by Eladrin Happy Thursday! Thanks to everyone who answered our User Research survey as well as to everyone posting in our Custodian Diplomatic AI Feedback thread. Originally I was planning on just talking about what was going into 3.7.4, with a potential release date next week, but things went a bit better than expected and as of this morning the 3.7.4 patch has been released. Unless something major crops up, the next Stellaris update is expected to be the 3.8 Gemini release during Q2. This patch includes another adjustment to pre-FTL civilizations being too keen on destroying themselves in atomic fire (they now have a significant chance to have a close call, and we've adjusted some of the possibility weights some more), but we have a larger solution planned for 3.8. STELLARIS CANIS MINOR 3.7.4 PATCH NOTES [expand type=showmore] BALANCE AND IMPROVEMENTS

• Pre-FTL civilizations now have a chance of having a "close call" when nuclear war threatens to break out.
• Payback Origin * If you defeat the Debt Collectors three times, the MSI will use the Humiliate war goal against you instead of trying to vassalize you * The Debt collectors won't bug you anymore if you're currently at war with the MSI * Fixed Payback war goals to ensure you can't vassalize or impose ideology on homicidal empires * Slightly increased surrender acceptance of Payback war goals * Payback origin: fixed a rare instance where the Debt Collectors event chain could get soft locked if the debt collectors were defeated by another empire * Payback empires now get a consolatory prize if the MSI gets destroyed by a Marauder empire * Fixed an issue where a Payback empire using the End Threat (Payback) war goal against the MSI could end with a whimper instead of as intended.
• Increased starbase reactor power by roughly 15%.
• Hive-Minds with both Cordyceptic Drones and Stargazers now start with 3 reanimated amoebae.
• Pre-FTL Awareness cannot naturally decay below 10.
• The Raise Awareness espionage operation now prevents pre-ftl Awareness from naturally decaying for 5 years.
• The Triumviri ending for Fear of the Dark is now achievable from infiltrating the Fevorian government.
• Buffed MSI by giving them some bonus naval capacity and starting technologies.

BUG FIXES

• The devolving beam now properly destroys the final contingency world (when boosted with the Archaeo-Engineers Ascension Perk)
• Fixed Sabotage Starbase operation failing to destroy starbase components
• Fixing a case where you were blocked from building orbital rings on a Fear of the Dark planet
• It is no longer possible to acquire multiple Galatrons from reliquaries
• Hivemind pre-FTLs will no longer be producing consumer goods.
• Fixed an issue where the Solarpunk society wouldn't reattach itself to the galaxy.
• Fixed an issue where the Solarpunk society would stay neutral after being attacked.
• Fixed an issue where Sol X and your Beta homeworld would overlap.
• Fixed the Dark Forest achievement not triggering in some cases due to interactions with marauders.
• Construction ship and science ships gained from picking a specialization as part of the Imperial Fiefdom origin now correctly start with hyper drives for empires with the Eager Explorer civics.
• Fix AI Empires building hundreds of observation stations if you don't own First Contact
• Empire naming adjectives should now be seen for German, Simplified Chinese, and Russian.
• Removing an unnecessary progress bar in the clear blocker view.
• Removed happiness penalties from unemployment from living standards, these are now solely applied from job strata.
• AI with Clone Army Origin now creates clone vats to keep their colonies alive.
• Starbases should now correctly reflect their new sensor range on the monthly tick.
• Ancient Saturator Artillery tech now unlocks the Spinal Mount Bow section for battleships.
• Fixed decloaking in a system with pre-ftls not correctly firing the event to increase awareness.
• Broken Shackles empires with robots outlawed now correctly purge machine and mechanical pops.
• Terraforming a planet now also has a chance of triggering an awareness increase.
• Fix crash when a species doesn't have a valid archetype
• Removed ability to use the "reveal yourself" diplomatic action while you're already revealing yourself
• Pre-FTL agreements like "give technology" now get correctly removed once a pre-FTL civilization becomes spacefaring
• Blocked "Salacious Affair" envoy event from firing on pre-FTL worlds
• Removing the option of upgrading at neutral starbases
• Fixed the Fear of the Dark Separatist country being localized incorrectly in German, Polish and Spanish.
• Added correct icon for Negative Media Coverage modifier.
• If a pre-FTL society has more than one planet then none will keep being available for observation once the society becomes fully aware.
• Dig sites should no longer generate minor artifacts for users that do not own Ancient Relics DLC
• Corrected icon for Declining Healthcare modifier.
• Class-4 Singularity can now be constructed when rewarded by event.
• Made it so you can't get an option in an espionage event that requires an interference policy that doesn't allow for espionage.
• Genocidal empires can now use assimilation species rights targeting their species. This should fix Fanatic Purifiers not being able to cybernetically or psionically assimilate lost colonies, splinter planets or the like.
• Adding missing cloaking stat on ship design view.
• Blocking the possibility of terraforming while the planet is under colonization.
• Fixed a crash when loading old savegames
• Fixed tooltip bug with fleets from defensive pacts in a war.

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Concepts

As part of our ongoing efforts to make the game less daunting for new and returning players, weve discovered a UX Insight Technology while observing the pre-FTL games made by our sibling studios. In 3.8 well be introducing Concepts as a variant of the nested tooltips you may be familiar with from Crusader Kings or Victoria. Our primary goal with Concepts is to simplify tooltips while providing the means to get more information than before. Instead of cluttering the base tooltips with complete details, you can dig down to learn more about key terms as desired. While it may change for the final release, Concepts are currently planned to always be shown in a specific Teal color. After a brief delay (or after clicking the middle mouse button), a tooltip that possesses in-line Concepts will lock into place as shown below. Our initial efforts in introducing these have been focused on the Galaxy Settings before starting a new game to further explain some details that might not be obvious at first glance, but to fully explain would bloat the normal tooltip into a wall of text.
An Example of Concepts While Concepts in 3.8 will initially be limited exclusively to Galaxy Settings, were planning on expanding the use of Concepts to Empire Creation and beyond during the Custodian releases over the next year. SPOILER: CONCEPT DETAILS FOR MODDERS [expand type=showmore] common\game_concepts will have a 00_game_concepts.txt where we define concepts, alongside icons and aliases. concept_fallen_empires = { alias = { concept_fallen_empire } } concept_awakened_empires = { alias = { concept_awakened_empire concept_fallen_empire_awakening concept_awaken } } concept_marauder_empires = { alias = { concept_marauder_empire } } concept_technology = { icon = "gfx/interface/icons/concepts/concept_technology.dds" alias = { concept_technologies } } Any concept that does not have an icon defined will default to a "thinking cloud" icon that's in Defines.
Marauder Empires concept, showing off the default icon. Concepts themselves are referenced in-line in localization using the ['concept'] notation: FE_FALLEN_EMPIRES_TOOLTIP:1 "HNumber of Fallen Empires!\nThis controls the maximum number of ['concept_fallen_empires'] that are allowed to spawn in the galaxy." The text for the generated tooltip is defined by the concept name you defined earlier, and by default, will use the base concept name _desc. Aliases let you reuse _desc text easily. concept_fallen_empire: "Fallen Empire" concept_fallen_empires: "Fallen Empires" concept_fallen_empires_desc: "Fallen Empires are ancient precursor civilizations that start with advanced technology and powerful fleets, but are generally passive. At times they may make demands or offer tasks to lesser empires.\n\nProvoking a Fallen Empire is risky unless you are confident in your ability to defeat a challenging opponent." If desired, you can make it show something other than the base concept name as the Cyan tooltip. For example, here we wanted the Unity symbol to also count for the mouseover tooltip. (Tip: Use non-breaking spaces so the mouseover region sticks together if you do this!) concept_edict: "Edict" concept_edicts: "Edicts" concept_edicts_desc: "Edicts are empire-wide decisions that can be enacted by spending resources or paying a monthly upkeep. These typically cost ['concept_unity', unity $concept_unity$] or are paid for using the ['concept_edict_fund'], but some Edicts may cost other resources." concept_edict_fund: "Edict Fund" concept_edict_fund_desc: "The Edict Fund is a separate and static pool of unity IUnity! for IEdict! upkeep.\n\nIf upkeep exceeds the size of the Fund, regular unity IUnity! will also be used.!" Concept text can itself have additional further concepts within it. concept_technology: "Technology" concept_technologies: "Technologies" concept_technology_desc: "Technologies unlocked by research are one of the primary ways to increase your empire's strength in Stellaris, and fall into three fields of study:\n\n$t$['concept_physics_research', physics $concept_physics_research$]\n$t$['concept_society_research', society $concept_society_research$]\n$t$['concept_engineering_research', engineering $concept_engineering_research$]\n\nThe most common sources of IResearch Points! are from pops IPops! working in IResearch Labs! or from IResearch Stations! built in space above appropriate deposits." We've added a few new text colors to fonts.gfx that we use exclusively for Concept tooltips. While K and I are identical to H and Y, they're separate in case we want to change them. C = { 33 232 208 } # C = Cyan, Used for Concept Text that generates another tooltip. K = { 251 170 41 } # K = Header for Concepts. Currently identical to H. I = { 247 252 52 } # I = Highlights for Concepts. Currently identical to Y. [/expand]

Next Week

Next week well start going through the main features well be adding in Gemini, and (hopefully) some details on our planned 3.8.0 Gemini Open Beta.

Tofus been studying.