by PDX-Ruk


In this week's dev diary, I am taking the reins from Eladrin.
I am a producer on Stellaris and usually help Eladrin as best I can, but today I want to talk about my other project and let Stellaris have a week off before they talk about their next thing.

And that Project is: Star Trek: Infinite




Watch the video version of this Dev Diary


I joined Paradox back in the start of 2021, and was given the task to bring Star Trek: Infinite to Launch.
Today is that day: we launch Star Trek: Infinite.

Why am I talking about Infinite in the Stellaris Dev diary? To start off, I am a producer on Stellaris, but also the producer for Star Trek: Infinite - I love playing both games, and I think some of you might feel the same.

Secondly, as all of you can easily identify, Star Trek: Infinite is built on the Stellaris Engine, with little effort to hide it. Everyone here on the Stellaris team has been giving feedback and tips since its inception, and we are all fully behind it.

While Star Trek: Infinite is not a Stellaris Team project, it is a distinguished member of Stellaris Selective Kinship.



From a product point of view, Stellaris is the best Space/Emergent Story/Strategy game out there. Star Trek has a great tradition of 4x strategy games, and several story driven games. With that in mind, was there a possible way to mix this peanut butter gameplay of Stellaris with the strawberry jelly of Star Trek?

I for one believed it could be done. The big takeaway from Stellaris we wanted in this game was exploration, choice and evolving gameplay. From Star Trek I wanted recognizable factions, lore authentic events and leaders.

This has been our north star since the start. We don’t want to make a game that only explores the existing timeline, nor do we want a game with complete randomness. A balance between the two had to be maintained, and I think we might have pulled it off.




It really depends on what type of Stellaris player you are. I love making themed factions that are not optimized, but thematically attractive. Setting the difficulty to Ensign/Captain, and seeing how it all plays out. I will usually restart if I get boring neighbors, or I get an unwanted precursor. My favorite Origins are Post-Apocalyptic+UNE, Toxic God, Payback+UNE, or Machine Empire with Eager Explorers. I also lean heavily away from micromanagement and build optimization.

If you play anything like me, Star Trek: Infinite might be for you.

If you think seeing Klingons going to war with Romulans over their claim to Kithomer gives a different flavor than seeing UNE being attacked by Kel-Azaan Republic over a claim in Parvus, Star Trek: Infinite might be for you.

If you think you can be a better Gul than Dukat, and that there should be a statue of you on Bajor. Star Trek: Infinite might be for you…

If you think Romulans should reunite with Vulcan, but it should be done with force, and not diplomacy? Star Trek: Infinite might be for you.




This is one of the reasons we wanted to make this game a standalone, rather than part of Stellaris. We wanted this game to have its own track and not cause limitations on Stellaris, or Stellaris cause limitations for it. Stellaris should continue to evolve as the best Sci-fi sandbox strategy game in existence, and Star Trek: Infinite should be the definitive Star Trek strategy game.

Mods are already being made, and we have full Steam Workshop support. We will be paying a bit more attention to our terms and conditions, but we have not made major changes to the existing one.

So if this sounds like it could be appealing, check it out here.

Until next time,

PDX_Ruk

Ghost Signal is a VR action roguelite set in the Stellaris universe, where you captain your ship to battle a multitude of alien species. Partake in dynamic space wars, encounter planet sized creatures, gather valuable loot to conduct research, and more. No journey is the same. Will you find the origins of the mysterious Ghost Signal?



Get Ghost Signal: A Stellaris Game!
Get 20% off Ghost Signal and Stellaris with the Alternate Realities bundle! (And you don’t pay for the content you already own!)

INTERSTELLAR SPACE BATTLES
Use the full artillery of the Aurora against enemy armadas. Loot or purchase power-ups like freeze rays, atomic missiles or even dragon companions - the choice is yours.

UPGRADE & CUSTOMIZE
Scan exotic creatures for your logbook and conduct research in multiple tech trees. Asynchronous multiplayer allows you to scavenge other players' deserted ships for valuables.

A NEVER ENDING JOURNEY
Alongside the story mode where randomized maps make every session unique, Ghost Signal includes Daily Challenges with both global and local leaderboards to climb.

A UNIVERSE FULL OF WONDERS
As captain of the Aurora, encounter strange aliens in their home worlds and enter lost temples in the pursuit of the mysterious signal that seems to defy even death.

by Eladrin

Hello everybody!

Today we’re going to look at a likely 3.10 feature, some changes that we’ve called the Leader Consolidation.

With leaders becoming more important to your empire following the 3.8 ‘Gemini’ release alongside Galactic Paragons, there were some rough edges leftover and experiences that could be better. Some of the changes we’re implementing during this leader consolidation were things we talked about during the development of Galactic Paragons but decided against for various reasons, or were out of scope at the time, while others are based on data gathered since then and community feedback.
Some of these names are still being argued over, so are subject to change. Hate one in particular? Let us know. One of us probably hates it too.

Admirals and Generals will be merged into the Commander, the Military leader class.

Admiral and General will remain as veteran classes, with the following foci:

• Admiral - Focuses on Fleets and general naval combat
  
• General - Focuses on taking planets and assaulting static defenses - Armies, Planetary Bombardment, Ground Combat, and attacking defensive structures such as Starbases are the General’s forte
  
• Commissioner - Focuses on Planetary Governance (Martial Law)
  
• Strategist - Focuses on the Council, especially the Minister of Defense position

The old Governors and some Envoy functions will be merged into Officials, the Administrative leader class.

Their veteran classes will be:

• Delegate - Focuses on Federations and the Galactic Community
  
• Industrialist - Focuses on Planetary Governance (Industry and Development)
  
• Ambassador - Council Focus (Diplomacy, Espionage, and First Contact), especially suited for the new Minister of State position
  
• Advisor - Council Focus (Economy)

This does give the Officials two council focused subclasses, but the two are different enough that we felt it best to let them specialize accordingly. The Advisor is expected to thrive in some civic based council positions.

Scientists remain the third, Scientific leader class.

Veteran Classes:

• Explorer - Focuses on Surveying and Exploration
  
• Academic - Focuses on Archaeology and Anomalies
  
• Analyst - Focuses on Planetary Governance (Assist Research)
  
• Statistician - Focuses on the Council, especially the Minister of Science position

As suggested in last week’s teaser and by some of the above bullet points, “governor” will no longer be a leader class. Instead, a planet or sector can be governed by any leader, regardless of class, with differing effects. For example, instead of being local planetary decisions, placing a Commander in charge of a sector will place the entire sector under Martial Law. (The exact effects of which will be changing somewhat too - we want it to be a reasonable thing to put the military in charge of a newly conquered or disruptive set of planets until the condition stabilizes.) Administrative leaders will have most of the effects of the current governors, and the Assist Research effects will be moving to the Scientific governors.

You will still be able to override a Sector Governor on a specific planet by placing a Planetary Governor there, so your Forge Ecumenopolis could have an Industrialist governor in a sector that is otherwise led by a Scientist.

We’re also doing a major rebalancing of the traits themselves. As part of this, we’re reintroducing some sector-wide traits to governors (though now they’re split across the governing veteran classes), and the traits themselves will clearly show if they’re of sector or planetary scope. Note that a sector-wide governor trait will not apply to a planet that has its own local planetary governor overriding them.

​
Partially.

A single Administrative leader can be assigned to your Federation and another to the Galactic Community (or Empire) like numerous Envoys did in the past. Their level and traits will determine how effective they are at the job instead of cramming every Envoy you can spare into there, making Delegates the optimal candidates for this sort of thing.

The Minister of State position is being added to the base council alongside the military and scientific ministries. This councilor will also have general effects on diplomacy, espionage, and first contact.


Ruler, plus one red, one yellow, and one blue council member.​

Envoys will remain as they were to represent the Minister of State’s bureaucratic reach, and will continue to handle “minor tasks” such as Improve and Harm Relations, maintaining Espionage spy networks, and First Contact.

Leader caps remain, but are per-class, with any over-cap penalties affecting only the particular leader class that is over. Civics, traditions, and other effects that previously increased the generic leader cap will now generally increase the cap for one or more specific classes.

We may end up shifting more of the over-cap penalty over to the upkeep cost of leaders.

Gestalt Councils currently have a significant advantage in passing agendas in the early game due to having a larger number of councilors. This disparity will be lessened a bit due to the regular empires starting with one additional councilor, and we’re also making council legitimacy (how happy your factions are with your council) affect agenda progress.

Their nodes will get a little bit of a reshuffle to accommodate the various changes, but should otherwise remain generally familiar. We’ll be able to share more details later on during the development cycle.

We’ll have more details in the release notes, but leader classes are no longer hard-coded and are thus much more moddable in script, so you should theoretically be able to do things like "this leader does research, commands armies, and represents us in the galcom!"

Nooooo.

Next on our Custodian “this is not internal politics” agenda is to do a pass on council agendas. Our thought is that agendas should have more impactful results (tangible effects rather than modifiers), and the range of available agendas should be related to the ethics of your active councilors instead of the ethics of your empire.

This is planned for 3.11 ‘[REDACTED]’ at the earliest.

In the longer term, we may want to make greater differentiation between the councils of different authorities - the councils of a Democracy and a Megacorp could feel different from one another, for example.

Next week we’ll boldly go where no dev diary has gone before.

(We're all currently at a staff conference, so dev replies to the diary will be delayed, but we'll make sure to read through all of the comments when we get back.)

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

3.9.2 has been released with a handful of bugfixes.

STELLARIS 3.9.2 PATCH NOTES

[expand type=showmore]

############################################################​
#################### VERSION 3.9.2 ######################​
############################################################​
Balance

• Pre-FTL empires now have reduced technological development before the mid-game year.
  
• Catalytic empires can now build bio-reactors.

Bugfix

• Anomalies that reward Scientist Expertise traits now apply those traits to the Cognitive Node for gestalt empires.
  
• Blocked empires without the Scientific Method technology from constructing research districts.
  
• Federations End should no longer spawn empty habitats if the pre-FTL slider is set to 0
  
• Fix a CTD when loading a save containing an invalid species archetype
  
• Fix for wrong value for evasion in ship design.
  
• Fixed being able to build multiple gaia seeders on a single planet.
  
• Fixed Fallen Empires not triggering their monthly random events
  
• Fixed pre-ftl civilizations that naturally progressed to the Early Space Age being unable to become space faring.
  
• Fixed Secrets of the ... no longer granting Expertise traits.
  
• Fixed stage 4 gaia seeders being buildable, but immediately destroyed by non-Idyllic Bloom empires.
  
• Fixed the Colonial Remains deposits not spawning for the Remnants origin in some cases.
  
• Fixed the Patron achievement not firing.
  
• Fixed the Prethoryn getting stuck because their starting system contains an FTL inhibitor that prevents them from expanding
  
• Fixed the Surveyor not spawning resources in some cases.
  
• Gardening Drones will no longer have an unlocalized string.
  
• Habitat Central Complexes constructed around stars should now be placed further away, so they no longer clip into the star.
  
• Industrial designation is now only available on habitats for gestalt empires, if they use consumer goods.
  
• Merc enclaves now inherit their shipset from their creator.
  
• Paradisiacal Habitat modifiers in Ithome's Gate no longer use placeholder icons.
  
• Restored -25% penalty if the government doesn't have a head of research.
  
• Set a manual planet size for the Toxic God star asset, as it otherwise counts the large visual effects as part of the planet.
  
• The Crystal Splitter will now hopefully stop blowing up Fruitful Partnership colonies
  
• The spiritualist fallen empire will now wake up if you eat their holy worlds.
  
• The knights will no longer try to quest if you pacify their habitat.

Performance

• Removed MTTH from anomaly.6710, bane of ship events, horror of designers
  
• Removed MTTH from assorted fallen_empire_tasks events
  
• Removed MTTH from communications_spread.1 and communications_spread.3
  
• Removed MTTH from crime.1, crime.40 and crime.41, plus added pre-triggers to all crime-events
  
• Removed MTTH from fallen_empires.1, fallen_empires.3, fallen_empires.10, fallen_empires.11
  
• Removed MTTH from leviathans.660 and leviathans.662
  
• Removed MTTH from pop.1-13, madness that should have never existed
  
• Removed MTTH from random caravaneer events (cara.4000-4050)
  
• Removed MTTH from refugees.5, scourge of the game, destroyer of performance
  
• Removed MTTH from the Migrating Forests event chain (colony.1 to colony.12)
  
• Removed MTTH from the Orbital Debris event chain (colony.171 and colony.171)

UI

• Added new main menu gradient

Modding

• Added researchers_add.txt and archaeoengineers_add.txt inline scripts for buildings.
  
• Added chemist_add.txt, factory_add.txt, foundry_add.txt, refiner_add.txt and translucer_add.txt inline script for buildings.

[/expand]

3.9.3 is currently planned for a few weeks from now, and will include some more bugfixes as well as some diplomacy changes that we’ve pulled in. The recommended DLC screen updates I mentioned a few weeks ago have shifted to 3.10 at the earliest.

Let’s talk about Diplomacy now.
A common complaint since the release of Overlord and the 3.3 ‘Cepheus’ update is that the galaxy frequently degenerated into a handful of powerful vassal blocs, and things like Federations only formed rarely. A significant cause of this was due to the willingness of AI empires to quickly diplomatically submit to more powerful empires, even if the difference in power really wasn’t all that high. This then led to a snowball effect, as newly encountered empires would generally be less powerful than this already established bloc.

We’ve made a few minor adjustments to AI Acceptance in past releases, but decided that we need a more impactful change to delay this sort of behavior. We do want it possible for these political formations to form, but it shouldn’t be a fast and virtually guaranteed phenomenon.

Trust is an existing concept that grows over time between empires that have diplomatic ties. It grows up to a Trust Cap based primarily on the magnitude of those diplomatic ties, but is also affected by traditions and other sources of modifiers. Since the release of Federations and the 2.6 ‘Verne’ update, Envoys could be assigned to Improve Relations to waive most of the requirements for diplomatic pacts - this has now been largely shifted over to Trust and having an Embassy with the target or the Diplomatic Networking tradition.


The Centralized Yibrak Systems would like to join your network.

These requirements will change the initial flow of the game quite a bit - it’ll be harder to meet someone and have a Commercial Pact, Research Agreement, and the like a few days after finishing first contact, but similarly as a MegaCorp it’ll be rarer to encounter an AI Empire that already has their fill of Commercial Pacts and refuses to enter any more. It takes a bit of getting to know one another before they’re willing to entwine their economies or swear eternal allegiance to one another.


Let’s not be too hasty, maybe get to know one another first.

SPOILER: SOME PRELIMINARY 3.9.3 DIPLOMATIC PATCH NOTES

[expand type=showmore]

Balance

• Rebalanced requirements for diplomatic treaties to require trust.
  
• Having less than 50 Trust with an empire imposes a -100 Acceptance to them becoming your subject or overlord.
  
• Removed the ability to trade favors.
  
• Insulting someone decreases their Trust of your empire.
  
• The Intimidation menace perk now allows you to ignore diplomatic requirements for proposing subjugation.

AI

• The AI will no longer request to become the subject or overlord of another empire unless they have 50 Trust with the other party.
  
• Certain AI personalities (Federation Builders, Spiritual Seekers, Migrating Flocks, and Peaceful Traders) are now 25x more likely to select Diplomacy traditions.
  
• The AI will no longer request to be subjugated by empires that are equivalent or weaker than them.
  
• Trust between nations is now visible in the main diplomatic screen.

[/expand]

As another general diplomatic change, we’ve removed the ability to trivially trade favors between Empires. The traditions related to them and the Extort Favors operation will be the most consistent source of favors going forward, though in time we plan on adding more to various events that feel like they really should include a favor exchange. (This pass will not be complete in 3.9.3.)


All values are subject to change, but we’re generally pretty happy with them so far.

Internal testing has shown these changes to be pretty effective at reducing the vassalization blobs while still allowing them to form either over the long term or through judicious application of violence. (Subjugation wargoals do not require trust.) This also gives a potentially interesting hook for the Smear Campaign operation when we revisit Espionage sometime in the coming updates.

Next week we’ll be examining a potential 3.10 feature - the Leader Consolidation and trait balancing.


Hey wait, who put you in charge of that planet?

See you then!

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

We're also planning a follow-up 3.9.3 patch for mid to late October, which will include some of the issues brought up during the Open Beta that require new text, more fixes that did not meet the 3.9.2 deadline, and a handful of other improvements.

Please find the patch notes below.

STELLARIS 3.9.2 PATCH NOTES
[expand type=showmore]

############################################################​
#################### VERSION 3.9.2 ######################​
############################################################​
Balance

• Pre-FTL empires now have reduced technological development before the mid-game year.
  
• Catalytic empires can now build bio-reactors.

Bugfix

• Anomalies that reward Scientist Expertise traits now apply those traits to the Cognitive Node for gestalt empires.
  
• Blocked empires without the Scientific Method technology from constructing research districts.
  
• Federations End should no longer spawn empty habitats if the pre-FTL slider is set to 0
  
• Fix a CTD when loading a save containing an invalid species archetype
  
• Fix for wrong value for evasion in ship design.
  
• Fixed being able to build multiple gaia seeders on a single planet.
  
• Fixed Fallen Empires not triggering their monthly random events
  
• Fixed pre-ftl civilizations that naturally progressed to the Early Space Age being unable to become space faring.
  
• Fixed Secrets of the ... no longer granting Expertise traits.
  
• Fixed stage 4 gaia seeders being buildable, but immediately destroyed by non-Idyllic Bloom empires.
  
• Fixed the Colonial Remains deposits not spawning for the Remnants origin in some cases.
  
• Fixed the Patron achievement not firing.
  
• Fixed the Prethoryn getting stuck because their starting system contains an FTL inhibitor that prevents them from expanding
  
• Fixed the Surveyor not spawning resources in some cases.
  
• Gardening Drones will no longer have an unlocalized string.
  
• Habitat Central Complexes constructed around stars should now be placed further away, so they no longer clip into the star.
  
• Industrial designation is now only available on habitats for gestalt empires, if they use consumer goods.
  
• Merc enclaves now inherit their shipset from their creator.
  
• Paradisiacal Habitat modifiers in Ithome's Gate no longer use placeholder icons.
  
• Restored -25% penalty if the government doesn't have a head of research.
  
• Set a manual planet size for the Toxic God star asset, as it otherwise counts the large visual effects as part of the planet.
  
• The Crystal Splitter will now hopefully stop blowing up Fruitful Partnership colonies
  
• The spiritualist fallen empire will now wake up if you eat their holy worlds.
  
• The knights will no longer try to quest if you pacify their habitat.

Performance

• Removed MTTH from anomaly.6710, bane of ship events, horror of designers
  
• Removed MTTH from assorted fallen_empire_tasks events
  
• Removed MTTH from communications_spread.1 and communications_spread.3
  
• Removed MTTH from crime.1, crime.40 and crime.41, plus added pre-triggers to all crime-events
  
• Removed MTTH from fallen_empires.1, fallen_empires.3, fallen_empires.10, fallen_empires.11
  
• Removed MTTH from leviathans.660 and leviathans.662
  
• Removed MTTH from pop.1-13, madness that should have never existed
  
• Removed MTTH from random caravaneer events (cara.4000-4050)
  
• Removed MTTH from refugees.5, scourge of the game, destroyer of performance
  
• Removed MTTH from the Migrating Forests event chain (colony.1 to colony.12)
  
• Removed MTTH from the Orbital Debris event chain (colony.171 and colony.171)

UI

• Added new main menu gradient

Modding

• Added researchers_add.txt and archaeoengineers_add.txt inline scripts for buildings.
  
• Added chemist_add.txt, factory_add.txt, foundry_add.txt, refiner_add.txt and translucer_add.txt inline script for buildings.

[/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.

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

It’s been exactly 100 dev diaries since we introduced the Custodian initiative alongside the Lem update. With that milestone met, and 314 being funny math number, I thought it would be a good time to review what the Custodians have accomplished, some of the process they use, and where we could go from here.

To review, the original idea behind the Custodians Initiative was to do some of the following:

• Tweaking game balance
  
• Adding new content to old DLC
  
• Polishing existing content
  
• Bug fixes
  
• Performance improvements
  
• AI improvements
  
• Multiplayer stability
  
• UI and quality-of-life improvements

​
In my view, the Custodians have been a pretty solid success.

We’ve done a few things:



















I promised bad math jokes last week: Why did the Blorg cross the Mobius Strip? To get to the same side.​


Ideally, a third of their tasks are dictated by my directives, a third are taken from community requests, and the remaining third are individual developer passion projects. In reality, these segments overlap quite a bit, since we all share many of the same desires.

Before each release, we hold a “Custodian Pitch” meeting, where everybody on the team can write up proposals, give a two minute presentation on what they want to do and why they want to do it, and then a brief but spirited discussion is held debating the merits of the pitch as well as highlighting any concerns or suggestions.


Photo from a recent Custodian Pitch Meeting​

Accepted pitches go onto a team board, get prioritized, and eventually end up on the schedule. Unlike tasks slated for DLCs, Custodian tasks are intended to be able to slip to a later release if they’re deemed not ready to go live yet, and sometimes accepted pitches wait for a while before getting worked on. Rejected pitches sometimes resurface at a later date, revamped to resolve whatever problems the original pitch had.


Part of the Custodian Team Board​

As you can see, far more things get pitched and approved than we can actually do, so prioritization is extremely important. More things will move into 3.10 and 3.11 over time.

The Development Oubliette off to the side is for things that we started working on, but had to pause for various reasons.

Following Overlord, we instituted a rule that expansion work cannot absolutely depend on Custodian work, since we intentionally want Custodian work to be able to slip to a different release if necessary - the Situations system came in a little hot and that had negative effects on some of the systems we planned on using them with.
From the “In Progress” section under 3.9 Caelum, we have the Diplomacy and Trust changes that we’ve mentioned a few times. We’ll have a dev diary dedicated to this next week, since these have been accelerated to be included in the 3.9.3 release.

Two weeks from now we’ll be providing more details on the Leader Consolidation that we’ve also talked about in the past. Currently these tasks are in the To Do and In Progress sections of 3.10 Pyxis, grouped by dark blue dashed lines that you can barely see in this image.

Other things on the board without planned release dates include a variety of possibilities. Some are larger scope tasks that involve a large number of Custodians, while others might be the type of thing that can be knocked out quickly.

A handful of them include:

Espionage enhancements

• Make Espionage more impactful, but have systems in place to prevent “dog-piling”.

Continued work on concepts and nested tooltips

• Provide information in a clearer way, avoiding walls of text.

Improve tutorials

• They’re really not good at introducing the concepts new players need to learn the game.

Improve the outliner

• Make the Outliner easier to use during different phases of the game.

Do something with the Megastructures UI

• As the number of large space constructions grows, it gets harder to find the ones you want to build.
  
• It’s also very confusing to have things that require Mega-Engineering alongside constructions that don’t.

[/i][/list]
Continue after losing

• Pop up the Select an Empire UI from Multiplayer if you lose a Single Player game, in case you want to continue your galaxy’s story, even if your first empire’s has ended.

Improve species modification

• Address micromanagement and tedium in species modification.

Pop performance

• Pops are one of the greatest sources of late game performance issues. Find ways to reduce their impact.

Ship performance

• Ships (and fleets) are another performance issue to investigate.

Investigate number of habitable worlds (and rebalance if necessary)

• As more scripted systems get added to the game, the habitable worlds slider becomes less accurate.

Make AI personalities matter more

• Review the existing personalities, make them show up in AI weights more often, and differentiate them more.

Having come full circle, next week will be about Diplomacy and Trust.

See you then!

by Eladrin

Hi all!

The Stellaris 3.9.1 ‘Caelum’ update has been released, with full release notes listed here.



Unless critical issues arise over the weekend, our current plan is to have a general bugfixing 3.9.2 patch roughly two weeks from now. We’re also planning a followup localized 3.9.3 release in mid to late October, which will include some of the issues brought up during the Open Beta that require new text, more fixes that don’t meet the 3.9.2 deadline, and a handful of other improvements.

Localized updates are the only time we can add new text to the game, so some of the suggestions made during the Open Beta will be included in it.


Agendas will now show the required time to enact.​

We’re also making some upgrades to the existing recommended DLC screen. To make it more generally useful, it will be possible to see things like the tooltips of origins and find out what’s actually in this thing? in-game, hopefully letting you make better informed decisions by seeing what you’re getting before buying any DLC.

Based on the number of requests for it, we’re also considering accelerating the Diplomatic Trust and Vassalization changes Alfray has been working on, which we first mentioned way back in Dev Diary 291. At this point I’m not willing to outright promise this for 3.9.3, but the trajectory looks like I can pull it in rather than waiting for 3.10 ‘Pyxis’. If it continues to look good, we’ll provide more details in two weeks.


Trust, but verify.
(And don’t reveal your tender underbelly until you at least get to know them a bit.)

Free your desktop from that drab background! We have more species pack based wallpapers for you!







4k variants can be found in our wallpaper album.

We’re hitting an auspicious number next week, so we’re stocking up on bad math jokes and we’ll be talking about the state of various Custodian plans - as well as some of the things we’re considering investigating.

See you then!

The 3.9 “Caelum” update brings with it bug fixes, improvements to Gameplay, Automation, Performance, and the Leader Cap, on top of adding new content for many of our previously-released DLCs.

Read the full patch notes here.

Dont want to read pages of patch notes? Stellaris Game Director Eladrin joined us on YouTube last week to talk about the new features coming in 3.9!



You can also read our (translated) Steam post outlining the new additions to Stellaris in 3.9 here.

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

If you have an important 3.8.4 game going, please back up the save file before trying to load the save in 3.9.1. You can roll back to a prior version by right-clicking on Stellaris in your library -> Properties -> Betas -> choose the 3.8.4 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.

Thanks for playing Stellaris, and always remember the galaxy is vast and full of wonders!

Hello Stellaris Community!

The 3.9 "Caelum" update is currently scheduled to release on September 12th!

This update brings a host of new features to previously released DLC, including a habitat rework, trade rebalance, softening of the leader cap, new features and updates to previously released DLCs, plus a plethora of other bug fixes, AI and performance improvements. We’re going to go through some of the major features of this new update so that you can hop in and start playing on day one!

You can read the full patch notes on the Stellaris forums here.


Game Director Eladrin takes us through the features coming in the 3.9 "Caelum" update!


Leader Cap Rebalance
We’ve heard your feedback on the leader cap, and we’ve softened up the penalties for going over the Leader Cap in 3.9. Leader XP gain reduction will now follow a curve, allowing you to hire more leaders. This in itself is a temporary measure, as we are continuing to experiment internally to find a Leader system that we’re truly happy with.

Automation Improvements
In the 3.9 “Caelum” update, Sector Automation has been completely removed, in favor of individual Planetary automation. Planetary Automation will now take resources directly from an Empire’s resources, and we have added the ability to forbid using specific resources.

Just a reminder that Planetary Automation builds planets based off of the designation of the planet – so remember to set your Planetary Designation before turning on Automation, for a consistent experience!

Performance Improvements
Performance concerns are always top of our list when it comes to creating new patches, and 3.9 “Caelum” is no different. In this version, we have fixed a case where Country Modifiers would continuously recalculate, decreased the amount of texture loading on the Council and Leader list screens, refactored calculations for Trade Value from Living Standards, parallelized the Construction Queue and Trade Route/Piracy calculations, optimized the AI evaluation of subjugation actions, improved the way old events are fired and optimized triggers for Jobs, Casus Belli and Opinion modifiers.

I don’t know what any of these things means either. How do these changes feel to you? You can find out now in the Open Beta!



Ascension Path Updates (Requires Utopia)

We know how important it is for you to get your synth on. We’ve reduced the RNG-factor of completing the tech requirements for ascensions. We’ve added new Council Agendas to Utopia that will give you partial research on the technologies required to complete your chosen ascension. That way, you will be able to research them as soon as you learn to talk to those fleshy things from Eta Sigma 9.

Habitat Rework (Requires Utopia, Federations, Toxoids or First Contact)

Habitat Central Complexes are a new type of space construction, which act as the central hub of the Habitat system. Major and minor orbitals can be constructed around stars and planetary bodies in the system to further expand the Habitat Central Complex’s capacity for districts and buildings.

And before you ask, yes, if you blow it up with a Colossus, it leaves a ruined Habitat Central Complex that can be restored.

Expanded Leaders from Enclaves (Requires Overlord or Leviathans)

Shroudwalker Enclaves and Salvagers now both have a leader that you can hire. The leader from the Trade Enclave has been improved, plus all Enclave-hired leaders will now provide a special Council seat for those who own Galactic Paragons.

More Origins for Hives and Machines (Requires Utopia or Synthetic Dawn)
Machine Intelligences and Hive Mind can now choose the Lost Colony, Common Ground* and Hegemony Origins*. Hive minds can also now start as Void Dwellers*!

*also requires Federations

Workers Cooperative (Requires MegaCorp)
Live in a classless society, where the Ruling Class is replaced with democratically-elected Stewards, and quality of life is high. Worker Cooperatives also gain access to the Mutual Aid trade policy, which converts trade value into basic resources.

The Kaleidoscope (Requires Nemesis)
An energy-hungry parasite has appeared over your homeworld. Do you attack it, or nurture it? A new Situation-based event chain has been added for the owners of Nemesis. We won’t spoil anything else about this, but let's just say it’s not your garden variety event chain.

Price Increase for Species Packs
Stellaris Species Packs started as purely cosmetic add-ons, consisting of portraits, ship sets, city sets, and advisor voices. They’ve come a long way since them, now including a much greater variety of content. While the exact spread of features varies by pack, they now all include things such as origins, civics, traits, events, and new mechanics.

With the changes coming in 3.9 ‘Caelum’, we believe that the older Species Packs will be on par with the newer ones, and we’re planning an increase in the base price of the Plantoids, Humanoids, Lithoids, and Necroids Species Packs from $7.99 to match the $9.99 base price of the more recent Aquatics and Toxoids Species Packs.

Read on to see the new additions coming to the older species packs!

Plantoids Additions (Requires Plantoids)
Plantoid and Fungoid species will now be able to spread via seed in the Fruitful Partnership Origin, with their seeds hitching a ride across the galaxy on the backs of wandering groups of Tiyanki. We’ve also added a new Invasive Species trait, that gains habitability and growth bonuses from each negative trait it carries, a new Dryad-inspired portrait and new prescripted empire: Blooms of Gaea. Improvements are also coming for the Idyllic Bloom civic, with its level four Gaia Seeder building now also improving your pops over time, as well as increasing the effectiveness of their other Plantoid traits. The Catalytic Processing civic has also been improved and now uses food to produce Strategic Resources.

Humanoids Additions (Requires Humanoids)
Owners of Humanoids will now get access to the Enmity Tradition tree, which is all about benefiting from rivalries, as well as three new species traits, and two new Humanoid portraits!

Lithoids Additions and Updates (Requires Lithoids)
Lithoid Hiveminds will now be able to mine space deposits without protection with the new Void Hive Civic, and get mining and research stations built automatically as the hive expands its control over the system. Owners of the Lithoids Species Pack will also get access to the Selective Kinship civic, allowing only their phenotype to be rulers and a new Humanoid-inspired Lithoid, and a prescripted empire: Federated Theian Preservers.

Mechromancy Ascension Perk (Requires Necroids and Synthetic Dawn)
Machine Intelligences can now also reanimate biological leviathans, as well as create cyborg zombies out of biological pops. I, for one, am terrified of our new robot overlords.

Thanks for reading! We hope to see you all on September 12th for the release of Stellaris 3.9 “Caelum”!

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!
We're a day earlier than normal today because we wanted to make sure you had a chance to look at the release notes before the AMA event we’ll be holding on /r/stellaris from 15:00--17:00 CEST [CA note: 9am to 11am EDT / 6am to 8am PDT] . Bring your questions, we’ll bring answers.



The 3.9 ‘Caelum’ update is likely to be released next week if everything goes according to plan.

Today we are releasing the patch notes, which include a number of fixes thanks to feedback we received from the Open Beta.

Because of the length of the 3.9.1 Patch Notes​, please visit the Paradox Forums to view them all.