Jun 15, 2023

Stellaris Dev Diary #304 - 3.8.4 Released, What’s Next?

Stellaris - PDX_ladydzra

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

The ‘Gemini’ 3.8.4 update has been released today. In it, we’ve continued post-release balance work. Some of the bigger changes in the release include the conversion of several leader traits into Council Traits either to reduce micromanagement (moving a governor from planet to planet to maximize benefits of some traits) or to address undesired stacking issues.

STELLARIS 3.8.4 PATCH NOTES

[expand type=showmore]
############################################################
#################### VERSION 3.8.4 ######################
############################################################

Balance

Rebalanced a number of leader traits: Some general and governor traits that previously encouraged moving leaders from planet to planet have been made council traits or had their modifiers changed to discourage this. Resource production traits now require the leader to have at least level 2 to gain the first tier.
Empire Size now has a floor of 50, and thus can no longer go negative.
Increased the bombardment effectiveness of large fleets.
The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops has been dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 2 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony)
Renormalised political power from living standards and reduced base faction unity gain to better fit intended unity production. The Shared Burdens civic no longer grants an increase to the base unity of the Egalitarian faction, as the benefit is now rolled into their living standards.
Sequential End-Game Crises now get +2 strength multipliers instead of +1.5.
The Khan now has terrifying admiral traits.
The opinion modifier from Defender of the Galaxy now only affects normal, non-fallen/awakened, empires that are capable of independent diplomacy.
Colonists now increase planetary build speed by 10% instead of creating defensive armies.

Fixed AI hiring a governor without having a planet to assign them to.
Fixed AI hiring scientists without having science ships to assign them to.

Bugfixes

Broken Shackles Origin event "Homesick" no longer casts affected Pops into the void
Adjusted width of MP lobby chat entries so that they don't overlap the scroll bar.
Council Agenda Costs now benefit from Empire Size Effect modifiers.
Cyborg general trait will now add +2 combat width, as stated in the tooltip
Empires with the Under One Ruler origin no longer ignore the initial 20 year cooldown on government reform.
Federation project Flocks of Cloud should no longer get stuck ad infinitum in the situation log
Fixed an error in which you may have been prevented from using Operation Crisis Beacon again - beyond the intended 4-year lockout period - if said Operation was aborted after confirming its target.
Fixed duplicate tradition names in French
Fixed Imperial Heirs not having a starting leader trait.
Fixed queued move orders from a system with an FTL inhibitor not being displayed correctly.
Fixed randomly generated empires having DLC-locked civics.
Fixed randomly generated species having DLC-locked traits.
Fixed randomly generated species having invalid trait and climate preference combinations.
Fixed randomly generated species not having enough traits if it has traits (such as Aquatic) that are required by something else.
Fixed the bonus leader trait from Aptitude Traditions not applying to Imperial Heirs.
Fixed tooltip for Beacon of Liberty and Fanatic Purifiers, now they do mention that they are incompatible with Crusader Spirit
Imperial Heirs are excluded from the effects of The Orb.
Imperial Heirs that are generals or admirals in empires with Distinguished Admiralty now benefit from the +2 starting level.
Invalid civics will get removed when authority is changed through event for Under One Rule
Leaders excluded from the upkeep cost now correctly produce resources
Pharma State civic is now correctly blocked by Payback and Broken Shackles.
Removed DLC lock on some faction demands that were introduced in 3.8
Set the AI weight for reorganizing the council to 0.
Void Dweller MegaCorps with the Pharma State civic now correctly replace their starting Holo-Theaters with a Gene Clinic, unless they also have Permanent Employment (in which case it is replaced with the Employment Center).
Warform no longer has the synth trait and has the second tier of the skirmisher trait.

Improvements

Imperial Heirs are now up to 10 years younger than regular leaders of the same species. Starting Imperial Rulers are now up to 15 years older than regular leaders of the same species.
Imperial Heirs that benefit from bonus starting levels now have selectable traits for those levels for owners of Galactic Paragons.
Imperial Rulers and Heirs now have a 5% chance to start with a negative trait and an additional positive trait. The Philosopher King civic negates this.

Fixed leader portrait clipping in the level up window.
Fixed position of Speech To Text button in the MP lobby.
Fixed width of MP lobby chat text for large fonts and text to speech.
If a player in your coop group adds a leader trait while you have the level up window open and there are no more traits to add, it will show the last selection.
Reworked the planet occupation icon frame
Selecting a ship by clicking it will now ignore its bounding box if it has a collision mesh.

Modding

Empire size string now uses the actual defines instead of localized numbers for its message.
Made it possible to set what leader portrait container to use for each location of the new portraits
Made reload_gui console command more stable

[/expand]

More changes to leader traits and some of the mechanics surrounding them will be coming in 3.9 in the fall. We’re placing some of the ideas and suggestions we’ve received into our “Summer Experimentation” bucket and we’ll see which ones pan out.

At this point we feel that 3.8 Gemini is in a stable state, and barring the need for a 3.8.5 hotfix, the next planned release will be 3.9 Caelum. (Caelum, “the Chisel”, represents a sculptor’s tools. Perfect for a balancing and polish update.)

Living Standards, Political Power and Unity Generation

A pass has been done on living standard political power and unity generation to normalize them when compared with one another - living standards like Shared Burdens and Utopian Abundance were not generating enough, while Academic Privilege was previously the “champion of Unity” - a little odd for the Materialist living standard.

After these changes, Utopian Abundance should be at the top of the charts, followed by Shared Burdens. (Which no longer needs the “double Unity from the Egalitarian faction” crutch.)

These changes have gone live in today’s update.

Habitats and You

A few people [ed: a few?!?] have discussed the tendency of late game systems to become flooded with extreme numbers of habitats. We have some ideas on different ways to curb this behavior while still ensuring that habitats are thematic and effective, especially in the hands of Void Dwellers.

I’ll have a broader feedback discussion later on during the summer where we present some of our ideas, discuss how experiments with them went, and collect additional feedback from the community.

Stellaris with a Twist

Stellaris with a Twist is our streaming event, where Ep3o and AlphaYangDelete play co-op multiplayer, and try to accomplish goals suggested and chosen by the Community.

If you have a suggestion for the final stream's goals, you can submit it here, and if you've missed part of this event you can get caught up here!

The last session of Stellaris with a Twist is next week, at 1500 CEST! Don't miss the exciting conclusion and find out which of our streamers will accomplish their Community-Suggested Goals for the Stream!

Free to Play Weekend

But wait, there's more!

What's better than having a galaxy full of wonder to explore? Conquering that galaxy with a friend, obviously!

From June 22nd to June 26th, Stellaris will be Free to Play; there will never be a better time to introduce a friend to Stellaris -- and with the addition of co-op, you can now work together to conquer liberate the galaxy like never before.

In Stellaris multiplayer, the host's DLC is shared between all the players in the game -- the same holds true for co-op, even if one of the players is playing for free. So grab a friend, your planet cracker, and be sure to play during the Free to Play weekend! Thinking of trying Stellaris for the first time during the Free to Play, but don't know where to start? Join us on Discord; from the 22nd to the 26th, our Player Helpers will be running "Learn to Play" Stellaris sessions!

That's it for this week, see you next week!

Jun 15, 2023

3.8.4 "Gemini" Now Available!

Stellaris - MrFreake_PDX

Hello,

The latest minor patch for Stellaris is ready and released, fixing a number of issues and further balancing the new mechanics.

This should be the last of the 3.8 patches, although the teams work continues targeting later updates.

Please find the patch notes below.
3.8.4 "Gemini" Patch Notes
[expand type=details]
############################################################
#################### VERSION 3.8.4 ######################
############################################################

Balance

Rebalanced a number of leader traits: Some general and governor traits that previously encouraged moving leaders from planet to planet have been made council traits or had their modifiers changed to discourage this. Resource production traits now require the leader to have at least level 2 to gain the first tier.
Empire Size now has a floor of 50, and thus can no longer go negative.
Increased the bombardment effectiveness of large fleets.
The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops has been dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 2 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony)
Renormalised political power from living standards and reduced base faction unity gain to better fit intended unity production. The Shared Burdens civic no longer grants an increase to the base unity of the Egalitarian faction, as the benefit is now rolled into their living standards.
Sequential End-Game Crises now get +2 strength multipliers instead of +1.5.
The Khan now has terrifying admiral traits.
The opinion modifier from Defender of the Galaxy now only affects normal, non-fallen/awakened, empires that are capable of independent diplomacy.
Colonists now increase planetary build speed by 10% instead of creating defensive armies.

Fixed AI hiring a governor without having a planet to assign them to.
Fixed AI hiring scientists without having science ships to assign them to.

Bugfixes

Broken Shackles Origin event "Homesick" no longer casts affected Pops into the void
Adjusted width of MP lobby chat entries so that they don't overlap the scroll bar.
Council Agenda Costs now benefit from Empire Size Effect modifiers.
Cyborg general trait will now add +2 combat width, as stated in the tooltip
Empires with the Under One Ruler origin no longer ignore the initial 20 year cooldown on government reform.
Federation project Flocks of Cloud should no longer get stuck ad infinitum in the situation log
Fixed an error in which you may have been prevented from using Operation Crisis Beacon again - beyond the intended 4-year lockout period - if said Operation was aborted after confirming its target.
Fixed duplicate tradition names in French
Fixed Imperial Heirs not having a starting leader trait.
Fixed queued move orders from a system with an FTL inhibitor not being displayed correctly.
Fixed randomly generated empires having DLC-locked civics.
Fixed randomly generated species having DLC-locked traits.
Fixed randomly generated species having invalid trait and climate preference combinations.
Fixed randomly generated species not having enough traits if it has traits (such as Aquatic) that are required by something else.
Fixed the bonus leader trait from Aptitude Traditions not applying to Imperial Heirs.
Fixed tooltip for Beacon of Liberty and Fanatic Purifiers, now they do mention that they are incompatible with Crusader Spirit
Imperial Heirs are excluded from the effects of The Orb.
Imperial Heirs that are generals or admirals in empires with Distinguished Admiralty now benefit from the +2 starting level.
Invalid civics will get removed when authority is changed through event for Under One Rule
Leaders excluded from the upkeep cost now correctly produce resources
Pharma State civic is now correctly blocked by Payback and Broken Shackles.
Removed DLC lock on some faction demands that were introduced in 3.8
Set the AI weight for reorganizing the council to 0.
Void Dweller MegaCorps with the Pharma State civic now correctly replace their starting Holo-Theaters with a Gene Clinic, unless they also have Permanent Employment (in which case it is replaced with the Employment Center).
Warform no longer has the synth trait and has the second tier of the skirmisher trait.

Improvements

Imperial Heirs are now up to 10 years younger than regular leaders of the same species. Starting Imperial Rulers are now up to 15 years older than regular leaders of the same species.
Imperial Heirs that benefit from bonus starting levels now have selectable traits for those levels for owners of Galactic Paragons.
Imperial Rulers and Heirs now have a 5% chance to start with a negative trait and an additional positive trait. The Philosopher King civic negates this.

Fixed leader portrait clipping in the level up window.
Fixed position of Speech To Text button in the MP lobby.
Fixed width of MP lobby chat text for large fonts and text to speech.
If a player in your coop group adds a leader trait while you have the level up window open and there are no more traits to add, it will show the last selection.
Reworked the planet occupation icon frame
Selecting a ship by clicking it will now ignore its bounding box if it has a collision mesh.

Modding

Empire size string now uses the actual defines instead of localized numbers for its message.
Made it possible to set what leader portrait container to use for each location of the new portraits
Made reload_gui console command more stable

[/expand]

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 new version. You can roll back to a prior version by 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.

May 30, 2023

Stellaris 3.8.3 "Gemini" Patch Now Available!

Stellaris - MrFreake_PDX

Hello,

Our latest patch is now live and ready for download.

Please find the patch notes below.

Enjoy!

STELLARIS 3.8.3 PATCH NOTES
[expand type=details]
############################################################
#################### VERSION 3.8.3 ######################
############################################################

Improvements

It is now possible to rename council positions by clicking on council position name in the council view.
Added additional event chains to Under One Rule.
Under One Rule now will take into account if the ruler was bad or good towards citizens.
Added a checkbox to toggle automatic expansion of a sector in the sector editor
Made the three different "Terraforming Candidate Discovered" events turn into messages if you have already found one before.
The pre-sapients that worship the Beholder now have the Psionic trait.
The Beholder's Psi-Inoculation process is now a pair of decisions to toggle it on and off, instead of a decision to be enacted for each pop you want to become psionic.
The Animator of Clay has blessed the corroded one.
Imperial Heirs will now be more likely to adopt the class of the current ruler if you have the Philosopher King civic.
Imperial heirs will now have their chosen class weighted by civics and traditions that give bonuses to specific leader classes.
Added the Reorganize Council agenda, which allows reselection of unlocked council positions without the need to reform the government.
Beholder now has a recruitment event, and Azaryn's recruitment event has a couple more options
Added a checkbox in the army tab of the planet view to control if a planet is used via the sector army builder or not
Added scroll wheel speed settings
Leaders in the leader pool that start with a negative trait, now correctly gets one less additional negative trait during their lifespan.
For players without Galactic Paragons, leaders will more often get traits that match if they're assigned as councilors or not.
Increased the age span of new leaders, but weighted towards the middle. Initial Leaders will now also be roughly the same age as pool leaders.
The edict fund is now shown in the council view.
Imperial empires can now crown a Chosen One to be the Divine Sovereign if the Chosen One is the current ruler or heir.

Balance

Legendary leaders do not count towards Leader Capacity.
The Eager trait now has an additional effect: these leaders will not contribute towards Leader Capacity until they reach level 4. Assigned some event spawned leaders the Eager (II) trait.
Admirals that command fleets hired from marauders no longer count towards your leader cap.
XP Penalties for going over leader capacity have been reduced. The LEADER_CAPACITY_XP_SCALE define has been added for modders to be able to easily adjust this number.
Military fleets led by an Admiral can now explore unsurveyed hyperlanes. (This does not permit Admirals to survey planets, anomalies, or wormholes.)
Admirals no longer give Fleet Command Limit based off of their level.
Researching Galactic Administration now removes the cooldown for government reform, this was previously only done if you obtained it via Statecraft traditions.
Rebalanced many traditions and ascension Perks.
Opener for Aptitude traditions now gives +1 trait, moved from the Finisher. This is retroactively applied to leaders that have been hired or are in your leader pool.
The Empire Needs You now gives -25% Leader Hire Cost instead of +1 Leader Capacity.
Specialist Training now gives +25% Leader XP Gain.
Psychological Profiling now gives -25% Leader Upkeep Cost in addition to -1 Max Negative Traits.
Healthcare Program now gives +20 Leader Lifespan instead of +10 Leader Lifespan.
Aptitude Finisher now gives +1 Leader Capacity and +1 Leader Trait Pick options instead of +1 trait.
Science Division now gives -10% Scientist Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Scientist XP Gain.
Polytechnic Education now gives +10% Leader XP gain instead of +20%.
Colonial Viceroys now gives -10% Governor Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Governor XP Gain.
War Games now gives -10% Admiral Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Admiral XP Gain.
Mind and Body now gives +10 Leader Lifespan instead of +20 Leader Lifespan.
Finisher effect for Statecraft now grants Galactic Administration as a research option with 25% progress instead of giving the tech for tree.
Resistance is Frugal now also gives -10% General Cost and Upkeep.
Imperial Prerogative now gives +2 Leader Capacity in addition to its existing effects.
Transcendent Learning Prerogative now gives +2 Leader Capacity, +1 Leader Pool Size and +33% Leader XP gain.
Aptitude Tradition "Champions of the Empire" now gives bonus per Leaders' levels. Effect is now a flat -2 Empire Size per Governor level, and 0.5% Exp per Scientist level (and 2 Naval capacity per Admiral/General level)
Guardian trait maximum effect is now +33% Defense Platform Damage and Hull Points.
Frontier Spirit trait maximum effects changed to -10% Colony Ship Cost and +50% Colonization Speed and +1 starting pop for colonies.
Cyborg generals now increase planetary combat width.
Reduced passive experience gain by 30% for Progenitor Hive leaders from level 1-6 and 50% for Progenitor Hive leaders between 7-10.
Gray Eminence destiny trait now reduces the effects of empire size, instead of reducing empire size directly. Updated Aturion Efficiency to match Gray Eminence.
Now imperial rulers do not lose imperial heir trait, so they don't become worse when they take over the country.
Lowered the spawn chance for the legendary paragon Keides by 75%.
Autocannons are no longer valued at three times their intended military power.
Now criminals are also unhappy when under oppressive autocracy civic
Kai-Sha's "Expanded Contact Network" event will now upgrade her Shady Contacts trait if she already has it. And gives intel on other empires if it has already been maxed out.
Replaced -20% Empire Size reduction for Aturion Efficiency trait with -10% Empire Size Penalty.
Leader traits that have base resource production now produce the market equivalent of 8 energy/month for tier 1 and 24 energy/month for tier.
Aggressor admiral sub-class now gives +7.5% weapon damage.
Artillerist II trait now gives +7.5% tracking.
Fortifier trait now scales between -5% Starbase upgrade cost and -5% Defense platform cost at tier 1 to -10% Starbase upgrade cost, -10% Defense platform cost, +5% Starbase hullpoints and +5% Defense platform hullpoints at tier 3.
Armada Logistician trait ship upkeep maximum reduction is now -10%.
Military Pioneer trait maximum effects are now +20% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
Guerilla Tactician now gives a flat 10 Evasion instead of a +50% Evasion multiplier.
Architect of War now gives -10% Military Ship Cost.
Charisma trait now has a maximum Edict Upkeep reduction of -10%
Removed -5% Military Ship Cost from the Strategist sub-class
Geological Consultant trait maximum effect reduced to 9 months of unity per blocker removed.
Retired Fleet Officer trait maximum effects reduced to +20% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
Agrarian Upbringing trait now checks for country_uses_food = yes instead of being biological.
Shipwright maximum effects reduced to +10% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
Frontier Spirit maximum effects reduced to -10% Colony Ship Cost and +45% Colonization Speed.
Architectural Sense maximum effects reduced to -10% Buildings and Districts Cost, -5% Buildings and District Upkeep, +25% Planetary Build Speed.
Experimenter trait now gives a maxium of 2×Leader Level Research Points per month.
Explorer trait maximum effects reduced to -10% Science Ship Cost and +25% Anomaly Research Speed.
Expansionist maximum effects reduced to -10% Outpost Alloy and Influence Cost.
Great Researcher trait now gives 5×Leader Level Research Points per month.
Taskmaster trait XP reduced from 600 to 500. In return it now has soldiers produce 2/2/2 Energy/Minerals/Food (for countries that use food) or 3/3 Energy/Minerals (for countries that don't)

Bugfixes

Under One Rule now changes to Imperial Authority when transitioning to Galactic Emperor or Psionic Sovereign.
Intellectual Espionage trait now takes into account all researcher category jobs on the planet.
Fixed an issue where the Expanded Hive Warren would get deleted if there was no remaining unupgraded Hive Warrens on the planet
Updated all researcher jobs to check for Academic Recruiter.
Increased the army upkeep from Disorder II trait.
Chainbreaker trait now requires Egalitarian ethics.
Honored Warmaster trait now requires Xenophile ethics.
Commented out cut prospecting decision.
Kidnapper trait now checks that the general's owner allows slavery instead of checking their ethics.
Taskmaster trait no longer gives an undocumented +5% Building Speed per soldier job.
Now you can't terraform with Azaryn without launching her special ability.
The Death of a Great Leader event should no longer fire when you send a leader off to the Keepers of Knowledge.
Cloaked Ships will no longer block starbases from being rebuilt.
Moved gestalt nodes further apart from each other in the council view so that trait picking doesn't get blocked when they have a lot of traits.
The planet visuals should now update properly when planets change class
Fixed an issue where traits given via event options would not correctly display triggered effects
The ambience sound effect played in the council view is now properly affected by the ambience volume slider
Fixed an issue where leaders that changed empires would retain their council position in their old empire
Updated all researcher jobs to check for leader_trait_academia_recruiter
Fixed a bug where modding the species appearance would not apply to the ruler
leader_trait_industrial_espionage now takes into account all researcher category jobs on the planet.
The Scholarium Investigator leader trait now gives +25% Assist Research Efficiency instead of failing to give 10% Research Speed as a non-council trait.
Fixed a COOP bug where it was possible for several players to unlock council positions at the same time resulting in duplicates
If there is a wormhole in the capital system, then the Keides wormhole will spawn in a random neighboring system 1-2 jumps away
Cordyceptic Stargazers now correctly spawn with an amoeba fleet again.
Fixed Eager Explorer empires spawning with an extra scientist.
Slaves are now properly set under dystopian living standard
Any Gestalt empire generated after game start (e.g. from machine uprising) should now correctly get their Gestalt council nodes.
Hyperdrive technologies no longer show duplicated icons.
Fixed issues where starbase modifiers would apply to defensive platforms when they shouldn't
Fixed an issue where pre FTL empires spawned from the necrophage origin would spawn in orbit of their planet
Fixed a bug where ships would sometimes stop following its target when they entered a hyperlane
Zroni Relic will now add 1 level to the leader, but won't choose trait on random it will be up to player to chose the trait.
Fixed notification map ping staying visible for some time after dismissing the notification.
Fixed a bug where some traits would not properly localize their names when their modifiers are part of tooltips
Fixed a bug where the Insightful trait tooltip would duplicate headers for its effects
Fixed an issue where it was not possible to unassign envoys from their current task
Fixed Resilient trait to properly adjust for synths. Did the same for destiny trait which was giving leader life span
Crusader Spirit Opinion Modifier: Now it gives -80 opinion towards everyone of different ethic and +20 to the same ethic empires
Fixed issues with the fleet manager where the buttons to increase and decrease the number of ships would not work correctly when using shift or ctrl modifiers
Rogue Scientist event chain shouldn't trigger for Governors assigned as Head of Science.
Updated some trigger loc from "No of ..." to "Number of ..." to be more consistent with the rest of the game.
Fixed Tooltip for Paranoid Leader Trait
Fixed title case for anomaly.3141 "The Depths of Alien Life"
The event that allows you to pick a Chosen One no longer says "three individuals" are capable of absorbing such power and proceeds to list four names.
Events that give the Chosen traits now check that the leader in question is psionic.
Fixed an issue where you could reinforce a fleet when the template was not filled with the correct ships even though the fleet was filled on command limit
Fixed the spawn chance modifier of the anomaly The Orb, as it could not spawn before.
Beholder planetfall error message now states that an empty building slot is required.
Fixed icon for brainslug species trait again.
You can no longer psi-inoculate hive-minded pops or those being purged.
Fallen empire capital planets should now have the correct planetary designation.
You can no longer create subjects from sectors if the primary species would be an infertile clone army species.
Marauder admirals can no longer serve on the council or be manually fired.
Fixed some edges where a ruler could be chosen by a shroud entity but not awarded the trait.
Added scripted loc for GetDefenseForceOrArmada and GetGDFOrArmada
Updated Cybernetic Advantage agenda so it doesn't display placeholder art.
Regular empires no longer have machine or hive-mind leaders in their external leader pools and vice versa.
Cloned Organs/Self-Preservation Protocols now correctly has the same effects as Mind and Body.
Fixed incorrect modifiers on the adoption effect of Synthetic traditions.
Fixed MP lobby chat messages and scroll bar spilling outside the chat box.
Fixed most tooltips in the game browser not working.
Fixed Plantoids Species Pack DLC not showing up in MP lobby DLC list
Fixed misalignment of the DLC icons in the multiplayer lobby
Fixed icon lists sometimes becoming vertical when they should be horizontal
Fixed coop presence icons not always showing their tooltip.
The Interstellar Recruitment Office tooltip now specifies why you can't build it if you already have one in your empire.
The sentinels archaeology site will now put Azaryn back on her own ship when she returns.
Fixed a bug where some mercenary fleets would not have an admiral assigned to them
Mercenary Admirals now get Mercenary Warrior Trait and 2 admiral traits to represent their level
Mercenary Enclaves should no longer steal their admirals which they just rented out

AI will now wait until it has at least 5 planets and 25 years before choosing a specialization designation for its homeworld
Fixed an issue where AI would be unable to build any buildings if they desired to build the Ancient Refinery but did not have access to any minor artifacts

Stability and Performance

Fixed a number of Out of Sync errors.
Increased performance in the leader view
Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur when a scientist was elected ruler while performing science ship orders
Fixed a rare, but persistent crash when an empire was destroyed
Fixed a crash that could sometimes happen if there were issues opening or writing log files
Fixed crash in MP lobby when you confirm disbanding a coop group if the player list changed while the confirmation popup was open.
Disabled tooltips in the loading screen to avoid crashes related to focus loss.

Re-enabled tooltips while the game has no focus as hiding them caused issues for screen readers.
Added tooltips for the join/leave coop empire button in the MP lobby when you can't click it.
Added a tooltip for the coop checkbox in the MP lobby when you can't change it due to being ready.
Use different titles for the multiplayer and coop game browsers.
The multiplayer game browser now has a column that shows whether a game allows coop.
Fixed an issue where the active agendas list would sometimes duplicate elements
Added a new version of the main coop presence view to the topbar for resolutions with width >= 1600
Auto-confirm disbanding a coop group in the MP lobby if all other players leave the group.
Modifiers that affect leader experience gain will now be indented under a "Experience Gain Rate:" header
Added confirmation prompt when selecting a country during hotjoining
Lysator Syng's hire tooltip now shows that hiring him will give you 3 pirate ships as well.
Show decimals for power projection breakdown in naval cap tooltip

Modding

Added set_random_$CLASS$_background_effect script effects, to assign a random background class to a leader. $CLASS$ can be replaced with admiral, general, governor, or scientist.
Added support for custom_tooltip_with_modifiers for council positions.
Updated documentation for council positions to include new script support. See 01_test_councilor.txt for an example of a council position not linked to civics.
Added script effect "unlock_council_selection = yes" to force validation of council positions and allow the player to reselect their council positions.
Fixed the ethics OverLappingElementsBox not reloading properly
Fixed the spacing parameter not working for vertical OverlappingElementBoxTypes
Added new "empire_size_add" modifier, which flatly increases or decreases the Empire size.
Council position unlock screen will now show council positions which are available by scope check but don't require any civics
Added console command "debug_trait_weights", which enables logging of some of the trait random roll weights.
Added military_power_multiplier to weapon components, which allows manual adjustment of combat power assessment for intangibles that are otherwise difficult to automate.
Use 2 decimals for army upkeep in army view

[/expand]

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 new version. You can roll back to a prior version by 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.

May 25, 2023

Stellaris Dev Diary #302 - Leaders and 3.8.3 Balance Changes

Stellaris - PDX_ladydzra

by Eladrin

Hello again!

We’ve been working on a balance and bugfixing update, which should hopefully be coming to you early next week. Today I’ll be going over some of the things that will be in it, as well as go into why we’ve prioritized certain fixes over others.

STELLARIS 3.8.3 ‘GEMINI’ PRELIMINARY PATCH NOTES

[expand type=showmore]
############################################################
#################### VERSION 3.8.3 Patch ######################
############################################################

Improvements

It is now possible to rename council positions by clicking on council position name in the council view.
Added additional event chains to Under One Rule.
Under One Rule now will take into account if the ruler was bad or good towards citizens.
Added a checkbox to toggle automatic expansion of a sector in the sector editor
Made the three different "Terraforming Candidate Discovered" events turn into messages if you have already found one before.
The pre-sapients that worship the Beholder now have the Psionic trait.
The Beholder's Psi-Inoculation process is now a pair of decisions to toggle it on and off, instead of a decision to be enacted for each pop you want to become psionic.
The Animator of Clay has blessed the corroded one.
Imperial Heirs will now be more likely to adopt the class of the current ruler if you have the Philosopher King civic.
Imperial heirs will now have their chosen class weighted by civics and traditions that give bonuses to specific leader classes.
Added the Reorganize Council agenda, which allows reselection of unlocked council positions without the need to reform the government.
Beholder now has a recruitment event, and Azaryn's recruitment event has a couple more options
Added a checkbox in the army tab of the planet view to control if a planet is used via the sector army builder or not
Added scroll wheel speed settings
Leaders in the leader pool that start with a negative trait, now correctly gets one less additional negative trait during their lifespan.
For players without Galactic Paragons, leaders will more often get traits that match if they're assigned as councilors or not.
Increased the age span of new leaders, but weighted towards the middle. Initial Leaders will now also be roughly the same age as pool leaders.
The edict fund is now shown in the council view.
Imperial empires can now crown a Chosen One to be the Divine Sovereign if the Chosen One is the current ruler or heir.

Balance

Legendary leaders do not count towards Leader Capacity.
The Eager trait now has an additional effect: these leaders will not contribute towards Leader Capacity until they reach level 4. Assigned some event spawned leaders the Eager (II) trait.
Admirals that command fleets hired from marauders no longer count towards your leader cap.
XP Penalties for going over leader capacity have been reduced. The LEADER_CAPACITY_XP_SCALE define has been added for modders to be able to easily adjust this number.
Military fleets led by an Admiral can now explore unsurveyed hyperlanes. (This does not permit Admirals to survey planets, anomalies, or wormholes.)
Admirals no longer give Fleet Command Limit based off of their level.
Researching Galactic Administration now removes the cooldown for government reform, this was previously only done if you obtained it via Statecraft traditions.
Rebalanced many traditions and ascension Perks.
Opener for Aptitude traditions now gives +1 trait, moved from the Finisher. This is retroactively applied to leaders that have been hired or are in your leader pool.
The Empire Needs You now gives -25% Leader Hire Cost instead of +1 Leader Capacity.
Specialist Training now gives +25% Leader XP Gain.
Psychological Profiling now gives -25% Leader Upkeep Cost in addition to -1 Max Negative Traits.
Healthcare Program now gives +20 Leader Lifespan instead of +10 Leader Lifespan.
Aptitude Finisher now gives +1 Leader Capacity and +1 Leader Trait Pick options instead of +1 trait.
Science Division now gives -10% Scientist Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Scientist XP Gain.
Polytechnic Education now gives +10% Leader XP gain instead of +20%.
Colonial Viceroys now gives -10% Governor Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Governor XP Gain.
War Games now gives -10% Admiral Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Admiral XP Gain.
Mind and Body now gives +10 Leader Lifespan instead of +20 Leader Lifespan.
Finisher effect for Statecraft now grants Galactic Administration as a research option with 25% progress instead of giving the tech for tree.
Resistance is Frugal now also gives -10% General Cost and Upkeep.
Imperial Prerogative now gives +2 Leader Capacity in addition to its existing effects.
Transcendent Learning Prerogative now gives +2 Leader Capacity, +1 Leader Pool Size and +33% Leader XP gain.
Aptitude Tradition "Champions of the Empire" now gives bonus per Leaders' levels. Effect is now a flat -2 Empire Size per Governor level, and 0.5% Exp per Scientist level (and 2 Naval capacity per Admiral/General level)
Guardian trait maximum effect is now +33% Defense Platform Damage and Hull Points.
Frontier Spirit trait maximum effects changed to -10% Colony Ship Cost and +50% Colonization Speed and +1 starting pop for colonies.
Cyborg generals now increase planetary combat width.
Reduced passive experience gain by 30% for Progenitor Hive leaders from level 1-6 and 50% for Progenitor Hive leaders between 7-10.
Gray Eminence destiny trait now reduces the effects of empire size, instead of reducing empire size directly. Updated Aturion Efficiency to match Gray Eminence.
Now imperial rulers do not lose imperial heir trait, so they don't become worse when they take over the country.
Lowered the spawn chance for the legendary paragon Keides by 75%.
Autocannons are no longer valued at three times their intended military power.
Now criminals are also unhappy when under oppressive autocracy civic
Kai-Sha's "Expanded Contact Network" event will now upgrade her Shady Contacts trait if she already has it. And gives intel on other empires if it has already been maxed out.
Replaced -20% Empire Size reduction for Aturion Efficiency trait with -10% Empire Size Penalty.
Leader traits that have base resource production now produce the market equivalent of 8 energy/month for tier 1 and 32 energy/month for tier 2.
Aggressor admiral sub-class now gives +7.5% weapon damage.
Artillerist II trait now gives +7.5% tracking.
Fortifier trait now scales between -5% Starbase upgrade cost and -5% Defense platform cost at tier 1 to -10% Starbase upgrade cost, -10% Defense platform cost, +5% Starbase hullpoints and +5% Defense platform hullpoints at tier 3.
Armada Logistician trait ship upkeep maximum reduction is now -10%.
Military Pioneer trait maximum effects are now +20% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
Guerilla Tactician now gives a flat 10 Evasion instead of a +50% Evasion multiplier.
Architect of War now gives -10% Military Ship Cost.
Charisma trait now has a maximum Edict Upkeep reduction of -10%
Removed -5% Military Ship Cost from the Strategist sub-class
Geological Consultant trait maximum effect reduced to 9 months of unity per blocker removed.
Retired Fleet Officer trait maximum effects reduced to +20% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
Agrarian Upbringing trait now checks for country_uses_food = yes instead of being biological.
Shipwright maximum effects reduced to +10% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
Frontier Spirit maximum effects reduced to -10% Colony Ship Cost and +45% Colonization Speed.
Architectural Sense maximum effects reduced to -10% Buildings and Districts Cost, -5% Buildings and District Upkeep, +25% Planetary Build Speed.
Experimenter trait now gives a maxium of 2×Leader Level Research Points per month.
Explorer trait maximum effects reduced to -10% Science Ship Cost and +25% Anomaly Research Speed.
Expansionist maximum effects reduced to -10% Outpost Alloy and Influence Cost.
Great Researcher trait now gives 5×Leader Level Research Points per month.
Taskmaster trait XP reduced from 600 to 500. In return it now has soldiers produce 2/2/2 Energy/Minerals/Food (for countries that use food) or 3/3 Energy/Minerals (for countries that don't)

Bugfixes

Under One Rule now changes to Imperial Authority when transitioning to Galactic Emperor or Psionic Sovereign.
Intellectual Espionage trait now takes into account all researcher category jobs on the planet.
Fixed an issue where the Expanded Hive Warren would get deleted if there was no remaining unupgraded Hive Warrens on the planet
Updated all researcher jobs to check for Academic Recruiter.
Increased the army upkeep from Disorder II trait.
Chainbreaker trait now requires Egalitarian ethics.
Honored Warmaster trait now requires Xenophile ethics.
Commented out cut prospecting decision.
Kidnapper trait now checks that the general's owner allows slavery instead of checking their ethics.
Taskmaster trait no longer gives an undocumented +5% Building Speed per soldier job.
Now you can't terraform with Azaryn without launching her special ability.
The Death of a Great Leader event should no longer fire when you send a leader off to the Keepers of Knowledge.
Cloaked Ships will no longer block starbases from being rebuilt.
Moved gestalt nodes further apart from each other in the council view so that trait picking doesn't get blocked when they have a lot of traits.
The planet visuals should now update properly when planets change class
Fixed an issue where traits given via event options would not correctly display triggered effects
The ambience sound effect played in the council view is now properly affected by the ambience volume slider
Fixed an issue where leaders that changed empires would retain their council position in their old empire
Fixed a bug where modding the species appearance would not apply to the ruler
The Scholarium Investigator leader trait now gives +25% Assist Research Efficiency instead of failing to give 10% Research Speed as a non-council trait.
Fixed a COOP bug where it was possible for several players to unlock council positions at the same time resulting in duplicates
If there is a wormhole in the capital system, then the Keides wormhole will spawn in a random neighboring system 1-2 jumps away
Cordyceptic Stargazers now correctly spawn with an amoeba fleet again.
Fixed Eager Explorer empires spawning with an extra scientist.
Slaves are now properly set under dystopian living standard
Any Gestalt empire generated after game start (e.g. from machine uprising) should now correctly get their Gestalt council nodes.
Hyperdrive technologies no longer show duplicated icons.
Fixed issues where starbase modifiers would apply to defensive platforms when they shouldn't
Fixed an issue where pre FTL empires spawned from the necrophage origin would spawn in orbit of their planet
Fixed a bug where ships would sometimes stop following its target when they entered a hyperlane
Zroni Relic will now add 1 level to the leader, but won't choose trait on random it will be up to player to chose the trait.
Fixed notification map ping staying visible for some time after dismissing the notification.
Fixed a bug where some traits would not properly localize their names when their modifiers are part of tooltips
Fixed a bug where the Insightful trait tooltip would duplicate headers for its effects
Fixed an issue where it was not possible to unassign envoys from their current task
Fixed Resilient trait to properly adjust for synths. Did the same for destiny trait which was giving leader life span
Crusader Spirit Opinion Modifier: Now it gives -80 opinion towards everyone of different ethic and +20 to the same ethic empires
Fixed issues with the fleet manager where the buttons to increase and decrease the number of ships would not work correctly when using shift or ctrl modifiers
Rogue Scientist event chain shouldn't trigger for Governors assigned as Head of Science.
Updated some trigger loc from "No of ..." to "Number of ..." to be more consistent with the rest of the game.
Fixed Tooltip for Paranoid Leader Trait
Fixed title case for anomaly.3141 "The Depths of Alien Life"
The event that allows you to pick a Chosen One no longer says "three individuals" are capable of absorbing such power and proceeds to list four names.
Events that give the Chosen traits now check that the leader in question is psionic.
Fixed an issue where you could reinforce a fleet when the template was not filled with the correct ships even though the fleet was filled on command limit
Fixed the spawn chance modifier of the anomaly The Orb, as it could not spawn before.
Beholder planetfall error message now states that an empty building slot is required.
Fixed icon for brainslug species trait again.
You can no longer psi-inoculate hive-minded pops or those being purged.
Fallen empire capital planets should now have the correct planetary designation.
You can no longer create subjects from sectors if the primary species would be an infertile clone army species.
Marauder admirals can no longer serve on the council or be manually fired.
Fixed some edges where a ruler could be chosen by a shroud entity but not awarded the trait.
Added scripted loc for GetDefenseForceOrArmada and GetGDFOrArmada
Updated Cybernetic Advantage agenda so it doesn't display placeholder art.
Regular empires no longer have machine or hive-mind leaders in their external leader pools and vice versa.
Cloned Organs/Self-Preservation Protocols now correctly has the same effects as Mind and Body.
Fixed incorrect modifiers on the adoption effect of Synthetic traditions.
Fixed MP lobby chat messages and scroll bar spilling outside the chat box.
Fixed most tooltips in the game browser not working.
Fixed Plantoids Species Pack DLC not showing up in MP lobby DLC list
Fixed misalignment of the DLC icons in the multiplayer lobby
Fixed icon lists sometimes becoming vertical when they should be horizontal
Fixed coop presence icons not always showing their tooltip.
The Interstellar Recruitment Office tooltip now specifies why you can't build it if you already have one in your empire.
The sentinels archaeology site will now put Azaryn back on her own ship when she returns.
Fixed a bug where some mercenary fleets would not have an admiral assigned to them
Mercenary Admirals now get Mercenary Warrior Trait and 2 admiral traits to represent their level
Mercenary Enclaves should no longer steal their admirals which they just rented out

AI will now wait until it has at least 5 planets and 25 years before choosing a specialization designation for its homeworld
Fixed an issue where AI would be unable to build any buildings if they desired to build the Ancient Refinery but did not have access to any minor artifacts

Stability and Performance

Fixed a number of Out of Sync errors.
Increased performance in the leader view
Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur when a scientist was elected ruler while performing science ship orders
Fixed a rare, but persistent crash when an empire was destroyed
Fixed a crash that could sometimes happen if there were issues opening or writing log files
Fixed crash in MP lobby when you confirm disbanding a coop group if the player list changed while the confirmation popup was open.
Disabled tooltips in the loading screen to avoid crashes related to focus loss.

Re-enabled tooltips while the game has no focus as hiding them caused issues for screen readers.
Added tooltips for the join/leave coop empire button in the MP lobby when you can't click it.
Added a tooltip for the coop checkbox in the MP lobby when you can't change it due to being ready.
Use different titles for the multiplayer and coop game browsers.
The multiplayer game browser now has a column that shows whether a game allows coop.
Fixed an issue where the active agendas list would sometimes duplicate elements
Added a new version of the main coop presence view to the topbar for resolutions with width >= 1600
Auto-confirm disbanding a coop group in the MP lobby if all other players leave the group.
Modifiers that affect leader experience gain will now be indented under a "Experience Gain Rate:" header
Added confirmation prompt when selecting a country during hotjoining
Lysator Syng's hire tooltip now shows that hiring him will give you 3 pirate ships as well.
Show decimals for power projection breakdown in naval cap tooltip

Modding

Added set_random_$CLASS$_background_effect script effects, to assign a random background class to a leader. $CLASS$ can be replaced with admiral, general, governor, or scientist.
Added support for custom_tooltip_with_modifiers for council positions.
Updated documentation for council positions to include new script support. See 01_test_councilor.txt for an example of a council position not linked to civics.
Added script effect "unlock_council_selection = yes" to force validation of council positions and allow the player to reselect their council positions.
Fixed the ethics OverLappingElementsBox not reloading properly
Fixed the spacing parameter not working for vertical OverlappingElementBoxTypes
Added new "empire_size_add" modifier, which flatly increases or decreases the Empire size.
Council position unlock screen will now show council positions which are available by scope check but don't require any civics
Added console command "debug_trait_weights", which enables logging of some of the trait random roll weights.
Added military_power_multiplier to weapon components, which allows manual adjustment of combat power assessment for intangibles that are otherwise difficult to automate.
Use 2 decimals for army upkeep in army view

[/expand]

Leaders, Level Caps, and Balance

There’s been a lot of discussion about the Leader Caps that were reintroduced with the 3.8 update. We feel that they are a necessary piece of the balance puzzle, as leaders are generally far more powerful than they were before, and we explicitly wanted empires to have fewer, more important leaders.

The leaders you recruit are intended to be seen as exceptional individuals within your empire, and the planets and fleets that do not possess an Admiral or Governor were not intended to be “unled” - but the rank and file administrators that led them were not as important as the ones represented by visible, portraited characters.

I agree with the comments that it’s unsatisfying to have empty space where there should be some representation of non-exceptional leaders. We’re still exploring solutions to this, whether it be envoy-style “level 0 leaders”, class-specific leader limits, authority based institutions being present in areas without exceptional leaders, a different system altogether, or a combination of some or all of the above. (Not so secretly, I’m also interested in exploring the idea of upgrading Envoys into full leaders at some point in the future, so adjustments will have to be made to the system regardless. Currently I lean towards a combination of some of the above, but some of the changes I want to make are bigger than fit into post-release support.)

You’ll also be able to rename Council positions.

We also concur that the caps are a bit on the tight side. As noted in the patch notes, we’re making some changes to loosen them a bit, but we feel that we have to tread carefully for balance reasons. We’ve reduced the rate at which leaders reach -100% XP for being over cap, and added an XP scalar in Defines for easy modder access.

We’re also merging the “Leader of Opportunity” mechanic we discussed last week into the Eager leader trait - leaders with this trait will not count against the Leader Cap for their first few levels. We originally intended for Leader of Opportunity to be used exclusively with event leaders, but the discussions that followed showed that people were looking forward to seeing leaders with the effect in the Leader Pool, and we agreed that it would be interesting to see.

Traits are also now nouns to ease localization into gendered languages.

Regarding early game exploration - while we are happy with the exploration phase of the game being longer than before, it’s a bit slower than we’d like. We’re going to let military fleets with an assigned Admiral explore hyperlanes, which also has the benefit of resolving an edge case when you’re at war and have an enemy system hidden away in a nebula. They won’t be able to survey planets or explore wormholes like a crewed Science ship, but this should provide more freedom to find hyperlane choke points during your initial steps to the stars. The change which gave Admirals increased command limit as they gained levels has also been removed - as many of you have pointed out, it didn’t feel great to have your fleets split on leader death.

In the longer term, we’re considering giving Generals more “things to do” - as some of you have pointed out, it could be interesting to let a General step in when newly conquered planets need to be pacified, perhaps acting as an interim martial law governor for freshly “liberated” sectors. #nopromises

We’re generally happy with how Gestalt Nodes have worked out - they have several major advantages over regular Empires due to these immortal specialist nodes, but also some differences that become more pronounced as the game goes on. In a future release (likely 3.9), we’re considering allowing them to “cull” a node and grow a new one as an agenda, as some Council traits are valuable in the first parts of the game but far less useful later on.

A great many leader traits have had a balance pass, described in the patch notes above. As the systems evolve, expect more motion there. We expect that we’ll be making further adjustments and improvements to all of these systems in upcoming Custodian updates.

Prioritization of Bugs and Balance

Naturally, there must be some prioritization done when it comes to bugs and balance. At the top of the pile are things that prevent you from playing - crashes, out of syncs, and the like.

Issues that involved displayed text are often high priority as well - as Stellaris is available in ten different languages and translators need time to do their jobs, we have limited windows in which to make any changes that require localization. 3.8.1 and 3.8.3, for instance, are localized releases, while 3.8.2 and the future 3.8.4 are not. Sometimes we’ll plan ahead and slip some “emergency loc” into a localized release even if we haven’t had a chance to actually address the bug itself, but that’s relatively rare.

Bugs deemed Exploits are usually rated very low in our general triage - if an AI is unlikely to abuse a bug against you, but you can choose to use it or not, it tends to be lower priority than things that are more disruptive to general gameplay.

Script Improvements for Councilors

Some improvements to the scriptability of council positions we were working have also been added into 3.8.3.

Firstly, we've added the Reorganize Council agenda which will allow empires to reselect their council positions without needing to reform the government.

Of more interest for modders, support for council positions made possible by non-civic sources, such as country flags, ascension perks and other such triggers have been improved.

We've attached the documentation below.

COUNCILOR SCRIPT DOCUMENTATION
[expand details=showmore]

# Councilor Documentation # # councilor_name_key = { # possible = { } Country scope triggers to evaluate if the council position is allowed. # leader_class = { } Which leader classes can have this council position. Currently only used for the Recruit new Leader buttons. Default = none. # is_leader_possible = { } Leader scope triggers to evaluate if a leader can be assigned to this position. # conditional_tooltip = "LOC_KEY" Custom tooltip text shown for the requirements of the council position. # civic = civic_imperial_cult Civic that is required for this council position. Also used by UI. Default = none. # custom_unlock_title = "LOC_KEY" Custom text shown instead of "UNLOCK_COUNCIL_POSITION_TOOLTIP for council positions without a civic" # modifier = { } Country Modifier, that is multiplied by assigned Leader's level. # custom_tooltip = "LOC_KEY" Custom tooltip text shown instead of the auto-generated modifier tooltip text of the council position. # custom_tooltip_with_modifiers = "LOC_KEY" Custom tooltip text shown in addition to the auto-generated modifier tooltip text of the council position. # icon = "GFX_icon_name" Icon used for the council position, if a civic is not specified. # required = yes/no Is this position forced to be on the council. Default = no # }

[/expand]

EXAMPLE COUNCIL POSITION
[expand details=showmore]

Script: # councilor_expert_programmer = { # leader_class = { scientist } # possible = { # has_country_flag = expert_programmer # } # is_leader_possible = { # leader_class = scientist # } # modifier = { # planet_researchers_physics_research_produces_add = 1 # } # custom_tooltip_with_modifiers = "councilor_expert_programmer_modifiers" # icon = "GFX_icon_councilor_research" # custom_unlock_title = "councilor_expert_programmer_unlock_title" # conditional_tooltip = "councilor_expert_programmer_conditional" # } Loc: # councilor_expert_programmer: "Expert Programmer" # councilor_expert_programmer_female: "$councilor_expert_programmer$" # councilor_expert_programmer_desc: "An $TITLE$ is to thank for the new script support for Council Positions." # councilor_expert_programmer_modifiers: "This is an example of a custom tooltip with modifiers for a Council Position." # councilor_expert_programmer_conditional: "This is an example of a conditional tooltip for a Council Positon." # councilor_expert_programmer_unlock_title: "§HCouncil Position from Console Commands§!"

[/expand]

Out of Syncs

I mentioned this last week, but since we’re very interested in improving multiplayer stability… If you're running into frequent out of sync issues, you can help us out a lot by having the host add these startup parameters to their game:

-randomlog -randomlog_stack=5 -randomlog_frames=3

Then, if you run into an Out of Sync, please post in the Bug Report forum and give us the Host's OOS logs as well as at least one of the clients that the popup mentioned. (OOS logs can be found in Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\oos near your save games.) Any details you can provide about what you were doing at the time is also helpful.

This setting has some performance implications (which is why it's not on by default), but if you're running into OOSes reliably, it can really help us track them down.

Ideally I’d like the 3.8.4 update to be in a state where we can remove the beta tag from the Cooperative game mode.

That's it for this week folks, see you next week!

May 9, 2023

Galactic Paragons is Available Now!

Stellaris - MrFreake_PDX

[trailer]

Galactic Paragons is available now! You can check out the full list of patch notes from Galactic Paragons and 3.8 “Gemini” here. (Patch notes are in English only.)

The galactic council is vast and full of personality! Galactic Paragons expands the Council mechanic, allows leaders you command to amplify your empire's vision, adds additional civics, and much more. An empire is only as strong as its weakest link, so invest and strengthen your leaders to guide the future in ways the galaxy has never seen before.

“There are endless stories to tell in the Stellaris universe. Breathing life into the stories of the leaders in the Galactic Council and your empires is a perfect showcase of the team’s commitment to expanding the ways our players can explore a vast and wondrous galaxy.”
-Stephen Muray, Game Director for Stellaris.

Features of Galactic Paragons include*:

Unique Council Roles: Specialized roles and benefits are included in Galactic Paragons to expand upon the new Council Mechanics in Stellaris! Find dozens of unique council roles based on your civics and government types, and unlock additional positions as your empire evolves.
New Dynamic Leaders: Recruit, improve, and follow the leaders of your empire through the ages! You may shape them by picking their traits, selecting their veteran class, and guide them towards their destiny, up until they retire - or perish!
Meet Galactic Heroes: Attract paragons of renown to your council: unique leaders with their own art, events, and stories may join your empire and bring their own benefits to your government. Or, discover four Legendary Paragons with intricate event chains and unique mechanics!
New Traditions, Civics, And More:
- A new “Under One Rule” Origin that tells the tale of the leader who founded your empire
- Eight new Civics focused on leadership, from immortalizing the personalities of leaders past in digital archives to heavily optimized council selection via corporate charter
- 12 new Veteran Classes
- Hundreds of new Leader Traits
- Two new Tradition Trees, giving players new edicts and improved leaders
- New ships, art, and story content

Get Galactic Paragons now!

3.8 “Gemini” Update

Launching alongside Galactic Paragons is the 3.8 “Gemini” update! Loaded with new Features, Quality of Life Improvements (including a Sector Editor!), story events, bug fixes, and more!

Cooperative Multiplayer (Beta)

The Custodian team has been hard at work, making it possible for several players to play the same empire in Stellaris! We look forward to see what you all will do with this new functionality, from PVP multiplayer games on fastest, to teaching a friend how to play Stellaris for the first time, Coop has been a long time coming, and we’re extremely excited for you to all to have shared experiences with your friends!

You can currently access coop multiplayer one of two ways:

Click Multiplayer -> Tick Allow Coop - This will allow you to have multiple cooperative empires in one game, or have a mix of cooperative and non-cooperative empires.
Click Cooperative - This will have up to 5 players join the host’s empire. It is not possible to have multiple cooperative empires (or a mix) in this game mode.

Cooperative multiplayer is currently still in beta, we will be doing some polish, bug, and desync fixes during post launch support. If you have issues with cooperative multiplayer, you can report bugs and desyncs here!

Empire Council

Ruling a Galactic Empire is hard work, and your council of trusty leaders is there to help you. Base-game Stellaris now includes a ruling council, where up to three leaders will assist you in ruling your empire - your Ruler, your Head of Research, and your Defense Minister.

Each leader gives bonuses to their area of expertise, which grow increasingly more powerful as they level up over time.

Gestalts will have a collection of immortal “nodes”, that will level up and gain new traits over time, which we feel better suits them thematically.

Ruler Creator

Gone are the days when you were forced to reroll your empire a dozen times, looking for that one specific trait to complete your roleplay. In 3.8 “Gemini”, we’ve introduced a Ruler creator where you can choose your ruler’s appearance and starting trait.

Renowned & Legendary Leaders

Paragon leaders are not just for owners of Galactic Paragons! The Custodian team has been hard at work updating existing content in Stellaris. You will now be able to find six* existing leaders that have been updated to the new leader system introduced in Galactic Paragons, including new traits, new and/or updated events and in some cases, updated artwork.

* Finding some of these leaders may require other DLC

Ground Combat

Ground Combat has had some love from the Custodian team as well. First off, Devastation has been rebalanced. Planetary Devastation is now more impactful to planetary production, and orbital bombardment now causes more damage and has an increased chance of killing pops, buildings, districts and defensive armies based on bombardment stance and planet size, with more aggressive bombardment stances doing more damage. Bombardment damage will now scale based on planet size, with larger planets taking less damage than smaller planets, since the bombardment is spread over a larger surface area. Additionally, Planetary Capital buildings will now spawn 0/4/8/16 defensive armies for free based on the tier of the building.

Planets that have been bombarded to the point where they have no defensive armies will now have a chance to surrender without being invaded. The first time you bombard a planet, you will get an event that asks if you want to accept planetary surrender. You can change this decision later in the Government -> Policy screen. Planets will never surrender if their pops would be purged after doing so.

And lastly, starbases now have the ability to construct offensive armies! Clicking on a starbase and going to the “Army Builder” tab will allow you to queue armies across all the planets in that sector, or hold control and click to queue five armies at a time! Each army also now has a “Rally Troops” option that will order constructed armies to automatically travel to their location (provided they can find a path to do so) and merge with the selected army.

To summarize 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 defenses. 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 the smaller planets or habitats.

Sector Editor

The Sector Editor has returned! It is now possible to (again) edit Sectors in the Planets and Sectors screen. Planetary capitals are still limited to be at least four jumps away from one another, however this should make it easier to resolve your sector gore, and make your sectors more visually appealing.

Capital Designations

3.8 “Gemini” has also brought with it four new Capital Designations for non-Gestalt empires. Choose Factory Capital, Forge Capital, Trade or Extraction Capital to boost your economies even further!

Fleet & Ship Designer

The Custodian team has also done some updating on the Fleet and Ship designer. The first thing you’ll notice is that the two tabs are now on the same screen, allowing you to easily swap between them when designing ships and fleets.

The Fleet Editor itself has also had some usability improvements, including a longer list of fleets, a new button to Copy a Fleet Template to a new fleet and an Overwrite Fleet Template button, which will update the fleet’s template to the current contents of that fleet. Additionally, pressing Delete + Enter on a fleet will now delete that fleet.

Science Ship Automation

In 3.8 “Gemini” - when you click Science Ship Automation - we have added the ability to enable or disable the modules.

The new Science Ship Automation modules are:

Explore Systems - will explore the galaxy by entering systems and discover any planets and hyperlanes in there
Survey Systems - will survey new systems the science ship enters
Investigate Anomalies - will automatically research anomalies
Excavate Archaeology Sites - will automatically excavate Archaeology sites
Research Special Projects - will automatically research special projects

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 reading the automation tooltip.

(Almost) Rebindable Hotkeys

The Custodian team has also taken a look at the left-side menu. We know a lot of you have wanted to be able to rebind which hotkeys open these menus for a while, and while adding rebindable hotkeys to Stellaris would require rewriting most of the code for the UI, we’ve done the next best thing:

In 3.8 “Gemini”, it is possible to rearrange the list of options in the left side menu, by pressing the new Cog icon at the top. This will also correspondingly change the hotkeys to open these menus, allowing you to rebind these menu items to whichever F1-F10 key you prefer to have them on.

Message Notifications

The onslaught of notifications while playing Stellaris is something that has been bothering us as much as it’s been bothering you. We’ve added a new type of message called a “Toast” that will drop down from the top right of your screen, and convey low priority information (such as a leader gaining a level).

Additionally, we’ve gone through all the in-game messages and added the ability to turn them on or off, as well as change the pausing behavior of each message. Notification messages you no longer wish to see can be disabled by Control + Clicking on them and unticking them in the message settings. Toast notifications can be enabled or disabled by clicking the cogwheel.

That’s it for today folks! Thanks for playing Stellaris, and don’t forget to pick up Galactic Paragons today!

May 9, 2023

Stellaris Dev Diary #300 - 3.8 "Gemini" & Galactic Paragons Release Notes

Stellaris - PDX_ladydzra

by Eladrin

It's been seven years since Stellaris released, and with this anniversary and three hundredth dev diary, I'm happy to bring you the Stellaris 3.8 "Gemini" update and the Galactic Paragons expansion.

Here are the release notes for the update, which will be going live later today. Until then, you can still Wishlist Galactic Paragons here.

SPOILER: STELLARIS 3.8.1 "GEMINI" AND GALACTIC PARAGONS RELEASE NOTES
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#################### Galactic Paragons ######################
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Galactic Paragons

Unique Council Roles: Specialized roles and benefits are included in Galactic Paragons to expand upon the new Council Mechanics in Stellaris! Find dozens of unique council roles based on your civics and government types, and unlock additional positions as your empire evolves.
New Dynamic Leaders: Recruit, improve, and follow the leaders of your empire through the ages! You may shape them by picking their traits, selecting their veteran class, and guide them towards their destiny, up until they retire - or perish!
Meet Galactic Heroes: Attract paragons of renown to your council: unique leaders with their own art, events, and stories may join your empire and bring their own benefits to your government. Or, discover four Legendary Paragons with intricate event chains and unique mechanics!
New Traditions, Civics, And More:
A new “Under One Rule” Origin that tells the tale of the leader who founded your empire
Eight new Civics focused on leadership, from immortalizing the personalities of leaders past in digital archives to heavily optimized council selection via corporate charter
12 new Veteran Classes
Hundreds of new Leader Traits
Two new Tradition Trees, giving players new edicts and improved leaders
New ships, art, and story content
6 new achievements introduced

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#################### VERSION 3.8.1 - Gemini ######################
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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.

Please note that Cooperative modes are still considered to be a beta, and may be less stable than standard multiplayer, or may have some unusual experiences. We will continue to polish and refine Cooperative mode over the next few patches.
Empire Council: Ruling a Galactic Empire is hard work, and your council of trusty leaders is there to help you. Base-game Stellaris now includes a ruling council, where up to three leaders will assist you in ruling your empire - your Ruler, your Head of Research, and your Defense Minister.
* Each leader gives bonuses to their area of expertise, which grow increasingly more powerful as they level up over time.

* Gestalts will have a collection of immortal “nodes”, that will level up and gain new traits over time, which we feel better suits them thematically.
Ruler Creator: Added a new step in Empire Creation that permits the selection of your ruler’s appearance and starting trait(s).
Renowned Leaders: Updated several leaders to use new Leader systems:
* Updated Tuborek with new effects to use the Paragon System.
* Updated Reth Unddol with new visuals and effects to use the Paragon System.
* Updated Gray's Menu and effects to use Paragon Systems.
* Updated the Caretaker with new visuals and effects to use the Paragon System.
* Updated the S875.1 Warform with new visuals and effects to use the Paragon System.
* Updated the Oracle with new visuals and effects to use the Paragon System.
Ground Combat and Bombardment Changes: Several changes have been made to armies and bombardment.
* Army Builder tab added to starbases, which allows easier creation of Assault Armies across a sector.
* An army can be set as a Rally Point - new troops will automatically try to merge with this fleet (regardless of whether they were queued with the Army Builder or the old Recruit button).
* Planets can now select whether or not to Deploy in Orbit any newly recruited armies.
* Planets can now be taken through Orbital Bombardment if all defending troops have been killed. A policy can be set if you wish to refuse this form of surrender, and planets will not surrender to genocidal opponents.
* Bombardment is significantly more damaging than it used to be. More pops will die, and more buildings and districts will be ruined.
* 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.
* Bombardment effects are scaled based on the number of pops, buildings, and planet size. Small dense planets will suffer greater losses than 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.
Sector Editor: It is now possible to edit Sectors in the Planets and Sectors screen. Systems can be freely moved between sectors as long as they are in range of the Sector Capital. Sector Capitals must now be at least four jumps away from any others.
Customizable Menu: It is now possible to rearrange the list of options in the left side menu, by pressing the new Cog icon at the top. This will also correspondingly change the hotkeys to open these menus, allowing you to rebind these menu items to whichever F1-F10 key you prefer to have them on.
Customizable Message Notifications and Toasts: Messages and notifications can now be customized to suit your needs.
* Added a new message type called a “toast”, which pops up and disappears automatically after a brief period of time.
* Settings -> Messages, Ctrl+Click, or cogs (on certain messages) will open the Message Settings menu.
* Messages can be disabled, enabled, or set to automatically pause the game.
Fleet and Ship Designer:
* Merged into tabs of the same screen.
* Now displays a longer list of fleets.
* Copy Fleet Template and Overwrite Fleet Template features added.
* Delete + Enter will delete a fleet.
Science Ship Automation: You can now enable or disable more Science Ship automation modules.
* Explore Systems - will explore the galaxy by entering systems and discover any planets and hyperlanes in there
* Survey Systems - will survey new systems the science ship enters
* Investigate Anomalies - will automatically research anomalies
* Excavate Archaeology Sites - will automatically excavate Archaeology sites
* Research Special Projects - will automatically research special projects

IMPROVEMENTS

Added new Capital Designations for non-Gestalt empires. (Factory Capital, Forge Capital, Trade Capital, and Extraction Capital).
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.
Improved animation for gas giants.
Added a 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.
There is now a 1% chance that a pre-ftl civilization will spawn with the Forcefully Devolved trait.
Added hotkey 'u' to upgrade fleet button.
Broken Shackles empires will now have their starting Minister of Defense and Head of Research be recruited from any of the species in their empire.
Added keyboard command for jumping to the next day, ‘.’
Added Ship Section Templates to the Ship Designer which allows for easier creation of designs of a certain role, such as carriers or missile focused designs.
Auto-designed ships and those designed by the ship role button will now only equip archaeo-components if your empire has the Archaeo-Engineers AP.
You can now hotjoin an MP game to control the Daemonic Incursion.

BALANCE

The Khanate Successor origin now unlocks raiding bombardment.
Fallen Empire starting rulers are now level 10.
Species traits that gave +N leader level cap now give reduced leader upkeep and reduced maximum leader negative traits.
Reduced focused capital production bonuses from +20% to +15% following dev diary feedback.
Random leader starting age range increased to 25-35
Bonuses for many Authorities changed. Previous benefits such as the old form of Agendas and Mandates have been removed.
* Democracies focus on their factions, with +10% Faction Approval and they Reset Government Reform and Policy cooldowns following elections. Their ruler provides +2% Faction Unity and +5 Edicts Fund per level. The people have spoken!
* Oligarchies focus on their ruling council, and have +2 Effective Councilor Skill. Their ruler provides +5% Councilor Experience Gain and +5 Edicts Fund per level.
* Dictatorships focus on their ruler, who provides -2% Pop Amenities Usage and +10 Edict Fund per level.
* Imperial empires focus on their Capital System, which produces +10% Resources from jobs. Their ruler provides +0.25 Maximum Influence from Power Projection and +5 Edicts Fund per level.
* Megacorps have +20% Commercial Pact Efficiency, but +50% Empire Size from Planets. Their ruler provides +2% Branch Office Value and +5 Edicts Fund per level.
* Hive Minds have +25% Pop Growth Speed and -25% Empire Size Effect. Their ruler grants +2% Monthly Unity and +5 Edicts Fund per level.
* Machine Intelligences have +1 Pops When Establishing Colonies, +1 Mechanical Pop Assembly, +10% Mining Station Output, +50% Empire Size from Planets, and 50% Pop Growth Reduction. Their ruler grants -3% Empire Size from Pops and +5 Edicts Fund per level.
Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 2,000 or by 4,500 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken.
Criminal Syndicates now have -20% to Branch Office cost.
Broken Shackles laborer jobs no longer benefit from modifiers applying to artisans or metallurgists.
Broken Shackles scavengers are now considered researchers for the purpose of modifiers.
Gave the Grand Herald archaeo-tech components.
Rebalanced the "Shroud-Touched” traits that can be gained by leaders going through a Shroud Tunnel.
Commercial Pacts now give High Economic Intel on Colonies.
Empires with the Payback origin gain a damage bonus against ships belonging to militarily superior empires.
The Seize Galatron casus belli is now unlocked the first time the Galatron is used, instead of upon acquisition.
Trade collection will now prioritize the capital and then sector capitals if they are in range, even if other starbases are closer, resulting in overall greatly reduced piracy from trade routes if collection is there.
Curator order now offers Gestalts a Trait instead of a Scientist.
Changed Technocracy bonus to award Scientists a random expertise trait in addition to their other traits.

Massively reduced the number of starbases assigned to cloaking detection for the AI.
Fanatical Spiritualists will now always outlaw robot workers.
AI attitude updates now happen only monthly and on diplomatic actions.
Relaxed AI budget requirements for orbital ring upgrades.
Allowed AI to build economically useful orbital ring buildings without a matching designation.
AI takes into account planetary production impact of possible orbital ring buildings when considering building orbital rings.
Stopped AI from never fully re-evaluating ship designs if it had no preferences specified in its AI personality.
Fixed an issue where AI would calculate a forecast of planet build queue items using a pop which could not work jobs provided by these buildings leading to incorrect results.
AI is now much more restrictive about building gene clinics.
AI will now prioritize building new starbases at the Sector Capital more.
AI will now micromanage their enforcer jobs by using the scripted logic provided by the Planet Automation System.
Fixed an issue where AI would not attack pirate stations in their empire.
Ai will now resettle pops with low habitability to planets with higher habitability in the early game.
Adjusted AI alloy spending budget to be a bit better at spending alloys on starbases and colony ships at the same time.
Fixed several issues where AI would build or upgrade amenity or crime buildings even when they had already forbidden jobs from these buildings.
AI trader persona are now the only ones who will build trade hub starbases and they will now only build them in sector capitals.
Improved peace time AI for upgrading fleets and patrolling trade routes.
AI empires that has Thrifty perk on their main species are now also eligible for the Peaceful Traders and Ruthless Capitalists AI personalities.

STABILITY

Tooltips will no longer be shown when the game has lost focus (tabbed out or any other focus loss). This will prevent crashes caused by tooltips being generated in contexts where they aren't expected.

Disabled tutorial in Multiplayer (but not coop PvE).
Auto-close auto-opened anomaly window if the science ship has already started researching the anomaly.
DLC icons on the empire creation screen now appear in the same size and in order of releases.
The popup when you are kicked or banned or the server is lost will now appear in front of other windows.
Truncate long empire, government and species names in hotjoin.
Make scrolling smoother in some places.
Display special project energy cost in situation log.
Auto Track Log Entries setting is saved in the save game.
Fix certain windows (e.g. ship orders) being too small compared to the sprite tiling, which caused graphical bugs.
Removed the in-game web browser. The game will now use the system browser instead.
Adjust chat input and chat entry to the new chat window size.
Changed player ready string to text icon.
Planet view no longer closes when opening other UIs like the pop resettlement or market view.

BUG FIXES

The Espionage Operation "Imperium: Target Seditionists" now correctly aborts if the Imperium falls.
Fixed incorrect costs for Caravaneer deals.
Payback: fixed incorrect tooltip in "Flagship Updated" event.
Broken Shackles: fixed "First Contact with MSI" modifier not disappearing under certain circumstances.
MSI can now use raiding bombardment with fleets hired from mercs.
Fixed checkbox tooltips in "Host server" window not appearing.
Fixed some scoping errors that prevented the "Indoctrinate Society" operation from working correctly.
Fixed an issue where it was possible to do two jump drive orders back to back by queuing them up via shift clicking.
Insight technologies should no longer be randomly awarded from events such as Old with Defects.
Removed Broken Shackles being scripted to start without a shipyard.
Pledging Secret Fealty to another empire now gives them +20 Intel on and knowledge of all of your diplomatic pacts.
Fixed the trapped in the storm special project stating the planet is trapped in a storm on the planet instead of the science ship being trapped in the storm.
Fixed "Cross-platform play" checkbox sometimes not being checked by default.
Choosing to hand over system ownership during the course of Pre-FTL Observation event "Among Us" now correctly grants you a Claim on that system.
Removed erroneous custom tooltip for the finisher effect of Psionic traditions.
Fix an issue where starbases would do cloaking detection for the wrong empire for 1 day.
System and star name should now match even if the player selects an origin that has a special starting system.
Enclaves should no longer keep offering you their services if you become a fanatical purifier.
If you are a corporate angler when you finish the Fear of the Dark story line you will now become a regular angler.
You will no longer get stuck with two unuseable civics if you become a Fanatical Purifier while a Barbaric Despoiler.
You can no longer become a Fanatical Purifier while the Galactic Custodian or Galactic Emperor.
A synthetically ascended empire should no longer refer to their own pops as having owners.
Fixed some grammar in the Hivemind Voidspawn reanimation event.
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.
Removed a double “be” from a machine become the crisis event.
Multiple Tuboreks should no longer be hidden inside the shielded worlds.
Fixed Status Quo in a Subsidiary war subjugating the wrong empire.
Fixed incorrect calculation used for Offspring amenities.
Lithoid pre-sapients "working" in zoos now correctly eat minerals.
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.
Added a new description to the Broken Shackles Homecoming event if the world is a tomb world.
The "Direct Join" window now blocks other input.
Corrected the Ancient Target Scrambler tech not stating that it unlocks the Ancient Target Scrambler ship component.
The Radio Telescope Array now reduces the chance of Pre-FTL awareness decay instead of increasing it.
Archaeoshields should now properly provide their shield hardening bonus.
Fixed materialist culture workers (and death chroniclers) not having the effects of the Charismatic or Repugnant traits.
Fixing custom diplomatic action sounds playing for unrelated empires.
Fixed materialist culture workers (and death chroniclers) not having the effects of the Charismatic or Repugnant traits.
Added missing background for Ironman game setting.
Added missing "gateway" icons and tooltips to cloaking and detection technologies.
Changing policies now correctly removes diplomatic pacts with pre-ftl civilizations.
Fixed issues where sectors would not always include all systems within range, also fixed related issue where sector map mode would sometimes draw borders between systems in the same sector
Deleting templates in the fleet manager will no longer reset the scrollbar, added 'Delete' hotkey to template removal.
The "Host server" window now blocks other input.
Prevented joining full MP games.
Fix MP game browser listing full games even if "Not full" is checked.
Species with servile trait can no longer be given the Full Military Service rights and thus generate leaders.
Ringworlds now use empire color.

MODDING

Add_random_research_option script effect now ignores Insight technologies by default.
Added the creator scope for leaders, allowing you to scope to a leader's country of origin.
Added reset_policy_cooldowns = yes effect.
Added the special_max_amount = yes/no parameter for resources.
Council position support use of conditional_tooltip = "LOCKEY" to display custom tooltips for triggers you define in is_leader_possible = { }, triggers defined here are not otherwise shown in the council position tooltip.
Scripted triggers may now generate up to one automatic event option icon each
Calling GetAge in localization should no longer show the leaders age if marked as hidden
Added controls to the fleet imgui view and added jump drive information to ships
Using the ImGui view shortcut for selectables (ctrl+alt+right click) on the same selectable when it's already open, will now close the view.
Added expansion_planner = yes/no for districts. This controls if the district type should be visible in the expansion planner or not and defaults to no.
Views containing longer texts will now automatically reload when changes in localization are detected.
Added damage_vs_superior_empires_mult modifier
Add `remove_from_federation` script effect
Removed support for the "Major" flag and potential trigger in events.
You can also use from for the ship design in section template ai weights
You can now scope to a ship's design using 'design = {}'
Added has_role trigger for ship designs
You can now refer to the ship design using "from" in ship components. It may have incomplete information, but it will have at the very least the ship's designated role stored in it.
Added copy_flags_and_variables_from effect to copy all flags and variables from one scope to another
Replaced set_is_female with set_gender
Renamed country_mia_time_mult to fleet_mia_time_mult so that you can apply it at leader or fleet level too
You can now use "initializer = random" in the spawn_system effect
New trigger "num_candidate_supported", returns number of times an election candidate has been supported this election.
Removed add_ruler_trait and remove_ruler_trait in favor of using add_trait and remove_trait instead
Add random_ruler to create_leader's class field. This will randomize between valid ruler classes for the empire
Removed the ruler specific class. The ruler can now have other
Kill_leader leader effect now accepts ruler = <yes/no> instead
Has_ethic trigger now works on pop_faction scope too, returning their guiding_ethic.
Added on_planet_returned on action which triggers when an owner of a planet regains control of it
Made species_classes overwrite extendably too
AI economic plans now overwrite in an "extendable" way, so you can define a further "basic_economy_plan" which adds an extra subplan, and it will append this subplan to the existing basic_economy_plan
Ownership limits now no longer overwrite the full object but are instead "extendable", which means you can define a second "default" and put an entry in, and the game will add that to Vanilla's definition of "default"
Activating an Agenda triggers OnAction "on_agenda_finished".
Fixed faction_approval not working as country modifier.

[/expand]

A Review of the Year

Since the last anniversary, let's look at some of what we've accomplished together.

Last May we released the "Cepheus" update and the Overlord expansion, introducing the Situations system, updating subjugation mechanics, adding five new Origins, and a huge amount of empire emblems, backgrounds, and flag colors.

In September, the "Fornax" update and the Toxoids Species Pack added new difficulty settings, allowed you to spawn all the crises, and brought us the epic tale of the Toxic God.

Fleet combat rebalancing was the primary focus of the "Orion" update in late November, which also added some new galaxy shapes and added roles to the ship designer.

The First Contact Story Pack started this year alongside the "Canis Minor" update, adding Cloaking to Stellaris and improving Pre-FTL civilizations, while also adding some challenging Origins and focusing on game stability.

And now the "Gemini" update and Galactic Paragons adds the Council, revamps leader mechanics, updates armies and bombardment, and introduces two cooperative game modes (in a beta state).

Over the year we also had a number of Open Betas. Many thanks to all of you that played in them and helped us find as many issues as possible.

We've had a busy year!

We'll be skipping this Thursday's Dev Diary to keep the team focused on post-release support, and will be returning to our regular once-a-week cadence. Since next Thursday is a holiday in Sweden, the next Stellaris Dev Diary will be on Tuesday, May 16th. After that, we plan on returning to our normal Thursday slot.

See you then!

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

If you have an important game going in a previous version, please back up the save file before trying to load the save in 3.8.1. You can roll back to a prior version by 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.