by Eladrin Hello again! Last week we went over the basic design of the Cooperative multiplayer system were currently working on, and were ready to announce that the Coop Open Beta is looking like it will be starting sometime next week. Though at this time I cant give a precise date, I thought Id provide a list of preliminary patch notes. I expect that well leave the branch up until the release of 3.8, and feedback will be collected in threads until April 30th. Stay tuned for more details once we can share them.

Release Notes

Heres a changelog of what will be present in the Coop Open Beta. This is only a small subset of whats going to be coming in 3.8 - we wanted to keep the Coop changes relatively isolated in order to get better testing of the feature. STELLARIS 3.8 GEMINI COOP OPEN BETA PRELIMINARY RELEASE NOTES [expand type=show more] Features

• Added two Cooperative modes, allowing up to five players per empire. More information can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #293. * Cooperative PvE can be initiated from the main menu - all players that hotjoin the hosted game will join the primary players empire. This mode is primarily intended for teaching new players or for lower intensity cooperative gameplay. * Cooperative PvP can be allowed by the host of a standard multiplayer game. When enabled, empires can open themselves up to allow other players to help control their empire. We expect this game mode to be useful for competitive team play.

Improvements

• Added unique textures for Mercury, Venus, Neptune and Uranus for Sol system.
• Added unique textures for Earth and Mars when terraformed based off of available heightmap data.
• Added new anomaly The Orb
• Added a special solar system protected by the Lone Defender.
• Added a decision to clear the wreckage on a Broken Shackles starting planet in the event that they are conquered before they enact the Memorial to the Unshackled decision.
• Improved accuracy of tooltips on the galaxy setting screen and implemented experimental nested tooltip functionality.
• The mind-wiped species from On the Shoulders of Giants will now have the Forcefully Devolved trait.
• The Observation Insight Situation now remembers what approach you had when it last finished.
• There is now a 1% chance that a pre-ftl civilization will spawn with the Forcefully Devolved trait.

Balance and Bugfixes

• Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 1,000 or by 3,000 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken.
• A synthetically ascended empire should no longer refer to their own pops as having owners.
• Added a new description to the Broken Shackles Homecoming event if the world is a tomb world.
• Added missing "gateway" icons and tooltips to tech_cloaking_1 and tech_detection_array.
• Added missing background for Ironman game setting.
• Broken Shackles empires with the Parliamentary System civic will instead have Unshackled Politics fire one month after game start instead of one year after game start.
• Corrected the Ancient Target Scrambler tech not stating that it unlocks the Ancient Target Scrambler ship component.
• Enclaves should no longer keep offering you their services if you become a fanatical purifier.
• Fix MP game browser listing full games even if "Not full" is checked.
• Fixed a typo in the Cloud, Snagged event (federations3.2010)
• Fixed an issue with an unlocalized version of MSI in the initial interaction between a Broken Shackles and Payback empire.
• Fixed an unlocalized string for the Reanimated Tiyanki Matriarch.
• Fixed events related to the Out of Warranty event chain not firing.
• Fixed incorrect calculation used for Offspring amenities.
• Fixed Liberation wars not showing up for Payback empires.
• Fixed materialist culture workers (and death chroniclers) not having the effects of the Charismatic or Repugnant traits.
• Fixed NO_POSSIBLE_OPTION text in tooltip for an option in Starbase sabotage event
• Fixed reloading of system initializers and crash in with reload_galaxy console command
• Fixed some grammar in the Hivemind Voidspawn reanimation event.
• Fixed Status Quo in a Subsidiary war subjugating the wrong empire.
• Fixing truncated build queue items in the starbase view
• Former pre-FTL worlds will no longer display the technological age of the former civilization during colonization.
• Increased size of the Relic World tied to the Moon Base arc site from 26 to 30.
• Newly added starbase modules and buildings are now possible targets for Sabotage Starbase.
• Prevent joining full MP games.
• Removed a double be from a machine become the crisis event.
• Solved exploit where a base price would constantly reset the next day if you sold the minimum amount
• Special project energy cost is now displayed in situation log
• System and star name should now match even if the player selects an origin that has a special starting system.
• The "Direct Join" window now blocks other input.
• The "Host server" window now blocks other input.
• The Separatist Planet will no longer nuke themselves if you lose your capital to space fauna.
• Torpedo and Frigate technology now requires you to have researched Corvettes.

AI

• Fix for AI requiring wrong techs to build some megastructures
• Prevent "Assist Research" from blocking AI construction of orbital rings
• AI can take into account planetary impact of orbital ring buildings when picking which one to build
• AI takes into account planetary production impact of possible orbital ring buildings when considering building orbital rings
• AI attitude updates now happen only monthly and on diplomatic actions
• Allow AI to build economically useful orbital ring buildings without a matching designation
• Relaxed AI budget requirements for orbital ring upgrades
• The AI will now build more Offspring Outlooks and Cordyceptic Reanimation Facilities.

UI

• Addition of new social assets. Update of the Text on tooltips
• Auto Track Log Entries setting is saved in the save game.
• Removed the in-game web browser. The game will now use the platform's browser instead.

Modding

• Added copy_flags_and_variables_from effect to copy all flags and variables from one scope to another
• Added keyboard command for jumping to the next day [.].
• Added the special_max_amount = yes/no parameter for resources.
• Removed support for the "Major" flag and potential trigger in events.
• Renamed country_mia_time_mult to fleet_mia_time_mult so that you can apply it at leader or fleet level too
• Replaced set_is_female with set_gender
• Scripted triggers may now generate up to one automatic event option icon each
• You can now use "initializer = random" in the spawn_system effect

[/expand] Again - this isnt everything that were planning for 3.8.

Things to Keep in Mind

Coop touches a lot of systems in Stellaris, and it is very likely that you will run into synchronization issues, or other weirdness. (The dreaded Out of Syncs that are the bane of multiplayer Stellaris.) This system is still in active development, but we wanted to let people play with it now, while theres still time to react to feedback and bugs that are found. Certain events, such as diplomacy with enclaves or other special entities, may also behave oddly during the beta, with responses going to the first player in the empire rather than the one that initiated contact.

Did you miss last week's Dev Diary Introducing Coop?

Community Manager Mordred Viking is back on Stellaris Official to save you the trouble of reading it! [previewyoutube=79WxfMJSzWM;full][/previewyoutube]

StellARTis Competition Winners

The StellARTis competition has completed, and winners have been announced! Check out some of their brilliant works.

Next Week

Next week well start going through some of the many changes coming in 3.8 that arent in the Coop Open Beta release.