Hello, The latest minor patch for Stellaris is ready and released, fixing a number of issues and further balancing the new mechanics. This should be the last of the 3.8 patches, although the teams work continues targeting later updates. Please find the patch notes below. 3.8.4 "Gemini" Patch Notes [expand type=details] ############################################################ #################### VERSION 3.8.4 ###################### ############################################################

Balance

• Rebalanced a number of leader traits: Some general and governor traits that previously encouraged moving leaders from planet to planet have been made council traits or had their modifiers changed to discourage this. Resource production traits now require the leader to have at least level 2 to gain the first tier.
• Empire Size now has a floor of 50, and thus can no longer go negative.
• Increased the bombardment effectiveness of large fleets.
• The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops has been dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 2 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony)
• Renormalised political power from living standards and reduced base faction unity gain to better fit intended unity production. The Shared Burdens civic no longer grants an increase to the base unity of the Egalitarian faction, as the benefit is now rolled into their living standards.
• Sequential End-Game Crises now get +2 strength multipliers instead of +1.5.
• The Khan now has terrifying admiral traits.
• The opinion modifier from Defender of the Galaxy now only affects normal, non-fallen/awakened, empires that are capable of independent diplomacy.
• Colonists now increase planetary build speed by 10% instead of creating defensive armies.

AI

• Fixed AI hiring a governor without having a planet to assign them to.
• Fixed AI hiring scientists without having science ships to assign them to.

Bugfixes

• Broken Shackles Origin event "Homesick" no longer casts affected Pops into the void
• Adjusted width of MP lobby chat entries so that they don't overlap the scroll bar.
• Council Agenda Costs now benefit from Empire Size Effect modifiers.
• Cyborg general trait will now add +2 combat width, as stated in the tooltip
• Empires with the Under One Ruler origin no longer ignore the initial 20 year cooldown on government reform.
• Federation project Flocks of Cloud should no longer get stuck ad infinitum in the situation log
• Fixed an error in which you may have been prevented from using Operation Crisis Beacon again - beyond the intended 4-year lockout period - if said Operation was aborted after confirming its target.
• Fixed duplicate tradition names in French
• Fixed Imperial Heirs not having a starting leader trait.
• Fixed queued move orders from a system with an FTL inhibitor not being displayed correctly.
• Fixed randomly generated empires having DLC-locked civics.
• Fixed randomly generated species having DLC-locked traits.
• Fixed randomly generated species having invalid trait and climate preference combinations.
• Fixed randomly generated species not having enough traits if it has traits (such as Aquatic) that are required by something else.
• Fixed the bonus leader trait from Aptitude Traditions not applying to Imperial Heirs.
• Fixed tooltip for Beacon of Liberty and Fanatic Purifiers, now they do mention that they are incompatible with Crusader Spirit
• Imperial Heirs are excluded from the effects of The Orb.
• Imperial Heirs that are generals or admirals in empires with Distinguished Admiralty now benefit from the +2 starting level.
• Invalid civics will get removed when authority is changed through event for Under One Rule
• Leaders excluded from the upkeep cost now correctly produce resources
• Pharma State civic is now correctly blocked by Payback and Broken Shackles.
• Removed DLC lock on some faction demands that were introduced in 3.8
• Set the AI weight for reorganizing the council to 0.
• Void Dweller MegaCorps with the Pharma State civic now correctly replace their starting Holo-Theaters with a Gene Clinic, unless they also have Permanent Employment (in which case it is replaced with the Employment Center).
• Warform no longer has the synth trait and has the second tier of the skirmisher trait.

Improvements

• Imperial Heirs are now up to 10 years younger than regular leaders of the same species. Starting Imperial Rulers are now up to 15 years older than regular leaders of the same species.
• Imperial Heirs that benefit from bonus starting levels now have selectable traits for those levels for owners of Galactic Paragons.
• Imperial Rulers and Heirs now have a 5% chance to start with a negative trait and an additional positive trait. The Philosopher King civic negates this.

UI

• Fixed leader portrait clipping in the level up window.
• Fixed position of Speech To Text button in the MP lobby.
• Fixed width of MP lobby chat text for large fonts and text to speech.
• If a player in your coop group adds a leader trait while you have the level up window open and there are no more traits to add, it will show the last selection.
• Reworked the planet occupation icon frame
• Selecting a ship by clicking it will now ignore its bounding box if it has a collision mesh.

Modding

• Empire size string now uses the actual defines instead of localized numbers for its message.
• Made it possible to set what leader portrait container to use for each location of the new portraits
• Made reload_gui console command more stable

Please note that save file compatibility between versions is not guaranteed. If you have an important game going, please back up the save file before trying to load the save in the new version. You can roll back to a prior version by right-clicking on Stellaris in your library -> Properties -> Betas -> choose the desired version from the drop-down. If you experience crashing or other issues, first disable all mods and start a new save. If the issue persists, please report it on the Bug Report forums.