Hi all! I'm happy to announce that the 3.4.3 hotfix should now be live and available on all platforms! On Monday I said that we were planning to address primary issues as quickly as we could and have a larger patch in a few weeks, but the team was absolutely on fire and was able to bring many of the fixes and changes that were originally scheduled for the later release into this hotfix. As a result, the 3.4.3 hotfix is significantly larger than a hotfix would usually be. I want to stress exactly how helpful the bug reports we received were during this process - they made it possible for QA to generate a list of the biggest issues affecting the community and helped us prioritize our work, so thank you for submitting them, and please continue doing so if you run into issues. Without further ado, here are...

"Stellaris 3.4.3 Cepheus Patch Notes"

################################################################# ######################### VERSION 3.4.3 ############################ #################################################################

Revolt and Planet Stability related fixes and changes:

When planets revolt, there is now an option to declare war on the new country immediately rather than being subjected to a 10-year truce. The revolting planet counts as the aggressor. (if the planet joins another empire, and you choose war with them, the other country is now considered the aggressor). Revolt Situations no longer cause escalating stability maluses, as these could make it impossible to stop a revolt. They now give a flat 10 stability malus at all stages. The modifier a pop gets from its faction's happiness now updates properly (so if you make a faction happier, it will correctly make its pops happier now). Fixed it being possible for a Revolt Situation to start and immediately cancel. (They will now only start if the planet is calculated to be currently capable of succeeding the revolt) Planets with Culture Shock can now only start a revolt situation after 8 years of unrest, rather than 1, as it could be quite hard to avoid a revolt on these planets. Otherwise newly-conquered planets have 4-year cooldowns. Improved AI decision making on Revolt Situations. Fixed cases where rebels and released empires would have traditions and techs they should not have had access to (e.g. if non-gestalt pops rebelled against a gestalt empire). Fixed cases where rebels and released empires would use their parent countries scientists for research. I.e. the researcher would be active in both countries, until one country changed their task. Cleaned up some unclear language in the tooltip for Revolt Situation progress (the one describing what you can do about it). Void Dwellers now replace the 1 Politician (or Executive) job from Habitat Administration buildings with two Colonist jobs, which should increase their overall stability in the early game. Doomsday origin starting planets will no longer clamor to revolt. (Revolt Situations are disabled on them.)

Deficit related fixes and changes:

To help them to deal with unexpected deficits, Empires can now purchase basic or advanced resources (specifically food or consumer goods) from the internal market if they have expenses of that type, even if they do not produce any themselves. Fixed never-ending deficits - if you go into a deficit of a resource you do not produce at all, and then stop spending it (i.e. end up with both expenses and income of 0), the deficit will now resolve itself in a few months. This solves issues with machines having inexplicable food and consumer goods deficits, as well as cases where people over-spend rare resources they gained via event. All resources provided for deficit bailouts now scale with the game year, instead of just those for the situation that completed. Fixed a case where the situation approach to cut the maintenance of habitats would count double. Fixed stray reference to Minerals in the Consumer Goods Deficit Situation.

Subject and Agreement related fixes and changes:

Subjects should no longer flip-flop between regular subject types and protectorate. Fix issue where a new subject created from a Status Quo would be made up of the wrong systems. Subjects can no longer sign Defensive Pacts or Guarantee Independence of other empires. Releasing a sector as a subject or enlightening a pre-ftl civilization now ignores the cooldown on agreement negotiation. Increased the effects of Relative Power on AI acceptance of agreement negotiation. Added base acceptance for subsidiary. Tweaked AI acceptance of resource contribution terms, making them more likely to accept harsher tithes/subsidies. AI overlords and subjects will now be more likely to accept specialist subject types that disagree with their ethics. Set minimum Advanced Resources tax for Prospectorium to 15% from 30% Fixed ACTION_DEMAND_SUBJUGATION_NOTIFICATION and ACTION_ASK_TO_BECOME_SUBJUGATED_NOTIFICATION loc keys. Fix for trade deals that are accepted and then canceled immediately. Fixed AI not taking relative power into account when considering subjugation proposals. You can no longer set the priority of overlord catalytic or metallurgist jobs. Overlord catalytic jobs no longer have the pre-3.4 penalties for food deficits. Corporate overlords now have access to the protectorate subject type. Slaves can now be "employed" as mind-thralls. Fixed issue when removing/replacing overlord removes the corporate holdings. The Divided Patronage loyalty penalty is now correctly removed from existing subjects when taking Shared Destiny, Feudal Society or Franchising. You can no longer immediately see the secret fealty status of sectors released as subjects. Rebalanced trade weights for specialist subject leaders. Subjects that are converting to a specialist subject can continue conversion even if they should flip to a protectorate. Subjects that are converting to a specialist subject cannot flip to a protectorate due to low tech level. Empires can no longer have negative diplomatic weight.

Game Stability related fixes and changes:

Fixed crash connected with resettling the last pop of a species. Fixed a rare crash in the Situations interface. Fixed crash with modded shipsets. Fixed a crash that would happen when generating very large galaxies with high hyperlane density. Fixed a crash related to Federation Laws.

Ship related fixes and changes:

Ship starting experience modifiers now work when provided empire-wide (e.g. Fleet Supremacy edict) Fixed tracking not countering evasion. Added missing ship components for Offspring ships. Mercenary fleets are now buffed by Offspring Auras Added missing L2 Battleship section for Offspring Battleships. Fixed ship build and upgrade cost modifiers not being applied correctly when retrofitting ships. Fixed certain AIs (the ones with Calamitous Birth and Private Colony Ships) never colonizing. You can no longer found mercenary enclaves using fleets belonging to your federation or the galactic community.

Other fixes and changes:

Legacy Human portraits have been re-added as an option in empire creation. Fixed pops that grow as specialists on Colonies. Fixed pops which go into a loop of swapping jobs with unemployed specialists constantly resetting strata demotion timers. Amenity job management is now activated even when there are no resources available for planet automation. Fixed an issue where planet automation could not use resources from their local sector stockpile. Planet automation will now check that the unemployed pops can work the jobs that the automation would build, e.g. preventing specialist job creation for slave pops. Reduced the amount of research given by merc dividends. Fixed an issue where systems with primitives in them would not be transferred correctly during a status quo war resolution. Non-Prophet Organization now correctly checks for the Teachers of the Shroud origin. Fixed the Stellar Performance achievement not being awarded properly. Subterranean empire are now shown uncapped mining districts on uncolonised worlds. The Crystalline Bane modifier is now removed if you kill the Crystal Kraken in a dishonorable manner. Progenitor Nest deposit is no longer removed when terraforming a planet into a hive-world. Hive worlds now provide an offspring drone for progenitor hives instead of a spawning drones. Fixed the Cyro Pod warrior event for xenophobes. Meeting the artist enclave now sets the correct flag. Added tooltip on create office branch button when players could not open a branch office. Shroudwalker greeting event now fires only once. Fixed tooltip for starbase resource silos. ###################

New Known Issues

################### Localization for non-English languages related to these changes will be coming in a future update. When negotiating an agreement, if the other party does not wish to accept the terms but does not have the influence necessary to decline, the eventual notification says that the deal timed out and auto-declined when in fact it was auto-accepted.

So what's next?

We'll be continuing to keep an eye on things, so keep those bug reports and feedback flowing. Currently our plan is to have a 3.4.4 update in a few weeks, that will contain localization updates for the 3.4.3 hotfix, more fixes and balance adjustments. A sneak peek of some of the things we're looking at for the planned patch include the following:

"Stellaris 3.4.4 Partial Sneak Peek"

The Imperial Fiefdom will start with colonies close to every member of their empire, so nobody will feel left out of the fold. Those who feel particularly loyal will now also be able to remain a vassal of the empire after the civil war has started. Added Hydroponics Station designation for habitats. This designation removes 2 housing from Habitation Districts in exchange for adding 1 farmer jobs. Ships now gain 5 exp per day in battle instead of 1. Doubled the base unity output of telepaths. Khan should no longer be hostile to mercenaries. Admirals no longer abandon their post on leased fleets. Planetary automation will no longer seek to build gene clinics if you are a synthetically-ascended empire. Planetary automation will now seek to clear blockers as soon as there is any need. It now uses the same formula as the indicator on the outliner: i.e. if it is limiting the number of districts OR if there are buildings that could be built by clearing the blockers OR if planet growth speed is reduced (previous behaviour was to only check the first of those). Fixed issue where planetary automation would upgrade Necrophage Centers of Elevation (which is often undesirable as it may lead to you running out of necrophytes) Newly colonized planets will now have their planet automation turned on if they are in an automated sector Made some clarifications for the Shroudwalkers, so it is clearer what asset you are getting from them and how the planet modifier works. You can no longer build an orbital ring around a planet with a destroyed orbital ring. Added is_human_species scripted trigger if you want additional portraits to be considered humans. Added on_fleet_lease_started/ended on_actions for more friendly mod compatibility Added is_human_species scripted trigger if you want additional portraits to be considered humans.

We also have some quality of life automation improvements planned for 3.4.4:

Automated Exploration and Automated Research are now available from the start of the game rather than being tech-locked. Construction ships now have an Automated Construction mode, which will automatically build Research and Mining Stations over appropriate deposits. (It will not automatically build Observation Stations, Hyper Relays, or other constructions.)