Hello everyone!

We’re back with yet another dev diary to showcase some more fruits of summer experimentation. As with the previous dev diary, this involved a lot of work carried out during the summer and involves something I’ve wanted to explore for a good while now.

Today we’ll be talking about empire sprawl and administrative capacity. Do note that these changes are still fairly young in their development, so numbers and implementation details may not be representative of what it will look like in the end.

As a background, I can mention that I have a grander idea of where I want to take these mechanics, but it will not all happen at once. These changes aim to mimic state bureaucracy or overhead created by managing a large empire. As a minor aspect I also wanted you to be able to experience the funny absurdity of having a planet entirely dedicated to bureaucracy. The movie Brazil is a great source of inspiration here :)

Empire Sprawl
We wanted to expand on how empire sprawl is used, so that it becomes a more interesting mechanic. The largest change means that pops now increase empire sprawl. Most things in your empire should be increasing empire sprawl to various degrees, to represent the administrative burden they impose.



Empire Sprawl can now be modified from its different sources, and as an example, the Courier Networks expansion tradition will now reduce empire sprawl caused directly by the number of planets and systems. As another example shows, the Harmony traditions finisher now reduces the total empire sprawl caused by all your pops.

We are also able to modify how much empire sprawl each pop contributes, and we’ve added a couple of new species traits that affect it. There are also machine variants of these traits.



We have also increased the penalty for the amount of empire sprawl that exceeds your administrative capacity. The goal is not to make administrative a hard cap, but we want to make it necessary to invest some of your resources into increasing your administrative capacity. More on that later.



The current plan is for machine empires to be more reliant on keeping their administrative capacity in line with their empire sprawl, so machine empires will suffer a much harsher penalty for exceeding their cap. We want machines to feel “centralized” and to perhaps favor a more “tall” playstyle.



Hive Minds, on the other hand, should be more tolerant of a sprawling empire where unmanaged drones are able to fall back on their instincts whenever they cannot maintain a responsive connection to the hive mind. Therefore, hive minds should be more tolerant of a “wide” playstyle.

Administrative Capacity
With all these changes to empire sprawl, what about administrative capacity, I imagine you asking? Well, since empire sprawl is becoming an expanded concept, administrative capacity will naturally be a part of that. Increasing your administrative capacity will now be a part of planning your empire’s economy.



For regular empires, the bureaucrat is a new job that increases your administrative capacity at the cost of consumer goods. This is also a specialist job, and has needs accordingly. Administrators are unchanged, and do not currently affect administrative capacity or bureaucrats.

For machine empires, the coordinators have changed roles from producing unity to now increasing administrative capacity instead, and they are more effective than bureaucrats. A new job called Evaluators now produce unity for machine empires.

Hive Minds currently have the hardest time to produce administrative capacity, but it has been added as a function of the synapse drone job.



Certain sources that previously increased administrative capacity by a static amount now increase is by a percentage amount instead. This doesn’t affect the output of the jobs, but rather increases the total administrative capacity directly.

Summary
Personally I’m very excited for these changes and I’m very much looking forward to taking it to its next step in the future. I hope you enjoyed reading about the changes that will come to Stellaris sometime later this year. As always, we’ll be interested to hear your thoughts.

As mentioned in last week’s dev diary, the schedule for dev diaries will now be bi-weekly, so the next dev diary will be in another 2 weeks.

If you want, you can also read this Dev Diary and comment on our forums: Dev Diary #153

Hello everyone!

Summer vacations are reaching their end and most of the team is back as of last week. Work has started again and we're really excited for what we have in store for the rest of the year.

While most of us have been away during most of the summer, we’ve also had some people who worked during July. July is a very good time to try out different designs and concepts that we might not otherwise have time to do, and today we thought it might be fun for you to see some of the experiments we ran during that period of hiatus.

Although we learned some useful insights, these experiments didn’t end up being good enough to make a reality.

Industrial Districts
As I have mentioned earlier, I have wanted to find a better solution for how we handle the production of alloys and consumer goods. I often felt like the experience of developing a planet felt better with an Ecumenopolis rather than with a regular planet. I think a lot of it had to do with their unique districts and that it feels better to get the jobs from constructing districts rather than buildings. Not necessarily as an emotion reaction to the choice, but rather that the choice perhaps feels more “pure” or simple.

An experiment I wanted to run was to see if it was possible to add an industrial district that provided Laborer jobs, instead of having buildings for Metallurgists and Artisans. Laborers would produce both alloys and consumer goods but could be shifted towards producing more of either.

This meant we added a 5th district, the Industrial District. By adding another district we also needed to reduce the number of building slots available. Since there would be no more need for buildings that produced alloys and consumer goods, this should still end up being similar.



A Laborer would consume 8 minerals to produce 2 alloys and 4 consumer goods, and that amount could be modified in either direction by passing a Decision. What I wanted was to have an industry that could have a military and civilian output, and where you could adjust the values between these outputs.

Having a laborer job that generates an “industrial output”, which could be translated into either alloys or consumer goods did feel good, but the specific solution we used didn’t feel quite right.

City Districts & Building slots
Another experiment was to see how it felt if city districts unlock building slots instead of pops. This experiment didn’t have a specific problem or issue it was trying to address but rather it was to investigate how that would feel and work. It was interesting but ultimately it felt less fun than the current implementation. It would have needed more time to see if it could be made to work.
​


This experiment did include increasing the number of jobs you would get for the building, so a research lab would provide 3 jobs instead of 2.

City District Jobs from Buildings
At the same time, we also tried a version where buildings applied jobs to city districts instead of providing jobs by themselves. One upside would be that you’d need less micromanagement to get the jobs, but the downside is that it would also be quite a large upswing in new jobs whenever you built a city district. In the end, it felt like you had less control and understanding of what a planet was specializing in.

Summary
Although these experiments were interesting, they didn’t end up quite where we wanted to, so they never became more than just experiments. We did learn some interesting things though, which we will keep in mind for the future. The industrial districts are still something I want to keep looking into, but we have to find a better solution.

Dev diaries will now be back on a regular schedule, but we will be looking into changing the format a bit this time around. For now, dev diaries will be coming bi-weekly, which means we will be back again in another 2 weeks with a similar topic.

You can also read today's Dev Diary on our forums here.

Hello everyone! We're ready to announce that we're releasing 2.3.3 with a few extra fixes as a live build before going on vacations. Below you'll find the traditional patch notes, with the extra fixes since the beta in underlined text.

We hope you enjoy the balances, tweaks and changes we introduced with this build!

#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.3.3 ##########################
#################################################################

###################
# Ancient Relics Story Pack Features
###################
* A number of archaeology sites have been overhauled to give more interesting rewards for completion, with new techs, empire modifiers, and ethics-based outcomes

###################
# General
###################
* Updated localisation for all languages

###################
# Balance
###################
* Further changed Precursor system spawning to always connect to an owned system, if possible, to reduce them appearing in inaccessible places
* More archaeological site events will grant minor artifacts
* Zroni chain grants Psionic Theory tech option for non-gestalts
* The Surveyor relic now has a chance to find multiple deposits during its activation time. It has also been reduced to a five year timer
* Adjusted the rate at which Admirals gain XP when patrolling and when in combat
* Daily patrolling XP is now based on the max piracy in a system rather than the current piracy
* Disengaged ship now also give xp, they have their own define: LEADER_ADMIRAL_FLEET_COMBAT_SHIPS_DISENGAGED_CONVERSION
* Zro is slightly more common
* Marketplace of Ideas trade policy unity per trade value increased from 0.15 to 0.25
* Grand Herald site is less common. When the Grand Herald is found it may be damaged to some degree, if so there is a special project to restore it to full power
* Finishing Arc Sites may yield Technology Research Options/Boosts
* Lowered the chance of archaeology sites being discovered when planets are surveyed
* Non-genocidal gestalt empires may now also seize the galatron from those who would withhold access to its glory

###################
# UI
###################
* Added MP DLC ownership icon for Ancient Relics
* Fixed line break in Zro Deposits causing unnecessary truncation of text
* Fixed displayed Army Recruitment time not including build speed modifiers
* You should no longer be able to see the orders of the fleets of other empires
* Fixed the resources going haywire in the trade view. Hopefully for the last time
* Added a country modifier to remind you that you can safely colonize Holy worlds as the chosen of Zarqlan

###################
# AI
###################
* Fixed so that the AI uses their idle science ships to assist research rather than just drawing salaries and doing nothing like typical freeloading intelligentsia
* AI empires will finish tradition trees before starting new ones
* Changed AI weight for consecration decision, so that it's actually used
* AI will now build city districts on planets if needed even if not many pops live there
* AI no longer juggles leaders back and forth, and also makes sure there is always at least one leader assigned to a ship
* Fixed the AI declaring war on empire they can't reach, or empires on the other side of the galaxy
* AI no longer needlessly upgrades starbases if they still have unused module or building slots
* Removed ostensibly arbitrary pop requirement for research buildings, also capped holo-theatres to one per planet
* Increased alloy expansion budget to allow machine empires to do early expansion
* AIs in federation have finally discovered ship types other than "corvette"
* AI will no longer maniacally press the "build army" button in order to make armies building faster


###################
# Modding
###################
* add_anomaly effect now adds the anomaly to the scoped country instead of the first country to survey the planet
* Added "min_jumps" and "max_jumps" parameters to the "spawn_system" command for better control of where and to what world spawned system appear
* min_jump and max_jump now use -1 to be ignored, so that you can make systems that attach directly to your base system
* Added `steal_relic = { target = TARGET_COUNTRY relic = <all/random/RELIC_NAME>` effect
* The `on_arrival_effect` is now properly called with a fleet scope
* Replaced hard texture limit with hybridarray for people that have excessive amounts of textures due to mods
* Added 'is_last_lost_relic' and 'is_last_received_relic'. Both trigger return true if the relice passed as a parameter is the last (lost/received) relic by the country from the scope country scope: is_last_lost_relic = <relic_key> / is_last_received_relic = <relic_key>

###################
# Stability
###################
* Fixed a freeze when editing trade routes from a system you stole
* Fixed a crash when using mature galaxy in observer mode

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
* Colony automation now has a 3 day cooldown after a building completes in order for recently completed constructions to take effect
* Increased weighting of favorited jobs so that they're properly prioritized
* Made the logic for buy/selling slaves better. AI is now more likely to both buy and sell slaves, wrote someone in the 21st century
* Fixed automation not working on planet capitals or new colonies if you don't change the designation
* Conquered habitats will now convert districts that are not permitted by their new empire type
* Fixed so that rogue servitor AI will no longer just build organic sanctuaries
* All non-Exterminator Machine Intelligences should now be able to make Farming Colonies
* In MP only the first player to discover the Baol or Zroni precursor will begin their chain. Others are free to discover different precursors
* Fixed overflow issues in AI diplomacy due to relative strength calculations
* The result of "Reverse-Engineer Minor Artifacts" is now properly randomized
* Disabled map-ping for finished arch sites
* Admiral XP is based on the total cost of ships instead of just minerals
* Fix for all buildings swapping issues
* Secrets of the Irassians will no longer sometimes give machine intelligences a tech they can't use
* Changed so that arch sites and certain events use the correct GFX files
* Fixed Growth species disappearing every other month in some cases
* Ship build speed modifiers are no longer applied twice
* Fixed Build Speed modifier being applied twice to buildings
* Fixed some new Tutorial Lines not playing VO (VO for a bald eagle flying out of an explosion with a pistol grasped in its beak didn't arrive in time for today, alas)
* The Caravaneers roam space once again instead of sitting in orbit ringing your doorbell for all eternity with an "offer you can't refuse"
* Deficit modifiers are properly applied again
* Master Builders no longer ever affects Habitat size
* Rare resource tech will also be researchable if any planet you own contains an Industrial sector deposit
* Primitives living on Ring Worlds will no longer build normal districts on them when invaded, enlightened, or if they naturally develop spaceflight, because inscrutably we have created a game where apparently such things are possible
* Maintenance Drones again have a positive weight for the Emotion emulators trait
* Fixed ships not going MIA when they can't return because they don't have access
* Presapients can now be found again to be uplifted/exploited/devoured as your whim decrees
* Upgraded buildings are no longer moved after ruined buildings
* Fixes the rubricator system appearing without hyperlanes
* Pop Growth is now based on the pop growing rather than the fastest growing species on the planet
* Gateways and habitats can now built while other megastructures are being built
* Fixed Habitats and Ring worlds getting modifiers meant for non artificial planets
* Fixed planet view not changing image correctly after planet class change
* Add modifier effects to planet class tooltip
* Reduced the late game stutter
* You can now steal relics when you're not in the galatron war, rather than only during the galatron war, though why you would steal any relic other than the Galatron is beyond me.

The stellaris_test version is still there as 2.3.3 (checksum: 70ef), the only difference being it uses our experimental crossplay MP layer. Steam users need to be on stellaris_test to crossplay with GoG and Paradoxplaza. The stellaris_test version also has the "Legion" flag set as a thank you to people helping us test the mp layer.

You can check the forums patch thread here.

With this, and without further ado, we wish you all, on behalf on the Stellaris team and all of Paradox, a great summer, full of new fanatic friendships and platypi!

Hello everyone!

We’ve been working on the 2.3.3 patch, but before we put anything live we will release it as a beta version as usual. To try the beta, right-click Stellaris in your Steam Library and select Properties. In the BETAS tab there should be a drop down list where you can find stellaris_test. Set your beta opt in to stellaris_test to try the 2.3.3 beta.

Save file compatibility between versions is never guaranteed. If you need to roll back to a previous version, do this: go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> betas tab -> select the version you want.

The beta has a couple of known issues, but they are also things we will address before 2.3.3 goes live.

Known Issues:

• Robot empires are a bit slow to expand with outposts.
  
• We have added a Relic stealing feature, but it only works while in a Galatron war instead of when not in a Galatron war

Here are some highlights of changes in the 2.3.3 beta:

Admiral XP
We’ve tweaked how admirals get XP from patrolling and combat. Admirals will now get XP according to the max piracy value as opposed to previously only checking current piracy. XP from combat should also be increased due to fixing a bug with how ship value, in terms of XP, was calculated. Disengaged ships now also provide some XP, not just destroyed ships. In general it should now be easier to level up your admirals.

Archaeology Site Rewards
We’ve improved a lot of rewards for the archaeological sites to make them more unique, more fun and in some cases stronger.

Grand Herald
Although we like how the Grand Herald can change the game quite a lot, we think it was a bit too common and too easy to get so early on. The Grand Herald site now spawns less frequently and the site difficulty is higher. When you complete the site, there is a chance that you find the Grand Herald in a weakened state. In that case it will be possible to restore it to its full glory.

Full patch notes here.

stellaris_test is the version you need to be in to crossplay between Steam, GoG, and Paradoxplaza versions of the game.

Our goal is to fix whatever issues may arise and be able to set 2.3.3 live next week before we disappear on summer vacation.

Hey everyone!

With a weekend of beta testing on 2.3.2 behind us, it is now fully live. We're going to keep working on 2.3.x, in particular we are aware of some issues with presapients, overflows, and an energy deficit bug. We'll get fixes for those out as soon as we can, but given that 2.3.2 is overall a much better version than 2.3.1, we want to make it a part of the live build while we keep working on the remaining issues.

Full changelog below:

#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.3.2 ###########################
#################################################################

* Producer's note: in the interest of getting these fixes to you quickly, anything requiring new text is not yet translated in to languages other than English. We'll get localization done and in for the final 2.3.x version, never fear.

###################
# Ancient Relics Story Pack Features
###################

* The random outcome "Archaeological Loop" in the "Déjà Vu Dig" Archaeology Site now has altered story text, and the outcome temporarily traumatizes the Scientist
* The random outcome "A Custom Job" in the "Cut To Fit" Archaeology Site now rewards the player with benefits to Terrestrial Sculpting tech research

###################
# Balance
###################

* Added a new artifact action to discover a precursor site for 25 minor artifacts
* Reduced AI expansion distance to 2, for slightly less gruesome Balkan borders. It will still be more aggressive than before about trying to avoid being boxed in
* Nu-Baol Life-Seeding decision no longer has any cost, since the cost is paid for by activating the relic
* Ether Drake Trophy relic effect on unity increased from +10 a month to +10% a month
* Scales of the Worm relic effect on unity replaced with +10% physics research speed
* Rubricator relic effect on unity replaced with +20 society research per month
* The Surveyor relic activation cost is now 500 energy instead of 150 influence

###################
# UI
###################

* You now get a popup when resettling the last pop of a colony to make sure you want to destroy said colony
* Added the ability to toggle Steam rich presence on or off in settings, if you don't want your friends and family to know you're extinguishing all sentient life as a race of murderous Fanatic Purifier BDSM catgirls
* Fixed a draw issue on the Mechanocalibrator and pre-space Ratling worlds that would cause resources districts to display as a single gigantic box

###################
# AI
###################

* Fixed AI activating population control when it shouldn't
* Fixed colony automation spamming too many districts at once in multiplayer
* Lots of little tweaks to the AI's economic decision making

###################
# Modding
###################

* Using brackets in loc in 'scripted triggers' and 'scripted effects' can no longer result in an infinite loop as it thinks it's supposed to be a macro

###################
# Bugfixes
###################

* Fixed colonies not being destroyed properly when emptied of population. Go forth and purge once more.
* Fixed barren worlds not terraforming
* Fixed armies mysteriously gaining strength, regenerating or disappearing without a trace during invasions
* Fixed synth ascended robots that were robomodded not being assembled on planets
* Fixed Gestalt empires starting with either unemployed drones or unmanned job slots
* Fixed a crash when a planet building a robot template changes owner
* Fixed unplayable have/has typo atrocity in the Grand Herald event
* Fixed a bug where Steam Rich Presence would sometimes fail to display you were a race of murderous Fanatic Purifier BDSM catgirls with too many ethics
* Fixed so that pops will not promote to specialists/rulers if there are unemployed pops from those strata already available. Get back to the acid mines, proles.
* Inscrutable Power achievement now properly looks for the Galatron relic
* Planets shouldn't start with unemployed pops anymore
* Habitat specific orbital deposits should no longer rarely appear on non-habitats
* The "Givernor" skill is no longer a thing
* Driven Assimilators may now properly have farming worlds to feed their hungry Cyborgs
* No longer possible to merge the salvage cruiser with normal fleets to prevent exploits with upgrades and resource refunds
* Fixed the Atomic Clock event annihilating primitives but leaving observations stations intact to observe...their irradiated cadavers, I guess?
* The Galactic Wonders Ascension Perk will now begrudgingly accept a Science Nexus as "complete" even if it doesn't have a brain in a jar. Your researchers will still know it's not really complete without one though, and that knowledge will haunt them in the lonely hours of the night.
* Fixed events like "A New Metal" spawning on worlds that already had science stations, and wrongly being collected by these
* Did some more smoothing of SFX volume spikes in new Ancient Relics content
* Fixed a case where the Rubricator world could wrongly spawn a second, entirely unrelated dig site
* Fixed being able to make a slave army from any species whatsoever so long as a single pop of any race was enslaved on the planet, even though it was an admirable display of class solidarity
* Prevented the Baol chain from spawning any digsites in the Sol system because that made even less sense than lasers making sound in space


The stellaris_test version is still there as 2.3.2, the only difference being it uses our experimental crossplay MP layer. Steam users need to be on stellaris_test to crossplay with GoG and Paradoxplaza.

We'll get a new beta version with more fixes for your reported issues. In the meantime, enjoy, and we'll see you shortly with a new beta patch!

Hi all!

We've been busy processing the results of the 2.3.1 version, and are ready to roll out the next batch of fixes, which I'm making available as the 2.3.2 beta patch right now. If you want to get in on the new version early, please read the notes and instructions below.

Please note that 2.3.2 is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> betas tab -> select stellaris_test branch.

The stellaris_test branch is also required if you want to crossplay with people playing on the Paradoxplaza or GoG versions of the game. 2.3.2 is the default version on those platforms.

Here's the list of fixes and changes:

#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.3.2 ###########################
#################################################################

* Producer's note: in the interest of getting these fixes to you quickly, anything requiring new text is not yet translated in to languages other than English. We'll get localization done and in for the final 2.3.x version, never fear.

###################
# Ancient Relics Story Pack Features
###################

* The random outcome "Archaeological Loop" in the "Déjà Vu Dig" Archaeology Site now has altered story text, and the outcome temporarily traumatizes the Scientist
* The random outcome "A Custom Job" in the "Cut To Fit" Archaeology Site now rewards the player with benefits to Terrestrial Sculpting tech research

###################
# Balance
###################

* Added a new artifact action to discover a precursor artifact for 25 minor artifacts
* Reduced AI expansion distance to 2, for slightly less gruesome Balkan borders. It will still be more aggressive than before about trying to avoid being boxed in
* Nu-Baol Life-Seeding decision no longer has any cost, since the cost is paid for by activating the relic
* Ether Drake Trophy relic effect on unity increased from +10 a month to +10% a month
* Scales of the Worm relic effect on unity replaced with +10% physics research speed
* Rubricator relic effect on unity replaced with +20 society research per month
* The Surveyor relic activation cost is now 500 energy instead of 150 influence

###################
# UI
###################

* You now get a popup when resettling the last pop of a colony to make sure you want to destroy said colony
* Added the ability to toggle Steam rich presence on or off in settings, if you don't want your friends and family to know you're extinguishing all sentient life as a race of murderous Fanatic Purifier BDSM catgirls
* Fixed a draw issue on the Mechanocalibrator and pre-space Ratling worlds that would cause resources districts to display as a single gigantic box

###################
# AI
###################

* Fixed AI activating population control when it shouldn't
* Fixed colony automation spamming too many districts at once in multiplayer
* Lots of little tweaks to the AI's economic decision making

###################
# Modding
###################

* Using brackets in loc in 'scripted triggers' and 'scripted effects' can no longer result in an infinite loop as it thinks it's supposed to be a macro

###################
# Bugfixes
###################

* Fixed colonies not being destroyed properly when emptied of population. Go forth and purge once more.
* Fixed barren worlds not terraforming
* Fixed armies mysteriously gaining strength, regenerating or disappearing without a trace during invasions
* Fixed synth ascended robots that were robomodded not being assembled on planets
* Fixed Gestalt empires starting with either unemployed drones or unmanned job slots
* Fixed a crash when a planet building a robot template changes owner
* Fixed unplayable have/has typo atrocity in the Grand Herald event
* Fixed a bug where Steam Rich Presence would sometimes fail to display you were a race of murderous Fanatic Purifier BDSM catgirls with too many ethics
* Fixed so that pops will not promote to specialists/rulers if there are unemployed pops from those strata already available. Get back to the acid mines, proles.
* Inscrutable Power achievement now properly looks for the Galatron relic
* Planets shouldn't start with unemployed pops anymore
* Habitat specific orbital deposits should no longer rarely appear on non-habitats
* The "Givernor" skill is no longer a thing
* Driven Assimilators may now properly have farming worlds to feed their hungry Cyborgs
* No longer possible to merge the salvage cruiser with normal fleets to prevent exploits with upgrades and resource refunds
* Fixed the Atomic Clock event annihilating primitives but leaving observations stations intact to observe...their irradiated cadavers, I guess?
* The Galactic Wonders Ascension Perk will now begrudgingly accept a Science Nexus as "complete" even if it doesn't have a brain in a jar. Your researchers will still know it's not really complete without one though, and that knowledge will haunt them in the lonely hours of the night.
* Fixed events like "A New Metal" spawning on worlds that already had science stations, and wrongly being collected by these
* Did some more smoothing of SFX volume spikes in new Ancient Relics content
* Fixed a case where the Rubricator world could wrongly spawn a second, entirely unrelated dig site
* Fixed being able to make a slave army from any species whatsoever so long as a single pop of any race was enslaved on the planet, even though it was an admirable display of class solidarity
* Prevented the Baol chain from spawning any digsites in the Sol system because that made even less sense than lasers making sound in space

Glad we were able to get this done in time for the weekend. Give it a spin, let us know your feedback, and we'll use that to help us improve the next build. Thanks all, and have fun.

Hi Everybody! After the weekend in beta test, with no drastic new issues introduced, we've decided to make the 2.3.1 patch fully live. It contains a ton of fixes that we wanted to get in everyone's hands, most important of which are out of sync fixes for MP.

Here's the list of changes:

#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.3.1 ###########################
#################################################################


###################
# Ancient Relics Story Pack Features
###################

* Increased variety of introductory images for archaeology sites
* Added some missing SFX to archaeology site dig stages and random events

###################
# UI
###################

* Added alert if planet automation is low on resources and monthly transfer is lower than 10
* Fixed missing loc string in Zro deposits
* Fixed the tooltip for machine pops being processed by a devouring swarm wrongly suggesting that you could get delicious food out of their soulless metallic husks somehow, instead of decidedly unappetizing alloys
* Grunur system spawn popup event now displays neighbouring system name instead of an empty string
* Fixed some missing text on the omnicodex arc site

###################
# AI
###################

* Improved AI's desire to aggressively produce alloy foundries to drive its fleets and expansion
* AI is much more willing to actually spend that alloy on ships
* Fixed AI wasting its Influence by constantly reforming government
* Fixed AI being only willing to spend rare resources on base construction, never upgrades or edicts
* Updated AI food, energy, mineral, and influence budgeting. It will now try to use them on decisions and edicts when able, instead of amassing huge, untouched stockpiles
* Fixed AI treating pirate occupied systems as total no-go zones even when it had more than enough fleet power to wipe them out (should help them expand without being blocked off)
* AI empires will now be willing to expand into systems up to 5 jumps beyond their borders, making it more difficult to cut them off at chokepoints
* Tweaked AI influence spending on edicts and campaigns so as not to activate ones with limited value (map the stars when most of the galaxy is explored, etc)

###################
# Bugfixes
###################

* Fixed failure to launch crossplay beta branch on Linux
* Fixed failure to launch the GOG version on Mac without using GOG Galaxy
* Fixed cases where victorious Force Ideology wars would not result in ethics shift
* Fixed an economy out of sync
* Fixed a potential crash in the cross-breeding game rule
* Fixed Zroni precursor sites being wrongly visible to all empires, not just the discoverer, allowing them to be ninja'd by others and leaving you stranded with an uncompletable chain
* Fixed core sector being named after the initial planet name, before any homeworld name is applied
* When you have multiple fleets selected, some with the Psi Jump Drive and some without, it will now show the longest combined jump they can make together, not the max range for just the Psi ships
* Fixed exploits related to jump drive use allowing fraudulent circumvention of cooldown times and max ranges
* Fixed unconscionable, unplayable typos and missing texts
* Fixed a hilarious one from last year where if one of your starbases came under enemy occupation in a war, you could still queue up defense platform construction there. Helpfully, the enemy empire would pay for this from its own resource stockpile
* Fixed cases where General leader traits were wrongly applied to armies
* Added missing special portrait for the Nu-Baol, feat. Fred Durst
* Fixed new Ancient Relics SFX playing at way too loud a volume


Don't be alarmed if a fix for an issue affecting you isn't in yet, we're not done. We are continuing to work on 2.3 post launch support and will push new beta patches followed by live versions in the coming weeks, so keep the productive feedback coming. We're logging your issues in our bug base and will continue to knock them off as we go.

If possible, your feedback is especially appreciated in this forum thread: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/dev-team-2-3-1-patch-release-checksum-bcd1.1188440/

Hi everybody!

We just published a new beta patch for Stellaris 2.3 "Wolfe" and Ancient Relics, thanks to your speedy feedback!

We know that not all of you want to wait for the full verification process, so if you want, you can opt into it via the "betas" tab and by selecting the "stellaris_test" branch!

Patchnotes below.

#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.3.1 ###########################
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# Ancient Relics Story Pack Features
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* Increased variety of introductory images for archaeology sites
* Added some missing SFX to archaeology site dig stages and random events

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# UI
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* Added alert if planet automation is low on resources and monthly transfer is lower than 10
* Fixed missing loc string in Zro deposits
* Fixed the tooltip for machine pops being processed by a devouring swarm wrongly suggesting that you could get delicious food out of their soulless metallic husks somehow, instead of decidedly unappetizing alloys
* Grunur system spawn popup event now displays neighbouring system name instead of an empty string
* Fixed some missing text on the omnicodex arc site

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# AI
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* Improved AI's desire to aggressively produce alloy foundries to drive its fleets and expansion
* AI is much more willing to actually spend that alloy on ships
* Fixed AI wasting its Influence by constantly reforming government
* Fixed AI being only willing to spend rare resources on base construction, never upgrades or edicts
* Updated AI food, energy, mineral, and influence budgeting. It will now try to use them on decisions and edicts when able, instead of amassing huge, untouched stockpiles
* Fixed AI treating pirate occupied systems as total no-go zones even when it had more than enough fleet power to wipe them out (should help them expand without being blocked off)
* AI empires will now be willing to expand into systems up to 5 jumps beyond their borders, making it more difficult to cut them off at chokepoints
* Tweaked AI influence spending on edicts and campaigns so as not to activate ones with limited value (map the stars when most of the galaxy is explored, etc)

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# Bugfixes
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* Fixed failure to launch crossplay beta branch on Linux
* Fixed failure to launch the GOG version on Mac without using GOG Galaxy
* Fixed cases where victorious Force Ideology wars would not result in ethics shift
* Fixed an economy out of sync
* Fixed a potential crash in the cross-breeding game rule
* Fixed Zroni precursor sites being wrongly visible to all empires, not just the discoverer, allowing them to be ninja'd by others and leaving you stranded with an uncompletable chain
* Fixed core sector being named after the initial planet name, before any homeworld name is applied
* When you have multiple fleets selected, some with the Psi Jump Drive and some without, it will now show the longest combined jump they can make together, not the max range for just the Psi ships
* Fixed exploits related to jump drive use allowing fraudulent circumvention of cooldown times and max ranges
* Fixed unconscionable, unplayable typos and missing texts
* Fixed a hilarious one from last year where if one of your starbases came under enemy occupation in a war, you could still queue up defense platform construction there. Helpfully, the enemy empire would pay for this from its own resource stockpile
* Fixed cases where General leader traits were wrongly applied to armies
* Added missing special portrait for the Nu-Baol, feat. Fred Durst
* Fixed new Ancient Relics SFX playing at way too loud a volume

Thanks for playing and keep the feedback going!