Hello everyone!

This week we are going to talk about something new that we’ve been working on - namely improving first contact and extending the exploration aspects of the game. All of this is work in progress and may not accurately represent what the game will look like once all of this work is finished. A lot of UI is very much work in progress, so don't pay too much attention to icons or such.

Exploration has always been one of the best parts of Stellaris, and it is perhaps what sets us apart from other games that follow similar themes. Looking back, Stellaris has mostly revolved around the physical exploration of space, discovering an ancient galaxy full of wonders. We believe that exploring and uncovering the galaxy is such an important and fun aspect of the game that we really want to dive deeper into those experiences. We intend to take the next steps by improving the means by which you can establish communication and make the process of learning more about alien civilizations a part of the exploration gameplay.

In this dev diary we will be outlining some of the changes and additions that we are currently working on, so that you can get an idea of what to expect from our next big update.

The first steps we are taking is that we are changing how first contact works. First contact is now a much more engaging process with interesting choices that are supported by great narrative.

When you first have an alien encounter you are able to set a policy for what your approach will be. First Contact Protocols is a policy option that lets you dictate your stance when it comes to dealing with newly discovered alien civilizations. Each option has different effects that should suit different types of diplomacy.



Friends..?




First Contact Protocol Policy options.In order to establish communication with the alien contact, an Envoy will need to be assigned to the First Contact Investigation. The investigation will then be able to begin, and it will run through stages and will contain events similar to an archaeological dig site. The reason why we chose a system similar to archaeology is because its a great way of letting a process run over time in a way where it can also deliver some narrative along the way. The difficulty of the first contact investigation will be affected by things like how friendly the target is, or how difficult it is to translate their signals.

Since First Contact now uses an Envoy, that also means that it no longer pauses Society Research, and it is possible to run multiple first contact investigations simultaneously as long as you have the Envoys required.

(Envoys do still currently not have traits or levels, but it is something we are actively discussing.)




The events that you can get depend on the type of empire you are, and on the type of alien you are trying to contact.

There are friendly/peaceful paths as well as ... less so.

As a xenophobic empire with an aggressive first contact protocol it is possible to secure a couple of specimen for a closer look.





The choices you make during first contact can also have long-term effects on your relationship with the alien empire. Choose wisely and decide which trade-offs you are willing to make. Are you perhaps a materialistic and xenophobic empire that values scientific progress above all?




Stay on your side of the galaxy and all can be well.


Let’s agree to disagree.


That is all for this week! Next week we’ll be showing you some new features that allow you to explore maps like the one posted here below.

Hello!

This week we’re going to look at some more changes we're planning, as well as a review of how some of the experiments mentioned in the last few dev diaries have evolved.

Thank you for the massive amount of feedback in those threads.


Due to the effects on performance and a desire to reduce the micromanagement burden in the mid to late game, some of the things we’ve been deeply looking into are different ways of dramatically reducing the number of pops in the galaxy.

These experiments have generally revolved around modifying the growth (or assembly required) for pops as an empire’s population grows, with some variants trying a logistic pop growth (where growth follows an S-shaped curve as planets develop, based on a carrying capacity of a planet). These experiments have reduced the end date pop count to somewhere around one half of the old numbers with the expected performance improvements.

Organic pops will follow a curve where they begin at standard population growth, increase growth as the approach a midpoint between population and the planetary carrying capacity, then slow down to zero as they reach the top of the curve. Pop Assembly, on the other hand, is generally slow but consistent. The biggest change is that producing a new pop no longer costs a static amount of pop growth - it increases as the empire population does.

A significant reduction in pops has a cascade of major implications for the overall economy, production, and other gameplay effects. As such, these also require a pass on buildings, technologies, and even seemingly minor ripple effects like what the value should be for the trade value generated by pops.

There will be a lot of patch notes.

Most buildings have been standardized to now give 2 jobs per tier rather than the old 2/5/8 progression.


Just one example of many.

We’ve also changed a few buildings to have new or additional features, such as the Spawning Pool and Clone Vats, which have had their Pop Growth modifiers replaced with the new Organic Pop Assembly. This fills the same slot on the planet as Robotic Pop Assembly, so generally you’ll want to pick one or the other. (Clone Vats also picked up a food upkeep cost to represent simple materials to break down.)



Pops is Soylent Green!

A few other jobs got minor perks added to them, like the Medical Workers from Gene Clinics making it a little easier to live on less hospitable worlds.



Doesn't normally produce exotic gas, this one happens to be a lithoid.

And a few new techs have been added to help compensate for lost productivity. One tech line increases both the job production of a planet as well as job upkeep - those fewer pops are still capable of producing the work of more on a developed planet.


As part of the balance pass, Ring Worlds have been bumped up to 10 segments from 5, and the jobs per segment have been adjusted.

Regular Empire Ring World Segments






The Shattered Ring origin now possesses a warning that it may be a Challenging Origin for Lithoids due to a scarcity of minerals, and now also applies the Ring World Habitability Preference to your pops. We’re considering adding a similar warning for Hives selecting the origin, since the habitability preference change puts a serious crimp in their expansion.



Put a ring on it?

Their starting blockers have also been adjusted to give a more balanced spread of jobs.


Like the Ring Worlds, these start with all building slots open. As mentioned before, you can now use the Arcology Project decision on a planet that has a mix of City and Industrial Districts.

Regular Empire Ecumenpolis Arcologies

Note: Empire has all technologies but no traditions active.





The ecumenopolis has a unique distinction of being able to have both the Factory and Foundry building lines on the same planet.


The changes to Habitat modules are much smaller in scope, but here’s the list of their districts.

Regular Empire Habitat Districts







Void Dwellers have gotten a bit of attention as well with some tradition swaps for those that had minimal or no beneficial effects for them.

Void Dweller Tradition Swaps




Replacing Public Works Division:


And for Void Dwellers with the Adaptability tree:

Interstellar Franchising and Imperious Architecture now also function for Habitats.

Some of these updates may not be new to people following the forum threads, but it's easy to miss things so I figured we should go over them.

Many people requested the ability to fully specialize their foundry and factory worlds. We've modified the Forge and Industrial World planet designations to shift one pop on each Industrial District to the appropriate job if possible.





We've also upgraded the Food Processing Center, Mineral Purification Hub, and Energy Nexus to provide an extra job to each of their associated resource production districts. (The Food Processing Center will also improve Hydroponics Farms.)





One of the suggestions made in the thread was to add a civic that increases unlocked Building Slots. Sounded like a great addition to Functional Architecture.


Functionality increased!


We’ve explored some additional options regarding the resettlement system we outlined in Dev Diary 191, and after trying a few things, and have settled on some extensive modifications to the system.

All planets with sapient unemployed pops that are not locked down by migration controls will have a small chance every month of moving one to another planet within their empire that has jobs that they are willing and able to work, housing, and habitability of 40% or higher. This chance is increased if there are multiple unemployed pops that meet the criteria.

The system now prefers to move higher strata pops first, so rulers and specialists will move before workers, and this system also functions for gestalt empires. It will not relocate non-sapient robots. It will generally prefer to move pops to the planets with the most free jobs.

After some experimentation we’ve chosen to keep the Transit Hubs as Starbase Buildings that provide a system wide buff to the chance of auto-resettlement occurring. (Rather than being essential to have it occur in the first place.)


Doubles the chance the pops choose to resettle themselves.

Greater Than Ourselves has been rewritten to also massively increase this chance when the edict is active, with a +200% bonus.

We initially had these pops considering destinations available through Migration Pacts as well, but decided against keeping that since it introduced a new Migration Controls micromanagement element that we didn’t find desirable.

We’ve also done a minor update to the Authority bonuses that seemed a little bit weak.




Democracies now have a bonus encouraging their pops to seek their dreams, and Dictatorships have a bit of an easier time holding things together when they’re a bit overstretched.

Closing Thoughts
One other little quality of life improvement that was just added is this filter on the colonization interface.


That’s probably long enough for today. We’re looking forward to your feedback on these as well.

Next week we'll talk about... [losing transmission]

Hello everyone!

We are finally ready to release 2.8.1 on all platforms. First of all, I'd like to thank all of you for the feedback that you have given us to help us make the best version of Stellaris yet. And secondly, with this release we are hoping to end the post-launch support for Necroids as we shift our focus to [redacted].


Balance
* Added a define OVERCROWDING_ABSOLUTE_THRESHOLD_FOR_NO_GROWTH that sets the minimum number that overcrowding must be for a planet's population to stop growing, set it to 5.
* Redid sector automation scripts and code with the following goals:
** Closed vital gaps in sectors' knowledge concerning the likes of nonstandard planet (habitat etc) districts and bureaucracy buildings.
** All sectors now know about all buildings, i.e. if you put an alloys foundry on a science sector, it will still know how to upgrade it (it will of course still favour research buildings).
** Made checking for whether building a certain building would cause resource shortages and whether there were pops ready to take the job more reliable by shifting them to hardcoded checks.
** The automation will no longer clear blockers before districts are blocked by them.

Stability & Performance
* Moved the calculations for attack radius to threaded code instead of serial.
* Update trade routes every 7 days instead of every day.
* Fixed a nasty slow down when owning many many many planets and opening the planet view
* Fixed an OOS related to fleets.
* Fixed an issue where loading would get stuck when trying to load a lot of mods.
* Fixed being unable to load 2.7.2 saves in 2.7.2 made after installing Necroids.

UI
* Added debug tooltips to the fleet view header and rename button.
* Experimental DX11 mode now supports Chinese, Polish and Russian

AI
* The AI will not try to build a megastructure if it's already building or upgrading one.
* Fixed a case of the AI wanting to attack disabled starbases and getting stuck in a loop.
* The economic AI will now take better account of the resources a district would provide when choosing whether to build one.
* The AI will now check whether it would have any pops on the planet willing and able to take a job before building a building providing that job (i.e. Necrophages will not spam consumer goods buildings when there are no necrophage pops on the planet).
* Made the contingency constructor choose better systems to build in, and fixed their getting stuck after a while.
* Massively sped up all types of purging, with the crisis factions now purging 2 pops per month.
* Various improvements to crisis military AI.
* Fix issue with military AI ping-ponging fleets.
* Fixed AI not changing fleet bombardment stances.
* Crisis countries will now use Armageddon Bombardment.
* Augmented the distance at which AI looks for targets on larger maps.
* The Unbidden will no longer wait patiently to be allowed out of their initial system.
* The AI will no longer sell the last pop of a planet.
* Made the crisis worry less about ship health and more about taking over the galaxy.
* The Necrophage AI will no longer build Houses of Apotheosis so as to make it less likely it'll run out of necrophytes.
* AI considers "Take Point" fleet as objective when appropriate(*)
* The AI is now drastically more likely to know to build shipyards and titan/colossus factories

Modding
* Added "ignores_sapience" flag to job types to say a job works for both sapients and presapients.

Bugfixes
* Corrected name for necroid titan engine effect so the effect spawns in the correct position.
* Added missing undead army translations for Chinese.
* Fixed a layering issue with Necroid Portrait 11.
* Fixed a black face-tentacle on a Necroid Portrait to have color.
* Fix Ships not reaching their assigned slots when there are too many ships
* Evasive fleet now cancel order if the path to their targets contain hostiles
* Made it so the positions of hostile forces are remembered while you're at war.
* Fixed purging and assimilation not working on presapients
* Setting a sector to Production focus now correctly updates the icon in the UI.
* Necrophages with Glandular Acclimatisation will now make pops that suit the local planet, even if they have Necrophage pops that don't on the planet already.
* Death Priest job upkeep raised to 3 Consumer Goods in addition to the baseline level for specialist workers.
* Fixed the Pasharti Absorbers' default purge type being Displacement rather than Necropurging
* Fixed a bug with a Necroid Battleship weapon slot.
* Increased Necroid Corvette size and optimized some other textures.
* Fixed leader clearing by right-clicking.
* Fixed impossibility of swapping scientists between research areas.
* Fixed the Death Cult sacrifice effects so that the counting of Mortal Initiates proceeds as intended.
* The option to play as the Machine Uprising when that happens is now back.

Both countries must have the "follow allies" flag, or the leading country has to be human
if both countries are in a war:
- Vassals will follow their Overlords.
- If they're in the same war:
- - The AI will follow the war leader if they're in a defensive war.
- - The AI will also follow a stronger ally if they're close enough.
- - They'll follow a human player if they're not human.
- If the AI is fighting the Crisis.
- - If they're in a federation, they'll follow the federation leader (or a human player).
- - If the AI isn't under attack by the crisis they'll follow someone who is.
- - They'll follow a human who is also fighting the Crisis.


We hope you enjoy this patch and we appreciate your continued support :)

If you want to play crossplay multiplayer with your friends on non-steam platforms you can opt into the "crossplay" branch in Steam by right clicking on Stellaris in library -> Properties -> Betas -> choose the desired version.

Hello everyone!

As you may know we have a beta patch available on Steam on the "Stellaris_test" branch and we are happy to announce that we've updated it with some further changes. There's still at least one more fix regarding Save games and rollbacks we want to get in, however we thought it best to give you the additional fixes we have today while we continue with the proper work processes that are required to get 2.8.1 out on all platforms in its final form!

The additional fixes are highlighted in the changelog. Two fixes in particular of note, dx11 should now properly work with all languages (Check the original release thread to see how to enable it). We've also updated the AI behavior around "Take Point", we've added an explanation under the changelogs to explain how the AI reacts to the player using the "Take Point" command.



Balance
* Added a define OVERCROWDING_ABSOLUTE_THRESHOLD_FOR_NO_GROWTH that sets the minimum number that overcrowding must be for a planet's population to stop growing, set it to 5.
* Redid sector automation scripts and code with the following goals:
** Closed vital gaps in sectors' knowledge concerning the likes of nonstandard planet (habitat etc) districts and bureaucracy buildings.
** All sectors now know about all buildings, i.e. if you put an alloys foundry on a science sector, it will still know how to upgrade it (it will of course still favour research buildings).
** Made checking for whether building a certain building would cause resource shortages and whether there were pops ready to take the job more reliable by shifting them to hardcoded checks.
** The automation will no longer clear blockers before districts are blocked by them.


Stability & Performance
* Moved the calculations for attack radius to threaded code instead of serial.
* Update trade routes every 7 days instead of every day.
* Fixed a nasty slow down when owning many many many planets and opening the planet view
* Fixed an OOS related to fleets.
* Fixed an issue where loading would get stuck when trying to load a lot of mods.

UI
* Added debug tooltips to the fleet view header and rename button.
* Experimental DX11 mode now supports Chinese, Polish and Russian

AI* The AI will not try to build a megastructure if it's already building or upgrading one.
* Fixed a case of the AI wanting to attack disabled starbases and getting stuck in a loop.
* The economic AI will now take better account of the resources a district would provide when choosing whether to build one.
* The AI will now check whether it would have any pops on the planet willing and able to take a job before building a building providing that job (i.e. Necrophages will not spam consumer goods buildings when there are no necrophage pops on the planet).
* Made the contingency constructor choose better systems to build in, and fixed their getting stuck after a while.
* Massively sped up all types of purging, with the crisis factions now purging 2 pops per month.
* Various improvements to crisis military AI.
* Fix issue with military AI ping-ponging fleets.
* Fixed AI not changing fleet bombardment stances.
* Crisis countries will now use Armageddon Bombardment.
* Augmented the distance at which AI looks for targets on larger maps.
* The Unbidden will no longer wait patiently to be allowed out of their initial system.
* The AI will no longer sell the last pop of a planet.
* Made the crisis worry less about ship health and more about taking over the galaxy.
* The Necrophage AI will no longer build Houses of Apotheosis so as to make it less likely it'll run out of necrophytes.
* AI considers "Take Point" fleet as objective when appropriate(*)
* The AI is now drastically more likely to know to build shipyards and titan/colossus factories

Modding
* Added "ignores_sapience" flag to job types to say a job works for both sapients and presapients.

Bugfixes
* Corrected name for necroid titan engine effect so the effect spawns in the correct position.
* Added missing undead army translations for Chinese.
* Fixed a layering issue with Necroid Portrait 11.
* Fixed a black face-tentacle on a Necroid Portrait to have color.
* Fix Ships not reaching their assigned slots when there are too many ships
* Evasive fleet now cancel order if the path to their targets contain hostiles
* Made it so the positions of hostile forces are remembered while you're at war.
* Fixed purging and assimilation not working on presapients
* Setting a sector to Production focus now correctly updates the icon in the UI.
* Necrophages with Glandular Acclimatisation will now make pops that suit the local planet, even if they have Necrophage pops that don't on the planet already.
* Death Priest job upkeep raised to 3 Consumer Goods in addition to the baseline level for specialist workers.
* Fixed the Pasharti Absorbers' default purge type being Displacement rather than Necropurging
* Fixed a bug with a Necroid Battleship weapon slot.
* Increased Necroid Corvette size and optimized some other textures.
* Fixed leader clearing by right-clicking.
* Fixed impossibility of swapping scientists between research areas.
* Fixed the Death Cult sacrifice effects so that the counting of Mortal Initiates proceeds as intended.
* The option to play as the Machine Uprising when that happens is now back.

Both countries must have the "follow allies" flag, or the leading country has to be human
if both countries are in a war:
- Vassals will follow their Overlords.
- If they're in the same war:
- - The AI will follow the war leader if they're in a defensive war.
- - The AI will also follow a stronger ally if they're close enough.
- - They'll follow a human player if they're not human.
- If the AI is fighting the Crisis.
- - If they're in a federation, they'll follow the federation leader (or a human player).
- - If the AI isn't under attack by the crisis they'll follow someone who is.
- - They'll follow a human who is also fighting the Crisis.

We hope you'll enjoy these additional fixes and that it shows that we are indeed listening to your feedback :D
Please note that 2.8.1 is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.

Hi all!

As mentioned last week, our plan for today is to go over some changes to automated colony management and pop resettlement.

Major goals here were to reduce the micromanagement burden in the mid to late game when individual decisions are less oppressive, and to significantly decrease the need to manually move pops at all. As with the economic changes we were discussing before, a lot of this is still a work in progress to varying degrees.

Some sector management improvements have already been made in the 2.8.1 test branch (you can experiment and leave feedback on it by following the instructions in this thread), but here we’ll be focusing on planetary designations and individual planet automation.

A major pass has been done on automated colony management to improve its effectiveness. After manually setting a colony designation and turning on automated colony management, our intent is for the colony to develop into something you would reasonably expect if you were building it on your own. It should build districts, clear deposits as necessary, and upgrade buildings when there is a need for it.

Planet automation will upgrade capital buildings whenever possible (gotta unlock those building slots!), and will otherwise generally try to build or upgrade from its list if there are less than 3 open jobs. We’ve erred a bit on the side of caution, so it is currently extremely opposed to running deficits. It may require manual intervention if, for example, your energy credits per month are negative, but we figured it was better to leave those sorts of risky economic decisions in the player’s hands.

If you want to check out the Foundry Automation (Hive) Script, check it out in the forum post here

This script will attempt to build a forge world for a hive empire. If there are less than 3 free jobs and there is nothing currently in the build queue, it will check to see if there is anything that it can build. Planetary automation has a tendency to favor districts over buildings, but will construct buildings if there are 1.5 times as many districts already built than there are buildings. (This ratio is able to be set in 00_defines.txt as COLONY_AUTOMATION_DISTRICT_PREFERENCE.) When selecting a building, it will move down the list until it finds something that it is capable of building and meets the scripted restrictions. The building’s upkeep is always taken into consideration. The scripted “_affordable” checks are to estimate whether you can afford the jobs it creates as well.

Blockers are fairly low priority for planetary automation, and will only be cleared if they are blocking a district slot that it actively wants to construct, or if there are no free district slots remaining. (Thus it will eventually clear all those random blockers once the rest of the planet is finished.) You can, of course, intervene and clear those Sprawling Slums or sleepy Lithoids earlier.

Buildings (other than the capital) will be upgraded if there are no other things that it wants to build right now, it can upgrade without causing resource deficits, and there are pops available that would want to work there. (Either because they’re unemployed or they prefer it to their current jobs.)

The scripts will attempt to handle various issues that may crop up on a planet such as low amenities, high crime, or failure to build buildings dedicated to extra-dimensional beings that love you and just want to be loved in return. These are tucked away in 00_crisis_exceptions.txt.


If you want to check out the Amenity Crisis Exception (Regular Empire) Script, check it out in the forum post here

This "exception" will intervene if a planet’s amenities are -5 or below, and it’s either not an ecumenopolis or if it is an ecumenopolis, it’s either totally full or you’re running low on exotic gases. Based on your ethics and authority, it’ll pick one of the amenity buildings to add to the queue.

A few jobs, buildings, and planet designations have gotten a bit of a touch-up during this pass. Notable examples of designations include the Urban World, which now has a Trade Value bonus, and the Colony, which is now intended to satisfy the needs of a newly colonized world rather than provide pop growth bonuses.




Urban and Colony Designations

The old Colony bonus was changed because it was a bit problematic - growth bonuses made it somewhat stronger than many other more specialized bonuses. We’d greatly prefer if you could flag that newly settled Mining World as such right away and immediately turn on automation, rather than it being optimal to manually develop the world until it reached 5 pops and no longer qualified for Colony.

Due to its inherent terror of deficits, the automation scripts tend to be a little bit more conservative than players may be, but I’ve personally enjoyed the dramatically reduced mental burden my mid to late game colonies require. It’s also convenient that several designations (such as Forge, Factory, Tech, and Urban) will build out colonies that qualify for the Arcology Project decision. In our dev multiplayer games, I've been making a point of using colony automation as much as possible in order to give everyone else a chance get a feel for what it's doing. (Except my capital. I'll admit that I do manually build that so I can take care of sudden shifts in priority.)

If you're using planetary automation but it doesn't seem to be doing anything, the three most common things to check are:

• Is the colony in a Sector?
  Colonies have to be in a (non-Frontier) Sector in order to use either sector or planetary automation.
  
• Am I running an energy deficit?
  Most districts and buildings have energy upkeep. While it's possible for the district or building to theoretically produce enough energy to overcome that and help work off the current deficit, the automation scripts are as light as possible and without deeper analysis can't assume that pops moving into those jobs wouldn't worsen the shortage. Manual intervention is necessary to dig out of an energy crunch.
  
• Do I have resources in the automation pool for it to use?
  There's a notification for this, but if the pool is running low it might not be able to afford whatever it is it wants to build. Remember, you can hold Ctrl to change the units moved from hundreds to thousands.

Save mouse-clicks, use Ctrl.


Manual resettlement and the mitigation of unemployment is a huge burden in mid to late game Stellaris. It is generally our belief that manual resettlement should be an extremely rare occurrence, not something done expected to be done as part of the core game loop. When you must, it should be a simple process, but it should be an unusual act.

One quality of life change we’ve made is to filter Unemployed pops up to the top, and highlighted them. The pops underneath are then sorted from lowest stratum to highest.



You're unlikely to see this specific scenario unless you intentionally create unemployment problems by turning off jobs in every pop strata.
We've also adjusted resettlement costs, and added an Influence cost to many pop types. These influence costs are nominal for worker tier pops, but get fairly expensive when you're forcing Rulers to move.



Slave Resettlement and Worker/Drone/Bio-Trophy Resettlement



Specialist Resettlement and Ruler Resettlement
Slaves and unintelligent robots can still be moved without expending Influence, and certain civics permit you to waive these Influence costs.





Hey wait, what's that about colony abandonment?

Despite their best efforts the Servitors still haven't found a good way to get their Bio-Trophies to shift their consciousness to a different planet using OTA updates, so you still have to pay for them.

Manually resettling the last pop off a colony you own carries an additional influence surcharge in our dev builds. There will very likely be an exception made for Doomed planets and Holy Worlds that are risking initiating a war with a Fallen Empire. A planetary decision to abandon a recently conquered planet is under consideration, though it'll likely use displacement purging to do so. (With the diplomatic penalties associated with it.)


But we just finished building it!

With Federations, we introduced a galactic resolution in the Greater Good line that provided limited automated resettlement called Greater Than Ourselves. As noted by some, that was partially intended as a means to allow Egalitarian leaning empires a way of handling resettlement without forcing it on their pops. There have been many requests to make that core game functionality, but we’ve been somewhat wary of doing so without some restrictions.

We've come up with a way for every empire to have easier access to a similar effect. The following new Starbase Building will handle it, unlocked by the Hyperlane Breach Points tech. (The Hyperlane Registrar has moved to Interstellar Economics.)


They like to move it.



The tooltip effect is a bit of a mouthful.

The Transit Hub will operate as a limited variant of Greater Than Ourselves, moving unemployed low strata pops between planets that are in systems with Transit Hubs. (This will allow movement within a system as well, for example if you have a bunch of habitats in a single system.) We're investigating ways to expand the scope of pops it's willing to move - the original Worker limitation was put into place because while a Worker could promote themselves to fill any free job, a Slave or Specialist might find themselves restricted from the free job on the new planet. We're currently experimenting with a more robust variant - if it works out without performance concerns, the Transit Hub will prioritize high strata unemployment and then move down the ranks.

Building out the Transit network does function best when you have a developed starbase above most of your colonies since it will only move pops between nodes on the network.

Tangentially related, we've also cut demotion time in half across the board, and made some changes to give each Authority type a unique bonus.


Yes, Shared Burdens pops demote pretty much instantly.

We have some other experimental changes going on that significantly reduce the number of unemployed pops in the late game but we're not ready to talk about them yet.

The empire type that perhaps faced the most obnoxious burden of frequent manual resettlement were Terravores, the Lithoid Devouring Swarms. When devouring planets, they occasionally created pops on the consumption world. As a quality of life improvement, when they’ve finished the planet off we now resettle them back to the capital. (Since gestalts can also use the Transit Hub, I highly recommend that Terravores build one in their main system to send those drones someplace where they can be of use.)

Oh, and we also clear that pesky red habitability planet marker from completely consumed planets that was unnecessarily cluttering your map.



HP/MP restored! ...But you're still hungry.
As a reminder, we have an ongoing feedback thread related to AI improvements we have in beta on the stellaris_test branch. We'd love to get more people on it and telling us what they think about them. (Please note that 2.8.1 is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.)

Next week we plan on going through some more of the remaining economic balance changes. See you then!

Hi everyone!

Way back in Dev Diary 152, we discussed some planetary changes that we experimented with during summer 2019. At the time, we decided that while we learned a lot from the experiment, they required significant additional refinement before being something we wanted to incorporate into Stellaris.

Summer 2020 gave us the additional time we needed to revive these (and some other) experiments. Our primary objectives were to reduce the mid to late game micromanagement burden and provide quality of life improvements, including generally making the prebuilding of planets more viable, making planetary automation reliable enough to be trusted in the mid to late game, and making dealing with unemployment and pops easier.

We’ll be talking about these subjects in multiple dev diaries over the next couple of months.


Azure Chalice is… er, was... a lovely place.
The planet view has shifted things around a bit and now supports the display of up to six district types. Most planets will have five district types available. This extra real estate could also be of special interest to modders.

The new brownish-orange district next to the City District is the revived Industrial District. Industrial Districts are treated as urban districts (and as such are not limited by planetary features), but rather than the Laborers that split their output from the original experiment, we’ve decided to have the districts provide regular empires one Artisan and one Metallurgist job. Gestalts have either two Foundry Drones or Fabricators as appropriate.


Work, work, work.
Factories and Foundries will still exist but are now planet unique, with the first tier building adding 2 jobs to the planet just like the old versions. The upgraded versions, however, will now add either 1 or 2 jobs of the appropriate type to each Industrial District on the planet.

Ecumenopoli will retain their specialized districts, but can be boosted by the Foundry or Factory buildings. The number of jobs per district on ecumenopoli have been adjusted somewhat as part of an overall economic balance pass. Since Industrial Districts are considered urban, a planet with a mix of City and Industrial Districts can be paved over and turned into an Ecumenopolis using the Arcology Project decision.

Since districts are now much more critical to the development of your civilization, the average size of homeworlds has been increased by 2, and as an additional side effect, the Mastery of Nature Ascension Perk may also become a bit more desirable.


I’m sure you’ve already noticed from the above screenshot, Building Slots no longer list population counts. Instead of relying on population, they're opened up by increasing the infrastructure of the planet. This is generally done by building City Districts (or their equivalent) or by upgrading the colony's Capital building. As a pleasant side effect of this, your buildings will no longer get ruined when a pop gets resettled, ritually killed, or eaten by mutants.



Build up that infrastructure.

Two new technologies that unlock additional Building Slots have also been added, Ceramo-Metal Infrastructure and Durasteel Infrastructure. They represent the civilian adoption of military technology, and as such require some government techs and the associated armor technologies. The Adaptability tradition tree, for those that have it, still has a tech that grants a Building Slot as well.

As specialized and advanced worlds, Ecumenopoli, Ring Worlds, Hive Worlds, and Machine Worlds start with all of their building slots unlocked.

Habitats are intended to feel a bit cramped, so while Habitation Modules do not open up Building Slots, the Voidborne Ascension Perk will continue to grant two Building Slots to those that choose to embrace living in space.

The MegaCorps out there may ask “but what about our Branch Offices?” - we’ve got you covered.


Insider Trading. Institutionalized corruption exploited by the upper classes, or just greasing the wheels of trade?

Branch Offices will tie their slots to the level of the colony’s capital building. For example, a Planetary Administration building will grant one Branch Office Building Slot, a Planetary Capital will grant two, and a System Capital-Complex would grant three. If the target empire has the Insider Trading tradition, you’ll have one extra Branch Office Building Slot. (This may grant you a Branch Office building even on newly colonized worlds, if your business plan expects it to be profitable.)


By decoupling the building unlocks from population growth, it makes it much easier to “prebuild” a planet to varying degrees. It removes some of the tedium of waiting for that last pop to finish growing before a slot unlocks, as well as the negative experience that occurred when a critical pop moved or died right at the wrong time. This change went through many iterations - in one of them the rural and industrial districts added "fractional" slots, in another the capital buildings gave more slots at each upgrade. The combination of having both City Districts and the Capital Building contributing to the slots, along with the additional techs, finally felt right. It's nice when even a newly founded Colony possesses at least one open building slot since it lets you immediately begin construction of a Spawning Pool or other high value building right away.

Moving the essential secondary resources of Consumer Goods and Alloys to districts frees up the building slots a little bit and creates a greater differentiation between heavily urbanized or industrial planets and resource generating colonies. Qualitatively we also felt that it "feels nice" to be getting more of your physical resources from the district level, leaving the Building Slots for more unique and specialized needs.

Both of these changes also happen to make some planetary automation decisions a little easier - your Tech Worlds should clearly build a mix of City and Industrial districts, for instance, to make room for Research Labs as well as to provide the Consumer Goods needed to pay for them. We do recognize that it may be difficult - or even impossible - to unlock all Building Slots on a planet that has not been urbanized, but those resource generating planets often do not have quite as strong a need for a large number of buildings.

Ideally in the mid to late game you could colonize a planet, set the colony designation you want for the planet, turn on automation, and reasonably expect the planet to be in decent shape - and doing what you told it to - the next time you look at it. (In the early game it's certainly possible, but your empire's economy may not be stable enough to support dedicated worlds and your colonies may be better off with direct caretaking.)

We have a few other experiments that are still ongoing that affect the relationship between urbanized vs. less developed planets that are not entirely conclusive yet. If they prove out we'll discuss them later on in this series of diaries. Our current plan for next week's diary is to talk more about the automated colony management overhaul as well as the automatic and manual resettlement of pops.

As a reminder, we have an ongoing feedback thread related to AI improvements we have in beta on the stellaris_test branch. We'd love to get more people on it and telling us what they think about them. (Please note that 2.8.1 is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.)

Thanks!

Hello everyone!

We are proud to announce that the Necroids Species Pack is now live!



We are super proud of this release and we are excited to see what kind of spOooOOky Empires you all will create with this new addition to Stellaris!

Get your copy of the Necroids Species Pack here!

In addition, we will also have a Halloween themed multiplayer stream this weekend (in the true undead spirit of the Necroids Species Pack) on https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive!

Halloween Multiplayer Stream Schedule

Saturday October 31st 5pm CET (4pm UK, 12pm EDT 9am PDT)
Sunday November 1st 5pm CET (4pm UK, 11am ET, 8am PT)



Stay safe out there and have a Happy Halloween!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ON871QXrY&feature=emb_title

Hello everyone!

The 2.8.0 'Butler' patch should now be live on all platforms!

We are super proud of this release and we are excited to see what kind of spOooOOky Empires you all will create with the Necroids Species Pack!

We have also included quite a few bugfixes and QOL improvements that we think everyone will enjoy :)

For those of you that read Last weeks Dev Diary, you might've noticed that we mentioned that we've been working on some more stuff that couldn't make it into the main release and that we would release as a 'Beta Patch' sometime in the future. Well I'm glad to announce that that time is the same time as 2.8.0 :D. You can check out the changelog for 2.8.1 [checksum 9dc4] below! (The patch currently says 2.8.0, but just verify the checksum and you should have it!)

The 2.8.1 Beta Patch is available on Steam only, as this is the only platform that supports separate branches. Once we release it live as the default patch, all platforms will receive the update at the same time!

With the release of 2.8.0, we are also enabling dx11 support which should boost loading times and performance in some cases. However, please note that we're only enabling this as an opt-in solution for now, as it still is in an experimental stage! Steam users can use the launch command options as mentioned in the changelog, but for MS Store users you need to follow these steps:

1. Right click on your desktop and select New/Shortcut
2. Set the location of the item to (assuming your Windows folder is on C:\):
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start shell:AppsFolder\ParadoxInteractive.Stellaris-MicrosoftStoreEdition_zfnrdv2de78ny!App -dx11
3. Click Next, choose a name for the shortcut and click Finish
4. Start Stellaris using the shortcut

Final note about dx11, it currently does not support languages that uses special fonts (Polish, Russian, and Chinese). We're working hard to figure out what's causing the issue!

Save games shouldn't be adversely affected by the switch from 2.7.2 to 2.8.0, but just in case you do encounter issues, you can roll back to a prior version via right click on Stellaris in library -> Properties -> Betas -> choose the desired version.

Please note that 2.8.1 is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.

If you want to play crossplay multiplayer with your friends on non-steam platforms you can opt into the "crossplay" branch in Steam in the same way as above.



* Added a new Necroid pre-scripted Empire.
* Added a new Phenotype with 16 new portraits (15 normal + 1 robot) of spooky scary Jeffoids Necroids.
* Added a new City Set and room backdrop for Necroids.
* Added a new dark and eerie Ship set.
* Added a new Advisor Voice.
* Added three new Civics: Death Cult, Reanimated Armies and Memorialist.
* Added Necrophage, a new Origin.



* Added new Gestalt Governor Leader Traits: Amplifier and Mindfulness - both increase Administrative Capacity in relevant Pop Jobs.
* Systems spawned during the game (e.g. precursor ones) will now usually have two hyperlanes instead of one.
* Added a new experimental DirectX11 support launch command (“-dx11”).



* Gestalt empires can no longer build the Hyperlane Registrar starbase building as they have no use for it.
* The Oracle's admin bonus now grants +10% more admin cap instead of just +20.
* Observation Post Indoctrination events now have a 540 day cooldown before they can fire again.
* Terraforming Candidate is now a bit more common in the early game.
* Terminal Orbit anomaly's reward has been buffed slightly.



* Greatly improved startup and load times.
* Optimised the refugees system to perform fewer duplicate checks.
* Fixed an OOS related to armies created from Pops.
* Fixed an OOS happening if someone is hotjoining while a country is marked for destruction.
* Fixed an OOS with planet modifiers related to species crossbreeding.
* Fixed an OOS with Federation Fleet Capacity.
* Fixed a source of false positive OOS.
* Fixed a CTD when transferring a save file during hotjoin.
* Fixed a CTD that might happen when the outliner is updating certain elements when borders are updating.
* Fixed a CTD when planets are removed and have active construction.
* Fix CTD in Colonize window after dismantling shipyard.
* Disabled AlienFX/LightFX since it has been reported to have issues and might cause a CTD/freeze when starting the game (at 30% loading).
* Added a "hardoos" option that adds extra checksums to make it easier to catch causes for OOS.
* Fixed an OOS when you find a precursor civ. event and an observer is present at game start
* Tick time optimization (more efficient parallelisation (game go vroom vroom)).



* Fixed some Settings UIs having overrunning text in some non-english languages.
* Fixed overlapping text in Empire Modifiers tab in some non-english languages.
* The Curators' "goodbye" option is now always placed at the bottom of the option list.
* Envoys can't be reassigned to the same location.
* You can now only resettle your primary species away from planets with culture shock.



* The AI is more willing to lower federation centralization if they are the federation president. They now care if Cohesion and Monthly Cohesion are negative.
* Crisis AI will now be more likely to seek honorable alternatives to doomstacks (i.e. it will split its fleet up a bit more).
* AI will now refill starbase modules and buildings if they are destroyed.
* AI now handles FTL inhibitors better, new fleets will now try to assign each fleet to the closest most valuable objective.
* AI should now handle Colossi correctly again. Fear will keep the local systems in line.
* AI empires with the Void Dwellers origin are now more likely to choose the Voidborne ascension perk.
* AI in Mercantile stance is now less likely to close borders.
* AI now builds branch offices where it can rather than trying again and again to go on a world where there's already a branch office.
* Fleet AI should not abort orders for defensive fleets like merging.
* Fixed Fleet AI getting stuck in a regroup loop if some fleets cannot reach the system for regrouping.
* Make sure AI fleets stop when issued orders to merge.



* You can now use [ ] localisation commands in building descriptions.
* Added trigger num_assigned_jobs = { job = <key>/unemployed value > 2 }.
* Added is_ambient_object_type trigger.
* It is now possible to use scope variables in the create_message effect.
* ideal_planet_class trigger now works in pop and species scope, and also accepts a planet scope as the right hand side argument.
* Added remove_starbase_building and remove_starbase_module effects.
* Added change_colony_foundation_date = <number of days> effect.
* Trigger has_available_jobs now works.
* Added set_ship_prefix effect for country scope.
* Added set_adjective effect for country scope.
* change_government now has a cooldown = yes/no toggle (default is yes).
* Added effect set_government_cooldown = integer/default/no.
* added the missing settings to the get_galaxy_setup_value effect.
** Here's the new, up to date, list:
*** num_empires, num_advanced_empires, num_fallen_empires, num_marauder_empires, mid_game_year, end_game_year, victory_year, num_guaranteed_colonies, num_gateways, num_wormhole_pairs, num_hyperlanes, habitable_worlds_scale, primitive_worlds_scale, crisis_strength_scale, tech_costs_scale.
* Added set_origin effect, but note, it'll usually not be useful to use this as effects executed during galaxy generation will not be rerun.
* last_created_system now works.
* Added defines SPAWN_SYSTEM_BUFFER_DISTANCE and SPAWN_SYSTEM_ATTEMPTS, in case you want to try funky things with the spawn_system effect.
* set_location now works on juggernauts.
* Added on_colony_10_year_pulse on_action
* any_ambient_object and any_system_ambient_object scopes now no longer cause false positives in the error log.
* on_colony_5_year_pulse now works on the capital too.
* abort_trigger, on_fail and on_cancel in special projects now all use the same scopes.



* Fixed so that Zroni Precursor Arc Sites cannot be "hijacked" by another Empire.
* Multiple Curator Scientist cannot be purchased any longer.
* Added checks to see if the host has the appropriate DLCs for the slave market-oriented Resolutions.
* Added missing Loc when proposal for forming Federations failed.
* Fixed leviathans.1018 tooltip not showing actual results of the event.
* The UNE now spawns as intended when playing as the Commonwealth of Man.
* Fixed missing localisation in event “The Oracle”.
* Slave Market Resolutions are now properly locked without Megacorp DLC.
* Restoring megastructures will now only cause the rubble from their ruined variants to be cleared, rather than all ambient objects in the system (including system effects e.g. nebulas...)
* Droids can now take Colonist jobs.
* Subjects can no longer create vassals.
* Pox Bombardment no longer kills machine units.
* Fixed a case where the Slave Riots event could happen twice on the same day.
* Fixed being able to build from (mega) shipyards that are not owned.
* Added missing localisation keys for resolution_passed_diplomatic_weight and resolution_failed_diplomatic_weight empire modifiers.
* Hid Zroni and Shoulders of Giants arc sites from countries ineligible for completing them (thus hiding unlocalised anti-stealing flags).
* Added missing descriptions to Evermore planetary modifiers.
* The AI attitude of country A to B now depends on A's opinion of B rather than B's of A. This fixes Fallen Empires never declaring war.
* Surveyor relic can no longer find new resource deposits on Ring Worlds or Habitats.
* The Floating Value event text no longer mixes up the planet and ship names.
* Corrected Russian translation of Galactic Contender ascension perk.
* Fixed minor localization issue in the Senate Floor tutorial window.
* Changes to a progress-tracking variable in Joint Operation: Genius Caeli are now hidden from the arc site panel.
* Fixed various typos and duplications in the species name files.
* A Quiet Stroll event now has different text for Synthetic empires.
* Tree of Life deposits are now properly cleared when the planet changes owner.
* Shielded Planet special projects now use the correct planet name.
* Removed duplications in Tiyanki ship names.
* System graphical effects are now removed when the final Contingency planet is destroyed.
* VLUUR's space storm will no longer manifest in nebula systems.
* Fixed minor tooltip issue in Atomic Countdown event.
* Shortened and rewrote overlapping Vault of Acquisitions technology description.
* Fixed completed construction items for reinforcements not being removed properly from the fleet manager.
* Fixed research costs for Special Projects "Investigate the Loop Temple" and "Study the Messenger connection".
* The correct event description should now always be shown in “Finding the Truth”.
* Adjusted the tooltips for the Improve and Harm Relations diplomatic actions.
* Observation Posts are now cleared if all primitives have been killed by orbital bombardment.
* Removed duplicate entry in Alpha Hub technology.
* Mining Drones no longer display the Rare Crystal icon in the Jobs interface.
* Changed Miner and Technician building icons to be more consistent with other jobs.
* Fixed issue where some Spiritualist responses weren't always displayed in first contact situations.
* Removed duplicate cohesion effect from tooltip in federation fleet contribution laws.
* Fixed transparency on room backgrounds from Federations.
* Gestalts can no longer get the debris_gasgiant_category_temp anomaly at all - which is as it should be.
* Unity should now always spawn as a continental planet when playing the UNE.
* Fixed a bug where Star-Crossed Lovers could take refuge in the Mutaagan Trading Guild.
* Gestalts that conquer a regular empire's starbase will no longer have Trading Hubs and Offworld Trading Companies there.
* Fixed some cases of species growing on planets disappearing and reappearing every other month.
* Fixed Species rights showing as in breach of galactic law when they’re not.
* You can no longer get random tomb world events on tomb worlds created through armageddon bombardment and other similar causes. Also, you can now only get each of them once.
* Event Primordial Soup no longer wrongly assumes that Terminator machines think organic life worthy of interest.
* Space fauna resolutions can no longer be proposed if they're already active.
* Made sure clearing the blocker creates the correct species.
* Added in breach icons and warnings in confirm dialog for policies that would cause breach of galactic law.
* Fixed a case where the sector AI would spam luxury residences to deal with low amenities if there aren't workers available to work as Entertainers.
* Fixed a bug where special projects to investigate space fauna would sometimes lose the targets they were meant to investigate, become "Investigate <blank>", and do nothing on completion.
* Fixed a bug where the project to investigate Enclaves would talk about the system rather than the country.
* Having comms established with you by enclaves no longer gives you influence.
* The wrecked caravan ship ambient object is now removed by completing the project to research it.
* Enslaving the species in the Underground Vault now shows the correct species will be enslaved.
* Fixed some issues with special resources in the Hive Confluence building.
* Added missing Army Names if the name list is picked for a Machine Intelligence empire.
* Scions can now control their border access.
* Fixed cases where sometimes the Galactic Market would take a while to allow buying and selling of special resources.
* Gaia Worlds may no longer spawn with the 'poor quality minerals' planet modifier.
* If you manage to create a species that is both psionic or cybernetic and erudite, the resulting leaders will now get both the cybernetic/psionic and the erudite traits.
* Using modify_species to change the species of a country will now also target pops on colony ships. This fixes various gene modifications through events excluding colony ships.
* Pops are now more likely to be maintenance drones if the planet lacks amenities.
* Fixed some spaghetti script in the First Contact for Fallen Empires event, closing several loopholes where you could see Fallen Empires without them establishing contact with you.
* Fixed a case where the event for Fallen Empires requesting the long-dead species you kept in stasis would fire twice.
* Rewards for completing the Technosphere chain now take into account Gestalts (who cannot get Sapient AI tech).
* Nu-Baol Life-Seeding now no longer removes Baol Homeworld planetary features.
* Upgraded versions of planet-unique buildings now correctly specify that their number is capped per planet and keep their special background frame.
* Fixed flags not being set correctly on building upgrades (which led to AI spamming upgrades it shouldn't have).
* Fixed number of pacts not being visible in diplomacy windows at game start, as well as a potential OOS.
* Fixed a case where Awakened Marauders would conquer a planet with less than 5 pops, kill all those pops and then spawn 12 pops on the planet (which, having been rendered uninhabited, no longer counts as a colony).
* Fixed the tooltip for utterly failing the Enigmatic Cache uplift chain.
* It is now possible for your ruler to be randomly given the trait Charismatic during their rule.
* Events leading up to the spawning of a Relic Rails dig site may no longer fire multiple times.
* Made sure that the relevant Fallen Empires actually exist in order for the Resolutions to be available.
* Various fixes to the Golden Rule challenge for federation leadership, particularly addressing scenarios in which the event may not fire at the end of a presidential term.
* Do not ping pong fleet groups that are on mission but the leader has jumped to the next system.
* The tooltip for purchasing L-Gate insights from Curator Orders is now slightly more precise about the time it'll take them to identify each new clue.
* Resolved late-game pirate fleets losing their scripted event targets.
* The Yuhtaan system's star and planets are now correctly called "Yuhtaan" rather than "Yuthaan".
* Fixed a stray "?" in the Blue Lotus Project event
* The governor offered by the Nuumistic Order is now of the correct species
* Opening the Alien Box will now change your dominant species rather than just modifying your pops and leaders. It will also now modify subspecies of the main species.
* Forced a trait upon the event-created species that stops them from counting as Bio-Trophies.
* Tooltips in the diplomacy screen regarding the other empire's federation is now more consistent.
* Machine empires with the Resource Consolidation origin can now correctly adopt the Rogue Servitor civic when GC Resolution "A Defined Purpose" is passed (though they will be reset to the default origin in the process)
* Fixed some cases where empires would be created during the game with random and inappropriate origins e.g. Doomsday. create_country now creates countries with Prosperous Unification by default.
* Implemented an option trigger to stop an unnecessary/irrational option in an event.
* Players will no longer receive alerts about war goals they cannot set anymore.
* Fixed a case where marauder diadochi could spawn without any planets, breaking various things.
* Fixed issues with space monsters sometimes being uncontactable.
* Event experience reward is now assigned to the correct leader (scientist).
* Systems spawned during the game e.g. precursor systems will now no longer spawn on top of other systems unless there really is no space for them elsewhere.
* Fixed cases where you'd get refugees from a country you had no communications with.
* Stopped certain arc sites from disappearing from the situation log after completion.
* Fixed possible error with event-spawned Wormhole.
* In the subterranean nation chain, if you get an invasion by them after attempting a pre-emptive strike, the invasion will now work.
* Event "God of Death" no longer has an eyeball-popping tooltip.
* Fixed confusing tooltip mentioning rivaling members when inviting to federation.
* The conclusion to the Rage Virus event chain will no longer give invalid technologies for Gestalts
* Fixed a case where multiple arc sites would spawn on one colony; also, the Sentinels will no longer spawn as soon as you fulfil the conditions, but are now a bit more random.
* New auto-generated ship designs now have auto-upgrade checked by default
* Fortress proclamation actually increases defense build speed now.
* Fixed misspelled VO ID.





* Added a define OVERCROWDING_ABSOLUTE_THRESHOLD_FOR_NO_GROWTH that sets the minimum number that overcrowding must be for a planet's population to stop growing, set it to 5.
* Redid sector automation scripts and code with the following goals:
** Closed vital gaps in sectors' knowledge concerning the likes of nonstandard planet (habitat etc) districts and bureaucracy buildings.
** All sectors now know about all buildings, i.e. if you put an alloys foundry on a science sector, it will still know how to upgrade it (it will of course still favour research buildings).
** Made checking for whether building a certain building would cause resource shortages and whether there were pops ready to take the job more reliable by shifting them to hardcoded checks.
** The automation will no longer clear blockers before districts are blocked by them.



* Moved the calculations for attack radius to threaded code instead of serial.
* Update trade routes every 7 days instead of every day.



* Added debug tooltips to the fleet view header and rename button.



* The AI will not try to build a megastructure if it's already building or upgrading one.
* Fixed a case of the AI wanting to attack disabled starbases and getting stuck in a loop.
* The economic AI will now take better account of the resources a district would provide when choosing whether to build one.
* The AI will now check whether it would have any pops on the planet willing and able to take a job before building a building providing that job (i.e. Necrophages will not spam consumer goods buildings when there are no necrophage pops on the planet).
* Made the contingency constructor choose better systems to build in, and fixed their getting stuck after a while.
* Massively sped up all types of purging, with the crisis factions now purging 2 pops per month.
* Various improvements to crisis military AI.
* Fix issue with military AI ping-ponging fleets.
* Fixed AI not changing fleet bombardment stances.
* Crisis countries will now use Armageddon Bombardment.
* Augmented the distance at which AI looks for targets on larger maps.
* The Unbidden will no longer wait patiently to be allowed out of their initial system.
* The AI will no longer sell the last pop of a planet.
* Made the crisis worry less about ship health and more about taking over the galaxy.
* The Necrophage AI will no longer build Houses of Apotheosis so as to make it less likely it'll run out of necrophytes.



* Added "ignores_sapience" flag to job types to say a job works for both sapients and presapients.



* Corrected name for necroid titan engine effect so the effect spawns in the correct position.
* Added missing undead army translations for Chinese.
* Fixed a layering issue with Necroid Portrait 11.
* Fixed a black face-tentacle on a Necroid Portrait to have color.
* Fix Ships not reaching their assigned slots when there are too many ships
* Evasive fleet now cancel order if the path to their targets contain hostiles
* Made it so the positions of hostile forces are remembered while you're at war.
* Fixed purging and assimilation not working on presapients
* Setting a sector to Production focus now correctly updates the icon in the UI.
* Necrophages with Glandular Acclimatisation will now make pops that suit the local planet, even if they have Necrophage pops that don't on the planet already.

Stay safe out there and have a Happy Halloween!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ON871QXrY&feature=emb_title

Hello everyone!

We are rapidly approaching the release of Necroids, the next species pack coming for Stellaris. Yesterday we announced that Necroids will be released next week on Thursday the 29th of October.

Necroids will be released together with the 2.8 ‘Butler’ Update. As we promised next week, here's the full list of the patch notes.


* Added a new Necroid pre-scripted Empire.
* Added a new Phenotype with 16 new portraits (15 normal + 1 robot) of spooky scary Jeffoids Necroids.
* Added a new City Set and room backdrop for Necroids.
* Added a new dark and eerie Ship set.
* Added a new Advisor Voice.
* Added three new Civics: Death Cult, Reanimated Armies and Memorialist.
* Added Necrophage, a new Origin.

* Added new Gestalt Governor Leader Traits: Amplifier and Mindfulness - both increase Administrative Capacity in relevant Pop Jobs.
* Systems spawned during the game (e.g. precursor ones) will now usually have two hyperlanes instead of one.
* Added a new experimental DirectX11 support launch command (“-dx11”).

* Gestalt empires can no longer build the Hyperlane Registrar starbase building as they have no use for it.
* The Oracle's admin bonus now grants +10% more admin cap instead of just +20.
* Observation Post Indoctrination events now have a 540 day cooldown before they can fire again.
* Terraforming Candidate is now a bit more common in the early game.
* Terminal Orbit anomaly's reward has been buffed slightly.


* Greatly improved startup and load times.
* Optimised the refugees system to perform fewer duplicate checks.
* Fixed an OOS related to armies created from Pops.
* Fixed an OOS happening if someone is hotjoining while a country is marked for destruction.
* Fixed an OOS with planet modifiers related to species crossbreeding.
* Fixed an OOS with Federation Fleet Capacity.
* Fixed a source of false positive OOS.
* Fixed a CTD when transferring a save file during hotjoin.
* Fixed a CTD that might happen when the outliner is updating certain elements when borders are updating.
* Fixed a CTD when planets are removed and have active construction.
* Fix CTD in Colonize window after dismantling shipyard.
* Disabled AlienFX/LightFX since it has been reported to have issues and might cause a CTD/freeze when starting the game (at 30% loading).
* Added a "hardoos" option that adds extra checksums to make it easier to catch causes for OOS.
* Fixed an OOS when you find a precursor civ. event and an observer is present at game start
* Tick time optimization (more efficient parallelisation (game go vroom vroom)).

* Fixed some Settings UIs having overrunning text in some non-english languages.
* Fixed overlapping text in Empire Modifiers tab in some non-english languages.
* The Curators' "goodbye" option is now always placed at the bottom of the option list.
* Envoys can't be reassigned to the same location.
* You can now only resettle your primary species away from planets with culture shock.


* The AI is more willing to lower federation centralization if they are the federation president. They now care if Cohesion and Monthly Cohesion are negative.
* Crisis AI will now be more likely to seek honorable alternatives to doomstacks (i.e. it will split its fleet up a bit more).
* AI will now refill starbase modules and buildings if they are destroyed.
* AI now handles FTL inhibitors better, new fleets will now try to assign each fleet to the closest most valuable objective.
* AI should now handle Colossi correctly again. Fear will keep the local systems in line.
* AI empires with the Void Dwellers origin are now more likely to choose the Voidborne ascension perk.
* AI in Mercantile stance is now less likely to close borders.
* AI now builds branch offices where it can rather than trying again and again to go on a world where there's already a branch office.
* Fleet AI should not abort orders for defensive fleets like merging.
* Fixed Fleet AI getting stuck in a regroup loop if some fleets cannot reach the system for regrouping.
* Make sure AI fleets stop when issued orders to merge.


* You can now use [ ] localisation commands in building descriptions.
* Added trigger num_assigned_jobs = { job = <key>/unemployed value > 2 }.
* Added is_ambient_object_type trigger.
* It is now possible to use scope variables in the create_message effect.
* ideal_planet_class trigger now works in pop and species scope, and also accepts a planet scope as the right hand side argument.
* Added remove_starbase_building and remove_starbase_module effects.
* Added change_colony_foundation_date = <number of days> effect.
* Trigger has_available_jobs now works.
* Added set_ship_prefix effect for country scope.
* Added set_adjective effect for country scope.
* change_government now has a cooldown = yes/no toggle (default is yes).
* Added effect set_government_cooldown = integer/default/no.
* added the missing settings to the get_galaxy_setup_value effect.
** Here's the new, up to date, list:
*** num_empires, num_advanced_empires, num_fallen_empires, num_marauder_empires, mid_game_year, end_game_year, victory_year, num_guaranteed_colonies, num_gateways, num_wormhole_pairs, num_hyperlanes, habitable_worlds_scale, primitive_worlds_scale, crisis_strength_scale, tech_costs_scale.
* Added set_origin effect, but note, it'll usually not be useful to use this as effects executed during galaxy generation will not be rerun.
* last_created_system now works.
* Added defines SPAWN_SYSTEM_BUFFER_DISTANCE and SPAWN_SYSTEM_ATTEMPTS, in case you want to try funky things with the spawn_system effect.
* set_location now works on juggernauts.
* Added on_colony_10_year_pulse on_action
* any_ambient_object and any_system_ambient_object scopes now no longer cause false positives in the error log.
* on_colony_5_year_pulse now works on the capital too.
* abort_trigger, on_fail and on_cancel in special projects now all use the same scopes.


* Fixed so that Zroni Precursor Arc Sites cannot be "hijacked" by another Empire.
* Multiple Curator Scientist cannot be purchased any longer.
* Added checks to see if the host has the appropriate DLCs for the slave market-oriented Resolutions.
* Added missing Loc when proposal for forming Federations failed.
* Fixed leviathans.1018 tooltip not showing actual results of the event.
* The UNE now spawns as intended when playing as the Commonwealth of Man.
* Fixed missing localisation in event “The Oracle”.
* Slave Market Resolutions are now properly locked without Megacorp DLC.
* Restoring megastructures will now only cause the rubble from their ruined variants to be cleared, rather than all ambient objects in the system (including system effects e.g. nebulas...)
* Droids can now take Colonist jobs.
* Subjects can no longer create vassals.
* Pox Bombardment no longer kills machine units.
* Fixed a case where the Slave Riots event could happen twice on the same day.
* Fixed being able to build from (mega) shipyards that are not owned.
* Added missing localisation keys for resolution_passed_diplomatic_weight and resolution_failed_diplomatic_weight empire modifiers.
* Hid Zroni and Shoulders of Giants arc sites from countries ineligible for completing them (thus hiding unlocalised anti-stealing flags).
* Added missing descriptions to Evermore planetary modifiers.
* The AI attitude of country A to B now depends on A's opinion of B rather than B's of A. This fixes Fallen Empires never declaring war.
* Surveyor relic can no longer find new resource deposits on Ring Worlds or Habitats.
* The Floating Value event text no longer mixes up the planet and ship names.
* Corrected Russian translation of Galactic Contender ascension perk.
* Fixed minor localization issue in the Senate Floor tutorial window.
* Changes to a progress-tracking variable in Joint Operation: Genius Caeli are now hidden from the arc site panel.
* Fixed various typos and duplications in the species name files.
* A Quiet Stroll event now has different text for Synthetic empires.
* Tree of Life deposits are now properly cleared when the planet changes owner.
* Shielded Planet special projects now use the correct planet name.
* Removed duplications in Tiyanki ship names.
* System graphical effects are now removed when the final Contingency planet is destroyed.
* VLUUR's space storm will no longer manifest in nebula systems.
* Fixed minor tooltip issue in Atomic Countdown event.
* Shortened and rewrote overlapping Vault of Acquisitions technology description.
* Fixed completed construction items for reinforcements not being removed properly from the fleet manager.
* Fixed research costs for Special Projects "Investigate the Loop Temple" and "Study the Messenger connection".
* The correct event description should now always be shown in “Finding the Truth”.
* Adjusted the tooltips for the Improve and Harm Relations diplomatic actions.
* Observation Posts are now cleared if all primitives have been killed by orbital bombardment.
* Removed duplicate entry in Alpha Hub technology.
* Mining Drones no longer display the Rare Crystal icon in the Jobs interface.
* Changed Miner and Technician building icons to be more consistent with other jobs.
* Fixed issue where some Spiritualist responses weren't always displayed in first contact situations.
* Removed duplicate cohesion effect from tooltip in federation fleet contribution laws.
* Fixed transparency on room backgrounds from Federations.
* Gestalts can no longer get the debris_gasgiant_category_temp anomaly at all - which is as it should be.
* Unity should now always spawn as a continental planet when playing the UNE.
* Fixed a bug where Star-Crossed Lovers could take refuge in the Mutaagan Trading Guild.
* Gestalts that conquer a regular empire's starbase will no longer have Trading Hubs and Offworld Trading Companies there.
* Fixed some cases of species growing on planets disappearing and reappearing every other month.
* Fixed Species rights showing as in breach of galactic law when they’re not.
* You can no longer get random tomb world events on tomb worlds created through armageddon bombardment and other similar causes. Also, you can now only get each of them once.
* Event Primordial Soup no longer wrongly assumes that Terminator machines think organic life worthy of interest.
* Space fauna resolutions can no longer be proposed if they're already active.
* Made sure clearing the blocker creates the correct species.
* Added in breach icons and warnings in confirm dialog for policies that would cause breach of galactic law.
* Fixed a case where the sector AI would spam luxury residences to deal with low amenities if there aren't workers available to work as Entertainers.
* Fixed a bug where special projects to investigate space fauna would sometimes lose the targets they were meant to investigate, become "Investigate <blank>", and do nothing on completion.
* Fixed a bug where the project to investigate Enclaves would talk about the system rather than the country.
* Having comms established with you by enclaves no longer gives you influence.
* The wrecked caravan ship ambient object is now removed by completing the project to research it.
* Enslaving the species in the Underground Vault now shows the correct species will be enslaved.
* Fixed some issues with special resources in the Hive Confluence building.
* Added missing Army Names if the name list is picked for a Machine Intelligence empire.
* Scions can now control their border access.
* Fixed cases where sometimes the Galactic Market would take a while to allow buying and selling of special resources.
* Gaia Worlds may no longer spawn with the 'poor quality minerals' planet modifier.
* If you manage to create a species that is both psionic or cybernetic and erudite, the resulting leaders will now get both the cybernetic/psionic and the erudite traits.
* Using modify_species to change the species of a country will now also target pops on colony ships. This fixes various gene modifications through events excluding colony ships.
* Pops are now more likely to be maintenance drones if the planet lacks amenities.
* Fixed some spaghetti script in the First Contact for Fallen Empires event, closing several loopholes where you could see Fallen Empires without them establishing contact with you.
* Fixed a case where the event for Fallen Empires requesting the long-dead species you kept in stasis would fire twice.
* Rewards for completing the Technosphere chain now take into account Gestalts (who cannot get Sapient AI tech).
* Nu-Baol Life-Seeding now no longer removes Baol Homeworld planetary features.
* Upgraded versions of planet-unique buildings now correctly specify that their number is capped per planet and keep their special background frame.
* Fixed flags not being set correctly on building upgrades (which led to AI spamming upgrades it shouldn't have).
* Fixed number of pacts not being visible in diplomacy windows at game start, as well as a potential OOS.
* Fixed a case where Awakened Marauders would conquer a planet with less than 5 pops, kill all those pops and then spawn 12 pops on the planet (which, having been rendered uninhabited, no longer counts as a colony).
* Fixed the tooltip for utterly failing the Enigmatic Cache uplift chain.
* It is now possible for your ruler to be randomly given the trait Charismatic during their rule.
* Events leading up to the spawning of a Relic Rails dig site may no longer fire multiple times.
* Made sure that the relevant Fallen Empires actually exist in order for the Resolutions to be available.
* Various fixes to the Golden Rule challenge for federation leadership, particularly addressing scenarios in which the event may not fire at the end of a presidential term.
* Do not ping pong fleet groups that are on mission but the leader has jumped to the next system.
* The tooltip for purchasing L-Gate insights from Curator Orders is now slightly more precise about the time it'll take them to identify each new clue.
* Resolved late-game pirate fleets losing their scripted event targets.
* The Yuhtaan system's star and planets are now correctly called "Yuhtaan" rather than "Yuthaan".
* Fixed a stray "?" in the Blue Lotus Project event
* The governor offered by the Nuumistic Order is now of the correct species
* Opening the Alien Box will now change your dominant species rather than just modifying your pops and leaders. It will also now modify subspecies of the main species.
* Forced a trait upon the event-created species that stops them from counting as Bio-Trophies.
* Tooltips in the diplomacy screen regarding the other empire's federation is now more consistent.
* Machine empires with the Resource Consolidation origin can now correctly adopt the Rogue Servitor civic when GC Resolution "A Defined Purpose" is passed (though they will be reset to the default origin in the process)
* Fixed some cases where empires would be created during the game with random and inappropriate origins e.g. Doomsday. create_country now creates countries with Prosperous Unification by default.
* Implemented an option trigger to stop an unnecessary/irrational option in an event.
* Players will no longer receive alerts about war goals they cannot set anymore.
* Fixed a case where marauder diadochi could spawn without any planets, breaking various things.
* Fixed issues with space monsters sometimes being uncontactable.
* Event experience reward is now assigned to the correct leader (scientist).
* Systems spawned during the game e.g. precursor systems will now no longer spawn on top of other systems unless there really is no space for them elsewhere.
* Fixed cases where you'd get refugees from a country you had no communications with.
* Stopped certain arc sites from disappearing from the situation log after completion.
* Fixed possible error with event-spawned Wormhole.
* In the subterranean nation chain, if you get an invasion by them after attempting a preemptive strike, the invasion will now work.
* Event "God of Death" no longer has an eyeball-popping tooltip.
* Fixed confusing tooltip mentioning rivaling members when inviting to federation.
* The conclusion to the Rage Virus event chain will no longer give invalid technologies for Gestalts
* Fixed a case where multiple arc sites would spawn on one colony; also, the Sentinels will no longer spawn as soon as you fulfill the conditions, but are now a bit more random.
* New auto-generated ship designs now have auto-upgrade checked by default
* Fortress proclamation actually increases defense build speed now.
* Fixed misspelled VO ID.

In addition to what you have seen in the patch notes, we have also been working on some stuff that was deemed too risky, or didn’t finish in time, for it to be released together with 2.8. We intend to deploy some of these changes together with a beta patch sometime in the near future.

We also have some other larger changes that will not be released until the next big update, but we will start talking about some of those changes very soon.

Hello everyone!

My name is Fredrik Toll, and I am the Art Director for Stellaris. For this week's dev diary, we will have a look at how we develop our characters included in the Necroids Species Pack.

Much like when we design the ships, we start out with reference gathering, finding anything that inspires us visually. We gather everything we can find that fits roughly within the theme. In this case it was everything from Venetian masks, Egyptian mummies, Mexican makeup from Día de Muertos, wraiths, ascended energy beings, vampires, dark elves, and of course skulls. We are looking to find as many different ideas as possible.
Once we feel we have enough, we look at what we have, discuss them and put them in clusters, things that relate to each other and might be an idea for a species. We want each species to be as different from each other as possible, as well as trying to fulfill as many different player fantasies as possible.

On of the things we do to add depth to the ideas is we try to come up with a backstory for each of the, to explain a bit more what they are. Does not have to be that detailed, just something to give some context, and adds details, and helps the artist when they paint them, drawing on their history.

A backstory might be something like:
“A species which inhabits a completely sealed suit which they can never leave. You can see through the transparent helmet that whatever they once were, they are a hollow scare version of that.”
“An alien that has kept itself alive through genetic manipulation, the cells no longer die, they just keep dividing. The body has grown uncontrolled and looks weird / mutated.”
So once we have settled on the 15 or so idea’s we need, we start sketching out various ideas. For the initial ones we usually just do line art, sometimes rough shading, it depends on the artist. We always develop at least 3-4 different versions of each character idea before going ahead and developing it further.
Here are some of the early look dev for some species.







After the sketching phase, we use much the same process for developing aliens as we do for ship designs. We start out with rough sketches for the ideas, to see which path we want to go on. Then we choose the one we think has the best potential, develop it a bit further, trying different sub variants / poses. Once we are happy with the idea and its structure, we usually do a color test, look at different ways we can shade them.

Here is an example of what all this looked like for the aforementioned alien which extended life through genetic manipulation.













Even though the characters are done in 2D, and look like it in game. The way they are made is technically in a 3D software. To do this, the character needs to be split into layers. So before rendering all the details, we split them up into the components they need. Tentacles might be several layers, eye lids, arms etc, anything that moves needs to be on a separate layer. By splitting them up early, the animator can start setting them up with the rough version. While the 2D Artist continues his work on the details. This also enables us to catch any issues with the character earlier.






Example of what the character looks like in Maya, all set up and rigged.

So once the color test, and layer split is done, we can finally move on to the final render. This is where most of the work comes in, making it feel more 3 dimensional, making sure the materials look realistic.



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That is all for this week. Next week we'll be posting the patch notes!