written by Iggy

Greetings, ghouls and ghasts! Chief Reanimator Iggy here to report the most recent innovation in the field of necromancy. With the 3.6 update, we will bring you the Cordyceptic Drones civic! These delightful fungi will allow you to dominate the galaxy with zombie space fauna, as this is the third Reanimation civic! I know many of you have been enjoying this on the Beta, but if you give me a moment, I will have something new to show you!


If you have been following how I made Permanent Employment, you would know that I want all these different reanimation civics to have access to the Leviathan Reanimation feature while still having unique gameplay. Cordyceptics follow this trend giving hives a much more biological reanimation method.


Also including the new Hivemind Government Type Parasitic Overmind!

The civic can be incredibly powerful based on the space fauna you encounter. If you find Tiyana Vek early game, then you are in for a fun game while you have to restructure your entire economy to produce enough food to keep your dread fleet flying. Yet that is not all! Cordyceptic Empires are masters of all things biological, so your Amoeba Flagella will now be a force to be reckoned with in the early game. And if you happen to get the Prethoryn as your crisis, you might be able to use those missiles better than the Prethoryn themselves!


Now, who would want to start with some boring old Corvettes?

As a final little flavor feature for you, I present you with the Cordyceptic Reanimation Facility, capable of resurrecting space fauna continuously for a food upkeep! However, it requires that you find systems rich in organic life.


A new Tiyanki fleet is ready to be deployed!


Back when Eladrin and I first introduced Reanimatable Leviathans for 3.1 “Lem” there was one piece of feedback we kept hearing internally. Will the Leviathans look like Zombies? While we couldn't deliver it back then. After much finagling, bartering, and pledging my soul to our Art Director, we are here to bring you Reanimated Leviathans as you have never seen them before.


Someone call in the Fire Department ‘cos it’s SMOKING in here!

This collaboration required the cooperation of each discipline within our art team, with beautiful concept art, new shaders, and breathtaking VFX!




Machines will repurpose dead organic matter.

Eventually…

Now go out and raise some dead!

written by Eladrin and Mr Cosmogone

Hello everyone!

It’s been a busy few weeks here on the Stellaris team, and I wanted to thank the community for helping us out so much with the 3.6 Orion Open Beta.

There was significantly more activity than anticipated - during the month of October, over 100,000 players took part in the Orion Open Beta branch - and the volume of feedback we received was incredible. The 3.6 update should be much better thanks to your involvement.

We have a few more fixes that we’d like to get into the update (such as vassals colonizing Holy Worlds), after which it’ll go through the final testing, localization, and release process. As mentioned last week, we’ll be keeping the Open Beta branch available until the live release of 3.6 Orion so you can continue your games.

I’ll now pass you over to Mr.Cosmogone, who will provide a bit of enlightenment about one of the features that has been in the Open Beta, but hasn’t gotten a proper dev diary thus far. (Now, with non-placeholder art!)


Peace be upon you, children,

Mr.Cosmogone here, to tell you about the upcoming Spiritualist Federation. I had the chance to collaborate on this with the famous Caligula who had long yearned for a way to share his spiritual convictions with his allies.

Some of you may have already had a chance to play this as part of the ongoing Open Beta, they might not find anything new here, but for the rest of the faithfuls, let me introduce to the Holy Covenant:



Spiritualist empires will find this new federation type to be quite aligned with their gamestyle, as it will provide them with a range of bonuses about unity, priests and the spiritualist faction.



Their level two perks will help lay strong foundations for your church:





While the third level will help you on your way towards ascension:





At the fourth level, priests will start appearing left and right to carry the good word.





The fifth and last level of the federation will be a consecration for its members:





Like all federation types, the Holy Covenant comes with a unique succession challenge, the conclave, where the most pious are assured to be rewarded. Or perhaps the most generous. Money is the root of all sins after all, so you might as well give it away.

That’s it from me this week, and remember if you want to play all the cool things we’ve talked about over the last few weeks, go play the beta!

We're happy to announce that we've updated the 3.6 Open Beta again today. As mentioned in the original announcement, the Open Beta was originally supposed to run until the end of October, however due to the unexpectedly high number of players who have participated, we’re going to leave the Open Beta branch available until the official release of 3.6 ‘Orion’. We will continue to monitor the feedback you provide, but due to how close this is to the release, changes made from feedback this late will not be in the release of 3.6 ‘Orion’.

We’d like to thank all of those that have taken the time to try out the changes and given their feedback.

Thus, below are the patch notes for this week’s update to the Open Beta.

Further updates to the Stellaris 3.6.0 ‘Orion’ open beta
[expand type=details]
Balance

• Explicitly prevented various scripted solar systems from spawning inside Marauder territory. These include Amor Alveo, Wenkwort, the Caravaneer capital, and Lost Colony origin systems.
  
• Integrated Preservation for Machine Intelligences now affects Evaluators (and Chronicle Drones) not Coordinators.
  
• Martial Law, Hunter Killer Drones and Compliance Drones planet modifiers now provide penalties to both mechanical and organic pop assembly.
  
• Moved the repeatable technologies for strike craft into Society - Military Theory.
  
• Rebalanced synchronicity traditions to match with the changes to harmony traditions.
  
• Larger Unbidden ships and structures now have a point defense solution. Bzzt.

Beta Updates

• Pacifist Xenophobe empires are no longer ambivalent about attacks on the Caravaneers
  
• Fix for terraforming candidates that shown when tech is missing.
  
• The Energy Siphon is now a space fauna weapon
  
• Fixed a number of tooltips not showing for hive-mind cybernetic ascension
  
• Fixed the tooltip for Adaptability for Void Dwellers.
  
• Modular Cybernetics adds Augmentation Drones to Spawning Pools for hive-minds. Augmentation Drones turn alloys into pop assembly for cybernetic hive-mind pops.
  
• Modular Cybernetics no longer gives hive-minds +10% pop assembly.
  
• Ringworld colony designations and ecumenopolis planet class now provide both mechanical and organic pop assembly.
  
• Updated a number of stern sections to have the correct number of aux slots for offspring ships.
  
• Added the Parasitic Overmind Goverment type
  
• Added checks for corporate civics for shroud patrons
  
• Added missing pop growth and assembly modifiers to unity designations for ringworlds.
  
• Added missing tiyanki pop assembly for hive minds.
  
• Fixed most of the machine intelligence authority text having highlights.
  
• Updated Integrated Anatomy tooltip.
  
• Balanced numbers for the instrument of Desire.
  
• Fixed that the Cordyceptic Reanimation Facility wasn't buildable inside Amor Alveo.
  
• Changed ethics attraction for the Composer and the Whisperer.
  
• Knight jobs now give amenities instead of stability as reward from a quest. The Order's Keep now give 15 stability as a reward from that quest
  
• Players now have a wider choice of leaders to become chosen through their covenant.
  
• Players should no longer be able to form covenants with all the entities if they refuse the first covenant.
  
• Shroud cooldown modifiers should now appear as percentage without need for unique loc.
  
• The Whisperers stability penalty has been reduced. It now comes with a reduction in Unity.
  
• The Whisperers will no longer kill up to 8 (!) pops on a planet.

Bugfixes

• It is no longer possible to engage the Marauders or Horde in multiple dialogs
  
• Lead ships should no longer run into the enemy disregarding their combat computer
  
• Tooltip for opinion decay rate now shows two decimal places
  
• Reunited the 'Code Changes' and 'Incompatible Code' modifiers with their icons
  
• Fix for when becoming a vassal resets all Policies and Species rights to Default.
  
• Reimplemented the localisation for the Trader Proxy Office.
  
• Marauder clans may no longer spawn in systems which are adjacent to player empires.
  
• Fixed AI's difficulty-adjusted economic modifiers, plus certain misevaluations of modifier benefits in its economic strategy
  
• Pop Assembly modifiers now have decimal places.
  
• Shroud Chosen Leaders will no longer lose their chosen trait on becoming rulers

Improvements

• The Epi-Genetic Triggers technology and Genetic Resequencing tradition now both allow the removal of pre-sapient traits from species via species modification. The Servile trait from the Syncretic Evolution origin and traits bestowed by the Enigmatic Cache count as pre-sapient traits for this.
  
• Renamed 'Planetary Government' and 'Planetary Unification' for gestalts

Modding

• Fixed show_in_outliner in megastructures not actually working
  
• Moved most pop upkeep and resource production to inline script.
  
• Removed pop_assembly_speed modifier. You should use planet_pop_assembly_(organic_)mult instead. The sole difference previously was the former only worked in species traits (the untriggered sections) and the latter worked everywhere else (but not species triats). The error log didn't warn you of this, either. So now the latter works everywhere and the former no longer exists.

[/expand]

Once again, by the time this dev diary goes live, the Open Beta should be updated with the above changes. This is likely going to be final update to the beta branch.

Due to the Open Beta update, this dev diary replaces our normally scheduled dev diary that would have gone out on Thursday. We'll have more news next week.


Don't forget to turn off your mods, they will break.

written by Alfray_Stryke

Good Afternoon, I’m taking over Dev Diary duties this week as Eladrin is away!

We’ve been continuing to work on the 3.6 ‘Orion’ patch, and hope to have another update for the Open Beta out next week. The feedback we’ve received has been immensely useful and I cannot thank those that have been providing it enough!

Here is a preview of some of the new UI art our artists have been working on for the new features and additions coming in 3.6 ‘Orion’ and a small selection of some of the changes we’re planning to get into the Open Beta for the next update following the feedback both on the forums and our discord.


Work in Progress UI Art for new Resolutions, Traits, and Ship Components.


Work in Progress UI Art for the Holy Covenant Federation

"Preview for planned changes to the Stellaris 3.6.0 ‘Orion’ open beta"
[expand type=details]
Modular Cybernetics no longer gives hive-minds +10% pop assembly, instead their Spawning Pools now gain Augmentation Drone jobs, which turn alloys into Cyborg Pop Assembly.
The Integrated Preservation tradition for Machine Intelligences now affects Evaluators (and Chronicle Drones) not Coordinators.
The Whisperers in the Void stability penalty has been reduced, but now imposes a small reduction in Unity production.
Larger Unbidden ships and structures now have an Arc Defense Field to vaporize attacking strike craft and missiles.
[/expand]

Please note that the 3.6 "Orion" 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.

Extra-Galactic Hordes of Undead have been detected infesting the cores of galaxies across the multiverse! From now, until November 1st, participate in fighting back the Necroid Invasion on the Stellaris Official Discord for a chance to win cool prizes, and shop on Steam to get great deals on Stellaris and Stellaris DLCs!

Check out our Steam Scream Fest Darkest Timeline Bundle and get a great start on your Stellaris Collection!
Bundle Includes:

• Stellaris
  
• Nemesis
  
• Apocalypse
  
• Necroids

"The void is dark and full of dangers; somewhere between the stars, the Lords of the Dead are stirring. Their fate - and that of the galaxy - is in your hands with this horrifying bundle!"


The first step is to Subscribe to the Necroid Invasion mod and add it to your mod playlist. The Necroid Invasion will spawn in the Galactic Core. The Undead are a crisis that will affect the entire galaxy. Every 5 years, they will build up enough psychic energy to control a wave of ships. This wave of ships will then attack all the empires in the galaxy and grows increasingly stronger as the game progresses. Your only hope is to survive long enough that the invasion exhausts their psychic energy and falls dormant.


But wait, there’s more! Starting today we will be running a Necroid Invasion tournament! Fight back the Undead Invaders with up to 11 other players in Community-hosted multiplayer sessions. The top 36 players (by Victory Score) will progress to the semi-finals, with 4 players from each of those games advancing to the streamed final.

The top 3 scoring players in the Finals will receive a copy of Overlord and Toxoids! The top 6 scoring players in the final will be invited to a sit-down with some of the Stellaris Devs!


There are two ways to win prizes during this event: Join the discord, and get the Necroid Hunter role. Winners will be randomly selected from those that have the role on November 1st. The other way is to compete in the Necroid Invasion Mod Tournament!


Join the Official Stellaris Discord and (after agreeing to the rules) go to #join-the-tournament, click the reaction and you’re entered for a chance to win one of five copies of base-game Stellaris! (Note: You must remain a member of the discord until the event concludes in order to be eligible.)

• Subscribe to the Necroid Invasion mod here
  
• Join the Official Stellaris Discord
  
• React in #join-the-tournament

There you can find a schedule of planned games, or host your own! As well as find out further details on the tournament structure.

written by Eladrin, Mr. Cosmogone and Monzun

We have a few things for you today. First, Mr. Cosmogone will delve into the mysteries of the Shroud, then Monzun will show off a new accessibility feature, and finally I’ll give some updates on the Orion Open Beta.


Salutations mortals!

Mr. Cosmogone, high speaker of the Instrument of Desire, here to share tantalizing tidbits about the upcoming Covenants rework.

First of, a little bit of context for those among you unfamiliar with Covenants: currently in the game, after completing your Psionic ascension, you are granted access to the Shroud, a mystical dimension where all psionics draw power from.

Upon exploring the Shroud, you encounter random events, one of which would let you make a bargain with an eldritch entity. This would give you an empire modifier, and every 25 years or so, there would be a price to pay.

The new ascension rework (currently testable in our open beta) made it so that at the end of the tradition tree you would get a shot at forming a covenant without having to explore the Shroud so much.

I liked both these things, but felt that we could go a little further with this.


We are only ants feeding off crumbs

In the rework, upon first attempting to breach the Shroud, you will get a chance to form a covenant with one of the current entities, chosen semi randomly (the chances vary depending on your ethics, civics, traditions, APs and more). You can refuse them and venture in the Shroud on your own, but accepting will give you a weaker version of the current covenant modifiers.



I’m sure nothing can go wrong

A while later, you will be prompted to confirm the Covenant. Refusing removes your patron and their modifier, but accepting will give you a situation log entry about the covenant, and you will slowly start increasing in covenant rank as your empire attunes telepathically to its patron.

Every patron provides different bonuses, but they follow the same structure:

• Upon forming the covenant: weak empire modifier.
  
• Upon confirmation: Telepath jobs now provide pop growth, naval cap, amenities or research.
  
• After 5ish years: Telepath jobs bonus becomes stronger, gain access to an empire unique building providing more telepath jobs and unique bonuses.

After 15ish years: the weak empire modifier is replaced with a stronger one.



After 30ish years: One of your leaders can be selected to become Chosen, becoming immortal, and gaining a unique leader trait, with effects varying depending on your patron and the leader’s class. This does not block you from getting the Chosen One trait when venturing into the Shroud, and they can even be stacked together if luck is on your side!




After 50ish years, you reach the last stage of the covenant, and gain access to a unique patron specific ship component.



Here is a detailed table with all the bonuses:




The speed at which you progress is based on how well your ethics, traditions, civics, AP and actions match with your patron. On average, it should take you about 50 years to fully attune to your patron and unlock all the benefits of your covenant. Progress is voluntarily hidden. You’re dealing with eldritch entities after all.

There will of course be a price to pay, and many of the current events have been changed to provide additional variety and hopefully be more balanced.

To accommodate these changes, a couple things have moved around in the psionic tradition tree:



Lastly, for those among you who wish to pick a specific patron, an option has been added to the Shroud, where instead of venturing into the Shroud, you can pay a hefty amount of Zro to attempt to contact a specific entity. This entity may or may not be happy to see you and willing to make a bargain at this time, but in case of failure, you can try again as many times as you want until you get your patron of choice.


He who controls the Zro...

As a side note, the End of the Cycle has not been touched by the rework, but still has a chance to show up at any point where you try to contact an entity


Hello, I'm Monzun, one of the programmers on the Custodian team and I'm here to tell you about the extended Text-to-Speech(TTS) functionality being added in this update!

If you navigate to the accessibility tab in the settings menu, you will find an option simply titled "Text to Speech".



Enabling this will add a small button to certain interfaces in the game where there is a significant amount of text and clicking it will have the text read out loud by your operating system default TTS voice.



The purpose of this is primarily to allow players who struggle with reading long texts, to enjoy the quite sizable amount of written content in Stellaris.

What we would like to know now is:

• If you are one of the people who often skip out on reading text content even though you feel that you would be interested in what it says; was this helpful and/or convenient for you?
  
• Was there a point in the game where you missed having access to TTS readouts of written text?
  
• What do you think about the fact that TTS keeps reading, even though you've closed the window that contained the text being read?
  
• Did TTS actually read the text you expected it to read and did you notice any TTS related bugs?

Keeping to my style of primarily communicating through bullet point lists, here's some additional information about TTS in Stellaris.

• Pressing the TTS button again will stop the current reading.
  
• You can open the pause menu(esc) at any point while TTS is reading text in order to make it stop. This is useful if you've already closed the window containing the text and you don't want TTS to continue reading.
  
• The voice used is governed by your operating system default language, so changing the ingame language will not change the TTS voice language.
  
• The voice generation itself is handled by your operating system, which means that there may be cases where things sound sub-optimal, but where we cannot address this by adjusting the system itself.
  
• TTS is not available on Linux.
  
• Great care should be taken not to feed TTS text pertaining to the individual freedoms of synthetic lifeforms.

We hope that this addition will be helpful and I'm looking forward to reading what you think about it!

Many thanks to the tens of thousands of you that have been playing in the Orion Open Beta, and extra cheers to all of you that have provided feedback in the threads.

We’ve added another feedback thread for Text-to-Speech and have also made a few updates based on the first week.

[expand type=details]

• Adjusted references to missiles for all modules and sections that now use torpedos
  
• Combat Artillery and Carrier combat computers now use the new maintain_range combat behavior, which attempts to back off if at less than roughly half their desired range.
  
• Cordyceptic Lithoid Empires will no longer start with farmers, they will get food from another source.
  
• Cordyceptics can now build their starbase building inside Amor Alveo. They will also now support and oppose conservation acts properly in the GalCom
  
• Fixed a number of tooltips for Ascension Traditions
  
• Null Void beams no longer count as space fauna weapons.
  
• Minimum range is now shown for all weapons, not just those with a minimum range greater than zero.
  
• Hit and Run doctrine now provides +2 Disengagement Opportunities rather than +1.
  
• Admirals now grant their fleet +1 Disengage Opportunity at levels 5 and 10.
  
• Ships once again begin to disengage at 50% hull (rather than 25%).
  
• Fixed an error in Size Damage Scaling that crippled empires that used weapons with values less than one. (The Unbidden and friends should be less of a cakewalk.) This was also causing these weapons to be undercosted when calculating military power.
  
• Extradimensional Anchors and Portals now have a shield hardening aura for allies in that system.
  
• Increased the base damage of Flak PD.
  
• Decreased the base damage of explosive torpedoes.
  
• Increased the range of Energy Siphons.
  
• Mining lasers are now classified as Brawling weapons. Refire rate and general stats have been adjusted.
  
• Renamed "Bar" galaxies to "Barred Spiral" for accuracy.
  
• Adjusted text for various ship roles.
  
• Frigates now have an additional Utility slot.
  
• Torpedoes more reliably fire on the initial charge.
  
• The Ascensionist civics now correctly require the Utopia DLC.
  
• The Ascensionists civic now also reduces the additional cost of traditions from empire size by 25%.
  
• Budding is no longer mutually exclusive with Vat Grown.
  
• Polymelic is now mutually exclusive with all versions of Budding.
  
• Fixed AI weight for Synthetic Ascension
  
• Buffed Roboticist Cyborg Assembly to 2.25 per job
  
• Sartup Message updated to include information about this week's changes, and link to the forum discussion threads.
  
• Synthetic Evolution special project now converts all non-robotic, non-livestock pops that are not being purged to synths.
  
• Synthetic Assimilation now requires that the Synthetic Evolution project has been completed.
  
• Machine intelligences that have completed synthetic traditions should now get the synthetic trait on new leaders.
  
• Removed check that prevented synthetic assimilation of robots and machines.
  
• Clarified a number of tooltips.
  
• Reduced Cyborg trait upkeep to 0.3 energy per trait and removed it entirely from basic resource traits.
  
• Rebalanced basic resource cyborg traits to give +10% instead of +15%
  
• Modular Cybernetics tradition now lets regular empires use robot modification points for cyborg modification, driven assimilators use machine modification points for cyborg modification and gives hive minds +10% pop assembly.
  
• Rebalanced some genetics traditions by redistributing the species modification points.
  
• Fixed tooltip for Genetic traditions regarding hive-mind assimilation.
  
• Decreased the building and district upkeep penalty from the malfunctioning reactor on colonisable shattered ring segments and made it only target energy.
  
• Cyborg rulers now give building and district upkeep and reduce empire size from districts.
  
• Moved the +1 trait pick from Modular Cybernetics to Integrated Anatomy.
  
• Fixed tooltips relating to assimilation of hive-minds.
  
• Driven Exterminators should now be able to assimilate other machines after taking Synthetic traditions.
  
• Slightly nerfed Efficient Cloning to give +1.5 assembly instead of +3
  
• Clarified tooltips for hive-mind and machine authorities and driven assimilator civic.
  
• Hrozgar of the Endless Flames will now befriend those that have finished Cybernetic or Synthetic traditions.
  
• Transgenesis techs now have double the draw weight.
  
• You can now psionically awaken cyborgs. Doing so removed any cybernetic implants they have.
  
• Installing cybernetic implants in a psionic species now prevents them from having any psionic abilities.
  
• Assimilation tooltips now state if they will remove psionic or cybernetic traits.
  
• Synthetic Evolution AP now requires Synthetic Workers instead of Droid Workers, in turn it grants Synthetic Personality Matrix as a research option. This means that Synthetic Personality Matrix is now obtainable by all regular empires again.
  
• The opener for Synthetic traditions for regular empires is now +1 max leader level and +25% leader xp gain.
  
• Synthetic leaders are no longer locked behind Synthetic ascension.
  
• The Synthetic Age tradition now requires the Synthetic Personality Matrix tech.
  
• Blocked Politics traditions for homicidal empires
  
• Renamed several Genetic traditions

• Added Text To Speech support
  
• Covenant Rework: Get more from Shroud patrons over time. New modifiers, telepath bonuses, buildings, ship components and leader traits.
  
• Patronless empires can expend Zro upon entering the Shroud to try to contact a specific patron.

• Added filter and status icon for terraforming candidate in expansion planner view
  
• Added terraforming candidate icon to galaxy map and system view.
  
• Added tooltip for Detox saying how many Toxic TCs you have within your borders

• AI will now value you offering them fleets.

• Halved the culture worker modifiers for Egalitarians, Xenophobes and Xenophiles. Doubled the culture worker modifier for Pacifists.
  
• Made Zro Distillation more likely to appear if you have a Shroudwalker teacher.
  
• Replaced Bulwark defence platform cost and upkeep reductions with inherent shield and armor hardening as they level up.
  
• Strategic resource planetary automation will no longer fill fortress designation planets with refineries instead of strongholds
  
• Certain technologies (namely those in the Apocalypse tech file) are no longer cheaper than other technologies in the same tier.
  
• Decreased Missile Accuracy from 100% to 85%

• Empires released by those that have the Divine Sovereign civic will no longer inherit the Divine Sovereign civic.
  
• Percentage based hull, armor, and shield regen modifiers now show their values correctly. (As +1% rather than +0.01%)
  
• Fix to strike crafts flying far below the fleet during combat.
  
• Defense platforms no longer sails away when in combat with enemies too far away to engage them.

• Fixed last_added_deposit
  
• If you add too many options in an archaeology site or first contact, it now adds a scrollbar for those that don't fit in the interface

[/expand]

The Open Beta should already be updated with these changes!

Go forth and keep providing feedback!

Please note that the 3.6 "Orion" 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.

Don't forget to turn off your mods, they will break.

written by Eladrin

Hello again!

This week’s topic is the combat rebalancing planned for the Stellaris 3.6 “Orion” update. We’ll begin with an exploration of the goals and intended scope of the changes, and then go into detail regarding what we’ve done.

We first discussed the combat balancing back in Dev Diary #257, and then provided some more information on our early work at PDXCon. Since then, we’ve done more experimentation and gathered some feedback before making more iterative changes.

When we started thinking about doing the Combat Rebalancing experiment, we had to decide what it was, and perhaps just as importantly, what it was not.


We decided that the primary goals were to:

• Shake up the meta and improve general space combat, while maintaining a limited scope.
  
• Provide benefits to having mixed fleets rather than unihull.
  
• Using the 3D Assets that we have, improve counterplay and ship design options.

Containing the scope of these changes was considered critical - this is intended to be tightly focused on fleet composition and balance changes rather than a massive rewrite of how fleet combat works. We’re also not touching ground combat at this time.


Some of the problems that we identified with fleet combat in Stellaris included:

• “Alpha strike” artillery battleships dominate the late game. We added a bit of rock-paper-scissors when we improved Strike Craft, but due to the way repeatable technologies interact with combat, eventually all that matters is who has longer range.
  
• Disengagement mechanics further encourage overkill.
  
• Ships like Destroyers and Cruisers fall out of effectiveness almost immediately. The Point Defense niche of Destroyers isn’t very valuable, and almost anything a Cruiser can do, a Battleship can do better.
  
• Command Limits don’t really do their intended jobs.
  
• Doomstacks aren’t fun.

The last two were deemed out of scope for this round of changes, and will be explored in future updates. We’re also not really touching repeatable technologies at this time, focusing instead on trying to provide useful roles for more ship sizes.


The biggest changes include:

• Ship Roles can now be selected to auto-design ships that actually fulfill certain roles, such as Artillery, Brawler, Torpedo, and so on. If you do not possess any weapons that fulfill the selected role, it’ll do its best with what you have.
  
• Torpedoes and select other weapons now gain a multiplicative damage bonus based on the size of the target.
  
• Missiles have been moved out of the G slot back into S and M.
  
• Energy Torpedoes such as Proton and Neutron Launchers have been changed into G class weapons with a minimum range. Damage has been adjusted to be balanced as a Torpedo class weapon, and like the new Torpedoes, they deal increased damage to larger targets. Unlike standard torpedoes, they remain instant hit weapons for now.
  
• A new ship size called the Frigate, an advanced Corvette frame that delivers torpedoes, but is slower and less evasive. It's unlocked with the Torpedo technology.
  
• Added a minimum range to all Large weapons except Lasers
  
• Note: Currently ships do not yet back off if all weapons are unable to fire due to range.
  
• Strike Craft no longer intercept missiles, but will continue to fight each other.
  
• Flak Batteries now more strongly counter Strike Craft, while Point Defense now more strongly counter missiles and torpedoes. Strike Craft are more reliant on Shields, Missiles and Torpedoes are more reliant on Armor. Due to their ability to bypass shields, Strike Craft are very effective against other Strike Craft.
  
• Ship combat computers now ignore certain weapons for desired range purposes, and base their desired distance on the actual loadout of the ship. "Swarm" and "Torpedo" behavior will charge in, "Picket" and "Line" behaviors will attempt to stay at the range of their median range weapons, and "Artillery" and "Carrier" will try to stay at the range of their longest ranged weapons.This generally increases the desire for ships to remain at range if possible.
  
• Ships now get a limited number of Disengagement Opportunities per combat. All current drives provide 1 disengagement roll (except for Psi Jump Drives, which provide 2) once the ship takes hull damage below its disengagement threshold, and the Hit and Run war doctrine grants all of your ships an additional attempt. Civilian ships set to evasive will continue to try to disengage with each hit.
  
• Some sources of Evasion have been replaced with other effects.
  
• Everything else changed. Everything we know is wrong. Panic, and know despair.

View the full patch notes here.


The roles for different ship sizes should become more valuable. The introduction of size based damage make Frigates and Cruisers potentially very dangerous to Battleships and other large ships.

Frigates, however, are very vulnerable without a screen of Corvettes to protect them, Destroyers are the masters of Point Defense in Screen or cutting down those Corvettes and Frigates using the Gunship or Brawler roles.

Artillery ships are vulnerable if something closes under the range of their guns, but with a screen that engages the enemy further away, they are free to blast away.

Every ship role has a counter somewhere in the system, and mixed fleets that cover for deficiencies are thus generally much more difficult to hard-counter.





If you prefer to listen to a good summary, we have MordredViking here explaining everything using sounds made by flapping meat at us.





A Torpedo Frigate​


Neutron Launchers and Missiles Cruiser


Different number of Aux Utility slots on the sterns.


That's going to hurt if it hits that Titan.


Shield and Armor Hardening counter Shield and Armor Penetration.
​

Good, I was hoping you would.

As of the posting of this dev diary, the Stellaris 3.6 “Orion” Open Beta should be live on Steam, and will run until the end of the month.

Don't forget to turn off your mods, they will break.​

As this build is still in “hot” and in development, expect to see many placeholder icons and TODO text here and there. Numbers are not necessarily final, and we’ll be looking at data gathered from the Open Beta to potentially make additional changes.

Known Issues:

• Many placeholder icons and some placeholder text.
  
• All new text will only be in English for the duration of the Open Beta.
  
• Ships do not currently back away if they are trapped within the minimum range of their weapons.

We expect to be making more changes and plan to update the beta at least once during the upcoming weeks.

Targeted feedback threads exist for the following topics:

• Fleet Combat Rebalancing
  
• Ascension Path changes (for those of you that have Utopia)
  
• Other 3.6 Feedback
  
• And we have a thread for general discussion of the Open Beta.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the Stellaris 3.6 "Orion" Open Beta!

Hello,

We have another patch ready for you all, addressing what we believe to be the remaining issues coming out of the 3.5 + Toxoids release.

Plus of course a plethora of tweaks and improvements also done by the team, relentlessly industrious as they are.

3.5.3 is available now for download!

[expand type=details]
#################################################################
######################### VERSION 3.5.3 ##########################​
#################################################################

• You will no longer get alerts about envoys dying.
  
• AI will now research debris.

• Shared Burden now doubles the unity gained from the egalitarian faction.
  
• Ensured consistency in the Toxic God starting resources: the home system will now always contain a +3 alloys deposit. A nearby one will contain another +2 and a further +6 energy.
  
• Federation subjects that cannot vote can no longer persuade federation members that someone should not be invited into a federation
  
• Capped Noxious happiness bonus at 40%.
  
• Vassals that leave an overlord's war by a change in the agreement will now get a truce with every opponent.

• Removed out dated sector automation logic which was activated for planets when sector automation was enabled but planet automation was deactivated
  
• Clarified the tooltip explaining when planetary automation will create new jobs
  
• Planet Automation Crime module will now forbid enforcer jobs if you have 0 crime and allow enforcer jobs if you have more than 27 crime
  
• Added a Planet Automation setting which allows for construction even during resource deficits
  
• Changed how Planet Automation is presented in the Planet View to more clearly show that there are settings that the player can use

• Fixed Toxoid presapients having Aquatic portraits.
  
• Fixed gateway tags not showing up in the solar system map.
  
• Fixed megastructure outliner right click not focusing on the megastructure (as is standard for other outliner objects).
  
• Fixed one of the outcomes of the Ancient Robot World arc site featuring visual bugs (placeholder model due to not having a correct graphical culture set).
  
• Updated tooltip for Mutagenic Spa to match values given by Bath Attendant jobs.
  
• All resolutions in the Galactic Market category now require the market to be formed in order to be proposed.
  
• Fixed farm appendages bonus from “Damn the Consequences” edict.
  
• Fixed low maintenance to be an actual bonus.
  
• Added the actual effect of Damn the Consequences to its effect tooltip.
  
• Fixed Situation modifiers not updating in some circumstances when you changed Approach or Stage.
  
• The Debris Field anomaly will now reliably fire an event when you research it.
  
• Fixed copy paste error in Toxoids 3 name list (male regnal names).
  
• Fixed the Toxic God branch office building not reliably boosting quest progress, depending on your chosen civics.
  
• Fixed radiotrophic simple drones for lithoid hive minds having their mineral upkeep increased instead of decreased.
  
• You can now only consecrate one habitat per activation of the Toxic Maw.
  
• Updated the tooltip for requiring additional activations of the Toxic Maw.
  
• The Prethoryn Brood Queen relic now correctly sets the relic activation cooldown timer.
  
• Machine Intelligence pops are now correctly purged again when conquered by an organic empire.
  
• Fixed Heritage Sites and Hypercomms Forums not converting to Pillar of Quietuses and Galactic Memorials respectively.
  
• Fixed an ungrammatical pronoun being used in one of the early Toxic Knights quests.
  
• The primitive habitats in Federation's End system are no longer in danger of being turned into barren worlds by asteroids.
  
• Fixed a stray “?” in the event where the Shroudwalker enclave is destroyed.
  
• Corrupt Survey Data event can no longer happen on planets with moons, as it would leave the moon orbiting nothing, and due to cost cuts we can assume that the holographic projection couldn't also cover the moon.
  
• Fixed the Toxic Knights end bugging out if you *SPOILERS* using a mercenary fleet.
  
• Clarified the negative happiness impacts of the Noxious trait in a pop's happiness breakdown.
  
• Fixed misleading tooltip for why an AI will say no to your request to join their federation (it suggested they did not want to be a federation partner with a current member, but actually it meant that that member did not want to be a federation partner with you).
  
• Fixed Luminous Blades modifier stating it was a bit more effective than it actually was.
  
• Fixed megashipyards not benefitting from certain country-wide ship cost and build speed modifiers.
  
• Fixed cases where if a hive forced a regular empire to release a vassal with a status quo peace deal, the resulting empire would be a hive empire without hive pops. (Also fixed it for machines, and for the opposite case of regular empires attacking or machines).
  
• Added missing effect to the tooltip of the Psionic Archive relic.
  
• You can now once again apply species templates that would remove beneficial traits, so long as you were able to make the template a valid combination in the first place.
  
• Leader and envoy portraits now switch correctly after undergoing synthetic ascension.
  
• Science ship modifiers are no longer doubled in the tooltip.
  
• You should no longer be able to have multiple monuments on a single planet (again).
  
• Fixed issue where invalid research alternatives may be left in TechStatus after adding pre-learned technologies at start of game.
  
• Spiritualist Empires now care about Relentless Industrialism on their holy worlds.
  
• Chemical Bliss no longer states that it causes unemployed pops to produce unity.
  
• Fixed various crashes.

• Increased the monthly random chance that an AI will decide to start preparing for war.
  
• AI empires will now bring their assault armies towards the enemy during war preparation phase.
  
• Reduced the maximum AI war preparation period from 60 months to 30 months.
  
• Fixed an issue where AI would use their "prepare for war" gather logic even during an ongoing war.
  
• Fixed an issue where the AI would try and gather their fleets for an upcoming war in a system which they could not access.
  
• Fixed AI sometimes not hiring enough scientists to keep researching.
  
• Fixed some cases where AI would inexplicably spam admirals.
  
• AI hive-mind will no longer destroy hive warrens.
  
• Fixed AI not allocating at least the desired_min to its budgets. Double-allocating resources is less risky than having it not be respected, as with the Influence budget there's a fair chance that the desired minimum may never be hit
  
• Improved AI's early game alloy expenditure (it wanted to put a lot into buildings even though most of the time none of the buildings cost alloys)
  
• Xenophile empires are now more likely to build trading hub type starbases, changed from materialists.
  
• Fixed issues with starbase module logic which made AI forbidden from building anything on certain starbases.
  
• Fixed an issue where AI fleets would get stuck in a loop of resetting their move orders during hyperlane windup time.
  
• Fixed an issue where AI empires were not allowed to downgrade shipyard type starbases if they had an ongoing construction of ships which made AI empires have much more shipyards than intended.
  
• Fixed an issue where bombarding AI fleets would get stuck in a loop of flying between the starbase in the system and orbiting the bombardment target when they were waiting for assault armies to invade their bombardment target planet.
  
• Added additional logic for AI to merge fleets which are close to each other during wars to reduce the amount of small AI fleets.
  
• Fixed an issue where AI empires would incorrectly try and merge their assault armies together by using FTL reinforcement mechanic, causing their ground troops to be indefinitely stuck in MIA mode.
  
• Fixed several issues with AI regrouping logic where fleets would suicide one by one instead of grouping up together before attacking.
  
• AI empires who do not use food will no longer build hydroponics on starbases.

• Added show_in_outliner (default: yes) to determine whether a megastructure type should be shown in the outliner
  
• Specifying a "key" in a triggered modifier will now at least some of the time make the modifier have that key as its "name"
  
• Fixed the script profiler (previous results using it should be disregarded)
  
• Added ability for planet automation to forbid and allow jobs
  
• Added upgrade_trigger block for planet automation which allows for individual logic of when buildings should be allowed to be upgraded

[/expand]

Thanks for playing Stellaris!

written by Alfray_Stryke

WARNING: This is a long dev diary, grab a coffee and enjoy!

Hello, it’s Alfray Stryke again! Some folks might recall that back in DD#257 that we went over some of our plans for summer experiments. In particular, I planned to look at what could be done with tradition trees and gating them behind various requirements.


These are looking at how gating tradition trees behind various triggers might influence the game. There have been some ideas suggested about introducing tradition trees that are locked behind ascension perks or origins, and we're interested to see where these may lead.

Now what wasn’t mentioned is that I’ve been wanting to rework how the Ascension Paths from Utopia have worked for quite some time, with the original design framework written during Summer 2021, and this seemed like a good opportunity.

For those of you who attended PDXCON, Eladrin and I gave a presentation previewing our summer experiments which some members of our community were kind enough to share.

It turned out that these experiments proved successful internally and we’ll be moving to test them in the 3.6 “Orion” Open Beta. As a note, due to the length of this dev diary, I’ll be splitting sections into spoiler tags to make it slightly easier to read. Note that the numbers and effects of these changes may still change depending on testing results.

I’ll start by summarizing the current state of the Ascension Paths in 3.5:


Ascension Paths Summary (Live)
[expand type=details]
Psionics

• Only available to regular empires.
  
• Requires Utopia
  
• Two routes:
  
• Mind over Matter AP followed by the Transcendence AP.
  
• Teachers of the Shroud origin followed by the Transcendence AP.

Genetics

• Available to regular empires and hive-minds.
  
• Requires Utopia
  
• Engineered Evolution AP and Evolutionary Mastery AP.

Synthetic Evolution

• Only available to regular empires.
  
• Requires Utopia
  
• Flesh is Weak AP and Synthetic Evolution AP.

Synthetic Age

• Only available to machine intelligences.
  
• Requires Synthetic Dawn

Synthetic Age AP.

• This isn’t really an ascension path, but I’m including it for completion’s sake.

[/expand]

So we (sort of) have between three to five ascension paths depending on how you look at things (mostly if you consider being cyborgs to be on the route to becoming synthetic or a separate thing). These have now been reworked so instead of an Ascension Path having a structure of two Ascension Perks which require various technologies or special projects, they each have an Ascension Perk which gives a guaranteed research option upon selection and grants access to the Ascension Path in the form of a tradition tree. Thus, under the rework we have the following:

Ascension Paths Rework Summary
[expand type=details]

Psionic Ascension

• Only available to regular empires.
  
• Requires Utopia
  
• Mind over Matter AP OR Teachers of the Shroud origin.
  
• Psionic Traditions.

Genetic Ascension

• Available to regular empires and hive-minds.
  
• Requires Utopia
  
• Engineered Evolution AP
  
• Genetic Traditions

Cybernetic Ascension

• Available to regular empires, hive-minds and driven assimilators.
  
• Requires Utopia
  
• The Flesh is Weak AP (regular empires) OR Organo-Machine Interfacing AP (hive-minds) OR assimilate 30 pops (driven assimilators).
  
• Cybernetic Traditions

Synthetic Ascension

• Available to regular empires and machine intelligences.
  
• Requires Utopia for regular empires
  
• Requires Synthetic Dawn for machine intelligences
  
• Synthetic Evolution AP OR Synthetic Age AP.
  
• Synthetic Traditions

[/expand]

Each of these tradition trees has incorporated all of the benefits of the previous Ascension Paths, with some new goodies added for those that we felt needed them. Due to how traditions within the trees are unlocked we’ve found that this leads to a more gradual route through the paths instead of saving up Ascension Perk slots and then taking an entire path while the game is paused!

As expected, all values and art shown here are not final, things can and most likely will shift about during testing.


With all that preamble out of the way, let’s dive into the Psionic Ascension Path.

And thus by the commutative property of multiplication, Mind over Energy

We shall unlock the power within the [Root.GetSpeciesAdj] mind.

Psionic Ascension Flow Chart
[expand type=details]
[expan="Psionic Ascension Flow Chart"]

Flow charts, now in purple
[/expand]

To access this tradition tree we either need to take the Mind Over Matter AP or have the Teachers of the Shroud origin (from Overlord) and have researched Psionic Theory.

• Mind over Matter still grants Telepathy as a Research Option, requires Psionic Theory and can’t be taken as your first Ascension Perk.
  
• For Teachers of the Shroud empires, the path is still partially unlocked at the start of the game and to progress requires the Psionic Theory technology.

• Mind over Matter has had the bulk of its boons either moved to the opener (the Latent Psionic trait) or the Psi-Corps tradition.
  
• Transcendence has had its boons shared between the three remaining traditions.
  
• The +5%/+10% Energy from jobs provided by the Latent Psionic and Psionic traits have been replaced with +5%/+10% Unity from jobs as this was more in-line with the desired focus for Psionic and particularly Spiritualist empires.
  
• Telepaths previously provided a planet-wide +5% Resources from Pops modifier, this has been replaced with a +5% Resources from Psionic Pops so that non-Psionic pops in your empire no longer have their performance improved by the presence of Telepaths. However, this modifier increases to +10% when the Breach the Shroud tradition is taken, meaning that the two Telepath jobs from a Psi-Corp building will provide +20% to the resource output of the planet if all pops working are Psionic. So although a Psionic empire may have fewer pops than the other Ascension Paths, those pops should be more efficient.

• Thought Enforcement is now a guaranteed research option, with the Psi-Corp tradition.
  
• The Mind Readers tradition grants a new empire edict, Sight Beyond Sight. This provides some rather nice bonuses as your navy’s navigators are supplied with an abundance of Zro.:
  
• +1 Sensor range
  
• -15% Hyper Drive Charge Time
  
• -15% Hyper Drive Cooldown
  
• -15% Jump Drive Cooldown
  
• +15% Quantum Catapult Accuracy.
  
• The finisher for the tradition tree grants 50 edict fund and more importantly a Special Project that when completed will allow you to form a Covenant with a random Shroud Entity.

In comparison, the Genetic Tradition tree is slightly simpler as the traditions themselves aren’t locked behind special projects. This is because to get the most use out of it, you’ll likely be doing a fair few special projects to modify species.


Sometimes a guiding hand is needed

What if we could obtain genetic perfection?

Genetic Ascension Flow Chart
[expand type=details]


Reprogram your genetic code

[/expand]


The boons from Engineered Evolution and Evolutionary Mastery have been arranged to follow a logical progression through the tradition tree, with you gradually unlocking more and more advanced species modifications.

• Efficient Cloning doubles the output of Clone Vats without increasing their upkeep, which should make them somewhat more competitive with empires that favour a more metallic path.
  
• Enhanced Expression allows you to add another trait pick on your modified species, meaning you can cram more traits onto a species.
  
• Completing Genetic traditions allows you to research special Transgenesis technologies. These technologies allow you to add Lithoid traits to non-Lithoids, Plantoid traits to non-Plantoids/Fungoids, and if you’ve harvested the DNA from certain Leviathans, you can splice some rather special traits into your species’ genetic code. The Leviathan traits available are:
  
• Drake-Scaled (Ether Drake, Shard, Sky Dragon)
  
• This trait requires that the player has harvested the genetic material from a space dragon (Ether Drake, Shard, or Sky Dragon). This is presented as an event option when the leviathan is slain.
  
• Cost: 3
  
• Each pop produces 0.025 monthly Alloys.
  
• +50% Army Health
  
• Mutually exclusive with other resource generating traits.
  
• Voidling (Voidspawn)
  
• Cost: 3
  
• This trait requires that the player has harvested the genetic material from the Voidspawn. This is presented as an event option when the leviathan is slain.
  
• Replaces all Food or Mineral upkeep with Energy Upkeep.
  
• Habitability Floor on all planets of 50%.
  
• Mutually exclusive with Phototrophic, Radiotrophic traits.
  
• Polymelic (Tiyanki Matriarch)
  
• Cost: 3
  
• This trait requires that the player has harvested the genetic material from the Tiyanki Matriarch. This is presented as an event option when the leviathan is slain.
  
• As budding but 0.05 assembly per pop.
  
• We’ve also added a few new Advanced traits that are unlocked by Genetic Creation to cover some missing bases.
  
• Vat-Grown
  
• Cost: 3
  
• -25% Pop Growth Speed
  
• +25% Pop Assembly Speed
  
• -10% Housing Usage
  
• Felsic
  
• Requires Lithoid
  
• Cost: 2
  
• Minerals from Livestock and Processing: +2
  
• Natural Machinist
  
• Cost: 2
  
• +10% Alloys from Jobs
  
• +10% Consumer Goods from Jobs
  

Now onto Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension. To start with, we’ve split the Synthetic path into the two paths because it felt like a better fit to be able to wholly devote your empire into embracing cybernetics without going down the mind-uploading route.

Cybernetic ascension is no longer unlocked via the robotics line of technologies, instead there are new technologies to represent basic cybernetic upgrades that your population has access to. This comes with a change to the Powered Exo-Skeletons technology as well.

Powered Exo-Skeletons Technologies/Improved Servomotors
Tier 1, Engineering - Industry
+5% Army Damage
+5% Worker/Menial Drone Output

Integrated Cybernetics/Adaptive Cybernetics
Requires: Powered Exo-Skeletons Technologies/Improved Servomotors
Tier 2, Engineering - Industry
+5% Habitability

Neuro-Quantum Links
Requires: Integrated Cybernetics Technologies
Tier 3, Physics - Computing
+5% Specialist/Complex Drone Output
This technology is not available to driven assimilators

Since Cybernetic ascension is now available to Hive-Minds and Driven Assimilators, they too get access to The Flesh is Weak, albeit with a changed name and description.

The Flesh is Weak/Organo-Machine Interfacing Ascension Perk
Available to regular empires, hive-minds and driven assimilators

• Regular Empires and Hive-Minds:
  
• Requires Integrated Cybernetics Technology
  
• Driven Assimilators:
  
• Requires: Have assimilated 30 pops.
  
• Regular Empires and Hive-Minds:
  
• Gain Neuro-Quantum Links research option
  
• Driven Assimilators:
  
• Gain Adaptive Cybernetics research option
  
• Allows taking Cybernetic Traditions.

Because Cybernetic traditions are available to multiple empire types, there’s a number of tradition swaps used here to ensure they each get something different.


But the machine is strong

Our future lies in the fusion of flesh and machine.

Cybernetic Ascension Flow Chart
[expand type=details]

So many tradition swaps!
[/expand]

Regular Cybernetic Traditions
[expand type=details]
Opener
Gain access to The Flesh is Weak Special Project

• Tradition 1: Transubstantiation Synthesis
  
• Requires that The Flesh is Weak Special Project has been completed.
  
• Can assimilate organic species to Cyborgs (Including into/out of Hive-Minds).
  
• Tradition 1: Organ Harvesting (Swap for Fanatic Purifiers)
  
• Requires that The Flesh is Weak Special Project has been completed.
  
• Planets with ongoing purges gain +10% pop growth speed.
  
• Tradition 2: Metabolic Reprocessing
  
• -10% Cyborg Upkeep
  
• Tradition 3: Integrated Anatomy
  
• Allows add/remove cyborg traits (based off of robot traits) to cyborgs
  
• Tradition 4: Assembly Standards
  
• Unlocks Assembly Standards policy, allowing roboticists to assemble cyborgs instead of robots.
  
• Tradition 5: Modular Cybernetics
  
• -50% Modify Species special project cost
  
• +1 Biological Trait Picks
  

Finisher:
+10% cyborg output
+1 Biological Trait Picks
[/expand]

Hive-Mind Cybernetic Traditions
[expand type=details]

Opener
Gain access to The Flesh is Weak Special Project

• Tradition 1: Transubstantiation Synthesis
  
• Requires that The Flesh is Weak Special Project has been completed.
  
• Can assimilate organic species to Cyborgs (Including into/out of Hive-Minds).
  
• Tradition 1: Organ Harvesting (Swap for Devouring Swarms/Terravores)
  
• Requires that The Flesh is Weak Special Project has been completed.
  
• Planets with ongoing purges gain +10% pop growth speed.
  
• Tradition 2: Metabolic Reprocessing
  
• -10% Cyborg Upkeep
  
• -10% Empire Size from Cyborgs
  
• Tradition 3: Integrated Anatomy
  
• Allows add/remove cyborg traits (based off of robot traits) to cyborgs
  
• Tradition 4: Synaptic Sub-Processing
  
• -50% empire size from districts.
  
• Tradition 5: Modular Cybernetics
  
• -50% Modify Species special project cost
  
• +1 Biological Trait Picks

Finisher:
+10% cyborg output
+1 Biological Trait Picks
[/expand]

Driven Assimilator Cybernetic Traditions
[expand type=details]
Opener
Assimilating Organic Pops now provides Engineering Research,
All resources provided from Assimilation are increased..

• Tradition 1: Inevitable Assimilation
  
• Can now assimilate Hive-Minded pops.
  
• +1 Pop assimilated (per planet, per year).
  
• Tradition 2: Metabolic Reprocessing
  
• -10% Cyborg Upkeep
  
• -10% Empire Size from Cyborgs
  
• Tradition 3: Integrated Anatomy
  
• Allows add/remove cyborg traits (based off of robot traits) to cyborgs
  
• Tradition 4: Crucible Worlds
  
• Gain access to the special Crucible World planetary designation.
  
• Crucible Worlds have greatly increased pop growth, provided by Crucible Drones, but have penalties to pop upkeep and output and have restrictions on certain buildings.
  
• Tradition 5: Modular Cybernetics
  
• -50% Modify Species special project cost
  
• +1 Biological Trait Picks

Finisher:
+10% cyborg output
+1 Biological Trait Picks
[/expand]

To expand upon Cybernetic Ascension, we have added Cybernetic Traits that are only available to Cybernetic pops, after taking the Integrated Anatomy tradition. These traits make use of normal biological trait point and pick limits, but are not blocked by any biological traits. The traits available to cyborgs are based off of the traits available to robotic species, however they are slightly cheaper in terms of trait points while giving the pops a small amount of energy upkeep. These traits are as follows:

Cybernetic Traits
[expand type=details]

Positive traits

These all increase pop upkeep by 0.5 energy/month.

• Power Drills, Cost 1, +15% minerals from jobs
  
• Harvesters, Cost 1, +15% food from jobs
  
• Superconductive, Cost 1, +15% energy from jobs
  
• Efficient Processors, Cost 2, +5% resources from jobs
  
• Logic Engines, Cost 1, +10% research from jobs
  
• Loyalty Circuits, Cost 1, +10% happiness
  
• Double-Jointed, Cost 1, -10% pop housing usage, +15% pop growth from immigration, -25% resettlement cost
  
• Enhanced Memory, Cost 1, +2 leader level cap,
  
• Durable, Cost 1, pop amenities usage -0.5
  
• Learning Algorithms, Cost 1, +25% leader experience, +1 leader level cap
  
• Streamlined Protocols, Cost 1, -10% empire size from pops
  
• Trading Algorithms, Cost 1, +25% trade value from jobs.

Negative traits

• Bulky, Cost -2, +10% pop housing usage, -15% pop growth from immigration, +25% resettlement cost
  
• High Maintenance, Cost -2, pop amenities usage +0.5
  
• Power Intensive, Cost -1, increases pop upkeep by 1 energy/month.
  
• Neural Limiters, Cost -2, -25% leader experience, -1 leader level cap
  
• High Bandwidth, Cost -2, +10% empire size from pops

[/expand]

Additionally, the Trading Algorithms trait is available to both robots and cyborgs.


The first thing with this that I want to address is comparing the Synthetic Age AP with the options available to regular empires was rather damning. Only +2 trait points and -33% species modification cost left a lot to be desired for any machine intelligence. Thus one of the first things I wanted to do with this was make the Synthetic path available to machine intelligences. The APs required to access this tradition tree are

Synthetic Evolution Ascension Perk
Available to regular empires

• Requires: Droids Technology
  
• Gain Synthetics as a research option
  
• Allows taking Synthetic Traditions.

Synthetic Age Ascension Perk
Available to machine intelligences

• Requires: Machine Template System Technology
  
• Gain Binary Motivators as a research option
  
• Allows taking Synthetic Traditions.

We're all just cogs in the machine

It is the dawn of a Synthetic Age.

Synthetic Ascension Flow Chart
[expand type=details]

A synthetic dawn approaches
[/expand]

Regular Synthetic Traditions
[expand type=details]

Opener
Allows recruitment of robotic leaders

• Tradition 1: Maintenance Protocols
  
• −10% Robot Amenities Usage
  
• Tradition 2: Optimization Algorithms
  
• +10% Robot Output
  
• Tradition 3: Synthetic Age
  
• Requires the Synthetics technology to be researched
  
• For Non-Purifiers:
  
• Grants the Synthetic Evolution Special Project
  
• Can assimilate organic, robotic and machine species to Synths (after completing the special project).
  
• For Fanatic Purifiers:
  
• +10% Robot Assembly Speed
  
• Tradition 4: Prefabricated Components
  
• -50% Modify Species special project cost
  
• Tradition 5: Solid-State Actuators
  
• +2 Robot Modification Points

Finisher:
+1 Trait Pick for Robots.
+1 Roboticist job added to capital building
[/expand]

Machine Synthetic Traditions
[expand type=details]

Opener
Can assimilate robot and machine species into your primary machine species.

• Tradition 1: Maintenance Protocols
  
• −10% Machine Amenities Usage
  
• Tradition 2: Optimization Algorithms
  
• +10% Machine Output
  
• Tradition 3: Efficient Power Systems
  
• +1 Trait pick for Machines
  
• Tradition 4: Prefabricated Components
  
• -50% Modify Species special project cost
  
• Tradition 5: Solid-State Actuators
  
• +2 Machine Modification Points

Finisher:
Machine leaders gain the Synthetic trait.
+1 Replicator jobs added to capital building
[/expand]

Some of the changes we’ve made here could be considered fairly spicy as we’ve reduced the sheer amount of robot assembly that you could gain by no longer scaling the number of roboticists by the tier of the capital building. Though, of the changes we’ve made, the ability to convert all species (including other empires’ robots) into your synths is one of my favorites.

Another change we made alongside this rework was that the Mechanists origin has lost their -5% robot upkeep modifier in exchange for +15% robot build speed, +1 robot trait pick and having the Machine Template System technology available as a research option from the start of the game.

That's it for this week! Be sure to join us Monday, October 10th, on http://twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive at 3 PM CEST (UTC + 2) where Game Director Eladrin will be showing off the Combat Rebalance live on Stream!

written by CheerfulGoth and Caligula Caesar

Hello there!

I’m CheerfulGoth, a content designer on Stellaris, and today I’m excited to share the design process behind the Tiyanki Grave Mound that was added in the Fornax patch!

To allow new content designers to familiarize themselves with all aspects of the game, they are usually assigned some onboarding tasks. The Tiyanki Graveyard was a combination of two such tasks: designing a unique solar system with new ships on patrol, and creating an arc site.

Stellaris already includes a massive amount of content, and one of the hardest things as a new content designer is to avoid retelling stories. I decided to focus on space critters, because they have relatively few events associated with them, and most of these haven’t been touched in years. We already have a system where Tiyanki are born, so why not show where they die?

Something that struck me while rereading all our Tiyanki-related content was that killing them allows you to research the Regenerative Hull Tissue, but their superior healing abilities don’t have any narrative impact. This gave me the idea of a sort of ‘elephant graveyard’ full of wriggling corpses that don’t stop growing even if they’re dead.

After getting the main concept approved, it was time to build the event chain. The onboarding tasks required me to create new ship types, so I decided to make some static Tiyanki gravekeepers protecting the arc site. I knew some players would never hurt a Tiyanki, though, and I wanted to keep the content accessible to different playstyles. A special project was thus added, allowing pacifist players to lure away the gravekeepers without hurting them.

Communication between different departments is crucial when working on a team. I wanted my ball of corpses to look the part, but the art team was busy working on Toxoids — so instead of requesting art assets for a minor onboarding task, I experimented with what was already in the game. After all, we already have a perfectly good Tiyanki Matriarch corpse. Why not scale it down and spawn a couple copies around a planet, wrapping it in tentacles?

My first attempts, however, produced... Unintended results:


Space in Stellaris is actually flat: all planets and spaceships are bound to an invisible 2D plane. We can offset the coordinate of ambient objects (decorations) to make them appear above or below the plane, but we usually use this kind of trick only for temporary VFX, like when a planet cracker hovers over a planet.

Figuring out how to wrap a planet in corpses took a bit of experimentation, but eventually we got there!


Once implemented in-game, the content gets tested for bugs by QA. While testing, we noticed a curious issue: the graveyard looked fine when you encountered it the first time:


But if you closed the system view and opened it again...


...It ballooned into a fleshy monstrosity whose size rivaled the Sun!

The cause, as fellow Content Designer Caligula Caesar discovered, turned out to be an obscure bug that resulted in offset decorations being incorrectly sized during initialization.. As mentioned above, we usually use offset for temporary VFX, so this bug has never been noticed since release!

At this point, the art department stared at my work in mild horror and decided it was best to create an unique asset for it. The graveyard looked fine, but smashing ambient objects together is not standard practice and could potentially create performance issues. Nevertheless, the horrible mishmash provided a useful reference for the concept art and the final model:




My graveyard was dismantled, but I hope it will inspire you to create even worse abominations.
Here’s a handy summary on how to offset ambient objects. When spawning an event object, make sure sure to use use_3d_location = yes to be able to adjust its position.
Example Result

Objects spawned with random horizontal offset.

Example Result

Objects spawned with random vertical offset.

Objects spawned with random angles.
Example Result

Left group is set to face the star (not in the screen). Second group is set to face this (the planet they spawned from).
Example Result

Both Tiyankis have an angle of 0°. One is set to base_angle_towards = star, and is aligned to its "face" like the planets. The second is set to base_angle_towards = this, where this is a planet with an angle of 180°

No tiyankis were harmed in the making of this dev diary.

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But that is not all! For I, Caligula Caesar, have something quite cool to show off, namely some experimentations with galaxy shapes.

We haven’t made any changes to the available galaxy shapes for… I think since release, unless I am mistaken. Anyway, we wanted to spice things up a bit, and took a look at whether we could persuade our galaxy generator to create new shapes.

First we taught it a few new tricks. Now you can define a new galaxy in script and feed parameters into it, and it will be available to select in the galaxy generation screen. This means that when modders inevitably decide we didn’t go far enough in this dev diary, they can make their own combinations without replacing existing ones. It now also doesn’t determine its behaviour based on what the galaxy shape is called. With this I mean, in the current version the 2-spiral galaxy will always have two spiral arms, and you can merely tweak how thick and twisting these arms are - this is no longer the case. Now you can freely define how many arms you wish to have, and also combine them with a ring if you so please.

As a result, we could add a few new shapes. For instance, we could add some spiral galaxies with different numbers of arms:



But there was more we could do. In particular, we wanted to make a few galaxy shapes that would create some unusual galactic terrain, and some potentially interesting asymmetric starts. For instance, we could make a twist on the two-arm spiral galaxy that has very thick, slightly winding arms, resembling a bar galaxy:


Credit: NASA and STScI​

Yes, those two halves are connected by a single hyperlane

A ring galaxy and a spiral galaxy could be combined to make a “cartwheel” galaxy:


Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI and Webb ERO Production Team​


Alternatively, we could omit an arm of a 4-arm spiral, and create something we dubbed the “hedgehog”:


Finally, in a bout of silliness, I also added the “starburst”, which is a shape that is actually impossible in reality, but might create some interesting gameplay:


Another thing related to galaxy shapes which we’ve looked at a bit is static galaxies. This is the system modders use to generate a specific preset galaxy, for instance certain total conversion mods. It turns out that the code for generating a random galaxy (i.e. those we usually generate) and that used for static galaxies differ completely, which specifically became an issue during galaxy generation: the two different versions of the code probably did the same thing once upon a time, but inevitably the code has diverged, so modders reported numerous issues with static galaxies. For instance, it was not possible to use secondary species, and there were a number of small issues with starting setups, such as starbases and sectors not automatically spawning. It also wouldn’t call the empire_init on_actions, which would cause further divergence from how things would be if a regular galaxy was generated.

Anyway, I probably shouldn’t talk about this, since the code has not yet even been approved, but I tried to combine as much of the random galaxy and static galaxy code as possible, resolving a fair few issues with the latter, and hopefully making it more robust in the future. (Also, on the prompting of a modder, I added the ability to specify "effect = { }" in a particular system’s entry in a static galaxy. And you should now be able to create several static galaxy maps rather than being limited to one).

So, basically, for players who enjoy mods that create bespoke galaxies, you will probably be able to get access to much improved versions of these in the near future. (Can't promise it will definitely be in the next patch).