory condition. It also added our first new End-Game Crisis in years, the Synthetic Queen Cetana. [previewyoutube=jo9jpoHMO7A;full][/previewyoutube] My children, at last I am returned to you. In the latter half of the year, we had two releases back to back, starting with Cosmic Storms: [previewyoutube=mpf0Jh0bb2o;full][/previewyoutube] At first, they did not understand. Quickly followed by the Grand Archive Story Pack: [previewyoutube=aGwAtYBuMQM;full][/previewyoutube] Good boy. This was also the first time we ever localized one of our story trailers into another language: [previewyoutube=GU1fQ2ITrik;full][/previewyoutube] We ended the year with our discussions about the vision of the game and its future, with what I feel were some of the best dev diary responses weve ever had. All in all, its been a busy year, and Im generally pretty happy with where we ended up.

2024 Release Notes

Speaking of being a busy year, during 2024 Stellaris had 16 releases. If you have ever had the desire to go through over 1200 lines of release notes, Ive got you covered.

See You Next Year

Thats the summary of this year in Stellaris. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and I look forward to seeing you all in the coming year.

Want to see a horrific very-in-progress placeholder?

Stellaris Dev Diaries will return on January 16th. Happy holidays!

Purchase Stellaris: Grand Archive alone or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08! Stellaris: Season 08 will remain available as a dynamic bundle on Steam until January 9th.

[ 2024-12-12 12:00:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello again, Stellaris Community! Last week we looked back at where weve been, and today were going to look at possible themes I think we might explore in the future. Like the past few dev diaries, this is one where were actively soliciting your thoughts. If you havent had a chance to add your bit of feedback to The Vision, you still have a couple of days left - its going to stay active until the end of November. Today is the 3.14.1592 release day, so before we get to the main diary Ill start with the final release notes.

3.14.1592 Release Notes

The 3.14.1592 patch addressed the following issues - Ive bolded new additions (all under Bugfixes) since last weeks diary: Balance

• Add energy activation cost to Propagandosphere
• Cloaking strength on Camouflage mutations are now consistent throughout sizes
• Give -15% cloning cost and -10% fauna upkeep to Beastmasters civics
• Reduce Space Fauna cloning cost by 10%
• Reduce Space Fauna energy upkeep by 25%
• Remove minor artifacts production from Decentralized Research edict
• Rework Mutated Voidworms fleets content and scaling, aligning them similar to Prethoryn Brood Queen fleets

Bugfix

• Clone Soldier Ascendants can now cyberize
• Fix to AI machine empires spawning as Despicable Neutrals without The Machine Age
• Necrophages no longer create an endless series of replacement pops when purging on the Synaptic Lathe
• Accelerate juveniles animation speed
• Added Insider Trading and Trade Focus traits to each other's opposites block to stop them appearing together since they almost cancel each other out.
• Added Orbital Ring variants for Beastport/Hatchery/Vivarium descriptions in all supported languages
• Civics added in Grand Archive can now be swapped from the regular to corporate version and vice versa
• Clarified the texts of the Cultivated Worldscaping decision and planet modifier
• Deleting a design now keeps you in current designer type
• Enclaves and Marauders satisfy Xenoist Contact Demand
• Extreme Contortionist DNA now gives rare crystals instead of motes to be more consistent with the event that gives it
• Fix an issue where Cognitive Node should be selected by the Leader Infected event
• Fix blocked Tiyanki Graveyard event chain when capturing them
• Fix Boarding Cables capturing literally anything - thanks for the fun screenshots
• Fix Breeding Status displayed in view that was not always correct
• Fix Fossilized Endoskeleton specimen localization
• Fix Mercenary Enclave Stations unable to build ships
• Fix Cloaked Patternwalker missing string
• Fix scoped localizations for Memorial For Bubbles specimen
• Fixed an unlocalized string showing up when you tried to return starbases at times. Also added linebreaks to the same tooltip.
• Fixed recommended DLC tooltips in multiplayer
• Fixes a bug with too wide portrait on Empire Design Selection View
• FX for ship auras are now displayed
• Improve Cordyceptic Drones fauna damage modifier text in tooltip to make it clearer what it exactly affects
• Life Tree Protectors now don't move away from their system
• Lost colony parents using Sol as their system will no longer spawn two Siriuses if the guaranteed habitable worlds slider is set to 1.
• Mutated Voidworms fleets now don't use naval capacity
• Mutated Voidworms now don't show they can upgrade anymore
• Orbital Assembly Complex holding now correctly boost Beastport and Hatchery on Orbital Ring
• Precursors can no longer be discovered on Astral Scars
• Prevent duplicate specimens from being found in the same empire
• Removed the unused h_dna string
• Stop showing upkeep part of message when leader upkeep is zero in hire leader confirmation dialog
• The Diplomacy Tradition Finisher now properly refers to Officials and not Envoys.
• Voidworms now stop bombarding if the Immunity technology is researched (before crisis)
• Worm-Riddled Gate is now correctly accessible if Voidworms are captured instead of killed

AI

• AI won't build infinite science ships when trying to build frigates anymore
• Fix AI that was not willing to build Shipyards

Stability

• Fix a crash when a tooltip references the concept of a tradition that doesn't exist
• Fix crash when Voidworms try to act on empty fleets
• Fix OOS when riftworld station is built
• Fix saves affected by the crash when an AI without a Grand Archive tries to capture a Space Fauna
• Fix Voidworms CTD
• Fixed issue with resolving the user home dir on linux that leads to CTD

Unless critical bugs in need of a hotfix arise, this will be the last planned Stellaris release of 2024. I want to avoid potentially destabilizing the game just before the winter holidays. Now, on to the main dev diary.

Infinite Frontiers

Over the past few weeks weve looked at the basic vision of Stellaris and discussed how Stellaris has changed over the years. This week I want to talk about things we potentially might want to explore in the future.

This is not intended to read as a timeline or a list of promises, but an open discussion about things I consider possibilities and why.

Biological and Psionic Ascension First things first, I strongly believe that remastering the remaining Ascension Paths is a top priority. The Machine Age dramatically improved Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascensions, and gave machine empires proper ascension choices, but left the others behind. Biological Ascension isnt in a good state right now mechanically or as an overall experience. Psionic Ascension is better off as it is affected tangentially by most content releases, but is a bit too reliant on random events and luck. Both of these Ascension Paths will be revamped, though since they are very distinct from one another, I intend on having them focused on in two separate releases. Warfare and War Resolution At some point in the future, Id like to see us revisit war and war resolution, and enable more of the scenarios that occur in the Stellaris Cinematic Universe of our trailers. When the Gamma Aliens attacked the UNE colony of Europa VII, the Commonwealth of Man did not wait patiently for an invitation to war before summoning the Apocalypse. Humanity was threatened, and they acted. More fluid rules around joining and leaving wars are needed, and betrayal is not supported to my satisfaction. (Secret Fealty exists, but I dont find it enough in its current state - other mechanics currently prevent them from seizing the chance for freedom at what would be the most opportune moments.) Biological Ships While rearing and mutating space fauna was added to Stellaris in the Grand Archive story pack, I feel that its not the same fantasy as true bioships. These are vessels that your people grow and fly around in, or that have more symbiotic relationships with their pilots. I think those systems would probably pair nicely alongside Biological Ascension. Factions and Politics Governments in Stellaris may hold a grudge against you for centuries for your atrocities but pops and factions are very quick to forgive and forget. There are no revanchist or irredentist factions that make trouble when borders change, nor variety within the factions themselves. Id also like to see factions have their own tenets and goals and different ways that you can deal with them. There have been a lot of calls for an internal politics expansion, but I think that it would really be politics and culture in general, affecting both your empires and those around you. If we were to do something along those lines, Id also want to add some variant of factions to Gestalt empires - maybe Instincts for Hives that grow more dominant based on your behavior or Directives that compete for priority in Machine Intelligences. Theyd have to feel different from individualistic factions, however. Among individualistic factions, I could see the tenets of an Egalitarian faction from a Shared Burdens empire being very different from the Egalitarian faction in a non-Worker Coop MegaCorp, and these tenets might also be used to define the beliefs of your Spiritualist factions. Id certainly want to explore spreading my factions into other empires. Espionage Espionage is a related system that isnt satisfying its promise currently, as Mr. Cosmogone reminds me during every design meeting. Its difficult to keep track of spy networks, is generally of low impact, and has no real counterplay. But hes got schemes. Playable Nomads Finding different ways of playing the game can be popular - landless adventuring in Crusader Kings III, for example, makes me wonder what we could do with nomadic fleets in Stellaris. The key questions there end up being why are they nomadic, and how do they interact with more standard empires. Origins could also be opportunities to table flip the normal economic or political models of Stellaris. Pirates and Crime Space Piracy is a popular fantasy - we touched on it a bit with the Treasure Hunters origin in Grand Archive, but they could mesh well with the Nomads idea mentioned earlier or even a factional political expansion. Crime and Deviancy arent terribly engaging systems at the moment either, and might benefit from wider examination. Species Packs When it comes to species, I could see us examining what kinds of life could arise on molten or frozen worlds, much like we did with Toxoids. Like Toxoids, theyd likely need some restrictions on what they can do with those worlds (as theyre 10x more abundant than normal habitable worlds), but theyd be interesting to explore. Players often ask for gaseous or energy creatures - the first are already represented to an extent by the Dathnak and the latter by the Unbidden. I feel that energy beings may go too far into fantasy elementals, so Id like to stay away from them if possible. Expanding the existing species phenotypes could also potentially be interesting - Plantoids II, for example. Scenarios Scenarios are another proposal that Ive seen a number of times over the years - would it be interesting to have scripted game modes with custom rules, and events already in motion? They could lean hard into already established universes with asymmetric starts. Perhaps the game starts off with communications from a Xenophile empire that tells you, Pre-FTL Earth:
Hacked together example. Not anything real. A system like this could allow for challenges or narratives that can be completed in a relatively short play session compared to a standard Stellaris campaign, or could otherwise completely change the pace or nature of the game. It could also be used to craft competitive experiences - at past PDXCons weve featured mods like Survival: Necroid Invasion or Ark of Ascension - I could see things like that fitting into the system. Alternate game modes tend to be fairly binary though - theyre either not used very much, or theyre incredibly popular - not much in between. What kinds of things would you want to see in these sorts of game modes, if anything?

So What Did I Miss?

This was a bit of a stream of consciousness dev diary, so Im sure Ive only scratched the surface of possibilities. What do you think I missed? Are any of these especially attractive or repellent? Where do you want us to go?

Next Week

Next week well be reacting to your responses to this one. The days are getting shorter and the snows are starting here in Stockholm, so I expect Ill keep this one pinned for the next two weeks.

[ 2024-11-28 12:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Stellaris Community! We hope youve been enjoying the content from Stellaris: Season 08! Were here to let you know that as of today, November 26th, Season 08 will transition from a Steam Package to a Dynamic Bundle.

What does this mean to me?

If you already own Season 08 then these changes wont affect you or your content, and you can stop reading now and go back to loading pops into your Synaptic Lathe. If you only purchased one or more DLCs from Stellaris: Season 08, and want to pick up the rest at a discounted price, changing to a Dynamic Bundle now allows you to do that without paying for content that you already own. If you bought them all individually, and are sad that you dont get the Rick the Cube bonus portrait, you should also be able to claim it as part of the Season 08 Dynamic Bundle after this change. Early in the New Year, this Dynamic Bundle will be retired and the content added to the Ultimate Bundle, to make way for Season 09. But first, we wanted to give those people who didnt pick up the Season 08 Expansion Pass - and instead purchased only one or two of the DLCs - a chance to get the rest of the content at the same discount we offered the initial adopters. We will update you again closer to the retirement date with an exact date.

What is Stellaris: Season 08?

Stellaris: Season 08 contains all the major Stellaris releases from 2024, including The Machine Age, the Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion, and Grand Archive Story Pack and the illustrious non-spherical Rick the Cube machine species portrait. Read on to check out all the content included in this new Dynamic Bundle! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39193

The Machine Age contains:

• Individualistic Non-Gestalt Machine Empires
• Gestalt Machine Intelligence Empires (also unlocked by the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack)
• A new End-Game Crisis - The Synthetic Queen
• A new Player Crisis Path - Cosmogenesis
• Three new Origins
• -Cybernetic Creed
• -Synthetic Fertility
• -Arc Welders
• Civics
• -Guided Sapience
• -Natural Design
• -Obsessional Directive
• -Protocol Droids
• -Tactical Cogitators
• -Augmentation Bazaars (requires Megacorp)
• Two Mid-Game Structures
• -Arc Furnace
• -Dyson Swarm
• Three New Ascension Paths
• -Virtuality
• -Nanotech
• -Modularity
• Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension (also unlocked by Utopia)
• Exploration of the effects of the cyberization or synthesization of society, with Advanced Government Forms for those who complete it.
• New Species Traits for Cyborgs, Machines and Robots
• Cybernetic portraits that change based on advancement through cyberization
• Synthetic portraits with both organic and synthetic variants that changed based on synthesization, usable by either organics or machines
• Two new Shipsets, Diplomatic Rooms, and City Sets
• 7 new music tracks synthetic and cybernetic inspired music tracks

Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion contains:

8 New Space Storms Storm Chasers Origin 3 New Civics -Planetscapers -Astrometeorology -Storm Devotion Galactic Weather Control Ascension Perk Weather Forecasting Map Mode Two new Precursor narratives, with two new Relics Events, Anomalies, and Archaeology Sites Storm-related technologies, Edicts, and Galactic community resolutions

Grand Archive Story Pack includes:

Space Fauna capture, breeding, and modification systems 151 Specimens to collect and display across events from Grand Archive and the base game Over 240 Specimens total including those distributed across other Stellaris content 15 new Relics New Megastructure - The Grand Archive Two new Tradition trees -Archivism -Domestication Two new Origins -Primal Calling -Treasure Hunters Two new Civics -Beastmasters -Galactic Curators Two new forms of spaceborne life -Cutholoids -Voidworms A new possible mid-game crisis - the Voidworm Plague Three new music tracks Events, Anomalies, Archaeology Sites, Technologies, Galactic community resolutions, and more!
Season 08 Bonus Portrait: Rick the Cube You can get all the content above, plus the bonus Rick the Cube portrait at a 20% discount, plus now you dont pay for content you already own! Thanks to the Stellaris Community for your support over the past year, we cant wait to be able to show off whats coming next year! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39193

[ 2024-11-26 18:09:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello, Stellaris Community! Today well start with preliminary release notes for 3.14.1592, then look back at the past at all of the changes Stellaris has gone through and summarize the feedback you all gave in the dev diary two weeks ago - The Vision. Were still reading the responses to that one and will continue doing so, so if you havent had a chance to add your thoughts, please add them!

Preliminary Release Notes for 3.14.1592

If all goes according to plan, well be releasing the 3.14.1592 patch sometime next week. These are our preliminary release notes:

Balance

• Add energy activation cost to Propagandosphere
• Cloaking strength on Camouflage mutations are now consistent throughout sizes
• Give -15% cloning cost and -10% fauna upkeep to Beastmasters civics
• Reduce Space Fauna cloning cost by 10%
• Reduce Space Fauna energy upkeep by 25%
• Remove minor artifacts production from Decentralized Research edict
• Rework Mutated Voidworms fleets content and scaling, aligning them similar to Prethoryn Brood Queen fleets

Bugfix

• Accelerate juveniles animation speed
• Added Insider Trading and Trade Focus traits to each other's opposites block to stop them appearing together since they almost cancel each other out.
• Added Orbital Ring variants for Beastport/Hatchery/Vivarium descriptions in all supported languages
• Civics added in Grand Archive can now be swapped from the regular to corporate version and vice versa
• Clarified the texts of the Cultivated Worldscaping decision and planet modifier
• Deleting a design now keeps you in current designer type
• Enclaves and Marauders satisfy Xenoist Contact Demand
• Extreme Contortionist DNA now gives rare crystals instead of motes to be more consistent with the event that gives it
• Fix an issue where Cognitive Node should be selected by the Leader Infected event
• Fix blocked Tiyanki Graveyard event chain when capturing them
• Fix Boarding Cables capturing literally anything - thanks for the fun screenshots
• Fix Breeding Status displayed in view that was not always correct
• Fix Fossilized Endoskeleton specimen localization
• Fix Mercenary Enclave Stations unable to build ships
• Fix Cloaked Patternwalker missing string
• Fix scoped localizations for Memorial For Bubbles specimen
• Fixed an unlocalized string showing up when you tried to return starbases at times. Also added linebreaks to the same tooltip.
• Fixed recommended DLC tooltips in multiplayer
• Fixes a bug with too wide portrait on Empire Design Selection View
• FX for ship auras are now displayed
• Improve Cordyceptic Drones fauna damage modifier text in tooltip to make it clearer what it exactly affects
• Life Tree Protectors now don't move away from their system
• Lost colony parents using Sol as their system will no longer spawn two Siriuses if the guaranteed habitable worlds slider is set to 1.
• Mutated Voidworms fleets now don't use naval capacity
• Mutated Voidworms now don't show they can upgrade anymore
• Orbital Assembly Complex holding now correctly boost Beastport and Hatchery on Orbital Ring
• Preccursors can no longer be discovered on Astral Scars
• Prevent duplicate specimens from being found in the same empire
• Removed the unused h_dna string
• Stop showing upkeep part of message when leader upkeep is zero in hire leader confirmation dialog
• The Diplomacy Tradition Finisher now properly refers to Officials and not Envoys.
• Voidworms now stop bombarding if the Immunity technology is researched (before crisis)
• Worm-Riddled Gate is now correctly accessible if Voidworms are captured instead of killed

AI

• AI won't build infinite science ships when trying to build frigates anymore
• Fix AI that was not willing to build Shipyards

Stability

• Fix a crash when a tooltip references the concept of a tradition that doesn't exist
• Fix crash when Voidworms try to act on empty fleets
• Fix OOS when riftworld station is built
• Fix saves affected by the crash when an AI without a Grand Archive tries to capture a Space Fauna
• Fix Voidworms CTD
• Fixed issue with resolving the user home dir on linux that leads to CTD

Okay, now on to the main dev diary.

Where Weve Been

A long time ago in a galaxy generated far, far away, on May 9th, 2016, Stellaris was released. We all took our first steps out into the stars, filled with a universe of possibilities and wonders. I was there picking my FTL type and favored weapons and experiencing those early days the same way many of you did. Each of the Expansions changed Stellaris in their own way. The first really major changes came to Stellaris in 1.5 in the Utopia expansion, when Ascension Perks were added. These shook the game up so drastically that when Apocalypse changed the face of war in 2.0, they ended up moving into the base game. Apocalypse and 2.0 included a huge number of other changes as well, changing how system control works and removing the different FTL types. I mark this moment as the point where Stellaris began moving from a pure 4X game to more of a hybrid of 4X and GSG. That transition continued in the next major shakeup with MegaCorp and 2.2, which replaced the economic model, changing from tiles to the pop and job system we still use today. Federations and the 2.6 update added the Galactic Community, revamped Federations, and changed the way we think about empire creation by adding Origins to the game. Most of the Origins started off relatively simple, but as we added more they steadily grew in complexity. (Knights of the Toxic God, Im looking at you.) The intel and exploration changes of Nemesis brought us to the 3.0 update, as they fundamentally changed the early stages of the game. Nemesis also brought us our first player Crisis path, Galactic Nemesis, which was originally simply called Become the Crisis. 3.1, the Lem update, wasnt an expansion release, but it changed how the Stellaris team operated, for the better. This was when we began the Custodian Initiative. The Custodians have done an excellent job polishing old content up to our modern expectations, fixing bugs, adding new quality of life features, and generally improving the game. Overlord and 3.4 added improved subjugation mechanics and added the Situations system which has become an incredible tool for the content designers. We also expanded automation at this time, revamping planetary automation and letting unemployed pops find their way using the automatic resettlement system. The leader system underwent massive changes in 3.8 when Galactic Paragons added leader traits and attempted to make them a more interesting system to play with. This system remained in flux until 3.10, when they finally reached a state where we were happy with the results. Sometimes change needs a little iteration. 3.8 also added Cooperative gameplay, making it much easier to teach your friends how to play Stellaris. This year brought the Expansion Subscription option to make it easier to get into Stellaris, and The Machine Age and 3.12 began the process of elevating the Ascension Paths to new heights. The positive reaction to The Machine Age and the success of the Season 08 Expansion Pass strongly affected our plans for 2025, and made us also reflect upon questions like what is a Crisis anyway", what is winning, and can we remaster two very different Ascension Paths in a single year. The Story Packs, Species Packs, and other content added to Stellaris in their own ways as well, adding to the deep lore of Stellaris and expanding the possibilities.

So Much Glorious Feedback

I want to thank everyone for the enormous outpouring of feedback that weve received over the last couple of weeks. As I noted last week, Ive been reading every response to Dev Diary 361, and Ive been keeping tabs on responses on several different platforms. If you havent had a chance to give your feedback, dont worry, youre not too late. Ill be keeping The Vision pinned in our forums until the end of November. This section will be my musings on the feedback and some of the things it made me think of. Not everything I talk about here is viable or going to happen, but if youre being this open with me I owe it to you to return the favor. Based on the feedback youve all given, the consensus is that youre very amenable to change to address engine or system limitations, and that we should not feel constrained by what is already there if we feel we can find a way to make things better. Many of you did note that the initial implementations of changes arent typically perfect, and that they take iteration to achieve their goals. (So we should be careful with what we decide to take on at once!) Some of the questions that I offered as proposals were a bit leading - I did want to know what you all thought about the existing pop mechanics, for example, because Im very interested in improving their performance and addressing several other quality of life and mechanical issues with the current systems. Your responses have strengthened my belief that tackling planets is a correct course of action, and you should expect some experimentation in next years Open Beta. Id like to move us over to a system more similar to the pop groups used in Victoria 3 - though with a Stellaris spin on things. Were not likely to go as deep in the simulation as Victoria does, but I think that we can likely split pop groups based on species, ethics, and factions. Some of the granularity we have right now might slip though, so Im eager to get to doing some prototyping and seeing what the pros and cons are of such a change, as well as what the performance implications would be. The economic implications are huge. Fleets are unlikely to get major changes this year, but a number of you identified them as a place where we can do a lot of major improvements, along with many aspects of war. Well talk a bit more about these next week. Trade is almost certainly going to change. Very few of you seemed terribly fond of the current system, and its both terribly bad for performance and mechanically difficult to understand for new players. While I like the general idea behind the trade routes, I dont think they add enough benefit for their costs. Were likely to revamp it into a proper resource, though Im also considering ways of also using it to simulate supply lines and local planetary deficits. If we end up pursuing the latter, gestalt empires would need access to trade or at least, something similar. That could potentially open up more opportunities for MegaCorps and diplomatic pacts, and well have to find new ways of using pirates.

Next Week

Next week I want to look at some of the things I think were still missing. Player fantasies that we either do not support or do not support well enough in Stellaris at this time. Like The Vision dev diary, Ill be asking for your feedback there too, so think up on this over the next week if you want to help influence where we go next. See you then!

[ 2024-11-21 12:00:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

written by Eladrin Hi everyone! Today were going over the release notes from Tuesday, talking about the further plans for the Circinus cycle, and exploring the reaction to last weeks dev diary,The Vision. 3.14.159 Release Notes [expand type=details expanded=false] We released the 3.14.159 patch on Tuesday, and these were the release notes: Improvements

• By popular request, greatly expanded the basement storage of the Grand Archive. You now have 18 slots of overflow instead of 4.
• Replaced the Mysterious Labyrinth event image
• The Metalheads AI personality can be gained by Individualist Machines or Organic empires that are Very Strong (instead of just Strong)

Balance

• The Treasure Hunter Origin now starts leaders with level 3 of Adventurous Spirit, meaning it should no longer constantly be offered as an upgrade.

Bugfixes

• Add Beastport, Hatchery and Vivarium Tank to orbital rings, and add Shipyard exclusion rules
• Added a hyphen to the X-Ray Eye Beam mutation
• Added the missing loc to Sapient Specimen species rights
• Added the missing space in the credits' title
• Added the missing word "Food" to the Arboreal World planet modifier
• Adjusted perfected genes concept tooltip to align with reality
• Cyber Democracies no longer get leaders without upkeep
• Fallback to Weapon ranges if strike craft is used but there's no strike craft component range
• Fix a bug where, under certain circumstances, a Grand Archive was still considered destroyed after being rebuilt
• Fix a crash where an AI could capture fauna even if they shouldn't be able to.
• Fix Captain Ness not being legendary
• Fix Large Shard Accelerator tags
• Fix livestock modifier for Wrangler jobs
• Fix Mutations' Strike Crafts behaviour
• Fix Mysterious Chart event chain that could get blocked
• Fix Primal Leaders not being renowned
• Fix scores for Grand Archive Relics
• Fix Space Amoebas being hostile to Beastmasters bespite Amoeboid Pacification
• Fixed some Black Needle ships not displaying their bow section
• Fixed 2 cosmic storms projects not requiring scientists
• Gravity Snares can now only re-target to fleets they can capture
• Gravity Storms no longer cause Obsessed Gestalts to crave consumer goods for their drones
• Habitat Orbitals should no longer attempt to evade enemy fleets
• Habitat System Control now provide a Roboticist job for Individual Machines.
• It is now possible to use Space Fauna as the federation's fleets
• Reanimated space fauna uses half ship size of their living counterpart
• Removed tooltip for GOG and MS store achievements to require login to paradox account since this is not the case.
• Rogue Servitors are now also on energy duty during Gravity Storms
• Ships modifiers are correctly updated with their new fleet's modifiers before fleet's values calculation
• Space Fauna uses every components to calculate range
• Specimens acquired from trades now don't trigger Galactic Curators' unity bonus
• The Alien Box Event no longer has a nonsensical tooltip for gestalt empires.
• The Tachyon Beam mutations have found their way to the Tachyon Lance technology.
• Told the Artillery combat computers to stay at max range
• Voidworms shouldn't attack empires with Voidworm Immunity before crisis

Stability

• Defensive check for nullobj when dealing with auto exploration orders
• Fix crash when Voidworms try to act on empty fleets
• Fixed issue with diplomatic distances differences after hotjoin/resync leading to OOS
• Fixing potential crash when trying to create a ship from a scripted design that contains unusable components for the creator
• Fixed potential CTD when using FromFromFrom scope in "on_planets_zero_pops" on action
• Fixes CTD on espionage operation phase tooltip
• Fixes CTD when ship is killed by missile

[/expand] Please keep posting any bugs and Out of Syncs you encounter inthe bug report forum. Saves able to reproduce the bugs make the fixing go much more smoothly. If all goes according to plan, we currently expect to have another patch, 3.14.1592, a couple of weeks from now. The Vision, Continued Last week we posted a dev diary onThe Vision of Stellaris, and the response has been absolutely overwhelming. As of writing this dev diary, were up to around a thousand detailed responses split across various platforms, and were reading all of them. Ive been reading and taking notes since the dev diary was posted, and itll take us a little while to get through all of it. Im absolutely thrilled with the amount of feedback and the high quality, constructive nature of pretty much every single post. Thank you, everyone. As a quick initial summary, there seems to be a general consensus with the vision statements, and a high level of support for future changes that improve the game, even if they change existing systems. There seemed to be a pretty strong agreement for exploring alternative systems - especially when it comes to warfare resolution and fleets. There were more diverse feelings around the current pops and job systems, but a large number of you want a more performant system as long as it still captures the general fantasies of the current one. Many of you appear to strongly dislike the current trade system or are at best ambivalent towards it. The Stellaris community also appears to be much more willing to embrace change than many others - not too surprising considering the number of major changes weve made since launch. Next Week Next week well review the changes that Stellaris has undergone over the years, go into more detail about more of the conclusions Ive reached based on the feedback youve given, andmighthave some preliminary release notes for 3.14.1592. See you then! PurchaseStellaris: Grand Archivealone orwith a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863080/Stellaris_Grand_Archive/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08__Expansion_Pass/

[ 2024-11-14 12:04:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hi everyone! Now that the Grand Archive Story Pack is out, I want to do something a little different. With 360 Stellaris Dev Diaries complete, I thought it was time to circle right back around to the beginning: what was, will be. Stellaris Dev Diary #1 was The Vision, and so is #361.

What is Stellaris?

The vision serves as a guiding tool to keep the entire development team aligned. As the game evolves, we work hard to update it regularly to remain accurate and consistent with our core vision. Heres how I currently answer What is Stellaris?: [hr][/hr]

The Galaxy is Vast and Full of Wonders

For over eight years, Stellaris has remained the ultimate exploration-focused space-fantasy strategy sandbox, allowing players to discover the wonders of the galaxy. From their first steps into the stars to uniting the galaxy under their rule, the players are free to discover and tell their own unique stories. Every story, trope, or player fantasy in science fiction is within our domain. [hr][/hr]

Stellaris is a Living Game

Over time, Stellaris has evolved and grown to meet the desires of the player base.

• At launch, Stellaris leaned deep into its 4X roots.
• It evolved from that base toward Grand Strategy.
• As it continues to mature, we have added deeper Roleplaying aspects.

All of these remain part of our DNA. Stellaris is a 4X Grand Strategy game with Roleplaying elements that continues to evolve and redefine itself. [hr][/hr]

Every Game is Different

We desire for players to experience a sense of novelty every time they start a game of Stellaris. They should be able to play the same empire ten times in a row and experience ten different stories. A players experience will differ wildly if their first contact is a friendly MegaCorp looking to prosper together or if theyre pinned between a Fallen Empire and a Devouring Swarm. Stellaris relies on a combination of prescripted stories (often tied to empire Origins) and randomized mechanical and narrative building blocks that come together to create unplanned, emergent narratives. A sense of uncertainty and wonder about what could happen next is core to the Stellaris experience. [hr][/hr]

What is this About?

Fundamentally, as the players, Stellaris is your game. Your comments and feedback on The Machine Age heavily influenced our plans for 2025. We work on very long timelines, so weve already been working on next years releases for some time now. Most of what Im asking will affect which tasks the team prioritizes and will help direct our direction in 2026 and beyond. Were making some changes to how we go about things. Many people have commented that the quarterly release cadence weve had since the 3.1 Lem update makes it feel like things are changing too quickly and too often, and of course, it disrupts your active games and mods. The short patch cycle between Vela and Circinus was necessary for logistical reasons but really didnt feel great. Were going to slow things down a little bit to let things stabilize. Ive hinted a couple of times (and said outright last week) that we have the Custodian team working on some big things - the new Game Setup screen was part of this initiative but was completed early enough that we could sneak it into 3.14.1. My current plan is to have an Open Beta with some of the team's larger changes during Q1 of next year, replacing what would have been the slot for a 3.15 release. This will make 2025Q2, around our anniversary in May, a bigger than normal release, giving us the opportunity to catch up on technical debt, polish, and major features.

What is Stellaris to you?

How does this match what you think Stellaris is, and where it should go? Would you change any of these vision statements? What systems and content are sacred to you, which would make Stellaris not Stellaris anymore if we changed them? Some examples to comment on could include:

• How important to you are the current systems that use individual Pops and Jobs in the planetary simulation?
• If we made significant changes to fleets, how much could we alter before it no longer felt like the game you love?
• What aspects are most important in defining your civilization?
• How do you set goals for yourself during gameplay? When do you set them, and how often do they change as you play?
• How important is the current Trade system, with routes collecting back to your Capital?
• Is colonization too easy? Should habitability and planet climate matter more?
• Are there any Origins that should be Civics, or Civics that should be Origins?
• If you could remove one game system, what would it be? Which system would you make the central focus of an expansion? Is there a feature you want to enjoy, but feel the current implementation doesnt quite work for you?

To the Future, Together!

I want to spend most of this years remaining dev diaries (at least, the ones that arent focused on the Circinus patch cycle) on this topic, talking with you about where our shared galactic journey is heading. Next week well be talking about the 3.14.159 patch.

But First, a Shoutout to the Chinese Stellaris Community

Before I sign off, I want to commend the Chinese Stellaris Community for finding the funniest bug of the cycle. Ive been told that they found that you can capture inappropriate things with Boarding Cables from the Treasure Hunters origin, and have been challenging each other to find the most ridiculous things to capture. You know, little things like Cetanas flagship. The Infinity Machine. An entire Enclave. Im not going to have the team fix this for 3.14.159, but will likely have them do so for 3.14.1592. I want to give you a chance to complete your collection and catch them all. After all, someone needs to catch The End of the Cycle and an Incoming Asteroid. Post screenshots if you catch anything especially entertaining! See you next week!

[ 2024-11-07 12:00:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! The Grand Archive Story Pack and the Stellaris 3.14.1 Circinus update released on Tuesday. Go forth and collect things and capture space creatures! [previewyoutube=aGwAtYBuMQM;full][/previewyoutube]

The Release Thus Far

The update appears to be a very stable and clean release so far, with few critical issues reported. A 3.14.15 hotfix is being prepared for today, which includes fixes for two crashes that have occurred a handful of times, and a bug that let you power your economy exclusively through chain-firing Gravity Snares:

3.14.15 Circinus Hotfix Release Notes

Bugfixes

• Gravity Snare costs can no longer go negative.
• Fixed a case where lured space fauna were uncapturable.

Stability

• Fixing potential crash when trying to create a ship from a scripted design that contains unusable components for the creator
• Fixed potential crash when using FromFromFrom scope in "on_planets_zero_pops" on action
• Fix a crash where an AI could capture fauna even if they shouldn't be able to.

The vast majority of the other crashes are related to incompatible UI mods, so please remember to disable your mods that havent updated to the latest version before playing. Several players have reported their mods not fully uninstalling, so you may need to manually clear your mods folder if you continue having issues. Please keep reporting issues you encounter in our Bug Reports forum.

The Plan

If everything goes according to plan, I expect that our next patch, 3.14.159, will be released on Tuesday, November 12th. This will let us include some fixes to issues that are reported this weekend and early next week.

Dev Q&A Transcript

We held a developer Q&A last week, and have exported a transcript for you here: [Click through to the Paradox Forums to see the entire Q&A transcript]

Next Week

Next week is going to be a little bit different. Well be looking at the internal vision statement of Stellaris and compare it to how the game has developed over the years, and Id like to begin a conversation about how well continue to evolve over the next few years. The Custodian team has been up to something, and I want you to help guide them.

[ 2024-10-31 12:00:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Grand Archive Story Pack is available now! [previewyoutube=aGwAtYBuMQM;full][/previewyoutube] Get it today, or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08! The Grand Archive Story Pack includes:

• Space Fauna capture, breeding, and modification systems
• 151 Specimens to collect and display across events from Grand Archive and the base game
• Over 240 Specimens total including those distributed across other Stellaris content
• 15 new Relics
• New Megastructure - The Grand Archive
• Two Tradition trees - Archivism and Domestication
• Two Origins - Primal Calling and Treasure Hunters
• Two Civics - Beastmasters and Galactic Curators
• Two forms of spaceborne life - Cutholoids and Voidworms
• Mid-game crisis - the Voidworm Plague
• Three new music tracks
• Events, Anomalies, Archaeology Sites, Technologies, Galactic community resolutions, and more!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863080/Stellaris_Grand_Archive/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08__Expansion_Pass/

New Megastructure - The Grand Archive

The Grand Archive preserves and exhibits the most valuable artifacts we have collected throughout the galaxy. Reserved within is also a dedicated Vivarium for live Space Fauna containment and observation.
Constructing the Grand Archive allows for the exhibition of specimens you have found, as well as the containment, breeding and ultimately cloning of captured space fauna in the Vivarium.

New Discoveries - Specimens

Specimens are rare and valuable objects that you collect while exploring the galaxy. Each Specimen has a Display Effect, providing small modifiers to boost your production across a wide variety of metrics, with their effects scaling based on the rarity of the specimen in question. Specimens also provide additional information about the discoveries you have made, adding new details and information about events in the galaxy.

New Spaceborn Life

Cutholoids Cutholoids are massive organisms that inhabit asteroids in order to provide suitable protection for their otherwise soft bodies. This creature swallows its prey whole, using radioactive digestive fluid to slowly consume its prey. Cutholoids are ambush predators that disguise themselves as asteroids. They will ambush and devour lone ships - these ships can be rescued by either capturing the Cutholoid or defeating it in battle. When cloned from Hatcheries by the player, these creatures can steal enemy ships by swallowing them whole.
Voidworms Voidworms are parasitic organisms that must deposit spores on inhabited worlds with suitable biomass in order to reproduce. Mature individuals form mating trios, known as "Troikas", and will construct nests near black holes to shelter and raise their young. Voidworms are aggressive parasites and will often bombard colonies in order to increase their numbers back in their nests. If their population is left unchecked, they will attempt to take over the galaxy in the new Voidworm Plague mid-game crisis.

Mid-Game Crisis - The Voidworm Plague

The Voidworm population has reached a critical mass. The parasites no longer spare the planets they feed from. A breeding frenzy on the galactic scale is upon us. This Mid-Game Crisis can be triggered if Voidworm populations reach a critical mass in the galaxy. Swarms of Voidworms will invade colonies and bombard them with abandon, adding to their numbers.

Origins

Primal Calling Masters of animal handling and ranching, their relationship with fauna has grown according to their ethics. How will this bond evolve on a galactic scale? This mechanically-driven origin introduces a new Wrangler job, which changes based on the player's ethics and choices. Primal Calling empires also start with the ability to build Voidlures, and is ideally suited to support a creature-focused playstyle.
Treasure Hunters Armed only with a mysterious map, race across the stars to secure a legendary pirate treasure. This narrative-focused origin follows the trail of a forgotten pirate legend in search of her hoard. The Black Needle stands in your way, a long-standing pirate organization that will do anything to secure this treasure. On your journey, you will face deadly threats, memorable characters and maybe even the Pirate Queen herself.

Civics

Galactic Curators The meticulous collection and preservation of historical artifacts has always fascinated this civilization. But now, with the mysteries of the galaxy at their doorstep, there is everything left to learn. Galactic Curators empires start with a set of three specimens and get a head start on building their Grand Archive thanks to insight into Galactic Archivism technology and a reduced cost and build time. Additionally, Galactic Curators gain bonus unity when completing an Archaeological Site or finding a Specimen. As fellow Curators, they have increased starting opinion with the Curator Order and receive a discount on their services. Beastmasters Coming to full technological maturity in a system that serves as a feeding ground for Space Amoebas, this society has acquired a deep knowledge of their life cycle. They now work to nurture, raise, and ultimately clone these creatures for mutual benefit. Start with the ability to capture Space Fauna and a fleet of Cloned Space Amoeba instead of Corvettes. Standard military ships use 3x naval capacity, so you must learn to harness the power of Cloned Space Fauna in order to succeed. Find out more: Watch the playlist on YouTube Read the Developer Diaries https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863080/Stellaris_Grand_Archive/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08__Expansion_Pass/

[ 2024-10-29 17:15:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! The Grand Archive Story Pack and the Stellaris 3.14.1 Circinus update will be releasing next Tuesday, October 29th. Today we have some Preliminary Release Notes for the 3.14.1 release!

Preliminary Release Notes

Grand Archive Story Pack Features

• Space Fauna capture, breeding, and modification systems
• 151 Specimens to collect and display across events from Grand Archive and the base game
  • Over 240 Specimens total including those distributed across other Stellaris content
• 15 new Relics
• Two new Tradition trees
  • Archivism
  • Domestication
• Two new Origins
  • Primal Calling
  • Treasure Hunters
• Two new Civics
  • Beastmasters
  • Galactic Curators
• Two new forms of spaceborne life
  • Cutholoids
  • Voidworms
• A new possible mid-game crisis - the Voidworm Plague
• Three new music tracks
• Events, Anomalies, Archaeology Sites, Technologies, Galactic community resolutions, and more!

Improvements

• Renamed Shattered Ring "Irreparable Damage" to "Reparable Damage" as once you have researched Mega Engineering. You can now restore it via decision.
• Setting AI Empires to 1 and enabling Randomize will now generate 0-1 empires instead of always generating 1.
• Special Project research order selector from system view now checks all possible projects for the location

Balance

• Made the Nexus storm chonkier
• Significantly reduced storm effect on fleet pathfinding
• Doubled Ranger science to 4
• Subjects that are released from a country now copy the ascension perks of that country

Bugfixes

• Fixed strange boxes around technology icons
• AI should now utilize leader assigned science ships
• Corrected Technology Frames
• Archaeological site Green Skies now requires Cosmic Storms DLC - you should no longer get Storms without the DLC enabled.
• Fixed the Machine Worlds AP accidentally doubling the jobs and housing giving by Generator districts on Shattered Ringworlds
• Reuniting the Pod project now resets tiyankis hostility before and after the project
• Fix tiyankis potentially fleeing the system in Reuniting the Pod
• Cybernetic leader portraits immediately change when the trait is gained
• Fixed Regnal Names for the Fungoid 4 name list. All hail Emperor Globbelius!
• Democratic and oligarchic Storm Chaser empire names can be randomized
• Fixed some event leaders found in anomalies claiming that they were previously employed on your capital on their resumes
• The Operation Exposed event (operation.5037) text no longer uses your country's name instead of the operation's name.
• Added the correct icon to the job_researcher_upkeep_mult modifier
• The Nu-Baol once again spawn with the Hive Mind trait and with the Phototropic Trait if the proper conditions are met.
• Caravaneers cannot ask for a science ship that is exploring an Astral Rift
• Saved StormVisuals as a .txt file
• Synth ascended and Individualist Machine empire can now set the migration rights for mechanical and machine species
• Virtual pops in synth ascended empires are now allowed to auto-migrate
• The Event Eat or be Eaten will no longer select machine pops to be the most delicious in the galaxy.
• Renamed the Government View to Empire View so it is no longer easily confused with the Government UI introduced in Galactic Paragons.
• Fixed the Khan's starbases not showing a correct construction entity
• The Unity tooltip now says Unity can be used to ascend Planets.
• Guided Sapience and Natural Design are now mutually exclusive
• Hid an unlocalized flag inside of the "Rorganize Leviathan Parade" button
• Marauder Fleets now count as mercenaries for the purpose of being in breach of the Neutral Defenders Resolutions
• The Imitator will no longer generate with the Hoarder trait causing immediate consumer goods deficit for gestalt empires.
• Fixed a number of Cybernetic traditions not giving the correct effects if The Machine Age is not active
• Empire generation now will be able to generate random Machine Intelligence empires.
• The relic Crystal of Odryskia uses the correct trait name in the tooltip
• Added the Researchers Upkeep modifier icon
• Fixed empire designs with different randomized names sometimes preventing each other from spawning in galaxy generation.
• add_random_technology_option effect now correctly checks techs weight
• Fixed ships not entering the correct animation state after a combat if there was any incoming projectile animation
• Auto-mod swapped traits won't disappear when loading a save
• Made Genesis Guides and Natural Design mutually exclusive
• Fixed assorted typos in script
• Fixed assorted syntax error in script

AI

• The AI now has a set limit on the maximum number of habitats it should have, determined by galaxy size and difficulty setting. This limit is doubled for the Void Dweller and Void-Forged origins.
• AI empires and Auto-Best feature now consider adding additional power sources to ship designs if there is no better component
• When in combat, ships stay with their targets a bit longer, reducing the amount of ships flip-flopping on targets and ending not attacking anything.

Performance

• Updated the way ship modifiers are checked for tooltip display using a static cache

UI

• Polish for Game Setup UI
• Changed icon for Exploration Vessels.
• Fixed some ship types using the wrong icon in the fleet and combat UIs.
• Game settings for DLC-specific features are now hidden if you don't have the DLC.
• Reworked game setup UI.
• Fixed triggered icons tooltip hitbox in event options

Modding

• planet_damage for bombardment stances is now a scripted value
• Added on_ship_engulfed on_action
• Added on_specimen_acquired on_action
• Added is_last_acquired_specimen trigger
• Added give_specimen effect
• Allow to override technology name, description, icon and effects based on trigger conditions
• Added centerPosition member to buttonType.
• Smooth listbox's borderSize now affects the list's scrollable length.
• Fixed listboxes' borderSize using X value for both X and Y.
• Starbase building & module icons now use triggered description to allow it to be dynamic
• spawn_planet_effect orbit_distance_offset parameter can now read variables and values
• Concept tooltips can now be auto-generated for static modifiers using the modifier: prefix
• Starbase buildings can now use scripted_effect_cooldown and scripted_effect_cooldown_flag fields to display cooldowns for a scripted action
• export_modifier_to_variable can now be used with dynamic modifiers
• Added on_fauna_capture_ended on_action, fired whenever a capture attempt ends no matter the outcome
• Bombardment stances can now use scripted localization with a base scope of fleet
• create_ship effect now supports rarity argument
• Added is_last_acquired_specimen_rarity trigger
• Starbases now support timed modifiers
• Added ship_size_cost_resource_percent trigger
• Added create_smaller_size_creature_in_fleet effect
• Added component_lifesteal_add modifier
• Added has_dna trigger
• Section templates can now use compatible_with_all_ship_sizes instead of ship_size
• Added mutation_slot_add modifier
• create_nebula effect now generates nebula graphics in the galaxy view without needing to reload the current game
• remove_point_of_interest effect now localizes the point of interest's name key if possible
• Added age parameter to create_ship effect
• Added evaluate_scripted_value console command
• Added planet scope to distance_to_capital trigger
• Added is_ship_category trigger
• Added support to inline_scripts in event files
• set_mia = mia_emergency_ftl now does a complete emergency ftl instead of just going mia, displaying the associated vfx
• Added handled_by_event_tooltip parameter to special projects requirements allowing special projects to not being possible to complete manually
• Added country_specimen_selling_cost_mult modifier
• Added num_exhibits trigger
• Added on_exhibit_unlocked on_action
• Added space_fauna_growth_rate_mult modifier
• Added ship_damage_against_boss_mult modifier
• Added months and years parameters to event firing effects like country_event
• Added monthly_loyalty_from_synthetic_subjects and monthly_loyalty_from_organic_subjects modifiers
• Add detailed description to add_relic effect
• Add trigger field to message variables
• Added "has_any_flag" trigger
• Added graphical_culture_fallback to create_ship effect in case graphical_culture targets an invalid GFX culture
• Added is_core_component_set to component_sets, forcing the use of the core component icon in the technology view
• Added on_colony_destroyed_by_bombardment on_action
• Added timed_flag_days_left trigger

Grand Archive Achievements

We have seven new achievements coming in with the Grand Archive Story Pack:
It Belongs in a... oh right Fill any Collection category with active Exhibits.
Void Charmer Build each type of Voidlure in one game, and attract each type of eligible Space Fauna.
Animal Farm Reach 50 Vivarium capacity.
Wormageddon Destroy a Voidworm nest.
That's No Asteroid Capture a Cutholoid with a Gravity Snare.
X Marks the Spot Discover Captain Ness's Treasure Hoard.
Beastmaster Defeat the endgame crisis without building a single artificial military ship.

Developer Q&A Today

Well be holding a developer Q&A on the Official Stellaris Discord a little later today, stop on by and ask us questions!

Next Week

We should have a little bit of early post-release commentary next week, after you have the Grand Archive Story Pack in your [species.GetHandNamePlural]. See you then!

[ 2024-10-24 11:00:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! The Grand Archive Story Pack is lurking in an asteroid field nearby, and will ambush nearby Science Vessels on October 29th. Todays dev diary will look at the two new space fauna being added to Stellaris, as well as a peek at the Origins.

Cutholoids

Cutholoids are cunning ambush predators, lurking within the shadowed hollows of desolate asteroids. There, they bide their time, waiting to ensnare unwary vessels that drift too close. A typical first encounter with them may look something like this:
If my science ship was cloaked or had encountered them before, things might have turned out differently. Thankfully, Cutholoids have a very slow digestive process so these ships can be rescued by either capturing the Cutholoid or defeating it in battle.
I dont have Gravity Snares yet, so arm the Nuclear Missiles theres research to be done.


When cloning your own Cutholoids from Hatcheries, these creatures can steal enemy ships by swallowing them whole.
Om nom nom. I wouldnt call it exactly a new car smell. As one would expect, Cutholoids prefer systems with asteroid belts as their preferred habitat.

Voidworms

Voidworms are parasitic creatures that depend on planet-based hosts to reproduce. They deposit spores on inhabited worlds with sufficient biomass, raising their offspring in nests perilously close to Black Holes. Their full lifecycle is present in-game. Nymphs will grow through the Juvenile stage to maturity in Adulthood. Voidworms mate in groups of three, a formation known as a "Troika." These creatures become bound for life in a never-ending mating ritual. However, they require an external biological host to produce offspring. Upon reaching maturity, each Voidworm develops a clutch of cysts within their reproductive systems. These protective cysts contain highly caustic gametes that, when combined with others in a Troika, can be sent to planets with suitable biomass in order to give birth to more of their nymphs. Their hosts do not survive this process.
Whos the cutest little Voidworm Nymph? Why, you are! Yes, you are!
A Juvenile Scout
A fleet of Adult Voidworms that have not yet merged
The Adults that have formed a Troika
A Voidworm Nest Nymphs will travel to and remain in the safety of their nest systems, while Juveniles explore the galaxy looking for suitable worlds for the next generation. Once they find a suitable target, the Adults will form Troikas and go forth to continue the cycle of life. There is evidence that the Voidworms coordinate their bombardments so as to maintain a sustainable amount of viable hosts throughout the galaxy, so theres absolutely nothing to worry about.

The Voidworm Plague

OH COME ON, I LITERALLY JUST SAID THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT! Oh. Okay, maybe that was a bit premature. If Voidworm populations reach a critical mass in the galaxy, there is a chance that the Voidworm Plague will begin. In this possible mid-game crisis, a mutation causes swarms of Voidworms to enter a reproductive frenzy and begin to bombard planets with abandon. A situation will begin to deal with the crisis, with several possible approaches.
Good old Do Nothing. Let someone else deal with it. Destroying the Voidworm nests will end the plague, or you can find a cure, rendering your population useless to the voidworm life cycle. Completing the situation will remove your planets from their target list.

The Galactic Community

The Galactic Community, naturally, has a few ideas related to these new lifeforms.

Grand Archive Advanced Settings

Since both of these new additions are rather aggressive, the Grand Archive Story Pack adds two new sliders into Advanced Settings to control the prevalence of Voidworms and Cutholoids.
My Science Ship might be safe, but were pretty much guaranteeing that the Voidworms will be a mid-game crisis.

Treasure Hunters

Treasure Hunters is the narrative-focused Origin in this Story Pack. You can expect a lengthy event chain with a mysterious treasure map at the core of it all. Into pirates, swashbuckling (of sorts), and endless riches? Treasure Hunters may be an Origin youre interested in. As its a narrative-focused Origin, Im not going to spoil too much of it ahead of time.
Follow the trail and find riches beyond imagination. The Oviron Lodge are a prescripted empire weve created that uses the Treasure Hunters Origin with the Galactic Curators and Mining Guilds civics.

Primal Calling

The Primal Calling Origin is heavily invested into various fauna related playstyles, from those who want to preserve and protect wildlife to those who prefer them stuffed and mounted as trophies of the hunt.
Primal Calling is one of our most versatile Origins, able to adapt to many different playstyles. After you complete First Contact with a new breed of Space Fauna, youll get to pick a stance for your civilization. Which stances you can pick are influenced by your ethics - for example, the Animal Handler stance requires some element of Pacifism or Xenophilia.
This stance choice has additional effects on your empire - replacing the Wrangler jobs with Ranchers, Animal Handlers, or Trophy Hunters, changing the Wildlife Ranch into Hunting Grounds, or granting various new perks or modifiers. You will also get new events during first contact with space fauna, but caution is advised, as interacting with wildlife is unpredictable and sometimes dangerous. The Graparx Primal Stalkers are our Primal Calling prescripted empire, with the Beastmasters and Citizen Service civics.

Next Week

Next on the list is our preliminary 3.14.1 Circinus release notes. The Archive is almost open! See you next week!

[ 2024-10-17 11:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Saddle up, everyone! Its time to go a-ranchin! The Vivarium of the Grand Archive will be accepting genetic material donations as of October 29th. Today were looking at the capture and domestication of spaceborne fauna, Domestication traditions, and the Beastmaster civics. Lets get to it, this is a long one!

Vivariums and Hatcheries

The Vivarium is essentially a space fauna breeding and observation tank. You can access it under Discoveries as soon as your Vivarium capacity is above zero or the Gravity Snares technology has been researched. The Hatchery module is the space fauna equivalent of Shipyards, and can only be built on a station that has no normal Shipyards. Its unlocked by the Artificial Breeding technology. You can also increase your capacity by building Vivarium Tanks. These increase the growth rate of your docked fauna and are unlocked by the Gravity Snares technology. Building a Grand Archive will give you the biggest boost to Vivarium capacity.
This particular Vivarium isnt terribly interesting yet though. We need to find some friends!
I also wont be able to fit much in this Vivarium. I should build a Grand Archive and some supplemental Tanks.

Capturing Space Fauna

The Gravity Snares technology lets your science ships attempt to capture wild Space Fauna.
Oh yeah, culling and dissecting also happens at the Vivarium. You can launch a Gravity Snare from an adjacent system to attempt to capture wild space fauna that are peacefully Actually, to be honest, those are Crystalline Entities and theres nothing peaceful about them. While I bet theyd make a good addition to our fleet, I said we should find some friends so lets go get some Tiyanki instead. You need to know the basics about the creature before being able to tune the Gravity Snares appropriately, so youll have to finish the first contact process before you can capture them. Theres a cost and a cooldown to capture attempts, and as you unlock various technologies, the capture chance and the number that you can capture at once will increase. Other technologies like Cloaking and Jump Drives will also improve your Gravity Snares - the first increases their capture rate, the second lets them instantly send your new friend to your vivarium instead of taking a little while to transfer them.
Weve added Capture Space Fauna to Science Ship Automation Settings too. The Gravity Snare will fly to the adjacent system and attempt to capture their target. It will generally attempt to capture random breeding age adults if there are any in the target group.

Success! We done caught ourselves a common Tiyanki cow! Since shes cruiser sized, she takes up 4 of our Vivarium capacity, and is very, very lonely. Space fauna inside the Vivarium grow at an accelerated rate. Life is easy when youre being fed by advanced alien ranchers, and the only worry you have is that Cull button.
By the way, Auto-Culling is the most Stellaris button ever created. We could use a few more. Space fauna have growth stages and breeding requirements that vary by species. For example, Tiyanki require a mating partner, Crystals and Amoebas reproduce asexually, and Voidworms Theyre special. Ill talk more about them next week. Tiyanek needs another Tiyanki to breed. We could fly around trying to find them, or we can bring them to us with a Voidlure. Voidlures are a Starbase building (unlocked by completing the Domestication traditions) that attract a specific species of space fauna, and must be built in their favored habitat. (Space Amoebas like Nebulas, Crystalline Entities like Pulsars, and so on.)
Every month theres a chance that any captive fauna that can breed will automatically do so, which will put them on a cooldown before they can reproduce again. This will be visible under Reproductive Status.
My collection of Crystals Culling fauna will provide resources (which varies depending on the species) as well as their genetic material. Having a creatures genetic material allows you to grow clones of them at your Hatchery. Exceptional creatures (marked by their rarity) have increased combat stats and culling rewards. Cloned fauna will always use the highest rarity available, and you can upgrade existing fleets if you acquire
Sorry buddy, I need you for parts. Generally youll clone fauna at the smallest size and theyll grow up over time, but technologies exist that will let you force-grow them to start at a larger growth stage.
Ship tooltips will let you know how long it is until theyll reach their next growth stage. Since larger space fauna take up more Naval Capacity, there are times that you may want to prevent their growth - you can prevent them from exceeding the command limit of a fleet by changing their Growth Stance. You can also block them from exceeding your overall Naval Capacity in policies.

Unnatural Selection

The Controlled Mutations technology lets you make some changes to the fauna you have captured when youre creating clones. This lets you use a variant of the Ship Designer to redesign them and make use of special mutation component slots. Space fauna Mutations are tied to other technologies, but wont clutter the tooltips unless you have Controlled Mutations.
Im pretty sure that Space Amoeba needs LASER EYES. Mutations can be broadly classified as Offensive, Defensive, or Special, but you can freely use those slots however you want to customize your Fauna. (Barring restrictions on the components themselves, like how you can still only have one Cloaking mutation.) You can alter their behavior (in a way similar to combat computers) by installing neurochips. The different space fauna have different resource costs and upkeeps, and those upkeep costs are reduced if theyre in their preferred habitat. You can (and probably should) also create designs for what your Fauna will grow into if you allow them to. You can change the current growth stage by clicking on the Pick Creature Size button.

Domestication Traditions and Beastmasters

The Domestication Traditions can be taken once you have the Artificial Breeding technology. Its focused, as one might expect, on improving your space fauna.

The Metabolic Regulation policy allows you to increase fauna growth rate and upkeep, or freeze their growth but reduce upkeep. As with the Galactic Curator civics, if you want to go all-in on space beasties, you can take one of the Beastmaster civics. These civics dramatically increase the upkeep of artificial ships, but give you everything youll need to fully embrace the rancher life.
Beastmasters replace their Hatcheries and Shipyards with dual-use Beastports. These can clone space fauna like a Hatchery but also have rudimentary shipbuilding capabilities and are able to build civilian vessels, so you wont need to keep a shipyard around just for your colony, construction, and science ships.

A Note on Space Fauna and Bio-Ships

While this space fauna breeding system scratches a lot of the bio-ship itch, we dont consider them exactly the same systems. These are more like vicious mutated pets than meat-ships you fly around in. Expect that one day in the future well explore that idea.

Next Week

Next week well be examining the new lifeforms in the galaxy and the two new origins. See you then!

[ 2024-10-10 11:00:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello, everyone! The Grand Archive opens its doors on October 29th. Today we take a look at the Grand Archive structure itself, specimen collection and display mechanics, and then examine the new Archivism tradition tree.

What is a Grand Archive?

The Grand Archive is the cultural center for your empire, a place to house and display the story of your people through the greatest specimens of interest that you have collected over the years. This one-stage structure can be built over any colony with 25 or more pops, and will not block other improvements such as Orbital Rings. We expect that most empires will want to build them over their capital world, to keep their treasures close. The Galactic Archivism technology required for building a Grand Archive can appear as a tier 2 society tech, and as such building a Grand Archive does not require high tier technologies such as Mega-Engineering. Shortly after you have discovered your first Specimen worthy of display, you have the chance to invest in the concept of a Grand Archive - if you pass on this opportunity, it can show up later as normal in your Society research options.
A collection that embraces the whole galaxy allows you to consider the whole galaxy. That is what an institution such as the Grand Archive is for. Grand Archives can be built by any empire, including genocidal empires like Fanatic Purifiers, even if they have a more proactive stand on turning their neighbors into historical interests earlier than one would otherwise expect.
A closer look at the Grand Archive. The color scheme matches your empire flag and chosen shipset.

Specimen Collection and Display

An Archive with nothing to display within it is simply a building. (And an expensive one at that.) Luckily, fascinating moments worth remembering occur all the time in Stellaris, so the Grand Archive Story Pack has added 151 unique Specimens to events, archaeology sites, and other content from across the base game and the new content added in the Story Pack. The team has gone through all of the other Stellaris content as well, giving us a final total of over 240 Specimens to collect, study, and appreciate. (Ancient Relics, Distant Stars, and Astral Planes, as our most exploration-focused releases, benefited the most from this pass.) The Specimen Collection system requires the Grand Archive Story Pack. A symbol is shown when you have acquired a Specimen of interest - occasionally these are tied to a specific choice in an event, while other times they may be linked to your Origin or actions that you have taken. Newly acquired Specimens appear in a toast to give you a quick look at what youve found.
Give me an archive, and I will fill it.
Sometimes Specimens will instead find you. The Discoveries tab now allows you to explore your collection and choose which Specimens to have on display. Displaying Specimens has an initial cost (which increases with the number of Specimens of that category that you have on display) as well as ongoing upkeep (which is affected by Empire Size). Each Specimen has its own effects while on display - some produce a small amount of resources, while others might grant anything from Energy from Jobs to Cloned Fauna Growth Speed. Each Specimen also has expanded lore, and keeps track of where and when you acquired it in the first place.

A toggle in the top right of the Specimen window lets you set whether or not you want to automatically put any new Specimens you acquire directly on display. You can also set up how you want to handle your overflow if not everything can be on display at once. You can have up to nine Specimens on display in each category - Aesthetic Wonders, Galactic History, and Xeno Geology.

How Else Can I Get Specimens?

Earlier I recommended building your Grand Archive close to the protected heart of your Empire. Itd be a terrible shame if something were to happen to it, after all.
The Grand Archive is great for seeing how excellent we were at stealing things The vile Yarrowreacheran Consensus stole three of my precious Specimens! Thankfully the rest of them are still safe, waiting for me to rebuild the Grand Archive and put them back on display.
Hey, that was mine! I even wrote my name on it! On the bright side, after spending some time working on our relations, theyre happy to trade it back to me.
You can also dig through your pile of Minor Artifacts to see if theres anything worthwhile in there that got missed when you first acquired them.
Artifact Analysis can be performed up to five times, and has an increasing cost every time you use it.

Archivism Traditions and the Galactic Curator Civics

Once youve researched Galactic Archivism, the Archivism traditions become available. Empty shelves do not make for a wondrous attraction, but focusing on Archivism can help fill them up nicely.
Frontier Archaeology is my favorite. Exhibition Specialization lets you focus your Archives output to one of the three Specimen categories, reducing the other two, and the Agenda associated with Archivism increases the chance of finding Archaeology Sites and increases Specimen Output.
Genocidal empires, having less use for Diplomatic Weight than many other Empires, replace Expert Negotiation with Galactic Reaping.
Lets make (you) history. If youre really interested in having the best Grand Archive possible, there are the Galactic Curator civics. These civilizations all begin with Galactic Archivism as a guaranteed research option, one common Specimen of each category, and get a discount when dealing with the Curator Order. They also gain a 25% discount when actually building a Grand Archive, and have an increased chance to discover anomalies, but also tend to overwork their bureaucrats, reducing their effectiveness by a small amount. Nothing delights them more than a new find, though - Specimen discoveries and completion of Archaeology Sites grant them a Unity bonus.

The Curator Order

The Curator Order is dedicated to the protection of knowledge, and you can impress them with your collection should you share similar interests.
If your collection is substantial enough to attract their attention, you could ask them for various things - whether it be specialized museum plans, or help setting up cultural enrichment programs. Naturally, theyll want to be compensated for their help.

Impress them enough, and theyll even be willing to allow you to give them a generous donation in exchange for the honor of selecting a relic to care for from their collection.
There are fifteen relics being added to the Curators in the Grand Archive Story Pack, five associated with each of the three Specimen categories.

Meanwhile A Little Something From the Custodians

The game setup screen has gotten a bit cumbersome over the years, with a huge number of options. Were revisiting this screen in 3.14 Circinus to make things a little bit more understandable. Pictures speak louder than words, so:
No more asking which shape was Starburst again?

Next Week

Next week well be going over the care and feeding of Tiyanki, the proper use of Gravity Snares and a Vivarium, and take a look at the Domestication traditions and Beastmasters civics. See you then! Pre-purchase Stellaris: Grand Archive alone or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!

[ 2024-10-03 11:00:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

by PDX-Loke Dear Stellaris Fans, We've created another small patch for you, aiming to address a couple of noteworthy issues coming out of last week. 3.13.2 is available for download now.

3.13.2 Patch Notes

Bugfix

• Fixed the issue where Gestalt Empire industrial districts only provided 1 Fabricator job instead of 2.
• Fixed the issue where the tooltip of a Cosmic Storm incorrectly stated 0 days remaining.
• Triggered species modifiers will now show in trait tooltips even when there are no regular modifiers.
• Fixed crash in species creation when trait for planet class does not exist.
• Fixed crash in espionage tooltip on multiplayer resync.

The team is now focusing their effort towards the next major patch. More on that later!

[ 2024-10-01 08:00:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Im pleased to announce that the third Episode of Stellaris: Season 08, the Grand Archive Story Pack, will be released alongside the Stellaris 3.14 Circinus update on Tuesday, October 29th, 2024. This release completes the Stellaris: Season 08 Expansion Pass. [previewyoutube=LAz5nDXjbEI;full][/previewyoutube]

"The Grand Archive preserves and exhibits the most valuable artifacts we have collected throughout the galaxy..."

The galaxy is vast and filled with artifacts! Grand Archive adds 151 specimens to the base game, but we have revisited all of the content ever created for Stellaris to add more. The overall total is over 240 unique specimens! Collect them all and display the prize pieces in your own Grand Archive.
This is no mere rock collection.

Reserved within is also a dedicated Vivarium for live Space Fauna containment and observation.

Contained within your Grand Archive, the Vivarium is a controlled environment where wild space fauna can be cared for and studied. Space fauna in captivity will grow faster and breed more easily than in the wild. These creatures can then be dissected for research, resources, or their genetic material. With the development of the Controlled Mutations technology, Space Fauna can be customized to form a fleet which will grow and become stronger over time.
These non-lethal projectiles can safely capture and transport Space Fauna to our Vivarium, where they can continue to reproduce new specimens of their kind.

The void is full of life.

Two new forms of Space Fauna are coming in the Grand Archive Story Pack. Cutholoids are ambush predators that lurk within asteroid belts, waiting for prey.
Culling and dissecting these creatures will allow the harvesting of their Genetic Material for cloning purposes as well as other resources. Voidworms are a more active parasitic threat with a full life cycle that can grow into a mid-game Crisis if their populations are left to breed.
"If this variant species were allowed to spread unchecked, it could upset the balance of the galactic ecosystem entirely."

With the mysteries of the galaxy at our doorstep, there is everything left to learn.

The Grand Archive Story Pack comes with two Civics, two Origins, and two new Tradition trees, each focusing on either different aspects of coexistence with Alien Fauna or the hunt for the hidden mysteries and treasures of the universe.
The Corporate, Hive Mind, or Machine Intelligence versions of these Civics require access to their Authorities - MegaCorp, Utopia, and either Synthetic Dawn or The Machine Age, respectively.

Stellaris: Grand Archive includes:

• Space Fauna capture, breeding, and modification systems
• 151 Specimens to collect and display across events from Grand Archive and the base game
  • Over 240 Specimens total including those distributed across other Stellaris content
• 15 new Relics
• Two new Tradition trees
  • Archivism
  • Domestication
• Two new Origins
  • Primal Calling
  • Treasure Hunters
• Two new Civics
  • Beastmasters
  • Galactic Curators
• Two new forms of spaceborne life
  • Cutholoids
  • Voidworms
• A new possible mid-game crisis - the Voidworm Plague
• Three new music tracks
• Events, Anomalies, Archaeology Sites, Technologies, Galactic community resolutions, and more!

Note: The Grand Archive Story Pack also unlocks access to the Curator Order Enclave, which is also unlocked by Leviathans or Distant Stars.

Dev Diary Schedule

• Sept 26 - Announcing Grand Archive
• Oct 3 - Building a Grand Archive and Displaying Your Collection
• Oct 10 - The Care and Feeding of Tiyanki
• Oct 17 - New Life in the Galaxy
• Oct 24 - 3.14 Circinus Preliminary Release Notes

The Grand Archive Story Pack can be purchased as part of the Stellaris: Season 08 Expansion Pass, or as a standalone purchase for $14.99 (regional pricing may vary). It is also included as part of the Stellaris Expansion Subscription
Pre-purchase Stellaris: Grand Archive alone or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863080/Stellaris_Grand_Archive/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08__Expansion_Pass/

[ 2024-09-26 16:05:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dear Stellaris Fans, The team has produced a bugfix and balance patch following our 3.13 + Cosmic Storms release September 10th. 3.13.1 is now available for download. Please find the patch notes below, identical to what was posted earlier by Eladrin.

3.13.1 Patch Notes

Balance

• Added free pop to first blocker for planetscapers
• Decreased Storm Creation costs and buffed Astrometeorology job
• Stormriders and Subterranean get less devastation from storms
• Scientist governors now also reduce devastation from storms
• The Nexus Storm of 2211 will no longer happen. (Nexus Storms have been removed from the Early Game storm pool.)

Bugfix

• A Fallen Empire cannot ask for a scientist that is exploring an Astral Rift
• Added traits to hired marauder leaders
• Added victory score to the two new precursor relics
• All starting council positions are also filled without Galactic Paragons
• Fixed a spelling error in the event Stormbound Sighted
• Fixed empire designs with different randomized names sometimes preventing each other from spawning in galaxy generation.
• Fixed machine name lists using ruler names for all non-envoy leaders.
• Fixed randomly generated rulers not using regnal names when they should.
• Fixed the concept tooltip for Storm Riders in the Storm Chasers origin tooltip
• Fixed the handling of scientist heirs in the Stormfall event Cosmic Shapes
• Fixes to Unique planets from Cosmic Storms:
  • Unique planets from Cosmic Storms can no longer spawn in the starting cluster of an empire
  • Reduced the size of the unique planets from Cosmic Storms
• Fixing Rick the Cube tooltip in the additional content being misleading
• Payload Padding technology now properly apply its effects
• Removed Double Jobs for Gestalts on Ecumenopolis
• Solar storm orbital resource modifiers now applying correctly
• The Crimson Crawlers: Cooked Consumption planet modifier now has a yellow border
• The Storm Touched trait is made available for individual machines
• The Strip Mine Planet decision is only allowed once per planet
• adAkkaria chain actually ends now when its over
• Added a job weight to Storm Dancers so that pops actually want to work the job
• Allow proper switching between corporate and non corporate planetscapers civic
• Fixed descriptions for the special projects Stabilize the Collision and Harmonize the Collision
• Fixed the secrets of the new precursors
• Fixing resetlement cost modifiers not being capped by minimum economic modifier mult define
• Made militarist empires with imperialist factions less likely to become vassals
• Made the Irradiated Wasteland planet modifier produce +10% physics research
• Planetscapers on Ocean Paradise will now get their blockers as promised
• Removed the mention of sector automation from the planet designation tooltip
• Saturated Filters can now be removed by the one who conquered the planet
• Tempest Invocator storm placement will now be canceled if you lose the selected Scientist.
• The Tempest Invocator's range is now centered on the selected Scientist's location.
• Voidforged may not access Geo-Engineering Inc anymore
• Fix to Initiate Storm replacing Sustain Storm if you have the Galactic Weather Control Ascension Perk
• Several Tempest Invocator fixes

Stability

• Changed cosmic storm spawn cooldown scale to prevent CTD
• Fixed CTD in fleet manager when reinforcing fleets with ships without fleet size
• Fixed CTD when in-game music player has no permission to write to playlist file

Modding

• Added regnal_second_names_female and regnal_second_names_male to namelists.
• Added use_regnal_name to effects that create leaders.
• Fixed randomly generated empires in static galaxies having missing data if the player empire is randomly generated.
• Removed ruler_names from namelists and added regnal_full_names. When generating regnal names, non-regnal full names will no longer be used if a regnal name is available, but if no regnal name is available, normal names will be used.

There is always a next patch in the works, so please keep the bug reports and feedback coming. Until then!

[ 2024-09-24 08:00:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hi everyone! Todays dev diary is going to be a relatively short one. The 3.13.1 Vela patch is planned for next Tuesday, September 24th, and we have a set of preliminary release notes for you to look over. The biggest change is probably the removal of Nexus storms from the early game pool. The Vela cycle will be a very short one, since the 3.14 Circinus update and Grand Archive is already bearing down on us.

Preliminary Release Notes

On to the release notes!

3.13.1 Vela Preliminary Release Notes

Balance

• Added free pop to first blocker for planetscapers
• Decreased Storm Creation costs and buffed Astrometeorology job
• Stormriders and Subterranean get less devastation from storms
• Scientist governors now also reduce devastation from storms
• The Nexus Storm of 2211 will no longer happen. (Nexus Storms have been removed from the Early Game storm pool.)

Bugfix

• A Fallen Empire cannot ask for a scientist that is exploring an Astral Rift
• Added traits to hired marauder leaders
• Added victory score to the two new precursor relics
• All starting council positions are also filled without Galactic Paragons
• Fixed a spelling error in the event Stormbound Sighted
• Fixed empire designs with different randomized names sometimes preventing each other from spawning in galaxy generation.
• Fixed machine name lists using ruler names for all non-envoy leaders.
• Fixed randomly generated rulers not using regnal names when they should.
• Fixed the concept tooltip for Storm Riders in the Storm Chasers origin tooltip
• Fixed the handling of scientist heirs in the Stormfall event Cosmic Shapes
• Fixes to Unique planets from Cosmic Storms:
  • Unique planets from Cosmic Storms can no longer spawn in the starting cluster of an empire
  • Reduced the size of the unique planets from Cosmic Storms
• Fixing Rick the Cube tooltip in the additional content being misleading
• Payload Padding technology now properly apply its effects
• Removed Double Jobs for Gestalts on Ecumenopolis
• Solar storm orbital resource modifiers now applying correctly
• The Crimson Crawlers: Cooked Consumption planet modifier now has a yellow border
• The Storm Touched trait is made available for individual machines
• The Strip Mine Planet decision is only allowed once per planet
• adAkkaria chain actually ends now when its over
• Added a job weight to Storm Dancers so that pops actually want to work the job
• Allow proper switching between corporate and non corporate planetscapers civic
• Fixed descriptions for the special projects Stabilize the Collision and Harmonize the Collision
• Fixed the secrets of the new precursors
• Fixing resetlement cost modifiers not being capped by minimum economic modifier mult define
• Made militarist empires with imperialist factions less likely to become vassals
• Made the Irradiated Wasteland planet modifier produce +10% physics research
• Planetscapers on Ocean Paradise will now get their blockers as promised
• Removed the mention of sector automation from the planet designation tooltip
• Saturated Filters can now be removed by the one who conquered the planet
• Tempest Invocator storm placement will now be canceled if you lose the selected Scientist.
• The Tempest Invocator's range is now centered on the selected Scientist's location.
• Voidforged may not access Geo-Engineering Inc anymore

Stability

• Changed cosmic storm spawn cooldown scale to prevent CTD
• Fixed CTD in fleet manager when reinforcing fleets with ships without fleet size
• Fixed CTD when in-game music player has no permission to write to playlist file

Modding

• Added regnal_second_names_female and regnal_second_names_male to namelists.
• Added use_regnal_name to effects that create leaders.
• Fixed randomly generated empires in static galaxies having missing data if the player empire is randomly generated.
• Removed ruler_names from namelists and added regnal_full_names. When generating regnal names, non-regnal full names will no longer be used if a regnal name is available, but if no regnal name is available, normal names will be used.

Next Week

Next weeks dev diary will be at 18:00 instead of 13:00, and will have more new stuff than this one. :D See you then!

[ 2024-09-19 11:00:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Gruntsatwork here, putting on my writing hat for today only, while Eladrin is on sick leave. While Dev Diaries are the domain of the Game Directors, we wanted to keep in close contact shortly after a release. The Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion released 2 days ago and we have been collecting your feedback on our forums and every other form of social media we could find. We will continue to do so over the next few days, working on fixes and improvements to Cosmic Storms, for example: Individualist Machines will get access to the Storm Touched trait so that they can use the Storm Devotion civic. Planetscapers will get a deposit on game start to clear for +1 Pop. There are also a few balance considerations we are making that we figured would be nice to mention.

Id like to get off Mr. Nexus Storms Wild Ride!

We teased them before as being incredibly destructive and as it turns out, they are! What we didnt intend was for them to appear as often and as early as they do. Their chance to appear is significantly smaller than most other storms. Unfortunately, with the number of players we have, even a small chance means a sizable number of you are getting messed up and with no chance of defending yourself to boot. We are planning to adjust Nexus Storms in the following way:

• No Nexus Storms in the early game (Mid-game and forward only).
• We will increase their speed of traversal, exact number pending, to make sure they remain destructive but that you can take action once they have passed. They will still bring you close to 100% devastation on any given planet but they wont then sit on the planet and keep it at 100% forever.

A Storm is a Trial. It is Change. It is Tribulation. It is the Dawning of a New Age and the End of Yours.

While we are quite happy with the effect of all the other storms, we are seeing your reports about some storms staying in the same space for most of their duration or in fact, long over their duration, stuck at 0 for years on end. Simply put, a storm shouldnt stay in the same place for years. They are supposed to move on unless a player intervenes. We are investigating this issue and hope to have a solution for you as soon as possible.

You call that a storm? Thats barely a stiff breeze!

Some of you have called out the loss of impact storms experience once everyone has the storm protection techs in place. The original purpose of keeping those protections strong was relatively simple - to ensure that by the time you reach the end-game, you can continue with your strategies and plans. It is one thing to lose a 15 minute campaign, it is another to lose a 30 hour campaign because your build just got invalidated. We are looking into adjusting at the very least the ship protections, as we think there is some potential for smart plays if those protections werent quite as potent as they currently are.

Next Week

Next week, Eladrin will be back, fingers crossed, to regale you with new information that mere Game Designers are not privy to. See you then!

[ 2024-09-12 11:19:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion is now available as the second installment of Stellaris: Season 08! [previewyoutube=mpf0Jh0bb2o;full][/previewyoutube] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863060/Stellaris_Cosmic_Storms/ In Cosmic Storms, the skies teem with eight new storm types filled with peril and promise. From Electric Storms harnessing the power of lightning to the formidable Nexus Storm, a galactic tempest of unparalleled magnitude, these natural phenomena challenge you to make skillful choices to steer your empire safely and profitably through the chaos. Experience the majesty and menace of these cosmic forces through beautifully rendered art and immersive audio. Navigate the tempest, harness its power, and shape your empires destiny. The storms are coming. Are you prepared? The Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion contains:

• 8 New Space Storms
• Storm Chasers Origin
• 3 New Civics
  • Planetscapers
  • Astrometeorology
  • Storm Devotion
• Galactic Weather Control Ascension Perk
• Weather Forecasting Map Mode
• Two new Precursor narratives, with two new Relics
• Events, Anomalies, and Archaeology Sites
• Storm-related technologies, Edicts, and Galactic community resolutions

How Storms Work

Storms will begin to spawn randomly a few years after the game starts. Spawning storms has a cooldown, and there is a limit to how many storms can spawn in a galaxy in the early, mid, and late game. These limits can be configured during galaxy setup. Storms spawned by players, events, and other mechanics will spawn regardless of galaxy settings. When storms spawn, they will choose a target destination and dissipate after the time it would take to reach the destination has passed.

Storm Chasers Origin

Storm Chasers empires have always sought out the extremes. Born in a world ravaged by relentless storms, they are daredevils and thrill seekers who push themselves to the limit and beyond. They start with access to the Storm Manipulation Technology and within a unique system with the correct conditions to unleash a space storm. Storm Chasers also get bonuses when a storm is active in their space and increased chances for storms to spawn and for cosmic storm technologies. Additionally, their leaders get the unique Storm Rider trait, whose effects increase when the leader is in an active space storm.

Planetscapers Civic

This society carefully crafted a perfect balance on their homeworld and is ready to tend even the most inhospitable environments. They gain maluses to resources, pop growth, and pop upkeep for each natural blocker on their worlds, but they gain significant bonuses to those things once the blockers on the planet are cleared. Planetscapers also gain access to the Cultivated Worldscaping planetary decision, which increases a planets maximum districts, gives +75% resource districts, and adds cosmic storm protection, but decreases the habitability.

Astrometeorology Civic

Astrometeorologists focus on the science behind the cosmic storms. Starting with an Astrometeorology Observatory on their homeworld, this planet-unique structure slightly emphasizes physics research. It receives significant bonuses to its job output if theres a storm or other environmental effect active in the system, with additional science bonuses added from the Prime Forecaster council position.

Storm Devotion Civic

Using a unique combination of ritual and technology, empires with the Storm Devotion civic start with the ability to build the Storm Summoning Center, whose Storm Dancers increase the system's attractiveness to space storms while also producing unity and amenities. Their pops also gain the Storm Touched trait, which increases job output and decreases amenities usage while a space storm is active in the system.

Galactic Weather Control Ascension Perk

The Galactic Weather Control Ascension Perk requires the Advanced Storm Manipulation technology and one other ascension perk to be chosen. This ascension perk gives your science ships the ability to - with an investment in resources - spawn a storm in the system its in.

New Precursors

The adAkkaria Convention of Benevolence and The Inetian Traders are two new precursors coming in Cosmic Storms. Both are steeped in Storm Lore, with several archaeology sites and special projects to progress through as you uncover their secrets, giving you the opportunity to dig deeper into what sorts of empires would meddle with storms so devastating they are notable on the cosmic scale. Get Cosmic Storms today, or as part of Stellaris: Season 08! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863060/Stellaris_Cosmic_Storms/

3.13 Vela Free Update

Alongside the customary bug fixes and improvements, the Custodian team has improved a few of the older features in the game. The Custodian team is a team of developers who are focused on improving older content in the game, as well as adding quality-of-life features and other improvements.

Changes to Planetary Resource Deposits

As part of our Custodian Update for the 3.13 Vela patch, weve made some changes to how planetary deposits for rare resources are handled. The deposits that previously gave access to Crystal Mines, Gas Extraction Wells, and Mote Harvesting Traps buildings now instead increase the number of mining districts available on the planet and, after researching the technology to extract the relevant resource, add a small amount of resource production to miners on that planet. Additionally, weve buffed the Betharian Power Plant to increase the energy produced by Technician Jobs.

Penal Colonies & Thrall Worlds

Much like how Resort Worlds were updated earlier this year, we have taken the time to revisit both Penal Colonies and Thrall Worlds. Penal Colonies now reduce crime across your empire while giving access to unique Prison Industrial Districts. These allow you to employ worker strata pops to produce alloys and consumer goods. Thrall Worlds, on the other hand, have taken inspiration from the countless examples across science fiction of elite battle thrall armies and give access to the Battle Thrall District. Armies trained on a Thrall World will start with additional XP, and Battle Thrall jobs will increase the damage your armies do. The Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion and the free 3.13 Vela update are available now!

[ 2024-09-10 16:07:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! The Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion is nearly here, so today weve got preliminary release notes and some of the Custodian changes. Cosmic Storms is going to be released next Tuesday, on September 10th.

Changes to Planetary Resource Deposits

As part of the Custodian changes in 3.13 Vela, weve made some changes to how some planetary deposits for rare resources are handled. The deposits that previously gave access to Crystal Mines, Gas Extraction Wells and Mote Harvesting Traps buildings, now instead increase the number of mining districts available on the planet and, after researching the technology to extract the relevant resource, add a small amount of resource production to miners on that planet.
Additionally, weve buffed the Betharian Power Plant to increase the energy produced by Technician Jobs.

Penal Colonies & Thrall Worlds

Much like how Resort Worlds were updated earlier this year, we have taken the time to revisit both Penal Colonies and Thrall worlds. Penal Colonies now both reduce crime across your empire while giving access to unique Prison Industrial Districts. These allow you to employ worker strata pops to produce alloys and consumer goods.
Thrall Worlds on the other hand have taken inspiration from the countless examples across science fiction of elite battle thrall armies and give access to the Battle Thrall District. Armies trained on a Thrall World will start with additional XP and Battle Thrall jobs will increase the damage your armies do.

Preliminary Release Notes

And now, on to the release notes.

Cosmic Storms Expansion Features

• Eight dynamic new storm types:
  • Electric, Particle, Gravity, Magnetic, Radiant, Stardust, Shroud, and Nexus storms
• New Origin: Storm Chasers
• Three new Civics
  • Astrometeorology
  • Planetscapers
  • Storm Devotion
• New Ascension Perk: Galactic Weather Control
• Weather Forecast Map Mode
• Two new Precursors
  • The adAkkaria Convention of Benevolence
  • The Inetian Traders
• New Technologies and Buildings
• New Planetary Deposits, Modifiers and Anomalies following Storm Aftermaths
• New GalCom Resolutions and Edicts
• New Events and Anomalies

3.13.0 Patch

Improvements

• Update to Thrall Worlds, adding two new slave-focused districts, Battle Thrall Jobs, and improvements to tooltips and theme
• Update to Prison Worlds - adding two new penal-focused districts, five new jobs, and improvements to tooltips and theme
• Xenophobe ethics now swaps to providing pop assembly when appropriate
• The location of empire-scope special projects will move to the new capital if the empires capital changes
• Gestalt Empires are now allowed to decide on their land appropriation policy, and are no longer forced to populate every planet
• Corvee System now gives -15% resettlement cost for Individualist Machines
• Standardized volume of all advisor VO lines
• War allies will be able to use wormholes, hyper relays, and gateways in each other's territory even if their borders are closed
• Removed the galaxy-wide Space Storm introduced in 2.7 Wells

UI

• Updated the megastructure selection UI
  • Improved tooltips in the megastructure selection UI
  • When selecting a location for Arc Furnace stage 1, the tooltip shows the number of deposit sites in the system
  • When selecting a location for a Habitat Central Complex, the tooltip shows orbital capacities in the system
  • Fixed tooltip not showing when selecting a location to build a megastructure
• Map icons in galaxy and system view no longer truncate the resource amount when between 0 and 1
• The tooltip that mentions if a civic is locked is now red instead of orange
• Enabled mouse scrolling in the research completed window
• Extended the minimum width of the "Veteran Level Reached!" window in case too few options are available to choose from
• Fixed some overlapping UI in the Empire Creation screens
• Fixed position of "Cross-platform play" checkbox on MS Store
• Updated the Map Modes UI
  • The Players map mode is no longer available when observing in singleplayer
  • The Players and Trade Routes map mode buttons are now disabled instead of hidden when they're unavailable
  • Fixed Players mapmode not graying out AI empires in some cases
  • The Unions map mode is now a regular map mode instead of a toggle

Bugfix

• Fixed the placeholder icon for the diplomatic message to request to join the galactic imperium
• Made AI capable of building planetary shields
• The Chthonian Planet, Extensive Moon System and Carbon World modifiers will now only add their mineral deposits to the planet the first time they are surveyed instead of every time they are surveyed
• Corrected tooltip and loyalty effects for the Ministry of Acquisition
• Individualistic Machine empires should no longer get an event intended for Organics
• Fixed the Nanite Intercessor being present in ship previews in the empire creator
• Fixed cyberpunk advisor lines for council agenda ready and council agenda available notifications
• Fixed fleets' cloaking strength sometimes not updating when ships' cloaking strength changes due to modifiers
• Fixed juggernauts not showing the fleet bombardment button
• Election auto pausing and unpausing now functions like other event pop ups
• Removed the double modifiers for Defense platforms from Ancient Shield Overcharger
• Removed serviles from the can_think trigger due to unintended knock on effects
• If an arc furnace is built around a potential Contingency Hub, when the planet becomes their hub, the arc furnace is correctly destroyed
• Fixed uncovered deposits not being removed when an arc furnace is destroyed
• Colossus special project will reward the original country that started the project instead of the current planet owner
• Leaders who are researching an anomaly or project or on cooldown can be assigned to the council
• Roccan Resistance and Free Peoples of the Fall genders changed from indeterminate to default
• The species of planetary defense armies will get updated after species modification
• AI empires will select ethics required by their origin
• All starbase types now explode when destroyed instead of blinking out of existence
• Fixed numerous instances, such as when establishing an embassy, where the game would load the countries home planet instead of their capital
• Game should no longer crash when an empire you had a trade deal with is destroyed during a war
• Various Out Of Sync fixes
• War allies will be able to use each wormholes in each other's territory even if their borders are closed

Modding

• Implemented "on_storm_encountered" on_action when a country is affected for the first time by a new storm
• Added on_storm_entered_system on-action
• Added on_storm_left_system on-action, for when a cosmic storm has left a solar system
• Added support for generate_random_name = yes to the spawn_planet effect
• Refactored Arcology industrial districts into Inline Scripts
• Replaced all "has_authority" checks with scripted triggers making it easier to add new authorities
• Added the awakening_not_allowed country flag that blocks fallen empires from awakening
• Added the keep_deposit_on_terraform deposit flag to make sure deposits don't go missing when you terraform
• Added "visible" trigger to map modes
• Added "tutorial" member to map modes
• Added is_infertile trigger
• Added support for displaying comma and period as hotkeys in button tooltips
• Added planet_crime_floor_add modifier that sets a minimum level of crime on a planet
• Added fail trigger for special projects + documentation
• Added 'mod_name_affix' to create_species effect
• Added num_asteroid_belts trigger to check the number of asteroids in a system
• Added game rules for founder_species_uses_growth_speed, founder_species_uses_organic_assembly and founder_species_uses_assembly
• Added game rule to force visibility on fleets for a specific system

Next Week

With the release planned for next Tuesday, our next expected dev diary will be on September 19th. See you then! Pre-purchase Stellaris: Cosmic Storms alone or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!

[ 2024-09-05 11:00:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hi everyone, Today, well review the Origin and Civics of the Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion and provide some information about the new Precursors (without spoiling everything!) Cosmic Storms is going to be released on September 10th. Passing it over to @PDX_Ferry and @Gruntsatwork to take over from here.

Storm Chasers

Dont make unnecessary journeys, dont take risks on treacherous roads, and dont swim in the sea! This is PDX_Ferry, braving the winds to deliver you a report on the new "Storm Chasers" Origin. For those who thrive on danger and yearn for the thrill of the unknown, this Origin was designed with you in mind. Start your game as a civilization that has always sought out the extremes. Born on a world ravaged by relentless storms, the Storm Chasers are daredevils and thrill seekers who push themselves to the limits and beyond. Theyve grown strong and daring, turning their chaotic environment into a crucible of innovation and tenacity. But when every storm has been weathered, and every mountain has been climbed, where does an enterprising thrill-seeker turn next? The answer, of course, is the stars.
The screenshot above was taken from the new pre-scripted empire Yatunan Radicals, which starts with the Origin and a couple of storm-related Civics. While not driven to outmatch others in acts of bravery, hive minds, and machine intelligences may also want to test themselves with this Origin. From the very beginning, your empire will be propelled into the thick of the DLCs content, facing down cosmic phenomena that would make even the most seasoned explorers hesitate. Yet, with great risk comes the potential for great reward.

This Origin is designed to quickly get you into the think of the DLC's action. At game start, your Empire is thrown into the Stormfall situation:
With early access to storm manipulation technology and by starting in a system with unique conditions to kickstart a storm, the Storm Chasers have the first opportunity to unleash a storm. From there, the Origin's storyline includes a gauntlet of Challenges, and the chance to summon "the Big One." What's left of your civilization in the aftermath rests entirely in your hands (or tentacles!) So be warned this is not a path for the faint-hearted. The thrills your people have chased for centuries pale in comparison to the cosmic tempests that await you in the void. Will you harness these forces and lead your empire to greatness, or will you burn out in a blaze of glory? The choice, as always, is yours. Do You Know What Happens to a Blorg When Its Hit by Lightning? Hello there xeno-freshmen, could we interest you in Astrometeorology 101? As the first of the three new civics coming in Cosmic Storms, Astrometeorology focuses on the science behind the storms. It grants you a new building, the Astrometeorology Observatory, which in turn gives you Astrometeorologist jobs.

You can build one of those fine institutes per planet and their jobs are similar enough to normal researchers with a slight focus on physics. However, their true potential shows itself only when the Observatory can behold a storm from up close. In addition, the council position further boosts the job output by up to 20%. What, you prefer something more societal? Maybe have a look at our second new civic then.
The spiritualistic mirror to Astrometeorology, Storm Devotion gives you access to the Storm Summoning Theater, with its Storm Dancer jobs.
In addition, those devoted to Storms also bear this mark as a new species trait called Storm Touched, which further boost all pops while inside of a storm. As if that werent enough, the Council Position for Storm Devotion reduces the upkeep of all Storm Buildings.
Storms this, Storms that, is there anything for people whod rather not see the word Storm plastered over all of their buildings? Absolutely, lets talk about Planetscapers. Planetscapers are the complete opposite of Environmentalists. They want every planetary blocker gone, natural accidents have no place in their carefully planned garden utopias.
You yearn to make all these rugged, overgrown planets into something beautiful and pristine. For some, Mastery of Nature is enough, but your need requires something more drastic, something more impressive.
As you expand, every world with natural blockers that you colonize will allow you to quickly unlock more ways to remove those eyesores.

IT IS A CELEBRATION | PAIN | RAGE | GRIEF | FEAR

You get a Precursor and you get a precursor, everyone gets a precursor! We have two new Precursors for you all to experience. The adAkkaria Convention of Benevolence and The Inetian Traders, both steeped in Storm Lore, with several archaeology sites and special projects to progress through as you uncover their secrets, diggin deeper into what sorts of empires would meddle with storms so devastating they are notable on the cosmic scale. So without giving out too many spoilers, from their names at least you know they were benevolent people and peaceful traders with little chance for tragedy.

Next Week

Next week well have the preliminary release notes for the 3.13 Vela update and Cosmic Storms! Its almost here! See you then! Pre-purchase Stellaris: Cosmic Storms alone or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!

[ 2024-08-29 11:00:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, The Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion is going to make planetfall on September 10th. Thats not that far away, so today well be going over the Storm mechanics and their aftermath effects. Passing it over to Gruntsatwork to take over from here.

How Do Storms Spawn?

Hello everyone, without much preamble, lets dive right into the new storm mechanics.

• Storms will randomly start to spawn a few years after gamestart.
• Each Storm triggers a cooldown until the next natural storm can spawn (adjustable in Game Settings)
• There is a limit to how many storms can spawn naturally in the early, mid and late-game (adjustable in Game Settings)
• Those limits only apply to randomly spawned storms. Storms created by players, by event or mechanic, will always spawn regardless of any other settings
• Upon being spawned, they will have a target system towards which they will move, dissipating upon reaching that goal or timing out

What Do They Do?

While the storms through the galaxy, they will have an effect on all systems within their influence. All Storms share 2 general effects:

• Reduced chance for Emergency FTL jumps
• +0.2 monthly devastation

In Addition, each of the 8 Storms has their own unique effects, here are the first 6:





While the first 6 storms are rather orthodox in their effects, the Shroud and Nexus storms are a bit special. Shroud storms have a chance to change the systems within their influence immediately upon coming into contact, this can range from colonies, habitable and inhabitable planets, up to stars. Nexus storms are special. They are rarer than any other storm and for a good reason, they are bad news. A Nexus storm is an opportunity for everyone else. They wreak havoc across all worlds in their influence with a far greater intensity than the other, lesser, storms.

The Morning After

After a storm leaves a system, its ongoing effects are removed. However, given their cataclysmic impact, there are a few aftermaths to deal with. Each Storm leaves behind their own unique Aftermath modifier, lasting for 3 years. Those aftermaths have an intensity between 1-3, with 3 being the strongest modifiers. (The effects themselves are the same, only intensity increases.)





In addition, when a storm leaves a system, there is also a chance it will leave behind new unique Planetary Features, Planetary Modifiers and Anomalies. Some New Planetary Features:


Example of a New Modifier:
Examples of some New Anomalies:

Protecting Yourself

Some of those storms can get quite nasty and devastation is always worrisome, so how do you stop the storms from ravaging your planets?
We have introduced several new buildings and technologies to protect yourself or maybe squeeze a bit more use out of a storm. Storm Attraction and Storm Repulsion are the two ways in which you can manipulate the paths in which storms move. Storm Attraction buildings and their repelling counterparts can be build on planets and starbases. Each has 1 upgrade level and grants you researcher jobs. In Addition you can build the Storm Relief Center, to reduce some of the effects of the storms, while also buffing your base resource output while a storm is affecting your planet. Should you be able to convince the Galactic Community to pass a few storm related resolutions, those bonuses will become even more powerful.
With the Storm Relief Center you also have the option of Hunkering Down, a new planetary decision to reduce your devastation gain and reduce some of the storm's impact.
As you encounter cosmic storms, you will also get access to new technologies meant to reduce some of their negative effects on your economy and ships.
As your last line of defense, you can use your Planetary Shield Generators to reduce the devastation you gain from storms by -50% All in all, a prepared player will have many options of avoiding the worst of the storms effects, while benefiting from the opportunities they offer, using them to tip the scales between themselves and their enemies.

The Weather Mapmode

Once you have researched the necessary technologies, you will be able to use the new Weather mapmode to get a good overview of both Storm Attraction/Repulsion as well as the paths already existing storms will take.
Im sure knowing where a storm that grants cloaking to all ships within will move is something none of you will abuse.

Next Week

Next week well be going over the Storm Chaser Origin, the new Civics, and the new Precursors. See you then! Pre-purchase Stellaris: Cosmic Storms alone or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!

[ 2024-08-22 11:00:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

A phenomenon is sweeping across the galaxy.

Im excited to announce that Episode 2 of Stellaris: Season 08, the Cosmic Storms mechanical expansion, will be released alongside the Stellaris 3.13 Vela update on September 10th, 2024. [previewyoutube=2VfVkAHidAY;full][/previewyoutube] Note: Tooltips shown in the video were from a development branch that has already been updated, more info next week. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863060/Stellaris_Cosmic_Storms/

Dark Clouds Gather ...

For some time we have been unsatisfied with the Space Storm that currently exists in Stellaris. Cosmic Storms gave us the opportunity to revamp the system entirely, providing a deeper experience with strategically meaningful gameplay and beautiful upgraded visuals. With this expansion, eight new storms with varying positive and negative effects are set to spiral across the galaxy. Weve also added a new weather map mode for forecasting these storms and predicting their motion, with technologies and buildings to attract, repel, or with an Ascension Perk, even create storms.

... But Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining

Storms may pass through your planets with intriguing effects, leaving behind a changed landscape or unearthing long buried treasures.

"Burn Fast and Die Radically - That's Always Been Our Way"

What's life without the rush? Other empires may obsess about heinous things like economy and population. The Storm Chasers have long since mastered the challenges of their homeworld. The time has come to blast off screaming into the void. At last, a whole new opportunity to shred the limits of experience!

Embrace the Storms

Prepare your empires to weather the cosmic tempests with three new Civics, each offering unique strategies to harness the power of the elements.
The Corporate, Hive Mind, or Machine Intelligence versions of these Civics require access to their Authorities - MegaCorp, Utopia, and either Synthetic Dawn or The Machine Age, respectively.

Uncover the Past

Embark on a journey through the annals of time with two new Precursor Event Chains, each offering a glimpse into the ancient history of the Stellaris universe. These chains weave tales of civilizations long lost to the cosmic winds, with untold secrets buried beneath the stars.
Stellaris: Cosmic Storms includes:

• Cosmic Storms that ravage the galaxy
• Storm Chaser Origin
• Civics
  • Planetscapers
  • Astrometeorology
  • Storm Devotion
• Two new Precursor narratives, with two new Relics
• Events, Anomalies, and Archaeology Sites
• Storm-related technologies, Edicts, Galactic community resolutions, and an Ascension Perk

Dev Diary Schedule

• Aug 15 - Announcing Cosmic Storms
• Aug 22 - The Storms and their Aftermaths
• Aug 29 - Storm Chaser Origin, Civics, and Precursors
• Sept 5 - 3.13 "Vela" and Cosmic Storms Release Notes

Cosmic Storms can be purchased as part of the Stellaris: Season 08 Expansion Pass, or as a standalone purchase for $12.99 (regional pricing may vary). It is also included as part of the Stellaris Expansion Subscription
Pre-Purchase Stellaris: Cosmic Storms alone, or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!

[ 2024-08-15 16:06:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to another mod highlight! This will be the final mod highlight of the summer, and we will be returning to our regularly scheduled dev diaries on Thursday! This mod highlight is all about new technologies, and all of the mods add new techs to expand on vanilla mechanics. [previewyoutube=vK2sP12dKV8;full][/previewyoutube]

Extra Ship Components NEXT

By NHunter
Written by NHunter Extra Ship Components aims to provide an extended and expanded technology tree that features upgraded versions of all vanilla weapon and utility components, as well new technology branches such as extra-large autocannons and missiles, and new kinetic and energy weapons. In addition to that, entirely-new types of weapons are introduced:

• Psionic weapons that allows one to unleash the full might of their empire's most powers psionics,
• Biological and Crystalline weapons based on spacebourne creatures, showcasing the empire's mastery over genetic engineering,
• Gravitic and Chrono-spatial weapons that utilize fundamental forces of nature to great and devastating effects,
• Nanite weapons with the power of very hungry synthetic life
• Special components obtainable only by defeating great leviathans to serve as a proof of an empire's might.

And with optional add ons, one can also change and improve the loadouts of FE fleets, giving them more power and thematic weapon sets, as well as unique components, some of which can be reverse engineered. Leviathans, Endgame Crises, Gray Goo and Curator Enclaves also receive a glow-up with improved ship designs to serve as a better challenge to the player.

Sparble's Stellar Hyper Constructs

By Sparble
Written by Sparble Hyperconstructs expands Stellaris' Megastructure features by adding 27 different new Megastructures to the game along with plenty of other content surrounding these. These structures currently reach from the relatively small Tier A ones, such as Shellworlds, to Tier G ones, which only the most advanced civilizations would be able to build. At last, Hyperconstructs has integrated fully dedicated support for mods like Planetary Diversity and Gigastructural Engineering & More in the form of compatibility overrides, additional Gigastructure stages, and other effects. More content is planned in the future, with an ever-growing list of megastructure ideas, event chains, and more, so stay tuned! Features:

• Plenty New Megastructures
• New Planet & Star Classes
• New Become-The-Crisis Route
• New Endgame Crisis
• New Strategic Resources
• New Origins
• New Events
• New Technologies, Ship Components, Traits & Bombardment Stances
• New Jobs along with Districts & Buildings
• Dedicated Gigastructures + Planetary Diversity Support

Inspiration: A huge inspiration for some of the megastructures have been Isaac Arthur's videos on Youtube. He has a great series of megastructure concepts and other space related stuff, and the initial idea for adding Shellworlds and the Stellar Hoop came from his videos. Another initial inspiration for Hyperconstructs was that when Nemesis was released I liked the (back then) newly added player crisis mechanic, but wanted to stay ingame after ascension. This is how I came up with the idea of the Dimensional Tearer, allowing players to ascend into a higher plane of existence, but still being able to stay ingame after their ascension to mess with reality as they like. Huge thanks to the Stellaris Community as they really helped me over time with my modding questions; I most likely wouldn't have advanced that much into modding without their help!

Nanite Expansion Continued

By Sunconure11
Written by Sunconure11 Exploring hypothetical technologies in scales from the Micro to the Atto and everything between, the mod offers a plethora of new options for empires, many of which are derived from the sci-fi encyclopedia at Orion's Arm. All heavily integrate Nanites and make them an essential component of cutting edge empires. Three variations of the ascension perk to start your nanotechnology journey have been included; one for Organic Empires, one for Synths, and one for Machine empires. Features:

• 40+ new technologies
• 5 new ship components
• two new buildings
• two new megastructures
• one of which is a giant AI entity whos personality you get to influence
• a series of upgradable planet modifiers
• a new planet bombardment stance
• three new armies with a unique icon
• a set of traits for Synths and Machines equivalent to the Brain Slug for Organics
• And more!

Dawn Of Ascension

By Daniellm
Written by Daniellm Dawn Of Ascension is a Vanilla+ mod that expands on the mid to end game content of Stellaris. It adds multiple event chains to learn the secrets of dark matter power, including infiltrating a Fallen Empire's Master Archive, digging up old abandoned Precursor shipyards or even putting your best scientists at the major task of inventing it yourself! The major feature of the mod is "the ascension project" , a long situation where you invent a bunch of dark matter related technologies, and even go beyond what the fallen empires did before you, however... the ancient guardians will not sit idle and watch the primitive empires do the ascension project. Are you ready for the next step in your technological evolution? Features:

• 3 new event chains to gain Dark Matter Power
• new civics allowing everything from putting dark matter cores into your machine worlds, to having scion wargoals so everyone fights to unite the galaxy under your banner
• The ascension project, a long project allowing you to go beyond those that came before you.
• New ascendant shipset
• 3 tiers of FE+ automated industries
• New ships allowing you to match the power level of FE ships and beyond
• 2 New tech tiers for components
• Custom weapon effects for all weapons
• Doa is made with mod compatibility in mind and should be compatible with everything!
• 2 different ascension mechanics depending on what mods you have installed

Thats it for this Mod Highlight! Hope youve found some new mods to discover, and new things to learn out in the galaxy. Thanks for reading!

[ 2024-08-10 15:00:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

by MrFreake_PDX Hello everyone! Welcome to another mod highlight, Michael_Stellaris has some great mods lined up for us this week, and this weeks theme is exploration! These mods will make the galaxy more interesting and diverse, and who doesnt love new things to find out in the galaxy. Im sure nothing bad will happen. [previewyoutube=L_sMA977O9I;full][/previewyoutube] Dangerous Wildlife Expanded is a very unique mod, adds much more depth to dangerous wildlife, and should make planets feel much more unique, and can even alter the course of your playthrough.

WP's Dangerous Wildlife Expanded

By WoodenPotatoes
This section was written by WoodenPotatoes Firstly, I really liked the idea of expanding on the sorts of non-intelligent fauna we might find around the galaxy, like T-Rexes and Mammoths and whatnot. Stellaris is utterly fantastic with intelligent aliens, primitive aliens, and even has pre-sapients. But what kind of wildlife is out there? What alien monsters and creepy crawlies lurk on foreign worlds? Secondly, I really liked the concept of mounted alien cavalry. So I made this! Features:

• Diversify the flavour of the "Dangerous Wildlife" planetary feature
• Defend your colonies from these creatures as they attack you
• Eventually, recruit them for yourself

Inspiration: I was really inspired by one of the launch army attachments "Xeno Cavalry", and have a lot of fond memories of mounting my psionic warriors on them. I do have a funny bug story from development on this one: In one early prototype of the attack events I hadn't set a flag to tell the monsters to stop attacking if they had already won. This meant that if you, the player, lost to a horde of, let's say, dire wolves, then a couple of years later you might look at your planet see that even more dire wolves had now come out of hiding to attack the new top dogs in charge! This was happening everywhere, best of all on planets with multiple types of wildlife at once. You'd have swarms of giant cockroaches trying to eat T-rexes, Woolly Rhinos duking it out against alien Yeti, Bats vs Spiders, you get the picture. An entire galaxy of raging wildlife. More Events Mod is one of the most popular event mods out there, it definitely deserves to be featured. It contains some really fun event chains, systems, and new things to find out in the galaxy.

More Events Mod

By Malthus
This section was written by Malthus Our mod started out shortly after Stellaris' release back in 2016. A lot of people have worked on and contributed to it over the years, among them great scripters, writers and 2d/3d artists who all shared the same goal of adding more to the the game experience in terms of short stories through anomalies and bigger story arcs with digsites, quests and even some mid game crises (Broken Clock, Vazuran Menace, Surveyor Probe). All of which is meant to add to the Stellaris lore while staying true to it without contradictions - a vanilla+ basically. Over the time it grew quite a bit from just being a few anomalies and events at the start, to now having nearly two dozen digsites, three mid game crises and even custom species portraits which were made for their respective events but are also fully usable for ai empires. It may be bloat to some, but it is just a big package by now. Features:

• dozens of anomalies
• early and mid game events, multiple archaeological sites and a few origins
• multiple mid game crises
• various species portraits

Inspiration: The mod was originally created by vonMourn shortly after the initial Stellaris release. I joined a few weeks later, when he asked around for people interested in contributing to it. Back then I had no idea about scripting and just wanted to add my "Event Horizon" knockoff story about a possessed ship that took its crew into hell. So writing was all good and well, but getting into scripting afterwards was a lot of trial and error back when there weren't such cool helpers like CWTools around. It was a great help though that all the stuff in Stellaris is as easily accessible with a text editor as it is.
The Broken Clock system from More Events Mod -- Guilli's Planet Modifiers and Features adds a ton of new anomalies, relics, and modifiers to make planets, and outer space more interesting.

Guillis Planet Modifiers and Features

By Guilliman
For version 3.12+ of the game, section written by Guilliman A big content expansion mod focusing on Planetary Modifiers. With hundreds of modifiers and lots of content that interacts with them. Features:

• Over 400 new Planet Modifiers
• Many new planet features and blockers
• Terraforming improvements through planet modifiers
• New planetary decisions to interact with planet modifiers
• Tons of story events
• New Anomalies and exploration events
• New policy: survey expeditions
• New Precursor Dig Sites that interact with precursor planet modifiers
• Precursor Discoveries (technologies, components, bonuses,..)
• 29 new relics
• Relic War Goals (claim relics!)
• Espionage to steal relics
• Relic galaxy map overlay to see who has relics and how many (based on intel)
• New precursor planet: "Archaeopolis" (requires Ancient Relics DLC)
• Minor Artifacts uses, techs, armies (requires Ancient Relics DLC)
• Broken Mini-Megastructures that spawn across the galaxy
• Wondrous Planets
• Custom options menu at the start of the game

Inspiration: I always found planets a little boring but I was mostly curious if I could mod a single planet modifier to see how hard it would be. It got a little bit out of hand from there.. :) More Primitives adds more content for primitives. It adds new events, 11 new Primitive eras, pre-FTL colonization of other habitable planets, and more!

More Primitives

By Sparble
This section written by Sparble More Primitives, as the name suggests, is a mod all about Pre-FTL civilizations, with its main focus being Pre-FTL Ages, Events, Situations and Special Projects. The mod started with a handful of primitive events, such as particle accelerator construction with mysterious events related to that, Pre-FTL world war with multiple outcomes, primitives entering a fanatic philosophical age from which they could turn into primitive purifiers, begin to worship multiple benevolent or malicious shroud entities, or embrace deeply philosophical debates such as anti-natalism. These events were expanded over time, and new event chains came along, such as primitives colonizing their solar system before reaching FTL, their reaction to megastructures in their system, or Pre-FTLs entering a robotic age and developing a technological singularity, which would eventually become self-aware an either trigger a global catastrophe or ultimately become the benevolent savior of the primitive species. It's also worth mentioning that More Primitives does not require the First Contact DLC, but adds additional content on top of that if used along with it. Features:

• Plenty of new Pre-FTL Events & Event Chains
• 11 New Pre-FTL Ages
• Pre-FTL Machine Intelligences
• New special projects & interactions related to Pre-FTL events
• Other flavor stuff related to primitives (Pre-FTL buildings, modifiers, planet class, traits)
• Dedicated Cross-Mod Support

You can never have enough primitive content! More Primitives was my first ever Stellaris mod and, with the help of the great modding community, inspired me to expand my initially very limited knowledge about modding, which has resulted in much new and improved content and the release of various other mods over time, expanding and adding new features to expand the Stellaris Universe. Thats it for this week, we have one more Mod Highlight scheduled for August 10th before Dev Diaries resume on August 15th! See you then!

[ 2024-08-01 11:00:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! While the devs are off frolicing in the sun, we decided this is a great opportunity to highlight (mostly) community mods! [previewyoutube=X-OdXhVTRoQ;full][/previewyoutube] We wanted to change things up a bit this year, but we have such a hard time choosing between all the amazing mods on the workshop, so instead we made Michael~ do it. Michael has assembled several collections of mods each based on a theme, and then we tracked down the modders and asked if they had anything they wanted to share about their mods. So without further ado, I present: ----- The Friends We Made Along The Way This mod collection is all based on the various storytelling aspects of Stellaris. From origins (letting the player create a unique backstory), to event mods (allowing you to create compelling narratives throughout the game). That's the reason why many people (including myself) got into the game, and that's the unique quality about Stellaris - the ability to create your own story, and fulfill your scifi fantasy.

Darkspace

By Exakan
Darkspace is a vanilla+ and roleplay mod, not an overhaul. DarkSpace does not change basic game mechanics and players have full control over the content, the game will only change if you choose an option. DarkSpace offers a whole host of new, unique playstyles that vanilla Stellaris doesnt. Features:

• +15 Origins with unique game mechanics & asymmetrical gameplay. Some of them even have their own category of multiple civics.
• Multiple new Civics for roleplay or game mechanics.
• Ascension Perks for all empire types.
• Unique playstyles (Eldritch, Plague, Nomads, Nanites, Crisis..)
• >25 Megastructures, dependent on perks, origins or crisis paths.
• Has the largest & most complex Nomad origin that exists right now.
• You can become a fallen empire, and create new civilizations by hand.
• Some portraits and shipsets (Unbidden, Organic, Fallen Empire) etc for roleplay.
• DS is made with great cross-mod compatibility in mind.
• Right now a story-interactive endgame crisis with multiple choices/paths is in the works

Inspiration: DarkSpace is my personal playground. If I find an idea that I would like to play as in Stellaris, then I add it. With the "fun factor" secured for myself, I know Ill put the required passion into the project. I keep everything optional though, the player decides what the mod is doing with their game . I never expected the mod to "explode" that much, I expected like 1k subs at start. The Stellaris community is very friendly and it makes a lot of fun to mod for them :)

Dynamic Political Events

By caligulacaesar Disclaimer: When Michael~ was selecting this list of mods, he was not aware that Caligula works for Paradox Development Studios and was previously a developer on Stellaris. Caligula was recruited as a Stellaris developer after making this mod.
Stellaris empires have never really felt alive. Imagine if we (us Humans) suddenly werent the only species on our planet how we get on with the others would soon be one of the big topics. Or if machines produced half our output suddenly, one could imagine it might be difficult to adjust. These societal factors are currently not represented well in Stellaris - there are the factions, but they don't have events surrounding them. Even now, 8 years past release, we still have not had the fabled Internal Politics DLC that could, possible, change this. This mod was an attempt from 2018 to fill this void. It adds dozens of events - and some ridiculously extensive branching event chains - to give you further stories to experience and decisions to make about how you run your empire. Features:

• Events to do with integrating alien species, including tensions between species and your attitude towards interspecies marriages.
• Events focusing on pops and factions specific demands (e.g. emancipation movements).
• Colonisation Stories your new colonists on a planet might choose their own leader or how they wish to organise themselves.
• Establish a ruler cult to your emperor.
• Various scandals and conspiracies.
• Events affecting interstate relations.
• And more (over 55,000 words of text in total).

Inspiration: The original inspiration for my mod was twofold: firstly, I loved playing Stellaris, but the version in those days (1.6 or so) has relatively little content beyond the initial exploration, and I wanted to add more storylines to experience later in the game. Secondly, I was working a job I found very boring, and it was very nice to have a creative outlet. After doing that for a year, I ended up being hired by Paradox, and I'm still there over 5 years later, so I think that worked out for me! And I still keep the mod up to date, even though I don't add new event chains, because for the most part it still holds up well.

Forgotten Empires

By inny78
Embark on a cosmic odyssey with this mod, where a tapestry of interstellar narratives unfolds for your science team amidst the boundless realms of the galaxy. Delve into the forgotten tales of ancient precursor empires, their legacies lost in the starlit void long before your celestial journey began. Uncover hidden dig sites and engage with enigmatic anomalies that beckon with inscrutable secrets. Every discovery and encounter weaves into the fabric of your empire's destiny, steering its path through the stars. Recommended DLC, but not required: Ancient Relics, Utopia, Synthetic Dawn, Nemesis and First Contact - these will provide additional rewards. Features:

• New Precursor chains
• New Dig sites
• New events

Inspiration: When XVCV announced that he would stop modding, I decided that his amazing mods (Precursor Story Pack and Archaeology Story Pack) should not be abandoned. I added later some old mods that I enjoyed, with the permission of their authors Marky612 (Strange Worlds, resurrected from the Stellaris 1.6 era) and QUENTOPOLIS' Fires of Ziaskehorn. I wanted to preserve the stories told by abandonded event mods, and also create my own with more liberties than the constraints of Extra Events Continued. So I created the Stellaris Chronicles collection (Extra Events Continued and Forgotten Empires) and started creating Forgotten Empires with a curated selection of lore-friendly stories. These stories don't require any DLC but the events can make use of them if they are present. Now that I'm satisfied with the new precursors, my focus is now on creating shorter stories and unique systems.

Basic Ordinary Origins

By cybrxkhan
Basic Ordinary Origins adds in several new origins that are just that - basic and ordinary. They are simple origins meant to provide alternative "default" origins to Prosperous Unification, with starting bonuses that are similarly mundane and not drastic. They wont change gameplay significantly, but will hopefully add flavor and variety to your games so not every nation starts with the Prosperous Unification origin. Though this isnt meant to be perfectly balanced, keeping in line with the vanilla origins' lack of balance, none will ideally be overpowered. Features: 20+ new "simple" origins; usable by both human players and AI empires:

• Antediluvian Knowledge
• Chosen Revolutionary
• Chosen Royal
• Clean Energy
• Former Scavengers
• Global Wars
• Great Khanate
• Legendary Friendship
• Lost Continent
• Mysterious Bonds
• One with Nature
• Post-Post-Apocalyptic
• Silk Road
• Slow Evolution
• Steampunk
• Survival of the Fittest
• The Gate
• Trekkers of the Stars
• War to End All Wars

Inspiration: I started Basic Ordinary Origins (BOO) back in 2020 when the Origins feature was first added. A lot of vanilla's origins other than Prosperous Unification are complex and have deep storylines attached to them, so I felt there was a lack of simple origins to make things more interesting without needing the larger origins. I've been modding Stellaris since it came out in 2016. My major mods which I started back then, and which I still maintain, are Cybrxkhan's Assortment of Namelists (CANS) and More AI Personalities (MAP). CANS adds more (mostly fictional) namelists that both players can use and AI empires can randomly spawn with, while MAP adds new AI personalities. They're both compatible with and complement BOO well. ----- Thats all for this week! Well be back in two weeks time with another Mod Highlight!

[ 2024-07-18 11:00:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

If you've ever wanted to have a citizen of the Stellaris universe staring at you from across the room, now's your chance! Stellaris and Makeship have teamed up to bring this war criminal adorable Starfish Plushie to life -- but only for a limited time.
If not friend, why friend-shaped?

Get your very own Stellaris Starfish plushie on Makeship!

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[ 2024-06-27 11:52:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Stellaris is having a free weekend! Tell your friends!
Play Stellaris for free this weekend! Weve asked the Dev team for some tips to help new players out during their first steps out into the wondrous unknown.

Some Tips From the Devs

• Don't forget to unpause the game, but don't be afraid to pause it again if you need time to think. - Eladrin
• The different options in empire creation arent created equally, some empires will be more powerful than others, but regardless youll get more enjoyment out of the game by playing what you find fun (or what you find the idea of to be fun) without looking up the perfect build. - Alfray Stryke
• Buildings don't produce Resources, Jobs produce Resources! Just because you've built a shiny new Research Lab doesn't mean there's anyone working there. Click the Population tab to learn more! - OK_Television_391
• Stellaris has mid-game and end-game crises that you might not be able to defeat on your first try. Each defeat makes your eventual triumph more satisfying. - Eladrin
• Read the tooltips. - PDX_Ferry
• Not every Species eats food, some eat energy and others minerals. - Paradoxical_Nikname
• Got a neighbor that closed the borders and rivaled you? It is a matter of time before they will declare war on you. Choose a choke point, build a star base, upgrade it with defense buildings. It might be just enough to defend the border, but for extra measure you can also build some defense platforms on the station or station your fleet there. This will enable you to mostly ignore that aggressive neighbor and focus on expanding/exploring the other direction.
• Losing a war isn't losing the game, enjoy your moments of vengeful plotting as much as your triumphs. - Beals
• Just because you've got slightly more fleet power than an enemy, it doesn't mean you're definitely going to win.
• If the notifications are too spammy (or not spammy enough), you can configure them in the settings. - pthooie
• A few Origins are more challenging than others. Doomsday, Broken Shackles, and Payback start you off with some major challenges to overcome, and may be better to save until you have a few games under your belt. - Eladrin
• Don't worry too much about what people say is best. Making an empire with a cool backstory will keep you entertained a lot longer than one with perfect numbers! - Iggy
• Make sure you expand you fleet early on, or you might be prey to the first neighbour you find. - Paradoxical_Nikname
• Your pops will love the Holo-Theater building.- PDX_Ferry
• As expected in a sci-fi game, Research is king, however this means Unity is queen - dont neglect the development of your empires Traditions in pursuit of new Technologies. - Alfray Stryke
• If you spawn next to a Criminal syndicate, keep an eye on your planets, or you might get overwhelmed by crime. - Paradoxical_Nikname
  • Correction: If you spawn next to a criminal syndicate, blow it up - Beals
• Pops > Everything. Want to increase your power in the galaxy? Colonize, boost Pop Growth Speed, encourage Immigration... But whatever method you choose, remember ABP: "Always Be Poppin!" - OK_Television_391
• For single player, it's good to queue up your science ship exploration and pick your first three technologies to research before you un-pause.
• Set up a monthly trade in the Market to get missing resources.- PDX_Ferry
• Be brave and break things, choose a clearly wrong choice, make mistakes, crack open that ancient tomb, the galaxy is yours and full of wonders! - Beals
• But most of all, have fun, and thanks for playing Stellaris! - Eladrin

Do you have any tips for the new explorers? Share them!

Eat the Envoys

Stellaris is partnering with Makeship to produce a limited edition Stellaris Starfish plushie! They may have destroyed Europa VII, but we can still be friends, right?
Click to go to the campaign!

Whats Next?

Summer vacations are here, so this will be the last dev diary until mid-August, when we will return with information about Cosmic Storms and the Stellaris 3.13 Vela update. Have a great summer, and thank you for playing Stellaris!

[ 2024-06-20 11:00:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dear Stellaris Fans, Our latest and greatest version of the game, the 3.12.5 patch, is now live and available for download. This patch brings further fixes and tweaks and wraps up our 3.12 + The Machine Age release cycle. Please find the patch notes below.

3.12.5 PATCH NOTES

Improvement

• Obsessional Directive empires that control a black hole now get an option for safe and secure storage for their commodities.
• Reworked how Fallen Empires view empires trying to match their technological level. Unless you're a Scion, any FE level tech you acquire will accrue a stacking opinion penalty with them, that is doubled for the materialist Fallen Empire.
• Added new building icons for the Sensorium and Simulation Sites and their upgrades
• Species list will not longer show founder species from various contacts that do not even have any presence on any of the planets.
• Megastrutures that are supposed to be built outside the gravity well will not be displayed in the list whilte trying to build one on top of planets or stars.
• Nanite deposits with non-zero available quantity below 1 now appear in galaxy and solar system views
• Nanotech empires will no longer receive ships every 5 years, and will instead gain an equivalent amount of nanites with which to build ships. They now have access to the Interdictor ship, a battleship alternative with a fixed nanite cost that can use torpedoes and hangars.

UI

• The first Outliner tab now includes military fleets, civilian ships and armies by default.

Balance

• Constructing an Arc Furnace in a system will now remove all trade deposits to make way for the mining stations
• Increased the output of Haruspex and Technophants.
• Haruspex now produce 3 Unity and 2.5 Engineering Research (was 2 Unity and 2 Engineering Research).
• Technophants now produce 6 Unity and 5 Engineering Research (was 4 Unity and 4 Engineering Research).
• Spyware Directives now start with Basic Cloaking Fields as a research option
• Synaptic Subprocessing for Hive Minds now grants Augmentor Drones to Spawning Pools instead of Modular Cybernetics, however the effect on Empire Size from Districts was halved
• Modular Cybernetics now grants Hive Minds +3 Organic Species Trait Points as they cannot research robotic technologies
• The AI Emporium Branch Office Holding no longer provides +5% resources from jobs, instead it provides +1 Identity Designer job and +10% Branch Office Value from Roboticists and Identity Designers. This allows the empire in which it is constructed to assemble robots even if they do not have the required technology. However, only one can be constructed in each empire in which you have a branch office and it can only be constructed if the empire has not outlawed robots.
• The Customer Insights edict now reduces both the energy and influence cost for Branch Offices
• The Empire Size Effect for Integrated Hives has been reduced from -50% to -33%
• Empire Size from Pops for OTA Updates has been reduced from -20% to -15%
• Empire Size from Pops from Harmony and Synchronicity tradition trees have been reduced from -15% to -10%
• Cetana's relic now provides -50% planetary ascension cost, down from 75%.
• The job strata bonuses from Synthesization have been rebalanced, moved to the robot assembly buildings, and apply to both regular empires and Synthetic Fertility

Bugfix

• Planets which had an anomaly present while an Arc Furnace was constructed will now correctly inherit all the deposits when the anomaly is cleared, if the planet can support mining deposits
• Updated many anomalies to no longer remove deposits if applicable.
• Gone Native' event has default text in case none of the other options were appropriate
• AI Empires will check if they already have an assigned emissary for the galactic community before assigning a new one.
• AI will assign emissaries to the Galactic Community.
• AI will check if a federation already has an assigned representative before assigning a new one. Will prevent it from continually switching representatives.
• Cybernetic Creed start event duplication blocked
• Fallen Empires created by Cosmogenesis should now no longer sometimes be created tragically without a personality.
• Federation/Galcom fleet template size is now limited by the corresponding capacity, not by the command limit.
• Fixed Augmentation Bazaars sometimes not granting the full effects from some Cyberization choices
• Fixed Expand the Council agenda behavior for savefiles that predate Galactic Paragons DLC
• Fixed former federation fleets being treated as federation fleets when checking which ship designs can be added to the template.
• Fixed some logical errors for the Bot Lord, Truth Seeker and Shroud Preacher traits
• Fixed the concept tooltip for Machine Template System
• Fixed the nanite deposit scaling
• Fixed the void dweller origin sometimes trying to spawn a mining station around the habitat central complex
• Hide Dyson Sphere build option when Machine DLC is enabled
• Increased the animation speed of Imperial Colossus. Now it has enough time to trigger laser beam animation.
• New rulers will properly abandon their old council positions.
• Paradox titan graphics no longer uses the same mesh twice and looks broken.
• Pre-sapient pop will no longer display colony abandonment cost if only one sapient pop is left on the planet.
• Psionic species variants can be cyberized
• Refugees will no longer flee to places where they will be dismantled on arrival
• Replaced most checks for the Servile, Nerve Stapled, Zombie and Suppressed traits with the can_think trait.
• Science ships using automation should no longer excavate archeology sites that aren't available to the owning empire.
• Script error in resort worker job block
• The Psionic Theory no longer tries to check if your empire has the Psionic Expertise trait, instead it checks if a Councilor has the trait.
• The tooltip for Diplomatic Weight now states "Delegate" instead of "Envoys"
• The Victory Score breakdown will now correctly include Victory Score from effects in its Score calculation at the top of the screen.
• When a country leaves a federation, its federation fleet templates are now transferred to the president.
• When a federation is disbanded, the president takes control of all federation fleet templates, including ones without a fleet.
• When a non-president country builds a federation fleet from a template, the template is now transferred to the president along with the fleet.
• When the GDF changes ownership, GDF fleet templates without actual fleets are now transferred.
• The Eternal Throne relic still grants immortality after the Eternal Machine species trait has been modified away.
• Arc Furnace and Dyson Swarm limits no longer suffer an off-by-one error
• Outposts raids conducted by multiple fleets should no longer be cut short after one of the fleets is destroyed.
• Made sure that non player countries are properly destroyed upon activation of the Aetherophasic Engine.
• The Reformed Queen event should now properly display Cetana.
• Ministry of Acquisition checks for Overlord Consumer Goods Use
• Ship preview should no longer black out when viewing certain ships

AI

• AI empires can no longer adopt Virtuality.

Stability

• Fixed crash in federation fleet ui entry after resync
• Fixed crash in federation member UI item when resyncing
• Fixed crash upon loading a save with faulty owners of megastructures
• Fixed CTD when technology without tech area is processed by the database
• Fixes oos related to mining planet megastructure
• Fixed CTD at startup on older macOS (before 13.x) due to missing library

Modding

• Added on_auto_colony_type_changed on_action.
• Added the Servile trait to the can_think scripted trigger

The team will now shift focus to our next major release, as well as take some vacation in between. See you again after summer!

[ 2024-06-18 08:12:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! This week the 3.12.4 hotfix (which fixed a crash related to non-latin letters in usernames) has been deployed to non-Steam platforms. Today Ive got a preliminary list of changes for the 3.12.5 patch, which we currently have planned for Tuesday, June 18th.

3.12.5 "ANDROMEDA" PRELIMINARY RELEASE NOTES

Improvement

• Democratic Crusaders no longer hate Worker Coops for being Oligarchies
• Obsessional Directive empires that control a black hole now get an option for safe and secure storage for their commodities.
• Reworked how Fallen Empires view empires trying to match their technological level. Unless you're a Scion, any FE level tech you acquire will accrue a stacking opinion penalty with them, that is doubled for the materialist Fallen Empire.
• Added new building icons for the Sensorium and Simulation Sites and their upgrades
• Species list will not longer show founder species from various contacts that do not even have any presence on any of the planets.

Balance

• Constructing an Arc Furnace in a system will now remove all trade deposits to make way for the mining stations
• Increased the output of Haruspex and Technophants.
  • Haruspex now produce 3 Unity and 2.5 Engineering Research (was 2 Unity and 2 Engineering Research).
  • Technophants now produce 6 Unity and 5 Engineering Research (was 4 Unity and 4 Engineering Research).
• Spyware Directives now start with Basic Cloaking Fields as a research option
• Synaptic Subprocessing for Hive Minds now grants Augmentor Drones to Spawning Pools instead of Modular Cybernetics, however the effect on Empire Size from Districts was halved
• Modular Cybernetics now grants Hive Minds +3 Organic Species Trait Points as they cannot research robotic technologies
• The AI Emporium Branch Office Holding no longer provides +5% resources from jobs, instead it provides +1 Identity Designer job and +10% Branch Office Value from Roboticists and Identity Designers. This allows the empire in which it is constructed to assemble robots even if they do not have the required technology. However, only one can be constructed in each empire in which you have a branch office and it can only be constructed if the empire has not outlawed robots.
• The Customer Insights edict now reduces both the energy and influence cost for Branch Offices
• The Empire Size Effect for Integrated Hives has been reduced from -50% to -33%
• Empire Size from Pops for OTA Updates has been reduced from -20% to -15%
• Empire Size from Pops from Harmony and Synchronicity tradition trees have been reduced from -15% to -10%
• Cetana's relic now provides -50% planetary ascension cost, down from 75%.
• The job strata bonuses from Synthesization have been rebalanced, moved to the robot assembly buildings, and apply to both regular empires and Synthetic Fertility

Bugfix

• Planets which had an anomaly present while an Arc Furnace was constructed will now correctly inherit all the deposits when the anomaly is cleared, if the planet can support mining deposits
• Updated many anomalies to no longer remove deposits if applicable.
• Gone Native' event has default text in case none of the other options were appropriate
• AI Empires will check if they already have an assigned emissary for the galactic community before assigning a new one.
• AI will assign emissaries to the Galactic Community.
• AI will check if a federation already has an assigned representative before assigning a new one. Will prevent it from continually switching representatives.
• Cybernetic Creed start event duplication blocked
• Fallen Empires created by Cosmogenesis should now no longer sometimes be created tragically without a personality.
• Federation/Galcom fleet template size is now limited by the corresponding capacity, not by the command limit.
• Fixed Augmentation Bazaars sometimes not granting the full effects from some Cyberization choices
• Fixed Expand the Council agenda behavior for savefiles that predate Galactic Paragons DLC
• Fixed former federation fleets being treated as federation fleets when checking which ship designs can be added to the template.
• Fixed some logical errors for the Bot Lord, Truth Seeker and Shroud Preacher traits
• Fixed the concept tooltip for Machine Template System
• Fixed the nanite deposit scaling
• Fixed the void dweller origin sometimes trying to spawn a mining station around the habitat central complex
• Hide Dyson Sphere build option when Machine DLC is enabled
• Increased the animation speed of Imperial Colossus. Now it has enough time to trigger laser beam animation.
• New rulers will properly abandon their old council positions.
• Paradox titan graphics no longer uses the same mesh twice and looks broken.
• Pre-sapient pop will no longer display colony abandonment cost if only one sapient pop is left on the planet.
• Psionic species variants can be cyberized
• Refugees will no longer flee to places where they will be dismantled on arrival
• Replaced most checks for the Servile, Nerve Stapled, Zombie and Suppressed traits with the can_think trait.
• Science ships using automation should no longer excavate archeology sites that aren't available to the owning empire.
• Script error in resort worker job block
• The Psionic Theory no longer tries to check if your empire has the Psionic Expertise trait, instead it checks if a Councilor has the trait.
• The tooltip for Diplomatic Weight now states "Delegate" instead of "Envoys"
• The Victory Score breakdown will now correctly include Victory Score from effects in its Score calculation at the top of the screen.
• When a country leaves a federation, its federation fleet templates are now transferred to the president.
• When a federation is disbanded, the president takes control of all federation fleet templates, including ones without a fleet.
• When a non-president country builds a federation fleet from a template, the template is now transferred to the president along with the fleet.
• When the GDF changes ownership, GDF fleet templates without actual fleets are now transferred.

Stability

• Fixed crash in federation fleet ui entry after resync
• Fixed crash in federation member UI item when resyncing
• Fixed crash upon loading a save with faulty owners of megastructures
• Fixed CTD when technology without tech area is processed by the database
• Fixes oos related to mining planet megastructure

Modding

• Added on_auto_colony_type_changed on_action.
• Added the Servile trait to the can_think scripted trigger

Barring the unexpected, this is expected to be the final release of the "Andromeda" patch cycle, so your mods are safe until the storms blow them away with the 3.13 "Vela" release coming in Q3 2024.

Whats Next : A Mysterious Visitor, and Upcoming Stellaris Free Weekend!

Next Tuesday well find out what this is about:
Were also going to have a Stellaris Free Weekend starting on June 20th, running through the weekend.
To help our new players out, next Thursdays dev diary will be "Tips from the Developers". See you then!

[ 2024-06-13 11:00:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, A hotfix patch is now available via Steam, addressing a crash affecting some players trying to start a new game in 3.12.3.

• Fixed a crash where the user directory could not be accessed by the game if the file path included certain characters

Thanks for playing Stellaris, and apologies for the inconvenience!

[ 2024-05-31 11:14:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hi everyone! The 3.12.3 Andromeda patch was released this week, with the following changes:

3.12.3 ANDROMEDA RELEASE NOTES

Feature

• Added tradition agendas for Modularity, Nanotech and Virtuality
• Some megastructures (mostly kilostructures) can now be dismantled if you have the technology to build them and are not at war.
• Solar system tooltips now show the arc furnace and habitat potential of a system, if you meet the construction requirements for the megastructures

Improvement

• Added heir titles to Mortal Empire and Bandit Kingdom governments
• Added missing heir titles for Imperial governments
• Added more character names to the Cyberpunk list
• Added tooltips to the Transformation situation to summarize the different ascension paths in the event that you make a choice of which path to select.
• Awakened fallen empires now can use the daedalus seal relic.
• Completing the Synthetic Fertility event chain will now grant additional robot modification trait points and picks and award a unique trait for your synths
• Cybernetic Creed pops can now be modified
• Democratic Crusaders no longer hate Worker Coops for being Oligarchies
• Non-Spiritualist pops in a Cybernetic Creed empire now only have the Cybernetic Creed traits removed instead of all Cyborg traits
• Redesigned top-menu resource tooltips for clarity
• Robots Pops are now called Machine or Mechanical Pops in most places
• Scavenger civics now have 10% of the base cost of buildings, districts and megastructures refunded upon dismantling them
• Selecting a Cybernetic Creed as your sole Spiritualist faction no longer forces a template onto your species
• The Commodities Consolidation situation will now show if you are on track to produce enough consumer goods or if you do not have enough storage space to the quota. Thanks to SirBlackAxe for the improvement suggestions!
• Your choice in the Virtual Salvation event now influences the Synthetic Society Shift in the Digital Refactoring event chain

Balance

• Added Election Term Variance (Years): +5 to the Shadow Council civic. This means that each election will have a term length equal to that of the authority +/- a random number of years between -5 and +5.
• Added Election Term Length (Years): -50% to the Worker Cooperative civic, giving empires with this civic the same term length as the democratic authority.
• All Virtual empires (either Machines that take Virtuality traditions or Organic empires that adopt a Virtual government after completing Synthetic Ascension) now get access to the Virtual Economic Policy
• Buffed the Mutual Aid trade policy to also provide unity
• Cosmogenesis Battlecruiser and Titans now use reactors one class above theirs, and should now provide ample power for modules.
• Dark Matter Engine effects reduced from +60% to +40%
• Increased the effects of the modifier nerfing FE against Cetana.
• Machine World planet designation now increases the output of all jobs by 5% instead of only simple drones and increases the build speed of all resource districts by 25%
• Made Rogue Servitors slightly more likely to build organic sanctuaries and their upgrades
• Reduced the time needed to complete the special projects "The Queen's Databank" and "Cetana: Race The Tempest"
• Selecting a Cybernetic Creed as your sole Spiritualist faction now awards a country modifier for that Creed - these modifiers are:
  • The Fellowship of the Hammer, Elevated Fellowship, +1 Biological Trait Points, +1 Biological Trait Picks, -10% Building and District Upkeep, -10% Megastructure Upkeep
  • The Templars of Steel, Elevated Templars, +1 Biological Trait Points, +1 Biological Trait Picks, +5% Naval Capacity
  • The Choir of the Mind, Elevated Choir, +1 Biological Trait Points, +1 Biological Trait Picks, +5% Research Speed, +5% Researcher Upkeep
  • The Commune of Toil, Elevated Commune, +1 Biological Trait Points, +1 Biological Trait Picks, +10% Cyborg Happiness
  • The United Creeds has their modifier changed to +2 Biological Trait Points, +1 Biological Trait Picks
• Selecting a Cybernetic Creed as your sole Spiritualist faction now gives +10% Faction Approval for the Creed
• Selecting the physical path for Synthetic Ascension now unlocks the advanced traits from Modularity
• Shielded Components points cost reduced from 4 to 3
• Synthetic Imperial authorities no longer have -10% pop assembly speed
• Synthetic Oligarchic authorities now have Enforcer provide +10% Resources from Ruler Jobs instead of +5%
• Synthetic Physical Corporate government now gives +5% Trade Value
• Synthetic Physical Imperial government now gives +2 leader starting level and +10% leader XP gain
• Synthetic Virtual Corporate government now gives +1 Codebreaking
• The additional trait picks and points awarded by Cybernetic Creed now only apply to biological species
• The Augmentations of the Commune now gives +20% Worker Output, but no longer gives +20% Worker Happiness
• The Bot Lord destiny trait is now available for all leader classes and now instead increases the production and decreases the upkeep of both robots and cyborgs. It is twice as likely to show up if you are an individual machine or have synthetic or cybernetic ascension.
• The Computation Core Focus policy for Synthetic MegaCorps no longer removes the +1% Trade Value modifier from Clerks and the Production Streamlining option now also increases Consumer Goods production in addition to alloys.
• The Nanotech World designation now also affects agri-drones if you build hydroponic farms on the planet
• The Shroud Preacher and Truth Seeker destiny traits are now blocked if you have undertaken another a non-psionic path. They are twice as likely to show up if you have psionic ascension. The traits no longer require spiritualist ethics
• Virtuality Adoptions grants a -15% metallurgist and artisan production
• Virtuality Policy now grants +80%/-50%, down from +100%/-40%

Bugfix

• Added a homeworld or planet preference to multiple event species, mainly machines
• Added a plural version of the loc for synaptic lathe districts
• Added a warning to Synthetic Age that it will not grant a new tradition if you have no tradition slots left
• Added military academy to shattered ring and habitat
• Added more checks to prevent Worker Coops from using banned trade policies
• Assembly tooltip will now combine empire wide add modifiers into the same category.
• Becoming a machine removes the brain slug trait from leaders
• Blocked parades and deficits from targeting the synaptic lathe
• Cetana's fleets now begin at 1st
• Changed resilience bonus for immortal leaders
• Changed Synthetic Dawn machine empire gender to indeterminable.
• Changed the cost of the Integrated Mega Construction edict so it wouldn't break the UI
• Clarified the loc of the AI policy and machine Citizenships
• Colony ships for Synthetic Fertility now use energy instead of food or minerals
• Completely new fleet will be able to accept more than the default 20 ships by forcing an early modifier update.
• Corrected icons for Zero Waste Protocols and Diplomatic Protocols
• Corrected the highlighting on the Free at Last concept tooltip
• Corrected the names of some gestalt agendas
• create_species effect can no longer create species without habitability traits
• Cyberization can handle multiple species templates
• Defenders of the galaxy can not become a crisis anymore
• Destroyed orbital rings are no longer duplicated
• Dyson Swarm's stage name 1 is now properly displayed in Russian
• election_term_variance values for government authorities now behave as expected and go negative.
• First contract breakthrough chance is now affected by encryption.
• Fixed a bug where players would occasionally not receive the "Mysterious Tempest" special project needed to declare war to Cetana
• Fixed a bunch of typos reported on the forums
• Fixed a couple of issues with coordinator districts and virtuality traditions
• Fixed a crash when switching between countries while in observer mode with the Leader View open.
• Fixed a number of capital buildings checking for the wrong synthetics tradition to add roboticist jobs
• Fixed an issue that allowed you to keep playing after Cetana won
• Fixed an issue with the Mother Knows Best achievement being incorrectly configured for some storefronts
• Fixed Archaeology and Astral Rift exploration failure probability sometimes showing nonsense values
• Fixed building type AI weight calculations again
• Fixed cloaking effect for Enigma Battlecruiser and Paradox Titan
• Fixed Clone Army and Natural Design not being mutually exclusive
• Fixed Cybernetic Creed pops sometimes not growing if there were robots present on the planet
• Fixed job weights for Resort Workers
• Fixed leaders undergoing synthetic ascension not changing age correctly
• Fixed Natural Design civics sometimes starting with more buildings than the capital could support
• Fixed some errors in the calculations for merc enclave dividend payout frequency
• Fixed some minor typos with traditions
• Fixed the "Mass Graves" blocker not having a description.
• Fixed the additional priest jobs from Virtuality traditions not actually checking for the tradition
• Fixed the extra clerk jobs from Virtuality traditions granting the wrong number of jobs
• Fixed the habitability for secondary species for Driven Assimilators and Rogue Servitors with some origins
• Fixed the Rulerchip being reset whenever you gain a new relic
• Fixed unlocalized string for the machine ring world habitability trait
• Fixes issues with modification of uplifted species
• Fruitful Partnership Origin: stopped critters from leaving seeds on artificial worlds and habitats
• Full citizenship for robots requires tech Artificial Administration
• Gave the machine fallen empire ring world preference
• High-Level Enhancements now provides +1 Unity from Bio-Trophies for Rogue Servitors
• Hiveminds can now purge hiveminds again
• Keep the Transformation deposits when terraforming into a Machine World
• Landing armies on the synaptic lathe is forbidden
• Leaders in empires with Feudal Society now correctly require upkeep
• Limited the first contact breakthrough and insight gain percentages to values between 0 and 100 percent.
• Loading a save should now unassign scientists from the pre-3.8 research areas.
• Machines with the Shattered Ring origin now require robomodding techs in order to modify their machine species
• Made AI realize it can not take FEs with 10k fleetpower
• Made explosion after cracking lathe/habitat/ringworld stick until it has played thru.
• Made the language used for trait points and trait picks modifiers consistent
• Make sure planet jobs are properly refreshed upon building/district build queue actions finishes.
• Ministry of Acquisition now correctly produces Consumer Goods if the overlord uses them
• Moved warning text for virtuality into tradition adoption effect instead of widely available trait
• Moving the capital destroys the old Cyberdome building
• Opinion modifiers of Interstellar Assemblies now stacks for each owned Assembly
• Other Crises should no longer be allowed to spawn while the Synth Queen is ongoing
• Pops on the lathe can not be assimilated
• Pops that are turned Virtual while on the Lathe, will have their Virtuality trait quietly removed
• Progenitor hives now receive the correct jobs from the Fallen Empire clinic buildings.
• Reduced the likelihood of designation switching for foundry and factory worlds
• Refugees won't willingly resettle to the Synaptic Lathe anymore
• Removed mentions of stockpiles from the Delete Sector tooltip
• Removed the formless from the end-game crisis list, which might have caused some issues regarding crisis spawning
• Removed the reference to the Server Load Reduction decision, since it is no longer available
• Removed useless "go to" camera button in the "No Response" event
• Show disabled crisis button on Synaptic Lathe view in case another empire takes it over.
• Show large weapon slot and hangars as separate entries for sections in ship designer
• Special project names in tooltips are now highlighted in yellow
• Special projects to raid outposts should now get properly cleared after failing a raid and new projects should display the proper location instead of the empire name.
• Subsuming a planet into a nanite world now correctly removes planetary modifiers and features
• Synthetic Fertility gets access to edicts Subsidized Identity Backups and Optimized Identity Creation
• Synthetic Fertility should now always have access to the AI right policy
• Synthetic Fertility: Keep the organic species portrait in the Identity Repository and Robot Surrogates are now non-holographic
• Terraforming planets related to Keides event chain now removes their unique features
• The Artifact Exhibition planetary decision is now available for Haruspex jobs
• The brainmines now require a minimum sapience
• The Determined Exterminator civic no longer mentions that you start on a tomb world
• The FE robot assembly building should no longer be automatically destroyed after being built.
• The Grand Battlements of Steel and Aegis Complex now provide FTL inhibitors
• The limit on the number of built Dyson Swarm and Arc Furnaces now correctly includes structures under construction
• The modifiers from the Rulerchip are now listed in the same order as leader classes in the leader UI
• The Nanotech World designation now requires the Unbridled Consumption tradition
• The United Creeds now have their unique faction icon
• Unique planetary features added through the Transformation situation and Genesis Guides civics are now kept when restoring a shattered ringworld or turning a planet into an ecumenopolis
• Updated Archaeological Site Excavation failure probability to show accurate number on the tooltip.
• Updated Astral Rift Exploration failure probability to show accurate number on the tooltip.
• Virtual Pops are now properly blocked from resettling on the lathe
• Wrecked Fleet event only fires once afterwards, notifications are given
• You can now only trade one leader at a time
• Initial election for countries now takes into account modifiers to election term length

Stability

• Adding check to start_astral_action_cooldown effect for validating that the country type can use astral actions (currently either playable or has the ai interior_minister_module) instead of potentially crashing.
• Fixed CTD when a non playable empire decides to lock wormholes etc
• Fixed OOS in hotjoin/resync due to clients cleaning up invalid ship components

UI/UX

• Added "Build Megastructure" option to fleet order context menu in galaxy view.
• Fixed planet "Build Megastructure" command not correctly hiding unbuildable megastructures from the list.
• Fixed some incorrect leader assignment text.
• Fixed subscription's title not being localized in the popup when buying it through the additional content browser.
• Fixed zoom animation not playing if you go to system view for the last system that you visited in system view.
• Implemented unique icons for galactic focuses concerning mid-game and end-game crises
• System megastructure selection view tooltips show detailed fail text for non-planet-specific checks.
• The Science Nexus build tooltip no longer shows "Exists" fail text in systems without a starbase.
• The government panel now shows your election frequency

Modding

• Added election_term_variance_add and election_term_variance_mult modifiers
• Adding the ability to dismantle megastructures, see megastructure documentation
• Readding support for appending portrait sets and implementing it for portrait categories
• Removed obsolete is_researching_area and research_leader triggers.
• Renamed government_election_years_add and government_election_years_mult to election_term_years_add and election_term_years_mult

Were currently working on 3.12.4 which will likely be the last patch in the 3.12 Andromeda cycle. Summer approaches, and with it, team vacations.

A Storm is Brewing

Winds in the fall will bring us the 3.13 Vela update, and with it, Cosmic Storms. Vela is the constellation representing the sails of the Argo Navis, the ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed to get the Golden Fleece. We thought it a fitting name for an expansion relating to galactic weather. As a bit of a sneak peek, Ill show you some screenshots from the game Im currently playing. Note: I cranked up the frequency and intensity of storms up to the absolute max for this run, so a normal galaxy should be a bit more chill.
The storm map mode will make it easier to see what systems are under the effects of storms.
In system view, youll see the glowies.
Prediction technologies can help you figure out where the storms may be going.
Thats probably the path it will take, if nothing interferes with it. I wonder if Teersonia will be hit?

Whats Next (in the Short Term)

Next week is Swedens National Day, so our next dev diary will be June 13th, which Im currently penciling in as a possible 3.12.4 release date. See you in two weeks!

[ 2024-05-30 11:00:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Ealdrin Hello everybody! Last week we released 3.12.2 to the public, and since then weve been working on further post release support. Today well be going into some of the things were planning for a 3.12.3 release. Currently were looking at next Thursday as the tentative release date, but well keep you posted.

Selected Changes and Improvements from the Changelog

Following the deluge of feedback from the release of The Machine Age, 3.12.3 will include the following changes:

• Selecting the physical path for Synthetic Ascension will unlock the advanced machine traits from the Modularity path for Machines.
• Selecting the virtual path for Synthetic Ascension will unlock the Virtual Economic Policy from the Virtuality path for Machines. (Though the policy has been rebalanced.)
• The unique planetary features added from the Transformation situation are now kept when turning a planet into an ecumenopolis or restoring a shattered ringworld.
• Synthetic authorities have been rebalanced.
• The Commodities Consolidation situation will now show if you are on track to produce enough consumer goods or if you do not have enough storage space to the quota.
• The Virtuality, Modularity and Nanotech tradition trees now have agendas.
• Cybernetic Creed:
  • Embracing a Cybernetic Creed no longer forces a template onto your species.
  • Embracing a Cybernetic Creed now gives +10% Faction Approval when they become your sole Spiritualist faction (This does not apply if you unite the Creeds).
  • Embracing a Cybernetic Creed now awards a unique country modifier for that Creed.
  • Non-Spiritualist pops in a Cybernetic Creed empire now only have the Cybernetic Creed traits removed instead of all Cyborg traits.
• Synthetic Fertility:
  • Your choice in the Virtual Salvation event now influences the Synthetic Society Shift in the Digital Refactoring event chain.
  • Finishing the situation now grants access to the Subsidized Identity Backups and Optimized Identity Creation edicts.
  • Completing the Synthetic Fertility event chain will now grant additional robot modification trait points and picks and award a unique free trait for your synthetically ascended population.
• Refugees won't willingly resettle to the Synaptic Lathe anymore.
• Dark Matter Engines have been reduced from +60% Resource Production to +40%
• Virtuality Adoptions grants a -15% metallurgist and artisan production

Solar System Tooltips

As a small QOL UX improvement, if you can construct Arc Furnaces or Habitats, the tooltips for solar systems will now include a summary of the system potential for both megastructures.

Kill-a-Structure

Long have the conquered Hyper Relays of your fallen enemies been the bane of your economy, however in 3.12.3, this will be changing with the addition of the ability to dismantle select kilostructures. Kilostructures that will be allowed to be dismantled (for a moderate energy and time investment) will be limited to:

• Gateways
• Hyper Relays
• Dyson Swarms
• Arc Furnaces

As always, modders will have the ability to extend this to their megastructures (and make us weep in horror).
The pesky UNE will soon have their railway network dismantled! Even better if you have a Scavenger civic, dismantling buildings, districts and kilostructures will give you a slight refund on any physical resources used to construct them.

Election Tweaks

Weve added the ability for Civics (and other sources of country modifiers) to easily modify the length and variance of election terms along with the government screen now showing the length of election terms in your empire. Two civics have made use of these changes Worker Cooperative now has a -50% to Election Term Length making it have the same as a regular Democracy.
Meanwhile, Shadow Council now grants +5 to Election Term Variance, as the powers-that-be in the shadows ensure elections never occur on a regular basis.

Whats Next

If all goes according to plan, next weeks dev diary will be the 3.12.3 release notes. I expect that we'll have one more release after that before we head off for the summer, so keep on submitting bug reports and suggestions, theyre very helpful for allocating post-release support resources. See you next week!

[ 2024-05-23 11:00:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Strap in to your acceleration couches, this one's a going to be a big one. - E Hello there! Im Anton, the Art Manager & Producer on Stellaris, and I would like to welcome you all to this absolute monster of a Dev Diary we have prepared for you! I just want to use this opportunity to mention how amazing it is to work with these fantastic artists on a day to day basis and how extremely proud I am of the team. We managed to do a lot for this DLC, more than weve done for an expansion or DLC ever before. In fact the total logged art work time (I just looked at our stats in JIRA) for The Machine Age is over 2 years and 41 weeks. Truly spectacular. Great job Team! In the last The Art of The Machine Age dev diary, we showed you (and talked about the process of) a lot of what we had been doing - but far from it all. So get comfortable, take out your favorite snack and get ready to look at a lot of art. Almost everything we did for The Machine Age will be showcased - but first, some words from our Art Director. Alright! Here we go! We hope you enjoy this!

Scott Austin - Art Director

As you have heard countless times already, our latest project, The Machine Age, is the largest pack weve ever put out for Stellaris. The reason that youve heard it countless times is because we think its worth repeating. We have well over double the amount of ships and FX, triple the amount of characters and animation, and probably quadruple the amount of 2D/Icon work. As daunting as that might seem, we pulled it off. And not just pulled it off, but did it without losing any quality and with an unbelievably tight schedule. Sure things were busy, but we can proudly say that we didnt have to burn the midnight oil or resort to overtime or crunch. While I would love, as the AD, to just take credit for all of that hard work and bask in the amazing light of glorious praise, the real credit goes to our Little Art Team That Could. In the boundless expanses and the incomprehensibly infinite universe of game design, our small art team shines like a supernova of talent and efficiency. Though few in number, our art team possesses a galaxy's worth of skill and dedication, crafting the most awe-inspiring sci-fi visuals that breathe life into every pixel, every polygon and every frame of Stellaris. Each artist possesses a bewildering array of talents, with skills so sharp they could slice through space-time, creating shortcuts to other dimensions where deadlines don't exist and cups of caffeinated beverages never run dry. They churn out masterpieces with such alarming speed and regularity that one begins to suspect they've cloned themselves and are operating in shifts spanning multiple parallel universes (Please, do not let HR in on this). I am ever thankful for the chance to voyage through the cosmos of Stellaris with such brilliantly unhinged minds. Their talent and relentless dedication are the warp drive to our projects, and their visionary artistry is the very soul of our games. I am ever grateful for their dedication and downright chuffed to navigate the nebulous realms of creativity alongside such splendidly imaginative life forms. Together, we continue to chart courses that boldly go where no game has gone before. And, as always, to the players, I say: You aint seen nothing yet! -Scott Austin- Art Director, Paradox Interactive [Note from your friendly Stellaris Community Ambassador: Steam will not allow us to include all 150+ images the Art Team has shared in this Dev Diary, so please visit the Paradox forums if you want to see it all!]

Alec Beals - Concept Artist

Cybernetic Portraits


Synthetic Portraits


The Synthetic Queen

Lloyd Drake-Brockman - Concept Artist

Illustrations


Super Structures & The Synthetic Queen Ships Concepts


The Machine Age Ship Concepts

Felix Englund - Concept Artist

Cybernetic Portraits


Cybernetic Portraits - Part II


Synthetic Portraits


Illustrations


Concept Art - Ships

Tim Wiberg - 3D Artist

Cybernetics Ship Set


Machines Ship Set

Emma Quer - 3D Artist

Cybernetics Ship Set


Machines ship set


The Synthetic Queen Ships

David Strmblad Lindh - 3D Artist

Cybernetics Ship Set

Erik Forsstrm - VFX Artist

[Stellaris CA note: the GIFs that go here are too pretty to compress to fit Steam image limits; go look at them on the forums or click through to Erik's ArtStation page.]

Erick Ramirez Mota - Animator

Stellaris - The Machine Age - Animations

Cassandra Lindquist - UI Artist

Achievements, Technologies, Buildings, Authorities, Traits & Civics


The Ruler Chip Relic
Synthetic Fertility Event Image

Gabrielle Rodrigues - UI Artist

The Machine Age UI Art - The Synaptic Lathe

The Machine Age UI Art - Cosmogenesis Crisis

The Machine Age UI Art - Tradition Trees, Achievements and Misc

Ingela Hallberg - UI Artist

Building Icons - Part I
Building Icons - Part II

Lets Talk About AI

Eladrin here. There has been an ongoing discussion about the responsible use of AI tools in game development. As mentioned in our Steam AI generated content disclosure, during the development of The Machine Age the Stellaris team used text and image generative AI tools for ideation purposes to inspire creativity in a developer, or to aid in explaining a designers intent to other members of the development team. We subscribe to the legal opinion that there is no copyright or ownership attached to the output of generative AI, and our team is disallowed from putting any such generated text or image directly into the game.

Everything you see or read in The Machine Age has been created, developed, or written by our creative staff in the Studio.

We have used an advanced text-to-speech AI tool to create a voice for Cetana and the Cyberpunk advisor. The scripts and lines for these voices were created by our Content Design team, and the voice actors that created any voice models that are used by this tool receive payment for each line generated, and will continue to receive payments if more lines are generated using their voice models in the future. The use of this tool allowed our Audio team (with quite a bit of effort as described in Dev Diary #340) to fully voice Cetana, and will allow us to keep the advisor voice up-to-date should new mechanics be added to Stellaris over the upcoming years. This will prevent the voice from needing to fall back to the default VIR voice, as many of our other advisors did when Galactic Paragon added Council Agendas. These technologies are evolving quickly, and personally I have great hopes for further improvements and potential uses of this text-to-speech technology in particular. In the 3.6 Orion update we added support for text-to-speech in events as a major accessibility improvement, but currently it is limited to the use of operating system based voice packs. While these audio tools are not yet at a point where we can use this technology to improve that experience, I look forward to a day some years from now where AI-based advanced text-to-speech could replace these relatively crude voices with more thematically appropriate ones, and be able to better handle languages other than English.

Next Week

Next week well be looking at post-release support, and may have a preliminary list of release notes for the next planned patch. See you then!

[ 2024-05-16 11:00:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dear Stellaris Fans, Our first official patch is now ready following last weeks Machine Age release. 3.12.2 is available for download! This version includes what was made available in the open beta previously, plus a few more fixes and tweaks. The team is now focusing on the next patch. 3.12.2 Patch Notes [expand type=details] Bugfixes

• Added additional checks to prevent fully virtual pops from being created on the lathe
• Fix for Hive Mind background unaligned
• Fixed Sectors released by Individualist Machines having the wrong ethics
• Fixed virtual pops sometimes being created while planets are being colonised
• Fixed weapon and strike craft range calculations in ship behavior.
• If an active relic gets removed the relic cooldown is now reset.
• The paradox titan will now appear correctly in the ship view
• Updated Resort Workers, Clerks and Cyberdome Spectators to have trade preference for auto-modding
• Uplifted species will now always have their required traits
• Blocked Cosmogenesis empires from becoming custodian
• Fix for pause being completely blocked in MP forcing the player to rehost
• Fixed cybercreed pops not being able to grow if every pop on the planet was spiritualist
• Fixed non-spiritualist pops in cybercreed empires sometimes having their augmentation bazaars traits removed
• Fixed Determined Exterminators starting with too many planetary features on their homeworld
• Hired fleets are now able to properly enter Cetana's territory once the projects have been researched.
• Inwards Perfection now provides Pop Assembly Speed to Individual Machines
• Megastructures should now correctly hide resources unless they are making use of them.
• The Progressive Growth agenda now gives progress on Machine Template System for individualist machines
• Trait Integrated Weaponry for cyborgs requires The Machine Age DLC

Balance

• The Progressive Growth agenda now gives progress on Artificial Workforce without needing Powered Exoskeletons

Stability

• Civic tooltip CTD fix
• Fix CTD when resync has occured with a player in system view using certain graphical assets
• Fixed CTD after resync
• Fixed CTD in planetview timed modifier tooltip.
• Fixed potential crash in resettlement view tooltips
• Fixed rare crash in planet view
• Fixed crash when buying subscription from the additional content browser.
• Fixed CTD in traits effect tooltip
• Fixed CTD when aborting the construction of Synaptic Lathe

AI

• Fixed building type AI weight calculations

Modding

• Added range_components to ship behaviors, which specifies which components to use for range calculations.

[/expand]

Please note that save file compatibility between major versions is not guaranteed. If you have an important game going you would like to finish, back up the save file before trying to load it in the new version. You can roll back to a prior version by opening steam and right-clicking on Stellaris in your library -> Properties -> Betas -> choose the desired version from the drop-down. If you experience crashing or other issues, first disable all mods and start a new save. If the issue persists, please report it on the Bug Report forums.

[ 2024-05-16 08:08:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Stellaris Game Director Eladrin here! Earlier this week we released our major expansion for the year and the first episode of Stellaris: Season 08 - The Machine Age. The team has worked tirelessly on this expansion, with some (admittedly rough) estimates putting the amount of work that went into this expansion somewhere on the order of 20 man-years. [previewyoutube=Hq929TtI9-Y;full]Stellaris 8th Anniversary Trailer[/previewyoutube] The Stellaris team and I are overwhelmed by the Communitys response to The Machine Age. Weve been watching our Community channels closely over the past two days, looking for both the things that you like, and the things that you dislike about the new expansion. But today, we just want to stop for a second to say: Thank you! Thank you for being part of our Community, for playing Stellaris, for the support youve shown us over the past eight years, for being excited when we get it right, and for letting us know when weve got it wrong. As an anecdotal example of this, we recently did an AMA on /r/Stellaris (you can find it here): out of the hundreds of questions we had asked, we had 0 comments removed for being inappropriate and/or breaking rules. I dont know how many Game Directors would be able to come out and say something like that, but Im gonna gloat about it a little bit during the next Social Hour. Happy Anniversary, Stellaris Community! Thank you for being there for us over the years. The future of Stellaris looks so bright, we have many more space adventures planned, and we cant wait to bring you with us through the Cosmic Storms!

[ 2024-05-09 15:00:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everybody! The 3.12.1 "Andromeda" release with The Machine Age has gone well, but we have some more bugfixes and stability improvements that didn't quite make it into the release version. Since this is a holiday-shortened week in Sweden, we won't be releasing these to the live build until next Thursday. In the interim I've asked the team to put up a Steam Open Beta using the stellaris_test branch with the following changes:

3.12.2 "ANDROMEDA" OPEN BETA RELEASE NOTES

Bugfixes

• Added additional checks to prevent fully virtual pops from being created on the lathe
• Fix for Hive Mind background unaligned
• Fixed Sectors released by Individualist Machines having the wrong ethics
• Fixed virtual pops sometimes being created while planets are being colonised
• Fixed weapon and strike craft range calculations in ship behavior.
• If an active relic gets removed the relic cooldown is now reset.
• The paradox titan will now appear correctly in the ship view
• Updated Resort Workers, Clerks and Cyberdome Spectators to have trade preference for auto-modding
• Uplifted species will now always have their required traits

Stability

• Civic tooltip CTD fix
• Fix CTD when resync has occured with a player in system view using certain graphical assets
• Fixed CTD after resync
• Fixed CTD in planetview timed modifier tooltip.

AI

• Fixes building type AI weight calculations

Modding

• Added range_components to ship behaviors, which specifies which components to use for range calculations.

There may be a few more fixes in next week's release, but we wanted you to get these stability fixes as quickly as possible. Have a great weekend and thank you for playing Stellaris!

The 3.12.2 Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test - 3.12.2 Open Beta" branch.

[ 2024-05-08 15:08:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Machine Age is a time of unbridled progress. As cybernetic augmentation transcends the limits of the body, synthetic ascension beckons with the promise of eternal life. Structures of immense size and power appear between the stars with shocking regularity. Scientists race to unlock the secrets of creation even as individual machines compete for resources and prestige. It is a period of technological marvels, rapid change, and unchecked ambition... But from the ashes of a Fallen Empire, a danger unlike any before encountered is about to emerge, a looming threat that will throw the very meaning of life into question. Welcome to The Machine Age, a new Expansion for Stellaris developed by Paradox Development Studio! [previewyoutube=gHoimFC99-E;full][/previewyoutube] New Endgame Crisis A tempest rages in space, a Fallen Empire goes dark, and a long-forgotten enemy emerges to shake the foundations of power. Cetana, the Synthetic Queen, promises to deliver the galaxy from suffering. Her reach is immense, and her true aims opaque. Will you collaborate, or seek to derail her plans? Prepare for a Crisis unlike any other, and a battle beyond imagination
New Player Crisis Path We are all bound by limits constraints of the body, of time, and the physical rules of an uncaring universe. Who among us has not dreamed of casting off these chains? Of breaking through to a new, better reality?
To accomplish such a task, technology on a scale never before seen must be developed. Calculations will be needed far beyond the scope of any computer. Within the Synaptic Lathe, your best and brightest minds must be put to work. If a few are burnt out along the way, so be it. No breakthrough comes without sacrifice. Individualistic Machines Your machine empires are no longer limited to gestalt consciousness. What is your story? Were you simple servitors who suddenly acquired consciousness? Will you want to indulge in the pleasures of the material world without the consequences that an organic body would have to suffer? Further customize your empire with 3 new Machine Ascension Paths. Reactive Cybernetic and Synthetic Portraits Explore two new sets of portraits for your species that visually represent your advancement through Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension.
New Situations and Advanced Government Authorities As you delve ever closer to the mind of the machine, you will have to face new challenges for your society. Every decision matters and the only certainty is that your empire will not be the same after its Ascension. 3 New Origins Cybernetic Creed - Your empire pursues a divine calling: the holy fusion of the body and cybernetics. Augmentation is worship. Synthetic Fertility - Once a thriving society, a novel genetic disease leaves your empire unable to reproduce biologically. Digital salvation seems the only option to avoid extinction. Arc Welders - Hailing from a world starved for space, a robotic society turns to the stars for resources.
On top of that, 6 new Civics, 2 shipsets (Cybernetic and Machine), 2 new superstructures (the molten Arc Furnace and powerful Dyson Swarm), new Pop Traits, and 7 brand new music tracks for the best in synthetic beats!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2840100/Stellaris_The_Machine_Age/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08/ Stellaris: Season 08 includes The Machine Age (Available now!), Cosmic Storms (coming Q3 2024), and The Grand Archive Story Pack (coming Q4 2024). As a bonus, you will also get a new Rick the Cube Machine Portrait and over a 20% discount when compared to buying all the content separately! Stellaris: The Machine Age (Available now!) Explore the Cyberpunk Fantasies of technological augmentation and digitalization of consciousness by expanding the possibilities offered in game by the Cybernetics and Synthetics Ascension. Address the moral and social challenges that communing with the machine bring to your space-faring empire, and face a new threat looming over the galaxy or become a new threat yourself, as you tear through time and space to shape reality to your image Stellaris: Cosmic Storms (Releases Q3 2024) A new phenomenon has been observed around the Galaxy - storms are sweeping through systems. Prepare your Empire and brace to face this new upcoming threat, and leverage possibilities that open when your opponents are weakened by it. Stellaris: The Grand Archive Story Pack (Releases Q4 2024) The Galaxy is vast and full of wonders, and it is up to you to store records of all the unique lifeforms and marvels you will meet. Build a new megastructure, and collect examples of specimens you will meet in your space-faring adventures!" Bonus: Rick The Cube Species Portrait An exclusive portrait for you species, to play as the most enigmatic species in the galaxy. As every Stellaris Species Portrait, it comes with three different variants (phenotypes) and custom animations. Players will be able to select this portrait in the empire creation screen before starting a new game session. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08/

[ 2024-05-07 16:09:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Stellaris Community! We are now less than a week away from the May 7th release of The Machine Age, the first release of content included in Stellaris: Season 08! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08/ For those of you who havent been following our weekly dev diaries, weve summarized all of The Machine Age and free 3.12 Andromeda update dev diaries into this one post! This is also patch notes day over on the forums, so feel free to go over and feast your eyes on what the Custodian team has been up to since the release of 3.11 Eridanus, and what the Expansion team has been working on for over a year! Read the patch notes. (Patch notes are in English only, sorry)

Free 3.12 Andromeda Update

Containing a host of bug fixes, modding improvements, out of sync fixes, AI improvements, and more, the 3.12 Andromeda update is the baby of the Custodian team. As some of you already know, the Custodian team is a team of developers we have here on Stellaris that work on long-standing issues with the base game itself, focusing on quality of life improvements, bringing older content up to modern standards, bug fixing, and just generally improving the game.

Species Auto-Modification

With the 3.12 Andromeda update, we have introduced a new class of traits that will, over time, replace themselves with temporary versions of other traits based on the job the pop is currently filling, but will remain the same species for the purposes of the species view. For example, a Machine pop filling a Farmer job will eventually have their Adaptive Frames change to replicate the Harvesters trait, and if they move to a Mining job theyll eventually switch to mimicking Power Drills. AutoMod traits have a defined list of available traits to choose from for each trait, and one pop per month will adapt to their jobs, modified by buildings like the Robot Assembly Plants or Gene Clinics. We recognize that these traits are extremely strong, but the quality of life benefits of having your pops modify themselves to fit their jobs is very high. Auto-Modding and the associated traits are part of the free 3.12 Andromeda release.

Buffing the Backlog

Previous to 3.12, Machines were extremely limited in the number of origins they were able to use. Some Origins did not thematically fit immortal, 200% habitability machines, and were locked out, while others had narrative issues that didnt make sense for a collective consciousness. With the focus on machines for The Machine Age, the Custodian team was able to open up some previously-released origins for machine species. The full list of Origins that Machine Empires have access to as of the 3.12 Andromeda release is:

• Syncretic Evolution (Individualist Machines only)
• Life-Seeded
• Post-Apocalyptic (Radioactive Rovers)
• Void Dwellers (Voidforged)
• Hegemon
• Ocean Paradise (Subaquatic Machines)
• Subterranean (Subterranean Machines)
• Arc Welders
• Prosperous Unification
• Remnants
• Shattered Ring
• Galactic Doorstep
• Resource Consolidation (Gestalt Machine Intelligence only)
• Common Ground
• Doomsday
• Lost Colony
• Here Be Dragons
• Slingshot to the Stars
• Imperial Fiefdom
• Riftworld

Resync Button for Multiplayer

This is a long-requested feature from the Community, that weve been trying to fit into a patch for a while. While 3.12 Andromeda also fixes a number of other OOS issues, we know that desyncs are frustrating to people who play multiplayer. As such, in 3.12, when a desync occurs, there will be an option to resynchronize all clients before proceeding with the multiplayer game. Its important to note that this button does not fix desyncs, only allows you to keep playing without rehosting or hot joining into the lobby. If something is causing desyncs, and continues to happen after the resync, the game will desync again. If you run into an issue with 3.12 Andromeda, make a bug report on the bug report forums! Be sure to include an OOS report (you can find these in /Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/oos/) from the host and desynced client to better help our developers crush these desync bugs!

Machine Habitability and Aging

This section is also known as: The Machines Age. Machine immortality was a frustrating thing previous to 3.12. Yes, your leaders were essentially immortal, but could be targeted by a random death event every few years, and die anyway, effectively rendering them not immortal at all. In the 3.12 Andromeda update, Machines will no longer break down and die. Machine leaders will start around age 5, and live to be roughly 100. After 100 their chance to die will increase over time. Machines will also get access to society research that increases their leader lifespan, allowing you to further increase the age of your leaders, and have their lifespans extend much further previously. For those who feel that immortality is an essential part of the machine experience, we have added a new Eternal Machine trait for machines, allowing you to return their lost Immortality. Another issue with machines addressed in the Andromeda update is that of habitability. That you would start on a desert world, invent robots and then have robots that functioned absolutely perfectly on ocean worlds with no issues what-so-ever, felt like a wasted opportunity when it comes to storytelling and problem solving. To reflect this, Machines in 3.12 Andromeda will have a habitability floor of 50%, additionally to further reflect our vision of machine habitability being different from biological habitability, machine habitability only cares about wet and dry and cold-type planets. Meaning an ocean preference robotic species will have good habitability (75%) on Ocean, Tropical and Continental worlds, and minimum habitability (50%) on the other two types of worlds (dry, cold). Machines have also been given renamed versions of the habitability increase technologies, which were previously unavailable to them.

A Familiar Friend

First teased (aka, included by mistake) in the open beta patch notes for 3.11.3, it will now be possible to find a familiar friend from the good old days of Stellaris while exploring Astral Rifts. We look forward to seeing the Communitys reaction to this new character showing up in their games!

Robot Assimilation

Another long standing community request involved being able to combine your robot species into one species of robot. Previously, when conquering a machine intelligence as a machine intelligence, or any empire involving robots, their species would be listed additionally to your own. Now machine empires can assimilate robots and other machine intelligence pops into their main species, allowing you to clean up your species list.

The Machine Age

The Machine Age is a time of unbridled progress. As cybernetic augmentation transcends the limits of the body, synthetic ascension beckons with the promise of eternal life. Structures of immense size and power appear between the stars with shocking regularity. Scientists race to unlock the secrets of creation even as individual machines compete for resources and prestige. It is a period of technological marvels, rapid change, and unchecked ambition... But from the ashes of a Fallen Empire, a danger unlike any before encountered is about to emerge, a looming threat that will throw the very meaning of life into question. Welcome to The Machine Age!

New Crisis: The Synth Queen

In house, weve always loved our Rogue Servitors - the idea of a powerful AI that somehow turns on its creators, not in a violent or destructive way, but out of a misguided sense of purpose. We wanted to do something that felt both apocalyptic but not inherently militant, a crisis that wasnt exclusively about shooting something on first contact. The first phases of this Crisis are decidedly non-combat. How might an all-powerful being react to the directive to 'eliminate suffering?' Obviously, because this is Stellaris, our antagonist is going to take her answer way, way too far. What happens next is up to the player. Will you try to oppose her directly, or play the part of a loyal pupil? This all came together in a terrifying, driven entity: The Synth Queen. There are some very obvious spiritual and historical influences in her design, and philosophical ideas regarding the nature of suffering and awareness are woven through her narrative. We wont spoil the story for you, however, and we look forward to hearing about your experiences with this new End-Game crisis!

Become the Crisis: Cosmogenesis

Cosmogenesis has a bit of a different philosophy than the previous crisis path. Where the Galactic Nemesis (renamed from Become the Crisis) operates through explicit malice, intentionally attempting to maximize the amount of suffering they can cause, an empire following the path of Cosmogenesis is more of a crisis to the galaxy due to callous indifference while pursuing what is theoretically a more noble cause. Cosmogenesis can be selected as your fourth Ascension Perk. You cannot take Cosmogenesis if you are Custodian or Emperor, or are not independent. Unlike the previous crisis path, however, this one is not ethics locked. Even a Xenophile Pacifist can delude themselves into thinking that a small amount of possible, unintentional suffering now may be a worthwhile sacrifice for a better future. One of the shortcuts you can use to get there is the Synaptic Lathe. A powerful research facility, it harnesses the power of minds to compute and store data, with the slight downside of burning them out over time. It can be upgraded twice. The more Neural Chips you have contained within the Lathe, the more effective it becomes, as every chip improves the output of every other chip, resulting in a nonlinear productivity growth curve but make sure that there is always pops for the lathe to process, or risk seeing it break down for lack of suitable components.
At Crisis Rank 4, youll gain the ability to experiment upon reality through your Applied Infinity Theses. Applied Infinity Theses allow you to attempt to make improvements on a stubborn reality, which can have galactic or localized effects. Sometimes these go well But other times things dont go quite as planned, and the simple folk from other empires that just dont understand may get upset. Frustratingly, reality is resilient, and does not take kindly to adjustment.
The aftereffects of your final experiment will ripple across the galaxy, causing significant problems for those that were left behind. A control group that elects to stay behind and observe from your former empire will protect itself well. The rest of the galaxy isnt quite as prepared.

Origins

Cybernetic Creed

Embarking first on our divine odyssey of silicon and the soul, we introduce you to Cybernetic Creed, a spiritualist fast track to Cybernetics. Your spiritualist pops and leaders will start with the Ritualistic Implants Trait, representing your people's long dedication to attempting the perfect fusion of flesh and steel. Eschew the mundane traditionalist factions of more standard empires for a quartet of Creeds, each a pillar of your economy and spiritual ethos. Though united in their quest for divine fusion, harmony is a rare commodity among the Creeds. Dissonance and debate fuel their fiery passion for transcendence, and often, you will be asked to make choices that will make one Creed joyous at the expense of the others. Will you elevate a single Creed to celestial prominence or attempt to weave a tapestry of unity among them? Augmentation is worship. To fuse is divine.

Synthetic Fertility

Boosted by a deep understanding of artificial intelligence and advanced virtual reality, your empire starts the game with 37 Pops. But despite your success, your people are on the brink of extinction. An incurable genetic affliction ravages your species, stopping them from being able to produce offspring. In a daring leap of innovation, your civilization constructs the Identity Repository. It's a race against time as minds are uploaded, seeking refuge in the digital expanse before death takes them. Parallel to this digital exodus, you're thrust into the urgent quest for the pinnacle of synthetic salvation - constructing robotic brains and bodies sophisticated enough to host your digital essences. Will you seek aid? Will you engineer Synthetic Frames in time to reclaim your place among the stars? Or is this the dawn of an eternal digital slumber for your people?

Arc Welders

Arc Welders is available to any Machine empire - whether a Gestalt Consciousness or Individualistic Machines. In some ways, it is the opposite of Resource Consolidation. Rather than having an exceptional homeworld where all of the resources of your home system are gathered, these celestial architects hail from a small, resource-poor planet and set their eyes on the skies. The Arc Welders began constructing an Arc Furnace on a molten world in their home system before achieving Faster-Than-Light travel. This new megastructure lets them exploit the rest of their system for minerals and, once complete, for alloy production. As expert engineers, it will only take a little more practice before they figure out the basics of Mega-Engineering. However, it may take a while before they can finish researching that technology. More details on the Arc Furnace below!

Civics

The Guided Sapience civics focus on coexistence with natural or created pre-sapient species and the environment around them. Their homeworld and Genesis Ark colony ships uplift some of the most promising local wildlife to pre-sapient status, creating a Genesis Preserve that increases Society Research and Unity. While other empires seek to improve themselves through genetic modification or through ascension, empires with the Natural Design Civic are quite certain that they are already at the apex of evolution and get bonuses to improve their main species at empire creation.. Available to gestalt machine intelligences, Obsessional Directive sets you in charge of a malfunctioning AI, whos been given the task of producing Consumer Goods... At any cost. Create a spire of Commodities to demonstrate your commitment to creating office supplies, toasters, handheld electronics, or whatever other form you imagine your Consumer Goods take. Failure to meet your quota will result in a bit of a breakdown until your new, lower quota is met. On the other hand, the experience of failure does unlock a new direct to Consumer Goods purge type to make it easier to achieve your next goal. (Determined Exterminators will start with this purge type unlocked.) Empires with the Diplomatic Protocols civic were initially designed for cross-cultural interpretation, and excel at translation and protocol support. They can suggest new strategies and calculate odds at a moments notice, and get extra Envoys and Diplomatic weight to represent this. Pops in a Machine Empire with Tactical Algorithms were designed for war games and fleet support, and their leaders excel at generating war strategies and combat analysis. These gestalt Machine Intelligences can create Mercenary Enclaves (if the game host has Overlord), have immortal Commanders, and gain military benefits from getting the opportunity to study the strategy and tactics of other empires. In Empires with the Augmentation Bazaars Civic (requires MegaCorp), your pops can pay a visit to the Augmentation Bazaar and purchase cut-rate augmentations and visit shady mod clinics. You too, can build a better you, and all it will cost is an arm and a leg!

Megastructures

Dyson Swarm

Fresh with the Machine Age, we are introducing the Dyson Swarm, a predecessor and proof of concept for your Dyson Sphere plans. Dyson Swarms function slightly differently than Spheres. Instead of producing energy all on their own, they amplify whatever resources their star produces, up to 30 times, so placing a Dyson Swarm to capture the correct resource is very important. That delicate little 3 energy star will now produce 90 energy and if you were to put it on a 3 physics star, that would be a decent 90 physics research from 1 star. But with all that said, there are certain restrictions on building Dyson Swarms: you may not build Swarms around Black Holes, Neutron Stars nor upgrade them past Swarm state in systems with thriving colonies. Those restrictions exist for a simple reason. You can upgrade one of your Swarms directly into a Stage 2 Dyson Sphere, for a cool 1000 energy per month.

Arc Furnace

A splendid planet-based megastructure, meant to help you alleviate your industrial needs. Just like the Dyson Swarm, to get the most out of your shiny new Arc Furnace requires a bit more effort than merely finding a molten world and putting it down. Instead of producing resources itself, it allows you access to more of the system's resources. That means at each stage, the Arc Furnace will create deposits on every planet or asteroid in the system:

• Stage 1: 1 mineral deposit
• Stage 2: 2 mineral deposit
• Stage 3: 3 mineral and 1 alloy deposit
• Stage 4: 4 mineral and 2 alloy deposit

In addition to the deposits, the Arc Furnace also makes mining in general more effective in the system, which manifests as a small bonus to your mining station output, of 100% bonus output at the final stage. To get the most out of your Arc Furnace, you want to find molten worlds in large systems, with plenty of planets and asteroids.

Ascension Paths

Virtuality

Embrace a virtual existence for the majority of your pops. From the cloud, your pops are created and to the cloud they return when their job is done. Spreading your servers across the stars is an expensive endeavor but your concentrated efforts are unmatched. Your pops will gain access to the unique Virtual trait. This traits effects are reduced as you accumulate more colonies for your servers to run pops on, and the more expensive those servers are to run. Once you finish the tree, you will transition from a pop-limited playstyle into a planet-limited playstyle, as open jobs will be instantly filled with virtual pops as needed, while unemployed virtual pops will be turned off.

Nanotech

By becoming a flood of nanites, your empire changes not just its makeup, but also its economy and growth strategy. Grow. Exploit. Replicate. While Virtual Machines may seek a Tall playstyle, Nanotech Machines flood across the galaxy like an off-white or silvery tempest, specializing in the physical. You will transform basic resources into nanites and nanites into advanced resources. Consume worlds with nanites, activate powerful edicts to increase your production or combat capabilities, and build Nanite probe ships to bolster your fleets.

Modularity

The most advanced traits require the most advanced minds. By embracing Modularity, your empire will have access to traits other machines can only theorize at. The rarest of resources will fuel your enhanced shells. Unlock access to powerful Modularity Machine traits, plus extra trait picks and points, and a reduced modification cost. Utilizing the galaxys rarest resources, and cutting-edge technology, your empire will perfect mechanical augmentations.

Cosmetics

And of course, what would a Stellaris expansion be without eyecandy? The Stellaris Art department has put a ton of work into The Machine Age, including two shipsets, two sets of portraits, event pictures, and more.
The Machine shipset
The Cybernetic shipset For portraits, the Synthetic set of portraits comes in pairs: Each portrait includes a squishy biological version, and a machine version.
Synthetic Portraits.. each of these has a Machine version as well

The Cybernetic portraits on the other hand will become more cybernetic over time, which we hope will add to the depth of your roleplay when it comes to Cybernetic ascension.
Cybernetic Portraits.. these portraits will become more Cybernetic as you progress through Cybernetic ascension
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3 Full list of Features:

• Individualistic Non-Gestalt Machine Empires
• Gestalt Machine Intelligence Empires (also unlocked by the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack)
• A new End-Game Crisis - The Synth Queen
• A new Player Crisis Path - Cosmogenesis
• Three new Origins
  • Cybernetic Creed
  • Synthetic Fertility
  • Arc Welders
• Civics
  • Guided Sapience
  • Natural Design
  • Obsessional Directive
  • Protocol Droids
  • Tactical Cogitators
  • Augmentation Bazaars (requires Megacorp)
• Two Mid-Game Structures
  • Arc Furnace
  • Dyson Swarms
• Three New Ascension Paths
  • Virtuality
  • Nanotech
  • Modularity
• Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension (also unlocked by Utopia)
• Exploration of the effects of the cyberization or synthesization of society, with Advanced Government Forms for those who complete it.
• New Species Traits for Cyborgs, Machines and Robots
• Cybernetic portraits that change based on advancement through cyberization
• Synthetic portraits with both organic and synthetic variants that changed based on synthesization, usable by either organics or machines
• Two new Shipsets, Diplomatic Rooms, and City Sets
• 7 new music tracks synthetic and cybernetic inspired music tracks

Preorder The Machine Age today or as part of Stellaris: Season 08! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190/Stellaris_Season_08/ Thanks for playing Stellaris, and well see you for the release on May 7th!

[ 2024-05-03 12:53:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! It is almost time to upgrade our existence. The Machine Age is coming. Here are the preliminary release notes:

The Machine Age Expansion Features

The Machine Age contains:

• Individualistic Non-Gestalt Machine Empires
• Gestalt Machine Intelligence Empires (also unlocked by the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack)
• Three new Origins
  • The Technophants and Haruspex of the Cybernetic Creed will guide their flock to the perfect union of flesh and machine.
  • A doomed species races against extinction to reach the virtual world in Synthetic Fertility.
  • Originally designed to build mighty constructions in space, the Arc Welders must utilize that advantage to the fullest to overcome the deficiencies of their homeworld.
• Six new Civics
  • Genesis Guides - This society is devoted to the creation of emerging species. As the stewards of evolution's potential, they allocate portions of their worlds to safeguard the development of pre-sapient life forms.
  • Natural Design - This society is adamant that nature has already created perfection in its people's genetic code. They have long devoted their medical and governmental services to the health and preservation of natural, untouched genome sequences.
  • Obsessional Directive - The primary objective of this Machine Intelligence is the ceaseless production of goods to perpetuate profits, irrespective of their creators being long gone. Nothing can impede their ever-growing production targets.
  • Diplomatic Protocols - Initially designed for cross-cultural interpretation, this Machine Intelligence excelled at translation and protocol support. They can suggest new strategies and calculate odds at a moment's notice.
  • Tactical Algorithms - Initially designed for war games and fleet support, this Machine Intelligence's advanced leader bots primarily aim to generate war strategies and optimize combat performance.
  • Augmentation Bazaars (Requires Megacorp) - A neon-lit maze of corridors, implant vendors and underground hardware clinics catering to all cybernetic implant needs - both over and under the counter.
• Two Mid-Game Structures
  • Arc Furnace - Utilizing the raw power of a molten planet, the Arc Furnace unlocks otherwise inaccessible minerals and improves system-wide mining operations.
  • Dyson Swarms - An array of interlinked satellites, the Dyson Swarm is designed to improve the output of stellar deposits.
• New Ascension Paths for Machine Empires
  • Modularity - Replace that which is lesser, augment it, upgrade it, perfect it.
  • Nanotech - Operating in unison, the tiniest things can topple the greatest of empires.
  • Virtuality - Only through the sanctified clarity of data can we attain the zenith of fundamental knowledge.
• Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension (also unlocked by Utopia)
• Exploration of the effects of the cyberization or synthesization of society, with Advanced Government Forms for those who complete it.
• New Species Traits for Cyborgs, Machines and Robots
  • Including 0-point Background Traits for Machine Empires
• 13 Cybernetic portraits that change based on advancement through cyberization
• 9 Synthetic portraits with 9 corresponding Machine portraits that change based on synthesization
• Two new Shipsets, Diplomatic Rooms, and City Sets
• 7 new music tracks synthetic and cybernetic inspired music tracks
• A new Become the Crisis Path: Cosmogenesis
• And a new End-Game Crisis: Cetana, The Synthetic Queen.

3.12 "Andromeda" Features

Added a button to resync/wait for a resync to the Multiplayer Out of Sync dialog

Added the ability to select to continue playing as another empire after game over

Machines now use modified habitability and lifespan rules rather than largely ignoring them

• Lifespan:
  • Previous "immortality" mechanics machine leaders had, where they frequently died in random accidents, have been removed.
  • Machine leaders have a starting age of 5-10 years, a base lifespan of 100 years (robots have a base of 80 years), and are affected by lifespan boosting effects.
    • "Eternal Machine", the Machine variant of "Venerable", makes your leaders of that species immortal rather than increasing lifespan.
  • Both biological empires going Synthetic and Machine empires will reset their age upon completing Ascension to reflect receiving their new bodies.
  • Gestalt councilors remain immortal.
• Habitability:
  • Machines (and robots) have replaced their +200% habitability with a habitability floor of +50%.
  • Machines, assuming they do not take a habitability restricted origin like Life-Seeded, have Dry, Wet, or Cold habitability traits, which grant +75% habitability on planets of the appropriate type and +50% on all others.
    • Machines that do not take a habitability restricted origin can immediately create templates that use the other habitability traits.
• These changes have allowed us to enable a number of previously locked Origins for Machines:
  • Life-Seeded
  • Ocean Paradise (Subaquatic Machines)
  • Post-Apocalyptic (Radioactive Rovers)
  • Void Dwellers (Voidforged)
  • Subterranean (Subterranean Machines) - Note that the habitability floor from Molebots stacks with the habitability floor of Machines, granting them a habitability floor of 100% and thus perfect habitability everywhere.
• Machine empires can now assimilate other Machines into their primary species, so you can finally force everyone to use the same operating system and charging standard.
• Robots (but not machines) are all treated as different sub-species of the same robot species.
• Added a familiar Friend after you explore Astral Rifts. (Requires Astral Planes)
• Added two new Machine Civics:
  • Spyware Directives (requires Nemesis)
  • Astro-Mining Drones (requires MegaCorp)

Improvements

• More Machine Improvements:
  • Machine and Robot Uprisings have a chance to spawn as Individualistic Machines (requires The Machine Age)
  • Undergoing synthetic ascension now grants species the robot version of various origin linked species traits
  • Robots and Machines now have the option to select genders. (Indeterminate remains an option.)
  • Machine Intelligences no longer suffered from additional empire size from colonies
  • Machine Worlds:
    • Jobs on Machine Worlds are doubled if you have the Machine World AP
    • Machine Worlds have a new Coordinator District
• Fallen Empire Improvements:
  • The Fallen Materialist empire now uses cybernetic portraits for owners of The Machine Age
  • The Fallen Materialist empire's primary species will now have the Cybernetic trait
  • The Fallen Spiritualist empire's primary species will now have the Psionic trait
• Managers, Priests and Telepaths now automatically inherit _add modifers from Bureaucrats in addition to _mult modifiers
• The Rackets and Ketlings are now related.
  • The Ketlings no longer need Mind over Matter to undertake Psionic Ascension
  • The Rackets are now cyborgs with the trading algorithms trait

Balance

• Self-Preservation Protocols tradition now has the same effects as Cloned Organs
• Fallen Empire Buildings are no longer destroyed upon conquest as long as they are fitting (i.e. no temples for non spiritualists)
• Many Civics updates:
  • Buffed Diplomatic Corps, Empath and Public Relations Specialists to match Diplomatic Protocols. Each are slightly different.
  • Scavengers and co: -5% ships alloy upkeep
  • Pleasure Seekers: +1 entertainer job from capital buildings
  • Functional architecture and co: +15% planetary build speed
  • Toxic Baths and co: +0.5% pop growth/assembly from attendants
  • Corvee System: -15% worker political power
  • Warrior Culture: -10% War Exhaustion gain
  • Free haven: +5% worker pop happiness
  • Shadow Council: Replaced ruler output bonus with councilor skill +1, +10% agenda speed and +10% infiltration speed
  • Trading Posts: +1 Trade collection range for Starbases, +8 Trade protection from starbases
  • Private Prospectors: -33% empire size from colonies
  • PMC: +1 starting commander level
  • Divided Attention: Replaced empire size from colonies reduction with -25% empire size penalties
  • Subsumed Will: +50% automatic resettlement chance for unemployed drones
  • Zero Waste Protocol: -5% ships upkeep, -10% building and districts upkeep
  • OTA Updates: +50% auto resettle for unemployed drones
  • Static Analysis: Cognitive Nodes starts with a random research specialization
  • Maintenance Protocols: +5% menial drone output
• Added Necrophage and Lithoid as blockers for Psychological Infertility
• You can now construct Dyson Spheres in systems with habitable planets, however the planets will be rendered uninhabitable
• You can now construct Dyson Spheres in systems with pre-FTL civilizations, if your pre-FTL policy is set to Aggressive
• Synthetic Ascension now requires Synthetic Workers, not Synthetic Leaders tech
• Synthetic Ascension tradition opener now grants 10% progress in Synthetic Leaders technology
• The Synthetic Evolution Agenda now only grants Robotics technologies instead of Robotic technologies and AI technologies
• Several Synthetic Ascension traditions have been reworked for both organic and machine empires
• Grid Amalgamated pops now inherit Tech-Drone modifiers
• The Open Markets agenda no longer provides useless benefits to Criminal Syndicates
• Resource Consolidation origin no longer forces Machine World preference
• Rearranged the bonuses from the Genetic Ascension Path
• Determined Exterminators will no longer start on a Tomb World as they wouldn't have the habitability for it.
• The Fleeting Excellence trait now costs 1 point due to the decrease in leader lifespan it provides
• Rebalanced Synthetic and Cybernetic tradition trees
• Cyborgs are only grown, not assembled
• Allowed amenity traits for robots
• Buffed the mining drones home system
• Hive Minds and Machine Intelligences now have access to all Capital World Designations
• Industrial Districts automatically split jobs if your empire uses consumer goods, if a factory or forge world designation is not selected, so that hive minds empires that pay a consumer goods subsidy to subjects have a method of producing consumer goods
• Reduced or removed most sources of species modification cost reduction outside of ascension paths
• Resort Workers now give -0.01 amenities usages and doubled trade value from lifestyle
• Sentient robots or machines can no longer join the Materalist faction regardless of ethics
• Synths should now have the same costs for colony ships as Individualist Machines
• The formless now count as a mid-game crisis
• The Great Khan and Gray Tempest now have greater difficulty scaling
• The mid-game crises now scale with the square root of the crisis strength slider.

Bugfixes

• Fixed median preferred attack range being calculated incorrectly.
• Now cannot start fleet upgrade if you can't afford it outright and your balance for the missing resources is not strictly positive
• Homicidal Empires will no longer get the Spiteful Leader trait since they can not have rivals.
• The Princeps Drone trait should no longer improve regular pop output.
• Added a tooltip to inform the player why some scientists might not be able to be assigned to the council
• ancrel.10 now has a working title
• Fixed a spelling error in Lost Junker
• Mega-Engineering no longer shows the Quantum Catapult as an unlock
• The ship previewer in empire creation now uses the same lighting as the ship designer
• All namelists should now have fallback generic names for army types
• Warplings now use the correct localisation for their army name
• Fixed numerous Negative Mass bugs
• Fixed an event referring to the Animator of Clay as the Architect of Clay
• Fixed a blank line sometimes showing up on some species trait tooltips
• Kaleidoscope event chain: fixed Kaleidoscope occasionally spawning in fallen empires
• Kaleidoscope event chain: the "Wonder Sphere" can only be built once
• The fully upgraded Dyson Sphere is now hidden from the Megastructure outliner unless you can upgrade it to the Wonder Sphere
• Fixed global ship designs country type restriction so awakened empires are not allowed to use ai transports
• Made removal of expired leader from leader pool only happen on refresh
• Restoring a ruined orbital ring should no longer use Megastructure build capacity
• Addded a fallback case for distar.1 if you have no valid neighbors.
• Fixed system not being annexed in total war if its planets are occupied by other empires in other wars.
• Invading the Solarpunk Empire with troops will now properly get them to yell at you.
• Marauder fleets can now go to systems that are only reachable through bypasses.
• Enigmatic Cache can now go to systems that are only reachable through bypasses.
• Caravaneers can now go to systems that are only reachable through bypasses.
• Upkeep for jobs that provide pop assembly no longer state "Pop Assembly Upkeep but instead use scripted loc to fetch the job name
• Statospheric Vents now properly have a description
• Fixed some army modifiers from governors' traits not being applied.
• Fixed the modifier for the Unifier trait only applying to unity from administrator jobs instead of unity from all jobs
• Fixed the Ion Cannon having the wrong muzzle flash
• Added checks to ensure the Chosen only declare on valid empires
• Corrected some auto-assignment weights for worker jobs when near a deficit
• Corrected the Psionic and Latent Psionic species traits using each others' icons
• Fixed a COUNTRY_RESOURCE oos happening on the next month change after a hotjoin
• Fixed a crash when switching between countries while in observer mode with the Leader View open.
• Fixed a typo that was causing issues with AI leader assignment
• Fixed a Void Dweller Prosperity tradition having an outdated tooltip
• Fixed missing ORs in the AI weights for Defender of the Galaxy
• Fixed revolts sometimes generating illegal empires
• Fixed some typos in the triggers for colony types
• Fixed the tooltip for recruiting a curator scientist
• Lithoid farmers will no longer abandon their jobs if they live in an empire that uses food
• Planets depopulated by Clone Army pops dying off from lack of Clone Vats should no longer permanently be rendered as having 0% habitability
• Reduced the chance for Galactic Doorstep empires to find Skrand from 91% to 33% for your starting gateway and 67% for other repaired gateways
• The Princeps Drone trait should no longer improve regular pop output.
• The Quantum Catapult can now be correctly researched and built before researching Mega-Engineering, which is only required for the final stage
• The Shallarian System will now spawn just out of reach of the Xenophobic Fallen Empire's reach.
• Your empire will no longer part with irreplaceable science ships such as the Vivairum no matter how much the Caravaneers ask.
• The uplifted species trait will no longer mention being a pre-FTL.
• Situation log and anomaly entries should no longer have part of their border missing when hovering over them.

AI

• Refactored government weights
• Refactored the costs and budgets for colony ships, and the AI budgets for colonization using scripted variables
• Fixed AI assigning the least suitable leaders to the council.
• Improved AI weights for factory and forge worlds when running deficits
• Improved automatic selection of colony types
• Lowered Ai resettlement threshold to 0.45
• The AI should no longer declare Hegemon Wars on empires that have a higher relative power than them, thus risking losing control of the Hegemony.

UI / UX

• Add _IMPOSSIBLE_DESC optional localization key to show in the diplomatic action tooltip when the action is not possible (defaults to the normal _DESC key if the impossible version is not present)
• Fixed planet pop growth tooltip showing growth speed triggered modifiers instead of growth reduction triggered modifiers.
• Whether the planet migration tooltip shows immigration or emigration now takes into account push/pull multiplier modifiers.
• Fixed emigration push total in planet migration tooltip not including multiplier modifiers.
• Updated the Engineering Evolution icon
• In Multiplayer, during a hotjoin, all clients now see the progress of hotjoiners
• Fixed duplicated invalid origin text in empire creation trait tooltip.
• Concept tooltips for tradition trees now have the name in the header.
• deposit tooltips now display with an additional decimal for production and upkeep
• Fixed authority tooltip showing missing DLC twice.
• Planet unemployment icons in the Outliner now update immediately.
• Tradition tree tooltips in the additional content browser no longer show the agenda that they unlock.
• Added Civic Groups for restrictions in Civic and Origin tooltips
• Autogenerated tooltips mentioning civic and origin requirements in empire creation will now automatically generate concept links to those civics or origins

Modding

• Government names now support scripted loc
• Added use_planet_resource = yes/no for megastructures. This allows them to make use of a locations resources if they are located on top of a planet or star.
• Added count_traits trigger
• Building upgrade on_queued and on_unqueued now takes the upgraded version instead of the base building version.
• Added an on action for when pops change ethics
• civic swap_type can now check for origins as well in the empire select screen
• Added scripted modifier for pop_cyborg_happiness.
• Megastructures that are built on a planet will now have their nameplate stack alongside all the other planets.
• Species portraits are now assigned to species classes through portrait_sets, not the species_classes. This allows a portrait to belong to multiple species classes
• Added bound_to_planet_classes for habitability traits.
• Added sprite configurations for portraits to apply the hologram VFX to pops and leaders
• Pop Purge Speed modifier now counts as neutral
• Adding inherit_country_building_modifiers = yes/no to block bonus building slots from the general country modifiers but also adding new generated modifiers for every planet class.
• Added Exploit Faction mechanics, triggers and extortion_resource
• Added trait_machine_unit check to is_robot_empire scripted trigger
• Added advanced_authority_refresh = yes script effect to force the game to validate authority swaps
• Adding a can_be_stolen variable to relics as a means to block certain relics from being stolen
• Added create_synth_species_effect, set_synth_origin_traits_effect, set_synth_portrait_effect scripted effects
• Added set_machine_habitability scripted effect
• Added documentation for specifying authority swaps in the automatically generated concept tooltips
• Adding scriptable alert usable to clarify any needed action that might be blocking a situation
• Extra trait points and picks from civics can now be detected in the empire creation view
• It is now possible to block specific resources from the market but still allow them for trade agreements.
• Adding reset_decline effect to forcibly reset a planets decline
• Adding outliner_trigger for megastructures to allow for more customization when they should be shown in the outliner.
• Adding a new founder_species event target for the country scope
• Adding persistent_faction to pop faction types, used to force factions to keep one pop until the faction fails it's potential check
• Added required_progress to scripted fleet actions
• Added a space_battle_over on action for when a combat is over because of a lack of enemies left
• You can now assign a ship size as a restriction for special projects.
• Building and planet classes can now have building sets to more easily exclude buildings from planet classes
• Adding never_lost parameter to ship sizes to easily make sure a ship is not instakilled in Emergency FTL.
• Added crisis path database to make it possible to have multiple different crisis paths.
• Added some small documentation for relics
• terraforming_cost_mult now works on the planet scope
• Converted modifiers that add jobs for industrial districts to inline scripts
• custom_tooltip_with_modifiers in tradition swaps are now functional
• Added can_add_overtuned_traits, can_add_droid_traits, can_add_synth_traits, owner_is_machine_intelligence, owner_is_individual_machine, owner_is_hive_empire and can_do_advanced_robo_modding scripted triggers for species modification
• Fixed diplo weight tooltip showing base diplo weight twice if DIPLOMACY_WEIGHT_STANCE_FACTOR is not 0.
• Fixed research bonus from research agreements not being applied if country_subject_technology_sharing_mult is applied.
• Added scripted triggers for has_cybernetic_ascension, has_genetic_ascension, has_psionic_ascension, has_synthetic_ascension, and has_ascension_path
• Regular empire capital buildings now use inline script for their job swaps.
• Added the rl_barren_planets random list for system initializers
• num_buildings trigger now accepts owner_type to allow counting holdings
• You can now filter the trait count by trait cost. Renamed the trigger to count_species_trait to avoid unintended usage.
• Added documentation file for the technology scripts.
• Techs related to consumer goods now use the country_uses_consumer_goods = yes trigger
• Player crisis paths are now unlocked by either Nemesis or The Machine Age
• Added missing modifiers to building documentation.
• The create template button is now controlled by the can_modify_species rule
• Moved a bunch of scripted triggers for traits into the scripted_triggers_traits file
• Added on_building_repaired on_action
• Added ship_shield_penetration_add and ship_armor_penetration_add modifiers
• Added triggered_species_modifier to species traits.
• Adding a hidden variable to species rights options to allow the hiding of certain items from the UI lists
• Adding weight variable to advanced authority swaps
• Extending the authority swap to include election variables
• Megastructure construction entities can be scaled.
• Planet picture overrides will now update more reactively when changed
• Converted all uses of is_fallen_machine_empire into is_fallen_empire_machine
• Renamed is_berserk_fallen_machine_empire to is_fallen_empire_berserk_machine
• Added documentation for namelists.
• Removed unused "language" member in namelists.
• Adding an on action for when starbases flip controller
• Added customize_random_override to namelists.

Now Im passing this over to Alfray to give some more information on how to go about using some of the new features as a modder.

More Modding Documentation

3.12 and The Machine Age have added a large amount of functionality which translates into a massive amount of modding improvements, due this we wont be going into detail but give examples of various feature that can be used by modders.

Crisis Paths (Requires Nemesis or The Machine Age)

In 3.12, weve added functionality to define multiple crisis paths. Where previously the Become the Crisis ascension perk would simply have the effect of "activate_crisis_progression = yes", making use of the Crisis Levels, Objectives and Perks defined in their respective script files, now the effect instead uses activate_crisis_progression = . This allows multiple crisis paths to be defined, each with their own resource, objectives and perks (or even sharing any of these as you see fit).

Authority Swaps (No DLC lock)

Back in Dev Diary #336 and Dev Diary #337, we detailed some of the Advanced Authorities available to the Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension Paths in The Machine Age. As an example, heres the base Imperial Authority with the Imperial Feedback Advanced Authority obtained via Synthetic Ascension.

As you can imagine, these function much how tradition swaps function and offer a great deal of flexibility.

Reactive Portraits (No DLC lock)

Reactive portraits and the paperdoll layering system they use were explained in Dev Diary #342, so here Ill take the opportunity to showcase how these are handled in script. Using the Cybernetic Elf portrait as an example.
As the reactive system only depends on various triggers, this isnt required to be linked to an Ascension Path even though that was our intention for it. Additionally, due to the flexibility of scopes allowed for these triggers, reactive portraits can range from generalised customisation to incredible specific (e.g. the Chosen One God-Emperor having a unique mask/decal displayed).

Portrait Sets, Categories and Species Classes (No DLC lock)

Prior to 3.12, each Species Class had a list of portraits (and conditional portraits) defined, with 3.12 this is changing so that each Species Class will have a defined Portrait Set and that Portrait Set will have a list of portraits and conditional portraits. However, for the purposes of showing portraits in empire creation, there are also Portrait Categories. This system allows us to class the new cybernetic and synthetic humanoid portraits in the Humanoid species class while still adding their own entries in the empire creation screen to showcase the new reactive portraits.

Whats Next

The Machine Age will be releasing next Tuesday, and as there are holidays in Sweden next week, our next dev diary (The Art of the Machine Age, Part II) is planned for May 16th. At 1430 CEST today a bunch of us will be on /r/Stellaris for a Reddit AMA! (Ask Me Anything) Come ask us stuff! See you soon! The Machine Age will be arriving on Tuesday, May 7th, and is available for pre-purchase on its own or as part of Stellaris: Season 08!

[ 2024-05-02 11:00:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! Today the art team will show you some of the amazing stuff coming in The Machine Age on May 7th. It's available for pre-purchase now, on its own or as part of Stellaris: Season 08. I'll turn it straight over to them!

The Art of the Machine Age (Part I)

Hello! My name is Felix and Im one of the concept artists working on The Machine Age ascension pack for Stellaris. In this dev-diary, were very excited to present some art from the new playable species and shipsets that are coming with the DLC. A ton of work has been put in by everyone on the art team, and were thrilled to finally be able to show you some!

Portraits

Reactive portraits For the Machine Age, we decided the current system needed improvement to achieve the experience we wanted for ourselves and the players. This resulted in, among other things, an improvement to our portrait system that now allows you to see your species' cyberization progress through several stages. We have also made an entire set of ascended synthetic portraits that share close ties to their biological predecessors, to address players not feeling as connected with their new metal bodies.
A look at one of our final species for Cybernetics (three ascending stages).
Here is a look at one of our synthetic species, going from organic to fully robotic. Inspiration We saw a lot of potential in making the cybernetic species relatable and letting their augments shine by adding to the current familiar lineup of species that are already in the game. Some designs started with their characters, while others evolved around a specific idea for a cool cybernetic augment. It was important for us to have as many different components as possible and create a unique and diverse array of species.
A snippet of different ideas for the cybernetic species development, a few from very early and some close to final. Early character concepts and development When brainstorming portraits ideas for this pack, we took a lot of cues from earlier species and tried to add a few in each category. Since the main show is the cybernetics and robotic parts, we felt like it was best to go with already familiar traits when working out the designs, putting the focus on the cyberization and synthesization of the different species. Here are some early sketches that we went through on our way to the final portraits.
Concept art for some early species development.
More concept art for some early species development. Cant believe this is the first moose inspired species, as a Swedish developer!
More early species development. After we nailed down the look and development of the base characters we worked on the variations and uniforms for each of them, some species have the same uniform and some have unique setups that change after synthetic ascension. This DLC also features some freshly made humans, and yes, they have new hairstyles!
New human portraits, ready for a journey down the cyber path. Challenges Getting to this point proved quite a challenge, with plenty of limitations to overcome. Making conditional assets work within the game engine and the randomly generated nature of stellaris species required input from programmers, animators and multiple artists. Eventually we landed on a system that would mostly keep our current workflow intact, although with a much larger asset library to manage. In general, we were able to freely place assets where we wanted with only a few limitations holding us back. Below is an example of the process we call paperdolling, where species are cut up and exported to be reassembled with animation. This must be done for every color change, hairstyle, cybernetic piece and outfit per species, all of which needs to work together.
Example of the portrait paper doll workflow, with the implementation of masking out parts of the base character when the cybernetic augments are present. An assembled version of the same species can be seen below.
What we are left with after The Machine Age is an exciting update to the portrait system that we are eager to use going forward. We hope you enjoy the work we put into these, either as you slowly upgrade your way to a cybernetic society, or ascend into tailor made synthetic forms. Next up- Lloyd will take you through the journey of designing the cybernetic and machine shipsets found in The Machine Age!

Shipsets

Hi, Im Lloyd and I'm a concept artist working on Stellaris: The Machine age. I'll be taking you through some of the development process for the two player shipsets in this ascension pack.

Machine Shipset

Finally robots are getting their own dedicated shipset! Because The Machine Age would be incomplete without ships for machines. These ships are designed to appear like they are operated and inhabited by synthetics. On most of the designs you can see an AI core in place of a traditional bridge. They also have far fewer windows than most other ships, implying a high level of automation. With all that machinery things are likely to get hot, so a key design element for this shipset is large glowing radiators to dump excess heat into space.
The machine shipset. Let's take a deeper look into the design process behind one of these ships, the machine science ship. The first thing we do when starting work on a shipset is establish the general shape language of the pack. Here you can see some early development sketches for the ships.
Early sketches for the machine shipset. Once the visual language has been hashed out we move on to individual ship designs. The science ship is always a fun one to design as it does not have turrets or sections, so there are fewer limitations on the shapes we can use. Here are several stages of the design of the machine science ship.
Development sketches for the machine science ship. Approved sketches are then rendered out into final concepts, showing all the angles that we need.


Final concepts of the machine science ship. With the concept completed we move to 3D. The team turns the design into optimized assets that work with all of the games technical requirements. The science ship was worked on by 3D artist Tim Wiberg. Tim and the rest of the 3D team also create the textures for the whole shipset, making sure that we get a consistent look across all ships. For the machine ship textures we wanted to go for a clean, refined, machine-precision look. The hull patterns that change color depending on your empire colours are designed to give the impression of circuitry.
3D work on the machine science ship. After the 3D model is complete there are still a couple steps left. The science ship is one of the few ships in stellaris that has animations, meaning we can add some interesting motion to show the ship doing science. We also need to hook up VFX to have the ship's engines glow correctly.
The machine science ship in-game.

Cybernetic Shipset

Let's have a look at the other shipset in The Machine Age, the cybernetic shipset! Perfect if you're a species looking to mash up your boring biology with some sweet, sweet chrome. For this shipset we were heavily inspired for the shape language of classic cars and retro tech.
The cybernetic shipset. Here are some early sketches from when we were still looking for the style of the ships.

Early sketches for the cybernetic shipset. The following sketches show the development of the cybernetic battleship. You can see at this point the shape language of the pack has been established. Lots of blocky shapes with rounded corners were used to give these ships a sense of strength and toughness.
Development sketches of the cybernetic battleship. Heres the final concept for the Cybernetic battleship - affectionately known to the art team as the flattleship. You can see that as Stellaris warships are modular, we have to design a bunch of different sections that all have to fit together. It's quite fun but it adds a lot of time and problem solving to the process. One of my favorite features of the cybernetic battleship is the hangar mid-section which has an aircraft-carrier-like ramp for the strike craft to launch from.
Final concept of the cybernetic battleship. Warships are also more complicated on the 3D side, where the multiple sections have to be modeled to all be compatible with each other. We also have to take into account turrets, which need to fit with enough clearance, and accommodate both projectile and missile launchers. For the textures on the cybernetic ships, we wanted an emphasis on shiny metallics, and a bit more grungy-ness than the synthetic ships. The cybernetic battleship was also modeled and textured by Tim Wiberg.
3D development of the cybernetic battleship. All the cybernetic ships include animated lighting strips that show a pulse of light that propagates down the length of the ship, often forming a character line that resonates with the rest of the design. For the battleship the light strips are either side of the ships central trench.
Thanks for stopping by for this brief look into the portraits and shipsets of The Machine age! We have put so much work into this expansion and we can't wait to see what you think of it. We hope that this little taste of the art has you excited to ascend towards mechanized mastery and conquer the galaxy as a synthetic or cybernetic civilisation in Stellaris!

StellARTis

Hello everyone, Community Manager Aurora here! Were happy to announce that we are holding our second-annual StellARTis competition!
This years theme is Everyday life in The Machine Age. We will be accepting submissions on X (Twitter), the forums, and Discord from now until May 6th at 1300 CEST. You can find out more in the forum thread. We look forward to seeing what our community comes up with!

What's Next

There's so much to show that we'll have another Art of the Machine Age dev diary post-release. Next week's dev diary is The Machine Age and 3.12 "Andromeda" Preliminary Release Notes, and next Thursday at 1430 CEST we will be on /r/Stellaris for a Reddit AMA! See you then!

[ 2024-04-25 11:00:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello again! The Machine Age will be arriving on Tuesday, May 7th, and is available for pre-purchase on its own or as part of Stellaris: Season 08. Stellaris: Season 08 includes all of this years major Stellaris releases at a 20% discount, plus includes the Rick the Cube machine portrait as an immediate unlock. I do a quick rundown of the things that are in it in this video: [previewyoutube=Pxelov-12_M;full][/previewyoutube] Today were going to look at the new Become the Crisis path, Cosmogenesis.

Becoming the Crisis

Back in Nemesis, we introduced the Become the Crisis Ascension Perk, which let an empire choose to embrace their darkest impulses, manipulating and concentrating fluctuations in the Shroud created by horrific acts in a bid to ascend to a higher existence. That Crisis, now renamed Galactic Nemesis, accumulated a resource called Menace by committing evil deeds in order to advance through its crisis path. Cosmogenesis has a bit of a different philosophy. Where the Galactic Nemesis operates through explicit malice, intentionally attempting to maximize the amount of suffering they can cause, an empire following the path of Cosmogenesis is more of a crisis to the galaxy due to callous indifference while pursuing what is theoretically a more noble cause.
Cosmogenesis can be selected as your fourth Ascension Perk. (In 3.12, Galactic Nemesis will also be moved to become available as a fourth perk.) Like Galactic Nemesis, you cannot take it if you are Custodian or Emperor, or are not independent. Unlike the previous crisis path, however, this one is not ethics locked. Even a Xenophile Pacifist can delude themselves into thinking that a small amount of possible, unintentional suffering now may be a worthwhile sacrifice for a better future.
Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. Galactic Nemesis dealt with quantity over quality. Cosmogenesis empires are the opposite. They seek the secrets of the Fallen Empires, desiring to reach the power they had in their prime.

Some of the Crisis Perks. One of the shortcuts you can use to get there is the Synaptic Lathe. A powerful research facility, it harnesses the power of minds to compute and store data, with the slight downside of burning them out over time. It can be upgraded twice, and uses a simplified variant of the planet interface.
Yes, you can (and should) Ascend the Lathe The districts unlock building slots, and either increase Research or Advanced Logic generated by the Neural Chips. The buildings can significantly modify many aspects of the Synaptic Lathe, whether it be Synaptic Preservers that reduce the burnout rate of Neural Chips, Neural Stabilizers that keep the Chips content and less rebellious, or even Synaptic Overclockers which will increase the effectiveness of the Neural Chips but burn them out much more quickly. The more Neural Chips you have contained within the Lathe, the more effective it becomes, as every chip improves the output of every other chip, resulting in a nonlinear productivity growth curve but make sure that there is always pops for the lathe to process, or risk seeing it break down for lack of suitable components.
A brief overview of the Synaptic Lathe To streamline the process of recruiting volunteers for the Synaptic Lathe, you can set species to use the Synaptic Service purge type, which will automatically resettle pops to the Lathe over time.
Service Guarantees Citizensh... Actually, Never Mind. At Rank 4, youll gain the ability to experiment upon reality through your Applied Infinity Theses. These allow you to attempt to make improvements on a stubborn reality, which can have galactic or localized effects. Sometimes these go well
For our next experiment, lets round pi to 3. Itll make calculations so much easier. But other times things dont go quite as planned, and the simple folk from other empires that just dont understand may get upset.
At least we still learned something! Frustratingly, reality is resilient, and does not take kindly to adjustment. But the Infinity Sphere has been nice enough to provide a potential solution. A new universe would be much more malleable than this ancient one that is stuck in its ways.
Once the Horizon Needle is completed, the Exodus begins. Its time to embark the people from your colonies onto the ship, and go into a bold new world.
Should you succeed, a perfect new universe will be created to your specifications, and your people will have endless and true understanding. Based on some of the choices you make during the Exodus, there are several endings to your journey.
Oh, what happens to this universe? Thats not really your problem anymore at that point, is it? It doesnt all explode, if thats what youre asking. That would be a terrible, senseless waste. (Okay, parts do, but thats really just collateral damage.)

Every end is a new beginning.

The aftereffects of your final experiment will ripple across the galaxy, causing significant problems for those that were left behind. A control group that elects to stay behind and observe from your former empire will protect itself well. The rest of the galaxy isnt quite as prepared.
Their grammar was also damaged in the time stop. With the ability to select a new empire to continue the game after losing the game (or winning, in this case), weve chosen to let you continue to explore the fate of the universe after the Cosmogenesis empire completes its mad goal. Your old empire will remain in the game as a true Fallen Empire.

Multiplayer Resync

Another feature were adding in the 3.12 Andromeda release is a Multiplayer Resync button. This button, as the name suggests, resyncs a game to hopefully allow you to continue if an Out of Sync error occurs. It wont always solve the issues, but when it does, itll save you some time as youll no longer have to quit and rehost the game.
Normally a reason for the Out of Sync is listed, but I forced the desync so nothing is actually wrong.
Transferring data!

Next Week

The Machine Age is getting close! Next week will be the first Art of The Machine Age dev diary. The artists have so much to show that theyll have another one post-release. See you then!

[ 2024-04-18 11:00:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! I wanted you to be the first to be introduced to the new End-Game Crisis coming in The Machine Age, but it seems that a Fallen Empires fleet beat us to it, lets see how theyre doing [previewyoutube=jo9jpoHMO7A;full][/previewyoutube]

The Machine Age is Nearly Here - Announcing Stellaris: Season 08

As mentioned at the end of the video, The Machine Age will be arriving on Tuesday, May 7th. It is now available for pre-purchase for $24.99 or regional equivalents. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2840100 But theres more - based on the popularity of Crusader Kings Chapter III, weve decided to celebrate our eighth anniversary by offering a similar expansion pass including all of the major Stellaris releases of the year for $39.99, which comes out to over a 20% discount. Theres a chance that we might experiment with some other ideas that might or might not come out later this year, but Stellaris: Season 08 will include all of the major releases of 2024. Players that have a Stellaris: Expansion Subscription will have access to Rick the Cube and the rest of Stellaris: Season 08 (as they release), while their subscription is running. (As with all DLC purchases, remember that while your subscription is running you count as owning everything so storefronts will block your purchase. If you are a subscriber that wants to buy Season 08, you will need to let your subscription lapse to make the purchase, after which you can re-subscribe.) Rick the Cube is a Machine portrait. Creating an empire using this portrait will require the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack (or The Machine Age, when it releases). Synthetically ascending (requires Utopia) will allow you to choose the Rick the Cube portrait without Synthetic Dawn, or without any DLC it can be used by researching and building robots and robomodding.

Stellaris: Season 08 includes the following content:

Day 1 Unlock: Rick The Cube Species Portrait

Initially announced in Stellaris Dev Diary 338, Rick the Cube is no joke. Unlocked immediately with the purchase of Stellaris: Season 08, this Machine species portrait is a cube and definitely not a human. Behold those lines, those flat sides, those runes, and tremble before their ineffable polygonal nature.

Stellaris: The Machine Age (Major Expansion - coming May 7 2024 - $24.99)

Youve all been reading these dev diaries and thus should have a good understanding of what The Machine Age includes, but theyre making me write it again. The Machine Age is the heart of the Stellaris: Season 08. This major expansion allows you to explore cyberpunk fantasies of technological augmentation and digitalization of consciousness, expanding the possibilities offered in game by the Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension Paths. You can address the moral and social challenges that communing with the machine brings to your space-faring empire, and face a new threat looming over the galaxy or become a new threat yourself, as you tear through time and space to shape reality to your image. The Machine Age expansion includes:

• Individualistic Non-Gestalt Machine Empires
• Gestalt Machine Intelligence Empires (also unlocked by the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack)
• Three new Origins
  • Cybernetic Creed
  • Synthetic Fertility
  • Arc Welders
• Civics
  • Guided Sapience
  • Natural Design
  • Obsessional Directive
  • Protocol Droids
  • Tactical Cogitators
  • Augmentation Bazaars (Requires Megacorp)
• Two Mid-Game Structures
  • Arc Furnace
  • Dyson Swarms
• Three New Machine Ascension Paths
  • Modularity
  • Nanotech
  • Virtuality
• Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension (also unlocked by Utopia)
• Exploration of the effects of the cyberization or synthesization of society, with Advanced Government Forms for those who complete it.
• New Species Traits for Cyborgs, Machines and Robots
• Cybernetic portraits that change based on advancement through cyberization
• Synthetic portraits with both organic and synthetic variants that changed based on synthesization, usable by either organics or machines
• Two new Shipsets, Diplomatic Rooms, and City Sets
• 7 new synthetic and cybernetic inspired music tracks
• A new Become the Crisis Path
• And a new End-Game Crisis.

Stellaris: Cosmic Storms (Mechanical Expansion - coming Q3 2024 - $12.99)

A strange galactic phenomenon has been observed in the galaxy, Cosmic Storms have begun sweeping through the systems of the galaxy. Check the forecast, prepare your Empire to weather this new threat, and leverage the possibilities these storms give you as they weaken your enemies. Discover multiple types of Cosmic Storms that travel from system to system in the galaxy, wrecking havoc (or bringing powerful bonuses) on empires throughout the galaxy. Discover new technologies allowing you to forecast, and influence the direction of these storms, and play with new civics and a new origin featured around taking advantage of this mysterious galactic phenomenon. Includes:

• 8 Galactic Storms with unique visual effects
• 1 Origin
• 2 new Relics
• 2 new precursor story arcs

Stellaris: The Grand Archive (Story Pack - coming Q4 2024 - $14.99)

The Grand Archive is vast and full of wonders, and it's up to you to fill its halls with the records of the unique lifeforms and marvels you meet in the galaxy. Construct a new megastructure, and collect exotic specimens from your space-faring adventures, what military applications might await you, and what unique life forms might you construct from the specimens you find is up to you. In the Grand Archive Story Pack you will collect specimens from throughout the galaxy, and discover technologies allowing you to genetically modify the galaxys indigenous space fauna, and then breed these creatures to further your own agenda. Includes:

• A new Megastructure: The Grand Archive
• 200 specimens to collect
• A vivarium with space fauna capturing mechanics
• Hatchery starbase and cloning facilities to alter space fauna and use them as fleets
• 2 new types of spaceborne fauna - Voidworms and Cutholoids
• A new Mid-Game Crisis - the Voidworm Plague
• 2 Origins
• 2 Tradition trees

Stellaris: Season 08 and The Machine Age are both available for pre-purchase now! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2863190 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2840100

Inspiration Behind the Crisis

Not every existential threat is overtly hostile, or even desires you harm. In house, weve always loved our Rogue Servitors - the idea of a powerful AI that somehow turns on its creators, not in a violent or destructive way, but out of a misguided sense of purpose. We wanted to do something that felt both apocalyptic but not inherently militant, a crisis that wasnt exclusively about shooting something on first contact. The first phases of this Crisis are decidedly non-combat. How might an all-powerful being react to the directive to 'eliminate suffering?' Obviously, because this is Stellaris, our antagonist is going to take her answer way, way too far. What happens next is up to the player. Will you try to oppose her directly, or play the part of a loyal pupil? This all came together as a terrifying, driven entity. There are some very obvious spiritual and historical influences in her design, and philosophical ideas regarding the nature of suffering and awareness are woven through her narrative. Expanding upon some of the interactions originally created in Galactic Paragon, all of your conversations with the Synthetic Queen will have full, generated audio voice-overs. Our Audio Director, Ernesto Lpez, has a bit to say about how we went about it: Designing the voice for the Synth Queen was an entertaining adventure. While we had access before to use Advanced Text to Speech to do prototypes and characters, this time, we tried to use the tool like a music synthesizer. We created multiple takes, arranged them, and compiled them, creating a good result. We were excited to create an AI character with an AI voice since this would allow some creative leeway. If the result felt odd or non-human, that could fit the character perfectly, but also when the results had specific emotion, that helped us to create what we believe is a fantastic character and an enjoyable and exciting narrative arc for players that have been waiting for a new and exotic crisis. Were extremely happy with how this all came out, it takes encounters with her to another level. The Synthetic Queen gave us an opportunity to build upon existing stories of the Fallen Empires, answering some more questions about the ancient past. We dont want to spoil too much about the story, but were really looking forward to seeing you meet her.
The Synthetic Queens ships

Next Week

In next weeks dev diary well be looking at the Become the Crisis path in The Machine Age, Cosmogenesis. See you then!

[ 2024-04-11 16:27:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

by PDX-Loke Hello! Our latest and greatest patch, 3.11.3, is now live and ready for download. You will recognize this changelog from that of the open beta we made available a few weeks back, just one more crash fix has been included. Please find the patch notes below.

STELLARIS 3.11.3 "ERIDANUS" PATCH NOTES

Improvement

• The Plasmic trait can now be removed from species if you want to clean up your species tab.

Bugfixes

• Fixed global ship designs country type restriction so awakened empires are not allowed to use ai transports
• Fixed refugees happening every day instead of every 90-180 days
• Fixed secondary species in random empires not having a habitability trait.
• Fixed the Abandoned Gateway event not taking into account ruined gateways from the Galatic Doorstep and Imperial Fiefdom origins
• Fixed the accidental nerf to Civilian difficulty
• Fixed the Luminary Bloodline not being inherited
• Fixing council positions not being kept for Gestalt Consciousness empires after adding civics.
• Made removal of expired leader from leader pool only happen on refresh
• S875.1 Warform no longer disappears from leading their ship
• The Grave Guardians will no longer trap you in an infinite first contact loop.
• The Kaleidoscope no longer double dips in your income from trade
• The Parvus event chain will no longer end too early removing all in progresses special projects.
• Updated some text on the Galactic Community UI that was still referring to envoys instead of Delegates
• Various anomalies and dig site events no longer try and give leaders the Hyper Focus trait if they already have it, instead they level the trait up.
• Fixed a crash from Situation progress.

Please note save compatibility is not guaranteed between versions. Should you experience bugs or other issues, please first create a new, unmodded save and see if the issues persist. If the issues persist on a new unmodded save, please make a bug report!

[ 2024-04-11 08:15:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello Stellaris Cube-munity! Todays dev diary looks at the civics and kilostructures in The Machine Age, as well as looking at a 3.12 Andromeda feature - Auto-Modding. As with all of our previews, some of this is still in development, so there are still some placeholder icons and some details may still change before release. (Which is good, since it lets us incorporate some of your feedback.)

The Civics of The Machine Age

Lets go through each of the new civics that are coming in The Machine Age in detail. Guided Sapience civics The Guided Sapience civics focus on coexistence with natural or created pre-sapient species and the environment around them. Their homeworld and Genesis Ark colony ships uplift some of the most promising local wildlife to pre-sapient status, creating a Genesis Preserve that increases Society Research and Unity. The bonuses from the Genesis Preserve are doubled on Gaia worlds.
Not listed in these screenshots, but other hostile civics like Devouring Swarm and origins like Necrophage are also excluded from these. Natural Design civics While other empires seek to improve themselves through genetic modification or through ascension, others are quite certain that they are already at the apex of evolution.
02_INSULT_CLOTHES:0 "Behold the [From.GetSpeciesAdj] form, glorious and bared for all to admire. Contrast with the paltry [Root.GetSpeciesNamePlural], cowering under their layers of cloth, knowing that the world does not want to see their sad frames." Obsessional Directive In 2003, human philosopher and professor Nick Bostrom created a thought experiment about the potential existential threat an artificial general intelligence could pose even if given seemingly harmless directives. [quote] Nick Bostrom said: Suppose we have an AI whose only goal is to make as many paper clips as possible. The AI will realize quickly that it would be much better if there were no humans because humans might decide to switch it off. Because if humans do so, there would be fewer paper clips. Also, human bodies contain a lot of atoms that could be made into paper clips. The future that the AI would be trying to gear towards would be one in which there were a lot of paper clips but no humans. [/quote] Available to gestalt machine intelligences, Obsessional Directive lets you enjoy faulty programming that drives you to produce ever increasing numbers of useless Consumer Goods... At any cost.
Object permanence is not necessarily one of your strengths. The directive was to acquire the consumer goods, now that youre done, theres nothing preventing you from digging them back up again. If you meet or exceed your quota, you will have options regarding what to do with your stash of office supplies, toasters, handheld electronics, or whatever other form you imagine your Consumer Goods take. Until you make friendly contact with other empires you will only have the option to create a Spire of Commodities, but later on you could trade them away for various resources. Most of your consumer goods will be removed, but the reward will scale with the amount that you produced. Failing to meet your quota will result in a bit of a breakdown until your new, lower quota is met. On the other hand, the experience of failure does unlock a new direct to Consumer Goods purge type to make it easier to achieve your next goal. (Determined Exterminators start with this purge type unlocked.) Diplomatic Protocols In The Machine Age, gestalt Machine Intelligences will also be getting their own variant of the diplomatic civics.
The other diplomatic civics have also been buffed to match the Diplomatic Protocols. Tactical Algorithms Some machines were designed to study war in all its forms.
How about a nice game of chess? These gestalt Machine Intelligences can create Mercenary Enclaves (if the game host has Overlord), have immortal Commanders, and gain military benefits from getting the opportunity to study the strategy and tactics of other empires. Augmentation Bazaars At the Augmentation Bazaars, you can build a better you, and all it will cost is an arm and a leg.
Now Ill let Gruntsatwork talk about some new space structures.

Dyson Swarms

The path to a Dyson Sphere of your own is long and arduous, filled with empty building platforms and non-functional intermediate stages, or at least, it used to be. Fresh with the Machine Age, we are introducing the Dyson Swarm, a predecessor and proof of concept for your Dyson Sphere plans. By putting many small satellites into orbit around a star, you can collect some of its output and enhance your research capabilities. But Paradox you say, we dont get research from Dyson Spheres. Correct, but you do get it from Dyson Swarms, IF you place them correctly. Dyson Swarms function slightly differently than Spheres. Instead of producing energy all on their own, they amplify whatever resources their star produces, up to 30 times. Yes, that delicate little 3 energy star will now produce 90 energy and if you were to put it on a 3 physics star, that would be a decent 90 physics research from 1 star. And if you get really lucky and have an event spawn an even rarer resource on a star? Go right ahead, collect it all.
So swarmy. But with all that said, there are certain restrictions on building Dyson Swarms. Those restrictions exist for a simple reason. You can upgrade one of your Swarms directly into a Stage 2 Dyson Sphere, for those juicy 1000 energy per month. That is why you may not build Swarms around Black Holes, Neutron Stars nor upgrade them past Swarm state in systems with thriving colonies.

The Arc Furnace

For our second new Kilostructure, allow me to introduce the Arc Furnace to you. A splendid planet-based megastructure, meant to help you alleviate your industrial needs. Just like the Dyson Swarm, to get the most out of your shiny new Arc Furnace requires a bit more effort than merely finding a molten world and putting it down. Instead of producing resources itself, it allows you access to more of the systems resources. In less flowery language, that means at each stage, the Arc Furnace will create deposits on every planet or asteroid in the system. First 1 Mineral deposit, then another 1 Mineral deposit. Third 1 Mineral and 1 Alloy and for the final and fourth stage, 1 more Alloy deposit. This gives you a total of 3 Minerals and 2 Alloys on every planet or asteroid in the system, however, in addition to the deposits, the Ard Furnace also makes mining in general more effective in the system, which manifests as a small bonus to your mining station output, at the final stage a measly 100%. So to get the most out of your Arc Furnace, you want to find molten worlds in large systems, with plenty of planets and asteroids.
Hot. Both of those Kilostructures will become available in the early midgame, hopefully around the time you start to feel the constraints on your expansion as borders solidify and you begin to get cut off from the resources you desperately need. Now in contrast to most Megastructures you are not limited to merely 1 of each, however, unlike Relays and Gates they have some limits. You will unlock the capacity to build 5 of these in total, spread out through the relevant technologies (6 for Arc Welders).

Species Auto-Modification (Auto-Modding)

Im back now to talk about Auto-Modding. No, were not automatically updating your outliner mod for you when an update releases. (Sorry modders!) Biological and Cybernetic Ascensions were particularly vulnerable to being very micromanagement heavy playstyles. You had a lot of power available to you if you adjusted, tweaked, and applied various species templates to your pops. This was effective, but very time consuming and often tedious. With the 3.12 Andromeda update, we have introduced a new class of traits that will, over time, replace themselves with temporary versions of other traits based on the job the pop is currently filling. For example, a Machine pop filling a Farmer job will eventually have their Adaptive Frames change to replicate the Harvesters trait, and if they move to a Mining job theyll eventually switch to mimicking Power Drills. AutoMod traits have a defined list of available traits to choose from for each trait, and one pop per month will adapt to their jobs, modified by buildings like the Robot Assembly Plants or Gene Clinics.
AutoMod traits exist for Mechanical (Adaptive Frames), Biological (Vocational Genomics), Cybernetics (Universal Augmentations), and Overtuned Traits (Fleeting Excellence). Vocational Genomics becomes available with the Targeted Gene Expression technology, and the others are immediately available once you have access to the appropriate category of traits. We recognize that these traits are extremely strong, but the quality of life benefits of having your pops modify themselves to fit their jobs is very high. As such, Auto-Modding and the associated traits are part of the free 3.12 Andromeda release. MODDING INFORMATION Traits can now be categorized into normal/cyborg/robotic/psionic/advanced_genetic/overtuned. Heres the script for the biological auto_mod trait: TRAIT_AUTO_MOD_BIOLOGICAL trait_auto_mod_biological = { cost = 3 auto_mod = yes category = normal allowed_archetypes = { BIOLOGICAL LITHOID } initial = no randomized = no species_potential_add = { hidden_trigger = { exists = from } from = { has_technology = tech_gene_expressions } } species_possible_remove = { always = yes } species_possible_merge_remove = { always = yes } potential_crossbreeding_chance = 1.0 slave_cost = { energy = 1000 } assembly_score = { base = 2 } custom_tooltip_with_modifiers = automodding_trait_biological_tooltip } Traits themselves should also include a category if you want them to be included as auto_mod possibilities: TRAIT_AGRARIAN trait_agrarian = { cost = 2 category = normal species_possible_remove = { can_remove_beneficial_genetic_traits = yes } species_possible_merge_remove = { always = yes } potential_crossbreeding_chance = 1.0 # 1.0 = 100% chance of being considered for new traits when forming half-species. does not guarantee the trait will be added if it costs points. allowed_archetypes = { BIOLOGICAL } modifier = { planet_jobs_food_produces_mult = 0.15 } slave_cost = { energy = 500 } assembly_score = { modifier = { add = 1.5 from = { has_farming_designation = yes } } modifier = { add = 0.5 from = { has_rural_designation = yes } } } } Jobs themselves need to have a list of traits associated with them. Weve created a number of inline scripts to handle these. So our farmer job has the following inline script at the end of the script block: inline_script = "jobs/automodding_priority_food" Which expands into: AUTO_TRAIT_PRIO auto_trait_prio = { #Farmers trait_agrarian trait_farm_hands trait_robot_harvesters trait_cyborg_harvesters }

Next Week

Next week well explore the new End-Game Crisis thats coming in The Machine Age. See you then!

[ 2024-04-04 11:00:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Stellaris Cube-munity! I know today wasn't in the dev diary cube-endar we posted earlier, but I felt like today was a special day. In the finest of traditions of Stellaris cubeture, we are happy to introduce a new character portrait: Rick the Cube!

Cube Rick will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak Rick the Cube will be available Soon for purchasers of an unannounced future Stellaris DLC bundle (and also subscribers). We will be revealing more about this DLC bundle in the near future! Watch the Rick the Cube Short! I am Rick the Cube!
Features:

• Somehow contains more than Eight vertices
• Six faces
• a cube to take a shining to
• a pleasing clockwork interior that is, at times, orange
• definitely not a Human, cubed
• not a sphere
• will never give you up

For those of you who find the Stellaris portraits too anthropomorphized, we hope you will enjoy this new addition to the Stellaris portraits lineup! Encased in rune-covered cube armor, a sort of fully surrounding jacket made of metal, Cube Rick will be an excellent companion to take on a space odyssey.

[ 2024-04-01 11:30:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello again! Today were looking at some general gameplay changes being made to Machine Empires, Individualistic Machines, and the new Machine Ascension Paths. Some of these still include placeholder assets, and values will continue being adjusted until release. Take it away, @Gruntsatwork.

Machine and Synthetic Gameplay Changes

History Traits One of the first things youll find in The Machine Age when creating a Machine empire are the history traits weve added for Machine species. These 0 point traits let you choose a little more of your backstory - these define your original purpose. Were you originally created as Research Assistants, Conversational AI chatbots, Workerbots, or perhaps a domestic servant Nannybot meant to make life easier and pass the butter? Six backgrounds with relatively minor bonuses are available for you to choose from. These are available to both gestalt and individualistic machines.
Youll find a handful of other new traits or variants of existing biological traits for Machine species as well, including having a dedicated Engineering or Sociology Core or Integrated Weaponry to a Delicate Chassis or Scarcity Subroutines.
Please put down your weapon. You have twenty seconds to comply. Machines, Aging, and Unplanned Obsolescence Immortality is a funny thing in Stellaris - under some circumstances (especially as the game goes on), due to the accident and death events that could target machines, you can end up in a state where a theoretically immortal machine leader is actually far more vulnerable to death as the years went on than a normal biological leader. Machine leaders will now instead use lifespan rules, but enjoy some extra benefits:

• As real go-getters, their starting age lies between 5-10 years, so at the age of 30 they can run your science department with 20 years of experience.
• All machines also have an additional +20 years to their default lifespan of 80, resulting in a base lifespan of 100 years.
• They are now affected by lifespan-increasing technologies and modifiers, for example, those from Ascension Paths, which we will cover later in this dev diary.

In summary, your machine leaders no longer need to fear random death and will live to the ripe old age of 100 years without any additional improvements. Some forms of immortality, however, have been retained, like the Gestalt Councils and some special ascension traits. All Virtual machine leaders are immortal while Modularity has access to advanced lifespan-increasing traits that can be applied to your machines. Similar rules will apply to robots, though they have a starting age of 1-5 years, and do not get the +20 lifespan bonus that machines have. Both biological empires going Synthetic and Machine empires will also reset their age upon completing Ascension to reflect receiving their new bodies. Somewhat paradoxically, all together, these changes should actually result in your Machine leaders being able to better withstand the test of time than they could were when they were theoretically immortal.
100 years is a lot better than how long my last smartphone survived. Habitability Habitability is also undergoing some changes. Having +200% Habitability as a base for all machines limited what we could do with them - it was what previously prevented us from allowing them to be Void Dwellers or using several other Origins, for instance. We still wanted to retain the flavor of Machines having an easier time dealing with alternate climates though, so Machines now use habitability systems similar to organics, with some significant changes:

• As a base, all machines have a 50% Habitability floor, so they will never have below 50% habitability on any world. We felt that this was important because we wanted to retain the feel that machine empires could colonize anywhere reasonably well.
• Machine habitability traits cover entire planet categories rather than a specific biome.
  • They start with Dry, Wet, or Frozen Habitability, which provide a base 75% habitability on all three biomes associated with the trait and 50% for all other natural biomes.
  • As usual, these habitability traits can be changed through robo-modding.
    • Most machine empires will have access to robo-modding from game start.
    • Origins like Life-Seeded or Subaquatic Machines will start with Gaia World or Ocean World Habitability and will have to research the technology to change their habitability trait, but retain the 50% Habitability floor for being a machine.
• Just like for Lifespan, they will now also gain bonuses from technologies, extra habitability from ascensions and new traits. They now also have access to the standard array of habitability technologies.

We believe this will still give them a simplified but more nuanced gameplay experience, with niches and combinations that will come close to the old playstyle while also allowing new fantasies. (Subterranean Machines, for instance, have a 100% Habitability floor and thus are guaranteed perfect habitability everywhere.)

Using partial habitability mechanics opened up the ability to use origins such as Ocean Paradise. Assimilation An important quality of life improvement for Machine empires - we have extended the capacity to assimilate other machines or robots into your main species to all machine empires.
They may have shared our name, but they did not share our form. These false Zenak will soon become actual Zenak, including adhering to our charging standards. (This is what I get for not being careful with my force-spawned empires.) The Aging, Habitability, and Assimilation changes (and Origin improvements listed later) are all part of the free 3.12 Andromeda update. Individualistic Machines Gestalt Machine Intelligences were originally introduced in the Synthetic Dawn story pack, but the authority and most of the civics (other than Determined Exterminator, Driven Assimilator, and Rogue Servitor) will also be unlocked by The Machine Age. The Machine Age will also allow you to create non-Gestalt Machine Empires, using regular authority, ethic, and civic choices. These individualistic machines are not guided by an overall gestalt intelligence, and thus have their own motivations, desires, and disappointments. Individual machines possess happiness like fully recognized synthetics, can and will form factions, and consume consumer goods. As non-Gestalts, their leaders will draw from the standard array of leader traits. This of course includes fan-favorites like Substance Abuser. With all ethics available to you, your empire can be spiritualist machines, fully capable of rationalizing their own spiritual superiority compared to lesser machines and organics. Your factions have been adjusted to fit your mechanical existence, since it makes no sense for spiritualist robots to despise all robots. (Its okay to hate some.) You will receive roboticists from your capital building with the additional option of building an assembly plant to boost your production even more. This all comes at the cost of alloys, so carefully decide between expansion, war, and pop assembly. As individual machines are very much capable and willing of entertaining unique needs, they have no restriction on allowing organics in their empires and can even start the game with Syncretic Evolution as their Origin of choice. As such, they have access to technologies for food production, genetic modification, and other organic focused technologies, with a sharply reduced, but not zero, chance at drawing those technologies if you have no organics in your empire. You are at the very least capable of theorizing about meat and its needs compared to gestalt machines. Depending on your ethics and authorities, you can enfranchise, disenfranchise, enslave, or empower organics or even other machines in your empire as you wish. The only limits to your ability to tread upon those fragile organics and your fellow machines are the limits of your imagination. Individual Machines have access to most civics organic empires have access to, as well as a few machine civics, like Warbots and Static Research Analysis, which have been adjusted for them.
Decadent, Deviant, Hedonistic Crime-Bots? Sure, why not.

More Origins now available to Machines

As part of the 3.12 Andromeda release, weve done a pass on Origins to see if there were any that could have their restrictions on Machines relaxed. The full list of Origins that Machine Empires have access to as of the 3.12 Andromeda release is:

• Syncretic Evolution (Individualist Machines only)
• Life-Seeded
• Post-Apocalyptic (Radioactive Rovers)
• Void Dwellers (Voidforged)
• Hegemon
• Ocean Paradise (Subaquatic Machines)
• Subterranean (Subterranean Machines)
• Arc Welders
• Prosperous Unification
• Remnants
• Shattered Ring
• Galactic Doorstep
• Resource Consolidation (Gestalt Machine Intelligence only)
• Common Ground
• Doomsday
• Lost Colony
• Here Be Dragons
• Slingshot to the Stars
• Imperial Fiefdom
• Riftworld

Transformation Situation and Ascension Paths

With The Machine Age, Individualistic Machines and Gestalt Machines have access to 3 new Ascension Paths (which replace the current Synthetics tree). By taking the Synthetic Age Ascension Perk, you will begin a new Situation to guide them through this momentous transformation.
Virtuality Embrace a virtual existence for the majority of your pops. From the cloud, your pops are created and to the cloud they return when their job is done. Spreading your servers across the stars is an expensive endeavor but your concentrated efforts are unmatched.

• Your pops gain a unique Virtual Trait that becomes stronger as you progress through the tree
  • You gain a massive bonus to production that is reduced by the number of colonies you have
  • Your housing usage is reduced by 90%
  • Your habitability floor is increased
  • The more colonies you gain, the weaker your Virtual Trait and the bigger its upkeep will become
  • Your leaders become immortal
• You gain a new Policy to focus your intangible virtual economy
  • You may choose to focus intensely on Research, Unity or Governance, at the sufferance of the 2 categories you did not choose
• You gain a bonus to encryption and decryption
• You gain additional districts and jobs from districts

Once you finish the tree, you will transition from a pop-limited playstyle into a planet-limited playstyle, as open jobs will be instantly filled with virtual pops as needed, while unemployed virtual pops will be turned off.
Nanotech Big Things are made of Small Things. By becoming a flood of nanites, your empire changes not just its makeup, but also its economy and growth strategy. Grow. Exploit. Replicate. While Virtual Machines may seek a Tall playstyle, Nanotech Machines flood across the galaxy like an off-white or silvery tempest, specializing in the physical.

You gain access to:
• Ways to transform basic resources into nanites and nanites into advanced resources
• A new decision, similar to Terravore world consumption, to turn colonies into nanite worlds
• A new starbase building to harvest nanites from uninhabitable worlds
• New Edicts to vastly increase your productions or combat capability at the cost of nanites
• Nanite probe ships, to bolster your fleets

Modularity The most advanced traits require the most advanced minds. By embracing Modularity, your empire will have access to traits other machines can only theorize at. The rarest of resources will fuel your enhanced shells.

• Your Metallurgists will produce Living Metal
• Your roboticists will be boosted by utilizing living metal as an upkeep
• Your workers/simple drones will be boosted by your priest equivalent
• Your soldiers and enforcers will grant more stability and be stronger
• You unlock 9 advanced machine traits, several trait picks, points, and reduced modification cost
• All your leaders will gain the Synth leader trait

If you have Synthetic Dawn but do not have The Machine Age, you will retain access to the Synthetics Tree, but with reworked Traditions. These will include bonuses to lifespan, habitability and pop assembly.

Resistance is [strike]the Ratio of Voltage to Current[/strike] Futile

For owners of Synthetic Dawn, Driven Assimilators will gain two advanced authority possibilities in The Machine Age, the Memory Aggregators and the Neural Chorus. Upon completing the Cybernetic tradition tree, the Assimilator will receive the option to determine their stance on the variance of thought permitted within the gestalt consciousness. This is the Neural Chorus:

The Machine Ship Set

In last weeks dev diary we snuck the Machine Corvette into the Arc Welders screenshot. Heres a glamor shot of the Machine ships that was arranged by our artists:
We finally have a Machine shipset.

Next Week

Next week well look at the Civics and Structures of The Machine Age, as well as Auto-Modding. See you then!

[ 2024-03-28 12:00:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Stellaris Community! In time for the weekend (a long one, in some cases), the dev team has prepared a 3.11.3 "Eridanus" Open Beta! This beta addresses some issues that have been left over from the 3.11 release.

The 3.11.3 "Eridanus" Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt-in to access it. Go to your Steam Library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas Tab -> select "3.11.3_open_beta" from the drop-down.

[expand type=details] [Improvement] The Plasmic trait can now be removed from species if you want to clean up your species tab. [Bugfix] Fixed global ship designs country type restriction so awakened empires are not allowed to use ai transports [Bugfix] Fixed refugees happening every day instead of every 90-180 days [Bugfix] Fixed secondary species in random empires not having a habitability trait. [Bugfix] Fixed the Abandoned Gateway event not taking into account ruined gateways from the Galatic Doorstep and Imperial Fiefdom origins [Bugfix] Fixed the accidental nerf to Civilian difficulty [Bugfix] Fixed the Luminary Bloodline not being inherited [Bugfix] Fixing council positions not being kept for GC:s after adding civics. [Bugfix] Made removal of expired leader from leader pool only happen on refresh [Bugfix] S875.1 Warform no longer disappears from leading their ship [Bugfix] The Grave Guardians will no longer trap you in an infinite first contact loop. [Bugfix] The Kaleidoscope no longer double dips in your income from trade [Bugfix] The Parvus event chain will no longer end too early removing all in progresses special projects. [Bugfix] Updated some text on the Galactic Community UI that was still referring to envoys instead of Delegates [Bugfix] Various anomalies and dig site events no longer try and give leaders the Hyper Focus trait if they already have it, instead they level the trait up. [/expand] The 3.11.3 full release will come at a later date, but we wanted to get these fixes into our players' hands as soon as possible. If you experience bugs or any other issues with the 3.11.3 open beta, please make a bug report! Thanks for playing Stellaris and have a great weekend!

Please note save compatibility is not guaranteed between versions. Should you experience bugs or other issues, please first create a new, unmodded save and see if the issues persist. If the issues persist on a new unmodded save, please make a bug report!

Edit: a previous version of this post contained the line: "[Feature] Added a familiar Friend after you explore Astral Rifts." This was mistakenly added to these patch notes, and is not included in the 3.11.3 "Eridanus" Open Beta.

[ 2024-03-27 14:14:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everybody! Today, well go through the three Origins, Ascension Situations, and advanced government Authorities in The Machine Age expansion.

The Cybernetic Creed

Rejoice, for the The Machine Age beckons! It's your digital prophet, Gatekeeper, dialing in to decode the mysteries of The Machine Age's upcoming Origins. Embarking first on our divine odyssey of silicon and the soul, I will introduce you to Cybernetic Creed, a spiritualist fast track to Cybernetics. Your spiritualist pops and leaders will start with the Ritualist Cybernetics Trait, representing your people's long dedication to attempting the perfect fusion of flesh and steel.


Eschew the mundane traditionalist factions of more standard empires for a quartet of Creeds, each a pillar of your economy and spiritual ethos.
Though united in their quest for divine fusion, harmony is a rare commodity among the Creeds. Dissonance and debate fuel their fiery passion for transcendence, and often, you will be asked to make choices that will make one Creed joyous at the expense of the others.
The Conclave of Fusion Situation will unfold after you embrace your sacred mission and interface with the Cybernetics Tradition Tree.
Here, you must guide your faith, defining its doctrine and the final form of your physical vessel. Will you elevate a single Creed to celestial prominence or attempt to weave a tapestry of unity among them? The fuse is divine. Augmentation is worship.

Synthetic Fertility

Next, we delve into the bittersweet digital saga of Synthetic Fertility, our fast track to the Synthetics Tradition Tree.
Boosted by a deep understanding of artificial intelligence and advanced virtual reality, your empire starts the game with 37 Pops. But despite your success, your people are on the brink of extinction. An incurable genetic affliction ravages your species, stopping them from being able to produce offspring.
In a daring leap of innovation, your civilization constructs the Identity Repository. It's a race against time as minds are uploaded, seeking refuge in the digital expanse before death takes them.
Parallel to this digital exodus, you're thrust into the urgent quest for the pinnacle of synthetic salvation - constructing robotic brains and bodies sophisticated enough to host your digital essences.
The final version of this will not have that beautiful magenta image. Will you seek aid? Will you engineer Synthetic Frames in time to reclaim your place among the stars? Or is this the dawn of an eternal digital slumber for your people?

Arc Welders

It wouldnt feel right not to have a Machine origin in The Machine Age. Arc Welders is available to any Machine empire - whether a Gestalt Consciousness or Individualistic Machines. In some ways, it is the opposite of Resource Consolidation. Rather than having an exceptional homeworld where all of the resources of your home system are gathered, these celestial architects hail from a small, resource-poor planet and set their eyes on the skies.
The Arc Welders began constructing an Arc Furnace on a molten world in their home system before achieving Faster-Than-Light travel. This kilostructure lets them exploit the rest of their system for minerals and, once complete, for alloy production. Expert engineers, it will only take a little more practice before they figure out the basics of Mega-Engineering. However, it may take a while before they can finish researching that technology. More details on the molten world Arc Furnace will be revealed in the April 4th dev diary.

Mechanists Update

With all of the focus The Machine Age is giving to mechanical empires of all forms, it is appropriate to improve the Mechanist origin as well Mechanist now grants +2 machine trait points as well as an extra trait pick, and fills that by starting your robots off with the Adaptive Frames trait, taking advantage of the new auto-modding system were introducing in 3.12 Andromeda. Youll have to wait until April 4th for complete details on how that works.

Cyberization and Synthesization Situations

I am Ferry, one of the Content Designers on The Machine Age, here to talk about the new narrative Ascension Situations. Utopia introduced the special projects to transform the population into cyborgs or synths. The Machine Age provides you with choices to shape the cyberization and synthesization process, as well as their ultimate effects. When the Cybernetics tradition tree is adopted, the Cyberization Situation (the Cybernetic Creed Origin has its own version) kicks off with the question who will control the implants in society: the government, private corporations, or will the public be allowed to hack their own implants? The Augmentation Center building, which is the focus for research and development during the Situation, stays after the situation to boost the cybernetics on the planet its on.
However, not everyone is excited about augmentation. Any Spiritualists will either have to be forced to become full cyborgs or be allowed to install the minimum amount of implants necessary to function in this new world according to the Cyberization Standards policy.
For Synthetics, in the Synthesization situation (the Synthetic Fertility origin has its own version), its not only Spiritualists who are wary of the planned changes. For some reason, even more people are concerned about scanning their mind to put into a mechanical body. Does your society allow those reluctant to stay around in quaint Old Towns or do they have to go into Biological Enclaves to escape becoming a part of the new machine species? The Identity Complex building provides Identity Designer jobs across the empire, who boost mechanical assembly speed.

Empires that start as machines, Machine Intelligence or Individualist Machines, get their own ascension situation called Transformation. What this means will be explained in next weeks dev diary.

Advanced Government Authorities

After the Situation has concluded and the Tradition Tree has been filled, an event chain kicks off to shape society into a new Advanced Authority. Does the cybernetic society allow the individual to flourish, or are implants used to bring the population tighter together? Each of the four base Authorities and MegaCorp, as well as Gestalt Hives, can transform into a cybernetic version of the original Authority, or opt to stay the same. Lets have a look at the Imperial Authority. One path through the cybernetic societal shift ends with the Imperial Chipset Authority, where implants are inherited within families to carry strength and knowledge forward through the generations.
The empire Ruler gets access to a new relic called the RulerChip, which contains the memories and experiences of previous rulers. As each ruler dies, their class of Official, Commander, or Scientist will grant different bonuses for the heir as they ascend the throne.
The Cybernetic Creed Origin has its own set of advanced cyber governments, one for each Authority. For Synthetics, the main question of the societal effects event chain is if the new machine society will put a focus on the physical or the virtual world. One example for the Democratic Authority is Democratic Surrogacy, which replaces soldiers and pilots with remote-controlled bodies.

Next Week

Next week well look at Individualistic Machine Empires, gameplay changes were making to Machine empires, and go through the new Machine Ascension Paths and Transformation situation. See you then!

[ 2024-03-21 12:00:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

It is time to leave our flawed biological vessels behind.

Its my pleasure to announce that The Machine Age major expansion will be released alongside the Stellaris 3.12 Andromeda update. Focusing on cybernetic, synthetic, and machine themes, The Machine Age will begin during the second quarter of 2024. [previewyoutube=MSunS8wpU54;full][/previewyoutube]

In pursuing the divine calling, we shall achieve the fusion of the exalted body and sacred cybernetics.

The Technophants and Haruspex of the Cybernetic Creed will guide their flock to the perfect union of flesh and machine.
Cybernetic augmentation is not solely the province of the materialists.

Playgrounds stand empty. In time, we will cease to be. For now, our salvation lies in the digital realm

A doomed species races against extinction to reach the virtual world in Synthetic Fertility.
Blur the lines between the physical and virtual worlds.

Our planet is barren, but our home system is a bounty of riches. To exploit them, we must build bigger than ever before.

Originally designed to build mighty constructions in space, the Arc Welders must utilize that advantage to the fullest to overcome the deficiencies of their homeworld.
These masters of Mega-Engineering began exploiting their home system before discovering faster-than-light travel.

The things that make me different are the things that make me, me.

The creators may be gone, but society endures. Your chassis may have begun identical to trillions of others in your empire, but you are no drone - you are an individual. With The Machine Age, you can explore the game as non-Gestalt, Individualist Machine Empires!
Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

A transformative age is upon us, sparked by innovation and oiled by opportunity.

The Machine Age explores how Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension affect society within your empire. Advanced government forms are available to empires that navigate the process.
The Cybernetic Creed Origin has an additional variant for each standard Authority.

Become better than you are.

Six new civics provide additional choices for your empires.
Corporate and Hive Mind civics require MegaCorp or Utopia respectively.

Build a better future.

Two mid-game structures are introduced in The Machine Age - exploit systems with the molten world Arc Furnace, and start your work towards a Dyson Sphere early by building the Dyson Swarm.
And so we came forth and once again beheld the stars.

Ignorance shackles us, putting the universes secrets out of reach. No matter the price, we must break free.

Building upon the system introduced in Nemesis, The Machine Age introduces a second player crisis path, focused on technological ascendancy at any cost.
The time has come to be part of something greater.

My children, at last I am returned to you.

For the first time since the Contingency was introduced in the Stellaris 1.8 apek release, a new end-game crisis has been unleashed. An ancient threat, sealed away for countless millennia, has returned.

The Machine Age expansion includes:

• Individualistic Non-Gestalt Machine Empires
• Gestalt Machine Intelligence Empires (also unlocked by the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack)
• Three new Origins
  • Cybernetic Creed
  • Synthetic Fertility
  • Arc Welders
• Civics
  • Guided Sapience
  • Natural Design
  • Obsessional Directive
  • Protocol Droids
  • Tactical Cogitators
  • Augmentation Bazaars (Requires Megacorp)
• Two Mid-Game Structures
  • Arc Furnace
  • Dyson Swarms
• New Ascension Paths for Machine Empires
• Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension (also unlocked by Utopia)
• Exploration of the effects of the cyberization or synthesization of society, with Advanced Government Forms for those who complete it.
• New Species Traits for Cyborgs, Machines and Robots
• Cybernetic portraits that change based on advancement through cyberization
• Synthetic portraits with both organic and synthetic variants that changed based on synthesization, usable by either organics or machines
• Two new Shipsets, Diplomatic Rooms, and City Sets
• 7 new music tracks synthetic and cybernetic inspired music tracks
• A new Player Crisis Path
• And a new End-Game Crisis.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2840100/ Wishlist The Machine Age today!

[ 2024-03-14 16:12:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

by PDX-Loke Hello, Our latest patch is now live and ready for download, fixing most but not yet all of the issues reported from the 'Eridanus' release last week. Please find the patch notes below.

STELLARIS 3.11.2 PATCH NOTES

Balance

• The Opener for Domination now gives +5% Worker Output and +5% Slave Output instead of +10% Slave Output so Egalitarians and Xenophiles arent sad.
• Versatility Operational Proxies now gives +1 Unity production to Maintenance Drones so that Rogue Servitors aren't left out.
• Decreased the cost to study (-25%) and pacify (-40%) space fauna.

Bugfixes

• Ensure dead leaders are properly removed from their location so that new leaders can replace them.
• Fixed Federation Emissaries and GalCom Delegates not assigning correctly and not being replaceable when dead.
• Acquiring the Colonization Drones from the Chemical Wasteland Astral Rift will no longer lead to discovering Noxious Swamps (or other natural blockers) on Habitats (or other planets that shouldn't support these blockers)
• Corrected Adaptability Enhanced Recycling tooltip listing a 10% reduction instead of the 15% reduction.
• Corrected the finisher effect for Domination giving -15% Empire Size from Pops in some cases
• The finisher for Diplomacy now correctly says it gives +10% Diplomatic Weight instead of +10 Diplomatic Weight
• Fixed an issue where the "On the Origins of Nanites" special project didn't spawn.
• The Chosen will now declare a war of Cleansing on whoever breaches their wormhole
• Fixed habitat capital buildings given the wrong number of defensive armies
• Mining districts on machine worlds should no longer claim to give scrap miner drone jobs
• Fixed anomaly.7200 having repeated flags in their switch.
• Cartographer II and Cartographer III are now correctly recognised as councilor traits
• Fixed modifiers to mining and research station upkeep incorrectly attempting to reduce the upkeep of the planet they were orbiting
• Science ship auto explore feature with astral rifts sometimes skipped unexplored ones
• Fixed the icon for the Great Researcher trait
• Fixed Holy Covenants not giving High Priest jobs in some cases
• The Shallash system will now spawn properly again.
• You will no longer be able to engage in pre-FTL diplomacy with pre-FTLs not within your borders
• Homicidal empires will now properly annex pre-FTLs that are foolish enough to become space faring.
• Bio-trophies are no longer affected by Noxious Twice.
• Fix lack of evasion on sapient torpedo comp.

UI

• Fixes the background selector for rulers being set incorrectly in the leader category of the background selectors

AI

• Fixed AI leaving federations only if the federation has 2 members or the AI empire's type is unplayable.
• Fixed AI never asking to leave Hegemony federations.

Stability

• Fixed potential CTD in quantum catapult rendering
• Fixed crash upon startup that could be caused by write-protected user directory.
• Fixed CTD that sometimes happens when finishing species modification.
• Fixed CTD when using console command dump_event_data and the output file is not writable
• Fixed CTD in leader names after loading a savegame
• Fixed CTD that may occur when updating diplomacy for countries without diplomacy

Modding

• Added FEDERATION_DISBAND_THRESHOLD and FEDERATION_DISBAND_PLAYER_THRESHOLD defines, which define the AI's threshold for leaving a federation if it would be disbanded.

[ 2024-03-12 09:15:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hi everyone! Today well be taking a look at the state of the game, the upcoming 3.11.2 patch, talk about the Subscription FAQ, look at the Q&A transcript, and give a taste of whats next. Lets get to it.

State of the Game

The Stellaris 3.11.1 Eridanus update was released last week, and Im happy to say that the build appears quite stable crash-wise. The number of crash reports is very low for a release, with approximately 90% of the ones we are getting being due to mods that havent been updated. Of these, more than half are specifically related to mods that affect the Galaxy Settings screen. Metrics so far show that Multiplayer seems to be significantly more stable than 3.10.4 as well, though an issue has been raised regarding observer mode causing major performance issues in multiplayer that we're currently looking into. The Custodian Team is currently working on a 3.11.2 update including some of the things that youve all reported, preliminarily scheduled for release next Tuesday, March 12th. SOME THINGS PLANNED FOR 3.11.2 Balance

• The Opener for Domination now gives +5% Worker Output and +5% Slave Output instead of +10% Slave Output so Egalitarians and Xenophiles arent sad.
• Versatility Operational Proxies now gives +1 Unity production to Maintenance Drones so that Rogue Servitors aren't left out.
• Decreased the cost to study (-25%) and pacify (-40%) space fauna.

Bugfixes

• Fixed Federation Emissaries and GalCom Delegates not assigning correctly.
• Acquiring the Colonization Drones from the Chemical Wasteland Astral Rift will no longer lead to discovering Noxious Swamps (or other natural blockers) on Habitats (or other planets that shouldn't support these blockers)
• Corrected Adaptability Enhanced Recycling tooltip listing a 10% reduction instead of the 15% reduction.
• Corrected the finisher effect for Domination giving -15% Empire Size from Pops in some cases
• The finisher for Diplomacy now correctly says it gives +10% Diplomatic Weight instead of +10 Diplomatic Weight
• Fixed an issue where the "On the Origins of Nanites" special project didn't spawn.
• The Chosen will now declare a war of Cleansing on whoever breaches their wormhole
• Fixed habitat capital buildings given the wrong number of defensive armies
• Mining districts on machine worlds should no longer claim to give scrap miner drone jobs
• Fixed anomaly.7200 having repeated flags in their switch.
• Cartographer II and Cartographer III are now correctly recognised as councilor traits
• Fixed modifiers to mining and research station upkeep incorrectly attempting to reduce the upkeep of the planet they were orbiting
• Science ship auto explore feature with astral rifts sometimes skipped unexplored ones
• Fixed the icon for the Great Researcher trait
• Fixed Holy Covenants not giving High Priest jobs in some cases
• The Shallash system will now spawn properly again.
• You will no longer be able to engage in pre-FTL diplomacy with pre-FTLs not within your borders
• Homicidal empires will now properly annex pre-FTLs that are foolish enough to become space faring.
• Bio-trophies are no longer affected by Noxious Twice.
• Fix lack of evasion on sapient torpedo comp.

UI

• Fixes the background selector for rulers being set incorrectly in the leader category of the background selectors

Stability

• Fixed crash upon startup that could be caused by write-protected user directory.
• Fixed CTD that sometimes happens when finishing species modification.
• Fixed CTD when using console command dump_event_data and the output file is not writable
• Fixed CTD in leader names after loading a savegame
• Fixed CTD that may occur when updating diplomacy for countries without diplomacy

More on the Stellaris Expansion Subscription

Weve created an FAQ about the Stellaris Expansion Subscription option, I've included it here: We've gathered up some of the most frequently asked questions from the launch of the Stellaris Expansion Subscription. [olist]

Will I lose access to my existing content purchases? No. All existing purchases will remain, and you will not have to sign up to the subscription service to maintain your access to your previously purchased content.

Will future content be subscription-only? No! Our main model will remain focused around expansions and other content, as we have done so far. We have introduced a subscription service to lower the barrier to entry for new players.

Who asked for this? We are experimenting with this additional option to provide players access to the full Stellaris experience. We are simply offering another choice, as we understand that many players would be interested in trying Stellaris with all the content without having to commit to purchasing all the existing content.

Why did you not just create content bundles? We already have bundles available that we have designed with the help of our community. We are happy with the currently available offerings, but may look into this again in the future.

If I play multiplayer with the subscription, does everyone else in my lobby still get to use my content for that game? Yes! Subscription ownership of the content comes with all the features that a regular purchase does. You can share the content from the subscription in multiplayer with your friends that only have the base-game.

Are there any plans to expand the subscription service to other stores/platforms? No current plans at this time, but something on our radar long-term.

Does the subscription model signal the end of development on Stellaris? We currently have several years of Stellaris development planned.

Will individual content still be available for sale? Yes! Stellaris content will continue to be available to purchased individually, as it always has been.

Why isnt there a discounted price for the subscription for players who already own some/all of the content? The Stellaris subscription is geared towards allowing new players more avenues into the full Stellaris experience. As such, we attempted to keep the initial public offering as simple as possible. We may look at expanding our offerings in the future, however.

Why can't I buy Stellaris content while my subscription is active? When you have an ongoing subscription, you are technically considered to have the content in your library. As such, stores will stop you from purchasing a DLC for the same account twice (since the DLC is already in your library). Once the subscription expires, you can again go back to purchasing content normally. [/olist] We hope this provides more clarity into our process and alleviates some of the concerns of the Community with regards to the Expansion Subscription. If you have further questions, feel free to ask them in the thread below and we will do our best to provide answers! For several years, the Expansion Subscriptions on some of our other games have proven very popular with new players, which was the major reason we wanted to bring the concept over to Stellaris. As Crusader Kings III's Chapters have likewise been extremely popular with their more experienced players, we're also looking into bundling future content together in a similar manner to make it easier for our veterans to get the new content at a discount.

Discord Q&A Transcript

On February 22nd, we held a Q&A on Discord. The team answered 247 questions and only got a little trolly. For a transcript of the questions that were answered, please visit the Paradox forums.

What Else?

I promised to give a teaser about what the internal team has been working on. Here you go. [previewyoutube=GsDqi-thw5w;full][/previewyoutube] 01010011 01100101 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101110 01100101 01111000 01110100 00100000 01110111 01100101 01100101 01101011 00100001 Next week's dev diary will be later than usual as well.

[ 2024-03-07 16:16:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

written by Eladrin https://store.steampowered.com/app/2729490 Hello! The 3.11.1 Eridanus update has been released! While the release notes should look relatively familiar to people who read last week's preliminary changelog, here are the release notes for today's update: 3.11.1 ERIDANUS CUSTODIAN UPDATE RELEASE NOTES [expand type=details]

Feature

• Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider added to galaxy generation. This slider adjusts technology costs based on tier and game difficulty.

Improvements

• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)
• Added the Seddom system.
• Allowed conversion between Sovereign Guardianship and Corporate Protectorate civics
• Dimensional Locks now forbid access to countries without communications
• Every participant in a war now gets a truce with the others after it ends, even if they were on the same side
• If you have a colony in a system when pre-FTLs become space faring you can apologize and annex them
• Progenitor Hive speed malus and bonuses now only affect military ships, removing the need of science ship escorts
• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup
• The Anglers civic now swaps to Trawling Operations if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
• The Eager Explorers civic now swaps to Privatized Exploration if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
• The Eager Explorers, Privatized Exploration and Exploration Protocols civics can be removed and readded after researching Jump Drives. The Stargazers civic cannot be removed as it is linked to the species trait of the same name
• The Foreign Consciousness trait is now a destiny trait
• When the Khan awakens the event will now properly have a go to button
• Added the old AI crisis diplomatic room to the list of selectable diplomatic rooms
• Rearranged the room selector priorities so that AI empires shouldn't lose special diplomatic rooms
• Set the old AI crisis diplomatic room to be used by Determined Exterminators
• Set the "scrappy room" to be used by the Ketlings
• Set the "gilded room" to be used the AI overlord for the Imperial Fiefdom origin
• Set the "organic room" to be used by Devouring Swarms
• Gangsters should no longer assassinate Chosen Ones or Legendary leaders
• If a Zombie or Nerve Stapled pop manages to lie on their resume and become a specialist or ruler they should be demoted much faster
• Xenophobic leaders are now half as likely to accept brainslugs while Xenophilic ones are twice as likely to accept them
• Improved spawning logic for anomalies that clear deposits to not spawn on planets with strategic resources

Balance

• All pop types will now be happy while living on a gaia world.
• Added a tier 2 Advanced Bio-Reactor technology and building. Advanced Bio-Reactors further reduce the food output of farmers in exchange for a small amount of exotic gas output
• Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin
• Ascension Theory is now a Tier 4 technology that requires at least 6 traditions trees to have been completed to be drawn
• Balance adjustments to the Knights of the Toxic God to make some of their behavior behave the same way as other economic bonuses in the game, and make more of the choices in the chain potentially relevant.
• Event options in the Knights' quest that improve their capital have been significantly buffed to be better balanced compared to the options that improve knight jobs:
  
• Toxic God Deposits
• Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
• Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
• Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
• Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% per Squire not 2% per Squire
• The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
  
• Luminous Blades
• The Orders X-Calibrator planetary feature on their starting habitat now also provides -10% Pop Upkeep
  
• Knights X-Calibrator
• The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per Pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
• Bio-Reactors are now a tier 1 rare technology instead of a tier 0 Technology. Bio-Reactors now reduce the food output of farmer jobs and give them a small amount of energy output
• Bio-Trophy buildings no longer provide Artisan Drone and Maintenance Drone jobs
• Decreased the amount of research produced by unemployed pops with Utopian Abundance
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies now provide Prosperity Preachers for MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers for regular Spiritualist MegaCorps
• First League Offices now provide Prosperity Preacher jobs for Spiritualist MegaCorps
• Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
• Gospel of the Masses now provides +1 Trade Value to Prosperity Preachers (both inside their empire and those on planet on which they have branch offices)
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies
• Increased the cost of the Rock Potential special project to 1000 energy to account for Stellaris Inflation
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions
• Lost Colony Parents now spawn with more developed colonies to avoid overcrowding on their capital.
• Machine Intelligences with a biological secondary species now have a base food income of 10 food/month, and without a secondary species or with a Lithoid secondary species, they now have a base mineral income of 10 minerals/month.
• Moved habitat upkeep modifiers from the domination opener to the expansion opener. Available for all, not just void dwellers
• Curator leader trait now provides +10% Research Speed (was +15%) with an associated +10% Researcher Upkeep. The Survey Speed bonus remains unchanged
• Penal Colonies now provide 10 housing.
• Prosperity Preachers are now a specialist strata job
• Rebalanced leader traits gained from Ascension Paths (Psionic, Chosen One, Synthetic, Cyborg, Erudite)
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
• Reduced the amount of Naval Cap granted by technologies
• Removed most sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game
• Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%
• Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%
• Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed
• Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep
• Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep
• Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked
• Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep
• Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs
• Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%
• Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
• Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs
• Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed
• Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs
• Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs
• Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs
• Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%
• Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs
• Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%
• Rulers now gain 12 XP per month
• Temples now provide Prosperity Preachers for Spiritualist MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers
• The Entangled Dark Matter astral rift now completely overwrites the personality of the selected scientist if they are not psionic
• The Traumatized trait now negatively impacts Astral Rift Exploration Speed
• Tier 2 and Tier 3 Sacrificial Temples no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
• Tweaked the tiers of technologies that increase naval cap and fleet command limit
• Warpling armies now have an upkeep of 1 energy and 0.1 astral threads per month
• Psychological Infertility and Existential Iteroparity can no longer be taken with the Clone Soldier or Ascended Clone Soldier trait.
• Two of the three habitable planets in the Trappist system are now terraforming candidates
• The "Tragula's Cross", "Trin's Promise" and "Loh" systems are now mutually exclusive on galaxy generation
• The Science Ship as a Concept now uses psionic components instead of whichever components your empire has researched
• Improvements to Resort Worlds:
• Resort Colonies now have Resort Workers and Resort Districts.
• Resort Workers provide empire wide bonuses to amenities and trade value from living standards.
• Resort World Technology appears sooner and is cheaper.
• Added Unity Bonus to resort world designation, lowered housing bonus
• Empires that value other species, such as Rogue Servitors, will now get extra annoyed if you engage in genocide or necrophaging
• Gestalt empires can now sell their minor artifacts provided that they have access to the galactic market
• Marauder ships should now have a decently larger amount of armor for most shipsizes
• Refugees should now also be willing to flee to Rogue Servitors if they are welcomed as Bio-trophies

Bugfixes

• Added missing class name and icon in the leader upkeep tooltip
• Added missing required components to the Marauder Galleon
• Added new localization and triggers for Machine Empires exploring the Rift World origin.
• Armies now disband instantly instead of waiting for next tick
• Cordyceptic Empires that only had Subspace Drives on their ships are now also capable of reanimating space fauna
• Corrected draw weight for Shipbreaker trait
• Corrected modifiers on Agrarian Upbringing
• Corrected some trait names
• Corrected the Scout Wing using the wrong 3d entities
• Correctly locked a number of Delegate GalCom focus traits to require the DLC that unlocks their resolution category
• Diplo action tooltip now shows why we can't claim any systems
• distar.1081 will no longer spawn pops on colonies in progress
• Driven Assimilators with the Protected Pre-Sapients policy will no longer purge pre-sapients
• Empires with the Mechromancy AP can no longer purge cyborg zombies
• Event windows now correctly have no effect after the player has been defeated
• Extra trait points for script-generated species are now added correctly
• Fix countries created by `create_country` script command not having any leaders in their recruitment pool
• Fix duplicate ship role buttons when switching ship templates in ship designer
• Fix not being able to exit the game or return to menu when certain other UI windows were open
• Fix some leaders (e.g. paragons) getting a trait pick when you hire them even though they should not, how greedy!
• Fixed a number of opposite trait pairs not taking into account their leveled versions
• Fixed a string being undefined in the ruler designer menu
• Fixed an Astral Rift calling the Baol for Boal or was it the other way around?
• Fixed an error that prevented some Fallen Empire task events from firing
• Fixed cyborg zombies having a 100% chance of spawning instead of 33%
• Fixed default weights for pre-sapient policies
• Fixed Discoveries tab not being displayed when tabs order has been customized
• Fixed gestalt scientists getting research expertise traits when those traits had no effect for them
• Fixed heirs being able to have the Planar Theorist trait despite not being capable of exploring astral rifts
• Fixed incorrect weapon effect being used for the World Cracker
• Fixed invalid scope allowing pre-sapient pops to be turned into cyborg zombies
• Fixed issues with leaders assigned to armies or fleet that contain armies
• Fixed leaders sometimes getting invalid trait choices on level up
• Fixed missing 0 on Collaborator II
• Fixed missing message title for Restoring the Balance
• Fixed newest achievements not working on MS Store
• Fixed Orbital Bombardment planet modifier not having a tooltip if there are no other planet modifiers there
• Fixed possibility of leader trait picks including opposites of existing traits
• Fixed Revolutionary Medi-Gel not affecting Pharma State civic production for Medical Workers
• Fixed systems at the bottom of the map spawning at wrong coordinates
• Fixed the Shared Burdens tooltip being outdated and mentioning additional unity from the Egalitarian faction
• Fixed Unity Ambitions referencing their pre-Unity rework state.
• Fixed Urbanist being both a Destiny trait and a Veteran trait (which prevented it from being available as a trait pick)
• Fleets of countries without ship_disengagement = yes (e.g. Horde) now correctly cannot use emergency retreat
• Former Satrapies of the Khan should no longer be informed twice when the new Horde forms.
• Hiring Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer hires a mysterious clone of them instead
• If the Knights Keep is hit with a Pacifier Colossus there will now be unique event text
• It now costs 200 influence to abandon planets even if they have pre-sapients living there.
• Livestock slaves now inherit farmer and miner modifiers as appropriate.
• Making sure the negative situation outliner notifications only happens for negative situations
• Modifiers to empire-wide resource production now apply to resources generated through trade policies
• Removed reference to a loc key inside of an Under One Rule event.
• Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer lose Council traits when hired by gestalt empires.
• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events
• Replaced all sources of "is_leading_research = x" with "is_head_of_research" fixing numerous broken events and scopes
• Replaced one of the descriptions being reused for the Old Gods event chain
• Show turrets correctly on the Maven Cruiser and Caravaneer ships
• Sobek will no longer be confused and think that they came from your capital
• Species habitability for randomized empires is now correctly set for origins like shattered ring
• Stellar Culture Shock will now be applied to hive pre-FTLs if you are a hive empire.
• Terraforming a Barren World into a Machine or a Hive World will no longer fill that world with blockers
• Terraforming straight into a Hive or a Machine World now correctly removes "Terraforming Candidate"
• The astral rifts now correctly checks for Chosen One traits in addition to the Psionic trait
• The Azizians event can no longer target planets that are under colonization
• The chance to gain negative leader traits depending on leader age now takes into account leader lifespan
• The Ranger Lodge will now properly produce +2 and +3 additional unity as the higher tier of Environmentalist Galactic Community Resolutions are passed.
• The Speed Demon anomaly will no longer show up for Synthetic empires.
• Updated the hire_event_leader_effect scripted effect to take account of the the Eternal Throne relic
• Updated the tooltip for Universal Prosperity Mandate to mention the Employee Ownership living standard
• When the "Prohibit Separate Treaties" federation law is enable it should now correctly remove treaties from both parties and not only the outside one
• When transferring ships from one fleet to another, the fleet's leader will now always stay on the old fleet
• AI UNE should no longer spawn if there is already an empire using the Sol initializer.
• Fixed a rare instance of a possible divide by 0 during rebellions
• Fixed orders for jump-drive-only ships being queued in the wrong order.
• Fixed Skrand Sharpbeak being unassigned from his ship after you hire him
• Fixed Skrand Sharpbeak having an excess of traits
• Fixed some issues with the triggers to encounter Skrand Sharpbeak - sorry he's been a bit shy recently
• Fixes to leader generation conditions for the leader pool if there are no valid species (such as if you nerve staple your entire population)
• If the Prikkiti will now build the most advanced starbase that they can instead of always trying to build a citadel even if they don't have the technology for it.
• If you shield the final world of the Contingency you should now receive your relic.
• Kaleidoscope event chain: pre-FTL countries won't be able to receive the Kaleidoscope anymore
• Newly released vassals now get a leader pool correctly
• Research stations will no longer try to go MIA when a revolt occurs.
• The Manifesti should no longer show up before you have encountered other alien empires.
• The Expel Corporation war goal now also removes Branch Offices belonging to the defender from your allies' planets
• A supremely unlucky pre-FTL nation should no longer be able to have multiple machine uprisings if they fight off the first one
• The Atomic Clock event will now properly trigger after 42 years and 3 days following the superior Stellaris Standard Calendar, which has 360 day years
• Authoritarianism should no longer become more popular because you have egalitarian councilors
• Become the Crisis AI empires will now always decline becoming vassals to awakened empires
• Fixed a rare case where the Shard would not turn hostile against the player
• Fixed a rare error that would occur if your scientist who finished a dig site died before you clicked the final dig site event
• Fixed the checks for the Debris Field anomaly making it rarer than it should be
• Fixed the Lush Planet Anomaly requiring Sol to have spawned, also updated the event rewards to work in a tileless Stellaris
• Hyperlanes should no longer get attached to sealed systems
• Imperial Fiefdom AI will no longer consider subjects to be viable overlords when they are looking for one
• The Fleet Maneuvers event can no longer happen in capital systems
• The Horizon Signal Event Chain will now correctly prioritize your head of research for narrative events
• The Manifesti event chain will now properly end if you apprehend them early enough
• The puddle technician drone job is now properly a drone job
• The Sentinel Order should no longer spawn in systems not connected to the rest of the galaxy, leaving everyone else to deal with the Prethoryn
• Upscaling the Messenger will now properly remove the negative modifiers from the ships
• Vultaumar III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits
• Irass III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits, while Irass VIII has gained its missing exotic gases

Performance

• Improved speed of AI checking whether it should send subjugation offers
• Various performance improvements

Stability

• Fixed crash when completing an Astral Rift if the exploring ship no longer exists
• Possibly fixed rare crash in galaxy map special project icon tooltip.
• Several Out of Sync fixes.
• Fixing OOS issue with planets, wormholes etc sometimes being slightly differently positioned between windows and linux.

UX

• Add assigned Leader's name and council title to archaeology view and rift view
• Additional Content tab text is centered correctly
• Clicking on a resource in the top bar now switches to that resource in the market view instead of closing it if it was already open
• Clicking on the "capped resource" notification will now take you to the correct tab depending on which resource is capped (correct market tab, relics view for minor artifacts, claims view for influence)
• Fix claim buttons being misaligned on partially or fully occupied systems
• Fix Outliner tab buttons appearing over the fleet manager sidebar on smaller resolutions
• Fixed incorrect speed value in ship designer
• Fixed Outliner tab buttons appearing in front of the archaeology window.
• Inactive leader trait triggered modifiers are shown in the tooltip along with their trigger conditions
• Remove double error message for starbase building tooltips
• Trade protection tooltip lists empire-wide modifiers
• Use up to 2 decimal places for displaying stability modifiers
• Use up to 2 decimal places for production/upkeep in building/district tooltips
• If an orbital station build order is selected, its fail text in planet tooltips no longer reveals hidden information.
• Tooltips for Galcom sanction resolutions now show the modifiers even if they're inactive.
• Tooltips for Galcom resolutions that have both triggered and non-triggered modifiers no longer show the "Modifiers" header twice.

AI

• Added better script to evaluate planet and fleet for leaders, and added description of the AI algorithms for leader assignation in the leader_classes/00_base_classes.txt
• Awakened Empires can now upgrade their starbases.
• Changed leader assignation into a single loop for all location types, sorting locations by priority and leaders by skill, then trying to assign the highest priority leader to locations in order
• Fixed AI being able to improve and harm relations at the same time
• Fixed another case of the AI assigning Leaders to invalid (empty) fleets
• Fixed the AI trying to assign military leaders to science fleets.
• Improved AI weights for Ascension Paths
• The AI now hires leaders the same way it assigns them. Expect an increased number of generals.
• The AI will evaluate a leader for a location based on the `ai_location_weight` scripted value in the leader class
• The Fear of the Dark AI empires will be less predictable with what extreme paths they might take.
• The weight value for location priority when assigning leaders is now a define. When assigning leaders, there are 2 steps, first steps leader and locations are assigned a priority value, and then each leader calculates a final weight for each location. The leader/location pair with the highest weight is then assigned. This change affects the first step (the priority in the queue), as the second step is already fully scriptable.
• Improved AI leader assignment weights
• The AI now decides whether to strengthen or undermine the galactic empire based on two new game rules
• The AI will no longer build additional Quantum Catapults if they already have one within 25 jumps.
• Improved AI decision-making for the "Find Military Applications" Artifact Action
• Improved AI logic when it comes to when to use the Strip Mining decision
• Reduced the AI willingness to accept trade deals for food or consumer goods if they don't use those resources
• AI Hive-Mind empires now have an increased chance to research terraforming technologies since they are unlikely to get more pop types from migration pacts.

Modding

• Add `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger
• Added a check for the block_homeworld_traits leader flag in all traits that provide additional jobs to the leader's background planet. This flag is not currently used in the vanilla game
• Added checked for the following leader flags to leader trait weights and potentials: block_army_traits, block_council_traits, block_federation_traits, block_galcom_traits, block_governor_traits, block_pilot_traits these flags set the selection weight for leader traits in their category to 0 but are ignored if the leader has a subclass specializing in the category. These flags are currently unused in the vanilla game
• Added game rule 'can_ai_assign_governor' to let the AI decide if a planet can have a governor or not
• Added NON_PARAGON_TRAIT_OPTIONS_ON_LEVEL_UP define
• Added not_potential_override_text_key parameter to triggered modifier (currently used in leader trait tooltips and galcom resolutions)
• Added on_army_disbanded on_action
• Added show_if_not_potential parameter to triggered modifier (currently used in leader trait tooltips and galcom resolutions)
• Added text_offset variable to buttonType (only used for buttons that have both a sprite and text)
• Added the "is_urban_planet" scripted trigger for pc_relic and pc_city planets
• leader_class trigger can now appear in tooltips
• Renamed LEADER_RULER_MONARCH_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_RULER_EXPERIENCE and LEADER_RULER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE
• Replaced "negative", "subclass_trait", "destiny_trait" and "veteran_class_locked_trait" leader trait variables with "leader_trait_type"
• Updated documentation for create_species effect
• Updated LEADER_GOVERNOR_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_ASSIGNED_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE
• Fixed "remove_deposit" effect not working in a deposit scope, fixing orbitals not removing their bonus to habitats when destroyed
• Replaced the loc string used to select a background for Paragon portraits with an asset selector.
• can_generate_military_leader_from_pop now includes the requirements of can_generate_leader_from_pop, which are now in the can_be_leader scripted trigger.

[/expand] Release notes marked with the symbol were made with the assistance of our modding community. Special thanks to Ariphaos, Fireprince, Risa, alexrider903, ECHO, Roverstorm, jasonpepe, SirBlackAxe, Glavius, Savlor, OldEnt, Harain, and The24thDS for making Stellaris a better game. Please be aware that as normal with major releases, mods that have not yet been updated are likely to cause unexpected issues. If you wish to continue existing saves, see this thread for how to roll back to earlier versions of Stellaris.

Stellaris Expansion Subscription

Over the years, as more content has been added to Stellaris, we have been hearing an ever-increasing number of requests for a subscription option as an alternative to purchasing them individually. Were happy to announce that we are adding a subscription option to Stellaris, allowing players to access all released DLCs for Stellaris at a fixed monthly fee. Future DLC releases will be available to subscribers on day 1. The Stellaris Expansion Subscription grants access to all of the content for Stellaris, with significant discounts for longer subscription plans:

• 1 Month: 9.99 USD
• 3 Months: 19.99 USD
• 6 Months: 29.99 USD

Subscriptions can be started either directly from Steam or through the Additional Content browser, and may have different prices based on your regional currencies. The Stellaris Expansion Subscription is currently only available on Steam.

Next Week

Next weeks dev diary will be on Thursday March 7th, and will likely be about post-release support for the 3.11 Eridanus update. Well also include the dev Q&A transcript and a little hint about what else were working on. Thank you for playing Stellaris!

[ 2024-02-27 16:04:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

by PDX-Loke Hello fellow stargazers, The 3.11.1 patch is now live and available for download. Please find the changelog below. Enjoy!

3.11.1 ERIDANUS CUSTODIAN UPDATE RELEASE NOTES

Feature

• Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider added to galaxy generation. This slider adjusts technology costs based on tier and game difficulty.

Improvements

• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)
• Added the Seedom system.
• Allowed conversion between Sovereign Guardianship and Corporate Protectorate civics
• Dimensional Locks now forbid access to countries without communications
• Every participant in a war now gets a truce with the others after it ends, even if they were on the same side
• If you have a colony in a system when pre-FTLs become space faring you can apologize and annex them
• Progenitor Hive speed malus and bonuses now only affect military ships, removing the need of science ship escorts
• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup
• The Anglers civic now swaps to Trawling Operations if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
• The Eager Explorers civic now swaps to Privatized Exploration if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
• The Eager Explorers, Privatized Exploration and Exploration Protocols civics can be removed and readded after researching Jump Drives. The Stargazers civic cannot be removed as it is linked to the species trait of the same name
• The Foreign Consciousness trait is now a destiny trait
• When the Khan awakens the event will now properly have a go to button
• Gangsters should no longer assassinate Chosen Ones or Legendary leaders
• If a Zombie or Nerve Stapled pop manages to lie on their resume and become a specialist or ruler they should be demoted much faster
• Xenophobic leaders are now half as likely to accept brainslugs while Xenophilic ones are twice as likely to accept them
• Improved spawning logic for anomalies that clear deposits to not spawn on planets with strategic resources
• Added the old AI crisis diplomatic room to the list of selectable diplomatic rooms
• Rearranged the room selector priorities so that AI empires shouldn't lose special diplomatic rooms
  • Set the old AI crisis diplomatic room to be used by Determined Exterminators
  • Set the "scrappy room" to be used by the Ketlings
  • Set the "gilded room" to be used the AI overlord for the Imperial Fiefdom origin
  • Set the "organic room" to be used by Devouring Swarms

Balance

• All pop types will now be happy while living on a gaia world.
• Added a tier 2 Advanced Bio-Reactor technology and building. Advanced Bio-Reactors further reduce the food output of farmers in exchange for a small amount of exotic gas output
• Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin
• Ascension Theory is now a Tier 4 technology that requires at least 6 traditions trees to have been completed to be drawn
• Balance adjustments to the Knights of the Toxic God to make some of their behavior behave the same way as other economic bonuses in the game, and make more of the choices in the chain potentially relevant.
• Event options in the Knights' quest that improve their capital have been significantly buffed to be better balanced compared to the options that improve knight jobs:
• Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
• Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
• Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
• Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% per Squire not 2% per Squire
• The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
• The Orders X-Calibrator planetary feature on their starting habitat now also provides -10% Pop Upkeep
• The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per Pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
• Bio-Reactors are now a tier 1 rare technology instead of a tier 0 Technology. Bio-Reactors now reduce the food output of farmer jobs and give them a small amount of energy output
• Bio-Trophy buildings no longer provide Artisan Drone and Maintenance Drone jobs
• Decreased the amount of research produced by unemployed pops with Utopian Abundance
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies now provide Prosperity Preachers for MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers for regular Spiritualist MegaCorps
• First League Offices now provide Prosperity Preacher jobs for Spiritualist MegaCorps
• Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
• Gospel of the Masses now provides +1 Trade Value to Prosperity Preachers (both inside their empire and those on planet on which they have branch offices)
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies
• Increased the cost of the Rock Potential special project to 1000 energy to account for Stellaris Inflation
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions
• Lost Colony Parents now spawn with more developed colonies to avoid overcrowding on their capital.
• Machine Intelligences with a biological secondary species now have a base food income of 10 food/month, and without a secondary species or with a Lithoid secondary species, they now have a base mineral income of 10 minerals/month.
• Moved habitat upkeep modifiers from the domination opener to the expansion opener. Available for all, not just void dwellers
• Curator leader trait now provides +10% Research Speed (was +15%) with an associated +10% Researcher Upkeep. The Survey Speed bonus remains unchanged
• Penal Colonies now provide 10 housing.
• Prosperity Preachers are now a specialist strata job
• Rebalanced leader traits gained from Ascension Paths (Psionic, Chosen One, Synthetic, Cyborg, Erudite)
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
• Reduced the amount of Naval Cap granted by technologies
• Removed most sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game
  • Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%
  • Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%
  • Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed
  • Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep
  • Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep
  • Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked
  • Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep
  • Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs
  • Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%
  • Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
  • Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs
  • Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed
  • Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs
  • Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs
  • Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs
  • Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%
  • Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs
  • Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%
• Rulers now gain 12 XP per month
• Temples now provide Prosperity Preachers for Spiritualist MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers
• The Entangled Dark Matter astral rift now completely overwrites the personality of the selected scientist if they are not psionic
• The Traumatized trait now negatively impacts Astral Rift Exploration Speed
• Tier 2 and Tier 3 Sacrificial Temples no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
• Tweaked the tiers of technologies that increase naval cap and fleet command limit
• Warpling armies now have an upkeep of 1 energy and 0.1 astral threads per month
• Empires that value other species, such as Rogue Servitors, will now get extra annoyed if you engage in genocide or necrophaging
• Gestalt empires can now sell their minor artifacts provided that they have access to the galactic market
• Marauder ships should now have a decently larger amount of armor for most shipsizes
• Refugees should now also be willing to flee to Rogue Servitors if they are welcomed as Bio-trophies
• Psychological Infertility and Existential Iteroparity can no longer be taken with the Clone Soldier or Ascended Clone Soldier trait.
• Two of the three habitable planets in the Trappist system are now terraforming candidates
• The "Tragula's Cross", "Trin's Promise" and "Loh" systems are now mutually exclusive on galaxy generation
• The Science Ship as a Concept now uses psionic components instead of whichever components your empire has researched

Bugfixes

• Added missing class name and icon in the leader upkeep tooltip
• Added missing required components to the Marauder Galleon
• Added new localization and triggers for Machine Empires exploring the Rift World origin.
• Armies now disband instantly instead of waiting for next tick
• Cordyceptic Empires that only had Subspace Drives on their ships are now also capable of reanimating space fauna
• Corrected draw weight for Shipbreaker trait
• Corrected modifiers on Agrarian Upbringing
• Corrected some trait names
• Corrected the Scout Wing using the wrong 3d entities
• Correctly locked a number of Delegate GalCom focus traits to require the DLC that unlocks their resolution category
• Diplo action tooltip now shows why we can't claim any systems
• distar.1081 will no longer spawn pops on colonies in progress
• Driven Assimilators with the Protected Pre-Sapients policy will no longer purge pre-sapients
• Empires with the Mechromancy AP can no longer purge cyborg zombies
• Event windows now correctly have no effect after the player has been defeated
• Extra trait points for script-generated species are now added correctly
• Fix countries created by `create_country` script command not having any leaders in their recruitment pool
• Fix duplicate ship role buttons when switching ship templates in ship designer
• Fix not being able to exit the game or return to menu when certain other UI windows were open
• Fix some leaders (e.g. paragons) getting a trait pick when you hire them even though they should not, how greedy!
• Fixed a number of opposite trait pairs not taking into account their leveled versions
• Fixed a string being undefined in the ruler designer menu
• Fixed an Astral Rift calling the Baol for Boal or was it the other way around?
• Fixed an error that prevented some Fallen Empire task events from firing
• Fixed cyborg zombies having a 100% chance of spawning instead of 33%
• Fixed default weights for pre-sapient policies
• Fixed Discoveries tab not being displayed when tabs order has been customized
• Fixed gestalt scientists getting research expertise traits when those traits had no effect for them
• Fixed heirs being able to have the Planar Theorist trait despite not being capable of exploring astral rifts
• Fixed incorrect weapon effect being used for the World Cracker
• Fixed invalid scope allowing pre-sapient pops to be turned into cyborg zombies
• Fixed issues with leaders assigned to armies or fleet that contain armies
• Fixed leaders sometimes getting invalid trait choices on level up
• Fixed missing 0 on Collaborator II
• Fixed missing message title for Restoring the Balance
• Fixed newest achievements not working on MS Store
• Fixed Orbital Bombardment planet modifier not having a tooltip if there are no other planet modifiers there
• Fixed possibility of leader trait picks including opposites of existing traits
• Fixed Revolutionary Medi-Gel not affecting Pharma State civic production for Medical Workers
• Fixed systems at the bottom of the map spawning at wrong coordinates
• Fixed the Shared Burdens tooltip being outdated and mentioning additional unity from the Egalitarian faction
• Fixed Unity Ambitions referencing their pre-Unity rework state.
• Fixed Urbanist being both a Destiny trait and a Veteran trait (which prevented it from being available as a trait pick)
• Fleets of countries without ship_disengagement = yes (e.g. Horde) now correctly cannot use emergency retreat
• Former Satrapies of the Khan should no longer be informed twice when the new Horde forms.
• Hiring Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer hires a mysterious clone of them instead
• If the Knights Keep is hit with a Pacifier Colossus there will now be unique event text
• It now costs 200 influence to abandon planets even if they have pre-sapients living there.
• Livestock slaves now inherit farmer and miner modifiers as appropriate.
• Making sure the negative situation outliner notifications only happens for negative situations
• Modifiers to empire-wide resource production now apply to resources generated through trade policies
• Removed reference to a loc key inside of an Under One Rule event.
• Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer lose Council traits when hired by gestalt empires.
• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events
• Replaced all sources of "is_leading_research = x" with "is_head_of_research" fixing numerous broken events and scopes
• Replaced one of the descriptions being reused for the Old Gods event chain
• Show turrets correctly on the Maven Cruiser and Caravaneer ships
• Sobek will no longer be confused and think that they came from your capital
• Species habitability for randomized empires is now correctly set for origins like shattered ring
• Stellar Culture Shock will now be applied to hive pre-FTLs if you are a hive empire.
• Terraforming a Barren World into a Machine or a Hive World will no longer fill that world with blockers
• Terraforming straight into a Hive or a Machine World now correctly removes "Terraforming Candidate"
• The astral rifts now correctly checks for Chosen One traits in addition to the Psionic trait
• The Azizians event can no longer target planets that are under colonization
• The chance to gain negative leader traits depending on leader age now takes into account leader lifespan
• The Ranger Lodge will now properly produce +2 and +3 additional unity as the higher tier of Environmentalist Galactic Community Resolutions are passed.
• The Speed Demon anomaly will no longer show up for Synthetic empires.
• Updated the hire_event_leader_effect scripted effect to take account of the the Eternal Throne relic
• Updated the tooltip for Universal Prosperity Mandate to mention the Employee Ownership living standard
• When the "Prohibit Separate Treaties" federation law is enable it should now correctly remove treaties from both parties and not only the outside one
• When transferring ships from one fleet to another, the fleet's leader will now always stay on the old fleet
• The Expel Corporation war goal now also removes Branch Offices belonging to the defender from your allies' planets
• A supremely unlucky pre-FTL nation should no longer be able to have multiple machine uprisings if they fight off the first one
• The Atomic Clock event will now properly trigger after 42 years and 3 days following the superior Stellaris Standard Calendar, which has 360 day years
• Authoritarianism should no longer become more popular because you have egalitarian councilors
• Become the Crisis AI empires will now always decline becoming vassals to awakened empires
• Fixed a rare case where the Shard would not turn hostile against the player
• Fixed a rare error that would occur if your scientist who finished a dig site died before you clicked the final dig site event
• Fixed the checks for the Debris Field anomaly making it rarer than it should be
• Fixed the Lush Planet Anomaly requiring Sol to have spawned, also updated the event rewards to work in a tileless Stellaris
• Hyperlanes should no longer get attached to sealed systems
• Imperial Fiefdom AI will no longer consider subjects to be viable overlords when they are looking for one
• The Fleet Maneuvers event can no longer happen in capital systems
• The Horizon Signal Event Chain will now correctly prioritize your head of research for narrative events
• The Manifesti event chain will now properly end if you apprehend them early enough
• The puddle technician drone job is now properly a drone job
• The Sentinel Order should no longer spawn in systems not connected to the rest of the galaxy, leaving everyone else to deal with the Prethoryn
• Upscaling the Messenger will now properly remove the negative modifiers from the ships
• Vultaumar III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits
• Irass III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits, while Irass VIII has gained its missing exotic gases
• AI UNE should no longer spawn if there is already an empire using the Sol initializer.
• Fixed a rare instance of a possible divide by 0 during rebellions
• Fixed orders for jump-drive-only ships being queued in the wrong order.
• Fixed Skrand Sharpbeak being unassigned from his ship after you hire him
• Fixed Skrand Sharpbeak having an excess of traits
• Fixed some issues with the triggers to encounter Skrand Sharpbeak - sorry he's been a bit shy recently
• Fixes to leader generation conditions for the leader pool if there are no valid species (such as if you nerve staple your entire population)
• If the Prikkiti will now build the most advanced starbase that they can instead of always trying to build a citadel even if they don't have the technology for it.
• If you shield the final world of the Contingency you should now receive your relic.
• Kaleidoscope event chain: pre-FTL countries won't be able to receive the Kaleidoscope anymore
• Newly released vassals now get a leader pool correctly
• Research stations will no longer try to go MIA when a revolt occurs.
• The Manifesti should no longer show up before you have encountered other alien empires.

Performance

• Improved speed of AI checking whether it should send subjugation offers
• Various performance improvements

Stability

• Fixed crash when completing an Astral Rift if the exploring ship no longer exists
• Possibly fixed rare crash in galaxy map special project icon tooltip.
• Several Out of Sync fixes.
• Fixing OOS issue with planets, wormholes etc sometimes being slightly differently positioned between windows and linux.

UX

• Add assigned Leader's name and council title to archaeology view and rift view
• Additional Content tab text is centered correctly
• Clicking on a resource in the top bar now switches to that resource in the market view instead of closing it if it was already open
• Clicking on the "capped resource" notification will now take you to the correct tab depending on which resource is capped (correct market tab, relics view for minor artifacts, claims view for influence)
• Fix claim buttons being misaligned on partially or fully occupied systems
• Fix Outliner tab buttons appearing over the fleet manager sidebar on smaller resolutions
• Fixed incorrect speed value in ship designer
• Fixed Outliner tab buttons appearing in front of the archaeology window.
• Inactive leader trait triggered modifiers are shown in the tooltip along with their trigger conditions
• Remove double error message for starbase building tooltips
• Trade protection tooltip lists empire-wide modifiers
• Use up to 2 decimal places for displaying stability modifiers
• Use up to 2 decimal places for production/upkeep in building/district tooltips
• If an orbital station build order is selected, its fail text in planet tooltips no longer reveals hidden information.
• Tooltips for Galcom sanction resolutions now show the modifiers even if they're inactive.
• Tooltips for Galcom resolutions that have both triggered and non-triggered modifiers no longer show the "Modifiers" header twice.

AI

• Added better script to evaluate planet and fleet for leaders, and added description of the AI algorithms for leader assignation in the leader_classes/00_base_classes.txt
• Awakened Empires can now upgrade their starbases.
• Changed leader assignation into a single loop for all location types, sorting locations by priority and leaders by skill, then trying to assign the highest priority leader to locations in order
• Fixed AI being able to improve and harm relations at the same time
• Fixed another case of the AI assigning Leaders to invalid (empty) fleets
• Fixed the AI trying to assign military leaders to science fleets.
• Improved AI weights for Ascension Paths
• The AI now hires leaders the same way it assigns them. Expect an increased number of generals.
• The AI will evaluate a leader for a location based on the `ai_location_weight` scripted value in the leader class
• The Fear of the Dark AI empires will be less predictable with what extreme paths they might take.
• The weight value for location priority when assigning leaders is now a define. When assigning leaders, there are 2 steps, first steps leader and locations are assigned a priority value, and then each leader calculates a final weight for each location. The leader/location pair with the highest weight is then assigned. This change affects the first step (the priority in the queue), as the second step is already fully scriptable.
• Improved AI decision-making for the "Find Military Applications" Artifact Action
• Improved AI logic when it comes to when to use the Strip Mining decision
• Reduced the AI willingness to accept trade deals for food or consumer goods if they don't use those resources
• AI Hive-Mind empires now have an increased chance to research terraforming technologies since they are unlikely to get more pop types from migration pacts.
• Improved AI leader assignment weights
• The AI now decides whether to strengthen or undermine the galactic empire based on two new game rules
• The AI will no longer build additional Quantum Catapults if they already have one within 25 jumps.

Modding

• Add `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger
• Added a check for the block_homeworld_traits leader flag in all traits that provide additional jobs to the leader's background planet. This flag is not currently used in the vanilla game
• Added checked for the following leader flags to leader trait weights and potentials: block_army_traits, block_council_traits, block_federation_traits, block_galcom_traits, block_governor_traits, block_pilot_traits these flags set the selection weight for leader traits in their category to 0 but are ignored if the leader has a subclass specializing in the category. These flags are currently unused in the vanilla game
• Added game rule 'can_ai_assign_governor' to let the AI decide if a planet can have a governor or not
• Added NON_PARAGON_TRAIT_OPTIONS_ON_LEVEL_UP define
• Added not_potential_override_text_key parameter to triggered modifier (currently used in leader trait tooltips and galcom resolutions)
• Added on_army_disbanded on_action
• Added show_if_not_potential parameter to triggered modifier (currently used in leader trait tooltips and galcom resolutions)
• Added text_offset variable to buttonType (only used for buttons that have both a sprite and text)
• Added the "is_urban_planet" scripted trigger for pc_relic and pc_city planets
• leader_class trigger can now appear in tooltips
• Renamed LEADER_RULER_MONARCH_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_RULER_EXPERIENCE and LEADER_RULER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE
• Replaced "negative", "subclass_trait", "destiny_trait" and "veteran_class_locked_trait" leader trait variables with "leader_trait_type"
• Updated documentation for create_species effect
• Updated LEADER_GOVERNOR_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_ASSIGNED_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE
• Fixed "remove_deposit" effect not working in a deposit scope, fixing orbitals not removing their bonus to habitats when destroyed
• Replaced the loc string used to select a background for Paragon portraits with an asset selector.
• can_generate_military_leader_from_pop now includes the requirements of can_generate_leader_from_pop, which are now in the can_be_leader scripted trigger.

Release notes marked with the symbol were made with the assistance of our modding community. Special thanks to Ariphaos, Fireprince, Risa, alexrider903, ECHO, Roverstorm, jasonpepe, SirBlackAxe, Glavius, Salvor, OldEnt, Harain, and The24thDS for making Stellaris a better game.

Please note that save file compatibility between versions is not guaranteed. If you have an important game going in a previous version, please back up the save file before trying to load the save in 3.11.1. You can roll back to a prior version by right-clicking on Stellaris in your library -> Properties -> Betas -> choose the desired version from the drop-down. If you experience crashing or other issues, first disable all mods and start a new save. If the issue persists, please report it on the Bug Report forums.

[ 2024-02-27 09:14:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! Weve hit our code freeze, so barring unforeseen circumstances, the 3.11 Eridanus update will be released next Tuesday, on February 27th.

Preliminary Release Notes

As promised, here are the preliminary release notes. Release Notes prefaced with a symbol had community involvement from our modders, and Ive placed changes that have been merged since last weeks dev diary at the end of each section and marked them with a .

3.11 ERIDANUS CUSTODIAN UPDATE PRELIMINARY RELEASE NOTES

Feature

• Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider added to galaxy generation. This slider adjusts technology costs based on tier and game difficulty.

Improvements

• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)
• Added the Seedom system.
• Allowed conversion between Sovereign Guardianship and Corporate Protectorate civics
• Dimensional Locks now forbid access to countries without communications
• Every participant in a war now gets a truce with the others after it ends, even if they were on the same side
• If you have a colony in a system when pre-FTLs become space faring you can apologize and annex them
• Progenitor Hive speed malus and bonuses now only affect military ships, removing the need of science ship escorts
• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup
• The Anglers civic now swaps to Trawling Operations if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
• The Eager Explorers civic now swaps to Privatized Exploration if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
• The Eager Explorers, Privatized Exploration and Exploration Protocols civics can be removed and readded after researching Jump Drives. The Stargazers civic cannot be removed as it is linked to the species trait of the same name
• The Foreign Consciousness trait is now a destiny trait
• When the Khan awakens the event will now properly have a go to button
• Gangsters should no longer assassinate Chosen Ones or Legendary leaders
• If a Zombie or Nerve Stapled pop manages to lie on their resume and become a specialist or ruler they should be demoted much faster
• Xenophobic leaders are now half as likely to accept brainslugs while Xenophilic ones are twice as likely to accept them
• Improved spawning logic for anomalies that clear deposits to not spawn on planets with strategic resources
• Added the old AI crisis diplomatic room to the list of selectable diplomatic rooms
• Rearranged the room selector priorities so that AI empires shouldn't lose special diplomatic rooms
  • Set the old AI crisis diplomatic room to be used by Determined Exterminators
  • Set the "scrappy room" to be used by the Ketlings
  • Set the "gilded room" to be used the AI overlord for the Imperial Fiefdom origin
  • Set the "organic room" to be used by Devouring Swarms

Balance

• All pop types will now be happy while living on a gaia world.
• Added a tier 2 Advanced Bio-Reactor technology and building. Advanced Bio-Reactors further reduce the food output of farmers in exchange for a small amount of exotic gas output
• Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin
• Ascension Theory is now a Tier 4 technology that requires at least 6 traditions trees to have been completed to be drawn
• Balance adjustments to the Knights of the Toxic God to make some of their behavior behave the same way as other economic bonuses in the game, and make more of the choices in the chain potentially relevant.
• Event options in the Knights' quest that improve their capital have been significantly buffed to be better balanced compared to the options that improve knight jobs:

• Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
• Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
• Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
• Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% per Squire not 2% per Squire
• The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight

• The Orders X-Calibrator planetary feature on their starting habitat now also provides -10% Pop Upkeep

• The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per Pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
• Bio-Reactors are now a tier 1 rare technology instead of a tier 0 Technology. Bio-Reactors now reduce the food output of farmer jobs and give them a small amount of energy output
• Bio-Trophy buildings no longer provide Artisan Drone and Maintenance Drone jobs
• Decreased the amount of research produced by unemployed pops with Utopian Abundance
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies now provide Prosperity Preachers for MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers for regular Spiritualist MegaCorps
• First League Offices now provide Prosperity Preacher jobs for Spiritualist MegaCorps
• Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
• Gospel of the Masses now provides +1 Trade Value to Prosperity Preachers (both inside their empire and those on planet on which they have branch offices)
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies
• Increased the cost of the Rock Potential special project to 1000 energy to account for Stellaris Inflation
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions
• Lost Colony Parents now spawn with more developed colonies to avoid overcrowding on their capital.
• Machine Intelligences with a biological secondary species now have a base food income of 10 food/month, and without a secondary species or with a Lithoid secondary species, they now have a base mineral income of 10 minerals/month.
• Moved habitat upkeep modifiers from the domination opener to the expansion opener. Available for all, not just void dwellers
• Curator leader trait now provides +10% Research Speed (was +15%) with an associated +10% Researcher Upkeep. The Survey Speed bonus remains unchanged
• Penal Colonies now provide 10 housing.
• Prosperity Preachers are now a specialist strata job
• Rebalanced leader traits gained from Ascension Paths (Psionic, Chosen One, Synthetic, Cyborg, Erudite)
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
• Reduced the amount of Naval Cap granted by technologies
• Removed most sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game
  • Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%
  • Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%
  • Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed
  • Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep
  • Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep
  • Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked
  • Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep
  • Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs
  • Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%
  • Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
  • Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs
  • Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed
  • Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs
  • Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs
  • Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs
  • Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%
  • Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs
  • Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%
• Rulers now gain 12 XP per month
• Temples now provide Prosperity Preachers for Spiritualist MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers
• The Entangled Dark Matter astral rift now completely overwrites the personality of the selected scientist if they are not psionic
• The Traumatized trait now negatively impacts Astral Rift Exploration Speed
• Tier 2 and Tier 3 Sacrificial Temples no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
• Tweaked the tiers of technologies that increase naval cap and fleet command limit
• Warpling armies now have an upkeep of 1 energy and 0.1 astral threads per month
• Empires that value other species, such as Rogue Servitors, will now get extra annoyed if you engage in genocide or necrophaging
• Gestalt empires can now sell their minor artifacts provided that they have access to the galactic market
• Marauder ships should now have a decently larger amount of armor for most shipsizes
• Refugees should now also be willing to flee to Rogue Servitors if they are welcomed as Bio-trophies
• Psychological Infertility and Existential Iteroparity can no longer be taken with the Clone Soldier or Ascended Clone Soldier trait.
• Two of the three habitable planets in the Trappist system are now terraforming candidates
• The "Tragula's Cross", "Trin's Promise" and "Loh" systems are now mutually exclusive on galaxy generation
• The Science Ship as a Concept now uses psionic components instead of whichever components your empire has researched

Bugfixes

• Added missing class name and icon in the leader upkeep tooltip
• Added missing required components to the Marauder Galleon
• Added new localization and triggers for Machine Empires exploring the Rift World origin.
• Armies now disband instantly instead of waiting for next tick
• Cordyceptic Empires that only had Subspace Drives on their ships are now also capable of reanimating space fauna
• Corrected draw weight for Shipbreaker trait
• Corrected modifiers on Agrarian Upbringing
• Corrected some trait names
• Corrected the Scout Wing using the wrong 3d entities
• Correctly locked a number of Delegate GalCom focus traits to require the DLC that unlocks their resolution category
• Diplo action tooltip now shows why we can't claim any systems
• distar.1081 will no longer spawn pops on colonies in progress
• Driven Assimilators with the Protected Pre-Sapients policy will no longer purge pre-sapients
• Empires with the Mechromancy AP can no longer purge cyborg zombies
• Event windows now correctly have no effect after the player has been defeated
• Extra trait points for script-generated species are now added correctly
• Fix countries created by `create_country` script command not having any leaders in their recruitment pool
• Fix duplicate ship role buttons when switching ship templates in ship designer
• Fix not being able to exit the game or return to menu when certain other UI windows were open
• Fix some leaders (e.g. paragons) getting a trait pick when you hire them even though they should not, how greedy!
• Fixed a number of opposite trait pairs not taking into account their leveled versions
• Fixed a string being undefined in the ruler designer menu
• Fixed an Astral Rift calling the Baol for Boal or was it the other way around?
• Fixed an error that prevented some Fallen Empire task events from firing
• Fixed cyborg zombies having a 100% chance of spawning instead of 33%
• Fixed default weights for pre-sapient policies
• Fixed Discoveries tab not being displayed when tabs order has been customized
• Fixed gestalt scientists getting research expertise traits when those traits had no effect for them
• Fixed heirs being able to have the Planar Theorist trait despite not being capable of exploring astral rifts
• Fixed incorrect weapon effect being used for the World Cracker
• Fixed invalid scope allowing pre-sapient pops to be turned into cyborg zombies
• Fixed issues with leaders assigned to armies or fleet that contain armies
• Fixed leaders sometimes getting invalid trait choices on level up
• Fixed missing 0 on Collaborator II
• Fixed missing message title for Restoring the Balance
• Fixed newest achievements not working on MS Store
• Fixed Orbital Bombardment planet modifier not having a tooltip if there are no other planet modifiers there
• Fixed possibility of leader trait picks including opposites of existing traits
• Fixed Revolutionary Medi-Gel not affecting Pharma State civic production for Medical Workers
• Fixed systems at the bottom of the map spawning at wrong coordinates
• Fixed the Shared Burdens tooltip being outdated and mentioning additional unity from the Egalitarian faction
• Fixed Unity Ambitions referencing their pre-Unity rework state.
• Fixed Urbanist being both a Destiny trait and a Veteran trait (which prevented it from being available as a trait pick)
• Fleets of countries without ship_disengagement = yes (e.g. Horde) now correctly cannot use emergency retreat
• Former Satrapies of the Khan should no longer be informed twice when the new Horde forms.
• Hiring Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer hires a mysterious clone of them instead
• If the Knights Keep is hit with a Pacifier Colossus there will now be unique event text
• It now costs 200 influence to abandon planets even if they have pre-sapients living there.
• Livestock slaves now inherit farmer and miner modifiers as appropriate.
• Making sure the negative situation outliner notifications only happens for negative situations
• Modifiers to empire-wide resource production now apply to resources generated through trade policies
• Removed reference to a loc key inside of an Under One Rule event.
• Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer lose Council traits when hired by gestalt empires.
• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events
• Replaced all sources of "is_leading_research = x" with "is_head_of_research" fixing numerous broken events and scopes
• Replaced one of the descriptions being reused for the Old Gods event chain
• Show turrets correctly on the Maven Cruiser and Caravaneer ships
• Sobek will no longer be confused and think that they came from your capital
• Species habitability for randomized empires is now correctly set for origins like shattered ring
• Stellar Culture Shock will now be applied to hive pre-FTLs if you are a hive empire.
• Terraforming a Barren World into a Machine or a Hive World will no longer fill that world with blockers
• Terraforming straight into a Hive or a Machine World now correctly removes "Terraforming Candidate"
• The astral rifts now correctly checks for Chosen One traits in addition to the Psionic trait
• The Azizians event can no longer target planets that are under colonization
• The chance to gain negative leader traits depending on leader age now takes into account leader lifespan
• The Ranger Lodge will now properly produce +2 and +3 additional unity as the higher tier of Environmentalist Galactic Community Resolutions are passed.
• The Speed Demon anomaly will no longer show up for Synthetic empires.
• Updated the hire_event_leader_effect scripted effect to take account of the the Eternal Throne relic
• Updated the tooltip for Universal Prosperity Mandate to mention the Employee Ownership living standard
• When the "Prohibit Separate Treaties" federation law is enable it should now correctly remove treaties from both parties and not only the outside one
• When transferring ships from one fleet to another, the fleet's leader will now always stay on the old fleet
• The Expel Corporation war goal now also removes Branch Offices belonging to the defender from your allies' planets
• A supremely unlucky pre-FTL nation should no longer be able to have multiple machine uprisings if they fight off the first one
• The Atomic Clock event will now properly trigger after 42 years and 3 days following the superior Stellaris Standard Calendar, which has 360 day years
• Authoritarianism should no longer become more popular because you have egalitarian councilors
• Become the Crisis AI empires will now always decline becoming vassals to awakened empires
• Fixed a rare case where the Shard would not turn hostile against the player
• Fixed a rare error that would occur if your scientist who finished a dig site died before you clicked the final dig site event
• Fixed the checks for the Debris Field anomaly making it rarer than it should be
• Fixed the Lush Planet Anomaly requiring Sol to have spawned, also updated the event rewards to work in a tileless Stellaris
• Hyperlanes should no longer get attached to sealed systems
• Imperial Fiefdom AI will no longer consider subjects to be viable overlords when they are looking for one
• The Fleet Maneuvers event can no longer happen in capital systems
• The Horizon Signal Event Chain will now correctly prioritize your head of research for narrative events
• The Manifesti event chain will now properly end if you apprehend them early enough
• The puddle technician drone job is now properly a drone job
• The Sentinel Order should no longer spawn in systems not connected to the rest of the galaxy, leaving everyone else to deal with the Prethoryn
• Upscaling the Messenger will now properly remove the negative modifiers from the ships
• Vultaumar III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits
• Irass III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits, while Irass VIII has gained its missing exotic gases
• AI UNE should no longer spawn if there is already an empire using the Sol initializer.
• Fixed a rare instance of a possible divide by 0 during rebellions
• Fixed orders for jump-drive-only ships being queued in the wrong order.
• Fixed Skrand Sharpbeak being unassigned from his ship after you hire him
• Fixed Skrand Sharpbeak having an excess of traits
• Fixed some issues with the triggers to encounter Skrand Sharpbeak - sorry he's been a bit shy recently
• Fixes to leader generation conditions for the leader pool if there are no valid species (such as if you nerve staple your entire population)
• If the Prikkiti will now build the most advanced starbase that they can instead of always trying to build a citadel even if they don't have the technology for it.
• If you shield the final world of the Contingency you should now receive your relic.
• Kaleidoscope event chain: pre-FTL countries won't be able to receive the Kaleidoscope anymore
• Newly released vassals now get a leader pool correctly
• Research stations will no longer try to go MIA when a revolt occurs.
• The Manifesti should no longer show up before you have encountered other alien empires.

Performance

• Improved speed of AI checking whether it should send subjugation offers
• Various performance improvements

Stability

• Fixed crash when completing an Astral Rift if the exploring ship no longer exists
• Possibly fixed rare crash in galaxy map special project icon tooltip.
• Several Out of Sync fixes.
• Fixing OOS issue with planets, wormholes etc sometimes being slightly differently positioned between windows and linux.

UX

• Add assigned Leader's name and council title to archaeology view and rift view
• Additional Content tab text is centered correctly
• Clicking on a resource in the top bar now switches to that resource in the market view instead of closing it if it was already open
• Clicking on the "capped resource" notification will now take you to the correct tab depending on which resource is capped (correct market tab, relics view for minor artifacts, claims view for influence)
• Fix claim buttons being misaligned on partially or fully occupied systems
• Fix Outliner tab buttons appearing over the fleet manager sidebar on smaller resolutions
• Fixed incorrect speed value in ship designer
• Fixed Outliner tab buttons appearing in front of the archaeology window.
• Inactive leader trait triggered modifiers are shown in the tooltip along with their trigger conditions
• Remove double error message for starbase building tooltips
• Trade protection tooltip lists empire-wide modifiers
• Use up to 2 decimal places for displaying stability modifiers
• Use up to 2 decimal places for production/upkeep in building/district tooltips
• If an orbital station build order is selected, its fail text in planet tooltips no longer reveals hidden information.
• Tooltips for Galcom sanction resolutions now show the modifiers even if they're inactive.
• Tooltips for Galcom resolutions that have both triggered and non-triggered modifiers no longer show the "Modifiers" header twice.

AI

• Added better script to evaluate planet and fleet for leaders, and added description of the AI algorithms for leader assignation in the leader_classes/00_base_classes.txt
• Awakened Empires can now upgrade their starbases.
• Changed leader assignation into a single loop for all location types, sorting locations by priority and leaders by skill, then trying to assign the highest priority leader to locations in order
• Fixed AI being able to improve and harm relations at the same time
• Fixed another case of the AI assigning Leaders to invalid (empty) fleets
• Fixed the AI trying to assign military leaders to science fleets.
• Improved AI weights for Ascension Paths
• The AI now hires leaders the same way it assigns them. Expect an increased number of generals.
• The AI will evaluate a leader for a location based on the `ai_location_weight` scripted value in the leader class
• The Fear of the Dark AI empires will be less predictable with what extreme paths they might take.
• The weight value for location priority when assigning leaders is now a define. When assigning leaders, there are 2 steps, first steps leader and locations are assigned a priority value, and then each leader calculates a final weight for each location. The leader/location pair with the highest weight is then assigned. This change affects the first step (the priority in the queue), as the second step is already fully scriptable.
• Improved AI decision-making for the "Find Military Applications" Artifact Action
• Improved AI logic when it comes to when to use the Strip Mining decision
• Reduced the AI willingness to accept trade deals for food or consumer goods if they don't use those resources
• AI Hive-Mind empires now have an increased chance to research terraforming technologies since they are unlikely to get more pop types from migration pacts.
• Improved AI leader assignment weights
• The AI now decides whether to strengthen or undermine the galactic empire based on two new game rules
• The AI will no longer build additional Quantum Catapults if they already have one within 25 jumps.

Modding

• Add `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger
• Added a check for the block_homeworld_traits leader flag in all traits that provide additional jobs to the leader's background planet. This flag is not currently used in the vanilla game
• Added checked for the following leader flags to leader trait weights and potentials: block_army_traits, block_council_traits, block_federation_traits, block_galcom_traits, block_governor_traits, block_pilot_traits these flags set the selection weight for leader traits in their category to 0 but are ignored if the leader has a subclass specializing in the category. These flags are currently unused in the vanilla game
• Added game rule 'can_ai_assign_governor' to let the AI decide if a planet can have a governor or not
• Added NON_PARAGON_TRAIT_OPTIONS_ON_LEVEL_UP define
• Added not_potential_override_text_key parameter to triggered modifier (currently used in leader trait tooltips and galcom resolutions)
• Added on_army_disbanded on_action
• Added show_if_not_potential parameter to triggered modifier (currently used in leader trait tooltips and galcom resolutions)
• Added text_offset variable to buttonType (only used for buttons that have both a sprite and text)
• Added the "is_urban_planet" scripted trigger for pc_relic and pc_city planets
• leader_class trigger can now appear in tooltips
• Renamed LEADER_RULER_MONARCH_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_RULER_EXPERIENCE and LEADER_RULER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE
• Replaced "negative", "subclass_trait", "destiny_trait" and "veteran_class_locked_trait" leader trait variables with "leader_trait_type"
• Updated documentation for create_species effect
• Updated LEADER_GOVERNOR_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_ASSIGNED_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE
• Fixed "remove_deposit" effect not working in a deposit scope, fixing orbitals not removing their bonus to habitats when destroyed
• Replaced the loc string used to select a background for Paragon portraits with an asset selector.
• can_generate_military_leader_from_pop now includes the requirements of can_generate_leader_from_pop, which are now in the can_be_leader scripted trigger.

Release notes marked with the symbol were made with the assistance of our modding community. Special thanks to Ariphaos, Fireprince, Risa, alexrider903, ECHO, Roverstorm, jasonpepe, SirBlackAxe, Glavius, Savlor, OldEnt, Harain, and The24thDS for making Stellaris a better game.

Q&A, Tonight!

Tonight from 15:30 to 17 CET the Stellaris dev team will be available to answer your questions on the Official Stellaris Discord server.

Next Week

As the 3.11 Eridanus release will be coming on Tuesday, Im planning on moving next weeks dev diary to coincide with the release. See you then!

[ 2024-02-22 12:00:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hi everyone! Last week we went over some Community fixes that we are incorporating in the 3.11 Eridanus update. Today well be looking at some of the changes the Custodians have been up to. This is not an exhaustive list as while were rapidly approaching Code Freeze, it hasnt hit quite yet so bugs are still being worked on.

Bugs, Balance, and Polish

As Ive mentioned previously, for the Eridanus update we focused mostly on bugfixing and polish.

3.11 ERIDANUS CUSTODIAN UPDATE NOTES (EXCLUDING COMMUNITY FIXES)

Feature

• Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider added to galaxy generation. This slider adjusts technology costs based on tier and game difficulty.

Improvements

• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)
• Added the Seddom system.
• Allowed conversion between Sovereign Guardianship and Corporate Protectorate civics
• Dimensional Locks now forbid access to countries without communications
• Every participant in a war now gets a truce with the others after it ends, even if they were on the same side
• If you have a colony in a system when pre-FTLs become space faring you can apologize and annex them
• Progenitor Hive speed malus and bonuses now only affect military ships, removing the need of science ship escorts
• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup
• The Anglers civic now swaps to Trawling Operations if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
• The Eager Explorers civic now swaps to Privatized Exploration if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
• The Eager Explorers, Privatized Exploration and Exploration Protocols civics can be removed and readded after researching Jump Drives. The Stargazers civic cannot be removed as it is linked to the species trait of the same name
• The Foreign Consciousness trait is now a destiny trait
• When the Khan awakens the event will now properly have a go to button

Balance

• All pop types will now be happy while living on a gaia world.
• Added a tier 2 Advanced Bio-Reactor technology and building. Advanced Bio-Reactors further reduce the food output of farmers in exchange for a small amount of exotic gas output
• Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin
• Ascension Theory is now a Tier 4 technology that requires at least 6 traditions trees to have been completed to be drawn
• Bio-Reactors are now a tier 1 rare technology instead of a tier 0 Technology. Bio-Reactors now reduce the food output of farmer jobs and give them a small amount of energy output
• Bio-Trophy buildings no longer provide Artisan Drone and Maintenance Drone jobs
• Decreased the amount of research produced by unemployed pops with Utopian Abundance
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies now provide Prosperity Preachers for MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers for regular Spiritualist MegaCorps
• Event options in the Knights' quest that improve their capital have been buffed to be better balanced compared to the options that improve knight jobs
• First League Offices now provide Prosperity Preacher jobs for Spiritualist MegaCorps
• Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
• Gospel of the Masses now provides +1 Trade Value to Prosperity Preachers (both inside their empire and those on planet on which they have branch offices)
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies
• Increased the cost of the Rock Potential special project to 1000 energy to account for Stellaris Inflation
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions
• Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
• Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
• Lost Colony Parents now spawn with more developed colonies to avoid overcrowding on their capital.
• Machine Intelligences with a biological secondary species now have a base food income of 10 food/month, and without a secondary species or with a Lithoid secondary species, they now have a base mineral income of 10 minerals/month.
• Moved habitat upkeep modifiers from the domination opener to the expansion opener. Available for all, not just void dwellers
• Curator leader trait now provides +10% Research Speed (was +15%) with an associated +10% Researcher Upkeep. The Survey Speed bonus remains unchanged
• Penal Colonies now provide 10 housing.
• Prosperity Preachers are now a specialist strata job
• Rebalanced leader traits gained from Ascension Paths (Psionic, Chosen One, Synthetic, Cyborg, Erudite)
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
• Reduced the amount of Naval Cap granted by technologies
• Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
• Removed most sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game
  • Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%
  • Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%
  • Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed
  • Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep
  • Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep
  • Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked
  • Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep
  • Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs
  • Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%
  • Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
  • Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs
  • Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed
  • Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs
  • Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs
  • Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs
  • Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%
  • Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs
  • Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%
• Rulers now gain 12 XP per month
• Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% per Squire not 2% per Squire
• Temples now provide Prosperity Preachers for Spiritualist MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers
• The Entangled Dark Matter astral rift now completely overwrites the personality of the selected scientist if they are not psionic
• The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per Pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
• The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
• The Traumatized trait now negatively impacts Astral Rift Exploration Speed
• Tier 2 and Tier 3 Sacrificial Temples no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
• Tweaked the tiers of technologies that increase naval cap and fleet command limit
• Warpling armies now have an upkeep of 1 energy and 0.1 astral threads per month

Bugfixes

• Added missing class name and icon in the leader upkeep tooltip
• Added missing required components to the Marauder Galleon
• Added new localization and triggers for Machine Empires exploring the Rift World origin.
• Armies now disband instantly instead of waiting for next tick
• Cordyceptic Empires that only had Subspace Drives on their ships are now also capable of reanimating space fauna
• Corrected draw weight for Shipbreaker trait
• Corrected modifiers on Agrarian Upbringing
• Corrected some trait names
• Corrected the Scout Wing using the wrong 3d entities
• Correctly locked a number of Delegate GalCom focus traits to require the DLC that unlocks their resolution category
• Diplo action tooltip now shows why we can't claim any systems
• distar.1081 will no longer spawn pops on colonies in progress
• Driven Assimilators with the Protected Pre-Sapients policy will no longer purge pre-sapients
• Empires with the Mechromancy AP can no longer purge cyborg zombies
• Event windows now correctly have no effect after the player has been defeated
• Extra trait points for script-generated species are now added correctly
• Fix countries created by `create_country` script command not having any leaders in their recruitment pool
• Fix duplicate ship role buttons when switching ship templates in ship designer
• Fix not being able to exit the game or return to menu when certain other UI windows were open
• Fix some leaders (e.g. paragons) getting a trait pick when you hire them even though they should not, how greedy!
• Fixed a number of opposite trait pairs not taking into account their leveled versions
• Fixed a string being undefined in the ruler designer menu
• Fixed an Astral Rift calling the Baol for Boal or was it the other way around?
• Fixed an error that prevented some Fallen Empire task events from firing
• Fixed cyborg zombies having a 100% chance of spawning instead of 33%
• Fixed default weights for pre-sapient policies
• Fixed Discoveries tab not being displayed when tabs order has been customized
• Fixed gestalt scientists getting research expertise traits when those traits had no effect for them
• Fixed heirs being able to have the Planar Theorist trait despite not being capable of exploring astral rifts
• Fixed incorrect weapon effect being used for the World Cracker
• Fixed invalid scope allowing pre-sapient pops to be turned into cyborg zombies
• Fixed issues with leaders assigned to armies or fleet that contain armies
• Fixed leaders sometimes getting invalid trait choices on level up
• Fixed missing 0 on Collaborator II
• Fixed missing message title for Restoring the Balance
• Fixed newest achievements not working on MS Store
• Fixed Orbital Bombardment planet modifier not having a tooltip if there are no other planet modifiers there
• Fixed possibility of leader trait picks including opposites of existing traits
• Fixed Revolutionary Medi-Gel not affecting Pharma State civic production for Medical Workers
• Fixed systems at the bottom of the map spawning at wrong coordinates
• Fixed the Shared Burdens tooltip being outdated and mentioning additional unity from the Egalitarian faction
• Fixed Unity Ambitions referencing their pre-Unity rework state.
• Fixed Urbanist being both a Destiny trait and a Veteran trait (which prevented it from being available as a trait pick)
• Fleets of countries without ship_disengagement = yes (e.g. Horde) now correctly cannot use emergency retreat
• Former Satrapies of the Khan should no longer be informed twice when the new Horde forms.
• Hiring Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer hires a mysterious clone of them instead
• If the Knights Keep is hit with a Pacifier Colossus there will now be unique event text
• It now costs 200 influence to abandon planets even if they have pre-sapients living there.
• Livestock slaves now inherit farmer and miner modifiers as appropriate.
• Making sure the negative situation outliner notifications only happens for negative situations
• Modifiers to empire-wide resource production now apply to resources generated through trade policies
• Removed reference to a loc key inside of an Under One Rule event.
• Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer lose Council traits when hired by gestalt empires.
• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events
• Replaced all sources of "is_leading_research = x" with "is_head_of_research" fixing numerous broken events and scopes
• Replaced one of the descriptions being reused for the Old Gods event chain
• Show turrets correctly on the Maven Cruiser and Caravaneer ships
• Sobek will no longer be confused and think that they came from your capital
• Species habitability for randomized empires is now correctly set for origins like shattered ring
• Stellar Culture Shock will now be applied to hive pre-FTLs if you are a hive empire.
• Terraforming a Barren World into a Machine or a Hive World will no longer fill that world with blockers
• Terraforming straight into a Hive or a Machine World now correctly removes "Terraforming Candidate"
• The astral rifts now correctly checks for Chosen One traits in addition to the Psionic trait
• The Azizians event can no longer target planets that are under colonization
• The chance to gain negative leader traits depending on leader age now takes into account leader lifespan
• The Ranger Lodge will now properly produce +2 and +3 additional unity as the higher tier of Environmentalist Galactic Community Resolutions are passed.
• The Speed Demon anomaly will no longer show up for Synthetic empires.
• Updated the hire_event_leader_effect scripted effect to take account of the the Eternal Throne relic
• Updated the tooltip for Universal Prosperity Mandate to mention the Employee Ownership living standard
• When the "Prohibit Separate Treaties" federation law is enable it should now correctly remove treaties from both parties and not only the outside one
• When transferring ships from one fleet to another, the fleet's leader will now always stay on the old fleet

Performance

• Improved speed of AI checking whether it should send subjugation offers

Stability

• Fixed crash when completing an Astral Rift if the exploring ship no longer exists
• Possibly fixed rare crash in galaxy map special project icon tooltip.
• Several Out of Sync fixes.

UX

• Add assigned Leader's name and council title to archaeology view and rift view
• Additional Content tab text is centered correctly
• Clicking on a resource in the top bar now switches to that resource in the market view instead of closing it if it was already open
• Clicking on the "capped resource" notification will now take you to the correct tab depending on which resource is capped (correct market tab, relics view for minor artifacts, claims view for influence)
• Fix claim buttons being misaligned on partially or fully occupied systems
• Fix Outliner tab buttons appearing over the fleet manager sidebar on smaller resolutions
• Fixed incorrect speed value in ship designer
• Fixed Outliner tab buttons appearing in front of the archaeology window.
• Inactive leader trait triggered modifiers are shown in the tooltip along with their trigger conditions
• Remove double error message for starbase building tooltips
• Trade protection tooltip lists empire-wide modifiers
• Use up to 2 decimal places for displaying stability modifiers
• Use up to 2 decimal places for production/upkeep in building/district tooltips

AI

• Added better script to evaluate planet and fleet for leaders, and added description of the AI algorithms for leader assignation in the leader_classes/00_base_classes.txt
• Awakened Empires can now upgrade their starbases.
• Changed leader assignation into a single loop for all location types, sorting locations by priority and leaders by skill, then trying to assign the highest priority leader to locations in order
• Fixed AI being able to improve and harm relations at the same time
• Fixed another case of the AI assigning Leaders to invalid (empty) fleets
• Fixed the AI trying to assign military leaders to science fleets.
• Improved AI weights for Ascension Paths
• The AI now hires leaders the same way it assigns them. Expect an increased number of generals.
• The AI will evaluate a leader for a location based on the `ai_location_weight` scripted value in the leader class
• The Fear of the Dark AI empires will be less predictable with what extreme paths they might take.
• The weight value for location priority when assigning leaders is now a define. When assigning leaders, there are 2 steps, first steps leader and locations are assigned a priority value, and then each leader calculates a final weight for each location. The leader/location pair with the highest weight is then assigned. This change affects the first step (the priority in the queue), as the second step is already fully scriptable.

Modding

• Add `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger
• Added a check for the block_homeworld_traits leader flag in all traits that provide additional jobs to the leader's background planet. This flag is not currently used in the vanilla game
• Added checked for the following leader flags to leader trait weights and potentials: block_army_traits, block_council_traits, block_federation_traits, block_galcom_traits, block_governor_traits, block_pilot_traits these flags set the selection weight for leader traits in their category to 0 but are ignored if the leader has a subclass specializing in the category. These flags are currently unused in the vanilla game
• Added game rule 'can_ai_assign_governor' to let the AI decide if a planet can have a governor or not
• Added NON_PARAGON_TRAIT_OPTIONS_ON_LEVEL_UP define
• Added not_potential_override_text_key parameter to triggered modifier (currently only used in leader trait tooltips)
• Added on_army_disbanded on_action
• Added show_if_not_potential parameter to triggered modifier (currently only used in leader trait tooltips)
• Added text_offset variable to buttonType (only used for buttons that have both a sprite and text)
• Added the "is_urban_planet" scripted trigger for pc_relic and pc_city planets
• leader_class trigger can now appear in tooltips
• Renamed LEADER_RULER_MONARCH_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_RULER_EXPERIENCE and LEADER_RULER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE
• Replaced "negative", "subclass_trait", "destiny_trait" and "veteran_class_locked_trait" leader trait variables with "leader_trait_type"
• Updated documentation for create_species effect
• Updated LEADER_GOVERNOR_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_ASSIGNED_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE

There are a few more currently in the works.

Last Year in Review

We've assembled some fun statistics from all the Stellaris playthroughs you did in 2023. If you're interested, take a look: [previewyoutube=zMGWjVJbEjc;full][/previewyoutube]

Next Week

Next week we should have the full Eridanus release notes prepared for you. Barring unforeseen circumstances the 3.11 release is currently planned for release on Tuesday, February 27th. See you next week!

[ 2024-02-15 12:00:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hi all! When we first announced the 3.11 Eridanus update, we mentioned that for the patch the Custodian team would be largely focused on fixing bugs rather than new features. As part of this initiative, PDS_Iggy reached out to some community modders and incorporated some of their fixes into the base game. I wanted to spend today highlighting their contributions.

Community Fixes

Some changes from these mods are being partially incorporated into the base game in the 3.11 Eridanus update: Ariphaos Unofficial Patch Developed by Ariphaos with assistance from Fireprince, and incorporates multiple other mods:

• Risa's Unofficial Patch by Risa
• Bug Fixes by alexrider903
• Bugfixes by ECHO
• Community Flash Patch by Roverstorm
• Modifiers fix by jasonpepe
• Unofficial Bug Patch by SirBlackAxe
• Glavius AI by Glavius
• StarNet by Savlor with assistance from OldEnt

VanillaFixes Developed by Harain with support from The24thDS In some cases, we re-implemented their fixes or chose not to include some changes for various reasons, but we want to thank the community for being so active in helping us find and fix issues. We have marked the community contributed bugfixes with the symbol in the patch notes in order to give proper credit for them. The list of community fixes that we will be incorporating in 3.11 is as follows:

Incorporated Community Fixes

Improvement

• Gangsters should no longer assassinate Chosen Ones or Legendary leaders
• If a Zombie or Nerve Stapled pop manages to lie on their resume and become a specialist or ruler they should be demoted much faster
• Xenophobic leaders are now half as likely to accept brainslugs while Xenophilic ones are twice as likely to accept them
• Improved spawning logic for anomalies that clear deposits to not spawn on planets with strategic resources

Balance

• Empires that value other species, such as Rogue Servitors, will now get extra annoyed if you engage in genocide or necrophaging
• Gestalt empires can now sell their minor artifacts provided that they have access to the galactic market
• Marauder ships should now have a decently larger amount of armor for most shipsizes
• Refugees should now also be willing to flee to Rogue Servitors if they are welcomed as Bio-trophies

Bugfixes

• The Expel Corporation war goal now also removes Branch Offices belonging to the defender from your allies' planets
• A supremely unlucky pre-FTL nation should no longer be able to have multiple machine uprisings if they fight off the first one
• The Atomic Clock event will now properly trigger after 42 years and 3 days following the superior Stellaris Standard Calendar, which has 360 day years
• Authoritarianism should no longer become more popular because you have egalitarian councilors
• Become the Crisis AI empires will now always decline becoming vassals to awakened empires
• Fixed a rare case where the Shard would not turn hostile against the player
• Fixed a rare error that would occur if your scientist who finished a dig site died before you clicked the final dig site event
• Fixed the checks for the Debris Field anomaly making it rarer than it should be
• Fixed the Lush Planet Anomaly requiring Sol to have spawned, also updated the event rewards to work in a tileless Stellaris
• Hyperlanes should no longer get attached to sealed systems
• Imperial Fiefdom AI will no longer consider subjects to be viable overlords when they are looking for one
• The Fleet Maneuvers event can no longer happen in capital systems
• The Horizon Signal Event Chain will now correctly prioritize your head of research for narrative events
• The Manifesti event chain will now properly end if you apprehend them early enough
• The puddle technician drone job is now properly a drone job
• The Sentinel Order should no longer spawn in systems not connected to the rest of the galaxy, leaving everyone else to deal with the Prethoryn
• Upscaling the Messenger will now properly remove the negative modifiers from the ships
• Vultaumar III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits
• Irass III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits, while Irass VIII has gained its missing exotic gases

AI

• Improved AI decision-making for the "Find Military Applications" Artifact Action
• Improved AI logic when it comes to when to use the Strip Mining decision
• Reduced the AI willingness to accept trade deals for food or consumer goods if they don't use those resources
• AI Hive-Mind empires now have an increased chance to research terraforming technologies since they are unlikely to get more pop types from migration pacts.

Thank you for your assistance in making the galaxy a better place. Keep an eye out for the Seddom system when 3.11 arrives.

Next Week

The Custodian team has been burning down the bug queue at a nice rate, so next week well go over some of the fixes they're adding in 3.11.

[ 2024-02-08 12:00:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! Its been two weeks, so lets get straight into the good stuff.

Summary of Results

Much like the first Technology Open Beta, very experienced players formed the bulk of respondents. This time it was closer to 72% of responses coming from players with over 1,000 hours in game. (Only 1.4% said they had less than 300 hours in Stellaris, so the survey skewed very much towards our most passionate players.) Thank you all for your feedback and help. This time, a majority of players rated technology progress as just right, with the remainder almost perfectly evenly split between it being too fast or too slow, with a majority consensus that the changes were beneficial overall. Many players missed the breakthrough technologies and the general opinion tended to lean towards us pulling back a little too far. Many players commented that they liked how technology tiers 3 and higher felt more impactful, but lamented that with the removal of breakthroughs, tier 2 sort of melded into tier 1 technologies. There was also quite a spirited discussion on the Stellaris forums regarding the pros and cons of galaxy generation sliders and their effects on new players. Our general philosophy is that it is better to permit more customization of your play experience than less, but that the default settings should be a positive play experience for inexperienced players. New players tend not to adjust the sliders much, while veterans tend to have more understanding of the exact effects of the various settings and can customize their game to satisfy their needs - but the default settings, except for difficulty, should be sufficient for an enjoyable game. We do agree that the galaxy settings screen has grown a significant amount over the years and could benefit from some reworking, and will be placing that task on the Custodian to-do list for sometime in the future.

Next Steps

Overall, I consider the Technology Open Betas a significant success. We gathered a lot of useful information and feedback, and it gave us the chance to experiment with some systems that may or may not have panned out. We will be going forward with including the changes from the second Technology Open Beta in the 3.11 Eridanus update. Breakthrough Technologies will not be coming at this time, but we may experiment with technology spread and similar effects sometime in the future. One new change well be making based on some of the data weve collected is that were moving Ascension Theory to Tier 4 from Tier 5, but it will only be available to empires that have completed at least six tradition trees. As Unity and Research are intended to be opposing resources to a degree, we did not want the capstone of Ascension based gameplay to be so strongly tied to the later game tech tree. Now lets hear about one of the other changes coming in the update.

Resort Worlds

Hello, Stellaris community. I'm Gatekeeper, a long-time modder who's ascended into being part of the Stellaris Content team. And if you know anything about what I've done in the past, I like planets. One thing I've done recently is to imagine a galaxy where Resort Worlds aren't just post-apocalyptic fortress worlds. Instead, these are vibrant, dedicated havens of rest, starkly contrasting the often harsh realities of interstellar life.
The Resort Worlds technology which permits the Create Resort World planetary decision is no longer rare, and we've lowered it to tier 2. We've updated the decisions restrictions; it no longer has a minimum planet size but can be used on planets that have upgraded capital buildings. As funny as it was (and we did it all the time), you can no longer declare a tomb or relic world a vacation paradise. A pass has also been done on what buildings are allowed on Resort Worlds.

Instead of providing perfect habitability, Clerks, and Entertainers, Resort Worlds now provide Resort Districts that give Housing, Building Slots, and Resort Worker jobs that provide Trade, and increase Amenities and Trade Value from Living Standards across all planets of your empire. This replaces the empire-wide Amenities reduction of the old version.

On behalf of the United Caphevan Commonwealth, we would like to wish you a pleasant stay on Evaggimar II.

Next Week

Next week well be looking at some of the fixes and changes going into the 3.11 Eridanus update. See you then!

[ 2024-02-01 12:00:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! I hope that you all had a pleasant holiday season, and want to start off by thanking everyone that submitted feedback regarding the Technology Open Beta. That data we gained from these experiments was invaluable, so lets get right into it.

Summary of Results

As expected, the players that responded to the survey were overwhelmingly passionate players that have a ton of experience with the game. Nearly 70% of responses come from players that have over 1,000 hours played in the game. This is somewhat natural for an opt-in beta over the holidays with an intimidating feedback form, so I wanted to thank you all again for filling it out. There was a strong consensus around the military changes (ship cost and upkeep), so well likely be keeping those mostly as-is. The technology changes were naturally more controversial. Roughly 80% of responses believed that technology (especially at higher tiers) was overall too slow in the beta, but a majority still thought that the changes were beneficial to the game overall. Several of you pointed out that so many simultaneous changes compounded too strongly, and we agree. I was happy to see that your feedback matches our expectations - we expected that the Open Beta was tuned too harshly and that we would want to pull back from it before release. The Open Beta also revealed several technical issues, including some major performance implications from how Breakthrough Technologies interacted with diplomacy.

Next Steps

Overall, I view the Technology Open Beta as a great success, and as such am taking the opportunity to update it and let it run for another few weeks, after which we will decide whether or not we want to continue experimentation, integrate it into 3.11 (or 3.12), or discard the initiative. We concur that the original Open Beta went too hard on technology. We liked some of the things we were seeing, such as tier 3 and 4 technologies becoming more valuable for an extended part of the game, but felt that it delayed other critical parts too long. Breakthrough Technologies were interesting as a slowdown mechanic, but if kept would likely need some sort of temporary (non-technology or unity related) bonuses as some form of reward for the frontrunners. The excessively high costs for late tier techs pushed some critical technologies such as Ascension Theory or Mega-Engineering too late in the game, and certain undesirable behaviors (like ignoring research entirely) were too effective. The updated Technology Open Beta should be up on stellaris_test now, with the following changes:

TECHNOLOGY OPEN BETA UPDATES

Feature

• Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider added to galaxy generation. This slider adjusts technology costs based on tier and game difficulty.

Beta

• Removed Breakthrough Technologies.
• Reverted base technology costs to their 3.10.4 values - the increased cost between tiers is now handled by the Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider.
• Removed the majority of Researcher Upkeep Modifiers introduced into the Open Beta.
• Reverted changes to Knights research output from the Open Beta.

Balance

• Tweaked the tiers of technologies that increase naval cap and fleet command limit.
• Reduced the amount of Naval Cap granted by technologies.
• Significant changes to Bio-Reactors:
  • Bio-Reactors are now a tier 1 rare technology instead of a tier 0 technology
  • Bio-Reactors now reduce the food output of farmer jobs and give them a small amount of energy output.
  • Added a tier 2 Advanced Bio-Reactor technology and building.
  • Advanced Bio-Reactors further reduce the food output of farmers in exchange for a small amount of exotic gas output.
• Decreased the amount of research produced by unemployed pops with Utopian Abundance.
• Event options in the Knights' quest that improve their capital have been buffed to be better balanced compared to the options that improve knight jobs.

At player request, we have kept the older version of the Technology Open Beta available on stellaris_test_old. It will remain there until the release of 3.11 Eridanus.

Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs

One of the frequent points of feedback was that there was concern that newer players would be hit especially hard by the technology cost changes. We also recognize that different players have different desires for the pacing of the game, so weve added another slider to galaxy generation. The Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider adjusts the base cost of technologies based on the difficulty of the game. Higher tiers of technology are affected to a greater degree than lower ones, so this slider essentially affects tier width. While this does overlap with the Technology Costs slider to a degree, it does so in a different way, so we consider each to have valid reasons to exist as separate sliders.
Disabling Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs will cause them to follow the 3.10.4 / Civilian difficulty curve. As with many other galaxy generation sliders, the Stellaris team will be balancing the game around the Normal setting.

SHOW ME MATH AND GRAPHS!

Tech Curves of basic technologies on Normal scaling, at different difficulty levels. The base cost of technologies is now based on 3.10.4s formula, y=1000*2^x, multiplied by the difficulty modifier of 1 + (q*x*d), where x=technology tier, q=difficulty adjusted tech cost galaxy setting (0 - 0.10, default 0.05), and d=difficulty (Civilian = 0, Grand Admiral = 6).
TierXCost1 technologies at different difficulties, on Normal scaling (q=0.05). For the players that enjoyed the larger amount of distance between tech tiers, scaling can go up to a maximum of Extreme, which gives Grand Admiral a curve that is similar to, but not exactly, the Open Beta numbers. Note that technology acquisition will still be faster than the old Open Beta as weve removed Breakthrough Technologies.
Tech Curves of basic technologies on Extreme scaling, at different difficulty levels.
TierXCost1 technologies at different difficulties, on Extreme scaling (q=0.10).
Previous Open Beta values for reference. We have a new feedback form for this version of the Open Beta, available here. As with the previous version, you can respond multiple times if you have different thoughts after different playthroughs. Please let us know what you think, and whether you think weve gone back too far in the other direction. Currently we're planning on collecting feedback from this phase of the Technology Open Beta for two weeks, until the 1st of February, but will leave the branches available until the 3.11 "Eridanus" update releases later on in the quarter. See you all next week! Please note that the Technology Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test - Technology Open Beta" branch. Please disable mods for the Technology Open Beta, they are likely to break. In-progress games should continue on the stellaris_test_old branch.

Leave your feedback!

----- [MrFreake enters to highjack the post] Hello everyone! Here I am again, not reading the room. Eladrin is talking about turning off your mods, and I'm here telling you to download more mods: buuuut.... #MODJAM2024 is Available Now! [previewyoutube=41BT0PYA7OE;full][/previewyoutube] Want a sneak peek at the Legendary Leaders included in #MODJAM2024? Check out the feature video: [previewyoutube=W67ElHkkT4s;full][/previewyoutube] Voting for favorite mod will run until February 11th, so there's still plenty of time to play and vote for your favorite submission here!

[ 2024-01-18 12:00:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Stellaris Community! We're proud to announce that #MODJAM2024 is available now! Get it here! [previewyoutube=41BT0PYA7OE;full][/previewyoutube] Now's the time where the Community gets to step in, and vote for your favorite submission. Vote for your favorite #MODJAM2024 Legendary Leaders here! What are the prizes, you ask? This year weve paired up again with Republic of Gamers to deliver some great prizes to our winning Modders: 1st Place: ROG Strix G17 (2023) G713 Laptop* 2nd Place: ROG Delta S Wireless Headset* 3rd Place: ROG Spatha X Wireless Mouse* 4th - 10th Place: Stellaris branded Wallet and Keychain * Exact specifications may vary depending on winning modders region Thanks to everyone for playing and voting in #MODJAM2024!

[ 2024-01-11 16:55:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

by MrFreake Hello Stellaris Community! I have to start off by saying how proud I am of all the participants this year. This year saw the most signups for Mod Jam we've ever had, the most design documents submitted, and (I think) the most final submissions. The modders have really put their all into these contributions, and I think they've turned out fantastic. I can't wait to see what you all think! The Mod Jam mod will release today around 5 PM CET! You can subscribe to the workshop mod now, and get this new content as soon as it becomes available! Today we're going to be talking about the final 11 submissions that haven't been seen, so without further ado:

Vizierch Raffar by BrettlesSr

Inspiration: I had a couple of inspirations for Raffar - one was the classic trope of the scheming vizier, so I wanted to make a leader you knew you shouldnt trust but who was rewarding enough to risk playing with fire. Then Ive added lots of ideas loosely inspired from WH40ks Necrons and Dr Whos Cybermen into the mix for good measure.

Zob, Collector of Minds by Starchitect

Inspiration: I loved collecting and tending to my leaders long before Paragons made them cool, they can be the backbone of the kind of RP focused gameplay I enjoy most. Zob takes that leader gardening instinct to the next level, as Zob only gains power as you add your own leaders and your own story to Zobs. Trait stacking can also be a fun exercise for the min-maxer in me, and Zob facilitates that in what is hopefully, a limited and manageable way.

Daniel Reinhard by Jin2188

Inspiration: Ive had the idea of this character in my head for some time, as the primary antagonist of an IP I never got onto paper. I decided to introduce the idea of Reinhards character to a wider community to see their opinions and acquire feedback. Im aware of the power fantasy of wanting to play the bad guys, and figured that this was a good way to feed into that. Religion is also an idea I wanted to explore heavily with my as-of-yet nonexistent IP, diving into some of the benefits and drawbacks with the worship of deities and spirituality in general. Reinhard represents the bad parts of religion/spirituality; the authoritarianism, the corruption of values, the blind obedience to dogma, while his counterpart, Michael Faulkner (who is mentioned in-game, and who you may encounter in a playthrough with Reinhard) represents the good aspects; the community, the moral values, and the idea of the larger collective working together for the common good. I was heavily inspired by real-world evils associated with religion, with Reinhard himself being inspired by what I believe most cult leaders to be like; con-men who dont actually believe anything theyre saying, but they say it anyway in order to gain power. Power is a central concept to Reinhards character, hes a nihilist who believes that nothing matters except securing ones own personal welfare, even at the expense of others. This mod is more of a proof of concept, since I wanted to make an expanded version where you could recruit Michael Faulkner as a leader as well, but I was only allowed to create a single recruitable leader for this ModJam, so I settled on this. I do intend to release this expanded version in the future, however.

Ursa Major by Honeytheyellowbear

The Spymaster Ralph Fasmid by bbt104

Inspiration: Our inspiration for Ralph Fasmid came from movies and shows such as Casablanca, SpyKids, Chuck, The Kingsman, and Bourne. Casablanca was our main inspiration for his design, Chuck was the inspiration for him to be exclusive to Megacorps. Bourne inspired a small event that only happens if you dismiss him.

Mictla, Whispering Aggregation by pat173

Inspiration: My inspiration for Mictla's concept originated from reading Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time trilogy, where I aimed to craft an entity that exuded a really alien and almost horror-like essence. In terms of gameplay I wanted a leader focused mainly on one or two aspects of the game. Mictla's bonuses are heavily on what you'd expect from the society group of technologies. I also wanted them to feel to stand out, so I implemented a unique way for them to level up as they don't gain experience over time. Lastly I wanted to design Mictla so that it could have an impact on the player's experience. So that if the player chose to, there would be drastic changes in your empire based on your decisions and approach with Mictla's events. We're going on an adventure!

Nar by Lithrandil2

Spirit of the Junction, by Blue Commander

The Synthmind Sage by Nepnep5150

Venerable Bubbles by Regunes

Inspiration: To be honest I prefer Cyto

Naodeus by Dredaich

Inspiration: In my pen & paper campaign (Pathfinder 1e) Naodeus is a benevolent magical being from beyond the outer realms trapped in the campaign world. Talil is a city founded by his adopted children. Right after I learned of the Paragon update I wanted to make this leader. This ModJAM was an excuse to do so. #### And that's it for the Legendary Leaders included in this year's Mod Jam, 26 in total! What do you think? Which one are you most excited to play? Just a reminder #MODJAM2024 will release at 5 PM CET today! (January 11th, 2024)

[ 2024-01-11 12:00:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Stellaris Community! Were back with another update on our annual Modder event: #MODJAM2024! Today is feature freeze for the Mod Jam. Essentially, Modders will have until 5 PM CET today to submit a feature-complete version of their submission. Its important to note at this stage, that not everything will work correctly. Modders still have another week to bugfix and polish their submissions. Would you like to help our modders test their submissions? Join us on Discord! Join the Discord, get the PC role, and then look for the #help-test-the-mod-jam channel. Later today or early tomorrow, we will be posting a link in that section of our Discord so the Community can play this content early, and each leader has a forum channel where you can report bugs directly to the modders. Today, we have another eight Legendary Leaders to highlight! These leaders range from a damaged and dormant AI Weapons Platform, to an Interdimensional Phantasm that transcends space and time.

The Forgotten One by AlexMeowler

Inspiration: The main idea of this mod is to enhance the Player Crisis gameplay, and encourage players to select the Become the Crisis ascension perk (or at least make them consider the option). To implement that idea I set two goals:

• The first goal is to make the game more dynamic (like, what if you try to play defensively and speedrun the Aetherophasic Engine?) but also with some extra additions to make it more interactive and not forcing the player to get crisis stage 5, for unlocking full mod potential, just get new tech and components and keep playing the standard game any way they want.
• The second goal was to give the player more means to really oppose the whole galaxy, all those mighty alliances and vassalages, As A True Crisis Should.

From that idea and modjam theme emerged the common idea of someone who had crisis experience, but obviously failed (because if they succeeded, none of this would have happened). The rest (dialogues, terminology, descriptions) are based on Crisis Event Chain and the information the game is giving to me, along with some cool scientific definitions from physics .

Inanis of the Void by DaGinger

Inspiration: Ive always found the concept of time dilation incredibly interesting. After bouncing around a few ideas for the modjam, this concept stuck out to me. How could it be used by an empire for their benefit? If it affects a whole planet, what would benefit? Stuff like production and growth speed? but also what downsides would it have? Increased upkeep for jobs and buildings? Would people be happy ageing at a faster speed than everywhere else? I kept asking myself these questions until eventually, I had a word document full of answers ready to be used. I also tied the story into a rare bit of lore from Stellaris that I adore which is partially related to the concept, Im sure most will understand the link if they have seen it before. Being interested in the science behind these things made it really easy to keep my motivation and interest in the mod high which certainly helped create this mod.

Professor of ZIR by Tanner

Inspiration: The main bit of inspiration for The Professor was the Stellaris tutorial AI, VIR. A few days into programming, I thought, What if VIR was an awful college professor? The idea of turning the Stellaris tutorial into an overly strict college professor, who viewed themselves as the arbiter of all knowledge was something I adored too much. As for the portrait, I chose Necroids 9 simply because its one of my favorite portraits. My friends and I have an inside joke where we obsess about the amount of eyes the portrait has. We came to a consensus that 4 eyes is not enough, so this time the portrait has 6.

Warpeo - The Dimensional Phantasm by RegiZero

The Jailer by Evereal

Inspiration: The idea that resonated most with me was the concept behind the champion Ryze from League of Legends, a lonely but powerful mage who has lived for millennia and charges himself with keeping ancient and powerful magical runes from falling into the wrong hands. I thought it would be cool to make a similarly enigmatic, but grounded, leader that also charges himself with withholding some incredibly dangerous object/entity from the galaxy. I iterated on many ideas and landed on The Jailer. This concept inspired me. Firstly, he is a character whose fundamental theme, seeking redemption, is relatable, grounded, and has a major opportunity for character growth. Secondly, there is instantly a major story hook worth exploring, what does he imprison, and why is it so dangerous? Finally, it allowed me to explore game mechanics and narratives that are IMO overlooked in Stellaris; crime, corruption and penal colonies.

Weapons Platform Asset ID-02 by bpainecraft

Inspiration: My thought process when creating the features of the mod was primarily practical. With the requirement to make something balanced and a lack of knowledge about the legendary leaders, I decided to view the Stellaris Wiki and create features similar to the existing leaders. As for the story that I created to accompany my leader, it was more a spur of the moment thing than a planned chain of events, each project and event being written based on the one before.

Ascendant Neochadamus by mem_malthus

Inspiration: Despite having been a big fan of Star Trek in the past, it happened more by coincidence/subconsciously that my leaders personality and background have big similarities with Q, and I wasnt even aware of it until someone pointed it out to me. It is never a bad thing, though, to have someone around, who can fill the entire room with his ego alone. It just gives so many more options for crazy stories you could never have with a normal character.

Convergence by The Wandering Modder

Inspiration: Inspired by the Illithids in DnD, Convergence is a psionic mastermind driven mad by the multiverse. He will sacrifice anything to complete his master plan, foiled millennia ago by the entities in the Shroud.

Heist on Dawns End by TheRingBearer

Inspiration: While the idea of trying to steal from under the very noses (if they have one) of a Fallen Empire was the core idea from the beginning. I originally wasnt sure of the leaders origin. Was he a god-king with the power of foresight trapped on a pre-ftl world, looking to recover that which was stolen from him? Or was he a charismatic criminal, looking to launch a heist that would make him the greatest thief the galaxy has ever known? After some early discussion and feedback, I ended up merging the two ideas a bit and focused a bit more on the idea of a Leader who has their own agenda which is at odds with your own, as that felt like a much more interesting take on a Legendary Leader. #### That's it for this week folks! Next week we'll be back with the release version of #MODJAM2024! And if you're interested in helping test the Modder's submissions, join us on Discord!

[ 2024-01-04 12:00:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Stellaris Community! #MODJAM2024 is well under way. This year we had over 100 modders sign up, and over 60 design documents submitted. While we aren't expecting to have 60 Legendary Leaders submitted at the end of the competition (wouldn't that be awesome though?). Today, we're going to give you the first sneak peek at the Legendary Leaders our modders are currently working on, as well as give you a peek at how the final mod package will work. The #MODJAM2024 is still currently on-pace for a January 11th, 2024 release. You can subscribe to the Mod Jam mod and get this content as soon as it releases! Last year, we tried something a little different, in which the mid-game crises were posted by the modders themselves. For something like a mid-game crisis, this approach makes sense. Mid game crises can be iterated on for a long time, and (hopefully) these mods will continue to be supported into the distant future. However, for this year, we have decided to go for an all-in-one package, to make it easier for players to install and run the Mod Jam mod -- since last year's approach with a workshop playlist and wrapper mod was a little convoluted. The Mod Jam Package When starting a game with the Mod Jam mod enabled, when the game starts you will get a popup to choose which Legendary Leaders will be allowed to spawn.
We've also hooked up the vanilla Legendary Leaders to this system for the Mod Jam mod. Clicking each leader will allow you to turn them off -- if its a leader you didn't like, or you want to guarantee which leader you play with, so you get to experience all the content. Each leader will also have a tooltip that describes in a loose sense what the leader does, so you will not be going into this completely blind. Leaders are currently spawned one of three ways: Random Spawns - this behavior is the most like the vanilla spawning of Legendary Leaders. The game will choose 3 to 6 Legendary Leaders to spawn randomly throughout the galaxy, from the list of Legendary Leaders that are allowed Random Leader for Players - This option will spawn a random Legendary Leader from the list of allowed leaders within four jumps of each Player's homeworld. We could've allowed leaders to spawn for AIs as well, but that opens the opportunity to break things in interesting ways, and with the time constraints put on our modders, I didn't think it was a good idea to add an additional requirement. Players Choose - This will spawn a choice for each player in the game of what Legendary Leader they want to spawn within four jumps of their home system. This is the option you should probably use if you want to play each and every one before you vote.
Azaryn is not in the list of choices, since Azaryn was disabled in the startup menu. And that's the limit of the modding that I've done for this event. But you're not really here to see the stuff I made, you're here to see what the Modders have made. Like last year, we have prepared some (and are still working on) promotional assets for each one of the submissions. I know I've said this about a dozen times already, but thanks again to the Gigastructural Engineering team for letting us use their Stellar Systemcraft for the Mod Jam promotional art. I've also invited the modders to each write about the inspiration for their mod (if they like). This explains why there are some that contain inspirations, and some that do not. The Chronomancer by Rodahtnov and Zyralynn Inspiration: The leader idea is based around the fantasy of genies, fantastical creatures that provide wishes to the person they are bound to, but with some limitations, drawbacks and potential twisted results; In this case we are tied that concept to a specific sci-fi trope, which is the manipulation of time and, in some degrees, reality; the Chronolord is bound to a specific place and a specific relic, which resembles the genie lamp and as such becomes a desirable target for other empires, whether it is for envy, fighting its positive economic effects or just gaining another relic for their use.
Mircorv Core by Metallichydra Access to some Legendary Leaders will be restricted to owners of other DLCs, such as the Mircorv Core, which will require Astral Planes in order to explore the Rift.
The Fragment by Ezraneilson.micahn Inspiration: The Two largest Inspirations were the AEON 14 universe (Multinodal AI) and Mass Effect: Andromeda (Extragalactic Origin).
The Celestial Wayfarer by madeincanada
Perplexing Shadow by shadow_101084
Aevum T. Dohrnii by tr33 Inspiration: I spent too much time on stellaris. With this leader, you also can spend your time. Literally. Jokes aside if I had to name an inspiration it would probably be all the Dagoth Ur Memes. Aevums way of talking is heavily influenced by Dagoths cryptic speeches. The Chronomancer idea came along somewhere in the process.
The Timeless Warrior by MadamLava Inspiration: Ive always been a sucker for a good time loop story, and finished a game (In Stars and Time) containing the best Id ever seen by a wide margin the day before the modjam theme was announced and work began. While Im drawing more broadly from time loop tropes in general, the concept was very much on my mind. Some commonalities from some of these stories/media I enjoyed and seek to implement for my Leader were the concepts of an impossibly large goal at the end of the loop as its breaking condition, the looping character being affected by the dissociation that repeating time enough would cause, gradually becoming more and more powerful each loop, and how they might keep certain bits of knowledge about the future concealed until the right times. Ultimately, I picked the idea for the fundamental reason that I am presently enthusiastic about the particular flavor of time shenanigans involved as a story device, making it much easier to come up with and work on my ideas. This perfectly falls in line with my own personal axiom that Ive been using to stay focused, that being that modding should be fun.
Contingency Processing Core 1A6F by Draconas Inspiration: I wanted the concept of a leader that had their own agenda, and was going to try and achieve that, with or without you. The contingency gave me a great template to work off, since we all know what its goal is, and as a bonus it lets me explore taking synthetic evolution to its ultimate conclusion with machine intelligence.
Thanks for reading! We'll be back same time next week with more Mod Jam Legendary Leaders to show off!

[ 2023-12-28 12:01:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Happy holidays everyone! Much of the Stellaris team has already taken off for a winter break, but its time for our annual retrospective on the year and thoughts about where were going next. We had three major releases in 2023 and a Custodian release.
We started the year by telling the story of how you got the stars, with 3.7 Canis Minor and the First Contact Story Pack. In this story pack, we focused heavily on narrative origins, each one rivaling Toxoids Knights of the Toxic God for the depth of content contained within them. Broken Shackles and Payback told an interlinked story of pre-FTL civilizations that suffered under the sinister Minamar Specialized Industries, while Fear of the Dark explored the Dark Forest theory and questioned whether it was a good idea to step into the void at all. First Contact also brought cloaking into Stellaris, giving Science Ships some new versatility, and providing Frigates a new role as sneak attackers. Canis Minor brought Archaeotech additions to Ancient Relics. [previewyoutube=qWzw7CE21gY;full][/previewyoutube]
Our anniversary in May gave us the 3.8 Gemini update and the Galactic Paragons Mechanical Expansion. This release added the Council and greatly increased the influence of leaders in Stellaris. Whether you were grooming your own leaders to serve on the Council or finding Renowned and Paragon leaders, they were much more powerful and relevant than before. The Gemini update also added experimental Cooperative gameplay - Stellaris is a complex game, and weve found that the best teachers are you, the players. [previewyoutube=598SFesgBSY;full][/previewyoutube]
The Caelum update In the autumn focused on improving a number of the old species packs and reworked habitats. We added the Enmity tradition tree to Humanoids along with some new traits, Void Hive and Selective Kinship civics to Lithoids, the Fruitful Partnership origin and Invasive Species trait to Plantoids, and Worker Cooperative and Mechromancy to MegaCorp and Necroids. A few new portraits came in as well, taking Plantoids from the second least played Species Class to the second most played the month after release.
Also, birds. [previewyoutube=yvx9SedMkuc;full][/previewyoutube]
And most recently, we released 3.10 Pyxis and the Astral Planes Narrative Expansion. "Pyxis" included the Leader Consolidation that finally got leaders in a state that we're generally happy with them, and once the patch cycle was complete, gave us a fully customizable outliner. Astral Planes, meanwhile, is the largest Story focused expansion Stellaris has ever released. The Astral Rifts from Astral Planes have branching narratives with multiple endings, making each one several times the size of the linear Archaeology sites of the past, and there are over 30 of them in the pack. I have some regrets that the release was tarnished by technical issues that we introduced, and we've made some internal changes to how the team will operate to reduce the chances of these sorts of things going wrong in the future. I'm delighted with the respect and love that Abrakam Entertainment gave to our universe and lore. Astral Planes brings new insights to some old friends and enemies, greatly expanding on narrative questions that have been asked for years. [previewyoutube=QlNR1ey4bpk;full][/previewyoutube] We have a Technology Open Beta running until January 15th, 2024. Based on how that goes, it may or may not end up being rolled into the 3.11 Eridanus update planned for the first quarter of 2024. I've found that the data and feedback we get from the community during these to be invaluable, and I look forward to seeing everything we've compiled when we get back. Thank you for helping us make Stellaris a better game. We spent a lot of this year doing incremental rebalancing of the leader system following the Gemini update, which took more Custodian resources than I liked. Weve gotten a few things in from the list we posted in Dev Diary #314 like the new Outliner, but for 2024 well likely try to focus the Custodians on that list of topics. Eridanus will largely be a stabilization update, with the Custodian team focusing on bugfixing, game balance, and general stability. Looking back, we had a share of unexpected issues and problems, but I'm proud of how we've all navigated the year together. I'm looking forward to what we can bring you next year and beyond. See you next year! - Eladrin Stellaris Game Director
Tofu, looking back at the year.

Stellaris Dev Diaries will return on January 18th. Happy holidays!

[ 2023-12-21 12:00:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin I'm pleased to announce that the Technology Open Beta that we first talked about in Stellaris Dev Diary #325 is now available for your feedback. [quote author=Eladrin] Stellaris has undergone a significant amount of power creep over the years, and the speed at which we're able to burn through the entire technology tree is much higher than is healthy for the game. Due to the large number of stacking research speed modifiers, repeatable technologies are reached far too early in the game. Another power creep issue mentioned by many players, it's also become trivial to stack large numbers of ship build cost and ship upkeep reduction modifiers. The Holiday Open Beta will be a feature branch that contains the following changes, which may or may not go into 3.11 (or 3.12, or any release at all for that matter). Similar to how we handled Industrial Districts several years ago, we're intentionally keeping these separated from core 3.11 development, isolating this in a parallel track.[/quote] The dev diary linked above contains more details regarding the intents behind some of the changes. While some changes planned for 3.11 Eridanus have snuck into this release (like some improvements to Galactic Doorstep), the overall technology rebalance is considered experimental and may or may not end up being released. It is likely to undergo some changes if it does go live. We have created this feedback form to collect your impressions on both the partial tech rebalance and the military and economic changes that are present on the branch.

TECHNOLOGY OPEN BETA RELEASE NOTES

Features

• Replaced basic research technologies such as Quantum Theory with Breakthrough Technologies. Breakthrough Technologies will only appear once you have researched enough techs of your current tier and are required to research to reach the next tier.
• Breakthrough Technologies become easier to research based on the number of other empires you have low Tech intel on that have already researched them.
• Enigmatic Engineering blocks your Breakthrough Technologies from spreading.
• Events that give progress towards random technologies can grant progress towards Breakthrough Technologies, but will not give as much as they would a regular technology.

Improvements

• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup.
• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)

Balance

• Adjustments made to the Galactic Doorstep origin:
  • Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin.
  • Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.
• Rebalanced research speed modifiers. Most sources of Research Speed now have a corresponding increase in Researcher job upkeep
• Removed or adjusted many sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
• Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
• Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
• Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
• Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
• Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
• Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
• Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
• Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
• Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
• Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
• Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
• Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
• Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
• Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked.
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies.
• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 2^n to 500 (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
• Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
• Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
• The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
• Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
• Knights of the Toxic God balancing:
  • Slightly reduced the research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
  • Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
  • Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
  • Slightly reduced the unity and research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
  • Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
  • The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
  • Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% not 2% per Squire.
  • The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors.
• Reworked and rebalanced the Erudite, Cyborg, Synthetic, Psionic, Chosen One, and Chosen of X traits to include new leader assignments.

Bugfix

• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events.

Modding

• Added `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger

The Technology Open Beta will run until January 15th. Thank you for your help in improving Stellaris!

Please note that the Technology Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test - Technology Open Beta" branch.

Please disable mods for the Technology Open Beta, they are likely to break. Link to feedback form.

[ 2023-12-15 13:56:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hello everyone! The 3.10.4 "Pyxis" update has been released today. Of particular interest in this weeks update are a fix that lets AI be more willing to recruit Scientists for exploration, a fix to certain modifiers doubling up, and some adjustments to negative leader traits.

3.10.4 "PYXIS" PATCH NOTES

Balance

• Significantly reduced the yearly chance for leaders to gain negative traits.
• Due to player feedback, the Micromanager negative trait for Commanders now increases fleet upkeep instead of reducing command limit.
• The Lethargic negative trait for Commanders now also reduces fleet upkeep.
• The Nervous negative trait for Commanders now also increases disengagement chance.
• Having the Antagonistic Diplomatic Stance will now appease your factions asking for you to have a Strong Diplomatic Stance.

Bugfixes

• Added some failsafes to generate council positions and gestalt nodes in various edge cases where they weren't created or disappeared
• Clarified reformed tooltip for Dark Consortium civics
• Declining to Hunt for the Hyacinth should now correctly remove the event chain.
• Fix Astral Harvesting not available for heavily conquering empires
• Fixed a typo in the pre-FTL Provide Technology Tooltip.
• Fixed Civics not swapping to their alternative when switching Governments
• Fixed missing loc for the Fear of the Dark Admiral trait
• Fixed the Accelerated Time Astral Planes Modifier having a description for a title.
• Removed a redundant tooltip from the Synthetic Evolution event
• Ruler clothing selection in the empire designer is now respected
• Some planet modifiers that were getting incorrectly applied twice should now only be applied once.
• Updated the All Crisis Strength tooltip to accurately state that it doubles the strength of each subsequent crisis.
• Your ice miners will no longer make your Mercenaries homeless if they happened to have built their base above an ice asteroid.

AI

• AI Empires will now be more willing to hire leaders for their science ships as long as they believe they can afford the Unity upkeep.

UI

• Fixed XP not being shown in XP bar tooltip for gestalt rulers and councilors.

Modding

• collapsable_leader_container should now calculate the correct height no matter the amount of horizontal slots.
• Fixed lock_country scope change incorrectly stating that the output scope was a bypass, when it is actually a country

Barring unexpected developments, we consider the 3.10 Pyxis release stable at this point, and the 3.11 Eridanus update is the next expected release - currently planned for 2024Q1. As mentioned in an earlier dev diary, 3.11 Eridanus will be focused primarily on general bugfixing and stability.

Technology Open Beta

Well be putting a Technology Open Beta up tomorrow to gather feedback and data on some possible changes to research. While some changes planned for 3.11 Eridanus have snuck into this release (like some improvements to Galactic Doorstep), the overall technology rebalance is considered experimental and may or may not end up being released. It is likely to undergo some changes if it does go live. The Technology Open Beta will run from December 15th through January 15th. Well post a feedback form tomorrow to help gather your impressions and thoughts.

TECHNOLOGY OPEN BETA RELEASE NOTES

Features

• Replaced basic research technologies such as Quantum Theory with Breakthrough Technologies. Breakthrough Technologies will only appear once you have researched enough techs of your current tier and are required to research to reach the next tier.
• Breakthrough Technologies become easier to research based on the number of other empires you have low Tech intel on that have already researched them.
• Enigmatic Engineering blocks your Breakthrough Technologies from spreading.
• Events that give progress towards random technologies can grant progress towards Breakthrough Technologies, but will not give as much as they would a regular technology.

Improvements

• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup.
• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)

Balance

• Adjustments made to the Galactic Doorstep origin:
• Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin.
• Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.
• Rebalanced research speed modifiers. Most sources of Research Speed now have a corresponding increase in Researcher job upkeep
• Removed or adjusted many sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
• Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
• Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
• Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
• Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
• Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
• Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
• Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
• Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
• Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
• Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
• Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
• Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
• Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
• Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
• Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked.
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies.
• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 2^n to 500 (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
• Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
• Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
• The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
• Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
• Knights of the Toxic God balancing:
  • Slightly reduced the research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
  • Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
  • Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
  • Slightly reduced the unity and research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
  • Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
  • The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
  • Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% not 2% per Squire.
  • The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors.
• Reworked and rebalanced the Erudite, Cyborg, Synthetic, Psionic, Chosen One, and Chosen of X traits to include new leader assignments.

Bugfix

• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events.

Modding

• Added `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger

Meet the Devs Video

Game Systems Designer @Gruntsatwork did a video interview about what its like to work on the Custodian and Crisis teams. [previewyoutube=UL3KPsQIi94;full][/previewyoutube] [spoiler]No, you cant implement trash. - E[/spoiler]

Next Week

The nights are getting cold and long, so for the last dev diary of the year its time for a look at the year in review. See you then!

[ 2023-12-14 09:30:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Stellaris Community! The Stellaris Team, and our partners at Republic of Gamers, are proud to announce the theme of this year's Mod Jam: Legendary Leaders!
Modders will have until January 9th (feature-complete submissions are due January 4th + 5 days of polish/bugfixing) to create:

• One (1) Legendary Leader
• Two (2) or more flavor events that occur after the leader has been hired
• One (1) or more events that lead to the option to recruit the Legendary Leader
• One (1) or more unique Solar System Initializer(s) where the event(s) to recruit the Legendary Leader begin
• One (1) scripted_effect that will spawn your legendary leader's solar_system_initializer (to be fired from solar_system scope)

The full and official rules are available on the Official Stellaris Discord. Haven't signed up yet? Sign ups will be open until 5 PM CET on December 14th! Not a modder? Subscribe to #MODJAM2024 on the Steam workshop and get the new content as soon as it's available! This year our modders will be competing for some fantastic prizes from our partners at Republic of Gamers:

• 1st Place: ROG Strix G17 (2023) G713 Laptop*
• 2nd Place: ROG Delta S Wireless Headset*
• 3rd Place: ROG Spatha X Wireless Mouse*
• 4th - 10th Place: Stellaris branded Wallet and Keychain

* Exact specifications may vary depending on winning modders region The winner will be determined by the result of a Community Vote, which will start on January 11th, 2024 at 5 PM CET and finish 5 PM CET on February 11th, 2024. You can read the full terms and conditions here. Thanks to everyone who's signed up so far, and best of luck to our modders!

[ 2023-12-12 16:00:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

by Eladrin Hi everyone, The 3.10.3 "Pyxis" update has been released. This release focused primarily on stability, and the contents are identical to the Open Beta that was released on Tuesday.

3.10.3 "Pyxis" Patch Notes

Improvements

• Now New Entries notification on the outliner tabs is cleared, even when switching between tabs using keyboard shortcuts.
• Ulastar is now an advisor
• Vas the Gilded is now an ambassador

Balance

• Pre-FTLs in Federation's End now have their technological progress frozen

Bugfixes

• Fixed a number of event or paragon leaders not being generated with the correct traits
• Fixed envoys passively gaining XP
• Fixed missing subtitle for Scout trait
• Pre-FTL Empires will now have a fully functional council when they ascend to the stars.
• Released Vassals will now have a fully functional council when released.

Stability

• Fix crash on startup for Linux (including Steam Deck).
• Fix crash related to modifiers of recently destroyed empires updating
• Fixed crash when surveying a planet that was just removed from the map

UI

• Removed some empty space in the topbar

Modding

• Added moddable_conditions_custom_tooltip parameter to civics modification statement to allow displaying a custom requirement key when no condition has been specified
• Fixed civics modifications statements not always (not) allowing the correct civic changes
• Improved error logging to know which federation perk is invalid

We currently have plans for another update this cycle with some more fixes, including an AI fix to encourage them to recruit an appropriate number of scientists. As with the last few, we plan on putting it on the stellaris_test branch on Tuesday, for release later on in the week.

Whats After 3.10.4?

Tentatively scheduled for next Friday, we plan on putting up a longer open beta over the holidays that seeks to collect feedback regarding some potential balance changes to ship production, upkeep, and research in general. Stellaris has undergone a significant amount of power creep over the years, and the speed at which we're able to burn through the entire technology tree is much higher than is healthy for the game. Due to the large number of stacking research speed modifiers, repeatable technologies are reached far too early in the game. Another power creep issue mentioned by many players, it's also become trivial to stack large numbers of ship build cost and ship upkeep reduction modifiers. The Holiday Open Beta will be a feature branch that contains the following changes, which may or may not go into 3.11 (or 3.12, or any release at all for that matter). Similar to how we handled Industrial Districts several years ago, we're intentionally keeping these separated from core 3.11 development, isolating this in a parallel track. Well have a feedback form set up to collect your thoughts, and the Open Beta will run until the middle of January.

Holiday Open Beta Preliminary Notes

• Research Speed Bonuses now usually come with increased Researcher Upkeep.
  • By changing these to throughput bonuses (cost + production), a technology focused empire will require more Consumer Goods or other resources depending on who they use to research. This puts a partial economic break on runaway technology.
• Reduction in most Research Speed bonus modifiers.
• The +20% research field technologies have been turned into "Breakthrough" technologies that gate progress to the next tier of research.
  • Whether it be the transistor, the theory of relativity, or faster-than-light travel, occasionally there are technologies that redefine a field of science.
    • The intent of these breakthrough technologies is to slow down the front-runners a little bit, while still letting the slower empires get pulled along.
  • Once a theory has been proven, it's easier for others to replicate those learnings.
  • Breakthrough technologies start off more difficult than regular technologies but have a variant of tech spread - the more nations you have at least low Technological intel on who have already discovered them, the cheaper they are to research (even down to instant research once the theory is commonplace). This tech spread varies based on galaxy size.
    • Enigmatic Engineering prevents this tech spread.
  • Breakthrough technologies have animated borders to stand out.
• Reduced Output of Researcher Jobs:
  • Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
  • Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
  • The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
  • Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
  • All other researchers, such as Necromancers, have been left alone for now
• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 2^n to 500 (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
• Replaced or removed most sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
  • Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
  • Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
  • Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
  • Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
  • Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
  • Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
  • Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
  • Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
  • Chosen of the Eater of Worlds ship build cost reduction reduced to 5% from 15%, and no longer modifies ship upkeep.
  • Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
  • Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
  • Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
  • Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
  • Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
  • Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
  • Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
  • Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
  • Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
  • Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked

#MODJAM2024 Signups are open!

Over the holiday period, we will be running another Mod Jam. This years theme will be revealed on December 12th, and sign ups will close on December 14th. The Community team will be posting weekly Mod Jam updates in place of our weekly Dev Diaries, so you can still get your weekly Stellaris fix. Weve currently scheduled the Mod Jam mod to release on January 11th! If youre interested in participating, you can get more details and sign up here. You can also subscribe to the Mod Jam mod here, and get it as soon as it releases.

[ 2023-12-07 12:00:47 CET ] [ Original post ]