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written by Eladrin Hi all! Last week we talked about the basics of the Unity Rework. This week we have multiple features and announcements to discuss. Ready?

Planetary Ascension Tiers

Tied to unlocking Ascension Perks, Planetary Ascension Tiers are a way of improving your core worlds by expending Unity. In normal empires they represent the active will of the people supporting your government and giving a little extra to do things the way theyve always been done. In machine and hive empires, its more the well oiled machinery of the world gaining efficiency or drone instincts becoming better honed with endless practice. In either case, an Ascended planet does whatever it focuses on better. Once youve unlocked three Ascension Perks (you do not need to actually spend them for this feature), you can Ascend each of your planets to Ascension Tier 1. This increases all of the effects of the planets Designation by 25% - whether it be Technician Output from a Generator World or Trade Value on a Commercial Ring World.
Each additional Ascension Perk you unlock increases the maximum Ascension Tier by 1, with an extra 4 tiers unlocked once you unlock all of the Perk slots. This lets you Ascend planets up to ten times, for a maximum bonus of 250% of the base Planetary Designation effects.
A fully Ascended, Tier 10 Fortress World. Vi Valam will break before its defenders. Ascending a Planet costs Unity, and this cost is heavily affected by both Sprawl and the total number of Ascension Tiers you have across your entire Empire. Currently it costs the same amount of Unity to raise your first planet to Ascension Tier 2 as it would to raise two planets to Ascension Tier 1, so youll want to pick and choose which planets you want to improve, and decide whether you would rather raise all your planets to low Ascension Tiers or focus on reaching the heights of Ascension on your most productive core worlds. Well be watching how you use Planetary Ascension Tiers and will be very interested in your feedback regarding the current costs and perceived benefits during the Open Beta. Currently Planetary Ascension Tiers are only lost if a planet permanently changes owners (not merely from temporary occupation) or is abandoned.

Unity Rework, Continued

Weve continued refining some of the elements of the Unity Rework, and as mentioned last week, some civics and authorities have undergone some changes. One change from last week is that we swapped out the Sprawl bonus from the Capital worlds for a production bonus. Weve also found that starting with penalties isnt very fun, so Sprawl under 50 is ignored. Death Cults will now be able to build either regular Temples or Sacrificial Temples to suit their needs, and the Memorialists special building line now replaces the Autochthon Monument (and has gained the extra Unity per Ascension Perk of the Monument line). Hives will also have access to their own variant of the Autochthon Monument, the Sensorium.
Can you feel it? The generic Administrator job is being renamed to Politicians, with Administrator being the category term for Bureaucrats, Priests, and other unifying jobs that guide your Empire. The Bureaucratic Colony Designation will also be renamed to Administrative Center, to better apply to any of these jobs.
Early feedback said that suspension of disbelief was being tested by Politicians being productive, but we embrace utopian ideas.
Less bureaucracy, more administration. Civics like Technocracies and Merchant Guilds have been modified to no longer grant incidental Unity bonuses. Technocracy is actually changing quite a bit - it will now grant +1 Research Option, and the research expertise bonuses (such as Expertise: Voidcraft) of your scientists are doubled when selecting technologies to offer. This should give Technocratic empires the ability to better manipulate the technology deck when theyre hunting for specific types of technologies. They also once again require any level of Materialism rather than being restricted exclusively to Fanatic Materialists.
Technocracies excel at manipulating the research deck if you're looking for a specific tech. Weve also heard your feedback regarding the loss of Culture Workers. Well see if we can find a good place for them to return for those of you that prefer creative art to beautiful spreadsheets. In the Open Beta, the Ministry of Culture and Artisans will still be providing them, and well be doing another pass on the buildings to see if there are any other good places to put them.

A Job to Die For...

The Custodian team has the mandate to work on directives that come straight from the Game Director, Quality of Life changes they think would improve the game, and Community Requests that they wish to champion. They also have the right to pitch what we call Passion Projects for things they simply want to do. One of these comes to life (sort of) in the 3.3 patch, as the Permanent Employment Megacorp civic.
Speaking of which, we're hiring! A MegaCorp variant of Reanimators, this civic allows the construction of Posthumous Employment Centers, as well as the ability to reanimate Leviathans that the original Reanimators gained in the Lem update. At the Posthumous Employment Center, carcasses bereft of consciousness can find new purpose and a new opportunity to pay off their debts. The Reassigner jobs from the P.E.C. provide organic pop assembly of mortally impaired Well Zombies.
Unfortunately for them, it's impossible to fulfill their contracts.
Thrifty Zombies. Give me the brain! Zombies cannot produce leaders, have no happiness, are infertile, and can only work Worker strata jobs But on the bright side, they dont have any upkeep and wont ask for any more raises. There are a few more interesting interactions Ill leave for you to find on your own during gameplay.

Announcement Number One

An upcoming event that we wanted to tell you about is [previewyoutube=_rhxm_3N03Q;full][/previewyoutube]
DEV CLASH! DEV CLASH! DEV CLASH!

Announcement Number Two

Regarding the Open Beta weve been talking about Were planning on running the Unity Open Beta starting checks watch now. Please note that the 3.3 Unity 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" branch. Its up. Right now. Go play! The Open Beta will run (assuming everything goes to plan) until the 3rd of February, and also has a sneak preview of the 3.3 Custodian release, Libra. As we move into a more frequent release cadence than we used to have due to the Custodian initiative, with the 3.3 release were switching to Constellation names for patches to reduce the (sometimes significant) overhead related to negotiating with Authors estates. Read the Stellaris 3.3 "Libra" Unity Open Beta Patch Notes here. Since this is still in very much active development branch, we have a few known issues in the Open Beta to keep things spicy. Localization for new strings are currently only available in English, and some things may still only be partially implemented or give placeholder rewards. Due to the many changes, 3.3 Unity Open Beta is not save game compatible with existing saves, and may or may not be compatible with the eventual 3.3 "Libra" release. Read the known issues list: [expand type=details] The following are some of the known issues in the 3.3 Unity Open Beta. This list is not exhaustive and some issues have already been resolved internally but did not make the open beta build. If you encounter any issues however not reported here please report them via the bug forums :)

• Sacrifice edicts are not showing their up front Unity costs. Conveniently, they're also not charging them at the moment. Heads still roll though.
• Unity costs for faction manipulation are not implemented yet.
• The Byzantine Bureaucracy and Parliamentary System civics need tooltip updating.
• Depreciated triggers, modifiers, buildings and jobs have yet to be totally removed.
• Influence from Power Projection tooltip is unclear and needs refactoring.
• Planetary Ascension does not have any form of confirmation.
• Fleet reinforcements sometimes create a new fleet instead of joining the fleet it is supposed to.
• Species traits look a bit wonky in the colonisation window.
• Aquatic pop portraits not randomizing properly or applying gender options reliably.
• Void Dwellers with Permanent Employment start with a ruined posthumous employment centre.
• The tooltip informing the player of the cost to reform their government does not explain how the cost is calculated.
• AI implementation for new features is still using hot code.
• AI issue where they are building a lot of buildings that are not using jobs such as luxury housing
• After submitting to the Khan you will quickly just be attacked again, so don't give up!

[/expand] Please keep all Open Beta feedback in this thread and report bugs in the bug reports forum so we can keep track of everything. Thanks! Enjoy, and see you next week, when well have Caligula Caesar explaining all of the new modding tricks were adding in 3.3.