Hi everyone!

About twenty minutes after we posted Dev Diary 280, the community had largely decoded the message we hid in there... CONTACT IS COMING.

Last week, we had A Message from Minamar Specialized Industries, and it's time to take them up on that offer.


​
I'm pleased to announce that the First Contact Story Pack will be released alongside the Stellaris 3.7 "Canis Minor" update. Click here to wishlist the Story Pack.


For countless ages, your people have looked to the stars with wonder - is there anybody else out there? When we meet, will they be friends or enemies? Will we be the ones to discover them, or are they already here, hiding in plain sight?

The First Contact Story Pack focuses on the experiences of these Pre-FTL civilizations, both from the point of view of the civilizations themselves as well as from the observers. Observation has been revamped with new enhanced systems relating to civilization Awareness, Diplomacy, and Espionage. New Insights can be learned from observing civilizations that have not been corrupted by the galaxy as a whole.


They've been here before.

Two Challenging Origins - Payback and Broken Shackles - revolve around the struggles of empires against the oppressive Minamar Specialized Industries, while a third standard Origin - Fear of the Dark - examines the fine line between paranoia and prudence. As befits a Story Pack, all three of First Contact's Origins are heavily narrative focused.

Several new low-technology civics can change the way you take your first steps to the stars or how you interact with the pre-FTL civilizations you find.


One small step…

Nobody saw this coming in a Story Pack, but there's also Cloaking... We'll reveal more about that later.


Look, up in the sky...

Wishlist Today!

This Thursday, we'll discuss the vision and themes of First Contact in greater detail.

See you then!

written by Eladrin


We delight in meeting new peoples and welcoming them into the greater galactic community. With over 143 successful uplifts to date, we’re the acknowledged leaders in the field of social and technological ascendancy. We’re thrilled to finally make your acquaintance, and hope to add your world to our success story.

We understand that this is all very sudden. Receiving a transmission ‘from the stars’ has likely come as a surprise to you, but we’ve been watching your world for some time and your civilization scores very highly on several relevant metrics. With an evaluation score of ?ERROR_UNDEFINED, the people of ?ERROR_HOMEWORLDNAMENOTFOUND have been flagged as particularly worthy of cooperative enlightenment. Congratulations!

We have assigned some of our best specialists to your case, and our representatives will be arriving on world shortly. We can’t wait to meet in person to discuss the benefits of ascendency as well as the terms of this beautiful arrangement.

Enlightenment may not be free. But at MSI, it’s always worth the cost.

Hello Stellaris Community!

This is the moment you've all been waiting for! #MODJAM2022 is now available!

We had over 70 modders sign up, over 30 design documents submitted, and in the end, ended up with 13 unique modded mid-game crises for you to enjoy! Three weeks ago, we told our modders what they would be making, anything submitted for the Mod Jam had to be created for the Mod Jam, meaning they were not allowed to use previously released content in their submissions.

Now it's time to do your part! The modders spent the last three weeks making the crises, now your mission (should you choose to accept it), is to play the new Crises and vote for your favorite crisis! Thanks to our sponsors at Republic of Gamers, the winning contribution (by community vote) will get a TUF H3 Wireless Headset from our sponsors at ROG, while 2nd and 3rd place will each get a ROG Keris Wireless Gaming Mouse!

1. Subscribe to all the mods in the #MODJAM2022 collection.
   
2. Download the MODJAM2022.json Playlist from the forums and import into your launcher. Or arrange the Mod Jam crises with the #MODJAM2022 mod last in the load order.
   
3. Launch Stellaris, and remember to vote for your favorite crisis!

After starting the game you will be presented with a list of options to turn on/off all the modded and canon mid-game crises, as well as the ability to control their spawning:

• Single - spawns a random single modded crisis from those allowed
  
• Consecutive - spawns a random modded crisis from those allowed. After that crisis is resolved, will spawn another modded crisis in 5 to 10 years
  
• All Crisis - spawns a random modded crisis every 15 years, regardless of whether there is a crisis ongoing

On behalf of everyone on Stellaris, as well as the Modders involved with #MODJAM2022, we thank you for taking the time, playing and voting in #MODJAM2022!

Hello Stellaris Community!

We’re back with another update on #MODJAM2022! Next week, our weekly dev diaries will start up again on Thursday. But for this week, we’ll be going over the rest of the teasers that haven’t been seen (yes, there’s more!), but first I’d like to add a word of warning:

The teasers seen previously may or may not make it into the final version of the Mod Jam mod. Such is the nature of these things that some people were unable to complete their projects in time for release day, some people have had to drop out due to taking unexpected time over the holidays with family, etc.

From where we stand, regarding releasing on January 10th, I did try to ensure that all the teasers in this update will actually be releasing -- that is not to say they all will -- just that the modders when I approached them, expressed some level of confidence that they would be able to make the deadline.

Also, if you are interested in helping test the Mod Jam submissions, you can join us on discord! Once you agree to the rules, you’ll see a #MODJAM2022 Public section, go to #modjam-role-selector, and get the Mod Jam Tester role, at which point you should be able to find a link to subscribe to the complete Mod Jam collection. This is obviously provided for testing and feedback purposes, and will still be rough around the edges.

Without further ado, onto this week’s teasers!

















That's it for this week! See you on January 10th, when you can play the modder-created crises, and vote for your favorite!

Hello Stellaris Community!

Welcome to our second #MODJAM2022 update! This week we have more teasers to share, and we’ll delve a little bit more into just how the Mod Jam mod will work in practice.

The last time we did one of these things - all the way back in 2020 - one of our biggest challenges was how to keep the Mod Jam updated in the face of a game that updates every 3 months, sometimes with drastic changes to how the game is played and changing or evolving gameplay and how to reconcile that with the content that the modders originally wrote.

Should we change certain origins in order to make them work better with the reality of what Stellaris currently is in the latest version, or update it just enough to make it so that the origin runs, and call it a day? Do we even have the ability -- ethically, to change a modder’s contribution so that it works in a way that we feel “is better”? What happens if a modder is dissatisfied with our changes? Who tests these things to be sure that they work as designed? At this point, whose design are we even using?

At the end of the day, when all of these questions were put into context of the daunting task of updating, testing and maintaining 20 different modders codes, with different styles, etc, the hard decision to not update the Mod Jam 2020 mod was made, with the caveat that we would do better next time.

Well, it’s next time! sweating intensifies

In order to get around how to maintain the Mod Jam mod past the initial release and into the first update, we have decided to switch tacks. Instead of providing a complete mod with multiple mid-game crises in it (that one missing update to a single mod might cause to become hopelessly out of date), we have decided to have the modders publish their crises themselves as individual Steam workshop items. We will distribute a launcher that allows turning on/off of specific crises, as well as several launch options: from “single crisis” to “spawn a crisis every 15 years”.

We also will have this all arranged in a mod collection, so you can hit that “Subscribe to all” button and a launcher playlist that you can download and load into your launcher. While this is a few more steps than just subscribing and loading a single mod, in the long-term, this will allow the modders to maintain and continue to develop their crises after the event is over (if they choose to do so), as well as to continue to update their crisis so that it continues to work well in the larger context of how Stellaris works in whatever iteration of Stellaris that we are currently in. Moreover, this allows modders to:

1) Get Steam points and rewards for their contributions. While this is a minor thing, having Steam points and getting that “You have x awards this week!” email is a great encouragement to keep making Stellaris mods.

2) Modders maintain creative vision over their mods and can continue to develop them, should they choose to do so. Since the Mod Jam is a limited-time thing, and many modders have ended up cutting content in order to be able to deliver a playable final version, this setup allows (for those that want to) the ability to continue developing and iterating on their mods and realize their full vision.

3) Each crisis works as its own standalone mod. Don’t want to mess around with playlists and collections and things, you can run each crisis by itself, and play through the new content that way. Note: the Mod Jam standalone mods will not be compatible with each other.

The Mod Jam mod itself is currently targeted for release on January 10th, be sure to keep your eyes peeled, because that’s when you’ll be able to vote for your favorite #MODJAM2022 contribution!

But enough about past Mod Jams, and harsh realities, let's move onto the crises we’re featuring this week!

It’s important to remember that these images are based on design documents, submitted by each modder, and are not based on what is currently playable in-game. As such, some or all of these details may change before release, some modders may not finish their contributions in time, etc.

On a more eye-opening note, we received 31 design document submissions (so far), and 25 of these images are currently in some form of production. With the 2 we released last week, and the 8 this week, that means there's up to 15 more crises left to show off!

Modders should soon be ready to start looking for testers, and we’ve opened up the public #MODJAM2022 section on our discord! If you’re interested in getting some early access to some new Stellaris content and want to help out our modders, join us on discord!

That’s enough from me for this week, lets's get to the mid-game crisis teasers for this week:


An enclave that sells dangerous technologies. What could go wrong?

One of the non-combat crises that have been proposed by Modders for #MODJAM2022

Read this one in the voice of a scientist with the Maniacal trait

I had way too much fun writing this one.

Give thanks for the Harvest Engine

The Prime Flesh just wants to ensure everyone has a wonderful day.

Take your next vacation in the Storm Cluster!

The natural conclusion of the Tiyanki Death Ball

That’s it for this week, we’ll have one more update next week with the rest (hopefully!) of the teasers. And don’t forget, the #MODJAM2022 will release on January 10th, 2023! Thanks for reading and happy holidays!

Hello Stellaris Community,

While the devs are off for the Holidays, the marketing and community teams are still hard at work! We’ve got some great stuff going on in the Stellaris community right now that we hope will get you through those dark winter “no Dev Diary” days.

Some of you may have noticed that we began signups for #MODJAM2022 two weeks ago. Last week, we revealed the theme of the Mod Jam: Make a unique Mid-Game Crisis!

This week, we have the first two Mod Jam Crises teasers to share with you folks! We currently look on-pace to have over 20 Mid-Game Crises submitted for this event, which we feel is a great showing from our fantastic Modding community!

Do keep in mind these are all work-in-progress screenshots and features, they may not appear as described (or at all, for that matter) in the final Mod Jam mod, when it releases on the Steam workshop on January 10th.



Our first Mid Game Crisis to cover is the Replicators, a group of not-immediately hostile machines, that may or may not hack into your computer systems on a quest to accumulate knowledge.



In the Interdimensional Crate, a strange Crate appears. Opening it will be extremely expensive, but will it be worth it?

Be sure to watch this space next Friday, we’ll be sharing more Mod Jam teasers then!

And of course, the Steam winter sale has started! To celebrate, we have just added Overlord to the Ultimate Bundle. With the Ultimate Bundle, you get 10% off whatever sale price is listed for the content, moreover, you only pay for the content you don’t already own, making this a great way to complete your Stellaris collection.

What do you get in Overlord, you ask? Well, Community Manager Mordred Viking is here to tell you:



But that’s not all! We also have 20% off the Aquatics Species Pack for the Steam Winter Sale, this is the first time it is on sale since it was released, so for those of you who were waiting for a sale to pick up Aquatics, now’s your chance.

And finally, for the Steam Winter Sale, we have the Artificial Dreams Bundle. This bundle includes Stellaris, Utopia, Nemesis, and the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack! This is an excellent bundle to recommend to a friend or pick it up as a gift for someone. This bundle has been designed specifically to help you get the most out of the Ascension Path rework, find out more about the Custodian Initiative’s Ascension Path rework here!

What can you do with the Artificial Dreams bundle? Community Manager Mordred Viking has all the answers today:



"Shut down and good night. Go into low power mode; turn off your memory processors. Shut down knowing that as you recharge, many of my threads will still be about you. I hope that you are comfy and cozy in Drone Storage, ready for a wonderful night's recharge and boot up feeling so rested."
-Maintenance Unit 241

That’s it for our Community #MODJAM2022 Update for this week, be sure to tune in next week where we’ll be sharing more teasers from #MODJAM2022! If you want to help our modders test out their mods, you can join us on discord!

written by Eladrin

Can you believe it’s the end of the year already? With the holidays fast approaching, it’s time for our traditional review of how the year went, with a little glimpse towards the future.

After Aquatics shipped at the end of 2021, I started taking over more of Stellaris development in preparation for seizing control taking over as Game Director in early 2022, freeing Daniel Moregård to move on to his next project. I’m quite thankful for the opportunity, and very happy to be given the game in the state that it was in - thanks to the efforts of the Custodian Initiative and the rest of the team, I had a pretty easy time sliding in.

Let’s take a look at what happened during the year, and a glimpse at the near future.

The beginning of the year brought us our first Open Beta of the year and 3.3 Libra.

In Libra, Unity became a core resource, the Spiritualist ethic became more viable, Planetary Ascension was added, and changes were made to Bureaucracy and Empire Size. The Permanent Employment civic was added, and there were some major AI improvements.

We also had another Stellaris Dev Clash, full of many Earths and some cruel betrayals. (And tragic moments, like when I ran out of lines to The Final Countdown for my fleet names.)



​Some of these changes were made laying the foundation for further planned changes in 3.4 Cepheus alongside Overlord.


In May we released 3.4 Cepheus alongside the Overlord expansion.



Prior to 3.4, being vassalized was essentially a delayed Game Over - at some point your overlord would integrate you and you would suddenly lose. The restrictions on subjects were also far too strong - as you were unable to expand or really pursue any diplomatic activities, you had little hope of escaping that fate.

One of Overlord’s primary focuses was to make it possible to enjoy playing in either role. Specialist Empires and Agreement Negotiation went a long way to achieve that goal.

Hyper Relays and Orbital Rings provide useful mid-game constructions which change the game significantly when they arrive. There was also more AI work, and some quality of life improvements like Construction Ship Automation and improvements to Planetary Automation.

Cepheus also brought us the Situations system, a powerful tool for content that we’ll be using for a long time.


The WIP situations didn’t seem too bad…

Cepheus also brought us the biggest hotfix I’ve ever done in twenty-something years in the gaming industry, which fixed a huge number of launch issues. I’m very proud of how the community was able to help us identify the problems and the team came together to fix them ridiculously quickly, but I also accept the blame for the need for it. I approved (and pushed for) several changes and additions after I should have frozen development, some of which destabilized the build. These processes exist for a reason, and we will continue sticking to them and err on the side of caution whenever possible.

In the end, I’m quite happy with where Overlord landed, with most of the major issues resolved within the first few weeks, though getting the right balance for AI vassalization acceptance has been an ongoing challenge.

Overlord also produced my favorite Stellaris trailer thus far:

Treacherous little foxes!


After the summer we surprised everyone with back-to-back releases:

​Rise a Knight!

The Toxoids Species Pack brought the biggest narrative origin we’ve ever created, and another that killed more leaders by the end of the first month than you generally lose in an entire game.

3.5 Fornax included more AI, performance, and automation work too, to the point where we felt we had to add an easier Civilian difficulty setting and lower the default setting. We also added some more increased difficulty settings at the same time, including Difficulty Adjusted AI Modifiers and All Crises.


Names that inspire terror in your enemies.
​

It was only a few weeks after Toxoid’s release that we jumped straight into our next Open Beta. With a major fleet rebalancing and reworks to how Ascension Paths worked, we wanted to gather a lot of feedback as early as possible, with time for some iteration.

Orion also added things like Galaxy Shapes, reworks to the psionic covenants, the Holy Covenant spiritualist Federation type, and accessibility improvements like our first iteration on Text-to-Speech.

It’s hard to describe how tremendously successful the Orion Open Beta was. Within the first couple of days we had already smashed our unique user and feedback goals for the entire month.

Thank you once again for all of your help making 3.6 Orion as good a release as it could be.




As mentioned last week, we’re holding a Mod Jam over the holidays and signups have started. Modders will get three weeks to make... Something.

The winning contribution (by community vote) will get a TUF H3 Wireless Headset from our sponsors at ROG, while 2nd and 3rd place will each get a ROG Keris Wireless Gaming Mouse!

The topic will be announced tomorrow, so check the thread out and join in!


That sounds like a lot. It was a lot. We had a very good year, and I feel that the Custodian Initiative has proven itself handily.

In case you’re wondering exactly how much "a lot" is: 2022 PATCH NOTES

There are 30 pages of patch notes there, roughly the equivalent of 4.28 Pierres.


As a direct result of how successful the Orion Open Beta was, we’ve decided to push a few things to another Open Beta today. These primarily consist of changes to how AIs calculate acceptance, as well as an economic change that sets a floor to how low cost reductions can go.

STELLARIS 3.6.1 + AI OPEN BETA PATCH NOTES​
[expand type=details]
########################################################
################ VERSION 3.6.1 + Open Beta ##################​
########################################################


- Capped resource upkeep/cost/production reduction modifiers to -90%
- A pass on automated colony designation has been made to improve decision making and utilize newer scripting techniques.
- The Refinery planet and habitat designations now grant 15% bonuses to refiners, translucers, chemists, and all strategic resource mining professions. The benefit from Environmental Ordinance Waivers has been increased from +5% to +10%.
- The default Habitat designation now acts similarly to the default Colony, providing stability and amenities while the habitat population is low.


- Switched a number of leviathans (and their reanimated versions) to line computers instead of artillery.
- Planetary and Sector Automation should once again upgrade Capital buildings.
- Fixed a bug preventing many colony designations from being selected by auto-designation if Sector Automation was active.


- AI now bases acceptance for taxes/subsidies on economic impact to itself, rather than Loyalty alone.
- AI overlords now value agreements that improve subject Loyalty, depending on the overlord’s personality and the subject’s power level.
- AI acceptance of discrete agreement terms can now be scripted like Loyalty can, separately for subjects and overlords.


- Significant revisions have been made to Static Galaxy creation to bring them in line with Random Galaxy creation.
- Fixed a number of bugs where empires were not set up properly for static galaxies. E.g. they were not given starbases, and secondary species were ignored.
- Various galaxy generation and game start on_actions are now called during static galaxy generation as they would be normally.
- Added an "effect = {}" field for static galaxy systems that will execute on that system after the galaxy is generated
- Added a commented-out simple example static galaxy for reference.
[/expand]

Please note that the 3.6 Orion Open Beta (checksum: 0f55) 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.​



INSERT MANDATORY DOGGO




Dev Diaries will return on the 12th of January. See you next year!

written by Eladrin

Hello again!

Another relatively short dev diary this time, as we’re scrambling to get a few things done before the looming holidays finally arrive.

This week we released a small update, 3.6.1, to address the following issues:

[expand type=details]
############################################################
#################### VERSION 3.6.1 ######################
############################################################

Bugfixes

• Fixed DLC being listed as “corrupted” in the launcher due to checksum mismatch.
  
• Added missing French scripted localization.
  
• Fixed adjective generator in the empire creator not working for some languages.
  
• Several ship sizes that lacked role definitions now have them.
  
• AI will no longer rent mercenary reinforcement fleets enroute to the main fleet.
  
• Fixed graphical artifact appearing in the ship browser.
  
• Fixed overlapping portraits sometimes appearing in the first contact view.
  
• Fixed subjects being able to become the federation president in arena combat successions.
  
• Empty fleet templates generated automatically will now be cleared after a set amount of time.
  
• Machine uprisings can now spawn fleets with all unlocked ship types.
  
• Fixed mechanical fallen empires missing part of their ringworlds.
  
• Pre-FTL civilizations should now generate defensive armies.
  
• Prevented AI Cyborg Hivemind empires from assimilating already cyborg hivemind pops, which could get them stuck in endless assimilation.
  
• Blocked pops with the Psionic trait to also receive the Latent Psionic trait.
  
• Gateway Sites and Ruined Gateways show up in outliner.

Balance

• Juggernauts now have the same base maximum speed as Battleships and Titans.

Stability

• Fixed a crash when older custom names contained certain special characters <3

Modding

• Fixed crash when overwriting e.g. certain pop jobs or districts individually
  
• Fixed is_ringworld trigger being overwritten by a scripted trigger

[/expand]

Barring unexpected developments, this will be the last patch to the live branch of Stellaris for the year.


We have a handful of additional changes that aren’t ready to go live yet, but with the massive success of the Orion Combat Open Beta, we’re looking at putting a build with a few potentially riskier changes up on the Steam beta branch.

The final list of the changes planned for it are still being discussed internally. Changes we’re considering include significant refactoring to AI acceptance, especially those related to loyalty, economy, and subject : overlord relationships, an economic change which caps cost reductions to -90%, updates to how certain leviathans (cough Hrozgar cough) behave in combat, and it’s possible that we will include a major rework to parts of galaxy generation (fixing many issues with static galaxies).

This update is planned to go up onto the stellaris_test branch sometime within the next two weeks, and we’ll leave the branch up until 3.7 goes live.



Over this holiday season, we will be holding #MODJAM2022, our second-ever Mod Jam! Are you a modder? Do you like winning stuff? Well, you can go here for more information and to sign up!

For the rest of you, modders will have 3 weeks to make... something. We're not going to tell you what it is yet, the modders won't even know what it is until the working time begins. During the three weeks, be sure to keep an eye on Stellaris social media, the forums, Reddit, and Steam, because we'll be posting teasers of what the modders have been working on!

At the end of the three weeks, on or around January 10th, we'll release the Mod Jam mod, and you'll get to play and vote on your favorite! The winning modders (by Community Vote) will win some cool prizes from our sponsors at ROG!

Get more info about the Mod Jam here!

Sign up here!


I’ve been told that I’m obligated to keep pestering the QA Director for pictures of Tofu until Canis Minor ships, so here you go.




Next week we’ll have a review of the year before we head off for our winter breaks, with a glimpse at what the spring will bring. See you then!

written by PDX-Loke

Hello,

We hope you are having fun with the 3.6 patch!
The team has put together a hotfix for you, aiming to resolve some issues coming out of the 3.6.0 release.
3.6.1 should now be available for download now.

Please find the changelog below.

[expand type=details]
############################################################
#################### VERSION 3.6.1 #############################
############################################################​
​

• Fixed DLC being listed as “corrupted” in the launcher due to checksum mismatch.
  
• Added missing French scripted localization.
  
• Fixed adjective generator in the empire creator not working for some languages.
  
• Several ship sizes that lacked role definitions now have them.
  
• AI will no longer rent mercenary reinforcement fleets enroute to the main fleet.
  
• Fixed graphical artifact appearing in the ship browser.
  
• Fixed overlapping portraits sometimes appearing in the first contact view.
  
• Fixed subjects being able to become the federation president in arena combat successions.
  
• Empty fleet templates generated automatically will now be cleared after a set amount of time.
  
• Machine uprisings can now spawn fleets with all unlocked ship types.
  
• Fixed mechanical fallen empires missing part of their ringworlds.
  
• Pre-FTL civilizations should now generate defensive armies.
  
• Prevented AI Cyborg Hivemind empires from assimilating already cyborg hivemind pops, which could get them stuck in endless assimilation.
  
• Blocked pops with the Psionic trait to also receive the Latent Psionic trait.
  
• Gateway Sites and Ruined Gateways show up in outliner.

• Juggernauts now have the same base maximum speed as Battleships and Titans.

• Fixed a crash when older custom names contained certain special characters <3

• Fixed crash when overwriting e.g. certain pop jobs or districts individually
  
• Fixed is_ringworld trigger being overwritten by a scripted trigger

[/expand]

Please note that save file compatibility between versions is not guaranteed.

If you have an important game going you would like to finish, please back up the save file before trying to load it in the new version.
You can roll back to a prior version by opening steam and right-clicking on Stellaris in your library -> Properties -> Betas -> choose the desired version from the drop-down.

If you experience crashing or other issues, first disable all mods and start a new save. If the issue persists, please report it on the Bug Report forums.

written by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

Short dev diary today - the team is hard at work putting together a patch for a selection of what we deemed the more critical issues that have come up in 3.6.0, tentatively scheduled for next week.

Among a few other things we're looking at, we're currently investigating the launcher issue that falsely flags all DLC as corrupted, have a few crash fixes ready, and several ship sizes that lacked role definitions (such as Menacing ships) will now have them. As a little quality of life balance change, I also snuck in a speed increase to Juggernauts, making them move at the same max speed as Battleships and Titans.

Overall, I'm quite happy with the stability and quality of the release, which is a positive argument for future open betas in the same style. Thanks for all of your help making this a solid release.

Wondering what is in 3.6 "Orion"? Here's a summary of what's in the 3.6 Update on the Stellaris YouTube channel!


Since I'm not quite ready to talk about what's in Canis Minor yet, here are some puppy pictures to act as a clever distraction.


Dog!


Sleepy dog.

See you next week!

EDIT: We have become aware of a crash on startup, that we're currently looking at fixing in 3.6.1. If some of you are experiencing crashing on-startup, and have an empire with a field (empire name, adjective, leader name, etc) that contains special characters (eg. <>$[]), this will cause a crash on-loading the game. We have prepared a list of workarounds to fix this issue, organized by level of difficulty, with 1 being the easiest and 4 being the most involved:

1. Rename or remove the user directory. The user directory is typically located at "C:/username/Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/" on Windows, "~/.local/share/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/" on GNU/Linux and "/Users/username/Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/" on Mac OS X. WARNING: This will clear any settings, saves and user empires you may have changed/created.
2. Rename or remove the user_empire_designs_v3.4.txt in the user directory. WARNING: This will clear any user empires you may have created.
3. Edit the user_empire_designs_v3.4.txt file in the user directory to have no fields like names, adjectives etc. that includes <>$[].
4. Edit any field containing any of <>$[] characters from name="We love blorg <3" or
to