One of the things I’ve always wanted to do as a part of the Community team is to try and come up with a format to better highlight Community mods. The Steam workshop is a wonderful, almost magical place, but from a Mod Creator’s perspective unless you’re in the top 20 most popular mods (a hard place to reach after mods that have been there 7 years), or post a brand new mod (that gives you 7 days on the front of the Workshop, if you’re lucky), your mod will never be seen by someone who doesn’t actively search for it.
Since it’s summer, and it’s the time for experiments, we’ve started a small-scale experiment to see if we can highlight some of the lesser well known mods in the workshop. This is currently limited to a small group of modders, but should it turn out to be popular, we would like to eventually expand this to the broader modding community.
Each of these modder highlights will be geared towards specific aspects of the game, new species, politics, etc. Today we’re here to show off four warfare related mods.
Let's get into it!
This first mod is something a lot of you’ve been asking for. While this isn’t a likely direction that the base-game will go, maybe this is the Ground Combat Rework you were looking for. handwave
Ground Command is a mod that attempts to expand upon the ground battles in Stellaris. It does this in several ways allowing for more control and greater roleplay potential. This is done by reworking the system to no longer use a single "Assault Army" but instead to use the components that an Assault army would be made of.
By giving the player the ability to recruit individual divisions it opens the door to a wide variety of different army types. These army types can be tailored to reflect the empire they come from by making certain civics, origins, authority types, or even ascension perks part of unlocking them.
There is also a system wherein more industrially taxing units, such as armored units, atmospheric air wings, and the theorized Mecha-Walker can only be built on planets that have at least 1 industrial district or have the industrial buildings (consumer goods factory/ Alloy forge). This was done both to reflect the actual challenges that armies have historically faced with producing equipment but also to give a sense of strategic importance to an empire's more industrialized worlds.
Inspiration
The inspiration came when I was playing my weekly multiplayer game with a friend and we were discussing how tedious invading worlds was. We both quickly accepted that we weren't experienced enough to make an alternate system mechanically but I had the idea of at least making it more interesting to engage with. I believed that if the ground portion of the game was as immersive as the political and naval aspects then the tedium would be a bit more bearable and so far it seems at least a few people agreed with me.
It was also a good opportunity to give some civics and origins that the community tends to neglect a little bit of love. Maybe someday someone will find all the wacky unique army types that I've hidden throughout the civics list.
This next mod introduces new galaxy shapes and sizes to conquer, as well as new win condition mechanics that are guaranteed to spice up your next war focused run.
New Galaxy Shapes (Gemini, Triple, Islands, Split, Helix)
New Galaxy Sizes (100,300,500,700,900)
New Galaxy Size variants (Spotted & Aftermath)
Galactic Seasons (Gameplay Modifiers)
Extra Win Conditions (Emperor's Throne)
Sudden Death Mechanics (Eclipse, Attrition)
Summary
Everything this mod adds are optional additions; the goal is to let players have more control over their current "campaign" via the Menu offered on game start. Customizability is the main focus, with many interesting combinations which allow for a unique experience each playthrough.
Emperor's Throne has the Players fighting over a unique System at the Galaxy's Core, ensuring victory for whoever controls it long enough.
Eclipse dooms the Galaxy to a gruesome and dark fate as all suns begin imploding into black holes starting from the Galaxy's edge and slowly creeping towards the core.
Attrition plagues all life in the Galaxy, increasing costs and reducing growth, until finally pops begin dropping dead left and right.
Inspiration
The main reason I started creating this mod was to get some of my friends to finally try out Stellaris, as the lengthy playthroughs Stellaris suffers from put them off - that's where Win Conditions and Sudden Death come in. Both are inspired by other games' mechanics, such as Emperor's Throne which is a variant of a "King of the Hill" gamemode, and are intended to bring the game to an end quicker than usual, all while feeling more like a "natural end" than simply having a low victory year.
The mod allows you to play as a private military corporation that offers its fleets for rent to other empires. Or you can play with a friend with one player focusing on military dominance and the other on scientific dominance. The first player can always transfer fleets to the second. Or you can help an empire that is losing the war, but the defeat of which will be unprofitable.
Inspiration
It all started with a friend's phrase "can you make it so that I can transfer the fleet?" and one line of code "set_owner = player2". Now this is a good mod that can be useful in various multiplayer games.
And of course, in your next warfare playthrough, you’ll probably want a way to put that SPQR Namelist to good use. Want to make all roads lead to Deneb IIb? This next mod will give you the tools to do just that!
Major Features: 3 origins depicting different stages of Roman history, from the early Republican period, to the high Augustan Imperial Period and the late Imperial Period.
The Republic: *Cheaper election costs * Faster ship build speed * +3 Admiral & General level cap * +25% army morale and +100 starting xp * Unique Ruler, Specialist, and Soldier jobs
The Empire: * +3 General & Governor level cap * +100 army starting xp * -15% building & district cost * +15% megastructure build speed * +10 stability on all planets * Unique Ruler, Specialist, and Solder jobs
Late Imperial State: * +3 Admiral & General level cap * +1 Limitanei job per 30 pops * +25% ship fire rate * Big Ruler class political power * Stability from soldier jobs +1 * Unique Ruler, Specialist, and Soldier jobs
Summary
The mod consists of 3 origins, each with unique jobs and bonuses. The vanilla politician jobs will be completely replaced with more thematic versions along with a unique specialist job and unique soldier jobs.
Inspiration
As a big fan of Roman history I noticed that Stellaris had a SPQR name list but no actual reason to use it. The Prosperous Unification origin was a bit too overtly modern future and things like Remnants would be too detached from being future Rome. So I decided to add roleplay origins to go along with the SPQR namelist.
What sort of Chad-mod-enjoyer would you be if you didn’t ask this question? There are no conflicts between these four mods, meaning you should be able to run them altogether without any issues!
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That’s it for today’s Mod Highlights! We’ll be doing these all summer during gaps in the Dev Diary schedule, so stay tuned!
We want you and your friends to have a reason to celebrate too. As we announced last week, Stellaris will be free to play on Steam from the 22nd to the 26th.
With the addition of Co-op (that is, up to five players playing as the same empire), there’s never been a better time to introduce your friends to Stellaris!
Remember, as host, your friends will have access to all of your DLC.
Stay tuned to our social media channels during the Free to Play event - they have plans.
Stellaris Nexus
Stellaris Nexus is a simultaneous turn-based multiplayer 4X game offering the full spectrum of a thrilling, strategic 4X experience. Choose a unique faction and leader and challenge up to 5 other players, plotting and battling your way to galactic dominance; all in about 1 hour.
Hello! This is MordredViking, the Community Manager for Stellaris. We recently asked the community for their input on what DLCs to recommend to new players, and we thought we should share some of our findings.
We got 420 responses from you all, and among the questions we asked was, for how many hours had you played Stellaris? The answers ranged from a couple of hundred to a whopping 13,000! This came out to an average of 855 hours among all respondents. A pretty hardcore group!
The core of the questionnaire however, was of course which DLCs to recommend to a new Stellaris player, and here’s the top 10:
From these results, we wanted to have a bundle that provided a representative selection of available content, catering to a range of different play styles and fantasies. With this criteria and the survey results in mind, we settled on Utopia, Federations, Distant Stars and Synthetic Dawn.
Utopia allows for a broader range of empire choices, by providing new tools to develop the empire and ultimately allowing players to transform their nation into a paradise. Federations taps into a more diplomatic playstyle, and really ramps up the potential for in-game alliances and also enables power projection through bodies like the Galactic Council. Distant Stars entices eager explorers with new discoveries throughout the galaxy. Then finally, Synthetic Dawn brings those robot dreams to life with expanded robotic gameplay options.
What’s Next?
We will return with dev diaries on July 27th with Habitat discussions, and start going into detail regarding what’s planned for the 3.9 Caelum update.
Like 3.1 Lem, 3.3 Libra, and 3.6 Orion, Caelum will be a Custodian update focused on revisiting old packs, catching up on technical debt, and generally improving the game.
Spoiler: We Dug Up Some Lithoid Previews
[expand type=show more] The newly clarified Calamitous Birth tooltip.
The home crater gets a bit of a boost.
A minor tweak to the craters makes a big difference.
What do Lithoids eat?
Pom-a-granites!
Placeholder icons on the approaches.
Once you start feasting, it's really hard to stop. Om nom nom.
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.
AI
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.
UI
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!
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.
AI
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.
UI
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.
Now that the 3.8.3 patch has been released, and it seems so far that multiplayer and co-op stability is in a pretty good state. We’re continuing work on a 3.8.4 release planned for a few weeks from now, to get some more fixes in before summer hits.
A few highlights include changes relating to ground combat collateral damage and bombardment (specifically Raiding Bombardment).
We’re reducing the amount of collateral damage ground units deal, as many invasions were destroying the colonies before the battle completed.
The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops will be dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 3 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony, so on a colony with three defending armies the last ten pops would be safe from raiding.)
Since next week is another short week in Sweden, our next dev diary will be on June 15th, though I may drop a little update with some more of the confirmed fixes planned for 3.8.4.
Now I’ll pass it over to MordredViking for some information on the community event that’s starting.
Stellaris with a Twist
Hello! I’m Mordred Viking, the Community Manager for Stellaris!
To celebrate Stellaris’ 7th anniversary, we’re running our Stellaris with a Twist event! Two of our favorite content creators will explore a galaxy, with objectives suggested by, and voted on, by you, the Community. These streams will run for the first three Wednesdays in June (June 7th, 14th and 21st), at 1500 CEST (UTC+1). Want more details on this event, and how you can get involved? Check out this forum post!
Each player will have a personal goal to achieve, plus they will have a joint goal. All the Content Creator goals will be crowdsourced from the Community. Goal suggestions are currently open, so you can leave your suggestions here. Be sure to watch our social media channels (or join us on Discord!), because voting will start on Friday and be active all weekend. On Monday we will announce the goals for the first stream on Wednesday, June 7th!
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
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.
UI
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.
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
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.
UI
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.
# 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:
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.
Galactic Paragons and the first hotfix have been released on all PC platforms, and we're working on a balance and bugfixing patch that we're currently targeting for the end of the month. Please keep on providing your thoughts and feedback.
Based on the feedback you've all provided thus far, we are creating a plan for fixes and improvements. While it's possible that we may release a stability hotfix before the balance patch, it will not include any design changes.
Cooperative Mode and Out of Syncs
The 3.8.2 hotfix took care of a number of out of sync issues, but there are more to hunt down. The programming team is focusing heavily on clearing these up, so every bit of information we can get is helpful.
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:
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.
Tell Us More About the Balance Patch
Here are a few selected notes.
SPOILER: A FEW OF THE THINGS PLANNED FOR 3.8.X [expand type=showmore]Balance
Legendary leaders no longer count towards Leader Capacity.
Admirals that command fleets hired from marauders no longer count towards your Leader Capacity.
Added the Leader of Opportunity trait, leaders that have this trait do not count towards Leader Capacity while under Level 4.
Assigned some event spawned leaders the Leader of Opportunity trait.
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.
Autocannons are no longer valued at three times their intended military power.
Bugfixes
Fixed a bug where ships would sometimes stop following its target when they entered a hyperlane
Leaders can no longer start the game with traits that produce resources. This should stop machine leaders from keeping a bonsai tree garden as a hobby.
AI
AI will now wait until it has at least 5 planets and 25 years before choosing a specialization designation for its homeworld
Performance
Leader view performance optimizations
[/expand]
There will, of course, be more.
Next Week
Our next dev diary will be Thursday, May 25th, when we'll be going over a more complete list of the preliminary patch notes.
Following some quick work from the team we have now produced a patch aiming resolve the high priority issues coming out of the Galactic Paragons + 3.8 release. 3.8.2 should be available for download via Steam and GOG now.
Unfortunately there is a delay in the deployment of the patch to Microsoft Store, and players on this platform should expect the update to arrive early next week instead.
We will continue our efforts fixing and balancing where needed, so keep your reports coming!
Fixed an issue where the mouse input would be offset when playing with fullscreen on.
Fixed an achievement not always being awarded correctly.
Fixed the Kidnapper trait applying to the whole empire population instead of the given planet.
Fixed a bug where permanent rulers would not get their ascension perks when finishing the special projects to convert them.
Anglers now once again count as farmers.
Fixed map tracking sometimes not working for first contacts and archaeology sites.
Holo-Theatres are now correctly destroyed when a gestalt empire conquers the planet they are built on.
If an empire stops having Imperial Authority, the Imperial Heir trait is removed from their former heir.
Leaders can no longer start the game with traits that produce resources. This should stop machine leaders from keeping a bonsai tree garden as a hobby.
Restored the brainslug species trait.
You can no longer psi-inoculate hive-minded pops or those being purged.
Fixed an issue where some situation modifiers were not applied correctly.
Fixed The Beholder, Keides, Azaryn, and others leaders from Paragon mutating due to traveling through shroud tunnels.
Now Crusader Spirit will correctly impose the Crusader spirit civic on empires who lose the ideology war.
Now the Imperial heir will have 0 Unity upkeep (upkeep from negative traits can still apply).
STABILITY
Fixed a COOP crash when two players were selecting ascension perks at the same time.
Fixed a crash related to pops with invalid species.
Fixed a crash that could occur during removal of invalid trade deals.
Fixed an out of sync related to events.
BALANCE
The Minister of Exploration now grants +3% jump drive range per level.
The additional unity duelists gain from the Arbiter of Duels is now added to their base output instead of multiplying the base output.
AI
Fixed an issue where the AI would repeatedly attempt and fail to invade the pre-FTL empires from the Fear of the Dark origin.
UI
Event notifications can now be configured in message settings.
Added ship engagement range modifier to ship tooltip.
Crime/Deviancy modifiers should now show the correct name in more places.
Fixed Galactic Paragons not being shown in DLC lists.
Fixed UI issues affecting the council view for gestalt empires after they unlocked their third civic.
Fixed overlap between achievements and forum link button in the main menu on non-Steam platforms.
Fixed text overlap between coop filter and cross platform filter in the matchmaking view.
Improved the layout of the Multiplayer lobby DLC icons.
Message settings are now sorted in alphabetical order.
Message settings that have been changed and later changed back to their default values (without using "Reset Default") will now be saved as changed values.
The coop filter checkbox in the multiplayer game browser is now checked by default.
The player name used for Multiplayer is now saved more consistently.
When hot-joining a coop empire, events that are open for other players in your empire before the hot-join will no longer be shown to the joining player.
Icons for tiered traits should now correctly display a Roman numeral 'I' for tier 1, for players without Galactic Paragons.
MODDING
Fixed a case where modded games could crash when using custom leader classes.
Fixed crash on session start when using modded leader classes.
Fixed some incorrect documentation for message types.
[/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.
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
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!