by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

Today we’ll be taking a look at the state of the game, the upcoming 3.11.2 patch, talk about the Subscription FAQ, look at the Q&A transcript, and give a taste of what’s next.

Let’s get to it.

The Stellaris 3.11.1 “Eridanus” update was released last week, and I’m happy to say that the build appears quite stable crash-wise.

The number of crash reports is very low for a release, with approximately 90% of the ones we are getting being due to mods that haven’t been updated. Of these, more than half are specifically related to mods that affect the Galaxy Settings screen. Metrics so far show that Multiplayer seems to be significantly more stable than 3.10.4 as well, though an issue has been raised regarding observer mode causing major performance issues in multiplayer that we're currently looking into.

The Custodian Team is currently working on a 3.11.2 update including some of the things that you’ve all reported, preliminarily scheduled for release next Tuesday, March 12th.

SOME THINGS PLANNED FOR 3.11.2

Balance

• The Opener for Domination now gives +5% Worker Output and +5% Slave Output instead of +10% Slave Output so Egalitarians and Xenophiles aren’t sad.
  
• Versatility Operational Proxies now gives +1 Unity production to Maintenance Drones so that Rogue Servitors aren't left out.
  
• Decreased the cost to study (-25%) and pacify (-40%) space fauna.

Bugfixes

• Fixed Federation Emissaries and GalCom Delegates not assigning correctly.
  
• Acquiring the Colonization Drones from the Chemical Wasteland Astral Rift will no longer lead to discovering Noxious Swamps (or other natural blockers) on Habitats (or other planets that shouldn't support these blockers)
  
• Corrected Adaptability Enhanced Recycling tooltip listing a 10% reduction instead of the 15% reduction.
  
• Corrected the finisher effect for Domination giving -15% Empire Size from Pops in some cases
  
• The finisher for Diplomacy now correctly says it gives +10% Diplomatic Weight instead of +10 Diplomatic Weight
  
• Fixed an issue where the "On the Origins of Nanites" special project didn't spawn.
  
• The Chosen will now declare a war of Cleansing on whoever breaches their wormhole
  
• Fixed habitat capital buildings given the wrong number of defensive armies
  
• Mining districts on machine worlds should no longer claim to give scrap miner drone jobs
  
• Fixed anomaly.7200 having repeated flags in their switch.
  
• Cartographer II and Cartographer III are now correctly recognised as councilor traits
  
• Fixed modifiers to mining and research station upkeep incorrectly attempting to reduce the upkeep of the planet they were orbiting
  
• Science ship auto explore feature with astral rifts sometimes skipped unexplored ones
  
• Fixed the icon for the Great Researcher trait
  
• Fixed Holy Covenants not giving High Priest jobs in some cases
  
• The Shallash system will now spawn properly again.
  
• You will no longer be able to engage in pre-FTL diplomacy with pre-FTLs not within your borders
  
• Homicidal empires will now properly annex pre-FTLs that are foolish enough to become space faring.
  
• Bio-trophies are no longer affected by Noxious Twice.
  
• Fix lack of evasion on sapient torpedo comp.
  

UI

• Fixes the background selector for rulers being set incorrectly in the leader category of the background selectors

Stability

• Fixed crash upon startup that could be caused by write-protected user directory.
  
• Fixed CTD that sometimes happens when finishing species modification.
  
• Fixed CTD when using console command dump_event_data and the output file is not writable
  
• Fixed CTD in leader names after loading a savegame
  
• Fixed CTD that may occur when updating diplomacy for countries without diplomacy

We’ve created an FAQ about the Stellaris Expansion Subscription option, I've included it here:

We've gathered up some of the most frequently asked questions from the launch of the Stellaris Expansion Subscription.

1. Will I lose access to my existing content purchases?
   No. All existing purchases will remain, and you will not have to sign up to the subscription service to maintain your access to your previously purchased content.
   
2. Will future content be subscription-only?
   No! Our main model will remain focused around expansions and other content, as we have done so far. We have introduced a subscription service to lower the barrier to entry for new players.
   
3. Who asked for this?
   We are experimenting with this additional option to provide players access to the full Stellaris experience. We are simply offering another choice, as we understand that many players would be interested in trying Stellaris with all the content without having to commit to purchasing all the existing content.
   
4. Why did you not just create content bundles?
   We already have bundles available that we have designed with the help of our community. We are happy with the currently available offerings, but may look into this again in the future.
   
5. If I play multiplayer with the subscription, does everyone else in my lobby still get to use my content for that game?
   Yes! Subscription ownership of the content comes with all the features that a regular purchase does. You can share the content from the subscription in multiplayer with your friends that only have the base-game.
   
6. Are there any plans to expand the subscription service to other stores/platforms?
   No current plans at this time, but something on our radar long-term.
   
7. Does the subscription model signal the end of development on Stellaris?
   We currently have several years of Stellaris development planned.
   
8. Will individual content still be available for sale?
   Yes! Stellaris content will continue to be available to purchased individually, as it always has been.
   
9. Why isn’t there a discounted price for the subscription for players who already own some/all of the content?
   The Stellaris subscription is geared towards allowing new players more avenues into the full Stellaris experience. As such, we attempted to keep the initial public offering as simple as possible. We may look at expanding our offerings in the future, however.
   
10. Why can't I buy Stellaris content while my subscription is active?
    When you have an ongoing subscription, you are technically considered to have the content in your library. As such, stores will stop you from purchasing a DLC for the same account twice (since the DLC is already in your library). Once the subscription expires, you can again go back to purchasing content normally.

We hope this provides more clarity into our process and alleviates some of the concerns of the Community with regards to the Expansion Subscription. If you have further questions, feel free to ask them in the thread below and we will do our best to provide answers!

For several years, the Expansion Subscriptions on some of our other games have proven very popular with new players, which was the major reason we wanted to bring the concept over to Stellaris. As Crusader Kings III's Chapters have likewise been extremely popular with their more experienced players, we're also looking into bundling future content together in a similar manner to make it easier for our veterans to get the new content at a discount.

On February 22nd, we held a Q&A on Discord. The team answered 247 questions and only got a little trolly.

For a transcript of the questions that were answered, please visit the Paradox forums.

I promised to give a teaser about what the internal team has been working on. Here you go.




Next week's dev diary will be later than usual as well.

written by Eladrin

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2729490

Hello!

The 3.11.1 “Eridanus” update has been released!

While the release notes should look relatively familiar to people who read last week's preliminary changelog, here are the release notes for today's update:

3.11.1 “ERIDANUS” CUSTODIAN UPDATE RELEASE NOTES
[expand type=details]

• Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider added to galaxy generation. This slider adjusts technology costs based on tier and game difficulty.

• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)
  
• Added the Seddom system.
  
• Allowed conversion between Sovereign Guardianship and Corporate Protectorate civics
  
• Dimensional Locks now forbid access to countries without communications
  
• Every participant in a war now gets a truce with the others after it ends, even if they were on the same side
  
• If you have a colony in a system when pre-FTLs become space faring you can apologize and annex them
  
• Progenitor Hive speed malus and bonuses now only affect military ships, removing the need of science ship escorts
  
• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup
  
• The Anglers civic now swaps to Trawling Operations if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
  
• The Eager Explorers civic now swaps to Privatized Exploration if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
  
• The Eager Explorers, Privatized Exploration and Exploration Protocols civics can be removed and readded after researching Jump Drives. The Stargazers civic cannot be removed as it is linked to the species trait of the same name
  
• The Foreign Consciousness trait is now a destiny trait
  
• When the Khan awakens the event will now properly have a go to button
  
• Added the old AI crisis diplomatic room to the list of selectable diplomatic rooms
  
• Rearranged the room selector priorities so that AI empires shouldn't lose special diplomatic rooms
  
• Set the old AI crisis diplomatic room to be used by Determined Exterminators
  
• Set the "scrappy room" to be used by the Ketlings
  
• Set the "gilded room" to be used the AI overlord for the Imperial Fiefdom origin
  
• Set the "organic room" to be used by Devouring Swarms
  
• ¤ Gangsters should no longer assassinate Chosen Ones or Legendary leaders
  
• ¤ If a Zombie or Nerve Stapled pop manages to lie on their resume and become a specialist or ruler they should be demoted much faster
  
• ¤ Xenophobic leaders are now half as likely to accept brainslugs while Xenophilic ones are twice as likely to accept them
  
• ¤ Improved spawning logic for anomalies that clear deposits to not spawn on planets with strategic resources

​

• All pop types will now be happy while living on a gaia world.
  
• Added a tier 2 Advanced Bio-Reactor technology and building. Advanced Bio-Reactors further reduce the food output of farmers in exchange for a small amount of exotic gas output
  
• Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin
  
• Ascension Theory is now a Tier 4 technology that requires at least 6 traditions trees to have been completed to be drawn
  
• Balance adjustments to the Knights of the Toxic God to make some of their behavior behave the same way as other economic bonuses in the game, and make more of the choices in the chain potentially relevant.
  
• Event options in the Knights' quest that improve their capital have been significantly buffed to be better balanced compared to the options that improve knight jobs:
  
  
• Toxic God Deposits
  
• Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
  
• Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
  
• Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
  
• Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% per Squire not 2% per Squire
  
• The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
  
  
• Luminous Blades
  
• The Order’s X-Calibrator planetary feature on their starting habitat now also provides -10% Pop Upkeep
  
  
• Knights X-Calibrator
  
• The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per Pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
  
• Bio-Reactors are now a tier 1 rare technology instead of a tier 0 Technology. Bio-Reactors now reduce the food output of farmer jobs and give them a small amount of energy output
  
• Bio-Trophy buildings no longer provide Artisan Drone and Maintenance Drone jobs
  
• Decreased the amount of research produced by unemployed pops with Utopian Abundance
  
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors
  
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
  
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies now provide Prosperity Preachers for MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers for regular Spiritualist MegaCorps
  
• First League Offices now provide Prosperity Preacher jobs for Spiritualist MegaCorps
  
• Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
  
• Gospel of the Masses now provides +1 Trade Value to Prosperity Preachers (both inside their empire and those on planet on which they have branch offices)
  
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies
  
• Increased the cost of the Rock Potential special project to 1000 energy to account for Stellaris Inflation
  
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions
  
• Lost Colony Parents now spawn with more developed colonies to avoid overcrowding on their capital.
  
• Machine Intelligences with a biological secondary species now have a base food income of 10 food/month, and without a secondary species or with a Lithoid secondary species, they now have a base mineral income of 10 minerals/month.
  
• Moved habitat upkeep modifiers from the domination opener to the expansion opener. Available for all, not just void dwellers
  
• Curator leader trait now provides +10% Research Speed (was +15%) with an associated +10% Researcher Upkeep. The Survey Speed bonus remains unchanged
  
• Penal Colonies now provide 10 housing.
  
• Prosperity Preachers are now a specialist strata job
  
• Rebalanced leader traits gained from Ascension Paths (Psionic, Chosen One, Synthetic, Cyborg, Erudite)
  
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
  
• Reduced the amount of Naval Cap granted by technologies
  
• Removed most sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game
  
• Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%
  
• Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%
  
• Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed
  
• Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep
  
• Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep
  
• Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked
  
• Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep
  
• Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs
  
• Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%
  
• Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
  
• Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs
  
• Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed
  
• Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs
  
• Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs
  
• Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs
  
• Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%
  
• Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs
  
• Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%
  
• Rulers now gain 12 XP per month
  
• Temples now provide Prosperity Preachers for Spiritualist MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers
  
• The Entangled Dark Matter astral rift now completely overwrites the personality of the selected scientist if they are not psionic
  
• The Traumatized trait now negatively impacts Astral Rift Exploration Speed
  
• Tier 2 and Tier 3 Sacrificial Temples no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
  
• Tweaked the tiers of technologies that increase naval cap and fleet command limit
  
• Warpling armies now have an upkeep of 1 energy and 0.1 astral threads per month
  
• Psychological Infertility and Existential Iteroparity can no longer be taken with the Clone Soldier or Ascended Clone Soldier trait.
  
• Two of the three habitable planets in the Trappist system are now terraforming candidates
  
• The "Tragula's Cross", "Trin's Promise" and "Loh" systems are now mutually exclusive on galaxy generation
  
• The “Science Ship as a Concept” now uses psionic components instead of whichever components your empire has researched
  
• Improvements to Resort Worlds:
  
• Resort Colonies now have Resort Workers and Resort Districts.
  
• Resort Workers provide empire wide bonuses to amenities and trade value from living standards.
  
• Resort World Technology appears sooner and is cheaper.
  
• Added Unity Bonus to resort world designation, lowered housing bonus
  
• ¤ Empires that value other species, such as Rogue Servitors, will now get extra annoyed if you engage in genocide or necrophaging
  
• ¤ Gestalt empires can now sell their minor artifacts provided that they have access to the galactic market
  
• ¤ Marauder ships should now have a decently larger amount of armor for most shipsizes
  
• ¤ Refugees should now also be willing to flee to Rogue Servitors if they are welcomed as Bio-trophies

​

• Added missing class name and icon in the leader upkeep tooltip
  
• Added missing required components to the Marauder Galleon
  
• Added new localization and triggers for Machine Empires exploring the Rift World origin.
  
• Armies now disband instantly instead of waiting for next tick
  
• Cordyceptic Empires that only had Subspace Drives on their ships are now also capable of reanimating space fauna
  
• Corrected draw weight for Shipbreaker trait
  
• Corrected modifiers on Agrarian Upbringing
  
• Corrected some trait names
  
• Corrected the Scout Wing using the wrong 3d entities
  
• Correctly locked a number of Delegate GalCom focus traits to require the DLC that unlocks their resolution category
  
• Diplo action tooltip now shows why we can't claim any systems
  
• distar.1081 will no longer spawn pops on colonies in progress
  
• Driven Assimilators with the Protected Pre-Sapients policy will no longer purge pre-sapients
  
• Empires with the Mechromancy AP can no longer purge cyborg zombies
  
• Event windows now correctly have no effect after the player has been defeated
  
• Extra trait points for script-generated species are now added correctly
  
• Fix countries created by `create_country` script command not having any leaders in their recruitment pool
  
• Fix duplicate ship role buttons when switching ship templates in ship designer
  
• Fix not being able to exit the game or return to menu when certain other UI windows were open
  
• Fix some leaders (e.g. paragons) getting a trait pick when you hire them even though they should not, how greedy!
  
• Fixed a number of opposite trait pairs not taking into account their leveled versions
  
• Fixed a string being undefined in the ruler designer menu
  
• Fixed an Astral Rift calling the Baol for Boal or was it the other way around?
  
• Fixed an error that prevented some Fallen Empire task events from firing
  
• Fixed cyborg zombies having a 100% chance of spawning instead of 33%
  
• Fixed default weights for pre-sapient policies
  
• Fixed Discoveries tab not being displayed when tabs order has been customized
  
• Fixed gestalt scientists getting research expertise traits when those traits had no effect for them
  
• Fixed heirs being able to have the Planar Theorist trait despite not being capable of exploring astral rifts
  
• Fixed incorrect weapon effect being used for the World Cracker
  
• Fixed invalid scope allowing pre-sapient pops to be turned into cyborg zombies
  
• Fixed issues with leaders assigned to armies or fleet that contain armies
  
• Fixed leaders sometimes getting invalid trait choices on level up
  
• Fixed missing 0 on Collaborator II
  
• Fixed missing message title for Restoring the Balance
  
• Fixed newest achievements not working on MS Store
  
• Fixed Orbital Bombardment planet modifier not having a tooltip if there are no other planet modifiers there
  
• Fixed possibility of leader trait picks including opposites of existing traits
  
• Fixed Revolutionary Medi-Gel not affecting Pharma State civic production for Medical Workers
  
• Fixed systems at the bottom of the map spawning at wrong coordinates
  
• Fixed the Shared Burdens tooltip being outdated and mentioning additional unity from the Egalitarian faction
  
• Fixed Unity Ambitions referencing their pre-Unity rework state.
  
• Fixed Urbanist being both a Destiny trait and a Veteran trait (which prevented it from being available as a trait pick)
  
• Fleets of countries without ship_disengagement = yes (e.g. Horde) now correctly cannot use emergency retreat
  
• Former Satrapies of the Khan should no longer be informed twice when the new Horde forms.
  
• Hiring Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer hires a mysterious clone of them instead
  
• If the Knights Keep is hit with a Pacifier Colossus there will now be unique event text
  
• It now costs 200 influence to abandon planets even if they have pre-sapients living there.
  
• Livestock slaves now inherit farmer and miner modifiers as appropriate.
  
• Making sure the negative situation outliner notifications only happens for negative situations
  
• Modifiers to empire-wide resource production now apply to resources generated through trade policies
  
• Removed reference to a loc key inside of an Under One Rule event.
  
• Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer lose Council traits when hired by gestalt empires.
  
• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events
  
• Replaced all sources of "is_leading_research = x" with "is_head_of_research" fixing numerous broken events and scopes
  
• Replaced one of the descriptions being reused for the Old Gods event chain
  
• Show turrets correctly on the Maven Cruiser and Caravaneer ships
  
• Sobek will no longer be confused and think that they came from your capital
  
• Species habitability for randomized empires is now correctly set for origins like shattered ring
  
• Stellar Culture Shock will now be applied to hive pre-FTLs if you are a hive empire.
  
• Terraforming a Barren World into a Machine or a Hive World will no longer fill that world with blockers
  
• Terraforming straight into a Hive or a Machine World now correctly removes "Terraforming Candidate"
  
• The astral rifts now correctly checks for Chosen One traits in addition to the Psionic trait
  
• The Azizians event can no longer target planets that are under colonization
  
• The chance to gain negative leader traits depending on leader age now takes into account leader lifespan
  
• The Ranger Lodge will now properly produce +2 and +3 additional unity as the higher tier of Environmentalist Galactic Community Resolutions are passed.
  
• The Speed Demon anomaly will no longer show up for Synthetic empires.
  
• Updated the hire_event_leader_effect scripted effect to take account of the the Eternal Throne relic
  
• Updated the tooltip for Universal Prosperity Mandate to mention the Employee Ownership living standard
  
• When the "Prohibit Separate Treaties" federation law is enable it should now correctly remove treaties from both parties and not only the outside one
  
• When transferring ships from one fleet to another, the fleet's leader will now always stay on the old fleet
  
• AI UNE should no longer spawn if there is already an empire using the Sol initializer.
  
• Fixed a rare instance of a possible divide by 0 during rebellions
  
• Fixed orders for jump-drive-only ships being queued in the wrong order.
  
• Fixed Skrand Sharpbeak being unassigned from his ship after you hire him
  
• Fixed Skrand Sharpbeak having an excess of traits
  
• Fixed some issues with the triggers to encounter Skrand Sharpbeak - sorry he's been a bit shy recently
  
• Fixes to leader generation conditions for the leader pool if there are no valid species (such as if you nerve staple your entire population)
  
• If the Prikkiti will now build the most advanced starbase that they can instead of always trying to build a citadel even if they don't have the technology for it.
  
• If you shield the final world of the Contingency you should now receive your relic.
  
• Kaleidoscope event chain: pre-FTL countries won't be able to receive the Kaleidoscope anymore
  
• Newly released vassals now get a leader pool correctly
  
• Research stations will no longer try to go MIA when a revolt occurs.
  
• The Manifesti should no longer show up before you have encountered other alien empires.
  
• ¤ The Expel Corporation war goal now also removes Branch Offices belonging to the defender from your allies' planets
  
• ¤ A supremely unlucky pre-FTL nation should no longer be able to have multiple machine uprisings if they fight off the first one
  
• ¤ The Atomic Clock event will now properly trigger after 42 years and 3 days following the superior Stellaris Standard Calendar, which has 360 day years
  
• ¤ Authoritarianism should no longer become more popular because you have egalitarian councilors
  
• ¤ Become the Crisis AI empires will now always decline becoming vassals to awakened empires
  
• ¤ Fixed a rare case where the Shard would not turn hostile against the player
  
• ¤ Fixed a rare error that would occur if your scientist who finished a dig site died before you clicked the final dig site event
  
• ¤ Fixed the checks for the Debris Field anomaly making it rarer than it should be
  
• ¤ Fixed the Lush Planet Anomaly requiring Sol to have spawned, also updated the event rewards to work in a tileless Stellaris
  
• ¤ Hyperlanes should no longer get attached to sealed systems
  
• ¤ Imperial Fiefdom AI will no longer consider subjects to be viable overlords when they are looking for one
  
• ¤ The Fleet Maneuvers event can no longer happen in capital systems
  
• ¤ The Horizon Signal Event Chain will now correctly prioritize your head of research for narrative events
  
• ¤ The Manifesti event chain will now properly end if you apprehend them early enough
  
• ¤ The puddle technician drone job is now properly a drone job
  
• ¤ The Sentinel Order should no longer spawn in systems not connected to the rest of the galaxy, leaving everyone else to deal with the Prethoryn
  
• ¤ Upscaling the Messenger will now properly remove the negative modifiers from the ships
  
• ¤ Vultaumar III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits
  
• ¤ Irass III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits, while Irass VIII has gained its missing exotic gases

• Improved speed of AI checking whether it should send subjugation offers
  
• Various performance improvements

​

• Fixed crash when completing an Astral Rift if the exploring ship no longer exists
  
• Possibly fixed rare crash in galaxy map special project icon tooltip.
  
• Several Out of Sync fixes.
  
• Fixing OOS issue with planets, wormholes etc sometimes being slightly differently positioned between windows and linux.

​

• Add assigned Leader's name and council title to archaeology view and rift view
  
• Additional Content tab text is centered correctly
  
• Clicking on a resource in the top bar now switches to that resource in the market view instead of closing it if it was already open
  
• Clicking on the "capped resource" notification will now take you to the correct tab depending on which resource is capped (correct market tab, relics view for minor artifacts, claims view for influence)
  
• Fix claim buttons being misaligned on partially or fully occupied systems
  
• Fix Outliner tab buttons appearing over the fleet manager sidebar on smaller resolutions
  
• Fixed incorrect speed value in ship designer
  
• Fixed Outliner tab buttons appearing in front of the archaeology window.
  
• Inactive leader trait triggered modifiers are shown in the tooltip along with their trigger conditions
  
• Remove double error message for starbase building tooltips
  
• Trade protection tooltip lists empire-wide modifiers
  
• Use up to 2 decimal places for displaying stability modifiers
  
• Use up to 2 decimal places for production/upkeep in building/district tooltips
  
• If an orbital station build order is selected, its fail text in planet tooltips no longer reveals hidden information.
  
• Tooltips for Galcom sanction resolutions now show the modifiers even if they're inactive.
  
• Tooltips for Galcom resolutions that have both triggered and non-triggered modifiers no longer show the "Modifiers" header twice.

​

• Added better script to evaluate planet and fleet for leaders, and added description of the AI algorithms for leader assignation in the leader_classes/00_base_classes.txt
  
• Awakened Empires can now upgrade their starbases.
  
• Changed leader assignation into a single loop for all location types, sorting locations by priority and leaders by skill, then trying to assign the highest priority leader to locations in order
  
• Fixed AI being able to improve and harm relations at the same time
  
• Fixed another case of the AI assigning Leaders to invalid (empty) fleets
  
• Fixed the AI trying to assign military leaders to science fleets.
  
• Improved AI weights for Ascension Paths
  
• The AI now hires leaders the same way it assigns them. Expect an increased number of generals.
  
• The AI will evaluate a leader for a location based on the `ai_location_weight` scripted value in the leader class
  
• The Fear of the Dark AI empires will be less predictable with what extreme paths they might take.
  
• The weight value for location priority when assigning leaders is now a define. When assigning leaders, there are 2 steps, first steps leader and locations are assigned a priority value, and then each leader calculates a final weight for each location. The leader/location pair with the highest weight is then assigned. This change affects the first step (the priority in the queue), as the second step is already fully scriptable.
  
• Improved AI leader assignment weights
  
• The AI now decides whether to strengthen or undermine the galactic empire based on two new game rules
  
• The AI will no longer build additional Quantum Catapults if they already have one within 25 jumps.
  
• ¤ Improved AI decision-making for the "Find Military Applications" Artifact Action
  
• ¤ Improved AI logic when it comes to when to use the Strip Mining decision
  
• ¤ Reduced the AI willingness to accept trade deals for food or consumer goods if they don't use those resources
  
• ¤ AI Hive-Mind empires now have an increased chance to research terraforming technologies since they are unlikely to get more pop types from migration pacts.

​

• Add `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger
  
• Added a check for the block_homeworld_traits leader flag in all traits that provide additional jobs to the leader's background planet. This flag is not currently used in the vanilla game
  
• Added checked for the following leader flags to leader trait weights and potentials: block_army_traits, block_council_traits, block_federation_traits, block_galcom_traits, block_governor_traits, block_pilot_traits these flags set the selection weight for leader traits in their category to 0 but are ignored if the leader has a subclass specializing in the category. These flags are currently unused in the vanilla game
  
• Added game rule 'can_ai_assign_governor' to let the AI decide if a planet can have a governor or not
  
• Added NON_PARAGON_TRAIT_OPTIONS_ON_LEVEL_UP define
  
• Added not_potential_override_text_key parameter to triggered modifier (currently used in leader trait tooltips and galcom resolutions)
  
• Added on_army_disbanded on_action
  
• Added show_if_not_potential parameter to triggered modifier (currently used in leader trait tooltips and galcom resolutions)
  
• Added text_offset variable to buttonType (only used for buttons that have both a sprite and text)
  
• Added the "is_urban_planet" scripted trigger for pc_relic and pc_city planets
  
• leader_class trigger can now appear in tooltips
  
• Renamed LEADER_RULER_MONARCH_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_RULER_EXPERIENCE and LEADER_RULER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE
  
• Replaced "negative", "subclass_trait", "destiny_trait" and "veteran_class_locked_trait" leader trait variables with "leader_trait_type"
  
• Updated documentation for create_species effect
  
• Updated LEADER_GOVERNOR_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_ASSIGNED_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE
  
• Fixed "remove_deposit" effect not working in a deposit scope, fixing orbitals not removing their bonus to habitats when destroyed
  
• Replaced the loc string used to select a background for Paragon portraits with an asset selector.
  
• can_generate_military_leader_from_pop now includes the requirements of can_generate_leader_from_pop, which are now in the can_be_leader scripted trigger.

[/expand]
Release notes marked with the ¤ symbol were made with the assistance of our modding community. Special thanks to Ariphaos, Fireprince, Risa, alexrider903, ECHO, Roverstorm, jasonpepe, SirBlackAxe, Glavius, Savlor, OldEnt, Harain, and The24thDS for making Stellaris a better game.

Please be aware that as normal with major releases, mods that have not yet been updated are likely to cause unexpected issues. If you wish to continue existing saves, see this thread for how to roll back to earlier versions of Stellaris.




Over the years, as more content has been added to Stellaris, we have been hearing an ever-increasing number of requests for a subscription option as an alternative to purchasing them individually.

We’re happy to announce that we are adding a subscription option to Stellaris, allowing players to access all released DLCs for Stellaris at a fixed monthly fee. Future DLC releases will be available to subscribers on day 1.

The Stellaris Expansion Subscription grants access to all of the content for Stellaris, with significant discounts for longer subscription plans:

• 1 Month: 9.99 USD
  
• 3 Months: 19.99 USD
  
• 6 Months: 29.99 USD​

Subscriptions can be started either directly from Steam or through the Additional Content browser, and may have different prices based on your regional currencies. The Stellaris Expansion Subscription is currently only available on Steam.

​
Next week’s dev diary will be on Thursday March 7th, and will likely be about post-release support for the 3.11 “Eridanus” update.

We’ll also include the dev Q&A transcript and a little hint about what else we’re working on.

Thank you for playing Stellaris!

by PDX-Loke

Hello fellow stargazers,

The 3.11.1 patch is now live and available for download.

Please find the changelog below.

Enjoy!


Feature​

• Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider added to galaxy generation. This slider adjusts technology costs based on tier and game difficulty.

Improvements​

• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)
  
• Added the Seedom system.
  
• Allowed conversion between Sovereign Guardianship and Corporate Protectorate civics
  
• Dimensional Locks now forbid access to countries without communications
  
• Every participant in a war now gets a truce with the others after it ends, even if they were on the same side
  
• If you have a colony in a system when pre-FTLs become space faring you can apologize and annex them
  
• Progenitor Hive speed malus and bonuses now only affect military ships, removing the need of science ship escorts
  
• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup
  
• The Anglers civic now swaps to Trawling Operations if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
  
• The Eager Explorers civic now swaps to Privatized Exploration if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
  
• The Eager Explorers, Privatized Exploration and Exploration Protocols civics can be removed and readded after researching Jump Drives. The Stargazers civic cannot be removed as it is linked to the species trait of the same name
  
• The Foreign Consciousness trait is now a destiny trait
  
• When the Khan awakens the event will now properly have a go to button
  
• ¤ Gangsters should no longer assassinate Chosen Ones or Legendary leaders
  
• ¤ If a Zombie or Nerve Stapled pop manages to lie on their resume and become a specialist or ruler they should be demoted much faster
  
• ¤ Xenophobic leaders are now half as likely to accept brainslugs while Xenophilic ones are twice as likely to accept them
  
• ¤ Improved spawning logic for anomalies that clear deposits to not spawn on planets with strategic resources
  
• Added the old AI crisis diplomatic room to the list of selectable diplomatic rooms
  
• Rearranged the room selector priorities so that AI empires shouldn't lose special diplomatic rooms
  
  • Set the old AI crisis diplomatic room to be used by Determined Exterminators
    
  • Set the "scrappy room" to be used by the Ketlings
    
  • Set the "gilded room" to be used the AI overlord for the Imperial Fiefdom origin
    
  • Set the "organic room" to be used by Devouring Swarms

Balance​

• All pop types will now be happy while living on a gaia world.
  
• Added a tier 2 Advanced Bio-Reactor technology and building. Advanced Bio-Reactors further reduce the food output of farmers in exchange for a small amount of exotic gas output
  
• Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin
  
• Ascension Theory is now a Tier 4 technology that requires at least 6 traditions trees to have been completed to be drawn
  
• Balance adjustments to the Knights of the Toxic God to make some of their behavior behave the same way as other economic bonuses in the game, and make more of the choices in the chain potentially relevant.
  
• Event options in the Knights' quest that improve their capital have been significantly buffed to be better balanced compared to the options that improve knight jobs:
  
• Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
  
• Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
  
• Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
  
• Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% per Squire not 2% per Squire
  
• The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
  
• The Order’s X-Calibrator planetary feature on their starting habitat now also provides -10% Pop Upkeep
  
• The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per Pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
  
• Bio-Reactors are now a tier 1 rare technology instead of a tier 0 Technology. Bio-Reactors now reduce the food output of farmer jobs and give them a small amount of energy output
  
• Bio-Trophy buildings no longer provide Artisan Drone and Maintenance Drone jobs
  
• Decreased the amount of research produced by unemployed pops with Utopian Abundance
  
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors
  
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
  
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies now provide Prosperity Preachers for MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers for regular Spiritualist MegaCorps
  
• First League Offices now provide Prosperity Preacher jobs for Spiritualist MegaCorps
  
• Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
  
• Gospel of the Masses now provides +1 Trade Value to Prosperity Preachers (both inside their empire and those on planet on which they have branch offices)
  
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies
  
• Increased the cost of the Rock Potential special project to 1000 energy to account for Stellaris Inflation
  
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions
  
• Lost Colony Parents now spawn with more developed colonies to avoid overcrowding on their capital.
  
• Machine Intelligences with a biological secondary species now have a base food income of 10 food/month, and without a secondary species or with a Lithoid secondary species, they now have a base mineral income of 10 minerals/month.
  
• Moved habitat upkeep modifiers from the domination opener to the expansion opener. Available for all, not just void dwellers
  
• Curator leader trait now provides +10% Research Speed (was +15%) with an associated +10% Researcher Upkeep. The Survey Speed bonus remains unchanged
  
• Penal Colonies now provide 10 housing.
  
• Prosperity Preachers are now a specialist strata job
  
• Rebalanced leader traits gained from Ascension Paths (Psionic, Chosen One, Synthetic, Cyborg, Erudite)
  
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
  
• Reduced the amount of Naval Cap granted by technologies
  
• Removed most sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game
  
  • Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%
    
  • Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%
    
  • Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed
    
  • Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep
    
  • Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep
    
  • Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked
    
  • Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep
    
  • Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs
    
  • Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%
    
  • Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
    
  • Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs
    
  • Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed
    
  • Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs
    
  • Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs
    
  • Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs
    
  • Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%
    
  • Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs
    
  • Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%
• Rulers now gain 12 XP per month
  
• Temples now provide Prosperity Preachers for Spiritualist MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers
  
• The Entangled Dark Matter astral rift now completely overwrites the personality of the selected scientist if they are not psionic
  
• The Traumatized trait now negatively impacts Astral Rift Exploration Speed
  
• Tier 2 and Tier 3 Sacrificial Temples no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
  
• Tweaked the tiers of technologies that increase naval cap and fleet command limit
  
• Warpling armies now have an upkeep of 1 energy and 0.1 astral threads per month
  
• ¤ Empires that value other species, such as Rogue Servitors, will now get extra annoyed if you engage in genocide or necrophaging
  
• ¤ Gestalt empires can now sell their minor artifacts provided that they have access to the galactic market
  
• ¤ Marauder ships should now have a decently larger amount of armor for most shipsizes
  
• ¤ Refugees should now also be willing to flee to Rogue Servitors if they are welcomed as Bio-trophies
  
• Psychological Infertility and Existential Iteroparity can no longer be taken with the Clone Soldier or Ascended Clone Soldier trait.
  
• Two of the three habitable planets in the Trappist system are now terraforming candidates
  
• The "Tragula's Cross", "Trin's Promise" and "Loh" systems are now mutually exclusive on galaxy generation
  
• The “Science Ship as a Concept” now uses psionic components instead of whichever components your empire has researched

Bugfixes​

• Added missing class name and icon in the leader upkeep tooltip
  
• Added missing required components to the Marauder Galleon
  
• Added new localization and triggers for Machine Empires exploring the Rift World origin.
  
• Armies now disband instantly instead of waiting for next tick
  
• Cordyceptic Empires that only had Subspace Drives on their ships are now also capable of reanimating space fauna
  
• Corrected draw weight for Shipbreaker trait
  
• Corrected modifiers on Agrarian Upbringing
  
• Corrected some trait names
  
• Corrected the Scout Wing using the wrong 3d entities
  
• Correctly locked a number of Delegate GalCom focus traits to require the DLC that unlocks their resolution category
  
• Diplo action tooltip now shows why we can't claim any systems
  
• distar.1081 will no longer spawn pops on colonies in progress
  
• Driven Assimilators with the Protected Pre-Sapients policy will no longer purge pre-sapients
  
• Empires with the Mechromancy AP can no longer purge cyborg zombies
  
• Event windows now correctly have no effect after the player has been defeated
  
• Extra trait points for script-generated species are now added correctly
  
• Fix countries created by `create_country` script command not having any leaders in their recruitment pool
  
• Fix duplicate ship role buttons when switching ship templates in ship designer
  
• Fix not being able to exit the game or return to menu when certain other UI windows were open
  
• Fix some leaders (e.g. paragons) getting a trait pick when you hire them even though they should not, how greedy!
  
• Fixed a number of opposite trait pairs not taking into account their leveled versions
  
• Fixed a string being undefined in the ruler designer menu
  
• Fixed an Astral Rift calling the Baol for Boal or was it the other way around?
  
• Fixed an error that prevented some Fallen Empire task events from firing
  
• Fixed cyborg zombies having a 100% chance of spawning instead of 33%
  
• Fixed default weights for pre-sapient policies
  
• Fixed Discoveries tab not being displayed when tabs order has been customized
  
• Fixed gestalt scientists getting research expertise traits when those traits had no effect for them
  
• Fixed heirs being able to have the Planar Theorist trait despite not being capable of exploring astral rifts
  
• Fixed incorrect weapon effect being used for the World Cracker
  
• Fixed invalid scope allowing pre-sapient pops to be turned into cyborg zombies
  
• Fixed issues with leaders assigned to armies or fleet that contain armies
  
• Fixed leaders sometimes getting invalid trait choices on level up
  
• Fixed missing 0 on Collaborator II
  
• Fixed missing message title for Restoring the Balance
  
• Fixed newest achievements not working on MS Store
  
• Fixed Orbital Bombardment planet modifier not having a tooltip if there are no other planet modifiers there
  
• Fixed possibility of leader trait picks including opposites of existing traits
  
• Fixed Revolutionary Medi-Gel not affecting Pharma State civic production for Medical Workers
  
• Fixed systems at the bottom of the map spawning at wrong coordinates
  
• Fixed the Shared Burdens tooltip being outdated and mentioning additional unity from the Egalitarian faction
  
• Fixed Unity Ambitions referencing their pre-Unity rework state.
  
• Fixed Urbanist being both a Destiny trait and a Veteran trait (which prevented it from being available as a trait pick)
  
• Fleets of countries without ship_disengagement = yes (e.g. Horde) now correctly cannot use emergency retreat
  
• Former Satrapies of the Khan should no longer be informed twice when the new Horde forms.
  
• Hiring Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer hires a mysterious clone of them instead
  
• If the Knights Keep is hit with a Pacifier Colossus there will now be unique event text
  
• It now costs 200 influence to abandon planets even if they have pre-sapients living there.
  
• Livestock slaves now inherit farmer and miner modifiers as appropriate.
  
• Making sure the negative situation outliner notifications only happens for negative situations
  
• Modifiers to empire-wide resource production now apply to resources generated through trade policies
  
• Removed reference to a loc key inside of an Under One Rule event.
  
• Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer lose Council traits when hired by gestalt empires.
  
• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events
  
• Replaced all sources of "is_leading_research = x" with "is_head_of_research" fixing numerous broken events and scopes
  
• Replaced one of the descriptions being reused for the Old Gods event chain
  
• Show turrets correctly on the Maven Cruiser and Caravaneer ships
  
• Sobek will no longer be confused and think that they came from your capital
  
• Species habitability for randomized empires is now correctly set for origins like shattered ring
  
• Stellar Culture Shock will now be applied to hive pre-FTLs if you are a hive empire.
  
• Terraforming a Barren World into a Machine or a Hive World will no longer fill that world with blockers
  
• Terraforming straight into a Hive or a Machine World now correctly removes "Terraforming Candidate"
  
• The astral rifts now correctly checks for Chosen One traits in addition to the Psionic trait
  
• The Azizians event can no longer target planets that are under colonization
  
• The chance to gain negative leader traits depending on leader age now takes into account leader lifespan
  
• The Ranger Lodge will now properly produce +2 and +3 additional unity as the higher tier of Environmentalist Galactic Community Resolutions are passed.
  
• The Speed Demon anomaly will no longer show up for Synthetic empires.
  
• Updated the hire_event_leader_effect scripted effect to take account of the the Eternal Throne relic
  
• Updated the tooltip for Universal Prosperity Mandate to mention the Employee Ownership living standard
  
• When the "Prohibit Separate Treaties" federation law is enable it should now correctly remove treaties from both parties and not only the outside one
  
• When transferring ships from one fleet to another, the fleet's leader will now always stay on the old fleet
  
• ¤ The Expel Corporation war goal now also removes Branch Offices belonging to the defender from your allies' planets
  
• ¤ A supremely unlucky pre-FTL nation should no longer be able to have multiple machine uprisings if they fight off the first one
  
• ¤ The Atomic Clock event will now properly trigger after 42 years and 3 days following the superior Stellaris Standard Calendar, which has 360 day years
  
• ¤ Authoritarianism should no longer become more popular because you have egalitarian councilors
  
• ¤ Become the Crisis AI empires will now always decline becoming vassals to awakened empires
  
• ¤ Fixed a rare case where the Shard would not turn hostile against the player
  
• ¤ Fixed a rare error that would occur if your scientist who finished a dig site died before you clicked the final dig site event
  
• ¤ Fixed the checks for the Debris Field anomaly making it rarer than it should be
  
• ¤ Fixed the Lush Planet Anomaly requiring Sol to have spawned, also updated the event rewards to work in a tileless Stellaris
  
• ¤ Hyperlanes should no longer get attached to sealed systems
  
• ¤ Imperial Fiefdom AI will no longer consider subjects to be viable overlords when they are looking for one
  
• ¤ The Fleet Maneuvers event can no longer happen in capital systems
  
• ¤ The Horizon Signal Event Chain will now correctly prioritize your head of research for narrative events
  
• ¤ The Manifesti event chain will now properly end if you apprehend them early enough
  
• ¤ The puddle technician drone job is now properly a drone job
  
• ¤ The Sentinel Order should no longer spawn in systems not connected to the rest of the galaxy, leaving everyone else to deal with the Prethoryn
  
• ¤ Upscaling the Messenger will now properly remove the negative modifiers from the ships
  
• ¤ Vultaumar III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits
  
• ¤ Irass III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits, while Irass VIII has gained its missing exotic gases
  
• AI UNE should no longer spawn if there is already an empire using the Sol initializer.
  
• Fixed a rare instance of a possible divide by 0 during rebellions
  
• Fixed orders for jump-drive-only ships being queued in the wrong order.
  
• Fixed Skrand Sharpbeak being unassigned from his ship after you hire him
  
• Fixed Skrand Sharpbeak having an excess of traits
  
• Fixed some issues with the triggers to encounter Skrand Sharpbeak - sorry he's been a bit shy recently
  
• Fixes to leader generation conditions for the leader pool if there are no valid species (such as if you nerve staple your entire population)
  
• If the Prikkiti will now build the most advanced starbase that they can instead of always trying to build a citadel even if they don't have the technology for it.
  
• If you shield the final world of the Contingency you should now receive your relic.
  
• Kaleidoscope event chain: pre-FTL countries won't be able to receive the Kaleidoscope anymore
  
• Newly released vassals now get a leader pool correctly
  
• Research stations will no longer try to go MIA when a revolt occurs.
  
• The Manifesti should no longer show up before you have encountered other alien empires.

Performance​

• Improved speed of AI checking whether it should send subjugation offers
  
• Various performance improvements

Stability​

• Fixed crash when completing an Astral Rift if the exploring ship no longer exists
  
• Possibly fixed rare crash in galaxy map special project icon tooltip.
  
• Several Out of Sync fixes.
  
• Fixing OOS issue with planets, wormholes etc sometimes being slightly differently positioned between windows and linux.

UX​

• Add assigned Leader's name and council title to archaeology view and rift view
  
• Additional Content tab text is centered correctly
  
• Clicking on a resource in the top bar now switches to that resource in the market view instead of closing it if it was already open
  
• Clicking on the "capped resource" notification will now take you to the correct tab depending on which resource is capped (correct market tab, relics view for minor artifacts, claims view for influence)
  
• Fix claim buttons being misaligned on partially or fully occupied systems
  
• Fix Outliner tab buttons appearing over the fleet manager sidebar on smaller resolutions
  
• Fixed incorrect speed value in ship designer
  
• Fixed Outliner tab buttons appearing in front of the archaeology window.
  
• Inactive leader trait triggered modifiers are shown in the tooltip along with their trigger conditions
  
• Remove double error message for starbase building tooltips
  
• Trade protection tooltip lists empire-wide modifiers
  
• Use up to 2 decimal places for displaying stability modifiers
  
• Use up to 2 decimal places for production/upkeep in building/district tooltips
  
• If an orbital station build order is selected, its fail text in planet tooltips no longer reveals hidden information.
  
• Tooltips for Galcom sanction resolutions now show the modifiers even if they're inactive.
  
• Tooltips for Galcom resolutions that have both triggered and non-triggered modifiers no longer show the "Modifiers" header twice.

AI​

• Added better script to evaluate planet and fleet for leaders, and added description of the AI algorithms for leader assignation in the leader_classes/00_base_classes.txt
  
• Awakened Empires can now upgrade their starbases.
  
• Changed leader assignation into a single loop for all location types, sorting locations by priority and leaders by skill, then trying to assign the highest priority leader to locations in order
  
• Fixed AI being able to improve and harm relations at the same time
  
• Fixed another case of the AI assigning Leaders to invalid (empty) fleets
  
• Fixed the AI trying to assign military leaders to science fleets.
  
• Improved AI weights for Ascension Paths
  
• The AI now hires leaders the same way it assigns them. Expect an increased number of generals.
  
• The AI will evaluate a leader for a location based on the `ai_location_weight` scripted value in the leader class
  
• The Fear of the Dark AI empires will be less predictable with what extreme paths they might take.
  
• The weight value for location priority when assigning leaders is now a define. When assigning leaders, there are 2 steps, first steps leader and locations are assigned a priority value, and then each leader calculates a final weight for each location. The leader/location pair with the highest weight is then assigned. This change affects the first step (the priority in the queue), as the second step is already fully scriptable.
  
• ¤ Improved AI decision-making for the "Find Military Applications" Artifact Action
  
• ¤ Improved AI logic when it comes to when to use the Strip Mining decision
  
• ¤ Reduced the AI willingness to accept trade deals for food or consumer goods if they don't use those resources
  
• ¤ AI Hive-Mind empires now have an increased chance to research terraforming technologies since they are unlikely to get more pop types from migration pacts.
  
• Improved AI leader assignment weights
  
• The AI now decides whether to strengthen or undermine the galactic empire based on two new game rules
  
• The AI will no longer build additional Quantum Catapults if they already have one within 25 jumps.

Modding​

• Add `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger
  
• Added a check for the block_homeworld_traits leader flag in all traits that provide additional jobs to the leader's background planet. This flag is not currently used in the vanilla game
  
• Added checked for the following leader flags to leader trait weights and potentials: block_army_traits, block_council_traits, block_federation_traits, block_galcom_traits, block_governor_traits, block_pilot_traits these flags set the selection weight for leader traits in their category to 0 but are ignored if the leader has a subclass specializing in the category. These flags are currently unused in the vanilla game
  
• Added game rule 'can_ai_assign_governor' to let the AI decide if a planet can have a governor or not
  
• Added NON_PARAGON_TRAIT_OPTIONS_ON_LEVEL_UP define
  
• Added not_potential_override_text_key parameter to triggered modifier (currently used in leader trait tooltips and galcom resolutions)
  
• Added on_army_disbanded on_action
  
• Added show_if_not_potential parameter to triggered modifier (currently used in leader trait tooltips and galcom resolutions)
  
• Added text_offset variable to buttonType (only used for buttons that have both a sprite and text)
  
• Added the "is_urban_planet" scripted trigger for pc_relic and pc_city planets
  
• leader_class trigger can now appear in tooltips
  
• Renamed LEADER_RULER_MONARCH_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_RULER_EXPERIENCE and LEADER_RULER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE
  
• Replaced "negative", "subclass_trait", "destiny_trait" and "veteran_class_locked_trait" leader trait variables with "leader_trait_type"
  
• Updated documentation for create_species effect
  
• Updated LEADER_GOVERNOR_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_ASSIGNED_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE
  
• Fixed "remove_deposit" effect not working in a deposit scope, fixing orbitals not removing their bonus to habitats when destroyed
  
• Replaced the loc string used to select a background for Paragon portraits with an asset selector.
  
• can_generate_military_leader_from_pop now includes the requirements of can_generate_leader_from_pop, which are now in the can_be_leader scripted trigger.

Release notes marked with the ¤ symbol were made with the assistance of our modding community. Special thanks to Ariphaos, Fireprince, Risa, alexrider903, ECHO, Roverstorm, jasonpepe, SirBlackAxe, Glavius, Salvor, OldEnt, Harain, and The24thDS for making Stellaris a better game.

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

We’ve hit our code freeze, so barring unforeseen circumstances, the 3.11 “Eridanus” update will be released next Tuesday, on February 27th.
As promised, here are the preliminary release notes. Release Notes prefaced with a ¤ symbol had community involvement from our modders, and I’ve placed changes that have been merged since last week’s dev diary at the end of each section and marked them with a §.


Feature​

• Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider added to galaxy generation. This slider adjusts technology costs based on tier and game difficulty.

Improvements​

• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)
  
• Added the Seedom system.
  
• Allowed conversion between Sovereign Guardianship and Corporate Protectorate civics
  
• Dimensional Locks now forbid access to countries without communications
  
• Every participant in a war now gets a truce with the others after it ends, even if they were on the same side
  
• If you have a colony in a system when pre-FTLs become space faring you can apologize and annex them
  
• Progenitor Hive speed malus and bonuses now only affect military ships, removing the need of science ship escorts
  
• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup
  
• The Anglers civic now swaps to Trawling Operations if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
  
• The Eager Explorers civic now swaps to Privatized Exploration if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
  
• The Eager Explorers, Privatized Exploration and Exploration Protocols civics can be removed and readded after researching Jump Drives. The Stargazers civic cannot be removed as it is linked to the species trait of the same name
  
• The Foreign Consciousness trait is now a destiny trait
  
• When the Khan awakens the event will now properly have a go to button
  
• ¤ Gangsters should no longer assassinate Chosen Ones or Legendary leaders
  
• ¤ If a Zombie or Nerve Stapled pop manages to lie on their resume and become a specialist or ruler they should be demoted much faster
  
• ¤ Xenophobic leaders are now half as likely to accept brainslugs while Xenophilic ones are twice as likely to accept them
  
• ¤ Improved spawning logic for anomalies that clear deposits to not spawn on planets with strategic resources
  
• § Added the old AI crisis diplomatic room to the list of selectable diplomatic rooms
  
• § Rearranged the room selector priorities so that AI empires shouldn't lose special diplomatic rooms
  
  • § Set the old AI crisis diplomatic room to be used by Determined Exterminators
    
  • § Set the "scrappy room" to be used by the Ketlings
    
  • § Set the "gilded room" to be used the AI overlord for the Imperial Fiefdom origin
    
  • § Set the "organic room" to be used by Devouring Swarms

Balance​

• All pop types will now be happy while living on a gaia world.
  
• Added a tier 2 Advanced Bio-Reactor technology and building. Advanced Bio-Reactors further reduce the food output of farmers in exchange for a small amount of exotic gas output
  
• Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin
  
• Ascension Theory is now a Tier 4 technology that requires at least 6 traditions trees to have been completed to be drawn
  
• Balance adjustments to the Knights of the Toxic God to make some of their behavior behave the same way as other economic bonuses in the game, and make more of the choices in the chain potentially relevant.
  
• Event options in the Knights' quest that improve their capital have been significantly buffed to be better balanced compared to the options that improve knight jobs:

• Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
  
• Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
  
• Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
  
• Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% per Squire not 2% per Squire
  
• The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight

• The Order’s X-Calibrator planetary feature on their starting habitat now also provides -10% Pop Upkeep

• The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per Pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
  
• Bio-Reactors are now a tier 1 rare technology instead of a tier 0 Technology. Bio-Reactors now reduce the food output of farmer jobs and give them a small amount of energy output
  
• Bio-Trophy buildings no longer provide Artisan Drone and Maintenance Drone jobs
  
• Decreased the amount of research produced by unemployed pops with Utopian Abundance
  
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors
  
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
  
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies now provide Prosperity Preachers for MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers for regular Spiritualist MegaCorps
  
• First League Offices now provide Prosperity Preacher jobs for Spiritualist MegaCorps
  
• Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
  
• Gospel of the Masses now provides +1 Trade Value to Prosperity Preachers (both inside their empire and those on planet on which they have branch offices)
  
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies
  
• Increased the cost of the Rock Potential special project to 1000 energy to account for Stellaris Inflation
  
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions
  
• Lost Colony Parents now spawn with more developed colonies to avoid overcrowding on their capital.
  
• Machine Intelligences with a biological secondary species now have a base food income of 10 food/month, and without a secondary species or with a Lithoid secondary species, they now have a base mineral income of 10 minerals/month.
  
• Moved habitat upkeep modifiers from the domination opener to the expansion opener. Available for all, not just void dwellers
  
• Curator leader trait now provides +10% Research Speed (was +15%) with an associated +10% Researcher Upkeep. The Survey Speed bonus remains unchanged
  
• Penal Colonies now provide 10 housing.
  
• Prosperity Preachers are now a specialist strata job
  
• Rebalanced leader traits gained from Ascension Paths (Psionic, Chosen One, Synthetic, Cyborg, Erudite)
  
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
  
• Reduced the amount of Naval Cap granted by technologies
  
• Removed most sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game
  
  • Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%
    
  • Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%
    
  • Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed
    
  • Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep
    
  • Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep
    
  • Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked
    
  • Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep
    
  • Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs
    
  • Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%
    
  • Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
    
  • Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs
    
  • Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed
    
  • Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs
    
  • Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs
    
  • Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs
    
  • Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%
    
  • Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs
    
  • Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%
• Rulers now gain 12 XP per month
  
• Temples now provide Prosperity Preachers for Spiritualist MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers
  
• The Entangled Dark Matter astral rift now completely overwrites the personality of the selected scientist if they are not psionic
  
• The Traumatized trait now negatively impacts Astral Rift Exploration Speed
  
• Tier 2 and Tier 3 Sacrificial Temples no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
  
• Tweaked the tiers of technologies that increase naval cap and fleet command limit
  
• Warpling armies now have an upkeep of 1 energy and 0.1 astral threads per month
  
• ¤ Empires that value other species, such as Rogue Servitors, will now get extra annoyed if you engage in genocide or necrophaging
  
• ¤ Gestalt empires can now sell their minor artifacts provided that they have access to the galactic market
  
• ¤ Marauder ships should now have a decently larger amount of armor for most shipsizes
  
• ¤ Refugees should now also be willing to flee to Rogue Servitors if they are welcomed as Bio-trophies
  
• § Psychological Infertility and Existential Iteroparity can no longer be taken with the Clone Soldier or Ascended Clone Soldier trait.
  
• § Two of the three habitable planets in the Trappist system are now terraforming candidates
  
• § The "Tragula's Cross", "Trin's Promise" and "Loh" systems are now mutually exclusive on galaxy generation
  
• § The “Science Ship as a Concept” now uses psionic components instead of whichever components your empire has researched

Bugfixes​

• Added missing class name and icon in the leader upkeep tooltip
  
• Added missing required components to the Marauder Galleon
  
• Added new localization and triggers for Machine Empires exploring the Rift World origin.
  
• Armies now disband instantly instead of waiting for next tick
  
• Cordyceptic Empires that only had Subspace Drives on their ships are now also capable of reanimating space fauna
  
• Corrected draw weight for Shipbreaker trait
  
• Corrected modifiers on Agrarian Upbringing
  
• Corrected some trait names
  
• Corrected the Scout Wing using the wrong 3d entities
  
• Correctly locked a number of Delegate GalCom focus traits to require the DLC that unlocks their resolution category
  
• Diplo action tooltip now shows why we can't claim any systems
  
• distar.1081 will no longer spawn pops on colonies in progress
  
• Driven Assimilators with the Protected Pre-Sapients policy will no longer purge pre-sapients
  
• Empires with the Mechromancy AP can no longer purge cyborg zombies
  
• Event windows now correctly have no effect after the player has been defeated
  
• Extra trait points for script-generated species are now added correctly
  
• Fix countries created by `create_country` script command not having any leaders in their recruitment pool
  
• Fix duplicate ship role buttons when switching ship templates in ship designer
  
• Fix not being able to exit the game or return to menu when certain other UI windows were open
  
• Fix some leaders (e.g. paragons) getting a trait pick when you hire them even though they should not, how greedy!
  
• Fixed a number of opposite trait pairs not taking into account their leveled versions
  
• Fixed a string being undefined in the ruler designer menu
  
• Fixed an Astral Rift calling the Baol for Boal or was it the other way around?
  
• Fixed an error that prevented some Fallen Empire task events from firing
  
• Fixed cyborg zombies having a 100% chance of spawning instead of 33%
  
• Fixed default weights for pre-sapient policies
  
• Fixed Discoveries tab not being displayed when tabs order has been customized
  
• Fixed gestalt scientists getting research expertise traits when those traits had no effect for them
  
• Fixed heirs being able to have the Planar Theorist trait despite not being capable of exploring astral rifts
  
• Fixed incorrect weapon effect being used for the World Cracker
  
• Fixed invalid scope allowing pre-sapient pops to be turned into cyborg zombies
  
• Fixed issues with leaders assigned to armies or fleet that contain armies
  
• Fixed leaders sometimes getting invalid trait choices on level up
  
• Fixed missing 0 on Collaborator II
  
• Fixed missing message title for Restoring the Balance
  
• Fixed newest achievements not working on MS Store
  
• Fixed Orbital Bombardment planet modifier not having a tooltip if there are no other planet modifiers there
  
• Fixed possibility of leader trait picks including opposites of existing traits
  
• Fixed Revolutionary Medi-Gel not affecting Pharma State civic production for Medical Workers
  
• Fixed systems at the bottom of the map spawning at wrong coordinates
  
• Fixed the Shared Burdens tooltip being outdated and mentioning additional unity from the Egalitarian faction
  
• Fixed Unity Ambitions referencing their pre-Unity rework state.
  
• Fixed Urbanist being both a Destiny trait and a Veteran trait (which prevented it from being available as a trait pick)
  
• Fleets of countries without ship_disengagement = yes (e.g. Horde) now correctly cannot use emergency retreat
  
• Former Satrapies of the Khan should no longer be informed twice when the new Horde forms.
  
• Hiring Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer hires a mysterious clone of them instead
  
• If the Knights Keep is hit with a Pacifier Colossus there will now be unique event text
  
• It now costs 200 influence to abandon planets even if they have pre-sapients living there.
  
• Livestock slaves now inherit farmer and miner modifiers as appropriate.
  
• Making sure the negative situation outliner notifications only happens for negative situations
  
• Modifiers to empire-wide resource production now apply to resources generated through trade policies
  
• Removed reference to a loc key inside of an Under One Rule event.
  
• Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer lose Council traits when hired by gestalt empires.
  
• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events
  
• Replaced all sources of "is_leading_research = x" with "is_head_of_research" fixing numerous broken events and scopes
  
• Replaced one of the descriptions being reused for the Old Gods event chain
  
• Show turrets correctly on the Maven Cruiser and Caravaneer ships
  
• Sobek will no longer be confused and think that they came from your capital
  
• Species habitability for randomized empires is now correctly set for origins like shattered ring
  
• Stellar Culture Shock will now be applied to hive pre-FTLs if you are a hive empire.
  
• Terraforming a Barren World into a Machine or a Hive World will no longer fill that world with blockers
  
• Terraforming straight into a Hive or a Machine World now correctly removes "Terraforming Candidate"
  
• The astral rifts now correctly checks for Chosen One traits in addition to the Psionic trait
  
• The Azizians event can no longer target planets that are under colonization
  
• The chance to gain negative leader traits depending on leader age now takes into account leader lifespan
  
• The Ranger Lodge will now properly produce +2 and +3 additional unity as the higher tier of Environmentalist Galactic Community Resolutions are passed.
  
• The Speed Demon anomaly will no longer show up for Synthetic empires.
  
• Updated the hire_event_leader_effect scripted effect to take account of the the Eternal Throne relic
  
• Updated the tooltip for Universal Prosperity Mandate to mention the Employee Ownership living standard
  
• When the "Prohibit Separate Treaties" federation law is enable it should now correctly remove treaties from both parties and not only the outside one
  
• When transferring ships from one fleet to another, the fleet's leader will now always stay on the old fleet
  
• ¤ The Expel Corporation war goal now also removes Branch Offices belonging to the defender from your allies' planets
  
• ¤ A supremely unlucky pre-FTL nation should no longer be able to have multiple machine uprisings if they fight off the first one
  
• ¤ The Atomic Clock event will now properly trigger after 42 years and 3 days following the superior Stellaris Standard Calendar, which has 360 day years
  
• ¤ Authoritarianism should no longer become more popular because you have egalitarian councilors
  
• ¤ Become the Crisis AI empires will now always decline becoming vassals to awakened empires
  
• ¤ Fixed a rare case where the Shard would not turn hostile against the player
  
• ¤ Fixed a rare error that would occur if your scientist who finished a dig site died before you clicked the final dig site event
  
• ¤ Fixed the checks for the Debris Field anomaly making it rarer than it should be
  
• ¤ Fixed the Lush Planet Anomaly requiring Sol to have spawned, also updated the event rewards to work in a tileless Stellaris
  
• ¤ Hyperlanes should no longer get attached to sealed systems
  
• ¤ Imperial Fiefdom AI will no longer consider subjects to be viable overlords when they are looking for one
  
• ¤ The Fleet Maneuvers event can no longer happen in capital systems
  
• ¤ The Horizon Signal Event Chain will now correctly prioritize your head of research for narrative events
  
• ¤ The Manifesti event chain will now properly end if you apprehend them early enough
  
• ¤ The puddle technician drone job is now properly a drone job
  
• ¤ The Sentinel Order should no longer spawn in systems not connected to the rest of the galaxy, leaving everyone else to deal with the Prethoryn
  
• ¤ Upscaling the Messenger will now properly remove the negative modifiers from the ships
  
• ¤ Vultaumar III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits
  
• ¤ Irass III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits, while Irass VIII has gained its missing exotic gases
  
• § AI UNE should no longer spawn if there is already an empire using the Sol initializer.
  
• § Fixed a rare instance of a possible divide by 0 during rebellions
  
• § Fixed orders for jump-drive-only ships being queued in the wrong order.
  
• § Fixed Skrand Sharpbeak being unassigned from his ship after you hire him
  
• § Fixed Skrand Sharpbeak having an excess of traits
  
• § Fixed some issues with the triggers to encounter Skrand Sharpbeak - sorry he's been a bit shy recently
  
• § Fixes to leader generation conditions for the leader pool if there are no valid species (such as if you nerve staple your entire population)
  
• § If the Prikkiti will now build the most advanced starbase that they can instead of always trying to build a citadel even if they don't have the technology for it.
  
• § If you shield the final world of the Contingency you should now receive your relic.
  
• § Kaleidoscope event chain: pre-FTL countries won't be able to receive the Kaleidoscope anymore
  
• § Newly released vassals now get a leader pool correctly
  
• § Research stations will no longer try to go MIA when a revolt occurs.
  
• § The Manifesti should no longer show up before you have encountered other alien empires.

Performance​

• Improved speed of AI checking whether it should send subjugation offers
  
• § Various performance improvements

Stability​

• Fixed crash when completing an Astral Rift if the exploring ship no longer exists
  
• Possibly fixed rare crash in galaxy map special project icon tooltip.
  
• Several Out of Sync fixes.
  
• § Fixing OOS issue with planets, wormholes etc sometimes being slightly differently positioned between windows and linux.

UX​

• Add assigned Leader's name and council title to archaeology view and rift view
  
• Additional Content tab text is centered correctly
  
• Clicking on a resource in the top bar now switches to that resource in the market view instead of closing it if it was already open
  
• Clicking on the "capped resource" notification will now take you to the correct tab depending on which resource is capped (correct market tab, relics view for minor artifacts, claims view for influence)
  
• Fix claim buttons being misaligned on partially or fully occupied systems
  
• Fix Outliner tab buttons appearing over the fleet manager sidebar on smaller resolutions
  
• Fixed incorrect speed value in ship designer
  
• Fixed Outliner tab buttons appearing in front of the archaeology window.
  
• Inactive leader trait triggered modifiers are shown in the tooltip along with their trigger conditions
  
• Remove double error message for starbase building tooltips
  
• Trade protection tooltip lists empire-wide modifiers
  
• Use up to 2 decimal places for displaying stability modifiers
  
• Use up to 2 decimal places for production/upkeep in building/district tooltips
  
• § If an orbital station build order is selected, its fail text in planet tooltips no longer reveals hidden information.
  
• § Tooltips for Galcom sanction resolutions now show the modifiers even if they're inactive.
  
• § Tooltips for Galcom resolutions that have both triggered and non-triggered modifiers no longer show the "Modifiers" header twice.

AI​

• Added better script to evaluate planet and fleet for leaders, and added description of the AI algorithms for leader assignation in the leader_classes/00_base_classes.txt
  
• Awakened Empires can now upgrade their starbases.
  
• Changed leader assignation into a single loop for all location types, sorting locations by priority and leaders by skill, then trying to assign the highest priority leader to locations in order
  
• Fixed AI being able to improve and harm relations at the same time
  
• Fixed another case of the AI assigning Leaders to invalid (empty) fleets
  
• Fixed the AI trying to assign military leaders to science fleets.
  
• Improved AI weights for Ascension Paths
  
• The AI now hires leaders the same way it assigns them. Expect an increased number of generals.
  
• The AI will evaluate a leader for a location based on the `ai_location_weight` scripted value in the leader class
  
• The Fear of the Dark AI empires will be less predictable with what extreme paths they might take.
  
• The weight value for location priority when assigning leaders is now a define. When assigning leaders, there are 2 steps, first steps leader and locations are assigned a priority value, and then each leader calculates a final weight for each location. The leader/location pair with the highest weight is then assigned. This change affects the first step (the priority in the queue), as the second step is already fully scriptable.
  
• ¤ Improved AI decision-making for the "Find Military Applications" Artifact Action
  
• ¤ Improved AI logic when it comes to when to use the Strip Mining decision
  
• ¤ Reduced the AI willingness to accept trade deals for food or consumer goods if they don't use those resources
  
• ¤ AI Hive-Mind empires now have an increased chance to research terraforming technologies since they are unlikely to get more pop types from migration pacts.
  
• § Improved AI leader assignment weights
  
• § The AI now decides whether to strengthen or undermine the galactic empire based on two new game rules
  
• § The AI will no longer build additional Quantum Catapults if they already have one within 25 jumps.

Modding​

• Add `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger
  
• Added a check for the block_homeworld_traits leader flag in all traits that provide additional jobs to the leader's background planet. This flag is not currently used in the vanilla game
  
• Added checked for the following leader flags to leader trait weights and potentials: block_army_traits, block_council_traits, block_federation_traits, block_galcom_traits, block_governor_traits, block_pilot_traits these flags set the selection weight for leader traits in their category to 0 but are ignored if the leader has a subclass specializing in the category. These flags are currently unused in the vanilla game
  
• Added game rule 'can_ai_assign_governor' to let the AI decide if a planet can have a governor or not
  
• Added NON_PARAGON_TRAIT_OPTIONS_ON_LEVEL_UP define
  
• Added not_potential_override_text_key parameter to triggered modifier (currently used in leader trait tooltips and galcom resolutions)
  
• Added on_army_disbanded on_action
  
• Added show_if_not_potential parameter to triggered modifier (currently used in leader trait tooltips and galcom resolutions)
  
• Added text_offset variable to buttonType (only used for buttons that have both a sprite and text)
  
• Added the "is_urban_planet" scripted trigger for pc_relic and pc_city planets
  
• leader_class trigger can now appear in tooltips
  
• Renamed LEADER_RULER_MONARCH_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_RULER_EXPERIENCE and LEADER_RULER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE
  
• Replaced "negative", "subclass_trait", "destiny_trait" and "veteran_class_locked_trait" leader trait variables with "leader_trait_type"
  
• Updated documentation for create_species effect
  
• Updated LEADER_GOVERNOR_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_ASSIGNED_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE
  
• § Fixed "remove_deposit" effect not working in a deposit scope, fixing orbitals not removing their bonus to habitats when destroyed
  
• § Replaced the loc string used to select a background for Paragon portraits with an asset selector.
  
• § can_generate_military_leader_from_pop now includes the requirements of can_generate_leader_from_pop, which are now in the can_be_leader scripted trigger.

Release notes marked with the ¤ symbol were made with the assistance of our modding community. Special thanks to Ariphaos, Fireprince, Risa, alexrider903, ECHO, Roverstorm, jasonpepe, SirBlackAxe, Glavius, Savlor, OldEnt, Harain, and The24thDS for making Stellaris a better game.


Tonight from 15:30 to 17 CET the Stellaris dev team will be available to answer your questions on the Official Stellaris Discord server.



​
As the 3.11 Eridanus release will be coming on Tuesday, I’m planning on moving next week’s dev diary to coincide with the release. See you then!

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

Last week we went over some Community fixes that we are incorporating in the 3.11 “Eridanus” update. Today we’ll be looking at some of the changes the Custodians have been up to. This is not an exhaustive list as while we’re rapidly approaching Code Freeze, it hasn’t hit quite yet so bugs are still being worked on.
As I’ve mentioned previously, for the Eridanus update we focused mostly on bugfixing and polish.


Feature​

• Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider added to galaxy generation. This slider adjusts technology costs based on tier and game difficulty.

Improvements​

• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)
  
• Added the Seddom system.
  
• Allowed conversion between Sovereign Guardianship and Corporate Protectorate civics
  
• Dimensional Locks now forbid access to countries without communications
  
• Every participant in a war now gets a truce with the others after it ends, even if they were on the same side
  
• If you have a colony in a system when pre-FTLs become space faring you can apologize and annex them
  
• Progenitor Hive speed malus and bonuses now only affect military ships, removing the need of science ship escorts
  
• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup
  
• The Anglers civic now swaps to Trawling Operations if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
  
• The Eager Explorers civic now swaps to Privatized Exploration if you reform your government into a megacorp and vice versa
  
• The Eager Explorers, Privatized Exploration and Exploration Protocols civics can be removed and readded after researching Jump Drives. The Stargazers civic cannot be removed as it is linked to the species trait of the same name
  
• The Foreign Consciousness trait is now a destiny trait
  
• When the Khan awakens the event will now properly have a go to button

Balance​

• All pop types will now be happy while living on a gaia world.
  
• Added a tier 2 Advanced Bio-Reactor technology and building. Advanced Bio-Reactors further reduce the food output of farmers in exchange for a small amount of exotic gas output
  
• Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin
  
• Ascension Theory is now a Tier 4 technology that requires at least 6 traditions trees to have been completed to be drawn
  
• Bio-Reactors are now a tier 1 rare technology instead of a tier 0 Technology. Bio-Reactors now reduce the food output of farmer jobs and give them a small amount of energy output
  
• Bio-Trophy buildings no longer provide Artisan Drone and Maintenance Drone jobs
  
• Decreased the amount of research produced by unemployed pops with Utopian Abundance
  
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors
  
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
  
• Ecclesiastical Arcologies now provide Prosperity Preachers for MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers for regular Spiritualist MegaCorps
  
• Event options in the Knights' quest that improve their capital have been buffed to be better balanced compared to the options that improve knight jobs
  
• First League Offices now provide Prosperity Preacher jobs for Spiritualist MegaCorps
  
• Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
  
• Gospel of the Masses now provides +1 Trade Value to Prosperity Preachers (both inside their empire and those on planet on which they have branch offices)
  
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies
  
• Increased the cost of the Rock Potential special project to 1000 energy to account for Stellaris Inflation
  
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions
  
• Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
  
• Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
  
• Lost Colony Parents now spawn with more developed colonies to avoid overcrowding on their capital.
  
• Machine Intelligences with a biological secondary species now have a base food income of 10 food/month, and without a secondary species or with a Lithoid secondary species, they now have a base mineral income of 10 minerals/month.
  
• Moved habitat upkeep modifiers from the domination opener to the expansion opener. Available for all, not just void dwellers
  
• Curator leader trait now provides +10% Research Speed (was +15%) with an associated +10% Researcher Upkeep. The Survey Speed bonus remains unchanged
  
• Penal Colonies now provide 10 housing.
  
• Prosperity Preachers are now a specialist strata job
  
• Rebalanced leader traits gained from Ascension Paths (Psionic, Chosen One, Synthetic, Cyborg, Erudite)
  
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
  
• Reduced the amount of Naval Cap granted by technologies
  
• Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
  
• Removed most sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game
  
  • Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%
    
  • Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%
    
  • Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed
    
  • Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep
    
  • Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep
    
  • Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked
    
  • Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep
    
  • Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs
    
  • Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%
    
  • Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
    
  • Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs
    
  • Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed
    
  • Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs
    
  • Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs
    
  • Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs
    
  • Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%
    
  • Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs
    
  • Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%
• Rulers now gain 12 XP per month
  
• Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% per Squire not 2% per Squire
  
• Temples now provide Prosperity Preachers for Spiritualist MegaCorps instead of a split between Priests and Managers
  
• The Entangled Dark Matter astral rift now completely overwrites the personality of the selected scientist if they are not psionic
  
• The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per Pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
  
• The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
  
• The Traumatized trait now negatively impacts Astral Rift Exploration Speed
  
• Tier 2 and Tier 3 Sacrificial Temples no longer provide Manager jobs for Corporate Death Cults
  
• Tweaked the tiers of technologies that increase naval cap and fleet command limit
  
• Warpling armies now have an upkeep of 1 energy and 0.1 astral threads per month

Bugfixes​

• Added missing class name and icon in the leader upkeep tooltip
  
• Added missing required components to the Marauder Galleon
  
• Added new localization and triggers for Machine Empires exploring the Rift World origin.
  
• Armies now disband instantly instead of waiting for next tick
  
• Cordyceptic Empires that only had Subspace Drives on their ships are now also capable of reanimating space fauna
  
• Corrected draw weight for Shipbreaker trait
  
• Corrected modifiers on Agrarian Upbringing
  
• Corrected some trait names
  
• Corrected the Scout Wing using the wrong 3d entities
  
• Correctly locked a number of Delegate GalCom focus traits to require the DLC that unlocks their resolution category
  
• Diplo action tooltip now shows why we can't claim any systems
  
• distar.1081 will no longer spawn pops on colonies in progress
  
• Driven Assimilators with the Protected Pre-Sapients policy will no longer purge pre-sapients
  
• Empires with the Mechromancy AP can no longer purge cyborg zombies
  
• Event windows now correctly have no effect after the player has been defeated
  
• Extra trait points for script-generated species are now added correctly
  
• Fix countries created by `create_country` script command not having any leaders in their recruitment pool
  
• Fix duplicate ship role buttons when switching ship templates in ship designer
  
• Fix not being able to exit the game or return to menu when certain other UI windows were open
  
• Fix some leaders (e.g. paragons) getting a trait pick when you hire them even though they should not, how greedy!
  
• Fixed a number of opposite trait pairs not taking into account their leveled versions
  
• Fixed a string being undefined in the ruler designer menu
  
• Fixed an Astral Rift calling the Baol for Boal or was it the other way around?
  
• Fixed an error that prevented some Fallen Empire task events from firing
  
• Fixed cyborg zombies having a 100% chance of spawning instead of 33%
  
• Fixed default weights for pre-sapient policies
  
• Fixed Discoveries tab not being displayed when tabs order has been customized
  
• Fixed gestalt scientists getting research expertise traits when those traits had no effect for them
  
• Fixed heirs being able to have the Planar Theorist trait despite not being capable of exploring astral rifts
  
• Fixed incorrect weapon effect being used for the World Cracker
  
• Fixed invalid scope allowing pre-sapient pops to be turned into cyborg zombies
  
• Fixed issues with leaders assigned to armies or fleet that contain armies
  
• Fixed leaders sometimes getting invalid trait choices on level up
  
• Fixed missing 0 on Collaborator II
  
• Fixed missing message title for Restoring the Balance
  
• Fixed newest achievements not working on MS Store
  
• Fixed Orbital Bombardment planet modifier not having a tooltip if there are no other planet modifiers there
  
• Fixed possibility of leader trait picks including opposites of existing traits
  
• Fixed Revolutionary Medi-Gel not affecting Pharma State civic production for Medical Workers
  
• Fixed systems at the bottom of the map spawning at wrong coordinates
  
• Fixed the Shared Burdens tooltip being outdated and mentioning additional unity from the Egalitarian faction
  
• Fixed Unity Ambitions referencing their pre-Unity rework state.
  
• Fixed Urbanist being both a Destiny trait and a Veteran trait (which prevented it from being available as a trait pick)
  
• Fleets of countries without ship_disengagement = yes (e.g. Horde) now correctly cannot use emergency retreat
  
• Former Satrapies of the Khan should no longer be informed twice when the new Horde forms.
  
• Hiring Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer hires a mysterious clone of them instead
  
• If the Knights Keep is hit with a Pacifier Colossus there will now be unique event text
  
• It now costs 200 influence to abandon planets even if they have pre-sapients living there.
  
• Livestock slaves now inherit farmer and miner modifiers as appropriate.
  
• Making sure the negative situation outliner notifications only happens for negative situations
  
• Modifiers to empire-wide resource production now apply to resources generated through trade policies
  
• Removed reference to a loc key inside of an Under One Rule event.
  
• Renowned and Legendary Leaders no longer lose Council traits when hired by gestalt empires.
  
• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events
  
• Replaced all sources of "is_leading_research = x" with "is_head_of_research" fixing numerous broken events and scopes
  
• Replaced one of the descriptions being reused for the Old Gods event chain
  
• Show turrets correctly on the Maven Cruiser and Caravaneer ships
  
• Sobek will no longer be confused and think that they came from your capital
  
• Species habitability for randomized empires is now correctly set for origins like shattered ring
  
• Stellar Culture Shock will now be applied to hive pre-FTLs if you are a hive empire.
  
• Terraforming a Barren World into a Machine or a Hive World will no longer fill that world with blockers
  
• Terraforming straight into a Hive or a Machine World now correctly removes "Terraforming Candidate"
  
• The astral rifts now correctly checks for Chosen One traits in addition to the Psionic trait
  
• The Azizians event can no longer target planets that are under colonization
  
• The chance to gain negative leader traits depending on leader age now takes into account leader lifespan
  
• The Ranger Lodge will now properly produce +2 and +3 additional unity as the higher tier of Environmentalist Galactic Community Resolutions are passed.
  
• The Speed Demon anomaly will no longer show up for Synthetic empires.
  
• Updated the hire_event_leader_effect scripted effect to take account of the the Eternal Throne relic
  
• Updated the tooltip for Universal Prosperity Mandate to mention the Employee Ownership living standard
  
• When the "Prohibit Separate Treaties" federation law is enable it should now correctly remove treaties from both parties and not only the outside one
  
• When transferring ships from one fleet to another, the fleet's leader will now always stay on the old fleet

Performance​

• Improved speed of AI checking whether it should send subjugation offers

Stability​

• Fixed crash when completing an Astral Rift if the exploring ship no longer exists
  
• Possibly fixed rare crash in galaxy map special project icon tooltip.
  
• Several Out of Sync fixes.

UX​

• Add assigned Leader's name and council title to archaeology view and rift view
  
• Additional Content tab text is centered correctly
  
• Clicking on a resource in the top bar now switches to that resource in the market view instead of closing it if it was already open
  
• Clicking on the "capped resource" notification will now take you to the correct tab depending on which resource is capped (correct market tab, relics view for minor artifacts, claims view for influence)
  
• Fix claim buttons being misaligned on partially or fully occupied systems
  
• Fix Outliner tab buttons appearing over the fleet manager sidebar on smaller resolutions
  
• Fixed incorrect speed value in ship designer
  
• Fixed Outliner tab buttons appearing in front of the archaeology window.
  
• Inactive leader trait triggered modifiers are shown in the tooltip along with their trigger conditions
  
• Remove double error message for starbase building tooltips
  
• Trade protection tooltip lists empire-wide modifiers
  
• Use up to 2 decimal places for displaying stability modifiers
  
• Use up to 2 decimal places for production/upkeep in building/district tooltips

AI​

• Added better script to evaluate planet and fleet for leaders, and added description of the AI algorithms for leader assignation in the leader_classes/00_base_classes.txt
  
• Awakened Empires can now upgrade their starbases.
  
• Changed leader assignation into a single loop for all location types, sorting locations by priority and leaders by skill, then trying to assign the highest priority leader to locations in order
  
• Fixed AI being able to improve and harm relations at the same time
  
• Fixed another case of the AI assigning Leaders to invalid (empty) fleets
  
• Fixed the AI trying to assign military leaders to science fleets.
  
• Improved AI weights for Ascension Paths
  
• The AI now hires leaders the same way it assigns them. Expect an increased number of generals.
  
• The AI will evaluate a leader for a location based on the `ai_location_weight` scripted value in the leader class
  
• The Fear of the Dark AI empires will be less predictable with what extreme paths they might take.
  
• The weight value for location priority when assigning leaders is now a define. When assigning leaders, there are 2 steps, first steps leader and locations are assigned a priority value, and then each leader calculates a final weight for each location. The leader/location pair with the highest weight is then assigned. This change affects the first step (the priority in the queue), as the second step is already fully scriptable.

Modding​

• Add `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger
  
• Added a check for the block_homeworld_traits leader flag in all traits that provide additional jobs to the leader's background planet. This flag is not currently used in the vanilla game
  
• Added checked for the following leader flags to leader trait weights and potentials: block_army_traits, block_council_traits, block_federation_traits, block_galcom_traits, block_governor_traits, block_pilot_traits these flags set the selection weight for leader traits in their category to 0 but are ignored if the leader has a subclass specializing in the category. These flags are currently unused in the vanilla game
  
• Added game rule 'can_ai_assign_governor' to let the AI decide if a planet can have a governor or not
  
• Added NON_PARAGON_TRAIT_OPTIONS_ON_LEVEL_UP define
  
• Added not_potential_override_text_key parameter to triggered modifier (currently only used in leader trait tooltips)
  
• Added on_army_disbanded on_action
  
• Added show_if_not_potential parameter to triggered modifier (currently only used in leader trait tooltips)
  
• Added text_offset variable to buttonType (only used for buttons that have both a sprite and text)
  
• Added the "is_urban_planet" scripted trigger for pc_relic and pc_city planets
  
• leader_class trigger can now appear in tooltips
  
• Renamed LEADER_RULER_MONARCH_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_RULER_EXPERIENCE and LEADER_RULER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_HEIR_EXPERIENCE
  
• Replaced "negative", "subclass_trait", "destiny_trait" and "veteran_class_locked_trait" leader trait variables with "leader_trait_type"
  
• Updated documentation for create_species effect
  
• Updated LEADER_GOVERNOR_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE to LEADER_ASSIGNED_MONTHLY_EXPERIENCE

There are a few more currently in the works.

We've assembled some fun statistics from all the Stellaris playthroughs you did in 2023. If you're interested, take a look:



Next week we should have the full Eridanus release notes prepared for you. Barring unforeseen circumstances the 3.11 release is currently planned for release on Tuesday, February 27th.

See you next week!

by Eladrin

Hi all!

When we first announced the 3.11 “Eridanus” update, we mentioned that for the patch the Custodian team would be largely focused on fixing bugs rather than new features. As part of this initiative, PDS_Iggy reached out to some community modders and incorporated some of their fixes into the base game. I wanted to spend today highlighting their contributions.
​
Some changes from these mods are being partially incorporated into the base game in the 3.11 “Eridanus” update:

Ariphaos Unofficial Patch
Developed by Ariphaos with assistance from Fireprince, and incorporates multiple other mods:​

• Risa's Unofficial Patch by Risa
  
• Bug Fixes by alexrider903
  
• Bugfixes by ECHO
  
• Community Flash Patch by Roverstorm
  
• Modifiers fix by jasonpepe
  
• Unofficial Bug Patch by SirBlackAxe
  
• Glavius AI by Glavius
  
• StarNet by Savlor with assistance from OldEnt

VanillaFixes
Developed by Harain with support from The24thDS​

In some cases, we re-implemented their fixes or chose not to include some changes for various reasons, but we want to thank the community for being so active in helping us find and fix issues. We have marked the community contributed bugfixes with the ¤ symbol in the patch notes in order to give proper credit for them.

The list of community fixes that we will be incorporating in 3.11 is as follows:
Improvement​

• ¤ Gangsters should no longer assassinate Chosen Ones or Legendary leaders
  
• ¤ If a Zombie or Nerve Stapled pop manages to lie on their resume and become a specialist or ruler they should be demoted much faster
  
• ¤ Xenophobic leaders are now half as likely to accept brainslugs while Xenophilic ones are twice as likely to accept them
  
• ¤ Improved spawning logic for anomalies that clear deposits to not spawn on planets with strategic resources

Balance

• ¤ Empires that value other species, such as Rogue Servitors, will now get extra annoyed if you engage in genocide or necrophaging
  
• ¤ Gestalt empires can now sell their minor artifacts provided that they have access to the galactic market
  
• ¤ Marauder ships should now have a decently larger amount of armor for most shipsizes
  
• ¤ Refugees should now also be willing to flee to Rogue Servitors if they are welcomed as Bio-trophies

Bugfixes

• ¤ The Expel Corporation war goal now also removes Branch Offices belonging to the defender from your allies' planets
  
• ¤ A supremely unlucky pre-FTL nation should no longer be able to have multiple machine uprisings if they fight off the first one
  
• ¤ The Atomic Clock event will now properly trigger after 42 years and 3 days following the superior Stellaris Standard Calendar, which has 360 day years
  
• ¤ Authoritarianism should no longer become more popular because you have egalitarian councilors
  
• ¤ Become the Crisis AI empires will now always decline becoming vassals to awakened empires
  
• ¤ Fixed a rare case where the Shard would not turn hostile against the player
  
• ¤ Fixed a rare error that would occur if your scientist who finished a dig site died before you clicked the final dig site event
  
• ¤ Fixed the checks for the Debris Field anomaly making it rarer than it should be
  
• ¤ Fixed the Lush Planet Anomaly requiring Sol to have spawned, also updated the event rewards to work in a tileless Stellaris
  
• ¤ Hyperlanes should no longer get attached to sealed systems
  
• ¤ Imperial Fiefdom AI will no longer consider subjects to be viable overlords when they are looking for one
  
• ¤ The Fleet Maneuvers event can no longer happen in capital systems
  
• ¤ The Horizon Signal Event Chain will now correctly prioritize your head of research for narrative events
  
• ¤ The Manifesti event chain will now properly end if you apprehend them early enough
  
• ¤ The puddle technician drone job is now properly a drone job
  
• ¤ The Sentinel Order should no longer spawn in systems not connected to the rest of the galaxy, leaving everyone else to deal with the Prethoryn
  
• ¤ Upscaling the Messenger will now properly remove the negative modifiers from the ships
  
• ¤ Vultaumar III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits
  
• ¤ Irass III will now properly have both alloys and mineral deposits, while Irass VIII has gained its missing exotic gases

AI

• ¤ Improved AI decision-making for the "Find Military Applications" Artifact Action
  
• ¤ Improved AI logic when it comes to when to use the Strip Mining decision
  
• ¤ Reduced the AI willingness to accept trade deals for food or consumer goods if they don't use those resources
  
• ¤ AI Hive-Mind empires now have an increased chance to research terraforming technologies since they are unlikely to get more pop types from migration pacts.

Thank you for your assistance in making the galaxy a better place. Keep an eye out for the Seddom system when 3.11 arrives.

​
The Custodian team has been burning down the bug queue at a nice rate, so next week we’ll go over some of the fixes they're adding in 3.11.

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

It’s been two weeks, so let’s get straight into the good stuff.
Much like the first Technology Open Beta, very experienced players formed the bulk of respondents. This time it was closer to 72% of responses coming from players with over 1,000 hours in game. (Only 1.4% said they had less than 300 hours in Stellaris, so the survey skewed very much towards our most passionate players.) Thank you all for your feedback and help.

This time, a majority of players rated technology progress as “just right”, with the remainder almost perfectly evenly split between it being too fast or too slow, with a majority consensus that the changes were beneficial overall.

Many players missed the breakthrough technologies and the general opinion tended to lean towards us pulling back a little too far. Many players commented that they liked how technology tiers 3 and higher felt more impactful, but lamented that with the removal of breakthroughs, tier 2 sort of melded into tier 1 technologies.

There was also quite a spirited discussion on the Stellaris forums regarding the pros and cons of galaxy generation sliders and their effects on new players.

Our general philosophy is that it is better to permit more customization of your play experience than less, but that the default settings should be a positive play experience for inexperienced players. New players tend not to adjust the sliders much, while veterans tend to have more understanding of the exact effects of the various settings and can customize their game to satisfy their needs - but the default settings, except for difficulty, should be sufficient for an enjoyable game. We do agree that the galaxy settings screen has grown a significant amount over the years and could benefit from some reworking, and will be placing that task on the Custodian “to-do” list for sometime in the future.

Overall, I consider the Technology Open Betas a significant success. We gathered a lot of useful information and feedback, and it gave us the chance to experiment with some systems that may or may not have panned out. We will be going forward with including the changes from the second Technology Open Beta in the 3.11 “Eridanus” update.

Breakthrough Technologies will not be coming at this time, but we may experiment with technology spread and similar effects sometime in the future.

One new change we’ll be making based on some of the data we’ve collected is that we’re moving Ascension Theory to Tier 4 from Tier 5, but it will only be available to empires that have completed at least six tradition trees. As Unity and Research are intended to be “opposing” resources to a degree, we did not want the capstone of Ascension based gameplay to be so strongly tied to the later game tech tree.

Now let’s hear about one of the other changes coming in the update.

Hello, Stellaris community. I'm Gatekeeper, a long-time modder who's ascended into being part of the Stellaris Content team. And if you know anything about what I've done in the past, I like planets.

One thing I've done recently is to imagine a galaxy where Resort Worlds aren't just post-apocalyptic fortress worlds. Instead, these are vibrant, dedicated havens of rest, starkly contrasting the often harsh realities of interstellar life.



The Resort Worlds technology which permits the Create Resort World planetary decision is no longer rare, and we've lowered it to tier 2. We've updated the decision’s restrictions; it no longer has a minimum planet size but can be used on planets that have upgraded capital buildings. As funny as it was (and we did it all the time), you can no longer declare a tomb or relic world a vacation paradise.

A pass has also been done on what buildings are allowed on Resort Worlds.




Instead of providing perfect habitability, Clerks, and Entertainers, Resort Worlds now provide Resort Districts that give Housing, Building Slots, and Resort Worker jobs that provide Trade, and increase Amenities and Trade Value from Living Standards across all planets of your empire. This replaces the empire-wide Amenities reduction of the old version.



On behalf of the United Caphevan Commonwealth, we would like to wish you a pleasant stay on Evaggimar II.​

Next week we’ll be looking at some of the fixes and changes going into the 3.11 “Eridanus” update. See you then!

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

I hope that you all had a pleasant holiday season, and want to start off by thanking everyone that submitted feedback regarding the Technology Open Beta. That data we gained from these experiments was invaluable, so let’s get right into it.
As expected, the players that responded to the survey were overwhelmingly passionate players that have a ton of experience with the game. Nearly 70% of responses come from players that have over 1,000 hours played in the game. This is somewhat natural for an opt-in beta over the holidays with an intimidating feedback form, so I wanted to thank you all again for filling it out.

There was a strong consensus around the military changes (ship cost and upkeep), so we’ll likely be keeping those mostly as-is.

The technology changes were naturally more controversial. Roughly 80% of responses believed that technology (especially at higher tiers) was overall too slow in the beta, but a majority still thought that the changes were beneficial to the game overall. Several of you pointed out that so many simultaneous changes compounded too strongly, and we agree. I was happy to see that your feedback matches our expectations - we expected that the Open Beta was tuned too harshly and that we would want to pull back from it before release.

The Open Beta also revealed several technical issues, including some major performance implications from how Breakthrough Technologies interacted with diplomacy.
Overall, I view the Technology Open Beta as a great success, and as such am taking the opportunity to update it and let it run for another few weeks, after which we will decide whether or not we want to continue experimentation, integrate it into 3.11 (or 3.12), or discard the initiative.

We concur that the original Open Beta went too hard on technology. We liked some of the things we were seeing, such as tier 3 and 4 technologies becoming more valuable for an extended part of the game, but felt that it delayed other critical parts too long. Breakthrough Technologies were interesting as a slowdown mechanic, but if kept would likely need some sort of temporary (non-technology or unity related) bonuses as some form of reward for the frontrunners. The excessively high costs for late tier techs pushed some critical technologies such as Ascension Theory or Mega-Engineering too late in the game, and certain undesirable behaviors (like ignoring research entirely) were too effective.

The updated Technology Open Beta should be up on stellaris_test now, with the following changes:

Feature

• Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider added to galaxy generation. This slider adjusts technology costs based on tier and game difficulty.

Beta

• Removed Breakthrough Technologies.
  
• Reverted base technology costs to their 3.10.4 values - the increased cost between tiers is now handled by the Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider.
  
• Removed the majority of Researcher Upkeep Modifiers introduced into the Open Beta.
  
• Reverted changes to Knights research output from the Open Beta.

Balance

• Tweaked the tiers of technologies that increase naval cap and fleet command limit.
  
• Reduced the amount of Naval Cap granted by technologies.
  
• Significant changes to Bio-Reactors:
  
  • Bio-Reactors are now a tier 1 rare technology instead of a tier 0 technology
    
  • Bio-Reactors now reduce the food output of farmer jobs and give them a small amount of energy output.
    
  • Added a tier 2 Advanced Bio-Reactor technology and building.
    
  • Advanced Bio-Reactors further reduce the food output of farmers in exchange for a small amount of exotic gas output.
• Decreased the amount of research produced by unemployed pops with Utopian Abundance.
  
• Event options in the Knights' quest that improve their capital have been buffed to be better balanced compared to the options that improve knight jobs.

At player request, we have kept the older version of the Technology Open Beta available on stellaris_test_old. It will remain there until the release of 3.11 “Eridanus”.
One of the frequent points of feedback was that there was concern that newer players would be hit especially hard by the technology cost changes. We also recognize that different players have different desires for the pacing of the game, so we’ve added another slider to galaxy generation.

The Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs slider adjusts the base cost of technologies based on the difficulty of the game. Higher tiers of technology are affected to a greater degree than lower ones, so this slider essentially affects “tier width”. While this does overlap with the Technology Costs slider to a degree, it does so in a different way, so we consider each to have valid reasons to exist as separate sliders.


Disabling Difficulty Adjusted Technology Costs will cause them to follow the 3.10.4 / Civilian difficulty curve. As with many other galaxy generation sliders, the Stellaris team will be balancing the game around the Normal setting.

Tech Curves of basic technologies on “Normal” scaling, at different difficulty levels.

The base cost of technologies is now based on 3.10.4’s formula, y=1000*2^x, multiplied by the difficulty modifier of 1 + (q*x*d), where x=technology tier, q=difficulty adjusted tech cost galaxy setting (0 - 0.10, default 0.05), and d=difficulty (Civilian = 0, Grand Admiral = 6).

TierXCost1 technologies at different difficulties, on “Normal” scaling (q=0.05).

For the players that enjoyed the larger amount of distance between tech tiers, scaling can go up to a maximum of “Extreme”, which gives Grand Admiral a curve that is similar to, but not exactly, the Open Beta numbers. Note that technology acquisition will still be faster than the old Open Beta as we’ve removed Breakthrough Technologies.

Tech Curves of basic technologies on “Extreme” scaling, at different difficulty levels.


TierXCost1 technologies at different difficulties, on “Extreme” scaling (q=0.10).


Previous Open Beta values for reference.

We have a new feedback form for this version of the Open Beta, available here. As with the previous version, you can respond multiple times if you have different thoughts after different playthroughs. Please let us know what you think, and whether you think we’ve gone back too far in the other direction.

Currently we're planning on collecting feedback from this phase of the Technology Open Beta for two weeks, until the 1st of February, but will leave the branches available until the 3.11 "Eridanus" update releases later on in the quarter.

See you all next week!

Please note that the Technology Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test - Technology Open Beta" branch.

Please disable mods for the Technology Open Beta, they are likely to break.
In-progress games should continue on the “stellaris_test_old” branch.

-----
[MrFreake enters to highjack the post]
Hello everyone!

Here I am again, not reading the room. Eladrin is talking about turning off your mods, and I'm here telling you to download more mods: buuuut....

#MODJAM2024 is Available Now!



Want a sneak peek at the Legendary Leaders included in #MODJAM2024? Check out the feature video:


Voting for favorite mod will run until February 11th, so there's still plenty of time to play and vote for your favorite submission here!

Hello Stellaris Community!

We're proud to announce that #MODJAM2024 is available now! Get it here!



Now's the time where the Community gets to step in, and vote for your favorite submission. Vote for your favorite #MODJAM2024 Legendary Leaders here!

What are the prizes, you ask? This year we’ve paired up again with Republic of Gamers to deliver some great prizes to our winning Modders:

1st Place: ROG Strix G17 (2023) G713 Laptop*
2nd Place: ROG Delta S Wireless Headset*
3rd Place: ROG Spatha X Wireless Mouse*
4th - 10th Place: Stellaris branded Wallet and Keychain

* Exact specifications may vary depending on winning modder’s region

Thanks to everyone for playing and voting in #MODJAM2024!

by MrFreake

Hello Stellaris Community!

I have to start off by saying how proud I am of all the participants this year. This year saw the most signups for Mod Jam we've ever had, the most design documents submitted, and (I think) the most final submissions. The modders have really put their all into these contributions, and I think they've turned out fantastic. I can't wait to see what you all think!

The Mod Jam mod will release today around 5 PM CET! You can subscribe to the workshop mod now, and get this new content as soon as it becomes available!

Today we're going to be talking about the final 11 submissions that haven't been seen, so without further ado:


Inspiration: I had a couple of inspirations for Raffar - one was the classic trope of the scheming vizier, so I wanted to make a leader you knew you shouldn’t trust but who was rewarding enough to risk playing with fire. Then I’ve added lots of ideas loosely inspired from WH40k’s Necrons and Dr Who’s Cybermen into the mix for good measure.


Inspiration: I loved collecting and tending to my leaders long before Paragons made them cool, they can be the backbone of the kind of RP focused gameplay I enjoy most. Zob takes that leader gardening instinct to the next level, as Zob only gains power as you add your own leaders and your own story to Zobs. Trait stacking can also be a fun exercise for the min-maxer in me, and Zob facilitates that in what is hopefully, a limited and manageable way.


Inspiration: I’ve had the idea of this character in my head for some time, as the primary antagonist of an IP I never got onto paper. I decided to introduce the idea of Reinhard’s character to a wider community to see their opinions and acquire feedback. I’m aware of the power fantasy of wanting to play ‘the bad guys’, and figured that this was a good way to feed into that. Religion is also an idea I wanted to explore heavily with my as-of-yet nonexistent IP, diving into some of the benefits and drawbacks with the worship of deities and spirituality in general. Reinhard represents the bad parts of religion/spirituality; the authoritarianism, the corruption of values, the blind obedience to dogma, while his counterpart, Michael Faulkner (who is mentioned in-game, and who you may encounter in a playthrough with Reinhard) represents the good aspects; the community, the moral values, and the idea of the larger collective working together for the common good. I was heavily inspired by real-world evils associated with religion, with Reinhard himself being inspired by what I believe most cult leaders to be like; con-men who don’t actually believe anything they’re saying, but they say it anyway in order to gain power. Power is a central concept to Reinhard’s character, he’s a nihilist who believes that nothing matters except securing one’s own personal welfare, even at the expense of others. This mod is more of a proof of concept, since I wanted to make an expanded version where you could recruit Michael Faulkner as a leader as well, but I was only allowed to create a single recruitable leader for this ModJam, so I settled on this. I do intend to release this expanded version in the future, however.




Inspiration: Our inspiration for Ralph Fasmid came from movies and shows such as Casablanca, SpyKids, Chuck, The Kingsman, and Bourne. Casablanca was our main inspiration for his design, Chuck was the inspiration for him to be exclusive to Megacorps. Bourne inspired a small event that only happens if you dismiss him.


Inspiration: My inspiration for Mictla's concept originated from reading Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time trilogy, where I aimed to craft an entity that exuded a really alien and almost horror-like essence.

In terms of gameplay I wanted a leader focused mainly on one or two aspects of the game. Mictla's bonuses are heavily on what you'd expect from the society group of technologies. I also wanted them to feel to stand out, so I implemented a unique way for them to level up as they don't gain experience over time.

Lastly I wanted to design Mictla so that it could have an impact on the player's experience. So that if the player chose to, there would be drastic changes in your empire based on your decisions and approach with Mictla's events.

We're going on an adventure!









Inspiration: “To be honest I prefer Cyto”


Inspiration: In my pen & paper campaign (Pathfinder 1e) Naodeus is a benevolent magical being from beyond the outer realms trapped in the campaign world. Talil is a city founded by his adopted children. Right after I learned of the Paragon update I wanted to make this leader. This ModJAM was an excuse to do so.

####

And that's it for the Legendary Leaders included in this year's Mod Jam, 26 in total! What do you think? Which one are you most excited to play?

Just a reminder #MODJAM2024 will release at 5 PM CET today! (January 11th, 2024)