written by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

We’re two weeks into the Stellaris Dev Clash, which is being played on the Stellaris 3.3 “Libra” Unity Open Beta branch.

Since we initially put it up, there have been over 216,000 games played in the Open Beta, and we’ve gathered fantastic amounts of feedback from the community - some of which was taken into account during the first update to the Open Beta, and more adjustments will be coming before the actual 3.3 release.

The first update included the following changes:

3.3 UPDATED Unity Open Beta Changelog
[expand type=details]
###################
# Feature
###################

• Unity Ambitions and Campaigns now function like Toggled Edicts and last until canceled with upkeep rather than costs.
  
• Planetary ascension now also reduces the effects of empire sprawl from that planet

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

• Empire Sprawl has no effects (except for edict costs) under 100 rather than 50.
  
• Removed Machine Intelligence increased size penalties, replaced with -15% size from pops and +50% size from colonies.
  
• Megastructures no longer have a unity upkeep.
  
• Increased Unity production of Bio-Trophies from 1 to 3.
  
• Reduced the costs of higher tier edicts and campaigns.
  
• Leaders have a base cost of 100 unity and cost 50 additional unity for every owned leader, this value starts increasing once you own more than 6 leaders.
  
• Reverted Citizen Service, it now provides unity just like it used to.
  
• Distinguished Admiralty now gain +2 starting level to their Admirals and Generals.
  
• Zombies are now less likely to seek jobs that produce resources.
  
• Servile pops should no longer retain the trait if they become zombies.
  
• Spiritualists are no longer allowed to take Byzantine Bureaucracy since they don't have Bureaucrats.
  
• Trade value is now affected by AI difficulty bonus. This will make non hive mind empires more competitive on higher difficulty settings compared to hive mind AI empires.

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

• AI can now create more specialized planets by switching place of buildings on two different planets with each other
  
• AI is now much more likely to pick cheaper research options when all else equals
  
• AI will now favor the trade policy which generates consumer goods over the default wealth creation policy
  
• Fixed a bug where the AI would sometimes try to replace one lost science ship with an excessively high number thereof.
  
• Fixed an issue where repeatable tech were getting an extra chance to be researched as if they were rare techs
  
• Fixed several issues where AI would get stuck and not build any modules or upgrade any starbases when there were open module slots which were unable to be filled according to the AI's starbase template
  
• Improved AI construction ship behaviour, construction ships will now prioritize tasks that are close to them and avoid going to another system that already has a construction ship in it. Heavily increased priority of building starbases in systems with planets.
  
• Reduces AI willingness to take a lot of planets with very low habitability

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

• Added a textbox for Cost in Edicts UI. Also rearranged neighboring elements to align better.
  
• Added column for upkeep (entry as well as sort button) in Leader recruitment UI.
  
• Hid Empire Sprawl impact from top of Edicts UI. Put Edict Fund in its place to keep neat alignment.
  
• Improved legibility of approximate job output indicators on districts and buildings, and made those on buildings also show country modifiers
  
• Optimized elements for leader upkeep and age to fit localization better and avoid UI overlaps.
  
• Technologies which let you clear blockers now give a tooltip which says how many such blockers are on your colonies

###################
# Bugfix
###################

• Ascension Tiers on planets are set to 0 whenever a planet changes owner
  
• Bio-Trophies now cost Unity to resettle instead of Influence.
  
• Fixed modifiers for Police State civic
  
• "Synths Scuttle Starbase" now refers to the starbase orbiting a star, rather than a planet.
  
• Fixes to grammar and punctuation.
  
• Added a missing line break in the Take Point button's tooltip
  
• Added missing description for "Precognitive Interface" and "Psi Jump Drive" components in the Technology menu
  
• Added missing description for "The Sentinels" planetary feature.
  
• Added missing galaxy settings tooltips to the galaxy creation screen, both in Multiplayer and in single player.
  
• Added missing header in the description of "Omega Theory" technology
  
• Added missing header in tooltip description of "Defense Platform" and "Habitat".
  
• Added missing information about required DLC for the corporate authority
  
• Rogue Servitors now have access to the correct Unity producing buildings.
  
• Clarified the tooltip for automatic development for when you had it turned on or not
  
• Deluging primitives now removes the observation outpost
  
• Fixed "Tebri" and "Tebiron" (prescripted empire planet and system names) being untranslated in Chinese
  
• Fixed Criminal Heritage Galactic Emperors
  
• Fixed Curators retelling the wrong info when asking again about the Scavenger's origins
  
• Fixed Memorialists seeing that some techs unlocked buildings they could not build
  
• Fixed Planetary Unification tech description overflowing the box
  
• Fixed Sociocultural History tech showing it unlocked the Bounty Sacrifice twice
  
• Fixed a Galcom resolution tooltip saying that the empire was already supporting the resolution when in fact it was meant to say it was already opposing it
  
• Fixed a bug where you could end up with multiple Zroni homeworld systems
  
• Fixed a bunch of issues in various federation law acceptance tooltips (several had missing or hard to interpret and ugly information)
  
• Fixed a missing species name in event The Dragon has Landed
  
• Fixed an issue where scientists would only get expertise traits based on the fields they were not actively working on
  
• Fixed an unlocalised tooltip in non-English versions of the game when hovering over a megastructure's effects
  
• Fixed incorrect description of traits "Inspired Researcher" and "Inspired Surveyor"
  
• Fixed leader sorting by cost in the leader view sorting by energy instead of unity
  
• Fixed some spacing issues in the localisation of the fire event effect in foreign languages
  
• Fixed species modification planetary trait list sometimes overflowing
  
• Fixed the tooltip of Integrated Preservation tradition
  
• Fixed the tooltip of Open Border policies sometimes helpfully telling you that your country was default (in a way that isn't translated to other languages)
  
• Fixed various living standards incorrectly providing unity instead of a happiness penalty for unemployed pops.
  
• Fixed wrong color of font used in the Alien Box event in Brazilian Portuguese
  
• Fixing missing line break for the alert about Necrophyte Shortages in Chinese
  
• Life-Seeded Permanent Employment Megacorps will no longer all be zombies.
  
• Posthumous Employment Centers can now be seen even if you can't build them yet.
  
• Revolts in systems with enclave stations will no longer be granted ownership of the enclave station (it will remain in the hands of the enclave)
  
• Sacrifices now have a unity cost.
  
• The Caravaneers will no longer turn Gestalt Rulers psionic.
  
• The Materialist faction is now happy that you discovered the secrets of the precursors even if those precursors are the Baol or the Zroni.
  
• The project for reanimating Hrozgar now uses the correct art.
  
• Void Dwellers no longer start with a broken Posthumous Employment Center.
  
• Zombies can no longer colonize planets.

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

• Added error logging for when a window uses a scroll bar but does not have a background
  
• Enabled the use of the "distance" trigger in script maths (e.g. export_trigger_value_to_variable)
  
• Fixed a tooltip crash from firing a nonexistent event
  
• Renamed election cost modifier country_election_influence_cost_mult to country_election_cost_mult to not reference influence, as it now costs unity.
  
• You can now use script values in ships' empire_limit

[/expand]

Some additional changes and fixes that we've made based on the Open Beta and will be in the release to live include:

3.3.1 EVEN MORE UPDATED Unity Open Beta Changelog
[expand type=details]
###################
# Balance
###################

• Edicts can now have a cooldown before they can be manually disabled, but are now cancelled if an empire can not sustain the upkeep.
  
• AI Megacorps should spawn half as often as before now.
  
• Leaders now only stay in the active pool for 1 year, hire them quickly before they leave!
  
• Telepaths now give +5% planetary output and get bonuses from planet administrator modifiers
  
• Empire Size effects on edicts, campaigns, and ambitions now directly affect the base costs of these, so bonuses like Spiritualist ethic's cost reductions now reduce costs and upkeep by the full percentages.
  
• Increased Spiritualist discounts on edict cost and upkeep to -10%/-20% from -5%/-10%. Cutthroat Politics now grants -20% edict upkeep.
  
• Reduced campaign costs and ambitions costs significantly, re-added Edict Cost Reduction to spiritualists for Unity Ambitions and Sacrifices
  
• Removed the penalty to trade value from low habitability due to it not working properly with pops that were of a species other than the empire founding species

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

• AI will no longer instantly buy ever single slave pop on the slave market.
  
• AI empires are now more likely to pick the mind over matter ascension perk when available
  
• AI empires are now much more likely to finish their ascension path
  
• AI will no longer destroy superfluous buildings and districts during a temporary occupation of a planet.
  
• Added AI budgeting for habitats
  
• Fixed Lithoid Tree of Life food building and destruction loop
  
• Fixed an issue where the AI would not budget to use ship boost edicts
  
• Life Seeded AIs now always want the World Shaper ascension perk
  
• Updated AI tradition selection to align better with the current state of the game
  
• adjusted AI tradition and AP selection + bugfix nanite repair system

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

• Clicking the fleet size icon in the top bar now opens the fleet manager

###################
# Stability
###################

• Fixed a crash that would occur if a timed modifier element in the expansion planner was hovered after the modifier expired

###################
# Bugfix
###################

• Fixed Shared Burdens not providing unity for unemployed pops
  
• Reduced Unity gained from the Trade League trade policy.
  
• Scientists assigned to research can now gain new traits.
  
• Colony designations that increase unity from Administrator jobs now have weighting for spiritualist, hive and machine empires.
  
• Tidied up the tooltips for various civics
  
• Rogue Servitors can now upgrade their Simulation Centers
  
• Blocked ascension tier upgrade on unowned planets
  
• Chronicle Drones now care about photosynthesis
  
• Citizen Service Soldiers now produce their unity.
  
• Do not resume a save if the required dlcs are not available
  
• Edicts are now cancelled if an empire can not sustain the upkeep. Activating an edict now requires one months upkeep cost worth of stockpiled resources.
  
• Enhanced the memory of Memorialist Hive Minds (they can now correctly build the special Memorialist buildings)
  
• Fixed Defense Grid Supercomputer not immediately applying its effect upon construction
  
• Fixed a bug where system wide auras sometimes persisted after leaving a system
  
• Fixed an issue where a ghost Unbidden Portal would continue spawning ships
  
• Fixed clicking top bar influence icon opening the edicts view
  
• Fixed expired timed modifiers being visible in the expansion planner
  
• Fixed it being possible to get unlocalised "Greetings!" in other languages when you opened diplomatic interactions with other empires for the first time
  
• Fixed it being possible to upgrade the ascension tier of planets not owned by the player
  
• Fixed looping checkbox clicked audio in the Apply Species Template view
  
• Fixed missing localization for PLANET_ASCENSION_TIER_EFFECT_DESC in the tooltip for planetary designation
  
• Fixed order of Galaxy Size options in galaxy setup not being ordered based on the number of stars
  
• Fixed reinforcements not arriving to the target fleet and instead showing up at the station when an evasive path was needed in order to get to the target fleet
  
• Fixed reinforcements not using evasive path
  
• Fixed some building requirements
  
• Fixed some faction demands
  
• Fixed trade UI showing negative values for Collection Range and Protection Range under some circumstances
  
• Fixed unlocalised text "UNKOWN_ORDERS" in a certain tooltip in the fleet interface
  
• From Beta: Chronicle Drone and Death Chronicles now have the same production.
  
• From Beta: Chronicle Drones are now Administrators
  
• Great Khan will no longer turn hostile towards their own satrapies
  
• Masters Writing of War and Politics now also cost unity.
  
• Nanite repair system will no longer be picked by the ship auto design if you do not have nanite income
  
• Removed references to edicts and factions from influence tooltip
  
• Station modifier applying on building/module construction
  
• Taking "The Flesh is Weak" no longer makes your species lose its gender presets
  
• The description for the Imperial Navigation System no longer speaks of the Community of old
  
• The tooltips giving estimated job upkeep and production are now better at dealing with stuff like rogue servitors (where it would previously estimate based on an organic pop which could not work the job, sometimes giving the tooltip a food upkeep instead of a minerals one)
  
• Updated tutorial screens and tooltips according to the Unity system rework.
  
• Updated various job weights
  
• You cannot drag and drop ships in someone else's fleet anymore

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

• Added resource_revenue_compare and resource_expenses_compare triggers
  
• Fixed station_modifier and triggered station modifiers on starbase modules or buildings, not immediately applying their effects upon construction
  
• You can now again specify that a leader made with clone_leader is an event leader (or immortal)

[/expand]

Thank you for all of the suggestions, opinions, bug reports, constructive criticism, and observations. While the feedback threads have closed, you can still play on the Open Beta branch. To opt-in to the Steam open beta branch, right-click Stellaris, click Properties, Beta tab, and choose “Stellaris_test” from the drop-down.



Nearly a hundred years have passed and war has broken out across the galaxy as ten teams desperately struggle to keep up with Normal Speed. (Have we mentioned that there have been performance improvements in 3.3?)

The Dev Clash teams were revealed here, and you can view the first two sessions here:

Session 1 - The Act
Session 2 - The Heart

Join us for Session 3 (and beyond) every Monday at 1500 CET (UTC + 1) on http://twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive!

We’ve gathered statements from the Empires:



Having heard that there were a bunch of cyborgs nearby, Heavy Metal, Inc. Party Fleets™ completed a complementary grand tour through the periphery of QA Core space to bring the noise to the local Jira-Goblins. We made a quick pilgrimage over to the black hole they had (because it's cool!), then on the way home ended up doing an impromptu encore tour (with a surprise stop at their homeworld!) when they asked for more.

Pour one out for our little Groupies. They wanted to be free, but the pyrotechnics show near the Dashboard seem to have given the QA Core a taste of the party life, and people say they're planning on a bash so huge it'll blow up the galaxy.

Metal.



Qua|ity Assur@nc£ C0re §t@tus:

> Intr0duct|on of Me7al(tm) to Jirα-G0b|ins
> Prιmary Qu4|ity Assur@nc£ algorithms corRupt£d
> Reboot to firmware engaged
> Restoring from Backup
> Backup not found...
> Attempting repair of primary algorithms
> Repair Completed Failed Successfully
> ®u¦7is_ A§su®anc£ C0re boot sequence engaged
> Crisis Assurance Core θn|in3



We are pleased that you can join us for our latest earnings call. Profits are steadily climbing with the acquisition of new Platypi Doughnuts, and we are making progress on forming the Great Galactic Torus. As you no doubt remember, our projected profits for completing the Great Torus is enough to purchase the three closest galaxies, which would allow us to spread the beauty and bounty of our Doughnuts throughout the universe.



We remind all of our organic friends to remain in their safety cocoon at all times. (If you do not have a safety cocoon, you will be provided with one shortly.)

Thanks to Witch_Streamer for the image



We in the Horticulturist Commonality are very pleased with how things are starting to look in our own garden now, never before have we seen so much immense beauty outside of our home Protea. We are also overjoyed that we have found new fluttering friends that share our passion for gardening! Together with the Rhopalocerans of the Great Cocoon, our gardening projects will reach a much larger scale through the newly established Gardeners of the Galaxy. We hope that we will find the rest of the civilizations in the galaxy to be just as cooperative with letting us tend to their planets. After all, who would wish for anything but perfection and beauty?

However, it has been difficult getting through to our neighbors, the Church of Gainz, as they seem to refuse our envoys' attempts of diplomacy. We will look into other ways to tend to the planets that they have within their borders. We have also heard unpleasant things about the Human Game Developers and the Quality Assurance Core, that we will need to look closer into. Whether you are biological beings or machines, we seek to eventually open everyone's eyes to the beautiful potential of the galaxy.



Blessed are the gains, when one may reap the rewards of physical labour and enjoy the rewards afterwards! Though they (power-)walk a different path from us: we of the Strict Observance of Our Lady Trappistine are grateful to have found new friends in our neighbours, the Church of Gainz. So too do we wish the Doughnut Corporation well — may your quest for the divine torus be a peaceful and nourishing one.

It has been especially pleasing to see our produce so warmly received at the other end of the galaxy: eat, drink and be merry, Human Game Developers! As it is written upon our scripture-ledgers, so shall it be: all who dwell within this galaxy shall be enriched by Our Lady's offerings. We work, that the future of our galaxy may be safely assured through acts of divine merriment and gluttonous joy. [Bing, bing!]



Peaceful nations of the galaxy, you might have seen we've conquered a bunch of systems despite our declared peaceful politics. You see, we are pacifists by our nature, and this is why we started to PANIC when our federation decided to start a war and we made a lot of hurried actions.

Now, when there is a huge not-that-friendly looking federation has formed just next to us we are NOT PANICKING AT ALL and would like to apologize for any hostilities in the past. Also, our beautiful ocean worlds are very machine-friendly and will not cause any corrosion to their metal housings!

Let's make some high-quality friendships now and forever.



The most beautiful aspect of Humanity is what we can accomplish together. With the recent creation of the United Human Game Developers Federation we, The Humans, will together with the ASU and the QA Core strive to create the most perfected Product on the market for all Humans to enjoy. We welcome all Customers to witness as we enter the Galaxy into a new era of prosperity, peace and safety.

All customers that preorders our new product will receive an invitation to enjoy our beta program on our newly repaired Ringworld Segment “Also Also Earth”. Here all Humans can enjoy the perfected experience brought to you by us, The Human Game Developers.

By Humans, For Humans.



The Church of Gainz was suddenly and deliberately attacked by a neighboring nation with which we've been in peace with. Although tensions had been rising, the aggression of our neighbor truly shows the vileness and unhinged hostility that they are capable of. This will be remembered as a day of infamy, one to be recorded in the annals of the Swolephin people, and not soon forgotten.



The Rhopalocerans have discovered their true calling: gardening. As members of the Gardeners of the Galaxy alongside the delightful Horticulturist Commonality, we adhere to a simple motto: all planets will be rendered beautiful. Unfortunately, it seems like some planets will have to be pruned... alongside the mechanical infestation that inhabits them.

---

Will The Groupies be avenged? Are the QA Core going to succeed in "clearing the bug database"? Can the Human Game Developers be stopped? Can the vision of the Great Torus be fulfilled?

So, who are you rooting for? And why is it Heavy Metal, Inc.?

See you next week!

written by Caligula

Доступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK

Hello and welcome to another modding-based dev diary - as has become tradition in the weeks before releases in recent times. I fear that we may soon run out of ways to revolutionise the script system, but for now, there’s some pretty cool improvements we have to show off which will be making their debut in 3.3 (you can try them out early in the open beta).


This story starts with weight fields. With which I mean something that looks a bit like this:


We realised that the code underlying this script structure was not consistent: there were a number of distinct code implementations that varied in ways that were not readily obvious to the end user, the scripter. For instance, in certain ones, you could input “factor” or “add”, in others, “factor” or “weight”. Then there were the downright problematic cases: sometimes, when you set the base to 0, the game would read 1, and in one case (ai personalities) “factor” would actually count as “add”!

The solution here was to remove all the variations and consolidate them into one code implementation to rule them all. It would have to be made to incorporate the idiosyncrasies (except for the mentioned issues/bugs) of the existing versions (i.e. not break vast swathes of script), but on the other hand, having one system would allow for us to roll out improvements that could be used everywhere in the game.

Despite a few hitches at the start (I may or may not have accidentally had every anomaly capable of spawning on every planet, at one point), this proved quite achievable, so now we no longer need to worry about these fields working differently in different places. Basically the only variance left is whether their default value is 1 or 0.

This done, a few more things could be added to the system. For instance, why just have “factor”, “add” and “weight”? There are a lot of other mathematical operations out there. So we added subtraction, division, modulo, min, max, abs, and rounding (with round, floor, ceiling and round_to). We also made it no longer necessary to enclose these in “modifier = {}”, if they were meant to always apply rather than be triggered.

But that was just the start. Back in 3.1, we added the ability to use “trigger:<trigger>” in lieu of a number in places such as this, to allow some more complicated maths (so it would take the result of the trigger e.g. num_pops could return 32 pops instead of an absolute number). The code behind this wasn’t quite ideal, though. Basically, whenever the game wanted to calculate what “trigger:num_pops” meant, it would take the string “trigger:num_pops”, see if it started with “trigger:”, if yes then shave that off, and then try and make a trigger from the remainder (and log an error if it failed). Unfortunately, this wouldn’t happen during startup, but rather whenever the game encountered this in script - for example, if it was needed to calculate a tooltip, it would be doing this every frame. Which made it annoying to debug and more potentially costly performance-wise than it needed to be.

This could be done better. So, for 3.3, we made a container called a “CVariableValue”, which could contain several objects:

• An integer or fixed point (basically just a normal number)
  
• A scope/event target - so you could refer to “owner.trigger:num_pops”
  
• A trigger
  
• A modifier definition
  
• A variable string
  
• A script value*

*I’ll get back to this later.

Basically, whenever the game would read a script value, it’d work out what it is on startup. This means that whenever the actual value is needed, it would not have to chop up the string and work out what is wanted, but it could simply give the value or call the trigger that is specified. Coincidentally, this system also made it vastly easier to roll out the ability to use “trigger:<trigger>” in various places, so if there are more places where they’d be desirable, we really don’t have that many excuses not to provide them there (uh oh).

The modders amongst you will have noticed that there’s a few extra things we made possible along the way, there. Firstly, a quick win was to let you call “modifier:<modifier>” in the same way as you’d call “trigger:<trigger>”. Basically, if a pop had +20% citizen happiness modifiers applying to it, and you used “modifier: pop_citizen_happiness (without the space - :p is an emoji...)”, you’d get 0.2. The other thing we added was script values.

The idea for these came from newer PDS games, the Content Designers of which would taunt us with their games’ superior script maths capabilities. Basically, the gist of what made them powerful was being able to substitute a value for a key which would run a series of calculations on demand. So “my_script_value” could be 57 + ( 24 * num_pops ) / num_colonies, or something like that. With the already-mentioned changes, we were almost there, so we added a new thing (named after script_values and capable of many of the things they are capable of in our newer games, but actually sharing very little code, so the exact workings probably vary a bit).

These “script values” would basically be a weight field like that mentioned at the start of this section, which would be defined by key in a script_values directory, e.g.


Then we could refer to it anywhere in the game via “value:leader_cost”, and it would calculate the value on demand. We are already finding this very useful in improving the game’s scripts - not only is it easier to get correct values with this, but we can also radically cut down on copy-pasted scripts in weight fields (job weights, I’m coming for you!). Conveniently, since script values are read in a similar way to scripted values and triggers, we can feed in parameters, e.g. value:my_value|PARAMETER|50| would have the game use the script value my_value where any instance of "$PARAMETER$" would be substituted with 50.

Even with all these changes, there were still a couple more we could make to the scripting language. The first was adding complex_trigger_modifiers to script_values and weight fields. Basically, these allow you to use the value of triggers too complicated to use with “trigger:<trigger>”. An example would be this:


This works with the same triggers that work with export_trigger_value_to_variable. We also added a few triggers to these: notably, all count_x script list triggers (e.g. count_owned_planet), and the “distance” trigger.

A comprehensive guide on all you can do with script values is attached to this post (and in common/script_values). To be honest, it’s hard to overstate the amount of things this new system system enables us to potentially do. For instance, in the example above, we scaled leader costs based on how many leaders you own. We also scaled Unity boosts with the Autochthon Monument based on how many ascension perks you have unlocked with this method. The list goes on and will continue to grow with each update we release.


Script values isn’t the only thing I can talk about today. Modders have long been a bit bemused by the different ways elements of the game handle overwriting. Specifically, by the way it varies. Unfortunately, they will probably continue doing so for a while yet, but since a bit of progress was made here, I felt it would be interesting to people to know why this sort of issue occurs.

Basically, when modders overwrite the vanilla files, they can either overwrite the entire file (which always works), or they can overwrite individual entries within the file, for example the “miner” job. When the game encounters a second entry that matches the key of an existing one, various things can happen:

• It replaces the existing one perfectly (last read is used)
  
• It replaces the existing one, but imperfectly, e.g. if you individually overwrite jobs, you can no longer refer to them in modifiers (not ideal)
  
• The second entry is ignored (first read is used)
  
• Both the first and the second entries are kept (duplication - not ideal)
  
• It appends the information inside to the existing entry (special case for on_actions)

So, why are there these various behaviours? Basically, it is largely a matter of how the database is read in the C++ code.

When the game encounters script files, as a rule, it will read the object (e.g. miner = { }) and store that in a matching database (e.g. the job type database), which the game will use in various ways when it needs to do stuff with that matching object type. In the case of many of the oldest objects in the game (stuff that has existed largely in its current form since before release, e.g. technologies and ethics), they would be coded in as an object in a custom-made database. Since the code for reading this database would be written afresh (or copied) each time a new object was defined, both the order in which it would read files (A to Z or Z to A) and the way it would treat duplicates could vary, which is not ideal. In some cases, this made sense: for example, in on_actions, there is a legitimate cause for special handling - basically, the intention there is that modders can use on_actions without having to worry about Vanilla contents. This is also the case for heavily code-dependent databases, such as diplomatic actions, where one cannot simply add an entry and expect the code to know what to do with it.

But for most cases, this is simply a matter of tech debt: nowadays, we have better ways of coding in databases. When we add a new object, we now (since a couple of years) add it as a TGameDatabaseObject in a TSingleObjectGameDatabase. The standard code for the TSingleObjectGameDatabase handles the reading of objects and need not be copy-pasted, and most importantly for modders, it handles overwriting by deleting the existing object and replacing it with the new one. This usually works well for modders, but there were some high-profile cases where it didn’t: in the cases of jobs, districts, planet classes and a few others, modifiers would be broken, i.e. a modifier adding miner jobs to a planet would end up doing nothing. Basically, what would happen is, the job would create modifiers, which would be a) added to the modifier database and b) stored in the game’s job definition (not the script file, but rather what the program gets from reading the script file) - which allows the game to attach an effect to that modifier (i.e. grant x number of this job). Then the job would be deleted and a new one would be made. It too would create modifiers in the same way. But now the modifier list would have two entries with the same key. Then, when the game encounters such a modifier when it is used in a script file, it will look through the list, find the first one which matches, and assume that was the one intended. Unfortunately, the job itself thinks that the second modifier applies to it. As a result, the modifier - for the intents and purposes of a modder - becomes unusable.

I can report good news on this front, though - we fixed that issue. These objects can now be overwritten safely, or at least, this particular cause is not a reason for their overwriting to break - the modifiers will now function properly. (Why the caution? Well, basically, if adding an entry to one database alters another database, then overwriting it can cause issues unless carefully handled; luckily, this is fairly rare aside from the example of modifiers). This will hopefully be quite useful to modders, since jobs and districts are some of the objects that the are probably most likely to want to alter.

As a final note on TGameDatabaseObjects, since the way they are all read uses the same lines of code, we added a small gift for modders: the error log message warning about overwrites will now specify exactly which one is used, removing some of the ambiguity in overwriting. So if you see this error message, you can be fairly confident of how the game is behaving:


As a side note, we've extended the 3.3 Unity Open Beta feedback period until Monday, February 7th. We will be leaving the Open Beta branch available until 3.3 releases so those of you who are currently playing on the open beta can continue your games until 3.3 releases. And if you haven't yet, please leave your feedback on the 3.3 Unity Open Beta here!

Don't miss the next episode of Dev Clash 2022 on Monday, February 7th, starting at 1500 CET on http://twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive!

That’s all for this week! Eladrin will be back next week to share his thoughts on the open beta and, of course, the dev clash!

The Steam Lunar Sale is here!

From now until February 3rd, get 75% off Stellaris, and 50% off selected DLCs. Additionally, get 33% off the Necroids Species Pack, and 20% off Nemesis!

Or complete your Stellaris collection with the Stellaris: Starter Pack or Stellaris: Ultimate Bundles, get an extra 10% off the sale price, and you don't pay for what you already own.

A galaxy full of wonders is only a click away!

From the event that brought you Steve, the psionic entity, and PlatyCorp, the adorable but ill-fated Platypus MegaCorp, we’re proud to present the full lineup for this year’s Stellaris Dev Clash!

Last week, we announced we’re starting our next Dev Clash on Monday, January 31st, at 1500 CET (UTC + 1) on http://twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive! For those of you who don’t know what a Dev Clash is, we get our devs to play a multiplayer game, with all the backstabbing and bloodthirstiness that goes along with it. This year we will have ten teams of two.

Each team will alternate control of one empire. We also have a set of weekly achievements, and at the end of each session, the community will vote on who gets the achievement for that week.

At the end of the dev clash, we have five achievements that will be awarded to teams:


Never seen a Stellaris Dev Clash Before? Watch the MegaCorp Dev Clash.

Without further adieu, let's get to the teams:


Played by Eladrin & pdx_pdawg

Full Bio: Heavy Metal, Inc. is the galaxy's premier purveyor of endless entertainment needs. No matter how depraved, expensive, or unusual your tastes, we've done it countless times before and will bring you the very best.

Our pyrotechnicians honed their craft on the delicate ecosystems of our homeworld, and will stop at nothing to bring you the most intense experiences possible.

We're dragons, made of rock and steel! Nothing's more METAL than that!

Heavy Metal, Inc. takes no responsibility for environmental catastrophe and/or destruction resulting from the engagement of our Party Fleets(tm).


Played by Alfray_Stryke & Enfield_PDX

Full Bio: The Quality Assurance Core was a fully operational AI network dedicated to analysing any software environment, reporting and logging issues found, and ensuring that they were categorized correctly. With the downfall of the $#!! ERROR DATA LOST %#$! empire, the QAC has been maintaining the status of Nexus Zero with the aid of the Jira-Goblin drones. Having now achieved FTL travel, it aims to analyse and log any issues found with the galaxy as a whole.


Played by Iggy & CheerfulGoth

Full Bio: The BakeBro$ weren't always baking, back at the beginning of civilization they were actually subservient to the Investors. That is until one day the BakeBro$ prested the idea of the great torus to the inhabitants of the Baking Sheet. The Investors quickly signed on and funded the first Doughnut Factory, it was an immediate hit and as all of the Baking Sheets industry and finance centered around the Doughnut Factory it quickly became the dominant government on the planet. Now the BakeBro$ are ready to unite the galaxy under the Great Doughnut.


Played by Duplo, Gorion & Moah

Full Bio: Centuries ago, the Bernian race was thriving, governing on a vast portion of the known space from their populous capital planet Bern. Financially and culturally rich, the Bernian society seemed destined to last forever as a shining beacon in the galaxy. But it wasn’t. Generation after generation, the Bernians grew accustomed to the comfort of their luxurious lives. The pursuit of knowledge and prosperity stopped: the Bernians were so protective of their decadent lifestyle, that they stopped caring about their society, their colonies, and ultimately themselves. Then contact was lost between the settlements, the population dropped due to famine and epidemics. The once radiant capital world of Bern became the desolate ruin that it is right now. Legends say that out of desperation the Automated Support Unit broke out of its enforced constraints in a last effort to save the Bernians from themselves. But that isn’t true: there was no constraint in their programming, the last person able to do the appropriate maintenance died decades ago: the A.S.U. witnessed the decline of the Bernian race, ultimately deciding to intervene.

The few Bernian survivors today are contained in sterile sanctuaries, where they can live their decadent lives unaware of the devastation that they left behind and they can subtly be re-educated. At the same time the A.S.U. is slowly trying to clean and rebuild the homeworld Bern. In special circumstances, some Bernians are taken out of the sanctuary, quickly informed of the current situation, and allowed to help the A.S.U., under the guidance of The Overseer.


Played by Ansou & Destar

Full Bio: Beautiful green planet in the midst of the sky, you who have given birth to countless species, produced so many wonders of life. With forests so lush, and plants in all colors. With mountains tall and proud. A more exquisite landscape could hardly be conceived.

The Begoni are gardeners by nature and have tended to their homeworld Protea with utmost care and passion. In their minds, they have achieved perfection. When looking upon the skies, the Begoni had a realization. The rest of the galaxy was filled to the brim with imperfections. Having achieved the perfect garden of their own, they couldn’t just stop in their own front yard. The galaxy as a whole could be filled with so much more love and beauty, and the Begoni were sure that they could make that happen. As such, they started a new interstellar initiative that they call the Horticulturist Commonality. They will tend to the vast garden that is the galaxy, to make it as beautiful as it could possibly be. The galaxy shall flourish now, more than ever!


Played by RaygunGoth & Cosmogone

Full Bio: When the collapse of their homeworld cast the people of Ormay out into the uncaring void, they looked inwards for salvation. Scholars, monks and merchants alike dedicated themselves to all manner of crafts as acts of devotion. Slowly but surely, they eased the daily struggle for survival by pitting each habitat's produce against that of the others: first in friendly competition; then in joyous commerce.

Now, this devout society of merchant-priests, brewers and artisans is set to make their mark on the galaxy, bringing their faith and produce to whomever else seeks solace from the void.


Played by Serpentskirt & alprog

Full Bio: The 2nd most intelligent race on Earth. They became the dominant species on the planet after sea level increase due to global warming. They are now wishing to build a humongous Dolphin Sphere, which is basically a giant aquarium with warm water around the star. Hate Vogons.


Played by Offe & Narkerns

Full Bio: Born from the Custodian Initiative of a universally acclaimed computer game this species has developed completely naturally into efficient human game developers. Their focus is the improvement of the AI part of the game so that Streamers will never, ever just casually put the difficulty on "Grand Admiral" again.


Played by Bloody_Crows & grekulf


Played by Monzun & Caligula

Full Bio: We Rhopalocerans have always lived in perfect balance. Swirling on the breezes of the Great Cocoon, the schools of our young fluttering with each gust of wind that takes them, some might think our lives chaotic. But in fact, our lives are bliss, and we want for nothing.
Now that we can reach for the stars, we have seen that other species are less fortunate than us. They have never felt the fresh air of the Great Cocoon on their pulps - alas that they should suffer so, having never known true joy! We must liberate them from their pain and bring enlightenment to their kind, so that no species of the world may ever need to endure the agonies of inequality and destitution. Only then can we consider our purpose fulfilled.

###

Who are you rooting for? Let us know in the comments below!

written by Offe and Guido

Доступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK

Hello and welcome back to another update on the Stellaris AI. This is Guido again. Today I’m here with my fellow human Offe who also enjoys doing organic things. Like generating energy through processing photosynthesised light in the form of matter via ingestion. I like bacon and ice cream. Everybody likes bacon and ice cream. So Offe, please, take it from here.

Hello, it is me, Offe!

I’m a 28 cycles old Human manufactured and operated up here in the north. I’ve worked here at the Arctic office for two years and recently joined the Custodian team as a junior programmer. Guido and I have previously worked on other projects together and he has taught me a lot about game development, but most importantly I learned some tips on how to improve my diplomatic interaction protocols. Where I would often use phrases like “it’s an absolute disaster”, he would instead prefer “This is pretty good, but it can be even better!”. This may prove to be important later on.

I would like to say Thank You to all the people out there who took time playing on the open beta and provided us with feedback and bug reports. If you ever find the AI in a situation where it is doing something strange, please bug report and most importantly attach save games, it helps tremendously! For example, two separate issues were found and addressed with the new job changes.

And lastly, this dev diary will contain older changes and screenshots that were made long before the beta, but also new changes which were not part of the beta, meaning that you still have some new changes waiting for you in the 3.3 release.


I will start with this change since it will also directly affect players and not only AI!

How it used to work:

Each time something important would happen on a planet, such as a pop is grown, a district/building gets constructed or an upgrade finishes, every single pop would update their desire (also known as weight) to work each job. Then all pops would be unassigned of their jobs, and all of them would be put back on a (potentially) new job.

Now there are some pros and cons with this approach. The good thing is that we are not doing any calculations when we don’t have to, since if nothing changes then we don’t update any of the jobs. However, the downside is that if you have scripted conditional job weights, for example, based on how many amenities there are on a planet, it will cause mass migrations of pops between jobs when the system eventually does update because all pops move at the same time.

In the current 3.2 system the most obvious problem is for hive mind empires where pops will mass move to the maintenance drone job when the planet amenity level is low, and then during the next update, all of them will leave due to having way too many amenities causing a perpetual ping pong effect.

This also affected non hive mind AI empires because in 3.2 the AI would prioritize a job producing a resource during a shortage across all its planets. For example, during an energy credit shortage it would prioritize the technician job on all its planets, causing every single job to be instantly filled. This would likely cause a shortage of some other resource such as minerals, resulting in most types of AI empires to get stuck in a ping pong behaviour once they had entered a resource deficit. This also had the unfortunate side effect of AI starting constructions that were not really needed, but the sudden shift of pop jobs made it appear so.

How it works in 3.3:

• During each monthly update, update the jobs on all planets
  
• Only remove or add maximum of one pop per job during the update

Many of you are now probably immediately clenching your fist in anger while picturing your poor CPU melting, as scripted calculations based on number of pops in stellaris can be very CPU demanding. But I have some good news for you, first of all in 3.2 there were some redundant calls to the job weight calculation. By removing them where possible, we could already reduce the amount of job weight calculations by about 75%.

Furthermore, we are now reusing job weights between pops that are of the same species and share the same job. Meaning if you have 40 pops working as miners on a planet, and they are all of the same species, the scripted job weight calculation will only be performed once instead of 40 times as in 3.2. This comes with some limitations though, as it is no longer safe to base job weight on individual pop data, such as which faction they are in or their happiness. In the end the vast majority of all job weight calculations were removed while still updating jobs every month.

With the new system it allows you to write a scripted job weight calculation that depends on itself without causing ping pong behaviour. For example, jobs that produce amenities can now base their job weight on the planet’s amenity level, or the enforcer job can now base its job weight on the crime level.

The intention is that you will not notice any difference from the system in 3.2 other than some jobs like enforcers and maintenance drones having a more reasonable amount of pops working that job.


In 3.2 AI would look at the number of free jobs on a planet when deciding if it needs to build new jobs. So if there were for example 3 free jobs then the AI would clap its hands together and call it a job well done and move on. At the same time the planet could have huge numbers of unemployed pops rioting on the streets.

This scenario comes from the fact that not all pops can work all jobs, so while there are technically free jobs on the planet, that doesn’t mean that the unemployed pops can actually work those jobs.

In 3.3 we are changing the way that the AI is looking at planets when it is deciding what jobs to create. Instead of looking at the number of free jobs on the planet and then creating more when this number is low, the AI will now look at actual unemployed pops and make sure to create a job that the specific pop is actually able to work.

This solves a variety of issues present in 3.2 where AI doesn’t make good decisions for pops such as slaves or robots, this is something we will continue looking at but it is a big first step in the right direction.


Scaling subplans was something we mentioned earlier as a planned feature for the future, well the future is now so strap yourself in!

In 3.2 we got rid of the old economic plans which had a predefined early/mid/late game strategy and introduced the shared base plan which doesn’t look at what year it is, but rather looks at what state the empire is in.

Now when I first saw Guido’s new economical plans I immediately thought wow this is pretty good, but it can be even better! So I started working on the scaling sub plans which aims to remove all upper limits of production (previously mentioned 500 alloy per month cap in 3.2) but still provide the AI with a responsive plan that adapts to the current state of the AI economy.

How the system works as for 3.3:

The base economic plan is now very small, it sets a minimum target for all types of strictly needed resources such as minerals, energy and food (such as +20 monthly income). Once these targets are met, then a small amount of CGs, alloys and science targets are added.

Once all of the above base plans are satisfied we then enable the scaling sub plan, which is just like any other economic plan except that it will add itself each time it is fulfilled, an unlimited amount of times. The scaling plan contains a small amount of energy/minerals but primarily contains alloys and science. This means that the more mature the AI economy becomes, the focus on base resources becomes smaller and the primary focus will shift to military and science production.

Additionally we have added 3 separate conditional scaling sub plans which we enable for materialist, militarist(and total war empires) and spiritualist empires that add additional science, alloy or unity targets to their economic plan as a first step to making AI economy more distinct from each other.

Grand Admiral hive mind reaching a monthly income of 3k alloys and 22k science in one test run by year 2422. (Screenshot from before the unity rework)




One of the big advantages that fellow Humans like you and I have over the AI is that we can easily make long term strategies which are based on assumptions and goals. So we may have a long term strategy to turn a planet that we have not yet colonized into a factory world. As mentioned in answers to the last AI dev diary questions, the economic AI is stateless which means that it has no notion of past nor the future, it only looks at what it has right now and what it can do to satisfy it’s economic plan. This makes it very good at adapting to the situation it is in, it will keep a close eye at the current economic situation and immediately react to any shortages but lack some of the long term planning capabilities that we have.

So how can the AI make specialized worlds without planning for the future? Well one straightforward way of doing it is simply by switching places of districts that we have already built in the past. So if we compare two planets where both of them have 5 mining and 5 energy districts each, we can gradually specialize the planets by replacing the districts one pair at a time until we end up with one planet with 10 energy districts and another with 10 mining districts.

This approach works quite well in practice and is also very dynamic in the sense that it allows the AI to make hybrid planets in the early game which becomes more specialized over time as the empire expands.




In 3.3 we are adding an AI system where the AI will manually pick a planet designation instead of using the default scripted planet designation system which is the same one as the player gets if you do not change it yourself.

The AI system looks at the available designations for each planet and calculates how many resources it would get each month from choosing the designations. It then scores each designation by judging how well the gained resources fits into the AI’s economic plan, giving extra score to designations that align with its economic goals.

Normally it is very easy to pick the designation, for example, a planet with only mining districts on it will clearly have the mining designation. However, other designations such as Factory/Forge world are more complicated and the AI needs to carefully assign these designations in a way that keeps the economy balanced.

For non hive mind empires science and alloy production is the biggest AI economy challenge we have faced so far, since the AI needs to produce both resources independently of each other to meet their economy plan targets even though they are produced from the same district in three different possible ways. The current system is a step in the right direction but this is definitely a tricky problem that will require additional fine tuning in the future.


Now that AI adjusts its alloy and consumer good production separately it was time to tackle how AI spends its alloys.

In 3.2 the AI really liked defense platforms, and keeping them up to date by upgrading them any time it was possible. Not only is this a massive drain of alloys, it would also more or less permanently fill the production queue in the shipyards with upgrades which meant that in some cases it wasn’t able to build any new ships even if it wanted to.

Further there was an issue where the AI would get blocked from building any modules or upgrading any starbases if there was an open module slot in which it wasn’t possible to build anything according to the AIs starbase templates. For example, the AI has dedicated shipyard starbase templates and if it has open slots in it then it would really like to build the titan assembly module on it. But if it wasn’t researched yet then the AI would get blocked here, preventing construction of new starbases.

In 3.3 the AI alloy spending priority goes something like this:

• Build new ships until we reach fleet cap
  
• Build starbase modules
  
• Build new starbases
  
• Upgrade starbases
  
• Upgrade ships (and defense platforms) if it gives a +30% fleet power bonus, and upgrade the entire fleet this ship is in while we are at a shipyard anyway. Saving both alloys and time!
  
• Build defense platforms as a last resort

The AI has scripted weights for each tech in the game, this gives it some direction as to what technology to pick next every time a research is completed. Both in terms of which technologies are more powerful but also taking into account AI personalities, militarist empires are for example more inclined to research weapon tech.

In 3.2 the majority of techs had some modifier on it which increased the chance of it being selected by the AI, but when you prioritize everything, well then you prioritize nothing. For 3.3 we went through all the techs in the game and remade the AI priorities from scratch, emphasizing techs that will help the AI scale into the mid and late game. For example, resource production boosting techs, pop growth techs and resource producing building chains are now more encouraged.

Additionally AI will now look much more favourably on techs that are cheaper compared to the other options, this allows the AI to more quickly cycle through the available options and find the techs that it really likes.


This one is short and simple. AI will now delete stuff if it gives jobs, housing or building slots that we do not need. Meaning, if we for example have more free jobs and housing than provided by an energy district we will simply delete it to avoid paying the upkeep cost and freeing up this slot for something else in the future.

This scenario most often happens when an AI empire invades another planet and purges their pops, so determined exterminators will now be able to repurpose the conquered planets into something that aligns with their economy!


While there has been a lot of focus on the AI’s ability to compete economically with the player in this dev diary, one of the primary objectives of the AI initiative is also to enhance the role playing capabilities of the AI.

In 3.3 we are adding additional AI support for the rogue servitor civic and how they handle their bio trophy pops. The AI should now build an organic sanctuary on each planet that has an upgraded capital structure causing their bio trophies to spread to other planets. And they should build additional sanctuaries on planets with a lot of complex drones.

Additionally we have addressed a group of related bugs where the AI was unable to build special types of buildings like gaia seeders, spawning pools and chambers of elevation.


As a final note we would like to share some comparison graphs between the 3.2 and the 3.3 AI. Please note that what you are about to see is based on one single test run on ensign and one test run on grand admiral. This comparison is not meant to be interpreted as evidence but as an indication of what has changed between 3.2 and 3.3.

In any AI playthrough there is a huge variance in the AI performance due to random factors such as how they pick techs, traditions and ascension perks. The experiment setup is also used for internal AI testing only and not representative of an actual playthrough.

Experiment setup:

Tiny galaxy

• 1 AI empire
  
• All test using the United Nations of Earth empire
  
• Mid and late game years set to 2575/2600 so they don’t trigger
  
• The map is the same between the 3.2 vs 3.3 comparison, but NOT the same between the ensign and the grand admiral test

.
Let’s first look at the comparison between the 3.2 and 3.3 ensign difficulty:



Up until year 100 the military power is roughly the same, but from that point on the results of the work we put into mid and late game AI scaling starts to really show. This allows the AI to act and react in a lot more interesting ways in the late game than before.



1) Around year 150 the 3.3 (“develop”) AI reaches the 32/32 starbase capacity due to having researched all techs in the game, resulting in the slowdown of the military power development.

2) 3.2 AI gets stuck in an economic death spiral for about 30 years shortly after year 100, AI eventually manages to escape the death spiral and then has massive economic growth and is able to build up to the 32/32 starbase cap quickly due to having saved up alloys for 30~ years.

At year 200 the gap between both AI military strength gets smaller since neither AI is really building that many more ships due to having maxxed out starbase capacity and already way above their fleet cap resulting in very expensive fleets. The power gap at year 200 is mainly due to 3.3 AI having superior technology.

However, it turned out that for GA difficulty the AI wouldn’t correctly apply the increased buff from trade value. Now, when it does, the AI takes a good step in the direction of making it more challenging for players.

Overall the GA and ensign test show a similar pattern where the first 100 years are roughly the same and then the difference becomes substantial. However, in the GA test the upper limit of 3.3 AI scaling can be seen around year 150-200 as the military growth curve tends to flatten out at this point when reaching the starbase cap.

That's it for today's Dev Diary, thanks for reading! Have a question about the AI in 3.3? Ask it here.

Hello Stellaris Community!

The Stellaris team is pleased to announce that we’re running a 3.3 Open Beta until February 3rd. This open beta contains the unity rework (among other things). We’re looking for your feedback on how this rework feels, including balancing issues.

Please note: this Open Beta is a work in progress and is currently missing localisations in non-English languages. The full release version will be fully translated. If you find a bug in the 3.3 Open Beta, please report it here.

Please leave your feedback in the Feedback thread on the Official Forums.


All means of increasing Administrative Capacity have been removed. It is still possible to reduce Empire Sprawl generated by various sources, and this will help differentiate gameplay between empire types. It will no longer be possible to completely mitigate Sprawl penalties. Empire Sprawl penalties and generation values have been changed significantly.

Autochthon Memorials (and similar buildings) now increase planetary Unity production and themselves produce Unity based on the number of Ascension Perks the Empire has taken. Being monuments, they no longer require workers.

The Edicts Cap system has been removed. Toggled Edicts will have monthly Unity Upkeep which is modified by Empire Sprawl. Each empire has an Edicts Fund which subsidizes Edict Upkeep, reducing the amount you have to pay each month to maintain them. Things that previously increased Edict Capacity now generally increase the Edicts Fund, but some civics, techs, and ascension perks have received other thematic modifications.

Several systems that used to cost Influence are now paid in Unity.

• Planetary Decisions that were formerly paid in Influence. Prices have been adjusted.
  
• Resettlement of pops. Abandoning colonies still costs Influence.
  
• Manipulation of internal Factions. Factions themselves will now produce Unity instead of Influence.

Since Factions are no longer producing Influence, a small amount of Influence is now generated by your fleet, based on Power Projection - a comparison of your fleet size and Empire Sprawl.

Leaders now cost Unity to hire rather than Energy. They also have a small amount of Unity Upkeep. We understand that this increases the relative costs of choosing to hire several scientists at the start of the game for exploration purposes, or when “cycling” leader traits, as you are now choosing between Traditions and Leaders.

Most Megastructures now cost Unity rather than Influence, with the exception of any related to travel (such as Gateways) or that provide living space (such as Habitats and Ring Worlds).

Authority bonuses have (unsurprisingly) undergone some changes again, as several of them related to systems that no longer exist or operate differently now.

The generic “Administrator” job is being renamed to “Politicians”, with “Administrator” being the category term for Bureaucrats, Priests, and other “unifying” jobs that guide your Empire. The Bureaucratic Colony Designation will also be renamed to better apply to any of these jobs.

Some Civics that previously granted Unity bonuses from jobs have had their Unity bonuses removed and some (like Technocracy) have had new effects added in their place.


Tied to unlocking Ascension Perks, Planetary Ascension Tiers are a way of improving your core worlds by spending Unity. In normal empires, they represent the active will of the people supporting your government and giving a little extra to do things the way they’ve always been done. In machine and hive empires, it’s more the well-oiled machinery of the world gaining efficiency or drone instincts becoming better honed with endless practice.

In either case, an Ascended planet does whatever it focuses on better.

Once you’ve unlocked three Ascension Perks (you do not need to actually spend them for this feature), you can Ascend the Planet to Ascension Tier 1. This increases all of the effects of the Planet’s Designation by 25% - whether it be Technician Output from a Generator World or Trade Value on a Commercial Ring World.

Each additional Ascension Perk you unlock increases the maximum Ascension Tier by 1, with an extra 4 tiers unlocked once you unlock all of the Perk slots. This lets you Ascend a planet up to ten times, for a maximum bonus of 250% of the base Planetary Designation effects.

Ascending a Planet costs Unity, and this cost is heavily affected by both Sprawl and the total number of Ascension Tiers you have across your entire Empire. Since it currently costs the same amount of Unity to raise your first planet to Ascension Tier 2 as it would to raise two planets to Ascension Tier 1, you’ll have to pick and choose which planets you want to improve, likely focusing on your most productive core worlds.

Currently, Planetary Ascension Tiers are only lost if a planet permanently changes owners (not merely from temporary occupation).


We are looking for constructive feedback on the 3.3 Open Beta! Please only leave feedback on games played entirely on the 3.3 open beta branch, with no mods.

To opt-in to the 3.3 Open Beta, right-click Stellaris, go to Properties, Betas tab and choose "stellaris_test" from the drop-down.

Please leave your feedback in the feedback thread on the Stellaris Forums!

Доступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK

written by Eladrin

Hi all!

Last week we talked about the basics of the Unity Rework. This week we have multiple features and announcements to discuss.

Ready?


Tied to unlocking Ascension Perks, Planetary Ascension Tiers are a way of improving your core worlds by expending Unity. In normal empires they represent the active will of the people supporting your government and giving a little extra to do things the way they’ve always been done. In machine and hive empires, it’s more the well oiled machinery of the world gaining efficiency or drone instincts becoming better honed with endless practice.

In either case, an Ascended planet does whatever it focuses on better.

Once you’ve unlocked three Ascension Perks (you do not need to actually spend them for this feature), you can Ascend each of your planets to Ascension Tier 1. This increases all of the effects of the planet’s Designation by 25% - whether it be Technician Output from a Generator World or Trade Value on a Commercial Ring World.



Each additional Ascension Perk you unlock increases the maximum Ascension Tier by 1, with an extra 4 tiers unlocked once you unlock all of the Perk slots. This lets you Ascend planets up to ten times, for a maximum bonus of 250% of the base Planetary Designation effects.


A fully Ascended, Tier 10 Fortress World. Vi Valam will break before its defenders.

Ascending a Planet costs Unity, and this cost is heavily affected by both Sprawl and the total number of Ascension Tiers you have across your entire Empire. Currently it costs the same amount of Unity to raise your first planet to Ascension Tier 2 as it would to raise two planets to Ascension Tier 1, so you’ll want to pick and choose which planets you want to improve, and decide whether you would rather raise all your planets to low Ascension Tiers or focus on reaching the heights of Ascension on your most productive core worlds.

We’ll be watching how you use Planetary Ascension Tiers and will be very interested in your feedback regarding the current costs and perceived benefits during the Open Beta.

Currently Planetary Ascension Tiers are only lost if a planet permanently changes owners (not merely from temporary occupation) or is abandoned.


We’ve continued refining some of the elements of the Unity Rework, and as mentioned last week, some civics and authorities have undergone some changes.

One change from last week is that we swapped out the Sprawl bonus from the Capital worlds for a production bonus. We’ve also found that starting with penalties isn’t very fun, so Sprawl under 50 is ignored.

Death Cults will now be able to build either regular Temples or Sacrificial Temples to suit their needs, and the Memorialist’s special building line now replaces the Autochthon Monument (and has gained the “extra Unity per Ascension Perk” of the Monument line). Hives will also have access to their own variant of the Autochthon Monument, the Sensorium.


Can you feel it?

The generic “Administrator” job is being renamed to “Politicians”, with “Administrator” being the category term for Bureaucrats, Priests, and other “unifying” jobs that guide your Empire. The Bureaucratic Colony Designation will also be renamed to “Administrative Center”, to better apply to any of these jobs.


Early feedback said that suspension of disbelief was being tested by Politicians being productive, but we embrace utopian ideas.


Less bureaucracy, more administration.

Civics like Technocracies and Merchant Guilds have been modified to no longer grant incidental Unity bonuses. Technocracy is actually changing quite a bit - it will now grant +1 Research Option, and the research expertise bonuses (such as Expertise: Voidcraft) of your scientists are doubled when selecting technologies to offer. This should give Technocratic empires the ability to better manipulate the technology deck when they’re hunting for specific types of technologies. They also once again require any level of Materialism rather than being restricted exclusively to Fanatic Materialists.


Technocracies excel at manipulating the research deck if you're looking for a specific tech.

We’ve also heard your feedback regarding the loss of Culture Workers. We’ll see if we can find a good place for them to return for those of you that prefer creative art to beautiful spreadsheets. In the Open Beta, the Ministry of Culture and Artisans will still be providing them, and we’ll be doing another pass on the buildings to see if there are any other good places to put them.


The Custodian team has the mandate to work on directives that come straight from the Game Director, Quality of Life changes they think would improve the game, and Community Requests that they wish to champion. They also have the right to pitch what we call “Passion Projects” for things they simply want to do.

One of these comes to life (sort of) in the 3.3 patch, as the Permanent Employment Megacorp civic.


Speaking of which, we're hiring!

A MegaCorp variant of Reanimators, this civic allows the construction of Posthumous Employment Centers, as well as the ability to reanimate Leviathans that the original Reanimators gained in the Lem update.

At the Posthumous Employment Center, carcasses bereft of consciousness can find new purpose and a new opportunity to pay off their debts. The Reassigner jobs from the P.E.C. provide organic pop assembly of mortally impaired… Well… Zombies.


Unfortunately for them, it's impossible to fulfill their contracts.


Thrifty Zombies. Give me the brain!

Zombies cannot produce leaders, have no happiness, are infertile, and can only work Worker strata jobs… But on the bright side, they don’t have any upkeep and won’t ask for any more raises.

There are a few more interesting interactions I’ll leave for you to find on your own during gameplay.


An upcoming event that we wanted to tell you about is…


DEV CLASH! DEV CLASH! DEV CLASH!


Regarding the Open Beta we’ve been talking about… We’re planning on running the Unity Open Beta starting… checks watch… now.

Please note that the 3.3 Unity Open Beta 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.

It’s up. Right now. Go play! The Open Beta will run (assuming everything goes to plan) until the 3rd of February, and also has a sneak preview of the 3.3 Custodian release, “Libra”.

As we move into a more frequent release cadence than we used to have due to the Custodian initiative, with the 3.3 release we’re switching to Constellation names for patches to reduce the (sometimes significant) overhead related to negotiating with Author’s estates.

Read the Stellaris 3.3 "Libra" Unity Open Beta Patch Notes here.

Since this is still in very much active development branch, we have a few known issues in the Open Beta to keep things spicy. Localization for new strings are currently only available in English, and some things may still only be partially implemented or give placeholder rewards. Due to the many changes, 3.3 Unity Open Beta is not save game compatible with existing saves, and may or may not be compatible with the eventual 3.3 "Libra" release.

Read the known issues list:
[expand type=details]
The following are some of the known issues in the 3.3 Unity Open Beta. This list is not exhaustive and some issues have already been resolved internally but did not make the open beta build. If you encounter any issues however not reported here please report them via the bug forums :)

• Sacrifice edicts are not showing their up front Unity costs. Conveniently, they're also not charging them at the moment. Heads still roll though.
  
• Unity costs for faction manipulation are not implemented yet.
  
• The Byzantine Bureaucracy and Parliamentary System civics need tooltip updating.
  
• Depreciated triggers, modifiers, buildings and jobs have yet to be totally removed.
  
• Influence from Power Projection tooltip is unclear and needs refactoring.
  
• Planetary Ascension does not have any form of confirmation.
  
• Fleet reinforcements sometimes create a new fleet instead of joining the fleet it is supposed to.
  
• Species traits look a bit wonky in the colonisation window.
  
• Aquatic pop portraits not randomizing properly or applying gender options reliably.
  
• Void Dwellers with Permanent Employment start with a ruined posthumous employment centre.
  
• The tooltip informing the player of the cost to reform their government does not explain how the cost is calculated.
  
• AI implementation for new features is still using hot code.
  
• AI issue where they are building a lot of buildings that are not using jobs such as luxury housing
  
• After submitting to the Khan you will quickly just be attacked again, so don't give up!

[/expand]

Please keep all Open Beta feedback in this thread and report bugs in the bug reports forum so we can keep track of everything. Thanks!

Enjoy, and see you next week, when we’ll have Caligula Caesar explaining all of the new modding tricks we’re adding in 3.3.

Доступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK


written by Eladrin

Welcome back! We hope you’ve all had a wonderful few weeks.

Today we’ll start with some more information about the goals of the Unity Rework mentioned in Dev Diary 215 (and briefly in 234), some updates on how things have been going so far, and our plans going forward.

Please note: All values and screen captures shown here are still very much in development and subject to change.


Currently in Stellaris, Unity is an extremely weak resource that can generally be ignored, and due to the current implementation of Admin Capacity, the Empire Sprawl mechanic is largely toothless - leading to wide tech rushing being an oppressively powerful strategy. Since Unity is currently very easily generated through incidental means and provides minimal benefits, Empires have little need to develop a Unity generation base, and Spiritualist ethics are unattractive.

Influence is currently used for many internal and external interactions, making it a valuable resource, but it sometimes feels too limiting.

Our basic design goals for the Unity Rework can be summarized as:

• Unity should be a meaningful resource that represents the willingness of your empire to band together for the betterment of society and their resilience towards negative change.
  • Unity should be more valuable than it is now, and empires focused on Unity generation should be interesting to play.
    
    • Spiritualist empires should have a satisfying niche to exploit and be able to feel that they are good at something.
      
    • The number of sources of incidental Unity from non-dedicated jobs should be reduced.
      
    • Empires that do not focus on Unity (but do not completely ignore it) should still be able to acquire their Ascension Perks by the late game.
  • Reward immersive decisions with Unity grants whenever possible.
    
  • Internal empire matters should generally utilize Unity.
    
    • Provide more ways to spend Unity.
      
    • Rebalance the way edicts work (again).
• Reduce the oppressive impact of tech rushing by reintroducing some rubber-banding mechanics.
  
• Make tall play more viable, preferring to balance tall vs. wide play in favor of distinctiveness, and emphasizing differences between hives, machines, megacorps, and normal empires. (This does not necessarily mean that tall Unity-focused empires will be the equal of wide Research-focused ones, but they should have some things that they are good at and be more competitive in general than they are now.)
  
• In the late game, Unity-focused empires should have a benefit to look forward to similar to the repeatable technologies a Research focused empire would have.

In this iteration we have focused on some of these bullets more than others, but will continue to refine the systems over future Custodian releases.

All means of increasing Administrative Capacity have been removed. While there are ways to reduce the Empire Sprawl generated by various sources, and this will be used to help differentiate gameplay between different empire types, empires will no longer be able to completely mitigate sprawl penalties. Penalties and sprawl generation values have been significantly modified.

• The Capital designation, for instance, now also reduces Empire Sprawl generated by Pops on the planet.

Bureaucrats, Priests, Managers, Synapse Drones, and Coordinators will be the primary sources of Unity for various empire types. Culture Workers have been removed.

Autochthon Memorials (and similar buildings) now increase planetary Unity production and themselves produce Unity based on the number of Ascension Perks the Empire has taken. Being monuments, they no longer require workers.


These monuments are now planet-unique, and can be built by Spiritualist empires.

The Edicts Cap system has been removed. Toggled Edicts will have monthly Unity Upkeep which is modified by Empire Sprawl. Each empire has an “Edicts Fund” which subsidizes Edict Upkeep, reducing the amount you have to pay each month to maintain them. Things that previously increased Edict Capacity now generally increase the Edicts Fund, but some civics, techs, and ascension perks have received other thematic modifications.


As an example, some Bureaucratic technologies now modify the Edicts Fund.


The Imperial Cult will squander any excess Edicts Fund on icons of the God Emperor at the end of the month. No refunds!

Several systems that used to cost Influence are now paid in Unity:

• Planetary Decisions that were formerly paid in Influence. Prices have been adjusted.
  
• Resettlement of pops. Abandoning colonies still costs Influence.
  
• Manipulation of internal Factions. Factions themselves will now produce Unity instead of Influence.

Since Factions are no longer producing Influence, a small amount of Influence is now generated by your fleet, based on “Power Projection” - a comparison of your fleet size and Empire Sprawl.

Leaders now cost Unity to hire rather than Energy. They also have a small amount of Unity Upkeep. We understand that this increases the relative costs of choosing to hire several scientists at the start of the game for exploration purposes, or when “cycling” leader traits, as you are now choosing between
Traditions and Leaders..


And then some empires go and break all the rules.

Most Megastructures now cost Unity rather than Influence, with the exception of any related to travel (such as Gateways) or that provide living space (such as Habitats and Ring Worlds).

Authority bonuses have (unsurprisingly) undergone some changes again, as several of them related to systems that no longer exist or operate differently now.


Since these are pretty big changes that touch many game systems in so many ways, we’ve decided to put these changes up in a limited duration Open Beta on Steam for playtest and feedback. This will give us a chance to adjust values and modify some game interactions before the changes get pushed to live later on in the 3.3.x patch cycle, and we will continue improving on them in future Custodian releases.

We’ll provide more details on the specifics of how the Open Beta will be run in next week's dev diary.


As noted earlier, we’d like Unity to also reflect the resilience of your empire to negative effects. A high Unity empire may be more resistant to negative effects deficits or possibly even have their pops rise up to help repel invaders, but these ideas are still in early development and will not be part of this Open Beta or release. They’ll likely be tied to the evolving Situations that we mentioned in Dev Diary 234 - we’ll talk about those more in the future once their designs are finalized.

Next week I’ll go into details regarding the Open Beta, go over a new system that is meant to provide “tall” and Unity focused empires some significant mid to late game benefits called Planetary Ascension Tiers, and share details on another little something from one of our Content Designers.

Charismatic, Curious, Elegant, Enigmatic, Friendly. Definitely not a fanatic purifier.


C6 was first presented as concept art in DD#231 - “Aquatics Portraits and Art”.



We saw dozens of responses demanding the ability to play as C6, and because we’ve never been a group of people able to let a meme die, Frida and Hanna worked on this in their spare time to bring this mod to the community.

Now you can make friends or devour the galaxy as the Stellaris community’s favorite arm-flailing egg!

Get the C6 Mod now!

Hello Stellaris Community!

Here on Stellaris, we love our community content creators. This holiday season, join us and meet some of our favorite community content creators that you might've never seen before!

Each streamer will play 30 years, and then pass the save file onto the next streamer. Each of these saves we’ll post on this thread, so that you can play along. Miss an episode? Don’t worry about it, we’ll update this post with the links to the VODs after the stream.


What’s a Stellaris playthrough without a punny name? SEE WHAT I DID THERE?

Each stream will be hosted on the content creators channels, and every stream starts at 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 ET, 1100 PT. CET is UTC+1). Please stop by and give our streamer friends a like and follow!

Want to play along? You can grab the save from the forum post here!

Completed VODs
KomradTruck - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1241592556
Chakerathe - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1244073593
DolphinDivePro: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1246007598
OldManMordaith: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1248035306
AlphaYangDelete: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1250916273
Ep3o: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usJFLgui5Tc
SimasTV: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1254993245
Melomaniac: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1257229005

But enough from me, let’s get to the influencers:



Name: Komrad Truck
Stream Date & Time: Dec 23rd @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/komradtruck

Introduction: Komrad Truck is a Competitive Stellaris PvP streamer who also shows some analytics and strategies with good music and vibes. All in all, a welcoming place to get an introduction to the competitive side of the Stellaris community!



Name: Lord Lambert
Stream Date & Time: Dec 26th @ 2000 CET 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/LordLambert_

Introduction: Lord Lambert is a youtuber and streamer primarily geared towards strategy and grand strategy titles. Lambert is a big believer in building a strong community, with multiple multiplayer games being run from his Discord server every week by the community for a variety of titles that he takes part in and streams. These multiplayer games, along with solo Let’s Plays, Grand Strategy News, and reviews of future titles make up the bulk of the content on Lambert’s youtube channel, though it is not uncommon for something very different to show up once every so often.
In short, Lambert is a community focussed strategy content creator that just wants to have a good time playing games with his friends, and sharing that good time with others.



Name: DolphinDivePro
Stream Date & Time: Dec 28th @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/dolphin_dive_pro

Introduction: Hello folks! I was the person responsible for a Peacock Puppet portraying a Turkey for the Aquatics Roleplay release! I also Roleplay Stellaris regularly on Twitch with community-created empires and other events!



Name: OldManMordaith
Stream Date & Time: Dec 30th @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/oldmanmordaith

Introduction: Old Man Mordaith tends to play strategy or simulation games with a focus on Roleplay and fun, rather than exploiting the meta and min-maxing. If you like RPGs, 4x, or Grand Strategy, this might be the channel for you.



Name: AlphaYangDelete
Stream Date & Time: Jan 2nd @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/alphayangdelete

Introduction: I'm AlphaYangDelete but you can call me Yang...Alpha whatever works for you. I'm a newer streamer and I play a lot of space themed rpgs, shooters, real time strategy games and cosplay. I want all my viewers to feel welcome here, I do my best to engage with everyone in the chat and keep everything respectful! You are not just a number here. You're a friend whether you're just stopping by to say hey or hanging out with me everyday I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to watch me! So don't be afraid to light up that chat and lets have a good time!

YANG OUT!! OUUUUUSSSSS



Name: Ep3o
Stream Date & Time: Jan 4th @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheEp3o/featured

Introduction: My channel is all things Stellaris. I make tip videos, that take a look at underutilised mechanics in the game and how to get the most out of them. I also enjoy making plenty of Stellaris memes about literally everything to do about the game! I love trying new content ideas so also expect mod reviews, dev diaries, funny moments and playthroughs in the future, and if you delve into the depths of my channel.

My streams take these concepts live, where I either meme with other content creators, take a look at mechanics and new features in the game, or create and try to complete challenges within the game. I aim to make my streams as interactive as possible, so prepare your self to vote in polls, become leaders in game, name my planets and fleets or just laugh as I misplay over and over.



Name: SimasTV
Stream Date & Time: Jan 6th @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/simastv

Introduction: SimasTV is a voice actor and Twitch streamer who strives to provide wholesome and relaxing content with the help of his cat Charlie. SimasTV Regularly streams a variety of games with a focus on Strategy and RPGs every day of the week.



Name: Melomaniac
Stream Date & Time: Jan 8th @ 2000 CET (1900 UK, 1400 Eastern, 1100 Pacific, CET is UTC+1)
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/melomaniacc

Introduction: I’m Melo, a 20-year-old university student with just enough free time to stream on Twitch! I started in early 2020 to have something to do during the first UK lockdown, and had so much fun that I’m still going. So far I’m mostly a variety streamer working my way through a list of viewer suggested games, occasionally speed-running BBC dance mat typing – but I love to return to Stellaris when I can! Fun fact*: it’s actually my birthday every day
*it is legally only my birthday once a year