[previewyoutube=THTad3NBhWk;full][/previewyoutube] Embrace the life of a seafaring civilization with the release of the Aquatics Species Pack on November 22nd for USD $9.99! Choose to originate on a large Ocean Paradise world, with increased pop happiness, output, and growth. Or choose the Here Be Dragons Origin, and start guarded by a sage-blue - and occasionally very hungry - space dragon, which will protect you from harm, as long as you keep it happy. Specialize your species with the Aquatics Species Trait, which further optimizes your species for living on Ocean worlds, but penalizes living on Cold and Dry planet types. Become interstellar seafood harvesters with the Anglers Civic, and harness the bounty of the ocean with fresh seafood and rare pearls as staples of your Empires economy. Ascend into the deep with the Hydrocentric Ascension Perk, and your species becomes more adept at terraforming planets into ocean worlds, as well as the ability to harvest ice asteroids to expand the planetary ocean even further. The Aquatics Species Pack also includes:

• 15 Aquatic-inspired portraits plus a new Robotic portrait
• Aquatics-themed ship set
• New Advisor Voice, inspired by high-seas adventure fiction
• New prescripted empire, the Sathyrelian Bliss
• New diplomacy room
• New city set
• 4 new Aquatic name list

Wishlist the Aquatics Species Pack today!

"3.2 Herbert Update (Free):

Launching alongside the Aquatics Species Pack, the 3.2 Patch, named after renowned Sci-Fi author Frank Herbert, brings along with it many bug fixes, improvements to performance and AI, as well as new features for the Humanoids Species Pack and the base game.

Pompous Purists Civic

In our latest addition to the Humanoids Species Pack, the Pompous Purists Civic allows for a diplomatic playstyle, but for Xenophobes. The idea is based on an elven fantasy, where they are willing to negotiate with other species, but only on their own terms. To that end, empires with the Pompous Purists Civic cannot receive diplomatic proposals, but may still send them. They will also get bonus trust growth and extra envoys.

Terraforming Improvements

With the focus on Terraforming in the Aquatics Species Pack, the Custodian Team has been hard at work to improve the experience of terraforming as a whole. Terraforming planets now have a chance to randomly trigger events, to add more flavor to the overall process of terraforming. These events vary in power and complexity and will only trigger the first time a planet is terraformed. But theres more, weve also done some work with the AI budgets to make the AI more likely to terraform planets to optimal planet types, and will be more likely to pick Terraforming technologies and Ascension perks under certain circumstances.

More to Explore

We have added new anomalies for the Gas Giant, Asteroid, and uninhabitable anomaly categories. This will add more depth to some anomalies that previously only had a single outcome (for example the Gigantic Skeleton Anomaly). We also have revisited some of the older anomaly events and added new options, to add more depth to these older anomalies.

AI Improvements

As part of the Custodian Initiative, we have set goals for ourselves, one of which is constantly working on and improving AI empires in Stellaris. The long-term goal is to move towards having a challenging AI, while still keeping the game entertaining to players and making AI empires feel more distinctive. Previously, AI used to follow an economic plan based on the stage of the game they were in. For the 3.2 Update, we have updated the economic scripts used by the AI. The AI now uses a single base plan but relies more heavily on sub plans, which allow the AI to react more easily to unexpected developments throughout the game. The AI also has the ability to turn these sub plans on and off based on their economic situation, allowing them to react to unexpected resource deficits, and in our testing has lowered the frequency of AI economic collapses. We also have gone over the Building and District weights for AI empires, which will further improve your AI opponents economy. AI starbase construction has also been improved and will now use more varied setups when building their starbases and making use of special buildings where it makes sense. AI empires will now also construct Ecumenopolis, choose better Planet Killer weapons, and are better at fighting Crime.

Fleet Manager and Reinforcements

We have addressed several issues with regards to the Fleet Manager, namely that it was possible to create fleets larger than the command limit, which resulted in large amounts of single-ship fleets when attempting to reinforce those fleets. Fleets containing one ship type and one ship should also now appear in the fleet manager. The time taken for Fleet reinforcements and MIA fleets will now be more accurate when compared to simply flying the fleets to the target system. Fleet reinforcements will now make better choices when selecting shipyards to reinforce from and should better consider systems with multiple shipyards as well as systems connected by bypasses. We also have improved the reinforcement pathfinding: reinforcements will now attempt to find a second, longer route if the shortest reinforcement route is considered unsafe. Systems containing both friendly and hostile fleets will no longer be considered unsafe for reinforcement purposes. In addition, Reinforcing fleets that fail to find a safe path to the target fleet will now merge with other fleets orbiting the same shipyard if both fleets intended to reinforce the same target fleet.

Performance Improvements

The 3.2 update will feature some new Performance Improvements as well. These performance gains were realized by performing optimization on a number of various game systems (specifically Pop Factions and Jobs), to make them more efficient. We also did a deep dive into some of our events and scripts and finding and stopping events from attempting to fire when they shouldnt be. It is our hope that this work will be felt in the form of a bit less late game slowdown, and we have identified several other places where performance improvements can be realized, either in 3.3 or in a later version.

Improved Ship Browser

Back in May, we talked about a Ship Browser Experiment, where roughly half of our players would be getting an improved ship browser in empire creation, that allows viewing all of the ships in a shipset, and that allows viewing all of the ships in a shipset up close and from any angle. Were happy to announce that this experiment will be going out to all Stellaris PC players with the free 3.2 Herbert update!

And More

Modding improvements, Multiplayer stability improvements, Balance changes, and over 80 bug fixes in total. We hope you enjoy our latest additions to Stellaris on November 22nd, and dont forget to Wishlist the Aquatics Species Pack now!