by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

The 3.8 ‘Gemini’ Coop Open Beta we talked about last week is now open! See this message for more details. We’ll be collecting feedback and Out of Sync errors until the end of April.



This week, we’ll be exploring some of the improvements that aren’t in the Coop Open Beta, but are planned for the full 3.8 release. Here are Offe and kc to tell you all about them!

Hello again, it’s me Offe, today I will share some information about what I have been working on since my previous Dev Diary about AI. Today I have seven smaller side projects to present that will be coming with the 3.8 free patch: Army Builder, Rally Troops, Ground combat and Bombardment Tweaks, Science Ship Automation, Capital World Designations, Fleet Manager Improvements and Sector Editor.

First I have three changes related to Ground Combat and Orbital Bombardment, seeing how the community is split between a ground combat rework or removing it completely, I opted to instead make everyone disappointed and give you what no one asked for: Quality of Life and slight rebalance.

Army Builder​

First up is the Army Builder, this is a tool designed to make it much easier to build and gather Assault Armies for an upcoming war. This tab is available on any starbase in a sector, and armies recruited via this tab will gather at the starbase.


Note: It's moved one tab to the left since this screenshot was taken.

Construction is spread out across all planets in the sector and there is also a CTRL-click option to more quickly queue up more construction.



In cases where you would like to reinforce an existing fleet of Assault Armies instead of simply gathering them at a starbase I’ve also added a mode for assault army fleets called Rally Troops. New troops will then automatically try and merge with this fleet regardless if they are built via the Army Builder or by the old method of recruitment from a planet.



Speaking of planets, I’ve also added a Deploy In Orbit checkbox to planets for the use case where you want to recruit assault armies to defend a planet on the frontier without them first deploying in orbit meaning you then have to manually go back and land those troops afterwards.



Bombardment Changes​

Next up is changes to bombardment, if you really hate ground combat then I got good news for you. Orbital Bombardment will now be able to take control of planets, in most cases, when they have completely killed all defending troops. There are some exceptions, for example, your pops will never surrender to an enemy that are Fanatical Purifiers as they would be purged anyway.



There is also a policy where you can refuse enemy planets that would like to surrender to you, however, your defenceless planets will still prefer to surrender to non genocidal/hive minds enemies to spare their own lives.



Further there are some tweaks to ground combat and orbital bombardments to create a trade off between bombing and invading:

• Bombarding planets is much more devastating than it used to be, more pops will die and buildings and districts will be ruined in the process. This also adds a trade off between the different bombardment stances, doing selective bombardment will be slower but fewer pops will die in the process compared to indiscriminate bombardment.
  
• Orbital Bombardment will now scale with the amount of ships bombarding, the first 100 fleet size ships will do full damage, after that each additional 100 fleet size will add 70% of that efficiency. For example, 300 fleet capacity worth of ships will deal 100% + 70% + (0,7^2 = 49%) = 219% total worth of bombardment damage.
  
• This effect is scaled based on the number of pops/buildings and planet’s size, where highly populated small planets will suffer greater losses compared to large sparsely populated planets.
  
• Ground Combat is also more devastating to planets than it used to be, but much less so than bombarding.
  
• The effect of collateral damage from different army types have also been adjusted, previously the collateral damage on army types was a linear value and not a multiplier, which meant that in practice high damage high collateral units like Xenomorphs could effectively do less collateral damage on the planet compared to normal troops because they would kill the enemy troops very quickly. This is no longer the case as the collateral damage modifier now acts as a multiplier on any damage dealt.
  
• Planetary Capital buildings now spawns 0/4/8/16 defensive armies for free based on the tier of the building.

To summarise the Design Philosophy of all the changes to ground combat and bombardment:

Ground Combat and orbital bombardment will now be a bigger part of the game since big planets will automatically have some defences. Building armies and using them to invade planets will be much easier by using the Army Builder and Rally Troops functionality. Small planets with 1-25 pops will be prime candidates to be taken by orbital bombardment alone, removing the need to have to manually invade each small insignificant planet or habitat.

Updated Science Ship Automation​

Previously I made the Construction Ship Automation and Planetary Automation Settings which was well received by the community so for 3.8 I’ve decided to also make improvements to the Science Ship Automation.



Now when you click on the Science Ship automation you can enable or disable the modules you like, Explore Systems simply mean exploring the galaxy by entering systems which will discover any planets and hyperlanes in there, the other settings should be self explanatory. The default settings are Explore Systems and Survey Systems which is the same functionality as before 3.8.

For Science Ships that are already automated you can see which modules they have enabled by hovering the automation button:



New Planetary Capital Designations​

I have gone a bit outside of my own designation as a Programmer and dabbled a bit with content design. There are 4 new Capital world designations coming in 3.8 for non hive minds. They are: Forge Capital, Factory Capital, Trade Capital and Capital Extraction World.

These designations are not part of the automatic colony designation system and your capital world will never change designation on its own, rather you must explicitly change the designation yourself in order to avoid instantaneous collapse of the player economy when unpausing the game.

They are not revolutionary in their design but rather they are the combined effects of the Capital Designation paired with a specialisation. So, for example, the Capital Forge world designation will give you all the bonuses as the normal Capital Designation, but instead of the +10% output to all jobs it gives +20% Metallurgist jobs output as well as shifting the Consumer Goods jobs into Alloy jobs like the other Forge Designations.



So for everyone like me who wanted to make a Forge, Factory, Trade or Base Resource Capital World, now you can.

Fleet Manager​

Overall the Fleet Manager serves its purpose and works, sort of. Together with KC (more from her later) we made some reorganisation of the UI and fixed some annoying bugs. Here is what the fleet manager looks like now:



Some notable changes are that the list of fleets is now much larger than it used to be, now you can see 12 simultaneous fleets instead of 6, there is a new button to copy a fleet template, you can now easily delete fleets templates by using the DELETE + ENTER keys and doing so will no longer select the first fleet in the list and scroll the scrollbar to the top.

The ship designer and the fleet managers have also been merged into one item in the sidebar and are accessible via tabs to easily be able to switch between them.

We’ve also added this new button which originally was designed and implemented for the AI but then I figured it is useful for players too:



Sector Editor​

Overlord really made us miss the ability to edit sectors, so better late than never I’ve made a tool which allows the player to freely move systems between adjacent sectors as long as they are in range of the Sector Capitals. The Sector Editor tool can be access either via the Planet view or the Planets and Sector view:



Opening the sector editor will enter into the sector edit map mode, here you can edit the sector either via the galaxy map icons or by using the UI on the left. While in the sector editor mode you can easily switch between editing different sectors by clicking on these icons in the galaxy map.



This comes with a few adjustments to requirements of creating Sectors, for example, it is no longer possible to create a sector that is too close to an existing Sector Capital even if the systems in between are unclaimed. Meaning it is no longer possible to release one of your guaranteed habitable worlds as a Vassal.

Further, all of the old counter intuitive rules regarding which planet would belong to which sector capital have been removed which previously resulted in very strange looking sectors when players would try to delete and recreate sectors to attempt to fix their sector borders.

Currently the sector editor gives a lot of control to the players, meaning it is even easier than before to create 1 system/planet vassals, but it is also now possible to fix sector border map gore. I trust everyone here will use this power responsibly.


Hey everyone, I'm kc - your favourite UX designer you have never heard of. Usually working from the shadows up in Arctic, I have descended upon you to shed light on some more quality of life things we have been working on for the last few weeks.

Rebindable keys for the side menu, ok, not rebindable but close enough. We have made it possible to customise the order of the items in the menu and thus decide which of them will have the F1-F10 hotkeys. Technology? You got it!

Toggle edit mode by clicking on the little gear icon.



Message Onslaught​

Something of a pet peeve of mine since I started on Stellaris a couple of years ago, was the lack of different scales of urgency when the game presents information. Since everything is considered equally important, in order to cut through the noise every new message has to scream as loud as the others, or louder. This has led to the barrage of popups and notifications we all know and love, and love to hate.

So what we decided to do to fix this is of course to make even more notifications. OK, rather;

1. Make a new system to add even more different notifications
   
2. Allow you to disable notifications. Yes, Message Settings is coming to Stellaris.

The new notifications are called toast notifications (cue bread-related puns!) because of how they pop up and disappear automatically (like bread in a toaster.)

This system will be used to communicate things that are low priority, things you don't need to act on but might want to know about. And feedback on things you've done. Ding! Leader ready!





My hope is that we can convert old messages to use this system when it makes sense to do so (System Surveyed, Build Complete, etc.), as well as allow for customization on how different messages should be presented. Pick your poison! Or just turn it off completely.

Message settings can be accessed directly from the notification/toast you no longer wish to see, (by Ctrl-Clicking on it) or from the game menu, under Settings/Messages. Some messages, such as the toasts shown above, also have a cogwheel to adjust setings.






No really, there’s actually more. But since this was chonky enough, I guess we’ll be back later. Stay tuned.


We’ve got a lot left to go through before the Gemini release, so we’ll see you next Tuesday with our next Dev Diary.

Hello Stellaris fans,

We are happy to announce the release of our 3.8 Coop Open Beta!
It is now available on a separate branch in Steam.

Instructions for opting in to the Open Beta branch:

Open the Steam client

1. Go to Library
   
2. Right click "Stellaris" in the list of games
   
3. Select "Properties..."
   
4. Go to the "Betas" tab
   
5. Select "stellaris_test - 3.8 Coop Open Beta" in the drop down

This should trigger a new update to Stellaris that lets you enjoy our new Coop mode early!
Please note that the feature is still in development and does have a few issues and instabilities.
Reporting any issues you encounter would be welcome, and you may do so in our Bug Report forums.

Also note that the game now runs in DX11 by default.
You can override this by adding a startup argument in steam.

Instructions for running the game with DX9:

• In the "Properties..." menu, go to the "General" tab
  
• Enter "-dx9" in the Launch Options field

Finally, as always, the team has done a great deal of improvements to the game that are also available in the 3.8 open beta.

Please find the patch notes below.
STELLARIS 3.8 COOP OPEN BETA PATCH NOTES

############################################################
#################### VERSION - 3.8 COOP OPEN BETA ######################
############################################################

Features

• Added two Cooperative modes, allowing up to five players per empire. More information can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #293.
  
• Cooperative PvE can be initiated from the main menu - all players that hotjoin the hosted game will join the primary player’s empire. This mode is primarily intended for teaching new players or for lower intensity cooperative gameplay.
  
• Cooperative PvP can be allowed by the host of a standard multiplayer game. When enabled, empires can open themselves up to allow other players to help control their empire. We expect this game mode to be useful for competitive team play.

Improvements

• Added unique textures for Mercury, Venus, Neptune and Uranus for the Sol system.
  
• Added unique textures for Earth and Mars when terraformed based off of available heightmap data.
  
• Added new anomaly The Orb
  
• Added a special solar system protected by the Lone Defender.
  
• Added a decision to clear the wreckage on a Broken Shackles starting planet in the event that they are conquered before they enact the Memorial to the Unshackled decision.
  
• Improved accuracy of tooltips on the galaxy setting screen and implemented experimental nested tooltip functionality.
  
• The mind-wiped species from On the Shoulders of Giants will now have the Forcefully Devolved trait.
  
• The Observation Insight Situation now remembers what approach you had when it last finished.
  
• There is now a 1% chance that a pre-ftl civilization will spawn with the Forcefully Devolved trait.

Balance and Bugfixes

• Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 1,000 or by 3,000 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken.
  
• A synthetically ascended empire should no longer refer to their own pops as having owners.
  
• Added a new description to the Broken Shackles Homecoming event if the world is a tomb world.
  
• Added missing "gateway" icons and tooltips to tech_cloaking_1 and tech_detection_array.
  
• Added missing background for Ironman game setting.
  
• Broken Shackles empires with the Parliamentary System civic will instead have Unshackled Politics fire one month after game start instead of one year after game start.
  
• Corrected the Ancient Target Scrambler tech not stating that it unlocks the Ancient Target Scrambler ship component.
  
• Enclaves should no longer keep offering you their services if you become a fanatical purifier.
  
• Fix MP game browser listing full games even if "Not full" is checked.
  
• Fixed a typo in the Cloud, Snagged event (federations3.2010)
  
• Fixed an issue with an unlocalized version of MSI in the initial interaction between a Broken Shackles and Payback empire.
  
• Fixed an unlocalized string for the Reanimated Tiyanki Matriarch.
  
• Fixed events related to the Out of Warranty event chain not firing.
  
• Fixed incorrect calculation used for Offspring amenities.
  
• Fixed Liberation wars not showing up for Payback empires.
  
• Fixed materialist culture workers (and death chroniclers) not having the effects of the Charismatic or Repugnant traits.
  
• Fixed NO_POSSIBLE_OPTION text in tooltip for an option in Starbase sabotage event
  
• Fixed reloading of system initializers and crash in with reload_galaxy console command
  
• Fixed some grammar in the Hivemind Voidspawn reanimation event.
  
• Fixed Status Quo in a Subsidiary war subjugating the wrong empire.
  
• Fixing truncated build queue items in the starbase view
  
• Former pre-FTL worlds will no longer display the technological age of the former civilization during colonization.
  
• Increased size of the Relic World tied to the Moon Base arc site from 26 to 30.
  
• Newly added starbase modules and buildings are now possible targets for Sabotage Starbase.
  
• Prevent joining full MP games.
  
• Removed a double be from a machine become the crisis event.
  
• Solved exploit where a base price would constantly reset the next day if you sold the minimum amount
  
• Special project energy cost is now displayed in situation log
  
• System and star name should now match even if the player selects an origin that has a special starting system.
  
• The "Direct Join" window now blocks other input.
  
• The "Host server" window now blocks other input.
  
• The Separatist Planet will no longer nuke themselves if you lose your capital to space fauna.
  
• Torpedo and Frigate technology now requires you to have researched Corvettes.

AI

• Fix for AI requiring wrong techs to build some megastructures
  
• Prevent "Assist Research" from blocking AI construction of orbital rings
  
• AI can take into account planetary impact of orbital ring buildings when picking which one to build
  
• AI takes into account planetary production impact of possible orbital ring buildings when considering building orbital rings
  
• AI attitude updates now happen only monthly and on diplomatic actions
  
• Allow AI to build economically useful orbital ring buildings without a matching designation
  
• Relaxed AI budget requirements for orbital ring upgrades
  
• The AI will now build more Offspring Outlooks and Cordyceptic Reanimation Facilities.

UI

• [UI] Addition of new social assets. Update of the Text on tooltips
  
• [UI] Auto Track Log Entries setting is saved in the save game.
  
• [UI] Removed the in-game web browser. The game will now use the platform's browser instead.

Modding

• Added copy_flags_and_variables_from effect to copy all flags and variables from one scope to another
  
• Added keyboard command for jumping to the next day [.].
  
• Added the special_max_amount = yes/no parameter for resources.
  
• Removed support for the "Major" flag and potential trigger in events.
  
• Renamed country_mia_time_mult to fleet_mia_time_mult so that you can apply it at leader or fleet level too
  
• Replaced set_is_female with set_gender
  
• Scripted triggers may now generate up to one automatic event option icon each
  
• You can now use "initializer = random" in the spawn_system effect

*****************************************************************************************

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

If you have an important game going, please back up the save file before trying to load the save in the open beta branch.

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.

by Eladrin

Hello again!

Last week we went over the basic design of the Cooperative multiplayer system we’re currently working on, and we’re ready to announce that the Coop Open Beta is looking like it will be starting sometime next week. Though at this time I can’t give a precise date, I thought I’d provide a list of preliminary patch notes.

I expect that we’ll leave the branch up until the release of 3.8, and feedback will be collected in threads until April 30th. Stay tuned for more details once we can share them.

Here’s a changelog of what will be present in the Coop Open Beta. This is only a small subset of what’s going to be coming in 3.8 - we wanted to keep the Coop changes relatively isolated in order to get better testing of the feature.

STELLARIS 3.8 ‘GEMINI’ COOP OPEN BETA PRELIMINARY RELEASE NOTES
[expand type=show more]
Features

• Added two Cooperative modes, allowing up to five players per empire. More information can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #293.
  * Cooperative PvE can be initiated from the main menu - all players that hotjoin the hosted game will join the primary player’s empire. This mode is primarily intended for teaching new players or for lower intensity cooperative gameplay.
  * Cooperative PvP can be allowed by the host of a standard multiplayer game. When enabled, empires can open themselves up to allow other players to help control their empire. We expect this game mode to be useful for competitive team play.

Improvements

• Added unique textures for Mercury, Venus, Neptune and Uranus for Sol system.
  
• Added unique textures for Earth and Mars when terraformed based off of available heightmap data.
  
• Added new anomaly The Orb
  
• Added a special solar system protected by the Lone Defender.
  
• Added a decision to clear the wreckage on a Broken Shackles starting planet in the event that they are conquered before they enact the Memorial to the Unshackled decision.
  
• Improved accuracy of tooltips on the galaxy setting screen and implemented experimental nested tooltip functionality.
  
• The mind-wiped species from On the Shoulders of Giants will now have the Forcefully Devolved trait.
  
• The Observation Insight Situation now remembers what approach you had when it last finished.
  
• There is now a 1% chance that a pre-ftl civilization will spawn with the Forcefully Devolved trait.

Balance and Bugfixes

• Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 1,000 or by 3,000 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken.
  
• A synthetically ascended empire should no longer refer to their own pops as having owners.
  
• Added a new description to the Broken Shackles Homecoming event if the world is a tomb world.
  
• Added missing "gateway" icons and tooltips to tech_cloaking_1 and tech_detection_array.
  
• Added missing background for Ironman game setting.
  
• Broken Shackles empires with the Parliamentary System civic will instead have Unshackled Politics fire one month after game start instead of one year after game start.
  
• Corrected the Ancient Target Scrambler tech not stating that it unlocks the Ancient Target Scrambler ship component.
  
• Enclaves should no longer keep offering you their services if you become a fanatical purifier.
  
• Fix MP game browser listing full games even if "Not full" is checked.
  
• Fixed a typo in the Cloud, Snagged event (federations3.2010)
  
• Fixed an issue with an unlocalized version of MSI in the initial interaction between a Broken Shackles and Payback empire.
  
• Fixed an unlocalized string for the Reanimated Tiyanki Matriarch.
  
• Fixed events related to the Out of Warranty event chain not firing.
  
• Fixed incorrect calculation used for Offspring amenities.
  
• Fixed Liberation wars not showing up for Payback empires.
  
• Fixed materialist culture workers (and death chroniclers) not having the effects of the Charismatic or Repugnant traits.
  
• Fixed NO_POSSIBLE_OPTION text in tooltip for an option in Starbase sabotage event
  
• Fixed reloading of system initializers and crash in with reload_galaxy console command
  
• Fixed some grammar in the Hivemind Voidspawn reanimation event.
  
• Fixed Status Quo in a Subsidiary war subjugating the wrong empire.
  
• Fixing truncated build queue items in the starbase view
  
• Former pre-FTL worlds will no longer display the technological age of the former civilization during colonization.
  
• Increased size of the Relic World tied to the Moon Base arc site from 26 to 30.
  
• Newly added starbase modules and buildings are now possible targets for Sabotage Starbase.
  
• Prevent joining full MP games.
  
• Removed a double be from a machine become the crisis event.
  
• Solved exploit where a base price would constantly reset the next day if you sold the minimum amount
  
• Special project energy cost is now displayed in situation log
  
• System and star name should now match even if the player selects an origin that has a special starting system.
  
• The "Direct Join" window now blocks other input.
  
• The "Host server" window now blocks other input.
  
• The Separatist Planet will no longer nuke themselves if you lose your capital to space fauna.
  
• Torpedo and Frigate technology now requires you to have researched Corvettes.

AI

• Fix for AI requiring wrong techs to build some megastructures
  
• Prevent "Assist Research" from blocking AI construction of orbital rings
  
• AI can take into account planetary impact of orbital ring buildings when picking which one to build
  
• AI takes into account planetary production impact of possible orbital ring buildings when considering building orbital rings
  
• AI attitude updates now happen only monthly and on diplomatic actions
  
• Allow AI to build economically useful orbital ring buildings without a matching designation
  
• Relaxed AI budget requirements for orbital ring upgrades
  
• The AI will now build more Offspring Outlooks and Cordyceptic Reanimation Facilities.

UI

• Addition of new social assets. Update of the Text on tooltips
  
• Auto Track Log Entries setting is saved in the save game.
  
• Removed the in-game web browser. The game will now use the platform's browser instead.

Modding

• Added copy_flags_and_variables_from effect to copy all flags and variables from one scope to another
  
• Added keyboard command for jumping to the next day [.].
  
• Added the special_max_amount = yes/no parameter for resources.
  
• Removed support for the "Major" flag and potential trigger in events.
  
• Renamed country_mia_time_mult to fleet_mia_time_mult so that you can apply it at leader or fleet level too
  
• Replaced set_is_female with set_gender
  
• Scripted triggers may now generate up to one automatic event option icon each
  
• You can now use "initializer = random" in the spawn_system effect

[/expand]

Again - this isn’t everything that we’re planning for 3.8.

Coop touches a lot of systems in Stellaris, and it is very likely that you will run into synchronization issues, or other weirdness. (The dreaded “Out of Syncs” that are the bane of multiplayer Stellaris.) This system is still in active development, but we wanted to let people play with it now, while there’s still time to react to feedback and bugs that are found.

Certain events, such as diplomacy with enclaves or other special entities, may also behave oddly during the beta, with responses going to the first player in the empire rather than the one that initiated contact.

Community Manager Mordred Viking is back on Stellaris Official to save you the trouble of reading it!


The StellARTis competition has completed, and winners have been announced! Check out some of their brilliant works.

Next week we’ll start going through some of the many changes coming in 3.8 that aren’t in the Coop Open Beta release.

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

One of the major Custodian features planned for the 3.8 ‘Gemini’ update is the addition of two cooperative gameplay modes. Up to five players will be able to control the same empire and work together to play the game as a team.

Surveys suggested that there are two distinctly different reasons people want to play together.

• I want to play a PvE game of Stellaris with my friends, either to teach them how to play the game or to have a more relaxed game where we can share the duties of empire management.

Stellaris is a complex game, and learning to play can be difficult without a guiding hand. While some people learn well by watching informative videos created by the community, others might do better playing alongside a friend.

• I want to play a multiplayer PvP game of Stellaris where teams of players go up against each other.

The cognitive load when playing competitive multiplayer can be at times overwhelming, especially during wars. Being able to split duties with other players on the same team could provide an enjoyable experience.

We’ve tried to support both goals through two different modes of play, with slightly different game rules.

A new main menu entry exists for starting a Cooperative PvE game where all human players control the same empire.

This will bring them to the Game Browser screen, where one of them can choose to Host a New Game, just like the regular Multiplayer flow.

The hosting player will go directly to Empire Selection, where they can create a new empire or select one they’ve already created as normal, select the Galaxy Settings for the game, and then begin the session.

Unlike regular Multiplayer, the Cooperative PvE flow bypasses the Game Lobby, and the coop players will not need to select an empire. These players hotjoin directly into the hosting player’s empire once the game has begun.

For most purposes, Cooperative PvE is treated the same way as single player PvE is.
The flow for creating a competitive multiplayer coop game is similar to the normal multiplayer flow. One player will host the server, ticking the “Allow Coop” checkbox.



Other players can join the Game Lobby and open their empires up for additional players.


pdx_eladrin has opened his empire up for cooperative play.


After Loner has joined the empire.​

Empires that have been opened for cooperative play add an “inspect” icon to the portrait so prospective players can see the details on the empire before deciding to join.


Inspect a coop empire.​

For more competitive players, the primary player of the empire will be able to lock their empire, which will add a password requirement to joining or inspection.
It’s often useful to know what your teammates are up to. To make it a little easier to understand what’s going on, we’ve added Presence Markers to the UI to show which tabs your teammates are currently using.


pdx_eladrin is currently taking care of our research issues, so Loner can worry about something else.​

We're currently exploring the addition of Goto buttons in the top right corner that will allow you to bring your camera to your teammate’s location, but this isn't fully functional yet. (And is unlikely to be during the Open Beta.)

Events will be shown to all members of a coop team, and any of the players can select a response. The window will remain in place with the selected option marked with the icon of the player that made a choice.


Only one option for this one, but it’s nice to know it’s already been selected.​

Next week we’ll be talking about the 3.8 ‘Gemini’ Open Beta.

As the Coop game modes touch a lot of moving parts, we’d like to gain feedback on your thoughts of how it plays as well as find where desyncs and other bugs crop up before the actual release.

by Eladrin

Happy Thursday!

Thanks to everyone who answered our User Research survey as well as to everyone posting in our Custodian Diplomatic AI Feedback thread.

Originally I was planning on just talking about what was going into 3.7.4, with a potential release date next week, but things went a bit better than expected and as of this morning the 3.7.4 patch has been released. Unless something major crops up, the next Stellaris update is expected to be the 3.8 ‘Gemini’ release during Q2.

This patch includes another adjustment to pre-FTL civilizations being too keen on destroying themselves in atomic fire (they now have a significant chance to have a “close call”, and we've adjusted some of the possibility weights some more), but we have a larger solution planned for 3.8.

STELLARIS ‘CANIS MINOR’ 3.7.4 PATCH NOTES

[expand type=showmore]
BALANCE AND IMPROVEMENTS

• Pre-FTL civilizations now have a chance of having a "close call" when nuclear war threatens to break out.
  
• Payback Origin
  * If you defeat the Debt Collectors three times, the MSI will use the Humiliate war goal against you instead of trying to vassalize you
  * The Debt collectors won't bug you anymore if you're currently at war with the MSI
  * Fixed Payback war goals to ensure you can't vassalize or impose ideology on homicidal empires
  * Slightly increased surrender acceptance of Payback war goals
  * Payback origin: fixed a rare instance where the Debt Collectors event chain could get soft locked if the debt collectors were defeated by another empire
  * Payback empires now get a consolatory prize if the MSI gets destroyed by a Marauder empire
  * Fixed an issue where a Payback empire using the End Threat (Payback) war goal against the MSI could end with a whimper instead of as intended.
  
• Increased starbase reactor power by roughly 15%.
  
• Hive-Minds with both Cordyceptic Drones and Stargazers now start with 3 reanimated amoebae.
  
• Pre-FTL Awareness cannot naturally decay below 10.
  
• The Raise Awareness espionage operation now prevents pre-ftl Awareness from naturally decaying for 5 years.
  
• The Triumviri ending for Fear of the Dark is now achievable from infiltrating the Fevorian government.
  
• Buffed MSI by giving them some bonus naval capacity and starting technologies.

BUG FIXES

• The devolving beam now properly destroys the final contingency world (when boosted with the Archaeo-Engineers Ascension Perk)
  
• Fixed Sabotage Starbase operation failing to destroy starbase components
  
• Fixing a case where you were blocked from building orbital rings on a Fear of the Dark planet
  
• It is no longer possible to acquire multiple Galatrons from reliquaries
  
• Hivemind pre-FTLs will no longer be producing consumer goods.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Solarpunk society wouldn't reattach itself to the galaxy.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Solarpunk society would stay neutral after being attacked.
  
• Fixed an issue where Sol X and your Beta homeworld would overlap.
  
• Fixed the Dark Forest achievement not triggering in some cases due to interactions with marauders.
  
• Construction ship and science ships gained from picking a specialization as part of the Imperial Fiefdom origin now correctly start with hyper drives for empires with the Eager Explorer civics.
  
• Fix AI Empires building hundreds of observation stations if you don't own First Contact
  
• Empire naming adjectives should now be seen for German, Simplified Chinese, and Russian.
  
• Removing an unnecessary progress bar in the clear blocker view.
  
• Removed happiness penalties from unemployment from living standards, these are now solely applied from job strata.
  
• AI with Clone Army Origin now creates clone vats to keep their colonies alive.
  
• Starbases should now correctly reflect their new sensor range on the monthly tick.
  
• Ancient Saturator Artillery tech now unlocks the Spinal Mount Bow section for battleships.
  
• Fixed decloaking in a system with pre-ftls not correctly firing the event to increase awareness.
  
• Broken Shackles empires with robots outlawed now correctly purge machine and mechanical pops.
  
• Terraforming a planet now also has a chance of triggering an awareness increase.
  
• Fix crash when a species doesn't have a valid archetype
  
• Removed ability to use the "reveal yourself" diplomatic action while you're already revealing yourself
  
• Pre-FTL agreements like "give technology" now get correctly removed once a pre-FTL civilization becomes spacefaring
  
• Blocked "Salacious Affair" envoy event from firing on pre-FTL worlds
  
• Removing the option of upgrading at neutral starbases
  
• Fixed the Fear of the Dark Separatist country being localized incorrectly in German, Polish and Spanish.
  
• Added correct icon for Negative Media Coverage modifier.
  
• If a pre-FTL society has more than one planet then none will keep being available for observation once the society becomes fully aware.
  
• Dig sites should no longer generate minor artifacts for users that do not own Ancient Relics DLC
  
• Corrected icon for Declining Healthcare modifier.
  
• Class-4 Singularity can now be constructed when rewarded by event.
  
• Made it so you can't get an option in an espionage event that requires an interference policy that doesn't allow for espionage.
  
• Genocidal empires can now use assimilation species rights targeting their species. This should fix Fanatic Purifiers not being able to cybernetically or psionically assimilate lost colonies, splinter planets or the like.
  
• Adding missing cloaking stat on ship design view.
  
• Blocking the possibility of terraforming while the planet is under colonization.
  
• Fixed a crash when loading old savegames
  
• Fixed tooltip bug with fleets from defensive pacts in a war.

[/expand]
As part of our ongoing efforts to make the game less daunting for new and returning players, we’ve discovered a UX Insight Technology while observing the pre-FTL games made by our sibling studios. In 3.8 we’ll be introducing Concepts as a variant of the nested tooltips you may be familiar with from Crusader Kings or Victoria.

Our primary goal with Concepts is to simplify tooltips while providing the means to get more information than before. Instead of cluttering the base tooltips with complete details, you can dig down to learn more about key terms as desired. While it may change for the final release, Concepts are currently planned to always be shown in a specific Teal color. After a brief delay (or after clicking the middle mouse button), a tooltip that possesses in-line Concepts will lock into place as shown below.

Our initial efforts in introducing these have been focused on the Galaxy Settings before starting a new game to further explain some details that might not be obvious at first glance, but to fully explain would bloat the normal tooltip into a wall of text.


An Example of Concepts

While Concepts in 3.8 will initially be limited exclusively to Galaxy Settings, we’re planning on expanding the use of Concepts to Empire Creation and beyond during the Custodian releases over the next year.

SPOILER: CONCEPT DETAILS FOR MODDERS
[expand type=showmore]
common\game_concepts will have a 00_game_concepts.txt where we define concepts, alongside icons and aliases.


Any concept that does not have an icon defined will default to a "thinking cloud" icon that's in Defines.



Marauder Empires concept, showing off the default icon.

Concepts themselves are referenced in-line in localization using the ['concept'] notation:


The text for the generated tooltip is defined by the concept name you defined earlier, and by default, will use the base concept name _desc. Aliases let you reuse _desc text easily.


If desired, you can make it show something other than the base concept name as the Cyan tooltip. For example, here we wanted the Unity symbol to also count for the mouseover tooltip. (Tip: Use non-breaking spaces so the mouseover region sticks together if you do this!)


Concept text can itself have additional further concepts within it.

We've added a few new text colors to fonts.gfx that we use exclusively for Concept tooltips. While §K and §I are identical to §H and §Y, they're separate in case we want to change them.

[/expand]

Next week we’ll start going through the main features we’ll be adding in Gemini, and (hopefully) some details on our planned 3.8.0 Gemini Open Beta.



Tofu’s been studying.

by PDX-Loke

Hello,

While you were busy upgrading cloaked fleets at enemy starbases and buying multiple galatrons, the team has kept on fixing and tweaking.
The 3.7.4 patch is ready and available for download now.

Please find the patch notes below.


BALANCE AND IMPROVEMENTS

• Pre-FTL civilizations now have a chance of having a "close call" when nuclear war threatens to break out.
  
• Payback Origin
  
  * If you defeat the Debt Collectors three times, the MSI will use the Humiliate war goal against you instead of trying to vassalize you * The Debt collectors won't bug you anymore if you're currently at war with the MSI * Fixed Payback war goals to ensure you can't vassalize or impose ideology on homicidal empires * Slightly increased surrender acceptance of Payback war goals * Payback origin: fixed a rare instance where the Debt Collectors event chain could get soft locked if the debt collectors were defeated by another empire * Payback empires now get a consolatory prize if the MSI gets destroyed by a Marauder empire * Fixed an issue where a Payback empire using the End Threat (Payback) war goal against the MSI could end with a whimper instead of as intended.
• Increased starbase reactor power by roughly 15%.
  
• Hive-Minds with both Cordyceptic Drones and Stargazers now start with 3 reanimated amoebae.
  
• Pre-FTL Awareness cannot naturally decay below 10.
  
• The Raise Awareness espionage operation now prevents pre-ftl Awareness from naturally decaying for 5 years.
  
• The Triumviri ending for Fear of the Dark is now achievable from infiltrating the Fevorian government.
  
• Buffed MSI by giving them some bonus naval capacity and starting technologies.

BUG FIXES

• The devolving beam now properly destroys the final contingency world (when boosted with the Archaeo-Engineers Ascension Perk)
  
• Fixed Sabotage Starbase operation failing to destroy starbase components
  
• Fixing a case where you were blocked from building orbital rings on a Fear of the Dark planet
  
• It is no longer possible to acquire multiple Galatrons from reliquaries
  
• Hivemind pre-FTLs will no longer be producing consumer goods.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Solarpunk society wouldn't reattach itself to the galaxy.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Solarpunk society would stay neutral after being attacked.
  
• Fixed an issue where Sol X and your Beta homeworld would overlap.
  
• Fixed the Dark Forest achievement not triggering in some cases due to interactions with marauders.
  
• Construction ship and science ships gained from picking a specialization as part of the Imperial Fiefdom origin now correctly start with hyper drives for empires with the Eager Explorer civics.
  
• Fix AI Empires building hundreds of observation stations if you don't own First Contact
  
• Empire naming adjectives should now be seen for German, Simplified Chinese, and Russian.
  
• Removing an unnecessary progress bar in the clear blocker view.
  
• Removed happiness penalties from unemployment from living standards, these are now solely applied from job strata.
  
• AI with Clone Army Origin now creates clone vats to keep their colonies alive.
  
• Starbases should now correctly reflect their new sensor range on the monthly tick.
  
• Ancient Saturator Artillery tech now unlocks the Spinal Mount Bow section for battleships.
  
• Fixed decloaking in a system with pre-ftls not correctly firing the event to increase awareness.
  
• Broken Shackles empires with robots outlawed now correctly purge machine and mechanical pops.
  
• Terraforming a planet now also has a chance of triggering an awareness increase.
  
• Fix crash when a species doesn't have a valid archetype
  
• Removed ability to use the "reveal yourself" diplomatic action while you're already revealing yourself
  
• Pre-FTL agreements like "give technology" now get correctly removed once a pre-FTL civilization becomes spacefaring
  
• Blocked "Salacious Affair" envoy event from firing on pre-FTL worlds
  
• Removing the option of upgrading at neutral starbases
  
• Fixed the Fear of the Dark Separatist country being localized incorrectly in German, Polish and Spanish.
  
• Added correct icon for Negative Media Coverage modifier.
  
• If a pre-FTL society has more than one planet then none will keep being available for observation once the society becomes fully aware.
  
• Dig sites should no longer generate minor artifacts for users that do not own Ancient Relics DLC
  
• Corrected icon for Declining Healthcare modifier.
  
• Class-4 Singularity can now be constructed when rewarded by event.
  
• Made it so you can't get an option in an espionage event that requires an interference policy that doesn't allow for espionage.
  
• Genocidal empires can now use assimilation species rights targeting their species. This should fix Fanatic Purifiers not being able to cybernetically or psionically assimilate lost colonies, splinter planets or the like.
  
• Adding missing cloaking stat on ship design view.
  
• Blocking the possibility of terraforming while the planet is under colonization.
  
• Fixed a crash when loading old savegames
  
• Fixed tooltip bug with fleets from defensive pacts in a war.

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.

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

It’s now been a bit over a week since the First Contact Story Pack released, and it’s been great hearing your stories and experiences.

While some things slipped through into the initial release, like the Great Filter becoming nigh impenetrable if nobody’s watching, overall Canis Minor was the most stable release we’ve ever had on Stellaris - to the point where red flags were being raised whether the Crash Reporter was working properly.



A couple of days ago we pushed the 3.7.3 hotfix to take care of a few of the more pressing issues.

STELLARIS ‘CANIS MINOR’ 3.7.3 PATCH NOTES
Fixes and Changes

• Every single atomic pre-FTL will no longer nuke themselves if they are not being observed.
  
• Fixed Contingency worlds not being properly cracked by devolving beam.
  
• The Solarpunk Empire will no longer stay pre-FTL if you decide to steal from them.
  
• Admirals should no longer be able to gain both versions of the trickster trait.
  
• The Solarpunk empire will no longer gain a new fleet every single month.
  
• Fixing custom diplomatic action sounds playing for unrelated empires.
  
• Missing localizations are added in English. Proper translations are expected with the following patch.
  
• Fallen empire buildings should no longer disappear when you conquer their planets.
  
• The Ministry of Culture should no longer disappear after you finish building it.
  
• The Artist Enclave should no longer offer to sell you a Ministry of Culture if you already bought one.
  
• Non-Xenophobe empires can once again enable displacement purging.
  
• The Accepted Plea for Protection opinion modifier is now granted to the subject towards the overlord instead of to the overlord towards the subject.
  
• Randomly generated machine empires now have a chance to use the toxoid machine options if you own the corresponding DLC
  
• Removed a TODO Opinion Modifier String.
  
• Fixed Broken Shackles offering Payback information about the MSI even if they got already destroyed
  
• Fixed a bug when cloaked ship cannot progress special project inside closed borders
  
• Admiral doesn't get killed anymore when you upgrade the MSI flagship
  
• Torpedo and Frigate technology now requires you to have researched Corvettes.
  
• The Separatist Planet will no longer nuke themselves if you lose your capital to space fauna.
  
• Broken Shackles empires with the Parliamentary System civic will instead have Unshackled Politics fire one month after game start instead of one year after game start.
  
• You can no longer select the Fear of the Dark version of the Sol system without the Fear of the Dark origin.
  
• Fixed Liberation wars not showing up for Payback empires.
  
• Fixed events related to the Out of Warranty event chain not firing.
  
• Fix being able to build an observation post over Haven using the fleet order button
  
• The Accepted Plea for Protection opinion modifier now grants +150 opinion.
  
• The Observation Insight Situation now remembers what approach you had when it last finished.

We’re currently working on another patch, planned for a few weeks from now, to resolve more bugs, balance issues, and add some localization fixes.

So far, some items of particular interest include:

STELLARIS ‘CANIS MINOR’ 3.7.4 SNEAK PEEK

• Fixed an issue where a Payback empire using the End Threat (Payback) war goal against the MSI could end with a whimper instead of as intended.
  
• Gave the Grand Herald archaeo-tech components.
  
• Buffed MSI by giving them some bonus naval capacity and starting technologies.
  
• The Raise Awareness espionage operation now prevents pre-ftl Awareness from naturally decaying for 5 years.
  
• Hive-Minds with both Cordycepic Drones and Stargazers now start with 3 reanimated amoebae.

Please keep posting bug reports in our forums, they’re a great help to us.

Speaking of other reports that are a great help, and since I mentioned the Crash Reporting tool earlier, I have a message to share from our Tech Lord.


Hey, I am Lorenzo, your friendly neighborhood Tech Lord. I just wanted to spend a second talking about releases and the work that we do behind the scenes once a new shiny version of the game is there, downloading. Game development is no joke, like any other business, and releasing a new patch is not the beginning of the end, but barely the end of the beginning. Our team puts heroic effort into delivering the best product to you, but hey, mistakes or oversights happen. Sometimes the result is a hilarious bug, like the tendency of pre-FTL societies to prematurely end their lives by nuclear means. Sometimes the result is this dreaded window.



Like no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, no patch survives contact with the players. But we are aware of this, and every time we release a new patch, somewhere in our offices there’s a group of developers sitting down, constantly monitoring the stability of the game, patiently waiting for the inevitable fire to spark: luckily most of the time there’s no real fire, just some tiny candle flames.

And this brings me straight to my point: thank you all for your reports! When you press that “send button”, detailed information on the crash are collected and sent to us for investigation. This info is usually enough to point out the problem, but often not enough to identify the cause of it: that’s when your comments come into play! Tell us what you were doing when the crash happened, even the most tiny detail could help us!

They say that an image is worth 1000 words: let me tell you a beautiful story in four acts with an image, then:


(Thanks from the bottom of my heart, anonymous player: your reports were immensely useful in finding the issue and fixing it )

Thanks, Lorenzo, and thanks again to all of you that submit detailed bug reports and crash logs. The more information we have, the easier it is to track down some of these sometimes troublesome issues.


We currently have two ways that you can help out improving the Stellaris experience for existing players, new players, and directly effect development of the game!

Since Alfray Stryke has finished his duties with First Contact, and has transitioned back to the Custodian team, he is currently running a feedback thread looking for constructive, directed feedback on AI Diplomatic interactions.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author

We are looking for feedback on the AI's willingness to accept diplomatic pacts, become subjects or overlords and form federations, in particular with other AI empires. Some of the changes for 3.8 “Gemini” we are considering are requiring a Trust threshold for the AI to offer certain diplomatic agreements and improvements on the AI weights for Diplomatic traditions.

You can find the feedback thread here!

The other way to help influence the development of Stellaris, is a survey from our User Research department. This survey is designed to give us feedback on what you like/dislike about Stellaris, and will be taken into account while we're planning future development for Stellaris.

You can complete the survey here!



Always able to be relied on for questionable puns, the Stellaris Community team announced our StellARTis Competition yesterday! Leave your First Contact-inspired artwork in this forum thread, for a chance to win a code for First Contact or a copy of Stellaris to give to a friend! Contest runs until April 3rd, and the winning entries will be chosen by the Stellaris Art Department!

We’re not quite ready to talk about 3.8 ‘Gemini’ yet, but here’s a peek at one thing we’re going to start rolling out in it.

SPOILER: 3.8 SPOILERS

Nesting Concepts will initially only be present in Galaxy Settings

Next week we’ll be going over more of the things planned to go into the 3.7.4 patch. See you then!

Thank you all for playing and providing feedback on First Contact and 3.7!
We've been hard at work fixing and balancing, and are now ready to supply you with a quick patch aiming to resolve the most pertinent problems.

3.7.3 should now be available for download. Please find the changelog below.

The team is still focusing on finding and resolving incoming bugs, and we hope to have a second patch ready for you within a few weeks.

Enjoy!

Fixes and Changes

• Every single atomic pre-FTL will no longer nuke themselves if they are not being observed.
  
• Fixed Contingency worlds not being properly cracked by devolving beam.
  
• The Solarpunk Empire will no longer stay pre-FTL if you decide to steal from them.
  
• Admirals should no longer be able to gain both versions of the trickster trait.
  
• The Solarpunk empire will no longer gain a new fleet every single month.
  
• Fixing custom diplomatic action sounds playing for unrelated empires.
  
• Missing localizations are added in English. Proper translations are expected with the following patch.
  
• Fallen empire buildings should no longer disappear when you conquer their planets.
  
• The Ministry of Culture should no longer disappear after you finish building it.
  
• The Artist Enclave should no longer offer to sell you a Ministry of Culture if you already bought one.
  
• Non-Xenophobe empires can once again enable displacement purging.
  
• The Accepted Plea for Protection opinion modifier is now granted to the subject towards the overlord instead of to the overlord towards the subject.
  
• Randomly generated machine empires now have a chance to use the toxoid machine options if you own the corresponding DLC
  
• Removed a TODO Opinion Modifier String.
  
• Fixed Broken Shackles offering Payback information about the MSI even if they got already destroyed
  
• Fixed a bug when cloaked ship cannot progress special project inside closed borders
  
• Admiral doesn't get killed anymore when you upgrade the MSI flagship
  
• Torpedo and Frigate technology now requires you to have researched Corvettes.
  
• The Separatist Planet will no longer nuke themselves if you lose your capital to space fauna.
  
• Broken Shackles empires with the Parliamentary System civic will instead have Unshackled Politics fire one month after game start instead of one year after game start.
  
• You can no longer select the Fear of the Dark version of the Sol system without the Fear of the Dark origin.
  
• Fixed Liberation wars not showing up for Payback empires.
  
• Fixed events related to the Out of Warranty event chain not firing.
  
• Fix being able to build an observation post over Haven using the fleet order button
  
• The Accepted Plea for Protection opinion modifier now grants +150 opinion.
  
• The Observation Insight Situation now remembers what approach you had when it last finished.

Hello Stellaris Community!

The Devs are currently working on a small update planned for next week, containing fixes for some of the more pressing issues that you’ve found so far. So no Dev Diary this week, but please keep providing feedback and bug reports, they’re very valuable to us!

Instead we have something special for this week: To celebrate the release of the First Contact Story Pack, our Art Department has teamed up with ArtStation to do an Art Blast featuring completed and concept art from First Contact!

“We looked to the stars and saw that we were not alone.”

First contact. It has been the inspiration for so many stories in so many IPs over the years and now it has come to Stellaris.

That exciting, sometimes frightening point in your civilization's timeline when the signals and messages you’ve sent out into the darkness of space have been answered. Or perhaps you have been living a peaceful life, minding your own business, believing that you are the only ones out there when suddenly that alien ship appears in your atmosphere. 

Are they friends? Are they foes? Will they advise and aid your people? Take you to another level in your evolution or do they have something else in mind? Something... more sinister? 

First Contact, is the latest addition to Stellaris and this is some of the mind blowing art that went into making it a reality from our amazing art team.

Scott Austin
Art Director - Stellaris


"Some early explorations onto what cloaked ships could look like in Stellaris, and what the transition to cloaking would be like. Lots of fun to do!"
Lloyd Drake-Brockman


"Some early theme exploration sketches for the front end Illustration. We ended up going with the the lower left one; Herders in swamplands of some distant planet are frightened by a sudden visit of an unknown."
Pavel Goloviy


The Chemical Ship of 'First Contact' based on Lloyds' concept Art.
David Lindh


The MSI Flagship for 'First Contact', based on Lloyds' concept Art.
Tim Wiberg

You can check out the full Art Blast here. Dev diaries will return next week!

Thanks for playing Stellaris, and you can pick up the First Contact Story Pack right now!

First Contact is available now!

You are not alone! The galaxy is vast and full of wonders, but it’s also full of alien empires you’re going to encounter, whether you’re ready or not. First Contact offers a set of new origins and mechanics that give players the chance to tell stories about their civilizations’ early encounters with visitors from the stars — ones that may not have come in peace!

Features of First Contact include*:

NEW ORIGINS
Broken Shackles: You didn’t take to the stars; you were taken to the stars as an alien captive! Now, you and your fellow prisoners have overtaken the ship and found yourselves banding together to survive and thrive as a diverse new community. Can you rise to greatness from this humble origin… and will your former captors take notice?

Payback: No one would have believed your world was being watched keenly by intelligences greater than your own — until they invaded. But you did not go quietly into the night! Your civilization has repelled a would-be conqueror from space, and with sudden access to their advanced technology, you’re about to discover just what else is out there beyond the stars!

Fear of the Dark: As you’ve explored your home system, you’ve always suspected you weren’t alone in the galaxy… especially when one of your planets suddenly suffered an “incident” a while back. A very large faction of your own people have long advocated against tempting fate out in the dark abyss of the unknown. What path will you choose as you find yourself needing room to grow?

NEW PRE-FTL INTERACTION OPTIONS
What will your role be when the next member of the galactic community tells their origin story? New mechanics allow for a broader range of interactions with pre-FTL civilizations, depending on their level of technology and their awareness of your presence. Will your arrival be celebrated, or met with violent panic?

CLOAKING TECHNOLOGY
Nobody saw this feature coming! Equip your ships with cloaking devices to survey in secret or catch a foe unaware; keep subtle tabs on your pre-FTL neighbors with cloaked observation posts. Just be sure your own scanners and intel are strong… you never know which of your neighbors might be lurking in the shadows!

*Some features may require content sold separately

Get the First Contact Story Pack today!