Sep 17

Stellaris Dev Diary #433 - 4.5 'Cygnus' Preliminary Release Notes

Stellaris

by Eladrin

The Stellaris 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta is drawing to a close, and we’re currently building a release candidate.

We’ve temporarily pulled Exclusive Harvesting Rights from 4.5 - your feedback from the Open Beta made it clear that it needed more balancing time, but expect it to return in a future release.

4.5.0 ‘Cygnus’ has the most bugfix entries of any Stellaris patch, with more bugfixes than our two previous bugfix record holders - 2.0.2 and 3.0.1 - combined. Keep reporting them and the Custodians will keep fixing them.

Here are the complete preliminary release notes for the patch:

Stellaris 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Custodian Update Preliminary Release Notes

Feature

Pop groups are no longer divided by Ethics or Factions, instead each pop group will have a given percentage that belongs to each faction or ethic as appropriate. This means that:
- THIS IS A BREAKING CHANGE AND WILL NOT PRESERVE SAVE GAME COMPATIBILITY.
- Ethics and factions are now shown on the pop group entries in the planetary management UI, with tooltips showing the attraction to ethics and factions. Verbose tooltips are enabled by holding Alt, to show a breakdown of all modifiers for these attractions.
- Pops shift ethics and factions more frequently
- Pop group faction conversion happens more frequently
- Ethic attraction now impacts faction growth
- Simplify factions randomization logic
- Updated Cyberization policies to account for the changes to pop groups and ethics. The Limited Cybernetic species trait has been removed, instead if the Limited Cyberization policy is in effect, Cybernetic Spiritualist pops do not benefit from Cybernetic Job Efficiency. The Limited Cyborg leader trait still functions as previously. This will also decrease the Approval penalty from regular spiritualist factions from the demand The Flesh is Strong.
Unlocked Knights of the Toxic God for nomads
Added policies to provide better control over the auto-designer for both players and AI:
- Added a Fleet Doctrine policy with six doctrines that determine the tactical roles each ship class is designed to fill, affecting automated ship designs and ship-designer auto-complete.
- Added Weapon Preference and Defense Preference policies that steer automated ship designs and technology research.
- Added Starbase Weapon Preference and Starbase Defense Preference policies so station loadouts can diverge from the fleet.
Federations can now enact laws to grant members free, automatic Commercial Pacts (and, with the Nomads DLC, Wayline Pacts) or Research Agreements. Each law is unavailable to the federation type that already grants the benefit through its perk (Trade League / Research Cooperative).
- Trade League federations now provide free, automatic Commercial Pacts between all member empires.
- Trade League federations now also provide free, automatic Wayline Pacts between all members. (Requires Nomads)
Cosmogenesis is now available for Nomads
Added a nomad compatible version of Storm Chasers
- Storm Attraction is now fully functional for mobile arkships
Empires now have more control over their colors:
- Added a toggle and selectors in empire creation so you can select your map border and fill colours independently of your flag color.
- Ship Color can now be selected independently from flag colors in Empire Creation.
- Color swatches in the species creator's flag editor and ship-set selector now show the name of the selected color on hover.
Flag emblems are now correctly centered within the Empire's Flag hexagon frame

Improvement

Regular Empires can now cancel accepted contracts after 20 years, with a notification sent to the operator.
The Dyson Swarm "best systems" list will now always show a variety of systems with different resources, so if you have a dozen physics deposits, they won't hide all of your energy systems. All "best systems" finders now show up to 12 systems.
Added new event options to the Forever Cruise situation stage events, allowing players to accept temporary economic penalties to affect the situation's direction.
Starbase, Orbital Ring, and Waystation weapon modules are now weapon-type-specific (lasers, mass drivers, swarmer missiles, particle launchers, psionic torpedoes, scourge missiles, and several strike-craft hangars), each gated by the matching weapon technology and automatically upgrading to your latest tier.
The Starbase Weapon Preference policy now includes Explosive and Strike Craft options, and automated station designs build the weapon modules matching the chosen preference.
Nomad empires can now benefit from the Composer of Strands, Whisperers in the Void, and End of the Cycle Greatest Patron accords, with Arkship-appropriate rewards.
Adaptive Evolution approach effect will be displayed as an active situation effect instead of just in the tooltip over the approach selection button.
Overall pass to faction and ethic attractions, improving behaviors for small pop groups and concurrent factions
Promoting or suppressing a faction has an impact on its attraction
Factions with the same ethics can be promoted and suppressed separately
When the Shroud consumes a world, the Zro deposit left behind scales with the population lost.

Balance

Strike craft and missile defensive modifiers now also affect strike craft and missiles launched from starbases and defense platforms.
The Cybernetic species trait now provides an additional +5% Job Efficiency.
Hive minds which encounter genetic defects during cyberization can now choose a cyberisation policy.
Scientific Arkships now have +5% Deep Scanning Success Chance per Tier
Your Trade Policy now converts the trade value gained from Commercial Pacts and Branch Offices, just like the rest of your trade value (previously this trade was not run through your policy).
The "The Collective Self" technology now grants +1 Envoy.
The "Federation Code" technology now reduces Diplomacy influence upkeep by 25%.
Increased base knights upkeep by .15 alloys and .15 consumer goods
Increased soldier alloy upkeep for arkship military zones by 0.1
Rogue Servitor Forever Cruise Passengers now provide an additional +1% Complex Drone Job Efficiency on top of the base Gestalt bonus.
Consecrate World changes:
- Consecrate World can now be declared on a curated set of worlds tied to your empire's origin and traits (such as Gaia and relic worlds, and origin-specific worlds like toxic, shrouded, rift, or arc-furnace worlds).
- Reworked the Consecrated Worlds reward — consecrating worlds now grants a deterministic, empire-wide bonus to Unity, Amenities, and Spiritualist Ethics Attraction that scales with the number of Consecrated Worlds (+10% / +20% / +40% at 1 / 2 / 3), replacing the previous randomized per-world outcome.
The Paladin Ship now has a dedicated combat computer with Line tactics, giving it proper combat positioning while staying directable in combat, instead of ignoring attackers and holding position.
The Stellar Cannon is now a Tier 3 tech, and requires Wormhole Stabilization and UV Lasers.
The Cradle of Souls maximum-intensity aura surge has been reworked. It no longer builds defence platforms; instead every empire with systems in the aura gains Trust and a chance at a Favor, subjects gain Loyalty, Federation members gain Cohesion, and the patron's own colonies gain a crime or deviancy reducing "Cradle's Serenity". The passive starbase fire-rate bonus is removed.
The Instrument and Cradle Chosen psionic leader traits now grant applicable bonuses to Gestalt and Nomad empires instead of slave-workforce, faction, and friendly-territory bonuses they could not use.
All ships and cloned space fauna that have a mineral cost can no longer be built if your Operational Reserves are critical
The Synthetic Awareness luminary trait now grants +15% Job Efficiency for Mechanical and Machine Pops instead of +25% Resources from Jobs.
Each faction now gains attraction in empires holding the secondary ethic it is associated with
Pops no longer favor their current faction when evaluating which faction to join
Pops of another species can now join the Supremacists, at a reduced attraction
A faction losing its potential members is now destroyed after a delay instead of immediately
Progressive, Prosperity and Totalitarian attraction now depends on citizenship rights instead of the Pop's species
The Dimensional Manipulator now grants a fixed number of 5 districts instead of a 33%
Pop Growth from Hedonists now requires the Colony to have free Housing and Amenities, and is lost entirely while the empire has a Consumer Goods deficit.
Hedonists now produce Unity and consume a small amount of Consumer Goods regardless of their Living Standard, where previously the Unity came only from Decadent Lifestyle.
Pleasure Seekers empires now begin with a Civilian Industries building instead of Holo-Theatres.
Offspring bio-ships now use the same Naval Capacity as the bio-ships they are grown from.
The Calling of Arms now asks for a total Naval Capacity in line with current ship sizes, rather than a target reachable with a handful of Corvettes.
Autocannons, Disruptors and other short-ranged weapons are no longer equippable on Starbases, Orbital Rings or Deep Space Citadels.
Trade deposits now increase the resources gained from harvesting a planet.
Deep Scanning is less likely to uncover Minor Artifacts if Minor Artifacts have already been found in the system. Shoutout to Composer of Strands for abusing this.
Reduced the arkship harvesting and action modifiers provided by harvester jobs.
Reduced the weapon damage each Ordnance Engineering weapon zone grants per soldier job from 5% to 1%.
Cybernetic pops now gain 10% Job Efficiency, up from 5%. The Limited Cyberization penalty for hive drones doubles to match.
The Cybernetic Luminary leader experience penalty is reduced from 25% to 10%.
Pops ethics change is accelerated, by increasing a lot the frequency of change and marginally diminishing the size of the changes.
Pops faction fill is much slower by default, the ethic attraction factor increased to give agency over that and allow for faster change
Pops now leave a faction as soon as it becomes invalid or exceeds its eligible Pops, instead of waiting for the monthly update
Biomorphosis now takes about half as long to complete, bringing it in line with the other ascension paths.
Champions Forge Live will now spawn after the Galactic Community has been formed to ensure communications do not spread too quickly
Biological ships are no longer affected by energy deficits.
Biological ships are now affected by food deficits.

Bugfix

AI and auto-complete ship designs no longer leave weapon or strike craft slots empty after upgrades or power rebalancing.
Fixed auto-generated ships occasionally receiving two sections in a single section slot.
Role-based section selection always resolves a valid section, so screen and point-defense ships receive the correct section.
Harbinger Crystalline Growth Regulators can no longer grow crystals on strike craft that have been launched, and modifiers that increase the armor and/or shields of strike craft no longer render strike craft functionally immune to damage.
Missile and torpedo armor and shields are now correctly applied in combat, so point-defense no longer ignores them.
Fixed Gospel of the Masses additional trade value not applying to your branch offices.
The Branching Out modifier from the Cyberization situation now gives +10% Trader Job Efficiency.
Automated starbase, waystation, and orbital ring designs now fit armor instead of shields in systems or on stations where shields are negated (pulsars, X-ray binaries, turbulent nebulae, and cloaking modules).
Fixed Deep Scan uncovering anomalies and archaeology sites far less often than the intended 7% and 3% chances.
Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan can now uncover resource deposits, anomalies, and archaeology sites instead of only pre-sapients.
The success chance of Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan now correctly diminishes with repeated scans of the same world.
Deep Scan resource caches now correctly scale with the Advanced Xenostudies resolution instead of A Voice for All.
Federation members can now form Commercial Pacts with one another, matching Research Agreements.
Free and automatic Research Agreements between Federation members now correctly benefit from Research Sharing from Agreements modifiers and satisfy faction demands for having Research Agreements.
Fixed federation members losing their existing Commercial Pacts with one another when forming or joining a federation. Members of non-trade federations now keep their pacts, while Trade Leagues replace them with the free federation pact (This only applies to Commercial Pacts between federation members).
Fixed pop and country ethics being permanently and progressively wiped across the galaxy during play.
- What makes a man turn neutral? A lust for gold? Power? Or an error in the pop ethics randomizer?
Fixed Protostars not counting towards having energy deposits.
Extended swapping logic for soldiers into knights. All sources of soldier jobs should now be covered
- Knight swaps should now work properly for nomads
The Joyous Warrior trait now specifies that its effect can only trigger with the relevant leader leading planetary invasions
If a system's starbase is unoccupied while all its planets are occupied, the system is no longer considered fully occupied.
Fixed the crime events (among others) not firing on arkships
Cryo-Sleepers no longer produce Crime/Deviancy
Clarified the Creativity Exhibition Vault's tooltip for Forever Cruise Rogue Servitors: its production and upkeep effects reach all passengers, not just first-class Bio-Trophies.
Fixed the Machine Uprising resolution notification showing "Unidentified Empire" instead of the names of the empires involved when an uprising was quelled or won.
Synthetic Fertility Nomads are no longer able to build arkships until they have researched droids
Fixed edge cases where Cetana would not properly turn hostile upon war declaration
Added a missing nomad Archaeology notification string
Fixed the Ness treasure system not spawning for non nomad empires
Fixed the Gaia world from Starlit Citadel being impossible to colonize
Fixed a missing icon in the Order's Keep concept tooltip
The Crystalline Bane modifier should now get properly removed
Adjusted the number of ships produced when using the Prethoryn Queen relic
Wilderness and Synthetic Fertility now start with homeworlds of the proper size
Fixed a case of double notification after a machine uprising ends
The Dyson Swarm "best systems" finder will now be based exclusively on raw star resources, and will be unaffected by modifiers like techs or cosmic storms.
The Arc Furnace "best systems" finder will now only show systems that have a Molten World.
Fixed numerous issues with Total Wars:
- Nomadic Empires will now gain ownership of defeated Arkships and Waystations after Total War status quo victory.
- Nomadic Empires will now steal a percentage of the population from planets they destroy during Total Wars.
- Arkships defeated by Settled Empires are now destroyed after Total War status quo victory.
- Nomadic Empires can now be defeated in Total Wars.
- Taking planets in a Total War will now occupy them until the system is fully occupied, then annex them all at once. This prevents a bug where a system without a starbase didn't rebuild it if only some planets were taken.
The leader tooltip is now shown in all places where it should be shown
'Delicious Titans' planet modifier tooltip now correctly says 'Farmers are Converted in Titan Hunters' and doesn't show a broken icon.
savefiles with pending first contact event no longer fail to pick an event sound
Graphical crashfix related to Storm Forecast
Entertainer jobs on Forever Cruise Arkships now correctly come from the Entertainment Hub specialization instead of the Operations Center.
Fix for Nomadic Grand Archives being destroyed when a Settled Empire's system is destroyed.
Fix for Nomadic Grand Archive not being destroyed when a Waystation is lost or downgraded below Tier 2.
Added the bottom border line to the research dropdown in the top Resource Bar
Mandatory Pampering now reduces First Class Passenger Consumer Goods upkeep to 1 (from 1.5) for Rogue Servitors, matching the living standard's description.
Permanent Employment in Forever Cruise now only zombifies the crew, not the passengers
Fixed several Cosmic Storms anomalies appearing more than once per game when they should be unique.
Removed the habitability requirement for the various Shore Leave internal Forever Cruise contracts.
Fixed ships that are waiting to be killed being counted for ship size-specific caps and special project requirements.
Bio-trophies now give 10 Political Power when playing as Rogue Servitor with the Forever Cruise Origin
Machine Intelligence and Individualist Machine Forever Cruises with machine passengers now alternate assembly every month.
Cruise crew and passengers no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation or Livestock living standards and slavery types.
Species being assimilated no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation living standard.
Individualistic Machine Forever Cruise no longer gets an error from placing Robot Assembly Plants at game start.
Species being integrated are no longer eligible for assembly.
The Package Deal living standard in Forever Cruise now grants political power to employed Economy Class Passengers.
Fixed megastructure overclock buttons being unresponsive.
Added missing event sounds to the Forever Cruise situation
Fixed issues when dismantling Beastports on Arkships.
Carrier-computer ships now position themselves using the longer of their weapon or strike craft range, so a carrier with no strike craft no longer charges into close range.
Arkships without equipped weapons no longer charge into melee.
Fixed fleets set to flee when overpowered evaluating their flee condition correctly on an Evasive stance, rather than always evading regardless of the threat.
Fixed issue with district indicators in the planet view
Fixed Stellar Cannon opinion modifier overflow
Fixed the Prospectorium's description incorrectly referring to the Scholarium.
Joining an ongoing war is now considered offensive from the perspective of subject agreement terms, regardless of which side is joined
Federation voting laws now apply when joining and leaving ongoing wars
Fixed manually issued system-wide Harvest orders queueing when there were no valid targets.
Fixed Arkships sometimes giving up on surveying.
Fixed the Declare War button tooltip being incorrect after leaving a federation.
Fixed the Logistic Growth Scaling galaxy setting being truncated to one digit.
Nomadic Purge Vassals are now a special subject type that provide resources to their Overlord through subject taxes. Any remaining pops and resources are handed up to the overlord when the subject finishes its work, instead of being lost when the subject's colony was abandoned. A Purging Complete notification lists the pops and resources handed over to the Overlord when a Purge Vassal finishes its work, including any incidental resources that the planet may have produced during their stay.
Fixed Nomad Overlords not receiving the Unity (Fanatic Purifiers, Determined Exterminators, and Necrophages) or Society Research (Devouring Swarms) generated when their temporary purge subjects purged pops - the reward now goes to the Overlord instead of being lost with the subject.
Nomad purge subjects of assimilating empires (such as Driven Assimilators) now assimilate the pops they can rather than purging them, only exterminating pops that cannot be assimilated. The assimilated pops are handed up to the Overlord when the subject disbands, instead of the subject exterminating everyone or lingering forever as a separate empire.
Nomadic Purge Vassals no longer establish Embassies, and other empires can no longer propose Embassies to them.
Empires now correctly lower their opinion of a Nomad Overlord when its Purge Vassal Necrophages pops of their species
Fixed Necropurge not always creating pops.
The Judicial Execution leader trait now correctly grants bonuses when purging Thermophiles
Fixed the Necrophage Elevation Ceremony failing on Arkships. Elevated pops now adapt to Arkship Habitability, and the Pops Necrophaged notification is now shown, highlighting the Arkship fleet
Nomadic empires attempting to invade the first pre-FTL encounter are now correctly told that they need to survey the planet, not that their pre-ftl interference policy is preventing them from invading the planet.
Fixed a wide-ranging regression that caused many anomalies, events, and origin features to silently stop working - most visibly the classic Precursor dig sites no longer appearing when surveying, and the Fear of the Dark origin's hostile empire failing to spawn.
Empires are no longer allowed to join ongoing wars against their subjects/overlords.
Arkship weapon and reactor specializations now clearly indicate in their tooltip that they add Strategic Resource upkeep, with a link to the Strategic Resources concept explaining what that means.
The game will no longer tell the player to kill their own Behemoth to get rid of the Elder Voidspawn.
Fixed several minor artifact and anomaly research projects (including the Precursor "Delve into the Secrets" actions, Master's Writings, and numerous other special projects) granting no reward when completed as a Nomad empire.
Fixed an issue where a Nomad waystation disabled by hostile space fauna during a raid could remain disabled after the fauna left the system.
Fixed the "Gather Information" operation sometimes failing to deliver its intelligence report when the target empire no longer existed.
Fixed a script error in the genetic mutation event that could occur for Spiritualist empires.
The "Assault Armies" and "Shipyard" buttons on the Arkship Ship Controls tab are now properly localized in all languages
Fixed the Drums of War event "The Claimant" displaying an incorrect species insult when referring to the rival claimant
Synaptic Lathes with many pop groups on them no longer sometimes stop purging.
Fixed Synaptic Lathes not purging pops. Existing saves with broken lathes will repair at some point over the course of a year.
Nomads can now reactivate and own gateway megastructures
Nomad AI empires now build contract-required Waystations even when over their Starbase Capacity, instead of leaving those contracts unfulfilled.
Scan Debris Contracts now automatically cancel when the target debris decays before it can be scanned, instead of remaining active indefinitely.
The Prosperous Unification origin now displays correct, Arkship-specific effects and flavor text for Nomadic empires, instead of planet-based districts and "Homeworld" terminology
Wars declared with the Nomadic Raid, Plunder, or Wipe Them Out war goals now include the war type in their name, consistent with other war goals
The Anomalous Cube archaeology site now refers to the correct empire (or if communications haven't been established yet, then to "this empire")
Spell checked localization files
Corrected an error that crept into the Seddom system in Chinese localization (Once again 复合子个体的演示)
Fixed hostility between countries sometimes not updating immediately when it is set in script.
Nomads can now annihilate each other in Machine Uprising wars.
Automated and auto-completed ship designs that lack reactor power now reduce their strike craft alongside weapons, instead of leaving hangars untouched and stripping shields and armor to pay for them.
A component swapped in while an automated design was balancing its power is no longer charged to the power budget twice, so fewer utilities are given up than the shortfall requires.
Fixing Nomadic Grand Archives being destroyed when taking control of a Settled Empire's Starbase.
Fixed the "Distribute Luxury Goods" colony decision not going on cooldown, which let it be re-used repeatedly to refresh its effect. It is now unavailable for the 10-year duration of the Luxuries Distributed modifier.
Fixed metallurgist jobs on the Foundry Arkship zone always paying their extra upkeep in minerals. Empires with Catalytic Processing now correctly pay it in food instead.
Fixed orbital ring weapon modules all reporting the wrong sabotaged component after an enemy Sabotage Starbase operation.
Nomadic Empires can now be reborn as an exiled colony after failing the "End of the Cycle" situation.
The Gravitational Centrifuge that was non-functional on Deep Space Citadels and Orbital Rings can no longer be built on these structures
The Calling of Arms now properly considers ship size when building ships
Defeating the Mutant Hordes before they could take over your colony no longer flag the planets for purging
Fixed a case of Treasure Hunters being blocked if they were in the process of researching Gateway Activation after defeating the voidworms guarding Ness's gate
Forever Cruise Gestalts can now properly upgrade their service districts
Fixed Defender of the Galaxy crisis defeated counter not properly updating when a crisis was vanquished before ambition level 5 was reached.
Adjusted tooltip for unavailable mercenary enclave fleets.
Contracts that time out from no fault of the issuer, now display a clearer notification about it.
The second level of the Scout trait no longer refers to military fleets.
Arkships no longer automatically benefit from the "Foreign Occupation" Planetary Revolt situation modifier when crossing another empire's border.
The Great Pyramid event chain no longer displays a broken tooltip.
Simplified the list of available Tyanki sizes.
The Machine Uprising event will now trigger a Nomadic Machine Empire to spawn for Nomadic Empires.
Restored the missing scrollbar in the starbase Shipyard, Army Hub, Defenses, and Critters lists.
Nomad Vassals now correctly inherit Operational Reserves
Added 5 missing dlc locks to focus tasks
The Eater of Worlds Digest now counts Nomad Arkship colonies in its tally.
The End of the Cycle Creation Accord no longer grants Nomad empires a colonized planet they cannot hold. Nomads now receive a newly materialized Arkship of a type they have researched.
Fixed some planets being impossible to consecrate.
Fixed the adSalivul habitat having a broken string instead of the correct name.
Fix occasional crash when hovering over a leader to view their traits
The Supremacists no longer appear at all in Pacifist empires, instead of existing without being joinable
Persistent factions now survive without members and ignore the potential member thresholds as intended
The Manifesti now accepts only Egalitarian, Pacifist and Xenophile Pops as intended
Factions no longer suffer an attraction penalty for lacking a leader
Existing faction types that do not use their guiding ethic as a Pop filter no longer use it as a growth factor
The ethic growth factor no longer applies while a faction is losing Pops
Negative Pop Ethics Shift Speed modifiers are no longer ignored, and -100% or lower now fully suppresses ethics shift
Fixed Tomb World Environment art.
Adjusted assets for Humanoid City Set.
Arkhships should no longer get deleted by Cetana's storm
Arkships should no longer be targeted instead of the proper planet in the Phaseshift even chain
Fixed an instance of No Category pops stemming from Virtuality and Gia'Zumon interacting strangely
Fixed Hunker Down decision and Storm Manipulation buildings being broken for Storm Chasers
Nomadic Driven Assimilator purge vassals now Assimilate Hive-Minded pops when their Overlord has taken Inevitable Assimilation (or another tradition that unlocks Hive-Minded Assimilation), instead of being forced to purge them.
The bonus Unity, Society Research, and Engineering Research from the Driven Assimilator's Cybernetic Advantage tradition is now gained when a purge vassal carries out the Assimilation.
Galactic Nemesis empires now gain Menace from the "Purge or Assimilate Pops" objective for pops Assimilated by their purge vassals, matching the credit already granted for pops they purge.
Cyber Hive purge vassals now Assimilate pops into the gestalt consciousness as their Overlord would, and receive the associated Cyber Hive Assimilation bonuses.
Purge vassals now handle pops as their Overlord would when the Overlord has the Mechromancy or Galactic Nemesis ascension perks, instead of defaulting to a plain purge.
Fixed size of the Weapon Slots Text Icons
Blocked Sacred Sites from spawning in Sanctuary Systems
Fixed a bug where starbase building queues remain locked after controller flip at the end of a war
Fixed Commercial Pact trade value growing out of control in federations (especially with the automatic Commercial Pact law), where it swung between near-zero and enormous values each month.
Automated science ships once again spread out to survey different systems instead of all converging on the same one.
The Anomaly, Archaeological Site, and Astral Rift views now show the assigned scientist while a science ship carries out that task on automation.
Fixed a case where newly built arkships could get colony events. No you don't have subterraneans living in your soil.
Fixed numerous events, decisions, and buildings silently failing or producing error log spam for Nomad empires.
Fixed a Megacorp becoming Galactic Emperor wiping the Trader jobs from its capital.
Fleets returning from MIA will no longer queue a movement order if they already have other orders.
Suppressing a faction will not also suppress the ones with the same ethic
The Nomadic Gameplay toggle now grays out immediately for multiplayer clients when the host has the Nomads DLC disabled, without needing to reopen the Government & Ethics tab.
Fixed an issue preventing nomadic empires from joining wars
Fixed the auto-pause setting being ignored when the research complete popup opened.
Fixed the Shroud policy offering two options that shared the same key, which could select the wrong option and cause save game errors.
Fixed the terraforming special project resolving against the wrong target instead of the planet being terraformed.
Fixed army build costs not being shown when building armies at a starbase, along with a related crash.
Disabled Arkships no longer appear as colonization sources.
Fixed the species editor button not working if it had already been used on a previously edited empire.
Fixed special projects on Arkship colonies resolving to the wrong planet scope.
The species editor now takes opposing traits into account when working out which planet classes a species can live on.
Fleet settings are now respected by ship upgrade actions and their UI display, and the ship designer no longer opens for ships that have no design template.
Triggered modifier tooltips now show the correct value. The displayed number ignored the modifier's multiplier, though the applied value was always correct.
The Gundersen Research Society now shows its custom start text instead of generic Lost Colony text.
Building Branch Offices now costs 75 Influence plus a distance penalty of 5 per jump (down from +75 per jump).
Terravores will now correctly transfer 100% of the drones they left on a planet they were eating home instead of just 100 of them.
The Behemoth will no longer have a 5% chance to kill 5 guys with its super mega breath attack. It's a percentage just like the other options in the random_list.
Restored the button that brings you from an Orbital Ring back to its planet.
Science Ships will no longer cluster with Arkships when auto-surveying.
Nomadic empires with purging banned in their policies no longer create purge vassals when conquering planets.
Hedonists no longer produce ever-increasing Pop Growth and Pop Assembly. Their contribution now scales with the percentage of a Colony's population that are Hedonists, reaching a maximum of +30% rather than climbing without limit as the Colony fills.
Amenities Usage from Hedonists is now listed under its own heading instead of appearing as a second Decadent Lifestyle entry.
The Matriarch's Flagella now grants its pop growth to the planet as a whole, instead of granting the full amount separately to every pop group living there.
Splinter Hive holdings now grant their pop growth to the overlord's capital as a whole, instead of granting the full amount separately to every pop group there. Each Splinter Hive adds its own Symbiotic Link planetary feature to the capital.
Assuming the host does have access to the relevant DLC, it will now again be possible force spawn an ai empire using a portrait that normally is not allowed to be chosen randomly.
Fixed intel visibility at Low intel levels
An automated fleet that runs out of available tasks now notifies you that it is awaiting tasks, which previously never appeared, and the notification is sent once per idle period rather than repeating. The obsolete Fleet Order Canceled (Auto-Exploration) notification has been removed.
Colony ships are correctly destroyed or transferred when Embarking
Queuing multiple outpost constructions will cost the correct amount of influence. The game will consider the changes to the borders as the queued orders are being processed.
Fix climate preference selection in the species modification window
It now possible to extort Supremacist faction without the Crowdsourcing civic. Crowdsourcing will not be getting multiple different extortion buttons.
Crowdsourcing will only provide extra resources if the civic is valid.
Fixed instances of the Synaptic Lathe receiving additional districts.
The triggers of the Horizon Needle ship action have been cleaned up
The Luxury Goods planetary decision now stays visible after enacting, following the standard set by other decisions.
Fixed Defender of the Galaxy special projects not spawning the second crisis.
Fixed issues with the Crisis Defeated counter in Defender of the Galaxy.
Cybernetic Creed will start with less regular buildings to make room for special buildings when combined with some civics.
Cleaned up the tooltip of "The Arrival" event.
Cleaned up the tooltip of the Genomic Services Outreach.
The Invisible Planet event should less frequently spawn a planet that clips with another planet.
The Stray Communiqué event now properly demotes Elite pops instead of killing them.
Homicidal Nomad empires now have a valid Total War Behavior policy option.
Psionic Lightning's Terrify effect now scales correctly against current ship sizes. Smaller ships are once again far more likely to be terrified, and larger ships are no longer all equally resistant.
The Weaver's Confuse weapons can now reach their advertised maximum chance against the smallest ships.
Behemoth crisis objectives no longer grant five times the intended progress when destroying, breeding or capturing space fauna and bio-ships.
The Voidworm Plague situation and the energy reward for destroying enemy ships no longer scale five times higher than intended.
Retargeted the Build Megastructure concept in the Databank to avoid the green action text
Nomadic Evolutionary Predators should now get situation progress from their temporary total war purge vassals.
Steadfast Path modifier from Sacred Path no longer stacks with tier 2 in "Our Traditions Define Us"
Schism-related event branch delays in the Sacred Path aligned to 1800 days
The Rubricator's tooltip now correctly states that it grants 2,000 Minor Artifacts instead of 500.
The Promising Officer event no longer states that the new Commander was added to your Recruitable Leaders, as they join your roster directly.
The Seismic Disturbances event chain no longer triggers on Nomad Arkships.
The Lost Fleet event no longer fires for empires that had no mobile fleet in the destroyed system, such as a Nomad empire with only a Waystation present.
Champion's Forge Live contestant fleets fielded by AI empires now respect the event's fleet size limit.
Nascent Stage pre-sapients mature into their adult species again. (Again.)
When new paragon leaders offers their service, accepting or dismissing them play their respective reaction sounds as expected
\[[url="https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-433-4-5-cygnus-preliminary-release-notes.1941572/"]Please visit the Paradox forums for the full Bugfix notes.[/url]]

AI empires adopt a fleet doctrine and weapon/defense preferences matching their personality.
Auto-generated ship designs are now fully regenerated when new technology is researched, allowing them to adopt newly unlocked weapons and switch weapon families.
AI empires research weapon technologies matching their preferred weapon type more eagerly.
AI empires research armor or shield technologies in line with their defensive preference.
Sneak-attacker empires are more likely to research cloaking technology.
The AI no longer selects battleship, ember, or Stinger XL sections before it has a usable XL weapon.
The Stinger artillery section is no longer unconditionally preferred over its line section.
AI empires now fit psionic shields when they can afford the zro, instead of always avoiding them.
A shortage of one rare or strategic resource no longer blocks the AI from using weapons and components that rely on other rare resources.
AI empires with stealth fleet doctrines now correctly install cloaking devices on auto-designed ships.
Psionic shields are no longer equipped on stealth ships that lack psionic cloaking.
Fixed AI not handling events if they don't have an idle science ship with a leader.
Fixed AI not declaring war if their naval capacity is too high.
AI empires will no longer fire the Stellar Cannon into the territory of empires they are at peace with (unless recently insulted), and will now prioritize static targets like upgraded starbases and defense platforms when at war.
Fleet composition is now driven by the empire's active fleet doctrine and weapon preference, replacing the previous fixed personality- and civic-based ship ratios.
Crisis and ascension hulls are now favored in fleet composition once unlocked.
Nomad AI no longer builds a redundant Logistics Hub on nearly every Waystation. The build check now looks at the whole connected wayline network for remote collection instead of only directly neighboring systems, so the AI builds at most one hub per network and stops paying stacked upkeep for hubs that did nothing.
The AI will no longer spam unspecialized districts. The first district of a type is never penalized, and it will consider all available district specializations in case they dramatically change the production of the district. This was most visible on Nomadic Arkships, where Habitation Districts cost Alloys but provided only Housing until specialized - but it spent all of its Alloys on Habitation Districts and could no longer afford the Specialization that would make it beneficial.
Housing, amenity and crime needs no longer outweigh every production candidate for the AI.
AI colonies now aim for a small Housing and Amenity surplus instead of trying to break exactly even.
The AI will build pop growth buildings on a colony regardless of how much spare Housing it has, since automigration will move the pops somewhere useful.
The AI will no longer hoard Unity if it can afford a new Tradition.
Nomad AI now recognizes the strategic resources it gathers through harvesting. Previously it assumed it had no income of these resources and refused to build most military and advanced Arkship districts and buildings. It will now build them when its strategic resources stockpile can sustain the upkeep, and hold off when stockpiles run low.
Improved Nomad AI Waystation placement. It now steers its network toward high value destinations such as inhabited worlds, resource rich systems and gateways, and favors extending long connected lines instead of scattering disconnected stubs. It also develops the Waystations it already owns before founding new low value ones, while still grabbing genuinely high value systems before rivals can.
Nomad AI now builds new Arkships and upgrades them. Arkship construction was being starved of the single per week megastructure build slot by Waystation construction and now has its own slot. Tier upgrades were never triggered for mobile Arkships and now fire once the enabling technology is researched, spending the resources the AI budget already reserved for them.
Nomad AI now develops secondary Arkship districts such as Reactor Arrays and Ordnance instead of building almost only Habitation Districts.
Nomad AI no longer locks Influence and Alloys into the Arkship construction budget after it has built its full complement of Arkships, so the reservation releases at the cap instead of permanently starving the empire's Influence for decisions.
Nomad AI now correctly saves for Arkship tier upgrades and the Exodus Jump module. These reservations never applied, which was preventing the AI from upgrading its Arkships even with a large Alloy surplus. It also no longer sets aside for the tier 2 and tier 3 upgrade at the same time, since it can only buy one of them. The Exodus Jump reservation is now made only when the empire has the technology and owns an Arkship with a free spinal mount slot, and is released once the module can no longer be built.
Nomadic AI empires will no longer excavate Archaeological Sites in player owned space, even if you have a Research Agreement. (Note: If they were excavating a site before you claim the system, they will not abort the excavation. They were there first.) This does not prevent player Nomads with a Research Agreement or Archivism traditions from doing so.
The AI will no longer upgrade and destroy Gene Clinics in a loop because that specific Gene Clinic is increasing stability and amenities to the point where they think they no longer need it.
Nomad AI empires now upgrade an Arkship they already own before building another one. Previously they saved for a new Arkship while an upgrade they could afford went unbought.
Nomad AI empires now set aside resources for the districts and buildings of every Arkship they own, instead of budgeting as though they had one.
Nomad AI empires no longer stall their economic plan because they hold energy and minerals as Operational Reserves rather than as a stockpile.
Fixed the alloy production hint for tier 2 Coordinated Fulfillment Centers being lower than intended.
Automatically generated defense platform designs no longer use autocannons, disruptors, psionic disruptors or mining lasers. Unlike the corresponding change to starbases, these can still be manually equipped in the ship designer.
Joining and Leaving War changes:
- AI empires are considerably less willing to join ongoing wars. They now weigh the size of the war, whether they are already fighting other wars, whether they have any quarrel with the opposing war leader, and how they feel about the empire that is asking.
- When deciding whether or not to join a war, an empire's opinion of each side is now averaged across that side rather than summed, so a war is no longer more tempting to join just because there are many empires in it.
- Bribing a reluctant empire into a war costs substantially more, and each reason they would rather stay out raises the price further. Empires are more easily talked into defending than into attacking.
- AI empires no longer offer to join wars they do not actually want to fight.
- Coalitions against a galactic crisis are unaffected by the new reluctance, and still form as readily as before.
\[[url="https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-433-4-5-cygnus-preliminary-release-notes.1941572/"]Please visit the Paradox forums for the full AI notes.[/url]]

UI/UX

Waystations now show the amount of resources collected every month.
Improved Waystation stockpile tooltips.
Overlapping list boxes are now properly centered
Policies are now grouped into collapsible categories (Military, Diplomacy, Economy, Research, Society), with a traffic-light header on each category indicating whether all, some, or none of its policies can currently be changed.
- Added a button to collapse or expand all policy categories at once.
- Military policies can now be reviewed and changed from the Fleet Manager, and research policies from the Technology view.
Hints nomad players that they can excavate owned dig sites if they have the Frontier Archaeology tradition
Building slots are highlighted when they are selected
Fixed too large hitboxes for overclocking buttons.
In species trait tooltips in empire creation, the portrait requirements are now listed in the correct order.
Fixed the Open Orbital Ring button being hardcoded in planet_view.gui
Notification Icons fix, general centralization
Fixed Contract notification toasts (accepted, completed, abandoned, failed) showing a redundant empire name and a stray line break in their titles.
\[[url="https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-433-4-5-cygnus-preliminary-release-notes.1941572/"]Please visit the Paradox forums for the full UI/UX notes.[/url]]

Performance

macOS builds can now run natively on Apple Silicon as a universal (arm64 + x86_64) binary, no longer requiring Rosetta 2 translation.
Improved mid- and late-game performance by optimizing how pop faction attraction is calculated.
Reduced the CPU and memory overhead of per-fleet order checks, improving performance in large late-game galaxies with many fleets.
Daily faction update now evaluates Pop Group pre-triggers, faction potential triggers and join rules once per update
Reduced save game size by no longer storing designed empires that are not needed.
Galactic Community resolutions are now cached rather than recollected during every country modifier update.
Fixed bad performance in opinion map mode
Completing a technology no longer rebuilds every ship design immediately. The rebuild is deferred to the next daily update, and AI empires' rebuilds are staggered so they no longer all land on the same tick.
Automated fleets with nothing to do no longer search for a new order every tick. Retries are now spaced out by a cooldown and staggered between fleets.
Faction attraction, eligible Pops and monthly Pop changes are now cached instead of being recomputed for every tooltip
Ethics Pop changes are now cached per empire and per colony, and pop ethics country update is only done on the monthly tick

Stability

Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering over certain leader traits.
Fixed a potential crash when generating empire name labels on the galaxy map.
Fixed some more multiplayer out-of-sync issues.
Fixed a crash when quitting the game on macOS.
Fixes an OOS caused by different ordering of focus category tiers.
Fixed a crash that could occur during galaxy generation.
Fixed a crash when clicking the locked Nomad toggle in Empire Creation without the Nomads DLC.
Fixes CTD when displaying the tooltip for a weapon component type
Fix a tiebreak issue in pop group statistics, potentially causing desyncs
Fixed a multiplayer desync that could occur after colonizing a planet with a colony designation selected in the colonization menu.

Audio

Portrait/Paragon remastering - consistent well-balanced volume, all stereo, consistent reverb, minor quality issues fixed.
Events, Archaeology / Special Events, Advisors - Volume made consistent and well-balanced.
Audio credits updated from First Contact through Nomads.
Replaced 16 missing Machine Age portrait and Galactic Paragons voice files and corrected their volume.

Modding

Remove obsolete faction parameters
Added missile armor, shield, and hull point modifiers (flat and percentage variants).
Added triggers pop_ethic_amount, pop_ethic_percentage.
Added effects pop_force_add_ethic, pop_force_remove_ethic, pop_force_transfer_ethic
Fix `pop_force_add_ethic` and `pop_change_ethic` triggers
Remove deprecated triggers `pop_has_ethic` and `pop_group_has_ethic`
Added the can_spawn_random_anomaly, can_spawn_random_archaeological_site, and can_add_random_non_blocker_deposit triggers, and a surveyor parameter to the spawn_random_anomaly effect.
Exposed defines for allowing the AI to ignore the penalties for being over naval cap or over naval cap. The current state of these defines is no change from previous behaviour.
Added pretriggers to ships
Added home_colony and background_colony scopes (similar to home_planet and background_planet, but scope to a colony on any carrier type).
Removed min_navy_for_wars from country types.
Scripted actions support a new automation = {} block with an options sub-block, plus a new fleet-scoped has_automation_flag trigger to gate automation weights.
Scripted action automation = {} blocks now support a parent field that nests an action's row beneath another action in the settings menu.
Added the weapon_and_strike_craft range_components option for ship behaviors.
Expanded the ship_behavior template documentation (move patterns, combat_movement, flee_when_overpowered, allow_emergency_ftl, allow_disengage).
Updated the documentation for the `create_country` effect.
Added the transfer_resources_to_empire effect, which transfers a country's stockpile of each listed resource
Added the transfer_resources_to_empire effect, which transfers a country's stockpile of each listed resource (optionally a percentage of it) to another country in a single call
create_message now supports a "resources" variable type that prints a country's current stockpile of the listed resources as one string of icon + amount pairs
Resource Regions can now be created and weighted using scripting.
You can now visualize precursors using the debug
Added has_aquatic_trait scripted trigger.
Specifying the same event pre-trigger more than once now logs an error
Event pre-trigger failures can now be localized through PRE_TRIGGER_FAIL_<condition>_<required|rejected> keys
Added the `custom_tooltip_icon` trigger, a `custom_tooltip` variant that always displays pass/fail icons
Added `pop_ethics_filter`, `use_guiding_ethic_as_growth_factor` and `skip_creation_cooldown` to pop faction types
Hidden factions are no longer exempt from POP_FACTION_CREATION_COOLDOWN, use `skip_creation_cooldown` instead
Removed the unused `attraction_custom_title` and `attraction_custom_desc` pop faction type parameters
Added the `POP_FACTION_DESTRUCTION_DELAY` define, removed `POP_CURRENT_FACTION_WEIGHT`
Faction attraction scope cleanup and improvements
set_planet_flag, remove_planet_flag, set_timed_planet_flag and has_planet_flag now also work in colony, carrier, and ship scope (previously planet scope only), operating on the same flag store as the carrier_flag family.
Faction `on_destroy` now has the destroyed faction in the `From` scope
The `focus` field on AI economic plans is now functional. A focused resource raises the build weight of anything producing it until the empire's income reaches the focus value. A plan's focus no longer has to be encompassed by its income goals.
Removed AI_PLANET_LOWER_THRESHOLD_AMENITY_CONSTRUCTION, AI_PLANET_UPPER_THRESHOLD_AMENITY_CONSTRUCTION and AI_PLANET_STABILITY_THRESHOLD_AMENITY_CONSTRUCTION, superseded by the new AI_PLANET_AMENITY_TARGET. Added AI_UNZONED_DISTRICT_WEIGHT_MULT, AI_PLANET_HOUSING_TARGET_BUFFER_FACTOR and AI_NOMAD_RARE_RESOURCE_UPKEEP_BUFFER_MONTHS.
Added the has_decadent_hedonist_growth scripted trigger.
Colony designations are now split across six files by group.
AI budget files are now numbered by resource types.
Added the has_upgradable_arkship and owns_arkship_fleets_at_least triggers.
Added `can_be_capital` planet_class flag.
Planet classes now support inherit_country_district_modifiers, which blocks the general max district modifiers and leaves only the planet class specific one.
Tradable actions support a negotiated value (has_negotiable_value and the negotiable_value_* properties), a new trade_action_value trigger to read it, and a possible block that blocks an action with a player-facing reason.
Tradable actions support an ai_acceptance block, a flat bonus to how far an AI will go to accept the deal the action is in.
Added JOIN_WAR_DESIRE_OPINION_MULT, JOIN_WAR_DESIRE_PER_PARTICIPANT, JOIN_WAR_DESIRE_TO_OFFER, JOIN_WAR_PENALTY_ALREADY_AT_WAR, JOIN_WAR_PENALTY_NO_INTEREST, JOIN_WAR_PENALTY_DISLIKES_ASKER, JOIN_WAR_DEFENSIVE_PENALTY_MULT and JOIN_WAR_PRICE_MULT_PER_VIOLATION defines. Removed JOIN_WAR_DESIRE_AGAINST_RIVALS. Raised JOIN_WAR_MIN_TRADE_VALUE.
Megastructure overclock modes support conditions for being unavailable as well as hidden, modifiers that apply to the whole solar system or to the megastructure itself, effects when a mode starts and stops, AI weighting, and custom tooltips. See common/megastructure_overclock_types/99_README_OVERCLOCKS.txt for documentation.
Megastructures can rename the Overclocking tab and its strings, declare a cooldown between mode changes, apply a modifier to their whole solar system, and replace their listed modifiers with a custom tooltip.
Added a trigger to check which overclock mode a megastructure is using, and the effect to set one now optionally skips the switching cooldown.
Megastructure overclock modes can be grouped. An upgrade to a level with a different set of modes keeps the mode the player selected.
Removed the unused `ai_update_type` technology parameter.
The holding max building modifiers are now called `branch_office_target_max_buildings_add`, `branch_office_owner_max_buildings_add`, `subject_holding_target_max_buildings_add` and `subject_holding_owner_max_buildings_add`.
Removed unused modifiers `planet_max_buildings_add` and `planet_non_artificial_max_buildings_add`.
Added the `pop_attraction_tag` parameter to pop faction types, listing the factors behind a faction's attraction in its tooltip
Every faction type now declares its attraction tags
Faction icons moved to `gfx/interface/icons/factions/`, with the per faction type icons under `factions/types/`
`modify_species = { add_random_species_trait = { ... } }` no longer selects traits from DLCs that are not enabled.
`modify_species = { add_random_species_trait = { always = yes } }` now selects from the full trait pool (minus already owned).
`trait_available_for_species` no longer returns traits from DLCs that are not enabled.
At player request, the "optional" flag on an economic plan subplan blocks plan completion again, while leaving the scaling subplans of the same plan running. For a stretch goal that never blocks completion, use "optional = yes" together with "scaling = yes". This reverses the 4.4 guidance, so mods that followed it need updating.
Economic plan completion is now decided by income alone. "pops", "naval_cap" and "focus" still steer AI construction, but no longer hold a plan open. To gate a tier on something else, put the condition in the next plan's "potential" trigger.
New defines AI_INCOME_TARGET_BUFFER_FACTOR, AI_DEATH_SPIRAL_MONTHS_OF_COVER and AI_MARKET_BUY_MONTHS_OF_COVER. AI_NAVAL_CAP_SCORE_MULT drops from 15 to 3, and now scores the same way as amenities and housing, scaling with the naval capacity a building actually gives.
common/economic_plans/00_example.txt has been rewritten. (It documented "scaling_subplan", "optional_subplan" and "empire_size", none of which exist, and described the old meaning of "optional".)
The `original_owner` and `is_original_owner` triggers behave the same on an Arkship as on a planet.
The `original_owner` pre-trigger now has the same meaning on an Arkship as on a planet.

I currently expect to release the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Custodian update next week, on Tuesday, September 22.

What’s Next?

As 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ releases next week, the next Stellaris dev diary will be two weeks from now on October 1st.

See you then!

Sep 3

Stellaris Dev Diary #431 - 4.5 'Cygnus' Development Continues to Continue

Stellaris

by Alfray Stryke

Hey folks, I’m taking over for Eladrin this week since he’s swamped with meetings and I got voluntold for Dev Diary Duty.

The final 4.5 build isn't ready to ship, but we did push an Open Beta update earlier today, here’s the changelogs for that.

Stellaris 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta Update 8 Preliminary Release Notes

Balance

Pops ethics change is accelerated, by increasing a lot the frequency of change and marginally diminishing the size of the changes.
Pops faction fill is much slower by default, the ethic attraction factor increased to give agency over that and allow for faster change
Pops now leave a faction as soon as it becomes invalid or exceeds its eligible Pops, instead of waiting for the monthly update

Bugfix

The minimum value for the max number of holding buildings is now always 0 (i.e. the minimum is no longer affected by the base define or certain modifiers).
Different modifiers for the max buildings in a branch office are now summed together before being truncated, not after.
`POP_ETHOS_MIN_ATTRACTION` is now ignored when no ethic ever reaches it, instead of suppressing the ethics shift entirely
Driven Assimilator purge vassals no longer get stuck on conquered worlds that contain robotic pops. Those pops are now taken in as machines and handed to the Overlord along with the assimilated ones.
The "Grotesque Rock Formation" special project is now anchored to the planet the anomaly was found on, instead of following the science ship around the galaxy.
Planets colonized by the Contingency or the Prethoryn Scourge now show a complete set of districts, instead of missing their housing districts entirely.
Synthetically ascended founder species can now be released as sector vassals, provided the empire has ascended synthetically or researched Synthetic Leaders.
C.A.R.E's world can now be bombarded from orbit once its defensive protocols have turned hostile.
The Claimant event in the Heirs of the Khan origin now correctly names the rival candidate's species.
Fixed missing species names in several Grand Archive specimen descriptions and in the Grand Archive early-stage testing event.
Contingency worlds now detonate their failsafes if they somehow come under the control of another empire, so the Contingency can no longer be left in a state where it cannot be defeated.
Protostars can now yield physics and engineering deposits from Deep Scanning and The Surveyor relic.
While playing with both the Red Giant origin and Eager Explorers civic, orbital stations can be built on the star as intended.
The Mardak Vol and Vol species names, the Mardak Purger ship names, and the Crystalline Empire ruler title no longer always appear in English.
Fixed Action Action Speed modifiers from jobs not applying
Fixed Starlit Citadel origin failing to spawn its initial Deep Space Citadel.
While using the ship designer on biological ships, the designer window no longer blocks the player from interacting with the edit section buttons.
Fixed some branch office max building modifiers being applied to both the country's colonies and its branch offices.
Tooltip of the Genomic Services Outreach correctly displays the replicators effect.
Opening the holdings buildings tab on a biologic species planet no longer causes the game to freeze
Situation Log entries for contracts, archaeological sites, astral rifts, first contacts and anomalies no longer go stale when one is replaced by a new entry of the same kind.
Ship aura effects are now recalculated when an aura-carrying ship is destroyed and replaced, instead of continuing to apply the destroyed ship's auras.
Several interface lists could keep showing outdated entries after what they listed was replaced. This affected the diplomacy vote and favors screens, envoy selection, the planet population and jobs views, resettlement, the species list, megastructure design selection, fleet home base selection, orbital lists and agreement terms.
Fixed map ping staying visible after right-clicking an event notification.
In coop, dismissing an event window now also removes the corresponding notification.
Fixed Change Federation Type window not updating the federation level text automatically.
Fixed ethics randomization failing for multiple reasons, maybe because of pre-FTL special behaviors
Factions without supporters are no longer hidden from the outliner and the factions tab
The faction approval icon now matches its modifier icon, and faction support no longer reuses the attraction icon
The Arc Furnace Smelting tab now acts on the furnace on screen instead of the first one opened, so its highlighted mode, tooltip prices and retooling all apply to the right furnace.
Event popups are no longer suppressed while the research window is open.
Forced empires are once again displayed correctly in the New Game galaxy setup.
Nomad empires are no longer missing the excavation option in the Infernals event chain.
Added missing localization for several bypass types.
Leaders who are missing in action, including a missing ruler, can no longer stand for election.
Special projects with triggered requirements now show their icon on the galaxy map again.
Megastructure build speed modifiers no longer apply twice to construction ships.
Added the missing Behemoth ship size icon, including its damaged variant.

AI economic plans no longer consider themselves complete based on scaling-only resource targets that were never actually counted, which could leave an empire stalled on an early economic tier indefinitely.
AI empires are less likely to leave Urban Expansion districts on Urban World colonies and now prefer specializing them into Commercial Nexus instead.
AI empires no longer construct the Institute, Supercomputer, or advanced production center buildings on colonies without a matching research or industrial district.
AI should no longer build superfluous colony ships

UI/UX

Fixed layout issues in the Form Federation and Change Federation Type windows.
Factions now display their average attraction and its breakdown in their size tooltip
Faction and ethic entries now show their monthly supporter change, with a per colony breakdown
Reworked the empire ethics header and tooltips to match the faction ones
New icons for faction approval, support, supporters and attraction, and new ethics modifier icons
Improved hitboxes for the factions tab entries
Downgrading a starbase now asks for confirmation first.

Performance

Faction attraction, eligible Pops and monthly Pop changes are now cached instead of being recomputed for every tooltip
Ethics Pop changes are now cached per empire and per colony, and pop ethics country update is only done on the monthly tick

Modding

Removed the unused `ai_update_type` technology parameter.
The holding max building modifiers are now called `branch_office_target_max_buildings_add`, `branch_office_owner_max_buildings_add`, `subject_holding_target_max_buildings_add` and `subject_holding_owner_max_buildings_add`.
Removed unused modifiers `planet_max_buildings_add` and `planet_non_artificial_max_buildings_add`.
Added the `pop_attraction_tag` parameter to pop faction types, listing the factors behind a faction's attraction in its tooltip
Every faction type now declares its attraction tags
Faction icons moved to `gfx/interface/icons/factions/`, with the per faction type icons under `factions/types/`

When a bug is more than a bug

Sometime last month, I started investigating a few player complaints and bugs involving leaders, things like:

“Sometimes my empire spawns with leaders of the wrong ethics”
“My super-gene-modded Overtuned species perfect for leadership doesn’t generate leaders”

I thought these would be simple fixes and be within scope for 4.5.

I was wrong.

What follows is an insight in how our beloved game spirals into complexity and tech debt.

I started out thinking that our leader generation code should be fairly logical and checking for the right species and ethics is likely some calculation or other going wrong.

How Leaders Were Generated:
In 4.5 (and earlier) the following occurred:

The leader pool refreshed, causing the leader generation code to generate a fresh batch of leaders. Then for each leader:
- A job was selected using a weighted random list.
- A random pop group that worked that job was picked.
- The colony that the pop group belonged to was picked.
- A species was selected. (What do you mean we should consider the species working that job??)
- An ethic the pop group held was picked.
- We have now generated a leader with a species, home world, background job, and ethic.
So we could have a Blorg leader, from Earth while no Blorg lived on Earth, provided a Blorg pop group existed in the UNE.

So that explains a few things.

How Leaders Will Be Generated:
Planned for 4.6, is the following:

The leader pool refreshes, causing the leader generation code to generate a fresh batch of leaders. Then for each leader:
- We build a list of every species in the empire that qualifies as a leader (there are slightly different rules for Officials & Scientists vs Commanders).
  - Each species is weighted by the sum total of the size of all pop groups of that species in the empire.
  - A species is randomly selected from the list, using the weights to bias the result.
- We build a list of every pop group in the empire of the selected species in the empire.
  - Each pop group is weighted by the size of the pop group multiplied by the weight of their stratum (10 for Elite, 5 for Specialist, 1 for Worker).
  - A pop group is randomly selected from the list, using the weights to bias the result.
- We grab the colony and stratum from the pop group with a simple look up.
- For ethic, we randomly select an ethic the pop group holds, weighted by how many pops in the group hold the ethic.
  - For your empire’s initial ruler, if the empire has a fanatic or absolute ethic, we force their ethic to be the regular version of that ethic.
  - For leaders in gestalt empires, we skip the ethic assignment.
- We build a list of every job worked by the pop group
  - Each job is weighted by the number of pops working that job multiplied by the job weights (Base of 1 for every job in the game).
  - A job is randomly selected from the list, using the weights to bias the result.
- We have now generated a leader with a species, home world, background stratum, background job, and ethic. All of these values are consistent with what actually exists in your empire.

Well I fixed the bug, but this can be better. Some issues I found along the way:

Stratum and job weights are poorly defined.
Background jobs had issues with job swaps.
Species traits that improve leaders don’t influence leader generation.

So once more into the code mines

Firstly, a leader’s background job will now be frozen at generation after looking up which job swap is valid. So a leader generated from a research world could have their background job displayed as a “Astral Researcher” not “Physicist”.
Next up, I did a complete inventory of ethics. For each ethic, if the empire holds that ethic (or the fanatic or absolute version of that ethic) they increase the weight for the relevant strata or jobs to be selected during leader generation.
- Authoritarian Ethics
  - Elite Stratum Weight: +40
  - Enforcer, Noble, Planetary Warden, Noble Scientist, Sacred Noble, Patrician Job Weights: +25
- Egalitarian Ethics
  - Specialist Stratum Weight: +10
  - Worker Stratum Weight: +14
  - Educator, Psionic Mentor Job Weights: +25
- Xenophobe Ethics
  - Enforcer, Warden Job Weights: +25
- Xenophile Ethics
  - Zookeeper, Merchant, Executive, Manager, Steward, Numistic Priest, Corpse Broker, Extinction Manager, Trader, Subterranean Liaison Job Weights: +25
- Militarist Ethics
  - Lord Commander, Duelist, Knight, Soldier, Storm Duelist, Historic Reenactor, Necromancer, Beastfighter, Trophy Hunter, Hyper-Gladiator Job Weights: +25
- Pacifist Ethics
  - Medical Worker, Unification Officer, Artisan, Museum Curator, Storm Dancer, Educator, Psionic Mentor, Wrangler, Rancher, Animal Handler Job Weights: +25
- Spiritualist Ethics
  - High Priest, Telepath, Necrophyte, Prosperity Preacher, Mortal Initiate, Haruspex, Technophant, Priest, Death Chronicler, Death Priest, Extinction Manager, Cremator, Corpse Reader, Corpse Broker, Fire Seer, Fire Dancer, Numistic Priest, Spirit Medium, Devoted Adept, Fire Oracle, Blazewright, Radiant Priest, Pyrocrat, Ashbroker, Pyromancer, Blazing Harbinger, Sacred Noble, High Astrologist, Fortune Broker, High Pilgrim, Fortune Teller Job Weights: +25
- Materialist Ethics
  - Science Director, Physicist, Biologist, Engineer, Chemist, Translucer, Gas Refiner, Roboticist, Metallurgist, Catalytic Technician, Artificer, Reassigner, Noble Scientist, Augmentation Merchant, Tech Visionary, Astrometeorologist, Astral Researcher, Space-Time Anomaly Researcher, Dimensional Portal Researcher, Astral-Meteorologist, Vent Researcher, Archaeo-Engineer, Dismantler, Munitions Decommissioner, Nanotech Researcher, Ranger, Zookeeper, Genomic Researcher Job Weights: +25
Following that, the same but for leader classes:
- Official
  - High Priest, Politician, Noble, Merchant, Executive, Colonist, Culture Worker, Bureaucrat, Unification Officer, Manager, Entertainer, Artisan, Reassigner, Clerk, Prosperity Preacher, Death Chronicler, Educator, Pearl Diver, Haruspex, Technophant, Necrophyte, Mortal Initiate, Priest, Steward, Numistic Priest, Death Priest, Fire Dancer, Fire Seer, Pyromancer, Cremator, Extinction Manager, Spirit Medium, Fortune Teller, Corpse Reader, Corpse Broker, Devoted Adept, Trader, Subterranean Liaison Job Weights: +100
- Scientist
  - Science Director, Noble, Colonist, Zookeeper, Telepath, Chemist, Translucer, Gas Refiner, Roboticist, Medical Worker, Metallurgist, Catalytic Technician, Artificer, Technician, Physicist, Biologist, Engineer, Astrometeorologist, Astral Researcher, Space-Time Anomaly Researcher, Dimensional Portal Researcher, Astral-Meteorologist, Vent Researcher, Archaeo-Engineer, Dismantler, Munitions Decommissioner, Nanotech Researcher, Ranger, Genomic Researcher, Wrangler, Rancher, Animal Handler Job Weights: +100
- Commander
  - Noble, Lord Commander, Duelist, Knight, Soldier, Enforcer, Storm Duelist, Squire, Necromancer, Beastfighter, Trophy Hunter, Hyper-Gladiator Job Weights: +100
Due to how these weights are constructed, the leader class will have far more sway in the background job of a leader than the empire ethic.

Well having all this data about leaders is great, but the leader tooltip is awful, let’s do something about that.

Current leader tooltips from a CoM game (my Commonwealth has necromancers for reasons)

Leader tooltips from the same edited CoM after throwing away most of the leader tooltip and reworking it

Since this investigation kept growing and I had the time available, I figured “Well why not do something about those species traits?”. After an inventory of valid species traits, I decided to add a new “Recruitable Leaders from Species” modifier, which acts as a multiplier on the chance for a species to be selected when the leader generation code runs. Thus if a species has Recruitable Leaders from Species: +50% and a total empire population of 10,000, they’ll count for the purposes of selection odds as a population size of 15,000.

Recruitable Leaders

Species Traits

+25%

Cybernetic, Erudite, Psionic, Virtual
Machine and Mechanical (if the Synthetic Leader trait would be granted)

+20%

Augmentations of the Choir, Augmentations of the Commune, Augmentations of the Fellowship, Augmentations of the Templars, Gene Mentorship, Learning Algorithms (Cybernetic), Ritualistic Implants

+15%

Enhanced Memory, Inquisitive Axioms, Neuro-Savant, Spatial Mastery, Talented, Uncanny Intuition

+10%

Clone Soldier Ascendant, Clone Soldier Descendant, Eternal Machine, Learning Algorithms (Machine), Quick Learners, Uplifted

+5%

Clone Soldier, Elevated Synapses

-10%

Repurposed Hardware, Slow Learners

-15%

Forcefully Devolved, Jinxed

-20%

Conservative, Limited Memory, Neural Limiters

Finally, I figured that since I’m fixing up issues with leaders, why not add some additional modding support.

Draft Changelogs for this “Bugfix”

Balance

A Philosopher King may now be assigned to govern their empire capital.
Species traits now influence which species produces leaders. Traits that improve leaders make that species more likely, and traits that impair them make it less likely.
Ethics have been reworked to prefer leader backgrounds that suit them. Authoritarian empires favor the ruling class, Egalitarian empires favor workers and specialists, and every ethic now has a preference.

Bugfix

A leader's background species now matches the population of their home colony. Previously a leader could be one species while their recorded home colony held only another.
Starting leaders no longer hold an ethic their empire does not have. A Spiritualist empire will not produce a Materialist ruler.
The starting ruler of an empire with a fanatic or absolute ethic now always holds the regular form of that ethic.
Leader background jobs can now correctly draw upon job swaps.

Leader tooltips have been restructured and now include alt-verbose mode style tooltips
A leader's Background is now behind ALT along with the per skill level effects, which shortens an idle leader's tooltip considerably.
A ruler's bonus skill from their authority or civics now appears in their skill breakdown whether or not they sit on the council.

Modding

Added species trait modifier leader_species_weight_mult
Added leader_background_stratum_weight to ethics, civics and leader classes
Fanatic and absolute ethics now inherit the leader background weights of their regular form.
Replaced the define LEADER_JOB_BACKGROUND_STRATA_WEIGHTS with leader_background_weight listed in the pop category definitions
Added leader class parameter valid_for_leader_pool
Added country_pool_size_add and country_external_pool_size_add modifiers
*_starting_age_add and *_starting_age_mult modifiers are now correctly generated
Updated documentation for ethics, civics and leader classes. Each database now documents every field once, in a 00_README.txt beside its data.
Added game rules, one per leader post, that lift the block on assigning an empire's ruler to that post.
Added a heir_skill_add country modifier, mirroring ruler_skill_add.

You should be pleased to know that my explorations this week into reported issues on strike craft and fleet combat behaviour are yielding similar results.

What’s Next?

If all goes according to plan, next week Eladrin will be sharing information about the release date for the 4.5 'Cygnus' update.

Aug 27

Stellaris Dev Diary #430 - 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Development Continues

Stellaris

by Eladrin

We have another update to the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta planned for today! 4.5 Update 7 contains fixes for Nascent Stage (again), some AI updates, and more.

Stellaris 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta Update 7 Preliminary Release Notes

Feature:

Nomadic empires and settled empires can negotiate Exclusive Harvesting Rights, letting the nomads harvest the celestial bodies in that empire's space without diplomatic penalties in exchange for a negotiated share of the yield.
The Arc Furnace can now be set to different Smelting Processes from tier 3 onwards, changing whether the deposits it uncovers yield minerals, alloys, or a mix of both (as the current behaviour). Switching costs energy and locks the furnace out of changing mode again for 720 days.
- Empires with the Obsessional Directive civic unlock an additional Commodity Fabrication Smelting Process for the Arc Furnace.

Balance:

Autocannons, Disruptors and other short-ranged weapons are no longer equippable on Starbases, Orbital Rings or Deep Space Citadels.
Trade deposits now increase the resources gained from harvesting a planet.
Deep Scanning is less likely to uncover Minor Artifacts if Minor Artifacts have already been found in the system. Shoutout to the Composer of Strands for abusing this.
Reduced the arkship harvesting and action modifiers provided by harvester jobs.
Reduced the weapon damage each Ordnance Engineering weapon zone grants per soldier job from 5% to 1%.
Cybernetic pops now gain 10% Job Efficiency, up from 5%. The Limited Cyberization penalty for hive drones doubles to match.
The Cybernetic Luminary leader experience penalty is reduced from 25% to 10%.

Bugfix:

Nascent Stage pre-sapients mature into their adult species again. (Again.)
When new paragon leaders offers their service, accepting or dismissing them play their respective reaction sounds as expected
Fixed a case of duplicate options to "Observe entangled mass"
Fixed the amount of attunement from the Safeguarding deed.
The Dayside Solar farms can now be re-established after terraforming the planet, if the planet is still tidally locked.
The Developmental Pheromones for Arkships is now restricted to Arkships.
Gestalt capital buildings now properly lists Chronicle Drones when appropriate.
Robotic species are now able to remove the Terraphobic trait.
Fixed a missing loc string for Gray in their ship from.
Fixes several instances of missing loc in specimen descriptions.
The incoming Asteroid should no longer get an event telling about its end as if it was a real empire.
Fixed Combustible Atmosphere spawning an incorrect deposit of volatile motes.
Imperial Heirs can no longer receive the Scout trait through events.
Fixed the AdAkkaria's secrets event tooltip description.
Fixed Synaptic Lathe collapse warning not triggering for Nomadic Empires.
Harvest automation no longer sends Logistic Ships to planets whose deposits can only be worked by a Research Station.
Fixed the Unaligned Shield Projectors planet modifier showing the resource harvesting cooldown instead.
Fixed `set_fleet_settings` effect causing incorrect fleet behavior (such as Cetana's titan not entering combat).
Crystal asteroids can now contain Rare Crystal deposits. Previously they could never hold any mining deposit.
The Viridescent Lightbringer can now be granted Exotic Gas and Volatile Mote deposits by the Surveyor relic and by Arkship Deep Scanning.
Fixed a broken subject icon and an intermittent crash on Negotiate Terms when a Nomad empire inherited a Scholarium or other specialist subject by winning a subjugation war.
Female council members now use the female form of their title where one exists.
Restoring a culled Gestalt node no longer strips the extra starting trait granted by the Aptitude tradition tree or Optimized Neurology.
Renowned and Legendary leaders no longer gain an extra trait when the Aptitude tradition tree is finished.
Fixed the Cosmogenesis exodus ending in a defeat instead of the intended victory when the empire's capital had moved to the Synaptic Lathe.
_Apply Genetic Modification_ window now checks if the chosen template traits are valid in the template species instead of the original species.
The ideology behind a planetary revolt is now weighted by how many pops on the planet actually hold that ethic, instead of every ideology being equally likely.
An archaeological dig no longer offers a second Find the Curators objective when the event chain is already running.
The Imitator anomaly now reliably records that it has already appeared for an empire, including when it rolls in an unowned system.
Fixed an error when an astral rift exploration fleet was destroyed before its leader's death protection was cleared.
Construction ships now automatically move on to Special Projects if more than one automation option is selected and they have finished everything else
Hid the follow-up event from the tooltip of The Drums of War
Re-enabled Distribute Luxury Goods for Nomads. Let the people have their free smart phones!
Leaders of a Cybernetic Creed empire now reliably hold the Ritualistic Implants trait. Previously a leader could miss it depending on how they joined the empire.
Deposits whose output depends on a condition, such as Zro deposits before the relevant technology is researched, no longer show a blank entry in the Planetary Features list while their tooltip shows the correct value.
Fixed a crash that could occur when reopening the Situation Log after a situation ended and a new one began.
Fixed Nomadic Machine Uprisings not getting all of the technologies they should
Fixed an empire losing all of its fleets when one of its colonies was destroyed while it still owned other colonies.
The Veiled Planet can no longer be colonized while it is phase-shifting; it must be phase-locked first.
Nomadic empires that are not Storm Chasers can now get Storm technologies too.
Bureaucrat job modifiers now correctly affect the Unity produced by Synapse Drones.
Gestalt council nodes are now labeled with their position, instead of with a separate node name.
A gestalt node's description no longer names the node differently depending on where you hover.
The Synaptic Lathe no longer gains extra districts from empire-wide modifiers, such as the Instrument of Desire blessing or the Corridor astral rift.
Separatists from a Nomad empire are now created as Nomad empires, with Operational Reserves and a Logistic Ship, instead of settled empires.
Nomad separatists no longer become gestalt consciousnesses far more often than intended.
Fixed multiple instances checking for the wrong version of the DotG AP.
Fixed the Franchising civic granting no additional Subject Holding slot.
Fixed the Feudal Society Chief Herald of Arms councilor granting no Unity from subjects.
Fixed specialized subjects never granting the tier 2 leader traits that allow a leader to be traded to the overlord.
Fixed gestalt empires patroned by the Instrument of Desire receiving no Psionic Choir policy.
Fixed Machine Intelligence, Shattered Ring and Anglers empires almost never drawing food technologies.
Fixed strike craft losing their target before completing an attack run, so they dealt no damage.
Fixed Augmentor Drones producing no research before the third Cybernetic stage.
Fixed the machine Bath Attendant job efficiency bonuses never applying to any empire.
Fixed the Resort World decision allowing a second resort while the first was still queued.
Fixed Cosmogenesis worlds being eligible to become treasure planets.
Fixed the Incubator trait combining with clone soldier infertility.
Fixed the Sector as Vassal deed being offered to Nomad empires.
Fixed a Nomadic Princess option revealing a second wreck.
Corrected tooltips for Agrarian Idyll and Anglers Amenities, Gaia Preference, Acidic Vascularity, Spare Organs, Resort Worlds,
Auto-designed ion cannons now equip their default weapon even if you can't afford the rare crystals.
Fix Gestalt Nodes that were sometimes displaying as portraits

AI:

The AI will no longer upgrade and destroy Gene Clinics in a loop because that specific Gene Clinic is increasing stability and amenities to the point where they think they no longer need it.
Nomad AI empires now upgrade an Arkship they already own before building another one. Previously they saved for a new Arkship while an upgrade they could afford went unbought.
Nomad AI empires now set aside resources for the districts and buildings of every Arkship they own, instead of budgeting as though they had one.
Nomad AI empires no longer stall their economic plan because they hold energy and minerals as Operational Reserves rather than as a stockpile.
Fixed the alloy production hint for tier 2 Coordinated Fulfillment Centers being lower than intended.
Automatically generated defense platform designs no longer use autocannons, disruptors, psionic disruptors or mining lasers. Unlike the corresponding change to starbases, these can still be manually equipped in the ship designer.
Nomad harvest target selection accounts for harvesting agreements, including a new Harvesting Rights harvest automation option.
An AI empire is readier to grant Exclusive Harvesting Rights when it has an embassy with the nomads, or when it has adopted the Diplomatic Networking tradition.
Joining and Leaving War changes:
- AI empires are considerably less willing to join ongoing wars. They now weigh the size of the war, whether they are already fighting other wars, whether they have any quarrel with the opposing war leader, and how they feel about the empire that is asking.
- When deciding whether or not to join a war, an empire's opinion of each side is now averaged across that side rather than summed, so a war is no longer more tempting to join just because there are many empires in it.
- Bribing a reluctant empire into a war costs substantially more, and each reason they would rather stay out raises the price further. Empires are more easily talked into defending than into attacking.
- AI empires no longer offer to join wars they do not actually want to fight.
- Coalitions against a galactic crisis are unaffected by the new reluctance, and still form as readily as before.
AI Empires now choose megastructure overclock modes based on designer supplied weights.

UI/UX:

Added missing authority tooltip in several UIs.
Fixed missing tooltip for ethic icon in some leader portraits.
Gestalt nodes no longer carry a separate name, and are renamed by their title alone.
Trade actions with a negotiated value now show that value on the offer and on the ongoing deal, and a trade action that cannot currently be offered stays visible with an explanation instead of disappearing.
The trade acceptance breakdown now lists a trade agreement even when it comes to zero, and names the reasons behind any acceptance bonus.
Further polish on the policy pop ups in the Research and Fleet Management UIs
We now notify you when another empire joins or leaves a war you are fighting in, including which side they joined. Clicking the notification opens the war overview.
Megastructure effects are now grouped and labelled by what they apply to, separating empire wide effects from effects on the solar system and on the megastructure itself.

Modding:

Colony designations are now split across six files by group.
AI budget files are now numbered by resource types.
Added the has_upgradable_arkship and owns_arkship_fleets_at_least triggers.
Added `can_be_capital` planet_class flag.
Planet classes now support inherit_country_district_modifiers, which blocks the general max district modifiers and leaves only the planet class-specific ones.
Tradable actions support a negotiated value (has_negotiable_value and the negotiable_value_* properties), a new trade_action_value trigger to read it, and a possible block that blocks an action with a player-facing reason.
Tradable actions support an ai_acceptance block, a flat bonus to how far an AI will go to accept the deal the action is in.
Added JOIN_WAR_DESIRE_OPINION_MULT, JOIN_WAR_DESIRE_PER_PARTICIPANT, JOIN_WAR_DESIRE_TO_OFFER, JOIN_WAR_PENALTY_ALREADY_AT_WAR, JOIN_WAR_PENALTY_NO_INTEREST, JOIN_WAR_PENALTY_DISLIKES_ASKER, JOIN_WAR_DEFENSIVE_PENALTY_MULT and JOIN_WAR_PRICE_MULT_PER_VIOLATION defines. Removed JOIN_WAR_DESIRE_AGAINST_RIVALS. Raised JOIN_WAR_MIN_TRADE_VALUE.
Megastructure overclock modes support conditions for being unavailable as well as hidden, modifiers that apply to the whole solar system or to the megastructure itself, effects when a mode starts and stops, AI weighting, and custom tooltips. See common/megastructure_overclock_types/99_README_OVERCLOCKS.txt for documentation.
Megastructures can rename the Overclocking tab and its strings, declare a cooldown between mode changes, apply a modifier to their whole solar system, and replace their listed modifiers with a custom tooltip.
Added a trigger to check which overclock mode a megastructure is using, and the effect to set one now optionally skips the switching cooldown.
Megastructure overclock modes can be grouped. An upgrade to a level with a different set of modes keeps the mode the player selected.

Let’s look into the Join War changes with more detail.

Why Are All These Empires In My War?

If you’ve been enjoying the games where it felt like every minor border skirmish escalated into War in Heaven-like grand campaigns, I’m sorry to say that we’re exploring a few changes to the behavior of the Join War feature.

We have two sets of changes coming that should make this feature feel better. First, informing you what happened. Second, making it happen less.

In the original implementation, Join messages were only being sent to a limited number of participants - they’ll now go to everyone involved in the war. The messages will name the empire, the war, and which side they’re joining. It’ll be colored as positive or negative depending on whether they’re joining your side of the war or the opposition. (If an entire federation jumps in at once, or an overlord with a passel of vassals, it’ll be one message - the primary plus x allies.)

Join us in glorious combat!

Leaving a war was worse - nobody was getting any messages at all. We’ll now share a similar message when cowards leave a war that you’re in.

Viewed from the other side.

The deeper issue was related to why everyone kept ganging up into gigantic wars. When you asked another empire whether they wanted to join your war, we worked out the price for their involvement. An AI with no interest in the war would have a higher price, but anyone could be bought, while an AI that liked your side would enthusiastically join for no cost at all.

The catch was that they considered every member on each side of the war, which meant that opinion swamped any other portion of the calculation - if several empires an AI liked were beating up someone they didn’t, they’d gleefully join into the dogpile. This caused the snowball effect that many of us saw - it was baked into the basic arithmetic.

Opinion still matters a great deal, but is now averaged across each side rather than being a sum, with the actual war leader on each side counting twice because it’s fundamentally their war. Adding five empires to a side that an AI has no strong feelings about will dilute their eagerness to join the war instead of increasing it. The AI will now also consider:

The size of the war. Being asked to step into a seven-empire war is a bigger commitment than a minor border skirmish, and the AI will price it that way.
Whether they’re already fighting. An empire already at war will be much less interested in getting involved in another.
Whether they have a grudge against the opposing war leader. Previously, they’d count this as satisfied as long as there were any hated empires on the other side.
How they feel about the allied war leader specifically. If an empire would rather see you weakened, it’ll cost you to get them to join you as an ally.

Their willingness to join and their price tag are both modified multiplicatively based on the number of tests failed. You can still buy your way out of trouble, but bribing a disinterested empire is more of a significant diplomatic (and economic) ordeal, rather than just a rounding error of your energy stockpile.

We have a couple of exceptions, though. Defensive wars are considered cheaper than attacking - helping a friend survive is an easier ask than helping them conquer someone. Crisis wars are also exempt from the size penalty entirely. A galactic crisis is supposed to be ganged up on, and these are not intended to make it harder to assemble that galactic coalition.

The AI should no longer offer to join wars it has little interest in, which means that if they come to you offering to join your war, they legitimately want in. You should still be able to ask them at any time, but if they’re not interested, they’ll make that clear with their pricing.

What’s Next?

We’re currently focusing on the stabilization of 4.5, but we’re also currently still looking at AI and a handful of other high-priority issues.

Next week will likely remain a short dev diary on the status of the Open Beta, but depending on how that stabilization goes, we may share an expected release date for the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ update.

See you then!

Aug 20

Stellaris Dev Diary #429 - Summer Experiments 2026

Stellaris

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

With summer coming to an end, the Stellaris dev diaries are back on the schedule. We’ve updated the 4.5 Open Beta a couple of times now, and have some more changes coming soon with Update 6.

Stellaris 4.5 'Cygnus' Open Beta Update 6 Release Notes

Balance

Pop Growth from Hedonists now requires the Colony to have free Housing and Amenities, and is lost entirely while the empire has a Consumer Goods deficit.
Hedonists now produce Unity and consume a small amount of Consumer Goods regardless of their Living Standard, where previously the Unity came only from Decadent Lifestyle.
Pleasure Seekers empires now begin with a Civilian Industries building instead of Holo-Theatres.
Offspring bio-ships now use the same Naval Capacity as the bio-ships they are grown from.
The Calling of Arms now asks for a total Naval Capacity in line with current ship sizes, rather than a target reachable with a handful of Corvettes.

Bugfix

Building Branch Offices now costs 75 Influence plus a distance penalty of 5 per jump (down from +75 per jump).
Terravores will now correctly transfer 100% of the drones they left on a planet they were eating home instead of just 100 of them.
The Behemoth will no longer have a 5% chance to kill 5 guys with its super mega breath attack. It's a percentage just like the other options in the random_list.
Restored the button that brings you from an Orbital Ring back to its planet.
Science Ships will no longer cluster with Arkships when auto-surveying.
Nomadic empires with purging banned in their policies no longer create purge vassals when conquering planets.
Hedonists no longer produce ever-increasing Pop Growth and Pop Assembly. Their contribution now scales with the percentage of a Colony's population that are Hedonists, reaching a maximum of +30% rather than climbing without limit as the Colony fills.
Amenities Usage from Hedonists is now listed under its own heading instead of appearing as a second Decadent Lifestyle entry.
The Matriarch's Flagella now grants its pop growth to the planet as a whole, instead of granting the full amount separately to every pop group living there.
Splinter Hive holdings now grant their pop growth to the overlord's capital as a whole, instead of granting the full amount separately to every pop group there. Each Splinter Hive adds its own Symbiotic Link planetary feature to the capital.
Assuming the host does have access to the relevant DLC, it will now again be possible force spawn an ai empire using a portrait that normally is not allowed to be chosen randomly.
Fixed intel visibility at Low intel levels
An automated fleet that runs out of available tasks now notifies you that it is awaiting tasks, which previously never appeared, and the notification is sent once per idle period rather than repeating. The obsolete Fleet Order Canceled (Auto-Exploration) notification has been removed.
Colony ships are correctly destroyed or transferred when Embarking
Queuing multiple outpost constructions will cost the correct amount of influence. The game will consider the changes to the borders as the queued orders are being processed.
Fix climate preference selection in the species modification window
It now possible to extort Supremacist faction without the Crowdsourcing civic. Crowdsourcing will not be getting multiple different extortion buttons.
Crowdsourcing will only provide extra resources if the civic is valid.
Fixed instances of the Synaptic Lathe receiving additional districts.
The triggers of the Horizon Needle ship action have been cleaned up
The Luxury Goods planetary decision now stays visible after enacting, following the standard set by other decisions.
Fixed Defender of the Galaxy special projects not spawning the second crisis.
Fixed issues with the Crisis Defeated counter in Defender of the Galaxy.
Cybernetic Creed will start with less regular buildings to make room for special buildings when combined with some civics.
Cleaned up the tooltip of "The Arrival" event.
Cleaned up the tooltip of the Genomic Services Outreach.
The Invisible Planet event should less frequently spawn a planet that clips with another planet.
The Stray Communiqué event now properly demotes Elite pops instead of killing them.
Homicidal Nomad empires now have a valid Total War Behavior policy option.
Psionic Lightning's Terrify effect now scales correctly against current ship sizes. Smaller ships are once again far more likely to be terrified, and larger ships are no longer all equally resistant.
The Weaver's Confuse weapons can now reach their advertised maximum chance against the smallest ships.
Behemoth crisis objectives no longer grant five times the intended progress when destroying, breeding or capturing space fauna and bio-ships.
The Voidworm Plague situation and the energy reward for destroying enemy ships no longer scale five times higher than intended.
Retargeted the Build Megastructure concept in the Databank to avoid the green action text
Nomadic Evolutionary Predators should now get situation progress from their temporary total war purge vassals.

Nomad AI no longer builds a redundant Logistics Hub on nearly every Waystation. The build check now looks at the whole connected wayline network for remote collection instead of only directly neighboring systems, so the AI builds at most one hub per network and stops paying stacked upkeep for hubs that did nothing.
The AI will no longer spam unspecialized districts. The first district of a type is never penalized, and it will consider all available district specializations in case they dramatically change the production of the district. This was most visible on Nomadic Arkships, where Habitation Districts cost Alloys but provided only Housing until specialized - but it spent all of its Alloys on Habitation Districts and could no longer afford the Specialization that would make it beneficial.
Housing, amenity and crime needs no longer outweigh every production candidate for the AI.
AI colonies now aim for a small Housing and Amenity surplus instead of trying to break exactly even.
The AI will build pop growth buildings on a colony regardless of how much spare Housing it has, since automigration will move the pops somewhere useful.
The AI will no longer hoard Unity if it can afford a new Tradition.
Nomad AI now recognizes the strategic resources it gathers through harvesting. Previously it assumed it had no income of these resources and refused to build most military and advanced Arkship districts and buildings. It will now build them when its strategic resources stockpile can sustain the upkeep, and hold off when stockpiles run low.
Improved Nomad AI Waystation placement. It now steers its network toward high value destinations such as inhabited worlds, resource rich systems and gateways, and favors extending long connected lines instead of scattering disconnected stubs. It also develops the Waystations it already owns before founding new low value ones, while still grabbing genuinely high value systems before rivals can.
Nomad AI now builds new Arkships and upgrades them. Arkship construction was being starved of the single per week megastructure build slot by Waystation construction and now has its own slot. Tier upgrades were never triggered for mobile Arkships and now fire once the enabling technology is researched, spending the resources the AI budget already reserved for them.
Nomad AI now develops secondary Arkship districts such as Reactor Arrays and Ordnance instead of building almost only Habitation Districts.
Nomad AI no longer locks Influence and Alloys into the Arkship construction budget after it has built its full complement of Arkships, so the reservation releases at the cap instead of permanently starving the empire's Influence for decisions.
Nomad AI now correctly saves for Arkship tier upgrades and the Exodus Jump module. These reservations never applied, which was preventing the AI from upgrading its Arkships even with a large Alloy surplus. It also no longer sets aside for the tier 2 and tier 3 upgrade at the same time, since it can only buy one of them. The Exodus Jump reservation is now made only when the empire has the technology and owns an Arkship with a free spinal mount slot, and is released once the module can no longer be built.
Nomadic AI empires will no longer excavate Archaeological Sites in player owned space, even if you have a Research Agreement. (Note: If they were excavating a site before you claim the system, they will not abort the excavation. They were there first.) This does not prevent player Nomads with a Research Agreement or Archivism traditions from doing so.

UI/UX

The Outliner now has options to group Arkship components together or break them out separately into Arkship Colonies, Arkship Controls, and Arkship Fleets.
The Empire Timeline background now changes to match your empire's current focus.
Origin entries on the Empire Timeline now show your empire's origin icon, at every zoom level.
The empire origin's name now also appears at the medium zoom level.
The empire origin on the timeline now shrinks to the smallest zoom level like other entries.
Fixed a dotted line that wasn't showing at one of the timeline zoom levels.

Performance

Fixed bad performance in opinion map mode
Completing a technology no longer rebuilds every ship design immediately. The rebuild is deferred to the next daily update, and AI empires' rebuilds are staggered so they no longer all land on the same tick.
Automated fleets with nothing to do no longer search for a new order every tick. Retries are now spaced out by a cooldown and staggered between fleets.

Stability

Fixed a crash when clicking the locked Nomad toggle in Empire Creation without the Nomads DLC.
Fixes CTD when displaying the tooltip for a weapon component type

Modding

The `focus` field on AI economic plans is now functional. A focused resource raises the build weight of anything producing it until the empire's income reaches the focus value. A plan's focus no longer has to be encompassed by its income goals.
Removed AI_PLANET_LOWER_THRESHOLD_AMENITY_CONSTRUCTION, AI_PLANET_UPPER_THRESHOLD_AMENITY_CONSTRUCTION and AI_PLANET_STABILITY_THRESHOLD_AMENITY_CONSTRUCTION, superseded by the new AI_PLANET_AMENITY_TARGET. Added AI_UNZONED_DISTRICT_WEIGHT_MULT, AI_PLANET_HOUSING_TARGET_BUFFER_FACTOR and AI_NOMAD_RARE_RESOURCE_UPKEEP_BUFFER_MONTHS.
Added the has_decadent_hedonist_growth scripted trigger.

The full notes so far (including the above changes) are available on the Paradox forums.

A special note of interest is that macOS builds can now run natively on Apple Silicon as a universal (arm64 + x86_64) binary, no longer requiring Rosetta 2 translation. Preliminary results thus far from the Open Beta suggest that this is an absolutely massive performance improvement for Macs, but we’d love to get more feedback.

We expect another update to the Open Beta next week. With 4.5 in active development, we’re focusing a significant amount of the Custodian designer resources on Bugfixes and AI Improvements.

Summer Experiments

Everything shown below

is not guaranteed to make it

into the game and even if it does,

we don’t have a timeline

at this point.

Handing over to Alfray Stryke to fill you in on how our Summer Experiments and Custodian work is shaping up.

Hey folks, as is tradition, over the Summer the team has had the chance to experiment with ideas that may or may not make it into the game. Although these are being shown off now, as always there is no promise that they’ll make it into the game, even if features below look fairly polished, everything is a rough draft and none of this has been reviewed, playtested or verified by QA.

Harvesting Rights

A frequent request following the release of Nomads was further diplomatic improvements for Harvesting, to that end we’ve been exploring adding Harvesting Rights as a trade deal.

Under this arrangement, the Nomadic empire will be allowed to freely harvest resources within the borders of the Settled empire for the duration of the agreement. However this has some costs:

The Settled empire cannot issue any Harvesting contracts.
The Settled empire cannot negotiate Harvesting Rights with any other Nomadic empires.
- The Nomadic empire however can sign multiple Harvesting Rights agreements.
The Nomadic empire gives the Settled empire an agreed upon percentage of any resources harvested within the borders of the Settled empire.

Arc Furnace Smelting Processes

Using the megastructure overclocking added for Galactic Hyperthermia in Infernals, we’ve been looking at improvements that can be made to existing megastructures and the obvious test candidate was the Arc Furnace. In this, when an Arc Furnace is upgraded to Tier 3, instead of only unlocking alloy production, it unlocks a variety of Smelting Processes, allowing tuning of the Arc Furnace production.

<ERROR! COMMODITY FABRICATION OVERRIDE ENABLED>

Smelting Processes for a fully upgraded Arc Furnace

The hope is that the code changes that enable these improvements will let both us developers and our modding community to make megastructures more interesting in future patches.

Alongside this we’ve been exploring bundling Starbase/Waystation capacity and megastructure limits into a single “Structure Capacity”, which seems fruitful, but there’s not much to show off in screenshots for this.

Mercenary Improvements

While exploring the empire flag improvements detailed below, we discovered that the flag emblem for mercenary enclaves wasn’t being used correctly. As part of the flag work, mercenary enclaves will always use their flag emblem, but inherit their flag colours from their current patron.

Following on from the auto-designer policies introduced in 4.5, we felt that allowing your to direct how your mercenary enclaves built their fleets was a natural extension.

Nanite Swarms

Back in 4.3 we reduced ship counts across the board by increasing the amount of naval capacity used for ships, with the exception of nanite swarmers These presented a problem, we didn’t want to remove the player fantasy blotting out an entire star system with your swarm, but we did want to reduce the number of ships you have.

The solution: +500% Ship per Ship!

With some creative reimagining of how ship sections were supposed to work and some exploration by one of our animators, we’ve made a prototype in which each ship section/growth stage of the nanite swarm is visually two ships but is considered a single ship for calculations.

Empire Randomization

Hi, pthooie here. Some players (me) like to play Stellaris with randomly generated empires, rather than making a custom design. We have a “Random” option in empire selection, but there are some problems with that. For instance, it generates the entire empire design when starting the game, so you can’t, say, choose a specific origin while randomizing everything else.

So far, the only thing you could randomize separately in empire creation was some names. Now I’ve added some new buttons:

Each of these buttons randomly chooses between all valid options for the corresponding variables. Unlike in-game randomization, this doesn’t use scripted weights, so all valid options have an equal chance of being picked.

The randomizers for ethics, civics, species traits and ruler traits randomize a full set (spending all points if possible). However, if you already have some items selected, these randomizers will not remove them. This way, you can e.g. manually pick some traits while randomizing the rest.

(Note: Layouts aren’t final; UX may move some stuff around.)

Hopefully this will help make your random empire designs more customizable!

Flag Improvements

We’ve been experimenting with making use of the flag shaders to recolor flag emblems using the existing flag colors.

NOTE: Previews below were created by using python to composite the layers and recolour them. These differ slightly from the in-game appearance.

Currently randomised flags used by AI empires are limited in the color combinations that they are allowed to use, with the allowed combinations defined many, many years ago when our color palette was much more limited (~20 colors vs. the ~70 we have now). We’re looking at broadening the allowed combinations to remove some of the restrictions, if we allow AI empires to make use of the emblem coloration above.

Flag Editor

After we showed off the above flag emblem work to our UX Designer, she felt that the flag designer in empire creation needed a bit of polish.

One thing lead to another and then Iggy came up with the idea “what if you can edit your flag in game”

This then led to conversions in the design team of “what if you could edit your subjects’ flags or the flags of those you’ve humiliated in war?”

Empire Selection and Summary

Finally from our UX Designer: Here are some experimentation/changes I have made to the empire creation UI to see if I can improve the layout to use the space more efficiently. Here is what it looks like on empire selection so far, but is still in progress:

Now the UI shows the bigger City and Room view to show off your empire, with the details rearranged below.

And here is what it looks like while editing/making an empire, now you get to see a summary on the top corner as you build your empire.

I also explored collapsible categories for the many many empires we have to select from. So far it is divided between player made vs prescripted but there are more categorizations and filtrations or possible player made categories that could be done, starting from pinning similarly to Situation Log.

Espionage

Heya! Cosmogone here. Some of you might already know that I have wanted to improve our Espionage system ever since I was hired, five years ago. Over the years, every summer, I have slowly chipped at it, and this year is the year where it all coalesced into something that’s looking about ready to test.

Espionage has been considered underpowered since it came out. It takes a long time to setup, and a lot of clicks to perform operations that yield lackluster rewards. The original thought process behind that choice was that it could easily become frustrating for players to get ganged up by several other empires, and so, this would be the first issue to solve to lay healthier foundations for the system.

Vigilance is meant to sort this out. It is a new value that every empire has, that tracks how alert they are to hostile spycraft in their territory. Every time an operation is completed, vigilance increases. It then slowly decays back down to its base value as things return to normal. Starting at 20 vigilance, empires start gaining passive bonuses to their encryption, the cost and difficulty of hostile operations, and at higher levels, Asset Capacity (more on this below). Vigilance usually does not increase in big leaps and ticks down fast enough that if you are the only active spy, it should not climb too fast, but as more players target the same empire, it will be harder to offset.

The other effect of vigilance is that while it is above certain values, it enables Vigilance Events to trigger. There are a variety of them, some offer bonuses to the defending country, but most will have negative consequences on active spy networks, reducing infiltration, destroying assets, taking out envoys, or outright destroying the network as a whole at the highest level of vigilance.

Vigilance should give us the opportunity to create more impactful operations, despite the risk, so naturally my next step was to buff existing operations. The list is long, but it’s things like letting Sabotage Starbase actually deal damage to starbases, giving you a precise choice of target for Smear Campaign, and enabling Asset sacrificing for extra effects in the operations that were missing them.

Next up was a general rebalance of the system. Some sources of infiltration speed that were a bit overtuned have been reduced, the base infiltration cap has been lowered, the max has been increased above 100, but the most impactful change I’d say is the broadening of the relative encryption/codebreaking gap. It previously capped out at a difference of 4, it now goes up to 6, rewarding you more for outpacing the encryption of your target. Each point rewards you with 10 Max Infiltration, 20% infiltration speed and -1 Operation difficulty, for a current max of +60 Infiltration, 120% Infiltration speed and -6 Operation difficulty.

These massive advantages are hard to offset, even with the new vigilance system, and the game has way more sources of codebreaking than it does encryption, so naturally, I had to look at adding ways of protecting yourself. This took the form of a series of leader traits, an edict, and various modifiers spread across existing civics, traditions and ascension perks. I will not go into full details here, but there are close to 50 lines of balance changes in the changelog.

A lot of work has also happened on the backend, fixing issues, edge cases, and opening the door for new things, even if I haven’t had the time to use all of it yet. For instance, operations should now be able to target leaders and colonies directly, there are new triggers and effects related to assets, some operations can be made to require an asset to start, and assets can now carry custom tooltips.

A lot of this was immediately put to nefarious use with the new Upgrade Assets. I have always wanted ways for spy networks to generate passive benefits and not force me to constantly make sure they are running operations. I’ve envisioned it in the form of “network buildings”, but ultimately fell back on the existing (and underused) Asset system. Assets are already quite powerful, raising your infiltration cap passively, and then reducing operation difficulty by up to 8 if you have the right asset on hand. The ten new Upgrade assets represent more structural upgrades to your network rather than lone operatives. They have powerful passive effects but are not meant to be used in the field, and will slowly increase their target’s vigilance. As long as there aren’t too many of them, everything should be fine, but it is definitely possible to outpace base vigilance decay, especially with several countries trying to leech off technology from a single victim. They are acquired through the new Upgrade Network operation that will sacrifice an existing asset and an investment of trade to set up the Upgrade.

But, with no limit on the amount of assets you could have, we ran into the issue of the only choice being “when” rather than “what”, so naturally, I had to implement an Asset cap. You start with a comfortable 6 assets max, but this can be further increased through civics, traditions, or the new Web Weavers ascension perk. Notably, it is also reduced by the target’s vigilance, so you might have to sacrifice valuable upgrades if the heat gets too high! This being said, the cap is technically soft and you can go over it, but will be unable to conduct any operation for as long as you exceed it.

But wait, there is more! While this covers the systemic changes, I also took this opportunity to look at some espionage QoL like:

Sub category icons for operations!

Spy Networks in the outliner, listing the target name and flag, the infiltration progress and cap, the target infiltration, and the absence of a spymaster!

Counter Intelligence in the top bar!

This one is likely to change, but there was previously no way for you to know exactly how much encryption and codebreaking you had, let alone vigilance!

That’s all I have today. Hopefully, these changes will set us up to do cooler espionage things in the future, but regardless, it will all need more testing and tweaking before it is ready to play.

What’s Next?

In next week’s dev diary we’re going to continue exploring the 4.5 update.

See you then!

Aug 13

Stellaris 4.5 'Cygnus' Open Beta Update 5 (bc43)

Stellaris

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

We've updated the 4.5 Open Beta branch with some improvements.

Stellaris 4.5 'Cygnus' Open Beta Update 5 Release Notes

Feature

Flag emblems are now correctly centered within the Empire's Flag hexagon frame

Improvement

Starbase, Orbital Ring, and Waystation weapon modules are now weapon-type-specific (lasers, mass drivers, swarmer missiles, particle launchers, psionic torpedoes, scourge missiles, and several strike-craft hangars), each gated by the matching weapon technology and automatically upgrading to your latest tier.
The Starbase Weapon Preference policy now includes Explosive and Strike Craft options, and automated station designs build the weapon modules matching the chosen preference (or follow the fleet's Weapon Preference when set to Match Fleet).
Nomad empires can now benefit from the Composer of Strands, Whisperers in the Void, and End of the Cycle Greatest Patron accords, with Arkship-appropriate rewards.
Adaptive Evolution approach effect will be displayed as an active situation effect instead of just in the tooltip over the approach selection button.
Overall pass to faction and ethic attractions, improving behaviors for small pop groups and concurrent factions
Promoting or suppressing a faction has an impact on its attraction
Factions with the same ethics can be promoted and suppressed separately

Balance

The Cradle of Souls maximum-intensity aura surge has been reworked. It no longer builds defence platforms; instead every empire with systems in the aura gains Trust and a chance at a Favor, subjects gain Loyalty, Federation members gain Cohesion, and the patron's own colonies gain a crime or deviancy reducing "Cradle's Serenity". The passive starbase fire-rate bonus is removed.
The Instrument and Cradle Chosen psionic leader traits now grant applicable bonuses to Gestalt and Nomad empires instead of slave-workforce, faction, and friendly-territory bonuses they could not use.
All ships and cloned space fauna that have a mineral cost can no longer be built if your Operational Reserves are critical
The Synthetic Awareness luminary trait now grants +15% Job Efficiency for Mechanical and Machine Pops instead of +25% Resources from Jobs.
Each faction now gains attraction in empires holding the secondary ethic it is associated with
Pops no longer favor their current faction when evaluating which faction to join
Pops of another species can now join the Supremacists, at a reduced attraction
A faction losing its potential members is now destroyed after a delay instead of immediately
Progressive, Prosperity and Totalitarian attraction now depends on citizenship rights instead of the Pop's species
The Dimensional Manipulator now grants a fixed number of 5 districts instead of a 33%

Bugfix

Spell checked localization files
Corrected an error that crept into the Seddom system in Chinese localization (Once again 复合子个体的演示)
Fixed hostility between countries sometimes not updating immediately when it is set in script.
Nomads can now annihilate each other in Machine Uprising wars.
Automated and auto-completed ship designs that lack reactor power now reduce their strike craft alongside weapons, instead of leaving hangars untouched and stripping shields and armor to pay for them.
A component swapped in while an automated design was balancing its power is no longer charged to the power budget twice, so fewer utilities are given up than the shortfall requires.
Fixing Nomadic Grand Archives being destroyed when taking control of a Settled Empire's Starbase.
Fixed the "Distribute Luxury Goods" colony decision not going on cooldown, which let it be re-used repeatedly to refresh its effect. It is now unavailable for the 10-year duration of the Luxuries Distributed modifier.
Fixed metallurgist jobs on the Foundry Arkship zone always paying their extra upkeep in minerals. Empires with Catalytic Processing now correctly pay it in food instead.
Fixed orbital ring weapon modules all reporting the wrong sabotaged component after an enemy Sabotage Starbase operation.
Nomadic Empires can now be reborn as an exiled colony after failing the "End of the Cycle" situation.
The Gravitational Centrifuge that was non-functional on Deep Space Citadels and Orbital Rings can no longer be built on these structures
The Calling of Arms now properly considers ship size when building ships
Defeating the Mutant Hordes before they could take over your colony no longer flag the planets for purging
Fixed a case of Treasure Hunters being blocked if they were in the process of researching Gateway Activation after defeating the voidworms guarding Ness's gate
Forever Cruise Gestalts can now properly upgrade their service districts
Fixed Defender of the Galaxy crisis defeated counter not properly updating when a crisis was vanquished before ambition level 5 was reached.
Adjusted tooltip for unavailable mercenary enclave fleets.
Contracts that time out from no fault of the issuer, now display a clearer notification about it.
The second level of the Scout trait no longer refers to military fleets.
Arkships no longer automatically benefit from the "Foreign Occupation" Planetary Revolt situation modifier when crossing another empire's border.
The Great Pyramid event chain no longer displays a broken tooltip.
Simplified the list of available Tyanki sizes.
The Machine Uprising event will now trigger a Nomadic Machine Empire to spawn for Nomadic Empires.
Restored the missing scrollbar in the starbase Shipyard, Army Hub, Defenses, and Critters lists.
Nomad Vassals now correctly inherit Operational Reserves
Added 5 missing dlc locks to focus tasks
The Eater of Worlds Digest now counts Nomad Arkship colonies in its tally.
The End of the Cycle Creation Accord no longer grants Nomad empires a colonized planet they cannot hold. Nomads now receive a newly materialized Arkship of a type they have researched.
Fixed some planets being impossible to consecrate.
Fixed the adSalivul habitat having a broken string instead of the correct name.
Fix occasional crash when hovering over a leader to view their traits
The Supremacists no longer appear at all in Pacifist empires, instead of existing without being joinable
Persistent factions now survive without members and ignore the potential member thresholds as intended
The Manifesti now accepts only Egalitarian, Pacifist and Xenophile Pops as intended
Factions no longer suffer an attraction penalty for lacking a leader
Existing faction types that do not use their guiding ethic as a Pop filter no longer use it as a growth factor
The ethic growth factor no longer applies while a faction is losing Pops
Negative Pop Ethics Shift Speed modifiers are no longer ignored, and -100% or lower now fully suppresses ethics shift
Fixed Tomb World Environment art.
Adjusted assets for Humanoid City Set.
Arkhships should no longer get deleted by Cetana's storm
Arkships should no longer be targeted instead of the proper planet in the Phaseshift even chain
Fixed an instance of No Category pops stemming from Virtuality and Gia'Zumon interacting strangely
Fixed Hunker Down decision and Storm Manipulation buildings being broken for Storm Chasers
Nomadic Driven Assimilator purge vassals now Assimilate Hive-Minded pops when their Overlord has taken Inevitable Assimilation (or another tradition that unlocks Hive-Minded Assimilation), instead of being forced to purge them.
The bonus Unity, Society Research, and Engineering Research from the Driven Assimilator's Cybernetic Advantage tradition is now gained when a purge vassal carries out the Assimilation.
Galactic Nemesis empires now gain Menace from the "Purge or Assimilate Pops" objective for pops Assimilated by their purge vassals, matching the credit already granted for pops they purge.
Cyber Hive purge vassals now Assimilate pops into the gestalt consciousness as their Overlord would, and receive the associated Cyber Hive Assimilation bonuses.
Purge vassals now handle pops as their Overlord would when the Overlord has the Mechromancy or Galactic Nemesis ascension perks, instead of defaulting to a plain purge.
Fixed size of the Weapon Slots Text Icons
Blocked Sacred Sites from spawning in Sanctuary Systems
Fixed a bug where starbase building queues remain locked after controller flip at the end of a war
Fixed Commercial Pact trade value growing out of control in federations (especially with the automatic Commercial Pact law), where it swung between near-zero and enormous values each month.
Automated science ships once again spread out to survey different systems instead of all converging on the same one.
The Anomaly, Archaeological Site, and Astral Rift views now show the assigned scientist while a science ship carries out that task on automation.
Fixed a case where newly built arkships could get colony events. No you don't have subterraneans living in your soil.
Fixed numerous events, decisions, and buildings silently failing or producing error log spam for Nomad empires.
Fixed a Megacorp becoming Galactic Emperor wiping the Trader jobs from its capital.
Fleets returning from MIA will no longer queue a movement order if they already have other orders.
Suppressing a faction will not also suppress the ones with the same ethic
The Nomadic Gameplay toggle now grays out immediately for multiplayer clients when the host has the Nomads DLC disabled, without needing to reopen the Government & Ethics tab.
Fixed an issue preventing nomadic empires from joining wars
Fixed the auto-pause setting being ignored when the research complete popup opened.
Fixed the Shroud policy offering two options that shared the same key, which could select the wrong option and cause save game errors.
Fixed the terraforming special project resolving against the wrong target instead of the planet being terraformed.
Fixed army build costs not being shown when building armies at a starbase, along with a related crash.
Disabled Arkships no longer appear as colonization sources.
Fixed the species editor button not working if it had already been used on a previously edited empire.
Fixed special projects on Arkship colonies resolving to the wrong planet scope.
The species editor now takes opposing traits into account when working out which planet classes a species can live on.
Fleet settings are now respected by ship upgrade actions and their UI display, and the ship designer no longer opens for ships that have no design template.
Triggered modifier tooltips now show the correct value. The displayed number ignored the modifier's multiplier, though the applied value was always correct.
The Gundersen Research Society now shows its custom start text instead of generic Lost Colony text.

Fleet composition is now driven by the empire's active fleet doctrine and weapon preference, replacing the previous fixed personality- and civic-based ship ratios.
Crisis and ascension hulls are now favored in fleet composition once unlocked.

UI/UX

Fixed Contract notification toasts (accepted, completed, abandoned, failed) showing a redundant empire name and a stray line break in their titles.
Fixed the Technologist faction's "AI Allowed" demand description being cut off; it now reads as a complete sentence.
Pop group entries now display every faction of the empire, graying out the ones the group cannot join
New faction tooltips explaining membership, attraction, join conditions and why a Pop Group cannot join
Clarified the ethic and faction membership recap wording
Reorder guiding ethic tooltip to always display the secondary ethic after
Subject agreement terms no longer show empty category headers.
Added the missing War status filter to the galaxy map.
Fixed the Decisions tooltip on the planet view.
The fleet upgrade icon is no longer hidden in fleet summary entries when many fleets are listed.
Volcanic Planets now showcase correct sky assets

Performance

Daily faction update now evaluates Pop Group pre-triggers, faction potential triggers and join rules once per update
Reduced save game size by no longer storing designed empires that are not needed.
Galactic Community resolutions are now cached rather than recollected during every country modifier update.

Stability

Fixes an OOS caused by different ordering of focus category tiers.
Fixed a crash that could occur during galaxy generation.

Audio

Portrait/Paragon remastering - consistent well-balanced volume, all stereo, consistent reverb, minor quality issues fixed.
Events - Volume made consistent and well-balanced.
Archaeology / Special Events - Volume made consistent and well-balanced.
Advisors - Volume made consistent and well-balanced.
Audio credits updated from First Contact through Nomads.
Replaced 16 missing Machine Age portrait and Galactic Paragons voice files and corrected their volume.

Modding

Added has_aquatic_trait scripted trigger.
Specifying the same event pre-trigger more than once now logs an error
Event pre-trigger failures can now be localized through PRE_TRIGGER_FAIL_<condition>_<required|rejected> keys
Added the `custom_tooltip_icon` trigger, a `custom_tooltip` variant that always displays pass/fail icons
Added `pop_ethics_filter`, `use_guiding_ethic_as_growth_factor` and `skip_creation_cooldown` to pop faction types
Hidden factions are no longer exempt from POP_FACTION_CREATION_COOLDOWN, use `skip_creation_cooldown` instead
Removed the unused `attraction_custom_title` and `attraction_custom_desc` pop faction type parameters
Added the `POP_FACTION_DESTRUCTION_DELAY` define, removed `POP_CURRENT_FACTION_WEIGHT`
Faction attraction scope cleanup and improvements
set_planet_flag, remove_planet_flag, set_timed_planet_flag and has_planet_flag now also work in colony, carrier, and ship scope (previously planet scope only), operating on the same flag store as the carrier_flag family.
Faction `on_destroy` now has the destroyed faction in the `From` scope

The rollback branch has also been updated to have 4.5 Open Beta Update 4.

Thanks for helping us with the 4.5 release!