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written by grekulf

Hello everyone!

The first update by the Custodian team is now out, and we hope that you’re enjoying yourselves trying out some of the new changes. We’re very excited to see that so many of you seem very happy with the Custodian Initiative and the Lem Update. As usual, your feedback is very important to us, so we hope that you let us know what you think. Also thanks to those of you who left reviews on Steam recently, it's nice that so many of you seem to be happy.

In terms of 3.1 itself, we are aware of some exploits that have been popping up, and we’ll continue to monitor what you folks in the community can find over the weekend. Next week we’ll be looking at what has popped up, and after that we’ll be making a decision of if and what we may want to hot fix.
We’re still focusing on the release itself and learning from its development. Within the next coming weeks we will start talking a bit more about our future plans, in terms of features and changes, so stay tuned!

We also have some fancy new wallpapers to go with the update:
(you can find 4k versions of these wallpapers, and more Stellaris Wallpapers here)






Last week we held another Q&A session on our Discord. You can view the transcript here.

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The Stellaris Team is proud to announce the free 3.1 “Lem” Update is Now Available!

This is the first release from our new Custodians Development Team at Paradox Development Studio. This team will operate in parallel to the “Expansion Team”, which will focus on creating new content for Stellaris. Read more about the Custodians Initiative here.

This patch is named to honor the 100th Anniversary of the birth of renowned Sci-Fi author Stanisław Lem, bringing with it a host of balance changes, bug fixes, AI improvements, as well as adding content to several previously released paid DLCs.

Release Trailer:



For the “Lem” Update, Traditions have been reworked, in addition to adding a new Tradition Tree to the base game (Mercantile), we have also removed empire limitations on Tradition Trees that were previously in the game, reworked some of the Tradition Trees, and redesigned the user interface for Traditions. We have also added the Unyielding Tradition Tree (requires paid DLC Apocalypse) and the Subterfuge Tradition Tree (requires paid DLC Nemesis).

Now, instead of having a fixed 7 Tradition Trees to unlock, Empires can now choose 7 from up to 11 (with all the DLC) Tradition Trees, adding further customization to players’ empires.


Along with the free Lem Update, The Plantoids Species Pack now comes with two additional Civics and three new Species Traits.

• Catalytic Processing Civic: Changes Metallurgists to Catalytic Technicians, who convert Food into Alloys
  
• Idyllic Bloom Civic: Allows the construction of Gaia Seeder buildings on ideal planets, which after a series of upgrades will terraform the planet into a Gaia world
  
• Budding Species Trait: Pops with this trait will reproduce by budding, adding Organic Pop Assembly to planets they live on
  
• Phototropic: Pops with this trait have 50% of their Food upkeep converted to Energy.
  
• Radiotropic: Pops with this trait have 50% of their Food upkeep converted to Energy, but do not pay the Energy portion of their upkeep on Tomb Worlds.

The Humanoids Species Pack now comes with a new Clone Army Origin, as well as two new Civics.

• Clone Army Origin: Do not reproduce naturally, but instead rely on Ancient Cloning Vats to reproduce. Natural warriors, Leaders and Armies get combat bonuses, but Clone Army Empires are limited by the number of Ancient Cloning Vats buildings they can construct across their empire.
  
• Pleasure Seekers Civic: Gain access to the Decadent Lifestyle Living Standard, giving Increased Happiness in exchange for Increased Consumer Good upkeep. In addition pops working Entertainer jobs add to Pop Growth, and Servants produce 5 extra Amenities
  
• Masterful Crafters Civic: Artisan jobs are replaced by Artificer Jobs, which in addition to Consumer Goods, also produce Trade Value and Engineering research. For Empires with this civic, every three Industrial Districts on a planet also will unlock another building slot.

The Necroids Species Pack has been rebalanced in the Lem Update, with the Reanimated Armies Civic being named to Reanimators, as well as other changes.

• Necrophage Origin: Can now be taken by Hive Mind empires, pops are now also more likely to escape the Necrophage Purge, as well as several other balance changes to bring Necrophage more in-line with the other Origins.
  
• Death Cults Civic: Have had the odds of getting bonuses when sacrificing Mortal Initiates increased based on the percentage of the Empire’s overall population sacrificed, as well as the total number of jobs created by Sacrificial Temple buildings reduced
  
• Reanimators Civic: Start with the ability to build Dread Encampment buildings and they now create Undead Defense Armies. In addition, enemy armies destroyed in battle have a chance of returning as Undead Armies and can reanimate certain Leviathans that have been defeated in battle

The Lem update comes with a wide array of new toys for our Modding Community to play with, you can read more about Modding in Lem here.

For the full list of changes included in the 3.1 “Lem” Update, you can read the patch notes here.

Thank you for playing Stellaris, and always remember: The Galaxy is vast and full of wonders...

The Stellaris team is proud to announce the free Lem Update, honoring the 100th year anniversary of Sci-Fi author Stanisław Lem, will be released on September 14th!

The update marks the first free update of Stellaris from our Custodian Development Team. This new group of developers was created with the mandate of updating and maintaining the amazing content that has been added to Stellaris over the years, as well as crushing bugs, adding content to existing DLC, as well as improvements to Quality of Life, Performance, UI and AI. The Custodians Team operates in parallel with the “Expansion Team”, which will continue to develop new content for Stellaris.

With the Custodians initiative’s added resources, we hope to be able to increase the frequency of our free patches, and by extension the overall quality of the game.

For the Lem Update, in addition to bug fixes and AI improvements, the Custodians have focused on adding additional content to previously released DLC, as well as updating Traditions, a system that was added to Stellaris in the 1.5 “Banks” version.

In addition to the eight Tradition Trees that are in the current version, we have added three new Tradition Trees: Mercantile (free), Unyielding (requires Apocalypse), and Subterfuge (Requires Nemesis). The existing Tradition Trees have had a balance pass as well.

In the Lem Update and with all the DLC, there are now up to eleven total Tradition Trees, with each empire only being able to pick and unlock up to seven Tradition Trees. Some Tradition Trees also now unlock further abilities, such as Mercantile and Trade Doctrines, similar to Supremacy and the Supremacist diplomatic stance. This will add more variety and replayability to every playthrough.

The Plantoids Species Pack (Paid DLC) has also been refreshed in the Lem Update, Plantoid and Fungoid species will get three new species traits and two new civics. Plantoids will be able to reproduce by Budding, adding organic pop assembly by simply existing. Or they can choose to be either Phototropic - converting some of their food upkeep into energy - or Radiotrophic, and feast on concentrations of background radiation. In addition, empires can choose to take either the Catalytic Processing Civic - and convert food into alloys - or lead an Idyllic Bloom empire which can convert ideal worlds into organic paradises.

We also have revisited the Humanoids Species Pack (paid DLC) and added a new Origin, as well as two new civics to this species pack. Start as the lost remains of an ancient Clone Army, play as a species of Masterful Crafters whose artistry is appreciated throughout the galaxy, or have your species live a Decadent Lifestyle as continue to Seek Pleasure throughout the galaxy. These new origins and civics add many ways to tell your species’ story like never before.

The Necroids Species Pack (Paid DLC) will also receive a significant overhaul in the Lem Update, with the Reanimated Armies Civic changing to the Reanimators Civic, which can lead to some interesting reanimation options. The Death Cult civic is getting an overhaul with increased bonuses due to the reduced pop growth in Stellaris 3.0, as well as some balance changes to the Necrophage Origin including the option to start as a Hivemind (requires Utopia). In the Lem Update, the Necroids Species Pack is unlocking its true potential.

In addition to the changes above, the Custodian Team has been hard at work, doing a balance pass on civics, you can dive into the details in the patch notes. In addition, the Shattered Ring Origin has been changed to work more like the Remnants Origin - you now start on a Shattered Ring segment, that you can upgrade to a Ringworld Segment when you have the Prerequisite Technologies. The Void Dwellers traits have also been changed so that the negatives from living on a planet can no longer be simply gene-modded away. For Quality of Life updates, when constructing an Ecumenopolis, it will now take into account the planetary designation of the planet, meaning that Factory Worlds will get more Factory Arcologies, and Foundry Worlds will get more Foundry Arcologies when the upgrade is complete. Additionally, Rogue Servitors can now build Ecumenopolis, and get a special district to house their bio-trophies.

For all the full list of additions, balance changes and bug fixes, you can read the Lem Update patch notes here.

We hope you enjoy our latest additions to Stellaris for PC, and enjoy the free Lem Update on September 14th!

by Caligula

Welcome to another Stellaris Modding Dev Diary! Today, I’ll be talking you through some of the new scripting language features in the upcoming 3.1 patch.

We have already mentioned that Traditions are considerably more moddable now with the new system, with far less heavy lifting needed in the gui and loc files. I can also confirm that you can, for instance, now script in tradition trees that only become available if you make certain decisions during the game. But today, the main focus will lie on variables.


I mentioned last time that we have been looking to do more with variables. In the last patch, several more ways to save various bits of information in the game were added, but the biggest missing one was an easy way to get trigger values, like for example the number of pops on a planet. You also were still quite limited in where you could use variables, especially compared to PDS’ newer games like CK3. Also, the syntax for using them was not quite ideal, in many cases.

With 3.1, we have greatly increased the power of variables. First of all, the format: previously, when you wanted to get the value of a variable, you had to refer to… well, the variable itself, and that was all. Now, you can do a few more things:
So you can do dot scoping, which saves a lot of ugliness, and is a big improvement as it is. And as you can see, you can also refer to triggers, with trigger:<trigger>. This will support any trigger checking a number and just a number, with no { }.

(Note: the previous, ugly format for copying variables across different scopes has been removed. The one where you'd specify "value = { scope = x variable = y }")

3.0 already had an effect, export_trigger_to_variable, but it only worked with fleet_power. That was the prototype; the functionality has been expanded to all such triggers. Importantly, that effect lets you get values from triggers that are a bit more complex, with { }, that are still comparing a single number:
3.0 also, to mention it again, added a bunch more ways to get game values such as modifier numbers and resource stockpiles to variables. It also added a few more places where you could use them: multipliers in add_resource and add_modifier, for instance. With 3.1, we have added a lot more things that you can use a variable for:

• As values in triggers checking single numbers, e.g. "num_pops > my_variable", "intel = { who = from value < trigger:num_pops }"
  
• As values in effects using a single number, e.g. "add_experience = my_variable".
  
• As a multiplier parameter in triggered resource tables (e.g. in a building):

• In MTTH/AI Chance modifiers:

• add_modifier now has a time_multiplier as well as a multiplier parameter, you can use it there. E.g. for death cults, this is used to apply a modifier for 10 years X edict_length_mult
  
• In ordered_script_lists: a feature yoinked from our newer games. I’ll let the trigger docs entry explain:

If your variable is too exact a number, you can now use round_variable_to_nearest to round its value to e.g. the nearest multiple of 10.

A summary of these functionalities have been added to an information file in the events folder (and attached to this post). Also, I could well imagine further expanding on these usages of variables, so it’s quite possible there will be even more coming along these lines in future. The changes have already proven extremely useful to us, e.g.:

• Improving Death Cult rewards: cut about 1000 lines of script and still ended up with the new version taking more factors into account to determine the adequate reward for you!
  
• Fixing Golden Rule cash payouts: the previous solution was to fudge the numbers and give you an amount with a rather tenuous connection to the actual pay-in. This is no longer necessary.
  
• Improving Federation Science Leadership Challenge: adding the actual number of techs and repeatable techs you have researched as a factor
  
• And more.

That was already quite a lot, but there’s a few more things that I’d like to highlight. Firstly, certain older elements of the game used sprite sheets for their icons - a system where a list of icons would all be in a row on one image file, and we’d specify that we’d want to use, say, the 5th icon on the list. We had a few issues with these inhouse (the colony automation button currently accidentally being a robotic cow springs to mind), and modders have pointed out that they are a pretty bad overwriting bottleneck, since only one mod can overwrite the sprite sheet at a time, and therefore only one can add extra types of that object that add new graphics at a time.

We figured out a way to change index references to icons in sprite sheets into normal key references, which meant that we could convert these elements of the game to use string references to sprites (with no need for new icons to be inside a sprite sheet). This got rolled out to the likes of army types, colony automation types, bombardment stances, and (with great difficulty!) ship sizes.

An example:
In the case of ship sizes, it was a bit tricky, since the icon_frame index number then specified which icon it would use on multiple sprite sheets. In the end, we left that system in place for starbases (since very few tend to add a new type of starbase) and made the line “icon = ship_size_military_1” tell the game to refer to several sprite keys: GFX_text_ship_size_military_1, GFX_ship_size_military_1, GFX_ship_size_military_1_top, GFX_ship_size_military_1_top_damaged

This will need some updating for mods which change the affected objects, since the old format no longer works, but in the long term it will hopefully solve a lot of compatibility headaches!


Some have noticed that, in certain cases, the randomness of script functions such as random_list is not very random. Specifically, events fired from on_game_start had this issue (and various other on_actions, but that was the one that hurt the most). This was pretty unfortunate, since this effectively meant that certain things that were meant to be different each game... simply were not. Relatedly, we also revisited some more longstanding issues like where if you used while loops or every_x loops, each time the effect happened within that loop, the random result would be the same. (As in 25x random_list resulting in 25x the same result rather than 25x a random result).

We fixed this quite exhaustively:

• The lack of randomness in on_actions like on_game_start is fixed. If we in future make the mistake that caused this to happen again, the game will warn us, so hopefully it is banished for good.
  
• While loops and every_x loops have improved randomness
  
• For good measure, we added a reroll_random effect

On another note, we can now add triggered pop modifiers to traits, so for instance, you can add a trait that gives a bonus on one planet class and a penalty on another. The potential that this unlocks is quite considerable - for instance, it allowed us to stop using the somewhat unintuitive (and eminently cheeseable) stopgap solution of giving Void Dwellers two traits, and instead giving them one that applies differently depending on what sort of planet they are on.

As some have noticed, the Clone Army origin does several cool, new things that we haven’t really explored in the game before. A lot of what we added for it could have further cool uses in the future, for instance:

• You can now gender-lock species
  
• You can set an empire limit on how many instances of a building you can build. (And alter it during the game).
  
• A game rule, “should_force_decline_species”, has been added. It will make a species for which it returns true decline on a planet, triggering an alert based on whatever tooltip is specified in the game rule. It is also hooked up to stop pops from migrating/being resettled/etc to a place where they would immediately start declining.

Finally, we added a bunch of new effects, triggers and modifiers, as usual. A couple to highlight are:

• set_visited = <system> - reveals a system to you, without you having surveyed it
  
• set_saved_date - lets you save a specific date (can be in the future) so that you can use it in locs, similar to variables: [This.my_saved_date].
  
• Technically, the last effect is actually adding a <scope>_flag, so the standard flag effects and triggers have been ported over to all scopes
  
• You can now use [loc] commands in button effects, which apparently will be very useful for dynamic modded UIs
  
• You can define descriptions for districts, buildings, jobs and special projects through desc = { text = X trigger = { Y } } now. They also now take loc commands.
  
• We deleted has_non_swapped_tradition and has_tradition_swap, and consolidated them into has_active_tradition. Modders: do a search-replace!
  
• Every scope that lacked script flags (e.g. country_flag) now has them. Also, variables work in all scopes now too.
  
• Note for updating mods: count_diplo_ties is now count_relation, count_armies is count_owned_army or count_planet_army (depending on the case). any/every/random_mining_station/research_station have also been removed, because they were nonsense. Use simply mining_station/research_station/orbital_station scope change instead. Also, observation_outpost no longer takes a "limit", but you can say "exists = observation_outpost" as compensation.

Adding all these new functionalities has been a boon for us in the Custodian team, and we are gradually rolling them out to older parts of the game which can benefit from them. It’s something I look forward to doing more of in future, and equally, I am excited (and, I’ll admit, a tiny bit afraid) to see what modders will do with them!

One last thing: the old trigger_docs.log has now been deprecated, and instead we now have a more wieldy and more comprehensive script_documentation folder, the contents of which are attached to this post.

And as some of you are probably aware, we did some early access for Modders for the Nemesis update. We had ~10 mods update on release day, servicing around 1.6 million subscribers, overall we were very happy with the results and the community reaction, and if this continues to go well we’re looking to gradually expand this experiment to more of the Modding Community. For Lem, we’re looking to add another 10-ish Modders to the early-access experiment. If you’re interested you can fill out the Modder Early Access Request form.

Hey folks,

I’m Alfray Stryke, a member of the QA team for Stellaris. As part of the Custodians’ work on the 3.1 “Lem” patch, as mentioned in Dev Diary #215, the team has done a balance and Quality of Life pass on various features throughout the game and we’d like to highlight some of the more harder hitting changes. This is not a complete list of all changes, and may contain some not-final numbers. As a reminder, the changes to the Necroids Species Pack were covered in Dev Diary #216, and all of these changes will also be included in the Lem update.


We’ve been aware that the implementation of Void Dwellers of having two separate traits, one positive and one negative resulted in behaviour that we weren’t happy with - in particular being able to gene-mod the negative aspects of the trait out of existence. To solve this we’ve made some changes to how the traits work:

There is now only a single Void Dweller trait, so it can’t be exploited via genetic modification of your species.
The modifiers on the trait itself have changed, previously it gave:

• +15% Resources from Worker and Specialist jobs & -10% growth speed (for the positive version)
  
• -60% growth speed (for the negative version)

The new version of the trait is now:

• +15% Pop Resource Output on Habitats.
  
• -15% Pop Resource Output on Non-Artificial Worlds.
  
• -10% Growth Speed
  
• -30% Happiness on Non-Artificial Worlds.

The new, improved, Void Dweller trait with its modifiers.

What this means is your Void Dwellers pops are most productive and happiest on habitats, have their bonuses removed on ringworlds and have production and happiness penalties if they settle on planets (best to leave those for immigrants or robots!)


So before you grab your plasma-pitchforks (yes, plasma-pitchforks are canon now), rebalancing the Shattered Ring origin is something the team has been discussing for a while. We’ve gone through various iterations on decreasing the initial power of the origin, while keeping the player fantasy that it provides in mind and eventually settled on having the progression of the Shattered Ring resemble that of the Remnants origin.


The Voor Technocracy, showing off the Shattered Ringworld Segment as a homeworld.

The shattered ring itself supports the following district types:

• City, Hive & Nexus - housing depending on your empire type.
  
• Industrial - where valuable consumer goods and alloys can be manufactured.
  
• Trade - where clerks turn a tidy profit and artisans run their workshops.
  
• Generator (not pictured) - where hive-minds and machine intelligence power their infrastructure. Note that Generator and Trade districts swap depending on the owner of the Shattered Ring, much like Commercial and Generator Segments on a ringworld.
  
• Agricultural - where food is grown for those that eat it.
  
• Mining - more on that in a moment...

Once all the rubble has been cleared out, there’s space for 25 of these districts.

So you might be wondering, “Are those mining districts on my ringworld? What am I mining?”

Well dear reader, the answer is the ring itself!


Mining districts, aka tunnels filled with valuable minerals and alloys.
As a civilization that has only known life on the ring prior to achieving spaceflight, the only resources available to you were those that made up the ringworld itself. Luckily ruined ringworlds are massive and can spare some missing broken materials without falling into their local sun.

As such your mining district on the shattered ring replaces the regular miner jobs with scrap miner jobs with a base job output of 2 minerals and 1 alloy per month.

Of course, as was alluded to above, we wanted the progression for the shattered ring to resemble that of the relic world from the Remnants origin. So once you’ve cleared all the debris from the shattered ring and researched the appropriate technology you can repair it into a fully functioning ringworld segment.


Of course, sometimes a bit of home repair work needs to be done.

Upon completion of this monumental task, the districts on the shattered ring are upgraded into their respective ringworld districts at a 5:1 ratio - so 5 agricultural districts become 1 agricultural segment. Since fixing up the ring means you’ll no longer be clearing out material, the mining districts are removed and the ability to construct research segments is added.


Something we’ve received a lot of feedback on is that when a world is transformed into an Ecumenopolis is the assignment of industrial districts.

Prior to 3.1, all of the industrial districts were assumed to be devoted to alloy production and thus converted into foundry arcologies. No more, in 3.1 industrial districts will convert based off of the planetary designation:

• With the “Foundry World” designation, industrial districts will convert into foundry arcologies, at a 2:1 ratio
  
• With the “Factory World” designation, industrial districts will convert into factory arcologies, at a 2:1 ratio.
  
• With any other designation, including the “Industrial World” designation, industrial districts will convert into both foundry and factory arcologies, at a 4:1:1 ratio.

Earth, a bygone relic of a time long past, ready to be restored anew.


Earth, restored anew! Note that the local governing algorithm did not assume all industrial capabilities should be focused on supporting the Custodianship Navy.

Another change we’ve implemented is the Arcology Project ascension perk and decision to restore relic worlds into ecumenopolises is now accessible to Rogue Servitors. In addition, the leisure arcologies that would normally be present have been repurposed for housing bio-trophies in luxurious towering arcologies.


Pampering will be provided at Floor 314, Room 15 at 9:26 am.


As mentioned above, the planetary designation for consumer goods has been renamed to Factory World, because we’ve added an Industrial World designation.


Multiple planetary designations for your various needs

The new Industrial World designation is ideal for planets where you don’t want to focus the Industrial districts on a single job type, instead providing a minor upkeep discount to both Artisan and Metallurgist jobs.


Industrial World Designation

Subversive Cults (MegaCorps with both Gospel of the Masses and Criminal Syndicate) no longer have access to the Temple of Prosperity. Instead, they can now establish a Subversive Shrine in their branch offices - increasing both Spiritualist ethics attraction and crime on the planet.



Subvert expectations with deals so good they’re criminal!

With that I’ll pass things over to Gruntsatwork to discuss some of the changes we’ve made to civics!

----

Hello everyone.

I am one of Game Designers currently working on Stellaris and on the Custodian Team. While we have been busy with radical changes here and there, new civics and origins, we also wanted to have some more tame but no less important balance changes for our already existing civics, specifically for our outliers and those we felt under- or especially over-utilized.

The following lists all the civics we felt needed a substantial lift up

• Beacon of Liberty: Gave +15% produced Unity -> Now ALSO also gives -15% Empire Sprawl from Pops
  
• Imperial Cult: Gave +1 Edict cap -> Now gives +2 Edict cap
  
• Idealistic Foundation: Gave +5% Happiness -> Now gives +10% Happiness
  
• Environmentalist: Gave -10% Consumer Goods Upkeep -> Now gives -20% Consumer Goods Upkeep
  
• Parliamentary System: Gave +25% Faction Influence -> Now gives +40% Faction Influence
  
• Efficient Bureaucracy: Gave +10% Admin Cap -> Now gives +20% Admin Cap
  
• Nationalistic Zeal: Gave -10% War Exhaustion Gain and -10% Claim Cost -> Now gives -20% War Exhaustion Gain and -15% Claim Cost
  
• Functional Architecture: Gave -10% Building and District Cost, -10% Building and District Upkeep and +1 Building Slot -> Now gives -15% Building and District Cost, +2 Building Slots, Upkeep reduction removed

• Subspace Ephase: Gave +15% Naval Capacity -> Now gives +20% Ship Speed and ALSO gives +15% Naval Capacity
  
• Divided Attention: Gave +10% Admin Cap -> Now gives +20% Admin Cap

• Constructobot: Gave -10% Building and District Cost, -10% Building and District Upkeep and +1 Building Slot -> Now gives -15% Building and District Cost, +2 Building Slots, Upkeep reduction removed

We hope those changes, while strictly number tweaks, will give those civics a breath of fresh air and increase their appeal to the wider player-base because, “oh, shiny new numbers” is one hell of a drug.

Now sadly, only strengthening the civics we felt undervalued or under-used doesn’t solve all issues, so we also introduced some slight nerfs to the 2(3) biggest offenders in terms of being “must have” civics.

• Slaver Guilds : Reduced enslaved population from 40% to 35%
  
• Indentured Assets: Reduced enslaved population from 40% to 35% (Megacorp civic)
  
• Technocracy: Added 1 Consumer Goods upkeep to Scientist Jobs that create unity because of Technocracy

As you can tell, for the slaver guild civics, this change is relatively minor, compared to the Technocracy nerf. The goal here is to make those 3 civics slightly less good. We have no intention of nerfing them into the ground. Our goal here is to move them from “the best pick, every time” to “could be best pick, depending on circumstances”.

We will be following your feedback here and over all other platforms very closely as well as our own telemetry and we will keep adjusting and tweaking the civics as we go on.

As an extra note, we know that there are several other civics that definitely need a pick me up, we will be looking into them as well, but not for the Lem update.

That’s everything from us this week! Thanks for reading and we’ll be back next week diving into more changes in the Lem Update.

Hello everyone!

I’m here to announce a surprise update to the game. But before we get our expectations blown out of proportion, this update contains only a change to our Multiplayer Backend. We are rolling out the Nakama infrastructure to host cross-store PC multiplayer.

With this update we are completely removing our internally developed Multiplayer backend (PDXMP) that is currently used by all stores excluding Steam, which uses the built in Steam backend. The reason for this change is because we believe that Nakama, developed by an external partner, is more stable than our current in-house solution.

What this will mean for you as a player is hopefully nothing different from how you normally play the game. This update should not affect your single player experience whatsoever and if you have the game installed on Steam and don’t have friends on other platforms you won’t be affected by the Multiplayer change either.

The only people this will affect are those of you that play the game on Steam and want to play multiplayer with your friends that have bought Stellaris on other platforms (such as the Microsoft store). You might already know about the crossplay Steam Beta branch we have had in place prior to today, but from this update and forward you will now be able to launch the Crossplay version straight from the launcher!

All you have to do is go into “Game Settings” in the launcher and scroll down to “Cross Store Multiplayer” and click “Launch” as shown below:



If for some reason that doesn’t work, you can also add “-nakama” as a launch option in Steam. Do this by Right-Clicking Stellaris, Going to Properties, General Tab and adding “-nakama” to the Launch Options. This will force the game to switch from the Steam multiplayer backend to the new one for crossplay purposes!




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######################### VERSION 3.0.4 ###########################

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# Performance and Stability

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* Replaced PDXMP multiplayer backend layer with Nakama.

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Thank you for playing Stellaris, and if you experience any issues with Nakama Multiplayer please report them on the Bug Report forums!

Hello everyone!

It is Thursday and that means it is time for your weekly dev diary. Today, we will talk a bit more in-depth about the upcoming additions to the Humanoids species pack.

First, let us take a look at the civics that will be added:




The Masterful Crafters Civic, previously teased in Dev Diary 214, will replace your artisans with a new job type called Artificiers. They will fulfil the same basic production needs as Artisans, Consumer Goods that is, while also producing some extra Trade Value and Engineering Research. As you might expect, since they focus on consumer goods, this civic will not be available for gestalt empires.



To facilitate you focusing your empire more on the industrial branch, this civic will also make industrial districts grant building slots.

Our hope is to allow you a bit more leeway in how you want to play your empire, whether you go hard into artificers to capitalize on their bonus production or use their superior production to cut back on how much you have to build up your consumer goods industry.

And of course, before anyone can ask, let me assure you, yes, it's dwarfs, it's most definitely dwarfs.
For the more materialistic among us, megacorporations will have their own mirror version of this civic.




Now let us talk about our second new civic, Pleasure Seekers. This new civic grants you access to the Decadent Lifestyle Living Standard, which increases happiness and consumer goods upkeep for all affected pops.



In addition, the Entertainer job will now also grant +1% pop growth and Servants jobs will produce an additional 5 Amenities.



Quite a potent mix of happiness and the means of keeping it up. Of course, if you are interested in an experiment or two, you could fill entire worlds with entertainers for the pop growth bonus, one might
even call it a planet-wide shore leave on Risa.

Now with both of these civics covered, it is time to talk about our biggest addition to the Humanoids DLC, the topic of this weeks spoiler tweet and our new origin.
As with the civic above, Pleasure Seekers also has a mirror-version for megacorporations.




What do you do when you outlive your usefulness/your creators? That is the question you can dive into with the Clone Army origin.

As Clone Soldiers, your empire will be perfectly suited for warfare, even though you may not currently have any enemies. Your lifes and continued existence will depend on your Ancient Clone Vat buildings, which support your population.



Did we mention that there is a limit to how many Ancient Clone Vats you can have in your empire at the same time? There is, it is 5.



Now, you could be a good little clone-soldier and simply wage war as you were designed to, or, you could dive into the secrets of your own history, that choice will be left to you for every playthrough.
Oh, you can also combine Clone Army with both Masterful Crafters and Pleasure Seekers.

One more thing worth mentioning, all 3 of those additions are NOT portrait-locked. Some have ethic or competing civic restrictions though.

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And with that I shall leave you be for this week and I hope to see you for the next dev diary.

Greetings and salutations space fans!

Today we’re back with another dev diary, and the topic at hand is the feature improvements coming to the Traditions system. Back in dev diary 214 when we announced the Lem Update and the Custodians Initiative, we also talked about how to make Selectable Traditions.

Selecting your Traditions

We know there’s been mods that have extended the amounts of traditions for some time now, and we also know that it's something that parts of the community have been asking for as well. For us, Traditions have always been an important part of customizing and specializing your Empire during play, and although we of course like giving players more customization options, we also need to maintain a balance. We didn’t simply want to keep adding new traditions without having the UI support it well, and we didn’t also want to give players too many options right away, which can lead to Choice Overload. We felt like it was a good time to review the Traditions system, because we wanted to add a few more Tradition Trees, and open up the avenue for doing more of that in the future, where it makes sense.

Let’s dive into the changes, and keep in mind that nothing is final and there’s missing art. Feedback is still very welcome though.



We are improving the traditions system so that you are no longer locked to the same set of 7 traditions (with some swaps), but you can rather pick which Tradition Tree you want to go into one of these 7 slots.


All the Tradition Trees currently available to the United Nations of Earth.

Some of the Tradition Trees, that were previously swaps of other trees (like Adaptability being a swap of Diplomacy), are now their own trees again. This means that Adaptability, for example, is now available to all non-machine empires. Synchronicity is still mutually exclusive with Harmony (one will appear if you are a gestalt empire, the other if you are a regular one). Versatility is available to all machine empires.

Changes to existing Traditions

Other than allowing you to select your own Traditions trees, we’ve also changed some of the traditions within the existing trees. Let’s take a look at some of those changes:

• Judgment Corps: no longer increases crime prevention, but rather makes your Enforcers produce 1 Unity.
  
• Finisher: no longer provides +1 monthly influence, but rather increases +10% ruler output for regular empires, or +10% admin cap for gestalts

• Open Markets replaced with Diplomatic Networking: Embassy pacts now produce 3 Unity
  
• Secure Shipping replaced with Eminent Diplomats: Diplomatic Acceptance increased by +5, and your Envoys that are Improving Relations have a 1% chance per month to gain a Favor from the target empire.
  
• Insider Trading replaced with Trust or Bust: Trust Cap +50, Trust Growth +33%
  
• Finisher: no longer increases Trust Cap or Trust Growth, but rather increases Diplomatic Weight by +10% and +1 Envoy.

• Mind and Body: now also increases Leader Skill Cap by +1
  
• Kinship: effect on demotion time buffed from -50% to -75%
  
• Bulwark of Harmony moved to Unyielding, replaced with Harmonious Directives: +1 Edict Cap

• Adoption: no longer increases Starbase Cap by +2, but instead increases Naval Cap by +20
  
• The Great Game: old effects removed, now increases damage done to Starbases by +20%

• Finisher: no longer provides Merchant Jobs per Pops on a planet, but rather increases Stability by +5.

New Tradition Trees

We are adding 3 new Tradition Trees to the game: Mercantile, Unyielding and Subterfuge. Unyielding and Subterfuge are currently unlocked by Nemesis, while Mercantile (originally supposed to be unlocked by Megacorp) is available to everyone. The reason being that we wanted to see how it felt to have the Trade Policies unlocked through this tree. It will therefore no longer be possible to convert Trade Value into Energy + Consumer Goods/Unity unless you have the (3) Adaptive Economic Policies tradition.


New art is still coming in.

• Adopt: Starbase Collection Range +1, Trade Protection +5
  
• (1) Trickle Up Economics: Clerks provide an additional +1 Trade Value
  
• (2) Commercial Enterprises: Commercial Zones Building now provides 1 Merchant Job.
  
• (3) Adaptive Economic Policies: Can convert parts of their Trade Value into Unity or Consumer Goods
  
• (4) Marketplace of Better Ideas: increases trade value by +10%
  
• (5) Insider Trading: moved from Diplomacy Traditions, -10% Market Fee
  
• Finisher: increases trade value by +10%

• Adoption: Starbase Cap +2 and Starbase Upgrade Speed +50%
  
• (1) Resistance is Frugal: Stronghold buildings now produce 3 Unity and Defense Army Health is increased by +33%
  
• (2) Never Surrender: reduces Planet Bombardment Damage by -25%, war exhaustion by -25% and increases hostile claim costs by +25%
  
• (3) Bulwark of Harmony: moved from Harmony Traditions, effects are as before
  
• (4) Fortress Doctrine: increases the Hit Points and Damage of Starbases and Defensive Platforms by 33%, and reduces the upkeep cost of starbases by -20%
  
• (5) Defense in Depth: increases Starbase Cap by +2 and reduces Starbase upgrade cost by -50%. In addition, owners of Nemesis will also increase Hostile Operation Difficulty by +4 for the Sabotage Starbase Operation.
  
• Finisher: Max Defensive Platforms +50%

• Adoption: +1 Codebreaking
  
• (1) Information Security: +1 Encryption
  
• (2) Operational Security: +1 Codebreaking, +2 Operation Skill
  
• (3) Non-Disclosure Agreements: Hostile Operation Difficulty is +1, and Hostile Operation Cost and Upkeep is increased by +50%
  
• (4) Double Agents: Whenever a Hostile Operation targeting us fails, we gain 10 Intel on the offending empire
  
• (5) Shadow Recruits: increases Infiltration Speed by +50%
  
• Finisher: Successful Operations refund half of their cost on Infiltration Level

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That is all for this week folks! Let us know which Tradition Trees you like to pick, and why. Any feedback is very welcome.

Next week we’ll be back to talk about the additions we’re making to the Humanoids Species Pack.

Hello everyone!

I hope you have had a great summer thus far, and let’s hope we can enjoy the rest of August as well. The team is starting to return from their vacations and we’re eager to start finishing off the Lem Update so that we can ready it for release in September.

As mentioned in dev diary 214, we’re going to Buff the Backlog by adding some gameplay to existing DLC. Today we’re here to talk about an addition coming in the Lem Update, and more specifically what additions we are making to the Plantoids Species Pack.



We are adding 2 new Civics and 3 new Species Traits to the Plantoids Species Pack. Let’s start by taking a look at the new Traits.

New Traits

We have added 3 new traits that require the species to be either Plantoid or Fungoid.


New traits and their cost.

Phototrophic: Is mutually exclusive with Radiotrophic, and changes some of your food upkeep into energy upkeep. Requires your species to be Plantoid or Fungoid.


Instagram-friendly?

Radiotrophic: Is mutually exclusive with Phototrophic, and changes some of your food upkeep into energy upkeep. It also makes it more beneficial for your Pops to live on Tomb Worlds, as their energy upkeep is removed. Requires your species to be Plantoid or Fungoid.


Contrary to popular belief, this species does not sustain itself by consuming ancient communication equipment.

Budding: This trait allows you to produce some pop assembly. Multiple Species with this trait can help provide pop assembly on potentially another species. For example, two species with the Syncretic Evolution Origin can together assemble one of the two. This trait can probably be especially great for a Hive Mind species.


New Civics

Let’s continue taking a look at the Civics. Both of these new Civics are available to regular empires as well as Hive Minds. Only Idyllic Bloom requires you to be a Plantoid or Fungoid.

Catalytic Processing: This Civic lets you produce Alloys with Food instead of Minerals. Starting Districts have been adjusted to be balanced when using this Civic. Regular Empires and Hive Minds convert 9 Food into 3 Alloys. Machine Empires turn 12 Food into 4 Alloys.

Catalytic Processing is available to many types of empires, but not all of them.

Idyllic Bloom: This Civic lets you transform planets into Gaia Worlds by building Gaia Seeders and upgrading them. The Gaia Seeders have 4 phases, with the 4th and final phase triggering the terraformation of the planet to a Gaia World. Available to regular empires as well as Hive Minds.




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That’s all for this week folks! We’ll be back again next week, so until then, stay safe and be well.